014 Rich on Tech Radio Show - April 8, 2023 - Rich On Tech

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Google drop support for yet another product. Best Buy launches
boxes that make it easy to recycle old gadgets, even cables.
How to make your cell phone calls sound clearer. Plus
your tech questions answered. What is going on? I'm Rich
Demiro and this is Rich on Tech, the show where
I talk about the tech stuff I think you should

(00:22):
know about. It's also the place where I answer your
questions about technology. I'm the tech reporter at ktlaight Channel
five in Los Angeles. Welcome to the show. What a
show it's going to be. Phone lines are now open.
Let me press the magic button to open those triple
A Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven

(00:45):
four to two four one zero one.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
Kim is standing by to screen your calls.

Speaker 1 (00:53):
Give me a call. If you have a question about technology.
Email is also open. Send it to hello at on
tech dot TV. You're really taking advantage of that email
I've noticed. So yeah, you know the goal of this
show was to get like less emails, but it's actually
created more emails. So yes, I get to your email.

(01:15):
It may take a bit, but I do read them.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
Believe me.

Speaker 1 (01:18):
If you follow me on social media, you know that
I just go back from a family vacation to Hawaii.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
We plan this thing so long ago. It was so
nice to go. But isn't it weird how when you're
on vacation. Oh wow, that was weird.

Speaker 1 (01:31):
I just looked at my show clock here and it
literally showed eight oh eight, which is the ZIP or.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
The area code for Hawaii. It was weird anyway. Isn't
it odd that how when you go on vacation you
are happy to come back home? Did you do you
ever think that would happen?

Speaker 1 (01:44):
Like when you're planning a vacation, you think you want
to stay there forever, but after a couple of days.
Maybe it's just me. I don't know, but I'm always like, Okay,
I can get back to my routine. I can get
back to going to the gym. I can get back
to eating like a standard meal and not you know,
the most food you could ever imagine.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
But it was great on this trip.

Speaker 1 (02:03):
I challenged myself to disconnect, which is always a challenge
for someone like myself because I'm trying to keep up
with the news. I'm getting questions from a lot of
people from all over the place.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
How did I do?

Speaker 1 (02:17):
I think I did pretty well, I said I was
only going to use one phone the entire trip, which
I pretty much did. I did bring two phones, but
I only used one the whole time. You know, I'm
always testing something, so I wanted to see you know,
Samsung's got this new two hundred megapixel camera, so I
was like, I want to see how it does. I
also want to compare the selfie camera on both the
Samsung and the iPhone. So I did that, and by

(02:38):
the way, Samsung does a lot better. One of the
things I've noticed much much better with HDR. So when
you're taking a picture of like a sunset behind you
or in front of you with a selfie, Samsung just
does a little bit better processing on that.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
I don't know why, but that's just a thing.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
Also why I was able to disconnect, the signal was
terrible all along the beach. My wife and I were
like laughing, We're like, we found the one place in
the world that has no signal, and so we pretty
much were forced off of our phones because they just
didn't work, and the Wi Fi was pretty much non
existent unless we were in our place. So it was good.
It was nice to disconnect for a little bit. I
did a little tiny bit of work so I can

(03:15):
prep for this show. Of course, if you want to
see the highlights of my trip, I've got them on
my Instagram stories. I did all that stuff, tried to
do that towards the end of the trip, and I
also challenged my kids to no roadblocks for the week,
so I said, you know, let's see if you can
do no roadblocks, which you know I'm not a fan of,
and they did also know YouTube that one they were

(03:36):
not so successful at. In fact, my kid at the
end of the week with the roadblocks, he's like, Dad,
you know what, I actually kind of liked not playing
roadblocks all week. And I was like, okay, can we
keep that going when we get home, and he said
no because he was already on it this morning. I
did encourage my kids to download Apple Arcade games. So
if you're not familiar with Apple Arcade, the games there

(03:56):
are pretty much free of any in app purchase is
and also, as far as I know, you can use
them without an Internet connection. So a lot of these
games that are online on the iPad, you know, they
show a lot of ads and they you need internet
to play them. So if you're looking for something that's
sort of offline. The Apple Arcade games are really good.
It is like, I think five dollars a month to
do that, but you can sign up for a free

(04:17):
trial often if you look in the target app. I
know it's weird, but if you look in the target
app in the like kind of settings area, there's always
like an offer for a couple of free months of
Apple Arcade and Apple Fitness and Apple Music.

Speaker 2 (04:31):
So definitely check there.

Speaker 1 (04:32):
Also Best Buy a lot of times has deals where
you can get a couple of free months of the
Apple subscription stuff. The other thing that was really cool
is this little device from Nintendo called the Game and Watch,
and it's almost like a game Boy, but just for
one game or maybe two or three. It has like
three built in games. So we had the Mario one
and it just has like the original old school Super

(04:54):
Mario Brothers game, Super Mario Brothers two, and then some
other game. But it's just a simple little device that
you can charge up. I was surprised to see that
it did use USBC, which was cool, and my kids
loved it. So they would just swap and play and
it was great. And I said, this is like old
school days when you had to watch someone play video games,
you would watch them play while you waited for your

(05:17):
turn to play.

Speaker 2 (05:18):
And that's how it worked.

Speaker 1 (05:19):
Now when I travel, I even though I'm not working,
I love to see the trends that are happening. So,
for instance, I took United Airlines over there. They don't
take cash on the plane, and for some reason, this
always trips people up. You're supposed to store your credit
card in the app before you go, so it's all
contact lists, and for some reason, nobody could figure this out,
Like it's very farign to like everyone on the plane,

(05:41):
so everyone has their cash out and the flight attends
they're like, oh, sorry, you can't take cash, and like what?
And then you gotta go online. You gotta connect your
device to the Wi Fi. You gotta download the app,
which you can't do when you're in the air. You
gotta link link up your credit card. So that always
trips people up, which I always laugh at because I
see it happen every single time I take United. The
weather apps do not work at all in Hawaii. So

(06:04):
I'm not talking about Apple's weather app, which had some
issues this week. It was literally down for a couple
of days. I did notice that but if you believe
the weather forecast that we were looking at on the
apps before we went to the island, we wouldn't have
gone because it just seemed like it was horrendous, like
really really bad, like windy, rainy, cold. And we got yes,

(06:24):
we got wind, we got rain, we got cold. But
as they say on the islands, if you don't like
the weather, just wait five minutes.

Speaker 2 (06:30):
It literally changes.

Speaker 1 (06:32):
And so we had fantastic weather for I would say
ninety nine percent of the time. But if we believe
the weather app I'm not kidding, we would have diverted
to a different destination. The other thing I noticed in
this I absolutely love is kudos to whoever the Toast
salesperson is on the island. And Toast is a tech
company that does they do like, let's see, how do

(06:53):
they describe themselves a restaurant point of sale and management system.
So whoever their salesperson is in Hawaii is they get
an A plus? Because I noticed a lot of restaurants
were using their handheld order tablet, which is basically like
a small kind of phone tablet kind of thingy that
lets the waiters type in your order as you say it.

(07:16):
So it's nice and a fission and it sends it
straight to the kitchen. But then, better yet, at the end,
when you're all done, you can just tap your card
to this little device and they don't need to take
your card away, which I love. And better yet than that,
some of the restaurants were actually printing QR codes on
the receipt which you can scan with your phone and
then use Apple Pay or Google Pay or PayPal or

(07:37):
Venmo to just take care of your bill immediately. Now,
that only worked when you had a signal, which I
didn't a lot of the time, so that was kind
of tricky.

Speaker 2 (07:45):
But when it did work, it was awesome.

Speaker 1 (07:47):
And what was really cool is it would get you
out of the restaurant faster, because you know, after you're done,
you know you want to dine, We like to dine,
but after you're done, when your bill comes, you're done.
You want to get out of there. You know, the
wine is gone, the food is gone, the plates are
piled up. It's like, I want to get out of
this restaurant, and so all you want to you don't
want to wait for the waiter to come back ten
minutes later with your bill because at that point they're

(08:08):
done kind of serving you and it could take a while,
so I love being able to do that. All right,
let's see what else? Oh, this was good? The ways
to find things to do? So Number one. I usually
sort on Yelp by most reviewed, but I've noticed that
sometimes these days, since everyone uses Yelp, it almost might

(08:29):
be better to go to the second most reviewed restaurant
because the first one has a line like Disneyland. So
maybe give a little business to the second restaurant that's
the most popular because the first is just slammed. Google
Maps also pretty good. I use this the top rated
filter to narrow down restaurants that I might like. And
then on Instagram, this is a cool feature that I
used to find a couple of places that we went to.

(08:51):
You can actually search on Instagram. It's kind of a
hidden feature. You do a search and then you click
the city that you're going to, and then there's a
big X. You click that, and then it shows you
all of the most Instagram spots in that area, but
you can sort them by restaurant attractions. Things like this,
and that has found helped us find a couple of
cool places too, particular on this trip, one place called

(09:13):
Slappy Cakes, which I thought was a cool concept. You
make pancakes on a griddle on your table, kind of
like Benny Hanna, but at your own table for pancakes.
And then this other thing called Maui Fruit Ninja, and
this guy was like literally standing outside. It's like a
pop up kind of shop that was standing outside of
our hotel one day and I found it through Instagram.
So Instagram does work if you're a business, to put

(09:34):
the time into Instagram because people are on there, people
are looking, people are noticing. So that is something that
you should really put some time into marketing because people
do find places on Instagram. And before you go, I
should have followed my own advice, which I forgot to do.
I said on Instagram, Oh, you should use offline maps
your next trip, and sure enough, I forgot to download
the offline maps, and so when I got there, I

(09:56):
finally had.

Speaker 2 (09:56):
To do it because the signal was so bad.

Speaker 1 (09:58):
But definitely, before you go somewhere, download offline maps on
Google because that basically saves the maps to your phone
and that will mean that you'll be able to navigate
a lot easier when you get to your place. I
did also have one one wild thing that happened while
I was on the beach, and I'm gonna tell you
after the break because I've got to go to break here.
But I actually had to help save a life. And

(10:21):
this was not something that was planned obviously, and it's
not something that you would ever think would happen, but
I had to do it. And so I will tell
you the story of how I had to save someone's
life on the beach in Maui when we come back.
But first, let me tell you about the show We've
got coming up here. Lots of stuff going on, Google
dropping support for another product.

Speaker 2 (10:39):
I'm going to tell you what that product is.

Speaker 1 (10:41):
I got lots of feedback, so later in the show,
I will share the feedback that you have given me.
And we've got great guests this week. Hyundai is going
to join me to talk about their latest ev that
they hope will take on the Tesla Model three. The
CEO of an app that wants to bring I message
to Android users is also going to joined me, and
later in the show, my old pal Dan Akerman from CNET.

(11:04):
He's gonna join us to talk all things Tetris, including
the new Apple TV Plus movie that I watched on
the plane. But first it's gonna be your turn. Your
calls coming up next at triple eight rich one O one.
That's eight eight eight seven four to two, four.

Speaker 2 (11:19):
To one zero one.

Speaker 1 (11:20):
I'm rich Dmiro and you are listening to rich on Tech.
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging
out talking technology with you. You can find me on
social media at rich on Tech. I'm on Instagram, Facebook,

(11:40):
and Twitter, the website richon Tech dot TV. All right,
so I said I was gonna tell you the story
about saving a life in Hawaii, So let me let's
go to Shirley first. Let's do that. Let's see, uh oh, Cheryl,
let's go to Cheryl. Am I saying that right, Cheryl
and Palmdale.

Speaker 3 (12:00):
Yes, that's correct. Thank you for taking my call.

Speaker 2 (12:03):
How's it going great.

Speaker 3 (12:05):
I'm looking forward to hearing the story, and I'm glad
you were at the right place at the right time
to save a life.

Speaker 1 (12:10):
Oh my gosh, it was I think my heart is
still beating from what happened. But I'll tell the whole
thing in my anyway. So tell me what's going on
with you and then I'll get to that.

Speaker 3 (12:20):
I just want to know if there's some tips or
anything that I should be doing to make my internet
router safer. I'm trying to save money. So Verizon was
having a deal to where I could try their Internet gateway,
you know the five gear.

Speaker 4 (12:36):
Yeah yeah, yeah, or for a year.

Speaker 3 (12:38):
For free and if it works out, well, then I
can cut my you know, internet cord and save myself
like almost two hundred dollars a month.

Speaker 2 (12:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (12:47):
Well, I got that same text, and I forgot to
actually act on it. They said, hey, We're going to
give you a year of like internet for free, and
I said, wait what? And then they sent me a postcard.
So I still haven't done it. But the problem is
now where you are Do you get five G coverage?
Because I don't where I live. Yeah, okay, see that's
the thing. If you have five G that's amazing because
you're going to get a speed that's pretty good.

Speaker 2 (13:07):
Where I live.

Speaker 1 (13:08):
I have only lteve available with Verizon, and so I
don't get the fat like the speed is really not good.

Speaker 2 (13:14):
It's like maybe ten down or something.

Speaker 1 (13:16):
Are you getting? Have you done a speed test on
this new wireless.

Speaker 3 (13:20):
No I'm not.

Speaker 2 (13:22):
Okay, Well here let me want. Yeah, so let me
tell you what to do. It's just go to the web.

Speaker 1 (13:26):
So when you're connected to this new Wi Fi, I
assume you're running two right now, you have like your
old and your new one running ye okay, so you
can tell in your computer which one you're connected to.
One's Verizon, one's the other the other brand.

Speaker 2 (13:38):
Yeah okay.

