019 Rich on Tech Radio Show - May 13, 2023 - Rich On Tech

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Google explains how it will be bold yet responsible with AI,
and unveils a five hundred dollars pixel, a foldable pixel,
and a pixel tablet. The best anti virus programs, and
watch out for this new Chrome scan that might install
mildware on your computer. It can trick anyone. Oh yeah,

(00:22):
plus your tech questions answered. What's going on on rich
Demiro And this is rich on Tech, the show where
I talk about the tech stuff I think you should
know about. It's also the place where I answer your
questions about technology. I'm the tech reporter at KTLA Channel
five in Los Angeles. Welcome to the show. This is
show number nineteen. Whoo number nineteen. Phone lines are open

(00:47):
at triple eight Rich one oh one. That's eight eight
eight seven four to two four one zero one. Give
me a call. If you have a question about technology,
email is also open. Just send it to hello at
richon Tech dot TV. Well hello there from Austin, Texas. Yeah,

(01:09):
here for the Iheartcountry Festival. This is a concert that
we are going to. Very exciting. So of course Austin
a little bit different than Los Angeles. So we got
in and we immediately went and got some barbecue and
What I love about the world of Instagram and social

(01:29):
media is that there are so many suggestions from folks.
It makes it really easy to pick where to go.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
So I put a.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
Story on my Instagram saying, hey, where do you think
we should go to eat while we're in Austin? And
I got lots of good suggestions, and so of course
I just took the best ones that bubbled up to
the top, that were the most. So if I got
the most suggestions for a place, clearly a lot of
people like it, a lot of people have been there.
So we picked our barbecue place last night based on
you and it was excellent. It was exactly what I want,

(02:00):
cafeteria style. You walk through the line, it kind of
snakes through all the different food, and then they carve
up the barbecue right in front of you.

Speaker 2 (02:08):
And it was.

Speaker 1 (02:09):
Delicious, so so good. So thank you for your suggestions
on my Instagram.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
At rich on.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
Tech last night, we also went out for a little bit.
You know, it's a very lively city and I've been
here a bunch of times for south By Southwest. My
wife has never been here, so it was kind of
exciting for her to see it for the first time.
And of course we took in some live music, which
is there are many many places to do that here.
But I noticed something that's kind of interesting that the

(02:37):
performers now instead of sort of a tip jar, which
they still kind of have, but they all have these
QR codes that you can scan to tip them via
Venmo or the cash app. And I thought that was
interesting because, I mean, the tip the cash tip is still.

Speaker 2 (02:56):
I think the best thing out there.

Speaker 3 (02:59):
Now.

Speaker 1 (02:59):
There's a lot of reasons why you want to have
that QR code. It's because people aren't carrying as much
cash these days, and so I get that, but it
just feels weird to scan a code and give someone
a tip versus just going up there and giving them
a couple of bucks.

Speaker 2 (03:14):
And I get it.

Speaker 1 (03:15):
Maybe people tip more because it's Venmo, and like, are
you really going to tip a dollar on Venmo?

Speaker 3 (03:19):
Now?

Speaker 2 (03:20):
You're probably gonna give like five bucks.

Speaker 1 (03:21):
So maybe it's a better thing that they have both options,
but I just thought that was interesting. Also, the hotel
where we're saying is kind of cool. It has a
record player in the room. So I chose the hotel
because that was kind of the the thing that I
thought was really neat to have a record player in
the room. So we actually got to our first room
and the first thing I looked for was the record player,

(03:44):
and lo and behold, no record player. And I was like,
wait what The one thing I wanted at this hotel
was the record player in the room. They didn't have
it in the room, and so I called down to
the front desk. I said, no, it's there. Just look around.
I said, I can see the entire room where I'm
standing right now, and I don't see a record player.

Speaker 2 (04:02):
Oh, we can bring one up.

Speaker 1 (04:04):
So I went back down to the room, went back
down and said, you know, can you just give us
a room that has it? And they said, sure, we'll
give you a different room. So we get in the
other room and sure enough, record players right there. They
also have a record concierge, so they have a person
whose job it is to help you select records.

Speaker 2 (04:22):
So you go down to the lobby.

Speaker 1 (04:23):
The person standing there, obviously they know music, and gave
us about five or six albums. Said hey, start the
night out with this and the night with this. And
it was so great because I'm putting on records something
I haven't done well. I mean, look, I grew up
with record with a record player in my home. It
was not something I typically used, like my era started
a little bit more with tapes and then CDs and

(04:46):
then MP three's and then streaming so and of course
you know FM radio, so delivering my newspapers, listening to
my FM radio walkman. But the record player was something
we had and it was really neat, so I was
aware of how it worked, and so I didn't know
if I was going to know how to put the
record on and play it. But sure enough, I put

(05:07):
the little record on, I moved the needle. You get
that little crackly sound at the beginning, and it plays
the music and it just was really fun because it's
a record and it's not something that you typically do.

Speaker 2 (05:19):
But the problem with the record, and.

Speaker 1 (05:21):
I remember this from one of my best friends who
happens to be from Texas, and he would always have
a record playing when we went to dinner at his
place and we'd go over there and you know, he'd
play the record and the problem was the record would
stop after about a half an hour. And you know,
I don't know what a side of a record last.
It didn't seem like it's more than a half an hour.
But we've become so accustomed to unlimited music that it's

(05:43):
kind of odd to have something stop. But on the
flip side, when you are putting a record on, it
is very is a very mindful activity, right. You can't
just randomly listen to music. When you're putting a record on.
You have to select the record, you have to take
it out of its sleeve, you have to place it
on the record player, you have to move that needle

(06:04):
and you are playing something. If you're using one of
these music apps, there's no way you just press shuffle
and it starts and it goes on forever and ever
and ever. This is a much more mindful way of
listening to music, so you know the album, you know
the artist, and it's a different experience. So I highly
recommend if you have not played with the record player
in a long time to try it now. Myself, I

(06:27):
have a Sonos system at home, and when I was
at CES, I saw this record player that connects to Sonos.
It's let's see, what's the brand here, Victrola, which obviously
that's a brand that's been around forever. I'm not sure
if it's the same company ownership as it was back
in the day. But they have a turntable, the Aunks
that works with Sonos, so this wirelessly connects to your

(06:49):
sons Now. The reason I didn't buy it immediately when
I saw it at CES, even though I thought it
was cool, is because it's six hundred dollars. But after
talking to my wife last night and how much we
enjoyed this record hair situation, I think I may have
convinced her to let me invest in this record player.
And it does work with my Sonos system. But then,
of course now I have to start buying albums and

(07:10):
I've got to do that whole thing. But there's just
something so classic and so fun about listening to vinyl
that it's a very very neat experience.

Speaker 2 (07:19):
So I may do this. Ah, so much fun stuff
this week.

Speaker 1 (07:24):
Google Io was this week, which is Google's big developers conference.
This was the first time in four years that Google
did something in person. So they've done their developers conference
throughout the pandemic, but it just wasn't really a big deal.
They still had announcements, but this was the first time
in four years that you could go up there, and
so I did. I was in Mountain View earlier this week.

(07:45):
Google does this at a place called Shoreline Amphitheater and
it's a big kind of outdoor amphitheater that they do
concerts at, but they also do Google Io and Google
Io is where they have developers come to sort of
see what tools are available to them to code apps,
to code search things, to code Android, just what tools

(08:06):
Google is working on to let developers use in whatever
they're making that works with Google.

Speaker 2 (08:12):
And so it was really fun.

Speaker 1 (08:13):
It was such a great experience to go up there
and not just see all of the products, because they
announced three new products, a five hundred dollars pixel phone,
a brand new eighteen hundred dollars foldable pixel phone that's
something I'm also trying to maybe that might be my
next phone, and also a pixel tablet. But by going
to these events, it gives me the perspective I need

(08:35):
to be able to talk about these products. And later
in the show we're going to talk to someone else
that was there as well and talk to them and
kind of get their thoughts on all these different things.
And this show is going to be very Google heavy,
I will admit, So if you don't like Google or
you have a problem with Google. You may not like
the show today, but I promise it's still going to
be fun. It's still going to be interesting, and we're

(08:56):
still going to have lots of calls and lots of
stuff to talk about. These events that I go to.
It's a lot, you know. You go up there, there's
a lot of other journalists. We're all trying to get
our stories filed. I had to file mine for TV
for the next day. I was actually shooting my entire
story myself, So I went up there solo recorded everything
and then wrote the story and then sent it back

(09:17):
to my editor in Los Angeles. He edited it, and
then I flew back and then we were on the
news in the morning. So it's a lot, but it
was a lot of fun. It was a lot of challenge.
But the best thing was that the internet was so
slow this year. I don't know why. I was on
Wi Fi and I had like twelve gigs of stuff.
I had to send twelve gigabytes of stuff like video
that I just sent down to Los Angeles, and it

(09:38):
just wasn't happening. It was giving me like hours and
hours of time that it was going to take. And
I was like that's not going to work. So I
found a wired Ethernet connection. I plugged my computer in
and I'm not kidding. It was the fastest Internet I
think I've ever seen in my life. Because the twelve
gigabytes that was taking about seventeen hours to go up
via the Wi Fi. It went up in about I

(10:00):
would say less than a minute. It was maybe sixty seconds.
And I texted my photographer and I said, hey, everything's up.
It's ready to go, and he's like, what changed? I said,
I found some Ethernet. So if you ever need stuff
to go up much faster, just find an Ethernet connection
and I'm sure that will take care of it. All right,
I've got lots more to talk about with Google throughout
the show. I'm gonna talk about all the different hardware announcements,

(10:21):
the way AI is gonna get into more things. We're
gonna talk about how search is changing. There is so
much to talk about when it comes to Google. So
we're gonna talk about all of that. But I've got
some great guests as well coming up on today's show.
So we're gonna do the Pixel, We're gonna do the
Pixel tablet, We're gonna do the pixel fold. Then I've
got some great guests. We've got Miriam Juar of the

(10:42):
Mobile Tech Podcast. They're gonna join me to talk all
things Google, especially that pixel seven A and that fold.
I've got n gadget Sherlyn Lowe to explain the difference,
to explain her experience with Project Starline. This is Google's
holographic version of Zoom. It's quite incredible. It's quite interesting, uh, Sherilyn.

(11:03):
We will talk about that and then later. If you've
got a gamer in your life, they're playing one of
two games right now. They're either playing Zelda or they're
playing the new game from Pokemon Go Paradot. So we're
gonna talk to Eric Switzer ofthegamer dot com about those
two games, which are a lot of fun.

Speaker 2 (11:21):
But first it is your turn.

Speaker 1 (11:23):
We've got your phone calls coming up next at triple
eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven
four to two four one zero one.

Speaker 2 (11:32):
You are listening to rich on Tech. I'm Rich Demiro.
We'll talk to you coming up next. Welcome back to
rich on Tech.

Speaker 1 (11:41):
Rich Demiro here hanging out with you talking technology from Austin, Texas.
The phone lines are open at triple eight rich one
O one eight eight eight seven four to two four
to one zero one. Welcome to the show Google Io
held this week up in Mountain View, California. I was there,

(12:04):
and everyone's sort of wondering what Google is going to
do with AI. Google has some of the best AI
engineers in the world. They've been talking about AI long
before it was cool, long before every other company has
jumped on the bandwagon.

Speaker 2 (12:18):
And I don't think that.

Speaker 1 (12:20):
Google is going to get AI wrong because number one,
they're already using it in so many little ways in
their products. Maybe they didn't talk it up as much,
but they've always infused AI into a lot of their things.
And so here are some of the new things coming
out with AI in Google. So number one, they showed

(12:40):
off this feature called help me Write in Gmail. So
in twenty seventeen we got something I can't believe it's
been that long.

Speaker 2 (12:47):
Called smart Reply.

Speaker 1 (12:49):
So these are the little replies when you're on the
Gmail app or the website that if someone says, hey,
is lunch at twelve thirty, good for you, and at
the bottom it might say good for me. Sounds good, yep,
And so you can just tap one of those and
send off the email, and that's called a smart reply.
Then came smart Compose, which if you're typing an email,

(13:10):
it will kind of complete your sentence. So if I
say something like sure, that sounds really good, it'll complete
that or great, it'll say to hear from you, and
you just press tab and it will complete your Gmail typing.
So that's really cool. But now they've got help Me Write.
This is an AI feature that will write your entire email.

