This Week in Google 236 (Transcript)
Leo Laporte: It’s time for TWIG, Jeff Jarvis is here in studio and he brought his boss, so everybody be nice, we are going to talk about the crappy Olympics coverage, what’s wrong journalism today and all the new stuff Google has brought us. It’s time for TWIG.
Net casts you love from people you trust. This is Twit! Bandwidth for This Week In Google is provided by cachefly.com, at c-a-c-h-e-fly.com.
Leo: This is TWiG, This Week in Google, episode 236 February 12, 2014.
Who’s Your Daddy?
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Leo: It’s time for TWIG, This Week in Google! The show that covers… you know, we use the word Google very loosely with this title, anything we want to talk about right?
Jeff Jarvis: Right!
Leo: Hey look who’s here, Jeff Jarvis! He’s not Pink!
Jeff: I’m not pink! My cameras usually make me very pink.
Leo: Jeff Jarvis is in town; Jeff is always nice to have. Jeff Jarvis is the professor of journalism with the City University of New York, the author of Public Parts and What would Gutenberg Do? No, that’s another book that you haven’t written yet! It’s good to have you.
Jeff: Not a bad idea. It’s good to be here, it’s wonderful to be here, I love being here with my guy.
Leo: And you have brought your boss; Sarah Bartlett is also here and is currently the Dean of the School of Journalism of the City University of New York. But I was just, first of all somebody in the chat room said, Oh, Sarah’s’ book is great, you have got to read the Money Machine.
Jeff: Ooh
Sarah: That’s nice I have at least one fan out there, that’s good!
Leo: So you have a fan. This is the story of the guys who invented the leverage buy out practically, Colbert, Kravis and Roberts, and really the beginning of the end of the financial markets, but it also says here that you were a reporter at Fortune, Business Week, and the New York Times, Assistant managing editor at Business week for 6 years and Editor and Chief of Oxygen media.
Sarah: That’s all true.
Leo: They didn’t lie?
Sarah: No, it’s actually accurate.
Leo: When did you go into academia?
Sarah: I started at Peru College, which is part of the City University network in 2002.
Leo: You decided that journalism was over or I guess not since you’re…
Sarah: No, I needed an income that was steady and stable.
Leo: Ah! You needed a job and you chose academia, well anyway that’s great, was it your inspiration to bring Jeff?
Sarah: I can take no credit for it, he was the first professor hired at the school and I was the second!
Leo: Oh! Perfect.
Sarah: I could thank him maybe, for not shutting the door on me, I guess but now the tables have turned and I can inflict whatever pain I like.
Leo: So, it’s nice to have you both in studio and we are going to ask what you are doing out here, besides feeing the snow which apparently Gina has not fled
Jeff: Poor Gina!
Leo: She is bundled up in mom’s basement. (Laughing)
Gina: I am, Hello!
Leo: Hi Gina, Gina Trapani.
Gina: I am doing a podcast from my mother’s basement, yes. I owning it, you see my mom’s chotskies up here and I’m here.
Jeff: Oh the jets like it again please
Gina: Oh yea the Jet flow, it’s all the way across the room, I’m surrounded here by all my mom’s pictures and well , my mom loves me and I am here in her house.
Leo: The irony of all of this is mom is in Florida. (Laughing)
Gina: Yeah, mom is in Florida and she is like, are you watering the plants, honey? Are you warm? Okay there are extra snow boots in the closet. Make sure you lock the door at night.
Leo: So when we left you last week you were running off to buy your house in Park Slope, is that done?
Gina: Yes I was and it is done! The closing is done. I am officially very much in debt, happily in debt and responsible for shoveling the snow tomorrow, which will be fun. Yes, I am a brand new homeowner, really, really excited! We are not quite done yet because our stuff is still in a truck or getting loaded into a truck on its way from San Diego but, will be moved in soon, and yeah, there are a lot of home improvements in my future, so I am very excited!
Leo: well here we are gathered together and I think we are going to spend a little more time than we usually do talking about journalism, the future of journalism.
Jeff: Uh oh, watch out! Get the coffee now, gentlemen.
Leo: No, I love this stuff and as I watch NBC botch the Olympics yet one more time, spending more time on Bob Kostas’s pink eye than on some of the stories in the Olympics!
Gina: Do you know how disgusting that is? God!
Leo: It’s so disgusting and this morning on the Today show they actually interviewed him about his pink eye and I thought, this is NOT news!
Jeff: No.
Leo: Anyway, I guess when it’s the Olympics it’s not news either really.
Jeff: They edited the opening ceremony again in two ways, I don’t know because A & P called me, they took out the human rights statement from the opening which is a problem, they did the same thing in the London Olympics when they polished it up.
Leo: Interesting. Why did they do that? Oh, because it is too boring for the Americas.
Jeff: That’s what I thought, I guess; they also too out the police choir.
Leo: So this made me mad, because Lisa said, hey did you see the Russian Police choir singing Daft punk? I said I saw them singing the Russian national Anthem, what do you mean Daft Punk? She said No! They did. I said well that’s a mash up. She said No they did! And yes online you can see it but it was not on TV. Okay, so I wasn’t crazy.
Jeff: You weren’t crazy.
Leo: what the hell happened?
Jeff: The Associated Press called me to try to talk about this.
Leo: Why did they cut that out?
Jeff: It was a dumb mistake because they said it got millions of views on YouTube!
Leo: Yeah!
Jeff: And so they said
Leo: They don’t understand their own audience!
Jeff: No they don’t! How could you miss that? Plus, the great thing about all of this, I say this with no disparagement, but it’s these gay moments in the Olympics (laughing) that you want to celebrate! You want to say, Come on guys!
Leo: I just thought it was really funny because this is the Russian Police choir, I presume they are all Policeman
Jeff: With the greatest hats in the world!
Leo: The big, big, big Russian Police hats, they are wonderful! And then what you see is the younger guys are really getting into Daft Punk.
Jeff: Right
Leo: I don’t know if they understand the lyrics, “I am here to get lucky I am going to stay all night to get lucky?”
Sarah: What’s hard to understand about that?
Leo: Maybe it didn’t translate? This is a song about getting laid. Anyway, they are singing that and then the older guys who are clearly Gorbachev era or maybe even Khrushchev era, are kind of like, standing there, like, puzzled and maybe a little put out. It’s fascinating, it’s fun to watch, and why NBC cut that out?
Jeff: Well, they have this chance to edit the whole thing.
Leo: Pardon me
Gina: Wasn’t there also a technical glitch where one of the rings didn’t open and didn’t they edit in the
Leo: Yes, no
Jeff: No, the Russians did!
Leo: Putin asked NBC to Photoshop in the ring and NBC said no, at least in this respect, said no.
Jeff: Yea
Gina: Okay
Leo: At least showed some integrity and said no. However, the official Russian version included the rings opening up from the rehearsal instead of the failed ring.
Gina: We saw the opening.
Jeff: And immediately saw the t-shirts.
Sarah: Yes.
Jeff: Well, the jokes about the fifth ring came out.
Leo: Okay, This is the Russian Police choir, you can turn it up a little bit, I think we can enjoy it, we should all enjoy it, Daft Punk is performed by 100 straight Russian Policemen! Except for that one.
Chad: This is the only clip that I have, everything else has been taken down by
Leo: By Daft Punk! That’s why NBC didn’t show it .
Chad: Yeah, so like this is or looks like the full version.
Leo: It was a rights issue, a full rights issue.
Chad: Yeah, with all of the money, of course.
Leo: Okay this isn’t really This Week in Google at this point but what the hell, am I wrong in seeing a little bit of bias on the part of American media, anti-Russian bias? I’m thinking of before the Olympics began, the Sochi problem, Twitter feeds, and all of these other problems.
Jeff: The Canadians did that, let’s be clear.
Leo: But many of these pictures turned out to be spurious and many of these stories turned out to be spurious but it seems like, as we go through the Olympics, maybe its hereditary because they were our enemies for so long during the cold war, maybe, I think nominally I think it has to do with the anti- gay propaganda.
Jeff: I don’t think Putin is beloved, I think Pussy Riot is a strong bias, brilliant PR time to be in the US and did you see Colbear? Amazing!
Gina: I didn’t, I bet that was amazing.
Leo Did they sing? What did they do?
Jeff: How you can be funny in simultaneous translation!
Leo: That’s awesome.
Jeff: And both sides of them did it. That’s amazing.
Gina: Wow, I got to look that up.
Leo: So I mean, I guess this hasn’t been a real surprise that we would have somewhat of a negative slant on things.
Jeff: I kind of want to admit emotionally, I am rooting against Putin.
Leo: Yeah.
Jeff: You know? And what you hear,
Leo: You hear it’s so warm there, everything’s terrible, the hotel handles fell off, and by the way, you didn’t hear anything more after the Olympics started about hotel door handles falling off, it just stopped.
Jeff: Maybe they are out working.
Leo: Maybe they fixed it.
Jeff: Yeah
Leo: So..
Jeff: Well the greatest story was about the luge guy who had to break through the door,
Leo: Yeah
Jeff: That one was crazy yeah, punched it right
Leo: Punched the door, I think that reflects worse on us than it does the Russians. No, I think you’re right no one confessed it.
Jeff: Open the door, Pow!
Leo: Anyway, there is not a whole lot of stories there except there is one tech story there that Richard Engel, I think who normally is a very good correspondent at NBC did a story that seemed to me to fail one of the critical tenants of good journalism, you tell me, Sarah Bartlett, you’re the Dean of journalism, that it sounded like he went into the story knowing what it was going to be about and knowing what story he wanted to tell and in the face of all facts he told it and they did it with editing so this is the story he did about hacking, hackers in Russia and the premise of the story going in was , don’t bring any electronics to Russia because it will be hacked immediately. Now he did mention that we are not in Sochi we are in Moscow, 1,000 plus miles away, they brought in a guy from an anti-virus company which right there was probably a mistake but he is a technical expert, he set up a Windows machine and a Mac machine, no updates, they also got an Android phone and what happened, although you didn’t see it on camera was he had Richard Engel go to malicious sites on the Windows and The Mac machine, download and run software, what they showed on the screen was, he didn’t so anything he just turned on the computer and now it’s hacked. Now, Maybe our Android fans will understand even better on this, he had him in the Android phone go to that setting, you know that setting, Gina, where you check the box that says allow third party downloads?
Gina: Yep
Leo: He checked that box, unchecked by default,
Gina: And it says, are you sure?
Leo: And gets a big warning, “This could be dangerous” and then he went and downloaded a known malicious App.
Gina: Okay!
Leo: And then all this is edited out, then he shows that he has been hacked! So in other words
Jeff: So it proves nothing.
Leo: He did stupid things on all three systems, known stupid things and edited out the doing of them and by the way you could do this sitting right here, every one of them, it has nothing to do with Russia or Russian hackers!
Gina: The Internet is everywhere.
Leo: Yeah, so it felt like a hit piece, I think Engel is a better journalist than that.
Sarah: Total lack of transparency to what he was doing.
Leo: Yeah, One of the reasons we know what he did is because the Trend Micro guy, an expert, I think felt guilty about it and blogged it all. “Oh, By the way, here’s what really happened…” That’s a bad precedent to set: I am going to prove a story true and then I am going to edit my piece to make it so.
Sarah: Yeah, and then I am going to hide my tracks!
Leo: Well they haven’t, as far as I know, not to this day in any way apologized and despite a lot of criticism from, not only from us, but security experts, the Trend Micro expert and others. So, although, a lot of people felt like what made it worse, (go ahead and show this, Chad) him ripping the box open! Apparently Richard Engel doesn’t understand how to open a MacBook Air box! He tore into it like it was a Fed Ex package.
Gina: Awe, that’s just wrong.
Leo: Ohh
Jeff: That’s aesthetically violating.
Leo: Awe, that where the big cringe factor was, I don’t know, I guess that’s fine. I feel like to me this is sort of a larger pattern of, lets figure out how to make Russia look as bad as possible.
Jeff: Well it was also a way to make technology look bad too, it was, it’s always a chance to scare people about dangerous technology.
Sarah: I don’t know, I think it’s sort of broader than that, I think it’s sort of failures of journalism that we see every day and we just happen to see them more because everybody’s focusing on the Olympics but these are problems that we see across the board.
Leo: This is uh.
Sarah: Bad Journalism.
Leo: Standard operating procedure for networks, Oh, doesn’t that hurt!
Gina: Oh
Leo: He just tore open the box, no these are carefully made.
Jeff: There are 20 designers who designed that back box flap.
Leo: Yeah, I mean, I don’t know, there’s not much more to say about that, it’s not really news.
Jeff: TV news sucks.
Leo: Yeah, it’s pretty bad isn’t it? Isn’t it also a truism that if you are an expert in the field and if you watch the television version of it, it will always be wrong and confused.
Jeff: Well that’s also the news magazine, whenever I bought the Time magazine it was like, no of course it was always the snow was gaining water.
Leo: Well, as a good example, Time just published a good example about quantum computing, in which they kind of say well, this is going to change the world as soon as they can make it work, this is like cold fusion!
Jeff: Yeah.
Leo: When somebody invents it will you let me know? And then we will talk about what it can do. All right lets continue on, it’s actually interesting Google had a little bit of a response to the anti-gay propaganda law in Russia, they changed their homepage.
Gina; Yeah it’s a big old rainbow
Jeff: Which they rarely do to advocate and they did it.
Leo: You think that’s what it was, it was really about that?
Jeff: Well it was presumed, you know when I looked at it again, was it really the rainbow colors?
Leo: It is the rainbow I actually figured it out it was red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet
Jeff: Well!
Sarah: It’s a little suttle
Leo: I thought that might be the Google colors, is that the Google colors?
Jeff: NO
Leo: No
Jeff: I wondered if they were the colors of sport tabs or something
Leo: No it’s the rainbow.
Jeff: It’s the rainbow.
Leo: And what country was it that wore rainbow uniforms?
Jeff: All of them?
Gina: Germany, they said we just like the rainbows.
Leo: We just like the rainbows.
Jeff: It may be ugly.
Leo: We just feel that we had to compete with Ralph Lauren’s ugly sweater, so we had to get something ugly.
Jeff: There is something ugly there is a great Twitter handle; nine, and he went crazy on this one, it happened in Germany.
Leo: I thought the German skaters had lovely little shifts, that’s my thought. Hey good news! Here it is a Nexus 7, Jeff Jarvis can finally use his on the Verizon network.
Jeff: Well, we will see because I, they are going to sell them, I’m saying no because they announced that they are going or it has been leaked that they are going to sell them
Leo: Right
Jeff: What I don’t know is that when I walk in with my Nexus 7 that I didn’t buy there... I don’t know.
Leo: Oh they won’t.
Jeff: That’s my last test, what are they going to do? Six months, six freaking months it took these bozos to say that this works on their network, but it takes two seconds to put a freaking SIM in and it works fine.
Gina: Okay, My request Jeff, is that you wear Google glass and you do this interactively live and say hey this is what you are talking about in your mediums here I want you to stream this with the Verizon salesperson live on Google Plus okay and let us know what time before hand so we can all be there with you!
Leo: You wrote to the FCC?
Jeff: I have complained to FCC which I think is valid, because Verizon, it took six months to maybe follow the dictates to maybe follow the auction for LG Spectrum.
Leo: So do you think as part of their agreement that if they were to buy this 700 megahertz C-band that they would be an open network on that band?
Jeff: Right. And Google forced when Google entered into the auction and that spectrum Google put in the requirements for openness and then pulled out and that’s why they got it. So they didn’t follow the dictates and I am a victim to be punished.
Leo: What was the response to you?
Jeff: Silence.
Leo: Nothing?
Jeff: Nothing, nada.
Leo: They never responded at all?
Jeff: Nothing.
