Minnov8

Researchers have found that code written by women—submitted to the software repository GitHub —was approved at a higher rate than code written by men, but only if the submitter’s gender was not disclosed (download and read the study here (PDF)). We discuss this topic, and alot more, on this week’s podcast.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott and Phil Wilson.

Music: Basic Jazz Blues by J. Simon van der Walt under a Creative Commons License

The Podcast

Story Links

Past Week’s Top Minnesota Stories

* DevFest recap

* Twin Cities angel investor group wants to help Vegas startups hit the jackpot

* Tony Hsieh’s $350 Million Gamble On Las Vegas

* SPS Commerce feels the squeeze of a tightening labor market

* Parking in downtown St. Paul? Feed meter with mobile app

* Gravitational wave detection used supercomputing system of Burnsville’s Nor-Tech

* Experience the Torchlight Parade in virtual reality

* Chuck Olsen and team’s company Visual

Other Top Tech Stories

* The First 100,000 Funded Kickstarter Projects in 100 Numbers

* UK politicians green-light plans to record every citizen’s internet history

* ‘Internet of Things’ an Absolute Goldmine for Big Brother, Admits Top US Spy

* Full text of Clapper’s testimony (PDF)

Cool Thing of the Week

* Phil: Quartz News App

* Tim: Fitbit Alta

* Steve: Visual Hunt

Upcoming Events

* The Complete List of 250+ Tech, IT, and DevOps Conferences in 2016

* The list as a Google spreadsheet

* 32 conferences for Mac and iOS professionals in 2016
...

It is with equal measure of sadness and deep appreciation that we say “so long” to Graeme Thickins (LinkedIn; ; Twitter; his blog) as an ongoing host of the Minnov8 Gang podcast. Like many of us the acceleration in his business, involvement as a board member for the wildly successful big data group Minneanalytics, alongside all of his other commitments, have made carving out the time to prepare and record the podcast just too much.

Graeme was one of the co-founders of Minnov8 and has been podcasting with us since we started in June of 2008 (hear that first show, and all of our other hundreds of shows, located here in our podcast archive). Besides podcasting nearly every week (and sometimes from his car, connected to Wifi in the cabin, when up at the lake) Graeme’s also written many posts; liveblogged events Minnov8 covered; interviewed startups, CxO-level company executives, and shot video. But mostly it was his deep and analytical understanding of the venture capital space and startup world that brought a unique perspective to this show.

That…and his energy, wit and willingness to be the butt of our “Photoshop jokes” all too frequently. So no…he’s not actually going to be modeling jammies for Victoria’s Secret, but we couldn’t help ourselves poking fun at him just one more time!  

Dinosaurs being resurrected by pulling DNA from a mosquito fossilized in amber for the Jurassic Park movies has been ruled out by scientists. Even so, we chuckled when Phil immediately went there as we discussed a new WordPress and Drupal plugin from Harvard’s Berkman Center called Amber.

Learn more about Amber, and what’s going on with other top tech stories from Minnesota and globally this past week, in this episode.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott and Phil Wilson (Graeme Thickins is off).

Music: Organ Grinder’s Swing by DJ Ecklectic Mick under a Creative Commons License

The Podcast

Story Links

Past Week’s Top Minnesota Stories

* At Buzzfeed, a week off to do something different

* Average Twin Cities tech salary cracks six figures for first time: survey

* Credit card skimming is an emerging threat in Minnesota

* Minnesota ED Taps Partner To Enhance STEM Ed

Other Top Tech Stories

* Facebook Bans Gun Sales

* Harvard’s Berkman Center releases Amber: A Tool For Blogs & Websites To Keep Linked Content Accessible

* WordPress plugin and Drupal download at Github

* Everything We Know About Tesla’s Secret Model 3…And Model Y

* Apple News

* Apple will unveil a new 4-inch iPhone in March

* Apple likely to debut iPad Air 3 at March event; new Apple Watch models revealed

* Apple TV And Apple Watch (Probably) Had A Big Quarter

* This Is The Latest Front In The War For Control Of Your TV—And It’s Going To Get Ugly

* Apple: iPhone Is Not Dead, It’s About To Come Alive

* Why the Internet of Things needs another 10 years

* SmartThings

* Disclaimer: both Steve and Phil are SmartThings users.

