AI Wars, NFL on Netflix & Tech Accessibility

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's an all out AI war between Chat, GPT and Google.
I'll explain what both companies announced this week. New accessibility
features coming to Apple, Google and Samsung. The website with
promo codes that actually work. Plus your tech questions answered.

(00:22):
What's going on on rich Dedmiro And this is rich
on Tech. This is the show where I talk about
the tech stuff I think you should know about. It's
also the place where I answer your questions about technology.
I believe that tech should be interesting, useful and fun.
Phone lines are open at triple eight Rich one oh one.
That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one

(00:46):
zero one. Give me a call if you have a
question about technology. Email is also open. Just go to
rich on Tech dot tv and hit contact. Guests on
the show this week, C Scott Brown, Senior editor at
Android Authority, is going to discuss all things Google Io

(01:08):
twenty twenty four. Then we've got Jenny Blackburn, VP of
User Design for Gemini Experiences and Google Assistant. She's gonna
explain how to use Google Gemini AI Assistant. Yes, this
week was all about Google Io and it was a

(01:31):
good one. So as I said, it is an all
out war between Chat GPT and Google. Google's AI is
called Gemini, so this week was pretty unique. Google had
a long standing event scheduled for Tuesday called Google Io.
It's a big event where they show off all the

(01:52):
things that they've been working on for the year and
they show off new features that are coming soon, especially
of course with AI. But not to be outdone, just
about a week before the event was supposed to happen,
what does open AI do? They say, Hey, we're having
an event on Monday, the day before Google's event. Perfect timing.

(02:15):
So the Open Ai event was not It didn't seem
to be open to journalists. I think they had people
in the audience, but I'm not sure who they were.
It was just mostly the people on stage showing off stuff.
Small event, but they unveiled GPT four to oh, so
this is a new flavor of their chat GPT that's
even smarter. And the new term across all the ais

(02:38):
is multi modal. What does that mean. It means that
instead of just typing your questions, you can now do text,
you can do voice, you can do vision. So it's
a combination of things. It understands various inputs. Now we've
had text, voice, and vision before, but now it continues

(02:59):
to get better, and video is pretty much the new
thing that these AI are very good at understanding. So
they showed off a whole bunch of demos of all
kinds of cool stuff. The entire event was about twenty
six minutes. You can watch the video on YouTube. It
just gives you a really good understanding of what's to

(03:20):
come with Open AI and chat GBT, and you understand
why chat GBT has become a household name. It's smooth,
it's fluid, and in the future, very near future, it's
going to become even more natural. The real time conversation
aspect is getting amazing, So they demoed where you can

(03:40):
talk to this chat GPT as you would a human,
and you could even interrupt them mid sentence while the
thing's talking back to you. You could just interrupt and change
gears whatever you want, just like you would a real human.
And the real time video interaction is particularly interesting because
you can now just point your phone at things and say, hey,
what's this or how can I use this? What's this four?

(04:03):
And it's just another way of kind of absorbing the
world's knowledge. So the new voice mode is coming in
the next couple of weeks. Now, one of the neat
things they did was they are making this new level
of chat GBT four oh available to everyone. So once
you go on to chat GBT, it may say, hey,

(04:24):
you've been upgraded to chat GBT four. Oh that's what
mine said yesterday, and it's free. Now. I will tell you.
You're like, well, why should I pay twenty bucks to
get all these features? What's chatchibt plus that generally gave
you the access to this higher level of you know, smarts. Well,
there are limits to how much you can use it.
So I started using it with the added features, and

(04:47):
after just a couple of chats back and forth, it
was like, oh, now if you want to keep going,
you got to pay or we're going to drop you
down to the three point five. So again, lots of
cool things coming from chat gbt open a kind of
staying ahead of the game. There's also a desktop app
which I did download for the Mac Windows is coming
later and that brings chatchybt right into your desktop system

(05:11):
with a quick shortcut keyboard shortcut. It is. It is
pretty wild. So what did Google do the next day?
These stakes were high for Google because Google is the
search leader. Google started their presentation by saying, look, we've
been working on AI for a long time, fifteen years, okay,

(05:32):
So they made it very clear that they know their
stuff when it comes to AI. Now their AI model
is called Gemini, and again Gemini is getting smarter. It's
now multi modal, which means it can handle text, it
can handle images, it can handle video, it can handle code,
and it's becoming just smarter and more fluid. So a

(05:54):
couple of things that they announced AI agents. So these
aiag they have an idea where you may just say
to your AI, hey, can you return these shoes for me?
And you take a picture of the shoes that you
just bought. It will go into your Gmail, find that
order number, It will find the information and fill out
the form on how to return them. It will even

(06:16):
contact the pickup company like UPS or FedEx and get
you a return pickup date. Now that's a pie in
the sky idea. That's where they think this can go.
They didn't say when that's coming out, but that's kind
of like where they think things are going, where things
are actually going, and where things are happening in the
next couple of months. Is here number one Google Search

(06:38):
getting AI overviews. Now, if you say, rich, I already
have this in my Google Search. Yes, if you opted
into the AI experiments on Google, you might have been
seeing this already. When you type in something on Google
up at the top, it gives you kind of an
AI generated overview of that topic. I call it a
book report, but it provides quick, detailed answers to complex questions. Now,

(07:01):
the big question here is Google Search going to be
impacted by this, especially the advertising aspect. Google makes a
lot of money by showing US ads at the top
of our search results. You click a couple of those ads.
That's how they make a bulk of their money. By
having an AI overview where you just get the answer

(07:21):
without having to really click anything, that's a problem for
their advertisers. Now, of course, Google says it will not
be a problem, but that remains to be seen how
they're going to walk that fine line of still making
gobs of money but providing answers very quickly with AI.
Another new feature in Google Photos ask Photos. This allows you,

(07:43):
instead of just putting in one keyword for your Google
Photo collection, like beach, you can now say show me
where I went to the beach last year and my
best pictures from that trip, and it will find those
pictures and unearth them. You can say what's my license
plate number, and it will figure out which car you
continually drive on a recent basis, find the picture that

(08:04):
you took of your license plate, and tell you that
license plate number. Another example they gave, Hey, when did
my kid learn how to swim? It will look through
all the pictures of your kid and figure out when
they learn to swim. This is wild stuff, but again
kind of pie in the sky. They're gonna this is
gonna roll out soon, but they will have this and

(08:25):
I can't wait to try this. First question, I'm gonna ask, Hey,
show me all my duplicates of my library because I
need to clear those out. Then they're putting Gemini, which
is again their AI, into all of their apps. So
we're talking Gmail, we're talking Docs. Any app that Google
makes AI is going to be built in. So for Gmail,

(08:46):
for instance, you can say, Hey, summarize all the recent
emails I got from my kids' school, and what are
my action steps, like what do I need to respond
to And it will be smart enough to go into
your Gmail and figure that out. When you're working on
a document, you can say, hey, help me brainstorm this,
or you know, help me write this, or look at
my last presentation in Drive and help me make a

(09:06):
better one this time around, and it will go into
Google Drive and find out all that stuff. Now, Google
says this is all done very privately, So even though
it can access your documents, and it can access your
Gmail and it can access your photos, it's not using
any of your data to train its large language models,
so it is keeping that information private. And then finally

(09:29):
they mentioned that they're going to start flagging any of
their AI generated content with a special watermark so that
it can be identified. And the other demo I got
in person, which was really really cool, was called Project Astra.
This is again what I mentioned with open AI and
chat GBT. It's a very new way of interacting with
AI using the video camera on your phone. So you

(09:52):
would just point your phone at something like they gave
the example of a record player that's not working, or
actually that was a different example, but you could just
point your phone pretty much anything and say hey, where
am I what does it look like? And they'd say, oh,
it looks like you're in London. Right now based on
you know, what we're seeing around you, or hey, show
me stop when I when I get to a speaker,
and you know, you can just pan your camera around

(10:13):
the room and when you get to a speaker, it'll say, oh,
I see a speaker. I mean, it's just really really
new and interesting ways of interacting with all of the
world's information, and access to information is just going to
continue to get better. The flip side of all of
this is that these AI models need to be trained,
and the big question in the future is how are

(10:35):
we going to train these things? Where are they getting
the training data? If everything you've searched on the web
is a summary for the next five years, that's going
to be great. But when people stop writing articles because
everything's summarized now, where does the new information come from?
When everyone's generating images using AI, Where are we getting

(10:56):
original art from? Where are we getting original music from?
This is the new question that is going to be
a rising with the rise of AI. All right, coming
up on today's show, we're going to talk about new
accessibility features coming soon. But first it's your term. Give
me a call triple eight rich one oh one eight
eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.

(11:19):
If you have a question about technology, phone lines are open.
Let's go to Manny in Covina, California. Manny, you're on
with Rich.

Speaker 2 (11:30):
Hey, mister Rich, good show. Listen. I have a different inquiry.
It's the beginning of technology. I have a textbook and
I was wondering if your opinion on the value of
the Learning to Use Work Perfect five point zero, Slash
five point one, Lotus one two three and Database three plus.

(11:53):
The authors are Gary B. Shelley and Thomas J. Casmin.
What do you think? Should I donate it? Do you
want it? I mean, but I'd like to get some
money for it. I looked online and I didn't really
find too much on whether I can buy one. I
wanted to see what the query would say. It did
say that there are like maybe two available, so I
think it's rare. So your opinion.

Speaker 1 (12:14):
What's the book called again.

Speaker 2 (12:16):
Learning to Use Work Perfect five point zero, Flash five
point one, Lotus one two three and Database three plus
dBase three plus.

Speaker 1 (12:24):
And who's the author? I'm sorry, who's the author?

Speaker 2 (12:28):
Shelley Cashman? I'm sorry, Gary B. Shelley, Thomas J. Cashman.

Speaker 1 (12:34):
And then there are three more Okay, so I'm just looking.
I mean, obviously eBay is the place to look for this.
So I'm looking on eBay and I see a couple
of a couple of different books. Here. This looks like interesting,
This looks like someone is selling like a copy of
it maybe. But here's the thing. The bottom line is

(12:57):
nobody needs this anymore. There is no need for this book.
So that kind of limits its value because the only
person that would want this is someone that's interested in
the nostalgia factor or a collection factor. So a couple
of things you can do with this number. One, go
on eBay and type in the name exactly as you
see it, and kind of get an idea of if

(13:18):
people are selling this if they're not. If you want
to sell it on there, go ahead, name a price
or just let people bit it up. Start at ninety
nine cents to what happens. But it's one of these
things where it's it's this is a very small group
of people that may want something like this. Now that
doesn't mean that it doesn't have value, but you'll find
out on eBay if it does have value. Second thing

(13:41):
is you can donate it to someone, maybe like a
computer museum, or something like that if they want it.
But really, Manny, I think that this main thing is
that just go on eBay. eBay's your friend with this,
and you know, a Google search, and just see if
anyone else is selling this, see if there is any
value in this. That's the best way of figuring it out.

