Podcasts about microsoft kinect

Main Topics:Google Meet using Chrome on MacOS and facing Mac screen sharing issues.Transition from Zoho to FastMail, focusing on privacy and benefits.FastMail's pseudo email features and its cooperation with One Password.Differences and similarities between FastMail and Google Workspace.Deep analysis of Tesla's self-driving technology and neural network models.Evaluation of Tesla's autonomous driving performance.Technological understanding behind self-driving cars, discussing self-parking, sensors, cameras, and radar.Relationship of radar, LiDAR, and Microsoft Kinect in autonomous cars.Discussion on crash rates of autonomous cars vs human-driven cars.Comparing Waymo, Cruise, and Chevy Bolt EV costs and experiences.Introduction of Waymo's partnership with a Chinese manufacturer for a purpose-built car.Speculating the future of self-driving cars.Electric vehicle industry: challenges, GM's Ultium platform benefits, and cost savings.Review and analysis of films including Barbie, No Hard Feelings, Palm Springs, Deadpool, The Proposal, Zoolander, and Naked Gun.References:Google MeetChrome (macOS)ZohoFastMailiCloud+One PasswordGoogle WorkspaceTeslaROS (Robot Operating System)Microsoft KinectWaymoCruiseChevy Bolt EVGM's Ultium platformVarious films: Barbie, No Hard Feelings, Palm Springs, Deadpool, The Proposal, Zoolander, Naked Gun, Hotshot, Lethal Weapon, American Pie, Free guy.Reach Out: Engage with us and the community on our Discord Channel.

The 8bA Podcast is a podcast bringing you the latest and greatest geeky news of the past week.NEWS ITEMSLorcana. Some thoughts and first impressions on the game and its rollout.AI Generated Art. The Verge reports that DC District Court Judge Beryl A. Howell ruled that AI-generated artwork cannot be copyrighted as part of a lawsuit against the US Copyright Office. The suit was brought by Stephen Thaler over a rejection of copyright concerning an AI-generated image made with an algorithm he created. The crux of the case seems to be that he tried to copyright the image “as a work-for-hire to the owner of the Creativity Machine.” Judge Howell's ruling stipulates that “human beings are an essential part of a valid copyright claim.”Charles Martinet. GameInformer reports that the longtime voice of Mario will no longer be cast in that role, but instead move into the role of “Mario Ambassador.” Nintendo has said it will share a special message from Shigeru Miyamoto and Martinet at a later date.Cult of the Lamb. NintendoLife reports that indie-hit Cult of the Lamb is getting a crossover update with Don't Starve Together, which includes a survival mode, a unique spider follower who is immune to starvation, and themed decorations.Microsoft Kinect. The Verge reports that Microsoft is (once again) sunsetting the Kinect, though it will partner with outside companies to provide options for people who need similar devices for development. The Azure Kinect Developer Kits will be available through the end of October or “until supplies last.” Those who have one will be able to continue using it without disruption, according to Microsoft's Swati Mehta.Pixelborn. Dicebreaker reports that a small team led by game developer Pavel Kolev has created a digital app for playing Lorcana. The app functions similarly to Hearthstone, but does not include any artwork or assets from Disney. The app is currently available on PC and Mac, with mobile support currently being worked on.PlayStation. The Verge reports that Sony is releasing a streaming handheld for the PS5 later this year. The device will allow users to stream titles from their PS5 over WiFi, though Sony did not indicate if the device needed to be on the same WiFi network as the console. The handheld also will not allow you to stream games being streamed on the base console, nor will it have Bluetooth - it will instead use Sony's proprietary PlayStation Link technology, and will allow for wired headphones. The device will retail for $199.LINKSWebsite: https://8-bitadventures.comPatreon: https://patreon.com/8bitAdventuresMerch: https://8-bitadventures.com/shopJoin the Discord: https://discord.gg/FAPKjjQ“1-UP” is by Professor Shyguy. You can find his work at https://professorshyguy.bandcamp.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT When a big LED video wall gets populated with fresh creative, the creatives and the people operating a display are likely going to have a conversation about the size of the finished file and how to move it – because there's a good chance the rendered file is huge, and not something that can attach in an email. So I was intrigued as hell when a creative guy told me the video wall creative he'd produced for a project could fit on an old-school floppy disk … because it was really just some lines of code. A lot of people in the digital signage ecosystem will know Jim Nista. He started and ran the LA creative technology shop Insteo, before it was acquired by Almo. Nista worked for his new masters for a while, but eventually went off on his own, and is now spinning up a new boutique agency that's doing creative for visual projects. One of the things he's been actively working on is what he calls Code Painting – a big visual that gradually builds in front of viewers and then self-destructs, replaced by a new visual that again starts to build. You set the file and visual instructions, and then forget it, as it will just run and run but always be a bit - or a lot – different. It's all done in programming instructions, and in the case of his current efforts, is focused on the familiar visuals of flowers. Nista's work was one of three used for the Sixteen:Nine Mixer at InfoComm last month. Having had a couple of explainers of what was going on, and the approach, I figured a podcast was the best way to help the industry understand what he's figured out, and what he's delivering to clients. Subscribe from wherever you pick up new podcasts. TRANSCRIPT Hey Jim, can you explain what code painting is?  Jim Nista: Yeah, it's a fun new concept for me. I know that other people are doing some of the same types of things, but really, I have been trying to make a painting through either JavaScript or other coding techniques. I started with a more simple approach, and the goal truly was to create something that you're watching a painting come to life, and my own brief to myself was this needs to look good at every stage of the process. Sometimes a time-lapse at the beginning is. what are we looking at here? And so it's been a fun process for me to figure out a way to make something, not just paint itself through code, but to be interesting to look at through the entire process, however long it takes, but 30 seconds to a minute is what I'm usually trying to come towards.  But it is truly just code. There are no images, videos, AI, machine learning, or anything else. It's just a scripted process of creating a unique painting while you watch.  We were sitting in Orlando, chatting about this and you were describing it to me, and I was thinking, boy, this is a little bit over my head, but it sounded like it starts with almost like an armature. You start with some curves, and it just builds from there? Jim Nista: Yeah. It starts from a very primitive drawing. It is almost like a child's drawing because some of the early pieces, and certainly some of the pieces that I showed down in Orlando, are flowers because those are shapes that are very recognizable to our eyes. We can spot a flower-type shape almost as well as we can determine a human face style shape. I don't know why, and I don't know the evolutionary reasons behind it, but I realized that this is a pattern that we can determine very easily so behind the scenes, one of the very first things that this code does is to generate out some curves and if you think about the shape of a curve, if you flip that shape, it makes a petal or a leaf shape. So if you make a simple curve and then flip it, you end up with a leaf shape or a petal shape, and if you take that and rotate it around in a certain way and put a dot in the center, our eyes say “flower,” and we're really good at it, right?  It probably has something to do with our ability to find food and all the other things that we do as humans. But it becomes a shape that is very recognizable to us, and so once I have these very primitive drawn shapes stored in memory, then the real code takes over, which is the work that I spent so much time on over the last year and a half trying to make realistic-looking paint strokes come out of these primitive drawings that are stored in memory, and that's been really the fun part of the project is to invent a way to create something that comes to life that way, but is truly just based on the most primitive, basic line drawings you could possibly imagine. So there's some color encoded in that primitive. There are some rough shapes encoded in that primitive, but really it's just very simple and then works from there to create a painting while you watch.  We demoed this on a very large canvas down in Orlando, a 26-foot-tall LED video wall, 155 feet wide in terms of a curve and you had little vignettes, a number of these, I shouldn't say little, but they were substantially sized, maybe 15 feet tall or something like that, but you had a number of them and essentially, something would just build on this as you went and eventually show itself as a flower and evolve from there. How long do these things take to build, and when they're finished building, is that what stays on screen, or does it erases off and you start over?   Jim Nista: The big idea that I started with for this project and just going back one step is this really came from before the pandemic when I started trying to learn oil painting again. I had done it in college and art classes and things like that, and it was always a fun passion. But I was struggling because when I was learning oil painting, especially during the pandemic-that was my hobby-I kept making paintings that were almost too realistic and I challenged myself. I was like, I know how to code too, so why can't I code a paint stroke that can teach me how to be more loose? And this is where the genesis of this came from, and from there, I let this take on a life of its own, but along the process, I decided I don't want this to look as organic as it could. The overall idea is that it creates a piece as you're watching it and then destroys it and creates a new one, and then destroys that and creates a new one, and the idea came out of so many video walls, and we've all done them where you end up with a five-minute loop of stock footage, and there's a lot of fatigue that you can imagine from employees who have to visit, watch this screen every single day to, guests and visitors having to see the same content over and over again and just the boring factor of yeah, we spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on this video while now we're gonna spend a thousand dollars on content. There are so many projects that are like that, and so I was thinking, how can I put together something that is eternal content, or at least, doesn't need to be changed as often? And that was the genesis behind this. Let it create a piece, let it destroy it, let it make a new one, let it destroy that, and just eternally create work that hopefully carries some unique nature to it, and that's part of what this code carries, it will not just change the colors throughout the day and do dramatic colors at sunrise and sunset and things like that, but it also changes its colors and I even call it mood. It changes its mood throughout the year, so for running this on a video wall, it would be never the same image. There would be a lot of similarities from day to day. There would be a lot of similarities if you looked at something in one November versus next November, you'd see a lot of similarities, of course. But that content would constantly evolve and change throughout the day, the month, and the seasons, and with the idea that you just can truly set this and forget about it, walk away and let this run on a video wall indefinitely and truly never see the same thing twice.  What's the timeline? I imagine there are all kinds of variables and parameters you can set, but typically, is it the sort of thing that builds over the space of four hours or four minutes?  Jim Nista: I've been playing around with it and I love the idea of letting these things run even longer. But right now I've found, at least from people watching some of the early samples and some of the places that I've installed it, that shorter time durations are better, so about a minute to create a piece and letting it linger for a little while after it's created and then destroying it, and that really does seem to be the sweet spot.  Now everything is just code. So if somebody said, I want it to run and build for four hours, I can certainly do that, but I was funny as I've been building this because it's code I can just run it in a web browser, that means I can run it on my phone, and so I've been able to annoy friends but demo this out in front of a lot of people as I've been working on it, and I noticed very early on that the slower pieces tended to have people looking away as opposed to looking at it, so capturing a performance of creating this piece within a minute and refining it and almost getting the rough sketch done sooner rather than later, really that's how it started to feel like it was creating a performance that people would wanna watch, and I think it can capture people's attention while they're transiting through space, which is a lot of these sorts of corporate AV installations take place. Nobody is expected to just stand there and look at it for a really long time. So it's tuned into that.  But I do know that even running it in my own space, I have a projector here and I can run it on a big wall from time to time just to see it, that sometimes when it is more ambient, letting it build for several minutes is a better approach. But in the public space, I think about always seeing, and when somebody first walks into this space, I don't know what point of the build, of the painting it's gonna be at, it's just continual, and so the goal is to just have it always look good, and that's been a very difficult goal to achieve because you think about something at the very beginning of it drawing, it might be very abstract, and it's hard for people to understand. When you say, it builds, and then it destroys itself. What does that look like when it's in destruction mode, so to speak?  Jim Nista: I had to make the brushes move a lot faster during that mode so that it does attract attention like something's being wiped out. But I also found that leaving a lot, not completely erasing the canvas, leaving a lot of the underlying or previous painting adds a lot of character as well, and so it roughly washes over with larger brushes and lighter brushes, but it will leave pieces of the previous painting there, and that's a nice approach.  Now there's another version of this that was more prevalent in Orlando that we ran there, which is more of a continual mode where rather than creating an image behind the scenes, it's creating a 3D image and using that instead and so now that can constantly rotate or unfold or evolve, and so that's an alternative version. So in that one, the destruction is almost immediately where it is changing from, let's say, creating an orange flower to now evolving into creating a purple flower. That transition is a lot less noticeable than some of the other versions of this that I'm running, which are creating one painting, building that painting, and then destroying it. So there are a few different ways that I've envisioned this, and one is truly continuous, but evolving where rather than Building and painting and destroying, it's constantly painting, and what it's painting is constantly changing, and so it's a different approach and that process requires a little bit more horsepower. So I've built one of these that I know, from having worked at digital signage, we don't necessarily always have the fastest media players in the world, and so one of these, I've tuned is low cost and even with previous generation media players, we're getting some really fast new media players that have GPUs built into them, so that's really going to be wonderful to take advantage of. But I built this before those were really available to me, and some of the versions of this are really designed for a sort of solid-state media player, like BrightSign players or SpinetiX players, that kind of thing, right? Where I've been focused on turning this around, they're great HTML engines, they don't have a lot of memory, and they don't have a lot of horsepower, but how can we do generative art on that type of hardware, which is so prevalent around the industry?  So this doesn't need to be on a big-ass media server. Jim Nista: There's a version that does, and that's the version that I was running in Orlando because of course we had a lot of horsepower there and a bigger screen too, to take advantage of. But yeah, there's a version of this that's just pure JavaScript and I've tested it all over the place, including on a 15-year-old laptop, and it runs fine there. So I've written for a number of years now about visualized data, and that's evolved into the terminology of generative visuals and generative AI. But you skip past this really quickly when you're explaining things that this isn't AI. This is its own thing, right?  Jim Nista: Yeah, I could have used some machine learning techniques for this in terms of creating the underlying primitive image. But rather than doing that, given that I'm dealing with somewhat simple shapes like flowers and landscapes and hills and trees and things like that, code can easily create things like trees and landscapes and those types of things. So it didn't make sense for me to train this in a machine learning model to build those primitives for me, and certainly, machine learning wouldn't help with the process of coming up with the painting itself, but the idea of connecting this to live data or sensors in space is really where this is headed.  I've had other projects that are more interactive or immersive, especially involving the Microsoft Kinect from the Xbox Days before it evolved into this commercial tool toy. So now some of the new work around this is, reading what's happening in space. So if somebody is standing in front of this and they're wearing red, the flowers will be red, and so those are some of the pieces that are coming out within this because yeah, it's generative. I can pull weather data, I can pull any sort of information and add it to the mix of what I'm currently doing. Oddly, some of the early versions of this were intended and requested to be offline, completely isolated from the internet, and run forever, and so really the only data that those have is the clock. They just know the time and the date, and that's the only data that they can use. So everything has been pre-programmed in and it's just following its script forever, but there's so much randomness to it has a tendency to never repeat. So one of the things that were interesting about walking around the exhibit hall at Infocomm recently was seeing how a lot of the big display guys, particularly the LED guys, were using generative art on the displays instead of just like the stock videos and so on, which was what happened for a whole bunch of years. It is the sort of thing that Refik Anadol pioneered; there may be another artist as well, but that's the one that most people would know. Is that the sort of thing you could conceivably do with this as well, or is it just a different track?  Jim Nista: No, a lot of the work that he's doing, and I don't mean to trivialize it because when I see some of the work that he's doing, he's pulling in these massive data sets, right? But a lot of the work itself is running through software that I use as well, like TouchDesigner, and a lot of the same type of effects are happening. What he's built, and a lot of people are copying, unfortunately for him, but what he's built is in some respects, a two-part process. He's pulling all of this data together and then from there, using his own code to render it, and that a lot of that is done in software, like TouchDesigner, Unity, Unreal Engine, those types of applications is where a lot of this happens. But yeah, I think that one challenge that we're facing is that an artist like him, his style is identifiable, but as I was walking around the shift floor, I'm seeing essentially what are either ripoffs, direct ripoffs of his work, or artists just copying it or inspired by his work.  At the end of the day, and again, I don't mean to trivialize what he's doing, but there are effects built into these software applications that sort of mimick his style. He was the first guy to come up with it and use those tricks and techniques and everything else. But a lot of people can just follow along a 30-minute YouTube tutorial and mimic a lot of the work that is coming from him and then some of these other generative artists as well. So there is danger in that, working this way becomes somewhat easy if your style becomes popular to mimic it, and it's sad to see that so many companies are either hiring somebody to copy this artist's style or just outright taking the work directly from other videos that he's published online. But it's unfortunate. It happens. It's nicer to see though because most of the time what we see at these is somebody running movie trailers or worse, Big Buck Bunny or those blender foundation free videos, and those are very well produced, but they're now 15 years old, and it's like blenders have gotten better in the last 15 years, and so it's nice to see a little bit more creativity around the show floor, but at the end of it, it's not creative because a lot of it's just, “Hey, look at this popular artist. Let's take his work.” And there's a fine line with that. I certainly would love to have some of my demos made available, but, at the same point, if we start seeing it over and over again or people are copying it, it's a nice form of flattery, but it's also dangerous form of flattery as well. One thing that you mentioned when you were finalizing this stuff for this big video wall was you said that the actual code package scripting or however you wanna describe it, and you'll do a better job than me obviously, was so light that you could have loaded this on a couple of floppy disc, which for the youngsters out there, look it up, and you'll see what a floppy disc is. Jim Nista: It's the icon that we use when we save things on our regular software. Not that anybody has seen one in a while.  That canvas we were working on for the Orlando project is 18,000 by 3,000 pixels, so a lot of real estate, and of course, this was rendered out, we've given the nature of the project and everything, but if that had been delivered generatively, it's just shader code. That project was built using a concept called GLSL shaders, and it's code, it's a weird code language. It borrows a lot from many different types of scripting languages, but it's for creating visuals like that through code and the files that created those flowers, the individual code for some of those was 9 kilobytes. Just because it's just a little script running and doing all this creative. But what's funny in there is that along the way, as I was initially building some of these projects, I would go into graphics software like Adobe Illustrator for example. I'd go into that graphic software and I'd hand draw what I thought a paintbrush should look like. And so now I've got this little chunk, not really code, but a vector graphic of what a paintbrush should look like, and over time, all of those little things that I did, I took them out and said, no, I need to code what a paintbrush looks like. I can't rely on having drawn something in advance and so all of these asset files initially part of this just to save a step or move faster were removed and just replaced with code. So there's just one file that builds these experiences that just has to be launched in and played back. Some of those are HTML and run in a web browser. Some of them are not HTML and would need a GPU to render out properly. But yeah, they're very small files that run.  Obviously if it's running in a web browser, the digital sign's just going to be playing its HTML content and the file that is uploaded to, for example, BrightSign players can go a few kilobytes. It's a fun different process versus hundreds of gigabytes of files and or these large dataset files that we see from some of these artists where they're saying, “I built this dataset analyzer that goes through a million photos of this city to create this art.” And I'm looking at it going, that's cool, I created some random noise channels to get my data to generate my randomness rather than having to go through millions of photos.  It's certainly a different approach and makes for fun stories as far as not having to deliver all of these massive files. I've had some surprises along the way. “I don't think you sent me everything.” “Yes, I did.” Just launch it on the BrightSign player and see what it does.  So operationally, there are implications it seems, in terms of data transmission times, and bandwidth consumption, although that's not as big an issue as it used to be, and local storage, things like that. Are there other kinds of operating implications or advantages of going down this path?  Jim Nista: Yeah, I think the biggest advantage is just being able to promise a client that the content's not going to get stale, right?  You can set it and truly forget it. Jim Nista: Yeah, and that provides a big advantage to it. There are some other challenges to this, and so certainly some of the projects that I've done where we, after a while, realized that that particular circumstance and that particular hardware are not really conducive to running generative, and in those cases, I've rendered eight-hour-long movies, I just let my computer do the generative work and record it, and then upload a big, long movie. So that defeats the purpose and the idea of having to send a nine-kilobyte file, now all of a sudden, it's turned into a big, long movie. But for the most part, no, there's really not too much to consider with this, especially on the simpler version of this code, which certainly is not as dramatic as what we're seeing in museums, in some of the early days of some of the generative artists that are starting to get really well noticed.  But I'm also thinking in terms of the real-world applications of this, we have a lot of low-cost, low-power media players out there in the world that are well suited towards this and can handle a project like this without overheating or anything else like that. So that was a big driving factor for me that I know a lot of other artists wouldn't really even think to put limitations on themselves like that. They would just think, I don't care about the technology and then suddenly create a project that requires multiple of the latest, greatest expensive GPUs on a Windows device, which is nothing wrong with Windows, as we all know, it's not the biggest friend in digital signage. It's a noisy operating system, and it wants to make its presence known, and what we're looking for most of the time is all of that stuff to be in the background as far as possible.  Is this something that you came up with or was it technology that existed and some people were using and you've just adopted it and done your own thing with it? Jim Nista: I think in terms of the work that I'm doing with GLSL shaders, and the more modern GPU process, I'm coming into a workflow that other people have been pioneering, and so I'm just getting more than my feet wet with that, but it really is newer.  But on the other side, building generative art on, essentially, think about some of the last-generation BrightSign players, we're talking about devices that were designed in 2015-2016. So seven years old and already intended for a solid state and not necessarily have any GPUs. That idea to create generative art on some of these older devices, is new, and I have not seen anybody building content that way. I don't know why you would, right? If you start on a project like this and you don't create limitations for yourself, your are going to want to have the best GPU, you're going to want the best system to run it on. You're going to aim for the highest caliber, and here I am going, no way, I got to aim for these devices that are out of date and not necessarily have the fastest horsepower, but I know I can count on them and I know I can rely on them and I know that they're going to do what part of this project's goal was for me, which is to run indefinitely, right? To be able to create something like this.  I think another idea that's always popped into my head, and just as an odd way, is if you go to a contemporary art museum or gallery and you see audiovisual art fairly often, it's a big part of it, and I was at one a couple of years ago, I went to one of those big art shows where they have the galleries come and I bought the tickets and I decided I wanted to go see this like the Art Basel but Frieze is the one that I went to, and I noticed a lot of the AV was very poorly running. So they're trying to sell us a million-dollar art project and there's a BrightSign player on the floor with cables, and the AV guys frame-shooting it and know it just isn't right. I know that device. I know what it's capable of. I know it could pull this off.  So a lot of that was what happens when somebody invests in one of these pieces or wants a work of art in their space. Now they have to keep it running, and they have to have an AV tech constantly going out there and patching it up and fixing it and keeping it going and all the other things and it really started to make sense as you look at it older AV art installations. There are a lot of AV artists from the 80s and 90s who used CRT devices, right? How do these museums keep that stuff running? And so it was also just a practical idea for me, having an understanding of the AV industry to think as an artist doing this work, I have to prepare for that. Who knows if anything I do will ever have longevity or maybe nobody will even look at it. But, it was an idea from the beginning. I want to help solve these things. I've been that guy on the floor fixing the BrightSign player and I don't wanna be, I don't wanna create that problem for somebody else. So it was an idea just about born out of seeing how a lot of this audiovisual art becomes a technical nightmare, and how can I do something that is, from the beginning, avoiding those technical challenges. I've done projects until the pandemic like I had BrightSign players that had been on and running for 10 years for some projects and, if I can count on a device to just run that way, that makes this creative all the more impactful, at least easier to operate into the future, and just a fun little goal of myself to say, how can I challenge this to do something that attracts people that is interesting to look at, but then also is capable of running on much, much older devices. So is this a product? You've had a design agency in the past that you sold to Almo, then you went off on your own, doing your own thing, and you're spinning up an agency again. But is this something that if I could ring you tomorrow and say, yeah, I want five for five different venues, I could buy it, or how does that work? Jim Nista: Yeah, that's part of the idea for me I wanted to do something as a creative project, but I also wanted to find a commercial space for it too, right? It's no fun just to build something and then walk away from it, and knowing and having a background in the commercial AV space, it it's designed for that, especially the more modern version that is a little bit more active. Both of them are really designed for the commercial AV space, and yeah, I've been working already with some architectural firms. I think that they're the ones that are going to get this right away. But then also there are some AV companies that are really specialists in building video walls in corporate residential spaces, right? And I think the residential spaces are going to be a big upcoming space for this, and also I think this is another factor around this type of work that it lends itself to is most larger cities in North America, have a percentage of a project's budget that has to go to art, and I've noticed more and more a lot of l led walls getting put in to satisfy that piece of the art budget, and so if I can productize this around some of the commercial AV companies that I know are getting those projects, right? They can say, oh, we spent all this money on art, but they're putting in an LED wall. You know exactly what the next step is. They're going to put the stock video on it and call it art, and so if we can have something readily available, somewhat off the shelf, and I say somewhat because I don't know too many clients who are going to just want this exactly as is. This is custom creative. Everyone's gonna want a little bit of customization to it, and I always have known that in any of the template-type projects that I've done is that there's a piece of this that has to be still within the client's control. They feel that they drove some of the creativity, and they wanted certain colors or whatever, and I've left that as part of this. But yes it really truly is intended for this commercial AV space as a somewhat off-the-shelf product that you can just pick up and install into this as the primary visuals on an LED wall. Some of the work that's been done by these generative artists, it's amazing and everything else, but there are six-figure projects. I don't want to put you on the spot, but can you give any sense of how this fits? Or people listening to this going, that would be amazing, but I don't have half a million dollars to buy this original creative. Jim Nista: A lot of that comes with the name, and once you get to be a well-known and a well-identifiable artist suddenly, the prices go up. I'm not there yet, and you know a lot of projects have a tendency to fit into that magic sweet spot of the 10k budget, right? The $10,000 content budget. They're spending $250,000 on the LED and the installation and the content is still in the afterthought realm, and that's really the other idea that I've had around this. What's very common, but when I'll get a phone call, we have an LED wall that's being built. This is the type of content, only sometimes clients are asking for generative. They come back, and they're looking for some sort of animated visuals, motion graphics, or edited video loops, and it typically comes in as a budget of around $10,000 for getting that content pulled together, and that's what I was aiming for with this is that it would fall into that sweet spot. Somebody's looking for more or more customization, certainly, that's possible, and that would impact the price, but to just prep this and get it ready to go for your average installation is intended to be easy and also not half a million dollars, right? At least not yet! Jim Nista: No, and even then, if you reach that stage as an artist, there's another fun factor that comes along with it is now you have gallery exclusivity and all kinds of other things, and while it's fun, those big tickets are being shared amongst a lot of different greedy hands, and so you see something that sells for half a million dollars, the artist might have gotten 20% of that and as sad as that is, there's a lot of hands that get into those pies. So at least for now, by focusing this around a space that I know better, I don't necessarily know that gallery space so well, but I know the commercial AV space a lot better, and focusing on that, just makes a lot more sense to me.  I do interact with commercial art brokers, and that's been happening now for about the last six months or so, but, again, that space is different from the commercial art gallery space, which is very interesting.  I bet. So if people want to know more about this, how can they find you?  Jim Nista: My website is getting redone. I'm in the process of making it prettier, and I still need to put this work on there, because I have put very little on there, so this is all new for me as I'm getting this up this summer. But yeah, it's nista.co, and I'll be enhancing that over the next couple of weeks to be showing some more of the work that I'm doing. I have a few projects that are wrapping up all around the same time, so I should get those wrapped up, get some photographers out to those locations, and then get this content on my website. If you look at it today, it could be showing off some of the generative work.  Okay. Thank you. That was terrific. I now understand it better, although I'm not ready to sit down and try to do it myself.  Jim Nista: No, it's fine. I appreciate this and the opportunity to talk a lot more. I'm having a blast with it. I can't wait to see what else is out there as I get more involved with this work.

