Dave Jackson with Audio for Home Workers, Smart Speakers and Cloud-based Editing Services – HGG427

Dave Jackson from School of Podcasting and my co-host on Ask the Podcast Coach joined this week as we talked about why everyone working from home should care about their sound quality when making calls. We covered different ways to set up a home studio, looking at both microphones and headphones. We also talked about Smart Speakers and how they might be starting to changes our listening habits, both for music, but mostly for podcasts. Last, we talked about different cloud-based services that are changing the way we create both audio and video. I think you will enjoy the show.

Full show notes, transcriptions, audio and video at http://theAverageGuy.tv/hgg427

Join Jim Collison / @jcollison and Mike Wieger / @WiegerTech for show #427 of Home Gadget Geeks brought to you by the Average Guy Network.

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Jim Collison  [0:00] 
This is the Average Guy Network and you have found Home Gadget Geeks show number 427 recorded on December 19.2019

Jim Collison  [0:22] 
Here on Home Gadget Geeks we cover all your favorite tech gadgets that find their way into your home news reviews, product updates and conversation all for the average tech guy. I’m your host Jim Collison broadcasting live from the average guy TV Studios here in a very chilly Bellevue Nebraska hosts a show with world class show notes you might want to get out there this week. We’ll have a few for you out at the average guy. tv Don’t forget you can also join us live on the mobile app probably the best way to listen live and on the road, Android and iPhone alike. You can get that for free. I make it available for you actually our Patreon subscribers do Home Gadget Geeks. com is the way to get that done. And we appreciate those who sponsor the show. I just was going through some Patreon On stuff and Dave, maybe we’ll talk a little bit about Patreon tonight in what we’re chatting about, but I always appreciate our subscribers when they do that. And that helps pay for the bill every year when we when we pay for that Home Gadget Geeks. com gets done. Join us in our discord group and a little more conversation out there the average guy TV slash discord as well as on Facebook, the average guy.tv slash Facebook. Big thanks to Erin Lawrence who joined us last week some good conversation, some van life some iRobot some Google Home stuff. We’re going to talk a little bit about that tonight as well. And a little bit of follow up and so Aaron, thanks for coming on, as she always does a great job. Dave Jackson is with us tonight. Dave I have not I was trying to It’s been a while I think since you’ve been on my show. I mean, we get together every Saturday but Welcome to Home Gadget Geeks.

Dave Jackson  [1:46] 
Glad to be here man. It is it’s a it’s it’s what’s the word here it’s it’s comfortable and yet uncomfortable at the same time.

Jim Collison  [1:55] 
Well, so for my listeners who don’t probably come out on Saturday morning Many of you don’t. But Dave and I’ve been podcasting for five years. Nearly every Saturday morning there’s something that I have to miss but Dave’s terribly consistent at it. Askthepodcastcoach.com so if you ever need a week, so our listeners out there Dave call it their Saturday morning cartoons, right? It’s kind of you and I vamping on about podcasting. And you might be wondering like, oh Dave’s on all Jim’s gonna talk about his podcasting. Well, they’ll be some podcasting, but we actually have some great topics that are around it. What I tried to do since I have Dave on tonight, but I tried to do is think about all the things we’ve learned about podcasting and then applying them to other things. So hang with us for tonight. Appreciate that. Dave, great to have you on our roles are reversed typically, like that’s your show. On Saturday mornings, I just get to come and goof around. Now tonight. I have to keep the conversation going. It’s got to feel pretty good to be in the guest chair, right?

Dave Jackson  [2:54] 
It is it’s in if I want to like turn around and mute my woman in the tube. I can because you’re going to talk for a while. And I’m like, I should probably do that because the a word might be monitored tonight. So we’ll see.

Jim Collison  [3:07] 
Yeah, this Dave is right, this may be a show or you just want to go ahead and mute. I’m going to mute mine. And you might want to mute it. later on in the show. We’re going to talk a little bit about that Amazon and Google devices. So if you have a nearby you’re listening to the recording, you’re listening live, whatever. You just might want to mute those during the show. I hear people we set those things off all the time, although mine has been pretty good. I’ve been listening to some things where they’ve said it and it it detects it, you know, the ring goes for a second and then it just drops it so I think they’re getting better. Maybe at knowing who’s talking and who’s not. does yours get set off? Do you listen to podcasts?

Dave Jackson  [3:44] 
No, what I usually do is I will Bluetooth my phone and use it as a speaker basically, which is hilarious because then on my Apple Watch, overcast comes up so I can pause it on my watch but I’m listening it listening to it on on this Speaker I did have a fun experience where I had gone out of town and came back and apparently the power gone on and off and for whatever reason the internet didn’t quite connect the way it was supposed to and I walked in and told her to turn on the living room and said and she said I’m having problems connecting and I was like, Oh no, like every everything I was like, I actually had to go and flip the switch. I was like, What if I was this the 1800s I have to flip a switch. Holy Cow,

Jim Collison  [4:27] 
it is kind of the drawback is we think about these. You know, these smart speakers it is the big drawback to getting totally dependent upon them whether it’s in my case turning on my studio lights that are here or getting notifications from Amazon or setting timers up in the kitchen, and I find an ordering you know, just turning the lights on in general we have probably a half a dozen lights set in our house using the speaker and you’re right if you lose your Internet connection, you’re kind of screwed. We we I interviewed a company called habitat and their goal is to attach them devices that actually will help you control them, even if it doesn’t have internet. So, you know, there’s some things coming up in the market that are kind of realizing, hey, you lose, like in your case, you lose power. Think about if you had your door locks on that if you’re okay, what happens if it goes down and your nest thermostat is on that? And it’s because you’re in Ohio? Yeah, pretty cold right now. What would happen if your internet went down and then the heater didn’t come on? Right?

Dave Jackson  [5:32] 
Yeah, that’s that’s a good question. Like, is there a way to override that when it’s? That’s a good question. Well,

Jim Collison  [5:38] 
that’s I think the dilemma we have when we’re when we’re going all these smart devices. A little bit later in the show. We’re going to kind of talk about consuming audio on this but I think it’s a great topic when we think about the you know, the the complications of now having to always be connected and what if that connection is down for whatever reason? I have all My networking equipment is on its own ups. So I have a yet dedicated battery backup just for that reason just so if there’s a brownout or we lose power temporarily I can actually probably run my network because it’s all low power. I could probably run for an hour without without power, it would probably stay on right. But it not everybody has that capability. You plug your what your garage door now and actually today if your powers out, you can’t use your garage door. Yeah, in a lot of cases, but I think you gotta, you gotta think about that those scenarios, right? Yes. But Could I get in? When Dave, if you were thinking about a door lock for your house, and you’re going to get a smart one, right? Would you insist on also making sure it has a manual way of getting in as well? Or would you be comfortable with it being completely kind of smart, you know, doing doing it via an app, or whatever?

Dave Jackson  [6:54] 
Yeah, that’s a great question, because I’ve really got one door. I mean, I have sliding doors, but there’s trust. mean I’ve locked myself out of my apartment and you can’t get in the sliding doors. So I’d be out of luck if that thing went down. I would be like, you know, and that is a good question because not only getting in but it’s the the other one. What if all of a sudden you got to get to work and you know, you’re calling your boss, you’re like, sorry, I can’t make it to work. I can’t get out of my apartment. It’s like, it’s not going to go over real well.

Jim Collison  [7:20] 
Yeah. Chris Nesi. He’s out in the chat room. He says you definitely need a backup solution. And I think when you when you’re thinking about that, and let me do a follow up question, I’m in a house. You’re an apartment. You don’t own the place. Right? Are you? Are you hesitant to put in smart stuff? Because it’s not your fault? You’re not your place?

