Gadgetory

good morning on Thursday March second it's time for episode 188 of the 359 podcast with Alfred Aang and then Fox Rubin good morning guys Alfred what the hell are you doing there's no eight-track port on the macbook air oh my god you are insufferable this is horrible people I'm just glad it's Thursday it's our last episode of the week so maybe there's a dongle alright you win you win it's now endearing really you fought your way through that joke and ended up on top so so that are we just gonna make fun of Apple dongles again today or what it's whatever I mean like people were interested I'm as much as I'd love to make fun of Apple dongles today we got a big day for snapchat today yeah this is apparently recording the stock exchange in the other room so yeah so we do that later Wall Street is going haywire because there's just really like very few new tech IPOs that come out and this is a really significant one everybody yeah everybody knows what snapchat is or at least 25 year olds know it's yeah that's all those 25 year olds on the new york stock exchange right now there's some more there's okay i guess so yeah we'll start off with snapchat send us in all your questions about that what you think about it whether you think it's a camera company because that's how they're trying to sell themselves to Wall Street which is interesting and will also end with Roger story about 5g wireless tech there's a ton of 5g stuff that's going on at mwc right now a lot of different demos so we'll run through as many as we can in the four minutes and that's it yeah without further ado let's let's kick this thing off and send in your questions and comments we'll get to them at the end of the show all right here we go for the recording in three two welcome to the 359 I'm Ben Fox Rubin I'm Alfred hang snapchats parent company went public today kicking off a splashy IPO that raised over three billion dollars for the company so it opened it twenty four dollars a share which was higher than its offering price of seventeen dollars and the valuation is above 24 billion dollars which is well over Twitter I'm throwing out a lot of numbers here but if anything this really shows that people are really hungry for snapchat snapchat shares try to say that five times fast and you know maybe this is this means something good for the company maybe they're moving places I mean it makes a lot of sense they've been reach the Millennial market in ways that Facebook and Twitter have been failing at a lot of it is because snapchat is temporary and you know people have been moving away from the social media of Facebook and Instagram where you know it's your edited life whereas on snapchat it's very unfiltered mmm where you know people can just get to it and just post their photos so you know teens kids they've been flocking to snapchat because things don't last forever there they can hide from their parents there and essentially you know that's where the market follows where people want ads on there now and they're willing to pay a very high premium to get direct access to you know that market what we have seen though is is that the daily active user base is the growth of it is already starting to slow it's about a hundred and fifty eight million right now so it seems are these guys in the next Facebook I mean are they going to get to a billion users I don't think you should be comparing them to facebook though because they've got a different very different you know idea of what they are as a company they're not saying that there are social network and their IPO they said that they were a camera company which I'm not lying I'm very skeptical of but it could be what they're trying to move into you know with the spectacles which report yesterday that they were developing kind of a drone to take photos we've seen all these selfie drones that are out there also that could be their next move that might be the reason why they even have an IPO to kind of raise more money for more hires and acquisitions yeah they're definitely trying to present themselves a little bit differently because facebook is such a big kahuna yeah the big danger is is that they're already getting you know the potential of is the are these guys the next Twitter and with Twitter they've just they they have proven themselves to be a critical part of the social media landscape but they're just not that valuable I think that's what's gonna happen with snapchat they're not gonna be you know Facebook because you know you're everyone's mom and their grandmothers and the great grandmother's are on facebook it's essentially snapchats not that in the same way Twitter's panel like a niche like kind of social network I think snapchat will be too i think the difference is though snapchat knows how to make money what's a very good hard for Twitter to sell because there's not like one demographic on Twitter yeah yeah next the hype about 5g wireless tech is in full display at Mobile World Congress with Qualcomm Intel Samsung and others showing off some of the early results of their rd in 25 gtech Roger Cheng wrote a story about this today about how the super fast speed and low latency can actually provide some really interesting things one of them was that