TechFirst with John Koetsier

Amazon's new flying home security drone does not have lasers. Nor can you mount a gun on it, much to the dismay of many, apparently.  But will you buy it? To chat about the Ring Always Home Cam and Amazon’s other announcements we have repeat guest Brian Jackson, who is an analyst, researcher, and consultant with the Info-Tech Research Group.

A week ago Facebook announced it was working with Ray-Ban on a multi-year deal to build and ship smartglasses. Mark Zuckerberg says they’re “the next step on the road to augmented reality glasses.” So why does Irena Cronin say they fail? She is the CEO of Infinite Retina, an xR consultancy, and a co-author of "The Infinite Retina: Spatial Computing, Augmented Reality, and how a collision of new technologies are bringing about the next tech revolution." We chat about Facebook's smartglasses, Project Aria, North (which Google acquired), Snap and its Spectacles, and Apple's coming smartglasses product.

Want to work at Tesla? Apple? Reddit? Netflix? You’re not alone. Most people want to work for a company that is doing amazing work in the forefront of their field. And while we typically think of a brand as something that is relevant to customers and buyers, it’s also critically important to companies that are looking to hire the best available talent. So Hired surveyed 4,100 tech professionals about the companies they most want to work for ... and I chat with two tech execs about the results. In this episode of TechFirst, we'll chat with Vanessa Camones, a brand and communications expert and CEO at AnyContext. and Suzie Weitzman, former comms at Apple, now a senior VP at eBay. Get the full story in my post at Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/09/22/the-top-40-brands-people-want-to-work-for-in-the-tech-industry/ And ... here's the lists, if you're interested: Here are the top 20 public companies people want to work for in the tech industry, along with their ranking in Hired’s “brand positivity index.” Netflix: 86 GitHub: 85 Google: 84 Slack: 81 Microsoft: 78 Apple: 77 Tesla: 74 Twitter: 73 LinkedIn: 72 Dropbox: 69 Square: 65 Amazon: 64 Shopify: 63 Adobe: 62 Facebook: 60 Lyft: 57 Walt Disney: 57 BBC: 52 Salesforce: 50 New York Times: 48 And here are the top 20 private companies in the tech industry that people want to work for: SpaceX: 75 Gitlab: 72 Airbnb: 69 Stripe: 66 Hulu: 64 Reddit: 62 Kickstarter: 57 Robinhood: 54 Bloomberg: 50 Jet Propulsion Lab: 50 Coinbase: 49 Quora: 48 Instacart: 47 Squarespace: 47 Indeed: 46 Hyperloop One: 42 PBS: 41 Whole Foods: 41 NPR: 40 Sigma: 36

This is episode 100! Thank you so much for subscribing to TechFirst. I very much appreciate it. In a year we've taken this podcast to a top-100 podcast in the tech category in the U.S., and much higher in some other countries (#4 in Austria!) :-) That's because of you, and what you've done. Thank you! I've decided to celebrate by doing a 100th-episode giveaway ... check the details in the podcast. And, let's connect wherever you're online: Twitter: https://twitter.com/johnkoetsier LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnkoetsier/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/johnkoetsier?sub_confirmation=1 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/johnkoetsier

iOS 14 is a game-changer in more than a few ones. One of them is definitely privacy. I've been writing a lot about privacy, Apple, and what Apple's been doing with the IDFA (identifier for advertisers), so I was invited to speak at the Mobile Growth Summit about it. Here we talk about what's changing, why, what the implications are, and what Google will do as a result. What I chat about: Why Apple made the change What's dangerous about IDFAs What motives might be behind Apple's decision besides privacy Apple's IDFA policy and how it potentially conflicts with GDPR, CCPA (California's privacy law), and other privacy statutes Why Apple delayed full implementation until 2021 How Facebook influence those decisions Where Google might go with GAID And ... what the long-term impact to mobile and advertising is likely to be

Is iOS 14 fundamentally changing what kinds of apps can be successful? And … with iOS 14 … is Apple building a fundamentally different future for software? In this episode of TechFirst with John Koetsier, we chat with Nick Hobbs, the former head of Google’s iOS app. Hobbs says that iOS 14 is fundamentally different and that it will benefit certain kinds of apps while de-prioritizing others. We chat about when Google's traffic from iOS massively dropped, and what will happen this time with games, Facebook, Google, and more. And, of course, we also chat about The Social Dilemma.

Literally five minutes ago I updated to the new version of Safari, version 14. Then I browsed Forbes, hit up Techmeme, checked Twitter briefly, went to Fox News (first time, I think), clicked over to Slashdot, and finally read a story on ZDNet. Oh, and I checked for a picture for this story on Unsplash. In that five minutes, Safari prevented 90 trackers from profiling me. Let me repeat that. Five minutes, 90 trackers. Read this story in my Forbes column: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/

Could smart contact lenses grant millions the gift of sight? In this episode of  TechFirst with John Koetsier with chat with Andrés Vásquez Quintero, a professor at Ghent University in Belgium, where researchers have just presented an artificial iris embedded in a smart contact lens. It has an artificial iris, an all-day battery, an on-board ASIC, or application-specific integrated circuit, and a very small LCD screen. And it can do very basic augmented reality for people with limited vision. PLEASE NOTE: the wifi at Ghent was not great, so Andres' audio and video is pretty sketchy. As always, full transcripts will be available at: https://johnkoetsier.com/category/tech-first/

I used to think that Apple Music was an enormous treasure chest filled with amazing things that you could never really get out. And I used to think that Spotify’s biggest advantage over Apple Music was not its free tier, but its user experience and playlists. Not any more.

Consumer Report says extensive testing on Tesla’s “full self-driving” capability shows that it falls short of its name, isn’t worth the $8,000 price tag, and actually makes Tesla drivers less safe. “Tesla has repeatedly rolled out crude beta features, some of which can put people’s safety at risk and shouldn’t be used anywhere but on a private test track or proving ground,” says William Wallace, manager of safety policy for Consumer Reports.  Get the full details in this episode of TechFirst with John Koetsier ... Also, see my written column at Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/09/08/4-ways-tesla-self-driving-falls-short-in-consumer-reports-testing/