CEDIA 2025 smart home tech, Windows 11 upgrade check & Gemini photo tricks (138, September 6, 2025)

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Google Gemini can now restore your old photos and remove
fences from them. Amazon ends a prime shipping perk. I
will end the confusion around that. Highlights from the home
tech show Cedia twenty twenty five plus your tech questions answered.
What's going on? I'm Richdmiro and this is Rich on Tech.

(00:21):
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
the tech should be interesting, useful and fun. With that
in mind, let's open up those phone lines at triple
eight Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven
four to two four one zero one. Give me a

(00:43):
call if you have a question about technology. Email is
also open. Just go to rich on tech dot TV
and hit contact. Rich on tech dot TV hit contact.
I guess you can also just send an email to
hello at richon tech dot TV. Either way it'll make
its way to my inbox. We've got some guests this week,

(01:03):
including Julian Keel, founder and CEO of Points Path. I'm
going to share some tips for smarter travel, including the
tool they make that helps you decide when to book
flights with cash or points you can install it right
into Google Flights. When you search for flights, it'll say
here's the points, that's a better deal, here's the cash

(01:23):
that's a better deal. And of course we'll have you
on the show as well well. This week I was
in Denver, Colorado for CEDIA twenty twenty five. CEDIA have
not been to this show in probably about a decade.
The last time I went it was in Indianapolis, and
it is a show that started out as sort of

(01:45):
the home theater show. So these are all the people
that would install home theaters at rich folks houses, and
it's now become this big show where they show off
just all kinds of technology for the home, but for
still for people that install and all the people surrounding
that business, right the people that sell it, people that
install it, all that kind of stuff. So this is

(02:06):
a trade show not open to the public, but think lighting,
energy management, audio video, outdoor wellness, security systems, and a
lot of the stuff that where you saw at the
show is dealing with, like smarter lighting tied to circadian rhythms.
I know that sounds silly, but the lighting in your

(02:27):
home can now sort of reflect what's going on outside.
When it's time to wake up, the lighting's really bright.
When it's time to go to bed, the lighting gets warmer.
Outdoor living that is a huge, huge growth area for
this industry. You know, people are putting stuff that's typically
inside outside. I mean we've always had a grill outside,
but now we're talking TVs, refrigerators, all that good stuff. Lighting,

(02:49):
better home networks. And also, you know, this is a
new thing that we talked about on the show a
couple months ago. But when I had a leak with
my washer when I was out of town. But that
idea of you can put these censors on your pipes
that will detect if there is a leak, and not
only the leak, but it's also going to tell you, you know,
energy management if you put it on your your electricity stuff,

(03:11):
and then you also have it for your your water
pipes too. About three hundred exhibitors, not as large as CS,
about fifteen to twenty thousand attendees. But here is what
I think, you know, my takeaway. You know, many of
us and I'll get to some of the gadgets I
saw in a second, but many of us live with
like sort of this mashup of just a bunch of
random smart home gadgets that we've purchased. They work with Google,

(03:33):
they might work with Alexa, they might work with Apple,
and you know it works for us, right Like I've
got lighting, I've got some smart speakers, I've got some
you know, smart security stuff, the different cameras. But I
think the idea of this show is you have a
pro come and put all of this stuff in your
home and make it all work together in harmony. And

(03:54):
I think for most of us it feels like that's
probably unattainable because it's very expensive to do that. But
there are a lot of people out there that are
doing this, and they build these multimillion dollar homes and
then they spend another one hundred and fifty three hundred
thousand or more on getting this technology built in. Now,
I will tell you my problem with all this stuff.
In the past, I personally thought it was really interesting

(04:15):
that you would get all this technology, you know, this lighting,
these speakers, and then you have to control it with
like this really old school controller. Right Like when the
phone came along, the phone was just such a better
way of doing these controls and the voice, and so
I always felt like it was funny that you would
have all these people spend so much money on this
high end home technology and then they have to use

(04:37):
this like silly controller straight out of the eighties or
nineties to control it all. But nowadays, I mean that's
getting an upgrade too, all right, So what are some
of the things that I saw? TCL was there. They
were showing off their QM nine TV. This TV was
super bright, their brightest yet. It also has the first
to have Gemini built in, so basically AI built into
the TV, which means you can search it using your

(04:58):
natural language instead of searching, you know, by type. You know,
just by saying the name of a movie. You can
say like, oh, I want that movie where the guy
travels back to the future, and it will or you
can just say, hey, I'm feeling kind of like excited
about the sports season. Give me some great sports movies
from the eighties or whatever, and it'll give you that
kind of information. They also had this Z one hundred

(05:19):
wireless speakers. I get a kick out of that name
because that's a big radio station I grew up with
in New York City. But these are the name of
the speakers Z one hundred. They're wireless speakers and they
auto calibrate in about ten seconds. So they brought me
into this room. You place the speakers wherever you want,
so you plug them into the wall and basically they
are wireless to the TV, but the TV listens for

(05:41):
the speakers. So it sets up kind of like the
perfect wireless setup with these speakers. And it sounded fantastic
and it's doing Dolby autmost so that's amazing. That's going
to save people a lot of headaches with running speaker wire.
They're called flex Connect. By the way, four speakers plus
a sub is about twelve hundred dollars. Let's see what else. Oh,

(06:02):
outdoor TV. So I spent a long time talking to
this representative from a company called Neptune TVs. They make
these outdoor TVs, and he told me what to look
for when you buy an outdoor TV. Sustain brightness, right,
you want a TV that can stay bright, not just
peak knits, which is basically saying, oh, we get to
this brightness, but only for a second. You want something
that can sustain that brightness. Commercial grade panels they last

(06:25):
longer outside minimum of IP fifty four to keep out dugs,
dust bugs, and moisture, and then if there's protective glass,
it should be optically bonded or ventilated. That way you
don't get condensation behind the screen. So ballpark prices a
fifty five inch TV runs you about eleven twelve hundred dollars.

(06:46):
Seventy five inch full sun about forty two hundred dollars
next year. That's expensive lighting. Again, we talked about that,
brands are pushing for this idea of following the sun
so color temperatures to help you get a way, help
you focus when you're working the afternoon and then wind down.
So they have these lights that basically do all that.
And we've seen smart bulbs that can do that, but

(07:08):
now you know these are fixtures that they're putting in
throughout your home, in the bathroom, in the kitchen that
do all that stuff. Let's see I talk to simply safe.
They're making a new outdoor camera. The big thing with
outdoor cameras and security cameras is AI. So AI is
now detecting what's happening on that camera screen or on
that camera you know frame, and then the cloud is

(07:30):
kind of checking, okay, is this typical for their home
or is it you know, is this a familiar face
or is it someone that we should probably flip this
to an operator and then a live agent can come
through and say, hey, what's happening, what's going on? Why
are you on this property? And usually nine times out
of ten the person runs away, but the AI or
the AI the live agent can then you know, call

(07:51):
for backup whatever they need. So we've seen this now,
it's simply safe. Ring has a feature like that. And
then it started with this company called Deep Sentinel. Deep
Sentinel and they were also there. I didn't get to
talk to them, but we did a story with them
a while ago, but they kind of pioneered that idea
of AI live video monitoring. Eero this is the company
that I like for my Wi Fi signal. They have

(08:12):
this new thing called the Eero Signal. This is a
cellular backup module. So if your network at your house
is always going in or out, this is going to
save you and make sure that you're never without internet ever.
So it's a little box that you sort of plug
into your network and it takes in a signal from
all three carriers, a wireless signal from AT and T, Verizon,

(08:33):
a T Mobile and then if your Internet ever goes back,
ever goes out, this just springs into action and just
fills in the gap with a wireless cellular signal. So
it's ninety nine dollars a year for a ten gigabyte
backup total per year, or this is wild for two
hundred dollars a year. You get one hundred gigabytes a

(08:54):
month of backup data. So I guess it just really
depends on how often your your your network goes out,
whether you have Cale or fiber. If it goes out
a lot, you might want to get that two hundred
dollars month a year, or two hundred dollars a year.
If it goes out a little bit, maybe just the
ninety nine dollars a year. That's going to launch early
next year. This was really cool. I spent way too

(09:14):
much time at this. If you look something up, just
look up vesta board. It's a mechanical flip tile message
board that it kind of looks like those old message
boards you would see at the airport. But this is
for your home and so it shows whatever you want.
You can send a little message from your phone. It'll
show a text, it'll show weather, it'll show sports scores,
now playing from Sons and they've sold a big version

(09:36):
of this for the past couple of years for several
thousand dollars. Now they have a new smaller version which
is called the Note, and that's going to sell for
about fifteen hundred dollars, but right now it's on pre
order for about a thousand. And I'm telling you, I
really want this thing. It's just so old school and
retro looking, and the way the little tiles flip to
display the message is just super super cool. I got

(09:58):
to post a video of on my Instagram when I
have it. Let's see gadget that made me smile. The
laundry jet. I did post this on my Instagram at
rich On Tech. This is sort of like a central
vacuum back in the day, but for dirty close. So
these little ports are in your room, you open them
up and it sucks the dirty laundry right into your
laundry room. I mean, who needs this? Come on, are

(10:19):
we really that lazy that you can't put your laundry
in a laundry basket and bring it to the laundry room.
But that's really silly. And then if you want something
that's actually gonna save you money. This company they make
Soul Loucks, makes what's called the EOS. This is a
smart awning, so you install it on your window outside
above it. It's solar powered and basically, when it gets

(10:41):
really hot and the sun comes out, the thing automatically
extends an awning, and then when the sun goes down
or it gets cool, it retracts the awning. So basically
it keeps your glass cool, it cuts the amount of
AC that you need to use, and it's all automatic,
so it's doing everything by itself. And it'll even detect
the wind so if it's too windy, it won't extend.
About one thousand to two thousand dollars. So long story, short,

(11:04):
fun time at CDIA. Lots of cool stuff to see.
I'll put it all on the website. Rich on Tech
dot TV. All right, coming up, Your call is eighty
eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four
to two four one zero one. Welcome back to rich
on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking
technology at triple eight Rich one oh one eight eight

(11:25):
eight seven four to two four one zero one. I
mentioned that I went to Denver this week, and uh,
I gotta say Denver is a city that tries like
so impressed with that city. I wrote about this in
my newsletter that I love public transit, and so anytime

(11:45):
I land in a new city, I always try to
see if I can take public transit to my hotel.
And sure enough, they built this giant airport in the
middle of nowhere. But they said, you know what, We're
gonna make it easy for you. We're gonna put a
train directly from the airport right to downtown. And by
the way, it's only gonna cost you ten bucks. Now,
if you traveled that far, it was about a forty

(12:06):
five minute train ride. If you travel that in any
other city, you're talking, you know, fifty sixty if you're
in you know, Los Angeles or New York, one hundred
dollars uber ride. Right, this was ten bucks. And you know,
they accommodate the luggage and all that because they know
everyone's going right to the to the airport, which, by
the way, is incredible, huge airport, beautiful, brand new as
I don't know. Let's see, what was a Denver airport built.

