Samsung Unpacked, Defending Your Data & Dark Patterns Explained

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is the show where I talk about the tech
stuff I think you should know about. It's also the
place where I answer your questions about technology. I believe
the tech should be interesting, useful, and fun. Phone lines
are open at triple eight Rich one oh one. That's
eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.

(00:20):
Give me a call if you have a question about technology.
Once again, the phone line is eight eight eight rich
one oh one. Now, if you want to email, that's
also an option. Just go to Rich on tech dot
tv hit contact Guests. This week, I'm gonna talk to journalists, creators,
and analysts who attended Galaxy Unpacked in Paris for their

(00:41):
take on Samsung's new gadgets. Later, we've got shopping expert
Trey Bodge. She's gonna share smart tips to maximize this
year's Amazon Prime Day. And later we've got the co
founder of the Oco app. He's gonna explain how his
app helps the visually impaired safely cross streets. Well, this

(01:03):
week I was in Paris, France, my first time ever.
Samsung brought me there for Galaxy Unpacked. This is their
event that they held in the basement of the Louver
and are also sponsoring the Olympics, so I think it
all seemed fitting for Samsung to have their event in Paris.
This is where they showed off foldaboles, a new watch,

(01:25):
a new ring, new earbuds, all kinds of great stuff.
This was my first time in Paris. I'll share some
observations with you. Great historic city. The food was just
as rich as I imagined.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
It would be.

Speaker 1 (01:41):
People love to sit outside at bistro tables and just
talk and eat and drink all day long, it seems,
and surprisingly smoke. Lots of smokers over there, like they
did not get the message about how smoking is bad
for you. So my first night sitting I sat downwind
of like a table of well everyone was smoking outside
so anyway, but I will say every time I take

(02:03):
an international trip, technology continues to make international travel easier.
So this trip was I think the first or the
second time that I did not have to go to
an ATM even once. My Tap to pay on my
phone worked every single time except once. Translation apps make
it so much easier to understand signs. I was even

(02:24):
able to download the Metro app for their subway there,
buy a ticket on my phone and use tap to
go all for my phone. I was so impressed, although
I will say New York City's implementation is the best
I've found because you do not need to do anything special.
They made it so that if you have a credit
card or a debit card set up on your phone
is tap to pay. That serves as your ticket to

(02:46):
ride the subway. All you do is tap and go.
And if you ride it like a certain amount of times,
like let's say nine times in a week, there's like
a cutoff. They will then just billy the flat rate
for that week, so you're not getting overcharged if you
take it a bunch. So I thought New York City
did a really nice job there. My phone worked perfectly.
I did not need an eSIM this time around. I
had enough days banked in my travel pass. But I

(03:08):
did try out one of the sims that I talked
about here on the show gig Sky. They offer a
free one hundred megabyte e SIM, so I downloaded that
just to try it out and see if it worked.
It worked perfectly, but I will tell you one hundred
megabytes is not enough to do anything overseas. It ran
out of the megabytes without me doing anything, So anything

(03:29):
that was happening in the background on my phone.

Speaker 3 (03:30):
That burned it all up.

Speaker 1 (03:32):
One of the cool things I did was board the
plane using facial recognition outside of LAX so you've probably
seen TSA using more facial recognition, but this was actually
to get on the plane. I did not show my
boarding pass. I literally just scanned my face and the
doors opened and I got on the plane. So instead
of having a line of people and one person checking

(03:52):
boarding passes, now it is just like four or five
little areas you stand in and there's kind of like
glass doors and you just show your If you're good,
it turns green, the doors open up, you get on
the plane. So watch for that to happen more often
because guess what, less people needed to do anything, And
that's kind of the trend we're seeing with technology.

Speaker 3 (04:12):
Internet much more private in Europe.

Speaker 1 (04:15):
I noticed that those cookie choice screens, you know when
you go to a website it's like, hey, do you
mind if we use cookies? Well over in Europe they
have much stronger privacy protection and data protection laws, so
it will tell you very clearly do you want to
accept all the cookies or reject them? They don't play
games with you like they do here in the US. Also,
I noticed when your data is being shared, it tells

(04:37):
you how many people it's sharing that data with. So,
for instance, I was setting up one of the Samsung
test devices and I said, hey, do you mind if
we share your data with these seven hundred and sixty
eight partners we have.

Speaker 3 (04:48):
I said, what, no comment there?

Speaker 1 (04:52):
Everyone walking around Paris is looking at their phone, So
that is a universal thing at this point, seems like
phones are you know, phone zombies are everywhere. But I
still think there's lots of opportunities to help people find
their way around new cities with the smartphone, also learning
about landmarks and helping people choose restaurants. I mean, it's

(05:12):
I do not have a good method for finding good
restaurants around me. Let's say I'm staying at a hotel.
It's really tough to vet restaurants and figure out like
is this a tourist trap, is it a good place?
Is it recommended? Does it just have a lot of reviews?
Because you know it's on Instagram? So at the end
of the day, how did I get most of my
recommendations from other people and concierge? So there's still a

(05:35):
lot of opportunities for technology to make that easier. Uber
definitely making the world an easier place to get around.

Speaker 3 (05:43):
I took Uber. I was in where was I last weekend?

Speaker 1 (05:47):
Bendorgon last weekend, and we took so many Ubers because
we decided not to rent a car, and this time
in Paris. Of course I did not I'm not going
to rent a car. Took it everywhere, and it's just
it's truly remarkable to me how a product that was
created here in the US is just had an impact
around the world. There's a little bit of a language barrier.

(06:08):
I was trying to meet my driver at the airport
and they were in a different place than I was.
I could tell they were in a different place because
of the bubble on the phone or the blue dot
that shows you where they were and where I was.
But they kept calling me, and I can't speak French,
so I you know, there's like a language barrier there.
But then we started texting through the Uber app because
that seemed to be easier, and I noticed under our

(06:29):
text is said translated from French to English, like, so
it's doing that on the fly. So literally, not only
can you get a ride anywhere, but now you can
chat with the driver and it's instantly going to translate that.
I mean, it's just brilliant things like this that are
making life a lot easier.

Speaker 3 (06:45):
Thank you, Bobo.

Speaker 1 (06:47):
Also, don't disregard the feature that lets you reserve an
Uber in advance. A lot of people may not know
about this, but basically, you can reserve a car so
that it's there for you waiting, and it doesn't have
to be a fancy car. I'm not talking like, you know,
super expensive town car service. But you can just get
a car in advance so you don't have to think about,
you know, if you're waking up early trying to catch

(07:09):
a flight. And what I liked about this, I'd never
seen this before. Uber was like, hey, try this new
feature where you just type in your flight number and
we'll take care of figuring out when to pick you up.
Same thing on the back end, So just put in
your flight number and we'll take care of when you
land and.

Speaker 3 (07:24):
When we should pick you up.

Speaker 1 (07:25):
Now I will say the driver that picked me up,
you know, because my flight was delayed. They said it
didn't work out so perfectly. But for me on the
front end, getting to the airport from my hotel to
the Paris airport. I didn't really know, do I need
to leave early? Do I need to you know, give
myself enough time? And sure enough Uber figured it all
out and it worked out perfectly, And yeah, I thought

(07:47):
that was great. The event itself well organized, but Samsung
held this thing in the middle of a major tourist attraction.
They unveiled multiple products, two foldable phones, two smart watches,
two sets of your duds, and a new health tracking ring.
All of the new products are going to be available
on July twenty fourth, So just to give you a
quick rundown, I've been playing with almost all of these

(08:08):
products except the ring, the Flip six, and the Fold six.
These are their foldable phones. These new models are the
slimmest and lightest yet. Also they have improved durability, so
if you're not familiar, the Flip is the one that
kind of looks like the old school Motorol eraser. It's
got a small screen on the outside, big screen on
the inside that got the most improvements. The cameras are

(08:31):
finally on par now with the S twenty four, So
if you're thinking about getting the entry level Samsung, you
can go with this little Flippy phone and get the
same camera quality. They upgraded to a fifty megapixel main
camera and a twelve megapixel ultra wide. I was taking
this phone around Paris taking pictures. It works great. It's
if you want something that's different. The Flip six is

(08:53):
really cool. That starts at eleven hundred dollars. I know
they went up by one hundred dollars. I can't believe.
It is the one that opens and closes like a book,
so you get this kind of narrow screen on the outside,
which has gotten wider over the years. But then when
you open it up, it is a nice tablet sized
screen seven point six inches on the inside. That is

(09:14):
a huge screen. Now that is nineteen hundred dollars. They
didn't really improve the cameras on this. They said they
put AI on it to make the cameras better. But
this is the phone for kind of This is the
top of the line Samsung phone when it comes to technology.
Maybe not the cameras because the S twenty four camera
ultra cameras are still better. But if you want something
that's super unique and different, I think they got the

(09:38):
form factor to a place where it feels.

Speaker 3 (09:40):
Good in the hand, it's slim, it's light.

Speaker 1 (09:43):
It's going to get better, but I think at this
point they've made a device that is foldable and very,
very usable. So again, that is the z Fold six
nineteen hundred dollars. You're talking the price of a laptop
for a phone. But the good news is you don't
really need anything else besides that because it's going to
function in so many great ways. They also talked about

(10:04):
their AI features. Samsung really pushing AI, and they're pushing
it in a different way than Apple because they're bringing
it to a lot of older models. So right now
you can get all their AI features on the S
twenty two, S twenty three series, S twenty four series,
and the foldables, Whereas when Apple comes out with Apple
Intelligence rumored for later this year or early next year,

(10:25):
that's going to work on the iPhone fifteen Pro models
and up, which means a lot of the older models
are not going to get them. And no surprise here.
The number one AI feature that Samsung has introduced is
called Circle to Search with Google, and it means you
can circle anything on your screen. You can translate the text,
you can reverse search the picture, you can search the

(10:46):
text whatever you want to do.

Speaker 3 (10:47):
It is very very useful.

Speaker 1 (10:49):
In fact, it is one of the reasons why I
have been loving the S twenty four Ultra so much, because,
especially when you're traveling internationally, it is just like it's
it feels very very smart, and it feels like a
feature that we need on our phones and you get
it there. All right, Coming up, I'll tell you some
more about the products. We still have two more products

(11:10):
to go through, an ultra watch and a ring, plus
some earbuds. Eight eight eight rich one oh one eight
eight eight seven four two four one zero one.

Speaker 3 (11:19):
This is rich On Tech.

Speaker 1 (11:24):
So I was talking about Samsung and some of the
products that they unveiled. They unveiled a lot of stuff,
and I will tell you that this is Samsung's moment.
They now have an ecosystem that is so rich and
so wide ranging that you are not giving up anything

(11:46):
by being in it. The reason why this Ultra watch
fills a need of people that want kind of a
nicer watch that's more geared towards hiking and on all
the extreme sports kind of stuff. And then the ring
is they are the first major company to have a
ring that sort of integrates with everything else. So, yes,

(12:07):
there's the Aura ring out there, but you know, you're
using its own app, and it's kind of like a
it's an island, and there's nothing wrong with Aura. That's
kind of the big ring right now. But the fact
that Samsung has one that works in their ecosystem and
it works with the watch. So if you're wearing the
watch and the ring, they will take the best readings
off of whichever device is working at the best at time.

(12:31):
So if you're sleeping, it'd probably be the ring. If
you're out on a bike ride, it'd probably be the watch.
So let me tell you about this Ultra Watch. This
is six hundred and fifty dollars. It's fantastic. It's it's
got a titanium frame. It's got good water resistance, it's
got good altitude so you can go from five hundred
meters below sea level to nine thousand meters high. It's

(12:54):
got all kinds of different tracking, so it's got really
accurate tracking. It's got the addition of a quick button,
which means you can instantly start a workout. Yes, just
like the Apple Watch. Ultra It's got an emergency siren. Yes,
just like the Apple Watch Ultra. It's got a bright
display up to three thousand knits which is actually very bright, yes,

(13:14):
just like the Ultra from Apple. And it's got the
longest battery life on a Galaxy Watch, so up to
one hundred hours in power saving mode. Now that's not
gonna be realistic for most people because you want to
track your stuff, but it's nice to have that option
otherwise you're gonna get for me after a whole day
of travel yesterday, I was down to about I think
it was about fifty percent sixty percent, and you're talking

(13:37):
almost twenty four hours of travel yesterday. So but I
didn't do a workout. So again, six hundred and fifty dollars.
There isn't LTE version, which means cellular, so you can
leave your phone behind and still get your text and
your calls. It's a forty seven millimeters watch size. It's
available in gray, white, and silver. My choice is the gray.
I really like that. The white is really cool too.

