The Two Blokes Talking Tech podcast – Episode # 744 – Smart Glasses DRAMA, Alexa+ Launches and Robot Mowers!

Two Blokes Talking Tech
Episode 744 — Smart Glasses DRAMA, Alexa+ Launches and Robot Mowers!
Date: August 6, 2026
Hosts: Trevor Long & Stephen Fenech

[00:00:00] Trevor Long: I mean, I’m out of practice. I’m out of practice.

[00:00:04] Stephen Fenech: We’re back.

[00:00:06] Trevor Long: Welcome to 3 weeks, 2 weeks, 3 weeks. We’ve had 2 weeks away from the studio.

[00:00:10] Stephen Fenech: So you haven’t had the pleasure of looking at our faces for a couple of weeks.

[00:00:14] Trevor Long: It’s been a good couple of weeks for some people.

[00:00:15] Stephen Fenech: Everybody thinking, woo, we had a break.

[00:00:17] Trevor Long: Yeah, yeah.

[00:00:18] Stephen Fenech: Yep.

[00:00:19] Trevor Long: Thanks for your support. If you’ve been watching on YouTube and missing us, it’s available every week on the Spotify and Apple Podcasts and places like that. But just whenever we’re in studio is YouTube. That’s the challenge. I mean, I’ve got nothing else. We’ve had a wild couple of weeks.

[00:00:38] Stephen Fenech: It has been, yeah. We’ve been to London, we’ve been driving Mercedes and BMWs and Geelys and everything, yeah.

[00:00:45] Trevor Long: And we went out of our way for Geely today, to be honest.

[00:00:48] Stephen Fenech: Did we?

[00:00:48] Trevor Long: We upset our normal schedule.

[00:00:51] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, we did tailor it down to our needs.

[00:00:55] Trevor Long: You’ve had your first GYG.

[00:00:56] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, not bad. I’m impressed. So what’s the actual name?

[00:01:01] Trevor Long: Guzmán y Gómez.

[00:01:02] Stephen Fenech: Guzmán y Gómez.

[00:01:03] Trevor Long: Guzmán y Gómez.

[00:01:04] Stephen Fenech: What’s the y Gómez?

[00:01:05] Trevor Long: Guzmán and Gómez. I assume, I don’t know Spanish, but Guzmán y Gómez.

[00:01:10] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, that was good.

[00:01:11] Trevor Long: Guzmán and Gómez and G-Y-G for sure.

[00:01:13] Stephen Fenech: That was a very substantial burrito. Substantial.

[00:01:17] Trevor Long: Yeah, well, when you load it up, I was in the car and I was like, what, do you want to add this? Do you want to add this? And you said yes to everything. And I’m like, oh, and then it gave you, let me add more. There must be a certain number of things that you can add because I couldn’t read you the rest of it. The rest of the list.

[00:01:29] Stephen Fenech: It said, no, that’s enough for you, big man.

[00:01:30] Trevor Long: And then you were jealous because I’d added fries into my burrito and you’re like, why didn’t you tell me about that?

[00:01:35] Stephen Fenech: I’m actually, you know, I’m happy with the outside. You had the interior fries, I’m happy with the exterior fries, mate. That’s fine, I don’t mind. I still had my fry intake.

[00:01:44] Trevor Long: Okay, your fry intake was at normal levels. It was all good. Okay, everyone relax.

[00:01:50] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s been, uh, interesting couple of weeks, all the travel we’ve done and, um, continue to do.

[00:01:56] Trevor Long: Yeah, we’ll have a— that’s going to be this weekend.

[00:01:59] Stephen Fenech: That’s right.

[00:02:00] Trevor Long: Yeah, this Sunday, this Sunday, this Sunday, we are taking that seventh day from you folks and we’re going to throw in a Two Blokes Talking Optus Stadium. Yeah, and Optus generally. So we’re flying to Perth as guests of Optus to see some Italian football, but at the same time we’re going to learn a little bit about network splicing. We’re going to talk about things, important things that they’ve learned and we’ve learned over the last few years basically about device updates, software updates and things like that. The importance of those things. We’ll talk about how they’re going with their networks and stuff. So yeah, just a little bit of an under-the-hood look at how Optus handles its networks and most importantly, major events. So like on the weekend just gone, they had the Supercars down at Wanneroo in Perth. Then this, this week they’ve got, they’ve got a football game tonight our time, but it’s already been on if you’re, if you’re listening, they’ve got 3 Italian football events at the stadium. So it’s big events, big crowds. How do you cater for that? How do you make that work?

[00:02:57] Stephen Fenech: Is that where the Perth Bears are going to play too or not?

[00:02:59] Trevor Long: I don’t think so.

[00:03:00] Stephen Fenech: They’re not going to be.

[00:03:01] Trevor Long: They need a rectangular stadium for that.

[00:03:03] Stephen Fenech: Of course. Yeah, of course.

[00:03:04] Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:03:04] Stephen Fenech: Well, they were watching soccer there, so.

[00:03:06] Trevor Long: Yeah, I know. But that’s big event stuff. It’s like, you know, why would they?

[00:03:09] Stephen Fenech: Because that tends to be like, I know they had State of Origin there and a few others. So interesting.

[00:03:16] Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:03:16] Stephen Fenech: I’m looking forward to it. That should be good. I’ve never been to Optus. Have you ever been to Optus Stadium before?

[00:03:19] Trevor Long: No.

[00:03:20] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, my first time too.

[00:03:21] Trevor Long: I’m looking forward to a little tour.

[00:03:22] Stephen Fenech: Should be good.

[00:03:23] Trevor Long: One problem.

[00:03:24] Stephen Fenech: One problem. Yeah. Souths are playing at the same time as the Sox.

[00:03:27] Trevor Long: It’s not a problem for pretty much anyone else.

[00:03:30] Stephen Fenech: Well, I’ll be glancing down at another device during the game, although with the time difference, I should be able to watch the first half of the Souths game and then, and then do, then just double, double, double team it on the other one. Yeah. You know what I mean? Watch both at once, mate. Is that what they call that? We had this discussion before, have we?

[00:03:50] Trevor Long: When you got 2 drinks. No, that’s a different— that was a double fisting situation.

[00:03:53] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, well, yeah, I’ll, uh, I’ll be doing double duty on my, on my viewing of sport. I’m live and one in my hand, so to speak.

[00:04:03] Trevor Long: It’s getting worse, genuinely getting worse, Steven.

[00:04:07] Stephen Fenech: I’ll stop it right there.

[00:04:08] Trevor Long: Oh, how about I help you by stopping it right there, just generally, and we’ll do this. Welcome to Two Blokes Talking Tech. Not a bad price.

[00:04:18] Stephen Fenech: With Trevor Long from eftm.com. Really handy device.

[00:04:22] Trevor Long: And Steven Fenech from techguide.com.au. Episode 744. Thanks to the great people at Netgear and Arlo. We’ll tell you more about them shortly. If you’re into networking and improving your home network with the big NBN speeds that you’ve got, you should do that. And Netgear can help you out with a great Wi-Fi system, and Arlo can help you keep an eye on your home inside and out with their amazing home security system. So we’ll tell you more about them shortly. But Stephen, it has— we, we, we can tell best when a gadget story kind of makes waves in the mainstream because we get calls from—

[00:04:56] Stephen Fenech: that’s right—

[00:04:57] Trevor Long: news media, radio stations and everything to talk about it. And, and we’ve talked about these products before, let’s be clear. And I think our audience is across them. But let’s have a conversation about smart glasses. And it all came about because Kmart released a set of ANKO-branded smart glasses, which I saw TikToks from people going, these are the Kmart Meta Glasses. I’m like, well, you don’t know what Meta is a brand, but anyway, they’re smart glasses, but they have the same functions as Meta glasses. Cameras, they apparently have like AI, so you can ask.

[00:05:26] Stephen Fenech: Oh really?

[00:05:27] Trevor Long: So they link to your phone.

[00:05:28] Stephen Fenech: $89.

[00:05:28] Trevor Long: I know, pretty wild.

[00:05:31] Stephen Fenech: Speakers as well, so you can hear. You go over here.

[00:05:33] Trevor Long: So they have—

[00:05:33] Stephen Fenech: Have you bought them?

[00:05:34] Trevor Long: No, they’re sold out. Yeah, right. They have the same features as a set of Meta glasses.

[00:05:39] Stephen Fenech: So it’s again another case of kind of the big box brands reverse engineering a popular product and selling a cheap version.

[00:05:47] Trevor Long: I said this on the Today Show this morning, you know, once a piece of technology is launched and goes well, which you’ve got to argue Meta Glasses have done, the Chinese factories are going, how do we make them? And they engineer them and then they try and sell them to whoever they can. Well, like, you can bet your dollars that Kogan’s got a bloke on the ground in China going, well, okay, we need some. You can bet your dollars there’ll be bloke on Temu and on Alibaba.

[00:06:11] Stephen Fenech: You’re already on Temu. I was actually talking with John Stanley on Monday night. We were chatting about the $89 Kmart glasses and Temu are in on board. Amazon are selling them cheap too. And a couple of weeks ago, remember Samsung announced they’re going to enter the game as well.

[00:06:26] Trevor Long: And there’s plenty of rumors that Apple’s going to do the same.

[00:06:28] Stephen Fenech: Well, I think that’s kind of the last shoe to drop really, isn’t it? Is Apple with the Vision Pro being out for so long, they’re going to— how much of that technology is going to come down to a pair of smart glasses? We don’t know.

[00:06:37] Trevor Long: And the biggest question about— and I look, I don’t buy into the Apple thing yet. It’s easily a year and a half away if it’s happening. But the problem for Apple is they’re so big on privacy. How do they go so big on privacy? Because remember, yeah, that’s right. For context, the Ray-Ban Stories, which were the first product launched, that’s 5 years ago.

[00:06:55] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, it’s a while.

[00:06:56] Trevor Long: They’ve been around for a long time.

[00:06:57] Stephen Fenech: That was just a camera, no AI, just a camera.

[00:06:59] Trevor Long: That’s right. It was all about the smart and downloaded to your phone. You could on those original ones, which you cannot do with the current version, you could livestream on YouTube. Oh, sorry, on Instagram.

