Latest / TechtalkRadio / Episode 407 - A Flashback Show

Transcript

Episode 407 - A Flashback Show · TechtalkRadio

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The following program is produced by the Tech Talk Radio Network. This is Alice
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Cooper, the original Techno Todd and you're listening to tech Talk Radio. Welcome
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to another episode of tech Talk Radio. I'm Andy Taylor, I'm sean to
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Weird Click, and I'm Justin And now, if you don't know, we
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are the show that delves into technology, computers and the Internet. We got
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that down without a script. Good to have God, it only took us
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three tries. Well, good to have Slick with us this week. We've
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been talking about a whole bunch of things pre show, so Slicky kind of
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came in just as we got started. But I'll tell you there's a lot
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going on in the world of tech. There is. Not only do you
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have big, huge news screens where we're going to be talking about, but
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we're going to talk about the creative stylings of Justin and something he has created
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that is absolutely blowing my mind. All right, So some people have heard
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about mid Journey and can you kind of explainsin what mid Journey is all about?
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Well, mid Journey is just one of the many facets of this new
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AI wave of technology, artificial intelligence. You know, a lot of people
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have heard about Chat, GPT and Barred and Microsoft bang Chat. You know,
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these are the text based AI programs that will you know, write things
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for you or look up answers or even you know, help you solve coding
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problems or whatever. But mid Journey is the visual aspect of AI. So
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what mid Journey does is it's a Discord server. Now Discord is kind of
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like you know, it's it's a it's a giant chat room. But there's
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you know, millions of different you know, chat rooms you can join,
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and mid Journey is one of them. You do have to pay for it.
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It used to be freed during the beta test, but now you have
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to pay. I think I pay ten bucks a month. That yeah,
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and I get like two hundred images or whatever. But basically, what you
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do is you go to mid Journey. You give it a prompt, but
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now tell it what you do. This all in within Discord, still within
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Discord. Yes, okay, so you're in Discord. You're in the Discord
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server for mid Journey, and there's guides. If you don't know what I'm
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talking about, there's guides. It'll tell you how to do it. But
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what you do is you give the bot a prompt, and so what I've
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said in the past and and and Slick. If you go to the zoom
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chat you can see some of the images that I posted earlier. But for
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instance, what I did with this one is I told it to generate an
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image of three guys. Because I didn't know you were joining Slick at this
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point, so I said, generate an image of three guys discussing technology on
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a podcast, one of them being older, slightly slightly middle Eastern descent,
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one of them being middle aged, white guy a little bit slender, and
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the third guy glasses and just a tiny bit heavy set. I'm not saying
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you're fat, Sean, just I'm trying to. I'm trying trying you just
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give it some ideas behind sugar coated. That one didn't he I'm not saying
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you're not fat, Sean, you're just big boned. Got back here.
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But I told it to. That's that was the prompt I gave it,
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and it generated an image and we'll post it up on the website. It's
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kind of interesting because it is a photo realistic image. Now it's obviously not
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us. These are not even real people. It looks real. It looks
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like real people. Wait, so these aren't there not, These aren't pulled
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from a stock photo somewhere I mean initially yeah, because the thing has got
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a train. I mean, the AI has to train. So it looks
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at millions and millions of images and it puts little tiny pieces together to form
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new things. Now, during the pre show, Sean was discussing about how
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AI is is good at a lot of different images, but one thing it
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can't do. Sean, what was it again that you said hands and feet
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right now? Why why is that? Why can't it do that? Apparently
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it can't count digits on your finger, because there are other images where you'll
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look and you'll see a person with like two hands, well I mean two
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hands on one side arm, or a hand cut their armor, or a
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hand coming out of their hand, or like six fingers, you know.
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So to segue out of that a little bit, right, it's that it
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busted a artist who does content for Wizards of the Coast, for Dungelson and
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dragons. Right, so some people notice, like why are the hands and
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the feet of these wolves the paws of these wolves so terrible? And then
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he's like, oh, yeah, I used AI to finish some of my
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artwork, and Wizards is like, what, we don't use AI at any
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of our work. Yeah, we don't pay for AI too. Wait it's
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already published. Oh wow, you see I don't understand. I'm looking at
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this and if you're looking at this to the blog, it is mind boggling.
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Uh, you know, Slick is looking at this for for the first
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time. I just can't believe these aren't real people that somewhere have you know,
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uploaded their photo to you know, a resume exchange, and it's just
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grabbing him because it really, honestly, we don't even have we don't even
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have a group shot of us that looks that great. Okay, yes,
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truthfully, yes, but we're gonna post a couple more pictures because there are
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some pictures that are just completely jacked up. What were you thinking when you
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asked mid Jersey to create this? Okay, so Slick look at the third
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the third image total of the third image total. I told it to generate
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women celebrating pumpkin spice season, and it generated women generating women celebrating pumpkin spice
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season. Why but just because people were talking about pumpkin spice season happening,
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and women love pumpkin spice for all the reason, all the places that got
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the pumpkin lattes and Doggy Tree. Just understand how his brain kind of pulls
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to give. Well, I just I just randomly think of things. I'm
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like, oh, that'd be a cool prompt, and I generated this.
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But now this third image, look if you look at it and we'll post
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it on the blog. First off, the eyes of the women are completely
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jacked up. They look they they look like aliens. One person's face is
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just completely melting. What what the heck? I mean, it's it's really
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really messed up. I think if there's a woman pulling another woman's chin down
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like the Scream and it looks like the scream masks, Yeah, yeah,
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yeah. The pumpkins are there, you know, they look good, the
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big lots and she looks like a nineties WWE wrestler, yes, with the
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face paint on, like the Ultimate Warrior or whatever. Her face is melting
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in her arm is like disappearing in a foam of pumpkinness. But but the
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thing is is these are these look real. I mean, for the most
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part, they look real, and so it's it's it's funny to see what
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AI can generate based on what you give it. Now, you don't have
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to do photorealistic stuff. You could do artwork. You could be like,
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oh, I want an artistic representation of blah blah blah, and it will
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do that. You can even give AI an image. You can take an
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image, a real image, and say make this a little different, and
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it will generate a new image based off the image you've given it. And
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did you put one in there that would say like, uh, you know,
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upload a photo of Slick and then say, give Slick more more hair?
