WEBVTT - Flops, Failures and Falls from Grace 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:07.800 Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. 0:00:12.240 --> 0:00:15.320 Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, 0:00:15.480 --> 0:00:18.560 Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio 0:00:18.600 --> 0:00:21.880 and a love of all things tech, and one of 0:00:21.920 --> 0:00:25.760 my favorite topics in tech centers on projects that just 0:00:26.560 --> 0:00:30.160 didn't work out. Not to be clear, this isn't all 0:00:30.200 --> 0:00:33.080 about schadenfreude, which, for those who don't know, is a 0:00:33.120 --> 0:00:36.280 German word that essentially means the feeling of pleasure you 0:00:36.360 --> 0:00:40.159 get when you see someone else fail. Now there's a 0:00:40.159 --> 0:00:43.280 little bit of that going on sometimes, but really, to me, 0:00:43.320 --> 0:00:46.120 the interesting thing about failure is that you can learn 0:00:46.200 --> 0:00:49.760 from it. By learning what doesn't work, you can refine 0:00:49.800 --> 0:00:53.519 your approach and find ways that do work. Or sometimes 0:00:53.760 --> 0:00:55.960 you figure out the thing you wanted to do isn't 0:00:56.040 --> 0:00:59.840 necessarily possible. So in this episode, I'm going to look 0:00:59.840 --> 0:01:03.520 at some projects, gadgets and campaigns that didn't succeed for 0:01:03.600 --> 0:01:08.200 various reasons. Because for every iPhone success story, there's a 0:01:08.240 --> 0:01:13.399 massive flop that hardly anyone remembers today. Long time listeners 0:01:13.440 --> 0:01:17.720 know that once upon a time, I very confidently predicted 0:01:18.080 --> 0:01:22.319 that Apple's iPad would be a failure. Obviously I was 0:01:22.440 --> 0:01:26.040 as wrong as wrong can be about that. So there's 0:01:26.040 --> 0:01:29.279 our first fail. It was mine. But at the time 0:01:29.440 --> 0:01:32.479 I felt pretty sure of myself. After all, no one 0:01:32.760 --> 0:01:37.759 had really made a successful consumer tablet computer at that point. 0:01:38.000 --> 0:01:41.360 There were tablets on the market, or slate computers they 0:01:41.360 --> 0:01:44.440 were sometimes called, but for the most part, the only 0:01:44.520 --> 0:01:49.680 place you found them were in certain occupations or specific 0:01:49.840 --> 0:01:52.880 use cases. No one had really hit it big with 0:01:53.000 --> 0:01:59.000 a general use tablet computer. Q Michael Arrington, co founder 0:01:59.040 --> 0:02:02.480 of tech Crunch, he wanted to create a useful tablet 0:02:02.600 --> 0:02:05.720 or slate computer. He also wanted it to be affordable. 0:02:06.280 --> 0:02:09.680 He really wanted to aim for a two dollar price tag, 0:02:09.760 --> 0:02:14.080 which was pretty darn ambitious really. He and his team 0:02:14.120 --> 0:02:16.360 got started in two thousand and eight on the concept, 0:02:16.919 --> 0:02:19.600 and they were able to build a couple of prototypes, 0:02:20.000 --> 0:02:22.520 and it turned out that making a tablet was really hard, 0:02:22.639 --> 0:02:26.799 particularly getting the capacity of touchscreen just right so that 0:02:26.880 --> 0:02:29.440 there was a good input method for the user. I mean, 0:02:29.480 --> 0:02:31.800 obviously there's no keyboard or mouse. You have to have 0:02:32.320 --> 0:02:35.200 a way to interact with the device. And after those 0:02:35.240 --> 0:02:40.200 first couple of prototypes, Errington's team partnered unofficially it turns 0:02:40.200 --> 0:02:44.519 out with a company called Fusion Garage, and that really 0:02:44.639 --> 0:02:48.240 ended up being a bad choice. Now. At first, everything 0:02:48.320 --> 0:02:52.480 was going okay, but then on November two thousand nine, 0:02:52.680 --> 0:02:55.840 Errington got a message from the CEO of Fusion Garage, 0:02:56.480 --> 0:03:00.720 and the message said that Fusion Garages shareholders felt that 0:03:00.840 --> 0:03:06.120 Errington's team was superfluous and that their company, Fusion Garage, 0:03:06.160 --> 0:03:09.320 should just move forward with this device on their own, 0:03:09.639 --> 0:03:14.280 cutting Errington out entirely to make matters worse. This was 0:03:14.360 --> 0:03:17.120 just days before Errington was going to show off the 0:03:17.120 --> 0:03:20.440 working prototype at a live event. He had already talked 0:03:20.440 --> 0:03:23.600 about the crunch Pad publicly and people were eager to 0:03:23.680 --> 0:03:26.240 see what it was that his team had been working on. 0:03:26.639 --> 0:03:29.360 It was supposed to be the launch of the product, 0:03:29.400 --> 0:03:31.520 and the plan was to even take pre orders for 0:03:31.600 --> 0:03:36.720 up to a thousand units, and boom, Errington gets this message. Now, 0:03:36.800 --> 0:03:40.280 as you can imagine, that didn't go down well. Fusion 0:03:40.320 --> 0:03:44.640 Garage announced that the tablet, now renamed Juju that's j 0:03:44.840 --> 0:03:48.520 o O j o O, would go on pre sale 0:03:48.600 --> 0:03:52.480 in December for five hundred dollars, more than twice the 0:03:52.520 --> 0:03:55.440 price Errington wanted to aim for when he had started 0:03:55.480 --> 0:03:58.600 working on the project. A couple of years earlier, Errington 0:03:58.760 --> 0:04:03.320 sued Fusion Garage, but because there was no formal contract 0:04:03.560 --> 0:04:06.840 about their agreement, a judge dismissed a lot of the 0:04:06.920 --> 0:04:11.600 arguments that Errington's legal team made against Fusion Garage. But 0:04:11.640 --> 0:04:13.880 it seemed like the whole thing would end up being 0:04:13.880 --> 0:04:16.479 a moot point anyway, because during the court case, it 0:04:16.520 --> 0:04:21.160 was revealed that the Juju device had only received ninety 0:04:21.440 --> 0:04:26.000 that's nine zero pre orders before it finally began shipping 0:04:26.200 --> 0:04:31.719 in March of The tablet was absolutely hamstrung by the 0:04:31.760 --> 0:04:35.800 Apple iPad, which we first learned about in January and 0:04:35.880 --> 0:04:39.520 which began shipping in April of that year. So a 0:04:39.520 --> 0:04:41.440 lot of people were saying, well, if I want a tablet, 0:04:41.880 --> 0:04:44.680 I'm just gonna wait for the iPad. While I don't 0:04:44.760 --> 0:04:48.400 know how those court cases ultimately played out, I couldn't 0:04:48.480 --> 0:04:51.000 find that when I was researching this episode, I can 0:04:51.120 --> 0:04:54.400 tell you that the Juju Tablet didn't last very long. 0:04:54.720 --> 0:04:58.000 Fusion Garage decided to stop supporting it before ten was 0:04:58.120 --> 0:05:02.480 even over, So we're only talking about half a year 0:05:02.560 --> 0:05:04.920 from the point it launched to the point that Fusion 0:05:04.920 --> 0:05:08.520 Garage stopped supporting it, and Fusion Garage itself didn't last 0:05:08.560 --> 0:05:11.279 a whole lot longer. That company went into liquidation in 0:05:11.360 --> 0:05:14.880 twenty twelve. I think there's some real lessons to learn 0:05:14.920 --> 0:05:18.480 from that story. One is that making a particular form 0:05:18.560 --> 0:05:22.719 factor consumer friendly is really hard, and while Apple made 0:05:22.720 --> 0:05:27.440 it work, countless other companies have made slates or tablets 0:05:27.480 --> 0:05:30.560 that saw very little traction in the general tech consumer 0:05:30.600 --> 0:05:34.799 market before and since the introduction of the iPad. Another 0:05:34.880 --> 0:05:40.240 is that you always get those business agreements in writing always. Now, 0:05:40.360 --> 0:05:42.880 let's take a leap, In fact, let's call it a 0:05:43.080 --> 0:05:47.760 Magic Leap, a decade ahead. The company Magic Leap started 0:05:47.839 --> 0:05:50.680 in two though it kept a pretty low profile for 0:05:50.720 --> 0:05:53.600 the first few years. We would later learn that the 0:05:53.640 --> 0:05:56.400 primary focus of the company was the development of an 0:05:56.400 --> 0:06:01.560 augmented reality headset. Now, just in case you're not familiar 0:06:01.640 --> 0:06:05.680 with that, term, augmented reality or a R refers to 0:06:06.120 --> 0:06:11.240 using digital information to enhance a real environment in some way. 0:06:11.240 --> 0:06:16.680 Typically we experience this digital enhancement through a screen or 0:06:16.720 --> 0:06:19.479 a headset, though you could do it with audio like 0:06:19.560 --> 0:06:23.680 with