POP | TECH | JAM

It’s September and you know what that means: Apple will hold forth a mighty media event in San Francisco to formally reveal its fall lineup of hardware and software. As today is Apple Event Eve, we here at Pop Tech Jam thought we’d pass the time with technologist Don Donofrio to speculate about what tomorrow’s announcements will bring. And on next week’s show, we’ll regroup to see how many things we guessed correctly. Feel free to play along at home, Jammers! And for those of you who care not for the Fruit-Themed Toymaker of Cupertino, we have news on Samsung’s exchange program for the overly combustible Galaxy Note 7 and the end of the Rosetta mission to good ol’ Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

Labor Day is upon us and so is the annual U.S. Open tennis tournament. Laura M. Holson drops by to share her love of the game and ways to share the excitement through apps, streaming and other technology. Check out the U.S. Open’s official website, Twitter feed and mobile apps for Android and iOS. And don’t forget the podcasts, either. In the weekly news roundup, El Kaiser and J.D. serve up talk of Apple’s various legal woes of the past few days, Facebook’s whoopsie with its Trending Topics list and the fate of a certain noisy, nosy drone in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virgina.

What happens when you find a vital piece of history falling apart due to time and neglect?  If you’re Dr. Sue Black, OBE, you start a blogging and Twitter campaign to save it. That’s exactly what she did to keep Bletchley Park, Britain’s World War II codebreaking headquarters, from disappearing. Dr. Black chats with J.D. about her new book, Saving Bletchley Park: How #SocialMedia Saved the Home of the WWII Codebreakers. And, as  El Kaiser and J.D. find out while rolling through the recent tech headlines, it’s all about getting what you want — whether you’re a lucky Nexus owner looking for the new version of Android, Barbra Streisand telling Siri to properly pronounce her surname or NASA finally getting back in touch with a lost spacecraft. Sometimes, you just have to go for it.

Podcasting as we know it has been around for about a dozen years and is now enjoying something of a boom thanks to popular shows that have caught the listening public’s ear and reignited interest in the medium. So, what’s happening in the pod world these days? Audio producer and educator extraordinaire Jocelyn Gonzales joins El Kaiser and J.D. this week to discuss the state of the art and some of the many popular podcasts she currently produces, including Strings and Things, The MashUp Americans and Inside The New York Times Book Review. Listen for the segment right after El Kaiser and J.D. discuss two of Netflix’s recent streamers and the notable tech news of the week. (Two words: Pizza ATM!)

Four years after it rose from the ashes of that other podcast, Pop Tech Jam has reached its 200th episode and we’re ready to party with our friends! Journalist Laura M. Holson and actor/poet/writer Francis Mateo join El Kaiser and J.D. after the news segment this week to discuss the ever-churning evolution of popular culture and consumer technology in the four years since Episode 1 hit the Interwebs. And yes, there might even be a mention of Star Wars…

And, as always, a big thanks to the BROS for hosting the party since 2012!

Forget those grainy old newsreels of Republicans and Democrats putting on large hats and gathering every four years to nominate a candidate for president. Thanks to YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and various other social platforms, wonks and watchers alike have instant access to high-definition video right from the arena floor, plus ongoing commentary from viewers around the world. Will this massive wall of easily accessible data make for a more informed body politic — or just lead to more online body slams? And what about those the hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee that some say were courtesy of Russian operatives trying to influence the results of November? Journalist Laura M. Holson drops by PTJ HQ with her observations on it all.

And, after a week off so J.D. could work on her monitor tan, she and El Kaiser are back behind the mic with a summary of the week’s tech news, including Verizon’s purchase of Yahoo and summer projects from Microsoft and Google. Pour yourself a cool, refreshing beverage and settle on in for a listen!

Pokémon, those whimsical little Japanese pocket monsters, are celebrating their 20th anniversary in style by taking over much of the mobile world this month with the release of the augmented reality smartphone game, Pokémon GO. But while millions of people downloaded the game to their Android handsets and iPhones in the first week of release, security experts and privacy advocates have voiced concerns. Journalist Laura M. Holson drops by Pop Tech Jam HQ to discuss how Pokémon GO works, what to worry about and why it became so popular so fast. El Kaiser and J.D. also discuss the non-Pokémon headlines of the week, including Twitter’s big plans for this month’s political conventions and some truly classic code.

This week El Kaiser revisits Audioquest’s Dragonfly USB DAC, preamp and headphone amp. This new version of the thumb drive sized device improves on its predecessors and finally ditches black for fire engine red. Also on this episode,  J.D. prepares us for the 100th Anniversary of the U.S. National Parks Service and Pedro joins her for a rundown of the biggest tech news of the week.

It’s on like Donkey Kong!

 

This week, J.D. shares some handy tips on how to keep track of your family’s whereabouts using tools you may already have on your computers and mobile devices. El Kaiser rants on the state of Hollywood and why he thinks movie makers need to worry. In the news, the Dynamic Duo snark it up over the latest Microsoft missteps with their Windows 10 push; Google’s plans to legally display lyrics in their search results; Facebook’s decision to go all in on slideshows and a cubic, um, BOATload of tech news. C’mon, press play already. You know you want to…

After a week’s vacation El Kaiser and J.D. have returned to Pop Tech Jam HQ for this week’s episode — and they’ve brought some friends along. Journalist Laura M. Holson explores the photo-sharing trend of door and window portraits (sometimes with dogs in the picture, too), while technologist and Apple guru Don Donofrio discusses the highlights from Apple’s hefty pile of announcements from last week’s World Wide Developers Conference. And of course, there’s the usual rundown of the weekly tech, science and pop-culture headlines from around the world — and all the latest magic pony news.