Jetpacks Are Overrated

We're wrapping up the show to consolidate the Byteside podcast network into our core show, Byteside! Search 'Byteside' in your podcast app or hit the relevant link below to add it to your app of choice: Pocket Casts: https://pca.st/itunes/1482077503 Overcast: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/overcast-podcast-player/id888422857 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1482077503 Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5hY2FzdC5jb20vcHVibGljL3Nob3dzLzA0NzA5ZTVkLWU0ZTQtNDk0Ny1hYmNmLTYyZDM3MmIyZTFiNg Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/43tUBmO4DknkGbd4Hw9dlb RSS: https://rss.acast.com/byteside And get loads more written content at byteside.com. Thanks so much for tuning into the show – we've got a lot more in store, but all distilled into the one true podcast feed... Byteside. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

When you hear the name Blackberry, most people will think back to its dominance of the early era of smartphone tech before touchscreens arrived and changed the game. But the company transformed itself over the past decade and one of the areas it is now leading in is embedded computing systems for vehicles. Sarah Tatsis is Senior Vice President of the Advanced Technology Development Labs at Blackberry and is constantly thinking about what's coming next in embedded systems so this week we've had the chance to catch up with Sarah to discuss what BlackBerry is up to in this area and what the promises are for the future of technology and particularly data out there on the road. We chat about how vehicle data can be put to better use, how in-car information systems will improve, and of course how to protect this data while making it more useful. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

There's a big difference between a product marketed 'for gamers' and a product that has genuinely been designed for gaming, so this week I'm talking to two key team members on a recent product launch to get a solid insight on which column the new Optus Gamer Plans really sit in. No surprise, if they're willing to come on the show, they're feeling confident they've designed something that is the real deal and, once you hear the story I think you'll get a good feeling about it too, especially once you factor in tools like Game Path. But let's not jump ahead! I'm talking to Steven Manichanh, Senior Product Development Manager and Clive Dickens, VP of Product Development. Clive joins us part way through the conversation, so I kick things off asking Steven to hit that important question and help alleviate the gamer scepticism head on. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This episode is sponsored by IBM, and I'm speaking with Wesley Allen, Business Leader for IBM Cloud Platform in ANZ. We're specifically digging into the discussion of hybrid cloud and the role it has to play in the enterprise. Over the past year in my wider work I've spoken to a lot of IT leaders about digital transformation and it's clear that people are seeing that there is a lot more to life than either full on-premises or a full lift and shift to the cloud, so it's important to get a grip on the nuance in how use a hybrid design to solve problems in a way that suits your specific needs. We talk about scenarios, risks, misunderstandings, and key questions to ask when designing the right solution. Wesley brings a lot of insight and experience to the discussion so it was great to get his time for the show. Let's dive in.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

We speak to Diya Jolly, Chief Product Officer at Okta, about the growing importance of getting 'digital identity' right in the decade ahead and the lessons learned on this front over the past year. We spoke during the Oktane21 event where Okta announced its latest product updates, but this conversation focuses on getting the tools and standards right across the industry and how digital identity is taking on importance across society, not just within business environments. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

We talk to Ryan Richards, Global Product Marketing Director at Sonos, about the new Sonos Roam, the new portable speaker about to join the Sonos line up. It's aiming to compete in the most hotly contested slice of the audio scene – why do they think they can win there and how does this serve as a gateway to the wider Sonos experience? Plus we look at their Ikea partnership and their new music services to find out how the bigger picture at Sonos is going in 2021. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

A big chat with founder and CEO of Kogan, Ruslan Kogan, on his company's 15th anniversary. We first met around 2 years into the growth of kogan.com and thanks to those nostalgic connections he said yes to a rare interview to look back on the journey so far. From his failed effort to launch one of the first Android phones in the world to his media battles with Gerry Harvey, we explore some of the company's big moves and the business lessons he's learned on the road from upstart to IPO and beyond. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

