American technology journalist
POPULARITY
9 episodes with Walt Mossberg
7 episodes with Walt Mossberg
24 episodes with Walt Mossberg
6 episodes with Walt Mossberg
2 episodes with Walt Mossberg
3 episodes with Walt Mossberg
2 episodes with Walt Mossberg
2 episodes with Walt Mossberg
6 episodes with Walt Mossberg
The Dean of the Personal Technology product review was Walt Mossberg and now he joins The Look Back and reviews his early days in journalism to the transition into the most followed column @WallStreetJournal that instantly became a MUST READ for everyone in the PC industry. Walt shares his approach to proper product reviews and also reflects on his work on All Things Digital and ReCode, home of the famous Code Conference he ran with Kara Swisher. Currently Walt is serving on the Board of News Literacy Project https://newslit.org/ - working with educators and journalists to give students the skills they need to discern fact from fiction and to know what to trust! (please review the site as they need donations). Help Journalism Stay Free! (now more than ever)
Walt Mossberg is a legendary tech journalist and longtime columnist for the Wall Street Journal. This is a preview of our premium Big Tech War Stories Podcast where Mossberg joins to discuss how he formed connections with industry titans like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Jeff Bezos, and what drove their thinking and strategies. In this preview we cover Jobs, discussing his optimism, focus, and unending curiosity that led to long hours of conversation with Mossberg via phone. We also discuss the relationship between the tech industry and the press, where Mossberg has some interesting thoughts, and even some optimism of his own. To listen to the full episode, go to bigtechnology.com if you're a paid subscriber, or upgrade here.
To savvy tech consumers, Walt Mossberg and Marques Brownlee, aka MKBHD, need no introduction. Before he retired in 2017, Walt was the undisputed dean of tech reviewers. As Senator Maria Cantwell, a recent guest and former tech executive put it, “all our product reviews lived or died by Walt Mossberg.” MKBHD began reviewing tech products on YouTube, as a high schooler, and he now has more than 18 million subscribers to his channel. He has become this generation's Walt Mossberg, and Jimmy Donaldson/MrBeast, the king of YouTube, put it, “you're the video producer that decides what tech everyone in America buys.” Yet, somehow, the titans of tech reviews had never met before. Kara rights this wrong, and she, Mossberg, and Brownlee discuss the art, philosophy and ethics of reviewing tech, as well as the Tesla Cybertruck, Apple Vision Pro, AI-in-a-box and Taylor Swift. Click here to listen to Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast. Questions? Comments? Email us at on@voxmedia.com or find Kara on Instagram/Threads as @karaswisher Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Lawmakers Ignoring The LawIn her influential 2017 Yale Law Journal article, "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox," Lina Khan argues that the current antitrust framework, which primarily focuses on consumer welfare and price effects, fails to capture the full range of anticompetitive practices employed by digital platforms like Amazon. She suggests that the Sherman Act and other antitrust laws may need to be reinterpreted or updated to address these companies' specific challenges from an anti-trust point of view.Khan writes,"The current framework in antitrust—specifically its pegging competition to 'consumer welfare,' defined as short-term price effects—is unequipped to capture the architecture of market power in the modern economy."She argues that focusing primarily on price effects overlooks other ways digital platforms can harm competition, such as by leveraging their dominance across multiple markets or using their control over data to create barriers to entry.While Khan does not explicitly state that the Sherman Act is inadequate, her arguments suggest that the current interpretation and application of antitrust laws, including the Sherman Act, may not be sufficient to address the challenges posed by Big Tech. Her work has contributed to a broader discussion about updating antitrust enforcement for the digital age. But the harsh truth is - she cannot use current Law because her targets are not breaking it.The DOJ complaint that Apple is a monopoly (not a crime) and abusing its monopoly power fails if the Sherman Act is relied upon to judge criminality. Although the FTC is not bringing the case—it is run by Lina Khan—the DOJ is clearly on the same page as she is in bringing it. In July 2023, I argued, “Khan and Gensler Should be Fired.” The case for that is now even more convincing.As Jason Snell from Six Colors argues:Defining a “monopoly.” Before we get to some of the details of Apple's specific anti-competitive behavior, it's worth noting that this suit is charging Apple with violations of the Sherman antitrust act, which is meant to specifically regulate monopolies. Things that are legal for regular companies to do become illegal when monopolies do them.Part of this document, then, has to establish that Apple holds monopoly power over a specific market. Given that Apple's share of the U.S. smartphone market is about 60 percent, how can it be called a monopoly? The DoJ attempts to square this circle in a few different ways: It uses revenue instead of unit sales, pointing out that Apple and Samsung combined hold 90 percent of the U.S. smartphone market by revenue. It creates a new sub-market, the “Performance Smartphone,” which pushes Apple up to about 70 percent of the market in terms of unit sales. It accuses Apple of attempting to create a monopoly through its various business tactics, which is also illegal.Questions I would ask about this approach: Can you add in Samsung, find a number starting in ninety, and declare something a monopoly? Is revenue share how monopolies are defined? Can you draw borders on a product category in a beneficial way in order to declare it a new market?Apple's position in the U.S. market is certainly strong, but regardless of how you view its behavior, it will be interesting to see if the DoJ can make a convincing case that Apple is actually a monopoly, given the presence of Samsung and Google in the market. Jason Snell, six colorsBecause the law does not provide a solid case against Apple, the DOJ is attempting to redefine the meaning of words to allow its case. This alone should be sufficient evidence that the complaint is a political, not a criminal, decision. The case will fail before a judge and jury, and Apple's response indicates it plans to fight.Renowned former journalist Walt Mossberg had this to say on Threads:https://www.threads.net/@mossbergwalt/post/C41RaBuvrC0And Steven Sinofsky - his article is below - gives a damning appraisal of the DOJs chances.His first day X post is a great overview from somebody who - at Microsoft - has been down this path with the DOJ. Click the graphic for the full thread.https://twitter.com/stevesi/status/1770878948421059035?s=61&t=vSSPDgMsv3aFc2ctR_yOwwApple's multibillion-dollar investment in building a global software distribution platform benefits its shareholders. But it also benefits users, even Android users. Who in their right mind would have thought Eric Schmidt would have focused on mobile as much had Apple not started the mobile revolution in 2007?The intense competition for users (Android's many varieties have about 80% global market share) drives innovation on all sides.The essence of the DOJ case is that Apple should be forced to be as bad as Android, or there will be no equality. The essay By Kurt Vonnegut that Daring Fireball ‘typeset'—‘HARRISON BERGERON'—is therefore entirely appropriate—and hilarious, too. It's the first Essay of the Week. See below.This DOJ complaint is not for “the people.” It is for the DOJ and the FTC, who are increasingly attempting to hold back innovation, especially when the innovator is better than the competition. This makes it increasingly irrelevant as accelerated competition challenges all incumbents.OpenAI and its peers (now several) are a great example, seemingly driving two of the slower movers - Apple and Google - to partner on AI in the next version of iOS.Well, there you have it. Shame on the DOJ for filing this amateur complaint. And if we buy the DOJ case or fail to oppose it, Shame on us. ContentsEditorial: Lawmakers Ignoring the LawEssays of the Week‘HARRISON BERGERON' ★ (Fiction) United States v. Apple (Complaint) Apple slams DOJ case as misguided attempt to turn iPhone into Android The Department of Justice comes for Apple A few thoughts on the DOJ's antitrust case against Apple Two Roads Diverged: The Splitting of Venture CapitalVideo of the WeekThe Odds of Raising a Series A, The Latest in Venture Valuations, The AI Premium and More! - Jason LemkinAI of the WeekNvidia's Accelerating AI Strategy. RTZ Apple Is in Talks to Let Google Gemini Power iPhone AI Features How to win at Vertical AI After raising $1.3B, Inflection is eaten alive by its biggest investor, Microsoft Here's how Microsoft is providing a ‘good outcome' for Inflection AI VCs, as Reid Hoffman promised Stability AI CEO resigns because you're ‘not going to beat centralized AI with more centralized AI' Saudi Arabia Announces New $40B AI Fund AI is changing writingNews Of the WeekVC Funds Drawing Down More Capital Truth Social is going public Reddit prices IPO at $34 per share, the top of the rangeStartup of the WeekNeuralink video shows patient using brain implant to play chess on laptopX of the WeekAlways good to know you can be fired from Deepmind for being an a*****e, abandon your $$ startup, and still get hired as a Microsoft VP! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thatwastheweek.com/subscribe
Today on the flagship podcast of really old computers: 03:54 - Walt Mossberg, former Verge executive editor and longtime Wall Street Journal tech columnist, joins the show to discuss forty years of the Macintosh computer. Mossberg - The Verge 40:28 - Ali Abdaal chats about his new book "Feel Good Productivity: How to Do More of What Matters To You" and why overthinking your productivity system might not be such a good idea. Ali Abdaal - YouTube Feel Good Productivity 1:06:53 - David Pierce answers a question from the Vergecast Hotline about laptops. The best laptops you can get Email us at vergecast@theverge.com or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Guest: Jim Lanzone, CEO of YahooJim Lanzone doesn't waste time thinking about what other people think of him ... or the companies he has run. After helping to rejuvenate Ask.com in the early 2000s, he has more recently served as CEO of Tinder, and now Yahoo. As an expert in brand turnarounds, he says, “don't worry about what the world thinks ... worry about your growth versus yourself.” With a focus on people and product, Jim believes, “not only can you accomplish a lot, you're going to make a lot of money at doing it.”In this episode, Jim and Joubin discuss being bicoastal, downtown San Francisco, supportive partners, Garret Camp and StumbleUpon, “co-opetition,” Walt Mossberg, Redpoint Ventures, Dave Goldberg, Clicker, taking punches, Apollo Global Management, loyalty to the cause, high-EQ people, and user goals vs. company goals.In this episode, we cover: Growing up in Silicon Valley (00:53) Long-lasting marriages (07:26) Jim's first company, eTour (13:18) The Web 1.0 boom (17:33) Joining Ask.com & partnering with Google (20:40) Rejuvenating a brand (24:11) Back in the mud with Clicker (28:05) CBS All Access (34:02) 14 months at Tinder (37:25) What people get wrong about Jim (39:05) Becoming the CEO of Yahoo (42:45) How Jim hires great teams (49:54) Top priorities and Yahoo's verticals (55:10) First principles & making decisions (01:02:26) Hiring & what “grit” means to Jim (01:05:02) Links: Connect with JimLinkedIn Connect with Joubin Twitter LinkedIn Email: grit@kleinerperkins.com Learn more about Kleiner Perkins This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm
Burning Man; UK wises up about encryption; McPoutine; hello, Ello; ad free Facebook in the EU; META back to office; Grindr loses half staff due to unionization, we mean WFH; NYC regulates Airbnb; Mossberg departs X; facial recognition for stadiums; privacy nightmare cars; how to do business; Spotify financial woes; your pants are lying, perhaps on fire; Moviepass is back, again; Inside Man; Lincoln Lawyer; Winning Time; Wheel of Time; the Witcher; Star Trek: Lower Decks; Roku layoffs; Messi, MLS and AppleTV+ win; 3zekiel; Scalzi; Ahsoka; Only Murders in the Building; Apple Watch Ultra; AI homes.Sponsors:Dark Web Academy - Head over to darkwebacademy.com and use code "gogfree" for complimentary access to ANY course!~Hover - Go to Hover now and grab your very own domain or a few of them at hover.com/gog and get 10% off your first purchase.1Password - Get a great deal on the only password manager recommended by Grumpy Old Geeks! gog.show/1passwordPrivate Internet Access - Go to GOG.Show/vpn and sign up today. For a limited time only, you can get OUR favorite VPN for as little as $2.03 a month.Show notes at: https://gog.show/617FOLLOW UPFuture of iMessage safe in the UK, as government backs down on encryptionAmericans Should Feel Humiliated by Canadian McDonald'sAI reading coach startup Ello raises $15M to bolster child literacyIN THE NEWSFacebook and Instagram may offer paid, ad-free plans in Europe to sate EU privacy concernsMeta is back in the office three days a week, as WFH continues to dieGrindr loses nearly half its staff to strict return-to-work ruleNYC's ‘de facto ban' on Airbnb is already removing listingsVeteran tech guru Walt Mossberg slams Elon Musk, deactivates X account: ‘Cesspool'These 9 Stadiums Are Already Using Facial Recognition at GamesYouTube Vlogger Ruby Franke Charged With Six Counts of Felony Child AbuseIf You've Got a New Car, It's a Data Privacy NightmareBMW drops plan to charge a monthly fee for heated seats‘Hyundai Pay' is the latest effort by car companies to make in-car payments a thingSpotify's $1 Billion Podcast Bet Turns Into a Serial DramaSpotify reportedly locks white noise podcasters out of an ad programFree audiobooks to be tested by Spotify; Audible competition planSpotify wants to put in-app lyrics behind a paywallElon Musk's X will use public data to train AI modelsAre Your Pants Lying to You? An InvestigationMEDIA CANDYMoviePassInside ManLincoln LawyerWinning Time: The Rise of the Lakers DynastyThe Wheel of Time Season 2The WitcherStar Trek: Lower DecksRoku Laying Off 10% of Employees, Will Take up to $65 Million Charge to Remove Streaming ContentMessi Drives Jump in Apple TV+ and MLS SubscriptionsAT THE LIBRARY3zekiel (First Contact) by Peter CawdronNOTES FROM A FELLOW TRAVELLER by Derren BrownStarter Villain by John ScalziTHE DARK SIDE WITH DAVEThe CyberWireDave BittnerHacking HumansCaveatControl LoopNYPD will use drones to monitor private parties over Labor Day weekendCory Doctorow's presentation on a better internet from DefconAI IMAGINES A TYPICAL HOME IN EVERY STATECLOSING SHOUT-OUTSJimmy Buffett: Margaritaville singer dies aged 76See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
A big shout-out to Walt Mossberg for a great #SmartTechCheck podcast when he shares a few great Steve Jobs and Bill Gates stories, as well as his thoughts on Apple's Vision Pro, and GenAIhttps://www.youtube.com/SmartTechCheckFollow Mark Vena on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarkVenaTechGuyFollow Rob Pegoraro on Twitter: https://twitter.com/RobPegoraro Follow John Quain on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jqontechFollow Stewart Wolpin on Twitter: https://twitter.com/stewartwolpin
Originally published June 22nd 2020In Episode 4 we talk to Walt Mossberg, retired journalist and entrepreneur. Things Mentioned:Esabalu Music VideoWWDC Live Blog with WaltNon Traditional Facebook groupDo you have a questions for the hosts? Drop us a line. You can tweet us @traditionalpod or dm us on Instagram @none_traditional. If you want to be the first to know when a new episode arrives subscribe to the podcast and our newsletter at www.nontraditionalcast.com Co-Hosts: Anastasia Folorunso, Jenn MundiaProduced and Edited by: Anastasia FolorunsoTheme Music by EsabaluGraphics by Rowan Shalit Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
The Dean of the Personal Technology product review was Walt Mossberg and now he joins The Look Back and reviews his early days in journalism to the transition into the most followed column @WallStreetJournal that instantly became a MUST READ for everyone in the PC industry. Walt shares his approach to proper product reviews and also reflects on his work on All Things Digital and ReCode, home of the famous Code Conference that he ran with Kara Swisher. Currently Walt is serving on the Board of News Literacy Project > https://newslit.org/ < working with educators and journalists to give students the skills they need to discern fact from fiction and to know what to trust! (please review the site as they need donations).