Speaker 1 (13:38):
So when you're on the Verizon one, just go to
the website called fast dot com. And so if you
go on that website on your computer, it will instantly
do a quick speed test and you can see how
fast your internet is through Verizon. And so so the
first thing I would do is connect to Verizon, do
the fast dot com, and then I would go to
you know, connect to the other Wi Fi from your

(14:00):
other provider, and go to the same website and compare
the SPEEDSKA. Now, typically if you have five G it's
going to be fine. You don't need a super high
speed to do all this stuff like the Netflix, and
unless you're uploading giant video files like I am because
of my job, you really don't need very fast internet
up or down. I mean it's you know, twenty five
fifty will be just fine. You may get faster than that.

(14:21):
With Verizon, I think they guarantee about anywhere from fifty
two to one hundred maybe. Okay, anyway, so how to
keep it secure? I actually think that the Verizon Internet
is very secure because it's it's a wireless connection and
it's just between you and the tower, and so there's
really not much you need to do to secure that.
I think what it really comes down to is what

(14:44):
you're doing on the web and staying secure there. And
ninety nine percent of the problems that I'm seeing from
people right now have to do with people getting phished,
some sort of phishing attack where they're clicking a link
in an email and that's installing malware on their system
or it's stealing their login or passwords. So that's what
I'd be most careful about.

Speaker 3 (15:03):
Okay, So I opt on the side of caution and
I don't click on Jack.

Speaker 1 (15:08):
Yeap, that's a that's a good I like that. I'm
gonna get a bumper sticker. I don't click on Jack.

Speaker 3 (15:13):
Okay, But what about like that? You know, everything is
like one nine two one six eight. Do I need
to change that or anything with that?

Speaker 1 (15:21):
That's that's your IP address, that's basically that's how it
assigns things into your network, like the different devices you have,
so they all get a little addressed. That's basically how
the network finds your your devices, and so that's only
on your inside network and when it comes to your
outside network, really nobody else can get into that unless
you give them access, and they have access to your router.

(15:42):
So once you know, the router kind of protects you
from the outside world. There are devices that can make
things a little bit more secure. There's a device called
FIREWALLA if you really want to get you know, really
want to get fancy and put like a basically a
hard firewall between you and your internet connection or your
internet connection in the outside world, you can get something

(16:02):
like that. It's a little device starts at at like
two hundred dollars. I don't know if you need it, though,
I really don't. I think it's it's better to just
kind of be aware because most of these modern routers
have the privacy protections built in that you need. Now,
if you're looking to say private as you surf, that's
a whole nother story.

Speaker 2 (16:19):
That's where VPNs come in.

Speaker 1 (16:20):
But I don't think that the average person needs that
unless you specifically want that. But for what most people
are doing day to day, you know, just being on
guard is really the best advice I have.

Speaker 3 (16:31):
Okay. And should I change like the password that's like
on the bottom of the you know, the one that
came with the box or that doesn't really matter?

Speaker 1 (16:39):
I would I mean, I don't think you have to,
because nowadays a lot of those are are they make
them pretty complex, But I would say that that's something
that you could probably change, but make sure it's just
as complex as the one on the bottom, okay.

Speaker 3 (16:51):
And so to change it, I would still need to
log into that to the URURL.

Speaker 5 (16:57):
The one, nine, two whatever.

Speaker 3 (16:59):
And then oh yeah, my last question, because I know
you have to go like there's WPA two and K
and three, which one's the best one to get to have?

Speaker 2 (17:09):
So I would go with the what is the default one?
What is it on right now?

Speaker 3 (17:13):
WPA two?

Speaker 1 (17:14):
Okay, So I would leave it there, So I don't
think you need to change that. There's different there's different
standards that come out over the years, but the old
one was I believe w EP, which they had.

Speaker 2 (17:26):
But I would just leave it where it is.

Speaker 1 (17:27):
So I think WP A two might be I've got
to look this up, but I think that's the most recent,
but I would go with that one and stay there.

Speaker 3 (17:33):
Okay, thank you so much. All right, Cheryl, and I'm
loving your show. I was bummed that Leo was leaving,
but excited that you were stepping in. And I listened
to you on your KFI segment. I can't catch you
on the news because I might I might work. And
then plus the five AM one is like I love
you but I.

Speaker 6 (17:53):
Can't get well.

Speaker 2 (17:54):
I love you too.

Speaker 1 (17:54):
Thanks so much, Cheryl for listening and watching and all
that good stuff. And coming up, we're going to talk
to Hyundai about their new Ionic six.

Speaker 2 (18:03):
Welcome back to the show.

Speaker 1 (18:04):
Rich Demiro here, Rich on Tech on location in Phoenix, Arizona,
where Hyundai has been doing media test drives of the
new Ionic six EV. They brought me out here to
test drive it and with me now is John Simmons
of Hyundai to.

Speaker 2 (18:18):
Talk about it. John, thanks so much for joining me.

Speaker 7 (18:20):
It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you.

Speaker 2 (18:22):
Nice location.

Speaker 8 (18:23):
Oh it's beautiful out here. I mean we got the
great weather. I hope it's not raining in California, but
I hear it is.

Speaker 1 (18:29):
It has been for a while now, all right, Now,
before we get to the ionics six EV Hondai recently
became the world's third biggest car maker after Toyota and Volkswagen. Congratulations,
And what do you attribute that to?

Speaker 7 (18:42):
I think, you know, just great products.

Speaker 8 (18:43):
I'm just committed to bringing products that customers really want
to the market.

Speaker 1 (18:49):
Okay, So let's talk about this Ionic brand, because we've
got this new car, but it's part of a EV
brand that Hyundai is building, the Ionic.

Speaker 2 (18:57):
What does that mean and why?

Speaker 8 (18:59):
Well, we're dedicated to an electronic future, electric future in
terms of vehicle transportation, and we see by twenty thirty
the market will be at least fifty percent EV, so
we're preparing for that. And this egm P platform which
is underlying these three vehicles that we're planning under the brand,
means these will be dedicated electric vehicles.

Speaker 1 (19:20):
Now in California, we've seen a lot of momentum with evs.
Is that happening elsewhere in the US?

Speaker 7 (19:27):
You know it is.

Speaker 8 (19:28):
Urban areas, of course, are very attracted to it.

Speaker 7 (19:31):
It's a good solution.

Speaker 8 (19:34):
Ranges are getting longer and longer in terms of all
electric range of the vehicles, and we're having more amenities
available and people are seeing the reliable transportation that they
can count on.

Speaker 1 (19:47):
Okay, so we're here to talk about the Ionic six.
This is a car that you're putting up against the
Tesla Model three and the poll Star two, two really
nice cars.

Speaker 2 (19:55):
Tell me about some of the key features on.

Speaker 1 (19:57):
The Ionics six, and so some people might be confused.
They might think, well, wait, I heard of the Ionic five.
Is this the same car and upgrade to that car?
So it's totally different car than the five.

Speaker 7 (20:08):
It is.

Speaker 8 (20:08):
It's a four door car. We call it a streamline concept.
It's an aerodynamic four door. It has a trunk, so
you know it'll anyone who's coming out of a Sonata
or something like that will recognize it.

Speaker 1 (20:21):
It's got this unique design so it almost inside it's
very sizable.

Speaker 2 (20:26):
Outside it looks.

Speaker 1 (20:27):
Pretty compact and the back has almost like a sport
like design.

Speaker 2 (20:32):
Was that intentional?

Speaker 9 (20:33):
Yeah?

Speaker 8 (20:33):
Everything comes from the aerodynamics, the efficiency of the vehicle.
You ask about the key aspects of the vehicle, the
selling points. I think the ultra fast charging. We have
eight hundred volt charging, ten to eighty percent charge in
eighteen minutes. We also have a four hundred volt charging,
which is kind of legacy fast charging, so that'll be

(20:54):
a huge benefit for customers.

Speaker 1 (20:56):
Now, the eight hundred vault charging is that mostly for
home or we see those on the road as well.

Speaker 8 (21:01):
Eight hundred volt is only available at charging stations that
offer it, so it's something that is the next stage
of ultrafast charging.

Speaker 2 (21:09):
So the car is sort of ready for that absolutely.

Speaker 7 (21:12):
Now.

Speaker 2 (21:12):
They talked up recycled materials in the car. I saw that.
Do you recall any of those in there?

Speaker 8 (21:17):
Yeah, we, among other things, fishing nets, you know, which
probably get dropped in the ocean a lot. I'm not
sure the exact you know, composition chemically and nylon or something,
but we utilize those two make the carpets in the car.

Speaker 2 (21:31):
It's interesting.

Speaker 1 (21:31):
It's definitely a trend I'm seeing with other automakers, and
not just auto but also tech gadgets in general, a
lot more recycled materials. Okay, I thought this was a
cool feature, the phone as a key. So this utilizes
Apple Wallet and also Samsung's pass where your phone literally
becomes a key and you can lend the key to
someone that way.

Speaker 8 (21:50):
That's right, you can send your send your key to
someone with limited restrictions. If you want, you can rescind it,
you can take it back. It really makes you know
sharing your car or emergency situations, you can you can
with your phone, you can get in and drive your car.

Speaker 1 (22:05):
Speaking of tech features, there is one thing that I
think is kind of cool.

Speaker 2 (22:08):
I always love.

Speaker 1 (22:09):
Hitting Easter eggs, and there is one with this car.
There's a lot of lighting and you call it something unique.
Explain the lighting and also the Easter egg that people
can look for sure.

Speaker 8 (22:19):
The vehicle has a theme of we call parametric pixels.
You'll see these little dots of light all around the
car at really over seven hundred of them, and it's
pretty impressive and they're a design element. There's also a
statement that this is an advanced, something different you haven't
seen before. But on the steering where we didn't want
to go with a conventional brand logo on the steering wheel,
so we decided to put some dots to show some lighting,

(22:43):
dots to show some interactivity with the car in terms
of when you're when you're talking to the car to
ask it to do something, it can recognize that. But
we put four dots there and then we recognize that
four dots is actually is actually h and Morris code.

Speaker 7 (22:58):
So it's a little easter egg for you.

Speaker 2 (23:00):
Awesome. And I was playing with some of the lighting
last night.

Speaker 1 (23:02):
The ambient lighting people love, you know, switching the way
the lighting looks inside the car. And the best way
I can describe the parametric pixels is it's almost like
an eight bit video game.

Speaker 2 (23:12):
It looks really cool and retro but also modern.

Speaker 8 (23:15):
Absolutely. I think that's the point. And to your point,
the ambient lighting is really cool. You know, you've got
sixty four colors times to over four thousand combinations. You've
got some combinations that some designers have worked up for
you to calm you or to energize you. So really
cool features and lets you personalize the interior of the car.

Speaker 2 (23:34):
Okay, over the air updates.

Speaker 1 (23:36):
Is this something that Hyundai has done in the past,
because I know you're promoting this as a big new
feature for this car.

Speaker 8 (23:42):
Well, we've done it with navigation maps. We've had that
for a few years, and now we're rolling it out
to actually the car systems can be updated over the air.
So that's a huge benefit. We think of it as
the car being able to get better over time.

Speaker 2 (23:55):
I mean it's kind of like the smartphone.

Speaker 1 (23:56):
You know, you don't have to go into the store
to update your phone.

Speaker 2 (24:00):
I mean it used to be to update I remember,
you know, if.

Speaker 1 (24:02):
You had a navigation system, you'd have to go to
the dealership and pay a fee to get that updated.
And now, of course we just all get our phones
updated overnight.

Speaker 8 (24:10):
Right in terms of navigation systems maps, that's you know,
still happening. So it's really a recent development. So this
is great. As the car is electrified, we become more
like those gadgets that we have in our pockets.

Speaker 2 (24:22):
Okay, I love this feature.

Speaker 1 (24:24):
You actually showed it off yesterday in a demo where
the car can become a giant power outlet. So one
of the chargers you plug it into the side of
the car and you can basically plug something into it
to power it.

Speaker 7 (24:36):
That's right.

Speaker 8 (24:37):
Our model has a seventy seven point four kilowatt hour battery,
which is pretty big. We'll power the car for three
hundred and sixty one miles, which is for its class,
leading for all electric range, and it eliminates range anxiety.
But the what we call V to L, which is
there's an accessory plug that you can take the charging
port and you can plug it into your refrigerator in

(24:58):
case of outages. You can take it on a can
camping trip, all sorts of use cases, and you can
set it so it won't run out your battery.

Speaker 1 (25:05):
Finally, Yeah, so you can say, like leave twenty percent
on my battery so that you know I can get
back home.

Speaker 7 (25:11):
Absolutely, you don't want to.

Speaker 8 (25:12):
You know, no one wants to run out their battery
all the way and be stuck somewhere.

Speaker 1 (25:16):
So blue Link is sort of your connected subscription service
that you've had.

Speaker 2 (25:21):
It's kind of the connectivity of the car.

Speaker 1 (25:23):
And there's some pretty major changes to that subscription where
it's going to be included for the lifetime of the owner.

Speaker 2 (25:30):
That's a pretty sizable shift.

Speaker 8 (25:32):
Yeah, we've made a big investment in blue Link, you know,
a decade ago, and we've gotten more and more subscribers.
You know, allows you to turn on your car, remotely
locate your car, turn on your air conditioning for certain models.
It's really a great tells you when to service the car.
And now what we've done is we've made it a
part of the car. We've made it standard. No subscription
fees after the initial trial period whether you know, we

(25:54):
have a long trial period anyways, but you know this
we go out to ten years now.

Speaker 1 (25:58):
So so the Ionic five was a top ten best
selling EV in twenty twenty two.

Speaker 2 (26:05):
Do you think that will happen with the six?

