YATS 24: The Greater Good

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“What is available in Canada besides healthcare?”

It’s YATS! Welcome to Yet Another Tech Show everyone. We have another great show this week and a full house on the panel. The YATS crew is on board as usual, but we’re also joined by Isaac Kendall and Shane Brady from aNewDomain.net. And by the way, I’m Ant Pruitt. Myself, Mat Lee, Larry Press, Mike Rothman and our guests take a dive into the hottest tech news of the week which happened to be featured in a keynote at San Francisco.

Let’s get into it. . . .

Cupertino based Apple finally announced the iPhone 5. The device seemed to meet everyone’s expectations regarding the hardware. HSPA+/LTE, 4-inch screen, thinner than previous versions and iOS6 on the way. Yada, yada, yada as expected. Well what did the YATS crew think? We, like most of the technologists today, were numb to the announcement. At this point, the iPhone needed to have at least what the best Android phones offer to be relevant. Everything announced is pretty much a standard in higher-end Android phones. Apple also announced new iPods and iPod Touch devices as well. Mike found some hilarious comments reacting to the event via Google+. What do you all think of the new iPhone? Drop us a comment below.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg sees web search as a “great opportunity” for his massive social network. Does this make sense to anyone? Why are you using Facebook to search? What are you looking for? Facebook is having monetization and stock issues hand over fist. This just seems to be an ill-advised move to try to challenge what Google is doing in the search market.

Google’s fiber infrastructure in Kansas City has been a buzz for the locals. If you lived there, wouldn’t you clammer for gigabit internet speeds in your home? Heck, none of the YATS crew lives in Kansas City and we’re dying for it! With this rush, priority had to be set on which areas or “fiberhoods” would get the initial rollouts. Larry mentions on his blog that on August 31st, Google adjusted some of the thresholds to make it easier for poor neighborhoods to qualify. The sweet deal about this is the pricing. $70 per month for gigabit speeds.

Massively Open Online Classes (MOOC) are continuing to grow and provide another avenue for further public education. With its growth, MOOCs are not perfect. Larry suggested broadcasting class discussions with real people via tools such as Google Hangouts. This could provide a bit more spontaneity from the environment and in-class dynamics. Just general discussion around the subject matter can assist in the learning process, not just staring at a talking head. Larry shares more if his thoughts on this in his blog. This is a great discussion on the innovation of education today or lack thereof. Including the thoughts of electronic text book subscriptions.

The news of the new Kindle Fire devices is old, but the feature of Whispersync for Voice technology still intrigues. Isaac shared his experience of listening to one of his audio books via his Android device which was later able to be resumed in text on his Kindle eReader. Very cool stuff going from voice to text and vice versa, keeping your media synced. Wired had a great write up comparing the new Kindle Fire against the Nexus 7. Who wins the edge?

Thank you for tuning in and checking out Yet Another Tech Show, everyone. We appreciate your continued support as always. Be sure to follow us on our Twitter, Facebook and Google+ pages. The crew members have their own social media connections you can check out as well. Find us on The Crew page. Give us a follow, comment, like, +1 or even CALL US to leave a voicemail. That number is 406.204.4687. You can even text message Mat at 406.848.1739. We enjoy interacting with our listeners and live chat fans. Stick us in your podcatcher and subscribe! Thanks YATS Squadron! We’ll see you next week.