Gadgetory

good morning from the scene at new york studios it's episode 207 of the 359 podcast my name is bvg and in the house today we've got outfitting and joanie souls Minh what is in our headlines so much stuff and it's only monday as you said a 4 out of 10 days it is a 4 out of 10 day April 10 so we've got three great stories today we're leading with Jones story about her interview with the father of the Internet Vint Cerf who is pretty disappointed with the lack of a tech accessibility going on on the computer which is you know everything should be amazing but it isn't then we've got another great story up coming out of Louisville Kentucky basically about a hack up a weekend hackathon that all these coders go through they volunteer their time to make the city you know kind of like a smart city it's led to really cool programs that people that live in can Louisville can access like you know create helping create like the smart smoke detectors and like vacant homes we've talked about this on previous podcast but you know people like don't get paid for this they like volunteer on weekends just to do that unless you need because if you had that's why people that's why local governments can't do it yeah hey smart coders you get paid a lot yeah and then um and then we'll be talking about a Twitter's fumble football aah over the NFL live streaming and you know if they even still have a chance when it comes to life during when they're going up against all these like giant companies that you know are pretty good at making money yeah Google Facebook that all have money that Twitter doesn't so yeah snapchat no not snapshots not even like I'm not I'm I've looked into snapchats numbers I actually don't know like how much more money they make them Twitter they're just like right now I'm a very high valuation but very very high they're kind of like Twitter when you know when they went public anything yeah time will tell yep if they know how to make money too um but yeah I don't do you want to get started or yeah let's hang out everybody we're gonna go ahead and get our little bite-sized three minutes and 59 second podcast recorder that you can download later at your leisure and then we'll be back in a couple of minutes and we'll be joining you in the chat and doing a little QA as we do every single weekday here from cnet now hold on a second we're doing a hackathon so let me hack he's tight and I'm in welcome to the 359 where we talk about the top tech news of today and all the other crap we want to throw in I'm Alfred Aang and I'm Joanie Salzman don't you spoke with Vint Cerf the father of the internet and his thoughts on tech accessibility recently he's hearing impaired and mentioned how awful it is that computers haven't really adapted well to the way you know people need assistive technology now why was he so frustrated by Tech Tech's lack of a growth with it with accessibility right his frustration I think stems from the fact that for a long time accessibility isn't something that's baked into a design process it's something that designers programmers hardware makers kind of sprinkle on at the end and he was encouraged that things are starting to change that there's more for thought into making things accessible at the beginning rather than at the end but it's to his point it's been a long time for that sort of attitude kind of start to take hold now when he was helping create the internet though how much of that was it was the thought in his process yeah yeah well he suffered people who don't know Vint Cerf helped on the DARPA project that's the underpinning for the internet and he also was instrumental in the beginnings of email emails one topic are one technology that was helpful for him as someone who's hearing impaired when you're using email you don't have to strain to hear somebody you can know exactly with precision what they're trying to say because they just wrote it out for you so that was helpful for him his wife asst was also profoundly blind I'm sorry profoundly deaf before she had cochlear implant surgery in the 90s um and he thought it was gratifying that in order for her to find that technology she used email and the internet to figure out that it existed and set it up right so our colleague in Kentucky Ashley Clark Thompson detailed how volunteer coders in Louisville are helping build a smart city so on weekends they volunteer in hackathons where they create projects where you know everyday citizens can just go through public data really easily they can find out like kind of cool things like what crimes and in certain neighborhoods or what days trash pickups are without having to go through all this you know bureaucracy stuff so these projects you know actually led to some pretty cool features Louisville like they have these smart smoke detectors that are you know if there's a fire in a vacant home it'll be able to pick that up and there's another voices system for your google home or your echo that they created which can tell you like the air quality around your town now I mean I'm wondering you know wouldn't it be cool to have the features like these in like every city where you know what would your idea for like in New York if they had something like this what would you want oh my gosh an easy way to complain about bad smells and restaurants can we do that can we turn 311 into something that's hackathon so it actually works I mean what do we really cool you know how like on the restaurants in New York they always have like the the grades out there a baby what your grade pending insatiable matter what