Gadgetory

good morning on Thursday September 15th I ever keep track of this stuff Joe and I welcome to another episode of the 359 podcast thanks for joining us this morning our hosts are Ben Fox Rubin and Alfred A and good morning guys hey thank you very much for that very nice and warm welcome we've got a couple things we're gonna go over today we're actually going to try to get through four stories in four minutes discussing amazon Twitter and the NFL Pandora and Lincoln White Sea Link NYC is my favorite story of the day guys I'm excited for this one well you have to stick around to the end to actually check out that one so well it's only four minutes anyway so not too much time as always send in your questions we're going to get to them after the podcast and we'll try to answer as many of them as possible obviously we're happy to answer any questions that you have specific to technology whatever but it's always helpful to focus on the main subjects at hand so particularly with Amazon we're going to be talking about their smart home efforts with the echo dot and the echo smart home speaker and then also be really interested in here what some of you guys have to say about Twitter and the NFL they have a big deal with that so without further ado let's get this thing rolling alright audio to speed and here we go in three two welcome to the 359 where we talk about the top tech news of the day plus whatever crap we want to throw in I'm Ben Fox Rubin I'm Alfred Aang okay so first up it looks like Amazon is planning to take over the smart home with fifty dollar pieces of electronics it introduced a new echo dot that it came out with yesterday and it also revealed last week plans to add it's voice assistant Alexa to its fifty dollar fire tablet so Alfred do you plan on buying these things in six packs which they're both available in I actually was considering getting the six pack only so that I you know that's Christmas shopping that's done already you know that's a Alexa that's a amazon dot keep one for free for myself so you have like an echo already I don't when I really want one and fifty dollars to me is like the perfect price mark for ya for that I bought an echo speaker during prime day so it was like 130 bucks I was waiting for it to go on sale usually it's like a hundred and eighty and I was like okay great whatever no problem and then when the doc came out yesterday I was like all right 50 bucks i got fifty bucks to throw at this thing so i don't know maybe i'll put it in the living room i don't know i have to figure that out but do you think that this is a smart move on Amazon's part to actually provide stuff this cheaply I mean like are people going to hesitate and be like 50 bucks how could how good could it be four fifty dollars well yeah I actually think fifty dollars is the perfect price mark I think it's not too expensive and I don't think it's that cheap that people would be skeptical of it I was its amazon I mean like I put their name on the product so that does help too yeah and their return policy is amazing so even if you hate it well which I doubt you will I mean it's a great product for at that price and if you hate it you can just return it extremely easily onto the website I also think that the dot is probably a better product considering that you can plug it into speakers that you already own that's jump a double that's true let's see if they take over the smart home with that thing next twitter is making a stab at relevance by live streaming NFL games the first game will stream tonight with the help of a new twitter app for streaming boxes however do you think this is going to work you think people are gonna flood Twitter like they've always wanted I think Twitter is really banking on this only because you know they're the platform for live sports as it is already everyone who wants is like a second screen yeah everyone who wants to talk about games are is on Twitter talking but I don't know if they'll be watching it though is the thing on Twitter um because you're right it is a second screen experience if anything I tonight is the Super Bowl for the Twitter can for Twitter yeah I mean even though it's you know Jets against the bills who would never make a super bowl hey I think this is a very important game for Twitter and it's hard to see you know where people will go on so apparently yahoo screamed a game last season and was it went horribly for them and it was very very low watch low viewership so it's a low bar that was set there and hopefully Twitter will be able to do better than that I think I they definitely will because people are on Twitter already like I said it's a platform for you know live news sports football is huge on Twitter it essentially just takes over that social network whenever a game is on so also we wanted to get to Pandora today unveiled Pandora plus it's a five dollar monthly subscription plan that lets you do extra things like skip songs replay tracks without any additional commercials is this something that you could get into absolutely for five dollars it's half the price of both of the leading you know leading products as it is you know with Apple music and Spotify and you know I think people have been spoiled when it comes to streaming music as it is where its oh I have to listen to this ad but I mean if you put on the radio at any point it's just it's ads everywhere yeah i'm looking forward to it either way we're out of time but we want to talk about link NYC anyway link NYC New York's big bold public Wi-Fi project has this weird snag Alfred what is it this is again like I said my favorite story of the day um so they have these tablets on it that you know people used to be able to browse the the internet on and now blink NYC has taken that feature away because there's too many people watching porn on it yes a bunch of jerks I've ruined it for everyone I stole your line which um you know to me I that seemed inedible inevitable if you know if there's internet there will be porn that's just yes go to a public library I most certainly will not leave that advice all right we're at a time we're going to go to the post show if you want to hear more about these stories or 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 delving into the comments we have a really good one read up front with Alexa and I haven't even considered this yet but do they work in the car so Alexa amazon has started to Ford so there is discussion about adding a LexA into the car it makes a lot of sense to potentially include a voice assistant into the car because when you think about it having a voice assistant out in the street or in a restaurant or you know even in this you know kind of small enclosure you can really find how it would be really annoying really really quickly to just