Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works, and I love all things tech and
Speaker 1: we are continuing our celebration of tech Stuff's tenth anniversary.
Speaker 1: Now all full disclosure here. I recorded an episode about
Speaker 1: services and companies that are younger than tech Stuff, and
Speaker 1: I intended it to be one episode, but then when
Speaker 1: recording ended, we realized that I was creeping up over
Speaker 1: an hour and that's a really long episode, so we're
Speaker 1: breaking it into two parts. So what you are about
Speaker 1: to hear is the first part of that two part
Speaker 1: series where I really talk about some interesting things that
Speaker 1: have happened since the launch of tech Stuff. So we're
Speaker 1: gonna start with some products that and companies that did
Speaker 1: not exist at that time. And the first thing I
Speaker 1: want to talk about is Apple's iPad. And this was
Speaker 1: a doozy. If you've are a long time listener to
Speaker 1: tex Stuff, you know what I thought about tablet computers.
Speaker 1: I remember talking with Chris Palette, the original co host
Speaker 1: of tech Stuff, about Apple's rumored tablet computer. So before
Speaker 1: it even had a name before it launched. I was
Speaker 1: convinced that if the company came out with a tablet,
Speaker 1: it would just be a fad and after a short
Speaker 1: while it would disappear, because why would you need a tablet.
Speaker 1: I mean, I get a smartphone. I understand smartphones. You
Speaker 1: can put that in your pocket when you don't need it,
Speaker 1: you can carry it around wherever you go. And if
Speaker 1: you want something that is a more of a rich
Speaker 1: involved experience, why not use a computer like a laptop
Speaker 1: or a desktop. I just couldn't see a good use
Speaker 1: case for a tablet. Now this was largely because I
Speaker 1: was looking at it from my own personal perspective. It
Speaker 1: just seemed like a computer made more sense for anything
Speaker 1: beyond what you would use a smart own for. And
Speaker 1: I thought the iPad will never take off, And boy
Speaker 1: was I wrong. So the iPad came out in April,
Speaker 1: and it did quite well, at least for the first
Speaker 1: few years. But then in fourteen things started to slide
Speaker 1: and there was a year on year decline and iPad sales,
Speaker 1: with every quarter showing a decline up until the first
Speaker 1: quarter of eighteen that's the year that I'm recording this,
Speaker 1: and then we saw a modest increase of two point
Speaker 1: one in sales, so not a huge jump obviously, But
Speaker 1: maybe what that tells us is that a lot of
Speaker 1: the folks who needed or wanted a tablet got one
Speaker 1: early on. Then they saw very little reason to buy
Speaker 1: a new one. So new ones come out and they
Speaker 1: just thought, well, I've already got one that works well enough,
Speaker 1: i don't need to upgrade yet, as opposed to a
Speaker 1: phone where you might upgrade every year or every two
Speaker 1: years at any rate. The iPad showed once again that
Speaker 1: Apple can make a market when no one else can
Speaker 1: make a market for that particular product. Because tablet computers
Speaker 1: were not brand new when the iPad came out, they
Speaker 1: did exist before Apple's iPad, they just no one had
Speaker 1: really found a a good consumer market for them. They
Speaker 1: were all very narrow use cases, like in the medical
Speaker 1: field or for people who were on remote work locations. Uh.
Speaker 1: Now the iPad had become a must have consumer device
Speaker 1: thanks to Apple. Next, I'm gonna talk about bing as
Speaker 1: in the search engine. Microsoft launched Bing in two thousand nine.