I've always had a soft spot for Steel Series. Back in my early freelance days I did a massive round up of gaming headsets for Atomic magazine – shout out to the old school Atomicans out there – and I was blown away by the quality of what Steel Series served up with its original Siberia v1. A wide soundstage, a comfortable design, and crisp, clear game audio so you could hear what felt most important in the heat of the moment.I actually still have that headset in the house and it's used regularly by my kids. Unlike many other headsets over the years, the materials have hardly aged a day. No crumbly ear pads. They just keep doing what they do.So yeah, always a soft spot for Steel Series. And now, over the past few months, I've been using the spiritual successor of the Siberia line, the Arctis 9 wireless headset. With wireless we've clearly stepped forward into the modern era – and I'm a noted wireless headset skeptic, for those who've listened in the past. But the Arctis 9 wireless has truly won me over.The fundamental victory here is seamless dual-channel wireless over 2.4GHz wireless to a USB dongle and Bluetooth at the same time. 100% life changing for me at my desk.I work on an iMac for all of my daily grind work across my publishing and podcast work routines, and at the same desk I have my Windows PC setup for gaming. I love my setup. I love being surrounded by screens. But it's always been a pain to switch back and forth between headsets for different tasks. Even trying to leave the iMac mostly on internal speaker mode and the PC on headset leads to feeling split between worlds. What's 'inside' my head right now vs 'outside'? It's far from ideal.The Arctis 9 wireless has made this feel truly seamless. The battery life claims 20 hours and for the most part I've found that I've needed to charge roughly every other evening, which seems about right given I generally work long hours.On first setup I found the headset would keep shutting itself down from one connection or the other all too quickly, which seemed like a power saving function that was more annoying that useful. But once I dug into the Steel Series Engine software controls I found I could adjust the inactivity shutdown timer and also set Bluetooth to auto-startup so that it always connected to the iMac anytime they're switched on.The settings also allowed me to set the surround sound and stereo profiles – whether for gaming, or to mimic a large or small room environment, or for using the DTS 7.1 surround sound profile – and bass and dialogue enhancements were also here. I'm never sure about those surround sound emulation setups but I've found the sound stage of these headphones to be really nice for gaming and general use, while I do find the EPOS headsets I've reviewed recently and headphones like the AirPods Max are superior for serious music listening.I love switching bass enhancement down to ZERO because too many gaming headsets get carried away on that front, while having dialogue enhancement has felt nice, especially for clarity of speech when playing online with friends.The settings also included equaliser presets – flat, bass boost, reference and a smiley option that basically boosts the top and bottom end because hey, why not paint a smiley across your equaliser for kicks.I mentioned earlier that I work long hours and I've found this to be a seriously comfortable headset. The soft elasticated headband system keeps the weight feeling just right and the ear cups sit lightly on the ears. They are not trying to do serious sound isolation and that's just the way I like them.Though I largely work with a desk mounted Rode mic for a lot of my needs, I've found the retractable mic has done a perfectly fine job when gaming with friends and the odd video conference where I haven't switched on my podcast desk. A physical toggle button and red light makes it clear when you have switched your mic to mute or not. Just don't forget when ... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

We speak to two of the co-founders of BuildBee, Matt and Leanne Connolly, about their company and its place in the 3D printing ecosystem as they prepare to push BuildBee software out across the globe. BuildBee has worked on solving problems of IP protection to make it easier for a company to sell a single print of a 3D item, as well as ensuring a 3D printer delivers the best print possible. The future of supply chains get a lot more interesting – especially in a pandemic – when we take out the shipping and move to local production. It all points to the importance of companies like BuildBee in our future, so it's great to talk to this Wollongong, NSW, team about their place in it all. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week Google announced it would end its unlimited free photo storage service. There’s obvious reasons for doing so, and Google argued the case in its blog post announcing the decision. It’s annoying and will force a big shift in our relationship with photo storage and backups of all kinds. Many will maybe panic at the idea that the future of where they put their photos is uncertain. If you have to pay, should you reconsider where you store them? What is in there now will be given the ‘doesn’t count’ treatment so you don’t have to move them… but do you really want a split library of the history of your life? So many cultural issues attached to reorganising our digital archives in this context. But the biggest question should probably look closely at what Google did to the photo storage industry when it offered free photo storage in the first place. If Woolworths started offering free milk there would be uproar over anti-competitive behaviour, because the local corner store can’t afford to wear a loss like that. It has caused its own problems that the big supermarkets have offered very cheap milk – but free? The consumer watchdog would step in. Yet, like in so many other contexts, the digital world always accepts the idea that offering genuinely valuable utility services for free is OK for the big guys to do. If some other company wanted to try to innovate in that space, well they’d better be able to convince people why it’s worth paying for the service – because it’s OK that other companies offer that same base function for free. I used to use Smugmug and Flickr, and those companies had their key features and options that they tried to make their attractive proposition for 'Pro’ customers to pay a monthly fee. But with Google, we all had the account, and it was so easy to just say “Yes” and watch it all vacuumed into one place without a major fuss. Today I pay Apple for my photo storage alongside still having a second home for backups at Google Photos. But I’m sure many Android users have made this their home. If five years ago someone had said “free storage until we decide we’ve killed enough competition and we’ve copied enough of their features that you will find it easiest to just pay us instead of try to move it all somewhere else” would as many people have said yes? Maybe. We’ll never know. Control the storage, control the customer in so many ways. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