yeah yeah I mean that I feel like that should be something integrated in with like Google Maps and then so last Tuesday amazon announced that would be streaming the nfl's thursday night football games which twitter had last year they clearly outbid Twitter for 50 million dollars and you know for Twitter that's that's pretty bad i mean they're they're big focus is on live streaming and you know right now without the NFL which is you know America's most popular sport you know they're pushing hard for MLB America's pastime but as far as a live streaming video platform does Twitter kind of still have a leg to stand on after losing like this big deal yeah i mean this definitely speaks to the fact that that amazon and google's people that are not struggling like twitter as they have the ability to kind of kick the legs out from underneath and what are what are kind of fighting on so many fronts that even the thing that its banking on to be the the thing that distinguishes it it can't compete and that makes it hard well what is it that twitter has that you know that stick makes it stand out right and a lot of ways live streaming video and to make a lot of sense because Twitter is such a live based platform but it's also a hobbled platform it doesn't it doesn't make money it's having a hard time making money it's having a hard time keeping it so its users well thanks again for listening and be sure to check us out on cnet I'm Alfred dang I'm Joni salzman and we are back and hopping into the chat room and we got a good question well not a question more so a profound statement uh the internet is now filled with cats so what's disappointing about that little dog lovers are very very easy I thought that was just a profound statement question response however to the hacking app Pell Dean's an easy app that can give instant info on bad things about companies they talking about us I mean I think that's Twitter actually yeah right I mean well I mean to an extent you've got Yelp yeah but more maybe you're saying more rating systems more or less about a dining experience or personal experience as in the review section of like an Amazon transaction fleshed out maybe that might not be merely it might also be talking about like companies that do like awful things well yeah like maybe if in order countries especially since we're talking about local government if there was a way to know like which pediatricians in your area have been sued the most you know like probably don't want to that might not show up on yeah that's like things that usually are in you know like I know reporters that have to do that a lot where there was like a big feature story last year basically about like which child care centers had been like so yeah exactly I more like which contractors yes basically trying to find data projects that you see in newspapers like I feel like that'd be something really interesting is like in real time yeah pretty much yeah Danny Green our old buddy how about beacons that broadcast restaurant ratings and or health code ratings for any business requiring expansion that's actually pretty good idea yes good idea I again rounding out something we kind of already have into a more robust thi presentation yeah that's the cool thing about their projects it's basically it's taking something that like is all out there that you can find on your own but it's one of those things where it's like you have to go through so many hoops to be able to get it and then it usually comes in like a PDF form that you can't search where it would be so much better if it were you know and that's whether they're working to make like I don't even think there's like a centralized way to find all these like restaurants and stuff yeah I know in New York they have this really cool project but uh where it's basically like you can add we find every single tree in New York City like it's like a tree's data project they tell you like how long it's been there for some a kind of tree it is and like if you want a tree planted on your block like like there's no tree on it you can like request the city to come and like plants a tree like that yeah I always liked the idea of parking space oh yeah yeah we're like oh thank you get into a parking garage and you know like I've seen some of them start to implement actual like traffic lights above spaces but that's pretty far and few in between but the idea that you could go in and like say it's it's a it's a chain store and target you just a target parking app kind of thing it pings your location as soon as you log in on your smartphone and it tells you Lane c5 on the fifth level is available as a room yeah the only the only thing that New York has done so far as far as parking and technology is that they've made it easier for you to pay your meter which is nice to you know you don't have to leave a restaurant in the middle I need to fill up my meter again but to find a parking space is definitely I think a lot more important than you know being able to pay it but you know the city's gonna make money somehow yeah Doug be is requesting social media for pets Doug I'm sorry I already exists it's called Instagram unless they mean like like your dog is allowed to Like Tweet and stuff well it didn't they experiment with that wasn't there some interactive collar add-on thinking that they could put on a dog Isis interpret it I saw actions I saw something like that but it wasn't um it wasn't like an interactive collar that could interpret it was more so like it was like this kind of like raspberry pi kind of project where every time like the dog