Microsoft puts Windows in the Cloud

Microsoft unveils a cloud-based version of Windows; Twitter says goodbye to Fleets; a $60 mesh WiFi system; Ring enables end-to-end encryption for all; Verizon introduces a filter to stop neighborhood scam calls; Alexa introduces a new wake word, ESPN raises streaming prices; Apple introduces a MagSafe battery pack.Listeners ask about streaming Bluetooth using an AUX port, using a hotspot on the road, when the new iPad might come out, best group messaging app, place to sell back used and damaged electronics, notifications interrupting Bluetooth music and a way to download personal YouTube videos.LinksFollow Rich on InstagramFollow Rich on TwitterOmega Mart in Las VegasWindows 365Twitter Fleets$60 WiFi system$60 WiFi system reviewRing end to endVerizon Neighborhood Call FilterAlexa new voices and wake wordESPN price hikeApple MagSafe BatteryGizmogo to sell used electronics for cashSoftorino YouTube Converter 2See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
Microsoft puts Windows in the cloud, Twitter says goodbye to fleets.
There's a new wake word for Echo devices. Plus your
tech questions answered. What's going on? I'm Rich Demiro and
this is Rich on Tech, the podcast where I talk
about the tech stuff I think you should know about.
It's also the place where I answer the questions you

(00:31):
send me. I'm the tech reporter at KTLA Channel five
in Los Angeles. Welcome to the show. Welcome to my
friends listening on Facebook from all over the world. I've
been loving this Facebook spaces thing, and right now I'm
just using it to sort of broadcast my podcast as

(00:51):
I do it. But believe me, my plan and I
just realized you can actually schedule a spaces is to
schedule a space each week where you know what time
it's gonna happen, when to tune in, and you can
come with your questions and I will answer them live.
But for right now, thanks for tuning in, Thanks for
sending those stars. I do appreciate it. And this is

(01:15):
where I talk about all the good stuff of the week.
I was off last week, so thanks for tuned in.
This week. I went to Las Vegas over the weekend
and wow, Wow, Wow, what a fun trip. It was
really really amazing. We ate, we drank, we played. I mean,
it was just so great. We went to this place

(01:35):
called a Megamart, which I had no idea what it was,
but I knew I was going to Las Vegas, and
I happen to get a pitch for this like interactive exhibit.
I don't know what you want to call it, but
I didn't really know what it was all about, but
I you know, they sent me the two tickets and
I said, all right, let me check it out, and
so we went there. Just thankfully I scheduled it for
early in the day because this thing you can spend

(01:56):
a lot of time here and I won't go into
all of it, but it's kind of like an immersive
interactive art experience. And thankfully we had a pr person
to sort of lead us around, because if they would
have just set me out in there, I would would
not have known what to do. So on the surface,
it's this really interesting grocery store where everything is just

(02:20):
not exactly right, like all the names of the products
and stuff, Like one of the names of the the
cereals is like simply not spiders or something like that.
And there's just all this stuff and the products are real,
by the way, a lot of them. In fact, you
can buy them apparently, so but once you go into
this place, you realize there's like hidden passageways that bring
you into the depths of the actual immersive exhibit and

(02:44):
you could just sit there and explore It's there's like
a whole storyline. There's lights, there's songs, there's like these
immersive like sound rooms. There's slides. I went down the
slide and it was a little rough on my back,
pretty fast slide. There's like three of them, so be
ready for that. It was just really really fun and
interesting and they actually it took me a while to

(03:05):
figure out because I didn't do the whole storyline thing, like,
I didn't investigate it for myself. But when I interviewed
the folks from Miao Wolf who makes Omegomart, I know
these names are just wild. They explain the whole thing.
So spoiler alert, I'm not going to tell you what
it's all about, but I might do a YouTube video
to like explain, because I feel like if I went
through that whole thing and didn't know what it was
all about, I'd want to know what it actually was, Like,

(03:27):
what did I just experience? So it's at a place
called Area fifteen in Las Vegas, off the strip that's
kind of like a big adult playground. I say adult playground,
but it's really kids are in there. There's ziplining, it's
all black light, there's like a cool restaurant in there.
So I was just unprepared for this whole experience, but
it was it was amazing. And I also visited Resorts World,

(03:48):
which is a new casino in Las Vegas, which has
this giant like the whole building itself outside is like
one giant billboard. It's like one of the biggest in
the world. So that was really cool and it's funny.
I came back. I didn't you know, it was just
on vacation in Las Vegas. And when I came back,
I had so much video that I had shot that
I said, Oh, I'm doing a story for KTLA about
all this stuff. So today on KTLA, I ended up

(04:11):
putting all these little things together that I saw in
Las Vegas, including Omega mart and it was a very
popular story. People were emailing me saying, Oh, I heard
about this place. That's so cool. Ah, So anyway, lots
of fun there. Definitely crowded there, but it was fun.
We had we ate, Oh my gosh, we ate. I
listened to I've talked about it before Bobby Flay's podcast

(04:34):
Always Hungry with his daughter Sophie, and so we ended
up going to Bobby Flay's new restaurant, Amalfie. So thanks
Sophie for getting us in there, by the way, and
we got the best treatment. Oh my gosh. We had
such a great dinner at a Malfie. If you go
to Las Vegas, you have to go. It was just phenomenal.
They gave us the best table in the house. I'll

(04:55):
just be honest, because they just did, and it was phenomenal.
The people were coming up to us. We ordered like
such great things. You know, my wife and I like
to split everything, so you know, we just it was
so great. Such a The restaurant basically has like a
what amounts to like an Italian fish market. Inside. You
walk over, you take a look at all the fresh fish,

(05:17):
and then you end up ordering one of those fish
and they make it to your suiting and we're sort
of whimps. So we didn't get it like fully, you know,
like a fish on your plate like we got it
fill aid, but it was it was so good. We
also went to Giada's restaurant, which was awesome, and then
we also went to this place called Bavetts, which is
a really cool, like nineteen twenties French style speakeasy steakhouse.

