Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with text from dot Com.
Speaker 1: Hey there, everybody, and welcome to Text Stuff. Guess what
Speaker 1: it's our five hundred episode. I'm your host extraordinaire jomp
Speaker 1: In strick Linding with me is Lauren Buffalo. That's right,
Speaker 1: my co host extraordinary and we also have a special
Speaker 1: guest in the in the studio today. Special guest introduce yourself.
Speaker 1: Oh I'm sorry, let me just rip the tape off here.
Speaker 1: Oh who are you? Wait? Where you brought me back here? Yeah? Okay,
Speaker 1: so everyone, Uh, if you don't recognize that voice, that is,
Speaker 1: in fact my former co host, our our our good
Speaker 1: friend Chris Pillette. Who who how's your head feeling? Chris?
Speaker 1: You know chloroform is so nineteen seventies. Yeah, you know.
Speaker 1: We just wanted to go the full route. We really
Speaker 1: wanted to have you here, and you seemed a bit
Speaker 1: reticent on instant Messenger, so that happened. But anyway, here
Speaker 1: we all are just chair. Don't you know? The struggle
Speaker 1: all you like? The chains are far too thick. The
Speaker 1: interesting thing here, folks, is that this is the first
Speaker 1: time we've had all three of the Tech Stuff hosts
Speaker 1: in the same room at the same time with microphones
Speaker 1: pointed at us. It's actually the first time that I've
Speaker 1: ever met Chris Polatte period today about you know, twenty
Speaker 1: minutes before this recording happened, right, you had been in
Speaker 1: the same building as Chris a few times, but you
Speaker 1: had never actually had the opportunity to meet him hypothetically before.
Speaker 1: Now the two of us could have been the same person,
Speaker 1: and I never would have known. Now we have been asked,
Speaker 1: you know, what are you gonna do for your fipisode?
Speaker 1: And I thought it'd be fun to open that up
Speaker 1: to the tech stuff fans at large, also the small ones,
Speaker 1: and they ended up responding in droves, and the two
Speaker 1: most popular responses where talk about the history of tech
Speaker 1: stuff and maybe explore the differences of what tech was
Speaker 1: like when you started the podcast versus what it's like
Speaker 1: today today being in twenty and we started the podcast
Speaker 1: way back in two thousand and eight. So I thought, well,
Speaker 1: the best way to talk about that is to bring
Speaker 1: on the person who was with me from the very beginning. So, Chris,
Speaker 1: what do you remember from those earliest days of the podcast? Well,
Speaker 1: they were they were five minutes long. Yes, they were
Speaker 1: told to keep them no longer than five minutes, which
Speaker 1: was people are complaining that they're too long. Well, now
Speaker 1: there are many many five minutes, right, sometimes way too many. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The the very first well, first of all, we were
Speaker 1: we were kind of taken aside by by the guy
Speaker 1: who was the managing editor at the time, Connell, who
Speaker 1: is now he's now a big wig with all of
Speaker 1: the Discovery Digital. But he um, I think that's a
Speaker 1: real here. Okay, that's fair enough. He brought us aside
Speaker 1: and he said that he won to us to to
Speaker 1: look at doing a podcast. We had already started to
Speaker 1: record How Stuff Works, had already started to record podcasts
Speaker 1: in a couple of different fields. They had Stuff you
Speaker 1: Should Know which, Chris you were part of that originally. Yes,
Speaker 1: so it's the original co host of Stuff you should
Speaker 1: Know what, Josh Clark. So yeah, so we've got a
Speaker 1: Stuff you should know all star on our team here too.
Speaker 1: They retired my jersey. Yeah, that's that's fair. We did
Speaker 1: the same thing to you many years later. But that
Speaker 1: that you can't give milk anymore. So it's all right,
Speaker 1: Jersey cal folks, that's the puns we've been missing here,
Speaker 1: So missing being a relative terms. Chris Uh, I heard
Speaker 1: the quotes around missing right. Chris and I ended up
Speaker 1: being uh pulled into a meeting and talked to about
Speaker 1: the possibility of making a technology podcast, And so we
Speaker 1: went into the studio and we recorded a few test episodes,
Speaker 1: none of which actually ever aired there. I I can't
Speaker 1: even do you even remember what any of those topics were.
Speaker 1: I don't, no, no, but but my earliest recollection of
Speaker 1: episodes that just made me laugh was the the Blue
Speaker 1: Ray Versus HD DVD podcast that we recorded, uh somewhere
Speaker 1: within the neighborhood of I don't know, a week to
Speaker 1: two weeks when before or after. I don't even remember
Speaker 1: which one it was when h D DVD was killed.
Speaker 1: We actually talked about it. Was it after? It was
Speaker 1: after h D DVD had died, because you and I
Speaker 1: had gone to we were going to do it, and
Speaker 1: then when we actually recorded it, it was like mere
Speaker 1: milliseconds after they shelved it something like that. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was one of the earliest ones. The very first
Speaker 1: episode we ever recorded was, or at least the first
Speaker 1: one that ever published, was an episode called how the
Speaker 1: Google Apple Cloud Computer Will Work, which was based off
Speaker 1: an article you had written, wasn't it Christmas? I have
Speaker 1: written very few articles for the website. That is one
Speaker 1: of them. Um, and it was based on a Postconnell
Speaker 1: actually suggested that because he had read this, uh, this
Speaker 1: article by Nicholas Carr, who was a famous tech pundit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he wrote the essay that I've quoted quite a few
Speaker 1: times is Google making us stupid? Yeah? Yeah, exactly in
Speaker 1: Atlantic And as a matter of fact, we touched on
Speaker 1: this anyway back sometime after that and the Frenemies episode,
Speaker 1: because Google and Apple had been frenemies for quite some time.
Speaker 1: And uh, the idea was that Google could do the
Speaker 1: back end, Apple could do the hardware, and you know,
Speaker 1: they would work together and that this cloud computer thing
Speaker 1: would be absolutely brilliant. And it might have been if
Speaker 1: they ever actually did that. Apple could have done the aesthetics,
Speaker 1: because that's what I mean. Apple is known for making
Speaker 1: these beautiful products. And yeah, there was the maps, the
Speaker 1: maps look at their mat Oh yeah, I think Google
Speaker 1: has been slightly better off in that if it would
Speaker 1: have run on the Google Maps obviously, otherwise there'd be
Speaker 1: bridges where no bridges should be. Uh. Yeah, that first
Speaker 1: episode was five minutes already five seconds long or thereabouts.
Speaker 1: I actually went into our RSS feed and looked it up.
Speaker 1: By the way, guys, if you are iTunes subscribers, you
Speaker 1: might be wondering, how could we have five hundred episodes
Speaker 1: because you go back and there aren't five hundred on
Speaker 1: their iTunes has a limit to how many episodes you
Speaker 1: can have of any podcast available for download. But if
Speaker 1: you go to the RSS feed and that's that's linked
Speaker 1: off the tech stuff page at how Stuff Works, you
Speaker 1: can actually go and listen to our earliest episodes. I
Speaker 1: don't know why you would want to, but you could.
Speaker 1: I listened to a bunch of research preparation for this episode.
Speaker 1: Actually that was Lauren, this was this was so before
Speaker 1: you were born. I think that we recorded those before
Speaker 1: we figured out how to get rid of the horrible echo.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you listen to the sound quality, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's some subty issues. It's not actually sactually not echo,
Speaker 1: but it is there is some sort of tenniness to
Speaker 1: the voices, which we eventually fixed. Uh. The another episode
Speaker 1: I wanted to mention this one I thought was funny,
Speaker 1: just because you know, you look at those early episodes
Speaker 1: and you think of what was important back in two
Speaker 1: thousand eight. Right, one of the earliest episodes was do
Speaker 1: I really need a digital converter box for my TV?
