The Android DJI Go 4 app lets you fly your drone. It also contains sophisticated hidden functionality that can “phone home” every hour to Sina Weibo, one of the most popular Chinese social media sites, asking for fresh commands. Those new commands could include installing new apps on your phone for almost any purpose. In addition, the app restarts itself automatically when you try to quit it.
Jul 28, 2020•7 min•Season 1Ep. 58
Ads suck and we all know it. They’re invasive, they track us, they create horrible user experiences, and most of the time, they’re incredibly annoying. The future’s not like that ... and here's why. In this edition of TechFirst with John Koetsier, we chat with the creator of Javascript, Brendan Eich (co-founder/CEO of Brave Software) and Carolina Abenante (founder of NYIAX). Using micropayments, permission, edge AI, blockchain, and crypto, they're creating a future in which you only see ads from...
Jul 24, 2020•31 min•Season 1Ep. 51
Apple’s App Store has reasonable commission rates that are roughly comparable to other online services, significantly cheaper than traditional offline retail, and are generally in line with commissions at art auctions, consignment shops, and car dealerships. At least, according to a new report written for Apple by hired competition and antitrust experts. Two things the report doesn’t mention? Only the two biggest elephants in the App Store room.
Jul 24, 2020•7 min•Season 1Ep. 57
During COVID-19, we can't really go to the gym. So many of us are working out in our (new?) home gyms. Is that making us fitter? And, can an AI coach motivate us? In this episode of TechFirst, we chat with Freeletics CEO Daniel Sobhani about what we're doing to stay fit during Coronavirus, what's working, and how men and women are reacting differently ... including with regard to mental health. We chat about: - the biggest ways fitness changed during COVID-19 - what are people doing differently ...
Jul 23, 2020•26 min•Season 1Ep. 56
Facebook is one of the two most dominant companies in an $80 billion industry that impacts hundreds of billions of dollars, if not trillions, in consumer spend. But a huge percentage of that revenue is now at risk, thanks to an obscure privacy move by Apple at the company’s World Wide Developer Conference in June. The move? Deprecating a mobile device identifier called the IDFA. That threatens billion in Facebook revenue. And Google could be next ...
Jul 21, 2020•9 min•Season 1Ep. 55
The electricity that powers our digital future is very, very analog. Is that about to change? We don’t think a lot about the technology that drives our computers and homes ... we flip a switch and get to work, or turn on the TV. But the actual mechanics of what happens in our walls and wires is very 18th century. One company is working on making it better. In this edition of TechFirst with John Koetsier we’re joined by Thar Casey, founder and CEO of Amber, to dive in and check it out....
Jul 17, 2020•28 min•Season 1Ep. 54
Everyone is investing in India lately. In April, Facebook announced it was investing $5.7 billion in India. In January it was Amazon, investing $1 billion in India. Today’s it’s Google (or its parent company, Alphabet) investing $10 billion in partnerships, infrastructure, and ecosystems. Since China’s closed, the giants have to invest elsewhere, apparently.
Jul 17, 2020•7 min•Season 1Ep. 54
TikTok was THE mobile phenomenon of 2019 with almost 700M app installs. But with the ban talk getting louder and louder ... are other contenders poised to steal its thunder? We chat with one of the owners and board members of Triller, which has over 100M installs ... and just got a bump of 40M new installs in India after the TikTok ban. Triller thinks TikTok will get banned in the U.S, as well as in India. And Triller is trying to take full advantage of that by poaching all of TikTok's creators ...
Jul 15, 2020•21 min•Season 1Ep. 53
Ads suck and we all know it. They’re invasive, they track us, they create horrible user experiences, and most of the time, they’re incredibly annoying. The future’s not like that ... and here's why. In this edition of TechFirst with John Koetsier, we chat with the creator of Javascript, Brendan Eich (co-founder/CEO of Brave Software) and Carolina Abenante (founder of NYIAX). Using micropayments, permission, edge AI, blockchain, and crypto, they're creating a future in which you only see ads from...
Jul 13, 2020•31 min•Season 1Ep. 52
Can AI help us connect trillions of smart devices? There are currently perhaps 20 billion devices connected to the internet: things like laptops, phones, smartwatches, TVs, smart speakers, smart home devices ... In a decade, that could be 50 billion … and a lot of it is enterprise IoT. In this edition of the The AI Show with John Koetsier we chat with Intel and the National Science Foundation, which has funded $30M+ into projects to use AI to figure out how we'll manage ultra-dense wireless netw...
Jul 10, 2020•31 min•Season 1Ep. 51
3.8 billion people on the planet don’t have access to the internet. But that could be about to change soon. While Elon Musk’s SpaceX is building internet access from satellites 340 miles off the earth in space, Google’s Project Loon is doing something similar. In Loon’s case, however, internet access comes from just 12 miles up in the stratosphere. Via balloons floating in the wind.