like went out for a walk or something would like automatically like tweet out like how far it's walking or something like that they're like a Fitbit thing but until we need a Fitbit for your dog which I think that exists I'm sure it does actually I mean I guess that's not a terrible idea if somebody's trying to get their pet healthier you got an overweight dog or an overweight cat I hit one of those myself we visualize like the people that are in my facebook feed which are like I read three miles it's four seconds this morning yeah rate your dog is an athletic I locked up my stairs um I would actually pay to see like a reality show based around that when you and it'll be like so niggas loser for pets oh so many people would watch that we got a few minutes left in the show farming out more questions or requests or wish lists for this hacking project what else I'm sorry I'm brain farting it's Monday what else we talked about this way oh the accessibility yes and Twitter the man who helped invent the Internet let's flesh that out a little bit since we're well I mean one thing I'll say is talking about surf um you can appreciate like just talking to him you're like this person is so much smarter than me like man um not by like throwing out fat like he doesnt sit there and throughout facts or like impress you with things that you can't understand you can just tell that his mind is more thoughtful in a way that most people aren't able to think I mean I each I agreed with his argument about how it's like why are people thinking about accessibility like an afterthought oh we made this whole thing oh oh crap we forgot to make it one of the things you mentioned is that it's such a youth skewing design system um so many young people work on it and one of the like nature's of being young as you don't think about the fact that you're eventually going to be able to not be able to see very well or I don't think about that you're most likely than most likely you're gonna be more able-bodied like young people just haven't had the chance maywood unless they were born or um you know Warren had a disability her to them through the very early part of their life then they don't probably they don't specifically like call out though like you know computer developers for that issue because i know that in like the gaming world that's like that's a part of their process like when they get started right now people that are advocating for video game accessibility they they're trying to get people to get started from that straight from the beginning because it's way more cost effective that right but i think so the answer your question I think the reason is that with gaming there's a reward system built in if you have accessibility in your game because it means that you'll be able to sell your game to a lot more people and make your game more accessible even to know people able-bodied people yeah don't I disabil some of them like to use disability features because it makes them be able to perform back yeah um so there's already a reward built-in what his argument was that there haven't been enough a war rewards built into other types of computer and technological design to get people to start thinking about it earlier and that's part of the problem is that there's not I don't know if it needs to be artificial or not um but there's not like a reward system building this is he is it kind of more advocating though for like a like a requirement thing like it's like like a law that like yeah be able to do this or as Eve gifs more saying like guys like this is what you should be doing I think it's a mixture of both okay um yeah it's not in the interview I had with him but in some comments he made on the sidelines of talked about South by and so he had a panel there and he mentioned that there needs to be a mixture of like people accepting responsibility especially like big corporations that have the power to set rewards for their employees um and all southern east that they're a prong of it should be also some sort of legislation I was just going to bring that up i gotta be wonder if that's gonna be something that will be regulated sometime in relative future cuz i mean you have to have wheelchair ramps and public buildings and so on and so forth i wonder if that will have to become part of the lexicon for maybe yeah cuz there's really no guidelines like that like as part of the law for you know just browsing around online right which i agree there should be and at this point a consumer is a consumer as a consumer they want everybody that they can to be able to get full on in one hundred percent hmm that's a thought sumukha says how could the Internet of Things take away our jobs are we heading towards jobless future due to Internet of Things and AI depends what your job is yeah I mean all right so think about it let's go back a few decades it's not centuries and there were steam engine operators and eventually that technology became obsolete they have repurposed themselves like technology will perpetually obsolescence yeah eyes you need to actually find new ways to make yourself relevant so if your specialty becomes no longer desirable yes that sucks and yes us here at this table will probably feel that burn eventually in our lives everybody will but that doesn't mean that jobs are going away just because a robot is going to start working that manufacturing line is I mean they don't need an engineer doesn't need to make that way yeah but on on that questions note though as but as far as like related to like the Internet of Things I mean unless your job is