January 29, 2021 • 46 mins
How can a company that makes thermostats be worth $3.2 billion? We look at Nest Labs and how it may fit into Google's future.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to tex Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio and
I love all things tech, and today it is time
for a classic episode of tech Stuff. This episode originally
(00:25):
published way back on January twenty second, two thousand and fourteen.
It is titled text Stuff builds a Nest Enjoy. So
we're gonna talk today about the Nest Labs company and
UH and the products they make. And I, like Lauren
was saying, Google has made a really incredible move in
(00:46):
offering to purchase Nest for a what some might call
a ridiculous sum of money. I think that three point
two billion accounts as pretty ridiculous. I mean, I mean,
it's a company that makes two things so far, yes,
and it's only existed since so and they've only been
having stuff that they could sell since So anyway, let's
(01:08):
let's talk about this. If you had told me ten
years ago that I'd be sitting down and talking into
a microphone to record a show about a company that's
big product is a thermostat first, I would say who
are you and why are you? In this consulting firm
because that's where I was ten years ago. But moreover,
I just said no, I wouldn't. Who who would want
(01:30):
to listen to that? Well, okay, there has been a
lot of buzz about Nest over the past couple of
years that it has existed because they make these these
smart devices, smart thermostats and smart smoke detector carbon monoxide exactly, um.
And and you know, with the Internet of Things becoming
more of a real thing, people have been excited about.
(01:51):
This is one of the leading companies that's creating the
kind of hardware that you can use to to make
your home and Internet of things. Yeah, and also the
design aesthetic right, gorgeous it is and and and it
works with your smartphone and that's all terrific. And I
did want to mention that for the record, thermostats are
kind of a big business. There's some ten million sold
(02:12):
in the US every year, and they control some half
of the energy used in US homes, right, so this
is not insignificant. Yeah, if you talk, if you look
at your energy bill and you divide it by two,
that amount of money is going straight to your system. Yeah.
So if you are able to make an impact on that.
(02:34):
It will reflect in the amount of money you have
to spend on energy bills, particularly if you live in
a place where you have a fairly extreme climate, so
that you're HVA system has to work extra hard to
make sure your living space is a comfortable one. And uh.
And in fact, what this all comes back to a
guy named Tony Fidel, who once upon a time worked
(02:56):
for a little company called Apple. Yeah, by work, do
we mean it? He kind of led the iPod and
kind of that the iPhone teams for a while, for
multiple generations for iPod and I think three generations of
iPhone he was overseeing that. He was senior vice president
of those departments. And uh. And so yeah, we're talking
about someone who definitely knew about designing for a particular aesthetic, uh,
(03:21):
and to create something that is attractive for consumers. Because
it's easy for us to forget this and I know
we say it on tech stuff all the time, so
maybe it's not easy for you to forget because we
say it so frequently. But before the iPod, you know,
MP three players existed, there were, but no one had
really designed one that really cut the public's attention like
(03:44):
there were there was no one that was a dominant
player at the time, and then the iPods design really
started to kind of dominate to the point where you
started seeing other companies designs look more iPod ish. Not
to Ryan Stirrup any patent, you know, wars again, but
but people realized that. I mean, previous to that, I
(04:07):
think that most MP three players looked like they were functional, Yeah,
like bricks. I had one. I mean I had one
that I loved because it was probably about the price
of an iPod, but it had twice the capacity. But
it looked like a brick and it felt like one too.
It was heavy. But the uh, you know, and the
iPhone another great example. We've talked about that before too,
(04:29):
about how in the United States smartphones were pretty much
the realm of executives, right like BlackBerry was king in
the US. Now in Europe and in Japan that was
a different story, but not here in the US. It
wasn't until the iPhone came out that you started seeing
the consumer market move toward it. So this is a
guy who was right there on the forefront. He knew
a thing or two about, you know, making sure you
(04:51):
had an attractive product. But that's not exactly what got
him excited about this. First of all, he retired. He
retired in two thousand eight from Bowl. He was he
was like, okay, I have made my mark. I I
have helped bring to really influential products to the market.
I may rest, but apparently things just weren't always you know,
(05:14):
the most comfortable temperature at the Fidel house. Maybe he
just got up to change the thermostat one too many times,
and he started thinking about this fact, the fact that
half of your energy is spent controlling the climate of
your home, and that, according to at least some study
that he was aware of, because it's in a blog
post on the Nest web page, that the average person
(05:39):
adjusts his or her thermostat hundred times a year, and
so and and and Furthermore, he was, you know, he
was trying to update his home to he he was like,
we've got these gorgeous products for our music and for communication.
Why can't we have that kind of thing for everything?
Why does why does this control for my climate? Where
(06:03):
apparently I'm getting up to do it multiple times a day,
Because if it's times a year, that's you know, that's
a bunch. Why is it so boxy and ugly, and
because the almost thermostats not really aesthetically pleasing, they're they're functional, right,
So that's why Yeah. Yeah, According to another guy that
we're going to be talking about in just a couple
of seconds, the design, the basic design on thermostats has
(06:25):
not really changed since the nineties. Yeah. You either have
the digital kind or you have the old kind that
has sort of a coiled thermometer in it. If you
want to know more, you can actually go back. We
did a tech Stuff episode about how thermostats work back
in the day where we talk about the actual the
actual mechanics of a thermostat, both the I think we
(06:45):
mainly focused on the old, the old mercury switch kind,
but there are various other types as well. Um. And
another thing that Fiddel was thinking about was the fact
that he, you know, we we live in the incredible future.
Why can't I control my thermostat from my smart phone? Right?
And and and there were some products out there that
would let you do that, but they cost like five
dollars a unit, right, And you had to you know,
(07:08):
you you essentially had to go to some sort of
home automation specialist and then have that installed forum then
why are why are these things in for you? It
wasn't like something where you could go to a warehouse
in or or is some major store Hony People or
Lows or something like that and say show me where
the automated or the remote thermostats are, because it was
(07:31):
all packages that you had to go through contractors to get,
so not the not the most accessible, certainly. And he
also realized that we were getting to a point as
far as computer software is concerned, where you could create
very sophisticated algorithms that could have quote unquote learning behavior right,
they could start to recognize patterns and then respond to
(07:53):
those patterns in a predetermined way. So the big example
that we would have with nest is that if no
one's in the house, there's no need to have the
heat cranked up or the a C cranked up to
keep the house at the regular comfortable temperature. And if
you know when people are coming home, all right, if
it notices that you come home at six thirty every night,
(08:15):
then it can start working the house towards that temperature
whenever it needs to in order to have it ready
for you to get home. Yeah, so when you walk
through the door. It feels as if your house has
stayed that temperature all day long, whereas the reality is
between the hours of whatever and whatever, it was not
you know, either the system wasn't working at all, or
(08:35):
it wasn't working nearly at full capacity, it was working
enough so that it wouldn't take too much work to Yeah, yeah,
you don't want to. I mean, obviously you don't want
to shut everything down. Like if it's if it's the
the what was what do they call it the polar vortex?
When uh, it was when I was at ce S,
so I missed it. I wasn't here in Atlanta, and
that's what they called it. Nine degrees here. There's some
(08:56):
kind of science about it that I think that we
have actually written and stuff about on how stuff works
at this point, but I have no idea. I just
saw tweets that said polar vort text. I was like,
I don't know what it is it the day after
tomorrow back in Atlanta, I don't know nine degrees it
was basically yeah, in that case, you wouldn't want the
house to get all the way down to you know,
below freezing obviously not. But but at the same time,
(09:19):
you wouldn't want it to be at you know, seventy
five degrees because you'd be using a lot of energy
while you're not actually there. So it needed he solve
the problem. It was an engineering problem. You had to
build a device that could monitor the temperature, keep it
within a certain range, and then be flexible enough so
that that range changes based upon the parameters that are present.
(09:41):
And also if you happen to like it warm in
the morning but cold at night, then if you had
a thermostat that could learn these patterns, it could start
to anticipate it and change them for you proactively, so
you don't have to be the one to go up
there and say like, oh, you know, I like it
cold when I go to bed, but when I wake up,
it's it's my body temperature so low. I need to
(10:01):
get my temperature up. I needed to be warmer. So
this was a great opportunity he saw. So he ended
up contacting a couple of other folks and working on
an idea for a learning thermostat. Yeah, and these were
mostly other ex Apple folks or perhaps folks that were
maybe at the time still working for Apple. Exactly the
(10:23):
date lines of these there's certainly ex Apple folks now yes, um,
and and one of them, Mr Matt Rogers, he would
wind up co founding this company, Nest with yep. So
twenty ten is when Nest Labs officially forms May specifically,
and they their strategy was to be kind of quiet
(10:47):
about what they were doing. They didn't talk about their products,
I didn't talk about their lines of research really, and
so it kind of took the world by surprise when
in October of twenty eleven, Fidel essentially announces, Hey, here's
this thing we've been working on. Is this little, round,
gorgeous looking device. It's actually a thermostat and it's smart
(11:08):
and it can connect to WiFi and you can adjust
it with your phone and it learns what you like.
And people were just thinking, you are saying too many things,
Mr man, I don't know what you're what's going on.
I think that they owe so much of their um
just general corporate feel from Apple. Uh. You know. Matt
Rogers strikes me as kind of an Apple fanboy who
(11:28):
who became eventually one of the iPod software developers there. Um.
