TechStuff’s 500th Episode!

Oh who are you? Wait? Where you brought me back here? Yeah? Okay, so everyone, Uh, if you don't recognize that voice, that is, in fact my former co host, our our our good friend Chris Pillette. Who who how's your head feeling? Chris? You know chloroform is so nineteen seventies. Yeah, you know. We just wanted to go the full route. We really wanted to have you here, and you seemed a bit reticent on instant Messenger, so that happened. But anyway, here

we all are just chair. Don't you know? The struggle all you like? The chains are far too thick. The interesting thing here, folks, is that this is the first time we've had all three of the Tech Stuff hosts in the same room at the same time with microphones

pointed at us. It's actually the first time that I've ever met Chris Polatte period today about you know, twenty minutes before this recording happened, right, you had been in the same building as Chris a few times, but you had never actually had the opportunity to meet him hypothetically before. Now the two of us could have been the same person, and I never would have known. Now we have been asked, you know, what are you gonna do for your fipisode?

And I thought it'd be fun to open that up to the tech stuff fans at large, also the small ones, and they ended up responding in droves, and the two most popular responses where talk about the history of tech stuff and maybe explore the differences of what tech was like when you started the podcast versus what it's like today today being in twenty and we started the podcast way back in two thousand and eight. So I thought, well, the best way to talk about that is to bring

on the person who was with me from the very beginning. So, Chris, what do you remember from those earliest days of the podcast? Well, they were they were five minutes long. Yes, they were told to keep them no longer than five minutes, which was people are complaining that they're too long. Well, now there are many many five minutes, right, sometimes way too many. Yeah.

The the very first well, first of all, we were we were kind of taken aside by by the guy who was the managing editor at the time, Connell, who is now he's now a big wig with all of the Discovery Digital. But he um, I think that's a real here. Okay, that's fair enough. He brought us aside and he said that he won to us to to look at doing a podcast. We had already started to record How Stuff Works, had already started to record podcasts in a couple of different fields. They had Stuff you

Should Know which, Chris you were part of that originally. Yes, so it's the original co host of Stuff you should Know what, Josh Clark. So yeah, so we've got a Stuff you should know all star on our team here too. They retired my jersey. Yeah, that's that's fair. We did the same thing to you many years later. But that that you can't give milk anymore. So it's all right, Jersey cal folks, that's the puns we've been missing here, So missing being a relative terms. Chris Uh, I heard

the quotes around missing right. Chris and I ended up being uh pulled into a meeting and talked to about the possibility of making a technology podcast, And so we went into the studio and we recorded a few test episodes, none of which actually ever aired there. I I can't even do you even remember what any of those topics were.

I don't, no, no, but but my earliest recollection of episodes that just made me laugh was the the Blue Ray Versus HD DVD podcast that we recorded, uh somewhere within the neighborhood of I don't know, a week to two weeks when before or after. I don't even remember which one it was when h D DVD was killed. We actually talked about it. Was it after? It was after h D DVD had died, because you and I had gone to we were going to do it, and then when we actually recorded it, it was like mere

milliseconds after they shelved it something like that. Yeah, Yeah, that was one of the earliest ones. The very first episode we ever recorded was, or at least the first one that ever published, was an episode called how the Google Apple Cloud Computer Will Work, which was based off an article you had written, wasn't it Christmas? I have written very few articles for the website. That is one of them. Um, and it was based on a Postconnell actually suggested that because he had read this, uh, this

article by Nicholas Carr, who was a famous tech pundit. Yeah, he wrote the essay that I've quoted quite a few times is Google making us stupid? Yeah? Yeah, exactly in Atlantic And as a matter of fact, we touched on this anyway back sometime after that and the Frenemies episode, because Google and Apple had been frenemies for quite some time.

And uh, the idea was that Google could do the back end, Apple could do the hardware, and you know, they would work together and that this cloud computer thing would be absolutely brilliant. And it might have been if they ever actually did that. Apple could have done the aesthetics, because that's what I mean. Apple is known for making

these beautiful products. And yeah, there was the maps, the maps look at their mat Oh yeah, I think Google has been slightly better off in that if it would have run on the Google Maps obviously, otherwise there'd be bridges where no bridges should be. Uh. Yeah, that first episode was five minutes already five seconds long or thereabouts. I actually went into our RSS feed and looked it up.

By the way, guys, if you are iTunes subscribers, you might be wondering, how could we have five hundred episodes because you go back and there aren't five hundred on their iTunes has a limit to how many episodes you can have of any podcast available for download. But if you go to the RSS feed and that's that's linked off the tech stuff page at how Stuff Works, you can actually go and listen to our earliest episodes. I don't know why you would want to, but you could.

I listened to a bunch of research preparation for this episode. Actually that was Lauren, this was this was so before you were born. I think that we recorded those before we figured out how to get rid of the horrible echo. I mean, if you listen to the sound quality, Yeah, there's some subty issues. It's not actually sactually not echo, but it is there is some sort of tenniness to

the voices, which we eventually fixed. Uh. The another episode I wanted to mention this one I thought was funny, just because you know, you look at those early episodes and you think of what was important back in two thousand eight. Right, one of the earliest episodes was do I really need a digital converter box for my TV? Which is ironically another one of the very few articles

that I've written for the website. Right, And at the time, you might have yeah, these these days you might not remember, but there was this big movement where we were going to move from analog to digital broadcast, and it meant that if you did not have if you had an older television set and you did not have this converter attached to your television set, you might not get over

the air transmissions anymore. You wouldn't be able to your your your television wouldn't be able to interpret the signals, and you wouldn't be able to watch television. So it was a big concern and there was a lot of confusion out in the marketplace about do I need one of these things? I'm a cable subscriber, do I need one?