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Could I could? This probably won't because he's got enough. There's no
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need for that to go. Yeah, there's no need to reach back in
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time. Yeah, I was always I was sitting here thinking maybe it's a
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good thing I came in late today because I'm free to what Justin would or
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could have said to go. Oh and by the way, this other guy,
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let me let me describe him. Do you yeah or or Sean?
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I mean Sean looks perplexed. H Do you have a favorite pumpkin picture?
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I like the last pumpkin picture, which you'll be able to see. Yeah,
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it's awful. Yeah, I mean, it's just it's just the way
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they're positioned. Like you can see the one woman's chest is blending into the
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arm of the other girl who's wristled click like it's broken in six places.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah, oh yeah, yeah. It looks like her
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hand is completely malformed. She's holding onto a spoon that's mystically floating in the
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air. The best part about the best part about mid Journey, though,
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is you don't necessarily even have to subscribe to use. I mean you don't.
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You can't give it your own prompt unless you subscribe, But you can
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still join the Discord channel and look at all the different photos that other people
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have been generating, and it will tell you the prompt that they're using.
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So you'll see a prompt of you know, I'm just looking right now at
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some random thing. Let's see here. Do you know none of these women
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there's bottom teeth. Well, yeah they are, but it's a weird jaw
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thing. And it's again it's got to be the AI is having a problem
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recreating not only hands. Yeah, but yeah, well there's there's another one
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here. There's the prompt. This guy just something, it said. Abstract
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illustration of a Hispanic woman standing in a pile of spaghetti, and it literally
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draws an an artwork. It's not photorealistic. It's artwork of a Hispanic woman
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wrapped in spaghetti like wearing like a spaghetti dress. Would why would somebody come
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up with something like that? I don't know, dude. Honestly, we
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Internet literally anything you can think of, somebody's drawn it. You know,
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we've seen the commercials too. Did you guys see the pizza commercial that was
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done with aih's awful. Maybe we could put that was scary. We could
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put that in the blog too. So they created they basically told and you
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think about this, the artificial intelligence, you tell it create this, and
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it created this pizza commercial that had people enjoying pizza that was like melting into
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their face and and it was horrific. It was like a scary movie.
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But AI is able to do this kind of thing. Now, imagine now
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if you took this picture justin like the last picture you created with the Asian
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woman walking away from the fire, you want to say, why you created
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that? I think that's that's actually pretty good. Oh well, yeah,
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so I took a picture of it's basically kind of like that Hollywood shot where
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somebody's walking away from an explosion, right, and they're walking, they're walking
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towards the camera, and this happens to be an Asian woman walking away from
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an explosion. And my idea behind that was a story was I was trying
10:28
to get Eric ready for bed, and I told him, Hey, Eric,
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it's it's time for bed. Get ready for bed. Well, as
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he was starting to get ready, I went upstairs to get his bed ready,
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and during that time, my wife decided to pull out some like origami
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paper or something and start cutting things. And Eric was like, ooh,
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I want to try. So I come downstairs and I'm like, what the
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heck, dude, I said bedtime? And my wife just goes all right,
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I'm gonna go take a shower and just walks off. And so this
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represents her starting an explosion of anger when I'm telling my kid to get ready
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and she's just walks away. That's perfect, but it actually looks this one
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really looks if you were to do on that image and you went back in
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time ten years ago, maybe maybe even fifteen years ago, or you couldn't
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even till you showed that to somebody, they'd be blown away. They'd be
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thinking, yeah, you were the greatest photographer in the world. Yeah,
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to be able to add after that, and then this last one I just
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posted. I literally just did this on mid journey while we were talking.
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It is Mortal Kombat characters drawn in the art style of Studio Ghibli. Oh
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wow, that's actually really good as well. Yeah, it's really good.
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Now, what are your restrictions when you use these? You can't do anything
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that's pornographic. You can't do anything that shows harm or death. I mean
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you can. You can tell it show me a picture of death, and
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it will draw like the character of death. Yeah, but you can't say,
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show me somebody getting their head cut off or something. They won't do
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that, I mean it won't, it won't. Yeah. It has limitations,
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and you can appeal like I've I've told it to do things, and
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it's like, oh, we've we've blocked your request because we think it's not
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right, and I can. You can click a button to appeel it and
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it gets sent to a moderator who's a human who will actually review it and
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say hmm, nah, I'm not going to allow that, or yeah,
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okay, I'll allow that, and then it will generate the image if they
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do allow it. So there are restrictions on what you can and cannot generate.
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Right, So if somebody wants to do this, what they need to
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do is set up a discord their own discord. Well, which is not
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that hard to do, right. You can you can get the mid journey
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bought uh in your discord. I don't personally know how to do it.
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I'm actually on So I just went to mid journey dot com and you can
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sign up. You can. You can sign up right there and it will
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tell you everything about how to use it and what it is and uh yeah,
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it'll tell you how to join the discord server and I will tell you
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how to you know, generate images. So I tried to sign up.
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It took me unownst to me. You'll find out like a second or third
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screen that you're creating an account on discord right right, And we have it.
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We have a tech talk radio account that only I think you know,
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only the three of us are on nobody. I don't really get on it
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enough, but I need to. I want to because I think there's a
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lot of a lot of things we can have some fun with. Well,
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you still got to make us admins. You haven't even done that yet.
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Yeah, you're an admin. I like it, either you or Sean.
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Oh no, you're an admin. Sean, you bumped out before I got
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a chance to do to add you. So I'll make you an admin too,
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and then we could have we'd have some fun with this. But to
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be able to create this, how long is the process for you to say,
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say, the picture with the three guys sitting around the Apple computer,
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which is funny, that's that's pretty cool. But how long did it take
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to create that the Huh let's see from the initial prompt. Uh, then
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I went through like about seven variations of it to try to find that perfect
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one about five minutes. Wow. You know a lot of the companies are
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really trying to find a way to integrate AI into Topaz is one of those,
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and I'm going to be taking a look at their Topaz Photo AI.