This week Dr. Syintist, Chump Slap, and Poppascotch finally get their act together when they decided to discuss a mid 2000s horror game featuring one of the most influential and important peripherals of all time according to the most prominent video game historians and journalists. If you said the Microsoft Kinect, of course you are right! The game is the surreal cursed woods rave party fever dream Rise of Nightmares!

Gareth and Ted chat about Honor Magic Vs, Honor 80, Oukitel WP21, Anbernic RG505, Palm OS emulator, Lelo Pleasure Console, Galaxy A23 5G and Clarks shoes With Gareth Myles and Ted Salmon Join us on Mewe RSS Link: https://techaddicts.libsyn.com/rss iTunes | Google Podcasts | Stitcher | Tunein | Spotify  Amazon | Pocket Casts | Castbox | PodHubUK Feedback and Contributions Anker 521 Powerhouse Hardline on the hardware Lelo's the pleasure console offers exceptional variety and even hooks up to an app! £149

This week, Wayne Kimmel interviewed ASENSEI CEO Steven Webster and VP of Sales Blake Whitcomb on the SeventySix Capital Sports Leadership Show. ASENSEI has unlocked how human movement is observed, understood, coached, and corrected. ASENSEI's form tracking powers personalized experiences for digital fitness apps and connected fitness products. Webster sold his first company to Adobe and then went on to work at Microsoft, alongside the Microsoft Kinect and Xbox Fitness teams. Tune in to find out more!

Schweezy attempts to cancel himself by talking about the Cancel Schweezy Drinking Game, Stranger Things (Season 4), why people like Jesus but not the Bible, the beef between Kenny Loggins and Garth Brooks, Microsoft Kinect creator resigning after watching VR Porn, a Christians Against Ms. Marvel Facebook Group, Ted Cruz being jealous of Pete Davidson, and advice on handjobs, women shaving, rebublicans being bad people, horse kicks, religious people being dumb, sex for men, stop being homophobic, and more. . . . Patreon: Patreon.com/TheSchwegCast . . . Follow Schweezy: linktr.ee/TheSchweezy . . Sponsors: Novilla: https://www.novilla.net/?rfsn=5637876... FNX Fitness: fnx.grsm.io/schwegcast​​​​​​​ Privacy: https://privacy.com/join/2N62A Drizly: drizly.com/i/rkqax​​​​​

The Microsoft Kinect In this episode, I will be discussing the Microsoft Kinect. How it works, how it is used and the issues associated with it as it pertains to paranormal research.

Stephen Miller: How To Leverage Mobile Phones And 3D Data To Build Robust Computer Vision Systems[Audio] Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Google Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | TuneIn | RSSStephen Miller is the Cofounder and SVP Engineering at Fyusion Inc. He has conducted research in 3D Perception and Computer Vision with Profs Sebastian Thrun and Vladlen Koltun while at Stanford University. His area of specialization is AI and Robotics, which included 2 years of undergraduate research with Prof Pieter Abbeel. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:Episode Links:  Stephen Miller's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sdavidmiller/ Stephen Miller's Twitter: https://twitter.com/sdavidmiller Stephen Miller's Website: http://sdavidmiller.com/ Podcast Details: Podcast website: https://www.humainpodcast.com Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/humain-podcast-artificial-intelligence-data-science/id1452117009 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6tXysq5TzHXvttWtJhmRpS RSS: https://feeds.redcircle.com/99113f24-2bd1-4332-8cd0-32e0556c8bc9 YouTube Full Episodes: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxvclFvpPvFM9_RxcNg1rag YouTube Clips: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxvclFvpPvFM9_RxcNg1rag/videos Support and Social Media:  – Check out the sponsors above, it's the best way to support this podcast– Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/humain/creators – Twitter: https://twitter.com/dyakobovitch – Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/humainpodcast/ – LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidyakobovitch/ – Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HumainPodcast/ – HumAIn Website Articles: https://www.humainpodcast.com/blog/ Outline: Here's the timestamps for the episode: (00:00) – Introduction(01:42) – Started in robotics around 2010, training them to perform human tasks (surgical suturing, laundry folding). Clearest bottleneck was not “How do we get the robot to move properly” but “How do we get the robot to understand the 3D space it operates in?”   (04:05) – The Deep Learning revolution around that era was very focused on 2D images. But it wasn't always easy to translate those successes into real world systems: the world is not made up of pixels; it's made up of physical objects in space.(06:57) – When the Microsoft Kinect came out; I became excited about the democratization of 3D, and the possibility that better data was available to the masses. Intuitive data can help us more confidently build solutions. Easier to validate when something fails, easier to give more consistent results. (09:20) – Academia is a vital engine for moving technology forward. In hindsight, for instance, those early days of Deep Learning -- one or two layers, evaluating on simple datasets -- were crucial to ultimately advancing the state of the art we see today. (14:48) – Now that Machine Learning is becoming increasingly commodified, we are starting to see a growing demand for people who can bridge that gap on both sides: conferences requiring code submissions alongside a paper, companies encouraging their engineers to take online ML courses, etc.(17:41) – As we do finally start to see real-time computer vision productized for mobile phones, it does beg the question: won't this exacerbate the digital divide? Flagship devices, always-on network connectivity: whether computing on the edge or in the cloud, there is going to be a disparity. (20:33) – Because of this, I think the ideal model is to treat AI as one tool among many in a hybrid system. Think smart autocomplete, as opposed to automatic novel writing. AI as an assistant to a human expert: freeing them from the minutia so they can focus on high-level questions; aggregating noise so they can be more consistent and efficient. (23:08) – Computer Vision has gone through a number of hype cycles in the last decade –real-time recognition, real-time reconstruction, etc. But the showiest of these ideas seem to rarely leave the realm of gaming, or tech demonstrator. I suspect this is because many of these ideas require a certain level of perfection to be valuable. It's easy to imagine replacing my eyes with something that works 100% of the time. But what about 90%? At what point is the hassle of figuring out whether I'm in the 10% bucket or the 90% bucket, outweighing the convenience?Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

If you have been in the industry for a while, you'll maybe remember all the excitement around using gesture technology to control screens. That was followed by the letdown of how crappy and feeble these gesture-driven touchless working examples turned out to be. Like just about everything, the technology and the ideas have got a lot better, and there is a lot of renewed discussion about how camera sensors, AI and related technologies can change up how consumers both interact ... and transact. Ultraleap is steadily developing a product that lets consumers interact with and experience digital displays using sensors and, when it makes sense, haptic feedback. The company was formed in 2019 when Ultrahaptics acquired Leap Motion, and the blended entity now operates out of both Silicon Valley and Bristol, England. Leap Motion was known for a little USB device and a lot of code that could interpret hand gestures in front of a screen as commands, while Ultrahaptics used ultrasound to project tactile sensations directly onto a user's hands, so you could feel a response and control that isn't really there. Or something like that. It's complicated stuff. I had an interesting chat with Saurabh Gupta, who is charged with developing and driving a product aimed at the digital OOH ad market, one of many Ultraleap is chasing. We got into a bunch of things - from how the tech works, to why brands and venues would opt for touchless, when touchscreens are so commonplace, as is hand sanitizer. TRANSCRIPT Hey, Saurabh, thank you for joining me. Let's get this out of the way. What is an Ultraleap and how did it come about?  Saurabh Gupta: Hey, Dave, nice to be here. Thank you for having me. Ultraleap is a technology company and our mission is to deliver solutions that remove the boundaries between physical and digital worlds. We have two main technologies. We have a computer vision-based hand tracking and gesture recognition technology that we acquired and on the other side of the equation, we have made a haptic technology using ultrasound. The whole premise of how we came about was we started out as a haptics company and that's what our founder and CEO, Tom Carter, built when he was in college, and it was a breakthrough idea for us to be able to deliver the sense of touch in mid air using ultrasound was how we started, and to be able to project haptic sensations in mid-air, one of the key components of that was, you need to understand where the hands are in space and for that we were using computer vision technology by Leap Motion to track and locate user's hands in space, and we had an opportunity to make an acquisition, and some of your listeners may already know about Leap Motion. Leap Motion has been a pioneer in gesture based hand tracking technology since 2010. They've got 10 plus years of pedigree in really refining gesture based hand tracking models. So we had an opportunity to purchase them and make an acquisition in 2019, we completed the acquisition and rebranded ourselves to Ultraleap. So that's how we started. As stated in our mission, it's all about focusing on user experience for the use cases of how users are interacting with their environment, and that environment could be a sort of a 2D screen in certain applications, the application that we'll probably talk about today, but also other aspects of augmented reality and virtual reality, which are on the horizon and our emerging technologies that are gaining more ground. So that's the central approach. How can we enhance the interactivity that users have with a physical environment, through an input and an output technology offerings with gesture as input and haptics being the output?  The whole gesture thing through the years has been kind of an interesting journey, so to speak. I can remember some of the early iterations of Microsoft Kinect gesture, sensors, and display companies and solutions providers doing demos showing, you can control a screen by waving your hand, lifting it up and down and this and that, and I thought this is not going to go anywhere. It's just too complicated. There's too much of a learning curve and everything else.  Now, the idea as it's evolved and like all technology got a lot better is, it's more intuitive, but it's still something of a challenge, right? There's still a bit of a curve because we're now conditioned to touching screens. Saurabh Gupta: Yeah, you're right. One of the key aspects here is that gesture has been around. There's been research that goes back to the early 90s, if not in the 80s, but computer vision technology in general has come a long way. The deep learning models that are powering our hand tracking technology today are a lot more sophisticated. They are more robust, they are more adaptable and they are able to train based on a lot of real world inputs. So what that really means is that since the computing power and the technology behind recognizing gestures has improved, a lot of that has manifested itself in a more approachable user experience, and I completely accept the fact that there is a gap and we've got 10 plus years of learned behavior of using a touchscreen. We use a touchscreen everyday, carry it in our pockets, but you also have to understand that when touch screens became prevelant, there was the type keyboard before that.  So the point that I'm making here with this is that we are pushing the envelope on new technologies and a new paradigm of interactivity. Yes, there is a learning curve, but those are the things that we are actually actively solving for: The gesture tracking technology should be so refined that it is inclusive and is able to perform in any environment, and I think we've made some really good steps towards that. You may have heard of our recent announcement of our latest hand tracking offering called Gemini. The fundamental thing with Gemini is that it's based on years and years of research and analysis on making the computer vision, deep learning models, that power that platform to be as robust, to be low latency, high yield in terms of productivity and really high initialization, which means as part of the user experience, when you walk up to an interface, you expect to use it right away. We know we can do that with touch screens, but if you put this technology complementary to an interface, what we are solving for at Ultraleap is: when somebody walks up to a screen and they put up their hand to start to interact, the computer vision technologies should instantly recognize that there's a person who is looking to interact. That's number one, and I think with Gemini, with the deep model work that we've done, we've made some good progress there. Number two, which is once the technology recognizes that a person wants to interact, now can we make it more intuitive for the person to be as or more productive than she would be with a touchscreen interface? And that's where I think we've made more progress. I will say that we need to make more progress there, but some of the things that we've done, Dave. We have a distance call to interact, which is a video tutorial attraction loop that serves as an education piece. And I'll give you a stat. We ran a really large public pilot in the Pacific Northwest at an airport, and the use case there was immigration check-in, so people coming off the plane, before they go talk to a border security agent, some people to fill out their information on a kiosk. So we outfitted some kiosks with our gesture based technology and the rest were the controls, which were all touchscreen based and over multiple weeks we ran this study with active consumers who actually had very little to no prior experience using gestures and we did this AB test where we measured the gesture adoption rate on the kiosks without a call interact, before a call to interact and after a call to interact, and it increased the gesture adoption rate by 30%, which means that it certainly is helping people to understand how to use the interface. The second stat that came from it, that at the end of the pilot, we were almost at 65% gesture adoption rate, which means almost more than 6 out of 10 people who use that interface used gesture as the dominant interface for input control, and the third piece of this was how long did it take for them to finish their session? We measured that using the gesture based interaction, the time was slightly higher than for the control group that was using a touchscreen, but it wasn't much, it was only 10% higher. Now one can look at that stat and say in a transactional setting where you know, it's going to take you 30 seconds to order a burger, adding an extra second can be a problem, but at the same time, those stats are encouraging for us to think about when we look at that as the baseline to improve from.  So if I'm listening to this and I'm trying to wrap my head around what's going on here, this is not a gesture where you're standing 3 feet away from a screen and doing the Tom cruise Minority Report thing, where you're waving your arm and doing this and that is, can you describe it? Because you're basically doing touch-like interactions and the ultrasonic jets or blasts of air or whatever are giving you the feedback to guide you, right?  Saurabh Gupta: So we've got two avenues that we have going at this from. One is for the self service type offering, so you think of check-in kiosks or ordering kiosks at restaurants or even digital wayfinding, digital directories. We are solving for those primarily led at least in the first phase led by our gesture tracking technology. So gesture being the input modality, complimentary to touch. So, what we do is we build a touch-free application, which is a ready to use application that is available today on Windows based media players or systems to convert existing touch screen-based user interfaces to gesture, but what we've done is we've made the transition a lot more intuitive and easier because what we've done is we've replicated and done a lot of research on this and replicated interaction methods or gestures you would call it. I hate to use gestures as a word, because it gets tagged with weird hand poses and things like that, people pinching and all of that. For us, it's all about how we can replicate the same usage that a typical average consumer will have when she interacts with a touch screen based interface. So we came up with this an interaction method that we call Airpush which is basically, to explain it to your listeners, it's all about using your finger and moving towards an interactive element on screen. But what happens is the button gets pressed even before you approach them based on your forward motion or interaction. Now, the smart math behind all of this is that not only do we track motion, but we also track velocity, which means that for people who are aggressive in terms of their button pressing, which means they do short jabs, we can cater for those or people who are more careful in their approach as they move towards the screen, the system is adaptable to cater to all types of interaction types, and we track all the fingers so you can use multiple fingers too or different fingers as well. So these are some of the things that we've included in our application. So that's one side. The second side is all about interactive advertising, immersion and that's where I think we use our haptic technology more, to engage and involve the user in the interactive experience that they're going to. So for self service and more transactional type use cases, we're using primarily our hand gesture technology. And for immersive experiential marketing, or even the digital out-of-home advertising type of use cases, we are leading without haptic based technology.   And you're involved on the digita, out-of-home side, right? That's part of your charge?  Saurabh Gupta: That's correct. So I lead Ultraleap's out-of-home business. So in the out-of-home business, we have both self service retail, and digital out-of-home advertising businesses that we focus on. David:. So how would that manifest itself in terms of, I am at a train station or I'm out somewhere and there's a digital out-of-home display and I go up and interact with it and you're saying it's a more robust and rich experience than just boinking away at a touchscreen. What's going on? What would be a good example of that? Saurabh Gupta: So a good example of digital out of home activations is that we've partnered with CEN (Cinema Entertainment Network) where we've augmented some of their interactive in cinema displays that are being sold from a programmatic perspective. Now the interactive piece is still being worked into the programmatic side of things, but that's one example of an interactive experience in a place based setting. The other example is experiential marketing activations that we've done with Skoda in retail malls and also an activation that we did with Lego for Westfield. So these are some of the experiences that we've launched and released with our haptics technology and on the self service side we've been working with a lot of providers in the space you may have heard of.  Our recent pilot concluded with PepsiCo where we are bringing in or trialing gestures for their ordering kiosks for their food and beverage partners. So these are some of the things that are going on on both sides in the business. David:. So for the Lego one or the Scoda one, what would a consumer experience?  Saurabh Gupta: So these are all interactive experiences. So for Lego, it was about building a Lego together. So basically using our haptic technology which obviously contains gestures as the input, moving Lego blocks and making an object that was being displayed on a really large LED screen at one of the retail outlets and in London, so a user would walk up, they would use their hands in front of our haptic device to control the pieces on the screen and then join them together and make a Lego out of it and while they're doing that, they're getting the sensation of the tactile sensation of joining the pieces and that all adds up to a really immersive, engaging experience within a digital out of home setting.  So you get the sensation that you're snapping Lego pieces together?  Saurabh Gupta: Yeah, snapping pieces together, controlling so you get the agency of control, and it's one of those sensations that gives you a very high memorability factor. I don't know whether you track the news. This was in 2019. We did actually a really extensive activation with Warner Brothers in LA, and what we did was at one of the cinemas down there for Warner Brothers' three upcoming movies, Shazam, The Curse of La Llorona, and Detective Pikachu, we added interactive movie posters using haptics in the cinema lobby, and this would complement the digital poster network that was already existing at that location, and over the course of the activation, which was around six weeks long, we had almost 150,000 people that went through the cinema and we actually did in partnership with QBD, we did a lot of analytics around what the. performance was of an interactive movie poster experience within a digital out-of-home setting and got some really great stats.  We measured a conversion rate between an interactive experience versus a static digital signage experience. The conversion rate was almost 2x, 33% increase in dwell time, like people were spending more time in front of an interactive sign versus a static sign. Attention span was significantly higher at 75%, 42% lift in brand favorability. So these are really interesting stats that gave us the confidence that haptic technology combined with gesture based interface has a lot of value in providing and delivering memorable experiences that people remember. And that's the whole point with advertising, right? That's the whole point. You want to present experiences that provide a positive association of your branded message with your target consumer, and we feel that our technology allows that connection to be made  One of the assumptions/expectations that happened when the pandemic broke out was that this was the end of touchscreens, nobody's ever going to want to touch the screen again, the interactivity was dead and I made a lot of those assumptions myself and turns out the opposite has happened. The touch screen manufacturers have had a couple of pretty good years and the idea is that with a touchscreen, you can wipe it down and clean your hands and do all that stuff. But you're at a far greater risk standing four feet away from somebody across a counter, ordering a burger or a ticket or whatever it may be.  So when you're speaking with solutions providers, end user customers and so on are you getting the question of, “Why do I need to be touchless?” Saurabh Gupta: Yeah, it's a fair point, Dave, and let me clarify that. Look, from our perspective, we are focusing on building the right technology and building the right solutions that elevate the user experience. Hygiene surely is part of that equation, but I accept your points that there are far greater risks for germ transmission than shared surfaces, I totally accept that, and yes, there is a TCO argument, the total cost of ownership argument that has to be made here also.  The point that I will make here is that we fundamentally believe and being a scale-up organization that is focusing on new technology, we have to believe that we are pushing the technology envelope where what we are focusing on is elevating the user experience from what the current model provides. So yes, there will be some use cases where we are not a good fit, but contactless as a category or touchless as a category, maybe the pandemic catalyzed it, maybe it expedited things, but that category in itself is growing significantly.  A couple of stats here, right? The contactless payment as a category itself, 88% of all retail transactions in 2020 were contactless, that's a pretty big number And assuming that retail is a $25 trillion dollar market. That's a huge chunk.  But that's about speed and convenience though, right? Saurabh Gupta: Totally. But all I'm saying is contactless as a category is preferable from a user perspective. Now, gesture based interactivity as a part of that user flow, we fundamentally believe that gesture based interactivity plays a part in the overall user journey. So let me give you an example.  Some of the retailers that we are talking to are thinking about new and interesting ways to remove levels of friction from a user's in-store experience. So there are multiple technologies that are being trialed at the moment. You may have heard of Amazon's just walk out stores as an example. You don't even have to take out your wallet and that is completely based on computer vision, as an example, but there are other retailers who are looking to use technology to better recognize who their loyal customers are. So think of how we used to all have loyalty cards for Costco or any other retailer.  They're removing that friction to say, when you walk through the door, you've done your shopping and you're at the payment powder, we can recognize who you are. And if we recognize who you are, we can give you an offer at the last mile, and in that scenario, they are integrating gestures as part of the completely contactless flow. This is where I think we are gaining some traction. There is a product that we are a part of that hasn't been announced yet. I can't go into details specifically on who it is and when it's going to be released. But we are part of a computer vision based fully automated checkout system that uses gesture as the last mile for confirmation and things of that nature. That's where we are gaining traction. Overall point here is that we are focusing on really showcasing and delivering value on how you can do certain things in a more natural and intuitive way. So think of digital wayfinding at malls, right? You have these giant screens that are traditionally touchscreens, right? When you think of that experience, it has a lot of friction in it, because first of all, you can't use touch as effectively on a large screen because you can't swipe from left to right to turn a map as an example. We fundamentally believe that the product could be better with gesture. You can gesture to zoom in, zoom out, rotate a map, and find your direction to a store. Those kinds of things can be augmented. That experience can be augmented with adding just a capability as opposed to using a touchscreen based interface. So those are the high value use cases that we are focusing on.  So it's not really a case where you're saying, you don't need to touch screen overlay anymore for whatever you're doing, Mr. Client, you just use this instead. It's tuned to a particular use case and an application scenario, as opposed to this is better than a touch overlay? Saurabh Gupta: I think that is a mission that we are driving towards, which is, we know that there is potentially a usability gap between gesture in terms of its evolution than touchscreen. We are looking to bridge that gap and get to a point where we can show more productivity using gesture.  And the point is that with our technology, and this is something that you referenced a second ago, you can turn any screen into a touchscreen. So you don't necessarily need a touchscreen and then you can convert it to gesture. You can convert any LCD screen to an interactive screen. So there is some deep argument there as well. What's the kit, like what are you adding? Saurabh Gupta: Just a camera and a USB cable, and some software. And if you're using haptics feedback, how does that work? Saurabh Gupta: So haptics is a commercially off the shelf product. So it's another accessory that gets added to the screen. However, that contains the camera in it so you don't need an additional camera. That also connects to external power and a USB back to the media player.  So as long as you've got a USB on the media player, you're good, and right now your platform is Windows based. Do you have Android or Linux?  Saurabh Gupta: Good question, Dave. So right now we are Windows based, but we know it's of strategic importance for us to enable support on additional platforms. So we are starting to do some work on that front. You'll hear some updates from us early next year on at least the hand tracking side of things being available on more platforms than just Windows.  How does economics work? I suspect you get this question around, “All right. If I added a touch overlay to a display, it's going to cost me X. If I use this instead, it's going to cost me Y.  Is it at that kind of parity or is one a lot more than the other?  Saurabh Gupta: It depends on screen size, Dave, to be honest. So the higher in screen size you go, the wider the gap is. I would say that for a 21 or 23 inch screen and up, the economics are in our favor for a comparable system. And are you constrained by size? I think of all the LED video walls that are now going into retail and public spaces and so on, and those aren't touch enabled. You really wouldn't want to do that, and in the great majority of cases with this, in theory, you could turn a potentially fragile, please don't touch surface like that into an interactive surface, but are you constrained to only doing things like a 55 inch canvas or something? Saurabh Gupta: This will require a little bit of technical explanation. The Lego example that I talked about was targeted on, I would say a large outdoor LED screen. So the concept here is that if you want one-to-one interactivity.  So what do I mean by one-to-one interactivity? One-to-one interactivity is that basically when in our interface, when the user approaches the screen, there is an onscreen cursor that shows up, and that on screen cursor is what is the control point for the user. Now one-to-one interactivity for us to achieve that where the cursor is at the same height or there's no parallax between where the finger is and where the cursor is, for that you have to be connected to or at the screen, and when you are connected to the screen, based on our current camera technology, we can control up to a 42 inch screen for one-to-one interactivity, but we've also been doing exams showing examples where if you connect the sensor to slightly in front of the display, then you can cover a wider area and we've been able to showcase examples of our technology being used on up to a 75 inch LCD screen in portrait mode.  So then any larger than that, the scale gets a little wonky, right? Cause you've got a person standing in front of a very large display and it just starts to get a little weird. Saurabh Gupta: Yeah. It's like putting a large TV in a small living room. So you need to be slightly further away because then it gets too overwhelming, and for that, we have worked with certain partners and they've done some really interesting work like this company called IDUM, they built a pedestal and so that pedestal encloses our tracking device, and that can be placed several feet from a large immersive canvas, like a LED wall, as an example, in a museum type activation, and people can walk by and then they can control the whole screen with that pedestal slightly further away from the screen. So it's like a Crestron controller or something except for a big LED display!  Saurabh Gupta: Exactly. It's like a trackpad in front of the screen, but slightly further away.  Gotcha. All right. Time flew by, man. We're already deep into this. You were telling me before we hit record that your company will be at NRF and you may also have people wandering around IEC but if people want to know more about your company, they go to ultraleap.com?  Saurabh Gupta: That's correct. Ultraleap.com, we have all the information there and David, it was great to talk to you and thank you for the opportunity.   