(05:40):
Oh my god, it was just ah, it was so fun. Anyway,
that's enough about my talk about Las Vegas. You want
to know more, just tweet me or social media me.
But let's start with the first story of the week.
This is a big, big shift in the way that
we use computers, and I think Microsoft is probably kicking
itself for not having launched this a year ago, but

(06:02):
nonetheless it will forever change the way we compute. It's
it's Windows three sixty five Cloud PC. So it's kind
of like the dream of being able to run a
computer in the cloud on any platform is now available. Well,
it's going to be available August second. And it's the
idea of this cloud PC, which we've heard about for
so long, but it's never really happened, and it's probably

(06:25):
happened in different ways. In fact, you know, if you
think about it for my entire year and a half
at home, I was remoting in from my Mac computer
to my Windows computer at work, and for all intents
and purposes, I was using a cloud PC. Everything I
was doing on there was happening at my workstation at work.
But I was using my Mac and I was using

(06:46):
not a web browser. I was using you know, Microsoft,
what do they call it? Remote Remote Access? I think
it's called I don't even know where it is. Where
is it? It's called Microsoft Remote Desktop. And that's a
program that I have to install. But with this, you'll
actually be able to just open up a web browser
and log into a virtual PC that doesn't exist anywhere.

(07:07):
It only exists on the cloud. And what's really neat
about this is that you can use any computer you want.
You can use a smartphone, you can use a web
browser on your Mac, you can use a web browser
on a PC. You can use a web browser at
the hotel computer if you ever decided to do that,
which I would never ever do, because the one thing
that the hotel or the security expert at Chrome at

(07:30):
Google told me when I interviewed her is she said
she would never ever use a public shared computer at
a hotel. Now, this is actually an example of why
this could change that because think about it, if you
just logged into a PC in the cloud, you wouldn't
really have to worry about security because all the security
is handled on the cloud. I mean, it's really really phenomenal.

(07:50):
So Windows ten, Windows eleven will be on this instant
boot up. All your applications, all your tools, all your
settings are consistent no matter what, and so you can
get your work done on an iPad, you can do
it on a computer. You just move through any computer
that you have access to with a keyboard and a
mouse or not. Even you can sit down to the

(08:12):
same exact desktop. If I feel like I'm under selling this,
I think i am. Because this is such a huge
shift in the way that we use computers. You no
longer need to update your computer with all these software
things and all this like Microsoft's gonna handle all that
for you. On the back end. You don't have to
worry about the amount of RAM on your computer because
your computer is going to be so fast because it's

(08:34):
actually just streaming the computer experience. I mean it's like
basically how Netflix works the same no matter what device
you access it on. Now we can think about Windows
being the same. You don't really, it doesn't matter like
Netflix works the same whether you use it on a
Roku or on an iPad or anywhere you use it.
Part of the magic is how or Amazon are sorry

(08:56):
getting ahead of myself, how Netflix has optimized that to
work so well everywhere. So August second, twenty twenty one,
that's when this is going to be available. It's mainly
based at organizations, but you know, anyone can use this,
and I think that we are in for a real
treat when it comes to the future of computing. And
I cannot wait to try this out. All right, let's

(09:23):
get to the first question. Uh, Zora Aida Da Zora
Aida says, Hey, Rich, glad to see you back on
the set at KTLA. Yes, that was exciting. Thank you
for always enlightening us with your tech wisdom. Question for you.
We have older cars with no Bluetooth, but it has
an oxport. I just noticed some ox to Bluetooth adapters

(09:43):
on the market and was wondering if you can recommend one. Again,
I appreciate your insight and thanks for answering my question.
Zor Aida. Uh, well, I'm actually gonna defer to my
pal Brian Tongue on this one. When we did a
segment with him over the holidays, he recommended a ox
Bluetooth adapter that he uses on the plane by twelve South.

(10:04):
It's called Airfly, and that is the one that I'd
recommend because that's a great you know, if he's recommending it,
it's got to be good. And since he recommended it,
I have seen this at places like Amazon Store. I've
seen other people recommend it, and it's just kind of
like a standard, like a gold standard of like this
what you what you're talking about? So you can connect.

(10:26):
You can use it as an ox in adapter for
your car, your boat, or your non Bluetooth speaker. It's
got sixteen hours of battery life, which is really nice,
and it's forty five dollars, so I think that's gonna
be a great way to do it. You could also
connect two pairs of headphones if you want to use
it the other way, like if you wanted to transmit
from a device, But Airfly duo I think is the
way to do it. They have one, two, three, four different,

(10:50):
four different ones of these ones of these four different,
so the classic might be the best one to go.
It's only thirty so just see what you need, see
which one suit you. But that's what i'd recommend. And
the other thing is if you if your phone, and
I'm guessing you have a newer phone that does not
have a headphone jack, but if you have a headphone

(11:12):
jack on your phone, that's the easiest way to connect
it to your car. I know it's not wireless, but
you're gonna get the best sound quality if you just
connected that way. So good question and a good question
to start things off with. All right, let's talk about fleets.
This is something that Twitter introduced just about eight months
ago and guess what it's going away? So Twitter Fleets

(11:35):
is was Twitter's answer to stories that everyone else has,
and stories are, you know, these little things that have
become very popular. It's kind of like if you think
about Snapchat back in the day, like they invented it,
Instagram took it, ran with it, and now everyone has
a version of stories, you know, like all these apps.
Facebook has it, Instagram has it, Snapchat has it. It's

(11:57):
just it's kind of like an ephemeral expiring post usually
sixteen by nine vertical, and Twitter introduced it, but I
was always kind of it was kind of a head
scratcher to me because to me, Twitter at its core
is already ephemeral and even though tweets don't expire like
stories do, to me, when you tweet something, there's a life,

(12:20):
there's a there's a shelf life on it. It doesn't
last forever, and it does, and yes, they can come
back to haunt you, but and so could a story.
But to me, Twitter was always kind of like a
in the moment kind of thing where you tweet and
it goes, and you know, people forget about it until
they need to until they need to remember about it.
So fleets are going away on August third. Fleets were

(12:42):
meant to be a lower barrier of entry for conversations.
Twitter thought that more people would use them because they
did expire and it might feel like it wasn't as
much pressure as like a well crafted tweet. But guess what,
that didn't happen. But here is what is going to happen.
Twitter is not going to get rid of the fleet composer,

