It's the best of Always On, Season 3!

-This week on Always On, we bring you the best of highlights from Season 3. -From torture testing in Mount Shasta. -To road testing and finding exotic foods in Barcelona. -Always On is on. All right. -Oh, that was good. Welcome to Always On, I'm Molly Wood -and I'm Jeff Cannata. -and this is the show where you take a look at the tech as part of your life. -And your future. -This week, though, we have a great show for you. It's all of our highlights from Season 3, the best moments, may be wrap a little bit. -Yeah, and one of my favorite moments was up in the snow when you were taking a snowmobile over the Lumia 920, the iPhone 5, the Kindle Fire. -That was a really good day, but I got to admit that my favorite part was when the iPods took a deep with my Tasty, Tasty beverages. -Yes. -Let's take out some of that footage. Welcome to the Always On Reindeer Games. We're here at the base of Mount Shasta of in beautiful northern California. We're on our way to the Mount Shasta's key park where we have a bunch of gadgets and a layer of fresh snow to torture test them and I have some monster iSport headphones. I've got a couple of iPods and nano and a shuffle. I have an iPhone 5, a Nokia Lumia 920 and a Kindle Fire just for the heck of it. We're gonna put them all through their paces in a series of ski-related torture test ranging from green circle to blue square to black diamond. Let's see how they do. Our interpret assistant, Nick, is going to snowboard down, jump and ideally land on one maybe all of these gadgets and we're gonna see how they can take the impact. Oh. Are you okay? Oh, that was awesome. Kindle. Kindle Fire takes a direct hit appears to be A-okay. It looks like this actually may have just escaped like I've got a nice carved line right next to him. Let's turn this guy on, iPhone. Good to go. Nokia Lumia. This is coming on. Nokia Lumia 920, okay. Check. I thought Nick was so impressive and here everything is working fine. It's time to go black diamonds on the bearcat. We're gonna snow mobile over the Nokia Lumia 920, the Kindle Fire and the iPhone. Now, the Nokia and the Kindle, they're going unprotected. The iPhone, though, is encased in this Seidio OBEX hard-core ballistic style case, and we're gonna see if somehow this helps it survive the pressure of my little arctic cat right here. You guys see the Kindle? Is it stuck on me? -Yeah. Let's do one more run, see if how it's doing. Okay, here we go. I think it's probably time to see how these guys are doing. Oh, yes. We have done significant damage to the Lumia 920. We pretty much shattered the screen although it looks like the screen is kind of blacked out right here on the left side, but it's still on. Now, the back though, the back is in perfect condition. However, I think we're gonna have to say that this one generally speaking did not survive the snow mobile attack. Next, iPhone 5 in the Seidio OBEX case. I'm not seeing any signs of damage right off the bat. In fact, kind of remarkably, even this little clip deal it's still intact, and it comes on. The iPhone seems to have been well protected, so compared to the Nokia this one got off pretty easy. All right, let's come find that poor Kindle. Anybody who wanna take bets on this one? It went around twice, stuck underneath the snow mobile. Oh, yeah. And we have a shattered screen, not too surprising really, kind of a nice spider web pattern in the center there. Let's see if we can get it to come on. Oh, yeah, wow. Okay, unlike the 920, Kindly Fire doesn't even come on. This one is a straight up fail. Now, our ski patrol escort that day actually did not think that the snow mobile would kill these phones. He thought the snow would be soft enough. We think it's time for the dunk test. First up, iPod shuffle and monster iSport headphones in the hot chocolate. There's so much whip cream and I'm gonna feel like push it down there. And they're very sticky. I didn't really think this out very well 'cause to test it, I'm gonna have to put it in my ear. Oh, it's on too. It was on when it went in there. All righty, let's see. Huh! There's still my music playing. It's playing "Let It Be" as in "Let me be. Don't do that anymore." Dude. Good job, shuffle. All right, now for our Nano in our perfectly good beer, and you go, headphones and all. I think it's still on though. No. Oh, no. It's definitely not. So-- It can't be any worse than all those times I baked it in my oven. All right. Let's get that out of there. Come on, little buddy. Oh, look at that. Okay. The screen is still working. Let's listen 'cause I don't have enough chocolate in my ear. I need to add beer too. A little-- Oh my god, that is loud. It's working. Oh, look, even the volume works. This beer-- This beer, no big deal, for our iPod Nano. All right. That's a wrap for the Mount Shasta Ski Park where it turns out that winter sports are not nearly as tough on your gadgets as you would think they are. And by the way, if this is what iPod tastes like in a