 It's Monday, Veronica. It is. It's Monday, June 29th, 2015. You can't spell fun without the phoneme un, which is also in Monday. Yes. It's close to fun as I'm going to get. Ready? Google Translate says, support DTNS. If you fail to become a Patreon, all searches will return a Rick Roll. Go to bit.ly slash help DTNS or say hello to Mr. Rick Astley. This is the Daily Tech News for Monday, June 29th, 2015. I'm Tom Mara, joining me today. As she does most Mondays, although we threw a few people off last week, but she wasn't here on Monday. Kind of rocked their world. Veronica Belmont, host of Dear Veronica on a gadget. How are you? I'm good. How are you? I am good. We had one person was like, I thought Veronica was on Mondays. And I was like, yes, she is usually. She's like, but she was on a Tuesday. And I'm like, yes, that happened. Sometimes people will not be on exactly the same day every week. He was like, OK, I think it was a good little switcheroo though. It worked out OK. It keeps things interesting. Mix it up. We're going to talk about Facebook's Snapchat imitator here in a second. Are you all right over there? Yeah. Well, I'm excited. You've got a good interesting take on this in our main discussion about people eating other people's lunch and the second mover advantage, et cetera. So let's just get right into the headlines. What I'm talking about is TechCrunch reporting Facebook has consolidated some of its photo upload features and added a couple as well to its app. When you upload a photo now to Facebook, you'll immediately see a prompt to swipe to either autocorrect or use a filter. Works really well. You can also choose to overlay colored text and paste on stickers. But those sound familiar. That's because you've used Snapchat or maybe Line before. The new features are rolling out to iOS app users and are being tested for Android apps should come to all the Android users soon as well. They want their stickers and they want their crazy stuff. That's what the people want. Now, everybody wants stickers? People, you know, I think yes. When I ask individuals, mostly they say no. Really? But that belies the facts that Line has built their entire business on stickers. Yeah, if the entire continent of Asia is stoked on stickers, I think they're on to something. Because it is blowing up over there. But we'll get more on that a little bit later. But Yelp paid legal scholar Tim Wu and economist Michael Luca to work on its data science team on a research paper that shows evidence that Google manipulates search results in its favor. No kidding. According to recode, Yelp used a browser plug in their recreated Google search page stripped of the one box listings that Google began inserting in 2009 for searches that trigger local results. That page was tested against Google's normal version with 2,690 participants. Users clicked through on the stripped down version at a 45% higher rate. Google has repeatedly argued that its revamped search puts the most relevant results in front of searchers and had declined to comment on the paper. This is the first evidence we've seen, like hard research evidence, that Google creating its own search results gives you a less good experience, for lack of better phrasing. And Tim Wu has even changed on this. He's like, I didn't think that the FTC investigation should have found anything with Google. He's like, now I've got more facts and I'm changing my mind. It looks like when Google tweaks its results, it ends up being a lesser experience, at least according to the test. Yeah, I find that very curious. I definitely want to read up more on this because I do find that when I pick Google searches, they tend to be what I'm looking for. So personally, I've had a pretty good experience with that and I've come to rely on those results because I hate having to click around. And it really just goes to show how our search habits have been formed by Google throughout the years and how we've come to kind of, well, if it's not on the top, then it's probably not what I'm looking for. If I have to click to the second page, I'm doing something wrong. And what we do with this information is not obvious, right? It all depends on whether Google has a predominant share and how big of a predominant share. This will make a big difference in Europe, for instance. It may not make as big of a difference in the United States where more people are using other search engines, but it definitely changes the conversation a bit to say, well, we've got some evidence that Google, messing with his search results, make their search results less good in a competitive marketplace than whatever, that just means that you might want to go choose another search engine, right? But if you're in a 90% market like Europe, then that carries a different meaning. And as if on Q, Reuters reports that Google now has until mid-August to answer charges from the European Commission that it abused its market share in a dozen EU countries. The EC accused Google of distorting search results to favor its own shopping services. Google could face a billion euro fine based on Google AdWords revenue generated from European users, as well as revenue from its comparison, shopping service, and search queries. The EC is always on top of things, I feel like. They always got their fingers in things. But yeah, this is one where I've been of the mind that, okay, yeah, 90% market share in Europe, definitely you need some competition there, but if people don't wanna use Google search, then they shouldn't have to. But if you are, I don't know that it changes my mind that it looks like maybe Google search results are degraded. To me, it's the same situation, which is you do need more competition. You need to make sure that people have a choice and that Google doesn't have such a big market share that they're choking off other competitors. Tech Crunch is reporting that PayPal will update its user agreement to clarify how the company is allowed to contact customers. After an earlier updated policy on robocalls ran afoul of the US FCC. The revised user agreement clarifies that PayPal primarily uses prerecorded or auto-dialed calls to protect customers from fraud, provide account notices to customers, or collect a debt. It also states that PayPal will not market to customers using automated calls and texts without explicit written consent. Customers can revoke that consent at any time. Yeah, that's a good switch, although the debt collection thing I bet is gonna send a few people into paroxysm. Awkward. Yeah, but this is a good alteration to that policy. Recode reports Facebook has chosen Johannesburg, South Africa as its first