(13:32):
And what's neat about this is that it can use
details from a previous email. So the example they gave is,
let's say your airline canceled your flight or changed your
flight or something. They said, hey, we're going to give
you a seventy five dollars credit. Well, you can respond
to that email and then say Google, help me write.
Gmail helped Me Write, and it will take the details

(13:53):
from that previous email, your flight info, how much they
offered you, all that good stuff, and it will compose
an entire email with a couple of things from you.
So you might say, help me write an email back
to this airline that says I don't think your seventy
five dollars is good enough. I think I deserve a
thousand dollars flight credit, and it will write the entire email.
And then you can go ahead, after it writes the

(14:15):
entire email, say can you be more persuasive, and it
will even tweak it further. You can say can you
be more conversational? Can you be more fun? Whatever you want.
So that is a really cool feature that's just going
to help people write entire emails. And like we've said before,
everything is going to start with a first draft. From
now on, you're never gonna have to really write anything

(14:35):
from scratch, which is kind of wild because that's a
big departure from what we've experienced in the past. All right,
in Google Maps, they've got this new immersive view. So
let's say, for instance, last night we were here in Austin.
We were wondering if we can walk to the restaurant,
and you're kind of curious, like, what are you walking through?
It looked like we were walking through a campus of
a college, and so can you do that? Well now

(14:58):
on Google Maps, because they've all of these images from
street view, and they've got all of these satellite images,
they fuse them together for something called immersive view for routes.
So you can actually take a look at the route
and take a bird's eye flyover view and see exactly
what it's going to look like to walk, drive, or
bicycle a certain route. Now, this reminds me of a

(15:21):
feature that All Trails recently put on their app, and
I told you about it on the show. I forget
what it's called, but it's like an immersive view as well.
But you can take a look at what a trail
is going to look like before you hike that trail.

Speaker 2 (15:35):
And it's a very similar feature that Google has now introduced.

Speaker 1 (15:38):
So in the future we're gonna be able to ride
or drive or fly over a route before we actually
ever take it.

Speaker 2 (15:44):
So that's interesting.

Speaker 1 (15:46):
So that's maps that's going to roll out this summer
launch in fifteen cities by the end of the year,
including London, New York, Tokyo, and San Francisco. The other
cool thing, of course, this is quite googly. You can
check the air quality, traffic, and weather to see how
they might change depending on the time of day that
you are taking that route. So they showed off that
as well. If it's going to be raining, you can
see that on the route and then in Google Photos

(16:09):
they've got this new Magic Editor experience. So this was
first introduced. The magic eraser was first introduced on Google Photos.
That's where you can just circle something and have it
erase what's in a picture. But this is much more thorough.
This will kind of transform everything in the picture. And

(16:30):
so the example they used is, let's say you've got
this kid sitting on a bench. Took a picture of
your kid holding some balloons on a bench, but you
kind of were a little bit too over, so the
balloons are cut off and you want to center up
the child a little bit more in the picture. Well
you literally just just take, you know, hover over the
child and then pull them over to the right into
the center of the picture, and AI will generate what's

(16:53):
missing from the left side of the picture. So all
of the balloons, it'll complete them, it will complete the bench,
and the child can move over. And then of course
it will make the entire picture kind of smoothed out
so it doesn't look.

Speaker 2 (17:06):
Like you edited it.

Speaker 1 (17:07):
It will kind of make the lighting look right and
the sky look right, whatever you want. And this is
called Magic Editor, and that's coming out soon. It looks
like that is going to come out to Pixel owners first,
so if you have a Pixel smartphone, that will come
to you first. But again, these are just some of
the small examples of AI that are coming to Google products.

(17:29):
Those were the three big ones. They also showed off
what search is going to look like, and search is
now going to have AI at the top of your results,
and then at the bottom are going to be those
ten blue links. So if you want to try these
things now, they actually have a certain website you can
go to. If you're searching on Google, you will see

(17:50):
a little kind of experimental beaker in the upper left
hand corner of your search. You tap that and you
can sign up to try some of these new features.

Speaker 2 (17:59):
First.

Speaker 1 (18:00):
All right, coming up, we've got Miriam Juar to talk
all things Google. Miriam's from the Mobile Tech podcast that's
coming up next right here on rich on Tech on
Rich Demiro plus your calls at triple eight rich one
O one. Welcome back to rich on Tech, Rich Demiro
here hanging out with you, talking technology at triple eight

(18:21):
Rich one O one. That's eight eight eight seven four
to two, four to one zero one. If you have
a question about technology, give me a call. Maybe you're
trying to decide between two gadgets, figuring out if an
app can do something. Maybe you're stumped on something, give
me a call triple eight Rich one O one eight
eight eight seven four to two four to one zero one.

(18:42):
You can also email hello at richontech dot TV. All right,
My next guest is host of Mobile Tech podcast, Miriam
Juwar was up there in Mountain View with me at
the Google event and welcome to the show.

Speaker 2 (18:58):
Miriam.

Speaker 4 (18:59):
Hi, Why Rich?

Speaker 5 (19:00):
How's it going?

Speaker 1 (19:01):
It is going fantastic, So so much to talk about
from Google's big events. Where should we start. What was
your initial impression of sort of the event at large?

Speaker 5 (19:13):
Lots of AI? I was like, why if I had
to summarize it, you know, lots of AI and some
cool devices, that would be my summary.

Speaker 1 (19:20):
And how do you think Google delivered with the AI stuff?
Because you know a lot of people are wondering this
is a big change in the way Google does business
because potentially, when you're asking AI for answers, you know
there might not be room for as much advertising as
there is in traditional search. So do you feel like
that's a threat to Google's kind of prime business?

Speaker 5 (19:40):
I think ultimately it is, but I think they were
prepared for it, you know they have. When they announced
bart I thought, hey, there, this is this is the
first shoe to drop, and the second shoe will be
adding you know, some sort of eye to search. And
then of course, you know, there's the whole they've been
working on Palm, you know now that Palm two, which
is there, you know, a large language model for a

(20:02):
while now, and that seems to be getting integrated in
so many products. That's the thing that really surprised me.
It wasn't just search, but they have, like, you know,
ways for Gmail to improve your email writing. They have
ways for you to create documents and Google docs. They
have ways to if you're a Google Cloud customer, to

(20:22):
integrate the AI into that. So it's not just a
consumer play, it's like a business play. They're going basically
all in and it makes sense. They don't really have
a choice.

Speaker 1 (20:31):
Yeah, and also they're really good at AI, and it
kind of makes sense for what the products that they offer.
They've always been largely infused with a sort of an
AI machine learning kind of stuff, but nowadays it's like, okay,
AI is the hot thing, so let's let's just go
all in on that. Okay, So we also saw a
lot of products, well three products in particular. We saw

(20:52):
a five hundred dollars Pixel seven A, and we saw
an eighteen hundred dollars Pixel fold which is a foldable phone,
and then we also saw a Pixel tablet. So let's
start with that seven A. So this is the five
hundred dollars kind of entry level Pixel phone. They made
some improvements this year, things like face unlock, it's got
a little bit more ram, it's got a better display.

(21:15):
But this is a I think, from everything I've heard
from everyone talking about it, a really solid choice for
an entry level phone, even though it is fifty dollars
more than it was, you know, in years past.

Speaker 2 (21:26):
So what do you make of this phone?

Speaker 5 (21:28):
Well, I think it's a proper flagship for five hundred dollars,
which is quite the feat. You know. I think that
the Pixel A series with this seven as finally gone
from you know, a mid ranges phone with some flagship
features to a proper flagship and fifty dollars more. For that,
I think it's worth it. But it tells me another story,
and the story is that, you know, Google's try to

(21:51):
simplify a little bit all those new products include the
same new ten Sergy two chip that came with the
Pixel seven and seven Pro in the fall, so they're
using a flagship chip on everything. And in addition to that,
you know, we're seeing these this this Pixel seven A
gaining things like high refresh rate niney hertz display, like

(22:11):
wireless charging. So that tells me the Pixel eight right
that is going to replace the seven which is right
now only one hundred dollars more than this new seven
A is probably going to cost more and might have
more features, because it would be nice to space them
two hundred dollars apart right now. You know, the seven
A starts at five hundred, then you had six hundred,
you got the seven which is you know, almost identical really,

(22:35):
and then you know, like the nine hundred dollars you
have the seven Pro and that's a big jump, right,
So I'm thinking two hundred dollars apart once they eight
and eight pro land in October. But for now, I
think this is a killer phone if you can, you know,
kind of pry yourself away from Apple or Samsung, which

(22:55):
are the two dominant phonemakers in North America and the
US in particular. I would say, this is a killer
package for the money. It has absolutely everything you need.

Speaker 1 (23:06):
It is the phone that I trust my mom with,
so I get her the Google the kind of the
A or one of the pixels.

Speaker 2 (23:13):
Every year or not every year, every.

Speaker 1 (23:15):
Time she upgrades, and it's always it's always a fantastic device,
and people are always saying like, how are your pictures
so good?

Speaker 2 (23:21):
How are your pictures so good?

Speaker 1 (23:23):
The thing that she doesn't get is the like you mentioned,
the whole I message world, which you know, Apple has
been really really good about keeping that exclusive to their products,
and it makes sense because it keeps a lot of
people on their devices. All right now, this pixel fold
this is an eighteen hundred dollars device. This is not
going to be for everyone, but it's actually pretty good.

(23:44):
I mean, I'm sitting here like, could this be my
next phone? Because I'm ready. I'm kind of bored with
the standard phones at this point. I've tested all of them,
and this one is really unique because it opens up
to a giant seven point six inch screen, so that's
kind of like a tablet size. On the outside of
the phone, you get a nice I think it's a
five point eight in screen that's actually usable, unlike the

(24:06):
Samsung one.

Speaker 2 (24:06):
So tell me your thoughts about this phone.

Speaker 5 (24:09):
Well, you know, I'm a pixel user. I have a
Pixel seven pro, so obviously very interested in a folding pixel.

Speaker 2 (24:14):
This is it.

Speaker 5 (24:16):
There are obviously some things that could be better, but overall,
I think this is a proper competitor to Samsung's Galaxy
z Fold four, which will be soon, you know, be
followed by a z Fold five. So let's see what
happens there. But I think, as you kind of nailed it,
the thing that really matters here is the form factor.
Right abroad in China and other countries in Europe, there's

(24:38):
a company named Oppo, and they make a folding phone
that has a similar form factor, more like a passport
so basically shorter height, a little wider rather than that
super skinny form factor that Samsung has been using with
the z fold series. And personally, I think this is
a better form factor because you can use it one
handed when it's shut, and then you can up to

(25:00):
this huge tablet experience I mean usual relatively speaking for
something that unfolds, and I think that's going to differentiate
this phone. And it's about the same price as the
Galaxy Z Fold. So you know, in that sense, I
think it's it's a pretty good competitor. You know, the pixel,
the tensor G two chip, the chip that runs the

(25:22):
show here is not as powerful as what Qualcom and
Media Tech can deliver these days, or even Apple with
their chips. So there's a bit of that, but I
think it mostly reflects in terms of battery life. So
we'll see in our reviews how battery life folds up.
We know the cameras are going to be killer, and
then you know, there's the other thing that I think
could be improved is the charging speed. Twenty one wht

(25:43):
is a little slow these days in the flagship space,
but look for a first try. It's one of the
thinnest falling phones you can buy six millimeters or something
slightly thicker than the Champion, which is a phone out
of China called the Chami Mi Mix to fold. And
so you know, like you can complain. I think Google

(26:04):
did their homework and it does everything, has it does
have everything, and the kitchen sink.

Speaker 2 (26:09):
So so the fold.

Speaker 1 (26:12):
It's kind of funny because it's eighteen hundred dollars, but
they're giving you this this watch with it right, the
Pixel Watch, which is like three hundred and fifty to
four hundred dollars. So a lot of people are saying,
why don't you just not give me the watch and
take four hundred dollars off the price of this phone,
because fourteen hundred dollars seems a lot better. That's like
much more achievable if you really want something that's high end.

Speaker 5 (26:32):
Well, you know, that's the thing that's been happening. A
lot of people are buying these flagship phones, whether they're
Pixels or Samsung or Apple even iPhones, you know, with
trade ins and getting deals right, and that they have
a lot of Pixel watches sitting around. It hasn't been
a super popular product, even though it's a great android
to watch right. So I think they're probably like, this

(26:53):
is a great way to kind of satisfy people without
you know, having to drop the price. And if you
look at the Pixel seven A, there's some great deals too.
If you get it directly from Google, you can get
a custom color called Coral, which is this orange superb color,
and then you can get a pair of Pixel buds
a for free. And I think if you buy it
from best Buy, you get a fifty dollars rebate like

(27:16):
a card you can use. So I think this is
kind of part for the course. I don't think this
watch thing is you know, a replacement for selling this.
That fourteen hundred is just kind of like, well, let's
sweeten the deal. But we I think they're not making
any money on this phone. There's no way, you know.

Speaker 1 (27:32):
And I really fell in love with the Samsung by
the way, except for that tiny outside screen. I was
doing everything on the Fold. I was doing you know,
I was reading, like I used it as a kindle.
It was great because you can watch movies and videos
on it on the plane without any sort of like
extra you know, accessories, And it was just that outside

(27:52):
screen was so small. So the fact that Google made
this outside screen usable and it feels great in your hand,
like it's easy to hold, I think this phone is
actually an early winner. It's just the price point is
going to turn off so many people.

Speaker 5 (28:05):
But then again, the price point turns off a lot
of people from the Galaxy Fold, you know. So I
think I think it's it's more it's harder to you know,
to accept that price when you know it's a pixel, right.
I think that's the problem. I think we're conditioned to
take whatever pricing Apple and Samsung gives us, and I
think this is something we should revisit because Google has
to make money. They can't just be completely losing money,

(28:26):
although I'm pretty sure they are not making money on this,
at least not much. I have used that Apple Find
and End two that has the same form factor as
the pixel and I tell you it's a much better
form factor than the Z fold from Samsung. So I'm
very excited about the pixel fold having this new form
factor because I think for some you know, everybody's got

(28:48):
a different thing. Some people will prefer the fold, no doubt,
but for me, this is a better form factor for sure.