Speaker 8 (26:07):
You know, we're not focused on volume. We're focused on satisfying,
you know, what customers want. And this is an alternative
Theonic five. It has a lot of the same characteristics.
It has a little bit more range if you want that,
and the interior has some pretty neat features to personalize it.

Speaker 1 (26:21):
And for folks wondering about Hyundai in general, what do
you say to them, You've worked for different car companies,
what do you say about the Hondai brand.

Speaker 8 (26:30):
Hundai moves fast and they provide quality products. It's it's
really impressive. You know, they never stand still, they never
take second best.

Speaker 2 (26:41):
All right, John Simmons of Hyundai, thanks so much for
chatting with me today. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 7 (26:45):
Thank you.

Speaker 2 (26:45):
I'll have more rich on Tech right after this.

Speaker 1 (26:53):
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging
out with you talking technology at Triple eight one O one.
That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one
zero one. No need to write the number down. You
can also go to the website rich on tech dot
tv the numbers right at the top. And yes, i
will tell my story about saving a life, but I've

(27:16):
got so many calls to go to here, so let's
go to my leen first in Fontana, and I promise
I'll do it at the end of this before the break, Eileen,
Welcome to the show.

Speaker 10 (27:24):
Hi, I'm waiting for your story. I did a Heimnik
one time and felt like a hero too.

Speaker 1 (27:30):
Well, I don't feel like. I mean, my kids thought
I was a hero, but I was just doing the
right thing, so.

Speaker 10 (27:34):
Right, Okay, anyway, first thing, I think it was last
week that you mentioned the flighty dot com website and
it sounded really interesting. And when I go to that website,
all I get is a h offer to buy the dolmazing.

Speaker 1 (27:50):
Okay, the app, it's called flight app dot com f
L I g h T y app dot com.

Speaker 2 (27:57):
That's yep, that's the part.

Speaker 1 (27:58):
And I used it over the weekend too for the
for the Hawaii trip and it was fantastic. In fact,
it was only off by five minutes when we landed,
which was amazing.

Speaker 11 (28:06):
Wow.

Speaker 10 (28:06):
So anyway, Oh that sounds so wonderful. Yeah, anyway, the
other thing I have, I started a business about thirty
five years ago and out of my home and would
use that number, and at that time I don't. And
then finally I got an eight hundred number also, but
we're going to be moving about forty miles away, and
I think that maybe a different telephone company. And I

(28:30):
didn't know if landline numbers are portable at all, what
to do to make it portable.

Speaker 1 (28:35):
I believe landline numbers are portable just like a cell
phone number. So if you have a landline, I would
contact a company that does it. And yeah, I believe
you can just do it just the same way you
would a cell phone number.

Speaker 10 (28:49):
Okay, I hadn't tried, so I hate to hate. I'm
sorry to wasted your time.

Speaker 1 (28:53):
Well, no, no, no, it's a good it's a good
question because I think that people, probably a lot of
people probably keep these numbers because they're wondering if you can,
and they're worried you can't.

Speaker 2 (29:03):
So if you know you can, it's a good you know,
it's a good thing. If you want to switch it
to a cell phone line, you can do that. The
only thing to know about that is you probably have
to call your provider and get some sort of pin
number or account number. Just have everything that.

Speaker 1 (29:16):
Just call your provider and ask all the information that
you need to support the number, because there are if
you do it wrong, it could get hung up and
like never never land. So just really know that information
before you go into it.

Speaker 10 (29:28):
And here's something the thing that just happened recently and
it's kind of frightened me. A friend of mine called
me and was wanted to know about the money deal
that I had offered, you know, told him about emailing
him about and I hadn't done that. And anyway, he
said that what I supposedly said him was here I

(29:51):
got fifty thousand dollars out of this program. And then
when he followed that, and then they were asking for
fifteen thousand dollars deposit. And I don't know how that happened.

Speaker 2 (30:03):
Well, I'll tell you what happened.

Speaker 1 (30:05):
It sounds like your email got hacked, and so your
email address got hacked, maybe an old one that you used,
and what they did was once they hacked that email address,
they used your account to send out emails to everyone
in your contact book, and so to keep that from happening,
you really need to Number one, get rid of old
email accounts if you're not using them, or at least

(30:28):
you know you can delete the account or at least
lock them down as much as you can. So typical
hacks at this point are a lot of social engineering attacks,
which means that people get they get access to your Facebook,
they get access to your Instagram, they get access to
your email, and they use your good name to send

(30:48):
out information to your friends and try to scam them
because people will take a second look because it's coming
from you. And so you want to be sure that
you lock down your accounts both with a strong password
and also to factor authentication on every and all accounts
that are available, because that's really the best way to
protect yourself. So that's what i'd recommend. Make sure you

(31:09):
do it, Eileen, and find the flighty app and get
that landline transferred. You can do it all right, Thanks
for the call, appreciate it. Phone lines are open at
eight eight eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight
eight seven four to two four one zero one. I
mentioned that Google is dropping support for yet another product,
and I've talked about this on the show. This is

(31:30):
my problem with Google. I love Google, but they have
such a short attention span when it comes to things.
Now you can argue that these things have been out
since twenty twelve, and okay, fine, it's been a good
ten years since people had these these things in their home.
But the reality is yet another Google product is getting sunset,
and this time it is Dropcam and Nest Secure. So

(31:53):
in one year, on April eighth, twenty twenty four, you
will not be able to use your Dropcam anymore or
the Nest Secure home security system. Now, existing dropcam users,
according to The Verge, will be able to keep using
them until April eighth, twenty twenty four, after which you
will not be able to access them with the next app.
So Google, in the meantime is offering a free indoor

(32:15):
wired Nestcam to Dropcam owners who subscribe to Nest Aware.
So if you're not a subscriber, they'll give you a
fifty percent off coupon. But if you're a subscriber like
myself and I have a Nestcam, I can go on
their website and I can get a free Oh sorry,
I have a Dropcam. I can get a free wired Nestcam,
so I will definitely be doing that. The promotion runs
through May seventh, twenty twenty four, so you have a

(32:37):
bunch of time. In fact, you have time even past
when the dropcam will stop working. Now, the Dropcam, to
its credit, did come out in twenty twelve. The pro
version came out in twenty thirteen, and then of course
Google bought this company. Everyone wondered what would happen to Dropcam.
It sort of became Nest. Nest made their own cameras,

(32:57):
they were more expensive, they had more features, more AI,
and now Nest Cam is pretty much their brand. And
then the next Secure. That's another story because I believe
when Nest Secure came out and people were asking me
should I subscribe to this?

Speaker 2 (33:15):
I said no.

Speaker 1 (33:16):
And the reason why is because I'm not sure I
trust Google with something that you don't really want to
buy a security system very often, and I've purchased two
in my lifetime, and it's something that you don't really
want to sit and replace and change.

Speaker 2 (33:31):
So here's a deal.

Speaker 1 (33:32):
Google recently signed a deal with ADT to offer this,
you know, their own kind of security system. And let's see,
do I have the name of that security system.

Speaker 2 (33:44):
Let's see.

Speaker 1 (33:45):
I don't know if I have it, but it's like
it's like a self installed security system, kind of like
what simply Safe offers, kind of like what Ring offers.
But to be perfectly honest, if you're buying a self
install security system, do you really want ADT? I mean,
ADT is the company that people know that you have
someone come to your house, they install the security system.

Speaker 2 (34:03):
It's a three year deal.

Speaker 1 (34:04):
You're not really paying for the system, but then you're
paying the fifty five to seventy dollars or whatever it
is a month for your security monitoring. And so people
that wanted the alternative, they went to a company like
Simply Safe, they went to a company like Ring, and
now they're giving Nest Secure customers a free next generation
security system from ad T or a two hundred dollars

(34:25):
credit to use on the Google Store. I'd use the
two hundred dollars credit on the Google Store, and personally,
I would not go with the Nest Secure or whatever
their new system is, and I would just go with
something like Simply Safe, or I would go with Ring,
because I think those companies are a little bit more
dedicated when it comes to I mean, I think ADT
is fine, but I just I don't. To me, I

(34:46):
want something that's a little bit more forward thinking, something
like a simply safe that was created as an alternative,
or something like the ring system that I think is
very good and it's an alternative. And again, you have
to subscribe or you you know, there's options for it,
but it's just easier. And Google says, yes, you can
cancel the ADT subscription at any time. But the reality is,

(35:09):
I would say, go out to work. All right, let
me tell you the story about the life. Okay. So
I'm on the beach in Hawaii, sipping on my tie
and no joke, you know, I'm reading my book Sun
is Shining, beautiful beach, and I hear like offen the
you know, to the right, like help, and I'm like.

Speaker 2 (35:25):
Okay, that's a joke. Like who who says help on
the beach?

Speaker 7 (35:28):
Right?

Speaker 1 (35:28):
Like unless it's a joke. And all then all of
a sudden we hear help, my dad needs help, and
I'm like, okay, I can't sit here, and I'm looking
around and people are just standing there like not doing anything.
And so I must have been a thousand feet from
where this person is, and so they're out in the sea,
and you know, I look and I'm like, oh gosh,
like what just happened to this guy?

Speaker 2 (35:46):
Like a shark?

Speaker 1 (35:46):
Like what is going on? Like I don't know for
this kid to scream? Right, So I just jump up,
drop everything, and I run over to I was like,
you know what this probably this person probably needs like
one of those things, like those like life raft things.
And I saw it on the beach when I was
walking in, so I ran, I grabbed it.

Speaker 2 (36:02):
I swam out.

Speaker 1 (36:03):
And I'm not like a very physical guy, like I'm
not like mister athletic, but I can run really fast,
and so I ran and I can swim fast, and
I swam to this guy and it was me and
another person, and he kind of just swam out.

Speaker 2 (36:14):
But I had this little thing.

Speaker 1 (36:16):
I looked it up. It's called a rescue tube. And
the person we were able to get on the tube
and drag him back in to shore. And I guess
this guy he was wearing a life jacket, so I
don't know if he couldn't swim or what, but he
was very thankful that we got him in. He was
not bitten by a shark. He just I guess lost
his footing he lost I don't know what he just lost.
He just couldn't swim back to shore. And so we

(36:36):
did kind of save his life. I guess in a way.
I don't know what would have happened if we didn't.
And believe me, I looked up on my Apple Watch
after this whole situation to see kind of like where
my heart rate was at that minute, and believe me,
it was up. So that's my story from Hawaii.

Speaker 2 (36:50):
Do the right thing.

Speaker 1 (36:50):
Don't be the bystander effect when you see something happening,
spring into help.

Speaker 2 (36:55):
A lot of people went and dialed nine one one.
That's fine, but you do need some people that actually
go and physically helped the person. I didn't know what
I was running into, but I did it, and uh
it was.

Speaker 1 (37:05):
All fine anyway, Thanks for listening. All right, rich On
Tech phone number, Triple A rich.

Speaker 2 (37:11):
One O one.

Speaker 1 (37:13):
Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich DeMuro here chatting
technology with you at Triple A rich one O one
eight eight eight seven four to two four to one
zero one is the phone number email address Hello at
Richon Tech dot TV. All right, so let's just go

(37:34):
to Kevin in Walnut, California, to start off this hour.

Speaker 2 (37:37):
Kevin, you're on with Rich.

Speaker 5 (37:39):
Thank you Rich, and welcome belated welcome to KFI. So
glad you were the replacement for Leo.

Speaker 6 (37:47):
And Happy Easter.

Speaker 2 (37:48):
Thank you. Christian.

Speaker 9 (37:49):
Is.

Speaker 5 (37:50):
I have a whole bunch of old cell phones, sensoring
and other brands. I want to donate them or destroy
them because I don't want any of the data context
information going to somebody else.

Speaker 6 (38:02):
How should I do that?

Speaker 2 (38:04):
So the first question is can you turn these phones on?

Speaker 9 (38:08):
Yes?

Speaker 2 (38:08):
I can, Okay, So if you can turn them.

Speaker 1 (38:10):
On, then I would go through the settings on the
Android and are they all Android?

Speaker 5 (38:17):
Yes?

Speaker 2 (38:18):
Yeah, okay.

Speaker 1 (38:18):
I would go through the settings and I would format
them so you can go into settings and then it's basically,
you know, there's different variations depending on the Android model,
but usually you can go into Advanced.

Speaker 2 (38:31):
And then systems. Let's say I I have a Samsung
right here.

Speaker 1 (38:34):
Let's see if we go into settings and then we
go into let's see about phone and then reset and
then it says reset all settings, reset, network settings, reset,
accessibility settings, or factory data reset. Factory data reset is
the one that you want and that will erase all
of your data, including files and downloaded apps. And you

(38:56):
can also do the same thing on the iPhone if
you go into Settings General and then reset and then
basically you're looking for the factory data reset make sure
that all the important stuff you need is backed up.
That's the way that you can, you know, get that
stuff on a different phone. But if you really want
to be secure, you know, you might want to do
this process twice. But I think that once should probably

(39:17):
be sufficient for most people. If especially if you're donating them.
The second you donate these phones to a reputable organization,
they're going to do the same thing.

Speaker 2 (39:24):
They're going to wipe them as well.

Speaker 5 (39:26):
So does that help, Yeah, definitely. And I have one
more question, rich Sure, I got a IPTV service from
a Canadian firm to watch mostly Asians programs like from
India and also cricket. Is that illegal in US to
do or is it legal?

Speaker 1 (39:48):
Well, it's tough to know based on how this box
is working. But I call these black boxes IPTV, so
it's not necessarily illegal. I mean that's a term that
you know, it depends how they're taking this programming. So
some of these boxes, you know, they offer a lot
of programming based on streams, and they just put that

(40:09):
stream in an easy way, or maybe they present it
in a way that is not the way that the
provider wants, Like maybe they take the stream outside of
the app that the provider typically offers it through and
they just make it easier to find, or they make
it easier to watch.