Jul 09, 2020•7 min•Season 1Ep. 50
Recently Apple blocked updates to the Hey email app on the iOS App Store and threatened to delete it. What does this tell us about App Store guidelines? And unwritten rules? In this episode of TechFirst with John Koetsier we chat about Apple's App Store guidelines with Denys Zhadanov, a VP at Readdle. Readdle has 7 top-30 apps in the App Store including the Spark email app which competes with Hey. There’s always been controversy that Apple isn’t allowing competition for its own apps and services...
Jul 08, 2020•21 min•Season 1Ep. 50
50% of the food produced globally is wasted. At the same time, a child dies from hunger every 10 seconds, and 25,000 people starve to death every single day. Another billion, almost, are malnourished and don't have enough food. Can AI fix this? In this episode of TechFirst with John Koetsier, we chat with SPRK.Global CEO Alexander Piutti, who is a finalist in Samsung's Extreme Tech Challenge startup competition.
Jul 08, 2020•18 min•Season 1Ep. 49
Are subscriptions the new retail? We know digital retail is way up, thanks to COVID. But … surprisingly ... subscription purchases are way up too. Streaming: jumped up to 89.8% Consumer goods: growth of 105%-145% Education: growth as high as 60% SaaS/Cloud: subscriber growth peaked at 51% That's interesting because we tend not to want long-term commitments especially during a downturn. We chat about all the details with Dan Burkhart, CEO of Recurly.
Jul 07, 2020•14 min•Season 1Ep. 48
Can we design AI that will teach itself how to drive a car? Self-driving cars will unlock trillions in market value and probably change our lives with fractional car ownership, better ride-sharing ... maybe even cars that pay for themselves. Also … they'll give us back months if not years of our time that we currently spend driving. In this episode of TechFirst with John Koetsier we chat with Helm.ai CEO Vlad Voroninski. Helm.ai has developed a new AI technology it calls "Deep Teaching" which it...
Jul 03, 2020•20 min•Season 1Ep. 47
What can we learn from the queen of LinkedIn about telling stories for warm robots? If you’ve been around LinkedIn, you’ve probably noticed Goldie Chan. The green hair makes her stand out … but her consistent calm, positive, and supportive content help you center and ground and ... sure, even feel good about yourself. Goldie started doing video on LinkedIn, and never really stopped. She has the longest daily video streak on LinkedIn, and got shoutouts from top execs there as well as elsewhere, w...
Jun 30, 2020•36 min•Season 1Ep. 46
At WWDC this year Apple essentially killed the IDFA, the identifier for advertisers. It’s not completely gone … but it’s now opt-in with a big scary warning. Now we’re wondering … will this kill modern mobile marketing as we know it? In this episode of TechFirst with John Koetsier, we chat with Eric Seufert former VP of User Acquisition for Rovio. He runs Mobile Dev Memo, QuantMar.com, and is a consultant. What we chat about: Is this a mobile marketing apocalypse? Attribution Look-alike audience...
Jun 25, 2020•33 min•Season 1Ep. 44
Need offbeat growth tactics for uncertain times? These are definitely uncertain times. COVID would have been enough, with its massive health and economic consequences. Add George Floyd’s murder as a flashpoint to decades of simmering racial inequities, and we’ve got a perfect storm. In the middle of all this, we’ve got people trying to do their startups afloat in one of most challenging times ever. In this episode of TechFirst, we chat with Michele Romanow, who co-founded Clearbanc, helped raise...
Jun 24, 2020•56 min•Season 1Ep. 42
Can virtual reality make your home gym less boring ... and maybe improve your workouts? In this episode of TechFirst with John Koetsier we chat with Eric Malafeew, former chief architect of Guitar Hero. He's worked on Mars landers and the Xbox Kinect, among other things, and now has VZfit, a VR app that makes workouts feel like a game I’ve been using Beat Saber to get a bit of a workout at home in VR. But according to Malafeew, VZfit can make your workouts better … longer … more frequent ... and...
Jun 19, 2020•22 min•Season 1Ep. 42
Can we really decentralize the internet with blockchain? The internet was originally designed to be decentralized ... and that’s how it was supposed to work for emergencies and disasters. Lately, it's been getting more and more centralized controlled by major corporations, as well as countries like Russia and China. One company thinks it has a solution. In this episode of TechFirst, we chat with the cofounder and CEO of ThreeFold, Kristof de Spiegeleer, who thinks the internet should be like ele...
