Gadgetory

good morning and welcome back on Monday November 28 this time purpose of 144 of the 359 podcast with Roger Cheng know that no no but then factory when an Alfred goggles McGee Inge hey guys welcome back oh happy cyber monday having right now I'm being videotaped you're all be twice alright I'm okay with that I mean like we're being videotaped anyway so how was everybody's holiday great time off yeah I was with a bunch of babies and dogs nothing nothing will be better that sounds fifty percent great and greeting buzzer my baby and greetings everyone in the chat who's joined us back after our little hiatus and for those of you who didn't celebrate anything happy Monday as Roger would say yeah but happy cyber monday so hopefully you guys are checking out all the various deals and whatnot we're going to be talking about for the cyber monday wrote a story about how shopping on your mobile phone still sucks you you'd know it i I know Amazon's a little different but for the most part mobile shopping is still pretty terrible and also as you can see Alfred has some handy snapchat spectacle so he's going to tell us about what it's been like over the past week to test them out I waited six hours for these so I'm milking them for as much as they're worth so definitely as always send in your questions and comments Brian will get through them at the end of the show and without further ado let's get moving all right we'll be back to answer your questions after we cover the recording of the podcast in three two welcome to the 359 I'm Ben Fox Rubin I'm Alfred Aang happy cyber monday everyone in honor of this important made-up holiday I wrote about how buying stuff on your phone is still pretty terrible that's due to a bunch of problems including small screens difficult comparison shopping and annoying check out so Alfred do you buy on your phone a lot not a lot only because it's I like to compare products a lot and it's really hard to do that on mobile where I like to compare prices and I like to read like as many reviews as I can yeah you just can't do that as effectively on your phone now when it's like one small screen in your hand like I like to have like at Lee like 10 tabs open when I'm like shopping online if I'm buying like something like small like really simple where it's like oh I need new pens or something then like that's just completely different definitely but even then it's only I'm usually only on Amazon or like eBay for that kind of stuff yeah and those guys tend to be so what I ended up finding out in my research those guys are way ahead of the curve amazon and ebay and if anything they're doing an even better job nowadays where they're adding things like voice search more personalization more comparison shopping tools different things like that to actually make it a lot easier for you to shop on your phone whereas I don't know folks like macy's nordstrom traditional retailers they're just not nearly as good with mobile these I mean I I know in your story you talked about how you know mo there's such a market for you know shopping online through mobile but do you actually see that as you know being able to take over at some point or yeah yeah yeah absolutely so adobe has a statistic that they say that by early 2018 we're going to be shopping on our mobile phones as like that's the primary vehicle for which we're going to be buying stuff as opposed to pcs but I'm having a hard time seeing like how you know with all these like roadblocks in the way you know I like to you know compare and contrast all these other things do you think that they're going to be adding interfaces like what does Amazon and I guess ebay do that you know these other websites like macy's and nordstrom aren't doing that you know you know they could be doing better yeah so like I said stuff like personalization is super important when it comes to like a really really tiny screen so you will see more of that kind of stuff there's also check out is really important with a lot of retailers they don't have your personal information so there are different things that you could do for for that to improve check out and make it a lot more seamless anyway also what we wanted to talk about is next up Alfred got a chance to check out fancy snapchat spectacles which he's wearing right now I know you can't see them if you're just listening to this so tell us what it's been like to hang out with these things these have been great I've been I got them last Monday I've been using them pretty much every day it does get a little annoying though where I've kind of been forcing myself to take them and they're not like normal sunglasses where you can just kind of put in your pocket I have to carry this like big like that's okay sir yeah but it's also the case for just because I want it to like break in my backpack or I'm like pocket or anything like that so that's been annoying and it's just hard thinking of you know things that I can do with both hands while snapchatting but I did I wore it for like Thanksgiving a war like when I went to like like break dance practice yesterday I've walked cooler than me I wore while like skateboarding the other day so it's kind of like it's forcing me to like go out and like bring this like with it and do more stuff with it but it's been pretty cool i like being one of like document stuff in my life with this i wish you were like easier to import and i wish they were you know just like a better like I could take photos with it instead of like just videos but was it what was like the buying experience like right you were like in line for six I was not find things yeah that was not fun it was really cold there were no restrooms I I know snapchat doesn't plan on adding any restrooms to that a store across the street from the apple store mm-hm but I I'm glad I have them I know other people that have gone on like more like more extreme lengths than I have a friend of mine on Friday it opened at four