he performed like a demo surgery using a special glove and VR headset to do surgery remotely I thought that was kind of cool but I wouldn't want to get like surgery done on me from a robotic arm by a doctor that's like somewhere in Bermuda no but would you want you know to control or drone from far away using 5g or you know drive it one of those automated cars you jump driving car surgeries one thing but you know I think the idea behind 5 G's like it's not just hey your phone is gonna go really fast now you're gonna be able to stream this video even faster or download this Netflix show even faster i think the prospect is now you know there's way more things that you can do now that involve you know groans and the internet of things that yeah and and one of them to is like more VR is that you could potentially do like real-time live streaming chats in VR which also opens up the possibility for that anyway if you want to read more about these stories check us out on cnet on Ben Fox Rubin I'm Alfred Aang thanks for listening and going right back into our good buddy Michael Brown in the chat well let's act like them welcome back Mike he's asking while he's what he's wondering um as you said they're presenting themselves as a camera company and you've mentioned like the rumors of the drone if they're he's wondering if they're really going to develop a legit camera type situation like a camera camera camera camera um that one that oh I really doubt they're gonna make a phone it really should not make a phone I mean like it would look silly it would look whimsical but I really don't think that that's a good idea I mean I don't think that that they would be pursuing a camera like a camera on its own only because everyone has a camera in their pocket already it's kind of moving it trying to take it to the next step that's kind of why the spectacles where it sits on your face you they function as glasses instead of you know having to take out your phone okay so I don't think they want another product that you have to take out and then you know snap again I think that's why the drone idea kind of makes sense for them yeah we've seen a lot of selfie drones at sea as and it's a good point it's an it's an advancement on the camera it's not just a straight up camera motorway everybody is kind of trying to speculate that they must have something new coming in a physical sense to justify all this yes like the product is not going to just remain as this software they're going a further develop yeah it's such a cliche thing to say but now we just got to figure out what I mean if anything I think they would be pushing to develop their AR yeah yeah we didn't even mention that um yeah so brother improvement on the software yeah well specifically the AR software the face tracking and you know all those like filters that you're getting I know they also played around with like forward-facing filters I think they're gonna improve on that because that's been a real big seller for them yeah and they have a potential of becoming one of the leaders John salzman wrote about that today that they have the potential becoming a leader in AR because they've already been playing in that space with the app with the spectacles and going back to the previous point as far as like would they create a camera I mean like cameras already exist phones already exist so what are some of the things that they could add to them market that are actually different that's that's where spectacles come in that's where the drone comes in and that's where whatever X you know the next the next other iterations of what it is that they do could come in yeah where they actually provide something that's differentiated that doesn't already that isn't already out there that they're not just you know regurgitating a design with like a cool look to it so let's uh let's let's walk in to some dangerous territory here let's get stock advice sure oh I used to work at the wall street years oh I know if you should buy stock now and I think Michael Brown has given them some pretty good advice saying wait until it dips back down to 17 it's impossible to know where the stock is going to move I mean like this is just like but it Michael is not wrong in that usually there is a very big pop in the beginning when everybody tries to dive into it and it there is a tendency for things to die down we saw that with Facebook where Facebook actually kept creeping down for a while and people were starting to wonder if it was a dud and there were a lot of opportunities for people to jump into it and now it's worth way more so patients does often pay off but you really never know with the stock market where something is going to go i mean like I've told myself that a million in one times because if I knew where the stock market was going to go I wouldn't be doing this podcast I won't say this about the spectacles oh and you know maybe some advice for snapchat on their next piece of hardware that they're planning on coming out with snapchat has always been like notorious for killing your phone battery life part of it being the way that the software works but the specters are the spectacles are kind of the same story right now where it transfers video through