VPN Advice & Vinyl Records

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Social media's impact on teams under scrutiny, Costco recalls a
popular phone charger. New tech lets anyone appear on a
Times Square billboard, including me plus your tech questions answered.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
What's going on?

Speaker 1 (00:17):
I'm Rich dmiro and this is Rich on Tech. This
is the show where I talk about the tech stuff
I think you should know about. It's also the place
where I answer your questions about technology. I believe that
tech should be interesting, useful and fun. Let's open up
those phone lines at triple eight rich one oh one.
That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one

(00:41):
zero one. Once again, triple eight rich one oh one
eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.

Speaker 2 (00:50):
Give me a call.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
If you have a question about technology. Email is also open.
Just go to rich on tech dot tv and hit contact.
By the way, if you want to link to anything
I mentioned on today's show, just go to the website
rich on tech dot tv. Hit the light bulb right
at the top of the screen that will bring you
to links in real time. Guests this week Ryan McLoud,

(01:16):
creator of the Apple Design Award winning game black Box.
Perhaps you perhaps you've played it on your iPhone and
we've got Derek Ting, co founder and CEO of Text.
Now he's gonna explain how you can get free calls,
free messaging, and even free essential data on your smartphone.
Plus I've got a special guest. Well, in case you

(01:38):
can't notice, I am literally broadcasting live from my parents'
basement in New Jersey. This has been a lifelong dream
of mine and here we are. Well, I'm actually kind
of visiting home and this was the best place. And
I got to say, my dad really set this studio up.
He had so much fun setting up all the cables

(01:58):
and running them throughout the house and taping them down.
He thought he was like a real gaffer. So if
the show sounds good, if it works good, it is
all thanks to him and the quick thinking of a
door dash delivery. Now, my dad lives in the middle
of nowhere in New Jersey, and we needed this cable
that was like one hundred feet long, an Ethernet cable

(02:18):
to run for the show. And I said, let me
just see if DoorDash can bring this from Best Buy
And sure enough, I'm not kidding. By the time I
ordered it, it was at his door within forty five minutes.
So once again technology comes through. It is just an
incredible way to kind of It's just changed our lives
in so many ways, even in the middle of nowhere.
So thanks, not thanks to them, because I did pay

(02:41):
for it, but I can't believe how well that worked now.
You know, whenever I go home, I become the unofficial
tech support for my family, as I'm sure some of
you do for yours, And whenever I'm home, the challenges
of technology are immediately clear to me. The stuff that
you are up against on a daily basis becomes so
clear to me that it just it immediately like resets

(03:04):
my entire life. Just when I think I've made progress
on this show, on my segment on KTLA for thirteen
years now and running, it's all reset because I see
that the work has just started. The dark patterns on
the smartphones of these apps that try to get you
to download stuff or to try to subscribe to things,

(03:24):
or the stuff that's just not clear to anyone becomes
very clear to me. So, for instance, I'm at a
family gathering, I take a bunch of pictures on my phone,
which happens to be an Android right now, and my sister,
who has an iPhone, says, hey, can you share those
with me? And that is sort of the ultimate, like,
oh no, how am I going to do this? That

(03:44):
is a moment that is make or break in the
tech world right now, How are you gonna share pictures
from an iPhone to an Android or an Android to
an iPhone. Now, obviously the iPhone person does not want
to download any extra apps. They don't want to do
anything differently than what they typically do. And so I said, okay,
let me try this quick share scan this QR code
on my phone and it will give you a link
to all these pictures. Oh, that didn't work because the

(04:07):
pictures were ninety megabytes worth and I had limited connectivity.
They were not uploading fast enough, so that didn't work. Okay,
let me try Google Photos. Use Google Photos, right, She
says yes, And I say, okay, I just sent them
to you through Google Photos.

Speaker 2 (04:21):
She opens up the photos app on her phone.

Speaker 1 (04:22):
I said, that's not Google Photos, that's the that's Apple's
Photos app.

Speaker 2 (04:26):
Let me open up Google Photos. I open up Google Photos,
which she.

Speaker 1 (04:29):
Did have on our phone, and sure enough, it had
never been opened on her new iPhone ever. So it
started going through the motions of signing up and you know,
getting everything up to speed. I said, okay, that's not
gonna work either. So I don't know how I ended
up sending them to her. I think I just used telegram.
That was, you know, my first entree to you know,
these tech issues that happened logging onto guest Wi Fi.

(04:50):
So of course everyone is heightened about security at this point.

Speaker 2 (04:54):
So you go to someone's house.

Speaker 1 (04:55):
Some people may be fine about sharing their home Wi
Fi with you. Others may be a little bit more
hesitant to share that password, and for good reason, your
device is getting onto their home network, which potentially could
do bad things. So my advice number one, I do
think you should have a guest network setup. So if
you haven't set up a guest network on your Wi

(05:16):
Fi router, please do that.

Speaker 2 (05:18):
It'll make it much easier.

Speaker 1 (05:19):
It'll make it much less awkward for when people want
to join your Wi Fi because you can give out
that password no problem.

Speaker 2 (05:24):
But here's what I recommend number one.

Speaker 1 (05:27):
Don't assume everyone has an iPhone in this world, so
everyone's like, oh, just open up to the password thing
and I'll share it through my iPhone. Not everyone can
do that, especially if you're on iPhone and Android, so
have a QR code that they can scan. So all
you have to do is go to a website like
QR dash Code dash generator dot com and they can
generate a Wi Fi QR code for you. You can print

(05:48):
out that QR code. It not only includes the password
to your Wi Fi, but it's also a scannable QR
code that phones when they see that QR code. No,
I can just join this one without a lot of work.
It's very easy. So if you don't have a QR
code that you have printed in your house and posted
on your fridge, please do that. It makes life a

(06:08):
lot easier. Now when it comes to my dad's business. Okay,
so he runs a small business like many people in America,
and technology is always an issue because you know, you
are good at your small business, your trade, whatever you do,
but maybe technology does not come as easy to you
as it does for maybe someone that is much more

(06:29):
technology focused or a digital native. So my dad's been
doing his trade, which happens to be roofing, for a
very long time. He's very good at it. But he
does these things called proposals and invoices. You know what
those are, right, proposal estimate for the job invoice. You
got to get paid for your job. Well, he's been
using these pre printed invoices forever and proposals, which, of course,
back in the day when he was using an old

(06:51):
school computer and it had the software from the company
that he bought the invoices from, it would fill everything
in in a nice way. And back before then, by
the way, it was a typewriter, which was really easy
to fill in because you just move the typewriter to
the part of the paper that you wanted to type
on and you typed very easy. Well, nowadays he's still
using that pre printed paper, which he likes because it

(07:11):
looks professional. But he tries to type it out on
his computer and like, I think it's Microsoft word or
something like that, and he tries to align where he's
typing on the proposal on his computer just by eyeballing it.

Speaker 2 (07:22):
So what does that mean.

Speaker 1 (07:23):
He's typing in a bunch of times, he's printing it
out a bunch of times things are misaligned. I said, Dad,
you can't do that anymore. We've got to get you
in the twenty first century and make this easy because
it'll save you a lot of time. So of course
I embark on this journey while I'm trying to hang
out with my family, while I'm trying to have conversations.
So immediately I try to create him a new logo
on Canva, which I did. He actually liked it, so

(07:44):
I said, okay, you can use this. Then I just
tried to make the form fillable on Adobe so he
can just type everything in. I kind of scanned it
all and Adobe kind of found the form fields that
didn't work for some reason. It didn't get everything aligned.
So I said, you know what, let's just make this
from scratch, and so I made I took that new
logo I made, I put it into Google Docs, and
I retyped out the entire proposal. And I knew my

(08:05):
dad was going to be particular about it because he
has a certain way he likes things. But he said,
you know what, I actually liked that. And we kind
of cleaned up some of the wording that he's been
using for thirty years, and I showed my dad how
to fill it out. I saved it as a template
on Google Docs, showed him how to make a copy
of the template, fill it out, save it, and then
we even emailed his first one through DOCU sign and
I'm telling you he got the signature within a couple

(08:27):
hours from the other person, and he was so impressed,
and so was I. But here's my lesson that I learned.
Even basic tech skills that you might take for granted,
depending on your level of technology, can be confusing for
the average person. So please have the heart of a teacher.
Please explain this stuff to your friends and family in
a very calm way. And it may take a while.

(08:48):
It's not going to be immediate. So something like a
right click, I said, hey, write click on that. Now
he's got a laptop that of course, I gave him
one of my old MacBook pros And he said, how
do you write click when there's no button on the
right And I said, that's a great question. Now for me,
I just natively write click thousands of times a day
without even thinking about how I write click. And I
had to sit there and put my thumbs on the

(09:08):
track pad and figure out, wait, how do I write
click on here? And of course I figured it out
and I showed him. And again it's those little things
that you do and you take for granted that someone
that's less tech savvy may not so when you hear
about these people that fall for scams, you know, through
the phone, or through a text or through a phishing link,
and you say, how could anyone ever fall for that?
This is how they're just regular people. That's what these

(09:31):
scam artists take advantage of their good nature and the
fact that they're not up on technology in every possible
way like you and I are, or someone that knows
about this. Now, I will tell you one thing that
even tricked me. So I was downloading I wanted to
print to his printer, which happened to be an HP printer.
I have a similar printer at home. I know I
use the HP Smart app to print. So I just

(09:52):
said to my phone, you know, download the HP smart
print smart app, and it came up with the first
link on Google Play. I clicked it, downloaded it. I
started opening it and wanted like all this weird access
and I'm like, wait a second, hold on, did I
just get scammed by downloading this bogus app?

Speaker 2 (10:09):
Even I can fall for this stuff.

Speaker 1 (10:10):
So if I can fall for anyone, can please be
careful out there. There are a lot of things you
need to know and a lot of things we need
to teach to people, and that's what this show is
all about, which is why I'm very excited to be
here each and every week. All Right, I'm gonna tell
you more about my trip here to New York City
and New Jersey. I'll tell you how I ended up
on a billboard in Times Square taking my kids on

(10:32):
a hike, how TikTok changes that experience, and much much more.
Triple eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven
four to two four one zero one. My name is Richdmiro.
You are listening to Rich on Tech. Welcome back to
rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you,

(10:54):
talking technology at Triple A rich.

Speaker 2 (10:56):
One oh one.

Speaker 1 (10:57):
That's eight eight eight seven four to two one zero one.
Give me a call if you have a question about technology.
You can also go to the website and send me
a message. Just go to rich on Tech dot tv
and hit the contact link up at the top. If
you want to link to something I mentioned, you can
hit the light bulb icon up at the top of

(11:19):
the page. And yes, I am broadcasting live from New Jersey.
That's why we have some great New Jersey artists singing
on the show. Well, not live, but you know, there's songs,
I guess. And also if you want to see highlights
from my trip, I've been talking a lot about my
trip to New York and New Jersey. I've got it
all on my Instagram. So go to my instagram at

(11:41):
rich on Tech. Check the highlights on the profile page
and you can see all the fun stuff I did here,
all the places I ate, all the place I stayed,
all the things I did. And of course the theme
is technology. I'm always telling you the coolest, best tech
that I used throughout my trip, and I will talk
about how I ended up on a New York City
billboard as well. But first, let's take a call. Let's

(12:04):
go to Tony in van Ey's. Tony in van.

Speaker 2 (12:07):
Eyes, you're on with rich Welcome to the show, Tony.
You there.

Speaker 1 (12:16):
Oh, we gotta have so this Because it's a remote show,
Bobo's got to actually bring up Tony and Van Eyes.
So I don't know if that's ready to go yet.
So let's be while we until Bobo tells me that
we've got our caller. Okay, oh Tony here, can you
hear me? I cannot hear Tony. Well, we thought we've

(12:37):
done this before. There Hello, yeah, okay, there you go. Okay, great,
I can you hear me?

Speaker 2 (12:44):
Now?

Speaker 1 (12:44):
I feel like I've an entire ad campaign was built
from that. What can I help you with?

Speaker 3 (12:49):
Tony Pleasure speaking with Geez, question about VPN on smartphone? Ah,
what do you recommend? I have one, but sometimes it
just goes out and I have to turn it back
on and that's.

Speaker 2 (13:07):
An iPhone thing.

Speaker 1 (13:10):
Exactly. Yeah, so okay, so here, Yeah, here's my recommendations
on the The VPN, which by the way stands for
virtual Private network. Uh, this sort of creates an encrypted
tunnel if you want to use the Internet a little
bit more private privately, I guess private focused. So if you,
for instance, don't want anyone to be able to see

(13:30):
what you're doing, or you don't want your ISP or
your wireless carrier, it makes the connection between you and
the servers a little bit more private. Now I say
a little bit more because people would argue that you know,
nothing is one hundred percent.

