Tech Brew Ride Home - Wed. 09/19 - HQ Wants to Play Wheel of Fortune

Episode Date: September 19, 2018

Amazon’s ad business is already huge, there’s a new retro Playstation console, Evernote is in our prayers, HQ is moving beyond trivia with a new game and a roundup of the Apple Watch Series 4 reviews. Links: The ACLU Is Charging Facebook With Gender Discrimination In Its Targeted Ads (Buzzfeed News) Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men (ProPublica) Amazon becoming 3rd-biggest digital ad platform (Axios) Google Home Mini was the best-selling smart speaker in Q2 (TechCrunch) Sony is launching a PlayStation Classic console this December loaded with 20 games (The Verge) Evernote just slashed 54 jobs, or 15 percent of its workforce HQ expands beyond trivia with new ‘Wheel of Fortune’-type game (Digiday) Google Maps for CarPlay in iOS 12 is now available (9to5Mac) iOS 12.1 references ‘iPad2018Fall’, all but confirming new iPad Pro debut next month (9to5Mac) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to the TechMeme ride home for Wednesday, September 19th, 2018. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, Amazon's ad business is already huge.

There's a new retro PlayStation console. Evernote is in our prayers. HQ is moving beyond trivia with a new game. And a roundup of the Apple Watch Series 4 reviews. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Buckle up, guys, because there were so many interesting little stories today. and even half stories, that instead of letting one or two slip through the cracks, I've instead tried to cram everything in, so it's going to be a bit rapid fire today.

Let's do this. First off, the ACLU has filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging that Facebook and 10 other employers hid job ads on the social media platform from women. And this comes on top of charges from ProPublica that found in an investment. investigation, 15 employers, including Uber, who advertised jobs on Facebook exclusively to one sex in just the past year. Facebook, of course, allows you to target ads to specific genders. The review found Uber to be among 15 employers in the past year who have advertised jobs on Facebook exclusively to one sex. Many of the ads seem to target in accordance with stereotypes.

The Pennsylvania State Police, for example, boosted a post. targeted to men with texts saying Pennsylvania state troopers earn a starting salary of $59,567 per year. Apply now. A Michigan-based truck company took out ads targeting not just men, but men interested in college football. And a community health center in Idaho sought nurses and certified medical assistance and limited its audience to women.

The Supreme Court ruled in 1973 that it is illegal for an employer to take out job ads. in newspapers with parameters such as help-wanted men. The ads themselves are illegal, Galen Sherwin and ACLU lawyer said. It's been established for five decades, end quote. So what again are my favorite long-term tech narratives that I'm following for you guys? There's will we get self-driving cars by 2020, of course. There's also how soon can I get 5G on a phone where I live?

The streaming content horse race is another. favorite of mine, and most recently, of course, Amazon becoming a major force in online advertising. And there's a new e-market study out that speaks to that last bit by saying Amazon's ad business is on track to rake in $4.61 billion this year, which would already today vault Amazon into third place ahead of Microsoft in terms of share of the U.S. digital ad market. There are apparently analysts out there that say that Amazon, ad business is growing so fast it could overtake Amazon web services in revenue in just two years, which, if true, that is insane. According to Sarah Fisher in Axios, quote, Amazon has reportedly

been pitching ad buyers to buy ads on its platforms by saying that they are more brand safe or less risky than buying ads on big social media platforms like Google's YouTube and Facebook, end quote. Although Stephen Sinovsky wants to pour cold water on this, I caught his tweet this morning saying, quote, Amazon increases ad market share. Spiffs are as old as retail. Calling these ads changes little about cost of retail selling and gaining distribution. Amazon benefits by calling them ads because it looks like a new business, not just organizing shelf space, end quote. In case you're not familiar with the term, spiffs are when a merchant is paid a commiss. mission on top of the usual retail markup by the brand in order to promote that brand over

others. So he's suggesting that that's all Amazon's promoted ads are at this point, glorified end caps in a supermarket. Come on, Stephen, you're a buzzkill on my excitement here. Shifting gears, I'm not following this trend as closely, but I am keeping my eye on it. There have been lots of little signs recently that Google's home speakers might quietly be surpassing Alexa Echo devices in terms of popularity. One more indication of this from TechCrunch today, quote, Google's home mini device is now the top-selling smart speaker worldwide, according to a new report out this morning from strategy analytics. The analyst firm says Google's small speaker accounted for one in five smart speaker shipments in Q2 2018 edging out the Echo Dot with its