Speaker 1: It was a competitive search engine, really meant to go
Speaker 1: up against Google, and in fact, Microsoft would often talk
Speaker 1: about bing's search results compared to Google's, and the speed
Speaker 1: at which it would return search results, and the relevance
Speaker 1: and all that sort of stuff. According to stat Counter,
Speaker 1: Being accounts for about three point two four percent of
Speaker 1: search engine market share in May. Google accounts for ninety
Speaker 1: point one four Now that's global data, so obviously, Microsoft being,
Speaker 1: while it does have some market share, trails far far
Speaker 1: behind Google. However, that also was a thing that did
Speaker 1: not exist back when tech Stuff first started. Venmo another product,
Speaker 1: or service rather that launched after tech Stuff did. Venmo
Speaker 1: launched in two thousand nine from co founders Andrew Cortina
Speaker 1: and ekrom magden Ishmael. Originally, it was a service that
Speaker 1: would let you send a text message to music groups
Speaker 1: and receive an MP three via email in return, but
Speaker 1: that changed pretty dramatically. The co founders of the company,
Speaker 1: who had attended college together back in two thousand one,
Speaker 1: ran into a bit of a problem when one of
Speaker 1: them stayed with the other but forgot his wallet, so
Speaker 1: the other one covered him, and when the the uh
Speaker 1: borrower decided they wanted to pay back their friend, he
Speaker 1: did it with a check because there was no easy
Speaker 1: way to send money to his friend, there was just
Speaker 1: no way to easily trans transmit money to him without
Speaker 1: having access to a bank, and the two decided to
Speaker 1: pivot Venmo into a payment transaction service that could allow
Speaker 1: easy payments between individuals. A company called Braintree would buy
Speaker 1: Venmo in two thousand twelve for twenty six million dollars
Speaker 1: a princely some PayPal would then go on to acquire
Speaker 1: brain Tree for eight hundred million dollars in so Venmo
Speaker 1: is now part of PayPal. And I find that a
Speaker 1: lot of people are surprised by that. I met young
Speaker 1: folks who said, oh, no, I would never use PayPal.
Speaker 1: I use Venmo. And I said, well, Venmos owned by PayPal,
Speaker 1: so technically you're still using PayPal. And they were surprised.
Speaker 1: But yes, Venmo is still very active. It is a
Speaker 1: useful service. It makes transit transmitting payments very very easy
Speaker 1: between individuals. Uh So I actually really like that service
Speaker 1: a lot. Four squares another thing that did not exist
Speaker 1: when tech stuff launched back in two thousand eight. Uh
Speaker 1: it was technically built in two thousand and eight, but
Speaker 1: it did not launch till two thousand nine. Dennis Crowley
Speaker 1: and Navine Selva Durai built four Square after working on
Speaker 1: a similar project earlier called Dodgeball. This is a location
Speaker 1: based check in service. Now Google acquired Dodgeball back in
Speaker 1: two thousand five, and eventually Google chose to shut down
Speaker 1: the service, and so the co founders went on to
Speaker 1: create a similar service that would let people check into
Speaker 1: locations using a mobile device and you could share your
Speaker 1: location with your friends. So it's kind of like a
Speaker 1: social network that was location based. But in two thousand fourteen,
Speaker 1: four Square would shift that feature to a companion app
Speaker 1: called Swarm. Was right around the time with my wife
Speaker 1: decided she was never going to use four square again,
Speaker 1: and four Square became more of a recommendation engine for restaurants, shops,
Speaker 1: and activities based off of user location and user preference. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, you could use four Square to get
Speaker 1: a recommendation for maybe a restaurant in an unfamiliar city
Speaker 1: that happens to be near your area and it happens
Speaker 1: to fall within the certain parameters that you prefer. Maybe
Speaker 1: you really like Indian food and says, hey, there's this
Speaker 1: cool Indian place. It's two blocks over. You should go
Speaker 1: check it out. But the check in stuff, all the
Speaker 1: stuff that you would use to check into a location
Speaker 1: and eventually acquire the the mayor position of that location
Speaker 1: if you checked in enough. All of that got shifted
Speaker 1: over to SWARM and I don't know what the numbers
Speaker 1: are right now for Swarm and four square, like, what
Speaker 1: what's the user engagement? How many people are using it?
Speaker 1: Was there a drop off or have they stayed strong?
Speaker 1: I know that my wife and I both stopped using
Speaker 1: it right around that time, but that's totally anecdotal and
Speaker 1: therefore not at all reliable as far as analysis goes.
