Welcome to Between the Bytes! I’m Gary Arnold.
Arash?
“I can do this on my own he doesn’t need me they don’t need me I am Between the Bytes.
Welcome to Between the Bytes. I’m Gary Arnold, and I’m Arash, no wait I’m Sandra Smith.
Sorry, are you getting a teleprompter? Yeah, we got to get one of those.
Thanks for joining today. Who needs Arash anyway? Today on Between the Bytes we’ll be talking about some news from Facebook a little bit of progress in a Tesla world and we also have an announcement from Microsoft and some local news about a ski resort.
Business & Tech News
So Monday was the Eclipse and no apocalypse happened. The world did not end. But it was fantastic. I was up in Idaho and I saw the total eclipse and it’s something surreal to be honest. It was amazing, stars come out of here you could see some planets, everything kind of got hazy and it was it was fantastic. That’s awesome. Yeah, we even took some pictures here at the office of us trying to see it. We didn’t get totality here at the office but still pretty cool to see. Any time that you get a chance to see the Eclipse, I highly recommend it. I think the next one is supposed to be in April in 2024 somewhere in Texas.
Google just announced their latest version of Android and they’re calling it Android Oreo. I hope you brought your appetite. Google is known for releasing Android updates that are food-related. We’ve had KitKat in the past and you know different pies different things like that. It’s going to be available on Android devices in the coming months if you have a pixel it is actually already available. Some of the new features include better notifications it has better battery life it’ll help conserve battery a little better. There’s also some features with the apps that you can pin and things like that. So this is a great update to Android.
For Facebook users, there is a safety feature in Facebook that during a natural disaster or any sort of emergency you can check in with your family and friends that’s been available randomly. Intermittently depending on the event. But now it is built into the Android and iOS app so you if there’s any disasters that happen make sure that you check out your Facebook app and check in and let your family and friends know that you’re OK.
Microsoft has been working behind the scenes for the past couple of years on a voice recognition software designed to transcribe voices into written text when it was officially released it it did fine but it was not as good as human transcribers well they recently surpassed some expert transcribers this Microsoft artificial intelligence which we like to talk about here on the show is now has now an error rate of less than six point three percent when transcribing human voice it’s going to become a great tool I think for a variety of circumstances and we’ll probably see it integrated into Cortana and other Microsoft apps in the years to come great improvement so
On some other news, we have Tesla being the number four car maker in the world, number one in the U.S. In 2013 they started around $3.9 billion when they launched their Model S, they are now valued at over $58.7 billion. So now in value, they are ahead of GM and Ford. That’s despite shipping far fewer cars. The market just loves Tesla.
Finally, with some local news, the Deer Valley Resort is in process of being acquired by a venture capital group. There’s a group, and I need to read this because there’s quite a few of them; KSL Capital, Henry Crown and Company, Interests Resort Holdings, Mammoth Resorts and Squaw Valley Ski Holdings are all coming together to purchase Deer Valley resorts and to bring it in part of their other resorts. These resort companies hold a hold over a dozen different mountain resorts across the states. They don’t anticipate being there being a lot of changes to how the resort runs and things like that it will just be a different change. They’ll try to make them all year round yeah a four season resort. If you have bought season passes at Deer Valley already they are still valid. This acquisition is anticipated to take place before the 2017 the winter season
We’re headed off to our product insider and featured guest. We want to let you know that this week is going to be a little special. We have a special guest, a friend of ours here at Executech who is an expert in some specialized equipment and so we’ll be demoing that along with our interview. Stay tuned it’s going to be really awesome
Featured Guest & Product Insider
BtB: Welcome to this week’s Featured Guest on Between the Bytes. We have a special guest with us Kerry Brown. How are you doing Kerry?
Brown: Good, good.
BtB: Kerry we wanted to ask you a little bit about what you do at Executech. We understand it’s a fairly technical, you’re known as one of the smart guys on the block. Tell us a little bit more about what you do here.
Brown: Well I think I get pulled into the really hard stuff. Yeah and some of the guys reach out to me to get help with problems they’re having. I do a lot of networking stuff at the enterprise level.
BtB: What is a trend you’re seeing? Is there a frequent problem you’re seeing and is there something businesses could do to either prevent it or easily fix it?
Brown: Design your networks properly. I’m not sure where in the organization, but when designing your network a lot of people tend to overdo it and that causes more problems down the line. In the future when you need to say add another building, add some more space, a lot of times that requires us to go through and redo pretty much everything you had there. We redo IP addresses and things like that so keeping it simple. Keeping it simple and planning for the future. That’s great advice for anything.
BtB; Kerry we like to ask what are some books or podcasts, movies are you into right now?
Brown: I am currently playing a Zither.
BtB: What is that?
Brown: It’s a lap harp. I’ve been experimenting with that. I like weird instruments and that.
BtB: Well we’re going to have to have you back for talent show. The last thing as one of our special guests we understand that you have a pretty interesting hobby.
Brown: Yeah
BtB: We’d like to go and have you demonstrate that hobby. You’re quite a drone fanatic?
Brown: Yes
BtB: Okay so we’re going to go outside and we’re going to check out some of your drones. We appreciate you have you.
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BtB: So talk to us a little bit about what we’re looking at here.
Brown: Yeah so when I fly the I’ll crow us a gopro session 5. I use these goggles to fly with. I can see what the second camera which is this is the actual camera.
BtB: Tell us a little bit about the flying specs of your drone, speed, length, height, all that.
Brown: So by law, we’re only allowed to fly to 400 feet. With this receiver I can probably go out about 1,000 feet. The top speed goes to 75 miles an hour with just this configuration so they go a lot faster than that.
BtB: Are you also a racer?
Brown: Yes
BtB: Are you considered a professional racer?
Brown: I don’t know about that:
BtB: Where does one go to watch races?
Brown: There are some in Utah that’s by the airport you can the racetrack in Springville. So it’s just getting involved with those groups on Facebook and figuring out when they’re going.
BtB: Awesome. All right let’s let’s check out these things in flight!
Tech Tip
Wow and we’re back at the studio. It’s a nice studio.
Our tech tip of the week is to look up the saved passwords that you saved in Google Chrome. You probably know that Chrome will automatically offer to save your passwords and you can save them. But did you know that you can go back and look at those passwords if you need to share them, change them whatever. You can visit the settings tab in your Chrome browser and as you look under the advanced features there’s an option to manage passwords. There you can look at all the passwords you’ve saved over time and you can look and see the passwords that you’ve saved. It will prompt you to type in your computer password for security which is a nice feature.. Once you type that in you’ll be able to see passwords and use them as you need.
Thank you for hosting with me today Sandra. It was great, thank you. Don’t forget to Like and subscribe and let us know if there’s more features you’d like to have us cover and on upcoming episodes we’ll catch you next week.