(14:01):
You know, I've got too much stuff already. I don't
need any I want less stuff because I do keep
a small amount of tech that I think in the
future might be interesting. But at the same time, it's
you know, this kind of stuff like a book, a
book on how to use word perfect is just really
probably I can't imagine many people would still want something

(14:22):
like that. Sadly, now if it was like an old
Blockbuster card maybe, like those are the kind of things
that you know, people may find interesting. But good question.
Thanks for the question today, Manny and Covina eBay, Oh
my gosh. When eBay first came out, they call it
the perfect Store, and it really is because if someone

(14:43):
wants what you are selling, I mean, really, two people
have to want what you're selling for it to be valuable.
If only one person wants it, it's not really valuable.
But if two people want it and they bit it up.
It can become very valuable. So eBay is are really
really to me such an amazing site. When it first
came out, it just kind of blew my mind because
I said, this is incredible. Like you put something on

(15:04):
on a groad sale, you know, at a groad sale
in front of your house. The only people that can
possibly want that is someone who drives by and sees
that product. But eBay is worldwide, everyone has the opportunity
to buy it. Thanks for the question. Eight eight eight
rich one one eight eight eight seven four two four
one zero one. Netflix getting into live sports with an

(15:29):
NFL deal. So NFL is partnering with the NFL for
uh or sorry. Netflix is partnering with the NFL for
a three season deal, getting into sports streaming live two
Christmas Day games this year, so this is a big deal.
They haven't announced what games these are going to be,

(15:49):
but as we know, the NFL is really making a
lot of money off of selling their games to these
different streaming services. Peacock had won last year. We know
that Amazon got Thursday Night Football and this is just
going to continue. I was looking up to see what
we need to watch NFL this season and it's just
all over the place. What NFL has not done is

(16:13):
their own streaming service, which would just be bananas. If
you could just pay a one time fee and get
every game no matter what, that would be incredible. But
we are going to see uh two games, two games
on Christmas Day on Netflix. I'm here for it, and
I think we're just going to continue to see more
on Netflix when it comes to live events and live sports,

(16:34):
something they really shied away from when Netflix first started.
They said, why would we ever need to be like
traditional TV? Why would we ever need to be like
a traditional broadcaster? And the answer is those games when
they are played live, are very valuable to advertisers. Netflix
will make a lot of money on this deal. Eighty
to eight Rich one on one eight eight seven four

(16:56):
to two four one zero one coming up, I'll tell
you why Twitter is no more. You're listening to Rich
on tap. Let's go to Mark in San Diego. Mark,
You're on with Rich.

Speaker 3 (17:11):
Thanks so much. I'm learning a lot with your show
and I appreciate what you do. Thank you A quick question.
My current situation is I have at and T DFL
internet and that's that's okay. If I mentioned names.

Speaker 1 (17:25):
Oh sure.

Speaker 3 (17:26):
And then I also have an old school landline. We've
had the number in our family forever endeavor. So I'm
paying on both of those and they just keep moving
my internet rate up and up and up. So they're now.

Speaker 1 (17:37):
Pushing the Hey, a major company continues to raise prices
on you. Yeah, no way, I can't believe that.

Speaker 3 (17:43):
Yeah, it's gonna go. I get eighteen megabytes per second
and I'm going to be paying ninety dollars a month
just for.

Speaker 1 (17:48):
The Internet for eighteen eighteen down.

Speaker 3 (17:53):
Yeah, that's it.

Speaker 1 (17:54):
Got to dump that. Okay.

Speaker 3 (17:55):
Yeah, so they offered me, you know, they're like, hey,
we've got this new Internet Air thing in your area.
So one, what are your thoughts on Internet Air?

Speaker 4 (18:06):
Two?

Speaker 3 (18:08):
I currently have a cell phone that's AT and T
and then I'm thinking about converting my landline from a
landline and going to a different carrier like maybe Mint
Mobile or T Mobile someone else and just let it
take over my landline number.

Speaker 1 (18:24):
And what do you need to land on?

Speaker 3 (18:26):
How do you like AT and T Internet Air?

Speaker 5 (18:27):
Two?

Speaker 3 (18:28):
Is it smart going to two different carriers for cell phones?

Speaker 1 (18:31):
Okay, well, so the first question is, uh, so you
have AT and T on your smartphone already, right, yes, okay,
so the question is how is the speed on your smartphone?
Have you done a speed test?

Speaker 3 (18:46):
Well, I'm not, I don't. Do you mean like using
it as a hotspot?

Speaker 1 (18:50):
Well, just going to like if you go to a
website like fast dot com on your phone, see how
fast that is, because that's going to be a pretty
good indication of how how fast this Internet air is
going to be. Yeah, because you already have AT and T.
Now I will tell you that the antenna inside the
Internet air box is obviously going to be a little
bit more powerful than what's on your phone, but it

(19:12):
gives you an idea. If you're getting five down, you're
not going to get much more on the Internet air
If you're getting one hundred down, then that's pretty good.
Interesting now, so that's my number one suggestion. I would
also look in the upper right hand corner of your
phone and see what kind of signal you have? What
what type of phone do you have? Is it newer
or do you have like five G Yeah, well.

Speaker 3 (19:32):
It's a couple of year old Pixel four A, yeah,
Google Pixel four A. But it's been a great little phone.

Speaker 1 (19:37):
Yeah, Oh no, I love. I've been testing the Pixel
eight a actually, and for five hundred bucks it's a
great little phone, even though I know it'll be sold
for cheaper, so don't buy it for five hundred Okay,
So that's number one. So here's what what what AT
and T is doing with Internet air. They're making that
available in places where they don't have fiber internet. So
in places like where you are, where DSL, they want

(19:58):
to get people off the DSL because it's expensive and
you know, to maintain and all that stuff. They would
rather have people using their cellular network that's already in
the area. So that's where they're activating AT and T air.
So it's not in many places right now, but where
it is, and they're they're probably offering a decent price
as well. I have no problem with switching to it.
Have you checked the other internet service providers in your area,

(20:21):
like a Spectrum or cocks or whoever else services your area.
Have you checked to c because if you're switching, you know,
you might get a pretty good deal for the first
two years or so on them as well.

Speaker 3 (20:31):
And I'm glad you brought that up because I just
started looking into that obviously when I went to AT
and T to try to negotiate a deal. They're like, oh, no,
you know, we'll offer you this, you know, for fifty
five bucks a month, you get the Internet air and
that's it. They weren't willing to negotiating.

Speaker 1 (20:44):
No, they don't. They don't negotiate on the home Internet.
None of them do. They're not. That's like kind of
the new thing. In fact, AT and T is not
really negotiating at all anymore on their home Internet. The
thing that's non negotiable is the price increases like clockwork
every year or so, my no mind does. But the
website that I'd recommend to see what else is in
your area speed test dot net. They have what's called

(21:07):
a speed test performance site, and so you type in
your zip code and it will tell you the different
providers in your area and also the speeds that people
are getting with those providers. So, for instance, if I
type in a zip code in Los Angeles near where
I am, you can see the different providers and what
they're getting. Now. AT and T Internet Air is not there,

(21:30):
but they do have kind of the T Mobile Internet.
They've got a couple other providers that they do have
speed tests for so I'd recommend looking at that as well.
And I think that was your first question. The second
question was the switching to the Mint mobile or whatever.

Speaker 3 (21:45):
I mean, that's kind of why I kept my landline
all this time. If one network went down, I was
had the other one as a backup. But like if
I go with maybe a T Mobile and stay with
AT and T or a Mint.

Speaker 1 (21:53):
Yeah, the other The only issue with that, if you
are going to switch to internet air, they probably give
you the best price if you're also on their cell
phone network as well? Is that not the case?

Speaker 3 (22:05):
Gotcha?

Speaker 1 (22:05):
So that would be my only consideration. But I will
tell you I recently switched my wife to one of
the mv and o's because my bill for her just
kept going up and she doesn't use a lot of data,
and it just it was like ninety bucks a month,
and I switched to one that was like forty five
a month unlimited. And it's you know, I've been asking
her like every day, like, hey, do you notice any
difference in your service? And she's like, no, not really.

(22:27):
So you know, I have no problem with switching to
save money, especially if you don't use that much data,
but maybe maybe do one thing at a time, you know,
like maybe you know, jump off onto the internet air first,
you know, wait a couple of months, and then if
you want to switch your your cell phone provider, you
can do that as well.

Speaker 3 (22:45):
Gotcha, gotcha? Okay, yeah, that's a great tip. Fast dot
com and speed test dot net.

Speaker 1 (22:49):
Okay, yeah, check it out.

Speaker 3 (22:51):
Perfect, Thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (22:52):
All right, Mark, appreciate the call. Thank you all right.
Uh eighty eight rich one oh one eight eight eight
seven four to two zero one. I mentioned that Twitter
is going bye bye, and yeah, that's true. It's a
little bit of a tease, but yes, Twitter has completed
their rebranding to x dot com. If you use Twitter

(23:15):
on a daily basis, you notice that half the time
you would go to the website, it would be a
Twitter address in the URL, and so you'd be like, well,
wait a second, I thought this switch to X dot com.
But this week Twitter has finally transitioned fully to x
dot com. All core systems and all the URLs have
now been moved to x dot com. And that means

(23:35):
that the Twitter handle and the bluebird logo are gone.
They are now just a memory, a memory for all
of us that remember the failwal Do you remember the
fail well, no, Adam's in for Bobo today doesn't remember
the fail Well. That was when Twitter first started. It
would always just it would always crash, and it would
because too many people were using it, and it would

(23:57):
go to this failwale that was like a I think
it was like an upside down whale and it was just,
you know, it was like kind of cute. It just
you know, that meant Twitter was down. But this is
now fully done and uh, yes, there's no So let
me see if I go to Twitter dot com slash
rich on tech and uh wait, yep, there it is
x dot com. Oh it did change x dot com

(24:18):
slash rich on tech. There you go. Anyway, you can
follow me there and join the fun.

Speaker 6 (24:23):
And uh.

Speaker 1 (24:24):
Microsoft's free PC optimizer got a new version this week,
so PC manager. If you want to free upspace on
your Windows machine if you have Windows ten or Windows eleven,
Microsoft has launched a new version of its free Windows
tuning tool called PC Manager. The main thing you can
do with this is the files cleanup toool. This can

(24:46):
help you free up storage on your hard drive by
cleaning up any downloaded files, and it can also search
for large files and remove duplicates. Now, before you say, oh,
I've been looking for a duplicates manager, I'm not sure
this is one hundred percent for finding all those duplicate photos,
but it will help you in the process of finding
those duplicate files. You can say if you want to

(25:07):
do the downloaded files, the large files, or the duplicate files.
This is kind of an alternative to the mainstay, which
is C Cleaner. I know that I feel like that
has mixed reviews online. Some people love it, some people
don't like it. But a lot of people when they're
trying to speed up their system clear out stuff, they
download anything they find on the internet to help them.

(25:27):
Be careful when you do that. Not all programs are
treated equally. But this is a program that is put
out by Microsoft. You can find it in the Microsoft Store. Again,
it is called PC Manager. I'll put a link on
the show notes as well. But this is only for
Windows ten or Windows eleven, but new version this week.
If you want to clean up your hard drive remove

(25:48):
some of the stuff that's in there. It also removes
temporary files and clears out the Windows Update cash. So
there it is PC Manager eighty eight. Rich one eight
Still coming up. I'm gonna tell you about the latest
accessibility features that are coming to Samsung, that are coming

(26:10):
to Apple and coming to Google. It was a Global
Accessibility Awareness Day this week, so we got a lot
of new updates. Eighty eight rich one on one eight
My name is rich Damiro. You are listening to Rich
on tech Welcome back to the show the website rich

(26:34):
on tech dot TV. While you're there, sign up for
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(26:55):
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and then and then I write the newsletter and send
it out and it's just I feel like it's just

(27:15):
chuck full of good information. So Rich on tech dot
TV and just go sign up. It is free. Let's
go to Kathy in Orange County, California. Kathy, you're on
with Rich.