Dave Jackson  [7:39] 
Yeah, cuz I’ve thought about doing the thermostat. I thought that would be cool to just be able to say, because what I do now, is I’m doing something different this year. Because I usually most of the time, I’m in this room. I’m either here or I’m sleeping or riding an exercise bike. I’m rarely downstairs and I’m like, why am I heating the whole apartment? This is dumb. So I have my thermostat set that like 65 and what I do is I have another smart plug in my living room and I call my heater Sparky and I if I’m going to go eat lunch about a half hour before I go down there I’m like hey, woman in the tube turn on Sparky. So I go down and it’s 70 degrees in the living room and when I’m done so I don’t know if I’m going to save any money on electricity or not. Because it’s just a little bit I mean my apartments not huge by any means. But I always like instead of heating the whole place why don’t I just heat the room? I mean, because I mean I mean this office is not big at all. And it’s probably like a balmy 78 in here now because between the just a fan from the computer surprised how if it’s if you get the door locked and there’s you know, things like that so I’m trying that right now we’ll see if that saves me any on the electric bill. When

Jim Collison  [8:49] 
did you get into So did you get a nest

Dave Jackson  [8:51] 
is that I did not be in and that’s why cuz I Mike, I’d have to save the old one because when I leave you want to take it with you. So yeah, there’s a But that would be one I would be tempted to I had a, I had a smart This is before, you know all the but it was supposed to be an automated thermostat when I had a house. And I was really surprised that because I said like, Look, we’d like it to be, you know, whatever 68 when we get home at five o’clock, and then we would say we leave at 730 in the morning because we go to work. And I was surprised when I had the day off that it still kicked the furnace on. I’m like, why is it like we’re nowhere it’s, you know, it’s 11 o’clock in the morning, you should not be turning the heat on. So it wasn’t quite as smart as I thought it was because I thought it would like let it get really chilly during the day and then about three o’clock look up and go Hey, they’re gonna be home in two hours. You better kick it back on and that’s not the way that thing. Yeah, and I

Jim Collison  [9:43] 
think there’s probably some math depending upon the weather. It’s Yeah, it doesn’t pay off to let things get too cold, right, there’s thermal thermal dynamics start to kick in and if your walls start to get cold, a lot of forced air to heat those up, right? If you’re if you’re in a forced air system, and so there’s not a lot of value and letting things get cold especially you gotta heat him up in an hour to it may pay to just kind of keep everything yeah the furnace you know every so often to kind of keep things that are right that may be more appropriate Emily checked in she said what it’s Saturday morning already a little bit Emily, welcome. Glad to see we pulled some of the the Saturday morning listeners over as well. Today I was on a big conference call and there’s a bunch of folks on there and it kind of reminded me we are getting and Dave you work from home for Lipson right and so you’re you’re doing tech support, you’re doing all the things that you do you have to do company meetings Do you use when you have to call in I’m assuming when Lipson does conference calls one do they require video and today’s your podcasting gear when you when you do the calls?

Dave Jackson  [10:51] 
Yeah, I do use my podcasting gear and thank god they do not want video because there are times when you roll out of bed and you’ve still been like, you know Take a shower at lunchtime or whatever. So it’s like I’m not looking great around 1030 when we typically have meetings and things like that, but Yeah, I do. And it’s it’s funny, because today I had a bunch I was off today. And I ended up scheduling a bunch of interviews and such. And it was funny because I was on one podcast, and the minute I popped on, she’s like, Oh, that is so nice. And I go, What? And she goes, You sound so good. And I’m like, well, she goes, No, you don’t understand. She goes, I’m used to people using their built in laptop or, or whatever it is. And she goes, you just she’s like, Oh, you just sound great. And I’m like, yeah,

Jim Collison  [11:38] 
so one of my so one of my co hosts at Gallup that that’s on with me every month. He does a monthly podcast with me and in a sprinkle sprinkle of other times as well. But he one day he just asked me He’s like, Hey, can I have a mic to like, Can I just have one? And so I sent him a mic in arm and said, Yeah, and he tells me all the time he’s do he does calls all over as well. And he gets that same feedback. People are like, Oh, you sound so good. And you know, I’m actually kind of kind of say I think for at homeworkers like I think the best possible setup for them is what podcasters are doing today. In other words, I don’t think it’s just enough to call from your laptop when I was in London a couple weeks ago. I did a call from hotel room and I hit up packed all of our podcasting gear up already and it left it was Friday afternoon. Friday evening, I was doing these calls. And I didn’t have any podcasting gear with me. I know that sounds kind of weird. I packed the mic up. So I was coming up my laptop and they were like, Oh man, I like the video is good but that audio is terrible. And and they’re so used to hearing me everything I do at work I do on almost all this or set of really nice plan tronic you know, headset That goes on with that we get really good sound out of and Dave I get a feeling like I think personally if you’re going to work from home I think it’s really important to get the best audio that you can and I don’t think it has to be terribly expensive to do it we are podcast or so we end up with expensive equipment you’re running right now through a road road procaster right or caster pro Yeah, and there’s about a $600 mixer of sorts right takes phone calls, Bluetooth enabled sound effects on it I mean you can you can do the buzzer and you know we use those on Saturday mornings by the way if you ever want to join us ask the podcast coach comm slash live and but I don’t think you have to necessarily go that route right? You like your you like the road caster pro? It’s a great podcasting device but you don’t have to go that route, right?

Dave Jackson  [13:57] 
No, not at all. I mean, I the only reason it’s here is because of Saturday morning, it’s great on Saturday morning makes things really easy. And I’m really this is one of those units that kind of no matter what comes up, it’ll handle it. So if somebody goes, Oh, I can’t I’m not on a computer, I need to connect via a phone. I can easily tie my cell phone into this thing. If for some reason, it just really does if I have a bunch of people show up, but it is it’s overkill. If I’m just working from home, and I want to have a decent audio because I’m with you. I once a week, I call it a little Lipson office for service meeting. And there’s probably five or six people around a conference call with one of those kind of a triangle looking thing. And for some people that are sitting right in front of it, it’s not that bad, but there’s always the one guy and it’s like

Dave Jackson  [14:50] 
I don’t know what he said, but I hope it wasn’t important.

Jim Collison  [14:52] 
I know I kind of want to get you want to get microphones or microphones in front

Dave Jackson  [14:56] 
of me. I’m like, I’m like Can’t you guys just all fire up a microphone from your pewter at your desk and we’ll all just connect on, you know, whatever you can connect. You can do calls on slack if you wanted to, you know, we’re, we’re using some sort of conference call thing on and I’m like we’re using the phone and like on occasion we will use GoToMeeting if we’re sharing screens or something like that.

Jim Collison  [15:18] 
Just a phone, all of them take some kind of USB interface, you could take a step down from that from the road caster pro and maybe move to a mixer. This is six or seven years ago, this is all we could. This is what we all did, right and many of the mixers the Mackie the Behringer, the Yamaha, they all came out with USB interfaces to make it easier. And we’re talking anywhere from 100 to $400. Depending on how many channels and more channels you get, the better. I’m currently running through a Mackie mixer and when I when I make calls when I’m home and I do work calls, I just I run it through that too. I’m not gonna got the setup to get it done. In fact, it’s funny. I do require when I’m going to be on a conference call in video always available. I tell everybody get on video. I don’t care if you look, I don’t care if you did shower, I want to see your face, like get on the video, right? I think it’s important.

Dave Jackson  [16:09] 
It’s just another form of communication. That’s I

Dave Jackson  [16:11] 
still think it’s really odd that in going on 2020 we will in some cases, send text messages back and forth to where we will actually hit a button, talk into the phone. So it will then transcribe what we said to then send it to somebody, instead of just talking on the phone. And now Mike, when when I was married, my my step son and his sister would occasionally get on FaceTime together and I was like, why wouldn’t you? You know, it’s just another form of communication. And plus, you can kind of tell when I’m done talking, right, you know, there’s just all sorts of other clues and boy in a business setting, you know, a visual can add a lot to The conversation, especially if you’re talking business, and they’re like, are you kidding about that? Well, you can tell if you can see their face but you can, if it’s just tone of voice keeps

Jim Collison  [17:09] 
them from checking email and doing other things. I was at a meeting today, I hope No, none of my coworkers are listening. I was in a meeting this afternoon. And I was in a room with six people and I was giving an update. So the the meeting organizer had asked me like, Hey, could you give us an update on London? So I was telling the room about London and I could barely hear myself over all the typing on the keyboards. And at one point, I kind of know what to say do you guys even care like should I just stopped it Listen, I’ve been guilty of this myself where I’ve been in meetings and other things are going on and I’m needing to send emails out and people give me a funny look. So you know, I don’t if he who throw stones should not live in a glass house, something like that. So I try not to say those kinds of things but the people in the room or being super noisy. They were in the I was talking like in the room. One of the things I think, Dave, that is for people who do work from home and you could go with an easy Plantronics has some great headsets now that cost anywhere from 75 250 bucks and go Bluetooth if you want. Their Bluetooth one has zero latency By the way, such as really, really, really good. Or you could do what we’ve done and go USB through microphones. One of the things I want to talk about in just is there are some pretty good USB interfaces for folks. So you are working from home and maybe you want to use a mic and some earbuds. Dave I just most recently bought the Behringer audio interface. It’s both XLR and trs which means you can get a phone thing into it and you can get a LR connection piece on it, which is super cool. has a headphone monitor right now. I don’t know about you. But the other thing since I started podcasting, I cannot. I have a hard time doing calls, or I don’t have earbuds in like I want to hear the sound right now. not coming from a speaker from somewhere. I want it in my ears. I want some control over it. And so I’ve been a little crazy to think like, every device I have, I want some kind of headphone back so I can hear them.