[00:07:08] Stephen Fenech: On Insta.

[00:07:09] Trevor Long: And you can’t do that on the current ones, which is insane.

[00:07:11] Stephen Fenech: But you can do a video call on WhatsApp or something, can’t you?

[00:07:14] Trevor Long: I think you can, but I’m sure you can. The idea of livestreaming from Instagram Instagram was amazing. It was such a cool thing. But anyway, um, so 5 years they’ve been around. Why is it a big story? The Kylie Jenner link. Meta did the smartest thing ever to get attention, which was link with a global celebrity. Celebrity, yeah. But it was also the worst thing they could have done because it put the focus on them, right? Um, that you can’t avoid that.

[00:07:39] Stephen Fenech: But I can remember— well, I don’t know whether you remember, but I remember when the stories came out.

[00:07:44] Trevor Long: Yes.

[00:07:44] Stephen Fenech: And it was then the first thing was there was a bit of an ick factor to it with the, oh, you know, privacy. Did they have a light? You could tell that though.

[00:07:52] Trevor Long: They’ve always had the light.

[00:07:54] Stephen Fenech: But that was the first thing that, you know, you look at, there’s the glass half full, glass half empty sort of, right? The glass half empty people were saying, oh, that’s a breach of my privacy. I don’t agree with it. The glass half full people saying, how good’s this? I don’t have to pull my phone out to take a photo.

[00:08:09] Trevor Long: Yeah, I know. I’ve told that story so many times where I loved, and it’s March, last year, took the family to America and I went, no phone, I’m not going to get on social media, but I want to share my trip and record. I want to be able to look back at my trip so I can go to my— I think on my Instagram there’s a highlight that’s like USA. I can click through all of the places we went and things we did because I would sit there and I’d say, hey, Meta, take a photo and share it on Instagram. Do you want to share? Yes. Done. Hope it was a good photo. I can’t tell, right? And I think that’s a great record. Plus standing in front of— I remember it clearly. We’re at the Washington Monument again. I’ve told this story before. And one of the kids said, what’s, what’s that building? And I said, well, hey Meta, what am I looking at? And they go, it’s the Museum of Black History. I said, tell me more. And it told me a bunch of things about the, about the Museum of Black History. It was, it was really, really cool.

[00:08:55] Stephen Fenech: I agree. And I think the fact that now more people can get hold of it, it’s obviously going to be a product that because it was sold out. All right. So people want to get hold of it. I think the idea of, the idea of filming and taking photos without having to pull out your phone is kind of a bit You know, a lot of people, for them, it’s maybe their first time they’ve ever experienced a product like that. So of course it’s going to be popular. There have been others out. But the question we were both asked, it’s all about what does this mean about privacy? Yeah.

[00:09:23] Trevor Long: And I think it’s a hard thing for people to really grasp because I’ve— and I’ve said this before and I’ve shown this demo before— I could be having a conversation with you, just casually chatting. Hey, man, it’s really exciting and interesting. And you don’t know whether this phone is recording because there’s no light on this.

[00:09:37] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:09:37] Trevor Long: Now I get it. When someone does this, You know they’re taking a photo, right?

[00:09:41] Stephen Fenech: Yep.

[00:09:41] Trevor Long: But if someone’s just holding their phone or does the old pocket trick, you know, that could be hanging out of your purse, you don’t know that that’s not happening. And then, yeah, take one of the cameras we’re using now, that’s got a 600mm lens on it. I could zoom in on someone 200 meters away and take a photo of them. So to what extent do we expect or are entitled to privacy in public? Now the rule is you’re not.

[00:10:07] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, well, you don’t need permission. There’s a— it’s not— if you’re in public, then you can film anyone.

[00:10:12] Trevor Long: That’s correct.

[00:10:12] Stephen Fenech: Public. Now, I think that you’re right, that the expectation of privacy in a time when everyone’s got a camera in their pocket and there are other surveillance cameras and other things around, if you don’t— if you expecting— if you’re expecting privacy, then you’re— I think that’s a big ask.

[00:10:33] Trevor Long: And I don’t— So I don’t know if you’ve had this, but I’ve done enough interviews where people get really narky about how you’re a creep if you wear them, this kind of thing. I’m like, hang on a minute, that’s a really strong accusation to make to someone who— Exactly. I wear them. They’re my only glasses. They’re my only sunnies, right? And you know what? 90% of the time they’re turned off because actually when I want to use them, I want the battery to be there, right? So if you just have them on latent, the battery will drain after a day or two. Whereas when I want to use them, it’s because I want to use them to film a video of a car or whatever, whatever. So they’re off most of the time, right?

[00:11:04] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:11:04] Trevor Long: And so the idea that you’re a creep just because you own them is wild to me.

[00:11:09] Stephen Fenech: I agree, mate. That’s clickbait. That’s clickbait sort of statement.

[00:11:12] Trevor Long: A couple of weeks ago when the Kim Kardashian ones came out, Triple M Melbourne called me and said, do you want to talk to—

[00:11:18] Stephen Fenech: Kylie Jenner ones, you mean? The Kylie Jenner.

[00:11:20] Trevor Long: Kylie Jenner. What did I say?

[00:11:21] Stephen Fenech: Kim Kardashian.

[00:11:22] Trevor Long: Okay, same thing. Whatever. They’re the same people.

[00:11:24] Stephen Fenech: Same family.

[00:11:24] Trevor Long: I don’t know. They’re not the same person. Anyway, they’re like, can you talk to Mick and the team this morning? Yeah, of course I can. Do you know much about them? Yeah, I own them. I’ve got them. I can tell you all about them. And mate, I’ll be honest with you, and I don’t care if Mick hears this, Mick went went over the top, like, at me about them. Like, what? Well, mate, what are you wearing for? You’re a creep. And it was solid, right? Come on. And to the point where the producer afterwards texted me and said, are you okay with that? And I rang them and I said, listen, I’ll be honest with you, I thought it was a bash-up. I thought it was a bit silly given I’m your guy. Like, it’s a bit, it’s a bit of a weird thing to go hard on me like that. She goes, do you want me to take it out? I said, no, I don’t care, I’m fine. I stand by everything I said, of course, and I’m okay with that being his opinion. But There’s a difference. And I was trying, I actually—

[00:12:05] Stephen Fenech: There’s a lot of assumptions going on. They’re assuming that you—

[00:12:08] Trevor Long: I used AI yesterday. I’m like, can you give me thought? I wanna brainstorm here examples of a product that is in the market for undetermined purposes being used by a small percentage for bad things. And they were like, you know, cars and you can crash a car, you can use a car as a weapon, all these kind of things. There’s not actually a really great example of how 1% of people are like, AirTags is a really good example. Unbelievable product. But there’s some absolute filths in this world go, hey lady, track you, and they’ll track you. And that doesn’t mean— that doesn’t have to be a domestic abuse situation. It could just be some creep at the beach going, I wonder where she lives, you know.

[00:12:42] Stephen Fenech: I wonder why, why then aren’t people assuming that you’re a creep buying an AirTag?

[00:12:47] Trevor Long: Exactly. Do you know what I mean? So, so I think it’s, I think it’s horrible to pigeonhole people like that. Now look, am I walking down the beach wearing these things taking photos? No. Is there someone doing that? Probably.

[00:12:58] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:12:59] Trevor Long: But, but you know what, I, I don’t think it’s unlikely that those same people have been doing it with their phones because remember this, with the camera or the volume buttons, you’ve been able to take photos randomly really easily. So you can be walking down the beach, holding your phone and going click, click, click, not stopping to take a photo. So—

[00:13:15] Stephen Fenech: But you know what, I think that there is like, I know I grew up near the beach and I’m near there a lot. There is a certain etiquette that you learn, I think, especially, and not just in public, like with adults, but also with kids. I mean, there’s a certain etiquette that, it’s not really on, you take photos of kids or people’s kids. It’s like etiquette at school, sorry, weekend sports.

[00:13:39] Trevor Long: Yeah, like I’d love to have more photos and videos of Vivi playing netball, but you always feel like the weird dad taking photos of your daughter playing netball.

[00:13:46] Stephen Fenech: I can remember, like, my kids are obviously older than yours. I can remember when there was a time when there were— that they told us you’re not allowed to take photos of your kids.

[00:13:56] Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:13:56] Stephen Fenech: And I’m thinking, why?

[00:13:57] Trevor Long: It’s kind of an unwritten rule.

[00:13:58] Stephen Fenech: Yeah. Well, but I was— I can remember when they first introduced that, I’m thinking, they’re my kids. Why can’t I take photos of my own kids?

[00:14:05] Trevor Long: Yeah. So these—

[00:14:06] Stephen Fenech: I said, I’m not going to take photos of other kids, I’m going to take photos of mine. These days we live in a world where where there’s a thing called permission to publish.

[00:14:11] Trevor Long: So at schools, when you sign your kid up to school, you tick a box to say permission to publish. And so I know this ’cause Amanda does a lot of social media for the baseball club and also helps the school out and stuff. So it’s like someone sends a photo of a group of kids going, “Hey, we raised $1,000 today in our thing.” But there’s a kid there that can’t, is not allowed on social media. So the school can’t post that photo. And so it’s like, she used to work with a politician and it’d be like, “Don’t take a photo with the group unless we’ve checked that all the kids have permission to publish.” And I respect that. Parents, if you choose that that’s what you want Well, that’s your right.

[00:14:43] Stephen Fenech: Absolutely. That’s your right. Fair enough. But for publication though.

[00:14:47] Trevor Long: Yes. But that child, there’s absolutely nothing stopping them being at a bus stop and someone taking a photo of the coffee shop with these kids happen to be there and putting it on the internet.

[00:14:59] Stephen Fenech: Yes.

[00:14:59] Trevor Long: There’s no rule about that if they were in public.

[00:15:02] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, of course.

[00:15:03] Trevor Long: Now I can’t remember. I felt like you and I were in the conversation, but maybe we weren’t. Someone, whether it was a caller or something somewhere, said to me there’s a country— I don’t know where it was— where you’re not allowed to take photos in public, like it’s illegal. So it stops paparazzi.

[00:15:18] Stephen Fenech: I’ll look that up.