Speaker 2 (13:42):
But with that said, the.

Speaker 1 (13:44):
iPhone, by the way, has a has a history of
turning off VPNs every so often, so as far as
I've seen now, these VPN apps try to turn it
back on, but it doesn't always work. So if you
are using a VPN on iPhone, uh, sometimes it just
toggles off and you have to go back in and
toggle it back on. Or the app might have a
setting for a persistent connection. But I don't think you

(14:06):
need a VPN all the time. So Number one, when
do you need to use a VPN? If you ever
want to protect your browsing history, or you want to
get access to a block site. So for instance, if
you're in China or another country that may not allow
you to access a certain site, you might want to
use a VPN. Like I said, it can also help
you protect yourself. So if you want to use say

(14:26):
the public Wi Fi at a hotel or a library,
but you want to access something that's a little bit
more sensitive or something that is like your financial information,
you'd probably want to use a VPN. So what do
you want to look for? Number one A no log VPN.
These are VPNs that promise not to keep your user data.
Typically you want to look for an independent audit to
verify those privacy claims. And you have to understand that

(14:50):
a VPN can slow down your Internet connection, so it
may not be as fast as a direct connection. On
your phone, and if you're looking for the different protocols
that they have, there's a couple of them. Wire Guard
is the one that you want. It's just I think
it's a little bit more modern. That's the one that
you want to look for. So how do you choose
a VPN? So you want a VPN that works across

(15:11):
various devices. Free VPNs typically not so great. Historically, there
are lots of companies that promise free VPN. You know,
you can try one of those, but you know it
may not tick all of these boxes that I'm talking about.
So let me see this Proton vpn. I think they
offer a free level of VPN. So yeah, so Proton,

(15:34):
if you want one that's free, that's pretty very trusted.
If you go to protonvpn dot com, they have a
free level. You get one device, no ads, no logs,
unlimited and free forever and that works across various various devices.
So obviously there's probably some sort of catch that that
they have on that free plan, and it looks like

(15:56):
it's because it's limited to just one device at a time,
But that is an option for a free VPN. Some
of the other things to look for if you're purchasing
a VPN, like on a paid program, you want one
that works across multiple devices, so you can use it
on both your iPhone but also an Android, also a computer.
Multiple server locations. Sometimes you want to spoof where you are,

(16:17):
so you say, you know they have server locations in
various places, obviously no bandwidth caps, and you're probably gonna
pay anywhere from five to ten dollars a month. Some
of the trusted brands in the past that I've talked
about on KTLA include molvad, surf Shark, IPVN, and tunnel Bear.

Speaker 2 (16:35):
So those are some of the.

Speaker 1 (16:36):
Brands that you need to look into, but again, pick
one that works for you. Great question. Thanks for the call.
Eighty to eight Rich one O one eight eight eight
seven four to two four one zero one. The website
for the show Rich on tech dot TV. Coming up
so much to talk about uh AT and T is
raising prices. I've got a recall that a power device

(17:00):
that was sold at costco a portable charger, So if
you've bought one of those, you want to stay tuned.
And of course coming up, I will tell the story
of how I ended up on that New York City Billboard.

Speaker 2 (17:10):
It is pretty wild. My name is Rich d'miro.

Speaker 1 (17:13):
You are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to
rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you
talking technology at triple A Rich one oh one. That's

(17:34):
eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.

Speaker 2 (17:38):
Give me a call.

Speaker 1 (17:39):
If you have a question about technology, you can also
go to the website and send me a message. Just
go to that same website rich on Tech dot TV
and hit the light bulb icon and that will bring
you to it. We just played my Chemical Romance. They
are from Newark, New Jersey. That is where I've flown
into more times than I can tell you. I can't

(18:00):
tell you because I use an app called Flighty, which
keeps track of all of the different flights that you've taken,
and it's pretty incredible. So it told me that I
have spent I think, like, I don't know, I don't
want to miss quote here. I think it was like
one hundred and fourteen thousand hours in the air flying
to New Jersey. Now that's just the ones that the
flights that it found. I'm sure there are many more.

(18:22):
But yes, I've been flying back and forth between LA
and New Jersey for many many years now. On that note,
Sarah from Los Angeles writes in Rich, sounding good from
New Jersey, I'm glad you had that experience with your
dad and had to write click, which, by the way,
you didn't explain. I'm sure it's frustrating with some questions
that have you thinking, wait.

Speaker 2 (18:40):
You don't know how to do that, But you're one of.

Speaker 1 (18:41):
The only resources for super basic questions, so please try
to remember that some people need very simple explanations.

Speaker 2 (18:48):
Thanks Sarah.

Speaker 1 (18:49):
That is a good reminder, and I do try to
make things simple, but yeah, I do have to remember
that even some of the most basic things don't come
easy to everyone. So by the way to write click,
I did figure it out. It is two fingers on
my truck pad. It took me a while to kind
of figure out what my motion was, but yes, two fingers.
That's just one way to write click. I'm sure there

(19:11):
are many others on the mac.

Speaker 2 (19:13):
Let's see.

Speaker 1 (19:14):
Let's go to Thomas in Carlsbad, California. Thomas in Carlsbad
at California, Line one.

Speaker 2 (19:21):
You're on with Rich.

Speaker 4 (19:22):
Hey, Rich, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my call.

Speaker 5 (19:25):
Rich. I'm on an old school, AT and T hookup
WI took an Internet table to my router my Wi
Fi connections in the house. Given their system is terrible
to get things to work, I want to disable their
router and put in a new mesh system. Any advice

(19:47):
in the pass through looks like something I'm not quite
capable of handling.

Speaker 2 (19:54):
And what do you mean past So they.

Speaker 5 (19:58):
Talked about use that router, Oh right, right, right.

Speaker 4 (20:03):
Yeah, and then you have to go on a pass through.

Speaker 2 (20:06):
Yeah, and okay, So I when I set mine up.

Speaker 1 (20:10):
It's been a while since I set mine up, but
I remember there's a lot I put a lot of
thought into that. The idea is that there's that AT
and T is handling the routing of the network. So
what they want you to do is disable their kind
of router and use the Well, what I use is
EO E E R O and that will handle all

(20:31):
of the routing. Now, as far as I remember, and
like I said, it's been a while since I actually
set this up, so I need to remember if I
actually did that or not. But as far as I know,
I'm pretty sure I just plugged my ERO into the
back of the UH into the back of the AT
and T router and just let it go. But the
pass through if you need to change that or toggle

(20:52):
that off, you will find that in the settings on
the AT and T device. Now, turning off the Wi
Fi is very very easy. So on pretty much every
router from like a cable company or wherever you get
your Internet from, you know, they give you that box.
And nowadays these boxes include both a router which takes
that Internet signal and kind of helps figure out where

(21:13):
to route things throughout your home. So if you go
to a website on your computer, that router will get
that information, it will send it back to AT and
T or whoever your ISP is, and it will get
that website for you, and it will give you that information.
But when you're using your own system, and by the way,
most of these modern systems that they're giving you include
Wi Fi, so that Wi Fi, that same box that's

(21:36):
also a router also serves as your Wi Fi hub
and that it emanates this Wi Fi connection that you know,
sends a signal throughout your house. Now, typically these have
been pretty low powered in the past. Nowadays, I've seen
a lot of these companies are actually upgrading to more
you know, even a mesh network. Sometimes, like some of
these companies, you can even ask for a little satellite

(21:59):
mesh network, you know, like an extra router or an
access point they're called, and they can give them to
you as well.

Speaker 2 (22:05):
But I say skip all that.

Speaker 1 (22:08):
Go get yourself an euro E E R O system
or an ORB. There's so many different brands that are
out there that are all pretty good, but you know,
those are two that I really like. And once you
plug it in, it will it will guide you through
the setup. And the main thing that you want to
do is is definitely turn off the Wi Fi that
emanates out of that router box that the cable company

(22:31):
supplies you. That way you don't have two competing Wi
Fi signals throughout your house. And again what I was
saying is that the on the bottom of these boxes
there's usually a place where you can log into the
box and change some settings. Now, before you do that,
just be warned that, you know, there are a lot
of settings and they're not very easy to kind of

(22:52):
figure out. Sometimes they are, sometimes they're not, so just
beware when you go in there that it may take
you know, like, just be informed.

Speaker 2 (23:00):
Now.

Speaker 1 (23:00):
The other thing is you may not have access to
your computer during this time because you're gonna be accessing
the router itself, and you need to usually plug in
your computer directly hardlined to that box because you're gonna
be changing settings on that box. It's gonna restart, it's
gonna be doing some things. So you want a hard
connection because if you're not hardwired, as soon as you
turn off that Wi Fi on that cable box, your

(23:21):
computer's gonna have no Internet connection. So you need to
keep all these things in mind before you go and
change stuff. But when it comes to the access point,
I feel like and I really need to kind of
school myself in this and see if I actually change
those settings since it's been so long. But there are
some settings where you can set it up as a
pass through, and that means that the router is saying

(23:42):
they're putting their hands up on your router and saying,
you know what, We're not doing anything. We're gonna let
your new euro handle everything on your network, and we're
literally just going to be a cable modem that takes
the signal in and we're gonna give give that signal
to your Eero, and Ero's gonna serve as both the
router and also the Wi Fi and so that's what

(24:02):
they're saying when they talk about that pass through mode.
Other than that, it's very easy to set up. Most
people are just plugging these things into the back of
their cable router and it's pretty much plug and play,
and the app is where it will log you in
and get you through everything that you need to know
about how to set this thing up. But again, I
would check out EURO, I would check out ORB and

(24:24):
make sure you have a cable physical cable that you
can connect your router. And the password and user name
is usually printed on the bottom of your router as
well as the log in which is typically something like
a one nine to two dot one six eight number.

Speaker 2 (24:37):
So if you see that, you type.

Speaker 1 (24:39):
That into your web browser and you log in with
the username and password that's on the bottom of your router,
that will give you access to these settings on that
black box that sits under your TV.

Speaker 2 (24:49):
Just be careful. You can always reset it back to
the factory.

Speaker 1 (24:52):
There's probably a little pinhole that you can push a
paper clip in. If you really mess things up, you
can always get it back to the factory. Good question,
and yes, get that Mesh network, because it really does
make a difference. You will get a signal that's throughout
your house. So the way the Mesh network works is
that it takes that one signal that you're getting from

(25:13):
your router box now it's the EURO and it sends
it throughout your home by using these access points that
are additionally located throughout your house. You've got the one
box under your TV. Now that's the signal coming in
from the cable company that goes into your ERO, and
then the EERO takes that signal and kind of boomerangs
it around your house through the use of these little

(25:35):
access points that you place in locations.

Speaker 2 (25:38):
Throughout your house.

Speaker 1 (25:39):
So they all work together to blanket your home in
Wi Fi versus just imagine one little box that's under
your TV. It's crowded under there. The signal is being
blocked in a million different ways, and that signal does
not make its way throughout your house. These eros and
the similar systems have figured out a way to kind
of tune each other specifically to carry that Wi Fi

(26:02):
signal and manage it throughout your house, and that's why
the signal works better. And of course over the years
I've been using this since day one. We actually had
Nick Weaver, the one of the I think he was
the creator of Ero. He kind of came up with
this whole concept and made it commercial. He came to
KTLA to do an interview, and I'm not gonna joke.
He was very seem very young at the time. I said,

(26:24):
you created this new technology and he said, yeah, and
it kind of revolutionized how we access Wi Fi in
our homes. It's because it's gotten so much better thanks
to what he did with this idea of a mesh network.
So anyway, that is what I think you need. I
think it'll help and I think it'll be a lot better.
All right, thanks for the question. Eighty eight rich one
one eight eight eight seven four to two four one

(26:47):
zero one. I promised you the story about how I
got on the Wi Fi billboard.

Speaker 6 (26:51):
In New York City.

Speaker 2 (26:52):
I will tell you that.

Speaker 1 (26:54):
Story coming up right here on rich On Tech. Welcome
back to rich On Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out
with you, talking technology at triple eight rich one oh
one eighty eight seven.

Speaker 2 (27:12):
Four to two four one zero one.