(14:00):
I don't think I saw the silver. Let's see what else, Okay, now,
the Galaxy ring. So this is the Galaxy ring. And
if you've seen like the Aura Ring, it's just like
that twenty four to seven health monitoring, up to seven
days battery life. It's lightweight. I tried it on. It's
weird because Samsung says, oh, these sizes are not standard,
so you have to get a sizing kit or you

(14:21):
have to go to a store to get sized before
we'll let you order this thing. But I was like, oh,
give me size ten and sure it up. It fit
me just like a size ten ring. So take it
for what it's worth. But you're not going to be
able to order this apparently without getting some sort of
sizing kit first, and I think that's because they don't
want to deal with all the returns on the wrong sizes.

(14:41):
But this is really a big thing to track your sleep.
So it's got sleep tracking, it's got skin temperature monitoring,
it's got this new energy score, which all of these
rings are doing. Kind of this like energy score. Aura
has it, the Amaze fit has it. But that's kind
of a score of your day, So how are you doing?

(15:02):
And this is looking at your sleep, your activity, your
sleeping heart rate, and your sleeping heart rate variability to
let you know how prepped you are for your day.
So if your scores a little low, it's going to say,
you know what, maybe today is not the best day
to work out. Maybe take it as a recovery day.
It also has automatic walking and running tracking. It's got
heart rate alerts, so it will give you a real
time notification if you have an unusual heart rate issue happening.

Speaker 3 (15:25):
And gesture controls.

Speaker 1 (15:26):
So if you have this ring on and you set
your phone up on a tripod or you just have
your phone in your hand for a selfie, you can
pinch your two fingers together and that will take a photo.
You could also pinch your two fingers together to dismiss
the alarm on your smartphone, which I think is a
very dangerous feature because I think people are going to
be doing that a lot.

Speaker 3 (15:45):
Might want to.

Speaker 1 (15:45):
Disable that one. The Rain comes in three colors, silver, gold,
and black. It is four hundred dollars. There are no
subscription fees. That was a big rumor that Samsung was
going to start charging subscription fees. That is not the case,
so that into consideration again. All of these products from
Samsung are available on July twenty fourth, And you know,

(16:07):
like I said, I've been playing with them and I've
been really impressed. I wore the Galaxy uh Buds three
Pro all day on the plane yesterday. They sounded fantastic.
They have two new Galaxy Buds Pro. They now have
a stalk which before they come they almost look like
beans before that you put in your ear. Now they
look like, you know, very standard earbuds. So again that's

(16:29):
kind of a wrap up on the Samsung stuff. You
have any questions about it, give me a call. Eight
eight eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven
four to two four one zero one. Now to continue
with the Samsung I know it's a lot coming up.
We're going to talk to some of the folks that
were at the event with me to get their take
on this stuff. You're listening to rich on Tech. Welcome
back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out

(16:50):
with you, talking technology at triple eight rich one oh one.
That's eight eight eight seven four to two four to
one zero one. We'll get back to the phone lines
in just a moment, but first let's take you back
to Paris for a deeper dive into Samsung's announcements. They
showed off two new foldable phones, plus an ultra watch,
earbuds and a smart ring. First up, I talked to

(17:13):
Bob O'Donnell, President and chief analyst at TECHnalysis Research. Bob
shares his thoughts on Samsung's focus on digital health. You know,
I thought the event was great.

Speaker 4 (17:23):
I mean doing it in Paris right before the Olympics,
of course was exciting. It gave it an international feel
and flair, and it's important for Samsung. I mean, Europe
is their second largest market, so I think that was great. Obviously,
do we end the louver made it even more exciting,
So I thought that was great, you know, And then
the big story for me is digital health. Like they

(17:43):
really focused on digital health. Obviously, they added the ring,
which is the big new edition. They added the Watch
Ultra with fis looks just like Apple's Watch Ultra, but
I wish they would have did a little bit different design.
But anyway, it's still important to their whole digital whole
hell story. And of course they focused on AI. But
the interesting thing for me was, hey, it's censors from

(18:07):
wearables with AI to do digital health, and that is
I think a really interesting story and frankly it puts
them ahead of everybody else because they're the only big
company that's got that complete suite. You know of devices
with the watch ring and of course the smartphone with
the app that's it's combining all that data. So to me,

(18:28):
that's the big takeaway from this show, and it was
pretty exciting.

Speaker 3 (18:31):
In that regard.

Speaker 4 (18:32):
I've been a big foldable fan for a long time,
and frankly, this year's iteration is a pretty modest upgrade
compared to previous ones. But then I also have to remember,
look for the mainstream audience, foldables are still kind of
a new thing and we're really just starting to see
it take off. And the fact that Samsung now has

(18:52):
more competition from other vendors is actually making the foldable
market one of the few areas of the smartphone market
that's act growing because it as a small base to
grow from, but it's a new and different form factor
and a lot of people are excited by that.

Speaker 1 (19:07):
You know.

Speaker 4 (19:07):
I think a couple of things are going to make
that foldable purchases happen. Number one, of course, the price
points are kind of high and that's a challenge for
a lot of people. But as we start to see applications,
and I think some of the AI applications that can
leverage the foldable screen, like the interpreter application, those kinds
of things that leverage those two screens that are foldable

(19:29):
has and then combine that with AI. All of a sudden,
there are things you can do with that phone that
you cannot do with any other phone. It's not about
just having a bigger screen.

Speaker 3 (19:39):
It's a completely.

Speaker 4 (19:40):
Different experience, and I think those kinds of things is
what will trigger it. But look, at the end of
the day, it's going to be a price point. Obviously
we've seen some level of component price issues. That's always
a factor. But I think Samsung also is trying to
make clear that they've got a premium line of devices
and prices are not quite as big of an issue

(20:03):
for those premium phone buyers. So I think they're continuing
to position the foldables there. The big question will be
when will they go to a mainstream price point for
those foldables, And we'll see maybe next.

Speaker 1 (20:15):
Year next I talked to Rebecca Isaac's consumer tech and
electronics editor at Forbes Vetted.

Speaker 3 (20:21):
Rebecca gives us her.

Speaker 1 (20:22):
Take on the Galaxy Ring and its potential impact on
the wearable tech market.

Speaker 5 (20:27):
Oh my gosh, the ring is really exciting. It's the
person it's kind from Samsung. I mean, sure, we've seen
products like the Aura Ring Gen three, and there are
a few others out there, like Ring Kong produces the
one that I'm aware of, but the first one from Samsung.
It feels light to wear, It's really comfortable, It's made
of a super durable titanium fild, and daring my hands

(20:50):
on of it, it felt very sturdy, like it's not
going to break, It's not going to slide off of
my hand as I'm washing the dishes. I really like
the battery life. That seven day battery like that it
promises is really exciting because I don't know about you,
but I'm always forgetting to charge my watch, very guilty
of daki, but I'm really excited for it. It's gonna

(21:12):
have some really great use cases for someone who maybe
wants the smart technology but doesn't want to wear a
bulky watch on their wrist.

Speaker 6 (21:20):
Now.

Speaker 1 (21:20):
I love social media content creator Parker Burton. He makes
Android focused content on TikTok and Instagram. He told me
he appreciates the refinements in Samsung's latest foldables, but something
has to give.

Speaker 3 (21:33):
For people to really want one.

Speaker 7 (21:35):
And at this event, I'm really excited for the refinements
with the Z flip and.

Speaker 3 (21:39):
The Z fold.

Speaker 7 (21:40):
I love the flattened up edges and the matt rails
and the map backs, heels a lot more premium than before.
Also love the ring and how it's like now connecting
with the watch, so you don't need a separate app
for your ring and a separate app for your watch.
They all connect together, which is great. And the earbuds
a little bit interesting. It looks like some other earbut

(22:00):
that we know. But I guess I'll try them out
and see if they're good. I think once they introduce
a lot more features that could be more compelling, Like
I mean, they've showed us features like taking hands free selfies,
which that can be compelling. But I think for people
who aren't already fold or flip users, there's got to
be something big that people are like, oh yeah, now
I want it, which I don't know if we're there

(22:20):
yet for some people. For some people, yes, for sure
they love their folds and flips, but for others, I
don't know what's gonna make them switch.

Speaker 3 (22:27):
But in the future we could get something come.

Speaker 7 (22:29):
I mean, there's probably people who want a folding phone,
but just because of the price, they just like can't
get it, and so if somehow the price goes down,
then there's people that'll probably just snatch at it immediately.

Speaker 1 (22:43):
Next up at abung Ata also known as thunder E
from Board at Work.

Speaker 8 (22:48):
And this impact was quite interesting because we saw some
really new stuff, some upgrades, and honestly, I've got a
little mixed feelings on it. I love the ring, I
love the idea of the ring. I like when it's
smart rings, the buds. I like the improvements I'm seeing there.
The new Watch Ultra looks kind of similar, but I
still love the fact there's a ton of features.

Speaker 1 (23:10):
Now.

Speaker 8 (23:10):
When it comes to the Galaxy Z Flip six Z
Fold six as well, I kind of I'm leaning towards
the Flip six. I think there's more upgrades on that device.
The fifty megapixel, new sensor, the new ultra, why you know,
just a little accents on the design look really nice.
The fold is thinner and lighter, but I'm gonna lean

(23:31):
to the Flip six overall. I think this is pretty
good on the health department from Samsong. When it comes
to the phones, we just have to wait and see.
As an Android used, I like the flexibility that Android brings,
and Samsung, as the market leader, does bring a lot
of features in a more polished fashion. Plus they have

(23:52):
honestly the best camera on an Android device. And I've
been using the Galaxy Notes since the very first note,
So for me, the S twenty four Ultra makes sense.
I write a lot of notes. I still try and
write something or else, you know, I'll forget how to
write anything at all, So I love it for that feature.

Speaker 1 (24:09):
Finally, lance Yulenov, Editor at large at tech Radar, He's
particularly impressed with Samsung's progress in creating a cohesive ecosystem
of devices.

Speaker 9 (24:20):
So I think, you know, the ring is really the
hot thing to me because it follows the trend of
you know, lower impact or you don't have to have
a screen where you can go to bed with the
tracking device because we really don't want to sleep with
our watches, you know, because if we look at that
Samsung Galaxy Watch Aultra, that thing is a beef thing.
I'm not going to sleep with that. But the ring
I'll sleep with. Then seven days of battery life. That's

(24:42):
kind of exciting.

Speaker 2 (24:43):
I like the new.

Speaker 9 (24:44):
Help you know technology, They've got the AI stuff that's
built into it. I also like that Samsung is starting
to really deliver on the ecosystem idea either getting closer
to doing that thing that's going to excite people about
owning a whole bunch of Samsung devices. ICE is going
to be a big leason. Guess what, the Samsung Galaxy
D fault six just got one hundred dollars more expensive.

Speaker 2 (25:05):
I'm honestly really.

Speaker 9 (25:06):
Success, you know, surprised about that.

Speaker 10 (25:09):
I do like the device.

Speaker 9 (25:10):
I think the design is really good.

Speaker 2 (25:12):
I like that then, or I like that it's lighter.

Speaker 9 (25:14):
They did not really upgrade the cameras to what I wanted,
So I'm not really sure why I'm going to spend
one hundred dollars more.

Speaker 2 (25:20):
If they want to expand the.

Speaker 9 (25:21):
Market, they've got to make these things cheaper.

Speaker 3 (25:25):
Well, it's good.

Speaker 9 (25:25):
That's a race of AI, right, So we have, you know,
the Galaxy AI versus Apple Intelligence, and Samsung seems like
maybe they're going to deliver some of these features sooner
than what Apple's capable of. Some of our Apple Intelligence
features again puts to twenty twenty five, so maybe Samsung
gets a lead there. But it's really about how many
people are using these things. Will they use them on

(25:48):
the Samsung Galaxy devices? And that depends on how easy
they are to find and how effective they are every
time they use them.