Jun 18, 2020•24 min•Season 1Ep. 41
What are the top reasons you want to keep working from home after Coronavirus? Here's what about 150,000 people said in a survey. Time with family (34%) No commute (29%) Flexible schedule (17%) Saving money (11%) More productive (5%) Less office politics (4%) Listen to the show for the full story, or check it out in my Forbes column.
Jun 15, 2020•6 min•Season 1Ep. 40
Why games are making record revenues in a recession, with Unity VP Julie Shumaker. In a recession revenues generally go down. That’s not been the case in 2020, at least for games. Games have been seeing record-high revenues over the past few months ... we'll chat about what's hot and why ... What we talk about: - First off, what happened with games over the past 3-5 months? - What kind of games grew the most? - Weekends and weekdays kinda flipped. Why? - Revenue was up … how? - What’s different ...
Jun 12, 2020•19 min•Season 1Ep. 39
Switzerland is the safest country in the world right now for COVID-19. South Sudan is, according to a massive 250-page report , the most dangerous nation. The United States? It ranks number 58, just behind Romania, and two places ahead of Russia. The Forbes story I reference in this episode is available here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/06/05/the-100-safest-countries-in-the-world-for-covid-19/ The full report, with methodology, is here: https://www.dkv.global/covid-safety-asse...
Jun 11, 2020•6 min•Season 1Ep. 38
Glasses haven’t changed much in 500 years: Take glass, grind it to a shape, refract the angle of light impacting your eye … see better, hopefully. But a new Apple patent, however, seems to indicate that Apple is working on glasses that will change as your prescription changes. And just maybe … do even more. In this episode of TechFirst with John Koetsier, we’re joined by Robert Scoble, now former Chief strategy officer, Infinite Retina, and co-author of "The Infinite Retina: Spatial Computing, A...
Jun 10, 2020•38 min•Season 1Ep. 37
Everyone in my family uses a Mac, most of them on laptops. That includes my two sons, one in university and one in high school, both of whom are doing school from home these days. So I didn’t think when I ordered a new MacBook Pro recently I’d have to return it almost immediately. And I didn’t think Apple would completely and utterly ignore the meaning of the word “Pro.” Unfortunately ... both are true.
Jun 05, 2020•6 min•Season 1Ep. 36
Is 5G safe or is it dangerous to humans, animals, and the environment? There are a lot of concerns and worries about 5G. Pictures of dead birds near cell towers. Even snake oil products to protect you … USB sticks with a "bio shield." In this episode of TechFirst with John Koetsier, we’re going to get the facts by talking to a research scientist in Belgium. What we'll talk about: - is 5G dangerous - what is the difference between ionizing and non-ionizing radiation? - how much RF radiation does ...
Jun 04, 2020•18 min•Season 1Ep. 35
You’re an NBA all-star ... what do you do when the league’s shut down thanks to Coronavirus? If you’re Chicago Bull and 2-time NBA dunk champion Zach Lavine … you work out … you play Call of Duty or Apex Legends, and apparently … you give away free JBL headphones. In this episode of TechFirst with John Koetsier, we chat with Zach as well as JBL VP Chris Epple and learn more. We also get Zach's take on some of the most important matters in tech ... GIF or JIF ... EV or gas ... Windows or Mac ... ...
May 29, 2020•11 min•Season 1Ep. 34
Massively social platforms built around gaming or video or news might be our new way to experience entertainment. We've already seen concerts in Fortnite -- Travis Scott, a month or so ago. Now we're going to see movies being screened in Fortnite. Christopher Nolan, the filmmaker behind Inception, The Dark Knight, and Interstellar will be bringing “one of his iconic films” to the massively popular Fortnite game this summer. And guess what: No risk of COVID-19!
May 27, 2020•4 min•Season 1Ep. 33
(cross-posted from my future39 podcast) Today we plug our computers in to power. Tomorrow, we might plug ourselves into them. AR and VR are changing how we see the world. AI and augmentation and brain-machine interfaces will change how we live, how we work, and how we play. Cathy and I chat about HTC Vive, Magic Leap, Oculus Quest, brain-machine interfaces, Upload (the new show on Amazon Prime), and augmented intelligence. We also talk about Apple and where Apple's upcoming product will fit, as ...
May 25, 2020•25 min•Season 1Ep. 33
How do you survey 330 million people across 4M square miles? Every 10 years: the United States government is constitutionally required to take a census, which then gets used as the basis for distributed hundreds of billions of tax dollars. In 2010, doing the census cost $12 billion. They printed 17 million pages of paper maps and 50 million paper questionnaires. In 2020, the Census Bureau is going digital in 59 languages. Good timing too: COVID-19 happened, and the Census Bureau had to cut back ...
May 22, 2020•29 min•Season 1Ep. 32
