Turbotech: Facebook, gadgets, privacy, interactive tech

[ MUSIC WITH ANNOUNCER: It's time for TurboTech!]
LANINGHAM: Welcome to TurboTech, the last TurboTech of 2011.
I'm Scott Laningham with Todd "Turbo" Watson.
Todd is still in Denton.
Is that right, Todd?
WATSON: Ho, ho, ho.
LANINGHAM: You're just having so much fun you can't come back to Austin.
WATSON: I can't, and you know, this day in 1845,
Texas became the 28th state of the United States.
Just so you know.
LANINGHAM: This is a big day, an important day.
WATSON: A very important day.
LANINGHAM: For many Texans, a sad day -- a day they wished...
[ LAUGHTER ]
WATSON: Oh, I'm not even going to go there.
LANINGHAM: Hey, did you get some holiday gifts that were fun?
I got a few I wanted to share with you.
And you can't see this first one, but see if you can hear it.
[ DIGITAL VOICES: STAY CALM! ]
Isn't that a useful item?
WATSON: I don't know what it is.
LANINGHAM: It's called a panic button.
My kids gave me the panic button, and there's also this one called,
if you need a laugh, you can...
[ DIGITAL VOICES: LAUGHING ]
WATSON: Oh, my God, this is going to be like the Jim Cramer show where you're going
to be hitting all these sound effects during the podcast.
LANINGHAM: That's right, I'm going to...if I don't feel like laughing at something you said,
all I have to do is hit the blue button.
It takes care of it.
WATSON: I don't have any buttons.
I don't have a panic button.
LANINGHAM: You also see that I found the Angry Birds shirt...
WATSON: I do see that.
LANINGHAM: ...that I goofed up our last show over.
And this completes the attempt at humor, which is not near as funny now.
WATSON: What level are you up to, Scott?
You've been playing a lot during the holidays?
LANINGHAM: We also have a real angry bird to accompany us here
on the podcast today, I'll put him right down there.
WATSON: You know, I think there's going to have to be a movie soon, just so you can...
LANINGHAM: I've got a few others, but we'll save them 'til later, 'til the end.
WATSON: Well, let me show you, I got...this is actually a toy I bought
for myself when I was down in the Bahamas.
It's going to be kind of hard to see on camera, but can you guess what that is?
LANINGHAM: Looks like a Stairmaster with a steering wheel.
WATSON: It's an airplane joy...what do you call them?
See, I'm learning to fly and I don't even know what it's called.
A yoke.
LANINGHAM: Wow.
Wow.
WATSON: It's a yoke.
LANINGHAM: That's impressive.
WATSON: And, hold on, hold on.
And I have throttle.
So if I don't like this podcast, the way it's going?
I'm just going to take on off out of here.
LANINGHAM: You're just going to throttle back and go.
Or, throttle forward or whatever.
WATSON: Yes, so, I'm going to try to learn how to fly on the computer,
and this is an IBM endorsement of a Microsoft product on the air.
I'm playing with Microsoft Flight Simulator.
Although, they're apparently coming out with a newer version
after like five years out of having updated it.
But my buddy in the Bahamas swore by it, and he safely took off and landed.
So I figure if he can learn on a computer, I can, too.
I mean, eventually I'll have to get in a real airplane, but.
LANINGHAM: He safely took off in the real airplane?
WATSON: Ah, yes.
LANINGHAM: Okay.
WATSON: And landed, too.
LANINGHAM: Oh, good.
WATSON: Or I wouldn't be here.
LANINGHAM: The landing part's at least 50 percent of it, right?
WATSON: I think it was, yes, that was the part where I was kind
of holding on with white-knuckled....
It kind of looked scary when you're at the front, and you know, you normally don't see
out the front of the airplane, but in a Piper Cherokee, believe me, you can see everything.
LANINGHAM: You can even open up the bottom and look out sometimes I guess, but.
WATSON: No, I didn't have...thankfully the floor didn't open up.
LANINGHAM: Okay.
We're going to...what do you want to do today?
WATSON: Well, I just thought we'd talk about just stuff in general.
I had some rants that...and the rants are kind of connected
to what's supposed to happen next year.
I've been out there reading some of the, you know, what are going to be the big themes
in 2012, so I figured we could riff on that.