Speaker 2 (40:24):
So it really depends.

Speaker 1 (40:25):
But typically I don't recommend those boxes because they do
operate in a gray area and so you don't really
know what you're getting, and well, I don't think someone's
going to come to your front door and arrest you
for it. I don't feel good using something like that
just because it's not the way it's intended. Like if
you're getting a service for free that you should be

(40:47):
paying for, then yeah, there's probably a problem there, like
it's something that you probably shouldn't be doing. But if
it's just being presented in a different way, like if
they're just putting YouTube streams on there or channels in
a different way that they are and then they're typically presented,
then you know, again it's a gray area. So the
main thing about those boxes is that sometimes the software
is not up to date, they're the service or the

(41:09):
support can can be all over the place. I just
personally don't recommend them because of that reason. So it
sort of comes down to a personal Uh, you know
what you're comfortable doing. But I, you know, I work
in the content creation world, and so personally, I like
to pay for the stuff that I'm streaming. And it
sounds like Kevin, because you're you're wondering about this, you

(41:30):
probably already know the answer. So I hope that helps,
and I do appreciate calling and thanks for the kind words.
All right, if you want to call in Triple eight
Rich one oh one is the phone number. That's eight
eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
This is something that's affecting a lot of folks right now.
If you have a Western Digital hard drive, they're my

(41:53):
cloud service has been down for a while. It's been
down for apparently more than twenty four I know that
I've been getting emails about this for about a week,
so I think it's been closer to a week now.
And I just got an email yesterday from Western Digital
because I had one of their drives in the past
that I was testing. It was called the eb which

(42:13):
I really liked and I didn't even know they were
still supporting it, but they sent an email about this
whole situation. But according to Ours Technica, folks are locked
out of their local drives many times because of this
my Cloud system. So Western Digital issued a release saying
that the company learned there's been an unauthorized third party

(42:35):
that gained access to a number of the company's systems
AKA they were hacked, and the company believes that the
unauthorized party obtained certain data from its systems and they're
working to understand the nature and scope of that data
AKA they're trying to figure out how many passwords and
usernames were taken and if folks, if these hackers were
able to access the data on people's drives or that

(42:57):
was stored in the cloud. So, as you can see,
this could be a major problem. This is affecting the
my Cloud, the my Cloud Home, the MyCloud Home duo,
the sand Disk eb and the sand Disk I expand
wireless charger. And I'm a big fan of these sand
disk products. The eb I was a huge fan of
when it came out. When it SYNCD with Google Photos,

(43:18):
that functionality went away, so I didn't really recommend it anymore,
but I still recommend the sand disc I expand not
necessarily the wireless charger, but I do like their little
drive that they have. So the outage means that users
cannot access data stored in my cloud, and it also
extends to some of these things that you need around
my cloud. And so the log in service is just

(43:40):
not available, and so people are saying, hey, wait, I
can't access my hard drive that's sitting in my living room,
but it's not letting me access it because I need
to log in through the my Drive service or the
MyCloud service. So what I got from Western Digital and
I'm not sure this effects or this will extend to everything,

(44:01):
but there is a feature that allows you to access
your stored files locally using a feature called local access.
And this feature allows you to directly access your personal
files from a Windows or Mac computer that's connected to
the same network as your device. But you have to
enable it. So you go to your browser and you
connect to your device's dashboard.

Speaker 2 (44:21):
And remember we were talking about this earlier.

Speaker 1 (44:22):
It's usually a number of IP address that's printed on
the bottom of the device, so you navigate there and
look for the local access feature. You enable that feature
and you can create a new local access account and
then using that account, you can go through and access
the files on your drive. But this is again not

(44:43):
very good. We're seeing this more and more and I
just can't believe how many times I'm seeing these companies
that are getting hacked. And it's a problem because these
online services that we rely on are not usable during
that time, could be a week, could be a couple
of days. But also your information is then put at risk.

(45:05):
So if you're using the same login information for this
MyCloud service as you use for other services, if they
were able to get this information from Western Digital, now
they've got your log in for another service that you
use the same log in and password for. So the
big thing to know here is that you always want

(45:25):
to use unique log in, unique password for everything that
you're logging into because that way, if one of these
services gets hacked, they can't use it on a different service.
And Disney Plus moving on now is launching with ads
on Roku. So if you are waiting for Disney Plus
and that AD supported plan, which is a little bit

(45:47):
cheaper than the AD free plan, actually it's not, it's
the same price. They just made it ad supported, but
it is available on Roku, and so Roku users can
now use Disney Plus with or without ads. It took
them about four months to get this going. The reason
probably because Roku likes to get a cut of ad revenue.

(46:08):
So the way Roku works is that all the ads
that are shown on there, some of them make money
for Roku. So let's say you're Disney Plus and you
stream a show and it has, you know, six minutes
of commercials. Roku gets a small cut of the commercials
and that ad time on that service, even though it's
Disney Plus. It's a unique way that they kind of

(46:30):
came up with stuff. So Roku is really an advertising platform.
And that's why those Roku boxes are so cheap, because
Roku sells you those at an inexpensive cost, and then
they make it up on the services that you subscribe to.
In fact, they may even get a cut of the
price you pay to Disney Plus for this plan. And
so that's probably why it took so long, because Disney

(46:50):
Plus is probably like, ah, we're big, we don't need
to pay you anything, and Roku is like, now, we're
not gonna put you on our platform unless you pay US,
and Disney Plus said, Okayku, you're pretty big, so we'll
give you a little cut of that money. It's all
about recurring revenue streams at this point, because it started
out where the services would just put the apps on

(47:11):
there and they didn't really care because it was good
for everyone. They would sell the hardware, they'd sell other
movies and things on the side. But now someone like
Roku is saying, yeah, we're pretty big out there, We're
like one of the top streaming platforms. We're going to
take a cut of some of this money that people
are spending on these things. So that's what's happening there.
But if you have Roku, you can now use Disney

(47:32):
Plus with ads.

Speaker 2 (47:33):
I believe is it six.

Speaker 1 (47:35):
Ninety nine still when it came out, it was six
ninety nine, so I'm not sure how much it is
at this point. I pay for like the Disney Bundle.
According to GameSpot back on December eighth, it was eight
dollars a month.

Speaker 2 (47:50):
Anyway, I got to look that up.

Speaker 1 (47:51):
I'm not sure, but it's it's one of these things
where Disney Plus added the ads supported plan, but it
was the same price as pep or paying before they
had ads, so it was like ad free. So anyway, Yeah,
it's confusing. All I know is every month you get
these these bills and you're like, did I watch Disney
Plus this month?

Speaker 2 (48:11):
Did I?

Speaker 4 (48:12):
All?

Speaker 9 (48:12):
Right?

Speaker 1 (48:12):
Coming up on the show, we still get a lot
more to talk about. We're going to talk to the
CEO of a company that is attempting to bring I
message to Android users.

Speaker 2 (48:20):
And then later in the.

Speaker 1 (48:21):
Show, we're going to talk about the movie that I
watched on the plane, Tetris on Apple TV. Plus my
friend Dan Ackerman from CNAT we'll talk He wrote a
book on Tetris, so we'll talk all about that, plus
your calls at Triple eight rich one on one eight
eight eight seven four two.

Speaker 2 (48:35):
Four one zero one. Welcome back to rich on Tech.

Speaker 1 (48:39):
Rich Demiro here chatting about technology with you at Triple
eight rich one oh one. Max is in Newport Beach, California. Max,
Welcome to rich on Tech.

Speaker 6 (48:53):
Thank you for taking my call.

Speaker 9 (48:54):
Rich.

Speaker 6 (48:54):
I'm a little older guy. If I know what button
used to push, I'm good. Otherwise I'm not ethnically savvy.

Speaker 7 (49:01):
Read more.

Speaker 6 (49:02):
My homes seven years ago got new TVs and new
stereo stuff and everything I want to cut the cord.
I'm apprehensive because I don't know I need help. I
don't know who to call. I know what I want
to do, but I have no clue what to do
or how to do it. Okay, how do I find

(49:22):
somebody that can come to my house and help me?

Speaker 2 (49:26):
Okay? You want someone?

Speaker 1 (49:27):
Well, I mean most of the time people di why this,
Because that's what's so great about it is that you
don't really need someone.

Speaker 2 (49:35):
So how many TVs are we talking here?

Speaker 9 (49:37):
Four?

Speaker 2 (49:38):
Okay, so you got four TVs and you want to
have the same programming across all of them?

Speaker 6 (49:44):
Yeah, and I have I have Sono system in the house.

Speaker 1 (49:47):
Also, Oh wow, you've got sons one of my favorites.
I mean, I was just playing with mine this morning.

Speaker 2 (49:52):
I love it.

Speaker 6 (49:53):
Okay, I need somebody to come out and really show
me how to work stuff, okay, because I'm confused.

Speaker 1 (50:00):
Okay, Well, I mean, look, there's a lot of there's
a lot of local people that can do that. There's
a lot of national services that can do that. If
you want someone that's you know, local, I would just
go to yelp and find someone that maybe that mounts
TVs that runs a service like that that can do
you know, they do more than mount TV's, they run cable.

(50:20):
They really know their stuff. So if you want someone
to kind of, you know, a little bit more handholding
to get through this, that's who i'd recommend someone.

Speaker 7 (50:29):
What do I look under on Yelp?

Speaker 1 (50:32):
I would search let's see here, let me let me
actually search here. It's probably someone that like cable installation,
let's see, or video camera installation, because those people are
usually you know, the people that know what they're doing
with all this stuff. They don't do just that, you know,
like the people that I had come mount my TV,

(50:54):
they would do all kinds of stuff, they would run
video cameras IP. So I would search something like that.
You can also, let's see if you search tech support,
like tech support in home tech support. You can do that,
and there's people like that'll bring up a whole bunch
of a whole bunch of stuff. Network. I mean, there's

(51:14):
computer I T services. I mean there's a whole bunch
of people that will do that. Your computer guy, I
mean there's a lot. So I would search something like that,
But realistically, I think it's easier than that. I think
what you need to do do you watch cable? Do
you need cable TV or like certain channels?

Speaker 6 (51:29):
I want sports, I want to I want to get
you know, I want to get some of the local channels, okay,
you know, like HGTV and the golf channel and some
of the sports.

Speaker 5 (51:38):
But we only used to.

Speaker 6 (51:40):
Be to streaming services Netflix and Prime for some reason.
My Prime thing it's very slow and uh everything. But
but I want to be able to get some of
the local channels and to get my streaming. But I
want to cut the cable.

Speaker 1 (51:57):
Okay, well you mean the cable like the s Yeah,
the cable is yeah, yeah, exactly. Now here's the thing
with cutting the cable is that when you cut the cable,
typically the internet price goes up, and so that could
be a little bit of an issue. So right now
you're probably on some sort of bundle deal that they
give you the cable and the internet all in one.
When you call them up and say, okay, I'm cutting

(52:19):
the cable part, they say, okay, well your internet's.

Speaker 2 (52:20):
Going to go up to this price.

Speaker 1 (52:22):
So you know what you need to do is really
have the cable ready to go. You live in Newport Beach,
you may be able to get the Verizon five G
like the wireless box we were talking about, or the
T Mobile Home Internet, So that could be a way
to save on some of your cable costs. But I
think that at the end of the day, you need
to pick a streaming device, which I'd recommend either a

(52:44):
Roku or an Apple TV would kind of get expensive,
but you told me you have so nos so that
tells me that you've got, you know, a decent setup
there and you're not afraid to spend money, so that's good.
Maybe an Apple TV that's kind of simple, and then
a Fire TV that's also really easy that's from Amazon.
And then you need the cable service. If you want
to get something like HGTV and you want to get

(53:07):
something like the Golf Channel, you're probably going to have
to look into a service like YouTube TV, which is
going to run like eighty bucks a month. There are
other services out there. There are services that are cheaper
like Filo. Filo TV is another one, and that will
give you some of the channels. It doesn't do a
lot with sports, and so this is seventy channels for

(53:29):
fifty bucks a month.

Speaker 2 (53:30):
And if let's just I'm just going to look up
and see if golf is in there. So Golf channel
is not on there, and so what you want to
do is I would look up golf channel streaming service
and see which channel, which streaming provider has that that's
the cheapest.

Speaker 1 (53:47):
And so if you go on their website, it will
should tell you that I'm looking at this right now.
So you need to figure that out. And then you
need to just once you get all those things in line,
connect them all up. So you've got you UG in
the streaming stick, and then you've got your service, and
then you've got you already said you have Netflix and Prime.
Now the only other thing you said is that your

(54:08):
Prime is really slow. So that tells me you may
have an issue with your router. And since you're going
fully streaming, you may want to upgrade your network to
something like a mesh network system.

Speaker 2 (54:18):
I recommend systems from.

Speaker 1 (54:19):
Euro E E r O and also Villo v I
l O, but there are many others that will do it,
like Neckgear ORB. But also you may be able to
just go through Spectrum and ask them for a Wi
Fi extender and they have those as well.

Speaker 2 (54:33):
All right, good question coming up.

Speaker 1 (54:34):
We are going to talk to the CEO of Sunbird Messaging.
They are bringing I message to Android. You're listening to
rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich
DeMuro here hanging out talking technology with you at Triple
A Rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four

(54:54):
to two four to one zero one. Email address hello
at rich On Tech TV. Tom wrote in and said, Hey,
I was listening to your description on the show regarding
United Airlines and the purchase of snacks using a credit card. So,
if I understand correctly, you have to use United Airline
app United Airlines app with a card attached. You can't

(55:15):
pay with a credit card by itself.