Jason Anthony Harris (Public Speaking) joins us for another round of spooky ghosts! This week we learn more about the dreaded Toby and the Microsoft Kinect!

Tech News and Commentary Dave and the team discuss a multimillion fine against Facebook in Britain, Microsoft Kinect back from the dead, Microsoft shutting down LinkedIn in China, NASA helping to narrow the digital divide, Waze and Headspace, Fisher Price adding bluetooth to their toy phones, LG paying the costs of a GM recall, the […]

Josh is joined by Jen Pollard to discuss her life with tech, but they also cover the latest news from Google TV, Microsoft Kinect, and Xbox. The post Entertainment 2.0 #568 – Weeping in the Kitchen appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

Today we're working up a sweat as Anthony, Kelly, Arnaldo, and Paul are here with a special Patron request episode to discuss video game motion controls! First, we dive into the biggest question: why do we want motion controls in video games? (10:30). Some of the first motion control concepts are up next with arcade classics like Hang On (19:00). With the arcade in the rear view mirror, we move to the home market, first with the Atari Mindlink (27:00) and then the inspiration for the Infinity Gauntlet (probably) and antagonist of lefties everywhere, the Power Glove! (35:00) Pathetic flailing simulator the Sega Activator is lovingly discussed next (57:00) followed by the Sony Eye Toy (1:07:00) and the first big motion control success, Babysitting Mama! On the Nintendo Wii! (1:12:00) For the last segment we try to capitalize on the success of the Wii with the Microsoft Kinect (1:30:00) and Playstation Move/PSVR and talk about what the future of motion controls will look like (1:59:00).   Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/regionfreegamers Talk to us! https://linktr.ee/regionfreegamers Email regionfreegamers@gmail.com   Music: Terminator Theme - Arnaldo Perez Daytona Match - Super Spike V'Ball Mario Kart Wii - Luigi Circuit

Red Hat just made big changes to how CentOS works, we breakdown the good, and the bad. Plus how you can DIY a cheap IP KVM using a Raspberry Pi. Special Guests: Alex Kretzschmar and Hector Martin.

About James Ashley: James Ashley has been a software architect and development lead over a decade that has seen the rise of gestural interfaces and holographic headsets. He wrote Beginning Programming for the Microsoft Kinect in 2012 as an introduction to programming for 3D cameras and gestures and more recently co-developed a course for LinkedIn Learning on HoloLens development. He was in the preview dev program for the MagicLeap and his company received one of the largest creative grants from MagicLeap for researching and building enterprise applications for spatial computing devices. He currently leads Holographic and VR development in the AEC space for VIM, based in Atlanta, Georgia. Outline: 1 hr speaking / 1 hr Q&A Many people have loosely followed the victories and setbacks in the spatial computing industry over the past few years. In this talk, I want to provide a deeper dive into the aspirations of the industry and the roots of spatial computing in the battle chess scene in Star Wars and the holodeck from Star Trek TNG. I'll discuss the competing hardware created by Microsoft and HoloLens for spatial computing and the strengths each brings to the endeavor, breaking down the different approaches to human-computer interactions, display technologies, and the tough trade-offs each company was forced to make. Finally, I want to describe the excitement and heartbreaks that face any developer who chooses to work in this space and why the journey toward holographic ubiquity has been one of the greatest adventures of my life. Social media: @JAMESASHLEY on twitter http://www.imaginativeuniversal.com (personal) https://www.vimaec.com/ (work) Want to learn more about those events and connect with the XReality community? *Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/bQ6neHR *Join our Facebook Fan Page:https://www.facebook.com/XRealityMeetup *Watch recorded speaker event video: https://www.youtube.com/dominiquewu *Join XReality Membership - sign up our newsletter: https://bit.ly/32jBqAr

The Game Jawns crew sits down and talks about all kinds of VR and AR hardware with returning guest Shane Casserly along with a new presence at the table, Will Gray. They discuss Vive, Oculus, Samsung Odyssey, Windows Mixed Reality, Wii, Microsoft Kinect, Rec Room, Beat Saber (https://store.steampowered.com/app/620980/Beat_Saber/), and much more!    Podcast Info: Host: Mitch Cook @MCook2016 (https://twitter.com/Mcook2016) Co-host: Jack Forschner @JackForschner (https://twitter.com/JackForschner) Guest Podcasters: Shane Casserly (Xbox Gamertag: Willvasco (https://www.trueachievements.com/gamer/Willvasco))  Consider supporting us on our Patreon at: patreon.com/lanternlightstudios (https://gamejawns.podbean.com/gamejawns/episode/patreon.com/lanternlightstudios) Like what you hear? Don't forget to follow and share us around to others that you think might like us too! Want to interact with the Lantern Light Studios and the Game Jawns crew? Follow us directly at https://gamejawns.podbean.com/ (https://gamejawns.podbean.com/) Producer: Anthony Zoccola - @AnthonyZoccola (http://twitter.com/anthonyzoccola) Audio Engineer: Steve Angello - @StephenAngello (https://twitter.com/stephenangello) Support this podcast

Literature mentioned in the episode: Clinical Practice guidelines: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1808273/ Link to the National Center on Health, Physical Activity and Disability website: https://www.nchpad.org/ Link to the Rehabilitation, Engineering and Assistive Technology Society of Northern American website: https://www.resna.org/ Milgrom, R., Foreman, M, Standeven, J., Engsberg, J.R., & Morgan, K. (accepted). Reliability and Validity of the Microsoft Kinect for Assessment of Manual Wheelchair Propulsion: Journal of Rehabilitation Research and Development. Morgan, K., Tucker, S., Dashner, J., Walker, C., Garrett, L., Hollingsworth, H., & Gray, D. (under revision). Influence of a community-based exercise program on fitness, endurance and strength of mobility device users. Disability and Health Journal. Morgan, K. A., Tucker, S. M., Engsberg, J. R., & Klaesner, J. (2015). A motor learning approach to wheelchair training for new manual wheelchair users: A pilot study. Journal of Spinal Cord Medicine, 1-20. Morgan, K. A., Engsberg, J.R. & Gray, D.B. (2015). Wheelchair Skills for New Manual Wheelchair Users: Health Care Professional and Wheelchair User Perspectives. Disability and Rehabilitation: Assistive Technology, 1-11.

How does the Microsoft Kinect work? What's Microsoft's position on hacking the Kinect? What are some of the most creative hacks? Join Jonathan and Chris as they break down the astonishing potential of the Kinect. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://news.iheart.com/podcast-advertisers

Most of us don't actually zone out in front of the TV. In fact, we give off all kinds of clues to what we really think about the shows we are watching. Japanese startup, T-Vision Insights has come up with a way both to measure and to monetize those reactions. Today we sit down with founder and CEO Yasushi Gunya and we talk about T-Vision's business and the future of advertising in video. T-Vision Insights already has 100's of customers and is monitoring thousands of households both in Japan and the US and we dive into some of the differences in how different kinds of people watch and react to TV. I guarantee some of the results will surprise you. It's a great conversation, and I think you'll enjoy it. Show Notes How AI can determine viewer engagement Proof that women watched the super bowl more closely than men How men and women watch TV differently Which TV shows and commercials  are most engaging The danger of advertising on the Walking Dead How privacy concerns are addressed Why it's hard to sell genuinely new innovations The most engaging parts of commercials Why starting a startup is not really risky in Japan Links from the Founder Everything you ever wanted to know about T-Vision Insights T-Vision Insight's ranking of the most engaging commercials in Japan Friend Yasushi on Facebook Leave a comment Transcript Welcome to Disrupting Japan, straight talk from Japan’s most successful entrepreneurs. I’m Tim Romero and thanks for joining me. This episode is a fun one. You know, I’ve always considered watching TV to be a passive activity. I mean, aside from sleeping, it seems like the most passive thing you could spend your time doing. You zone out while entertainment is poured into your brain, but it turns out, that’s not quite the case. TV watchers are a subtly active bunch and as we watch, we give off all kinds of signals to indicate our opinion of what we are being shown. Well, Yasushi Gunya, founder and CEO of T-Vision Insights has developed an unobtrusive way to measure viewers’ reactions to TV shows and to TV commercials. It’s already deployed in thousands of homes in Japan and in the United States, and the results are remarkable. T-Vision is already showing global 100 brands how consumers react to their commercials and to the TV shows that they air in, and they provide a data-driven approach to show what content is the most engaging and what kind of response it evokes, but what I think is even more interesting is that T-Vision’s data shows that we all engage with TV differently. Adults engage differently than children, Americans watch differently than Japanese, and men watch very differently than women do. In fact, there’s a big difference between how men and women watch sports on TV, and I guarantee you, it’s not the difference you think it is. But Yasushi tells that story much better than I can. So, let’s get right to the interview. [pro_ad_display_adzone id="1404"  info_text="Sponsored by"  font_color="grey" ]  [Interview] Tim: Cheers! Yasushi: Cheers! Tim: So, we are sitting here in the We Work office in this incredibly hot Tokyo afternoon with Yasushi Gunya of T-Vision Insights, so thanks for sitting down with us. Yasushi: Thank you, Tim, and let’s cheer since we have beer here. Tim: That tastes good on a hot day. So, T-Vision Insights measures the viewer’s reactions to TV shows and the commercials, but why don’t you explain basically how it works and what it is? Yasushi: Okay, our core technology is AI-backed algorithm and we just inserted to a sensor and set the sensor on the top of TV. As a result, we can understand how people in front of the TV will react to the contents of TV, and actually, we have already said this kind of stuff to 3,000 households in US and Japan. Tim: Okay, and we say ‘how they react,’ so is this a device sort of like Microsoft Kinect,

