NEXT with John Koetsier

During COVID-19, we can't really go to the gym. So many of us are working out in our (new?) home gyms. Is that making us fitter? And, can an AI coach motivate us?

In this episode of TechFirst, we chat with Freeletics CEO Daniel Sobhani about what we're doing to stay fit during Coronavirus, what's working, and how men and women are reacting differently ... including with regard to mental health.

We chat about:

- the biggest ways fitness changed during COVID-19

- what are people doing differently

- how Sobhani's AI coach for fitness works

- how the AI coach compares to a human coach?

- how the AI works, at a high level

- what’s different about working out at home?

- how meditation is up, and how men vs women deal with mental health differently

- what people are doing with regard to investment in new equipment

Facebook is one of the two most dominant companies in an $80 billion industry that impacts hundreds of billions of dollars, if not trillions, in consumer spend. But a huge percentage of that revenue is now at risk, thanks to an obscure privacy move by Apple at the company’s World Wide Developer Conference in June.

The move?

Deprecating a mobile device identifier called the IDFA. That threatens billion in Facebook revenue.

And Google could be next ...

The electricity that powers our digital future is very, very analog. Is that about to change?

We don’t think a lot about the technology that drives our computers and homes ... we flip a switch and get to work, or turn on the TV. But the actual mechanics of what happens in our walls and wires is very 18th century.

One company is working on making it better. In this edition of TechFirst with John Koetsier we’re joined by Thar Casey, founder and CEO of Amber, to dive in and check it out.

Everyone is investing in India lately.

In April, Facebook announced it was investing $5.7 billion in India. In January it was Amazon, investing $1 billion in India. Today’s it’s Google (or its parent company, Alphabet) investing $10 billion in partnerships, infrastructure, and ecosystems.

Since China’s closed, the giants have to invest elsewhere, apparently.

TikTok was THE mobile phenomenon of 2019 with almost 700M app installs. But with the ban talk getting louder and louder ... are other contenders poised to steal its thunder? 

We chat with one of the owners and board members of Triller, which has over 100M installs ... and just got a bump of 40M new installs in India after the TikTok ban. 

Triller thinks TikTok will get banned in the U.S, as well as in India. And Triller is trying to take full advantage of that by poaching all of TikTok's creators and helping the monetize 2X more on Triller than they did on TikTok ...

Ads suck and we all know it. They’re invasive, they track us, they create horrible user experiences, and most of the time, they’re incredibly annoying. The future’s not like that ... and here's why.

In this edition of TechFirst with John Koetsier, we chat with the creator of Javascript, Brendan Eich (co-founder/CEO of Brave Software) and Carolina Abenante (founder of NYIAX).

Using micropayments, permission, edge AI, blockchain, and crypto, they're creating a future in which you only see ads from brands you want to, you don’t sacrifice privacy when you see an ad, and you get paid for your attention.

In a lot of ways, that future is now.

Can AI help us connect trillions of smart devices? There are currently perhaps 20 billion devices connected to the internet: things like laptops, phones, smartwatches, TVs, smart speakers, smart home devices ...

In a decade, that could be 50 billion … and a lot of it is enterprise IoT.

In this edition of the The AI Show with John Koetsier we chat with Intel and the National Science Foundation, which has funded $30M+ into projects to use AI to figure out how we'll manage ultra-dense wireless networks ... how we'll keep it secure, and how we'll keep everything connected.

Joining me in this episode:

Vida Ilderem, VP, Intel Labs

Thyaga Nandagopal, National Science Foundation

Pu Wang, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

3.8 billion people on the planet don’t have access to the internet. But that could be about to change soon. While Elon Musk’s SpaceX is building internet access from satellites 340 miles off the earth in space, Google’s Project Loon is doing something similar.

In Loon’s case, however, internet access comes from just 12 miles up in the stratosphere.

Via balloons floating in the wind.

Recently Apple blocked updates to the Hey email app on the iOS App Store and threatened to delete it. What does this tell us about App Store guidelines? And unwritten rules?

In this episode of TechFirst with John Koetsier we chat about Apple's App Store guidelines with Denys Zhadanov, a VP at Readdle. Readdle has 7 top-30 apps in the App Store including the Spark email app which competes with Hey.

There’s always been controversy that Apple isn’t allowing competition for its own apps and services, and the EU antitrust division is looking into it now. We dive in with an App Store insider.

50% of the food produced globally is wasted. At the same time, a child dies from hunger every 10 seconds, and 25,000 people starve to death every single day. Another billion, almost, are malnourished and don't have enough food.

Can AI fix this?

In this episode of TechFirst with John Koetsier, we chat with SPRK.Global CEO Alexander Piutti, who is a finalist in Samsung's Extreme Tech Challenge startup competition.