Gadgetory

and good morning on Thursday May 11th episode 226 of the 359 podcast on BVG and in the house with me today I've got Joanie soles Minh and Alfred hing Goodway what's up how's it going great thanks for joining us today all right what are we talking about on the show today well if you've paid attention to any financial news yesterday very exciting snapchat finally released their first-ever quarterly earnings and things are not looking good for them I don't know they lost 2.2 billion dollars now a lot of that is like stock payout options but 750 million dollars out of that went straight to their CEO so we'll be talking about what's going on at snapchat and you know and then Joan was at the Tribeca Film Festival and she checked out this really cool VR like program though yeah where they touch you with so that's that's awesome not inappropriately and there's a proposed DHS ban basically their electronics ban that they had for eight middle eastern countries but they're now proposing it for some parts of flights coming from Europe so if you have a laptop and you're planning on taking a flight somewhere to or from Europe to the US maybe think twice about that all right everybody hang out we're going to cover these in detail over the next three minutes and 59 seconds and then we'll come back and hang out with y'all on the chat so feel free to submit questions comments let's uh do this week closeout right and here we go in three two welcome to the 359 I'm Alfred Inge I'm Joanie sauceman so snapchat released its first ever quarterly earnings report yesterday and it turns out the emperor has no clothes before went public snapchat was always really secretive about its finances and projects so it went public with a crazy amount of hype and Wednesday was the first day that we really got to see how the company runs so they lost 2.2 billion dollars to billion the majority of which was in stock payout and the thing that stood out to me the most was how poorly the spectacle so do you remember the spectacles so with with like they sold about 12 point five million dollars totals worth of these these like camera sunglasses and if you look at it $130 a pop that means that basically like less than point zero five percent of snapchat users actually own spectacles that's not so great for a company that bills itself as a camera yeah the when they released it they're like oh we're a camera company now except less than 1% of our users are actually like actually own our cameras I mean it seems like it was part of their like marketing strategy to make it rare at first but now it's just like okay well now no one has it yeah and then CEO Evan Spiegel also said he wasn't afraid of Facebook despite Instagram copying snapchat and in my mind doing it better said was focused on making more creative products like adding more filters people be able to draw anymore more of those options do you really think that these like puppy filters are going to be able to save the company well I think that the network effect has a big influence on it's easy to compare Instagram and how quickly stories increase to snapchat and how many people are using their stories but Instagram is coming off of the benefit of having just like lots and lots millions and millions millions more users to begin with so if a small segment of them start using that feature which they already know is pretty cool because snapchat people like it then a lot of people are gonna use it but do you think that people are defecting from snapchat to use Instagram I don't think so I mean I do this oh you do yeah maybe um so Joan you were at the Tribeca Film Festival and you saw a lot of virtual reality that had a real nice touch to it get it because you saw they Tribeca immersive program where they use more than just the headset for the experience they they had somebody like come and hug you or they had like a landscape while it was happening in like VR this sounds a lot like those like forty movie theaters were like the seat shake and like something crazy happens right well what did you think of it it's cool it's definitely something that makes more sense for a festival setting or a museum setting or a theater setting that I would Furby for home it's not something you can you know you can't send an actor or actress into your home to be there with a motion capture so you can give you a hug at the right moment but it's a great way to kind of drum up some interest in what VR can do if you're experimental with it and it works well on a festival so did it feel were you like expecting the touch to come like happen when you tried it out Scott Scott's died and our colleagues last night he was the one that did that one we kind of divvied out who would do which things because there were so many experiences to do and in that one the idea is that this person in a motion capture suit you know you see a virtual version of them so you know when she like reaches out to hold your hand and you reach out to hold her hand you actually touch your hand same as they have built their rooms so that there's a door where in the virtual room there's also doors when you reach out for the knob it's actually there I mean that's kind of cool I I don't see that like scaling like you're like you were saying like I see there's more than like museums and things like that yeah it's a cool way to drum up interest in VR and to see what you can do if you think about it a little outside the box and finally there's reports at the Department of Homeland Security's looking to extend its onboard electronics ban from eight Middle Eastern countries to several parts of Europe so the original plan was to