Minnov8

Yep…you read that headline right. After nearly NINE YEARS this week’s show is our last podcast as the Minnov8 Gang. It’s been a great ride. We’ve had an incredible amount of fun, talked to literally dozens of guests, interviewed Minnesota technology leaders, attended hundreds of events, and covered Minnesota technology innovation in all its forms. It is time, however,...  [Read More...]

This week’s show was recorded at Minnebar, an enormous gathering of techies in Minnesota. Our guest is Adrienne Peirce (LinkedIn), Product Owner at Leadpages and President of Minne*, the organization responsible for Minnebar and Minnedemo. Hosts: Steve Borsch and Phil Wilson (Tim Elliott is off) Music: Woke Up With The Blues by Deep Sea Gypsies under...  [Read More...]

This past week a Minnesota judge signed a search warrant for anyone who did a Google search for someone who defrauded an Edina bank. Besides being outrageously broad as a warrant—anybody who searched on this guy’s name for legitimate reasons would be under suspicion and could be brought in for questioning—is likely violating our Constitution’s 4th...  [Read More...]

Minnesota’s own big box tech retailer, Best Buy, sees its Geek Squad in the news since the FBI Used Best Buy’s Geek Squad To Increase Secret Public Surveillance. Are Geek Squad people really being used as spies? Unfortunately it certainly seems so. Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott and Phil Wilson Music: Rock and Roll –...  [Read More...]

We cover the Minnesota tech stories of the week including disappointing earnings from both Target and Best Buy over the holiday period. Can they compete with Amazon and other online sources? We have a few ideas. Later we discuss the Amazon S3 outage, Uber’s use of tech to evade law enforcement and Google’s rapid rise...  [Read More...]

Several good tech stories this week but, once again, we dust-off our “Gang Mentality” segment to ponder a question after the president of the United States inaccurately calls out major news organizations as “fake”. That question is: Will technology provide the answer to real vs. fake news, or will it take human intervention? Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott...  [Read More...]

Are you a U.S. citizen? Then you should know that, if you travel internationally, when you come back to the U.S. you may be forced to reveal your device passwords (e.g., smartphone, tablet, laptop) as well as providing U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officers with passwords to your social media and other accounts. Farfetched? Nope…read...  [Read More...]

Tim and Steve could only imagine what it would be like if Phil Wilson was an advisor to Donald Trump. Would we all have healthcare? Would he build a wall around Lakeville where Tim lives? We can only speculate, but let’s not, and instead go on and talk about technology! Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott and...  [Read More...]

We discuss the top Minnesota and other tech stories, but our guest this week is none other than Chuck Olsen, a new media entrepreneur who continues to be involved with cutting edge tech. This time Chuck’s virtual reality firm, Visual VR, Inc., created an augmented reality character named Rosa, the world’s first virtual activist. She’s a 50ft...  [Read More...]

It is obvious to people who are aware of mass surveillance that we all are being watched. Anything digital is swept up, made Google-like searchable, connected to others and also events, regardless whether those connections are relevant or not. We talk about our usual Minnesota tech stories but in our other top tech stories was one that caught...  [Read More...]

Hackers around the world are undoubtedly cheering the appointment of Rudy Giuliani as an advisor to the president on cyber security for the upcoming Trump administration. For anyone following this pick by Trump, a sad (but still amusing) story appeared shortly after it was discovered that Trump’s cybersecurity advisor choice, Rudy Giuliani, was running an easily hackable website...  [Read More...]

One of the stories we discovered this past week was this amusing one in New York Magazine about Joel Johnson‘s adventure moving from MacOS to Windows 10 and what he thinks about both platforms. In a nutshell he describes the two this way: “If MacOS is a sterile art gallery, Windows is a carnival in an open field staffed...  [Read More...]

It’s our annual predictions show and, while we cover a handful of Minnesota and other top tech stories this past week, we focus on our “hits and misses” from predicting 2016 and then jump in to our 2017 prognostications. Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Phil Wilson Music: Everyday I Have the Blues by Ike Rock and Blues under...  [Read More...]

This week’s snow emergency turned in to a ‘no’ emergency in our view, but if you live in a place where towing cars is a much-needed winter activity then you should listen to our discussion about Julio Ojeda-Zapata‘s article regarding Apps keep you abreast of snow parking, assuming they’re up to date. You might want to download one of them! Hosts: Steve...  [Read More...]

This week we interview Katie Jones from Atique to learn more about their combination of vintage jewelry and virtual reality. We also run-down the week’s tech news including Julio’s picks for Minnesota-made holiday tech gifts, A Klingon Christmas Carol and why everyone should have a Ring doorbell. Hosts: Tim Elliott, Phil Wilson and Julio Ojeda-Zapata...  [Read More...]

Phil is our resident superhero and his Cool Thing of the Week is a classic phone booth for his team at the wide-open and cavernous Minneapolis BuzzFeed office. While he claims it’s for them to have privacy for phone calls, Tim and I know the real reason he bought it and it’s depicted in this week’s show cover art....  [Read More...]

Did you know that Minnesota is the state with the highest rate of internet usage? We didn’t. Must be the combination of smart people and high number of months each year spent mainly indoors! Hat tip to our friend over at Blandin on Broadband, Ann Treacy, who highlighted this statistic in this post. The Gang chats about this and...  [Read More...]

Tuesday’s election brought Donald Trump to president-elect status and the tech industry isn’t so sure what that means. The short answer is yes, tech will experience a Trump effect but listen for the longer term effect and take a peek at the “Election and Technology” links below for more perspective. Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott...  [Read More...]

We kickoff the show about MNSure‘s rough start this past week and how Governor Mark Dayton said it was due to robocallers tying up phone lines. Though we have little evidence to the contrary, we’re not so sure that was the issue. Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott and Phil Wilson Music: Sentimental Gentleman from Georgia by The Bottoms Up...  [Read More...]

This week Apple announced new MacBook Pros and one takeaway was what BGR wrote about in You’ll need $250 in dongles to upgrade to the new MacBook Pro. Yes, if you do buy the new MacBook Pro you’ll likely need A LOT of dongles! The Gang discusses dongles and much more on this week’s show. Hosts:...  [Read More...]

In Chinese philosophy and religion there are two principles, one negative, dark, and feminine (yin) and one positive, bright, and masculine (yang) whose interaction influences the destinies of creatures and things. This week we experienced both with the Internet of Things (IoT): The massive distributed denial of service on Friday was definitely ‘yin’ and today’s...  [Read More...]

One of the most interesting Internet of Things (IoT) events of the year is IoTHackday, a fun, FREE day that brings together teams, novel ideas, and an entrepreneurial spirit to dream up and build cool new devices to solve everyday problems. Teams form, submit their ideas ahead of the event, and hack for 12 hours. The public is...  [Read More...]

We cover the usual Minnesota tech stories as well as other top ones, but our guest this week is all about the cloud. Tom Iverson is an Enterprise Solutions Consultant with a Minneapolis firm and we dig in to questions about cloud computing and why it’s the answer. Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott and Phil Wilson...  [Read More...]

You may remember the protestor at Secretary John Kerry’s talk at U of Florida and that guy wouldn’t leave so the cops Tased him as he yelled out, “Don’t tase me, bro!!” The video of the guy screaming that out became an internet meme in 2007 and so it was the first thing that came to...  [Read More...]

Phil Wilson, aka “Mr. Acoustics“, comes to us from the Minneapolis BuzzFeed office conference room. As a former radio DJ, Phil knows a thing or two about good acoustics, microphones, and sounding your best. THAT is why it’s so fun to tease him about his “down the well” acoustics this week!