*

As 2016 ramps up we have a few important stories to cover and we do. During the Security Tip of the Week our buddy Tim Elliott chimes in with another method to ensure data is wiped on your solid state drive (SSD) before you sell your computer or drive: thermite!

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott and Phil Wilson (Graeme Thickins is off).

Music: Gudbuy T’Jane by Stefan Hösemann under a Creative Commons License

The Podcast

Story Links

Past Week’s Top Minnesota Stories

* Magnet 360 Bought By India-Based Firm For $50M

* Target

* Target CEO Brian Cornell visiting homes of customers

* The Last Days of Target: The untold tale of Target Canada’s difficult birth, tough life and brutal death

* St. Paul native’s tech startup wants to kid-proof your smartphone

* iOS 9.3 adds multi-user support for iPads in schools, new Classroom app, more

* Investment in Minnesota’s digital-health startups surges as med-tech dips

* Connecting the Dots: The Internet Revealed in 1993

Other Top Tech Stories

* IBM Acquires uStream

* NSA Chief Stakes Out Pro-Encryption Position, in Contrast to FBI

* Symphony Advanced Media Software Tracks Your Digital Life Through Your Smartphone Mic

* Music Memos is Apple’s new, simple recording app

* Microsoft kicks off Office Insider program for Mac users

Steve’s Security Tip of the Week

TIP: How to really erase your hard drive…especially if it’s an SSD. Tossing your file into the computer’s trash and emptying it doesn’t delete your data. It just erases the file’s reference information in the disk directory, marking the blocks as free for reuse. Your data is still there, and can be recovered. Wiping an SSD incorrectly can cause such wear as to significantly reduce it’s life.

* Reference Links:

* ZDNet: How to really erase any drive — even SSDs — in 2016

* Thermite…really Tim? TekThing 51: Thermite, Acid,

Hosts: Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins, Phil Wilson and Julio Ojeda-Zapata (Steve Borsch is off).

Music: Take Me Higher by Jahzzar under a Creative Commons License

We run down the stories of the week with special guest host Julio Ojeda-Zapata and we all have a chuckle when the talk turns to Republican Presidential candidate Jeb Bush’s reaction to receiving a call on his Apple Watch. The Nerdery’s new CEO, Best Buy’s holiday results, Senator Franken’s letter to Google, and Julio’s summary of Minnesota companies at CES also figure in the mayhem.

The Podcast

Story Links

Past Week’s Top Minnesota Stories

* Tom O’Neill named new CEO of the Nerdery

* Best Buy’s holiday web sales grow by double digits

* Best Buy stock takes a hit with poor holiday sales report

* CES post-mortem: How Minnesota companies are feeling about the show

* Woof! Chat for pets among local tech at Vegas electronics show

* In Letter To Google CEO, Sen. Franken Raises Questions Regarding Student Data Collection

Other Top Tech Stories

* First Click: Apple should echo Amazon with a Siri speaker

* Smaller, cheaper Amazon Echo could be coming soon

* Apple News:

* Apple Is Developing Wireless Earbuds For The iPhone 7, Says Report

* Photos: With tvOS 9.2, Apple TV adds Podcasts app, Folders, Bluetooth keyboard support, new app switcher and more

* When Will We See A New Apple Watch?

* Avowed Apple fan Jeb Bush realizes his Apple Watch can take phone calls

* Microsoft is bringing its excellent Windows Phone keyboard to iOS

Cool Thing of the Week

* Phil: Robot Carry-on

* Tim: Screw Those $300 Standing Desks.

Big week with the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in full swing with twenty-two Minnesota companies in attendance showing their wares, one of which is a Burnsville company PetChatz, makers of a device for pets and owners to video chat. Question is, will your pet answer when you call?  

It’s our annual predictions show and, while we cover a handful of Minnesota and other top tech stories this past week, we focus on our “hits and misses” from predicting 2015 and then jump in to our 2016 prognostications.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.

Music: Exploding All Over You by East Village Vampire under a Creative Commons License

The Podcast

 

Story Links

Past Week’s Top Minnesota Stories

About the Zoltar machine*

* 2015 JAMF Software Survey: Managing Apple Devices in the Enterprise (download the PDF)

* Samsung builds SmartThings control into every 2016 smart TV

Other Top Tech Stories

* Big Data and computational medicine: Who guards the data?