Speaker 1: Speaking of analysis, then we have Wolf from Alpha. We
Speaker 1: actually did an episode about Wolf from Alpha way back
Speaker 1: in the day, Chris Poulette and I did when it
Speaker 1: first launched. Wolf from Alpha is a computational knowledge engine,
Speaker 1: so it looks a lot like a search engine, but
Speaker 1: that's not exactly what Wolf from Alpha does. It launched
Speaker 1: in May two thousand nine, and it answers factual queries
Speaker 1: by computing results from curated data. So it has access
Speaker 1: to tons of information and it can pull relevant information
Speaker 1: based upon what you ask it, and it answers the
Speaker 1: query directly. It doesn't provide you a list of search
Speaker 1: results where you'll find the answer. It will tell you
Speaker 1: the answer. So for example, I could type in the
Speaker 1: question how far away from Earth is Polaris, and Wolf
Speaker 1: from Alpha would tell me it's four thirty point nine
Speaker 1: light years away, Plus it would give me more information
Speaker 1: in units like parsecs, kilometers, and miles. Or I could
Speaker 1: ask it what is the area of a square with
Speaker 1: fourteen foot long edges and it would tell me the
Speaker 1: answer is one square feet or eighteen point to one
Speaker 1: square meters. So, in other words, you can ask Will
Speaker 1: from Alpha these questions. It will return the actual relev
Speaker 1: an answer instead of sending you a list of links
Speaker 1: where you could find the answer if you searched through it,
Speaker 1: which is pretty useful for very particular types of queries.
Speaker 1: It doesn't work for everything, but it works really well
Speaker 1: for these kinds of applications. I have more to say
Speaker 1: about some of the services and companies that launched since
Speaker 1: tech Stuff became an official podcast in just a second,
Speaker 1: but first let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor.
Speaker 1: Another thing that launched after tech Stuff was Snapchat that
Speaker 1: launched in September two thou eleven, and boy howdy, the
Speaker 1: Snapchat story is one I will have to cover in
Speaker 1: a full episode sometime in the future. Now here's the
Speaker 1: summarized Snapchat story that I will expound upon in much
Speaker 1: more detail when I do cover this company. Three college
Speaker 1: buddies get together to create an app that would allow
Speaker 1: users to send photos to each other, and the photos
Speaker 1: would only stay active for a limited time before they
Speaker 1: were deleted. And the original app was called Peek A
Speaker 1: Boo p I C A b o O and later
Speaker 1: was renamed Snapchat. The three founders were Frank Reggie Brown,
Speaker 1: who came up with the idea for the app, but
Speaker 1: he didn't have any real business or coding knowledge. Then
Speaker 1: you had Evan Spiegel, who was sort of the business guy,
Speaker 1: and Bobby Murphy, who was sort of the coder, and
Speaker 1: they brought this idea to life. Spiegel and Murphy would
Speaker 1: end up creating a company that shared the ownership of
Speaker 1: Snapchat between the two of them, but it left Reggie
Speaker 1: Brown out of it, and Brown would later sue the
Speaker 1: other two co founders and eventually the three would settle
Speaker 1: out of court for about a hundred fifty eight million dollars.
Speaker 1: And that was a big deal. You see, Snapchat was
Speaker 1: heading towards an initial public offering in and that had
Speaker 1: the potential turning the owners into billionaires. But Spiegel and
Speaker 1: and uh Murphy felt that Brown really didn't contribute very
Speaker 1: much apart from that initial idea. He wasn't according to them,
Speaker 1: he was not instrumental in actually making it happen, and
Speaker 1: so they objected to the idea of him being an
Speaker 1: owner in this company. When Snapchat did hold its ip O,
Speaker 1: it had an opening share price of twenty four dollars,
Speaker 1: which gave Snapchat a market capitalization of thirty three billion
Speaker 1: dollars based on the number of shares that were available
Speaker 1: on the day I'm researching this. However, snap the code
Speaker 1: for snapchats parent company, is trading at thirteen dollars per
Speaker 1: share or so, so a little bit more than half
Speaker 1: of what the opening price was when it first went
Speaker 1: up on So why the fall from grace, Well, there
Speaker 1: are a lot of reasons. For one, Snapchat had a
Speaker 1: major redesign that angered a lot of US ers, and
Speaker 1: the most recent analyst reports I can find are optimistic
Speaker 1: that stock prices will continue to climb, although maybe not
Speaker 1: quite up to that two dollar per share limit, and
Speaker 1: it may be a little lower than that, but that
Speaker 1: the company as a whole is starting to rebound. In March,
Speaker 1: Pinterest launched that was founded by Evan Sharp, Ben Silberman,
Speaker 1: and Paul Ciara. Pinterest let's users create image boards kind
Speaker 1: of like giant bulletin boards of pictures, and you can
Speaker 1: group images together in whatever way you happen to like.
