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