LANINGHAM: It's off, your first one, you sent me a few to look at.
Android's in there somewhere?
WATSON: Well, you know, you just told me off the air that you're going
to upgrade...well, that's a Freudian slip.
To me it's an upgrade.
You're going to move from an Android to an iPhone.
You know, these Android code names are cracking me up.
I was doing a little bit of research because I waned
to understand, where do these names come from.
And the first two code names for Android's releases -- the software releases --
were Astro and Bender, whatever those mean.
I mean, Astro, I can get back to the Jetsons.
I don't know, what a Bender is, something that happens
in the hangover part...or hangover part two.
But the new names are all based on desserts.
So I went back and did some history.
So starting with C, because they already had A and B -- Alpha/Beta were done.
They had Cupcake, Doughnut, Eclair, Froyo, Gingerbread, Honeycomb and Ice Cream Sandwich.
And now I hear all these people talking about, oh, yes,
we've got the new Android with Ice Cream Sandwich.
And I feel like I should be running out to Dairy Queen or something.
And I'm like, well, what's the next code name...I guess it's going
to have to be Jelly Doughnut.
I couldn't really find any other desserts with J. But it's like IBM acronyms.
Where do people come up with this stuff?
LANINGHAM: You know there's so many.
I mean, the Web has so enlarged the field of acronym usage
that I'm sure people are stressed beyond belief trying to come
up with something that's more...that's original.
WATSON: I guess.
LANINGHAM: I kind of liken it, when I heard somebody talking
about Android Ice Cream Sandwich, it was on a certain phone that I saw in the stores,
I think I was like, hmm, that's kind of intriguing.
You know, I mean, what is that?
WATSON: Well, you know, if we're going to do this, I want to go back to the B's
and have some classy desserts like, you know, I don't know, Bananas Foster.
When we get to T, let's do some Tiramisu or something.
LANINGHAM: Bananas Foster?
WATSON: Oh, sorry.
LANINGHAM: J, Jelly Doughnut Android phone,
Android operating system...this is the operating system we're talking about.
WATSON: So, speaking of convergence, that's the next thing I want to talk about,
that I don't know if you've been following some of these discussions.
You've got the new Panasonic DRTV, I was seeing that in Sam's Club,
that has a lot of the Internet apps built into the TV.
We're already hearing talk of Apple's coming out not with iTV
but literally a TV set starting next summer.
So all this talk about convergence.
And I'm just not so sure that I'm sold.
You know why?
C'mon, it's like a knock-knock joke.
LANINGHAM: Why?
WATSON: You say, knock-knock; who's there.
You know why?
Because I like sitting in front of my frickin' television set doing absolutely nothing
but watching.
And now, with all this convergence stuff going on, I'm going to be expected
to interact with the stupid thing.
I mean, you and I, I know, spend like 10-plus hours a day during our regular working schedule
looking at these little screens or even a moderate-sized screen.
And when I'm finished with work, I don't want to be reminded that I can interact with my TV set.
You know, the only interaction I want to have is with my remote button to be able to stop
and pause and fast forward my DVR, but you know, the way it's going, pretty soon we're going
to have to like, I don't know, interact with Kim Kardashian
on some reality TV show voting whether or not she should get married
for 17 minutes again or something.
LANINGHAM: About ice cream sandwiches, I don't know.
I mean...
WATSON: Or ice cream sandwiches.
I mean, whatever happened to good old-fashioned TV passivity where we just sit in front
of the boob tube and allow the TV waves to just wash over us in a mind-numbing malaise.
LANINGHAM: You know, I'm going to have to take an opposing viewpoint here with you, Todd,
because I know, I know you're a Netflix user through your Wii,
so you're already interacting beyond just channel switching and volume adjusting.
WATSON: That's a good point, and actually, to take it a step forward,
one of the devices I can't show you
that I bought right before Christmas also was a Roku box.
I don't know if you know Roku, but it's a streaming device.
And I mentioned this in one of my blog postings, because it has its own version of Angry Birds,
which I haven't tried yet, because I want to continue to be productive in the workplace.
But it has a remote, you can play it on the big screen.
But the point is, the Roku box, it has a lot of interactive content.
But basically I'm searching for content, hitting play, and I'm watching it.
