TechFirst with John Koetsier

It’s been a little challenging to get fitness equipment lately, hasn’t it? Scammers have noticed too. That’s why there’s been a proliferation of scammy-looking fitness product ads on Facebook lately. I’ve personally seen literally dozens of ads for fake Bowflex products, often from “stores” with unpronounceable names and obscure but extremely similar websites. So I bought some fake Bowflex weight from a fake store. And here's what happened ...

When you generate economic activity on an iPhone, Apple wants a piece.  That’s not changing in the new App Store review guidelines Apple released this morning. What is changing is that Apple cracked open the door to off-platform purchases. The question will be whether that applies to everyone, or only smaller developers. Apple and Epic, makers of the hit game Fortnite, have been locked in a battle over payments. Epic wants all the revenue when players purchase an upgrade or enhancement in its game; Apple wants a 15-30% cut on purchases and subscriptions. After they could not come to terms, Apple removed Fortnite from the App Store, as did Google from the Android equivalent, Google Play.  While the matter is now before the courts, Apple updated the rules that govern the App Store this morning. 

How do you automate risk 8 billion times a year? In this episode of TechFirst with John Koetsier we chat with Anjali Dewan, American Express’ VP of Risk Management.  Credit card companies have some serious challenges ... with trillions of dollars in transaction volume, they’re target #1 for fraud. But customers expect everything to work perfectly every time. So American Express started managing every single risk decision on risk using AI in 2015, which makes them much faster. They can now make billions of decisions in nanoseconds, using what might be the largest commercial machine learning system on the planet (probably excluding Google and Facebook)

We talk a lot about self-driving cars. But what about autonomous robots, doing work that isn’t safe for people? We’re talking environments like mines a mile deep … nuclear reactors … remote locations.  In this episode of TechFirst with John Koetsier, we're chatting with Nader Elm, CEO of Exyn Technologies. Exyn is building robots that have to think for themselves and communicate with each other where they don't have GPS or radio communication. Exyn just signed a deal with a Finnish mining to provide drones for autonomous mapping and exploration.

TransPod, a four-year-old company with roots in Canada and France has signed a memorandum of understanding with the government of Alberta to study the feasibility of linking the provinces two major cities, Edmonton and Calgary, by a hyperloop-like system. Top speed would be over 1,000 kilometers/hour, or about 620 miles/hour, and the Hyperloop would be an above-ground enclosed tube. Since Edmonton and Calgary are just under 200 miles apart, travel time would be about half an hour.

Are smartwatches becoming table stakes for modern health? Chatting with Fitbit's VP of product, Larry Yang, about the new Fitbit Sense. Arguably the first smartwatch was invented in 1927 ... you could buy little map scrolls and find your way around. The first digital watch came out in 1972 … calculator watches in the 1980s … and fitness trackers on your wrist launched in the early 2010s … including Fitbit. Apple Watch launched 2015, and now about 1 in 4 wear a smartwatch and/or a fitness tracker. Now Fitbit is launching the Fitbit Sense … which is widely viewed as a full-on assault on the Apple Watch. In this episode of TechFirst with John Koetsier, we dive into health and smartwatches and get the story behind the Fitbit Sense ...

The safest country in the world for COVID-19 is now Germany, according to a recently released ranking. Germany is followed closely by New Zealand and South Korea. Switzerland, which was first, has dropped back to fourth. Japan is fifth, and Australia and China are sixth and seventh.  The United States now ranks number 55, still behind Hungary, Vietnam, China, Malaysia, and Bulgaria.  The most dangerous nations? Somaliland, South Sudan, Afghanistan, and Mali. Get the full ranking in my story at Forbes ...

The history of advertising recently has been one of identity ... specifically, knowing identity across sites and apps.  That’s changing: the third-party cookie is dying, Apple’s identifier for advertisers is going opt-in, and Google's GAID might as well. What does that mean for the future of advertising? And … what does it mean for the ad-supported services we’ve all come to enjoy? In this episode of TechFirst with John Koetsier, we chat with Sheri Bachstein, Global Head of Watson Advertising and The Weather Company.

Covid-19 was the 'digital accelerant of the decade,' pushing brands' digitization strategies up an average of 6 years. In this edition of TechFirst with John Koetsier, we're chatting with Twilio chief customer officer Glenn Weinstein about a major report Twilio put together on digital transformation. COVID-19 is clearly a medical and economic disaster, but it also vastly accelerated technological change and changed how companies think about the tech that drives their business. In this discussion we chat about who's winning and who's losing in the fight to stay relevant as customer behavior changes massively.

In iOS 14, Apple is making the IDFA opt-in. Is this a privacy power move or a cash grab?  The IDFA is a device identifier that advertisers use to know who's engaging with their ads. It also helps ad networks target ads. In previous version of iOS, the IDFA has been default on, but users can turn it off. In iOS 14, keeping the IDFA on now means that each app must ask individually for permission to use the IDFA.  That's probably good for privacy, but it's tough on marketers and advertisers. The question is: is Apple doing this primarily to increase privacy, or because what's bad for advertising might be good for in-app purchases and subscriptions ... which Apple takes a 30% cut from? We chat with Abhay Singhal and Sergio Serra from InMobi, an ad network, about their perspective.