WTF Tech

Darren and Jesse (sans Stuart) are joined by Richard Moy in the first “WTF Tech on-the-road” show at MWLUG in Alexandria. VA (USA) back in August. We chat about the things that went on at the conference (which admittedly was over 3 months ago….apologies for that – DD) but it’s still a fun one nonetheless.

Sponsored by:

DJI: Leaders in developing and manufacturing innovative drone and camera technology. Special offers on Phantom and Inspire drones, and Osmo camera mounts.

KNOMO: Founded in 2004 in London, with a mission to create perfect accessories that are beautiful on the outside and smart on the inside… And perfectly organise your life.

Darren, Jesse and Stuart return with the eighth episode of WTF Tech show. We discuss the the 10th birthday of the iPhone,  WWDC and the vitally important (and incorrect, since it’s missing the 3 of us) “most influential people on the internet” (Recorded Thursday 29th June 2017).

Show notes:

Chitchat

* Crap movie reboots

10th Anniversary of the Apple iPhone

* What are our memories of the first iPhone?

* Did any of us have one?

* $499/$699 plus contract!

* Visual voicemail revolutionary

* ‘Had me at scrolling’

* BlackBerry/Treo/WinCE aside, it heralded in modern (and consumer driven) computing

Tech Nostalgia

What were our first smartphones?

Stuart: Series of Nokia featurephones (including the classic 6210/6310), then Windows Mobile on an Orange branded Huawei device. Had Nokia laptop-style phones, plus various Blackberries.

Darren: Samsung Windows flip, BlackBerry Bold

Jesse: Treo 650

WWDC

iMac Pro, actual VR support, and a general re-interest in the Mac

VR support is pure catch-up, but it’s a new area for them

Will they one day have a machine that can play video games?

Poor little Mac mini (SM: oh I love those machines!)

Will it be like the G4 Cube?

iOS

Big updates for the iPad Pro again

Huge focus on AR

HomePod

Terrible name?

Beginning of the end for Sonos?

Will Siri be good enough to compete against Echo and Google Home?

Yet Another Big Malware Strike

Second verse, same as the first

More damaging

Time Magazine’s “25 most influential people on the internet”

We’re not on it…..again

Via Time Magazine

Tips:

* Jesse – Elgato Game Capture HD60 S

* Darren – Architecture of Radio app

* Stuart – An oldie but goodie – Waze.

Sponsored by:

MWLUG 2017: Social collaboration professionals, come join us in Washington DC for the ninth annual MWLUG conference.

DJI: Leaders in developing and manufacturing innovative drone and camera technology. Special offers on Phantom and Inspire drones, and Osmo camera mounts.

KNOMO: Founded in 2004 in London, with a mission to create perfect accessories that are beautiful on the outside and smart on the inside… And perfectly organise your life.

 

Darren, Jesse and Stuart return with the seventh episode of WTF Tech show. We discuss the Wanna Cry attack, IBM’s new work location strategy. We also touch on the Jive acquisition and the new Surface Pro. Oh, and Tech Nostalgia. (Recorded Wednesday 24th May 2017).

For starters, sorry about the audio quality (particularly Stuart’s track). We were hit by a Chrome bug that incorrectly detects the audio sample rate. We did investigate re-recording the episode, but with vacations imminent, felt it was better to get it out ASAP. We’ve cleaned it up as best we can, but you’ll still hear the occasional dropout and artefact. Sorry about that!

Show notes:

Chitchat

* Jesse heads to Europe for Engage.ug

WannaCry attack

What is it (Wikipedia)?

Should folks still be running Microsoft XP? Is there any excuse?

NSA responsibility

IBM’s work from home/office colocation strategy

Press coverage

Inc. Magazine

Forbes

The Register

Yahoo’s similar policy from 2013

Jive acquired by ESW Capital/Aurea

Last of the E2.0 startups to go (apart from Atlassian possibly)

Press coverage

Techcrunch

Forbes

ZDNet

Jive to be folded into Aurea Prime

Microsoft’s new Surface laptop

Microsoft’s announcement

Microsoft going head to head with Apple on vertically integrated systems

* Very normal laptop design, not convertible tablet/laptop

* Material covering is a bit weird?

“Surface Laptop provides the perfect blend of texture, subtle details, and clean, elegant lines — plus the luxurious touch of our Signature Alcantara® material-covered keyboard.”

What will this do to Microsoft OEMs?