But he has said that his first computer, when he
was like three years old, was a Macintosh Plus and that, um,
a lot of the you know, design, sensibility and just
just concepts of how to run a business are definitely
deeply owed to Apple in general and Steve Jobs very
particularly sure, and you can certainly see elements of that
(11:52):
when you look at both the company and its products.
So Fidel wrote a blog post that when up on
the Nest website October and kind of explained why a
thermostat because that was you know that you had two
big reactions from people when this was first announced. People
would say, uh huh, like what, what's what's your game?
(12:15):
Why would you even do this? And the other were
like where when and where can I buy one of these?
Because it looks beautiful? And I mean, I remember when
this came out because I remember, you know, I was
a big fan of shows like c Nets Buzz Out Loud,
and I remember people like Tom Merritt and Molly would going, uh,
you know, kind of bonkers over this thing. They were
they were like this, yeah, and at the same time
(12:37):
when I started looking into it and my gosh, I
kind of want one of those two. Well, he in
that blog post laid out what it was they wanted.
The thermostat to be able to do. He said he
wanted to design the thermostat to learn your preferred temperature
and schedule since when you left the house or when
you came home, to give you tips and feedback on
your energy use. To be able to connect to WiFi
(12:59):
so you can control it from anywhere, for it to
look beautiful, and for you to feel proud to actually
be an owner of it, which it's very Steve jobs
ish kind of thing, right right, and also to have
a positive impact on the world. And you know, I
honestly think based upon the work that this company has done,
they're being they're being sincere about that. It's not that
(13:21):
you know, it's obviously it's a business, but it's not
something where I don't think that's just lip service, like
let's make the world a better place. I haven't heard
any numbers from outside sources, but according to the company
UM as of as of only February, they had already
helped energy efficiency to the tune of saving like two
million kill a lot hours of energy. So I'm like
(13:44):
twenty nine million dollars worth and in US, yeah, convergion,
so you're saving money and you're also by by taking
down some of that demand, we don't have to produce
as much energy and we're not wasting it on on
heating an empty house, or we're not burned, we're not
burning even more coal or or using up more natural
gas or whatever it happens to be that has provided
(14:06):
the heat and or a c for those homes. And um,
it's interesting. They started taking pre orders for the Nest thermostat,
and I think that was at a price point of two,
which I believe is what still is today. Two, So
you know, not a small amount of money for something
like that, but still cheaper than any I mean by half,
(14:27):
cheaper than any relatively similar products in the market. Yeah. Yeah,
and also it would ultimately save you money, assuming that
you're using it properly. So at any rate, pre orders
pre orders within three days of of them talking about this,
that within that blog post going up, they had sold
out of all of their stock that they had planned
(14:48):
on producing in the short term. So after three days
of the store being opened, they shut it. They closed
the store after three days with the explanation of guys,
this had way more of a demand than we had anticipated.
We knew that we had something potentially big on our hands.
We didn't know that all of you would agree with us.
And so they closed the store and they started working
(15:10):
very hard on meeting the demands of the initial pre
orders as well as figuring out how were they going
to meet the expanded demand. And it wouldn't be until
uh later in UH I think it was March two
thousand and twelve. So they shut the store down November
two thleven. It's not until March two thousand twelve that
(15:30):
they're able to open the store back up again. I'm
sure that most of that time was devoted to um
to investment related issues and sure and maybe like uh
streamlining manufacturing process and he's getting the supply chain in order,
you know, lots of stuff that the background stuff. Yeah,
that's not terribly exciting to talk about. It's pretty important.
It turns out that that's a big deal. We'll be
(15:53):
back with more about tech stuff explaining how Nest works
after this quick break. So, starting in May two twelve,
the Nest Thermostat became available in other places besides their
online store. You could get it at Lowe's Hardware stores.
(16:14):
By June, you can get it on Amazon. By a
little bit later in the year. I think of by
October that year you could get it best Buy. You
can't even get it at the Apple online store. Yeah,
so you know, that's obviously the relation. And I don't know,
I'll be right now, I don't know if that's going
to be be the same now that Google has is
acquiring Nest. Yeah, that's a con question. They have affirmed
(16:36):
that they are going to um continue supporting I I
O S product exactly. Yeah. It's not gonna be like
suddenly your iPhone is unable to adjust the temperature of
your home, right that would be that would be a
pretty ridiculously poor business decision. And I think I think
the Google and Apple have both learned their lesson on
that kind of I mean, you even had for a while,
you had one person, like you had the CEO of
(16:56):
Google sitting on the board of directors of Apple for
a while, that was Eric Schmidt. That that didn't last forever.
He did a step down for the board of directors eventually.
But the relationship between Google and Apple is not always contentious,
even though they are direct competitors, at least in the
mobile space and arguably in the computer space. But I
don't think chromebooks are really that big of a competitor
(17:17):
against at any rate. Yeah, at any rate. Getting back
to Nest, So by October, remember this is just one year,
not even a full year since they had announced it,
because they they announced it late in October two eleven.
But in October twelve, the second generation of Nest Thermostat
debuted and um, this one was you know, a little
(17:40):
sexy er, even it was thinner. So they were able
to miniaturize some of the components make it even more compact,
which is kind of astounding because they even increased the
capabilities of the second generation. So the first generation worked
with oh, I don't know, it was something like fIF
HVAC systems out there, and you had to check to
(18:01):
make sure before you know, they stressed check to make
sure that the one that you have, the system you
have is uh is compatible with the system UH. Well,
they were able to open that up to a much
larger percentage of the market. They also were able to
create a device that could work with uh H VAC
(18:23):
systems that had two different capacities for cooling down your house,
so some of them would work at a percent sometime
and then knock it down to for just maintaining a temperature,
or if it didn't need to, like if you're getting
starting to approach the temperature, then they might might power
down a little bit, but not turn all the way off. Well,
(18:43):
those systems have two dedicated wires for that. There's one
dedicated for there's one decadent, and the original Nest did
not have the capability. Yeah, you couldn't. It didn't have
a place to plug both of those in the second
Nest did, so you could do that. It also works
with multi stage heating systems. That works with systems that
have humidifiers or de humidifiers, and and across all energy modes.
(19:06):
I mean if you've got gas or propane or electricity
or etcetera. Yeah, So, so it definitely opened up the
market a lot wider than the initial Nest did. And
again it was smaller too, so um or at least
it was thinner, it didn't project out as far from
the wall. So yeah. They say that three out of
(19:28):
four of their Nest customers opt to install it themselves
and that it can be installed within thirty minutes. They
also have the Nest Concierge service, so if you feel
like you are one of those one of who would
likely electrocute him or herself were you to attempt to
install it, such as, I don't know yours truly, uh,
(19:50):
not that I haven't nest, but if I did, I
would totally. I'm tech savvy, which means I also know
it can kill me. Um. But yeah, you can actually
opt for an additional fee to have someone come out
and help you. So then made two thousand thirteen, Nest
made its first acquisition. It was a company called my Energy,
(20:13):
which specifically builds products that let users track energy usage
and savings. So the idea is by getting some more
analytic data and some more collective uh products, they can
make the Nest even more effective and make products further
down the line that are able to incorporate some of
this analysis so that you get an even more granular
(20:35):
idea of what's going on and how you can save energy. Now,
as we've seen in the past, there's a huge market
for stuff that collects data and then analyzes it and
presents it to you in an understandable way. Oh sure,
and and basically any time that you allow these days, um,
you know, nerds, which are most of us. Let's be
(20:56):
honest and um to to min max their surroundings. You're
going to yeah, fitness trackers perfect example, right, being able
to sit there and say, like, now I'm able to
attract every single calorie that I intake and burn. I
don't mean to make you check your force while you're
doing that, but it's a little bit over a thousand today,
I'm gonna work out. Okay, that's good. So yeah, I don't.
(21:17):
I'm not wearing any of my accouchramal today, not even
my pebble. I feel a little lost without it, to
be honest. But anyway, so clearly there's a market there,
so it makes sense to bring that in and incorporate
that in the Nest family. But then, uh, you know,
we get over. Towards the end of two thirteen, they
also introduced a brand new product, and that's the Nest Protect.
(21:41):
That's their smoke detector and carbon monoxide detector. Now, this
was obviously a departure and some people again we're thinking,
why why would you would I need one of those
to be smart? Doesn't the thing on the ceiling that
beeps do just as well. But this one, again is
WiFi enabled. It can can neck to an app so
(22:01):
that that way you can get an alert on your
phone if your smoke detector goes off, which obviously could
be you know that could be monumentally important. Oh sure,
sure it can. It will wirelessly connect to other smoke
detectors in your house, so that if, for example, there's
a fire in the kitchen, then all of them when
they go off, can say, hey, there's a fire in
the kitchen. Right, it can specifically tell you where the
(22:23):
alarm was triggered. A lot of smoke detector systems are
wired together so that if one alarm is triggered trip
they all they all beat, but they don't tell you
which one it was that was set off. Right, So
you have the information that you need in order to
get out, but you might not have the information you
need to maybe to get out very safely, or or
(22:43):
to or to actually diffuse a situation before it gets
you know, unmanageable, because it may be that there's something
smoking that you can actually take care of and minimize
the damage. But if you don't know where in the
house that's singing place, obviously the most important thing for
you to do is to get out safely, right clearly.
So this would give you more information about that, and also,
(23:03):
of course the carbon monoxide monitor, which is also very important. UM.
It also will work wirelessly with Nest thermostats, so if
the carbon monoxide A sensor picks up a concentration, it'll
send a message to the Nest thermostat to say, hey,
shut off the furnace because we have a leak somewhere
or something's going on. Yeah, yeah, I really need stuff.