Speaker 2 (55:16):
Is that correct?

Speaker 1 (55:17):
Yes, that's what I was trying to explain. So that's
what trips people up, is that you cannot present a
credit card on United Airlines to pay for snacks and
so and by the way, they do give you some
free snacks.

Speaker 2 (55:28):
You don't have to do this. This is if you
want to.

Speaker 1 (55:29):
Buy one of their boxes or a burger or something
like that. But yes, you need to have the credit
card stored inside the app before you get on the
airline because you cannot even though there is Wi Fi
on the airline, you can't download the United Airlines app
once you're on the airline, so once you're in flight,
it doesn't work, so you have to set this all

(55:50):
up before and so literally I just watched people, you know,
as the flight attents are going down the aisles, and
they're just explaining this to everyone because it is kind
of confusing, like when are you not able to for something?
So it'd be nice. I get why they're trying to
do the contact list payment stuff, but it would be
nice if they were able to accept credit cards. But
they've got all kinds of stuff they even accept. I

(56:10):
think it's like Venmo or PayPal by like QR codes,
so they do give you options just if you're flying United.
My advice download any airline you go on, download, even
if it's just a one time thing, download the app
before you get on the plane because a lot of
times you do get some benefits and features by downloading
the app that you wouldn't typically get if you didn't.

(56:31):
Like for Southwest, for example, you can activate free messaging
on the airline even if you don't pay for the Internet.
You can still get like I message and stuff and
some other things as well. Same thing on United, even
if you don't pay for the Internet. You can still
activate free messaging, but you have to activate it first.
So that's that's how it all works, all right. Speaking
of messaging on the line, we've got Danny Misra. He

(56:54):
is the CEO of Sunbird Messaging. They are bringing I
Message and other messaging apps to one messaging app called Sunbird,
which is available on Android.

Speaker 2 (57:05):
And Danny, welcome to the show.

Speaker 12 (57:08):
Yeah, thank you, Rich, thank you for having me, and
happy holladays all those celebrating.

Speaker 2 (57:13):
Thank you. So let's talk about Sunbird.

Speaker 1 (57:16):
So this has been an app that a lot of
people are excited about because not only does it bring
I Message to Android, but it brings a unified messaging
we've gotten there's so many messaging apps at this point,
and so tell me what you're building with Sunbird.

Speaker 7 (57:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 12 (57:32):
Absolutely, we are so very excited. And so you know,
there's a massive, massive, pent up demand to fix messaging
between androids and iPhones. I've never had an iPhone personally.
I've had an Android my whole adult life here and
so I was one of those people that had to
ask my parents who were maybe babysitting my kids, who

(57:54):
were sending me videos blow resolutions you know, being in
the group chat where everyone basically made fun of me
and you know, kept on doing like to emphasize dislike.
If you know, if you have an Android, then you
know what I'm talking about. You know that that kind
of torture. And and so Garn and I, who have
known each other for you know, over a decade, and uh,
and he has this background in messaging and I have

(58:15):
a background in cybersecurity and it, et cetera, said we
can solve this problem. But then that the way that
we solved it meant that we can do the same
thing for any messaging type. That was the big aha
moment there. So I Message is actually just you know,
maybe you can call it the prototype for some bird,
but it happens to be just this ridiculous demand for

(58:37):
androids and iPhones to finally communicate well with each other.

Speaker 1 (58:40):
Right yeah, well, okay, so let's talk about that whole situation.
Because Apple overnight can launch I Message on androids and
they would be the number one messaging app pretty much
in the US. Maybe I don't know about in the world,
because there's a big emphasis on I Message here in
the US, which is just not present anywhere else in
the world. So why is Apple not releasing that. Let's

(59:01):
start with that.

Speaker 12 (59:03):
Well, I can't really speak for them. I just know
that they've been asked about it, and you know they've
said it's not a priority for their users, right, So
Apple focuses on their users and their ecosystem. If they
were to create let's say, an API where it opens
up I message to the world, that's a huge business

(59:24):
in itself, and that would take a couple of years. Similarly,
you saw you know, Google do that with OURCS, right,
create a messaging protocol based on opening up an API,
and there's only one company that actually has access to API,
which is faandsome. So you know, to create a business
around an API, it takes years, and by then, we
do believe we'll have millions and millions of users that launched.

(59:47):
We know we're going to have millions of users.

Speaker 2 (59:49):
So okay, I guess my big question is, well, how
does it work? Number one?

Speaker 1 (59:53):
So you sign up on I mean right now, it's
a wait list, so there's some beta users and I
got a little taste of this. I got to try
this out myself, and so it's pretty simple. You just
kind of sign in with your Apple ID. But let's
talk about security because that you know, Apple doesn't necessarily
allow that per se like they don't. It's not like
with Google where they allow you know, you can authorize

(01:00:14):
third party apps with your Google app or your Google
logging right, like Apple doesn't really have that provision for this,
So you're sort of doing something that Apple may not like.
But I mean, tell me how that's how that's gonna work.

Speaker 12 (01:00:28):
Yeah, I mean it's it's a little hard to get
into the technical weeds, but at the end of the day,
that's what the invention is.

Speaker 7 (01:00:33):
And so.

Speaker 12 (01:00:36):
Two parts of this right privacy, security and confidentiality being
one of them. You know, Darren the inventor is twenty
years in fintech dealing with banks and technology before ten
years of messaging, and me personally, I have twenty years
in it, you know, in the last ten of which
has been in cybersecurity and compliance, you know, dealing with
things like GDPR in Europe and ISO twenty seven thousand

(01:00:58):
and one, auditing and stock to readiness right and the
California Consumer Protection So I know, privacy in and out,
and a huge part of this app is not storing data,
so that ties into the second part of your question,
which is the actual invention here? So what is the invention?
So the invention is maintaining encryption, right, So using the

(01:01:18):
native authentication. So for you, when you logged into I message,
it's user name, password and two factor authentication. But when
you add what's app into some bird, you're just scanning
the QR code so without getting two and that same idea.
Now it's in some bird also, so the next app
it's going to be using their authentication. So we're basically
building let's call it relay services in the cloud, right,

(01:01:40):
So relay services that get and this is what we
have a patent filed on as well. Right, So relay
services in the cloud that automatically open up the relay
maintain the encryption, right. And the cool thing is is
that as soon as it goes through our servers, it
automatically gets purged from our servers at the same time,
because if you're not storing data, you can't have compliance issues.

(01:02:02):
You can have hacking issues, right if you don't store data.

Speaker 7 (01:02:06):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:02:06):
My guest right now is Danny Mezrahi, CEO of Sunbird,
and they are building a messaging app that not only
brings I message to Android, but also a unified inbox
for all different types of messengers including WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger,
your text messages, later, Telegram, Discord, RCS, slack. You want

(01:02:27):
one place for all messages.

Speaker 2 (01:02:28):
That's what you're.

Speaker 4 (01:02:29):
Building, right, Rich.

Speaker 12 (01:02:31):
Remember when we first got Outlook for the first time,
and I don't know your age, but you know I'm
old enough to have had Outlook with you know, I
attached my AOL address. You know, that's maybe too much
information now really show on my age, but you know
I attached my AOL, I touched my hot Hotmail, I
attached my Yahoo all to Outlook, right, which is called
the thin client. So think some bird as a thin client.

Speaker 7 (01:02:53):
Right.

Speaker 12 (01:02:54):
So it's it's just the window to see all these messages.

Speaker 9 (01:02:57):
Right.

Speaker 12 (01:02:57):
But when you look at all the data and you
see that people are spending four point two hours every
day scrolling through their messaging apps, going back and forth
between them, right, we want to claim a couple of
those hours. We want to make it a little easier
for people to say I don't have to go or
you know, we have I have a friend that said
that he got a message from a Facebook friend and

(01:03:18):
it was a very important message, and it was a
very timely message and basically a friend was in need
and he didn't have any other people that he communicated
on Facebook Messenger with.

Speaker 2 (01:03:28):
Right, so you have it.

Speaker 1 (01:03:29):
Yeah, I missed it, right, And this happens a lot
with LinkedIn messages. You know, these these services that you
sign up for and you may not check very often,
but if they're all in one place, of course you're
going to see them much much quicker. What about cost
for all this? Are you going to charge for this
service when it comes out? And when do we expect
to see this?

Speaker 11 (01:03:47):
Yeah?

Speaker 12 (01:03:48):
I mean right now, it's a free app and it
plans to be free through launch, and you know, with
millions and millions of users, frankly, we can keep it
free because then we have funding. I mean, you know
this is not brain surgery, right, so you know we
want to keep it free. We want to get the
user count up, and we want to keep our costs
a little. You know, we're getting our costs lower and lower,
which has been great, and so we're going to keep

(01:04:11):
it free.

Speaker 7 (01:04:11):
Now.

Speaker 12 (01:04:11):
We do think we're going to have some premium premium features.
I don't want to, you know, do too much spoilers
in terms of you know, what are going to be
premium premium. I mean, we have some really cool features
like chat, GPT, changing the tone of a message, and
you know, face Android to Android face time, right, we
have some really cool features and store. The big, the
big subscription model that we do four C for now

(01:04:34):
would be unlocking the rest of the apps. We know
at launch we're going to do, you know, I Message
and WhatsApp or and or WhatsApp and Facebook and or
SMS and or r cs. Right, we think there's going
to be four or five you know, free apps at launch,
and we can get tens and tens of millions of
users just based on that, and that's what we want.

Speaker 6 (01:04:54):
That's absolutely what.

Speaker 9 (01:04:55):
We want, you know.

Speaker 12 (01:04:56):
And then after that, if you want to unlock Telegram, Signal, line, discord, right, LinkedIn, messaging,
team spaces, all of these are doable, right the way
that the invention is any messaging app that we want
to bring into it, we can do that based on
the invention.

Speaker 1 (01:05:12):
Interesting, all right, We're gonna have to leave it there,
but it's very intriguing. And you know, like I said,
I did get to try the I Message on there
and it works.

Speaker 2 (01:05:20):
My messages were coming through.

Speaker 1 (01:05:21):
I was sitting there texting from an Android phone and
my wife and kid were getting the messages on their
iPhones and they were in blue, so blue bubbles on
Android both ways, it did work. Danny Mezrahi from Sunbird Messaging,
Thanks so much for joining me today.

Speaker 2 (01:05:37):
How can folks find the app?

Speaker 6 (01:05:40):
Yeah, sumbird app.

Speaker 12 (01:05:41):
I mean you could put some bird messaging into Google.
At this point, we're coming up a lot. You know,
we've been very very fortunate with a lot of great
you know, coverage and and but you know slombird app
dot com. You know, share this with your Android friends,
share this with you know, anyone who's you know, making
green bubbles in the group chat, and we love more
people on the wait list, and soon we're going to
get the app there everyone. We're working, you know what,

(01:06:01):
off on making sure that that happens.

Speaker 2 (01:06:03):
All right, Thanks so much for joining me today. Appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (01:06:06):
Coming up, we are going to talk about best Buy
launching recycle by mailboxes. So if you have a bunch
of cords and cables and gadgets laying around the house,
you can now send them in for recycling. Details on
that coming up. Oh, rich Demiro here Rich On Tech
triple eight Rich one O one eight eight eight seven

(01:06:26):
four to two, four to one zero one.

Speaker 2 (01:06:31):
Good song.

Speaker 1 (01:06:33):
Courtney recommended that we play how to Save a Life
by the Fray thanks to my story about helping to
save a life in Hawaii. But I'm telling you, I
know I'm laughing now. But the thing the thing to
know this thing, where's my note? I wrote this down.
What it's called a rescue tube. That is what it's called.

(01:06:56):
I took a picture of this thing. It's like kind
of that long floaty thing that is. That was the
key to the entire rescue operation because I knew that
this adult I would not be able to swim back
to shore. But with the rescue tube, that floaty thing
that was, I told him to grab onto that and
I pulled that had a nice big cable like a cord,
and so I basically pulled him back into shore with that. So, yeah,

(01:07:18):
learn where the rescue tube is. When you go to
a beach, learn where the rescue tube is. That's my
advice to you. All right, let's go to Ron in
Orange County. Ron You're on with Rich Welcome.

Speaker 5 (01:07:28):
To the show. Oh, thank you, thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:07:30):
Hold on and take you off to speak of Okay,
take off speaking.

Speaker 11 (01:07:33):
I have a small business, sure, and I've been operating
it for years, and I'm trying to get better organized. Essentially,
when someone calls in, I want to be able to
input in some type of software, some affordable software that
I can dis log everything in, name, the phone number,

(01:07:54):
what they're calling about, so forth.

Speaker 2 (01:07:58):
And do you have this software already?

Speaker 11 (01:08:00):
No, I'm asking you, Okay, what would you recommend an
affordable software?

Speaker 9 (01:08:05):
If not free?

Speaker 1 (01:08:06):
Well, the good news is we live in an amazing
time right now, with so many great software options. So
I think what you're talking about is CRM software. Have
you heard that term?

Speaker 2 (01:08:15):
I assume have.

Speaker 1 (01:08:17):
I believe now you know this is not a small
business show. I'm not a small business owner. Well actually
I am, but I you know CRM is like customer
relationship management or something like that, right, And so you
know you want to put this information in there and
be able to remember the last time you talked to
this person, remember the last time they called, what they're
you know, and just it's it's kind of an address book,

(01:08:39):
but with more features, right right? Okay, So the big
company that I think revolutionized this world is Salesforce. They
came out with CRM software that was, you know, all
in the cloud and very different. So I think that
that's probably a you know, kind of the basic CRM
software that everyone knows, right and you have you heard

(01:09:01):
of that company Salesforce?