Speaker 1 (27:15):
So this week I've been hanging out in New Jersey
and New York visiting some family, doing some things, and
we stayed at this hotel in Times Square that turned
out to have this like incredible view of Times Square,
Like it's literally at the top of Times Squares, so
you have the view of the entire square, which we
didn't realize until we went to breakfast and wow, oh

(27:36):
my gosh, what this is. This is wild. So it
took us a bit to figure this out too. We
saw the billboards obviously in Times Square, but one of them,
after like seeing it cycle through the billboard probably one
hundred and fifty times, I realized I was like, wait
a second. It said something about you can download an
app and be on the billboard, and so I said,

(27:57):
that's kind of interesting. An eighteen thousand square foot billboard
at the corner of forty seventh Street and Seventh av
in Time Square, about four hundred thousand people see it daily.
And you download this app called the TSX app, and
you upload a picture, you type in some text whatever
you want, or you can upload some video and next

(28:18):
thing you know, you pay a couple of bucks and
your video or clip or whatever shows up on this
billboard in Times Square. And so I said, well, of course,
I have to do this as the tech guy, right.
I got to figure out how this works and if
it really does work, and how cool it is. So
I just took one of the pictures that we took
on our trip and it uploaded to the app. I

(28:40):
typed in New York City twenty twenty four at rich
On Tech and it had some rules as to what
you can do, what you could say on the billboard.
Social media handles are allowed, things like QR codes and
URLs are not allowed. And once you upload it, you
pick your time where it's gonna appear on the billboard.
I picked like seven to fifteen PM, and you pay
forty dollars and of course they took Apple pay or

(29:02):
Google pay, so it was very easy to do the
entire process. I would say it took me less than
a minute. And then someone, obviously a human has to
approve what you're doing, because you know, they don't want
you to put something up there that's you know, bad,
And so it was approved and next thing you know,
it said, okay, your time is seven fifteen pm. Seven
fifteen is seven to seventeen. So we sat there in

(29:23):
the restaurant at the hotel, all of us and we
watched our pictures show up on this billboard in Time
Square for fifteen seconds, and I got to say, what
a smart business. By the way, this could be replicated
anywhere that there is a large group of people. And
I'm sure this is just the first of its kind,
but this is a very very smart business. I paid

(29:43):
forty dollars to have my billboard up in Times Square
for fifteen seconds. And by the way, if you want
to see it, you can check out my Twitter at
rich on Tech. I posted the picture of me looking
at the picture. I'll also put it on my Instagram
at rich on Tech. But I thought this was such
a smart idea.

Speaker 2 (30:01):
The amount of.

Speaker 1 (30:02):
Money that they make from these fifteen second clips throughout
the day is probably incredible and throughout the year, and
it's just a billboard that makes money in New York City.
Of course, all billboards make money because they're showing ads,
but the fact that this one shows user generated ads
is just really really cool. So again, the app is TSX,
and I guess it's TSX Entertainment is the company that

(30:25):
came up with this brilliant idea. We had a lot
of fun, and you know, you saw other people doing
it as well. So it's kind of cool to see
yourself on a billboard in New York City. And now
I can say I've done that all right. Eighty to eight,
rich one, oh one, let's take a call here. Let's
go to line one. That is Nicole in Los Angeles.
Nicole in Los Angeles. You are on with.

Speaker 7 (30:45):
Rich Hi, thank you for taking my call.

Speaker 2 (30:50):
Absolutely, what can I help you?

Speaker 7 (30:51):
With my Apple MacBook Pro to adath and with display
or doesn't work. I can't get an image. And when
I took it back to Apple, they said it was
going to toss around to hundred dollars. And I purchased
this lab.

Speaker 1 (31:07):
I was going to say, I was going to say
six hundred bucks. That's how much it costs me. When
I got my uh my kid threw a toy at
my computer screen and cracked it, and uh, six hundred
bucks the price.

Speaker 2 (31:18):
So go ahead. What's your question whether you should got
a new one, should I.

Speaker 7 (31:21):
Get a new one and my or should I fix it?
Or I'm also thinking about getting a Samsung laptop because
I didn't use all the all the features that the
MacBook Pro had to offer. I'm just not that kind
of a.

Speaker 8 (31:34):
User, it's really just for my leisure. It being a
lot of online search emails, that's about the extent of it.
I do open up a lot of pages, a lot
of web pages all at once, and that's it.

Speaker 7 (31:49):
I'm not editing. I'm not looking at videos. I don't
really watch TV.

Speaker 1 (31:52):
What do you like about the What do you like
about the Samsung versus the like? Are you not liking
the MacBook anymore? Do you not like gample?

Speaker 7 (32:00):
Really? An Android user, I have a fan stung tone,
so I kind of like that idea that it's you know,
working together. I have STANSTUNGD appliances. But I do have
some Apple products, like I have an iPad that I love.
You know, I didn't like my MacBook Pro, but again
I didn't use already had to offer me, which was fine.
I was okay with that, but now that it's broken,

(32:20):
I don't necessarily want to pay that price bag again.

Speaker 1 (32:24):
So I hear you, well, look, I mean I see
this in two ways. Number one six hundred dollars solves
your problem for another couple of years.

Speaker 2 (32:32):
So that's what I end up doing.

Speaker 1 (32:34):
Because of course, anytime you have a repair, you think,
do I get a new one, do I you know?

Speaker 2 (32:39):
Or do I pay for this?

Speaker 1 (32:40):
So a new computer is going to cost you easily
one thousand bucks, right, but it's going to last you
at least, you know, four or five six years from today.
For that amount of money, the six hundred dollars you're
going to spend is going to last you at least.
I would say, I'm looking at the Mac os Sequoia
because that's how I go by how long your Mac
is going to be supported?

Speaker 2 (32:59):
What your Mac?

Speaker 1 (33:00):
Do you know?

Speaker 4 (33:01):
I've purchased it.

Speaker 1 (33:03):
A little bit, so it's probably probably a twenty nineteen
MacBook pro Sequoia is going to be compatible with a
twenty eighteen and later. That tells me that you're probably
going to get at least two more years of software
updates from Apple on this computer, So that three hundred
dollars divided by two at a six hundred divided by
two is three hundred dollars for the next two years.

(33:25):
So I would probably lean towards just repairing this because
you've got at least two more years out of it.
And then, by the way, it's still worth something that
you can sell it for even if it's one hundred
dollars or something, versus the new Mac versus the new Samsung, which,
by the way, I will tell you if you have
a Samsung phone, I've been testing their Samsung their new
Galaxy books, and it is amazing. Like you take a

(33:47):
picture on your Samsung phone, it immediately shows up on
your Windows computer because it's all in sync like the
the just the way the iPhone works with the Max,
the Samsung phones work with these Samsung Galaxy Books.

Speaker 2 (34:01):
So if you really.

Speaker 1 (34:02):
Want that and you're trying to go for a change,
then you know, I say go for the new Galaxy Book.
But if you just want to spend the six hundred dollars,
be done. Your computer, you know, is good to go.
You've already had it, you're comfortable with it. Maybe you
want to just plan a little bit more because we're
just seeing these new AI computers come out, so it
might be best to maybe wait one cycle on those

(34:24):
because I'm all brand new right now. So maybe in
the next two years, you just kind of plan for
this new Galaxy PC.

Speaker 7 (34:31):
Okay, I like that. Yeah, I I'll have a problem.
Yeah it actually makes sense.

Speaker 2 (34:36):
I like it. Yeah, that's what I would do.

Speaker 1 (34:38):
Just make sure you if you can back up your
computer before you send it in, because they may have
to wipe the drive in the process of replacing that
screen or whatever they do in the repair, So just
be aware that you may lose data and if you
can't see the screen, you're going to have to figure
out a way to mirror the screen or connect your
computer to a like a TV screen or something to
see the screen while you secure every thing and get.

Speaker 2 (35:00):
Everything backed up there. All right, thanks so much for
the call.

Speaker 1 (35:03):
Eighty eight rich one on one eighty eight seven four
to two four one zero one. Coming up, we got
lots more of rich on Tech. I'll tell you about
a recall on a portable chargers sold at Costco.

Speaker 2 (35:14):
This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.

Speaker 1 (35:20):
Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology at
triple A rich.

Speaker 2 (35:25):
One oh one.

Speaker 1 (35:27):
That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one
zero one. The website for the show is richon Tech
dot tv. If you want to send me an email,
you can do it there by hitting contact, or if
you want to link to something I mentioned on the show,
just hit the light bulb icon. Coming up in this hour,
We've got a lot we've got a special guest. The

(35:49):
special guest is later on. We've got a guest that
is a Apple Design Award winning game creator black Box.
Don't know if you've played it on your iPhone. We
will talk to Ryan McLoud about that, and later on
we'll talk to Derek Ting, co founder and CEO of
text Now about how you can get free calling and
texting on your smartphone and even free data now. If

(36:11):
you bought one of these portable chargers at Costco in
the last couple of years, you might want to return it.
My charge is recalling five hundred and sixty seven thousand
power Hub portable chargers due to fire risk. This is
a ten thousand million amp hour portable charger. They got
a couple of models affected. There is it's basically a

(36:34):
it's tough to read on the radio here, but a
zero ten or AO ten FK, Dash A, Dash B
and Dash C. These can overheat while charging, posing a
fire and risk burn. They were sold at Costco from
January twenty twenty two to November twenty twenty three. They
cost about forty dollars. You can get a free replacement.

(36:54):
So far, there's been one hundred and twenty reports of overheating,
including two residential fires with one hundred sixty five dollars
reported in property damage. Plus a bunch of these were
returned to Costco mentioning various issues. So immediately stop and
contact my charge for a replacement. I will put the
information on the website rich on tech dot TV. Meanwhile,

(37:17):
another week, another price hike, AT and T raising prices
on older unlimited plans starting in August. I'm telling you,
all these price hikes are pushing people to the mv
and os mobile virtual network operators like the Mint Mobiles
of the world, and the Tings, all these different companies,
the Tellos, the let's see what's the other one. I like,

(37:38):
there's just so many of them mobile X. I mean,
it's just that people are noticing that their costs are
no longer fixed. When you've got a streaming service or
your cell phone built.

Speaker 2 (37:48):
It just keeps going up.

Speaker 1 (37:50):
AT and T increasing prices on older unlimited plans according
to c NEET, starting in August ten dollars a month
for single lines, twenty dollars a month for multiple lines.
That is significant. Affective plans include various AT and T
unlimited options. You can check the cnet article for all
of the the plans. Now AT and T is doing

(38:10):
something kind of nice. They are going to increase your
high speed hot Spot data allowances on these plans. So
if you had thirty gigabytes, now you're getting seventy five.
If you had sixty gigabytes of hot Spot, now you're
getting one hundred. But again, this is the second price
hike by AT and T. They raised prices on their
newer plans by ninety nine cents earlier this year. So again,

(38:33):
lots of price hikes come in your way from all
of these services.

Speaker 2 (38:38):
All right, eighty eight.

Speaker 1 (38:39):
Rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to
two four one zero one. Let's go to Martin In
at Anza California line too. Martin, you are on with
Rich Martin?

Speaker 2 (38:50):
Can I help?

Speaker 3 (38:50):
Hi?

Speaker 4 (38:50):
Rich? Thanks? Look taking my call. I was wondering I
have an iPhone seven ass and evidently Apples quit updating
and supporting this up the fifteen point eight point two
or something, So it is just it's an obsolete phone.

Speaker 1 (39:08):
Uh is it an obsolete phone? Well, I mean you
can still use it for other stuff. I mean, look,
the phone is not going to stop working. It's just
not getting software updates, and some of the apps are
just going to start barking at.

Speaker 4 (39:19):
You right right, No security updates, no nothing.

Speaker 1 (39:24):
Yeah, so that is the problem. I'm trying to scroll
through the list and see what's supported here. Yeah, so
the latest software supports the iPhone ten are and up.
So if you're looking at the iPhone seven, you're talking
iPhone seven, iPhone eight. There was no iPhone nine. Not
going to get tripped up on that one again if

(39:44):
you've listened to the Phone the Show for a long time.
So we went iPhone seven, iPhone eight. So the reality
is this phone is already a couple of years out
of service. I would say it's probably time to get
a new one. Yes, you can still use it, but
you are putting yourself at risk. You can trade this
phone in, you can sell it. There's a website like

(40:05):
gizmo Go that I like. You might get a couple
of bucks for this. You can also turn it into
a security camera. A lot of people like to do
that with their old phones. You know, you can download
some software and turn it into a security camera. That
might be an option, but otherwise I think I think
it's time for a new phone. This is this how
long do you have this phone?

Speaker 4 (40:26):
I bought it in twenty eighteen, so it's six years.
Is that about the life spanities?

