Gadgetory

welcome to the 359 I'm Roger Chang I'm Ben Fox ribbon hearing aids are getting much much smarter our latest tech enables story looks at how hearing aids are starting to connect to smart homes incorporate fitness trackers and AI and eventually even read your glucose levels the point here is to make these hearing aids more appealing more affordable because there's actually a ton of people who deal with hearing loss don't even know it from it's the numbers pretty stagnant 48 million Americans or a fifth of the country deal with some degree of hearing loss right where they don't like hearing aids and so don't use it there's absolutely negative stigma with hearing aids they're bulky you know they're they don't last long battery wise smartwatches I guess but know that there is definitely negative stigma here and we talked to companies like Otakon and Starkey who have all kinds of crazy plans for for their hearing aids okay let me ask you something why would you need to connect a hearing aid to smart home devices so this is it's a great question there's the the sort of an opening anecdote for my story this this woman who uses this Otakon open hearing aid which is an internet-connected one basically she says she as soon as she puts it on and turns it on she has the coffee maker making brewing coffee she has the lights in her bathroom turn on she basically has like a morning routine that's triggered by her turning on her hearing aid well and because she had deals with hearing loss when someone rang the doorbell that doorbell chimes streams right to her ear all right that actually makes a lot of sense that's pretty cool one of the examples her daughter also has the same condition she places her iPhone right next to a professor near the lectern so that she can understand hear the lecture has its dream stranger here Wow no kidding is a lot of this stuff already like available on the market what's the pricing the Otakon hearing aid is available to market there isn't pricing because and they need to kind of talk about it because it's kind of different depending on your situation your insurance so they were kind of hesitant to talk about it some of the stuff from Starkey is really interesting that they're thinking about one coming out this year will incorporate a motion sensor which allows you to one mate use it as a fitness tracker but also it'll be able to detect if if you've fallen and actually contact 9-1-1 or at least alert a loved one that something might be wrong later features will incorporate AI well corporate like I said that a glucose sensor non-invasive glucose sensor they really try to make these things that like a Swiss Army knife of utility mmm interesting all right next up face book came out yesterday with some new tools and ways to restrict third-party apps from using your data oh and they also snuck in a revelation at the end that that Cambridge aleca data breach didn't just affect 50 million people in fact 87 million do you feel like this happens all the time wasn't that that happened with the was at the Equifax for each channel so there was like three million people were affected no wait is 300 billion that's pretty much it they didn't really say why they it was after this long blog post it's also a sentence at the end oh by the way yeah 87 million people think surprised CEO Mark Zuckerberg on a call with journalists and he said all the right things he took responsibility for this but plenty of plenty questions left for this this whole saga from rich nieves story from yesterday Zuckerberg made clear he doesn't plan to step down as CEO big surprise there and so far he hasn't fired anyone in connection to the scandal wait to see if that actually happens quote from Zuckerberg which I'd like to throw out there it's not enough to give people a voice we have to make sure that people are not using that voice to spread disinformation all right so Amazon key is out or Amazon is out with some new features for key Ben break down forest Amazon key is essentially this in home delivery service from Amazon today they expanded part of Amazon key nationwide not the delivery service but certain elements like keyless entry remote lock and unlock and guest access and that could you know potentially Chum the water to get them to do in a home delivery at some point later down the line nationwide all right for more of those stories check us out seen it I'm Roger Cheng I'm Ben Fox Ruben thanks for listening all right it's time for me to go ahead and jump back into the chat and I'll see you all there with all your riveting comments and questions I think this hearing aid thing is very fascinating I have a lot of relatives who have suffered from hearing loss and some of these activations and inclusions that come with it I think are pretty darn cool but you don't think about them like the revelation that you had with oh it starts your daily routine or the the student can hear the lecture that those are just incredible innovations that you wouldn't think of and you know necessity is the mother of invention is that the tert what's the phrase yes yeah but I at the same time and I don't want to make too light of this all I could picture in my head with that routine one which is the one that interested me because like I'd love to have that but I could just picture the scene from Honey I Shrunk the Kids when Rick Moranis gets up and all of the other just start making him breakfast it's like I want my life wait doesn't doc do that also and back to the future at the very beginning right with the yeah it does it's like a whole like it's like all the mad scientist yes or the science geeks in the 80s that's what they did actually made breakfast writers toast and eggs yeah they all made like uh what it what are they called forbidden Goldberg machines yes yeah no Rube Goldberg Rube Goldberg machines like let's let's try to give the Rubin Goldberg machines guy who shows up late for the podcast shots fired continued on guys please cuz I'm still I'm still diggin for some comments all right one other thing that I wanted to mention about Amazon ki we didn't get to is that and we mentioned this a little bit pre-show is that it's still unclear whether anybody's really using this from the CNET reviews on the cloud cam which is their own security camera it seems that that is a really capable security