Sarah: They get so many letters from Jeff that’s probably why
Leo: Put them in the Jarvis basket, you know where that is right? Yeah the round file.
Gina: And it’s not a priority inbox.
Jeff: I am not going to say where it was in our trip here I have heard of the start up of a technology company in our area that tries to ban garbage cans to eliminate garbage.
Gina: To eliminate garbage?
Leo: Okay, but that doesn’t eliminate the garbage that’s just the place to put it.
Jeff: But the person who told me to me you get kind of motivated you get that Mac maybe you think about tearing the box up and you don’t have to think about it before throwing it away because there’s no place to throw it away.
Leo: You throw it away at home.
Jeff: No
Sarah: It doesn’t always make the garbage at home
Jeff: or you throw it on the floor, I mean garbage, and maybe it’s not a horrible addition on the email, think before you print.
Leo: Oh yeah, yeah.
Gina: Oh yeah.
Jeff: I hate that.
Leo: First of all, who the hell prints email? Somebody apparently?
Jeff: Secretaries.
Gina: Sending you the email is not very savvy.
Leo: William Randolph Hertz the 3rd, you would send him an email and his secretary would print it, bring it to him and he’s very technically savvy too, but that was just his service.
Sarah: I know people like that.
Jeff: Service
Leo: And you know he would read it and he would write a response and then she would go type it. I think he has gone beyond that by now, I think he actually uses email now. He was a good friend so I shouldn’t say bad things about him.
Jeff: I think we will go to a Verizon store and I will report back.
Gina: Someone should tape it.
Sarah: Someone should tape it, you are absolutely right.
Jeff: Gina, Google glass, I think I mentioned last week that I talked to somebody from the team after my rant about that and I am seeing the team on Mountain View on Friday.
Gina: Oh excellent!
Jeff: So I will see you at that and that could be a little uncomfortable.
Sarah: They are more responsive than the FCC
Jeff: That’s darn true, my lenses for the Google Glass $435
Gina: Yikes!
Leo: So it’s $250 for the frame
Jeff: $250 for the frame $225 for the glass and $435 you add it up I don’t know how
Leo: that’s a lot it’s like $2023 bucks I think for a pair of glasses
Gina: Yeah, last night we had Jason Applebaum on “All about Android” and he just got his custom frames and he just got his lenses fitted and he has his Vtube and he loves it.
Jeff: He does?
Gina: Yeah, so I refer our viewers back to the show.
Jeff: Jacobs somebody I got to listen to.
Leo: Gina said, well Jeff hates them, you should watch TWIG and see but Jeff said all of the things that you can see if you Jacob said that
Gina: Jason, Jason Applebaum
Leo: Jason, he said they shouldn’t bend because one side wouldn’t bend and the other side would and that would be crazy and then,
Jeff: Did he like the gigantic 5 gallon case?
Gina: We didn’t talk about the case, you know he is in touch with the developers and he is an engineer himself so I think he has empathy for the developers and how difficult it is to install a hinge, which is obviously something a user or consumer should worry about and he did say that when it’s absolutely a consumer product and there has to be a better solution to what they are marketing but he was sort of, happy that they were able to get as far as they have now.
Jeff: Its one hell of a new item.
Gina: Yeah.
Leo: Sarah, what happens when Jeff wears Glass into the office? Do you throw him out? Do you?
Sarah: No, not at all, but people want to borrow them all of the time, my students are crazy, in fact my son told me, don’t come home if I don’t have Google glass!
Jeff: Your son, the swag store!
Sarah: Yeah, I keep telling him, I don’t think that’s going to happen.
Leo: Yeah, I am of the opinion Google will never make it a consumer product, I think this is more like Gluten 411 where they are collecting data, but it’s such a prototype. I think they, I can’t imagine Google trying to sell this as a consumer product.
Gina: Social experiment?
Leo: No, not even that, for Google I mean its data.
Jeff: What do you think they will do?
Leo: I think Google will use wearables, what the reaction to factors
Sarah: But they would pony does that if they wanted to sell something into the consumer that was aware of it.
Leo: well remember that data to Google is valuable in many ways besides selling an actual product.
Jeff: if somebody else makes the product
Leo: right, yeah but we just learned this week Google does have a patent on a watch and apparently it is very close to market according to some rumors so I don’t think Google necessarily
Jeff: what’s going to be so special about the Google watch?
Leo: I think Google believes wearable’s will happen, Google special will be the Google Now card is on the watch, so Google Now on a watch would be actually Google Now watch would be much more valuable than anything Apple would make I think.
Gina: Absolutely Google now and Rich notifications the way that they pull down on your pull down shade on your phone I bet that those are going to be integrated into the watch. See the developers won’t even have to make a change
Jeff: Ginas so excited she is ordering right now.
Leo: So I don’t think Google wants to make a commitment in any way it’s just that there is knowledge that there is going to be a wearable space and they want to know how do we? Remember this is the way a lot of companies got bit by mobile it would show how to do a search a desktop they learned how to do it in face book and then mobile happened much faster than anybody predicted everybody had went with mobile and these companies got caught with their pants down and are like oh my God how do we make it work on mobile? So, assuming that wearable might be the next thing what we do we need know at Google, we need to know about everything about what people want about what works for people
Jeff: And push the market
Leo: And push the market
Jeff: Which is the argument being made about Motorola, now they use the time necessary to push the Samsung company.
Leo: They did and it worked.
Jeff: And it worked.
Leo: They got what they wanted.
Jeff: Yeah they always do, I for one welcomed my new masters in
Leo: I think that everything that has gone through, now they have the Nest thermostat, the Nest smoke detectors so they are in the hardware business.
Sarah: And that’s a consumer product.
Leo: Yeah, but this is kind of new to Google, I guess Nexus was a consumer product, these are consumer products these Nexus tablets, the Nexus phones.
Jeff: Do you think Mac was saying last week that he would hope that Nexus doesn’t go away
Leo: Right.
Jeff: What do you think? What’s your position about this?
Leo: I guess this is the same conversation: Does Google want to be a product manufacturer, which has its downside…
Jeff: Yeah
Leo: Or does Google just want to understand these products to better do what they do best. Which is more important? This is my question for Matt and I have said this before. Which is more important to Google? Android or Nexus and Matt said well they need Nexus because that’s how they try stuff out and that’s how they show other handset manufacturers what the best in class could be and that may be a good argument for doing it but I don’t think it’s a good business for them. Even as it is it’s not a good business for them.
Gina: Right it’s a reference device, it’s not a business and it’s got a strong power in following developers and it’s about advocates and you know we all own the Nexus Live, regular consumers don’t go into the play store and buy Nexus but you know,
Leo: I think that’s the point, is that we are in a bubble.
Jeff: Oh yeah.
Leo: And so we think that Nexus and the glass is the THING! Right, but real people... They want to say oh, look at that guy with the glass, but they are not going spend $1500 bucks on it, you just wouldn’t spend money on it.
Sarah: No they’d just want to borrow it.
Leo: Yeah
Jeff: Well how well has the Samsung watch sold?
Leo: We don’t know but I doubt very well
Sarah: Terribly, terribly, this really is a market that’s going to grow, though, so I don’t know, I don’t think we can write it off yet.
Leo: Right.
Gina: And it was so limited, it had to work with a Samsung device but if Google comes out with a watch that works with every single App you can get in the play store as it is and the price right, running Android and just compatibility-wise, you know, the market is so much broader here. And they can do that because
Leo: Well that’s the argument we were having yesterday or no, yesterday on Mac break weekly, was if Apple does a watch, Apple’s not going to make a device, you will have to have an iPhone, you will have to live in the Apple ecosystem, that’s how Apple works. That is not a very compelling device to people like us who want something open. Pebble I can use with my Apple but I can also use with my Android, right?
Gina: right.
Leo: It’s kind of open, I think.
Gina: Yeah.
Leo: And you have to have partnerships with everybody possible all the run keepers of the world
Jeff: And you have got to be more compatible with the new Android and all of the operating systems and all kinds of other pains in the butt.
Leo: So do we think Google considers these a way of business or more a way of learning about other customers or learning what services to provide?
Jeff: Yeah, it’s a way of learning; the question is, Do they want to keep learning for a while?
Leo: Yeah, I’m not saying, I probably should amend my thought, I did think they would stop making Nexus and just use Google Play, I thought, but they probably will continue to do Nexus because Matt Cutts is no fool but it won’t be a business, it will just be experiments.
Sarah: Does it need to be either or? Can’t they be doing both?
Leo: Oh, of course they could be doing both, I guess what I am saying, they can make it interesting for them, the making money, it’s not a billion dollar business, Microsoft needs billion dollar businesses, what does Google need? You notice Microsoft doesn’t enter a business unless they think it’s a billion dollar business. Does Google have a metric like that?
Jeff: No, Google says, we want to fail early and try stuff right? And so it’s not going into business like cars but do they stay in business, do they make it in business?
Leo: Cars is a good example because when Google started doing cars it was like, Woohoo! Serge’s Woohoo! And in fact, now they own that space and anybody, Ford or General Motors, anybody who wants to do vehicles, the first place they are going to go is to Mountain View and say, explain, how does this work?
Jeff: Right
Leo: So maybe that was a smart move from a product point of view
Jeff: Yeah it’s with a lead strategically
Leo: How about his? Google has released a chrome teleconferencing system.
Jeff: Watch out, Cisco.
Leo: I don’t know again it’s like what is Goggles intent here? So the idea here is the Chrome box for meetings it comes with a Logitech HD webcam not made by Google, a jabra speaker phone not made by Google, a remote control with a keyboard in the back and uses Google Plus hangout for video chat and it’s all in a chrome box.
Jeff: for $1000 bucks.
Leo: $1000 bucks total with the works.
Jeff: With the first year free with a #200 a year service fee like a $200 a year service fee
Leo: Oh $250 a year, Google cloud services, which I don’t think you would have to have, I don’t think people
Jeff: So people saw this last week and said Oh Leo, why aren’t you using that for TWIT? But then again what do you get out of that, that you don’t get out of my wonderful pixel?
Leo: Right
Jeff: With its wonderful camera
Leo: That’s interesting, what we do now Chad bet a $1000 would matter $ stock PC’s with Windows 7 with Skype on them, when you call in well Gina’s using it right now you call one of those four boxes each of them has their own input on a board and we can bring it up. Why couldn’t those be instead of this $1000 well the camera we don’t care about, we’d have to have video in right?
Chad: Yeah that’s the problem we
Leo: We need our own special camera in
Chad: What’s interesting is in the article they showed two different manufacturers they show HP and there’s an Asus and these little boxes look a lot like the Intel NUCs
Leo: Nukes
Chad: The next unit of computing or whatever, so it maybe what would fit our needs with the NUC style needs , but this $2%0 a year thing it doesn’t seem like it would fit like basically what we would want at TWIT is a separate layer of internet you know or
Leo: We want a surfer; we want to be a Google surfer
Chad: Yeah
Leo: We want a Google surfer in our basement in fact we are doing with a Microsoft technology called LINK
Chad: Right
Leo: That has a server in our basement
Jeff: A what?
Leo: Sorry dude I don’t think it will work on your Pixel
Jeff: Yeah
Chad: But it looks from the article I could be wrong they bill it as the $250 Google Cloud service to set up as painless as possible, that doesn’t seem like we can get an actual server that we could go in there and get files
Jeff: What’s the difference between just going gout and buying a Chrome box?
Chad: Right, that’s what I am thinking which is $199.
Jeff: I’m not understanding, what makes this different?
Chad: It may be that server.
Jeff: Does the camera move?
Leo: No
Chad: What I bet is is you can give your client the link and then they will call the setup that
Leo: Well that’s what the services are
Chad: That’s what the service is, that $250 bucks is call Google they will set it up for you this is something that Amazon does
Leo: well look at the Lenovo conference, which is just software a web conference that provides a site web RTC hub that’s only for audio that’s not for video so
Chad: Right but I have seen this before or who is it? I believe its Adobe who does a connect and they you can call them on the phone and get technical help if you are not connecting and that’s what I think the $250 service is if your CEO needs to call a technical line they have some place to do that, to be honest that’s what they do.
Leo: $1000 bucks it’s just a kit company’s feel better and then they are like Oh we bought the kit.
Gina: And then it looks like there are some enterprise features the Google calendar, and then the future of Microsoft exchange the display the schedule of upcoming meetings, you can start a meeting by typing the meeting name in the terminal and it like tells you when the nest meeting is scheduled to begin so, it warns you if someone’s muted and they start speaking then they got a warning so it sounds like it got. It’s got a couple of little bells and whistles that you would want in a corporate teleconferencing environment that’s video hangouts doesn’t have.
Leo: That’s an interesting product again I think for Google they think this is not a product per say they think is a line of business as much as an experiment in which we learn stuff. They’re business is data right?
Gina: They want people using hangouts
Leo: Righty
Gina: And if it means getting the conference rooms for super cheap I mean this is cheap compared to most
Jeff: All right what does Cisco say you’re sitting there and you’re saying it’s cheap?
Leo: Cisco more like $20,000
Jeff: So what’s the difference between this and what Cisco offers you?
Leo: I think Cisco probably has a lock on enterprise because they are Cisco and the Cisco guy comes and sets it up
Jeff: Some geek in the company at some point says well
Leo: It’s too geeky you don’t want geeks to run your business they are
Sarah: They will save you too much money
Leo: Save you money, strange they don’t dress properly
Sarah: Yeah
Leo: They wear brown shoes
Jeff: So your response with Cisco is probably half it makes this place nice and wonderful
Leo: It’s actually cheaper
Jeff: I would think of it as if it’s competitively useful
Leo: This is the idea
Jeff: If you are already using Centrex then
Leo: Well, Centrex is much less expensive than Cisco, so GoTo Meeting is their conference in product is considerably cheaper than Cisco so that’s always a good thing and I think it’s their best selling product. I think that. I don’t know I don’t think businesses are as price sensitive as you might think. I don’t think they go oh here’s a 1000 box that’s built on 3 different manufacturers they don’t want that. I want to call Cisco and say put it in. Now let me ask Sarah this, How important is market capitalization as a way to judge a company? It seems like a number that the press might like.
Sarah: I think it’s very important
Leo: Is it?
Sarah: It is to me
Leo: Well I will tell you why? Google is now the Us company right after Exxon , Apple briefly passed Exxon but now is back down, Google #2 its market capitalization is $395.42 billion dollars so that’s important, what it’s a reflection of the stock price, right?
Sarah: Yeah, I mean, you know, there are lots of ways to rate a company, you can look at revenue, you can look at profits, you can look at stock price, you can look at ratios, but I like Market cap because it actually shows values.
Leo: But do you think it’s value? I always think the stock market is just a game.
Sarah: A game? It is to some to degree but I think at the end of the day through all of the different measures it’s all about revenues you know look at the manipulation that goes on with earnings you know if you decide you want to pick some measure I would argue that Market cap is the best.
Leo: James Serowick and the Market of the crowd said, while working with the crowd it is the crowd he even pointed out something that I thought was weird that right before the Challenger disaster the company that made the O rings, no right after, before we figured out why the Challenger blew up, somehow the stock market, the wisdom of the crowds knew that is was the O rings and that company tumbled in the stock market and that could just be weird or maybe there is some kind of collective wisdom that the stock market shows, but it’s over the long, not over the short term, right?
Sarah: Yep, I mean, the day to day of market cap fluctuations are meaningless but I think to say that Google is the number one or 2nd most valued company in this world that we live in is reasonable.
Leo: Actually, that’s a good way to put it, not the 2nd most valuable company but the 2nd most valued, valued by the market.
Sarah: Right.
Jeff: Now what about the cash awards? The cash already rewards Google in that price.