Speaker 6 (40:32):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (40:32):
In fact, yeah, so on the iPhone side, the lifespan
published is officially about five years. Traditionally, Apple has supported
their phones for about six years on the dot. Now
when it comes to the Android side of things, the
trend that we're seeing there is seven years. So will
Apple do seven years? I'm not sure, but Apple has

(40:55):
been really good. I know there's a lot of conspiracy
theories out there that Apple tries to put these software
updates out there just to ruin your phone. I don't
think that's the case. I think that software is getting
better and better and better. It requires more horsepower. And
if everyone's using an iPhone seven, that's putting them at
risk of you know, viruses and malware and all kinds
of different things, you know, phishing attempts, all that stuff

(41:17):
happening on their phone. If people are if a lot
of people are using that, what happens then the experience
of using that device dwindles and people start complaining to Apple.
So I think, you know, five six years is a
pretty reasonable clip for a phone. If you do the
math on those things. So, Martin, what do you what
are you thinking about getting?

Speaker 4 (41:36):
Well, I'm thinking of going backwards. Do you know anything
about the Nokia twenty seven twenty or twenty seven eighty
flip phones.

Speaker 1 (41:47):
I know that a lot of people are starting to
use them, and I have no problem with you going
backwards as well. If you're not using the smart features
on this phone, why not. Your battery is going to
last a long time. The phone's going to cost you
under one hundred dollars, and you know you'll still be
able to text, but it's just going to take you
a lot longer to text on that phone. But that's
the major downside. But otherwise, don't retired.

Speaker 4 (42:10):
I'm I'm at home, I'm on why Fi. I got
like I have, okay, twenty five dollars a month after
the discounts from Verizon for a five gigabyte plan and
that's all I need. I don't use three two streak
gigga guy by in a month on just the outside,

(42:32):
you know, yeah, I.

Speaker 1 (42:33):
Mean it sounds to me, It sounds to me like
you just want to be connected and all you need
is that phone line, maybe a text or two occasionally
you're not surfing YouTube on there, you're not surfing the
web on your phone. But yeah, I think that the
only thing is you just have to figure out if
that Nokia is compatible with your Verizon network.

Speaker 4 (42:51):
That's the only thing you'll have to I know the
twenty seven twenty is. But did you have a add
or some them for dumb Wireless a while back?

Speaker 2 (43:03):
Yeah? Yeah, we did a segment with them on kJ.

Speaker 4 (43:07):
Twenty that I could get through from them from Verizon
or go just down to the Verizon store to Meca
and get to twenty seven twenty. So you know, that's
what I probably do in the meantime until the next
sc comes out, hopefully next year. What is that to
be the fourth generation?

Speaker 6 (43:29):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (43:29):
Actually, uh, let's see, I was just looking this up
the iPhone SE. There's there's a new rumor about when
it's coming out, and the website that I typically go
to is mac Rumors Buyer's Guide, and if you go there,
let's see what the rumor is on the SE. So
it's been eight hundred and thirty seven days since they
came out with an iPhone SE. Again, this is the

(43:50):
only iPhone remaining that has that fingerprint reader on it,
you know, the little touch ID kind of thing. And
the rumor says that the iPhone SE with face oh
with face ID, oh no, they're going to get rid
of that thing, is going to be under five hundred
dollars and the launch is supposed to be according to
mac rumors, let's see here. Oh, according to the information

(44:14):
that mac Rumors is quoting, let's see design similar to
iPhone fourteen is going to come out in spring of
twenty twenty five, so you still got a while.

Speaker 2 (44:22):
So yeah, yeah, that's yeah.

Speaker 4 (44:25):
That's always. They're going to get rid of the home
button at the bottom of the of the phone like
on the cheven Ass.

Speaker 2 (44:34):
That's what they're saying here.

Speaker 1 (44:36):
If this rumor is accurate, the iPhone SE would finally
gain face ID in a notch instead of touch ID
and a home button. So uh, that will probably be
Apple's least expensive phone when it launches.

Speaker 4 (44:47):
But yeah, they're saying like fourne or something. So what's
that mean? Senior edition or.

Speaker 2 (44:56):
You know what.

Speaker 1 (44:57):
I can't it's been so long since that launched. I
can't remember what officially stood for. I'm not even sure
it stood for anything. I think the rumor was like
simple addition, but yeah, you can. You can coin it
senior editions. I know a lot of people like that,
like that simplicity of the phone. So Martin, thanks so
much for the call today. I really appreciate it. And
you know, upgrade to the downgrade. Why not, right, get

(45:19):
that flip phone and make life a little bit simpler.
That's a great thing. Speaking of phones, I have been
using a five hundred dollars phone throughout my week here
in New York City and New Jersey. It's the Pixel
eight A from Google. And I'm telling you, I challenged myself.
I said, you know what, I recommended this thing on Katiela.
I'm going to use it as my only phone for
a couple of days throughout the city. And sure enough,

(45:42):
I am so impressed with this phone. It does everything
you need for five hundred dollars and it's really good.
And by the way, so far we have not seen
a substantial price drop on this phone. It hasn't gone
on sale in a big way just yet, but I
still fully expected to go on sale for anywhere between
three hundred and fifty four hundred and fifty three hundred
and fifty four.

Speaker 2 (46:02):
Hundred fifty dollars.

Speaker 1 (46:03):
So if you're looking for a really good phone at
a very inexpensive price, I really still like the Pixel
eight A.

Speaker 2 (46:09):
Check out my instagram at rich on Tech.

Speaker 1 (46:11):
All the pictures you see there, a majority of them
were taken with this Pixel eight A. More rich On
Tech coming your way right after this. Welcome back to
rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you
talking technology at triple eight Rich one oh one. That's
eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one

(46:32):
zero one. Give me a call if you have a
question about technology, you can also email me. Just go
to rich on Tech dot tv hit contact. Noel wrote
me and said, if you really flew one hundred and
fourteen thousand hours between Lax and Newark, that's twenty thousand
flights at an average of six hours each way. That's

(46:53):
a lot of flights. Don't get me started on the radiation.
So my math was a little bit wrong. I looked
up in my flighty app to see what it actually is,
and flight time about three hundred and three hours.

Speaker 2 (47:05):
That's one way.

Speaker 1 (47:06):
So if you double that, maybe about six hundred hours
distance one hundred and forty five thousand miles so times
two three hundred thousand miles. So yes, I've flown between
Newark and Los Angeles many times since I moved to
LA for college. And this Flighty app, now, it's not
I don't think it's one hundred percent accurate because sometimes
it loops in like friends and family members flights that

(47:28):
might they might have emailed me. But again, it's a
lot and it's a cool app. It's a really neat
app that will kind of tally up all of your
flying and it finds even your old flights too, So
if you want to download it, it's only on iOS,
but it is called Flighty fli gh t y. It
is really the best app for flying period. It doesn't

(47:51):
book your flights, it doesn't do anything like that. It
just helps you track your flights, get on them on time,
see your baggages, get heads up on delays before they
even happen. It is and it's all done in a
very beautiful way. So check it out. Flighty is the
is the app f l i g h t Y.
There is a premium upgrade. If you fly a lot,

(48:14):
then you might want to look into that. Otherwise you
can use it for free. Check it out. You won't
get all of the features for free, but it's still great.
All right, let's go to line. Let's see here. Where
are we Let's go to himI in Torrance, Line one. himI,
you're on with.

Speaker 9 (48:28):
Rich Can I call?

Speaker 2 (48:33):
Yeah, welcome to the show. What can I help you with?

Speaker 9 (48:35):
Well, a few months ago you mentioned Q like I
won't charge your and UH for traveling for travel, but
I have stated why, and now I need it. I
was wondering if you have something similar or something better
or the same ones you can't recommend.

Speaker 1 (48:56):
Well, are you trying to Are you trying to charge iPhones?
Apple stuff or Android? No?

Speaker 4 (49:02):
Apple?

Speaker 2 (49:03):
Okay, so I think.

Speaker 1 (49:05):
What you're referring to is the Mofi three and one
travel charger with mag Safe. So it's kind of expensive.
It's one hundred and fifty dollars. There may be a
cheaper price available if this was a couple months ago
that I mentioned it. But what I love about this
is that it's simple. It charges your iPhone, Apple Watch,
and AirPods all at the same time. It comes in

(49:25):
this fabric case. Everything fits in there. It charges the
iPhone wirelessly at the maximum speed. But it's it's expensive.
The other ones I mentioned, twelve South has one called Butterfly,
and this is a two in one charger. So this
this will charge two items at once. It will charge
an iPhone in an Apple Watch. It will also charge

(49:48):
AirPods if you have the wireless charging case, but it
just won't do them at the same time.

Speaker 2 (49:52):
You can only choose two items to charge it once.

Speaker 9 (49:56):
That one also the first one.

Speaker 2 (49:59):
I'm sorry Mophy M p h I E and so
I will.

Speaker 1 (50:04):
I will link these up on the website as well,
so you can go to rich on tech dot tv
as soon as I'm as soon as I'm done here,
and I will link them up as well. So the
other one I mentioned was the twelve South and that
one is called the Butterfly, and the twelve South Butterfly
is a two in one charger. That one's one hundred

(50:24):
and thirty dollars and again it will charge those things.
It will charge everything you need, it just may not
do three that well, won't do three at the same time.
That also comes with four wall adapters, so if you
are traveling internationally, that's kind of nice because those are
all in the box. Another one I mentioned is the
STM Goods Charge Tree mag Now, this one's the cheapest

(50:46):
out of the bunch. It's one hundred dollars and I
love this thing. It charges all three at once. I
used to use the old version. This is the new
version that has mag Safe, which means pretty much all
the modern iPhones or many of the modern iPhones have
that magnet ring on the back that will help this
to charge very easily and line it up properly and
all that good stuff. But this one folds up. It's

(51:08):
super compact. Again, it's one hundred dollars, so it's the
cheapest of the bunch. But the trick here is that
it does not come with a wall adapter, so that
is sold separately, or maybe you have one at home.
You need one that's at least twenty watts to get
the full charging capacity out of this device. Again, that
one is called the STM Goods Charge Tree mag and

(51:30):
that's one hundred dollars and I've been carrying around for
a while now. I really love this one because it
solves the problem of I don't need an extra charger
for my Apple Watch. It's called the Belkan Boost Charge Pro.
Now it is pricey, it's one hundred dollars, but it's
a it does a couple of things really well. Number one,
it's a ten thousand portable battery pack, So that means

(51:52):
when you're on the go, you can just plug your
phone into this device and it will charge your phone.
But it also has a built it's in Apple Watch
charger on it, so you never need to bring a
separate cable to charge your Apple Watch. Apple has a
very proprietary cable for the Apple Watch. It's annoying if
you travel a lot, you got to bring it everywhere.
This boost charge pro means you only have to carry

(52:14):
one device, a portable charger, which by the way, I
recommend everyone carry anyway, and you also have your Apple
Watch charger so when I get to my hotel room.
So when I'm on the plane, I charge my phone
with the battery bank. Then when I get to a
hotel room, I charge the battery bank by plugging it in,
and then I just put my Apple Watch on top.
So everything gets charged up and it's one less thing

(52:34):
to carry and it's really really convenient. Again, I will
link all of these up on the website. Rich on
tech dot TV hit the light Bulb. That's where you'll
find the show notes. This week's show is show number
seventy seven. So if you want to find links to
anything I mentioned here, I just said someone email about
the Times Square app.

Speaker 2 (52:53):
You can find the link on the website as well.

Speaker 1 (52:56):
All right, coming up, we're gonna talk to Ryan McLoud,
creator of the the app called black Box. This is
a puzzle game for the iPhone that's coming up right
here on rich on Tech.

Speaker 2 (53:10):
Welcome back to rich on Tech.

Speaker 1 (53:11):
We are talking with winners of Apple's Design Awards at
WWDC twenty twenty four. This is Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference.
These are the apps and games recognized for their excellence
in design and technical achievement. Joining me now is Ryan McLoud.
He has created an app called black Box. This was

(53:31):
originally available on the iPhone. Now it is on Apple
Vision Pro. It got the award for Spatial Computing. Thanks
so much for joining me.

Speaker 6 (53:39):
Thanks so much. This is so cool.

Speaker 2 (53:41):
So explain what the black Box game is?

Speaker 10 (53:46):
Yeah, it depends where you're talking about it. It started
as a game for iOS collection of over forty now
over eighty puzzles that don't involve touching the screen and
has sort of evolved to the Vision Os to be
this spatial concept of puzzles that kind of enter the
room and you have to sort of take your curiosity

(54:08):
and figure out how to solve them.

