TechFirst with John Koetsier

Is technology making us lonely, stressed out, insecure, and narcissistic? In this TechFirst with John Koetsier we dive into a 2,000-person study on the impact of technology and mobile devices on:   - mental health   - loneliness   - narcissism   - social isolation The news is not great ... I chat with futurist Nikolas Badminton and researcher Nick Black to go through their study.

Coronavirus is changing how we work ... most tech companies are now telling their employees to work from home.   Well, if you work from home, you need tools to do that.   One company says it’s going to offer a free productivity suite to everyone. Zoho created a product literally this week called Remotely, which it is offering for free for all.   We’re chatting with Raju Vegesna, the Chief Evangelist at Zoho.

What is it like to be living and working in China right now, during the coronavirus epidemic? What's different?   We chat with James Ren, who’s currently living and working in Beijing, China. He leaves his home every three days for food and hasn't seen his family for weeks, but he's trying to do business, meet clients virtually, and keep working through the crisis. What we talk about:  What’s the status in Beijing right now?  Are there any conferences that you’re planning to go to? Or, have they been canceled?  Are you restricting your movement? Meetings?  What information are you getting from medical authorities on what to do and what not to do?  How are you continuing with business?  What’s the impact on your business?  How long do you anticipate this continuing?

Ad fraud costs billions each year.   Why does that matter to you … and how can we stop it?  Welcome to Tech First Draft, with John Koetsier   Ad fraud is huge ... I’ve seen estimates from $10B to even $40B a year, globally. Just today, Google kicked 600 apps with 4.5B downloads out of Google Play.   Luke Taylor, the founder and COO of TrafficGuard, is going to tell us how it works ... and … how to stop it. And yes … we’ll even talk about how ad fraud impacts you, or any average person.   The types of fraud we'll talk about include:   - App install farms   - SDK spoofing   - Misattribution (i.e. click spam, click injection; where ~80% of ad fraud occurs)   - Domain spoofing   - Cookie stuffing   - Hidden ads/ads stacking   - Bots & servers   - Malware engagement

We now have almost 8 billion people on the planet ... what kind of digital growth are we seeing from those billions on social, mobile, and the internet as a whole? Welcome to Tech First Draft, with … yours truly ...  John Koetsier Hootsuite just put together a massive series of reports -- 200+ pages -- about everything, basically, in terms of digital growth … social adoption … mobile penetration … top social networks ... emerging trends ... you name it. So we’re going to dive into all that … we’re going to chat with: Simon Kemp, who wrote the report, and Henk Campher, a VP at Hootsuite.

Fake reviews are killing our ability to google for the truth Two of the top 9 google suggestions for “fake reviews” are “fake reviews generator” and “fake reviews generator free” So we know that it’s hard to trust reviews for consumer products What about reviews for B2B software? Consumer products might cost $50 to $500 B2B software? Could be $500,000, and easily more with multi-year contracts Today, we’re chatting with TrustRadius CEO Vinay Bhagat about a new program to kill fake reviews

Are your headphones not providing the quality sound that they might actually be capable of? Can you get audiophile quality sound with hardware that doesn’t cost thousands of dollars?    This company says it can make your headphones better … with software.   Welcome to Tech First Draft.    See all TFDs here: https://johnkoetsier.com/category/tech-first-draft/  My guest, Matthias, is from Dirac: https://www.dirac.com   My name is John Koetsier, and today we’re speaking with Mathias Johansson, the CEO of Dirac.   He’s fixing crappy audio with software, and we’re going to find out how ...   What we talk about:   - You’re on a quest to fix bad audio. Why?   - What is the problem with most headphones/earbuds sold today?   - You are trying to fix it in software … via an app. How?  - What headphones or earbuds do you support right now? Will you eventually support all brands?   - Your software learns or adjust to different hardware … how? Do you test all different types of hardware in the studio?   - How close are you right now … you’re in beta still, right?   - When I tested, it sounded great. But podcasts had some echo … perhaps because of lower-quality recordings?

Why is technology so important for the next decade of business? Why is every company a tech company? And how are expectations changing over the next decade? I talk about State Farm, NASCAR, Allbirds, and TikTok in an interview with Sean Moffit of FutureproofingNext.

Let’s start with TikTok. It gained over 500 million new users just last year. Why is it growing so quickly? When you’re on TikTok -- and other, similar social platforms -- there’s an almost compulsive view and flick, view and flick as you scroll through bits of content. What’s happening in the brain while this is going on? And … what does this do to people? Does it kill their attention span? Does it ruin them for anything requiring deep focus? As a culture, we have a long history of crying wolf at the next new media platform, claiming it will ruin kids, ruin society, destroy education, kill the future workforce. Contextualize TikTok and other similar platforms for us within this history. But are digital platforms fundamentally different than previous shifts? How do you see people changing as we grow up with technology and media like this? What are the good things that come out of this?

Intro to guest Christoph Burkhardt is the CEO of OneLife They’ve developed a revolutionary new air purifier that they’re releasing at CES 2020 We’re getting a sneak peek What we talk about: What are the worst problems with indoor air? What percentage of people even know that they might have a problem? There’s a lot of existing air purifiers out there … what’s wrong with them? Replaceable air filters … one reason why people don’t buy purifiers? Talk about OneLife … what makes your solution better? PM1 … how small is that, really? And … those are the most numerous particles, right? Wireless? Battery?