Speaker 1 (28:54):
All right, Miriam Jouir of the Mobile Tech Podcast, how
can folks follow you online?

Speaker 2 (29:00):
Simple?

Speaker 5 (29:01):
The podcast leaves at Mobile tech podcast dot com and
we're on all the major platforms, so your podcast needs
just look for it.

Speaker 2 (29:07):
It's called the.

Speaker 5 (29:08):
Mobile Tech Podcast. And then of course you can find
me on Twitter at tank Girl, like the comic book character,
but you drop all the vowels, who ends up being
t NK g R L. And that's also my Instagram
if you want to see pretty pictures of phones and
cars and things I reviewed.

Speaker 1 (29:23):
Awesome, You're always somewhere. Thanks so much for joining me today.
Miriam Duir of the Mobile Tech podcast. Coming up more
of your calls at Triple eight rich one oh one.
That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one
zero one.

Speaker 2 (29:36):
I'm gonna tell you.

Speaker 1 (29:37):
About a new Chrome update error attack. You gotta watch
out for this one. It can fool anyone. You're listening
to Rich DeMuro here on rich on Techy. Welcome back
to rich on tech Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you,
talking technology.

Speaker 2 (29:56):
At triple eight rich one oh one.

Speaker 1 (29:59):
That's eight eight eight eight two four one zero one.
You can also email hello at richon tech dot TV.
Tom did just that, he said, I'm an executive level
IT leader, typically a chief information officer. My recruiter resources
are lacking contacts who can take my background and old

(30:19):
resume and overhaul it so it's great and scores high
when application tracking systems ATS evaluate it. That's sort of
those automated systems.

Speaker 2 (30:28):
I'm hoping you know someone.

Speaker 1 (30:30):
Or a tool that can help me overhaul my resume asap.

Speaker 2 (30:34):
Thoughts.

Speaker 1 (30:35):
Uh so, Tom, I think uh a service I did
a story with the guy who started the latterers dot com,
which is like a job search website, and he's got
a service called Leaked Resumes l E E t resumes
dot com. And I know this sounds kind of weird,

(30:56):
but they will help you write your resume for free.
I know it's so wild. There's not even a way
to pay. But here's what they do. So they will,
you know, you give them your old resume, you answer
a couple questions, they rewrite your resume, and of course
it's all driven for these, like you said, these ats
system these application tracking systems. And then if you like

(31:18):
your resume, you tip your writer. And that's how it works.
They say the average tip is forty dollars. And you
know in the facts on the website it says, you
know what's the catch and it says, basically, if you
take your how much you make, let's see here what's
the hidden cost. So if you like your resume, we

(31:40):
recommend tipping your writer. Your salary in thousands divided by two,
So for instance, if you make eighty thousand dollars a year,
we recommend a forty dollars tip. So in addition, we'll
make introductions to job boards that can provide jobs with
titles you're looking for. So that's that's it. Lead Resumes
L E. E. Tmes dot com is the website.

Speaker 2 (32:02):
Check it out.

Speaker 1 (32:03):
I have not personally used this because I have not
written a resume in a long time, and I'm sure chat,
GPT and all these things can help you write it,
but it's kind of nice to have a human actually
help you write a resume, because it's just you need
that human touch every once in a while. A new
Chrome update error attack. I got to tell you about
this one because I'm looking at my Chrome right now

(32:26):
on my computer and it says update in the upper
right hand corner. And the way that Chrome updates is
it downloads the software in the background, the update to
the to the Chrome web browser, and then it gives
you this little message that says update, and then you
just relaunch Chrome to update it. It's very simple process.
It's very easy. Well well, well, of course, the scam

(32:49):
artists have figured out a way to socially engineer the
Chrome updates. And here's what happens. This is according to
trend Micro, the new attack campaign distributes malware by posing
as a Chrome update error message. It started a couple

(33:09):
of months ago and it's impacting a lot of people.
The message displayed reads update exception and error occurred in
Chrome Automatic update. And you say, oh, interesting, Okay, I
know Chrome updates automatically, but there's an error. I better
spring into action. It says, please update, Please install the
update package manually later or wait for the next automatic update.

(33:32):
And then a link is provided at the bottom of
this fake error message that takes the user to a
what's misrepresented as a link that will help you do
a Chrome manual update, But that link downloads file that
will put malware on your system that might degrade your performance,

(33:53):
but it can also potentially compromise your sensitive information potentially
the way that you log into websites. Now this is
installed on your computer. Now here's what's so brilliant about
this campaign, and this is what all of these socially
engineered phishing attacks, smishing attacks, all these little scams that
are going around, they all play to something that is

(34:15):
somewhat true. We know that if we use Chrome, it
needs to update every once in a while, and typically
it works just fine. It's a very simple process. But
this one is a little error message that says, oh,
something went wrong with the automatic update. Here, manually do it,
and you don't want to be unprotected on your computer,
so you go ahead and do it.

Speaker 2 (34:34):
So why this is.

Speaker 1 (34:35):
So effective is because it's it looks routine, it looks
like it's innocent. There's no big threat window. It doesn't
blank red like some of these ransomware attacks. It just says, hey,
your update failed. Here, go ahead and install it. And
then there you go. You install it and it really
messes up your computer. So the reality is we can
never be off our guard when it comes to any

(34:58):
sort of thing that we are doing on our computer,
whether we.

Speaker 2 (35:01):
Are installing software.

Speaker 1 (35:04):
Don't, like I say, do not just go through those
whenever you're installing something. Don't just go through the motions
of pressing go, go, go, go go, because that will
get you into trouble. That will be a major problem.

Speaker 2 (35:16):
Don't do it. That's that's the issue that I talk about,
because you just it's not good.

Speaker 1 (35:22):
So again, if you're looking at Chrome and you see
this thing, just be sure you're on guard all right.

Speaker 2 (35:30):
Phone number by the way, triple.

Speaker 1 (35:31):
Eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four
to two four to one zero one I'll get to
some of your calls in just a moment here, But
first I watched this this Apple movie.

Speaker 2 (35:42):
It's called Ghosted. You know, it's funny.

Speaker 1 (35:45):
With all the reviews and ratings and things out there,
it's it's very tricky because you want to watch something
that's highly reviewed, highly regarded, highly rated, and sometimes you
just want something that's fun. So every time I opened
up Apple TV Plus on my computer or on my TV,
I would see this ad for a movie called Ghosted.

Speaker 2 (36:03):
And I never heard of it. I never knew what
it was.

Speaker 1 (36:06):
It just looks like an action kind of you know,
romantic action movie, whatever that means. And so I was like, oh,
this looks interesting. Of course, all the app all the
reviews for it are not very good, but I'm like,
I'll give it a try because it just looked like
something I want something that was kind of like no
brainer movie.

Speaker 2 (36:22):
Right, Well, this is an Apple show. So this is
an Apple movie.

Speaker 1 (36:26):
And every time you watch something on Apple TV plus,
any of the original programming from Apple.

Speaker 2 (36:31):
It features a heavy dose of Apple products.

Speaker 1 (36:34):
I mean they just give these producers like here, take
an iPad, take a an iMac, take a take ten iPhones,
everything happens with these Apple products in these Apple movies,
which is kind of distracting, but I get it. It's synergy.
It's like if someone on an Amazon movie was shopping
on you know.

Speaker 2 (36:50):
Best buy dot com. It wouldn't really wouldn't feel right.

Speaker 1 (36:53):
Well, anyway, every Apple movie is an ad for all
things Apple, except when it's not in their favor. And
on this Ghosted movie, what do they use for the
tracking device? It's a tile, It's not an air tag,
because they didn't want to seem like their products were
being put in a bad light. So I just thought
that was really funny. So if you watch the movie Ghosted,
I recommend it. I thought it was pretty good. But

(37:15):
just notice that. Notice that little quirk. Why didn't they
use an air tag? Didn't fall in Apple's favor. You're
listening to rich on Tech. More of your calls up
next at Triple eight.

Speaker 2 (37:23):
Rich one O one.

Speaker 1 (37:26):
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here talking
technology with you at Triple eight rich one on one.
That's eight eight eight seven four to two, four to
one zero one. The show coming to you today from Austin, Texas,
site of the iHeart Country Fest, which I will be attending.

(37:46):
I'm very excited for that. Also excited for barbecue. You
can't have enough barbecue when you're here, that's for sure.
The only question is what kind of sauce you want
on it?

Speaker 2 (37:55):
Oh, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (37:56):
I don't want to get into like a big barbecue debate.
I know there's like dry I mean, barbecue people are
very very serious about their craft, and I don't tend.

Speaker 2 (38:04):
To be a barbecue expert.

Speaker 1 (38:06):
All I know is that I will eat the brisket
with some sort of barbecue sauce slathered on it, and
I will be a very happy person. All right, enough
about me, Let's go to Pat in Laguna Hills. Pat,
you're on with Rich.

Speaker 2 (38:23):
Pat? Are you there? Pat? And Laguna Hills?

Speaker 1 (38:27):
Okay, I can't hear you, Pat, but okay, maybe we'll
get you on in a second. Here, let's talk while
we're waiting for Pat. Oh, there you are, Hello, Pat, Welcome.

Speaker 4 (38:38):
I don't know what happened.

Speaker 1 (38:40):
You know, we're you know there's the show is if
you if you knew the technology behind this show, it's
quite impressive. We've got people in all corners of the
US today. We've got Kim up in near San Francisco.
We've got Bobo producing the show in Los Angeles, and
we've got myself sitting in Austin. And then somehow, you know,
the show goes up to a satellite somewhere it comes

(39:02):
back down through the road.

Speaker 4 (39:03):
I don't know, because you're in auction. Yeah, I imagine.

Speaker 2 (39:06):
We'll believe it on Texas. What's up?

Speaker 1 (39:09):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (39:09):
Okay. I have a Chromebook since twenty fifteen. I bought
another one last year because I have one upstairs and
one downstairs. I want to give my twenty fifteen Chromebook
to a friend to practice on and in buying a

(39:31):
new one. I see this. There's two hard drives, an
SSD and an eMMC if in fact, that is a
hard drive e m MC. And I do banking on
this CHLME book, and I prefer the chrome book only
because I think it's safer with all the updates. Yes,

(39:52):
and I only use the one that's updated, not the
other one for banking so or paying bills and stuff.
So that's that's my question. I don't know what to.

Speaker 1 (40:01):
Buy now, Okay, Well, good question. I like that you're
thinking about safety and security with this device, and I
would agree that it is a safe device, because there's
not I don't think there's any viruses for a chromebook
at this point, So I mean, you could still get
caught into phishing emails and all that stuff. So you
still have to be on cars.

Speaker 4 (40:20):
And thank you for what you said before about I
didn't know about the era, Thank you very much.

Speaker 1 (40:26):
Yeah, Look, these people are tricky. They will figure out
ways of I mean a lot of these ninety nine
percent of the attacks that I hear about are either
your password you didn't have two factor authentication, or you
hand over your password with some sort of social engineering
attack where you're logging into a website that looks legitimate
and you just don't realize anyway, onto these chromebooks. So, okay,

(40:49):
there's two different things you're talking about here, eMMC and
also SSD. So these are in fact they are a
hard drive in a colloquial term like it is a
storage device. But these are both sort of solid state
flash you know, they're both solid state drives. There's no
moving parts on these. eMMC is a type of flash memory,

(41:12):
whereas an SSD is a solid state drive. It's also memory,
but these things don't move, not like the old hard
drives that's spun right. eMMC is going to be a
little bit slower, but it's going to be a little
bit cheaper, And there's also some size limitations there, so
you may not get a drive that's as big, whereas
SSD is kind of like you know, it's a much

(41:33):
higher end technology that is in much higher end devices.
So if you're comparing these two chromebooks, I'm guessing that
the SSD is more expensive.

Speaker 2 (41:42):
Is that true?

Speaker 4 (41:45):
But is one more secure than the other? That's really
what I want to know.

Speaker 1 (41:50):
Well, I don't think that one is more secure than
the other because at the end of the day, these
are just storing your data, and so you know, when
it comes to storing data, that's pretty much going to
function in the same way. So I don't think you're
gonna have a problem with this with the security of
these two devices. I think it's really comes down to
what you want out of a price and what you

(42:11):
want out of the performance. So I think that the
SSD overall is going to be a better choice. If
you have the money and it's in your budget and
you're comparing two things, the SSD I think is going.

Speaker 2 (42:22):
To be better. But if you're just not really caring.

Speaker 1 (42:25):
You just want this thing to log onto your bank
account and pay your bills and all that kind of stuff.
In the standard eMMC, it's going to be just fine.
I don't think that one is more secure than the other.

Speaker 4 (42:36):
Okay, And what about using the Chrome browser? Should I
use a different browser?

Speaker 2 (42:41):
No?

Speaker 1 (42:41):
I think the Chrome browser is a great browser to use.
Keep it up to date, just keep away from those
issues that I was talking about. And also when it
comes to the extensions, if you're installing extensions on the
Chrome browser, that's you know, those are the potential for
you know, leaking information or putting.