Speaker 1: Maybe you have a specific interest and you want to
Speaker 1: collect images that relate to that interest. I have friends
Speaker 1: who are costumers, for example, and they have pinterest boards
Speaker 1: that are separated into various types of costumes with representations
Speaker 1: of costumes that they find really really compelling, and they
Speaker 1: use that to help make their own patterns and their
Speaker 1: own designs for their own costumes or costumes that they
Speaker 1: get on commission. Uh. I have other friends who do
Speaker 1: this for foods. They collect various really great pictures of food.
Speaker 1: I always see that the pictures of food tend to
Speaker 1: look better than the food tends to taste when I
Speaker 1: ever get my chance to actually try it. But I
Speaker 1: don't really object to this. So Pinterest was a very
Speaker 1: popular and different way of sharing information with a social network.
Speaker 1: It took a little while to catch on, but in
Speaker 1: August two thousand and eleven it was named one of
Speaker 1: the fifty best websites of twenty eleven by Time magazine,
Speaker 1: and at that point it started growing rapidly with users,
Speaker 1: and by the company was valued at three point eight
Speaker 1: billion dollars. The next one I want to talk about.
Speaker 1: I just did a full episode on the Instagram story.
Speaker 1: But Instagram launched in October. Kevin Sistram and Mike Krieger
Speaker 1: launched it on iOS exclusively at first. Android got its
Speaker 1: own version a couple of years later, And it's a
Speaker 1: photo sharing service. I'm sure you're familiar with it. If not,
Speaker 1: go back and listen to those episodes that they'll tell
Speaker 1: you all about it. So I'm not gonna die into
Speaker 1: detail here, but Instagram has done pretty well for itself.
Speaker 1: It got acquired by Facebook and twelve for a billion buckaroos,
Speaker 1: which that's not a bad chunk of change. Next, in
Speaker 1: June two thousand nine, CoA launched That's a question and
Speaker 1: answer site that aims to be a little more helpful
Speaker 1: than other similar sites like Yeah, who Answers. Adam de'angelo,
Speaker 1: who used to work for Facebook and who I talked
Speaker 1: about a bit in the Instagram episodes, was one of
Speaker 1: the co founders so was Charlie cheever Uh, and they
Speaker 1: put together this idea, created the infrastructure. The questions supposed
Speaker 1: to Cora are curated and answered by the community of users.
Speaker 1: Users can up vote or down vote answers to help
Speaker 1: the most relevant responses rise to the top. So it's
Speaker 1: not quite to the point of necessarily experts answering your questions.