Sarah: Yeah, If you are or if one of the things you are looking at is how much cash are they sitting on and how they
Leo: And how do I get that?
Sarah: Yeah and how they deployed it previously? How good are they at it?
Leo: How do I get that?
Jeff: Yeah
Leo: Actually he has given up because done a big buyback and Icon or ISS said
Jeff: Never mind.
Leo: They need this cash, don’t deplete their reserve, so I kind of said well, all right I will take that. They are going towards 19 billion by the way. They said the other day if Apple continues at the rate they are going they will go private by 2020. I don’t know if that’s going to happen. Google strikes a big measurement ad with Comscore, comscore has been the kind of traditional platinum ratings company right? On the web?
Jeff: Yeah and there are smart people there, Abrahams’ chairman with the CEO title some of these companies is that they are still based on more mass media measurements they are still based on sampling its
Leo: It said they took the Neilson model and applied to the web.
Jeff: Because you can’t measure everybody, but Google can measure everybody
Leo: You can measure everybody
Jeff: So, see what fascinates me is that Google has is a measurement we don’t have.
Leo: Right.
Jeff: And part of this is because advertisers buy relative BS
Leo: Advertisers demand it that’s why. So Comscores validated essentials to meditate what they use and that’s going to be part of the double click ad and stuff. The combination says USA Today and I click that the Flappy Bird Icon is their masthead yesterday.
Sarah: They have a sense of humor!
Leo: you got to give them credit for that
Sarah: Well
Leo: Accommodations and advertisers will let publishers track online applications in near real time. That’s something you can’t do if you’re getting the total numbers. Samsung won’t let you do that right? Allowing them to change things on the Fly as expected because advertisers pay a dollar amount per impression right? Per 1000 impressions
Jeff: Per 1000 impressions
Leo: Okay I’m buying an ad but the impressions never went up or down how is that going to affect my ties.
Jeff: We have been out here seeing a lot of companies including Media and Twitter and Face book and Google more on that later but one of the things that’s come up on that again and again is proper metrics, metrics and this is gone on before in the old media or mass TV and what that brings into the then is these feeds and slideshows and all that crap it like volume and this is still a measurement along that line. Whereas we need to learn how to measure and where we need to go one of them so red another way we need to go is relationships , relevance what’s the value of this brand to you does it really give you any value and the final metric is the key final metric throughout is outcomes. Did I get something from this that improved my life? But we are still stuck in this idea of we will show an ad at you and that will enter your brain by osmosis and you will end up buying this.
Leo: This reminds me a lot of the early during tech TV when you’re in a new cable channel you are never going to get brand advertisers because they are unproven, so you get direct marketing you get stuff that’s measureable and that’s the state that its currently in Podcasts are to most of our advertisers do a direct response of some form. Because an advertiser can say well I got 50 leads from that ad so it’s worth it the return on the investment is a clear calculation. The problem is Ford, Pepsi coke, Procter and Gamble it’s hard for them to say well we sold 58 more liters to Coke today because of the Google ad they don’t know.
Jeff: Lisa happens to be over here in charge of the business
Leo: She runs this
Jeff: So you run Ford for a good amount of time they had a branding mission which was supposed to make them a tech savvy company right they weren’t going for volume
Leo: But the way they have validated that was with a lot of research the n they added it into the and say what was the recall but by the way they have since left because they are totally accomplished. It worked! You got people seeing that Ford is High tech
Jeff: That wasn’t an experiment you helped them change the name of the brand
Leo: And they knew it worked that’s why they spent two years almost two years and spent several million dollars with us so it wasn’t although, for Ford that’s less than a Super Bowl ad but it was for us fairly significant. According to this advertising traditional advertising is worth 300 billion dollars a year and Google wants a chunk of that right? Digital brand spending is only 18 billion dollars in 2013 and so they would like more of that 300 billion to move over to the digital side so in fact, I kind of understand this issue because it’s the same issue for us is how do you get a metric to an advertiser that they understand and will buy? I agree with really the metric that they care about is harder to measure with engagement and things like that,, but its ultimately coming down to results they can measure that the direct ones can but Google wants more advertising. The end game according to Comscore is to integrate this with TV measurement most of the ads are on TV and it will shift to digital and in real time across all platforms that’s interesting. Now it’s time for change log with Gina Trapani get ready for change log
Sarah: Will do
Jeff: Get ready for the umbrecher
Leo: Umbrecher
Jeff: When you do a trumpet, what’s that called chat room what’s that called?
Leo: Umbercher
Jeff: what umbercher
Jeff: Get your umberchers ready, people.
Leo: That’s your…
Jeff: Yeah, because it trumpets
Leo: You know really when I hear a Tuba I just see a guy going (noises) into a big tube
Jeff: That catches the spit
Leo: This week in Google is brought to you by 99designs.com. When I see an app. that’s poorly designed I see a programmer that was a good programmer perhaps but didn’t understand that he wasn’t also a designer. I saw something on Secret today, somebody that thinks he is a good designer but is good at neither. You could be a great chef, you could have a great business but frankly, you need a great designer to show it off for that landing page, that email template, the billboard, the t-shirt, the app and the best place is the place where 270,000, no, 280,458 designers have gathered waiting to help you look better. I’m talking about 99designs! If you’re worried about budgets, don’t worry, 99designs is very affordable. We just did a 99designs contest where you go there and you say, I want a TWIT hoodie design, and count how many, I don’t know, we got 20 or 30 , 60? We got a ton of them, it was fun going through them, great cool stuff! So if you want more, normally you would work with a designer and say okay, I want this one. We liked so many of them we bought 5 of them because we thought we will use these later, these are great! 99designs is a great way to find signs, logos, car wraps. Here it is, there is one of them, I really like that one. We are having a vote right now but I don’t think that’s going to be the hoodie but I think we will do a t-shirt sometime.
Jeff: I like that one a lot.
Leo: Yeah, you can go to inside.twit.tv and vote
Jeff: Which one won?
Leo: It’s not done yet; we think that one is going to win. Isn’t that great? Well for a hoodie it needs to be bold it needs to make a statement right?
Jeff: Yes
Sarah: Do you have a swag store?
Leo: They are all from 99designs. We do actually, we used to have a swag store. I will tell you in a second just in case I forget. We figured something out that was true. Projects start at $199 dollars and happiness is always a 100% guarantee. I want you to boost your brain’s visibility and get something great, something that looks good and if you’re doing an APP please do it from somebody or with somebody that really knows designs! 99designs.com/twig and get a $99 power pack of services absolutely free. The power pack gives you more designer time and attention and they will bold, highlight and feature your design project in 99designs marketplace, that way you get literally about twice as many designs. 99designs.com/twig, get that $99 value. We love 99designs!
Leo: If we say we are going to sell we found out it works better if you say, “gone in 3 days.”
Jeff: It’s more about the audience. We went to the new Facebook headquarters, last I saw them they were in the palmetto and we drive up
Leo: That wasn’t so long either.
Jeff: It wasn’t long, so we drive up and were both thinking, well, Sarah is making fun of California.
Sarah: You’re not supposed to tell people that!
Leo: And 18 inches of snow!
Sarah: I know, we should have stayed here.
Jeff: So you know how it’s really dull on the outside? Well, inside though, it is this great courtyard like Disneyland!
Leo: That’s where their hacker stayed!
Jeff: Exactly, so they have a swag store there makes me very happy to go in and buy hoodies.
Leo: Can I tell you people, we are part of the geek trail or whatever it is; they got to the Hewlard Packard garage, they got to the Apple Company. When they got to Apple they got the company store when they got to Google they got to the company store.
Sarah: That’s why I want to know, where is your company’s store?
Leo: We don’t have one.
Leo: You know why we don’t have one?
Jeff: Why?
Leo: Tax, I think we don’t want to have to collect sales tax, it’s just a pain in the butt, it’s just too complicated.
Sarah: Just give something to me if I’m nice.
Leo: We do, I will give you a hat!
Sarah: And a shirt, okay now we are a talking.
Leo: And a shirt, we frequently do and I don’t want to say this out loud, because you know we have a live audience and we frequently give them small parting gifts.
Jeff: Uh oh, they are coming up soon!
Leo: Sticker’s pens key chains t-shirts
Jeff: Leeching off you!
Leo: So we don’t want to sell stuff, it’s
Sarah: Cheesy!
Leo: And besides, who needs to make money?
Jeff: I think we need a special change log trumpet to sell.
Leo: Let’s get it, you got your umbersures ready? All right everybody together now. And here she is Gina Trapani with the latest from Google.
Gina: Google Now just keeps getting better, with a couple new updates this week you can now go to specific TV and video on demand providers for video and in Google Now you will see reservations that you have made that are in your inbox, simpler alarm controls and now you get information about traveling to appointments on time, so if I have got in my calendar, go to TWIG at 2:00, Google now will actually show that appointment but if you are driving it will say, hey you better leave by noon before the rush, which is pretty cool.
Jeff: A bridge, you better take your medication.
Gina: Right, for Jeff you better say bring your anxiety meds!
Leo: This Is cool though thank you for telling me this I am doing this right now in my Google it says here the TV providers which one do you use ? So you press the magic wand
Gina: Yea I have to say there is a lot of a good setting in the magic wand. Google now has become the first thing I look at in the morning now particularly here because of the weather and I want to know what the temperature is and whatever but Its getting really good at showing me new stories that I am interested in and showing me stuff that I didn’t realize that I wanted really love Google Now always getting better
Leo: So you can choose your own provider so I can check Amazon Netflix that’s really cool
Gina: Right, and then it will recommend time and
Leo: You better leave work now if you want to see Game of Thrones, that’s a good one.
Jeff: Bye, show is over!
Gina: Okay we have got a Google search menu showing restaurants inside search results.
Jeff: Yay!
Gina: yeah so it’s an experiment that hasn’t gone out o everyone but I tried it here I tried a couple of local joints and then I tried a couple of really famous joints I tried Eat a luger and Juniors cheesecake and I couldn’t see this now it turns out that Google says this is just an experiment and its going out to a few users or a certain segment of users are seeing it and it looks like an extension of the knowledge graph, so it looks like they are pulling menus information from allmenus.com and will show it online in the search result.
Leo: Do a search Chad just to see if you are getting it. So you search for a restaurant so it have to be somebody who has submitted their menus to all menus I guess
Gina: Right
Leo: Nothing
Chad: How about
Leo: What’s the big restaurant?
Chad: I mean you can almost just search and it will give you allof these
Leo: Yeah, but we have already seen that but we want to see is also a menu right?
Chad: Right
Leo: Anything.
Gina: Yeah, so you got the review all menus so yeah this menu actually in lines the menu in
Jeff: Yeah, which is an example of what you were saying, Leo, about data. Google has the data to know that we always click on is the damn menu so we will give you the damn menu.
Gina: Yep
Leo: Yeah
Gina: Another change is that Google is showing the first play of prominence a music video showing your search term in the official channel so if you searched for Daft Punk Get lucky the top result is what looks to be a playable video but it’s just a giant image so you click on it and it takes you to YouTube to play the video
Leo: Is it always YouTube or can it be other sources?
Chad: It can be other sources but it shows up differently so that’s on daily motion it will not have the full screen image it will just be
Gina: These are usually the official videos an don’t like user uploaded videos and finally a little YouTube update you can basically play videos on your chrome cast now Google quietly rolled out support for web clips to the chrome cast media stick you just need to choose this little button bottom right and you just click o that on your wifi network and you will be able to choose the target and go for it
Jeff: Gigantic curved screen
Gina: Yes, the only clips that won’t work are live screens private screens and desktop only videos which I guess is the YouTube video setting
Leo: You know it’s so funny because I was playing a YouTube last night and normally that YouTube video is full screen and I hit it and it showed my chrome cast I said what the ?
Gina: Yep, it’s interesting choice placement for that button because I hit that full screen button a lot
Leo: Yeah.
Gina: So now I am going to see the chrome cast button, normally I see, not on the changes but I was digging through to see on my Android and if you go into Android settings and you go into display there is a is a setting that says cast screen which got me really excited I said ca you send this ca you send your android screen to the chrome cast? You can’t yet. But it looks like that’s going to get rolled out I guess there is support from Mira cast which is kind of a wifi.
Leo: Yes
Gina: Yeah so they changed it from wireless display to cast screen so it seems eminent that you are going to be able to cast your entire Android or whatever you are doing to your TV screen soon.
Jeff: It says no nearby devices found.
Leo: Do we have chrome cast on our network?
Chad: I don’t believe we do
Leo: Can I take your phone Jeff with me please?
Gina: It doesn’t work, I already tried.
Jeff: Only if you take your Pixel, too.
Leo: No, I don’t want our Pixel.
Gina: This apparently rolled at the end of 2013 and it doesn’t do anything right now. So I got really excited and then found it doesn’t work, it’s really cool to see the Chromecast kind of opening up. That’s all I got.
Jeff: Love it, Gina, so last night I had nothing to do and for entertainment I went into my Android settings…
Jeff: That’s Gina.
Leo: That’s Gina.
Gina: You know, actually what I was doing, I was catching the subway home from work and catching up on the “All about Android” I had missed the week before because I had a work thing, I had missed the show so I was trying to figure out how to lock my screen orientation, so it was a discovery, so there you go, I was watching a TWIT channel on my phone and that screen popped in.
Leo: My new my phrase; I was having a TWIT related discovery.
Gina: TWIT related discovery, a lot of my discoveries are TWIT related discoveries!
Leo: Well, that’s funny because you, Gina Trapani are a TWIT related discovery.
Gina: Well, thank you.
Leo: And that is your Google change Log. Couple of sad notes of course you probably all know that Shirley Temple passed away at the age of 85 yesterday and that caused me to bench watch 15 Shirley Temple movies last night
Jeff: Did you really?
Leo: No
Gina: Did you have a Shirley Temple in her honor?
Leo: Ah the drink cherry ginger I love that a little extra maraschino on the side
Jeff: I also saw some things that she did when she was a diplomat and she walked like she did when she was in the movies
Leo: Vladimir puttant you’re a bad man, the other sad note Sid Caesar passed away today another great television comedian his show of shows really broke so much ground in TV comedy and one of the funniest men alive, not only that but the writers room for your show gave us woody Allen and Mel Brooks.
Jeff: Schwartz shouldn’t do this because in the moment of an obituary one should do nothing but respect,
Leo: Come on, Sid Caesar he would have loved, he was a guy who had so much doing television.
Jeff: Well, word has it he wasn’t a very nice guy, but you know it wasn’t the golden age of TV his shows were not in the Golden age of TV.
Leo: He was hysterical!
Jeff: No, it wasn’t! Let’s watch some right now, I’m not going to laugh.
Leo: This is Jeff Jarvis TV critic coming out.
Jeff: Yeah.
Gina: Future news or TV critic?
Leo: You know
what there was a movie called 12 from your show of shows he was actually one of
the funniest movies I had ever saw. I beg to differ I beg to differ> from
here to eternity where they throw a bucket of water that’s comedy gold my
friend comedy gold! We can agree to disagree on that
Jeff: All right
Leo: And remember my favorite year was being in a writer’s story kind of like this. One of the great movies of all time
Jeff: I want that made about John Stewart in the daily show.
Leo: We are in a new Golden age I interviewed someone on triangulation last night, Martin which is a really great CQ writer really great guy he wrote a book called Men which is what he called a third golden age of TV that began with the Sopranos but the thing that changed you could certainly make television that didn’t care about ratings because of subscription TV you could actually say we don’t care if the Sopranos generates ratings we care if it generates subscriptions.