Speaker 2 (43:00):
Something on there.

Speaker 4 (43:01):
Meaning what extension.

Speaker 1 (43:03):
Extensions are little browser add ons that you can get
that kind of help your browser do different things. For instance,
I have one that will help me print a page
or save something to the kindle.

Speaker 4 (43:17):
I don't use them every time I do a banking transaction.
I get out of it and shut it down and
come back. Okay, that's how secure and the other very skeptical.

Speaker 1 (43:32):
The other thing that I would recommend when it comes
to doing the banking on the computer is I always
try to keep that limited to at home or on
a simular connection if you're out of that. So I
wouldn't do that on like a public Wi Fi connection.
That's kind of my rule of thumb with it.

Speaker 4 (43:48):
Definitely not. And I just have one little question, what
about a tablet? Is banking secure on a tablet since
you're using a different you're using a cell uh yes,
and a Wi Fi you're using the cell cell thing, right.

Speaker 1 (44:08):
Well, it depends, I mean yeah on the table Well,
on the tablet, you can use a hot spot or
you can use Wi Fi, depending on where you are.
I mean, if you're at your house, you might just
use Wi Fi, but you can. You know a lot
of people when they're out and about, they're just connecting
their tablet to their phone. I think that's that's very
secure as well. Again number one, I mean we have
we have millions and millions of people that are doing

(44:28):
their online banking on a daily basis, and so these
banks have gotten really good at trying to keep people secure.
I think the online banking is not the the insecure part.
It's really these money apps that are that are leaking
money because people get requests and they send money to
someone that's not the right person or the right phone number.

(44:49):
So I think in that case, you need to be
really careful with with sending money.

Speaker 4 (44:52):
To connect those too. I don't use zill and I
don't I might do them though, I don't know. I
have to research. But Zell is out.

Speaker 2 (45:03):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (45:05):
I used to really like zel and I I came
to not like it as much because the problem with
Zell is it's a one way street. So if there's
a problem, it's these banks have really shown over and
over that they're not really interested in getting your money
back to you if you send it to the wrong person,
or if there's a problem or if you you know,
if you get some sort of scam attack and you

(45:27):
send money to someone that you shouldn't have and you
realize that it's it's really tough to get that money back.
With VENMO, I feel like there's a little bit more
of a there's a little bit more of a barrier,
almost like using a credit card versus a debit card.

Speaker 4 (45:40):
Agreed, Okay, all right, I I totally agree with you. Then,
so uh so, Yeah, I still don't want to send
big amounts of money through them all.

Speaker 6 (45:50):
I still write checks and send.

Speaker 4 (45:51):
Them credit return, receive credit.

Speaker 6 (45:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (45:57):
Smart, Well, Pat, you sound You sound like the perfect
listener for the rich On Tech Radio show because you
said you agree with everything I said, so I like that.
Thumbs up to you, Pat, Thanks so much for listening
today in Laguna Hills. Coming up, we've got a lot
more to talk about. Apple is bringing Final Cut Pro
and Logic Pro to the iPad, and later on.

Speaker 2 (46:17):
We're going to talk about projects Starline.

Speaker 1 (46:20):
This is Google's version of Zoom, but in a holographic way.

Speaker 2 (46:25):
I call it holographic.

Speaker 1 (46:26):
I'm not sure that that's the exact technology they're using,
but we've got Sherylyn Low from ngadget. She actually experienced
this up at Google Io and she's going to talk
to us about that as well, so stay tuned for that.
But I wanted to mention this real quick before we
go to break Peloton recalling two million of its exercise bikes.

(46:47):
This company cannot catch a pass. They just really can't.
So this Peloton bike, if you have one model PLO
one that's pretty much the original one, the bike's seat
post assembly can break during use, posing fall and injury hazards.

Speaker 2 (47:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (47:02):
Yeah, Think you're on a bike seat and you're pedaling along,
and if this thing has a problem. Yeah, you don't
want to be on that bike seat when this happens.
So they've got a repair as an issue to help
you get that fixed. Recall two point two million of
these Pelotons and so far they say consumers should immediately

(47:25):
stop using the exercise bikes and contact Peloton for a
free repair. They'll give you a new seat post that
can be self installed, and thirty five reports of the
seat post breaking and detaching from the bike during use,
thirteen reports of injuries, including a fractured wrist, lacerations and
bruises due to falling from the bike. These were sold
from January twenty eighteen to May twenty twenty three, pretty

(47:47):
much the entire time during the pandemic. They were sold
through Peloton, Amazon, and Dick Sporting Goods nationwide for about
fourteen hundred dollars. Ah, this is not good for Peloton
because we've seen, you know, Peloton was was flying high
during the pandemic and then after the pandemic things didn't
go so well for them. And I still love Peloton,
don't get me wrong, but if you got one of

(48:09):
these bikes, definitely check to make sure if your model
number pl zero one and you've been using this thing.
You want to get this free repair because I'm know
about you. I don't want to be on a bike
seat and have that thing break and there's a bar
there that can really hurt you. So my wife and
I were debating this last night. She said, well, only
thirty five people. I said, do you want to be
one of those thirty five people that got hurt on

(48:31):
this thing?

Speaker 2 (48:31):
I don't think so.

Speaker 1 (48:33):
All right, more of your calls a triple eight rich
one on one eight eight eight seven four to two
four one zero one. You are listening to rich on
Tech pull in. Welcome back to rich on Tech, rich DeMuro.

Speaker 4 (48:46):
Here.

Speaker 1 (48:47):
You can find me online at richon Tech dot tv.
You can find me on all the social media networks
at rich on Tech. I posted a video this week
on my Instagram, actually a couple a couple of videos
this week on my Instagram. First is this little flick

(49:10):
flick smart button. This was really cool testing this thing out.
And it's a little smart button that you can program
to do a whole bunch of different things. So think
of it as like a almost like a light switch,
but it's a smart button, so you can make it
turn on and off lights.

Speaker 2 (49:23):
You can make it ring your phone.

Speaker 1 (49:25):
You can make it play your sons, play a special playlist, whatever,
all by programming it through your phone. I also posted
the automated pancake maker at my hotel up in San Francisco.
I never saw this before, and I thought it was
so neat. You just press a button and it pops
out too fresh pancakes that it kind of makes on
a griddle that's inside this little robotic mechanism, So you

(49:47):
can watch that on my Instagram. And then I got
this security tracker from u fee that's the size of
a credit card, so it's basically an air tag but
the size of a credit card.

Speaker 2 (49:59):
You can it in your wallet.

Speaker 1 (50:00):
I have another one from Chippolo already in use, but
this was on sale on Amazon for sixteen ninety nine,
and I get so many questions about these things. I
ordered it came the next day. It's very very.

Speaker 2 (50:13):
Simple when I like about it.

Speaker 1 (50:14):
It uses the Apple Find My network, so you can
find this thing on a map pretty much anywhere in
the world because it uses all the other iPhone devices
to locate it, so you can find those all on
my Instagram at Richon Tech, and I got a lot
of questions about the trackers because people are saying, Hey, Rich,
you know, I want a tracker for Android. My advice
in the Android tracker situation is just to wait. Because Google,

(50:35):
we talked about this last week or the week before.
Google and Apple are working together to come up with
a common framework.

Speaker 2 (50:42):
So very soon there is going to be a whole bunch.

Speaker 1 (50:45):
Of air tag style devices on the market that will
work with both iPhone and Android much better than they
do right now. Google at their annual event, the Io Event,
announced that they're going to make the find My network
use all of the Android phones to help you look
devices from a wide variety of manufacturers, so Samsung, Tile, Chipolo,

(51:05):
so you have the air tag for the iPhone. That's
been about a couple of years now. Now everyone's going
to have access to this same technology. So that's really
really cool. Triple eight Rich one O one eight eight
eight seven four two four to one zero one. Ron
is in Arizona.

Speaker 2 (51:22):
Ron. You're on with Rich.

Speaker 7 (51:24):
Hey, Rich, can you hear me?

Speaker 2 (51:25):
I can hear you? What's up?

Speaker 7 (51:28):
Our church has Wi Fi right now, but it's sketchy
in some parts of the church. We have basically, you know,
one router and then they they use some of those extenders.
And I have a Mesh network. I have a Mesh
network at home and it works really well to our house.

(51:51):
Our house is not real big though, it's about nineteen
hundred square feet. So I'm wondering the size of the building.
That foundation size of our church building is about thirteen
thousand square feet. Can you take you know, just your
standard Mesh network like a Google or something, and just
add more modules to it to extend me because most

(52:14):
of the time they talk about covering you know, forty
five hundred, five thousand square feet something like that.

Speaker 1 (52:20):
Yeah, I mean typically with something that big, you'd want
more of a corporate you know, more of a professional solution.
This may be somewhere in the middle. So if you go,
which one do you have at home? Which which system?

Speaker 5 (52:34):
The Google?

Speaker 4 (52:35):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (52:35):
You have the Google? Okay, So you know, it's interesting.

Speaker 1 (52:39):
I think that you know, if you look at like
euro which is kind of like the they kind of
started this whole thing with the mesh networking systems for
the home. You know, this might have been going on
in the corporate kind of world for much longer. But
if you look on Euro's website, you know, because I've
got euro and I was wondering, like how many of
these things can you add?

Speaker 2 (52:56):
You know, just how large?

Speaker 1 (52:59):
This says that you can add as many beacons or
euros to your house as you'd like. Now they always
say home, so they don't ever mention that this is
for corporate now, you know, I think you can use
it at a church if it's just something you want
to try. The good news is this is all sort
of off the shelf. You can buy it, you can
set it up, and if it works, that's great. You know,

(53:20):
some homes are probably I don't know about thirteen thousand
square feet, but I'm you know, I'm sure there's some
pretty big homes that have you know, these mesh networks
in them and it works. I think the problem with
the church is that it, you know, the what's the foundation,
Like what's the you know, is it a lot of
concrete and brick and stone and things like that.

Speaker 7 (53:38):
We've got one really large room where the services take place,
and then we have a couple of like classrooms for
the Sunday school, and then there's a an upstairs balcony
where the sound equipment is and the you know, the
computer for running the slide during the service and stuff
like that, So we'd really like to reach all of
those areas fairly well. So I just kind of walked

(54:01):
off the foundation just to see, well, how big, how
big is the building itself, not just the total square
footage like a realtor would estimate it right, right, And
that's where I came up with that thirteen thousand.

Speaker 1 (54:13):
Well I would recommend I mean, look you can you
can kind of investigate the euro situation and see. I
don't know if I would use Google because that's a
much more consumer device. Ero kind of is in the
middle there. They do a lot of like pro stuff
as well. But I would also look at something like Ubiquity.
Have you heard of that?

Speaker 7 (54:31):
The name sounds familiar, so that.

Speaker 1 (54:33):
Is sort of a it's more of a prosumer kind
of model. And I'm looking on their website for the
different devices that they have, and it seems like it
would be much more suited. And it's not that expensive, so,
I mean, these devices are anywhere from one hundred dollars
to two hundred and seventy nine dollars for each device,
depending on which one you want. So they've got a
light a long range of professional and enterprise and then

(54:55):
the mesh hub. So I think that that's probably something
to look at, and it's going to give you more
a professional installation than something like an euro which is
really meant for the home. This will give you some
enterprise grade access tools and things, especially when you have
a lot of people using it, including visitors, it might
give you more of the tools that you need to
manage that. So that's at UI dot Com. I would

(55:18):
check that out. Of course, the big one that comes
to mind is a Ruba networks that is a much
more corporate industrial solution as well. So I would check
those two things out. And Ron great question. I know
we've become so accustomed to these mesh networks. We need
them everywhere, all right. Coming up, we're going to talk
to Sherlyn Lowe about projects Starline, Google's new video chat

(55:40):
that is just wild. You're listening to rich on Tech.
Welcome back 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 one zero one.
You can also email me hello at rich on Tech

(56:02):
dot tv. Maybe a little shy on the phone and
you'd rather email, or maybe it's just something that's easier
to email than call, but either way, Triple eight Rich
one on one or Hello at Rich on tech dot TV.
So there's this really cool demo up at Google Io
that I did not get to do.

Speaker 2 (56:20):
But it's Project star Line.

Speaker 1 (56:23):
So this is a video conferencing sort of I don't
know what you call it, like contraption that Google has
come up with that makes it look like the person
is sitting in front of you and you can talk
to them. So I'll just bring on Sharlen Lowe from
n Gadget. She actually got to experience this. Charlyn, Welcome
to the show.

Speaker 8 (56:42):
Hey, rich thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (56:44):
Okay, so can you explain Project Starline better than I can,
because you got to try this out and I just
feel like it's holographic video conferencing, like this stuff you
imagine would be around when I was a kid, Like,
you know, talking face to face to someone that's not
really there is that kind of it's accurate.

Speaker 8 (57:00):
You're basically sitting in front of what's really big TV,
like a forty ish inch TV, but instead of a
regular screen is a light field display and that allows
the sort of holographic projection to up here like a
person is really there in three D in front of you.
They're protruding out of the screen kind of Oh.