Dave Jackson  [19:10] 
Well for me, the thing I love about the headphones, my hands are free. So if you know like here, while we’re doing this, I can, you know, look up things or whatever I am. So it’s the same thing if I’ve got, I don’t know about you, have you ever tried to pin a cell phone to your shoulder? So you can that’s just not going to work? You know? So that’s the other advantage. But yeah, that’s one of the first things if I get a phone call many times before I hit, you know answer is I’m plugging in my headphones because a I mean, if I’m not going to sit here at my desk, I’m going to get up and walk around a lot of times I will do that while I’m walking. And again, I want my hands free to do whatever the heck I’m walking out of the room for.

Jim Collison  [19:48] 
I also purchased so that Behringer audio interface, I think the one I got I’m trying to figure out which one I have here but I think it was 50 bucks. So not terribly expensive. I’ve also in the past purchase the the PreSonus audio boxes, which are the blue boxes. I think they’re two they’re $100 if you want to do them that way, USB driven, you can use software or now I think they’re just recognized by Windows or Mac if you want to do it that way. You are you’re actually sponsored or right now the School of podcasting is sponsored by focus, right? And you’ve got a box right right near right near there and then focus

Dave Jackson  [20:26] 
right this is the four I four But yeah, I like the two I two not that I don’t like the four by four but I think for for a person that’s just doing well actually both Berenger and focus right have just a single input. Yeah, no, but if I was doing a podcast and I had a you know, co host, I’d want to go to it. But now and then when you get down to just a single input, because it’s just you from home. Yeah, those get much more

Jim Collison  [20:50] 
focused, right, Scott, this they have the Scarlet solo solo, right, one input and those who have some kits actually where you can get a parent headphones in and all the cables that you need to be able to pull us off. I think at a minimum, I kind of, first of all, I kind of like have this setup rather than a than a microphone over here because one of the Yeah, right, you get this breathing either effect. Right, YouTube’s going to translate that by as applause. I don’t know if you’ve ever turned on closed captioning on YouTube, but any noise is applause. So that’s applause on YouTube. But you breathe. So you hear people breathing with these kind of microphones when you’re not talking. If you’re listening to the audio, I just moved the mic away. Right? You can which is really, really handy. Like if you’re, you need to do some things and you know, you gotta grab something off, right. So again, a setup like this microphone, you know, the ATR 2100s, or the Samsung cue to use or those are really that probably the two best on that right. 6570 bucks, an arm is another 65 bucks, 5060 bucks, depending on what you get, you can spend as much as 100. plugging them into one of these devices, I think is super handy. Like if I had to work from home, I’d still have this podcasting equipment or I want to have a setup like that, don’t you think?

Dave Jackson  [22:14] 
Yeah, it just, I was just thinking about this. I don’t know how frequent frequently would happen. But if you’re in sales, and you fire up somebody and you’re doing some sort of, you know, call to, you know, touch base with a customer, and you sound awesome. And your competition sounds like they’re in the bathroom. That just may be something that, you know, it’s it’s subtle, you know, it’s not it may it’s not going to get you the deal, but it’s like, it’s just gonna make you sound more Pro. Yeah,

Jim Collison  [22:41] 
well, and I’ll be honest, when I do a call from home, and I turn my video on, and they see this, everybody goes for, like, Whoa, what are you wearing? What are you and I’m like, No, this is I’m at home. This is my podcast studio and, and I think you’re right, I think there’s an element of kinda like, oh, Okay, well he’s serious about his audio. And and so I think good really good sounding audio is a little more affordable than most people think you’re going to put it, you’re probably going to put 200 bucks into it in a minimum, but I think at homeworkers and I just think there’s some real benefits in it. Now you’ve got cans head headphones that are cans and I I’m an Im a earbud guy. Why have you like for me earbuds just seem better because they’re not on my head. But Dave you’ve never like you’ve never given the earbuds things you’ve always had cans. I’m like good. Yeah, um, you don’t have to like you choose to you choose to use those headphones.

Dave Jackson  [23:43] 
That’s a great question. I honestly I think they just because they do sound a little better. Maybe. I think they block some of the sound out that might seep in. Not by much though.

Jim Collison  [23:55] 
See in these these earbuds that I have actually encouraged the sound. They’re meant for When you’re out running and those things and so I don’t get that closed down, you know, I don’t get that close now. I think you get used to it, whatever you’re doing whatever, whether you have cans or whether you’re using your buds, you could use the apple headphones, you can really use anything, right? But it’s key right that you get that sound coming in your ears, and not back through the microphone.

Dave Jackson  [24:21] 
Yeah, it’s one of those things where, although some programs like zoom and Skype, they do a decent job of trying to because because what happens if I didn’t have headphones on right now Jim’s voice would come out of my speaker, and then go right back into the microphone, which would then go back to Jim. So it creates this weird echo effect. And some programs do a somewhat decent job of of detecting that and kind of filtering it out. But I would not rely on that all the time. And that that’s just another communication hurdle that you got to get over if everybody’s got this weird, half a second echo.

Jim Collison  [24:56] 
But I think I think it’s really key if you’re going to go this route that You do have some kind of year, you’re using either regular traditional headphones and I find get some really comfortable ones like yeah, make sure if you’re going to have them on for an hour call, you know, I’ve got some of those cheap $15 Sony ones they’re only better they’re just a little bit better than the one the ones that came with the Walkman, you know like 40 years ago and they sit on your ears and I find it gets uncomfortable after you know about 20 minutes you’re kind of like kind of rubbing your ears Yeah. So it’s it I think it’s important that you find something comfortable but having good sound being able to control the sound that’s coming into your so it’s this is the other value of going through a USB interface as opposed to just going USB. Is that you can control I think you can control the sound coming like I can I can control your sound to me so much better than I could if it was via you if it was just a straight via USB. In other words, taking a USB mic like this plugging it in and then they do have mic outputs on the back of these. But man I do not like it like one I want to hear what I sound like natively. So what am I What am I sounding like to you I think that’s really really important and then to I want to hear you back super clear and I haven’t always been super impressed by these microphones natively when you’re running them via USB just worked well for me.

Dave Jackson  [26:23] 
And for me, the Audio Technica ATR 2100 they put everything in one spot so the the volume knob and when you plug it in XLR when you plug in it’s all in one spot and you almost need like a set of tweezers to turn down the volume where the queue to you makes it a little easier but they’re all you know it’s I’m with you. When you have a nice either the Berenger or focus right, get a nice volume knob and a headphone knob and it just makes life a whole lot easier.

Jim Collison  [26:52] 
It gets it running an XLR just makes it better run in the chat room, says he he’ll take cans over in air any day. And I think that is one of those preference type things. You can go any way you want. I’ve always known you In fact, when I see you live without headphones on because I’m every time I see yours, like, wow, Dave Jackson had yours comes from

Dave Jackson  [27:17] 
it’s my days as a musician. When I was in the studio, they always had these kind of headphones. So yeah, yeah,

Jim Collison  [27:24] 
no, I get it. Emily in the chat room says For those who have glasses, it’s even harder to try to pretend we were talking earlier about using video to make sure he says that. It’s harder to pretend that we’re not checking Facebook or emails because the screen reflects it. You can see, I was on a call. I was on a group call one time and the camera it was in a conference room. And the camera was coming off the wall and it’s a wide angle camera. And I was sitting on the end where the camera was going down and I thought it was kind of anonymous, but I didn’t know that the camera could see my screen. So I was Facebook and LinkedIn and all the things that I do for my job but at the end of the at the end of the call the gallows on the other end she’s like you do realize I could see your screen the whole time. Now a good thing I you know, good thing I was doing work.

Dave Jackson  [28:12] 
Yeah, that’s good. That’s hilarious.

Jim Collison  [28:15] 
I do recommend. I do recommend for at homeworkers like I think we need if you’re if we’re going to do this, we need to step up our audio a little bit. I don’t think it’s okay. By the way. I think that stepped up audio could be the headphones that came with your phone like I just did a podcast interview in Japan. And they were on an iPad with headphones that came with the iPad. Actually sounded pretty good. So you know, you could get away with that. But I think if you’re making calls a lot, man, I think it’s good to get some kind of rig something set up in your home office. Something or a good really good set of headphones with a with a mic. Some of those noise cancelling headphones. Oh Here’s a good example my quiet comfort 35 they actually have noise cancelling mics. So they’re isolating your voice, your voice in any noise. They’re kind of designed to be talked on in really loud environments. So not only and I didn’t realize this to I saw a video just recently, not only are the isolating the sound for you, they’re canceling all the noise that’s around you and only bringing your voice into that microphone. So that could also be if you have a really good pair of you know, like those quietcomfort 35. They’re not cheap. I might have 350. So but could you do it off of that that may have been for me. The other night when I was in London, I probably should have thrown on those 30 fives instead of talking through the laptop mic. And I might have had the only thing I don’t like about that is I don’t get my own. My own voice sound back. Yeah. So you’re like yelling, hey, you know and you can’t hear yourself and you’re talking too loud. So I do recommend getting Cuz you do it and I do it and I just think it works better if we have better sound that way.