business office on the continent. It will serve as a sales office for regional businesses. Nunu Chinggilla, who is a chairman of Ogilvy, South Africa will run the office as Facebook's new head of Africa. I did not know that Ogilvy had a South Africa office together, so learning all sorts of things from that report. TechCrunch would like to remind you that Apple Music launches at 8 a.m. Pacific time tomorrow, and so does iOS 8.4, which is required for Apple Music. In case you forgot, Apple Music will have a three-month free trial and a streaming radio service called Beats One, which features artist-hosted programming sections as well as a team of full-time DJs headed by ex-BBC host Zane Lowe. You know, I saw Patrick, not Patrick, talking about this, Patrick Beja. Oh, Patrick Beja, yeah. Talking about this over on Twitter this morning, and he said that he was very excited about the launch of Apple Music, and that it might get him back into new releases and new music once again, and I agreed with him, and we don't agree all that often, surprisingly. So we had an idea. Now, why is this going to get you into more new music than Spotify or Amazon Music or Artio or... You know, I don't know. I don't really have a good answer. I'm just hoping that it does. It's just Apple magic. It's just, you know, we've talked about this on the show a few times. I haven't been satisfied with my Artio or Spotify experiences. I don't know how or why Apple will be different. I do tend to find that I learn about new music primarily through Serious XM, so I'm maybe hoping that if any of this new Beats One stuff is any good that I will also get that same kind of benefit. I like DJ-hosted content. I like streaming music that's being done live, so I'm excited about that feature, I think more than anything else. Yeah, and that's a feature you can get without having to subscribe. You can just listen to Beats One. I think I'm definitely gonna tune into that and hear what they have to say. I'm more of a playlist management guy, and I don't like the restrictions that iTunes Match puts on what I can store in the cloud, so I don't think I'll, I may do the free trial for a month. Why would you not? I mean, why? Yeah, I mean, because it's free. Exactly, why would I not? I don't foresee myself wanting to keep it, though. Now, I have to ask why not? Because I'm perfectly happy with what I have. You like what you have. Yeah. I feel like I'm not smart enough musically to really make, curate my own playlists. Like, I don't know what's good out there anymore. I'm two out of the loop, so I rely on people's heart. See, that's the difference between you and I. I know I'm not smart enough and don't care. You're just like, I'm just a cool guy. I'm a cool guy, John Merritt. No, no, I'm just a, I wanna listen to my own dumb tunes and no one else should have to, obviously, but I will enjoy them. If I could just listen to Lithium on SiriusXM for all time and just hear the same songs that I grew up liking forever and ever, I'd probably be okay. That's okay. A little blind melon for you. A little blind melon? All right. Let's check in on the subreddits. We get lots of our story ideas from there, dailytechnewshow.reddit.com. Get in there and vote if you haven't yet. Hermoth and Flying Spatula, both submitted versions of the story that the US Supreme Court has declined to hear Google's appeal of the Google Oracle API copyright dispute that essentially rules in Oracle's favor because ours technically explains, Google used names, declarations, and header lines of the Java API in Android. At first, a San Francisco federal judge ruled that calls to an API could not be copyrighted. A federal appeals court, however, overruled that and said, declaring code and the structure, sequence, and organization of the API packages are entitled to copyright protection. So now the Supreme Court is letting that decision stand. However, it's not over. Google will return to the lower court to determine if the company's use of those API headers counts as fair use, in which case Oracle isn't owed any money. Oracle wants a billion dollars. A billion dollars. You know, I was hoping you would just pass over the amount because I was throwing that out there as a rough amount. I can't remember. They're seeking one billion dollars exactly in damages. Never mind, I was absolutely accurate. There you go, Tom, you know your business. Yeah, but this is a big case. Before we move on though, this is a big case because it could set a lot of precedents for people on their uses of APIs and the idea of an API is like, hey, I'm putting it out here for everyone to use and granted, Google was using it in a different way than an API is usually used, but it could now make some people a little timid or possibly wary of using APIs from companies. Well, you know, that brings up a whole different discussion that's tangentially actually related to our main discussion today, which is what happens when you're a small startup that basically builds your entire product around someone else's API. That larger company or that API generator could effectively shut down your entire business at any given moment. We saw that with Meerkat. We've seen that with other companies in the past where, well, we'll talk more about this later. I keep trying to jump into our topic because I guess I'm excited about it. But it is, it's a major problem. I think it kind of stymies innovation in a way as well. Yeah, it's an interesting story that we'll definitely keep our eyes on. Capt Kipber submitted the BBC article that it has published a list of links removed from Google's European searches as part of the right to be forgotten ruling. BBC head of editorial policy said that the company would continue to publish the list in order to further a meaningful debate about the policy. I don't know how I feel about this. Well, it's certainly legal. The right to be forgotten says that Google as a search engine and any other search engine can be requested to remove a link that is no longer relevant, but could be considered harmful to someone's reputation. And Google has decided on their own to alert the source material if a link from them is being removed, in this case the BBC, and the BBC has decided, well, we're going to create a page that lists all those links so that we can talk about, hey, this is news, there's nothing inaccurate in it. That's the thing that right to be forgotten isn't, hey, correct, a mistake. It's, I was busted for this 10 years ago and it's over. I've moved on and changed, but I don't want people to know about it, so I want it removed from search engines. And BBC rightly is saying, well, we should