Alexa+ Unveiled, Erasing Your Info from Google & Smarter Spam Tips

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Amazon's Voice Assistant gets a major AI upgrade. It's the
end of an era as Microsoft retires Skype. I'll tell
you when it's going away. There's a much easier way
to remove your personal details from Google, like your phone
number and address. I'll tell you how. Plus your tech
questions answered. What's going on. I'm Rich Demiro and this

(00:22):
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.
Let's open up those phone lines at T triple eight
Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four
to two four one zero one. Give me a call.

(00:45):
If you have a question about technology, you need a recommendation,
you're trying to figure out how to do something, whatever
it is, I will try to help you out. Email
is also an option. Just go to rich on Tech
dot tv and hit contact guests. This week, Mike Prospero
from Tom's Guide is going to join to talk all things. Oh,

(01:06):
I'm gonna say the word already Alexa plus watch out
smart speakers. Amazon's big AI upgrade. I'll tell you he'll
tell you what's new, what's improved, and is it worth it?
And then later in the show, Chris Gold of Geeks
on Tour, we'll share expert tips on making the most
of Google Photos. You know, I talk about that program

(01:27):
a lot, so Chris will join. She is an expert
in all things Google Photos. Is going to be a
great interview there. Okay, Now, fair warning, if you have
an Amazon Echo smart device nearby, you might want to
press that mute button. I'm going to be saying the
A word a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (01:45):
I flew to New York for Amazon's Alexa event this
week and the entire thing was focused on a new
AI version of Alexa called Alexa Plus. Now. The event
started out with the new CEO of Amazon, Andy Jase.
Did you know that we have a new CEO. It's
not Jeff Bezos anymore. Andy actually took over. I had
to look in the notes. Twenty twenty one spent four

(02:06):
years of this new guy. Previously, he was in charge
of one of the biggest growth areas for Amazon, which
is Amazon Web Services. This is our cloud computing vision.
He came on stage to say, look, we're Amazon, We've
got a ton of experience in AI, and he set
the stage for the newest member of the Amazon executive
team to introduce Alexa Plus, and then Ponos Penney came

(02:27):
on stage. Now, he used to be in charge of
Microsoft's Surface devices. He was one of the key players
behind that very successful device. I can't believe this, but
he actually came to visit me at the TV station
when Surface first launched. That was in like think about
twenty twelve. And anyway, Ponos is a guy really he's

(02:49):
like very passionate about the products that he's promoting or
talking about. So of course these days he's all about Alexa.
And the first thing he did was start out by
talking about how magical that first Alexa experience was right
back in the day. This was about ten years ago
and they launched Alexa, and I remembered I was on
a shoot in Kentucky and one of the producers had
one of these echo speakers, the early one, I guess,

(03:11):
the first one, and he said watch this, and they
just set a song and all of a sudden, this
thing springs to life and plays the song and we
were like across the room and it sounded great, and
I was like, wow, that is magical. And now, of
course Alexa is in over six hundred million devices worldwide,
and yes, she has helped a lot of people do
things like turn on and off the lights, cue up music,

(03:31):
set timers, and answer basic questions. If you ask me,
it's never really progressed past that, right. It feels like
it's helpful, but it's not truly smart. But now all
of that is changing with Alexa plus. So this is
using a large language model in the background. And what
that is is something like a chat GBT. They're not
using chat GBT, They're using some others because chat gibt

(03:55):
is the competition. But now when you hear this voice,
it sounds like one of these large language model, you know,
AI chatbots that we're all using these days. It's smarter,
it's more cheerful, it's helpful. Now I keep saying she.
I was curious on stage, you know, you always wonder
with these voice assistants, is it a he? Is it
a she? They kept saying she, So I guess Alexa

(04:17):
is truly she, So I'll refer to her as she.
But now you're gonna be able to speak to Alexa
in the way you would talk to a human, So
instead of saying something very specific like turn on the
left couch light, you might say something like turn on
the light that's near the side of the couch. But
that's just the beginning because also Alexa is now infused

(04:37):
with all the world's knowledge. Now keep in mind, Amazon
did all of these devices on a scor all these
demos that they showed on screen based devices, so they're
really pushing sort of the visual aspect of all this.
But eventually Alexa Plus is gonna work on both screen
based devices and non screen And speaking of those smart
home devices, Amazon says, the new Alexa is gonna work

(05:00):
with ten thousand platforms and devices, So all those skills
that you know all about, you know, those are going
to be kind of enhanced with AI. And I tell
you this because we've got so much going on here
with Alexa. You know, remember you had to kind of

(05:20):
manually configure all of these things in the past, like
if you wanted to use these skills. It seems like
that's going to be mostly part of the past. So
now you're gonna be able to seamlessly control not only
things like your smart home devices like robot vacuums and lights,
but also make reservations through services like open Table, listen
to music from all kinds of services, order food, get

(05:42):
event tickets, and even ask Alexa to review your ring
footage to see if someone took out the dog and when.
So these are all things that they showed off on stage. Yes,
it's very ambitious, but to me, I think there is
some helpfulness here, especially when it comes to routines. If
I can say, hey, Alexa, every night at the time,
turn on my outdoor holiday lights, turn off this, turn

(06:04):
on that, you know, change this, make the coffee whatever,
without having to program all that that's gonna be a
big advantage. Now, we didn't get to see all that
stuff in action, and what they did let us see
was kind of interesting because they showed off these demos
and I was very excited because when you're at an
in person event, the most exciting thing is that you
get to go hands on with this stuff. Afterwards, Well,

(06:25):
it was weird because they basically did the same demos
but in like smaller individual rooms, and I kept saying,
can I try, Alexa, can I try doing this? And
they were very worried about letting me just have like
free access to this thing, like they didn't know what
I was gonna do. I was like, well, I'm just
gonna try some of the like I just want to
talk to it and see. But anyway, we're gonna have
to wait till it comes to our houses, I guess.

(06:45):
So I think this is gonna be pretty helpful. But
there's more. The system now learns as it goes along,
so it understands your preferences, It remembers things about you
and your family and when you come and when you go,
and so all of that is being fed into this system,
so it can truly be a smarter personal assistant. And
the other thing that's pretty unique is that you can

(07:06):
now feed knowledge into the system. So for example, let's
say your kid is on a basketball team. You can
send that schedule to Alexa and then she can add
those games to your calendar or you can cross reference
them at any time. So now imagine this smart speaker's
in your house and you say, hey, alex Ay, you
know when is my kid's next basketball game? And she says, oh,

(07:29):
Thursday at two pm. Oh what school? And she'll tell you. Oh,
now that's helpful. Am I on snack duty? Oh? No,
you're not on snack duty this week, but next weekend
you are. So that's really cool and I think that's
very very useful, and you're wondering, We'll wait a second, Rich,
how do I tell this stuff to Alexa? Like, how
do I feed this stuff into her? There's going to
be a new mobile app and a website at Alexa

(07:51):
dot com where you'll be able to chat with her
and upload documents. So it's kind of like, you know,
now we're getting closer to the chatbox where already using
from like Google, Gemini and also chat GBT. Now the
thing this part is really interesting to me because it
sounds like what Apple sort of talked about when they
introduced Apple Intelligence. So the big play on Apple Intelligence was, Hey,

(08:15):
here's your phone. We're gonna add AI to this and
guess what. You've already got your emails on there. You've
already got your text you've already got your photos. They're
all on your phone, your messages, and so the idea
is that Siri would generate an index of all that
information and then you can ask about any of it. Hey,
Siri showed me my email from last week that I
sent to my boss or whatever, or hey, you know,

(08:36):
catch me up to speed on on what do I
need to know about my kids? You know, conference happening
next week. Now, we haven't gotten there yet. With Apple,
they're still kind of evolving their AI and we haven't
gotten to that like exact moment yet, but that's what
they're going to do in the future. And that's sort
of what Google's doing because we store a lot of
information on Google's cloud and they've built Gemini into a
lot of their products. But right now, and I even

(08:58):
try this again this morning, it's not super cohesive.

Speaker 2 (09:01):
Right.

Speaker 1 (09:02):
So I could be in my Gmail and there's a
little Gemini icon I can ask about my email. It's
not always perfect, but sometimes yes, it works, and it
will find anything in your email. You can go into
Google Docs and you can ask for information about your
docs and it will find stuff like I needed my
TSA pre check number. I said, hey, Google, can you
find my TSA pre check number in my Google Drive?
And sure enough, it found it. And then in Google

(09:23):
Photos they've got Gemini built in and you can ask
for any picture. Hey, show me my best picture from
Hawaii last year. I want to post it to Instagram
and it will show you those so it's working, and
then CHATCHYBT of course could do something similar, but that
would take a little bit of a leap of faith
because you know, could you imagine chatchybt saying, hey, can
we scan all of your email, all of your cloud storage,

(09:44):
all of your photos, and all of your texts so
you can ask about them?

Speaker 2 (09:47):
Now?

Speaker 1 (09:47):
I think that would be very handy. But I mean,
that's a lot of faith in that system, right because
if there's a breach, that would be a problem. Now
I tell you to tell you all of this because
I feel like AI is all over the place in
terms of its usefulness and its functionality. I'm using chat
GBT for some things, Google for others, you know, Siri
for less, but the list goes on and on. Right

(10:10):
We're using all different things right now, and so I
think the first AI to truly unify all this information
about us, all of our devices, all of our smart
home stuff, could win. Now. Alexa has a head start
because they've got tons of smart speakers and homes, but
so does Google, and Apple is rumored to be working
on something there too. So at the end of the day,

(10:31):
the question is will Alexa plus number one will people
use it? Will they rely on it and will it
live up to the hype. Time will tell if people
start to use it past the basics, right, I think
this is going to be a win. If Alexa can
just turn on and off all your smart home stuff
much easier than before. But if it can start to
really weave itself into your life and become that personal assistant,

(10:52):
then maybe this is a win. And also Amazon, you know,
if it's working with Uber and door Dash and all
these other companies, they probably collect a little bit of
a percentage of any transactions you do through Alexa with
those services. Now, the pricing is interesting, twenty dollars a month.
I don't think anyone's gonna pay that standalone because it's
gonna be included for free for Prime members. Prime is

(11:13):
one hundred and forty bucks a year. If you paid
for Alexa Plus standalone, that'd be two forty. So I
think people will just either use this included in Prime
or subscribe to Prime, which, by the way, of course
helps Amazon's bottom line. So we're gonna have to see
what happens with Alexa Plus. It's promising. If you want
to get on the list, you got to go to
Amazon Dot com slash new Alexa. They're going to prioritize

(11:36):
folks that have one of these eco devices with a screen.
They're gonna get it first. But it's coming out in
the next few weeks. We'll see how it works, all right,
coming up your questions at triple eight rich one on one.
That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one
zero one. You are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome

(11:57):
back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out
with you, talking technology at triple eight rich one oh one.
zero one. I mentioned I was in New York City
for the uh the Amazon event. What a fun city.
By the way, I love visiting York because, well, you know,

(12:17):
I'm from New Jersey, but I'm very familiar. But I
love the fact that you can just get around anywhere
anywhere you want. You can get around, whether that's you know,
in a taxi uber nowadays subway walking. And of course
it was raining a little bit, so I had planned
on walking like this big old walk like a couple

(12:38):
miles and it was raining, so I went as far
as I could before I was like, all right, I
gotta get on the subway here, but what a fun
I mean. And then I stay at this hotel that
ended up having a rooftop kind of area where you
can just stand outside, and it was just like photogenic,
like I was taking pictures up there. I mean, it

(12:59):
was just it really really was. And the food, of course,
you know, ended up going out to dinner with my family,
went to this place. I always look for a place
that's the closest to my hotel to walk to, just
to be easy, and so it was literally around the
corner and we had such a nice night. And this
is the other thing I love about New York, these
unassuming places like this, this little tiny restaurant. You know,

(13:22):
you can barely see it from the street, and you
go inside, it's like this whole world inside. Right, it
was like two floors, all these people are having dinner,
having a great time. So always always fun to be there.
News this week that Microsoft is shutting down Skype. Now,
I guess this is not really a surprise, like Skype is. Definitely.