(13:02):
so they will continue to build that into the Twitter composer,
so there'll be the text formatting options and stickers. So
I think what they realize is that just build this
into Twitter, and it's the same thing. People are gonna
use these cool ways of making tweets. That's the thing
that the Twitter composer doesn't have right now, a way
to like, you know, type in you know, fun text

(13:24):
or affect pictures and this and that. They're small ways.
But now they're gonna make it basically the idea of
a story into a tweet. Now what's gonna happen to
the top of the timeline. They're gonna put their spaces
product there. And you might be saying, rich, aren't you
using a spaces like product right now? Yes, I am,
but I'm using it on Facebook. And I'll be honest,
the reason why I like it on Facebook versus Twitter

(13:46):
is because my audience is on Facebook. Yes, I've got
a small audience on Twitter, but my Facebook audience is
much larger and I can reach many more people. And honestly,
the type of people that I reach the most, which
is your average everyday person and is on Facebook and
Twitter is a little bit more of a little bit

(14:06):
more of a techie because to be on Twitter you
have to be a little bit more involved in kind
of I don't know, like you have to be a
little bit more technical, like Facebook is kind of for
the every person. And Twitter. If you're on there and
you're especially using it a lot, you're either in media,
you're in tech. You're definitely it's a little bit different

(14:27):
than the Facebook audience, and for me, my audience is
much more on Facebook. So that's why I'm using the
Facebook Audio Rooms thing, which is very similar. Anyway, fleets
did not last very long. There's a million and one
jokes there about them not lasting long, but I'm not
going to make them. I'm just going to go into
my next question. All right, Carrie says need some advice.

(14:48):
What would be the best hot spot to buy when
working on the road or traveling? Can you buy a
hot spot that you can hardwire to your laptop. I
want to do some traveling, but need to make sure
I have a good connection. Thanks in advance for all
your help To answer your question, Carrie, I don't think
that you need a hardwired hot spot. I've traveled around
the world with my wireless hotspots and somehow I've been

(15:11):
able to manage just fine. So and I do a
lot of video stuff, I do a lot of social media,
and the types of stuff that I'm doing does require
big files, usually streaming. So I don't think that you
need to hard wire now if you want to, you can,
And I think that number one, you don't necessarily need
a dedicated hot spot. Now, there are reasons to have those,

(15:33):
and the reasons for those, and the reasons why I
like a dedicated hot spot is you plug it in
and it is a nice dedicated Wi Fi network wherever
you are. So whether you're in the car, or whether
you're in a hotel room or at an event, it's
just kind of a nice solid connection that is different
from your smartphone. And so for that reason, it's nice

(15:55):
to just get into a hotel room, plug in your hotspot,
your computer and your device is recognize it and it
just sits there the whole weekend or you know whatever,
however long you're in that hotel room. Same thing. If
you're in a car, you're on a you know, let's
say you're on a road trip, you plug in the
hot spot using you know, the auxport whatever, you know,
the power adapter, and now you have just a hot

(16:15):
spot that's always powered, it's always ready to go, and
a bunch of people in your car can connect to it,
and if someone else is driving like my wife and
I will sometimes you know, she'll drive for an hour
so I can catch up on social media. I mean,
that's that's the reality of our road trips at this point.
But when I'm on my road trips, I get a
lot of good stuff for social media. So if you
want to do a hardwired thing, you can actually connect

(16:37):
the iPhone to your computer via a hardwired connection. I
believe it's been a while, but I think it's just
a tethered connection to your iPhone. I have not done
that in a long time, but I think there's an
option to do that in your personal hotspot. But I
would just use the personal hotspot feature on your iPhone
or your your smartphone. If it gets to be where
it just doesn't work, then I would look into something else.

(17:00):
But uh, and then if you're going to get a
dedicated hot spot, I would just get one from your carrier.
That's gonna be the easiest to do because you know,
you'll just it'll just be the same connection. If you
really want to take things to the next level, if
you really need a good connection, I would go with
the carrier that's opposite of your cell phone carrier. So

(17:20):
that way Let's just say, for example, you have AT
and T as your cell phone, maybe get a Verizon
hot spot and that way you are covered in a
much bigger way when you're traveling versus just being narrowed
down to one network. So take your pick. You know,
you can go tea Mobile. There's also a hot spot
that's unlocked. If you search ZT hotspot. You can buy

(17:42):
an unlocked hot spot and just pop in a SIM
card and use it that way. So it really just depends.
There's so many ways of doing this that you know,
there's not not one size fits all, but those are
those are sort of the big options that I think
would work for most people. All right, let's get to
the next story. This is a story I did on

(18:02):
KTLA that of course blew up. I got so many
messages about this. This is a startup called Villo and
they came out with a sixty dollars whole house mesh
Wi Fi system. And I hope I didn't do this
already in the podcast, but this is you know, if
you look at one of these mesh networking systems, they're expensive.

(18:24):
You know, I have one from Ero, Google Wi Fi
is another one Neckgear Orb there's a whole bunch of them.
But the bottom line is they are very expensive, especially
if you want to get the Wi Fi six like
the newer versions like the one I bought retails for
six hundred bucks. I got it for cheaper since I
bought it on Prime Day, but it or maybe was
it near Prime Day whatever, I didn't pay that much

(18:45):
for it, but it was definitely expensive. So Villo, When
you know they pitched me on this sixty dollars system,
I was like, okay, well you got my interest, but
I wanted to make sure that it worked, and I
have to say I was very impressed with it. Sixty bucks.
You plug it into your router and you set it
up the first one using the app, and then you
set up the second one and the third one by

(19:06):
putting them in different places around your house. But they
just find each other, which I thought was really cool.
So that was a nice spin on the whole mesh network,
which usually takes a little setting up. This one. You
just plug them in and boom, it's all set up.
The signal was great. I found the signal throughout the house.
I set it up at the same time as my ero,
so I didn't want to interrupt my ero. But if

(19:27):
you want to switch to a new Wi Fi network,
you know, just use the same network and password name,
network name and password and all your gadgets will follow over.
They will find the new network, and so you know,
the reality is is this as good as the super
expensive systems? I thought it's I think for ninety nine

(19:48):
percent of people, this is going to be just fine.
Was my euro a little bit faster? Probably? But is it,
you know, ten times the price faster? I don't think so.
I thought that the app was really nice. There was
like three software updates, well I should say, I would
say firmware updates for the system in the time I had.
I was using it for a couple of weeks, so

