November 30, 2018 • 33 mins
Long form version of the podcast packed with the things I think you should know that happened in the tech world this week! Learn the details of Marriott's major customer database hack, Apple Music comes to Amazon Echo devices, why I think the Payless "fools" influencers story is bogus, Instagram's new close friends feature, and T-Mobile's new debit card that gives you 4% interest on your money.Links:Marriott / Starwood HackApple Music on EchoInstagram Close Friends FeaturePayless "fools" influencersDJI Osmo PocketAndroid Auto revampT-Mobile Money101 Handy Tech Tips for the iPhone book in paperbackFollow Rich on Social Media:Facebook: http://facebook.com/RichOnTechTwitter: http://twitter.com/richdemuroInstagram: http://instagram.com/richontech Easy ways to listen on your phone or smart speaker:"Hey Google, Play the Rich on Tech Podcast""Hey Siri, Play the Rich on Tech Podcast""Alexa, Enable the Rich on Tech Flash Briefing"
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Get full access to Rich on Tech at richontech.tv/subscribe
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Get full access to Rich on Tech at richontech.tv/subscribe
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Starwood and Marriott reveal a major data breach. Apple Music
is coming to the echo. Instagram makes it easier to
share stories with close friends and pay less fools influencers
or do they what's going on? I'm rich Demiro. This
is Rich on Tech coming to you with an extended
version of the podcast. This is the version where I
(00:26):
talk about all the cool things happening in the tech world,
all the stuff that I think you should know about,
including some of these top stories like the Starwood and
Marriott hack. I'm also going to talk a bit about
recast TV. You guys apparently love the idea of that
cord cutting DVR. Plus my book one hundred and one
Handy Tech Tips for the iPhone published as a paperback
this week, so I'll talk about that a little bit.
(00:48):
But let's get started. First off with star Ward. This
is really interesting and we're seeing these large scale data
hacks more and more. Basically, what happened was they had
an investigation. They determined there was an un authorized access
to a guest database which contained information relating to reservations
as Starwood properties on or before September tenth, twenty eighteen.
(01:10):
So you're talking a lot of people staying at these hotels.
They basically got an alert from an internal security tool
regarding an attempt to access this database, and they realized
that apparently there had been unauthorized access to the Starwood
network since twenty fourteen, so this went on for quite
a long time. Not sure why they didn't notice it
(01:33):
before that time. But here's the deal. They have not
figured out exactly. They have to kind of clean up
the database that they found that was kind of taken
in the hack, but they say they think it contains
information on approximately up to five hundred million guests who
made a reservation at a Starwood property, and for three
hundred and twenty seven million of these guests, that information
(01:56):
includes name, milling address, phone number, email address, passport number,
your star War preferred guest number, which may have changed
now that they took over with the Marriotte rewards as well.
They merged those recently data birth gender, arrival and departure information,
reservation date and communications preference. All that stuff not so bad,
(02:18):
with the exception of the passport number. But the one
thing that is bad is the payment card numbers and
payment card expiration dates. So that was all taken apparently
as well, but the information used to decrypt all of
that data on the payment cards, they're not sure that
that wasn't taken as well. So again, let's say that
they took the database that was encrypted star Woods saying
(02:42):
that they also might have gotten the key to unlock
that database as well. So for other guests, information was
limited to name and other data like the mailing address,
email address, and other information. So what is Marriott doing
now that this all happened. They've set up a dedicated
call center email notification so they've been starting to send
(03:03):
emails to affected guests on November thirtieth, so that's the
first day, so if you haven't gotten an email yet,
they just started doing that, so it could take a
couple days for them to do that. And they're also
letting folks enroll in this web Watcher service, and this
is a service that monitors Internet sites where personal information
is shared, and you'll get an alert if some of
(03:25):
your information is shared. And if you're not sure what
a star War hotel is, if you stayed at a
w hotel A Saint Regis Chreton Weston element a Loft
luxury collection, Tribute Portfolio Lee Meridian four points and design
and also their timeshare properties. I have stayed in the
recent years at the w Shareton Weston element Aloft and
(03:49):
that's about it. So yeah, my information is probably out there.
This is bad. I mean the information that they got
not so bad. I mean, passport number definitely not something
you necessarily want random people to have. But it doesn't
seem like they got passwords, which is good. And if
you're still reusing your password on various websites, don't do that.
And this is another example of why you don't want
(04:11):
to do that. This is some big news coming out
of Apple and Amazon. Who would have thought that these
two would be playing so nice now? Recently Amazon and
Apple announced that Apple products would be available for sale
on Amazon. Now they're taking a step further. Apple Music
will be available on Echo devices beginning the week of
(04:32):
December seventeenth, and that's just in time for you to
enjoy some holiday music on your Echo device if you're
a subscriber to Apple Music. And it's funny because someone
was just asking me the other day what the deal
is with Apple Music, and I was saying, they really
aren't available on any of these smart speakers except for
the HomePod obviously and Sonos, but you have to have
(04:53):
a complex Sonos system for that to work. But now
here they are on the Echo devices, so you can
now ask ex A, I'll say, to play Beats one
to hear Apple's radio station. I've listened to that on
my run through the Apple Watch. It's okay, it's not
my thing. I'm sure it's good if you listen to
maybe some of the shows, and maybe you'll find a
(05:14):
show in there that you like, but just to listen
to it as radio. I've kind of gotten beyond that
with Spotify and kind of all the playlists that I like,
so it's tough for me to just kind of get
involved in Beats one, But if you want to start
listening to that, and of course all the other stuff
I mean, now you can ask al Exa to stream
all the stations that they have. You can also ask
(05:36):
for music by name, so basically anything that you can
do with Siri on the iPhone, if you have Apple
Music and calling out your music, you can now do
on the Echo. And to get started, all you have
to do is enable the Apple Music skill in the
al Exa app, and you can link up your account
and start listening which is really cool and a little
fun fact they put out on the press release here,
(05:57):
top Country is the most requested music to wake up too,
So okay, there you go. Instagram is changing things up
with stories. This is basically the most popular feature of
Instagram right now, stories, and I love it. I mean,
everyone loves Instagram Stories right It's just basically showing you
throughout the day. It's easy, it's simple, it expires after
(06:20):
twenty four hours. You don't have to put too much
thought into it, although a lot of people do. And
it's just a fun way to kind of share what's
happening in your life in a very casual way. And
people love looking at these stories. They love posting them.