[00:15:19] Trevor Long: So it— so basically their privacy law essentially said that it’s illegal to take photos of people without their permission in public spaces. And what this prevents is obviously this kind of thing, but also it prevents paparazzi. And mate, I’ll be honest with you, if, if I was super famous, I think the paparazzi would be annoying, right? So, so I think I think if we’re going to have a conversation about privacy, it’s not to ban Meta glasses, it’s to somehow instill a new form of privacy expectation, but also a new etiquette as well.

[00:15:52] Stephen Fenech: Yeah. And then don’t forget too, we haven’t mentioned the glasses have the light that— so if the light’s on, and I know in bright sunlight, daylight, you probably won’t notice the light.

[00:16:01] Trevor Long: And on a set of Meta glasses, if you put a tape over the light or you try and drill out the light, but it theoretically won’t work. But there’s no way that a pair of Temu glasses is going to have that same safeguard.

[00:16:12] Stephen Fenech: All right, you want to hear about this? No country bans all public photography entirely. This is according to Google AI. Yeah, uh, but strict privacy and anti-surveillance laws make it illegal to photograph individuals without consent or to capture government and military sites.

[00:16:24] Trevor Long: Where?

[00:16:24] Stephen Fenech: In places like United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

[00:16:27] Trevor Long: It was the UAE. So someone said to me, that’s why people move to Dubai. Celebrities move to Dubai because they don’t want to be photographed in public.

[00:16:34] Stephen Fenech: It says it is a severe privacy violation and illegal in the UAE to photograph people in public without explicit consent, carrying fines of up to $136,000 US dollars or jail time.

[00:16:49] Trevor Long: So if you’re a Hollywood celebrity sick of being photographed, go to the UAE.

[00:16:54] Stephen Fenech: Move there, move to Dubai.

[00:16:55] Trevor Long: Now, you know, do you really want massive fines like that? Is it going to be that kind of thing? And do you want to stop people taking photos of the beautiful beach just because someone might be in the shot? You know, there’s a—

[00:17:04] Stephen Fenech: of course not—

[00:17:04] Trevor Long: there’s a balance there, but I I genuinely don’t know the answer. And my other thing is horses bolted on smart glasses. Let’s be clear, horse bolted.

[00:17:13] Stephen Fenech: And phones too, phones.

[00:17:14] Trevor Long: But mate, think about, remember that stupid rabbit pin or whatever it was that came out? It was like an AI thing.

[00:17:19] Stephen Fenech: Yes.

[00:17:19] Trevor Long: There’s going to be other products because there’s gonna be products that essentially record your day.

[00:17:25] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, Plaud has one, a wearable version.

[00:17:28] Trevor Long: Yes. And so imagine—

[00:17:29] Stephen Fenech: That’s just record all day.

[00:17:31] Trevor Long: But imagine the next version of that Yeah.

[00:17:33] Stephen Fenech: Has a body cam or something.

[00:17:35] Trevor Long: Yeah. Basically has like a time-lapse camera. So it just takes snapshots through the day because, mate, I’ve got a crap memory. Imagine I could go, what time did I go to JB Hi-Fi? And it just goes, finds JB Hi-Fi. Like, it’s amazing, right?

[00:17:48] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:17:48] Trevor Long: But you know what? I was talking to someone. Did we talk about this? I was talking to someone about Plaud. Yep. And how— and I was telling— I was on a video call with a former colleague and we were talking about some business. And then I said, mate, you should get this thing. It’s unbelievable if you’re doing a lot of meetings. Yeah. And he said what about permission? And I went that’s a great point like you actually should say in a meeting ’cause when we do a briefing with some big companies they go this meeting’s being recorded, I should tell you this means it’s recorded on background for our use not for publication right? In theory when we attend a meeting—

[00:18:23] Stephen Fenech: When they say that though.

[00:18:25] Trevor Long: No no don’t worry about that bit, I’m talking about when we take Applaud to a meeting in theory we should be telling people everyone in the meeting just so you know I’m recording this meeting meeting for note-taking purposes. Yeah, but otherwise, but why are we there?

[00:18:38] Stephen Fenech: What else are we there for?

[00:18:39] Trevor Long: No, no, but I know what you mean in terms of the law. Yeah, like if you’re having a— so if you’re going to have coffee with someone and you sit your plod down, well, because you’re having a course, that would be— but it’s a meeting. Yes, you’re having a coffee meeting with someone.

[00:18:51] Stephen Fenech: I would say, do you mind if I record? If it’s just a one-on-one. Yeah, but if I’m sitting in a briefing with 40 other people, I’m going to press record and that’s it.

[00:18:59] Trevor Long: But again, it’s this balance of law versus use case, right?

[00:19:02] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, I know, but well, the briefing is like for, it’s a business meeting.

[00:19:06] Trevor Long: I know, but you’re getting stuck on the briefing. What I’m talking about is the technology and the fact that no one is talking about permission. No one is talking about the fact that you’re actually meant to get permission in any circumstance. Yeah. Same with cameras, right? In what circumstances are you meant to, or should you, or do you need to get permission?

[00:19:21] Stephen Fenech: I understand, but in terms of say journalism, I think that it’s a given wouldn’t it be just a given that they expect you—

[00:19:29] Trevor Long: Again, move on from the briefing. Think about the average person using Plaud or Pocket AI in their daily work.

[00:19:35] Stephen Fenech: Average person that’s not a journalist doing their job.

[00:19:37] Trevor Long: Just who goes to meetings somewhere.

[00:19:38] Stephen Fenech: Just goes to meetings a lot.

[00:19:40] Trevor Long: And is the most— like, if I was at SBS still, I would have Plaud in every meeting because it would change my world about action points, notes, all that kind of stuff. But in theory—

[00:19:50] Stephen Fenech: Do we need to explain what Plaud is?

[00:19:51] Trevor Long: In theory, we’ve talked about it. In theory, everyone in the room should know that I’m going to record this. There’ll be a transcript and actions. What I would say to people is, hey guys, just so I’m going to use my AI assistant to record this. I’m happy to distribute the notes to everyone. Yeah. Like that’s the game changer.

[00:20:05] Stephen Fenech: Fair enough.

[00:20:06] Trevor Long: That’s the game changer for everyone.

[00:20:08] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, that’s true. But I think I remember when I reviewed Plaudid, I did address the sort of the issue of people sort of were worried about privacy. But well, it’s not like I think the issue is you can, you could because it’s so small, you could have that in your pocket and no one knows it’s there. Correct. But you can do the same thing with your phone. You could be recording right now.

[00:20:26] Trevor Long: And that’s why if you have that conversation about AI audio recording, we could be recording right now on this phone. Who’s checking?

[00:20:32] Stephen Fenech: Are you?

[00:20:33] Trevor Long: Maybe. Like, do you know if I just took a photo of you?

[00:20:35] Stephen Fenech: Do I care? No, but you did.

[00:20:37] Trevor Long: You have no idea. No, I didn’t. I didn’t, but I could have.

[00:20:39] Stephen Fenech: But I charge $500 per photo. Okay.

[00:20:41] Trevor Long: I just think that’s the challenge. I’m not, I’m not saying it’s not creepy, but I’m saying first and foremost, there’s a dozen reasons why these glasses are amazing. Things we’ve talked about, others like visually impaired people getting information about where they are and what they’re standing in front of. Like, it’s a game changer for some of those people.

[00:20:59] Stephen Fenech: I think the main reason— and I did a little interview on Channel 10 News, and you do the Today Show about this?

[00:21:04] Trevor Long: Yeah, this morning.

[00:21:06] Stephen Fenech: The whole— like I said, you just got to remember why people are buying this. I said 99% of people buying these glasses are going to want to be able to take photos and videos while still being in the moment. They’re not pulling their phone out and pulling themselves out of the moment. They’re still present and still recording at the same time.

[00:21:25] Trevor Long: I think it’s an etiquette question. So Danica at the Today Show was telling me she went to a— she said she’s got a pair. I think she was sent them, but she doesn’t use them much. Even the floor manager’s husband has a pair. And I’m like, this is real people. This is just everyday people.

[00:21:38] Stephen Fenech: Exactly.

[00:21:38] Trevor Long: But she said to me she went to a wedding and there was a guy with these glasses there. And initially it was like, oh cool, he could take photos. And then after a while it was like people were like, mate, can you take them off? We’re just in the moment here.

[00:21:49] Stephen Fenech: But that’s the other thing too. Like mine are sunglasses. So if I’ve got them indoors, I am creepy.

[00:21:54] Trevor Long: Yes.

[00:21:54] Stephen Fenech: I’m thinking that’s a bit odd.

[00:21:56] Trevor Long: But you can put your prescription in these things and just wear them as your daily drivers.

[00:21:59] Stephen Fenech: So there’s a difference. And the ones at Anko, they’re just the— no, not sunnies. They’re just normal.

[00:22:04] Trevor Long: I don’t know if they sell sunnies.

[00:22:05] Stephen Fenech: They look clear, the lenses to me. They were just glasses.

[00:22:07] Trevor Long: They might have had other versions though.

[00:22:08] Stephen Fenech: You never know, right?

[00:22:10] Trevor Long: But like etiquette is, guys, it’s not something you wear when you’re having chats with people.

[00:22:14] Stephen Fenech: Exactly right. And I remember when I bought my pair in Houston, remember? Yeah. And I came home and I remember Joe joking, he says, “Oh well, I’ll know that if you’re wearing them in the bedroom, I should be worried.” And I went, “Oh, I’m not gonna be doing that, am I?” Like, it’s gonna be, it’s obvious that they’re sunnies. And if I’m wearing them indoors, you’ll think, “Hang on a minute, what’s doing here?” So there you have it.

[00:22:37] Trevor Long: Not that there’s anything wrong with that if it’s consented.

[00:22:39] Stephen Fenech: Exactly, if you wanna do that, then that’s up to you, but it would, you’d be, you’d be found out if they’re thinking, “How come you’re wearing your glasses?” And then, “Oh, hang on, they’ve got cameras in them.” This is gonna sound like a really weird sidetrack, but we’re in a time where a different generation to us, a much younger generation is now in a consent generation.