Speaker 1 (57:18):
So it is Okay, I've been saying this is holographic.
It is actually holographic. Okay, cool, all right, so I
got something right. So you wrote all about this, uh
in your experience with it, So take me from start
to finish.

Speaker 2 (57:30):
You walk in here in what happens?

Speaker 8 (57:32):
Yeah, so I walked. These are a hush hush displays. Okay,
they're not letting us teak photos or videos because it's
hard to capture on camera, so we're gonna have to
verbally describe it as best as we can. You walk into
a room. There's this long office table or desk in
front of the setup, the prototype. The news at schole
i OWE this year is that there's newer prototypes.

Speaker 6 (57:49):
Right.

Speaker 8 (57:49):
Project styling was first and down about two years ago,
and since then the prototypes have gone from requiring an
entire room of space to being somewhat portable. I mean
the take up more like a whiteboard amount of the
space now. So I went in through my friend the chair,
the office chair in front of the table and then
the other person on the other side of the call,

(58:09):
who themselves is sitting in front of another Project Starline prototype,
steps into frame. And when they're sitting down and I'm saying, now,
we're both kind of like facing the screen dead on.
There's no real sense that this is anything extra special.
They look life size, They're like, you know, not like
a little laptop size of a video call. But without

(58:30):
kind of looking around, you don't get the sense that
this is protruding. But everything changed when this person, the
Google executive on the other side of the call, picked
up an apple on his end and kind of reached
it through the screen in front of his face. It
looked like it was coming right at me. It looked
like I could grab it from his hand, because that's
really what you felt, the spatial distance kind of change.

(58:52):
And that's what's really different with Project Starline as opposed
to your typical video conference is the holographic thing. This
is supposed uh, more realistic, more in person experience way
of communicating. It's just really different. We tried other things tough,
We tried high fiving, we tried fist bumping, and you know, again,

(59:13):
this is Overcaul, He's not actually there. So I didn't
actually grab his fist or touch his palm or whatever,
but it felt like I could. I actually made virtual contact,
my real palm sort of overlaid on top of his
his virtual one, if that make sense.

Speaker 1 (59:27):
Okay, I was gonna I was wondering about that, like
when you put the apple out, like, did you go
to reach for it and what hit him? Does it
just feels like there's nothing there? Like does it does
it break up the image?

Speaker 2 (59:37):
Like what is?

Speaker 8 (59:39):
Yeah?

Speaker 6 (59:39):
Yeah?

Speaker 8 (59:40):
So when I when I went to grab it, and
when you know, he hadn't outstretched his uh hand that
far yet, I just was kind of grabbing it and
it wasn't The image wasn't breaking at all. What was
happening was uh as you wouldn't realize when you cover something,
it kind of like you block it from your vision, right,
and it was happening here except when my hand wasn't
grabbing anything with such a space. So it's kind of strange.

(01:00:02):
I think my brain didn't really process it, right. I
will say that when he the caller, did outstretched his
hand a little further, it would start to hit boundaries
and it would his face would term blue, like as
if you were hitting an outer limit and it gained
you Oh wow, yeah, that's sort of feel. And also
when I when I sat in my seat and I
would move my body from side to side to kind
of like you know, see him from the profile and

(01:00:25):
stuff like that to see if it was more three D.
It wasn't. Indeed, more like a three D experience was
protruding more, but you would get messages on screen that
would tell you hate remain centered in the frame. Stop
moving around your tea so much, because, uh, the experience
is really tailored for a specific position because they're you know,
a life of this way is you know, projecting all

(01:00:46):
the themes to your eye, so it's kind of needing
your perspective to be within a controllable area.

Speaker 1 (01:00:51):
We're talking with Sharlen Lowe, editor at n Gadget about
Project Starline. This is Google's holographic video conferencing exproment, which
they showed off at Google Io in a very private way.
This was something that you kind of had to sign
up for and it was a you know, it was
an appointment only kind of thing. So what do you
think is the implication of this. I imagine it's very expensive,

(01:01:14):
it's very early technology. Google says that they've done several
thousand hours of testing with this, but what do you
think the impact of this is? Do we need this
in our world?

Speaker 6 (01:01:23):
Yeah?

Speaker 8 (01:01:25):
So what's happening too is alongside the new prototype, Google
also announced that some of these new prototypes have been
shared with exclusive access partners like T Mobile. We work
in salesforce and they're trying to see, you know, gather
real world feedback to see how these work. In what
they're saying, are distributed a workforce or work workplaces. Right, So,

(01:01:47):
I think the idea is that now that we're doing
so much hybrid and remote work, that some sort of
bridge between the video an alternative solution to the traditional
video conferencing is necessary and their wholefully or they're thinking
that this might provide them of that in person experience
without really you know, short of teleporting, someone is giving

(01:02:08):
you sort of that experience. My take though, I'm not
quite sure. I think, yeah, sure, it felt like a
person was kind of in front of me, only their
top half though, And yes, you can get more non
verbal cues from a person if you have you know,
I was making direct eye contact with the person that
felt like you know, every little smirk, every little frown,
you could really tell because it's just so much more

(01:02:28):
detail in this experience. I don't know that we're still
going to be able to fully replace in person call
or in person in chat with this. It might be
better than a laptop call by quite a lot. It
never has been a substitute the real real thing, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:02:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:02:46):
I talked to someone else about this, and they said
up at Google Io after they tested out, they said
that it was like almost a little eerie to like
look them in the eye, the other person, and so
they had to look away at some point because it
was like too much, it was too intense.

Speaker 8 (01:02:59):
I think I think that was the demo person. They think.
They were really trying to hammer home the point that
I can make eye contact with you, you don't have to, right,
But there is an uncanny Valley sort of aspect to this,
because during my demo there were a little, you know,
a few glitches here and there, your typical tech support
technical era stuff, right like if we were both talking
at the same time, I could tell if you couldn't

(01:03:19):
hear anything.

Speaker 1 (01:03:20):
I was saying.

Speaker 8 (01:03:21):
And some of these issues can be talked up to
the WI Fi at the event, which was very spotty.
As you and I were both there, we know the
Wi Fi struggled. And this to be clear, it is
the cameras around the screen are gathering your data and
then they're sending that information to the cloud, where it's
then generating a three D model of you and the
caller on the other side, and then beating that back

(01:03:42):
down to your respective light field display. So it's a
lot of bandis that's necessary, a lot of processing that's happening,
So some hiccups are understandable at the moment, I understand that.
You know, there's going to be some sort of feriness
or uncanny valley going on, and I don't think that
that's ever going to go away, really.

Speaker 2 (01:04:00):
Do you think? Well?

Speaker 1 (01:04:01):
And by the way, I mentioned a story earlier about
how when I was sending my video back for editing
back to Los Angeles, it was so slow. Like Google
is known for really good Wi Fi, and this year,
I don't know what happened, but the Wi Fi was
just really bad at the event that remember the first
year they had like they had like one gigabit connections
at like every seat.

Speaker 2 (01:04:20):
At one point.

Speaker 1 (01:04:20):
Yeah, yeah, do you think we're gonna have something like
Project Starline in our homes at some point, and you
could just I mean, as someone who lives far away
from their family myself, like my parents live in New Jersey,
I live in LA it'd be really cool to just
like hop into this Project star Line and chat with
them on a Saturday. Do you think we would ever
have this in our homes?

Speaker 8 (01:04:40):
I think one day. I think that that's Google's goal perhaps,
but it is going to be a long way as
the way. I think the over rich people will have
them within the next three years, but regular your average
people probably another I don't.

Speaker 5 (01:04:57):
I wouldn't.

Speaker 8 (01:04:57):
I wouldn't use the crime to do like a decade.
And even then, you know, like it doesn't really take
off because again, you don't if people want to be
around other people, and this so far feels like a
one person at a time experience, and you know, there's
there's just something about social gatherings in person that technology
can't fully replicate.

Speaker 9 (01:05:15):
You just can't.

Speaker 1 (01:05:16):
I agree, And I also mentioned that about Io, because
half of it is just seeing the people that you
see on Twitter, and it's like, you know, it's funny
because even with the advent of social media, you feel
like you know all of your friends and what they're
up to. But even just spending ten minutes with someone
in real life, you are caught up in a way
that Instagram and Twitter and all these things can never
catch you up.

Speaker 8 (01:05:38):
I agree absolutely, and I have so much fun at IO.
I mean, I think you and I met what for
the first ish time there in person, and then you know,
I got to see all my friends. I got to
within like the said ten minutes, I met such a
gamut of people at once without and getting to know
them and getting the sense I pick up on vibes
like to say, oh yeah, I.

Speaker 2 (01:05:57):
Have everyone you know absolutely.

Speaker 1 (01:06:00):
Sherlin Low, deputy editor at n Gadget. How can folks
follow you online?

Speaker 9 (01:06:05):
Yeah?

Speaker 8 (01:06:06):
I am on Twitter still at c h e r
l y n n l O W or my Instagram
at c h r l i n N at t
h e r e M.

Speaker 1 (01:06:15):
Thanks for joining me today. I love the qualification, the
qualifier with Twitter. I'm still on Twitter, I know, so
am I yeah for now till anything changes, all right,
thanks so much for joining me today.

Speaker 2 (01:06:26):
Appreciate it.

Speaker 7 (01:06:27):
Sherylyn, thanks for having me.

Speaker 6 (01:06:29):
Betthew Saturday all.

Speaker 2 (01:06:29):
Right, yes, you too. All right.

Speaker 1 (01:06:32):
Coming up on the show, we are going to talk
about Oh gosh, we have so much to talk about.

Speaker 2 (01:06:37):
Still speak, you know me? Speaking of Twitter.

Speaker 1 (01:06:40):
Twitter's got a new CEO, Linda Jacharino. That's really all
there is to mention about that. Linda came from NBC Universal.
She was advertising chief there and now in a couple
of weeks she will take over as CEO of Twitter.

Speaker 2 (01:06:56):
We'll see what changes happened there.

Speaker 1 (01:06:58):
Coming up, I'll talk about Apple bringing Final Cut Pro
to the iPad.

Speaker 2 (01:07:01):
Finally, welcome back to Rich on Tech.

Speaker 1 (01:07:05):
Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology, listening
to some country music because the show is originating from Austin,
Texas this weekend. Yep, I'm here for a country fest.
iHeart country fest. Triple eight Rich one oh one eight
eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.

(01:07:27):
I've been to Austin many times for South by Southwest.
This is the big music and interactive and what was
it music, film and interactive.

Speaker 2 (01:07:38):
I always went for the tech part.

Speaker 1 (01:07:40):
And they've launched a lot of apps here, a lot
of a lot of big apps launched here. I believe
Twitter's square like a lot of these things originally started
at south By Southwest where they showed them off to
the world. Let's go to Sam in Hemmett, California. Sam,
you're on with rich Sam?

Speaker 2 (01:08:00):
Are you there?

Speaker 6 (01:08:01):
Yes?

Speaker 9 (01:08:02):
I am, sir. Thanks for taking my call.

Speaker 2 (01:08:05):
Well, thanks for calling in. What can I help you with?

Speaker 6 (01:08:08):
Okay?

Speaker 9 (01:08:10):
I have an old phone that I'm about ready to
just get rid of, but there are some games on
there that I would like to save the progress on.
They just cannot be attached to anything like Facebook or Twitter.
I'm curious if I can if I put them onto
a micro s D card, could I transfer them from

(01:08:34):
the old device to a new one?

Speaker 1 (01:08:38):
Well potentially, so, I mean the way that I mean,
you'd have to get all the data along with the game,
right and can you do that?

Speaker 2 (01:08:46):
Are you sure you can?

Speaker 1 (01:08:48):
You can move the game data and like the actual
they call it on Android and APK, but can you
grab that along with the data?

Speaker 2 (01:08:55):
Do you know if you're able to do that?

Speaker 9 (01:08:58):
I'm not a real tip savvy person, and so the
best I could do is just tell you a little
bit about each of the phones. The old one that
I want the data off of I use in much
the same way a person would use a tablet computer
and it is a Samsung Galaxy a ten E on

(01:09:20):
a three G system, and I want to move it
from and I want to move it to a Google
Pixel that's on five G.

Speaker 2 (01:09:30):
Okay, And are you trying to what are you trying
to do? Exactly? What's you know? Because you can you
want to keep the game.

Speaker 9 (01:09:37):
From Yeah, I want to keep my games and the
progress through those games, okay, and take them from the
Samsung and put them into the Google Pixel.

Speaker 2 (01:09:49):
Okay. So now number one, A lot of this depends.

Speaker 1 (01:09:53):
So if you you've tried to have you tried to
install the game on the new phone and see if
it picks up where you left.

Speaker 9 (01:09:58):
Off, Yes, and it won't do it.

Speaker 2 (01:10:02):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:10:03):
I was wondering that because some games, you know, it
depends on the game's If it's a game that's relying
on a cloud sync, it's going to just pick up
where you left off. For instance, I've got the Pokemon
all right. Sorry, the Paradot game installed on two phones
and it's pretty much synked between the two phones. But
that's a newer game. So these obviously, since these are
on an old three G phone, these are much older games.