(12:29):
Let's see it was built in uh Okay. Well, now,
there's no way nineteen ninety five that can't be right. Okay, well,
maybe it's been there for a while, but anyway, it
looked new. They were renovating it. Anyway, I say this
because what's that they remodeled it? Maybe they remodeled it. Yeah,
new Airport was a massive undertaking, eleven thousand workers, five

(12:51):
billion dollars, sixteen months behind schedule, and significantly over budget.
What isn't over budget when it's you know, built. Anyway,
I just say this all because I just love visiting
cities that try so hard to like be a great city,
and it just has this fun vibe like it's just
kind of this outdoor place. So anyway, I loved it.
I was only there for two days, but I really

(13:11):
really enjoyed it. Didn't get to do anything outdoors, but
now I want to go back. But I will tell
you I had one of the best steaks of my life,
best stakes of my life at this restaurant. It was
called Guard and Grace, And I don't know what they did,
they they did it perfectly and it was just so good.
That kudos to you, because I do like to test

(13:32):
a steakhouse when I go to a new city and
they can't all get them right, and this one was perfect,
Like I'm talking perfect. Anyway, if you're in Denver, check
it out. There's also one in Houston apparently, and they're
building one in Charlotte. Okay, so I talked I want
to talk about this because it's really important Amazon. There's
a lot of talk going around about how Amazon is
ending this free Prime shipping outside your home, Okay, and

(13:56):
there's a lot of confusion around it. But let me
just explain what this is all Aboutazon is ending what
they called their invite program. Okay, So if you were
a Prime member in the past, you were able to
invite just random people to share your membership for free. So,
for instance, I had two family members back on the
East Coast that just basically had free Amazon Prime. So

(14:19):
because you had a Prime membership, they said, oh, you
could share it with like I think it was like
two or three or four people, whatever it was. And
so I used that and I said, hey, why pay
for Prime when they're letting you do this. This was
not illegal, It was not like under the table. It
was like a program that Amazon had and this was
for many, many years. So I think my family members
had free Prime for like ten years. Prime is like

(14:40):
one hundred and fifty bucks a year, so they were
saving a significant amount of money. Not anymore. Amazon says
it's ending that program as of October first, twenty twenty five. Now,
if you were part of this program, you already know
because you're frustrated because you got an email from Amazon
that said, hey, the free ride is over. Now you
got to pay for your own Prime membership. It wasn't
It's not like they've found people that were doing this

(15:01):
illegally or under the table or whatever. They are just
ending something that legitimately you could do in the past,
and now they're just saying, no, you can't do this anymore.
So invitees will You'll have to sign up for your
own Prime. They are giving you a discount. It is
fifteen dollars for the first year, but then after that
it's fifteen dollars a month, so it's like eighty five

(15:22):
percent off. Yeah, it's a very good deal for the
first year, because they're saying, we get it. This is
a big change. You're going from paying nothing to paying
for your own Prime. So they do have what's called
Amazon Family, which is replacing the Amazon Invitee program, but
only people that live at your same address qualify for this,
So that means you can share with one other adult

(15:44):
in your house. So you know, if your mom lived
with you, sure you can share with her, but it's
mostly for like a spouse or a partner whatever. And
then you can also share with children and teenagers, but
that's very limited. Like children, yes, like what kid is
gonna have their own Prime account? But teenagers they really
want them to have their own. So it's kind of
like the way I see this. Streaming services started to

(16:06):
crack down on password sharing, and now Amazon's doing the same.
Why because they want to grow the memberships. They know
that there's probably another fifty million people out there who
knows sharing Prime memberships that now they're going to force
a certain percentage of them to sign up for their own,
which means more money for Amazon. So you know, if

(16:28):
you're one of those people, Rick writes in what is
the name of the service that will help keep track
of your subscriptions and ask you if you want to
request cancelation. I've got so many out there, I've lost track, Rick.
It is called Rocket Money. You link up all of
your accounts, your credit card, your bank accounts, and then
it finds your subscriptions, your recurring subscriptions, and then you

(16:49):
can decide if you want to keep them or cancel them.
It will also help you do that as well. Again,
it's called rocket Money. It is a really nice app.
I found an app that I like better. Actually now
it doesn't help you cancel subscriptions, but it does help
you keep everything in one place with your with your finances.
The difference is Rocket Money is free. The new one

(17:10):
I found is not. It's called monarch Money. But I
will tell you I am completely obsessed. If you want
to track all of your bank accounts, do all your budgeting,
see your net worth, monarch Money is absolutely incredible. I'll
put a link to it on the website rich on
tech dot TV. All right, eighty to eight rich one
O one eight eight eight seven four to two four

(17:32):
one zero one. Your calls next, Welcome back to rich
on tech rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking
technology at triple eight rich one oh one. That's eight
eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Phone lines are open. Email is also an option. Just
go to the website rich on tech dot TV. It's

(17:53):
also where I take great notes. So if you want
to anything. I mentioned that restaurant in Denver, the money
app that I like, it's all there. This is episode
one eight Rich on tech dot TV. All right, let's
go to Tim in Huntington Beach. You're on with Rich.

Speaker 2 (18:10):
Well, thank you, Rich, I love your show.

Speaker 3 (18:12):
Thank you calling today because I have a very old
computers two thousand and two. It's a desktop as half
a terrabite of hard memory, and Windows of course is
telling me that they're ready to update by October. By
the way, I pay a monthly for Windows. The question

(18:33):
is will lift older computer be able to handle Windows eleven.

Speaker 1 (18:38):
I don't think so. I don't think that it will.
But there is a way that you can check. There's
an app that you can download called the PC health
Check app. So, yeah, PC health Check app. I'll link
it up. Just make sure you get the official one
because there might be some imposters out there. But it's
called the PC health Check. Once you install that, it

(19:00):
will scan your computer. And I'm doing this right now,
and it will scan your computer and tell you if
it's a fit for Windows eleven. So I'm pressing check
now now. My computer already has Windows eleven, so it's
saying great, news it's already there. So this PC meets
Windows eleven requirements. But that's what I would do. And

(19:21):
basically it tells you exactly which requirements your computer meets
in which one it does not. So it says, you know,
there's a couple things. The main thing that Windows eleven
needs is this secure boot thing and this TPM two
point zero, and that basically means that your computer is
much more secure than it has been in the past.

(19:42):
And so a lot of the older computers do not
support that, but they might, so, you know. So here's
what it says. This PC supports secure boot, TPM two
point zero is enabled on this PC. The processor is
supported for Windows eleven. There's at least four gigs of
system memory, the system disc is sixty four gigs or larger,

(20:03):
and the processor has two or more. Course, so those
are the things that it's looking for on your computer.
Do you think your computer meets those specs or no?

Speaker 4 (20:13):
I'm not sure.

Speaker 3 (20:14):
I'm not even sure a gigabyte was available in two
thousand and two, but I can check.

Speaker 1 (20:19):
Yeah. Now, there are some ways to force Windows eleven
onto a unsupported PC, and I'll link that up as well.
There's a there's an article, great article from edbo at
zd net. He explains how he can do that, and
I've got I've got two articles that explain how to
do that. So I would say for a two thousand
and two computer, there's two things you can do. By

(20:41):
the way, you can try to force upgrade Windows eleven
on it. I don't think it's going to run very
well at all, but it may. The second thing is
that you can you can sign up for one more
year of support directly through Windows. Have you heard about that?

Speaker 3 (20:58):
No?

Speaker 1 (20:58):
Okay. So if you go back back into your search
and you type in Windows Update, okay, and if you
go to check for updates, there should be a screen there.
I don't have it on my computer, but in your
Windows Update screen it should say that you can extend
updates for one more year, and you can go through
and you can sign up. In the way they do that,

(21:19):
they give you three options. You can either pay thirty
dollars for the additional year and they'll give you through
October of twenty twenty six. You can redeem it's a
certain amount of Being Rewards points and you may have those.
If you just search Being Rewards, you might have those
like already banked, so I think you have to redeem
like a thousand or two thousand of them. You might

(21:39):
even have them already. And the third thing you can
do is just upload some of your data to one
drive and it will give you an extra year if
you do that. So those are the three things. I'm
gonna link it all up, Tim, because I think a
lot of people are in your same shoes right now.
So does that help?

Speaker 3 (21:55):
Yeah, that helps a lot. Thank you so much.

Speaker 4 (21:57):
It gives me some recourse. You're at least to search it.

Speaker 1 (22:01):
And if you still want that, yeah, if you still
want to use this computer, you can also transform it
into a Chrome os Flex computer as well, So I'll
put that link as well. Lots of options. I mean,
there's so many things you can do. I know everyone's
in this kind of like turning point with Windows where
you know they're going to stop supporting Windows ten in October.

(22:21):
So that's coming up next month. Wow, we're already in September.
So October fourteenth, twenty twenty five, Windows will no longer
provide free software updates. So here's the thing. Windows ten
will continue to work after that date. The problem is
you are putting yourself, your data, and your computer at
risk of any sort of hacking issue or security issue,

(22:43):
and then programs are going to start saying, no, we
don't run on that Windows because it's no longer supported.
So if you want to continue getting those software updates,
I'm going to put all the links on the website
rich on tech dot TV. This just gave me a
great idea for my TV segment because so many people
are emailing me right now about this this changeover, and
I really need to give all the options. I mean,

(23:04):
I just laid them out for Tim, but I know
that there's so many more. You know, everyone wants to
see their path, like what they're going to do, and
it's a little bit differently for everyone. So I'll lay
it all out. I'll link it up on the website
rich on tech dot TV. It'll be there in the
next couple of minutes or so. Thanks for the call, Tim,
really appreciate it. Let's see what do we have a
couple of minutes here? I think I could take another
call right, Let's go to h Drew in Orange County.

(23:27):
This looks like a pretty simple one.

Speaker 5 (23:28):
Drew.

Speaker 6 (23:29):
What's up, hey, Rich how you doing glad you had
good time in Denver. I hope you were able to
eat some of those good restaurants from the Denver Airport.

Speaker 1 (23:37):
Oh my god. Yeah, Well, funny you should say that
I ended up going into the United Club because I
needed to work. I had like three hours. But I
loved it because it had it was like kind of
based on a lodge, kind of like a you know,
wilderness lodge, so it was pretty cool. But I spent
like three hours sitting there writing my newsletter, so it
was great. Unfortunately I did not take advantage of the

(24:00):
free drinks, which I really.

Speaker 7 (24:02):
At least the view was good.

Speaker 6 (24:03):
I know that.

Speaker 1 (24:04):
Yeah, the view and the and the snacks were great.
So yes, what can I help you with? TROW?

Speaker 5 (24:08):
Yeah?

Speaker 6 (24:08):
My question is I'm no longer in the day to
day business environments, so I really don't need a computer.
I don't want to buy a new one, but I'm
thinking about, uh getting a tablet that I can just use.

Speaker 7 (24:22):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (24:23):
I'm not doing any access databases or big Excel spreadsheets
any more in my life, thank god.

Speaker 1 (24:28):
Uh, thank god.

Speaker 6 (24:29):
I'm looking at me. Yeah, right, so I'm looking at
the Samsung Galaxy nine Plus and the Galaxy s tn
f E. Just like to get your thoughts on on
the two of those.

Speaker 1 (24:42):
Uh, let's see that. So the the fee is the
one i'd recommend. That's the one that I've used, and
it's basically the It's it's perfectly fine. It's been out
for a while, so it's not going to be the
most powerful. But if you're are you what are you
doing on this thing? Watching videos and just some some
emails and searching the web?

Speaker 6 (24:58):
Yeah, I'll do I'll do some emails, YouTube, read the
La Times. Uh you know.

Speaker 1 (25:04):
Yeah, I mean it's gonna be great. It's gonna be
great for all those things. I think the fee is
probably the way go. The A nine plus is I'm
thinking it's cheaper. Let's see that.

Speaker 6 (25:15):
One is got a bigger screen, I think.

Speaker 1 (25:18):
Yeah, but it's you know what, this one, I wouldn't
recommend this one because it's gonna be it's probably gonna
be too too underpowered for you, Like you're gonna get
frustrated with this. So I would just spend a little
bit extra and go with that fee model. It's gonna
it's gonna be a little bit more expensive. But I
think if you're using this as like your main device.
You're gonna be happy you did that because it's gonna
have just a little bit more horsepower and features that.

(25:40):
I think the screen is gonna be better, like just
everything's gonna be better about it. I'd say go with
that way.

Speaker 7 (25:45):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (25:45):
My only downside is it is a little bulkier than
you know, a standard kind of iPad. But it's not
a deal breaker. It's fine. It's just a little heavy.
That's it. That's my only downside. But I think it
all right, And you don't.

Speaker 6 (25:58):
I'm not flowing on airplane about carrying it anymore.

Speaker 1 (26:00):
Okay, but you don't you don't want an iPad, do you?
You want Samsung specifically?

Speaker 6 (26:04):
Yeah, I had an iPad and I don't know. I
just fill constraint with the the Apple locations.

Speaker 1 (26:11):
Oh I hear you, yep, Yeah, I get it totally. Okay. Well,
I think the the fe is gonna be the way
to go, and I think you're gonna enjoy it.

Speaker 6 (26:19):
Drew, hey Rich, thanks a bunch, enjoying the show and
have a great week.