pm on Friday and he decided I'm gonna be there starting at 6am someone else I knew Wow on sunday was waiting there at 10pm for the six a.m. opening on sunday so bad I went I ate on the first day and I got him by like two so not as Extreme as everyone else but here I am with them and I think it's a good buy cool I don't think they'll catch on as much as like snapchat once you do but well we'll see about that if you want to read more about these stories check us out on cnet I'm Ben Fox Rubin I'm Alfred Aang thanks for listening who else here thinks that Alfred looks a little silly right now let's get it right down there normal sunglasses sort of well did you know that they're not that it does a whole point I mean I only think I looks alike because I'm wearing sunglasses indoors they look like the kind of sunglasses a 50s pin-up girl would wear I punch on the beach yeah ok that's it 50s pin-up girls on the beach are totally cool it looks like them shades popping yeah thank you Michael know what you guys having it this is like the one place in tech where snapchat spectacles are not cool brian has deemed them uncool oh thank your life is over that's it down the drain yeah any any questions or comments a lot of people actually did do some shopping under tablets this year yeah she's kind of a little column a little combi yeah what's interesting is that tablet shopping is not taking off really smartphones have started to overtake tablets and so it's like if you look at it as a pie chart most of the pie chart is taken up by PCs and then tablets is a smaller sliver and smartphones is a growing bigger sliver and by 2018 it's expected that the major part of the pie chart is going to be your smartphone and it would be really interesting to see what that looks like a couple like a year down the road yeah part of it is like it's just easier to input like your address your like card number and all this like stuff like on your pc and then with all these websites you know if you haven't been a member before you have to like kind of like sign up for an account right but like why can't that live on your phone yeah like your phone should be able to just put it in for you and that is one of the efforts like Apple pay should be able to do that I think eventually by a problem is that there just isn't enough ubiquity for it right I would argue like is it fun to carry around like this big old laptop no not so much you're not like shopping at every second though yeah what a shopping experience ehlers want you to if you're not in the store your best bet is to try to get a really great high res picture and that can only take you so far in a mobile screen right i mean i do try lean a lot on the visual aspect of the online shopping and I'd the fair amount of online shopping over this weekend and just kind of scoping out the deals and I couldn't imagine doing that on a phone yeah it's like way too small I totally agree maybe adobe is wrong like I'd and I mean I I mean I use primarily group on Amazon trusted sites kind of thing I didn't have any negative experiences with any of the the crap apps that kind of leaked out there but as far as like the actual shopping experience like mmm then he doing it for me I when I do shop on my phone I almost always do it on Amazon exclusively just because they already have my personal information I check google shopping to do some comparison shopping but i've generally found like on the mobile web it's a total pain and it's not set up very well for the I small screen I think always like great for window shopping like I've like browsed a lot on my phone and then just oh that looked cool and then I like will open up my laptop to like buy it instead yeah it's like I don't we XD / laptop yeah like I'll check this out in detail later yeah yeah absolutely so that is that is generally what I wrote about and yeah there are a lot of problems with doing it on the phone but in general mmm excuse me traffic has been like skyrocketing because people are using their phones a lot more to that make sense a traffic is skyrocketing that yeah yeah again like I doing research yeah on on at a free moment like if you're on a commute or whatever yeah checking out i window shop like crazy on my phone yeah definitely i'll buy anything but imagine solomon is the classic example imagine soggy agrees largely is it i searched around on mobile and tablet and then when it's time to pi 2 by 2 pi I still got Thanksgiving in the mind it's nice when it's time to buy I get back on my pc our good buddy Michael Brown Happy Holidays to you tatty holiday thanks for uh thanks for joining us as always he says chrome does a great job with entering payment options automatically on mobile yeah TC yes I do that on mobile I haven't seen that option they do that on mobile and they also do that on iOS however I know on iOS it's buried it's an option that's generally buried and most regular consumers aren't actually going to like search out and find it by savier customers like our friend Michael know about it and they are able to find it and it makes shopping on the mobile web a little I've really enjoyed the autofill feature on like on desktop yeah but like I use it all the time and I got mobile like at least for me I didn't turn on auto fill even after I found out about it cuz security issue sure yeah like how hard is it for somebody to steal my laptop whereas like yeah I could lose my mobile phone yeah I was very it was very paranoid of that there was this one one time I tried buying something on mobile and I was like instead of entering your credit card numbers like scan your credit card with the camera yeah it was like okay I'm gonna take a photo of like my credit card number that doesn't sound like safe at all that's interesting what you probably like you know you probably just typed it in and you you may have like red I assume that you may read your credit card number to somebody over the phone when you were doing like I don't