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They also a video AI program which actually can take like something shot in four
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eighty and enhance it for seven to twenty. Now, Sean, you know
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what that means. I mean, basically, you could take away that that
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eighties seventies VHS look and give it a crisp feel a crisp look to it.
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Using their AI, their photo, AI topaz his photo. AI can
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actually make stuff a lot sharper looking, which is kind of neat. And
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Adobe is also doing this, and Sean has already given us a demo with
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that with Generative Phil. Have you still been playing around with that, Sean
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at all? Nope? No, you know. I mean, you guys
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are talking about AI and I'm kind of zoning out of here right now.
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You AI. I know that AI is going to change the world, and
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I need to get on board, but I just can't do it. I
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can't get into it. I can't. Well, do you really need to
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get on board, though? Is it absolutely necessary? I mean so,
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because it'll come right for my industry. Yes, it will come, but
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you need to get in. I work for an industry leader in the broadcast
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world, so I have to know it. I have to get on board
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because we're already integrating it. We're already integrating stuff, and the biggest part
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of our job for AI is logging. So somebody doesn't somebody doesn't have to
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sit down and watch the screen and say player number twenty five yards at three
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minutes on the clock. Two outs, one inning whatever. Right, AI
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is scraping all that data and just putting it into the metadata. Wow,
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we're already using all of our highlights for and you know, who knows if
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I'm also allowed to say this, right, but it's like the majority of
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our our highlights from sports that are being broadcast are done by AI. We
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feed our game feed into a program, right that then cuts highlights based on
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parameters that the people program I mean the content, not the program. Yeah,
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sure, a programmer, but like the content creator for the social media
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says all right, I need these style of highlights, and it just shops
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it up and spits them out. Wow. So there's nobody sitting there logging
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and watching the game going all right, Player twenty is to just score a
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touchdown clip that here's the metadata player name that we're time whether all that stuff,
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It just does it. They're also saying right now that that AI is
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the fastest growing job industry. Yeah out there, I mean there are jobs
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posted that are offering five hundred thousand dollars per year to program AI. Yep.
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And there are people that now that maybe you used to be proficient in
16:53
Excel or word or lotus one two, three, you know, or maybe
16:57
a type sixty words per Now, honestly, a company is going to look
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at you a little better if you say I have experience with AI, whether
17:07
it be Chat GPT you know, or the new enterprise Chat GPT which they've
17:11
just announced, or any of these, any of these AI programs that can
17:17
actually help you. It used to be you could say I know how to
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work illustrator. Well, now you need to to be able to to create
17:23
faster and even maybe even more dynamic using these AI tools, whether you use
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imagine somebody comes to you and say, yeah, I could create using Correl,
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which is great. But if they come in and say I could use
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Corel, I could use Illustrator, and I can use mid Journey, They're
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gonna look at oh mid Journey, oh wow, because they've heard of it.
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So it's going to create more of an environment. Especially the kids are
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in school now. I don't know if anybody's teaching them this stuff. But
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Sean, you're not you're not a big fan of this. No, I
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didn't say I wasn't a fan. I just I it doesn't fit my work
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style, it doesn't fit my vision of technology. It doesn't fit me and
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that's not to say it doesn't fit everybody else, But it's just my interpretation
18:04
of what technology technology should be and how it impacts our lives is not Ai,
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it's not. It's to me. And I've talked about this before.
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We are as a society are dumb. And that's that's just me saying it.
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Right. We are so ingrained with technology, and our faces are in
18:29
everything. There is zero creativity, there's zero art outlet, there's and and
18:33
again people are ingesting content by the so much content all the time. But
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when is it too much? When does your brain have a time to shut
18:44
off and process the content you've seen, the content you've read, the content
18:48
you've heard, right, the content that you've created. When you draw a
18:52
piece of art, you've got to post it. Like I ran into this
18:56
with with just my art in general online I had this immense pressure to just
19:02
produce content because people wanted to see it. Well, I was burned out.
19:07
I don't want to produce content, but people were like, hey,
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you stop posting pictures on the I really like seeing your pictures. Yeah,
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because there's a saturation limit, right, Well, I mean look at it
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from a mental capacity, right, And AI is going to this is again,
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this is me just on a soapbox. AI is stifling the creativity of
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the human mind. M m yeah, because I don't have to think about
19:33
anything anymore. I don't have to think about a story prompt, I don't
19:34
have to think about an image. I can just type show me this and
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it's gonna spit it out, whereas before you you have to be creative to
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put it all together. Well yeah, I mean, and granted it's it's
19:44
it's enabling people that maybe aren't artists to generate art, and that's cool.
19:51
But to me, that's scary because it's you're not You are disconnecting yourself from
19:59
the career creative process that makes us human. The marketplace is going to weed
20:03
that out though, because to me, that's the shotgun approach. You know,
20:07
you got created content, doesn't mean it's good content, doesn't mean it's
20:11
targeted content, you know, doesn't does it even mean it's correct content.
20:14
It's just content, you know. I kind of wonder. Buddy of mine
20:18
is a really good photographer. He's great. He takes some great photos,
20:22
and lately a couple of the photos he's shown me, it's to me,
20:26
it's mind blowing where he's gone out on a photo shoot and it hasn't been
20:30
the best conditions. Sean, you know more than anybody, especially even flying
20:36
drones. Uh, sometimes the conditions just aren't going to be right. He's
20:40
junk. That's that's part of that's part of the business, right. But
20:42
instead, what what a lot of photographers are doing now is they're taking these
20:48
photos and they're there. It's they'll fix it in the mix. It's that
20:52
old term. It's a you know, it's an old video fix it.
20:56
We'll fix it in post. You know, you'll fix it afterwards. And
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now they're fixing a lot of it's being done by AI, where they'll suddenly,
21:03
well, we don't need that building there, let's take that out.
21:06
And that building could be wiped using generative phil from Adobe and some of the
21:10
other you know, AI tools that are available. It does all of that
21:15
because you still have to be careful, especially you look at it the photos
21:18
that we have on our blog now of how many fingers do these people have,
21:22
how many hands do they have? They're a little the little and I
21:26
think, uh, Sean, you've mentioned this word before, uncanny valley.