talk about whether that information should be removed from search engines or not. But it's more than just talking about whether or not it's right. It's continuing to put that information out there. I mean, does that kind of regenerate the search if in effect they're keeping those links and that data? No, I mean, that's a really good question. Like, will this page of search links show up in Google? I don't know, but I understand the right to be forgotten. You wouldn't have this page come up in relation to the search term. Basically what you get to say is, when you search my name, these links shouldn't show up. So I would guess that this link would not show up either. But yeah, I mean, there's nothing in the law that says the page has to be removed or that the site itself can't link to it. I think the controversial thing for some people is that Google is telling them, hey, we're removing this link. Yeah. Star Fury Zeta shared the story that French authorities took two Uber executives, Thibault Simphle, the CEO for France, and Pierre-Dimitri Gorkoti, the CEO for Western Europe, into custody for questioning. Now you're seeing headlines saying they were arrested, which is technically accurate. But the way Uber France puts it, according to a spokesman who told Ars Technica, are general managers for France and Western Europe today attended a hearing with the French police. The primary regulatory issue in France, if you don't know, is that UberPops drivers operate under a VTC license designed for pre-booked travel. And we talked about the demonstrations and protests last week by taxi drivers saying, no, these should be regulated as taxi drivers, not as pre-booked travel like tourists would book for a tour of France or something like that. In any case, whether you wanna call it an arrest or a hearing, the heads of Uber in France have been called in to talk to the police about stuff. Yeah, and Patrick Beichel was pretty mad about this too. You wanna make a comment? Yeah, he wrote on Slack. I tried to talk him into sending us a voicemail, but he's on vacation. So he said, basically the government voted a law clearly targeting UberPop, which is pretending it is a ride-sharing service when it clearly isn't. And Uber is fighting it in the courts, which they clearly have the right to do. But since the taxis are pissed and are burning cars, and maybe since the government wants to scare the big evil US corporations that don't pay taxes in France, quote unquote, even though changing EU tax laws, really what's needed to fix that, they're deciding to crack down on Uber justifying the taxis appalling attitude and violence. Patrick says, how could they ever say burning cars is bad again after that? And stepping on the separation of power again, since the legal procedure is in progress and will likely result in UberPop being illegal through the courts, but they essentially don't want to wait and are pulling stunts on them. So is he essentially calling the French government big wussies? I don't know if he's calling them that, or if he's saying they're just subverting the law, they're sidestepping the law, let the courts do the work. Why are you calling in these executives into the police outside of the court depositions and he's like, let the courts do their job and determine whether the service is legal or not. Why are the police stepping in now? Because in Patrick's view, it looks like they're trying to appease the taxi drivers, which then he thinks would encourage, if I'm getting this right, would encourage future protests to be legitimized. Yeah, I mean, it's giving them, it's giving them a, I immediately go into dog training terms. I'm like, it's giving them a food reward. And although not a food reward, it's rewarding bad behavior in a sense, right? I don't know if it is or not, to be fair. There could be an entirely legitimate reason why you would want to call these executives in based on what happened in the protest. I'm not saying this is the case, it is arguable, I mean, it is possible that because Uber property was damaged or that Uber drivers were put in danger, that they need these CEOs to explain why the service was working that way or maybe they want to tell them, hey, we need to coordinate with you. Oh, we're putting 200 extra officers on the street, which is true, and we want to make sure we protect you. They obviously need to find out more facts about what happened and why Uber is causing this problem. Nobody is thinking that that's why, everybody's thinking it's an enforcement issue, which it also may be, I don't know. Yeah, I mean, it's pretty, it's a serious situation over there. I'm, you know, this has been happening all over the world, but it's really come into a head over in France. And yeah, Uber's got some explaining to do. Well, and that's the case, right? I mean, Uber's coming at this, trying to pretend like, hey, we're just an app that hooks up some people with other people who want to ride in each other's cars. And the fact is that's not true. Uber is much more organized than that. Uber make, you know, I know most Uber people don't even own the car that they're driving. They've borrowed it somehow. So this is not, the Uber has moved on beyond just like, hey, I got a space in my car and I'm headed downtown, right? That's not what it's about anymore. Even UberPop is more organized than that. So Uber needs to recognize that and work with people about it. But at the same time, it has also pushed the taxis to modernize and lots of taxi companies now have their own apps because Uber came in and disrupted the space. So it's good to have competition. It just needs to be done right. Agreed. So it's what the entire headlines was about today. It's good to have competition. Let's do it right. All right, let's talk about this Facebook Snapchat photo uploader and your thoughts that were inspired by the idea that Facebook is creating a feature that looks very similar to features in other apps like Snapchat in mind. Right, I mean, as we mentioned in the news segment, the headline segment, Facebook is creating a very Snapchat-y new feature for photos. And, you know, this is always curious because we, I mean, they were in talks to acquire Snapchat and Snapchat eventually decided to stay independent. And so, you know, it goes to show that Facebook was definitely interested in this kind of technology and these kinds of features way back when because they saw the looming success of Snapchat and said, hey, we want a piece of that. You know, we want to get these users on board. We want to keep them in the Facebook ecosystem. But that ultimately did not happen. So now they're going the other