(13:45):
It's so weird because when you were using Skype back
in the day, you were ahead of the curve, right
like you thought you were beating the system. Because back
in the day, there was like something called long distance
charges for calls, and so the fact that you could
do video and audio calls to anyone in the world
for free was unheard of and you felt like you were,

(14:10):
you know, ahead of the curve. And now, of course,
after twenty three years, you know, we take for granted
that you can call anyone, you can text anyone, you
can use a million different services to video chat or
to make an audio call, and so people have moved
away from Skype. They were the market leader in this area,
and somehow they did not capture the wave of like

(14:32):
the next thing, right, I mean, Zoom. If you think
about in recent years, what's really one out of anything?
They really won during COVID, So people didn't turn to Skype.
They you know, teams. Teams won, but mostly because of
the Microsoft connection, because they were so connected to companies

(14:53):
that paid for Microsoft that teams was their preferred way
of doing things. But most people use Skype or Zoom
no matter what. So after twenty three years, Skype is
shutting down for good on May fifth, and Microsoft, of
course they bought Skype about fourteen years ago, they are
retiring it officially and putting all their focus on teams,

(15:17):
and I get it. For Microsoft to do this, it
makes sense. Teams is where the growth is. I mean,
the last time I used I did all of my
interviews during COVID on Skype and the reason why is
because I thought that the video quality was superior to
what Zoom had. And also a lot of the nerds,

(15:39):
you know, a lot of the tech people that I
was interviewing, they were kind of like Skype people, Like
they all had Skype. We all had an old Skype
user name, you know, is the first time we used
it during COVID, and so that was what I turned to.
So the last day of service May fifth, twenty twenty five,
so you basically have about ten weeks to figure out

(15:59):
what you're gonna do. Gosh, Skype once had three hundred
million users, and you're basically gonna be able to migrate
your contacts and your chats to teams or you can
download your data. So if you don't want to be
part of teams, you can just go in and just
download your stuff. Now, phone call functionality is not going

(16:20):
to be included in the free version of Teams, So
if you're thinking you can still make you free phone calls.
You're gonna have to find a different way of doing that.
I mean, you could use Google Voice. There's so many
ways you can make a phone call nowadays. If you
have Skype credits, apparently they stopped charging for that in December,
but you can continue using these until your next renewal period.

(16:44):
Skype credit users can continue using their remaining Skype credit
after May fifth. They're going to have the Skype dial
pad still available to paid users within the Skype Web
portal and within teams, so you'll still have a little
bit just to use up your credit now. I did
get one question about someone saying, what about my phone number?
I guess if you had a Skype phone number at

(17:05):
one point, you could have a phone number through them.
I was looking online to see if you can like
port that to a different service. Seemed very all over
the place, like I couldn't find anything anything official, But
people had some thoughts where, you know, the main thing
you need is when you poured a phone number to
a different company, is your account number and your PIN.
And some people were saying the account number was the

(17:27):
Skype phone number itself, and the PIN was zero zero
zero zero. I don't know if that's true, because that
would mean anyone could just poort out a Skype number
even if it's not there. So there must be some
level of protection in there somehow. But maybe they text
the number or something. But yeah, end of an era.
Skype shutting down May fifth, twenty twenty five. If you

(17:48):
want to download your history, get in there, do it now,
export it out all right? Eight eight eight rich one
O one eight eight eight seven four to two four
one zero one. Coming up. I'll tell you how it's
easier than to remove your personal information from Google. You're
listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.

(18:14):
Rich Demiro here talking technology with you at triple A
Rich one on one. That's eight eight eight seven four
two four one zero one. If you want links to
anything I mentioned on the show, go to the website
rich on Tech dot tv. While you're there, be sure
to sign up for my free newsletter. That way we
can keep in touch. Let's go to Jeff in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Jeff,

(18:36):
you're on with Rich.

Speaker 3 (18:37):
Yeah, Rich, I recommendation I got for a password manager,
which I got from Kim Commando was a Nord passed.
Oh well, it gets good ratings. All over the place.
But I tried to set it up, and the setup
feature is very Uh. I couldn't understand what they wanted,

(18:59):
and I didn't manage to get one app. One website
entered into it, and it obviously recognized it because it
had the whole website's logo.

Speaker 4 (19:09):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (19:09):
But when I tried to log onto it, it the
auto field suggested that the nord past password, and of course,
and then it came back and said password not recognized,
but my and my old password still work. So I
guess probably when I set it up. I don't know
how you get the website to recognize the nord past password.

Speaker 1 (19:35):
Okay, well, did you change the password with the website?

Speaker 3 (19:39):
Yes, I took the one that they auto suggested.

Speaker 1 (19:42):
Okay, okay, so I will I will tell you, Jeff.
I do think that password managers are a little tricky
to get started with because it's a it's a departure
from what you're used to and how you're typically signing
up for websites. So it does take a little bit
longer when you sign up, but in the end it helps.
So I think nord Pass is a completely fine password manager.

(20:03):
Are you on iPhone, Android a combination of.

Speaker 3 (20:06):
Things iPhone and the thing I really didn't like about
it was the the help center, of course, and they
don't have a phone number that you can talk to
a person.

Speaker 5 (20:17):
But the chat the.

Speaker 3 (20:18):
Guy was chatting with on the health center, he obviously
had no idea what my issue was. He was asking
me questions like, have you cleared your the catch in
your browser? Have you hit the auto field? Have you
extended the auto field time?

Speaker 6 (20:32):
Which had?

Speaker 3 (20:33):
I sent him a picture of the error message I got,
and that has nothing to.

Speaker 5 (20:37):
Do with my issue.

Speaker 1 (20:38):
Well, okay, so are you only using the iPhone for this.

Speaker 7 (20:44):
Right now?

Speaker 3 (20:44):
That's I began with just the iPhone and that's as
far as I got. I eventually gonna put it on
my desktop too.

Speaker 1 (20:51):
Okay, so you're gonna put on your desktop too, Okay?
All right, So I think you can still use nord pass.
I think that that's going to be a fine option
for you if you don't mind paying. I mean, there
are you know, there are free alternatives and I on
my website if you hit the search icon and just
type in password manager, I have a full post on
you know what my recommendations are. But in general, there's
there's three free options that I recommend to people, which

(21:14):
is Apple Passwords app if you only use Apple products.
The Google Password Manager is completely free if you're using Android,
iPhone and Chrome, like a combination of those things. And
then if you just want something that's free that you
never have to pay for, Bitwarden will always have a
free version and it's open source, which is nice, and
it works on all platforms. So if you don't want
to get on this train of like paying for your

(21:35):
passwords forever, you can use one of those three free options. Now,
when it comes to paid options, I think nord pass
is fine. I put it in my recommendations. I like
dash Lane as well, and one password that's the number one,
and then password. Those are all three popular paid options. Now,
when it comes to actually using this, Jeff, it gets

(21:56):
a little complicated because you have to make sure that
your phone is up to autofill from the password manager
or you can copy and paste. So if you go
on the iPhone and you look at the settings, the
first thing you need to do is search for autofill
and where it says passwords, make sure that it says
autofill from and then make sure that Nord pass is

(22:18):
highlighted and you should turn off the other one. So
on my phone, I've got passwords, which is the Apple one,
I've got another password manager. I've got Chrome and Google,
so turn off all of those and just have your
nord Pass highlighted and toggled on. So that's the first thing. Now,
when you go in to create a password, the first
thing you have to do is actually generate a password

(22:42):
for the website and then save that into the password manager. Now,
what happens sometimes is you go to a website. Let's
say you go to you know, Yahoo dot com, right,
and you generate a password and you save it in
your password manager, and then you go back to Yahoo.
Sometimes you might be on Yahoo Finance or you might
be on Yahoo Entertainment, and it might not link up

(23:02):
the website properly, the website properly, and so in that
case you might have to go in to nord Pass,
search for Yahoo, copy the password, and then paste it
into the website. Now, on desktop, it's a little bit
easier because your browser takes care a lot of this stuff,
and so it's just due to the architecture of the
iPhone that's a little trickier to do that kind of stuff.

(23:23):
But in general, I think that what you're talking about
is you have to first change the password, make sure
it's saved in your password manager, and then the next
time you go to that website, use that password. And
most of the time the password manager should spring into
action if it's recognizing the website that you're going to.
The way they're set up is that it will just

(23:43):
spring into action above your keyboard and say, hey, do
you want to auto fill this, and typically it should
find that, or you can do a little search on
your password manager for that website and it should fill
in that information. If it's not doing all that stuff,
you know, it's I would check those autofill settings. That's
really what's happening. But again I understand that password managers

(24:04):
do take a little bit more setup and they're not
the easiest thing to use if you're not used to
using them, and you have to get used to it,
and you have to continue to use it and set
this up for every website, or change the password for
your existing websites, and you have to save it and
you have to just continue doing it. And this is
why when you go to websites it says sign in

(24:25):
with Apple sign in with Google, because it's so much
easier to do that because it's one click and it's
using the account you already have that you're logged into
Google or Apple or some other services. Sometimes you see
on there, but I don't recommend that, because it's better
to keep these websites insulated from each other and separate.
And I get it in a pinch. I've been guilty

(24:45):
of it myself. I will log in with Google when
I'm signing up very quickly, but in general, take the
extra two seconds to make a password on the password manager,
save that password on your password manager, and the next
time you go to log in, and it should find that.
And by the way, Jeff, when you sign up for
a website fresh, there should be a little setting on

(25:08):
your password manager that says a plus sign, and so
you press that plus sign and that's how it links
that website to the new password that you're linking or
that you're generating. I know it all sounds very complicated
now that I'm speaking this, I'm like, this sounds more
complicated to use a password manager than to not use
a password manager. But I think at the end of

(25:29):
the day, once you get used to it. It will
become second nature. And I'm using it. My wife uses one,
you know, I've got my mom to use one, and
a bunch of other people I know. So it's something
that just takes a little bit of time and a
little bit of routine. But I think nord pass is
a fine suggestion. I think you'll be good with that.
Thanks for the call, Jeff, appreciate it, and continue to

(25:52):
make sure you install the extension too on your web browser.
So nord pass will have an extension that you install
on your web browser that will help auto fill on
the web as well. And maybe if you're top you
know five six websites like yours, five or six logins,
go to the web and start doing it there and
then go back to your phone. But there's gonna be
a lot of copying pasting when you use a password manager,

(26:14):
that's for sure. Jose writes in from Los Angeles. I'm
considering the Riyoko Portable Wi Fi hot Spot? Is it
any good? So I have to look this one up.
Ryoko they do have it the right. Ryoko pro Portable
Wi Fi hot Spot offers global Internet access, allowing you

(26:36):
to connect to any device anywhere and it's oh, seventy
percent off. Get a seventy percent discount, don't miss out already.
I can tell from this website that I'm not a
fan of it because I don't like the websites with
the high pressure stuff that says your seventy percent discount
has been applied, limited time offer, free delivery. It's all

(26:56):
very vague, right, and it's all on one page, really
trying to do the hard sell to get you to
purchase this thing instantly and quickly. But here's the question
I have. How much is the internet connection once I
have this and I'm looking on the website, I cannot
find that information anywhere. I can't find it in the
bottom of the website. I can't find it on the

(27:17):
top of the website. I can't find it anywhere. How
much is it going to cost me to use this
once I purchase this device? So for that reason, I
can't tell you I would recommend getting this. I have
tested one called Cemo s I M and that is
a same thing. It's the mobile Internet, same exact thing.
It's a little hot spot and if you look on

(27:39):
their website, it tells you exactly how much it costs
for the different countries that you're purchasing your coverage for.
So I've used this, it works. I can tell you
that I would go with something that you know the
price for. By the way, Jose, you can also use
your phone as a hotspot. You can also use your
mobile you know mobile hotspot feature on your phone. You

(27:59):
can all so just use your phone because a lot
of phones now have this included in their international plan. So, uh,
did you mention you're going out of town? No, So
I would just be careful any website that here's my
thing with any website that you go to make sure
it has all the information that you're curious about. If
they're making you hunt for information on the website that

(28:21):
you think should be there very clearly, like how to
cancel their phone number, their email address, a customer service contact.
If all that stuff is hidden when you're trying to
purchase the device or the thing, then that's a red flag.
And also the first thing I noticed when I search
for this on Google is uh is Reddit people asking

(28:43):
you know, is this thing legit? So anytime the next
search underneath you know the result is is this product legit?
That's usually a red flag that it may not be
the thing that you want. Eighty eight rich one oh
one eight eight eight seven four to two four one
zero one the website rich on Tech dot TV. I
know I promised it before, but coming up I will

(29:03):
tell you about the new easy way to remove personal
information from Google Search. This is rich on Tech. Welcome
back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out
with you, talking technology at eight eight eight rich one

(29:28):
oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two
four one zero one. So Google this week has made
it much easier to remove information, your personal information like
your phone number or your address in Google search results.
So they've long had this tool for the past couple
of years. I've talked about it many times, called Results
about You. This is where you can put in your information.