block devices larger than your phone from being carried on flight so like laptops tablets you know DSLR cameras which stemmed originally from a an alleged bombing plot that with an iPad so you know air travel is like probably going to be really annoying this year between all the different kinds of things you can and cannot bring and the places you can and cannot go or return from yeah yep also just a quick shout out to our team covering the Microsoft build Developers Conference it's a day two of their keynote so be sure to check us out and seeing that for more on that as always thanks for listening I'm Alfred Inge I'm Jonny Salzman and let's jump right into the chat Danny Green are loyal tried and true Danny Green he says really who wants to wear camera glasses all the time or even half the time and Alfred I'm gonna defect to you thought that one I feel really stupid for buying a pair I was one of the few people that bought a pair and I'm part of the point zero five percent now it was a fun novelty for half a second can't believe I spent $130 on that was it your money or company with my money oh you fool well the I I look at it on it just collects dust on my dust on my desk that's why I said tusks um I'm like I really should have just sold this on eBay cuz the day that I bought it it was selling for like a thousand dollars on eBay like you know this will probably go up in value so just Oh God um I mean I thought that would be really cool like when I got it I was like riding my bike I was like skateboarding I was like cooking like doing it on like spectacles and then your phone died yes that was the problem that like I I did a podcast with respect to those you remember that one yeah um but the problem is that it kills your battery life um it doesn't matter what phone you're using because it's transferring video over Bluetooth from like the glasses into your phone and snapchat already like takes up like a crazy amount of your phone's battery life so like I could send like four or five videos and I look at my phone oh c'mon like 25% after like 30 minutes you just think about it and maybe like 20 years or so you'll be able to uh donate those to an electronics museum probably not I'll be telling the great failure section Oh God um yeah but like when it first came out everyone's saying like oh this is gonna succeed we're like Google Glasses failed or Google glass sorry we're you know they managed to make like the camera glasses look cool which they did um but like I feel like they were it was like a lot of technical faults at it here we're which to be fair like that's what snapchat is like focusing on right now they spent about eighty million dollars on research and design now granted a lot of that went to researching and designing how to make a better Android app but I mean I see a lot of potential for them to make this better and like refine it um again though I feel really stupid for happy alright so expanding on this Matthew doctor asks or states no one could really get spectacles and then he asks has that changed or snapchat pulling a Nintendo on us no no well yeah it has changed because like I think around like January or like February they were they basically yeah they made it available on their website where anybody can buy it but the thing is is that they're like they did not do a really good job of letting people know that so it's available on their website now but because of their original marketing campaign where which everyone knew about we're basically all we like parachuted this vending machine and like the bottom of the Grand Canyon right um go find it like kind of thing yeah like now's like it's available guys please please buy this like kind of thing so it's it's it completely backfired on them I think as imagine sake points out by the time they were available no one cared anymore that was really that was the other thing too like the reason why I'd like people really wanted was because it wasn't like that available um the prices on eBay like really started going down once they open up their New York City like store where um they were it was like open like every day for like three weeks like pretty much from like the middle of December until like New Year's Day I was very annoyed by hat to wear um so I was there the first day and I waited like six hours in line for that for us for a story but then I just bought one for myself anyway um and then I went back like I was around the area like three weeks later or so um because like something related to Trump Towers and the tech summit that was there but it's like the snapchat stores like two blocks away so I walk past and there's like no lines completely empty yeah but it was open so anyone could just walk in and buy one and I just thought like you fool I waited six hours in the cold for this guy haha and there are better there are better glasses cameras situations they find them all over Amazon and eBay but they're not connected to snapchat so imagine soggy wants to know as far as the faults go if the battery life did improve like if it stopped murdering your phone battery life would you come back um I would use it more often um but I still think there's like a cultural line lapsed its novelty what do you mean is it is it fun anymore whistling it's fun like I like using it um my friend had like a really cool thing where like he just put it on like the dashboard of his car and then like he just pressed it like it was like a like a short term like dashcam kind of thing like I didn't use it officially as one but like it was way that with the GoPro - it was a way of like snapping without like Drive like you know getting your