I personally love posting them. I always forget to do it,
but when I do it, it's really fun. Well, now
Instagram is letting you make a close friends list on Stories,
(06:43):
so now you can share with just the people you've
added to close friends. And I'm not a big Snapchat user,
but this kind of reminds me of something that you
can do on Snapchat with groups of people, and I
feel like this is something that you used to be
able to do on Instagram anyway. With groups. Maybe there's
some kind of difference here, but I'm not sure, but
it seems like it's just a revamp of groups. But
(07:03):
to add people to your list, you can go to
your profile and tap on close Friends. In the side
menu only you can see your close friends list. No
one can request to be added to this list, so
you can adjust it at any time. But people do
kind of know that they're on this list because when
you share to stories, you'll have an option to share
just with the people on your close friends list, And
if someone has added you to their list, you'll see
(07:25):
a green badge when you're viewing their stories, So that
little green badge means like, oh, this is super special,
and you'll also see a green ring around their profile
photo in the stories trey, which is up at the
top of your Instagram. So it's kind of a fun
little feature. I immediately think of this as something I
can do with my family. I've got a huge family
back east in New Jersey, all my family members, and
(07:48):
sometimes you just want to share maybe a little bit
more intimate pictures of your life, your kids, all that
good stuff, a little bit more personal than what you
might do on your public So I think This is
a really cool feet for that, because it just makes
sense that there are different levels of sharing, and Instagram
is kind of admitting that. Speaking of Instagram this, I
(08:10):
don't believe this story one way. I don't believe this
story at all. But it's making the rounds. Payless fools
influencers with a fake store. That's the CNN headline, and
I just don't believe it. I don't believe that this
was real. I don't think that influencers were fooled. But
I'll tell you the story, and I'll tell you why
I think that. So Payless you obviously know them. They
(08:31):
have Payless shoe stores. They opened up a fake pop
up store called pay Lessie in a Santa Monica I
guess it was somewhere in Santa Monica, maybe on the promenade,
And they invited influencers to a grand opening, and they
had all these Payless shoes there, but they had prices,
you know, four or five hundred, six hundred dollars. Really
the shoes were twenty bucks, right, So they fooled, or
(08:53):
they said they fooled all these people. They of course
did this stunt. They recorded the whole thing. They made
a whole bunch of ads getting a lot of press
and a lot of play out of this. And according
to the CNN article, it says that shut up, are
you serious? One of the shoppers says when she heard
that the shoes were twenty dollars. It says over eighty
(09:16):
influencers attended over two nights. According to Payless, they shelled
out a total of three thousand dollars. One shopper spent
six hundred and forty dollars for a pair of boots,
which represents a eighteen hundred percent markup Payless. However, he
turned their money and let them keep the shoes. They said.
The influencers were paid a small stipend to a tend
(09:36):
So let me tell you why this story's bogus, because
number one, influencers do not spend any money when they
go to events. Okay, I've never been to an influencer event,
and believe me, I get invited to a lot of
these things where you are expected to spend any money whatsoever.
And I'm talking big electronics events where they're giving out
a gift bag at the end of the thing where
it might have a high value piece of electronics. For
(09:58):
these influencers. I'm talking clothes, shoes, there is There's never
been an influencer event I've ever been to where someone
is expected to shell out cash. Okay, in fact, I
don't think I've ever seen that. Usually there's an open bar,
there's you know, food, there are little you know, things
that you can take home, you know. So that's number one.
(10:20):
So if any influencer was at this event spending four
or five hundred dollars or six hundred and forty dollars
for a pair of boots, that's got to be bogus
because that just doesn't happen at an influencer event. So
clearly whoever was going to this event knew that there
was something more going on here, especially when they got
paid a small stipend to attend. That tells me that
(10:43):
these were not influencers, but they were actors that were
sort of told that this would be happening. You know,
we want you to act natural, We want you to
maybe purchase some stuff, but don't worry. We're you know,
you can purchase it, but we're going to reimburse you
at the end. Whatever. I think that this was all
highly set up. I'm sorry, but no one on. None
of these influencers are spending six hundred and forty dollars
(11:04):
on a pair of shoes at an event. It just
doesn't happen. They're getting these shoes gifted if they are
an influencer of any worth. That's number one. Number two.
I kind of looked up the tag on these, the
hashtag pay lessie on Instagram, and guess what, there's almost
zero posts. Okay, so if they had real influencers at
this event, there would have been a bunch of posts
(11:27):
on Instagram about this event. The only posts that I
saw that were on Instagram were from the people that
actually set up this event, the advertising agency and the
event marketing company that set up the whole quote unquote
bogus Payless storefront right, pay Less e storefront. So again,
I think that this is all kind of bogus. It's
(11:48):
all marketing scheme by Payless. It's fun, Don't get me wrong.
I'm not pooh poohing the whole you know idea that
people can be tricked, And yes, we live in a
society where people are influenced by marketing and they're influenced
by price. You put two bottles of wine in front
of someone in a brown bag. I can tell the difference.
I can tell you which one's the cheap one. Not
(12:10):
everyone can. And sometimes I might be tricked and think
that a ten dollars bottle of wine actually tastes better.
But I'm not gonna think it's an eighty dollars bottle
of wine most of the time. But yes, you can
brown bag stuff and fool people. It's human nature. If
you are treated a certain way and something is presented
to you in a certain way, you're gonna feel better
about it. And that's not a bad thing. I mean,
(12:31):
you spend ten dollars for a bottle of water inside
a five star hotel. That bottle of water is literally
twenty five cents at Costco and you're spending ten dollars
on it. Why because you're in a five star hotel.
That's what you expect to pay when you're in a
five star hotel. Now, personally, I will stay away from
that water by all means possible if I can, unless
I am so thirsty I'm about to faint from hydration dehydration.
(12:56):
But the reality is we have these kind of idea
is in our mind of what we expect to pay
and how things are presented. And if you're in a
store that's called pay less and it looks like a
high end store, you're not expecting to be tricked, even
though yes you can be. So I just thought that
was an interesting little story. It's getting a lot of
play in the media, but I just wanted to give
you kind of my thoughts on that stuff. One story
(13:19):
we did on KTLA that was got a lot of
play for real was the Amazon Fire TV recast. And
you guys love this thing. This is a DVR for
cord cutters. It lets you connect an antenna to this
little box and then watch live TV on your TV.
I know, what a concept, but also record that TV
(13:40):
and it reminds me of TVO back in the day.
I got super excited about that. I was a big
TV fan. But the cool thing about this is that
we are getting away from DVRs because we're so into
streaming and on demand right so all of our shows
are on demand and every major network has an app
for on demand. But I'll tell you why DVRs are
still more interesting to me, and that's because the DVR
(14:02):
actually lets you skip those commercials when you're watching on
demand on Hulu and all these different services out there,
you're not able to skip those commercials. So these big
media companies actually like the fact that we're all moving
to on demand because guess what, they now control that
experience again, and I get it. I work for a
place that's free over the air, and I would love
(14:22):
for you to watch commercials. I'd love for you to
listen to the commercials in this podcast and others. But
the reality is people have that control, and we have
technology to give you that control, and it's kind of
nice to have that control. And now, if it's a
good commercial, I like to stop and watch it. Other
people like to stop and watch it, and that's part
of the marketers to figure that stuff out, but it's
kind of cool. So anyway, the Recast TV also has
(14:43):
no monthly fees, which is really nice as well, and
that's a huge part of it, so you don't have
to pay any monthly fees. The device is two hundred
and thirty dollars. Let you record seventy five hours of TV.
If you want, you can spend a little bit more
and record I think it's one hundred and fifty hours
of TV. I've been using this thing at home. It
is fantastic. The integration with fireTV is just amazing because
(15:06):
I can go from watching a show on Netflix right
next to it, it says, hey, KTLA Morning News is streaming,
or sorry is on live, and I can flip right
to that, or I can flip right to a show
that I DVRD, like Jimmy Fallon and watch that. And
it's really really cool to have that all on one screen.
And you might be thinking, Rich, come on, we've had antenna.
(15:28):
You can connect an antenna to a TV forever. Well, yeah,
but now it's all on the same screen. It's all
on the fireTV screen. And yes, you do need a
fireTV to make this all happen. Now, you don't necessarily
have to have a fireTV. You can actually use this
thing and set it up independently of a fireTV, but
to really get the most use out of it, you
do have to have a fireTV because that's really the
(15:50):
only way that you can set recordings. As far as
I can tell, you can view your recordings from the app,
and you can watch live TV from an app on
your tablet or your iPhone or your Andrew, But as
far as I can tell, the only way to actually
set those recordings and to kind of manage everything is
to go through the actual fireTV interface. Now that may
change in the future. Also, at this point there is
(16:12):
no support for third party streaming boxes like the Apple TV,
like Rouke Roku. That may come in the future, and
I do think that Amazon will eventually build some of
that stuff in, but right now that's not there. So
you have to have, let's say, a fireTV stick. I
really like the fireTV four K, the brand new one.