(23:26):
And um these are less expensive than the Nest thermostats.
The thermostats are two fifty. The smoke detectors are about
I think one thirty to one fifty. As I recall,
I didn't write it down in front of me, but
I know it's right in that range because I was
actually looking at it to um possibly replace my smoke detectors.
But if I do that, I will have to buy
five of them because I have five smoke detectors in
(23:48):
my house. Anyone who follows me on Twitter saw that
that terrible day when I got home and one of
them was chirping, and the way my house is laid out,
I could not tell which one it was, so I
had to go out and get new batteries for all
of my smoke detectors, but you should do anyway, but well, yeah, yeah,
but this would actually tell me what's going on. Also,
it's designed to be very uh, very careful with power
(24:12):
consumption and and the and it even says you wouldn't
have to replace the batteries every single year, but it
would give you an alert when it has to. In fact,
it would send you a message on your phone so
that you wouldn't have to sit there and listen to
that chirp forever trying to figure out right. And if
you're away from your house and you get that message,
then you actually have the opportunity to go and buy
a battery before you get back and realize that you
(24:34):
need to go back out again. So very clever and
uh yeah, it's it looks like it's a pretty neat product.
You do have to replace it every seven years or
so because the detectors will eventually wear out. It's a
chemical based thing, I specifically the carbon monoxide sensors in particular,
and that's that's that's typical. By the way, if you
think that that's unusual, no, that's not unusual. For carbon
(24:56):
monoxide detectors. You do have to replace those regularly because
the sensors do wear out over time. UM, smoke detectors
didn't last a little bit longer, but carbon monoxide and
I think it's still recommended to replace your your smoke
detectors once every ten years or so. Yeah, I'm I
don't have the number in front of me, but I
feel like UM. And all of these devices, by the way,
(25:18):
do have activity detection like like motion and light sensors
on them so that they know when you're coming to
and fro rooms, so that they can all link up
and decide, you know, figure out when someone is in
there and whether or not they need to be activated
for for the for the thermstat's sake, although the carbon
monoxide and smoke detectors work together with the thermstats to
(25:39):
help them cover more area. And they also have lights
in them and will light up if you want them to,
so that when you you can set it so like
if it's in bedroom mode, it won't do that. So
if it detects motion, it won't light up and wake
you up, But if it's in a hallway and you
walk out, it will end up acting like a little
night light, which I thought was kind of cute too.
And and the light changes color and we'll give you
(26:00):
a warning. This is probably the thing I like the
most about the smoke detector. So let's say it starts
detecting a little bit of smoke and it's not enough
for it to trigger a full warning yet, but it
wants to alert you to this fact. It will give
you an actual human voice, uh warning saying that there
is detecting some smoke, and the little blue ring of
(26:21):
light on the device will turn to yellow. And then
if you go to it, and let's say you are
like me and you're attempting to roast some veggies and
you did not realize that you had a little bit
of minced garlic on the burner or whatever, and that's
the only reason there's any smoke at all. Uh. You
can wave physically at the smoke detector and it will say, oh,
(26:42):
false alarm. Well then never mind. It will shut itself off.
It will never do the full blast alarm. So my
dog would be so excited about that. Yes, yes, my
dog too. Yeah. So the idea of being able to
uh not have the typical response in the Strickland household
where the alarm goes off and then the other person
(27:05):
in the house helpfully chimes out, dinner must be ready.
That would be nice. That's my life. We've got a
bit more to say about the Nest, but first let's
take another quick break. Okay, So it's and uh in
(27:29):
there was some really big news, especially like we're recording
this podcast on January. It was not very long ago
at all when we heard the news that Google was
acquiring Nest for the some of around three it depends
upon who you ask. Some say three point two billions,
some say three point one, some say three point five.
(27:51):
But in excess of right, yeah, and I think that
the official news might have broken on thet of January
wearing that's yeah, not long at all, right, And and
the thing is, the thing is that Fidel had had
a meeting with them before Nest even launched. Um and
then at the TED conference, uh he and Sergey Bryan
(28:15):
had a big pow wow and they showed him a
video and a prototype of the Nest and kind of
got them pretty excited about it, like excited enough that
in May of that year, Google led their first round
of financing. I guess it was their second round of financing,
but um and and would also lead their next round
of financing the next year. So Google was involved early
(28:36):
on and making sure that this company was going to
get the funding it needed to do the work they
were doing. And I mean, if you look at some
of Google's other stuff that they're doing with the automos,
driving is probably the easiest example, right, you can you
can see that this sort of these algorithms and these
products fit very well into this kind of integrated uh
(28:58):
you know, using information in an actual, real world physical way. Yeah.
And it's been such a big year for Google in
terms of hardware. Um, you know, they they acquired Motorola
for what like twelve point five billion dollars. They've been
working so much with Chromebook. Uh. They they've been working
with Glass. They've got a rumored smart watch project that
(29:20):
that could be coming out this year. Although although rumored
smart watch projects are pretty bountiful, three more watches on
the way to me, So I'll get excited about that
when I see a picture. I've got to watch problem, okay,
I And I imagine that CS did not help that
at all. It was okay, Yeah, I saw a lot
(29:42):
of watches, but I thought, no, I think I've got
that one covered with one exception, but we'll talk about
that and to see it. Well, we have already talked
about that the ce S podcast, we just haven't recorded
it yet. Yes, they're publishing in opposite order. I think.
So you guys out there have already heard me talk
about it, but I have not, will have already talked
about it yet. I think I need a diagram that
(30:05):
sentence go on. Yes, um okay, and so so, both
Google and Nest have have indicated that Nest is going
to remain its own sort of independent thing, which you
know that was that was one of the big concerns,
right people where those knee jerk reactions as Google is
going to purchase this company that does smoke detectors, does
that mean that Google is going to change it in
(30:26):
some way? Like is it going to no longer be
the thing that we got excited about, right or are
they going to make them work on some other projects
instead of what they were originally created for? And they've
said nope, that Google is mostly going to be providing
you know the kind of money and infrastructure and marketing
teams and tech resources that will let Nest be more
themselves than they ever have been before. And other concerns
(30:48):
like The other big one is that you could conceive
of Nest devices gathering lots of different information like well,
I mean, they do gather lots of different information. Um,
and how that is going to be put to use
is a pretty big and pretty fair, I think concern
from the sectors right now. And Nest has already come
out and said that they don't they don't plan on
(31:08):
changing their privacy uh statements. Well, they said, and I
quote from their blog, our privacy policy clearly limits the
use of customer information to providing and improving Nests products
and services. We've always taken privacy seriously and this will
not change. Right, So the fact that they take privacy
seriously won't change. They haven't said that their privacy policies
(31:31):
won't change. Okay, fair enough if you're going to parse
it to that level. But I think I think the
main concern people had was, all right, so does this
mean you're gonna send Google all this information about when
I'm home, when I'm not home, how active I am,
what I you know, whether or not you know how
many people tend to be in my house and rooms
I spend the most time in. It's all the information
is going to go to Google and then I'm going
(31:52):
to get directed advertising or worse because of this. And
I think that was them saying like, that's not gonna happen.
You're not gonna You're not going to have your your
smoke detector and your thermostat tattling on you. Well, I mean,
you know, I could. I could certainly see One of
the concerns that I that I've read about was that
Google could sell your your energy usage data to providers
(32:14):
to let them advertise to you more sadly. Um. And
I can totally picture Google doing that. I mean maybe, yeah,
kind of, I can see it happening. I mean, if
let me put it to you this way, if that
would mean at the end of the day that I
actually had the opportunity to take advantage of genuinely good deals,
(32:35):
I wouldn't necessarily be upset about that. Yeah. And and
to be fair, and Nest already does have partnerships with
energy providers. Um, I mean they are opt in, and
but it's for you know, either free or discounted equipment
or rates on energies. And I would hope they would
remain an opt in approach. That would I always prefer
opt in to opt out, because when you know that
(32:56):
you can take advantage of the stuff, but you don't
feel like that's a appropriate then you don't have to
do anything. I hate systems where it just assumes that
you are in whole hog and then you have to
hunt through this labyrinthian system to find the one checkbox
two un check so that you are looking at you
Facebook so that you can so that you can get
(33:18):
out of that system. So as long as it remains
opt in, and of course that's a big if, right,
I mean that's I like to wear rose colored glasses
for this sort of stuff. But I am aware that
sometimes companies make these changes. But as long as it
remains opt in, I'm perfectly fine with us. But at
any rate, anytime you're talking about any kind of ice
that's collecting information in one way or another, how that
(33:39):
data could eventually be used is always going to be
a concern, exactly. Yeah. Um. One one other Google's Sway
kind of concern is that it's going to is that
it may become difficult to not have a nest installed
in your house if they get enough contracts with enough
HVACT providers and which you know they certainly have the
(34:01):
the money and the marketing power to do then, um,
you know, having having these providers, say, because you can
buy a Nest retail, but you can also get it
through whatever company you use to to heat and cool
your home. And so people have expressed a concern that
that it will be harder and harder to have a
(34:22):
non smart thermostat in your house once these things really
catch on and people figure out how much money and
equipment wear and tear can be saved by installing them. Oh, sure,
if you have a system that is dependent upon Nest thermostat.