Jeff: here is another way to put that I think it true but I also think it goes back to our earlier discussion about Metrics, that’s a way to get a feedback loop about quality all right, ratings don’t give you a feedback about quality anymore than page views do. So we talked about this with Ed Williams today so you need that feedback loop to talk about quality and some would say that’s just ah! Jarvis whose pain walls are good for the world but its one kind of signal
Leo: it’s one kind of signal it’s not the only kind of signal, we get a feedback loop I mean the number of people in chat the number of people on download our shows the number of people in engagement in our audience and the amount of email we get.
Jeff: What’s the proportion of I wanted to ask this before but I always forget the people who watch live, the people
Leo: Less than 10%
Jeff: Okay, the people who watch video versus listen?
Leo: that , it varies by show depends on the show I mean this is a talking heads show so it’s more about the audio nut ipad today is on the video so it’s really on the content . What surprises me is how many people do watch video of talking heads like this where the video adds nothing to the content
Jeff: Because we are so pretty
Gina: I have friends and my brother is an avid watcher and he said he will mount his phone to his dash board and bring up the video he said I do not want to watch the show and I was like please while your driving in Manhattan download our show, he said no I want to see your faces and I want to see what you’re talking about and its way better with video so yeah I get that a lot.
Leo: I didn’t want to do video, audio is so cheap and easier but I also realized that audio doesn’t get the attention. Like there was just a great article on DIG and its content about why audio does not go viral but video does go viral
Gina: That was an incredible piece
Jeff: Really?
Sarah: What was the Gist of it I didn’t see it?
Leo: There has been viral video you know Orson wells degrading the advertising agencies
Jeff: What sir is Gok? Can you define a Gok?
Leo: I don't know if he said why. I have an opinion why. I think to go viral,
something has to engage — I actually got this from Tim Street — has to engage your emotions. The more emotion that anything
engages, the more viral it will be. So if it makes you laugh and makes you cry,
that's better than just laughing. And I think video is better at engaging the
emotions. Audio tends to be more abstract and intellectual.
Jeff: This is another TWIT discovery because I think that the presumption is — we
have this in our journalism school — the presumption is that audio and video are different worlds. For that matter, broadcast video and web video
are different worlds.
Leo: Right.
Jeff: We'll leave that aside. But audio and video are different things, entirely
different skills, and so on and so forth. And so talking about this show, the
fact that a good proportion of people listen to it rather than watch it, yeah,
you miss some jokes, you miss — you don't see my pink face when I'm on my
camera, you don't see other things. But — but the jokes become apparent.
Leo: Right.
Jeff: They become known. So I had — one of my students has a new business idea, and
he presumed audio. So I then show him TWIT and say, "You know, I'm not so
sure, folks. Maybe you want to do video, presuming the option of audio."
And he — he got a lot — he loved that. That was inspired by you.
Leo: That's kind of what we've done.
Jeff: Yeah.
Leo: And at great expense, by the way. In order — for instance,
this studio. We don't need it for audio.
Jeff: Oh, God no.
Leo: And it's a million and a half dollars extra to do this.
Jeff: Actually, folks, it's just a giant Chroma key.
Leo: (Laughs)
Jeff: It's a giant green screen. There's nothing really here.
Leo: We're in a closet.
Sarah: (Laughs) We're actually in Gina's basement.
Jeff: Yes.
Leo: I wish we were. That looks like such a cozy, fun place to be.
Jeff: You could help her shovel.
Gina: (Laughs) I mean, isn't it that audio is just — video is inherently more
shareable? I mean, when you're listening to audio, you're out and about and
doing things. When you're watching video, you're doing it on your computer,
right? And it's also — short video is — goes viral, right? I mean, Leo, I'm
seeing, you know, the — your shows do great, right? But I've seen people take
clips or do, you know, jump cuts of —
Leo: Nothing — yeah.
Gina: — certain moments within your shows, and those go viral because they're short
and people just have, you know, short attentions spans, and they're seeing them
on Facebook or wherever, but audio just doesn't — isn't quite as inherently
shareable, and usually people are downloading it and listening to it while
they're washing the dishes or walking the dog, and there isn't a Share button
anywhere for them to press.
Leo: It is a challenge for us because video's not all that shareable, either, and we
want to — we don't really go viral. There's very — I don't think —
Jeff: Well, I think the other thing that people don't use enough, especially for your shows because they're so long, is "Share at start
moment X."
Leo: Right. And you can do that.
Jeff: You can do it, and I'm surprised it doesn't — it's not a lot more —
Leo: It's not very discoverable.
Jeff: I think the — it would. The only — you know, you get to see the rant, or you
get to see the funny moment, and — and then you might watch the rest. It's the
same thing I've wanted to see with articles where Repost on us, which I've
talked on the show before.
Leo: Right.
Jeff: You can post an entire article. The next level I'd like to see of that is —
David Carr wrote a wonderful piece on Medium about the death of Philip Seymour
Hoffman, and he had one paragraph in there about addiction that was just
brilliant. So what I wanted to do was to share —
Leo: Share that paragraph.
Jeff: Right. So what I did instead was, of course, I cut and pasted it onto Google+.
Leo: Right.
Jeff: I wanted to embed the article with that paragraph.
Leo: Yeah.
Jeff: Highlight it, right? And then people would probably stay and read the rest.
Same for your show, I think. If somebody can go into — consider how long our
shows are in — you know, hour, four minute, twenty-two, and say, "Well,
that's a really funny moment when Gina really socked it to Jeff." And then
people would watch both ways.
Leo: Right.
Jeff: So what you want the audience to do — hello, chatroom,
this is your job now — is you want to basically annotate the shows to the good
bits, and you want, I think, a schedule of good bits in the show, and then
share those.
Leo: I mean, I — you know, viral is, as someone — a couple of people in the chat are
pointing out — isn't the goal.
Jeff: No.
Leo: Because viral is very short-term —
Jeff: It's discovery. What viral gives you is discovery.
Leo: Discovery's the goal.
Jeff: Yes.
Leo: And so I would love — I don't care if we get a million views of anything, or
even a hundred thousand, but what I want is people to discover what we're doing
and say, "Wow, that Jeff guy is great. I want to see more of him —
Jeff: Yes.
Leo: — and then watch the show. So I agree with you. We'd like — but there's —
mechanically, it's very difficult right now to do that.
Jeff: This is one of the great metrics of Repost on us, which I don't know if I
mentioned on the show before.
Leo: No.
Jeff: Poor Sarah's heard it ten times already this week. They find that the
click-through rate from an entire embedded post or article — which you think
would be zero because somebody's read the whole article — is actually high.
It's 5 to 7 percent.
Leo: Wow.
Jeff: Obviously, how do they qualify clicks? Because somebody says, "Oh, I like
that. I want to read more."
Leo: "I want to reread it"?
Jeff: "I want to read more."
Leo: "I want to read more."
Jeff: "I like that article. Are there more like you at home?"
Leo: Ah.
Jeff: And — and so you go that way —
Leo: I think that's true. I'll click through — even if I've read the gist of an
article, I'll click through if I want to see more.
Jeff: Yeah.
Leo: Or I'm interested in belly fat ads because I don't get enough of those.
Jeff: Whereas now — yes.
Sarah: (Laughs)
Gina: (Laughs)
Jeff: Where's, now, what's really happening is we have this cynical act — I'm
slamming them again, but Upworthy and Chartbeat — where you just are sharing the headline —
Sarah: Don't you mean Buzzfeed?
Gina: Buzzfeed.
Jeff: Buzzfeed. What'd I say?
Sarah: Chartbeat.
Gina: Chartbeat.
Leo: Chartbeat's different than Buzzfeed.
Jeff: Right. Because Chartbeat, however —
Leo: We know what he meant.
Jeff: Chartbeat has some great stats where — I think I've
mentioned it on the show before — where people share before they read. So what
they're really sharing is just the headline.
Leo: Yeah.
Jeff: They're not sharing the article.
Leo: Yeah. I mentioned that on TWIT this weekend. I thought that was a very
interesting piece of information. We also saw this week that Upworthy has taken a great dive in the number of hits,
almost 50 percent, because of a change in algorithm at Facebook. That's all it
took to downgrade Upworthy —
Sarah: (Laughs)
Leo: — which is apparently not so ... worthy.
Jeff: Live by the sword, die by the sword.
Leo: Yeah, die by the sword, that's right.
Gina: Yeah.
Leo: The Upworthy CEO's response was, "Well, that's —
we're just going back to normal. We had a very unusually big December, and
that's all you were seeing there."
Sarah: (Laughs)
Leo: We're going to take a break, come back with more. I want to hear about your
travels — you and Sarah's travels around the Bay area to meet with CEO's, like Ev Williams of Media and Twitter.
Sarah Barton is here, she's the dean of the school of journalism at the City
University of New York. So nice to have you. Bartlett!
Sarah: Bartlett. Like the pear.
Leo: Not relation to President Bartlett.
Sarah: No.
Leo: That's what I always think.
Jeff: (Laughs)
Leo: President Bartlett.
Sarah: I like that.
Leo: Yeah.
Sarah: Although "dean" sounds good, too.
Leo: Dean's good, too. Dean's a good title. I always am scared because I always got
brought up in front of the dean.
Jeff: (Laughs)
Leo: You're not that kind of disciplinary dean —
Sarah: I want you to feel that fear.
Leo: You do? (Laughs)
Jeff: She's good at that, actually, yes.
Gina: (Laughs)
Leo: "The dean would like to see you now, Laporte." "Oh, God, again?"
Sarah: (Laughs)
Leo: Although the Dean's List is a good thing. I was on that other list the dean
had.
Sarah and Jeff: (Laugh)
Sarah: The bad list.
Leo: The bad list. Jeff Jarvis is here, also from the City University of New York
and the author of Public Parts.
Jeff: Indeed.
Leo: And a welcome weekly contributor on the show, so nice to have you in studio.
It's great.
Jeff: I love being here.
Leo: Gina Trapani, stuck in Manhattan. Good to have you,
too.
Sarah: No, Brooklyn, right?
Leo: Well, you're Brooklyn today. Okay. That's right.
Gina: Yeah.
Sarah: It's important.
Leo: How's —
Jeff: That does not look like Manhattan, Leo.
Gina: (Laughs)
Jeff: They have no — paneling is illegal in Manhattan.
Leo: Yeah, I guess you're right.
Jeff: It's not allowed.
Sarah: And the tchotchkes, too.
Jeff: No tchotchkes. Not allowed in Manhattan. No Jets blankets. Not allowed in
Manhattan, only Queens and Brooklyn.
Leo: You've got to be in the suburbs.
Jeff: None of that stuff is allowed.
Leo: (Laughs)
Sarah: Maybe the Bronx.
Jeff: Bronx? Okay. Queens, okay.
Leo: Queens is all right.
Jeff: Not Manhattan. No paneling.
Leo: That's funny. See, I'm learning about the culture.
Sarah: (Laughs)
Jeff: That was — when Bloomberg got rid of the big sodas, that took all the attention. He also outlawed paneling.
Leo: Yeah. And tchotchkes. Yeah.
Gina: (Laughs)
Leo: No Hummel figurines on the aisle of Manhattan. How is ThinkUp going?
Gina: ThinkUp is going great. We demoed it last week at New
York Tech Meet-up, which is a —
Jeff: Oh, yay, how'd that go?
Gina: — huge organization. It went really, really well. I was worried — I heard it
was a really tough crowd —
Jeff: It is?
Gina: — and they were really good to us. The demo went well. It was really good. I
was actually —
Jeff: The video's up?
Gina: The video? Yeah, I'm not sure if they chopped it up into individual demos, but
the entire — the video of the entire meet-up is up. And we were up against,
like, a sex tech section that was like —
Jeff: A what? A what?
Gina: — smart vibrators and —
Sarah: I was there.
Leo: Smart —
Jeff: You were there?
Sarah: I was there. I didn't realize that was you.
Gina: yeah, that was me!
Sarah: Oh, wow!
Gina: There you go, there you go!
Sarah: Yeah, no, it was really fun. I didn't —
Leo: What do you mean, "up against" smart vibrators? What do you —
Jeff: (Laughs)
Leo: What do you mean — what is that —
Sarah: It's a really complicated concept.
Leo: Is it a competition?
Gina: No. Well — so the tech meet-up is a series of demos from various tech companies
in New York, and there happened to be — and it was actually the first ever — it
was a sex tech section at the end of the night where they —
Leo: Ah.
Sarah: It was in honor of Valentine's Day? You know, kind of?
Gina: Oh, was it?
Sarah: Yeah, sort of a February event.
Gina: Yeah. Yeah, so basically, you go up and you demo in groups of two or three, and
we actually — the other company that we demoed with was Lendo,
which is a micropayment loans company, and they actually got a ton of questions
as well. But it's really fun. It's a huge event. It was really intimidating,
but it went really well, so I was happy with it. And —
Jeff: Mazel tov.
Gina: Yes. So thank you, thank you. ThinkUp's going —
Jeff: Wait, wait, we've still got to hear more about the sex tech, Gina.
Gina: Oh. (Laughs)
Jeff: You've got male geeks out here; you're not satisfying their needs.
Gina: Yeah ...
Jeff: Let's hear one stupid sex tech item.
Leo: I am so biting my lip right now.
Jeff: (Laughs)
Gina: There was a demo of a smart vibrator, and I forget what the name of it was.
Maybe — I don't know — maybe, Sarah, you remember. And —
Sarah: I'm not going to —
Jeff: She's trying not to.
Sarah: I'm going to tell you that I don't remember.
Jeff: (Laughs)
Gina: It's a — okay.
Leo: Chatroom, what would you name a smart vibrator?
Sarah and Gina: (Laugh)
Jeff: "Telestosterone," says the chatroom.
Gina: Let's — let's just say it's remote-controlled, wearable tech, and that's all
I'll say.
Leo: Okay.
Sarah: It was designed by someone who was living in Boston, I think, and his wife was
back in Singapore or something like that —
Leo: Oh, you mean over the internet?
Sarah: — and so —
Gina: Yeah.
Sarah: — she can help to —
Jeff: (Laughs)
Sarah: He can help her achieve an orgasm with the —
Gina: With the app.
Sarah: — with the remote vibrator.
Jeff: With the aid of the internet.
Sarah: It was a riveting demonstration.
Gina: It was —
Jeff: (Laughs)
Leo: This gives new meaning to the word "latency," I've got to tell you
that.
Gina: I have to say, the demo — the guy who demoed — came off — he was so earnest —
Sarah: He was —
Gina: — and really — was like, "I really want" —
Sarah: It was a devoted husband trying to help his long-distance wife. What are you
going to not like about that story?
Jeff: Wait, wait, is this Vibease?
Gina: Yes.
Sarah: Yes, that's it. Check it out.
Jeff: (Laughs) Whoa!
Sarah: All you girls out there.
Leo: It's only $79.
Sarah: I know there's two or three of you.
Jeff: There's a video chat. I don't — do we dare?
Leo: Wait a minute. So there's a — no, don't show that.
Jeff: (Laughs)
Gina: My favorite moment of the demo was a point at which he said, "And we even
talk to women." (Laughs)
Leo: Well, it's about time.
Gina: And I thought, "Oh —
Leo: Connect, select, play ...
Sarah: It was a little — you know, there was sort of a bit of an anticlimactic moment,
if I may use that term —
Jeff: (Laughs)
Sarah: — because they announced at the beginning — at the beginning they said,
"Okay, anyone with young people, you know, children under the age of, you
know, X, you really need to leave the room now because we're going to have this
special sex, you know —
Jeff: Imagine listening to 50 Shades of Grey with a hands-free vibrator.
Leo: That vibrates in perfect sync with the audio fantasy.
Sarah: Yes.
Jeff: So there's an audio fantasy?
Sarah: Yes, yes.
Jeff: So you don't need the husband?
Sarah: No, that's what I'm saying. You can be 3,000 miles away, and —
Jeff: But you don't need the husband at all.