headphones, or even other methods of sensory input. But 0:06:23.760 --> 0:06:27.080 the technology interprets what we are focusing on within our 0:06:27.160 --> 0:06:31.520 environment and then enhances our experience in some way. So 0:06:31.600 --> 0:06:35.839 a super simple implementation are the various filters on phone 0:06:35.880 --> 0:06:38.240 apps that let you, you know, take pictures of yourself 0:06:38.279 --> 0:06:41.240 with bunny ears, or you can turn into a dragon 0:06:41.360 --> 0:06:44.960 or whatever. Magic Leap was working on a headset that 0:06:45.040 --> 0:06:48.360 could overlay digital information on your view of the world, 0:06:48.800 --> 0:06:52.479 and the applications for this technology are practically limitless, from 0:06:52.839 --> 0:06:57.600 entertainment to productivity. And obviously there are other examples of 0:06:57.600 --> 0:07:01.080 this technology on the market, such as micros offs hollow lens, 0:07:01.520 --> 0:07:04.679 but Magic Leap had a sense of mystery and well 0:07:04.760 --> 0:07:08.120 magic about it, and it attracted a lot of attention 0:07:08.279 --> 0:07:11.200 and a lot of investors, who poured around two billion 0:07:11.280 --> 0:07:13.760 dollars in the company years before it had a product 0:07:13.760 --> 0:07:17.520 to even show off. In two thousand eighteen, Magic Leap 0:07:17.600 --> 0:07:22.280 introduced its first headset, fittingly named the Magic Leap. One 0:07:22.600 --> 0:07:25.760 had a steep price tag two thousand, three hundred dollars 0:07:25.800 --> 0:07:29.880 per headset. The CEO's original hope was that the company 0:07:29.880 --> 0:07:33.480 would sell one million headsets in its first year, but 0:07:33.640 --> 0:07:37.240 in the official company projections that got reduced down by 0:07:37.280 --> 0:07:41.040 an order of magnitude, down to one thousand units, but 0:07:41.160 --> 0:07:45.280 reality was far more harsh. After the first six months, 0:07:45.280 --> 0:07:48.800 the company had only sold around six thousand units, according 0:07:48.880 --> 0:07:54.040 to Alex Heath of The Information. The Information Is a website. 0:07:54.240 --> 0:07:57.720 By the way, Addie Robertson of The Verge got to 0:07:57.760 --> 0:08:00.920 try out the Magic Leap and fell that the experience 0:08:01.000 --> 0:08:05.000 was interesting but fell far short of expectations. Given all 0:08:05.040 --> 0:08:08.760 the hype around the Magic Leap one for years, the 0:08:08.760 --> 0:08:11.360 tech world had been teased with hints at what was 0:08:11.440 --> 0:08:15.040 to come and lots of conceptual videos that really made 0:08:15.040 --> 0:08:18.880 it seem phenomenal, and the anticipation was really high. But 0:08:18.960 --> 0:08:21.360 by the time it finally came out, after the hollow 0:08:21.440 --> 0:08:24.960 lens had already been demonstrated, the Magic Leap one just 0:08:25.120 --> 0:08:29.160 didn't quite live up to its reputation. Magic Leap chose 0:08:29.240 --> 0:08:33.400 to pivot towards catering to enterprise clients, meaning instead of 0:08:33.400 --> 0:08:36.839 offering a consumer electronics product, the company was aiming at 0:08:36.880 --> 0:08:40.840 something for other businesses to purchase, and the rocky launch 0:08:40.960 --> 0:08:45.760 had some pretty big consequences, including massive layoffs like a 0:08:45.840 --> 0:08:49.520 thousand people laid off at the company and the CEO 0:08:49.679 --> 0:08:53.320 and founder of the company stepping down. Today, Magic Leap 0:08:53.400 --> 0:08:57.040 is planning the release of their second headset. This one 0:08:57.200 --> 0:08:59.280 is lighter, and the company says it will have a 0:08:59.400 --> 0:09:02.920 larger few old of view, but there aren't many details 0:09:02.960 --> 0:09:06.960 beyond some general statements about the physical specs of the 0:09:06.960 --> 0:09:10.200 the high tech specs. It may be that the experience 0:09:10.240 --> 0:09:13.640 of using them will match more closely with the perception 0:09:13.679 --> 0:09:16.320 of what it was going to be like, but we'll 0:09:16.320 --> 0:09:18.720 have to see. I personally get the feeling that a 0:09:18.960 --> 0:09:21.640 R is kind of going through what VR went through 0:09:21.640 --> 