Not that there are such systems right now, because right
now Nest is designed to work with anything to work
with the pre existing systems. But down the line, let's
(34:43):
say we go down five ten years, I could see
that being a real issue, especially you're talking several generations
down in the Nest product line. You could end up
with a system that was optimized for a Nest and
then yeah, you know, you might in theory be able
to disc nect it and then put in a generic thermostat,
but it might not work very well, kind of like
(35:06):
the way Nest wasn't always compatible with everything that existed.
Pregeneration too and yeah, I think that that's another another
area where people are like, well, what if I don't
want that much data collected about me? And what if
I want a dumb thermostat and I and I don't
think that. I mean, I think it's going to be
at least a couple of minutes before anyone is forcing
(35:27):
us all to have smart thermostats. But that when the
day comes, you'll be used to it, so don't worry
about it. And by then all of your data will
be out already from everything else that we interact with,
so our thermostat will be you know, it will mean nothing.
But then, um, so let's talk a little bit about
what actually makes it tick. Not that they tick, they
don't tick. If if your nest is ticking, you might
(35:49):
want to have that checked out. Now, the nest thermostat
has multiple temperature sensors inside of it, and this is
the idea of the multiple sensors is in order to
get the most accurate reading on the temperature of the room, right,
So these sensors are are designed so that they can
very carefully calibrate the climate system so it meets exactly
(36:11):
what it is that the thermostat has learned you like.
So if it knows that I like the temperature of
my house, especially say in my bedroom to be right
around seventy degrees when I go to bed, it can
uh start that up when it gets close to bedtime,
and the rest of the time it may just be
you know, kind of a warmer temperature or colder depending
(36:33):
upon what time of year it is. Um and then uh.
So that's the main sensor obviously for heat, but it
also contains motion and light sensors, so it can detect
when people are home, because if no one's home, then
it can go into away mode right and Ottawa Way
I think is what they call it. But anyway, the
(36:53):
the idea is that it can then start to ramp
down the the system so they're not putting out so
not consuming so much energy. And it used to be
that it would wait I think it was it was
more than an hour or an hour plus something to
before I would go into auta away. Now it's half
an hour. Um they did a software update, so I
(37:16):
think even generation one will do it in half an
hour now. So if it doesn't detect any movement, and
if especially if you have a pattern of leaving at
around a certain time each day, it will go ahead
and get and go into that away mode so that
it doesn't waste energy. And then there are all these
algorithms that has that uses an onboard computer. It's actually
(37:37):
got a microprocessor. It's an arm based microprocessor, so similar
to what you would find in a mobile phone or
a tablet, uh. And it would run those algorithms to
create those those patterns and the responses to the patterns
so that it would start to control the system and
make sure it was the most comfortable whenever you happen
to be coming home. Um, and that would be and
that's that learning behavior kind of thing that active change.
(38:00):
And it has both RAM and ROM, so I mean
it's it is like a little computer. It's like it's
a tiny well mounted computer that knows what temperature you
want it to be. Yep. It's got the Wi Fi
chip obviously that allows it to connect to your home network.
This is what allows you to operate it via an app. Right,
although they also can connect wirelessly directly to each other
without going through your home networks, so that if your
(38:21):
power goes out, they can still talk to each other. Yeah,
they're not obviously if your power goes out, they are
not going to be able to control system. But it
means that in the in terms of the carbon, monoxide
and smell detectors, that they will still operate, Yes, exactly.
One of the cool things I actually looked at a
tear down of a Nest thermostat, and there was They
(38:43):
showed the battery inside the thermostat and a couple of
cool things about it. One, the battery is there sort
of to act kind of in the place of a capacitor. Now,
a capacitor is designed to store energy and then release
it all at once. The battery is not releasing it
all at once. What's there to do is to supplement
the electricity that the Nest dermostatic gets from your home,
So you hardwire it to your home right so it's
(39:04):
connected to your HVAC system that way and it draws
power that way. But that power is not sufficient enough
for it to do some of the ultra cool things
the Nest does, like broadcast over WiFi or have that
beautiful LCD screen which is I think four bit and
three twenty by three twenty resolution. So you know, most
thermostats don't have that. They don't need that much power,
(39:26):
but this one does, so the battery provides that extra power.
The cool thing about the tear down was they showed
that not only is it a replaceable battery, but the
directions on how to replace it are actually on the
various cables that attached to the battery itself. It says
pull this, push this, and so. Uh. The the it was,
I fix it. That's a great website for anyone who
(39:48):
likes tear downs. You should go check that out, but
specifically to show how easy or difficult it is to
take apart various pieces of equipment if you ever have
to repair it. So it's really meant for repair Phoe.
You know, it's not necessarily meant for the average person.
But they said this is remarkable because not only is
it easy to do, but they even include instructions on
how to do it. It's very it's very repair friendly,
(40:09):
which if you think back to the fact this guy's
from Apple might shock you. That's some commentary. But they
also have sensors that are humidity sensors, so that it
can control a humidifier or de humidifier if that's part
of your climate control system. I do not have one
of those. Um also it can work with you know,
(40:30):
you have you ever seen the systems that have uh
heating elements underneath floors, so it can actually do radiant heating.
It will heap the floor system they have. They'll work
with the nest too. They have sensors that will work
with that as well. Yes, that's pretty awesome and uh
and it's also important because one of the drawbacks to
(40:50):
those those systems. One thing is that they are really
efficient and they're very quiet, but it takes a while
for it to warm up a room, and they tend
to kind of muck with regular thermostats. Thermostats really have
trouble being able to detect whin a room is a
comfortable temperature using this radiant heat technology. But the next
(41:11):
one has a mode in it when you if you
have that kind of system and you hook it up
into the nest, it can take that into consideration and
thus not be confused, so you don't end up with
floors that are too warm to walk on, which would
be bad. The floor is literally lava floor. Yeah, so
it also is you know, it's it's got all the
elements of your basic computer is really what is it?
(41:33):
And it's a circular circuit board. So if you look
at those tear downs, it is a thing of beauty.
And in fact, I think on the I fix at
one in particular, they say, you don't seem any circular
circuit boards. This is pretty cool. That's that's really cute.
That's that I mean, it's it's an optimization of the space,
which is wonderful, but just that kind of design detail
is wonderful. Yep, yep. So it's really an interesting product.
(41:56):
It's one of those things where maybe eventually I will
I'll go whole hog and and save up the money
to refit my house because I would need to share
I it would be a significant investment. You know, you're
talking at that point for for me to replace the
thermostats and the smoke detectors in my house. We're talking
(42:16):
more than a thousand dollars. So that's not a small
amount of money. It's certainly not. But you know, some
of the cool stuff I talked about what some of
those naysayers are talking about with with this entire Google deal,
but some of the cool stuff that could go on,
you know, uh, nest could potentially collaborate with your Google
apps to automatically detect when you're on vacation or how
long it takes you to get home from work, and uh,
(42:38):
and an update its temperature preferences based on that, and
it's temperature warm up and cool down. Yeah, I didn't
even mention that the WiFi connectivity allows it to even
figure out what the temperature is in your region, so
that it can anticipate how hard it's going to have
to work or how hard your HVAC system will have
to work to camera act what and where the outside
(43:01):
temperature happens to be. So here in Atlanta, for example,
and say I don't know July, it would know that
the temperature outside is surface of the sun. And therefore,
if you are going to be home in forty five minutes,
it might as well start cranking up the A C now,
because that's how long it's going to take it for
your house to be habitable by the time you get there.
Also some commentary um Also, Nest employees could potentially start
(43:27):
collaborating with with other Google departments and and working on
on hardware, maybe maybe that elusive smart watch that we've
been hearing about, or some of those automated cars or
are personal robots that Google X has been talking. If
I find out that the Google automated car gets a
Nest climate control system in it, I'm just like, just
just just sell it. Just let me buy one, or
(43:50):
not even climate control. I mean, these are clearly incredibly
um smart, savvy people who are working for Nest. They
could they could work on any number of projects, and
they could they could be I mean like, could Nest
be Google's new smart home division? Yeah, no, it totally
could be that. Now, you know, before we get all
excited about that, let's keep in mind that Motorola has
not exactly become Google's you know, mobile division, and in fact,
(44:13):
there's some talk of Motorola spinning off and becoming its own,
uh independent sub company. So you know, there's we're not
we're not ready to prognosticate fully yet. It's too bad.
I didn't make this one of my two thousand fourteen
predictions that Google was going to buy Nest. I did
not see that coming, and I don't think anybody saw
this one coming, aside from maybe like Larry Page and
(44:38):
maybe Fidel Yeah. I did make the joke on Twitter
that if Google wanted, they could pay me three point
one billion and I'd be happy, to manually change everyone's
thermostatic for them whenever they liked. But they did not
take me up on that, I'm sorry, which is too
bad because then I could have afforded to get the
Nest once put in my house. All right. Well, anyway,
(45:00):
that wraps up our our discussion about Nest the company,
the fact that it has entered into this new era.
Uh and you know, we don't really know what that
means yet. It could very well mean that we're going
into an era where privacy becomes even a larger concern
and that you know this, this could mean some dark
stuff in the future. I'm hoping that that's not the case.
(45:21):
I'm cautiously optimistic that we're going to see some really
cool collaborations between Nest and Google come out of this,
and hopefully the kind that will benefit us as consumers
more so than say, any kind of advertiser. That wraps
up this classic episode. Hope you guys enjoyed it. I
look forward to hearing from you if you have any
suggestions about future topics I should cover in tech Stuff.
