I am pretty fortunate to be able to sit down with Andrew Thomas of Nexa, he may even be Dubai's own futurologist, and have a chat about what is interesting or cool or important in the world of tech today.
As you can see from that photo it is not just about the tech it is about having a bit of fun and learning some new things.
We licked off the show talking about the Fitbit Ionic, again, this is easily the best fitness tracker I have ever used and it really makes it easy to keep motivated. I have had the opportunity to use a lot of trackers but the Fitbit is the only one I have stuck with and the dashboard to keep track of the data collected is super. The funny thing is I am not using 1/2 of the features of the watch.
Grab the podcast here.
We had a quick chat about the Google Arts & Culture's new selfie and art search feature, unfortunately it is not enabled here but it would be pretty cool.
Here is how you can grab a look at all we spoke about on the show.
OK this is cool Google does some crazy things to gather data and test stuff! ONLY IN USA! (https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/15/psa-googles-art-selfie-feature-is-us-only-for-now/?ncid=rss)
If you've ever wondered if there's a museum portrait somewhere that looks like you and you're ready to have your ego crushed, there's now an app for that. Google Arts & Culture's latest update now lets you take a selfie, and using image recognition, finds someone in its vast art collection that most resembles you. It will then present you and your fine art twin side-by-side, along with a percentage match, and let you share the results on social media, if you dare.
1 in 6 Americans own a smart speaker! Pretty cool!
About 7 percent of Americans reportedly bought at least one speaker between Black Friday (November 24th) and then end of 2017, with 4 percent of Americans having bought their very first speaker.
Not surprisingly, Amazon still rules this fledgling market. The study indicates that 11 percent of Americans have one of Amazon's Echo speakers, while 4 percent have a Google Home of some kind thanks to its relatively late arrival. Just how people use their speakers is more complicated. About 66 percent of buyers plan to entertain others by streaming music, asking questions or playing games, while 64 percent anticipate using theirs for smart home control.
These speakers aren't necessarily replacing the devices you'd expect, either. While 39 percent of owners say they're using radios less often, and 34 percent say the same for smartphones, you also see significant impacts on TV (30 percent), tablets (27 percent), PCs (26 percent) and even the printed word (23 percent). About 44 percent also said they increased use of voice assistants on their phones, which suggests that these speakers are raising awareness of these AI helpers -- no doubt what companies like Amazon and Google are hoping for.
Facebook activity
CES
Assistive Hearing is next
Cool smart kitchen!
Term Quiz!
Google win CES