Get up to speed with the Digital Marketing News and Updates from the week of Feb 27-Mar 3, 2023.1. PSA: US TikTok Ban Moves a Step Closer - More bad news for TikTok, with the US House Foreign Affairs Committee voted to give President Joe Biden the power to ban the Chinese-owned app, if he deems such a move necessary, amid ongoing security discussions around its potential connection to the Chinese Communist Part (CCP).TikTok responded to the vote by tweeting that “A U.S ban on TikTok is a ban on the export of American culture and values to the billion-plus people who use our service worldwide…”While Today's announcement doesn't give Biden the full green light to ban the app, with the US Senate still required to give sign-off before a ban could be implemented. But it's another step towards that next stage, which increasingly feels like it will lead to a TikTok ban, or at the least, a significant change in direction for the app.Remember that TikTok, along with 58 other Chinese-created apps, was banned completely in India by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology on 29 June 2020. So if you are relying on traffic from TikTok then it is high time you diversify your traffic sources.2. Google Shares How Its Keyword-Matching System For Search Ads Work - Google has released a 28 page comprehensive guide during Google Search Ads Week 2023, providing a unique behind-the-scenes glimpse into its keyword-matching system for search ads.To achieve better results, advertisers can optimise their campaigns by gaining an understanding of Google Ads keyword-matching process.Google's guide provides a comprehensive breakdown of the system, which includes how the company utilises machine learning and natural language understanding technologies to determine keyword eligibility, and how the responsive search ads creative system selects the best-performing creative for users.It is essential to note that grouping keywords is critical to campaign optimisation. By eliminating the need to add the same keyword in multiple match types, advertisers can avoid segmenting and reducing the available data that Smart Bidding can use for optimisation, which can result in fewer conversions and higher costs.The guide is an invaluable resource for anyone seeking to enhance their Google Ads campaigns. Incorporating the insights and best practices outlined in the guide can boost the chances of success and drive more conversions. This is why I always tell my listeners to work with a reputable learning and growing agency who is in the know. Afterall, you can not make moves or leverage opportunities if you are not in the know.3. Google Ads Is Changing Location Targeting Settings In March 2023 - Starting March 2023, “Search Interest” targeting will no longer be available in Google Ads. Campaigns that use “Search Interest” targeting will be migrated to “Presence or Interest” targeting. These changes will be consistent in Search, Display, Performance Max, and Shopping campaigns. The Presence option lets you show your ads to people who are likely to be located, or regularly located in the locations you've targeted.The Search Interest option lets you show your ads to anyone searching on Google for your targeted location. If a person doesn't specify a location in their search, then the system uses the location where a user is likely to be located for targeting. This option is only available for Search campaigns.So after this change is in effect, a person who lives in Northern VA but often travels to Maryland for shopping or work. While home in VA, the person searches for "plumber near me." Now Google is going to show some Maryland plumbers who are not licensed in VA. Am I the only one who thinks that the real winner of this change is Google!!4. Google Ads Introduces AI-Powered Search Ads - During the Google's Search Ads Week, a new customer acquisition goal for Search campaigns has been launched globally. This goal utilizes Smart Bidding and first-party data to optimize campaigns and attract new customers during peak periods. According to Google, by combining the new customer acquisition goal with bidding strategies like Maximize conversion value with a target ROAS, advertisers can prioritize and target high-value customers. The new customer acquisition goal has two modes that help you to reach your campaign goals: Value New Customer: Bid higher for new customers than for existing customers New Customers Only: Bid for new customers only. 5. Microsoft Bing's Fabrice Canel : SEO Will Never Be "dead" - Fabrice Canel, the Principal Product Manager for Microsoft Bing, gave a keynote presentation at the Pubcon convention in Austin, Texas. His presentation offered valuable information on optimizing websites for the new Bing search experience as well as shared the benefits of using Bing Webmaster Tools to monitor traffic data and make necessary adjustments to improve visibility in search results.First, Canel suggested to stay with the same SEO playbooks for optimizing content for Bing's AI experience because it's still the early days for AI search. Throughout his keynote at Pubcon, Canel stressed the importance of SEO professionals in guiding Bing's search crawlers to high-quality content.Then Canel emphasized the importance of setting the lastmod tag to the date a page was last modified, not when the sitemap was generated. Remember lastmod was covered in previous episodes in details. ICYMI, the lastmod tag is an HTML attribute indicating when a particular webpage or URL received significant changes. This tag is used in sitemaps to help search engines like Bing understand when a page was last updated. Lastmod also helps searchers identify and access the most up-to-date content available. When a lastmod tag is present, Bing will display the updated date in search results. This signals to searchers that the webpage may have new or updated information they haven't seen yet. According to Canel, 18% of sitemaps have lastmod values not correctly set, typically set to the date and time the sitemap is generated.Thirdly, Canel recommended website to adopting IndexNow to inform search engines of recent modifications to website content instantly. FYI: IndexNow was covered in episode# 90 (Jan 10-15, 2022). According to Canel, 20 million websites have already adopted IndexNow, and he expects more top websites, search engines, and content management systems to follow suit. Canel adds that manually crawling a webpage to see if its content has changed wastes resources and energy and creates CO2. He also suggests having sitemaps to provide search engines with all relevant URLs and corresponding modification dates.Most importantly, he wanted website owner focus on writing quality content and use semantic markup to convey information about the pages.Lastly, we learned Bing Webmaster Tools will soon include traffic data from Bing's AI chat.6. Google On ‘lastmod' Tag In XML Sitemap - I covered “lastmod” in episode#146. It is back again. Google's John Mueller said on Twitter if you are "providing something new for search engines that you'd like reflected in search," then update the date, if not, then don't. John added, "The issue is more that some CMS's / servers set the lastmod to the current date/time for all pages. This makes that data useless. Good CMS's setting it thoughtfully, even if not always perfect, is much more useful."The current Google documentation says, "Google uses the lastmod value if it's consistently and verifiably (for example by comparing to the last modification of the page) accurate." And according to a recent study at Bing (also covered in episode#146) revealed that among websites with at least one URL indexed by Bing: 58% of hosts have at least one XML sitemap (sitemap known by Bing).84% of these sitemaps have a lastmod attribute set 79% have lastmod values correct. 18% have lastmod values not correctly set. 3% has lastmod values for only some of the URLs. 42% of hosts don't have one XML sitemap (Bing does not know it) P.S: Don't be the business that is skipping the basics and easy to do stuff and looking to do advanced stuff. #DoTheBasics first.7. Google: Don't Combine Site Moves With Other Big Changes - Sometimes businesses make changes to their top-level domain as well as update their website. So Google Search Advocate John Mueller during a recent Search Of The Record Podcast with Gary Illyes, and Senior Technical Writer Lizzi Sassman asked “What happens if I do a domain change, and move from a “.ch”, which is a Swiss top level domain, to “.com”? Is that a problem? Like if I combine a domain change with other stuff?”In response, Illyes, shared that these changes should be done in smaller pieces over months. Making too many changes at once could result in lower rankings and lost traffic. For example, if a website is moving from “example.ch” and “example.fr” to “example.com,” Illyes recommended moving “example.fr” first and waiting before moving “example.ch.”Mueller and Sassman questioned Illyes on why he's so concerned about spreading out site moves. Illyes admitted that many site moves he's been involved with have resulted in lost traffic. Illyes also mentioned that misconfigurations, such as incorrect redirects, are common mistakes that can cause traffic loss. However, traffic shouldn't be lost during a domain change if everything is done correctly.If all you're doing is redirecting URLs from one site to another, there's a low risk for adverse effects. On the other hand, if you do lose rankings and traffic, there's no specific timeframe for a full recovery.8. Google's Gary Illyes: Google Does Not Care Who Authors or Links To The Content - Gary Illyes from Google gave a keynote and a Q&A session at PubCon and while the keynote was pretty vanilla stuff, the Q&A did reconfirm a lot of what has been said in the past around authorship, links and disavowing links. In short, Google does not give too much weight to who writes your content. So if you get a Walt Mossberg to write a piece of content on your site, just because it is Walt, doesn't make it rank well. If the content is written well, it will rank well, but by default, just because Walt wrote it, doesn't make it rank well. Gary also said that links are not as important as SEOs think they are. And disavowing links is just a waste of time.P.S: All these topics have been covered in the past shows. 9. Google: PageRank Sculpting Is A Myth - Every website is assigned a unique value by the Google PageRank algorithm. This value, also called PageRank, has long been an important factor in link building and link exchange. PageRank sculpting is a technique in which an attempt is made to distribute the PageRank of a website to other subpages. Assuming that the home page receives the highest PageRank because it is the most important within the sites hierarchy, the PageRank will decrease as you go further down into the structure. Before 2009, it was common practice to control the PageRank through sculpting so that only certain pages would benefit. For example, function pages such as the imprint or contact page were linked internally with the attribute “nofollow.” Thus, the link power increased (as measured by PageRank) for the remaining internal links. Unfortunately, some SEO Experts still feel that they can control how Google passes your link equity throughout your site by using the nofollow link attribute. So Google's John Muller said on Twitter that it is an SEO myth to say you can use the nofollow attribute on links sculpt PageRank. Remember, back in 2019 he tweeted that Internal PageRank Sculpting Is A Waste Of Time. Another #SEOMythBusted. I'll file this under #AvoidBadSEOAdvice.10. Check Domain Reputation Before You Buy A Domain - Google's John Mueller was asked about a domain name purchased several months ago but still does not rank well in Google Search. John explained that if a domain has a "long and complicated history." "It's going to be hard to convince search engines that it's something very different & unrelated to what was done in the past decades," John added.In short, he is saying that not only was this domain abusing search engines for a long, long time, but also that the new content on this old domain is not different enough or unrelated enough from what the topic was previously where the search engine would consider it a brand new site and wipe the site clean.Basically the issue here is “domain legacy penalty” - It's a penalty that's associated with a domain from when it was registered by someone else in the past. Apparently the penalty remains after the domain is registered by someone else years later. Which makes sense or else bad actors will keep on transferring domain ownership to bypass the penalty. The way to prevent is to check the past history of a domain name is to visit Archive.org. Archive.org downloads and creates an archive of websites throughout the Internet.A similar issue happened a few years ago to ZDNet. One of their domains was hyphenated (CXO-Talk.com). So they purchased the non-hyphenated variant (CXOTalk.com) from a third party domain auction. ZDNet was unaware that the domain had been used by spammers. Soon after ZDNet migrated all their content from CXO-Talk.com to CXOTalk.com, their website was banned from Google. ZDNet wrote an article about what happened to them and had the following advice: Before purchasing any domain at auction, be sure to check its history using backlink tools If the domain has a bad history, use Google Webmaster Tools to do a clean-up before putting the domain into service Google's system of problem remediation lacks transparency and responsiveness. They can and should do better. I still don't really know what caused the problem or how to fix it. 11. Should You Rewrite Your Content With ChatGPT? - Google's John Mueller went back and forth on Twitter with some SEO practitioners on the topic of using ChatGPT to (re)write existing content. Basically Ujesh was wondering if he can rewrite his own content with the help of tools like #ChatGPT without losing its helpfulness and relevancy. He was curious to see if it will reduce the quality of the article due to AI involvement or does it boost the article considering the quality revamp ?To that question, John asked “Why do you need to rewrite your own content? Is it bad?” IMO, this is a fair question.To John's question Paulo replied, “let's say that English is not my main language. Then, I write something in my mother tongue, translate it in my own limited vocabulary, and ask AI to enhance the vocabulary. The content is not bad, but limited by my knowledge of a language, not the topic I'm trying to cover.”And John responded by saying “Why do you want to just publish something for the sake of publishing something, rather than publishing something you know to be useful & good? (This is not unique to LLM/AI NLG, it's the same with unknown-quality human-written content.) What do you want your site known for?”John is saying that, if your content is bad, why are you writing it in the first place? If you know your content is bad, then it is not helpful, will ChatGPT make it helpful for you? How do you know if the ChatGPT version is helpful and quality if your content you originally wrote is not quality? Maybe instead of using ChatGPT to improve the quality of your content, maybe you should focus on topics that you can write quality content about?
Jazzed to spend some time with Jason Krikorian, the co-founder of Slingbox, famed tech journalist Walt Mossberg and early Slingbox employee Sharon Rylander on remembering how the company came into existence and its legacy.Subscribe to @SmartTechCheck for weekly podcast upload reminders: https://www.youtube.com/SmartTechCheckFollow Mark Vena on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarkVenaTechGuyFollow Rob Pegoraro on Twitter: https://twitter.com/RobPegoraroFollow John Quain on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jqontechFollow Stewart Wolpin on Twitter: https://twitter.com/stewartwolpin
For our final episode of 2022, Kara and Nayeema unabashedly dish out advice and answer questions you sent in (and some you didn't). They tackle dating woes, difficult family dynamics, salary negotiations, choosing between career and travel and even give … fashion tips? In addition to listener questions, we hear from past guests and friends, including Kathy Griffin, John King, Rick Wilson, Mike Birbiglia and Walt Mossberg. Stay tuned till the end to hear Kara's ultimate escape plan — which involves an island and a donut shop. You can find Kara and Nayeema on Twitter @karaswisher and @nayeema. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Google CEO Sundar Pichai talks with The Verge's Walt Mossberg about why Google thinks it can beat Apple, Amazon and Microsoft to make artificial intelligence easier and more helpful for every consumer. He says Google wants to offer smarter privacy controls, so that users might save certain types of conversations forever and wipe others off the record. Plus: Pichai adds that the company is investing more into its flagship Nexus devices for the Android operating system, but will not make its own smartphone without an OEM partner.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos talks with The Verge's Walt Mossberg about the "gigantic" potential of artificial intelligence to change everything from shopping to self-driving cars. Bezos also discusses his purchase of the Washington Post in 2013, which he says is transforming from a local to a global institution. He explains why he opposes both Peter Thiel's campaign against Gawker Media and Donald Trump's attempts to "freeze or chill" press scrutiny. Plus: Why Bezos's other company, Blue Origin, is trying to lower the cost of entrepreneurship in space.
We support both transcripts and chapters, if your podcast app doesn't then grab a new app from podnews.net/newpodcastappsSpecial GuestSkye Pillsbury - The Squeeze The Squeeze Newsletter Article What Does "Big Money Podcasting" Look Like?Show Notes + Links: Joe Rogan is no longer #1 in Podnews's Ranker Anchor continues to lose market shareFive editorial people from Spotify's podcast team were laid off this month, reports Ashley CarmanCadence13 may be up for saleThe RSS feed to Kara Swisher's former podcast Sway has been repurposed by the New York Times to be used by tech show Hard Fork. Swisher is annoyed, Walt Mossberg is upsetThe winners of the International Women's Podcast Awards were announcedSpotify released a Fan Study for podcast creators … Nick Hilton digs deep into Spotify's new podcast researchPodcast host Castopod has added support for premium podcastsSATurn, the Alby view into boostagrams, now shows complete boost amountsWant a new podcast recommendation? Live in the US or Canada? JustBuzzsprout Podcast hosting and a whole lot moreSquadCast The Remote Recording Studio That Your Audience Will LoveSupport the showGet in touch with our weekly review of all things podcasting! Website: www.podland.news Twitter: @jamescridland and @samsethi Boosts: ⚡james@crid.land and ⚡sam@getalby.com
“Sway” has put out almost 200 episodes in more than 20 months, with guests ranging from Elon Musk and Bill Gates to Stacey Abrams and Brené Brown. As the show comes to a close, it felt fitting to save the most elusive guest for last: Kara Swisher herself.In this conversation with the senior editor of “Sway,” Nayeema Raza, Kara revisits major moments from her year and a half of interviews — from a dropped Zoom call with Nancy Pelosi to a raw interrogation of Parler's C.E.O., John Matze, which was taped as the Jan. 6 Capitol attack unfolded. They talk about the guests who got away (like Dolly Parton), the ones they could have been harder on and how Kara thinks about her own power, or sway. And they tackle questions in an AMA, or “ask me anything,” format, fielding listeners' questions about what start-ups were before their time and which tech titans need more scrutiny. Kara also answers questions from the former “Sway” guests Jon Stewart, Walt Mossberg and Mark Cuban.This episode contains strong language.You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway.And you can find Kara and Nayeema on Twitter — @karaswisher and @nayeema.
As the show comes to a close, it felt fitting to save the most elusive guest for last: Kara Swisher herself. In this conversation with the senior editor of “Sway,” Nayeema Raza, Kara revisits major moments from her year and a half of interviews — from a dropped Zoom call with Nancy Pelosi to a raw interrogation of Parler's C.E.O., John Matze, which was taped as the Jan. 6 Capitol attack unfolded. They talk about the guests who got away (like Dolly Parton), the ones they could have been harder on and how Kara thinks about her own power, or sway. And they tackle questions in an AMA, or “ask me anything,” format, fielding listeners' questions about what start-ups were before their time and which tech titans need more scrutiny. Kara also answers questions from the former “Sway” guests Jon Stewart, Walt Mossberg and Mark Cuban.This episode contains strong language.You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway.And you can find Kara and Nayeema on Twitter — @karaswisher and @nayeema.