(45:44):
The best way to get in touch with me it's
over on Twitter. We use the handle text stuff hs
W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text
Stuff is an I heart Radio production. For more podcasts
from I heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
(46:11):
H
Welcome to tex Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio and
I love all things tech, and today it is time
for a classic episode of tech Stuff. This episode originally
(00:25):
published way back on January twenty second, two thousand and fourteen.
It is titled text Stuff builds a Nest Enjoy. So
we're gonna talk today about the Nest Labs company and
UH and the products they make. And I, like Lauren
was saying, Google has made a really incredible move in
(00:46):
offering to purchase Nest for a what some might call
a ridiculous sum of money. I think that three point
two billion accounts as pretty ridiculous. I mean, I mean,
it's a company that makes two things so far, yes,
and it's only existed since so and they've only been
having stuff that they could sell since So anyway, let's
(01:08):
let's talk about this. If you had told me ten
years ago that I'd be sitting down and talking into
a microphone to record a show about a company that's
big product is a thermostat first, I would say who
are you and why are you? In this consulting firm
because that's where I was ten years ago. But moreover,
I just said no, I wouldn't. Who who would want
(01:30):
to listen to that? Well, okay, there has been a
lot of buzz about Nest over the past couple of
years that it has existed because they make these these
smart devices, smart thermostats and smart smoke detector carbon monoxide exactly, um.
And and you know, with the Internet of Things becoming
more of a real thing, people have been excited about.
(01:51):
This is one of the leading companies that's creating the
kind of hardware that you can use to to make
your home and Internet of things. Yeah, and also the
design aesthetic right, gorgeous it is and and and it
works with your smartphone and that's all terrific. And I
did want to mention that for the record, thermostats are
kind of a big business. There's some ten million sold
(02:12):
in the US every year, and they control some half
of the energy used in US homes, right, so this
is not insignificant. Yeah, if you talk, if you look
at your energy bill and you divide it by two,
that amount of money is going straight to your system. Yeah.
So if you are able to make an impact on that.
(02:34):
It will reflect in the amount of money you have
to spend on energy bills, particularly if you live in
a place where you have a fairly extreme climate, so
that you're HVA system has to work extra hard to
make sure your living space is a comfortable one. And uh.
And in fact, what this all comes back to a
guy named Tony Fidel, who once upon a time worked
(02:56):
for a little company called Apple. Yeah, by work, do
we mean it? He kind of led the iPod and
kind of that the iPhone teams for a while, for
multiple generations for iPod and I think three generations of
iPhone he was overseeing that. He was senior vice president
of those departments. And uh. And so yeah, we're talking
about someone who definitely knew about designing for a particular aesthetic, uh,
(03:21):
and to create something that is attractive for consumers. Because
it's easy for us to forget this and I know
we say it on tech stuff all the time, so
maybe it's not easy for you to forget because we
say it so frequently. But before the iPod, you know,
MP three players existed, there were, but no one had
really designed one that really cut the public's attention like
(03:44):
there were there was no one that was a dominant
player at the time, and then the iPods design really
started to kind of dominate to the point where you
started seeing other companies designs look more iPod ish. Not
to Ryan Stirrup any patent, you know, wars again, but
but people realized that. I mean, previous to that, I
(04:07):
think that most MP three players looked like they were functional, Yeah,
like bricks. I had one. I mean I had one
that I loved because it was probably about the price
of an iPod, but it had twice the capacity. But
it looked like a brick and it felt like one too.
It was heavy. But the uh, you know, and the
iPhone another great example. We've talked about that before too,
(04:29):
about how in the United States smartphones were pretty much
the realm of executives, right like BlackBerry was king in
the US. Now in Europe and in Japan that was
a different story, but not here in the US. It
wasn't until the iPhone came out that you started seeing
the consumer market move toward it. So this is a
guy who was right there on the forefront. He knew
a thing or two about, you know, making sure you
(04:51):
had an attractive product. But that's not exactly what got
him excited about this. First of all, he retired. He
retired in two thousand eight from Bowl. He was he
was like, okay, I have made my mark. I I
have helped bring to really influential products to the market.
I may rest, but apparently things just weren't always you know,
(05:14):
the most comfortable temperature at the Fidel house. Maybe he
just got up to change the thermostat one too many times,
and he started thinking about this fact, the fact that
half of your energy is spent controlling the climate of
your home, and that, according to at least some study
that he was aware of, because it's in a blog
post on the Nest web page, that the average person
(05:39):
adjusts his or her thermostat hundred times a year, and
so and and and Furthermore, he was, you know, he
was trying to update his home to he he was like,
we've got these gorgeous products for our music and for communication.
Why can't we have that kind of thing for everything?
Why does why does this control for my climate? Where
(06:03):
apparently I'm getting up to do it multiple times a day,
Because if it's times a year, that's you know, that's
a bunch. Why is it so boxy and ugly, and
because the almost thermostats not really aesthetically pleasing, they're they're functional, right,
So that's why Yeah. Yeah, According to another guy that
we're going to be talking about in just a couple
of seconds, the design, the basic design on thermostats has
(06:25):
not really changed since the nineties. Yeah. You either have
the digital kind or you have the old kind that
has sort of a coiled thermometer in it. If you
want to know more, you can actually go back. We
did a tech Stuff episode about how thermostats work back
in the day where we talk about the actual the
actual mechanics of a thermostat, both the I think we
(06:45):
mainly focused on the old, the old mercury switch kind,
but there are various other types as well. Um. And
another thing that Fiddel was thinking about was the fact
that he, you know, we we live in the incredible future.
Why can't I control my thermostat from my smart phone? Right?
And and and there were some products out there that
would let you do that, but they cost like five
dollars a unit, right, And you had to you know,
(07:08):
you you essentially had to go to some sort of
home automation specialist and then have that installed forum then
why are why are these things in for you? It
wasn't like something where you could go to a warehouse
in or or is some major store Hony People or
Lows or something like that and say show me where
the automated or the remote thermostats are, because it was
(07:31):
all packages that you had to go through contractors to get,
so not the not the most accessible, certainly. And he
also realized that we were getting to a point as
far as computer software is concerned, where you could create
very sophisticated algorithms that could have quote unquote learning behavior right,
they could start to recognize patterns and then respond to
(07:53):
those patterns in a predetermined way. So the big example
that we would have with nest is that if no
one's in the house, there's no need to have the
heat cranked up or the a C cranked up to
keep the house at the regular comfortable temperature. And if
you know when people are coming home, all right, if
it notices that you come home at six thirty every night,
(08:15):
then it can start working the house towards that temperature
whenever it needs to in order to have it ready
for you to get home. Yeah, so when you walk
through the door. It feels as if your house has
stayed that temperature all day long, whereas the reality is
between the hours of whatever and whatever, it was not
you know, either the system wasn't working at all, or
(08:35):
it wasn't working nearly at full capacity, it was working
enough so that it wouldn't take too much work to Yeah, yeah,
you don't want to. I mean, obviously you don't want
to shut everything down. Like if it's if it's the
the what was what do they call it the polar vortex?
When uh, it was when I was at ce S,
so I missed it. I wasn't here in Atlanta, and
that's what they called it. Nine degrees here. There's some
(08:56):
kind of science about it that I think that we
have actually written and stuff about on how stuff works
at this point, but I have no idea. I just
saw tweets that said polar vort text. I was like,
I don't know what it is it the day after
tomorrow back in Atlanta, I don't know nine degrees it
was basically yeah, in that case, you wouldn't want the
house to get all the way down to you know,
below freezing obviously not. But but at the same time,
(09:19):
you wouldn't want it to be at you know, seventy
five degrees because you'd be using a lot of energy
while you're not actually there. So it needed he solve
the problem. It was an engineering problem. You had to
build a device that could monitor the temperature, keep it
within a certain range, and then be flexible enough so
that that range changes based upon the parameters that are present.
(09:41):
And also if you happen to like it warm in
the morning but cold at night, then if you had
a thermostat that could learn these patterns, it could start
to anticipate it and change them for you proactively, so
you don't have to be the one to go up
there and say like, oh, you know, I like it
cold when I go to bed, but when I wake up,
it's it's my body temperature so low. I need to
(10:01):
get my temperature up. I needed to be warmer. So
this was a great opportunity he saw. So he ended
up contacting a couple of other folks and working on
an idea for a learning thermostat. Yeah, and these were
mostly other ex Apple folks or perhaps folks that were
maybe at the time still working for Apple. Exactly the
(10:23):
date lines of these there's certainly ex Apple folks now yes, um,
and and one of them, Mr Matt Rogers, he would
wind up co founding this company, Nest with yep. So
twenty ten is when Nest Labs officially forms May specifically,
and they their strategy was to be kind of quiet
(10:47):
about what they were doing. They didn't talk about their products,
I didn't talk about their lines of research really, and
so it kind of took the world by surprise when
in October of twenty eleven, Fidel essentially announces, Hey, here's
this thing we've been working on. Is this little, round,
gorgeous looking device. It's actually a thermostat and it's smart
(11:08):
and it can connect to WiFi and you can adjust
it with your phone and it learns what you like.
And people were just thinking, you are saying too many things,
Mr man, I don't know what you're what's going on.
I think that they owe so much of their um
just general corporate feel from Apple. Uh. You know. Matt
Rogers strikes me as kind of an Apple fanboy who
(11:28):
who became eventually one of the iPod software developers there. Um.
But he has said that his first computer, when he
was like three years old, was a Macintosh Plus and that, um,
a lot of the you know, design, sensibility and just
just concepts of how to run a business are definitely
deeply owed to Apple in general and Steve Jobs very
particularly sure, and you can certainly see elements of that
(11:52):
when you look at both the company and its products.