route, which is to take those features and integrate them into their existing products. And we've seen this time and time again. This is, you know, early innovators come out with a product, they enter a new space, create a huge following and then larger, more established companies see this and jump on board. They decide that they want to get into that space. They want to start doing those technologies too. And, you know, do they have the, what's called the second mover advantage because they're essentially coming into the market much later, but without having to face the early issues of not knowing if the technology is going to take off, not knowing how to do it. They don't even have to come up with the idea. The idea is already out there. They just have to build it on their own platform. And so, you know, is it better to be first and original and build your audience that way or is it better to be the second mover come into the marketplace later with an idea and capitalize off the initial success of the innovative startup? And I want to know which of those ends up making a better product for me to use, right? Like which scenario or is it the combination of those that makes better stuff for me as a consumer? We looked into a few things. There's a great article at Northwestern from the Kellogg School about late mover advantage or second mover advantage. And it points out that imitation costs are low because someone else has spent all the money developing something. And we're not talking about patent and copyright infringement. We're talking about legally saying like, oh, you had an idea to do something and now we're gonna do a similar idea, right? But you spent all the money getting that startup and showing that Snapchat is a thing that can work without violating your patents or your copyright. I can also make a competing service and legitimately draft in off of all of that work that you did. Also, if you're the first mover, you may not have enough funds to maintain your advantage. And if the second mover is somebody like Facebook who has a lot of money, they can just throw money at the problem and win away the advantage. Now that doesn't mean if you're a pioneer that you don't have any advantages at all. There's getting people to use your thing first and then they stick with it that repeat use. You have brand loyalty where people know like, I started with Friendster, I'm sticking with Friendster using the example on purpose there. And you get off to a faster sales start, right? Because you get some momentum. So it's a good question, like, which is better? Is it better to be first to market and get that jump and then just try to fend off those late movers? Or is it better to hold back and Apple is the king of this and say, we'll wait and watch what mistakes they make and then we'll come in and do it right. Reinvent the category. And I think ultimately it really depends on the quality of the initial idea and the execution of the initial idea. So someone can have a great idea and come to market with it, but they might not do it right. They may not execute properly. And so even though the idea is great, it's not getting the kind of traction that a larger company, well, you know, let's look at Google. I mean, that is a huge example of the, you know, the coming to market later with the search engine and just doing it better, doing it more simply and ultimately becoming the verb for searching on the internet. I mean, that's a big thing. Coca-Cola though. You know, we were reading this article from the Kellogg Insight page over from Northwestern and they were talking about, you know, Coca-Cola was first to market and they managed to stick because they really grabbed that name recognition and held onto it and became like the brand of soda that people think about when they think about soda. So it can go, it can definitely, you can be successful either way, but there's really no way of knowing if you're going to be successful as either the first or second mover. Yeah, one way to do better as a late mover is to redefine the category and as I mentioned, that's what Apple does. They come in and say, sure, you've all made phones, but we have made the best phone. The best phone. And you have to follow up on it and make a better phone that people think is a better phone. The other thing is that late movers do better with objective standards. So let's say, I don't know, your car sells because it's the fastest car, a late mover can come in and create a faster car and say, we are now the fastest car and gain some sales that way. It's harder when your Coke and your message is, we taste great, which is not an objective standard. It's harder to undermine that marketplace. So it does seem like according to the research that has been done, one of the seminal papers apparently on this is by Golder and Telus from 1993. They studied pioneers and late movers across a century, more than a century, late 1800s into the 90s and found that 47% of pioneers failed among the 500 brands that they studied. 11% of pioneers remained market leaders like a Coca-Cola, but pioneers tended to lead for five to 10 years and it was better if you wanted to beat a pioneer to enter 13 years after. Now, I don't know if internet time will squeeze these down because we're talking about things like bacon and soda, right? They were invented in the 1800s. It's a different time scale here, but it does bring up the really interesting question of, okay, we look at Amazon and Facebook now and Apple and Google and Microsoft as the stalwarts, right? But Google has been around for just more than 13 years. Is there a late mover that can come in and disrupt all of these companies? And Microsoft's gone through it a few times, so has Apple. They've been disrupted and they've disrupted back. But some of these brands like Amazon particularly, we think of as solid, but they may not, they could suffer from someone else coming in with a late mover advantage. And I guess to turn your question on its head, Veronica, could that be a startup? Well, yeah, I mean, we saw Alibaba kind of coming into that space and wanting to be that Amazon disruptor in certain ways. But I think at the end of the day, it's really, it's better for consumers. All of this is better for consumers because we get more choice. We get the ability to compare. And it comes down to really great marketing and positioning because if you can come in as a late starter, now the words are getting late mover, late starter, whatever you guys know what I'm talking about. Late bloomer, is that right? Late bloomer, that's good, I like that. If you're a late bloomer and you come to market, but if you