Gadgetory

good morning noon or night wherever the hell you are in the world and welcome to episode 142 of the 359 podcast and Roger Tang and Ben Fox true but I'm sorry let's flip that with Ben Fox Ruben and Roger oh yeah with a big promotion for me too that I know and I've decided to just take a step back yeah Roger was hungover this morning so I wish post I so wish yes so watch me bumble my way through the podcast and I'm gonna be judging you the entire time all right now artists extra pressure before I was fine but now I'm totally freaking out either way we're gonna be talking about snapchat again today they filed apparently reportedly confidential IPO filing also new restrictions on the Airbnb and a really cool new app from Google to help you scan your photos as always send in your questions and comments and Brian will look through them and we'll check them out at the end of the show so that's about it let's get this thing started all right 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 Ruben I'm Roger Jane starting off we're talking about snapchat yet again this week after reports came out that the social company confidentially confidentially filed an IPO valuing the company at as much as twenty five billion dollars for a little context Twitter is currently valued at about thirteen billion dollars Wow so Roger why would snapchat be that valuable look what it's all about the kids man the kids the Millennials Millennials are you use asshat the Utes cute is that look they're they're using snapchat like crazy they're living on snapchat and for advertisers that's yeah that's a gold mine right there and I mean you look you make that comparison to Twitter Twitter's growth has completely stalled early and it's it's kind of cryptic people aren't really jumping on that snapchat and people not understanding as much SAP chat ironically is also kind of cryptic it hard to understand true but it's the kind of cryptic that like kids can get into that's why they like that's why yeah they're Wired's don't get it right parents don't get it which is what's kind of awesome I'd like to show how old I'm like I find it somewhat baffling this is so and I know we talk about this a lot when we talk about snapchat but how much of a threat is snapchat to Facebook obviously Mark Zuckerberg knew this because he tried to buy them a couple years ago no I think they're a big big threat that's that's why you see Facebook rolling out feature after feature whether through Instagram or Facebook that mimic some of the features of snapchat as right like Instagram stories is basically he snaps right so pretty lame yeah so yeah Facebook definitely sees the right in the wall I mean it's still the by far the largest social network out there but they must see that younger audiences are looking at snapchat as their primary tool for communication I can't wait for more competition for different tech companies to waste my time in new ways so here comes snapchat next up San Francisco tightened its laws involving Airbnb saying folks can only rent their place for 60 days a year that follows more rules against home run against the home rental service in New York City too so it seems like it's getting harder to do yeah yeah it's interesting because I've done Airbnb ease-out like in Europe and in Asia and like it's practically a business like no one lives in those homes you know that they're renting out they're just continually renting them out through Airbnb mm-hmm and that's that's how I'm being be work so to limit it to like 60 days in SF that's that's a big blow already in New York you you wouldn't be able to like buy it as a rental home for specifically for Airbnb right which is what a lot of people doing what a lot people do and what city's trying to crack down on right because it's basically taking more housing stock out of the rental market which for SF and New York obviously they're very mindful of that oh yeah oh yeah I mean in New York it's tough right you can't you can't even rent out the place I think you can rent out a room I think legally god I don't know it's getting more and more complicated which is making it harder to do Airbnb so last Google introduced a new Android and iOS app called photoscan which lets people scan pictures even if they're in a frame or an album making it easier to preserve old photos yeah Roger do you think you'd be using this I think I will be using this constantly over the holiday season my wife has been bugging me about scanning her old family photos for like the last two years i know i collection and i mean the idea of having to put a photo in a flatbed scanner scanning it scan it and then just replace it constantly do that it just it's just so tedious and i tried out the the app yesterday actually and it's you know it's really simple it's basically kind of connect the dots therefore dot to kind of line your phone next to it's not super precise we're dots on the corner of the photo well there's sort of like they're kind of yeah they're all it's not exactly the corner like i said you don't have to be super precise about it and it's google says that you know within ten minutes you can actually scan a hundred photos and I kind of believe it cuz it's it's a pretty that's pretty sweet yeah it's simple way to do it okay well if you want to read more about these stories check us out on SEANET I'm Ben Fox Ruben I'm Roger Tsien thanks for listening all right I survived you did it congratulations I know finally step back and just retire you're pretty good you're pretty good color guy I mean good color commentary over there so there's a lot of big snapchat fans in the chat yeah obviously everywhere we will be talking I feel a lot more about snapchat talking about them twice this week and they're just a very interesting company I'm I will admit I'm trying to use them more often yeah I tend to live a little bit more often on Twitter but that is