David Woodbridge joins us for Chit Chat Across the Pond to talk Samsung accessibility, my appearances on Daily Tech News Show and Clockwise, Steve (Sheridan) does a great review of the Powerbeats Pro earphones, we’ll listen to the proposed sounds different electric vehicles will make come this September in the US and in 2021 in the EU, I’ll shill for David Spark’s Keyboard Maestro field guide (because I love it) and finally I’ll answer Denise’s question, “How long does it take to charge your car?”
Hi, this is Allison Sheridan of the NosillaCast Apple Podcast, hosted at Podfeet.com, a technology geek podcast with an EVER so slight Apple bias. Today is Sunday, May 26, 2019, and this is show number 733.
Next week Steve and I are off to San Jose to attend Alt Conf. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s an alternative conference that runs parallel to WWDC. They stream the live keynote to another theater where we’ll get to watch with a bunch of other people who could never get into WWDC. It’s our first time going to Alt Conf and I’m super excited. We’ll be meeting up with several nerd Apple friends of ours and we’ve managed to get ourselves invited to a couple of parties that sound like we’ll make new friends.
If you’re in Europe or Africa and staying up late on a school night to attend the live NosillaCast is a problem, maybe you could come to this week’s live show because it will be on Saturday instead of Sunday. Still at 5pm so it’s at 1am in the England/Ireland/France/Spain, Algeria, and Mali areas, and 2am if you’re over a bit in Germany, Poland, Slovenia, Libya, Chad, Congo or Angola. If you do want to attend, head over to podfeet.com/live on Saturday at 5pm Pacific Time (which of course is actually Sunday in all the countries I mentioned, and I think some time in July in Australia, New Zealand and Japan!) Anyway, it’s great fun to chat with the other NosillaCastaways and watch the sausage get made behind the scenes. Join us, won’t you?
Chit Chat Across the Pond
I could not possibly had more fun on Chit Chat Across the Pond this week. My guest was David Woodbridge, who has been a guest twice before but not since 2015. David’s “job” if you can call it that is tested out new technology for the visually impaired at the Vision Store which is part of Vision Australia. He basically has a NosillaCastaway’s dream job. He’s currently using a Samsung Galaxy S10, Samsung Watch and Samsung Buds and comparing them to his iPhone 8 and iPhone X, along with the Apple Watch and AirPods. David is hilarious and brilliant and while he has an ever so slight bias, I think he’s got a pretty balanced view.
You can listen to this episode in the Chit Chat Across the Pond or Chit Chat Across the Pond Lite feed in your podcatcher of choice, or of course over on podfeet.com.
Daily Tech News Show
On Thursday I got to be a guest on Daily Tech News Show again. Tom, Sarah, Roger and I talked about a couple of meaty topics along with the top tech news. We talked about a really interesting and discouraging article at cbsnews.com/… about how we talk to the female voices on our digital assistants and whether they’re spreading a bad message. The article explained that the some of the assistants respond to inappropriate or even profane comments with docile comments back.
I don’t want to repeat on the air what people say to their assistants, but I can tell you categorically I wouldn’t have taught my daughter to respond with things like, “I’d blush if I could” as Siri does in one awful example. It does appear that Cortana and Google Assistant just play dumb when idiotic things are said to them, but both Siri and Alexa are much weirder.
The study infers that a contributing factor could be the dramatic reduction in women in computer and information science over the last 30 years (from 37% in the mid-1980s to 18% now). With the pool of available female talent continuing to dwindle, tech companies have an ever increasing problem of gender diversity to help shape technology to be less biased.
Anyway, that was the first chewy topic on Daily Tech News Show and then we talked about my new favorite topic, electric vehicles! Go check it out in your podcatcher of choice, and look for episode 3538 called “Tesla Jerk-face Mode” or there’s a link in the shownotes so you can watch the video version at dailytechnewsshow.com/…
Clockwise
I also had the great pleasure of being a guest again on the Clockwise podcast. This is a great show where Dan Moren and Mikah Sargeant are the hosts and they have two other guests, and we talk four topics in 30 minutes. It’s fast-paced, tightly edited and gets interesting ideas out in that very short amount of time. This week I was on with Anže Tomić (pronounced anZHé TOmich) from Slovenia. He’s awesome, knowledgeable, and sarcastic. His About page on his website stormingmortal.com says ” yes, I do sound like a Eastern-european Bond villain.”
ANYWAY, Anže, Dan, Mikah and I talked about the latest MacBook keyboard revamp and whether we trust Apple that they got it right this time, we discussed whether what’s happened to Huawei could happen to other products (I had to phone a friend and ask Tom Merritt to help me with my answer to that question), Apple’s proposal to help block tracking cookies from identifying you and yet still give advertisers aggregate info on what ads turned into purchases, and finally what considerations we may have given to buying an electric vehicle. Can you guess which question was mine?
You can find this episode of Clockwise at relay.fm as episode #295 entitled Pixie Dust.
Blog Posts
Powerbeats Pro Review
Patreon
I’ve talked a few times about how the Patreon model is awesome because you are 100% in control of how much money you pledge to your favorite content creators. If you’re having a tough month or year, you can dial it back. But did I ever tell you if you’re feeling extra generous, or felt that my latest podcast or blog post taught you something of increasing value, that you can actually dial up your contribution? That’s what Martin Stein did just this week. He was already one of the most generous supporters, but he actually increased his pledge this week.
I really appreciate even the smallest contributions that do so much to help fund the work of producing the shows. You know I’d do it for the love of the sport, but it’s a lot more fun to do it knowing I’m not losing money to create the shows. If you’d like to become a patron of the Podfeet Podcasts, head on over to podfeet.com/patreon and be cool like Martin!
Electric Vehicles Will be Required to Make Sound
MacSparky Presents — Keyboard Maestro Field Guide
Tesla Tech – How Long Does it Take to Charge?
Soon I’ll be coming out with another installment of Tesla Tech entitled “How to get body work done on a TeslaModel 3 when someone rear ends you when your car is 2 weeks old.”
That’s going to wind this up for this week. Don’t forget to send in your Dumb Questions, comments and suggestions by emailing me at [email protected], follow me on twitter @podfeet. Remember, everything good starts with podfeet.com/. podfeet.com/patreon, podfeet.com/facebook, podfeet.com/slack, podfeet.com/chat! And if you want to join in the fun of the live show, head on over to podfeet.com/live normally on Sunday nights, but next week on Saturday at 5pm Pacific Time and join the friendly and enthusiastic NosillaCastaways. Thanks for listening, and stay subscribed.