[00:22:58] Trevor Long: Like they genuinely, and I’ve had this conversation with a young person who used to come and work with us a bit. And I remember a few of us having this conversation with him ’cause he was a bit of a player and stuff. And it was like, so honestly, like, how do you deal with the problem of consent? He goes, I ask, you ask every time, and often I’ll use a voice note, I’ll record the consent. And I’m like, that’s amazing to me. Wow, the young people are so astute to go, you know what, I’m gonna— they’re gonna protect— I don’t just want the consent, I want a record of the consent, which is wild. That’s amazing. And I don’t think that’s what everyone’s doing. But what I’m getting at is, I wonder whether, because we’ve gotten to a point where, yeah, in terms of you know, sexual content, consent has become a real genuine—

[00:23:39] Stephen Fenech: Absolutely, mate.

[00:23:40] Trevor Long: And a great move, great change from when, you know, when you were 16, right? Very different world.

[00:23:45] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:23:45] Trevor Long: This— we just need that same evolution to happen with this kind of stuff, whether it’s photos or audio.

[00:23:50] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:23:51] Trevor Long: We just need people to go, hey guys, just so you know, I’m going to wear these for the ceremony because I think it’s a really cool POV. Like, I think it’d be cool for me to have this.

[00:23:57] Stephen Fenech: Okay, cool. I think if you know, if people know, then— and you know, they’re not and they’re comfortable with it, then good. But do you think though, just sort of mentioning this generation, like they’re like, you know, you and I, or me for sure, I didn’t have a phone in my back pocket to take photos when I was a kid, right?

[00:24:14] Trevor Long: Neither did I, yeah.

[00:24:15] Stephen Fenech: And yet young, younger people today have, that’s all they know. Like your kids, they’ve been alive since smartphones and later, right?

[00:24:24] Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:24:25] Stephen Fenech: My kids were sort of on the cusp of it a bit earlier. So say you take a, say, take an 18-year-old today, they would have had access to a smartphone since birth.

[00:24:37] Trevor Long: Correct.

[00:24:38] Stephen Fenech: Right. And so there, the whole thing about having a camera around is something that they just take for granted.

[00:24:45] Trevor Long: It’s very natural. Yes.

[00:24:46] Stephen Fenech: And so, but, and so where I’m getting at is that taking photos of stuff is something that they just do. And that they expect. And so, you know, to whatever degree, to whatever level of photography they want to go, if you know what I mean.

[00:25:02] Trevor Long: 100%.

[00:25:03] Stephen Fenech: Then that’s to me today, in today’s youth, that’s kind of something that’s accepted.

[00:25:09] Trevor Long: As I walked out of the kitchen to go upstairs to the bed last night, Victoria was walking out and she had her phone up. And as I walked past, it was on camera and she goes, say hi. And I just went, hey, because she was clearly snapping someone because they just snap each other back and forward, right? Ephemeral. You know, 24-hour messages disappear and stuff. They just take photos. It’s what they do. But here’s the other thing, using my buddy here in the office, Claude, because I was so kind of— I was trying to find— I was basically— I’m worried that we’re gonna come off being the tech guys as the creeps in this situation, right? Because we’re always— I’m not advocating for the technology, I’m just trying to help people understand it. Absolutely. And I was like, I need to— I need a way to support— I told it everything I would say on air if I was doing it. I said, I need to kind of help enforce my argument. And you know what I You know what I learned about the Kodak Fiend? A Kodak Fiend. Can you have any guess what that is?

[00:26:00] Stephen Fenech: Kodak Fiends are someone who’s like with a hidden camera or something, or—

[00:26:03] Trevor Long: In 1888, when Kodak created the portable camera. Now think about everyone’s vision of the 1800s is a big camera on a tripod. They put a thing in, it goes, boof, and it takes a photo, right? Yeah, exactly right. So at some point, and I don’t know the exact date, but 1888 was in my mind. At some point they created one that was broadly You could take, and I’m holding up a box here, right? It’s a big thing. It’s not a little digital camera.

[00:26:27] Stephen Fenech: I think I know where this is going.

[00:26:28] Trevor Long: And so that these, they would, they would record the world. They would, you know, take photos of people on the streets. You know, it’s, it’s just the world that they see around them.

[00:26:35] Stephen Fenech: But again, they became known as Kodak fiends because they were taking photos of people in public.

[00:26:40] Trevor Long: Correct.

[00:26:41] Stephen Fenech: Because it used to be a formal thing you used to do.

[00:26:43] Trevor Long: Correct. You would go to get your photo taken. You wouldn’t just have it taken in the street. People would hold up newspapers if they saw a Kodak fiend so they wouldn’t be photographed.

[00:26:52] Stephen Fenech: Wow, how far have we gone?

[00:26:54] Trevor Long: So we are now at the Meta Fiend or the smart glasses fiend stage, and I don’t know if it’s a genuinely similar, yeah, comparison, but it felt really interesting that that was a progression of technology that resulted in it. And by the way, it linked me to an article which essentially talked about how it was kind of the mainstream press that pushed this fiend concept onto people.

[00:27:16] Stephen Fenech: Of course, mate, it’s a headline.

[00:27:17] Trevor Long: Of course, headlines, clickbait happened back then.

[00:27:19] Stephen Fenech: It’s a headline. But no, it’s a funny argument how the, you know, like, I’m a journo, you know, you’ve worked in the media, you kind of got your headline written already before you’ve written the story.

[00:27:34] Trevor Long: You know what I’m saying?

[00:27:35] Stephen Fenech: And in this case, the TV stations and radio stations, they had their headline already written.

[00:27:40] Trevor Long: Yes.

[00:27:40] Stephen Fenech: Like the joke in our office used to be when I was a sports editor, mate, can you get him to say this?

[00:27:45] Trevor Long: Yes.

[00:27:46] Stephen Fenech: And have your headline ready. ‘Hey, can you get him to say this?’ So that’s kind of the approach to this whole story and people sort of being really righteous and saying, ‘Oh, well, privacy, how dare you invade my privacy,’ where, you know, they’re carrying a phone around in their back pocket that’s got a better camera than the one on my head.

[00:28:00] Trevor Long: Yeah. So, and look, again, the beach always comes up because, you know, people are scantily clad on the beach. And look, if you’re someone who loves to lay in a string bikini or in your Speedos as a bloke on the beach for your own enjoyment and sun and all that kind of stuff, and you’re worried about someone getting a photo, let me just tell you that there could There could be someone on the headland. There could be someone flying a drone. And with a great lens, they may have a far, frankly, a far better photo than someone who walks within 2 meters of you with these glasses.

[00:28:31] Stephen Fenech: That’s a good point because like it’s, look, and I’m sure you’ve had seen this yourself. And you know, there are some women who like to dress, you know, a bit risqué and you know, the low-cut tops and stuff like that. Why do they do that?

[00:28:47] Trevor Long: Why? I’m not going there, brother.

[00:28:49] Stephen Fenech: Well, but I’m just saying, like, it’d be like, right, this reminds me of someone, say some woman’s wearing a low-cut top down to her belly button.

[00:28:57] Trevor Long: Oh, my, my simple answer would be because you can.

[00:29:00] Stephen Fenech: No, well, okay, but some say some bloke, and I’ve seen this happen, right, in public. It wasn’t me, I’m just saying I’ve seen this happen where woman’s got a top down to here, right? And you know, and guys looking and the woman goes, you’re right. And the guy turns around and goes, well, I’m sorry, but you know, why else would you dress that way? What’s why would you, do you not want people to look at you? Is that why you dress that way? Or are you just sort of trying to bait people to have an argument with them?

[00:29:31] Trevor Long: Yeah. And again, you can bring it back to the Meta glasses thing. If that bloke was wearing glasses, Look, it is creepy as hell to take a photo, but also you stood there. Now my point again is you don’t know how many people around you, 5x lens on a phone, let alone 200mm lens on a big camera. But trust me, this photo has been taken.

[00:29:49] Stephen Fenech: We should also make the point too that you’re wearing, so you’re wearing the glasses. I pretend these are my Metas, okay? To take a photo, you gotta do this.

[00:29:56] Trevor Long: Or say, hey Meta, take a photo. Exactly right.

[00:29:59] Stephen Fenech: So if you, and you could have started rolling on a video before you even approached it. Approach the people, right? But you see someone doing this and that makes you uncomfortable, then get out of the way. Yeah, yeah.

[00:30:09] Trevor Long: And the other side of the etiquette is you should, you should feel comfortable saying, are they recording glasses? I really, I don’t feel comfortable with people wearing them around me. Fair enough. And if you’re someone wearing them that says bugger off, you, then you’re, then you probably bought a lot of problem.

[00:30:23] Stephen Fenech: Now that’s a problem. And that, that’s just been, that’s been just a human being, right? You, you, you entitled to say, nah mate, can you not, can you not film me? Like, yeah, yeah, I know you see the narcs on TikTok and that, many other people out the front of a bank and they’re saying, what are you guys doing here? I’m doing whatever I want. Have you seen those videos where I call the cops? I don’t care. I’m filming on a public street.

[00:30:42] Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:30:42] Stephen Fenech: You get those idiots.

[00:30:43] Trevor Long: There’s a bloke we’ve talked about before, DJ Audits in the UK, who flies drones over industrial estates and he just wants to get— he wants security to come and say, mate, what are you doing? You can’t be here. But he knows that. He knows he’s within the law, right?

[00:30:54] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:30:54] Trevor Long: And he’s just trying to aggravate people. The fact is that those people do that in the States because they want to aggravate people. They want to create a YouTube video. They want the police to be called and the police are going to say, ‘You are within your rights to do it.’ What they should be able to say is, ‘You’re within your rights, but it’s a bit weird.’ But you’re being like—

[00:31:09] Stephen Fenech: it’s stupid. Yeah, you’re being an idiot.

[00:31:10] Trevor Long: Yes.

[00:31:10] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, for the sake of it.

[00:31:11] Trevor Long: That’s what we should bring back. We should bring back honest and brutal policing, which is, ‘Mate, get a job.’ You know, you’re a goose. You’re entitled to do it, but you’re a bloody goose. Yeah, but you’re an idiot. Yeah, I know.

[00:31:23] Stephen Fenech: And then they’ll sue you for defamation or something. Yeah.

