Episodes
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The end of the beginning - get the Byteside podcast
We're wrapping up the show to consolidate the Byteside podcast network into our core show, Byteside! Search 'Byteside' in your podcast app or hit the relevant link below to add it to your app of choice: Pocket Casts: https://pca.st/itunes/1482077503 Overcast:...
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How will data make your car better? BlackBerry has some ideas
When you hear the name Blackberry, most people will think back to its dominance of the early era of smartphone tech before touchscreens arrived and changed the game. But the company transformed itself over the past decade and one of the areas it is now leading in is embedded computing systems for...
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Inside the tech details under the Optus Gamer Plan
There's a big difference between a product marketed 'for gamers' and a product that has genuinely been designed for gaming, so this week I'm talking to two key team members on a recent product launch to get a solid insight on which column the new Optus Gamer Plans really sit in. No surprise, if...
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IBM's Wesley Allen on the hybrid cloud opportunity
This episode is sponsored by IBM, and I'm speaking with Wesley Allen, Business Leader for IBM Cloud Platform in ANZ. We're specifically digging into the discussion of hybrid cloud and the role it has to play in the enterprise. Over the past year in my wider work I've spoken to a lot of IT leaders...
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Interview: Diya Jolly, Chief Product Officer, Okta
We speak to Diya Jolly, Chief Product Officer at Okta, about the growing importance of getting 'digital identity' right in the decade ahead and the lessons learned on this front over the past year. We spoke during the Oktane21 event where Okta announced its latest product updates, but this...
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Interview: Ryan Richards, Sonos
We talk to Ryan Richards, Global Product Marketing Director at Sonos, about the new Sonos Roam, the new portable speaker about to join the Sonos line up. It's aiming to compete in the most hotly contested slice of the audio scene – why do they think they can win there and how does this serve as a...
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Interview: Ruslan Kogan on Kogan's 15th anniversary
A big chat with founder and CEO of Kogan, Ruslan Kogan, on his company's 15th anniversary. We first met around 2 years into the growth of kogan.com and thanks to those nostalgic connections he said yes to a rare interview to look back on the journey so far. From his failed effort to launch one of...
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Review: Steel Series Arctis 9 Wireless Headset
I've always had a soft spot for Steel Series. Back in my early freelance days I did a massive round up of gaming headsets for Atomic magazine – shout out to the old school Atomicans out there – and I was blown away by the quality of what Steel Series served up with its original Siberia v1. A wide...
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BuildBee and the future of 3D printing
We speak to two of the co-founders of BuildBee, Matt and Leanne Connolly, about their company and its place in the 3D printing ecosystem as they prepare to push BuildBee software out across the globe. BuildBee has worked on solving problems of IP protection to make it easier for a company to sell…
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Free as in anti-competitive
This week Google announced it would end its unlimited free photo storage service. There’s obvious reasons for doing so, and Google argued the case in its blog post announcing the decision. It’s annoying and will force a big shift in our relationship with photo storage and backups of all kinds.…
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Byteside special 2: Sony PlayStation 5 reviewed
We've got a special double episode of Byteside to share over the next two days. In the last show, Seamus Byrne and Alice Clarke looked at the Xbox Series X (and Series S), with both having review units over recent weeks. This time it's the PlayStation 5's turn! What's the future of PlayStation…
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Byteside special: Xbox Series X reviewed
We've got a special double episode of Byteside to share over the next two days. Seamus Byrne and Alice Clarke discuss and debate the merits of the new Xbox Series X, with both having review units over recent weeks. What does the future of Xbox look like? And what about the new controllers? Should...
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Deepfaking Trump with Harry Shearer
This week, Seamus interviews Michela Ledwidge, a virtual production director who has just helped Harry Shearer launch an album of satirical songs with Shearer shifting from his famous roles of The Simpsons and Spinal Tap into the tweeter-in-chief, Donald Trump. If it isn't freaky enough to watch...
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Building a new old brand (EPOS headphones)
We catch up with Andres Jessen and Maya Sand-Grimnitz from Epos Audio, the new gaming headset brand has formed as an offshoot of the former Sennheiser Gaming sub-brand. We talk about building a new brand in a competitive space like gaming headsets, building the right reputation and partnerships,...