That is fantastic because the remote control has universal volume
(16:35):
and mute buttons and power buttons on it, which is
really nice because now you can have literally one remote
control to control your entire interface and home theater setup,
and one interface on your TV screen to not only
watch streaming stuff, but also to watch your live over
the air channels and your DVR stuff. And again, this
(16:55):
does not work with cable. So I got a lot
of emails yesterday folks saying, hey, Rich, what if I
want to watch Bravo, what if I want to watch
Fox Sports? What if I want to watch this? No,
none of that is included in over the air. These
are local channels, Channel two, Channel four, Channel five, Channel seven,
Channel nine, Channel thirteen, Channel eleven here in Los Angeles,
(17:15):
and very similar channels where you live. You have to
have an antenna to get those channels. Bravo is not
delivered over an antenna, so if you want something like Bravo,
or if you want CNN or some of these cable channels,
you would have to supplement this setup with a subscription
to some sort of streaming service like DirectTV Now or
(17:37):
Sling TV. Those will work. And again, the other flip
side of that is that those services have a lot
of the local channels included in them, but not PBS,
not KTLA. If you're in Los Angeles and maybe in
your market, they may have other local channels that you like,
especially some international ones that they just don't offer on
the direct TV Now or the Sling TV or the
(17:58):
YouTube TV. So long story short, this is a not
a perfect solution, but it's a really nice solution if
theoretically you wanted to cut the cord, stop paying for
cable TV, still have to pay for cable internet, some
sort of high speed internet, and also have all your
local channels for free DVR, all that content, all those
(18:18):
network shows that you know that air like Modern Family,
and I was gonna say Letterman in Leno, but there
is no more Letterman in Leno. But you know Fallon
and Jimmy Kimmel. You can record that stuff. You can
record your local news, all the sports that air locally,
and that's a lot of programming. There's a lot of
good stuff there. You can have all that for free
(18:39):
over the air with this device. And then you can
have let's say Netflix, because you pay fourteen bucks a
month for that, you can have that. And then you
can also have you know, Amazon Prime Video if you
have an Amazon Prime membership. So just those three things alone,
all the over the air stuff plus your Netflix plus
your Prime's that's a large amount of content. I don't
(19:01):
know if you need much more than that. So if
you like some of these cable channels, though, you will
have to have a subscription for that. So some of
you may know that my book one hundred and one
Handy Tech Tips for the iPhone came out as a paperback.
This is very exciting because I published the ebook over
the summer. It did very well. Thank you so much
for supporting the book. I did it as a PDF
(19:21):
and also as an e book, and also on the Kindle,
and the number one question I got was Rich, I
want to read this thing as a paperback, And I'll
be honest, what happened with the first book is I
had every intention of making it up. Well, actually I didn't.
When I to be honest, I actually wasn't going to
make it a paperback at all. But when I started
to kind of tease it a little bit, people were saying,
(19:42):
you know, when can I buy this as a paperback?
And I was like, all right, well, I guess maybe
I'll make it a paperback. The problem was that formatting
for a paperback was so different than formatting for an ebook.
I didn't realize that, and I couldn't go back. By
the time it was published, it was just not There
was no time to actually go back and make it
a paperback. So I said, I'll take everything I learned
from here and when I do my next book, especially
(20:03):
with all the emails I got, I will make this
thing a paperback because that's what people want. And I did.
I started this second version of the book, which was
updated for iOS twelve, as a paperback in mind, and
when you do a paperback you have to think about
different things, most specifically the formatting of the book, the
way it looks. The pictures. They have to be a
(20:24):
certain quality, they have to lay a certain way on
the printed page. And I kind of thought about all
that stuff as I wrote it from the beginning, and
here it is in my hand, the paperback book one
hundred and one Handy Tech Tips for the iPhone, all
updated for iOS twelve. So I talk about all the
things that are new in iOS twelve. Creating a momoji
that looks like you memoji, taking control of your notifications
(20:46):
because they're much easier now. To manage screen time, Do
not disturb time limits for apps, screen time and content
limits for your kids, downtime. This is a great one.
If you want to say, like from five to seven pm,
your phone does let you do anything. You can set
that up Google Maps and ways. Adding that to CarPlay,
fun message effects, USB accessories, How to keep them from
(21:10):
siphoning off your data. Turn your iPhone into a virtual
measuring tape. How to autofill passwords. If you're not using
one of these password management systems, and you can even
use a free one that's built into the iPhone. I
tell you how to set that up. It is essential
in Today's Day and age group FaceTime. Let's see series shortcuts.
Setting up a second phone line, deleting a used boarding pass.
(21:33):
I know that sounds simple, but those things linger forever.
Look in your Apple wallet if you ever use them,
you probably have a bunch of them in there. And
then I go into the basics, taking a screenshot, checking
for app updates, how to cancel a subscription, setting up
two factor authentication, creating a medical ID from emergencies that's
really important, emergency sos. One cool thing. You can change
(21:54):
the brightness of the flashlight. Did you know you could
do that on your phone? Let's see revealing the hidden
search bar that are all over, erasing one calculator digit.
That's pretty cool, the secret redial button. I mean, there's
so many little things. Changing your airdrop preferences fast. I mean,
this thing just goes on and on and on. Oh
my gosh. I love this book, and I'm not just
(22:16):
saying that because I wrote it. I love it because
you have no idea how many questions I get from
people about the iPhone on a daily basis, and it
does not frustrate me. It's just one of those things
that we all use this device. But we don't truly
know how to manage it and all the things that
it's capable of. And so this book just kind of
(22:36):
goes through all those things that your phone does. You
may not need to know how to do all this
stuff right now today, but the reality is I want
to give you the tools you need to know just
to understand what the phone is capable of. And then
when someone says, hey, can you sign this piece of
paper and email it to me, and you go, I
don't know how to do that. Oh wait, I read
(22:57):
in Rich's book. I can sign a PDF right from
my eyes iPhone. I can make a piece of paper
into a PDF right for my iPhone. Oh yeah. These
are the kind of things I just want to plant
in your brain so that when you need the functionality,
you know how to access it or you know that
it's there, and then you can go back to the
book and actually follow the step by steps and do it.
So the book is one hundred and one Handy Tech
(23:18):
Tips for the iPhone. It's on Amazon. It's amazing the process.
I really want to write another book on just publishing
a book. I self published this on Amazon. The process
is just amazing the fact that we can do this
in this day and age is just phenomenal. And the
fact that I can reach so many people and get
this book into their hands on the most popular shopping
(23:40):
platform in America, maybe the world. I don't know, maybe
China has something bigger. But the reality is it's just
so cool and I love it. When Sam Rubin, one
of my colleagues at KTLA, looked at the book, he goes, oh,
my gosh, this is real. I said, yes, it's real.
It's a real it's a paperback, it's thick, it has
a lot of information, and when you get this thing
(24:00):
mailed to you, there's gonna be a little smile that
comes on your face because you're gonna go wow. I've
known Rich, I've followed him, and I feel like this
is like literally Rich placing this in my hands from
Rich's brain right to mine. And that's the way I feel.
So it's on Amazon now. It makes a great gift
for the holidays. If someone has an iPhone in your life,
(24:21):
especially someone that doesn't necessarily know how to use all
the features, and you're kind of sick of telling them
how to do all these things on it, get them
this book. They will love you for it, and I
guarantee you they will come back to you and tell you,
you know what, I really learned this or that from
the book, and I appreciate it. And so there you go.