Sarah: Well, he's talking — he's talking over his iPhone —
Jeff: No, but there's a video — there's a fantasy. There's an audio fantasy.
Sarah: Yeah. There's —
Jeff: That's — that's the husband.
Leo: That's the fantasy. You don't need the husband.
Gina: Yeah, there were a few different options.
Sarah: Yeah. You could —
Jeff: "You've been replaced by a podcast, honey." (Laughs)
Gina: (Laughs)
Sarah: You could choose different paths. Aren't you the one who's interested in paths?
Jeff: Oh, paths, paths.
Leo: There's more — there's more than one way to do it.
Gina: Yes.
Sarah: Not to in any way overshadow ThinkUp.
Gina: Well ... (Laughs)
Sarah: (Laughs)
Leo: You see what she meant when she said —
Jeff: Even with this, you did well. Yeah, this is great.
Leo: Yeah.
Gina: This is what I meant by being up against some tough — it was a ... (Laughs) It
was a tough time to demo, honestly.
Sarah: (Laughs)
Leo: Well, that's important.
Jeff: (Laughs) Wait, wait. It's — oh, no.
Leo: Oh, no. No, no, that's —
Jeff: I've seen too much!
Sarah: (Laughs)
Jeff: It's wearable.
Leo: It's a 100 percent hands-free experience.
Gina: It is indeed wearable. It's wearable tech.
Sarah: (Laughs)
Jeff: I think I'm about to get fired for having — being an unpleasant work
environment.
Sarah: The dean is here. It's okay.
Jeff: Yeah, it's okay. Jesus.
Gina: I didn't — I didn't mean for this to go so —
Sarah: Well, it was the topic of my ex-faculty meeting. Now you've blown it for me.
Jeff: (Laughs)
Leo: There's an app for it. That's what's, I think, kind of interesting. It has an
app, Android or iOS. I'm surprised Apple approved
that, to be honest. Seems like that's something Apple wouldn't approve. They
don't believe in people having sex.
Sarah: I think they had some problems with it, actually, and then —
Leo: Yeah.
Gina: Yeah. It was part of the discussion, was like, how do legitimate consumer products
that are related to sex deal with, you know, things like app store policies,
and even just getting, you know, payment processors and different web services.
Leo: Sure.
Gina: A lot of the companies just won't work with them.
Leo: I bet they only have problems in the U.S., though. I think in —
Jeff: No.
Sarah: No, no, she said globally they have a problem.
Leo: Globally.
Jeff: Really? Not in Germany.
Leo: Not in Germany.
Sarah: I think she was saying — I mean, there was a woman who — I forget her name —
who came up afterwards, and was quite passionately, you know, annoyed about how
— how the financial world was sort of shutting down.
Leo: Yeah, were anti-sex.
Sarah: Correct.
Gina: Cindy Gallop.
Sarah: That's right.
Leo: So a lot of negativity about sex.
Sarah: Especially by bankers.
Jeff: So it's all the more impressive that you did so well, Gina.
Leo: Yeah.
Gina: (Laughs) Thank you.
Jeff: That's a tough act to be onstage with.
Leo: So let me ask you: how's ThinkUp doing?
(All laugh)
Gina: ThinkUp's going really well, Leo, thank you. We
demoed last week, it went awesome. We're going to open up signups to the public
in the next couple of weeks. It's going really well, thank you for asking.
Jeff: (Laughs)
Leo: Thank you, thank you.
Jeff: "And damn you, Jarvis. You couldn't let it slide, could you?"
Leo: Well, not only does it slide — well, no —
(All laugh)
Leo: This episode — we'll be back with more in just a bit. This episode of This Week
in Google is brought to you by —
Jeff: (Laughs)
Sarah: (Laughs)
Leo: — Financial Markets. Personal Capital — actually, Personal Capital was started
by — I want to say Ed Harris, but he's an actor.
Sarah: That's right.
Leo: The other Harris who was former CEO of Intuit and
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Jeff: A little — a little news update here: I see from Twitter, Lee Ball sent in an
update that there's a new Android update for the Nexus 7 to improve
compatibility with Verizon's 4G/LTE network.
Leo: Yes. And that goes to all — I should actually check — this goes to all Nexus
7's?
Jeff: I didn't have it on mine. I guess it would, yeah, sure.
Leo: Yeah. Interesting.
Leo: Well, unless you're — yeah, that's right because it's the same technical setup.
Leo: Mine doesn't have LTE, so even if I got it, it wouldn't be much use to me. But
you've got your Nexus 7 there, so check and see.
Jeff: It's not on.
Leo: It's one of the worst dances that we tech geeks do, where you go, "Update?
Is there an update now? Is there an update now?"
Jeff: "Update? Update? Update?"
Leo: "How about now?" (Laughs) It's so frustrating. Very,
very frustrating. So a very interesting new story coming out — in fact,
this morning on Windows Weekly we talked about it — that at Mobile World
Congress, which is just a couple of weeks off, Nokia will show a phone based on
Android. Nokia, by the way, about to be acquired by Microsoft
as soon as the Chinese government approves it. This is something Peter
Bright at Ars Technica said
could never happen. He wrote an article that said — and I thought it was a
great article — neither Nokia, Microsoft, or anyone
else should fork Android. It's unforkable. His point
being, there's two parts to Android. There's the Android open-source part; and
there's the Google services part. And yes, this AOSP part of Android is free
and open and can be put on any device — amazon did it and forked — but you
don't get — if you do that, you don't get any of the Google services. Which
means, not just the Play store and all the Google apps, but it also means
things like location services. There's an open — now, Gina, you probably know
better than I, so jump in here. There's open-source versions of, let's say,
location services, but it's old and not been kept up to date and probably not
very good; is that right?
Gina: It's not as up to date as Google's proprietary layer. It works, but, you know,
people who have been writing this article, this sort of thing that's been
coming out over and over — that Google's not really open, that AOSP is abandonware — you know, will say that it hasn't been
updated in a really long time, that Google is putting most of its development
efforts into GMS. GMS is the Google Mobile Services, which is their proprietary
layer that works on top of AOSP.
Leo: Well, even to the point where the launcher, now, is a GMS app, right?
Gina: Right. The Nexus 5 launcher is the Google Now launcher. That is a proprietary —
that is a close-source Google app. Right. So the AOSP is an open-source
version, but then you can layer all these things on top of it, right? And so
the argument is — and I think that this is, like, developers who feel who feel very passionate, religious, really, about what
open-source is. What does "open" mean? What does Google mean when
they say it's open? And this is where I think Bright is coming from in this Ars Technica article. Saying, you
know, Android's not really open. You can't really fork it because the real
value in Android is GMS, is Google's proprietary layer. So if Microsoft, you
know, shouldn't fork Android and try to build on top of it, Nokia shouldn't
fork Android and build on top of it. It's a lose-lose situation because you
either have to write your own proprietary layer to catch up to what Google's
done — and Google has a tremendous head start. And not only would you have to
match feature for feature, but you'd have to match all the quirks as well,
because there are some bugs in the open-source layer that the proprietary layer
fixes. You know, you're not going to be able to do that. Or you have to release
a phone without any of the Google goodness, which is just a crappy experience —
this is Bright arguing. Or you have to concede control of your phone to Google
and apply for certification and get all the Google goodies, but sort of, you
know, give all the control of the platform, or give all the good stuff of the
platform to Google, right? So that can you have — you can have control, or you
can have that — the good experience, but you can't have both. That's his —
that's his thesis of this article.
Leo: Now, Peter, of course — we've had him on many times, he covers Windows. And his
point really is aimed at Microsoft, and this rumor that Microsoft and Nokia
might be doing an Android-based phone. In fact, we believe that rumor is true.
Both Paul Thurrott and Mary Jo Foley said this is
true. They will announce it soon. And what it is, it's the Asha low-end Nokia
phones, the phones they sell for as little as $35 in the developing world. And
it's just not possible to put Windows Phone on such a cheap device, but it is
possible to do Android. What they're saying —
Jeff: Wait, wait. Is that a PR move to say, "Well, Windows isn't cheap, but
Android is"?
Leo: Could be. Or it could — well, I mean, it is true that you could — what they've
been using is Cymbian. They've been using S60.
Jeff: Right, right.
Leo: So that — I mean, it's time to update it. I think it's not unreasonable to say
Windows Phone couldn't operate on these, but you're right, it could just be
pure marketing to say, "We're not going to put our premium operating
system on a 35-dollar phone.
Jeff: Right.
Leo: Although it is on a 100-dollar phone, the 520. So the other side of that story
is that Nokia will be providing all of the services that Google currently
provides; in other words, just as there's a Google services layer, there might
be a Nokia services layer, including location, a Nokia store, and all of that.
Gina: Right.
Leo: There's a rebuttal to Peter's article by Diane Hackborn.
Do you know her? She's an Android developer, it says.
Gina: She is. I don't know her personally. She's a Googler, she's been working
on Android for a very long time. She's one of the earliest Android developers.
She's, you know, probably one of the biggest Android experts that exists on the
planet, and she wrote a point-by-point rebuttal inside the Ars comments, which is an amazing read, because it really gives you a sense of how
Google's thinking about Android kind of internally. And her argument is,
essentially, that AOSP is a fully-functioning smartphone operating system that
anyone can install on any device and everything works. And there's no other
operating system that is that — is that open. And that Google's proprietary
layer is proprietary because it interacts with Google's cloud services. The
cloud services that Google builds — or provides — that's really where the
business value is, and that's where — that's why it's proprietary, because that
code lives in the cloud. It does not — it does not run on the phone. That's why
Google isn't including it into the open-source project. And it's a really —
it's a great, great read. I absolutely recommend seeing her perspective on it.
I mean, you know, she went as far as to say — she said, "Look, there's
lots of good reasons why Microsoft and Nokia shouldn't fork Android and build
on top of Android, but it's not this. Android is absolutely forkable."
And, you know, she's really right. I mean, Amazon forked Android successfully.
Leo: Yeah.
Jeff: Yeah.
Gina: It's certainly forkable.
Leo: But Amazon, a year before they did that, built the Amazon Android Store, really beefed it up.
Gina: Yes. Yep.
Jeff: Because that's their business model, and part of what we're hearing is that
this is a way to get the web on phones at a cheap price.
Leo: And I think it's pretty clear that after all the Scroogled ads, no Microsoft company would ever include Google
services as a layer on their phone. So that was a non-starter. The real
question is — and I think that Nokia has answered it, because I think it's
pretty clear they're going to do it — that can you make a good phone based on
AOSP? And I bet you they did.
Gina: I mean, the big question is: Can you make a great
mobile phone experience that doesn't involve rich cloud services?
Leo: Right.
Gina: You know, connections —
Leo: Well, but Microsoft has all those services, right? Microsoft has cloud
services. So you tie in — instead of you tying into Google, you tie into
Exchange.
Gina: Right.
Leo: You tie into Microsoft. Azure. And I don't know what
services Google provides that Microsoft doesn't. Instead of Google apps, you've
got Office 365. I think that —
Gina: Right. There's one-to-one.
Leo: Well, I don't know if it's exactly one-to-one. I'd have to look down the list.
Gina: Right. And there certainly is a layer of app code you have to write on the
Android side in order to interact with the cloud services.
Leo: Right.
Gina: But, you know, a long time ago — and I forget who — I think it was one of the
founders of GetHub — wrote this great post about what
you should open-source and what you shouldn't. And he
basically said that you — you open-source everything except what's core to your
business value. And, you know, Android — the AOSP —
isn't — that's just a platform for Google to offer their services to users on
top of. That's not their business — their business value is the cloud services.
It's the data, right? It's the users.
Leo: Right.
Gina: It's — it's that. That's what GMS is the bridge to on smartphones.
Leo: I think where this comes from is the sensible feeling that — why would Google
want to allow forks of Android? Isn't that bad for Google to allow that at all?
Jeff: That was my next question, yes. So —
Leo: The presumption is they're doing things to prevent it, even if they're not.
Gina: That seems to be what people are arguing, that Google is making Android unforkable.
Jeff: Oh, I see.
Gina: They're trying to make it as closed — and it's really — it's closed, but it's
wearing the open — you know, it's flying the "Open" banner, right?
They're trying to win developers' hearts.
Jeff: Which is the whole fight.
Gina: Yeah. But really, truthfully, they're evil and trying to take over the world.
Jeff: Right.
Gina: And this is — you know, we've kind of heard this
argument about Android a whole bunch, right?
Jeff: Yeah, we heard it before, Gina, right, when they weren't fast enough in opening
up the various versions.
Gina: Yes.
Jeff: Like, oh, they're kneecapping open-source.
Gina: Yep.
Jeff: Yep.
Gina: Exactly. And I just — I don't — I don't think that that's true.
Jeff: Yeah. Well, it's a compelling argument.
Leo: Yeah. It just — people can't believe it. (Laughs) I think you're right, but I
think people go, "No, that can't be true. Google's not allowing this.
Google must be trying to undermine us."
Jeff: Open is open is open.
Leo: Because, by the way, that's what Microsoft would do.
Jeff: I mean, the question is: Does Google get some yuk-yuks
out of this and start advertising that Microsoft is using Android?
Leo: Ah. No. Because it's not Google Android. It has no Googliness to it. It's all open-source. They get no
benefit.
Jeff: That's true.
Gina: I mean, the truth is, though, that the best Android experience is AOSP plus
GMS, right?
Jeff: Yes.
Gina: I mean, that's —
Jeff: Minus — minus cruff from other manufacturers.
Gina: Right. Exactly. AOSP —
Leo: Which Google's done a good job of getting rid of.
Jeff: Getting rid of, yes.
Gina: Yeah, right. Just — plus, only GMS, right? You don't
even want any of the other crap, right?
Jeff: Amen.
Gina: And this is — this is true because Google shepherded AOSP along. They — this
was — they went all in on Android, and they said, "We're going to build —
this is the platform we're going to put out. We're going to build our great
experience on top of it." Much like they did with Chrome. And no other
company has had this sort of headstart, and, you
know, no other company has kind of had this vision. I mean, I would love to see
— I would love to see two companies — and maybe it's Google and Amazon —
working on the AOSP actively —
Leo: I agree.
Gina: You know, and in open, in the — you know, in public. I want to see nightly
commits. I want to see — why hasn't location services been updated? Is that
Google's responsibility? It's an open-source application.
Leo: Right.
Gina: It's everybody's responsibility. Anybody can update location services, so when
the — when people throw accusations at Google, saying, "Well, they haven't
updated the mail client on AOSP for two years," why should they? Because
they want you to use Gmail, and that means that they're evil. I kind of feel
like, you know, theoretically, if it's open-source, anybody can hack the email
client and make it better, submit patches back, and get those, you know,
brought into the open-source project, and so everyone can benefit. I mean,
that's what open-source is.
Leo: So that's the question: Has Amazon, for instance, contributed back to the AOSP?
Gina: So I asked — I asked Jason Applebaum last night this,
because he follows AOSP development more closely than I do, and he says that
yes, there have been committers backed AOSP from, you know, from other
companies, plenty of them —
Leo: Oh, good.
Gina: — more, I think, the low-level pieces of the operating system, but yeah, that's
— that's good.
Jeff: Including Amazon?
Gina: Yeah, I — I believe so. I believe so. Chat —
Leo: And would — I mean, this is the proof in the pudding:
if Nokia contributes back to AOSP, everybody wins, right?
Jeff: (Laughs)
Sarah: (Laughs)
Gina: Right. But you know —
Leo: Then that's great.
Jeff: Yeah.
Gina: He — his argument was, though, you know, he knows — he's like, "There's at
least one bug — major bug — that I know of that has been fixed multiple times,
right, by different people, and the fix has never been pulled back."
Because what is — it's in your interests —
Leo: Right.