EP107- Listener Questions   Listener Questions Q1: Brands selling direct on their own site Shawn Cheng What do u think about a brand to run their own brand store, not through market place such as eBay, Amazon or Alibaba? Jamie Dooley Hi Scot & Jason: Have you heard of any brands seeing true success building a D2C E-Comm business through their own websites? (On a path to do 10-20% of sales and/or 8-9 figures in annual sales?). D2C seems like D2C was a big trend a year ago but I am not hearing about success stories where sales justified significant spend. Scott Silverman Do you think a new brand without an e-commerce site or digital presence could be built by selling on Amazon? Secondarily, should manufacturers selling on their own e-comm sites, shut them down and just sell via retailers? Q2 Mobile Conversion Gap Ari Nahmani Mobile conversion rate... retailers are getting more and more of their web traffic from mobile, but those users are half or a third as likely to convert. They don’t seem to be coming back on desktop. So what’s happening? We see across the board where YoY traffic is flat, revenue is down due to the device mix over-indexing on mobile YoY. How do we explain this behavior? Where are those users purchasing if ecommerce growth is up?  I’m seeing his trend on several client sites and I recall one of your shows that this trend was discussed. Q3: Omni-Channel Fulfillment Alexandro Volakis order sourcing in an omnichannel network. how do you decide where its best to ship from? Q4: Singles Day in the US Julia Ptock How do you think about Singles Day (11.11.)? Are there some retailers who take part at this event in the USA? Amazon is focusing on Cyber Week (Cyber Monday & Black Friday) but doesn't show interest in Single Day. Do you have an idea why? Q5: Toys R Us impact on Holiday Promotions Melissa Burdick How will the bankruptcy of Toys R Us impact Amazon this Holiday? Is it going to be a bloodbath in pricing this Holiday with TRU stores cutting prices and Amazon price matching (and then closing stores shortly after holiday)? https://www.usatoday.com/.../toys-r-us-store.../683762001/ Amazon News Amazon opening permanent device shops inside of some Chicago WholeFoods stores.  Jason visited one under construction. Amazon lowers prices on marketplace sellers products.  It looks like primarily 3000 beauty SKU's at the moment. More Amazon Private Label: Furniture:  Rivet - “stylish and versatile mid-century modern furniture and décor".  Mid-century modern aesthetic, focus on small space solutions, 1 year warranty, prime exclusive Stone & Beam - Higher end price points.  modern farmhouse aesthetic, 3 year warranty. Athlesure Rebel Canyon - Low price point, Men's and Woman's lounge clothing. Peak Velocity - Higher price point active wear (Under Armor competitor), prime exclusive GoodSport - Men's and Woman's moisture wicking apparel Baby Mama-Bear - Relaunched diapers Amazon Private Label articles: Bloomberg piece on Amazon sportswear w/ L2 Glossy covers Amazon Gift Guide (which focuses on exclusive Amazon products) http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, SVP Commerce & Content at Razorfish, and Scot Wingo, Founder and Executive Chairman of Channel Advisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 107 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Thursday November 9, 2017. New beta feature - Google Automated Transcription of the show Transcript Jason:  [0:25] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show this is episode 107 being recorded on Thursday November 9th 2017 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scot Wingo. Scot:  [0:40] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason Scott show listeners Jason how you doing. Jason:  [0:46] I'm doing terrific Scott if you like there's a number of exciting things I've been eager to talk to you about. Scot:  [0:53] Let's talk about the Chicago weather first. Jason:  [0:55] It's sad I feel like we've had a super mild winter so far but this week it turned cold so we've been in the forties and tomorrow it's, can a potentially drop it on the twenties in snow so I've had to visit a portion of my closet I haven't seen in awhile. [1:15] What about Raleigh is it beautiful and sunny still. Scot:  [1:18] It wasn't beautiful but it is still like in the 50s so I enjoy hearing about your snow stories. Jason:  [1:24] I am always happy to help you feel better about your life by hearing about mine. Scot:  [1:29] Thanks man. Jason:  [1:30] I would imagine that you're feeling some extra warmth because I feel like there's been some exciting Star Wars announcements later that keep you up warm and comfy. Scot:  [1:39] Yes it is a great time to be a Star Wars fan we went through kind of. Salmon there for a long time and I know we have the prequel trilogy which is exciting and then we didn't know what the future would hold and then with the Disney acquisition the announcements coming Fast and Furious so we have first of all we have. 2 Star Wars movies just right in the pipeline right behind each other which is exciting as we record this 35 days until the last Jedi 34 if you go on the. Actual opening on the 14th 196 days for the Solo movie so excited about that little Star Wars story and then the big news is at the. Industrial, conference call at Bob Iger announce to Star Wars things so Ryan Johnson the guy thats directing Last Jedi they loved working with him so much they've given him his own Trilogy so it's going to be some, three part story in the Star Wars universe but not part of the normal Saga and then they're also. I'm sure you seen this but they're doing a streaming, thing at Disney that this is all the rage everyone's unbundling and now will pay, 8 times as much for all the content but anyway they're doing a Disney streaming Channel and they announced a Star Wars live show will be on that so. Lot of great new Star Wars content con. Jason:  [2:56] Yeah yeah yeah the TV show super exciting I'm with you I've been annoyed by all this unbundling like I, I suspect you and I both had to buy the CBS subscription to get Star Trek I probably would have already had to give the Disney one due to my son so maybe like in that case I'm not as upset but. [3:16] And you and I both been walking around with her iPhone 10s for almost 2 weeks now so what's what's the verdict for you. Scot:  [3:23] It's awesome it is a great phone the. [3:28] Notches not a big deal the face ID is really cool I really like it it's very handy to buy stuff it is a little unusual to Skylake pick up your phone and look at it, but you get used to it, I have an Android phone that is the same feel as iPhone and everyone will take it out of my pocket and look at it and then I feel really ridiculous cuz it doesn't look back at me. [3:50] Just kind of like what you think I'm an iPhone and then I would put my phone and it unlocks to the face ID thing is pretty cool how do you like yours. Jason:  [4:00] I can agree on how you're looking your Android phone is how my son looks at everything that isn't like an echo like he expects All Electronics to be able to talk to him. [4:11] But I have been super happy with the 10 I'm with you everything has worked pretty smooth. Uniden it I have is without the button there's not an obvious way to feel with the right orientation of the phone at so I now fine I put out of my pocket upside down or backwards more than I. I used to. Scot:  [4:33] Get a feel for the camera bump. Jason:  [4:35] Yeah I have. Scot:  [4:37] About should be on your right index finger. Jason:  [4:39] That that I would do you answers part of me that doesn't want to like get a bunch of smudgy fingerprints on the camera now that I'm not OCD. Scot:  [4:48] That's why I put the camera there. Jason:  [4:50] Gotcha I'm think I did put the leather case on it the kid cancer got the phone a lot so I felt like I needed some protection and so now I what I feel for is the. [5:02] There's no weather in the bottom of the phone so that's how you can tell. [5:06] Yeah so that's worked out well and what's killing me is I do use an iPad a fair amount and the muscle memory now to go back and forth between I feel like I've gotten used to the all the gestures. [5:20] Answer that the button still being on my iPad is killing me so I feel like I'm going to have to get a new iPad when they come out just to have them all work the same. Scot:  [5:28] Yeah I like the new gestures I don't like swipe down from upper right to get to the control panel because I frequently hold it. One handed and like that's pretty weird gesture to do single-handed. [5:41] So I kind of don't like that and I did hear there's a rumor of their members on the. Apple Hardware sides today or I read a rumor they're working on a high-end iPad that will have face ID in a bunch of other cool stuff and then there's a lot of rumors going around about a r Hardware that they're working on which is kind of interesting. Jason:  [6:00] Yeah man you know in some ways. [6:04] There's not new AR Hardware in this device but this is the first device with the horsepower to Sephora support the the new AR software kit and so there are some cool. [6:16] New AR apps that you can run on this phone that you couldn't run on other phones which is pretty cool we make that make him up in one of the listener question. Scot:  [6:24] Yep and that this is nursing one of these kind of these designers kind of tries to pontificate what the future looks like these things that this interesting observation that the sensors that are in the notch on the 10. Are really everything you need for a r glasses today they took essentially kind of the the look and feel of the 10 and they put that not kind of on bridge of glasses and then they, they made glasses come around them which is kind of an interesting I have never thought of it but it is kind of interesting. Because it's doing the face ID in all the pieces you need to do that is exactly what you need to turn that around and be able look out at the world with with ar glasses so. [7:03] That could be kind of part of what they're thinking about. Jason:  [7:05] So an interesting thing in this comes into play in some in-store retail environments the Microsoft Kinect has been the the cheapest ubiquitous sort of. [7:17] 3D camera with. [7:19] Infrared distance measuring that was out there until there were tons of little Nitch applications that hacked some solution using that. [7:27] Does Microsoft Kinect camera so there's lots of these like 3D body scanners that you could potentially use for. [7:35] Uploading your avatar to your favorite e-commerce site or or made to order clothing or measuring rooms for furniture and all all these different things in there a bunch of in-store applications where are these. Is Microsoft Kinect camera got hacked in Microsoft just announced that they're discontinuing the Kinect and so that's going to go away and of course the. Everything that was in that big camera module is now you know there's a better version in this little notch on the on the iPhone and so I think we're going to start to see a bunch of. Interesting apps and use cases where they're essentially using an iPhone just for that that sensor array and in a bunch of. I fixed installations in which I think would be cool you know the bummer at the moment is there going to be hard to Source in there going to be expensive for a while. [8:27] And I sure wish they had them on the back as well cuz I feel like. [8:30] Retail uses it would be very handy to have that sense of Ray pointing out so that we could use it for some other uses. Scot:  [8:38] Vehicle in the other exciting gadgets tree portal. Jason:  [8:42] Well I know you got a new one that I'm eager to hear about when we'll get to that in a minute the other thing I'm just over over all excited for this week, is so we recording this Thursday night which is Friday morning in China so it's the day before singles day we'll talk about that like that would be an exciting event on the show just anyway but it's extra exciting because, our very first show was a recap of singles day which tells me that the next should we do will be our our anniversary show. Scot:  [9:14] Yeah if you're coming in on two years who knew. Jason:  [9:17] Exactly I do think you put up with me for that one. Scot:  [9:20] It's been a struggle but I managed to figure it out. Jason:  [9:25] I appreciate it I'm I can't speak for the listeners that II. Scot:  [9:28] Speed of a source of it's been awhile since we did a question episode, way back to episode 96 actually so put put a call out this morning and we actually got a very strong response our listeners have a lot of questions, so let's jump into someone's no questions. [9:59] Questions first one is not really questions more of a statement it's from Natalie Bowman and she says hello. Jason:  [10:07] Hey Natalie thanks for responding to the questions. Scot:  [10:11] Hi Natalie okay and then next question is kind of interesting three people. Who's similar nuances of the same kind of a topic so the first flavor of this was from Shawn ching and. I said what do you think about a brand to run their own Brand store not to a Marketplace such as eBay Amazon or Alibaba. So you should have ran have their own e-commerce site is kind of the flavor there and then are a good friend of the show Jamie Dooley asked hey Scott Jason have you heard of any brand seeing true success Building address. Consumer e-commerce business through their own website so should you do it and then have we seen anyone that's had success. I in any kind of adds a Nuance you know it seem like it was a big trend of year ago but I'm not hearing about success stories and then another friend of the show Scott's ornament he said what do you think about it there's a new brand. [11:10] That doesn't have any Commerce site should they just start on Amazon or Marketplace like that. And then should manufacturers be selling all their own e-commerce sites are just shutting down and Salvia retailers so. [11:23] Interesting flavor kind of in this topic of Brands going direct that we've hit on. Probably at least every other week if not every week but what's your advice when a brand comes to you with with those flavored questions. Jason:  [11:35] Yeah so I agree they're all related to Sean and Scott's to me are almost identical right like the two spins on the exact same thing which is. Do you need to have your own branded site in addition to selling on the marketplaces are you can you get by with just having a presence on the market places in my strong advice to anyone, it's trying to build a long-term sustainable company is I would I would definitely encourage you to have your own. Site in addition to you know whatever efforts make sense for you on Market places in. The reason I say that is a couple in most cases you're not going to do the kind of volume on your own site that you're going to do on the marketplaces I get it in so it you know it maybe. Your first effort might be your presence on the marketplaces and it may not be that appealing to invest a ton in your own site. But the thing is. We are all essentially digital sharecroppers on the the marketplaces platforms right like. [12:41] They can change their terms and conditions at any time they could be horribly under favorable the. We could intentionally or unintentionally run a fall of any of their their policies or. [12:56] He perceived to run afoul of them and get cut out of those Marketplace it there all kinds of bad things that can happen on the marketplaces. And it didn't given time you look at it and say hey yeah I know there were some Old Market places that change the rules all the time but Amazon has been much more consistent or. Alibaba is much more consistent or whatever the case is. [13:16] Overtime that can just shift so it's just really risky to have a hundred percent of your. Brand presence be on this site that you don't own and you don't control and that your landlord can essentially. Raise your lease and change that your terms or kick you out in anytime and so I do think it it absolutely makes sense to have your own destination on the web that you own and you absolutely can. And to the extent that your brand can drive any organic traffic that you can build any of your own falling. It just makes more sense and it's more profitable to send those customers to your own site instead of. To the marketplace you can avoid the take rate you can still in most cases for Phil through you know whatever fulfillment vehicle you're using on the marketplace. And you know as you get to know some of those customers into the relationship with his customers like this gets a little dicey but you know there certainly is a, percentage of your customers you can shift to be direct on your own site and you just you know on those marketplaces you're totally disintermediated from the customer, and so you did you know even if it's only a small percentage of your customer base, you want a direct relationship with some customers if only to get feedback to be able to understand what kind of content is selling and not selling and to build to run a B test and do all sorts of other things so for those reasons, I would say you absolutely have to invest in your own site, and I'll you know I'll give you a caveat that it maybe isn't the first investment you make are the biggest investment you make that that fair to you Scott. Scot:  [14:54] Yeah and a lot of it depends where you're coming from too so you know there's there's many buckets of Brands these days and it's. It's becoming increasingly easy to create a new brand when we were growing up, new brands had this like huge hurdle to launch them yet to do a TV campaign and all this kind of stuff and now we're just seeing an explosion of brand so so I would use a framework where there's kind of Legacy Brands and then, new kind of born recently kind of Brands and. Do I cycle I see with newly-born Brands is if we take and there's kind of two segments there but let's just take. More Scrappy auction real ones they to Sean's Point Sean ass this year they. They start on marketplaces soap to marketplaces a great place to start a colony e-commerce training wheels because they have these incumbent. [15:51] Consumers already there so just like riding a bike with training wheels it's hard to steer pedal and balance so training wheels takes balance out of the equation starting a direct-to-consumer business you know it's hard to acquire customers. Gold products can get the products to the consumers and and all that so I Marketplace simply gives you the training wheels by giving you a customer sand, I wanting them to you to your pointer sharecropping of whatever whatever analogy is there and but you know to your point. Next product life cycle needs to be maybe start on Amazon you go multi Marketplace but the sooner you can kind of create your own presents on the internet where you can control the brand at the better, and then there's a lot of tools to Jamie's Point kind of weave that in the companies that have had a substantial kind of was caught materials over 10% of their sales on their website, there's a lot of tricks that utilize to do that and what are the simplest ones is offering something special to your website customers. You could think about special pricing but that actually kind of creates this. [17:04] The problem so that's usually not what brands do but usually special products so for example Under Armour I don't know if their website is out there. To talk about this publicly I don't know if their websites 10% of their sales I doubt it is cuz they have that huge wholesale component yeah. But you're one of the clever things they do on their site and it did I know is successful is if you're an atheist of their brand that's where they launched a lot of new stuff so that's kind of like the exclusive Channel 4 new stuff and then there's this waterfall maybe the new stuff there for. [17:38] A month in an account waterfalls into retail and then it waterfalls down into a Marketplace or something like that that's interesting kind of thing a lot people do exclusives on different channels the mattresses and why electronic guys are King. the digitally native vertical Brands what's interesting about kind of those is they start really with a website and then we seen many of them. Going to realize you can only get so far with that approach so it's almost kind of speaks to the store location is the right strategy so they are diversifying into offline a lot of them are exploring Marketplace is a lot of exploring Retail Partners those kinds of think so. So I think the best strategy is a balanced kind of from a risk and a channel perspective is to have a portfolio of channels and that includes having website. Jason:  [18:24] Yeah tonight I would totally agree in like just to tell you more explicitly answer Jamie's question, I bet you hit it like all those digital need a vertical brands, all you know hit the eight or nine figures in in direct e-commerce sales so that's in a bona Bose ModCloth Warby Parker Casper, you know all of those guys certainly do it there's some some pretty big brands that we don't hear about as much for e-commerce but you know I think the surprise people when you see how big they are but like revolve clothing I think is a big one and then of course stitchfix which arguably started out as a multi, vendor retailer but but is Shifting to a branded, to be more of a man with her own products I mean obviously you know got got pretty darn near a billion dollars. Predominantly through their own website so I think I think Jamie's right that the hype, was there before and I absolutely don't think it's one of these things were you build it in your guaranteed success so you know I think, to to Jamie's point there was probably a light-year a couple years ago when I went. I love I just want to website you I called you know I'll be. [19:41] Entitled to these sort of eight or nine figure, run rates and you know we certainly seen a lot of people fail but they're absolutely have been and continue to be some successful sites sites in that space. Scot:  [19:56] It was talking about just failure for some kind of like what brands do wrong the number one thing I see is, the brands of everyone loves this map pricing concept and many Brands Don't Force It so it will do is still set for website and all, yeah they're their there. I have my pricing so they adhere to that obviously because they believed in the policy and they're selling stuff directly there and then they will have absolutely no kind of understanding of consumer. Expectations around shipping cost and time so they'll have you know a $50 widget for $10 shipping and, you know you can upgrade to 3 days for $40 and you know the $10 shipping is the equivalent of USPS. Yo week. Week plus you 7 to 10 day type of delivery without tracking and then they're shocked when they don't sell a lot because you know why we put up this website and you know we have all this traffic and no one's buying things why is that. Did he have to have that kind of discussion about well you're the single. Most expensive place to buy your products on the Internet is your website your shipping and you know the cost or just way off base with what consumers want and then another funny one is a lot of Brands and you know. To go to the legal department and all the stuff and they end up like not doing the basics like user-generated reviews and things like that because. [21:27] How to get really wrapped around the axle like what if someone leaves a bad review should we go delete that or what should we do and you know should we should we go after them with a cease-and-desist letter and it's kind of funny to have this discussion because. There are people reviewing their products right there on Amazon but it just shows you're somebody's Legacy companies have such a hard time wrapping your head around this digital world there's some the things I see that happen all the time or these Brands really get off base with her web store. Jason:  [21:56] Yeah I know told you I've had all those conversations. That you another there is just a lot of back of house stuff that people tend to overlook when they're you know I used to wholesale model and they're going direct to Consumer for the first time so it's your point like, they generally wolfley underestimate fulfillment know where they are selling charging too much for 4, crappy level of service but it's probably also a side job for the wholesale fulfillment guys instead of stuff probably sits in the warehouse for 5 days after you place the order, before it even gets into the the the shipper system, answer their those issues and then like you know there's a customer service guy and they that that guy quickly gets overwhelmed with calls so they're all those kinds of things and, if you survive the infant mortality like if you survived all those mistakes the next big steak mistake we see everyone making is that there's, every Branford, whatever the brand attributes are whatever Niche it's in how well it's known there's some certain amount of sort of organic traffic that's relatively easy for each branch require in for some Brands that's. Three significant amount of traffic for some Brands that's not very significant but there always is some threshold where if you do the fundamentals right you get to a certain level and it then you hit a wall and it suddenly becomes much harder to grow inside the. [23:26] The real test for the sustainable direct-to-consumer business is are, you know what once you get over that that first tranche of easy to get customers can you, still be profitable and successful in growing beyond that original based, or you just met being a cop out and you get stuck there or do you start spending way too much on customer acquisition and I think that's a mistake we see a lot so, so they're there are definitely lots of pitfalls and there's some good examples of of companies that have been able to steer clear of them. Scot:  [23:59] Let's jump in turn next question and then we can kind of Go Lightning round on a couple days maybe we'll see. Jason:  [24:08] Wait that wasn't Lightning Run. Scot:  [24:09] How's Jason Scott lightning room, okay second question this is from RE nahmani he is the CEO of an israel-based digital agency, and he says I'd like to talk about mobile conversion rate retailers are getting more and more of their web traffic from mobile yes but those users are 1/2 or 1/3 is likely to convert, they don't seem to be coming back on desktop so what's happening we see this across-the-board we're year-over-year traffic flat revenues down due to the vice mix over indexing on mobile how do we think about this Behavior. Where are the users buying stuff e-commerce is growing let me see okay so yes. [24:53] And then I'll take that over to you cuz you have a clever name for it. Jason:  [24:56] So we've talked about that on a couple episodes I call it the mobile Gap and it it's it's very real you know most sides are seeing, their Mobile Traffic grow much faster than their desktop traffic so they often would characterize that as, there traffic is shifting from desktop to mobile and the conversion rate on that mobile traffic is much lower than it was on desktop and so you go gosh, that's. Potentially not a very favorable Trend and we we for sure talk with that with the are friends from Adobe around the holiday episode but I think I think it's coming up on a couple shows and I was actually surprised to find out that we haven't done a deep dive so maybe that something will. Will do it at future show but I know you and I have done a number of live presentations were weave weave debated the Mobil gas. [25:44] And I guess what I would say to Arya a couple of things. [25:52] Most clients if you looked you mentally at your desktop and your Mobile Traffic your traffic probably supposed to go inside look up there traffic isn't flat there traffic is actually increasing. It's a one of the things that's happening is some of those mobile visits that don't convert well are incremental visits. And of course there's a because it's so much harder to buy something on a mobile device there's a lot more friction to check out. There's way you know West support for plugins in your browser so your payment information is less likely to be. Be stored in there and we joke a lot about a taking three hands to check out on a mobile device right one told the phone one that tap the virtual keyboard and 1/3 to hold your credit card. [26:36] The that that friction you know makes it less likely that people check out people also on mobile devices are are generally in a more micro moment context. They might be at the red light in the light turns green or they might be in line at the bank and get to the front of the bank or you know they might be doing something. Weather going to get interrupted in the much shorter. Of time so all that friction leads to too much more abandonment and so. We are seeing things where we're at experiences that reduce the friction improve the mobile Gap they don't make it go away but they you know if you look at the best mobile checkouts they have our mobile free mobile apps then. Then the traditional bad mobile checkouts have also a percentage of that is. [27:25] Not real inserted incorrectly measuring conversion so so most sides you know. Back to the simple formula conversion how many people bought versus how many people visited the site and of course mobile gives people a bunch of new reasons to visit your site so a bunch of mobile customers are coming to find out your store hours or if you have something in stock. Or what store is near than those are all things that used to do with the Yellow Pages in the in the analog phone. And with the newspaper in those visits are not coming to your site that customer had no intention to buy online they're ultimately going to go to your store. It does look like non-converting Mobile customer so so some of its an attribution problem and then the last thing we talked about is this Multi-Device attribution problem where. Because it is harder to check out on a mobile phone a lot of people will build their list do their pulmonary shopping on mobile. And then they'll ultimately consummate the purchased on their they're desktop browser where they you know are more likely to have payment information stored or or use a keyboard. [28:28] A password Plug-In or something like that that that makes it easier to pay. And because of the way that because we use cookies when you come back on your desktop you don't mess in your not authenticated as much users are. You look like a different visitor than the visitor that came on mobile so instead of it looking like got window came to my site twice and bought on the second visit it looks like. Got Wingo number one came to my side and mobile and didn't buy and some unrelated Scot Wingo came to my site later on a desktop and did by the. Yeah I don't think that's the the dominant mode but that absolutely is a mode and interesting Lee it at Publix this week we built this database with that now has over 2 billion device IDs in it. That we can map back to individual users and sure enough view you see if there still is a pretty substantial. A chunk of Christ of a shopping happening on a bunch of these e-commerce site so. All of that is interesting but here's the real bad news. You asked the great question at the end if that's the trend then how is e-commerce growing e-commerce should be shrinking everyone's moving a mobile and mobile doesn't come out as well why is he Commerce not drinking. And the bad reason for that is because not every site suffers from the mobile Gap. And the sites that don't suffer from the mobile Gap are you and the biggest most dominant sites in the markets right so. [29:59] Well no sides have a very low percentage of authenticated users Amazon has a very high percentage of authenticated users, and by all accounts has a very healthy mobile conversion rate right and so you have some of those sites at the top of the echo system that have a disproportionate Cent percent of the traffic and sales also way outperform the industry averages in Mobile and that is driving a lot of the e-commerce growth. Scot:  [30:27] Yeah yeah we could probably do a whole show on this so I'll just kick it the next question before I get into a controversial topic that we have to go back. Jason:  [30:36] So are you saying that was not a good lightning round answer. Scot:  [30:39] That was very good and I'm not going to ruin it by it by adding on third question is from Alexandra volakis. I said it's about omni-channel so this is another one that squarely in your Wheelhouse in a centrally. And I'm kind of tripping this little bit how do you decide where it's best to ship from so I think what what L Alexander Andrew is kind of thinking about is you get an online order you've got ship from store or you've got a moment Center. [31:10] You probably have some complexity there you probably have you know Boosie's on each other guys have hundreds if not thousands of stores that could ship the product and then you have like let's say you have 5 phone at centers. [31:21] What's the what's the logic you would kind of work with a retailer to think about that do you just kind of go. Product is closer to the consumer here or ship from there or do you kind of is it cheaper to ship from the store or is it more expensive and how should people think about that. Jason:  [31:37] Yep that's a great question and most retailers that have gotten successful with pretty complicated, fulfillment channels where they have a lot of different choices, either because they're feeling from store have a lot of different fulfillment centers there they're all using pretty sophisticated software sometimes that even uses machine learning to build a model for deciding how to do for filma and so normally we we call those the solutions of order Management Systems, the big Enterprise ones all have like very robust logic in them, but at the end of the day that the way you're implementing that logic for most cases is you're actually thinking about three big factors you're thinking about the cost of a fill so you want to optimize the lowest cost to fulfill, you're optimizing for the customer experience in the customer experiences is generally two big factors one is how fast you can get it to that customer so you want to get to him as quickly as possible obviously and another is, you want to get multi-item orders to the customer together so you'd rather ship everything in one box, not only is that more economical many cases but it's also just a better customer experience then split shipping from multiple fulfillment centers and the third is this this notion of inventory potential. And that that can get a little more complicated but essentially what it amounts to is. [33:12] Whatever fulfillment vehicle you fulfill for this order is going to leave inventory in the other for film of vehicles and what is the likelihood of there being further demand for, that next piece of inventory so when you're getting really sophisticated you you may. Choose a film that vehicle that isn't your cheapest because, it's likely to be the only demand in that particular fulfillment set of vehicle and there's likely to be other demand in the other fulfillment channels that's even lower cost for the rest of your goods, so I'm not sure I explain that super clearly, but like at at one level or another you basically are are putting together an analogue Rhythm that that optimizes for that customer experience that potential the cell and that that cost of fulfillment and, you know there are both a number of Enterprise off-the-shelf tools that do that in there a lot of the custom software that a lot of retards have, built over time to do it. Scot:  [34:16] I will kind of dispute one thing so I actually like it when when Amazon since we split orders and they send them to me that when the stress available at I think that's a better customer experience I don't think it's a better. It's cheaper, for the retailer but you kind of implied it's better customer experience get all your stuff together that assumes that all would come together but I think most times you're having to choose you know do your hold up so it's one of the least common denominator problem. Jason:  [34:42] So great potential Nuance like I would certainly agree, that to a certain extent like if if I'm an option to get two things faster than the other things and I and then option is overtly presented to me and I choose to get them as fast as possible I agree with you I'm a shopper that appreciates that and so, best customer experience for each customer is probably defined differently one problem with that experience is it can get very complicated right, and until I always use the Amazon versus Jet analogy and Amazon tends to make all those decisions for you but they tell you what they are and Jet you know is, is it sort of in the middle of giving you the choice of all those decisions and letting you choose for yourself as it split shipping actually both companies kind of let you choose for yourself but, what that the more friction that's in that choice like you actually see conversion go down, but the bigger issue is you and I are the least typically e-commerce Shoppers in the world and so for the overwhelming majority of people that buy stuff online they don't understand any of the nuances of fulfillment they don't understand that there are multiple fulfillment center that have some of these goods and so for most users they simply believe that when they order three things that they're using together in a project, that that those three things are all coming from the same source and so when the the the seller chooses to split ship or even just drop ship from one of the items from a manufacturer and it arrives on a different day what we see is. [36:17] A huge influx in customer service calls so customer service calls on switch shipments are way higher because customers just think. Something got left off the order they ordered, shoes and running shorts and a running shirt and they're using all three to go for a run and only to arrive you must have forgotten to ship me the 3rd and they don't understand that the third is coming direct from the manufacturer or from a different Warehouse or from the store and so, you know for those customers it's a bad customer experience to split ship but for sure, I'll totally agree with you and there's an elegant way to offer that to the customer make them understand then the best customer experience reach customers whatever they choose. Scot:  [36:57] Yeah and then another thing all Throne of this is I think the omni-channel dirty secret is this ship from store and buy online pickup in-store, usually kind of sucks because I don't think stores know what's in the store like past half the time so so you know. Show me my worst online shopping experiences have been shipped from store and buy online pickup in-store and you know the ship from store stuff goes wrong because they're stock-outs where they thought they had the widget that happens you know. Lot more than a fulfillment center they also have you know they always say well just walking around the store in someone's cart we don't know where it is but I think their inventory is just really really bad at in stores and then the other thing is wrong kind of having. [37:45] Stuff cuz you got this salesperson there and they're trying to you know. Imagine you're in the shoe department at one of these retailers and you have to know about the shoes and then some on my order comes in and there's got to be part of your day where now you're. [38:00] Pick Pack ship person so we get a fair I would say the things we actually get that are in stock. You know a pretty material 5 10% there's usually some kind of error like we've been sent someone else's stuff or they did leave something out or you know if that kind of thing so. I know there's this kind of glassy omni-channel all your problems are solved but I found that most people really just don't do this for a while what are there any industry stats that you see her on that or. Jason:  [38:31] Oh yeah so you're for sure right then did most people when they first do it totally suck at it in the one thing I would say is that there is a maturity curve there and when people get over that curve and get good at it, the customer satisfaction with the experiences very high so I would say like the. The benefit of being excellent at both of those experiences at at ship from store or buy online pickup in-store. But the potential upside is is true and very high, it's. It's easy to do it poorly and most people start out doing poorly so first actor. You're you nail that in-store inventory is a huge problem industry-wide and retailers never. Like the primary impetus to have super accurate inventory was. Was really your balance sheet for the most part like people don't even like purchase based on their inventory levels in in many retail stores in the old days. Inside like these experiences are the first ones to really put pressure on inventory accuracy in the store. [39:37] Inventory accuracy is getting way better there's both both machine learning and newer inventory systems have made it much. Easier for stores to get better at store inventory most of the big retailers now both Target and Walmart have robots running around the store taking pictures of shelves. And they're taking inventory based on this picture so they've actually taking people out of the equation, we're starting to see some new store concept that have intelligent shells so they can actually the shells take their own inventory and no right when there's out of stocks and things like that so the future of inventory accuracy is getting better, but at the end of the day almost every retailer I've ever worked with it started as a ship from store program started out with horrific metrics and so you know usually you have this, this error code item not found and you have this you don't sort of, percentage fulfillment like of all the orders I sent to a store what what percentage got filled and it's, totally common to see 50% of in-store orders be item not found or you know only be able to have a 50% fill rate when you first start shipping from store for, because of the inventory issues in the Employee Staffing and incompetency issues and I'll and the customers having the inventory and their Card issues all those things you can have huge failure rates in there and that creates a hideous customer experience, I've seen 90% item not found or 10% fill rates in some customers when they first want ship from store. [41:09] But if you many of the same customers I worked with it started out at 50% fill rates are now it like 94 96% fill rates, so over time they're able to put systems in places and process in place and be smarter about when they send the order to the store and trying not to fulfill when they have really thin inventory and only one in stock, and by implementing all those things the fill rate goes way up and you can today absolutely look at a Target and Best Buy and see that they're generating a meaningful economic advantage against Amazon, by being able to ship at a significant portion of their e-commerce but business from the store one zone get it to customers fast and cheap. Scot:  [41:54] I'm learning a lot from this we should get that list of questions for Julia. Guitar chorus is the P silent or talk how do you think about singles day are there some retailers who take part of the vent in the US Amazon focuses more on Cyber week, and doesn't really do anything on single stay why is that. Jason:  [42:20] So great question will be talking more about this I am not bullish on Singles day becoming a global holiday that's. Heavily the big factor here in the US and then there's a variety of reasons for that it already is a holiday in the u.s. is Veterans Day which is, somewhat problematic for turning it into a high-volume shopping day Alibaba just doesn't have a significant presence here at the moment, you know said they were they were years when when, Alibaba was having huge success in China and they're making noise about next year is going to be a much bigger Western holiday and. What that's morphed into in my mind and perhaps we'll have them on the show here in the near future to defend themselves is, they're they're making it a much bigger deal for us Brands largely to sell to, Eastern consume customers that are celebrating singles day so I think it's because singles to become a huge event for a lot of my clients for example, but it's because they're selling to customers in other markets it's not because they're selling in the US, all that being said you know I think it is possible to to create a new holiday here certainly Prime day is it is, a great example in the in the west but you know another interesting one is, Cyber Monday has become a very big holiday in Europe and as most of our listeners are probably aware. [43:57] They're not celebrating Thanksgiving in Europe so it is possible to create these shopping holidays I just think the dynamic of trying to create a holiday on Veterans Day a couple weeks before a very traditional shopping. you know for non-income and Company is is a rolling a rock up a pretty big hill. Scot:  [44:21] And I will be a little facetious and Amazon does participate in. I'm single stamp but they do it in China so Amazon runs T-Mobile store in China and they saw other devices there and it just shows. China's interesting to me we talked about Amazon all on the show cuz it's the one area where Amazon has not been dominant then you argue with either the number three or four player in China. And it's because Alibaba has really kind of dominated with a. Different local way of doing things that that Amazon I wasn't able to replicate so because of that you have some really weird things that must be kind of painful for Amazon tap to do but example as they do sell Auntie mall now and then, they do accept Ali pay so this is the one. Region where you know Amazon doesn't control the entire payment world so I can the US they don't take Paypal because they have the power to kind of say no we want all that to flow through our system so. Little car fun fact for you if you didn't know that. Jason:  [45:23] I did not know that the only part that's pretty funny. Scot:  [45:28] And then the last question so Melissa Burdick another kind of friend of the show. How is the bankruptcy of Toys R Us going to impact Amazon this holiday is it going to be a bloodbath and pricing with, Toys R Us cutting prices at the stores because the bankruptcy in an Amazon matching and then this kind of Race To The Bottom. Jason:  [45:49] So interesting question unless confident in my answer here but I think there's two, two issues is this holiday. Going to be a bloodbath of discount pricing number like regardless of Toys R Us like are a bunch of retards going to start you know early and aggressive discounts and is that going to drive. Pricing down for the whole holiday. I think it's an open question and frankly I'm very nervous about that like all of the the early forecast for Holiday are for, for pretty significant growth and robust sales and the unspoken truth in a lot of those is most years we have that kind of growth it's because, we sold stuff really cheap and discounted really deeply and potentially because we had too high of an inventory position and then you don't have to Discount more deeply, so I think the fact that there been a bunch of bankruptcies and More Store closures than usual this year and more distressed inventory his, has flooded the market and that that's cause more inventory full price inventory to get abandon on the shelves so I do think we're going to go into this holiday season with retailers in a little bigger inventory position than they'd like. And so I'm just frankly concerned overall, that then it's going to be heavily promotional holiday. What we already seen some early indication that it was going to start their sales super early, so all of those things could just turn it into a bloodbath not because of Toys R Us current current bankruptcy status. [47:19] Actually think. The Toys R Us in the current status has a disincentive to aggressively promote like the stores have to operate profitably over a holiday, and so I think they're not going to be the first one to drop their drawers on price like I think if they become really aggressive and promotions it's going to be later in the season, as they see how the the holiday is is shaking up but I think the. At this point they're not looking to liquidate inventory or those kinds of things like I think that's, you know if they decide they have to close 300 stores and they hire Gordon Brothers 2 to come in and liquidate inventory like that that potentially create a bloodbath but I don't think that's going to happen until 2018, so I kind of suspect toys is not going to be the the fuse that lights the. The the discounting fuse but I'm not sure that we we aren't going to see a bloodbath nonetheless. Scot:  [48:24] Yeah. I would just add I'm an e-commerce software guy and I've learned a lot about retail over the years that I didn't know and I know Melissa used to work at Amazon so she. Definitely got kind of a similar kind of DNA on the digital side. And does really good Bloomberg article that will link to in the show notes that talks about how all these retailers these traditional retailers have really loaded up on debt, and you know what what happens is they get acquired by private Equity Firm and part of their model is to take the Assets in leverage them pretty highly meaning piling on a fair amount of debt. And what does this done is left. The entire segment pretty exposed to a Destructor like Amazon because in in Toys R Us has a good case study that you brought up, so Toys R Us has something like four or five billion dollars in debt and this debt comes in these tranches so you have all that dead out there and I'll have maturity dates and, Toys R Us couldn't actually deal with about 400 million of that which is what pushed him into bankruptcy so what happens is when you yo so Amazon has no debt and you a lot of retailers argue that she doesn't even care they don't make a profit. Talk about down the show but what what happens if you have a competitor like that. Come in and make a pretty small impact on you so maybe you'd lose five or 10% of sales doesn't feel like that would really. Australia upside down. What's Insidious is Amazon it knows everyone's margin because they have all this data and you may lose 5 or 10% of sales but that's probably your most profitable stuff and maybe lose 15 or 20% of a profit. [50:02] Are Eva. And that's what this debt is all priced against is. [50:07] 1015 years ago when this debt was piled on everyone assumed that your profit margin would be the same. [50:14] And then you have a new competitor, long. And they're able to Chisel a enough profit that it really tips you over so this article doesn't really good job of kind of, because really in-depth and looks at at that which is pretty interesting and has a whole map that shows kind of the hot areas and the whole point of the article. Apocalypse is just getting started to date when will you get from a debt perspective it looks like we're just at the beginning of a bloodbath the thing I've learned in this was too I guess we had on the show is. These at the mall level Aldi's anchor tenants effectively don't pay much in rent and there are because the word anchor they're there to draw other people in, what happens if so let's say you're a small mob a store and one of the anchors goes out of business usually is written in the lease that. Because you were drawn there by an anchor if an anchor leaves you. You are now free from your lease so these balls are unwinding at a pretty incredible pace and. There is a I don't follow it that closely but there's a lot of rumors that some of them are going to be sold and the mall for large Mall reach because they are in such a stress situation so. So so this kind of gets Amplified didn't did these things are not mutually exclusive so now you have stores at malls that are anchors and have huge debt and if it's caused this kind of death spiral that's happening there. At the mall level is kind of what I called Mulligan so interesting things that I wouldn't have learned about until the podcasting and try to understand what is going on out there. Jason:  [51:47] That's why everyone should start a podcast. Scot:  [51:49] Absolutely or listeners last question so this is from James lecourt how do you see augmented reality playing a role in e-commerce and when do you think it will be mainstream and accessible to the smaller retailers. Jason:  [52:04] Another interesting question James we've done aviare are deep dive and I think Scott and I are sort of an alignment like VR is, truly interesting for some other reasons but I actually don't think it's it in the near-term very relevant to e-commerce I think augmented reality is potentially. Way more relevant but it's I think most of the use cases in Commerce are actually digital in-store use cases. [52:33] So warning more about getting more of the digital content to learn about products when you're in a physical store augmented reality in e-commerce the big use cases you think about are things like. How will that art look in my house will that furniture fit in my house what. You know what would this clothes look like on a a virtual representation of me or me and this me or these kinds of things. And what's interesting the. Rudimentary version of that technology is all out there oh I should mention the like virtual makeup stuff when beauty stuff which is has become quite good. So that the technology is all out there it's involving very quickly and so both Google and apple have really robust. New AR kits building in the latest version of their operating systems. And you look at the kind of experiences you can have on those those devices these latest devices that are using these they are kids. And you go man that's really compelling so if you have an iPhone 8 or an iPhone 10 I'd highly recommend you download this app called House craft. And how scrap uses AR to place Furniture in your house and it's it's amazing it's much better than some of the rudimentary stuff you've seen from. Some of the retailers Warby Parker has already leverage the AR kit in their app. [54:07] For virtual try-on of sunglasses and so you think about the face recognition technology that's in the iPhone 10 and the hundreds of measurements it's taking your face. Warby Parker take out of the AR kid all of those measurements put them into a deep Learning System, in recommend sunglass frames to you that are best suited to your face, and it creates an amazing AR experience and so you look at those things and you go man that is the future that that really is going to become mainstream, but then there's a big Debbie Downer in terms of how fast it's all going to happen, does AR kids only work on a small percentage of the hardware that real people own right so it it only runs on the the latest and greatest Hardware, so we have to wait for a couple upgrade Cycles to everyone, I want to get up to that that hardware and then at the moment those best experiences are really only deliverable through apps, and we've talked about this a lot on the show as well but for most retailers in for sure for small shops, it's next to impossible to get a a meaningful volume of customers to download and use your Mobile app and so what we really need is this robust AR capability to to be available in the web browser, not in the app and it is coming it's just still probably a couple years away so I think right now we're at the point where. [55:40] On the Best Hardware in an app customers are seeing experiences that really can drive conversion and sell more stuff and I think we're going to see more examples like the Warby Parker app that are going to be very very persuasive but it's probably another 3 years before, the majority of consumers have that capability in a web browser and that's when it becomes really meaningful for those medium and small size shops. Scot:  [56:03] Yeah and I would add another challenge for a small size shop is the 3D models so, to put your products into this 3D World you have to have models of them and this is not a trivial skill set for folks to have and there's not a great solution for just kind of imagine you ran I don't know, sports store and you wanted to put everything into a virtual world there's no really good off-the-shelf solution for kind of scanning that stuff that, a mere mortal can handle and build the models so that's another one is like how do you partner with this assume your retailer multi-brand retailer you're going to partner with your Brands and they're going to have to have a level of sophistication where you call and say hey I really need 3D models for all your stuff they're going to have to know what you're talking about how many brand struggle just to get you the. Current tenant to the digital assets so that that's going to be an interesting challenge to see who solves that because you could end up in this scenario, because worst laws applying all these other things that pretty quickly we get the hardware as Jason mentioned all that stuff solved and it's pretty easy for you to have a platform but you just don't have the assets. Jason:  [57:11] Yep and although I would point out just got you take that the that iPhone 10 sensor array in the Notch and you put it on the turntable and you suddenly have a pretty darn good cheap 3D scanner in so, you know, you you could imagine that the ability to to 3D scan and very high-quality at very well cost is something that Moore's Law is also going to deliver to us over the next two or three years. Scot:  [57:38] Cooper we really appreciate it when asking the questions there and we have about 5 or 10 minutes to catch up on news and it wouldn't be a Jason Scott show without Amazon news. [58:03] Jason you had let's kick it off of you you walked into your Whole Foods was that today or yesterday and you had an interesting situation tell us about it. Jason:  [58:15] Yeah that was today so there's a nice, two-story Whole Foods in my neighborhood downstairs is a very fancy coffee shop upstairs at the store and when I walked in the store today a big chunk of the coffee shop has been taken up by these. Temporary walls with all this Amazon signage and it looked like they were implying some kind of shopping experience was coming and that I got a chance to talk to some of the, the employees that we're doing it and it turns out they are this is a permanent installation. It's going into a bunch of Amazon stores in Chicago and it it basically is a Amazon device store, it's going into Whole Foods so another you know men's staffed place where you can go and get a echo demo or a Kindle demo or a fire. Demo and it sounds like they're going to have inventory for sale in the store and in ready to go. Scot:  [59:14] Cool Sorry Amazon bookstore has that like little apple like section so you're kind of fishing it'll be like that couple tables. Jason:  [59:21] Yeah and in fact I got to see the pictures and they look like they're straight out of the Amazon store. Scot:  [59:26] And then there's also a nursing news where I forget who broke this but, Amazon is doing the nursing thing so if your third-party seller and Amazon to text that your price is a competitive what they'll do is they'll actually discount it and it says, sold by the third party seller but then discount provided by Amazon so, you know Amazon is pretty well known in history that they monitor prices across the internet in near real-time so I think what's happening there is they probably realize they were expensive in a couple areas especially that, part of the curve where they rely on third parties to sell things someone exclusively and they decided they. Wanted to not be disadvantaged there so they're actually funding that and it's a nursing so you had on average are going to pay as a third-party seller you pay Amazon 10% but then they kind of are selectively say you're effectively In-N-Out. The ones I've seen have been under 10% but they couldn't hear you actually go beyond that and say that we want to be competitive enough here that will fund even pass what the third-party is selling to us. [1:00:37] Actually figure out how to do a Google Search and Google Nexus Amazon. Pretty much real time and I found about 3000 items that that had this set so this is out of Amazon's like four or five hundred million this is not a huge thing at this point but the thing I thought you would find interesting is. Everyone I can I did look at all three thousand but I page through pretty quick they were all in the beauty category. Jason:  [1:01:01] Yeah it it was super interesting and clever so obviously is as most of the regulars that showed no Amazon has a pretty sophisticated pricing I'll grab them on their 1p product, and you know when they sense a competitive situation they're they're very likely to be a fast follower, and they they see a lot of advantage in overall customer lifetime value even if they have to sell something at very narrow margins or even negative margins in the short term and you know the liability traditionally of the marketplaces you, Amazon doesn't have control over the pricing of that 3p product and so then you think about hey what are some categories that Amazon doesn't compete in in 1 p, but would really like to control prices in the 3p and you know there's certain kinds of products that that are tougher Amazon, and one of them would be like private label Cosmetics that have no interest in selling on Amazon but they want a third parties and gray marketers will by and and list on the Amazon market so that could actually be like, Ulta products. That should be exclusive to Ulta that's on the Amazon Channel and this tool gives them an opportunity to gives Amazon an opportunity to get really price competitive on that and, you know and in many cases that grey market product. Like the sellers are relying on selling because of convenience and so they often aren't super price competitive so this is a way for for Amazon to offer a competitive price in those categories were. [1:02:32] It wants to compete in the long run so that that's pretty clever but was interesting is there's a bunch of. [1:02:39] Not obvious unintended consequences of this program and it it's going to be funny to watch them all play out so there's all these things you wouldn't think of that initially but I'm sure Amazon stock through. When is something like returns so you know the seller offered offered a cosmetic 450 bucks Amazon discounted at 2:40 bucks. The consumer only paid 40 when you return it. You know Amazon has to refund part of your money and that seller has to refund its at all that stuff has to work out. But another big one is some of those sellers. Either have the other authorized sellers of a product they very likely have you know are complying with some some pricing requirements from. From their supplier so they they might have agreed to offer prices. Only at map price minimum advertised price in Amazon potentially could be discounting below that minimum advertised price so even though the seller is complying with their their pricing agreements. They're involuntarily out of compliance with that agreement because of this Amazon discount and I think another scenario is. Sellers that a promise to offer the same price to multiple marketplaces and then Amazon discounts at so effectively they're no longer complying with that agreement and so. You know those are all going to be some some that potentially sticky situations it's going to be interesting to see if any manufacturers come go after their sellers. [1:04:16] As a result of Amazon's price Judo. Scot:  [1:04:21] Yeah yes, interesting to see how this plays out their solutions to these things so if you know you can imagine that if you don't want Amazon to do this there could be a knocked-out kind of thing and they've done that with a bunch of other programs, all the things are solvable but it is pretty interesting to see Amazon do this and you're there must have been some pressure in the beauty category that cause them to think about doing this. Jason:  [1:04:45] What other things maybe is an opportunity for someone out there like maybe Channel advisor should do it but if you were a seller that used to be selling that good at, 50 bucks and you were competing against guys that were selling it at 60 and you suddenly see that Amazon is dropping t