17/06/22 - Walt Mossberg fala do iPhone, Safari no Windows, Recorde de pre-venda iPhone 4, Vazadores presos, ipad 10 com usb-c, alemanha contra transparencia de rastreamento, ação Reino Unido quer multar apple, migração whatsapp android para iphone, rumor macbook 12'', 55 patentes apple, macbook pro melhor que mac pro, https://www.doctorapple.com.br
Rob Walch was inducted into the Podcasting Hall of Fame in 2016. Rob is the Vice President of Libsyn Enterprise and Platform Partnerships, having joined Libsyn (LSYN) in 2007, Prior to joining Libsyn he founded podCast411, Inc in 2004. Rob is Co-Author of the book “Tricks of the Podcasting Masters” - Que 2006, an editors pick as a Top 10 Reference book for 2006 by Amazon.com. Rob was listed as the 5th most influential person in podcasting according to the book “Podcasting for Dummies” – Wiley Press 2005. He has consulted on podcasting for Jack Welch, Senator Edwards, Governor Bill Richardson, Noah Shanok (Stitcher), Tim Ferriss, Dr. Mark Hyman, eBay and the Sacramento Kings/Monarchs to name just a few. Rob is a member of the IAB Podcasting Working groups that wrote the IAB V2 podcast guidelines. And is on the Editorial board for Podcast Business Journal. Rob started podcasting in 2004, and is the host of the award winning podCast411 podcast, where he has interviewed such prominent podcasters as Quincy Jones, Walt Mossberg, Colin Ferguson (Eureka), Ronald Moore (Executive Producer of Battlestar Galactica), Phil Gordon (World Series of Poker), Larry Kudlow (CNBC's Kudlow and Company) and Leo Laporte (TechTV, G4 TV). Additionally Rob is host of Today in iOS (iPhone) Podcast – The first and largest podcast about the iPhone - www.todayinios.com and also the KC Startup 411 podcast which covers the Kansas City Start up scene - www.kcstartup411.com Since 2004 Rob has presented at well over 200 events on the subject of podcasting and New Media including NAB, the Newspaper Association of America Marketing Conference, the US Latino Film Festival, the Corporate Podcasting Summit, The Association for Women in Communications 2006 Annual Professional Conference, Social Media 2007, Ad-Tech, Podcast Movement, New Media Expo, Podfest, NRB, and Blogworld Expo. In 2004 Rob received his MBA from the University of Connecticut. He also has an Engineering degree from the University of Dayton. http://www.twitter.com/podcast411 2:12 "Ad stitching, from this perspective, is one way you can have different ads in different geographical areas." - Rob Walch 6:21 "On my most recent episode, I can have promos that are more about getting to know me." - Brian Keith 8:01 "I'm learning about what ads are going to perform best on my podcast, but I'm going to have each of them record there own ads and I'll be able to manage those ads going to there podcasts as well including their entire back catalog" - Brian Keith 9:20 "You can do a two-way revenue generation...all you have to do is upload the file." - Rob Walch 10:42 "The most common price-point for subscribing to a premium show..." - Brian Keith 12:07 "Another way to monetize is just to do affiliate offers even if it's not for your own stuff." - Brian Keith 13:12 "If you're at a point where you've passed friends and family and strangers are listening to your show, you're at a point where you can monetize one way or another." - Rob Walch
Crack open your old Macs, it's update time.Sorbet Leopard is Snow Leopard for PowerPC Macs.Moltz is looking at this SSD adapter for his TiBook.Walt Mossberg creeps on Dan. Not cool, Walt. Not cool.The Greek gods were kind of jerks.We've been playing Knotwords.Switch Sports is now out.Our thanks to Indochino, where you'll find the best made to measure shirts and suits at a great price. Use the promo code "REBOUND" and get $50 off any purchase of $399 or more.Our thanks as well to Sunday. Sunday makes taking care of your lawn easier than ever. Made with natural ingredients, Sunday takes the guesswork out of growing a greener, more beautiful lawn this Spring. Visit getsunday.com/rebound to get $20 off your custom lawn plan at checkout!If you want to help out the show and get some great bonus content, consider becoming a Rebound Prime member! Just go to prime.reboundcast.com to check it out!You can now also support the show by buying our NEW shirt featuring our catchphrase, TECHNOLOGY! Are we right?! (Prime members, check your email for a special deal on the shirt.)
"I see retirement as just another of these reinventions, another chance to do new things and be a new version of myself." (Walt Mossberg) When I was contemplating early retirement from my hospital and university work, like Walt Mossberg, I believe that retirement was a chance to do new things and learn skills I had long wanted to pursue but that I had not had the time and freedom to do while I worked. Today, when living into one's eighties or nineties is increasingly common, it becomes even more important not to squander those years and to enjoy retirement to the full. That's why I called chapter 7 in my book “Choose A Challenge”. Today's guest is retirement coach, Maria Lucassen, who is passionate about helping women create a happy, blissful retirement. She believes that though retirement is supposed to be our golden years, often people feel all alone, questioning their life direction, but sometimes caring for elderly parents, or kids who've moved back home.Maria is the CEO of Maria Lucassen Coaching, As a Certified Retirement Coach and member of the Retirement Coaches Association, she has a passion to help career women shift their perspective on creating and living a blissful retirement after leaving their 9 to 5 job. Maria organizes workshops for women who are ready to plan their retirement and helps them individually or in groups to prepare for a next phase in life that is fun, purposeful and affordable. She hosts a Radio Show that inspires women to dream about the next chapter in the book of life. She is a Certified Retirement Coach and member of the Retirement Coaches Association. She has authored chapters in two books. ‘What Have You Forbes'd lately'. Is a compilation book in which the authors describe successes in major life events. In January 2021 she was one of 100 authors that published a chapter in the Book: 1 Habit to thrive in a Post Covid world.In this conversation you will hear how a self-described 40 year corporate career junkie became a Retirement Coach, and the perspectives she has gained about retirement, from her own introspection as well as working with her clients. We discuss the importance of health to a blissful retirement. Contact Maria Lucassen:Free gift: Do You Need a Retirement Lifestyle Makeover? Self-assessment to evaluate your present lifestyle and the first step for change. https://marialucassen.kartra.com/page/Assessment. Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/marialucassenonline linkedin.com/in/mlucassen427 Contact Dr. Gillian Lockitch Website : https://www.askdrgill.com/ Schedule your free Living Younger Discovery call with me at https://calendly.com/askdrgill/discovery-phone-chat Order your copy of Growing Older Living Younger: The Science of Aging Gracefully and The Art of Retiring Comfortably at www.gillianlockitch.com
How did Kara Swisher become Silicon Valley's most feared, trusted, and respected journalist?Oh not to mention media personality. Come learn! Technology has changed rapidly over Swisher's career. From the invention of the internet to the emergence of the metaverse. How does she stay on top of a rapidly changing industry? Looking back on her career, what has surprised her about where technology has gone? After a lifetime of being the main tech reporter, what's next for her? What does she have planned for Sway? About Kara Swisher: Kara Swisher is the host of “Sway,” the new twice-weekly interview podcast about power by New York Times Opinion. She has been a contributing Opinion writer since 2018. Over her career, Ms. Swisher has hosted hundreds of news making interviews, going head-to-head with prominent figures including Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Rupert Murdoch, Stacey Abrams, Kim Kardashian and President Barack Obama. Her early and no-holds-barred coverage of the technology industry earned her a reputation as “Silicon Valley's most feared and well-liked journalist.” Ms. Swisher studied at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, where she wrote her first technology story for the school paper (it was in 1980 -- and the technology was pay phones). She subsequently received a graduate degree from Columbia University's School of Journalism, became an editor at The City Paper in Washington, D.C., and interned at The Washington Post, where she worked her way up to reporter and covered nascent digital companies like America Online (a.k.a. AOL). Ms. Swisher moved to the San Francisco bureau of The Wall Street Journal in the 1990s as one of the first reporters on the internet beat and eventually began her popular “Boom Town” column. With her longtime collaborator Walt Mossberg, she was a co-producer of the technology conference “D: All Things Digital,” where they interviewed major tech figures including Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. The duo later founded Recode, which was sold to Vox in 2015. In addition to her contributions to The Times, Ms. Swisher is an editor-at-large at New York Media, host of the “Pivot” podcast and executive producer of the Code Conference. She is also the author of “aol.com: How Steve Case Beat Bill Gates, Nailed the Netheads and Made Millions in the War for the Web” and co-author of the sequel, “There Must Be a Pony in Here Somewhere.” She currently lives in Washington with her fiancée, various cats and dogs, and her three children, one of whom just left to start college in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic.
This was a tough one. The Verge co-founder and Executive Editor Dieter Bohn is leaving us. Nilay Patel, Walt Mossberg and Dieter Bohn walk down memory lane and discuss their first meeting, founding The Verge, CES memories, and what Dieter is doing once he leaves. Behringer's iNuke Boom is the essence of Vegas And now, a brief definition of the web Dieter on Twitter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Incoming FDA Commissioner, Dr. Robert Califf recently announced his concern about how social media magnifies and disseminates false information about science. Covering this topic, our SoundPractice guest today is author, technology columnist and podcast host, Kara Swisher. Swisher has been on the tech scene since the early 1990s. She has written for the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, and she started the “All Things Digital Conference” with Walt Mossberg, also from the Wall Street Journal, back in 2003. These days, Kara Swisher is an editor-at-large for New York Media, a contributor to the New York Times, and a host of the podcasts “Sway,” and “Pivot.” This engaging episode is a tutorial for physicians on the tech landscape, the lack of accountability for tech companies, and an overview of Section 230 of the Communication Decency Act. Host Mike Sacopulos and Kara Swisher also discuss how social media has turbo charged the anti-vax messaging putting physicians on the front lines with patients, how platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, Amazon and Reddit proliferate the disinformation, and what physicians and healthcare professionals can do to help stem the false information. https://twitter.com/karaswisher Learn more about the American Association for Physician Leadership at www.physicianleaders.org
Incoming FDA Commissioner, Dr. Robert Califf recently announced his concern about how social media magnifies and disseminates false information about science. Covering this topic, our SoundPractice guest today is author, technology columnist and podcast host, Kara Swisher. Swisher has been on the tech scene since the early 1990s. She has written for the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, and she started the “All Things Digital Conference” with Walt Mossberg, also from the Wall Street Journal, back in 2003. These days, Kara Swisher is an editor-at-large for New York Media, a contributor to the New York Times, and a host of the podcasts “Sway,” and “Pivot.” This engaging episode is a tutorial for physicians on the tech landscape, the lack of accountability for tech companies, and an overview of Section 230 of the Communication Decency Act. Host Mike Sacopulos and Kara Swisher also discuss how social media has turbo charged the anti-vax messaging putting physicians on the front lines with patients, how platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, Amazon and Reddit proliferate the disinformation, and what physicians and healthcare professionals can do to help stem the false information. https://twitter.com/karaswisher Learn more about the American Association for Physician Leadership at www.physicianleaders.org
After leaked internal documents in The Wall Street Journal, whistle-blower testimony on Capitol Hill, a global server outage and drops in share price, Facebook has recently taken (another) spectacular beating. But the veteran tech journalist Walt Mossberg says none of it has been a surprise. A longtime friend and mentor of Kara Swisher, he tells her, “I think the company is fundamentally unethical.” And, drawing on his experience covering controversial leaders, including Steve Jobs and Bill Gates (as he calls them, “the old guard”), Mossberg says the Facebook C.E.O. is still an aberration: “In my encounters with Mark Zuckerberg, I've never been able to discover any principles.”In this conversation, Kara and Mossberg talk about “the sins of Facebook,” whether this new scandal really is the company's Big Tobacco moment and why Sheryl Sandberg is still sitting at Zuckerberg's side. They also swap stories of tech executives — from making Zuckerberg sweat (literally) and getting the cold shoulder from Elon Musk to Mossberg's Taco Bell invitation from Gates and “arm-waving arguments” with Jobs.You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.Love listening to New York Times podcasts? Help us test a new audio product in beta and give us your thoughts to shape what it becomes. Visit nytimes.com/audio to join the beta.
After leaked internal documents in The Wall Street Journal, whistle-blower testimony on Capitol Hill, a global server outage and drops in share price, Facebook has recently taken (another) spectacular beating. But the veteran tech journalist Walt Mossberg says none of it has been a surprise. A longtime friend and mentor of Kara Swisher, he tells her, “I think the company is fundamentally unethical.” And, drawing on his experience covering controversial leaders, including Steve Jobs and Bill Gates (as he calls them, “the old guard”), Mossberg says the Facebook C.E.O. is still an aberration: “In my encounters with Mark Zuckerberg, I've never been able to discover any principles.”In this conversation, Kara and Mossberg talk about “the sins of Facebook,” whether this new scandal really is the company's Big Tobacco moment and why Sheryl Sandberg is still sitting at Zuckerberg's side. They also swap stories of tech executives — from making Zuckerberg sweat (literally) and getting the cold shoulder from Elon Musk to Mossberg's Taco Bell invitation from Gates and “arm-waving arguments” with Jobs.You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.Love listening to New York Times podcasts? Help us test a new audio product in beta and give us your thoughts to shape what it becomes. Visit nytimes.com/audio to join the beta.
No matter where you look around in today's world, you use things that were conceived and built by engineers. There were engineering-minded thinkers in ancient times like Archimedes and Leonardo da Vinci. industrial age thinkers like Thomas Edison and Henry Ford built on their ideas, to manufacture many things that improved the quality of our daily lives. Since then, engineers like Alan Turing, Thomas Watson and David Packard ushered in an electronic revolution that gave us the technology that makes possible the communication we're having right now. Engineers are great. But, they are also a breed apart. They have a stereotype of being way too exacting for most people's liking. They put a new spin on the proverbial glass half-full or half empty debate. While the Pessimist says "The glass is half empty" and the Optimist says "The glass is half full," The Engineer does some measuring and pronounces "The glass is exactly twice the size that it needs to be." They also have a reputation for being notoriously tough to market to. Today's guest knows how to reach engineers, and in her 2020 book Content Marketing, Engineered, she gives us a formula so we can reach them as well. Wendy Covey is a co-founder of TREW Marketing, an Austin, TX-based agency that serves technical industries such as engineering design and hardware manufacturing. Prior to starting the agency in 2008 Wendy produced global marketing and services programs at National Instruments. Another side of Wendy you should know about is how she loves outdoor recreations - in fact she is the current holder of a Texas fishing record. People/Products/Concepts Mentioned in Show Geoffrey Moore's Crossing the Chasm SWOT Analysis: Strengths Weaknesses Opportunities Threats Influencers like Walt Mossberg, Leo Laporte and Robert Scoble Foreword to the book written by former HubSpot COO JD Sherman Wendy's profile on LinkedIn and resources like the State of Marketing to Engineers Research Report, available on the TREW Marketing agency's site. Wendy's podcast Content Marketing, Engineered Episode Reboot Figure from Wendy's book (used with permission) showing channels where engineers prefer to get their content. Note how high YouTube and LinkedIn are on the list. For complete show notes, please visit: https://funnelreboot.com/episode-55-content-marketing-engineered-with-wendy-covey-summer-books/
Not only is public relations changing alongside marketing, but the two seem to be converging. The KPIs for PR activities increasingly include SEO metrics, inbound traffic, qualified leads, and conversations. In this episode, we talk to Dmitry Dragilev, an entrepreneur, do-it-yourself PR advocate, and founder of JustReachOut.io, about the challenges of getting noticed in a noisy market, tips for getting recurring press mentions, and what Dmitry thinks many PR agencies and past approaches to press outreach were getting wrong. Episode Guide 2:00: How has PR changed in the last 10 to 15 years? 3:15: Dmitry's first encounter with Walt Mossberg from The Wall Street Journal. 5:19: How has the balance of power shifted in PR? 8:07: Tips for companies having trouble getting noticed in the press. 11:52: Has the importance of the PR pitch changed in today's world? 14:40: The convergence of PR, content marketing and SEO. 17:15: Are SEO rankings becoming the metric of choice for PR? 19:30: The lure of getting mentioned in the big publications. 23:20: What is the one tool Dmitry can't work without?
Not only is public relations changing alongside marketing, but the two seem to be converging. The KPIs for PR activities increasingly include SEO metrics, inbound traffic, qualified leads, and conversations. In this episode, we talk to Dmitry Dragilev, an entrepreneur, do-it-yourself PR advocate, and founder of JustReachOut.io, about the challenges of getting noticed in a noisy market, tips for getting recurring press mentions, and what Dmitry thinks many PR agencies and past approaches to press outreach were getting wrong. Episode Guide 2:00: How has PR changed in the last 10 to 15 years? 3:15: Dmitry's first encounter with Walt Mossberg from The Wall Street Journal. 5:19: How has the balance of power shifted in PR? 8:07: Tips for companies having trouble getting noticed in the press. 11:52: Has the importance of the PR pitch changed in today's world?14:40: The convergence of PR, content marketing and SEO. 17:15: Are SEO rankings becoming the metric of choice for PR? 19:30: The lure of getting mentioned in the big publications. 23:20: What is the one tool Dmitry can't work without?