Dave Jackson  [30:05] 
Especially something like that if you’re, you know, if you’re traveling for your job, and sometimes you’re like, Okay, I’m going to duck into the Starbucks and enjoy some Wi Fi while you’re doing that, but now you’re trying to talk to somebody, and you know over the frappuccino machine or what?

Jim Collison  [30:21] 
Well, it’s kind of key and of course, some of those mics that the headset mics they do have some noise cancelling around them as well as they just get closer to you. And so they’re not picking up. They are very directional and they’re not picking up the sound of the coffee machine and Starbucks. So very, very helpful. And I’d encourage you folks to do it as well. Dave, I’ve been noticed on on Ask the podcast coach and let me just say before we get started so to Joe ski in the chat room or Joe in the chat room just sent me over here a home mini nice to try out. Now I’m an Amazon guy. And has been in I’ve been getting I’ve had folks on the show who have said Google fans in in I don’t necessarily want to talk about the debate on what’s better. But a couple times on the podcast coach recently you have brought your device up. I have mine plugged in so it you we can hear it around here. I’ve got it muted right now. But I kind of wanted to ask you the question when we think about our listening habits because both you and I are incented to somehow get our podcasts out the these devices last week on podcast coach you demonstrated and you were very very kind to play Home Gadget Geeks when you when you did that, but you demonstrated that now Apple is supporting, listening to podcasts on these devices. It always tune in had done it for me. You could say hey, listen to ask the podcast coach on tune in and there’s probably some other ones that do it as well. Now Apple’s doing it, by the way, so do I have to get Apple to work? Does that work natively or do I have to catch something

Dave Jackson  [32:00] 
I think in the app, you can go in and say, use this for my default podcast app. And then you don’t have to say, on Apple podcasts, otherwise, you have to tell it. You know, hey, woman in the tube, play Home Gadget Geeks on Apple podcasts. I think you can configure that in the app, so you don’t have to. But what was funny is it worked flawlessly on Saturday morning. And then I went to do it again for my other show, and it didn’t work at all. And I was like, Well, there you go, like maybe not quite as ready for prime time is like, Well,

Jim Collison  [32:30] 
why I was surprised. I was just listening to that today on on on school, podcasting. And I was like, Dave, why don’t you cut that part out? Like you could have easily have just, yeah, redone it, redid it. However, I think it’s some good integrity to say yeah, on these devices. It doesn’t. It doesn’t always work. Well. By the way. Let me say, Joe, thank you for sending this over. I appreciate a little Christmas gift from him. And so, Joe, thanks for sending those over. I have a I have one for Mike Wieger as well. By the way, Mike’s out tonight doing Christmas things with the family. So We appreciate him. But Dave, how do you think when you think about the smart speakers, do you think they’re changing the way we listen to podcasts? In other words, do you think people are yet listening to a complete 15 3045 hour of a podcast on their smart speaker?

Dave Jackson  [33:19] 
I know. JOHN Buchanan, who’s an audio editor, he says he listens to podcasts on a smart speaker. He’s the only person I know. I know right now with Lipson the status. I think it’s like point o 2%. It’s really low. And Jim, I came prepared Are you ready for this? Like if you want me to share my screen actually did some research on this? And they said, this is from this site comes up a lot statistic, I guess is is how you pronounce that. And they said in 2019. The top thing that people do with their smart speakers was asked a question, which I thought was kind of like Well, duh, but listening to streaming music. I don’t see I do.

Jim Collison  [34:03] 
Yeah, it’s number two. Okay.

Dave Jackson  [34:05] 
And for me, I listen to streaming music. Like I listen to Spotify, Pandora, but I have a pretty nice set of computer speakers and a subwoofer. And I have the latest

Dave Jackson  [34:17] 
what echo that has the Oh, I forget the

Jim Collison  [34:22] 
ugly, whatever. It’s got a half the size of the old one. And it’s got Yeah, beakers built

Dave Jackson  [34:27] 
and it sounds great. It’s got some nice low into it. The third thing I do this every day, multiple times is check the weather. set an alarm is next after that. Set a timer for that. listen to the radio. I don’t know that I’ve ever listened to but you and I don’t listen to the radio. That’s true. It’s the same point. Yeah, we’re not we’re not the average. Then use a favorite skill. I don’t know that I have a favorite skill or action on the Google unit. I use

Jim Collison  [34:57] 
are using both are you using

Dave Jackson  [35:00] 
I have one in my kitchen. I have a Google one. And the thing I love about the Google one is I can say, what’s the temperature outside and she will say that it is 24 degrees. If I asked the woman from Amazon, she will tell me that the temperature, and then I think she gives me a whole bunch of other information. I’m like, No, I just need to know what the temperature is. And then she’ll say in and she will now ask me, would you like to hear the weekend? No, Mike. No, I just need to know if it’s cold outside. And then play a game or answer trivia that I know my niece has one. And she goes it’s one of the best babysitters ever. Because the kids just go crazy with Ella joke.

Jim Collison  [35:37] 
Tell me a story. Yeah, right. kinds of things.

Dave Jackson  [35:41] 
Yeah. Control a smart home device. That’s what I use mine for. Yeah. All the time.

Jim Collison  [35:46] 
Well, and I think for this audience, Dave, I think that’s going to that would go way up like our audience here. On Home Gadget Geeks, it would go way up if you think about most of our folks, I think control a lot of the chat room. You can let us know what while we’re talking about this, what do you use your smart speaker the most for? But yeah, I think that’s a, that’s a big usage. But listen to news or sports search for product info see for me search for product info that’s a Google Home, because Amazon’s not going to really help you much with that. She’s going to say, you know, she’s going to get confused because she’s now.

Dave Jackson  [36:18] 
Yeah, I think the only thing she searches is Wikipedia. So like she can tell you like how old is Ted Nugent? But other than that

Jim Collison  [36:26] 
was done some of those kinds of facts right. But you want to do that way. But I

Dave Jackson  [36:31] 
have seen other studies that have said that people that have a smart speaker, do listen to more podcasts. So it’s there. I do occasionally. If I’m in my living room, like when I decorated the tree. I played a bunch of Christmas music through it. But most of the time again, I have a smartphone with and I got my headphones in. So if I’m listening to Spotify, or Pandora, and I’m not in front of my computer, I’m listening to earbuds and, you know, so but, you know,

Jim Collison  [37:04] 
so we listened to I’m going to, I’m going to unbox this as we go, so there we go. Nice little thing there. Oh, look at that. And then this just pops open. So nice. Yeah, pretty easy packaging right on. So it’s one of the charcoal ones. This is the mini so just a small version of it, we end up we we actually listen, my wife and my daughter are big music fans and so we actually have a box that’s in there. We actually end up listening to a lot of music on it and that seems to be a real common there’s a real simple there’s a plug. USB mini on the on the backside there. And not much else in this box a pretty a pretty minimalistic install. I’m gonna I’m actually gonna it’s got the, on this piece. It has the USB there’s the charging port. There. Oh no, no speaker out. So I guess I’m just going to use it as a regular speaker me up to make it up on that. It’s got a little button here, which I’m assuming a little on off button right side where you can turn that on and off. What do you have from the Google device? standpoint? What do you what do you have one of those? You got the same one? Yeah, it’s on top of my fridge and no place to plug this. I can’t plug in speakers to this. I just have not

Dave Jackson  [38:24] 
that I know. Go Go.

Jim Collison  [38:26] 
Well, it’ll, it’ll go find on the desk down here. The goal is to have it, they have a close by to be on that. But we listened to a ton of music. So my daughter and we stream a ton of music from Amazon. I’m seeing my wife to that’s kind of where they get their primary music source. I never I am not in one place long enough and maybe get the desk I might. But see, when I’m here at the computer, I’m watching YouTube. And and so if I’m going to watch or listen to a podcast, I’m just going to find it on YouTube and do it that way as opposed to when I’m in the car. I’m using overcast or whatever to listen to a podcast, I’m you know, it’s just kind of listening habits. So I’m just not finding that, at least for me that the podcast consumption is changing and all based on that. And

Dave Jackson  [39:15] 
I know me talking about listening to music, one of the things I like on the Amazon, so I don’t know if you can do this on Google, I’m assuming you can, is you can take a bunch of devices like I have a setup that I can say play this upstairs, and it’ll play on me it’ll play the one in my office, I’ll play the one in the bedroom. It’s like no matter what room I’m on, that what it is, it’s all playing the same thing. So I will, on occasion, play either music or something like that. I’ll have Spotify or something going on. And that way if I’m cleaning or something, and I’m going from room to room, yeah, it’s there. So that’s that comes in handy.