camera and I would assume that that's selling pretty well I have no reason to believe that it isn't but Amazon ki and Gen like the whole service yeah the whole service which is the in home delivery stuff eventually supposed to include home services like you would allow a dog walker to come in walk your dog bring the drive back lock the door that still appears to me to be maybe a little bit ahead of its time maybe a little Google glass it is definitely there's a psychological wall that they have to break through to get people to really be comfortable with that right and Amazon is like a very trusted company that's what I generally like a lot of the polls say about it and folks still really pay well it's that weird dynamic where like you probably trust Amazon more than you trust like the local dog walker I guess that's that's kind of the issue the dog walker that they wouldn't burn or a plumbing service right right if you don't know the plumber exactly were you know the house cleaner that kind of thing yeah so but it's it's I haven't met people that use Amazon key I'd certainly I don't know maybe I'll try it at some point right I know they're doing a sale right now we'll say I wanted to jump back at the conversation with hearing aids because beyond the hearing aid makers the sort the other aspect of the story I didn't really get into during the taping was the fact that big-name companies like Bose Harman Kardon which is owned by Samsung are also working on these things there was a law passed last year that basically made it a lot easier for folks that get hearing aids there was sort of a sort of step-down non-prescription version of hearing aids for basically care of this trend that's called augmented hearing as interesting and fascinating seeing what these companies are doing bose is talking about by using some of their noise cancellation technology to filter out background noise and like yeah direct the mics towards the person in front of you from what I understand from some some folks that I know in my life from what I understand that is a very critical element to actually getting people to use a hearing aid because I don't need a hearing aid I haven't used to hearing aid but from what I understand from folks that have tried it it'll just raise the volume on everything and it may be right which is not gold yeah not helpful at all right that's the thing like if you if you hear all the background noise everything like it's still just noise so I'll be able to kind of isolate and find the right source or you know actually what you want to hear is really critical and sort of taking it to that next step like the idea that these headphones might for hearing aids might eventually be able to block out people that you don't want hear oh my god how many times are we going to go back to black beer just block their faces too while you're at it unfriend no I mean look I the folks I talked to said like it's the technology is possible I don't think you'd actually want to do this but it's it's definitely possible down the line I don't like it at all Alex Alex Mitchell confers with some of your comments about the filtration he says his dad uses hearing aids that then you can change the different settings and pair it to your phone listen to music and override noisy restaurants that kind of stuff Danny Green says we need one that my mother cannot lose and syringe or expands on size and how long until we see these turn into implants there so there are other parents there's cochlear implants that that basically can replace think it's the ear drum or something that basically can stream in just like a regular hearing aid so the implants are definitely out there already right and those are generally for people that are very hard of hearing or were born without the ability to hear at all um so the cochlear implants are they're not considered hearing aids they're yeah good their surgical operation that you need - yes absolutely they they like many hearing aids in the market they're there they also follow this made for iPhone program that basically they're they're kind of synced up so like the example I gave of the daughter putting her iPhone near the lectern so she could hear the the professor voice streaming in tahrir that works with cochlear implants as well so there there are a number of hearing aids and devices that have that made for iPhone I believe there's a there's also a version for Android as well but there was a bass ya know if the mobile is actually gone they've been pretty good about making accessibility part of the smartphone experience sure so how long until we see Alexa or Siri paired into these devices fantastic question we actually addressed that Starkie particular had talked about incorporating digital systems wouldn't say specifically which but definitely talked about the idea of having visual assistant where you would just say Alexa I think you'd probably tap your hearing aid that's pretty century I mean if I think if you the problem with saying it is that would require a Harriet to always be on listening for that wake word I guess and that might drain the battery yeah I've talked to those folks at Qualcomm is that they've trying to address this with like smaller more power efficient processors but for a hearing aid Syrians are the ones I've seen are tiny so for that to be able to handle a digital assistant and be able to listen for one I think it's gonna take a little bit longer I think what they would need is that Star Trek technology where you just have the paper badge yeah the badge I didn't like the badge because it was like basically speakerphone like you he's spoken and like everyone heard what the other person was saying I guess that's true so expand on that expand on that Josh boy does says do smart hearing aids have longer or shorter battery life than the traditional hearing aid and how are we looking for the future prospects for longevity that that's fantastic question to do so the Otakon product I saw I mean they they produce several days of battery life and this is an internet-connected Bluetooth connected device you know they told me that they had to do a lot of work to kind of make it work last as long as it does and it's also it's really just about sound processing right it doesn't have anything else which is why it's able to kind of run as long as it