Speaker 1 (54:10):
So what made you come up with this game? Because
you said you've been doing it for this came out
many years ago ocasionally.

Speaker 6 (54:17):
Yeah, over eight years now, okay.

Speaker 1 (54:18):
So what were you doing and then all of a
sudden you said, okay, I'm making this game.

Speaker 10 (54:23):
I think there was a long period of getting frustrated
kind of how it felt to me that people weren't
taking advantage of the full potential of iPhone iPad and
using the full context sensor platform that was there. There's
so much there to kind of understand your world and
make better experiences based on that, not just something that
can exist under any slab of multi touch glass, so

(54:44):
to speak.

Speaker 1 (54:45):
So it's a game that takes advantage of the different
sensors and things on the iPhone. Explain that a little bit,
because it's kind of tough to it is. When you
see it, you understand, but when you're visually representing it,
it's tough. It's like you might turn your phone on
its side and that might solve.

Speaker 6 (54:59):
A yeah, exactly.

Speaker 10 (55:01):
It really tries to turn things on its head immediately,
Like touching the screen is kind of discouraged and sends
you back to the main menu.

Speaker 6 (55:07):
Right, So it's really.

Speaker 10 (55:10):
The goal is to get people thinking outside the phone
and in their world. Whether that sends you on a
hike or sends you looking for a musical instrument, it's
really all over the place. But to get people thinking
really critically. There isn't just something that you learn as
a skill like an arcade game and get good at.
Once you solve one, the next one is completely different,

(55:32):
and people are better and worse at different ones. It's
really interesting. We're all very different in that way.

Speaker 1 (55:39):
How many games did you launch with on the iPhone
and how many are you up to?

Speaker 10 (55:43):
I think I launched with somewhere around forty two and
now it's up to eighty one at eight years later.

Speaker 6 (55:49):
Yeah, twelve million players.

Speaker 10 (55:50):
Now it's kind of has a cult viral status. Certain
people have done a lot of crazy things trying to
play Black Box.

Speaker 1 (55:57):
So you had this idea in your head, you did it,
and you had twelve million people play your idea. How
does that make you feel?

Speaker 6 (56:05):
It's wild?

Speaker 10 (56:05):
Yeah, it's it's I get so many stories constantly from
people and the places that's taken them, and it's yeah,
it's just a privilege. It's fun to share something that
I wanted to play and wanted to exist, and to
see that touch so many other people that feel the
same way.

Speaker 1 (56:24):
Who do you think this type of game appeals to.

Speaker 10 (56:27):
A lot of people that play it and love it.
Tell me they're like, I don't I don't play games,
but like I love black Box.

Speaker 6 (56:33):
You know.

Speaker 10 (56:33):
It's like, you know, there's nothing wrong with being a game,
But I think.

Speaker 6 (56:39):
The kind of person who loves.

Speaker 10 (56:41):
Easter eggs and loves surprises and loves kind of is
curious to check things out and figure out how they
work and take something apart put it back together, or
just someone that likes, you know, the kind of art
that's at a gallery that you want to touch.

Speaker 6 (56:57):
You should be able to touch, but you're not allowed
to here.

Speaker 10 (57:00):
You know, you can't touch the screen, but try everything else,
you know, Lock your phone in a box, put it
under a pillow, go walk outside.

Speaker 1 (57:07):
So you won the award for Spatial Computing. You brought
this to Apple Vision Pro. Yeah, what made you want
to bring into Apple Vision Pro and what was the
new challenge of bringing this type of game to that headset.

Speaker 10 (57:20):
Yeah, I wouldn't even say I brought the game to
the headset, so to speak. I really stripped the concept
down back to its essence, not even on a phone,
and had to grow it back onto this sort of
thing into your space. It was always an interesting idea

(57:40):
to have black Box be more physical, I think, but
there just wasn't the means to do so, so it
had always been kind of reduced to this two D plane.
It was really fun once I had tried vision pro
to think of how would these things exist? And I
really didn't want it to feel like puzzle Box, or

(58:01):
like some sort of puzzle creator had locked you in
a room and you were escaping or something like that.
Those are fine experiences, but I wanted black Box to
be a bit more of like this phenomenon, not like
an alien thing, but kind of this like agnostic.

Speaker 6 (58:15):
Kind of blob something.

Speaker 10 (58:17):
It's not really clear if there's any person involved, so
to speak, and this was the perfect way to do
it once I figured out how we could pull off
the visuals and call together the friends and team to
make it happen.

Speaker 1 (58:30):
So briefly, explain what the game is like Inside Vision Pro. Yeah,
you showed me a little bit earlier. It's kind of
like there's bubbles, there's all kinds of stuff going on.
It's like very mysterious.

Speaker 6 (58:40):
Lots of bubbles.

Speaker 10 (58:41):
I like if you've played Black Box on iOS, you
know there's very little language. I try to get away
from words as quickly as possible. It's the same here.
Starts with kind of this mysterious splash screen. You click
away from that, and then bubbles come in all around
the room and that gets you away from any sort
of menu or this concept that the puzzle is only

(59:02):
in one place, which I think is great because as
you look in over your shoulder a little bit to
see if there's more. These bubbles work if you're in
a living room or an office, or you're outside and
they just kind of float there waiting for you, and
they sort of I.

Speaker 6 (59:14):
Think bubbles just beckon interactivity.

Speaker 10 (59:17):
You want to catch them or poke them, and as
soon as you do that, you're kind of rewarded. And
it might just pop if it's empty, but if it's
a colored bubble that contains a puzzle, then popping it
will cause it to kind of, yeah, wiggle into the
room and become its thing, start responding to you somehow,
or you can do that bubble gesture with your hands
and put it back and choose a new one.

Speaker 1 (59:38):
Now, this idea of augmented reality, virtual reality, mixed reality
is still very new for a lot of people. You
have developed a game for one of the most cutting
edge headsets out there. What do you make of this
emerging technology? Do you think it's going to be a
force in our world?

Speaker 10 (59:56):
Definitely, it's a long road, I think, and it's really
fun to be a part of the very beginning of
it how it will evolve. This is just such a
great platform to get to experiment with on I think
I was always interested in doing this sort of stuff,
but the technology just didn't exist, at least in forms

(01:00:16):
that I felt I could approach, and I didn't know
how to do any of this a little over a
year ago. So it's been fun to have the tools
to sort of build these weird, wacky dreams and then
take off the headset and be confused that that thing.

Speaker 6 (01:00:30):
That you made is not there in the room with you.

Speaker 2 (01:00:33):
Do you get a lot of feedback?

Speaker 1 (01:00:34):
Are like people emailing you like every day, like asking
like for help on this game?

Speaker 6 (01:00:38):
Yes, yes, And what do you do?

Speaker 1 (01:00:41):
You can't reply to all that, can you try?

Speaker 6 (01:00:44):
I try.

Speaker 10 (01:00:44):
I think when I was a kid, I had emailed
some game doves and when they replied it was I
remember all those So I try to reply to all
those emails, even if I'm really coy about it and
won't give an answer, and just you know, a wink,
and well.

Speaker 6 (01:00:59):
You should try a little looking at a different place.

Speaker 1 (01:01:02):
You know, keep playing, keep playing. So what's your advice
for aspiring developers? People always come to me, they say, Rich,
I have an idea for an app. Is it tough
to do this? You did it on your own. Do
you feel like there's enough tools out there and resources
to be able to for the average person to figure
this out?

Speaker 10 (01:01:19):
Yeah, there's I don't think there's ever been more resources
and better time to get started with it.

Speaker 6 (01:01:26):
Yeah, it was.

Speaker 10 (01:01:28):
I'm jealous of people learning now that don't have to
deal with some of the sort of things that I
did coming into this field many, many years ago.

Speaker 6 (01:01:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 10 (01:01:37):
I think just paying attention to what people find they
like in other apps, and what experiences work really well
and what is intriguing to them, and really keeping track
of that and chasing that sort of how I developed
my sense of what I wanted to create and add
more too.

Speaker 1 (01:01:55):
All Right, the app is called black Box. It's available
on the iPhone. Is it on? And then of course
Apple Vision pro so search for it, download it and
enter this world of mystery and see if you can
solve some of these puzzles.

Speaker 2 (01:02:10):
Ryan McCloud, thanks so much for joining me.

Speaker 6 (01:02:12):
Thank you so much. Yeah, keep thinking outside of the bucks.

Speaker 1 (01:02:15):
I'll put a link to the game on the website.
Richon Tech dot TV more rich on Tech coming your
way right after this. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Rich Demiro here talking technology with you. Bad week for
social media and teens. A lot of legislation to kind

(01:02:37):
of curb the use also help teens be on their
cell phones less. So let me talk about three different
things that happen. One in LA, one in New York,
and then one from the Surgeon General. Let's start with
Los Angeles. LA Unified School District wants to vote on
a proposal for student cell phone ban during school hours.

(01:02:58):
This aims to improve learning, reduce bullying, distraction, and anxiety.
If past staff would develop policies within one hundred and
twenty days, including input from experts, staff, students, and parents.
Some of the ideas they're running by including cell phone lockers,
cell phone pouches, or even just technology to block social
media access. If this policy was approved, it would take

(01:03:21):
effect in January of twenty twenty five. While it sounds
like it's a good idea, not everyone is happy about it.
Parents are concerned about safety and communication with their kids
because if their kids didn't have access to their smartphones
all day, a lot of parents use them to get
in touch and also track where they are. Meanwhile, in
New York, they actually enacted enacted a law to protect

(01:03:43):
minors from social media. Governor Hokul signed a bill targeting
addictive feeds and data collection. So two things they did.
Two bills signed into law on June twentieth, the Stop
Addictive Feeds Exploitation for Kids Acts Safe Act and then
the New York Child Data Protection Act. So the Safe

(01:04:05):
for Kids Act requires parental consent for social media companies
to use quote addictive feeds. So already you can see
they turbocharge what they call these things. They're going to
need user parent consent on users under eighteen. It would
also prohibit notifications to minors between midnight and six am

(01:04:26):
without parental consent, and this would take effect one hundred
and eighty days after they figure out how to age
verify kids on these apps. A lot of kids just
lie about their aide, so clearly that will not work.
Violators would face fines of five thousand dollars per infraction.
Then you've got the Child Data Protection Act. This limits
data collection on miners without consent, restricts the sale of

(01:04:49):
miners information. This one does not require age verification. It
will take effect in one year. So a lot of
states looking at these different laws to protect miners from
social media because if left on checked, kids would be
on their phone unlimited amounts of time, unlimited amounts of time.

Speaker 2 (01:05:08):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:05:08):
The Surgeon General meanwhile, did an op ed piece arguing
that we need urgent action to protect the youth's mental
health from social media risks.

Speaker 2 (01:05:20):
Vivic H.

Speaker 1 (01:05:21):
Murphy says adolescents spend over three hours a day on
social media. If they do, they face double the risk
of anxiety and depression. Average social media use for adolescents
was four point eight hours as of last summer. Half
of adolescents say social media negatively impacts their body image,
and he is proposing a Surgeon General's warning on social

(01:05:45):
media platform similar to what they did for cigarettes and
other things. Of course, all of this is debatable. I
think that some kids are very healthy with their social
media use, others are greatly impacted, and then you have
the majority that are probably in between. But I think
what we're seeing here is that left unchecked, these social
media platforms would of course take advantage of these impressionable

(01:06:09):
youth and the fact that we're all on our phones.
It's not just the young kids that are on their
phones all the time. It's just that they're not maybe
as evolved in their brains as an adult to be
able to figure out when to say enough is enough,
just like anything else.

Speaker 2 (01:06:25):
Uh, we'll continue to watch those.

Speaker 1 (01:06:26):
Let's go back to the phone lines triple eight Rich
one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two
four to one zero one. Let's go to line three,
Ron in Laguna Noguel, California. Ron, you are on with
rich Welcome to the show.

Speaker 11 (01:06:41):
Hey, hey you're rich Man. Prosperable information each week. Thanks
so much for you.

Speaker 2 (01:06:47):
Thank you.

Speaker 4 (01:06:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 11 (01:06:48):
Of course, question my question. There are companies out there
that offer up services to delete your name from well
being and Google searches. And I know we can do
it manually, and thanks for your education that way. But

(01:07:09):
are these things useful?

Speaker 2 (01:07:11):
Do they work?

Speaker 11 (01:07:11):
I mean they say they're on an online basis up
per month where they monitor it. What are your thoughts?

