Chrome is getting experimental AI features – including writing assistance. The tab organizer and generative AI wallpapers features are available now (as of Jan. 28). The writing assistant is not (yet)
In this mini-podcast, guest co-host Jared Kuroiwa and I bought lunch from Drip Studio HNL in downtown Honolulu before kicking off the podcast.
Todd Ogasawara and Jared Kuroiwa
Jared demoed what seemed like every augmented, virtual, and audio smart glasses except the Apple Vision Pro. We discussed the pros and cons of these much more affordable smart glasses (compared to the Vision Pro).
Jon Westfall and I are joined by frequent guest panelists Steve Hughes (who joins us at about the 18 minute mark) and Don Sorcinelli to discuss some of the product announcements made during CES 2024.
We discuss a very few items we might actually consider buying, a number of items that are interesting but not in our buy-list, and some products that are interesting but puzzling.
Bio-medical engineer Steve also surfaced three intriguing assistive products:
Todd Ogasawara and Jon Westfall are joined by frequent guest panelist Sven Johannsen for this podcast. They discuss whether consumers (like them) will pay for “pro” LLM/GenAI tools. They also discuss the Zeiss Holocam that turns any glass window into a camera. Sven highlighted a report about Calendar Spam. They spend most of the rest of the podcast discussing water bottles and bags for techies.
Richchip Bluetooth microphone (top) and Richchip wireless lavalier microphone pair with USB-C receiver (bottom)
For this recorded-in-person podcast, I was joined by Paul Lawler at the Heavenly Island Lifestyle restaurant in East Honolulu where he had the Bibimbap plate and I had a Chicken Katsu plate for lunch.
The main purpose of this mini-podcast was to field test three microphones in a busy noisy restaurant
We used:
An iPhone 15 Pro Max built-in microphone
Richchip Bluetooth wireless microphone connected to an iPhone 15 Pro Max. This is a single microphone designed to be used as a lavalier clipped to a collar. However, for this test, I placed the mic in between us with an 18 to 24 inch distance from the mic to each of us.
Nearstream AWM10T wireless lavalier pair of microphones connected to a Google Pixel 7a. In prior tests, I found that Nearstream recordings were nearly inaudible when using an iPhone. However, it produced acceptable audio volume when used with an Android phone. Each mic was clipped to a shirt collar roughly 6 to 7 inches from the speaker’s mouth.
All three audio files were processed by Adobe Podcast Enhance (a cloud based service). Generally speaking, my opinion is that the best post-processed audio came from the Nearstream lav mic pair. In all cases, my speech had the most audio aliasing artifacts while Paul’s speech sounded much better than mine. I suspect it has something to do with our respective “timbre”.
Our actual discussions were mostly about Paul’s recent 3D printing efforts and aspects of Adobe Podcast Enhance and Adobe Podcast Studio beta.
Paul Lawler’s 3D printed dragon with articulated jointsBibimbap plate. Heavenly Island Lifestyle restaurantChicken Katsu plate. Heavenly Island Lifestyle restaurant