beer, iPod tastes delicious. I think I kind of maybe have to get my own snowmobile. -I think you should and keep it away from electronics. So that was fun being up in the snow, but next season we're doing summer games, -That's right. -which I think will be even more fun. -Beach games. Okay. But in the meantime, we're gonna go and while we go plot that. Here's the look back at our Blackberry Z10 road test in Barcelona. Basically, we're starting here. We're at the Plaza Catalunya in beautiful Barcelona and our producers have given us a list of objectives that we have to accomplish. So, we're gonna have to go places, buy things,-- -Yeah. -take a train. -All those things are pre-loaded onto my BlackBerry Z10 in my "Reminder" app. -And don't lose me, remember. -I will remember. -It's your "Remember" app. -Barcelona Road Test file. Objective one: Get to Mercat de la Boqueria, try an unusual food and tweet a photo of it. -Okay. Maps. -Maps. -Okay. -Let's see for information. -Oh, I see where we are. -I'm not even getting-- Oh, there's my map. Slowly loading. -Slowly loading. -What happened? Look, it just crashed. -I'm just gonna use Google, Google Custom Search. All right. Oh my God. So, I can't-- We need to go that way and then turn left. That's it. All that work just for that. -Okay. We'll do it. -Let's do it. -Go. Let's go. Yehey, Google! Mercat- -Right there? -Yeah. -So there is no shortage of weird-looking food. -I'm thinking this is gonna be faster if we split up. Each of us has 10 minutes to find a weird food. -Okay. -And then we meet back here, compare. -Oh, I'm gonna outweird you. -Ready? -Yeah. -Go. -[unk] No. No. -Oh, man. Chicken ala- -I don't know [unk] so, I-- ooh, look at this. -Oh, wow, that is weird. Take a picture of it. Detecting faces. -Oh, God. -Oh, please don't detect the face. -Oh, little bunnies. -It's alive. We're all alive. -Hello. Tres. -[unk] -We'll have this. It's not that adventurous 'cause it comes with a spoon, but it is magenta on me. Jeff's turn. -It was-- Yeah. -How did you do? -It's Okay. -I got pitaya. -Oh, my gosh. It's awesome. -I know it's beautiful fruit. I mean, it's unusual. It's not the scariest food here 'cause it comes with a spoon. -I really wanted to get something that would terrify you. -Yeah? -But I chickened out-- -Oh. -and I got churros, but not any churros like anything I've ever seen before. -Wooh. -It's got honey on it. So- -We got churros and honey. Look at this. It has tentacles. I got a tentacle fruit -Yeah, I know it's fruit. -and you got churros. -I wanted to get a goat head and they have plenty of them for sale. -I wanted to get a goat head. I wanted too. -But you know what, the market for- -but instead I got a churro. -goat heads right now is really-- it's really overpriced. -Overprice for goat heads. All right. I'm gonna take a picture of my pitaya. You take a picture of your churro. All right, I'm gonna tweet it. Boqueria with-- I wonder if I can add you. Oh, God, really? I can't just type it. -No, it won't let you. -No, no. The Twitter app is truly terrible. -There you go. Tweeted. -Tweeted. Photo uploaded to Twitter. Boom. -So, objective one down. -Buddy, I know we did it. -Nice. -We did it. Weird food completed. -Now, objective two is, each take five photos of La Catedral, see if you can figure out "Burst" mode, upload one to Facebook. -Share via NFC. -Oh. -Oh. I saw a sign. I'm going old fashion, like no more mapping. -Wait, you saw a sign, where is that? -I saw a sign that pointed to Catedral. -Okay, cool. -Let's do that. -All right. Following you. Catedral. -That way. Yes. -That looks like a cathedral to me. -That is beautiful. -Cool. -That was one. -I figured out "Burst" mode. -Huh, you did? -Yeah. Yeah, "Burst" mode is a little man with exploding water out of his face. -And burst. -Tell me when you're gonna burst me. -Okay, ready, one, two, three. -Did you burst me? -Wooh! "Burst" mode is rad. -Oh, gosh. -Fires. All right. Goggles. -I need burst zoom. All right, let's keep going. -That's really pretty. -That's muy artistico. -Muy artistico! -So, I'm gonna try to enhance-- edit my artistic lens flare shot. -I like that you can edit right natively in the app. -I know. You've got kind of a cool little edit button. Oh, phone surface is cool. I'm going with that 'cause it's very gothic. Save. -I made mine looked like something out of Game of Thrones or Skyrim. -Oh. Go back to camera. Share. Facebook. Post. Photo upload has started. Is it there? Oh, yeah, it's there. -It's there. -Sweet. -That's pretty great. -Okay, so, now, though, this is a tricky part. We have to share photos via NFC. -Okay. -So, I think I have an idea of how to do this. -Are you sharing me? -I think we hit the share button. -Okay. -Oh, look, NFC. -NFC. To share files, please align the back of your device with another NFC device. Oh, it vibrated. -Oh, I heard a buzz. -Waiting. -Waiting. Receive data transfer, receive. It's coming. -Three seconds, 13 seconds. -This is not as fast as in the commercial-- -No, it is not. -at all. I