Speaker 7 (27:26):
Hi, thanks for taking my call. I have a Sansung
Galaxy twenty three and I just downloaded like the one
I U six point one or something. Ye, yes, yeah,
that one. So now when I text, it's the voice
texting is gone, the microphone to voice text is gone.

(27:46):
All there is is the ability to record a text
message and send it.

Speaker 1 (27:51):
Okay, what what app are you using for your for
your keyboard? Do you know?

Speaker 7 (27:59):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (28:00):
So do you have your phone with you?

Speaker 2 (28:02):
I do?

Speaker 1 (28:02):
Okay, you got to go into settings, okay, and we're
going to go into keyboard so you can just search
for keyboard. Let's see keyboard so general management. So if
you go into general management, okay.

Speaker 7 (28:17):
I think it's Samsung.

Speaker 1 (28:19):
Okay, So if it's a Samsung keyboard, you probably just
have to re enable it. So if you go in
there where it says keyboard list and default does it
so it says Samsung keyboard. And then if you go
in there let's see here, I'm looking for the uh yeah,
so voice typing? Do you have voice typing? Is it
toggled on or off?

Speaker 7 (28:43):
I don't see voice typing?

Speaker 1 (28:46):
Okay, So if you go into your Samsung keyboard under
keyboard list in de fall right, I mean I'm looking
at mine right now, says Samsung Keyboard, and then it
says for me, I haven't selected as Google voice typing
because I like Google to be on there, so it
doesn't show you that on there. Huh. Now okay, so
what if we let's see, let me try a different ways.

(29:07):
Let's say we go into the keyboard and okay, so
in the lower when you go to your app, when
the lower left hand corner, there's no little voice, there's
no little keyboard microphone icon, no interesting okay, gone. Now,
so now when you go into your keyboard, so go
into like a text message. Okay, okay. Now now up
at the top, do you see the first thing on

(29:28):
the left hand side is like a little AI kind
of like toggle like two little stars.

Speaker 7 (29:33):
Uh Like, there's like a little camera. There's a phone,
and then three.

Speaker 1 (29:38):
Dots a camera and a phone and three dots. Hmmm,
what so you're looking at the keyboard and you see
do you see a number row at the top?

Speaker 8 (29:50):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (29:51):
Okay, So above the number road, do you see like
a little gear icon, a little what like a little
looks like a little gear Oh yeah, okay, so tap
that okay, okay, Now that should bring you into Samsung keyboard.

Speaker 2 (30:06):
Right, okay, okay.

Speaker 1 (30:07):
Now scroll all the way down, okay, to where it
says voice input. Oh yeah, okay. Now do you have yours?
Probably says none, Select Samsung or Google.

Speaker 7 (30:19):
It's it's Samsung voice Inputright select Google voice tyking.

Speaker 1 (30:24):
You can if you want, but you can just do
I mean, Samsung works as well. But you can try
toggling it to Google and maybe that'll bring it up. Okay, okay,
now you did that.

Speaker 3 (30:35):
Oh it won't let me.

Speaker 7 (30:36):
Oh it's like great and it won't allow me to interesting.

Speaker 1 (30:40):
Okay, So if you go back to the one before,
do you have your your voice? Okay? The bottom line
is you got to you gotta turn on voice typing again.
So the only thing I can think of is perhaps
you have taken away some sort of permission for your
keyboard that does not allow it to use the voice
the microphone anymore so the other thing you can do

(31:00):
is go into your settings if this doesn't work, and
go into your permissions. And so if you go into
your permissions, you can see your keyboard and it will
show you if it has permission to use the the microphone,
and if it somehow toggled that permission off, that may
be why you can no longer access the microphone. But

(31:21):
the two things you need to know is just go.
You gotta you gotta really look through those settings and
look for that that keyboard or the voice setting and
make sure you can turn that on. If you can't,
then I would say you have to go into your
permissions and see if you can set that on. The
only other thing I would I would say you can
do is when you're in your Samsung keyboard settings, you

(31:45):
can click reset to default settings, and that might that
might switch everything back on. Like the first time you
open up your keyboard, it may then show you the
I'm gonna do reset keyboard settings. And then the first
time that you open up that Samsung keyboard again and
it may ask you if you want to use the
voice input, but I'm tapping it and I've got the

(32:05):
I've got the one UI six point one right on
there and I am seeing it, so it's not it
has not gone away. It is just somehow deactivated on
your device. But you do have to just kind of
look through those settings and anything you see that has voice,
make sure it's toggled on and make sure that you
are allowing that permissions to access the microphone because that

(32:26):
might have been toggled off in the process. Email me, Kathy,
please with the update, because I don't want to go
through the whole system right now, because you know, obviously
we have limited time. But that is where you'll find it.
Thanks for the question. Today we got an email question.
Let's see here. Kate says he's traveling to the UK
and I would like to know the best apps for

(32:47):
getting ride shares and taxis, finding a self guided walking
tour of a city and its major sites, and the
best Beatles tour in Liverpool. And thanks already for wiki voyage.
It is a fantastic overview site, although the info is
kind of twenty twenty one is so I hope they
keep it current. Thank you, Kate. Kate, it's funny you
say this. They're actually adding in this travel itinerary like

(33:10):
this exact question. You'll be able to ask Google very soon,
and so just in time for summer planning, they're going
to do this new AI trip itinerary thing which is
going to be game changing. But until then, two things
that I would recommend. Number one, brand new website called
mind trip dot Ai. Mind trip dot Ai, I pasted

(33:31):
your question in there and it tells me that for
ride shares and taxis, you want to use Uber or
free Now, and I will tell you my experience. Free
Now was what I use when I went to Europe,
and it's what I recommend to everyone. It's a little
bit more popular, but it's much more taxi oriented, whereas
Uber is you know obviously Uber. And then it tells
for self guiding walking tours Rick Steves pocket Guide and

(33:55):
then regarding the best Beatles tour in Liverpool, it also
has that information as well. Uh. The other thing I
would recommend is guide geek dot Ai. Guide geek dot Ai.
Paste your question into there and it should give you
those answers. But this is the sort of thing that
AI is just built for. And these two new products,

(34:16):
both mind trip dot ai and guide geek dot ai,
are excellent at coming up with these complex answers. Check
them out. I'll put links in the show note show
notes rich on Tech dot TV. But this is the
kind of stuff that AI can really really help you for.
Of course, you always want to cross reference and make
sure that the stuff they recommend is still the best recommendations.

(34:37):
More rich on Tech come your way. Coming up, i'll
talk about the new accessibility features coming soon. This is
rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich
Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology at triple
eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four
two four one zero one, the website for the show

(35:00):
rich on Tech dot TV. Before the break, we had
Kathy call in and she was perplexed because she could
not find the voice typing input on her Samsung phone.
Get a lot of emails, a lot of phone calls,
Scott and Anaheim, you have the answer.

Speaker 9 (35:19):
Yes.

Speaker 10 (35:20):
When the UI update came on to the Samsung twenty three,
originally the speak to text microphone was in the bar
across the top of the keyboard. They moved the microphone
icon and made it a lot smaller and put it
in the bottom left corner of the screen. And I
think that's that's the problem. A lot of my coworkers

(35:41):
have had as well. They just couldn't find it.

Speaker 1 (35:42):
Yeah, and I just I got about a dozen responses
on Twitter and email people all saying the same thing.
They moved it to the lower left hand corner. Now
here's the funny thing, Scott. You know, like I don't
use the Samsung keyboard, I use g board, so I
you know, my microphone is up in the upper right
hand corner. But it's funny. When I first opened the keyboard,

(36:03):
I said, well, there it is right there at the bottom.
Like I found it in about two seconds. But maybe
I understand if you're looking in the same place over
and over and they change it, you're not good at
Maybe you're just not looking in the lower left hand corner.

Speaker 4 (36:16):
So that.

Speaker 1 (36:17):
But she also said that something was great out which
made it seem like maybe something else changed. But hopefully
that's the deal. But thanks for the call, Scott, appreciate it.
But yes, if you're looking for the you know, if
you're looking on the update, you just got the new
update on the Samsung phone. The voice to text is
now in the lower left hand corner. Coming up this hour,

(36:40):
C Scott Brown is going to join us. He is
senior editor at Android Authority. He's going to discuss all
of the changes coming to Android. Yes, one thing is
inevitable in the tech world. There will be lots of changes.
That's kind of how it goes, all right. So this
week was Global Accessibility the Awareness Day, and so all

(37:02):
of the major companies, Apple, Google, Samsung, they all came
out with updates about what they're doing to make their
phones more accessible to more people. And so Google has
a whole bunch of stuff that they are doing, and
let me go through theirs first, and I'll do Apple,
then I'll do Samsung. So Google is improving Lookout. Lookout

(37:22):
helps people with blindness and low vision use their phone's
camera to get more information about the world around them.
Now they're providing a way to find specific objects, so
you can select from categories like seating, tables, bathrooms, and
when you move your camera around, Lookout will notify you
in the direction and the distance to the item. Then
they're also doing a text free mode to communicate using

(37:44):
look to Speak, so you can select pre written customizable
phrases with your eyes and have them spoken aloud. So
starting today you've got a text free mode. You can
also select and personalized emoji symbols and photos to activate speech.
So this new feature, they say, is to make communicating
more accessible to people with cognitive differences, literacy challenges, and

(38:09):
language barriers. So you can literally look at an emoji
and it will speak that. Let's see what else. Then
they've got a hands free cursor for Android developers. So
starting this week, developers can access Project Game Phase, which
is going to mean that they can move a cursor
around on the screen. Let's see open face. Oh wow,

(38:32):
that's interesting, a hands free cursor. Okay, So yeah, Google,
Apple's doing something very similar in Google Maps. You can
get more detailed voice guidance for blind or low vision users.
That's available globally on Android and iOS. And then let's
see what else. Accessibility information. More than fifty million places
are marked with accessibility details. That is expanding to desktop.

(38:55):
So that was on mobile, now you can get that
on desktop and I always do that.

Speaker 4 (39:00):
I know.

Speaker 1 (39:01):
They made a big push a couple of years ago
to have people like myself that fill in information on
Google Maps to tell if there is accessibility entrances at places,
like wheelchair accessible entrances, and I try to always help
with that. Okay, so what else Apple, They've got a
whole bunch of things. Their most notable is IE tracking,

(39:23):
so they are introducing hands free I tracking on the
iPad and the iPhone, so people can only use their eyes.
So this is for people obviously with physical disabilities. They
will be able to control their iPad or iPhone using
just their eyes just by looking at stuff on the screen.
So the front facing camera notices where their eyes are looking,

(39:45):
and it uses AI to kind of figure out when
they stop on something and hover that will select or
they can swipe things. So this is a pretty pretty
amazing paradigm shift for the use of the iPad or
the iPhone for someone with a disability, because that means
that they can now control this device without any additional

(40:05):
hardware or software. It's all built into the operating system
that's coming later this year. Music Haptics they're also introducing
allows deaf or heart of hearing users to experience music
through iPhones Tactic Engine that will integrate with Apple Music
and then third party apps with They can also tap
into that as well. Vocal Shortcuts users can create customs

(40:26):
sounds to perform tasks, and then they also have vehicle
motion cues. So if you're the type of person that
gets car sick when you're looking at your smartphone, they
now have this new system that uses animated dots to
help your brain kind of like understand that the cars
in motion, and I guess that helps you with motion sickness.

