Gadgetory

Before we jump into tech tomfoolery we would like to take a moment to thank this week's sponsor hello fresh is a farm to box and couch to kitchen meal delivery service which aims to make cooking more fun so you can focus on the whole experience not just that finish plate you're going to share on Facebook through the camera on your phone each week hellofresh delivers delicious new recipes with step-by-step cooking instructions broken down into six easy-to-follow steps each meal designed to take around 30 minutes to prepare even for the kitchen novices or experienced cooks who might be short on time so you've got the the little card right here and you can see all of the the steps are well laid out broken into six easy-to-follow steps sourcing the freshest ingredients measured to the exact quantities needed helps reduce food waste and I have to throw a personal shot out because the packaging for hellofresh is absolutely fantastic instead of just a big gnarly bag full of individual ingredients all just sort of lumped in there every recipe you get with the service is sort of packaged in its own containers you know exactly what you're supposed to use and it really takes a really helps streamline the amount of prep needed for each meal less than $10 per serving you can select between the classic plan vegetarian options and a family box if you need to feed more people this week on the menu is a chicken parmigiana salad a Juicy Lucy burger with a molten cheese core and a zesty crusted catfish served over cilantro jasmine rice hello fresh employees to full-time dietitians to ensure each meal is nutritionally balanced now offering light spring meals and they're just added and they've just introduced back breakfast options to get your day started right with the most important meal of the day delicious ingredients you'll love to eat simple recipes you'll love to cook hello fresh has a special offer for listeners of the PocketNow weekly get $30 off your first week of deliveries when you use the promo code pocket now 30 again $30 off your first week when you sign up at hellofresh comm with the promo code now 30 and we thank them for supporting the pocket now we ladies and gentlemen it's my pleasure to introduce the guest for this week's podcast this is a story that is basically shaped almost my entire adult life and I say that without hyperbole mr. Philippe Kahn is responsible for a technology that we probably all take for granted today but we're celebrating a very important anniversary we're five days and 20 years ago he assembled all of the pieces to share a photo from a digital camera over through a computer and over his Motorola StarTAC cell phone this is an incredible story as the photo that he shared was of the birth of his daughter so all of these pieces came together in an incredible way his wife Sonya in the hospital as he is tinkering with this equipment to make it all happen in this moment and it creates the foundation of every social networking service every cloud service every data service that we use now all all came from this momentous event in technology history and momentous event in his own life so without further ado let's jump right into this conversation as mr. Khan is a phenomenal storyteller he's often running like a shot as we started this podcast I I present to you our conversation with Philippe Khan so to answer that question you know you can ask her herself but she's running around here but she she she she she's a full participant and you know we're partners really close in life and in business and a well in technology but you know she had a bit on during this 24 hours but you know the camera phone did come didn't happen 24 hours I spent a year before that building that bolas the server and the software infrastructure and everything that's needed to create this instant picture share we're not you know you need to be able to store picture to send notifications and this is 1990 and the web was young there were no easy tools you know you don't have a pad you know the Apache you didn't have a lot of the tools that you have now and so I you know I worked on the third year and then after we made it work I said Maternity you know I'd take it took quite a bit of time to integrate the whole thing into you know a module that could be embedded in a phone or something I got so that people could seek you could really do once this thing was integrated in at Roane the combination of the what people call the camera phone but you know I and they've server infrastructure but it's really a song where chunk there plenty of people who had put you know videos and photos and phones the problem is the pictures and everything stayed there no one thought about it I've gotten into a few sort of spirited conversations debates about that because you know I really feel that Jay phoned the sh0 for was the very first true camera phone in that I'm so racially combined and a lot of people have come I actually talk about Jay phone in my book I have a book about smartphone photography and I've gotten a lot of replies like well it wasn't the first phone to have a camera on it and like well I could another one camera to any phone but I can't do anything such as I I call it the Bulldog Craig symbol I said you know anyone can take a bulldozer and a crane put him together and sent the Bulldog crane the problem is what do you do with the Bulldog crane did you that ended and people went weren't doing anything anything with it and that is exactly the point Jay phone is not the camera phone is as much the the SHA mail infrastructure that we worked with transcoding and anything that we work with him on and it was the same thing with Sprint you know we we created a phone with Cascio we help them integrate this stuff and build some firmware but the real thing is the ability to instantly share pictures with thousands of people without sending thousands of the way in which Facebook and all these things the Instagram and a lot work today and that's exactly the point J phone was the first were you and you know I'm all over the place but let me let me say the argument