think I've ever ordered anything off the phone no no like you call somebody on the phone for like restaurants or like you know when you're getting takeout you've never liked neither did oh I've totally done that I like I've been you I use grubhub for that yes well I use grubhub more now because if I like really unsafe if I order by voice I kind of just give them cash nice alright Salford's much smarter than I am uh first of all carrot juice thinks you look badass with those glasses okay thanks characters Thank You carriage I apologize if I she was talking about me oh yeah he's saying asks what are the best sites to shop and we've already covered that chrome is a pretty solid browser for it but what are some of the better sources what are the better sites to use for shopping obviously amazon we're talking about in the US right so in the u.s. like yeah but the problem the problem with Amazon is is that people especially prime shoppers tend to use it reflexively and they don't shop around so it's really important especially for cyber monday or any other day of the year to not get complacent and just go on Amazon and then buy it more immediately I think the reason why I like people are more inclined to go on Amazon though then like any other website is essentially you know the a Milan it's like a jack of all trades kind of thing where yeah I can get those I can get food i can get electronics whereas i'm not going to sign up for a macy's account just like just I don't want what whole account just for clothes whereas on amazon i can get all this stuff on it i think you know that's wise but for bigger purchase especially with bigger purchases maybe not with clothes but especially for bigger purchases it improves you it's well worth your time to at least spend a little bit more time looking outside of amazon ebay is certainly useful for at least getting an idea of what else is out there and if you are interested in finding a used item or a like new item you're going to be able to find it on ebay more often than not then maybe some other sites i also check out jet calm all the time whenever i'm looking for consumables they're really good with that and they're just like a really helpful backup option to amazon and walmart com has also been increasing its selection considerably as it sure we touched on that a couple of months ago yeah about who did they acquire so jet and Walmart are now the same company right so thank you for mentioning that but yeah like I ate so those are those are the three that I generally go to and Google Shopping is also really helpful just say just to get a baseline of like what price you're looking white what price you're looking at and to see if Amazon is I I noticed in your article you somebody that you interviewed was shopping on like jackthreads you i I've like tried using jackthreads before that website like it's really hard shopping on that interesting yeah they even may loved the mobile shopping experience like their app he had the app though that's different that might have been different and like I think they were really into like browsing yeah yeah that's the thing pictures and like making like you no swiping yeah and whatever it's like one of the websites I used like window shop on but like I never bought anything yeah so he said the lake he enjoys window shopping yeah the drag jockey yeah that's happened like actually making it an enjoyable experience when you're on the am is like really vital to like get people it'll keep coming back yeah you happen like maybe you visit five times you don't buy anything but then that's sixth time they'll get you they'll get that sweet money from yeah that's the whole idea so in the last few minutes of the show let's talk privacy insecurities about regarding shopping online like what's the difference between you said yourself you don't trust the autofill necessarily or hadn't trust trustee for mobile yeah right in general mobile is a higher liability but what about when they have you like scan a picture of your credit card to use that for transaction I don't remember ever actually using that personally if it's a reputable retailer that you've heard of I would say that you should probably have a higher comfort level with that but if you're uncomfortable doing any of that stuff then you probably shouldn't do it that's like your spidey sense going off and saying like this is this is either you know not safe not secure or too good to be true I mean last Christmas season my wife found an amazing deal on ugg boots that were total knockoffs off of this completely unknown website and not only did we get fake ugg boots that were sent to us like weeks later but they also I'm pretty sure they stole our credit cards so it's also very much a buyer beware situation where you're much her off going to better known websites instead of trying to find like I'm gonna save twenty bucks on this thing from some unknown website that I've never heard of yeah it's not like really when when she entered the her credit card number it was like a she typed it in writing yeah yeah yeah she did it on desktop yeah like it'sit's if the deal seems too good to be true it probably is and you're much better off going to like reputable retailers that you've heard of so that's that's the that's the most obvious rules of the road that I know of so the moral of this past couple of months is when you're online you can't trust the news you can't trust the stores you can't trust social so let's just shut down the internet yeah yeah don't trust us either we're on the Internet so yeah let's just throw us in for automatically wrong never wrong alright that will continue to be fun always fun all right should we wrap this thing let's wrap it all right thanks thanks for the questions everybody the 359 is available on iTunes tune and stitcher SoundCloud feedburner google play music and of course on cnet com thanks everybody for watching and listening and we'll see you all tomorrow Oh