(29:51):
You sign up, you say, here's my name, here's my
phone number, here's my address. If you find that online,
send me an email or notification and give me the
option to take that down. And so that's been working
very nicely for a couple of years. But now they
added another level of this. So now if you go
to Google Search and you can try this. You can

(30:12):
type in your name and then the word phone number,
and you can scroll and see if one of those
services shows up that says, you know like spokio or
you know true people search all these different zoom info.
Let's see, I've taken away so many of my results
that I don't really have that come up anymore. But

(30:33):
oh yeah, white pages. So if you find one of
these results that has your personal information in it. Now,
if you look at the search results, and you've probably
never even noticed this before, there are three little dots
next to the search result. You tap those three little dots,
and all of a sudden you see this new option
that says remove result. So that is the new way

(30:57):
that you can just get your information off of Google Search.
And so you tap a remover result and it says,
why do you want to remove this? And the option
I see it shows my personal information and I don't
want it there, or I have a legal removal request,
or it's outdated and I want to request a refresh.
And I'll explain that in a moment. But you can
tap that first one. It shows my personal info and

(31:18):
I don't want it there. And then it says, well
what does it show? Contact info, government ID numbers, financial info, passwords,
restricted records, other and so you can search or select
one of those and submit it. And it does take
a little bit and not everything's going to be removed,
but in my experience, I have only had one denial request.

(31:41):
But if your phone numbers on there, your email address,
your home address, you can get these removed pretty easily.
Now keep in mind this only removes the information from
Google search results. It does not remove it from the
original website. If you want to remove it from the
original website, you have to do a takedown request at

(32:01):
the original website. And if you go to a website
like whitepages dot com, you'll notice at the bottom of
the page it says something like, you know, do not
sell my personal information or you can Actually it's probably
they kind of hide this stuff sadly, but usually you
can say something like takedown requests. So I would do

(32:24):
something like white pages remove my information, and then that
will bring up the page that will get your information
off of there. So here's what it says White Pages
Consumer Privacy Rights. You can opt out and have your
listing removed. Copy and paste the URL of your profile,
so that's how you can submit the request. They don't

(32:45):
make it very easy to find on the website. But
if you Google search for that, you know, I said,
whatever the website is, remove my information, you should find
that or opt out whatever. That's another way of looking
at it. But again this is for Google, and ninety
nine point nine percent of people are finding this through Google.
So this is a nice easy way to get your
information off of Google Search. I would also recommend signing

(33:07):
up for the free Results about You feature from Google
that is completely free, and this will proactively alert you
anytime a new website pops up with your information on it.
It will say, hey, well, we just found this information
on the internet. Do you want us to remove it?
And in one, one or two clicks you can say yes,
please remove it. They will somehow do whatever they do

(33:29):
on their back end to approve that or not approve it,
and they'll get it removed and it works pretty well.
So again that's called Google Results about You. But the
new feature is the fact that when you're on any
website search results, you can just tap those three dots
and click removers all and that will bring you right
to the option to get rid of it. Let's go

(33:50):
to Patrick eight eight eight rich one On one eight
eight eight seven four to two four one zero one,
Patrick in Colorado Springs. You're on with Rich Fayvoritch.

Speaker 4 (33:58):
Thanks so much for your wisdom. I sure appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (34:01):
Thank you.

Speaker 4 (34:02):
A few months ago I got a new MacBook Pro,
and then at a couple months ago I got the
suite called Microsoft Office for Mac. Okay, and it works fine.
But the thing I want to I have turned off
the updates so they did not automatically update. You have
to do it manually. But what I'd like to find
out if I can turn it off, is can I

(34:24):
turn off the updates so it doesn't even present the
updates to me and tell me that I can manually
download them.

Speaker 1 (34:31):
Oh that's a good question. Hmm. There is an option to.
So you've already turned off the option to automatically keep
the app up to date. Correct, so you have the
thing where it's now it's just telling you, hey, there
is an update, and you have to say no, I
don't want that. Just close out of that screen. Yes,

(34:52):
I don't know if there's a way to actually turn
off the search for an update. I mean, you may
be able to use like a third party program that
keeps you know, the Office tool from phoning home. But
as far as I know, there's probably not a way
to just say, like, hey, please don't even check for updates,
because most of these programs they want you to update

(35:13):
because you know, it's mostly for security reasons that they're
keeping them up to date. There's some sort of issue,
but you're still seeing the auto update menu even though
you said don't automatically install it.

Speaker 2 (35:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (35:26):
Yeah, but it's just to say, well, what's the problem, pat,
It's just a nuisance. It's constant. I've had it about
two months now and I have eleven just for a Word,
and there's a suite. I don't use any of the
other programs in the suite. I only use Microsoft Word.
But it's just a nuisance to constantly be having to
deal with updates. And I don't need anything. That's said,

(35:48):
I don't need perfection. I just need something to work.

Speaker 1 (35:51):
Yeah, well I would, I would recommend, and I know,
you know, I understand updates are annoying and this and that.
But most of the time, when there's an update, you
know there is a for it, and I know it
changes features a lot of the times, which is why
people are hesitant to do them. But it also most
of the time they're patching any sort of security exploits
or issues that they've found in that software. So for

(36:13):
that reason, I would recommend that you do the updates.
And I totally get it. I've got one program on
my computer, it's a scanning program, and pretty much every
time I turn on my computer, it's saying, hey, do
you want to do the update? And I just press
cancel because I barely use the program. So I understand
where you're coming from. But in general, it is good
to do those updates. But I think you're gonna be
stuck with just xiting out of that screen. Thanks for

(36:34):
the call, Patrick eight eight eight rich one on one
eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Coming up, I'll tell you about the new life saving
feature on a smartwatch. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology. The

(36:54):
website for the show rich on Tech dot TV. Be
sure toscribe to the podcast so you can always listen
no matter what. Just searching your favorite audio app for
Rich on Tech hit subscribe. Obviously, the best way to
listen is right here with me live. But if you
can't make it or you want to catch the end
of the show, just go to the podcast rich on Tech. Also,

(37:16):
you can give me a call eight eight eight rich
one O one eight eight eight seven four to two
four one zero one. If you have a question about technology,
give me a call. We'll get to the phone lines
in just a moment. This hour, we've got Mike Prospero
from Tom's Guide joining the show to talk all things Amazon.
They made a big upgrade to their voice assistant. Mike

(37:37):
covers that voice assistant. I'm trying not to say the name,
but it's alex Ay. You know what it is. You've
set up many times to control your lights. But she's
getting a big old upgrade. AI, So we'll talk about that.
Alison writes in on the website from Corona, I own
a business in a remote area. I need cameras set
up with no power on property. You can get cell

(37:58):
reception up there. Hell lots of ways you can do this, Allison,
but I would get a camera first off. I would
if you need cell reception, like do a cellular camera.
But obviously if you had Wi Fi access up there,
which maybe you don't because there's no power, that would
be a lot cheaper and easier. But two brands to
check out. The first is Real Link R EO l

(38:21):
I n K. They've got a four G camera that
also has a solar panel, so you can get one
of those. They look like they range from about two
hundred about two hundred dollars for one of those. Now,
don't forget, you're gonna have to pay for the cellular service.
So let's see how much are they asking for it.

(38:41):
It's probably listed on the monthly, but you know, keep
in mind you're gonna have to put some sort of
interesting It looks like it works with a bunch of
different cellular providers, so you can put the simcard in
there so you can get you know, you can shop around,
but again this is a pretty easy solution. Solar plus

(39:02):
a cellular camera is going to be great. Two hundred
bucks for that. The other brand to look at is
UFI EUFY and they've got a couple of cellular cameras
with also solar and there they look like they're anywhere
from one seventy five to about four hundred. And they've
got a couple of them that have like a you know,
different packages and things like that. So now again let's

(39:26):
see what their cellular is. So again, these are the
kind of things you should look for before you buy something.
Is make sure that you see, like, Okay, I see
that I can get this camera with the cellular, but
can I bring my own cellular or am I forced
to use the cellular that they want me to use?
And so that's the main thing that you need to
check on these cameras. And just quickly looking at this cellular. Yeah,

(39:49):
I'm trying to see you want to see the price? Okay,
simcard included compatible with the three major networks in the US,
no activation fee, no contract, one hundred megabyte trial data
for seven days, and so I'm guessing you're going to
have to yeah, see, this should really tell you how
much this thing costs on the cellular after the seven days, right,

(40:12):
Like you would think that would be front and center.
But again, anyway, so that's what I would check for.
Those are the two brands I would look into, Real
Link and UFI. They both make a cellular camera that
you can use and just set up. And once you
set it up, it's pretty much set it and forget it.
Thanks for the email. Let's go to John in Granada Hills, California.
John you're on with Rich.

Speaker 8 (40:33):
Hi, Rich, long time, first time regarding my email address,
which is decades old, getting a lot of course, as
expected spam and some have an unsubscribe at the bottom,
and you go to it and it takes you instead
of taking you to the website, it takes you to

(40:53):
a website where we're sorry to see you go enter
your email too. So I have to enter my email now.

Speaker 1 (41:02):
I hate that. It's literally my biggest pet peeve is
what you're talking about, because why why should I have
to put my email address in there? Right? Like, you
know my email address? I just clicked a link on
your email.

Speaker 8 (41:13):
But continue, So, yeah, I'm a paraid there sharing my
email with more spammers.

Speaker 1 (41:19):
Okay, So here's my guidance on this. Okay, this is
my guidance on all spam email, because it's a problem.
What service do you use for your email?

Speaker 8 (41:28):
Dslscream dot com.

