Rich On Tech Radio Show 003 - January 21, 2023 - Rich On Tech

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Apple surprises us with new laptops and a new home pod.
Amazon makes customers frown with its latest move. Why you
should change this setting on your password manager? Plus your
tech questions answered. What's going on? I'm Rich Demiro and
this is Rich on Tech. This show where I talk
about the tech stuff I think you should know about.

(00:21):
It's also the place where I answer the questions that
you ask me. I'm the tech reporter at KTLA Channel
five in Los Angeles. And if it's your first time
tuning in for a while, yes, I've taken over for
Leo Laporte, who has retired from radio. This is a
brand new show. Thanks so much for tuning in and listening.
All right, So this show is going to be packed

(00:42):
with useful news, tech tips, reviews, cool new apps and websites,
plus interviews and information to keep you safe and productive. Online.
Phone lines are open. The phone number to call is
one eight eight eight Rich one oh one. That's one
eight eight eight seven four.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
To two four to one zero one.

Speaker 1 (01:03):
You want to talk to me, We've got a couple
hours to do that right here. Saw a story this
week about gen z. These are young adults that were
born anywhere between the late nineteen nineties to the early
twenty tens. Apparently they are turning to flip phones. So
I know that we hear stories over and over about,

(01:25):
you know, different kind of trends that we see with
the young people and technology and how they reject some
of the new stuff in favor of the old stuff.
This was both on The Today Show and CNN, and
the bottom line is, you know what's happening here. They're
sick and tired of their smartphones consuming them. Have you
ever waited in a line anywhere, like at Starbucks or yesterday,

(01:46):
I was waiting for a pizza I was picking up,
and my initial reaction while I'm waiting for this pizza
is to just look at my phone and to just
sit there and you know, scroll Instagram, scroll Facebook, scroll Twitter.

Speaker 2 (01:59):
And I sat there.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
It's one of these pizza places that has like all
the photos on the wall and stuff, you know, of
the old celebrities that came in there, and the movie
posters and old pictures of New York City. I was like,
what am I doing? Let me look at some of
this stuff in this restaurant. You know, they put this
stuff up for a reason. And so I put my
phone away and it was really tough. It's not easy.

(02:20):
But this is what's leading these young people to put
away their phones. They just want their smartphone to be
quiet again. So they're picking up phones like the Nokia
twenty seven to eighty flip phone, a phone that just
does camera, texting and calls, all the basics you need.
They want to be present with each other. In the

(02:40):
CNN article, they quoted Camilla Cabello, the singer. She said,
I'm team flip phone Revolution, and then actress Dove Cameron,
who is on the Disney Channel show Livin Maddie, said
she switched to a flip phone. Spending too much time
on the phone and looking at social media is quote
really bad for me. She said, I found I went

(03:01):
through my tech closet and I found an old flip
phone that I had tested a while back from Alcatel
and it's the Go Flip and I charged it up
last night and just has this reassuring you know that
sound like that when you close it. Remember when you
were done with a phone conversation, you just close the

(03:22):
phone and you knew it was over. Now, when people
hang up, I don't even know they're still there. Because
I look at my phone, I still see the little
waves at the top of my phone, so I never
know if they're still there or not. But this is
the trend because here's the thing. Technology has made our
lives easier, but it also has made our lives a
bit more complicated. For instance, I was booking a flight

(03:44):
to go home from New Jersey, and I was booking
a flight to go home with my kid, just me
and him, kind of like some you know, father son
bonding time. See my family back east. There are no
less than five seating areas you can choose from on
a United Airlines plane, Basic Economy, Economy, Preferred Economy, Economy Plus,
Premium Plus, and Business Class. Now, as much as my

(04:07):
kid was saying, hey he wanted that live flat seat,
I don't think we're doing that one. But each one
of these seating areas comes with their own rules and
restrictions and price. There's entire industries built around where to
sit on a plane. Have you looked at the website
like seat Guru. I mean, before I book any flight,
I'm sitting there looking and some of the seats are

(04:28):
in red. Don't sit there. Some of them are in yellow.
It's you might want to wait and see.

Speaker 2 (04:32):
On that one.

Speaker 1 (04:33):
Some seats are in green and then some seats are
just nothing. There's also on the United website a virtual
walkthrough of the plane, so you can see in three
D where to sit on this plane, and you can
walk from the front of the plane to the back
of the plane.

Speaker 2 (04:49):
I mean, it's pretty wild. Now.

Speaker 1 (04:50):
Restaurants in entertainment that might be the most complicated.

Speaker 3 (04:53):
Now.

Speaker 1 (04:54):
So when I'm booking a restaurant, and maybe this is
just me, I might as well be doing a research
paper on this rest because I am researching it from
every angle possible. We're going to a play in dinner soon,
and the first thing I did was tweet about, Hey,
are there any good restaurants around this theater that we're
going to? And of course I got a bunch of
responses from a whole bunch of people telling me this restaurant,

(05:16):
that restaurant, why this one's good, why that one's bad,
why this one is you know in the middle, then
of course there's yelp. If a restaurant has less than
four to five stars, are you even gonna consider going
to that restaurant? And don't mind looking at all the
photos of the interior, the exterior, the random reviews from
people you don't know. I mean, I could scroll this

(05:37):
stuff for hours just to pick a restaurant. Then, of
course there's the question of do you check out the
menu before you go to the restaurant. Now, I come
from the side of I would like to be a
little surprised when I go in this place, but I
also want to make sure they have something that I like,
and so I'll kind of peruse the menu, see what
it's like, see what things are on there, see what

(05:58):
the prices are like. I was looking up the directions
to the play and it, you know, on ways, it
tells you the best place to park. Many wasers park
at this parking lot, which is near the theater. And
if you've been on Google Maps, they've got a thing
called a match score. So Google somehow looks at all
the restaurants that you've gone to in your lifetime, and

(06:19):
the places that you've looked up, and the reviews that
you've made and the pictures you've uploaded, and each restaurant
now has a score of is it a good match
for you? Eighty seven percent ninety seven percent. If I'm
not like at a ninety five percent. Maybe I'm not
going to that restaurant because Google's thinking it's not good
for me, and Google knows everything about me.

Speaker 2 (06:37):
Maybe I just don't go.

Speaker 1 (06:39):
I've even done the thing where I'll see how long
it is to uber from my house to the restaurant
from the restaurant back home. Maybe I'm going somewhere else
in between. I want to see how much that uber is.
It's a lot. It's like by the time I get
to this restaurant, I'm exhausted. Now what about the table
you get at a restaurant. I was making a reservation
for a restaurant in Las Vegas the other day and

(07:00):
it said, do you want to sit by the window?
It's an extra twenty five dollars that'll give you an
unobstructed view of the Las Vegas Strip. Now I've sat
in this restaurant several times. I never really thought about that.
I mean, I could see the strip from the tables
I was at, but I never sat next to the window.
Maybe because I never paid. There's a startup called Tables
that's table with a Z. They say on their website

(07:21):
that diners are willing to pay for their preferred table
so this is coming. The ability to book the table
you want at a restaurant, just like booking the seat
on the plane that you want. So now you want
that window seat, You're gonna pay a little extra for that.
You want the seat in the good dining room, You're
gonna pay a little extra for that, and guaranteed people

(07:42):
will probably pay.

Speaker 2 (07:44):
It's a lot.

Speaker 1 (07:45):
By the time you get to the restaurant, everything feels familiar,
down to the dish that they put in front of you.
I don't know, can we go back to the old
way at this point? I mean, I don't know about you,
but when I was growing up, here's how you picked
a restaurant. You walked around. You were in a new city.
You walk down the block. Oh, that place looks good.
Let's go in there, let's see how it is. And
maybe you might have looked at the menu that was

(08:06):
sitting outside the restaurant. Maybe maybe you snuck a peek
at it. Maybe you talk to the made or d
for a second about hey, what do you have?

Speaker 2 (08:13):
What's good?

Speaker 1 (08:16):
And you know, once you went to the restaurant, then
you discussed with your tablematee whether that was your friend
or your spouse or whoever or the group you would
say like, hey, what'd you think of that place? Was
it good? Was it bad? And that's the way things
worked for many, many years. So technology is fun, it's amazing.
I love all these things. And maybe I'm the only

(08:38):
one that does this stuff. Maybe you're listening to me
and you're saying, rich, nobody else does that. Nobody else
researches all the different angles of these restaurants and plane
seats and you know, tickets, Oh yeah, what about booking
a ticket for a concert or the play. Even I
was on this website called a view for my Seat,
and I'm popping in the seat numbers. I'm on ticket Master,
and I'm like cross referencing the exact and seats and

(09:01):
putting him into this website to see pictures that other
people have taken from that seat, so I can say, oh,
that's a pretty good view from the right there, or
the left or the orchestra. I mean, these are the
things we do nowadays, all thanks to technology. Back in
the day, maybe things were just a little simpler, where
we didn't have to think about the exact place we
were going to sit on a plane, in a restaurant

(09:22):
or in a theater or in a gymnasium.

Speaker 2 (09:25):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (09:26):
Anyway, I'm not giving it up. I still love it. It's
all a lot of fun, and this is the stuff
that I think about on a weekly basis. Wait till
I tell you about my dilemma with the new Apple laptops.
We've got a great show coming up today. We're going
to talk about some of the surprise announcements from Apple
new laptops fourteen and sixteen inch laptops. They also have
a new speaker called the home Pod. Amazon is shutting

(09:49):
down a popular charity program. I'll tell you about that.
If you have a small business, there's a new tool
that you need to know about for sure. And I've
got three guests this weeks, including a reviewer from Wired,
a cybersecurity expert, and the guy who has helped millions
digitize their personal photos. The phone lines are open. The

(10:10):
phone number is one eighty eight Rich one on one.
You're listening to me, Rich DeMuro. This is rich on Tech.
Welcome back to rich on Tech. My name is Rich DeMuro.
You can find me on social media at rich on Tech.
Check me out on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook. Steve is
in Murrieta, California. Steve, Welcome to the show.

Speaker 4 (10:33):
Yeah, Hi, rich G.

Speaker 5 (10:34):
Thank to you.

Speaker 6 (10:35):
I have a quick question. I just recently upgraded to
the iPhone fourteen pro line in you know what the
new USBC charging cables? Do I need to throw away
all my old chargers because what the cell phone stores
are telling me, oh, you got to buy this new
high watt twenty five thirty watch charger because if you

(10:58):
don't use your old chargers, it's going to ruin the battery.
So I don't know is it a sales gimmick or
is there some truth behind the new cables and the
higher output charging either the cigarette car adaptor or the
wall chargers and or the flat touch chargers.

Speaker 2 (11:16):
And which phone did you get?

Speaker 6 (11:18):
iPhone fourteen Pro?

Speaker 4 (11:20):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (11:20):
Nice, nice choice? And you loving that phone so far?

Speaker 6 (11:24):
Actually I am. Yeah. I came from the XSS, so
it's been a few years since I've upgraded, so I'm
really really pleased with it.

Speaker 7 (11:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (11:32):
Oh nice. Well, okay, so you know they're sort of
they're sort of half right in this stuff.

Speaker 1 (11:38):
So I don't think that the old chargers are going
to ruin the battery on this phone. That's probably not
the case number one, it's a charger. It's going to work,
it's just going to be very slow. So I think
the biggest change that you're looking at here is do
you want fast charging on this device? So if you
are charging it overnight and and it's just gonna be

(12:01):
sitting on the charger for a very long time, you
can probably safely use your old cables and chargers and
you'll be okay. Now, what you're referring to is USB
C the new charger, So in the box of the
new iPhone, you actually just get a cable. You don't
get the charging brick that plugs into the wall anymore.
And if you look at the cable that you get,

(12:22):
it won't plug into your old chargers because they're using
a larger size USB port and the new USB is
USB C and it's much smaller. So those new cables
are not going to plug into the old charging bricks.
So do you get a new brick? My recommendation would
probably be yes. And the reason for that is not
that you're going to ruin your phone with the old chargers,

(12:43):
is that you will be able to charge your phone
a lot faster with the new cable setup and The
reason that is is because the old phones don't support
fast charging. So the iPhone eight and up support fast charging.
So you actually had a phone that would you know,
fast charge back with your older phone, but you're using

(13:06):
the older cables anyway, So I would probably recommend getting
the newer charger. And the one you want is the
twenty want USB C charger, and so you can get
it from Apple, you can get it on Amazon. I
like to get ones that are not sort of like
the super duper cheap ones, because you know, it is electrical,
it is charging, So maybe pick up a brand that's

(13:27):
that's highly rated. You know, there's there's many many out there,
but you know, if you want Apple's specific you can
do that one as well. But that's really what you're
going to notice, Steve, is that your phone's going to
charge a lot faster.

Speaker 2 (13:40):
Now.