(40:48):
Let's see. There's also car Play updates, Vision OS enhancements.
That's you know with the with the their VR headset.
Not many people have that. Let's see now when it
comes to Samsung, this is something you can already access
now it is live. I checked forward on my phone.
It's called re relumina. How do you say this Relumineo mode.

(41:12):
And this was initially introduced on TVs to help people
with vision impairments. Now it's coming to Samsung's smartphones they say,
select Samsung Galaxy smartphones. So this was a feature for
smart TVs. It enhances the visuals for low vision. So
this improves visibility by outlining objects, enhancing contrast, adjusting brightness,

(41:36):
and sharpening images, making content clearer for people with vision impairments.
So this was originally shown off. I remember this at
CS twenty twenty three, and they showed it off again
at Samsung CS twenty twenty four, but now it's available
on your Samsung phone. So my recommendation if you have
any sort of accessibility issues, go into the settings on

(42:01):
your phone and go into the accessibility because there are
so many features available to you these days compared to
just a couple of years ago on the iPhone, on Samsung,
on Google, on Android, and there's just so many little
features that you can tap into and activate. So I
would definitely recommend doing that because they continue to update

(42:23):
these things. Again the website, rich on tech dot TV,
I'll link up everything that I just mentioned. Let's go
to Angie in Los Angeles. Angie, how are you doing today?
Welcome to the show.

Speaker 4 (42:36):
Hi, thank you for taking my call. I love your show.

Speaker 1 (42:39):
Thanks.

Speaker 4 (42:41):
I'm looking for just give you a little bit of background.
This is for a person who's in their early eighties
picking out a phone. They had that keyboard flip phone
for a while, loved it. They stopped making it. They
told them told her that she needed to upgrade to
a smartphone. So now she's using a motor role up
motorall was seven to be specific, and now wants to

(43:05):
replace this phone. But looking for something and hearing your
intro about the all the you know, adaptive uh features
on a lot of new phones. Sounds great. She does
have hearing issues, but no real vision problems other than readers,
and wants something very simple, doesn't use the internet. Loved

(43:27):
the keyboard that was on the previous older phone.

Speaker 1 (43:32):
But you mean had a physical keyboard or keypad.

Speaker 4 (43:37):
No, it had a physical It was like a keep
had the flip phone with the little keypad and you
just punched the you know.

Speaker 8 (43:43):
It was like.

Speaker 4 (43:46):
Looked similar to one of the ones you profiled on
qtl A one time where they had an actual physical keypad.
And I forgot the brand the name of that phone.
I know that you profiled at a one of your
segment's song a TLA. But she's just kind of looking.

Speaker 1 (44:03):
For something simple, something really simple.

Speaker 4 (44:08):
Yeah, and the Motorolas. I'm looking at some of the
newer Motorolas and they really don't get good reviews. But
the phone is really hard to I mean for an
iPhone user myself, who previously had a Samsum and came
from an android's family, I find her phone very cumbersome
to use for real person, Yeah, I mean the steps

(44:28):
she has to go through to delete a phone number is,
you know, kind of ridiculous.

Speaker 1 (44:33):
Okay, well, a couple a couple of resources. Number one,
there's a website called dumb Wireless. I talked about them
on KTLA and we showed a couple of phones. So
that may give you some ideas for phones. Like I'm
looking at this punk phone p U n k T.
I don't know how they say it, but that looks
like it'd be really simple. It has the physical buttons.

(44:53):
It doesn't have a full keyboard, but it's got the
you know, main number dial keys and all that stuff.
So that may be a place to kind of just
get some ideas for things. That's the first place i'd look.
At the c SUN conference, I also showed off this
phone company called blind Shell blind Shell, and that is
a phone that's very very simple. It speaks everything. It's

(45:17):
primarily made for low vision users. But I asked the
people and I said, can't anyone that kind of like
just wants a really simple smartphone use this? And they said, yeah, absolutely.
But the problem with that phone is it's a little expensive,
so it may be more expensive than you want to
spend on a smartphone. The other thing is that Samsung
actually has what's called easy Mode on all of their smartphones.

(45:40):
And when you activate easy Mode, it's like really simple.
All the buttons, all the icons, everything becomes bigger. It
gets rid of all the nonsense and all the extra
functions and stuff. It kind of puts them like a
step back, so you don't need to worry about all
those But that is a great way to just make
any Samsung phone very simple. And it's called easy Mode.

(46:01):
So if you go to settings display and just hit
easy Mode, it really does a lot of things. So
what it does is it makes bigger on screen items,
a longer touch and whold delay to prevent accidental actions.
That's a huge issue with especially some folks that are
using their phones high contrast keyboard for better readability. And

(46:23):
it's just a much easier way to use your smartphone.
And that you could just get the basic Samsung S
twenty four, even the S twenty three from last year,
the standard one and put it into easy Mode, and
then that will be a lot easier for her to use.
So I think that those are some good resources to
look for, and you know, one of those should probably
help maybe replace the phone that she's got. Now. Thanks

(46:47):
for the call appreciate it, Angie rich On Tech Rich
DeMuro here eight eight eight rich one oh one eight
eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero
one coming up. I'll tell you what's new in Iowa
U seventeen point five. Wow, A lot of new stuff
this week. You are listening to rich on Tech. I

(47:08):
know I mentioned a lot of resources on this show.
I know it's a lot, but it's all on the
website rich on tech dot tv. When you get there.
If you're listening live, you can hit the lightbulb icon.
If you're listening later, you can just scroll down to
the section where it says podcasts and you can find
show notes for every one of the shows that we

(47:30):
do here. It actually just says podcast It is no
s on the end there, so you'll see all of
the shows. You can listen to them. You can search
the transcript, which is my absolute favorite feature. It is
so cool. If you hit transcript and you search for something,
you're like, I know Rich said something about a dumb phone.

(47:51):
You type in dumb and it will bring you right
to the section of the show where I mentioned the
word dumb, and then it will also play that exact audio.
So it's all synced up. It is such a cool feature. Again,
Rich on tech dot TV when in your Belinda rode
In says, iPad, iPad Air, iPad ten or MacBook Air

(48:13):
M one which one to go for general browsing. Hmmm.
We just went to the Apple Store yesterday to check
out the iPad air and the iPad ten. iPad ten
is getting a little old, but it's a good price.
Three point fifty. I'd wait for that price to come
down to about three hundred before I bought it. MacBook
Air is about six ninety nine. That's a little bit

(48:34):
older the M one model, and then the iPad air five.
I think they're up to the six that might be
the last model. iPad air is gonna be the most expensive,
But it kind of depends you're saying general browsing. Any
of these are gonna work. They're all gonna work good
for Netflix for you know, if you're traveling, I'd go
with the iPad and if you're staying stationary, I go like,

(48:57):
if you're trying to do work as well, then I'd
go with the mac book care Hm, which one would
I pick? I'd probably go with the the iPad Air
because it's the newest out of these, and I think
that you're gonna get the most use out of that.
It's gonna be a little bit more expensive, but I
think that it'll be a little bit faster, a little
bit better than these other options because it has the
new M two chip. So that's probably what i'd go for. Yeah,

(49:23):
that's what I do. My kid, by the way, was
like I couldn't believe how expensive the iPad was last night.
He was like, wait, what this thing is like six
hundred and ninety nine dollars for the iPad. He was
really rethinking then that the new one is much more expensive.
Let's see trying to see what version the iPad is
at this point. It doesn't Yeah, Apple is not good

(49:44):
about that. Let's go to Rick in Torrents. Rick, Rick,
you're on with Rich.

Speaker 6 (49:51):
Rich. Let me get you off speaker.

Speaker 4 (49:53):
Okay, Okay, got you.

Speaker 6 (49:56):
I'm sixty nine years old and I've started to have
a little bit of heart issues, and I decided I
want a smart watch. But it seems like ninety percent
of the smart watch is focus more on people that
are doing sports than your health. I was wondering if
you know which smart watch has the most as far
as monitoring your health.

Speaker 1 (50:18):
What brand phone do you have because that makes a difference.

Speaker 6 (50:23):
Well, I've got a Google Pixel eight and I actually
just got the pixel Watch too last week. Oh okay,
and I'm wondering if there's one that's going to give
me more medical information than this one does.

Speaker 1 (50:39):
I think the pixel Watch is. The pixel Watch two specifically,
is pretty good. They've got the heart rate notifications and
they're also taking your heart rate at a much shorter interval,
so they're taking it much more often than some of
the other smart watches out there, which is you know,
that's actually very handy if you are trying to monitor

(50:59):
your heart So. Plus you've got fitbit, They've got Ai
coming soon, so you're gonna be able to ask it
all kinds of questions about your health. I think you've
got a good watch there. I think that that's probably
gonna be the best bet. Make sure you go through
the app and set up the uh all of the
heart rate notifications, so for high, for low, the fall,

(51:20):
all that stuff. Just make sure you go through every
single setting in the app and make sure all those
things are toggled on, because they may not have been
toggled on the first time you set them up. But Rick,
I think you got a good watch there. Pixel Watch
two has exactly what you need there. Eighty eight rich
one O one eight eight eight seven four to two
four one zero one. Coming up, we're gonna talk new

(51:41):
Android features. You're listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back
to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with
you talking technology at triple eight rich one oh one
eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
The website for the show rich on Tech dot TV.

(52:05):
Joining me now, C Scott Brown, Senior editor at Android Authority.
He was at Google Io along with myself, So we
are going to discuss all of the Android developments at
the conference this year. Scott, thanks so much for joining me.

Speaker 11 (52:22):
Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here.

Speaker 1 (52:24):
So the last caller was asking about the pixel Watch.
I know that you wear a pixel Watch. I was saying,
you know, do you like it? Do you think it's
good for the heart rate stuff? And your answer was
you like it?

Speaker 12 (52:34):
Yeah, I love it. I came from the Fitbit Sense,
which came out I think like three or four years
ago now, and I kept holding on to the Sense
because there was nothing that had all the features of
the Sense and you know that was available, Like the
Sense did everything, and so the pixel Watch too is
now the only thing that actually does everything the original

(52:56):
Sense did, with the downside being battery life. The battery
life is not as good on the pixel watch Too
as it is on the Sense, but it has a
lot more features and it looks better. It looks more
like a regular watch and stuff. So yeah, so I
love it.

Speaker 1 (53:10):
And apparently with one of the announcements was that they're
making war os, I guess better battery efficiency, so maybe
the battery life will get better on that.

Speaker 11 (53:20):
Yeah, I'm hoping.

Speaker 1 (53:21):
Let's talk about some of the things. First off, you
just your general impression of Google Io twenty twenty four
in general, what was your takeaway?

Speaker 12 (53:29):
It was a very different Io for a few reasons.
The biggest one that I noticed was there was no hardware.
Not one piece of hardware was announced, and that's not
like Io. Usually they announced at least something. In the past,
it's been the you know, the new A series Pixel,
but they launched that a week before Io this year,
and they've also teased hardware. They teased the Pixel tablet

(53:53):
one year. They've done a lot of things like that
and this just isn't just not this time. So I
would noticed that first off. And then number two, it
really felt like Google was trying to speak to its
shareholders more than speaking to the general public. I feel

(54:13):
like Google was trying to say to its shareholders, Hey,
we know we're under threat right now from a bunch
of different companies, but don't worry.