That's the book, one hundred and one Handy Tech Tips
(24:42):
for the iPhone, updated, simplified and revised for iOS twelve.
So thank you so much in advance for that. It
is already climbing the charts on Amazon, and I love
the fact that they are doing that. All Right, a
couple more stories to talk about and then I'll let
you guys go. But Dji Osmo they came out with
DGI is the company known for their drones. They came
(25:02):
out with this little thing called the Osmo Pocket. This
is a new stabilized camera. They say it's the world's
smallest three axi three axis axi axis stabilized camera. Now
I'm torn on this kind of stuff because I do
carry around a GoPro in my bag. But I'll be
honest with the cell phones nowadays, I find myself needing
(25:22):
these kind of small point and shoot cameras, video cameras
less and less, and I get it. If you're a
blogger influencer, maybe you want to have one of these
things on hand to produce content. I do that stuff,
and I rarely find myself needing it. It's nice to have.
And this is a really cool thing because it's basically
a highly stabilized GoPro. Imagine a go Pro mixed with
(25:42):
a flipcam member flipcams from back in the day. That's
kind of what this thing reminds me of. It's four
inches tall, it's got a little gimbal, little stabilizer, it's
got twelve megapixels for pictures and four K video up
to sixty frames per second, and it's a great little
device if you can afford it three hundred fifty dollars.
It also has a one inch touchscreen on it, which
(26:03):
is cool because you can see what you're shooting. And
you can plug this thing into a USBC or an
iOS lightning port to bring some extra functionality. The Osmo
Pocket sells for three hundred and fifty dollars and it
will ship on December fifteenth. Check it out if you're
one of those people that is looking for kind of
a go Pro style solution, but this is just a
(26:25):
little bit different because you've got the go pro style
camera but also it's stabilized and it just looks cool.
It's really small. Android Auto is giving a little revamp
to make things a little simpler now. I've been using
Android Auto and Apple CarPlay for a while now, I
personally think that Apple CarPlay has the much better layout.
(26:47):
It's easier to access your apps, it's quicker to access
your music, and the messaging function works better. And I
think that Google is realizing this with their Android Auto
layout and they're kind of revamping stuff. So they have
now made media browsing a little bit more visual and
a little easier. Plus, you also see a visual preview
of a message that someone sends you, which is also
(27:09):
really smart. That only happens when your car is stopped,
by the way, So if you come to a stop
and you're at a stop sign or a light and
someone texts you, you'll be able to see what their
text says, which is really handy. I know distracted driving
is dangerous and I don't ever want you to text
or even look at your phone while you drive, but
this is smart because sometimes you just want to see
the response. You don't need to wait for Siri or
(27:31):
for Google Assistant to read the whole response if you
can just see something like okay, because it's actually more
distracting for you to have to tap to hear that
message from Siri or from the assistant. But this new
revample be live in Google play Books, Google play Music, iHeartRadio,
Pocket Casts, and Spotify. Also popular messaging apps like Messages, Hangouts,
(27:53):
and Whatsapple work with the new messaging features. So when
it comes to the media, there's an improved layout with
larger album art views, so that's easier to find and
browse than I guess the old way of doing it.
And they also have improvements to voice search, so you
can ask Google now to play songs and playlists and
also types of music, and apparently you'll get some categorized
(28:17):
search results from your app right on the screen, which
is also brilliant because the reason why I've stopped using
the voice commands in Android autos because if you don't
get them just right, it starts playing some playlist you
don't even know if it's the right one. It's kind
of nice that they will actually now give you that
visual response and you're like eighties music and it will
show you kind of like the different playlists that have
to do with eighties music. That's smart. The functionality will
(28:40):
be rolling out over the next few days, so check
it out. And finally, let's end on this. I've got
a friend who we always talk about the interest rate
on our savings account because they seem to be going
up at some of these online banks, right. And I
remember back in the day, when I think it was
E Trade, I had an account there was like five
(29:00):
percent interest, which is pretty awesome. Now, obviously we know
that those I think that same account is down to
like point one zero. But some of these big accounts
they do have, you know, one to two percent interest.
Maybe some of the online accounts have even more than that.
But T Mobile now has their own virtual bank that
you can sign up for. It's called t Mobile Money,
(29:21):
and they give you a debit card and for all
intents and purposes, this is a little checking account that
you can use. I don't think they actually give you checks,
but you can obviously bill pay and that kind of stuff.
Maybe they let's see, do they have checks in here.
I don't think they do. You know, maybe they do.
Let's see Mobile check deposits pay bills with T Mobile Money. Yeah,
(29:42):
I think you do have to use all the mobile functions,
and for me personally, I write like one check a
month to one place that does not take a credit
card or a a bill pay. I mean, I guess
I could do bill pay with them, but it's just
easier to write the check. But yeah, I hate writing checks,
so I don't really use that functionality on my checking account.
But long story short, the magic of this account is
(30:04):
that they give you four percent interest on your money
in the checking account, which is pretty rare. So there
is a catch. You have to be a T mobile
customer not to get the account, but to get that
four percent. Anyone can sign up for T Mobile Money,
and if you sign up, it's actually a pretty cool
little account. It's all digital, it's very high tech, it's
very slick. You get a MasterCard, debit card, you get
(30:26):
fee free ATMs at the All Point network, which there
are a bunch of All Point ATMs out there, fifty
five thousand of them. There's also no fees whatsoever, so
there's no overdrafts. No, there's really nothing. There's no fees
whatsoever with this, no monthly maintenance fees whatever. You do
have to deposit two hundred dollars a month. Into the account.
(30:48):
And does that have to be direct deposit. I'm not sure,
but yeah, so I mean there's really no fees at all,
which is nice. So if you're a T Mobile customer,
you get four percent interest on your money in this
checking account. If you're just a everyday person without tea Mobile,
you do get one percent interest, which is pretty much
in line with a lot of the major bank accounts.
So I think this is a cool deal, and if
(31:09):
you're a T Mobile customer, I take a look at it. Personally,
I have a a separate I don't. I don't like
using credit cards as much as I do my debit card,
and there's reasons for that. I like to stay out
of debt, so that's why I use my debit card
as much as possible. If I'm traveling, yes I will
use my credit card, but for day to day stuff,
I really like to use my debit card as much
(31:29):
as humanly possible because guess what, the money's there, and
it it actually hurts me more to spend real money
than it does to have me spend money on a
credit card. And I'm sure you feel that way too,
So I love using a debit card, but I do
like the idea of having a separate a separate account
for your debit card of the day to day spend money,
right and so this is a perfect account for that
(31:50):
because you can get your debit card, you can put
your money in there. If you're T mobile customer, you're
getting four percent. There is one more catch, you only
get it up to three thousand dollars. But you know,
I mean, I don't know how many people are keeping
more than three grand and they're checking account. So it's
it's not a bad deal. And you can use this
kind of as your day to day spending account. And
I love it because you're staying out of debt, you're
getting a good a return, there's no fees. You can
(32:12):
use it with Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, Google Pay, you
can use it with bill pay. You can deposit checks
into there, you can have your portion of your paycheck
put into this, and it's a pretty nice little offering.
So again T Mobile Money dot Com, you can check
it out and see if that's something that's right for you.
And that's going to bring us to the end of
the podcast. Thanks so much for all of your emails,
(32:34):
your tweets, your messages. I do read them. I do
respond to them. If you want to follow me on Instagram,
I'm at rich on Tech. On Twitter, I'm at rich DeMuro.