Download Here - Episode 11: In this episode, Egerton and Raj update you on Olly, Monzo and Addison Lee (angrily) as well as discussing the end of Microsoft Kinect production. Then Raj attempts to explain cryptocurrencies and special guest Alexa answers questions for us (for some reason).

Host Tim Jennette (Metal Meeple), and co-hosts Matt RoBear and Eric Ledford begin the show with a few first impressions for the board games: Klondike Rush (Red Raven Games), Cutthroat Kingdoms (Alderac Entertainment Group), and Kingdomino (Blue Orange Games). Next they discuss if they would rather have a digital or physical copy of a game/CD/Movie, give their list of anticipated games coming out at Essen Spiel 2017, and finish off the show with their Top 5 Scary Video games - just in time for Halloween! ...and much more! Other games and topics briefly discussed in this episode: Game Toppers, Playstation VR, Halloween, Crusaders of Light, Polygon Dice Tower article, Microsoft Kinect, Wizkids and Games Workshop, mini playstation 4 game pad.

Новый выпуск Завтракаста выходит по расписанию, а также опять с ведущим на полставки в лице Григория “Bobuk” Бакунова. Очень много интересного про игры, технологии, фильмы, сериалы и прочих роботов с искусственным интеллектом. Кроме всего прочего, этот выпуск стал для нас отчасти экспериментальным, так как мы писали его вживую на нашем канале на Twitch, где зрители могли сразу что-то уточнить или задать вопрос. Местами получилось даже забавно. Так или иначе, в новом Завтракасте вы услышите много о наших впечатлениях от Super Mario Odyssey, Stranger Things 2, Wolfenstein II, а также интересные новости и краткий пересказ ещё одной главы книги Blood, Sweat, and Pixels Джейсона Шрайера. Шоуноуты: ДрамаГАФ и ResetEra; Well, bam, Microsoft окончательно похоронила Kinect; Будущее Microsoft в MR и AR; Некоторые старые игры с Xbox 360 обновятся и получат поддержку 4К и 10-битного цвета на Xbox One X; Легализация криптовалют в России и создание крипторубля; iPhone X разбирают, как горячие пирожки; Все жалуются на Google Pixel 2 XL; Подробности закрытия Visceral Games и отмены игры Эмми Хенниг по Star Wars; Тимур купил Nintendo Switch. Делимся первыми впечатлениями от Super Mario Odyssey и Mario + Rabbids; Nintendo могла бы заработать больше денег, если бы снизила цену на Super Mario Run; В […] Запись Завтракаст №77 – Радио Зэ впервые появилась Zavtracast.

8:22 - Microsoft Kinect is No More (https://www.fastcodesign.com/90147868/exclusive-microsoft-has-stopped-manufacturing-the-kinect) 23:41 - Mini SNES Impressions (https://www.nintendo.com/super-nes-classic/) 30:30 - Gold Rush: The Game (http://store.steampowered.com/app/451340/Gold_Rush_The_Game/) 48:49 - The Wild Eight (http://store.steampowered.com/app/526160/The_Wild_Eight/) 56:45 - Wunderdoktor (http://store.steampowered.com/app/705450/Wunderdoktor/) 57:40 - AER Memories of Old (http://store.steampowered.com/app/331870/AER_Memories_of_Old/) 59:55 - Opus Magnum (http://store.steampowered.com/app/558990/Opus_Magnum/) 1:13:34 - Cataclysm DDA (google it) 1:23:35 - Jackbox Party Pack 4 (http://store.steampowered.com/app/610180/The_Jackbox_Party_Pack_4/) 1:34:01 - South Park: The Fractured But Whole (http://store.steampowered.com/app/488790/South_Park_The_Fractured_But_Whole/) 1:44:05 - Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus (http://store.steampowered.com/app/612880/Wolfenstein_II_The_New_Colossus/) 1:47:18 - Destiny 2 (https://www.destinythegame.com/)

Professional maker of things Zach Radding joins us this week as we chat about the upcoming release of Stranger Things 2, Essential phone's price drop, Sony's new full-frame camera, and the demise of Microsoft Kinect. Plus, the VR minute!

Professional maker of things Zach Radding joins us this week as we chat about the upcoming release of Stranger Things 2, Essential phone's price drop, Sony's new full-frame camera, and the demise of Microsoft Kinect. Plus, the VR minute!

