roundtable

Reporters' Roundtable: Google Glasses you can buy today

It is the coolest tech demo we've seen this year: Google's Project Glass, which is an effort to create a glasses-based heads-up display for the real world.

With the Google glasses, you look out a window and get a weather report overlaid on your field of view. Look at a product and get information about it. Look at a bus stop and see when the next bus is arriving. Share photos. And maybe even look at a face and get the name that goes with it. Who wouldn't love that?

If you can't wait for Google to launch its augmented-reality product, I hope you like snow because Recon Instruments makes a heads-up display product just for skiers. Today, I'm talking with two guests about Google Glasses, the Recon products, and personal augmented-reality in general with:

Martin LaMonica, senior writer for CNET News Dan Eisenhardt, CEO of Recon Instruments

Vic Gundotra: How we claim 170M Google+ users (Reporters' Roundtable)

Google launched a redesigned version of the social network Google+ this morning. In the blog post announcing the upgrade, Google Senior Vice President of Social Vic Gundotra wrote, "More than 170 million people have upgraded to Google+." What does that really mean? Are 170 million people using the social network the way they use Facebook? I talked to Gundotra, as well as VP of Product for Google+ Bradley Horowitz, on a special Reporters' Roundtable interview this morning.

When I asked Gundotra how many people are using Google+, he deftly told me I was looking at it wrong. "You have to understand what Google+ is," he said. "It's really the unification of all of Google's services, with a common social layer."

Reporters' Roundtable: The big mess at Yahoo

The news of Yahoo has not been good of late. A patent lawsuit against Facebook turned tech commentators against the company. And then Yahoo announced a massive 2,000-person (14 percent) staff layoff.

Is it all part of a new Yahoo strategy? We'd all like to hope so, but new CEO Scott Thompson has not revealed how these moves serve a broader purpose.

Where does Yahoo go from here? Can it bounce back? Can it co-exist with Google, Facebook, and the rest of the Web?

Our guests today are:

Charles Cooper, executive editor at CNET News. Kara Swisher, co-executive editor of All Things Digital.

Reporters' Roundtable: Can an employer ask for your Facebook password?

Social-network users have an expectation that their views of their networks are theirs alone, that there is a private side to the public persona. But to get some jobs or scholarships, that expectation is thrown to the wind. What's truly private in a networked world?

Recently, reports have popped up about potential employees being required to divulge their personal social-network passwords or let hiring managers view their account. Some college sports players have to let "compliance officers" into their online social worlds.

What can a hiring manager or school reasonably ask of a person when it comes to monitoring their online social life? And where can, or should, a person draw the line? On this Roundtable, we discuss the topic with Bob Sullivan, author of the Red Tape Chronicles for MSNBC.

How sweepstakes, contests can drive app downloads, usage

People love prizes. And that's the core belief animating a start up called SherLabs.

Through a product called TapFame, the company offers game developers the ability to drop an instant sweepstakes or leaderboard contest into their apps, which presumably would drive interest and downloads.

It's a unique take on the issue of app discovery, which I've written a lot about -- and which continues to be an issue for the middle and lower tiers of developers. Developers want their apps to be noticed, but the market is so crowded, it's hard to stand out without spending … Read more

Reporters' Roundtable: JOBS Act makes crowdfunding the law

Crowdfunding is one step from becoming the law of the land. The JOBS Act, which has passed the House and the Senate in slightly different versions, is soon to be voted on again in the House for final approval, before it goes to the President, who has indicated he will sign it. This new law will make it possible for entrepreneurs to raise money from anyone they want to. It will also make it easier for new companies to go public, or to delay going public if they wish.

When JOBS becomes law, the landscape for technology startups will change dramatically. If you want to know how, and why it's happening, and what could go wrong when it does, watch this episode of the Roundtable.

Our guests today are:

George Zachary, partner at the VC firm Charles River Ventures Chance Barnett, CEO of the crowdfunding marketplace, Crowdfunder Tim Rowe, CEO of the Cambridge Innovation Center

Reporters' Roundtable: New tools for inventors

The game is changing for inventors. It costs less than it ever has to build a technology product or launch a company to sell it. There are new marketplaces to sell your goods, too--even if you haven't yet built a single unit.

Securities laws in the U.S. are also about to change, which will dramatically expand the funding possibilities for new companies. So get ready to be barraged with requests to help build small new companies, and prepare to be tempted to do it yourself.

Today we're talking with two real innovators who have built companies that make it possible for anyone with an idea to pre-sell products, learn how to design and build them, and manufacture prototypes and even the first batch of units. Our guests:

Yancey Strickler, co-founder of Kickstarter Jim Newton, founder of TechShop

Our episode, in two acts, is below:

Reporters' Roundtable: The Apple TV is a big fat deal

Of the two products Apple launched this week, I think the more important was the Apple TV update. Because it's in the living room where Apple has the more interesting battle going on. This "hobby" of a product is still imperfect, but it's making major waves with consumer electronics companies, content producers, and cable firms. Why? Because with an Apple TV (or a competing product, like a Roku), you can bypass the old-line media economy.

Or can you? We're discussing today how Apple is trying to rewrite the living room entertainment experience. We have two great guests on the show:

John Falcone, CNET's executive editor for reviews in New York. Matthew Moskovciak, our home theater editor, also in New York.

Reporters' Roundtable: The couch potato, version 2

Next week, on March 7, Apple will introduce the next generation of iPad. Why is the tablet form factor working so well? What is it about a machine that is best used on the couch?

One growing use case for tablets is the "second screen." It seems we aren't satisfied with just watching TV anymore. Now we need a second screen to keep us engaged. Businesses are growing up to build second screen apps, and programmers are starting to take the multiscreen user seriously.

Today I have two guests who are working on these apps who will discuss the emerging market space:

Ole Lutjens, chief creative officer and co-founder of MX Jeremy Toeman, chief product officer, Dijit

Reporters' Roundtable: Mountain Lion and OS X's evolution

It's time for what's becoming the annual look at the Mac operating system, OS X. A week ago, Apple announced its latest update, Mountain Lion, and the announcement reveals how the operating system battle is evolving.

Two key trends: Smartphones are influencing desktop/laptop OS designs. And the cloud is becoming integral to the OS.

We're going to talk about Mountain Lion today and the future of the computer OS with two great experts:

Josh Lowensohn, the Apple reporter for CNET News Brian X Chen, a tech reporter for the New York Times, and author of " Always On: How the iPhone Unlocked the Anything-Anytime-Anywhere Future--and Locked Us In" )

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