Speaker 1 (13:40):
Apple says that you are going to get about a
fifty percent charge in around thirty minutes, and that's if
you're using the USB C a lightning cable with one
of the fast adapters. And so you want a USB
C power adapter that supports USB c PD, which is
power livery and you can look on the back of

(14:01):
the the you know, if you look on Amazon, it'll
basically say if it's a PD, or if you go
into a store, just look for one that's labeled PD.
And twenty watts is really the magic number that you're
looking for. Here, you can use one that's faster. It's
not going to ruin the phone. The phone is going
to regulate the charging situation itself.

Speaker 2 (14:18):
So but it's a good question.

Speaker 1 (14:20):
It's you know, it's one of these things where we
have all these cables around, We're we already you know,
they're already in different places, whether they're at work, whether
they're at home, in the car. You don't need to
replace them overnight. But if you're noticing that your phone
is charging really slow, that's when you want to replace them.
And that's really the only reason that I would see
for that. I you know, when it comes to charging,

(14:42):
the iPhone's actually pretty slow compared to a lot of
other Android phones out there. So for instance, when I
was on a trip and I was using my phone
all day long, it was like I'd get back to
the hotel room before dinner and I literally could not
charge my iPhone fast enough. It just would not charge.
And so when you're comparing against something like a Samsung
phone that can charge it maybe forty five watts, it's

(15:05):
a lot faster. And then you've got phones like the
one plus Android phones that charge extremely fast. I mean
they have like super fast charging built in, but you
need a very specific charger that they sell and even
a specific cable that they sell that for best results.
And then the Pixel is somewhere in the middle. So
if you had to rank the charging speeds of different phones,

(15:27):
it'd be like iPhone at the bottom, then it would
be Pixel phones, then it would be Samsung phones, and
then it would be the one plus phones. So charging
is definitely a thing. I think it's less important than
it was before because these batteries are lasting much longer,
but at the same time, it's still a thing. It's
you know, it's a big deal to make sure your

(15:49):
phone is fully charged up. And also you've got a
phone that has wireless charging as well, so maybe think
about getting in on that wireless charging situation too. Steve,
good question. Enjoy the new phone. I think you'll have
a lot of fun with it. All right, let's talk
about Google. This is you know, we've seen all these
layoffs with big tech companies. And this is not really

(16:11):
a show where we're going to talk about, you know,
stuff like this in a big way, because you know,
this show is for consumers, so it's how do things
affect you? And this is more of an industry wide thing.
We've seen Facebook lay people off, We've seen Microsoft lay
people off, and now Google this week, which to me,
it just signifies the fact that this giant tech party

(16:32):
is over. We're seeing a change in this industry. So Google,
they're reducing their workforce by approximately twelve thousand people. And
this is the letter from CEO Sundar Pachai. He said,
over the past two years, they've seen periods of dramatic
growth and they hired for a different economic reality than
the one they face today. And so they're going to

(16:55):
take care of these people that are leaving. They're going
to give them a lot of several and sixteen weeks
plus two weeks for every additional year they've had at Google.
But the big kind of takeaway I see is that
number one Google has been around for twenty five years,
which is just wild. But is that AI is really
changing the face of Google's business, And not just AI,
but things like TikTok is impeding on YouTube. It's just

(17:19):
a lot of different things are really affecting the way
that Google does stuff. And with this AI, especially with
chat GPT coming along, we're seeing a whole different world
when it comes to the way that Google will do
business in the next ten years compared to the last
ten years. So thoughts go out to anyone affected by
these layoffs, and it's probably not the last we've heard
of them. All right, coming up, we're going to talk

(17:41):
about Apple's new laptops. They've got a new fourteen inch
model and a new sixteen inch model, plus a new
home pod. My guest is going to talk about all
of those gadgets, plus your calls at triple eight rich
one oh one. Welcome back to Rich on Tech. My
name is rich DeMuro. We're talking about the tech stuff
I think you should know about and answering your questions

(18:02):
at triple eight rich.

Speaker 2 (18:04):
One oh one.

Speaker 1 (18:05):
That's one eight eight eight seven four to two four
one zero one. My next guest is a product reviewer
and writer for Wired, and she is also taking a
look at the new Apple gadgets. This week, we saw
new MacBook computers and also a new home pod Welcome

(18:25):
to the show, Brenda Stollier, Brenda.

Speaker 8 (18:27):
Welcome, Hi, thank you for having me.

Speaker 1 (18:31):
So let's talk about some of these gadgets from Apple.
They didn't do a formal announcement, I guess a formal
in person announcement. What did you make of how they
announced these just by putting out press releases And that's
basically it.

Speaker 8 (18:44):
Yeah, so whenever they go for the press release option,
it already kind of sets this tone that it's likely
a more like a marginal upgrade. It requires such a
big event because they're not announcing anything so groundbreaking that

(19:06):
it requires the production of, you know, a large scale event.
So yeah, with and this is kind of part for
the course, especially with these MacBooks specifically and the chip sets.
So I wasn't surprised that they went with a press.

Speaker 1 (19:19):
Release, even though they still did sort of their own
event like taped and they played that and it looked
like it was an event in person, but it wasn't.
It was something that they you know, these slickly produced
productions that Apple is now sort of famous for ever
since the pandemic. So the products they announced new MacBook
Pro with an M two Pro and M two Max chips.

(19:40):
This is their own chip inside these laptops fourteen and
sixteen inch MacBook Pro models. Best ever battery life now
up to twenty two hours, better Wi Fi so Wi
Fi six e, but I don't think most people have
that support on their router anyway. As well as better HDMI,
it now supports eight K dis plaze and you can

(20:01):
also get up to ninety six gigabytes of memory in
the Max model, and the cameras also improved ten adyp
FaceTime HD availability beginning Tuesday, January twenty fourth. So Branda,
what are your sort of initial reactions to these computers.

Speaker 8 (20:19):
So, Yeah, the initial reaction i'd say is, I mean
it's definitely you know, on paper, Apple loves just throw
kind of that marketing jargon out, so you know, it's
they're forty percent faster overall or compared to you know,
last year's tips. You've got twenty percent greater you know,
graphics performance or just overall performance compared to the M

(20:42):
one Pro and the M one Max. And so when
you're looking at these numbers in front of you, it
could feel like, you know, a huge improvement overall. And
I have yet to you know, get my hands on
these chips and test them. But initial reaction is that,
you know, it's like it's it's not you know, that

(21:03):
much greater of an improvement.

Speaker 1 (21:05):
Well, I played, you played with the first ones, right,
the M So, the M one ship was Apple's first,
you know, their own ship. They they've been making their
own ship for the iPhone for many years. Then they decided,
let's do this for our laptops and computers.

Speaker 2 (21:17):
What was I mean?

Speaker 1 (21:18):
The M one chips have gotten phenomenal reviews, right.

Speaker 8 (21:23):
Yeah, Yeah, they were definitely the groundbreaking tip, I'd say
compared to coming from Intel. You know, we saw greater performance,
greater battery life, and it was just a lot uh
easier to use, like especially because they kind of made
this case that they wanted to make it feel like

(21:44):
you're using you know, an iPhone or an iPad, so
which is kind of tied into the ecosystem, you know,
the app obviously with an in house chip play nicer
with the with the the MacBooks.

Speaker 1 (21:56):
Yeah, they're controlling, they're controlling sort of the hardware and
the software and that's what enables them to you know,
with these efficiency cores. So with something like final Cut,
you know it's more efficient. But they said, you know,
even of Adobe Photoshop imaging processor is eighty up to
eighty percent faster than the fastest Intel, forty percent faster
than the previous generation, rendering in title animations and motion

(22:18):
up to eighty percent faster than the fastest Intel MacBook Pro,
and also twenty percent faster than the previous generation. So
the question is now, I have an Intel MacBook Pro
sixteen inch, and I'm trying to decide do I go
with that fourteen inch? Do I go with the sixteen inch?
But there's no question in my mind this computer is
really going to blow away what I've had for the

(22:39):
past couple of years.

Speaker 8 (22:40):
Would you agree with that one hundred percent?

Speaker 3 (22:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (22:42):
I mean, if you're coming from an Intel, you're going
to see the difference. You're going to feel it in
the in the power that it can deliver it to
your workflow. Performance is just going to feel a lot smoother.
You know, those fans aren't going to be like kicking
in as quickly, and it's not gonna be overheating as much.
So when you're coming from an Intel to these end series,
you're gonna see a difference. The difference is less so

(23:04):
apparent when you are going from an M one to
an M two or an M two I'm sorry, or
an M one Pro to an M two Pro, because
it's really important to remember that there's just, you know,
not that much time in between. It's been like a year,
if not a year and a half, and so it's.

Speaker 1 (23:27):
Yeah, you're not going to see a huge increase from me.
I got someone asking me, Hey, should I upgrade from
the M one?

Speaker 2 (23:32):
I don't think so.

Speaker 1 (23:32):
I mean, you're you know, you just these computers last
several years, I mean many, many years, and so you know,
I get it if you're trying to like squeeze every
last bit of processing power out of your computer, if
you rely on this for your you know, your workflow
and you're editing with large videos and stuff like, sure,
you want things to be faster, but I can't imagine
that it's going to be worth the price to upgrade

(23:53):
this quickly. And you know, everyone's different and everyone has
different priorities. So but to me, it seems like, you know,
I'm a pretty heavy power user, and I'm I'm looking
at a twenty nineteen MacBook Pro right now, and so
my mind is like every three years and I was
waiting for these, by the way, Specifically, the fourteen inch
MacBook Pro with the M two pro starts at two
thousand dollars. The sixteen inch MacBook Pro with the M

(24:16):
two Pro starts at twenty five hundred dollars. Don't forget,
if you've got a student in your household, you qualify
for that pricing, and so that will take a little
bit of money off of there. All right, let's switch
gears to the HomePod. This is the second generation HomePod.
The first one was discontinued a couple of years ago,
and it got good reviews. I think it was just

(24:37):
way too expensive for what it did, and it mostly
used Apple Music, and it was three hundred and fifty
dollars at a time when everyone was picking up Amazon
Echo speakers and Google speakers for under one hundred bucks.
So what do we think, Brenda this time around? Do
we think that the home pod second generation is going
to be worth it at two ninety nine?

Speaker 8 (25:00):
So I still very much think that the HomePod is
for the audio file specifically, like somebody that really values
and the sound that comes out of these speakers and
wants it to sound, you know, the best that it can.
And so while they have added in a lot of

(25:22):
these new smart home features like you know, room sensing
technology and the ultra wide band sound recognition, and just
also enhanced the smart home like control capabilities, I still
do think that if you're going to get the new HomePod,
you should get it for the sound more than anything else.

Speaker 1 (25:44):
So a couple of new things in this new home Pod,
like you said, the home automations with Siri. I don't
know of almost anyone that's using home Kit for their
home automations. I mean, if you do great, and I
think with matter things you're going to get better. But
right now, you know you've got most people are on
the Amazon ecosystem or the Google ecosystem, and the Apple

(26:05):
has not taken off in that area just yet. It
also has the ability to listen for a smoke or
carbon monoxide alarm in your home that's coming in the spring.
So if you've got a standard smoke alarm in your
home and it goes off, the HomePod will text you
on your phone and say, hey, you might want to
check on this. It also has sensors for temperature and
humidity in a room, which is cool for home automations

(26:26):
because you can use that to trigger certain things, like
if you have a fan that goes off when the
temperature in the room gets to a certain degree. These
are available on Friday, February third, and so again two
hundred and ninety nine dollars for that is the price,
and it comes in either white or black.

Speaker 2 (26:45):
And the other cool.

Speaker 1 (26:46):
Thing that you know, they didn't really make a huge
deal out of this, but I thought it was kind
of neat is that the cable is now removable. So
on the first iPad or the first HomePod, the cable
was not removable, and now it is.

Speaker 8 (27:01):
Yeah, I think that, you know, with all those features
that you mentioned, I think it's also important to point
out that a majority of these are also available on
the home Pod Mini. And so you know, if we're
talking about whether or not, you know, you want to
go for the home Pod Many or for you know,
the standard HomePod, I would also just take into account
like your space, because you know, the HomePod Mini is

(27:24):
ninety nine dollars and so you're going to be saving
yourself a lot of money, and so just really take
into account like what space you're putting it in, how
much you know, room you really need to fill with
the sound because at the end of the day, you're
not losing out on features when it comes to the Mini.
So it's good that they give you those two options
now without having to sacrifice capabilities.

Speaker 1 (27:46):
All right, Brenda Stoller from Wired, thanks so much for
joining me today and I assume you'll be getting your
hands on these very soon.

Speaker 8 (27:53):
Yeah, thank you for having me.

Speaker 1 (27:55):
All right, thanks for calling in, appreciate it. One more
thing to know about the HomePod. If you want to
pair these things up and use them with something like
an Apple TV for stereo sound, you do need to
have two of the same exact models. So if you
have an old HomePod and a big you know, the
new HomePod, you can't pair those up. You got to
use the same generation to pair those up. HomePod two

(28:16):
hundred and ninety nine dollars.

Speaker 2 (28:18):
All right.

