WTF Tech

Darren and Jesse (sans Stuart) are joined by Richard Moy in the first “WTF Tech on-the-road” show at MWLUG in Alexandria. VA (USA) in back in August. We chat about the things that went on at the conference (which admittedly was over 3 months ago….apologies for that – DD) but it’s still a fun one nonetheless. Sponsored by: DJI: Leaders in developing and manufacturing innovative drone and camera technology. Special offers on Phantom and Inspire drones, and Osmo camera mounts. KNOMO: Founded in 2004 in London, with a mission to create perfect accessories that are beautiful on the outside and smart on the inside… And perfectly organise your life. The post 008.5 : We’ve got to be finished before Rob’s beer session (MWLUG Live) appeared first on WTF Tech.

Darren, Jesse and Stuart return with the eighth episode of WTF Tech show. We discuss the the 10th birthday of the iPhone,  WWDC and the vitally important (and incorrect, since it’s missing the 3 of us) “most influential people on the internet” (Recorded Thursday 29th June 2017). Show notes: Chitchat Crap movie reboots 10th Anniversary of the Apple iPhone What are our memories of the first iPhone? Did any of us have one? $499/$699 plus contract! Visual voicemail revolutionary ‘Had me at scrolling’ BlackBerry/Treo/WinCE aside, it heralded in modern (and consumer driven) computing Tech Nostalgia What were our first smartphones? Stuart: Series of Nokia featurephones (including the classic 6210/6310), then Windows Mobile on an Orange branded Huawei device. Had Nokia laptop-style phones, plus various Blackberries. Darren: Samsung Windows flip, BlackBerry Bold Jesse: Treo 650 WWDC iMac Pro, actual VR support, and a general re-interest in the Mac VR support is pure catch-up, but it’s a new area for them Will they one day have a machine that can play video games? Poor little Mac mini (SM: oh I love those machines!) Will it be like the G4 Cube? iOS Big updates for the iPad Pro again Huge focus on AR HomePod Terrible name? Beginning of the end for Sonos? Will Siri be good enough to compete against Echo and Google Home? Yet Another Big Malware Strike Second verse, same as the first More damaging Time Magazine’s “25 most influential people on the internet” We’re not on it…..again Via Time Magazine Tips: Jesse – Elgato Game Capture HD60 S Darren – Architecture of Radio app Stuart – An oldie but goodie – Waze. Sponsored by: MWLUG 2017: Social collaboration professionals, come join us in Washington DC for the ninth annual MWLUG conference. DJI: Leaders in developing and manufacturing innovative drone and camera technology. Special offers on Phantom and Inspire drones, and Osmo camera mounts. KNOMO: Founded in 2004 in London, with a mission to create perfect accessories that are beautiful on the outside and smart on the inside… And perfectly organise your life.   The post 008: We’re all playing in a giant sandbox appeared first on WTF Tech.