Speaker 1 (26:23):
All right, Thanks you too. You know, the the Samsung
Fi models, they are the kind of you know, Samsung
comes out with a lot of lineups. So they've got
the A models, which are their basic, like their cheapest
I hate to say the word cheap, but it's just
like the least expensive. Then you've got the S models, right,
so anything that says S like the Samsung Galaxy S

(26:44):
twenty five Ultra, that's their top of the line, the
S models. Then you've got the Z models. Z is
all of their foldable models. And then you've got the
F E, which when it first came out from Samsung,
that meant fan edition, but now they've just dropped that
moniker that doesn't stand for anything. But now they come
out with an FE version of most of their devices,

(27:04):
whether it's their earbuds, whether it is their tablets, whether
it's their phones, their foldables, they all have an F E,
and F E means it's not going to be the
best of the best, but it's going to be pretty
darn close. And for most casual users, the FI is
going to save you a lot of money. It might
be a little bit of last year's technology, but it's
going to be just as good, and ninety nine point

(27:26):
nine percent of people are not going to know the difference.
They're only going to notice it in their pocketbook or wallet,
because you're going to save a bunch of money. With
that said, With that said, Samsung this week came out
with the S twenty five FE. So again, S twenty
five FE launched this week. It's six hundred and fifty dollars.

(27:47):
Positioned as an attainable flagship, so it has many of
the S twenty five features. Of course, Galaxy AI is
built in. It's got Gemini, it's got a twelve megapixel
front camera, It's got all the lenses you need for
the camera, all the I mean, it's just it's got
a great camera on it. I'm not kidding. I've tested
the fees and it's like I almost can't tell the difference.

(28:08):
I'm like, wait a second, how is this so good
for such an inexpensive price. You're getting a really nice
Samsung device. They've got the audio eraser built in. They've
got auto trim for video editing. It's got a forty
nine hundred million battery, which is really big, super fast charging,
wireless charging, a six point seven inch screen, maybe not
their top of the line screen, but still gonna be

(28:29):
really good. It's got an aluminum frame, IP sixty eight,
water resistance seven years of operating system updates, comes in navy, jet, black, white,
and Icy blue, and it comes with six months free
of Google's AI. They're higher end AI. So again, if
you're looking to get into those Samsung devices, you don't
want to pay the high prices of the foldables or

(28:52):
the the s line. The fe is a really nice
way to have a really well equipped Samsung with all
the things you need at a decent price. And by
the way, they get discounted too, So I would not
pay that six hundred and fifty dollars. Look for a discount,
education discount, first responder discount. All those discounts are out there.

(29:12):
Trade is eighty eight Rich one oh one eighty eight
seven four to two four one zero one richontech dot TV,
Welcome back to rich on Tech Rich DeMuro here. Fifteen
years later, Instagram finally has a proper iPad app. Why

(29:33):
did it take so long? Well, for many years, uh,
Facebook Meta, they said, Oh, we don't need an Instagram
app on the iPad. Nobody cares, nobody wants it, nobody's
asking for it. There's two little people using it. Well,
now it's here, so clearly something changed. What changed? Oh,
TikTok changed because the app opens directly to a feed

(29:55):
of reels, not your standard Instagram feed, so you can
sol access all that stuff. But as soon as you
open up the app, boom, you're in it. You're into videos,
so that is the main thing. Let's see bigger screen.
Comments appear next to videos. Dms show the inbox plus
chats side by side. So I guess that's good if

(30:15):
you like that idea of like writing back to all
your messages on your tablet. Meta says the same layout
is coming soon to Android tablets. But you know, the
message is pretty clear. They are all in on these reels.
They are really trying to push these reels. I'm going
to tell you about the how Google Gemini has some
new tricks with photos. It's pretty incredible, like really incredible.

(30:40):
But let's go to uh, let's see here. Let's go
to Gary in Lagodo, Miguel Gary, you're on with Rich?

Speaker 7 (30:46):
Yes, Rich, I can tell you. I got back from
Arizona on Sunday. I was over there for a week
and a half and I was absolutely depressed on where
are the areas that Verison used to cover? The I
don't cover anymore? And I would like to know about
these satellite phones. Maybe you can tell me about what's

(31:07):
going on with what T Mobile and right and now have.
Now how abine teens here are they're gonna be coming
up with satellite phone.

Speaker 1 (31:16):
Well, okay, so it's not a satellite phone per se,
but it's satellite backup. So let me let me explain.
So the carriers, they all have a level of satellite connectivity. Okay,
whether it's AT and T, whether it's Verizon, whether it's
T Mobile. Now here's what makes this a little complicated. Okay,
you got to start at the top level, which is

(31:37):
your phone. If you have a pixel, a pixel nine
or a Pixel ten, or you have an iPhone, iPhone
fourteen and up, you have satellite connectivity built into your
phone without your carrier even coming into the picture. So
let's just say you had a Pixel nine. You're in
the middle of nowhere, like you said in Arizona, and

(31:58):
there's no signal from your carrier. Your pixel would still
allow you to send and receive a message, and it's
an emergency message on the pixel at this point, I believe.
But on the iPhone you'd be able to send an
I message. You just be able to send your message
as you usually would. So that's at the top level

(32:19):
where the phone itself is offering you that added layer
of satellite connectivity. Then you have the carriers, so this
is much more dependent on your plan. So let's say
you have Verizon and you have to have a certain
phone by the way, so it's not every it's not
every phone that supports it. But let's say you're on Verizon,

(32:39):
You've got a Samsung phone. If you go into your settings,
it will tell you that you have satellite from your
carrier as well. And so you can look into your
settings if you go into your settings on your Android
network and Internet and then go into your SIM and
I believe if you tap your sin your sim, it
should show you this satellite connectivity and whether you have

(33:00):
that on your device. It's interesting because again it's like
it's a little bit confusing because the phones have them,
but also the carriers have them. So T Mobile let
me go through them. T Mobiles working with SpaceX, so
they are really pushing this, which means a lot of
phones are supported, a little bit of data is supported,

(33:22):
and coming soon calls are going to be supported, but
that's still a ways off. But at the very least
you might be able to. You know, the main thing
you want to be able to do is get in
touch with nine one one, whether that's through a call,
whether that's through a message that you send them with
emergency help. AT and T is partnering with something called
AST Space Mobile, and they have launched some of their

(33:42):
satellites in the US, and you know, you have to
have a compatible phone for this, and so AT and
T has their own flavor, and then Verizon they've rolled
it out. You probably saw during the Super Bowl last
year they had a big commercial. They're partnering with Skylow
and AST Space Wars, so some of the same companies
that AT and T is using. But again they have

(34:04):
satellite text messaging on select Android phones. So it really
depends on both your phone and your carrier. Your phone
may offer satellite, or your carrier may offer satellite, or
they may both offer satellite. And then there's a third option.
T Mobile is letting anyone sign up for SpaceX. They

(34:27):
call it TE Satellite is their brand name, no matter what.
So if you want to just pay for satellite connectivity
on your phone, you can you can go to T
Mobile and just sign up. I think it's like twenty
bucks a month. And now here's the caveat about all
of this satellite messaging and satellite connectivity. It is pretty slow.
It's not something where you just like you know, boom,

(34:49):
you send a message. It takes two seconds, it goes through.
I think T mobile satellite is probably the best out
of all of them right now. But you've got to
hold your phone up. You've got to angle it. You've
got to have a clear vision of clear view of
the sky. You hold your phone there, you type out
your message. It says, hold on, hold on, hold on, Okay,
we're sending, we're sending, we're sending. Okay, sent. Now move

(35:10):
your phone a little bit. Follow the satellites in the sky. Okay,
we're waiting for a message, waiting, waiting, wait, okay, it
came back. So it's not a perfect system right now.
But like you said, Gary, if you're in the middle
of nowhere, if you're hiking, if you're a hiker, if
you're a biker, if you are someone who's always camping
out in the middle of nowhere, and you want that
that little comfort blanket of knowing that if something ever

(35:33):
happened that's really bad. You would be able to at
the very least get in touch with emergency services or
send your location to someone that can then send help.
But again, check your carrier, check your phone. Check to
see if you have satellite availability, because you might be
able to breathe asier when you're out. And about eighty
eight rich one oh one eighty eight seven four to

(35:54):
two four one zero one. Coming up, I'll tell you
how Gemini can restore old photos and even remove right
here on rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology at
triple eight rich.

Speaker 5 (36:10):
One oh one.

Speaker 1 (36:11):
That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one
zero one. The website for the show rich on Tech
dot tv. There you can do a lot of stuff.
You can sign up for the newsletter, you can see
the show notes, you can watch my TV segments, and
you can also read my newsletter. I already mentioned that

(36:32):
you can watch the weekly show. I've got a show
called rich on Tech Weekly, And uh, let's see what
else can you do there? Oh, you can listen to
the radio show after so you can subscribe to the podcast.
If you're not just search rich on Tech in your
favorite audio app. It is right there and coming up
later we are going to have Oh, this is a
great guest. I'm always booking some sort of like you know,

(36:55):
flight or something, and you know, it was just I
was just walking my family through a flight that we're
booking together and up and then do that. We've got
Julian Keel later in the show to talk about points Path.
This is an award flight search engine that basically when
you're on Google Flights, it'll tell you if you should
book with points or if you should book with dollars,

(37:16):
which one's a better value for your money. So we'll
have him on a little bit later in the show,
but first you have to try this. This is just
every so often there comes a feature that is just
so cool that when I am wowed by it, I
want to share it with you and make sure you're
aware of this. So Gemini, that is Google's version. I
hate to say this, but it just helps people understand

(37:37):
what it is. But that's basically Google's version of chat
GBT Gemini. It was called barred when it first came out.
Now it's called Gemini and you can access it. People
think that you can only access Google's AI on an
Android phone. That is not true. You can download the
Gemini app right now for the iPhone. Make sure you
get the right one. There's also a Gemini cryptocurrency app.

(38:01):
This is you know, make sure you're getting the Google
Gemini AI app and the official one. But anyway, once
you have that, you can do a whole bunch of things.
You can search, you can ask you questions, you know,
all the stuff you can do on chat GBT. But
where Google has truly pulled ahead is in images, not
just creating images, but also working with photos that you

(38:24):
already have. So they had this big update okay called
Nana Nano banana, Nano banana. I know it's silly, but
Google Gemini when it got this Nano banana upgrade, which
is just a silly name. I don't know if they
just came up with that name. I think Nano is
some sort of like tech term. But banana, I think

(38:44):
they just had fun with just rhymed with nano. Well
does it wait, nano banano, No, it doesn't, Nano banana
doesn't rhyme. Anyway, when they came out with this upgrade,
people went nuts because not only can it reimagine photos
in any way you want to do, but it can
maintain your look as you edit. So most of these

(39:07):
AI image generators, they completely generate a new image right
you feed it an image. It just recreates that image
from scratch with the changes that you want. What Google
is now doing with is nano banana. It is changing
the actual image, so it's keeping the elements of the
image intact, and then it's just changing the stuff that
you want, which makes it very powerful. So I tell

(39:29):
you that because there's two things that you need to
try right now. Number one, it can restore an old photo.
So if you have a faded or damaged image, the
AI will bring back the color and detail. So you
can do this right now for free. Go to Gemini
dot Google dot com, tap create image and then tap

(39:51):
the plus sign. Upload your photo and then type in
restore this photo. So you can take an old black
and white photo, you can take a damage photo. You
can take any kind of picture from the past, put
it in there and ask AI to restore it. Now.
Is it going to be perfect? No, But is it
going to do a pretty good job? Yes? Is it free? Yes?
Are there a million apps out there that can do this, yes,

(40:12):
but a lot of them cost money. This is free,
and it's there's no there that's going to say a
word I probably shouldn't say on the radio, but it doesn't.
There's no like ads, there's nothing on the screen. It's
not trying to sell you anything. It just does what
it needs to do. So that's number one. You can

(40:32):
also do something like restore this photo to look like
a modern color photo while keeping all original details, so
that is number one. Number two. Finally, back in twenty seventeen,
Google announced they showed this thing on stage at one
of their events, where they said, this is our dream
for pictures to be able to edit them like this,

(40:53):
And they showed a picture of a kid playing baseball.
And if you've ever had a kid in little league
or baseball, you know that it's always behind a fence
that you're watching the action. And so Google showed the
fence and then it showed the fence dissolving away and
seeing the kid there playing baseball, and they said, this
is our dream, this is what we're trying to get towards.
Why can't we just ask a photo editor to remove

(41:16):
the fence and it removes it and guess what. It
took a couple of years. It's twenty twenty five. They
announced this back in twenty seventeen, but the promise is here.
They have delivered on that promise. You can now remove
fences from a photo. It is incredible. I did a
whole bunch of them this morning. If you want to
see the examples, go to rich on Tech on Instagram,

(41:38):
go to my stories, and it is quite incredible. I
have a picture of my kid looking at an animal
through a fence. Fence is gone now it just looks
like the kid and the animal are just face to face.
Another one where this is this big, complicated fence is
in front of this alleyway home. It's got all these
things in the background. I don't know, statues, a heart, plants,

(42:02):
all this stuff. Tin Man, I don't know why they
have a tin Man statue, but it's all erased the
fence and it looks perfect. Another one, my kid is
looking out over the Hudson River and there's a big
fence in front of him. Took away the whole fence
except for the top rail. And then finally I did
the actual dream photo, which is your kid playing baseball.