Speaker 1: Which is ironically another one of the very few articles
Speaker 1: that I've written for the website. Right, And at the time,
Speaker 1: you might have yeah, these these days you might not remember,
Speaker 1: but there was this big movement where we were going
Speaker 1: to move from analog to digital broadcast, and it meant
Speaker 1: that if you did not have if you had an
Speaker 1: older television set and you did not have this converter
Speaker 1: attached to your television set, you might not get over
Speaker 1: the air transmissions anymore. You wouldn't be able to your
Speaker 1: your your television wouldn't be able to interpret the signals,
Speaker 1: and you wouldn't be able to watch television. So it
Speaker 1: was a big concern and there was a lot of
Speaker 1: confusion out in the marketplace about do I need one
Speaker 1: of these things? I'm a cable subscriber, do I need one?
Speaker 1: And And it was just one of those things where, uh,
Speaker 1: the information was all out there, it was just that
Speaker 1: people were finding it really difficult to find that that
Speaker 1: relevant info and so they were all thinking, like, maybe
Speaker 1: I guess I better buy one of these things even
Speaker 1: if they didn't need one. And so Chris had written
Speaker 1: an article kind of explaining what this was, which people
Speaker 1: would actually need it versus which people could just ignore it,
Speaker 1: and then we did a podcast about it that was
Speaker 1: about five minutes long. Uh, the final five minute long
Speaker 1: episode we did because that that five minute time limit
Speaker 1: lasted for a couple of months. Actually August four, two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight, was when the final five minute long
Speaker 1: episode aired, and then we were allowed to go up
Speaker 1: to ten or fifteen minutes. That was what the new
Speaker 1: limit was. But that last episode was how Twitter works,
Speaker 1: so we were able to explain how Twitter works in
Speaker 1: five minutes. Apparently, well we should have explained it a
Speaker 1: little hashtag there, hashtag joke. Um. The the first episode
Speaker 1: that was the first episode that was longer, you know,
Speaker 1: a ten minute long episode. This one cracks me up
Speaker 1: to how the Facebook redesign works in two thousand and eight.
Speaker 1: So there's been quite a few redesigned since then. I
Speaker 1: was gonna say which one. Yeah, I couldn't even tell
Speaker 1: you what that particular redesigned what happened with that one,
Speaker 1: because it's been Facebook has been redesigned so frequently since
Speaker 1: that time that I could not tell you specifically, I
Speaker 1: didn't listen to it. I guess if I had, I
Speaker 1: would learn. Well, it's comforting to think that things have
Speaker 1: changed so little in in this time that people are
Speaker 1: still freaking out every single time there's a Facebook redesigns.
Speaker 1: You can always rely on that if Facebook changes something,
Speaker 1: there's going to be a storm of comments that rages
Speaker 1: across all social media, uh, saying it's the worst thing ever.
Speaker 1: It's really what they mean is it's the worst thing
Speaker 1: since the last time they did this. Uh. I you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes I have that action two, but I try and
Speaker 1: keep perspective. The very first episode that I could find
Speaker 1: that was fifteen minutes long was actually a pretty uh,
Speaker 1: pretty heavy one. It was can the government take away
Speaker 1: my laptop? And that was based off some news stories
Speaker 1: about people who were doing things like crossing a border
Speaker 1: and then uh, the question of whether or not the
Speaker 1: government could search a laptops contents for illegal material, saying
Speaker 1: that just by carrying the lab right the same way
Speaker 1: that you can search a car, It's yeah, it doesn't.
Speaker 1: It was one of those questions that was really it
Speaker 1: was an important question. UM. Another funny one that we
Speaker 1: did funny in the sense that just from a timing issue.
Speaker 1: On October eight, we published an episode about how Dean
Speaker 1: Came In works, and the reason that's funny's Lauren and
Speaker 1: I just got finished talking about how the Segway works.
Speaker 1: So I'm glad to get into that episode because he's
Speaker 1: a fascinating guy, like I should go back and listen that.
Speaker 1: And the last one I have specifically written down to
Speaker 1: just kind of a little walk down memory lane, and
Speaker 1: we can chat about other ones too, but the last
Speaker 1: one I've written down is what Happened to the Technology
Speaker 1: of the Future, which we published on October twenty eight,
Speaker 1: and that one was thirty minutes long. So that was
Speaker 1: about the time where we were told we could go
Speaker 1: as long as we needed to go, and that really
Speaker 1: any episode that we recorded could be as long as
Speaker 1: we felt was necessary in order to really cover the
Speaker 1: topic and and address what needs to be talked about.
Speaker 1: And uh, it's also funny because that's one of those
Speaker 1: topics that we get requests for all the time, people
Speaker 1: like why don't you talk about stuff that never happened
Speaker 1: that when you know, we were like, where's my jet
Speaker 1: pack kind of stuff, because we did that in two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight and it's still not here. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we could just play that one if you wanted to
Speaker 1: have a true Tech Stuff experience, play it twice back
Speaker 1: to back, because that's about the length of a regular
Speaker 1: Tech Stuff episode now these days. I was I was
Speaker 1: gonna say that. It's kind of funny because once they
Speaker 1: gave us enough time to talk about whatever it was
Speaker 1: we needed to talk about in enough depth to do
Speaker 1: that is when we started to talk about things for
Speaker 1: so long, we started to have to split them into
Speaker 1: two and three episodes. Yeah. We would get to a
Speaker 1: point where we would record an episode and realize, like
Speaker 1: Tyler would turn to us and say, okay, that was
Speaker 1: an hour and seven minutes long. We're like, uh, let's
Speaker 1: split that into two. Um. We We did get to
Speaker 1: a point where our average episode length was probably closer
Speaker 1: to forty five minutes long. Yeah. The first time I
Speaker 1: remember doing that was the time we were going to
Speaker 1: record an episode about Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. I
Speaker 1: had to make one about Bill Gates and another one
Speaker 1: about Steve Jobs. Yeah, it turned out that the one
Speaker 1: section had gone on so long that it didn't make
Speaker 1: sense for us to keep going, we would have had
Speaker 1: an hour and a half long episode. And uh, and
Speaker 1: that's that's probably too long. I think most of our
Speaker 1: listeners would say it's too long. Even if you are
Speaker 1: able to pause right in the middle and pick right
Speaker 1: back up, that's still a lot of a lot of
Speaker 1: tech stuff in one in one dose. Uh, there was
Speaker 1: a there was another thing that was not exactly directly
Speaker 1: related to the podcast that happened about that time. If
Speaker 1: I'm not mistaken. What's that text? Stuff live? Uh, tech
Speaker 1: stuff live now, Lauren, Lauren, I've talked about this briefly
Speaker 1: with you, but it's am. It was. It was very briefly.
Speaker 1: It was because it was did not last that long.
Speaker 1: This was an experiment we had where we did probably
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe what six or seven weeks maybe
Speaker 1: yeah stuff you said stuff you should know and and
Speaker 1: and we did that, and I think somebody else didn't.
Speaker 1: Maybe it was it was might not have might have
Speaker 1: been car stuff. It might have been car So I
Speaker 1: was gonna say stuff to blow your mind, except they
Speaker 1: were called something else at that point, stuff from the
Speaker 1: science lab or something. Um. But yeah, the it wasn't
Speaker 1: nerve racking at all. Sitting in front of a live camera. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that was that was the idea was that it was.
Speaker 1: It was me and Chris sitting down behind a desk.
Speaker 1: We had a live camera pointed at us and we
Speaker 1: would uh it was streaming out live too. Sometimes as
Speaker 1: many as twenty seven people. Uh thanks dad. Yeah, my
Speaker 1: family made up about five of those. Uh No, it
Speaker 1: was I joke, but it really was a very relatively
Speaker 1: small number of people, which is not that surprising. We
Speaker 1: were streaming in the middle of the day. We were
Speaker 1: trying to keep as close to the regular schedule as
Speaker 1: possible because I mean, if you're going to do a
Speaker 1: live event, you need it to be predictable, right, You
Speaker 1: need to go live when you say you're gonna go live.
