Yes, “virtual” is a thing and it is getting closer to reality, especially with local Minnesota startups like Chuck Olsen‘s Visual. We talk about virtual reality, and a lot more, on this week’s show.
Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.
Music: Down Around Bull Creek by Walker Winn under a Creative Commons License
The Podcast
Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:03:12 — 36.9MB)
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS | More
Story Links
Past Week’s Top MN Stories
- Code42 lays off 30 workers; ‘Let’s get the wrong people off the bus,’ CEO says
- Virtual reality becoming a reality in business, entertainment and the arts
- Local businesses match Amazon’s prices via Web tool
- St. Paul’s Tech Dump gives ex-cons a new lease, through work
- Tech Entrepreneur Tames the Warranty Wild With Upsie App
- Best Buy announces Thanksgiving Day, Black Friday doorbusters
- Defrag Conference Recap by Graeme
- #defragcon Twitter search
- Aaron Fulkerson’s MindTouch and Aaron’s slide deck (Graeme: good stuff starts about slide 18 on self-service content and “outside-in content”)
- Dell Cloud Manager (Enstratius)
- About Ramez Naam & his bio
Other Top Tech Stories
- Apple:
- TAG Heuer, Google Release First Swiss Luxury Smartwatch
- Alibaba’s Singles Day Blowout Racks Up $5B in Sales in First 90 Minutes
- Study: Retailers Are Ignoring More Than 80% Of Customers’ Social Media Requests
- Gmail Will Soon Warn Users When Emails Arrive Over Unencrypted Connections
- Bluetooth Technology to Gain Longer Range, Faster Speed, and Mesh Networking in 2016 (Bluetooth SIG focuses 2016 technology roadmap on enhancements for IoT)
Steve’s Security Tip of the Week
- TIP: Never, ever connect devices to the internet with their default security settings!
Cool Thing of the Week
- Phil: QuizChat from BuzzFeed
- Tim: Turn Any Watch Into a Smartwatch With the Chronos Disc
- Graeme: Boosted Boards: The world’s most advanced electric skateboards
- Steve: Waterfox Project
Upcoming Events
- MobCon 2015, Nov 17-18th
- Club E Duluth (first one!), “Drone Technology: The Future Is Now” Kitchi Gammi Club, November 17th
- MHTA Tekne Awards, Nov 18th
- Techopolis 2015, November 19th, The DOJO Group
- Mobile Twin Cities event: IoT for the Holidays, Dec. 1st, 6pm, BuzzFeed Office
- MinneAnalytics does Marketing Analytics – again! (MAMA2), January 22nd
We jokingly tweeted and mentioned earlier this week that we’d invited the Pope to be on this week’s podcast now that he was in the United States, but unfortunately his spokesperson said he had politely declined. We got a bunch of retweets, emails and mentions from listeners and now wish we’d actually asked! (Thankfully Phil was on a White House tour so he could photobomb the President and Pope).
We cover the top Minnesota and other tech stories this week, but are particularly pleased to have as our guest Justin Grammens to talkabout the upcoming Internet of Things Hackday (
Performance anxiety, or fear of being in front of people and especially on-stage, can be crippling. It happens so often it even has a name we all know: stagefright.
Android ‘Stagefright’ Exploit
TIP: If you use 
Once again, Steve’s selection of music finds Phil and Tim a bit bemused and it reminds Phil of the claymation shorts and films starring Wallace & Gromit (
Amazon.com is 
Turns out this past week there was a 
While Phil and Steve await their Apple Watches, Graeme already has his and loves his Mickey Mouse face. Um wait…did Disney get a new Mickey?
We recorded this show at Minnebar, a 1,000+ strong attended technology event held at the headquarters of Best Buy. Yep…we talk about the Apple Watch which, unfortunately, will cause Graeme to ditch his trusty 1978 vintage Timex. 😉