(20:10):
that goes to show me that the company's always trying
to make this thing better. The speeds were great, and
I think that if you're looking to upgrade the system
or the Wi Fi signal that typically is included with
your cable modem, then yes, this is a great way
to do that. Now, I got a lot of questions
and it made me realize that people don't really understand

(20:32):
these systems. So a mesh network does not replace your
Internet connection. You still need to subscribe to a spectrum
or a FiOS or an AT and T fiber or
a Comcast. What this does is it plugs into the
modem or the box that your cable company or your
internet service brider gives you, and then this controls the

(20:54):
Wi Fi signal. And so what you would do is
you would disable the Wi Fi signal that's emanated from
the box that your company provides you, and you would
use this as your Wi Fi signal. So that's the
big thing that a lot of people did not understand.
And another thing I like about this Villo system is
that not only is it inexpensive, but there are Ethernet

(21:16):
ports on the back, which a lot of these systems
don't have. So you get it looks like up to
three Ethernet ports on the back, which is really cool.
I don't know if all three of them are usable
on all of them, but at least two are I
know that for a fact, so that's also kind of cool.
A sixty dollars three pack covers a forty five hundred
square foot home. I think those numbers are always a

(21:36):
bit inflated. I think if you have a forty five
hundred square foot home. Well, number one, good for you.
Number two I'd probably get another one of these, depending
on the coverage. But it all depends on the coverage
you get. In my place, it's not that big, but
it's you know, it's an older place, so the walls
are thick whatever, and it's just like Internet does not
like to go through the walls here. So for me,

(21:57):
I use a three system and I do not have
a forty five square foot home full disclosure, and the
three seems to work for me. That's it. I mean,
I would take a look at this review. I'm gonna
put show notes in the shows. I got an email
from a viewer or a listener rather and they said, Rich,
you know, I love the show, but you're killing me.
Smalls said, you're killing me by not having the show

(22:20):
notes anymore. And I said, all right, I agree. Like
I'm doing a show that's purportedly for the average tech
person and I don't include links in my show notes.
Like that's that's a big. Uh, that's a big on
my part. So I'm going to bring back the show notes.
If you've been missing them, look in the show notes,
because I do talk about a lot of stuff that's
that's quite useful and interesting, and I definitely need the

(22:42):
show notes to go along with them. So anyway, that's
the Villo router. I'll put it in the show notes,
So look for it, and if you have any questions
about it, let me know. All right, D says or
Denise says. Thanks for all your good tips. You've helped
me out a lot. Right now, I'm trying to guess
when Apple will release the iPad twenty twenty one, not

(23:04):
the pro. I want a Wi Fi plus cellular. I'll
probably get an eighth generation if it's too long for
the twenty twenty one. I can't find any links or
any leaks. I trust to see when it will happen.
Do you have a good guess? Also, what do you
think of the mini versus the regular? I'd probably use
the device on cellular when I go out of the house.
I don't trust public Wi Fi. The size is tempting.

(23:25):
I trust you. Can you please advise? Thank you Denise
for trusting me. Number one, the regular iPad typically comes
out in October, so that's when historically comes out. But
don't take my word for it. There's a place that
I look and it's called Buyer's Guide dot MacRumors dot com,
and what they do is they have every single iPad

(23:47):
cataloged and it will tell you exactly when the last
one came out. So to answer your question about the
standard iPad, if you tup, if you look at the
iPad right now, it's neutral. It's been three hundred and
four days since they last released one, and the typical
release cycle is five hundred and seventy nine days, which
leads me to believe that we're not going to see

(24:07):
another one for another three hundred days. So now it
just sort of depends with the iPad. So I would say,
right now they're recommending a neutral, which means you could
buy it and take a chance, or you can just wait.
So I personally would just I'd probably just get it
because I feel like it's been I feel like the

(24:28):
one that they have right now is just fine, or
you can wait, you know, you can wait for a
little bit longer. Now. With respect to the Mini, that
is a whole different beast. The Mini they always seem
to give up on, and the average for the Mini
is about five hundred days. Right now, it's been eight
hundred and fifty one day since the last release, so

(24:49):
it has been a long time. I believe I bought
my kids the last iPad Mini and it was a
long time ago, so actually it might have been the
one before this. So with the mini, definitely don't buy,
and you can wait for a new one. I would
hope that they would come out with a new one
because I think that is a perfect size. But again
it's it's really I would not get the current one,

(25:12):
and you can wait for a new one, but there's
no guarantee that the new one's going to be there.
So bottom line, check out buyers Guide dot MacRumors dot
com for your true insight. But you have to decide
with respect to the whole cellular situation. I think you're
right in not trusting public Wi Fi, But to be
totally honest, I think it's fine. I mean, you're unless

(25:35):
you're connecting to really sketchy Wi Fi networks. Most of
the Wi Fi these days is pretty well locked down.
I think you'll be just fine on it if you're
you know, using Hotel Wi Fi, Starbucks WiFi, whatever, Especially
on an iPad. I mean, iPad is not a computer.
Even if someone were to get into your iPad, there's
almost nothing they can do. And yes they can deliver malware,

(25:58):
but it would be it would have to be a
pretty big hack for them to ruin your iPad if
you're just like a casual person connecting to you know,
trusted public networks, And yes, there's always a chance. And
I think it's good that you're you're being critical of
these networks, and I think that's very smart. But I
think you'll be okay for the most part. But with

(26:19):
that said, if you have the money to go cellular
and you like the this security of cellular, yeah go
cellular for sure. I always prefer cellular over Wi Fi
when possible, and so that is definitely something I'm not
going to not recommend. But I think if in general,
you're probably going to be safe a majority of the time.