Speaker 1: We had the chat room that was open where we
Speaker 1: could interact directly with our audience, and we would cover
Speaker 1: about five important text stories that had happened in the
Speaker 1: week since the last time we had done a tex
Speaker 1: Stuff live. And so we also introduced a segment called
Speaker 1: the Tweet of the Week, where I would I would
Speaker 1: go through my Twitter feed of all the stuff that
Speaker 1: I followed and picked the one that I liked the most.
Speaker 1: Usually I would end up doing that about five minutes
Speaker 1: before we went on the air, because I would forget
Speaker 1: about it. That was our first major special effect to
Speaker 1: the tweetcause yeah, one of one of the one of
Speaker 1: the video folks would crawl behind Jonathan with a bird
Speaker 1: on a It was usually Matt Frederick and he would
Speaker 1: he would have a bird on a stick. It was
Speaker 1: Tyler did it a few times too. But they would
Speaker 1: have a bird on a stick and they would poke
Speaker 1: it up so that it would somehow obstruct my view,
Speaker 1: and they would mess around with it while I was
Speaker 1: trying to do the segment, and it just became a
Speaker 1: bigger and bigger joke each time, and they would do
Speaker 1: a different bird noise each time, live live, fully produced
Speaker 1: by the vocal cords, where it might be like or
Speaker 1: you know, it just became these weird like I couldn't
Speaker 1: even identify what sort of birds they were supposed to
Speaker 1: be until there was one day where I the bird
Speaker 1: off the stick, slammed it on the desk and said there,
Speaker 1: that's done. The next week they came back with a
Speaker 1: bigger bird. It was an ex parrot. One of those
Speaker 1: birds now resides at my desk. It's actually one of
Speaker 1: the ones I smashed. In fact, it was missing a
Speaker 1: leg until Lauren found it and did some emergency glue
Speaker 1: surgery on bad for it. The leg was just kind
Speaker 1: of hanging out on a different part of the desk.
Speaker 1: It was kind of pinned up there from my lamp.
Speaker 1: Like to be fair, folks, in case you're being absolutely horrified,
Speaker 1: these are totally fake persons, never never living. No, No
Speaker 1: real birds were harmed in the making of Tech Stuff Live.
Speaker 1: A few real video technicians were, though, so um but no.
Speaker 1: That was an interesting experience because that was the first
Speaker 1: time we had ever tried to do a live show,
Speaker 1: knowing that there were people watching us at that time,
Speaker 1: which meant that we could not really make a mistake. Now,
Speaker 1: Chris and Lauren, this is true for us too. For
Speaker 1: the most part, our episodes are one take, unless unless
Speaker 1: we do something terrifying, you know, like sneeze in the
Speaker 1: middle of something or say something that is not quite
Speaker 1: appropriate or etcetera. We we might cut something out once
Speaker 1: in a while, but more often than not, what you
Speaker 1: hear on the podcast is one uninterrupted take from beginning
Speaker 1: to end, and that's it for the most part. There
Speaker 1: are exceptions. There are some episodes out there where one
Speaker 1: of us just goes off the rails and something unusual
Speaker 1: happens and we have to stop and go back. And
Speaker 1: usually it's me, I'll go ahead and be the one
Speaker 1: to say that, but but more frequently than not, it's
Speaker 1: it's we just we go warts and all. Um. Sometimes
Speaker 1: that meant that we had some less than accurate things
Speaker 1: in our episodes where one of us was speaking off
Speaker 1: the cuff, again usually me, but we tried to address
Speaker 1: those whenever that happened, which brings me to another thing
Speaker 1: that we used to do on text stuff all the time. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there used to be a segment that we would do
Speaker 1: on text stuff, a special segment that had its own
Speaker 1: special intro. And so, ladies and gentlemen, this is where
Speaker 1: I warn you, please turn the volume down on whichever
Speaker 1: listening device you happen to be using at this point.
Speaker 1: I am going to do a countdown from five to one.
Speaker 1: When I hit one, I am then going to do
Speaker 1: the amazing intro to this segment. You have been warned thoroughly.
Speaker 1: I want no email about how loud this is going
Speaker 1: to be five four, three two one listener. Usually. That
Speaker 1: was followed by Chris saying something like, uh, yeah, so
Speaker 1: we we used to have that segment when you did
Speaker 1: it all the time, and we're gonna start doing listener
Speaker 1: mail again, folks, And of course I will not be
Speaker 1: using that intro anymore. I got enough email, like Chris,
Speaker 1: do you I think they've probably got us the most responses, uh,
Speaker 1: most negative response and most negative responses were like could
Speaker 1: you please stop screaming into the microphone. But what was
Speaker 1: funny was that the second most negative responses was when
Speaker 1: we stopped doing it and people were begging us to
Speaker 1: bring it back. So we had that was kind of comic.
Speaker 1: Two camps. We had the camp and also the nature
Speaker 1: of podcasts meant that some people were about three or
Speaker 1: four months behind other people, so they're complaining about stuff
Speaker 1: that we haven't been doing for months. I mean, while
Speaker 1: we have another camp of people saying, why aren't you
Speaker 1: doing that thing you used to do that was always
Speaker 1: fun Um other big events, we did a live a
Speaker 1: live show at a convention. We went to Dragon Con
Speaker 1: in Atlanta, and Chris and I sat up on stage
Speaker 1: with Tom Merritt and Veronica Belmont, who are both tech
Speaker 1: journalists as well as the hosts of a show called
Speaker 1: Sword and Laser and we conducted that was also I
Speaker 1: think our first interview. Yeah, I believe so. And I
Speaker 1: found out something very important. What's that um that Jonathan
Speaker 1: was not the only podcast hosts after who am? I say?
Speaker 1: A lot? However, I'm not sure that there's a drinking
Speaker 1: game for any show other than this one, right right? Well,
Speaker 1: And that was fun because when when it started, I'm
Speaker 1: not kidding, there were people who had a drinking game
Speaker 1: for every time I would go U huh, yeah, that
Speaker 1: trend continues. Yeah, yeah, I'm very sure that I'm filling
Speaker 1: those shoes. The sorry about the smell. That particular that
Speaker 1: particular show was fun because we started off with just myself, Chris,
Speaker 1: Tom Veronica, and uh some of a couple of members
Speaker 1: of our crew we had. We had Matt and Tyler
Speaker 1: there and then there was a live studio audience by
Speaker 1: the end of it. There was when it first started,
Speaker 1: it was just it was just us plus the We
Speaker 1: had one technician from the the podcast track at dragon
Speaker 1: Con who was running the the the board for us.
Speaker 1: But were you guys like set up in in a
Speaker 1: conference room or in a conference room. It was the
Speaker 1: conference room that the podcast track was using for their
Speaker 1: regular events, and we were We had scheduled our our
Speaker 1: podcast recording an hour before the room officially opened. So
Speaker 1: but as we were going on, we're getting closer and
Speaker 1: closer to the first scheduled event of the day, and
Speaker 1: they had left the door open because they asked us
Speaker 1: if we if they could do that. I said, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I think that's fine. It's it's gonna be
Speaker 1: a little weird having people come in as we're going
Speaker 1: but I don't see why that should be a real issue.
Speaker 1: Um and everyone else felt pretty much the same way.
Speaker 1: And by the time our show ended, we had a
Speaker 1: full studio audience, so that was a live studio audience
Speaker 1: for the end of that episode. That sounds both thrilling
Speaker 1: and completely terrifying. Tex stuff is recorded in one of
Speaker 1: the live studio Yeah, yeah, because when it's when it's
Speaker 1: not in front of a live studio audience, it's a
Speaker 1: lot easier actually, because again, you don't have to worry
Speaker 1: about making mistakes because we've got we've got amazing producers
Speaker 1: who take care of all that for us. Oh hey,
Speaker 1: you know, I just noticed something and it's a rare
Speaker 1: footnote for those who have you who have been listening,
Speaker 1: have you gotten a new computer since I was hearing?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, okay, so that's a running gag with tech
Speaker 1: stuff as the idea about my how my computers die,
Speaker 1: except for the fact that that's not really a gag.