(01:10:25):
I doubt that they have any sort of cloud sinking
involved in these things. So I would say, try there's
a there's an app. Gosh, I've used it so long ago,
I'm not even sure it's still around, but it's like
a backup app. There's a couple of them on the
Google Play Store. One of them is that I used
to use as Titanium backup, and I'm just not sure

(01:10:47):
it's been updated recently, because a lot of these things
are so like you just don't need them anymore.

Speaker 2 (01:10:53):
But that's what I was. Yeah, the last time.

Speaker 1 (01:10:55):
This was updated, Oh gosh, this shows you how old
this thing is November twenty four, twenty nineteen. But there
are some apps that will help you back up from
Google Play or from one phone to another. So I
would try one of those and see if you can
just grab the you know, go into the app. It
should give you a list of all of the different
apps installed in that phone, and then you select the

(01:11:16):
app that you want to transfer over.

Speaker 2 (01:11:18):
It will either upload it to.

Speaker 1 (01:11:20):
The cloud, or you can transfer it, like you said,
to a little flash drive at the bottom of the
phone and then plug it into the new phone and
carry that over.

Speaker 2 (01:11:27):
But I'm not sure if all that data is going
to come over.

Speaker 1 (01:11:30):
I mean it's it's you know, it really sort of
depends on how that game is architected and figured out.

Speaker 5 (01:11:37):
Well.

Speaker 9 (01:11:37):
Among them is the Bejewel game series.

Speaker 2 (01:11:41):
M that's okay, yeah, what else are you playing there?

Speaker 9 (01:11:48):
There's Checkers, Solitaire, Mageong, yacht Ti.

Speaker 1 (01:11:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:11:59):
So it sounds like you have a whole bunch of
these things.

Speaker 1 (01:12:01):
So if if these if these games are linked to
Google Play, if you can go into the settings and
link them to any sort of account, I think that
they would transfer over something like Bejeweled, especially because that's
a that's a very popular game. And these these whether
you're on Android or Apple, they both have these sort
of game center things. And if you ever launch a

(01:12:23):
game and it says like game center.

Speaker 9 (01:12:26):
Okay, they're both. They're both Android phones. I prefer Android
to Apple. Apple I think is more overrated than it
really is. Okay, well that's to me, it's a better one.

Speaker 1 (01:12:40):
It's funny I've been using I went to the Google
event this week and I kind of retook a look
at the Google Pixel seven. So I've been using that
for a couple of days, and the difference between these
operating systems is so apparent. And the best way I
can put it is this Apple really and Apple's great.
I think, look, there's Apple is a amazing A lot

(01:13:01):
of people use Apple products and iPhones. It's it's kind
of like a standard issue here in America. But everything
on Apple sort of pushes you to use Apple stuff
right the way that Apple wants you to do things.
And I've noticed with Google just using the last couple
of days again from a fresh start, by the way,
that it really just gives you a lot of options

(01:13:22):
on how to do things and it doesn't necessarily push
you to one particular way of doing things. And so
I can understand that some people may like that, and
you know, may like that approach a little bit better
than the Apple approach. Apple stuff works, and it works
really well, and it's very simple because of that.

Speaker 2 (01:13:38):
But a lot of times they.

Speaker 1 (01:13:39):
Will just sort of push you towards their products, you know,
whether it's Apple Maps, whether it's Safari, whether it's you know,
Apple Mail. People just use the default apps that are
built into the phone, and you know, they may stray
if they if they feel like they know something better
or they know how to do it better, but otherwise
they just kind of build it in. But Sam, to
answer your question, I think that it's a matter of
trying this download if you haven't downloaded this already. There's

(01:14:04):
an app on Google called the Google Play Games app.
Install that on the old phone and the new phone,
and that may help save some.

Speaker 2 (01:14:12):
Of your progress in these games. But that's that's what
I would do.

Speaker 1 (01:14:16):
And you can try one of these backup utilities, like
a Titanium backup or some sort of backup and restore
utility to see if that can get the game from
one phone to another.

Speaker 2 (01:14:27):
But I don't know. I haven't done that before. And
most of the games that.

Speaker 1 (01:14:31):
I've played are just sort of cloud based and pretty casual,
so and I'm not a big gamer on these casual
games to begin with, so that's not even something that
I'm totally doing all the time. But great question, Sam,
And congrats on the new Pixel. That's a fantastic phone,
one of my favorites. All right, coming up, we'll talk
about oh Apple bringing Final Cut Pro to the iPad,

(01:14:52):
plus more of your calls at Triple eight rich one
on one eight eight eight seven four to two four
to one zero one three of rich On Tech.

Speaker 2 (01:15:01):
Come in your way.

Speaker 1 (01:15:04):
Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich DeMuro here talking
technology at Triple eight rich one oh one eight eight
eight seven four to two four one zero one. Coming
to you today from Austin, Texas. Welcome to our number
three of the show. I mentioned earlier in the show

(01:15:24):
that one of the cool things about the hotel room
I'm staying in is that it has a record player,
which I thought was kind of neat.

Speaker 2 (01:15:31):
And they've got a little record not a.

Speaker 1 (01:15:34):
Store, but almost like a record library where you can
check out some cool records, and they have a curator
there that can help you pick out some stuff. So
we did this, but I will tell you last night
it was raining. It was raining really hard here in Austin, Texas,
and there's a lot of dripping sounds outside the room. Well,
there was sort of this clicking sound all night long,

(01:15:55):
and at one point I thought it was the dripping
of the rain outside. And at one point it just
seemed way too like regular to be dripping of rain,
and it just seemed to go on way too long,
and it occurred to me that the record player was
still on, so I had you forget and it just
happened to me again, which is why I'm telling the story.

Speaker 2 (01:16:16):
The record player.

Speaker 1 (01:16:17):
When it's done playing the I guess the needle just
goes to the middle and it just stays there and
just like kind of clicks and just you know, I
don't know anyway, So last night, in the middle of
the night, I was like, Oh my gosh, this this
record player has been on for hours, just kind of
circling around and clicking and clicking and clicking.

Speaker 2 (01:16:35):
So I guess that's one.

Speaker 1 (01:16:37):
Of the uh analog technology a little bit different than
you know, the new digital options we have out there.
So that threw me for a loop last night. But
I'm still all in on the record situation. I think
it's pretty cool.

Speaker 2 (01:16:50):
Let's go to Rich in Carol Stream, Illinois. Rich. You're
on with Rich.

Speaker 3 (01:16:58):
Rich. Thank you paying well. I really do appreciate your show.

Speaker 2 (01:17:02):
Thanks for listening.

Speaker 3 (01:17:04):
I've got a strange question. I wasn't trying to word
it properly. I've got all my music files that you'll record,
my CDs recorded.

Speaker 6 (01:17:13):
To my PC.

Speaker 3 (01:17:15):
I've got at least ten thousand to ten to eleven
thousand songs on my PC and that was the iPad.
I mean the iPod is discontinued, I believe, or it's
no longer and the use is there a because I'm wondering,
is there a way for me to listen to my
music without anything relying on my PC? Because to port

(01:17:40):
you know, to enjoy these songs on the go, like
take them, you know, you know, take them as a portable.
Is there like a replacement for an iPod that I
could maybe perhaps consider transfer these files to the device
of some sort.

Speaker 2 (01:17:57):
Oh good question. Now what do you mean what kind
of device like your iPhone.

Speaker 3 (01:18:01):
Or what well I want to use or if.

Speaker 2 (01:18:04):
You want to use the files that you have somewhere else.

Speaker 3 (01:18:07):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, the files on my PC, my Windows PC.
But I don't I just I don't have an iPhone.
I just have my my my S twenty one Galaxy.

Speaker 2 (01:18:23):
But what about just loading them directly onto the phone?

Speaker 3 (01:18:29):
Like what ten thousand songs really don't I'm not really
well versed in terms of I may tarms of what
ten thousand songs can eat up a lot of memory
on a on an Android phone.

Speaker 1 (01:18:42):
Uh well, I mean if you have an S twenty one,
you know you've got a bunch of storage on there.
You can put a subset of those songs. I mean,
if each MP three is about you know, let's say
it's three megabytes, four megabytes. If you got ten thousand,
you want to put all ten thousand times four, that's
forty thousand megabytes. You know, that's a couple gigs right there.

(01:19:03):
That's not too bad. I mean, that's that's something that's
that's doable. There are there were in the past. Google
had a system where you could upload your songs into
something like Google Music Manager I think it was called,
and you could you could upload all of your songs
into there and then you can play them from any device.

(01:19:25):
But I'm not sure that that's around anymore. Yeah, it
looks like it was. Uh, looks like it was discontinued. Yeah, Google.
Oh wow, yeah, I think that was gone. H Google
play music Cloud. Yeah, this is something that you know,
I'm looking at this article. It's like from ten years ago.
That was back in the day where you could you
could physically upload all of your music. The other thing

(01:19:47):
you could do is you could potentially maybe upload it
something like Dropbox and then listen to it through there
on the on a cloud player on your phone. I
should know a better answer to this, because I feel
like there's something that's simple that I'm just not thinking
about right off the top of my head here. But
I know this was something that was popular a couple
of years ago, but now, of course, with the advent
of these streaming services, there's just not really a lot

(01:20:10):
of other options.

Speaker 2 (01:20:11):
That are left.

Speaker 1 (01:20:13):
Yeah, but I would say I would just upload these
to your phone and just have them on your phone
and maybe make a couple playlists.

Speaker 2 (01:20:21):
Maybe don't do all ten thousand. I mean you could
see it.

Speaker 1 (01:20:24):
I mean, go on their computer and see how much
that those ten thousand songs are taking up on the
hard drive, and then go to your Android phone, see
how much storage you have, and then transfer, you know,
a subset of them or all of them if you
have enough storage. Now, the S twenty one, Does the
S twenty one have an SD card slot or no?

(01:20:47):
I'm trying to remember when they discontinued that.

Speaker 3 (01:20:51):
I'll be yes, I haven't looked at I have to
go to verify that.

Speaker 1 (01:20:57):
No, I'm looking at an article and it's the twenty
one was when they did away with it, So okay, Yeah,
some of the older Samsungs had the SD card slot,
but the S twenty one did not. That's yeah, because
I would say otherwise you could just put it on
an SD card and just throw that into your phone.

Speaker 2 (01:21:14):
And now you've got all your music on there.

Speaker 3 (01:21:17):
I see.

Speaker 1 (01:21:18):
I'm coming up with a lot of a lot of
dead ends to this. What what kind of music? How
did you amass this collection just through the years?

Speaker 3 (01:21:27):
I just you know, record you know, just uh copy
my CD collections my PC over the years, and yeah,
I just saved it over the years from my PC,
one PC to another, and and some of my collective CDs.
That's it. You'll be bigging from the nineteen eighties, mid
nineteen eighties. So I've got to at least ten to

(01:21:50):
eleven thousand songs by now, maybe a few donald. I
don't really download it much material. Mostly it's just from
the hard copy.

Speaker 1 (01:21:59):
I'm looking at some of these alternatives to these things,
and I'm just not really finding a ton of things
that you can do. Now here's the thing. It's interesting
because there is so it used to be that you
could upload a bunch of songs into this Google you know,
this music manager, and I'm wondering if if Google still

(01:22:22):
lets you do that with their YouTube music which they've
they've now switched to, but I'm just not seeing the
ability to do that.

Speaker 2 (01:22:31):
Oh wait, here we go, hold on, upload music, hold on,
Oh we got it. Okay, So here's a solution.

Speaker 1 (01:22:37):
They did switch it over music dot YouTube dot com
and if you go to your profile on the upper
right hand corner, it says upload music. So it looks
like you can upload your music there and then use
the YouTube music player on your phone to play the
songs that you own. So I would go to this
music dot YouTube dot com and then sign in. And

(01:22:58):
I'm not sure if you have to be paid or
not this I am paid on this, so I do
have a membership. I'm not sure if that matters or not.
But you can go and check out hit your profile
on the upper right hand corner. It says upload music.
Drag a couple of MP threes in there, just to
try it out, and then go to your phone, open
up the YouTube music app and see if that lets
you do it. But it seems like it's still there,

(01:23:19):
at least on my end here, so that's actually pretty cool.

Speaker 3 (01:23:24):
I'll go, I'll definitely I'll play with that and see
if it works. Solfully.

Speaker 1 (01:23:31):
Okay, so you got you got the directions down right.
You go to music dot YouTube dot Com, go to
the upper right hand corner, tap your profile and it
says upload music. Drag a couple of MP threes in there,
get them uploaded. And then once you have them on there,
open up the YouTube music app on your phone and
it should have a section of your own music in
your library, and press play and see what happens there.

Speaker 3 (01:23:55):
I'll give it a shut rich. Thank you so much
for your time.

Speaker 1 (01:23:58):
All right, I appreciate I've heard of Carol Stream Illinois
so many times. What's what are they famous for? Was
that like we're like Columbia like music? Like what was
What's in Carol Stream Illinois that I know of?

Speaker 2 (01:24:08):
Is that like a big customer service.

Speaker 3 (01:24:15):
Uh, Billy Corgan went to high school and Carol Streams.

Speaker 1 (01:24:19):
I don't know if that's what I was thinking of,
But I love this. I love the Smashing Pumpkins just
as much as the next person. But I'm not sure
that was what it was.