* NSA Helped British Spies Find Security Holes In Juniper Firewalls

* The CIA Campaign To Steal Apple’s Secrets

* Apple TV Brawl results: Apple solidly wins the 4K debate for now – and here’s why

* CES 2016: our most anticipated products of the show

Discussed During Our Predictions

* List of mergers and acquisitions by Apple

* Brian Krebs: 2016 Reality: Lazy Authentication Still the Norm

Listen to the podcast for our 2015 recap as well as our specific 2016 predictions.

*Zoltar is from the movie BIG with Tom Hanks. Disclaimer: None of our predictions were made using Zoltar or any other fortune teller-like technology, though Phil Wilson may have consulted his magic toad.

Upcoming Events

* The Complete List of 250+ Tech, IT, and DevOps Conferences in 2016

* Only the list as a Google spreadsheet

* MinneAnalytics does Marketing Analytics – again! (MAMA2), January 22, Medtronic

* MinneWebCon U of MN McNamara Alumni Ctr April 25-26

Apple Pay, Android Pay, Samsung Pay, Walmart Pay, CurrentC (and more long-standing mobile payment platforms like PayPal & their apps) are all jockeying for position to become the mobile payments platform.

Now Target is reportedly working on its own mobile payments, too and we talked about it in our top Minnesota stories section. Then we thought, “Hey! What if the five us start Ojezap Pay?” since Julio Ojeda-Zapata is today’s guest-host and, with his huge net worth from all those lucrative ‘netcast’ appearances on TWiT, we figure he could cover any losses by writing a check.  

Apple’s new iPhone battery pack has received a bit of design dissing this week. Many have said it “looks like a hump” and we think it sort of appears as though the iPhone swallowed a sheep, like an anaconda (see: Apple debuts Smart Battery Case for iPhone 6s, extends life up to 25 hours).

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.

Music: Acoustic Blues Jam by Stefano Cirignano under a Creative Commons License

The Podcast

Story Links

Past Week’s Top Minnesota Stories

* Uneeq Company Launches in Minneapolis

* Mariner Software

* Target opens a holiday-themed playground to sell toys and test ideas in New York

* Best Buy’s CEO Tries to Shake Off Ghosts of Christmases Past

* 3M to showcase opportunities at 2015 Internet of Things World Forum

Other Top Tech Stories

* Internet Of Things Holiday Sales: 50 Million Smart Objects

* A Search Engine for the Internet’s Dirty Secrets

* Bitcoin’s Creator Satoshi Nakamoto Is Probably This Unknown Australian Genius

* Satoshi’s PGP Keys Are Probably Backdated and Point to a Hoax

* Apple Pay, Android Pay — now Walmart Pay

* Apple

* Report: Apple suspends plans for web TV service as it struggles to negotiate w/ networks

* CBS CEO Les Moonves explains why your future cable bill could be as low as $30 a month

* Big Cable’s Sledgehammer Is Coming Down

* Apple acquisition rumors send GoPro stock soaring

* Why Gadget Warranties Are (Almost) Never Worth It

*

Flash will be the missing superhero soon since even Adobe says not to use it anymore and confirms that the open standard, HTML5, has “won”. Learn more in this week’s Security Tip of the Week.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott and Phil Wilson (Graeme Thickins is off).

Music: Tom & Smitty Play the Blues by Smitty under a Creative Commons License

Photo credit: Duty (Tomfoolery-in-chief)

The Podcast

Story Links

Past Week’s Top Minnesota Stories

* Target

* Target’s digital fumble shows why we should kill Cyber Monday

* Cyber Monday marks Target’s best day of online sales ever

* Target, Banks Reach $39M Settlement For Data Breach Costs

* Minneapolis start-up wins federal grant to develop educational biology game

* Code42 Hires Two New Execs

* New Maker Space Slated for Anderson Student Center

Other Top Tech Stories

* Cyber Monday Beat Forecasts With A Record $3.07 Billion In Sales, 26% From Mobile Devices

* Microsoft takes wraps off PowerApps mobile-app creation service

* IDC: Wearables grew 197.6% in Q3 2015, Fitbit beats Apple again while Samsung drops out of top 5

* Half a year later, the Apple Watch feels like a stalled platform

* Analyst doubles Apple Watch sales prediction to 12 million sold in 2015

* Ford Sync car owners to get Apple’s Siri Eyes-Free

* Transformation at Yahoo Foiled by Marissa Mayer’s Inability to Bet the Farm

* Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Has an Insane Severance Package

* EFF’s free HTTPS tool ‘Let’s Encrypt’ enters public beta