Jim Collison  [39:49] 
And I think with all of them, you can now hook them together. I think with both that’d be great systems and you can have a you can do a whole I think now you can do a whole house kind of audience. system that way, drop in, I think works on each of those. My wife is a Google phi user. So my wife and my all my boys do Google phi, their phones. And they just sent out mini mini hubs or something, I need to take a look at what she got. But Joe sent this and then we got one in the mail from them as all five users got a free one. And they just shipped them to the address that was on your account like it was in they they notified you and they were there like two days later, it was the craziest thing. But

Dave Jackson  [40:30] 
we still use Google phi. I

Jim Collison  [40:32] 
didn’t get a whole unit for it. You should if you’re a Google phi user, yeah, notified you and said you’re getting because the boys got one and my wife got one so so we went from having zero Google units our house to two which will actually be good because that’ll put one on my desk and one up there and I’ll have Sarah will kind of try she uses the drop in feature from time to time and Some of some of those pieces to get that done a couple things. Joe in the chat room said he recently started using it to turn on, turn the TV, off and on. And that’s again another one of those things where you kind of think, really, the TV is right there in that remote and it’s like all of a sudden, super convenient, right? What?

Dave Jackson  [41:18] 
What comes in handy for me because I have an Amazon Fire TV. And it’s weird. I have to press the button on the remote, which also turns on the TV. So kind of wakes up the TV, but I’ll set it down. And then I’ll tell her Hey, play Hulu or turn on Hulu, and she will literally through the fire TV startup Hulu while I’m walking into the kitchen. I get whatever it is I want to eat and then from there, I just pick up the remote and I’m good to go.

Jim Collison  [41:48] 
So do you feel like you have to say the exact right words though I think this is the next step in these is that you don’t need to memorize, you know a the exact phrase That has because nothing is more frustrating than when you’re not getting the right phrase.

Dave Jackson  [42:04] 
Yeah, in some cases, because I know I think the one day I said play Hulu, and that did not work. And then the next day I said turn on or like play this through who I was. There was some sort of phrase, it’s not quite there yet. And, you know, now I have to learn a new phrase actually switched from Hulu, to YouTube TV.

Dave Jackson  [42:26] 
Because Hulu was Hulu was going up about 10 bucks. YouTube TV is pretty great.

Jim Collison  [42:30] 
Yeah, pretty great service.

Dave Jackson  [42:32] 
Yeah, the only thing I saw that was different is if you asked to watch you know, it’s Christmas time. Now, if you want to watch Christmas vacation on Hulu, you’re going to get Christmas vacation. If I do that on YouTube, I’m going to get a pre recorded version from TBS.

Jim Collison  [42:47] 
So But no, no commercials.

Dave Jackson  [42:50] 
No commercials. Yeah. So but

Jim Collison  [42:52] 
yeah, it’s it’s those those services are a little bit different. Well, I mean, to come full circle back to back to smart speakers. Smart speakers and changing our listening consumption. I think our listeners would, and you can let me know Jim at the average guy TV, but I think most of our listeners are still not have not moved to this smart speaker for podcast listening. I think we’re listening to it and in situations where it’s just not convenient to listen to a podcast that way. We’re on the we’re in the car. It is. I think, Dave when we get full voice integration in the car, so like Amazon has car, I think they call it a car play or they’re calling us. So maybe that was the apple version of it. But we are still not we’re using our phones. And I don’t think it’s fully integrated in the car or we’re not to a spot where we’re talking to these things in our car yet. I think it’s taken us a while to get to the point where we’re talking these things in our house. moving it to the car has been a little awkward and and I think it’ll get better. But how great would it be to get in the car And just say, hey, person, resume and resume right where I picked up and not necessarily have to use my phone.

Dave Jackson  [44:08] 
Well, I know Daniel J. Lewis, from the audacity to podcast when we’re talking about having Apple podcasts on Amazon. He said there is a way and I saw in the app where you can log in with your, your Apple ID. And I’m assuming that somewhere, then you can kind of have the sync up so that you can actually listen to something on a smart speaker. Right? And then pick up your phone and pick up right where you left off. I’d be Yeah,

Jim Collison  [44:34] 
yeah, that functionality, assuming you can get it all the work via voice, so you’re in your car.

Dave Jackson  [44:40] 
Wouldn’t be great that ask Siri to pick up.

Jim Collison  [44:43] 
Yeah, I mean, it would Yeah, it just doesn’t work that does that right now that’s not working very well. But that would be terribly convenient. And especially if I’m connected all throughout the house, and when I when I walk into a room, it resumes it in there. Assuming like, Hey, I’m gonna play this. Because I know these things in a lot of cases, they know where you’re at, you know, it would play it in each of the rooms I’m in, then maybe all of a sudden that changes my consumption habits. I think with an audio podcast, we’re assuming we can be mobile in and so I don’t know, we’ve got some work to do. I think both you and I agree. We’re still a long way from the average user using these things to listen to podcasts. We don’t have as podcasters I don’t think we’re to the point where we’re talking about what they want us to, but I don’t think we’re to the point where we’re advertising it that much. I think today, phone is 99% of the consumption, don’t you think? Yeah, in a lot of cases.

Dave Jackson  [45:44] 
Yeah. So the I have another thing I thought I’d share with you again, and kind of researching this. This is from voice spot.ai and it just shows the jump in smart speaker we you know 2016 guess this is 13 million. So that’s three years ago 13 million now we have 200, almost 206.

Jim Collison  [46:06] 
Now, given away

Dave Jackson  [46:07] 
Why they really are,

Jim Collison  [46:09] 
you can during Christmas, you can get in for 25 bucks at at or 20 at Best Buy or whatever. Google just send them out. You know, they’re not terribly expensive.

Dave Jackson  [46:20] 
Yeah. And I that always then makes you scratch your head and go, Why? Why are they? That’s Yeah, exactly. So

Jim Collison  [46:28] 
there’s a lot of value in knowing what you’re going to buy before you buy it.

Dave Jackson  [46:31] 
But I just I saw that. I was like, man, I knew there was a big jump, but that’s a that’s a huge jump. So,

Jim Collison  [46:37] 
you know, one of the is we just shift topics one more time as we think about the the advent of audio processing. So all these topics kind of have the theme of audio in them tonight. So think about audio processing. You and I in the I’ve been podcasting about a decade, you’re 15 years at this point. We have seen amazing changes in audio processing just from from the way we create it to the way we edit it to now I think the way it’s going to it’s going to be consumed. When we think about Dave, I think there’s some great stuff just on transcripts. So otter.ai is a service I’ve been using. Google has a version of it, YouTube as a version of it. But the ability, I’m starting to see a big jump in accuracy. Now we’re still not all the way there yet. Apple and Google are both now automatically transcribing behind the scenes, which, by the way, I think they’ve been doing this for a while. I just think they’re making it public now. But I’m just saying, Yeah, not that hard. Like transcription is not new. Right. I think they’ve been doing it for a while they’re advertising now that they’re doing it. But But how do you when when you think about taking audio to print because that’s very useful in some in some cases, are you Where are you using that? And how are you using that to kind of improve your experience?

Dave Jackson  [47:57] 
I have a client that I audited. I edit their audio. But it’s a really weird situation where I’m just looking for the main topics. I always ask them, I’m like, didn’t you have bullet points like when you did this? And instead, they will have me run it through otter.ai. They’ll give me a transcript. And from there, it’s a it’s a podcast where they just answer questions. So I basically just type in who, what, why, when, where, and find those words. And then I can find what questions were answered. I grabbed the questions that I say in this episode, we talked about and I grabbed those questions. So I use it in that way to kind of quickly see what was covered. I’ve heard of, I forget what event I went to. And somebody said they use the transcript for editing. Because you’re like, Wait, where was the part where we talked about such and such? And you can search for that because you know, you talked about it, like, Oh, it’s way down here at the 15 minute mark. So, and that’s one where I went. I never thought of using a transcript as an end. tool but that could be really, really handy.

Jim Collison  [49:03] 
Manny has that tool. I have this this is the podcast smart player and that’s not what it’s called. I have it it’s one of my plugins in WordPress. Yeah. But if I upload the transcript scripts with bought with the blocks around them it automatically then it sets that two there’s some shortcode that sets those two automatic spots in the audio. Based on the show notes that I put in which is pretty cool. In fact, every single show maybe for the last six months here on on the edge keys we’ve been putting I’ve been putting those transcripts if you haven’t checked out the show notes in a while right every show now I do has the transcripts in there clickable from that you can go down if you want to go to it if search for a certain spot find it then just click on the the timestamp button above it, it’ll automatically take you to the spot in the audio. where that is super cool. You can only do that on I should say only but I use WordPress to do that. Right. So supercooled same kind of idea right search for to then take me to the spot in the audio where we said that We’re finding this actually very, very useful and very helpful when we’re engaging with Amazon Gallup or engaging with Amazon to do these services. I know Google’s kind of doing it as well. This leads to an ethical question. So we’re starting to see some services like Adobe’s got something and there’s one I think it’s a D scripts is that the name of it that you now is you where you can go in and remove text? And it updates the audio? Have you messed with that service?