attention off like driving or anything like that um yeah you can do a GoPro but the thing is like it doesn't go directly to snapchat that might be the issue - like no one's using like snapchat as often as they used to so let's speculate on spectacles do we think that there are possibly other hardware type situations that snapchat could get like foray into that would possibly work than these Bluetooth glasses did definitely GoPro like if they were smart they would just allow like third party cameras to be able to thin yeah it's a Bluetooth into snapchat but they're they're like so insular with it where it's like no only our glasses can do this so that snapchat is a lifestyle it's a fashion statement I'm pretty sure that's what their ad was when they came out with it uh Joan I'd like to hear you expand on this incredibly uncomfortable sounding virtual reality situation just out of my own morbid curiosity because I don't like being hugged so that's one experience so that one was called draw me close um Scott Stein did that one but I know enough about it I can kind of give you a rough idea the premise of it is um it was done by a theatre company a Canadian theatre company and the premise is the playwright / director it kind of uh chronicles not chronicles but it's like vignettes like like not literal feeling but like motional vignettes given that his mom had a cancer diagnosis and so it's kind of like diving into his memories of his mother so you're in this room and the virtual thing that you see in the headset and mirrors the physical objects in the room so if you bend down and you touch the carpet you can feel carpet underneath you there's a bed in the corner if you walk over the bed you can sit down in it the mom can tuck you into the bed and at the end of it um she reaches out she gives you a hug um so I think that your heebie-jeebies are not going to be I don't know the virtual element of it's going to give you more heebie-jeebies or less if you already don't like getting hug my jimmies are less rustled after hearing this but I don't know I like to be stabbed in virtual reality well it kind of reminds your life I for for Christmas this year I got my mother this gift it was I can remember from the Kickstarter GoFundMe project but it was this lamp and it's not virtual reality but so I kind of see a parallels in the sentiment and it's literally a lamp that's just connected to your Wi-Fi and it says kind of little decorative table glowy lamp thing and she touches it her like there's two of them you get there and then you can actually extend that into a network of I don't know how many a think it's like up to 26 or something crazy like that yeah and so this lamp sitting at her desk at her home and I got one sitting in my desk my home and you know she says I'm thinking of she touches a lamp and mine lights up and then I come over and I touch it in a changes color and it'll reflect back and tell her like I'm thinking of you too kind of thing oh they have that for sex toys I don't want to ruin the sentimental moment here but right moving on we're just about out of time but to talk about this problematic travel situation our boy Danny Green says if I can't take my DSLR then I'm not going pictures is my thing when I travel always looking for interesting things to take pictures of you can take all of these technologies with you it's not saying that you can't bring it on your flight and you can't bring it on board you can like still like pack it in like you carry it Jack sure yeah but most people won't trust there that's the freshest electronics in the cargo bay I know for a fact I mean even when we did our RC net annual trip to CES I did not want to put my laptop in my toe my tablet cracked on a flight to Nashville that I had like a few weeks ago but it was like a small like hairline crack yeah whatever but but is that right that's something to think about they're gonna force you to start checking portable devices things are meant to be kept on your person like a like a tablet like the whole idea is like I'm bringing this on the flight and I'm gonna watch movies the whole time oh wait yeah that's yeah um my loophole I feel is that they should just start making phones like way bigger because their their policy right now is it can't be bigger than a phone so if they just make a phone like like this big then that's so getting a call hold on it's like flip phone that's so bizarre though I mean how many people try to work on the plane I mean I don't know I don't fly that much but I'd imagine a lot right there's tons of people who have to commute for the job jet sitting all over the place and they have to get something done while they're in the air they can't be stagnant hmm well my sometimes they'd probably be traveling like within the u.s. for that though that can still be a significant light yeah yeah I don't know that sounds really sour to me how much is this developed how much do we know what's coming into members were that they were gonna announce it today but the DHS has like commented on the record that they would be like announcing something within like the next few weeks and they're still planning it um marnik is all up in the area up in the air it's three puns on this show yes perfect place to wrap it up for the week thanks everybody all right take us home Alfred if you do I liked what you heard check us out on iTunes tune in stitcher SoundCloud Feedburner Google Play Music and of course cnet.com also be sure to get something for your parents or remember Mother's Day this weekend yes good shout out not a sex toy no don't don't do that got a lamp not a sex toy have a good weekend everybody