For starters, sorry about the audio quality (particularly Stuart’s track). We were hit by a Chrome bug that incorrectly detects the audio sample rate. We did investigate re-recording the episode, but with vacations imminent, felt it was better to get it out ASAP. We’ve cleaned it up as best we can, but you’ll still hear the occasional dropout and artefact. Sorry about that! Darren, Jesse and Stuart retuen with the seventh episode of WTF Tech show. We discuss the Wanna Cry attack, IBM’s new work location strategy. We also touch on the Jive acquisition and the new Surface Pro. Oh, and Tech Nostalgia. (Recorded Wednesday 24th May 2017) Show notes: Chitchat Jesse heads to Europe for Engage.ug WannaCry attack What is it (Wikipedia)? Should folks still be running Microsoft XP? Is there any excuse? NSA responsibility IBM’s work from home/office colocation strategy Press coverage Inc. Magazine Forbes The Register Yahoo’s similar policy from 2013 Jive acquired by ESW Capital/Aurea Last of the E2.0 startups to go (apart from Atlassian possibly) Press coverage Techcrunch Forbes ZDNet Jive to be folded into Aurea Prime Microsoft’s new Surface laptop Microsoft’s announcement Microsoft going head to head with Apple on vertically integrated systems Very normal laptop design, not convertible tablet/laptop Material covering is a bit weird? “Surface Laptop provides the perfect blend of texture, subtle details, and clean, elegant lines — plus the luxurious touch of our Signature Alcantara® material-covered keyboard.” What will this do to Microsoft OEMs? Tech Nostalgia First computer/arcade game played (or remembered) J: Dark Castle http://macintoshgarden.org https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_mac D: Some variant of pong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pong http://www.ponggame.org/ S: Asteroids https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroids_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_Command And favourite computer games of all time? D: Sensible Soccer (Amiga) J: World of Warcraft S: Spectrum games Jetpack / Manic Miner Tips: Jesse: 1Password – just added “Travel Mode” Darren: Rumba iRobot Stuart: Unsplash.com & Irvue – “Free (do whatever you want) high-resolution photos.” Sponsored by: KNOMO: Founded in 2004 in London, with a mission to create perfect accessories that are beautiful on the outside and smart on the inside… And perfectly organise your life. Backblaze: Online backup for $5/month. Native. Unlimited. Unthrottled. Uncomplicated. The post 007: Take My Syphilis appeared first on WTF Tech.

Darren, Jesse and Stuart are back with the sixth episode of WTF Tech show. Forever to be known as “the cursed episode”, this one took the best part of a month to record due to various technical and organisational difficulties! We discuss Apple’s decision to revisit the Mac Pro and what it tells us about the future of Pro computing, how we discover and consume news today, our first experiences of using hard disks, and then finish with a brief status report on our respective efforts to ‘cut the cord’… (Recorded Wednesday 12th April 2017) Show notes: Chitchat Jesse’s almost moved into his new house. Stuart has spent many many hours resurrecting posts from Domino-based blogs to new WordPress properties, including ibmconnections.news. Pro Computing Apple makes new Mac Pro pre-announcement, having been ‘backed into a thermal corner’ by their 2013 design  Many posts from invited bloggers, including: Daring Fireball: The Mac Pro lives Techcrunch: Apple pushes the reset button on the Mac Pro Rejigged Mac Pro product line: MacRumors: Apple Refreshes Mac Pro Lineup, Says All-New Modular Model With Apple-Branded Pro Displays Coming After 2017 What does this mean for the wider picture of Pro Computing? SSD Improvements Linus Tech Tips: The FASTEST SSD Technology Explained – M.2, U.2, and MORE Marques Brownlee (MKBHD) 8k videos The State of 4K: 2017! (in 8K) News Discovery & Consumption Do we still use RSS Readers? NetNewsWire, FeedWrangler, Reeder (for Mac) Traditional media subscriptions David Fahrenthold on Twitter Washington Post Stratechery (paid tech news from Ben Thompson) Read it later services Instapaper Pocket Podcasts The Incomparable Accidental Tech Podcast Top 4 Discovery services Refind (invite only) Nuzzel Flipboard YouTube Saturday Night Live Twitter Tweetbot’s Mute features Following gaming streams Stampy Longhead Pewdiepie Tech Nostalgia How big was your first hard drive? Darren: 20GB SCSI hard disk on Amiga 500 Jesse: 20GB internal disk on Macintosh SE Stuart: 40GB on a cheap clone PC Stacker disk compression software Zip drive Optical media? Steve Jobs announcing the G4 Cube How Long Can You Store CDs and DVDs and Use Them Again? Cutting the Cord HBO Now Sky TV Amazon Prime Netflix Roku Tips Jesse: White PC cases! It turns out they’re very “Space Odyssey”-esque…  Ewan’s Thermaltake Core P3 Snow Edition ATX Wall-Mount Chassis Darren: New TV! LG Electronics 65UH8500 65-Inch 4K Ultra HD Smart LED TV Stuart: Used this years ago, and have just returned, discovering it has improved a lot over the years… Dlvr.it. Now supports RSS as output, meaning it can aggregate RSS feeds, a la Yahoo Pipes… Great for sharing own blog posts on social media as well as curating content from elsewhere. A great plugin for WordPress. Redirection. Allows any URL to be redirected, and can be managed manually or via CSV upload, so is a great way to help with migrating sites. E.g. from DominoBlog to WordPress. Sponsored by: KNOMO: Founded in 2004 in London, with a mission to create perfect accessories that are beautiful on the outside and smart on the inside… And perfectly organise your life. Backblaze: Online backup for $5/month. Native. Unlimited. Unthrottled. Uncomplicated.   The post 006: Right out of Space Odyssey appeared first on WTF Tech.