that I take sticks with everyone I said listen all these people who claim that they they all these claims about a camera phone it's pretty funny they say every one of these guys who make claims and I met pretty much all that's it so where are the pictures you took right exactly and the answer is oh we don't have those and said well what was the point well we left him on the phone it said the lab it never been really and I'm going the point is to point shoot and share instantly it's a Polaroid of the 21st century so right that's exactly the point is that there were no pictures they didn't even use for their own pictures of their own kids it Riley for me okay if they wouldn't you wouldn't mind I'd like to backtrack really really quickly here just for our audience and especially why I was so excited to have you on the podcast is this is a really important anniversary that we're five days removed now at the time that we're recording this from the twentieth anniversary of this process that you developed this this ability to to instantly send over a wireless communication system a photo that other people could interact with and and I want to do this is just to kind of start even before the the birth of your daughter which was one of the most amazing I think occurrences to coincide with the birth of the camera phone because you were creating this infrastructure for years before all of these pieces really came together for the first practical demonstration was it always with the focus of photography or was this sort of like you were just looking at ways that you could create sort of a prototype for what we would now consider cloud storage in the modern era no I'm looking at closet this was 1997 I started in 1996 then the web was like really young and three years old and and I was focus on the images I really Sonya what was one of the first people at that time to do a digital photography manipulation on computers which was not something that a lot of people did and we were looking at how do we share these things instantly and we realized that the times not just wirelessly it's like in general the bandwidth even at the time you know the end of the web the internet wasn't that you know you get caught is that you couldn't we had a list of 2000 people around the world that we knew and if we wanted to share an image we're not going to send 2,000 pictures at a time I mean today but but but the same problem arises to dinner different waves but it didn't scale so we said we need to build something where as the owner of this I can upload this image and then I have a list and I can notify these people that if they would like here's a link back they can to get an email just like you get notification and email notification just like you get in Facebook and then you click and you could take a look take that thing on the server and everybody can see each other's annotation people can interact like at the time we used to call that forums or bulletin boards you know Baltimore style discussion that you'd have under each image and it was exactly thing but you couldn't really do it and in in in a brute force way with this okay outside 2000 images and even if you did that how would you have a conversation between the people who you don't but the problem is the same that now because you could argue okay there's plenty of bandwidth today you can send 2,000 picture but now people end up you know getting a million views right so you're not going to send a million pictures or a million video people get a million videos you know if you know viral video of some kind of of a you know a dog skateboarding or something I get a French bulldogs favor and you know they get 5 million if you have to send by million copies of it wouldn't work so you put it in one place in each person who wants to see this you know of a freshman skating French pink skating French Bulldog you know four point five average rating and then you go I'll click on that but then you see it and it downloads here it's your bandwidth it's not my bandwidth as a creator that needs to be almost infinite because millions of people are going to see it do you farm saying and that's really the so it was the same thing at the time you have very little bit of bandwidth and so you have to do it today you have very powerful pipes but at the same time the numbers of people who are looking at this stuff is huge so it's the same scalability challenge right well and especially for the aspect of creating this with the notion of social interaction baked into it that that I feel is where we've experienced a lot of this exponential growth in that when something goes viral or even just when something's popular among your own family and friends that the resource now needs to be stable enough to hold that media to hold that data but essentially the systems that we're using today are all very similar and tracked almost directly back to your initial experiments trying to solve this one problem of sharing an image from your computer easily amongst a population that's exactly right and and and the ability to have people come back comments each other's comment and interact it adds to live the you know that's the instant picture male where we go please you know you're interacting you know you you post a picture of your baby and suddenly yeah people say Oh Len you know what whatever it is they want to say and and it should always be oh what a beautiful baby now there's always one if it's really public as you know right as a bunch of smart asses out there who will and that's that's actually an interesting when you get to the to public side it's a curation is interesting because you have some really weird people who post weird thing close up and so that's a defense of modern phenomena but it's an important one well and it was also a we had a lot of conversations my wife and I before the birth of our first daughter that I we we made a conscious effort not to share her publicly I think there are maybe five photos that have ever gone live of my daughter in any kind of public forum but we have gigabytes and gigabytes of photos and videos that we share