2.3 million global shipments compared to Echo Dot's 2.2. million. Combined, these two entry-level smart speakers, the Echo Dot, and Home Mini, accounted for 38% of global shipments the firm found, end quote. Apparently, Apple's HomePod took a 16% share of the market last quarter. Why should Nintendo get to have all the fun in terms of nostalgia consoles? Sony has unveiled a miniature PlayStation classic console, on sale for $99.99 with 20 preloaded games, launching just in time for the holidays on December 3rd. Among the included games will be Final Fantasy 7, Tekken 3 and Ridge Racer Type 4. You'll also get two classic PS1 controllers for games that support local multiplayer.

If you want to get a jump start, you can pre-order now at Best Buy and GameStine. Stop. Quoting from The Verge, considering Sony seems to be a bit better than Nintendo when it comes to hardware supply, it doesn't seem likely this will be quite as hard to get your hands on as the NES or S-NES classic have been. That's good news for those longing for retro PlayStation feels and some good old-fashioned square role-playing games. Granted, you can already play a lot of classic PlayStation games as it is on iOS, PC, and soon the Nintendo Switch 2, end quote.

as Vlad Savov tweeted Sony is releasing a machine that converts my nostalgia into Sony's cache Let me throw this in here specifically because in theory you guys are listening to this show whilst commuting Google really banged it out because Google Maps is already available

on Apple CarPlay with iOS 12 Waze hasn't quite gotten its act together as quickly but it's coming they say You'll need to upgrade to Google Maps version 5, now available in the App Store to make this work, quoting from 9 to 5 Mac. Google Maps on CarPlay lacks voice control with Siri, but within the Google Maps app is Google-powered voice search. The navigation app also works with your Google account so you can have saved addresses like work and home. For drivers, most importantly, Google Maps for CarPlay gives iPhone users the option to safely use Google's navigation app in the car. if Apple Maps doesn't provide the best data for a given location.

Customers now have a choice with mapping data when using CarPlay, which is great to see, end quote. Again, it gives me no pleasure to talk about this, but we really might have to get that podcast Deadpool going. In a leaked email seen by TechCrunch, it seems that Evernote has cut 54 jobs or 15% of its staff. A tipster from inside the company has told TechRunch that Evernote is, quote, in a death spiral, end quote.

And this news comes after a slew of executive departures, as Daniel Schilt noted on Twitter, quote, Evernote recently lost its CTO, CFO, CPO, and head of HR. SaaS companies are still companies. There's no eternal storage of data, end quote. And Casey Newton tweeted, things Evernote has tried in the past year, a redesign, a rebrand branding and massive discounting. People just aren't signing up, end quote. But Evernote did get back to TechCrunch after it posted about the leaked email.

Quote, we've just been in touch with Evernote. It pointed us to a newly posted piece by O'Neill, who's the CEO of Evernote, in which he outlines the company's strategy going forward, which includes to, quote, operate with a more focused leadership team, to operate more efficiently, and to double down on product development. both quality and velocity. As for its funding situation, and Evernote representative insists that things are far from dire. The company is not fundraising, said this person.

Further, we're told Evernote has $30 million on its balance sheet and will exit the year without burning cash, end quote. Fingers crossed because I researched the whole darn book using Evernote as my main archive slash note-taking tool. I guess, though, I should look into backing up. up just to be on the safe side. The HQ trivia craze had started to wane a bit back in March

when we launched this podcast, so I didn't get a chance to cover it all that much. So let's do a quick check-in with an interesting company that's trying not to merely be the beneficiary of a fad. In October, HQ is planning to launch HQ words, a game that is being described

as something similar to Wheel of Fortune, but live on your phone, just like HQ trivia. Quote, HQ words has a hidden phrase revealed one letter at a time. Players are shown a clue and blank tiles for each letter of the answer. Below that is a selection of letters which players can tap to help complete the puzzle. Each player is permitted three strikes. Players are awarded points for each correct letter and the player or players with the most points win the jackpot, end quote.