And And it was just one of those things where, uh, the information was all out there, it was just that people were finding it really difficult to find that that relevant info and so they were all thinking, like, maybe I guess I better buy one of these things even if they didn't need one. And so Chris had written an article kind of explaining what this was, which people would actually need it versus which people could just ignore it, and then we did a podcast about it that was

about five minutes long. Uh, the final five minute long episode we did because that that five minute time limit lasted for a couple of months. Actually August four, two thousand and eight, was when the final five minute long episode aired, and then we were allowed to go up to ten or fifteen minutes. That was what the new limit was. But that last episode was how Twitter works, so we were able to explain how Twitter works in five minutes. Apparently, well we should have explained it a

little hashtag there, hashtag joke. Um. The the first episode that was the first episode that was longer, you know, a ten minute long episode. This one cracks me up to how the Facebook redesign works in two thousand and eight. So there's been quite a few redesigned since then. I

was gonna say which one. Yeah, I couldn't even tell you what that particular redesigned what happened with that one, because it's been Facebook has been redesigned so frequently since that time that I could not tell you specifically, I didn't listen to it. I guess if I had, I would learn. Well, it's comforting to think that things have changed so little in in this time that people are still freaking out every single time there's a Facebook redesigns.

You can always rely on that if Facebook changes something, there's going to be a storm of comments that rages across all social media, uh, saying it's the worst thing ever. It's really what they mean is it's the worst thing since the last time they did this. Uh. I you know, sometimes I have that action two, but I try and keep perspective. The very first episode that I could find that was fifteen minutes long was actually a pretty uh, pretty heavy one. It was can the government take away

my laptop? And that was based off some news stories about people who were doing things like crossing a border and then uh, the question of whether or not the government could search a laptops contents for illegal material, saying that just by carrying the lab right the same way that you can search a car, It's yeah, it doesn't. It was one of those questions that was really it was an important question. UM. Another funny one that we did funny in the sense that just from a timing issue.

On October eight, we published an episode about how Dean Came In works, and the reason that's funny's Lauren and I just got finished talking about how the Segway works. So I'm glad to get into that episode because he's a fascinating guy, like I should go back and listen that.

And the last one I have specifically written down to just kind of a little walk down memory lane, and we can chat about other ones too, but the last one I've written down is what Happened to the Technology of the Future, which we published on October twenty eight,

and that one was thirty minutes long. So that was about the time where we were told we could go as long as we needed to go, and that really any episode that we recorded could be as long as we felt was necessary in order to really cover the topic and and address what needs to be talked about.

And uh, it's also funny because that's one of those topics that we get requests for all the time, people like why don't you talk about stuff that never happened that when you know, we were like, where's my jet pack kind of stuff, because we did that in two thousand and eight and it's still not here. Yeah. Yeah, we could just play that one if you wanted to have a true Tech Stuff experience, play it twice back to back, because that's about the length of a regular

Tech Stuff episode now these days. I was I was gonna say that. It's kind of funny because once they gave us enough time to talk about whatever it was we needed to talk about in enough depth to do that is when we started to talk about things for so long, we started to have to split them into two and three episodes. Yeah. We would get to a point where we would record an episode and realize, like Tyler would turn to us and say, okay, that was an hour and seven minutes long. We're like, uh, let's

split that into two. Um. We We did get to a point where our average episode length was probably closer to forty five minutes long. Yeah. The first time I remember doing that was the time we were going to record an episode about Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. I had to make one about Bill Gates and another one about Steve Jobs. Yeah, it turned out that the one section had gone on so long that it didn't make sense for us to keep going, we would have had an hour and a half long episode. And uh, and

that's that's probably too long. I think most of our listeners would say it's too long. Even if you are able to pause right in the middle and pick right back up, that's still a lot of a lot of tech stuff in one in one dose. Uh, there was a there was another thing that was not exactly directly related to the podcast that happened about that time. If I'm not mistaken. What's that text? Stuff live? Uh, tech stuff live now, Lauren, Lauren, I've talked about this briefly

with you, but it's am. It was. It was very briefly. It was because it was did not last that long. This was an experiment we had where we did probably I don't know, maybe what six or seven weeks maybe yeah stuff you said stuff you should know and and and we did that, and I think somebody else didn't. Maybe it was it was might not have might have been car stuff. It might have been car So I was gonna say stuff to blow your mind, except they were called something else at that point, stuff from the

science lab or something. Um. But yeah, the it wasn't nerve racking at all. Sitting in front of a live camera. Yeah, yeah, that was that was the idea was that it was. It was me and Chris sitting down behind a desk. We had a live camera pointed at us and we would uh it was streaming out live too. Sometimes as many as twenty seven people. Uh thanks dad. Yeah, my family made up about five of those. Uh No, it was I joke, but it really was a very relatively

small number of people, which is not that surprising. We were streaming in the middle of the day. We were trying to keep as close to the regular schedule as possible because I mean, if you're going to do a live event, you need it to be predictable, right, You need to go live when you say you're gonna go live.

