Chit Chat Across The Pond Lite

Tom Merritt, host of the Daily Tech News Show along with many other fine podcasts, joins me to talk about how social media makes us feel. We talk about how we feel about pictures of food, how we curate Twitter, who in our family takes the photos, whether Instagram is a happy place, how we have real-life friends we only know online, how communities are awesome and how sometimes even Facebook is a place to share a deeply personal story. You can find links to all of Tom's podcasts and his books at tommerritt.com and the Daily Tech News Show at dailytechnewsshow.com.

Joe Dugandzic of Smarter Home Life has been on the show several times in the past year talking about Home Automation. This time he's on to talk about how being a Youtuber working on Home Automation landed him a full-time job at a home automation startup company called Lynky. It's a story of his technical chops, grammar skills, his good sense about marketing, and his deep knowledge of Home Automation that helped him become the marketing and project manager for the Lynky Home Intelligence Hub.

This week our guest is Allison Hartley. Allison is the Manager of the Napa Branch of the California department of Rehabilitation, and a podcaster. She co-hosts both the Tech Doctor Podcast with Dr. Robert Carter (dr-carter.com/...) and That Blind Tech Show (blindabilities.com/...). Allison joins us to talk about the less than smooth experience she had upgrading to iPhone X. You might think it was hard because she's blind, but accessibility had nothing to do with it. We talk a bit about whether Apple has taken their eye off the ball about quality lately (spoiler alert, yes!). You can follow Allison on Twitter @hot4technology.

Tom Merritt, host of Daily Tech News Show joins us to explain the implications of the different rulings of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regarding Internet traffic in the United States. He'll attempt to clarify the difference between the 2002 ruling where broadband was declared an information service provider and the 2015 ruling where it was changed to a common carrier. And of course we'll talk about the implications of the vote by the FCC next week on this issue.

This week our guest is Kaylee of the Zettai Geek Dayo podcast. You con find the podcast at platypuspodcasts.com and you can find Kaylee on Twitter at @kayleedayo.

This week our guest is Dr. Maryanne Garry, a professor from the University of Waikato in New Zealand. Dr. Garry is a scientific researcher into memory, memory distortions, false memories, the myth of repression and its overlap with the law. This is her fourth appearance on Chit Chat Across the Pond, and has pretty much ruined everything we think we knew about memory. She's back to answer even more questions we have about new research into memories.

I've been impressed by the women who have stepped forward and told their stories about what life is like for us. I don't have any salacious tale to tell but rather a thousand paper cuts type of story. I thought about doing a monologue but I was terribly anxious about talking through this, so I reached out to Bart Busschots because I trusted him to help me. I decided to push the audio out in both the NosillaCast and Chit Chat Across the Pond feeds, well, because I wanted you to hear it.

I met Mark Fawcett at Macstock Expo in Chicago last year and we hit it off immediately. Mark does in-home tech support for Apple products, and he's full of great stories of the fun he has doing this job. After 20 years as a TV and video producer, he finds his new job more fulfilling and fun. I had a great time hearing his crazy stories of some "interesting" clients and I'm sure you'll enjoy the conversation too. And of course I tease him about the name of his company, MacMen.

Erica Peterson of Moms Can: CODE joins us this week to talk about her new startup designed to help mothers who code to connect and collaborate. We talk about her life as a mother of a five-year-old, while coding, while teaching high school biology, creating a startup and running a non-profit. The non-profit is called Science Tots, which is focused on bringing STEAM activities to non-science-based events.

Megan Morrone joins us today. Megan is the host of iOS Today with Leo LaPorte and host of Tech News Today with Jason Howell on the TWiT network. She's got the new, shiny iPhone 8 Plus so I asked her on to tell us what she thinks about it. Megan talks about how the glass back feels, the fun she's been having with Portrait lighting and how she hasn't even tried the 4K 60fps video yet. She give us a tip for wireless charging - the Seneo Qi Wireless Charging Stand. iMore has a link to a code to get it down to only $13. Megan talks about her identical twin sons and their plans to mess with Leo's iPhone X when he gets it. She talks about the significant speed bump she noticed with the new A11 bionic chip. Megan brought an interesting perspective to the iPhone price points; talking about how you can get a good iPhone for only $350 (the SE) and a good iPad for only $329. You can find Megan at twit.tv/ios and twit.tv/tnt and you can follow Megan on Twitter at @meganmorrone.

I asked the fabulous Joe Dugandzic to come back on the show to talk us through the comprehensive HomeKit compatible product guide he created. For a long time there weren't a lot of HomeKit devices to enjoy but now that the market is filling up, having a really well organized page with all of the options is very valuable. Joe has organized the page into categories rather than by vendor. He's got lighting, outlets and sockets, wall dimmers & switches, security devices like locks and cameras, thermostats, ceiling fans and shades, fire and smoke detectors, specialized sensors like for air quality and water leaks, sand even smart buttons (which I think are dumb actually). If you're not of the HomeKit persuasion, every device on his site has a code for whether it's also compatible with Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa, and he designates if it works in countries with 240 volt power or just 120. With all this to go through, it's a long show because I asked so many questions of Joe! Check out the Illus