21:30
Oh yeah, you're you're going to see that no matter what right. And
21:33
it's just becoming more of a thing and people are getting used to it,
21:37
which is fine, but there's still that unsettling feeling when you look at something
21:44
doing yeah, that's been treated by AI. You even said it earlier,
21:47
Andy, you can tell one of the article is a I written just because
21:49
it doesn't feel right? It doesn't Is there going to be what's the new
21:53
term on canny valley? Is a film term? Is there going to be
21:57
a that? Is that a blanket term? Now? For that uneasy feeling
22:02
about content that AI we get. We get close to about one hundred maybe
22:06
one hundred and fifty pieces of email every day, pitches stories, uh,
22:11
stuff that's, you know, highlighting an event that is happening, whether it
22:15
be here in southern Arizona or you know around the globe that you know,
22:19
maybe we won't want to cover. And I've gotten to that point where I
22:25
reached that uncanny valley when I'm reading an email because I feel that email is
22:32
using the words that AI would be using, or I just don't feel it's
22:37
really a human that's that's typed it, that's that come up with the wording.
22:42
For example, we we have used chat GPT. I'm I'm, I
22:45
don't mind saying it. I create every and you don't have a very busy
22:49
schedule. So when we decide to post our show, I always create a
22:55
show synopsis, which usually means we do the show. I go back listen
22:59
to the show, and as I'm listening to the show, I'm typing up,
23:02
yeah, okay, well we talked about this, Okay, we talked
23:03
about that, we talked about this, we talked about that, and I'll
23:06
go ahead and I'll i'll, I'll go ahead and write it. And now
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what I've done is I've took I thought, well, yeah, maybe I
23:12
can highlight this a little more, and I have put it into chat GPT
23:18
and what comes back usually is something like wow, I didn't expect that,
23:22
where it's this too much, it's like over the top, like this exciting
23:29
episode of tech Talk Radio, groundbreaking technology, and I feel, no,
23:33
no, no, that's not what I want. I read that and I'm
23:34
like Andy had too much coffee, or that's chet GPT one of the two.
23:37
But I noticed something recently in one of those that we had done,
23:41
and I thought, okay, I go in and I edit it and I
23:45
think that's what you have to do with chat GPT when you're doing an article
23:48
or a story, edit it. If you want to help it, help
23:51
you guide along, Fine, go in and edit it. But I miss
23:53
something. I noticed that justin on his name it was was crylic So the
24:00
jay was done by Chad GPT in this different type of j My jays were
24:08
all perfect, but the AI that I didn't Okay, i'll let that go.
24:12
I'll let that go. It was all so you really you can't rely
24:17
one hundred percent on it. It still needs that human interaction. Now will
24:22
it be will you know the enterprise edition fix that? Will there be further
24:27
renditions? Will there be Chad GPT five that will fix some of that?
24:30
I don't. I don't know. And that's that's where it starts getting a
24:34
little scary, like skynet like you talked about the other day. So you
24:38
mentioned, you know that you mentioned the Gmail part of it or email part
24:41
of it. August twenty ninth, Google launched its due at ai for Google
24:45
Workspace. Ah, now what's that gonna be? And he must have well,
24:51
no, I was also gonna mention because you just mentioned skynet. I
24:53
was about to say, as of the recording August twenty ninth, which is
24:56
today. Today is the day that Skynet becomes self aware in the movie.
25:00
Oh oh that's right. Yeah, that's what I've been trying to say.
25:06
I've been trying to jump that in there, like hey, happy happy skuy
25:08
not becoming self aware to Yeah, that's right. For Terminator fans, I
25:11
annoyed. Are they making another Terminator movie? Yea, I swear I saw
25:18
it. See that's the thing with AI. You don't know anymore. I
25:22
saw an ad on YouTube and it said it had John Cena in it.
25:26
It had Schwartzenegger in it, and I thought, okay, I thought he
25:29
was done with this. So how do you know if it's real or not?
25:33
Well, you guess they can do it with AI. I mean,
25:36
look at this picture I'm posting in chower here. We can post this to
25:38
this. This picture just got generated. This. There's a really fun Facebook
25:41
group that I'm on actually called Cursed AI, and it's just pictures of things.
25:45
This is Tupac. Tupac going to the beach to enjoying going to the
25:51
beach to enjoy ice cream. That is not AI's well, I mean it
25:56
does, but not well, I mean a little bit maybe ice cream is
26:00
yeah, yeah, like but yeah that looks wrong, but yeah it does,
26:04
it does. But I'm just saying like, this is this is what
26:07
a I can generate. If you're on Facebook, go look up Cursed AI
26:11
and join it. It's funny. It's just funny because it's got some crazy
26:15
photos on it. All right, listen, we gotta take a break.
26:18
We come back. We've got something very cool. Now, a lot of
26:19
us are familiar with leap pad, leap frog. Well, we have got
26:23
the creator, the guy who came up with it all, Jim Margraff.
26:29
We're going to talk with Jim and find out about leap pad, what could
26:30
be the future of that type of entertainment and educational experience for our kids.
26:36
With more of tech Talk Radio. I'm Andy Taylor, I'm Sean de Weird,
26:41
and I'm Justin. Find us on the internet at tech talk radio dot
26:45
com. We'll be right back now back to tech talk Radio. So,
26:49
like many of you, I'm a grandparent, actually i'm a great grandparent.
26:55
And one of the things is with our you know, grandkids and great grandkids
26:59
kind of scattered all over the nation, is keeping in touch with them,
27:02
and I'll be honest with you. Technology has made it a lot easier,
27:06
but when it comes to child development, we've seen that before we could ever
27:11
think about connecting with them remotely. We are honored to have with us the
27:15
inventor of the leap pad, Jim Margraf, standing by with us on the
27:18
line to tell us a little bit about engaging with grandkids remotely and some of
27:23
the many different ways that it is possible. Jim also has just recently started
27:29
another new company called Canoe with the Canoe Magic wand some great stuff, so
27:33
we'll tell you about that as well. Jim, thank you so much for
27:34
coming on tech Talk Radio, Andie thanks good peace to be here with you
27:38
today. Thank you tell us how did you get involved in, you know,
27:44
getting leap pad off the ground and you know, really making this work.
