Episode 155 – Holiday Potluck

Gearing up for the festive season, Michael and Michael serve up a veritable smorgasbord of holiday potluck delights. Starting with well, um, leftovers from last week, Fitbit has indeed acquired the technology, software assets and intellectual property of Pebble and many of the people from Pebble will be joining Fitbit to continue their work on wearable technology. This brings up an interesting point on the nature of cloud services and the integration with physical devices — that one without the other does not work, as products and services are becoming more and more intertwined. Moving on to appetizers, Cortana now … Continue reading

Episode 153 – Chicken and Mushrooms

Michael and Michael get together to cook up an episode chock-full-o tasty post Thanksgiving treats — starting off with the promise of solar, with the example of the American Samoa island of Ta’u and the new solar roof tiles made available from the Tesla/SolarCity team. The Google Project Sunroof site is still up & running, so you can check your own roof to see how suitable it may be for solar. Alexa has teamed up with Allrecepies to help out in the kitchen, providing step by step guidance on how to cook delicious dishes. The video shows an example of … Continue reading

Episode 149 – AR Through the Looking Glass

Augmented Reality features prominently in this episode where Michael and Michael explore a number of new and existing technologies, and how they may work together in an interconnected world to create new experiences for the people who use them. This show starts with a true 3D display called Volume, announced by LookingGlassFactory.com which has an aquarium-like display with true color and millions of pixels to render a three dimensional holographic display that can be experienced without any kind of headgear. A Buzzfeed article adds more clarity on the potential that Apple sees with AR, and both Michael and Michael explore … Continue reading

Episode 148 – Painting with Digital and Physical Ink

In this episode, Michael and Michael struggle with the pronunciation of the Nissan Qashqai which features prominently as a recently completed work of 3Doodler art — a life sized vehicle that took 800 hours to craft. Moving to the digital realm, they discuss Google’s experiment with digital collaboration called Tilt Brush which allows multiple people to create & paint together in real time. The intersection between the digital and physical realms becomes even more tangible with the hospitality industry adoption of wearable devices to improve customer service, and an interesting sidebar on how blockchain can provide an even deeper engagement … Continue reading