Speaker 2 (01:07:21):
Well, my thought is this Number one. Do they work? Yeah,
they might work for some of them.

Speaker 1 (01:07:28):
I've been testing one called Mozilla Monitor to see just
how well these work. And so according to that, this
has auto removed two hundred and nineteen pieces of my
information from the web, including my physical address one hundred
and twenty four times, family members names ninety three times,
phone numbers thirteen times. So yes, they do work. But

(01:07:51):
here is We talked to an expert on this very
show a couple of weeks ago about this, and I
asked him that question because he's all about your information
on the web, mostly when it comes to the dark web,
you know, the really bad stuff. So let's let's put
it this way. Number one, most of the information out
there is your phone number, your address, if they get
that right. All of that stuff is on public records.

(01:08:12):
That's how these companies get it. They put it out
there and someone searches for you and next thing you know,
it says, hey, we've got Rich's address. Do you want
to you know, want to see it? And by the way,
it takes an hour to get to the final page
that shows you the actual address, if it shows you
that at all. So the information is out there. Number one,
Do you need to take it down? That's number two.

(01:08:32):
That's a personal preference. I think if you want your privacy,
it's a game of whack a mole. You can take
this stuff down, like I took two hundred and thirty down.
That does not mean that it's all gone, but I
would say you might want to get it down from
some of the key places. And I did this myself
a couple of years ago. I went to a website
I think it was just delete me. What was it,

(01:08:54):
delete me, delete me DIY. So delete me is one
of these companies that will will do this for you.
But they also have opt out guides on their website
that you can follow for some of these popular websites,
so you can get your information off of you know,
truth Finder and Spokeo and background checks and all these

(01:09:15):
different things. So I did that myself. It takes a
lot of time. It's annoying, but it did work. The thesis
that the expert I talked to was that this information
is not the most useful information. You know, your phone number,
your email, your you know, your your physical address. It's
really the dark web information that you should be concerned

(01:09:36):
about the most. And that's your user name, that's your password,
that's your date of birth, that's your email address, that
is your password for your different websites, your social Security number.
That's the stuff that is much much harder to get
taken down off the web because it's up there by
you know, companies that are not operating in in a

(01:09:57):
you know, reputable area, more of a gray area that
they're operating in, or the dark web in general. So
with all of that said, do I think you should
pay for one of these things. It's up to you
to do you want to pay for it, go ahead
if if you want to try it out and see
what information you can have taken down, try it. But
most of them wants you to do it on a

(01:10:18):
yearly basis or a monthly basis, where they just keep
charging you to get this information down. But again it's
a game of whack a mole. So new information just
pops up every single day, so you'd be doing this forever,
you'd be paying them forever, which obviously is the business
model that everyone really likes. Now, the one thing that
I do recommend that I think is incredible and it
is free, is Google Results about you. And this is

(01:10:41):
completely free. You go in, and I think this is
the more important way to do it. You basically put
in the information that you don't want on Google search results.
Every time Google finds that information in a search result,
it will give you an email and a notification and
will give you the opportunity to take that information off
of Google search results. When I say that, that's the
only thing it takes it off of, but think about it.

(01:11:03):
Ninety nine percent of people just go to Google, they
search your name, they look in those results for your information.
So if the result isn't there, they're probably not going
to go to Spokio or all these other websites that
actually have the data. So it's like a good first
line of defense and it's completely free.

Speaker 2 (01:11:18):
I use it.

Speaker 1 (01:11:18):
I get notifications on a daily basis. Google takes down
that result very quickly and it's gone out of Google,
and it's just a nice easy freeway to get your
information removed once again.

Speaker 2 (01:11:29):
It is called Google Results about you.

Speaker 1 (01:11:32):
I'll put the link on my website rich on Tech
dot TV.

Speaker 2 (01:11:36):
Hit the light bulb coming up.

Speaker 1 (01:11:37):
We've got a special guest plus much more of the
show right here on rich on Tech. Welcome back to
rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you,
talking technology. The website for the show rich on Tech
dot tv. There you can find my newsletter. You can

(01:11:59):
find me on on social media. I am at rich
on Tech. You can email the show by hitting contact,
or just kind of look at the different stories I
do for KTLA and my TV segments, or listen to
the podcast of the radio show.

Speaker 2 (01:12:14):
Thanks for joining me. Glad you're here.

Speaker 1 (01:12:16):
I've actually have a special guest with me. I am
broadcasting live for my parents' basement in New Jersey, no joke,
that's actually where I am. My dad set up the studio.
He was so excited to hang the blankets for the
noise cancelation and run the cables on the floor. He
said he felt like a real Hollywood gaffer. So thank

(01:12:38):
you Dad for doing that. My brother, though, joins me,
he did not do anything except join me here.

Speaker 2 (01:12:44):
To talk technology. Justin DeMuro, welcome to the show.

Speaker 1 (01:12:48):
Thanks for having me on. Oh wait, hang on, let
me get your I gotta actually turn on your mic.
Go ahead, say that again. Justin DeMuro, welcome to the show.

Speaker 2 (01:12:55):
Thanks for having me on.

Speaker 1 (01:12:57):
Okay, there you are. Okay, So I think we have
a little bit more so Justin is just as much
into technology as I am. We are going to be
talking about all of the good stuff that we love
to talk about offline here on the show in just
a moment. First, I just wanted to get through a
couple of notable news pieces this week. So number one,

(01:13:20):
California rejected AT and t's bid to end their landline obligations.

Speaker 2 (01:13:26):
This is according to Ours Technica.

Speaker 1 (01:13:28):
The California Public Utilities Commission rejected AT and t's request
to end its carrier of last result obligation last resort
That means that they were required to keep land lines
up and running in.

Speaker 2 (01:13:41):
These various rural areas.

Speaker 1 (01:13:43):
And they debated with the CPUC saying, you know what,
come on, people have ways of making calls here, and
they said no, they don't. So, according to the CPUC,
AT and T failed to demonstrate the availability of suitable
replacement providers for the service, and the Commission clarified that,
by the way, these rules are technology neutral. They don't

(01:14:04):
prevent AT and T from upgrading these areas to fiber.
So what is AT and T gonna do? They're gonna
lay fiber everywhere?

Speaker 2 (01:14:11):
Just kidding.

Speaker 1 (01:14:11):
No, They're now focusing on lobbying to change the state
law so that they can support legislation that allow it
to remain the Cohler in rural regions but being released
from obligations elsewhere. So if you got a landline, you're
gonna be able to keep it and pay those high
prices for a little bit longer. Amazon eliminating plastic air
pillows in North American shipments, so you know, you get

(01:14:33):
those little plastic like air pillow thingies and your shipments,
they're replacing them with recycled paper. Companies already removed ninety
five percent of plastic cushions. They aim to eliminate the
rest by the end of this year twenty twenty four.
Amazon plans to replace its plastic mailers with paper sleeves.

Speaker 2 (01:14:50):
In the coming months.

Speaker 1 (01:14:51):
I don't know about you, but I'm actually getting things
delivered to my house that are much more like just
in the box or just in like almost like a
clear plastic wrapping, like you can see what's inside. By
the way, if you want to reach a person quickly,
like a real person at Amazon Customer Service quickly, life
Hacker has the way, you can bypass all of their
automated systems and speak directly with an Amazon representative. All

(01:15:13):
you have to do is visit Amazon's contact us page,
select something else, choose I need more help, and in
the customer service chat that pops up, type in request
a phone call, and then select Okay, I'll enter my
phone number. They will call you. And yes, I've done
this before. They do actually have real people that will

(01:15:33):
call you. My advice is this, do not google search
an Amazon customer service phone number. You will get scammed.
Whatever the result you see may or may not be
a real phone number, So be very careful with any company,
not just Amazon. But if you're googling for a phone number,
make sure that phone number is originating from the official
web page and not some random thing that pops up

(01:15:56):
and you call it. And before we get to my brother,
let me just mention this. A Tesla battery died in
Arizona and a toddler was inside and it was like,
you know, the car was hot. And so the takeaway
from this adults might know how to use the manual
door releases inside these cars, but younger people cannot. So

(01:16:17):
this Tesla lost power. It trapped a twenty month through
twenty month toddler inside the hot car. Firefighters had to
break the car's window to rescue the child. Again, all
of these cars had these electronic door releases, and people
are unaware that there is a manual release mechanism. So
if you have an electric car and you've got these

(01:16:37):
doors that are electronic, figure out where the mechanical release
is and make sure you tell anyone who's in the
car with you where those releases are, because you never
know when you're gonna need them.

Speaker 2 (01:16:48):
Now, this is not just a Tesla problem.

Speaker 1 (01:16:50):
A lot of these new fangled cars are using these
push button doors and all these electronic doors, so know
where they are. In fact, when I was at the
Chicago Auto Show, I asked the Tesla rep because I
was in the car, and I said, Hey, how do
I open this car if I'm like falling into a lake?
You know, if I'm like the car is like falling
into water, Like, how would I open this door?

Speaker 2 (01:17:11):
Because it's all electronic, isn't it gonna short circuit?

Speaker 1 (01:17:13):
And they said, yeah, there's a little pull latch on
the door, so familiarize yourself with where it is.

Speaker 2 (01:17:18):
Yeah, all right, so welcome to the show. Justin Demiro.

Speaker 1 (01:17:21):
This is my brother, and Justin's a tech person as well.
So why your love of technology? Yeah, I think it
actually comes from you. You always had the computers growing up,
and I just started tinkering around with them and just
grew up loving them as well, playing video games and
getting into coding and eventually went to school for it.

(01:17:42):
So I've always loved technology. So you're much nerdier than
you're like, you're much more into tech. It's funny I
do a tech radio show in a TV segment, but
you're actually nerdier, probably smarter, and know more about this
stuff in your house. Like he's got his whole house
set up with like all these Google like routines and
they all have like the nerdiest names, like don't you say,
like okay computer and all this weird stuff. Yeah, I

(01:18:03):
give I give all of my smart devices cute little
names like like bed you and Jamo and Fie, they're
all just I got tired of saying living room lights.

Speaker 2 (01:18:14):
You know, yeah, see that's nerdy. I love it.

Speaker 1 (01:18:16):
And you're also an Android guy, So what makes you
keep Android all these years? When the you know that
that rush of that wave of iPhone, like everyone is like, hey,
share that picture, air drop it to me, and you're like,
I can't, Like, what makes you still stick to Android?
What do you love about it? That's the worst I've
I've lost so many dates because of that.

Speaker 2 (01:18:35):
No Android, I mean.

Speaker 1 (01:18:38):
It's just it's so flexible. I've I've never been able
to not do what I need to do other than
synergize with other iPhone users. So it's it just does
everything I need to do. There's I know, back when
they first came out, iPhone had the advantage and they
had all the apps, and you go look on Android,
they're like, yeah, we don't have an app or it's

(01:18:59):
like some weird, like shady app that like is definitely
not is like a virus or something. Yeah, but yeah,
they've polished up over the years. I mean, I have
a pixel and it's great. I mean it does everything
I needed to do. It's got great battery life. The
pictures aren't incredible. It just does everything I need to do,
and it's out of my way. I've used iPhones before,

(01:19:20):
and I'm not really a fan personally, but you know,
to each his own, they get to they get the
job done.

Speaker 2 (01:19:25):
Okay, let's talk about this story.

Speaker 1 (01:19:28):
So I lent my my knowledge to this KTLA story
on the vinyl revival, a resurgence of analog and a
digital age. So vinyl record sales continue to climb, which
makes no sense in today's streaming world. But I said,
it does kind of make sense. I said, you know,
number one, people want their ownership and control over music, right,

(01:19:50):
you don't get that with streaming. That's not a huge reason,
but it's kind of you know, it's one of them.
The tangible, collectible nature of vinyl records I think people
really like, and the nostalgia factor and sensory experience is
also I think what people really like. Plus it's simple
and you can focus on it. Now. I went to
your house this weekend. You have a record player, and

(01:20:10):
I was impressed by that. So what do you like
about the record player? Why do you have one? Yeah,
we actually use it. It's not just there for show.

Speaker 6 (01:20:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:20:19):
I bought it for my girlfriend for I don't know,
some some gift at some point, and you know, because
she has a collection of records, but I wanted her
to actually play them and I thought it would be cool,
and I didn't realize I would like it as much
as I do. I mean, most of the time you
want to play music, you go on your phone, you
open up Spotify or a music streaming app, and you

(01:20:39):
just hit play and then it plays forever. With this,
it's it's a bit more of a a conscious experience.
You're you're selecting the music. Like when we go to
play a record, we're talking to each other and saying, hey,
what do you want to play? We have this pile
of records that mostly that we stole from my parents' house,
so they're records. Yeah, but we also have new records.