27:48
What was the you know, what was the desire here? Well?
27:52
Thanks, thanks, It goes back quite a while. It was actually it
27:55
was actually twenty three years ago, wow, that I had the idea for
28:00
the LeapPad. My kids were two and four, had a boy and girl
28:03
was watching the learned to Read and I observed as these black squiggly marks on
28:07
a page and thought if we could give more direct access to be able to
28:11
allow them to look at a book and know that those little squiggles had names,
28:15
and those names of these squiggles had sounds, and if you put them
28:18
together, you meet words. I thought that we could create a breakthrough in
28:22
reading, and lo and Beholds created this idea of something I called paper based
28:26
multimedia, built it and we put books in a cradle, as you know,
28:30
with a leap pattern. Within five years we helped roughly one hundred million
28:33
kids learned to Wow. Amazing, it was just it was very It was
28:37
very gratifying. Made it so much easier too for parents as well to have
28:41
to always have that content in front of kids so that they're learning, not
28:45
just sitting in front of the television. You know. And now, of
28:48
course we think about the computer, but it gives them that ability to use
28:52
technology to continue to learn. Now, when it comes to people like myself
28:56
that have grandkids and we want to stay engaged with them, the new technology
29:00
in our modern world gives us that opportunity when they live far away. But
29:03
some grandparents are a little timid about that. What really advice could you give
29:07
them to extend that and keep in touch with them. The challenge is is
29:14
communicated with your grandkids in a way that is interesting and relevant to them and
29:18
also understanding the ages and stages of the needs, the style of communication,
29:23
the learning interests the kids have at different ages. So here here's a challenge.
29:29
Do you think he's a grandparent. You've got a four year old maybe
29:32
you're a you're a grandmother and you've got a four year old grandson named Johnny.
29:36
And we call this the Johnny problem. And Grandma gets on FaceTime with
29:38
Johnny and says, hey, Johnny, how are you good at nothing?
29:45
And nothing? And Johnny, you know, he just at that point he's
29:48
not interested in turning this year. He runs off these four and Mom chases
29:52
after him with a smartphone. Johnny talk to Grammy, and Grammy is sitting
29:55
on the on the FaceTime colling. She's feeling bad. She doesn't know what
29:57
to say. She knows he's not interest. It's did and and you know,
30:00
as that time extends, month after month and they try to have the
30:03
calls, they don't really connect. So when eventually they do get together,
30:07
more than half of grandparents or five hundred miles or so from their grandkids.
30:11
So it's a big problem in this country. And the Johnny problem happens every
30:14
day every day. Yeah, so you know you can say, so what
30:18
do you do? So think about what what does the grandparent need and what
30:22
does a grandchild want. Grandchild wants to do something fun. They like playing
30:26
games, they like moving their bodies. That's what they and they're in the
30:30
moment all the time. They're not thinking ahead. They haven't developed executive function
30:33
to look at and you know that part of the brain's not really developed.
30:37
So grandparent wants to engage them. So one you could put a game into
30:41
the video chat. So if you do that, put a game like TikTok
30:44
Tour Checkers in. When you do that, what happens is they play the
30:48
game, but they're not really bombing and connecting. But there is time together.
30:52
But pretty much the child puts their head down, they focus on the
30:53
screen that the grandparent looks at the top of the child's head depending on where
30:57
the camera is. It's okay, but we could do much better. So
31:02
the next step is said, Okay, let's find a way to allow both
31:06
to be a guided a bit. So we dropped a character into video chat
31:10
a cartoon, a retro classic two dimensional cartoon finstones Luck character, so we
31:15
put that there the talks to both of them. The next thing we did
31:18
is we created games. We'll call it bespoke games designed to bond and connect
31:22
nice. Once you have that, now you've got games like you're making a
31:25
cake together, you're fishing and grandpa puts a fish on the hook and a
31:29
child catches it. Where you're building a puzzle together, where you have to
31:32
collaborate the way we design it, so it's collaboration, creativity and and the
31:37
next piece that was key for us, and this is this is has moved
31:40
the whole company rather plane, which is we put a wand a four inch
31:45
wond about two houses in the hand of a child's got three bright colored orbs
31:48
to change colors, and it responds to the child's movement, and the wand
31:52
becomes an augmented reality tool on the screen. In the video chat with the
31:59
grand parent, you might say, you may think a cake together, and
32:01
the grandparent on the screen is the ingredient or the ingredients shown on a shelf,
32:06
and the grandparent drags an egg over and the grandchild takes their wand and
32:09
they crack the egg by moving it in air, and they see a knife
32:14
come down and it cracks the egg. And then the grandparent will pull up
32:17
a box of flour a bag of flower over, and the grandchild will pour
32:22
the wand the pour the flower by tilting their wand and it'll pour into the
32:25
bucket. Then it becomes a whisk and then they'll whisk it up and scoop
32:29
it out and put it on a tray, put it in the oven.
32:30
Or I'll go fishing, and Grandpa will see the fish swimming by, and
32:35
Johnny ARSUSI can't really see them. It blurt out, and he moves his
32:38
finger and puts a fish on the hook. And Johnny here, Susie takes
32:42
the wand and pulls it back in the air and catches the fish and pulls
32:45
it out if it does. Are dance and sings a song and teaches something.
32:47
So what you're doing is you're you're having that bond doing stuff together where
32:52
And it's not like Grandma or Grandpa is over there doing their thing on the
32:57
screen and the child sees it related to their screen. They're actually watching each
33:01
other, communicating with each other and using that wand to have some fun and
33:07
kind of move the play along. That's right, and it's designed for I
33:12
mean, our mission is to create the best possible future for kids their families
33:15
in the world through connection, play, and learning. And those three works
33:20
are so important because we polled grandparents for quite some time as I was getting
33:24
this company started in twenty twenty, and what they wanted, we heard it
33:29
get in when they want connection, They want to play with their grandkids,
33:31
and it'd be nice if they'd learn something hotagogically perhaps or something they teach them.