Tech Nostalgia

First computer/arcade game played (or remembered)

J: Dark Castle

http://macintoshgarden.org

https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_mac

D: Some variant of pong

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pong

http://www.ponggame.org/

S: Asteroids

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroids_(video_game)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_Command

Darren, Jesse and Stuart are back with the sixth episode of WTF Tech show. Forever to be known as “the cursed episode”, this one took the best part of a month to record due to various technical and organisational difficulties! We discuss Apple’s decision to revisit the Mac Pro and what it tells us about the future of Pro computing, how we discover and consume news today, our first experiences of using hard disks, and then finish with a brief status report on our respective efforts to ‘cut the cord’… (Recorded Wednesday 12th April 2017)

Show notes:

Chitchat

* Jesse’s almost moved into his new house.

* Stuart has spent many many hours resurrecting posts from Domino-based blogs to new WordPress properties, including ibmconnections.news.

Pro Computing

Apple makes new Mac Pro pre-announcement, having been ‘backed into a thermal corner’ by their 2013 design 

Many posts from invited bloggers, including:

Daring Fireball: The Mac Pro lives

Techcrunch: Apple pushes the reset button on the Mac Pro

Rejigged Mac Pro product line:

MacRumors: Apple Refreshes Mac Pro Lineup, Says All-New Modular Model With Apple-Branded Pro Displays Coming After 2017

What does this mean for the wider picture of Pro Computing?

* SSD Improvements

* Linus Tech Tips: The FASTEST SSD Technology Explained – M.2, U.2, and MORE

* Marques Brownlee (MKBHD) 8k videos

* The State of 4K: 2017! (in 8K)

News Discovery & Consumption

* Do we still use RSS Readers?

* NetNewsWire, FeedWrangler, Reeder (for Mac)

* Traditional media subscriptions

* David Fahrenthold on Twitter

* Washington Post

* Stratechery (paid tech news from Ben Thompson)

* Read it later services

* Instapaper

* Pocket

* Podcasts

* The Incomparable

* Accidental Tech Podcast

* Top 4

* Discovery services

* Refind (invite only)

* Nuzzel

* Flipboard

* YouTube

* Saturday Night Live

* Twitter

* Tweetbot’s Mute features

* Following gaming streams

* Stampy Longhead

* Pewdiepie

Darren, Jesse and Stuart reconvene for the first WTF Tech show in several millennia(!), and discuss IBM Connect (including appdev futures and Connections Pink), Mobile World Congress news and device announcements and then roll back the years to share their first experiences online… (Recorded Friday 10th March 2017)

Show notes:

Chitchat

* Jesse’s bought a new house – wahoo!

* Stuart has a new webcam – 4k, eek! The Logitech BRIO

* Darren is finally running Windows 10 on his main work machine – a new Intel NUC i7

IBM Connect

Conference Review

App Moderni(z|s)ation

Connections Pink

Deck available

Call this week on Connections 6 and Pink futures

Overall Vibe?

Amanda is collating available presentation decks – available to all

News from Mobile World Congress

All the key announcements

 Interesting that primary news seemed to be about retro Nokia 3310 relaunch

Can we imagine going back to those days? No apps, no GPS, no LTE etc?

Porsche Design laptop – beautiful, but €2795

Oppo’s periscope camera lens looks interesting

Tech Nostalgia

First experiences getting online

 Tips

* Jesse – RoomScan

* Darren – Intel NUC

* Stuart – Plex app, new Plex Cloud feature available for all Plex Pass members. Load media onto Dropbox, OneDrive or Google Cloud and Plex does the rest – all available on the cloud to mobile devices etc.

Sponsored by:

TUMI: Product quality and selection are key attributes that have made TUMI the leading international business, accessory and travel lifestyle brand. Simply put, there is no other product made like TUMI.

MOO: Born out of a love of beautiful, high-quality print, MOO combines the values of professional design with the accessibility and reach of the web.  MOO print premium quality business cards, letterheads, greeting cards, postcards, flyers and stickers.

Darren, Jesse and Stuart get together for the first WTF Tech show of 2017, and discuss Virtual Reality (two of the hosts now have HTC Vive systems), Avaya’s bankruptcy, Yahoo’s sell out and IBM’s results… (Recorded Friday 20th January 2017 – Inauguration Day!)

Show notes:

* VR:

* Darren’s just acquired an HTC Vive, only to find out that Jesse also has one!

* We discuss the experience, the learning curve, the apps and games available and more

* VivePort app store

* IBM Speech Sandbox (Stuart blogged about this following the episode)

* Google Earth VR

* Avaya files for bankruptcy

* Remainder of Yahoo becomes Altaba after sale to Verizon

* IBM announced Q4 and 2016 results

*  Tips:

* Jesse: The 8-bit Guy – Youtube channel dedicated to 80s/90s home computing

* Darren: Greenshot – a light-weight screenshot software tool for Windows

* Stuart:

* Blogged list of podcast recommendations for 2017

* Udoq – docking station for mobile devices

Sponsored by:

TUMI: Product quality and selection are key attributes that have made TUMI the leading international business, accessory and travel lifestyle brand. Simply put, there is no other product made like TUMI.