(26:39):
All Right, speaking of security and encryption, RING is now
giving end to end encryption to everyone. I believe this
was something they had a while ago, but I guess
maybe I never really covered it. But the reason I
would look the end to end encryption thing is great.
So what Ring, What that means is that no one
can see your video, not even RING, not even anyone

(27:02):
like It's it's really once you set this up. Your
your video is pretty safe from your camera, like someone's
not gonna be able to get in and hack it
and view your videos now. By default, Ring says that
they encrypt customer videos when they're uploaded to the cloud,
which means in transit and when they're stored, and that's
at rest. But you can now have opt into end

(27:24):
to end encryption, which means only you can view the
videos on your enrolled mobile device. And so you go
into the control center in the Ring app and you
can turn this on. Now. Once you turn this on,
because it is such high security, you do lose a
whole bunch of features. And some of those features include
viewing it on an Echo device. So if you're used

(27:46):
to viewing your your doorbell when someone rings it on
your Echo device, that is not possible. There's a whole
bunch of other things that you lose as well. There
is a web page that explains it all. This is
a big deal, you know, if you're gonna, if you're
gonna enable this, there's definitely some drawbacks. Now, if you
have a battery powered video doorbell, it's a non starter.

(28:07):
Those don't even support end to end encryption, and I
believe the reason for that is probably because the battery
this thing, it probably probably requires more power to do this,
And so it looks like only the wired video doorbells
and security cameras support this. So if you're doing strictly,
you know, anything that is not wired, it's not going

(28:28):
to work. So the any or sorry, anything battery powered
is just not going to work. So if you go
into your Ring app, you go into control center and
you tab video Management, Advanced settings and to end encryption
and got it, and that's it, and you have to
enroll your mobile device. It's a whole big thing. So
I don't know, I mean, this is it's you know,

(28:49):
for some people it might be overkilled. For others, you
might think it's the most secure way of using your camera.
But if you're only using a wired device and maybe
one smartphone, I'm unclear if you can use it with
multiple smartphones, but if you're only using one, I would
probably enable it, you know, for the most security, Like
why not, there's no downside, doesn't cost you any extra,

(29:10):
so I'd probably do it and you know, enjoy those
benefits of feeling and had encryption is always going to
be the most secure, No matter what you're using, whether
it's messaging, whether it's a video product, whether it's you
know anything, all right, Next question from Kim. She says,

(29:33):
quick tech question. We live on a very social street
and we've had a group text going over the past
couple of years. COVID pushed a lot of people here
working from home. More new homes are being built and
more people are moving to our street. Needless to say,
our text group has maxed out, so we consider going
to WhatsApp. Are there any other user friendly group text

(29:54):
apps that we should consider having everyone use? Let me
know your thoughts. We have one person who acts as
our admit I Straighter and they add and delete names
and phone numbers as needed. Thanks in advance, Kim. Uh. Kim, Well,
I would WhatsApp is a good option. I mean, so
what you're saying is you have a bunch of people
in your in your neighborhood on a private group text chat.

(30:16):
So that's good and I think that's a great thing
to do. Uh. The app that I'd recommend, WhatsApp is fine,
but some here's the problem when you start like shopping apps.
Everyone has a problem with every app. If if you
talk about signal way too secure. It's like overkill. It's yeah,
it's end to end encrypted and it's like super secure,
but like getting everyone on that is gonna be kind

(30:37):
of tough, and basically it would be a lesson in
just convincing people to do it. So that's that's out.
Facebook Messenger. Yeah, everyone has Facebook, but a lot of
people don't and they feel like Facebook is you know,
for some reason or not, they don't like it. So
Facebook messengers out. WhatsApp is owned by Facebook, and of

(30:57):
course they had that big thing with all the chain
in their privacy policy, so people got a little skittish
around Facebook or WhatsApp Messenger, so they don't want to
use that. So the one that I would recommend is
is Telegram, and that's what I use for my big
group text chatting, and it has been great. I got
my entire family on board and we've been using it

(31:18):
for a couple of years now and it's fantastic. Now
the rest of the world has seemed in the meantime
to discover Telegram, and so I see every single day
people signing up for it and I get a new
a message, Oh you you know your friend, this person,
this person, anyone in my address book has signed up
for Telegram, and so clearly people like it. It's easy.

(31:39):
I think it has all the features that you need.
You can add people, you can delete people. It's kind
of like and if you're asking me, Rich, why not
just recommend I Message? Well, I Message doesn't work across platforms,
so there's gonna be a lot of people left out
if you use something like I Message. And that's why
I always always prefer using a third party app over
something like I Message, because I Message is easy, it's slick.

(32:02):
I know you've got all your ie message groups going on,
but personally, when I get into those groups, it makes
me feel sad because I do not like things that
are not cross platform because technology should work across everything,
and in this world that we're building, a lot of
the stuff is starting to work and only, uh, only

(32:22):
this works with this, and only that works with that,
and only That's not the way tech was supposed to be.
Tech was supposed to be universal. And the more silos
that you go down, the more one way streets that
you go down. Yeah, everything works so nicely, but there's
a price to be paid for that, and the price
is that people are left out. And so just for example,
I've got one group that's a group text on I

(32:43):
message that you know, everyone is on iPhone and it
works so beautifully. And then I've got another one where
we've got a couple people that are on Android and
it just doesn't work as nicely. When people like the message,
it says Ranch liked your you know, whatever the message was,
you know, like spell it out. And so that's why
I like I love Telegram because it works the same

(33:04):
no matter what device you're using. I don't have to
ask my friends, oh, are you on Android or iPhone
because it determines how this group is gonna work. No,
you're on Telegram, You're on Telegram. Everything works the same.
So long answer short, That's what I would recommend, Kim.
I think that's the best way to do it. Oh,
speaking of neighborhoods, Verizon has a new feature in their

(33:25):
call filter app. If you're not using a call filter app,
I highly recommend that you install it on your device.
If you're on AT and T, there's this called call Protect.
If you're on T Mobile, it's called scam Shield, and
if you're on Verizon, it's called call Filter. Now, all
three of these apps are free, but like any good

(33:46):
carrier would do, they are gonna try to upsell you.
They're gonna try to upsell you on a subscription, and
I don't think you need it. It just adds more
features that it's it's like, you just don't need to
just go with the free app. You'll be fine. It'll
help block calls, but once you install these apps, they
will cut down on some of the spam calls. Now,
with that said, there is one thing that's very very

(34:07):
frustrating with spammers right or scam calls, whatever you want
to call them, and that is the neighborhood call. And
the way that Verizon describes this is it's called called
neighbor or neighborhood spoofing. They trick you into answering the
call because these calls have the same area code and
prefix as yours. Now, it's not coming from your neighbor's house.

