One of the big benefits of the Ars Technica UK office is that it’s right next to Wired UK. It means that, aside from chastising Wired over its 9-out-of-10 LG G6 review, we can work together on projects that otherwise wouldn’t be possible. The first of those projects, Kelly and Rowland’s excellent political podcast UpVote, launched alongside Theresa May’s call for a snap general election. The second, an all-new podcast devoted to the latest technological gear and gadgetry, launches today.
Gearhead, episode 1: Digital assistants. Download the raw MP3 file, add to iTunes, or subscribe to the RSS feed.
The Gearhead podcast, hosted by myself, Wired product editor Jeremy White, and Wired senior editor Victoria Turk, is a monthly (maybe even more often!) deep dive into what’s hot in tech. Gearhead isn’t a news show—we won’t be reading out the headlines—but rather wrangling over new tech purchases, nonsense announcements, and how tech fits into our daily lives.
Episode one is all about digital assistants. Amazon’s Alexa—which lives in devices like the Echo and Echo Dot—was the talk of this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, showing up in everything from smart fridges to wireless headphones. Since then, Alexa has found new homes inside the camera-based Echo Look, and the touchscreen-equipped Echo Show, as well as phones like the Huawei Mate 9 and HTC U11.
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