getting a little stale probably the problem with snapchat especially for for folks like us who are on to kind of you know promote our stories to have a large social awareness or presence is snapchat like gives you no indication of that right it's it's sort of a one-to-one communication tool and it's you can yes broadcast your snaps feed you have no idea if anyone's actually watching there's no real measure so you just sort of out there yeah that's what's kind of freaky and uncertain maybe that's why the kids love it right and but like I was in the the entrepreneurs I look at like dj khaled Michael points out in the chat he's making millions who snaps you have a marketing promotion of opportunities no absolutely once you get that sort of brand awareness going and won't kill the presence but like if you're starting out on snapchat and you're and you started part of this like you're thinking about it from like the rules of of normal social networks like Twitter and Facebook where there are numbers and metrics and things also easily see right followers but there isn't that it's just there's no guidance at all yeah that's why I've seen certain stories where it's sometimes described as a messaging service right as opposed to a social network which which it can be in some ways but that's a really good point that it is still very much applied I think most kids use it as a communications tool first like at not a social network it's it's something that they use to message back and forth right it's how they tell their stories yeah that being said I mean like I don't what what am I like Facebook posts from years and years ago I Cali pretty terrible yeah they're probably pretty terrible so my first weed was just I don't know what it was I'm hungry I wouldn't be that upset if if those things disappeared like I don't really have much of a use for them so that is a refreshing part of snapchat it's just kind of funny to me how short and abbreviated all of our communications have become yeah you know I don't know anyone who continues to write like books on Facebook you know until election season well okay you know it's it what's what's the length on snapchat ten seconds I have not used it I'm sorry world yeah okay what is a short admit that if we keep going in this trend like in like six or seven years it's gonna be a new social network yes one more one scream one photo yes and we saw vine was actually pretty exciting in that how much you could do in six second I liked vine actually cuz you creative with success everybody loves vine now that it's yeah I know I guess I stopped using it a long time ago like what it's like now that it's like you know Crested everybody's back on it so moving on over to Airbnb again what was it before the 60-day limit if you lived in the home you I I think you could rent it out as much as you wanted no limits always no limit at all so if like there's there's a house that you wanted to rent but I think there were much more significant restrictions in San Francisco if you didn't live there and I mean yeah we're now it's so now it's like 60 days I believe across the board regardless if you're living there or not which is a pretty substantial restriction for people that used to have that is as good income for an extra room or an extra apartment in their home where their incidents that led to this I mean what is the rationale behind the limit for the most part what I've seen is that a lot of hotel providers hotel operators are extremely annoyed and Airbnb guys absolutely you're taking stuff that's in neighborhoods like regular neighborhood and adding that to the hotel you don't you don't have to follow the same kind of regulations that a hotel right you don't have liability you don't have insurance like there there are a lot of restrictions on hotels it's the same exact thing as uber in many ways yeah we're right they don't have a taxi fight all over again right but they don't have the same regulations piled on top of them as the taxi it's like the uber fight except when you when you added housing like we as we said on the call like in cities like New York and SF where housing and real estate is such a precious commodity that is like this added stress level right like yeah every year the abuse has been like in the sticks like up north in New York or in Connecticut but yeah the idea that if you're if you're some guy if you own a bunch of partment and you're just renting them out on the Airbnb for like some super inflated price like that's taking away an opportunity for someone who actually lives in New York to have an apartment right that's you know oh I did use Airbnb once when I was in Greece when we were reporting there over the summer never stopped talking about that - yeah and and it was like super easy the guy you know gave us gave us the apartment it was a lot more enjoyable felt more like home than finding a hotel last I was stuffing my preferred way like when we used to go to Barcelona reaffirm a little Congress before I got organized and we had hotel rooms it was air B&B here for a year and I loved it it was great like the people were super nice and a lot of them were a couple of them were actually they were actually just sort of renting them out as a test they weren't it wasn't a business yet for a lot of them and so it's kind of nice to get that experience yeah I'm not a big fan of hotel rooms outside of like boutique hotel rooms they just feel a little too just I don't know impersonal so I I tend to prefer Airbnb but at the same time I understand I may be there for a long stay at the same time if you're visiting visiting a place on the fly and he's like you're gonna spend all of like your five to six hours of sleep in the hotel room yeah that's true what differences but I sort of your family and if you've got a kid like having your actual home amenities it's just it's just so much nicer actual refrigerator microwave things