You're listening to the Westerly Sun's podcast, where we talk about the best local events, new job postings, obituaries, and more. First, a bit of Rhode Island trivia. Today's trivia is brought to you by Perennial. Perennial's new plant-based drink “Daily Gut & Brain” is a blend of easily digestible nutrients crafted for gut and brain health. A convenient mini-meal, Daily Gut & Brain” is available now at the CVS Pharmacy in Wakefield. Now, some trivia. Did you know that famous technology journalist and Rhode Island Native, Walt Mossberg, was born in Warwick? From 1991 to 2013, he was the principal technology columnist for the wall street journal/ He then founded AllThingsD, ReCode, and associated conferences. He hosted a weekly podcast called Control-Walt-Delete and has announced that he would retire in 2017… though he still tweets. It's Friday and almost the weekend. Tomorrow, there's a food truck event from 3pm to 5pm at the Lilly Pulitzer boutique at 31 Bay Street in Watch Hill. Stop in and enjoy sample items from Ocean House and Weekapaug Inn's seasonal dining experiences, served from their “Off the Menu” Food Truck parked outside the boutique. Next, We're continuing our series of great weekend hikes in and around Westerly. Find a quiet spot to go for a hike with the Westerly Land Trust. Whether you head to the Avondale Farm Preserve, Barlow Nature Preserve, or other great places to take a walk, you can find maps and directions at westerlylandtrust.org. Lastly, it's a new year and we've seen just how important journalism is over the past few years. Remember that reporting the local news is an important part of what it means to live here. Head over to Westerlysun.com and help us tell the stories of our community each and every day. Digital access starts at just 50 cents a day and makes all the difference in the world. Are you interested in a new opportunity? Look no further, we're here again with another new job listing. Today's posting comes from Mohegan Sun. They're opening up again and looking for event security guards, event marketing representatives, ushers, and ticket takers. If you're interested, you can read more and apply by using the link in our episode description. https://www.indeed.com/l-Westerly,-RI-jobs.html?vjk=26d99a5d35f1087c Today we're remembering the life of Neil C. "Pop" Place, Sr., who passed away at home surrounded by his family. He was 89 years old. He was the husband of the late Abby) Place. Neil worked at Posi-Seal International in North Stonington before retiring. He also was the Chief of the Richmond Police Department for 18 years. He was a Life member of the Hope Valley Ambulance, Richmond Carolina Fire Department and the Hope Valley - Wyoming Fire Department. He enjoyed fishing and hunting trips. He loved to watch his New England sports teams and Woodmansee Insurance softball team. He leaves behind his life partner, Angie Lacey, his son Keith and daughter in law Jean, and daughter in law Lulu as well as one granddaughter, Stacy in Stockholm, Sweden. He was predeceased by his son Neil Jr. and his siblings Pauline, Larry, Charles and Skip He also leaves behind several nieces and nephews. Thank you for taking a moment with us today to remember and celebrate Pops life. That's it for today, we'll be back next time with more! Also, remember to check out our sponsor Perennial, Daily Gut & Brain, available at the CVS on Main St. in Wakefield! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Zi Wang, Timeless founder and CEO, learned a lot at Google in eight and a half years. Enough that he was inspired to turn his Google-esque bold vision for the future of time management into a company. Timeless isn't solving the calendar app problem - Zi and his team are solving the problem of how to get the most out of what little time we have.Listen and learn...The founding vision of TimelessAbout the future of time managementThe value of a "marketplace for time" Why data privacy is a 21st century human rightHow time graphs will be used to optimize your calendar Resources mentioned on the show:Zi's manifesto on timeThe Timeless visionWalt Mossberg and "The Disappearing Computer"
Want to know what veteran tech journalist Walt Mossberg's view of the smart home is? His thoughts and comments will surprise you...here's my new podcast with Walt
Kara Swisher, a journalist and author writing about information technology, will discuss her observations regarding the internet, the digital revolution it created and the possible future it may bring. Topics will include: the influence of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other platforms on our politics, especially on the January 6 attack of the U.S. Capitol; the effect of computer robotics on our economy; the development of artificial intelligence; facial recognition and other means of surveillance; the lack of gender diversity in the dot.com world, among other areas of public concern. Swisher is an opinion writer for the New York Times where she also produces a twice-weekly podcast “Sway” on tech issues; she is an editor-at-large at New York Media, co-hosts the popular “Pivot” podcast and has authored two books. Her examination of the tech industry led Newsweek to call her “Silicon Valley’s most feared journalist.” She has established a reputation in the tech world for unrivaled access, having interviewed Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, President Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Rupert Murdoch, Stacey Abrams, and Kim Kardashian, to name just a few. New York Magazine noted one of the reasons for Swisher’s unusual success is her longevity. She began covering tech in the early ’90s when the people in power today were just starting out. Amazon was looking for its first headquarters in Seattle, Google was in its garage and Netflix was a small startup. While working in the San Francisco bureau of The Wall Street Journal as one of the first reporters on the internet beat she wrote the column "BoomTown," which appeared on the front page of the Marketplace section. Swisher co-produced and co-hosted the Wall Street Journal’s "D: All Things Digital" conference series (now called the Code conference) with Walt Mossberg starting in 2003. It was, and still is, the country's premier conference on tech and media. Following her remarks, Ms. Swisher will answer questions from the audience. The moderator will be Adrianne Jeffries, investigative tech journalist for The Markup, founding editor at The Outline, former editor of Motherboard and reporter for The Verge, The New York Observer, The Virginian Pilot, The New York Times, Businessweek, and the Netflix documentary series Broken. Sponsoring Committee: Senior Lawyers, Diane Fener and Gertrude Pfaffenbach, Co-Chairs Co-Sponsoring Committees: Communications & Media Law, Matthew L. Schafer, Chair Council on Intellectual Property, James R. Klaiber, Chair Mental Health Law, Karen P. Simmons, Chair Technology, Cyber and Privacy Law, Sylvia Khatcherian, Chair
Walt Mossberg joins the show to discuss his experience with Apple's Macbooks with the new M1 chip. Nilay, Dieter, Chris, and Dan discuss ThinkAuthority's reviews of the computers.
Walt Mossberg joins the show to discuss his experience with Apple's Macbooks with the new M1 chip. Nilay, Dieter, Chris, and Dan discuss The Verge's reviews of the computers. Stories from this week: Trump’s post-election tantrum is holding up federal vaccine planning Virus surges complicate the distribution of scarce COVID-19 treatments CDC says people should not travel for Thanksgiving due to COVID-19 surges The COVID-19 pandemic hits new highs and new lows Apple Macbook Air with M1 review: new chip, no problem Apple Macbook Pro with M1 review: flexing Arm Apple Mac Mini with M1 review: over-performer macOS Big Sur review Here’s how to run any iOS app you own on Apple’s new M1 Macs Apple will reduce App Store cut to 15 percent for most developers starting January 1st Apple’s biggest App Store critics are not impressed with its new fee cut for small developers Google Stadia is coming to iOS officially as a web app Google Pay's massive relaunch makes it an all-encompassing ... Google is rolling out end-to-end encryption for RCS in Android .. Google’s latest Chrome update delivers ‘largest performance gain in years’ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Our guest is Kara Swisher, one of the premiere tech columnists in the country. Our host spoke to Swisher about how social media platforms have affected our ability to talk to one another. Have platforms like Facebook contributed to the rise of misinformation. Do social media platforms have a responsibility to police certain content? Swisher has been a long-time critic of the power of tech companies, their use of personal data and the industry’s lack of accountability. In our interview she said, “We are cheap dates to the data companies.”Swisher has been chronicling the rise of Silicon Valley since the early ‘90s. In 2003, Swisher launched the D: All things Digital Conference with Walt Mossberg, and later co-founded the website Recode with him, which was acquired by Vox in 2015. Swisher has written for The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, and she is currently an editor-at-large for New York Media and a contributor to the New York Times, where she recently launched a new podcast called “Sway: A Podcast about Power.” She is the author of two books, AOL.com (1999) and There Must Be a Pony in Here Somewhere: The AOL Time Warner Debacle and the Quest for a Digital Future (2003).
This podcast episode of BALL (Best Advice & Life Lessons) hosted by Srini Raghavan, features Walt Mossberg often known as the kingmaker of tech products, who pioneered the modern, consumer-focused, technology review and commentary. He shares his best advice & lessons on entrepreneurism, the power of personal brand, insights from some of the industry leaders like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Jeff Hawkins & others. The show focuses on best advice and lessons from world-class performers & leaders, deconstructing and teasing out their routines, habits, tactics, techniques, and the best advice or life lesson they've ever received. @SriniRaghavan
Resource Links: Valher Media Website (https://www.valhermedia.com/) Valher Media Resources (https://www.valhermedia.com/resources) A helpful guide to growing & monetising your podcast (https://www.valhermedia.com/podcasters-edge/) podCast411 Website (https://www.podcast411.com) The Feed Podcast (https://thefeed.libsyn.com/) Check out Libsyn (https://www.libsyn.com) Today in iOS Podcast (https://tii.libsyn.com) Podcasting is growing in popularity, and more people have decided they too wanted to have their own show. Most of them start for the fun of it, while others plan on monetising them through ads & sponsorships… And they buy into the idea that ratings, reviews, and episode length factor into their rankings. Well guess what - they don’t! Today’s episode features Rob Walch, 2016 Podcasting Hall of Famer and the VP of Podcaster Relations for Libsyn. It is packed with priceless insights, tips, and strategies (that you’ll most likely not hear from anyone else). It’s definitely time to debunk some of those podcasting myths, learn how to choose your host site better, accurately interpret your data, and figure out what metrics ACTUALLY affect your podcast ranking! There’s so much gold in this episode so tune in and take notes! Episode Highlights: Podcast statistics, Libsyn, and the Spotify vs Apple podcast ‘war’ [02:41] People overplay how big Spotify is (compared to Apple Podcasts) [04:02] The plight of podcasts in the Youtube space [06:20] Optimising your show to have bigger reach on Apple Podcasts [08:13] Ratings and reviews have no bearing on the charts [09:18] Choosing where to host your podcast is CRUCIAL (for very important reasons) [11:53] Privacy concerns with podcast hosting sites sharing your information [17:33] Do the hosting companies know about the audience tracking concern? [20:18] Good and bad applications of tracking audience data (in relation to ads) [22:07] Check your hosting’s policy on data and data sharing [25:56] How is Overcast bringing light to a host’s privacy policies & tracking? [27:49] Most brand sponsors pull back from partnerships due to privacy concerns [29:26] Can having numerous devices contribute to downloads & plays statistics on a single show or episode? [31:20] What qualifies as a new ‘play’ session and is it added to the statistics? [34:08] Defining “downloads” and comparing data with the number of unique IPs [35:37] The ‘preload’ feature inflates podcast download numbers [38:16] Paying ‘click farms’ can get you kicked out of Apple Podcasts [41:28] Debunking some wives’ tales about podcast statistics [42:48] Episode length does nothing to boost your show’s popularity [47:28] How can you measure a show’s success? [49:15] Adapt a hybrid model to monetise your show (if you have a sizeable audience) [53:49] The future of podcasting is mobile... and Google Podcasts’ native app on Android phones [54:32] About our guest Rob Walch was inducted into the Podcasting Hall of Fame in 2016 and is the VP of Podcaster Relations for Libsyn. He is Co-Author of “Tricks of the Podcasting Masters”Que 2006, an editor’s pick as a Top10 Reference book for 2006 by Amazon. Rob started podcasting in 2004 as host of the award winning podCast411 podcast, where he interviewed guests such as Quincy Jones, Walt Mossberg & Larry Kudlow. He has consulted on podcasting for Jack Welch, Tim Ferriss, and eBay to name just a few. Follow Rob on Twitter: https://twitter.com/podcast411 Send him an email at: rob@libsyn.com If you enjoyed this episode, please don’t forget to subscribe, tune in, and share this podcast! Connect with Valher Media: Subscribe on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZd7saQ4UFkeP5boN25Kiig? Follow Us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/valhermediaSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
EP237 - Always Day One author Alex Kantrowitz Alex Kantrowitzer (@Kantrowitz) is the author of “Always Day One: How the Tech Titans Plan to Stay on Top Forever.” He is an on-air contributor at CNBC and host of the Big Technology podcast. In this broad-ranging interview, we discuss the unique management styles at Apple, Google, and Facebook, as well as doing a deep dive into what makes the Amazon culture unique. Disclosure: links to Amazon are affiliate links. Don’t forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 237 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded live on Thursday, September 24th, 2020. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Transcript Jason: [0:24] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show this is episode 237 being recorded on Thursday September 24th 2020, I’m your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I’m here with your co-host Scott Wingo. Scot: [0:40] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason Scott showed listeners tonight on the show we are really excited to have the author of the book released, this April always day one so if you’re familiar with Amazon that maybe a hint of what we’re going to talk about tonight and he’s also the host of the big technology podcast. Alex kantrowitz welcome to the Jason Scott show. Jason: [1:05] We are three of the have you Alex I’m not remotely implying that this is why you wrote the book but Scott is a sucker for anything Amazon so it’s the fastest way to get on our podcast is to write an Amazon book. Alex: [1:17] Well you don’t even need to imply it I mean it was absolutely the goal and I’ve waited a long time but I’m glad to finally fulfill it here with you guys tonight. Jason: [1:25] Yeah well very well played also for for folks that have already read the book or are going to read the book as a result of this interview, so as not to trick you the book is actually about more than Amazon but you wisely chose to elevate the Amazon portion to the title of the book which totally worked with Scott. Scot: [1:42] Wait wait the whole books not about answer. Jason: [1:45] Scott’s pretending like he hasn’t read the book but obviously being the consummate professional he is he’s read everything you’ve ever written. Before we jump into the book Alex the first thing we always like to do on the show is get a little background I got about the guests and kind of find out how how you came to your current role so could you tell us a little bit about yourselves. Alex: [2:05] Definitely so I started my career buying digital ads right at the moment where Facebook was surpassing Myspace in the social media Arena, and just watched it happen as a practitioner bought those ads and I spent about a year selling ad Tech, in New York and just it was writing about it on the side and a certain point realized that this world was changing so fast that I’d much rather write about it professionally, then do what I was doing it might have been just a function of the companies I was at but for me I saw there were so many stories that the media were was either getting half right or missing completely and, you know I love doing the work and you’re digging up what was going on and finding a way to tell it to an audience and just kind of made the leap so I covered the advertising industry in particular at first working for ad age then went to BuzzFeed to cover like Facebook and Google and Snapchat and Twitter, and while I was there just decided to go ahead and write this book always day one which looks really at the different Tech Giant work cultures that, exists out there and the whole point of the book is these companies are moving to where the future of work is is going and we have two options one is we can like sit and fear them or two as we can call up their work. [3:27] Their work systems and actually give them a run for their money and, thrive in the workplace that they’re dominating and for me the idea was basically get the word out there and get the information out there and that was sort of the inspiration. [3:40] Behind always day one is and then just as the book released I quit BuzzFeed, I started my own publication called Big technology I what you call it in the intro its Weekly Newsletter and podcast that covers the tech Giants and it’s sort of. Building on my work on Amazon and the other Tech Giants. Jason: [3:56] Very cool and how are you finding being a podcast hosted. Alex: [4:01] I mean I love it I just think there’s something special about being able to connect with people in a podcast I mean you guys know because you’ve been doing it for, more than three years but the relationship you have with people who are putting on your show and giving you a chance you have to give almost your undivided attention, you know when you have a show on in your in your headphones and your on a run or driving or you know going for a walk I think it’s just an amazing way to communicate with people and allows for the Nuance that I think tap it topics in the world that we’re living in today deserve so I don’t know I mean I couldn’t be more thrilled with getting into the podcast world. Jason: [4:41] Nice well speaking for ourselves. It’s way better for lazy people because you know you just hit record your ramble for a bit and you have a show like you don’t have to write all those words and you know get judged by an editor and, you know and it’s frankly harder for the audience to give you feedback so you don’t even have to hear how much the audience hated it. Alex: [5:03] Let’s see if you can work out an arrangement like that and any form of content production you got to make that happen. Scot: [5:10] Yeah I like it the just be careful about the audio Engineers they tend to be prima donnas that’s my big advice to you having done this for a while. Alex: [5:18] That’s right yeah got to make sure that you don’t have anything clicking in the background. Scot: [5:22] Yes yes drives them crazy. Jason: [5:24] Scot hasn’t stopped fidgeting for the four years that we’ve done the show I’m just saying right, we’ve tried to buy him quieter chairs you name it we’ve tried it I apologize to all the listeners that have to do with it. Scot: [5:37] Fidgety guy. Jason: [5:38] Yeah so before we jump in the book I did, the book starts out like even in the preface you’re having this this big interview moment with Mark Zuckerberg, you you actually got it seems like really good access to a lot of the leaders in their senior management team that you wrote about. Did was there some trick to that like was that just from your what Your journalist career up to that point and and your reputation or I mean like frankly I feel like there’s a lot of other, journalists that have written books and didn’t have that kind of access you were able to secure for yourself. Alex: [6:15] Yeah I mean I wasn’t as easy as it comes across in the final Edition I can tell you guys the story quickly if you want to hear how it all came together. So I was covering Facebook for years here in San Francisco or what you know I mean I’m not in San Francisco right now but it’s where I live and, and so I told them I want to write this book based off of this interaction I had with Mark Zuckerberg and they said okay we’d be in Google said they can be in because I’ve been covering them for even longer and then the ones I didn’t have were Amazon Microsoft and Apple. And for me Amazon was going to be the key because I thought that you know if I’m writing a book about work culture Amazon has a pretty distinct in fascinating culture and for me nailing that that section of the book was going to be. [7:05] Super important so even before we actually sold the book I booked a ticket to Seattle. One way and I agreed to cats it for my friend’s moms cat lady the cat. And basically said like all right if I sell the book hopefully I’ll get access but one way or the other I’m in Seattle until I’m out with the story. And you know then we sold the book the day that I landed, and I met with Amazon PR few days later basically said look like this is going to happen. And Facebook is on board Google is on board and I’m not leaving Seattle until I’m done what do you think. What’s let you know help me make help me tell like the most complete the most accurate story and let me actually get some people on record. And they hadn’t participated in a book since the everything store which is Broad Stones book that came out I think in late 2013. For 2014 so I didn’t have high expectations but I guess they figured hey we have this reporter that’s roaming around Seattle, he’s already got these other two companies on board maybe he’s going to get you know some of the other fourth and the fifth so we might as well you know. [8:17] Get out there and tell our story you know for ourselves and you know see if he’ll incorporate some of it and honestly like you know more I the overwhelming majority of the interviews that I did for the Amazon chapter. [8:32] We’re with people who are not sanctioned through the company’s PR organization so I feel like people get the real story and, this chapter it’s not just like a sugar coated repackaging of a press release but that said, the people they did let me speak with we’re pretty invaluable I got a chance to speak with Jeff Wilkie who’s leaving