Speaker 1 (41:29):
Okay, So so generally when you have some of these
smaller services, they may not have as robust spam filtering capabilities.
But in general, here's what I do. Number one, Yes,
what you're talking about. When you hit that unsubscribed link,
it should immediately unsubscribe you from that email. You should

(41:49):
not have to confirm your email address. You should not
have to type in your email address, But yet some
websites make you do that because what are they doing.
They're putting a little bit of friction between you and
the unsubscribed process. I don't like that because half the
time I sit there and I go, well, why am
I giving you my email address again? Like you said,
is it going to give me more spam? Or why

(42:11):
shouldn't you know? Why should I have to do this?
And so or I wonder, oh, well, which email address
did I sign up for? And now I have to
go back to the email check it out, make sure
I put in the right one. So my general rules
of thumb when it comes to spam is number one,
if it comes from a legitimate sender. And you can
pretty much tell when a center is legitimate. It's a Macy's,

(42:33):
it's a home depot, it's a best Buy, it's one
of these companies that uses Mailchimp or anything that says
safe unsubscribe at the bottom. Of course, you know that
could be spoofed. But typically I can tell when an
email comes from a legitimate cender. Right those I am
completely fine with. Clicking that link. Hopefully it on subscribes

(42:53):
in one second, you know, one click. If it does
ask for the email address again, I will use my
spidy senses to say is this a legitimate email or
is this an unsolicited email that is doing something more?
And I will not put my email address in there.
So that's kind of like the first thing to do.
Then once you do that, the other thing is that

(43:15):
an if it's an email address that you know, you
get this email and you have no idea why you're
getting it, you have no idea why you're on the list,
I would just report that as spam or even just
delete it without doing anything. But reporting it as spam
will at least send a signal to the email provider
that hey, I don't know why I got this, I
shouldn't be getting it, and it will, you know, it'll
There is a system on the back end that's that's

(43:38):
scoring all of these emails that you get, and by
marking it as spam, maybe they won't let those through
as much to other people, So you might be helping
someone else out and in your account, you're probably not
going to get that email again. That's my main two
ways of doing it. The other thing that you can do,
and not every email provider supports this, but I have
remote images loading. I had that feature turned off. So basically,

(44:01):
when someone emails you, and any company emails you, as
soon as you open up that email, there is an
image that phones home, could be called a tracking pixel
or a tracking image, or just any sort of little
tiny image in that email. You might not even see
it that basically phones home and says, hey, Rich, just
open this email. Let's send him more because he saw

(44:21):
that email at ten oh one am, and so they
can actually track how long you're sitting there looking at
that email in some instances, depending on their level of sophistication.
But so that's another thing you could do, is you
can go into your settings and turn off the feature
that's called remote image loading. And so once you turn

(44:41):
that off, when you open up an email, they don't
have a way of knowing that you opened up that
email because that little tracker can't send a message home
to say hey Rich, just open this, and so that
also cuts down an email. So I will tell you,
and of course your spam filtering should do the rest.
But in general, like I just got an email from
two right and of course, we all had to sign

(45:02):
up for two B during the Super Bowl to get
the free stream. Now I know that that was their
entire plan, is to get me to sign up for
this email, and then later on they will do a
sell of getting me to watch something on two B
that's not the Super Bowl. But if I scroll down
to the bottom of that email, it says you're receiving
this email because you're a valued member of the two
B community. To stop receiving emails, unsubscribe from this list,

(45:23):
and I'll click that link and it should probably unsubscribe me.
Let's see if it does it. That's it. Sorry to
see you go. You've successfully unsubscribed from two B emails. Now,
if I go into my spam, there's going to be
some emails there that are probably not as simple to
unsubscribe to, Like, yeah, I'm looking at this one. No way,

(45:43):
I'm not going to do that. I mean, there's just
so many. So again, that's really my guidance. John on
the unsubscribed links, you kind of have to use a
little bit of your Spidey sense to figure out and
if not, if you can't figure it out, just either
market as spam or just delete it. But the main
thing is you don't want to send any signal to
these companies that are not legitimate. If they're legitimate, they're

(46:06):
gonna honor the unsubscribed no problem. You sign up for
best Buy, Yeah, they're gonna spam you every day until
you buy something again. But at least they're gonna honor
that unsubscribe as soon as you press unsubscribe. And I'll
admit I, you know, I sometimes let things go a
little bit longer than they should, like I'll sign up,
especially when it comes to text messages. You know, though
everyone wants your text because you're going to open and

(46:27):
look at your texts a lot quicker than email, and
so everyone wants your phone number to text you. And yeah,
I'll get texts from companies that I've signed up for,
and you can pre you can type stop to unsubscribe
again to legitimate textures and they will honor that. And
so if you get a text that you don't want,
just type stop and send it to them and they
will automatically recognize that and stop sending you text. So

(46:50):
good question. And it's definitely something we need to be
aware of because email is everything, and you know, I
have a newsletter, and you know, of course I want
to make it easy for people if they don't want to,
if the don't want to be on there unsubscribed. I
don't want to be you know, I don't want to
be spamming you. You don't want spam. You want to
be You want your email box to be a place
that you go and enjoy, and there's information in there,

(47:13):
and uh, you know, see it. Now look at this.
I just looked at my just looked at my spam,
and I had a spam email. And now this is
the other reason why you look in your spam every
once in a while, because sometimes you've got emails in
there that you actually need. And I just found one
from our guest in the third hour saying, hey are
we still on for this afternoon? Yes? So anyway, look

(47:36):
at that eighty eight rich one O one eight eight
eight seven four to two four one zero one. Uh.
If you go to the website, lots of different resources
on there. Uh, definitely sign up for the newsletter. Like
I just said, as I'm telling you not to get spam,
but that's not spam. It's useful, believe me.

Speaker 5 (47:51):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (47:52):
The other thing you can do is send me an email. Uh,
just hit the contact link up at the top. And
by the way, I get a lot of emails, and
I get put on a lot of spam lists. People
think it's funny to sign me up for you know, spam,
and yeah, I will have don subscribe. Eighty to eight
rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to
two four one zero one. Welcome back to rich On Tech.

(48:17):
Rich de Miro here talking technology. New feature coming to
the pixel Watch three. This was announced with the pixel
Watch three when it came out, but it was not
approved in the US. It was approved out of the US,
but now it's coming to the US. Pixel Watch three
just got FDA clearance for a feature called pulse loss

(48:41):
of pulse detection. Yeah, just what it sounds like. If
your heart stops beating, this Google pixel Watch will call
for help. Now you might think, wait a second, Rich,
hold on, doesn't every smart watch do that if your
heart stops beating, won't it like call for help?

Speaker 9 (48:55):
No?

Speaker 1 (48:56):
Surprisingly, I mean you would think, like when I heard
this on stage from Good Well, I said, wey never
really thought about that. Now it will most smart watches
will detect when there is an abnormal heart rate, right,
either high either low slow. But if it completely stops, which,
by the way, when that happens, you know you've got
a problem. I don't know. They don't do anything. Now,

(49:18):
I guess if you think about it, there is a
feature like a fall detection feature. So if your heart
stopped and you fell, I guess the Apple Watch would
call for help. But what if you're sitting down, what
if you're on a couch. You know that, you know anyway,
this is stuff we don't want to happen, obviously, But
now you've got this on the Pixel Watch three. So

(49:39):
the watch will detect if your heart stops beating, and
it does this by three different ways. So first it
will if no pulse is detected, it watches, it looks
for movement. If there's no response, the watch makes an
alarm and it starts a countdown. If there's still no response,
then the watch or the connected phone to the watch
will call nine one one and share your location. So

(50:00):
this feature is opt in, it's designed for emergencies. It's
rolling out in March, and of course this is part
of a bigger push on these wearables to have all
of these sort of life saving features. Fall detection, car
crash detection, irregular heart rhythm notifications. So a lot of
the smart watches that I test have these features, and

(50:22):
if they don't, you know, there's a big delineation between
the smart watches that have them and that don't have them.
Most of the Samsungs and the Apple Watches and the
pixel Watches have these features. It's some of the third
party watches from names you might not recognize easily that
don't have all of these features. But again, loss of
pulse detection coming soon to the pixel Watch three. It

(50:45):
will be a software update and then you'll have to
opt in, but kind of a handy feature and I
wouldn't be surprised if Apple eventually comes out with that
as well. Let's go to Mike. Let's see what are
we lyn to Mike in Austin, Texas, Mike with Rich.

Speaker 7 (51:01):
Hey, Rich, I have two Samsung Smart TVs, once to
fifty five, one to sixty five. They're only a year
and a half. When we first got them, our grand
boys played baseball, so we watch them on Game Changer
and I used to be able to mirror the game
from my phone to the TVs, but now I can't anymore.

(51:21):
And my son in law said he has the same problem.
He can only do it on one of his TVs,
and I was wondering. I tried to look it up,
but I wonder if you knew a solution to that.

Speaker 1 (51:30):
So how are you? By the way, Game Changer is
my kid uses that he plays baseball. Excellent app. I mean,
if you're unfamiliar, you know, lets you watch the game.
They can live stream the game to the app. It
lets you keep you know, you don't even have to
watch a live stream. You could just watch the score
in real time. It's just a It's like a app
that was created basically for sports teams to use to

(51:52):
keep in touch with the team teammates and also keep
track of the game. Like for me, if I'm at
the radio show when my kid is playing, I can
watch them on the little Game Changer app.

Speaker 7 (52:02):
It's a great site.

Speaker 1 (52:03):
Yeah, it's great and it's actually owned by Dick's Sporting Goods.
I don't know if you know that.

Speaker 7 (52:06):
Oh did one of my favorite stores too.

Speaker 2 (52:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (52:08):
Well, if you have a kid in sports, they go
hand in hand. Go figure. My wife's like, oh, we
just got a coupon from the Game Changer app for
Dix I'm like, oh, well, of course I'm.

Speaker 7 (52:17):
Gonna say it actually goes hand in your wallet.

Speaker 1 (52:19):
But anyway, yes, exactly. So here's the thing I'm looking
on the website. So what were you using to stream?
Were you chrome casting or were you like what? How
were you streaming this to the TV?

Speaker 7 (52:32):
I just the TV's on, yep. I go up in
that upper right hand corner, you know, and do that
pull down where it's got the little mirroring thing and
I just hit that.

Speaker 1 (52:41):
Okay, so you mirror it from your phone? You mean?

Speaker 5 (52:43):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (52:44):
Like on the settings of the phone. Yes, like where
it says screen mirroring.

Speaker 7 (52:48):
Yeah, you know where you pulled down up a right
hand corner and you can get your flashlight stuff.

Speaker 1 (52:53):
Brings you all the tiles and everything. So that's not
working anymore. What can you mirror any other app? Or
is it just the game changer black out? When you
try to do it?

Speaker 7 (53:01):
You know that probably would have been smart to try
another feature.

Speaker 1 (53:04):
Yeah, yeah, so that's what I would do. So a
couple of things you can do here. Number one, I
don't I don't have a TV here with chrome cast
or Apple. But I'm gonna check this now when I
get home. You know, some apps have the ability to
cast or airplay built into the app itself. Like if
you go to Netflix, as soon as you're on the
same Wi Fi network as that TV, that little chrome

(53:27):
cast icon or or now they call it cast or
the airplay icon will show up inside Netflix and you
can cast to your TV. Other apps, like some apps
don't have that built in, but you're able to mirror
your screen either through iOS or Android, and on the
side of you know, Android, there's usually a cast screen

(53:47):
that you can do. So if that functionality has gone away,
I would take a look at your Wi Fi network,
make sure you're on the same network, and I would
also just try a different app, Mike, and see if
that work. If the other app isn't mirroring, then it's
a problem between your phone and the screen. But I
am going to try this out when I get home,
and I'll have some more answers in next week's show.

(54:09):
You're listening to rich on Tech. Coming up, we're going
to talk more about changes coming to Alexa. Welcome back
to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with
you talking technology at Triple eight rich one oh one.
zero one. We'll get back to the phone lines in

(54:30):
just a moment, but first joining me is Mike Prospero,
us editor in chief at Tom's Guide covering all things
smart home and especially alex A. Yes, I'll say it now,
it'll probably activate your device, but it's Alexa.

Speaker 5 (54:44):
Mike.

Speaker 1 (54:45):
Thanks for joining me today.

Speaker 2 (54:46):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (54:47):
So what was your initial reaction to the Alexa Plus event?

Speaker 2 (54:53):
Well, you know, I was at the event, and unlike
most other Amazon events where they give you two hundred
new products, this was just about Alexa and just about
its new smart assistant, and it's a real reimagining of
what it can do.

Speaker 1 (55:11):
Yeah, that was surprising me. Surprising to me that there
was no real hardware announcement. This was completely software based.
And then we've got Alexa Plus, which is basically, how
would you describe it to me? It feels like, you know,
it's chat GBT in a speaker.

Speaker 2 (55:28):
Now, I mean, that's a fairly good way to describe it.
I think Amazon is using anthropic for their model, but
it's still the same concept. Basically, you can ask Alexa
to do just about anything now, but beyond just answering
questions for you. Alexa Plus is supposed to hook up

(55:49):
with other services to sort of go beyond just what
a smart speaker can do, and you connect you with
the rest of the world.