Dave Jackson  [50:29] 
I have not. I’ve heard about it. I downloaded it I think you get X amount of time for free. And it’s always been a like, Hey, you know what, maybe tomorrow play with the script, and I’ve yet to get there yet to actually play with it.

Jim Collison  [50:41] 
Well, so think about this, like so you said, you know, you said something tonight, and I’m like, I want to take it out. That’s pretty easy. I was talking to my sammys who’s been on the show before we just had her on a couple shows come in. There’s an ethical problem because now they have enough where you can actually in I heard an interview somebody was he was at your show or somebody else’s. They were interviewing the D scripts. Did you have you interviewed the D scripts? I have

Dave Jackson  [51:04] 
not it was probably Harry Duran, I think

Jim Collison  [51:08] 
it was good, good call. And you’re the other half of my brain, by the way. And so they were talking about they actually can reconstruct, so you can put words in, and they recently reconstructed from all the bits of data that they have. But there’s ethical concerns because now I can make you say things. How do you feel as a podcaster? How do you feel about reconstructing? So you and I have an interview you have a lot of me. I met my audio cuts out during an interview, but it was really, really important and you knew what I said? How would you feel about having AI reconstruct me or what I said, how do you how do you feel about that?

Dave Jackson  [51:49] 
Yeah, that’s a slippery slope, because it all depends on how you’re using it. So if, if Jim went to say, my favorite ice cream is chocolate, and instead it came out I got but I know what he said. And I perfectly fine. But yeah, if you seen the fake Joe Rogan clip,

Jim Collison  [52:09] 
no, oh, there’s

Dave Jackson  [52:10] 
a company that spent a lot of time and has this technology. And so it’s this video and they it’s like they call this deep faking a deep fake. Yeah. But it’s and he’s sitting there saying all sorts of outrageous things and you’re like, but it sounds like Joe Rogan, I was like, and that’s what I went that’s, that’s because, you know, it’s only going to get better. And I was like no and so I’m looking at him like, okay that face is obviously been, but there’s going to be a case where, you know, when somebody goes, it wasn’t me I wasn’t even there. And they can make it sound like you and look like you. I mean, the one guy was dead and he was in a movie. I mean, what’s your name? It’s coming out tomorrow I know, for instance, was in the movie, and she’s dead. And I’m like, wait, wait, huh?

Jim Collison  [52:55] 
The old the old one. Not that not the young one that they reconstructed the old one right? That Yeah, that boy Carrie Fisher.

Dave Jackson  [53:02] 
Yeah. But there was the guy in the fast and furious that like he died in the middle of movie and they just, they just CGI team and I was like, wait, why? And I’m like, you know.

Jim Collison  [53:12] 
So how handy would that be though to be able to reconstruct,

Dave Jackson  [53:15] 
it’d be great, it will think about it because if you had enough of this, instead of recording your podcast, you could just type it up. No more editing, because it’s going to say it. You know, again, there’s because right now you can have the woman in the tube read a book to you. You don’t have to buy it on Audible. And it’s one of those things that like, when you first hear the first three sentences, you’re like, Oh, I can’t listen to anything like this. And then your ears kind of get used to it. And I’ve had her read a whole book to me in the past. And it’s like after a while you’re like, Okay, it’s one of the things where you kind of have to get over what it sounds like. So you can concentrate on what’s being said, but it’s one of the things like and the future this could be interesting, but yeah, it for me personally. Part of my brain the geeky part of me goes, Oh, cool. And then the other side of me goes, Oh, this could be this could cause all sorts of problems.

Jim Collison  [54:09] 
Yeah, yeah. No, I think it’s an ethical dilemma. Michael Delaney says a Paul Walker. It’s I think, who we were talking about Fast and Furious. Yeah. That was in there. Yeah, in a movie fairly controlled. And I think we kind of know it’s not real. But what happens when, when that gets good enough that that’s, that starts getting supplemented, and maybe it’s happening already as news coverage. And so we play that, that we play that as news

Dave Jackson  [54:35] 
right. Did you see the thing where there was a kind of a fake news story going around and they were insinuating that Nancy Pelosi had had a few too many. And all they did was slower down just to budge. And I was like, that one’s kind of easy to figure out. Because when you set them side by side, but they’re there have already been if you listen to the no agenda show, they love to deconstruct stuff and it’s amazing. When you hear a sound bite, that is just scathing, you’re like, I can’t believe they said that. And then they’ll go, oh, by the way, here’s the full clip and you’re like, Oh, wait, that’s completely out of context. So with this new technology, you could just make things.

Jim Collison  [55:17] 
Yeah, yeah. No, I it’s it’s a sticky wicket, right. I mean, I think it’s one of those areas where we have to really question like, yes, we can, but should we? And I think, like, I think it’s going to happen, which makes me think we’re gonna have to kind of come up with some kind of technology that is an authenticator. So today, like I have to authenticate, if I’m logging into something. There has to be an authenticator to double authentication or whatever, right? I think we may have to get to a point where our audio print gets somehow authenticated. And you can say, No, run that against, you know, run that against my voiceprint. And it will be like this as a fake. Now, maybe that already exists. I don’t know. But I think think we’re gonna have to get to a point where we’re gonna have to have some kind of authentication of that’s know that is an actual that’s his actual voice. That’s a good thing about it. We’ve been doing Photoshop stuff for that. So I was gonna say, right you know and you gotta have now there are forensics that you can go against a file and tell exactly what’s happened to it right? So maybe that’s the maybe that’s the technology that we have that runs against the file and says no, this file has been pretty heavily altered and or it’s not authentic to the actual person so I think we’re gonna have to get to that

Dave Jackson  [56:34] 
but that’s the thing you have to bring in technology to figure it out because to the ear and I have you seen the Netflix there’s a documentary called Don’t f with cats? No, it’s a really I don’t know how I got stuck. I got sucked into it because I’m like, What is this about? And it’s about a what a turns out to be a killer. The sky starts killing cats and making videos of it on YouTube and a bunch of people got outraged. And they basically did a bunch of police work. And that’s why the squad up is there. The guy was kind of weird. And he was trying to make himself a celebrity. And so he had all he took all these pictures, showing how he was a world traveler and all this other stuff. And it turns out all these pictures of him next to his boat, and everything else, was just him playing with Photoshop is all fake. And they were all fake. And they look pretty good. Yeah. And it’s a really interesting documentary, because at the end of it, they do a little switcheroo, because this guy wanted fame. And they kind of they kind of point out how like, you know, this documentary is kind of making him famous.

Jim Collison  [57:40] 
Yeah. We got what he got what he wished for, yeah, good or bad publicity. It’s still publicity, right?

Dave Jackson  [57:47] 
But, but again, a lot of stuff you’re talking about, ran through, like you can upload an image in I forget the EFI. If there’s some sort of information that you can see where the person wasn’t even GPS coordinates. That’s how tracking down in some cases is they would look at the photo and go, and he had Brazilians. And there was one that like, Oh my gosh, he’s in Canada.

Jim Collison  [58:08] 
Yeah. So Well, I think I think there’s going to be need to be some ways that we authenticate ourselves for some of these things. What matters, you and I on Home Gadget Geeks, or ask the podcast coach or whatever? You and I, we don’t necessarily care right now like it but, you know, for public officials for things that really matter. Yeah, do we want people kinda, you know, do we need some way? Do we need some two factor authentication to say, hey, that’s not me. And I can prove it because in run some technology Yeah, I think we’re gonna have to come up with that. Here in the future.

Dave Jackson  [58:42] 
Yeah, absolutely. Because, you know, think about campaigns in the future. They always right, you know, Jim Collison, you know, right, likes to put blah, blah, blah and such and such and they’re like, and you watch it, you’re like, holy cow. I can’t believe that guy does this. Well. Now they can say we have Proof and you’re like me, so yeah, it’s gonna be it’s one of those things. It’s like, well, as long as nobody uses it for evil and you’re like, yeah, that’s not gonna work.

Jim Collison  [59:08] 
No, well, yeah, anything right? anything along those lines can be it’s like any, any contest can be gained. We know that for sure. Dave, one final thought. And I want to remind you, and I think as we think about YouTube, and where they’re going, they recently have released some, they change their terms of service to say, basically, if you’re not making us money, and we deem you unprofitable, we can remove you. And I’m starting and I don’t do this very often, but I’m going to start a conspiracy theory on this one, that they’re getting ready to deep deactivate thousands of accounts, that aren’t monetizing, that aren’t that are just sucking up bandwidth because this this thing that they do, right, they gave, they gave away free video to everybody and then all of a sudden You know, Google starts looking at the bills and starts going, Hey, like, wow, YouTube costs a lot of money. And yeah, we get ads off of it. But imagine if we started removing everybody, like you and me, right? Who’s not profitable, I don’t monetize any of my content. They don’t run ads against it. I’m just using their service. I’m, you know, I get several hundred to 1000 to 10,000 downloads per video. That’s just costing them and they’re not making any money off of me. Dave, I get a feeling that there’s gonna come a day when I think there’s going to be a mass exit know, a mass removal from YouTube, I would not be surprised if that happened. Where do we go? Like, if YouTube and all of a sudden we can’t get on YouTube? I mean, they are an effective monopoly. When you think about the space. Where do we go? What would you do if all of a sudden we couldn’t do this on YouTube?