We had the chat room that was open where we could interact directly with our audience, and we would cover about five important text stories that had happened in the week since the last time we had done a tex Stuff live. And so we also introduced a segment called the Tweet of the Week, where I would I would go through my Twitter feed of all the stuff that I followed and picked the one that I liked the most.

Usually I would end up doing that about five minutes before we went on the air, because I would forget about it. That was our first major special effect to the tweetcause yeah, one of one of the one of the video folks would crawl behind Jonathan with a bird on a It was usually Matt Frederick and he would he would have a bird on a stick. It was

Tyler did it a few times too. But they would have a bird on a stick and they would poke it up so that it would somehow obstruct my view, and they would mess around with it while I was trying to do the segment, and it just became a bigger and bigger joke each time, and they would do a different bird noise each time, live live, fully produced by the vocal cords, where it might be like or you know, it just became these weird like I couldn't even identify what sort of birds they were supposed to

be until there was one day where I the bird off the stick, slammed it on the desk and said there, that's done. The next week they came back with a bigger bird. It was an ex parrot. One of those birds now resides at my desk. It's actually one of the ones I smashed. In fact, it was missing a leg until Lauren found it and did some emergency glue surgery on bad for it. The leg was just kind of hanging out on a different part of the desk. It was kind of pinned up there from my lamp.

Like to be fair, folks, in case you're being absolutely horrified, these are totally fake persons, never never living. No, No real birds were harmed in the making of Tech Stuff Live. A few real video technicians were, though, so um but no. That was an interesting experience because that was the first time we had ever tried to do a live show, knowing that there were people watching us at that time, which meant that we could not really make a mistake. Now,

Chris and Lauren, this is true for us too. For the most part, our episodes are one take, unless unless we do something terrifying, you know, like sneeze in the middle of something or say something that is not quite appropriate or etcetera. We we might cut something out once in a while, but more often than not, what you hear on the podcast is one uninterrupted take from beginning to end, and that's it for the most part. There

are exceptions. There are some episodes out there where one of us just goes off the rails and something unusual happens and we have to stop and go back. And usually it's me, I'll go ahead and be the one to say that, but but more frequently than not, it's

it's we just we go warts and all. Um. Sometimes that meant that we had some less than accurate things in our episodes where one of us was speaking off the cuff, again usually me, but we tried to address those whenever that happened, which brings me to another thing that we used to do on text stuff all the time. Yeah. Yeah, there used to be a segment that we would do on text stuff, a special segment that had its own

special intro. And so, ladies and gentlemen, this is where I warn you, please turn the volume down on whichever listening device you happen to be using at this point. I am going to do a countdown from five to one. When I hit one, I am then going to do the amazing intro to this segment. You have been warned thoroughly. I want no email about how loud this is going

to be five four, three two one listener. Usually. That was followed by Chris saying something like, uh, yeah, so we we used to have that segment when you did it all the time, and we're gonna start doing listener mail again, folks, And of course I will not be using that intro anymore. I got enough email, like Chris, do you I think they've probably got us the most responses, uh, most negative response and most negative responses were like could

you please stop screaming into the microphone. But what was funny was that the second most negative responses was when we stopped doing it and people were begging us to bring it back. So we had that was kind of comic. Two camps. We had the camp and also the nature of podcasts meant that some people were about three or four months behind other people, so they're complaining about stuff

that we haven't been doing for months. I mean, while we have another camp of people saying, why aren't you doing that thing you used to do that was always fun Um other big events, we did a live a live show at a convention. We went to Dragon Con in Atlanta, and Chris and I sat up on stage with Tom Merritt and Veronica Belmont, who are both tech journalists as well as the hosts of a show called Sword and Laser and we conducted that was also I think our first interview. Yeah, I believe so. And I

found out something very important. What's that um that Jonathan was not the only podcast hosts after who am? I say? A lot? However, I'm not sure that there's a drinking game for any show other than this one, right right? Well, And that was fun because when when it started, I'm not kidding, there were people who had a drinking game for every time I would go U huh, yeah, that trend continues. Yeah, yeah, I'm very sure that I'm filling

those shoes. The sorry about the smell. That particular that particular show was fun because we started off with just myself, Chris, Tom Veronica, and uh some of a couple of members of our crew we had. We had Matt and Tyler there and then there was a live studio audience by the end of it. There was when it first started, it was just it was just us plus the We had one technician from the the podcast track at dragon Con who was running the the the board for us.

But were you guys like set up in in a conference room or in a conference room. It was the conference room that the podcast track was using for their regular events, and we were We had scheduled our our podcast recording an hour before the room officially opened. So but as we were going on, we're getting closer and closer to the first scheduled event of the day, and they had left the door open because they asked us if we if they could do that. I said, yeah,

you know, I think that's fine. It's it's gonna be a little weird having people come in as we're going but I don't see why that should be a real issue. Um and everyone else felt pretty much the same way. And by the time our show ended, we had a full studio audience, so that was a live studio audience for the end of that episode. That sounds both thrilling

and completely terrifying. Tex stuff is recorded in one of the live studio Yeah, yeah, because when it's when it's not in front of a live studio audience, it's a lot easier actually, because again, you don't have to worry about making mistakes because we've got we've got amazing producers who take care of all that for us. Oh hey, you know, I just noticed something and it's a rare footnote for those who have you who have been listening, have you gotten a new computer since I was hearing?