Speaker 1 (55:59):
Yeah, I mean they really painted a picture where this
thing is the personal assistant that we've sort of been
waiting for. It can book an Uber, It can buy
your tickets on Ticketmaster. It can get a restaurant reservation
and a recommendation and send a text and remember stuff
and remind you. Do you think this is too ambitious
or do you think this will actually work? And did
you get to try some of it? Because I kept

(56:20):
asking can I try this? Can I try this? And
they wouldn't really let me try it specifically. I mean
I was able to ask it a few things, but
nothing like I wanted to.

Speaker 2 (56:31):
Yeah, I was in the same boat as you and
that they didn't. They didn't let me get his hands
on with it as I would have liked. So I
think a lot is going to remains to be seen
when it finally rolls out in a few weeks from now.
But I don't know. I think it's I think it's
okay to be very ambitious, but I you know, when

(56:54):
you're that ambitious. A lot of things have to go
right in order for people to use it.

Speaker 10 (56:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (56:59):
Well, I mean, look, they've already got the user base
of many people that have these devices in their home.
But then when you check the fine print, you know
you have to have one of these Echo Show devices,
which means one of their smart screen devices, and then
maybe it'll work on the rest of your speakers that
you have, depending on how old they are. Did you

(57:20):
get an idea of how many devices this will work on.

Speaker 2 (57:24):
Yeah, So I was talking to Amazon representatives afterwards, and yes,
initially it's going to be available on the Echo Show eight, ten, fifteen,
and twenty one, but then they said they're going to
roll it out to pretty much every other Echo device,
with the exception for sort of first and second gen

(57:47):
Echo devices. So if you have, you know, some of
the OG models, you're not going to be able to
use Alexa Plus on them, but it should work for
most everything else.

Speaker 1 (57:55):
I think that there is room for a benefit to
the AI aspect of this, where it understands what you're
trying to say versus my My problem with Alexa, especially
back in the early days, was you had to be
very specific to what you were telling it to do,
please turn off the light left couch light. You know
who talks like that? No one. So I think that

(58:17):
this natural language could be very beneficial.

Speaker 2 (58:20):
No, that's true. That's a good point. And I agree that.
You know, there's I don't know how many times I've
said turn off the living room lights and then said
there are several things devices named living room lights. Which
one do you mean? And you go through this circuit
of you know, question and answer and you never actually
get to the one you actually want. You know, it
needs to be as simple as you know, turning off

(58:41):
a light. And I think with the natural language use
on this, we could actually get to that point.

Speaker 1 (58:50):
So there is one interesting feature that I thought was
quite useful. Is this idea of uploading documents to Alexa
for her to reference later. So it could be a
school calendar, an events calendar, schedule, just data about anything
in your life and then you can ask her to
reference that later. So what did you think of that aspect?

(59:14):
And also privacy that you know that you're uploading personal
information now.

Speaker 2 (59:19):
Yeah, no, I think I mean this is this is
an area where AI is in general are can be
very useful. Is taking a huge amount of data and
analyzing it for you, you know, and doing something with
it that you know you don't have to do, like
taking away sort of the rote manual mundane task and
making it more accessible, more easily for you. So, you know,

(59:40):
if you're uploading your school kid your kid's calendar for
school or something like that, rather than putting in, you know,
what's for lunch each day, you know it can you can,
You'll just upload it and it'll tell you, you know,
by the same token. I'm not going to you know,
upload my you know, healthcare documents or something like that
to Alexa and you know, in trust to you know,

(01:00:01):
keep everything private. And now Amazon did talk to me
a little bit about privacy stuff, and they, you know,
do have some safeguards in place, they said, but it's still,
you know, there's data breaches everywhere all the time, you know,
and you know, so I would be hesitant to upload

(01:00:21):
certain things for risk of it getting out somehow.

Speaker 1 (01:00:26):
Is there anyone else that would have this technology? And
do you think that Amazon is in the lead here
or do you think this is still very much in
open space.

Speaker 2 (01:00:36):
I think Amazon is somewhat in the lead just by
the fact that so many people already have Echo devices
in their homes, so they've got this base that's sort
of ready to go. And plus the fact that they're
giving Alexa Plus free to Amazon Prime members. You know,
you know how many Amazon Prime members are there. I mean,

(01:00:57):
there's got to be you know, millions of them. So
it's going to be sort of automatically in people's homes,
you know, in the in the coming months. You know,
there's plenty of people who obviously use Google Assistant, and
plenty of people who use Siri, but those are more
limited to phones, you know, rather than smart speakers. And

(01:01:22):
you know, I don't think, you know, even if Apple
does come out with a new home pod in the
next few months, it's still more of a niche device
than all of the Amazon Echoes that are already out there.

Speaker 1 (01:01:36):
Let's talk about that price. So they announced a twenty
dollars a month price or free to Prime members. A
couple of thoughts here, Number one, who would pay twenty
dollars a month for this? Number two, it's included with Prime.
But if you do the math, twenty times twelve is
two hundred and forty dollars a year, which is more
than Prime So are we going to see a Prime
price increase because of this?

Speaker 2 (01:01:57):
I mean, it's not outside of the realm of possibilit
I wouldn't rule out an increasing price, especially if you
don't get a lot of takers, maybe initially for Amazon
Alexa plus.

Speaker 1 (01:02:08):
Do you think this is a value at twenty dollars standalone?
I mean, why would you not just subscribe to Prime
at that point?

Speaker 2 (01:02:14):
Yeah, I don't know how many people would are gonna
subscribe to this, as you know, on its own. I
think I think the most majority of people are going
to have Amazon Prime and try it that way. But
I I am I don't know how many people are
gonna say, oh, yeah, I want I'm going to pay

(01:02:35):
twenty dollars a month, you know that. I think I
think it's the case is going to be a lot
of people who already have Amazon Echo devices in their
home and subscribe to Prime will just start using it.
And I think that's Amazon strategy.

Speaker 8 (01:02:49):
Here.

Speaker 2 (01:02:50):
Where Amazon has struggled with its smart assistance is that
it's sold the devices at a loss, initially expecting that
the services that people were gonna use through Alexa would
help recoup that cost. That hasn't happened. You know, they
they had to layoff, you know, tens of thousands of
people over the last few years. So I think if

(01:03:13):
Alexa Plus can get more people to you know, buy
ubers or you know, order from Uber, you know, order
from door Dash and use more services through Alexa, then
they can start recouping those costs and you know, generate
that revenue that they've been wanting for so long.

Speaker 1 (01:03:32):
All right, We're gonna leave it there. Mike Prospero from
Tom's Guide, thanks so much for joining me the website
Tom's Guide dot com. Get those calls in triple eight
rich one O one eight eight eight seven four two
or one zero one. We'll get back to the phone
lines right after this. Welcome back to Rich on tech.

(01:04:06):
Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology at
triple A Rich one on one. That's eight eight eight
seven four to two four one zero one. Let's go
to Nile in Culver City, Nile. You're on with Rich.

Speaker 11 (01:04:22):
Oh, hey, Rich, thanks for taking my call. Yeah, got
two separate I got two separate questions. I hope you
can answer them. The first one is about Skype. Uh,
the company I work for. Our department uses Skype daily
like religiously, and then every two weeks we talked to
our Asia team over a phone call, and I was

(01:04:46):
kind of wondering what we can recommend as an alternative
to this because someone mentioned discord. I've used another ones too,
but what's like the one that you think is going
to be more in service?

Speaker 1 (01:05:01):
Oh, for all your teammates, how how long are the calls? Typically?

Speaker 11 (01:05:07):
Well, an hour sometimes with the agent team, but our teammates,
we we tech stock and fort or all the chat
rooms that we have really like, you know, constantly during
the day. We do have Gmail set up. I don't
know if g chat has a call ability or what.

(01:05:29):
I know that a lot of the teammates will chat
in g Chat and then all of a sudden they
say we want to make an email group. So I
don't I don't know how you know reliable that is.
I just wanted to get your take on that part.

Speaker 1 (01:05:44):
Well, so I think, now, were you paying for Skype
at all or as.

Speaker 11 (01:05:49):
You used out now we're all using the freebies.

Speaker 1 (01:05:51):
You're all using the freebies. Okay, So yeah, so it
sounds like you want to free you know, something that's free.
I mean, here's the thing. You know, when it comes
to business, if you're relying on this stuff, a lot
of the consumer services have some sort of limitation on
them in order, you know, for people like yourself that
are running some sort of business aspect of it, they
want you to pay. So Zoom when it first came out,

(01:06:14):
you know, it was like, I think during the pandemic,
it was let's see meeting limits. So it was like,
I think they had they took their meeting limits off,
but right now, you know, now they put them back on,
and it looks like the meeting limit for free is
forty minutes, so if you want to go above that,
you would have to pay. But I think in general,

(01:06:36):
you know, it depends what you want to do. If
you're talking about chatting, you know, maybe something like a
Slack would be best for chats, and then for video conferencing,
maybe something like a Zoom would be good because you
can get a whole bunch of people on there. Everyone's
very familiar with the software. It's probably all installed on there.

(01:06:56):
But Teams is also going to do all of that
stuff as well, So you know, I'd have to look
at the free level of Microsoft Teams because most of
the time. People that have Teams are in a company,
in a corporate environment, and so there's a whole bunch
of features that come in there that are you know,
because people are paying. But I'm looking at the free

(01:07:16):
version of Teams, So group meetings with a time cap
of sixty minutes, one on one meetings with a time
limit for up to thirty hours, that's interesting maximum of
one hundred people per meeting, unlimited chat via Microsoft Teams messaging.
So it sounds to me, just off the top of
my head that what they're pushing you to on Microsoft

(01:07:41):
is Teams, and I think that that probably would work
out best for you. And what I like about Teams
compared to some of these other things is that it's
built for businesses. So it's built for businesses like yours
to keep in touch, and that means that they're going
to have apps for both Mac, PC, iPhone Android. No
matter how your workers want to connect, no matter where

(01:08:02):
they are in the world, they're gonna be able to
do that. So I'd probably recommend Microsoft Teams. You could
probably get away with Zoom. I don't know if Zoom
has as robust kind of chat features I'm looking at here.

Speaker 2 (01:08:16):
Oh, yep.

Speaker 1 (01:08:16):
Team Chat does have it, so that may be a
way to do it as well. I mean you could, yeah,
you could chat and Zoom as well. So I think
it comes down to for me is the amount of
time you get. So what I'd do is I would
compare teams to Zoom and see what you get for
free and if that works. They both offer chat, they

(01:08:37):
both offer video chat, they both offer calls, so just
go ahead and pick one of them that works the
best for your team. I think that that's gonna be
the best way to do it. It's interesting a lot,
you know, there's been so many changes to the calling
landscape since Skype came out, and you know, I'm looking

(01:08:57):
online for you know, it's interesting because you can call
anyone in the world through an app for free, basically
like WhatsApp. You can call anyone you want as long
as you're on that app. There's many other ways you
can do it as well. Google Voice, you can Viber.
I mean, there's so many different apps out there that
can do this. But when it comes to actually calling
a physical phone, that's where it gets a little trickier
because it's not always included because there are still costs

(01:09:19):
associated with that phone line. So a good question. Thanks
for the call today, appreciate it. Eight eight eight rich
one O one eight eight eight seven four to two
four one zero one. Let's see. We got an email
here from Neil in Virginia. He said, I see many
PCs are coming with a Qualcom processor. Do you recommend it?