Speaker 1 (25:54):
Samsung has always been on the cutting edge with new features,
new products, and just overall putting a lot out there.
Apple might be considered the more premium ecosystem, but Samsung
continues to push the envelope and deliver new ideas, sometimes
years before the competition. Keep in mind, these foldables have
been around now for five years and they just seem
to be getting started. I'm rich Demiro more rich on

(26:17):
Tech right after this, Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology at
Triple A Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight
seven four two four one zero one. I know you're
anxious for me to get to the phone lines. I
had a lot to get through with the Samsung stuff.
Hopefully that explained a lot of it, and you have

(26:39):
a better understanding of all the products that they have
put out and the website for the show rich on
Tech dot TV. I've got everything that I mentioned written
up in today's newsletter, So just go to the website
rich on Tech dot tv UH. You can find the
newsletter there and if you want to read more about
the Samsung stuff, it is all there. Let's go to

(27:01):
Sally in Los Angeles. Sally, you're on.

Speaker 3 (27:03):
With Rich.

Speaker 11 (27:05):
Hi.

Speaker 10 (27:06):
Hi. So my question is I'm traveling to China in
a few weeks and I know there's a lot of
apps or website or band in China that we can
use here in the US. So I'm trying to figure
out what is the best Do I purchase at ethan,
do I get a VPN? What is the best way

(27:29):
so that I can still use all the apps that
I can use here?

Speaker 3 (27:33):
There good question.

Speaker 1 (27:34):
So if you are using your cellular service that you
have here, pretty much everything is going to work as normal.
So that it's weird because when I was last over there,
there were things that if I was on my cellular
everything would work just fine. And I don't know if
that's because it's an American cellular company or what, but

(27:56):
in general things worked pretty well. So I was able
to access a lot of the stuff that you typically
you can't there. Now if you're not if you're not
using your own cellular, like if you are going to
get like an eSIM, that's for China, then yes, you'll
probably need to use like a VPN to access things
like Twitter, to access Google, to access Facebook. I mean

(28:17):
pretty much everything over there is banned. So what are
you going for? Is it work or fun?

Speaker 10 (28:23):
Or what for fun?

Speaker 3 (28:25):
Okay, so I'm going for a couple.

Speaker 1 (28:27):
Of weeks, Okay, So yeah, so it might be just
mostly social media that you're going to be impacted, obviously, Google,
Google Maps, things like that. It's been a while since
I was at in China, so it's I'm trying to remember.
Like the last time I was there, I felt I
felt like everything pretty much worked as long as I
was on my cellular. But if I wasn't on cellular,
like if I was on the work or the hotel

(28:48):
Wi Fi, that's when things stopped working. So I personally,
just to prepare, would get the VPN, and that way,
when you're over there in China, you would log onto
the VPN and you would choose a US server as
your host on that VPN. So if you want to
look at, you know, some of the recommended VPNs, I've

(29:10):
got I've got an article that you can you can
google just Ktla DeMuro VPN and uh.

Speaker 3 (29:16):
The article is.

Speaker 1 (29:17):
It says, do you do you need a VPN, here's
what the experts recommend, and there's some recommendations for what
you should look for in a VPN, So you know,
that's that's probably what I would do, just to be
sure and make sure that your VPN is working before
you go over there. And then for e SIM I
like arlow A I R A l O. You've probably

(29:37):
heard me talk about them on the show. Let me
check if they have one for China. Let's see if
they have a VPN for China or sorry, a.

Speaker 10 (29:47):
SIM China for a low because I'm going to China
and after China, I'm going to Japan. Uh, what they
have when an ethan that will work in both countries
or in China is a very.

Speaker 1 (30:00):
Specific sometimes they do. So there are regions, so if
you type in China, it will give you all of
the all of the SIMS that will work there. So
I think China is kind of its own thing. So
I'm looking on the website and it doesn't look like
they have a regional one. So and Japan, by the way,
is a little tricky with eSIMs. So when I was there,

(30:23):
do you have an iPhone or an Android, Okay, you
should be fine because on Android specifically, pixels in Japan
with the eSIMs do not like to work. And it
was driving me nuts the last time I was there
because I all, you know, typically I travel with an
Android in an iPhone and my iPhone I fired up
the eSIM, no problem. Then all of a sudden, I

(30:43):
get to the pixel and it's like it's just not working,
and I'm like, what is the problem here? And then
I finally cross reference talked to a couple of friends
and they said, yeah, for some reason, the pixel specifically
just has it or did have an issue with this
with this Aralow sim. If you look on the sim,
if you and read the terms on the sim card,
it will tell you that certain devices do not work

(31:06):
with that sim. So for my purposes, the pixel was
one of those devices. It just did not work on there. So,
but it's gotten a lot easier. You can buy all
these things before you go, so that you're ready to go.
You're all set up. What service do you have on
your cellular? Is it AT and T, Verizon, T Mobile,
AT and T Okay, so with AT and T, depending

(31:26):
on the plan you're on, I would call them and
see if you have any like what your data passes,
because sometimes you know, if you're only there for a
week or so, it might you might get a couple
of free days on their on their roaming.

Speaker 3 (31:39):
So call AT and T. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (31:40):
So on my last trip to Paris on my account,
I had twelve days of free roaming.

Speaker 3 (31:46):
So it depends on your play.

Speaker 1 (31:48):
Yeah, so call The first thing to do is call
AT and T say hey, do I have any international
days included in my plan? And they will look that
up and say, oh, yeah, you've got five days free,
so you know, you know that you've got Yeah, So
that's that's good to know.

Speaker 10 (32:02):
So as long as I let's let's just say I
I call AT and T let them know I'm traveling,
and I stay on my cellular plan while I'm in China,
everything should work.

Speaker 3 (32:15):
It should.

Speaker 1 (32:15):
I mean, I'm just you know, I'm telling you from
my memory of when I was on my US you
know SIM, when I was just roaming. It seemed to
work because I don't know if they have like you know,
because you're on an American SIM card. It's like, oh, okay,
well you're an American, you have access to these things.
But I you know, okay, but I'd be prepared just
for the you know, for the for the reality of

(32:37):
the VPN, but in general, you know, and things have
it might have changed over there. I'm not really sure,
but you know, in general, be prepared with the VPNs
that you have connections no matter what, and that you
can access to things that are important to you once
you're over there.

Speaker 3 (32:51):
It's a it's a little bit of a.

Speaker 10 (32:53):
It's a vp in like a pretty easy like do
I just turn it on while I'm there and then instead?
Do I need to do any settings on my iPhone
in order for the VPN to work.

Speaker 1 (33:01):
No, but you you know, you have to set it up,
set up everything here so that when you get there
you just have to toggle it on. And so it's
very Most of the VPNs are very very simple to use.
Once you install it on your phone, it will say hey,
can we install a VPN profile? You install that VPN profile,
and then some apps will say, hey, do you want

(33:22):
us to be on all the time. I don't recommend that,
but you know, there's a way to toggle on inside
the app. Usually I have like a big power button
looking thing you press that you'll see VPN in the
upper right hand corner of your phone.

Speaker 3 (33:34):
You know you're.

Speaker 1 (33:35):
Connected to the VPN, and then you know you can
you can go on as normal. But again I would
set this all up here so that you kind of
have an idea you could try the VPN out here. Okay,
So so try all this stuff here and get familiar
with it before you get there. And again the first
stop is to call your cellular company and just see
what they say about roaming in China, to say, hey,

(33:55):
do I have any days included? Don't make the mistake
I did of leaving my dry box on because I
racked up an eight hundred dollars bill because it tried
to upload all of my photos in the background.

Speaker 3 (34:05):
So that's another thing. When you're traveling internationally.

Speaker 1 (34:09):
If you have any sort of backup running on your phone,
like a photos program like Amazon Photos or Google Photos
or iCloud, make sure that cellular is turned off for
that sinking, because you do not want it sinking over cellular.
Make sure you have it turned on where it's just
backing up over Wi Fi. Very important, or you're gonna

(34:30):
run through all your data or get a huge bill.
Eight to eight rich one on one eight eight eight
seven four to two poor one zero one. Coming up,
I'll talk about the AT and T data breach how
it might affect you. Welcome back to rich on tech
eight to eight rich one oh one eight eight eight
seven four two four one zero one. The website rich

(34:53):
on tech dot TV. If you want links to anything
I mentioned, hit the light bulb. If you want to
prouse the stories I do for TV, they are there.
Also my newsletter. Be sure to sign up for that
and you can get that delivered to your inbox every week.
It includes a lot of great information, just like I
share on this show Richontech dot TV. This week, AT

(35:15):
and T revealed another massive data breach affecting millions of customers.
AT and T is in the process of notifying about
one hundred and ten million customers about this new data breach.
The stolen data includes phone numbers and call and text
records from May one, twenty twenty two, to October thirty first,
twenty twenty two. Some data from January twenty twenty three

(35:37):
was also compromised. This affects both cellular and landline customers,
including those who used another carrier on AT and t's network.
Like a cricket so what did they get metadata such
as who you called, who you texted, and how long
you talk to them for. Some of the records also
include cell site identification numbers, which might be able to

(36:01):
be used to reveal your approximate locations of where you
made those calls.

Speaker 8 (36:06):
Now.

Speaker 1 (36:06):
AT and T says they learned of the data breach
on April nineteenth, twenty twenty four. They say that the
stolen data does not contain the contents of calls or
the contents of the texts. This is the second security
incident for AT and T in twenty twenty four. They
had that passcode reset earlier in the year. So AT

(36:27):
and T says the stolen data is not currently publicly available,
which means you can't search through it. Lots of thoughts
on this number one. You just have to assume that
your data is going to be out there at some point,
because we are entering a world where it's not a
matter of who might get breached, it's a matter of when. Also,
you got to be careful about the information that you share.

(36:50):
I've been watching the documentary on Netflix, the Ashley Madison
data breach. That was just devastating to people. Not defending
what Ashley Madison was doing. But at the same time,
thirty seven million people that kind of data out there.
It was a big deal, and this is just going
to continue to happen. It's just going to continue to happen.

(37:11):
Now you can check to see if your data was
included in this. AT and T set up a special website.
You can go to AT and T dot com slash event,
slash lander, l A n d Er and I checked
my account. I got a big green check. Marcus as
accounts not affected. Bobo checked his account and it says
sure enough, account affected. So you can go to this

(37:33):
website ATT dot com slash event slash lander to see
if your data was involved in this breach.

Speaker 3 (37:41):
It's the good news is here.

Speaker 1 (37:42):
It doesn't sound like they got names, addresses, social Security numbers,
credit card information. Doesn't sound like they got that. But
they did get a lot of call data. So theoretically,
I'm just you know, looking to the most nefarious purpose
of this. Someone could theoretically set up a database if
this data gets out where you'd be able to search

(38:03):
and see if someone you know called a phone number
that you also know. So that's just one way and
just on this same note. While we're here surf Shark,
this is a VPN company. They introduced a new feature
called alternative Number. So this is a new tool to
protect your real phone number from online threats and spam.
They basically will give you a virtual US based phone

(38:25):
number that you can access through the app. You can
receive phone calls, you can receive messages, and you can
reply to messages with this alternative phone number. And the
whole purpose here is to help you safeguard your real
phone number from strangers, spam, and untrusted websites. You cannot
use this phone number to make outgoing calls or to
initiate messages. It's just for incoming and to reply. So

(38:48):
why would you want this, Well, you can use it
in place of your real phone number anywhere where you
don't think your real phone number is necessary. So maybe
you're signing up for a club card at a grocery store,
or you're just signing up for you know, online sweepsteakes, whatever,
you can use this phone number. So right now, it
only works with US phone numbers. It's anywhere from three

(39:09):
to five dollars a month. And I'm telling you this
idea of using a secondary phone number.

Speaker 3 (39:15):
I do it.

Speaker 1 (39:16):
I use my Google Voice number when I sign up
for almost anything as sort of a buffer between me
and all of these data breaches. Because your real phone
number is valuable, It's linked to a lot of things,
and I think people are just understanding that if they
want to protect their privacy, they have to start giving
out information that is much much less linked to their

(39:38):
real identity. Let's go to Dory in Westlake Village, California. Dory,
what's your question?

Speaker 10 (39:45):
Yes, I thank you for taking my call. My question
may be a little funny.

Speaker 12 (39:49):
That Samsung ring you were talking about? Can you wear
it on your toe?

Speaker 3 (39:54):
Oh? Like a toe ring? Interesting question that those rings
really down match with the rings I always wear in
my hand.