to you know change a light bulb all the time or like change colors like well I really you know this is more so about like making things you know more accessible and you know easier for you at home yeah unless you're talking about like other cuz like technically like a smart cars the Internet of Things and if anything rude yeah that you know that would you know completely drive out the entire car service industry and you know the taxi industry and all that so that's that's one field where that would happen but they still need mechanics and zoom okay I'm you say I'm a mechanical engineering student you're golden you're you're saying we will always need you let's take one quick side step into video streaming before we call it a day jeffer asks do you think YouTube will continue to dominate the video format it's the only format that's truly paying its creators absolutely I think YouTube will be dumb as remember how long it really took for them to get legs though like well I don't want them yeah yeah but I had that's the thing that made the difference is that they were able to invest in the kind of infrastructure in order to deliver this like mind-boggling amount of video upload and delivery maybe it happened like maybe because it happened when I was like much younger but like I don't remember like it taking long to blow up I just remember one day like everyone was just on youtube I mean I I was there during the apex I'm a little older than you little little me a little but I remember when YouTube is novelty mm-hm and as great as it is now everyone just kind of like well this will probably never really amount to much this is a great brain dump content no one thought it could be a viable money-making machine that's the thing like I think when it first came out like none of us I was never really thinking about it unlike the the business and where I was like this is a cool website Oh everyone's on it so that's awesome that's Twitter yeah but YouTube did not Twitter itself yes you figure out how to capitalize mm-hmm you gotta wonder who the next one because there's got to be another one coming well the reason what Twitter is able to capitalize because so with Twitter I'm sorry youtube twitter and youtube they're both ad based platforms and the crucial thing for advertising to make money for a company is it needs scale and that's what YouTube has in spades it is crazy scale like three billion people use youtube or something like that it's insane Twitter doesn't have that 12 billion or 12 million of them are BOTS Twitter doesn't have that kind of scale it's a fraction of it so that's where the kind of power dynamic the difference between the two so that's why twitter is also trying to go into this hey we're live with a live platform where we're live stuff happens live stream here but they don't have the ability to kind of deliver on competitively because everyone wants to do live stream yeah I mean like I'm surprised Twitter it like they're trying to become more of like a media organization now where I found out about the Syrian air strike like through Twitter and that was a push notification I wasn't even on Twitter I was like at dinner and I just saw it like oh that's cool Twitter's doing news now I guess but yeah I do just find like a moment like a moment no no no no it was a push notification I was like from Twitter oh really yeah wasn't somebody that I fall oh it was like from Twitter that's interest yeah that is interesting I just like I said seeing where YouTube came from where YouTube went where YouTube still going it's fascinating from the perspective of how we have treated the internet and how we've consumed the internet because the Internet was the birthright for podcasting taking the traditional radio program that had since been named obsolete the live talking somebody telling you a story a human being there the sense got pushed to the side no one wants to hear you talk they just want to hear the same four songs over and over and over again and then they brought back the podcast and an on-demand format and now the internets like no we want to re-energize live were there in the moment everyone's together it's a it's a water cooler everything's a digital water cooler now I'm just curious to see where we go with that in YouTube and out of you too I just think yeah I think YouTube is gonna be dominating that for a really long time unless like you know they make it easier to search on amazon in facebook which have not been that fun um even Twitter like even Twitter it's like hard to find like live streams there yeah oh it's definitely the most threatening to ya youtube it's still unclear how Facebook is going to what direction it's going to go yeah how much it's gonna how much it's gonna want to eat YouTube's lunch how much did one wants to eat like televisions luncheon there are more than a few people in the chat to think that twitter has kind of missed its opportunity wow I hope not I hope that sweater doesn't totally die I don't think it's gonna die any time relatively soon but they need to figure something out quick if they don't think I by a thread also yothu says you're a genius and that's a good place to round it out everybody knows everybody loves it Jones white hacked rolling all right let's close it out for the day alright thanks for watching again if you'd like to check us out on cnet com we're also available on iTunes tune in stitcher SoundCloud feedburner and google play music did did did it all right we need to have the guns that you don't confetti will be back tomorrow everybody thanks for joining us see you