(42:23):
Can you remove the fence in front of him playing baseball.
Sure enough, it did it unbelievable. So if you want
to do this, you can do this again on the app,
or you can do it on your desktop. So Gemini
dot Google dot com, upload the photo and just press
that image button and say erase the fence, and just
try it. I mean, it's quite incredible what you can do.

(42:44):
And it's just I get it. It's you know, do
you need this every day? Do you need this all
the time? No, but the ability to now restore photos
and to remove fences from photos simply and easily is
pretty incredible to me. It really is. And the fact
that it's free is just really really amazing. So if
you haven't played with Gemini and the Image generation, just

(43:05):
try it. Just that's your homework today. Just try it.
Auto writes in I love the show and I tried
calling but couldn't get through. I've been downloading MP three's
and adding details in Windows File Explorer for a few files.
Everything saves except the year. Restarting didn't help, and the
files aren't marked read only here. Use a program called

(43:29):
MP three tag. MP three tag. This program has been
around forever. It is kind of like the you know,
the Universal Tag Editor for Windows. So it adds all
that metadata to your MP three So if you're still,
you know, building an MP three collection, just use this
and basically it will let you have full control over everything.

(43:52):
So file name, the title, the artist, the album, the track,
the year, the genre, whatever you want to do. What
else can you put in comments directory? I guess that's
where it's located. Disc number, You can change the album, artwork,
the composer. I mean, this is like one of those
things where if you really want to make your collection exact,

(44:17):
this is what you need. And so it is Let's
see is it free? It is free and they've got it.
It's uh, oh, let's see they've Windows is the main area.
So they've got it for free for Windows and it
says MP three for Mac. Are you looking? Oh, you
can even get it for Mac now, So there you go.

(44:38):
So you can get it for Mac or Windows. So
if you have your own MP three collection, you want
to make sure that all the information on there is correct.
You can do that, by the way. It all you
don't have to type it all in yourself. You can
also use a look up database so they connect to
these databases like discogs, music Brains and free dB which

(44:59):
lets you all automatically tag and download cover art for
your music library. So this just gives you a lot
of a lot of options, and it is free as
far as I can tell. And they just updated it
August fifteenth, twenty twenty five. It was updated, so it's
not like a you know, it's a program that when
you look at it, you're like, Okay, this looks a
little old school, but it's still being actively updated, which

(45:20):
is really nice. So if you really like it, I
guess you can donate it. But MP three tag has
been around for twenty years now, so you can support
you know, you can give them a couple bucks if
you want to support them. I always like that. I
love when people have a program like that and they
you know, they just keep it updated and they say, look,
I just love to do this. I want this out there.
But if you can donate, donate, that'd be amazing. MP

(45:44):
three tag dot de MP three tag dot de. I'll
put the link on the website. Rich on tech dot
tv once again, this is episode one thirty eight. Al R,
I'm looking at my things that I tell you to
do every week let's see, I already told you about
the podcast. I already told you about the newsletter. The

(46:06):
newsletter is really the thing that I think is the
best way to keep in touch. You know, I've done
a bunch of the Instagram. I mean really, at this point,
here's where I'm updating. I'm updating Instagram and I'm updating
the newsletter. That is like the two best ways, and
of course this radio show the three best ways to
keep in touch with what I'm talking about. And you'd
be surprised. I'm not kidding. I get emails every single day,

(46:29):
a lot of them from you. And I got this
email this morning from someone, and I said, I can't
believe I almost can't believe it because they asked me
a question. They basically asked, Hey, do you have a
recommendation for any app that can clean up my iPhone?
Like the storage Now. I talked about it at length
on the radio show last week, I did a segment

(46:50):
on KTLA on TV. I posted it to my social
media and what else the podcast, I mean, the newsletter,
I mean everywhere. I was all over this. By the way,
the app is called Clever Cleaner, all over it, and
I said this person clearly does not follow me anywhere anyway.
How did they find me? How did they email me

(47:12):
on my website without even noticing the large giant blog
post that says, here's my best cleaner for your iPhone,
but anyway, it's called clever cleaner. Uh eighty eight rich
one oh one eight eight eight seven four two four
one zero one rich on tech dot tv. I'll tell
you how you can get free Microsoft three sixty five

(47:34):
Personal if you're a college student. Coming up next, really,
welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging
out with you talking technology. Well, sure, okay, you got
a little bit of me and Bobo chatting. I'm leaving
that in a podcast. Do you really have to edit

(47:55):
the podcast?

Speaker 5 (47:56):
You don't.

Speaker 1 (47:56):
You don't have to do too much. Do you like
most of the it sticks in?

Speaker 5 (47:59):
Right?

Speaker 1 (48:00):
What's that?

Speaker 8 (48:00):
Just take commercials out?

Speaker 1 (48:01):
Yeah? Oh wait a second, don't tell people that. No,
but they get replaced with other commercials. Yeah, otherwise you'd
have commercials on commercials.

Speaker 8 (48:13):
Pretty much, and it'll be longer than a radio show.

Speaker 1 (48:16):
Here's the thing I mean, I mean, yeah, okay, I'm
not gonna get into that. Let's go to Oscar in
uh Oscar in Winchester. You're on with Rich.

Speaker 2 (48:26):
By Rich. I've got a Windows ten desktop system and
I have over I use the Chrome browsers. I have
over fifty windows open, and each window has ten or

(48:47):
more tabs on it. I would like to be able
to bookmark all those you know, windoors with tabs, so
that I can click on a window to reopen it
and it opens with all the tabs. Yeah, and also

(49:10):
to be able to access them individually, because with all
those that I have open, I want to clean up
the Chrome installation that I have with all those open windows,
because it's slowing down my system. So I want to
put them all into bookmarks other than the regular Windows bookmark.

(49:37):
And I've got a couple of questions after you're done.

Speaker 1 (49:40):
A couple of questions after I'm done.

Speaker 2 (49:42):
I don't know questions about that, but question.

Speaker 1 (49:46):
So your your main question is number one, what do
you track it across fifty windows with ten tabs each?
Just various topics and things.

Speaker 2 (49:56):
I do marketing, and I don't close. You know, you're
just keeping doors when when I opened up and that
sort of stuff.

Speaker 1 (50:04):
You're keeping track of a lot of stuff, right, Okay.

Speaker 2 (50:07):
So it's almost like my my like my storage. Yeah,
because so I can go back to it, you know, quickly.

Speaker 1 (50:14):
Sure? Okay, So bottom line, you want to be able
to open up multiple tabs at once quickly and easily
and have those remembered as well.

Speaker 2 (50:22):
I want to be able to save them right first.

Speaker 7 (50:26):
Of all.

Speaker 2 (50:28):
With with the window so close you know, each of
those windows, and close the tabs with them, right so
when I click on that window and reopen it, it's
open the tabs.

Speaker 1 (50:41):
Okay. Well, that I'm not sure as possible to do.
I I don't know if a way to easily do that,
but I can tell you what I do that in
two methods that you that might work for you. Number one,
I mean the easiest thing. Now you said you didn't
want to keep these in the Chrome folders or what.
You didn't want to keep these in the Chrome, but.

Speaker 2 (50:58):
You know, I don't care folder. It goes into just
so that I can reopen them as I need them.

Speaker 1 (51:07):
Okay. So I think I think there's two things you
can do here that that make this pretty easy. So
Chrome has Number one, you can use a folder in
your bookmark. So I've got a folder with seventy five
bookmarks inside, and I have it on my bookmark bar
and basically it you know, when I write click it, it
says open up all seventy five bookmarks and it gives

(51:31):
you the option to open in a new window. So
that's number one. I think that's probably the easiest way
to do it. You save these.

Speaker 2 (51:39):
One thing about that, it does not have them all
as one folder. You know, the tabs are not all
on one as one window.

Speaker 1 (51:52):
Well it does online. I just did it.

Speaker 2 (51:56):
If you yeah, yes, you have the window with all
the tabs in it.

Speaker 1 (52:01):
Yep, just did it. So now the tabs are not
gonna be Now if you're trying to save the state
of the tab like let's say you have something in
there and you're trying to close that window and reopen it,
that's not gonna work. That's not gonna happen. You're gonna
be You're gonna be opening these up fresh each time.
So that's the number one way to do it. That's
probably the easiest way to do it. So what you

(52:22):
would do is in Chrome, you would just create a
folder and then you would put all those you know,
you said you have fifty windows with ten ten bookmarks
in each one, So you would just put those bookmarks
in that in that folder, and then you right click
that folder and it gives you the option to open
a new window. So once you open that in a
new window, all those tabs are gonna open, and you've

(52:43):
got that in that instance of all those tabs in
one place. The other way you can do it is
they have this feature on Chrome called tab groups. So
if you create, go to the left hand side, it
looks like four little squares tap tab groups. Create new
tab group, and now you can put in all the tabs.

(53:04):
You can put all the bookmarks in there, and they
call you know, as tabs, and then you say it
says move to new group, Move group to new window.
So once you put them all in you say move
to new window, it'll open up in that new window.
Those are the two ways to do it. The other
app i'd recommend is called Raindrop dot Io that might
also be worth looking into. Eight to eight rich one

(53:25):
o one eighty eight seven four to two four one
zero one. Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich Demiro
here hanging out with you, talking technology. Triple eight rich
one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two
four one zero one if you have a question you're
trying to decide between something, looking for an app, whatever
it is, comment, maybe we'll take a few of those. Uh,

(53:48):
go to the website rich on tech dot tv. You
can also send me an email there. I mentioned I
was at CEDIA Expo twenty twenty five in Denver, Colorado
this week.

Speaker 7 (53:58):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (53:59):
This is a big show focuses all on home like
smart home goods, right, and this is really for people
that are in this industry to see what they can
install in people's homes. And so with all that, I
interviewed Brian Pagel. He is executive vice president at Emerald.
They put on the show every year and so we
talked all about the latest trends and what Cedia is

(54:21):
all about.

Speaker 9 (54:22):
So Cedio is a show dedicated to residential home technologies.
Started off many years ago something around center around home theaters,
and now it's of all every aspect of the home.
So it's lighting, it's energy control, it's your home audio
and video, it's going outside, it's wellness. So it's really
creating that connected ecosystem within your home. Yeah, we've got
over three hundred exhibitors leading brands throughout the home residential

(54:46):
Technology space. We'll have about fifteen to twenty thousand guests
here in Denver over the course of the week, all
for the trade. So these are going to include builders, designers,
and then residential home integrators.

Speaker 1 (54:57):
First, I asked how the stuff on display at is
different than the off the shelf things you might see
at a place like best Buy or Amazon.

Speaker 9 (55:05):
Well, actually a lot of what you see here can
be purchased at a best Buy or through retail. But
as this also goes through the channel, you're going to
see touch panel controls, You're going to see window automation,
You're going to see certain lighting solutions that are only
available through the trade. So it's really what's next, What's
what's coming up in terms of the next greatest technology Next.

Speaker 1 (55:26):
I was curious how this idea of home automation has
evolved over the years.