(01:09:42):
How do they compare with AMD and Intel? Do the
Qualcom processors run all software that runs on Windows eleven?
Great question. So you're talking about the new Snapdragon uh
Elite chips excellite. Now are these are chips that are
inspired by mobile phones. So snapdrag has had its chips
in mobile phones for a long time. They made the

(01:10:03):
leap to computers. I went to the event at Microsoft
up in Seattle or Redmond where they introduced their new
Copilot PCs with these chips, and the whole point is
that these chips are built for efficiency, so battery life,
processing efficiency, and also the AI aspects of them. Now,

(01:10:24):
don't get me wrong, the AMD and Intel chips are great,
but they're like powerhouses. These Snapdragon chips are more for
the mobile kind of computing that people are doing today,
and so there is that trade off of app compatibility
now most Windows eleven apps are going to run just fine.
And I think if you're using any of the Microsoft apps,

(01:10:47):
any web based software, they're all going to be fine,
and you're going to get good battery life and good
power efficiency from these chips. And if you look at
the Microsoft website, they of course have an entire way
website dedicated to people asking this question because they know
that people are worried about app compatibility. When when Apple

(01:11:08):
first switched over to their own chips, they went from
Intel to their Apple their own Silicon chips, they there
was a lot of issues with compatibility and you had
to download a special program I think it was called
Rosetta to run a bunch of apps on your new
m processors until the companies you know, eventually rewrite the

(01:11:29):
apps to work natively anyway for most people. And this
the website says, based on research for Microsoft, ninety percent
of the total app minutes people spend today have native versions.
And if you go on this website, you can scroll
and just about every app you can ever imagine is
on this website. One No Word, Excel, Outlook, Team Zoom, OneDrive, Dropbox, WhatsApp, Telegram, Bitwarden,

(01:11:53):
all the Adobe apps, all the social media apps, web browsers,
multimedia apps. So I think you're gonna be fine if
you're running most apps. Now, if you're running some sort
of specialty app Neil, like something that is from an
older computer or something that is very specific, that may
not work, and I would check with the manufacturer of

(01:12:14):
that software and say, hey, how does this run on
a Qualcom processor. But if you're running the basic apps
that you're just downloading from the internet and running on
your computer, you're probably gonna be just fine. And so again,
you can go to this website it's Qualcomm dot com
slash Snapdragon and then well it's kind of a long website,
so but it's on there. But if you search Windows

(01:12:36):
Snapdragon X compatibility, you should see this website pop up.
I'll put it in the show notes as well. Rich
on Tech dot TV. But I think you're gonna be okay.
And I have one of these surfaces with the Qualcomm
and I have no problem. I've got the Snapdragon, and
you know, no problem with running anything I've run on there.
Eighty eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven

(01:12:56):
four to two four one zero one more rich on
Tech coming your way right after this. Welcome back to
rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here talking technology eighty eight
rich one O one eight eight eight seven four two

(01:13:17):
four one zero one the website rich on Tech dot tv.
Also be sure to follow me on Instagram at rich
on Tech. You guessed it. Coming up this hour, Chris
Gold of Geeks on Tour is going to share some
expert tips on making the most of Google Photos. That
is my preferred Google, uh, my preferred photo storage and

(01:13:40):
so I'm looking forward to learning something there. Let's go
to Killy. Is it Killy Killy in Los Angeles or Kelly?

Speaker 6 (01:13:48):
You either want to work? Okay?

Speaker 5 (01:13:49):
So much?

Speaker 6 (01:13:50):
Yeah, appreciate this.

Speaker 8 (01:13:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:13:53):
I've got a photostick with a whole bunch of photos
on it and it will not register or when I
when I plug it into my computer, have I lost everything?

Speaker 1 (01:14:04):
Now, when you say photostick, is it a specific device
that you've purchased or are you just talking a flask
drive with photos on it?

Speaker 6 (01:14:11):
No, it's a it's the photo stick brand.

Speaker 1 (01:14:14):
Okay, it is the photostick brand. Okay, So how is
that thing? First off? Notwithstanding the current problem, Well.

Speaker 6 (01:14:23):
I don't know. I mean, I've had it for a
long time, and the whole, the whole thing that got
me sold on it was this idea that I that
it would categorize the pictures for me and all that,
But I don't know, I didn't. I didn't find it
that good. But however, I mean, I didn't find it
all that great for that particular purpose, and that's probably
my fault.

Speaker 7 (01:14:43):
But the main.

Speaker 6 (01:14:46):
Thing was to you know, save these photos in a backup,
backed up style. And now when I plug it in,
to my horror, it's, well, it doesn't register.

Speaker 9 (01:14:58):
Now.

Speaker 6 (01:14:58):
The thing when when I plug it in, I do
get you know what it'llllum It is that there's a
red light that elluminates in the photo states. That's that's working, okay.
And when I and you you hear that doorbell sound
when you plug it in? Did it? Did it?

Speaker 1 (01:15:16):
So your computer is saying it's seeing that something's plunked in.

Speaker 6 (01:15:19):
I'm sorry, what was that?

Speaker 1 (01:15:20):
Your computer seeing that something's plugged in but nothing pops up?

Speaker 2 (01:15:24):
Correct?

Speaker 1 (01:15:24):
Now? Is there a special software that this runs that's
that's supposed to come up? And that is that software
coming up? Or are you just looking at the Windows Explorer.

Speaker 6 (01:15:34):
I'm just looking at the Windows Explorer.

Speaker 1 (01:15:37):
Okay, you know, so when you look at when you
look at Windows Explorer, does the stick show up on
the left hand side under like all the devices? And
can you double click that?

Speaker 6 (01:15:46):
No?

Speaker 1 (01:15:47):
It doesn't, okay, okay. Have you tried restarting your computer? Yes,
and it still doesn't show up?

Speaker 8 (01:15:54):
No?

Speaker 1 (01:15:54):
Okay. Have you tried a different computer?

Speaker 9 (01:15:58):
No?

Speaker 1 (01:15:58):
Okay, So that's what I would do first off. So
a couple of things. Now, by the way, do you
have these photos anywhere else or they just on this stick?

Speaker 6 (01:16:06):
Well, I don't know because I had you know, I
haven't access to this. If it's a project I've taken
on for myself. I've got thousands of photos and I've
decided it's time to start because I've matched out my computer.
That's another thing. Yeah, I need to start categorizing them
and weeding out the ones I don't need. And that's
why I, you know, picked this up to see what

(01:16:27):
was on it, and I don't know, but I'm sure
it's there are a lot of pictures I I thought
were worth keeping.

Speaker 1 (01:16:34):
Yeah, of course. All right, Well, here's here's the steps
I would I would take to see if you can
rescue this thing. So first off, you know, restart your
computer you already do. Make sure you have all the
software updates on your computer, that's number one. And make
sure that the software that whatever proprietary software that this
thing runs, make sure that that's up to date as well.
And then of course restart your computer. So if it's

(01:16:56):
showing up and and the device is not showing up
in your ex you know, in your file explorer, then
that's kind of a problem. If so, what I would
do is, first off, try a different computer, see if
the device pops up there. And you might even try
a different device, you know, if a friend has a computer, laptop, whatever,
plug that photo stick in, see if you can see

(01:17:18):
the files on that photostick, and if you're waiting for
the computer to show up, you know, and open up
those files. Just see if you can navigate to that
device on your computer in the Windows file Explorer and
see if you can double click and open up and
see the files in there. That's number one. The other
thing is do not format this device. So if you're
trying to say, okay, let me format this to start over,

(01:17:40):
you will definitely lose your pictures if you do that.
So if you can't get this thing to show up.
Let's say you try a different computer. You've tried restarting.
If you can't get this thing to show up at all,
then I would probably either try some data rescue software
on it. You can run that, or maybe bring it
to someone that's a data that runs a data rescue,

(01:18:00):
you know business. So the program for the data rescue
you can try as Recouva r CUVA. So install that
on your computer, plug this little drive in and see
if that brings it up, see if it shows up
in there. And that's it. There's a reason why I
don't like these little flash drives, and I get a
million questions about them, And that's why I was asking

(01:18:21):
about it, because I've not personally tested this device. But
I don't like the website, I don't like the way
they sell it, I don't like pretty much anything about it.
So I personally think that the cloud is probably the
best way of doing it. And I think the way
they sell this to you is the fact that this
software and if it does it, that's great. But this
software you install on your computer, it will find all

(01:18:42):
the pictures on your computer and kind of bring them
onto this flash drive. I actually think that's a very
helpful thing. But you can also accomplish that for free
using Google Photos. And so Google Photos actually has a
desktop software that will find the photos on your computer
if you and install it, and if you install it
on there to say, you know, here's my computer, find

(01:19:04):
all the pictures, upload them to Google Photos, or you
can dump them into that into a specific folder and
you'll back them up. And the reason I like that
is because now you have your photos in the cloud
and they're safely backed up. So no matter what, I
always kind of recommend that you would have your pictures
in two places, which is the original location plus the cloud.

(01:19:26):
Technically you're supposed to have them in three, but most
people don't even have them in two. Most people don't
even have any sort of backup plan for their pictures.
But when it comes to achilly with the organization of photos,
I don't really think that's necessary anymore, just because if
you put these into something like a cloud storage, and
you could choose whatever one you want. If you want iCloud, fine,

(01:19:46):
if you want one drive, fine, if you want Google Photos,
that's fine. Amazon Photos free with Prime membership, you can
do that, but just get them in somewhere, and all
of these systems have some level of AI organization, so
they're going to look through these pictures and pick out
the faces, pick out the places, the things, the objects,

(01:20:07):
and so there's really no reason to organize these anymore
into folders because if you want a picture of you
in Rome, just type in Rome and even the old
pictures that don't have the geotags on them, they'll still
find those pictures based on things in those pictures. You know,
it looks like Roman architecture or you know, anything from
Rome that it picks out. It's not gonna be perfect,

(01:20:28):
but it does a pretty good job. But I would
also get in touch with the photostick folks and see
if they have any customer service and see what they
say about this not showing up. It could be something simple,
but it sounds like something got a little bit. Maybe
it wasn't ejected, and that could have been you know,
a problem for this thing. So yeah, the main takeaway

(01:20:52):
I have here is you have to have these things
backed up because there's too many issues with photos where
you know, you lose a password, you lose access to something,
something crashes, and next thing you know, all of your
photos are gone, but those are the main things I
would do. I would check this on the different on
a friend's computer number one and see if that if
it finds the pictures there. If you're really, if you're

(01:21:15):
you know, kind of advanced, you might be able to
start up your computer in like safe mode and see
if you can put the drive in there. Because maybe
there's an app. You mean that your computer is making
some sort of some sort of noise when you put
this flask drive in it, so it definitely recognizes the
flash drive that's being plugged in, it's just not showing
you what's on there, So it could be an app
that is interfering as well. Let's see, do I have

(01:21:39):
time for another question or one more question? Okay, let's
go to Bill and Hartford. Bill your own with Rich.

Speaker 5 (01:21:46):
Thank you taking a call.

Speaker 1 (01:21:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:21:49):
Uh. Straight from the beginning, I tried to order a
QR code online. Okay, I didn't recognize where the company
was that was making the QR but evidently it's a
European company. So all I'm getting is maybe if necessary
text messages back and forth, no live contact. I ordered

(01:22:09):
the QR code, had it printed up on vinyl. It worked,
for a while, and then it set itself. It didn't
necessarily set itself down totally. But now when I open it,
instead of it opening up to the video presentation that
I'm looking for to present, it opens up to bemo.

(01:22:30):
I think it is a ve M or something. Yeah,
and it's suggesting that you need to have a log in. Well,
I never signed up for that. And if if I'm
riding down the road and you see this on the
back of my car and you don't, and you don't
have a Vimeo, how do I remedy it this?

Speaker 1 (01:22:47):
Okay, so you've got you Okay, she printed, Oh wow,
this is this is an interesting one. Okay, she printed
the QR code. And now it's the QR code is
leading to a place that you don't want it to lead,
a different website than you wanted.

Speaker 5 (01:23:01):
No, well, the initial website pops up, but it will
not run the video. It's initially now is calling for
you to have a Vimeo account to open it up
in order to see the video.

