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: 

• I saw Terry’s tweet about how surprised he was by the roll-out of autonomous vehicles in Pittsburgh with Uber. Well, it looks like Boston is next. Boston officials plan to start testing self-driving vehicles on city streets by the end of the year as part of a partnership between the City of Boston and the World Economic Forum. The city declined to reveal which technological companies or manufacturers it will work with, how many cars could be on the roads, or where they may be tested, but that info is coming. 
• Well, if our cars can drive themselves, why can’t our shopping carts be self-driving too? Walmart applied for a patent application, and it suggests that the company has at least considered the possibility. The application depicts a Roomba-esque motorized device attached to the underside of a shopping cart. Customers use their smartphone or other mobile device to summon the internet-connected device. From there, the cart is controlled by a centralized computer, and navigates the store using its sensors. The shopping cart will serve as a guide to different items the shopper is looking for throughout the store. The robots are coming! The robots are coming! 
• What are we going to do with online video next? What if I told you we may one day just watch other people eat? Stop laughing. Millions of people share millions of photos of what they’re about to eat, so why not switch to video and watch them eat? We’ve talked before about Twitch. Twitch was acquired for close to $1 billion by Amazon a few years back. Twitch is the place that people go to watch other people play video games lives. Well, Twitch is paying close attention to a new trend. Dubbed “social eating,” the practice is popular in South Korea and is picking up steam in the U.S., Twitch CEO Emmett Shear said last Wednesday at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco. A Twitch streamer with the user name Hacklyn was eating a bowl of soup Wednesday morning, with about 20 people watching live. She was listening to music and chatting with people about relationships while they watched her dig in.
• App of the week: If you have an iPhone or iPad, it’s iOS 10 time! 

Take a listen right here…