Speaker 9 (55:32):
It's really evolved based on digital natives coming up through
the through the ranks and having that accessibility and the
opportunity to invest in their homes. People want that experience
to follow them from their car to their house, to
their backyard to their office, and so as the technology
has become more readily available over time, prices have come down,
so it's far more accessible. I think Amazon has really

(55:55):
led the charge in terms of opening up.

Speaker 5 (55:57):
To a wider audience.

Speaker 9 (55:58):
So you know, when you're trying to create these connected ecosystems,
it first started off with av Yeah, so now it's
getting into lighting control, so you can follow your tarcadian rhythms.
It's going into your backyard, it's going into your your automobile.
So there's so much new and you know, there's some
emerging areas that I think people need to pay attention
to energy management in your home, knowing that your HVAC

(56:20):
is efficient, that you don't have a water leak under
your sake, and then wellness. Ultimately, people want to age
in place no one wants. No one wants to go
into a retirement home. So it makes for safer environments
because you know that Grandma slipped and fell. So I
think we've just scratched the surface in terms of what's possible.
I think it's just going to continue to growing involved
as the technology changes.

Speaker 1 (56:40):
We've heard a lot about eight K over the years.
I was just curious if that trend is actually taking off.

Speaker 9 (56:47):
AK it's big right now, You've got Sony, you got
LG and a number of these brands are unveiling you
AK products. I think one of the challenges still becomes
an eight K content. There's not a lot of it
out there, but it's an amazing experience.

Speaker 1 (57:00):
One big trend I did see it this year show
outdoor technology, the idea of all that stuff you have
inside but made for outside.

Speaker 9 (57:09):
People want indoor outdoor spaces and so as kitchens for example,
your outdoor grilling areas, patios, et cetera. Have evolved and
people are designing this. They want that same technology experience
to follow them. So you know at the show you'll
see televisions that are specifically designed for outdoor so they
deal better with lighting, they do better with weather, so
you can really take that experience from inside and bring

(57:30):
it outside and that that is an absolute massive opportunity
for this market.

Speaker 1 (57:34):
Another big trend is lighting. It can really change the
dynamics of a home.

Speaker 9 (57:39):
So what we're finding is, and actually I've got some
colleagues that work in this space. You see these homes
are built in lightings in afterthought. Lighting is really the
bridge between the design build side and the hometech integrator.
And given that that's kind of that centerpiece. It can
really change the experience. So if you have the wrong lighting,
that beautiful paint color that you put in your your
living room isn't gonna pop, or it's gonna maybe that

(58:00):
piece of artwork isn't going to work.

Speaker 5 (58:02):
So lighting is really really key.

Speaker 9 (58:04):
And that to me is the one area that bridges
the divide between the designer and builder and the home
technology integrator, and so that can really bring together that
holistic experience.

Speaker 1 (58:14):
Smart security has been around for a long time. At
the high end. Obviously you could get those cameras installed
by a professional, but then Ring came along and made
home security accessible to everyone. So I was curious what
we're seeing in that area these days.

Speaker 9 (58:28):
Well, they can tell you if someone is at your
front door, it can tell you if your kids got
Home security is one of the top consumer trends in
terms of what they want in a connected environment, and
so now with camera technology being what it is, it's
so easy to integrate that and just to make sure
that hey, you could be in Italy and check in
to see who's at your front door. It's something that's

(58:51):
very central and people were really looking for those safe
spaces and the technology is there.

Speaker 1 (58:56):
It's now, it's twenty twenty five, and many of us
have bits and pieces of that dreams smart home already
in our homes. So I was just curious to get
his take on what a dream smart home would actually
be like from start to finish.

Speaker 9 (59:10):
The dream is to have an experience. It's all your own.
You walk into your house, the lighting.

Speaker 5 (59:15):
Is the right tone. Speakers are playing your favorite music
that you know.

Speaker 9 (59:21):
You can walk outside, you know, have your lights on
in your outdoor area.

Speaker 5 (59:25):
You can turn on your grill before you get home. Right.
It's it's the creature comforts.

Speaker 9 (59:30):
It means a little something different for everybody, but it's
so important that this audience is all about creating that experience.
It's very specific to you based on what you want.
So if you're really into wellness, we can build a
solution around that. If you have elderly parents, we can
build something for you that's going to help to keep
them safe. Or if you just want to sit there
and immerse yourself in the you know the NFL football

(59:52):
this season, you can do that as well. So there's
something for everybody, and it goes well outside the home theater.
It touches every aspect of the home.

Speaker 1 (59:59):
Now, CEDIA is all about pro installers, but many people
have the perception that they just can't afford a luxury
like this. So my question is how do you know
when you should contact a professional versus just installing things yourself.

Speaker 5 (01:00:11):
So I've always used the rule of thumber.

Speaker 9 (01:00:13):
I look at some of the readily available products that
are out there in the market that you can get.

Speaker 5 (01:00:18):
A vest by. That's that's your three series BMW.

Speaker 9 (01:00:21):
But as you decide that you want to do more
or you need it to do something very specific where
my ab limitations. That's the point when you call it
an integrated Certainly Amazon, Google app will have great, very
basic suites.

Speaker 5 (01:00:34):
But depending on what you need.

Speaker 9 (01:00:35):
You know, if you want to integrate lighting, if you
want to integrate shade automation, that's when you need to bring.

Speaker 1 (01:00:41):
In an integrator.

Speaker 9 (01:00:42):
I would say when it comes to a show like CDIO,
this is always about what's new, what's next, what's on
the horizon.

Speaker 5 (01:00:49):
One of the things we haven't thought of yet.

Speaker 9 (01:00:51):
And you know you have a group that it was
it came together in CDIA, the association started in nineteen
ninety four. They can bring these ideas is to reality.
So it's all about bringing that experience that is unique
to you and doing your way. That's it's going to
continue to grow with you as you evolve in your
needs of aolt.

Speaker 1 (01:01:10):
All right, there you have it. Brian Pagel, Executive vice
president at Emerald They put on CDA twenty twenty five.
If you want to see some of my coverage from
this year's show, go to the website rich on tech
dot tv. Check out the newsletter this week. All my
favorite things that I saw there are listed all right
eighty eight rich one on one eighty eight seven four

(01:01:30):
to two four one zero one. Brenda writes in I
recently had a bad experience at Tesla, so I posted
about it on x Soon after, I got an email
claiming they found the exact car I wanted, but when
it came time to pay, they said the dealership only
accepts cryptocurrency. The email came from a proton dot me address,

(01:01:55):
which raised a red flag. Is this legit, Bobo? I'm
gonna let you answer this one. No, you don't think
it's legit that the dealership only accepts crypto Come on, really,
I mean, this is just it's it's wild that people
just I mean, I'm not saying Brenda, but like some
person's out there like literally waiting for people to complain

(01:02:17):
about Tesla on X and then swoop in and say, oh, yeah,
here we can get you this car, pay me in crypto.
Like come on, no, Brenda, that is a complete scam.
I don't now. Here's the thing, And this is why
I always say these scam artists, they always kind of
prey upon the fact that they twist things around, right, Like, yes,

(01:02:37):
at one point Tesla did accept bitcoin. I don't think
they do anymore. Maybe they still do, but they they
did at one point, so yes, they're and we know
Elon is big into that stuff or I think he is.
I don't know is he is Elon? I don't know anyway.
But the point is it sounds like it could be legitimate.
You're like, Okay, well I have to pay in crypto.
I'm getting a Tesla. No, do not do that. Tesla's

(01:02:58):
not gonna ask you to pay through crypto or use
a proton dot me email address. Come on, what It's just.

Speaker 8 (01:03:07):
People are getting creative, The criminals are getting smart. They're
trying new ways to get people to give them information.
I don't know if I told you it is. But
they called my phone looking for my mom. Oh, and
they was like, yeah, somebody's trying to start a credit
card in her name and we need some information to
stop it from going through.

Speaker 1 (01:03:27):
Oh wow.

Speaker 8 (01:03:27):
And I'm like, just stop it, yeah, just stop. So
we need to make sure that this is her. No,
you don't, I'm telling you just to stop it. Well,
we really need to speak to Cindy. And I was like,
that's fine, I'm telling you as the person you called
to stop it. Yeah, And they didn't want to stop it,
and they had they had the last four of her social.

Speaker 1 (01:03:46):
Well okay, so that's something that you could probably find online. Yes, right,
I mean now you can find with all these data
breaches everything. Yeah, but that's interesting. So they they were
trying to get the rest of the information.

Speaker 5 (01:03:57):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (01:03:57):
So hey, we've got we know you're so is two
two seven two. We just need the rest to confirm
before we go any further.

Speaker 5 (01:04:04):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (01:04:04):
That's exactly what they we're trying to do. That is unbelievable.
I mean, I'm telling you so, I don't know if
if you follow me on Instagram at Ridge on Tech,
you know that I love posting these scams because so
many people are now sending me scams that I go
through them and I will kind of filter out the
ones that I haven't seen before. So, for instance, the
other day, I saw one that I've never seen, which

(01:04:26):
is State of California Franchise Tax Board says, your tax
refund has been processed and approved. Please provide your accurate
collection information and then we'll deposit the money into your
bank account or get this email a paper check? What
does that even mean? Email a paper check? And then
it gives a website that kind of looks like the
California website. And I was like, all right, I've never

(01:04:47):
seen this one before. Let's let's put it out there.
And sure enough people were I mean, it got shared
like crazy because people were like, yeah, I'm getting that
one too, and it's like they will just try whatever
they can and if you go to the website. So
what I do is when when you send me these things,
and you can, you can send them to me hello
at rich on tech dot tv. You can go to
the website and email me rich on tech dot TV.

(01:05:10):
But what I do is I actually go through and
I do not recommend you do this, but I go
through and I click the links in those phishing emails
or those scams or those texts that you send me.
Because I know what I'm doing. I'm gonna be careful
and I will check to see what they're trying to do,
like what's their endgame and in this one, and then
I'll post it and I'll kind of break it all
down for you so you understand exactly what they're trying

(01:05:33):
to do here. And so for your instance with this, uh,
with this, my phone is acting wonky right now, for instance,
with this California one, basically they are trying to get
you to hand over your personal information. This is so wird.
Instagram is actually physically not working on my phone. I
can't swipe, like this is one of those carousel swipes.

(01:05:54):
I can't swipe, and my phone just won't let me.
Let me try my other phone. You know, I have
like three phones in front of me when I do this.
Show that way when you call in you have a question,
there it is that one's working. My iPhone's not working.
Android is anyway, you click the link and of course
it brings you to a bogus website that looks just
like the California tax website. Then immediately it says, oh,

(01:06:15):
check your status, and first thing it asked for social
and all your address, and then it says, oh, yeah,
we found a refund of one thousand dollars and fifty
How would you like us to send it to you
bank or credit card? And the bank is great out
it says, sorry, it's not working right now, so put
your credit card in. You put your credit card in.
Now what did you just do? If you made it

(01:06:35):
to that last screen, you have given them your name,
your address, your social your credit card information, and you've
confirmed it all and now what are they doing? The
last screen shows like a spinny ball while it's confirming.
What do you think they're doing? During that spinny ball?
They've got people in a room, hundreds of them, I
don't know, or a bunch of them that are sitting
there grabbing this information as it comes in live. We

(01:06:58):
got a live one, We got a good one. And
they literally try to hack you instantly as you're listening
to them or as you're waiting for that thing to stop.
So it's real and it happens every single day, So
be careful. And yeah, I post all of these to
my Instagram at rich On Tech. So if you want
to keep you know, ahead of the curve, follow me

(01:07:19):
there at rich On Tech. And I'm telling you, you know,
send them my way, because I do investigate them and
I only got you know. The other thing I recommend
people always ask, oh, do I need antivirus? Do I
need this? Do I need that? What you need is
two things on your phone. Nord VPN has a great thing.
I know you have to have a VPN, but they

(01:07:39):
have a feature called Threat Detection, and what it does
is in real time, it'll scan the things that you're
clicking and it will look out for you. So if
you're clicking on malware, it'll look out, it'll say sorry,
you're malware. It also happens to block ads, which is
really nice. And a lot of the ads, I hate
to say, they're called malvertizing. They deliver malware to your phone.