with our family and friends just in private little photo cloud storage shares of private folders so we were definitely cognizant of that and then also we never had our kid photos broadcast publicly so we wanted to give her a shot and having some kind of privacy before she has her own Instagram account that she can do whatever she wants with and that's absolutely true by the way it's like Sophie she's 20 like camera phone right she's at NYU she was doing my and she she people ask you know can we have a picture of her today and she goes no exactly if they see my you know like 30 minute old picture and I want I want my privacy I want to be successful in my own run had nothing to do with this picture except being born and this is really exciting it's really fun to be there but you know I have my own life this is not my life I don't want to be the camera phone baby you know I you know she is but she didn't want to be true and this is something that she's grown up with says she has to she has to know especially with where society is gone how important that image is to technology history yeah she she knows but no one can tell it's her it could be anyone and but it's hers but it does the point is that you if you look at her today and you look at a picture yeah if you look carefully maybe you'll recognize some trees but she's that baby could look like you know million people on the planet you know if you look at a picture but it's our babies our babies on picture but she it's for her I mean the way I interpreted she choose smart kid and for her she goes well I was born and that was great but I really mom did the work you did the technology and I happened to be there at the right time and she goes I want to be successive everywhere she goes he could she's really success she's a very good writer she's she's also very good with technology and stuff and she said I know what I want to do and she's very focused she's a she's a very busy kid and and she she she has her own life and and she does not want people to say you know like for example I'm on her college application she did not want to have it I'm the camera phone baby because she wanted to accept it somewhere on her own merits not because she was as she happened to be there and mom and dad did the work so and so for the members of our audience who maybe aren't quite as familiar is my sort of geek fascination with your store key maybe walk us through what actually came together because it's it's such a phenomenal story the there's an amazing dramatization of it on your on your site on what is it memo musings from Philippe its memo calm memo calm but you know in sort of condensing this this story for years you've been working on a backbone on a service the server-side service for sharing the photo and then your wife goes into labor and you are macgyvering the individual pieces to create a hardware chain that can interface with the server side solution right up to the birth of your daughter um take us through that you know part of that day that that's an amazing joining of events to all arrive at the at one moment in time it's approved that if it wasn't for the last moment nothing would get done so so so it's a other way that dramatization was not done by us we discovered it a week ago some film company was doing that as far as an encyclopedia of Technology and accomm protected so we had nothing to do with it just just took the story and made it happen we thought it was pretty good so what happened so I think what's important to understand as you as you put forward is that a lot of work had been done before on all the server infrastructure all the mechanics of storing remotely a picture and notifying a list of people that there's a picture that might be interested in through an email and with a link back to that server so that they could actually if they wanted look at the picture and post a comment or something I got and so now the question was at the maternity here in Santa Cruz when you're there at the time you didn't have any way to connect or it anything and I know I wanted to take pictures and this was 1997 was the first year where there was a successful digital camera that took pictures 240 by 320 if I remember correctly like quarter VGA and three every hazard right ad and that was that was the Kazi of QV 10 winner 210 whatever it was called and so we have one of those for the first time we could have one of those and it could it could you know they had a little cable and could download to your laptop at the time you know like most people I had to Sheba procure a laptop and I could download pictures and I I had built a little control program that was able to actually rapidly download these pictures and push him through the modem port and and and and and and do that and and you know using a wired modem that's how we communicated with the server right the problem is there was no no no Archie 11 plug until online in a full line in the you could use and so I had a start tag and so the start tag could act as a wireless 1200 baud Wireless Odom's and it had a little blood plug but the challenge is always you know the protocols I figure it out but the question is how do you connect really so the control program what would be in the MCU was on the laptop how do you connect a laptop to star tech and have the laptop tells us start tag the phone because an analog phone at a time it was an analogue start at how does the laptop physically you know in Hardware well what's the wires talk to to this phone and tell it to to use a wireless modem in there to actually send to the server those images sequentially and automatically it's just like a job control language you know the old days and so you're putting this together in in the waiting room of the hospital well I actually it's a it's a maternity we were very lucky because Sutter in Santa Cruz in a cave mem tourney with very large rooms actually that have in it a Jacuzzi and they have a desk oh you're lucky you were just kicking back in the jicama absolutely we were there and she had a long we got there early they sell you can you can either go back home where