Speaker 9 (01:09:02):
No? No, I haven't, all.

Speaker 1 (01:09:03):
Right, So Salesforce, I think is kind of like the
gold standard when it comes to this, and I'm just
going off of what I've heard in the past, what
I know, but Salesforce is kind of like the big one. Now,
with that said, there may be competitors that offer stuff
that is cheaper. You said you wanted something that is
less expensive, and so I'm looking at theirs. They're big

(01:09:24):
product customer three sixty, and I'm trying to look for pricing.
And that's where it gets a little tricky because it's
saying try for free, but it's not really saying how
much this is going to cost me. And so what
I would do is you can do a free trial,
which on their website, but I would look for some
other alternatives to this. And so when I look for alternatives,

(01:09:47):
I'm seeing something called HubSpot hub Spot, and HubSpot puts
the pricing right on the front page.

Speaker 9 (01:09:55):
Now this.

Speaker 1 (01:09:57):
H that's yeah, that's that's a little expensive for that one.
So you're talking eight hundred dollars a month. That's probably
not something you want to do. Then you've got something
called Zoho Zho and I'm looking at that. That's fourteen
bucks a month. That's sounding probably a little bit better.

Speaker 5 (01:10:14):
Huh huh.

Speaker 2 (01:10:15):
Okay, So Zoho is something that's no, it's flexible, so
there's no lock in, and it's looks like it's something
that might be worthwhile looking at. But those are just
a couple of the companies that I would look at.
And the thing that I would do too is have
you ever used the search the versus search versus versus?

Speaker 1 (01:10:38):
So if you type in something on Google Salesforce versus,
and then it comes up with all of the other
companies that compete against that, So it's saying Salesforce versus,
HubSpot Service, now, Zendesk, Shopify, So one of those companies
may be something. So it's just a little bit of research.

Speaker 2 (01:10:58):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:10:58):
Also, if you go on YouTube and you search hey,
best CRM software Small Business twenty twenty three, that's another
way to look for the companies that people are recommending,
and also you get a little taste of what they
can do and a little idea of the features, and
you say, oh, yeah, that's the feature I want.

Speaker 2 (01:11:15):
That's that's the cool thing.

Speaker 1 (01:11:16):
Some of these may be more complicated than you need,
but that's the way that I would sort of research
that situation.

Speaker 2 (01:11:22):
And you know what kind of company you're running.

Speaker 9 (01:11:26):
I have a legal service business.

Speaker 1 (01:11:28):
Okay, so legal services, so you know you want to
keep track of your customers and all the things that
they need and maybe even include some documents in this
online service as well. So but that does that help
you to kind of get you on the past?

Speaker 9 (01:11:40):
Great your he I do appreciate.

Speaker 1 (01:11:43):
All right, Ron, good luck with the legal services. People
need them, you know when you need them. You don't
want to need them, but sometimes you do, and when
you do, you know it all right. Before we go
to break here, let me tell you about best Buy
launching these new recycle by mail technology boxes. This is
so cool because someone like me, I have so much
I don't want to call it garbage, but so much

(01:12:03):
stuff laying around the house. You know, you get these
cables that you don't want to part with. You've got
an old gadget here and there that you just don't
You can't really throw out gadgets in the trash. You
don't want to for environmental reasons. You want to recycle
them properly, and so the first thing to do is
to donate them if you can. But if they're not
something that you would donate but you've just been holding

(01:12:23):
on to. They now have these prepaid boxes from best
buy dot com two options. A small box is twenty
three bucks. It carries up to six pounds. A medium
box can carry up to fifteen pounds. You order the box,
you pay it. When it gets to your house, you
fill it up with all your old gadgets lying around
the house, whether it's a tablet, cords, keyboards, whatever it is,

(01:12:44):
and they've got a full list of products that they
will recycle. You take the prepaid box to your nearest
UPS drop off or you schedule a pick up with UPS,
and boom, your electronics are recycled. Best Buy says they
are the nation's largest collector of e waste. They've recycled
more than two point seven billion pounds of electronics. This
is a pilot program, so we don't know if this

(01:13:06):
is going to continue. But there's also other ways you
can recycle stuff. You can drop off old electronics at
best Buy. Sometimes they may charge you for some of
that stuff, so it depends what it is like. If
it's a big TV, they may charge you a little bit.
There's an online service called gizmo Go that I recommend.
I've been to their recycling facilities gizmogo dot com. When

(01:13:26):
I had to recycle my mom's computer, I brought it
to Staples and it was completely free. And I know
that they ended or they stopped the program during the
COVID pandemic, but check out Staples as well because they
have a really good recycling program. Hopefully they've started again.
All right, Coming up later in the show, we're going
to talk Tetris. I watched the movie on the plane.

(01:13:48):
It's on Apple TV plus. We're going to talk to
my friend Dan Ackerman about all things Tetris plus. Walmart
the next place you might charge your EV. You're listening
to Rich on Tech, Give me a call eighty eight
rich one O one. All right, now we're getting into
the weeds with these songs. Ah oh, you know, you

(01:14:10):
don't know how you feel after you help save someone's life.
Until you do it. And I'm telling you that handshake.
I got a handshake from the guy. He was just
like thank you. And you know, my kids and my
wife they were by my side.

Speaker 2 (01:14:26):
They felt like a movie. We were running off into
the sunset.

Speaker 1 (01:14:30):
And then I ran to my chair and finished my
my tie. But I'm telling you, I looked at my
Apple Watch my heart rate and I could see the
exact time when I darted up from my chair to
run out into the water. And again, like I said,
I'm not I'm not like a mister athlete, but I
can run fast. I do run and I can swim
decently fast too. Anyway, let's go to a welcome back,

(01:14:53):
by the way, Rich DeMuro here, Rich on Tech Talking
Technology triple eight Rich one O one eight eight eight
seven four to two for to one zero one.

Speaker 2 (01:15:02):
Doug is in San Jose. Doug, you're on with Rich.

Speaker 9 (01:15:05):
Hi there, Thanks for taking my call.

Speaker 2 (01:15:09):
Thanks for calling.

Speaker 9 (01:15:09):
I'm wondering if you are aware of any problem nationwide
with comcasts keeping their system up and running. And the
reason I asked is because there's been an ongoing problem
in my area of San Jose, which is ironic giving

(01:15:30):
it the capital of Silicon Valley.

Speaker 2 (01:15:33):
Yeah, that is.

Speaker 9 (01:15:33):
And the just in the past three or four days
there have been system attages. This one is going on
twenty four hours.

Speaker 2 (01:15:42):
Oh wow. Okay, so and this happens quite often.

Speaker 11 (01:15:46):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:15:46):
I've heard people complain about this service up there, but
I you know, I don't live up there, so I
don't really know. And I feel like internet service can't
really be out nationwide for a long way or for
a long time, because you know, that would be pretty wild.
So how long has it been out for you? And
why is it out?

Speaker 9 (01:16:06):
I have no idea why it's out. Contasts will never
provide that information. A few months ago they came through
and upgraded the system to quote unquote improve your experience.
Hasn't exactly hasn't exactly done that interesting? I mean I've

(01:16:26):
been on the phone with their phone techs who are
ten thousand miles away, and then I've talked to their headquarters,
which is I think is in Minneapolis. I'm not sure.
I mean, I've been up and down the system, even
complained to the FCC, and that's because I'm a cranky

(01:16:47):
old man. But I need my I need my Internet.

Speaker 1 (01:16:50):
I get it. Yeah, it's frustrating. It's totally frustrating. And
this is the reason why I hate the fact that
many people only have one option for Internet at their home,
maybe too if you're lucky, I mean, and the second
one may not be that good. But we are seeing
more options come along with these wireless companies, the verizons

(01:17:12):
of the world, the t mobiles, even the satellite Internet
and some of these wireless internet companies. But I think
one of them is not doing too well, so that's
not really worked out pretty good. So most people, like
I said, they don't have that many options, and so
you're kind of stuck with this service. And also, you know,
it comes down to the price you pay. Like you know,
maybe you have a different option, but it's more expensive.

(01:17:33):
But let me kind of bring this out so that
if you're having trouble with your service, you understand there's
a couple of things you can do. So first off,
I know that Exfinity has an outage map and you
can put your address in so a lot of times,
if you're having trouble with your internet Internet it can
be localized to your home or to your neighborhood. Something

(01:17:54):
that's happening there. You know, someone runs into a power
line and you know, brings down the line. So I
understand that these things are going to happen, but if
it's going out over and over, it could either be
the hardware on your end, it could be your neighborhood,
or you know, it's just something is not right. And
so the first thing I would do is check the
Infinity outage map, and I would say almost every single

(01:18:17):
service at this point that's online, you know, including ones
that you don't pay for something like an I message,
they all have these status maps. So if you type
in like Apple service status on the website on Google,
it will tell you if these things are functioning properly.
So you can see a system status right now for
everything that Apple offers, the app Store, Apple Account, Apple Arcade, FaceTime,

(01:18:42):
Find My game Center, home Kit. It will tell you
if these things are down. So if you're having a
problem with I Message, you can go there and see, Okay,
is it just me or is it everyone that's having
a problem with this stuff. So that's one way of
doing it. Again. Infinity has its own which I'm looking up.
It's exfinity dot com slash slash status map and you
type in your address and it will tell you if

(01:19:04):
that address is having a problem. And so in this case, Doug,
you can type in your actual service address. I'm not
going to ask you for that on the radio, but
you can type that in and it will tell you
is this a problem for everyone or just you?

Speaker 2 (01:19:16):
So that's Exfinity.

Speaker 1 (01:19:18):
Whether whether your service is Infinity or AT and T
or whatever, they should have something similar to that. The
other thing is a website called down Detector, and this
website is a sort of a bigger website that will
tell you what's having trouble at any given time. And
if you look the top things that are having trouble
at any given time or always the Internet services themselves.

(01:19:40):
So I'm looking at the top kind of things that
are down. Spectrum, Verizon, Starlink, T Mobile, AT and T
is on there, and then you go down Inxfinity is
actually lower on the list cos you know it has everything.
But you can see a little line of when people
submit things that are wrong with these services. So if

(01:20:02):
you see a spike and the line looks like it's red,
that means there's a problem at any given time. And
so this is downdetector dot com. You can type in
the service you're having problem with. Let's say, or Instagram
isn't working.

Speaker 2 (01:20:14):
I N S T A g r M.

Speaker 1 (01:20:16):
You type in Instagram and it will show you if
Instagram is having trouble, and let's see, does it go
by Instagram Maybe it doesn't, Maybe it just goes by
Facebook or Meta.

Speaker 2 (01:20:26):
Let's see.

Speaker 1 (01:20:27):
I'll type in Facebook, and so here's Facebook telling you
you know, and then you can type in a problem.
You can say I'm having a problem with Facebook, website, app, login,
something else, and then it gives you the outage reports
for the last twenty four hours. You can see if
you're having trouble, and there's been a whole bunch of
people that are saying we have outages as well. You
can understand that. So that's a website called downdetector dot com.

(01:20:51):
And then this is another website that's really good. So
if you're having trouble accessing website, like people will tell me, hey, Rich,
I'm having trouble accessing Rich on tech dot tv and
I go on my phone and it's working just fine
for me. So this website, if you go to down
for Everyone or just me dot com, you can type
in a website so I'm gonna type in rich on
tech dot tv and it goes to that website from

(01:21:15):
its own browser, and so it checks to see is
it down for everyone or just you? And it's telling
me it's just you. Rich on tech dot tv is up.
And you can check a different website if you want,
so if you're having trouble with a specific website, you
can see if it's for everyone or just you. So

(01:21:35):
those are three good resources for looking up you know,
what's going on in your area, Doug. I know it's frustrating,
and especially with Internet, it's really frustrating when it goes down.
Thankfully we have our phones. You can pop into that
hotspot if you need it. But when it's going on
a couple of days or you know, weeks even, or
if it's just happening over and over, that's when it's

(01:21:55):
time to try to figure out what exactly is going on.
So good question. Thanks for in and appreciate the call.
Walmart launching coast to coast EV fast Charging network across
all of its stores, so they are building their own
coast to coast EV fast Charging network by twenty thirty,
so basically you will be able to go to a

(01:22:16):
Walmart store and charge your car fast. And this is
kind of the trend that we're seeing with these fast chargers.
They're starting to pop up at more and more stores.
So Walmart says they already have thirteen hundred fast charging
stations across two hundred and eighty retail stores with Electrify America.
But this is going to be a coast to coast

(01:22:36):
kind of thing. So Walmart says that they have, let's see,
by twenty thirty, they're going to build this. They say
they have a store club located within ten miles of
approximately ninety percent of Americans, okay, and it'll be at
super centers, neighborhood markets, and Sam's Club, so you'll be
able to go into the store and charge while you
go into the store. They didn't say if it's going

(01:22:57):
to oh, yep, in line with our purpose, we aim
to offer everyday low price charging, so this is not
going to be free charging, but they will have low prices,
and we know Walmart definitely has low prices, so it
should hopefully be pretty reasonable. But again, this is the
charge that we're seeing. You know, these chargers are showing
up at more and more stores, which I think is

(01:23:19):
very convenient because they have the space, They've got the
parking lots, and it's very easy to charge inside these
stores because you know, are outside these stores because you
can run in for something. And really, when it comes
to electric car charging, let's be honest, most people are
charging at home or at work. This is for when
you're on a road trip or you just need a.

