Can wearables go prime time in 2015?
VENICE BEACH, Calif. -- Hillary Clinton is no fan of wearable devices, she told an industry gathering this week.
She has no interest in wearing a Fitbit to monitor her exercise. But President Barack Obama is, and looks forward to checking out the Apple Watch when it's released in April.
What does the tech industry have to do to make folks like Clinton want to wear smartwear on their wrists? Can the category go mainstream in 2015?
The topic led our weekly TalkingTech roundtable podcast, with our panelists weighing in on the notion of moving the information from the smartphone to the wrist, with devices like the new Apple Watch, or the re-designed Pebble Watch, which announced a new model this week.
"I've had some wearables, and none of them have offered any value beyond what you have on your phone," says Oliver Luckett, CEO of social-media marketing firm theAudience. "The sea change is when they become real health devices."
App developer Max Stossel has already lived with Google Glass, the $1,500 computerized eye-wear experiment that turned into a bust for Google.
"Trying to get the screen out of our phones and in our faces was way too intrusive," he says. "A watch is a nice next step. Apple has the power to get people to pay attention to something new, and I think it will make a splash."
Stossel, from the video app Ocho and Luckett were joined on the panel by tech journalist Jessica Naziri, talk-show host Tom Leykis and how-to-knit YouTube star Judy Graham. (Full disclosure: she's TalkingTech's mom, and like Clinton, has no use for smartwear.)
On the podcast, we also talked gender issues in tech -- will we see more women getting involved in the next decade? And we looked at mobile payments -- Apple made a splash last year with Apple Pay, which won rave reviews -- but no important retailers have signed on since it's launch in September.
Now Google, which didn't find many customers with Google Wallet, is trying again. This week it swallowed Softcard, a company formed by three big wireless carriers, and said Google Wallet will be pre-loaded on new Android phones from AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon later this year, so many more people will now see it.
Will that boost the audience for people choosing to pay with their smartphone instead of reaching for their credit card?
Additionally, the panel takes a good hard look at the world's most popular online video service, YouTube, which still, after all these years, isn't making money, and barely breaking even, according to the Wall Street Journal.
How can that be and what has to happen for YouTube to turn the corner?
The TalkingTech roundtable series is produced at TuneIn.com studios in Venice Beach.
Follow Jefferson Graham, Oliver Luckett, Max Stossel, Jessica Naziri and Judy Graham on Twitter.