0:09:24.680 back in the nineteen nineties, which is when the actual 0:09:24.679 --> 0:09:27.520 experience of VR ended up being a pale imitation of 0:09:27.520 --> 0:09:30.960 what everyone thought it would be and then interest dropped 0:09:31.280 --> 0:09:35.080 like like a stone as a result. But I hope 0:09:35.480 --> 0:09:38.080 that they're successful. I would actually love to see more 0:09:38.120 --> 0:09:43.040 innovation in the a R space. So while I have reservations, 0:09:43.320 --> 0:09:46.960 my hope is that they make it work. Meanwhile, Magically 0:09:47.160 --> 0:09:50.000 has some other challenges. It seems like a lot of 0:09:50.000 --> 0:09:53.160 the planned partnerships that the company had with other big 0:09:53.200 --> 0:09:57.200 companies have sort of stalled out, and in Florida, the 0:09:57.240 --> 0:09:59.520 company has asked for an extension on a promise it 0:09:59.559 --> 0:10:02.920 made to the Broward County Commission. Magic Leap had promised 0:10:02.960 --> 0:10:06.640 to create seven jobs with an average salary of one 0:10:07.040 --> 0:10:10.280 thousand dollars per year, and in return they got some 0:10:10.360 --> 0:10:14.080 pretty sweet incentives to set up shop in Florida. But 0:10:14.200 --> 0:10:16.720 due to the fallout of the Magic Leap one release 0:10:16.840 --> 0:10:20.000 not going as planned and the subsequent layoffs and the 0:10:20.040 --> 0:10:23.400 pandemic on top of everything else, the company needs more 0:10:23.440 --> 0:10:26.280 time to make good on that promise. I'll keep my 0:10:26.400 --> 0:10:29.040 eye on Magic Leap and I'll continue to hope that 0:10:29.080 --> 0:10:32.760 the team is able to rebound. Let us now turn 0:10:32.800 --> 0:10:38.400 our sights to Microsoft. Now, Microsoft has tons of candidates 0:10:38.440 --> 0:10:41.560 I could choose from when it comes to failures. Years ago, 0:10:41.600 --> 0:10:44.920 I did an episode on Microsoft Bob, arguably one of 0:10:44.920 --> 0:10:48.200 the biggest flops in tech history. Also, it's the flop 0:10:48.240 --> 0:10:51.360 that introduced the world to comic Sands. I could also 0:10:51.440 --> 0:10:56.280 talk about Windows Vista or Windows eight, but instead let's 0:10:56.400 --> 0:11:00.920 chat about the Zoom. The Zoon wasly a suite of 0:11:00.920 --> 0:11:05.880 technologies centered around a portable media player called the Zoon. 0:11:06.480 --> 0:11:10.760 It was kind of Microsoft's answer to Apple's iPod. Microsoft 0:11:10.840 --> 0:11:15.400 launched the Zoo on November two thousand six. The original 0:11:15.520 --> 0:11:19.400 Zoom device had thirty gigabytes of storage space built in 0:11:19.600 --> 0:11:22.920 FM radio and a three inch screen, but two thousand 0:11:23.000 --> 0:11:26.000 six was pretty late to get into the portable media 0:11:26.120 --> 0:11:29.560 player game. Apple had introduced the first iPod in two 0:11:29.559 --> 0:11:33.359 thousand one and had worked to create an ecosystem with iTunes. 0:11:33.760 --> 0:11:36.880 An ecosystem I should add that worked okay if you 0:11:36.920 --> 0:11:39.280 were on a Mac, but I maintained it was a 0:11:39.440 --> 0:11:42.599 nightmare to use it on PC, at least in my experience. 0:11:43.200 --> 0:11:45.840 Microsoft was trying to make up for some lost time 0:11:45.920 --> 0:11:49.480 and lost ground, and it didn't go so well. When 0:11:49.480 --> 0:11:52.440 it came to market share, the Zoon was never able 0:11:52.480 --> 0:11:55.439 to get as high as ten percent of the whole market. 0:11:55.679 --> 0:11:58.560 It was always in the single digits. The company stuck 0:11:58.600 --> 0:12:02.000 with the product line for a file, including the introduction 0:12:02.040 --> 0:12:04.640 of a touch screen Zoom in two thousand nine that 0:12:04.760 --> 0:12:09.840 was the Zoom hd UH. Some first generation Zoom thirties failed. 