Oh yeah, okay, so that's a running gag with tech stuff as the idea about my how my computers die, except for the fact that that's not really a gag. It was true and no one has all the keys right, Yes, this is a new computer. There was one. You didn't have a tilta key. I didn't have an E as the and the and there was a hole being uh made through the a. Apparently I was secreting some sort of acidic oil through my fingertips. I just looked up and noticed that both Chris and I were doing the

same gesture. We're both holding the It turns out it turns out I have a mutant superability. Unfortunately, it would require years of me leaning against a substance to actually wear it down, unless it's a computer keyboard, in which case I can go through it in about six months. It does explain yeah, well you know, I'm what can I say? At one point I thought about being a lawyer and something stick the actually actually, uh you know that that wasn't really a problem for tech stuff. However,

at the time it was also Jonathan's editor. So it was a problem for that, right, there was a point where I could not type the letter E and I just told Chris, like, all right, so here's the deal. It didn't It didn't make editing very see. Yeah, yeah, it became it became it became quite sort of trial annoying. Yeah, it was. It was not good. It was not good. It was a bad that was there was a dark time in the empire. Um, yeah, it was rough. See

one other one. Other crazy things have happened during the course of text stuff. Um, oh well we we we talked about the uh, the large Hadron collider before it went online, and that's kind of interesting because we did a full episode on that not too long ago. And then, uh, of course the Higgs boson has essentially, I mean you might as well say the Higgs boson has been found at least within a fairly comfortable margin of still being

scientifically cautious, but might as well. It was because they were concentrated between the cushions of the couch, because that's usually where things end up. But you know, yeah, so that that was kind of crazy, and uh see what

other what other fun tech stuff stories are there? I mean we I had started my own Twitter account before anyone at at House Stuff Works had really gotten into it, and uh, and so I am sort of to blame for the fact that there are text Stuff Twitter accounts now because people noticed that people were following me, and then we were all required to have them. So now we've got a tech stuff Twitter account as well as uh, every every brand of the House. Lauren knows a lot

about that because she's our social media guru. Um guru is probably an incorrect word. That's I'm I'm the poor sap that they've hired to do that things. But she's our social media octopus. Well, perhaps we should give you a bird on a stick. Yeah, that's true. She she did get to play with the bird a little bit. I did. I did well, you know, I reattached the

leg because I felt so bad for it. But uh, yeah, there's only so much you can do another thing now, I guess, I guess really, Uh, Chris, are there any episodes in particular that stand out in your mind? Yeah? Yeah, oh wow. Yeah. I feel like that's probably a hard question because I've only done what like thirty of these things, and I already have no idea what I've recorded at

all that was that's pretty part of the course. Yeah, once it's It's funny because we had a lot of episodes where we had talked about specific technologies that may or may not have come and gone, some things that turned into vapor ware and another stuff. We talked about vaporware a lot games and oh, I know, I know some of my favorites. Uh, we're the we're not the prediction episodes. So the ones that were not predictions predictions

are are tough. I mean, we've but you you in general, tended to have a better batting average than I did. Not that first time. Okay, the first time was a little rough. But I listened to your most recent predictions episode. When when did you guys start doing them to you remember, let him keep score? I think it was he's keeping score things may or may not turn out accurately. Just just an observation on my part. The score keeping is like five donkeys to every like four cups of coffee.

So that really it was probably the most recent one and I just started I decided to go a little do with the reward system. There was one point where no matter what Chris, Chris predicted he got an X and no matter what I predicted, I gotta check whether it was right or wrong and better one. Yeah, I

ran away with it that year. Um No. The trick with those that that's the troubling thing is Jonathan and I and and now Lauren has been forced into this, um keep an eye on the tech news and you know the people who we didn't Really tech stuff hasn't really been about the news. It's really sort of about

technology and people, um. Which is one of the things that the Jonathan and I agreed on when we started talking about what we were going to do for the show, because there are so many other people who do the news and they do it really well, and they do it very well, and they have more frequent podcasts like We're never gonna be able to keep up with that, especially because tech Stuff is recorded some time in advance and by the time it reminds me of uh, you

know John, the writer who used to be here, who I assigned an article and he turned it out in a week, and before the week was out, the company declared that they would no longer be making that product. And I felt so badly um and and anyway, you know, we'd we'd have stuff like that, and we'd be following some story in the news, and so we'd make some prediction about where it was going to go. And over the course of a year that's just way too long.

And you make these predictions and you go back and look at him and go, yeah, well, I mean it's it's it's the same time it made six Yeah. It's the same thing of any sort of prediction that has to do with technology. You look at what's this, You look at what the current state is of that tech or that company, you know, whatever it might be, and then you project out, based upon where it is right now, where do you think it's going to be an X

amount of time? And the thing is that that doesn't take into account any other event that could happen in between that span. That basically everything new and technology comes completely out of proverbial left field. And is that is that? I I don't know, apparently, especially anything about best Buy

or T Mobile. Yeah, at least as far as my predictions are, well, yeah, I like I like that you stuck with them, though he would make the same prediction like, Okay, I know that last year I said that T Mobile and a T and T would merge. I'm saying it again this year because it has to happen another year because by okay, I know for the last two years I say a T mobile and are going to emerge. Yeah, Jonathan scared me so much that that was maybe the third or fourth episode that we recorded. It was one

of the early ones. And uh and yeah, he scared me so much about it that I was like, I'm going to predict that computers will still exist in a year. I've gotten some flex. I'm not so sure that's a good one back. Yeah, recent recent development suggests that it's I mean, it's still early in thirteen. So, um, what Lauren? That kind of leads me into a question for you, what was it like stepping into an existing podcast, you know, knowing that someone else was leaving and you were coming in.