So Fidel wrote a blog post that when up on
the Nest website October and kind of explained why a
thermostat because that was you know that you had two
big reactions from people when this was first announced. People
would say, uh huh, like what, what's what's your game?
(12:15):
Why would you even do this? And the other were
like where when and where can I buy one of these?
Because it looks beautiful? And I mean, I remember when
this came out because I remember, you know, I was
a big fan of shows like c Nets Buzz Out Loud,
and I remember people like Tom Merritt and Molly would going, uh,
you know, kind of bonkers over this thing. They were
they were like this, yeah, and at the same time
(12:37):
when I started looking into it and my gosh, I
kind of want one of those two. Well, he in
that blog post laid out what it was they wanted.
The thermostat to be able to do. He said he
wanted to design the thermostat to learn your preferred temperature
and schedule since when you left the house or when
you came home, to give you tips and feedback on
your energy use. To be able to connect to WiFi
(12:59):
so you can control it from anywhere, for it to
look beautiful, and for you to feel proud to actually
be an owner of it, which it's very Steve jobs
ish kind of thing, right right, and also to have
a positive impact on the world. And you know, I
honestly think based upon the work that this company has done,
they're being they're being sincere about that. It's not that
(13:21):
you know, it's obviously it's a business, but it's not
something where I don't think that's just lip service, like
let's make the world a better place. I haven't heard
any numbers from outside sources, but according to the company
UM as of as of only February, they had already
helped energy efficiency to the tune of saving like two
million kill a lot hours of energy. So I'm like
(13:44):
twenty nine million dollars worth and in US, yeah, convergion,
so you're saving money and you're also by by taking
down some of that demand, we don't have to produce
as much energy and we're not wasting it on on
heating an empty house, or we're not burned, we're not
burning even more coal or or using up more natural
gas or whatever it happens to be that has provided
(14:06):
the heat and or a c for those homes. And um,
it's interesting. They started taking pre orders for the Nest thermostat,
and I think that was at a price point of two,
which I believe is what still is today. Two, So
you know, not a small amount of money for something
like that, but still cheaper than any I mean by half,
(14:27):
cheaper than any relatively similar products in the market. Yeah. Yeah,
and also it would ultimately save you money, assuming that
you're using it properly. So at any rate, pre orders
pre orders within three days of of them talking about this,
that within that blog post going up, they had sold
out of all of their stock that they had planned
(14:48):
on producing in the short term. So after three days
of the store being opened, they shut it. They closed
the store after three days with the explanation of guys,
this had way more of a demand than we had anticipated.
We knew that we had something potentially big on our hands.
We didn't know that all of you would agree with us.
And so they closed the store and they started working
(15:10):
very hard on meeting the demands of the initial pre
orders as well as figuring out how were they going
to meet the expanded demand. And it wouldn't be until
uh later in UH I think it was March two
thousand and twelve. So they shut the store down November
two thleven. It's not until March two thousand twelve that
(15:30):
they're able to open the store back up again. I'm
sure that most of that time was devoted to um
to investment related issues and sure and maybe like uh
streamlining manufacturing process and he's getting the supply chain in order,
you know, lots of stuff that the background stuff. Yeah,
that's not terribly exciting to talk about. It's pretty important.
It turns out that that's a big deal. We'll be
(15:53):
back with more about tech stuff explaining how Nest works
after this quick break. So, starting in May two twelve,
the Nest Thermostat became available in other places besides their
online store. You could get it at Lowe's Hardware stores.
(16:14):
By June, you can get it on Amazon. By a
little bit later in the year. I think of by
October that year you could get it best Buy. You
can't even get it at the Apple online store. Yeah,
so you know, that's obviously the relation. And I don't know,
I'll be right now, I don't know if that's going
to be be the same now that Google has is
acquiring Nest. Yeah, that's a con question. They have affirmed
(16:36):
that they are going to um continue supporting I I
O S product exactly. Yeah. It's not gonna be like
suddenly your iPhone is unable to adjust the temperature of
your home, right that would be that would be a
pretty ridiculously poor business decision. And I think I think
the Google and Apple have both learned their lesson on
that kind of I mean, you even had for a while,
you had one person, like you had the CEO of
(16:56):
Google sitting on the board of directors of Apple for
a while, that was Eric Schmidt. That that didn't last forever.
He did a step down for the board of directors eventually.
But the relationship between Google and Apple is not always contentious,
even though they are direct competitors, at least in the
mobile space and arguably in the computer space. But I
don't think chromebooks are really that big of a competitor
(17:17):
against at any rate. Yeah, at any rate. Getting back
to Nest, So by October, remember this is just one year,
not even a full year since they had announced it,
because they they announced it late in October two eleven.
But in October twelve, the second generation of Nest Thermostat
debuted and um, this one was you know, a little
(17:40):
sexy er, even it was thinner. So they were able
to miniaturize some of the components make it even more compact,
which is kind of astounding because they even increased the
capabilities of the second generation. So the first generation worked
with oh, I don't know, it was something like fIF
HVAC systems out there, and you had to check to
(18:01):
make sure before you know, they stressed check to make
sure that the one that you have, the system you
have is uh is compatible with the system UH. Well,
they were able to open that up to a much
larger percentage of the market. They also were able to
create a device that could work with uh H VAC
(18:23):
systems that had two different capacities for cooling down your house,
so some of them would work at a percent sometime
and then knock it down to for just maintaining a temperature,
or if it didn't need to, like if you're getting
starting to approach the temperature, then they might might power
down a little bit, but not turn all the way off. Well,
(18:43):
those systems have two dedicated wires for that. There's one
dedicated for there's one decadent, and the original Nest did
not have the capability. Yeah, you couldn't. It didn't have
a place to plug both of those in the second
Nest did, so you could do that. It also works
with multi stage heating systems. That works with systems that
have humidifiers or de humidifiers, and and across all energy modes.
(19:06):
I mean if you've got gas or propane or electricity
or etcetera. Yeah, So, so it definitely opened up the
market a lot wider than the initial Nest did. And
again it was smaller too, so um or at least
it was thinner, it didn't project out as far from
the wall. So yeah. They say that three out of
(19:28):
four of their Nest customers opt to install it themselves
and that it can be installed within thirty minutes. They
also have the Nest Concierge service, so if you feel
like you are one of those one of who would
likely electrocute him or herself were you to attempt to
install it, such as, I don't know yours truly, uh,
(19:50):
not that I haven't nest, but if I did, I
would totally. I'm tech savvy, which means I also know
it can kill me. Um. But yeah, you can actually
opt for an additional fee to have someone come out
and help you. So then made two thousand thirteen, Nest
made its first acquisition. It was a company called my Energy,
(20:13):
which specifically builds products that let users track energy usage
and savings. So the idea is by getting some more
analytic data and some more collective uh products, they can
make the Nest even more effective and make products further
down the line that are able to incorporate some of
this analysis so that you get an even more granular
(20:35):
idea of what's going on and how you can save energy. Now,
as we've seen in the past, there's a huge market
for stuff that collects data and then analyzes it and
presents it to you in an understandable way. Oh sure,
and and basically any time that you allow these days, um,
you know, nerds, which are most of us. Let's be
(20:56):
honest and um to to min max their surroundings. You're
going to yeah, fitness trackers perfect example, right, being able
to sit there and say, like, now I'm able to
attract every single calorie that I intake and burn. I
don't mean to make you check your force while you're
doing that, but it's a little bit over a thousand today,
I'm gonna work out. Okay, that's good. So yeah, I don't.
(21:17):
I'm not wearing any of my accouchramal today, not even
my pebble. I feel a little lost without it, to
be honest. But anyway, so clearly there's a market there,
so it makes sense to bring that in and incorporate
that in the Nest family. But then, uh, you know,
we get over. Towards the end of two thirteen, they
also introduced a brand new product, and that's the Nest Protect.
(21:41):
That's their smoke detector and carbon monoxide detector. Now, this
was obviously a departure and some people again we're thinking,
why why would you would I need one of those
to be smart? Doesn't the thing on the ceiling that
beeps do just as well. But this one, again is
WiFi enabled. It can can neck to an app so
(22:01):
that that way you can get an alert on your
phone if your smoke detector goes off, which obviously could
be you know that could be monumentally important. Oh sure,
sure it can. It will wirelessly connect to other smoke
detectors in your house, so that if, for example, there's
a fire in the kitchen, then all of them when
they go off, can say, hey, there's a fire in
the kitchen. Right, it can specifically tell you where the
(22:23):
alarm was triggered. A lot of smoke detector systems are
wired together so that if one alarm is triggered trip
they all they all beat, but they don't tell you
which one it was that was set off. Right, So
you have the information that you need in order to
get out, but you might not have the information you
need to maybe to get out very safely, or or
(22:43):
to or to actually diffuse a situation before it gets
you know, unmanageable, because it may be that there's something
smoking that you can actually take care of and minimize
the damage. But if you don't know where in the
house that's singing place, obviously the most important thing for
you to do is to get out safely, right clearly.
So this would give you more information about that, and also,
(23:03):
of course the carbon monoxide monitor, which is also very important. UM.
It also will work wirelessly with Nest thermostats, so if
the carbon monoxide A sensor picks up a concentration, it'll
send a message to the Nest thermostat to say, hey,
shut off the furnace because we have a leak somewhere
or something's going on. Yeah, yeah, I really need stuff.
