Wind power has been around for a long time. For commercial applications, there are massive turbines with wings the size of 747s.  For home, there have been a number of options, but durability has been a concern, as well as bird safety. Solar has seen much wider adoption, but it doesn’t work everywhere ... Now there’s a solution from an Icelandic company that looks safe and affordable. To learn more, we chat with Sam Gerbus from IceWind “extreme energy solutions."

Alexa, Siri, Google: which is the smartest? Dumbest? Most useful? Growing the fastest?  And ... what capabilities will AI assistants have in the future? In this episode of TechFirst with John Koetsier we chat with Brian Jackson from Info-Tech Research Group. On the one hand … Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant are amazing technology ... on the other, they face-palm on some ridiculously simple tasks. We chat about: - which are leading (and getting smarter faster) - Google Duplex - Alexa and smart home - Privacy - Why Apple's challenged to make Siri truly smart - Smartglasses ... how they'll work with AI assistants

If you’ve been around marketing, you'll have heard the phrase "customer journey." It's what people do when they buy ... or don't buy. Naturally, marketers want to optimize that trip, and Adobe has developed an AI system that finds out where those journeys break. Theoretically, that will help brands sell more. Our guest this episode: Steve Hammond, a director at Adobe Experience Cloud.

A staggering 40% of the top 20 TV shows and series in the U.S. are produced, owned, and delivered on one network that isn’t available over the air or on standard cable TV and didn’t exist much more than two decades ago. It’s Netflix, of course ....

The Android DJI Go 4 app lets you fly your drone. It also contains sophisticated hidden functionality that can “phone home” every hour to Sina Weibo, one of the most popular Chinese social media sites, asking for fresh commands. Those new commands could include installing new apps on your phone for almost any purpose. In addition, the app restarts itself automatically when you try to quit it.

Ads suck and we all know it. They’re invasive, they track us, they create horrible user experiences, and most of the time, they’re incredibly annoying. The future’s not like that ... and here's why. In this edition of TechFirst with John Koetsier, we chat with the creator of Javascript, Brendan Eich (co-founder/CEO of Brave Software) and Carolina Abenante (founder of NYIAX). Using micropayments, permission, edge AI, blockchain, and crypto, they're creating a future in which you only see ads from brands you want to, you don’t sacrifice privacy when you see an ad, and you get paid for your attention. In a lot of ways, that future is now.

Apple’s App Store has reasonable commission rates that are roughly comparable to other online services, significantly cheaper than traditional offline retail, and are generally in line with commissions at art auctions, consignment shops, and car dealerships. At least, according to a new report written for Apple by hired competition and antitrust experts. Two things the report doesn’t mention? Only the two biggest elephants in the App Store room.

During COVID-19, we can't really go to the gym. So many of us are working out in our (new?) home gyms. Is that making us fitter? And, can an AI coach motivate us? In this episode of TechFirst, we chat with Freeletics CEO Daniel Sobhani about what we're doing to stay fit during Coronavirus, what's working, and how men and women are reacting differently ... including with regard to mental health. We chat about: - the biggest ways fitness changed during COVID-19 - what are people doing differently - how Sobhani's AI coach for fitness works - how the AI coach compares to a human coach? - how the AI works, at a high level - what’s different about working out at home? - how meditation is up, and how men vs women deal with mental health differently - what people are doing with regard to investment in new equipment

Facebook is one of the two most dominant companies in an $80 billion industry that impacts hundreds of billions of dollars, if not trillions, in consumer spend. But a huge percentage of that revenue is now at risk, thanks to an obscure privacy move by Apple at the company’s World Wide Developer Conference in June. The move? Deprecating a mobile device identifier called the IDFA. That threatens billion in Facebook revenue. And Google could be next ...

The electricity that powers our digital future is very, very analog. Is that about to change? We don’t think a lot about the technology that drives our computers and homes ... we flip a switch and get to work, or turn on the TV. But the actual mechanics of what happens in our walls and wires is very 18th century. One company is working on making it better. In this edition of TechFirst with John Koetsier we’re joined by Thar Casey, founder and CEO of Amber, to dive in and check it out.