 

MOO: Born out of a love of beautiful, high-quality print, MOO combines the values of professional design with the accessibility and reach of the web.  MOO print premium quality business cards, letterheads, greeting cards, postcards, flyers and stickers.

Darren, Jesse and Stuart gather for the final WTF Tech show of 2016, and take aim at Fitbit’s acquisition of Pebble, rumours of IBM refactoring Connections using modern web frameworks and the upcoming Connect conference. The hosts then start a new recurring topic reminiscing about old tech, kicking off with first computers… (Recorded Thursday 15th December 2016)

Show notes:

* FitBit acquires Pebble, shuts down Pebble

Related: Apple has best ever sales week for Watch

Moto pushes off smartwatches indefinitely

Google delays launch of Android Wear 2.0 to next year

Wearables are dead

Apple Watch Drops to Just 5% Share of Wearables Market as Basic Fitness Trackers ‘Reign Supreme’

Pebble Says Existing Smartwatch Services Will Continue to Function Through 2017

Darren’s steps:

* IBM to redevelop Connections (Pink)

* IBM Connect 2017 coming up soon…

* Old Tech Renaissance

* First Computers

* Darren: Sinclair ZX81 (1981)

* Stuart: Sinclair Spectrum (1982)

* Jesse: Apple Macintosh (1984)

*  Tips:

* Jesse: TaskPaper, plain-text task list software for macOS (Stuart also mentions Omnifocus)

* Darren: Ubiquiti’s latest Wifi access points, including Unifi AP-AC-LR (Stuart also mentions Amplifi)

* Stuart: Sonos. Still meeting folks that don’t get the power of the Sonos solution.  £20-£30 off most products in the range right now. Now play direct from Spotify. Also, Intercom… (Genius for getting teens out of bed!)

Sponsored by:

DJI: Leaders in developing and manufacturing innovative drone and camera technology. Special offers on Phantom and Inspire drones, and Osmo camera mounts.

 

Backblaze: Online backup for $5/month. Native. Unlimited. Unthrottled. Uncomplicated.

Darren, Jesse and Stuart reconvene for the second WTF Tech show to try to avoid mentioning the US election, but end up discussing “fake news”, the new UK surveillance law, followup on the new MBP USB-C ports and Touch Bar, plus the newly announced Microsoft Teams. (Recorded Mon 21st Nov 2016)

Show notes:

* “Fake News” and how to overcome it

* Jeff Jarvis: list of ideas on how to tackle fake news

* New UK Surveillance law

* Boing Boing article 

* The Guardian article 

* Volker’s post re: encrypted messaging (Signal)

* Apple Event Fallout

* Useful Macbook Pro with Touch Bar reviews

* Jason Snell @ Six Colors

* Rene Ritchie @ iMore

* Tweet re: using multiple dongles to provide Ethernet connectivity

* Microsoft Teams

* Stuart’s post on Teams and similar apps

*  Tips:

* Darren: Blue Yeti US Microphone

* Jesse: For Domino developers: Serdar’s improved XPages SDK

* Stuart: Workflow – powerful yet intuitive automation app for iOS. Canvas – podcast on iOS productivity, with recent series on using Workflow.

Sponsored by:

* DJI: Leaders in developing and manufacturing innovative drone and camera technology. Special offers on Phantom and Inspire drones, and Osmo camera mounts. Save $200 on the DJI Phantom 4!

* Backblaze: Online backup for $5/month. Native. Unlimited. Unthrottled. Uncomplicated.

Darren, Jesse and Stuart get together for the first WTF Tech show to discuss this week’s events and announcements from IBM, Microsoft and Apple.

Show notes:

* Urban Dictionary definitions of ‘WTF’ (and we’re not talking about Taekwondo)

* This Week in Lotus / TWiL

* IBM:

* World of Watson event

* Keynotes and other sessions available on IBM Go

* Watson Workspace announcement

* Access (or request access to) Watson Workspace (or DM Stuart)

* What’s new and coming soon (only available once logged in)

* Microsoft:

* The Verge: Microsoft Surface PC event: all the latest news

* Microsoft October 2016 Event (HD) Full | Windows 10, Surface Studio, Paint3D and MORE

* Apple:

* October 27th Apple Event

* Tips:

* Darren: UE Mini Boom Bluetooth speaker

* Jesse: Small Mac tools for developers (Dash, Paw and TaskPaper)

* Stuart: Overcast – podcast app for iPhone and iPad

Sponsored by:

* Backblaze: Online backup for $5/month. Native. Unlimited. Unthrottled. Uncomplicated.