TechFirst with John Koetsier

Social audio is having a moment. We're seeing an explosion of players in the space: up to 30 at analyst and thought leader Jeremiah Owyang's last count. And that's just the beginning. We'll see an explosion of hundreds of apps in social audio shortly, says Owyang. I caught up with Jeremiah recently to chat about social audio: why it's hot, what's happening, what's driving this trend, who the key players are, why it's here to stay, and what innovation this new sector will give birth to. Episode links: TechFirst transcripts (in about a week): https://johnkoetsier.com/category/tech-first/ Keep in touch: https://twitter.com/johnkoetsier Forbes columns: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/ Full videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/johnkoetsier?sub_confirmation=1 Jeremiah Owyang: https://web-strategist.com/blog/

Do self-driving cars need LIDAR? Elon Musk says no, but most other experts say yes. And we’re going to talk to one of them today Omer Keilaf, founder and CEO, Innoviz, who supplies lidar for BMW and other manufacturers, says LIDAR is essential, because water or mud or dust can disrupt visual sensors. And, of course, all this is happening in an era when LIDAR is getting so cheap we can have it in our phones. Right now it's at $1000 for automotive uses; that's coming down to $100 or even less. Episode links: TechFirst transcripts (in about a week): https://johnkoetsier.com/category/tech-first/ Keep in touch: https://twitter.com/johnkoetsier Forbes columns: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/ Full videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/johnkoetsier?sub_confirmation=1

Would you let a robot make you prettier? The LUUM lash extension robot could soon do all kind of spa treatments ... and even do hair transplants. We have robot surgery, robot manufacturing … so why not robot aestheticians? Or … lash artists? I wouldn’t know from personal experience, but getting fake lashes takes 2-3 hours. A new robot can do it in just 30 minutes ... snd could eventually do everything from makeup to hair transplants. In this episode of TechFirst with John Koetsier, we chat with Philippe Sanchez, CEO of LUUM, and we watch his robot apply fake lashes to a client. Episode links: TechFirst transcripts (in about a week): https://johnkoetsier.com/category/tech-first/ Keep in touch: https://twitter.com/johnkoetsier Forbes columns: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/ Full videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/johnkoetsier?sub_confirmation=1

In this episode of TechFirst we chat with Google director of engineering Ivan Poupyrev. He's making the world smart, starting with clothing (we buy 150 billion items of clothing a year, according to one estimate) released with Google's Jacquard technology. That's going to help us all move beyond screens and make technology ambient in our lives, not central, he believes. But the vision extends beyond clothing to every object in our worlds. Join this chat to see what Poupyrev is working on, and how he sees the world in 10 years. Episode links: TechFirst transcripts (in about a week): https://johnkoetsier.com/category/tech-first/ Keep in touch: https://twitter.com/johnkoetsier  Forbes columns: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/  Google Jacquard: https://atap.google.com/jacquard/

Digital security sucks, and it’s about to get much worse. The question is: can quantum computing save us? In this episode of TechFirst I chat with Quantropi CEO James Nguyen, who has built the world's first non-photonic quantum key distribution over the Internet. He says that quantum computing is the next foundation of computing, period. And functioning, fast cryptography will open up our ability to use it, just like the internet unlocked PCs in the 90s. At stake? $100 trillion in annual commerce. Global national security. Safety in internet of things devices. Medical privacy. And much, much, more. Episode links: TechFirst transcripts (in about a week): https://johnkoetsier.com/category/tech-first/ Keep in touch: https://twitter.com/johnkoetsier Forbes columns: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/

A new startup out of Harvard Labs has invented a way to print camera lenses 5,000 at a time just like computer chips, and in the same semiconductor foundries that make our computer’s CPUs. They’re 100X thinner than standard smartphone camera lenses, are simpler and cheaper to make, sense the full electromagnetic spectrum — not just visible light — and have excellent 3D-sensing capabilities that could bring Lidar-based dimensional sensing functionality that’s currently only on high-end phones like the iPhone 12 to smartphones across the price spectrum. In this episode of TechFirst with John Koetsier, I interview Metalenz co-founder Rob Devlin.

Could you learn trigonometry in 3 weeks if your life depended on it? In this episode of TechFirst with John Koetsier we chat with Josh Carroll, who volunteered with the US Army after 9/11 before he finished high school,  did 3 tours of duty in Afghanistan, then came back and worked, among other jobs, as a high school janitor. In the library of the high school he was cleaning he found A Brief History of Time, by Dr. Stephen Hawking, and rediscovered his love of science. Then he taught himself advanced math via YouTube on his path to becoming a physicist ... Want more? Full transcript will be here: https://johnkoetsier.com/category/tech-first/ Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/johnkoetsier Watch the video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/johnkoetsier?sub_confirmation=1

Biden’s Peloton vs national security: what’s risky about the president of the US using a Peloton or a Fitbit? And ... what does that mean for the rest of us? In this episode of TechFirst with John Koetsier, we chat with ex-googler Ben Barokas, founder and CEO of Sourcepoint, who is now running a privacy-focused company for, as he puts it "the sins" of his prior jobs in adtech.

Can forests be banks?  A new venture capital group is buying forests and wetlands. But they’re not cutting down the trees or starting farms ... they’re monetizing nature by selling carbon offsets, and looking to see increased value in the underlying assets. The goal for land owners? The ability to do nothing while making money. In other words, NOT cutting down the trees, NOT putting in a mine, NOT draining the wetlands. The goal for businesses and people? The ability to buy carbon offsets ... and invest in the bank of nature. Full transcript coming at: https://johnkoetsier.com/category/tech-first/

Imagine a "rocket" that only uses electricity. Have a ragtag group of physicists and engineers exploited a little-known feature of Einstein's equations to built a true propellant-less space drive that doesn't require reaction mass ... just electricity? James Woodward, physics professor emeritus at Fullerton, thinks so. NASA has funded new research into it, and the result if successful would be the ultimate EV ... an electric vehicle that not only can propel a space ship to the planets and the stars, but also lift off out of gravity wells like Earth's.