Speaker 12 (40:01):
But I love the idea of that ring.

Speaker 1 (40:04):
Yeah, that's a great question, and I totally get it
because you know, not everyone would match with these things.

Speaker 3 (40:12):
Let's see.

Speaker 1 (40:13):
So I don't have the information from Samsung specifically, but Aura,
who makes a smart ring. They replied in a tweet
to someone that asked about this exact same question, and
they said, we do not recommend wearing the ring on
a toe because the toe differs from the fingers in
the pulse signal it gives, so the readings are going

(40:35):
to differ and they're not going to be as accurate
as fingers. So bottom line, you probably could wear it
as a toe ring. You're not going to get the
right readings. But you know, I just don't think the
blood flow to the toe is as pronounced as it
is to your fingers, because that's an extremity. And Bobo's
just walking out. He's done, This show is over for him.

(40:58):
Like that question, I thought it was as a it's
a look, toe rings are a thing. In fact, we
were joking at the Samsung event that they might come
out with the nose ring.

Speaker 3 (41:10):
That's a smart nose ring. Why not smart ring?

Speaker 13 (41:13):
But the reason is because it doesn't match the jury
that she already wears.

Speaker 1 (41:18):
Well, look, people are particular. When we were looking at
the rings, they have him in three colors. They've got black, silver,
and gold, And because my wedding ring is silver, I
was I like the black the most. It looks the best.
It's like a nice matte black. But to me it's like, oh,
I'd have to go silver because it matches my ring. Look,
people want to match. You gotta Bobo, your your hat

(41:41):
is matching your shirt? I noticed, are your sneakers matching
everything too? What you don't know about Bobo? Yes, he's
a sneaker head and he comes in here every week
with fully matching clothes. His shirt matches, his hat matches
his sneakers. And yeah, if I wear my crocs here,
they only match, you know, my cross.

Speaker 3 (42:06):
All right, let's go to Mark and Woodland Hills. Mark,
you're on with Writch.

Speaker 6 (42:10):
Yes, good afternoon. My problem is is that a lot
of the subsidies were dropped for telephone, and I only
had bundled already landline and internet service. Now the landline
prices are just going out of the roof costs wise.
But I also recall when I used to have consumer cellular,

(42:31):
they had a base unit that was that ran on wife.
I believe it was or a cellular service. But there's
something similar I'm interested in. It's called Umama, and what
apparently what it does is it uses your internet and
I can have all my cordless phones all over the house,
so I don't have to run around to get to
one of them. And I was wondering if you had

(42:54):
that or any other alternatives. I've seen all the videos
on YouTube, but you never know what hucksterism is and
what's right, So I thought i'd run it by you.
You're the expert.

Speaker 1 (43:04):
Absolutely. UMA is fantastic. It's been around forever. It works,
it does what it says. You buy the unit. The
way it works, you plug the unit into your Internet
and they also actually have a Wi Fi unit at
this point, so you don't even need to plug it
into a physical ethernet jack, although I probably would recommend
that just for the best signal. But you plug that in.
It's a little box and that box takes that Internet

(43:26):
signal and gives you a phone line. So it's using
voiceover IP, which you know, most of the cellular services
and all of the voice services, almost all of them
now are using voiceover IP. You know, the landlines, you know,
the physical copper cables may not be, but everything else.
If you're getting a line from Spectrum, if you're getting
a line from your cable company, it's all using voiceover IP.

Speaker 3 (43:48):
So UMA.

Speaker 1 (43:49):
The interesting thing about the way they work is that
you basically buy the device for anywhere from seventy to
one hundred dollars and then the phone service is free.
You just have to pay the monthly taxes and fees
and you can put your phone number or your zip
code in online and it will tell you how much
the taxes and fees are. For where I live, It's
under ten dollars a month, so highly recommend it. It

(44:12):
will work with your phones. The other thing to look
at is called magic Jack.

Speaker 12 (44:17):
This.

Speaker 1 (44:18):
When I first covered this, I was working at c
Net decade probably over a decade ago, and I couldn't
believe it, Like it's just like I couldn't believe that
you can get something that turned Internet into a phone line.
And of course now it's very common, but this would
solve your problems if you want a home phone service
that does not cost as much as getting something from

(44:40):
the cable company. So again, UMA isom A. Like I said,
they've been around forever. I personally tested them. I had
it in my house for a very long time, and
it does exactly what it says it does. It's a
it's a virtual phone number that basically lets you plug
in a real phone, so you can go to Walmart,
you can buy a cordless phone like the old school phones.

(45:01):
And that little jack, I forget what it's called, like
the RJ oh gosh, what's a phone jack RJ something
r J eleven is that it You plug that in
to the back of this Uma and now you have
a real phone line that is all going through the Internet.
So the other one, like I said, magic Jack Vonage
used to be the third. It does not look like

(45:22):
they do a consumer product anymore. So those are the
two I go with Mark, markn Widlin Hills, Thanks for
the call. Definitely to go for it all right. Eighty
eight rich one on one oh one more tip wait
until Amazon Prime Day because the Uma is sold on
Amazon and it might be on sale on Amazon Prime Day.

Speaker 3 (45:41):
You've got a couple of days to wait.

Speaker 1 (45:43):
Eighty eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven
four to two four one zero one more rich on Tech,
come in your way right after this. Welcome back to
rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you
talking technology. The phone line for the show eight eight
eight rich one one eight eight eight seven four to
two four one zero one. I know you got a

(46:06):
burning question about technology, something on your mind. Give me
a call. The phone line is free, the call is
toll free. The answer is uh, you know who knows.
It may not be worth as much may be worth
the price of the phone call. Who knows you never know?
Eight eight eight Rich one on one eight eight eight
seven four to two four one zero one. The website

(46:28):
for the show rich on tech dot TV. The more
you call, the more you keep our lovely call screener
Kim Company. Uh, dark patterns? Are you familiar with what
a dark pattern is? This is pretty much a manipulative,
manipulative design. And we see this all the time. I

(46:49):
see this all the time.

Speaker 3 (46:51):
Every day.

Speaker 1 (46:52):
I download a lot of apps, I sign up for
a lot of websites, and I notice these dark patterns
almost every single time. And they're just and the FTC
they support my thoughts that this is happening a lot.
So Actually, the FTC teamed up with a whole bunch
of international partners to study six hundred and forty two
websites and mobile apps offering subscription services and guess what.

(47:16):
Nearly seventy six percent of them employed at least one
possible dark pattern. Sixty seven percent used multiple dark patterns. Now,
what's a dark pattern? It's something that makes you do
something that you wouldn't normally do if you had all
the information at your disposal. Let me explain the most
common dark pattern. You are signing up for, or you

(47:38):
download a new app and it says that screen where
it says, hey, would you like to sign up for
a free trial or a subscription, and you don't really
want to, You just want to try out the app,
but you can't seem to get past that page. But
if you look very closely, there's a very faint X
in the corner that you don't see when you first
look at that window, and so you think that you

(47:59):
have to either sign up up for a free trial
or sign up for a subscription to actually even just
try out the use of that app.

Speaker 3 (48:06):
But in reality, you can.

Speaker 1 (48:07):
Click that little X and deal with that later and
try the app and see what happens before you sign
up for anything. That is one dark pattern, and that's
the most common I see. So if you're ever signing
up for an app, and believe me, the reason I
know this is because I try a lot of apps
and I feature them on TV and of course here
on the radio, and people will email me invariably and

(48:28):
be like, Rich, I can't believe you're promoting an app
that you can only you know you have to sign
up for it and I said, oh, no, you missed
the dark pattern. They had a little X that you
missed during that sign up flow. This happens a lot,
so the two patterns, and I didn't know they had
a term for this. The most that they encountered was
called sneaking practices. This involves hiding or delaying the disclosure

(48:51):
of information that might affect your purchase decision. That's the
one I just talked about. And then interface interference. This
is obscuring important information or pre selecting options in a
frame that steers you towards making a decision that's more
favorable for the business. So if you're just clicking through
all the next, next, next, next, next, next, next, all

(49:11):
the stuff that's pre selected benefits the company. And I
see this a lot when I'm setting up new phones.
Every single new phone and almost every single tech device
that I set up has an option that says, do
you want us to send diagnostic data back to the
company about how you use this product?

Speaker 3 (49:27):
Now, you don't need to do that.

Speaker 1 (49:29):
You don't need to be their little, you know, feedback
response person for this stuff. Like you paid for this product,
you you know, should get to use it without having
to send back exactly how you're using this product. iPhone
does it, Android does it, Samsung does it?

Speaker 3 (49:44):
They all do that.

Speaker 1 (49:46):
You I always unclick that box because why should I
send you all this rich data about how I'm using
this phone? Now, By the way, what are they collecting everything? Everything,
how you swipe, the time you turn your phone on,
the time you turn your phone off, when you use
your phone, when you're not using your phone, how many
apps you download. Everything's being collected if you're sending back

(50:06):
that diagnostic data. And of course that box is checked
by default. In fact, here's another dark pattern. When you're
setting up a product, it will say accept all. And
when you press accept all, you think that you have
to tap yes to all these different things.

Speaker 3 (50:20):
You do not.

Speaker 1 (50:21):
If you tap them individually, you'd notice only the first
two are required. The rest are optional. So be very
careful when you download stuff and sign up for stuff,
because you are bombarded with these dark patterns and they.

Speaker 3 (50:34):
Trip people up. Seventy six percent of sites have them.
That's wild.

Speaker 1 (50:40):
Xbox raising Xbox game Pass prices. So if your kid
uses this like mine does, Yeah, typically this was seventeen
bucks a month. Now it's going up to twenty dollars
a month for the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. Now the
PC Game Pass they're raising that from that's going up
to twelve dollars a month previously ten. Now the nice

(51:03):
thing they're doing is introducing a new tier that's cheaper
than all of these tiers at fifteen dollars a month.
And this is called Xbox Game Pass Standard. But what
are they doing. They're taking away your access to day
one first party games. What does that mean. The news
here is that everyone was so excited that the brand

(51:25):
new Call of Duty was going to be available on
Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, and everyone was chatting when they
heard about this. They were tweeting saying, oh, Microsoft is
so great because they're giving us access to this game
on this service without raising prices. Well, they did a
dark pattern. They announced the exciting news a couple of
weeks ago that Call of Duty would be available, but

(51:47):
they held back the price increase until a couple of
weeks later. And so now you get I mean, it's
just these companies are wild and look, this is just
the way of the world, folks. We are just paying
and paying and paying and paying more. Like I say,
the free ride is over. Those price increases start on

(52:07):
September twelfth. Eight of eight Rich one O one eight
eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.

Speaker 3 (52:13):
It's not all bad.

Speaker 1 (52:14):
I'll tell you the free service that Google is making
available to everyone.

Speaker 3 (52:17):
Coming up.

Speaker 1 (52:19):
Welcome back to Rich on tech. Rich Demiro here talking
technology at eight eight eight rich one oh one. That's
eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
I see a holding on the lines. We'll get back
to those in just a moment. But first, let's talk
Amazon Prime Day tenth and well, i'd say annual, but
they now do it a couple times a year. But

(52:40):
this is their tenth Prime Day event. It's happening July
sixteenth and seventeenth. Of course, they're promising millions of deals,
over five million deals available for Prime members. Remember you
have to be a Prime member to take advantage UH
savings on all kinds of stuff. To talk about this,

(53:01):
I spoke with Deal's expert Trey Bodge. She had some
great tips on how to maximize your savings. Prime Day obviously,
it seems to be happening every year, sometimes twice a year.
Why does Amazon do Prime Day?

Speaker 14 (53:17):
Well, Amazon does Prime Day in an effort to create
their own shopping holiday.

Speaker 2 (53:22):
July.

Speaker 14 (53:23):
Up until ten years ago, in the first Prime Day,
July was kind of a sleepy time except for the
July fourth weekend sales. But now, as you see, there's
so much going on with Amazon Prime Day, and then
we have Target Circle Week and Walmart Deals Week, and
the list goes on and on. So Amazon has essentially
created their own shopping season, and then they do it
again in October, kicking off the holiday shopping season very early,

(53:48):
so they're controlling the game here.

Speaker 1 (53:50):
So what do you think are some of the best
strategies for finding deals during Prime Day?