I'm not, you know, Facebooking and YouTubing and doing all this other stuff through the TV set.
Now, I could see you and I at some point, we do a big webcast through the TV.
That could be cool.
But that's different than, I'm going to be just constantly interacting with the big TV screen,
which I just think it's going to be overkill, but you know, hey,
I grew up with TV, to me it's a passive experience.
LANINGHAM: You know, the lines are blurry.
I've got...I bought a TV recently and it's got kind of the smart center thing
where you can use different apps.
It's not truly a fully-enabled web browser, but you can pull different apps in.
And like you, without a keyboard, I still find it difficult.
With a remote it's tough.
And I'm like with you, it's just like, just give me the program, for crying out loud.
WATSON: Yes, I want to come back to interfaces, because that,
I think you've nailed it, is the missing component.
And yet I'm not sure that a keyboard is completely going to fit the bill.
But anyway, let's talk about another one that...I mean, everybody,
and you and I have talked about it all year, but I'm calling this one mobile frickin' everything.
Okay. So, here it is.
This is Turbo's rules of etiquette.
Whenever I go to dinner anymore, which I'm going to be doing later here in my hometown,
I try to compel my companions to put their smart phones away at least for the first 10 minutes.
But soon even I find myself needing to check into Facebook Places
to remind me again where it is that I actually am.
You know, I've concluded that the most scarce commodity in our freaked
out globally recessed economy is the personal attention of other human beings.
Would you look at me, Scott?
LANINGHAM: Wait a minute.
Wait a minute, I think I got a text.
[ LAUGHTER ]
WATSON: I should have known the first time that I saw somebody talking to themselves
on the streets of Rome, Italy, in 1990 time,
which is the first time I remember ever seeing somebody using a mobile phone microphone
where they were talking to themselves, is what it looked like to me,
I knew then we were witnessing the beginning of the downfall
of modern Western civilization as we know it.
And in the streets of Rome, no doubt.
How fitting, right?
LANINGHAM: Because your eyes can't tell you whether someone's talking to you anymore.
WATSON: Exactly.
So now, even the President of our United States upon taking office insisted he be given a top
secret security enabled BlackBerry.
Why? Is the world now such that Obama can send a BlackBerry message to set off the launch codes?
What happened to a good old-fashioned nuclear football?
And what happens if he's sitting on the couch in the Oval Office, he misses the crawl
on his super-duper 100-inch Panasonic Viera Internet-enabled TV,
that Russia has launched their missiles
because he's too busy playing Angry Birds on his BlackBerry?
LANINGHAM: And what if his phone, like my phone often does, makes a call to somebody
that I don't want to call, and he's discussing National Security issues
and they're listening in?
You know?
WATSON: Exactly.
So, I think we're going to have to get back to some old Wild West etiquette where you know,
you used to have to check your guns at the door.
That's what we do here in Texas, right?
Sorry, sir, no iPhones.
This establishment is for people who actually want to talk to one another.
LANINGHAM: I'm with you.
I couldn't agree more on that one, and I...just a minute.
Let me just let this person know I'm busy.
Okay, I'm good.
[ LAUGHTER ]
Let's keep going.
[ LAUGHTER ]
WATSON: Speaking of...okay, that's a good transition.
There's no room anymore in this world for privacy.
Scott McNealy, former CEO of Sun Microsystems said it in 1998:
you have zero privacy, get over it.
All this talk about privacy has led me to want to star in a reality TV show of some kind.
Seriously.
If you want privacy in this publicity-oriented world of ours,
I've decided the best defense is an aggressive offense.
I think we should create our own reality TV show -- not unlike, you know, Jersey Shore
or whatever show it is that Bruce and the Kardashians,
or Gene Simmons, or whoever stars in...
Because generally speaking, guess what?
I completely ignore those people.
They're so famous, I have no idea who they are.
I stopped watching reality TV shows after Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie went off the air
after the second season of the Bachelor,
after it became clear they were never going to pick me.
So, on our reality TV, show, Scott, nothing will be off limits.
We're going to reveal everything: our financial status --
which will be a short episode, of course.
Our love lives or lack thereof; our political and religious persuasions.
We'll let it all hang out and for the express purpose of regaining some of...