thought we were like-- bloop! -If you do this with a stranger, it could get awkward. -Yeah. -I feel like- -It's actually-- We're not strangers and it's a little awkward. -A little awkward. -What? -Received four files. -What? -So you gave me four and I gave you three. -I received three. Look. Okay. View. So, then, this is somewhere in my library. -It's not in my photo library. -I can't-- wherever they transferred to, I'll never know. -You go to File Manager, and on device, it's under Downloads. It's not under-- I guess, it wouldn't be under camera 'cause I didn't take it with my camera, but it's not also under Photos. It's under Downloads. And then for some reason, I got the same photo four times. -And I got three. I got three. -So, maybe, it would be a lot faster if it was only sending it to us once. -Probably. Nevertheless, I would say we have completed this objective. -Oh, for sure. -Let's check that sucker off. -All right, checked off, boom. -Checked off. Boom. -Now, we're on to objective three,-- -Okay. -find the metro station and catch a train to the Arc de Triomf. -Okay. -All right, let's do it. -I'm sure there's a sign for that. -Metro station. -Yeah. -Yeah. We're doing good dude. -Yeah. - We found the subway. -Yeah. -Pretty soon, I expect we will find the train. -Proxima estacion. -We did it. We're here. -[unk] -I know. That is amazing. -Wow! We're getting a good tour. We're here. -We did it. We found the metro station and caught a train to Arc de Triomf which was objective three. -We totally did that. -So, we're checking that off. -Boom. -Now, objective four, find a nice place to enjoy lunch. -Let's go. -Let's do it. We did it. -We did it. -Cheers. -Cheers. We completed our challenge. -Sangria for both of us. -Yeah. -We do our challenge. We've had this for a little while. -Yeah. -What is your impression of the BlackBerry? -Yeah, I mean, we've been using this all throughout our European travels, and you know-- I mean, I think, so part of some of our issues could have come from Vodafone and the local service. But, you know, I have to say, as an operating system, BlackBerry OS 10 just is not there yet and that is not really acceptable in this day and age when iOS, Android, and Windows phone are all so good. -Yeah, there's some good things about it. I mean, we both really liked Burst mode and some of the accessibility of the common apps that you get being right there on the phone already, -but, man, it is a clunky, hard to use, unintuitive experience, picking up this phone even for somebody that's used to, you know, using lots of different cellphones. --It's rough. It's gonna be hard for an advanced user and hard for a newbie. And then, on top of that, the app support is not there. It's heartbreaking to pick this up and have Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn built right in, -Yeah. -but not be able to download Instagram. So, I mean, I hate to say it, I was polling for this phone. I think the Q10 has a lot of potential 'cause people want the keyboard. But for me, right now, I have to say the Z10 is a do not buy. -I agree. Without the keyboard, there's really no reason to get this phone over other better smartphones. -We have now thoroughly road tested the BlackBerry Z10 here in Barcelona. -So, now, we're going to destroy it as best we can. -I think Jeff has really been looking forward to this. -Yes, it's a little cathartic for me. --He's got a really pretty buggy unit. So, I feel okay about, I don't know, throwing this one down the stairs. -All right, Molly, you do the honors. -Yeah, I get the first one. -First, toss. -Okay, ready? Here we go, one, two, three. -Oh, nice. -Oh. -We lost the back of the case. Excellent. Just popped off really. -[unk] -It's just designed to deal with that. -Let's see if it's still on, though. Here we go. Put together-- together. No problem. -Yeah. -Well, I think it handled that so well. We might as well do it again. Wooh. -Yeah, are you ready for this? -A nice roll, okay. Oh, I got some-- I saw some corners. -Yes. -Oh, no, I think the roll is not as cool as the- -Yeah, toss was a little more violent. It did get a little edge action. There's no-- no problems. -Yeah. Hey, you know what I'm thinking? Let's take this drop test step a notch. -I like-- I like this idea. -So, the thing you're always doing at Scenic Vistas is taking pictures in high places. Accidents can happen. -Molly, this is gonna be a great shot of you-- Oh no! -Oh. All right. We-- Oh, oh, I see glass on the ground. Come on down. -Did I get a shot? Did I get-- Oh, oh. -Yeah. Oh, I get the little red light, like terminator. -You have a message. You have a message. The message is, "Why?" -The message is, "Why?" -Why? -And it's still going, blinking. That was amazing. -Your fault. -Let's see. And now, this is a- -Sharp edges. -This is a downright dangerous situation. No, I think that red light just came on for a second to be like, "What's wrong with you?" -Esta muerte. -Esta telefono es muerte. You know for as much as crap as I gave you about that