Gina: — to have the fix in your software, versus everybody having the fix in their
software. Now, that totally goes against the whole spirit of open-source,
right, is that you're contributing back and that, you know, stone soup that
everyone is contributing and making easier and better for everyone, but, you
know, there's not a whole lot of easy ways to enforce that, and you need
someone — you need a leader who is encouraging that, and people who are helping
out with that. So that's sad to hear. I mean, I'd like to see more of, there's
a major bug with location services that doesn't make it as good as GMS. Let's
just make location services as good as GMS.
Leo: Yeah. I really — I think what happens — this is another case of the truth maybe
not matching the narrative that people want or expect, where — I mean, you —
you would expect Google to be churlish, the dog in the manger, and say,
"Well, we don't want anybody to fork." But, in fact, maybe they have
been generous, and maybe it is possible to fork AOSP.
Jeff: It's this default position of, "What's Google doing badly?"
Leo: Right.
Jeff: And — and I know I'm going to come off as the fanboy once again, but so often when that question is asked, the answer is, "Oh,
nothing."
Leo: (Laughs) We'll watch with great interest. This will be
a good litmus test for that, for all of that, and how good a neighbor
Nokia/Microsoft is.
Jeff: (Laughs)
Leo: Apparently, Nokia has — somebody in the chatroom said
Nokia has been a huge contributor to the Linux open-source repository.
Jeff: They're neighbors.
Leo: But remember, that's Nokia. Now they're Nokia/Microsoft, or soon they will be
Nokia/Microsoft. We'll see what happens there. I don't know if Microsoft
contributes much back to open-source.
Jeff: I don't know. I mean, you know, IBM — we talked about last week how Microsoft
becomes the new IBM in some ways.
Leo: Right. If you —
Jeff: IBM certainly —
Leo: There certainly are developers at Microsoft who work in their spare time on
open-source, and I would think — would love Microsoft to contribute back.
That's —
Gina: Yeah, I mean, I think at this point — at this point, any big software company,
just for the purpose of winning developer hearts —
Leo: Yes.
Gina: — has to have some money and some resources dedicated toward contributing back
to beloved projects that we all use, Like Linux.
Leo: That's the right thing to do.
Gina: It is.
Leo: Yeah. And Web0844 is pointing out that Nokia had Maemo and MeeGo, which were Linux-based phone operating
systems, unfortunately orphaned, but that's where a lot of that development
contributed back. So really, Nokia's done this before. They've taken the Linux
kernel and put a phone on top of it. So it may not be such a stretch for them
to do that.
Nest is final, FTC approval.
Google owns them. Interesting that Google also owns a fairly big stake in
Lenovo now. Not merely thanks to the fact that they sold Motorola to Lenovo,
partly for cash but partly for stock. But after the deal closes, they'll own
750 million Lenovo — dollars’ worth of Lenovo.
Jeff: So does that still put them in the same conflict that they were in before in
terms of the other hardware makers?
Leo: It's a 5.94 stake, so it — I don't know. Sarah's the finance person. Is that a
big enough stake to say — for people like HTC and Samsung to say, "Oh,
Google's still in the phone business"?
Sarah: It's 5.94?
Leo: Yeah. It's not a majority. It's not a — I mean, it's big —
Sarah: Yeah. I'm guessing every company has its own standard on that. I mean, it's not
a regulatory issue.
Leo: Right. Well, and it's on the Hong Kong exchange because that's where Lenovo's
traded.
Twitter. You guys — did you go
to Twitter, too?
Jeff: We did. We got to sit down with Dick Costolo —
Leo: CEO of Twitter.
Jeff: CEO of Twitter, yeah.
Gina: Nice.
Leo: And former CEO of Twitter Ev Williams about Medium.
Jeff: Yep.
Leo: Tell us about — tell us about your trip, then we'll take a break, then we'll
wrap it up because we're almost out of time.
Sarah, Well, I'm new on my
job. I'm, like, five weeks old on — as a dean, and I figured, why not grab Jeff
Jarvis and come out to the West Coast and be a reporter?
Leo: What fun!
Sarah: You know, basically go around talking to the big executives who are leading
technology companies here, and find out how we can work better with them as a
journalism school, what their thoughts are about journalism education, what our
students need to learn how to do in order to be successful as our industries
kind of converts. So it —
Leo: So you focused on journalism — I mean, certainly —
Sarah: The intersection of journalism and technology.
Leo: Medium is a journalistic enterprise; Twitter's not, but has some impact,
significant impact.
Jeff: Oh, it has a huge impact, yes.
Gina: Huge impact.
Sarah: Actually — I mean, there's some discussion about whether Medium is indeed a
journalistic enterprise. I think some of the conversation this morning with
them was really about the technology company, primarily, that loves stories.
Jeff: Ideas.
Sarah: And ideas. And they're not out to save journalism. That's —
Leo: But they see themselves as a back end for some form of journalism.
Sarah: A platform.
Leo: A platform.
Jeff: Not — well, I think what Ev would say is "not
breaking news, ever." He said, "We read too much news." He said
this out loud —
Leo: He doesn't want to do that.
Sarah: No.
Jeff: He doesn't want to do that. He's done that. Twitter did that. He's basically
balancing his own invention, Twitter, I think.
Leo: It feels like the return of Blogger in some ways.
Jeff: But more to it, I think. You know, they want to have the finest content
creation tool they can have, and they're a long way on that. It's a beautiful,
elegant tool —
Leo: You've submitted a lot of stuff to Media.
Jeff: I've used it a lot. I'm writing a new white paper on, you know, the future of
news —
Leo: Why would you submit anything to Media instead of onto your own blog?
Sarah: Well, he writes about it on the blog, too. It's not —
Jeff: I do that, too.
Sarah: it's not mutually exclusive.
Gina: Distribution, right? Distribution.
Jeff: Yeah, so you don't — the thing about Media from the very beginning — I said
this to Ev when he first showed it to me — is that I
find that when I start writing something on Medium, it raises the bar
immediately in what I would write there. And so I'm writing something that's
more — more thoughtful, cared-for —
Sarah: Maybe polished?
Jeff: Polished, yeah, than, certainly Twitter or my blog. Ev kind of said that he wants me to go ahead and — wants us to explore ideas there
and do things there. But I — there's the kind of little "for the
record" post — "Oh, I think this or that" — it's over — I don't
want to put that in Medium. In Medium, you put a thought that you're working
on. And he wants it to be collaborative, so you work with people.
Sarah: I think that's the key difference.
Leo: Ah.
Jeff: Yeah.
Leo: So instead of just on my blog all by myself. How is it collaborative?
Sarah: And comments at the end.
Leo: Comments.
Jeff: And comments on the side by every idea.
Leo: But I take comments on my blog. I mean —
Sarah: Yeah, but they're all —
Jeff: There are comments by every idea, and you can get into a conversation by every
idea.
Leo: Oh, so people can kind of annotate your —
Jeff: Yes.
Sarah: Exactly.
Jeff: Yes.
Leo: — piece. Ooh, that's interesting.
Jeff: And so you could ask a question, you could leave a TK, as we say.
Leo: Some people wouldn't want that.
Jeff: No, some people wouldn't. Well, in fact, Medium — the
first time I put something up there, they offered to edit it for me and I said,
"No, thanks."
Leo: (Laughs) So they have editors.
Jeff: They do have editors, yeah.
Leo: Well, then they aren't just a technology company.
Jeff: Well, we asked them what they are, you know, everybody's choking on this word
that was on Recode this week, of a platisher, a
platform/publisher —
Leo: Platisher?
Jeff: — which is just God-awful.
Leo: Yeah. When I saw that, I decided not to —
Sarah: (Laughs)
Jeff: I couldn't — I couldn't finish reading it because every time I hit that word, I
— it was as if I was going over a bridge.
Gina: It's like "Gesundeit."
Jeff: Yeah.
Leo and Sarah: (Laugh)
Jeff: But no, I think — I think Medium sees itself clearly as, Sarah said, a
technology company and a platform. Twitter is still a platform. Now, part of
the reason that I'm here — just my own hidden agenda to all this — is that I
think we've got to convince the Titans of technology industry that when they
start to want to save news, they don't make it a contribution. They bring their
best thoughts to it. They bring their technology and business experience to it,
and not give up on it. And so that's what I want to do with the technology
folks I'm seeing this week, is to say, "No, the thing is that you know how
to do — in big technology, we need that in news and journalism."
Leo: Yes.
Sarah: As opposed to just going straight to a sort of non-profit solution.
Leo: Right.
Sarah: And a charity.
Leo: Well, this week —
Sarah: Because it's not sustainable.
Leo: Pierre Omidyar launched The Intercept.
Jeff: Yes, he did.
Leo: The very much commercialization of news. He's put a quarter of a billion
dollars, apparently, into it, and brought Glenn Greenwald and Laura Fitton over. In fact, that — they also brought that big
stash of Snowden documents along with them.
Jeff: Yes, they did.
Leo: Some have complained that that is the monetization of the Snowden documents.
Others have vociferously denied.
Jeff: Greenwald has. In the meantime, he has shared some documents with NBC this week
—
Leo: Right.
Jeff: — so I think he's trying to spread the load.
Leo: That's okay. Yeah.
Jeff: Yeah. So I don't yet know — I tried to talk to Omidyar — I'm eager to talk to him about what his business model is. I'm not sure that
he knows yet what it is. We've talked about Bezos on the show before —
Leo: With the Washington Post.
Jeff: I really hope he doesn't view it as a — as a philanthropy, but instead sees it
as an opportunity to change the business models.
Leo: Yeah.
Jeff: There was an incredible exchange this week, absolutely amazing. Old "pmarca" — Marc Andrreessen on Twitter — has been going berserk all week, in a wonderful way, about the
journalism business.
Leo: I was wondering why everybody I know suddenly followed Pmarca.
Now I understand.
Jeff: Yeah. Save us! Save us, Marc!
Leo: What did he say? Marc Andreessen, for those who don't know, is the guy who
wrote Netscape, or helped write Netscape, made a lot of money, and is now a
venture capitalist at —
Jeff: Of — of major note. And he's — true to my heart — he's saying that journalism
can be a business. He's excited about crowd funding, which I think is one
revenue stream, and it's by no means the salvation. But he's — he's yelling at
the people — and this part I love — who say, "No,
journalism is — give up on it. It's not profitable. It's meant to be a
charity." And he's saying, "No, it's a badly-run business." I
hear people saying that.
Leo: yeah.
Jeff: A lot of my journalism friends are Communists.
Leo: I think — we love stories. And the people who can tell stories — all journalism
is — is telling a story about something that happened so that people understand
it better, right?
Jeff: Well, that's one form of it. I think the other form is verbatim —
Leo: I shouldn't say that to the professors here. They probably will spank me for
saying that.
Sarah: (Laughs)
Leo: But it strikes me that that's the — that's what we need is, we need the story.
We need — we understand things in terms of story. Humans do.
Jeff: Many of my professors would say the same thing. I argue that stories are only
one tool we have, and we're not primarily storytellers.
Leo: What's the other story? What's the other way to do it?
Jeff: Data. Tools that consist of data.
Leo: Yeah, but raw data is not as valuable as — in fact —
Jeff: Depends on what you're looking for.
Leo: But if you give me the raw data, that's one thing. If you explain the raw data,
i.e. tell a story about it —
Jeff: I'll give you an example. After Hurricane Sandy, or tomorrow after whatever
Weather Channel's calling the next storm to hit Gina, we'll get stories. You
know what the stories will say? I can write them right now. "Gosh, a lot
of snow fell. City digging out." On TV, they're
going to put rulers in the snow and say, "Guess what? It adds up over
time." They're going to tell us all this — you know, crap that we know.
Leo: So what would you like?
Jeff: I want a tool that says what streets are open, what streets are closed, and I
want that data to come from —
Leo: Is that journalism?
Jeff: Yes, you bet it is. It enables the community to share what it knows. That's
journalism.
Leo: Okay.
Jeff: Would you agree, boss?
Sarah: Yeah. I mean, that's the, sort of some of the thinking that we're doing right
now is, Should we be teaching our students how to be community organizers?
Leo: Right.
Sarah: Basically, to engage individual communities and help provide information that help them organize themselves. And —
Leo: That's very interesting.
Sarah: That's sort of a new —
Leo: That's a broader definition than the traditional.
Sarah: It is.
Jeff: Yes.
Sarah: Nothing wrong with that.
Jeff: Nothing wrong with that. I mean, I've writing this — this —
Leo: That's a librarian. (Laughs)
Jeff: No, it's a platform maker.
Sarah: That's stopped us in our tracks. who you callin' librarians?
Jeff: — librarians, Mista?
All: (Laugh)
Leo: Okay.
Jeff: Meanwhile, we want to destroy some things. I — part of the reason I wanted to
bring especially Sarah here was to look at the wonders that are TWIT and
reinventing TV news, which I think is vital.
Leo: Well, I'm never doing another stand-up, I can tell you
that, after reading your blog.
Jeff: Yep.
Gina: (Laughs)
Jeff: There's a very funny FOX 5 video on there of a guy who — I think it's the top
one —
Leo: Because you got interviewed by FOX.
Jeff: By FOX 5 New York about the stupid things they do in weather stories.
Leo: I'm surprised that they wanted to do that story, to be honest with you. That
seems self-defeating.
Jeff: Yeah.
Leo: Chad'll have to play it. I don’t have the capability
of playing videos back in —
Jeff: Yeah, what happened to your laptop?
Leo: My daughter has it.
Jeff: Ah.
Leo: She's using it for work.
Jeff: (Laughs)
(An ad begins to play.)
Leo: This is an ad, unfortunately.
Jeff: Oh, sorry about that. I should have warned you, Chad.
Leo: That's all right. I like Dwight David Eisenhower.
Sarah: (Laughs)
Leo: I particularly liked Robin Williams's rendition of Dwight David Eisenhower in
The Butler. Did you see that?
Jeff: No.
Leo: Very weird.
Sarah: (Laughs)
Leo: That's not the first person I'd have Robin Williams play.
Jeff: No. (Video begins) Here we go.
Male reporter: We get sick of
hearing our own voices sometimes. Local news really can be a bit much. We know
that.
Leo: What? This is a local news guy?
Jeff: Yes.
Female reporter: You know what
we're talking about, obviously. There are silly stories, pointless live shots,
endless clichés, and then there's Joel Waldman.
Male reporter: Joining us from
outside our building. Perfect.
Female reporter: (Laughs) I
couldn't resist. You're perfect for the story.
Male reporter: Putting a hand
to the earpiece so we can hear the anger.
Leo: I like the lower third. Inside, outside.
Jeff: I didn't see that.
Sarah: In case you weren't clear about it.
Joel Waldman: I love putting
my hand up to my earpiece here, otherwise known as an IFB, for all of you at
home who didn't know this. Look behind me over here at FOX 5 news. There's
absolutely nothing going on right now, so we decided to turn it all around,
forego Snowmageddon, and tell all you concerned
citizens at home exactly what annoys you, and us, most about this job.
Announcer: Time. We never have
enough.
Joel: A shocking revelation.
Thanks, local news. If you think it isn't, think again. Time is valuable.
Leo: (Laughs)
Female Voice: Honestly, who
has time to waste?
Joel: Maybe you do if you're
watching this right now. For the first time ever, in this exclusive local news
story, we ask the tough question: Does news ever annoy you? We put CUNY
professor Jeff Jarvis on the hot seat to give this story at least an ounce of
legitimacy.
Jeff [on video]: Doing a story
about local TV news is a bit navel-gazing, but it's a good start because it
shows me that you're willing to ask the tough questions about what's annoying
about TV news.
Joel, Like sticking rulers —
Male newscaster: Almost an
inch and a half ...