Speaker 14 (53:55):
So because we're seeing so many competitive deals around Prime Day,
I would make sure to look around. You want to
use tools like Yahoo Shopping or Google Shopping to search
for the items that you're looking for. Get a sense
of the landscape of where those items are sold in
for how much the best deal may be on Amazon
or it may be elsewhere, so it's always worth taking

(54:16):
a moment to do that. You also want to pair
that with using a deal site because often deal sites
have cash back offers that can be combined with retailer sales.
So one of my favorites is couponcabin dot com. They
have cash back offers in the four to eight percent
off range, and then sometimes they may have coupons that

(54:36):
can be kind of layered on top of the coupons
that retailers are offering. So I think that's a really
good thing to do as well. And then during this
busy time, you just want to make sure to keep
an eye on your shopping list and avoid impulse shopping
because there's so much activity.

Speaker 2 (54:55):
You certainly don't want to be kind.

Speaker 14 (54:56):
Of going willy nilly and buying all sorts of things
that you might rec Brett later.

Speaker 1 (55:01):
You mentioned the other retailers, So this this event sort
of has like a halo effect where like Target gets
in on it and Walmart gets in on it. Can
you talk about that a little bit? Like you know,
if the price is a good price at Amazon, will
be the same price at Target.

Speaker 14 (55:15):
Per se it may be or it may be better,
or it may not be as good. So it's really
important to look around now. If you are planning to
shop on Amazon Prime Day, you will find millions of
deals across thirty five categories and Amazon specifically. A good
tool to use is Camel Camel camel or their app

(55:35):
is called the Camelizer. I believe that's a good place
to get a sense of what the prices are. What
the prices were, you can set price alerts there and
then pair that with the other efforts that you're making
on Amazon to look for sales like they have. You know,
you can set up wish lists and look for discounts
on their app. And so there are lots of ways

(55:56):
to save around Amazon Prime Day.

Speaker 1 (55:59):
What do you think some of the biggest categories are
that people should be looking at shopping for.

Speaker 14 (56:03):
So on Amazon Prime Day, we've become accustomed to deals
from Amazon's proprietary brands, and so your kindle, your fire,
your ring, all of those items will be deeply discounted.

Speaker 2 (56:15):
You'll see lots of bundling.

Speaker 14 (56:16):
So maybe you can get a couple of echoes, for example,
or you can get a fireTV and a fireTV stick
or things like that. So I would look for those
bundles to take advantage of. You do have to be
an Amazon Prime member in order to enjoy these deals,
So as you're shopping, look for those Amazon branded items,
but then also look at other brands. We will see

(56:39):
lots of deals on especially on small home appliances like
your robotic vacuum or your air fryer. Things like that
will be discounted from multiple brands. So while you're within
the Amazon ecosystem, make sure to shop around and look
at different brands, read the reviews, and then you're making
a smart decision.

Speaker 2 (57:00):
You're ready to click buy.

Speaker 1 (57:01):
How does Prime Day compare to something like a Cyber
Monday or a Black Friday.

Speaker 14 (57:06):
It depends, and so you know, it depends on how
competitive the landscape is. Amazon tends to discount aggressively in
both places. You know, I think around Black Friday Cyber Monday,
you can sometimes expect deeper discounts because retailers are kind
of entering the finish line for their annual sales, and

(57:26):
so if they're having a great year, they may pull
back on the discounts. If they're not having a great year,
those discounts will be deeper. So it really depends on
what's going on in the in the climate at the moment.
Make a list of the things that you need, and
make a list of the things that you use regularly.

Speaker 2 (57:43):
Because that's an interesting point.

Speaker 14 (57:44):
On Amazon Prime Day, sometimes they get kind of a
bad rap because you can find discounts on paper towels,
but frankly, we all use paper towels, and so there's
nothing wrong with saving on those paper towels on Amazon
Prime Day. So I do like to have a list
of sort of those aspirational itea that I'm looking for
deals on, and then my regular go to grooming products
and paper products, because if I can save on Amazon

(58:07):
Prime Day, why wouldn't.

Speaker 1 (58:08):
I any other tools or tips or tricks that you
want to share that I haven't asked about.

Speaker 14 (58:13):
Yeah, so Amazon has a bunch of different ways that
you can save, and so I do think utilizing the
Amazon app on Amazon Prime Day is a good idea
because there are a few more features on the app
that you can use to be alerted to available sales
on the items that you've added to your lists. For example,
you can use Alexa to let you know if something

(58:35):
that you want is on sale. And then I would
also say, you know, utilize all the tools that Amazon
is telling you about. They may not be telling people
like me about these things just yet, but as Amazon
Prime Day of rives, there might be maybe extra features
that you should know about. It is a way to
save on those items I know there is a new one,
the Invite only that I mentioned. That's something that you

(58:57):
can click on and close to the shopping car and
then be randomly selected to be notified of a very
deep discount of an item. And then of course we
have the Lightning deals as well, so we'll see some
of that stuff happening on Amazon Prime Day as well.

Speaker 1 (59:13):
Finally, Amazon Prime Day is really to sell Prime memberships.
I know you can get a thirty eight free trial,
but what do you think of the value of an
Amazon Prime membership? Is it still sort of like the
golden standard of memberships.

Speaker 14 (59:25):
It's an interesting time right now because Amazon Prime is
not the only membership out there. So we have Target
Circle three sixty, we have Walmart Plus, and so as
a shopper, it's really important for you to take a
look at which platform or retailer you use the most
and then consider getting that membership, and the membership on
Amazon in particular.

Speaker 2 (59:46):
I'm a member.

Speaker 14 (59:46):
I find it to be worthwhile because I shop on
Amazon very frequently. I get cash back at Whole Foods,
and then there's the free streaming music, the movies, the
free Kindle book every month, and so if you are
a user of some or all of those benefits that
that membership can really pay off.

Speaker 2 (01:00:05):
But in my opinion, you shouldn't have more than one
of those retail memberships.

Speaker 14 (01:00:09):
You know, pick the one that serves you the best,
and stick with that and shop with that retailer regularly
to get the best bang for your bock out of
that annual membership fee.

Speaker 1 (01:00:20):
All right, Once again, that was Trey Bodge shopping expert
sharing tips to maximize this year's Amazon Prime Day. I'll
put a link to her website on mine. Just go
to Rich on tech dot TV hit the light bulb.
So my advice for Prime Day is the same every
single year. Start looking for the things you want now,

(01:00:40):
add them to your shopping car, and then when Prime
Day happens on July sixteenth and seventeenth, check your shopping
car or your saved items to see if any of
them dropped in price, and then you can purchase them.
So instead of just looking on the website, like she said,
just searching for stuff to spend money on, this is
kind of like the re the reverse way of doing it. Also,

(01:01:03):
you'll notice that things on Amazon when they are on
Prime Day, they will have a little banner. Next to
the price, it might say something like limited time deal
or with Prime or lightning deal. So that's how you
can tell when something's on sale. I already made my
first purchase. I bought the new Amazon Echo spot it's
typically eighty bucks. It was on sale for forty five

(01:01:25):
through Prime Day, and I put a list. I actually
went through because Amazon has not said what all the
deals are going to be, but they put out like
a release that says all the brands and stuff that
will be on sale. So what I did was I
made it easy for you. I went through and I
linked up every single brand on my website. So I
made this page that says Amazon Prime Day twenty twenty

(01:01:45):
four top brands to watch for deals. And if you
scroll down, you'll see all my tips that I just mentioned,
but you can see the different things that will be
on sale already announced that you can just click and
find that device or product or whatever, including the Ring,
Spotlight Cams, Eero, Blank, fireTV, Echo, what else, Rumbas, Sony headphones,

(01:02:07):
all Birds, and even.

Speaker 3 (01:02:09):
Cosmetics and things.

Speaker 1 (01:02:10):
So I put all those links on my website rich
on tech dot tv. So check it out if you
want to get a headstart on Prime Day coming up.
I'll tell you about the Google service that used to
cost money. Now they're making it free and it can
help protect your privacy. This is rich on Tech. Welcome

(01:02:30):
back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out
with you, talking technology at Triple eight Rich one oh one.
That's eight eight eight seven four two four one zero one.
The website for the show rich on Tech dot TV.
Go there for all the stuff that I mentioned on
the show, my TV segments, more information. I just post

(01:02:53):
a lot of great stuff there so you can find
a way to subscribe to my newsletter there as well,
so you can get information in your inbox. It's just
a wealth of information rich on Tech dot TV. Also
feel free to follow me on social media. I am
at rich on Tech on all of the major platforms.
Sherry writes in Hello Rich, I love listening to your

(01:03:14):
program on KFI. I learned something every time. My father
is nearly blind due to macular degeneration. He's ninety nine,
but honestly very sharp and social.

Speaker 3 (01:03:25):
Good for him.

Speaker 1 (01:03:25):
I would love to find a cell phone for him
to operate by voice. Is there such a thing, because
he's obviously old school he's not interested in Alexa or
any devices that listen or spy on him. Any recommendations
you might have, yes, I have a great recommendation. The
only issue is it's pricey, but it is perfect and

(01:03:46):
it's exactly what you're looking for. It is a company
called blind Shell B l I N D S H
E l L. And they make a smartphone that is
specifically for the visually impaired and it is fantastic. I
played with it at the Seasun Assist of Tech conference

(01:04:06):
and it is very simple to use. It speaks everything
that you do. It speaks everything on the screen. It's
got a nice, bold, big screen. It's got nice easy
to use physical buttons, so it's got the keypad so
you can actually type phone numbers on here and I
guess text as well, but you can also use voice
to text if you need to.

Speaker 3 (01:04:28):
But this is what you need.

Speaker 1 (01:04:30):
The problem is it's five hundred and twenty nine dollars,
so I get it. That's expensive, but it is going
to solve the problem. I think your dat is worth it,
and I think that this would be a great way
to make him feel like he can use this phone
to its maximum and not have any issues. The other
thing you could do is just get a flip phone

(01:04:52):
something simple. Did you say you wanted voice, Yeah, operate
by voice. So I mean the flip phones is they're
not really going to have the voice operation. The other
thing you might be able to do is get a
Samsung device and they've got something called easy Mode. That's
that's gonna make the phone easier. It's got a built
in magnifier. The iPhone also has a lot of accessibility features,

(01:05:17):
but it's not I mean that that might be too
much horsepower for what you're looking at. I really do
think the blind Shehell is going to be the way
to go. Sadly, this company does have a cheaper phone
that they just introduced, like a lesser version of the Classic.
It's called the Classic LTE that does not look like
it's available in the United States, sadly, So that's the

(01:05:40):
way to do it. The other thing you could do
is you could go on Amazon and just look for
a simple, you know, smartphone that might be good for
your father. There they do have a couple of smartphones
that are specifically for senior citizens. So just be aware
that you need to make sure that whatever service you

(01:06:01):
get is going to work with that. So for instance,
like Lively, that's a big company that sells a lot
of phones under the Jitterbug name. That is a senior
phone and you have to use their plan with that.
Some of the phones are unlocked. You can put in
any plan. So those are my recommendations. Check them out.
And I think that that blind show would be great.

(01:06:22):
Maybe wait for a sale or discount on it to
get it past that high price tag there. Google is
expanding this dark web feature. In fact, as I mentioned this,
I just got an email alert from Google about my
information being on the dark web. You have new information,
new personal information on the dark web, and sure enough,

(01:06:44):
my phone number was involved in a data breach and
my cell phone number is now available online for anyone
to find. Thank you for the app that I actually
love that it's involved in. So what is Google doing.
This is from a service called dark Web Report, and
this is excellent. It will tell you if your social

(01:07:04):
Security number, if your date of birth, if your address
is found online somewhere, and there's not much you can
do about it, because the problem is when your information
is out there on the dark web, there's no way
of taking it back. But at least, if you know
what's out there, you can be ready for what might happen,
which is someone opening up an account in your name,
someone spamming you, someone using your phone number, someone using

(01:07:26):
your address. So this was something that was previously only
available to paying subscribers of Google One. Now they are
making it available to everyone for free. This is going
to happen later this month. Highly highly recommend that you
sign up for it. So this is going to be
part of their results about you. So it's a little

(01:07:50):
bit confusing, but they're pretty much the same thing. So
Google results about you, well, I guess they're a little
bit different. Results about you. Google, if you sign up
for it, will find your personal contact information in Google
search results. So if your phone number shows up on
one of those like spoke Yo or people find heer websites,
Google will say, hey, we found your phone number on

(01:08:12):
this website. Do you want us to take that off
of search results? So when someone's searching for you, it
will not show hey, we can find rich Damiro's phone
number on this website. And you click through that website
and you know it's a whole thing to try to
get the phone number. But Google will take down that
search result for you. And so this is something that's
been free. I've been recommending it for years. It's a
really useful thing if you want to kind of tame

(01:08:35):
the information that's out there about you on the open web.
It does not take down the original website, It does
not take down your information from Spokyo or people Finder,
all these other you know, data brokers out there, but
it does take down that search result. And what do
most people do. They're just looking at search results trying
to find information. Now, with this Dark Web report, you'll

(01:08:56):
also get that information about your your per details on
the dark web. It's not going to remove them, it can't,
but at least you'll know that it's out there, and
again you can be ready for the ramifications of that.
So if you want to sign up for this stuff,
I'll put the link on the website rich on tech
dot tv and you can go to the light Bulb

(01:09:17):
to get the information about it. At least start with
the results about you on Google. You sign up for that,
and then later this month you'll get the dark web
information as well. Really really handy. I am so happy
that Google is making that available to everyone for free.
I don't know if we have time for this, but
let's go to PAM and venture of PAM, can you
say your question about thirty seconds?