(01:21:02):
I mean she has several Taylor Swift albums. I just
bought two records the other day from a concert that
I went to, and it's great playing them. I mean
you get that tactle experience with it. I will say,
something you don't realize is how short a record is. Yeah,
it's like what twenty minutes aside or forty minutes aside

(01:21:24):
forty five that yeah, yeah, it's only it's like it's
maybe like ten songs max. And that goes by quickly,
you don't even realize it. But again, that goes back
to what you were saying about that kind of like
you're you're focused on it, like it's you understand, Like
you know, you play music on a streaming service.

Speaker 2 (01:21:39):
It just plays forever and ever and ever.

Speaker 1 (01:21:41):
You can just leave it on for the entire weekend
and never and you one might not even know a
song that plays in the background. Sure with the record
you're placing it there. So I asked my Facebook page
Facebook dot com slash rich on tech what they like
about records. The commenters came in Number one, nostalgia and tangibility.

Speaker 2 (01:21:56):
That's what people like. Number one.

Speaker 1 (01:21:58):
Number two sound quality, you know, they like they think
it's superior compared to digital formats, which may or may
not be true. It may just sound richer. Perhaps, I
guess the convenience of streaming. People do like that.

Speaker 2 (01:22:11):
They do acknowledge the fact that streaming is more convenient.

Speaker 1 (01:22:14):
For sure. Sure, coexistence people say, hey, look, both of
these things can exist at the same time, and you're
you're saying that as well.

Speaker 2 (01:22:22):
Generational differences.

Speaker 1 (01:22:23):
People say older listeners, the older listeners say they preferred vinyl,
the younger listeners say they're exploring the formats you've got,
you know, one two there. Some people said that there's
concerns about vinyls, you know, longevity when it comes to
like how fragile the records are. Have you scratched one?
I mean, I'm playing records that our parents had from

(01:22:44):
they're probably from the seventies, and they still work. You know,
you might get a couple of skips here and there,
but that's part of the charm of the medium. I mean,
you don't think about music skipping these days at all,
but that used to be a very real thing that
we had to deal with, Like just CD players, remember
they had to the anti shock feature on portable on
like Walkman's Yeah, and that never worked, never worked. No,

(01:23:07):
it was always skipping. I remember running with a with
a Walkman and it was just it just was not
a perfect thing. All right, we're gonna take a break.
You're talking, and you're hearing from me Rich Demiro and
my brother Justin DeMuro. We are talking technology. We're going
to answer some emails that we got. Plus we've got
an interview with the co founder of text Now and

(01:23:28):
later on. It's the feedback Everyone's favorite. We'll be right
back here on rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich
on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology.
The website for the show rich on Tech dot TV.

(01:23:48):
If you need a link to something I mentioned, hit
the light bulb. If you want to get in touch
with the show, just hit contact. Sitting here with my brother,
Justin DeMuro, Justin, Welcome.

Speaker 2 (01:23:58):
To the show once again.

Speaker 1 (01:23:59):
Thanks again. So we have a bunch of emails that
you have sent in and we're going to talk about
some of these. So go ahead with the first email. Yes,
so we got one from Al from New Mexico rights in.
Is there a reason that you rarely speak about open
source Linux in general? We all report would frequently talk
about its benefits. I'm currently retired and live in a

(01:24:20):
community with other retired folks, some of whom I've converted
to Linux. Though not an expert, I have about twenty
years experience with telemetry and other security and privacy issues
that plague both Windows and Apple. I believe open source
is the better option. Unless one must use specific software
for certain business applications. Your thoughts, uh, well, I will

(01:24:42):
tell you my thoughts and I'll talk. I'll defer to
you because I know you're much more linuxy than I am.
So my thought is that this show is for the
average person. And in my twenty plus years of experience
covering technology, I don't know if it's been that long,
maybe it's been a little bit less. Maybe well being
in technology obviously, I've used technology myself, so I'm aware

(01:25:04):
of it. I understand it to a certain extent, but
it's just not what I'm seeing the average person using,
nor am I pushing it to the average person. Now
when it comes to open source and my big thing,
I do love open source stuff. I think it's open
source software is incredible. I think third party software is incredible,
like software that runs on all platforms.

Speaker 2 (01:25:26):
So if you listen to this show, you know I.

Speaker 1 (01:25:28):
Give Apple a hard time because Apple stuff is great,
but it's very much proprietary to Apple, and most other
tech companies in the world are working to unite the
world with software that works everywhere, and you know, the
Internet itself. If you think, can you imagine if you
went on a website that just didn't work on a
computer because it wasn't you know, a certain type of computer.
Or you plugged in a phone to an old school

(01:25:50):
like you know, Jack and it just didn't work because
it wasn't the right kind of phone, you know. So
that's the kind of stuff that I do understand. But
I don't think the average person to me is looking
to use Linux or adopt it in a big way.
I have nothing against it, justin what do you say? Yeah,
so I have used Linux a lot. I use it professionally.

(01:26:13):
Linux as a desktop, which is sounds like what you're
talking about is is a thing, right. I Mean, there's
Ubuntu and Linux Mint, and they have they have really
user friendly interfaces and they're completely free, but there is
still a level of technical aptitude that you need in
order to run these even though they're they're very user friendly,

(01:26:36):
So which is great. I mean, that's that's what I
started using years ago when I was working at a
web design place. Uh. They they got me working on Linux,
and I just I was like, you know what, I'm
going full in. I uninstalled Windows from my laptop and
I installed Ubuntu and I didn't stop configuring it for

(01:26:56):
the entire time I worked there, and that's the fun
of it. That is the fun of it. Sure, it
kind of like reminds you of Android. When I was
putting like ROMs on my phone, It's like I was
ever happy with it. I just kept like tweaking and
tweaking and tweaking. And I think that's what people like
about the Apple side of things, is that you don't
have to think about that stuff like Apple thinks about
it all for you. So I think that there's a
world that exists where these things can work and they

(01:27:17):
can happen. But like at the end of the day,
my show, what I do on TV, what I do
on the radio is trying to reach an average person
of average aptitude, that is just trying to get things
at work. And if it doesn't, you know, they're gonna
come emailing me more.

Speaker 2 (01:27:32):
So thank you. Next question. Let's go to the next question.

Speaker 1 (01:27:35):
Sure. So we have Kim from Kay Smith Interiors and
she writes in saying, Hi, Rich, love your show. I'm
writing on behalf of my boss. At the end of
most jobs we have professional photography done. Some are posted
on How's Yeah that's how website. I've stumbled upon that site.
Before this week we found a photo of our client's

(01:27:56):
entry on Amazon. They're selling several chandeliers using our clients
entryway photo with different light fixtures photoshopped in how do
we have Do we have any recourse here? Given this
exact photo was on How's Thank You in advance? Good question,
of course, this is the web. People take stuff all
the time. It is tough. We're seeing this with AI

(01:28:19):
where it's just grabbing, you know, photos on the web
and using it to regurgitate new photos. So I think
it's again a game of whack a mole, like I
mentioned with the data stuff. But it is Amazon. It
is a company that's selling stuff, and nobody should be
taking your photo without your permission. So if you look
on an Amazon product listing, there is a tiny link
that says report an issue with this product or seller.

(01:28:42):
Use the control F on your computer find report this
reporting issue, click that link and then say, hey, look
this is my picture. Why is this listing using my picture?
And it's probably some third party listing that's just you know,
grabbing stuff off the web and using it. So that's
the best you can do. But yeah, if you put
it on the web, chances are someone's going to steal

(01:29:03):
it and use it for their own good Yeah, and
I think I think I'll come up against the break
Yeah yeah, yeah, like ten seconds.

Speaker 2 (01:29:10):
Sure.

Speaker 1 (01:29:10):
Something else that might help is adding a water mark.
So add a watermark to your images to help track
them down a little bit.

Speaker 2 (01:29:17):
All right, good advice.

Speaker 1 (01:29:18):
All right, coming up, we're going to talk to you
Derek Ting, co founder and CEO of text Now. This
is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich On Tech.
Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology. Joining
me now, Derek Ting, CEO and co founder of text Now.

Speaker 2 (01:29:36):
Derek, thanks so much for joining me.

Speaker 12 (01:29:38):
Thanks for having me Rich.

Speaker 1 (01:29:40):
Well, I'm very excited to talk to you because text
now has a new free Essential Data plan which lets
you get free essential data on your smartphone. But first,
before we get to that, just explain to me what
text now is all about.

Speaker 5 (01:29:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 12 (01:29:55):
Text now is about free phone service through an app.
So we created a free phone service where you can
go to the app store, Play Store, search for text Now,
you down or app and in a few simple steps
you get a free phone line that's ad supported, and

(01:30:17):
then if you pay five dollars for a SIM card,
we ship a sim car to your door, and then
the app will also work without Wi Fi and get
nationwide five D coverage.

Speaker 2 (01:30:29):
It's like two levels.

Speaker 1 (01:30:30):
The first is you could just download the app, get
a free phone number, text with friends and family, make
phone calls. Or you can pay that five dollars to
get a physical sim that you can put in your
phone and actually kind of unlock some more features, which
is free calling and texting and also some other stuff,
but through you know, a five G network like a
regular cellular plan, but minus the monthly fee exactly exactly.

Speaker 12 (01:30:54):
And then our goal isn't to just be another app
on your phone, like our goal is to help people
cut the cord from their expensive wireless carrier and not
have to pay high monthly phone bills. That's where that's
the aim of our service.

Speaker 2 (01:31:14):
So how'd you come up with this? What made you
create text Now?

Speaker 6 (01:31:17):
It started when we.

Speaker 5 (01:31:18):
Were in college.

Speaker 12 (01:31:20):
I got tired of paying AT and T twenty bucks
a month for calling, twenty bucks a month for data,
and then another twenty bucks a month for texting. So
actually started from a pet project in college where we
want to make an app to make texting free. We

(01:31:40):
didn't want to pay for texting, and then what we
realized was a lot of people use their app not
just to make texting free, but they were actually using
our app instead of paying for phone service. So then
that got us obsessed with the idea of how can
we figure out how to make phone service free? And
then it's snowball from there and so ever since then

(01:32:01):
we've made texting free, but we also figure out how
to make calling free, and then now we've made a
free data plan.

Speaker 1 (01:32:10):
What's the catch, you say, ad supported, What does that
mean exactly?

Speaker 12 (01:32:14):
Yeah, so there's no catch, but it's a little different
from the traditional wireless plan model. So we are phone
service through an app. So think of us as any
other free internet service that you use, like Facebook or
Spotify or YouTube where you see some ads in the app.

(01:32:39):
So we deliver phone service through an apps instead of
going to a phone store and waiting for an hour
for them to get your phone working. We're phone service
through an app. So you download our app and then
you get phone service from the app. What that means
is you text through app, you call through her app,

(01:33:00):
and then while you do that, there are some ads
in the experience, but they're not intrusive. At all, and
then we get advertisers to sponsor the free service and
that helps people save money.

Speaker 2 (01:33:17):
So let's talk about this new plan.

Speaker 1 (01:33:19):
This is free essential data, and so can you explain
what that plan is? So you get the simcard for
your phone. I've tried this. I popped it into my phone,
download the app. It finds a five G signal, and
of course you can make your calls, you can do
the text just like you could regularly. But now you're
also adding some free data into the mix that you

(01:33:40):
can use for certain apps.

Speaker 2 (01:33:42):
Explain that part.

Speaker 6 (01:33:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 12 (01:33:43):
The idea is that we want to give people maximum
flexibility and more ways for them to save money from
their phone bill. And then so we identified these apps
that people use a lot that we can afford to
give for free. So then we create a free data

(01:34:05):
plan where you could just use the essential apps and
it's free. So it's email, it's maps, it's transportation. We're
able to figure out how to make those apps like
free and like a free data plan, so then we
so then when you can't pay, you still have these

(01:34:26):
apps you can use when you're on the go, and
then when you can pay, you can upgrade to the
full data plan. But the idea is you don't have
to pay for what you don't need. And also if
you are in a tight financial situation, you still have
phone service. It's reliable and you can access all the

(01:34:46):
essential things you need to get access to.

Speaker 1 (01:34:49):
So if I'm paying, if I paid that five dollars
to get the simcard, I would have access to free calling,
free texting. I could also check my email wherever I am.
I could check Google Maps wherever I am. I could
get an uber if I needed it, or you know,
and those are just example apps. You do have various
apps in those categories like you mentioned. And then of

(01:35:10):
course I can connect to Wi Fi to get data,
you know, if I'm out and about. But you also
have these kind of data one off plans where you
can get data for an hour, you can get data
for a day, you can get data for a month.