bluetooth on to your phone and like the amount of video that it takes and it doesn't do it like as you're taking it it's like it kind of both transfers all the videos so that pretty much like spells like disaster for your phone battery yeah which is why I feel like stop using mine like as frequently as i used to it because it used to be one of those things where oh I want to capture this but you know what's the point of it if my phone dies from it so so if they maintain their identity as a software service then they're really going to want to revise and repolish that yeah yeah which there's an opportunity to do that you could also perhaps juryrigg uh snapchat spectacles on to a nokia 3310 yeah which has you know month long battery life so let's try to make that I'm pretty sure the camera on these spectacles is probably better than the nokia 3310 my camera oh yeah absolutely I want to see somebody take a 3310 and turn it into a battery itself that one hour cool power your smartphone so I do want to throw out a quick PSA I wanted to mention this on the show if you do plan on buying snap incorporated make sure you're buying snap incorporated because another stock is actually way up today and it's snap interactive the ticker symbol on that one is STV ID that is the wrong company to be buying that is a lot of people you should be buying SN a piece that incorporated SNA p it's the sea but they're both going up tuna this is why we have the money man on the show I mean you this has happened before do you do remember when Twitter went public oh wait a minute snap interactive is now down nine percent okay it was up seventeen percent before and I guess everybody came to those senses and realized they were buying the wrong sorry it's a bell is rung if people want to get stock updates like a watch exchange of it worse yeah we're not gonna put a test in my show re read carefully before you buy I mean this is this isn't the first time something like this has happened when Twitter went public uh this company called tweeter oh oh wow their stock went up I know eighteen hundred percent thanks to thanks to the people that don't read fully so yes yeah yes nap will be joining such a grandpa air to make what oh what's doctrine by graham i got the tweeter i would not i mean like people make I was oh yes it happened but it's so funny because exactly I mean that I don't know about you but I had relatives like you do you use that tweeter that the tutor it makes me want to start a company that sounds very familiar like similar to like another one of these companies and just like wait for people to make that mistake ride the art of the rip off and it's like those movies like the trans morford knows ripoff movies now these sneakers are my key not not that's alright company hey if it helps us get rich quick I'm into it let's do it um let's talk about the 5g little bit could you maybe so outline the few people are kind of just curious like exactly what is the benefit of 5g well you get the basic it's faster but like what are some other things that come out of its functionality I mean I'm going to try to pull up Roger story because he does a really good job of explaining this well is that what he did demo if you go to Cena or YouTube we've got that video of him using the surgery was the power glove right he did they didn't let him actually do surgery thank God but yeah he actually did get the demo it's it's really kind of neat to see for nothing more than like he looks kind of badass when he was in there absolutely yeah those are some pretty cool vr specs I'll just read this quick sentence from Rogers story it's the combination of speed responsiveness and ubiquity unlocks full capabilities of other hot trends in technology offering a boost her self driving cars drones the Internet of Things and virtual reality and Rogers talked about this he's kind of the 5g expert for us and he's talked about this quite a few times on the show before that 5g is really considered the enablement that helps all these other things actually be possible sure it's not just speed it's not just as speeds and feeds things it's about the responsiveness it's also interesting to consider how 5g is so responsive and it has such low latency that it could actually replace your home broadband so you could be buying you know instead of through cable vision which I have you would be getting it through verizon or AT&T or tmobile whatever because 5g is so fast you would just get it wireless I mean yeah I kind of I kind of look at 5g as like the nintendo switch of like internet connections where instead of like just oh i have a home connection i have a mobile connection it's kind of like it's all just one thing where you can like take it home and then just leave with it also and it's like relatively the same quality and speed yes yes it is I like a matthew in the chat his his logic behind the idea of letting a doctor do virtual surgery on use like well if you get that doctor in Bermuda he's probably gonna be way more chill and like laid back and just like yeah I'll fix you it is interested I've heard this like whole remote surgery concept before and I guess in very very specific use cases you could save live you know there's some guy in Bermuda or