Speaker 1 (01:23:13):
Okay, Well then okay, then there's good news matters. If
it's so number one, you can't change where a QR
code goes to once it's created. It's not gonna unless
you can do something with a QR code website that
on the back end, and it depends how this QR
code is made. So if the company made it where
you know, they can change things on the back end.

(01:23:35):
They could change the URL that this leads to. Okay,
that's number one. So you would have to get in
touch with them. But the thing is when you scan
this code, and you can email me this code and
I'll take a look. But when you scan this code,
if it's going to the actual Vimeo video that you want,
is that where your videos hosted Vimeo?

Speaker 5 (01:23:53):
Initially? No, it's not hosted at Vimeo. It's hosted to
a business.

Speaker 1 (01:24:00):
Uh okay, well they may.

Speaker 5 (01:24:02):
Be business web adrift.

Speaker 1 (01:24:04):
They may be using Vimeo to to actually host that video.

Speaker 5 (01:24:07):
So no, I contacted them and they're not. And every
time that I go back, if I go back into
it outside of the QR code, I will go directly
to the video. It will never Vimeo will never pop up, right, Okay,
QR code that was that was developed.

Speaker 1 (01:24:24):
Did the QR code ever work?

Speaker 5 (01:24:27):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (01:24:27):
Okay, it did. Okay, So you got to get in
touch with this QR code company because that's the only
way that you can get them to change this link
to the right link. So it sounds like they're probably
using a proxy link that once someone scans this code,
it brings it to where you want the code to go.
It sounds like something got changed. Yeah, and so you've

(01:24:50):
got to get in touch with that company to do it.
Otherwise it's not You're not gonna be able to change
this yourself. You can't change a QR code yourself. You
have to go to the back end of where that
thing is leading to and have them change it. So
it's kind of a problem, Bill, But you got to
get in touch with that company that made it and say, hey,
look I need this to point to the right url.
This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.

(01:25:18):
Rich Demiro here hanging out with you talking technology the
website for the show rich on Tech dot TV. We've
got an interview coming up with Chris Gold of Geeks
on Tours. She's going to share some expert tips. I'm
making the most to Google photos. Steve k writes in
for the photostick problem, maybe look at Device Manager on

(01:25:41):
Windows see if the photostick shows up there. It's a
good avenue to check man so many issues. Like it's
like when sometimes you get stuck in these things. It's
like the QR code thing, It's like, that's a tough one,
you know. This is why again, whenever you're going to
do business with a company, make sure that you can
get in touch with them before you pay, because if

(01:26:02):
you can't get in touch with them before you pay,
you're definitely not gonna be able to get in touch
with them after you pay. A couple of items of note.
This week, Photoshop has a new mobile app, Photoshop. Adobe
launched Photoshop on the iPhone. Now this is an interesting
story because I never used Photoshop on the iPhone. But

(01:26:22):
they're saying Photoshop is launched on the iPhone. But if
you look at the app store, Photoshop has been on
the iPhone for a while. I don't think it was
this level of what you can do on Photoshop, So
it's a little weird that they keep saying Photoshop for
the first time ever. Like, if you look at the
version history of Photoshop, it's been on the iPhone since
twenty twenty two at least. But I think this version

(01:26:44):
is like a real version of Photoshop. So they say
this is the first time a full featured, pro level
image editing app, has been available for free on mobile now.
Free is also an interesting word that they're using, because yes,
you can get core access to Photoshop features like layering, masking, blending,

(01:27:06):
and the AI generative fill features, but you are going
to have to pay if you want to get the
extra features. So everything, you know, if you look at
apps like this, they're all freemium kind of things where
you get some stuff for free. If you want to
do some more, you got to pay some more. So
the premium version is eight dollars a month or seventy
dollars a year, and Adobe wants everyone to download this,

(01:27:29):
you know, not just for the real professionals out there.
They're saying, hey, look, even if you're just a casual creator,
like try this out, like use this to edit your photos.
And they're in an interesting place because there are a
million and one photo editing apps now, and so they
need to be here because so many apps are out
there that let you edit your photos, especially with AI.
And so now, of course these traditional companies, these companies

(01:27:53):
that have been around forever, they're you know, they tried
to do things their way for a long time and
then they say, okay, fine, we'll try things a new
way too, and I think that's what's happening here. But
if you want to check it out Photoshop on mobile,
I will have to download this. I haven't had a
chance to download it yet, but I'll see. I always
thought Photoshop was a little complicated for the average person,
and that's why people went towards apps like Snapseed or

(01:28:15):
the Radiant image that I recommend. One tap Google Photos
has a one tap improved SODA's Apple Photos, So see
what you need. DirecTV is launching some new TV packages.
Now remember Direct tv has both you know, they've have
the satellite business, but it's you know now they're focusing

(01:28:36):
mostly on the streaming business. So now they have these
new what they call genre packs, so they let you
choose the content you want to watch instead of a
giant bundle, and they start at thirty five bucks a month.
So what can you get. They've got a My Entertainment
which has forty channels, including Disney Plus and Hulu with ads.
You've got My News forty dollars, includes all kinds of

(01:28:59):
news services CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, CNBC. You've got a
Spanish package sixty Spanish language channels for thirty five bucks.
My Sports Now they launched this earlier that includes ESPN
Plus and a whole bunch of sports channels, but not
necessarily your regional sports channels. Then they've got some mini packs.

(01:29:19):
My Cinema for ten dollars a month for classic movies.
My Sports Now. Here's the thing that I'm excited for,
the My Home Team mini pack, which includes those regional
sports networks. That's opening, launching in time for MLB Opening Day.
So when is MLB Opening day? Bobo? Do you know
off the top of your head?

Speaker 9 (01:29:38):
No?

Speaker 1 (01:29:41):
Close, Let's see it looks like it is. You're very
close May eighteenth, mark? Wait is twenty second Tuesday March eighteenth,
and Wednesday, March nineteenth. Okay, so there you go, so close.
That was a couple of days off. Looks like it's
going to be in Tokyo. Is that the Dodgers playing Tokyo?
I think we played a Cubs. Okay, there you go

(01:30:03):
our residents sports guy, Bobo, where's that applause? So we
need it. But that's the thing like these like we
just had to subscribe to Fubo because you get your
regional sports networks through Fubo. YouTube TV doesn't have that,
so you pay for it. But here's the thing. I mean,
all this is dancing around the fact that nobody really

(01:30:24):
knows how to do this stuff with entertainment anymore. Because
we used to have big, old cable packages that had everything.
Then we went to individual streaming services. Those have gotten
so expensive. Now people are going back to looking at
these bundle packages and they're expensive, so not directvs. Trying
smaller bundles. I mean, it's just crazy, what's happening with
all this entertainment. All right, coming up, we're going to
talk about Google Photos and how to make the most

(01:30:47):
of it right here on rich on Tech. Welcome back
to rich On Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you,
talking technology. All right, We're going to talk Google Photos,
one of my favorite topics because this is where I
keep my pictures and I have for a long time,

(01:31:07):
ever since the days of Picassa. Chris gold is with
Geeks on Tour. Thanks for joining me.

Speaker 10 (01:31:14):
Yeah, thanks for having me. This is great. So I
love talking about Google photos too.

Speaker 9 (01:31:20):
Oh.

Speaker 1 (01:31:20):
I know your website is very much packed with Google
Photos tips and tricks and so definitely check out geeksontour
dot com. But just tell me how'd you get involved
in all this stuff?

Speaker 9 (01:31:33):
Hey?

Speaker 10 (01:31:35):
I love photography. I am a traveler.

Speaker 9 (01:31:38):
From two thousand and three to twenty seventeen, my husband
and I lived in an RV and traveled around the country.
And when you travel, you take lots and lots and
lots of pictures. And I was with Picasa. I wrote
a book on Picasa. I taught classes at RV rally,
so I gained quite a following of people who wanted
to learn how to manage their photos with Passa. And

(01:32:01):
I even did a seminar at Google when Picasa was it.
So when they decided to change from Picasa to Google Photos,
I just jumped right on board. I figured, you know,
they know what they're doing, they have the future in mind,
so I want to see what's going on.

Speaker 6 (01:32:19):
I went.

Speaker 9 (01:32:20):
I jumped right in with Google Photos at the very
beginning twenty fifteen.

Speaker 10 (01:32:24):
I started teaching that.

Speaker 9 (01:32:27):
I wrote a book on that, and I am now
a Google Photos Product Expert Diamond level for Google.

Speaker 1 (01:32:34):
Oh wow, well, I'm going to tell you immediately off
the bat my biggest pet peeve with Google Photos because
I have all my pictures in there. I love it,
but I have so many that to do a Google
takeout backup, you know, if I want to like download
them all, it's so many gigs I mean terabytes that
it's almost impossible for me to do that because it's
eighty files of like fifty gigs each and by the way,

(01:32:57):
downloading that is no easy fee. So I suggested to Google, is,
why don't you have some sort of hard drive that
I can plug into Wi Fi? Right, like a hard
drive I plug into the wall, connects to my WiFi.
That just sinks my library all day long. So at
any given moment, I just have my entire Google Photos
library on this little drive in case, you know, something happens,

(01:33:18):
something goes wrong. I'm like, oh, I've got my back
up here. So anyway, what do you think of that idea?

Speaker 10 (01:33:23):
Well, good luck with that.

Speaker 9 (01:33:26):
I you know, I've been asking for a few features
from Google ever since twenty fifteen, since it first came out,
and I haven't gotten them yet.

Speaker 10 (01:33:36):
So I wouldn't hold my breath.

Speaker 9 (01:33:38):
And I have to say I do completely agree with
you that takeout is completely unwieldy, and even I do
have a tip though, yes, even if you do.

Speaker 10 (01:33:49):
Download all of that.

Speaker 9 (01:33:50):
Let's say you have a smaller library and you download
all of your library using Google Takeout. It downloads all
of your albums. Now, understand that albums in Google Photos
are just a virtual construct. You'll only have one copy
of a photo. It can show up in multiple albums

(01:34:11):
when you use takeout. That is meant to store them
on your hard drive. Hard drives work differently. Every album
has to be a folder. So if you had one
photo in three albums on Google Photos, you use takeout,
you now have four copies of that photo, the one
original and one for each what is now a folder.

(01:34:34):
So yeah, my method of downloading is I make an
album each month of my best photos.

Speaker 10 (01:34:43):
You know, I'm sure you're like me.

Speaker 9 (01:34:45):
You take dozens of photos when you see a good picture, right, Yeah,
I don't want all those on my hard drive. I
just want a backup on my hard drive of my
best I mean, if the world should fall apart, I
know I have.

Speaker 10 (01:35:01):
My best photos.

Speaker 9 (01:35:02):
So I make an album per month and I just
use the Google album and download all to make a
ZIP file of that monthly album onto my hard drive.

Speaker 1 (01:35:13):
Okay, that's that's not a bad idea that actually, you know,
if yeah, all the world fell apart, you would at
least have some basics of like your favorite pictures instead
of the ten thousand receipts I have from last week
in New York City and like, you know, these sort
of things that I take pictures of. So what do
you like about Google Photos for people? Because there's so
many options out there, and cloud storage is confusing, you know,

(01:35:36):
like even with Google Photos, people try it and they say, rich,
Now I don't want it, And now I'm worried about
deleting the app because I don't know if it's going
to delete the photos off my phone. But what do
you like about Google Photos, Like, what do you think
it offers versus like iCloud or anything else out there.

Speaker 9 (01:35:49):
Well, I think Google Photos has the right philosophy, which
is a very different philosophy from iCloud, which maybe we'll
get through in a minute. But Google Photos says we
have cloud storage, and yes, you may have to pay
when you get over a certain amount, but if you're
willing to pay and small amounts, it's unlimited. So your

(01:36:11):
entire lifetime of photos can be in your Google account
in the cloud, regardless of what phone took it, what
camera took it, what scanned you took it. I have
pictures from when I was a baby in my mother's arms,
all the way up until just today when I took

(01:36:33):
a picture of the backyard, and I can find any
of those. That is That is the number one biggest
purpose of Google Photos is just one home for your
lifetime of photos.