LANINGHAM: I've got the laugh track for it, too, so.
[ DIGITAL VOICES: LAUGHTER ]
So I'm prepared, buddy.
WATSON: I mean, let's face it.
Facebook is the biggest small town in the world.
People used to move to the big city, Scott, to get away from that small-town-mindedness.
You and I both did it when we went to New York.
When I was in New York, I mean, I barely even had a broadband connection,
and nobody knew who I was or what the heck I was doing.
And I wanted it that way.
Now you have to about move to a deserted island in the Caribbean to get any semblance
of privacy; and even then, having just visited an island in the Bahamas,
Facebook can find you even there.
LANINGHAM: You know, the only way to really get off
of Facebook is to take your face off, I think.
And if there's a way to, you know...
WATSON: Like in Mission Impossible with the mask, or...?
LANINGHAM: Exactly, or maybe the Facebook will bring a revitalization
of that whole industry, of the latex face overlay.
Didn't you love that, when they used to pull those off?
WATSON: Oh, I just saw the latest movie.
I love those masks.
But listen, we have to have some rules, right?
All good reality TV shows have to have rules.
So, first, you and I, we can't be voted off the island.
It's our frickin' island.
We can't be voted off.
Okay? The only people who can be voted off the island are the Facebook fans who watch our show,
because if they're dumb enough to watch us, they're fair game for being voted out.
Okay, make a sound effect.
There you go.
Perfect.
[ DIGITAL VOICES: LAUGHTER ]
Hey, we're like second, second, they are going to be no roses,
especially on a show starring you and me.
All right?
Third, no, maybe.
Third, we cannot have one of those good-looking made for TV emcees.
I don't care if they're male or female.
We have to find the ultimate geek out there, one who's entirely uncomfortable standing in front
of a camera, one preferably fluid at Linux and who can program our website in Python.
LANINGHAM: We have somebody in mind.
WATSON: No, I mean, it's going to be a contest.
But in fact, I think that could be the basic premise of the show,
finding the consummate 21st century geek.
Of course, he'll have to have a Facebook group
so we can violate everybody else's privacy while we're in the midst of trying to protect ours.
[ DIGITAL VOICES: LAUGHTER ]
LANINGHAM: It's a different laugh every time you push it.
WATSON: You're going to have to get some more of those, because they're going
to get tired of listening to the same ones.
LANINGHAM: Okay.
WATSON: All right, here's my last rant.
Well, I think it's my last.
No, I've got a couple more.
Password overload.
It's official: I have too many...
LANINGHAM: I do, too.
WATSON: ...IDs and passwords.
I've had too many for about 15 years now, but recently with the kicking
in of my early onset Alzheimer's, it's gotten to the point, Scott, where I can't even get
to any of my online resources anymore.
I spend more time having systems email me passwords and IDs that I've forgotten
than I do actually getting any work done.
Now, I'll give IBM some credit.
We've done a good job with our Tivoli Access and Identity Manager product
for our own internal sites, and it's very consistent.
You can reset them very easily.
But for those public-facing cloud sites, I have more passwords
and IDs than the Library of Congress has books.
And this, too, I believe is another grand conspiracy intended
to keep the unemployment rate lower than it could be, because we're too busy looking up IDs
and passwords along with playing Angry Birds -- sound effect, please.
[ DIGITAL VOICES: LAUGHTER ]
And frequenting Facebook to get any real work done.
So, enough, I say.
During the break, I've investigated some possible solutions.
I'm all about actionable podcasts.
So, here you go.
I started a 30-day trial of a product called One Password.
I don't know who makes it, I don't know who they are.
But I went out and read all the reviews and I said, I'm going to try this.
So far in my brief experience, I'm wondering why I didn't stumble upon this solution earlier.
It basically lets you set up a single master password, and it's supported
by several browsers, that then allows you to log into all of your various
and sundry websites with the click of a button.
Duh. I mean, I can already envision my productivity quadrupling in 2012,
and that includes all the time I'll spend wasting on Angry Birds, and Facebook,
and of course, our new reality TV show.
LANINGHAM: onepassword.com?
WATSON: Just Google the number one and password and you'll find it.
I have it on the Mac; I don't know if it's made for everybody else.
I think it is.
But anyway.