but he’s their CEO of what consumer and then it from very interesting Lee Ralph her brick who was their head of, machine learning who helped bring about this like pretty fascinating automation program in the headquarters that took a lot of the work that there are people in their retail organization we’re doing, and automated it and it was great to have a conversation with him talking about how that project originated I had done some reporting outside but he was the guy that ran, and so it was great to like bring the stories I had heard and sort of get his perspective on it and then I was able to visit a couple of fulfillment centers as well, so you know I think as a reporter for me I’m always trying to tell the most complete story I think you’re missing out if you do only interviews you know outside the company, I think you’re missing out if you only take access interviews and so I think always day one is a you know if I have to say it like it’s a pretty good blend of both, I think it’s the first book ever that Amazon Microsoft Google and Facebook have participated in together an apple. Jason: [9:56] Scott Galloway is really pissed about that by the way. Alex: [9:59] I think Scott Scott’s doing fine and he blurb the book so yeah so yeah but but yeah Scott’s Kia Scott and I like I think there’s like great Synergy between the four, and the thing that I wrote I mean I his book almost inspired me right his is all about the strategy. You know what are they doing and always day one is more about how are they doing it look at the inside the work systems in the culture, but have led to produce what these companies are you know are building so yeah and I mean like lastly Apple you know as per tradition didn’t participate but I got a chance to sit down with Steve Wozniak, in a barbecue joint right outside of Cupertino and sort of. Very end of my reporting on Apple share what I have learned from him learned and and get his perspective on it so apples out but wozniak’s and I’ll take it. Scot: [10:54] Very cool the I definitely want to dig into the Amazon stuff but before we do I wanted to Fanboy a little bit on CNBC I’m a huge CNBC junkie the are you in the Silicon Valley office there with like John 14 those guys. Alex: [11:07] So I’m a contributor I’ve been appearing on CNBC as a guest for about four years and then when I left BuzzFeed you know I had an opportunity to go out and be a free agent and, work with anybody that I wanted to and CNBC and I got to talking and, we started be a pretty great connection for between the two of us were you know again like I’ve been doing all this reporting on the tech Giant’s if you look at the S&P 500 they make up 25%, of the of that index and supposed to be something that’s fairly well distributed across the economy and you have five companies taking up a quarter of it right so, obviously it underscores how important these companies are you know to overall health of business in the US and the US economy which is what cnbc’s known for us the leader in covering so, for me it was a great opportunity to go up there and be able to you know drop in when they need meat and and give my thoughts and share some of my reporting. And it’s been great so far we were a couple of months in but it’s just been a real awesome experience to be able to appear on their shows from time to time. Scot: [12:19] Yeah yeah they do a really good job I like the Silicon alley and that’s probably where you do most of your appearance on mentioned because that’s when they talk mostly Tech right. Alex: [12:26] Yeah I mean I’m still working my way into meeting everybody but honestly the number one show that I’ve been on a Squawk Box by a long shot, so you know Ike I love doing squat Buck show I feel like those host won’t let you get away with anything and there have been times where Kieran and Andrew Ross Sorkin of, called me on certain statements and we’ve had to have little discussions on are about it and honestly if you’re going to do live TV those that’s the way to do it right like. Let’s have let’s have some fun let’s you know not allow people to get away with statements without really thinking deeply about them and thinking about the repercussions and you know I feel like I learn every day I learn something every time I’m with them and, and I don’t know it’s just I walk away from each appearance saying man that was fun let’s do it again. Scot: [13:14] Yeah very cool so I could talk about that for the whole show but I don’t want to Bernard Bernard time let’s take an Amazon what were as you as you kind of dug in there’s been some writing about day one and Bezos have been pretty open about it in his shareholder letters, what were some of the surprises that you as you dug into the Amazon culture then also there was the you know there was that kind of famous New York Times article I think that, 2015 about in a kind of headline from that one was people crying at their desk and. Amazon was very unhappy with that you know what were some of the surprises that you got from your Amazon interviews. Alex: [13:51] Yeah I mean man that New York Times story we should come back to that because I think it’s pretty fascinating look I think we talked a little bit about the day one thing obviously it’s the title of my book Let’s just you know touch on it super quickly write the idea inside Amazon with day one isn’t you know work morning evening and night you know keep your foot on the gas pedal even though many people there do but day one really means like think like a start-up right don’t be burdened by Legacy keep Reinventing, and whatever Amazon does today if you have an idea of something you know to do it better just just talk about it and do it because, the companies literally operating it’s as if like it is one of those companies on its first day without the burden of we have to support our existing businesses or this is just the way we do things around here okay so you said that now here’s the question how do you do that right so it’s one thing you know all these companies have like your missions and visions of they put like some Backwater in their internet and never talk about it ever but Amazon’s really been able to live this always day one mentality and I think they like the rest of the tech Giants have been able to do it in two ways one. [15:02] Because they rethought the way that we do work and this modern era, so throughout our history throughout the history of the Work World almost all work has been done to support existing products I mean think of the factory right, you would have one guy come up with an idea like let’s make screwdrivers, and then everybody in every employee that he would hire because almost always a he right would be making in the factory making screwdrivers and if you say hey let’s make hammers they laugh at you because employee ideas, we’re just not a thing that they would pay attention to and that age then in like the 70s we moved to the knowledge economy were all of a sudden we say, all right workers are supposed to come up with ideas or we’re relying on their knowledge, but even still almost everything that people in the office do is just supporting existing products you know you might be moving numbers around in a spreadsheet but you’re not coming up with new inventions. By and large in today’s knowledge economy I think what Amazon and the tech Giants have done is sort of flipped the whole equation on their head they’ve used, technology to minimize that work supporting existing products which I call execution work and maximize the amount of time their employees have. [16:15] For inventing for coming up with new ideas, and bringing them to life and so they first reimagined work and once you re imagine working create that room, for your employees to come up with ideas you need to actually innovate on the channels that bring ideas to decision makers. I think Amazon has done a terrific job with that as well they’re famous for the vi pager process were instead of PowerPoints you know people right. [16:42] Ideas for new products down in a six-page document as a narrative single-spaced often 11 Point font calibri you know style and then they just share it through out and of course it’s good for crystallizing your thinking and catching up Executives you know really quickly on projects that you are proposing as opposed to like going through a game of telephone but what that I do what the whole concept of writing things up. Doesn’t Amazon is it just make sure that that ideas can get from. Employees to decision makers in as quick a time as possible so that’s sort of like the trifecta you know in the always day one equation right it’s think like you’re a startup don’t worry about Legacy. Use technology to minimize execution work make room for ideal work and then create channels to bring ideas from employees to decision-makers in as quick a time as you can. Scot: [17:37] So I started a company that interacts a lot with Amazon and Google and eBay and Facebook and whatnot, and it’s really interesting just from the partnership perspective to interact with all those companies because the thing that’s really amazing at Amazon is you’ll have a discussion with someone relatively senior there, and they know the details of everything and that you’ll do a similar discussion with another company and they’ll have to kind of start looping in more and more people from the from various teams you know so if you have a shipping question they’ll be well let me get Larry the shipping guy in and Sally the, payments lady in. But you’d have that same discussion with an Amazon executive and they just know the business so deeply it’s it’s a little scary sometimes and then then you’ll go you’ll think oh that’s an aberration it’s just it’s just this guy and then you’ll go, you know eight other people and they all know it just as well as the original person did you find that as you met various people. Alex: [18:32] Oh yeah I mean think about the amount of knowledge that’s contained in one of those six page documents and then how many conversations you would have to have to replicate that. And it’s totally unbelievable how well I just think about the way meetings working Amazon. In most companies would have meetings look like right you end up sitting down with a bunch of people you probably spend ninety percent of the time. Thinking about what you’ve done up until that point and 10% of the time. You know actually digging into the business and making decisions at Amazon you read that 6 pager and then that whole 90% you know figuring out what we’re doing is done by the time someone says a single word. So of course they’re going to be you know well-versed on what the business is doing just because like that’s just the way Amazon operates so, yeah I would say that the people that I spoke with had just this deep domain knowledge it was almost as if they’re all you know CEO level expertise and Amazon in a way that you don’t find elsewhere. Scot: [19:39] Yeah do you do you think that basis will let’s say he leaves do you think this culture will be so calcified in there that it will keep going or do you think eventually they’ll stagnant. Alex: [19:54] Yeah I think look the culture at the end of the day is going to come from whoever the leader is I do think like you know I do think CEOs have an outsized influence in the way the culture, operates inside a company that’s why when CEOs were like oh I wasn’t aware of how this toxic bubble happened or this toxic Behavior happened I always laugh a little bit because it’s like. Yeah okay maybe you weren’t there day-to-day but you certainly set the tone that allowed this stuff to happen. So Bezos I mean first of all I don’t think Bezos is going to leave anytime soon you know I when I was in Seattle reporting this book and in the time I’ve spoken with Amazon employees since my impression was always that Jeff Wilkie, would be the guy to take over if pesos left and milky leaving to me is sort of a clear indication that Bezos has no plan. To go anywhere anytime soon so I expect Bezos to leave that company for a long time, to come you know as for whether the culture will change here’s my prediction if it’s somebody internal it won’t change very much because they’ve seen, how that culture has been so effective in getting Amazon to where it is but like if Mark Zuckerberg took over Amazon after Bezos left you better believe it’s going to be a different company with him running the show. Jason: [21:09] Oh yeah sorry that was that was hard to imagine for a second there. Alex: [21:14] Never Say Never because actually Zuckerberg and I write about this little bit in the book but zeca Berg ask Bezos to go and Shadow him for a couple of days you know Zuckerberg had this thing and it happens common in Silicon Valley where CEOs will ask other CEOs to spend a couple of days just watching how they work. And and so Zuckerberg had Shadow Don Graham the CEO of the Washington Post and Don said you know Mark you’re not going to learn anything from me but end up being pretty you know impactful in terms of Zuckerberg ability to lead Facebook and then Don Graham eventually sells the Washington Post to Bezos but Zuckerberg knew we had a relationship even before hand and he said Dom Don you know can you introduce me to Jeff and he said sure. So Graham asked Bezos stiff Zuckerberg can Shadow him and done Graham was you know pretty involved with Facebook you as a board member and so just said okay let me make this asked and Bezos calls him up and says hey Don look it’s a great idea but the only thing more distracting than having Mark Zuckerberg follow me around all day would be having Angelina Jolie in the office, and so unfortunately we’re going to have to pass on this idea and why when I brought it up to Zuckerberg he seemed like absolutely dejected he’s like yeah you didn’t let me in I was so funny. So anyway I don’t think it’s such a random idea you know maybe Zuckerberg snake doc next ACT is doing some sort of e-commerce business. Jason: [22:41] No I’ve not maybe at that level of CEO but there have been a couple like pretty public examples of these CEO swaps we’re not just shadowing each other but where they trade jobs for a week which is pretty funny and Illuminating. Alex: [22:55] Yeah that’s a fun hypothetical what happens to Facebook if Zuckerberg if Bezos runs it for a week what happens to Amazon if Zuckerberg gets his hands on the thing for for a week or two that might be interesting. Jason: [23:07] Yeah I have a hypothesis but I maybe I’ll save it for later in the conversation I do want to unpack a couple things so first of all you do right. A lot about the engineers mind and it’s kind of a thread throughout like a number of the. The Deep Dives and I certainly think of Jeff as a, as an engineer although he’s not a formal engineer but as having an engineer’s mind and so I always wondered why he doesn’t call it Day Zero instead of day one that’s has always bugged me. Alex: [23:40] Well that’s right I mean yeah we got to take points away from besos. Jason: [23:44] All the coders are pissed because day. Alex: [23:45] Believe yeah he is a trained engineer though he just hasn’t worked in it for a while. Jason: [23:50] Fair enough. Alex: [23:51] Education is in engineering yeah. Jason: [23:53] Yeah so. One of the things that’s been fascinating to me and maybe we have to jump into another part of the Amazon story that you wrote about and hands off the wheel but but hold just a sec on that right like you talked in the beginning and this to me is like one of the fascinating insights from the book that you know just this whole evolution of, hey in the industrial revolution it was all about execution and you could add the most value by being good at execution and ideas were like almost. Not useful and then you know ideas where a small percentage and and you know today we’re in this culture where ideas are the most difficult thing to replicate and we can. You know frankly execution is easier it’s easier to Outsource and increasingly you can automate it and throw a i at it. And so. In the context of the Amazon story you you sort of have the example of a program than Amazon run called ran called hands off the wheel and when I let you explain it and then I’ll pick back up. Alex: [24:56] Yeah and you guys asked up the top like what the most interesting thing I found in the book was and hands off the wheel no doubt was it so I heard some Rumblings that Amazon was automating. White-collar work and its retail organization and I thought okay well this is something to investigate, and it turns out that they’ve been running this program called hands off the wheel it was originally called project Yoda by some people and they’re saying basically instead of having Amazon’s retail employees the vendor managers. You know do things like order products and figure out their pricing and do inventory management and even negotiate with vendors, we can hand that all off to machine learning based off of all the data that they had. So they started it around 2012 where they said hey like we have almost two decades of data at our disposal. Can we figure out the way to do this work that our vendor managers would with technology instead. And it took a little bit of time but eventually they are predictions got pretty good and so those predictions started to end up in the retail employees software tools were instead of them like typing in, you know where they wanted to, you know put certain units of product the a I would suggest it and they could either say yes or override it. [26:22] And then at a certain point right around 2015-2016 Amazon’s executive said hey these predictions are pretty good, and instead of giving our employees a chance to override them in the system’s why don’t we let them make the actual calls and then see what happens and allow them to learn, they can adjust the machine learning tools and so they said essentially take your hands off the wheel. And they gave them pretty high goals some employees told me as much as eighty percent of all the work that they used to do was now handed off to machines and basically what they would do. Is audit and just say okay did you get it right and you know are there trends that we that the machines don’t know that we should try to account for like for instance you could have 30 years of historical, knowledge but not retail knowledge but when something like a fidget spinner becomes hot how do you then, let the algorithm know that it should start ordering some fidget Spinners because it’s not going to know but on its own it does nothing to work with. So Youmans actually became more Auditors and doers and eventually their work became much less important inside Amazon. [27:30] And so typically when you hear stories like this you’re just like oh those people are gone owners like obviously the company fires them but the amazing thing about this story inside Amazon is instead of firing these employees. Amazon just made you know many of them product managers and program managers basically professional inventors inside the company. Where they said okay well your jobs automated but we still need you to build new things and it’s this prototypical example of a company using technology to minimize execution work right because like, you’re buying stuff but you know doing inventory management inside Amazon was basically supporting an existing product that could run on autopilot you know anyway. And it gave them time to come up with new ideas so it maximized idea work and allowed for reinvention and that’s sort of been to me one of the main secrets to Amazon success over the years and your listeners will know it’s not the only thing but I think it’s certainly one of the big headlines, that’s enabled Amazon to stay on top for so long. Jason: [28:29] I know for sure I mean I basically my career is helping people compete with Amazon right and most of the unsuccessfully and I totally agree with the the fundamental premise of your book. You know clients are always asking me like what what Amazon’s fundamental advantages and they’re like is it you know the massive fulfillment capability they have or the huge product category catalog they have or the, you know the flywheel and Prime and now you know those are all super valuable things, but but my firm belief is that their biggest fundamental Advantage is their corporate agility and their ability to just. Evolve and react faster than other companies and it’s largely because of a lot of the principles that you captured in the book. Um but what I’m not convinced about I’ll just be honest is the hole. Repurposing of these employees so I so I had an interesting view to hands off the wheel my many of my clients were the brands that sell on Amazon and they hated hands off the wheel right because. If you think about it if you’re a consumer packaged good company you sell the Walmart and Target and Amazon and the way you are good at your job is, you you got those buyers to come to lunch with you and you built personal relationships and you you know you hope that you influence them to buy a little bit more of your product instead of the other guys. [29:53] And so as Hands on the Wheel started getting implemented those those vendors. Lost a human to talk to and to smoother than to wine and dine and it became this ridiculous thing like, haha my competitor lost their Vendor Manager but we’re so big we still have one, and I always had to break the news to you yeah you have one but they they don’t do anything they just go to lunch with you and then the hands off the wheel algorithm still decides how much of your stuff to buy. So it’s. I’m curious Amazon’s famously good at hiring people and they have super high standards they have this whole bar razor program which I’m sure you ran into so so they they used all that to hire the best vendor managers they could hire. And then they obsoleted that job which was totally to their credit. Presumably the people that they hired as the best vendor managers are not the best inventors or idea people and so it. Like I haven’t seen evidence that it’s not working for them obviously but it just like him like in my mind fundamentally it seems like. Huh hiring a bunch of people is buyers and then turning them into program managers and product managers because you obsoleted their job doesn’t on its face sound like a recipe for Success like it seems like you could hire better program managers. Alex: [31:15] Yeah well let me yeah let me give the counter-argument here right. I fully agree with you that this experience has been frustrating for first party vendors with Amazon no doubt about it. But it also happened in a broader context where Amazon was saying okay we’ve we’ve rode the first party Marketplace to a certain point, for us to be able to expand to the next point we’re going to need to really foreground the third-party Marketplace and our fulfillment and Logistics services, so it changed the business definitely changed right but this is again the whole idea that you think about when it comes to all these day one is are you going to hang on to your asset. Milk it for all it’s worth or are you going to build for the future may Microsoft’s a good example Microsoft’s number one asset was Windows for a long time. [32:04] And it became the number one