Speaker 1 (28:19):
Coming up on the show, we are going to talk
about Amazon closing its charity program. We'll tell you why
they're doing that and what they're doing instead. Plus Instagram
wants you to log off, HM, why do they want
to do that? The phone lines are open at Triple
A rich one oh one one eight eight eight rich
one oh one you're listening to Rich on Tech. Welcome

(28:42):
back to Rich on Tech. This is the show where
I talk about the tech stuff I think you should
know about. It's also where I answer your questions. My
name is Rich DeMuro. I'm the tech reporter at KTLA
Channel five in Los Angeles and here on.

Speaker 2 (28:55):
The radio with you.

Speaker 1 (28:56):
You can also find me on social media. I'm on Instagram,
rich on Tech. My website is rich on tech dot TV.
We've got Nancy calling in from Corona, California. Nancy, you
are on with Rich. Welcome to the show.

Speaker 5 (29:13):
Thank you, rich All. I just have a several questions.
Explain the cookies to me. Should you accept? Should you not?

Speaker 2 (29:21):
That's a good question.

Speaker 5 (29:23):
I don't understand.

Speaker 1 (29:24):
Okay, yeah, cookies. They have such a nice name, don't
they like the It sounds like something you want.

Speaker 9 (29:29):
To eat, right, I guess.

Speaker 1 (29:33):
Like they They couldn't have come up with a better
friendly name for this thing that does good and bad
on our computer. So where are you seeing the references
to cookies? Are you just seeing it on your computer?

Speaker 5 (29:44):
Or where on the computer you go on a company
or a website? You know things like that.

Speaker 1 (29:52):
Oh, so you're talking, You're are you talking about when
you go to a website and it says like, do
you want to accept all these cookies?

Speaker 2 (29:58):
To be oh.

Speaker 1 (29:59):
Gosh, every single website and this is all this is
all because of a law over in Europe. Let's say
said GDPR is that what it's called General Data Protection Regulation,
and so over in Europe they have very very strict
privacy rules and regulations, way stricter than here in the US.

(30:20):
But the problem is every website does business worldwide, or
pretty much every website does, and so they're trying to
stay in line with these rules and regulations over in Europe.
At the same time here in the US, we're seeing
the same messages on our screen because they don't want
to make a different message for every single country that
visits their website. So what you're seeing when you go

(30:42):
to a website, it's saying do you accept all of
these cookies? Do you want to accept some of them?
Do you want to accept all of them? Do you
want to accept just maybe a few of them? And
every single place you go wants you to go into
this setting page and either accept or deny or whatever.

Speaker 2 (30:58):
It's a lot of work.

Speaker 1 (31:00):
It feels like surfing the web is just you know,
so much more work ever since this started happening. So
here's the deal on the cookies. Cookies are little pieces
of information that help these websites know that you've visited.
But also they can be used to help other websites
know that you visited a website.

Speaker 2 (31:18):
What do I mean by that?

Speaker 1 (31:19):
So if you go to a website that sells new mattresses,
there might be a cookie on that website that talks
to a marketing cookie from Facebook or Instagram or Google,
so that when you search on Google for mattresses, the
website that you just went to might show up as
an ad on Google higher up. Or when you're you know,

(31:41):
surfing on Facebook, it may show an ad for that
mattress company just to remind you, you know, you came
to our website and maybe you're still thinking about buying this.
And so cookies can do various things. They can you know,
they can help with marketing of a website, They can
record your visit and also they help remember your login,
so if you've been to a website you've visited before,

(32:02):
it will remember that you've been there. So there's good
and there's bad about these. So my thought about the
you know, the cookies that you see when it says
accept all. Typically, I'm just so frustrated every single time
that I just say accept all. If it's easy to
deny all, I'll just press that denial button because it's
just simple. But most of the time, when they make

(32:22):
you go into that big menu that says you know,
there's definitely there's like six different ways of like accepting them,
I just say, okay, fine, accept all. There is an
extension that I like for Chrome. Okay, and this is
the one that I've been using that will automatically accept
these cookies or reject them if it can. It's called
I don't care about cookies. So do you use the

(32:44):
Chrome web browser?

Speaker 7 (32:46):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (32:47):
Okay, So if you install this I don't care about
cookies And I've tested several of these. There's there's several
cookie kind of managers. It basically removes the cookie warnings
from many websites, and it will try to deny the
cookies if it can. If it can't, it will accept
them for you. But it kind of will do whatever
it needs to do to get rid of that pop up.

(33:09):
So is that something that you think you'd be interested in?

Speaker 5 (33:13):
Yeah? I'm going to check that out. I'll check it out.

Speaker 1 (33:15):
Yeah, I mean, I definitely care about cookies, but I
like more of like the chocolate chip kind of cookies.

Speaker 2 (33:19):
You know, you know what I'm talking about.

Speaker 5 (33:21):
Yeah, I know your information goes here and there and everywhere,
you know, and I just say no, I don't accept them.

Speaker 1 (33:31):
So yeah, if you can say no easily. Not every
website lets you do that very easily. Some of them
make you go to like the secondary page and it
just becomes too complicated. Now, the other setting that I
really like is inside Chrome. There's something called third party cookies,
and so third party cookies are the most nefarious out
of any cookie out there. What third party cookies do

(33:53):
is they report to other websites that don't really need
to know about your visit. And these are mostly marketing cookies.
And so when you go to a website, sometimes there
may be thirty cookies on that website that report to
other places. May report to Google, it may report to Facebook,
it may report to Instagram, it may report to all

(34:13):
these different advertising networks. And those are the cookies that
you don't necessarily want, because why do you need to
tell all these advertising networks that you went to a
website you don't and yeah, yeah, because it's your privacy,
and that's you know, it's look, when you're on the web,
there's not much privacy.

Speaker 2 (34:31):
Let's be honest. It's just there's not.

Speaker 1 (34:33):
But there are certain ways you can reclaim at least
some of that. So in Chrome, what I'd like you
to do is go to your settings. That's the three
dots in the upper right hand corner, next year profile picture.
Then tap settings. I don't know why Google doesn't make
this easier to find, Actually I do know why, and
then go into Privacy and Security, and under there there's

(34:55):
an option that says cookies and third site other site data,
and then there's there's an option that says block third
party cookies. So I would choose that option. I turned
that on on mine, and it basically will try to
block any third party cookies on a website. The one
thing to know about all of this, Nancy, is that

(35:16):
sometimes websites don't work properly when you've got these cookies blocked,
and so if that happens, sometimes you might need to
go and turn this off for a little bit, or
accept the cookies on that website. The one thing I
would not recommend doing is clicking the option for block
all cookies, because if you do that, it could really

(35:37):
you know, it could make your web surfing just a.

Speaker 2 (35:38):
Little bit trickier.

Speaker 4 (35:40):
Yeah, does that help?

Speaker 5 (35:42):
It helps a lot a lot of information today. And
thank you very much for all your information. I truly
appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (35:50):
You can't go without telling you what your favorite cookie
variety is, of the of the actual cookie.

Speaker 5 (35:58):
I like, what has a hey honus, Oh.

Speaker 1 (36:02):
Okay, that's that's a fancy cookie. All right, Well, Nancy
and Corona, thanks so much for calling the show.

Speaker 2 (36:08):
Appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (36:09):
The phone number is triple eight rich one, oh one
one eight eight eight rich one O. One great question, Nancy. Uh,
let's talk about Amazon. They are closing Amazon Smile. Now,
if you've got a kid in a school or you
belong to a church, you've probably heard of Amazon's Smile.
This is Amazon's charity program. It started in twenty thirteen
and they launched it as a way for people to

(36:31):
support their favorite charities. But guess what it is shutting
down after almost a decade. I'll talk more about that
when we come back. You're listening to Rich on Tech
Welcome back to rich on Tech. My name is Rich Jimiro,
and this is the show where we talk about technology
and answer your questions about technology. The phone number one

(36:53):
eight eight eight rich one oh one one, triple eight
seven four to two, four to one zero one free
call from anywhere.

Speaker 2 (37:01):
Give me a call.

Speaker 1 (37:01):
We can talk about technology and if you're having trouble
with a gadget, or want to compare something, or just
need some advice, I'm here for you. So my name
is Rich Demiro, tech reporter at KTLA Channel five in
Los Angeles. You can find me online at rich on Tech.
This is episode number three of the show. If you
can believe it, Wow, it feels like it's flown by.

(37:24):
So it's been fun. You know, I people are still
learning who I am, understanding who I am. Maybe you've
seen me on TV on KTLA or one of the
other TV stations I'm on. But you know, I'm a dad.
I've got two kids, and I'm learning this tech stuff
just like everyone else. I just happened to make a
job out of it. And so this week I had
some good and bad with the kids. So you know,

(37:46):
in my house there's a lot of technology. There's a
lot of stuff to play with. There's a lot of screens,
and I had a really good day with my kid
taking them to the field trip. They had a field
trip for school. And you know, back in my career,
back in the early days, I probably wouldn't have taken
a day off of work to go on a field
trip to Dodger Stadium. But I said, you know what,

(38:08):
you know, these kids don't get any younger, and so
I said, let's do it, and so I volunteer for
the field trip.

Speaker 2 (38:13):
It was great.

Speaker 1 (38:14):
It was really fun behind the scenes at Dodger Stadium.
I have so much respect for teachers after being on
that field trip because I realized I'm in the right business.
I could never be with that many kids on a
daily basis. I just can't do it. I don't have
the patience. I mean, these kids are jumping, they're running,

(38:34):
they're falling, they're tripping, they're you know, pulling on each
other's jackets. I mean, it was just wild. Now, they
were well behaved, but this is what kids do. They
just play, They jump, they crawl, and so of course
my kid was in there as well, but it was
so much fun to see, you know, the different kids
and how they interact with each other. And of course
getting to see behind the scenes at Dodger Stadium here
in Los Angeles was really neat as well. So that

(38:55):
was fun. Now that was a good day. Then of
course there's the bad day. So two days later, I
pay got my kid from school and I'm like, where
where's my kid? Where where is he? He's in one
of the you know, the spare room and the door
is locked, and I'm like, what's going on here? So
I opened the door. He's on his iPad and he
kind of closes out the screen real quick. Now, mind you,

(39:17):
he's eight, and I'm like, all right, what's going on here?
You know, what are you watching?

Speaker 2 (39:21):
Tanner? Oh?

Speaker 1 (39:23):
Nothing, just you know. So I'm sitting there as with
an eight year old, and I've got to figure out, now,
why is this child closing out the app on his iPad?
Like what was so bad that he's watching that? I
need to you know that he doesn't want to show me.
And of course he switches to a game on his
iPad this and that, and mind you, I have my

(39:43):
internet pretty locked down at the house. You know, We've
got the filters on there, and we've got you know,
different kind of screen time and all this stuff that's enabled.
But still somehow when I finally got him to show me,
it was a YouTube video. And it wasn't really a
bad YouTube video. It was fine, but it was just
something you shouldn't be watching, you know, something for maybe
a little bit older kids. And I can't even remember

(40:05):
what the title was, but it was just something that
was just not very good, right. And so my first
question was, Hey, how did you get on YouTube? Because
I have YouTube blocked on your iPad and to this minute,
I still can't tell you how. So I went through
looked at all the settings, and I guess the reason
I tell you this story is, you know, not to
feel sorry for me, but really to kind of understand
that it's tough.

Speaker 2 (40:26):
This stuff is really tricky.

Speaker 1 (40:28):
I'm sort of a tech expert in all this, like
you know, monitoring and these gadgets and this and that,
and it's really tough for me to understand what these
kids have access to and what they're able to do
because ninety nine percent of the time they're actively working
against me to try to figure out ways around this stuff.
And you know, I've got the filters and I've got
the screen time alone. I was just looking at all

(40:51):
the different settings inside screen time. There's so many of them,
and to sit there and go through it all is
just really tricky for the average person and it takes time.
And then, by the way, when you lock down something,
then your kid asks you, hey, can I buy this program?
Or can I buy this in app purchase? Or can
I access this website? You have to go through and
change all the options. So I don't really have an

(41:13):
easier solution for you, except for the fact that I
hear you, I feel you, and it is not easy.
It's definitely a tricky thing with these kids because they're smart.
They're digital natives, and they've been they've grown up with
this stuff, and so they know, they know how to
use it, they know how to get around it. And
believe me, they're on all the time with their friends.
And you know, you may have rules in place and

(41:34):
other families may not, and so, you know, like I
said the other night, there's always a kid on the
iPad that's ready to play with my kids. And that's
something that just didn't happen when I was a kid.
You know, you had to go over someone's house and
play with them, you know, or you maybe you talked
on the phone with them, but now you have access
to a friend at any time of the day, and
you know they can play the iPad with your kid.

(41:56):
So it's a challenge, believe me.

Speaker 2 (41:58):
All right.

