Last week SpaceX launched Falcon Heavy into space. It was only a test flight, but it lit the imagine of millions of people and gave a glimpse of where space travel is headed. In this episode, we gush a little about Elon Musk and SpaceX.
324: Exploring Unintended Consequences
This week we explore the unintended consequences of decisions different tech companies, and their leaders, make. For example, Strava published a cool map of user activity and accidentally showed secret military bases. IKEA flat packed furniture to save money, which turned out to increase customer love for their products.
We then look at decisions made last week that will probably also have unintended consequences. For example, will raising the fee music steamers have to pay impact how Spotify, Apple, Amazon, and Google strike deals to musicians. Will Elon Musk’s new compensation plan cause him to play short-term gain plans? Will Snapchat’s decision to open their walled garden doom their company? We look at each of these in this week’s show. The details for each are in the show notes below.
321: Concrete Predictions for 2018
It’s the beginning of 2018 and that means it’s time for us to provide concrete predictions of what will happen in tech this year. We managed to keep the show under an hour, which is amazing. We talk about larger tech trends (telling you the theme for the year), we cover the big 5 oligopolies (Apple, Alphabet, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft), plus discuss some small players (Snap, Elon Musk, Snap, Disney). It’s a great show and will give you a concrete foundation for the year. See the show notes below.
312: What’s Better: A Starving Artist? Or A Fat Artist?
What happens when a founder/leader gets tired of their main product and decides to take on a secondary product? For the second product, they’re no longer starving artist, but a fat artist. Does massive amounts of money and people help? We discuss this idea in this week’s podcast with many examples.
288: Samsung Isn’t Fooling Around With Their New Phone
It’s that time of year again, where the internet loses it’s mind and get’s all weird. That’s right, it’s April Fools. SpaceX launched and landed a rocket that they had already launched and landed. Twitter made some changes that got everybody in tweeting fervor. Samsung announced the explosive sequel to their exploding phones. Congress sold our privacy to the highest bidder (kinda, but not really) and Apple rearranged all your files while you slept (don’t worry, they’re right where you left them)
279: Amazon Is Winning Awards For Excellence And Twitter Is Not
Congrats to Amazon on the Oscar nominations. They’re proving that streaming companies can make just as good of movies and traditional studios. Exciting times! Twitter, on the other hand, has not received as high of marks for their recent update with the “explore” tab. Oh yeah, and Elon Musk is building a tunnel from SpaceX to LAX. That guy…
266: A Visionary Podcast With A New Line Of Hardware
Creating compelling products requires a visionary leader. Someone who can put the product line in context and provide a rationale for what was, or was not, created. Tesla and Microsoft both have visionary leaders. Apple appears to be struggling in this area.
262: BlackBerry, Meerkat And GoPro All Qualify For A Trip To Mars
In talking about who the first people to visit Mars should be, Elon Musk suggests that it should be people who are willing to die. So… BlackBerry, Meerkat & GoPro are already on their death beds, so it makes them perfect candidates to go to Mars. Each of our story’s are below.
257: Tim Cook Still Plays His Wii
This week, like every week, we talk about the continuing corporate of tech companies. We talk about power companies, Facebook’s data, how well Tim Cook is running Apple, Nintendo’s head in their sand over the Wii, spreadsheets, VR stuff (of course), and the amount of money Uber is losing. Check out all the notes below for the links.
248: Solar Powered Cheese Cutters
Dare to dream! Laptops are getting so thin that they can double as cheese cutters. But are they getting too thin? Maybe the “cheese cutters test” isn’t the right area laptop makers should be competing. Maybe it should be about battery life and speed.