Speaker 3 (01:24:27):
Yeah, we're a western suburb of Chicago. We're about Miles's Chicago.

Speaker 1 (01:24:33):
Maybe it's just where I send all the all my
bills back in the day to Carroll's.

Speaker 3 (01:24:37):
That makes sense because there is a major post office
about here, and uh, that's where a lot of bills
are being sent and you know, distribute area to the
local area.

Speaker 1 (01:24:48):
I sent many of my bills there back in the day.
All right, Rich, thanks so much for calling in today.
Appreciate it. Uh, coming up more of your calls at
Triple A Rich one O one eight eight eight seven
four to four to one zero one. Lots more to
talk about on the show. I'm gonna tell you about
a major change that Lift is making if you like
to take cheap rides with them. Plus, we've got the

(01:25:09):
best anti virus program, so if you're wondering what the
best anti virus program is, we'll talk about that as well. Plus,
you can go to the website rich on tech dot
tv if you want to see some of the stuff
that I do for television.

Speaker 2 (01:25:22):
You can watch my.

Speaker 1 (01:25:23):
Stories there, and of course I post the podcast version
of this show there.

Speaker 2 (01:25:27):
Once it's done. You're listening to Rich on Tech. My
name is Rich Dumurro.

Speaker 1 (01:25:31):
Will have more of your calls coming up next and
we're gonna talk Zelda. It's all coming up right here.
Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich Demiro here enjoying
one of the artists that will be at the iHeart
Country Fest, Luke Brian, one of my wife's favorites.

Speaker 2 (01:25:51):
You know that she were at breakfast and she said
that the thought of meeting Luke.

Speaker 1 (01:25:58):
Brian brought tier to her eyes, and I mean literally,
like this is someone that she absolutely loves. And I said, well,
I don't know if that's gonna happen, But I don't know,
do I just like step aside, like what's the what
do I do? I don't know because I I tears
to her eyes. Wow, that's uh, that's.

Speaker 2 (01:26:17):
A lot.

Speaker 1 (01:26:20):
Triple eight rich one oh one eighty eight seven four
two four one zero one. I've met a lot of
people in my life, and I don't know if anyone's
ever brought tears to my eyes just the idea of
meeting them. But I'm in for something, that's for sure.
Apple is bringing Final Cut Pro to the iPad. This
is very exciting for mobile creators. This is a brand

(01:26:41):
new version of Final Cut Pro with a touch interface.
So it's got this new tool that they call, uh,
well it's nothing new. I mean, it's it's a new tool.

Speaker 2 (01:26:51):
For final cut.

Speaker 1 (01:26:52):
But the idea if it's not new it's a jog wheel,
but it's digital, so that means you can, you know,
since there's it's all touch on the editing, you know,
this is a way to like kind of fine tune
how you're editing things and editing clips. It's got a
magnetic timeline. You can move clips around with just a
tap of a finger. It's got multi touch. This is

(01:27:12):
the coolest feature though to me, because I've been trying.
I was trying to figure out how to do this
years ago on the iPad. Use the pencil. It's a
feature called live drawing, which lets you use the pencil,
the Apple pencil to draw graphics on your video. So
let's say you're doing like one of those cool travel vlogs.
You know, you can write with the Apple pencil on

(01:27:33):
the sky and then it will be animated exactly how
you wrote it. Now, if you have terrible handwriting like myself,
it probably wouldn't look very good. But if you have
nice handwriting, this is such a cool, unique way to
make some animations.

Speaker 2 (01:27:48):
And so that's one of the features.

Speaker 1 (01:27:51):
The other feature that they talk about is multiicam video,
so they showed a demo where you can shoot multiicam
video and just tap your finger to switch between.

Speaker 2 (01:28:00):
The cameras, which is really neat.

Speaker 1 (01:28:02):
It also takes advantage of the Apple Silicon, the really
fast processors inside the new iPads. By the way, you
need at least an Apple M one chip inside the
iPad to use this, and really M two to get
like the best use case scenario. But they also have
this scene removal mask, so you know how you need

(01:28:24):
a green screen to remove the background typically in something
that you shoot, well you don't even need a green screen.
You can literally just say remove the background, and this
system is so smart that it will be able to
figure out what the background is and remove it. That
is really cool. There's also an autocrop feature that will
adjust your footage for vertical, square or other aspect ratios.

(01:28:48):
I mean, this is really cool. It also has professional
soundtracks that automatically adjust to the length of a video,
and you can start a project on the iPad and
then move it to Final cut pro on your computer
to finish it.

Speaker 2 (01:29:01):
Now I get it.

Speaker 1 (01:29:02):
This is mostly for either creative professionals or mobile professionals
or influencers, so not necessarily the average person that's going
to be using this, but I think more will because
it's more accessible. A final cut on the desktop was
like a several hundred dollars program. This will be five
dollars a month or fifty dollars for the year. And

(01:29:23):
I know there's a lot of people that are asking,
are kind of complaining about the fact that this is
now subscription and they don't like that. But the reality is,
I think that we've gotten so accustomed to subscriptions. Five
dollars a month, free trial for a month. I think
it's going to get a lot more people to try
this out. Logic Pro is also coming to iPad, but

(01:29:44):
since I don't really use that, I know it's for
more audio editing.

Speaker 2 (01:29:48):
I just don't use that.

Speaker 1 (01:29:49):
So if you're into that, you'll be excited for that
as well. Let's see antivirus programs. So this this is
from this website that I really like called av test.
Whenever people ask me, like, hey, Rich, what's the best
antivirus program for my computer? I always say Windows Defender

(01:30:10):
is pretty good because it's built in. Just activate it,
make sure it's up to date, and that will protect
you from most of the big stuff. But av test
is where I send you if you say, well, I
want something else, something different. This is an independent organization
that sort of looks at these different security programs and
comes up with rankings. And they always have a great
list of rankings on their website. It's av test, ava

(01:30:35):
test dot org. And they do tests for all different systems,
whether it is Mac, PC, Windows, sorry Android. You can
see what's top rated. Well, this is interesting because a
lot of people use Microsoft Defender. That's great, but it
turns out it uses up more system resources than some
other popular antivirus programs. So av test test did eighteen

(01:31:00):
different anti virus software for Windows ten. They tested the
programs around twelve thousand different malware samples mixed into one
point five million files to see which ones did the
best between differentiating between something bad and something good. The
eighteen security packages were from some big names like on

(01:31:21):
lab a, vast avg Bitdefender, Kespirski, malware Bytes, McAfee, Microsoft Defender, Norton.
They gave these things all kinds of different points for
their you know how they performed in different categories protection, performance,
and usability. So who came out on top, Well, the

(01:31:41):
highest system load in the test was generated by Windows
Defender Antivirus, which means this would take up the most
resources on your computer.

Speaker 2 (01:31:49):
Maybe use more battery, use more energy. Whatever.

Speaker 1 (01:31:52):
The worst score was given to PC Mattic in the
usability section. It got the lowest overall score. It also
found two dozen false positives and blocked a bunch of
applications that maybe you needed. Six products. Here's the best part.
This is the parts you need to know. Six products
got a perfect score of eighteen. So if you're looking
to install an anti virus program on your computer, these

(01:32:14):
are the ones that they currently recommend. A Vira, which,
by the way, those two are the same company at
this point, Bitdefender, g Data, Kasperski, and trend Micro.

Speaker 2 (01:32:27):
So those are the.

Speaker 1 (01:32:29):
Top six that got a perfect score of eighteen. And
by the way, Microsoft Defender was all the way down
to the bottom, almost.

Speaker 2 (01:32:38):
Number I guess it came in at sixteen.

Speaker 1 (01:32:40):
Norton and McAfee were right in the middle, so a Vastdavira,
those are the ones you want to install if you're
looking for a free antivirus program.

Speaker 2 (01:32:48):
I'll put the links on the website.

Speaker 1 (01:32:50):
Rich on tech dot TV, all right, coming up, we're
going to talk Zelda and the new game for the
makers of POKEMONO. It's called Paradot. You're listening to rich
on Tech. Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich DeMuro
here talking technology with you at triple eight Rich one
oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two, four

(01:33:13):
to one zero one. So a couple of games came
out this week that are proving.

Speaker 2 (01:33:18):
To be very popular. First off, Zelda.

Speaker 1 (01:33:23):
This is a brand new Zelda game that is just
the highly anticipated sequel to a game that came out
many years ago, that launched with the switch in fact,
and so everyone was downloading this at midnight on Thursday
to play all day Friday and of course throughout the weekend.
So if you know a gamer in your life, they're

(01:33:43):
probably playing the Zelda game. There's also another game called Paradot,
which is from the makers of Pokemon GO, and so
that's another new game. Let's see, let's bring up Eric
Switcher from the gamer dot com. I'm not sure how
we're connecting with Eric, but do we have Eric?

Speaker 9 (01:34:01):
I'm here?

Speaker 2 (01:34:02):
Oh hey, Eric, welcome to the show.

Speaker 6 (01:34:05):
Hi, thanks so much.

Speaker 1 (01:34:06):
We're doing the show remote today, so everything is sort
of well, I'm just all over the place. Everyone else
is very professional and calm and cool and collected. But
I am I am just you know, it happens anyway.
So tell me about the Which game do you want
to start with? You want to start with Paradout or Zelda.

Speaker 6 (01:34:26):
Let's start with Zelda.

Speaker 2 (01:34:27):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:34:27):
So every single person on my timeline that is any
sort of gamer is was very, very excited for this
new Zelda game. So why are people so excited for
Zelda Tears.

Speaker 2 (01:34:38):
Of the Kingdom.

Speaker 6 (01:34:40):
Yeah, So, like you mentioned, it is a sequel to
Breath of the Wild, which came out in twenty seventeen,
and Breath of the Wild is a pretty important game
in video game history. It's sold thirty million copies. It
launched alongside the Nintendo Switch, so it kind of ushered
in the new generation of Nintendo, which has become the
biggest Nintendo council of all time. So there was a

(01:35:03):
lot of anticipation for this game, and Nintendo was very
secretive about it for the months leading up to it.
We really didn't know much about what the game would
have to offer. So it's just sort of a perfect
storm of coming off of a game that's so popular
and on a Council. That's so popular.

Speaker 1 (01:35:20):
People were really excited about it, and so it's getting
like near perfect reviews.

Speaker 2 (01:35:25):
Is that true?

Speaker 6 (01:35:27):
Yeah? Yeah, I think the Metacritics score is at a
ninety six, which gets it tied for third highest rated
game of all time. There's quite a few games that
have in ninety six, but it is quite quite high.

Speaker 2 (01:35:40):
And why do you think, I mean, what are people
saying about it? Why is it so good?

Speaker 6 (01:35:46):
So there's a lot of new things that it has
coming off of Breath of the Wild. I think that
the big new feature that people are so excited about
is an ability that the character link has. It's called
ultrahand and it seems complicated, but what it really boils
down to is that you can take any objects in
the world and combine them together to make something new.

(01:36:08):
So it's really really unlocking people's creativity to invent new
machines and come up with interesting vehicles, and it helps
you to explore the world in creative ways.

Speaker 1 (01:36:21):
Oh wow, that's I mean you I love how you
said this is really complicated, but you made it sound
so easy. I mean you you explained it very well.
So that's a good job for explaining it. In that
simple way now.

Speaker 6 (01:36:33):
And it is so easy to use. Yeah, I think
that the genius of it is that, you know, you
can make these really complicated vehicles and machines and stuff,
but it's a very intuitive and I think that's what
people are really grabbing onto.

Speaker 2 (01:36:46):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:36:47):
This is also the first Switch game that is at
a higher price point, right, isn't this this the first
seventy dollars game for the Switch?

Speaker 6 (01:36:56):
Yeah, that's correct. That's a trend that the industry has
been moving in. PA started doing that with the launch
of the PS five. Xbox recently did that a couple
of weeks ago with the release of a game called Redfall.
So we're going to be seeing games come out at
seventy dollars pretty consistently from here on out.

Speaker 1 (01:37:13):
But the reality is, if you're listening and you have
someone in your life that has a Switch and they
like games, do you recommend that they would get this
for a birthday gift or some sort of gift for
the gamer in their life.

Speaker 6 (01:37:27):
Yeah? Absolutely. You know, the beauty of Zelda is the
way that it really crosses all ages. It's approachable for kids,
and it has so much depth for experienced gamers. Too.
It is a wonderful game, and it's also just sort
of a cultural moment that I think people want to
be a part of.

Speaker 1 (01:37:46):
And when do you think we'll see a new Switch?
I mean, this thing is going on many, many years old.
They've come out with various versions of it throughout the years,
but it's all pretty much basically the same.

Speaker 2 (01:37:55):
Do you think we're going to see a new Switch?
Maybe next year or no.

Speaker 6 (01:37:59):
I think that's a pretty reasonable expectation. This has come
out to be the longest council generation Nintendo has ever had,
where we're coming up on seven years, and we've never
had to wait that long for a new Nintendo. So
I think it's pretty reasonable to assume we'll be seen
a new one next year.