My website is rich on tech dot tv. You've probably
heard me say that a zillion times, and my Facebook
is Facebook dot com slash rich on tech. Let me
know what you think of this longer version of the podcast,
(32:55):
and if you like the podcast, you've been enjoying what
I'm doing here, take a screenshot of it and post
it out on social media and be sure to tag
me so I can restory that, or I can retweet it,
or I can just enjoy it and smile and sit
back and know that when I am talking into this microphone,
someone out there is listening, responding and smiling. When I
say thank you so much for listening, I do really
(33:15):
appreciate it. If you want links to anything I talk
about here, look in the show notes or go to
my website rich on tech dot tv, and you have
a great day. Thanks so much for listening. I'm rich Damiro.
I will talk to you real soon
Starwood and Marriott reveal a major data breach. Apple Music
is coming to the echo. Instagram makes it easier to
share stories with close friends and pay less fools influencers
or do they what's going on? I'm rich Demiro. This
is Rich on Tech coming to you with an extended
version of the podcast. This is the version where I
(00:26):
talk about all the cool things happening in the tech world,
all the stuff that I think you should know about,
including some of these top stories like the Starwood and
Marriott hack. I'm also going to talk a bit about
recast TV. You guys apparently love the idea of that
cord cutting DVR. Plus my book one hundred and one
Handy Tech Tips for the iPhone published as a paperback
this week, so I'll talk about that a little bit.
(00:48):
But let's get started. First off with star Ward. This
is really interesting and we're seeing these large scale data
hacks more and more. Basically, what happened was they had
an investigation. They determined there was an un authorized access
to a guest database which contained information relating to reservations
as Starwood properties on or before September tenth, twenty eighteen.
(01:10):
So you're talking a lot of people staying at these hotels.
They basically got an alert from an internal security tool
regarding an attempt to access this database, and they realized
that apparently there had been unauthorized access to the Starwood
network since twenty fourteen, so this went on for quite
a long time. Not sure why they didn't notice it
(01:33):
before that time. But here's the deal. They have not
figured out exactly. They have to kind of clean up
the database that they found that was kind of taken
in the hack, but they say they think it contains
information on approximately up to five hundred million guests who
made a reservation at a Starwood property, and for three
hundred and twenty seven million of these guests, that information
(01:56):
includes name, milling address, phone number, email address, passport number,
your star War preferred guest number, which may have changed
now that they took over with the Marriotte rewards as well.
They merged those recently data birth gender, arrival and departure information,
reservation date and communications preference. All that stuff not so bad,
(02:18):
with the exception of the passport number. But the one
thing that is bad is the payment card numbers and
payment card expiration dates. So that was all taken apparently
as well, but the information used to decrypt all of
that data on the payment cards, they're not sure that
that wasn't taken as well. So again, let's say that
they took the database that was encrypted star Woods saying
(02:42):
that they also might have gotten the key to unlock
that database as well. So for other guests, information was
limited to name and other data like the mailing address,
email address, and other information. So what is Marriott doing
now that this all happened. They've set up a dedicated
call center email notification so they've been starting to send
(03:03):
emails to affected guests on November thirtieth, so that's the
first day, so if you haven't gotten an email yet,
they just started doing that, so it could take a
couple days for them to do that. And they're also
letting folks enroll in this web Watcher service, and this
is a service that monitors Internet sites where personal information
is shared, and you'll get an alert if some of
(03:25):
your information is shared. And if you're not sure what
a star War hotel is, if you stayed at a
w hotel A Saint Regis Chreton Weston element a Loft
luxury collection, Tribute Portfolio Lee Meridian four points and design
and also their timeshare properties. I have stayed in the
recent years at the w Shareton Weston element Aloft and
(03:49):
that's about it. So yeah, my information is probably out there.
This is bad. I mean the information that they got
not so bad. I mean, passport number definitely not something
you necessarily want random people to have. But it doesn't
seem like they got passwords, which is good. And if
you're still reusing your password on various websites, don't do that.
And this is another example of why you don't want
(04:11):
to do that. This is some big news coming out
of Apple and Amazon. Who would have thought that these
two would be playing so nice now? Recently Amazon and
Apple announced that Apple products would be available for sale
on Amazon. Now they're taking a step further. Apple Music
will be available on Echo devices beginning the week of
(04:32):
December seventeenth, and that's just in time for you to
enjoy some holiday music on your Echo device if you're
a subscriber to Apple Music. And it's funny because someone
was just asking me the other day what the deal
is with Apple Music, and I was saying, they really
aren't available on any of these smart speakers except for
the HomePod obviously and Sonos, but you have to have
(04:53):
a complex Sonos system for that to work. But now
here they are on the Echo devices, so you can
now ask ex A, I'll say, to play Beats one
to hear Apple's radio station. I've listened to that on
my run through the Apple Watch. It's okay, it's not
my thing. I'm sure it's good if you listen to
maybe some of the shows, and maybe you'll find a
(05:14):
show in there that you like, but just to listen
to it as radio. I've kind of gotten beyond that
with Spotify and kind of all the playlists that I like,
so it's tough for me to just kind of get
involved in Beats one, But if you want to start
listening to that, and of course all the other stuff
I mean, now you can ask al Exa to stream
all the stations that they have. You can also ask
(05:36):
for music by name, so basically anything that you can
do with Siri on the iPhone, if you have Apple
Music and calling out your music, you can now do
on the Echo. And to get started, all you have
to do is enable the Apple Music skill in the
al Exa app, and you can link up your account
and start listening which is really cool and a little
fun fact they put out on the press release here,
(05:57):
top Country is the most requested music to wake up too,
So okay, there you go. Instagram is changing things up
with stories. This is basically the most popular feature of
Instagram right now, stories, and I love it. I mean,
everyone loves Instagram Stories right It's just basically showing you
throughout the day. It's easy, it's simple, it expires after
(06:20):
twenty four hours. You don't have to put too much
thought into it, although a lot of people do. And
it's just a fun way to kind of share what's
happening in your life in a very casual way. And
people love looking at these stories. They love posting them.
I personally love posting them. I always forget to do it,
but when I do it, it's really fun. Well, now
Instagram is letting you make a close friends list on Stories,
(06:43):
so now you can share with just the people you've
added to close friends. And I'm not a big Snapchat user,
but this kind of reminds me of something that you
can do on Snapchat with groups of people, and I
feel like this is something that you used to be
able to do on Instagram anyway. With groups. Maybe there's
some kind of difference here, but I'm not sure, but
it seems like it's just a revamp of groups. But
(07:03):
to add people to your list, you can go to
your profile and tap on close Friends. In the side
menu only you can see your close friends list. No
one can request to be added to this list, so
you can adjust it at any time. But people do
kind of know that they're on this list because when
you share to stories, you'll have an option to share
just with the people on your close friends list, And
if someone has added you to their list, you'll see
(07:25):
a green badge when you're viewing their stories, So that
little green badge means like, oh, this is super special,
and you'll also see a green ring around their profile
photo in the stories trey, which is up at the
top of your Instagram. So it's kind of a fun
little feature. I immediately think of this as something I
can do with my family. I've got a huge family
back east in New Jersey, all my family members, and
(07:48):
sometimes you just want to share maybe a little bit
more intimate pictures of your life, your kids, all that
good stuff, a little bit more personal than what you
might do on your public So I think This is
a really cool feet for that, because it just makes
sense that there are different levels of sharing, and Instagram
is kind of admitting that. Speaking of Instagram this, I
(08:10):
don't believe this story one way. I don't believe this
story at all. But it's making the rounds. Payless fools
influencers with a fake store. That's the CNN headline, and
I just don't believe it. I don't believe that this
was real. I don't think that influencers were fooled. But
I'll tell you the story, and I'll tell you why
I think that. So Payless you obviously know them. They
(08:31):
have Payless shoe stores. They opened up a fake pop
up store called pay Lessie in a Santa Monica I
guess it was somewhere in Santa Monica, maybe on the promenade,
And they invited influencers to a grand opening, and they
had all these Payless shoes there, but they had prices,
you know, four or five hundred, six hundred dollars. Really
the shoes were twenty bucks, right, So they fooled, or
(08:53):
they said they fooled all these people. They of course
did this stunt. They recorded the whole thing. They made
a whole bunch of ads getting a lot of press
and a lot of play out of this. And according
to the CNN article, it says that shut up, are
you serious? One of the shoppers says when she heard
that the shoes were twenty dollars. It says over eighty
(09:16):
influencers attended over two nights. According to Payless, they shelled
out a total of three thousand dollars. One shopper spent
six hundred and forty dollars for a pair of boots,
which represents a eighteen hundred percent markup Payless. However, he
turned their money and let them keep the shoes. They said.