What was that like for you? More intimidating than basically anything I've ever done? Um, because you guys just rock it out basically, And I I had never podcasted before, or I had been interviewed on a podcast literally three days before the first time that we recorded, but that was it. Yeah, So so yeah, it was a whole lot of me going like stuffy how does how does it do? Right? Well, at least you you, I think you hit that learning curve hard and you you really

ramped up your skills. I mean Chris and I when we started, neither of us have done podcasting before. Well, Chris have done a few episodes of Stuff you should Know, but that was only for a few weeks and then and yeah, so it was one of it wasn't that long enough for you to really start to develop a skill set, right. It was just kind of like, this

is what we're gonna try this thing. We don't really know where it's going, and uh, you know, we both had to learn through experience and to be fair, podcasting with Josh Clark is a different skill set entire. Josh creepy hands clark le. Then that's that's why is our call. That's what I called him one time, just randomly, and it kind of stuck as no, no basis in reality.

But that's another that's another history thing, the the foe uh val between us and stuff you should know, because we get people who actually they talked about you know, how they supported us or you know, you guys stink and the thing and we're like, you realized that we all sit next to each other in the office, and like we get each other coffee and chat and stuff. Yeah,

we're actually, we're actually friendly with one another. Yeah, this is a fake right to the point where we were actually going, this is not really real now, you know. We would we would make a joke about the rivalry and then immediately disarmed the joke, like, Okay, we don't really hate them. They're actually great guys. Yeah. In fact,

they've been They've been amazing. We we received uh what Twitter messages asking us if we were going to do a cameo appearance on The Stuff You Should Know TV Show, and I had to keep quiet. But if you guys have been watching The Stuff You Should Know TV Show, and you watched the pilot episode, which was the final episode of the season. They put it last, even though it was the first one they shot, and it it is very different from the rest of the episodes that

they aired. You might notice that I'm in the background and a couple of shots. Apparently I have not had a chance to watch yet, but I already got I got like all these messages saying, hey, I see the back of your head on stuffies you know, yeah, yeah, they gets around. That's it was really popular at c S for a few years. Um. Yeah, there was a talk I as actar now of this Weekend Tech and Eric Sandean, who both of the time we're working for a company called tech V that Randall Bennett had created.

They had suggested that at c e S they were going to create a website called c e S from the back of Jonathan Strickland's head, and that it would just be photos of all the various tech but it would be my head in the way of every shot, and that they would even have live video, but a live video would be mounted on a camera that's directly behind me, so that you just experienced cees from the back of my head. And uh, and I thought, you guys have way too much spare time to even think

about something like this. Um. That's another thing about tech stuff is that it it opened up a lot of opportunities for h really for me to appear on other shows, which was a lot of fun as well. I got to make friends and be on shows from tech V, which sadly now no longer exists, to Buzz Out Loud, which sadly no longer exists, to this week in Tech which still exists. Actually tech News Today, I shouldn't say this week in tech tech News Today, which still exists.

So you're not a total alcatrast. Well, I mean give it time, I detective pattern. Uh no, yeah, No, techn News Today is great. And so yeah, I got to do guest spots, and I love doing that kind of stuff. It's always fun to connect with other folks in the space, and they're all really really nice, and they tend to be very supportive. That's something that I've liked a lot about the podcast community is there seems to be the spirit of collaboration where I don't really run into people

who are uber competitive. They all want each they the attitude is that we could all succeed. You don't succeed at the expense unlimited digital space for us all to co exist. And it's not like there's there's only you know, two sets of ears out there, and and we have to fight for everyone. And if they listen to one podcast, they'll never listen to another. As it turns out, most

people listen to lots of different podcasts. But what was it, what was it like kind of watching your your viewership grow? I mean, because I mean, you know, I'm sure that there were like three people and your grandmother's listening in

at first. And it was really weird for me because it was very much the same sort of thing I had when I would write an article and then get feedback on it, because you get so focused on producing whatever it is that you're doing, whether it's an article or a podcast, that you forget that there are actually

people out there who are consuming it. You know, you are concentrated on the deadline, so you produce whatever you're trying to do and you try and get it in on time to the deadline, and then as soon as you're done with that, you move on to the next thing, so you're not thinking about that thing you just did.

You're thinking about the next thing you need to do, And so I would forget like that this stuff is actually going out to people and people are listening to it, and uh yeah, once we start get feedback, it was really kind of an eye opener. I'm like, wow, people are listening to this and uh uh, you know, it's it was. It was one of those things where I

wouldn't say that it was gradual. I would say it was unaware of it for the most part, and then when people would let me know, like, oh, by the way, you guys are up to like half a million downloads a month, I was a whole lot, you know. That was that was a big surprise. When I when I remember when we first broke into the top one d

on iTunes, that was a big deal. And when tech Stuff a few times was number one in technology podcasts, that was a huge deal because I knew the people who were on the other shows, right, and I'm like, I can't believe this is amazing. It's phenomenal, and uh, those were all huge moments for me. And when Apple chose tech Stuff as one of best podcast but that was that was that was huge. Yeah, it's you know,

because we're not in on those conversations. It's not like, you know, we know when everyone else knows when when Apple published it, that's when we found out. And uh, that was pretty phenomenal. And yeah, I mean it's We've been nominated a few times for uh, like the Podcast Audience Choice Awards. I don't think we've ever won. We've we've been nominated a few times, but I don't we've never actually one. I remember this last one they do the award ceremony the same time as c S around