Speaker 4 (01:09:38):
Yeah, I just have an iPhone six.

Speaker 2 (01:09:40):
I want to know if it's outa day.

Speaker 10 (01:09:41):
It has an episode of software on it of seventeen
point five.

Speaker 1 (01:09:46):
Seventeen point five, so you're still up to date at
this point. The problem is, I don't think that that's
going to be supported with iOS eighteen. So iOS eighteen
starts with the iPhone ten are and up? Uh wait,
you said you're you have the which.

Speaker 3 (01:10:04):
Software do you have on there? It's an iPhone and
you said you have iOS.

Speaker 10 (01:10:09):
What seventeen point five point one.

Speaker 1 (01:10:13):
On the on the iPhone six s Yeah, huh okay,
I was not aware that that was up to date
at this point.

Speaker 3 (01:10:24):
Let me see. So iOS seventeen.

Speaker 1 (01:10:26):
Uh, if it's supported and you're getting those updates, that's fine,
But I don't think it's going to be supported with
the next one. I would plan for a new phone,
That's what I would do, because you're not going to
get iOS eighteen.

Speaker 3 (01:10:38):
You're not going to get this.

Speaker 1 (01:10:39):
The uh the security updates, and that's the important part.
So I would any recommendation, I would just get the iPhone,
you know, a newer model.

Speaker 3 (01:10:49):
When they uh. Sorry.

Speaker 1 (01:10:54):
Welcome back to Rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging
out with you talking technology. I love that you're doing
something smart for yourself and listening to this show because
this is the information you need to know about how
to protect yourself online, how to make sure you're not
being scammed, how not to overspend on Amazon Prime Day,

(01:11:17):
Like I noticed some of us will my wife. I
was out in Paris and my wife's like, did you
order a an echo spot from Amazon? I said, yes,
I already I ordered that sight. On scene they announced it.

Speaker 3 (01:11:29):
It's this new Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:11:31):
It's basically a new like alarm clock and I thought
was kind of cool because it's a speaker, but it
also is Alexa enabled, uh, and it's got a little
display on it so it's colorful. It's got like a
you know, customized clock faces. You can choose from six
different colors orange, violet, magenta, lime, teal, and blue. You

(01:11:54):
can see the weather, the song that's playing, or the
whatever's playing. You can set alarm play music. They've got
four new custom alarm sounds, Aurora, Daybreak, Endeavor and flutter
and you can tap this thing to turn it off
for a snooze. It it's usually eighty bucks. It's forty

(01:12:15):
five dollars for Prime members right now. And I just
thought it was cool. I just thought it was kind
of nice to have. So that's the Echo Spot. I
have not opened it yet, so I'm curious if they're
What I think Amazon should have done is put a
USB in the back so you can plug in your phone,
but I don't know if they did that. So uh, anyway,

(01:12:37):
thanks for listening. Eighty to eight Rich one oh one
eight eight eight seven four two four one zero one.
The website rich on tech dot TV. I know a
lot of you are going for the Google Dark Web information.
So the way to find that on the website go
to the website. Up at the top. There is a

(01:12:59):
light bulb. If you tap that light bulb, it brings
you to what's called the show wiki, so you know Wikipedia.
I keep basically a show wiki for every episode that
we've ever done. So this is show number eighty. You
tap that, it should bring you right to the Let

(01:13:19):
me tap and just see where it brings you. Actually,
so I'm not saying the wrong thing here. If you
tap that little light bulb, it will bring you to
Oh yeah, it'll bring you right to the list of
every single show. So if you tap show number eighty,
you'll see all the show notes. Everything I've mentioned is
linked up there, and you can see at the bottom
it says Google is making its Dark Web monitoring available

(01:13:40):
to all. And so you can click that and get
more information about that, read about it, sign up for it.
And right now you can't sign up for the Dark
Web unless you are paying member, but you can start
with the feature I talked about, the results about you,
and then dark Web will come later this month. All right,

(01:14:00):
I think we got all that. Oh I want to
tell a funny story. So today I'm texting with my
friend this morning, as we typically do on Saturday mornings,
Jefferson Graham, friend of the show. He writes a great newsletter.
He does all kind of you know, you worked for
USA Today forever writing a column there, and now he
is on his own doing photo walks TV. And so

(01:14:22):
we both have newsletters on our substacks, and so Saturday
morning we usually send them out and we always compare notes,
and so we're texting this morning and I'm like, wait,
a second, are you on an iPhone right now? Because
we are texting the way you would text on I
message where I can see when he's typing. I can
see when my messages are delivered. And he said, yeah,

(01:14:44):
I'm running iOS eighteen. I said, you've got to be
kidding me. This is my first RCS text messaging ever
in my life with an iPhone person.

Speaker 3 (01:14:53):
What does that mean?

Speaker 1 (01:14:55):
It means that finally, after many many years of this
whole divide of iPhone versus Android when it comes to messaging,
come September when everyone finally gets the iOS update. Right now,
he is probably running a beta update. Then there's gonna

(01:15:15):
be a public beta coming out any day now, probably
you know soon, because they said it's gonna be sometime
in July. I don't recommend you install that on your
primary phone though, unless you are a tinkerer or you
know what you're doing with technology, because you really can't
go back. So once you get that, it's very tough
to roll back to a standard, you know, final software release.

(01:15:37):
So wait until September. But come September, you will finally
be able to text message between iPhone and Android in
a way that everyone can enjoy.

Speaker 3 (01:15:48):
The same thing.

Speaker 1 (01:15:49):
You can see when they're typing, you can see when
your messages are delivered, and most importantly, you can send
photos and videos that actually look high quality between an
Android and an iPhone. It's called RCS Rich Communications Services.
It's a standard that Apple has not adopted until now.

(01:16:12):
And so if you're Android to Android, you're already enjoying this.
If your iPhone to iPhone, you're already enjoying this. But finally,
come September, iPhone to Android, Android to iPhone, text messaging
will finally finally get better. And I'm telling you it
was like a weight was lifted this morning as I
just smiled knowing that text messaging is finally better. Let's

(01:16:35):
go to Clark in Lancaster, California. Clark, you're on with Rich.

Speaker 12 (01:16:40):
Hey, Rich, thanks for listening to this call.

Speaker 10 (01:16:43):
Yeah, I've got a question about.

Speaker 12 (01:16:45):
My home Wi Fi system. I wonder if there is
an easy way for a non technical person to troubleshoot.

Speaker 1 (01:16:54):
And see if.

Speaker 12 (01:16:55):
An intermittent problem with Wi Fi is a problem with
my router.

Speaker 10 (01:17:00):
My WiFi router.

Speaker 1 (01:17:02):
Well, your your your signal to us is pretty bad,
so I may have to put you on hold. Here
but what is specifically going wrong, like is it not
working in certain places?

Speaker 3 (01:17:12):
Is it not fast?

Speaker 12 (01:17:14):
It seems to be up and down. It's intermittent. Sometimes
I get the full mighte of what I'm paying for
on my uh my uh internet from spectrum and other
kinds of drops down to half that, and sometimes it's
almost non existent. And like I said, it's intermitt and
I can go days or weeks with no problem in them.

(01:17:37):
Like today it seems to be up and down. And
as you're saying, we've got a bad.

Speaker 3 (01:17:42):
Call, yeah, with my.

Speaker 12 (01:17:44):
Wife earlier and she complained that actually had to hang out.

Speaker 3 (01:17:48):
Oh wow wow.

Speaker 1 (01:17:49):
Okay, So so a couple of things. So first off,
I'm going to put you on hold just because the
interference there, So it sounds like there's something that's interfere
with your Wi Fi. Now, I don't know if you
were on a Wi Fi call with me, but it's
been a long time since I actually heard interference on
a cell call because everything's digital these days, so there's

(01:18:09):
really no more static. I don't know if you remember
back in the day, when you make a call on
an analog cell phone. Back in the day everything was analog,
there would actually be static. You would somehow you know,
hear the person through static, and nowadays you either hear
the person or you don't, or it drops out because
it's all digital. So number one, it sounds like something

(01:18:30):
is interfering with your Wi Fi. And there's a lot
of devices in the home that can do that, anything
that's putting out a frequency, like a microwave or a TV.
So if your router is not in a central location,
that's the first thing I would do. So if you
have it in a cabinet, or if you have it

(01:18:51):
behind your TV, get that bad boy out into the
open so that it can spread its wings and fly.
That signal needs to make its way around your house.
And if it's constricted in some way by a piece
of furniture or a wall, or it's in a corner,
nobody puts baby in a corner. Uh, you gotta you
gotta put this thing out in the open, right And

(01:19:11):
so uh, I love when I get Bobo on a
reference when he's just sitting there, you know, doing his thing,
and you know he liked that one. I guess you
grew up with the dirty dancing household as I did.

Speaker 3 (01:19:25):
Yes, I did. Yeah, that was that was big back
in the day.

Speaker 1 (01:19:29):
So anyway, so central location number one, get it off
the floor, don't you know the the the signal for
Wi Fi emanates out of your router in a doughnut shape,
So think about that as those waves are sort of
making their way throughout your house, So you want to
have the least number of obstructions from that signal, and

(01:19:49):
again keep it away from electronics. So if you have
a microwave going on, or a TV or any sort
of like other device near your router, that can definitely
impede it the way to try shoot And you mentioned
that your speed is sometimes not as good, so typically
the speed that you're going to get over Wi Fi
is going to be about half of what you are

(01:20:10):
getting wired. So if your connection is three hundred through
Spectrum or whoever your provider is that is coming into
your router, your WiFi is probably only going to be
one fifty when it's actually making its way to your device.
And the reason is just it's not a perfect system.
But what I would do is I would plug in

(01:20:30):
your computer into your actual router, your modem, your router,
whatever it is, and I would test the speed wired
on your computer. Go to a website like fast dot
com or speed test dot net and see what your
speed is and also check out the latency. And there's
also some diagnostics on there that can give you an

(01:20:51):
idea of if your signal is okay, because you know,
you may have a wire or something that's freight or
you might you know, chipmunk or something might have We
have chipmunks California laying caster.

Speaker 3 (01:21:02):
Yeah, we do, Okay, we have chipmunks, maybe more like one.

Speaker 1 (01:21:04):
Are those things called a possum, you know, the things
with like the really sharp teeth. Maybe they ate through
the wires, you know. My point is all the yeah,
some sort of rodent rap, you know whatever. You check
for those things because that can all be affecting your
signal and if none of that is working. You can
also get an app, a Wi Fi analyzer app, so

(01:21:26):
if you're on Android, I don't think they have these
for iPhone, but a Wi Fi Analyzer app you can
download to an Android device and you can kind of
walk around the house and see what's going on with
your signal that way. So those are just a few
of the ways that you can troubleshoot. If you want.
You can call your cable company or whatever. They may
charge you, but you can say, hey, look my signal's

(01:21:48):
just not working as well as it should be, and
they may come out and help you troubleshoot, but they
probably will charge you for that because they're going to
do a test from their end saying nope, we're giving
you the speed that you're paying for and it's on
your end. So that's another way to look at it.
But Clark, those are some of the suggestions. Thanks for
the call today, appreciate it. Eighty eight rich one O

(01:22:08):
one eight eight eight seven four two four one zero one.
Coming up, we are going to talk to the founder
of the Oco app. This is to help the visually
impaired safely cross streets. Plus, I'm gonna tell you Spectrum
is raising their cable and TV prices.