can position yourself as the new entry, the cool new thing, the upstart that is going to take on the Goliath, then you could potentially displace that brand loyalty. So it really just, yeah. I mean, you saw my space, I used Friendster on purpose because you saw my space play the late mover advantage against Friendster and then get the late mover advantage played on them by Facebook, but no one's been able to play it against Facebook yet. Yet. And we always look out for that, don't we? I mean, it always like the, who's gonna be the next Uber? Who's gonna be the new Facebook? It's starting to be there are fewer and fewer categories, especially if we're talking about internet sites right now. We kind of had a huge boom of startup technologies and these consumer oriented, get it when you want it type of products and we're in a new stage right now of that. So I don't know what the next level is gonna be, but there's gonna be new entrance into those markets and there's gonna be ones that are the pioneers and ones that become the stalwarts and yeah, it's very fascinating to watch this kind of, this shift, these companies on this ladder, just displacing each other and moving into the top of people's minds of brand recognition and then sometimes immediately disappearing. Yeah, that's what makes competition so interesting to follow. And I think one of the reasons you see Facebook doing this kind of thing and saying, sure, we're gonna take a page out of Snapchat and Lines book, absolutely, because we don't want to get disrupted by them. So we need to do that, we just need to do it well. And at the same time, they're like, you know what though, we're gonna buy Oculus VR because maybe they'll have the first mover advantage and it'll work. And so we're gonna diversify and make sure that our company isn't betting everything on one thing. We're gonna buy Instagram and we're not gonna roll it in. Everyone was like, oh, they're gonna roll Instagram into Facebook, they're gonna kill it. They haven't done that and they haven't done it on purpose because they want Instagram to be able to succeed on its own should Facebook suffer. They wanna grow Instagram into a bulwark against the other things in their portfolio here. So yeah, when you talk about like, where are the next mover advantage babbles, for lack of a better term, virtual reality, wearables, internet of things, those seem to be kind of the next arena. And you see all of these companies taking baby steps in and you see Apple hanging back, waiting to do what they do and try to take that late mover advantage away. Well, did they not do that exactly with streaming music? I mean, that could, I mean, that could be their next late entry into a marketplace. I'm skeptical that it'll work for them but that's what they're trying to do for sure. And this conversation really makes me think about dodgeball because dodgeball in terms of location based services was, first in line, they really, they had it going. They launched it South by Southwest. They were huge. It was a totally new category. And then they got acquired by Google and then suddenly Google just put them in a closet and hid them away and they did not, they weren't able to innovate. And then other startups showed up like, like, you know, Foursquare or what was that other one? What was that one that was based in Austin? The one that had the stickers, they had stickers too. Right, they were a first mover in stickers. And now I can remember. They were first mover in stickers, that's right. And now they're gone. But a first mover, yeah, yeah. They were, they were fantastic. And, but that category was able to innovate. Unfortunately, because dodgeball got swept under the rug. And it's, yeah, it just, you never know. I guess that's what it comes down to. Well, now Foursquare has killed themselves by moving the check-ins into Swarm and now nobody uses Facebook or Swarm. I use Swarm. There could be a no mover advantage. No Foursquare, Foursquare, Swarm. I see, I disagree. I think that that schism between the check-ins and the Yelp-like features of Foursquare has really worked for them. Because I think I'm using Foursquare. I mean, I'm using Swarm too. I use Swarm constantly. I'm using Foursquare in place of Yelp, which was the market leader in consumer generated reviews. I feel like I'm more and more. I was using Foursquare for reviews a lot more until they took the check-in feature away from Foursquare. Yeah. Well, we really know Guy's chat room. It's not Path that I'm thinking of. Path was much, much later. This app, this location-based app came out immediately after Dodgeball. And it was a very small company and they were great and very cute. And I'm not gonna Google it right now, but you guys will figure it out later or I'll remember an hour after the show. Yeah, I had a G in its name, I wanna say. Did it? That doesn't help any of it. That doesn't help at all. No. No. Well, let's move on to our pick of the day then. Victor wrote in and said, you have had several picks over the last few weeks regarding online books and I wanted to chime in for those who want to get access to Safari Books Online or Books 24-7, another great book site, better on a budget, join a professional organization. We mentioned libraries before, but Victor says, I strongly recommend joining something like the Association for Computing Machinery, ACM.org or the IEEE Computer Society at computer.org. My personal preference is ACM, just for the record, says Victor. Both of these have many benefits, including limited access to resources from both Safari Books Online and Books 24-7. Membership is 99 bucks a year for ACM and if I read the membership page correctly, is either 56 or $249, I think he's saying for IEEE, or for paying for those services on their own. But basically saying, pay 99 bucks a year, you get the benefits of membership in the society plus access to these two book services, which would cost you more than $99 a year. Anyway, Victor says, I suspect that other professional organizations provide similar benefits for a comparable cost. I also recommend checking your company's training websites and resource library as many provide access to these resources through there. I know many people I work with are unaware that we have access to these and other resources, including the entire ACM digital library, the IEEE digital library, et cetera. That is great information, Victor. Thank you for writing in. Hey, we got an answer. J.C. Calhoun said it was Gowalla and it was- Gowalla, I did have a G. I wasn't imagining it. I did have a G, I had a G. Thank you for that. Send your picks to feedback at dailytechnewshow.com and you