Speaker 1: It can happen. There are a lot of experts who
Speaker 1: do contribute to Cora, but it's whatever answers the community
Speaker 1: feels are really the most helpful that end up rising
Speaker 1: to the top of the list. In two thousand eleven,
Speaker 1: Google launched Google Plus, and originally it was an invite
Speaker 1: only social network that was for the beta testing. I
Speaker 1: got one of those invitations, and so for a brief while,
Speaker 1: I felt like one of the cool kids. It was
Speaker 1: just me, a bunch of entrepreneurs and a ton of
Speaker 1: tech journalists, and it was like the best social network
Speaker 1: ever because we were all bunch of dorks. But eventually
Speaker 1: it opened up to everybody and you would allow you
Speaker 1: to organize people into circles, so you wouldn't just have friends,
Speaker 1: You could organize your friends via specific circles. What however,
Speaker 1: you wanted to define it. So maybe you had a
Speaker 1: circle of friends who were related to a specific interest
Speaker 1: or specific event. So for example, I work at the
Speaker 1: Georgia Renaissance Festival in the springtime, So I might have
Speaker 1: a circle that's just dedicated to people who also work
Speaker 1: at the Georgia Renaissance Festival, and then I can post
Speaker 1: to that circle and only those friends will see that
Speaker 1: that post, and that way I can keep things that
Speaker 1: are irrelevant to anyone else off their feeds. They don't
Speaker 1: get sick of me posting to just a general feed
Speaker 1: when really I just need to post to this one
Speaker 1: specific group. You could also create a circle of people
Speaker 1: that you didn't want to see anything, so you could
Speaker 1: collect people that were problematic, you know, instead of blocking
Speaker 1: one by one, you just throw them in the same
Speaker 1: group with everybody else. Now, at one point, Google Plus
Speaker 1: was really tightly coupled with YouTube comments. It required commoners
Speaker 1: to create a Google account with a real name if
Speaker 1: they wanted to participate and leave comments on YouTube, and
Speaker 1: Google faced a lot of resistance with that, and the
Speaker 1: company eventually backpedaled a bit in two thousand fifteen. Now,
Speaker 1: the concept behind it was I think well intentioned The
Speaker 1: idea was that they wanted to make sure that they
Speaker 1: cut down on cyber bullying, on harassment, and they thought
Speaker 1: if users have to have their their handle associated with
Speaker 1: their real identity, they would be less likely to engage
Speaker 1: in bad behavior. But it also meant that people who
Speaker 1: were part of vulnerable populations or had an identity that
Speaker 1: was a public facing identity that was different from their
Speaker 1: private identity, it penalized them. So that's why there was
Speaker 1: a lot of resistance against this move. Also in analysts
Speaker 1: estimated that the active profiles on Google Plus topped out
Speaker 1: at about one eleven million users as opposed to a
Speaker 1: billion over at Facebook, and only six point seven million
Speaker 1: users had fifty posts or more, with only three point
Speaker 1: five million having fifty posts or more in the last
Speaker 1: thirty days, so it wasn't very active like that. They
Speaker 1: might have had a hundred eleven million users, but people
Speaker 1: were not using it very frequently, so it is not
Speaker 1: a hopping place like Facebook. And then in eleven Twitch
Speaker 1: dot tv launched. It was a spinoff of the life
Speaker 1: streaming site justin dot tv. More and more users on
Speaker 1: justin dot tv. We're using the service to stream video
Speaker 1: game play sessions and so Twitch was born to port
Speaker 1: that over to another platform and kind of free up
Speaker 1: justin dot tv for other stuff. The funny thing is,
Speaker 1: eventually justin dot tv would go away and Twitch dot
Speaker 1: tv would stick around. The service is the top live
Speaker 1: streaming video game platform in the United States, outperforming YouTube
Speaker 1: YouTube gaming, which is impressive. YouTube, of course, is enormous
Speaker 1: and has Google behind it, but was unable to dominate
Speaker 1: the live stream video game space the way Twitch has.