33:37
Now we started this and then we heard from parents once we did some
33:40
testing on this got it out. Parents want those three things, but in
33:44
exactly the reverse order. The first thing they want is learning. They want
33:47
to see that that child is getting ready for school. It's going to be
33:51
ready for kindergarten, is hopefully can spell the name and maybe knows the you
33:54
know, the alphabims and sounds. Next is play and the third ist connection.
34:00
So now it's learning, play and connection. So what we did we
34:04
took this idea and said, okay, we got this wand what could we
34:07
do with the wand to support the parents' needs. So immediately out of the
34:12
box, and the child child takes this wand out holds it in her hand,
34:15
they turn it on and when they push the button, the parent immediately
34:19
sees that child engaged on the spot without any connection, and he set up
34:22
just immediately with the wand learning. I said, well, I know something
34:27
about learning. So here's the question. And for you and listeners, if
34:31
I were to give a child one thing and they were to take this and
34:34
engage with it, and you saw the four year old doing this, you
34:37
would say, oh, that child is learning. What physical thing could I
34:42
put in that child's hand? It will cause you to say, oh,
34:45
definitively that child is learning, and make you feel good about it. Oh
34:49
wow, what would it be? So it'd be And when I say it
34:52
a book. If you give a child a book and they open it and
34:57
they start looking through the pages, and a childish age picture books, you
35:00
know, pictures, words, object association, they're flipping through it. If
35:04
you've looked over if you walk into the house, is a little kid sitting
35:07
down with a book in their lap and they're flipping through it, you want
35:08
to go, child's learning something. Whereas if you see them with a tablet,
35:12
you're going to go hmm, I wonder what they're doing and maybe,
35:15
look, they're good games on tablets, but a book doesn't. It doesn't
35:20
offer the distraction that a tablet has in their screen time limits by the American
35:23
Academy of Pediatrics. So there's a realization that books are really good and physical
35:29
books are on the increase for parents. Jondren's picture books are selling more now
35:32
than they did years ago. The sales are turning up. So back to
35:37
the original question, back to what a parent wants. They want learning,
35:40
play and connection with grandparent. So what we're doing now is we're evolving the
35:45
wand to support the ability to well, here's an analogy. Think of it
35:52
as you know a Nintendo we we okay, think of now a Wei for
35:58
books merged with a leap pad. Oh so handheld device yep, with colored
36:04
ords on it and response to your motion. And when you hold this band
36:07
and you take a book. In fact, if you download software into it,
36:12
we'll have a library software for books. Nowload your favorite book into it.
36:16
You can take that book off your bookshelf if you already own it,
36:21
use your wand and your wall will read the book to the child and let
36:23
them interact with it, just like a LeapPad did, but much more because
36:28
it will respond now not just to the child deep being able to interact with
36:30
it with words and pictures and the games that we did with what I called
36:35
paper Base multimedia, right, but also the one will respond to the child's
36:38
movement. So, for instance, now just with this book, that child
36:44
could be oh, they could be driving a car, and as they move
36:47
their wand like they're driving a car, they'll hear the sounds of the roaring
36:50
engine in the drive. Or they could reach up and grab a seatbelt,
36:53
click and move it down to wand you click down to their side, and
36:57
they'll do the seatbelt, plug it and dip in a paint bucket and they'll
37:01
hear the slashing paint and move it back and forth and paint a doom buppy
37:05
sitting on the moon, and then maybe climb up into a rocket, wave
37:09
it around and hear the rocket tape office they wave it over their head.
37:12
So the canoe Magic Wand is really kind of a gateway to progressing that learning,
37:16
whether it be turning a page, driving a car, counting showing where
37:21
a place is on a map when it comes to somewhere and then you get
37:24
to see more of that country, whether it be Italy or the United States,
37:29
or Canada or Britain. So what families basically would have is like a
37:32
magic wand that could give them unlimited, really different scenarios depending on the book,
37:38
for them to enjoy and share with each other. Love it, That's
37:42
it. It's a magic wand that works with books, works with magazines and
37:45
books. We also have done a partnership with Highlights Magazine. Oh I love
37:49
it. We will be bringing Highlights magazines to life, so hidden pictures.
37:52
I'm looking right now at a hidden picture in a Highlights magazine and issue we've
37:57
done and this will be coming out this fall, by the way, So
37:59
the new Magic wand On will be released supporting books and magazines. This this
38:04
spread is called My first Hidden Pictures on the Moon, beautiful artwork from Highlights,
38:08
and there's a picture of a dog holding a moon rock and uh and
38:13
and a rooster connected to a spaceship floating upside down. We've made this come
38:16
to life of the wand so you do exactly that. You'll paint the dune
38:21
bungy, you'll sip the tea, and you'll you'll throw the baseball into space
38:25
while you're looking at the pictures and then flip over to a story and have
38:29
the story be read to you and uh and listen to it and interact as
38:32
it's reading with pictures and with what you're here. I want our listeners to
38:37
take a look at the website Canoe dot com. That's K I N O
38:39
O dot com and you'll see and I totally see your vision. Now you're
38:44
reading a book. And to give you an example, there there is a
38:46
page there the wipers on the bush go Swiss, Swiss Swish, and it
38:51
shows you this is the movement you would make. So the kids understand.
38:54
The child understands Swiss Whish, Swiss left to right, and they get that,
38:59
they get the movement. They do that and then they go to the
39:00
next one. So it's really really well put together. I got to tell
39:05
you, thank you, thank you Andie so much. It's what you're seeing
39:07
there, by the way, is a precursor to what will be coming out
39:09
this fall. So this this magic wand with the reading capability will be available
39:15
this fall. And right now you can go online and you can down out
39:19
our app on the apps to the iOS app Store and you can connect with
39:22
the grandparent for free up to an hour a month. So that's already working.