Joel: Not an inch and a half,
and please, no more —
Male newscaster: ... wicked
winter weather ...
Joel: — gimmicks. Thanks for
that cliché, reporter man. And please stop, reporter woman.
Female reporter 1: I've got
this wind meter right here ...
Female reporter 2: The winds
are literally ripping across —
Joel: If you think this
station had enough reporters covering its city's severe weather its first
night, this was the second. At times in news, we come across another chilling
reality: reporters stretching the truth.
Male reporter: Are these holy
men walking on top of water ...
Joel: Holy smokes! A canoe in
just a few inches of water!
Leo: (Laughs)
Joel: ... but I've never
wanted to knee anchors as badly as during these recent blasts of cold, Arctic
air.
Leo: All right, we get the idea.
Jeff: Yeah.
Leo: We don't have to keep going.
(The video is stopped.)
Sarah: Give me Will Ferrell any day.
Leo: That's good. I like that, yeah. That's funny. I don't think they're going to
stop doing stand-ups. I would defend the stand-up, but I —
Jeff: Okay, try, try.
Leo: Well, again, this comes — see, I understand now why you guys don't want to
accept the fact that, really, what we are is storytellers, because that allows
some subjectivity to creep into —
Jeff: No!
Sarah: No.
Jeff: Subjectivity is great! I love subjectivity.
Leo: You want — you want facts. But the fact is, the human
brain wants people. They want faces, they want pictures. This is one of the
reasons why I was reluctant to do video. Video is — it's very clear to me that
audio is intellectual, it's abstract, it's ideas.
Video's all about emotions. Video wants pictures and wants — and so, for
television news to abandon the stand-up would be, you know — what do you get?
You get, you know, the [unintelligible] news report, news hour. You get PBS
news hour —
Jeff: Well, but you also could get more information, you get more value —
Leo: Well, but people don't — I've got bad news for you — people don't want that.
Jeff: The example —
Leo: What is — what is the job of the journalist? To —
Jeff: Inform.
Leo: Are we the Brussels sprouts of media, or are we here to help people understand
stuff in a way that is palatable? I would rather be an Egg McMuffin with some broccoli in there —
Sarah: (Laughs)
Leo: — than to be just the broccoli on the plate.
Jeff: Broccoli split.
Sarah: I can't think of any food analogy here —
Leo: (Laughs)
Sarah: — but I mean, it's not — again, it's sort of not one thing or the other. You
know, I mean, I —
Leo: You go right ahead and be deep data, I don't care.
Sarah: No. I mean, it's a mix of things. There's some times when I want to analyze
data; there's some times when I want to have a story that moves me; there's
some times when I want some deep, complex analysis; there's some times when I
want breaking news. I mean, those are all forms of journalism. They're all
critical.
Leo: I'm just saying, you understand why local has a ruler
in the snow? That's real for people. It tells people what's going on. There's a
wind meter. We —
Jeff: Here's the example. Here's the example.
Leo: They shouldn't lie about a rowboat in three inches of water. That's stupid.
That is bad.
Jeff: No. But there's also stupid — I have pictures in the blog of people standing up
in front of the George Washington Bridge in the Christie scandal we have in New
Jersey.
Leo: Right.
Jeff: There's no journalism to be had there.
Leo: Of course not.
Jeff: There's no [unintelligible] there, there's no victims there, there's no sources
there —
Leo: But it's pretty pictures. If you're doing — if you do TV, I'm sorry, you have
to have pretty pictures.
Jeff: I don't think so.
Sarah: You don't think Chris Christie's pretty? (Laughs)
Leo: Yeah, he's pretty. I would have a picture of Chris Christie. In fact, I'd have
them on there, of course. You want — TV —
Jeff: Another example. Another example.
Leo: You have a — as soon as you go to video, you have a responsibility to fill the
screen with something, and you might as well make it pretty.
Jeff: Well, okay. So there's a jury on a trial.
Leo: Doesn't mean you can't have solid information. So what I think is very
important — and I know you guys teach this — is that there be this very solid
foundation of journalistic ethics, where you don't make up stories, you don't
fudge things, you don't attempt to prove a point by editing.
Jeff: Yes.
Leo: You care most deeply about communicating to your audience the truth about a
story to give them the information they need to make the judgment that they
need to make as good citizens. All of that —
Jeff: And you do the things that are in the service of that.
Leo: Yes. All of that we agree that is the foundation of what you teach.
Jeff: Right.
Leo: So all we're disagreeing about is how you present it, and I would say that
sometimes you want to present it with a little bit of pretty stuff.
Jeff: But here — let me give you another example. So the jury's out in a trial. I
used this as an example in the blog. And what do they do? The anchor says,
"The trial's going on. This is what happened in the trial. Now we're going
to go to the — you know, Gina Trapani in the paneled courtroom." Gina
Trapani's going to say, "In that closed door behind me, there's a jury. We
don't know what the ef they're doing. I actually have
nothing to say to you, but, yeah, the trial's going on, it's about this and
that and that. Now back to you." The anchor comes back and says, "You
know, we'll tell you as soon as we hear anything." All of which could be
summarized in, "Jury's still out. For more, go to the web." And they
could get another story in, could get more value in. It's a waste of precious
journalistic resource. The reporters don't report. They are props.
Leo: Well, A. I would question how precious that resource is. There's a lot of people that you could put out there with the camera operator. That
stuff's not precious. That's what TV news does. And I would just say that if
you did this imaginary TV news station that you would like to do, no one would freaking watch it. And part of your mandate is not merely to
tell the truth and get the story out, but to get somebody to watch it.
Jeff: Well, I —
Sarah: Nobody's watching it now.
Jeff: No.
Sarah: I mean, they — the numbers — if you look —
Leo: Well, that's only because there's other places you can have people standing in
front of a door.
Sarah: Right, but I don't know — You have kids. I have kids.
You don't watch —
Leo: They watch Youtube.
Sarah: They watch — you know, any news that they're getting,
they're getting on the laptop.
Leo: You think that there's stuff on Youtube that is any
less — Youtube's full of stuff that's as stupid as
the guy standing out there —
Jeff: Oh, yeah. Sure. But it's not trying to be news. It's not trying to inform.
Leo: No, but it's presentational. If you look at the presentation on Youtube, there's a lot of attention to presentation,
otherwise nobody watches it.
Jeff: (Skeptical noise)
Leo: Watch Epic Mealtime, which has no content.
Sarah (Laughs) Do we have to?
Leo: Yeah. Has no content. My son loves it because it's — because of what they're
seeing and doing, he loves. They're mushing hamburgers into a
giant lasagna.
Jeff: I don't — here's — here's where I'm going to — I think the conflation of
informing and entertaining is the issue.
Leo: Yeah, I agree.
Jeff: Now, that's usually set in terms of, oh, it's crappy TV. What I'm trying to say
is something different — is that, if I want to read a long — if I want to read
a novel, that's entertainment. If I want to read a long New Yorker story,
that's often entertainment. Snowfall, the Times did that everybody loved, was
really, to me, entertainment because I don't —
Leo: That was a waste of time.
Jeff: Yes, I agree.
Leo: As much as everybody loved it, that was a waste of time.
Jeff: Waste of time.
Sarah: And money.
Leo: A lot of money. And I would — and this is very not politically correct — I
would complain far more about that than some idiot anchor with nice hair
standing out in the rain. I — to me, that is a bigger waste of money and
resources that added nothing to the conversation.
Jeff: I think they both are, and I think there's ways that we could probably inform
you — when I had my coffee with Katie Couric —
Leo: Did you mention this to Katie?
Jeff: Yeah, well —
Leo: I'm curious what she thought.
Sarah: I wanted to know how long it was going to take you to fit that in.
Jeff: I know. It was —
Leo: (Laughs)
Sarah: It was a little bit longer than I thought.
Leo: Here we are, the show's almost over —
Jeff: She's been with me too long this week. And so, one thing I said was, "The
one difference I see in going to Yahoo is you don't have to fill a clock
anymore." We overfill the clock here at TWIT.
Leo: We've never had any problems filling the clock.
Jeff: No. "You don't have to fill the clock anymore, and if you want to say
what's new in a story, you can do that in a minute thirty, and then not have to
say anything more until something actually happens." So part of what TV
does is think, We have to have video, video, video,
video because we have to fill an hour. Well, if you — instead, your job is to inform people, maybe you can do that in a minute
thirty and you're done.
Leo: Well, in my experience, television's very different
from that. In fact, my experience of television was that we never had enough
time, that there was always the urgency to get stuff done in less time, and
that hurt TV more than anything else. That's where you edit out the pieces of
him downloading the malware, because — not because you don't want that
information — because it takes too much time. There is never enough time in
mainstream media.
Jeff: Then why do they waste so much of it on idiots standing up where nothing
happened the last twelve hours?
Leo: I don't think they consider that wasted. I think they consider that the way
that they make a palatable product.
Jeff: That's my problem, is that's the orthodoxy of old TV.
Leo: Well, you can try different things.
Jeff: "This is the way we make TV. It's got to be the only way because it's the
way we've always done it." And I'm saying I want — you know what you're
going to do?
Leo: What?
Jeff: I'm bringing you to New York. We're having an event at CUNY in reinventing TV
news.
Leo: We should have a debate. (Laughs)
Jeff: And I'm going to have you in a hacking TV event, where we're going to reinvent
things.
Leo: I just — I feel like I want to argue the case for the average Joe who sits down
in front of the TV, and I understand what you need to do in television. You
need — which we don't do here — but you need to make pretty pictures.
Jeff: I think you're the proof that you don't need to.
Leo: You need to make emotional stuff.
Jeff: You, physically, are the proof that you don't need pretty pictures.
Sarah and Jeff: (Laugh)
Leo: That's why we have Gina, ladies and gentlemen. Gina Trapani.
Jeff: Yes.
Gina: You know, Jeff, I really liked — I thought that your bringing up Circa was really apt. Circa was that news app. I love it. I love
it. I barely look at it, but it notifies me when I need — like, so you can
follow a story, and it notifies me when there's something new, right? And when
there's an update to the story. And I really — I really like that, and I like
your point that, you know, the way that TV news works now is that it's just people
explaining the same, you know, thing, the same story. If you have all the
background, you're just hearing the same thing repeated over and over and over
again. But what you really want is just to know, has —
did the jury come back? What was the verdict?
Jeff: Yeah. I'm glad you raised that —
Gina: Don't tell me whether or not — only tell me if they have. Right? I don't want to hear anything else.
Jeff: We went to visit Circa this week as well, and they
make a big point of that, saying that once you already know enough in the
story, then all you want is the update. You want to follow the story. That's a
new opportunity we didn't have in big old news.
Leo: Now, Circa came out of Ben Huh of I Can Has Cheeseburger actually saying,
"I think we need to rethink how we deliver journalism.
Jeff: Yeah.
Leo: In fact, I remember going to Phoot Camp, he was
there. Were you at that Phoot Camp, Gina? I think you
were.
Gina: I was. And we went back to the cottage and did the show with him afterward.
That's when he demoed it, yeah.
Leo: Before he did Circa, he said, "Let's — I want to
talk with you about what's wrong with journalism, what's wrong with news, and
how we can do a better job." And then — and Circa, I think, is quite
successful. But it's a different thing. I mean —
Jeff: Oh, yeah.
Leo: And I think connected devices are a little different. You — they are more
goal-oriented than sitting down in front of a television, or even watching Youtube.
Jeff: Leo, you questioned the orthodoxy of television. You blew up the orthodoxy of
television, yet here you are defending it to me.
Leo: I am defending it because it works really well, I hate to tell you. Here's the
bad news: it's working.
Jeff: The audience is dying.
Sarah: By what measure? By what measure is it working?
Leo: Well, okay. Okay. You would say TV news is that thing that's on the box that
comes through the air; I would merely say video news — and I would say Youtube counts. In other words —
Sarah: Oh. Well, wait. You're redefining the terms here.
Jeff: (Laughs)
Leo: No! Because Circa's — Circa's very different. So there are ways of getting
information via web browsers and so forth, but I think what succeeds is people
like to — this is why we spend a million and a half dollars to do this — people
like to watch video. They like to — the lean back experience is not a dead
experience by any means, and in fact, I will give you the measure. People watch
more television now than they did ten years ago. That's the bad news. The number of hours that — look it up.
Sarah: Look at the TV news portion, though.
Leo: Ah, well, maybe —
Jeff: And the age thereof.
Sarah: And the age of the people who are watching TV news, and the portion of the TV
news segments that is actually news, as opposed to weather or sports.
Leo: Crap. Yeah. Well, that I agree with.
Sarah: It's really declining.
Leo: Well, that I agree with, but that's — that is the failure of local news.
Sarah: And how much of it is local news?
Leo: That is the failure of local news. Local news has always been horrific.
Sarah, Well, that's really
what we're focusing a lot on.
Leo: Yeah, I would agree with you, but I don't think the stand-up is the problem
there.
Jeff: It's the first of many.
Leo: I think the biggest problem with — with that is underestimating the
intelligence of your audience.
Jeff: Yes.
Leo: And this comes, again, from many years —
Jeff: Rulers in the snow.
Leo: I have worked for all the networks, and I know they don't want you to think of
the audience as intelligent. And that's kind of a mistake, if you ask me.
Jeff: Yeah.
Leo: Because guess what you get?
Jeff: Stupidity.
Leo: Stupid people. (Laughs) But that's — well, anyway,
this has nothing to do with Google. Hi, Gina. How are
you? How's ThinkUp going?
Gina: (Laughs)
Sarah: Can I just say that there was someone in the chatroom who said he wanted, or she wanted, to go for wood paneling, based on this, so —
Gina: (Laughs)
Leo: I think this is —
Sarah: You're changing — you're changing, you know, the
world.
Jeff: Says something about the TWIT — the TWIG —
Leo: What do you think — what do you think of Yahoo's effort at news? This is a very
— and to me, this is a very good example of Yahoo assuming people are not too
bright. So this — every morning, I get — this is the newest thing from Yahoo.
It is a total of nine stories, okay? In nine different
categories. I can interact with it, and presumably, it will update it.
And at the bottom, it's gamified. "You've read
zero."
All: (Laugh)
Jeff: You schmuck, you.
Sarah: Wow.
Leo: And I —
Gina: Wow. They send you kittens, the more you click.
Leo: Yeah. But they — but there is real news here. Katrina's mayor — New Orleans mayor Katrina [unintelligible] convicted on
corruption charges ... Senate approves debt limit ... Now, when I go to this,
this is the product they bought from that kid who was doing Summize.
He was summarizing news. So when I go to it, I don't get the actual, canonical
article here; I get a computer-generated summary of the stuff you need to know.
Although I have to say, it's not so bad. And then I can get additional stuff —
tweets and so forth — down here. I think this is an interesting look — I'm
surprised you guys haven't seen this. Derek Jeter will retire after — now, this
is the sports section, right? So this is a summary — not from any one source,
but summarized by Yahoo, summarized programmatically. I don't —
Jeff: It didn't take long for Calacanis to copy this, too.
Leo: Oh, Jason has no new ideas. That's obvious.
All: (Laugh)
Gina: Wow.
Leo: Big picture — well, he hasn't. He just copies everything, right?
Jeff: Well, I actually — I had a conversation this week with the club of people
who've been copied by Jason.
Leo: It's a big club.
Jeff: You are a major member of it.
Leo: It's a fairly large club.
Jeff: Yes, it is.
Sarah: (Laughs)
Leo: And I — you know, I actually like Jason Calacanis,
but that's a fact. There's no way around that. So that's another way to do
news. I just think that when we use these devices, it's more goal-oriented than
when we watch TV.
Jeff: That's a good point.