Darren, Jesse and Stuart reconvene for the first WTF Tech show in several millennia(!), and discuss IBM Connect (including appdev futures and Connections Pink), Mobile World Congress news and device announcements and then roll back the years to share their first experiences online… (Recorded Friday 10th March 2017) Show notes: Chitchat Jesse’s bought a new house – wahoo! Stuart has a new webcam – 4k, eek! The Logitech BRIO Darren is finally running Windows 10 on his main work machine – a new Intel NUC i7 IBM Connect Conference Review App Moderni(z|s)ation Connections Pink Deck available Call this week on Connections 6 and Pink futures Overall Vibe? Amanda is collating available presentation decks – available to all News from Mobile World Congress All the key announcements  Interesting that primary news seemed to be about retro Nokia 3310 relaunch Can we imagine going back to those days? No apps, no GPS, no LTE etc? Porsche Design laptop – beautiful, but €2795 Oppo’s periscope camera lens looks interesting Tech Nostalgia First experiences getting online  Tips Jesse – RoomScan Darren – Intel NUC Stuart – Plex app, new Plex Cloud feature available for all Plex Pass members. Load media onto Dropbox, OneDrive or Google Cloud and Plex does the rest – all available on the cloud to mobile devices etc. Sponsored by: TUMI: Product quality and selection are key attributes that have made TUMI the leading international business, accessory and travel lifestyle brand. Simply put, there is no other product made like TUMI. MOO: Born out of a love of beautiful, high-quality print, MOO combines the values of professional design with the accessibility and reach of the web.  MOO print premium quality business cards, letterheads, greeting cards, postcards, flyers and stickers.

Darren, Jesse and Stuart get together for the first WTF Tech show of 2017, and discuss Virtual Reality (two of the hosts now have HTC Vive systems), Avaya’s bankruptcy, Yahoo’s sell out and IBM’s results… (Recorded Friday 20th January 2017 – Inauguration Day!) Show notes: VR: Darren’s just acquired an HTC Vive, only to find out that Jesse also has one! We discuss the experience, the learning curve, the apps and games available and more VivePort app store IBM Speech Sandbox (Stuart blogged about this following the episode) Google Earth VR Avaya files for bankruptcy Remainder of Yahoo becomes Altaba after sale to Verizon IBM announced Q4 and 2016 results  Tips: Jesse: The 8-bit Guy – Youtube channel dedicated to 80s/90s home computing Darren: Greenshot – a light-weight screenshot software tool for Windows Stuart: Blogged list of podcast recommendations for 2017 Udoq – docking station for mobile devices Sponsored by: TUMI: Product quality and selection are key attributes that have made TUMI the leading international business, accessory and travel lifestyle brand. Simply put, there is no other product made like TUMI.   MOO: Born out of a love of beautiful, high-quality print, MOO combines the values of professional design with the accessibility and reach of the web.  MOO print premium quality business cards, letterheads, greeting cards, postcards, flyers and stickers.

