Ben Smith has hosted 104 Episodes.
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Palm & companion devices [S16E03]
30 November 2018 | Season 16 | 52 mins 23 secs
This week the team discuss the return of Palm with the, er, "Palm" companion device. Is this a new category of device and could they really replace our smartphones sometimes?
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Autonomous vehicles [S16E02]
12 November 2018 | Season 16 | 51 mins 46 secs
This week the team talk about self-driving cars, Ewan's recent briefing by Waymo in 'the valley' and how autonomous vehicle technology will change the world (probably).
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Smart homes revisited [S16E01]
19 October 2018 | Season 16 | 50 mins
The team discuss the tech they've added to their 'smart homes' since last year's challenge. They discuss what stayed and the new items that have been added.
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Ending the crypto-currency challenge [S15E07]
5 October 2018 | Season 15 | 37 mins 42 secs
After some time away the team are back to (prematurely) end the crypto-currency challenge. We talk about why and the challenges for using things like Bitcoin for anything other than speculation.
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The best explanation of crypto-currencies you'll hear by a geographer this week [S15E06]
25 January 2018 | Season 15 | 1 hr 35 secs
** Nothing in this podcast is investment advice. …
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Festive Winterval special [S15E05]
20 December 2017 | Season 15 | 45 mins 42 secs
This week the team tell bad Christmas cracker jok…
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Who can beat the banks? (FinTech special) [S15E04]
21 November 2017 | Season 15 | 49 mins 4 secs
This week the team discuss 'FinTech' - the apps a…
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Dodgy apps & data thieves [S15E03]
13 November 2017 | Season 15 | 39 mins 17 secs
This week the team discuss the ways apps and serv…
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The armchair social media experts [S15E02]
5 November 2017 | Season 15 | 54 mins 55 secs
This week the team talk about the state of social…
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Back to the smart home [S15E01]
25 October 2017 | Season 15 | 44 mins 36 secs
We're back (sorry for the wait) and this week we'…
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Smart things: Buses, Google Home and bees [S14E10]
5 June 2017 | Season 14 | 51 mins 39 secs
After a short break we’re back with the final episode of the season. We’re looking at smart ‘stuff’ again… Ben’s been on the Citymapper smartbus trial run in central London and Ewan’s been doing an extended comparison of Google Home to Amazon’s Alexa. Rafe’s also been messing about with bees.
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iPads, ‘transformers’ and ‘real’ work [S14E09]
22 March 2017 | Season 14 | 59 mins 17 secs
This week the team talk about mobile working… Do we still need laptops or is it possible to do ‘real’ work on an iPad. Does the device even matter or is it the software that drives users’ behaviour. We talk about ‘transformer’ devices, young people, keyboards and clipboards. Rafe also provides a duck-house update (so you can stop emailing to ask).
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MWC 2017 - the best bits [S14E08]
15 March 2017 | Season 14 | 47 mins 41 secs
Having pioneered previews of events after those events have actually happened (last week), the team look-back at some of the interesting topics from Mobile World Congress 2017. Rafe gets excited about 5G; Ben gets nostalgic for Blackberry keyboards and Nokia snake; and Ewan still thinks it was all a waste of time.
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Comments, questions & MWC [S14E07]
5 March 2017 | Season 14 | 57 mins 57 secs
After a brief break (important operational reasons, nothing to see here) the team are back catching up on the news, answering listener questions and taking a quick MWC preview. We cover duck houses (yes, really), how not to be in a 360° picture you’re taking, get an epic home camera review from a listener, cloud vs local smart-home controls, one smartphone hub to rule them all and Samsung taking our advice (sort-of).
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Our ‘smart-homes’ a year on [S14E06]
9 February 2017 | Season 14 | 46 mins 57 secs
This week the team re-visit home automation, a year on from our ‘smart-home challenge’. Ewan tells us about a break in (or was it?) and we discuss what we kept from he challenge and what we’ve added since, along with the frustrations of ‘dumb’ systems with apps and new houses built without smart features. This episode was originally scheduled for release in early January - sorry about all that Christmas chat.
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What did we learn at CES? [S14E05]
2 February 2017 | Season 14 | 53 mins 13 secs
This week the team look back at Consumer Electronics Show, trying to understand the themes that emerged: voice (and Alexa) everywhere, home automation and ‘emotional’ robots. Rafe, our ‘man on the ground’ gives us his view. Ewan’s still in Denmark and has discovered it has a land border with Germany… who knew?