(01:08:03):
That's how a lot of these things happen as well.
Now on your computer, same thing. I really recommend that
you use Chrome because of this reason. Chrome has something
called if you go into your settings, it is called
safe browsing. Okay, under privacy and security, you've got let's
see here it is security safe browsing, and they've got

(01:08:24):
two they've got three levels no protection, which is not recommended.
That means basically, you can click on anything in Chrome
and it's not going to check it. It's not gonna
say word to you. You want to go to website
that steals myinformation dot com, it'll let you, no problem.
Standard protection protects against the sites and the downloads that
are known to be dangerous. So when you visit a website,

(01:08:47):
Chrome just does like a quick little check and you know,
tries to keep it as private as possible, and it says,
we already know this website's pretty bad. Don't go there.
Then the highest level, and if you're worried about all
this stuff, I'd probably turn this up on. It's called
Safe Browsing Enhanced Protection. Now, this is real time AI
powered protection against dangerous websites, downloads, extensions. And what it

(01:09:10):
does is it sends a little bit of the URL
more than the other one, so it is a little
bit more or I guess a little less private than
the standard protection. So if you're worried about privacy, go
with the standard. But if you want to protect yourself
the most, go with the enhanced and this works nine
out of ten times. When I click these links on
these bogus emails, these scam text, it'll show up a big,

(01:09:34):
bright red screen, rich, do not proceed. We think this
site is dangerous. Now, if you know what you're doing,
you got to click like three more times like I do.
It'll bring you to the website. But for ninety nine
percent of the people, that's enough for them to say, oh, oh,
hold on, I'm not doing that. So again, go into Chrome,
turn on safe browsing. Make sure you at least have
the standard protection turned on. Enhanced protections good. I also

(01:09:57):
like again the nord VPN. I know it's paid, but
they've got this great threat protection built in and it
basically just, you know, scans the websites that you're going
to and we'll make sure that it alerts you if
you're trying to do something. Most of the things are
just trying to steal your data, your information, but some
of them do actually download stuff to your computer. There's
one scam that my son and I were investigating, and

(01:10:19):
as soon as you click that link to download like
a it was like, hey, we have your tax information
or your Social Security statement. You click it. It immediately
downloaded a virus to your computer that if you double
click that to run it, it is like game over.
They would get full access to everything. All right, I
do want to tell you before we go to break

(01:10:39):
that Microsoft is now giving Microsoft three sixty five Personal
to all college students for free for a year. So
we're talking all the stuff that comes with three sixty
five Personal. You're talking the versions of Microsoft Word Excel,
the terabytes of storage, one terabyte of cloud storage, the AI,

(01:11:01):
the Copilot, all this stuff. Premium. Microsoft three sixty five
Personal is now free. If you're a college student, you
gotta claim it by October thirty. First, I'll put the
link on the website because it's really long. Rich on
Tech dot TV go to Show Notes, episode one thirty eight.
If you're a college student, you might as well grab
this eight eight eight rich one o one eight eight
eight seven four to two four one zero one. I'll

(01:11:24):
tell you when Gemini is replacing Google Assistant on Google
Home Coming up. Welcome back to rich on Tech Rich
DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology. Eight eight
a rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four
to two four one zero one. You gotta tech question.
You gotta gadget. You're looking at an app. You need

(01:11:46):
a recommendation on whatever it is. Give me a call
eighty eight Rich one O one eighty eight seven four
to two four one zero one. You can also go
to the website rich on tech dot tv. This is
turning out to be quite the program because we have
gotten a lot of good recommendations so far. I talked
about the money app that I like these days. If

(01:12:07):
you're trying to figure out if your old Windows ten
PC can handle Windows eleven. I talked about the app
that can check that. Let's see what else. Oh, I
got a message from follower Paulette on my Instagram and
she just tried the remove fence in Gemini with the
nano banana. Unbelievable. The picture she sent me, these are

(01:12:30):
pictures of my boy forty years ago. It was a
picture of her kid playing little League through a fence
forty years ago. I'm not kidding. I'm looking at this picture.
It's almost bringing tears to my eyes. It's that amazing
the fact that you have a picture of your kid
from forty years ago behind a fence that is obstructing

(01:12:52):
him and now and it's a picture of the team too,
and now seeing it without the fence, it's unbelievable. I'm
believable that we can do this in today's day and age.
It gives it's like a shiver down my back. It's
just that wild to me anyway, Paula, I'm glad you're
enjoying that. We talked about organizing MP three's how to

(01:13:14):
Browse Safely and Chrome and coming up this hour, we're
going to talk to Julian Keel, founder and CEO of
Points Path. This is a cool extension for if you
travel a lot, you book a lot of flights when
you're on Google Flights, it basically inserts itself in there
and it tells you if you should book with Points,
if you have them, or if it's a better deal
to actually pay for the flight. So we'll talk to

(01:13:36):
him a little bit later on. I've been getting a
lot of emails about Google Home and it's not really
working as well as it used to. All these Google
Home devices people have around their house, they've just kind
of been defaulting to web answers for a while now,
and they've just not been as full featured as people
remember them being. And the reason is that Google has

(01:13:58):
sort of been getting rid of some of the features
of these devices and replacing it with Gemini. So Google
Assistant used to control a whole bunch of stuff. Now
they're kind of, you know, just switching it out for Gemini,
which is going to be way smarter. And we finally
have a date when that may happen. The date is

(01:14:19):
October first, twenty twenty five. Gemini will officially replace Google
Assistant on Google Home and Nest devices starting October first.
This was announced a long time ago. I actually saw
a demo last like holidays, like in New York City.
I went to this event with Google and they showed
me a little demo of Gemini on the speaker. I mean,
you're talking a long time ago. That was nine months ago.

(01:14:43):
But now we finally have a date. So if you
have one of these Google Google Home devices a Nest
device that uses Google Assistant in the past, Gemini will
be way better, way better. I cannot wait for this
to be able to just say, you know, h Google, whatever.
Anything I would ask on Google on my phone, now
I can ask on the smart speaker and it will

(01:15:04):
actually give me an AI answer. I can't wait, and
I think that. Hopefully controlling your smart home devices should
be easier as well, So instead of saying very specific things,
you can say things like, you know, turn off the
back lights and also heat the pool. Not that I
have that ability, but that would be cool if I did.
But that's the kind of things that you'll be able
to do. The other thing that you're not going to like, though,

(01:15:25):
is that Apparently, according to Tom's guide, Google is hinting
at paid versus free tiers. I don't know what that means,
but they're saying it's unclear which features might require a subscription,
so we'll see what happens there. Anyway, good news. I'm
very excited about that. Speaking of AI, I guess we're
getting through all the Google news today. This is amazing.

(01:15:49):
I've been using this on the Pixel phone that I'm testing,
and now it's available to everyone. But if you're using
g Board, which is Google's keyboard on your Android device,
there's a new little icon which looks like AI when
you're typing. So if you type something out, let's say
you're in like an email or something, and you type hey,

(01:16:09):
what's up, you'll see there's a little it looks like
a little pen with you know, stars around it. So
that's like the universal icon for AI. So if you
tap that, it's a new AI writing tool and it
goes through whatever you just wrote, whether it's a text message,
whatever text, and it just lets you start doing things

(01:16:33):
with it. So not only does it proofread it right
right off the bat. So I just wrote, Hey, what's up,
and it corrected it to hey, coma what's up? Question
mark and you can just tap use this and boom,
it's in there, almost like grammarly, but anywhere on your
phone right and for free. Then you can rephrase things,
you can make it professional, make it friendly. Emogifi. Oh, emogifi.

(01:16:53):
That's a good one. Let me try that. So now
it just you tap that and it turns everything to emojis,
Hey what's up? Hand ye I mean, this is such
a cool feature. I am just I know everyone's scared
about AI. It's changing things, it's changing everything that we do,
and it's ruining jobs and it's just everything is like
AI is just putting everything in flux. But at the

(01:17:15):
end of the day, it is really handy in so
many ways. So this AI writing tool, if you see
it above your keyboard on Android, if you're using the
g board. It is really handy. Tap it. I'm using
it all the time. I just love it. Proofreading, spelling, grammar.
One tap and everything happens on your device because you know,
when you're doing a text or something, a lot of

(01:17:35):
that's private. So Google's saying says that all processing is
happening on the device, or everything's staying private. I love that.
It kind of goes into what I was telling you
last week. If you're in Gmail and you type a message,
you gotta try the little the same little icon it's
above your message. It looks like a pencil with a star.

(01:17:57):
And basically I'm using that now for every message I write.
I just speak it out and then I taped that
little polish tool and Gmail looks at the person who's
emailing me, they look at their question, they look at
whatever the context is, and then it will polish it
up with that data as well. So it is it
is really really good. Let's go to Dan in Alabama. Dan,

(01:18:21):
you're on with Rich.

Speaker 4 (01:18:24):
Hi, Rich, thanks for taking my call. Absolutely, I have
an older computer. The last one I built was in
twenty fifteen, and obviously my hardware is not going to
allow me to upgrade to Windows eleven. So I was
thinking about upgrading hardware. But I'm a little nervous because
I don't want to lose my Microsoft Office sixteen and

(01:18:45):
some of my other programs that I have on it.
What would be the best way to transfer my C
based drive to a new computer?

Speaker 1 (01:18:55):
Ooh, with those programs intact? Yes, sir, that could be tricky.
So you're trying to get have you downloaded these programs
or you just have them running on the old computer.

Speaker 4 (01:19:09):
Well, I downloaded the Office sixteen back in sixteen, okay,
And so I don't know if I can still download it.
I still have the key for it, but I don't
know if I can continue if I could download it,
because I don't even know if it's available from Microsoft anymore.

Speaker 1 (01:19:25):
Not officially, that's for sure. Yeah, yeah, I mean you really.
You really can't directly transfer programs like that. It's just
not it's not something that you can do. You can
try to maybe run this hard drive on the new computer,
like if you plug it in, you might be able
to do that. I'm not even sure that would work.
I don't really have a way to do that unless

(01:19:47):
the program is physically downloadable or you have the physical
media that you can, you know, install in the new
drive and use the code. You may be able to
find unofficial installations, but I yeah, I can't really recommend that.

Speaker 4 (01:20:02):
There's just wondered if like a Cronus or a drive
duplicator would allow me to do that to the new
hard drive on the new equipment.

Speaker 1 (01:20:12):
I was, I was wondering that like a drive like
a disk image drive or something like a disc copy,
Like if you like clone the drive, you mean that
that may work. I have not personally done that, so
I can't tell you if that's gonna work or not.
So that's probably your best bet if you're so if
you're trying to like, let's see, I'm trying to see
I'm looking at a Cronus true image. The problem is,

(01:20:34):
I just I haven't tried this, so I just don't
know if it would work. I mean, it's it's maybe
worth the fifty dollars to try it. If it's said,
does it say it can do that? Does it say
it can like run a program on a new computer
if you clone it over.

Speaker 4 (01:20:47):
I don't know if it does or not. I mean,
I've just been looking around at some of them commercially.
I haven't purchased one yet, so yeah, I just you
may have experienced this before or not.

Speaker 1 (01:20:57):
I mean, this says moved from a hard drive to
an asset d drive, migration from a faulty drive. The
problem is, here's what you're going to run into. Unless
you're running the same exact operating system on the new device,
you know that you almost have to run this old
drive in its own instance, if that makes sense, you
know what I mean, Like it might have to be

(01:21:18):
like a virtual drive. I'm not even sure that's possible, Dan,
I just don't know on that one. That one's something
that I got to look into and see if that's
something you do. All I know is that you know,
if you're running something from twenty sixteen, you know it's
shown its age. It might be best to just keep
that on the computer you have, let that run. Clearly,
you're out of You're going to be out of updates anyway.