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Satya Nadella's Xbox is all about the Game Pass
From the aggressive subscription pricing for Xbox All Access to the buyout of ZeniMax Studios, it all fits the mission of getting every fan of Xbox to commit to a monthly Game Pass. That's what Microsoft has become – deliver value and depth that makes customers keep giving you money. In this...
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The tech behind the US Open
Today's episode is sponsored by IBM, with Dane Gambrill stopping by for a chat about the hardware and AI systems that support major sporting events like the US Open in 2020. With fans now watching remotely, digital interaction becomes a much bigger part of the fan experience. We dig into how…
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The dark value of uninformed consent
The Australian news media bargaining code is trying to solve the wrong problem. It's a Band-aid on an ulcer. We need digital advertising regulations to hold the mega ad platforms accountable for the scams they treat as customers, and to not use the excuse that they're too big to avoid being held...
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Solving big problems with little sensors
We speak to Brian Swift, Head of Product at SafetyCulture, an Australian unicorn startup that is using everything from the simplest print out checklists to internet of things sensors to help people run better safety procedures and risk management in their businesses. It's niche, but it's…
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Creating augmented reality with Simone Clow (CEO, Virtual Immersive)
We've talked virtual and augmented reality a few times over recent times. I guess it's on my list of things that are not all that overrated, but perhaps misunderstood. So today we're talking to a VR practitioner about how they're working in augmented reality and putting it in the real world with...
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Quitting Facebook: should I stay or should I go?
Just as Seamus was getting serious about an exit strategy, activists started hitting Facebook where it really hurts. Is it better to leave? Or to engage in the protest from within?
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WWDC news breakdown
Seamus looks at the big news from the WWDC 2020 keynote, analysing his top new feature picks and exploring the potential of some new ideas.
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RIG 700HX and the wireless headset conundrum
This is a great wireless headset for gaming and at a great price point for the quality on offer. But Seamus can't help wonder if every wireless solution is really solving the cable problem if it's introducing a separate charging problem along the way. And somehow he makes it about brushing his...
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Review: Sonos Arc (Dolby Atmos capable soundbar)
There’s a lot more tech inside this unit than any Sonos speaker ever before, and it has upgraded styling in both black and white that fits with the modern era of their speaker range. Everything about it feels ready for the next era in living room entertainment and even without the Atmos…
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Getting data right for humans with Ellen Broad
Ellen Broad is a boardgame designer. But that’s not actually why I’m talking to her. The boardgames was something of a byproduct – her main focus is being a rather brilliant thinker on all things data and AI. In her career, Broad has worked for governments and UN bodies to help plot the future of...
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D-Link COVR-2202 review aka No one should have to complain about a power cord but here we are
This tri-band AC2200 mesh router is a perfectly workable unit with some nice features but in this review Seamus gets seriously annoyed with some very short power cables and points out why this is actually a critical flaw in a product that is all about positioning units just where you need them in...
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Happy International Password Day with Alex Wilson from Yubico
Passwords. People hate them. But people can't live without them anymore. And they usually have to be dragged kicking and screaming toward doing something better than reusing passwords on 50 different sites... but there is a better way these days. Yubico and its Yubikey is one of those better…
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The ethics of AI with Professor Genevieve Bell
Today Seamus speaks with Distinguished Professor Genevieve Bell AO. She's a cultural anthropologist who spent two decades at Intel and is known as one of the most important thinkers on technology and culture. She returned to Australia in recent years to create an entirely new school of research…
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Vivacious VR with HTC's Thomas Dexmier
I first got a taste of virtual reality back in 1992 when the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney had the Dactyl Nightmare VR game on show. I queued for about an hour, I played this blocky 3D game with terrible physics for 5 minutes and it was over. We've all wanted good VR for a long time, and we've all...
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Review: AirFly Pro from TwelveSouth
TwelveSouth, famous for stylish iPhone and Mac accessories, has released a dongle that turns any audio input/output into a Bluetooth connection for any Bluetooth device or headset. Seamus walks through the options it makes possible and the features that make this clever device a winner.
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Real-time AI event and risk detection with Dataminr
Seamus talks to Ed Pullen, Regional Marketing Director for Dataminr to discuss the company's real-time AI event and risk detection system. It's running everywhere from newsrooms to corporate security departments, helping companies find the information they didn't know they really need to know to...