desktop operating system company in the world and remained so long after desktop operating systems were an important anymore because mobile operating systems became the most important operating systems in the world and only after realized to let go of its asset then it sort of was able to reinvent himself as a cloud services provider. And became what it is today as opposed to what it was just a few years ago, laughing stock so yeah Amazon did definitely meet transform itself in that way and those Transformations are in Easy they’re painful, I mean think about how terrible people in the windows division felt inside Microsoft after they were like the kings of the castle for you know their whole lives and then they realized that they were just kind of, on the outside looking in. [32:51] And so yeah from a from a first party vendor situation it’s painful and doesn’t doesn’t feel right and might look like Amazon is blowing its lead but it was also this part of this necessary transformation that happened you know maybe before it needed to but kept Amazon, you know moving forward in a way that’s helped it. Maintain its dominance today to Second point of your question I’m going to give a broader answer and then a more specific answer the broader answer is, I think in today’s economy we have to stop looking at people as like you know folks who do one thing and of course yes specialization is important and it takes time to learn, to learn you know sector specific skills but on the other hand all of our economy is becoming more abstract you know you have to be able to be nimble and think about things differently and you know maybe move to a couple of different jobs throughout your career I remember Basil’s was sitting with. Walt Mossberg at the recode conference or maybe it was all things D at that point and you know. [34:02] Basis was talking about her work at Amazon you need to be open to change and if you’re not interested in change. Of course you should find a more stable career. I mean the joke is that there are no more stable careers like that like one of the things he said is go you know become an insurance adjuster and Walt Mossberg said well they use iPads now and basil said Insurance soon enough they’ll be using machine learning and it’s true, right now insurance is the field where. Jason: [34:30] The Drone flies over the hurricane area and writes all the adjustments now like a hundred percent. Alex: [34:36] Yeah I know I know I’m you know rambling on a bit but I do really think that so so yes if you are a you know. Fire that’s that’s the type of career that you want to have you’re going to have some trouble but if you thinking more broadly about being an adult being the person who could succeed in this economy, it’s not about job functions it’s about skills and thought process which Amazon certainly teaches then you can Thrive okay here’s the more specific example. Dilip Kumar who was the head of pricing and promotions inside Amazon went on to become bezos’s technical advisor Shadow him for a couple of years. And by the time that student was up his old you know domain was on its way to getting automated through it was then project Yoda and eventually hands off the wheel. And so we had an option here could go there and sort of see his job become obsolete or he could try to invent something new and he ended up leading or being one of the members that led the team that built Amazon go which is Amazon’s check out free. Convenience store and soon-to-be Supermarket I believe that sort of came out of this idea can we eliminate the most annoying part of shopping in real life and that’s checkout, and and they didn’t I mean you guys I’m sure I’ve been inside of the ghost tours they’re freaking magic and they you feel like you’re stealing every time you go in. [36:01] And turns out that, you know that that turned out to be one of the next big moves that Amazon’s making every time you hear Bezos talk about it you hear how it’s the future for the company so I don’t necessarily buy the idea that if you, do a retail core retail function you can’t be an inventor I think Kumar is a good counter example for that. Jason: [36:23] For sure. Alex: [36:24] And yeah I just think that this is sort of the way that we’re heading and the. Jason: [36:28] No no and that’s fair enough and I’m sure Amazon would would rightly point out and I think Google and others are even more on this way of like a lot of that bar razor is less about job-specific skills and more about, cognitive ability and problem-solving and things like that that would apply to multiple job so I’m sure a portion of that is totally fair, um I do there’s one other theme in here that’s kind of fascinating to me like if you think about hands off the wheel and you you kind of described it really well I can’t remember is in your book we haven’t mentioned it yet but you also wrote a great hbr article specifically about the hands off the wheel component of Amazon, the first phase of hands out the wheel was tools for the merchant right so you know originally the merchant has black magic and only he can figure out because back then it was always a he, how many how many widgets to buy from a vendor and put on the website right and so then, we get this AI algorithm that suggest how many he or she should order. But it still was ultimately up to the the human and human could override that system and I think you wrote that they discovered that the human overrode the system way too often and So eventually. They got to the point where it was a hundred percent the the system and they you know ultimately were able to solve for all four most are all edge cases. Um the in analogy to that also in the Commerce industry do you follow Stitch fix at all. Alex: [37:56] I dabble. Jason: [37:57] Yeah so Stitch fix is you know in a parallel retailer but kind of their part of their magic is personal stylist for every customer that gets to know that customer and make custom recommendations and early on they hired the the, chief. Intelligence officer from Netflix that had written the Netflix product recommendation engine and invested heavily in a i for Stitch fix and so they have, you know this this Tier 1 machine learning product recommendation engine that takes all these attributes from the customer and recommends, fixes or products for them but but Katrina the CEO at Stitch fix hit has been adamant. The customer wants to deal with a human so we’re never going to just send the recommendations from the algorithm we’re always going to have a stylus that. Presents those recommendations and has a chance to sort of override or curate those recommendations so and in a way that’s what like that interim version of hands off the wheel felt like to a lot of my my clients right like, they gave my clients a human being to make my client feel better but in reality the work was being done by the algorithm and I’m curious if you think. Over time are we all going to learn that the algorithms are better like well will there come a point at Stitch fix when they’d be better off to say, we have world-class math picking your products instead of you know a moderately paid employee. Alex: [39:26] Right for a high dollar product like that you probably want a blend of both so you want the AI to be so good that the stylist doesn’t have to go back a thousand times to get you something that you like, because each one of those moments is an opportunity to that you know to lose money for Stitch fix and to annoy the customer, and so you get the AI really good and then yeah you work in conjunction as a person and the human being becomes this concierge you know on top of the AI That’s using that to end up, making the recommendation of the client and I do think that model you know this idea that. That you know everything’s going to be automated and all the humans will go away, no I’m not I’m not ascribe to that I think we’re still going to have very important job for humans but it might be something that’s more interesting right, that is something like you know be the stylist or be the concierge from Stitch fix that speaking to you know speaking of the customer, that sounds like a much more interesting job than like being the person that runs into the back and, you know keeps getting different things for people to try on and be the person that puts the order in to bring it from the warehouse. Jason: [40:38] Or that re folds the clothes to put them back on the Shelf after they leave. Alex: [40:42] Because if the AI can minimize the amount of times the stylist in the person needs to go back to try to find the right fit then is doing its job perfectly. Scot: [40:49] Freckles that’s a we want to leave some for people to buy the book so that’s good good overview of the Amazon you also cover Microsoft Facebook and apple what interesting kind of cultural conclusions we’ve got kind of anchor of Amazon now did you draw from those conversations. Alex: [41:07] Yeah well I think the main thing that I learned was the leaders of these companies operate a little differently. Then I imagined you know the world-class CEOs operating I mean maybe I came to Silicon Valley with this idea that. Everyone was going to be Steve Jobs and sort of you know not give a shit about what anyone thinks and sort of stand up on the table in the middle of the campus with the megaphone, Park a bunch of orders and demand people, follow their Vision but I think that that would be a misconception because you having spent time with people like Zuckerberg and been in and around the offices of Google and Microsoft and. You know touched on Amazon of course and apple to some extent like what I found is that these leaders are really terrific at eliciting feedback and it starts with the very first story in the book where I go in. Sit down with Mark Zuckerberg and typically your, you know your average conversation with the CEO as a reporter is you know you sit down they lecture you for about 25 minutes and the pr person in the room monitors your facial expressions and, you know if you look concerned they say thanks for coming we’ll see you again sometime soon and you know if you look at some what engaged they might give you a time for a question or two. But when I came in to meet Zuckerberg he immediately starts asking for feedback. [42:25] And I was like what’s going on like this is is this a weird way of trying to sell a song you know what he’s trying to say. And then I ended up just going and speaking of Facebook employees as we tend to do in this line of work and found that feedback is just built into everything that Facebook does so. There are posters on the walls in the office you know back when that was a thing that’s a feedback is a gift and. Once a two-day trainings for employees to learn how to give and receive feedback major meetings ends with a request for it and I think this is important because it means that. [43:00] When you’re so comfortable sharing ideas with your colleagues are sharing Thoughts with your colleagues. You’re not going to hold ideas for good products back and I certainly found inside Facebook and elsewhere in the tech Giants that when that sort of behavior is enabled people aren’t shy they actually believe what you say, and they feel hurt and they’re going to come out and tell you things that you know might save your business one day and it certainly has happened for Facebook a couple of times. Scot: [43:27] What you think about the Facebook go fast and break stuff and they have the of the hacker mindset and all this kind of hacker kind of stuff on all around. Alex: [43:36] Yeah so ice actually spoke to Zuckerberg about this. He maintains that move fast and break things is not like actually like break Society it was more just like you know push code as fast as you can to the site. And I mean speed building the speed has always been important for Facebook and why is that important for Facebook I think it’s because social media is the most fickle of all, product categories product categories in the world. You know we’ve gone through so many different social media apps with Facebook itself is losing interest with teen users pretty fast and one social media networks are social media platforms start to shrink it’s very difficult for them, to build back in fact I think Twitter is really the only one that sort of lost users and then, brought them back and you know I mean who knows what the data says that Donald Trump isn’t necessarily responsible for it but, you know I don’t think it’s one account I think its new environment around his presidency that certainly helped you know Twitter revive you know so that said like. [44:41] Facebook needs to invent fast because if it doesn’t do that it’s going to it will really be dead and it has reinvented itself numerous times throughout its history from an online directory to sort of this broadcast platform where you write something on your wall, and everybody you’ve ever met in your life and their friend see it and now it’s transforming again to a series of smaller more intimate networks with groups and the messaging. So you know when it comes to like Zuckerberg move fast and break things like you know you might call it the unfortunate you know phrase that sort of you know stuck with Facebook as it has gone and broken stuff in a big way. But it really captures both sides right they build fast they release products before they’re ready. And oftentimes when they do that it has negative repercussions on society no do I think that they’re working to fix that I think there’s at least an effort inside Facebook, I’d like to see it expanded but I don’t think they’re as unconcerned with what happens to society afterwards as they had been in the past. Jason: [45:42] Very cool at that point in your book I so you cover it Amazon you covered those other companies and then the book takes what I’m going to jokingly call a dark turn. And that’s because you write a chapter about Black Mirror which is a very dark dark show but the premise about why you bring that up is, you introduced the hypothesis that science fiction writers are probably better at predicting the future then corporate employees and I was wondering if you could tell the audience a little bit more about about that hypothesis. Alex: [46:20] Yeah so definitely so first of all like I’m a big fan of the show Black Mirror obviously have watched it predict lots of different things that happened, and will probably continue to be prescient in terms of what’s going to happen in our world but look I’m writing this book always day one from like a standpoint of these are work systems that. I’ve helped the tech Giants in a big way and we ought to know about them and Co-op them so we’re able to be competitive in their world, and I’m bullish on the systems but the other side of that is that like everyone who goes out and approaches Tech in a way saying this is positive and only positive has been wrong because there’s always downsides to it. And so what I decided to do was to bring in a science fiction writer and while go Nim who helped start the Arab Spring, and who now has some reservations about the impact of social media on the world even though he used Facebook largely to help stoke. The revolution in Egypt and said let’s look at some of the uses of technology in the book and see where they could go wrong and I think just to push it home. [47:32] Inside Amazon they write these narratives the six pagers that we’ve talked about and that your listeners I’m sure extremely familiar with. And one Amazon employed ex-employee told me it was like, it was like writing science fiction when you wrote these things because it was a story of something that’s going to happen that doesn’t exist yet and that’s largely what you do in the tech world is you dream something up that doesn’t exist then you go and build it. But the thing about the tech industry stories as they always end happily and you have to do that for a reason right you’re in a company you’re tasked with building stuff. You want to think about the successful case in build towards that but often that makes you blind to the negative. [48:09] And the amazing thing is once you put a couple science fiction writers actual science fiction writers on the problem people who are used to thinking dark and dark ways, you’re going to be a thousand times more likely to catch the liabilities in your products, then you would otherwise and so I found it to be an incredibly useful and interesting exercise at the end of the book when I was done with my reporting to bring these folks in. And for me you know I’m just like you know an author of a book doing one dinner with these folks so imagine how, amazing their perspective would be inside a tech company that’s actually actively building the future every day. And I do believe that we need many more science fiction writers working inside Tech doing exactly this thing like looking for liabilities looking where things could go desperately wrong in the future and then helping these companies look out for the problems before they happen. Scot: [49:06] Well that’s a good jumping-off point so if we if you kind of take what you’ve learned and projected out maybe it’s three five ten years do you know do you think it’s like 95% probability these dark mirror scenarios come true where you know we’re being surveilled all the time and Alexa devices are recording our every word or do you think that, there’s at least some probability that that we have a more utopian future. Alex: [49:31] Yeah well we are being surveilled all the time and Alexa devices are recording or every word they’re just I guess deleting them after 10 seconds. But you know I think that at the end of the day in a capitalist Society. The tech Giant’s right now are good example that they will push the limit to about the edge but they won’t go over it because they know there’s just going to be a backlash among the customers like. Ultimately you know if your Amazon’s number one leadership Principle as you guys know customer Obsession right. And you know you’re obviously obsessed with giving customers a good experience low prices wide selection and fast delivery, and so like the data that Amazon collects is used in service of that I don’t think Jeff Bezos like sits on his iPad at the end of the night or is like you know there’s one remaining Kindle Fire and. Decides to you know figure out which Amazon user he’s going to spy on. Just for kicks in fact now he knows what it’s like to be spied on after his photos were stolen off of his phone, or off of his his girlfriend’s phone in some way anyway look I think that like we that detect Giants need some form of data collection in order to exist every every company today, really need some form of data collection to exist I mean I run a newsletter business and I have to collect emails you know that’s Pi I so. [50:58] So it’s important part of the way our economy works today on the other hand like I don’t I don’t expect. You know this widespread nefarious use of data to become. And you know we’re definitely going to need a strong press to watch some of the ways things go wrong like I do have some concerns about. The way that Amazon handles the data that comes off of their ring doorbells for instance but ultimately like. These companies are here to serve consumers and, you know if consumers know that you know there are echoes show is I don’t know if that’s still what it’s called her, but whatever the Echo Show is spying on them in their bedroom and like Amazon employees are you know watching me sleep, they’re going to go to Google so ultimately I think that’s the thing that keeps this baby more than anything else. Jason: [51:53] You know coincidentally Amazon had a big product announcement today they launched a bunch of their newest Echo products and they an ring products and they had a lot of new software features and a lot of the software features. We’re mostly around cleaning up a lot of that privacy stuff so for example. You The Echoes all have better more powerful chips in them now so they can do more of the speech recognition. In the devices so they send less actual data over the network than they used to, but they built in these cool new features like you can say Alexa forget everything I’ve ever said or forget everything I said in the last hour or things like that that. You know they didn’t used to have and they done full in and encryption on drink so I will give them credit for, first starting to address some of those and it occurred to me as you were you were talking you know there are a couple of these big tech companies that have hired science fiction writer so I think like. Ray Kurzweil famously works for Google and I met this guy Peter Schwartz who’s, I wasn’t familiar with them but he’s a cool futurist that like. [53:06] Invented a lot of the experiences in Minority Report like including the you know though II scanning in the Gap store and all that stuff and he’s a full-time futurist for Salesforce. So I think it is your hypothesis may already be true I think they may already be starting to sort of a dad that thought process to there. Corporate knowledge base. Alex: [53:28] Yeah that’s great I applaud anyone that does that and it’s a two-parter right the first thing that is you hire the science fiction writers are the dark thinkers and the second part is you listen to them. And so we just got to make sure that these companies if they telling us they’re hiring science fiction writers at their coming through on the second half of that equation as well. Jason: [53:47] Hundred percent and I’m sure we’ll see some where they only do the first half. Alex: [53:52] It’s a nice press release. Jason: [53:53] Yeah and that’s a great point and that’s actually going to be a great place to leave it because it’s happen again we’ve used up all our allotted time, but Alex we certainly enjoyed chatting with you if listeners have any further questions or comments about the show we sure would appreciate a comment on our Facebook page or hit us up on Twitter and as always if you enjoyed this episode we’d love it if you jump on iTunes and finally give us that five star review. Scot: [54:20] Alex thanks for joining us if folks want to follow you online what we’re what are your best places that you publish content. Alex: [54:28] Yeah thanks so much this was a great conversation really appreciate the opportunity to be on I would say I would recommend folks go to the big technology podcast it’s big technology podcast you can get it in any podcast app and I have a different interview up there every week everyone from you know VC’s to timbre the VC who that sorry the Amazon VP left over its treatment of whistleblowers journalists, and Founders so the whole crew comes on it’s been super fun so far as we talked about in the beginning so I’d love to see you there and if you’re interested in the book it’s always day one and you can find it at any Bookseller you could just type it into Google or Bing if that’s what you’re interested or DuckDuckGo if you don’t like being tracked as we talked about in this last segment and you’ll be able to find it and, yeah I’d love to hear your thoughts. Jason: [55:22] That’s terrific will definitely put a link to the podcast in the show notes and until next time happy commercing.