Dave Jackson  [1:00:53] 
Yeah, the advantage of YouTube where podcasting is kind of separate, you can go to all these different apps consume all these different podcasts. If you want to consume YouTube, you are either going to the YouTube or the YouTube app. It’s not like I’m going to some other third party app to watch YouTube. It’s it’s all there. Now you can embed videos and things like that. But the only other service I did think about this, there’s a Vimeo,

Jim Collison  [1:01:19] 
but that’s not free, not free anymore.

Dave Jackson  [1:01:21] 
And either is Wistia is another one I use. And that’s like 25 bucks a month, you know, so, you know, and that’s for a limited amount of storage. So, yeah, it’s, it will be interesting to see if somebody goes and gets a bunch of, you know, seed money to start the new YouTube to see if they can reproduce it. But it’s, it’s just another example. We’ve talked about this on the podcast good free hosting doesn’t work, because bandwidth isn’t free and when you’re talking video, did you see the 60 minutes with the CEO of YouTube Oh, that’s it was on a couple weeks ago. And I forget the stat it was something ridiculous, like 5000 minutes of video, every x amount of it was just, and I just remember sitting there thinking, how are they doing that? Like, just just I know, hard drives are cheap, but I’m like, like, I just pictured guys all day running and stacking up more more boxes and plugging it in. And I’m like, I know, there’s like, somewhere. There’s a physical thing of that. Yeah. And I’m like, how do you do that? So I wouldn’t be surprised because yeah, when I heard bandhu talking about it on bandhu says, and, and he said, he goes, if you read it, it’s very vague. And it it kind of gives them enough of a crack to go, Oh, you know, we can’t really define whatever the whatever the phrase was not commercial, blah, blah, blah. But it’s a way to kind of go, Oh, yeah, we’re removing you. And of course, if you’ve ever dealt with Google, there are times when they go, other great allies have spoken, and we’ve done with you. There’s no recourse Gun

Dave Jackson  [1:03:00] 
and you go that’s it. I’m not going to not pay you

Dave Jackson  [1:03:03] 
anymore. Like,

Jim Collison  [1:03:05] 
what are you going to do? I don’t what do you think? I don’t know. It worries me a little bit. I mean, it’s kind of a perfect I like I said, I am not a big fan of conspiracy theories, but all the like all the planets are lining up for this where it’d be like, you know, for those of us who are just using the platform and not monetizing it, and there Listen, I watch a bunch of podcasters I’m sorry a bunch of YouTubers who are making plenty of bank on YouTube right now and many of them are supporting themselves through it and there’s already been one haircut I mean, YouTube cut a bunch couple years ago, cut a bunch of them way back. They do that again and start removing you know, again folks like me who just use the platform now is YouTube a huge part of my podcasting infrastructure know, to be honest, yeah, we do this this is this would be the hardest thing to replace. You know, when they got when they got When they removed Hangout, hangouts from us, we had to kind of scramble and think like, Okay, what are we going to do are using stream yard to get this done both you and I use this, I use it here you use it for ask the podcast coach and other stuff that we do that replace the Google property that went away. If YouTube if I couldn’t stream live on youtube anymore. I’d have to really kind of think like, I could stream live on Spreaker. But that’s the only I could

Dave Jackson  [1:04:26] 
there’s always Twitch and there you go.

Jim Collison  [1:04:29] 
Yeah. Twitch and next Facebook. Yeah. mixer Facebook. Yeah, I guess it’s Yeah,

Dave Jackson  [1:04:34] 
but either Facebook from what I heard. I haven’t verified this yet. But it sounds like Facebook for a while, had the ability to bring a guest on like, you could do two people like we’re doing right now. And they just straight up went on nevermind and took it away. And I was like, whoo. I mean, I’m not a huge fan of I don’t know that it would make anything. I mean, I feel nervous. Now. I have a Facebook group for the school of podcasting and I’m kind of like Hmm, there’s a part of me they, they had a, like a community tool called tribe that had a one time fee at app Sumo. And I missed it. And there’s a part of me that goes, hmm, you know, that would have been nice to have in my back pocket. So in

Dave Jackson  [1:05:16] 
because eventually, that if somebody asked

Dave Jackson  [1:05:18] 
me like, I don’t think in 2020, but by 2025 groups aren’t going to be free, because it’s one area that that Facebook has no control over for throughout conspiracy theories. I

Jim Collison  [1:05:28] 
know no ads, no ads in them.

Dave Jackson  [1:05:30] 
Yeah. And I forget what podcast I was listening to and they listed all these things that Facebook used to do for free and now you have to pay for and I win, that only makes sense. You know, because everybody now like groups are the best thing started with for your

Dave Jackson  [1:05:45] 
and as like, hmm.

Jim Collison  [1:05:46] 
So those times come those and maybe they’re worth it like if YouTube said, so pro over at Vimeo is 20 bucks a month build annually and if they said Hey, it’s 20 YouTube said, okay, you’re gonna start paying. I mean, it’s so valuable to me I might actually start paying for I mean, I pay for Otter, I don’t pay for so so this network my network, I pay for Otter, but I don’t pay for stream yard at work. I don’t pay for Otter, but I pay for 30 minutes at work because the services are more valuable to me based on what I’m doing. And so I will pay for him. I don’t expect everything to be free. But I might, I might fork out to if YouTube did that, and I couldn’t find a viable solution to stream I may be forced to, to get into that model.

Dave Jackson  [1:06:38] 
It’ll be interesting to see if they started charging for hosting and streaming. Yeah, what the pricing tier would be and, you know,

Dave Jackson  [1:06:46] 
yeah, be interesting because I, I noticed that

Dave Jackson  [1:06:49] 
in the in the 60 minutes thing, they said that when a new story comes up, and it’s breaking, they are it’s it’s set up now to where they’re going to start. Pushing the the mainstream stories to the top like they don’t want you know, Joe guy in his backyard. And it’s just kind of like me. And of course all those are monetizable and the whole nine yards and it just so yeah, I

Dave Jackson  [1:07:14] 
think you got some teeth there and your conspiracy I wouldn’t be surprised.

Jim Collison  [1:07:17] 
Yeah, it wouldn’t so I wouldn’t be shocked if it happened. Yeah The other thing we know if we think about newspapers first and then radio and TV, they all went through some kind of consolidation right and they’re really down to air k Johnson is on your podcast on your it’s not Radio Podcast, what’s Eric do with the review show? And he works. He’s in the radio business. And they’re like all the radio stations in America own like by seven companies now. Yeah, right. They’ve gone through consolidation TV has long been consolidated. It wouldn’t surprise me. You know, I’ve always told people podcasting is great because it goes down to the infinite niche, like one person or even zero, scalable, so I could do this for almost nothing and reach a very small team. It’s still worth it. If I tried to reach through anybody if I tried to reach that audience through newspaper or radio or television, it wouldn’t be cost effective, right? But you can do that in podcasting. But YouTube’s got going to have a model eventually where their ad driven, it makes sense for them to prioritize NBC going live versus me going live, right, it makes sense. And I’m not monetized. I’m not I don’t have the monetization turned on. So I and I’ve always kind of said, podcasting in general, or YouTube, in general, is kind of anti consolidation. It just doesn’t work that way, because you can have so many people doing it at a low price point. But maybe the platform’s themselves will consolidate. In other words, they’ll force the best because it’s in YouTube’s best interest to get the best, right content to the top. So you could still be there, but nobody’s going to see you. You know, from a platform standpoint, do you

Dave Jackson  [1:08:56] 
know some of the ads it’s like, you can skip this ad in five seconds. I almost always skip it. I’m assuming that is then not a paid ad.

Jim Collison  [1:09:05] 
I don’t know.

Dave Jackson  [1:09:06] 
Yeah, I wonder like how many of these are like, like they have to pay for or they’re getting income for?