Speaker 1: It has fifteen million daily active users and two million
Speaker 1: broadcasters every single month. Now, I have a lot more
Speaker 1: to say about services and companies that launched after tech
Speaker 1: Stuff did, but let's take a quick break to thank
Speaker 1: our sponsor and we're back right. So let's talk about
Speaker 1: some other companies and services that launched after tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: How about Tender. I did episodes on this recently as well,
Speaker 1: so I'm not going to spend a lot of time
Speaker 1: talking about it. But Tender started out as an app
Speaker 1: called Matchbox, developed out of the startup incubator hatch Labs,
Speaker 1: which in itself was operated by two companies called I
Speaker 1: a C and Extreme Labs. I a C also owned
Speaker 1: match dot com, so Matchbox was kind of sort of
Speaker 1: related to the established dating service, but Sean rad and
Speaker 1: Joe Mnios and a few others turned the dating scheme
Speaker 1: into kind of an online flirting game, using just your
Speaker 1: controls of swiping to create sort of a fun, addictive experience,
Speaker 1: and Tender was born in twent twelve. The full story
Speaker 1: of Tender is pretty interesting and filled with ups and downs,
Speaker 1: so check out the recent episodes to learn more. Then,
Speaker 1: how about Periscope? Now, I did an episode about Periscope,
Speaker 1: but that was way back in. Periscope is the live
Speaker 1: streaming service that works on Twitter, and it began as
Speaker 1: a project headed by Cavan bikepor and executive at Blackboard
Speaker 1: Mobile Mobile, and Joe Bernstein. They founded Periscope in February
Speaker 1: and Baker bake Poor met with Jack Dorsey of Twitter,
Speaker 1: and soon Twitter made an offer to buy Periscope. Estimates
Speaker 1: for that offer range from seventy five million dollars to
Speaker 1: a hundred million dollars. Twitter acquired Periscope in January, and
Speaker 1: the app itself was still in closed beta at that time.
Speaker 1: Periscope and Twitter ended up killing a competing service called
Speaker 1: mere Cat, which launched in February. The Periscope service is
Speaker 1: still active today and you can live stream straight from Twitter.
Speaker 1: I've done it a few times myself, although not recently.
Speaker 1: It's a very convenient way to do it. You can
Speaker 1: just use your mobile phone and you use the cameras
Speaker 1: on the mobile phone. You can use either forward facing
Speaker 1: or back facing cameras. It works on iOS and on Android,
Speaker 1: and it's kind a fun way to connect with people
Speaker 1: while you are live at some event or some some location.
Speaker 1: Next I'll chat quickly about Discord. Jason Citron, a game
Speaker 1: development studio founder, was frustrated that there was not really
Speaker 1: a good voice over Internet protocol tool set that worked
Speaker 1: well for gamers because some games incorporate voice chat services
Speaker 1: and others don't, and some of the ones that do
Speaker 1: have lousy implementations or they have features that you might
Speaker 1: not like. So, for example, there might be a game
Speaker 1: where you can chat using a component within the game,
Speaker 1: but if you do, then other people who aren't on
Speaker 1: your team can also hear you. Sometimes it's a proximity thing.
Speaker 1: So let's say you're playing a squad based action game
Speaker 1: and you want to be able to coordinate with your teammates,
Speaker 1: but you don't want someone on the other team to
Speaker 1: hear what you're up to, and you use the tools
Speaker 1: in the game, and if someone's close enough to you,
Speaker 1: they can hear everything you say a and then report
Speaker 1: it back to their fellow teammates. Well, using something like Discord,
Speaker 1: you could create a server and have private communications with
Speaker 1: your team and not worry about anyone else overhearing you
Speaker 1: if if in fact, that was your desire. And so
Speaker 1: Citron decided that he wanted to create such a tool
Speaker 1: because it didn't exist out there, and his company Hammer
Speaker 1: and Chisel secured funding to develop such a service and
Speaker 1: they called it Discord and launched it in It quickly
Speaker 1: found popularity through online communities like Twitch and Reddit, and
Speaker 1: users can communicate with other players or even audiences through Twitch,
Speaker 1: and communication can be through voice or chat. Discord was
Speaker 1: in the news a lot over the last couple of
Speaker 1: years because it is very easy to set up a server,
Speaker 1: and users can create handles tied to throw away email
Speaker 1: addresses to protect their anonymity, so you don't have to
Speaker 1: sign in with a real person name. You can create
Speaker 1: a throwaway Gmail account for exaus ample, and then create
Speaker 1: an associated Discord account and be completely anonymous, and some
Speaker 1: people belonging to the alt right movement, specifically white supremacists
Speaker 1: and neo Nazis begin using Discord servers to coordinate real
Speaker 1: world demonstrations, and Discord responded by shutting down those servers
Speaker 1: and making it clear the company does not tolerate hate groups.