[00:31:26] Trevor Long: Yeah. All right, uh, look, what a world we live in, eh? It’s, it’s been a fun couple of days of conversation about that. Yeah, I’d suggest it won’t be the last time we talk about it.

[00:31:33] Stephen Fenech: I’ve got I’ve got my Meta glasses. We should have done this whole segment wearing our Meta glasses.

[00:31:38] Trevor Long: But anyway, mine, I’ve got it. I got, um, they’re paired to my iPhone Air, which is with Qatar Airways at the moment. Um, hopefully we’ll pick it up tomorrow. And so I can’t download the stuff because that’s what they’re paired with. But Tom Steinfort wore them as he opened the segment today, and then he took them off. So it’ll be cool to see, oh, that, that just that few seconds before he took them off.

[00:31:57] Stephen Fenech: So you wore yours?

[00:31:59] Trevor Long: You wore mine and hit record and everything.

[00:32:01] Stephen Fenech: Okay, you can’t pair it to another phone.

[00:32:02] Trevor Long: I just don’t know if you lose everything when you pair them and stuff. And also, that’s the phone I will go back to, so I don’t want to unpair and repair and all that.

[00:32:10] Stephen Fenech: Oh mate, I’ve paired my glasses to 58 different phones, I reckon.

[00:32:13] Trevor Long: It’s painful.

[00:32:15] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:32:15] Trevor Long: Anyway, it’s fun and games, and it won’t be the last time you hear us talking about that, that’s for sure. Everything about tech you never wanted to know. This is Two Blokes Talking Tech.

[00:32:28] Stephen Fenech: 2 Blokes Talking Tech, proudly supported by Arlo. Arlo is a great, great brand for your security cameras. If you haven’t started, it’s really easy to get into the ecosystem. The one I want to talk about in particular is one of their latest cameras, which is the PTZ, which is pan, tilt, zoom cameras that actually allow you to control them. So you can actually get in the app, view a live feed, pan the camera around, tilt it around. So they’re ideal if you’ve got maybe a big area you want to cover, and they on their own can detect movement and track that movement in your yard. But also great if you want to get in there and you can manually control it remotely from the app. You’re able to see the entire expanse of your— they pan 360 degrees. So if you’ve got a big area, it will cover it. And of course there are two versions, one that’s an outdoor version, of course weatherproof. I’ve got mine out, it’s mine sitting on my Astro shed. And you know what, when I do shoot my Astro, I’ve got to turn it off because otherwise the light will come on.

[00:33:28] Trevor Long: Of course. Yes.

[00:33:29] Stephen Fenech: So yeah, but no, but Generally, uh, the other— there’s an indoor version as well that also has a privacy setting, so when it’s facing down, you know it’s not recording. But there is an indoor version too. So great, great way to start. Uh, also it can easily be added onto your existing Arlo system as well. Check it out, arlo.com.

[00:33:46] Trevor Long: This is Two Blokes Talking Tech with Trevor Long and Steven Fenech. Well, it is a big day for anyone with an Amazon Echo speaker who uses Alexa in any decent way. Look, there is a problem. There’s two speakers in here and I didn’t mute them, so there she is. Shush! And she’s on quite loud, so she’ll probably interrupt this. Let’s just use the word A for now, okay? Because it’ll set other people’s speakers off as well.

[00:34:13] Stephen Fenech: Because you can get an A, but you can also get an A+.

[00:34:15] Trevor Long: And that’s what we’re talking about. We’ll say it quickly once. Alexa Plus has launched in Australia today, and that’s a big deal because it was announced a year ago.

[00:34:26] Stephen Fenech: And yeah, it’s been around for a while in the US, hasn’t it?

[00:34:28] Trevor Long: Yeah, I want to talk about about the stupidest part about it. You’re okay with that at this point?

[00:34:34] Stephen Fenech: Straight in, mate. Straight in.

[00:34:36] Trevor Long: If you want Alexa Plus, hear me out here, folks. Yeah, you want Alexa Plus.

[00:34:39] Stephen Fenech: Listen, I know what you’re gonna say.

[00:34:40] Trevor Long: Listen, I’m gonna have to get up and mute her. A+, if you want A+, yeah, it’s going to cost you $29.99 a month. If you want to avoid that cost, you need to be a Prime member for $9.99 a month. Yeah. And so I spoke to—

[00:34:56] Stephen Fenech: I said, is that right? Remember GoPro had that? Remember GoPro, if you buy the camera and don’t join it’s gonna be—

[00:35:02] Trevor Long: It made no sense to go pro.

[00:35:03] Stephen Fenech: So what, I could spend less and get more?

[00:35:05] Trevor Long: What do you mean? So I interviewed Michele Butti, who is a lovely Italian bloke. He’s the Vice President of Alexa International. He’s the boss of Alexa, right? Right. And I said, mate—

[00:35:16] Stephen Fenech: He’s the boss of A.

[00:35:17] Trevor Long: Oh, boss of A, geez, I keep forgetting. And I just kept saying, mate, I don’t understand. And he said, and I can’t find the quote ’cause I thought I had transcribed the interview, but anyway, apparently I haven’t. He said, that he thinks it was Jeff Bezos that said he— that Prime should be better than the value of any sum of its parts, any one of its parts.

[00:35:40] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:35:40] Trevor Long: So broadly speaking, um, he said— so I’ve got the quote now. He said, I’m surprised you’re surprised by this because you just said you’re using your Prime benefits a lot. We always meant to make Prime the best subscription in the world. I think that what Jeff Bezos said is that it has to be irresponsible for a customer not to get Prime because every single benefit can be more valuable than the price of Prime. So $9.99 a month, free delivery, take it. Yes. $9.99 a month, Amazon Prime Video. Video. $9.99 a month, Amazon Music.

[00:36:12] Stephen Fenech: Yep.

[00:36:12] Trevor Long: $9.99 a month, you add on A+.

[00:36:14] Stephen Fenech: And reading, there’s all reading too.

[00:36:16] Trevor Long: And there’s more. And it’s like, that is so true. It’s a ridiculously dumb business decision.

[00:36:21] Stephen Fenech: Well, I think, you know what?

[00:36:22] Trevor Long: But it makes Amazon Prime, it’s actually smart.

[00:36:25] Stephen Fenech: Uncancellable. It is very, I think it’s a smart play thinking, well, hang on a minute, I can either be a Prime member be a Prime member or pay that much money, I’m going to be a Prime member. Yeah, if you’re not already.

[00:36:35] Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:36:35] Stephen Fenech: Now word is too that there is no need to update your actual Echo device for Alexa Plus. So it is, it will roll into, because it’s, because it’s made a cloud-based, right? So it’s not processing on the spot.

[00:36:47] Trevor Long: Yes. So you, if you’ve got like a 5-year-old Alexa Echo, Michele told me basically if you have a first generation, remember the Echos that were big, tall, and very, very obvious things?

[00:36:57] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:36:57] Trevor Long: From from like 2009, 2019, right? The original Echo.

[00:37:02] Stephen Fenech: Okay.

[00:37:03] Trevor Long: They probably won’t work.

[00:37:04] Stephen Fenech: Right.

[00:37:04] Trevor Long: But 98% of all speakers in Australia will work with A+.

[00:37:10] Stephen Fenech: And it’s been a while in development. They’ve been developing this in Australia for over a year. They’ve been working on this. And we should talk about how it’s not just about it learning more stuff to do, but it’s also about where it is. So it’ll understand Australian slang and my accent and all all these other idioms in our language, but also to our local services and other things like that. And our partners, do you remember when Alexa first started, they talked about skills? Remember the skills of Alexa? And you can add on your skill and it would do stuff for you. So the A+ version of the skill is the partner where I think is it OpenTable? Is that the company?

[00:37:52] Trevor Long: Yes.

[00:37:53] Stephen Fenech: So that’s an example. So with Alexa Plus, they’ve partnered with OpenTable and you’re able to just ask it to book your restaurant whatever, give it a time and it’ll book it for you. It’ll do that on your behalf.

[00:38:05] Trevor Long: Yes.

[00:38:05] Stephen Fenech: The other thing I think they’re working on, I think, is services like HiPages and Airtasker where you can say, I need a quote to get my dishwasher fixed, can you find it out?

[00:38:14] Trevor Long: Yes.

[00:38:14] Stephen Fenech: So that’ll come as well.

[00:38:15] Trevor Long: And what I find interesting, and again, I was asking Michele whether or not the skill concept was something that could be embedded here. So I didn’t use the restaurant example, but my thought was, GyG, right? I’m at a point now where I know my order. If I could just say to a, hey, I’m hungry.

[00:38:36] Stephen Fenech: Order my favorite from GyG.

[00:38:38] Trevor Long: Can you order my usual from GyG? And it would just come back and say, do you wanna pick it up? Do you wanna have it delivered? Where are you? Like it’s a conversational thing. Mate, I’m all in. Like that to me.

[00:38:50] Stephen Fenech: That’s what we’re getting towards, isn’t it?

[00:38:51] Trevor Long: But yeah, but see, it’s not like the app developers can’t just build it themselves like they could a Skill. It has to be essentially deeply It’s gotta come through Amazon. It’s gotta come through Amazon essentially.

[00:39:02] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:39:02] Trevor Long: Okay. Right. So I think we’ll get to that. And he confirmed that was the vision.

[00:39:06] Stephen Fenech: Yeah. But it’s learning all the time too. It’s learning. Now I don’t know, I had a briefing. I didn’t have an interview. I was told it was an interview, but I said, is it an interview or is it a briefing? They said it’s a briefing. And so I never recorded any of mine, but I did ask about, like I said, there’s like, this is, it’s AI, right? So A+ is AI. And I said, well, so it’s different to other AI agents really, isn’t it? Like I wouldn’t, like I said, The example I used, I said, look, I’ve got a document of a, say, a property I’ve just bought. I wanted to ingest this into, for it to explain it to me in plain English. And the response I got was, well, now you, you know, other people might use your speaker and there’s not so much privacy around that in your home and everything. But it is capable, ’cause you gotta remember, it’s not just about you talking to a speaker ’cause they’ve got the app as well. So you can even on the browser, you can upload stuff for it to read. Yeah. The example that was used in my briefing was family with everyone’s got different allergies and one’s gluten-free.

