NEXT with John Koetsier

Three years ago Google subsidiary Sidewalk Labs floated visions of smart self-driving cars and smarter technology making Toronto, Canada, a leader among smart cities.

Last week, that all died.

Sidewalk Labs canceled the Quayside project on May 7.

But we lost something when that happened. In fact, we lost at least nine things, as I discuss in this episode of TechFirst with John Koetsier.

To read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/05/13/9-things-we-lost-when-google-canceled-its-smart-cities-project-in-toronto/

Texting is nice. Zoom is great for work and birthday parties. And Facebook works for our wider circle of friends.  

But there's something about good old-fashioned audio that has us returning to voice calls on our phones during quarantine.

TextNow says its users spent more than 450 million minutes talking on the phone in the first full month of shutdown, March. While once that might not have been a shocking thing to say, it’s up 36% more than the previous month, and totals 313,000 days or 850 years of cumulative time talking on the phone.

Haircuts, pedicures and massages are big business in Georgia again.

Restaurants, too.

The state started re-opening businesses on April 24 and dropped its shelter-in-place order a week later. Now mobile data shows that visits to nail salons, spas, tattoo parlors, and barber shops is back up to 80% of pre-Coronavirus levels. Visits to restaurants are also up. With dine-in service allowed again, Georgia restaurants are now at 75% of their former pre-COVID levels of service.

We know how to get people to work together. How do you get robots, drones, autonomous vehicles, and smart systems to collaborate?

Welcome to TechFirst with John Koetsier. No jobs are simple ... getting a pizza requires multiple steps, processes, and hands, not to mention a car. Everything in factories takes steps and processes too. If we're going to get to an autonomous reality ... smart machines need to work together.

In this episode of TechFirst with John Koetsier, we talk to Kumardev Chatterjee, CEO of Unmanned Life. His company is working with Walmart, Vienna, Deutsche Telekom, and other companies to help drones and robots work together.

One example? Drones that take off from fire trucks and fly ahead to help in search and rescue operations, which Unmanned Life is doing now with the city of Vienna.

Will your next home be a bioceramic dome? They last 500 years, are bugproof, don't rot, mold, or rust ... and they're carbon-neutral. They're also much cheaper, according to Geoship.  

I interview the CEO, Morgan Bierschenk, on live social video.  We talk about construction, materials, permitting, whether they're built on-site or off-site, and what kind of maintenance they need. We also talk about new models of living: how they can be joined, and how you can form communities with bioceramic domes.  

And, of course, we chat about the cost.  

The full transcript will be available at johnkoetsier.com, and you'll be able to subscribe to the podcast at anchor.fm/techfirst.

Fake news: the truth about lies .... what is fake news? How can you spot it? And what can we do about it?  

In this edition of TechFirst with John Koetsier, we chat with Mitch Chaiet, who is the Media Innovation and Entrepreneurship Coordinator at the University of Texas at Austin.  

We'll discuss computational propaganda, reality bubbles, and Misinformation, Disinformation, and Malinformation, as well as how to spot fake news and how to fight fake news. (Including how to bring it up with Uncle Bob, who won't like it if you tell him his news is fake.)  

We'll also talk about who creates fake news, and why. (Hint: there's a lot of money in fake news.)

Are WiFi, Bluetooth, massage, adjustable positions, and built-in speakers essential for a good night’s sleep? For the past few weeks, I've been sleeping in a adjustable position bed with more tech than my whole bedroom used to have.

In this episode of TechFirst, we talk to Intellibed CEO Colin House about the $70 billion sleep industry, what technology matters (and what doesn't) and what works best for sleeping.

Hint:

According to House, it's different for men and women.

Today we're stuck at home. Wouldn't it be great to virtually wander the world in virtual reality? (At least until we can go out for real again!)

In this episode of TechFirst we chat with Simon Che de Boer from New Zealand’s Reality Virtual, who took 4,000 photos in Queen Nefertiti's tomb and digitally reconstructed King Tut's mask. 

They're working on technology to virtually re-create real physical locations, make them available to all, create ways for people and organizations to contribute to sort of a Wikipedia of virtual places, and tele-present us in more real ways than ever before.

How?

A ton of machine learning, generative adversarial networks, and a lot of computer. Graphics processing tech from Invidia helps, as did a big grant from Epic Games.

Just one health-care startup had 139,000 new doctors join and 1.35 million patients use telemedicine last week. Is this temporary or the evolution of a trend with staying power? 

 In this edition of TechFirst with John Koetsier, I chat with the CEO of Vonage, Alan Masarek.  

Some of the increases he's seen:  

Jeff Pulver created VOIP and founded the $3B Vonage. Now he's reinventing video, voice, and text communications online to fix security issues with Zoom and other platforms.  

Is secure, private communication a complete pipe dream?  

Jeff Pulver literally created VOIP. He also got the US government to issue the Pulver Order, which ensured that voice over IP was not restricted. Now he's working on a blockchain-based communications platform that could reinvent video, voice, and text communications online ... and make it much more secure.  

We dive into the details ... along with what's happening with Coronavirus and COVID-19.