Speaker 11 (54:21):
We got this. That's what I felt like the whole
show was like.

Speaker 1 (54:25):
And it didn't feel that reassuring because you know, they
had the open AI thing right before Google I owe,
and it's like Google, give us some like like I
feel like with every show you have to have something
like tangible that people can do like that day, Like
the takeaway is like, Okay, you can go to your
you know, Google dot com and do this and it's
really cool. But we did see a lot of neat things.

(54:45):
Let's talk about Android. So first off, one of the
new features is private Space. Now, if you have a Samsung,
you may be familiar with this concept of like what
do they call like secure folder or something, but this
explained this feature private space.

Speaker 12 (54:59):
So it it's a space where you can put apps
that need an extra layer of security. So let's just
say that you know someone who's shoulder surfed you. Shoulder
surfing is when someone looks over your shoulder and is
able to figure out your passcode because they've watched you
enter it a number of times. So somebody grabs your phone,
they know your passcode, they enter your passcode, and then

(55:20):
they have full access.

Speaker 11 (55:21):
To your higher phone. They can do anything.

Speaker 12 (55:24):
And with private space in Android fifteen, what's going to
happen is is that there will be some apps that
will be behind this private space locker and they'll need
a different pass code to get into there. So it
adds this extra layer protection to prevent somebody from being
able to access, for example, your banking app, or maybe
a app that has private health information or your photos,

(55:47):
whatever the case may be. It's a way to make
it so that they can't get into it, even if
they get.

Speaker 11 (55:52):
Into your main phone.

Speaker 12 (55:53):
And what's really cool about this feature is that there's
going to be what I'm calling a nuke button where
you can hit a button in settings and it will
immediately erase your entire private space.

Speaker 11 (56:05):
So all the apps in there are just gone, oh wow.

Speaker 12 (56:08):
That's an extra cool layer of protection that they'll put
in there, so you know, if somebody rushes into your
home or breaking into you or whatever whatever's happening, you
can immediately hit this button delete all your important stuff
and then don't have to worry about that getting with
the wrong hands.

Speaker 1 (56:22):
And I imagine that also maybe for like if you're
at the border and they want to, you know, confiscate
your phone if you're let's say you're a journalist or something.
I don't know. I mean, there's so many like different
ways of looking at this. Some people may just want
to hide some like you know, some apps if they
hand their phone to their kids that they don't want
their kids to have access.

Speaker 10 (56:38):
I mean.

Speaker 1 (56:38):
There's the nice thing is that this is available and
it will be an Android feature, So that's really cool. Now,
this theft detection lock is a really interesting feature because
we've heard so much about how people snatch phones out
of people's hands on like busy city streets and they
catch them kind of like with the phone unlocked. And
so again, explain how this feature is going to work.

Speaker 11 (57:00):
So this one is really cool. This was really exciting.

Speaker 12 (57:03):
Yeah, So if you're walking down a city street, you're
on your phone, you're texting whatever. Somebody who rushes up
behind you, grabs your phone in your hands and runs off.

Speaker 11 (57:11):
Your phone is probably unlocked.

Speaker 12 (57:12):
It is probably open to something, you know, whether it
be a messaging app or maybe your photos or camera
or whatever. And now for the next you know, let's
just say be to be to be fair, let's make
thirty minutes. The next thirty minutes this person has access
to your phone because by the time you get to
a place where you can remotely lock your phone, they

(57:33):
have thirty minutes to do whatever they want. And so
what this step protection lock will do is that it'll
sense that your phone has been grabbed and run off
with It'll use the sensors inside the phone to determine
that the phone has been nabbed and then quickly sped
somewhere else away from you, and then it'll just automatically
lock down, making it so you have that time to

(57:56):
go to your computer or your tablet and remotely wipe
and lock your phone to do anything with it. Honestly,
they'll still have your phone. You know, you can't get
your phone back that way. But at the same time,
you don't have to worry about them, you know, for example,
messaging your mom and saying, hey, Mom, I'm in real mind,
I need you to wire ten thousand dollars to this
bitcoin address. You know, like that's something that could potentially

(58:17):
happen if somebody had access to your phone for once
again just that thirty minute window. So this is a
really cool protection that I think is going to be
something that people are really going to appreciate, especially if
they travel a lot.

Speaker 1 (58:28):
Yeah, and kind of building upon that, you're also going
to be able to lock your phone now from a
third like any device, by going to like Android dot
com sash slash lock. That's not live just yet, but
you will be able to do that, cause like the
idea is that you're with a friend maybe and you go, oh, shoot,
my phone just got taken, like hurry up, give me
your phone, let me lock my phone, And so you

(58:48):
can also do that. And then the other thing they're
doing is what what iPhone has had for many many
years is this idea of an activation lock where even
if they wipe your phone clean, they will not be
able to activate that phone on or a new account
if it's still linked your Google account. Is that my understanding, Yeah, Yeah.

Speaker 12 (59:05):
That's basically just borrowed from from iOS. Yeah, and that's
a bit of a double edged sword because it does
it makes selling your phone a little more difficult, Like
you have to go through a lot more steps to
make sure that you know the person that you sold
your phone to will actually be able to access it
adetic password. So that's a bit of an inconvenience that
people who sell their phones a lot are going to face.

(59:26):
But in the broad scheme of things, I feel like
it'll do more benefit than anything else.

Speaker 1 (59:31):
So anything else that they announced that really was interesting
to you, anything else you want to talk about that
was you know, made public.

Speaker 12 (59:40):
As it pertains to Android, I was excited to see
that Android fifteen is getting more beta's released to other devices,
other manufacturers, you know. For the past since February, basically
anyone with a pixel phone, a recent thing phone has

(01:00:00):
been able to try out Android fifteen at its various
stages of development and all that. But up until I own,
anyone with a non pixel phone didn't have that option.
And now there's a lot more manufacturers with their own
betas out. So if you have a phone from one plus,
show me nothing. Bunch of other Android manufacturers, you can
now give Android fifteen a shot, assuming that you have

(01:00:23):
a recent phone.

Speaker 11 (01:00:24):
It's only available for the recent flagships.

Speaker 12 (01:00:27):
Yeah, and then I would expect maybe in the next
month or two we'll start seeing Samsung having its own beta,
so that'll be really exciting too.

Speaker 1 (01:00:34):
I was going to say, with the notable exception being Samsung,
because they have such a different system on their phones
that it's not easily like half the stuff that comes out,
and Android has already been on Samsung before it makes
its way to Android, which is kind of ironic. All right,
We're going to leave it there. See Scott Brown, how
can folks find you online?

Speaker 12 (01:00:54):
So my preferred method is Instagram, which is c dot
Scott Brown Instagram. And then also I'm also on threads,
so if you find my Instagram, you can just connect
to my threads. I'm not on Twitter anymore or x
or whatever it is nowadays. I love there, but yeah,
Instagram and threads are are the best place to get
old me.

Speaker 1 (01:01:13):
All right, there you go, see Scott Brown, Senior editor
at Android Authority. Thanks so much for joining me today.
Appreciate that eight eight eight rich one O one eight
The website for the show Richontech dot tv. Switching Gears
coming up. We just talked to Android. Now we'll talk
about iOS seventeen point five. I'll tell you some of

(01:01:35):
the new things available, including a new game you can
play on your phone. You're listening to rich on Tech.
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging
out with you, talking technology at triple eight Rich one
O one eight eight eight seven four to two four

(01:01:55):
one zero one. If you have a question about technology,
give me a call. The The website is rich on
Tech dot tv. Just got an email from Hugo. We've
been going back and forth about the Sonos app. Soos
recently updated their app, and I'm telling you, I've never

(01:02:17):
seen something ruin a piece of technology like this in
my entire life. I've got Sons speakers in every room.
Took me ten years to kind of build that collection up,
and I love it because I always have something on
and I love how you can group them and you know,
listen to all the different services whatever you want. And

(01:02:37):
this new app update, I think it came out in
like May seventh. I can't even use my system anymore.
It's horrible. I mean, really really bad. What do I
say at the beginning of the show? I think that
tech should be interesting, useful, and fun. It's certainly interesting.
The changes that they've made for the worst useful, they

(01:02:58):
get a big zero fun. It took all the fun
out of listening to any music in my home. So
let's see the email that they sent to him. He
forwarded me this email that son No says they've received
a great deal of feedback thus far on both the
improvements made as well as where we fell short. They're

(01:03:19):
working on going through it all in the coming weeks.
There's more work that needs to be done on the sonosapp,
and we want to provide an update. They already introduced
a software update on the fourteenth. But I'm telling you,
I'm ready to toss my system out. I can't even
change a volume on this thing, it's that bad. So
hopefully they will continue to refine and make my system
useful again. I know if you have a son Nos

(01:03:41):
you are probably feeling the same thing. The systems are there,
it's just everything has been changed. I kind of feel
like the woman who called in Kathy about the volume
button being moved that's the way I feel at my sons.
Let's go to Linda in Burbank. Linda, you're on with rich.

Speaker 8 (01:04:00):
Oh yeah, I remember hearing U two three weeks ago
a man calling in saying how they want to, you know,
do away with the landlines. Yes, and you know in
my situation about a couple that shoots a weeks ago? Yeah, no,
months ago, my cell phone went out on me. It

(01:04:23):
wasn't working and.

Speaker 4 (01:04:25):
I had to have my use by landline.

Speaker 8 (01:04:28):
To call my cell phone company. Now, if I didn't
hear my landline, i'd be at the crank.

Speaker 1 (01:04:35):
Yeah, that's definitely an issue. So you you have a
landline in Bourbank Conley? Is still interesting? Okay? You know,
so AT and T, who's the who's the company that
provides the landline?

Speaker 8 (01:04:48):
AH and T?

Speaker 1 (01:04:49):
And how much do they charge you a month for that?

Speaker 4 (01:04:52):
Oh?

Speaker 9 (01:04:52):
I don't recall right now, well I really don't.