Speaker 1 (41:59):
Coming up in the show, we're going to talk about
this Amazon smile shutting down. I sort of started talking
about it and ran up against the break, So we're
going to talk about that. Also, this Instagram, they've got
new settings they basically want and I guess this kind
of goes into what I was just talking about. They
want people to kind of turn off Instagram for a
little bit, take a break from Instagram. I've got a

(42:19):
great guest coming up, doctor Chris Pearson. He is a
founder and CEO of Black Cloak. He's a cybersecurity expert,
one of my favorite people to talk to on KTLA,
and he is going to be joining us as well.
For now, let's go to Gail in Huntington Beach. Gail,
you're on with Rich.

Speaker 10 (42:38):
Hi, Rick, Thank you for being there for me. I
have a question related to my attempt to cut my
cable bill in half as possible with all the increased
costs of living these days. That's one thing I think
I can do better with because I hardly ever watch
regular network stuff. I'm pretty much a streaming person. Occasionally

(43:03):
I'll watch one channel, but for the most part, I'm
a Netflix Prime and Paramount user. And so I did
did doing all my slooping around, I looked at antennas,
and I looked at this that I knew I needed
a box, and I came across this product called the
Superbox S three, and it seems to me to be

(43:24):
solving all my problems at once because I have an
old Logitech Elite remote that's dying and I need a
new hub for it or a new base, I'm not
sure which, And so I'm I'm looking at all these
options and thinking, I think that Superbox sounds like a
solution for me. And I'm wondering what you think about So.

Speaker 1 (43:44):
I have not heard of the Superbox, but I have
heard of similar devices, and these I would fall into
what I would call the gray area of legality.

Speaker 10 (43:55):
So of what a gray area of legal Yeah, exactly, Well,
I'm not I pay my dues and I wouldn't. I
wouldn't do that. I just want to access what I
want to access.

Speaker 1 (44:07):
Well, Okay, So what does this do that something like
a fire TV doesn't.

Speaker 10 (44:11):
Do, or you know, it comes with a remote, and
it comes with cloud storage.

Speaker 1 (44:17):
Okay, and does it promise It says allows you to
watch local and top cable channels without cable So is
there something that it does that I'm still trying to
figure out why it's better than something else out there
that doesn't seem to promise the world. And also it's
three hundred and twenty nine dollars.

Speaker 10 (44:34):
Yeah, I know that's a lot. I realized I can
go with Roku a lot cheaper. Yeah, but if I
want one or two network, if I want ABC or
Fox News or NBC once in the Great While, I
would be able to get it with this device, right,
I don't think so?

Speaker 11 (44:54):
No.

Speaker 1 (44:54):
I mean it says it's promising every single cable channel
out there, including Cinemax, h BO, ABC News, BBC America,
CNN Discovery Channel.

Speaker 10 (45:05):
Let me ask you this, here's my question bottom line.
If this is priating, why is it available on Amazon?
Why are they selling it?

Speaker 1 (45:15):
Well, I mean Amazon sells a lot of stuff. And
number two, the system itself may not be illegal, it's
just software. Now, the software on it and how it
gets these channels may not always work. And believe me,
I get this question all the time from people. They
send me these emails that say, Rich, I'm looking at
this box and they all have a million different names.
The name of this game is that they're going to

(45:36):
sell you this box, and it may or may not work.
It may or may not do what it promises to do.
And so for that reason, I cannot recommend anything close
to these black boxes. Back in the day, people had
cable boxes that were black boxes that got all the channels.
Sometimes they work, sometimes they didn't. Again, it's a gray area.
I'm not saying it's doing something illegal. I'm just not

(45:57):
sure what it's doing, and I know for sure that
it's not doing what it should be doing. Like something
like a Roku box or a fire TV or an
Apple TV. Those are regulated. They've got apps in there
that are vetted, and they've got official apps from these providers.
This box maybe just getting a stream of different channels
pulling it from the internet somewhere. It's just not something

(46:19):
I can recommend. So I would recommend something like a
fire TV if you want the functionality and have that
web browser. I think that's probably the best. Roku is
also a very good choice as well. Apple TV is
probably the least flexible when it comes to getting other programming,
although you can always mirror your phone from there as well.

(46:40):
But I would I'm not paying three hundred and twenty
nine dollars for this device. And the reason you know
that Amazon sells it is it's software and it's hardware.
So what you do with it, you know, it depends
on the end user. But it's promising the world. It's
promising every single cable channel. And while it's not saying that,
you know, it's illegal, it's definitely not something that is

(47:05):
standard for many people. So that is my recommendation. Thanks
for calling me and Gail. I would just go with
a Roku or a fire TV. I think that's going
to be a lot better for what you need and
you can easily, you know, lower your cable bill with
one of those two things. All right, coming up, we'll
talk about Amazon closing this program, we'll talk about Instagram's
new settings. Plus I've got a great guest to talk

(47:27):
about cybersecurity. You won't want to miss it. Rich on
Tech coming your way, phone number triple eight, Rich one,
Oh one eight eight eight rich one oh one. Welcome
back to Rich on Tech. This is the show where
we talk about technology and the stuff I think you
should know about happening in the tech world. My name
is rich Demiro, Tech reporter at KTLA Channel five in

(47:49):
Los Angeles. Phone number to the show triple eight, Rich
one oh one, triple eight, Rich one oh one. Let's
get your call on today's show. Gail really hit a
nerve with me because I was thinking about, you know,
it's one of these things where we all want stuff
for free, right, I mean, who doesn't want programming for free?
And you know I work in broadcast television. We give

(48:11):
away our programming for free. But you know, other than that,
you want Netflix, you gotta pay. You want Showtime, you
gotta pay. I mean, there's an entire city that I
live in that's built up around people making a living
making TV shows and movies, and they don't give them
away for free. Now, they do if there's ads attached
to them, but that's not what we're talking about here.

(48:31):
These boxes that let you get these channels or promise
these channels. I mean, just looking at the website for
the box you mentioned, there's no way that you could
get every movie for free, every sporting event for free,
every game you want to watch for free. I mean,
I pay eighty five bucks a month for YouTube TV,
and somehow this box is promising those same very channels

(48:52):
for free. It just doesn't make sense.

Speaker 2 (48:54):
Could you do it?

Speaker 9 (48:55):
Sure?

Speaker 2 (48:55):
Go ahead?

Speaker 1 (48:56):
I mean, I can't stop you from paying three hundred
and twenty nine dollars for a box that promises the world.
But at the same time, do you really want to
spend that money on something that's unproven. There's no support
for it, it could go away at any time. What's
the software update look like? What do the apps look like?
How do you install apps on this thing? So if

(49:16):
you want programming, you've got to be prepared to pay
for programming. There's plenty of free places to watch TV
at this point. There's a service called Tableau sorry Pluto,
I'm thinking Tableau for over the air if you want to.
If you want to, just set up an antenna so
you can do that. But you've got Pluto TV. You've

(49:37):
got to be TV. And these are legitimate, you know.
These are websites that are created by the content companies
that have advertising, and so it's kind of like over
the air programming, but on the Internet, and you can
do to be Peacock has a level of free. There's
a whole bunch of these things. Roku channel has free.

Speaker 2 (49:58):
There's a lot of.

Speaker 1 (49:58):
Ways you can watch for stuff on the different boxes
from Google and Apple and Amazon.

Speaker 2 (50:06):
So, I know Gail.

Speaker 1 (50:07):
Didn't like the answer that I had, but I just
have to put it out there that, you know, I
feel like there's a lot of people that make a
living on this stuff. And sure pirating has been going
on forever. You just have to choose whether you want
to do that. You know, it really comes down to
personal integrity.

Speaker 2 (50:20):
I think.

Speaker 1 (50:22):
Okay, let's talk about Amazon Smile. Amazon Smile is a
program that Amazon started to help donate money to charities,
and it didn't really cost anything extra for shoppers. Shoppers
just had to go to smile dot Amazon dot com,
choose a charity, and Amazon would donate a small percentage
of whatever they shop For the financial side of it,

(50:45):
they would donate this to charities. And so this started
in twenty thirteen, and they said there's been over a
million organizations that signed up for this and that used it.
But now they are winding it down. Amazon Smile will
shut down by February twentieth, twenty twenty three, and so
to help with the charities that are part of this
program that are no longer going to get money, Amazon's

(51:07):
going to give them a one time donation that's equivalent
to three months of what they earned in twenty twenty
two through the program. And for some of these charities,
they earned, you know, maybe a lot, maybe a little.
I got one person that message me and said, look,
I run a charity, and the money we got from
this just wasn't very substantial, but it kind of made
people feel good, and I think that's why Amazon did it.

Speaker 2 (51:28):
But they didn't make.

Speaker 1 (51:28):
It very easy to use it, because every time you
wanted to use it, your Amazon page would not default
to the Smile page, and if you didn't check out
through the Smile page, it wouldn't give the donation. So
I think that Amazon could have made this a lot
easier if they've really.

Speaker 2 (51:42):
Wanted to donate.

Speaker 1 (51:43):
The website said they donated about four hundred million dollars
over the past decade or so, But I mean to Amazon,
that's that's you know, to charities, that's a lot of money.

Speaker 2 (51:53):
I'm not sure if that was a lot to Amazon.

Speaker 1 (51:55):
Once Amazon Smile closes, Amazon is advising charities to seek
support by creating a wish list. But see, here's the deal.
A wish list is very different than just shopping on Amazon.
A wish list you have to go on know the charity,
choose the item, and purchase it. Whereas if you go
to you know, Amazon's Smile, it's just a portion of

(52:16):
whatever you're spending is getting sent to this charity. So
I think it was a lot easier that way. Amazon says, look,
we're not going to never you know, give money to
charities again. We support a bunch of charities, including housing equity,
future engineer charities, community programs for food banks, disaster relief charities,
and also community giving, which is, you know, things like
youth sport leagues. So Amazon, I think going through a

(52:39):
change like every other tech company right now, where they
are saying, look, you know, we've got to cut costs
in different places. It's sad that this was one of
the places that they decided to cut. But if you
have a school or church or whoever uses that, it
definitely will be an impact. All right, Instagram, I was
talking about this and kind of teasing this throughout the show. Here,

(53:01):
this is a new program that Instagram has called quiet Mode.
Now we know that these tech companies made the name
for themselves by getting us to use them as much
as possible. And what that's done is if you don't
have any self control, it's really tough to stop using
these programs like Facebook and Instagram and TikTok. And so

(53:21):
these tech companies are now getting hip to this. And
it's not because they want to make you stop using it.
It's because they fear regulators, and they fear rules and
laws that may stop people from using these as much,
and so they're trying to do their own thing to
keep them from being regulated. And so Instagram knows this.
So now they have this new feature called quiet Mode
on Instagram, and it's aimed at teenagers, but anyone can

(53:44):
turn it on and quiet Mode kind of functions the
same way that you would have on your phone. When
you're in quiet mode, they're going to send someone that
sends you a message and auto reply. This says, hey,
Rich is trying to take a break from Instagram. You
can turn on this at night, you can turn it
on any schedule you want. But they're going to prompt
teenagers to turn on quiet mode when they spend a

(54:05):
lot of time on Instagram late at night. Quiet mode
is already available today. You can check your settings to
see you know what your quiet mode is enabled for
or if you want to turn it on. I think
this is a smart thing because we need boundaries. I
did a story where teenagers still leave their phone on
with the notifications chiming throughout the evening because while they're sleeping,

(54:25):
they don't want to miss anything. That's just wild to me.
I can't believe that people would actually do that. So
if you're using too much Instagram, use those settings to
kind of set some time limits on things. Coming up,
I've got a great guest, doctor Chris Pearson, CEO of
Black Cloak. We're going to talk cybersecurity and how to
keep yourself protected on the Internet. You're listening to rich

(54:45):
on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. This is
the show where we talk about tech stuff and answer
your questions as well. Phone lines are open at triple
A rich one, oh one. My next guest is a
cyber SGUs security expert. It is doctor Chris Pearson. He's
the founder and CEO of black Cloak. Chris, thanks for

(55:06):
joining me on this Saturday.

Speaker 11 (55:08):
Hey, not a problem, can you hear me?

Speaker 1 (55:09):
Okay, I hear you. Great, So, Chris. I'm reading this
headline about T Mobile and thirty seven million accounts, you know,
exposed in the latest data breach, and this is how
they play it down on their blog. No passwords, payment
card information, social security numbers, government ID numbers, or financial

(55:30):
account information were compromised. Only some basic customer information, nearly
of which the type is widely available in marketing databases
or directories, was obtained, including name, billing address, email phone
number data, birth account number, and information such as the
number of lines on the account and service plan features.
Sounds to me like they got a bunch of stuff

(55:50):
that's pretty good.

Speaker 2 (55:51):
Do I want that stuff out there? Probably not.

