Techstination

Techstination, your destination for gadgets and gear. I’m Fred Fishkin. Have you caught The Beanie Bubble movie in theaters or on Apple TV Plus? It is the true story….with a few name changes…about the Beanie Baby craze during the 90s and the very young employee, named Maya in the movie, who took Beanie Babies online…creating a Web site and boosting the resale popularity on eBay. She is in reality Lina Trivedi...

“When I had the idea to create the Web site, the Web wasn’t even a thing that was commonly known. Most people didn’t even know what the Internet was and I remember I had to explain what the Internet even was to him.”

Him…is Ty Warner…the toy billionaire. Trivedi went on to become a top Web designer…and has a new AI startup …Joii.ai…that will address issues of loneliness and social isolation.

You can find us at Techstination.com. I’m Fred Fishkin.

What's trending in back to school searches? Google's Christina Basilio chats with Techstination about the trends and school tech tools for students, parents and teachers.

Techstination, your destination for gadgets and gear.   I’m Fred Fishkin.       The Oppenheimer movie and the Barbie movie…have been among the top search trends on Google of late.   And the searches go well beyond trying to find out movie times and theaters.    Google’s Luma Hamade…

“On the Barbie front, a lot of people were wondering what is the all-star cast.   I think people got really excited when they realized that there were musicians like Dua Lipa in the movie, I know Billie Eilish  also had a featured song.  So that was all the range in terms of search trends is just figuring out who was and wasn’t going to be featured.  On Oppenheimer people were actually interested in knowing if there was CGI in the movie.”

Others have also been searching for theaters showing the film in 70mm iMax….and some wondered how long the movie is.  The answer…three hours.   Find more at trends.google.com.

You can find us at Techstination.com.   I’m Fred Fishkin.

Techstination, your destination for gadgets and gear. I’m Fred Fishkin. He is at it again. Jason Michael Paul, the music producer and creator of the first stateside Final Fantasy Concerts, The Legend of Zelda 25th Anniversary Concerts and more…is about to kick off the world tour of Heroes: A Video Game Symphony…

“The concept was developed a few years ago when I was on tour with The Legend of Zelda, Symphony of the Goddesses. Basically we were thinking of some story tellers. And one that came to mind was Joseph Campbell and the monomyth from the Hero’s Journey. We’ve taken the framework from that story and we’ve created our on story.”

Featuring legendary video game music played by a 70 piece orchestra and narration. The global tour begins in Baltimore this month. Find more at www.heroes-symphony.com.

You can find us at Techstination.com. I’m Fred Fishkin.

pebblebee is bringing new capabilities to rechargeable trackers. Such as? Co-founder Caniel Daoura chats with Techstination's Fred Fishkin.

Techstination, your destination for gadgets and gear.   I’m Fred Fishkin.   How many streaming services do you use.   Synacor is a company that works behind the scenes with a product called CloudID to simplify the authentication process so when you go to watch that streaming service on a new device…it is less frustrating.   CEO Marc Zionts..

“So examples of customers in this space would be people like Max, Peacock, YouTube TV, Sirius XM, a whole host of companies like this that have content.”

And the goal is to make that authentication and login process  even easier……

“As we move away from passwords and we start using known things, including biometrics that can be on your computer or on your mobile device.”

And CloudID is branching into the healthcare space as well.

You can find us at Techstination.com.   I’m Fred Fishkin.

Austere brings high quality A/V accessories to partnership with Victrola. With a focus on real protection and style Austere is gaining consumer response. Founder and CEO Deena Ghazarian chats with Techstination's Fred Fishkin.

Documentarian Dan Levitt's new book What's Gottten Into You- The Story of Your Body's Atoms, from the Big Bang Through Last Night's Dinner, is filled with science and history and lots of research. And his motive for the research was concern about his daughter's vegetarian diet. Levitt chats with Techstination's Fred Fishkin.

Techstination, your destination for gadgets and gear. I’m Fred Fishkin. Like to tinker with smart home gear? The NSPanel Pro from Sonoff is a slightly under four inch touch screen that can be used in wall…replacing a wall switch…or go into a cradle for the nightstand or desk. It can control a wide range smart home devices with support for WiFi, Zigbee, Bluetooth and technology from eWeLink…where Chief operating engineer WeiHua Wang…

“We have a Zigbee bridge built into this control panel. We can add any devices following the Zigbee protocol.”

We’ve seen the panel selling for as little as 80 dollars….delivering lots of value. It works with smart speakers too. Find more info at www.sonoff.tech.

You can find us at Techstination.com. I’m Fred Fishkin.

Techstination, your destination for gadgets and gear. I’m Fred Fishkin. AI and the law. She has been an assistant attorney general in two states….and these days Jackie Schafer has been pioneering the use of AI as a valuable tool for the legal community with the company she founded and heads, Clearbrief. It uses AI to save time and improve accuracy in the writing of briefs and more….while avoiding the pitfalls of chatbots such as ChatGPT…

“So one of the issues with using ChatGPT.. which is OpenAI’s sort of public version… it will generate text for you based on different prompts, but there are very clear disclaimers like this is not accurate, it will make up stuff, it will do what’s called hallucination. And it will even make up cases that look like real case citations.”

And Clearbrief is designed for accuracy and reliability.

You can find us at Techstination.com. I’m Fred Fishkin.