churro, it was kind of a weird food. It was disgusting. -It was. It wasn't your average everyday churro. Everybody says, "Oh, Jeff, who wimp out with that churro?" It was a weird churro. -It was a weird churro. -And I could have gotten something's face. Nobody wants to see that. -So, you were worried a little bit of what's actually eating the churro. Time for a snack. You have some churro. Wooh, that was a crunchy churro. -Crunchy [unk]. -I heard a crunch. -I've never had a crunchy churro. -Unexpected. I do believe that that is a stale kind of crunchy or just still like a-- -I don't think so. -Hardens. -Good, except only sweet. -All right. -That looks good. -It's beautiful. Do you like color? -I'm not arguing about the color. What does it taste like? It's like a strawberry, kind of like a strawberry. -Do you want some of this? -I found like that better than a calcified churro. -Not a fan? -I like my weird fruit. All right. -Case of broadband internet in Kansas City don't seem like the sexiest things ever. -Until you go there and you find out that they have the best internet in the world and I want it so bad. -And possibly the best barbecue too. -Well, that helps too. -Although that is-- that's debatable with the spark arguments. Arguments yourselves and watch Jeff's trip to Kansas City. -I'm in Kansas City, Missouri, the home of the Kansas City chiefs, delicious barbecue and the beginning of Google Fiber. Google has promised of internet speeds 100 times what the rest of the country gets. Let's check out to see if it's really the case. Pitch on Google Fiber as a concept. What is it and why do I want it? -Sure. So, the average American internet connection today is 6.7 megabits per second. So with Google Fiber, we're offering 1000 megabits per second and we think is that not only it will just let people do everything they do today faster and easier online, but it also has implications for the future to let, you know, will let people develop the new applications that will make the web better and faster going forward. -And this is important. Faster broadband is good for everything from mapping to streaming videos to video conferencing. -Hi. -I'm see-- I'm definitely seeing some blurriness when, you know, when you move a lot, but you're super smooth and clear. -And there's no latency in this conversation. -Exactly. -No, this is like better than a sofa conversation. -It is, right? -This has huge implications for emerging fields like telemedicine. If you can video conference without latency and share huge files at the same time, you can have virtual meetings with doctors that could send you x-rays while you talk or any student could take any class anywhere, and then of course, there's things like Smart Energy Grids, connected devices and all the things we haven't even thought of. Google Fiber and the Gigabit Ethernet is great for consumers, but it's also transforming Kansas City from the business perspective. And at the center of that is the Kansas City Startup Village, which is a series of 3 houses like this one behind me where all kinds of entrepreneurs are gathering and creating a real community. Let's check it out. Do you really see the next big company coming out of Kansas City? I mean, are we gonna get a Google size company coming out of here? -I think that's completely possible, yes. -The biggest benefit is probably we get a glimpse of the future for what everyone is going to have, right? So, if we get to gear technology towards what people are going to have is an advantage. -Just a little time in the Google Fiber space made me a believer. -I'm wondering up against Sunset Boulevard on Street View in the Google Maps. This is basically my neighborhood in LA and this is something I would never do at home on my PC because it takes so long to load all the images and you look at something else that's a high image content on the web something like the Google Art Project. Now, pointillism is something that you can only really appreciate when you consume upclose and really see the detail of the brushstrokes. I'm sold on this. -So my visit was almost over, but I had to know when can I get it. Unfortunately, no matter how many times I asked, Google wouldn't say. Do you guys have plans to expand beyond Kansas City or even in the city? So when can I have this in Los Angeles? I wanna know how it's gonna happen, when? Give me a date. -We're really focused on Kansas City. -I mean, is there a timetable for trying to get this into the cities or I mean is there-- is this something that I can cross my fingers for? Do I have-- Is it gonna be my kids that are having this or where am I gonna be able to get it in, you know, the next few years? -Sure. I mean, from Google, like I said we've got a lot of work to do here. We don't have anything to announce. I mean, I think we would be interested in talking to other communities in the future perhaps. -Bottomline, if you want Google Fiber, you're gonna have to move to Kansas City to get it. I want it. -It was kind of a googly sort of