Speaker 1 (01:04:55):
So the big issue here is that AT and T.
Thanks for the call, Linda, pre siate it. The big
issue is that AT and T in California wants to
end its designation as what's called a cooler col R
Carrier of Last Resort. What they're saying is that right
now in these places that don't have an alternative to landlines,

(01:05:18):
AT and T is the specified carrier of last resort
and they have to maintain those lines until there is
an alternative. And so they have petitioned the California Public
Utilities Commission to say, look, can we just drop this
whole carrier of last resort thing? We'd rather not keep

(01:05:39):
these lines up and running because they're too expensive and
we just don't feel like it. And actually, this week
a judge at the California Public Utilities Commission is actually
saying they recommend rejecting this AT and T request. The
reason they said, there's no other carrier to replace AT
and T there in its wireline territory. And they also

(01:06:03):
went as far as saying that AT and T is
going around saying that they have to maintain these outdated
copper lines because of this ruling. California says, no, we
don't have a rule that says you have to maintain
these copper lines. What we do have a rule that
says that you need to have some sort of way
for these people to get in touch with other folks.
You can replace these lines with fiber. You can replace

(01:06:25):
them with something else. And so there's a little bit
of a back and forth here with what the exact
rules are. And so the reality is that, you know,
and I understand Linda's you know, she's saying that if
she didn't have her cell phone, she or her land lines,
she wouldn't be able to call her carrier. The number

(01:06:46):
one thing to know that if your phone is not working,
no matter what in the US, you can use a
cell phone to dial nine one one as long as
that cell phone is operable, and even if it doesn't
have a plan on it, if it can catch a signal,
it will work on any of the major wireless carrier
signals to dial nine one one. So in a true emergency, yes,

(01:07:07):
you would be able to dial nine one one, even
if your phone signal is you know, if your phone
isn't connected whatever you know is having some sort of issue. Now,
if if the signals are down, yes that'd be a problem.
But if even if you don't have a phone like activated,
it will still call nine one one. That's number one.
Other countries don't have that rule. Number two. I understand

(01:07:29):
the idea of these wirelines and people like them, and
people like them for emergencies, but the idea that the
cell phone is not as reliable maybe in certain places
if you don't have a signal, Like sure, I understand that,
and I'm not trying to say that there should be
no requirement that you have to have some sort of carrier.
That's why they're called a carrier of last resort because

(01:07:51):
people living these areas don't have an alternative. What California
is saying is that we don't really care what the
alternative is, whether that's a voipe line, whether it's a
cell phone line, whether it's an Internet line, like, but
you need an alternative. You can't just have these people
left high and dry without any way to dial their
friends or family or emergencies. And so I understand, Linda's

(01:08:14):
in a populated area in Burbank, So I understand that,
you know, if you needed to, you can walk to
your neighbor and get some help that way. But some
people live in very rural areas that really don't have
any alternative. The good news is we are seeing a
lot of other options open up, something like a starlink,
which is satellite based, which is really really good, and

(01:08:37):
so we're just seeing more options. But again this idea
of the landline is going away. It will go away eventually,
and we are seeing more and more of these companies
that provide landlines charge higher fees and also just try
to get rid of them for all of those reasons.
Ah okay, what else? Eighty to a bridge one O

(01:08:57):
one eight eight eight seven four to two four one
zero one is the website. If you like what I
do on the radio show here, I suggest that you
check out the website because I do have more information
on there about what I mentioned here. I've got my newsletter.
Let's see what I mentioned in the newsletter this week.
A couple things that I think are interesting. I talk
about the AI wars. Obviously, I have all the stories

(01:09:20):
that I did for TV, so you can watch my
video from Google Open AI. I talk about how to
handle data breaches. I look at some the one my
wife watched this morning. I have the whole newsletter. The
one she watches is the high Tech cat Accessories. She
got a kick out of seeing that I've got the

(01:09:41):
tech tidbits. So I talk about the best way to
send a fact. I know you don't have to send
a fact very often, but my favorite service dropbox facts
did win Wirecutters test of the best fact services, and
it is free if you're only sending a few a month.
Answer a question about how to scan your photos. I
talk about the best photo scanners if you want to

(01:10:01):
do it yourself or send it out. So it's all
the website. Rich on Tech dot TV more rich on
Tech coming your way right after this. Welcome back to
rich on Tech. Rich Demiro coming your way for another
hour at eight eight eight rich one oh one. That's
eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero

(01:10:24):
one coming up this hour. We're talking to Jenny Blackburn.
She is with Google in charge of Gemini and uh,
she's gonna explain basically how to use Google Gemini's AI assistant.
You've heard of chat GPT. This is Google's answer to
chat GBT. It is quite helpful. It has one key

(01:10:46):
advantage and that is, of course the depth and breadth breadth.
How do you say that word breadth bread You got
to put the D in there. I guess of Google
knowledge and so it does have like real time information
and it's it's pretty good. It's just very different than

(01:11:06):
Open AI. She's gonna explain about that. I was talking
about the pixel eight a earlier. If you want to
see some of the pictures I captured on it. This
is Google's brand new four hundred and ninety nine dollars smartphone.
I've got it right here. It is a great size.
It's really small and like compact, so if you like
a smaller phone, it's really nice for that. It is.

(01:11:30):
It's you know, it's just very googly. So the software
is really clean, it's very simple. And the cameras I
would say the camera is good. I wouldn't say it's excellent.
I think for point and shoot, like everyday pictures, they're
gonna look really good. But if you want to see
some of the pictures that I took on them, you
can go to my Instagram at rich on Tech. Check

(01:11:50):
out the Instagram stories. That's where I posted. Last night.
We went to the movies. We saw that movie If
and No, that's the whole movie name If, and we
took some pictures and so you can kind of see,
like what the camera looks like. I think it's very
good for four hundred and ninety nine dollars, and it's
going to be even cheaper. I'm expecting, you know, when
it goes on sale or discounted. I think that's a great,

(01:12:13):
great device, especially the clean software for Android. Usually the
cheaper you go with the devices, the more bloatwear, the
lesser specs, things just slow down quickly. I don't think
that's the case with the Pixel. Oh and did I
mention it'll get seven years of software updates. So you
buy this thing today and if you like to keep
your phone for a long time, you can keep that

(01:12:34):
phone for seven years. That's pretty incredible. Been testing a website.
I don't know if I mentioned this on last week's show,
but it's called Simply Codes. So if you're looking for
promo codes that actually work, this is it. I have
switched to this on my computer and I'm not kidding.
I've been using it for the past two weeks or so.

(01:12:55):
It is really really good. It's called simply Codes. Let
me just make sure. Yeah, simplycodes dot com and you
download it's you know, you can search for the codes
on the website. You can download the extension on your
Chrome browser and it's quite incredible. I'm telling you, the
codes that I've gotten on this thing have worked almost

(01:13:16):
every single time. How many times have you you know,
you get to the checkout at the website you're making
a you know, a purchase, and it says, oh, enter
your promo code. You go, what, Well, now that I
know there's a promo code option, there's got to be
a promo code out there. And you start searching promo
code whatever website name, and you start typing in these
random codes. Nine times out of ten they never ever work.

(01:13:40):
And so if you want a code that actually works,
I'm telling you this Simply Codes. I think in my
experience it has saved me money. It actually does work.
So if you want to sign up for Simply Codes,
you can just go to their website and tell me
what you think. I think it's pretty good. They say
that they just came out this new like AI powered

(01:14:02):
system this week, and that's why they say they have
tens of They scan tens of thousands of codes daily
to provide the most relevant and reliable author offers. You
can also submit your own promo codes via the app.
You can like take a screenshot of a promo code
that you get and it will kind of slice and
dice and get all the information out there. So I

(01:14:24):
takes a lot for me to like switch from what
I was using before, which was Honey, and I still
think Honey is good. Oh the one downside of simply
Codes so Honey will try all the codes for you.
This one does not try the codes. You have to
copy and paste them in, so it's like a little
bit extra work. But in my experience, like the couple

(01:14:44):
times I've used it, it's the codes have worked like
right off the bat. So the first time I pasted
one in it worked. So anyway, again, the website simplycodes
dot com. I'll put the link online. Just go to
Rich on tech dot tv, hit the light bulb and
you can get the show notes. I also wanted to
mention this. So I love to listen to articles because

(01:15:05):
I read a lot, but sometimes my eyes are just
tired and I'm like, you know what, can you read
this to me? And so there's a couple ways, and
I mentioned this in my newsletter this week, a couple
of ways to listen to articles. So there's a brand
new app this week. I know it's iOS only, so
if you have Android, please do not come after me.
But hopefully they'll come out with an Android version soon.

(01:15:25):
But I will go through some options that you can
get on Android. But this is a new app called
eleven Labs Reader. So if you go to the app
store on iOS and I'll tell you exactly what to
type in to search for this. Okay, it's coming up,
eleven labs Reader AI Audio. Type that in. It only

(01:15:46):
has fifteen ratings. That's how new this app is. It
just came out this week. It's like secret basically. But
eleven Labs is an incredible AI company and they do
AI voices, so beach to text. That's what their whole
game is. And this app is basically a proof of
concept for their AI voices. So you can paste in

(01:16:08):
any text you want. You can paste in a link
to an article, you can upload an entire PDF and
it will read the entire thing to you. Again, it's
called eleven Labs Reader AI Audio and it's excellent. I
use it yesterday at the gym to just listen to
a whole bunch of articles that were on my list.
And I will tell you, because it's new there, it

(01:16:30):
was down for a little bit. I think so many
people are like discovering this that it's kind of of course,
now that I mention it, it'll probably be even worse,
but at least you'll have it on your phone. It
was like an hour yesterday where it didn't work properly,
but then it worked again now if you want to.
By the way, the voices are so high quality. You
can pick from like a whole bunch of different voices
on there. You can pick one that you like and

(01:16:52):
it just reads the text to you. It's really really good.
So the other options if you want a speech to text,
these are all Pocket, poc k et Pocket. What they
can do is really cool is you put you put
your articles in there and then it will read them
in succession. So it can just go through your reading
list and just read them.

Speaker 10 (01:17:12):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:17:12):
The audio is not as high quality as something like
eleven Labs, but it's still it's totally free. It works,
and it's really good. And Pocket is just a great
way to save articles to read later in general. So
if you're like me, where you're coming across a bunch
of stuff throughout the day, some things are really short,
you can tackle them right away. Some things are much longer.

(01:17:32):
You want to read them maybe on a plane or
when you have a minute to sit on your couch.
Pocket is a great app for that. So that will
also read your articles out now a premium version of
this whole thing is called speech a FI, and I
might have mentioned this on the radio show a couple
weeks ago, but speech a PI is again they use
AI voices. The thing is, you can use this app

(01:17:55):
for free, but if you pay, you get the highest
quality voices, and it's good. The only thing I've noticed
about speech a fy the downside is that sometimes they
don't completely skip all the nonsense in an article, Like
if you put an article in there, it may still
read like, I don't know, just different things that it
should have cleared out. Like eleven Labs does a really
good job of just isolating the article, and so does Pocket.

(01:18:18):
Speech a FI needs to learn a little bit better
about how to isolate just the article text. But that's
a good one and you can. You've got to pay
if you want like the best features. It's a freemium
version of things completely free on Android. This is excellent.
Is called Google Reading Mode, and this is an accessibility feature,

(01:18:38):
but it's really really handy and it reads in a
really nice way. You can set a shortcut so you
can either have an icon on your screen all the
time and anything you're listening you're looking at on your
Android screen. You can just tap this reading mode and
it will start reading whatever's on the screen to you.
It also displays it in a nice easy to way,
easy to read version. And again that's called good Reading Mode.

(01:19:00):
That's for Android. It's completely free. It's an accessibility feature
and it works really well. I have mindset on the
Samsung where if I'm on an article on a page,
all I have to do is swipe up with two
fingers from the bottom of the screen and it immediately
puts my phone into this Android reading mode. And so
you can see that, you know, I've got this article up. Actually,

(01:19:23):
let me bring up like a real article, because that
was just a tweet that I brought up. Okay, so
let's go to This is Stephen and Wired. So I
bring up the two little swipes and now I can
just press play and immediately it's going to start reading
this article. Probably put my volume up here. So there
you go.

Speaker 11 (01:19:43):
Close of demos from open Ai and Google that started
the week's show. There's plenty more disruption to come.