(01:21:40):
I mean, you're not getting updates for that anyway. So
the software and security aspect is already out the window.
So maybe just set up the new computer fresh so
that you're good with security and all that stuff, and
then when you need to run that program. You can
run it there. There's also, by the way, and maybe
this is not what you want to hear, but they
also of a free version of Office Office Live on

(01:22:03):
the web. Let me see if I can find the
link for that. So if you go to U if
you just it's so tough to find these things. I
just searched Office Live on the web and it came
up free Microsoft three sixty five online Word Excel PowerPoint,
So you can actually use word Excel and PowerPoint on
the web for free. A lot of people don't realize

(01:22:25):
that Microsoft doesn't really advertise it, but it is the
web version of the app, and you may not get
all the features that you would get on the downloadable version.
But that's another option. But yeah, that's a it's a
good question. I'm just not sure that that's something that
would be easily done with this new computer or something
that you want to do. Actually. Eighty eight rich one

(01:22:46):
O one eight eight eight seven four to two four
one zero one. Coming up, I'll tell you about queues,
new cheaper light bulbs, and we'll get to more of
your questions right here on rich on Tech. Welcome back
to rich On Tech. Eight eight eight rich one oh
one eight eight eight seven four to two four one

(01:23:07):
zero one, the website rich on tech dot TV. Let's
go to I will mention these. I will tell you
about the new Phillips Hoe lights. They're much cheaper. But
let's go to Aldo in Los Angeles first. Although you're on.

Speaker 10 (01:23:24):
With Rich Hey, Rach, thanks for taking my call. Absolutely,
I'll say like a first time, long time.

Speaker 1 (01:23:32):
Okay, I like that.

Speaker 10 (01:23:34):
I have a question if you have any recommendations for
MP three players, like AMR day eight MP three players.
I'm looking something for something stimular to like what an
iPod used to be. That's just an MP three player
knock next to the internet.

Speaker 2 (01:23:49):
That's something that's.

Speaker 10 (01:23:50):
Not going to distract me. If you have any recommendations,
if you have like a high quality one and maybe
something that's more uh efficient, would be cool.

Speaker 1 (01:24:01):
Okay, Well, I mean, look, there's a lot of these
out there. What are where are you going to source
the music? Do you have your own collection or are
you trying to link it up with you?

Speaker 10 (01:24:08):
Yeah, just like well it's like I'm gonna I found
my own uh I found my old iPod mm hmm
so and like I still have my old music collection.
But you know, I'm downloading some uh music, have some
CDs still available, I'm converting over.

Speaker 1 (01:24:28):
Okay, So here's the deal. I mean at this point,
you know, you know the main answer is that they've
got you know, everyone's using their phone, they're using their
their Apple Watch or they're smart watch. But the good
news is they still sell MP three players. The bad
news is there's not one that's better than the rest,
you know, one that like is known to be the best,

(01:24:49):
because there's just so many. And if you look at
the recommendations, like if you go to like a Scene
or any of these websites and you look at the
recommendations for MP three players, you won't recognize any of
the brand names because they're all just random. I'm not
gonna say fly by Night, but they're just random brands
that you know, most of them are just kind of

(01:25:09):
you never heard of them before. Let's put it that way.
There is one that Sony does still make a you know,
an MP three player, and you said you wanted one.
That's the expensive one. That is it. So it looks like,
let's see, it's the Sony nw AO three six four
hundred dollars and it's high rese so it's you know,
it's this is this is the closest thing you'll find

(01:25:32):
to an iPod if you want like that experience of
like a nice screen, you can load the music onto it,
and it's just it looks slick and sleek, and it's
got a micro SD card slot, it's got USBC. I mean,
that's probably gonna be your best bet for high end.
I personally cannot imagine spending four hundred dollars on that.
That just seems way, way expensive. Because if you look

(01:25:56):
on Amazon, you will find there are many, many MP
three players for way cheaper. And the bottom line is,
I'm not going to recommend one that I think you
should get, but I would look at this list of
MP three players and look for the features that you want.
There are a few, in general, like two of them
that are very highly regarded. They've got thousands of reviews,

(01:26:19):
and the stars are just one of them's got three
point eight, one of them's got Yeah, they both have
three point eight stars. But again, at these prices, you're
talking twenty seven bucks. So for twenty seven dollars, you
buy it from Amazon. You see if it does what
you need and you return it if it doesn't. This one,
let's see this agp tis. You can't even pronounce the

(01:26:41):
name on this one. This has got one hundred and
twenty eight gigs of storage. The one hundred and sixty
gigs storage one. You know, it looks like it's running
a modified version of Android and that is uh yeah,
it's sixty five ninety nine, so I'd probably go. And
they've got them a whole bunch of different colors. That's interesting.
So I would say search is going to be your

(01:27:03):
best friend on here, Reviews are going to be your
best friend. Find something that's highly rated for a decent price.
The other way you can go. They do have a
this product called Mighty m I g h T Y
And this is actually really cool, but it does it
does require Amazon Music or Spotify. But basically, if you

(01:27:25):
remember what the iPod shuffle look like back in the day,
it looks like that. So it's just a clip and
it's got a little controller on the front, you know,
play pause, forward, volume, up, down menu, and it's screen free.
And what it does is you said you didn't want
this to connect to the internet, but this one does,
but in a cool way. So it basically connects to

(01:27:48):
your Spotify or your Amazon Music and downloads that music
to the device. And that way you can listen to
music on the go just like you did back in
the day, without any screen, without worrying about it anything.
But it still uses. It pulls from that nice library
that you have of pretty much every song in the world.
They're selling it for Let's see the mighty one hundred

(01:28:10):
and twenty bucks and yeah, I mean that to me
is really really cool. Thousand songs. It holds premium audio. Again,
those are your options, Mighty MP three players, random names
or the Sony MP three player. All We'll do what
you need. Thanks for the call. Although coming up we

(01:28:31):
are going to talk about points versus miles and the
tool that can help you decide. Right here on rich
on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro
here hanging out with you talking technology at well, So
I give out the phone number now, Kim gets angry.
So I won't because I don't think we can take
any more calls. But you go to the website rich

(01:28:51):
on Tech dot tv. You can still submit your email
there and yes, we will get you on at some point.
Here Joining me now is Julian Kiel, founder and CEO
of points Path. This is a really cool extension that
you can install in your computer and it does a
lot of things, but the main thing it does is
it tells you if you should book your travel with

(01:29:12):
your points or pay. So, Julian, thanks for joining me today.

Speaker 5 (01:29:16):
Hey, Rich, thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (01:29:19):
So tell me about points Path. First off, I discovered
this and I have it installed on my Google Flights,
and I love it because it's something I used to
do manually. I used to say, like, okay, this flight
is thirty thousand points or two hundred and eighty dollars,
which one's better? This you kind of all figured out
it's built in now.

Speaker 5 (01:29:37):
That's exactly right.

Speaker 6 (01:29:38):
You know.

Speaker 11 (01:29:38):
There's two problems that everybody has when it comes to
using Frequent Flyer miles right. Number one is that you
can never find flights you actually want to use your
miles on. And number two, even when you do, you
can't figure out if you're getting a good deal. Should
you use your miles here or should you save them
for later and pay cash. So that's what points path
is trying to do. It adds all the points prices
into any search in Google Flights and then tells you

(01:30:00):
which is the better deal of cash or points. Like
you said, it's doing what a lot of people have
manually or just sort of trying to eyeball it have
been trying to do.

Speaker 5 (01:30:09):
Gives you that answer right.

Speaker 1 (01:30:10):
Away, because there is like a value proposition with points,
like sometimes the points are worth more than the flight,
sometimes they're not, and so you have to kind of
know you're not getting ripped off.

Speaker 11 (01:30:21):
Well, that's exactly yeah, exactly right, because I think what
a lot of people do realize is that points from
different programs are worth different amounts. If you have Delta
sky miles, they're not worth as much as United miles.
The United miles aren't worth as much as American miles.
Americans not worth as much as Alaska. Every program has
its own sort of you know, currency that is worth

(01:30:41):
a different amounts, a little bit like foreign exchange, except
its points instead of cash. So you really have to
not only know what you're doing and know what's worth what,
but also then understand how to do the math. We're
trying to solve all that for you and save you
the trouble of doing it all manually just doing it
for you automatically.

Speaker 1 (01:30:59):
And so you've got the six sension that works with
all the major browsers. You install it, and then when
you go to Google Flights, it pops up and what
does it do?

Speaker 5 (01:31:06):
Right?

Speaker 11 (01:31:06):
So once you install it, you really don't have to
do anything else other than what you would normally do
to find a flight. Most people start with Google Flights.
It is the most popular search engine when it comes
to doing flight searches, and all you have to do
is act like you normally would do a search, like
you normally would round trip, one way, international, domestic, doesn't matter.
Once you get those results, points back will just automatically

(01:31:29):
start adding retrieving and it's all live data and adding
those points prices for you.

Speaker 5 (01:31:34):
And by the way, I always forget to measure this part.

Speaker 11 (01:31:36):
It is free, so make sure you give it a
shot because that won't cost you a.

Speaker 1 (01:31:40):
Dot we do like free. Now, you just mentioned Google
Flights because that's where I'm on there, like twenty four
to seven. I'm always on Google flights. Is there a tool?
Because everyone always says, like, rich, where do I book airfare?
And I just say I always go to Google Flights
And then I'll book directly with the airline. Is there
a website that is like number two for searching for airfare?

Speaker 10 (01:32:02):
You know?

Speaker 5 (01:32:03):
To be honest, it really depends, right, So Google Flights.
So what's beautiful about.

Speaker 11 (01:32:07):
Google Flights One, it's fast to it encompasses a lot
of different search engines. I mean, in other words, if
there's an Expedia price that's different than the airline price,
it'll usually pop up on Google Flights, So it's trying
to save you the trail of going from place to place.
The other one that I would say is a little
bit like that is Kayak, which does sort of the
same thing. It tries to pull in all those different

(01:32:28):
prices from different search engines, so that if you were
looking for a number two for flights, that might be it.

Speaker 5 (01:32:34):
But you know, look, when it.

Speaker 11 (01:32:35):
Comes to travel, the biggest problem is that you do
kind of have to search from place to place to
find the best deal because everybody's sort of got a
different deal going on.

Speaker 1 (01:32:44):
But all that stuff about booking on a Tuesday or
this or that, or booking one way flights, you know,
or using a VPN like all that stuff, I feel
like a lot of it's bogus.

Speaker 11 (01:32:54):
It is a lot of it is bogus. There is
definitely no best day to book your flight. That's leftover
a myth from back forty years ago, thirty years ago,
when airlines loaded all of their fares on a particular
day and then didn't touch them for a week. That
doesn't happen anymore. Airfares changed from hour to hour, even
minute to minute. Now that being said, there is generally

(01:33:16):
a best day to travel to actually fly, and that's
Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and the reason for that is simply
there's less demand on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. The worst days
are Fridays and Sundays. That's when all the business travelers
are either going home or trying to get to their
next location. So there is a best day to get
a deal to when you're flying, but not as far
as booking.

Speaker 1 (01:33:36):
Yeah, And the only thing I know about booking is
that as soon as I track a flight on Google,
it's guaranteed to go up every single time. It's like,
just book it when you see it the first time,
because it's always going to go up for some reason. So, Julian,
the other thing I really like about points Path is
the emails that you send out. You guys put me
on your newsletter, and I'm always finding great I think

(01:33:59):
I've purchased a bunch of the stuff, like the little
travel tools and things that you recommend. And it seems like,
is it just you or do you have like a
couple of people that are writing those newsletters as well?

Speaker 11 (01:34:09):
You know, it was just me to start and now
because a lot of people, and thank you by the way,
a lot of people have said what you're saying, which
is we love that you know.

Speaker 5 (01:34:18):
Look you and I probably rich.

Speaker 11 (01:34:21):
Like you said, you have Google flights up in twenty
four to seven, So do I even before I had
a tool that worked on top of it.

Speaker 5 (01:34:26):
Because we travel a lot.

Speaker 11 (01:34:27):
Most people don't, right, Most people maybe fly once or
twice a year, so they're not necessarily looking at those
tools all the time. But they still want to talk
about travel. They still want to know the tips and
tricks how can they travel better. That's what the newsletter
is trying to do. It's a daily email that you'll
get and we cover all sorts of things, not just points.
We even talk about you know, what's the best travel pillow? Like,
you know, how can I get the most rest on

(01:34:50):
a plane.

Speaker 5 (01:34:50):
So yeah, that's.

Speaker 11 (01:34:51):
What that email is about. It is now a whole
slew of riders. I think we've got eight or ten
riders in a managing editor. So it's really grown and
it is a very popular part of the business.