Speaker 1: It was true and no one has all the keys right, Yes,
Speaker 1: this is a new computer. There was one. You didn't
Speaker 1: have a tilta key. I didn't have an E as
Speaker 1: the and the and there was a hole being uh
Speaker 1: made through the a. Apparently I was secreting some sort
Speaker 1: of acidic oil through my fingertips. I just looked up
Speaker 1: and noticed that both Chris and I were doing the
Speaker 1: same gesture. We're both holding the It turns out it
Speaker 1: turns out I have a mutant superability. Unfortunately, it would
Speaker 1: require years of me leaning against a substance to actually
Speaker 1: wear it down, unless it's a computer keyboard, in which
Speaker 1: case I can go through it in about six months.
Speaker 1: It does explain yeah, well you know, I'm what can
Speaker 1: I say? At one point I thought about being a
Speaker 1: lawyer and something stick the actually actually, uh you know
Speaker 1: that that wasn't really a problem for tech stuff. However,
Speaker 1: at the time it was also Jonathan's editor. So it
Speaker 1: was a problem for that, right, there was a point
Speaker 1: where I could not type the letter E and I
Speaker 1: just told Chris, like, all right, so here's the deal.
Speaker 1: It didn't It didn't make editing very see. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it became it became it became quite sort of trial annoying. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. It was not good. It was not good.
Speaker 1: It was a bad that was there was a dark
Speaker 1: time in the empire. Um, yeah, it was rough. See
Speaker 1: one other one. Other crazy things have happened during the
Speaker 1: course of text stuff. Um, oh well we we we
Speaker 1: talked about the uh, the large Hadron collider before it
Speaker 1: went online, and that's kind of interesting because we did
Speaker 1: a full episode on that not too long ago. And then, uh,
Speaker 1: of course the Higgs boson has essentially, I mean you
Speaker 1: might as well say the Higgs boson has been found
Speaker 1: at least within a fairly comfortable margin of still being
Speaker 1: scientifically cautious, but might as well. It was because they
Speaker 1: were concentrated between the cushions of the couch, because that's
Speaker 1: usually where things end up. But you know, yeah, so
Speaker 1: that that was kind of crazy, and uh see what
Speaker 1: other what other fun tech stuff stories are there? I
Speaker 1: mean we I had started my own Twitter account before
Speaker 1: anyone at at House Stuff Works had really gotten into it,
Speaker 1: and uh, and so I am sort of to blame
Speaker 1: for the fact that there are text Stuff Twitter accounts
Speaker 1: now because people noticed that people were following me, and
Speaker 1: then we were all required to have them. So now
Speaker 1: we've got a tech stuff Twitter account as well as uh,
Speaker 1: every every brand of the House. Lauren knows a lot
Speaker 1: about that because she's our social media guru. Um guru
Speaker 1: is probably an incorrect word. That's I'm I'm the poor
Speaker 1: sap that they've hired to do that things. But she's
Speaker 1: our social media octopus. Well, perhaps we should give you
Speaker 1: a bird on a stick. Yeah, that's true. She she
Speaker 1: did get to play with the bird a little bit.
Speaker 1: I did. I did well, you know, I reattached the
Speaker 1: leg because I felt so bad for it. But uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's only so much you can do another thing now,
Speaker 1: I guess, I guess really, Uh, Chris, are there any
Speaker 1: episodes in particular that stand out in your mind? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh wow. Yeah. I feel like that's probably a hard
Speaker 1: question because I've only done what like thirty of these things,
Speaker 1: and I already have no idea what I've recorded at
Speaker 1: all that was that's pretty part of the course. Yeah,
Speaker 1: once it's It's funny because we had a lot of
Speaker 1: episodes where we had talked about specific technologies that may
Speaker 1: or may not have come and gone, some things that
Speaker 1: turned into vapor ware and another stuff. We talked about
Speaker 1: vaporware a lot games and oh, I know, I know
Speaker 1: some of my favorites. Uh, we're the we're not the
Speaker 1: prediction episodes. So the ones that were not predictions predictions
Speaker 1: are are tough. I mean, we've but you you in general,
Speaker 1: tended to have a better batting average than I did.
Speaker 1: Not that first time. Okay, the first time was a
Speaker 1: little rough. But I listened to your most recent predictions episode.
Speaker 1: When when did you guys start doing them to you remember,
Speaker 1: let him keep score? I think it was he's keeping
Speaker 1: score things may or may not turn out accurately. Just
Speaker 1: just an observation on my part. The score keeping is
Speaker 1: like five donkeys to every like four cups of coffee.
Speaker 1: So that really it was probably the most recent one
Speaker 1: and I just started I decided to go a little
Speaker 1: do with the reward system. There was one point where
Speaker 1: no matter what Chris, Chris predicted he got an X
Speaker 1: and no matter what I predicted, I gotta check whether
Speaker 1: it was right or wrong and better one. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: ran away with it that year. Um No. The trick
Speaker 1: with those that that's the troubling thing is Jonathan and
Speaker 1: I and and now Lauren has been forced into this,
Speaker 1: um keep an eye on the tech news and you
Speaker 1: know the people who we didn't Really tech stuff hasn't
Speaker 1: really been about the news. It's really sort of about
Speaker 1: technology and people, um. Which is one of the things
Speaker 1: that the Jonathan and I agreed on when we started
Speaker 1: talking about what we were going to do for the show,
Speaker 1: because there are so many other people who do the
Speaker 1: news and they do it really well, and they do
Speaker 1: it very well, and they have more frequent podcasts like
Speaker 1: We're never gonna be able to keep up with that,
Speaker 1: especially because tech Stuff is recorded some time in advance
Speaker 1: and by the time it reminds me of uh, you
Speaker 1: know John, the writer who used to be here, who
Speaker 1: I assigned an article and he turned it out in
Speaker 1: a week, and before the week was out, the company
Speaker 1: declared that they would no longer be making that product.
Speaker 1: And I felt so badly um and and anyway, you know,
Speaker 1: we'd we'd have stuff like that, and we'd be following
Speaker 1: some story in the news, and so we'd make some
Speaker 1: prediction about where it was going to go. And over
Speaker 1: the course of a year that's just way too long.
Speaker 1: And you make these predictions and you go back and
Speaker 1: look at him and go, yeah, well, I mean it's
Speaker 1: it's it's the same time it made six Yeah. It's
Speaker 1: the same thing of any sort of prediction that has
Speaker 1: to do with technology. You look at what's this, You
Speaker 1: look at what the current state is of that tech
Speaker 1: or that company, you know, whatever it might be, and
Speaker 1: then you project out, based upon where it is right now,
Speaker 1: where do you think it's going to be an X
Speaker 1: amount of time? And the thing is that that doesn't
Speaker 1: take into account any other event that could happen in
Speaker 1: between that span. That basically everything new and technology comes
Speaker 1: completely out of proverbial left field. And is that is that?
Speaker 1: I I don't know, apparently, especially anything about best Buy
Speaker 1: or T Mobile. Yeah, at least as far as my
Speaker 1: predictions are, well, yeah, I like I like that you
Speaker 1: stuck with them, though he would make the same prediction like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I know that last year I said that T Mobile
Speaker 1: and a T and T would merge. I'm saying it
Speaker 1: again this year because it has to happen another year
Speaker 1: because by okay, I know for the last two years
Speaker 1: I say a T mobile and are going to emerge. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Jonathan scared me so much that that was maybe the
Speaker 1: third or fourth episode that we recorded. It was one
Speaker 1: of the early ones. And uh and yeah, he scared
Speaker 1: me so much about it that I was like, I'm
Speaker 1: going to predict that computers will still exist in a year.
