TechFirst with John Koetsier

Everyone in my family uses a Mac, most of them on laptops. That includes my two sons, one in university and one in high school, both of whom are doing school from home these days. So I didn’t think when I ordered a new MacBook Pro recently I’d have to return it almost immediately. And I didn’t think Apple would completely and utterly ignore the meaning of the word “Pro.” Unfortunately ... both are...

Is 5G safe or is it dangerous to humans, animals, and the environment?  There are a lot of concerns and worries about 5G. Pictures of dead birds near cell towers. Even snake oil products to protect you … USB sticks with a "bio shield." In this episode of TechFirst with John Koetsier, we’re going to get the facts by talking to a research scientist in Belgium. What we'll talk about:  - is...

You’re an NBA all-star ... what do you do when the league’s shut down thanks to Coronavirus? If you’re Chicago Bull and 2-time NBA dunk champion Zach Lavine … you work out … you play Call of Duty or Apex Legends, and apparently … you give away free JBL headphones. In this episode of TechFirst with John Koetsier, we chat with Zach as well as JBL VP Chris Epple and learn more. We also get Zach's tak...

Massively social platforms built around gaming or video or news might be our new way to experience entertainment. We've already seen concerts in Fortnite -- Travis Scott, a month or so ago. Now we're going to see movies being screened in Fortnite. Christopher Nolan, the filmmaker behind Inception, The Dark Knight, and Interstellar will be bringing “one of his iconic films” to the massively popular...

(cross-posted from my future39 podcast) Today we plug our computers in to power. Tomorrow, we might plug ourselves into them. AR and VR are changing how we see the world. AI and augmentation and brain-machine interfaces will change how we live, how we work, and how we play. Cathy and I chat about HTC Vive, Magic Leap, Oculus Quest, brain-machine interfaces, Upload (the new show on Amazon Prime), a...

How do you survey 330 million people across 4M square miles?   Every 10 years: the United States government is constitutionally required to take a census, which then gets used as the basis for distributed hundreds of billions of tax dollars.   In 2010, doing the census cost $12 billion. They printed 17 million pages of paper maps and 50 million paper questionnaires.    In 2020,...

Joe Rogan is getting $100M+ to move to Spotify exclusively. But that might just be less than he's worth ...

Dan Ariely is working with Wisdo on a 25 million student study. The question: Are we losing our young people to depression, anxiety, and loneliness thanks to COVID-19?   Dan is a 3-time NYT bestselling author ... my favorite book of his is Predictably Irrational. He's also a professor at Duke University.   We discuss his horrific injury, why he wears half a beard, and what that taught hi...

I work from home. Many others do too.  But not many companies with 55,000 employees with a million clients in 52 countries. Especially fintech companies managing the flow of $10 trillion via 95 billion transactions annually. In this episode of TechFirst with John Koetsier, I chat with the chief risk officer of FIS, Greg Montana. We talk about the company moved to working from home, what techn...

Three years ago Google subsidiary Sidewalk Labs floated visions of smart self-driving cars and smarter technology making Toronto, Canada, a leader among smart cities. Last week, that all died. Sidewalk Labs canceled the Quayside project on May 7. But we lost something when that happened. In fact, we lost at least nine things, as I discuss in this episode of TechFirst with John Koetsier. To read th...

Texting is nice. Zoom is great for work and birthday parties. And Facebook works for our wider circle of friends.   But there's something about good old-fashioned audio that has us returning to voice calls on our phones during quarantine. TextNow says its users spent more than 450 million minutes talking on the phone in the first full month of shutdown, March. While once that might not have b...

Haircuts, pedicures and massages are big business in Georgia again. Restaurants, too. The state started re-opening businesses on April 24 and dropped its shelter-in-place order a week later. Now mobile data shows that visits to nail salons, spas, tattoo parlors, and barber shops is back up to 80% of pre-Coronavirus levels. Visits to restaurants are also up. With dine-in service allowed again, Geor...

We know how to get people to work together. How do you get robots, drones, autonomous vehicles, and smart systems to collaborate? Welcome to TechFirst with John Koetsier. No jobs are simple ... getting a pizza requires multiple steps, processes, and hands, not to mention a car. Everything in factories takes steps and processes too. If we're going to get to an autonomous reality ... smart machines...

Will your next home be a bioceramic dome? They last 500 years, are bugproof, don't rot, mold, or rust ... and they're carbon-neutral. They're also much cheaper, according to Geoship.   I interview the CEO, Morgan Bierschenk, on live social video.  We talk about construction, materials, permitting, whether they're built on-site or off-site, and what kind of maintenance they need. We also...

Fake news: the truth about lies .... what is fake news? How can you spot it? And what can we do about it?   In this edition of TechFirst with John Koetsier, we chat with Mitch Chaiet, who is the Media Innovation and Entrepreneurship Coordinator at the University of Texas at Austin.   We'll discuss computational propaganda, reality bubbles, and Misinformation, Disinformation, and Malinfor...

Are WiFi, Bluetooth, massage, adjustable positions, and built-in speakers essential for a good night’s sleep? For the past few weeks, I've been sleeping in a adjustable position bed with more tech than my whole bedroom used to have. In this episode of TechFirst, we talk to Intellibed CEO Colin House about the $70 billion sleep industry, what technology matters (and what doesn't) and what works bes...

Today we're stuck at home. Wouldn't it be great to virtually wander the world in virtual reality? (At least until we can go out for real again!) In this episode of TechFirst we chat with Simon Che de Boer from New Zealand’s Reality Virtual, who took 4,000 photos in Queen Nefertiti's tomb and digitally reconstructed King Tut's mask.  They're working on technology to virtually re-create real ph...

Just one health-care startup had 139,000 new doctors join and 1.35 million patients use telemedicine last week. Is this temporary or the evolution of a trend with staying power?   In this edition of TechFirst with John Koetsier, I chat with the CEO of Vonage, Alan Masarek.   Some of the increases he's seen:   - Total video traffic up 6.5x in last six months   - Total video...

Jeff Pulver created VOIP and founded the $3B Vonage. Now he's reinventing video, voice, and text communications online to fix security issues with Zoom and other platforms.   Is secure, private communication a complete pipe dream?   Jeff Pulver literally created VOIP. He also got the US government to issue the Pulver Order, which ensured that voice over IP was not restricted. Now he's wo...

Mobile app spend in Q1 2020 was the highest in history. And mobile app use was up 20%. In this episode of TechFirst with John Koetsier, I talk about a story I just published at Forbes based on a new App Annie report. Lots of apps, especially social, education, business, and fitness, are up and to the right. But will this last?

Coronavirus is leaving our elders alone, lonely, and frightened. In this episode of TechFirst, we dive into the tech you need to stay connected.   I talk to photographer and technologist George Krieger about the tech he's set up for his dad, who built the Iomega Zip drive. It includes a remotely controllable PC, a camera, a TV that shows who he's talking to on a large screen, a wearable devic...

Instacart is getting record downloads. Uber and Lyft are seeing record lows. How is Coronavirus impacting the app economy? Will Coronavirus be the death -- or the savior -- of our digital economy? Welcome to TechFirst with John Koetsier.   COVID-19 is changing everything. When it comes to mobile apps, some industries are way up, and some are way down. With us today to discuss which is which i...

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 g...

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...

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:  W...