In this episode, we welcome co-founder and TED speaker Cosmin from MIRA Rehab. It’s a software platform which uses games in physical rehabilitation. It was built as a result of Cosmin’s health experience when he broke his arm. Learn how it was developed, their challenges and successes, and how gamification can be used in healthcare. What you will learn in this episode: - What is MIRA and how it was invented - The clinical applications of MIRA - The startup costs and success so far - The challenges of creating med-tech software - The pros and cons of gamification in the healthcare What is MIRA and how it was invented MIRA is a software platform that turns physical therapy exercises into video games, making therapy easier to follow. It asks patients to complete the recommended movements to progress through each game level and as a result, the patients are playing and also recovering. While they play, MIRA tracks in real time their progress and compliance. It runs on Windows and uses the Microsoft Kinect device, which is a low-cost motion capture camera that can track the movement from a distance. The idea came about when a group of 4 software engineering students, including Cosmin, wanted to build something cool to participate at the Imagine Cup - A Microsoft software competition for IT students and the idea for Medical Interactive Recovery Assistant (MIRA) was born. The clinical applications of MIRA MIRA is built as a tool to allow the specialist to create tailor-made treatment plans. This system is being used with patients of various ages. It can be used for orthopedic conditions such as frozen shoulder and hip replacements, or even neurological ones like cerebral palsy, acquired brain injuries or stroke. The games that the system has are simple so they can be adapted to a variety of patients. At the moment there are 34 games and 31 exercises that can be combined in 420+ different combinations. Patient progress is measured by a range of factors such as compliance, repetition, speed and performance. The startup costs and success so far The startup costs for installing the system are quite affordable. For the kit to be used at home, the patient needs a Kinect device, which costs £110, and a Windows PC. The pricing of MIRA is as a subscription model, it’s only available to clinical institutions to ensure supervised quality treatment. Depending on the subscription, it is usually £10 per patient per month. Currently, the MIRA team is focusing on the UK market but also selling across Europe. Approximately 60 clinics are using the software so far, some of which have run feasibility studies that showed MIRA can benefit patients in need of physical exercise treatment. Most of the work has been with older people, and the University of Manchester ran a large randomised control trial. The challenge of creating med-tech software From a technical point of view, when Cosmin and the team came up with the idea, they realised they needed to use a device. In 2010, they noted that holding the Nintendo Wii was an issue for some patients. There were also issues with a smart watch type device. The camera option of the Microsoft Kinect is helpful because the patient doesn’t have to hold anything, and being a camera it can track the user from a distance. It only has to be set up once and is accurate in terms of gross movements, even when patients move slowly The pros and cons of gamification in health care Gamification can be used for anything that needs patients to comply with their suggested treatment. Compliance is a big issue in healthcare, getting people to take steps towards better health is positive. Cosmin and the MIRA team did find that the adoption of the gamification concept throughout healthcare was their biggest initial challenge. When we first started, most people…directed us to speak to paediatric institutions. Suggesting that because MIRA has video games,

In this episode, we welcome co-founder and TED speaker Cosmin from MIRA Rehab. It’s a software platform which uses games in physical rehabilitation. It was built as a result of Cosmin’s health experience when he broke his arm. Learn how it was developed, their challenges and successes, and how gamification can be used in healthcare. What you will learn in this episode: - What is MIRA and how it was invented - The clinical applications of MIRA - The startup costs and success so far - The challenges of creating med-tech software - The pros and cons of gamification in the healthcare What is MIRA and how it was invented MIRA is a software platform that turns physical therapy exercises into video games, making therapy easier to follow. It asks patients to complete the recommended movements to progress through each game level and as a result, the patients are playing and also recovering. While they play, MIRA tracks in real time their progress and compliance. It runs on Windows and uses the Microsoft Kinect device, which is a low-cost motion capture camera that can track the movement from a distance. The idea came about when a group of 4 software engineering students, including Cosmin, wanted to build something cool to participate at the Imagine Cup - A Microsoft software competition for IT students and the idea for Medical Interactive Recovery Assistant (MIRA) was born. The clinical applications of MIRA MIRA is built as a tool to allow the specialist to create tailor-made treatment plans. This system is being used with patients of various ages. It can be used for orthopedic conditions such as frozen shoulder and hip replacements, or even neurological ones like cerebral palsy, acquired brain injuries or stroke. The games that the system has are simple so they can be adapted to a variety of patients. At the moment there are 34 games and 31 exercises that can be combined in 420+ different combinations. Patient progress is measured by a range of factors such as compliance, repetition, speed and performance. The startup costs and success so far The startup costs for installing the system are quite affordable. For the kit to be used at home, the patient needs a Kinect device, which costs £110, and a Windows PC. The pricing of MIRA is as a subscription model, it’s only available to clinical institutions to ensure supervised quality treatment. Depending on the subscription, it is usually £10 per patient per month. Currently, the MIRA team is focusing on the UK market but also selling across Europe. Approximately 60 clinics are using the software so far, some of which have run feasibility studies that showed MIRA can benefit patients in need of physical exercise treatment. Most of the work has been with older people, and the University of Manchester ran a large randomised control trial. The challenge of creating med-tech software From a technical point of view, when Cosmin and the team came up with the idea, they realised they needed to use a device. In 2010, they noted that holding the Nintendo Wii was an issue for some patients. There were also issues with a smart watch type device. The camera option of the Microsoft Kinect is helpful because the patient doesn’t have to hold anything, and being a camera it can track the user from a distance. It only has to be set up once and is accurate in terms of gross movements, even when patients move slowly The pros and cons of gamification in health care Gamification can be used for anything that needs patients to comply with their suggested treatment. Compliance is a big issue in healthcare, getting people to take steps towards better health is positive. Cosmin and the MIRA team did find that the adoption of the gamification concept throughout healthcare was their biggest initial challenge. When we first started, most people…directed us to speak to paediatric institutions. Suggesting that because MIRA has video games,

Interview with Danny Barta, a PhD candidate in Comparative Biology at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City. We talk to him about "The Titanosaur" exhibit at AMNH and details about when it was found in Argentina. In the news: Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom has wrapped; A new species of troodontid was identified in Alberta and named after Phillip Currie; Dinosaurs couldn't migrate far enough to justify cold blooded dinosaurs in Antarctica; Rapidly scanning fossils with a Microsoft Kinect; Lots of dinosaur exhibts, a new comic, game, and more Dinosaur of the day Bahariasaurus, a giant Egyptian theropod that likely lived at the same time as Spinosaurus. Please consider helping us cover the costs of getting to SVP 2017 and get access to our Patrons-only video and/or a postcard! https://www.patreon.com/iknowdino For links to every news story, all of the details we shared about Bahariasaurus, a transcript of our interview with Danny, and our fun fact check out http://iknowdino.com/bahariasaurus-episode-139/

Refik drives new combinations of music, architecture, technology, and design forward, always asking "unasked questions." In this podcast, he discusses many of his projects, where he is exploring "alternative reality . . how to live without bias in our reality." He believes that architecture is a canvas and light is material. He brings music into every moment in his life, noting it is a "tool of thinking" and storytelling, allowing technology to be visible. He discusses his work with the LA Philharmonic, Microsoft, and Esa-Pekka Salonen a few years ago. He also shares some his work now in his Residency with Google in Machine  Intelligence where he is rethinking libraries. He discusses his work with Adam Gazzaley's neuroscience team at UCSF Neuroscape and LA Phil to analyze brain activity while subjects listen to music. He discusses his approaches to innovation, as well as the differences of working with other innovators, and how "alignments are the magic point." Guest: Refik Anadol, Refik Anadol Studios Refik Anadol is a media artist and director -- or perhaps a magician. Born in Istanbul, Turkey, he came to UCLA Design Media Arts, where he now is a lecturer and visiting researcher. As noted in the podcast, his current work is very exciting. Most recently, you may have seen his "Infinity Room/New Edition" at SXSW 2017, which had gotten an award in Germany. (Video: https://www.engadget.com/2017/03/13/refik-anadol-infinity-room-video/) Refik creates a hybrid relationship between architecture and media arts. Embedding media arts into architecture, he questions the possibility of a post digital architectural future in which there are no more non-digital realities. He invites the viewers to visualize alternative realities by presenting them the possibility of re-defining the functionalities of both interior and exterior architectural formations. his work suggests that all spaces and facades have potentials to be utilized as the media artists’ canvases. He is the recipient of a number of awards, prizes including Microsoft Research’s Best Vision Award, German Design Award, UCLA Art+Architecture Moss Award, University of California Institute for Research in the Arts Award, SEGD Global Design Award and Google’s Art and Machine Intelligence Artist Residency Award. His work has included an interactive performance art piece at the Walt Disney Concert Hall (https://vimeo.com/113002444). and assistance with the LACMA Rain Machine project (http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-et-cm-warhol-rain-machine-20161020-snap-story.html). For the site-specific Disney Concert Hall installation, he used custom-built algorithmic sound analysis to listen and respond to the music in real time, using architecture as a canvas and light as a material. Additionally, the movements of Salonen, as he conducted, were captured by Microsoft Kinect hardware and 3-D depth camera analysis to inform the visuals displayed. LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/refikanadol Twitter:  @refikanadol Refik Anadol Studios: http://refikanadol.com  

This week's guest is the delightful and insightful Susan Molnar!http://susanmolnar.com“Everything can be broken. But also, everything can be built. And sometimes, breaking it and then rebuilding it makes it even cooler.”Tech & Maker Education for ChildrenGoogle Policy Fellow for American Association for People with DisabilitiesLeukemia SurvivorWe Laugh A Lot(Where does my body end and somebody else’s product begin?)Programming Good ProgrammersThe Problem & The Promise of Education“There’s this student who comes in who’s like, ‘I’ve never touched a computer in my life and I don’t know how to do this. I can’t do it, I can’t do it.’ So I was like, ‘Look. Nobody was born knowing what a pixel is. A pixel was invented. This mouse? This mouse was invented. You can learn a system. Tell me about things you have learned in your life that you have been able to use to progress from. Let’s start there.’”“I am not a person of color. I have a disability, but I don’t have some of the disabilities that my friends have. If I can use who I am to work in concert with who they are, either to have a larger voice or be empowered to do more…”“If you’re not good at the front of the house, there’s plenty of work to do in the back of the kitchen. If you have the ability to give, I think you should be trying to how to do that successfully. Are you able to humble yourself when you need to? And are you also able to value yourself when you need to?”“Yes, you should be serving in a way that’s unique to your gifts. But also understanding that just getting out there and doing it is important.”Johns Hopkins Enable Project - 3D Printing Prosthetic Limbs from Freeware DownloadsPreparing Your Children For A World That Isn’t Ready YetHelicopter Parents & Quadcopter ParentsTeaching Kids Where The Invisible Lines of Society Are So They Don’t Cross ThemBuilding & Breaking vs. Creating & DestroyingTechnology As ChildrenTraining AI Like A Pet, Letting It Skin Its KneesIntegrating Failure & Breakdown & Surprise & DifficultyStanford Design School: Rapid Ideation, Fail FastDouglas Rushkoff and New School Media TheoryGoogle Glass & Microsoft HololensProject Springfield - cloud-based machine learning for bug eradicationVR & AR disrupting learning and educationSusan Sontag and the violent language of photographyIARPAThe archetype of glass and how we’re living in the “Glass Age”Literalizing the fairy-tale concerns of losing one’s self to magical objects and devicesNeil Postman’s Technopoly & the surrender of culture to technologyThe Media Show on YouTubeProducing vs. Consuming Media – building something new vs. merely mimickingHelping the ways you can, that other people can’t, rather than wasting yourself with the most obvious (but overpopulated and possibly less effective) strategies to donate time, energy, and effort. Help in the ways you’re uniquely able.Are millennials really that entitled? Or are we just strung out on “success pron?” Should we not try to serve the world in a way that we’re uniquely able to? But this podcast REALLY takes off in the last five minutes:Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality and how the future of media is a continuation of the “reducing valve” model of our own nervous systems, filtering information for the conscious observer before that witness is aware of it. Before awareness. (What’s aware?)The co-evolution of computers and people for something more COMFORTABLE, ergonomic, actually (!) GOOD for our bodies… (see: Microsoft Kinect, gestural keyboards swiftly replaced by natural language processing and brain-machine zero-UI systems)“It used to be, ‘Science is over here! Art is over here! We have anthropologists, and we have sociologists. Why would we ever want to mix these?’” See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Vangelis(or Vangos) Pterneas, honoured by Microsoft with the title of Most Valuable Professional for his contributions to the technical community and CTO of Kinetisense, explains the impact their product has in motion analysis for patients and clinicians and how they use Microsoft Kinect to accomplish it. Kinetisense is a real-time motion analysis tool for practitioners, physiotherapists and personal trainers. It can analyse the range of motion for the patient’s shoulders, the back, the elbows and the knees allowing the practitioner to understand the improvement (or not) in motion. Kinetisense is useful to clinicians but also to athletes and even dentists, as Vangos explains, due to posture change after dental surgery. He goes on to talk about the rest of the team and the funding the Canadian company has received. Interviewed by Vicki Kolovou for Tech Talks Central during the eHealth Forum Festival in Technopolis, October 2016.

Ted Spooner's 22 years of broad experience in financial services, technology, digital entertainment and healthcare IT led him to co-found RespondWell in 2003.  As Chairman and CEO, Ted led the company's initial strategy for development of a new game category - fitness gaming, selling more than $80 million at retail in the global consumer fitness game category. Ted led the company's transformation of the business, utilizing its assets for development of a Microsoft Kinect-based solution for physical therapy automation, making RespondWell the award-winning company it is today. He also leads the company's initiatives with clinical content partners such as Mary Free Bed, a leading post-acute rehab hospital and Cincinnati Children's Hospital. Ted was one of the pioneers of online banking, having founded Corrillian in 1997, an online banking software company with a mission to create a Microsoft-based, highly scalable transaction – processing platform to support emerging consumer and small business demand for online banking. Corillian was acquired by CheckFree Corp. for $245 million in 2007. 00:00 Ted discusses the difference between Telehealth and Telerehabilitation. 01:00 The Telehealth “umbrella.” 02:30 “Consumers have been using Telehealth for years and years, they just didn't know what it was called.” 03:00 The Telehealth reimbursement code. 03:30 The blurring line between synchronous and asynchronous Telehealth. 10:00 Telehealth as the difference between getting care and not getting care. 11:00 Aftercare as a potential deciding factor for patients choosing a provider. 15:15 Telehealth as an aid to hospital discharges. 19:00 The Connect Motion Sensor and how it's helping Telehealth and specifically Respondwell. 23:20 What Respondwell's adherence tools look like from the backend. 28:50 “Without automation, how are we going to care for these people?” 29:30 You can find out more at Respondwell.com.  

Nick Petra Certified Financial Planner, President of Strategic Duck Marketing and management consulting, Current chair of the Arizona Small Business Association John Grispon 25 years of experience in operations, digital entertainment and healthcare IT experience have led him to co-found RespondWell.  As Chief Operating Officer, John oversees the company's operational initiatives including marketing, sales, distribution and product development. He joined co-founder, Ted Spooner, in transforming the business, utilizing the company's assets for development of a Microsoft Kinect based solution for physical therapy and wellness program automation, developing strategic partnerships with Microsoft's Kinect for Windows Team. Under John's leadership, RespondWell was honored with a Microsoft HUG Innovation Award on 2014 in the Patient Engagement category Ron Kushner national leader for Wealthperx, an international network marketing company. He is the author of many marketing & business development articles and has helped people over the past 25 years to generate income working from home For more information go to MoneyForLunch.com. Connect with Bert Martinez on Facebook. Connect with Bert Martinez on Twitter. Need help with your business? Contact Bert Martinez. Have Bert Martinez speak at your event!

We discuss how the industrial and consumer IoT worlds are beginning to collide with technologies such as the Apple Watch and Microsoft Kinect. We also look at the growth of IoT in 2015, specifically focusing on the increase of acquisitions and mergers in the semiconductor space. Finally, we consider the transcendence of drones, robots and augmented reality into mainstream movements in 2016 and beyond.

I have to admit being mesmorized by motion control since I saw some early body-suit performances in London. But thank the gods, the technology has really advanced since those early days. With the advent of the Microsoft Kinect, artistic use of motion control for visuals and sound has blown up, and the Ethno Tekh team has been at the forefront of the work. Chris Vik took time out of his schedule to chat about motion control, his use of the Kinect and some of his performing experiences - including one of the most harrowing tales I've heard about crap-yourself tech problems. Any time you are taking technology out of its natural home (and let's face it - the Kinect is meant for your living room, not the C-Bit stage...), it can get a little wooly. But Chris and his working partner Brad Hammond take it on, and we get to hear about some of the fallout. You can check out Chris' work at his site: chrisvik.com. Enjoy!

How does the Microsoft Kinect work? What's Microsoft's position on hacking the Kinect? What are some of the most creative hacks? Join Jonathan and Chris as they break down the astonishing potential of the Kinect. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://news.iheart.com/podcast-advertisers

2012 is off to a roaring start, and this week's episode is chock-full of PC gaming news! Valve reports Steam's sales doubling for the seventh consecutive year, the Microsoft Kinect is officially coming to PC, and Razer is preparing to release a gaming tablet called “Project Fiona”. We also discuss Blizzard's plan to release a [&hellip

Fresh from the special Microsoft Kinect event we bring you the 22nd episode of the GameOnTV Podcast. Strangely enough we kick off with some Kinect talk discussing the newly announced voice activation tech and some upcoming Kinect games, we get an update on Tim’s PS3 hard drive, talk Battlefield 3 early reports, GTA V announcements, Ezio in Soul Calibur V, more Arkham City talk, Tim reviews Warrior, we look forward to In Time, and Jason reviews Batman: Year One on DVD.

Rob, Chachi, and Sorg are joined by Brett Wiewiora of OnlyinPGH.com and Zach Rizza of Wrestling Mayhem Show to talk the new iPhone 4S, play with Siri, check out Take This Lollipop, and ponder the point it makes. We also show a video from New York Comic Con where we see a demo of Crave 3D at the Realusion booth where they're motion capturing with Microsoft Kinect units. Join the AwesomeCast on Twitter, Facebook and be sure to follow us on iTunes in both video and audio formats, as well as YouTube, Boxee, Roku, and Blip.tv! As always, you can chime in with news, thoughts, or comments at Contact@AwesomeCast.com or 724-25-A-CAST.

Lee Scott, an Academic Evangelist within the Developer and Platform Evangelism ‘DPE’ Group at Microsoft UK discussed the Microsoft Kinect within teaching, learning and research at FOTE11. Since its release of Kinect, there has been tremendous e...

Heia wrandawyr, dyma ni’n cyflwyno Haclediad #6 – Yr un ar ôl yr un byw! Diolch mawr i bawb ddaeth draw i’n gweld a lawrlwytho Haclediad #5 o ddigwyddiad Hacio’r Iaith, ac i’r holl griw technegol oedd yn rhan o’i chyhoeddi, da chi’n bril. Y tro hwn ar Haclediad #6 byddwn yn trafod mwy am ddyfodiad Umap Cymraeg, yr aggregator trydar Cymreig. Byddwn hefyd yn sôn am yr anghydfod rhwng Apple a rhai o’u cyhoeddwyr, dyfodiad yr iPad 2 a phosibiliadau rheolydd y Microsoft Kinect nawr bod teclyn datblygu wedi ei rhyddhau iddo. Fel pob rhifyn arall, bydd digon o fwydro technoleg a’r we o’n cornel ni o’r rhyngrwyd – mwynhewch! The post Haclediad #6 – Yr un ar ôl yr un byw! appeared first on Hacio'r Iaith » Ffrwd Podlediad.

Steve Brandano joins the show as a guest scientist to learn the secrets of Miguels show prep, sordid tales of sex gone wrong and the war between the Playstation Move and the Microsoft Kinect. www.GloryHoleRadio.com

Εν μέσω θητείας, αναλύουμε την cosmic distance ladder, ή πώς ανακαλύψαμε το μέγεθος του κόσμου που ζούμε.Download MP3: Episode 49 (1:05:50, 60.6MB)Podcast feed: click hereComments: timaras@gmail.comWebsite: http://themos-podcast.blogspot.comShownotesCover Art: Το Yeti BlueNews & Σχόλια:- Νέο μικρόφωνο!- iPad 2- Εντυπώσεις από το Microsoft KinectMovies & Shows:- TRON: Legacy- The King's Speech- Mad MenΕπιστήμες:The Cosmic Distance Ladder, βασισμένη σε ομιλία του Terence Tao.Music:Oleg Serkov, Epoch Symbol

Reviews galore including Rock Band 3, Halo Reach and Fable 3 plus discussions about Call of Duty: Black Ops, Donkey Kong Country Returns, Kirby's Epic Yarn, Gran Turismo 5, and Goldeneye. Also, Microsoft Kinect, the future of motion control gaming and our top 5 hockey games of all time.

Reviews galore including Rock Band 3, Halo Reach and Fable 3 plus discussions about Call of Duty: Black Ops, Donkey Kong Country Returns, Kirby's Epic Yarn, Gran Turismo 5, and Goldeneye. Also, Microsoft Kinect, the future of motion control gaming and our top 5 hockey games of all time.

The Post Game Report crew is joined by Tamara, from ThatGirlsSite.com and Phoenix410, to talk about the world of video games. - Soldier X finally gets his hands on a Microsoft Kinect. - Heroic Superman has finally had the chance to play Call of duty: Black Ops. What did he have to say about it? - Tamara and crew talk of their love for the hit series: The Walking Dead. Music provided by Nine Inch Nails - Burn and Nonfinite - Pieces of our old apartment. You can find The Post Game Report at www.talkingaboutgames.com and subscribe to our show on iTunes. Twitter: @PostGameReport        

This episode we go crazy with all kinds of talk. There's the part where we eat a bowl of crow as we enjoy Microsoft Kinect and Sony Move. We talk Rock Band 3, Force Unleashed 2, Fallout: New Vegas, William's Pinball Collection, and a ton more. Seriously, it's jam packed with so much  stuff you'll … Continue reading "NQcast17 – Fresh Dragonballs" The post NQcast17 – Fresh Dragonballs first appeared on No Quarters dot Net | A MFVGP.

It's time for Microsoft Kinect! We take everyone through the setup process, show you what the room looks like under infrared light, show Video Kinect, and then play Kinect Adventures, Joy Ride, and KINECTIMALS! (Note: the trolls returned near the end for a little bit.)

It's time for Microsoft Kinect! We take everyone through the setup process, show you what the room looks like under infrared light, show Video Kinect, and then play Kinect Adventures, Joy Ride, and KINECTIMALS! (Note: the trolls returned near the end for a little bit.)

Episode 124 is all about the new Microsoft Kinect. The PGR crew, along with special guest TG1_Eddie will go into a deep discussion about the Kinect and it's future. There is also coverage from the Microsoft sponsored launch party that was held at the Hard Rock Cafe, in Times Square New York. Song at the end of the show was by 808 State - Cubik

In this week's slightly inebriated episode, we discover that E3 doesn't have much for us. In fact, it's for suckers. We discover that Microsoft Kinect probably isn't sensitive enough to do anything useful. Sony makes their dildo controller look somewhat appealing. Then, Nintendo announces a new console and steals the show. Then, we talk about games that are months (and in some cases years) old. For some reason, we don't play the new games. Except on the iPHONE! (But no one believes me.)