you can stay here because you know you're probably 12 hours from where we need you as well is just a because it's very comfortable and it's a comfortable place it's it's a maternity not a hospital and and there's a lot of room so I had my desk in 11 missus yeah well might as well do this and see if I can advance the project you know it sucks there's a piece of the product and I got stuck and and and and that's because Sonia's contribution really you know I said I was like started I mean really the issue is distorted is that the the female laptop I know how to hack that but the the phone is really difficult because you know it's like you know you couldn't take these phones apart really requires it and then Sonia's idea was don't you don't we have a car kit in the in the car you know you so he plugged the blah blah and it actually was able to do a hands-free call and I said wow that that's a great idea do you mind if I tear it off she goes I even if I'm I am you gonna do it anyway so okay I'll be right back so I took a bunch of tool when the pliers and etc and went to the car and basically undid the work of putting in a car kit I had I've installed the park it myself and so so you know the car KK with a little no enclosure for for speaker then there was a cable and then there was also another cable with microphone so he clipped the microscope to the top of the of the of the you know the guys referred that maybe put it on the visor and then you have your old box that was a speaker it was actually worked quite well and and and it all plugged into this to the back of the phone and I said well at least I have a plug because that's the hardest thing and with all the wires coming out now I need to figure out what to do with each wire and that was really the key to making it work then exactly and there is that too because I couldn't without that back blog and and and something any so I am t you know got rid of the speaker got old and used that actually as a place to to cross wires to test things and all that and it works and that was really kind of the miracle of the day it was a 18 hours of non-stop work really it was like focused like you know how you get in the zone right so I was in the zone and I says I'm gonna make this work and that's how that's how it function and it was funny because usually you're not off so Sonia Sonia's delivery happened let me see you what just happened here Sonia's delivery huh you're very small suddenly Oh if you've switched to a different page it'll probably shrink me but that's okay you're BA I got it I got here yesterday right there we go I'm not as familial Skype so so what happened was was that after 18 hours is that you know I think we should do a c-section and usually in there so when you see sexually you get into the operating room office right and usually you're not allowed to bring anything into an operating room but we were lucky that the delivery surgeon was a geek who knew me adilyn happier he was he was trying to learn to program and I giving him tips and stuff like that and helped him out it so the kid I bring this is cool what's this going to do and he was an eye on a prop problem getting him focused on Sonia and the delivery but don't worry he does that all the time I was much more interested on the phone and oh wow what are you doing yeah right right right baby show me this camera let's get there as it's a big kid Go Go focus on that so funny that it hey Dad but the pumps not working I go look I'll I'll stop working on this I'll go fix your palm let's just go focus on you do your java it was pretty funny but it was it was it was a I was very lucky that that and he was he witnessed the whole thing that he he's funny because he's very articulate guy is actually a great surgeon and he he he really was with a piece of it because he anybody else I think said I can't do that all these wires and stuff alog because I was fixing up but he was he was great and he's funny when he talks about that and and and so that happened there and kind of the it all came together and probably 24 hours you know there it was very intense at Sony I didn't sleep for 24 hours out of either because I was just so yeah I was in blue zone and that's how it all transpired any I don't think the process was important what happened right away is like we had a list you know some yes from Korea I'm from your Europe and so we have people all around the world friends and family and people we know and we had a list of about 2,000 people some of them were friends you know 200 of them probably ecologist by then that need probably 50 family or something I got then the rest were people we knew through work or whatever and we just took that list and it was on the server and we just assisted work as advertised and suddenly I started getting you know I was watching these these these annotations on the server and and I go well people go how did you do that we could see pictures say you're sending are happening in real time and because there was a time date stamp on him and any because how do you do this and the one of the first person to respond to that was the guy from The Wall Street Journal Walt Mossberg would just retired and Walt Mossberg says how do you do this I said well Walt Mossberg ask that that's pretty good I he goes yeah I want something I need something new with Walt Mossberg doesn't know how to do it right and so so at that point we said wow you know this is our next gig you know we're going to make this camera phone thing successful and you know we this is like the Polaroid of the 21st century and we're going to find a way to make it happen what do you then realize is there's a big difference between building the concept car and having a car that can drive 100,000 miles on the road and getting the roads to accept us and the question we had is that everybody we accept we talked in North America Kotick in particular and pollard they were clueless and as I met with the seals of these companies I actually spent two or three days in Rochester you know talking to sand carp and all his team and they didn't see it so the the Kodak man today as