0:12:10.000 --> 0:12:14.679 They froze entirely. Microsoft later said that the reason for 0:12:15.000 --> 0:12:17.960 the Zoom's freezing was because of a third party internal 0:12:18.000 --> 0:12:21.280 clock that failed to account for a leap year the 0:12:21.280 --> 0:12:25.800 host pesky clocks. One capability the Zoom players had that 0:12:25.880 --> 0:12:28.959 got a lot of snark was that you could wirelessly 0:12:29.040 --> 0:12:32.040 share a song from your library with a friend who 0:12:32.160 --> 0:12:35.199 also happened to have a Zoom. Also, you could actually 0:12:35.600 --> 0:12:39.160 send that song to any nearby Zoom device. If your 0:12:39.240 --> 0:12:43.360 Zoom detected another Zoom within thirty feet, you could send 0:12:43.360 --> 0:12:45.440 a song you know, or other piece of media like 0:12:45.480 --> 0:12:48.559 a podcast their way, and the recipient would get a 0:12:48.559 --> 0:12:51.839 little notification and they could choose to either accept or 0:12:52.120 --> 0:12:55.480 deny that offer, and then if they accepted it, they 0:12:55.480 --> 0:12:58.360 would have three days to you know, listen to the 0:12:58.400 --> 0:13:00.880 media before it disappeared from their vice, and they also 0:13:00.920 --> 0:13:04.040 had a limit of listening to it three times. And 0:13:04.120 --> 0:13:06.160 hearing that you might think, well, was there to be 0:13:06.200 --> 0:13:11.120 snarky about. Well, the snark wasn't about the capability, It 0:13:11.240 --> 0:13:14.680 was the name that Microsoft gave to it. Microsoft called 0:13:14.720 --> 0:13:19.680 it squirting. The lackluster sales of the Zoom ultimately led 0:13:19.760 --> 0:13:23.120 to Microsoft deciding to stop development and production on the 0:13:23.200 --> 0:13:28.360 Zoo in the company continued to support the Zoom software service, 0:13:28.679 --> 0:13:32.200 which allowed you know, existing Zoom users to listen to 0:13:32.280 --> 0:13:35.360 songs they had purchased through Microsoft and Stuff, or they 0:13:35.360 --> 0:13:37.560 could listen to a catalog of streaming music for a 0:13:37.600 --> 0:13:41.120 monthly fee, but all of that got shut down in 0:13:41.240 --> 0:13:44.600 two thousand fifteen and while Microsoft would you know, move 0:13:45.000 --> 0:13:48.600 users over from their service to a new service, the 0:13:48.640 --> 0:13:54.120 Groove Music Service, not all the copyright licenses made that shift. 0:13:54.320 --> 0:13:58.240 The the library of the zooon uh universe was different 0:13:58.280 --> 0:14:02.800 from the Groove universe, so that wasn't great. It meant 0:14:02.800 --> 0:14:05.439 a lot of Zoom users found themselves unable to listen 0:14:05.440 --> 0:14:09.360 to music that they had previously purchased on the Zoom platform. 0:14:09.400 --> 0:14:12.000 And it was also a reminder that the media model 0:14:12.080 --> 0:14:15.119 we have these days where we don't really have copies 0:14:15.559 --> 0:14:21.080 of media. Typically we normally access the media through streaming services. 0:14:21.480 --> 0:14:23.600 That means that there can come a time where we 0:14:23.680 --> 0:14:27.240 can't access that stuff anymore because of licensing issues that 0:14:27.280 --> 0:14:31.720 are on the back end. So bye bye Zooon. We 0:14:31.880 --> 0:14:35.960 hardly squirted d. On a related note, there was the Panto, 0:14:36.680 --> 0:14:40.760 famous for its association with musician Neil Young. The bitch 0:14:40.800 --> 0:14:44.280 for Panto is pretty simple. Most digital music we encounter 0:14:44.360 --> 0:14:48.040 these days has been compressed, and in that compression process 0:14:48.240 --> 0:14:52.760 you can lose fidelity, the quality of the audio, the 0:14:52.920 --> 0:14:56.280 dynamic range of the music. That's the range between the 0:14:56.400 --> 0:15:00.520 softest and the loudest bits of a piece that gets reduced. 0:15:00.800 --> 0:15:04.520 So it makes the music more flat right, The softer 0:15:04.640 --> 0:15:07.280 parts get boosted a little bit in volume, the loudest 0:15:07.320 --> 0:15:10.520 parts get reduced in volume, and you have less variation. 