Speaker 1: I've gotten some flex. I'm not so sure that's a
Speaker 1: good one back. Yeah, recent recent development suggests that it's
Speaker 1: I mean, it's still early in thirteen. So, um, what Lauren?
Speaker 1: That kind of leads me into a question for you,
Speaker 1: what was it like stepping into an existing podcast, you know,
Speaker 1: knowing that someone else was leaving and you were coming in.
Speaker 1: What was that like for you? More intimidating than basically
Speaker 1: anything I've ever done? Um, because you guys just rock
Speaker 1: it out basically, And I I had never podcasted before,
Speaker 1: or I had been interviewed on a podcast literally three
Speaker 1: days before the first time that we recorded, but that
Speaker 1: was it. Yeah, So so yeah, it was a whole
Speaker 1: lot of me going like stuffy how does how does
Speaker 1: it do? Right? Well, at least you you, I think
Speaker 1: you hit that learning curve hard and you you really
Speaker 1: ramped up your skills. I mean Chris and I when
Speaker 1: we started, neither of us have done podcasting before. Well,
Speaker 1: Chris have done a few episodes of Stuff you should Know,
Speaker 1: but that was only for a few weeks and then
Speaker 1: and yeah, so it was one of it wasn't that
Speaker 1: long enough for you to really start to develop a
Speaker 1: skill set, right. It was just kind of like, this
Speaker 1: is what we're gonna try this thing. We don't really
Speaker 1: know where it's going, and uh, you know, we both
Speaker 1: had to learn through experience and to be fair, podcasting
Speaker 1: with Josh Clark is a different skill set entire. Josh
Speaker 1: creepy hands clark le. Then that's that's why is our call.
Speaker 1: That's what I called him one time, just randomly, and
Speaker 1: it kind of stuck as no, no basis in reality.
Speaker 1: But that's another that's another history thing, the the foe
Speaker 1: uh val between us and stuff you should know, because
Speaker 1: we get people who actually they talked about you know,
Speaker 1: how they supported us or you know, you guys stink
Speaker 1: and the thing and we're like, you realized that we
Speaker 1: all sit next to each other in the office, and
Speaker 1: like we get each other coffee and chat and stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're actually, we're actually friendly with one another. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is a fake right to the point where we were
Speaker 1: actually going, this is not really real now, you know.
Speaker 1: We would we would make a joke about the rivalry
Speaker 1: and then immediately disarmed the joke, like, Okay, we don't
Speaker 1: really hate them. They're actually great guys. Yeah. In fact,
Speaker 1: they've been They've been amazing. We we received uh what
Speaker 1: Twitter messages asking us if we were going to do
Speaker 1: a cameo appearance on The Stuff You Should Know TV Show,
Speaker 1: and I had to keep quiet. But if you guys
Speaker 1: have been watching The Stuff You Should Know TV Show,
Speaker 1: and you watched the pilot episode, which was the final
Speaker 1: episode of the season. They put it last, even though
Speaker 1: it was the first one they shot, and it it
Speaker 1: is very different from the rest of the episodes that
Speaker 1: they aired. You might notice that I'm in the background
Speaker 1: and a couple of shots. Apparently I have not had
Speaker 1: a chance to watch yet, but I already got I
Speaker 1: got like all these messages saying, hey, I see the
Speaker 1: back of your head on stuffies you know, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they gets around. That's it was really popular at c
Speaker 1: S for a few years. Um. Yeah, there was a
Speaker 1: talk I as actar now of this Weekend Tech and
Speaker 1: Eric Sandean, who both of the time we're working for
Speaker 1: a company called tech V that Randall Bennett had created.
Speaker 1: They had suggested that at c e S they were
Speaker 1: going to create a website called c e S from
Speaker 1: the back of Jonathan Strickland's head, and that it would
Speaker 1: just be photos of all the various tech but it
Speaker 1: would be my head in the way of every shot,
Speaker 1: and that they would even have live video, but a
Speaker 1: live video would be mounted on a camera that's directly
Speaker 1: behind me, so that you just experienced cees from the
Speaker 1: back of my head. And uh, and I thought, you
Speaker 1: guys have way too much spare time to even think
Speaker 1: about something like this. Um. That's another thing about tech
Speaker 1: stuff is that it it opened up a lot of
Speaker 1: opportunities for h really for me to appear on other shows,
Speaker 1: which was a lot of fun as well. I got
Speaker 1: to make friends and be on shows from tech V,
Speaker 1: which sadly now no longer exists, to Buzz Out Loud,
Speaker 1: which sadly no longer exists, to this week in Tech
Speaker 1: which still exists. Actually tech News Today, I shouldn't say
Speaker 1: this week in tech tech News Today, which still exists.
Speaker 1: So you're not a total alcatrast. Well, I mean give
Speaker 1: it time, I detective pattern. Uh no, yeah, No, techn
Speaker 1: News Today is great. And so yeah, I got to
Speaker 1: do guest spots, and I love doing that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: It's always fun to connect with other folks in the space,
Speaker 1: and they're all really really nice, and they tend to
Speaker 1: be very supportive. That's something that I've liked a lot
Speaker 1: about the podcast community is there seems to be the
Speaker 1: spirit of collaboration where I don't really run into people
Speaker 1: who are uber competitive. They all want each they the
Speaker 1: attitude is that we could all succeed. You don't succeed
Speaker 1: at the expense unlimited digital space for us all to
Speaker 1: co exist. And it's not like there's there's only you know,
Speaker 1: two sets of ears out there, and and we have
Speaker 1: to fight for everyone. And if they listen to one podcast,
Speaker 1: they'll never listen to another. As it turns out, most
Speaker 1: people listen to lots of different podcasts. But what was it,
Speaker 1: what was it like kind of watching your your viewership grow?
Speaker 1: I mean, because I mean, you know, I'm sure that
Speaker 1: there were like three people and your grandmother's listening in
Speaker 1: at first. And it was really weird for me because
Speaker 1: it was very much the same sort of thing I
Speaker 1: had when I would write an article and then get
Speaker 1: feedback on it, because you get so focused on producing
Speaker 1: whatever it is that you're doing, whether it's an article
Speaker 1: or a podcast, that you forget that there are actually
Speaker 1: people out there who are consuming it. You know, you
Speaker 1: are concentrated on the deadline, so you produce whatever you're
Speaker 1: trying to do and you try and get it in
Speaker 1: on time to the deadline, and then as soon as
Speaker 1: you're done with that, you move on to the next thing,
Speaker 1: so you're not thinking about that thing you just did.