(34:31):
It's coming from some computer where they've just programmed it
to say. Oh, if you're dialing Rich's number and he
is three one oh five fivey five, make sure that
when you dial, the outgoing number looks like three wine
oh five fixy five one two one two, Because Rich
is one, two, one three or whatever, right, so it
makes you think. It just plays a trick on your mind.

(34:51):
You're saying, oh, wow, this looks a lot like my
phone number. I should probably answer it. And you answer
it in nine times out of ten, it's nothing. It's bogus,
it's a scammer, it's a call it's a scam artist. Whatever.
So now Verizon, inside this app, there's a little toggle
if you go to call management and other filters, all
you have to do, okay, So you go to management

(35:12):
section and then under the block filters app, just look
for neighborhood filter. You turn it on and it will
block the numbers that are similar to yours. And yes,
if you have a significant other or a friend that
lives nearby that you both have the same similar number,
you want to make sure they're in your contacts to
make sure that their phone number does ring your phone
and they come through. But otherwise, this is a great feature.

(35:34):
I turned it on on my phone, and you know,
we'll say it seems to work. Just know that the
more of these filters that you turn on, the more
of these spam filters, the more of these unknown caller filters,
the more of these apps that you install, the more
calls that are going to go straight to voicemail. And
so if you're like me and you like to answer
a lot of random numbers, because I've got a lot

(35:55):
of random people call me all the time because my
phone number is sort of out there, got a lot
of peer there are people that call me a lot.
I mean, I'm in the news business. People call me,
you know, And so I do want to keep my
number out there as much as possible because I don't
I don't want to be unreachable. I mean, yes, I
will not answer a lot of calls if I think
the number's bogus, or I'll wait for it to you know,

(36:16):
go to voicemail and then they'll text me whatever. But anyway,
the more lines of defense you have, the more it's
going to be tough for people to get a hold
of you if there was ever sort of an emergency
or a random number. Like I'll give you an example.
So because I had this feature enabled the just the
spam filters, I was getting an Uber the other day

(36:37):
and the Uber driver kept trying to call and I
think I told this story on the podcast last week,
but whatever, but I couldn't the call didn't come through
because it kept going right to voicemail because I was
somehow that number was identified as a spam number and
it just you know, kept getting blocked, so the driver
was not able to get a hold of me. And
you can't call back some of these numbers, like if
an uber calls you, it's basically a one way number

(36:59):
that they use to like call out, but you can't
call that number back in. So just be aware of
these limitations, and you know, make sure that your important
contacts are in your address book and that should help
with a lot, including things like doctors, dentists, all that
good stuff. All right, let's get to the next question.

(37:20):
Paula says, I recently saw a segment on selling back
electronics and I can't find it. I was wondering if
you could give me the name of that company. I
have a lot of old iPads to sell back. Thank you, Paula. Well,
the company is Gizmo Go. And I just had someone
at work actually ask me about this company, local company
in California. Where were they Chino, I believe, And I went.

(37:42):
I visited them and I'd never heard of them before
I did the story. So I wanted to check them out.
Actually sent in my kids old iPad mini. I got
eighty bucks for it. Went through the whole thing, and
the cool thing is that this company pays you money
even if your product is damaged. So for my kids iPad,
for example, Apple was offering me thirty dollars and when

(38:04):
I did gizmo gos estimate, it was eighty and I
was like, oh, that's really good. Fifty dollars more. Sure enough,
I sent it in. They give you a one of
these prepaid shipping labels. I had a box, you know,
I get all this Amazon stuff, so I just put it,
you know, in an old Amazon box, sent it off
and a week later I had my eighty dollars via PayPal.
So it worked really well. It's called gizmogo dot com.

(38:27):
I'll put a link in the show notes, but I
highly recommend them. Even if you don't get a lot
for your stuff, you should definitely. You know, you can
send them a box of like your old electronics that
you no longer need, and they'll recycle them properly. Because
you don't want to throw this stuff out, that's for sure.
But gizmo go is the website, and you know, just
give them a try. I mean, there's no you know,

(38:48):
you don't have to just because if you if you
get an estimate, doesn't mean you actually have to sell
it to them. But definitely check it out if you
need a box to leave and send you a box,
which is also really really cool. So all right, let's
move on to the next story. Amazon, you know what
do you what do you call the A word? I
don't even know because I don't want to say it
on here because it activates way too many things. But

(39:12):
do you now have two new voices that you can
use instead of the standard Chalmolexa voice. So they have
Samuel L. Jackson. I guess was on there at one point.
I guess he's a top selling digital purchase on Amazon
the day it launched. Wow, Well now they have two
new celebrities, Melissa McCarthy and Shaquille O'Neal. And so now

(39:33):
there's three. So you have Samuel L. Jackson, Melissa McCarthy,
and Shaquille O'Neal. So if you want to switch your
voice to these personalities, you have to pay five dollars,
which you know that's kind of a lot, but maybe not.
I mean, it's it's kind of cool. If you're a
fan of these two folks, which why would you not be?
You can pay five dollars and now they could be

(39:54):
your your voice. This is happening right now, it's available.
You can ask for the new voice several ways. You
can say a word change your voice, and they'll give
you the new options. But there's also a new wake
word for you know who. And I thought this was
kind of interesting. So I'm not sure if you know this,

(40:15):
but you can change your They call it the wake word,
you know the word that you say to trigger you
know who. You can change that to computer, Echo, Amazon
and as well as a Lexa. Oh is that going
to activate it? But you can now select ziggy as well.
So ziggy is a new word. So I was on
Twitter kind of talking with a couple of folks and saying, well,

(40:37):
what's the deal with ziggy? Like is there some pop
culture reference that I don't know about? Like why is
it ziggy? And I was talking with tech with Bratt.
He runs a YouTube channel and he's cool. He does
a lot of smart home stuff, and he was saying,
I think it's just a word that a lot of
people don't use. But then my pal Dave Malcoff, another reporter,
was saying that it might be some reference to something,