The influencers were paid a small stipend to a tend
(09:36):
So let me tell you why this story's bogus, because
number one, influencers do not spend any money when they
go to events. Okay, I've never been to an influencer event,
and believe me, I get invited to a lot of
these things where you are expected to spend any money whatsoever.
And I'm talking big electronics events where they're giving out
a gift bag at the end of the thing where
it might have a high value piece of electronics. For
(09:58):
these influencers. I'm talking clothes, shoes, there is There's never
been an influencer event I've ever been to where someone
is expected to shell out cash. Okay, in fact, I
don't think I've ever seen that. Usually there's an open bar,
there's you know, food, there are little you know, things
that you can take home, you know. So that's number one.
(10:20):
So if any influencer was at this event spending four
or five hundred dollars or six hundred and forty dollars
for a pair of boots, that's got to be bogus
because that just doesn't happen at an influencer event. So
clearly whoever was going to this event knew that there
was something more going on here, especially when they got
paid a small stipend to attend. That tells me that
(10:43):
these were not influencers, but they were actors that were
sort of told that this would be happening. You know,
we want you to act natural, We want you to
maybe purchase some stuff, but don't worry. We're you know,
you can purchase it, but we're going to reimburse you
at the end. Whatever. I think that this was all
highly set up. I'm sorry, but no one on. None
of these influencers are spending six hundred and forty dollars
(11:04):
on a pair of shoes at an event. It just
doesn't happen. They're getting these shoes gifted if they are
an influencer of any worth. That's number one. Number two.
I kind of looked up the tag on these, the
hashtag pay lessie on Instagram, and guess what, there's almost
zero posts. Okay, so if they had real influencers at
this event, there would have been a bunch of posts
(11:27):
on Instagram about this event. The only posts that I
saw that were on Instagram were from the people that
actually set up this event, the advertising agency and the
event marketing company that set up the whole quote unquote
bogus Payless storefront right, pay Less e storefront. So again,
I think that this is all kind of bogus. It's
(11:48):
all marketing scheme by Payless. It's fun, Don't get me wrong.
I'm not pooh poohing the whole you know idea that
people can be tricked, And yes, we live in a
society where people are influenced by marketing and they're influenced
by price. You put two bottles of wine in front
of someone in a brown bag. I can tell the difference.
I can tell you which one's the cheap one. Not
(12:10):
everyone can. And sometimes I might be tricked and think
that a ten dollars bottle of wine actually tastes better.
But I'm not gonna think it's an eighty dollars bottle
of wine most of the time. But yes, you can
brown bag stuff and fool people. It's human nature. If
you are treated a certain way and something is presented
to you in a certain way, you're gonna feel better
about it. And that's not a bad thing. I mean,
(12:31):
you spend ten dollars for a bottle of water inside
a five star hotel. That bottle of water is literally
twenty five cents at Costco and you're spending ten dollars
on it. Why because you're in a five star hotel.
That's what you expect to pay when you're in a
five star hotel. Now, personally, I will stay away from
that water by all means possible if I can, unless
I am so thirsty I'm about to faint from hydration dehydration.
(12:56):
But the reality is we have these kind of idea
is in our mind of what we expect to pay
and how things are presented. And if you're in a
store that's called pay less and it looks like a
high end store, you're not expecting to be tricked, even
though yes you can be. So I just thought that
was an interesting little story. It's getting a lot of
play in the media, but I just wanted to give
you kind of my thoughts on that stuff. One story
(13:19):
we did on KTLA that was got a lot of
play for real was the Amazon Fire TV recast. And
you guys love this thing. This is a DVR for
cord cutters. It lets you connect an antenna to this
little box and then watch live TV on your TV.
I know, what a concept, but also record that TV
(13:40):
and it reminds me of TVO back in the day.
I got super excited about that. I was a big
TV fan. But the cool thing about this is that
we are getting away from DVRs because we're so into
streaming and on demand right so all of our shows
are on demand and every major network has an app
for on demand. But I'll tell you why DVRs are
still more interesting to me, and that's because the DVR
(14:02):
actually lets you skip those commercials when you're watching on
demand on Hulu and all these different services out there,
you're not able to skip those commercials. So these big
media companies actually like the fact that we're all moving
to on demand because guess what, they now control that
experience again, and I get it. I work for a
place that's free over the air, and I would love
(14:22):
for you to watch commercials. I'd love for you to
listen to the commercials in this podcast and others. But
the reality is people have that control, and we have
technology to give you that control, and it's kind of
nice to have that control. And now, if it's a
good commercial, I like to stop and watch it. Other
people like to stop and watch it, and that's part
of the marketers to figure that stuff out, but it's
kind of cool. So anyway, the Recast TV also has
(14:43):
no monthly fees, which is really nice as well, and
that's a huge part of it, so you don't have
to pay any monthly fees. The device is two hundred
and thirty dollars. Let you record seventy five hours of TV.
If you want, you can spend a little bit more
and record I think it's one hundred and fifty hours
of TV. I've been using this thing at home. It
is fantastic. The integration with fireTV is just amazing because
(15:06):
I can go from watching a show on Netflix right
next to it, it says, hey, KTLA Morning News is streaming,
or sorry is on live, and I can flip right
to that, or I can flip right to a show
that I DVRD, like Jimmy Fallon and watch that. And
it's really really cool to have that all on one screen.
And you might be thinking, Rich, come on, we've had antenna.
(15:28):
You can connect an antenna to a TV forever. Well, yeah,
but now it's all on the same screen. It's all
on the fireTV screen. And yes, you do need a
fireTV to make this all happen. Now, you don't necessarily
have to have a fireTV. You can actually use this
thing and set it up independently of a fireTV, but
to really get the most use out of it, you
do have to have a fireTV because that's really the
(15:50):
only way that you can set recordings. As far as
I can tell, you can view your recordings from the app,
and you can watch live TV from an app on
your tablet or your iPhone or your Andrew, But as
far as I can tell, the only way to actually
set those recordings and to kind of manage everything is
to go through the actual fireTV interface. Now that may
change in the future. Also, at this point there is
(16:12):
no support for third party streaming boxes like the Apple TV,
like Rouke Roku. That may come in the future, and
I do think that Amazon will eventually build some of
that stuff in, but right now that's not there. So
you have to have, let's say, a fireTV stick. I
really like the fireTV four K, the brand new one.