Speaker 3 (01:22:24):
I'll tell you by how much.

Speaker 1 (01:22:26):
And Google Maps gets a feature that can help you
avoid a ticket for speeding. This is rich on Tech.
Welcome back to rich on Tech. One of my all
time favorite wedding songs. Nothing says a good wedding like
this song. Hey oh, if you're listening on the podcast,

(01:22:52):
it's September by Earth Wind and Fire. Okay, so I
have a funny story about this song. So we had
Earth Wind and Fire come to KTLA for a segment,
and I love this song, and so I you know,
when in my life did I ever think I would
be face to face with the guys from earth Wind
and Fire?

Speaker 3 (01:23:08):
Right, like never?

Speaker 1 (01:23:09):
But we have this restaurant in Los Angeles called earth
Wind and Flower in West Los Angeles. It's a it's
an Italian restaurant, and it's just a play on words, right,
And so I'm like, you know what I got to
ask these guys. So I go up to the guy
from earth Wind and Fire. I'm like, Hey, are you
aware of the restaurant called earth Wind and Flower? And

(01:23:32):
he's like, yeah, I've heard of it. I just thought
that was so funny because like, I don't know, like,
you have a restaurant that plays on your name of
your band. Isn't that a lawsuit? Kinder n you could
you could have that? I mean I don't. I don't
think it's a lawsuit. And also it's been around forever.
Changed my name to Demiro Rich DeMuro. This restaurant has

(01:23:54):
been around forever. Like I'm talking, it's got to be
thirty oh thirty five years there it is anyway, I
just thought that was funny. Like the guy kind of
looked at me, like, really, you're asking me this, but yeah,
you know, why not. It's so funny. Like working at
kat La, you know, where we do a news you know,

(01:24:15):
a morning news program, and there's always celebrities coming through,
and most of them are pretty guarded, but you know,
there's always moments when you can just kind of talk
to them whatever. And I've had more cool like oh
my gosh, I can't believe I am coming face to
face with this person who I watched their show when
I was a kid, or they sing a song that
I like, or it's just amazing that you meet these people.

(01:24:37):
And most of them, I will tell you most people
are a lot more shy than you think.

Speaker 3 (01:24:41):
Not shy, but more like introverted.

Speaker 1 (01:24:43):
Like you think just because you're a celebrity, they're like
sitting there telling jokes and stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:24:47):
They're not bubba.

Speaker 11 (01:24:48):
I know.

Speaker 3 (01:24:48):
You want to say something that was kind of same thing.

Speaker 13 (01:24:50):
It's still weird to me being friends with Stevie Wonder
and I have to.

Speaker 1 (01:24:55):
Text him that's amazing. Now, that is the weirdest thing
in the world.

Speaker 3 (01:24:58):
And when he told me. I thought he was joking.
What a text? Yeah, he always shows you like text
me before you call.

Speaker 1 (01:25:04):
He gave you his burner number. He's like, hold on,
I can't remember this number off the top of my head.

Speaker 10 (01:25:12):
Let me look at it.

Speaker 13 (01:25:14):
But no, it's weird because you text him and he'll
literally you get a text backer he'll just call you.

Speaker 3 (01:25:19):
That's amazing.

Speaker 1 (01:25:20):
My most LA story about that is I was in
the movie uh Zoolander two, but I wasn't in it.

Speaker 3 (01:25:29):
I didn't make the cut, but I was.

Speaker 1 (01:25:31):
I had a small like news person role that I
shot for the movie, and I didn't. I didn't make
the final cut. They ended up using someone else. But
I still recorded it all and everything check still got
a check. And the best part was I got a
text message from and this only in LA. I got
a text message on my phone that says, HI, this
is Blah Blah Blah's name, Ben Stiller's assistant.

Speaker 3 (01:25:53):
Ben would like to go over the lines with you.
Do you have a moment?

Speaker 1 (01:25:56):
I said, only in Los Angeles, you get a text
message like this, I screenshot it. I saved it forever
and I will never forget. On the phone call with
Ben Stiller, like I've who am I Rich Demiro speaking
with Ben Stiller and he's just sitting there telling me
how he, you know, his thought for like the person
and all this stuff. And clearly it didn't work because

(01:26:16):
I didn't I wasn't good enough. But anyway, I just
thought that was so funny. It's just these la things.
I had another point that I was gonna make and
now I forgot. But that's okay, you know what, It's
all good. Let's see a spectrum I was gonna tell
you about. This Spectrum is raising prices for cable TV

(01:26:36):
and Internet. This of course depends on where you are
on you know how much it's going up. But this
is this is cord Cutter's News reporting that TV prices
are raising by three dollars in certain states. Internet based
prices will increase by three to four dollars depending on
the plan. Cost of renting your cable box will go
up by a dollar a month, and Spectrum says rising

(01:26:59):
programming call that's why they're passing along these increases. So
number one, I would check to see if your prices
are going up for ninety nine point nine percent of you,
you're gonna say what can you do. You know, it's
just another price increase, just add it to the list
of all the other things that have gone up. But
if you want to get a little bit more you know,

(01:27:21):
angry about this and do something about it, there are
things you can switch to. You can switch to a
streaming service like a DirecTV stream, Fubo, Hulu, Live TV, Filo,
Sling TV, and YouTube TV. Those are all options. The
problem is if you are watching cable TV and you
like cable TV, it's all pretty expensive now. Some of

(01:27:44):
these smaller services, like a Sling TV or a Filo
or a Friendly TV, they ditch the sports, they ditch
the news, and you can pay a little bit less.
But if you want stuff like your sports and your news,
you're gonna be paying for it. Like direct TV stream
is just the same price as having cable YouTube TV
is just the same price. The only slight difference is

(01:28:04):
that you can kind of pause it and restart your
membership at will versus spectrum. You know, you can't just
call them up and say, hey, I want to pause.
I mean, maybe you can, but I don't think you can.
So it's a lot easier to kind of pause and
decide when you want to pay for these things versus
having a traditional cable company. When it comes to internet,
you can check out five G Home Internet. Verizon, t Mobile,

(01:28:26):
AT and t All offer five G wireless home Internet.
That might be a way to save on your internet costs.
Eight to eight rich one O one eight eight eight
seven four to two four one zero one. Coming up,
we're going to talk to the founder of the o
co app, which helps the visually impaired safely cross streets.

(01:28:47):
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here talking
tech with you. Recently, I was in Cooper Tino for
Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference. While I was there, I spoke
with a developer who's making waves inaccessible technology. Willem van
Demrop is based in Belgium and is co founder of Eyes.
They make an app called Oco. This won an Apple

(01:29:08):
Design Award for Inclusivity.

Speaker 3 (01:29:10):
OCO. That's Oko uses.

Speaker 1 (01:29:12):
AI and the iPhone's camera to help visually impaired people
navigate streets and crosswalks safely. In our conversation, Wilhelm shared
insights about this groundbreaking technology and his journey as a developer.

Speaker 3 (01:29:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 11 (01:29:26):
So, basically, the Oco application uses artificial intelligence and a
back camera of the phone to recognize the walk and
the don't walk signal for blind and vision impaired people,
and then bring that information back to you with vibrations
and sounds. And then now, especially for dubbed up, we're
actually launching a completely new version where we're also building
up Apple Maps basically and adding more information on that

(01:29:47):
combined with that artificial intelligence, so basically helping blind and
vision impaired people to safely ride from A to B
with that pedestrian navigation and also that pedestrian signal detection
that we have originally. So it's a whole new, brand
new version.

Speaker 3 (01:30:01):
Of the app. Oh wow, And what spent What was
kind of like the inspiration behind the app?

Speaker 11 (01:30:06):
Yeah, So myself and my two co founders were AI
engineers by trade. I used to work on medical computer vision,
my co founder autuonnel driving trains, and a third co
founder as well on computer vision AI. And we were
talking with a mutual friend of us who is officially impaired,
and he told us about the biggest challenges that he
had outdoors, and we just figured, well, hey, if a

(01:30:28):
tes i can do it on the highway, why we
do it for people on the sidewalk, and then we
started building a hecky wearable device with lots of wires
sticking out of it a camera. But we quickly realized
if we want to make it affordable and scalable so
that it works for everyone, we need to be able
to optimize the AI so that it runs locally on
the phone that they already own. And so the moment

(01:30:48):
that we were able to do that, we could our
jobs and started full time.

Speaker 3 (01:30:52):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (01:30:52):
And the beauty of the app is the simplicity of
it that it just uses the software and sensors on
the iPhone, and so with that simplicity, it's pretty incredible
what it's been able to do.

Speaker 3 (01:31:05):
What has been the reaction to this app, It's.

Speaker 11 (01:31:08):
Been pretty pretty amazing so far.

Speaker 3 (01:31:10):
It's really cool.

Speaker 11 (01:31:11):
For example, I have this one user who told me,
like beforehand, I used to not be able to reach
this farmer's market in this part of town. It was
really like a lucked out zone, almost like in a
video game. And now because of your app, I just
am able to unlock this part of town, go to
the farmer's market, and are able to reach all of
those destinations. Other people just say without the app, I

(01:31:33):
can't cross anymore. So it's really amazing to see that
we want to provide you with so much more information
and we want to help you create that independence sometimes.
Of course, it's so crucial to find that it can
help at these super difficult intersections and just make it
so much easier for some people.

Speaker 1 (01:31:51):
So what goes into programming an app like this to
work across you know, different languages, different places, you know,
different types of walk signals?

Speaker 3 (01:32:01):
How do you do all that? Yeah, so quite a lot.

Speaker 11 (01:32:05):
Although it's quite simple, it's a very difficult application to build.
It's building on computer vision, and it needs to be
super stable and needs to make sure, of course that
it's safe to use. So we start out by capturing
a lot of data ourselves. So that's the rain, the sun, snow,
all icy conditions, every scenario that you can imagine, and
we build an AI model based on that, and then

(01:32:26):
we optimize it so that it runs on the devices
that they already own. Of course, the entire world has
pretty similar production signals except for the US and ken
really yeah, so that's when when we started expanding here.
We needed to travel a bit here to capture a
lot of data here. To make sure that the algorithm
is very powerful here as well. And then now, of

(01:32:47):
course as people are using it, we're constantly gathering imaging
information to maintain that algorithm to make sure that it
stays performing.

Speaker 1 (01:32:53):
What's different about the US with respect to our signals.

Speaker 11 (01:32:58):
Here in the US it's a red hand which is
the don't walk signal, and then a white walking man
which is a walk signal. In Europe, Japan or similar places,
it's just like a red guy which is don't walk,
and then a green walking man which is the walk signal,
and they're on top of each other. Is instead of
one square pedession signal, So it's just like a whole

(01:33:19):
different few and different colors, which the AI needs to.

Speaker 3 (01:33:22):
Learn of course, and how accurate is the app.

Speaker 11 (01:33:26):
We've helped cross more than three million streets now we
haven't had any complaints, so we know that there's of course,
there's so many safety buffers in place to make sure
that it's not saying that wrong pedession signal. But very
important is that it's another tool in the toolbox for
so many binea visually impaired people. They are very independent,
then they have so many tools at their disposal.

Speaker 3 (01:33:46):
We're just trying to bring back more information to the user.
So this is WWDC.

Speaker 1 (01:33:51):
This is where developers come to kind of learn about
the tools available to them. So what developer tools are
you taking advantage of on the iPhone that enables this app?

Speaker 11 (01:34:01):
So of course the COREML is a big aspect of
it is that the possibility to run complex AI locally
on the device that they already own. But now of
course we're building on met Kit, but also voiceover and
dynamic typing. Blindness is a spectrum, so that means that
some people want to see the phone and have it
super and large information, but we are able to make

(01:34:23):
sure that the app really supports all that kind of information,
all that sooming and I've been and stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:34:28):
How long has this journey been?

Speaker 11 (01:34:29):
Right now, we're three years old, so we're really quite
a young underdog, still a small team, but we're growing
fast and where we get so many demands to expand
to so many countries as soon as possible.

Speaker 3 (01:34:40):
So it's going going great.