(41:00):
so I don't know, But anyway, ziggy, you probably don't
say ziggy very much right in your house, so I
guess that's a good wake word. The other words too,
you don't really well. Amazon were always saying did you
order that on Amazon? So anyway, it's all available and
it's just you know, the other options for the things.
I will say, I've been testing out an Echo device

(41:20):
Echo Show five. I am very impressed. I am still
very very impressed. I really wrote off the Amazon service
like for all this smart home stuff for a long
long time, and I'm eating my words because I feel
like they are doing a great job. They have a
great ecosystem, they have so many products, their stuff does

(41:40):
really well. I think that the voice capabilities have come
a long way, and I've just been very very impressed
with what I've seen and I continue to test it,
and so I don't know, I think it's pretty cool.
Next question comes from Chris. He says, when I'm working
mobile detailing, I'm using my iPhone too to listen to

(42:01):
Pandora Bluetooth to my headphones. When I get a call
or message. I have to stop everything. Oh maybe it's
an iPhone eleven. I have to stop everything to tend
to the phone. It even messes up my bluetooth. Is
there a setting I can use? I do not like
to use, like do not disturb or something, because if
I don't check my phone, it keeps beeping in my
ears until I do. It's a pain in the rear.

(42:23):
Rich sent for my iPhone, So I'm guessing iPhone eleven maybe,
But no matter which iPhone you have this, I've never
really had this problem. Number one, my iPhone is on
do not Disturb the entire day twenty four to seven.
I actually never take it off do not disturb. Now.
I work in television. I'm always recording something and I'm

(42:44):
always in a studio, and so I can't have my
phone ringing or binging at any time. So I've never
I've never experienced this. Now. I also don't wear headphones
for a long period of time. But when I do,
I'm wearing them when I'm running and my phone goes
into automatic do not just st mode as soon as
I start a workout, so and I do get messages
along the way, And I've never had my phone bing Now.

(43:06):
The only exception to this is when you have a
pair of air pods in and you get a text
message and Siri will read you the text message. So, Chris,
my advice to you is to turn on do not disturb.
I would turn on do not disturb. You can also
flip the side switch on your phone. I don't know

(43:27):
what it's called. There's a little rocker on the side
that basically turns it from audio to silent, and so
I would flip that as well when you're detailing, and
that way that should take care of it. But I
think that should do it. I mean, like I said,
I've never had this problem with these things binging in
my ears, and so I think that that has to
do with the fact that I always have my phone

(43:49):
on do not Disturb. So what I'd recommend is just
keep it on do not disturb and hopefully that will
take care of it. ESPN Plus, speaking of price, ESPN
Plus is going up. It's going up by a buck
a month, which you know, like like I always say
in this podcast, not gonna make or break you. But
now ESPN Plus is gonna rise to six ninety nine

(44:10):
a month, up from five ninety nine, this according to Variety.
And apparently according to Variety, they raised the subscription last
year from four ninety nine to five ninety nine. So
this just keeps going up. And this is something that
I've talked about in the podcast over and over. We
did not switch to streaming services to save money. Maybe

(44:31):
back in the day, day one, we saved a couple
of bucks by save by switching, But now there is
no money to be saved. In fact, you may be
approaching what you paid for cable. You may eclipse it.
Like in my case. The big difference is that you
are in control. You can turn this on, you can
turn this off, you can start it, you can stop it,

(44:53):
unlike cable. Let's say, how to subscription to HBO. Back
in the day, Yes you could subscribe for six months
and then call your cable operator and cancel, but realistically,
who did that? Not many people. So what happened was
you would always you know, I call it the rounding effect.
You know, you'd have your cable for a little bit
or your subscription for a little bit more than you

(45:13):
needed it. And that's just the way the game that
they played. And so now you can't play games now
if you want to cancel ESPN because they raised it
a dollar, you can. If you want to start it
up again when they bring the cricket match that you
like to streaming, then you can. And so all we
have now at this point is a choice. And these
things just keep getting more and more expensive. I mean,

(45:34):
all the prices just keep going up. There's price creep
on these streaming services. Is it causing me to cancel them? No,
although I will say I am not currently subscribed to
Apple tv Plus. They did not raise their price. It's
still the launch price of four to ninety nine a month.
But on July first, when they were going to start
charging me, I said, I just don't need this. There's

(45:55):
no there's nothing I'm watching on Apple tv Plus right now. Now.
That will change when the second season of the Morning
Show comes out. And I know everyone loves ted Lasso.
I have not watched that, but I know people love it,
and so if I was a Ted Lasso fan, which
I think that new season is starting. You know, they
time these things where they're you know, if there's one

(46:15):
show at any given time, that's all they need, that's
all they need to keep you hooked on these things.
And it's just the way it is. So again, the
best way to get Disney Plus or the ESPN Plus
service is realistically to subscribe to Disney this what do
they call it, the Disney Plus. It's like the bundle,

(46:36):
so it's Disney Plus Hulu and also ESPN Plus. That
trio is staying firm at thirteen ninety nine a month,
so according to Variety, that's thirty percent less than the
cost of buying all three services individually. Let's get to
another question here. Joanne says, hey, Rich, I received a

(46:58):
notice from YouTube announcing many of my family videos that
are currently unlisted will be set to private, thus changing
the URL. I provided my family a copy of the
URLs of these videos. Now I need to change It's
a huge amount of work. I wish I had another
option back then, but YouTube is it? An easier solution
to preserving these precious memories would be to take off
all my family videos and put them on hard drives

(47:20):
from my family members to copy to their computers with
a drive to keep as a backup. Well, that doesn't
sound easier, but anyway, to each his own. My question
is is there a bulk way to download three hundred
family videos I've uploaded on YouTube, collected over the years
to preserve on an external hard drive. It did some research.
It looks like you need some special software. There are
so many options, many of which I'm sure not safe.

(47:42):
I've read about a product called m m MM, which
looks to be legit, but who knows. Uh, Okay, Joe Ane,
couple things Number one, I don't think that. I mean,
it sounds like you got a big collection here, so
that's definitely an issue. Now. I wonder if once they
change these unlisted URLs to private, if you can just

(48:03):
make a private playlist and then just share that playlist
with the family members, and then they'd have to log
in to see those videos. I don't know. I didn't
put a lot of I got this same email that
you got. But to me, when I share an unlisted video, like,
I don't really I'm not expecting it to last very long.