Leo: My goal when I watch TV is, sit back, relax, and enjoy something —
Jeff: Which is part of what Sarah's saying. That's why — and
young people don't do that.
Leo: Yes, they do. They just do it on Youtube. So you know
how my son —
Jeff: That's not the "sit back" thing.
Sarah: That's a different model, different —
Leo: You know how my son consumes Youtube? On the big
screen TV. He's got it hooked up to the Apple TV, and they just go through
clips and they watch it. That — all that is, is they're programming their own
TV.
Jeff: Yeah.
Leo: But they're not — it's still "lean back."
Sarah: But it's not with local news — you know, produced by local —
Leo: No, the only time they watch local news is when there's gaffs.
Jeff: Yes.
Leo: (Laughs)
Gina: Gaffs.
Leo: They quite enjoy that. Of which there are many.
Sarah: Of which there are many.
Leo: (Laughs) Yeah, that was the Yahoo news app that I was showing there for those
of you who wanted to try that themselves. I like Circa a lot. I like the Yahoo news app a lot. But I do feel like how we use news on
these devices is very —
Jeff: Yeah, that's —
Leo: It's very goal-oriented.
Jeff: I love this discussion, and we're going to — we're going to have it again, I
warn you.
Leo: Our show today, brought to you by — coming up, our tips and tools and numbers
of the week. Our show today, brought to you by SquareSpace,
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We're going to wrap things up
as we always do. Gina Trapani with a tip of the week.
Gina: So I'll admit, I held this back from the changelog because I wanted it to be my tip.
Leo: That's fair.
Gina: (Laughs)
Leo: You want to do this in front of the building with a microphone?
Jeff: Where's the ruler? I want you with a — with a yardstick in the snow tomorrow,
Gina.
Gina: (Laughs) I want to be — I've got to be standing — I've got to go to Mountain
View and stand outside with the Android robot before I do — for this tip.
Leo: Exactly. Exactly. I like that.
Gina: So yeah, there you go. So this is an Android tip. Google's voice search on
Android now lets you set and refer to a relationship in your contacts. So you
have your mom in your contacts as her full name. You can say to Google voice
search, "Call Mom," and —
Leo: What?
Gina: If you haven't set the relationship, Google Now will say, "Well, who's
your mom?" And you tap in your contacts who it is, and then from there on
in, you can just say, "Call Mom," or, "Call my wife."
Leo: Can I get it to say, "Who's your daddy?"
Gina: (Laughs) Yes. "You can say, "Call my wife," "Call my
brother" ...
Leo: "Call Daddy."
Gina: Yeah. To do this, you just open up Google Now, you tap the microphone button,
and — or you use the "Okay, Google" hot word, and then just say,
"Call my ..." and then name a relationship: brother, sister, wife,
mother ... (Phone rings) And then —
Leo: Called you!
Jeff: (Laughs)
Gina: — you can select who that is. (Laughs) Damn it.
Jeff: I've been meaning — I can't do a Star Wars thing.
Gina: "I am your father."
Leo: Whaaaat?
Jeff: "I am your father."
All: (Laugh)
Gina: So, you know, we were talking about this last night on All About Android. I tried this, and I realized that I actually listed my mom as
"Mom" in my contacts. So that didn't work. So then I tried my
brother, but I have two of those, so that didn't work. But it will work if you
just don't want to say the name of your family member.
Jeff: I used to work for a nefarious mogul named Robert Maxwell, who bought
the New York Daily News —
Leo: Oh, yeah.
Jeff: And he went overboard in more ways than one — overboard on his yacht and his
finances — and he used to come into town in his private jet, and he would set
up at the Waldorf Astoria, and one of the people I know at — knew at the Daily
News, a woman who was six foot two he called tiny —
Leo: (Laughs)
Jeff: — would sit in the outer office, and he would sometimes just call out and he
would say, "Tiny! Get me the dickhead!"
Leo: (Laughs) That's better than Siri.
Jeff: And Tiny would sit there and say, "Uh oh. Who's the dickhead this week? I
don't know who it is. I think it's him, but I'm not sure. Now, if I connect —
if I ask him, I'm going to get fired because I'll be the new dickhead."
Sarah: (Laughs)
Leo: Right.
Jeff: "I'm going to connect it. You know what? By the time it connects, he may
not — may not be the dickhead, but he is now."
Leo: It could change. The new dickhead.
Jeff: So I like that. Siri — now I get to do this on Android. Google Now.
Gina: Yeah.
Leo: Wow. Siri's done this for a while. In fact, you can line up your relationships
in your iPhone contact list and use those. "Call my sister,"
"Call my mom," whatever you want. But this is new in Google.
Gina: Yep.
Leo: Yep. So do — so I noticed that when I — the first time I said, "Call my
daddy," it said, "Would you like to turn on the enhanced contact
recognition?" So you do have to do that.
Jeff: Oh, wow. That's very sophisticated.
Gina: Oh, okay. Nice. Okay.
Leo: So I don't know if — Call my daddy.
Gina: (Laughs)
Leo: It says, "This device ..." Oh, it doesn't have a phone.
Jeff: Oh, so wait, wait, wait. Okay.
Sarah: (Laughs)
Leo: Because I really want it to say, "Who's your daddy?" I really do.
Jeff: Go ahead, go ahead.
Gina: (Laughs) It — it won't say that aloud, but it will —
Leo: Oh, it doesn't say it out loud? Oh, well.
Jeff: Okay.
Gina: It doesn't say it aloud. It doesn't say it aloud.
Leo: That, by the way — what you just saw is the equivalent of a reporter stand-up.
Sarah and Gina: (Laugh)
Leo: It's a little — you're just against, like, little fun stuff. It's fun stuff.
Jeff: It's not fun!
Sarah: No, no, no. Jeff Jarvis is not against fun stuff.
Jeff: Fun stuff.
Leo: (Laughs)
Sarah: I'm sorry. You have the wrong guy.
Leo: We hear it here first. We now know the truth. All right. Very good. Is that it?
Gina: It'll — yes. It'll prompt you to choose your — from your contacts. It won't say
"Who's your daddy?" So ...
Leo: Okay.
Gina: Sorry to disappoint on that, but yeah, that's it. That's it for my tip.
Leo: (Laughs) I love it.
Jeff: That would have been a great Easter egg.
Leo: Yeah. You know what Siri says when you say, "What does the fox say?"
Jeff: No, what does it say?
Leo: Well, I have to have an iPhone. It says what the fox says. (Imitates the song)
Jeff: I like that.
Leo: Oh, I have it on my iPad. Let's see if it's — (to Siri) What does the fox say?
Siri: (Imitates the song)
Jeff: (Laughs)
Leo: (to Siri) What does the fox say?
Siri: (Imitates the song)
Jeff and Leo: (Laugh)
Leo: And on and on and on.
Sarah: (Laughs)
Leo: Take that, Google! Let's see you do that! (to Siri)
What does the fox say?
Siri: (Imitates the song)
Leo: (Laughs) Actually, as soon as I said, "Take that,
Google," this thing beeped. So I — it's out of control.
All: (Laugh)
Leo: It's out of control.
Jeff: Your robots.
Leo: Yes. Your number of the week, my friend.
Jeff: All right. Well, so the New York Post — speaking of press moguls with bad
reputations — reports that Eric Schmidt has bought a mansion in L.A.
Leo: Oh.
Jeff: Formerly owned by Gregory Peck's widow, Veronique Peck.
Leo: Wait a minute, wait a minute. You're missing the point of the headline. Buys
new home ...
Jeff and Leo: Near the Playboy Mansion.
Jeff: Yes, I was getting there, yes.
Leo: (Laughs)
Jeff: That's the New York Post angle.
Leo: (Laughs) Oh, God. It's in L.A. It's near the Playboy Mansion.
Jeff: Yeah. They say that he's a — the "tech ladies man."
Leo: Well, didn't they give him a hard time about his apartment in New York City?
Was that him, or who was that? I thought it was Eric. They — or was it — I
don't know if it was the Post, though, that did it. So it was in a nice
neighborhood.
Jeff: Yeah. So it's 22 — reportedly, says the Post, if you believe the Post — 22
million-dollar mansion on 1.3 acres, built in '32.
Leo: Does it have a grotto?
Jeff: I don't know.
Leo: (Laughs) With a waterfall?
Jeff: It has — it has abundant patio space, expansive parklike grounds, manicured gardens, and a pool.
Leo: Wow, wow. That's nice. 24 million dollars.
Jeff: 22 million. You got a bargain.
Leo: 22. Hmm. Once belonged to Gregory Peck's ex. Okay. I
don't have a tool off to hand, but I thought maybe — Sarah, if there's anything
you'd like to contribute —
Jeff: I didn't warn her. I'm in trouble now. I didn't warn her. "What?
What?"
Leo: She says, "What are you — what are you — what? What are you — what?"
I could show a really —
Sarah: You want an app?
Leo: Yeah. What's your favorite app?
Sarah: Well, I do like — I like ScannerPro. That's my —
Leo: I love ScannerPro.
Sarah: See? You didn't warn me, but I'm not totally —
Jeff: Sarah showed me — showed off to me yesterday. I had no idea.
Leo: It is a great app. I agree with you.
Sarah: Yeah, it's a nice tool.
Leo: And how do you — you scan receipts and stuff, or —
Sarah: Well, when you get stuck — like, I had to sign a letter, and I was — my
daughter had her tonsils out, so I was in the hospital. And I found out I found
out I had to sign the letter and get it to someone back at the school in like
half an hour.
Leo: Yeah. Yep.
Sarah: So I just scanned it in the hospital —
Leo: Scanned your signature.
Sarah: — sent it, and off you go.
Leo: Yeah. Really handy. And it works. Yeah. That's an
Android app that I have used for a long time, ScannerPro.
Sarah: I don't know if it's Android. I'm — I hate to admit this, but I have an iPhone.
Leo: I think it's both.
Jeff: (Clears throat)
Leo: We should check.
Sarah: Am I still allowed on the show?
Jeff: You're not going to be allowed in Mountain View, that's all.
Sarah: Okay.
Leo: There's another one — maybe it's just called Scan — I've got to find it.
Gina: Handy Scanner — there's a Handy ScannerPro on the
Play store.
Leo: No, there's one that I use on Android. I do use ScannerPro on the Mac — on the iPhone, and that's why I'm confused.
Sarah: Okay.
Leo,
But there is a very good scanning app on — on Android, which I will get for
you.
Sarah: And then there's Vibease, right? Vibease?
Leo and Gina: (Laugh)
Sarah: I mean, I didn't want to bring that up again, but ... (Laughs)
Leo: I'd like to tell you about a little something I've been using. I'm using it
right now.
Sarah: Who knew that New York Tech Meet-up could be so exciting?
Leo: Wow. Wow.
Jeff: (Laughs)
Gina: I'm so glad that you were here, Sarah, to —
Sarah: Share.
Gina: — because they wouldn't have believed me. I'm glad I've got — I've got backup.
Sarah: Yeah, we've got to share, right?
Gina: (Laughs) Yes.
Jeff: Open-source that app.
Leo: Yeah. Let me just — I want to see —
Sarah: I'm sure their hits are just going off the charts after this show.
Jeff: Well, TWIT does that.
Sarah: That's what I hear.
Leo: Well, we can actually bring the site down if we — if we really try hard enough.
Sarah: Yeah, yeah.
Jeff: Let's see if it's still up. I don't want to say it that way. I'm sorry.
Sarah: No, really, that was a bad — bad call there.
Leo: (Laughs) It's called Scan from Scan' Inc. QR and barcode reader. Very similar
to — and you can use it the same way. But it's — unfortunately, it's a buck 99,
but it is on sale right now. So —
Jeff: That's okay.
Leo: It's particularly for QR codes, but anyway.
Jeff: It'll also do paper.
Leo: Actually, you know what? Now I'm thinking it doesn't.
Jeff: Oh.
Leo: I think it's just for — it's the QR and barcode scanner.
Jeff: Ah, never mind.
Leo: Hmmm. I like it a little bit better than the one — you know, every time I use
the Google authorization app, Authenticator, it says, install this other app for scanning, which I don't like. So I use Scan instead.
I think we're out of time.
Jeff: (Laughs) About an hour ago.
Leo: How long has this show been?
Jeff: (Laughs)
Leo: This is a — this was a lot of fun with Sarah Barton — Bart-LETT.
Sarah: Yeah, you're going to get it. You're going to get it.
Leo: Was Sarah Barton, like, a famous — oh, I'm thinking of a famous actress in the
20's, I think. Anyway, but Sarah Bartlett.
Sarah: I'm too young to know.
Leo: Yes, you wouldn't know that, but I do remember that. Thank you so much for
being here. Dean of journalism at the journalism school at
the City University of New York, and Jeff's boss. Titular
boss, actual boss?
Jeff: Oh, actual boss. Oh, yeah.
Leo: Actual boss.
Jeff: Oh, yeah.
Leo: Hard to believe.
Jeff: I know. There — I have one.
Sarah: I know. That's — I say that every day.
All: (Laugh)
Leo: Jeff Jarvis also here, Professor of Journalism at the City University.
Jeff: Always wonderful to be here.
Leo: You know, I think it's so interesting to see what's going on in journalism. And
it really is a much broader field than I had imagined. It's not like,
"Here's how you get a job with the local paper or local TV station or
radio." It's much, much broader.
Jeff: Though our students do get those jobs, but —
Leo: Yeah. But they also can work in the library.
Jeff: They have new opportunities. They can start — they can start in business.
Leo: So that's good. Yeah. (Laughs) Gina Trapani, ThinkUp.com soon open to the public.
Gina: Yes, indeed. Thank you. This was a great show.
Leo: Sarah Bernhardt is who I was thinking of.
Sarah: There you go.
Jeff: Bernhardt. There you go.
Leo: So nice to have you.
Gina: Great to be here, as always.
Leo: google.com/plusginatrapani, or GinaTrapani on Twitter.
Gina: Yep.
Leo: And of course, don't forget Gina is so great on All About Android every Tuesday night at 5 PM Pacific, 8 PM Eastern time —
Gina: Thank you.
Leo: — on this network. In fact, we're thinking of — I love the app arena so much.
We're thinking of, not taking it off the show, but just editing and putting it
out as an app show with maybe a little additional stuff, because it's the
greatest way to learn about Android apps. I just love that.
Gina: Yeah, that'd be awesome. Yeah, I love the arena.
Jeff: You know, that's — you should also take the changelog every week and make it its own video.
Leo: Yeah, well, now you're talking!
Gina: Oh, yeah!
Jeff: Right?
Leo: Now you're cooking with gas! All right. Thank you,
Gina.
Gina: Sweet! Thank you.
Leo: Thank your mom. Thank Nona.
Sarah: Good luck with the snow.
Leo and Jeff: Yeah.
Gina: Well, yeah. Thank you.
Leo: So when's that coming? Soon?
Jeff: Tonight, tomorrow, all — tonight, all day tomorrow, into Friday morning.
Leo: Gina, I think next week you should be standing outside the building.
Sarah: With a ruler, preferably.
Leo: (Laughs) Yes.
Gina: (Laughs)
Leo: Thanks to everyone for joining us. We do this show 1 PM Pacific, 4 PM Eastern
Time 2100UTC on twit.tv. If you watch live, you get to participate in the chatroom and see all the stuff we edit out later. If you can't watch live, on-demand audio and video always available
after the fact. twit.tv/twig, or you can
subscribe and get it automatically in iTunes and all the other, you know,
podcast and netcast programs. We're also on Youtube. Is it — Chad, is it youtube.com/thisweekingoogle@, I bet.
Chad: I think it's youtube.com/twig, actually.
Leo: Is it? We got twig? Oh, that's nice. So we'll put it up there, just, you know,
in case you want to watch it there. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you next
time on TWIG!