Speaker 11 (55:54):
No, you really don't. What you want is to be
able to trust third party, these folks that you are
sharing your information with, to actually keep that quote unquote
subscriber information confidential. To keep it private. I mean that's
part of the job of offering services to other parties.
And in fact, that information is useful. It's useful for

(56:18):
missing attacks that the tax that are via SMS. I
e via text because now you know the phone number
that somebody has for a mobile number, you know their address,
you know a little bit about them, and so you
can do some social engineering, you could do some fishing,
you could do some smishing, and quite honestly, with that
text message, that's what most banks, financial accounts and others

(56:41):
use to send a verification code to your phone. If
somebody has all that information about your phone, your phone number,
your service and all the rest, there are ways that
cyber criminals can go ahead and attack you. So it's
a lot of subscriber information really juice the information. A
lot of it is publicly available, but this is a
Trevor research for cyber criminal Yeah.

Speaker 1 (57:01):
And these companies, you know, their job is to play
is to downplay any sort of data breach, and you know,
I get it. That's their job is to say, look,
this is not that big of a deal. It's just
your name and address and phone number something. You said
the smishing, So can you explain that. I think that's
the first time I've heard that term. What is smishing?

Speaker 11 (57:19):
Yeah, so smashing is going to be phishing via SMS
text messages. So just like you receive in your email
maybe your Gmail or Yaho. You'll receive an email that says, hey,
your PayPal accounts been suspended, your Netflix account, we need
new payment information, your bank needs a new credit card. Well,

(57:41):
folks are used to answering and seeing messages from their
accounts via text message all the time. Cyber criminals have
gone ahead and use that as a mechanism for attack
because something like ninety nine percent plus of all text
messages get read, and so the bad guys know that
you're going to read it, and so what they'll do
is say, Hey, this is Larry, account representative from ACME Bank.

(58:05):
Your account is going to be locked, your your credit
card is going to be locked because we don't have
the right information for you. Click care on this link
to go ahead and confirm, reconfirm this information, and then
we'll get your account all set. Or maybe it's Hulu
and it's a Friday night, or Disney Plus and it's
a Friday night, whatever it is. Those are attacks that
are directed towards you as a as an individual, and

(58:27):
if you have that number, if you have your cell
phone number, can tie it to a person and address
other defined information, you can make that attack all that
much more likely and believable, and once the person clicks,
they're had. They're the bait, they're the target.

Speaker 1 (58:42):
And what's so tricky about this new type of targeting
is that you do get texts from your bank, Like
if you use your credit card and you know, the
bank texts you it says, hey, was this you that
just tried to make this purchase a best buy? So
they're actually using those and these bad actors are taking
that kind of twisting it on us to take advantage

(59:02):
of us because we don't Sometimes it's tough to tell
is it really coming from my bank or is it
coming from someone that's just trying.

Speaker 2 (59:08):
To get me.

Speaker 11 (59:09):
Look, it's one of those things where we expect, we want,
and quite honestly even demand, right that our institutions communicate
with us via easy to understand mediums, via quick messages
so you don't waste our time. And so for text messages,
that's quite honestly what we consumers want, and it plays

(59:31):
right into the hands of cyber criminals. And I will
tell you even more, it's like when you take a
look at when you take a look at the attacks
that just happened on Uber and Twilio this past summer
and actually we just released earlier earlier today, get it
again another attack. These were targeted towards employees via SMS text.

(59:52):
So they're going around corporate defenses, targeting employees and their
personal devices. And if you said, well, where can somebody
get a treasure trove of information such as all the
mobile numbers for everyone who works at this defense company
or this high tech company or this BioMed pharmaceutical company,
Well you don't have to look any further than this
team mobile breach. Unfortunately.

Speaker 1 (01:00:14):
We're talking with doctor Chris Pearson, CEO and founder of
black Cloak, a cybersecurity expert. Chris, can you talk about
some of the ways to know if your email or
password has been compromised, because now you know, people get
emails to say, hey, we found your password in a database,
or even Chrome will send you a message that says, hey,
we found when of your passwords was exposed. Can you

(01:00:35):
tell people how we can figure out how to see that.

Speaker 11 (01:00:39):
Yeah, So there are a few things that consumers can
do that are, you know, a little bit easier. We
like keeping it easy so people know how to do
it and can rely upon it. Like, just like you said,
they're baking in identifications of breaches into browsers like Chrome
or into other services, so you can use something like that.

(01:01:00):
You can even see some of the same stuff through
password vaults, and you can even see stuff through maybe
an external website like have I Been Poned? And what
that will do is allows you to look at your
email address and then if your email address you so
crisitgmail dot com, if that is tied to the T

(01:01:20):
mobile breach, when a treasure trope of information is found
on the dark web, when a treasure trope of information
is found that has been hacked, and I'll say, hey,
you're part of this breach. Sometimes you don't know if
your password is fully exposed or not. The fact of
the matter is if your user name has been part
of a breach, the easiest thing to do is to

(01:01:41):
just go ahead to that service, whatever it might be,
to go to that service, log in, change the password,
and make sure dual factor authentication is set up and
on the account that'll enable a text message to come
to your phone to verify the ownership of that account
or secure it. But there are lots of mediums and

(01:02:02):
mechanisms that people can use to go ahead and understand
more about what is happening to their personal information post breach,
once it's been stolen, once it's been used by cybercriminals.

Speaker 1 (01:02:16):
So the website you mentioned have I Been Poned? Have
I Been Pwned? Dot Com? Now people are going to
ask it says for your phone number or email?

Speaker 2 (01:02:26):
Is it okay?

Speaker 1 (01:02:26):
Is it safe to put your phone number or email
into this website?

Speaker 11 (01:02:31):
So on this website, what you're actually doing on have
I Been Pned Pwned dot Com is you're actually putting
your email in there. And what it will do is
go ahead and do a lookup of databases that have
been breached on the deep web, the dark web. It
is in fact safe to put your email addrest in there.
We'll confirm the account ownership of that it can and

(01:02:51):
what it will do is just let you know what
every cybercriminal can see. So the information is out there.
It's almost like you know a vehicle has been stolen
and put in a tracker for your car and you say, hey,
has anybody seeing a you know, red BMW sitting in
a parking lot in New Jersey. Well, the simple fact
matter is that everybody within you know, within visual range,

(01:03:13):
can actually see that vehicle. So you're not putting yourself
at any increased risk of harm whatsoever by placing your
email address into a service like this to understand how
many breaches your email has been part of and what
steps you may or might want to take to go
ahead and better secure it.

Speaker 1 (01:03:30):
I've got about a minute, and I'm curious from your standpoint.
People always say to me, Rich, I got what are
they going to get from me? It's not that big
of a deal like what I have. You know, I
use these passwords that are simple. Is the average person
putting themselves at risk on a daily basis to being
breached or hacked or anything.

Speaker 11 (01:03:49):
Yeah, So you know, unfortunately it's the wrong type of approach.
You know, just look at your email address and protecting
what's actually in your email account, maybe your Gmail account.
Literally are the keys the kingdom. So all of your
tax information or trusting estate information where you're flying, information
about your home relatives, all the rest your pictures when

(01:04:09):
people send them, right they get loaded into Google Drive.
All of that is there. There is meaning, There is
value in all those things, whether it be there. We
always say this, pay attention to four top things. One
email accounts, two your financial accounts, three your healthcare accounts,
and four your social media accounts. Those are the big
ones to pay attention to. Those do matter. They're worth

(01:04:31):
money to cever criminals. They want them, they want what's
in them. And one set stuff is gone. It is
gone forever because it's digital. You can still access it perhaps,
but the bad guys now have it and will have
it forever. So you really do want to mitigate that
rest all right, And.

Speaker 1 (01:04:46):
It's really tough to get those accounts back once they're hacked.
Doctor christ Goosh, founder and CEO of Black Cloak black
cloak dot Io. Thanks so much for joining me on
your Saturday.

Speaker 2 (01:04:56):
I appreciate it.

Speaker 11 (01:04:58):
Hey, not a problem, Take care all right.

Speaker 1 (01:05:00):
Coming up, I'm going to talk about the new feature
from Apple. If you own a small business, you definitely
want to know about this. I'll talk about that, plus
more guests in the show, we're going to talk about
digitizing your photos. My name is rich Dmiro. You're listening
to rich on Tech.

Speaker 2 (01:05:16):
Back after this.

Speaker 1 (01:05:18):
Rich Demiro here, rich on Tech. This is the show
where we talk about the tech stuff I think you
should know about. It's also the place where I answer
your questions at triple eight rich one oh one one
eight eight eight rich one oh one. Let's go to
Troy in Hollywood. Troy, You're on with Rich.

Speaker 9 (01:05:39):
Hi, Rich, Hi, thanks for taking my call. Rich. My
problem is with an old MacBook. I have to twenty ten.
The only reason why I don't use it. The only
reason why I have it is the photos that I
have on it. I'm trying to save to some other device.

(01:06:02):
I've tried many things, and because this MacBook is old,
I can't update it past ten point seven iOS lions?
Does it have any suggestions?

Speaker 2 (01:06:17):
Does the MacBook still work?

Speaker 9 (01:06:21):
It turns on my photos up there? If I try to,
like email a photo I've tried, I can't do that.

Speaker 2 (01:06:28):
Why not?

Speaker 9 (01:06:32):
It may have to do with my settings. Maybe I
need to I'm not sure.

Speaker 2 (01:06:36):
Can you get on the internet on this computer?

Speaker 9 (01:06:38):
Sorry?

Speaker 2 (01:06:39):
Can you get on the internet?

Speaker 4 (01:06:40):
Like?

Speaker 2 (01:06:40):
Can you go to Google or any of those websites?

Speaker 9 (01:06:43):
I can?

Speaker 2 (01:06:43):
You can't know.

Speaker 9 (01:06:44):
It's very slow, and it's slow, Okay, it comes on
a lot.

Speaker 1 (01:06:47):
How many pictures are we talking about here?

Speaker 9 (01:06:50):
A little over one thousand, maybe twelve hundred, okay.

Speaker 1 (01:06:53):
All right, and so this is just you've been kind
of this computer's been lingering around because you don't want
to get rid of it because you've got these things
on there.

Speaker 2 (01:06:59):
But it's takes.

Speaker 1 (01:07:00):
It just seems to not be an easy process to
get these off of.

Speaker 9 (01:07:04):
Their no, and I thought a no brainer would was?
I was excited would because I thought I could easily
do it with Google Photos.

Speaker 2 (01:07:13):
Yeah, and that doesn't work.

Speaker 9 (01:07:15):
Google Photos doesn't work because my Google out, the Chrome out,
it's coming up. I need to update my computer in
order to use it.

Speaker 2 (01:07:25):
Okay, got it, got it? Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:07:26):
So here here's a couple solutions that I think. So
if you can get this computer on the internet, it's
gonna you know, it's gonna take a bit, but I
think that your best bet is to drag and drop
these onto some sort of cloud based storage program. So
there's a couple that I'd recommend that is easy. First,
you can use Google Drive, so if you just want

(01:07:47):
to go to drive dot Google dot com on your browser,
and then you're gonna make a folder that says, you know,
old photos whatever from this MacBook and then just take
the pictures and just try one and drag it in
and see if it goes in there, and you can
through the web interface drag and drop on to Google Drive.
So that's number one. If that doesn't work, or if

(01:08:08):
it's too slow, or it just doesn't seem to be right.
Google Photos also has a web interface which I would recommend,
so you can go to photos dot Google dot com
and same thing. You can just drag and drop and
this works for any picture. You don't have to have
an old, you know computer, this, you know, you don't
have to download the Google Photos desktop uploader for this,

(01:08:28):
you can try that.

Speaker 2 (01:08:29):
What about?

Speaker 1 (01:08:30):
And then of course there's things like Dropbox. You can
just sign up for a free Dropbox account, and I
think I don't know what they're given away anymore for
free storage. Maybe it's a gigabyte or two. But you can,
you know, sign up for Dropbox and go to dropbox
dot com. So what I'm getting at is all of
these solutions I'm offering are all through the web. So
you don't have to download any special software. Because this

(01:08:53):
computer's so old that any software you're trying to download,
it's either saying sorry, we can't do that, or it's
not going to on on this program or on this
old laptop. And so it's just not a non starter
to be able to use one of these programs that's
going to be a lot easier and faster. But the
webway is the way to go. Do you think that
would work for this?

Speaker 9 (01:09:14):
I'm certainly gonna try. My last attempt was buying a
stick off yeah Amazon, Yeah, a cheap, a cheap one.
But it didn't work for me.

Speaker 1 (01:09:24):
So so you bought I was going to say, because
that was my other option is to get a flash
drive and to just plug this flash drive into the
computer and drag these these these photos over to the
flash drive.

Speaker 2 (01:09:35):
That's that didn't work either.

Speaker 9 (01:09:37):
Well you know, I inserted the stick and nothing comes
up on the screen. Okay, And I'm not tech savvy,
so I know there's some sticks where you put them
in and then the screen pops up and you go
from there.