LANINGHAM: I need some more buttons.
I've got a panic button, I've got a laugh button.
I need a cry button.
WATSON: Speaking of the new buttons, here's my last one.
Okay. Virtual unreality.
Do you remember Second Life?
LANINGHAM: Yes.
WATSON: Did you try it out?
LANINGHAM: Ah, it was...
WATSON: What was your...
LANINGHAM: I don't know.
It seems to be kind of one-track mind, you know, time wasting, I don't know.
WATSON: See, that's what I was going to say.
All those flying phallic symbols and signs, I find it to be an enormous waste of time,
so we put it right put here with Facebook and Angry Birds,
except nobody actually really goes there anymore.
It was cool, but it was really hard to use.
And quite frankly, there wasn't much to do there other than buy real estate
or new virtual clothes for your avatar.
But I've got to tell you, I'm still bullish on virtual reality.
I recently bought a copy of Call of Duty for my Mac.
I think I showed you on the airplane to IOD, right?
LANINGHAM: Exactly, right.
WATSON: I showed you a demo of that game.
And I mean, it's the closest thing I've come to virtual reality or war for that matter,
which really is as close as I care to get.
But I can't understand why more of our digital experiences aren't that cool.
Now, I want to say, I want to wander around cyberspace expecting to get shot at any moment,
but heavens to Betsy, we're 17 years into the commercialization of the Internet.
I want to know what happened to the promise of the Jetson-ization --
you like that word, Jetson-ization?
-- of my web experience.
LANINGHAM: Are you thinking that you would like it to be where you log on and browsing
and everything involves more of that kind of a virtual experience?
Is that what you're thinking?
WATSON: Yes.
Why can't I like fly through my bank account and see my bank account
in some really cool visualization instead of the really sad, you know,
ASCII version of all the numbers?
LANINGHAM: And this coming from the man who wants a 1970s TV experience.
You seem conflicted to me.
I don't understand.
[ LAUGHTER ]
WATSON: Well, I could explain that one, though.
I did. They used to call it the lean forward versus the lean back.
When I'm leaning back, I don't want to be, you know....
Now, maybe if you do the voice thing.
Let's close on this.
Human interface design.
You talked about SIRI.
I haven't gotten an iPhone 4S, I've heard mixed reviews.
Most of them err towards the positive, but I've also heard quite a bit of negative.
I have a friend who has an Android and she talks to the Android and it picks up
and finds sushi places and all that.
So, I think that's great.
I think it can save a lot of people who otherwise, you know,
would be not looking at the road, right?
While they're driving.
LANINGHAM: That's my biggest motivation, sure.
WATSON: Yes.
And over Christmas, you asked about new toys.
I got a Bluetooth system installed in my car so I can talk through a little mic on my dashboard,
so I don't even have to think about it anymore.
But I do believe that this user interface thing,
even for the mobile devices, we're a long way away.
You know how you're...like the password thing, even, when you've got to get in there and start,
every time you want to get access you're finding your password,
you've got to go to a website and enter a password.
It's like, I spend too much time, again, getting access to the stuff instead of getting
to do the stuff I need to do, if that makes any sense.
LANINGHAM: Right.
No, totally.
I want to be able to speak my password in.
I remember it, but my fingers are too large.
WATSON: Or biometrics or something where you could just skip right over that
so you can get to what you can do.
So, you know, going back to the TV thing, I think the problem is with TV
and convergence is they haven't cracked that nut, and I don't know how many people want
to sit with a keyboard in their lap when they're watching TV; maybe they will.
But there's probably some middle ground in terms of user interface design
that we haven't found a combination of, you know, shortcuts via voice or whatever.
So, I say, Netflix, watch Annie Hall.
Well, if you could do that, then I can skip a whole bunch of, you know,
entering stuff with a remote that has no keyboard.
LANINGHAM: Well, and to me, I've thought about that.
When you have products like the Mac Mini and other miniaturized desktop type computers really
that are built with laptop ingredients, and you've got all these inputs, HDMI inputs,
and VGA inputs and all this stuff into these TVs, you know, you can just buy the PC you want
and have a keyboard for that, and when you want to have that experience, switch over there.
But when you want to have TV keep them separate.
It makes sense to me.
WATSON: Yes.