Rob Walch was inducted into the Podcasting Hall of Fame in 2016. Rob is the Vice President of Podcaster Relations for Libsyn (LSYN) having joined Libsyn in 2007. Prior to joining Libsyn, he founded podCast411, Inc in 2004. Rob is Co-Author of the book “Tricks of the Podcasting Masters” - Que 2006, an editors pick as a Top 10 Reference book for 2006 by Amazon. Rob was listed as the 5th most influential person in podcasting according to the book “Podcasting for Dummies” – Wiley Press 2005. He has consulted on podcasting for Jack Welch, Senator Edwards, Governor Bill Richardson, Noah Shanok (Stitcher), Tim Ferriss, Dr. Mark Hyman, eBay and the Sacramento Kings/Monarchs to name just a few. Rob is a member of the IAB Podcasting Working groups, and on the Editorial board for Podcast Business Journal. Rob started podcasting in 2004, and is the host of the award winning podCast411 Podcast, where he has interviewed such prominent podcasters as Quincy Jones, Walt Mossberg, Colin Ferguson (Eureka), Ronald Moore (Executive Producer of Battlestar Galactica), Phil Gordon (World Series of Poker), Larry Kudlow (CNBC's Kudlow and Company) and Leo Laporte (TechTV, G4 TV). Additionally, Rob is host of Today in iOS (iPhone) Podcast – The first and largest podcast about the iPhone, and also the KC Startup 411 Podcast which covers the Kansas City Start-Up scene . Since 2004, Rob has presented at well over 100 events on the subject of Podcasting. Rob was the Track Leader for the Podcasting sessions at the 2009 Blog World Expo where he recruited 25 top experts to speak on podcasting. www.todayinios.com www.kcstartup411.com
Rob Walch was inducted into the Podcasting Hall of Fame in 2016. Rob is the Vice President of Podcaster Relations for Libsyn (LSYN) having joined Libsyn in 2007. Prior to joining Libsyn, he founded podCast411, Inc in 2004. Rob is Co-Author of the book “Tricks of the Podcasting Masters” - Que 2006, an editors pick as a Top 10 Reference book for 2006 by Amazon. Rob was listed as the 5th most influential person in podcasting according to the book “Podcasting for Dummies” – Wiley Press 2005. He has consulted on podcasting for Jack Welch, Senator Edwards, Governor Bill Richardson, Noah Shanok (Stitcher), Tim Ferriss, Dr. Mark Hyman, eBay and the Sacramento Kings/Monarchs to name just a few. Rob is a member of the IAB Podcasting Working groups, and on the Editorial board for Podcast Business Journal. Rob started podcasting in 2004, and is the host of the award winning podCast411 Podcast, where he has interviewed such prominent podcasters as Quincy Jones, Walt Mossberg, Colin Ferguson (Eureka), Ronald Moore (Executive Producer of Battlestar Galactica), Phil Gordon (World Series of Poker), Larry Kudlow (CNBC's Kudlow and Company) and Leo Laporte (TechTV, G4 TV). Additionally, Rob is host of Today in iOS (iPhone) Podcast – The first and largest podcast about the iPhone, and also the KC Startup 411 Podcast which covers the Kansas City Start-Up scene . Since 2004, Rob has presented at well over 100 events on the subject of Podcasting. Rob was the Track Leader for the Podcasting sessions at the 2009 Blog World Expo where he recruited 25 top experts to speak on podcasting. www.todayinios.com www.kcstartup411.com
Rob Walch was inducted into the Podcasting Hall of Fame in 2016. Rob is the Vice President of Podcaster Relations for Libsyn (LSYN) having joined Libsyn in 2007. Prior to joining Libsyn, he founded podCast411, Inc in 2004. Rob is Co-Author of the book “Tricks of the Podcasting Masters” - Que 2006, an editors pick as a Top 10 Reference book for 2006 by Amazon. Rob was listed as the 5th most influential person in podcasting according to the book “Podcasting for Dummies” – Wiley Press 2005. He has consulted on podcasting for Jack Welch, Senator Edwards, Governor Bill Richardson, Noah Shanok (Stitcher), Tim Ferriss, Dr. Mark Hyman, eBay and the Sacramento Kings/Monarchs to name just a few. Rob is a member of the IAB Podcasting Working groups, and on the Editorial board for Podcast Business Journal. Rob started podcasting in 2004, and is the host of the award winning podCast411 Podcast, where he has interviewed such prominent podcasters as Quincy Jones, Walt Mossberg, Colin Ferguson (Eureka), Ronald Moore (Executive Producer of Battlestar Galactica), Phil Gordon (World Series of Poker), Larry Kudlow (CNBC's Kudlow and Company) and Leo Laporte (TechTV, G4 TV). Additionally, Rob is host of Today in iOS (iPhone) Podcast – The first and largest podcast about the iPhone, and also the KC Startup 411 Podcast which covers the Kansas City Start-Up scene . Since 2004, Rob has presented at well over 100 events on the subject of Podcasting. Rob was the Track Leader for the Podcasting sessions at the 2009 Blog World Expo where he recruited 25 top experts to speak on podcasting. www.todayinios.com www.kcstartup411.com
Sonos Company Profile Sonos was one of the first companies that sent our fledgling podcast equipment to review. We were just starting as were they. It made us feel like we were legitimate and could make a go of this podcast thing. Now almost a thousand podcasts later we are still going and so are they. One of us has grown exponentially and the other records a podcast every week! This week we are going to profile Sonos Inc. Much of this information comes directly from the Sonos website. Founding Founded Aug 22, 2002 Sonos is headquartered in Santa Barbara, California and currently employs just under 1500 people. Founders - John MacFarlane, Tom Cullen, Trung Mai, and Craig Shelburne - conjured a daring vision based on technology that didn't exist at the time. Fueled with the insight earned from success in the first phase of Internet-based business-building, they chose as their next mission a new way to bring music to every home - wirelessly, in multiple rooms, from PCs and the Internet, with awesome sound. They hired an amazing team who built amazing products from scratch, and music devotees all over the world found a new brand to fall in love with. John MacFarlane moved to Santa Barbara in 1990 to get his Ph.D. from the University of California-Santa Barbara. Instead he saw the promise of the Internet and built Software.com along with Craig, Tom and Trung. After Software.com merged with Phone.com in 2000 to create Openwave, they moved on to figure out together what to do next. Whatever was going to be next, they knew they wanted to stay together, and stay in Santa Barbara, due to the roots they and their families had begun to establish there. It was, perhaps, the beginning of a habit of unorthodox choices to add both a degree of difficulty and a fresh perspective to the work. The Problem In 2002, great music in the home meant wires hidden behind bookshelves and furniture, connecting to speakers the size of bongo drums; audio jacks plugged into the right holes on the backs of receivers and players; physical media primarily in the forms of compact discs and tapes - and if you wanted a multi-room experience, an afternoon (or weekend) drilling through walls to snake wires from a central receiver to speakers throughout your home. The Solution Developing a wireless multiroom home audio solution that was easy to deploy and control. The solution required setup that would be fast and intuitive for anyone, it would have to integrate well with any technology or service, and it would have to deliver superior sound in any home environment. Cross-technology integration meant choosing Linux as the technology platform, but no drivers existed at the time for audio, for controllers' remote buttons or scroll wheels, or for the networking that was needed. The Sonos team had to build them. Great multi-room music meant inventing a method to get audio instantly and wirelessly to multiple speakers without listeners noticing any gaps, ever. The team recognized mesh networking as the key. By 2003, it was a concept that had seen use in highly mobile environments, like battlefields, but never applied in the home or to the stringent demands of music experience. To develop and implement, Sonos had two choices: an easier engineering solution at the expense of its ideal user experience, or making it simple and great for users and excruciatingly difficult for its engineers. With the basic framework of the system built by early 2004, filled with new and untested technologies, the next phase focused on the scourge of software engineers: bugs. Despite all the ingenuity at hand, the prototypes couldn't communicate wirelessly to each other from even ten feet apart. And particularly with embedded systems, at the time developer tools and debuggers did not exist. So Nick and John took a road trip, the prototypes stowed in a cardboard box in the back seat of John's car, to Silicon Valley to see John's friend and hardware supplier, whose advice boiled down to one word: antennas. Developers know that the most frustrating bugs are the so-called “irreproducible” bugs. Many of them emerged from testing at Sonos employee homes in and around Santa Barbara – including one especially frustrating bug, only reproducible at one person's house, that required a packet sniffer to identify and fix. Recalls Andy Schulert: “We've got our first 15 to 20 prototypes, we feel great about them, we take ten of them to someone's house to try it out. We set them up, and it's a colossal failure. They barely worked. We had to dial back to just two, figure out the issues, then add a third, and so on. Excruciating, but worth it.” By summer 2004, Sonos had tackled the bugs, prototypes were beginning to function with the necessary reliability, and the team had started sneak-peeking the system to others in the industry. This confirmed what they had been beginning to recognize: the hard work to that point had paid off in the form of something genuinely new. Breakthrough music experiences often debut with certain signature songs. MTV, for example, famously launched with “Video Killed the Radio Star,” by The Buggles. How about Sonos? The first song played for the public on Sonos' first product, the ZP100, was The Beastie Boys' “No Sleep ‘Til Brooklyn,” at full volume, produced by longtime Sonos supporter/adviser Rick Rubin. Sonos engineers could affirm the “no sleep” part because of all the work they'd put in leading up to the ZP100's launch. But getting the experience just right for customers required a more practical approach to selecting songs for testing, dictated by the early days of scrolling through long alphabetical-order lists of songs and bands. So the most-played song by Sonos engineers for testing was “3AM” by Matchbox 20, for no other reason than it was at the top of a list. The most-played band: 10,000 Maniacs. Shipping At long last, on January 27, 2005, Sonos shipped its first product, the ZP100. Industry accolades, strong product reviews, and positive media coverage followed soon after, and sustained over the first months and years of availability. Reviewers lauded its simplicity of setup, design, reliability, and great sound. The dean of product reviewers, Walt Mossberg (then at The Wall Street Journal), wrote, “The Sonos System is easily the best music streaming product I have seen and tested.” Its second- and third-generation systems were efforts toward streaming direct to its players, taking the PC entirely out of the equation. They started in 2006, with Rhapsody as its first music service. It was a big turning point for the company, and it was not at all obvious at the time. With the launch of the iPhone in 2007 and Apple's App Store sparking a boom for apps, Sonos launched its own, free app for iPhone users, meaning you could turn your iPhone into the controller, without buying the Sonos remote. (Android users got their Sonos app in 2011, and Sonos phased out its own controller hardware in 2012.) Then in November 2009, Sonos released the PLAY:5, a truly smart, all-in-one speaker for $400, about a third of the inaugural price of Sonos' original product, the ZP100 (which with speakers and controller, cost about $1200 in 2005). Their hopes for sustained, strong sales growth were realized. This also marked a more decisive shift toward continual software upgrades for ongoing improvement in the products, an ever-more-exacting focus on sound quality, and closer relationships with recording artists and others in the creative community. The rest is history! Market Cap $1.24B, Sales $1.24B, Stock Price $11.77, 52 week High/Low $12.08/$11.50
As far as I can tell, Steve Jobs let only two people interview him on a stage that wasn't Apple's: Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher. Kara was also one of The post Kara Swisher, Executive Editor, Recode appeared first on Prokit.
This week's Flash Back Friday takes back to Episode 53 from April 2012. For those new to podcasting, terms like RSS Feed, media hosting, and platforms can be a foreign language. Jason Hartman interviews long-time podcaster, Rob Walch, Vice President of Podcaster Relations for Wizzard Media/Libsyn, about his career in podcasting. Rob talks about starting his first podcast, Podcast411, in 2004, which he began in order to teach the ins and outs of the trade to others aspiring to get in on this type of media delivery. He lists the best sources for statistics, such as Libsyn, Feedburner, and Blubrry. He talks about some of techniques of the biggest podcasters, who have hundreds of thousands of downloads per day or multiple millions per week, gives examples of premium content versus free content, and also the benefit of a podcasting service/community to provide media hosting, delivery, and track stats. He also stresses the importance of editing and professionalism to produce a quality show. Rob Walch is the Vice President of Podcaster Relations for Wizzard Media / Libsyn. Prior to joining Wizzard Media in 2007, he was President and founder of podCast411, Inc. Rob is co-author of the book “Tricks of the Podcasting Masters” – Que 2006, which was an editors pick as a Top 10 Reference book for 2006 by Amazon.com. Rob was listed as the 5th most influential person in podcasting according to the book “Podcasting for Dummies” – Wiley Press 2005. He has consulted on podcasting for Senator Edwards, Governor Bill Richardson and the Sacramento Kings/Monarchs to name just a few. He was also a monthly columnist for Blogger and Podcaster Magazine – the first print magazine covering this new media space. Rob is currently Chair of the Education and Outreach Committee for the Association of Downloadable Media. Rob started podcasting in late 2004, and is the host of the award winning podCast411 podcast, where he has interviewed such prominent podcasters such as Quincy Jones, Walt Mossberg, Colin Ferguson (Eureka), Ronald Moore (Executive Producer of Battlestar Galactica), Phil Gordon (World Series of Poker), Larry Kudlow (CNBC's Kudlow and Company) and Leo Laporte (TechTV, G4 TV). Additionally Rob is host of Today in iOS (iPhone) Podcast – the first podcast about the iPhone. In the past seven years Rob has presented at over 80 events on the subject of podcasting and New Media including the Newspaper Association of America Marketing Conference, the US Latino Film Festival, the Corporate Podcasting Summit, The Association for Women in Communications 2006 Annual Professional Conference, Social Media 2007, New Media Expo, and Blogworld Expo. He is also a regular guest lecturer at the University of Kansas School of Journalism. Rob was the Track Leader for the Podcasting sessions at the 2009 Blog World Expo – where he recruited 25 of the top experts to speak on podcasting. In 2004 Rob received his MBA from the University of Connecticut. He also has an engineering degree from the University of Dayton.