(23:26):
And um these are less expensive than the Nest thermostats.
The thermostats are two fifty. The smoke detectors are about
I think one thirty to one fifty. As I recall,
I didn't write it down in front of me, but
I know it's right in that range because I was
actually looking at it to um possibly replace my smoke detectors.
But if I do that, I will have to buy
five of them because I have five smoke detectors in
(23:48):
my house. Anyone who follows me on Twitter saw that
that terrible day when I got home and one of
them was chirping, and the way my house is laid out,
I could not tell which one it was, so I
had to go out and get new batteries for all
of my smoke detectors, but you should do anyway, but well, yeah, yeah,
but this would actually tell me what's going on. Also,
it's designed to be very uh, very careful with power
(24:12):
consumption and and the and it even says you wouldn't
have to replace the batteries every single year, but it
would give you an alert when it has to. In fact,
it would send you a message on your phone so
that you wouldn't have to sit there and listen to
that chirp forever trying to figure out right. And if
you're away from your house and you get that message,
then you actually have the opportunity to go and buy
a battery before you get back and realize that you
(24:34):
need to go back out again. So very clever and
uh yeah, it's it looks like it's a pretty neat product.
You do have to replace it every seven years or
so because the detectors will eventually wear out. It's a
chemical based thing, I specifically the carbon monoxide sensors in particular,
and that's that's that's typical. By the way, if you
think that that's unusual, no, that's not unusual. For carbon
(24:56):
monoxide detectors. You do have to replace those regularly because
the sensors do wear out over time. UM, smoke detectors
didn't last a little bit longer, but carbon monoxide and
I think it's still recommended to replace your your smoke
detectors once every ten years or so. Yeah, I'm I
don't have the number in front of me, but I
feel like UM. And all of these devices, by the way,
(25:18):
do have activity detection like like motion and light sensors
on them so that they know when you're coming to
and fro rooms, so that they can all link up
and decide, you know, figure out when someone is in
there and whether or not they need to be activated
for for the for the thermstat's sake, although the carbon
monoxide and smoke detectors work together with the thermstats to
(25:39):
help them cover more area. And they also have lights
in them and will light up if you want them to,
so that when you you can set it so like
if it's in bedroom mode, it won't do that. So
if it detects motion, it won't light up and wake
you up, But if it's in a hallway and you
walk out, it will end up acting like a little
night light, which I thought was kind of cute too.
And and the light changes color and we'll give you
(26:00):
a warning. This is probably the thing I like the
most about the smoke detector. So let's say it starts
detecting a little bit of smoke and it's not enough
for it to trigger a full warning yet, but it
wants to alert you to this fact. It will give
you an actual human voice, uh warning saying that there
is detecting some smoke, and the little blue ring of
(26:21):
light on the device will turn to yellow. And then
if you go to it, and let's say you are
like me and you're attempting to roast some veggies and
you did not realize that you had a little bit
of minced garlic on the burner or whatever, and that's
the only reason there's any smoke at all. Uh. You
can wave physically at the smoke detector and it will say, oh,
(26:42):
false alarm. Well then never mind. It will shut itself off.
It will never do the full blast alarm. So my
dog would be so excited about that. Yes, yes, my
dog too. Yeah. So the idea of being able to
uh not have the typical response in the Strickland household
where the alarm goes off and then the other person
(27:05):
in the house helpfully chimes out, dinner must be ready.
That would be nice. That's my life. We've got a
bit more to say about the Nest, but first let's
take another quick break. Okay, So it's and uh in
(27:29):
there was some really big news, especially like we're recording
this podcast on January. It was not very long ago
at all when we heard the news that Google was
acquiring Nest for the some of around three it depends
upon who you ask. Some say three point two billions,
some say three point one, some say three point five.
(27:51):
But in excess of right, yeah, and I think that
the official news might have broken on thet of January
wearing that's yeah, not long at all, right, And and
the thing is, the thing is that Fidel had had
a meeting with them before Nest even launched. Um and
then at the TED conference, uh he and Sergey Bryan
(28:15):
had a big pow wow and they showed him a
video and a prototype of the Nest and kind of
got them pretty excited about it, like excited enough that
in May of that year, Google led their first round
of financing. I guess it was their second round of financing,
but um and and would also lead their next round
of financing the next year. So Google was involved early
(28:36):
on and making sure that this company was going to
get the funding it needed to do the work they
were doing. And I mean, if you look at some
of Google's other stuff that they're doing with the automos,
driving is probably the easiest example, right, you can you
can see that this sort of these algorithms and these
products fit very well into this kind of integrated uh
(28:58):
you know, using information in an actual, real world physical way. Yeah.
And it's been such a big year for Google in
terms of hardware. Um, you know, they they acquired Motorola
for what like twelve point five billion dollars. They've been
working so much with Chromebook. Uh. They they've been working
with Glass. They've got a rumored smart watch project that
(29:20):
that could be coming out this year. Although although rumored
smart watch projects are pretty bountiful, three more watches on
the way to me, So I'll get excited about that
when I see a picture. I've got to watch problem, okay,
I And I imagine that CS did not help that
at all. It was okay, Yeah, I saw a lot
(29:42):
of watches, but I thought, no, I think I've got
that one covered with one exception, but we'll talk about
that and to see it. Well, we have already talked
about that the ce S podcast, we just haven't recorded
it yet. Yes, they're publishing in opposite order. I think.
So you guys out there have already heard me talk
about it, but I have not, will have already talked
about it yet. I think I need a diagram that
(30:05):
sentence go on. Yes, um okay, and so so, both
Google and Nest have have indicated that Nest is going
to remain its own sort of independent thing, which you
know that was that was one of the big concerns,
right people where those knee jerk reactions as Google is
going to purchase this company that does smoke detectors, does
that mean that Google is going to change it in
(30:26):
some way? Like is it going to no longer be
the thing that we got excited about, right or are
they going to make them work on some other projects
instead of what they were originally created for? And they've
said nope, that Google is mostly going to be providing
you know the kind of money and infrastructure and marketing
teams and tech resources that will let Nest be more
themselves than they ever have been before. And other concerns
(30:48):
like The other big one is that you could conceive
of Nest devices gathering lots of different information like well,
I mean, they do gather lots of different information. Um,
and how that is going to be put to use
is a pretty big and pretty fair, I think concern
from the sectors right now. And Nest has already come
out and said that they don't they don't plan on
(31:08):
changing their privacy uh statements. Well, they said, and I
quote from their blog, our privacy policy clearly limits the
use of customer information to providing and improving Nests products
and services. We've always taken privacy seriously and this will
not change. Right, So the fact that they take privacy
seriously won't change. They haven't said that their privacy policies
(31:31):
won't change. Okay, fair enough if you're going to parse
it to that level. But I think I think the
main concern people had was, all right, so does this
mean you're gonna send Google all this information about when
I'm home, when I'm not home, how active I am,
what I you know, whether or not you know how
many people tend to be in my house and rooms
I spend the most time in. It's all the information
is going to go to Google and then I'm going
(31:52):
to get directed advertising or worse because of this. And
I think that was them saying like, that's not gonna happen.
You're not gonna You're not going to have your your
smoke detector and your thermostat tattling on you. Well, I mean,
you know, I could. I could certainly see One of
the concerns that I that I've read about was that
Google could sell your your energy usage data to providers
(32:14):
to let them advertise to you more sadly. Um. And
I can totally picture Google doing that. I mean maybe, yeah,
kind of, I can see it happening. I mean, if
let me put it to you this way, if that
would mean at the end of the day that I
actually had the opportunity to take advantage of genuinely good deals,
(32:35):
I wouldn't necessarily be upset about that. Yeah. And and
to be fair, and Nest already does have partnerships with
energy providers. Um, I mean they are opt in, and
but it's for you know, either free or discounted equipment
or rates on energies. And I would hope they would
remain an opt in approach. That would I always prefer
opt in to opt out, because when you know that
(32:56):
you can take advantage of the stuff, but you don't
feel like that's a appropriate then you don't have to
do anything. I hate systems where it just assumes that
you are in whole hog and then you have to
hunt through this labyrinthian system to find the one checkbox
two un check so that you are looking at you
Facebook so that you can so that you can get
(33:18):
out of that system. So as long as it remains
opt in, and of course that's a big if, right,
I mean that's I like to wear rose colored glasses
for this sort of stuff. But I am aware that
sometimes companies make these changes. But as long as it
remains opt in, I'm perfectly fine with us. But at
any rate, anytime you're talking about any kind of ice
that's collecting information in one way or another, how that
(33:39):
data could eventually be used is always going to be
a concern, exactly. Yeah. Um. One one other Google's Sway
kind of concern is that it's going to is that
it may become difficult to not have a nest installed
in your house if they get enough contracts with enough
HVACT providers and which you know they certainly have the
(34:01):
the money and the marketing power to do then, um,
you know, having having these providers, say, because you can
buy a Nest retail, but you can also get it
through whatever company you use to to heat and cool
your home. And so people have expressed a concern that
that it will be harder and harder to have a
(34:22):
non smart thermostat in your house once these things really
catch on and people figure out how much money and
equipment wear and tear can be saved by installing them. Oh, sure,
if you have a system that is dependent upon Nest thermostat.
Not that there are such systems right now, because right
now Nest is designed to work with anything to work
with the pre existing systems. But down the line, let's
(34:43):
say we go down five ten years, I could see
that being a real issue, especially you're talking several generations
down in the Nest product line. You could end up
with a system that was optimized for a Nest and
then yeah, you know, you might in theory be able
to disc nect it and then put in a generic thermostat,
but it might not work very well, kind of like
(35:06):
the way Nest wasn't always compatible with everything that existed.
