Gadgetory

Gmail hangouts Google Drive these products are pretty much ubiquitous in modern offices this voiceover right now I wrote this script with a colleague in Google Docs that's all been online and now Google is trying to take its workplace tools from the cloud to the physical world we stopped by Google's New York offices to check out its first attempt big expensive surprisingly playful device called the jam board so the jam board is essentially a digital whiteboard it's a 55 inch 4k TV that's meant to solve the miserable experience that is collaborating with people remotely everything you do can be synchronized across multiple jam boards tablets and the web so that different co-workers can join in so even though this is something that's must be in an office this is weirdly fun and playful the whole design is it is bright red it has these soft curved sides material is actually kind of a soft plastic it just really looks like a blown-up kids tablet or something like that the devices you use are also the same way this is sort of like a giant crayon and there's no real technology here you just start writing in it and it works the eraser is the same way it's like a big puck and even has microfiber on the eraser side which is pretty neat because that way you end up cleaning off the display as you're erasing the tool that I really love is a hand writing tool my handwriting is absolutely horrible I can barely read it sometimes but the jam board for my experience has been really good if you're to get out look at that that happened pretty quickly I really amazed because my handwriting is really really terrible so this is pretty cool and actually makes this experience a lot more usable for somebody like me and you can just grab these you can manipulate the moon if you want you can just throw them away if you don't need them anymore the other thing is there is a shape tool that's really similar to that where again if you don't make a perfect shape it's not gonna always perfectly correct you in that case it did but this is an Internet textured whiteboard so nice to go a little bit further and you can bring in things from the web which is pretty cool so we have this verge page pulled up and I can just crop it and bring this in and now I can mark it up how I want so I guess circle the author so you can go back and circle the author here point out what it's about but these things are also on layers which I didn't point out and so I can move and scale these things around to do whatever I want with them and that's kind of neat because again this is another thing that normally you'd be sending files back and forth rather than being able to just draw on them which is a much more natural experience for people there are a few other options as well like sticky notes you can write text on and all kinds of emoji to play with there's even a selfie function which maybe you shouldn't use too much at work but the big deal here is being able to collaborate with people who aren't in the room so we called Lauren good out in our San Francisco office hey hey what's going on Lauren and you can see you can see me right now right I can see you and it appears to be a conference room yes is a beautiful party room so I think what I have to do is there's a specific button you can't do video and at the board at the same time but if I flip the switch I go away and I think now you can see everything that I've been writing right oh yeah I know I look what you posted an article page yeah I was able to get pasted another full page from Caitlin yeah I know I started so you can see can't even see my web searches and stuff or is it no so that's just that's not showing up to you I can't see your web searches okay now I just be a bunch of shapes and the words horrible so I'm here plotting something I see right now this is all a little bit confusing Lauren can't interact with a jam board because she's on the web she also can't see me and the jam board at the same time which is kind of strange when the jam board is actually out Lauren would be able to get more involved Google is launching a jam board app for iOS and Android and it basically turns your tablet into a miniature version of the jam board it's a little less fun but it works including the handwriting recognition so even without the app we were able to do a little planning for my next trip out to San Francisco if you put in AT&T Park again I remember be grab some lunch and then go to a game after work with people in the office AT&T Park and now I have go on this and I put that in okay cool yeah I don't know exactly when they're playing so we'll have to that's okay I need to look up how baseball works before we go I don't know how many offices will actually end up with a jam board the product costs $5,000 before annual service fees but if you're in a workplace willing to spend that kind of money the jam board seems like a surprisingly practical and fun way to collaborate even at this early imperfect stage and Google is already planning for the future third-party integrations for jam board are on the table I know I want to see Trello on there and Google tells us it's interested in using hardware to solve other problems in the workplace - so the jam board is only just the beginning thanks for watching our video on Google's jam board if you want to see more stuff like this be sure to follow us on YouTube calm the bird or you know this address right here