can find my picks at dailytechnewshow.com slash picks. Got a few emails to get to before we get out of here. Bobby Hendricks is a mobile support specialist and heard us mention that I gave away my Apple Watch and he was like, can you comment on that? I'm curious to get your thoughts on the Apple Watch. Did you wear a watch before the Apple Watch? I have an Apple Watch and I'm still trying to decide if it's gonna be a flop or a hit. I'm watch-wearing and have been all my life and I'm still not convinced it will be a hit even with the feature additions. I gave my watch to Jenny Josephson to try out. I wore it for a month and I wanted to see if I missed it. So I gave it to our producer Jenny and I have not really missed it at all. So it was a test why I gave it away because I was like, well, I'm enjoying a few things on here but they don't seem essential to my life. And for me, it's proved that I haven't been to answer Bobby's question though. I didn't wear a watch before. What about you, Veronica? Yeah, I have, I found myself not needing the Apple Watch as much as I thought I would. I'm still preferring my Fitbit greatly in terms of fitness tracking though I do enjoy the heart rate monitoring. It was basically useless for me in Yosemite because doing any kind of outdoor trail tracking or activity monitoring just ate up the battery life instantly. And we did have a portable charger with us but it just kept dying on me. And as a watch, I like it. I do wear a watch every day. So even before the Apple Watch, of course. So for me, it's a fine watch that does extra things that my other watches couldn't do. But as a separate technology device, I'm just really not that impressed. I just don't feel like I can't live without it. And if they made a next-gen Apple Watch that was super fitness-oriented, which I think we've heard some rumblings of in the past, if it could really match my Fitbit in terms of battery life and accurately counting steps, I hiked up to half dome. And it said I didn't meet my activity for the day. Yeah, no, that's wrong. That's wrong as hell. I hiked over 26,000 steps according to my Fitbit and that is just baloney. So that really made me think about it a lot in terms of do I need this? Is it doing what I need it to do? And I think the answer is just no. I like it as a fashion watch. I think it's cool-looking. It tells time. And most of all, I often don't see my text messages on my phone. So when I get a text message in, it's probably most convenient for me in that regard that I feel the buzz when a text message comes in. But really, is that worth $350? Probably not. Paul wrote in and said, I can't wait for more of these devices to be available. I think it's the next move in PC development. What is he talking about? Sticks, computer sticks. We've talked about Intel's computer stick. We've talked about Lenovo's computer stick. Paul says to me, this is the ultimate and portable computers. All you need is an HDMI display and the wireless keyboard mouse and you're good to go. Most of the things that you need are on a cloud service so you don't need much storage space. I can see this as the perfect thing for the road warrior. You can work on documents, then store them locally or on the cloud or use a thin client PC. Using VMs in the enterprise is very hot at the moment. This keeps the information safely stored within the enterprise instead of out on a laptop that could be stolen. For me, this would be perfect since I'm an administrator and mostly log in to remote machines to do my work. I guess if you're on the road, you're pretty sure you're gonna have an HDMI port in your television in your hotel room so then you just have to carry a keyboard and mouse with you. Interesting. And then Jason in Potsville, Arkansas, wanted to re-emphasize. He wrote a longer email about, he didn't think we gave enough attention to the fact that self-driving cars don't get distracted by Twitter and radio stations and such. We were sort of assuming that when Jonathan Strickland and I talked about it, we figured everybody knew that part of the argument. But you're right, we didn't talk about it particularly. But Jason wrapped it up and said, I love to drive and have driven competitively to some success, but I'd much rather share the road with a bunch of machines following the rules and making good decisions than a lot of the morons I see on the road every day. You know, it could be, I totally agree with him. I also, I love driving, but I think there could be whole new industries of driving tracks. I mean, those already exist. You can go to the driving track and get in a super fast car and drive as fast as you wanna drive safely and away from other slow pokes. What about driving parks? Yeah, they could, this could be a whole new cottage industry of, if you love driving, there's places for you to go do that, but keep your stick on the road. If you're actually going somewhere, if you're commuting, be in your self-driving car and be safe, no matter what. I say, we let a pioneer create a driving park, and then we let mover advantage them. Yeah. So somebody go create that. Let's do, oh yeah, so we can get, yeah, so we can be. Yeah, right, yeah, you're picking up on the same, yeah, right? See, exactly. Hey, don't listen to that. Thanks, Veronica Belmont, host of Dear Veronica on Un-Gadget. What's going on with the old Dear Veronica show that I love so much? I really do love the show. I think it's amazing. Thank you, I gotta get you on there. I'm running the scripts for the next two episodes. Today and tomorrow, we have episode five, I believe, is coming out on Wednesday. You gotta think of a good question. People are sending me a lot of dog questions, which I think is kind of fun, because I love talking about dogs. But really, we're looking for questions about technology, science, social media, etiquette, whatever you can come up with. I'm happy to answer. Just post it with the hashtag Dear Veronica on social media, I'll find it, and I'll pick the best questions to answer on the show. And I'm definitely looking for video questions. Not about video stuff, but video questions posted via video. Yeah, record yourself asking the question, folks. Exactly. So if you guys wanna get on that, like today, that would be awesome, because I gotta record it on Wednesday. So get them to me now. And then how do they send them to you once they've recorded it? They can either post it with the hashtag Dear Veronica, or they can email me a link to Veronica at engadget.com. Twitter.com slash Veronica as well, if you wanna follow her on Twitter. Thanks to our bosses, 5061 folks. You guys are the best in the world. You make this show possible, and we can't thank you enough. It's the value for value model, totally inspired by Adam Curry and No Agenda, along with John C. Dvorak. If you get some value out of the show, all we ask is if you can afford it, give a little bit of value back, at least a dollar a month. And there are some perks to doing more than that as well. DailyTechnewshow.com slash support, for all of those ways to support the show. Our email address is feedback at Daily Tech News Show. The show live Monday through Friday at 4.30 Eastern at player.alphagygradio.com, or visit our website, DailyTechnewshow.com. We'll be back tomorrow with Justin, Robert Young, and Molly Wood as our guests. Talk to you then. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. The club hopes you have enjoyed this program. I have to, that's my trade. It's your thing. That's a good show, what do we call it? All right, let's see what the choices are. Well, you've got Google, do no evil, spelled D-O-K-N-O-W. Bidding Ching. Oh good, people are voting for my selection. Cool guy, Tom Merritt. Standing on the Appies of Giants. APIs, APIs of Giants, right? I know, but I think Appie better. Cause like if you say an API a day, it's not as fun as if you say an Appie a day, which is also a title selection. Oh, I'm so unburned. Ooh, Google's the Google. Can you Google on Bing? Yes, you can. No, yes. Oh my gosh, I just typed in Bing in my address bar and because I'm using Chrome, it did a search on Google for Bing. Which Bing was the top result of? Good, at least they're not the ad-eval. You did not fill in Bing.com though for some reason. I do also like EU enough Google. Yeah, that's good. I like that one too. That's super punny. Super punny. It is a good one. All right, I'm not gonna forget Big Jim today. I kept forgetting him Thursday and Friday. I'm putting Big Jim in the end of the show with his eulogy for Circa. Oh, and for everyone who didn't know, happy belated birthday to Tom Merritt. Oh, thanks. Your birthday was yesterday. I'm old. I was gonna mention it on the show. My birthday's in a month. July 21st. It is. It is. It's okay. You're not old. Or as Roger said to me on text message yesterday, you'll always be older than me. Actually, that's not a quote though. What did he say? You said something hilarious, Roger. I said, no matter how old you get, you're always one step ahead of me. Yes, that's it. Actually, I think Tom's was better. Tom's version was better. Tom's version of Roger's bad joke was better. I rewrote your joke, Roger. I hope you don't mind. He was the second mover on that joke. See how I brought that back around? Hey, have you gone to myextralife.com slash book? I'm reading it right now. It's a Kickstarter for the definitive collection of Extra Life Comics. Whoa. That was a dramatic sound. Yes, cool guy Tom Merritt is so winning right now. I'm not making that the headline. Why? It's funny. Cause it's me making the headline. But clearly, you would not write that about yourself. So people would be like, why was Tom such a cool guy? What did he do that was so different this week? No, what? You know the inner one that doesn't work that way. I do like Google do no evil. I think that one's really clever. I think that's the one I like. Well, I'll just be happy in the knowledge that cool guy Tom Merritt won the day, even if it wasn't picked. Did you actually submit it? Yes, it says bye bye. Oh my God, I just noticed that. I submit things when I think they're funny. That's great. I submit things that I say that I think are funny is the show title. I just said a funny thing. I hope it wins. Man. I sunburned the hell out of my back yesterday. I did so well with Suntown with like SPF and then I just couldn't reach my shoulder blades and they got sunburned. So now I feel like, yeah, cool guy Tom Merritt is really killing it now. It's crushing it. Chris is nushing it. Chris is nushing. Well, Google do no evil is gonna be the title. But you can still think that the other one is the title. If you want. Now, I think it's just feeding into it because they think it's funny that it's winning. So they're all just clicking it. And it just goes to show like, I don't care if you bought this list. It's not, it's not like we always- I bought a list just because they like me. Well, I don't mean actual botting. I'm just saying like, it shows that- Oh, I think it's like I paid them to click it. I know you paid them to click. Is what I'm trying to say. No, I'm just saying like, we don't always choose the number one. It's guidance. It's guidance to us. Well, guidance. An API a day doesn't keep the Oracle away. Credit 10 back in Darker Damer. That's also good. Any UNF Google is excellent. Goliath versus Goliath. There's no good late mover ones, unfortunately. Smooth movers. Late movers and shakers is not bad. I feel like there's gotta be a constipation joke in there somewhere. Yeah, maybe that's why there's no good ones. Tea. Smooth move. Yeah, guys, I got that it was bot, like a bot, like a BOT and not a bot. Like I paid you. I get that now. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks chat room. I love you. I love you so much. Hugs. Hugs chat room. Oh, I love chat room. Chat room's the best. I'm not being sarcastic. I know that sounds sarcastic. They really did and they are the best. I'm not being sarcastic. I love them. They're the best. They're the wind beneath my wings. So many hugs. So much hugs. Are we gonna try to stump Roger or did he go away? Let's play stump Roger. Yeah, I think stump Roger went to go to Angeli. So we won. We stumped him. We stumped him. Did you stump me on? No. Damn it. He heard. Of course I heard. I hear all. I don't pretty sure I hear everything. I just don't know what to say. You and Jenny, man. You can't say a thing. Always hearing everything. So, do you want your Apple Watch back? Are you done with it really? No, I, my ultimate conclusion from month one is born out in month two, which is that it solves a very small problem. And that I do like that it, I do like the haptic feedback when driving, which is like turn left here. Okay, it helps, especially if the radio's on and you can't hear Siri tell you to turn left. Right. But I just, I don't know. There's too many things that are still tied to the phone itself. Yeah. Yeah, I don't have any big desire to take it back, but if you're done with it, give it back to me. I'll try it again, maybe. And give it just as another test, like okay, I haven't missed it, but what if I put it back on and go, I forgot what I was missing? I don't know, I don't think that'll happen, but. Yeah, I don't know. I also think my hands are so clumsy nowadays, like