the same time at a digital media expo. And I was in Las Vegas for C E S and it was the night of the awards ceremony, and I had not secured a ticket to go, and I had no idea if we were gonna win or not. And Scott Johnson of the Morning Stream was there, and I had told him that I gave him permission to accept our award on on our you know, he would accept the award on our behalf if we won. He sent to be a Twitter message a little bit later in the night says you lost. And I wrote back, so thank

you for saying for not saying you didn't. In no, you said you lost. It's like any buddy. But going back to the question that you got about the the tech itself, Um, there's a there's been a lot of change in technology and that's a really in a very short time. That's a great point, you know what, I think I think we should we should really focus on that. But before we do, let's take a quick moment to thank our sponsor. Now, meetings are essential to the way

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an iPhone there there was, there was. Yeah, iPhone was introduced in two thousand seven, and we and so it had been out a year, but the iPhone three GS was coming out just as we were starting, which was the iPhone too well, And I remember three G I

was the iPhone three gens. So that was really confusing because I remember remember all the confusion around the fact that it's the second generation iPhone, but it's called the iPhone three g M. And there was because because we did an episode about that to explain why it was the three G when it was the second generation iPhone, right right, And uh, let's see what else we we talked about DVRs and whether or not you could build them yourself. Yeah. The TiVo was something we talked about

a lot. Yeah, and in TiVo, TiVo's star has definitely declined since two thousand eight. Uh, we had the iPad had not yet launched. There was not a successful tablet on the market at all in two thousand eight. Yeah, we we spent there have been rumors for so long, yeah about that, and I talked about that was a prediction here. I famously predicted that if the the iPad was really going to be a thing, it would fail miserably. What a great predictor, I am. You were so yeah,

that was so not right. So I actually went over and I looked it, right, Yeah, I looked at some other stuff. So interesting things to think about. Okay. Back in two thousand and eight, Uh, the state of the art operating system if you had a PC was Windows Vista because Windows seven was not out yet. It wouldn't come out until two thousand nine. Uh. Yeah. We were very careful about not being critical about stuff at that point. We hadn't. Yeah, we were. We didn't really talk it.

We didn't get into Vista attacks until later. We didn't attack Vista, but we talked about how people were attacking right, And to be fair, that was towards the end of Windows Vista's lifespan anyway, so a lot of the complaints had already been hashed over a billion times by the time we went live. Yes, um, it had been burned down and salted. Yeah. I was gonna say I think that was the year that that Google introduced Android. It was the year Google introduced Android, and it's the year

Google introduced Chrome. The Chrome browser came out in two thousand and eight, so I'm pretty sure there were things that were Chrome color before that. Well, the browser, Chrome Browser Rome, Chris, it's it's a browser that you don't use because it's so resource intensive. Um, I use it.

I use it. I have it open right now. Uh the yeah, and so I Android debut, but well it Android had not yet come out when we started the podcast, but it did debut that year because we started in June Andrew Android debuted in September, so the g one really didn't become available till the end of two thousand and eight. I got that was my first smartphone, was the Android g one phone from HTC on T Mobile, and I got that in the beginning of two thousand nine.

Are you also an early adopter, Chris sir? No, No, I still still still have a flip phone. No, yeah, no, they well, I have my first I've had my smart This is my first smartphone here and it's I've had it for two years now. So it's that that was sometime into the Well, that's that's something you know, Chris and I are kind of common share this in common.

We I don't consider myself an early adopter. I was an early adopted with Android, but in general I tend to wait to make sure that the technology is robust enough before I go all in. There a couple of exceptions. Part of my thing was I'm cheap. There's also that that that's my that's my philosophy with video games. If you can wait for a while and it drops from sixty dollars to twenty bucks. Yeah, but that that might change pretty soon. The whole that whole market may change

before too long. And yeah, so okay, getting back to uh, operating systems. The mac os ten ten point five operating system, which was Leopard was the standard, and snow Leopard was coming out just after we started recording. Um. Uh, carefully at that photo, by the way, that leopard looks like

he might have just eaten. Two thousand eight, Wired had a list of the top breakthroughs in technology, and it's kind of interesting to see what was a breakthrough in two thousand eight flexible displays, which we saw for the first time at ce S. As I recall, UH still kind of waiting on those. Yeah, there's there's a few semies that were introduced at c that were curved, but but even then, you know, the flexible displays tend to be static right there. They're flexible in the sense that

you can not that kind of stealtic. They don't they're not bending. You can't bend them. You can't see from where you're sitting. But our producer just like like flipped his head around with everything's okay, don't go into the lightning, don't go into the light Uh. The Speedo l z R swimsuit was listed as one of the breakthroughs of two thousand and eight. That was one that used the NASA materials to relay to to to reduce viscous drag the swimsuit. That's the first time I remember you ever

saying viscus in the podcast. Um, I love that word. Um. Yeah. Actually, actually that was that was a big deal that year because that was an Olympic here, if I'm not mistaken, and they were wondering whether or not they were going to allow it, and they ultimately did. Flash memory was listed as a breakthrough. Not that flash memory came into existence in two thousand eight, but it was it was starting to come into prominence, mainly due to the iPhone.