0:15:11.200 --> 0:15:15.480 You might also lose some harmonics because compression algorithms typically 0:15:15.520 --> 0:15:19.320 determine if a sound is within the range of human hearing, 0:15:19.360 --> 0:15:21.840 and if it figures that the sound is outside the 0:15:21.960 --> 0:15:25.680 range of human hearing, it drops that information, thinking that's 0:15:26.120 --> 0:15:29.440 not really important, but that can help shape the sound 0:15:29.520 --> 0:15:33.400 a little bit, so that's also an issue. The Panto 0:15:33.720 --> 0:15:37.560 would let you listen to uncompressed digital music. Ideally, you 0:15:37.600 --> 0:15:39.840 would experience music as if you had been in the 0:15:39.880 --> 0:15:43.240 recording studio when the artists were laying down the tracks 0:15:43.280 --> 0:15:46.760 for the first time, or maybe more realistically, you would 0:15:46.760 --> 0:15:49.240 be in the studio after audio engineers had worked on 0:15:49.240 --> 0:15:51.400 a track to sweeten it up a little bit before 0:15:51.480 --> 0:15:55.200 recording it to a master. Neil Young first started talking 0:15:55.240 --> 0:15:59.080 about Panto back in two thousand twelve. A Kickstarter campaign 0:15:59.120 --> 0:16:02.800 helped fund the project initially, though the company called Ponto 0:16:02.960 --> 0:16:06.760 Music reportedly had industry backing as well. Despite all this, 0:16:07.240 --> 0:16:10.560 the project dragged on and it bled money, with the 0:16:10.600 --> 0:16:14.560 company having to launch a crowdfunder campaign later to raise 0:16:14.640 --> 0:16:17.880 even more money, so it had two different crowdfunding campaigns 0:16:18.520 --> 0:16:23.600 in the company released the Panto music player device. The 0:16:23.640 --> 0:16:27.280 sales must have been pretty lackluster. The Travel Insider blog 0:16:27.400 --> 0:16:30.840 estimates that perhaps around fifteen thousand Pantos were sold as 0:16:30.840 --> 0:16:34.320 part of the crowdfunding campaign, sort of pre sales. It 0:16:34.400 --> 0:16:37.000 was an expensive piece of technology. It started at four 0:16:37.080 --> 0:16:40.640 hundred dollars and ultimately I think Ponto failed because when 0:16:40.680 --> 0:16:44.080 it comes to considerations people give for portable music, the 0:16:44.120 --> 0:16:48.600 convenience factor typically rates much higher than fidelity. Plus, we 0:16:48.600 --> 0:16:52.920 were starting to shift from downloads to streams around this 0:16:53.000 --> 0:16:56.720 time too, And besides, there's a diminishing returns issue when 0:16:56.720 --> 0:17:00.360 it comes to fidelity. Yes, you can from a nickel 0:17:00.480 --> 0:17:03.040 level see an improvement in audio, like you can look 0:17:03.080 --> 0:17:07.360 at the different meters and say, okay, we detect more 0:17:07.400 --> 0:17:13.720 precisely that this recording is more uh accurate a representation 0:17:13.800 --> 0:17:17.040 of the original sound than this other recording. You can 0:17:17.080 --> 0:17:19.679 do that from a technical perspective, but a lot of 0:17:19.720 --> 0:17:23.159 us have trouble telling the difference between a good music 0:17:23.240 --> 0:17:27.800 playback session and an excellent music playback session. It's very 0:17:27.880 --> 0:17:31.360 easy to tell bad from good. But once you get 0:17:31.440 --> 0:17:35.320 up to good things, get a bit more subjective. The 0:17:35.400 --> 0:17:38.679 Pano players stuck around for two whole years before it 0:17:38.720 --> 0:17:42.600 faded away after various partners had already gone bankrupt. There 0:17:42.680 --> 0:17:45.639 was talk of Pano leading to another service, you know, 0:17:45.720 --> 0:17:48.359 kind of evolving into something else, but so far nothing 0:17:48.359 --> 0:17:51.200 has come of that. Now when we come back, we're 0:17:51.200 --> 0:17:55.240 gonna get all googly up in here, But first let's 0:17:55.240 --> 0:18:05.600 take a break. Well, I've already spoiled it. But one 0:18:05.640 --> 0:18:09.280 company that has had a very long history of abandoned 0:18:09.320 --> 0:18:12.960 projects is Google, and that shouldn't be a surprise because 0:18:13.000 --> 0:18:16.160 for more than a decade the company encouraged its employees 0:18:16.200 --> 0:18:21.199 to experiment and think outside the box. Until about the 0:18:21.280 --> 0:18:24.760 general policy at Google was that Googlers could spend twenty 0:18:25.160 --> 0:18:28.200 of their time working on their own projects that could 0:18:28.280 --> 0:18:32.160 potentially benefit Google down the line, but they weren't part 0:18:32.320 --> 0:18:36.320 of the employee's normal work. So that could mean that 0:18:36.400 --> 0:18:39.600 Monday through Thursday you work