you know subsequently they went bankrupt he said uh no one wants to do this digital thing look at the VGA quick people silver highlight is there forever we have all these many labs one our labs and everything no one's employed were the same way the big thing at the time was they were going to make a printer that was be attached that would be the next version of the Lloyd was going to be digital so it was going to create they were going to take a digital picture atlas and instead of being a film it was going to be a printer that would get and I was going in a little mini printer for the right-hand - suits on to the labs you know I went well you know if you didn't have to web maybe that's a good idea of it so let me get this I remember telling to see you you're going to print this picture like this right and you're going to hand it to whether people are going to look at are you are you going to use a photocopy machine as oh no we print one more so I said so what if you want to share this with somebody in Tanzania any good oh you send it through the mail I said okay so we have this instant picture mail how would you like that and they didn't take then I went to Motorola and and Chris was the son of the founder was running the with the CEO of the company and he called his whole staff I remember being in their boardroom and discussing it everybody was going now people want better voice people want better voice mail people want this people want there were no texts in the time you know Texas just rang the guy was about to emerge so they they didn't see it and I insisted on an update they were not interested and that's one of inthose you've created this process and you have you know this anecdotal experience I shouldn't even say anecdotal you got this test case experience which is sort of one of the perfect momentous life events that someone would want to share this story is still being lost on the executive teams of the companies you're pitching this to well I made a mistake the mistake that I made is that I'm not a I'm a technologist I'm not a marketing sales guy and I should have said he done exactly what you said which on we saw momentous events instead my demo was suit live make it work live with people there take that pictures and Sharon chives or something and say okay why and then I think if I had said okay it's your baby pictures it's a wedding pictures it's a selfie take on the beach whatever it is it's you know and by the way J phone invented the selfie the practical something if not do you remember the phone at all absolutely well and J phone actually kicked off with that notion I love the fact that that for an entire generation of phones we had those little mirrors on that so our gadgets yeah because we only had one we only had one imaging sensor and so that people don't realize that it's out that Jade the concept of J phone was a selfie I mean Dane right selfie really plucked practically so the the I wasn't successful I didn't do a good job cell but I think they were thick as a brick because they're old web background model on wind back record eckworth right and they couldn't see the paradigm shift there was a paradigm shift which was everything is moving to digital photography is willing to for digital story phones are moving to phones are going to become camera phones and smart phones and they're going to be one and you're not going to be able you know milking Nokia try to relaunch you know old phones and say people said I don't want that I do too much molecular they were on paradigm chef and all these guys have had missed a paradigm shift that every time there's a paradigm shift in technology like that you have some players who completely lose it there were major players you know me when the paradigm shifted personal computers happen you know that people like Dagon Burroughs and Wang and all that that one they all disappeared I mean people don't realize at the time how classy what happened I think they're saying things happening in the sleep industry right now is that you know we're seeing him but there's a paradigm shift from bed to smart bed from sleep to to digital quantified sleep and all that and and additional magician the traditional mattress companies if they don't harness that paradigm shift will will see the same challenges as the Kodak's Motorola's more kids so from those from those initial meetings where there was difficulty in getting this idea across there were a few companies that that were kind of leading into this conversation and sort of ready to take so obviously J phone with a was the sharp sh0 for they got on board and then you want to had a partnership with Sprint um that happened I hate it so how that happened was look so I felt you know I three four months in Japan pretty much and the we who basically spent time in Japan and and and so we created this business and it was great we did all the transcoding for them and all that and you know I first went to do kumal and this we NTT DoCoMo which was the the big dominating wildlife company internet and they were also a thick as a brief whoa you know they were doing the Japanese you know right weed no no and you know you didn't get a response and you spent a lot of time so until we found chaise longue and and and there was nobody and they took it on and they were very successful as you know so in in in early 2000 so as you know Jeff ona launched in late 1999 if I remember and in early too you know a few months later this writer from wired about parks saw the J phone when sharp saying and realize that of our involvement and so since I want to write a story and so he wrote the story and I think appeals to over 2000 this year something I got of Wired which this was supposed to be the title of the story was the big picture and the prior basically the idea with the paradigm shift and he oldest was what was great and and what's happening and they they even came to shut the cover picture and a left and then this is the issue where Napster died where we're not forgot unplug right right this is that famous issue where I got a call from the editors of wired say we're really