we're a T minus 10 days till Jenny drops this thing in a bad way and then nobody gets to play. Then nobody gets it ever. Oh, yeah, it might be time. I mean, I do feel a pang saying that for sure. All right. I don't know. Oh, check out Veronica's travel plans. No. Here's where she'll be. I am traveling every. You are traveling a while. Twice a week. Oh, I even took you off my Fourth of July plans. Oh, that's the ones I just got. The third to the fifth, the eighth to the ninth, the 17th to the 19th, and the 30th to August 2nd. I just got the third to the fifth ones. Yay, I'm looking forward to an intertacular. That's gonna be so fun. Me too. Jenny's gonna be there. And you know who's doing a panel, Mr. Jenny Matt Flanagan. Cool. Yep, how to write a screenplay in an hour. I've never met Mr. Jenny. Yeah, he's elusive. But yeah, he'll be there. He's super excited. I just bought our tickets this weekend. And then we're gonna go ride the gondola up to the top of the mountain and tell stories or tell it anyway. So that'll be exciting. That's our official. Stories about fear of heights. We're gonna hike up to the top of Snowbird again. I think we took the gondola last time, but I think this year I'm gonna hike it. I'll do that. Yeah? Yeah, if I have time. The problem's the last couple of years is I've always been doing something when you've gone the gondola. Yeah, I'm just gonna hike it this year, I think. When you say we. Well, I went up with Brian and Justin and Ashley last year. I like this guy. We drank beers at the top of the mountain and got... All right, you guys had a snowball fight. And we had a dirty, dirty snowball fight because the snow up there was filthy. In July. But there's still snowpack. I don't know if it'll be there still. I don't know what kind of spring they've had. Yeah. Any Utahns in the chat room? Tell us if there's snowpack. Utahns. I just wanna keep posting pictures from Yosemite on Instagram, but I feel like people are gonna get sick of seeing them. They're so good though. It's so hard to take a bad picture there. I don't think, those are the kinds of pictures that people will get sick of less quickly. Because they're just beautiful. Men look selfies. We had the craziest sunset yesterday. Everybody posted it to Instagram, who lives here. It was just nuts. Yeah. It was like pink and purple and red and... Mm-hmm. I'm pretty sure there had to been something toxic in the atmosphere to cause that. Yeah. That's a really sad way of thinking about it, Tom, but you're probably right. Like, oh, the prettiest sunsets are usually caused by the most dangerous things. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. All right, I think I've got everything published. I would like to think that. I mean, I'm gonna publish it and see what happens. I mean, I have everything right. TVZGun says that Matt's tint name tag should say Mr. Jenny Josephson. Mm-hmm. Yeah. He's used to it. I like when someone calls up in a hotel and asks for Mr. Rivera. Yeah. Oh, crap. That's not the right, I think. Yeah, it was too hard a left turn to become a Flanagan from being a Josephson. That was a... To lose that alliteration would have been tough. I did something wrong. But how wrong, Tom? Okay. What'd you do? I put the wrong embed in. I put Friday's show in the embed, but the MP3 is correct, so it won't mess up the feed. I just... I was very happy that the Sword and Laser switch worked. Though people would get... Yeah, you know, 84 episodes later for some people, but it worked. Yeah. Me too. Good thing they're short, oh. Not short. Not short. Well, it was worth it. Yeah, I don't know why that, because we tested that in an iTunes, it didn't do that, but I guess other... I had, well, I have my settings to only the five most recent episodes. So for me... Yeah, settings. I should have known that. That's why it's all about... That's why. And they were all new episodes suddenly. Yeah. Everything old was new again. I thought the fan was making a lot of noise, but it turns out it's my Drobo. Oh. It's been a long, because I haven't backed up in like... Oh, because you guys were gone a weekend, so it's catching up with all your data. Mm-hmm. It's like, what is that noise? Drobo on. You're on the microphone? I don't hear it though. No? Okay, that's good. Yeah. I'm just curious. Quote-ious. Maybe it's both. Anyway. I'm reloading the... Now I will have the correct embed from archive.org. They'll still be getting... People will still be getting the podcast right now. They just won't be able to play. In the browser until I finish and now they can. All right, let's see if that worked. See, this is why I check. Nice. It worked. Hooray. Seriously, chat room, send in video questions. Are they still listening? Yes. Please send in your video questions. For a dear Veronica at Veronica at NGadget.com. I really want to get some in. It can be about anything. Just any... I don't care. Fashion. And ask a question. That's kind of short. That would be great. So you have to have clothes on? Clothes are definitely preferable. Okay. Preferable. Not... No, because they're not necessary per se. Probably necessary. But please do that. Seriously, I will love you guys so hard. I'll send you a present. I'll figure it out. I'll get you something. She's lying. I will. I will send you something. I swear to God. I'll send you a sword and laser lanyard. Oh, hey, I had an idea, by the way. Oh, yeah? Because I don't know what to do with youtube.com. slash ace detect now that this show is on Daily Tech News Show channel. So I was thinking, I'm going to do book hauls. Book hauls? Because we get the sword and laser review copies sent here. Yeah. That's good. As long as they're not arcs, we can't really send out arcs until the book comes out. Well, I won't send anything out. It would be me showing me opening them, right? There's nothing wrong with that. Right now. I haven't opened it yet, but I got uppercase books, which is a new service that sends you out, young adult novels every month. And you get some stickers. Yeah, so I'm thinking of just doing a video where I open all of the packages that were sent to Sword and Laser and be like, what's this book? Who's it from, you know? Yeah, that's cool. Yeah. Yeah, as long as they're not, as long as the book publisher are comfortable with that. Well, they're sending it to us to review. Right. Which I won't be doing. Sure. But at least it will be getting them more exposure than not reviewing them. Yes. Also true. Yeah. All right. Well, thanks everyone for watching. Stay tuned for Cord Killers immediately following the even more Marvel Movies podcast on some of these local podcasting stations. Woo!