LANINGHAM: Because that big...the big real estate
of those screens is quite cool, it really is.
WATSON: Oh, absolutely.
LANINGHAM: Hey, let's wrap up with a few more Christmas gifts.
WATSON: Well, before you do that, I want to do a commercial,
because I know you're not going to be in Orlando, but I am.
And I know you and I are going to try to do some stuff remotely if we can figure out how
to connect, speaking of connecting.
But I just did a blog post on IBM Connect, which is a social business event for business leaders
and other folks who may not be the traditional Lotus faithful who are going to be going
to Lotusphere, it's more specific to people, C-level execs and business leaders
who are trying to understand how social business can become part
of the fabric of their organizations.
It's a two-day event inside the larger Lotusphere.
It's January 16th and 17th, also in Orlando.
I'm going to be on the ground covering it, blogging about it and hopefully you
and I will be doing some remote podcasting to summarize what we hear.
But I want to let people know about that, because you can still register
but it's only a couple of weeks away.
LANINGHAM: You're going to have to be our eyes and ears at Lotusphere.
You ready to do that?
WATSON: My eyes, ears.
I'm going to be invading our privacy, everything.
LANINGHAM: You ready to be our Skype contact?
WATSON: Our Skypecaster.
LANINGHAM: And it's going to be exciting, and that's why I brought out one
of these other gifts, it was a stocking gift.
It's a confetti gun.
It's a little confetti gun, I want to try it out and see how it works.
WATSON: Oh, that's really beautiful.
LANINGHAM: Did you see any of that?
WATSON: I did, I did.
LANINGHAM: Then we have your Texas Longhorn's ornament, football.
I don't know if you can see that very well.
Where's the camera?
WATSON: Oh, it's not there...there you go.
LANINGHAM: There you go, Texas Longhorn's ornament.
WATSON: Hook 'em, Horns.
LANINGHAM: And this small but powerful volume that we gave
to my 17-year-old daughter, Romance for Dummies...
WATSON: Hey, can I get a copy of that?
[ LAUGHTER ]
LANINGHAM: ...which has got some great tidbits in it,
but they're too small for me to read, sadly.
And you know, on a less comedic note, this is my favorite gift of the year for one of our sons
who loves classical music, Gershwin's Rhapsody on Blue, as a book.
WATSON: Wow.
LANINGHAM: And it's got a beautiful recording of the symphonic rendition of course,
but it tells the story of the writing of Rhapsody on Blue.
So I highly recommend this as Scott Laningham's pick for a Christmas gift for any year.
WATSON: Well, I don't have a gift of the year.
I feel left out.
LANINGHAM: You know, just hanging on line with you is a gift in of itself.
WATSON: Wait a minute, no, no.
I am going to do a product.
Hold on. This was a very considered purchase that I bought earlier in the year.
I think I showed this to you, but I'm going to show our audience.
This is the Canon S95.
LANINGHAM: Yes.
WATSON: I'm not being paid by Canon.
I bought this with my own money.
I think it's down to like 300 bucks now; I paid a little more.
This is one of the coolest cameras ever.
This thing, apparently professional photographers buy this camera
as their pocket camera, and now I see why, because the video
and the stills I've gotten off this thing, I use them in my blog all the time, I use the video.
It's easy to transfer.
It's fast.
It's got good battery life.
I mean, I can't say enough good things.
I know a lot of cameras are going to the smart phones,
that's why you're going to get your iPhone 4S.
But if you're looking for a pocket camera, I've enjoyed this all year long, and hopefully,
unlike what I did in India last year where I lost my camera, I won't lose this one.
And that completes Todd and Scott's Top 10 Techie Tips and Trends and Toys for 2011
with one cultural gift thrown in.
And it's been a good year, man, and we're going to keep doing it next year, right?
WATSON: Absolutely, unless you get hit by a bus or something.
LANINGHAM: Now, you get ready for Lotusphere.
You're going to need to be all rested.
WATSON: I've got to go and start reading right now.
LANINGHAM: Okay.
WATSON: All right.
LANINGHAM: Todd "Turbo" Watson, still in Denton, Texas, but returning to the land
of Austin, Texas, here with us very soon.
I'm Scott Laningham in Austin, and this is TurboTech.
[ MUSIC ]