We've got a special double episode of Byteside to share over the next two days. In the last show, Seamus Byrne and Alice Clarke looked at the Xbox Series X (and Series S), with both having review units over recent weeks. This time it's the PlayStation 5's turn! What's the future of PlayStation look like? How is the new DualSense controller? And we wrap things up by looking at the 'Xbox vs PlayStation' question and how the console market looks for the new generation. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

We've got a special double episode of Byteside to share over the next two days. Seamus Byrne and Alice Clarke discuss and debate the merits of the new Xbox Series X, with both having review units over recent weeks. What does the future of Xbox look like? And what about the new controllers? Should you be running out the door to knock people over to find one? Or is it OK to wait? See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week, Seamus interviews Michela Ledwidge, a virtual production director who has just helped Harry Shearer launch an album of satirical songs with Shearer shifting from his famous roles of The Simpsons and Spinal Tap into the tweeter-in-chief, Donald Trump. If it isn't freaky enough to watch these videos and see just how uncanny the deep fakery can be, especially when you have a voice artist like Harry behind the performance, the whole thing was produced across the great Pacific divide during coronavirus lockdowns. We talk about where it started, how it was produced between two Australian production companies (Michela's Mod studio and another Australian team, Electric Lens Company), how you manage directing a motion captured performance like this remotely, and what it means for the technology to be capable of pulling something like this off today. It's a fun and insightful conversation on the future of all kinds of digital production opportunities in a field where Mod has become a world leader in how to push the boundaries of what's possible. You can find the videos at Harry Shearer's YouTube channel and the full album, The Many Moods of Donald Trump, is on Spotify or wherever you get your new music. https://www.youtube.com/c/HarryShearerYT4U/videos See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

We catch up with Andres Jessen and Maya Sand-Grimnitz from Epos Audio, the new gaming headset brand has formed as an offshoot of the former Sennheiser Gaming sub-brand. We talk about building a new brand in a competitive space like gaming headsets, building the right reputation and partnerships, and what tech factors they believe set them apart. Plus why calling your mother is a great way to test your new headset. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

From the aggressive subscription pricing for Xbox All Access to the buyout of ZeniMax Studios, it all fits the mission of getting every fan of Xbox to commit to a monthly Game Pass. That's what Microsoft has become – deliver value and depth that makes customers keep giving you money. In this episode Seamus walks through two recent newsletter columns that bring together his thinking on all the Xbox news and how it shows they're chasing a different strategy altogether than Sony with its PlayStation. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Today's episode is sponsored by IBM, with Dane Gambrill stopping by for a chat about the hardware and AI systems that support major sporting events like the US Open in 2020. With fans now watching remotely, digital interaction becomes a much bigger part of the fan experience. We dig into how Watson AI has helped create smarter highlights packages, improve the crowd effects and make better digital assistants to give us better and easier access to the event online. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The Australian news media bargaining code is trying to solve the wrong problem. It's a Band-aid on an ulcer. We need digital advertising regulations to hold the mega ad platforms accountable for the scams they treat as customers, and to not use the excuse that they're too big to avoid being held responsible. Scale drove down ad values. The lack of regulation allows cheats, scams and liars to flourish. And fixing both would give the premium, trusted media industry a fighting chance at a real future instead of offering table scraps. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

We speak to Brian Swift, Head of Product at SafetyCulture, an Australian unicorn startup that is using everything from the simplest print out checklists to internet of things sensors to help people run better safety procedures and risk management in their businesses. It's niche, but it's genuinely helping to enable better, yep, safety culture in the businesses they support. We dig into how they decided on which problems to solve and how their technology is a great demonstration of what the promise of the internet of things can really do. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

We've talked virtual and augmented reality a few times over recent times. I guess it's on my list of things that are not all that overrated, but perhaps misunderstood. So today we're talking to a VR practitioner about how they're working in augmented reality and putting it in the real world with some help from smartphones and even 5G tech. Simone Clow is the CEO of Virtual Immersive, a company that produces a lot of commercial VR and AR content for companies to create cool experiences on phones or in stores and at special events. Simone came to the immersive tech industry from a long career in visual effects production for film and TV, and co-founded Virtual Immersive in 2017. She's got lots of interesting thoughts on where we're at now and where things might go next and the potential for 5G at offloading a lot of the heavy lifting to make our VR and AR gear more comfortable to use. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Just as Seamus was getting serious about an exit strategy, activists started hitting Facebook where it really hurts. Is it better to leave? Or to engage in the protest from within? See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.