Speaker 1 (01:09:48):
But yeah, that doesn't really happen on a MAX so much,
to be honest. And also, I think that you would
be better off with just a standard flash drive, one
that is not a photo stick. Person, say so, if
I were, you just go to you can go anywhere.
You can go to a you know, a CVS or
a Walgreens and just get a little USB stick, put

(01:10:11):
that in. Now, if if it's not showing up on
your you know, in your computer or on your home
you know, your desktop or in your finder. What you
want to use is an app called disc Utility. And
so if you go on your Mac and search for
disc utility, that will enable you to format that drive
and to make it work on a Mac. Because it
may not be formatted to work properly. So write that

(01:10:33):
down disc utility and so that will help you format
the little flash drive to work properly. But look, Troy,
these photos are out lost. The fact that this computer
still works. I think you've got many many ways of
doing this. If you can't figure this out, you can
always bring it into like a little you know, data
recovery place and they can help you do this. But

(01:10:54):
I think because this computers working, you're you're in.

Speaker 2 (01:10:56):
A good place.

Speaker 1 (01:10:58):
Thank you, Rich all right, thanks so much for calling
in from Hollywood. Right around the corner for me. Yeah,
all right, have a great day, have a great weekend.
I've got some hard drives just sitting around the house
that I have been you know, just they're just sitting
there because for so many years I've been waiting to
get the pictures off these drives. Even though I'm pretty

(01:11:20):
sure I have the pictures somewhere, I just want to
make sure that I have them. And it's one of
these things where it's I never get around to it
because I just don't want to. It's like the last
thing I want to do is sit there and try to,
you know, fire up this hard drive and get all
this stuff off of there. But you know, and I
think I have all the pictures in my Google Photos,

(01:11:41):
But back up your pictures. That's number one. That's I
guess my biggest piece of advice is just to please
back up your photos. I personally like Google Photos. If
you use an iPhone, you can use iCloud, but just
get them backed up.

Speaker 2 (01:11:54):
You can use one drive.

Speaker 1 (01:11:56):
There are so many ways to back up your photos
that I get emails all the time from people saying, Rich,
I should have taken your advice, but I didn't, and
when it's too late. Believe me, the feeling that you
get is not good. I've lost a picture or two
here or there over the years, and it's just it's
a bad feeling. So don't let that happen to you.

(01:12:16):
I also had a computer someone trusted me with their
old computer, and they said, hey, can you delete this
before you donated or whatever or.

Speaker 2 (01:12:24):
Get rid of it.

Speaker 1 (01:12:24):
We don't know how to do it, just take it.
And I knew that they had a bunch of personal
information on that computer. And I held onto that computer
for like a year before I figure it was really
tricky to figure out how to get this thing booted
up and to delete the stuff off of it because
kind of like the last caller, the computer was just
so slow and it was just so it was just
not cooperating with anything I wanted to do. So it happens,

(01:12:47):
but you know, just try to keep on top of
these things before you get to a point where your
computer's so old and it's just really tricky.

Speaker 2 (01:12:54):
All right.

Speaker 1 (01:12:54):
Coming up, I'm gonna tell you about the new feature
from Apple. If you have a small business, you definitely
want to know about this. Plus we're going to talk
about digitizing your old photos. I've got an in studio guest,
the first in studio guest for this show. You're listening
to rich on Tech. Welcome to the third hour of
rich on Tech. My name is rich DeMuro, talking technology,

(01:13:16):
answering your questions and basically helping you stay informed about
all the stuff that will keep you safe online, the
new gadgets, the new programs, basically anything that I think
is interesting that you should know about because I'm following
this stuff on a daily basis. I'm the tech reporter
for KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles. Coming to you

(01:13:36):
just about anywhere right now. So thanks for listening. Got
a lot to talk about in the next hour. We're
going to talk about digitizing your old photos.

Speaker 2 (01:13:45):
I've got an in studio guest to talk about that.

Speaker 1 (01:13:48):
We're going to talk about Apple's new program to help
you if you're a small business. And you can find
me online at richontech dot TV. So if you want
to see some of the stuff I do for TV,
or you're just interested in my Instagram, or you want
to talk about my Twitter, or I can't think of
an F word for the Facebook.

Speaker 2 (01:14:06):
But anyway, so you know what I'm talking about. You
got it.

Speaker 1 (01:14:10):
There's a lot of ways to see what I'm doing online.
All right, Let's get to Bob is in Arrowhead, California.

Speaker 2 (01:14:18):
Bob, you're on with Wretch. What's going on?

Speaker 4 (01:14:21):
I have a a pixel sixth bro And the screen
started flashing green on the right and then it got
worse and worse, so like I finally couldn't read anything,
and I went online and they were that's a I
guess it's a very common problem. And I called Google
and they told me to try a couple of things

(01:14:42):
and they were the same things online and then they
told me it was out of warranty and I got it.
That's February, but I ordered it in December and they
said a warranty starts on the day place you order,
not when you get the device.

Speaker 2 (01:14:58):
M that doesn't see that.

Speaker 4 (01:15:01):
I google that and that's California law really in state
to state, but in California, your warranty starts the day
you place the order. Well, it takes like six months
to get it in to one you warranty. But I
wondered if you had any suggestions or wow ideas.

Speaker 1 (01:15:18):
Well, that's that's news to me. That I mean, that
makes zero sense. And usually California is pretty ahead of
the curve when it comes to consumer protection laws, so
the fact that the warranty starts when you place the
order makes zero sense to me. I'll have to double
check on that one, but I'll take your word for
it at this point because you've talked to Google. So basically,
you've got a phone that doesn't work. Can you use

(01:15:41):
this phone?

Speaker 4 (01:15:43):
I know it's on because it makes noise and and
reacts to things. So but the screen is just as
it's on, but I can't see the screen.

Speaker 2 (01:15:54):
So yeah, I can't do anything.

Speaker 4 (01:15:57):
Well here's yeah, yeah, they say hold the power button,
then the volume up, will hold the power button and
the volume down. But neither of those who do anything.

Speaker 2 (01:16:07):
It's just yeah, so nothing. Okay, So a couple of
things here. Here's what I do.

Speaker 1 (01:16:13):
So first off, I think what you're referring to is
a the recovery mode to sort of get your phone
if it's not responding, to get it back to working. Now,
here's the thing. So is this your primary cell phone?

Speaker 4 (01:16:26):
It was, but when it died I ordered a seven Pro.

Speaker 1 (01:16:32):
Okay, so you've got a new phone. So this phone.
You just basically want to figure out what to do
with this at this point, like to get rid of
it or try to recoup some financially off of it.

Speaker 2 (01:16:41):
What what do you want to do with this phone?

Speaker 4 (01:16:43):
I'd like to be able to get it to work,
so I could you know, sell it or something? I
mean I couldn't trade it in because the screen is
blink or you know green, right, Okay, okay, So.

Speaker 1 (01:16:55):
So first off I would I would try the recovery Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:16:59):
Yeah, I won't want to throw it away because I.

Speaker 1 (01:17:01):
Can't yet you've got data on it. Okay, So I
would first off, I would, I would do the recovery mode.
So on a pixel again, you know, like you said,
it's it's a power. It's a series of buttons that
you press and you can look it up online if
you look up how Google and so. So it won't

(01:17:23):
it won't restart your phone. When you do that, you
can't get to the recovery mode.

Speaker 4 (01:17:27):
I can't get to the recovery mode.

Speaker 1 (01:17:28):
Interesting, Okay, there's also do they talk about this whole
like pixel website that you can go to the software
repair tool or no?

Speaker 2 (01:17:36):
Do they talk about that?

Speaker 4 (01:17:38):
No they didn't.

Speaker 1 (01:17:38):
Okay, So there is a website pixel pixel repair dot
with Google dot com, and you can plug your phone
into a computer with a USB cord and that may help.
So I would definitely try that and see if you
can access your phone through that way, because it may
just come up on your screen to give you the
options to fix this phone, So that would be my
first choice is to go to this plug your phone

(01:18:00):
in with USB cord to your computer, go to this
website pixelrepair dot Withgoogle dot com and follow this instructions
on screen and see if that finds your phone. If
your phone is on and working and the software can
talk to it, it may display on your phone on
your computer screen. Hey, what do you want to do
with this phone? Do you want to factory reset it?
And at this point that's pretty much what you want

(01:18:22):
to do, is you want to get this factory reset
so that you can clear your data off of here
and move on with your life. That's the first thing
to do. So if that doesn't work and you can't
do that yourself, you can bring it to a place
like you're in Lake Arrowhead. You can bring it to
a place like you break I Fix. They'll do a
free diagnostic and they can tell you what's wrong. And

(01:18:42):
even with their free diagnostic, you may just be able
to say, look, hey, if you can get access to
this phone, can you just erase it for me and
they'll take it. Or you can send it to a
place that will safely erase it and take the data.

Speaker 2 (01:18:55):
Now you have to have a little bit of trust.

Speaker 1 (01:18:57):
But there's places like gizmo Go so that they will
actually take this phone from you and they will erase
it safely and securely and either resell it or recycle
it if they can do that, and also pay you
anything for this phone if you want. The website is
giz Mo g I z m O Gizmoto. Let me sorry,

(01:19:21):
I'm trying to trying to get this website right. I
don't want to say the wrong website, cause there's there's
another one that's similar, but it's gives g I z
m O g O and we did a story with
them on KTLA. They're a store, a local place in
Los Angeles, and they will take your device that's not working.

Speaker 2 (01:19:38):
They will safely erase it.

Speaker 1 (01:19:39):
I watched them, I sat down with them, and I
saw them take these devices and connect them to computers
and erase them and then they'll recycle them or sell them.
But that would be my advice for you because you
just want to move on. It sounds like you've got
a new phone, but I get it. You don't want
this phone floating around with your information on it because
it's got your personal data. So those are the things

(01:20:00):
I would do in the in that order. So and
hopefully you can get this figured out and move on.

Speaker 2 (01:20:06):
But that's that's unfortunate.

Speaker 1 (01:20:07):
A phone should last more than a year, you know,
if you ordered it in you know, less than a
year ago, I.

Speaker 2 (01:20:14):
Would push Google a little bit harder on that.

Speaker 1 (01:20:17):
You know, maybe just try to escalate your you know,
your call to the supervisor and just see if they
can give you a new phone. You'll send them back
the old phone, but maybe they'll send you a refurbished
ask them to make a one time exception. Those are
those are usually the magical words that I use when
I'm calling a company and say, look, can you make
a one time exception here? I know this is your rules,

(01:20:39):
and you know rules are you know, they're made to
be broken sometimes, So can you make a one time
exception and make a customer happy? I bought another pixel?
I mean, come on, you can see my second order
of this phone. So I think that a little kindness
goes a long way with some of these companies. And
again getting to that supervisor that can maybe override the
system is also very helpful. So, Bob and Lake Arrowhead,

(01:21:01):
thanks for calling the show.

Speaker 2 (01:21:02):
I appreciate it. Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:21:03):
So I've been talking about this new tool from Apple.
If you own a small business, you got to know
about this tool. It's called Apple Business Connect, and it's
brand new. It's from Apple, and it's the equivalent of
a new tool that lets you update your business listing
across iPhone, across Apple Maps, across messages, across Apple Wallet,

(01:21:26):
Siri and other apps on the iPhone. And so if
you own a small business and you want to update
your phone number or your website or a special offer,
typically you would just have to wait for Apple to
find this information online or through a data broker, or
through some sort of third party system, and then update
that information in Google Map or in Apple Maps. With

(01:21:50):
this new tool, you can go and do this directly.
It's a lot faster and it's a lot quicker. So
now businesses around the world can directly manage their information
in the Apple Maps place card. So if people use
Apple Maps to look up your business, they will see
the information that you updated. That includes your photos, your logos,

(01:22:10):
and any links you want. So, if you run a
restaurant and you want to put a link to your
menu or a link to your reservation, how they make
a reservation, you can do that as well. You can
also do something called showcases, which is a special offer.
So if you have a seasonal discount or sorry, a
product discount or a seasonal menu, you can put that
on there. So again, this is really just the ability

(01:22:31):
to update your business listing across the iPhone. Now I
understand that many people use Google, many people use Google Maps.
This is sort of Apple's equivalent of saying, you know what,
We're going to take this stuff a little bit more seriously.
We're not just going to rely on third parties to
update this information. We're going to let businesses update this
information themselves. Google has something I think it's called the

(01:22:52):
business Let's see Google Business Manager.

Speaker 2 (01:22:54):
Let's see if that's what.

Speaker 1 (01:22:55):
It's called Google Business Profile. So if you have a business,
a small business, you should be on this as well.
So if you type in Google dot com slash business,
you can update your business on Google Maps and things
like that. So it's very important to do that. This
Apple website, Apple Business Connect. If you want to go

(01:23:15):
to this website, let me just get what the website
is exactly, because it's Apple and they're a little bit
different here, and you do need an Apple idea to
do this, but it is business connect dot Apple dot com.
Business connect dot Apple dot com. If you have a
small business, definitely update your information across these two platforms
because you know you've got a billion Apple users out there,

(01:23:36):
and you've got many many Google users as well. So
if you want your business to be found, you want
that accurate information, do that for sure. Coming up, I've
got a great guest. He has helped many many people
digitize their old photos, so we're going to talk about
the best ways to do that, how he can help,
of course, and also just the idea of all these

(01:23:57):
pictures laying around your house, you want to get them digital.
So we're going to talk talk to Mitch Goldstone. Coming
up next. You are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome
back to rich on Tech. This is the show where
we talk about tech stuff and answer your questions.