Hey everyone! Hope you are all having a great week! I am recording this in Washington, DC! I am flying back to ATL tonight but in the meantime, here is my weekly update! In this episode I'm going to rant a little bit on some of my thoughts, share some of my other favorite podcasts that I have been listening to, and answer some questions that I've been getting, and give you a preview of this weeks episodes. I have been reaching out to other podcasters and getting connected with some other people in this space, and tons of people have been commenting on my audio quality! I didn't really think it was that big of a deal until I started listening to some other podcasts that were just getting started, and I'm not trying to be mean, but most of them just aren't up to my standards. It doesn't really take much to have professional sounding audio. My entire setup excluding my computer and the editing software I use was only about $260. There is a bell curve to how much the equipment costs versus how much better your audio will sound. For example my Lavalier Microphones that cost 40 dollars each are going to sound a lot better than the microphone that comes on your phone. BUT you could still get really good, crisp audio on your phone microphone, too. Most people just aren't recording in the right environment. The environment you are recording in can take your recording from a 3 to a 7. If you are recording in an super echo-ey environment or there is a bunch of noise in the background like the A/C running really high or a refrigerator running in the background it can be really challenging to get listenable audio quality. If people only had to listen to it for a few minutes it would be fine, but these people are listening for hours at a time. They don't want to hear a constant humming in the background. I try my best to record in environments that don't have those negative qualities to make the post-production as easy as possible. I do all of my editing myself, so the less time I have to spend fixing the audio the better. I also want to get into the New & Noteworthy section in the iTunes Store and Podcast app and I know that in order for Apple to feature my podcast it's going to have to be up to their standards as well. Speaking of featuring podcasts, I wanted to take the time to share two podcasts that I have listened to this week that I think you guys would really enjoy as well if you enjoy my content here. The first podcast that I highly recommend is The Joe Rogan Experience: Episode #974 with Megan Phelps-Roper. Megan used to be a prominent member of the radical religious cult, the Westboro Baptist Church. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Westboro Baptist Church, they are especially known for their hate speech towards the LGBT community, Catholics, Muslims, Jews, and basically everyone else on earth. Their church website is godhatesfags.com, and they also have made statements such as, "thank God for dead soldiers," "God blew up the troops," "thank God for 9/11," and "God hates America." They picket soldiers funerals, religious gatherings, gay pride rallies and more. Megan left the church a few years ago and in this amazingly powerful interview she gives a surprising inside look on what goes on inside the church, how talking with people on Twitter helped her realize the errors in the church doctrine, and why she no longer is affiliated with them, and how she escaped the church. It was one of my favorite podcasts I have listened to in a while and you shouldn't miss out. The other podcast I would recommend this week is Control-Walt-Delete with legendary tech reporter Walt Mossberg and Nilay Patel. The episode is called Walt and Nilay Sign off. This was the final episode of Control Walt Delete, so if you like this podcast it is unfortunately all over because Walt is retiring, but they have 75 other episodes from the past 2 years that you can go back and listen to. Walt Mossberg was personal friends with Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and tons of other billionaire tech entrepreneurs, so he has some amazing stories about those guys. This final episode was recorded in front of a live audience in New York City, with a Live Q&A as well. If you are a tech-nerd like me, you will really enjoy that podcast. Okay so now I am going to take the time to answer a few questions that I have been getting. Some people, mainly my parents and their friends that want to listen to my podcast, are commenting on my use of "iinappropriate" language, and I thought I would address that. I have a very reasonable explanation for why I choose to swear on this podcast that I think is pretty logical. Number 1: I don't want to filter myself. In any way. I want to be as transparent and open as possible. I have no interest in censoring myself. Transparency is a huge driving factor behind this podcast and I think that being as open with my audience allows for vulnerability, and that is the only way to build trust. Number 2: I don't want to filter my guests. I want my guests to feel as comfortable as possible. I don't want them to change or filter their responses just because lots of people are listening. I also think it would be silly for me to censor myself, but then allow my guests to curse. By allowing myself the freedom to curse, it lets my guests know that they can be free to express themself however they want to as well. Of course their will be some guests who I know don't swear out of personal convictions or whatever, so you will probably not find me swearing on those episodes. Number 3: I think that I owe my listeners my real thoughts and feelings. Some people have commented that they think my cussing seems kind of forced, especially in the first episodes. I think that is because in the back of my mind there is a slight hesitation before I do it. Since this is being put out there for everyone to hear, there's a voice in my head telling me to not say it, but like I said, I have made the decision to not filter myself, so I say it anyways. Pretending that I don't swear in real life is just preposterous and putting on a filter to separate myself from the virgin ears of the listeners seems disengenuous. Over the course of this podcast I think it will become more natural. Number 4: Times are changing. The line between professional and unprofessional is blurring every day. We can't stop pretending to live these double lives. I don't want to have this weird voice that I only use when I know someone is listening. Its fake and gross, and everyone can tell its weird. Throwing in a curse word lets people know that you don't take things too seriously and that you are comfortable. The more we police language the more power you give to the word. The more we use these taboo words, the quicker they will lose their power. If they are such "bad words" don't we want them to lose their power? I think so. I think that having curse words in are an automatic filter for those who are not open minded enough to look past them. If it truly offends you, then maybe you shouldn't be listening to my podcast. If you are still listening at this point then I think you will be fine. The next question is something that I have been wrestling with. I was recently contacted by an Olympic Gold Medalist and motivational speaker and I really want to have her on the podcast. The only problem is she lives in New York. Eventually I want to be able to use this podcast as a way to travel and see the world. I would love to be able to fly up there and do a podcast but right now with my work schedule its just not a reality. So the question is: Am I going to do virtual podcasts where I am not in the same physical space as my guests? I am torn because I really want to have her and others on the podcast, but I hate virtual interviews. They are not as intimate and there is a weird disconnect you get when you are not in the same room. The other problem is the audio quality. Like I mentioned earlier I really want to make sure my audio quality is up to my standards and typically Skype interviews sound like they were recorded with a toaster oven. The audio is delayed and its just a big pet peeve of mine. On the other hand, I could totally do the interview, deliver the content to you guys, and just do my best to clean it up and get over myself. I am looking into some software that is designed specifically for this type of scenario but I am still wary of the quality. Let me know what you guys think. Should I start doing virtual conversations or stick with face to face and not settle for sub par quality? This week I have Three new episodes for your ear holes. Episode 18 is with my friend Luke Crawford. Luke is an Entrepreneur, Photographer, Competitive Shooter, Hunter, Fighter, Political Activist, fellow Eagle Scout and much more. I have been friends with Luke for over 15 years or so, and we had a lot to talk about. Luke has always had a way of standing out from the crowd, and not just because he is taller than everyone. Since high school he has been on the news, on the radio, and he has gained a sizable following on Instagram and Facebook. In this episode, Luke shares some amazing stories of how he got into the world of Firearms, the famous story of how he got on the news for his unique business idea, his huge recent win with Students for Concealed Carry, how he outsmarted Donald Trump's campaign and beat them to the punch on a great business idea, and his activism with fighting Human Trafficking and the Sex industry in Atlanta. I have wanted to have Luke on my podcast since I started, and I really enjoyed catching up with him and I'm sure this will be a classic episode. I can't wait to have him on again. Episode 19 is with Celebrity Stylist and Fashion expert, Cameron Hesseltine. Cameron has styled a bunch of celebrities including: Jon Hamm, Kate Beckinsale, Chrissy Teigen, and Sarah Hyland. In this episode Cameron shares her story of her upbringing and why she dropped out of college, her crazy stories of styling celebrities in LA and why its not as glamorous as it seems, and we talk men's fashion, the taboos surrounding it, and some do's and don'ts for the guys out there. I have been getting into men's fashion more and more over the past year and it was really fun to talk about all that stuff surrounding men's fashion with her. Cameron is also going to be starting her own podcast soon, so stay tuned for that. I can't wait to be a guest on her show and I will let all of you guys know when she officially launches it. Episode 20 is with my friend, Lyndsay Carreno. Lyndsay is a world traveler, political activist, historian, and one of my best friends, and she actually lives here in Washington, DC. I have been waiting to release this week's update because I knew we were doing this podcast, and I wanted to at least release three episodes this week. Lyndsay moved here six months ago, and didn't know a soul. Just straight hustled from the ground up. It has been her dream to move out here, and I am super proud of her of conquering her fears and just going for it. On this episode, Lyndsay shares her stories from her childhood and growing up in England, the stories of the impact her dad has made on her life and his tragic death last year, and at the end we delved into some good ol' american politics. I was super excited to come visit her and record this episode and I want to thank Lyndsay for being so vulnerable and sharing her stories with us. You definitely don't want to miss this one. Those three episodes will be coming very soon, so stay tuned. That's all I have time for today! I am actually flying back to Atlanta today, so I am going to be recording a lot more episodes when I get back. If you would like to support the podcast, please rate 5 stars and review on iTunes. Music by Calvin Kraakevik
Carolyn and Seth wish a fond farewell to Walt Mossberg and discuss his final column, which looks forward to a world filled with ambient technology. Walt's final column: www.recode.net/2017/5/25/1568909…berg-final-column *Apologies for some audio issues in this episode.
An extra long show as a surprise guest drops by. We talk about Mark's unfortunate week. Apple and their remarkable and unprecedented revealing of future product plans. Apple/Microsoft/Android “market share/user base”, the Samsung Dex Dock and, well, anything else that catches our attention deficit disordered minds! This and other episodes are available at iTunes | Opinion | Overcast | Google Play| RSS | FireSide.fm On this week's show: Mark's terrible week in tech… Apple patents anti-shock 'bumper' that could spell the end of cracked iPhones The spring-loaded bumpers would deploy automatically if your dropped your iPhone – Mirror Online Simon – Looks like Mark could have made use of that earlier in the week! Simon and the TWS Mini Twins BT Earbuds Read all about it over on the Essential Apple site Mac Pro isn't dead and Apple do care about Pros Apple meet with Gruber and a few others and spill the beans on the Mac Pro, plans for a new one, iMac Pros and more – Daring Fireball and Tech Crunch Apple Admits Microsoft Windows 10 Is Four Times More Popular Than Mac In a recent statement, Apple has admitted that there are around four times as many Windows 10 users as there are Mac users The statistics show that Apple's macOS operating system is not lagging behind as initially expected, even though it is miles behind Microsoft's Windows 10 in terms of user base. According to a briefing with TechCrunch, Apple's Phil Schiller admitted that the company's Mac platform had been adopted by nearly 100 million users. “Schiller shares some numbers he says are meaningful to Apple. The Mac user base is nearing 100 million users. As a business, it's also nearing a $25 billion run rate and is close to being a Fortune 100 company on its own. Apple now ships computers at a ratio of 80 percent notebooks to 20 percent desktop computers, a stat they haven't updated the public on in some time. MacBook Pro sales have been strong, with 20 percent growth in fiscal Q1 y/y.” At the same time, Microsoft announced earlier on that its Windows 10 user base was standing in at 400 million users, showing the dominance of the company's desktop OS. – Techworm Simon – In my eyes that's good - I remember when it was more like 19 to 1 because Apple held about a 3-5% share of the market! If they're saying 4 to one that means Apple is holding somewhere around 20% of the market - Perhaps that is why... Microsoft Has A New App To Help Mac Users Switch To Windows Microsoft recently released an app called “Mac to Surface Assistant” which in case the name did not already give it away, is an app designed to help Mac users port their data and files over onto Windows in an easier fashion. Users will still be required to have an external hard drive if they want to make the move, especially if they have bigger files, but the app is designed to help make the process more streamlined – Clotheshorse Android overtakes Windows to become the internet's most popular OS StatCounter reveals web traffic from Android has topped that from Windows PCs – Wired UK Simon – Strikes me - as they say too - this is more about the shift to mobile and MS's failure to get a proper stake in that game than it is about a “decline” in Windows Nemo's Hardware Store Vava Voom Model 21 Speaker – Amazon Vava Voom Model 20 Splashproof Speaker – Amazon Clips is released Clips is a new app for making fun videos to share with friends, family, and the world. With a few taps you can create and send a video message or tell a quick story with animated text, graphics and emoji, music, and more. Videos made easy • Clips lets you create videos in real time using simple controls — no timeline, tracks, or complicated editing tools • Shoot live video and photos or add them from your library • Easily mute audio, adjust the length of your clips, and reorder them • Clips looks and works great on iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Live Titles • Create animated titles and captions using just your voice • Captions are generated automatically as you speak and match the timing of your voiceover • Mix and match different styles throughout your video • Tap your title to adjust text and punctuation or add inline emoji Fun effects • Give your photos and video clips a comic book look with color and black & white filters • Drop in animated speech bubbles, arrows, and banners • Add emoji on top of any photo or video clip • Use full-screen posters with animated backgrounds and customizable text to help tell your story • Drag and pinch while recording to add smooth pan and zoom animations to your photos and videos • Add a music track from your library or use built-in soundtracks that automatically adjust to the length of your video Smart sharing • Clips suggests people to share with based on who is in your video and whom you share with most often • Tap a person in the share sheet to instantly send your video via Messages • Send directly to Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and other popular social media sites Clips is on the App Store info here From Rob Rait Walt Mossberg is retiring in June Thanks for reading, watching, listening – The Verge Rob Rait – I've always liked Walt Mossberg, he'll be missed. Ctrl Walt Delete is a great podcast. Samsung's DeX Dock Samsung's DeX dock makes most old home PCs look anachronistic The dock that turns your mobile into a desktop PC – now that's a good idea – Wired UK Simon – Is it a good idea? (commercially I mean) - I know techies like us find the concept appealing, but is it really a viable concept? Is it viable in the future but not yet? Would you want a $150 Dex, a screen, a keyboard and a mouse that basically sit idle 99% of the time because your phone is in your pocket. I'd say it is more “interesting” than “great” - I could see it perhaps working for some sort of “hotdesking” environment Feedback via email From: Richard Gregory Subject: Head's up on a weird iOS upgrade issue Hello all and thank you for sharing your ramblings, I had a major issue that is probably rare but worth sharing with anyone who will listen and uses an ad blocker on iOS. I'll keep it short - after having hangs on all my devices when upgrading to iOS 10.3 I figured out what was happening. The install was hanging at the iCloud account info screen regardless which option I selected (enter my password or skip). It turns out that I had set a proxy server up because that's how weblock app works on iOS both on my phone and iPad. For WHATEVER reason this was blocking traffic to Apple's iCloud servers only after the update to 10.3 as everything worked fine before the upgrade. I tested this theory and contacted futuremind (the dev) and received a nice reply saying they are working on fixing this issue. Here is their reply to my email describing what happens- Hi, we are hard at work to investigate and fix issues with iCloud and other Apple services while Weblock is enabled. We'll introduce a "allow apple" rule at the end of Filters section once we test it thoroughly. Kind regards, Kamil Palczewsk This cost me a LOT of time on the phone with Apple's support (which was helpful). It's a very oddball issue that will really tick off those it affects. To me this was even worse than having an EarPods set that doesn't work properly. I'm kidding, I feel your pain as my nearest Apple store is 100 miles away, a trip I have made more than once. Also - the new iPad has a teardown now that seems to confirm it's aimed at keeping costs low for both Apple and the owners, for example the screen replacement is cheaper not being laminated IIRC. Your podcast brings up some good points that aren't fully explored at times, I enjoy hearing these being re-capped and updated in the next podcast. Keep things positive, I hope all is well with everyone, Richard Listener Product Review MacJim sent us a review of the 595Strapco camera strap, and gets the award for being the first person to send in a Pages file! It will be up on the Essential Apple as soon as we get a chance to catch up Jim we promise! This week's “App-session” [obsession.. geddit?] Clips Just Broadcaster for Facebook and YouTube Social Media and Slack You can follow us on: EssentialApple.com / Twitter / Facebook / Google Plus / Slack – ask us for an invite any way you can get hold of us If you really like the show that much and would like to make a regular donation then please consider joining our Patreon And a HUGE thank you to the patrons who already do. This podcast is powered by Pinecast.
© 2020-2025 Ivy Podcast Discovery LLC