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8K TV Is A Joke
Seamus gets his (rather polite) rant on about 8K TV. Why you don't need it in your living room. Why it's just not viable on multiple fronts. But why this also means it's a brilliant time to buy a television! Because a 4K TV is likely to be the longest lasting television purchase you’ll make since...
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Marc Rogers from Okta and DEFCON on CTI League's "Hackers without borders" initiative
A fascinating chat with Marc Rogers, head of cybersecurity at Okta and long-time leader of SecOps for legendary hacker conference DEFCON. We talk about the CTI League, an amazing collective of hackers helping to secure hospitals and take down bad actors aiming to use COVID-19 as a security…
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The info wars
Information is at the front line of so many of today's battles. Fighting the good fight by tracking down the coronavirus and trying to stop it in its tracks, but also wrecking the digital town square with disinformation. There's a lot of work to do, and a lot of empathy required, to ensure we…
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It's time for 5 minute default meetings
Google. Microsoft. Apple. Zoom. All the rest of you out there doing calendars. The coronavirus crisis is the perfect time to give us our time back. Reset the defaults. 5 minutes at a time. It’s good for today, it’s great for tomorrow.
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Tech Has (Some) Answers
We're all discovering together what tech can and can't help with right now. Part tech. Part culture. But keep at it. We'll smooth out the troubles and we will get through this. Stay smart, be safe.
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Bring me the head of 5G! It's Harvey Wright from Optus
Wondering what the deal is with 5G? We visited Optus HQ in Sydney to put a lot of the big questions to Harvey Wright, the Head of 5G at Optus, to help understand what's happening right now and in the years ahead. How the roll out is going, his ambitions for fixed 5G, and when people realistically...
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I learned a lot about taking pictures while scanning old photos
I spent a week scanning 5,000 old photos with the Epson FastFoto F680W scanner. It taught me a lot about what I should try to take pictures of, and how I should take them. It was a good scanner too!
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Apple's War For Privacy
Exploring Apple's growing efforts to defend privacy, not just as a question of better securing our data, but in stopping it from being collected in the first place. It's more than rhetoric. It's not just a feature anymore. It's becoming its own service and it could make the whole web a better…
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WWDC: Streaks & ProCreate interviews - Aussie devs on the world stage!
Seamus talks to the Aussie developers behind two award winning apps, Streaks and ProCreate. Quentin Zervaas from Crunchy Bagel, the maker of Streaks and Outcast, and Jess Clarke & Michael Shaw from Savage Interactive, the maker of ProCreate. We talk about the value of attending a big developer...
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Smarter, better, easier passwords? Alex Salazar, VP of Product Strategy, Okta
This week on Jetpacks Are Overrated, a conversation about the state of passwords. From biometrics to two-factor authentication, there’s a lot of new tools in the mix that might lead some to feel like there will be a version of our future out there on the horizon where we can finally stop having…
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Getting better AI in videogames: Frank Soqui, Intel VP of Gaming
I’ve got a short and sweet chat this week, looking at the state of AI adversaries and challenge systems in video games. Not from the perspective of ‘can this AI beat the humans’, but instead from the idea that AI could do a lot to enhance our enjoyment of game experiences if we start applying it…
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Samsung DeX - can your smartphone replace your desktop?
One device for everything. Can it be done yet? Will it ever really happen? It's such a perennial question as we continue to iterate through the smartphone era. As screen sizes and interfaces change. As the processing power falls into step with laptops. As peripheral and add-on screen options make...
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Is one super wide screen better than two?
This week I spend some quality time with a Kogan 49-inch 32:9 SuperUltraWidescreen monitor and decide whether or not one really, really big screen is better than working with two separate monitors. From work to gaming, how does this fit into making a daily life at a desk better? The monitor...
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Chris Charla from ID@Xbox on why indie videogames are important
Seamus Byrne speaks with Chris Charla, Director of the ID@Xbox program, that helps independent game developers sell their games on Xbox One. Plus some elevator pitches from some of the indie devs we spotted at PAX Australia. Find Chris Charla on Twitter: https://twitter.com/iocat Or contact…
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Is it useful or beautiful?
Sometimes when we talk about shiny new technologies, we focus so much on what’s new about it, we can forget to think about whether or not it’s actually going to do anything useful or beautiful. On this show we’ll review cool new things in practical ways, we’ll talk to innovators about what truly...