like that in a washing machine here's a good question expanding on it but it might be a little bit out of our wheelhouse do you guys know of any laws that help ensure the Airbnb places are up to a certain standard of quality anything like that in New York specifically and I gotta say I have no command every B&B and I don't think so don't have a lot I doubt it I mean law background outside of media yeah I mean I think the only thing that would govern the quality of an air B&B unit are user comments you can complain Airbnb like say the apartment doesn't match the photos that you'd see when you're searching for words yeah yeah that would be the only I don't think there's like oh they're in kind of law that would like set a standard for minimum quality for an apartment or for a unit yeah I I don't I don't know I know that there are more restrictions coming up to try to at least get them at the same level in some ways to hotels so that there is a certain level of liability like if I broke my leg in an Airbnb what was liable yeah so the I think that a lot of the stuff is still being worked out that is a fantastic question though thank you for submitting that if anybody does have any input on this please add it to the comments section in the video anytime I think we're all kind of curious about that that is a very interesting thought yep let's talk about photo scan and how friggin cool this is yeah yeah I'm knee-deep in trying to digitize family vacation photo albums from decades it actually kind of reminded me that I hadn't backed up my photos to Google photo in a while and I like I turned it on today and I apparently 27,000 photos that don't need to be uploaded like alright the song and I'm walking off yeah no I I mean the thing is awesome and it's looks super easy I'm not sure how effective it is on an actual like when it's in a frame where there's a glass there's a glare I haven't tested that out yet but just like taking a photo looks like Bridget's had pretty good results here yeah yeah yeah so the idea is it again it takes multiple shots and images and merges the best of them and it like Auto straightens everything and crops out like the frame or on the album so you have pretty good digital approximation approximation of your your your print your photo mm-hmm so is there like a it this sounds really nice but I'm curious is there like a sneaky or a cynical reason for Google to provide this you know like do they want to get you you know suckered or stuck into their world of Google photos because like maybe they get a more the monthly fee I mean I think the the key thing is like if you're using Google photos you're using the Google ecosystem you're using Gmail and calendar and all the stuff and likely to use Android which they can serve you ads for and so it's it's to get you further stuck into this ecosystem right you know I don't know if it's nefarious I think everyone know I just I wanted to there's Apple sound so nice I just kind of wanted to like for the podcast like from a reporting perspective I was curious they look at the business implication the skeptical side of me is you know eventually they start scanning the photos and taking the data there and using that to advertise you know yeah well the thought I've heard of me like they could scan and they could see like you have a tendency to go to like for me Barcelona in February or March they don't they start advertising like in January hey last minute plane tickets to Barcelona mm-hmm like that's I don't think they haven't done so bad but they haven't done some people would be I think they've been pretty good about the privacy aspect of photos yet but you never know down the line like yeah taking that data that's that's what they ultimately care about right and there's a lot of data to be had from their photos I was looking at it more as if you preserve enough photos with Google photos you're gonna you might end up paying like the monthly fee to actually get more get it get a higher of like data limit or well you know the so the the deal who photos is its unlimited storage mmm unless you want to keep your like if your DSLR photos at like maximum quality right so I mean for me it's good enough that I take some my photos for my my phone that I don't really need that that extra limit so I'm perfectly happy with the unlimited like compressed version of it I've been on Google photos for a long time I'm definitely a fan and I like yeah I'm just certain that there's some kind of like business operandi going on behind this oh yeah but at the same time this is just a good innovation I totally agree with that yeah I just wanted to touch upon that as well and I I definitely think that this is an interest thing I feel like your feature I feel like photoscan is one of those projects that the it was like the 30 percent time or like whatever the I don't know if they still didn't do that you know like they spend whatever 30 percent thinking about non-core responsibility stuff and I feel like this is like a random side project that just came out of some guys thought right it's perfect timing for Thanksgiving by the way oh yes everybody's looking at photo albums yeah I'm going back to Los Angeles on Friday and oops no but I'm gonna be going back there's there are a lot of old photos I'm you know I'm gonna scan in like all my embarrassing childhood photos I'm gonna put up I'll be able to post on Twitter whenever throwback Thursday comes up nice yeah yeah everybody else out there is the app available now yeah yes it's available so we totally gonna try that tonight yeah all right that's a good place to cut it sounds good to me thanks everybody all right the 3:59 podcast is available on itunes TuneIn stitcher SoundCloud Feedburner google play music and of course on Sienna calm thanks everybody for watching we'll be back tomorrow we will and most nights about it that's a wrap buddies matey have a good day