Techstination

Through a new partnership with TKL, BenjiLock's fingerprint lock technology will be protecting guitars and other musical instruments. How? Founder and CEO Robbie Cabral chats with Techstination's Fred Fishkin.

Techstination, your destination for gadgets and gear.   I’m Fred Fishkin.     The popularity of electric scooters…or e-scooters in the U.S. continues to grow.  They are fun, provide a good mobility option in many circumstances and many fold up and are more easily carried with you into the office, onto mass transit or stowed in a trunk…than a bike or e-bike.   We’ve tested out the KS6-Pro from Yadea.   It is powerful, with an 800 watt motor,  has a range of about 34 miles, has shock absorption in the front fork for comfort and self healing ten inch tires.   The tech is impressive too…with the built in display connecting to a smartphone app to lock, unlock and set quick controls.   The list price is about 900 dollars.   Yadea has another new model as well..on Indiegogo with early bird pricing for the ElitePrime Scooter.   Find more at store.yadea.com.

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

Techstination, your destination for gadgets and gear.   I’m Fred Fishkin.   Bird Buddy is one of those products that comes along once and a while and delivers on its promise.   It is a smart, camera equipped bird feeder…that uses an app and AI to identify birds that come to the feeder…and fill you in with fun facts about the visitors.     CEO Franci Zidar..

“It’s a bit of a gamified experience of bird feeding.  We like to think that we are really, basically, making bird watching a lot more accessible.  Bird watching takes a lot of effort and Bird Buddy kind of makes that lot of effort really effortless for the customer and the user.”

Bird Buddy isn’t cheap at about 200 dollars…but the quality of the feeder and camera are impressive.  Up next….a Kickstarter campaign for a smart hummingbird feeder.   Learn more at www.mybirdbuddy.com.

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

Techstination, your destination for gadgets and gear.   I’m Fred Fishkin.   Once again the folks at Google are telling us what the top search trends were for the past month.   In sports…the Masters golf tournament, an NBA scoring record and Pickleball drew the most interest..

“Right, we saw pickleball spiking around this time last year last year but now it’s actually being searched at an all time high.  I think it’s probably because the weather is warm, people learned how to play pickleball last year and now it’s really taking off again this year.”

Google’s Sarah Armstrong.   The big technology company also lists Earth Day and National Park Week, Coachella and the upcoming Barbie movie in the big search trend list for April. 

“The trailer didn’t give away a ton about the plot so there’s speculation about what it could be about, but people are very excited.”

 Want to learn more?   Head to trends.google.com.

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

Techstination, your destination for gadgets and gear.   I’m Fred Fishkin.        Posit Science with its Brain HQ app has been used for years by many…including this tech journalist.   And new studies underscore  the science behind the brain training.  Researchers in Australia report that a relatively small amount of training is required to reduce dementia risk .   CEO Dr. Henry Mahncke..

“And what’s exciting about this study is that they asked people to do all of these things..exercise, change their diet and brain training and they gave them five or six months to do this.  And over the course of that time they saw that on the average people did about 10.8 hours of brain training, almost 11 hours of brain training.  And the question that you or I might have is well, is that enough brain training to make a difference.  And it turned out it was.”

BrainHQ is free to try…and full subscriptions are priced at 96 dollars a year.   

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

Techstination, your destination for gadgets and gear.   I’m Fred Fishkin.    In his latest book, The Real Work on the Mystery of Mastery, New York Times best selling author Adam Gopnik talks about learning to drive at the age of 50.   In our wide ranging Techstination interview…which you can find online… Gopnik talked about one of the skills that he had to learn in driving … less in learning to see and steer…than learning to be selectively blind…not seeing too much…

“And that art of selective blindness is part of the mastery of anything.  It’s true of boxing as well.  You have to not be overly obsessed with your opponent.  You have to be aware but not obsessed by your opponent.”

And coding that selective blindness is one of the big challenges for companies trying to build self driving cars today.   The book again, is The Real Work on the Mystery of Mastery.  

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

The top search trends during April? The list includes the upcoming Barbie movie, Coachella, Earth Day, Pickleball and more. Google's Sarah Armstrong chats with Techstination's Fred Fishkin.