Speaker 12 (01:35:23):
What we do know what's common with most people is
there and Wi Fi most of the time, and then
they're paying for these expensive data plans when they don't
need to, and we're able to help them save a
lot of money.

Speaker 2 (01:35:32):
How long have you been doing this with text now.

Speaker 12 (01:35:35):
We've been doing it since I was in college. So
twenty ten. We've been at it for a while. Yeah,
what's really exciting is that we started off what's the
simple goal of just not having to pay for texting,
and then now we're at a point where like text
now can replace your entire phone plan, you don't need to.

Speaker 4 (01:35:55):
Pay for a phone plan.

Speaker 12 (01:35:57):
And every day goes on, we're adding more to our
free service, and we envision a future where just the
free service just keeps getting better and better. And then
there's we're like the only phone company that's trying to
find ways to charge people less, not find ways to
charge people more. And that's exciting because we're approaching a

(01:36:18):
future where phone service can be completely this thing that
no one has to pay for, and that's very exciting.

Speaker 2 (01:36:25):
So who do you think your service is for.

Speaker 12 (01:36:27):
It's for consumers, it's for small businesses that don't want
to overpay for phone service that definitely have better use
for their money besides over paying for phone service. And
the average household spends two k a year on phone service,

(01:36:48):
which is a lot of money. And if we can
help families put more money in their pocket, ninety nine
percent of them have some better use for it that
benefit their family.

Speaker 1 (01:37:00):
So tell me about some of these add on costs.
Because we talked about the data plans. I also noticed
inside the app, you know, you can park your phone
number for a couple extra bucks. You can receive you know,
one time authorization codes like two factor authentication codes like
are there any limitations that you think people should be
aware of and the fees that people should be aware
of before they get into this.

Speaker 12 (01:37:21):
Yeah, we try to make it as simple as possible.
We have our free tier, which is like you get
always free tier, always get free talk through text, free
Central Data. And then we do have some Alkhart options
in case people don't want to pay the bundles, they
can do things alakarte. So we have options for people

(01:37:43):
to lock in their number. For example, on the free service,
if you don't use your number for a month, then
we have to give the phone number to someone else.
But if you pay five bucks, we can lock in
your numbers. So these are examples of some ala Caharte
things people can can buy. And then also if we
don't like ads, there's option to remove ads for ten

(01:38:06):
bucks a month, and then more and more more more
more commonly, if the free Central Data plan you need
more than the free Central Data plan. You can get
these data passes. So for an hour is a dollar.
For a day it's five dollars. And then we offer
an unlimited data plan for forty bucks a month if

(01:38:27):
you want unlimited for the whole month.

Speaker 2 (01:38:28):
Can you give me an idea of how many people
are using the service?

Speaker 12 (01:38:31):
Yeah, we have over ten million unique visitors, unique customers
that use text now a month, and then in the
given day, we have over two million unique people that
use text Now.

Speaker 1 (01:38:46):
Direkting of text now dot com, thanks so much for
joining me today.

Speaker 12 (01:38:51):
Thanks so much for having me Rich. Pleasure talking to you.

Speaker 2 (01:38:54):
Really appreciate it. You can find a link to text
now on my website. Just go to rich on Tech
dot TV. Rich on Tech coming your way right after this.

Speaker 1 (01:39:17):
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging
out with you, talking technology. Closing out the show. Three
hours always go by so fast. We've been playing New
Jersey music all show long to celebrate the fact that, yes,
I have been visiting New Jersey, hanging out friends and
family and also New York City. One of the best
things I did when I went to New York City

(01:39:38):
was dragging my family.

Speaker 2 (01:39:40):
To a hot dog cart. They did not want to go.
But I found.

Speaker 1 (01:39:44):
This this YouTube where I like that does all the
New York City stuff here. We bar definitely follow him.
He mentioned that he likes this guy up on ninety
third in Central Park West. He's been there for thirty
years selling these can I say dirty water dog? Is
that like a mean thing to say? That's just makes
it sound better. Greek immigrant and the guy we went

(01:40:04):
up there. My family did not want to go on
the subway and ride all the way up there, and
I said.

Speaker 2 (01:40:09):
Let's just go. Let's just go. We get there.

Speaker 1 (01:40:11):
It was the best experience of New York City. The
guy was so nice. Billy's called Billy's Dogs, and the
experience was just great.

Speaker 2 (01:40:21):
And the dogs, by the way, two bucks.

Speaker 1 (01:40:24):
Anything for two dollars nothing, that's that's my brother justin.
By the way, James rode in and said on the
radio program today, your brother sounds just like you. As
I listen, I cannot differentiate between the two voices. Just
a fun little fact from Jim and Dana point. William
rode in while we talked about Android versus iPhone. He said,
I would love to know why you your brother and

(01:40:46):
others feel it's okay to use an Android operating system
products that was basically started by theft from Apple. I
don't patronize any company who steals, and you shouldn't neither.
I don't know if I agree with that. I think
what they steal exactly, I don't know. I'm not really
sure I think that. Yeah, everything's in iteration anyway. All right,

(01:41:07):
let's get to one more question before we have to
close out the show with the feedback segment. Oh right,
So we have Terry who wrote in saying, I'm just
your average seventy four year old lady who loves to
dabble in doodle. I have the newest iPad pro and
an Apple Pencil Pro. Can you recommend a good free
sketching drawing app with the ability to attach photos and

(01:41:27):
other graphics? She tried using free Form but found it
unfriendly and can't find a way to save as JPEG
only PDF files, So thanks in advance. Okay, she said free,
which is the key word. Everyone wants everything for free.
And I understand that, Terry, because you're just dabbling, right.
But I just did a segment with Apple about their
Apple Camp for Kids, and they were using Pages, which

(01:41:50):
is something I would like never think to use on
an iPad because I generally just delete all those programs.

Speaker 2 (01:41:55):
But it does.

Speaker 1 (01:41:56):
Exactly what you want. It works with the Apple pencil,
works on the iPad. You can attach photos, you can
attach graphics. I assume you can export as a JPEG.
I mean I would assume that. I think that's gonna
work one hundred percent for free. So download Apple Pages
and try it out. The other two apps I recommend
Sketchbook and pro Create. Sketchbook might have like a freemium

(01:42:18):
version of it, and pro Create, I know, is a
one time fee, but a lot of people love pro Create.
It might be too much for what you need, justin
what do you think? Yeah, I use something on my computer.
I don't know. I'm not sure if this is actually
supported on iPad, but it's called photop dot com Photo
p EA, and it's a Photoshop clone. It looks just

(01:42:42):
like Photoshop. You can do everything you can do with
that you can do in Photoshop in this app. It's great.
Definitely check it out. And if you can't sketch with it,
which I believe you can, you can certainly go ahead
and edit your sketches and add embellishments to them. So
check that out. Okay, wow, that looks like how do
you know it's not called photo pia?

Speaker 6 (01:43:04):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:43:04):
I'm not sure.

Speaker 1 (01:43:05):
Actually okay, I was calling it that for a while
and then someone said photo pi, So I don't know.
Try out. Vincent into Hunga, California, wrote in and said,
my friend has a hard time reading his text messages.
Is there any way for the phone to read them
out loud for him? He has an Android? Uh yes,
there is a feature, an accessibility feature called select to Speak.

Speaker 2 (01:43:24):
Did you know about this? I did not.

Speaker 1 (01:43:26):
I'm telling you if you look in the accessibility section
of the settings on your on your phone iPhone or Android,
there are so many hidden features that can help you
use your phone, especially if you have any sort of
you know, a varying ability. This one's a really great one.
So I tried it on Android. Works perfectly. Once you
turn it on, you tap anything on your screen and
it will just read it out loud to you. And
it's really good to get. Yeah, it's called select to Speak.

(01:43:50):
All right, Do you have one more before we get
to the feedback?

Speaker 5 (01:43:52):
Uh?

Speaker 2 (01:43:52):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:43:53):
Yeah? So Sam from Fort Collins Colorado rights in I've
I've had Yahoo forever, and I'm glad to here they're
doing some updating. I receive many spam emails every day,
mostly most recently offering free awards that require completing surveys.
He's tried unsubscribing from each one, which takes forever, and

(01:44:13):
he recently started blocking emails. Is there a better way
to get rid of all these spam emails?

Speaker 2 (01:44:18):
All right, I'll let you go first.

Speaker 1 (01:44:19):
What do you think? So my number one thing is
to switch to Gmail if you can.

Speaker 2 (01:44:24):
Okay, he doesn't want to do that.

Speaker 1 (01:44:25):
I guarantee you sure you get all of his emails
in Yahoo. Yeah, and I totally understand that. I get it.
There's something you could do called plus addressing, which is
a lot of times when you sign up for something,
you make a new account somewhere, they sell your data,
which includes your email address, to advertisers, and then you
start getting spam emails. If you add a plus symbol

(01:44:46):
at the end of your address, like say it's sam
plus website at yahoo dot com, you will see that
when you get all these emails coming to you from
that plus address, you'll see where you wrote it from.
So it's definitely. That's something that I use for almost
every website right now, and you can see if any
spam is coming from a website that you signed up for. Now,

(01:45:07):
I'm looking at some support online. I don't know if
Yahoo supports the plus, so be sure to check to
see if your email provider supports it, but they might
also they might also support temporary email addresses, so if
you just need there's also a website. I think it's
called ten Minute Mail. Have you heard of that one?
So ten minute Mail. You go to this website and

(01:45:29):
it basically gives you a ten minute email address, so
you can go on there and it gives you this
random email address and basically once you do that, let's
see here, you've got a countdown of ten minutes, and
you see this email address, just some random email address.
You can put that in and then the email that
you get will arrive on the website. So if you

(01:45:50):
just want to sign up, I also use duck dot com,
so I've I guess I can say that the email
I have I don't know if I should say it,
but I have an email address at duck dot com.
You can put that in there and that it's another
kind of temporary disposable email address. My rule of thumb
when it comes to spam, unsubscribe to anything, be brutal anything.
Let's say you just signed up for like home Details,

(01:46:10):
home depots, ten ten percent off or whatever. Right, just
as soon as you get that coupon, unsubscribed. Scribe legitimate emails,
you can unsubscribe. It's the emails that come in as spam.
Do not open them, do not unsubscribe, do not click
any links, delete them immediately. All right, let's get back.
Let's get to the feedback. This is your feedback plus
the mail bag. Susan from California rights in, we watch

(01:46:32):
you every day on TV. You're so informed and seem
to be a really nice guy. Where your grandparents' age?
So we need trustworthy information. Thank you, Susan. Natalie writes,
love your TV segments, but they're often too short. I'm
subscribed to the website. A friend ask chat GBT to
write a song about being human. I'll figure out a
way to send the lyrics to you. Crazy interesting as expected.

(01:46:53):
Steve writes in I learn from you when I listen
on the radio and when I read your emails. I'm
not a Channel five watch, but I do record your
appearances on my DVR. And finally, a listener writes in,
I am an older person trying to keep up with
your ever changing tech information. Your TV and radio segments
keep me in the loop and knowledgeable. You always provide clear,

(01:47:14):
easy to understand, and learner friendly information that I can
actually use. Your enthusiasm for tech and problem solving keeps
me interested in sharing what I learned. I wish you
wrote a name in because I'd love to thank you.
But thank you Justin, thanks for being on, Thanks for
having me. That's my brother, Justin Demiro. That's going to
do it for this episode of the show. You can
find links to everything I mentioned on my website. Just

(01:47:34):
go to rich on tech dot TV. You can find
me on social media. I am at rich on Tech.
Next week I'll take you to Vigcon twenty twenty four
that's happening in Anaheim. Thank you so much for listening.
There are so many ways you can spend your time.
I really appreciate you spending it right here with me.
Thanks to everyone who makes this show possible, especially complex
remote shows like this, Kim Bobo, the engineers, everyone, Justin,

(01:47:58):
thanks for joining me.

Speaker 2 (01:48:00):
My name is rich Darmiro. Talk to you real soon.

Speaker 1 (01:48:01):
Justin I'll give you the last words.

Speaker 2 (01:48:04):
Did you have fun.

Speaker 1 (01:48:05):
I had a great time. Thanks for having me on.
All right, We'll see you next week.

Speaker 3 (01:48:10):
Mhm

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Rich DeMuro

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