Speaker 1: You're thinking about the next thing you need to do,
Speaker 1: And so I would forget like that this stuff is
Speaker 1: actually going out to people and people are listening to it,
Speaker 1: and uh yeah, once we start get feedback, it was
Speaker 1: really kind of an eye opener. I'm like, wow, people
Speaker 1: are listening to this and uh uh, you know, it's
Speaker 1: it was. It was one of those things where I
Speaker 1: wouldn't say that it was gradual. I would say it
Speaker 1: was unaware of it for the most part, and then
Speaker 1: when people would let me know, like, oh, by the way,
Speaker 1: you guys are up to like half a million downloads
Speaker 1: a month, I was a whole lot, you know. That
Speaker 1: was that was a big surprise. When I when I
Speaker 1: remember when we first broke into the top one d
Speaker 1: on iTunes, that was a big deal. And when tech
Speaker 1: Stuff a few times was number one in technology podcasts,
Speaker 1: that was a huge deal because I knew the people
Speaker 1: who were on the other shows, right, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: I can't believe this is amazing. It's phenomenal, and uh,
Speaker 1: those were all huge moments for me. And when Apple
Speaker 1: chose tech Stuff as one of best podcast but that
Speaker 1: was that was that was huge. Yeah, it's you know,
Speaker 1: because we're not in on those conversations. It's not like,
Speaker 1: you know, we know when everyone else knows when when
Speaker 1: Apple published it, that's when we found out. And uh,
Speaker 1: that was pretty phenomenal. And yeah, I mean it's We've
Speaker 1: been nominated a few times for uh, like the Podcast
Speaker 1: Audience Choice Awards. I don't think we've ever won. We've
Speaker 1: we've been nominated a few times, but I don't we've
Speaker 1: never actually one. I remember this last one they do
Speaker 1: the award ceremony the same time as c S around
Speaker 1: the same time at a digital media expo. And I
Speaker 1: was in Las Vegas for C E S and it
Speaker 1: was the night of the awards ceremony, and I had
Speaker 1: not secured a ticket to go, and I had no
Speaker 1: idea if we were gonna win or not. And Scott
Speaker 1: Johnson of the Morning Stream was there, and I had
Speaker 1: told him that I gave him permission to accept our
Speaker 1: award on on our you know, he would accept the
Speaker 1: award on our behalf if we won. He sent to
Speaker 1: be a Twitter message a little bit later in the
Speaker 1: night says you lost. And I wrote back, so thank
Speaker 1: you for saying for not saying you didn't. In no,
Speaker 1: you said you lost. It's like any buddy. But going
Speaker 1: back to the question that you got about the the
Speaker 1: tech itself, Um, there's a there's been a lot of
Speaker 1: change in technology and that's a really in a very
Speaker 1: short time. That's a great point, you know what, I
Speaker 1: think I think we should we should really focus on that.
Speaker 1: But before we do, let's take a quick moment to
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Speaker 1: believing Chris, You were saying yes about technology, Yeah, As
Speaker 1: a matter of fact, I don't think there was even
Speaker 1: an iPhone there there was, there was. Yeah, iPhone was
Speaker 1: introduced in two thousand seven, and we and so it
Speaker 1: had been out a year, but the iPhone three GS
Speaker 1: was coming out just as we were starting, which was
Speaker 1: the iPhone too well, And I remember three G I
Speaker 1: was the iPhone three gens. So that was really confusing
Speaker 1: because I remember remember all the confusion around the fact
Speaker 1: that it's the second generation iPhone, but it's called the
Speaker 1: iPhone three g M. And there was because because we
Speaker 1: did an episode about that to explain why it was
Speaker 1: the three G when it was the second generation iPhone,
Speaker 1: right right, And uh, let's see what else we we
Speaker 1: talked about DVRs and whether or not you could build
Speaker 1: them yourself. Yeah. The TiVo was something we talked about
Speaker 1: a lot. Yeah, and in TiVo, TiVo's star has definitely
Speaker 1: declined since two thousand eight. Uh, we had the iPad
Speaker 1: had not yet launched. There was not a successful tablet
Speaker 1: on the market at all in two thousand eight. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we we spent there have been rumors for so long,
Speaker 1: yeah about that, and I talked about that was a
Speaker 1: prediction here. I famously predicted that if the the iPad
Speaker 1: was really going to be a thing, it would fail miserably.
Speaker 1: What a great predictor, I am. You were so yeah,
Speaker 1: that was so not right. So I actually went over
Speaker 1: and I looked it, right, Yeah, I looked at some
Speaker 1: other stuff. So interesting things to think about. Okay. Back
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eight, Uh, the state of the
Speaker 1: art operating system if you had a PC was Windows
Speaker 1: Vista because Windows seven was not out yet. It wouldn't
Speaker 1: come out until two thousand nine. Uh. Yeah. We were
Speaker 1: very careful about not being critical about stuff at that point.
Speaker 1: We hadn't. Yeah, we were. We didn't really talk it.
Speaker 1: We didn't get into Vista attacks until later. We didn't
Speaker 1: attack Vista, but we talked about how people were attacking right,
Speaker 1: And to be fair, that was towards the end of
Speaker 1: Windows Vista's lifespan anyway, so a lot of the complaints
Speaker 1: had already been hashed over a billion times by the
Speaker 1: time we went live. Yes, um, it had been burned
Speaker 1: down and salted. Yeah. I was gonna say I think
Speaker 1: that was the year that that Google introduced Android. It
Speaker 1: was the year Google introduced Android, and it's the year
Speaker 1: Google introduced Chrome. The Chrome browser came out in two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight, so I'm pretty sure there were things
Speaker 1: that were Chrome color before that. Well, the browser, Chrome
Speaker 1: Browser Rome, Chris, it's it's a browser that you don't
Speaker 1: use because it's so resource intensive. Um, I use it.
Speaker 1: I use it. I have it open right now. Uh
Speaker 1: the yeah, and so I Android debut, but well it
Speaker 1: Android had not yet come out when we started the podcast,
Speaker 1: but it did debut that year because we started in
Speaker 1: June Andrew Android debuted in September, so the g one
Speaker 1: really didn't become available till the end of two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight. I got that was my first smartphone, was
Speaker 1: the Android g one phone from HTC on T Mobile,
Speaker 1: and I got that in the beginning of two thousand nine.
Speaker 1: Are you also an early adopter, Chris sir? No, No,
Speaker 1: I still still still have a flip phone. No, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: they well, I have my first I've had my smart
Speaker 1: This is my first smartphone here and it's I've had
Speaker 1: it for two years now. So it's that that was
Speaker 1: sometime into the Well, that's that's something you know, Chris
Speaker 1: and I are kind of common share this in common.
Speaker 1: We I don't consider myself an early adopter. I was
Speaker 1: an early adopted with Android, but in general I tend
Speaker 1: to wait to make sure that the technology is robust
Speaker 1: enough before I go all in. There a couple of exceptions.
Speaker 1: Part of my thing was I'm cheap. There's also that
Speaker 1: that that's my that's my philosophy with video games. If
Speaker 1: you can wait for a while and it drops from
Speaker 1: sixty dollars to twenty bucks. Yeah, but that that might
Speaker 1: change pretty soon. The whole that whole market may change
Speaker 1: before too long. And yeah, so okay, getting back to uh,
Speaker 1: operating systems. The mac os ten ten point five operating system,
Speaker 1: which was Leopard was the standard, and snow Leopard was
Speaker 1: coming out just after we started recording. Um. Uh, carefully
Speaker 1: at that photo, by the way, that leopard looks like
Speaker 1: he might have just eaten. Two thousand eight, Wired had
Speaker 1: a list of the top breakthroughs in technology, and it's
Speaker 1: kind of interesting to see what was a breakthrough in
Speaker 1: two thousand eight flexible displays, which we saw for the
Speaker 1: first time at ce S. As I recall, UH still
Speaker 1: kind of waiting on those. Yeah, there's there's a few
Speaker 1: semies that were introduced at c that were curved, but
Speaker 1: but even then, you know, the flexible displays tend to
Speaker 1: be static right there. They're flexible in the sense that
Speaker 1: you can not that kind of stealtic. They don't they're
Speaker 1: not bending. You can't bend them. You can't see from
Speaker 1: where you're sitting. But our producer just like like flipped
Speaker 1: his head around with everything's okay, don't go into the lightning,
Speaker 1: don't go into the light Uh. The Speedo l z
Speaker 1: R swimsuit was listed as one of the breakthroughs of
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight. That was one that used the
Speaker 1: NASA materials to relay to to to reduce viscous drag
Speaker 1: the swimsuit. That's the first time I remember you ever
Speaker 1: saying viscus in the podcast. Um, I love that word. Um. Yeah. Actually,
Speaker 1: actually that was that was a big deal that year
Speaker 1: because that was an Olympic here, if I'm not mistaken,
Speaker 1: and they were wondering whether or not they were going
Speaker 1: to allow it, and they ultimately did. Flash memory was
Speaker 1: listed as a breakthrough. Not that flash memory came into
Speaker 1: existence in two thousand eight, but it was it was
Speaker 1: starting to come into prominence, mainly due to the iPhone.