Speaker 2 (01:24:12):
I have my.

Speaker 1 (01:24:13):
First in studio guest here. I'm very excited. We're going
to talk to Mitch Goldstone of scan my Photos. He gosh,
he's helped so many people scan their pictures over the years,
including mine.

Speaker 2 (01:24:26):
And so if you've.

Speaker 1 (01:24:27):
Got that pile of pictures sitting in the closet and
you're thinking, I know I need to do this. He's
going to offer some great tips on how to do
that and why you should do it. I think that's
the most important thing, because you know, we talked about
losing digital photos, but imagine losing physical photos and that's
what's happening. So we're going to talk to him in
the next segment. It's gonna be a lot of fun.

Speaker 2 (01:24:48):
Let's ste another call, should we hear?

Speaker 1 (01:24:50):
Let's see we've got Jeffrey in New York, New York. Jeffrey,
welcome to the show. You're talking to Rich on Tech.

Speaker 10 (01:24:57):
Hi.

Speaker 3 (01:24:58):
How you doing?

Speaker 6 (01:24:58):
Rich?

Speaker 4 (01:24:59):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (01:24:59):
I'm doing fantastic. How are you doing? How is the
weather out in the East Coast.

Speaker 3 (01:25:04):
Where you're all stopping ground? Is thirty seven degrees right now?
We're in Rockland County. I know you're a Jersey boy.

Speaker 2 (01:25:09):
Nice yep, I am.

Speaker 1 (01:25:11):
I should know my geography better out there. I mean
I've heard of Rockland County obviously, But anyway, so what's
on your mind today?

Speaker 3 (01:25:20):
It's something that I went to one of the local
oppa stores today and we've got any issues with his
battery for twelve but they suggested a mag Safe. You know,
battery for it, you know the clips on the back,
but I say're pricing a little bit high. I wondered
if you know and you'll turn it in. Plus I
know you could get mag Safe speakers too, because I
kind of look on Amazon and kind of order it wise.

Speaker 2 (01:25:40):
You know right now, Oh you did nice.

Speaker 1 (01:25:42):
Yeah, Once you go down this mag Safe road, it's
actually pretty fun and it's it's one of the advantages
that the iPhone has over Android, but only for a
little a little longer because they are gonna reconfigure the
way that wireless charging works on androids very soon and
it will work in pretty much the same way mag
Safe work.

Speaker 2 (01:26:03):
So Apple kind of gave.

Speaker 1 (01:26:06):
That it's called the Chi Consortium, which is like the
wireless charging people kind of gave them the information about
mag Safe and said, you know what, you can use
this for all your phones now because it's it's anyway.
Apple basically took the standard and they said, this works,
but we're going to try to make it work better.
And that's how they made the magnet and how everything
aligns perfectly, which gives you more efficient charging. So you've

(01:26:28):
discovered that, so what you're trying to look for a
battery that clips onto the back of his phone.

Speaker 3 (01:26:33):
Yeah, his battery life isn't that great. Plus he's always on.
We went there and they said he's on TikTok a lot.
So they said, that's not gonna see So.

Speaker 1 (01:26:42):
Well, what kid isn't basically okay? So I like, I've
been testing a lot of these things. I carry a
bunch of them around, so I always have a wireless
mag Safe battery. I'm going to my website rich on
tech dot TV. I've got a whole bunch of recommended
gadgets and I'm going there because I like this Belkan one.
But I want to get the name just right. And
so if you go to the one from Apple, theirs

(01:27:03):
is probably the most expensive which Apple sells in their store.
Obviously it's probably, you know, sixty bucks something like that.
This one I like from Belkan is wireless power bank
with mag Safe. It's thirty nine to ninety nine and
so it will work with all of the different gadgets.
The thing you want to look for in a mag
Safe wireless charger is the capacity. So the capacity is

(01:27:27):
going to give you the amount of charging time, like
how many times you can charge his phone. So this
one is pretty thin. It just has twenty five hundred
million powers, which means it's pretty much going to charge
your iPhone once. That may not be sufficient for your child.
He may want I was it here or she I
didn't get that part, okay, So he may want something
that's more like five thousand million hours. But the bigger

(01:27:50):
the battery is, the larger it's going to be physically,
so it may be tough to actually hold the you know,
the battery on there at the same time as holding
the phone.

Speaker 2 (01:27:59):
Does that make sense.

Speaker 9 (01:28:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:28:01):
The other question with that is will it charge while
it's on both batteries?

Speaker 4 (01:28:05):
Does it works?

Speaker 9 (01:28:07):
Uh?

Speaker 1 (01:28:07):
Yeah, it'll Oh you're saying you want to charge the
battery while it's wirelessly charged while it's wirelessly on the phone.

Speaker 3 (01:28:13):
Yeah, you phone told me you could plug it into
the mag safe and it'll charge the phone well through
it or something.

Speaker 1 (01:28:19):
Uh, okay, So the mag Safe battery attaches to the
back of the phone. It will charge it wirelessly. You
can also plug a cable into the from the phone
into the battery and it'll charge it that way as well,
but you wouldn't want to do those at the same time.

Speaker 3 (01:28:33):
Right, Okay, yes, but I met is the Balkan one.

Speaker 1 (01:28:38):
Yeah, yes, And that's the other thing to look for
is USB C And you know, in portable chargers in general,
the wattage that they have, like the the watts like
this one's a seven point five watt. The maximum wattage
that mag safe can do, I believe is fifteen watts,
and it's it's kind of rare that you find a

(01:28:59):
lot of wireless charging banks that do that. The higher
the wattage, the faster it's going to charge your phone.
So if he's on TikTok and he's looking for this
thing to charge it, like in real time while he's
on the phone actively, it's probably not going to be
the best solution. Like I think a wired solution would
probably be better. But you mentioned that there is some

(01:29:19):
sort of issue with the wired so maybe that's not
that's why he's looking at wireless because he still has
that option.

Speaker 3 (01:29:24):
Yeah yeah, and that's when he's home, we're gonna have
it plugged in. Okay, Well that's play on the road.
I figured because you've been using it, like you said,
like every other kiddies or about home crazy.

Speaker 1 (01:29:35):
Yeah, this is this is a whole thing. I mean,
this is like basically my entire life is keeping my
iPhone charged at all times, so especially when I'm at
like an event like CEES or any of those things.
Like I am, I'm a stickler for just trying to
charge my phone at any given time that I'm not
using it, because that's really the thing that you want
to do, is make sure that when you're not using it,

(01:29:56):
you're having it charged, and even when you're using it, it'll
be fine. But they're plenty of these out there. There's
another company that I like called my Charge, and so
they have another portable power solution that I like that
I've tested and it.

Speaker 2 (01:30:09):
Works really well.

Speaker 1 (01:30:10):
It's called Maglock, and so it's not necessarily mag safe,
they don't use that term, but it does work with
mag safe cases and so that will work as well.
And they've got three different sizes. One is pretty pretty
large size.

Speaker 2 (01:30:23):
Let me see which one that is.

Speaker 1 (01:30:25):
They've got a nine thousand million amp hour which will
give you an extra forty eight hours of battery life
on top of your iPhone. So and yes, they have
speakers and all kinds of stuff. So mag Safe fun
thing to have on the iPhone that is on the
iPhone twelve and up I believe, so if you have
the iPhone twelve and up model, definitely check out mag Safe.
Coming up, we're going to talk scanning photos. You got

(01:30:48):
a bunch of photos at home. We're going to talk
about how to get those digitized so you can save
them forever. You're listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back
to rich On Tech. I've got my first in studio guest.
Mitch Goldstone is founder and I'm assuming CEO of scan
myphotos dot com. This is a website based in Irvine,

(01:31:10):
California that has helped many many people scan their physical photos.
And we all have that box of photos laying around
the house that you want to get to one day,
but let's make that today. Mitch, Welcome to the show.
Thanks for being here in person.

Speaker 7 (01:31:25):
Thanks rich you know it's it's so wonderful to be
your first guest. But I've been learning from you since
I'm going to date myself seen it.

Speaker 1 (01:31:33):
Wow, It's been a while since I was at CET,
but thank you and I appreciate it. And you know
I followed your stuff. I actually did a story with you.
I don't know how many years it's been at this
point with KTLA where we talked about scanning photos and
even back then it was important to do this, and
that was probably five, six, seven years ago. Tell me

(01:31:53):
about the state of the business, like, are people doing
this on a regular basis? I assume so, And why
do you think it's important that you digitize your fair photos?

Speaker 7 (01:32:02):
They are rich When you did the segment, sadly it
was before COVID and the pandemic. When that hit, there
are people that had to rush to prepare for memorial services.
And that's where we kind of reinvented the business because
people couldn't wait weeks months. Everything had to be done

(01:32:23):
the same day. So that was a big part of
the change.

Speaker 2 (01:32:27):
And so what what do you do?

Speaker 1 (01:32:28):
You've got I remember when I came there, I just
saw like palettes full of like boxes that people send in.
Are people so clearly people are comfortable mailing pictures in
to be scanned.

Speaker 2 (01:32:39):
How safe is that?

Speaker 1 (01:32:41):
Because that would be the first question I'd have is like,
I live in you know, Kentucky, I'm sending you pictures.

Speaker 2 (01:32:46):
Is this going to make it through the system?

Speaker 7 (01:32:48):
Okay, sure, We've preserved over a billion pictures. We never
lost anything but excuse me. And at CEES, I spent
an hour with the US Postal Service executives discuss that
very question, and what they loved is that people trust
them the US Postal Service with delivering the most precious
possessions photos and even on the website on the homepage

(01:33:11):
was a link to the commercial they made, which no
small business gets commercial from USPS.

Speaker 2 (01:33:17):
It's kind of an honor what you were in there.

Speaker 1 (01:33:19):
Yeah, so okay, so how does it work? So I
order from you, I get like a box. Do you
send me a box or do I just find a
box of the post office and just throw my pictures
in there?

Speaker 7 (01:33:28):
And what we do we do for smaller orders you
could just send in your photos, slides, home movie film,
all of that. For larger orders, just go to the
website and you get a prepaid box. Fill it up
with your photos, slides, movie film as well, send it
to us and the coolest new features. If you select
express scan fast, we do it same.

Speaker 1 (01:33:50):
Day, so you'll as soon as you get those in
you're going to scan them. And then when I did it,
it was like a flash drive or a CD. I
can't remember, but now, well you'll just directly upload these
two online site that I can download immediately.

Speaker 7 (01:34:04):
Indeed, so we have the DVD data desk for all
the files, regular DRAPEG files, they're yours, are not locked
or anything like that, or a flash drive, a gigabyte
flash drive. Most people now select the upload service. So
as soon as your images, your photos, slides, home movie
films are digitized, you get an email and you click

(01:34:25):
on it and all your resolution high five files are there.

Speaker 1 (01:34:31):
And so speaking of resolution, when I was doing this myself,
you know, because you can if you have a printer
that's got the flatbed scanner. You know, if you have
a couple of pictures, it's easy to do this yourself
as well. Which and I highly recommend that you no
matter what, just do it, Like whether you use you know,
a website or you send them out or whatever, or
you do it yourself.

Speaker 2 (01:34:49):
Just do it.

Speaker 1 (01:34:49):
That's the important thing. So what resolution do you recommend
that we scan our pictures?

Speaker 2 (01:34:54):
In act?

Speaker 1 (01:34:55):
Because I've noticed there's like, you know, six hundred or
three hundred do I need to do.

Speaker 7 (01:34:58):
The high resolution photos for images that you want to
make enlargements of historic photos? All of that, you should
always select the highest resolution, but we had a lot
of customers that were saying they just want their photos
digitized to upload to social media. Scan my Photos now
is a content provider for all photo sharing apps, whether

(01:35:18):
it's Instagram, Facebook, Snap, all of them. But what people
are doing is they just want the files to be
uploaded so they don't need to be that large because
we're talking about large quantities of photos. Five thousand photos.
Someone sent in twenty thousand slides just this past week,
and we have the new slide Carousel service, so we

(01:35:38):
digitize the slot entire slide carousel.

Speaker 2 (01:35:41):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (01:35:42):
I loved watching the machines at work at your facility
because they just so fast. They're so fast and they
just work really really well. Have you ever lost any photos?

Speaker 7 (01:35:52):
We've not, but man our customers have and it's so heartbreaking.
We get messages all the time, Hey, you digitize my
photos ten years ago to twelve years ago, fifteen years ago,
I lost them, fireflood, whatever do you have them? And
it was because of so many people saying they lost
their photos that we added a new archival service. We're
working with Amazon where everything is uploaded on our side

(01:36:15):
securely in the cloud. So if you had an order
and you selected to have us archive it. It's there permanently.
But I don't want to be the depository of your photos.
I want to please for you to save copies offsite,
make extra copies, give them to friends. You mentioned Google
Photos wonderful source, and also in a safety deposit box.