So the GPS proliferation Again, GPS had been around for decades, but again, devices like the iPhone, we're bringing GPS into more hands than before, so that became something that people were interested in. How about this, do you remember this? We were gonna do an episode about it, and I don't think we ever did memory stas. Oh, yeah, that's true. Oh, you still haven't done the one on We had a listener right in and asked us to do an episode about cantanas, and that has been um one that's been

on our list forever. But it's so technical that I'm worried that I cannot explain it properly, especially without the use of visuals, so I've always put it off. So that's become like the standing behind the scenes joke Windmills topic. Yeah, that has not happened. USB three point Oh oh he has another breakthrough which we're finally starting to see in in uh in laptops now um oh. Then of course the article that went along with it. But the technology

that is now known as Thunderbolt. Uh did a podcast, didn't we? Yeah? We did, and had to clarify later that it was actually going to be called something else. Yes, yes, we did, we did that, And what about here's another one. This is another breakthrough two eight breakthrough. This to me is an amusing breakthrough video capable SLR cameras, which are everywhere now. I guess that was a breakthrough because I mean, we our own video team uses some so it's kind

of interesting to actually see that as a breakthrough. Back in two thousand eight, we did a podcast shortly before I departed about Kodak, And in two thousand eight, I'm pretty sure we would not have predicted the demise or near demise of Kodak. Yeah. Yeah, a few companies have gone under. Uh. You know, back in two thousand eight, my Space was still a viable social network. It was

still doing pretty well. Yeah, and uh and so I mean, I actually downloaded my Twitter history not too long ago, and I went through and was reading it, and my Twitter history actually pre dates when we started recording the podcast. In fact, I see there was a tweet I made fairly early on where I was all excited about the idea of getting to do a podcast. I'm like, oh cool, I'll have to remember that. Um, But then yeah, I was.

I was talking about how it was interesting to discover that someone's relationship status had changed due to a flipped switch on my Space, and I'm like, really, my Space. I guess maybe I I wasn't so big into Facebook at the time. And it's true. In two thousand and eight, Back in August two thousand eight, Facebook hit one million users. Now they're over one billion, but back in two thousand

it was a hundred millions. Still a lot of people, but not nearly as many as there are now, and it had only been open to the general public for two years at that point. I didn't even have a Facebook or Twitter until two nine, so well, you know, you were like I was a toddler at the time, so you know, I couldn't speak human language yet. So it's nice because I'm not the oldest person in the room right now, because Chris is here, so Lauren could pick on him for a while. As soon as I

get untied Twitter. Twitter was hitting around a hundred million tweets per quarter, and it grew I think like seven hundreds something something percent over the course of two doesn't

eat right. It had been introduced in two thousand seven at south By Southwest, and so it had been around for a while, but it was still I don't think it had really caught on yet even then, because I mean I remember when I was and you know, I like social media stuff, but I remember when I started using it, I was like, what the heck would anyone use this thing for? And I wrote an article about

and I still wasn't sure. And it was about three months after I had written the article that I finally started actually using Twitter sharing what you had for breakfast. It's really not that hard, come on, Okay, once I figured it out, it all made sense. Hulu launched in two thousand and eight, Will never work. Netflix launched unlimited streaming in two thousand eight. Work. No, they'll just stick with the DVD thing. Also, you know what became a

thing in two thousand and eight. It was a huge trend, and in fact, you can tell that it was really powerful one by how by its presence in the market today. Netbooks. Netbooks became a thing in two thousand eight. So yeah, that books was a little, tiny, underpowered laptop. You mean you mean kind of like an iPad except it has a keyboard attach. Yeah, yeah, Because I mean back back when into things, they're never going to take off either, Okay, right, I did buy in net book? Uh, I no, longer

use it. I don't have an iPad though I got a tablet, but it's not iPad. Uh. Yeah, I have that HD DVD died and that Blue Rain won the the High Definition Wars in two thousand eight. Chris and I got to see direct evidence of that because when we went to cs that year. Uh, we went to see e S before tech stuff was existed, before it existed, but that was right about the same time. The genesis of tech stuff was right about two eight. At the beginning, Yeah,

we were talking about it. We didn't, like I said, the first episode didn't publish till June, but we had been talking about it for a while. So we go to c E S And Chris and I both went that year, and uh, and it was I remember seeing the blu ray booth. I think it was Pirates of the Caribbean things. Wasn't. Yeah, there was a giant ship right there in the middle of the floor, so it wasn't far from those uh take home mechanical bowl things. Yeah, right,

it was. It wasn't a mechanical ball. It was a saddle that you were supposed to ride to develop your ABS. I tried to get Chris on one so I could take a picture and he flat out refused, which was it was the right decision. I for the longest time, I had a picture of that up on my on my cubicle wall. I had to pick the the press release that they gave out back then they gave out paper press releases for everything too. We we both carried back home about fifty pounds worth of co yeah, and

a good stack of CD s. Yeah. This was before they started going to USB drives or or better yet online. That's just um but yeah, so we anyway, the blue ray booth was huge, and then we go over to where the HD DVD booth was supposed to be and it's just empty. Yeah. I I also remember talking about satellite radio some back. Yeah, we did before Serious and XM merge. We had an episode about what will happen

when those two companies merge, So that was kind of funny. Uh. Let's say the green tech became a huge buzzword in two thousand and eight, and it was interesting because over the next couple of years it really became a focal point, like people were really really, at least seemingly passionate about it, whether they were sincere or not is up for debate. But these days I would argue that green tech not nearly as stressed as it was back in two thousand eight,