That is fantastic because the remote control has universal volume
(16:35):
and mute buttons and power buttons on it, which is
really nice because now you can have literally one remote
control to control your entire interface and home theater setup,
and one interface on your TV screen to not only
watch streaming stuff, but also to watch your live over
the air channels and your DVR stuff. And again, this
(16:55):
does not work with cable. So I got a lot
of emails yesterday folks saying, hey, Rich, what if I
want to watch Bravo, what if I want to watch
Fox Sports? What if I want to watch this? No,
none of that is included in over the air. These
are local channels, Channel two, Channel four, Channel five, Channel seven,
Channel nine, Channel thirteen, Channel eleven here in Los Angeles,
(17:15):
and very similar channels where you live. You have to
have an antenna to get those channels. Bravo is not
delivered over an antenna, so if you want something like Bravo,
or if you want CNN or some of these cable channels,
you would have to supplement this setup with a subscription
to some sort of streaming service like DirectTV Now or
(17:37):
Sling TV. Those will work. And again, the other flip
side of that is that those services have a lot
of the local channels included in them, but not PBS,
not KTLA. If you're in Los Angeles and maybe in
your market, they may have other local channels that you like,
especially some international ones that they just don't offer on
the direct TV Now or the Sling TV or the
(17:58):
YouTube TV. So long story short, this is a not
a perfect solution, but it's a really nice solution if
theoretically you wanted to cut the cord, stop paying for
cable TV, still have to pay for cable internet, some
sort of high speed internet, and also have all your
local channels for free DVR, all that content, all those
(18:18):
network shows that you know that air like Modern Family,
and I was gonna say Letterman in Leno, but there
is no more Letterman in Leno. But you know Fallon
and Jimmy Kimmel. You can record that stuff. You can
record your local news, all the sports that air locally,
and that's a lot of programming. There's a lot of
good stuff there. You can have all that for free
(18:39):
over the air with this device. And then you can
have let's say Netflix, because you pay fourteen bucks a
month for that, you can have that. And then you
can also have you know, Amazon Prime Video if you
have an Amazon Prime membership. So just those three things alone,
all the over the air stuff plus your Netflix plus
your Prime's that's a large amount of content. I don't
(19:01):
know if you need much more than that. So if
you like some of these cable channels, though, you will
have to have a subscription for that. So some of
you may know that my book one hundred and one
Handy Tech Tips for the iPhone came out as a paperback.
This is very exciting because I published the ebook over
the summer. It did very well. Thank you so much
for supporting the book. I did it as a PDF
(19:21):
and also as an e book, and also on the Kindle,
and the number one question I got was Rich, I
want to read this thing as a paperback, And I'll
be honest, what happened with the first book is I
had every intention of making it up. Well, actually I didn't.
When I to be honest, I actually wasn't going to
make it a paperback at all. But when I started
to kind of tease it a little bit, people were saying,
(19:42):
you know, when can I buy this as a paperback?
And I was like, all right, well, I guess maybe
I'll make it a paperback. The problem was that formatting
for a paperback was so different than formatting for an ebook.
I didn't realize that, and I couldn't go back. By
the time it was published, it was just not There
was no time to actually go back and make it
a paperback. So I said, I'll take everything I learned
from here and when I do my next book, especially
(20:03):
with all the emails I got, I will make this
thing a paperback because that's what people want. And I did.
I started this second version of the book, which was
updated for iOS twelve, as a paperback in mind, and
when you do a paperback you have to think about
different things, most specifically the formatting of the book, the
way it looks. The pictures. They have to be a
(20:24):
certain quality, they have to lay a certain way on
the printed page. And I kind of thought about all
that stuff as I wrote it from the beginning, and
here it is in my hand, the paperback book one
hundred and one Handy Tech Tips for the iPhone, all
updated for iOS twelve. So I talk about all the
things that are new in iOS twelve. Creating a momoji
that looks like you memoji, taking control of your notifications
(20:46):
because they're much easier now. To manage screen time, Do
not disturb time limits for apps, screen time and content
limits for your kids, downtime. This is a great one.
If you want to say, like from five to seven pm,
your phone does let you do anything. You can set
that up Google Maps and ways. Adding that to CarPlay,
fun message effects, USB accessories, How to keep them from
(21:10):
siphoning off your data. Turn your iPhone into a virtual
measuring tape. How to autofill passwords. If you're not using
one of these password management systems, and you can even
use a free one that's built into the iPhone. I
tell you how to set that up. It is essential
in Today's Day and age group FaceTime. Let's see series shortcuts.
Setting up a second phone line, deleting a used boarding pass.
(21:33):
I know that sounds simple, but those things linger forever.
Look in your Apple wallet if you ever use them,
you probably have a bunch of them in there. And
then I go into the basics, taking a screenshot, checking
for app updates, how to cancel a subscription, setting up
two factor authentication, creating a medical ID from emergencies that's
really important, emergency sos. One cool thing. You can change
(21:54):
the brightness of the flashlight. Did you know you could
do that on your phone? Let's see revealing the hidden
search bar that are all over, erasing one calculator digit.
That's pretty cool, the secret redial button. I mean, there's
so many little things. Changing your airdrop preferences fast. I mean,
this thing just goes on and on and on. Oh
my gosh. I love this book, and I'm not just
(22:16):
saying that because I wrote it. I love it because
you have no idea how many questions I get from
people about the iPhone on a daily basis, and it
does not frustrate me. It's just one of those things
that we all use this device. But we don't truly
know how to manage it and all the things that
it's capable of. And so this book just kind of
(22:36):
goes through all those things that your phone does. You
may not need to know how to do all this
stuff right now today, but the reality is I want
to give you the tools you need to know just
to understand what the phone is capable of. And then
when someone says, hey, can you sign this piece of
paper and email it to me, and you go, I
don't know how to do that. Oh wait, I read
(22:57):
in Rich's book. I can sign a PDF right from
my eyes iPhone. I can make a piece of paper
into a PDF right for my iPhone. Oh yeah. These
are the kind of things I just want to plant
in your brain so that when you need the functionality,
you know how to access it or you know that
it's there, and then you can go back to the
book and actually follow the step by steps and do it.
So the book is one hundred and one Handy Tech
(23:18):
Tips for the iPhone. It's on Amazon. It's amazing the process.
I really want to write another book on just publishing
a book. I self published this on Amazon. The process
is just amazing the fact that we can do this
in this day and age is just phenomenal. And the
fact that I can reach so many people and get
this book into their hands on the most popular shopping
(23:40):
platform in America, maybe the world. I don't know, maybe
China has something bigger. But the reality is it's just
so cool and I love it. When Sam Rubin, one
of my colleagues at KTLA, looked at the book, he goes, oh,
my gosh, this is real. I said, yes, it's real.
It's a real it's a paperback, it's thick, it has
a lot of information, and when you get this thing
(24:00):
mailed to you, there's gonna be a little smile that
comes on your face because you're gonna go wow. I've
known Rich, I've followed him, and I feel like this
is like literally Rich placing this in my hands from
Rich's brain right to mine. And that's the way I feel.
So it's on Amazon now. It makes a great gift
for the holidays. If someone has an iPhone in your life,
(24:21):
especially someone that doesn't necessarily know how to use all
the features, and you're kind of sick of telling them
how to do all these things on it, get them
this book. They will love you for it, and I
guarantee you they will come back to you and tell you,
you know what, I really learned this or that from
the book, and I appreciate it. And so there you go.
That's the book, one hundred and one Handy Tech Tips
(24:42):
for the iPhone, updated, simplified and revised for iOS twelve.
So thank you so much in advance for that. It
is already climbing the charts on Amazon, and I love
the fact that they are doing that. All Right, a
couple more stories to talk about and then I'll let
you guys go. But Dji Osmo they came out with
DGI is the company known for their drones. They came
(25:02):
out with this little thing called the Osmo Pocket. This
is a new stabilized camera. They say it's the world's
smallest three axi three axis axi axis stabilized camera. Now
I'm torn on this kind of stuff because I do
carry around a GoPro in my bag. But I'll be
honest with the cell phones nowadays, I find myself needing
(25:22):
these kind of small point and shoot cameras, video cameras
less and less, and I get it. If you're a
blogger influencer, maybe you want to have one of these
things on hand to produce content. I do that stuff,
and I rarely find myself needing it. It's nice to have.