Speaker 1: So the GPS proliferation Again, GPS had been around for decades,
Speaker 1: but again, devices like the iPhone, we're bringing GPS into
Speaker 1: more hands than before, so that became something that people
Speaker 1: were interested in. How about this, do you remember this?
Speaker 1: We were gonna do an episode about it, and I
Speaker 1: don't think we ever did memory stas. Oh, yeah, that's true. Oh,
Speaker 1: you still haven't done the one on We had a
Speaker 1: listener right in and asked us to do an episode
Speaker 1: about cantanas, and that has been um one that's been
Speaker 1: on our list forever. But it's so technical that I'm
Speaker 1: worried that I cannot explain it properly, especially without the
Speaker 1: use of visuals, so I've always put it off. So
Speaker 1: that's become like the standing behind the scenes joke Windmills topic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that has not happened. USB three point Oh oh he
Speaker 1: has another breakthrough which we're finally starting to see in
Speaker 1: in uh in laptops now um oh. Then of course
Speaker 1: the article that went along with it. But the technology
Speaker 1: that is now known as Thunderbolt. Uh did a podcast,
Speaker 1: didn't we? Yeah? We did, and had to clarify later
Speaker 1: that it was actually going to be called something else. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: we did, we did that, And what about here's another one.
Speaker 1: This is another breakthrough two eight breakthrough. This to me
Speaker 1: is an amusing breakthrough video capable SLR cameras, which are
Speaker 1: everywhere now. I guess that was a breakthrough because I mean,
Speaker 1: we our own video team uses some so it's kind
Speaker 1: of interesting to actually see that as a breakthrough. Back
Speaker 1: in two thousand eight, we did a podcast shortly before
Speaker 1: I departed about Kodak, And in two thousand eight, I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure we would not have predicted the demise or
Speaker 1: near demise of Kodak. Yeah. Yeah, a few companies have
Speaker 1: gone under. Uh. You know, back in two thousand eight,
Speaker 1: my Space was still a viable social network. It was
Speaker 1: still doing pretty well. Yeah, and uh and so I mean,
Speaker 1: I actually downloaded my Twitter history not too long ago,
Speaker 1: and I went through and was reading it, and my
Speaker 1: Twitter history actually pre dates when we started recording the podcast.
Speaker 1: In fact, I see there was a tweet I made
Speaker 1: fairly early on where I was all excited about the
Speaker 1: idea of getting to do a podcast. I'm like, oh cool,
Speaker 1: I'll have to remember that. Um, But then yeah, I was.
Speaker 1: I was talking about how it was interesting to discover
Speaker 1: that someone's relationship status had changed due to a flipped
Speaker 1: switch on my Space, and I'm like, really, my Space.
Speaker 1: I guess maybe I I wasn't so big into Facebook
Speaker 1: at the time. And it's true. In two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: Back in August two thousand eight, Facebook hit one million users.
Speaker 1: Now they're over one billion, but back in two thousand
Speaker 1: it was a hundred millions. Still a lot of people,
Speaker 1: but not nearly as many as there are now, and
Speaker 1: it had only been open to the general public for
Speaker 1: two years at that point. I didn't even have a
Speaker 1: Facebook or Twitter until two nine, so well, you know,
Speaker 1: you were like I was a toddler at the time,
Speaker 1: so you know, I couldn't speak human language yet. So
Speaker 1: it's nice because I'm not the oldest person in the
Speaker 1: room right now, because Chris is here, so Lauren could
Speaker 1: pick on him for a while. As soon as I
Speaker 1: get untied Twitter. Twitter was hitting around a hundred million
Speaker 1: tweets per quarter, and it grew I think like seven
Speaker 1: hundreds something something percent over the course of two doesn't
Speaker 1: eat right. It had been introduced in two thousand seven
Speaker 1: at south By Southwest, and so it had been around
Speaker 1: for a while, but it was still I don't think
Speaker 1: it had really caught on yet even then, because I
Speaker 1: mean I remember when I was and you know, I
Speaker 1: like social media stuff, but I remember when I started
Speaker 1: using it, I was like, what the heck would anyone
Speaker 1: use this thing for? And I wrote an article about
Speaker 1: and I still wasn't sure. And it was about three
Speaker 1: months after I had written the article that I finally
Speaker 1: started actually using Twitter sharing what you had for breakfast.
Speaker 1: It's really not that hard, come on, Okay, once I
Speaker 1: figured it out, it all made sense. Hulu launched in
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight, Will never work. Netflix launched unlimited
Speaker 1: streaming in two thousand eight. Work. No, they'll just stick
Speaker 1: with the DVD thing. Also, you know what became a
Speaker 1: thing in two thousand and eight. It was a huge trend,
Speaker 1: and in fact, you can tell that it was really
Speaker 1: powerful one by how by its presence in the market today. Netbooks.
Speaker 1: Netbooks became a thing in two thousand eight. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that books was a little, tiny, underpowered laptop. You mean
Speaker 1: you mean kind of like an iPad except it has
Speaker 1: a keyboard attach. Yeah, yeah, Because I mean back back
Speaker 1: when into things, they're never going to take off either, Okay, right,
Speaker 1: I did buy in net book? Uh, I no, longer
Speaker 1: use it. I don't have an iPad though I got
Speaker 1: a tablet, but it's not iPad. Uh. Yeah, I have
Speaker 1: that HD DVD died and that Blue Rain won the
Speaker 1: the High Definition Wars in two thousand eight. Chris and
Speaker 1: I got to see direct evidence of that because when
Speaker 1: we went to cs that year. Uh, we went to
Speaker 1: see e S before tech stuff was existed, before it existed,
Speaker 1: but that was right about the same time. The genesis
Speaker 1: of tech stuff was right about two eight. At the beginning, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we were talking about it. We didn't, like I said,
Speaker 1: the first episode didn't publish till June, but we had
Speaker 1: been talking about it for a while. So we go
Speaker 1: to c E S And Chris and I both went
Speaker 1: that year, and uh, and it was I remember seeing
Speaker 1: the blu ray booth. I think it was Pirates of
Speaker 1: the Caribbean things. Wasn't. Yeah, there was a giant ship
Speaker 1: right there in the middle of the floor, so it
Speaker 1: wasn't far from those uh take home mechanical bowl things. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: it was. It wasn't a mechanical ball. It was a
Speaker 1: saddle that you were supposed to ride to develop your ABS.
Speaker 1: I tried to get Chris on one so I could
Speaker 1: take a picture and he flat out refused, which was
Speaker 1: it was the right decision. I for the longest time,
Speaker 1: I had a picture of that up on my on
Speaker 1: my cubicle wall. I had to pick the the press
Speaker 1: release that they gave out back then they gave out
Speaker 1: paper press releases for everything too. We we both carried
Speaker 1: back home about fifty pounds worth of co yeah, and
Speaker 1: a good stack of CD s. Yeah. This was before
Speaker 1: they started going to USB drives or or better yet online.
Speaker 1: That's just um but yeah, so we anyway, the blue
Speaker 1: ray booth was huge, and then we go over to
Speaker 1: where the HD DVD booth was supposed to be and
Speaker 1: it's just empty. Yeah. I I also remember talking about
Speaker 1: satellite radio some back. Yeah, we did before Serious and
Speaker 1: XM merge. We had an episode about what will happen
Speaker 1: when those two companies merge, So that was kind of funny. Uh.
Speaker 1: Let's say the green tech became a huge buzzword in
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight, and it was interesting because over
Speaker 1: the next couple of years it really became a focal point,
Speaker 1: like people were really really, at least seemingly passionate about it,
Speaker 1: whether they were sincere or not is up for debate.