Speaker 1: And I'll have to do a full episode about Discord
Speaker 1: in the future because it is a pretty fascinating story.
Speaker 1: Or how about hyper Loop have done several episodes about
Speaker 1: hyper Loop. I won't go into great detail, but this
Speaker 1: is the transportation mode that was suggested by Elon Musk.
Speaker 1: He made this proposal for transportation public back in and
Speaker 1: the basic ideas you create a tube and you pump
Speaker 1: out most but not all of the air, and that
Speaker 1: helps cut down on air resistance. You put trains inside
Speaker 1: the tube and they use pressurized air to create lift.
Speaker 1: They call like air ball bearings. It's sort of like
Speaker 1: an air hockey table, although typically you would have the
Speaker 1: train pushing air downwards to create this lift, and you
Speaker 1: would use powerful magnets to propel the train cars at
Speaker 1: incredible speeds and you can make trips in a fraction
Speaker 1: of the time it would take to drive between cities
Speaker 1: and without all the hassle and maneuvering through airports to
Speaker 1: just take a quick flight. It's meant to be a
Speaker 1: solution to travel between locations that are really too close
Speaker 1: for efficient air travel, the expense of gas and the
Speaker 1: amount of time you would spend trying to get on
Speaker 1: the plane and off the plane. UH saying, well that
Speaker 1: that's kind of frustrating if the two cities are fairly
Speaker 1: close together but there's still too far apart for you
Speaker 1: to easily drive between. That's what hyper loop is meant
Speaker 1: to UH, to solve that that kind of problem. So
Speaker 1: the example that was always used it was traveled between
Speaker 1: San Francisco and Los Angeles, which would take several hours
Speaker 1: to drive, more than an hour to fly just from
Speaker 1: the in an entry at the airport to the point
Speaker 1: where you're stepping off the plane at your destination, but
Speaker 1: less than an hour using this hyperloop approach. There are
Speaker 1: a few different companies that are experimenting with hyperloop like designs,
Speaker 1: but most of them take a slightly different approach than
Speaker 1: what Must's proposal originally said. Then let's see. In two
Speaker 1: thousand and thirteen, a new service called Slack was released.
Speaker 1: Slack Well, Slack is a team communication and collaboration tool,
Speaker 1: and it expanded from an internal utility. It was created
Speaker 1: by a guy named Stewart Butterfield, and he made it
Speaker 1: for a company called tiny Speck that was trying to
Speaker 1: develop a game, and it was a way for his
Speaker 1: team to communicate with each other in real time and
Speaker 1: also to coordinate and various tasks. And it was really effective,
Speaker 1: so it got repackaged as a product for the general
Speaker 1: use of companies and individuals throughout the world. It includes
Speaker 1: stuff like persistent chat rooms that you can associate with
Speaker 1: particular projects. So, for example, we could have a tech
Speaker 1: stuff chat room for internal work here at how Stuff Works,
Speaker 1: or you could use direct messaging. It's got a lot
Speaker 1: of other stuff in it. It's undeniably a useful tool,
Speaker 1: and I kind of hate it. But that's not because
Speaker 1: it's a bad tool. It's not a bad tool. It's
Speaker 1: perfectly fine. I hate it because it creates yet more
Speaker 1: notifications that can interrupt me as I do research and writing,
Speaker 1: and so this is where I get all grouchy and old.
