This week we spend time diving into Google’s hardware announcements. Their phones look interesting and the Pixel tablet is particularly interesting (if you can handle the price). Overall Google continues to make solid improvements to their hardware offerings. Check below for all the stories we cover in this episode.
What an action packed week for tech! Matthew gets his new iPhone, VW gets in trouble with the EPA, Smule sues some former employees, Oculus held their developer conference, Pebble came out with a new watch, Microsoft released Office 2016, and Apple’s App store got hacked. Check below for all the details and links.
This week we talk a lot about Google. Make sure you check below for the link to their new logo (hint: it’s not this logo).
In the book Made To Stick, it talks about to get people to quickly understand and idea. One really easy way is to take something they already know and then tell them how it’s different. Thus the formula “It’s the [existing company] of [new market]” was born.
Did you know that LOLs are on the way out? haha.
WeChat is huge and chances are you’re not using it because it’s huge in China. What makes this app interesting is that it breaks many of the current rules that US app makers follow.
Google is now part of Alphabet. It’s both a fascinating name, and a confusing name. Same goes for the structure. Hopefully this will make it easier for us to predict what Google is going to do.
Disneyland and Walt Disney World are adding a Star Wars land, to which we declare: about time! Seriously, this is going to be awesome. Just as awesome is the work that ILM is doing to bring VR to the professional movie level. As the camera guy who made bullet time says, he wants to make the Matrix.
People still think Apple is making a car. James still thinks they’re wrong.
HTC is worth less than the cash they have. That’s not a good sign and we expect something big to happen to them within the year.
Foursquare is still around, BTW.
Baseball is starting to experiment with computer aided batter’s boxes instead of umpires. This is a fascinating proposition that requires some fundamental answers about the purpose of the game. Check out the South Park episode right below that link.
Samsung creates the first 16TB SSD… which is just crazy.
And finally, if you’re on AT&T, check out their new shared data plans because they just got better.
Enjoy the show!
Mission Impossible came out this week. Go watch Tom Cruz do his own stunts.
Don’t forget to help us celebrate our 200th episode by getting in on our 2 $100 gift card giveaway.
In the meantime, is iTunes poorly designed (we’re still not sure)?, Zazzle is slowly growing and turning into a huge company, Intel & Micron invent a new memory called 3D Xpoint, OnePlus unveils the OnePlus 2, Motorola unveils the Moto X and Moto G, Microsoft releases Windows 10, Google starts killing Google+ but will revive Glass, Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk think militarized AI is a bad idea, Facebook plans to do the same bait and switch with Messenger/WhatsApp that they did with Pages, and Snapchat is selling a beach towel just because.
200 episodes! An amazing ride! Here’s the deal: We want to invite you to celebrate with us and so we’re giving away 2 $100 gift cards to one of your favorite tech companies (2 x $100, get it?). Head on over to http://furlobros.com/giveaway to sign up.
This week, we start out talking about Pixels and Ant Man (don’t worry, no spoilers). Then we get into the meat of show where we talk about the PlayStation winning this generation’s console war, Zillow buying DotLoop to take on DocuSign, the next industrial revolution, Google admitting the Microsoft’s Office is actually pretty good, Ashley Madison’s hack, GoPro’s new video service, Apple’s quarterly results, NASA’s new earth, Vizio going public, Apple’s car plans (if any), how drones impact emergency situations, and drug testing eSport athletes.
By the way, we did have an alternate show title: “The integral of x cubed from 0 to 5.318296”
Disney is really ramping up the number of Star Wars movies, the Bolt is a cool electric bike, HP is taking a week off and losing Bill Veghte to SurveyMonkey, Apple Watch is doomed, Waze is semi-taking on Uber, Microsoft is making progress with the HoloLens, the BBC is making a micro:bit for kids, Tinder has verified users, Ben Huh is stepping down from I Can Has Cheeseburger?, Reddit has a new CEO that the community likes, Google and Blackberry are suiting up together, and Nintendo’s Satoru Iwata passes away.
Twitter has tons of potential and that can only be unlocked with a full-time CEO, SQFT aims to reduce agent costs to only 2%, Taylor Swift and Apple harmonize over Apple Music, Google and Tidal try to keep up, Pando become subscription based, Facebook Messenger doesn’t require a Facebook account, Uber is driver France crazy, 360Fly wants to capture the VR recording market, and Swarm mayors are in the house again.
This week we talk about…
Google playing with photos (see image above), E3 where Microsoft and Sony show off all sorts of cool goodies, the future of virtual reality from Oculus, Valve & Starbreeze, Nintendo level maker and MarI/O, the death of the Mac, the possibilities of WebAssembly, Apple Music and TSwift, and finally Uber’s employees of the California Labor Commission.