Speaker 1 (01:34:41):
And what's been kind of the biggest challenge for you
along the way, is it just figuring out all these
different signals and all the different variables that go into
this I would.

Speaker 11 (01:34:51):
Say for us, the biggest challenge is expanding as soon
as possible because there's so much demand for the app
and we need to be able to to keep up
with our resources to expand into those different areas.

Speaker 3 (01:35:04):
So yeah, just.

Speaker 11 (01:35:05):
Going as fast as possible is I think one of
the biggest challenges.

Speaker 1 (01:35:08):
So this app is it do you monetize this app?
How is that going to work?

Speaker 11 (01:35:14):
It's started out by wanting to help out our visually
impaired friend, and we want to keep it for free
for the end user. It's similar to kind of like
a ways model, where you get a very interesting anonymized
data that you can license to third parties to make
sure that the stays for free for the end user.
But there is for example, like bigger companies, they can

(01:35:36):
have very very useful information extracted out of the images
that we capture, and that way you can maintain for example,
your Google Maps, Apple Maps, and that way you can.

Speaker 3 (01:35:46):
Keep the application for free for the end user. And
what advice do you have to someone that has an
idea for an app? Build it?

Speaker 11 (01:35:53):
There's there's so many great ideas out there. There's always
someone being hesitant, like should I build it? Should I
try it. As long as you one percent miss every
chance that you don't take, so just try it, go
for it. I would have never imagined that after three
years I would be get dubbed up, which is a
livelong dream, and now I'm here, so it's super amazing.

Speaker 3 (01:36:14):
How do you find the app?

Speaker 11 (01:36:15):
Just search for Oco in the app Store and then
you'll find Oco Accessible maps, accessible navigation.

Speaker 3 (01:36:20):
And who do you think should download it?

Speaker 11 (01:36:21):
I think everyone that knows someone who's bindo vision impaired
can download it, try it out so that they can
recommend it. Of course, if someone is blind and vision
impaired themselves, they can try it out and have fun
with it. Down the line, we're actually expanding to people
with a mobility disability as well, because we find that
there's so much information missing on accessible intersection and accessible

(01:36:43):
routing that we want to help answer some of those
questions as well. So down the line will be expanding
to helping the one in six Americans with a mobility
disability as well.

Speaker 1 (01:36:51):
That was my conversation with Willem van Demurop, co founder
of Oco, an app that's revolutionizing street navigation for the
visually impaired. It's truly inspiring to see how developers like
this are using AI and smartphone technology to create more
inclusive experiences.

Speaker 3 (01:37:08):
Right now, the app is only available for the iPhone.

Speaker 1 (01:37:11):
You can find it by searching Oko on the app store.

Speaker 3 (01:37:15):
I'll put a link on my website.

Speaker 1 (01:37:16):
Just go to rich on Tech dot tv and hit
the light bulb at the top of the page to
find it.

Speaker 3 (01:37:23):
More rich on Tech coming your way right after this.

Speaker 1 (01:37:27):
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging
out with you, talking technology. The website for the show
richon Tech dot tv. Can follow me online at rich
on Tech. A couple more items before we get to
the feedback. First off, Apple Launches worked with Google to
launch a tool where you can now transfer your Google

(01:37:48):
Photos directly to iCloud Photos. This is part of their
data transfer project. This is an open source initiative. A
lot of the big tech companies are very slowly doing this,
but you know they're trying to make it so that
you have data portability between these companies.

Speaker 3 (01:38:05):
It is a very slow process. It's very limited, but
you know we're seeing some progress. But if you have
Google Photos, you can now transfer your collection directly to
iCloud photos.

Speaker 1 (01:38:15):
Without downloading it first. It will do it on the
back end for you. Process may take several hours to
a few days. Your photos and videos are not deleted
from Google Photos after the transfer. So the nice thing
is if you wanted to sort of back up your
Google Photos to iCloud, maybe you have some extra storage
and you just want your photos in two places, which
you should have, this is one way of doing it.

(01:38:37):
So again, apples are the new tool to transfer Google
Photos to iCloud photos and also Google Maps introducing a
speedometer and speed limits on the iPhone app. So this
has been available and Android for a long time. If
you're driving with Google Maps, you'll see in the lower
left hand corner, it shows the speed limit for the road,

(01:38:59):
but right next to it now on iPhone is going
to show the speed that you're going. Yes, it's a
little scary because now someone else is tracking your speed.
I don't know what the privacy policy is with that information.
Google says it's informational only. You should actually mostly rely
on your car's actual spinometer, and if you want to
turn it off, you can go into Google Map settings

(01:39:21):
under navigation driving options. The update is to help iPhone
users avoid speeding tickets. The ironic part is that Uber
has a very similar feature for the Uber drivers, and
I always get a kick out of watching them go
faster than the speed limit signed and it's like in
red and it's flashing and they're just they don't care.
Kind of a funny story.

Speaker 3 (01:39:40):
My mother in law.

Speaker 1 (01:39:41):
We were out in Oregon last weekend for a wedding
and my mother in law says, oh, by the way,
my Apple Watch, I'm not getting notifications on it anymore. Said, huh,
let me check it out. Let me just see if
it's connected to your phone. So she gives me a
watch and I say, this is not connected to your
phone at all. When was the last time you got
a notification on your Apple Watch. I don't know, a

(01:40:02):
year ago. Was that when you got your new phone. Yeah,
well you never connected the Apple Watch to your new phone.
So it is a whole I I just got to
kick out of that, and it's it's the reason why
I do this show, because to me, it's a no
brainer that you know, if I'm not getting a notification
on my watch, I'm troubleshooting. For the average person, it's
taking them a year to figure this stuff out. And

(01:40:23):
they didn't even realize. So my mother in law is
a very smart person. It just goes to show that
technology is tricky. And I just got a good laugh
out of that because I said, have you gotten any notifications?
She said she wasn't getting her text. I said, have
you gotten any notifications? No, Well that's because your phone
is literally not connected to this watch. So I told

(01:40:43):
her she had to format the watch and reconnect it
to the new phone. Time for the feedback segment. This
is your feedback plus the mail bag. These are the emails,
the comments, and the questions I get from you. If
you want to submit yours, go to Rich on tech
dot tv hit contact. I was talking about the TikTok
ban last week at the VidCon conference, Frank writes in

(01:41:05):
I think people should understand the reason for the TikTok ban.
One could argue that content is the reason. But if
that were the case, Apple and Google could have banned
the app from their stores or set guidelines, which didn't happen.
The real issue what are the laws governing TikTok to
protect privacy and who can access it? The preservation of
privacy should be dealt with, but where's the law for
that banning TikTok is just cough medicine for a cough

(01:41:26):
caused by severe Capitol Hill pneumonia. That's not dealing with
the underlying issue.

Speaker 3 (01:41:31):
Wow. I like the analogy.

Speaker 1 (01:41:32):
I talked to a friend who explained how the laws
in China work, and I thought it to be true
from the US media. What I thought to be true
from the US media is not accurate. At one time
I agreed with the ban. Now I disagree. The government
should pass legislation that deals with the true issues. But
the real issue here is that it's more political at
this point and part of the posturing on both sides
for the election. That is very true, because let's be honest,

(01:41:56):
TikTok is not collecting any more data than any other
app on your phone. Somehow TikTok is a risk and
all the other apps are not.

Speaker 3 (01:42:03):
Hmm. Interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:42:05):
Tony from Syracuse, New York writes in Rich, I love
your show. I was listening and heard the call about
a spectrum router that would not connect devices properly. Many ISPs,
including Verizon, use a feature called SUN self Organizing Network
that decides which network two point four or five to
connect devices too While it works okay for some, it's
often a problem for printers, doorbells, cameras, and thermostats. The

(01:42:28):
best solution I've found is to turn this feature off
all together. You usually need to rename the five G
network to distinguish it, then manually disconnect problematic device. Oh,
manually connect problematic devices to the two point four network.
You can typically do this to the router's login page.
I hope that helps. It's great to listen to common
tech problems and keep up to date. Plus US tech

(01:42:49):
nerds can't help but absorb as much information as we can.
Another email about the two point four versus five Dylan
from MESA, Arizona rights in regarding the person who had
Cox or some other ISP with a router on those
two point four and five gigahertz bands and their printer
no longer worked. I found that some two point four
gigahertz devices get confused, and if there's the networks have

(01:43:13):
the same SSID. The workaround is to give each band
a different name. For instance, my two point four is
named mcwireless and my five G is named Mcwireless Fast.
All the devices still see each other. I segment my
WiFi putting white bandwidth hogs like smart TVs on the
fast network while smart appliances, bulbs and switches are on

(01:43:33):
the two point four.

Speaker 3 (01:43:34):
The setup works fine for me.

Speaker 1 (01:43:38):
Ken writes in feedback on the gig Sky phone service
unlimited Europlan fifty dollars. I went to Paris and Montpellier
in France, London and the UK. I probably butchered that
name and Venice in Italy. Like I said, Mercy in
France to the guy making my omelet in the morning,

(01:43:58):
I was like Mercy, he goes, you mean Merselle and
I was like, ah, is that how you say? I'm
so mad at that stuff. I was like, Mercy, No,
it's not Mercy bonjoor. It worked for the most part
using iPhone eleven with good tech support via phone, call
and email. There was an outage in Venice, but now
it's working. Thanks for talking about it on the radio show. Yes,

(01:44:20):
I tried gig sky while I was over there and
it did work just fine.

Speaker 3 (01:44:23):
So yeah, I will add that to my recommendations.

Speaker 1 (01:44:27):
Michael from Florida writes in on your June show, you
talked about getting data while traveling internationally. I bought a
Soulless hot Spot about six months ago on sale for
one hundred bucks. It comes with a lifetime one gigabyte
a month international service at no cost. I've used it
here in the US, Canada, and Jamaica. You can purchase
additional data, which never expires. For me, it was the
obvious choice for travel. I use WhatsApp to communicate, so

(01:44:50):
all I need is the data. Yes, I did talk
about the Solace. I used that when I was in Berlin.
I tested it and it worked great. I had the
five G model, which I think is more expensive than
the one you got. But yes, soulis. If you want
your own hot spot, it's a great way to do it.
Dan from Berkeley writes in Hey Rich, a few weeks ago,
I heard you referenced Yakima, Washington. I did a double

(01:45:12):
take when you said that. I was the principal at
a high school and used to watch you on k NDO.
You even covered our high school while you were up here.
Two thousand was a big year as we moved to
our new home in September. It's always fun to recognize
the names of people who are on TV. During my
two stints in Yakima, keep up the great work on.

Speaker 3 (01:45:28):
The radio show.

Speaker 1 (01:45:30):
Oh my gosh, bringing back memories can doo my first
job on TV in the middle of Washington State, Yakima, Washington.
Let's see one more here. Brian from Watsonville writes in Rich,
love the show. You're doing a terrific job. My two
cents regarding Linux, no need to discuss it. It's great
for those who use it, But I've been the tech
guy for my family and workplace for years and I've

(01:45:52):
never used it. None of the tech wizards I know
use it either. I appreciate that Leo loves it and
talked about it every week, but you only have so
much time with us. Every minute is precious and it's
best spent talking about iOS, Android, Mac and PC. As
my dad would say, Linux is the future of computing
and it always will be.

Speaker 3 (01:46:10):
Again, I'm not a hater. Linux works great for everybody.

Speaker 1 (01:46:13):
Great, it's just not what I need help with Your
tips on iOS and Mac have really helped me. Thank you, Brian.
That's sort of exactly what I think. That's gonna do
it for this episode of the show. You can find
links to everything I mentioned on my website. Just go
to Rich on tech dot TV. Once you're there, just
hit the light bulb or after the show is posted
with the podcast, you can listen to it again and

(01:46:34):
also get the links there. You can find me on
social media. I am at Rich on Tech. Thanks so
much for listening. There are so many ways you can
spend your time. I do appreciate you spending it right
here with me. Thanks to everyone who makes this show possible, Bobo, Kim.

Speaker 3 (01:46:48):
The rest of the crew. Do we have more of
a crew? I don't think so. My name is Rich Demiro.
I'll talk to you real soon.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Host

Rich DeMuro

Popular Podcasts

Good Game with Sarah Spain

Dateline NBC

The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Samsung Unpacked, Defending Your Data & Dark Patterns Explained