Apparently, over the last six months or so, HQ has worked hard to eliminate the technical glitches that were so common if you were a fan of the game early on. And now that they have the infrastructure solid, they're ready to move beyond trivia. And HQ has been making money. I'm not saying they're profitable, but in this Digiday piece that I've been quoting from, the claim is that those recent sponsored games that HQ has been running with partners like Warner Brothers, Miller Coors, and Target has generated more than $10 million in revenue. And I did not know this, but apparently in May,

HQ launched HQ Sports, a daily sports trivia show exclusively in the UK. Finally, today, the reviews for the Apple Watch Series 4 came out from under embargo this morning. So like yesterday, let's do a quick whip around to gauge people's impressions. But do stick around to the end, because I've got a little extra nugget about upcoming iPads to share. The general consensus on the Apple Watch Series 4. beautiful screen, great battery life. Everyone is just super impressed with the health tracking features, but the gripes seem to be the same gripes people have always had with Apple Watch.

Siri is just plain flaky and unreliable, and the Apple Watch is still a watch that you have to tap or flick your wrist to just, you know, check the time. There's no always-on-screen option, so the Evergreen complaint remains evergreen. In a way, good old mechanical watches. are functionally superior for the most basic functionality of a watch, glancing down and checking the time. In The Verge, Dieter Bone argues that the Apple Watch is the greatest comeback story in recent tech. The first version was just so basic, he argues, that Apple didn't know what it was really for, so the whole thing was muddled.

Quote, now that Apple has figured out what the Apple Watch is for, the series four just makes it better. What I can tell you is this. The Apple Watch has earned its place as the Apple Watch. the best-selling watch. It's at least an order of magnitude better than other smartwatches and fitness trackers. Nearly everything it is designed to do, it does very well. It's not yet a general-purpose computer for your wrist, but thankfully, Apple isn't aiming for that anymore, end quote. In BuzzFeed news, Charlie Worsell is a bit more measured, coming at it from a different angle, saying the Apple Watch is a device for a future that isn't quite here yet. Quote, I can't seem to shake the notion that the watch is priming us for a new kind of ambient computer behavior where all our

hardware is barely noticeable but just kind of connects to us through wireless headphones and little sensors and gyroscopes scattered in everything from hats to glasses to our clothing. We're not there yet but devices like the Apple Watch are getting us closer end quote. In TechCrunch Brian Heeter says quote the series four isn't the kind of refresh that justifies upgrading from the last generation especially given the $39 and $499 starting prices for the standard and LTE models, respectively. But there's certainly enough here to keep the Apple Watch at the top of the smart watch heap, end quote.

And in Wired, the watch rated an 8 out of 10, with Scott Rosenfield writing, quote, in practice, the larger screen feels as significant as going from the iPhone 5 to the iPhone 6. The rounded edges and thinner bezel give you substantially more screen space, which makes it easier to read and tap. Even the smaller 40-millimeter Series 4 has more screen area than the 42-millimeter Series 3.

That changed how I used the watch. I crammed in more complications on each watch face, and I found myself scrolling through texts, looking at heart rate and workout data, and even playing with the news and photos apps in a way that I hadn't since the watch first launched, end quote. Now for that little nugget about the iPads, according to 9-to-5 Mac code snippets in iOS 12.1 beta suggests a new iPad is indeed coming this fall and it will probably have face ID and an edge-to-edge-edge-notched display. Quote, digging into assets used by the setup app, which is the app that runs when you set up a new device,

we found a new identifier for a 2018 fall iPad. The previous version of the app only included identifiers for the 2018 iPhones. This means the app is being updated to teach users how to use the new Java. on a new model of iPad to be released this fall." So I guess I gotta get Chris Higgins on the line and scheduled to help me with another Apple event probably coming next month. Thanks to all of you who shared the show on Overcast

over the past 24 hours. We did indeed vault back into the most recommended section. By the way, Marco, not too serious an issue or I'd DM you, but I still could can't for the life of me get podcast episodes transferred to the watch. Even tried the overnight thing last night. Hopefully this will be sorted soon because I'm not kidding. Getting podcasts on my watch could potentially be a life-changing thing for me.

Talk to you guys tomorrow.