Sometimes a product requires a new look or feature. Sometimes the change is seen as a disruptive innovation and people love it. Sometimes it’s seen as a tone deaf redesign that inspire people to write petitions agains the change. This week we look into the latest changes from Snapchat and talk about it in the context of other changes like the Facebook timeline, Digg v4 and and iOS change. The show notes are below.
The big news this week is that Snapchat is changing their name to Snap, Inc and they’re releasing new hardware: a pare of sunglasses with a camera called Spectacles. See that story and many others below.
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.
Matthew and I hit peak tangent in this episode. It starts out easy enough with Instagram photos and Facebook’s f8 developer’s conference. Then we get deep into camera technology, texting, the future of books, drone sports, and end with a rant against making 4 sequels to Avatar. All the tangential show notes are below.
Everything on the internet was once expected to be free (thanks Google). Then we started paying for songs (thanks Apple) and books (thanks Amazon). Soon it became normal to pay for things online. Then Netflix showed us that monthly subscriptions can be massively convenient for customers and super profitable for companies. It seems that all the major players are getting in on the monthly subscription goodness. But is it setting them up for a backlash when the economy turns and people start looking for ways to cut their monthly expenses?
We come to an inescapable conclusion in this episode: Elon Musk is a Super Villain. Think about it. He’s publicly stated that humanity will die in 20 years. He’s working on his own escape to another planet. And he’s creating autonomous robots (cars) that look sleek and people inherently trust. This is how it happens people!
The sharing economy is dead. The biggest reason has to do with trust. With the potential for fake reviews and broken products/services, it’s easier to simply rent/subscribe to a bigger company.
See below for all the notes and links on the topics we covered.
We’re trying something crazy this week and experimenting with a shorter show format. There are a couple new Easter Eggs of wisdom, but it’s pretty much the same show, but done a whole laster faster. Let us know what you think!
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.