sorry we disrupted we're still we're going to run your story in there but the proper going to be a a a black cover funeral right a cover for the funeral of Napster because yeah so that's a famous that's that famous issue and so they ran that and but they ran our story which was you know a big story but parks is a little long story and very descriptive and he's still around and people ask him and he says well it's amazing because when we were together we described to him what was going to happen with citizen journalism with telemedicine with ole lamented it all happened and he was very skeptical at not but he wrote a great story and a couple of guys at Sprint in Overland Park you know cancer read the story that was a guy copia Babu and a guy called Danny dominant if I remember and yeah and daddy wrote that and I got a call from Pierre saying I'm with friend where you know there were the small carrier compared to AT&T Verizon this time and I want to do what what what J phone didn't in Japan it in the US I said well that's great because we can't convince AT&T or Verizon to do it right now and so we went to cause you but an office here and it would you be interested they were very either because they had lost J phone opportunity was sharp right in his right and so that's how we launched in the u.s. whisper and cause EO together we build a whole infrastructure for spirit everything we not only built it but we ran it for them so it was software-as-a-service really it was a platform of the service that software as a service and and they were very successful that puts sprint for the next five years melted like crazy they were the only or the you I remember that we have have it working and and you know AT&T Verizon had to come to to to to dad firehouse at one point but it took him several years and so all those years print was very successful so with with that now we finally got a foothold in the United States people are starting to understand this concept and from my from my rememberings that this this was a field that exploded rather quickly I mean obviously there were a number of those conversations that will your trading expediency for quality obviously if you want quality you've got to go to a standalone camera but these phone things they're kind of fun to play with up to this point now where we find that phone cameras have largely eclipsed t' standalone camera sales people can leave their their proper camera at home most days because their phone cameras are able to to carry the weight to carry the load in there in many cases just as good or if not better than some of the consumer point-and-shoot cameras what are some of your feelings you look at you look at this landscape and you see the the the past that you've created for people to create content and to distribute content what does that feel like I mean looking twenty years back to now this is such an amazing story and it's exploded so quickly that this was all sort of directly from your your handiwork yeah and you know the beauty of the camera phone is that it's always in your pocket or in your handbag or in your hand and so you always have it with you and that is you know the concept was was really that one is that instantly share what you experience and so it led you know when you look at it what it led to like citizen journalism you know you you know I think it's saved the lives of people in many ways and and and change the political landscape in a lot of places because you can't hide there's always someone with a camera phone who's fillable people with phones or multiply and I say it happened this way I don't know look at the video the camera come through and it's pretty funny and and and and and so that's a perfect example another one is you know if you go if you get it out of the US where we're it you go say to Africa or a you know circle third-world country you find people who don't have a house well home who don't have a laptop we don't have anything nice but they have a camera phone a smartphone with a camera and they now have memories and now those memories are stored on Facebook whatever they do it and they share it and they notify and they do all that stuff and that's something they have before they have a home they have to have a car before they have any you know they even have a bed a lot of these before they have public charging stations and so I I really that's the social impact and the impact of something as like that to me is is more important than the size of the industry you know I mean there's plenty of people who build you know incredible you know large businesses and they're very successful and alladin that good for them but you know I mean yeah it's great but my focus is more like you know you spent time on this planet you try to make misses and misters everyone's life a little better not just claim that I made a lot of money but you know Windows is better or something well it's not but but you look you know you you you you just look at you look at you know what can you what have you done really directly with technology that has had an impact I think that's that's really an important piece of it and and you know that's the power of the people who make the ARPANET that turn into the internet turn into the into into the the web and that turn you know and to into the ability for for mrs. and mr. everyone to do things that they couldn't do before and I think that that's a to me that's the important piece of it is is yeah it's exciting it it's fantastic when you see that the camera you get on us run a latest Samsung or something I got you go wow this is better than you know you'll never use that that that although that functionality is it's pretty amazing and you know now there's extensions even you know what the good drones now are sending directly to your to your phone that stuff which is streamed directly and you know and now suddenly you can see it from space you know I mean it's it's really the personal communicator and everyone connected with everyone at old times and suddenly well and your story again in the creation of this is something that hit very close to home