39:25
That's available. It's the Canoe app on the on the Apple App Store
39:31
pre iOS device. Yeah wow. But the wand the wands, this this
39:37
capability of the reading wand will be coming out this fall, and we're very
39:40
excited. I mean just it's as they said, it's it's the Wei for
39:45
books meets a leap pad and uh and in a new generation of technology with
39:50
AI coming into it as well. But I'll reserve talking about that until maybe
39:53
we speak later this year. We definitely will definitely and as you said,
39:58
at the fall, we're going to see more of this. But our listeners
40:00
can certainly benefit now by going to new dot com ki Noo dot com and
40:06
get all the info they'd eat there about this. This has got to be
40:08
pretty exciting to see this because especially when you see a child and a grandparent
40:14
communicating and doing doing this type of interaction, that's got to be fulfilling.
40:20
It is it is. I mean, my kids are they're both engaged at
40:22
this point. So I don't have grandkids. They're twenty to thirty. But
40:25
my fingers are crossed. But I'll see you Know what I really like,
40:30
Andy is was when I started the work on the leak pad, I did
40:34
deep dive researchers, I mean fascinating with education. I went to MIT and
40:37
computer science steadily, but studied education as well. And now I'm stepping in
40:43
deep brain science because the discoveries that have been made in the last decade that
40:47
show the visual word form area of the brain and your left hemisphere which is
40:52
always in the same place for everybody, cross cultures, and understanding some of
40:55
the theories we have about learning that are actually evolving because now we can look
41:00
at what's going on in the brain. So this this this interaction, these
41:02
interactions and the learning that we're presenting for reading and more are all brain based.
41:08
So I'd love to say, if you want your kids IQ to climb
41:12
and you want a smart kid, come on back this fall because we're really
41:15
creating some amazing experiences that we are committed to to supporting UH education and reading
41:23
and learning. It's great stuff. We will talk again in the fall.
41:25
Canoe dot com, k I n Oo dot com. Jim I got to
41:30
say it has been a privilege and an honor to speak to you an innovator,
41:34
because I mean, let's face it, you know, my kids have
41:37
used the LeapPad products over the years, and I will say they have learned
41:39
from them and have made them more engaged, and I am just so glad
41:44
it was there. Well, thank you, I really appreciate that, and
41:46
we hope to help another generation of kids realize their best possible future. Thank
41:52
you, sir. We're going to take a break. We'll be back with
41:53
more of tech Talk Radio and back to tech Talk Radio with a lot more
42:00
of us wanting to automate our homes and wanting to have all the greatness that
42:05
technology offers us. You know, we don't want to have security cameras.
42:07
And a recent report that was released. Daniel Marketson from VPN put out an
42:15
article all about how your security camera might be streaming your life online. And
42:20
Adriana's Warmerhoven is a cybersecurity advisor over at nord VPN. It joins us on
42:25
Tech Talk Radio. Adriannas, thank you so much for coming on the show.
42:29
Thank you having me tell us why this is so concerning to many that
42:34
we're seeing more and more people wanting to get cameras in their homes, but
42:37
yet there are some things to think about before they set them up. Well,
42:40
it's mostly a trade off on usability or convenience. Most people want to
42:46
buy something in store and then have a plug and play when they come home,
42:51
and within a couple of minutes there will have some results on the mobile
42:53
phone see in the camera pictures. But the problem is that cameras need to
42:59
do some really broad configurations of your router because everybody's home is different, everybody's
43:04
network is different, so they can only do some really generic configuration, which
43:08
usually means opening up your network and your camera directly to the whole of the
43:13
Internet. Now with that, that means then you have people that could actually
43:17
get into your system. But then we think, okay, you know,
43:21
we're protected. We have passwords that we set up within our home, or
43:23
passwords maybe to access these security cameras. That isn't entirely true. When it
43:30
comes to security, that means it's safe. Correct. Again, this disconvenience
43:35
part. Most of these apps. During the setup, they kind of forego
43:39
the whole past or thing because it gives you a really quicker sense of achievement.
43:45
Just plug it in and immediately see it. There sometimes is an option
43:50
to put on a password later on, but most people never see that option
43:53
because well, they see the camera, are happy and do something else.
43:58
We're talking with Adriana's warm having a cybersecurity advisor at nord VPN based in the
44:02
nevolence with products and services available around the world for your digital identity and passwords,
44:09
and when it comes to the dark web, that can be a scary
44:13
place. But what you will find on the dark web in many cases is
44:17
passwords. People. Even after people have set up passwords, they feel that
44:22
they're safe because maybe they've gone with you know, an eight character, twelve
44:27
character, sixteen and even more password string and the next thing you know,
44:30
their info is out there on the web. Nord VPN and their story that
44:36
Daniel put together actually tell a little bit about one of those sites. Yes,
44:40
although there's actually quite a lot of those sites. And if you look
44:45
at dark web, everything is being sold re sold. In my presentations,
44:49
I usually mention it the criminals use everything but the soul. That means that
44:54
you will be the sected. Your pastors will be sold, your credentials,
45:00
information, your cameras, your pictures, anything that can be solved will be
45:04
packaged and result wholesale, and some people wonder that's why they get the phone
45:09
calls from people doing mortgages and doing everything, especially if they've just gone through
45:15
that, because that's how it's sold. It's the data's bought cheap. For
45:19
our listeners who don't know what nord VPN is, adrianas, can you tell
45:23
us a little bit about the company. Yes, North VPN is a virtual
45:30
private network company. It has more security produces. I'll said something about that
45:36
in a minute, but it started out as doing a virtual private network over
45:39
the Internet. What it means is that from my own computer, I have
45:44
this secured, armored tunnel to one of north VPN servers and from then on
45:50
all the requests to the Internet are being made. So it means that the
45:52
recipient websites or email or whatever I'm doing will only see the addresses of the
46:00
north VPN sites. So if they want to attack that IP address your address
46:06
you need to be on the Internet, they will only attack the North VPN
46:10
servers. And the other benefit for a VPN is if you are at the
46:16
public Wi Fi, nobody can see to which side you are going. Many
46:21
people sometimes say TLS like the web encryption is enough it is, but an
46:25
attacker will still see that you're going to let's say Chase Manhattan Bank, and
46:30
then they can send you fishing mills for that specific bank because that information is
46:36
not encrypted, even if you have an encrypted connection to your bank. So
46:38
a VPN will also protect you from those kinds of attacks. The problem is
46:44
with these cameras is that VPN will not necessarily protect you. But one of
46:50
the other products we have, like the Mesh feature, which means that equipment
46:54
within your own network you can reach from your phone in a secure manner,
47:00
which that on within your NORTHVPN, you don't have to give your camera access
47:04
to the Internet and nobody from the Internet could see it. This is going
47:07
to be very important when it comes to baby monitors. A lot of people
47:09
have been concerned with those and the connections, and we've heard stories and this
47:15
is almost like an ad hoc connection between your smartphone and that device, and
47:20
NORD makes that possible. Yes, that's correct, and this is the Mesh
47:23
feature in the NORTHVPN. You have a North VPN running within your home and
47:30
then whenever you're outside of your home, you just enable the Mesh feature on
47:34
your mobile phone. It makes a secure connection with your home network without opening
47:38
up the network to anybody else. Is it easy for the general user?