We've all owned one, that bizarre product that was meant to improve your video gaming experience, but ended in disappointment. In the pre-historic days before the internet, it was difficult to determine whether a peripheral was worthy of your dollar (or even worked properly), and this laissez-faire environment created a wealth of crap-tastic innovations. From the Atari Mindlink to the just announced Microsoft Kinect, we've got all the bases covered. Plus, all the latest "retro news" in this episode of Pixel Dreams.

Join @travisdennie and @rcsheets in Episode #004 to hear about Microsoft Kinect, Google Voice, iPhone 4 defects, iOS 4, and console gaming.   Details: Total Running Time: 56m 56s Download Episode #004 (MP3)

Wherein we discuss Futurama's impending return, E3 2010 press conferences, the Microsoft Kinect, the Nintendo 3DS, PlayStation Move, Kid Icarus: Uprising, Star Wars: The Old Republic, free Xbox 360s, DC Universe Online, Rock Band 3, Epic Mickey, the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, our personal bottom-of-the-barrel movies, the A-Team, and Jonah Hex. Starring Ryan Scott, Karen Chu, Andrew Fitch, Ryan Higgins, and Brock Sager.

Part one?! What the hell?!   Yep. This week, Edie Sellers, Holy Goalie and Cooper Hawkes delve deep into the E3 press offerings from Sony and Microsoft... and then they run out of time. So the rest of the wrap up will have to wait until next week.   Don't worry, you'll get all the details. Patience is its own reward.   And this show is chock full of review and commentary about what Sony has up its sleeve and what we think of the Microsoft Kinect.   Enjoy.

Waluu Show épisode 3, présenté par les Waluu Twins, créateurs de la startup Waluu.com : Anthony et Benoit. Au sommaire : * Actus hebdo du web * Focus "Internet SuperStar" sur Evan Williams de Twitter * Waluu Actu

W tym tygodniu o: cyfrowym Prezydencie RP, wejściu w życie nowej ustawy o informatyzacji, dostępie online do ksiąg wieczystych, europosłach i ACTA, Microsoft Kinect, Operze 10.60 beta, MS Office 2010 i jego promocji, Mundialu trudnym dla internetu.

W tym tygodniu o: cyfrowym Prezydencie RP, wejściu w życie nowej ustawy o informatyzacji, dostępie online do ksiąg wieczystych, europosłach i ACTA, Microsoft Kinect, Operze 10.60 beta, MS Office 2010 i jego promocji, Mundialu trudnym dla internetu.

Here are the shownotes for episode #70 for the Global Geek News Podcast: Stories: * Report: Facebook "like" button increases traffic to blogs by 50% * Microsoft Kinect, Xbox 360 "slim", and more early highlights from E3 * Study shows low purchase intent for Natal, Move * Adobe expects flash to be on 205 million phones by the end of 2012 * FTC to investigate Apple's iPhone App rules * Sprint to begin throttling data this summer? * FCC rejects proposal that might have saved AM radio * Lawyers warn Wordpress over file sharing news blog * Hacker charged with threatening US VP using neighbors computer * Judge may dismiss 4,576 of 4577 P2P defendants from lawsuit * New York Times bans the word "tweet" Tips of the Week: * How to permanently delete your account on popular websites * 50 new useful CSS techniques, tools and tutorials * How to check your iPhone 4 upgrade eligibility Check out the new Global Geek News Online Store! Like Global Geek News on Facebook and follow it on Twitter! Host: Jeremy Bray & Wesley Faulkner

Here are the shownotes for episode #70 for the Global Geek News Podcast: Stories: * Report: Facebook "like" button increases traffic to blogs by 50% * Microsoft Kinect, Xbox 360 "slim", and more early highlights from E3 * Study shows low purchase intent for Natal, Move * Adobe expects flash to be on 205 million phones by the end of 2012 * FTC to investigate Apple's iPhone App rules * Sprint to begin throttling data this summer? * FCC rejects proposal that might have saved AM radio * Lawyers warn Wordpress over file sharing news blog * Hacker charged with threatening US VP using neighbors computer * Judge may dismiss 4,576 of 4577 P2P defendants from lawsuit * New York Times bans the word "tweet" Tips of the Week: * How to permanently delete your account on popular websites * 50 new useful CSS techniques, tools and tutorials * How to check your iPhone 4 upgrade eligibility Check out the new Global Geek N

Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes 00:00:00 - Speaker 1: On the academic side, you’re very limited by your work has to fit in the box of like a peer reviewed quantifiable research paper and in the commercial world, it needs to be commercializable in the next, you know, probably a year or two, maybe, maybe 3, but all the good ideas don’t fit in one of those two boxes. 00:00:27 - Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to Meta Muse. We use the software for your iPad that helps you with ideation and problem solving. But this podcast isn’t about Muse the product, it’s about Muse the company, the small team behind it. I’m Adam Wiggins. I’m here today with my colleague, Mark McGranaghan. Mark, you reading anything good lately? 00:00:43 - Speaker 1: Yeah, just last night, I actually reread an ultra classic, you and your Research by Hamming, who’s a famous scientist, and it’s about how you build a really impactful research program over the course of your career, and I was inspired to reread it because it’s one of the chapters in the classic book, The Art and Science of Doing Engineering, which is about to be republished by Stripe Press. 00:01:05 - Speaker 2: Stripe Press is really on a tear these days. 00:01:09 - Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, highly recommended. 00:01:10 - Speaker 2: And also perhaps relevant to our topic today, and I’m happy to say that our topic today was requested by a listener. So Fetta Sanchez wrote in to ask us, how do you get into the HCI slash interaction slash new gestures research field. So probably we need to start at the top there. Maybe you want to tell us what HCI is. 00:01:32 - Speaker 1: Sure, so HCI stands for human-computer interaction, and this is things like the way humans interface with computers, and also the way they use computers as a tool in their lives, how they get things done, how they learn. To use them, how they accomplish their goals, things like that. 00:01:48 - Speaker 2: And I did a couple of years of a computer science undergraduate degree that I did not finish. And during that time, I really remember everything in the curriculum was algorithms, databases, compilers, maybe some network type of things. And I only learned about HCI as a field a couple of years ago. And to me it was a bit of a revelation because this concept of How the user interacts with the computer and that being a whole field of study. Well, I was very excited about, but stood for me in very stark contrast to the System the algorithms oriented computer science that I sort of knew from my brief time in academia. 00:02:29 - Speaker 1: Yeah, likewise, it was pretty new to me, and it’s a whole huge world, you know, there’s conferences and papers and many professors who’ve dedicated their entire careers to it. 00:02:37 - Speaker 2: It was fun for me to dive in and learn about that world a little bit, and you and I were both part of this independent research lab called Inot Switch. Uh, and through that process, we began publishing and then made some connections with folks in this field, and then you and I went to a conference called Kai last year that I think really kind of opened the door for us there. Maybe one thing that would be worth doing is um categorizing here a little bit. There’s Human-computer interaction as a branch of computer science in the academic tradition, that is say mostly done in universities, sort of the the pure sciences. Then there’s corporate R&D which is more associated with for profit businesses, but actually it’s where a lot of the HCI innovations that are maybe the most famous, uh, we think of places like Bell Labs or Xerox PARC, maybe today, Microsoft Research. And then there’s a small but growing space of called them independent computer science labs, independent HCI researchers, of which I think we we had some contact with. How would you define the difference between those three categories? 00:03:39 - Speaker 1: Yeah, well, like you said, the academic side is grounded in these research universities, and this is often directed by a professor or graduate students, and there the values are really around evidence, rigor, review, publication and communication, and creating knowledge over time, which is a whole thing we should talk about. And then on the industrial side, it’s often more integrative because you need to consider. Not only the the pure HTI elements, but the business elements and the hardware constraints and the how easy the thing is to learn for the user and practice and things like that. And then on the indie side, this is a smaller domain, but that’s tends to be more experimental, free form. People can bring their own wild ideas to it and just try stuff. So it’s a nice injector of new ideas. 00:04:22 - Speaker 2: One way we can maybe make this concrete is to describe the path from let’s say the lab to commercial product. And I’ve I’ve struggled to find full stories on this in many cases, I think this is something that happens behind closed doors a little bit, even though science does have open publishing, the exact story of how something went from basic research or early um HCI research to a product that’s in the hands of end users is not well understood or well or written down anywhere. Um, I think the Xerox PARC case is one that has a lot of um, Fame and certainly in the tech circles that we run in, there’s there’s some books about it. There, they invented things like the modern GUI, uh, as well as what you see is what you get word processing, and was really a pretty special place. And notably there was a branch of Xerox, the copier company, and they were looking for innovations. I think their theme was the Office of the Future. And they were looking for innovations around that and, and clearly, you know, this is the 1970s, they knew that would have to do with computers, personal computing was, didn’t really exist yet or was, you know, still just an emerging idea. So that’s one famous example. Uh, maybe more recently, you have something like Microsoft Research, and I think, you know, I don’t 100% know what the path is for some, you know, for example, interesting innovations that emerged from Microsoft, to what degree were those laboratory projects versus some other path. Uh, one that I find quite interesting is what we now on the Apple platform, we talk about face ID on the Apple platform we use face ID rather. And that uses stereoscopic cameras and infrared, and infrared camera, which gives you depth sensing, right? So this is why you can’t fool your iPad into unlocking by holding up a picture of your face, because it can actually sense the the shape of it. And that idea was first in Windows Hello, which sort of was the Microsoft implementation of facial recognition. And that in turn, the technology there, I think came from the Microsoft Kinect, which is actually a gaming. Device, um, and I’ve tried to like dig into the history on this. I don’t know if it came out of a Microsoft lab. I think it may have come out of some other independent place. So you often have these very winding paths where a promising technology like stereoscopic cameras emerges, but you’re still trying to figure out the application of it. And it’s actually quite a long distance between when these early researchers are doing the work, and it’s in the hands of consumers as a usable product. 00:07:00 - Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think honestly, that’s the best case that you have this long winding path, but it does eventually find its way into commercialization. I think one of the ideas we had originally behind the lab was these two domains are kind of spinning in circles. So it’s a lot of good ideas from the academic world that are getting stuck or don’t have the appropriate context from the commercial world, so they’re not transferring over. And on the flip side, the commercial world isn’t tapping into the academic tradition and the way that it should be. So you have a lot of like the, the Microsoft research and the, the Googles and so on, they do a lot of internal research. 00:07:36 - Speaker 1: Google X maybe is their, their internal lab, or they have a bunch of computer science just doing research on, you know, search and stuff like that, uh, some of which gets thrown out as papers and some of which doesn’t, but the kind of the classic path from uh academic labs through commercialization I hypothesize is actually weaker than it, it should be or could be and perhaps was in the, in the past. And one of our ideas with the lab was to help bridge that gap with something that was kind of in between with the with the so-called industrial research lab. 00:08:01 - Speaker 2: Actually, Google search is another case. It’s not an HCI thing, it’s more of an algorithms thing, but the founders of Google, they were doing academic research work at Stanford, if I’m not mistaken, came up with this page rank algorithm, which was a science paper published like any other. At some point, I’m not super knowledgeable about the story, but at some point they decided to turn that into a working prototype. They set up this search engine, they found it worked way better than anything else out there, and they realized they could spin that out into a commercial. Entity. And so those two individuals took it from that early lab work all the way through to a commercially viable product, but it takes pretty extraordinary individuals and probably extraordinary circumstances or at least serendipitous circumstances for that to happen. And so what you’re alluding to there with the the gap between The academic researchers who are exploring wild new ways we can interact with computers and commercial companies that can bring these to people in their everyday lives. Um, that’s, you know, in the Google case, these, these extraordinary individuals took it across that threshold, but what can we do to create more movement there? 00:09:12 - Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. I think We’ll see as we get more into HCI specifically here, that the HCI domain isn’t as obviously susceptible to the academic tactics as other domains, so things like algorithms are very quantifiable, they’re very repeatable, they’re very discreet, and those are things that work well in the the traditional academic model of of measurement and confidence intervals and so on, whereas HCI is often much more multi-dimensional, maybe case based, maybe hard to quantify. 00:09:39 - Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, I think how it feels is like a huge dimension of making interfaces, but that is something that is very hard for science to evaluate. Uh, it’s something that is more of a taste or judgment call, but then science is and should be about rigor and the academic tradition and fitting into these and and sometimes I think that does mean from what I’ve seen of the HCI field. Sometimes I read these papers where, I don’t know, one example was, um, I think it was also a Microsoft research project. They did an interesting thing where they rigged up some projectors where you could essentially put windows from your computer, uh, individual windows, whether it’s like a document app or something else up on the wall and they had projectors, so basically all the walls. We were 100% turned into these screens, but it was collaborative. So I could put up one window, and it’s not like, while I’m, you know, screen sharing, no one else can, someone else could put up their window and you had this shared space that was very spatial and that sort of thing. This sort of stuff was, was, you know, part of what was inspiring us and we were thinking about the new opportunity. But notably there. It’s a really interesting prototype, you can look at their video and look at what they’ve done and read the paper and think about how this might be applied in the real world, but they have to, it’s not enough to just build the thing and say, hey, we liked it or we didn’t like it, then you need to go and do some kind of quantifiable test. And they did a usability test or user test, which is as near as I could tell was just grabbing 7 random people that happened to be walking by in the office and having them use it for 2 minutes and then, you know, giving them a little survey and writing it down. And it seems like, OK, well, I guess that makes it science because you’re measuring a thing. But that’s not where we make great breakthrough new interfaces, but it’s very difficult because you just leave it to, well, did you like the thing you built? People always are attached to the things they built. They always like the thing they built. How do we, how do we measure that? That’s probably an unsolved problem a little bit for the academic side. 00:11:34 - Speaker 1: Yeah, I think so. Thinking about things that do work well in this space, reflecting on my own journey. I started not so much with the HCI as like proposing a certain windowing system or a specific gesture model. I started more on the fundamental side. So we think about human computer interaction, you need to understand the human body, like biomechanics and things like that. You need to understand the human mind, like cognition, and then you need to understand the computer science fundamentals, things like the graphics pipeline. So I found it very useful to go and study those fundamentals, both within. And outside the HCI literature, and there again, that area is much more susceptible to traditional scientific methods, so it’s very good information. um, and then you really understand that the fundamentals, the ground truth. 00:12:21 - Speaker 2: You know, the point about humans and computers are equal participants in this. And I think there is a tendency for computer people to focus on the computer. Maybe one thing that HCI tries to do, or at least um some of the HCI teams that I’ve had chance to interact with, including this team out of UCSD that we met at this conference we went to, they try to have maybe a cognitive science person or behavioral sciences person on the team, and they are concerned more with that, how does the human mind work, how does our attention work? How does our how do our bodies work, and then, but you also have to connect that. Together with what’s possible with the technology, both in the moment and of course, also in the future where we think technology might go. And I think, you know, for example, VR AR stuff is maybe in some ways a hot or buzzy space or maybe was, maybe that’s died down a little bit. But if you go read a lot of research about that, you see that for example, one of the biggest problems with that is just a simple case of, OK, if you got these controllers, you’re waving around in the air as the main way you interact with it, your arms just get tired. And it’s, it’s like they, they’ve measured this, right? They, they put people in situations where they’re using these kinds of controllers for long lasting tasks and they see that after an hour, you got to take a rest and they’re they’re, they’ve tried lots of different things to try to make that to be able to let you do a full work day the way you would at a standard desktop computer or whatever, and they haven’t found a solution. And so if you’re coming in, if you’re a commercial company that’s coming in and wants to do something with this space, you probably want to read that literature and keep those, uh, keep that challenge, that unsolved problem in mind. Yeah, one place to fill in more of the picture on the academic side, for me, the big eye opener was going to, uh, the biggest conference in the space, which is Kai last year, you and I kind of spontaneously both decided to go. This is when we were still within the lab, but thinking about the use. Idea and that was a really great experience because we both got to meet a lot of the professors and researchers that were working in this space, got to see how many people were there. I, I don’t know, it was 2000, 3000 people, there’s hundreds of papers submitted, many, many tracks of talks, and then we saw all of these people who are working really hard at thinking big and thinking future facing about what, what computers can do for us and how we can interact with them. Some examples of just for fun, I pulled up my old notes, uh, had a very early version of Muse. Uh, back then, a prototype that I was working with, and I was able to dig that out of my, my archives, or dig the the Muse board exports out of my archives. Um, we had, for example, there was a talk on peripheral notifications, and this is where they’re basically testing, OK, so if you have a slack notification or an email notification or something pop up, and it’s on screen somewhere. What can we do to put it in your peripheral vision so that it won’t break your state of flow, or a better way to put it is just trying to understand what what kinds of sizes and colors and motions and shapes for a particular notification in a particular place in your field of view, how likely that is to get your attention. And then as a person who’s implementing something that wants to give a notification, you can go read this literature and they have this very extensive data set. And if you say, hey, I want something that’s absolutely certain to grab your attention, you should do it like this. If I want something that’s more a little bit of a note to the side, but I don’t want to distract you if you’re in the middle of something, maybe you should use this shape and this color and be in this space in your in your field of view. And there’s things there about keyboards and different ways to improve typing on mobile, there was lots of things about wall mounted displays. Uh, there was, um, Ken Hinckley’s group, uh, which has been a source of inspiration for us at use. They do a lot of stuff with tablets, particularly around the surface platform. They had one that was, I don’t know, they attached a bunch of extra sensors, they basically strapped a bunch of extra sensors onto a standard consumer tablet and they use that to detect, I think what they called like postures, so they could tell better the grip, like how you were holding the tablet at the time and then they can make the software behave differently. And clearly this is not something you can use in production. They, this is the equivalent of a raspberry pi taped onto the back and a bunch of sensors, you know, kind of hot glued on around the edges. This would never work in commercial environment, but it suggested some things you could do if such a capability. Existed and I think that that is a good example of what um what I think this field of this best does is it it it gives you possibilities to draw from and then it’s the applied people, what we would normally call just people building products that can potentially go and draw from that pool of ideas and that pool of things, finding things that have been learned and use them to make potentially new products that solve uh new problems or old problems in new ways. 00:17:07 - Speaker 1: Yeah, this experimental slash prototype approach is probably the thing that we um most think of when we think of HCI. Another type of work that I found very helpful is the ethnography, where you go and you understand how people actually work day to day and what’s worked for them and what hasn’t. Couple of examples there. One is a book called, I think it’s a small matter of programming or the simple matter of programming. This is a study of uh end user programming in the wild, things like Excel spreadsheets, CADS, and what actually works there, and because they talk to these people who are actually doing work every day and and having success or not in these environments, they’re able to pretty deeply understand what is useful in the way, in a way that you probably couldn’t get with either theorizing or experiments. 00:17:50 - Speaker 2: And I’ll just interject to say that one was a big inspiration for uh Hiroku. And it’s also a good indicator of how much the academic world is ahead of in a, in a strange way. We think of maybe in the startup world or the tech world or whatever, oh, we’re so on the cutting edge of things, but a small amount of programming was written in 1993, if I’m not mistaken. And this was 2006 or 2007 when I was reading this and and applying some of what it, um, some of the ideas that were in it went into Hiroku. And so at that point, the book was already 15 years old, but a lot of the research and understanding in it and ideas that suggested were still really bold, innovative, or just thought provoking, in a way that current technology and software products and certainly programming tools um had not taken advantage of or um learned from. 00:18:45 - Speaker 1: Yeah, a lot of the ideas that one tends to think of in HCI perhaps as as a supposedly novel interaction or approach has actually been tried before. I think it’s very important to understand that prior art, especially if it basically didn’t make it into the commercial world and like, why is that? Or else you’re liable to make the same mistakes again. Um, another example that I’m thinking of was the study. Of so-called folk practices with computer programs. This is like little habits or techniques that people have picked up to make themselves more productive with programs, and they found two examples. One is lightweight version control by making copies. So if you’re in, if you’re editing a photo and you want to, you know, have some quick version control. Uh, you might, uh, duplicate the item in your canvas, like in Figma, you know, make another copy of it, and then fiddle with the new version, and then you can kind of compare it to the old version, even if you don’t have like a, you know, get for Figma or whatever. Um, another one was this idea of everyone likes to have a little scratch space where you can like put, you know, your little clippings and bits and things you’re working on, and that was one of the inspirations for. the shelf in the original Muse prototype. 00:19:47 - Speaker 2: Another book we both read around that time was The Science of managing our digital stuff, and they had a lot of insights, again, things that I think we borrowed from a little bit from Muse, but because they come into it from this ethnographic or academic perspective, they just want to learn, they want to collect the data, they want to understand users. They’re not coming in with the point of view of like, we have a product we want to sell you or or just a uh A product we believe in and we’ve already bought into the mindset of, they just want to learn. And so one insight there was people who have been designing file systems, that is the way we store documents on our computers for decades have talked about the hierarchical file system, that is to say, folders that nest inside each other, uh, is no one thinks that way and hard drives get messy and no one wants that, maybe we want a tagging system, I think BOS had a version of that, um, maybe we want fast search or whatever. And these folks just did a bunch of studies of people including how they use Dropbox or Google Drive or their own hard drives or just the way they manage their files, and pretty reliably, people like putting files in folders. And they like pretty shallow hierarchies and they can remember where it is and it’s best for them if it’s only in one place. And you can sit there and talk about how that’s not the best solution or whatever, but they, they did a pretty broad survey and just saw this is what people want to do despite the existence of other ways of doing it and the other kinds of solutions, including search and tagging and so forth. At some point you have to acknowledge the reality of this is how humans behave, and even if we don’t like that behavior, we need to think about that when we build tools for them. 00:21:27 - Speaker 1: Yes, if you’re contemplating doing a search-based or tag-based information management system, please read this book. It’s, it’s super critical. 00:21:35 - Speaker 2: There’s an interesting tension there between, I think the academic world. is not only good at, but is science is essentially built on prior art and you’re building on what came before, right? Any paper that doesn’t start with a survey of other research that this is built on or related to or other people have tried similar things, and you’re you’re extending the tip of human knowledge, hopefully, by building on everything we already know. Um, and so for that reason, the academic world is very good at the the prior art thing. And maybe the startup world is all about, hey, I’m a 24 year old that doesn’t know anything and I’m totally naive, but I have this wild idea for a thing I want to build, and 99% of that at the time, that turns out to be an idea that a bunch of other people tried, it doesn’t work and fail for all the same reasons as everyone else does, but 1% of the time it turns out that some assumptions about the world have changed, and it is that naivety, it is that. Not looking at why people failed before that it allows you maybe to find an opportunity. So there is, there is a bit of attention there, but sometimes the um I’m very appreciative of the what people have thought about this, they studied it in depth, there’s a lot of prior art here, like look that up before you start building things, um, and I think that that would be advice I would give to my younger self, I think at a minimum. Alright, so that gives us a little bit of the landscape of of HCI. Now the next part of the question was, how do you actually get into this field? I think that’s kind of a tough one, so I’m gonna actually say that for the end. Uh, but in the meantime, there was a follow on question here and Fetta says, how do you forget or ignore current patterns and come up with new ones? You have some thoughts on that, Mark? 00:23:14 - Speaker 1: Yeah, I come back to this first principles idea of really understanding the basis for all of this, the biomechanics, the cognitive science, the computer science, and then understanding the Um, assumptions or lemmas, uh, of the current design paradigms. So, you know, for example, Uh, one thing we see with with phones is most apps are designed for only one finger to be used at a time, and it would be a mistake to translate that design constraint or design decisions over to a tablet, we think, but a lot of apps just kind of blindly do that do that because they’re both iOS and they’re both touch apps. Um, another example even more relevant to use is the pencil. A lot of the gesture space of tablet apps can’t assume that the user has a pencil because Apple and the various app developers just aren’t willing to make that assumption. Uh, with, with muse, we realized that was, uh, assumption that people were making and one that you could take the other side of. So we’ve basically said you really need a pencil to use muse and therefore we’re gonna have some of the functionality behind that, you know, that, that, that physical gesture. 00:24:15 - Speaker 2: Yeah, the status quo is a powerful force for all of us, and we, we tend to act on not quite habit, but this stack of assumptions about the world and what the right way to do something is. And here’s where I like to think in terms of maybe a spectrum between on one far extreme is the research thinking, the out of the box, wild ideas, weird ideas, when you go to one of these HCI conferences, this is what you see a lot of just Sometimes frankly pretty wacky mad scientist kind of stuff. Now, um, but actually there’s only certain times where that is appropriate and in fact, doing research is a place where that is appropriate. Typically, if you’re making a product that you expect people to use in the real world, it’s actually a bad thing to have weird out of the box ideas, particularly about basic interactions. You want the status quo, you want the known path, they usually called the best practice. And I’ve certainly run into this on. Teams where I don’t know, you’re building a basic e-commerce site or something like that, and there’s someone there that wants to do something fun and exciting and so they’re like, and so they say, why not, let’s try this wild idea, you know, instead of checking out like this, you you do this crazy thing and 99% of the time that’s just a bad idea. Please do it the way that other people do it. And this is one of the things that I think tends to make software so high quality in the Apple ecosystems, both Mac and then even more so on iOS is you have this pretty stringent set of, you know, they call it guidelines, but in many cases are just outright rules to get your app approved. They have this very extensive culture and set of principles and so forth in the human interface guidelines and in all the precedent with Apple apps and the wider ecosystem there. It’s all really good and it all hangs together and it works well and people know how to use it. And so most of the time you actually should do the boring, expected common known path thing. And it required, but it’s a shift in mindset, a fun one, but, but also takes some stretching of the brain, you challenge yourself a little bit to go into the research thinking mindset as both of us did, we went to to Ink & Switch. 00:26:29 - Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that’s an important point and a balance to strike. Another big source of inspiration for me has been the world of analog tools. We’ve been thinking about how to build good digital tools for maybe 50 years or so. We have a couple of 1000 years of explicit and implicit study of how to create analog work environments, so things like personal libraries, uh, studies, uh, workshops, artist studios, in some cases, there’s explicit treatises about how you organize one’s library, but there’s also just a huge amount of implicit and embedded knowledge in the patterns that we use every day and that people have kind of habitually used to organize, you know, say the library. So I like to look at the, the physical world and see, how can we just like, as a baseline, make it as good as that. So a simple example would be, if you use ink on a pen, it has zero latency. If you use ink on a really good tablet app, it might have 15 to 20 milliseconds, which is a lot. And if you use it on a bad tablet app, it might have 50 milliseconds. Um, so that’s a really basic example of how there’s a, there’s a simple bar to set. Uh, another one that I think about a lot is multitasking. So if you have a desk, and you have your main piece of work in front of you, and you have some notes to the side or uh up on the top of the table. It’s super fast and easy to multitask your attention, just like you kind of move your eyes or you move your neck and your eyes re refocus, maybe you lean into one side or the other, um, but it’s it’s super fast and lightweight. What you think about a typical iOS app, it’s like, you know, press next page, transition animation, spinner, loads, fonts come in, right? And so it’s it’s very discouraging to actually do this kind of multitasking work. 00:28:06 - Speaker 2: And maybe the flip side of that of taking physical world information practices, things from artist studios and offices, file folders. Scissors, rulers, pencils, desks, you do tend to get, especially the first time an analog process comes on to is digitized. So you think it’s something like desktop publishing going on to computers in the 1980s or yeah, word processors was taking what was a typewriter or a typesetter and moving that onto the screen, spreadsheets that were that way, um maybe PowerPoint, uh taking overhead transparencies, bringing onto the computer in the late 80s, early 90s. In all of these cases, they tend to be very literal. Like the first version of PowerPoint was a way to print out overhead print transparencies, and it wasn’t until much later that the idea of a slide deck that would be all digital and you would never need to print out and put on a projector, uh, showed up. And then often you when you look back at these first transliterations from the analog world to the screen, you see this thing where it’s, oh, isn’t this funny? You know, there’s the little, the little picture of the trash can and a little picture of the Um, you know, often very literal and kind of heavy handed and not taking advantage necessarily of what can be done in the new medium. Do you have a, I don’t know, a sense for the how we take the best parts and the things that work about the physical world, knowledge tools that we’ve been working with for so long and are so adapted to human needs, but not also get stuck in a weird rut of translating them directly so that we don’t get the benefits of the computer. 00:29:39 - Speaker 1: Yeah, I don’t think there’s a simple rule for that, but again, I come back to the fundamentals. A lot of the stuff is driven by the like the biomechanics or the cognitive structures of our mind, which isn’t going to change. So for example, we have a very realistic, deeply embedded expectation that when we like touch something and move our hands that it moves, and that I think is basically not going away, and it would be a mistake to think it’s going to go away. Uh, likewise, I think we have quite embedded cognitive arch. texts around both spatial memory and associative memory. I think those are basically baked in and they’re not going to go anywhere. 00:30:10 - Speaker 2: I guess that comes to mind because I feel like that tension or it’s not even the right word for the interleaving of try to draw the best parts of the physical world workspaces, but also really embrace this digital space and it’s part of the pitch, I guess, or the the value hypothesis for use as a product is that. We are going to take taking something you previously did with Post-it notes and your whiteboard and your notebook and some printouts of some screenshots that you scribble on that are on your desk, and moving them into this expensive and fragile computing device. That it will have new capabilities and new powers that you couldn’t get. And so getting bringing those best parts across, which is, for example, that yeah, you touch something and it moves right away and there’s this instantaneousness to it, and then you’re not like looking at spinners and loading screens and whatever, um, but also taking advantage of all the Um, incredible capabilities and the great depth of possibility that exists within once you move to the digital virtual workspace. 00:31:18 - Speaker 1: Yeah, one idea for an exercise here and this kind of gets into our next question would be just to try to understand and catalog the properties of these physical workspaces that are interesting. So for example, I have a desk here that I think is 6 ft by 3 ft. 00:31:32 - Speaker 2: For our non-American listeners, that’s probably about 2 m by 1.5. 00:31:38 - Speaker 1: Yes, thanks, Adam. So you have this desk and imagine it’s covered with like textbooks and notes and photo printouts at, you know, say 200 DPI. What’s the resolution of that? And if you do that exercise, you’ll see that it’s like massively bigger than even our most advanced displays, it’s not even close, and just being kind of aware of those basic fundamental properties of the physical world and how they might or might not be reflected in your app, I think is a good baseline. 00:32:02 - Speaker 2: So we mentioned academic HCI work, which tends to happen in universities and funded by grant money and the output is published papers, and then there’s corporate R&D which is divisions, separated divisions, but still departments within some large company that has a lot of cash, like a bell, or a Xerox or a Google to throw at potential new innovations, but there’s a third category that Or at least I hope it’s a category now, uh, that it’s much more rare, but I can switch falls into this, and that would be the independent research lab. And the hypothesis behind I and Switch was what if we take the corporate R&D lab, but we cut off the corporation. And this quickly leads you into how does this stuff get funded and our um. Our mutual friend, Ben Reinhard has a whole series of excellent articles about how innovation happens and particularly the different kinds of funding models that can happen and how it gets funded in turn leads into the incentives of the people doing it and there’s quite a, quite a rabbit hole there for those who are interested in it. But the concept behind it and switch was that we could get some grant money to do independent research. With the idea that it would generate called intellectual property. I don’t love that term, but basically, ideas that could potentially be commercialized and ideas with enough depth to them and research, and where we falsified ideas that were no go, and we had some really compelling ones. One of those turned out to be Muse, which we we went ahead and spun out to begin the commercialization project process. But there There are a few others that I know of that are independent labs. One is um Dynamicland, which is sort of Brett Victor’s effort to bring computing and programming in particular into a more spatial, a physical spatial environment, not just on a screen. And then another one that I know of is um maybe more in its nascent stages, but Andy Maze has done amazing work on mnemonic devices. And he’s, I think funding and stuff maybe started with Patreon and maybe led up to institutional funding kind of more of a kind of a, what’s the word for it, a nonprofit, more of a philanthropy type approach. But I think there’s no great answer for how independent research can get done, but I at least I hope that I could switch is an interesting example, if not role model for others that might want to see how they can push the frontiers forward in a particular space. 00:34:24 - Speaker 1: Yeah, that’s both the challenge and the promise of this third type of institution on the academic side, you’re very limited by your work has to fit in the box of like a peer reviewed quantifiable research paper and in the commercial world, it needs to be commercializable in the next, you know, probably a year or 2, maybe, maybe 3, but all the good ideas don’t fit in one of those two boxes. As hard as it is to collect them with this third organizational type, I think it’s worth trying. 00:34:47 - Speaker 2: It’s a great point. I think the time horizon is one of the key. Variables, let’s say that defines what I would call research for for anything, but certainly for human computer interaction, which is, um, I believe Xerox Park actually had an explicit time horizon of 10 years. Which is definitely way beyond what a commercial entity would normally do. Um, and I think, you know, basic science even has a longer time horizon than that sometimes. But yeah, when you look at maybe university labs, they’re thinking forward really, really far, um, maybe corporate R&D labs are thinking further than their commercial counterparts. And then if you talk about a startup, particularly something. combinator, you’ve got to build that MVP, get it to market, validate it, get customers. You can’t be building it on some shaky technology that one, you don’t know if it’ll work, and two might take many years of development yet to come to come to enough maturity that you can base something that people really want to build a product that people will depend on. 00:35:44 - Speaker 1: Yeah, and I also think you get a bit more wildcard energy in these independent orgs, you know, the, the academic institutions and the, the big commercial labs are just necessarily more constrained and structured, and you can have just more eccentric people doing stuff on the independent side, which sometimes leads you down weird dead ends, but sometimes you get really interesting results and it kind of injects a new idea into the mix. I’m actually we talked mostly about like independent research labs or research efforts. I also consider like indie creators, artists, tinkerers in this bucket too. One example that comes to mind is that the video game Braid, which is this amazing like time traveling based game where the time traveling is like very smooth and scrubbed frame by frame. Um, that’s actually been something of an inspiration for me thinking about like version control and time travel for productivity tools. 00:36:33 - Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that’s Jonathan Blow, and he also went on to make. Other like category breaking games, uh, trying to remember the name of it, there was a puzzle game that was actually really nice on the the iPad that I played with my girlfriend at the time. And then if I’m not mistaken now, he’s working on inventing a new programming language. So yeah, so that the, uh, maybe it just takes a certain mindset, a desire to perhaps even a um a drive to think outside the box and do weird stuff. And yeah, I certainly agree that Labs depend on weird, wild, I think I saw the word maverick used quite a bit when describing um there’s this book called Dealers of Lightning, which I think covers, covers Xerox Park and and kind of those glory days pretty well, and it talks about, yeah, there are these, I don’t know, kind of long hair types and, you know, don’t wear shoes in the office and of course those aren’t the qualities that make them good researchers, but it’s connected to this. Maybe desire to do a weird thing to not conform to try stuff at the fringes, to be actually fascinated by things that are at the fringes, as opposed to, this is weird, who cares? I want to work on something more mainstream, let’s say, um, and not to say that that’s a better or worse approach to bring to your work, uh, just that it, it fits in a different space in the innovation cycle. Well, maybe that brings us around to the core of the original question, how do you get into this field? 00:38:04 - Speaker 1: Yeah, and I, I feel like there might be two different questions embedded there. One is maybe how do you participate or contribute or even just kind of find, find out what’s going on, uh, and the other is how do you make a living doing it. And, uh, I, I think making a living doing it is, is harder, but it’s maybe simpler to answer. There, there are two main paths right now. There’s the academic path and there’s the corporate path. Um, the academic path you you basically you go to graduate school and you get a PhD. Uh, but even after that, it’s, it’s quite challenging just because it’s so competitive in the corporate path, you become a practitioner and you, you do good, you know, engineering or product work and eventually you can enter this more researching ladder. But I’m not sure we have that much to contribute on that front because neither you or I have gone down those paths, maybe more of the how do you engage with the community where we should focus here. 00:38:43 - Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. Well then, you teed up really nicely. How should we engage with the community? 00:38:49 - Speaker 1: Well, step here I would say is start digging into the literature, you know, it sounds obvious, but I think a lot of people haven’t done this either they don’t realize it’s there or they’re intimidated by it. Um, but this reminds me of Rich Hickey’s classic talk, hammock driven development. He’s like, if you’re working on something like you. I think you need a hash function that does X going to Google Scholar type hash function that does X enter and see what comes up. Like there’s almost certainly going to be something there. 00:39:12 - Speaker 2: Well, maybe there’s a great chance to talk about something again. I coming purely from the what what academics would call the industrial side, uh, yeah, working in companies that build products that they sell to people. That’s what I did my whole career. And so things like the fact that all this academic work tends to be published as PDFs in a particular format, there’s a lot tech to formatted to column PDFs, they have a particular style of writing, they have this particular style of citations, you typically, they’re not always open access, but when they are, they’re PDF on a web page, and the search engine for them is something like Google Scholar. I I actually didn’t know that. I didn’t know how to go find those things. And so as a Let’s say as a product developer, designer or engineer, I knew how to Google for stuff. I know how to find stack overflow. I read medium pieces, I read people’s blogs, I follow other folks in my field on Twitter, but the academic world of things was sort of a dark, yeah, was dark to me, except for on occasion, I would stumble across a book like the one you mentioned earlier, a small matter of programming. And I feel like I discovered this incredible trove of knowledge from someone that came at the the problem space from a very different perspective. And I think it also goes the other way, not as much, but I think academics are less likely to read the medium think piece posted by the product designer, the engineer, and basically the two, I think the two communities, if that’s the right way to put it. Uh, have different communications conventions and different ways that they share knowledge with each other and different systems for evaluating. Uh, importance and so on. So it’s very hard to, um, if you’re, if you’re steeped in one, it’s hard to cross the world into the other. So maybe that comes to all right, you find some hooks into this, you can follow some people, whether it’s on Twitter, whether it’s through their personal blogs, you can start to find some papers and Google Scholar on the topic, you can find some slack communities maybe that talk about this stuff and you can try to get hooked into it and and. Again, if you’re someone that comes from more the practitioner side, we might say, engineering products, design, uh and you haven’t been exposed to the academic side, going and and exposing yourself to that is a very good idea and maybe vice versa. 00:41:30 - Speaker 1: Yeah, and one other thing I would emphasize there is that you can do this citation crawling practice where you find a paper that you’re interested in, you can go look at the, the references, and this will refer to a bunch of other papers and sometimes books and in HCI it’s mostly papers, there are a few books, and then you can type those titles into Google Scholar and follow them that way. And a good way to kind of know if you’re getting your hand around the literature is if. When you read a new paper and like you basically recognize most of the citations or they’re kind of off the edge of your um your map in terms of your area of interest. So you’ve kind of identified the full graph of relevant papers and then you’re, you have a good handle on the literature. 00:42:05 - Speaker 2: And I think this is something that’s very much you learn this in the academic tradition, which is if you want to advance the state of the art in a field, first you need to know all the things that humans already know. And you do that by consuming all the literature, and you know when you’ve consumed all the literature exactly the way you described, kind of a crawling process, which is you start with a few seminal papers or you start with a few that are your starting point and you follow all the citations until you get to the edges of it and you feel like, OK, I’ve filled in this space now I know. in some kind of um general sense, what humanity knows about the subject. And now if I am, if I have novel ideas or I want to do new research or I see open questions that stand on top of this, now I can go do that in order to potentially contribute to this. 00:42:52 - Speaker 1: Yeah, and then speaking of taking that next step, it can be intimidating, certainly if you want to jump all the way to publishing in a peer reviewed journal, but I think you can take more incremental steps. One example that comes to mind is Dan Lew’s work on latency in computer systems. Uh, he did a series of measurements and experiments to assess uh the different latencies like from your keyboard. Your monitor for when you move your mouse to something happening, and uh but he was able to publish this on his personal website, and it’s not an academic peer reviewed paper, but it’s, that work has been quite influential, and you can indeed reach the kind of the caliber of academic work, even if you’re not participating in that full pipeline. 00:43:29 - Speaker 2: I’ll note that um work, and if I recall correctly, it’s published on kind of a really basic HTML page with very limited formatting and and whatever feels very um homegrown and authentic. But one of the things he does that’s so compelling is he says, he starts with this hunch, which is computer seems slower than I remember when I was younger, but then he goes to, you know, maybe the way if you don’t come at it from that scientific rigor position, you might go, you know, computers seems slower. I’m gonna like make some snap judgments. And then I’m going to go write a blog post and complain about it. But what he did was say, well, are they actually slower? And he got a, I don’t know, some kind of high speed camera set up and set that up and pointed it at the keyboard and the screen, and he recorded himself pushing a key, and then you can see on the camera when it appears on the screen, and then he, he wrote down exactly to the millisecond and he did that with a whole bunch of different devices, including some computers dating back to the 80s and then he put them all on the table and sorted them in order. And that’s a simple. Application of the scientific method to in this case, a very literal human computer interaction. How long does it take when I press a key when it appears on the screen? And that doesn’t say how long it should take or what would feel right, but you can put now real numbers to this intuition that maybe computers are more sluggish than they were at a different time. 00:44:55 - Speaker 1: Yep, exactly. And then if you are looking to take that step towards uh participating in these peer reviewed journals, a possibility that we’ve had some success with is collaborating with an established academic in the space. Um, Adam, you’ve kind of spearheaded our collaboration with Martin, maybe you want to describe that. 00:45:12 - Speaker 2: Right, well, we were lucky enough to get to work with Martin Klepman, who’s a one of the world’s experts on, say data and data synchronization, particularly around another track of research we had in the the lab around um what we eventually called local first. And he is someone who was in the indust, let’s say the industry world, he was doing startups and at some point felt that he can contribute more to the industry or the world by jumping over to the academic world to do more basic research around algorithms having to do with um synch data synchronization. And so we were lucky enough to get the chance to work with him within the context of the you can switch lab on a kind of a light part-time basis. And that led pretty naturally to, OK, well, we want to write a piece and publish it. And he wanted to publish some of his findings and he said, hey, you know, I think this could go into the academic format. And I said, well, Well, how does that work? He’s like, well, basically we take this web page we wrote, we put it into a lot of tech, we change some of the wording to remove, make it less emotional, uh, we changed the links into the citations where that makes sense, and we, we had a whole process to make it into something fits this format that’s expected by the academic world, and then we submitted it to a conference, uh, where it was accepted and eventually I actually ended up going to present it for. Um, various travel logistics reasons. Um, but yeah, that was a very interesting experience because the four authors on the page, uh, the paper, I think you and Peter maybe both have a good bit of academic experience, although I don’t know if you’ve published that way before. Martin is extremely good at that stuff, and then I knew very little about that world, but working with someone that knows all the ins and outs of it was a very um rewarding way to to learn about it. 00:46:58 - Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And to be clear, we didn’t just jump right to that, you know, a collaboration with one of the world’s leaders in synchronization technologies. There’s a little bit of a. 00:47:09 - Speaker 2: Yeah, don’t email Martin and ask him whether he’ll write a paper with you, he doesn’t know who you are. That’s not what I’m advocating for. 00:47:15 - Speaker 1: There’s there’s a bit of a proof of work function here where if you do some of your independent research in the space, and especially if you publish something that’s coherent and compelling, it becomes much more. You know, reasonable to establish a collaboration. Actually, when we did some of our publications around Muse and our latency measurement work, we had a few academics reach out to us and you know, say that’s interesting, maybe we should, you know, do some work together. I don’t think we’ve brought any of those yet to the point of writing a paper together, but it just shows that once you have some, some work out in the world that shows that you’re serious, that you’re engaging somewhat in the academic tradition that you’re aware of the literature, that you have contributions, um, it becomes a more feasible to have those collaborations. 00:47:54 - Speaker 2: Yeah, perhaps like any other intellectual or maker or tradition, this is a world or a community or a society that thrives on seeing what else you’ve done, and if you see that someone has done great work that overlaps with work you’re interested in, and that creates opportunity to connect, to learn from each other and then maybe lead to, can lead to collaborations. And yeah, maybe it’s not such a huge leap from do a weekend hack project and write up your learnings about it to eventually doing something a little more deeper and a little more serious that brings you in the direction of um the academic recognized academic world. Well, it’s interesting to note then that In doing the research lab, we came to it not from the perspective of how do we become a part of HCI, but rather we just wanted to see computers and computing interfaces get better uh in in some particular ways that led us to doing maybe some interesting experiments that led to some novel research that we we published about, and that in many ways opened the door to us to be more connected to this larger academic field. Is that something that a path you would recommend for others? 00:49:05 - Speaker 1: Yeah, there are certainly interesting paths there, you know, there’s this independent research lab path, and of course, there’s the academic and commercial path, and I think those are all interesting. I would also say though that being a scientist or being an innovator isn’t a hat that you’re granted by some external institution. It’s a way of thinking, it’s a way of navigating the world. You know, a scientific method is something anyone can use. Publishing is something anyone can do. Everyone can read the literature. So if you’re interested in this, I don’t feel like you’re, you’re stuck because you don’t have some credential like a PhD. Anyone can step into this world, go on to Google Scholar and read literature, and then maybe you have something to contribute on top of that. 00:49:40 - Speaker 2: It’s hard to think of a better place to leave it there. If any of our listeners out there have feedback, feel free to reach out to us at @museapphq on Twitter or hello at museApp.com by email. We’d love to hear your comments and ideas for future episodes, and big thank you to Fetta for giving us this very uh intriguing and deep topic to explore. I’ll catch you next time, Mark. 00:50:04 - Speaker 1: Great, thanks, Adam.