(48:24):
Like that's basically for people to watch for a little bit,
they're not really going back to whatever. So I don't
have the same issue. Even though a lot of my
unlisted videos are family videos, but when they go private,
it's not like my family members are watching them over
and over, so the solution about downloading them to your
hard drive, you can absolutely do that. That's well within
your rights on YouTube, these are your videos. The number

(48:45):
one way to do that is Google Takeout, And if
you just go to Google Takeout, you can select your
YouTube videos and they will zip them up and they
will send them to you in an email and you
can download all of them and put them on a
hard drive. That is one way of doing it. The
other way you can do it is with a video
downloader program, and the one that I like is called
soft O Reno YouTube Converter too. And You're right, there

(49:09):
is a lot of sketchy software out there that purports
to do this. I'm sure some of it works, but
the one that I found, soft Reno YouTube Converter two,
works the absolute best. It is dropped it easy, pop
in a URL. All you have to do is copy
and paste it and are actually just copy it and
the app, as long as it's running on your computer

(49:30):
will notice the clipboard and it will say, okay, what
format do you want this video in? And you can
convert it to video audio a ring tone. You can
go as high as I think twenty one sixty P.
You can do ten ADP seven to twenty P four
eighty or three sixty and you could save it to
your computer, your phone, your iPod, Apple Music. It's very,

(49:52):
very full featured. It is really fantastic. So that would
be my recommendation after takeout. If takeout doesn't work for you,
then I would just do it annually with the YouTube converter.
So good question. Hope that helps all right. Speaking of Apple,
they came out with a mag Safe battery pack for

(50:12):
the iPhone twelve, available now for ninety nine dollars. And
if you've seen these smart battery cases from Apple before,
this one's a little bit different because it is not
a case. It is literally just a like a little
bump that magnetically attaches to back to the back of
your phone if you have a mag Safe phone. Now,

(50:33):
there's been some unofficial mag Safe battery packs for a while.
I have not tested any of these. In fact, I
I mean I probably should get one, but to be
quite honest, I'm typically in a place where I can
charge my phone at some point during the day, and
if I'm not, like you know, I mean, if I'm

(50:54):
the only time I really need to recharge my phone
out and about is when like if I happen to
be at like a conference like a CS or something,
or you know, maybe an maybe maybe an Apple event.
But realistically, ninety nine point nine percent of the time,
I am a power user of my smartphone, and I
don't run out of battery because I make sure that
I am fully charged before I'm getting into that situation

(51:17):
where I'm going to be away from a plug for
a long period of time. And I mean basically I
can only imagine. I mean, you have to eat at
some point. So if you're even if your worst case
scenario you get at somewhere at seven am and you
go through one pm, I mean that's you know, six hours,
and your phone maybe would die during that time or

(51:40):
it's really close to death. But for me, you know,
most of the time, I will bring like a portable
battery pack. I'll plug it in at some point, or
I'll plug it into a plug in the wall. But anyway,
if you need one of these things, you just like
to have a lot of extra juice. Ninety nine bucks
is it's expensive, it's on the high end of things,
but it's kind of like, you know, it's from Apple,
so it's gonna work. Really well. The battery itself charges

(52:04):
with a lightning cable, which is nice, which means if
you just carry around an iPhone, you've already got the
cable to charge this thing. You can also pass through
charge your iPhone. This is all according to nine to
five mac Apple recommends using a twenty watt USBC charger
to charge this for the fastest charging time. What else,

(52:24):
The battery pack is really really slow. It's a five
watt charge, which is I think just about a quarter
It's about twenty five percent of what you could get
if you plugged in your phone. So this is another
reason why don't like these wireless battery packs. They're just
too slow. I mean, they're really like there's such a

(52:44):
trickle that like, it's fine if you have a long
runway to charge your phone, but you'd you'd probably be
better just plugging your phone in for twenty minutes and
just getting the amount of juice that you get during
that time. The other thing that's kind of cool is
that the battery percentage for the case will appear in
the battery widget and on the lock screen, which is
probably something that gives it a little of a step

(53:07):
ahead of some of the other battery packs out there.
That's about it. I don't know. I'm actually tempted to
buy this, to be honest, because I've been very lax
on the mag Safe accessories. I haven't even gotten the wallet.
My wife and I joke every time all I've been
wanting is one of these mag Safe wallets, and I
keep not buying it, and I just I should just

(53:28):
buy one, because every time I'm going out, like tonight,
I'm going out to my friend's house, and of course
it's a perfect example. All I need is my ID
and a credit card. That's it. You know, I'm going
to a poker game, and it's like my friend is
not accepting cash anymore, so I have to use Venmo.
So I don't need any things at my phone and
my credit card and my or my debit card rather

(53:50):
and my my ID and so all I need is
a little mag Safe wallet and that's it, and I'd
be perfectly fine, but I've yet to purchase one, even
though I've wanted one for six months. Anyway, all right, well,
that sound means that's gonna do it for this show.
Thank you so much for listening. If you have a
question for me, you'd like me to answer, Just go
to my Facebook Creatsfacebook dot com slash rich on Tech,

(54:12):
hit the big blue send email button and that will
get your message directly to my eyeballs. I would love
it if you would rate and review this podcast. Go
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the best. Just write a quick line about why you
like this show, like what do you like about it,
and that will help other people determine why they should listen.

(54:32):
There's so many tech podcasts out there, so they may
think that like you know, Rich on Tech means like
it's some rich person talking about technology like you know,
or it has or has to do with money or whatever.
So explain, like, hey, I like this show because Rich
explains things in an easy to understand way. I mean,
that would be ideal. You can find me on social media.
I'm at Rich on Tech on all social media platforms,

(54:56):
and no matter where you live in the US, it's
fun to listen to me. But you can also watch
me on TV on your big screen. Download the free
ktla plus app on Apple TV, Fire Tv, and Roku,
then scroll down to the tech section and you can
watch all of my TV segments on demand. They are
pulled directly from KTLA. You can see what I look

(55:17):
at and sound like on live TV, but of course
record it and play later. I'm Rich Demiro. Thanks so
much for listening. There are so many ways you can
spend an hour of your time. I do appreciate you
spending it with me. Stay safe, I will talk to
you real soon