[00:40:10] Trevor Long: My family, gluten-free, vegetarian.

[00:40:12] Stephen Fenech: So you can say, right, I’ll cook a meal that the whole family can have knowing that everyone has their particular things.

[00:40:18] Trevor Long: And I think a lot of people would be thinking, I can already do that with smart speakers.

[00:40:21] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:40:21] Trevor Long: So, but let’s walk through it, right? So the demo I saw was, we’re having people around this weekend. Can you come up with some options that are easy to cook and shareable food, right? And Alexa, came up with all these little options, right? Oh, sorry. Anyway, and then it was like interruption. Oh, hang on, Uncle Chris is coming. And that’s all she said, Uncle Chris is coming. And then the speaker came back with, oh, understand, here’s some options that have gluten-free included. So the speaker had learned that Uncle Chris equals gluten-free. And so that knowledge is retained. And so it’s that retention of knowledge, that learning.

[00:40:59] Stephen Fenech: And the conversational nature.

[00:41:00] Trevor Long: It’s truly conversational.

[00:41:01] Stephen Fenech: You don’t have to keep saying, hey, You can just keep talking and it’ll assume you’re still talking about the same thing.

[00:41:06] Trevor Long: Yeah. And so you could have a conversation about anything. So you could ask any AI-style question where you like, you know, I’m trying to understand, you know, which is the biggest airport in the world. And it says an answer and then you go, oh yeah, but I’m thinking about by traffic, not by size, you know? And so you could actually have a whole conversation back and forth.

[00:41:25] Stephen Fenech: But I think too, we got to remember this is more than just a question, like a search engine. It’s more agentic now, isn’t it?

[00:41:32] Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:41:32] Stephen Fenech: So it’s like, I think so many people, do you find this, that they use ChatGPT and those other services like a search engine? They ask a question.

[00:41:41] Trevor Long: Yes.

[00:41:41] Stephen Fenech: They don’t realize, or maybe they do, that you can actually ask it to do things for you and to organize things for you and to analyze things for you. Yeah. So that’s a whole part of this, isn’t it?

[00:41:53] Trevor Long: Oh, you know, it’s a plus. I don’t know whether you got this demo, but one of my favorite It was, you know, they came up with an idea for cooking, showed a recipe and a shopping list, like added all to my shopping list. And then we scrolled through and she grabbed a can of vanilla essence or something and said, the recipe calls for vanilla bean extract. Can you have a look at what I’m holding and tell me whether this would do the job anyway? And so it opened up the camera, took a photo and goes, you’re holding vanilla essence. That’s totally fine. The only difference will be the beans won’t be visible in that or something like that.

[00:42:20] Stephen Fenech: Right.

[00:42:20] Trevor Long: And I went, that’s That is 100% me because I’ve cooked things where it does say vanilla essence versus vanilla something else. And you’re like, I don’t know whether they’re interchangeable. And I would genuinely ask that. Like I would ring my mom and say, mom, can I do this? And not that I don’t wanna ring my mom, but isn’t it cool that you’ve got a speaker and a screen that at any time of night can answer that question for you?

[00:42:40] Stephen Fenech: So this speaks obviously with the camera.

[00:42:42] Trevor Long: This is one, you know, this is an Echo Show that has a lens on it and everything.

[00:42:45] Stephen Fenech: Anyone with a display has a camera, don’t they? Yeah, yeah.

[00:42:48] Trevor Long: And look, they’re pushing the display devices pretty heavy.

[00:42:51] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:42:51] Trevor Long: I’ll say this though, this was a planned demonstration in a controlled environment, and the only difference that I could understand was it wasn’t allowing barge-in, they called it. So that it, like, it was this long text and I said, listen, can you just jump in here? I don’t need to hear all this text. And they go, we’ve actually turned that off because it’s very sensitive. So if someone says something, it stops reading it out. And that’s fine. But it seems slow to me.

[00:43:15] Stephen Fenech: Okay.

[00:43:15] Trevor Long: Like I thought the responses were like, if you open up ChatGPT, the voice thing, like you’re having a conversation, like it’s there with you, man. It’s, there’s no delay. There’s no lag. Alexa Plus in my, sorry, said it again. In my first interaction with it seemed a touch slow.

[00:43:31] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:43:32] Trevor Long: I’m not quite sure. We know. Thank you.

[00:43:34] Stephen Fenech: It’s all good.

[00:43:34] Trevor Long: I’m sorry. It’s Trevor’s fault.

[00:43:35] Stephen Fenech: Take the rest of the day off.

[00:43:36] Trevor Long: Yeah, please. That’s all I wish you could do is just say, listen, I need you to, I can’t come to the speaker. Can you please stop listening to the next hour?

[00:43:43] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:43:43] Trevor Long: I wonder if you can do that.

[00:43:44] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:43:45] Trevor Long: You can’t do that, can you?

[00:43:45] Stephen Fenech: Maybe test it on your wife first.

[00:43:47] Trevor Long: Alexa, can you mute for 1 hour so you don’t hear your name? I can’t help you with that. Anyway, it was worth a try.

[00:43:54] Stephen Fenech: Yeah. Can’t be stopped.

[00:43:56] Trevor Long: Whatever.

[00:43:56] Stephen Fenech: But no, I think that there, yeah, that’s the, you mentioned about the camera and it listening, but also through the app you can upload documents.

[00:44:05] Trevor Long: I can’t imagine doing that. Information. Mate, every time I think, oh, I should use the app for this, I think, oh, What am I using the app for?

[00:44:09] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, well, but I think that’s kind of the, if you wanna get the full sort of 360-degree use of it, then that you need to be able to do things. If you wanna say upload a document or a photo or something, I don’t know whether, and ask about that through Alexa.

[00:44:25] Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:44:26] Stephen Fenech: You get as many avenues to Alexa Plus. And do you remember when we were in London with Amazon a few months ago? And they gave us all that, you know, inside baseball. We had all our press releases embargoed and one of them was about Alexa Plus coming to 10 more countries next year that we assumed one was Australia.

[00:44:45] Trevor Long: And it wasn’t.

[00:44:46] Stephen Fenech: And then when we got there, they said, oh no, it’s coming this year, a special announcement. And we went, ah, okay.

[00:44:51] Trevor Long: But the best part of that inside baseball is they were like, no, it’s not coming to Australia this year. And then it was like, yes, it is actually. And we’re like, oh, now you’re allowed to tell us.

[00:44:58] Stephen Fenech: So now, yeah.

[00:44:59] Trevor Long: They turned it around real quick.

[00:45:00] Stephen Fenech: Frantic rewriting.

[00:45:01] Trevor Long: The critical thing about that is, and we did talk we talked about this at the time, is it’s logical understanding. And so I said to this bloke yesterday who’s Italian, I said, so the idea of localizing it means that I can say to A, listen, I’m taking a sickie on Friday. I’m thinking about taking the missus to that Chinese joint near the servo. In theory, it knows, okay, he’s taking a sickie, so he’s talking about lunch. Knows the missus is Amanda, therefore knows she’s a vegetarian ’cause I’ve probably mentioned it. Knows where the servo is and therefore looks for a Chinese restaurant within 100 meters. Like theoretically it understands that lingo.

[00:45:35] Stephen Fenech: And that doesn’t it, and it was supposed to remember all that stuff too. It’s sort of in its memory bank.

[00:45:38] Trevor Long: It’s supposed to remember things like that’s your favorite Chinese restaurant or that’s your wife’s a vegetarian, all that kind of stuff.

[00:45:43] Stephen Fenech: So it’s like sort of Siri and those other services that remember what you’ve told it.

[00:45:47] Trevor Long: And I think for that reason it’s gonna be a hard, it’s gonna be a hard review. Like it’s gonna be, I think it’s something you need to live with for 6 months to really understand how good it is.

[00:45:55] Stephen Fenech: It is early days though. They keep saying it’s, it’s, you can get in the early, early program. Yeah.

[00:46:00] Trevor Long: The way to get in the early one is to buy a new speaker.

[00:46:02] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:46:02] Trevor Long: But then I think you just got to sign up and hope and wait for the, for the rollout here in Australia. But look, if not, if, if a million people are using it in Australia, whatever the number is. Oh, by the way, I think it was, I think it was an Australian number. 2 billion requests are made a year. A quarter of them are smart home related.

[00:46:19] Stephen Fenech: Oh, of course.

[00:46:20] Trevor Long: A quarter of those requests are, because like you heard me when I walked in here, I just turned on the lights and everything with one command. But that’s enhanced too though.

[00:46:26] Stephen Fenech: Plus, isn’t it?

[00:46:27] Trevor Long: Now I don’t know how you can enhance that. It’s pretty, pretty darn good already.

[00:46:30] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, it’s not bad. But yeah, good, good, uh, nice club to have in the back.

[00:46:34] Trevor Long: Remember, the number one use of smart speakers is, hey, can you play the radio or music? Yeah, like, that’s what it is. They’re speakers. Yeah, of course, they’re there for listening to the internet, which is why they make them such good speakers now. Of course, they realized they needed to have better quality.

[00:46:47] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, well, now they’ve got a lot smarter. Alexa—

[00:46:50] Trevor Long: oh, sorry, uh, The Amazon smart speaker called A+ now available in Australia. You can read more about it at techguide.com.au and eftm.com. This is Two Blokes Talking Tech with Trevor Long and Stephen Fenech. And we do it all thanks to the great people at Netgear, netgear.com.au, for all your home networking needs. We’ve talked about it a lot and you know exactly what they do, but the best place to buy your Netgear items is at netgear.com.au. You can click on their home Wi-Fi section to see, excuse me, all their latest products, uh, including of course the Orbi range of Wi-Fi solutions. And right now up to $600 off Wi-Fi solutions built for you, for how you actually live. Limited time offer on the Netgear website, netgear.com.au. Everything from extenders, routers, mobile hotspots, and mesh Wi-Fi. And there’s great little helpers on the website that let you choose which product is right for you. And of course the best thing to do after that is shop around and make sure you’re getting the best deal from all the retailers versus the, the Netgear online pricing, but they’ll look after you with good pricing as well as that discount if you sign up for their newsletter. And you can find out all their best products and the latest at netgear.com.au. This is Two Blokes Talking Tech with Trevor Long and Stephen Fenech.