start talking to your phone but not actually talking to the people around you however semi-private situations like the home or the car make a lot of a sense for voice assistance so that is another place that you should expect to see Alexa in the coming days in the future what if you set up like a personal hotspot and just drove around with a doctor's well right now there's that sounds like a good idea i'd like to see if that's possible there's a third-party product i actually wrote about this one yesterday it's called the onyx which is kind of like a Star Trek communicator would you clip on to you clip it onto your clothes or just anything on you like a bag and you press on it to talk to like your friends and family but it's getting Alexa integration within the fourth quarter this year so I mean they really they released a promotional video about it yesterday talking about how you know you'll be able to talk to Alexa from your car we're just anywhere in general right but there will be further integration particularly with ford cars going forward so i guess in the meantime yeah you could get the Onyx also so you could walk around with alexa all the time if you don't have a girlfriend I did see one of the saddest things in that promotional video though where the guy was like stuck in traffic and he plays rock paper scissors with Alexa oh gods no that would never do that or if you do don't tell people afterwards uh doesn't Roger use Alexa at home I do you use I'm okay yeah yeah I asked her what the weather is Michael in the chat says anytime he's seen it in action it's janky it needs to be really quiet or else it doesn't really understand you i have not had that experience no I yell at Alexa across the apartment and she can still hear me even when she's playing music issues playing music really loudly then I do have to like go into the kitchen and actually tell her like hey turn it down or turn off or ever but I found Alexa and the Google assistant on my smartphone to be way way better than Apple Siri Apple Siri I found to be SuperDuper janky compared to Alexa amazon Alexa the annoying overpriced daughter you never wanted is that a comment are you just talking that's that's me that Alexa turn it down right yeah absolutely but you will probably be hearing a lot more about Alexa in the future as Amazon tries to integrate it into like literally anything that I can get its hands on so and it's actually interesting with the fire tablet the idea would be that you're walking around with the tablet in your house and you're basically using it like like like a smart home hub or something like that you would press the home button and say you know turn on the lights or turn this thing off turn that thing on whatever which is another way of utilizing Alexa whether it's through the tablet or through a smart speaker Michael asks with google voice ai and its large platforms do you think any other personal assistants stand a chance once google home comes out it's an extremely good question obviously we have to see google home my primary concern with google home is that when they presented it to the market they promised a whole lot they had actually said that you'd be able to potentially on day one as far as I could tell have natural two-way conversation with the Google home and the Google assistant that is extremely hard to do and as far as I can tell it's not really how where we are with the technology even with google so there is a possibility that they have set themselves up to over promise coming out of the gate but the commenter is right that google home presents a significant challenge for amazon it'll be a beast yeah absolutely and that's why amazon came out with the echo dot at such a low price they want to try to seed the market before the google home comes out for sure so yeah good question we've talked a lot about cord cutting on this show like a lot a lot and I'm a strong proponent of it so this whole NFL Twitter thing is a huge deal being a cash football fan from Buffalo go bills mmm there are saves aid the super bowl I just don't think that I ever wanted yeah three years in a row I get it I get it no I'm not in denial but this is cool I'm kind of looking forward to this because I did watch the yahoo stream last year and it was I think a lot of the failure was a timing thing mmm Oh like what time it actually played because they were playing in London so was early mm-hmm on a weekend like really early so I got up and made a ton of breakfast and watch the game and for what it's worth like the stream worked fine am but in general I've had a shady past with the Yahoo app and I watched it on my xbox so I I will say this about Twitter I don't know what the futures of it are going to be for as far as a live stream goes I don't know if it's just gonna be a straight watch but I mean if it wants to win this it should give Twitter users you know kind of a feature of they can make a live Jeff of it or they can take a screenshot of it and yeah as they're watching it which is problematic for the NFL because they're so protective over their content but it still gets out Twitter either way I mean that that's the same if they want to build this platform they're gonna have to be able to build it with social chatter but that is what they're hoping to do ya I you know now that we're talking about it I might end up watching this thing on Twitter tonight just because I'm curious to see how it would actually play out and if there were an Eagles game because I'm an Eagles fan I would have I usually using my smartphone as the second screen too I don't know complain about any number of eagles issues you'll get to another year you'll get to see Rex Ryan's glorious sweater vests okay I look forward to it I feel like I'm not doing anything else anyway sure I'll watch I'll watch your NFL game Twitter oh here's a thought what about 360 or VR video for football yeah I think that's probably coming down then a night ability yeah I mean that makes perfect sense and i think it's just as you said an inevitability that's probably going to happen with twitter being involved i think maybe that makes it even more possible so yeah we'll see what ends up happening with that so as far as actually streaming it on Twitter exactly how does that work you have to look for a specific tweet are you just basically going to Twitter probably going to be publicized everywhere I think they have a URL that you can go to but it's also they have the app on several streaming boxes like the Amazon fire TV Xbox one help me out here I mean I'm looking the other one I mean it is on those platforms but I mean the majority of twitter users users are on mobile either way so I'm looking forward to seeing what the mobile experience is going to be like I don't know how you're planning