47:44
We have listeners that maybe are somewhat into tech. Is it easy for them
47:47
to set up? Absolutely? There's a lot of time spent at North about
47:54
user experience. And also we test this with a lot of our customers and
48:00
get a lot of customer feedback. And that means that just with a few
48:06
clicks you have and enabled it. We take care and not with all the
48:09
defaults, with all the routing, with all the configuration, you don't have
48:14
to be technical at all. Now, would this also be smart? In
48:16
the United States? It's tax season, a lot of people going to be
48:20
filing their taxes, connecting to their banks, getting their W two's and whatnot.
48:25
Is it important to have a VPN on the home so that when they're
48:30
dialing out and they're connecting I said, dialing boy, I'm old school,
48:34
But when they're connecting to somewhere that they have again that NORD VPN handling the
48:40
transmitting of data and receiving of it. Actually yes, not specifically because of
48:45
the encryption and armoring. But now we talked about cameras, but there will
48:52
be a lot more devices in your home, all of these plug and play
48:54
smart home devices that will open up ports or actually gates inside your fireball or
49:00
router to your home network. And if your home address is being exposed to
49:05
anybody who's listening, they can scan your home IP address and they will find
49:08
those holes, so they could come in through your vacuum cleaner, your almost
49:13
vacuum cleaner, or your smart door bell or anything actually that that has some
49:17
connection to the internet. Yeah, we just bought a fridge and it has
49:21
Wi Fi. I don't know why, but it does either way. I
49:24
just say that's just something else story about. Obviously. NordVPN is a great,
49:30
great way to go. How do our listeners get this product? Do
49:32
they just go to NordVPN dot com. Yes, that's all they need and
49:37
everything is being explained there. We have lots of tutorials on there, but
49:40
also some explanations on what the VPN does if you want to just look at
49:45
it in more detail. All the other features like password manage, they're also
49:49
free with the Nord VPN, so you can use those as well. It's
49:52
a comprehensive suite you get together with your VPN package, so you have like
49:55
a security suite for somebody to be able to use. There's even things like
50:00
threat protection where we do it at blocking and tracker checking, so even your
50:07
browser is getting some benefit out of that. A lot of tracking online with
50:12
cookies, we help with that, and there's some rudimentary mulware defense as well,
50:20
So very good. That's great stuff. Arenas, thank you so much
50:24
for coming on the show and telling us a little bit about nord vps and
50:28
some things to think about when we're hooking up those home security cameras trying to
50:31
stay warm there. Will you? Thank you, take care. We'll be
50:36
back with more of tech Talk Radio, and now back to tech talk Radio.
50:39
Hey, this is Detrich Bader for Batman and you're listening to TIK Talk
50:43
Radio. I can't remember my password all right, Well, it is the
50:46
same password you have for all your stuff. Then she made me change it.
50:51
Why would you do that? I heard you that you have to change
50:52
it every three hours. Then I had to change it again because it wanted
50:57
a capital letter, and then again because it wanted an Then it called me
51:00
a week and I just walked away. Welcome back to tech Talk Radio.
51:07
I am Andy Taylor. I want to thank you for tuning into the show.
51:10
As a reminder, you can check us out at tech talk radio dot
51:15
com. You can also sign up for our speaker and subscribe to that Absolutely
51:19
free Zing goes with iTunes. You find us on iTunes and of course Google
51:22
Play as well. Sign up, subscribe and never miss a show. Got
51:27
some great things gonna be coming up. One of the fun things that we
51:30
like to do on the show is find a website of the week, a
51:32
website that is a little different. Sometimes it's tech, sometimes it's entertainment.
51:37
Sometimes it's just playing goofiness. And I have a feeling that today's runs under
51:44
the guise of being a little goofy. It had me chuckling. It's a
51:49
site that has been put together by the folks over at Studio Moniker Now.
51:53
You'll find them at Studio Moniker that's m O N i k e r.
52:00
Now. They're an Amsterdam based interactive design company. And what they've done they've
52:06
put together this pointer pointer site. It's an experiment and pointer retrieval. So
52:12
imagine you have a photo and in the photo somebody is pointing for some reason,
52:17
you come up to you go to their site, you come up to
52:20
a black screen and you just move your your pointer, your mouse pointer,
52:23
and just leave your cursor there. It will come up with a photo in
52:28
its database of photos that specifically ties to that pointer to somebody pointing at you
52:34
or at the screen. It's kind of goofy again. That's all it is.
52:38
Just move your pointer, leave it there. It finds the pointer,
52:43
finds the location, and it will tie that finger whoever's pointing to your mouse
52:50
cursor. And it sounds silly, but you got to check it out for
52:52
yourself pointer pointer dot com. That's it for this week's show. Next week
52:55
we'll have some special guests. We'll talk more about Outlet and some other cool
53:00
things when it comes to technology. If you have a question for us,
53:04
please feel free to reach out to us. You can send an email tech
53:07
Guys at tech talk radio dot com. You can also visit our website visit
53:12
the contact page and send us your question or comment as well. We may
53:16
even read it on the air in the meantime. Have yourselves a great week
53:21
for tech Talk Radio. I'm Andy Taylor. Thanks for tuning in.