[00:48:08] Stephen Fenech: Hey mate, what is— what’s Guzmán Gómez and Law Order on Samsung TV+ got in common? A lot of repeats. It’s repeating, it’s repeating on you.

[00:48:18] Trevor Long: All right, all right, give me a break.

[00:48:20] Stephen Fenech: Boom!

[00:48:20] Trevor Long: How’s that improv Baby, I, um, I published a review this week of the Ecovacs GOAT A2000. Yeah, sounds like a product from Captain Underpants, the books that my kids used to read when they’d build some crazy machine. It was always the, the something something 2000 or something like that. But so I’ve had robot lawn mowers in my house for 8 years, 6 to 8 years. The Worx was the first one, and back in the day you had to run a wire around the boundary which had a little emission of frequency on it that you may not be able to hear, and, and that was That was how the robot would go up. I know the wires here, it would just bounce around. And by the way, it would bounce around, it would be random, it would randomly, um, put in that, those pegs. But once you put it in, years later you couldn’t— I mean, you couldn’t find it. The wire’s still in my lawn, I don’t know why. Good luck pulling it out. Then it evolved. I did have one from Worx that was— no, it could just see grass, so it had a camera on it that could detect the green essentially, so I could see grass, which was really cool. Then I had the Ecovacs GOAT G1, which was their first one a few years ago, and it had —these big, tall white beacons with D-sized batteries in them. You had to put in the corners of your yard and it would use that to essentially triangulate its location and know where it was in the yard. I had that too. But to create the map, you had to drive it with the Bluetooth remote around the yard. Yeah.

[00:49:36] Stephen Fenech: Similar thing with MOWVA. I had the MOWVA one. Same deal.

[00:49:39] Trevor Long: You had to remote like a remote control car. So Ecovacs GOAT A2000, $3,000 robot lawnmower, which is not unusual.

[00:49:46] Stephen Fenech: The price of the G1. That’s correct.

[00:49:48] Trevor Long: Right. So we’ve now advanced this thing. Has dual blades, dual disc underneath, so two discs with spinning blades on them, literal razor blades by the way. It also has an edge trimmer, so a little whipper snipper on the side. It has dual LiDAR, and mate, the LiDAR, like, because we’ve all— I think we’ve seen LiDAR, you know, the dot mapping, and made it— made a LiDAR map of my home. And even though it’s down on the ground in the backyard, it could see the pitch of the roof, and like, it’s this beautiful big dome on the top, this beautiful 3D map of my backyard, which is wild. But you still have to drive it around the border to say this is the edge. Yes, right. And I’ve— that’s my biggest negative here. You still got to manually set it up like that. And we’ll talk about some other brands in a minute. But that said, when it’s done, it’s done. And it’s just— it’s doing beautiful lines, wide track. The edge trimming is good, not great, right? So in my yard, my backyard is not a box and a square with bricks or anything. There’s some areas where it’s just wild. It’s like the garden leans down and so it’s got, it’s like kind of an angle down to a brick or a rock wall. So it struggles with that. And so I had to actually just mop, just go, no, don’t go there. And again, that’s my other problem with it is in the map, you can’t just draw a line like in a robot vacuum thing and say, don’t go here. You have to drive it over there and say, don’t go here. Don’t go here. It’s like you have to drive it where it’s not allowed to be.

[00:51:05] Stephen Fenech: Like trying to teach a dog not to.

[00:51:07] Trevor Long: Yeah. But mate, it is. I don’t think people understand, and I get this because my lawn, I used to mow the lawn at the back, all no dramas. But if you missed, like we were away or something, you come back, clovers had come through and you might have a few weeds. I don’t see weeds anymore because their heads get knocked off as soon as they raise their hand. Because this is going out every couple of days and just trim, trim, trimming.

[00:51:29] Stephen Fenech: And like the other goats, I’m assuming this just puts the grass, the trimmings back in. Yeah, it’s just trimming. Just mulches it into the ground. Yeah, well, I’ve been using, I’ve used the Mower, I’ve reviewed that on Tech Guide a while ago and that was pretty good. You know, did a good job. It had to be driven around, but then just, you know, went out and did what it had to do. I’m in the middle of reviewing a Mammotion one, which is—

[00:51:51] Trevor Long: You think it looks like a Formula 1?

[00:51:52] Stephen Fenech: It does look, mate, it looks like a Formula 1 car anyway. Nothing like that. But there’s also its own, got its own little GPS beacon. Yeah. And that’s connected to the mower. Yeah. And when it goes out, it’s like a robot vacuum in your house. It just maps your yard by itself. That’s gold. Does nothing else. Just knows the fence, knows it can’t go there.

[00:52:12] Trevor Long: You’re using it in the backyard, right? My backyard, yes. Which is decent size. Is there anywhere it could run away to there? Yeah, onto the pavers.

[00:52:22] Stephen Fenech: Onto the pavers. It could also go next door as well. We’ve got a gate. We’ve got a gate to— That’s open? That’s open. But when I did the map, I shut it so that it wouldn’t map And it just drove by itself, made the map and boom, it was really easy to set up. Yeah. Apart from putting it all together, putting the sort of the front sensor on it and all that, putting in the GPS beacon, setting up the charging pad as well. Yeah. But it took half an hour and it was up and running on its own. And because I’ve got the Eero outdoor Wi-Fi 7, which is on my Astro Shed, it extended the network out. So found around the network really well and keeps it connected. Yeah, but, uh, yeah, mate, does a really good job. And you can, like other mowers, you can tell it how high you want the grass to be. And yeah, mate, I send it out and mate, does a great job.

[00:53:13] Trevor Long: So I’ve got 3 to put through their paces, but I’ve got another one out the front at the moment called Terra Mow. Terra Mow. Okay, now this one’s interesting because it has, again, no beacons, no wires, but no driving again, no driving it around. So this was hard because I’ve always wanted to put a mower out the front because it’s more grass. Yeah. Now Stephen knows my place, it’s on a corner, so we’ve got a corner driveway. So I actually have 3 front yards entrances. I call it the front yard in front of the house, then the corner, which is the grass around the corner, and then the side. There’s a big bit of grass around the side. And I’m thinking, whoever lives on a massive estate, how does this work? But even that front one in front of the mailbox, the grass continues to my neighbor and goes up into their yard. Because if you, if you’re just following grass, there’s grass all the way up into my neighbor’s house, right? So I set this thing up in the front yard under a tree, and I just go, off you go, do your thing. And I notice it’s doing a good job of finding everything, but it it’s going, you know, to the neighbor’s area. So I stop it and I’m able to do— and I’m going to show this on, um, on camera here— I’m able to do what you can do on a, um, on a robot vacuum. I’m able to draw a dead zone, like don’t go here. So if it kept going here, it would have done my neighbor’s place. This is the Terra Mow. And so basically that’s the front yard and it does a great job there. And then I was able to say I want to drive you somewhere else because it goes, I’m done, that’s the grass. Yeah. So I drive it across the driveway and it makes this little pathway, and then it goes, okay, I’ve got more grass here, right? And then I go, I’ve got more, drive across this driveway and it does this. And mate, I set it like— to do all that, it takes a while, mate. To mow all that, it’s like 3 hours. Like, it’s 2 battery runs, it’s got to go and charge itself.

[00:54:45] Stephen Fenech: That’s outside your home, out the front of the house. You leave the Vower outside your house?

[00:54:49] Trevor Long: Yes. Okay. Yes. And so I’ve had to put in, in no-go zones so it’s like not going near the gutter and stuff.

[00:54:54] Stephen Fenech: Was that easy to do, or—

[00:54:55] Trevor Long: it was, it was pretty easy to work out like where it was. And now it was set at 30mm height, and I went, this is actually cutting better than my normal mower does. I set it to 25 5mm. Had a couple of times where it hit things and the blade actually came off. Whoops. And I’m like, I’ve got to find that blade because it’s now in my grass. I did both times. And then out the side of my place, there’s just a big bit of grass, but there’s this patch that’s kind of, it’s recessed a bit because there used to be a big tree there like 25 years ago. I found out, you look into Google Maps. Yeah. And, and so the roots are rotting away and it’s dipping, right? So I’ve got to fix that up. But I used to just drive the mower over and you couldn’t tell there was a dip there. This thing’s going in it and it’s like shaved it beautifully. Wow. And so, and it would— it got stuck there once, but now it’s working its way around. And my lawn has never looked so good. Yeah. Wow. And I’ve just got to do the edges and I’ll tell you right now, I don’t care. That’s fine. Edges is the easy part. That’s easy. The whipper snip is easy. I am blown away by how good this thing is.

[00:55:53] Stephen Fenech: Well, hasn’t it reached sort of— they’re really maturing as products, aren’t they? The early days, it was, you know, the cable and it was a bit of hit or miss. Now they’re just getting so much better, the LiDAR and all the controls.

[00:56:04] Trevor Long: Well, I think the— I think we’re at that point. Remember robot vacuums? Yeah. 10 years ago. Yeah. They’d have this piece of pad that would get wet and it would just be dragged around the house. That was mopping. But then they went, it’s not doing— and then they would agitate that. That was better. And then they got these circle pads that would turn. Then they got circle pads that would come out and turn. Now we’ve got the roller. We’ve essentially hit peak robot vacuum technology apart from climbing stairs and new other features like that. Right. So I think now the focus is now on advanced bringing that to outside. Absolutely.

[00:56:38] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, well, mate, I can tell you the Mammotion, fantastic. It did. There was a space, you know, right in the— I don’t know whether you’ve seen my backyard, right at the back of the yard in front of the fence, there’s a row of trees, right? And underneath the trees it’s quite sandy, but it’s tall enough for it to fit underneath. So it actually got in the sand and was in there, got bogged. It was like, it was like an F1 car sort of crashed off the side of the track into the sand.

[00:57:03] Trevor Long: Well, that’s what happened to George at the back.