And this is a really cool thing because it's basically
a highly stabilized GoPro. Imagine a go Pro mixed with
(25:42):
a flipcam member flipcams from back in the day. That's
kind of what this thing reminds me of. It's four
inches tall, it's got a little gimbal, little stabilizer, it's
got twelve megapixels for pictures and four K video up
to sixty frames per second, and it's a great little
device if you can afford it three hundred fifty dollars.
It also has a one inch touchscreen on it, which
(26:03):
is cool because you can see what you're shooting. And
you can plug this thing into a USBC or an
iOS lightning port to bring some extra functionality. The Osmo
Pocket sells for three hundred and fifty dollars and it
will ship on December fifteenth. Check it out if you're
one of those people that is looking for kind of
a go Pro style solution, but this is just a
(26:25):
little bit different because you've got the go pro style
camera but also it's stabilized and it just looks cool.
It's really small. Android Auto is giving a little revamp
to make things a little simpler now. I've been using
Android Auto and Apple CarPlay for a while now, I
personally think that Apple CarPlay has the much better layout.
(26:47):
It's easier to access your apps, it's quicker to access
your music, and the messaging function works better. And I
think that Google is realizing this with their Android Auto
layout and they're kind of revamping stuff. So they have
now made media browsing a little bit more visual and
a little easier. Plus, you also see a visual preview
of a message that someone sends you, which is also
(27:09):
really smart. That only happens when your car is stopped,
by the way, So if you come to a stop
and you're at a stop sign or a light and
someone texts you, you'll be able to see what their
text says, which is really handy. I know distracted driving
is dangerous and I don't ever want you to text
or even look at your phone while you drive, but
this is smart because sometimes you just want to see
the response. You don't need to wait for Siri or
(27:31):
for Google Assistant to read the whole response if you
can just see something like okay, because it's actually more
distracting for you to have to tap to hear that
message from Siri or from the assistant. But this new
revample be live in Google play Books, Google play Music, iHeartRadio,
Pocket Casts, and Spotify. Also popular messaging apps like Messages, Hangouts,
(27:53):
and Whatsapple work with the new messaging features. So when
it comes to the media, there's an improved layout with
larger album art views, so that's easier to find and
browse than I guess the old way of doing it.
And they also have improvements to voice search, so you
can ask Google now to play songs and playlists and
also types of music, and apparently you'll get some categorized
(28:17):
search results from your app right on the screen, which
is also brilliant because the reason why I've stopped using
the voice commands in Android autos because if you don't
get them just right, it starts playing some playlist you
don't even know if it's the right one. It's kind
of nice that they will actually now give you that
visual response and you're like eighties music and it will
show you kind of like the different playlists that have
to do with eighties music. That's smart. The functionality will
(28:40):
be rolling out over the next few days, so check
it out. And finally, let's end on this. I've got
a friend who we always talk about the interest rate
on our savings account because they seem to be going
up at some of these online banks, right. And I
remember back in the day, when I think it was
E Trade, I had an account there was like five
(29:00):
percent interest, which is pretty awesome. Now, obviously we know
that those I think that same account is down to
like point one zero. But some of these big accounts
they do have, you know, one to two percent interest.
Maybe some of the online accounts have even more than that.
But T Mobile now has their own virtual bank that
you can sign up for. It's called t Mobile Money,
(29:21):
and they give you a debit card and for all
intents and purposes, this is a little checking account that
you can use. I don't think they actually give you checks,
but you can obviously bill pay and that kind of stuff.
Maybe they let's see, do they have checks in here.
I don't think they do. You know, maybe they do.
Let's see Mobile check deposits pay bills with T Mobile Money. Yeah,
(29:42):
I think you do have to use all the mobile functions,
and for me personally, I write like one check a
month to one place that does not take a credit
card or a a bill pay. I mean, I guess
I could do bill pay with them, but it's just
easier to write the check. But yeah, I hate writing checks,
so I don't really use that functionality on my checking account.
But long story short, the magic of this account is
(30:04):
that they give you four percent interest on your money
in the checking account, which is pretty rare. So there
is a catch. You have to be a T mobile
customer not to get the account, but to get that
four percent. Anyone can sign up for T Mobile Money,
and if you sign up, it's actually a pretty cool
little account. It's all digital, it's very high tech, it's
very slick. You get a MasterCard, debit card, you get
(30:26):
fee free ATMs at the All Point network, which there
are a bunch of All Point ATMs out there, fifty
five thousand of them. There's also no fees whatsoever, so
there's no overdrafts. No, there's really nothing. There's no fees
whatsoever with this, no monthly maintenance fees whatever. You do
have to deposit two hundred dollars a month. Into the account.
(30:48):
And does that have to be direct deposit. I'm not sure,
but yeah, so I mean there's really no fees at all,
which is nice. So if you're a T Mobile customer,
you get four percent interest on your money in this
checking account. If you're just a everyday person without tea Mobile,
you do get one percent interest, which is pretty much
in line with a lot of the major bank accounts.
So I think this is a cool deal, and if
(31:09):
you're a T Mobile customer, I take a look at it. Personally,
I have a a separate I don't. I don't like
using credit cards as much as I do my debit card,
and there's reasons for that. I like to stay out
of debt, so that's why I use my debit card
as much as possible. If I'm traveling, yes I will
use my credit card, but for day to day stuff,
I really like to use my debit card as much
(31:29):
as humanly possible because guess what, the money's there, and
it it actually hurts me more to spend real money
than it does to have me spend money on a
credit card. And I'm sure you feel that way too,
So I love using a debit card, but I do
like the idea of having a separate a separate account
for your debit card of the day to day spend money,
right and so this is a perfect account for that
(31:50):
because you can get your debit card, you can put
your money in there. If you're T mobile customer, you're
getting four percent. There is one more catch, you only
get it up to three thousand dollars. But you know,
I mean, I don't know how many people are keeping
more than three grand and they're checking account. So it's
it's not a bad deal. And you can use this
kind of as your day to day spending account. And
I love it because you're staying out of debt, you're
getting a good a return, there's no fees. You can
(32:12):
use it with Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, Google Pay, you
can use it with bill pay. You can deposit checks
into there, you can have your portion of your paycheck
put into this, and it's a pretty nice little offering.
So again T Mobile Money dot Com, you can check
it out and see if that's something that's right for you.
And that's going to bring us to the end of
the podcast. Thanks so much for all of your emails,
(32:34):
your tweets, your messages. I do read them. I do
respond to them. If you want to follow me on Instagram,
I'm at rich on Tech. On Twitter, I'm at rich DeMuro.
My website is rich on tech dot tv. You've probably
heard me say that a zillion times, and my Facebook
is Facebook dot com slash rich on tech. Let me
know what you think of this longer version of the podcast,
(32:55):
and if you like the podcast, you've been enjoying what
I'm doing here, take a screenshot of it and post
it out on social media and be sure to tag
me so I can restory that, or I can retweet it,
or I can just enjoy it and smile and sit
back and know that when I am talking into this microphone,
someone out there is listening, responding and smiling. When I
say thank you so much for listening, I do really
(33:15):
appreciate it. If you want links to anything I talk
about here, look in the show notes or go to
my website rich on tech dot tv, and you have
a great day. Thanks so much for listening. I'm rich Damiro.
I will talk to you real soon
Host
Rich DeMuro
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.