on your official projects, and 0:18:39.600 --> 0:18:42.240 then on Fridays you just kind of experiment and build 0:18:42.280 --> 0:18:44.600 stuff that might or might not ever see the light 0:18:44.640 --> 0:18:48.600 of day. This was Google's way of encouraging innovation within 0:18:48.640 --> 0:18:51.680 the company, and a lot of elements of Google products 0:18:51.720 --> 0:18:55.760 emerged because of this policy, but we also saw stuff 0:18:55.800 --> 0:18:58.600 that would get a launch or get incorporated into something 0:18:58.640 --> 0:19:01.800 else and over time and Google would just step back 0:19:01.880 --> 0:19:04.600 from it. Sometimes I think the problem was that Google 0:19:04.800 --> 0:19:07.080 didn't really know how to launch and promote some of 0:19:07.119 --> 0:19:10.320 these products. But in other cases it really was more 0:19:10.480 --> 0:19:14.719 that the products just didn't appeal to non Google engineer types, 0:19:15.240 --> 0:19:18.560 or that you were looking at something that was questionably useful, 0:19:18.800 --> 0:19:22.360 or it just wasn't very user friendly in general. Anyway, 0:19:22.840 --> 0:19:25.639 there's a bunch of Google products we could talk about 0:19:25.680 --> 0:19:28.439 that didn't go very far, and a few that never 0:19:28.480 --> 0:19:32.159 emerged beyond an announcement. Oh and before I forget, you 0:19:32.240 --> 0:19:35.320 might wonder why Google abandoned that you know, employees get 0:19:35.359 --> 0:19:40.800 time to pursue their own projects policy. Sometimes around it's 0:19:40.840 --> 0:19:44.600 not because the company changed course on innovation, but because 0:19:44.600 --> 0:19:48.080 of managers. See, managers at Google are accountable for the 0:19:48.080 --> 0:19:52.320 productivity of the teams they manage, and that time really 0:19:52.359 --> 0:19:55.080 eats into the number of hours teams can dedicate to 0:19:55.280 --> 0:19:58.639 official Google projects, and that hits the managers when it 0:19:58.680 --> 0:20:01.600 comes to review time. So there was a shift within 0:20:01.640 --> 0:20:06.040 the company to eliminate the loosey goosey time component to 0:20:06.119 --> 0:20:09.160 boost productivity and go with a more top down approach 0:20:09.200 --> 0:20:13.399 to innovation. Anyway, let's talk about some Google products, some 0:20:13.640 --> 0:20:17.399 which may have been spawned from that time policy that 0:20:17.600 --> 0:20:20.840 ultimately flopped. And this is just a sampling. I could 0:20:20.880 --> 0:20:24.600 do multiple episodes about all the different products from Google 0:20:24.720 --> 0:20:28.000 that ultimately got the AX. So consider this more of 0:20:28.040 --> 0:20:32.520 a sampler platter, arranged in no particular order. And we'll 0:20:32.560 --> 0:20:35.720 start with a Google product that lasted all of one 0:20:35.960 --> 0:20:40.320 whole day. I'm talking about Google X. Now, this is 0:20:40.359 --> 0:20:44.800 not the moonshot Google X. That's a division inside Google 0:20:44.840 --> 0:20:48.480 that focuses on bleeding edge R and D. It's kind 0:20:48.520 --> 0:20:52.679 of Google's version of Lockheed's skunk Works. No. No, the 0:20:52.720 --> 0:20:55.159 Google X i'm talking about was a different approach to 0:20:55.200 --> 0:20:58.280 Google Search, and it was only available on March six, 0:20:58.720 --> 0:21:02.040 two thousand five. Back in two thousand and five, the 0:21:02.080 --> 0:21:05.040 basic Google search bar allows you to indicate what sort 0:21:05.040 --> 0:21:08.040 of results you wanted to look for before you hit 0:21:08.119 --> 0:21:12.120 search or I'm feeling lucky. The I'm feeling lucky button 0:21:12.160 --> 0:21:14.520 would just take you to whatever the top search result 0:21:14.720 --> 0:21:17.800 was for your query. You could search the web for 0:21:17.880 --> 0:21:21.520 pages related to your query. You could search images, you 0:21:21.520 --> 0:21:24.399 could search for news articles and so on. That stuff 0:21:24.440 --> 0:21:27.040 still exists, by the way, but now it's after the jump, 0:21:27.119 --> 0:21:30.440 after you've done that initial search. But in the old 0:21:30.520 --> 0:21:33.159 days you could do it before you actually