Speaker 1 (01:35:01):
And for sure I've purchased. I'm thinking about what I
bought because you always recommend like little gadgets and things,
and I love it. I bought the the sleep masks
you guys recommended a while back, so I have those.
Those are great for naps. I haven't worn them on
the plane yet because I'm a little bit like, okay,
well but at home. And then I also bought the
like the toiletry you know where you squeeze like the
larger bottle into like the small bottle. What are those things? Yeah,

(01:35:23):
like mini I don't know what do you call those?

Speaker 5 (01:35:25):
The silicon travel bombs?

Speaker 11 (01:35:26):
Yeah, yeah, so you can tick, Yeah, so you can
take you know, you have your favorite shampoo, but it
comes in a giant twelve ounce bottle. These are small
three and a half ounce silicon travel bots that are
good for you tsa security. You pour in just what
you need, put them in your carry on ben.

Speaker 1 (01:35:42):
And they don't leak, but I do. I do draw
the line Julian at shampoo, I do not need to
bring my own shampoo. I don't understand that whole thing.
I'm sure there's people that you know, they're they're loyal
to their shampoo. I'm sorry, but I like using the
shampoo that they give you there. I don't need to
bring my own. Everything else, yes, I will bring my own,
but shampoo, I'm like, come on, it's shampoo. It's like,

(01:36:03):
how bad could it be?

Speaker 11 (01:36:05):
You know, I feel the same way. But I will say, Rich,
I think your hair is better than mine. You have
a lot better hair. I'm sort of, you know, at
that age where I if I as long as I
have some hair, I'm happy about it.

Speaker 1 (01:36:15):
So, Julian, what's your background? Why did you start this?
You know, what's your world of travel?

Speaker 5 (01:36:20):
Like, yeah, you know, it's interesting.

Speaker 11 (01:36:22):
I fifteen years ago, I was actually a Hollywood director
and writer, and one of the last gigs I did
as part of that career was being a director for
World Wrestling Entertainment of WWE, and I was on the
road basically every single week, going from arena to arena
and directing the background scenes for the Monday night raw
on Friday night's backdown. Needless to say, when you're doing that,

(01:36:45):
you very quickly learn your points in miles. The whole
company knows pretty much. You know what the elite status
is and hotel points and all of the above. So
once I was done with that and was looking for
something different to do. I had all this knowledge and
experienced writing, but I hadn't didn't really have an out
for it, so I started blogging for some small blogs.
From there, I eventually got hired by The Points Guy,

(01:37:05):
which is a big travel site that you and your audience.

Speaker 5 (01:37:08):
Is probably aware of.

Speaker 11 (01:37:09):
From there, I actually went to CNN and launched their
travel rewards coverage for their e commerce site. CNN underscored
and all look through all that time and these are
all great sites, but it does mean somebody has to spend,
you know, hours digging through that information to try and
figure out how to use their points and miles. And
that's where the idea for points path came along. I said, well,
how can I, you know, do this in a way

(01:37:31):
that we can use technology so that people don't have
to spend their time figuring out the answer.

Speaker 1 (01:37:36):
It's funny you mentioned and I did not have that
in my Bengo card by the way, the wrestling stuff.
But I had this job one time where I was
a reporter and I was traveling a lot, like I'm
talking like a couple times a week, like for like
five days a week basically like for different things, for
you know, traveling around the US. And I remember, like
the first trip or second trip, they're like, oh, we're

(01:37:56):
going to go to I don't know whatever it was Austin.
I was like, oh, well, there's a direct flight on
you know this airline, Like, oh no, we are taking
a connecting flight through this city to get there. And
I said, wait, why would we do that? Takes so
much longer, they said, points in miles. I said what
I said, I can't believe. And then of course once
you start doing that, you get into that because you
realize that when you travel so much, and there's a

(01:38:17):
reason why they have the clubs and the airports, there
is the reason why there's these priority lines and things
like that, is because when you travel a lot, you
don't want to waste all that time and energy, and
by the way, you want to be rewarded on the
back end. Like people that travel a lot their families
travel for free when they go on their leisure trips
because these people have sacrificed, you know, spending all their
time in a plane and an airport.

Speaker 5 (01:38:38):
That's right.

Speaker 11 (01:38:39):
And you know, even to add on to that, when
you do have your points in miles and you can
book them for a family trip and you can get
everyone up front in business class, then it really doesn't
matter if you're connecting, because it's like flying in your
living room. You're just sitting there, you know, being served
champagne and then meals and whatever. It really is a
very different tread experience, and I think it's this is

(01:39:02):
where look and not everybody.

Speaker 5 (01:39:03):
Needs to do that.

Speaker 11 (01:39:04):
It's a great reward for people who are on the
road all the time for business, but a lot of
our folks just want to know, well, how can I
use my points and miles to get home for Thanksgiving?
Because the ticket prices are insane. That so there really
are two pieces of the puzzle here, two parts of
the equation.

Speaker 5 (01:39:19):
You know, we're trying to help both sides.

Speaker 1 (01:39:21):
Yeah, okay, we got about a minute left. If you
have any other tools you want to recommend, or any
other travel tips, or you can talk about how AI
is kind of changing everything once again with this.

Speaker 11 (01:39:31):
Yeah, there are a ton This is the golden age
of tools. When it comes to using technology for booking travel,
Hopper is a great place where they actually try and
predict in advance whether a price is going up or
down in cash. They've been around for a long time
and they really have billions of flight data, freight flace
data to base that on.

Speaker 5 (01:39:53):
Another one that.

Speaker 11 (01:39:54):
I love is Flighty. Flighty is great for when you
are actually traveling. It can actually tell you when you're
light is going to be delayed or canceled before the
airline does. He uses traffic patterns, weather reports where your
aircraft is and can actually predict better than the airline does.
So it's a great one to have. And when it
comes to tips, there's a really simple one. The one

(01:40:16):
positive thing that came out of the pandemic is that
most airlines now have airfares that you can cancel and
rebook with on a penalty. Don't book the basic economy fair.
That's the one to stay away from, but pretty much
anything else, even that economy can be canceled and rebooked.

Speaker 5 (01:40:31):
So find a flight you want.

Speaker 11 (01:40:33):
Book it but keep looking, keep checking those prices, because
if it drops, you can cancel and rebook at a
lower price.

Speaker 1 (01:40:40):
That is one of the best, probably the only good
thing to come out of the pandemic. Julian Kill, We're
gonna leave it there. Thanks so much for joining me.
Pointspath dot com. Pointspath dot com. Sign up for their newsletter,
download the extension for your browser, and maximize those points.
Thanks for joining me, toy, Julian. Thanks rich All right,
coming up, we are going to open up the feedbag
right here on rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich

(01:41:04):
On Tech. A couple of things to get through before
we open up the feedbag.

Speaker 5 (01:41:09):
Hugh.

Speaker 1 (01:41:09):
You know Phillips Hugh lights, very expensive but very reliable.
Now they are finally coming out with cheaper versions of them,
the new Essential line. This is designed to compete with
competitors like Govy. Prices start at under twenty dollars, so
bulbs a nineteen bulbs are going to be twenty five
each or sixty for a four pack. They've got some bulbs,

(01:41:32):
some spotlights, light strips. The trade offs slightly less dimming
range norower right white spectrum, so it's not going to
get the full spectrum there and not as good color accuracy,
but it's still going to run on Hugh's platform, So
that is a good thing, really really good that Hughes

(01:41:53):
are a little bit cheaper because I love those. Those
are the most reliable out of all the smart lights
I've ever used. I thought this was interesting. Assurance says
that people are trading in their phones a lot more
sixty percent this year over last year, sixty percent increase.
But here's the thing. People are also holding onto their
devices even longer now three point eight eight years, up

(01:42:16):
from three point seven years last year. That's forty seven
months people are holding onto their phones on average. Popular
models being traded in the iPhone thirteen and Samsung Galaxy
S twenty two Ultra most common for four straight quarters now.
But AI features are really pushing consumers to upgrade. That's

(01:42:38):
why you're seeing AI advertise so much on TV, even
if a company's not really delivering on that. Ooh, did
I just say that Tesco is trialing an avocado ripeness scanner.
This is the the big grocery store over in the UK.
They have a scanner that basically lets you test to
see if the avocado you want is ripe. Obviously, they're

(01:43:00):
probably just doing this to sell more avocados, but it's
probably you know, like what I do is I squeeze
like every avocado till I find one, and then I
squeezed the finalists like five more times. I'm sure they
don't want everyone squeezing every avocado. So that's that's kind
of a cool thing. Some people are saying it's a gimmick.
All right, let's open up the feedbag. These are the emails,

(01:43:21):
the comments, the questions you send to me on a
weekly basis. Submit yours at richon tech dot tv, hit
contact Pete wrights in. Apple photos does list videos by size,
Go to settings General iPhone storage photos Mine does anyway.
By the way, I love hearing about the Wizard of
Oz at the Sphere. I saw Dead End Company last year.
My floor ticket was three hundred and ninety five dollars.

(01:43:43):
I thought that would be my only Sphere show, but
now I'm thinking it'd be nice to see Oz too.
I tune in every week, always downloading the podcast. Keep
up the good work. You are a lot of fun.
Thanks Pete, save that one. Forward it to my wife.
Mark from Burbank rights In like so many others. I
love listening to your show and look forward to it
each weekend on KFI in Los Angeles and on the podcast.

(01:44:04):
There's a regular caller with such a distinct voice that
I can't help but picture him as an action hero,
square jawed in a bomber jacket, ray ban aviators, leather
gloves and a headset, commenteering a helicopter over La After
a double cross, he's ejected, grabs the skids midair, pulls
the pin on a grenade with his teeth, and still
manages to drop safely into the Beverly Hills pool sunglasses intact.

(01:44:25):
Next time he calls, please cue up some music from
like the A Team. Quite the imagination. Mark Bob writes
in from Victoria, Australia, listening on the podcast, enjoyed the
show as usual, looking forward to your layman's explanation of
how quantum computer works, because I came away more confused
after your guest's explanation. I did get that there are

(01:44:48):
things called quibbits, apparently little boxes with Schrodinger's cats inside
that magically come up with answers faster than light. Maybe
I wasn't paying close enough attention. Just like in high school,
and I daydreamed about rc own for the next Star
Trek episode. Also, I'd suggest asking callers who say their
smartphones were quote taken over what they actually mean. Either
they're important enough to be targeted by spy agencies, or

(01:45:10):
they keep letting the same person install sneaky software. I
love our emails this week. Oh my god. Tim in
Richmond writes in recommending two free antivirus and malware tools
directly from Microsoft. The first is the Microsoft Safety Scanner.
The second is the Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool. He

(01:45:31):
says you should download a fresh version each time so
you've got the latest updates. He recommends running these weekly
on his SSD, along with a full scan using Microsoft Defender.
All right, Tim, thanks for that. I'll link that up
on the website. A loyal listener in Richmond, Virginia says,
I was intrigued by your interview with US Mobile. Based
on your experience, I decided to switch. Unfortunately, it has

(01:45:52):
not gone well. Even though Verizon's WARP network has five
G I was only seeing two to three megabits down.
I couldn't add my Wi Fi EI N I'm on
one address. After four hours with Tech support nothing improved.
They even had me reset my phone, which erased all
my saved passwords. Tech support was polite, but troubleshooting felt
like trial and error. I'm not feeling the same enthusiasm

(01:46:13):
you had for US Mobile. I'm glad it's worked. I'll
keep listening. I'm still a loyal fan. Thank you. John
writes in finally listening from Wisconsin. We know that technology
is useful. You make it interesting. After two and two
thirds years, when does the fun begin other than the
best ice cream in the country. Ps, you should hire
your mother to select the music. Hey John, I think

(01:46:33):
we have fun here and that's all that matters. Let's
see we had one more here. Melissa writes in I
look forward to your newsletter every Saturday morning. It's one
of the highlights of my week. I read it first
thing and immediately downloaded the Clever Cleaner app. It's amazing.
I boosted my storage by almost forty percent, so easy
to use. Felt like a trip down memory lane. Thank you, Melissa.

(01:46:55):
That's going to do it for this episode of the
show next week, all about the iPhone and Ai T
travel insurance. Thanks so much for listening. My name is
Rich Damiro, I will talk to you real soon

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Rich DeMuro

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