Jim Collison  [1:09:12] 
Yeah, but there’s a there’s an ad where there’s a guy who’s like, Hey, don’t Don’t you know if you don’t like gadgets skip this. Have you seen that one and it’s all about a charger. And in the in five seconds he shows the charger. And I don’t care if I’ve only if I’ve only heard that. I mean, if I only get five seconds of that ad. I know what that charger is like, the the five seconds that I get over and over and over and over are actually effective advertising. So it’s good move. You know, you kind of think Yeah, 25 seconds. But think about those ads that you’ve seen. The NATS job isn’t necessarily to sell you in the moment is to plant a seed in your brain. That’s when right when that kind of things come up. You’re like, Oh yeah, maybe I’ll look into that battery thing that guy was selling on YouTube. It’s probably worth a look. or whatever, I get a lot of the St. Jude’s ads now I don’t know if you’ve seen those right Braxton has brain cancer and you’re like, Oh, it’s just like, I gotta watch this.

Dave Jackson  [1:10:11] 
Well, the thing that’s weird with YouTube TV is speaking of ads is they must have a bunch of like spots like, hey, if there’s nothing else, when it’s the more, you know, remember that when it’s like, Hey, you know, say, and it’s, you know, all these service announcement. It’s like, you know, bullying is bad. You shouldn’t talk to people like that, the more you know, and then they’ll go to another one. And here, it’s, here’s the guy from that

Dave Jackson  [1:10:38] 
NBC show, you know what, carrots are good for you, the more you know, they’re all

Dave Jackson  [1:10:42] 
like, 10 seconds long. And I’m like, did

Dave Jackson  [1:10:44] 
they run out of ads? Why am I watching all this public service, though? I know.

Jim Collison  [1:10:49] 
I know. Well, it’s a weird, it’s a weird world. And I just think, you know, as we think about the consumption of this, whether it’s us doing it tonight, and by the way, that’s actually really helpful to think through it. I was thinking about this topic earlier today. I was like, oh man, I’m screwed. And then you know, no actually no Twitch. mixer right? Facebook right there. periscope on Twitter,

Dave Jackson  [1:11:10] 
right? Microsoft one right?

Jim Collison  [1:11:12] 
Yeah, yes, there’s the Microsoft on and yeah, well how good would that be for twitch or for mixer if all of a sudden YouTube’s like nope. If you don’t if you’re not monetizing, or we deem you on what was the word they used unprofitable? That’s not really what they said. But they used the word

Dave Jackson  [1:11:33] 
monetizable

Jim Collison  [1:11:35] 
there was another term they use anyway. Was it commercially viable, commercially viable, like that’s man that is big open speak, I think for like, Hey, if you’re not making us money, you’re out.

Dave Jackson  [1:11:46] 
Is Amazon ever dabbled in video?

Jim Collison  [1:11:49] 
You can. You can do video stuff through s3, but you’re paying for the bandwidth and the storage and it just has never really, that just has never really worked for them. Yeah, I could just see YouTube consolidating and only Taking the very best, you know, it would be kind of like Lipson saying, you know what we’re only going to do the Joe Rogan show like you know we’re or you know name the top 25 podcasts and then say that’s all we’re streaming and I’m sorry if you’re not getting you know, if you’re not getting 25,000 downloads per episode you can’t be on our platform. They would never do that and it’s not in their business model but I kind of feel like YouTube’s heading that direction so be interesting to see where they go in 2020 watch and you know in your right YouTube once you’re gone you’re going there’s like there’s very little appeal there they’re kind of the dictators the video right now and they’ve always these always kind of been so Dave never surprises me when we get together we always have an hour and some change of of talking to do thanks for saying yes at the last minute By the way, I literally gave you about three hours. Notice today as like, Hey, I haven’t had you on in a while. I’ve got an opening last minute cancellation. Can you just join me because I know We could do this at the drop of a hat and and we do this so often. If you’re if you’re listening for and you’ve heard this is the first time you heard Dave Jackson, Dave hosts School of podcasting, which if you’re a podcast or is a great podcast, I listened to it every week. It’s my Monday, kind of my Monday morning podcast because you publish faithfully. Every Sunday night I think midnight or whatever.

Dave Jackson  [1:13:23] 
Yes, sometimes a little late But yeah, I before I go to bed Sunday,

Jim Collison  [1:13:28] 
we we also do ask the podcasts I mentioned that earlier we asked we also do ask the podcast coach and ask the podcast coach calm together on Saturday mornings that’s way more fun live than it is on the recorded side recorded code good we get we get good numbers there but it’s really fun to have. I know we probably have 30 in the chat room I think on Saturday mornings. more popular than this show off live anyways, although I do appreciate everyone who came out tonight to to join us live but if you want to catch up with us that way or you get more of Dave Jackson, we spend Saturday mornings is really trying of an open tech, and when we talk about podcasting, but I think we talked a lot about some of the topics that we’ve, we’ve talked about here. So if you like that you might like ask the podcast coach, join us on Saturday mornings do that, as well. Dave, thanks for joining me tonight. Can you hang out for just a few minutes? Oh, absolutely. As I kind of wrap this thing up, no good to have you. Just a couple reminders before we go on. If you do want to support us on Patreon, just head out to the average guy.tv slash Patreon and you can do that we have $5 plants that are out there if you want to do that, by the way, you’ll get if you see it up here you get a smaller let’s see this way right there. You get a smaller version of this coin that Ron made for us shipped directly from Canada so they apologize to you when you get them. They’re available for you on the $5 plan just let me know I’ll ship them to you pretty much anywhere but Man United States is better because it’s a little bit cheaper. That’s for the $5 plan on Patreon. You can do that as well. If you want to join us in the discord group theAverageGuy.tv dot tv slash discord contact the show Jimmy Jim at the average guy TV if you want to do that, I put some posts out In fact, I just did one on the site called for gadgets that are using AI. And so if you’re interested in doing that, we do get some guest. bloggers who contact me, Dave, we get this all the time in the business we’re in. We’re like, hey, one, it’s, you’ve got a link that I want to replace, you probably get 1000 of those right? on your blog. If you’re on a blog, you’ve gotten dozens of these requests. Yeah. But lately, I’ve kind of been able to turn some of these requests into some really good content. I’m just like, Oh, no, no, I’m not going to change. I’m not going to change the link. But if you want to write a post for me, I’m gonna strip all the links out of it. But that’s great. I could use some content. I had somebody contact me and said, I want to write about gadgets and AI. So for gadgets that are using AI available out there if you want to check it out. Today, the average guy TV is available there if you it’s a very interesting, not totally in depth, but some things like a little robot dog that I didn’t even know existed and I’m like, Oh, this, this dog kind of learns your habits and some of the things you’re doing and like follows you around. So it’s it’s pretty cool. That’s Check it out the average guy. TV if you want to do that. Also, don’t forget the average guy TV powered by Maple Grove partners get secure, reliable high speed hosting from people that you know. And you trust Dave’s a new customer out there as well, which is well not.

Dave Jackson  [1:16:12] 
Not yet. Have you moved? Now we moved. And it’s funny because I went to pingdom calm, and it measured how quickly my site loads. And I showed it to Christian. He’s like, hey, do I have permission to do some things on your site of my dad as long as it’s wicked fast? That guy’s a wizard.

Dave Jackson  [1:16:32] 
Wow. And it’s saving me 25 bucks a month?

Jim Collison  [1:16:35] 
Yeah. So yeah, pretty great. I was talking to a happy customer. I was talking to a podcast for this morning. It was just getting started. And I said hey, you can do it for 10 bucks. And he was like for everything. I’m like, Yeah, for everything. And and so Maple Grove partners. com plans start at 10. If you just think of starting a website, Christian does a bang up job and he’s got he just upgraded it’s got a bunch more bandwidth now to take on some new customers. So if you’re interested, check it out. Maple Grove partners.com. Don’t forget You can download us and listen to us on our app. Home Gadget geeks.com is that Android iPhone, that app is free because of our Patreon subscribers. So we appreciate that as well. We are live every Thursday 8pm Central nine Eastern. The guys from life door will be back or Joel the guy. He’ll be back February 12. So he’s supposed to be on tonight. He’ll be back February 12. We have him coming up and are looking forward to doing that. Some great shows ahead as well. Of course next week. It’s Christmas. Not podcasting. I mean, it’s not Christmas day after it’s Boxing Day. But I’m not going to podcast next week. And then after that Paul Brennan is back. Well, Mike is coming back on but Paul Brandon is back. I got a guest who’s coming in to talk. His name is Kevin and he’s going to talk about sports tech. Dwayne Robinson is going to come finish the show that he started and I interrupted him and we went on an hour long conversation about something that we hadn’t planned. He’ll be back to talk about what was planned. Jay Madison is coming back to talk and then we’ll have we’ll have two weeks in a row some hard core tech When we talk about that, I mean like computer here, you’re going to want to come on Jay Madison’s coming on to talk here and then Ryan is coming back to talk. He’ll be live from CEO just coming back from CES and he’ll have all this he is coming. So if you like the gear, tech gadget hardcore stuff that you do, you’re gonna want to catch us in early February as well. We are live every Thursday 8pm Central nine Eastern, I heard the average guy.tv forward slash live. We’ll be back with more with that will say goodnight.

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