can hmm I think battery life has definitely give me a challenge though for hearing especially as you add more capabilities into these things you have to be mindful of how long they last and how big they are they still are all pretty tiny so so uh space the back of the battery right it would be interesting to see where they could go with that CPR tech Dillon says do you so to go from music or a phone call to a TV you have to go through different pairing sequences or is it all fairly seamless I haven't tried it myself but so I can't really say for sure how seamless the processes of like streaming in one thing versus another I would imagine it's a lot of that it's probably run by the app like Oh buddy Kahn has an app for it it's hearing aid so imagine you've managed your preferences just like I imagined my preferences for the Bose headphones that I have I have an app for that streams in which which devices are like the priority devices sure let's move on to Amazon real quick because everybody's sick of talking about Facebook I Huey let YAG seems like Amazon is trying to lock people into an ecosystem is that likely we will see other companies I eat alphabet try something similar I think we're ready past that point who doesn't have an eco Google already totally locks into an ecosystem Apple lock system Amazon has it it's like a it's an ecosystem but society is skewed one because it's not really devices base is more you know it's more devices baby it's more purchase based right it's more like I guess you get out make the argument that it's also more it's become more media based as well with you know prime video but really the core is shopping and these devices are more answering whereas like Apple Google you're like you're tied to their devices and services mm-hmm yeah and with Google it's like search based it's always like you get you back to the Google search because that's where they make all their money but yeah it's a really competitive space and that's why Amazon keeps rolling out new stuff because it wants to make sure that it's one step ahead of the competition and smart home is definitely moving its tie I don't know how many echo speakers or Google home speakers some of the listeners have but I have way too many in my house I mean how long until they're literally locked in an ecosystem because the smart locks are now sensitive and you betrayed Amazon's trust and you are not allowed to leave your home and pray because by a guy on your prime member says that's like that's next week yeah yeah no that's I mean that would be that would be kind of a safe like you've missed your payments like the doors for but sorry yeah like all of a sudden like they can't do that yeah so let me out let me out yeah but like I don't know a lot of people that use smart door locks but the security camera stuff going back to what I said before Smart Security came as internet-connected security cameras whether their baby cams or just regular security cameras those have existed for years there are a lot of companies that provide them you know I like buying one from Amazon to me it doesn't seem that much of a stretch than anybody else by its some of that stuff like the door locks might be a little bit harder for people to jump on to it's like we watched 2001 a Space Odyssey and everyone went yeah that let's do that that was not the point guys it was supposed to be a warning I mean that being said and I think I've mentioned this on the podcast before to me it really is it is an innovation for sure and the potential for it to significantly change the way people live yeah how they experience services not having to wait around for the cable guy all day all that potential is there whether people want the trade-off is another question entirely and but but I think people should recognize why Amazon wants to do this because there is a lot of potential there sure it's not it's not just like a punching bag of like oh this is this is ridiculous they just want to you know control your front door they just want to control more things yeah we are almost out of time we have to cut it short a little bit today but do you guys have any closing thoughts about where these I just I always love hearing about these tech enabled stories yeah it's the most uplifting thing and a sea of I know exploded till I moved those stories good points our program yes definitely served a nice bit of nice bright point in tech I missed all the terribleness of the rest of the week so yeah yeah the series continues we'll have another story coming out tomorrow as well as next week any any leads on what might be coming down the line you can leak out it was curious we won't be on the podcast tomorrow but Maggie rune has great piece on sort of the the various apps are being created there they're sort of like to fill the hole for accessibility information venues like basically being able to find out whether or not this restaurant how accessible this restaurant is you see ratings for almost like a Yelp for accessibility say they should just integrate that right into Yelp or Google Maps there there and there are almost like these accessibility parties these gatherings where people go from place to place checking out various venues and sort of as a group kind of crowdsourcing and sharing the information to the wider public of how accessible this particular restaurant is or this bar so we've got that and we've got a couple we've got another one on diabetes tech early next week we've got at least one more store coming out I don't want to tease that because it's not quite finished yet but stay tuned for attitude yeah these are these are all fasting stories I definitely encourage you guys to check out the tech enabled collection on our site as well as the various stories fantastic and before we go I want to wish everybody a happy annual CSS naked day celebrated every year since 2006 this is a day that challenges websites to remove links to CSS files and show the nitty-gritty realities of HTML that was not what I thought it was yeah okay yeah all right I was worried about the worst right all right all right yeah if you liked anything you saw or heard here check us out on SEANET our podcasts also available on iTunes tune in stitcher Feedburner google play music and the amazon echo see you all next week have a great weekend everybody about a five you