things then. -Very googly. -We have the Nexus 10, a bunch of Android devices, your visit to Google. -And now we have another Google device the Chromebook Pixel, which I'm pretty sure Molly fell in love with. -I want it. I just-- I want you to touch it. -Oh, it has a touchscreen. -Uh huh. Pretty exciting unboxing today. -The Pixel arrives. -Yes, the Chromebook Pixel. I think this is the one that was so cool looking that there was like a YouTube video about it and then everyone thought it was hoax because it looks so cool. -But it wasn't a hoax. -But it wasn't a hoax and here it is. -And here it is. We've got one and you have a knife of incredible majesty. -Thank you. I have the RAD knife that the Radviewer sent to us. This part needs to be nice. -I appreciate that. -Yey. And then look, for safety, hold on. -Here we go. -All right. Okay. Hey, looks like there might be a MacBook in here. I think a MacBook. -Is it a MacBook? -I don't know, I don't know. Wait, it's not. -Oh, it has the same Apple on it. -Google. Diplastic it and here. -It was the one with those flat forms. -Oh, for God's sake, why they could do-- they did this with the Nexus 2 and it took me like half an hour to get it out of the box. -There you go. Wooh! -Hello. Wow. That is beautiful. -Look at their awesome chrome hinge. -Okay. Can I just take a moment to say that this is basically all I've ever wanted in a laptop industrial design? Like no branding, no kind of crap cluttering and just a flat black fox. What's here? Hey, look at this. -That's really pretty. -You wanna touch it? -Yeah, I do. Wow. -So, the only place that has chrome is right there. That's pretty-- pretty smooth- -That- -Wow, it's so nice. -It's absolutely stunning. -Did I turn right on? -Yeah, oh yeah. -Oh, I didn't. Oh my God, it's beautiful. -And look, they put like a beautiful picture right on the display. So, you can see it right off the batt. -But it's-- they got that weird 32 aspect ratio. -That's it, huh. -Yeah, cord. -So, these are two sets of power. -Yeah. -Because this just totally meant to be wireless all the time. I don't know, I'm clicking continue but nothing is happening but that's nice. -Oh, that's the thing, it has to be wireless all the time 'cause there's no hard drive in it. -Yeah. In fact, speaking of the total lack of hard drive and other things on the inside, let's break down the specs. The Chromebook Pixel runs Google Chrome OS. It has a dual core 1.8 GHz Intel Core i5 processor. It has middling graphics, an integrate Intel HD 4000 graphics card, and 4 gigs of memory. The hard drive is a somewhat surprising 32 gigabyte solid-state drive, and it's not the fastest drive on the market either. The display is 12.85 inches. It falls into the 13-inch category. It's HD as you probably notice with the resolution of 2560 by 1700. Also, a touchscreen, so if you feel like putting your Grammy paws all over your beautiful pixel display, go crazy. The Chromebook Pixel weighs 3.3 pounds. It has built-in WiFi and Bluetooth 3.0. It also has USB 2.0, a mini display port, an SD card reader and a microphone headphone jack. In terms of pricing, it starts at, again, a somewhat surprising $1299. You can also step up to a version for $1449 that has built-in 4G LTE support. So, unquestionably gorgeous. -Yeah. I think- -Like crazy gorgeous. -I can tell you love it. -I do. -Already. -I am totally in love with it, although, I completely understand the draw box. -It's a hard drive space. It's I think over the long term, you would be very frustrated by that. -I would think actually over the extremely short term. I would be frustrated by that. I have 128 gig solid-state drive in my MacBook Air and that's probably the primary competitor to this. -Uh huh. I'm out of room. I mean, I'm completely out of space already. -And it does feel a little heavy, but boy, that display is gorgeous. -My goodness. Would you wanna touch it? -I do. -I mean like- -I do wanna touch it. -Well, I mean, I know you do want to but over the long term, you know, you've got this beautiful display. The thing is all over it. -Well, I would personally really hate mouse pads. -Yeah. -So, I would love the touchscreen. -No, I love the touchscreen. I've been looking forward to that too. I-- I mean, I have to say, I think it is sort of a typical Google product. Their industrial design has gotten phenomenal. This is a gorgeous machine. The price is definitely high and it's for a small subset of people who kind of only live on the web but I don't know, I think I could maybe become one of those people. And there you have it, just a few of the best moments of Season 3. -It was an awesome season, but next week is my favorite episode of this season and that is blooper episode. -The bloopers are amazing. -Did you get to see Molly actually make mistakes, which I know no one think she does, but I've been here and I've seen it. -Two words people. Fart, giggle. You're not gonna wanna miss it. -I don't wanna miss those things. -So coming up next week on Always On. -See you then. -Bye.