Every Monday morning at 7:10 am, I am a guest contributor on CHOM 97.7 FM radio broadcasting out of Montreal (home base). It’s not a long segment – about 5 to 10 minutes every week – about everything that is happening in the world of technology and digital media. The good folks at CHOM 97.7 FM are posting these segments weekly to SoundCloud, if you’re interested in hearing more of me blathering away. I’m really excited about this opportunity, because this is the radio station that I grew up on listening to, and it really is a fun treat to be invited to the Mornings Rock with Terry and Heather B. morning show. The segment is called, CTRL ALT Delete with Mitch Joel.

This week we discussed: 

• Just when you’re getting used to your smartphone instead of a Web browser, we’re about to see the next big platform: virtual reality and augmented reality. This past week, I was in New York speaking at Columbia University‘s BRITE Conference, then I spent a half day learning all about virtual reality and augmented reality. It’s coming, and everyone is paying attention. Microsoft is launching their own platform, HoloLens, Google is pushing with Cardboard, Facebook is about to roll out Oculus, while Samsung, Sony and others all have skin in the game as well. What’s the difference between augmented and virtual reality? How soon will this be commonplace? Is this nothing more than a parlour trick?
• Facebook is now rolling out Facebook Live to more and more users. Live video streaming services. Right now, it’s for people with verified pages and public figures who access to their Mentions app, but it won’t be long before we’re all streaming live. Why is this important now? If you want to get to the top of Facebook’s feed, they are going to prefer live streaming videos now. From their news item: “Now that more and more people are watching Live videos, we are considering Live Videos as a new content type – different from normal videos – and learning how to rank them for people in News Feed. As a first step, we are making a small update to News Feed so that Facebook Live videos are more likely to appear higher in News Feed when those videos are actually live, compared to after they are no longer live. People spend more than 3x more time watching a Facebook Live video on average compared to a video that’s no longer live. This is because Facebook Live videos are more interesting in the moment than after the fact.”
• App of the week: Slack. 

Listen here…