Speaker 2 (01:23:36):
Quick fill up.

Speaker 1 (01:23:38):
To have a location like Walmart is very convenient because
if you know where one is, or if you're even
on a road trip you see that Walmart sign on
the side of the road, you know, Okay, I'll take
a little pit stop at Walmart, I'll charge my car
and I'll be on my way, and I know it's
going to be a pretty good price. So glad that
Walmart is doing that.

Speaker 2 (01:23:56):
All right.

Speaker 1 (01:23:57):
Coming up on the show, we're going to talk to
my pal Dan Ackerman from CNET.

Speaker 2 (01:24:02):
My day's at c NEET.

Speaker 1 (01:24:03):
It feels like it's further and further away, but we're
going to talk to Dan Ackerman. He wrote a book
about Tetris, and then when I saw the movie, I said,
we got to talk to Dan about the movie and
Tetris in general. All these years later, I'm still playing
Tetris and yes I had the original game Boy, so
we'll talk to him. And we'll also talk about Google
bringing air Drop, their version of air drop to Windows.

(01:24:24):
So if you have an Android phone, it is now
much easier to transfer files from your Android phone to
your Windows computer. All that plus your calls at triple
eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four
to two, four to one zero one. If you have
a question about technology, give me a call. Phone lines
are opening. You're listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back

(01:24:47):
to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here talking technology with
you at triple eight rich one oh one eight eight
eight seven four to two, four to one zero one.
We were talking about recycling Earlier. I mentioned the Staples
recycling and it went away during COVID, but.

Speaker 2 (01:25:05):
It is back.

Speaker 1 (01:25:06):
So probably one of the easiest places to recycle stuff
is your local Staples store. So they said that they
have recycled one hundred and fifty three million is that million? Yeah,
pounds of technology since twenty twelve, and you can basically
just bring it in for free as far yeah free.

(01:25:26):
I was pretty impressed. We brought back my mom's computer
and I couldn't believe how easy it was. In fact,
look at this. They'll give you five bucks in rewards
when you recycle or shred in store. And this is
not We're not you know, you can do like things
like ink cartridges, but this will. They'll take back almost anything.
Adapters and cables, all in one, computers, battery backup cable,

(01:25:48):
satellite receivers, calculators, camquarders, E readers, fax machines, GPS devices,
all this stuff that you have sitting there and you
don't want to throw in the trash because it's bad
for the environment. You can now it to a staple store.
So what can't be recycled there? Air conditioners, alkaline batteries, appliances,
floor model, printers and copiers. Can you imagine? Can you

(01:26:11):
imagine unloading that from your car? Like here you go,
let me, here's my copyer, my xerox machine, kitchen, appliances, lamps,
large servers, large speakers, smoke detectors, televisions. Don't bring TVs there,
they cannot recycle them at staples. Computers, yes, how about monitors, yes, monitors,
you can printers, all that good stuff. So anyway, really

(01:26:32):
easy to recycle there. I was quite impressed, but the
box now we have options. In fact, next week I'm
going to a recycling plant down in Carlsbad, and so
I'm going to see first hand. You know, Earth Days
coming up, so I'm going to see firsthand how they
recycle some of this stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:26:49):
And it's pretty wild. I mean they it's like melting
and shredding and all this good stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:26:54):
Better Business Bureau put out some tips about how to
give yourself a spring digital makeover. They're teaming up the
National Cybersecurity Alliance to remind you that not only when
you spring clean like this today, I opened up my
garage and I said, we got to get rid of
some of this stuff. And so not only do you
want to get rid of all of your physical clutter
in your house when you spring clean, remember the digital

(01:27:17):
clutter and also security. So they gave a couple of tips.
I'm gonna read some of them here because I thought
they were pretty good. I mean, it's stuff you've heard before,
but I think that it's good to reiterate this stuff.
So Number one, lock down your login, so make sure
that your logins are complex and unique. So if you're

(01:27:37):
having trouble with this concept, I'm telling you you can't
add a one or a exclamation point to your word
that you use over and over and expect it to
be safe. That is just not the case. So please
use complex passwords. You can generate them even if you
don't use a password generator. Okay, if you just type

(01:27:57):
in password generator on the way and you go to
a website like Norton Password Generator, one Password password Generator,
Bitwarden Password Generator, all of these websites have password generators
online and you can just go there and generate a
secure password. So even if you don't want to use
one of those apps, I always recommend you can actually

(01:28:20):
just do this online and write down the password. That's
better than nothing. So do that two factor authentication. I've
talked about it a million times. Please please please put
that on any account that will accept it. Update your
system and software, update your software.

Speaker 2 (01:28:37):
You have to do it.

Speaker 1 (01:28:38):
I know we don't like change, but you have to
do this because that's what keeps your software secure and safe,
and it's what the hackers do.

Speaker 2 (01:28:45):
They use exploits.

Speaker 1 (01:28:47):
So when software gets old, there are known exploits, there
are known ways of cracking that software and getting in
and doing bad stuff, and so if you update your software,
you're staying at least a little step ahead of some
of the problems that have been found and they're patched.

Speaker 2 (01:29:02):
Back it up.

Speaker 1 (01:29:04):
Back up your personal and workplace data by making electronic
copies backups of your most important files. Use the three
two one rule to help guide you. You want three
backup copies. I know it sounds like a lot, two
different media types and one offline in a separate location.
Let me give you an example of the iPhone. Okay,

(01:29:24):
now when you say three different places, so one of
those places could be your phone, and then you want
it in two other places. So maybe you plug your
phone into your computer and you do a full backup
of that computer or that phone that is stored on
your computer.

Speaker 2 (01:29:40):
Okay, now that's two.

Speaker 1 (01:29:41):
Now you've got your data on your phone, you've got
it on your computer, and then you want it in
a third place. So let's say you use Google Photos
for your photos, use iCloud for your important files. That
would be three places that would be sufficient. So again,
I know we don't want to do this stuff, we
don't want to pay for storage online, but do it
because if it has weepens to you and you'll lose

(01:30:01):
your stuff. And believe me, I get the emails. It's
not fun people lose this stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:30:05):
We had an email.

Speaker 1 (01:30:06):
We had a person the other day who said they lost,
you know, thirteen thousand photos on their phone.

Speaker 2 (01:30:11):
Because they just didn't check the backup.

Speaker 1 (01:30:13):
At the very least, if you're an Amazon Prime customer,
just download the Amazon Photos app. It's free and it
will download your photos or will it will back up
your photos to the cloud unlimited. It's not going to
do videos unlimited, but it will do photos unlimited. If
you're an Amazon Prime customer, take advantage of that. At
least get the pictures uploaded. And by the way, you
can't just download this app and never open it again.

(01:30:36):
You have to open up the app every once in
a while to make sure that you are actually backing
up your pictures.

Speaker 2 (01:30:43):
I also like Google Photos.

Speaker 1 (01:30:44):
Of course you've heard me talk about that clean up
your online presence. So this is a good one too.
And this is something that I do often on my phone.
I will just go through my phone and just kind
of delete apps that I don't use anymore. That's good
to do because if an app you know has access
to your contacts, your photos, you're not using it, you
don't really want that.

Speaker 2 (01:31:02):
Also, make sure that.

Speaker 1 (01:31:04):
You get rid of old accounts, and so if you're
not using an account anymore, just go ahead and delete it.
There are ways to delete these accounts. There used to
be a website that I've liked. Believe it's just delete me.
And so if you go to just delete me, just
delete dot me, it will give you a whole list
of ways to delete accounts. So if you want to

(01:31:26):
delete your Instagram or your Aol or anything Adobe, it
will tell you how to do that.

Speaker 2 (01:31:32):
There was another one I liked.

Speaker 1 (01:31:33):
I'm trying to remember what the other one wash Gosh,
I can't remember right now off the top of my head,
But there was a there was another website that would
help you delete these things. But if you just google
the service that you want to delete, along with delete,
you should find instructions online with how to delete that stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:31:52):
So please do these.

Speaker 1 (01:31:54):
Things, clean up your online presence, and just get these
things in order before it's too late. All right, Coming up,
we're gonna talk to Dan Ackerman. He is author of
The Tetris Effect. We're going to talk all things Tetris.
Coming up, one of my favorite games in the world.
You're listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich

(01:32:15):
On Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology.
We're gonna get to the feedback section of the show
coming up a little bit later, but first we're gonna
talk about one of my favorite games in the world, Tetris.
I watched the new Apple TV Plus movie on the airplane,
and I thoroughly enjoyed it. A little nostalgic, little fun,

(01:32:40):
little action, little intrigue, little saga. Here to talk about
all of it is Dan Ackerman, who I used to
work with at Cenet. He wrote the book called The
Tetris Effect, which is available on Amazon way before the
movie came out.

Speaker 2 (01:32:54):
Dan, Welcome to the show.

Speaker 4 (01:32:57):
Hey, Rich good to talk to you.

Speaker 3 (01:32:58):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:32:58):
Dan, let's just be clear the show was not based
on your book, but since you're the Tetris expert, I
figured we'd chat about Tetris.

Speaker 4 (01:33:08):
Yeah, exactly. The producers of the movie did a great job.
They did not license my book, but it covers the
story in a very similar way.

Speaker 1 (01:33:15):
So let's talk about Tetris. First off, what drew you
to this game to write a book about it?

Speaker 4 (01:33:21):
You know, what I was really interested in is Less
the game, which is an important game, one of the
most important games ever, but really the story behind it,
which reminded me of kind of a Silicon Alley tech
startup story, except it took place in the Cold War
Soviet Union in the nineteen eighties. But the parallels between
this and you know, the story of the service Facebook

(01:33:42):
or any other social media company or a big tech
company really jumped out at me.

Speaker 1 (01:33:47):
And so was the movie. The movie is called Tetris.
It's on Apple TV plus. Was it did it say
based on a true story? I think it did so.
I mean, how much of this was true as you
watched it?

Speaker 11 (01:34:00):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (01:34:00):
I got to say most of it was pretty was
tracking pretty well with the history as I wrote it,
up until maybe like the last twenty minutes where they
get into the the KDP agents beating people up and
the car chases. Everything up until then is actually pretty
dead on, even though it seems like you have these cartoonists,
you know, characters in the Soviet Union trying to shake

(01:34:20):
people down, and you have all this confusion about all
these people buying for the rights of the game. Really,
I'd say seventy five eighty percent of that stuff happened
pretty darn close to how they put it in that movie.

Speaker 2 (01:34:31):
Wow. So how did you do research for your book?

Speaker 4 (01:34:35):
You know, when I was sitting down to tell this
story in my book, obviously I got in touch with
a lot of the primary people in the you know,
in the story, and a lot of the characters usually
portrayed in the film are people I interviewed for the book.
Henk Rogers, like Depositov, even Starter Maya, our Colla from Nintendo,
Howard Lincoln, So a lot of the characters, and they

(01:34:55):
all had great stories to tell, and they all told
the stories from their own point of view, so there
were some discrepancies and you kind of have to go
through it and say, this guy remembers it this way,
this guy remembers it that way, and try to figure
out what the most likely version of the truth.

Speaker 2 (01:35:10):
Wash and what is so great about Tetris? I mean,
I know what I mean.

Speaker 1 (01:35:14):
So of course I got the Game Boy back in
I don't know what year it was, but that was
kind of like the first thing I remember having as
a kid was like this, I think it was ninety dollars.
I bought a like KB toy store, and I think
Tetris was the game that was included with it, right,
I mean that was a.

Speaker 4 (01:35:31):
Real big part of Tetris's long term success was getting
packed in with that game boy. And it happens very
much like you saw in the Texas movie where Hank
Rogers convinced Nintendo to put this new game in Tetris
instead of something like a Donkey Kong game or a
Mario game or a Zelda game, even though those games
have huge built in audiences. And the pitch was this

(01:35:51):
is a game for people who would never call themselves gamers,
you know, parents, teachers, people who didn't have game console.
It's really more of a puzzle. And if they think, oh,
I'm just playing this little box I bought at like
you said, a KB twys or ninety bucks, but it's
a puzzle, almost like a crossword and not a video game,
well then I'm into it. And that's why so many
people played Tetris. But you they would never call themselves gamers.

Speaker 1 (01:36:14):
Interesting, I mean, because yeah, anyone can play it, anyone
can pick it up. It's been made into so many
different variations. I mean I was playing, you know, a Tetris,
I think I've played it on every single device I've
had since the Game Boy, whether it's a console box
or whether it is a I'm just trying to think,
like all the different ways I've played over the year, so,

(01:36:35):
you know, smartphones, cell phones, and it's all had different names.
Is the Tetris Company still around and are they still likened?
Like what's the deal with Tetris at this point in time?

Speaker 9 (01:36:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:36:45):
One of the nice things about the company and the
game is that there's a Tetris company and it's run
by Hank Rogers and his daughter, and the LECTIPOSIV was
a partner in that, and these two guys who were
the protagonist of that film and the protagonist of my book,
and I think the agonists in real life ended up
owning the rights to the game and they've been administering
it ever since. So it's one of these great stories

(01:37:07):
about you know, creative ip where the good guys actually win.

Speaker 1 (01:37:12):
And what is it about Tetris that I mean you
said that anyone can play it. I mean it's a
puzzle and it's simple, but I still can't get enough,
you know, thirty years.