on watching it but I mean with its usual again it's usually a second screen experience but now it being the first screen I'm interested to see how that work you know people on the train watching people you know you know instead of you know speaking with their friends and families at like a dinner or something just watching it on their phones yeah looking forward to it chromecast yeah it actually does not have chromecast uh not natively but if you just brought it upon a browser thank you probably yeah yeah yeah that I'm into I would probably watch it on TV as opposed to on my phone like if I have the option it is football so you are used to seeing it on a bigger screen it we come so far with technology we have giant everyone's got a giant TV giant tvs are affordable now picture quality is through the roof we got right on the apex of 4k and it's like let's put football here right and it's been like the driving force behind like home entertainment the only reason people hang on the cable they're like screw it right here yeah i'm sure people will watch it on mobile as you said I mean like maybe you're not around a television or whatever so to me it could be interesting too is that if Twitter actually has any sort of success with this it would be pretty cool to see more games because oftentimes the Eagles aren't playing in this market because they'll get bounced by a jets or a giants game so if it is playing on Twitter then there's an enormous reason for me to go to Twitter to actually see it because I wouldn't be able to get it otherwise so maybe they have a chance with this one Alexander you are my soulmate can Alexa order a pizza yet yeah of course oh my god that came like a couple months ago day one yeah that was you can order it with Domino's I think you have to do like some initial setup because you can't really have a back-and-forth conversation that well with Alexa quite yet it's not like Alexa order me a pizza okay do you want a cheese or pepperoni I think you have to preload like this is the type of pizza that I'm getting the place yeah it's specifically from dominos they're the only ones that they have like an app or feature they call them skills specifically through Alexa I haven't done it yet so I don't know exactly how it works but knowing how Alexa works I don't think that there's a ton of option ality quite yet when you're talking to her directly it's more do this she's not conversational yet no not generally I mean like in small ways she can be like she has like small games that you can play where you can do a little bit more back and forth but in general there's still a ways to go to do more conversational stuff which again that's why it's interesting that Google presented to Google home as something that can do much more natural conversation so one more time back to twitter what do you think the next logical step is going to be what what are the next live events we're going to see them start to showcase after football award shows yeah great conversation point right that means I pretty much think yes what's the water cooler thing let's put it on Twitter award shows makes a ton of sense because that's another one of those second screen experiences people like jump on Twitter and say oh I can't believe this person won that award or you know that was a long time coming whatever so I don't know what the rights are with those things though so it might be very difficult for them to snag awards show yeah I would argue that most likely presidential speeches and just political events political Twitter's a very big presence mm-hmm and just the idea that you know and then the advantage of that is essentially they're free you know you know there's no copyright to it and you can you know white house briefing or anything like that you can just if you set up a camera if you set up into the feed you can kind of just be able to stream that I mean they kind of did that with a few debates before oh they did yeah no I totally miss those I do i do like i said before though i do think the key though is not just offering a stream but you know offering social integration with it where you know I could take a screenshot I can take a video clip from a specific moment which they do already with snappy TV but that's a service provided to most media companies and not the average Twitter user mm-hmm so I mean if anything I think that's the key route to go yeah I think what's also interesting is is that they vary directly decided not to do scripted because they're more interested in live stuff as opposed to like scripted sitcoms or whatever stuff that you could probably use a DVR for so I think they know what their places in the market or at least they're trying to figure that out and it's more what's the present as opposed to something something that I could get to some time later like you're not going to be watching old family guy episodes on Twitter anytime soon yeah but I mean like Facebook has faced with live or on YouTube right now we use live stream Twitter's finally kind of late to the game but that's a big get for them yeah and I'm just imagining this right now it's a guy who reads your comments politico yikes yeah asking for a fight yeah yeah but like you know they won engagement and even if it's ugly I mean like they've proven that more times than most other social mediums so the problem for them is is that a lot of these rights are expensive and is it really going to help them become more relevant I mean they grow so much slower than Facebook and so it's it's possible that this is just a way for them to like sink a lot of money into this experiment and it doesn't actually work i mean like twitter is not doing well so it's important to pay close attention of that and who's next in line after Twitter Apple what as far as like live-streaming event stuff like that Apple's been looking into television for a long time there are rumors around that allied amazon is another one that's being considered so i think all these guys are looking at it as a way to you know build their audience I'm gonna go with twitch TV on this one I know they've got live stuff already but the thing is most of it is eSports they experimented with you no more news kind of content before they did it with the Republican National Convention and the Democratic National Convention and they did pretty decently on that so I mean if they get into you know actual sports I think it'd be a good play hmm if they have the audience yeah pun intended yeah for sure that's probably a good place to leave it off we got to go go back to work yeah let's call it all right if you liked what you saw heard check us out on cnet com podcast is also on itunes google play feedburner soundcloud and tune in radio all right we'll be back on monday so thanks very much for watching