Pregeneration too and yeah, I think that that's another another
area where people are like, well, what if I don't
want that much data collected about me? And what if
I want a dumb thermostat and I and I don't
think that. I mean, I think it's going to be
at least a couple of minutes before anyone is forcing
(35:27):
us all to have smart thermostats. But that when the
day comes, you'll be used to it, so don't worry
about it. And by then all of your data will
be out already from everything else that we interact with,
so our thermostat will be you know, it will mean nothing.
But then, um, so let's talk a little bit about
what actually makes it tick. Not that they tick, they
don't tick. If if your nest is ticking, you might
(35:49):
want to have that checked out. Now, the nest thermostat
has multiple temperature sensors inside of it, and this is
the idea of the multiple sensors is in order to
get the most accurate reading on the temperature of the room, right,
So these sensors are are designed so that they can
very carefully calibrate the climate system so it meets exactly
(36:11):
what it is that the thermostat has learned you like.
So if it knows that I like the temperature of
my house, especially say in my bedroom to be right
around seventy degrees when I go to bed, it can
uh start that up when it gets close to bedtime,
and the rest of the time it may just be
you know, kind of a warmer temperature or colder depending
(36:33):
upon what time of year it is. Um and then uh.
So that's the main sensor obviously for heat, but it
also contains motion and light sensors, so it can detect
when people are home, because if no one's home, then
it can go into away mode right and Ottawa Way
I think is what they call it. But anyway, the
(36:53):
the idea is that it can then start to ramp
down the the system so they're not putting out so
not consuming so much energy. And it used to be
that it would wait I think it was it was
more than an hour or an hour plus something to
before I would go into auta away. Now it's half
an hour. Um they did a software update, so I
(37:16):
think even generation one will do it in half an
hour now. So if it doesn't detect any movement, and
if especially if you have a pattern of leaving at
around a certain time each day, it will go ahead
and get and go into that away mode so that
it doesn't waste energy. And then there are all these
algorithms that has that uses an onboard computer. It's actually
(37:37):
got a microprocessor. It's an arm based microprocessor, so similar
to what you would find in a mobile phone or
a tablet, uh. And it would run those algorithms to
create those those patterns and the responses to the patterns
so that it would start to control the system and
make sure it was the most comfortable whenever you happen
to be coming home. Um, and that would be and
that's that learning behavior kind of thing that active change.
(38:00):
And it has both RAM and ROM, so I mean
it's it is like a little computer. It's like it's
a tiny well mounted computer that knows what temperature you
want it to be. Yep. It's got the Wi Fi
chip obviously that allows it to connect to your home network.
This is what allows you to operate it via an app. Right,
although they also can connect wirelessly directly to each other
without going through your home networks, so that if your
(38:21):
power goes out, they can still talk to each other. Yeah,
they're not obviously if your power goes out, they are
not going to be able to control system. But it
means that in the in terms of the carbon, monoxide
and smell detectors, that they will still operate, Yes, exactly.
One of the cool things I actually looked at a
tear down of a Nest thermostat, and there was They
(38:43):
showed the battery inside the thermostat and a couple of
cool things about it. One, the battery is there sort
of to act kind of in the place of a capacitor. Now,
a capacitor is designed to store energy and then release
it all at once. The battery is not releasing it
all at once. What's there to do is to supplement
the electricity that the Nest dermostatic gets from your home,
So you hardwire it to your home right so it's
(39:04):
connected to your HVAC system that way and it draws
power that way. But that power is not sufficient enough
for it to do some of the ultra cool things
the Nest does, like broadcast over WiFi or have that
beautiful LCD screen which is I think four bit and
three twenty by three twenty resolution. So you know, most
thermostats don't have that. They don't need that much power,
(39:26):
but this one does, so the battery provides that extra power.
The cool thing about the tear down was they showed
that not only is it a replaceable battery, but the
directions on how to replace it are actually on the
various cables that attached to the battery itself. It says
pull this, push this, and so. Uh. The the it was,
I fix it. That's a great website for anyone who
(39:48):
likes tear downs. You should go check that out, but
specifically to show how easy or difficult it is to
take apart various pieces of equipment if you ever have
to repair it. So it's really meant for repair Phoe.
You know, it's not necessarily meant for the average person.
But they said this is remarkable because not only is
it easy to do, but they even include instructions on
how to do it. It's very it's very repair friendly,
(40:09):
which if you think back to the fact this guy's
from Apple might shock you. That's some commentary. But they
also have sensors that are humidity sensors, so that it
can control a humidifier or de humidifier if that's part
of your climate control system. I do not have one
of those. Um also it can work with you know,
(40:30):
you have you ever seen the systems that have uh
heating elements underneath floors, so it can actually do radiant heating.
It will heap the floor system they have. They'll work
with the nest too. They have sensors that will work
with that as well. Yes, that's pretty awesome and uh
and it's also important because one of the drawbacks to
(40:50):
those those systems. One thing is that they are really
efficient and they're very quiet, but it takes a while
for it to warm up a room, and they tend
to kind of muck with regular thermostats. Thermostats really have
trouble being able to detect whin a room is a
comfortable temperature using this radiant heat technology. But the next
(41:11):
one has a mode in it when you if you
have that kind of system and you hook it up
into the nest, it can take that into consideration and
thus not be confused, so you don't end up with
floors that are too warm to walk on, which would
be bad. The floor is literally lava floor. Yeah, so
it also is you know, it's it's got all the
elements of your basic computer is really what is it?
(41:33):
And it's a circular circuit board. So if you look
at those tear downs, it is a thing of beauty.
And in fact, I think on the I fix at
one in particular, they say, you don't seem any circular
circuit boards. This is pretty cool. That's that's really cute.
That's that I mean, it's it's an optimization of the space,
which is wonderful, but just that kind of design detail
is wonderful. Yep, yep. So it's really an interesting product.
(41:56):
It's one of those things where maybe eventually I will
I'll go whole hog and and save up the money
to refit my house because I would need to share
I it would be a significant investment. You know, you're
talking at that point for for me to replace the
thermostats and the smoke detectors in my house. We're talking
(42:16):
more than a thousand dollars. So that's not a small
amount of money. It's certainly not. But you know, some
of the cool stuff I talked about what some of
those naysayers are talking about with with this entire Google deal,
but some of the cool stuff that could go on,
you know, uh, nest could potentially collaborate with your Google
apps to automatically detect when you're on vacation or how
long it takes you to get home from work, and uh,
(42:38):
and an update its temperature preferences based on that, and
it's temperature warm up and cool down. Yeah, I didn't
even mention that the WiFi connectivity allows it to even
figure out what the temperature is in your region, so
that it can anticipate how hard it's going to have
to work or how hard your HVAC system will have
to work to camera act what and where the outside
(43:01):
temperature happens to be. So here in Atlanta, for example,
and say I don't know July, it would know that
the temperature outside is surface of the sun. And therefore,
if you are going to be home in forty five minutes,
it might as well start cranking up the A C now,
because that's how long it's going to take it for
your house to be habitable by the time you get there.
Also some commentary um Also, Nest employees could potentially start
(43:27):
collaborating with with other Google departments and and working on
on hardware, maybe maybe that elusive smart watch that we've
been hearing about, or some of those automated cars or
are personal robots that Google X has been talking. If
I find out that the Google automated car gets a
Nest climate control system in it, I'm just like, just
just just sell it. Just let me buy one, or
(43:50):
not even climate control. I mean, these are clearly incredibly
um smart, savvy people who are working for Nest. They
could they could work on any number of projects, and
they could they could be I mean like, could Nest
be Google's new smart home division? Yeah, no, it totally
could be that. Now, you know, before we get all
excited about that, let's keep in mind that Motorola has
not exactly become Google's you know, mobile division, and in fact,
(44:13):
there's some talk of Motorola spinning off and becoming its own,
uh independent sub company. So you know, there's we're not
we're not ready to prognosticate fully yet. It's too bad.
I didn't make this one of my two thousand fourteen
predictions that Google was going to buy Nest. I did
not see that coming, and I don't think anybody saw
this one coming, aside from maybe like Larry Page and
(44:38):
maybe Fidel Yeah. I did make the joke on Twitter
that if Google wanted, they could pay me three point
one billion and I'd be happy, to manually change everyone's
thermostatic for them whenever they liked. But they did not
take me up on that, I'm sorry, which is too
bad because then I could have afforded to get the
Nest once put in my house. All right. Well, anyway,
(45:00):
that wraps up our our discussion about Nest the company,
the fact that it has entered into this new era.
Uh and you know, we don't really know what that
means yet. It could very well mean that we're going
into an era where privacy becomes even a larger concern
and that you know this, this could mean some dark
stuff in the future. I'm hoping that that's not the case.
(45:21):
I'm cautiously optimistic that we're going to see some really
cool collaborations between Nest and Google come out of this,
and hopefully the kind that will benefit us as consumers
more so than say, any kind of advertiser. That wraps
up this classic episode. Hope you guys enjoyed it. I
look forward to hearing from you if you have any
suggestions about future topics I should cover in tech Stuff.
(45:44):
The best way to get in touch with me it's
over on Twitter. We use the handle text stuff hs
W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text
Stuff is an I heart Radio production. For more podcasts
from I heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
(46:11):
H
TechStuff News
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Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
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