Sweden or whatever that is the expert guy or girl that's a doctor that I mean you know that they're not doing the surgery right there not like controlling like a robot or anything like that and raising that the whole idea it's there there so they can kind of see it like up closer and then like they're advising people that are in the room and telling them what to do wait a minute isn't that like can't you already do that with skype though I thought the whole idea is that like your via truly their butts yeah that's the thing you can't do that with skype because it's kind of just like I can't like a 2d camera kind of thing VR it's like you can look around and like look at different parts of it nice yeah I don't know Roger mentioned like a robot arm sounds frightening but hey oh yeah he did have that power glove I don't know what that glove was about the power glove the idea there is that it's got haptic feedback on it and that you could literally be able to control a robot arm remotely to doing the virtual to be doing the surgery virtually to do it remotely because like if you're the super duper expert you're like the one person that can do this globally then yeah they'd want you to be the person need controlling the row bones and yeah that was he wonder to ship a robot than it is to transport a human sometimes yes yeah I love the power glove it's it's so really I mean a lot of this stuff I hate to say it has a lot to do with just like form factor and the way it looks and Roger just looks badass set up with all this stuff and you know some of the other VR and a our stuff just doesn't look cool and I think it's gonna cause people to not want to use it as much you know maybe hollow lens does look cool to certain people i'm not sure but whatever whoever makes this that VR headset they did a good job with at least making it look very future while they're discussing in the chat what new nicknames to give to you mr. money man oh really yeah thank you know let's let's get we're getting close to the end here but Michael Brown is making an off-topic request to talk about well one there's speculation going on when the iphones gonna hit and what's going to happen with the iphone the next iphone oh okay but more specifically he wants to know if we've talked about the ball but Apple drop that YouTube and Google are picking up five Apple TV oh yeah we didn't talk about Apple TV at all yesterday you know you can jump in on because adam did talk about YouTube yes obviously where we are very and beard buy it but yeah we didn't talk about Apple yeah mostly because Apple TV right now isn't really its own live streaming subscription service as opposed to just kind of like a Roku kind of digital box yeah so really what didn't cross our minds is one of the competitors with YouTube and you know sling TV DirecTV now PlayStation view I will say though they might they probably drop the ball by not doing by not having a life subscribe subscribe shun service considering that they have their own box set I mean it's not like they don't have the resources that too so i will definitely agree that they dropped the ball on that you guys fill me in on this are we talking about like planet of the apps or something no we talked about YouTube TV yesterday right yes and then he wanted to know if we he missed yesterday's show so you wanted to know if we talked about Apple TV yeah not you know jumping on that I got it alright thank you everyone watch the planet of the apps by the way I don't have an Apple TV so I am NOT but from what I've seen is not good it's is it a sitcom or what it's uh it's basically like shark tank but for apps oh that's right that's right it was genius reality a kind of games you know thing with genius tech entrepreneur will.i.am at the very least it looks like its baseline good enough reality television carpool karaoke maybe a bigger head because carpool karaoke has been like huge on youtube so we'll see if it's like gonna be like a parcel carriers oh yeah you know we need them we need to do a disclosure yeah live on CBS and I've on CBS which is also our owner ok Jordan right watch the show all the time it's it's okay to be a fan of something that exists on your own network we love you less communities what we really need is a reality game show plan of the app style with Elon Musk though where he's getting and like he brings in like Bill Nye as guest judges and they try to get kids to like like literal kids like college kids to battle for two wishin by developing software hardware any number of scientific type things engineering type things I love this idea I would watch the crap out of that that would and then like Emily Adam Savage comes in and he tries to like I said like he's the the Tim Gunn to there and to like what is a good idea runway kind of thing ya can't believe you're giving away this like million-dollar idea live on air yes where are you all right that's probably good place to end it for today yeah let's do it um anyway thanks everybody for joining us today the 359 podcast is available on itunes tune in stitcher SoundCloud feedburner google play music and yeah it's available on cnet com this of course thanks for watching we'll be back on Monday and have a good weekend bye-bye you