personally is I I was finishing my photography book while my wife was in the hospital bro we were going to have our daughter and I've got my DSLR there I've got lenses I've got I mean I'm prepped I'm ready for my daughter to arrive and when the moment actually came that I got to see my daughter for the very first time my phone was the right tool it wasn't that it was a compromising quality it wasn't that it was just easier to email from my phone once the photo was there was this was more discrete the optics were plenty good enough for me to capture the moment and it kept me closer to my daughter holding her for the very first time now then if I had taken the time to break out my SLR and pop on a really fancy macro lens and have this giant piece of machinery in between me and her in that moment and you know if when I when I read your story and when I especially after watching the dramatization that video is is really charming it's something that that personally has affected my family and it's something that I think a lot of people can can will resonate with a lot of people a lot of people can can sort of express those moments I had this or or maybe it was something dangerous or maybe it was something momentous or maybe it was something mundane like you know a cop says I was parked in this wrong position and so I took a photo of where my car was and I showed the judge exactly that that now we've got this ubiquitous control this is democratized our ability to tell a story or to share a moment or to join a conversation again something that we've not always had had had in the past exactly I agree 100% I actually you know the funny thing is we live in Santa Cruz there's a lighthouse because at the Harbor we're close to a lighthouse and so a lot of times we walk our dogs whatever and there's people at lighthouse is nice at sunset in a lab nice white lighthouse so if there's always people who say hey can you take a picture of us I feel like if they're asking me they don't they don't know just what edit a thing it's great it's a great experience because there we go you know that's exactly right now they have them they share it instantly and you couldn't even do that and how would they do that in any other way and they had the camera there they probably wouldn't have carried a camera it's reshaped a lot of the industry at a photography industry but you know that better than I do it and there was a huge paradigm shift for the Stuber fee industry and some of them made it and some of them didn't make it as well so I want to circle back to something else because I know you've been keeping busy you've been keeping busy since the invention of you know sort of photo sharing online 20 years ago and you mentioned briefly you were you were talking about sleep and in reading through some of the the articles on memo comm this is something that I think you've taken up as your next cause or your next what what's going to interest you in the next phase of your career and it's something where I kind of feel the technological barrier between services and data and then human biology is probably going to be the next battleground or is probably going to be the next exciting consumer area we see little hints of it with things like fitness trackers you know getting room I get my heart rate you know 24 hours a day of when I wear my watch kind of a thing and that's that's really great but I don't think we fully explored all of the opportunities for improving the quality of life not just bombarding physiology with more services and more apps and more data I agree with that and so sleep is a very interesting thing it's um we found a fit roughly a third of our lives in our bedroom sleeping or supposedly sleeping eight hours a day that's a third of our lives six and a half billion people it's a lot of time and we sleep we live in a sleep-deprived society and every time I make a speech in a big you know hotel or something area some convention or conference let me always ask people who said too much last night there's always a sign that otherwise the smart as is always said too much okay if I ask people who would have wished they could have slept a little more and they all think everybody raises their head I'm talking to you fresh from a trip that I got stuck in Shanghai and I'm still on the wrong timezone in my brain I'm I'm Way off my sleep cycle right now so so so you got it to everybody sleep deprived in some way you know you see people falling asleep at business meetings and other I mean where else we could drive then we have work we have kids we have fear you know a game of Thrones to watch we have video games to play we have whatever it is that we do I mean you know Facebook actually Facebook Never Sleeps that's from and and so people have a certain the way we look at it certain sleep budget you know you you basically have six eight hours a day that you you basically know that you're going to sleep the problem is you know you get all these sleep doctors and tell people oh you should sleep more so usually you actually sit at least leave six hours you should sleep it that doesn't work we're busy we're looking at Facebook we're doing playing a video game whatever it so it doesn't work so what can work is people have a certain sleep budget and look at sleep just like you look at you know a 5,000 meter run is look you can look at at your time and you try to improve your performance so my whole focus has been to understand sleep and try to give people the tools or build them over time that help improve your sleep efficiency performance so that in the same amount of time if I can improve your sleep efficiency by 20% and you sleep six hours I just gave you over an hour more of sleep without changing any of your schedule so you should be happy and I should be happy and that's really what we're we're looking at and so we've built non-invasive monitoring systems they get and under mattress away don't see him you don't have to wear anything you don't have to charge anything that are able to collect that information that respiration rate heart rate all that to give our AI bike and that's