Speaker 1: The tool is fantastic. I just wish I could lock
Speaker 1: myself away in a quiet library sometimes when I'm trying
Speaker 1: to put an episode together. The creation of so many
Speaker 1: real time communication tools creates an expectation among certain people
Speaker 1: that you should get back to them as soon as
Speaker 1: a message is sent to you. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: if someone else sends me a message, they think I
Speaker 1: should quickly respond to that, even it's supposed to be
Speaker 1: a synchronous communication and I've got a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: going on. In other words, it's really it's really disruptive
Speaker 1: if you're working on a task that requires a lot
Speaker 1: of concentration. Plus is really messing with my pub g
Speaker 1: games in the office as sorry, you can tell you
Speaker 1: I need to work on that. She's better at it
Speaker 1: than I am and she's only played twice. Next, how
Speaker 1: about chat Roulette. This online service randomly matches up people
Speaker 1: in online chat conversations, typically through webcams, and it was
Speaker 1: designed by Andre Turnovsky back when he was attending high
Speaker 1: school in Russia. He launched the site in November two
Speaker 1: thousand nine, and it grew steadily, and it also got
Speaker 1: a pretty dark reputation, well earned. You might say. It
Speaker 1: was a place where guys were jumping from connection to
Speaker 1: connection in a quest defined women willing to get naked
Speaker 1: in front of a camera and also had a reputation
Speaker 1: for guys exposing themselves to the camera. Not that everyone
Speaker 1: did this, mind you, but enough of them did do
Speaker 1: it to earn the serves this reputation. A similar service
Speaker 1: called Omegel launched that very same year, several months earlier.
Speaker 1: This one was designed by Leaf K. Brooks. Omegel initially
Speaker 1: only allowed for text chat, but by also had a
Speaker 1: video chat service built into it. And I've seen creative
Speaker 1: uses both of Omegel and chat Roulette and fun ways,
Speaker 1: but sadly that tends to take a back seat to
Speaker 1: all the coverage about people who are using it to,
Speaker 1: you know, either get naked or ask other people to
Speaker 1: get naked for them. So, you know, you can't always
Speaker 1: predict how your product is going to be used once
Speaker 1: it gets released into the wild. I have no idea
Speaker 1: if that was Andre's idea when he first decided to
Speaker 1: create chat Roulette, but it's certainly the way a lot
Speaker 1: of enough people have used it for it to get
Speaker 1: that reputation. Square was founded in two thousand nine and
Speaker 1: it launched the following year in Square is a company
Speaker 1: that was co founded by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. So
Speaker 1: Dorsey has been in charge of a couple of companies
Speaker 1: that have made a lot of impact in the text
Speaker 1: sphere in the last decade. The concept of Square is
Speaker 1: a technology that makes it easier to accept credit cards
Speaker 1: as a form of payment. The original card readers were
Speaker 1: square in shape, and they were dongles that you would
Speaker 1: plug into a mobile devices audio jack at three point
Speaker 1: five millimeter jack. So back when audio, when your smartphones
Speaker 1: and stuff had those. These days you need either an
Speaker 1: adapter or you have to get a different model of
Speaker 1: Square in the company introduced the Square stand, which allows
Speaker 1: for an iPad to act like a point of sale system.
Speaker 1: And I've seen these everywhere. A lot of the coffee
Speaker 1: shops I go to use these, a lot of the
Speaker 1: places downstairs here at our office building they use them
Speaker 1: as well. It's just a really convenient way to create
Speaker 1: a point of sales system. And so what Square has
Speaker 1: done is lowered the barrier of entry for owners of
Speaker 1: small businesses to accept credit card payments for their goods
Speaker 1: or services. And I'll have to do a full episode
Speaker 1: on that company at some point as well. All right, guys,
Speaker 1: that wraps up this first part of the stuff that
Speaker 1: came out after tech Stuff debuted. In our next episode,
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk a little bit more about some other
Speaker 1: services and companies that started up, and we're also going
Speaker 1: to take a look at some that didn't stand the
Speaker 1: test of time. They launched after Tech Stuff became a show,
Speaker 1: and they aren't around anymore. So make sure you tune
Speaker 1: in to hear that episode. If you have suggestions for
Speaker 1: future episodes of tech Stuff, get in touch with me
Speaker 1: tell me what they are. I don't know. Otherwise, you
Speaker 1: can do that by sending me an email. The address
Speaker 1: is tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com, or
Speaker 1: draw me a line on Facebook or Twitter. The handle
Speaker 1: for both of those is tech Stuff hs W. Don't
Speaker 1: forget to follow us on Instagram and I'll talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon for more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics. Because it how stuff Works dot com.
Speaker 1: W