hit the 0:21:33.200 --> 0:21:37.520 search button. Anyway, Google X was a new layout for search, 0:21:37.720 --> 0:21:41.840 with icons replacing the text above the search bar. So 0:21:42.040 --> 0:21:45.520 there was a portrait in a frame icon that represented 0:21:45.560 --> 0:21:49.520 image search, there was a newspaper icon that represented news, 0:21:49.800 --> 0:21:53.280 and so on. It looked a lot like Apple's Mac 0:21:53.320 --> 0:21:59.000 os ten or os x doc like a lot a 0:21:59.080 --> 0:22:04.080 lot like it. Chakai O Haasama, the software engineer presumably 0:22:04.119 --> 0:22:07.920 behind the redesign, acknowledge the connection to Mac os ten. 0:22:08.720 --> 0:22:12.119 But here's the thing. There are certain companies that have 0:22:12.280 --> 0:22:17.480 a reputation for really jealously guarding their I p. Apple 0:22:17.600 --> 0:22:20.320 is one of those companies. In fact, the company has 0:22:20.359 --> 0:22:23.640 been known to send legal teams after other companies that 0:22:23.680 --> 0:22:27.040 looked like they were kind of copying Apple style. This, 0:22:27.160 --> 0:22:29.359 by the way, is pretty rich if you know the 0:22:29.440 --> 0:22:32.600 history of Apple's graphic user interface and how Steve Jobs 0:22:32.640 --> 0:22:35.920 himself was famous for stealing other ideas and making them 0:22:35.960 --> 0:22:40.600 Apple's own approach. Anyway, while neither Apple nor Google said 0:22:40.640 --> 0:22:44.359 anything about it, the OS ten like layout of Google 0:22:44.400 --> 0:22:49.640 Search was gone by March two five. Next is Google Lively, 0:22:49.960 --> 0:22:53.880 which I honestly don't remember being a thing. Now. It's 0:22:53.920 --> 0:22:56.439 possible I heard about it at the time, but Google 0:22:56.520 --> 0:22:58.879 launched this back in two thousand and eight. That is 0:22:58.920 --> 0:23:02.240 the same year we paunched tech Stuff, So it's also 0:23:02.400 --> 0:23:06.080 entirely possible that it just completely escaped my attention. It 0:23:06.119 --> 0:23:08.199 wasn't around for very long, so it's not like I 0:23:08.240 --> 0:23:10.520 had a lot of opportunities to get familiar with it. 0:23:10.960 --> 0:23:14.480 So what the heck was Google Lively? We'll simply put 0:23:14.800 --> 0:23:18.760 Google Lively was a way of creating online three D 0:23:18.960 --> 0:23:21.880 spaces that kind of served as a sort of chat room. 0:23:22.240 --> 0:23:25.199 You can think of something like Second Life but for Google, 0:23:25.800 --> 0:23:28.800 or something that's kind of like an M M O RPG, 0:23:29.720 --> 0:23:34.080 just without the overt game elements. It all fit inside 0:23:34.119 --> 0:23:36.960 the web browser experience, so you didn't have to download 0:23:36.960 --> 0:23:40.439 a program or anything. When it launched. It worked only 0:23:40.480 --> 0:23:45.240 with PCs running Windows, specifically either Windows XP or Windows 0:23:45.359 --> 0:23:49.639 Vista anyone remember those, and it was also compatible with 0:23:49.760 --> 0:23:53.200 Internet Explorer or Firefox. I don't think It was even 0:23:53.240 --> 0:23:56.480 compatible with Google Chrome, though to be fair, Chrome did 0:23:56.480 --> 0:23:59.640 not launch until September two eight, so the same year 0:23:59.680 --> 0:24:03.119 that Ly came out. The company planned future versions that 0:24:03.160 --> 0:24:06.280 we're supposed to work on Mac and Linux computers as well. 0:24:06.960 --> 0:24:10.240 Rooms within Google Lively had their own u r l s, 0:24:10.520 --> 0:24:13.399 so you could link them together within Google Lively, and 0:24:13.520 --> 0:24:17.280 moving from one virtual room to another was essentially the 0:24:17.320 --> 0:24:20.080 same thing as clicking on a link and going to 0:24:20.200 --> 0:24:23.600 a new web page. Google Lively could be embedded into 0:24:23.640 --> 0:24:26.760 other websites, so a web administrator for a big brand 0:24:27.040 --> 0:24:30.480 could incorporate Google Lively into the brand's own web presence 0:24:30.720 --> 0:24:34.159 and allow visitors to wander around a virtual space. You 0:24:34.160 --> 0:24:37.840 could have some limited interactions with virtual objects and with 0:24:37.880 --> 0:24:40.560