Speaker 1 (01:19:48):
So there you can get a little idea of the voice.
You can change the text, you can make it faster
or slower. And then Safari has something called listen to page.
So if you're on Safari on the iPhone and you
tap reader mode, they have a little way that you
can use just it'll just read the page to you.

(01:20:09):
And so again you go into the reader mode and
then it just says tap AA, then tap listen to
page and it'll just read the page to you. And
the other thing is if you're anywhere on your iPhone,
you could just ask Siri to read this. So all
you have to say is you know, hey, Siri, read this,
or I want to listen to this page. And of

(01:20:30):
course I just activated every iPhone in front of me.
But again, these are the kind of things. I mentioned
all this in my newsletter. So if you want links
to everything I just mentioned, go to the website rich
on tech dot TV. It's the first article on the top.
It says AI wars Google versus Chat GBT. That's the
kind of stuff that I go through my newsletter. I
test a bunch of stuff and I explain how these

(01:20:52):
things work and I give you options. So instead of
just giving you the one new app the eleven labs,
I say, well, here's the alternatives as well. So again
the website rich on tech dot TV. If you like
listening to stuff as much as you like reading stuff.
These uh, these options are really really incredible, all right?
Eighty eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven
four to two four one zero one more rich on

(01:21:14):
Tech coming your way right after this. Welcome back to
rich On Tech. Let's go to uh John in uh Utica?
Is that? Am I saying that?

Speaker 10 (01:21:28):
Right?

Speaker 1 (01:21:28):
Utica? New York?

Speaker 4 (01:21:30):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (01:21:30):
Yes, okay, I feel like I should know that I
grew up in New Jersey and I've been there and
uh yeah, isn't it like a college there, university there?
You go, I've been there, so I should know how
to say that. Oh my gosh. But see, you know
sometimes you just forget stuff when you get older. How
can I help?

Speaker 9 (01:21:49):
I've got too hopefully short questions. The first one is
when I upload a file to a backup cloud services,
the date of the file changes.

Speaker 1 (01:22:01):
Why does it change?

Speaker 9 (01:22:03):
Because that's when it was received by the backup service.

Speaker 1 (01:22:07):
Okay.

Speaker 9 (01:22:09):
You know when you when you look at a file
that shows its name and then to the right of
it usually is a date.

Speaker 1 (01:22:14):
Right, okay, got it?

Speaker 9 (01:22:17):
When you upload that bit surprised you haven't run into
that problem no matter who I call out anything. Uh,
they it's dated at the time that they got it,
not when it was created.

Speaker 1 (01:22:29):
Okay, creation date, Okay, got it.

Speaker 9 (01:22:34):
So so my question is, you know a lot of
my files are important with that date, stand which disappears
if it's sent tobacco.

Speaker 1 (01:22:44):
Well, I mean, so I use drop Box. I'm trying
to think, let me look in there and see what
happens when I upload a file. So if I put
a file into Dropbox, it typically has a couple of
different ways to look at those files. So I'm looking
at the modified Okay, so there's modified, and then there's size,

(01:23:05):
and then there's a let's see there. I thought there
was a way to like look at different Okay, there
you go. So you've got show modified type extension. Yeah,
just mine just says modified, so that I guess would
be the creation date. But doesn't the actual file have
some metadata in it that would tell you when it
was What are you trying to do? What are you
trying to figure out which files to get rid of

(01:23:25):
or what? You know? What are you trying to do
with this with these files?

Speaker 9 (01:23:30):
Because they were taking a specific date and probably had
a specific place, that's important for me to keep track
of it.

Speaker 1 (01:23:40):
Okay, So when you look, when you drill down into
the kind of the metadata of the file, it should
have a created date and a modified date? Do they do?
They not have that?

Speaker 9 (01:23:52):
How how do I easily get into that data info?

Speaker 1 (01:23:56):
So if you're looking at the file, are you on
Windows or a Mac?

Speaker 9 (01:23:59):
I'm using the Total Commander?

Speaker 1 (01:24:03):
Okay, so I would I would just whatever you can
do to write click, you know, to like get info
for the file. That's what I would do and see
if that has like a different date.

Speaker 9 (01:24:15):
But it's funny you're saying that the Windows built in
file commander will show meta data.

Speaker 1 (01:24:22):
It should if you're looking at the data like the
info and the file. Yeah, I don't have a I
don't have that.

Speaker 9 (01:24:31):
So it's so I'll try that.

Speaker 10 (01:24:33):
Oh you know.

Speaker 9 (01:24:36):
One way I found to overcome that is is it
a file first, and then when it goes into the
backup service or in the correct data is there? You know,
the original data is there?

Speaker 1 (01:24:47):
Oh right, Okay, that's now. What what are you doing
with these files? Are they kind of like a backup
of your system? Or is it a backup of like
a photo or what? What are they.

Speaker 9 (01:24:57):
All of that?

Speaker 4 (01:24:58):
Deal.

Speaker 1 (01:24:58):
Okay u.

Speaker 9 (01:25:00):
Yeah, system data, I do not back up because maybe
that needs to keep its original date. You never know
what the most kind of files, but my personal data
files photos of crips. You know, if you if they
find a photo and they were saying, do you have
no idea when that photo was taken?

Speaker 1 (01:25:19):
Well that should be in the metadata of the picture itself,
like the file. So if you're looking at that picture,
there should be metadata that's that's saying when that picture
was taken. That's that's kind of embedded in the file
and you can look at if you download an app,
that's the EXIF data e x if. Have you heard
of that term? Right, so that you should you know,

(01:25:41):
you should be able to view the exif data for
that photo. But again I would in Windows, you know,
if you if you write click and you know, do
the properties or whatever, you should be able to see
the both the creation date and a modification date. And
in general you can you can also add columns to
your Windows Explorer that show you know when something was

(01:26:03):
created versus modified. So that should help in some of
these aspects. But with photos specifically, most of the modern
programs like you know, the Google Photos and things you know,
they will they will display pictures in order based on
the metadata. So even if you upload a photo, like,
for instance, if I upload a photo that I find

(01:26:25):
on a drive somewhere that is, you know, an older photo,
it will still put that in the right place in
my collection based on the metadata. And by the way,
there is one trick if you're using I know this
applies to Google Photos, but in Google Photos, there is
a way to arrange your stuff by recent So if

(01:26:46):
you go into to explore on Google Photos and you
scroll down, there's a section called recently added, and that
will put all of your photos in the order they
were uploaded, even if the dates are different. So that's
a neat way to look at it. And it's similar
to the iPhone. So if you think about the iPhone
the way they organize pictures, if you go into your photos,

(01:27:06):
there is a recence, and that's putting all your pictures
in no matter what the date is, it's just putting
them in the order you kind of put them on
your phone, versus the library which puts them in date order.
So this is good to know. Eighty eight rich one
oh one. This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to

(01:27:27):
Rich on tech Rich Demiro here talking technology with you
joining me or actually I talked to Jenny Blackburn at
Google all about Gemini. If you haven't tried Gemini, this
is formerly barred. This is Google's answer to chat GPT,
although of course they would never describe it that way,
but this is their AI assistant. You can access it

(01:27:49):
at Gemini dot Google dot com. There's also ways of
getting it on your smartphone. But Jenny Blackburn explains at
Google Io all the different ways that you can use
Google's Gemini AI assistant. So, first off, explain what Gemini is.

Speaker 5 (01:28:06):
Yeah, So Gemini is a conversational AI assistant that you
can access on the web on your phone and it
can help you with all sorts of things. So it
can help you brainstorm, it can help you plan, and
it can even take action on your behalf with Google's
apps and services integrated. One of the things that people
tell me they love the most about Gemini is it

(01:28:27):
can help you write and express yourself.

Speaker 1 (01:28:31):
What about the new features today? What do you think
are some of the key features that you announced here
for the average consumer to try.

Speaker 5 (01:28:37):
Yeah, such exciting announcements today, and I think like the
overview for me, is it really is becoming this personal
AI assistant you know a couple examples, is becoming way
more capable of doing complex tasks, so you can upload
lots and lots of files or really large files and
Gemini can help process those. As one example. The other

(01:29:00):
thing that I think is awesome for consumers is Gemini Live.
So Gemini Live lets you have a conversation like you
and I are having with Gemini in real time, and
we use our speech technology to just make it supernatural
and easy to do that. The third thing is we're
adding more apps and services that you can access through Gemini,

(01:29:21):
so you can use Gemini to add things to your calendar.

Speaker 1 (01:29:25):
For example, you could just take a picture.

Speaker 5 (01:29:26):
Of a event that maybe your kids got invited to
and Gemini I'll just add it right to your Google calendar.

Speaker 1 (01:29:34):
When people are choosing AI to use, what do you
think sets Gemini apart?

Speaker 5 (01:29:39):
Well, we're building AI that's great for everyone, and so
I think what makes Gemini so awesome and what people
tell us that they love is that integration into the
apps and services from Google that they use all the time.
We're also working hard to make Gemini just really easy
for everybody to use, so you don't have to have
any special skills. You just ask it or what you

(01:30:00):
want and.

Speaker 1 (01:30:01):
It will help you out about that integration with like
the different services. I saw they did a Google photos,
like you can ask what's my license plate? Or when
did my kid learn to swim? How do you kind
of balance the privacy of your data and also the
information that you want to get out of that data.

Speaker 5 (01:30:17):
Yeah, privacy is super important. We don't train our models
on any personal information, and everything that you upload to
Gemini that's personal stays private to your account.

Speaker 1 (01:30:29):
What kind of improvements are we seeing when it comes
to interacting with these assistants, they almost feel like a person.

Speaker 5 (01:30:37):
Yeah, the natural is the goal, and with Live it
just feels so natural and seamless and so an example,
you know, I can interrupt Gemini like I would a person.
You know, sometimes when you use your voice, you have
to like push a button or you have to say
things just the right way. But now with Gemini, you
literally can just say what's on your mind, you can pause,

(01:30:58):
you can say and and I just gets it naturally.

Speaker 1 (01:31:01):
And also I saw the email feature where you can
now summarize your emails and it can be like an
assistant in that regard. Explain that feature a little bit, like,
how are people going to be using that?

Speaker 5 (01:31:13):
You think users are already using that feature with our
Gmail extension in Gemini, and now we're bringing Gemini actually
into Gmail. So if you're in Gmail and you're looking
at your in box, you have a ton of email,
you can actually just ask Gemini to summarize that email
for you and save yourself a whole.

Speaker 9 (01:31:31):
Bunch of time.

Speaker 1 (01:31:32):
They showed off a really neat travel itinerary generator. Explain
what makes that so unique?

Speaker 5 (01:31:39):
I am so excited about this. So already users love
to come to Gemini and brainstorm travel ideas. But what
chatbots typically aren't very good at is understanding the physics
of the real world, like the fact that you have
to have time between events and there are opening hours
and closing hours, and so with this new planning experience
in Gemini, we've train the models on some of those

(01:32:02):
space and time dynamics, and so Gemini can actually create
a really realistic itinerary for you that takes into account
how long you have to you know, plan to travel
between places. And then because of the Gmail integration, it
can pull in your itinerary to help you get started.
So I can't wait to use it for my own travel.
I think it's going to be a killer. The one

(01:32:23):
other thing I'll just mention that we announced today that
I think is super cool speaking of personalization, is something
called gems, and so this lets users create their own
tailored versions of Gemini that are four specific things. So
I have a gem that I've created for travel planning
for my family and knows what kind of hotels we
like to stay at, It knows what our typical budget is.