two thin ten, that time period. Now it's just not I mean, there's still companies that are dedicated to making energy efficient products, but they just call it tech. Yeah, they don't call it green tech. In you like there there aren't that many companies dedicated to this whole green

tech idea. Um and uh. In fact, one of our peers, Jamie who who writes for tree Hugger, she would she actually said, well, this kind of makes sense because when you look at technology, it's really a lot of it is mostly about consumerism, and consumerism and green aren't a little a little bit. They don't really overlap. The ven diagram is not so great on that. Um. Just ask anybody who replaces their smartphone more than once a year. Two thousand eight was when the LHC was finished. Cloud

computing became a buzzword in two thousand eight. Now we all know what it is, but back then we weren't so sure. Geo tagging was very popular, and so now we've got things like four Square and Facebook places, and Google allows you to put in pins in places you go, but it was still pretty new back then. Uh, Voodoo look Ations, Dr Dre and Monster Cable came together to create the Beats Audio headphones. Yeah, those are actually in

my My personal laptop has Beats Audio. Not that I didn't pick the laptop because of that, It just happened that that would happened to be one of the features you want that beats me. Yeah. Yeah. We also talked about on the podcast whether you know you could actually replace um Monster cables with codgers. The answer yes, don't do it depending on who you ask. Yeah, but no. Essentially, if you're using if you're using really, you know, decent copper,

then you're going to get a good connection. Now great, if you're using an uninsulated copper wire, that could lead to problems. So that's why you don't do it. But uh. The Roku box was introduced in two thousand eight. The Sony e Reader was picked as one of the top ten gadgets of two thousand eight by the Guardian. The Amazon Kindle came out in late two thousand and seven, so it's interesting that the Guardian picked the Sony e Reader as a top ten gadget of two thousand and eight.

Considering that you know in the when you look at the long run, the Kindle ran away with it. You know that the Kindle has has more than beat out the competition in the e reader space. Uh that that'll never take up a wait. Wait hey, now it's gonna be huge. Wait. So other top gadgets that the Guardian listed included the Sony Flip Ultra Sony Flip no longer a thing. Uh. The one of them was a digital photo frame. Do you remember those? I do? Another one

was a netbook. One was the we Fit. Like again, these these are things that you know made a big impact when they first came out, and then did not none of them, not many of us. Yeah, we Fit. That was one of those things that people were really excited about for about three or four months. That's about how excited people are about exercising ever about three or four months. Then they stop and then it just doesn't

get used. We Fit it has. The balance board has sort of a disadvantage compared to other exercise equipment because you can't hang your clothes on it like you can with the stair stepper. Right, it doesn't it doesn't it's not a multitasker, is what you're saying. I mean, if maybe you have a shelf that's just barely out of reach, it could be a very tiny step letter if only I had that extra inch and a half heel. Right, Oh wait, look let's grab the we fit honey. Yeah.

So anyway, that's that's the list of stuff I had that happened in two thousand and eight compared to what's going on today. What's interesting is that there are some parallels. I mean, like the Windows Vista problem right where you had this big issue with the perception of Windows Vista, which you know, when it launched, there were a lot of problems that people pointed out, and Microsoft addressed a lot of those, but the damage had already been done.

The perception was already there that it was not h it was it was an inferior product in the eyes of many, and so even when Microsoft fixed things, it didn't matter. Uh. Some people would argue that Windows eight is following a similar pathway that a lot of people have criticized it. It's had slow adoption, and therefore Microsoft is now going through a second Windows Vista phase. Um, and I say that's probably for different reasons that people

are just happy with when it was seven. Well, yeah, and I think another I think another point is similar to that is the idea that a lot more people are looking to buy things like smartphones or tablets as a replacement for buying a new computer. So instead of spending a thousand dollars to buy a new computer, you spend a few hundred dollars on a tablet or a smartphone, and then that gives you the basic computing stuff that

you really want. And then you just you keep your desktop computer or laptop computer for longer than you normally would and you just use that to do the heavy lifting stuff. Um. That's seems to be a pretty common theme. So yeah, that's all I've got. Any of you guys want to add anything to that? No, but I can't feel my fingers. Okay, Well we're gonna cut you loose, um, and then we're just gonna watch Chris make a crist sized hole in the door. And uh, Chris, it was

great having you back. I'm glad that you were able to come in from I had a choice, you know, I mean, we hope that you're able to find your way home. I mean, I know I had you blindfolded on the way here, but it occurs to me that you actually know the location of the office, so I don't know why it took that step, in which case the bat gas was totally unnecessary. I apologize the bat has not been feeling well recently. I did not mean. Look,

this is how Chris and I play. It's like it's like juvenile chicken, and the thing is, neither one of us will swerve. It's just it's just crash in a big juvenile mess. Lauren, I feel like chicken and night Chicken, and all right, that's enough. They are not a sponsor of our show, so we're going to wrap this up and make it anymore. That would be a good reason why they don't. They aren't sponsoring us. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much. It has been an amazing episodes.

I am exhausted. I'm going to go take a nap. But if you guys have any suggestions for future episodes of Tech Stuff, I highly even Chris stop struggling. It will only make it worse. It'll I highly recommend you get in touch with us. You can send us an email. The address is tech Stuff at Discovery dot com or let us know on Facebook or Twitter or handle at both those locations. Is tech stuff hs W. Lauren and I will talk to you again soon. Chris may not

ever talk again. For more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it has stop works dot com