[00:57:06] Stephen Fenech: George the goat. But you know what? I pulled it out and it said, okay, I got stuck here and I’m not going back. It’s never been back. Wow. It learned no go, not going there again. Interesting. I didn’t have to— I’ve sent it out on its own 20 times. It’s never got stuck.

[00:57:20] Trevor Long: See, my new challenge is just I’m happy with the backyard goats there. It’s good. I’m just going to do them all in the front yard now because I think that’s the challenge. Does it end up on the road? Does it get hit by a car? Does someone steal it? Like there’s a bunch of options that could happen. But mate, the number one reaction nowadays is just people walking past going, that’s cool. Yeah. And I think what happens in a small neighborhood like mine is there’s a bloke up the road who’s a dad of one of Vivi’s friends and he’s self-appointed like, you know, neighborhood watch for lawns. Like he’s, you know, if you haven’t mowed your lawns, he’s kind of looks down at you. Really? Good on him. ‘Cause like I want all the lawns to look good, right? Yeah, of course. And his lawns are always immaculate. I’m waiting for him to come and go, mate, what’s the deal?

[00:57:55] Stephen Fenech: So he’s a lawn Nazi, is that what you’re telling me?

[00:57:56] Trevor Long: Yeah, ’cause I think he could, anyone could benefit. Like it’s just, it’s at that point where it’s like, I don’t think it’s at everyone’s point, but I think we are a year and a half away away from people looking at it, from them being good enough for everyone to use, and therefore maybe 2.5 years away from it being price sensitive to a point where it’s like, I’ve got to get one.

[00:58:14] Stephen Fenech: You think of like these— Mammotion approached me, they’re like a Chinese company, they sell them in Australia, but they’re Chinese.

[00:58:19] Trevor Long: So the bloke that runs Mammotion now used to be at WORX, did the Landroid originally. Yeah, yeah. So, but he’s right over it.

[00:58:27] Stephen Fenech: But you think about Australians as customers, like we’ve got, we got yakka. Yards. Like, are there— like, you go to Japan, how many people got a backyard in Japan, right? Australia, a lot of yards. So it’s ideal for Australian customers.

[00:58:40] Trevor Long: And look, the people— I don’t even know where you get Teramo yet because I haven’t looked it up. I’ve just been letting it go. But they approached me again. I think they’re just Chinese running it. And they keep sending me notes going, can you send us any updates, any photos? Like, they’re desperate to know how it’s going. I can tell you right now, they are going to be blown away by my review because it’s like— I’m going to be so positive. It’s so good. It’s good. Like, it’s once, once I realized that it was gonna— because the thing is, I don’t have a great lawn. Like, my gutter is here and the lawn is so high above it because it’s just, it’s always been mulched, right? So it’s always great, it’s grown higher, right? So it’s not one of those manicured fronts. What sort of grass you got? Just buffalo. Buffalo? Yeah, just good old buffalo. Yeah, it’s just buffalo, you know, the big long threads that come out and make their way into things. Long thread, long threads that eat their way out. Out into things. And you know, so I just went, I’m not going to even try to get it to go on the gutter because it’s going to fall off. That’s just, of course, obvious. So I’m just going to mark that off. But I’ve got it down to a point where it’s about, it’s 5 centimeters of non-mowed, and that’s easy to edge trim. But it’s going to be a 20-minute job for me to edge trim the front and back, but, and be up to date.

[00:59:44] Stephen Fenech: So where’s the goat in the backyard?

[00:59:45] Trevor Long: Goat’s in the backyard doing a great job.

[00:59:47] Stephen Fenech: How good is the edge trimmer?

[00:59:49] Trevor Long: How much does a great job, does a great job on a long, flat, straight edge. Of course. Yeah. But like, the thing is—

[00:59:56] Stephen Fenech: Are Heller good enough for you not to have to go after it or?

[00:59:59] Trevor Long: On that wall, yeah. But I have, there’s like 70% of my backyard still needs to be edged. Right. Because it’s this weird edge that the thing won’t go down. You know, it’s not because the edge trimmer doesn’t work. It’s because I either couldn’t drive it close enough when I was mapping it. ‘Cause it’s actually not that easy to drive. I think the next step generation Ecovacs with edge trimmer will be elite. I think they’ll learn a lot from, of course, this LiDAR detecting edge stuff. But the thing is about an edge trimmer, right? A corner, even when, even with an edge trimmer on the outside, when it turns, it’s always going to miss that edge. Yeah, it’s going to miss that corner.

[01:00:34] Stephen Fenech: Well, isn’t it funny how, you know, in, inside the robot vacuums are circular for a reason, right? So they can, they can now with the rollers that come out the side, they can get all the nooks and crannies. Well, how soon before they work out the robot lawnmower may need to evolve?

[01:00:52] Trevor Long: I think the hardest part is you really need the edging to be amazing right now. I was trying to take videos of this thing and if you get within 1.5 meters of it, it goes, person detected within 1.5 meters. But here’s the problem. Yeah. Whipper snipper turns off, goat keeps going. I’m like, whoa, whoa, whoa, come back. You missed a spot now because I was too close to you. So it’s like, they have to obviously, whipper snipper sticking out the side of a thing is a safety risk, right? How do you deal with a robot robot? With a weapon. Like, that’s essentially their challenge, right? Right. They’ve got to consider safety. Yeah. How accurate is its person detection and dog detection and stuff like that, right? Yeah. So getting whipper snippering perfect, I think, yeah, is a long way off if ever. Tough call. Yeah. And honestly, anyone that mows their lawns knows that the edging is essentially the easier part. First or last?

[01:01:38] Stephen Fenech: I do it last. I’m a last.

[01:01:39] Trevor Long: I was always a last.

[01:01:41] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, me too. Yeah, me too.

[01:01:42] Trevor Long: I think I did this on Instagram once and everyone I was like, dude, first.

[01:01:46] Stephen Fenech: No, I do it last. So you can see what you got to do. Yeah, it might get it, it might get to do a job for you, but it might do it.

[01:01:53] Trevor Long: Oh yeah, no, I obviously I’m talking about when you push mow and then, you know, me, yeah, that will push mow even now, always last.

[01:01:59] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, same.

[01:01:59] Trevor Long: Yeah, and if you, if you disagree, that was the end, that was the end, we don’t care.

[01:02:02] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, that was the icing on the cake was the edging. Yeah, and then you’re done.

[01:02:06] Trevor Long: Yeah, 100%. And now, mate, with the robots, yeah, let’s go out and done.

[01:02:10] Stephen Fenech: Trev just watching more Law and Order inside Is that right, mate?

[01:02:13] Trevor Long: No, I sit outside. Oh, you watch it? I still, you know what I do? I grab a Ruskie, sit outside, really, and just enjoy the day and let the robot do the work.

[01:02:20] Stephen Fenech: Hey, you grab a Ruskie there.

[01:02:22] Trevor Long: As Ego Back says, that’s it. Do you have an area in your backyard where you can sit and relax?

[01:02:26] Stephen Fenech: And look, patio, elevator, or is it a deck or something?

[01:02:30] Trevor Long: Just a little area.

[01:02:30] Stephen Fenech: Just come get our back deck that looks down on the yard there. Yeah, very nice. That’s big company.

[01:02:36] Trevor Long: Wearing your Gasman shirt. Somehow I got something. Somehow I got outdoor furniture as a wrought sometime. I can’t remember what it was. Yeah, well, it was like a Today Show segment or something.

[01:02:46] Stephen Fenech: Why doesn’t that surprise me? There you go.

[01:02:48] Trevor Long: You know what? I think it might have been during COVID because I remember it was here. The furniture was here in this office and I think I did a segment in here.

[01:02:56] Stephen Fenech: Oh, about outdoor furniture? About outdoor— indoors.

[01:02:59] Trevor Long: It was during COVID so it was all just, you know, and that furniture’s still there, mate, eh?

[01:03:05] Stephen Fenech: I think the statute of limitations limitations has gone, is, uh, finished on that one.

[01:03:08] Trevor Long: I haven’t asked for it back.

[01:03:09] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, I think what’s, what’s the law? Do I have 2 years if they haven’t asked for it back?

[01:03:12] Trevor Long: So I had a conversation with Sam Rutten, who’s a great, um, photographer. I was talking to him yesterday. I said, mate, I’d love for you to do more, another camera review if you want to, because he did one for me a couple years ago of a Fujifilm camera, and it was unbelievable review because he took the most beautiful photos. Yeah. Anyway, he, he, we had a good chat, and then he emailed me last night going, if you wanted to do something, here’s a couple other I have to look at. And he goes, and by the way, I tried 100 times to email and call those people. They never got in touch. That camera’s still in the back of my cupboard. And I’m like, mate, welcome to why I have an office in a warehouse. Yeah, it’s just full of shit.

[01:03:45] Stephen Fenech: You know, I had, I had, and he passed away unfortunately. Chris Oaten was my camera guy, was a, was a journo at News Limited, but then went out on his own and set up a photography business. Was mate, was one one of the primo time-lapse photographers. Yeah, right. He was a genius time-lapse photographer. Poor bloke got cancer and died a couple of years ago. He used to do all—

[01:04:07] Trevor Long: Imagine what you think about the amazing time-lapse stuff you can do now with all those DJIs.

[01:04:11] Stephen Fenech: Amazing, yeah. But he was a great bloke too, yeah. So rest in peace to Satan.

[01:04:15] Trevor Long: All right, well, we’re done for the day, folks. We’ve got some electric— Well, not really, no. That’s this show done. Shows to do now.

[01:04:24] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, Trevor’s holding me hostage here too. I’m being held captive.

[01:04:28] Trevor Long: This is your job.

[01:04:29] Stephen Fenech: It’s my job, of course. Yeah, yeah, that’s right.

[01:04:33] Trevor Long: All right, special edition of Two Bikes this Sunday, uh, thanks to Optus. We’ll be at Optus Stadium talking about the stadium network splicing and many other things. So look forward to that extra show in your feed with thanks to Optus this weekend. But until then, and, uh, many more shows every single day until this show next week.

[01:04:50] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, uh, Stephen, we’ll see you then. We’re not giving you a break.

[01:04:52] Trevor Long: No, getting your money’s worth this week, folks. All right, see you, folks. Ciao. This is Two Blokes Talking Tech.