(01:32:44):
It knows where we live and how far are we
like to go, and so you know, you can create
as many of these as you want, and it just
it's a great example of how Gemini is becoming so
much more personal and tailored to your specific needs.

Speaker 1 (01:32:57):
And what's the goal of all this? What's the kind
of of you know, end result. Is it really our information?
Is it Google's information that we're kind of access quicker
or is it a combination of both.

Speaker 5 (01:33:08):
I think that the end goal for me is really
to make everyone have, you know, access to this personal
AI assystem that helps them live their best life, that
helps them express themselves better, be more organized save time.
I think that's the end goal.

Speaker 1 (01:33:24):
Confused or I think some people may be confused on
how to access Gemini because we hear this, but it's
also an app, it's also a feature, it's also a thing.
So how do people access this tool?

Speaker 5 (01:33:35):
Yes, we are working to make Gemini available everywhere, but
if you want to go right to Gemini, you can
go to Gemini dot Google dot com, and you can
also download the Gemini app on Android and on iOS.
You can go right into the Google app and Gemini
is there. There's a star at the top of the.

Speaker 1 (01:33:52):
App that you just tap on, and can you give
me some kind of like hidden tips or tricks that
people may not you know, if you've never used Gemini, Like,
where do I start? I know you got the commercial
with just the prompt, but you know what do I
say to it?

Speaker 5 (01:34:05):
Well, yeah, the commercial the cat playing guitar. You know,
you can just describe an image that you want Gemini
to make for you, and it will draw that image
up for you. So that is a really fun place
to start. The other one I encourage people to try
is we all have things we have to write, whether
it's a thank you card or like declining an event
that you don't really want to go to, you can
just go to Gemini and say, hey, I need to

(01:34:26):
write this message. Here's what I wanted to say, and
Gemini will write that for you. And so that's a
great way to get started.

Speaker 1 (01:34:34):
Since it is so simple. There's no instructions. It's just
a box that says, you know, prompt, type your prompt.
I mean, how do you give people ideas on how
to use this stuff because there's so many like hidden
features inside. Yeah, we got a challenge.

Speaker 5 (01:34:48):
Yeah that I think it is super important to help
people know how to get started. And so when you
go to Gemini, one of the things that you'll see
is above that input box, we have some suggestions for
things that you can try, and if you tap or
you click on those, it will put that into the
prompt and you can run through that and kind of
get an idea of what that response would be like.

(01:35:09):
So that's one thing that we're doing to help people
know how to interact with this. But our goal is
really that people don't need special expertise. They should be
able to just start chatting with Gemini the way they
would chat with a actual assistant.

Speaker 1 (01:35:23):
And for people that maybe using another assistant like open Ai,
Chat EBT, probably lesser so clawed, But like, what do
you say to them, do you think they should try Gemini?

Speaker 5 (01:35:33):
I definitely think everybody should try Gemini. We're working to
make it such an awesome, helpful and really fun assistant
that just helps everybody with whatever they need to do.

Speaker 1 (01:35:44):
Once again, that was Jenny Blackburn of Google explaining Gemini.
If you haven't tried it out, definitely do it. It's
on your iPhone if you have the Google app, open
up the Google App up at the top, you'll see
it says search and then there's a little star. If
you tap that star, it will convert the Google App
into Gemini and just have some fun ask it some questions.

(01:36:05):
It is very knowledgeable. On Android, you can just go
in search on the play Store Gemini, you can download
the app and use it that way, and then on
the web Gemini dot Google dot com. Check it out.
If you're looking for real time information, like stuff that's
more so than just ideas and things like you want

(01:36:26):
information about where you're traveling or something like that, like
this is what Gemini is really good at all. Right,
coming up, we are going to do the feedbag segment,
that is your emails, your comments into the show. My
name is rich Sarmiro. You are listening to Rich on tech.

(01:36:46):
Before we get to the feedbag, let me just two
things I wanted to note Google. You know how Google
search results have gotten really cluttered with all kinds of
pictures and videos and Twitter and articles and whatever. If
you want to go back to the old style of
just text based links, there is now a new filter

(01:37:08):
on Google called Web. So the next time you do
a search, it may pop up as a little button
underneath the search bar. Like I search for my name
rich to Mirowna says images, news, videos, Wikipedia, Web. So
if I tap now web, it gets rid of everything
except the links. So if you just want a pre

(01:37:29):
two thousand and seven Google, you can tap web. It
doesn't do it for every search, but it does it
on a search by search basis. So if you're looking
for just links, there is now a filter on Google
for links. If it doesn't show the word web underneath
your search, go to where it says all filters, and
if you scroll down it'll say web right there. And

(01:37:50):
iOS seventeen point five is available now if you haven't
already updated your iPhone. This has a couple new things
for the folks over in the EU, but here in
the US. If you like to play word games, there
is a new Quartiles game inside Apple News Plus. Unfortunately
it's only for subscribers, but if you subscribe to Apple
News Plus, you can access this new Quartiles game. You

(01:38:13):
build words, and the longer you build the words the
letters they give you, the more points you get. I
tried it this morning. It's very tough. Apple News also
has an offline mode, so if you fly a lot
and you want something that's offline and you could download
your phone. This allows offline access to magazines, newspapers, and
narrated articles automatically downloads the content. There's from some Find

(01:38:37):
My Network updates and a new repair state so if
you send your phone in for repair, you can still
leave find My on which is a nice addition. And
there's fifteen notable security patches. And by the way, if
you want to find that Quartiles game, open up the
Apple News app and tap the following tab in the
lower right hand corner and then tap Quartiles. You'll see

(01:39:00):
under puzzles. All right, let's get to the feedbag. This
is a feedback plus the mail bag equals feedbag. These
are the emails the comments that I get from you.
If you'd like to submit yours, just go to Rich
on tech dot tv and hit contact. James from Tampa,
Florida says you mentioned you are currently testing Tello. We

(01:39:21):
have been using Tello and really enjoy their simple eSIM activation,
concise invoicing plan prices, ease of changing plans, and their coverage.
So good, so far, so good, better than my mint
line in terms of data speeds and coverage even though
they both use Tea mobile. If I need to call support,
I get right through to my helpful customer service, even
though it is offshore. I currently have six eSIMs on

(01:39:44):
my iPhone fifteen promacs, only two are active at a time.
Three of them are playing Tello one hundred minute lines
with no data because they are special phone numbers vanity
numbers that are easy to remember that I don't want
to give up, so I just parked them with Tello
until I decide what to do. Great show, as always,
Chow Yes, Tello is a great option if you want

(01:40:04):
something that is super simple and gives you a very
customizable way of creating your phone plan. So if you
just want talking text, you can sign up for that.
If you just want tell a text, you can sign
up for that. If you just want data, you can
sign up for that. If you want unlimited, you can
sign up for that. If it's really really great Tello
dot com, you can find a link on my website.

(01:40:26):
Rich on tech dot tv, I've got a a referral
link that I think gives you like ten bucks off
or something like that, only because I use it, Robert
from Sacramento says on the May eleventh program, a gentleman
mentioned he was happy with his Galaxy S ten, and
you correctly asked about security updates. He said he was
getting them. However, Samsung stopped updating that phone in April

(01:40:49):
twenty twenty three, so unless he rooted his phone, he
has gone over a year without an update. Given that
he also mentioned doing nature photography having a quality camera
with him all the time. Is I'm port will a
new phone matches Laika or whatever system he uses.

Speaker 10 (01:41:04):
No.

Speaker 1 (01:41:04):
Heck, my Pentax under certain circumstances, especially telephoto, takes better
pictures of my S twenty four Ultra, but the quality
top of the line phone cameras is amazing. Anyone serious
about photography should invest impossible, if possible, in a phone
with a quality camera. I did think that. After the
caller said that his S ten was still getting updates,

(01:41:24):
I was like, I don't think it is. There is
a website you can check. It's called end of life
and it'll tell you when the software is updated. So
I should come up with the if you just search
end of life, that does not come. This does not
come up. I gotta find the link for that website.
Richard from Murrieta says, Hey, rich I'm a regular listener

(01:41:48):
and I want to pass this along if you're inclined
to inform your audience. Frontier Airlines promotes its go Wild Pass,
which for one price, offers unlimited flights for the summer
or the year. I purchased a yearly pass for five
hundred and ninety nine dollars. However, when I tried booking flights,
nothing was available. I contacted Frontier. They said I had

(01:42:08):
twenty four hours to apply for a refund, but I
was past the allotted time. I resolved this with my
credit card company, which has given me a credit. Despite
Frontier's deceptive policy. I have since found numerous negative reviews
online from others in the same situation. Please inform your
audience that this program is as close to a scam
as it gets. Thank you, Rich. I've heard of this program.

(01:42:30):
I have not familiar, but any unlimited flight program I
would assume you have to be very, very, very flexible,
because if they're giving away a lot of flights for
that one price, it's basically whatever's left on the plane.
Melissa from Recita, California rights Hi, Rich, I've been watching
and enjoying your KTLA segments for many years, and I've

(01:42:51):
always wondered why there's so little attention paid to Android
by seemingly everyone in your field. As a decade's long
user of all things Samsung cell phone, own TVVCR, DVD,
and now smart TVs, I'm wondering why the overwhelming majority
of information, tips, updates, and reviews of cell phones are
focused on Apple, while it seems Samsung is more of
an afterthought or a courtesy mentioned when it comes to security,

(01:43:14):
convenience updates, and tips about using it more efficiently, everyone
seems mostly to leave it up to the user to
figure it all out. Thanks for your time, Melissa. Melissa,
I do understand that the industry is very iOS and
Apple centric. When I wrote my book, yes, it was
for iOS and there was a very particular reason for that.
It's because iPhone works the same for everyone around the world.

(01:43:37):
And I think that's the biggest difference between iPhone and
Samsung and what makes it tough to cover Samsung in
the same way. There are many different versions of their software,
There are many different devices, and they all work slightly differently,
and then the accessories are all different as well. You
may have a Samsung phone plus a one plus watch
and nothing headphones, and it's a It's a combination of

(01:44:01):
things and that's what makes the Android ecosystem so great,
but it also makes it really tough to say one
thing that works for everything. I would like to say
personally that I hope you notice on this show, I
do my best to try to be equal and to
also talk about Apple and Samsung. Maybe not equally, but
I do try to give it a go and make
sure that I'm mentioning both of them. Well, that is

(01:44:24):
going to do it for this episode of the show.
You can find links to everything I mentioned on my website.
Just go to rich on tech dot TV. If you
would like to submit your email for me to read
on the show or to answer, just go to the
website Rich on Tech dot tv hit the contact link,
and believe me, many of you do that. Every week.

(01:44:45):
I do see all of the emails. I cannot respond
to all of them, but when possible, I do, and
I very much enjoy doing that. You can find me
on social media. I am at rich on Tech. I
am active probably the most on Instagram, also on x
and also on Facebook, so you can find me on
all of those social media platforms. Next week it's Microsoft's turn.

(01:45:10):
They are talking about AI and there might even be
some hardware surprises, so I will bring you the latest
from up in Redman and Seattle, Washington. Thanks so much
for listening. There are so many ways you can spend
your time. I do appreciate you spending it right here
with me. Thanks to everyone who makes this show possible.
My name is rich Demiro. I'll talk to you real soon.

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