(01:36:37):
Even please make lots.

Speaker 2 (01:36:39):
Yeah, don't just have that one copy.

Speaker 1 (01:36:40):
That was my favorite thing about getting my photos digitized.
And by the way, when I got my photos digitized,
it was just my personal collection. I still have a
lot more. My mom's garage is like an untapped resource
and she won't really let me in there to do this.
But one of these days I will go in there
and get these pictures and send them in because I
I really want to see all these pictures of me

(01:37:02):
as a kid and my siblings and my parents. But
what was so fun about getting these pictures that I
had just a couple of them digitized, is throwing them
into Google Photos and it does its magic. Where it
was finding my grandfather and my grandmother and putting it
in their little face kind of recognition system. I mean,
that was really incredible, even with video. People may not

(01:37:24):
realize this when you digitize a video. Google Photos will
go through that video and identify the people in that video,
and then when you click on their face, you'll see that, oh,
they're in this video for my birthday party when I
was eight or whatever. I mean, that's pretty incredible. It's
just I mean, once you get these pictures back, I
imagine your customers just spend time just like sitting there

(01:37:46):
and looking at them for a while.

Speaker 2 (01:37:47):
So much.

Speaker 7 (01:37:47):
I have a great story. But I'm that too with
Google Photos. With videos, it's also a home movie film
where scan my Photos digitizes each frame so you can
actually capture a single frame to share it. But a
great story you mentioned about your mom and trying to
get those We have a CBS News correspondent had one

(01:38:07):
hundred boxes of slides from his mom that somehow he
was able to get away from her. We digitized it
same day, so that night they got a link. They
got all of them, and it was for his mom's
ninetieth birthday. He had a whole big celebration, the whole
family there and everything was digitized fifty years ago from
New York City from the World's Fair. Images that people

(01:38:30):
haven't seen ever before. That's why it's so important.

Speaker 1 (01:38:34):
We're talking with Mitch Goldstone, founder of scanmyphotos dot com. Mitch,
I know that recently Costco has gotten rid of their
photo processing facility in stores. This business of pictures, like
when I was a kid, you would have one ten film,
then thirty five millimeter film. You'd bring it to a

(01:38:55):
place like remember those little like tiny places they had
in parking lots where you like a photo processing facility,
You put it in an envelope. They would give you
the pictures like a week later, and you'd be so
excited to see what those pictures were that was on
that role in ninety percent of them were just trash
because you know, you didn't see what you were taking
a picture of. What do you make of this changing
industry now that everything's digital, we're taking more pictures than ever.

(01:39:19):
Is your job ever going to be done getting these
old pictures digitized?

Speaker 2 (01:39:22):
Not at all.

Speaker 7 (01:39:23):
They're trillions of images. Big thing though, is most people
are just uploading recent pictures. I'm sure your listeners are
smirking now because they're also uploading pictures from their smartphone
camera role basically if they're like me, of the food
they ate last night. Sure, but not from the World's
Fair in New York City.

Speaker 2 (01:39:41):
All of that.

Speaker 7 (01:39:42):
Costco is very interesting because my partner Carl Berman, and
I started as retail photo lab owners in Orange County
and everything changed. Our biggest competitor was Costco. I remember
people would walk in and say, well, I'm not going
to pay you, I can just go to Costco.

Speaker 2 (01:39:58):
And there's a lot cheaper. It was a lot cheaper, and.

Speaker 7 (01:40:01):
It was cheaper, less expense, I should say, less expensive
and cheaper. But what Costco just announced now is really
troubling because they close down their pitt labs at Costcos
and they just announced they're closing down online Costco, which
was a really great feature. You could upload all your photos,
print them everything, and they transferred all of that to Shutterfly.

(01:40:26):
I'm not sure exactly what the arrangement is because Shutterflies
discounted prices so much anyway, But the biggest thing is
that that segment has disappeared its retail, the photo labs,
all of that stuff, even from Back to the Future
that Kiosk in that scene with the Dolorean, all of

(01:40:46):
that has disappeared. But what hasn't disappeared but is disappearing
or all the photos, all the slides, all the home movies.
They're getting old and they have to be digitized and backed.

Speaker 2 (01:40:59):
Up and very quickly.

Speaker 1 (01:41:01):
Do you recommend if you still have the film like
let's say you remember how when your pictures came in
the little packet and it had the film roles like
sliced up, would you recommend that people get those digitized
or just just scan the pictures.

Speaker 7 (01:41:13):
We do all of that too with negatives.

Speaker 2 (01:41:15):
Meetium for negative forgetting. It works exactly.

Speaker 7 (01:41:19):
And you know, it's a great question because some people
want to digitize their negatives. Just send your photos to us.
The quality is so we never had anyone say I
don't like the quality of the photos, so please do
the photos.

Speaker 2 (01:41:31):
It's a lot less money.

Speaker 7 (01:41:32):
But not to say that negatives aren't important to to digitize,
all right.

Speaker 1 (01:41:38):
Mitch Goldstone of scan my Photos dot Com down in Irvine,
But you don't have to go there. Can you still
drop off if you wanted to, if you didn't trust
the mail or whatever.

Speaker 7 (01:41:49):
We're headquartered in Irvine, but only about ten percent of
our business is from California. It's all over the country, Hawaii,
Puerto Rico, Alaska, all all over for that. Even on
the website if you go to the top, I think
we just added a promo code for rich on Tech.

Speaker 1 (01:42:05):
Oh nice, use that promo code rich on Tech. Mitchicoldstone,
thanks so much for joining me first in studio guest
here on the rich On Tech Show. Coming up, we
are going to talk about the best journaling apps and
this calculator that can help you determine if you should
pay for your travel with points or cash.

Speaker 2 (01:42:22):
You're listening to.

Speaker 1 (01:42:23):
Rich on Tech, Laura, perfect song for the end of
the show closing time. Ah, yes it is. But before
we go, we got a couple of things to talk about.
Rich Demiro here rich on Tech, hanging out with you
talking about technology, and you know, I have started to journal.
I think that journaling is very important. I think it's

(01:42:45):
good for your well being, for your mind, and also
it's just kind of fun because you're like, who's going
to read this in the future, Like, who's going to
read what my thoughts are in the future. And so
I've been testing out a bunch of apps and I
do have my favorite, and actually I switched, but let
me go over the apps that that I tested first up. Clearful,
this is an app that I really like. I interviewed

(01:43:07):
the founder and it's kind of what's neat about it
is that every day it gives you a question to answer,
and that makes journaling very easy because you may sit
there and look at this blank page and say, I
don't know what to say, So this gives you a
question to answer on a daily basis. You can use it,
you don't have to use it. It's also available for
iOS and Android. It's called Clearful. I really like that.
That's one of my top apps. Next up is Reflection app,

(01:43:30):
and I like this one as well. They're very similar.
Clearful and Reflection almost look and feel the same. The
slight edge I like about Reflection is that not only
does it give you starter phrases, so you can say
something like I'm feeling or I've been thinking about or
I'm grateful for and you can also make your own
prompts as well, so you have to upgrade to a

(01:43:52):
paid plan to do that. But what I like is
it has this little light bulb button, very similar to Clearful,
except you press that button when you want a question.
So maybe every day you don't need a question, but
you can just press that button and get a question,
which I really like. Tangerine is Good was not my favorite,
but this is more for overwell, overall well being. It

(01:44:12):
helps you track your daily mood and your habits. That
was not my favorite because I'm not one of those
people that's like trying to form a new habit. I mean,
I know I should, but I just I don't know,
not this year, maybe next year. And then the other
one I really like is called Day one. Now this
is more of a journal that is almost like a
personal blog, so it's not so much focused on that

(01:44:35):
daily question, although they do have daily questions. But this
has so many features and you can add photos, you
can add files, you can add audio. It's almost like
your own private Facebook feed for your memories. And I
also like how this has apps available across everything iOS, Android, desktop,
browser extensions, and it's just really slick. And actually I

(01:44:57):
started out using one of these other apps and I
switch to Day one because I had been using Day
one as a journal. But then I was like, well,
I want kind of a work journal. So now I
have two journals inside my day one. One's a work journal,
one's a personal journal. And when I want a question,
I can answer it. When I want to do work stuff.
It's almost like just a personal blog for me, and
I really really like it. Again, all of these apps,

(01:45:20):
they're all free at the base, but if you want
to use a lot of extra features, you're gonna have
to be prepared to pay just a little bit extra.
And for day one, after using it for two days,
I paid I think it was twenty five dollars for
the year, and it's well worth it because that's like
two dollars a month for this feature, for.

Speaker 2 (01:45:38):
All of those features.

Speaker 1 (01:45:39):
And the other thing you want to look for when
you choose a journaling app is make sure that it's
encrypting your information, because you want this to be secure,
but also maybe you want to give someone the keys
to this so that later on, you know, I don't
want to think about the worst, but you know, you
don't want to just write this and have it disappear.
You want maybe your legacy to have this and to

(01:45:59):
read what you're doing, thoughts were, and what your feelings
were on things, and what you went through in your
life that your kids may enjoy at some point when
you're no longer around. It's just really it's weird to
think about, but it's it's kind of strange. I mean,
it's just very very kind of weird, but kind of
cool too. So again day one, if you want to
see all these picks, you can go to my website
rich on tech dot tv.

Speaker 2 (01:46:22):
I thought this was cool.

Speaker 1 (01:46:24):
I was planning a trip to New Jersey with my
kid and I was like, is it better to pay
for this trip using cash or my points? And I
know that you can go on websites and see how
much a point is worth. You know, Delta point is
worth this amount, United Point is worth this amount. But
the points to at the pointsky dot com makes it
really easy. So if you go to the points guy

(01:46:46):
dot com slash calculator, you just type in the loyalty program.
So if it's Southwest and you want to figure out
if it's better to use Southwest points versus your cash,
you put in Southwest. It asks you for the cost
in points or mind, so you can put in let's
say it's twenty five thousand points.

Speaker 2 (01:47:02):
For that flight. And then fees.

Speaker 1 (01:47:04):
You know, some of these things have like a little
tiny fee attached. Sometimes it's small, sometimes it's big.

Speaker 2 (01:47:09):
Let's just say the fee is.

Speaker 1 (01:47:10):
Six dollars for taxes and then we compare to cost
and cash. So let's say this flight was actually two
hundred and sixty seven dollars. You press calculate, and now
it says if you use cash, you're gonna save one
hundred and fourteen dollars. It's saying that the points guys
estimating the points are worth three seventy five plus six
dollars compared to the cash price of two sixty seven,

(01:47:32):
you're gonna save.

Speaker 2 (01:47:33):
One hundred and fourteen bucks.

Speaker 1 (01:47:35):
So again, that's at the points guy dot com slash calculator.
It's one of these things that I feel like I
would have known about for a long time, and I've
been doing these calculations myself. But now that I know
this website, I'm just gonna use that and I know
the points Guy. Believe me, I've interviewed the points Guy
great success story, sold this website or created this website

(01:47:57):
and just just did very well for himself. So this
is really really cool. Brian Kelly, great great guy knows
a lot. I follow him on Instagram now he knows
a lot about travel. He's always going somewhere. Finally, one
feature you want to change on your password manager is
how long the password manager stores passwords on your clipboard,

(01:48:18):
so there's a setting inside the password manager app that
you're using to clear the clipboard contents. Not every one
of these password managers clears the contents in a timely manner,
So you want to make sure that you have this
setting that says, hey, clear this after thirty seconds, so
that anything you copy and paste with your password is
not stored on your phone and a hacker may have

(01:48:38):
access to that. That's a PSA from TechSpot dot com.
Very very smart to do because these clipboards, a lot
of them now is just save things for a long time,
and so you definitely don't want that that save. So
I'll put all these links. I'm gonna put them all
my website rich on tech dot tv. Be sure to
find me on Instagram at rich on tech. Can you

(01:48:59):
believe it? But that is going to do it. For
episode number three of the show, when they said rich
you got to sit here and talk about technology for
three hours, I was like, how am I going to
do that? But clearly it can be done. If you'd
like to submit a question for me to answer, you
can go to richon tech dot tv, hit the email
icon you can find me on social media including Instagram, Facebook,

(01:49:22):
and Twitter at rich on Tech and don't forget to
check out my KTLA TV segments on YouTube. Next week
I'm testing out a fitness tracker that attaches to your sneakers.
Plus i'll talk about a new competitor for Facebook. My
name is rich Demiro. Thanks so much for listening. There
are so many ways you can spend your time. I
do appreciate you spending it right here with me. I'll
talk to you real soon.

All Episodes

Rich On Tech Radio Show 003 - January 21, 2023

Episode Transcript

Host

Rich DeMuro

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Rich On Tech Radio Show 003 - January 21, 2023