Speaker 1: But these days I would argue that green tech not
Speaker 1: nearly as stressed as it was back in two thousand eight,
Speaker 1: two thin ten, that time period. Now it's just not
Speaker 1: I mean, there's still companies that are dedicated to making
Speaker 1: energy efficient products, but they just call it tech. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they don't call it green tech. In you like there
Speaker 1: there aren't that many companies dedicated to this whole green
Speaker 1: tech idea. Um and uh. In fact, one of our peers,
Speaker 1: Jamie who who writes for tree Hugger, she would she
Speaker 1: actually said, well, this kind of makes sense because when
Speaker 1: you look at technology, it's really a lot of it
Speaker 1: is mostly about consumerism, and consumerism and green aren't a
Speaker 1: little a little bit. They don't really overlap. The ven
Speaker 1: diagram is not so great on that. Um. Just ask
Speaker 1: anybody who replaces their smartphone more than once a year.
Speaker 1: Two thousand eight was when the LHC was finished. Cloud
Speaker 1: computing became a buzzword in two thousand eight. Now we
Speaker 1: all know what it is, but back then we weren't
Speaker 1: so sure. Geo tagging was very popular, and so now
Speaker 1: we've got things like four Square and Facebook places, and
Speaker 1: Google allows you to put in pins in places you go,
Speaker 1: but it was still pretty new back then. Uh, Voodoo
Speaker 1: look Ations, Dr Dre and Monster Cable came together to
Speaker 1: create the Beats Audio headphones. Yeah, those are actually in
Speaker 1: my My personal laptop has Beats Audio. Not that I
Speaker 1: didn't pick the laptop because of that, It just happened
Speaker 1: that that would happened to be one of the features
Speaker 1: you want that beats me. Yeah. Yeah. We also talked
Speaker 1: about on the podcast whether you know you could actually
Speaker 1: replace um Monster cables with codgers. The answer yes, don't
Speaker 1: do it depending on who you ask. Yeah, but no. Essentially,
Speaker 1: if you're using if you're using really, you know, decent copper,
Speaker 1: then you're going to get a good connection. Now great,
Speaker 1: if you're using an uninsulated copper wire, that could lead
Speaker 1: to problems. So that's why you don't do it. But uh.
Speaker 1: The Roku box was introduced in two thousand eight. The
Speaker 1: Sony e Reader was picked as one of the top
Speaker 1: ten gadgets of two thousand eight by the Guardian. The
Speaker 1: Amazon Kindle came out in late two thousand and seven,
Speaker 1: so it's interesting that the Guardian picked the Sony e
Speaker 1: Reader as a top ten gadget of two thousand and eight.
Speaker 1: Considering that you know in the when you look at
Speaker 1: the long run, the Kindle ran away with it. You
Speaker 1: know that the Kindle has has more than beat out
Speaker 1: the competition in the e reader space. Uh that that'll
Speaker 1: never take up a wait. Wait hey, now it's gonna
Speaker 1: be huge. Wait. So other top gadgets that the Guardian
Speaker 1: listed included the Sony Flip Ultra Sony Flip no longer
Speaker 1: a thing. Uh. The one of them was a digital
Speaker 1: photo frame. Do you remember those? I do? Another one
Speaker 1: was a netbook. One was the we Fit. Like again,
Speaker 1: these these are things that you know made a big
Speaker 1: impact when they first came out, and then did not
Speaker 1: none of them, not many of us. Yeah, we Fit.
Speaker 1: That was one of those things that people were really
Speaker 1: excited about for about three or four months. That's about
Speaker 1: how excited people are about exercising ever about three or
Speaker 1: four months. Then they stop and then it just doesn't
Speaker 1: get used. We Fit it has. The balance board has
Speaker 1: sort of a disadvantage compared to other exercise equipment because
Speaker 1: you can't hang your clothes on it like you can
Speaker 1: with the stair stepper. Right, it doesn't it doesn't it's
Speaker 1: not a multitasker, is what you're saying. I mean, if
Speaker 1: maybe you have a shelf that's just barely out of reach,
Speaker 1: it could be a very tiny step letter if only
Speaker 1: I had that extra inch and a half heel. Right,
Speaker 1: Oh wait, look let's grab the we fit honey. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So anyway, that's that's the list of stuff I had
Speaker 1: that happened in two thousand and eight compared to what's
Speaker 1: going on today. What's interesting is that there are some parallels.
Speaker 1: I mean, like the Windows Vista problem right where you
Speaker 1: had this big issue with the perception of Windows Vista,
Speaker 1: which you know, when it launched, there were a lot
Speaker 1: of problems that people pointed out, and Microsoft addressed a
Speaker 1: lot of those, but the damage had already been done.
Speaker 1: The perception was already there that it was not h
Speaker 1: it was it was an inferior product in the eyes
Speaker 1: of many, and so even when Microsoft fixed things, it
Speaker 1: didn't matter. Uh. Some people would argue that Windows eight
Speaker 1: is following a similar pathway that a lot of people
Speaker 1: have criticized it. It's had slow adoption, and therefore Microsoft
Speaker 1: is now going through a second Windows Vista phase. Um,
Speaker 1: and I say that's probably for different reasons that people
Speaker 1: are just happy with when it was seven. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think another I think another point is similar
Speaker 1: to that is the idea that a lot more people
Speaker 1: are looking to buy things like smartphones or tablets as
Speaker 1: a replacement for buying a new computer. So instead of
Speaker 1: spending a thousand dollars to buy a new computer, you
Speaker 1: spend a few hundred dollars on a tablet or a smartphone,
Speaker 1: and then that gives you the basic computing stuff that
Speaker 1: you really want. And then you just you keep your
Speaker 1: desktop computer or laptop computer for longer than you normally
Speaker 1: would and you just use that to do the heavy
Speaker 1: lifting stuff. Um. That's seems to be a pretty common theme.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's all I've got. Any of you guys
Speaker 1: want to add anything to that? No, but I can't
Speaker 1: feel my fingers. Okay, Well we're gonna cut you loose, um,
Speaker 1: and then we're just gonna watch Chris make a crist
Speaker 1: sized hole in the door. And uh, Chris, it was
Speaker 1: great having you back. I'm glad that you were able
Speaker 1: to come in from I had a choice, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, we hope that you're able to find your
Speaker 1: way home. I mean, I know I had you blindfolded
Speaker 1: on the way here, but it occurs to me that
Speaker 1: you actually know the location of the office, so I
Speaker 1: don't know why it took that step, in which case
Speaker 1: the bat gas was totally unnecessary. I apologize the bat
Speaker 1: has not been feeling well recently. I did not mean. Look,
Speaker 1: this is how Chris and I play. It's like it's
Speaker 1: like juvenile chicken, and the thing is, neither one of
Speaker 1: us will swerve. It's just it's just crash in a
Speaker 1: big juvenile mess. Lauren, I feel like chicken and night Chicken,
Speaker 1: and all right, that's enough. They are not a sponsor
Speaker 1: of our show, so we're going to wrap this up
Speaker 1: and make it anymore. That would be a good reason
Speaker 1: why they don't. They aren't sponsoring us. Ladies and gentlemen,
Speaker 1: thank you so much. It has been an amazing episodes.
Speaker 1: I am exhausted. I'm going to go take a nap.
Speaker 1: But if you guys have any suggestions for future episodes
Speaker 1: of Tech Stuff, I highly even Chris stop struggling. It
Speaker 1: will only make it worse. It'll I highly recommend you
Speaker 1: get in touch with us. You can send us an email.
Speaker 1: The address is tech Stuff at Discovery dot com or
Speaker 1: let us know on Facebook or Twitter or handle at
Speaker 1: both those locations. Is tech stuff hs W. Lauren and
Speaker 1: I will talk to you again soon. Chris may not
Speaker 1: ever talk again. For more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics. Does it has stop works dot com