Speaker 10 (01:36:49):
Searchable, searchable.

Speaker 1 (01:36:51):
Yeah, and with the AI. I mean I've been playing
with the AI search on it. It's actually kind of cool.
It doesn't always get it right, but it finds pictures
really easily. Like I mean, you could literally ask like, hey,
show me my best picture from New York City last week,
or you know, I want to post to Instagram and
it will find something that it thinks like according to AI,
what it really likes. So what do you think people

(01:37:11):
should know about Google Photos, Like if they want to
get started with it, is there any mistakes people make
getting started?

Speaker 9 (01:37:16):
Or oh yeah, oh yeah, there's two really really really
big mistakes. Number one is that if people have an
iPhone or a sam Song anyway, they come with their
own photo management tools. iPhone has what I call Apple Photos,

(01:37:38):
Samsung has Samsung Gallery for Photos, and Google Photos can
work on both iPhone and Android, which is wonderful. I mean,
I have both, and I know a lot of people
that have gone back and forth during the last twenty
years from iPhone to Android and back. If they were
using Google Photos, all of their photos are in one.

Speaker 10 (01:38:01):
So that's great.

Speaker 9 (01:38:02):
But they don't realize when they take a picture with
their iPhone and then still on the camera app, they
tap the little miniature to.

Speaker 10 (01:38:13):
See the photo, they're not in Google Photos.

Speaker 8 (01:38:16):
You know.

Speaker 9 (01:38:17):
People say, oh, yeah, I use Google Photos, and I say, okay,
so show me a photo and I'll show you how
to edit it. And they open the photo and the
editing tools in Google Photos isn't there because they're not
using Google Photos.

Speaker 10 (01:38:30):
They exactly.

Speaker 9 (01:38:33):
So people have to get have to understand to get
in the habit. You take a photo, then you go
back to your home screen and open Google Photos if
you want to see it, and use Google Photos.

Speaker 1 (01:38:46):
And manage your photos from there. So if you want
to delight photos or you know, whatever you want to do,
you have to do it from there. In fact, on
the iPhone, there's an interesting delineation too, is that and
this is an iPhone thing that it doesn't necessarily run
Google Photos all the time in the background like it
only does it like sometimes, and so there could be
a you know, on Android, as soon as you take

(01:39:07):
a picture, it's basically going to be uploaded to the
cloud if you're on Wi Fi or depending on how
you have it. But on iPhone, you know, apps go
to a deep sleep, and so your Google Photos may
not back up immediately. Sometimes for me, you would have
to like open up Google Photos to get it to
do to trigger that backup as well.

Speaker 9 (01:39:25):
Actually you do have to do that on Android as well.
It's just more pronounced on the iPhone. And yeah, turning
on what is it background app refresh doesn't.

Speaker 10 (01:39:37):
Really make a difference.

Speaker 9 (01:39:38):
You do have to open the app in order to
trigger the backup. Then you can close the app and
the backup will continue for at least a certain amount
of time. But yeah, there are some people who install
Google Photos on their iPhone or even on their Android
Samsung and then never open it again. You know, they

(01:40:00):
keep using the app that is the default app for
the phone, and yeah, it doesn't work if you don't
open it.

Speaker 1 (01:40:07):
Yeah, you got to use it. Lets you use it.
So the biggest issue people have is they run out
of space on their phone. So what's the way to
kind of free up space without deleting your pictures, you know,
your important pictures.

Speaker 9 (01:40:22):
Well, that was the second big mistake that I didn't
get to is in deleting people. People take a photo
and they see it in their like Samsung Gallery or
Apple Photos, and they also see it in their Google Photos.
They go to Google Photos and they say, oh, I
don't need it in Google Photos. I'm just going to
keep it on my phone, and they delete, not realizing

(01:40:44):
that using the trash can in Google Photos deletes it
from everywhere. So understanding delete is a huge issue. But
specifically to your question, Google Photos does allow, oh, you
to delete from the device and still see the photo

(01:41:05):
that's in the cloud, that is in your Google Photos account.
Apple Photos does not. Apple Photos is a synchronizing tool.
Take you know, add something to this device, it gets
added to all.

Speaker 10 (01:41:19):
Of your Apple devices.

Speaker 9 (01:41:21):
Delete something from this device, it gets deleted from all.

Speaker 1 (01:41:24):
And that trips up a lot of people because they
think that if they're deleting it from their gallery on
the iPhone, it's deleting, it's not deleting from iCloud. But
those are linked and you have to There is a
setting where you can you know, optimize phone storage where
iCloud will manage that. But yes, if you delete it,
but we'll run out of time. But yeah, so explain
that you know you were containing on.

Speaker 10 (01:41:44):
Your thoughts in Google Photos.

Speaker 9 (01:41:46):
There is an option called free up space. You know,
I have to back up for an individual picture. You
don't have to use the trash can. You can swipe
up and you will see delete from device. That will
delete it from device, leaving it in the cloud so
you won't miss it.

Speaker 1 (01:42:05):
It's like if you had a big video file and
you don't want it to take up storage space on
your device, swipe up, tap that delete from a device.
It'll keep it in Google Photos in the cloud, but
it will free up that storage on your phone. But
then now you're talking about the bigger way that you
can Yeah.

Speaker 9 (01:42:19):
Exactly, but there is a if you want to do
that with all of the photos that are on your phone,
there is a free up space command.

Speaker 10 (01:42:27):
That will delete everything from your phone.

Speaker 9 (01:42:30):
But only for those photos that it knows made it
to the cloud, so you won't be missing anything. However,
please please please make an extra backup somewhere, because Google
Photos is not a backup to me. A backup is
a separate copy, an extra copy that you don't use.

(01:42:52):
Google Photos is meant to be your working copy, the
ones that you edit, change, delete, move, make albums.

Speaker 10 (01:43:00):
If you want to be safe, you need to have
another backup.

Speaker 9 (01:43:04):
I use another cloud service like one drive or dropbox
or Amazon, you know, or you could.

Speaker 10 (01:43:11):
Copy to hard drive.

Speaker 1 (01:43:12):
All right, Chris Gold, thank you so much. Geeks on
Tour geeks on tour dot com, check it out. They've
got great, great tips for using Google Photos. Thanks so
much for joining me today.

Speaker 10 (01:43:24):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:43:24):
All right, coming up, we're going to open up the
feedback right here on rich on Tech. Hey, welcome back
to rich on Tech. Rich on Tech dot tv is
the website. You can send me an email right there,

(01:43:46):
hit the contact button. Let's get through a few things.

Speaker 2 (01:43:50):
Well.

Speaker 1 (01:43:50):
Sarah writes in and says, stupid question. I'm sure, but
why Oh great show and I learned something every week? Oh,
thank you, Sarah. Stupid question. I'm sure, but why can't
the user set up a new wake up name for Alexa?

Speaker 5 (01:44:03):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (01:44:03):
I just man, the amount of times I said at
this show. I feel so bad but you know, I
feel like it's Amazon's issue, Like you shouldn't have a
device that understands what I'm saying, like recognize the person
in your house anyway. Yes, you can change the wake
word on a lot of these devices, but they have
to be very specific words. And so if you have

(01:44:24):
an Alexa, you can open up the Alexa app, select devices,
select your device, device settings, and it says wakeword and
you get your choice of a couple of wake words.
Last I checked, the wake words were ziggy, Echo, Amazon,
or computer and the Ziggy one. Oh gosh, people are
gonna give me a hard time because the Ziggy is

(01:44:45):
a reference to Oh my gosh, I got to find
out what what Ziggy is a reference to. I know, gosh,
I should know this. Don't ask me. I definitely don't know. Okay,
you don't know. I think it's Ziggy Marley, I think
I know. Okay, interesting someone I don't know Ziggy start Ust,

(01:45:06):
David Bowie. I don't know. Yeah, no, I don't know
what that's a reference to. What I know there is
a reference to something. Yeah, it looks like it is
a It is a Yeah, Ziggy start us or the
computer from the TV show quantum leap. Oh it's not
a reference. Oh never mind, it's not Okay, never mind, Okay,

(01:45:27):
now we're just spreading this information. Okay, so never mind,
it's just it's just ziggy anyway. So you can change
the word, but again, it takes a bit for these
computers to be constantly scanning for these words, so you
can't just change it to anything that you want. They
want them to be very specific. Uh so, good, good question.
There a couple of news notes before we get to

(01:45:47):
the actual feedback. Clicks is bringing its iPhone keyboard case
to Android devices. So we talked about this Click's keyboard
case a couple of years ago. They've now sold over
one hundred thousand keyboards. Kind of turns your your phone,
your iPhone into a BlackBerry, like a BlackBerry style keyboard.
So they sold one hundred thousand of these things. Wow.
Now they're expanding to the Pixel nine, the Motorola Razor,

(01:46:11):
and the Samsung Galaxy S twenty five. This adds a
physical keyboard to your phone, so it does make your
phone considerably larger, but you got back lit keys, you
got shortcut keys, no need for charging or bluetooth. It
connects via USBC. They launch in either March or April
or June, and prices is about it looks like about

(01:46:33):
ninety nine to one hundred and thirty nine dollars. So
clicks dot tech if you want to get one. This
was wild Blue Origin. This is you know, the space
crew stuff you know they send, you know, like Jeff
Bezos went on this. This is his you know, going
into outer space. They're going to send six women to
space on their next mission, including Ready Gail King, Katie Perry,

(01:46:59):
and Laurence say Chez, none other than Jeff Bezos's wife
or girlfriend, I'm not sure which one. How wild is
that they're going to space? Would you go to space
bobo on this thing?

Speaker 6 (01:47:11):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:47:11):
I would. You would like tomorrow. If I'm like, look
we got one bobo, this person dropped out, you you're
going you would go?

Speaker 2 (01:47:18):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:47:18):
I would, No problem? Wow, no issues. Okay, it's a
little dicey, isn't it. No, this is the eleven.

Speaker 10 (01:47:27):
I think it's something that not too many people get
the opportunity to do.

Speaker 1 (01:47:30):
The eleventh human space flight for Blue Origin. So you'd
be one of eleven flights. I mean there's eleven. Yeah,
first eleven and there's you know, there's been other people
in space obviously, but anyway, this is happening. Uh yeah,
that's wild. All right, let's see here feedback. Oh my gosh,
Drew from Sailine Valley, California, rights and I rationally switched

(01:47:54):
from a Motorola Android to an iPhone sixteen, specifically for
the satellite texting. I tested it out last week and
it worked flawlessly, connecting to a satellite in about thirty seconds.
I stayed in touch with my wife back in Oregon
with no issues. I've already canceled my inReach plan and
we'll scale back my spot program later this year. Thanks
for the advice on this great new feature. Awesome. Yeah,

(01:48:15):
satellite texting is awesome. I mean the fact that we
can do this is pretty neat. Alejandro from California rites in.
I was looking into satellite Wi Fi and came across
hughes Net. I currently have Spectrum. Should I switch? Is
hues net any good? The reviews seem mixed. No, if
you have Spectrum, if you have that availability, do not
switch to hughes Net. It is not gonna be a

(01:48:35):
good alternative because it's gonna be slower and much more
latency than spectrum. Most of the satellite stuff, except for starlink,
is for people that don't have access to anything else,
like the Huge Net is for people that live in well,
I mean now you have starlink pretty much everywhere, so
always go with that if you're gonna go with satellite,
because it's gonna be the best the best speeds in latency.

(01:48:58):
All right, that's gonna do it. For the episode of
the show. You can find everything I mentioned on my website.
Just go to richontech dot TV. Find me on social media.
I am at rich on tech. Next week we're gonna
talk about the crisis of healthcare misinformation as I google
my ailments on chat TVT and then digital citizenship for
teens and social media. We'll talk about that. Thanks so

(01:49:20):
much for listening. There are so many ways you can
spend your time. I do appreciate you spending it right
here with me. My name is rich Dedmiro. Talk to
you real soon.

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Rich DeMuro

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