cloud base AI by again the information it needs to actually help you with personalized tips and coaching to help you be more successful in your sleep improve over time the quality of your sleep and and and and and and if you have better sleep and you've been you will perform better and everything you do during the day whether it's work whether it's relationships whether it's sports and so that's what we look at and so is this uh is this a consumer facing business yet or is this still in a sort of a prototyping or testing phase or their products that people can engage with now for that kind of data so my what I do is always a b2b my customers are people like Nike like Simmons bedding like ceramic and all that I built technology for these guys I don't hey I'm not a market here and a sales guy I want to stay away from that because it's really difficult and once you start doing that then you're not really building technology it's very dry you're just you're just because I rather build technology suit for people and let them go sell it so yes so our partners at at Simmons Serta Beautyrest have actually just released the first version of what they call a sleep tracker monitor and it's at they sell it through their bedding channels which are you know companies like Jordans and all these okay because that's where they sell their mattresses these are kind of sell millions of mattresses a year and they actually just put it on Amazon but uh and so they you know the debate if is 150 our solution that that you just put a longer processor into the wall for two sensors under your mattress and then the whole AI base cloud that we run doesn't work and then you get everyday a report on your sleep and tips and personalized tips and coaching that help you improve your sleep and that's our version one and that's how you know it's a it's really an interesting challenging problem similar challenges because if you have we don't have them yet we have you know maybe a hundred thousand households using the system but just a hundred thousand bed phones during the night smart home streaming you know eight hours worth of heart rate and all that all night a lot of data there's a lot of data so we had to solve very difficult and does that data has to fit into machine learning and AI engine that allows us to analyze in real time how you're sleeping and then very rapidly notify you as that's how you perform against yourself or just you know ha the same day of the week last week or versus people like you which is you know looking at a demographics of people for example your age group your weight guru and fitness level and see how you perform and and and why would it be that you would perform as well in your sleep and so it's really fascinating has a fantastic team of scientists and data scientists and mathematicians and all that and it's a it's a real exciting space and has Sonya continue to work with you on these projects like after after picture picture phones and camera phones is this is something she's still involved with or was she more of a digital artist no she she she's to a hundred percent involved we do this together I don't think were we actually worked well together sheesh is a digital artist and a pianist and a cello player but she's she's a she she's also a very good operational person and a very good trick you tinker and she's much more organized operationally than I have so so she I picked my wife very similarly haha how do you know she maybe she picked you I I feel that's probably a more accurate way of putting it yes okay so it's so we have we have a very we work well together you know we we know that our boundaries in Aladdin we don't sit in the same office only on that we don't do but we we work together well and she's she's a hundred percent of part of of this of this company full power and our customers are people like Nike like cinnamon Serta beauty rest and people I got so it's an exciting company very AI based cloud base AI because really the secret is in in getting those massive streams of data and what you do with it and how you interact with it how you build artificial intelligence extra can deal with these things in right and in in real time because well I don't hate that to the customer to it's those right you know you have a mountain of data even just for some of like my fitness tracking if it's two charts and graffiti I might really not know what my goal is moving forward is sometimes it does need to be sort of broken down and spelled out to me in a very simple way exactly it's like it's it's to to to understand yourself first you want to quantify yourself but quantifying is not good enough it's you know it's the infographics type of lines you know how am i doing against myself how am i doing against people just like me and that's true for sleep but it's also is true for how many steps you're being active you are etc so that's it's a it's a quantified self right absolutely mr. Khan I can't thank you enough for joining us on this on the show joining us tonight it was something that was very important for me to have this conversation with you just how much a part of my life this technology has become and especially as I was growing up you know we're talking the late 90s I was just getting out of high school watching the system's evolved and watching this technology explode and and going from the early days of where I was carrying around Palm Pilots and Windows Mobile pocket pcs and being made fun of to seeing just how pervasive you know like I felt pretty good I was ahead of the curve on some of that stuff but to have you wanted to be able to share this story that 20 years ago we couldn't communicate this idea or why people would care about it and now we live in a world where we can't live without it is amazing and so one I just want to thank you personally for being a part of your vaping this landscape but then also thank you for joining us to have this chat and thanks for having us again you know communicating is a key part of building technology and you're obviously great communicators so thank you for doing that but absolutely my pleasure you