Speaker 1 (01:38:16):
Okay, all right, we're talking with Eric Switzer. He is
the features editor at the gamer dot com and your
bio says that you specialize in Pokemon, So I imagine
you are a big Pokemon player. But now that you've
got this new game from the makers of Pokemon Go
called Paradot, So what can you tell me about this game?

(01:38:37):
Which I've been playing a little bit, but I'm still
trying to figure out what it's all about.

Speaker 6 (01:38:41):
Okay, cool, Yeah, I've been playing a lot of paradigt too.
You know, it's pretty fascinating. Like you said, it's from
the creators of Pokemon Go is a company called Iontic
looking for their next big mobile game, and this is
a I guess you would call it a pet simulator.
Your audience might reach member of the Tamagatchi key chains

(01:39:02):
in the nineties, when kids would walk around training their
little pets and feeding them and playing with them. This
is sort of a modern evolution of that idea. So
it's an augmented reality game, which means that you play
it on your phone. Through your camera lens, you're looking
at the real world, and then the game puts in
virtual objects into your frame. So you have a virtual

(01:39:23):
pet that can go on walks with you. You can
feed it and play with it, and it's all through
the lens of your camera.

Speaker 1 (01:39:30):
And it's neat because I was looking at it. Because
it's augmented reality, it says it can learn like your couch.
It kind of knows the surfaces that it's looking at
through your camera, and it kind of interacts with those
surfaces in different ways. So it's a really unique spin
on sort of the standard, you know, video game that
you might play on your phone, because it is using
that augmented reality to kind of do different things.

Speaker 2 (01:39:54):
In the game.

Speaker 6 (01:39:55):
Yeah, there's some really impressive technology that went into this game.

Speaker 7 (01:39:59):
You know.

Speaker 6 (01:39:59):
It recognize the differences between all kinds of different services,
so it knows grass, water, concrete, shrubs, and the game
will ask you to find certain things for your pet.
Your pet will want to go look at a tree
so it can scratch on it, and you'll have to
go out into the real world and point your camera
at a tree, and then you'll get to see your
your pet run over dude and scratch on it. It's

(01:40:21):
pretty impressive stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:40:22):
I named my paradot. I guess they're called dots, but
I named him Spot or them. I don't know if
it's you know, it's it's what it is, but I
named it Spot. And it's very cute, and it's sort
of like modeled after various creatures in the real world,
but it's it's definitely just a made up being, but

(01:40:43):
it's it is very cute, it's very like affable, and
it's just kind of fun. I mean, I don't know
what I'm doing in this game, to be honest, But
it's it's fun and I like just you know, throwing
the ball and having this little creature fetch it and
putting the creature in these various places where I am it.

Speaker 2 (01:41:00):
Just it looks like it's a part of the world
that I'm in.

Speaker 6 (01:41:04):
Yeah, you know, in terms of gameplay, it is pretty bare.
You can walk with them, you can play with them,
and you can see them. But the real hook of
the game is the breeding function, because all of these
dots that you described, they all have a series of
unique traits and really no two dots are the same.
So I think that the real hook of the game

(01:41:25):
is finding other dots to mate with to make new
dots that have more complex and interesting traits.

Speaker 1 (01:41:33):
And I noticed on kind of the sharing aspect is
that you can see dots that are nearby, and so I.

Speaker 2 (01:41:40):
Was a little bit curious about that too.

Speaker 1 (01:41:42):
There's like on a map you can see dots that
were either visiting the same area or near the same area.
My big question for you, Eric, do you think this
will be a blockbuster hit the way that Pokemon Go
was and still plays a big role in the mobile
gaming world.

Speaker 6 (01:42:00):
Yeah, it's a good question, and I'm sure that Niantic
is wondering the same thing. You know, Pokemon Go's strength
is the Pokemon ip and while I think Pokemon Go
is a great game, it wouldn't be the game it
was if the world didn't love Pokemon as much as
we do. So Paradox has an uphill battle on that way.
I think the tech is really impressive, the characters are

(01:42:21):
super adorable. I think for them, what it's really going
to come down to is how fair and reasonable their
monetization is. You know, more and more with mobile games,
what is attracting players is the approachability aspect, and if
they're asked to pay lots and lots of money to
continue playing that game, it's what pushes them away. And
I think paradoig is trying to find a way to

(01:42:41):
balance that at the moment with what they're expecting their
players to pay for.

Speaker 1 (01:42:46):
All Right, Eric Switzer from TheGamer dot Com thanks so
much for joining me today. I really appreciate it. So
which game are you going to play next? Are you
going to play more of Zelda or more of Paradox
this weekend?

Speaker 6 (01:42:57):
H I am hooked into Zelda. I can't put it down.

Speaker 1 (01:43:00):
Oh, that's amazing. All right, I've got it loaded up
on my switch here. I was not able to download
it at the airport, so I had to wait. But
I've got it on there and I just have to
start playing and any tips you can give me, anything
that I could kick off with.

Speaker 6 (01:43:16):
There's a lot of big gumball machines that are scattered
around the world, and if you interact with those, they'll
give you lots and lots of extra parts that you
can use to make fun machines. So don't ignore those
when you see them, all right.

Speaker 1 (01:43:29):
Eric Switzer from TheGamer dot Com, thanks for much for
joining me today.

Speaker 2 (01:43:34):
Coming up, we're going to close out the show.

Speaker 1 (01:43:35):
We're going to do the feedback section, which is one
of your favorite sections of the show. I'm gonna tell
you about a traffic light that only turns green when
you're driving at the right speed. You're listening to Rich
Demiro here on rich on Tech.

Speaker 2 (01:43:52):
More of the show coming up.

Speaker 1 (01:43:54):
Next, Welcome back to Britcha on Tech. Rich Demiro here
talking technology with you.

Speaker 2 (01:44:07):
We have had it all country line up today.

Speaker 1 (01:44:10):
For the most part, it's been a couple other little
things sprinkled in here and there, But we got a
lot of country in this Austin based show today. Got
a couple of things to talk about, and then we'll
get to the feedback section. First off, Lift making a
lot of changes. Big change they're going to make. They
are discontinuing pooled rides. These were the super duper cheap

(01:44:34):
rides that would put you in there with someone else
in the car, not just the driver, but a random
person that also needed to go somewhere. And yes, I've
tried this. I've tried all of the different like Lift
and Uber offerings throughout the years, and so I did
this lift all I can't remember it was Left or Uber,
one of them. But I did like the pool because
it was so much cheaper. I was going to I

(01:44:57):
believe it was an Apple event, going from the airport
to the Apple of which was being held at like
the San Jose Convention Center. And I figured, everyone else
that's landing with me right now at the airport must
be going to the same place, So chances are I'm
just going to be linked up with someone else that's
going to the convention center and my ride is going
to be like seven bucks instead of like thirty. And

(01:45:18):
sure enough, it was great, it was fine. We didn't
really chat with the person that was I didn't chat
with the person in the car.

Speaker 2 (01:45:23):
I might have said hi.

Speaker 1 (01:45:25):
But ANYWAYT is discontinuing shared rides, they said this week.
The reason it takes people out of their way because
not every time you're going to be going to the
same place as the person in the car with you.
I mean they tried to make it to the same area,
but not always the same place. Lift started these things
back in twenty fourteen. Uber followed with Uber pool. The

(01:45:48):
companies both stopped doing these pooled rides during the pandemic
for obvious reasons, and they gradually reintroduced them last year.
But now Lift is saying no more. Yes, we'll still
do this. If they still do it, I'm not really
sure if they do it. But Lift is focusing on
boosting their airport rides, which makes up about ten percent

(01:46:09):
of their trips. They want to make it easier for
customers to pre book a trip. I noticed that I
got a notification on my phone. I guess it was
connected to my calendar, and it said, hey, do you
want to book a ride to the airport. When I
noticed that I was going to the airport. And the
thing about these airport scheduled rides with Lift and Stuff
and Uber is like, since Uber and Lyft are on demand,

(01:46:30):
I always find.

Speaker 2 (01:46:31):
It odd to schedule a ride.

Speaker 1 (01:46:32):
It's like, why not just do it on demand because
you can get a car most of the time pretty easily.
I actually tested out a service called Alto for my
ride to the airport this time, and this is super
duper fancy stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:46:44):
So this Alto situation.

Speaker 1 (01:46:47):
Is a company that they have their own fleet of
luxury vehicles and all of their drivers are w two employees,
so they give them benefits like four oh one k's
hourly pay and health benefits. This is operating in Houston, Dallas, LA, Miami, Washington,
d C. And San Francisco. And so they have the

(01:47:11):
guy picked me up. It was a scheduled ride. Way
more I would say, way more expensive than sort of
a Lift or an Uber at their cheapest tier, but
maybe on par with an Uber Black or a Lift Lux,
you know where it's like the really high end. This
is more like a car service if you're familiar with that.
So Alto is much more of like a almost like

(01:47:33):
a show first service. I would say women in safety.
That's the main reason why people use Alto.

Speaker 2 (01:47:42):
To.

Speaker 1 (01:47:42):
Fifty five percent of Alto riders are women and Alto
drivers eleven Let's see Alto.

Speaker 2 (01:47:49):
What am I looking at here? Oh? That I thought
this was cool. The Alto vehicles.

Speaker 1 (01:47:52):
Come equipped with cameras in real time monitoring, so I
thought that was neat, which is linked to a manned
Alto dispatch center. They've got two thousand drivers and four
hundred vehicles on the road. They have six hundred to
hit the road in twenty twenty three. And you have
to be a member, by the way, or you don't
have to be, but it's cheaper if you're a member,
so they say seventy five percent are member. So anyway,

(01:48:13):
Alto if you want an alternative to lift an uber,
but just keep in mind it is more expensive, but
it's more like a chauffeur. So this is like think fancy, fancy,
fancy ride to the airport or fancy fancy ride to
pick up someone from the airport. Okay, let's let me
tell you about this new light. This traffic light in Quebec.
It only turns green for safe drivers. This is in

(01:48:36):
the Canadian city of Brossard. Near Montreal, they have a
new traffic light in a school zone that turns green
for safe drivers. They call it fred. The light is
red by default, but it turns green when the speed
camera detects your car going at a speed limit that's
under the posted speed. So it's not really a real

(01:48:58):
signal per se, but it just makes you slow down.

Speaker 2 (01:49:01):
I guess if you see a red light, you're probably
gonna stop. I guess.

Speaker 1 (01:49:04):
So. Similar signals have been used in Europe for years.
This is on a ninety day trial in a two
lane street that runs through a suburban area. The mayor
said most vehicles go through that area at twenty five
miles an hour, but in the past week average speeds
have dropped to eighteen miles an hour. They say it
doesn't record any private information. It's just a text that

(01:49:25):
the vehicle is doing the speed it should to kind
of help people just slow down in that area.

Speaker 2 (01:49:30):
So kind of a smart idea. I like that.

Speaker 1 (01:49:32):
All right, let's get to the feedback. Dion says, great
show you put out Sunday. I'm listening in Montana. I
heard a woman call in wanting to know how to
get internet on her radio. I have not found a
way to do this either. What I do want to share,
I have a transistor radio which continuously picks up plays
the weather that has picked.

Speaker 2 (01:49:51):
Off picked up off of an FAA wave.

Speaker 1 (01:49:54):
It's not Internet, but I'd say it's as close to
as she's going to come with a radio device. Got
a lot of feedback about the caller last week that
was asking for some sort of radio that would pick
up Internet radio streaming and also THEAA radio stream. Greg says, hey, Rich,
I heard the segment with a woman that wanted anaa radio.

(01:50:14):
Sporties dot com has some aviation radios. The cheapest one
is one hundred and ninety nine dollars. They're kind of expensive.
And let's say I think there's one more on this, oh,
Neil said, and this is about the Aura frame. The
guest we had last week, the digital frame called Aura.
He said, when we became grandparents, our daughter gifted us

(01:50:34):
one of these frames. They seem expensive, but they work
really well and they have all the features being spot on.
Being ten hours away from our kids is balanced by
receiving new pictures as grandchild grows. Neil so Neil liked
the guest talking about the Aura frames. I love that thing.
Great gift. I can't believe that's going to do it

(01:50:55):
for this show. Next week, I'm going to tell you
about a website that lets you research and report scams
you don't become a victim of them again. You can
find me on social media. I am at rich on tech.
The website to go to is richon tech dot tv.
You can check it out For notes to what I
mentioned here, I also put them in the podcast, so

(01:51:15):
if you're listening to the podcast version, looking the notes
for anything that I talk about here on the show.
This has been a fantastic show from Austin, Texas.

Speaker 2 (01:51:24):
What a cool city.

Speaker 1 (01:51:25):
I love traveling because it gives me so much perspective
on the world. For instance, I can tell you prices
in Austin, Texas are cheaper than prices in Los Angeles.
That's the one thing I've noticed here so far. And
people are very friendly. My name is rich Demiel. Thanks
so much for listening. There are so many ways you
can spend your time. I do appreciate you spending it
right here with me. Thanks to everyone everywhere who makes

(01:51:49):
this show possible. As they say in the South, I'm
fixing to talk to you real soon take care

Speaker 4 (01:52:00):
And

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019 Rich on Tech Radio Show - May 13, 2023

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