Speaker 4 (01:37:22):
Later, you know it's it's the geometic spatial you know,
you know, recognition of the patterns. Scientists study how the
game affects your brain, and they've shown that it can
help people prevent them from developing PTSD after traumatic incident
because it rewires and rewrites some of the you know,

(01:37:42):
memory pathways in the brain that are traumatic event would
would write to you know, long term, so you'd have flashbacks.
And other scientists have studied how your brain is more
efficient playing Tetris. It's not that you get better at
the game, it's that your brain uses less power to
do the same amount of mental work in the game.
So there's something very unique about how it's a game
but there's no story and there's no characters. It really

(01:38:03):
requires a lot of unconscious thinking and that's something that
even a lot of twitch games don't have.

Speaker 1 (01:38:08):
So I was going to ask you, I'm gonna put
you on the spot. Is there a game similar to
Tetris that you've seen in the past couple of years
that you would recommend people play, Like if you love Tetris,
like something that you've seen that would be just as fun.

Speaker 4 (01:38:21):
You know, I always loved Luminous, and I think candy
Crush style games have a little bit of that, you know,
in spatial pattern Recognition Rush. It's really tough to beep
the original, especially when there were still kind of interesting
new versions coming out even all this time later.

Speaker 9 (01:38:35):
There's a game.

Speaker 4 (01:38:36):
Called Tetris Effect that there's a really nice job of
updating and modernizing the game, and it actually works in
virtual reality, which is a whole another level. And I
think it's just really fantastic in the VR three D space.
And you can do that on you know, Oculus and
on PlayStation VR and regular PCVR.

Speaker 1 (01:38:55):
Oh, I have to try that one, okay, Hevin, I said,
I played on all the platforms. I have not tried
it in VR. Yeah, I kind of do that. Well, okay,
so you said Candy Crush and what was the other one?

Speaker 2 (01:39:03):
Luminous.

Speaker 4 (01:39:04):
Luminous is a great one, and that's actually one of
the guys who designed that new texas of that game.
Luminus was one of his earlier games.

Speaker 1 (01:39:11):
What surprised you when you're writing the book, anything that
you really were surprised at?

Speaker 4 (01:39:16):
You know, there are a couple of really surprising things
that did not make it into the movie version that
you saw. But Russia really wanted to get into the
business and manufacturing Nintendo console, being in business with Nintendo
in a big way. And they tried to convince Howard
Lincoln and other people at Nintendo of this, and they
took him, Howard Lincoln, who's in the film. They took

(01:39:37):
him to one of the top secret cosmonaut training facilities
and gave him a big tour and so, you know,
we can put the Nintendo logo on the side of
a rocket going up. You know, anything you want, we
can do it. Let's make a deal. And of course
that didn't happen because you can imagine how you know,
not great a Soviet Union manufactured Nintendo entertainment system would be.
But the fact that they did all that and gave

(01:39:59):
him this, like the behind the scenes secret Cosna tour,
I was always one of the wildest parts of the story.

Speaker 1 (01:40:04):
Oh my gosh, that is wild that we would have
been forever change. We'd be talking about banning Nintendo at
this point like we are with TikTok if that was
the case. Okay, so do you recommend do you recommend
that folks watched this movie on Apple TV bus I
watched it on a plane, and so I have a
different place in my brain for movies that I watch
on the plane, because it's like, Okay, you know, I

(01:40:24):
wasn't my regular self when I was watching this, but
I still enjoyed it, and I thought some of it
was like, actually, the characters were so over the top
that I thought at some point it was almost like
a characature of a character. But that's what part of
the love. Part of what I liked about this movie
was that, Yeah, what I.

Speaker 4 (01:40:42):
Liked about it was it really carries forward that Cold
War spy thriller theme, which is the same way I
wrote about the book, And I don't think anyone had
really covered the Order of Texas like that before. But
it's pretty dark, true to life. Some of the outrageous
stuff really happened. Sometimes the characters are a little different
than they kind of invented, like that KTB bad guy
who you know most of his stuff was actually done

(01:41:03):
by one of the other characters in there. But until
you get to the car chases and like the fistfights,
it really wasn't all that exaggerated. Shockingly wow.

Speaker 1 (01:41:10):
All right, if you want to try Apple TV Plus
if you don't have a subscription, I just looked in
the target app if you're a Target circle member, you
can go into my Target on the app Apple tv
Plus free for three months, so you can sign up
watch this completely for free. So that's one way of
doing it. I'm sure there's other ways of getting Apple
tv Plus. Dan Ackerman is my guest from Cnet. Dan,

(01:41:33):
how are things going since I left Cnet? Probably what
fifteen years ago? At this point, I.

Speaker 4 (01:41:39):
Can't I can't imagine that it's been that long.

Speaker 6 (01:41:41):
That is crazy.

Speaker 4 (01:41:42):
But of course I always look running into you at
Apple events and other type events. It seems like there's
a huge network of NEET alumni out there and we
all just keep you know, stay in touch and keep
running into each other.

Speaker 2 (01:41:51):
And you're covering what over there at this point, you know, a.

Speaker 4 (01:41:55):
Lot of computer stuff and gaming, home entertainment, really a
lot of that tra personal tech that you think of
the brand.

Speaker 1 (01:42:02):
All right, absolutely go follow Dan Ackerman on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram,
all the different social media platforms that he's on. And Dan,
thanks so much for joining me today. I can't wait
to play more Tetris now.

Speaker 2 (01:42:16):
All right, take care?

Speaker 1 (01:42:17):
All right, coming up, we're going to have the feedback
section of the show. The more I do, the show,
the more feedback we get. Plus, I'm going to tell
you how Google is now guaranteeing that if you your
flight price goes down, they will pay you the difference.
I'll explain that coming up right here on rich on Tech.

(01:42:38):
Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich Demiro here closing
out the show with you with the feedback segment. But first,
before we get to that, I just want to tell
you about the new feature on Google Flights, which, if
you heard me talk about booking travel, I pretty much
only use Google Flights to look up my flights, and
so this is flights or I should say shop for

(01:42:59):
flights flights dot Google dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:43:01):
I'm on there multiple times on.

Speaker 1 (01:43:03):
A daily basis, so I love this website and they're
adding this new feature that basically, if your price goes
down on the flight, they will reimburse you. So if
you see a flight with this price guarantee badge, they
are confident that the price you see will not get
any lower. So Google, of course has a ton of data.

(01:43:23):
They know they've been tracking historic pricing data for flights,
and they bought a company that helps them do that,
so they know that they think the price isn't going
to go down before you fly, and so if it does,
they will send you back the difference via Google pay.
That's kind of annoying, but I'd rather have PayPal, but
I'll take Google pay whatever. But you have to see

(01:43:45):
this badge. You have to see this flight price guarantee badge.
And it does not show up on every flight. In fact,
I searched a whole bunch of flights. I didn't get
it to show up once. But in their example they
they showed like like a what was it like an
Alaska Airlines flight. So if you see that little badge,
you can do that.

Speaker 3 (01:44:05):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:44:05):
The other thing you can do on Google Flights is
just track the price of your flight. But I've found
a couple of times the price of the flight will
go down when you track it. A lot of times
it just goes up. So my advice stays with all
you know, it's still the same all these years later.
When it comes to booking a plane flight, if the
price seems good to you at the time, go ahead

(01:44:27):
and book it. Because it may go up, it may
go down a little bit, But the reality is, if
it feels like a fair price, go for it, because,
believe me, I've tracked prices for a long long time,
and sometimes they just never go down or they never change.
Sometimes they just go up and up and up, and
you just feel kind of like, why do I keep
watching this price go up?

Speaker 2 (01:44:45):
You just got a book when it feels right to
your Ruth.

Speaker 1 (01:44:48):
Wrote in feedback section, Hey, Rich, I watch you on
WGNTV in Chicago and listen to your podcast. In the
last three weeks, my visa card has been hacked repeatedly,
which means issuing a new car every time. Chase has
been good about sending fraud notices. Any suggestions. Also, I'm
getting a second visa card so I'm not left with
nothing while waiting for a new card. Thanks Ruth in

(01:45:10):
Glenn Allen, Illinois. Ruth, my advice is to not use
your the same card online that you're using out and about,
so I would think about getting a separate card just
for online purchases. Or you can use a website that
I use. It's called privacy dot com and you have
to link it up to your debit card or your

(01:45:32):
checking account or I think a savings account. But it
gives you a one time use virtual card number, So
that's a way to get around this, and I don't
think Chase offers virtual card numbers, but some of the
other credit card companies do. But I would look into
using virtual card numbers, so when you're shopping online, you
can use a one time card number that does not
give away your actual credit card because for some reason,

(01:45:54):
I don't know what it is these I don't know
why how they get it. But sometimes you use your
credit card online, next thing you know, it's hacked. And
it doesn't happen just online. It could happen in store too,
so it just really depends. But I would try to
limit the exposure to your credit card number. My rule
of thumb I try to use my debit card as

(01:46:14):
much as possible, So anytime my card leaves my hand,
I typically like to use a credit card just to
give me that little buffer between myself and that number.
So a credit card, if it gets hacked, a lot easier.
You don't really have to worry about as much. You
just call your company and say, hey, look this happened,
and they're going to reverse the charges. But if your

(01:46:35):
debit card, it's a little trickier because the money already
comes out of your account. So again my rule of
thumb if the card leaves my hand, I usually like
to use a credit card. The other way to do
it is to use tap to pay, which protects both
your debit card number and your credit card number equally well.
And anytime you can online shop with something like Google
Pay or Apple Pay, and a lot of times you

(01:47:00):
have to shop from your phone to get that button
to show up, but you can do that as well.
Like on the Southwest app I was talking about it
was booking a flight. It was very easy to book
because I could just use Apple Pay right through my phone.
So again, limit your exposure privacy dot com is also
a good way to do that.

Speaker 2 (01:47:16):
Let's see here. I have so much feedback now from
the show. John writes in.

Speaker 1 (01:47:20):
John from Appleton, Wisconsin says, another very informative show. You
had a nice discussion about free and Paige streaming services
with commercials or ad free. Here's my question. When TV
shows are sold for syndication, there's content removed to make
room for more commercials. Not sure if that's the case. Okay,
Today when we stream Cheers, Friends, Seinfeld x Files, are

(01:47:40):
we seeing shows in their entirety as they first appeared
on network TV? Or are we seeing the edited version.
I think you're seeing the shows in their entirety because
with streaming they can do whatever they want, so there's
no need to cut anything. It doesn't need to fit
into this. You know, typically it's twenty three minutes of
show seven minutes of commercials per hour, so I don't
think they need to cut anything when it's streaming. In fact,

(01:48:04):
I was watching Friends and Seinfeld on streaming services and
it seemed like it was the entire entire show. So
I think that that's probably your best bet. And these shows, man,
they keep having a life.

Speaker 2 (01:48:14):
Huh.

Speaker 1 (01:48:15):
Many years after I did a show, I did a movie.
I did It's gonna Sound funny. I was on the
cutting room floor of Zoolander two, Like they didn't even
use my part, and I'm still getting residual checks when
people watch that movie.

Speaker 2 (01:48:28):
I don't know how.

Speaker 1 (01:48:29):
I mean, I guess because they paid me to be
in the movie. I somehow, even though I didn't end
up in the movie. You know, when it comes to
all this stuff, you still get your check. So I
still just got to check. This weekend wasn't much, but
still there. And it shows you all the places people
watch it streaming is a big one. Mark says, I'm
a bit behind. Listening to episode number twelve. Two observations.

(01:48:50):
One woman had a friend with an iPad was asking
about a chromebook. One option is maybe getting a keyboard
case for the iPad instead of a chromebook. It's cheaper
and no need to learn a new device. Any bluetooth
keyboard would work with an iPad. Yeah, an iPad is
a good alternative. I think if you're just consuming content,
an iPad is really good. But I think a chromebook

(01:49:10):
is a little bit easier if you're trying to do
more on there, and so I think that's I'll recommend
an iPad when I think it's necessary. But I think
in that case, I actually forgot it might have been
a good option. I just forgot completely. Second item was
about the woman with a Lisa computer. Those are selling
for up to fifty thousand dollars on the market for

(01:49:31):
vintage technology these days.

Speaker 2 (01:49:32):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (01:49:33):
I don't know if she mentioned she had a Lisa
or she worked on Alisa back in the day.

Speaker 2 (01:49:38):
So that's oh gosh, this is a long one.

Speaker 1 (01:49:43):
Robert, retired web developer, says, regarding the woman who called
into your show, who asked for advice and how to
monetize her idea for an app. Instead of creating a video,
I would have suggested a catchy name for your app,
register that domain typically twenty bucks a year, host that
domain six a month, six bucks a month. Well, and
then use a website builder to create a website, kind

(01:50:05):
of a live website with placeholders to show people how
the app would function. And then as time becomes available,
she can build out the website more and more and
higher a web designer as necessary. Okay, that's interesting, but
most people, he says, do not know how to find
a VC. Even if they did, a VC would not
want to talk to them. Yeah, that's interesting advice, I guess.

(01:50:26):
I mean that's one way. And then a lot of
people wrote in about this whole two point four gigahertz
versus five gigahertz stuff and gets a little complicated. But
one person said a Lynksys MR nine thousand router worked
well and they were able to split the signal and
give each a separate name, So if you want to
do that. And finally, oh, Mario said rich, I just

(01:50:49):
wanted you to suggest resist ever calling yourself dumb and
don't refer yourself as dumb. I guess I called myself.
I said I felt dumb. I don't what it was about,
but I did say I felt dumb.

Speaker 2 (01:51:01):
All right, that's gonna do it for this episode of
the show. You can find me on social media at
rich on tech, my website richon tech dot tv.

Speaker 1 (01:51:10):
Go there to watch my TV segments. My name is
rich Merrol. 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 will talk
to you real soon.

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014 Rich on Tech Radio Show - April 8, 2023

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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;}014 Rich on Tech Radio Show - April 8, 2023