Darren, Jesse and Stuart gather for the final WTF Tech show of 2016, and take aim at Fitbit’s acquisition of Pebble, rumours of IBM refactoring Connections using modern web frameworks and the upcoming Connect conference. The hosts then start a new recurring topic reminiscing about old tech, kicking off with first computers… (Recorded Thursday 15th December 2016) Show notes: FitBit acquires Pebble, shuts down Pebble Related: Apple has best ever sales week for Watch Moto pushes off smartwatches indefinitely Google delays launch of Android Wear 2.0 to next year Wearables are dead Apple Watch Drops to Just 5% Share of Wearables Market as Basic Fitness Trackers ‘Reign Supreme’ Pebble Says Existing Smartwatch Services Will Continue to Function Through 2017 Darren’s steps: IBM to redevelop Connections (Pink) IBM Connect 2017 coming up soon… Old Tech Renaissance First Computers Darren: Sinclair ZX81 (1981) Stuart: Sinclair Spectrum (1982) Jesse: Apple Macintosh (1984)  Tips: Jesse: TaskPaper, plain-text task list software for macOS (Stuart also mentions Omnifocus) Jesse: Ubiquiti’s latest Wifi access points, including Unifi AP-AC-LR (Stuart also mentions Amplifi) Stuart: Sonos. Still meeting folks that don’t get the power of the Sonos solution.  £20-£30 off most products in the range right now. Now play direct from Spotify. Also, Intercom… (Genius for getting teens out of bed!) Sponsored by: DJI: Leaders in developing and manufacturing innovative drone and camera technology. Special offers on Phantom and Inspire drones, and Osmo camera mounts. Backblaze: Online backup for $5/month. Native. Unlimited. Unthrottled. Uncomplicated.

Darren, Jesse and Stuart reconvene for the second WTF Tech show to try to avoid mentioning the US election, but end up discussing “fake news”, the new UK surveillance law, followup on the new MBP USB-C ports and Touch Bar, plus the newly announced Microsoft Teams. (Recorded Mon 21st Nov 2016) Show notes: “Fake News” and how to overcome it Jeff Jarvis: list of ideas on how to tackle fake news New UK Surveillance law Boing Boing article  The Guardian article  Volker’s post re: encrypted messaging (Signal) Apple Event Fallout Useful Macbook Pro with Touch Bar reviews Jason Snell @ Six Colors Rene Ritchie @ iMore Tweet re: using multiple dongles to provide Ethernet connectivity Microsoft Teams Stuart’s post on Teams and similar apps  Tips: Darren: Blue Yeti US Microphone Jesse: For Domino developers: Serdar’s improved XPages SDK Stuart: Workflow – powerful yet intuitive automation app for iOS. Canvas – podcast on iOS productivity, with recent series on using Workflow. Sponsored by: DJI: Leaders in developing and manufacturing innovative drone and camera technology. Special offers on Phantom and Inspire drones, and Osmo camera mounts. Save $200 on the DJI Phantom 4! Backblaze: Online backup for $5/month. Native. Unlimited. Unthrottled. Uncomplicated.

Darren, Jesse and Stuart get together for the first WTF Tech show to discuss this week’s events and announcements from IBM, Microsoft and Apple. Show notes: Urban Dictionary definitions of ‘WTF’ (and we’re not talking about Taekwondo) This Week in Lotus / TWiL IBM: World of Watson event Keynotes and other sessions available on IBM Go Watson Workspace announcement Access (or request access to) Watson Workspace (or DM Stuart) What’s new and coming soon (only available once logged in) Microsoft: The Verge: Microsoft Surface PC event: all the latest news Microsoft October 2016 Event (HD) Full | Windows 10, Surface Studio, Paint3D and MORE Apple: October 27th Apple Event Tips: Darren: UE Mini Boom Bluetooth speaker Jesse: Small Mac tools for developers (Dash, Paw and TaskPaper) Stuart: Overcast – podcast app for iPhone and iPad Sponsored by: Backblaze: Online backup for $5/month. Native. Unlimited. Unthrottled. Uncomplicated.