025 Rich on Tech Radio Show - June 24, 2023 - Rich On Tech

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The government comes down hard on Amazon once again, this
time for making prime memberships hard to cancel. Rivian adopts
Tesla's charging network. Is Google's tablet any good? Plus your
tech questions answered? Well, what's going on? I'm Rich dmiro

(00:20):
and this is rich on Tech, the show where I
talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about,
and it's the place where I answer your questions about technology.
I believe the tech should be easy, tech should be helpful,
and that tech can be while worthy. Phone lines are
now open at triple eight rich one oh one. That's

(00:41):
eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one
zero one. Give me a call if you have a
question about technology. Email is also open. Leader can send
it to hello at Richontech dot TV. Welcome to show
number twenty five. We got the whole team in place.
We got Kim on phones, we got Bobo on the board,

(01:03):
and we've got Ai breathing down our backs, just watching
what we do so we can take over everything. So
this week I was in Nashville. For much of the week.
I was at a conference put on by Dave Ramsey
if you know who that is. So a lot of
fun learning from the best and every time I go
to a city now, I look up and see if

(01:23):
our show is on there, and yes it is. So
I want to give a shout out w LAC Talk
Radio ninety eight three fifteen ten, So thanks for listening there, Nashville.
I didn't really make it into Nashville because this was
like a full on, three days, nine to five kind
of conference, nine to six, nine to seven, and it

(01:44):
was a lot So we learned all about how, you know,
Dave built his show and how they do things over there,
a lot of research, a lot of a lot of people.
I think they have like eleven hundred people working all
from a single radio show. I mean, he's grown it
into my more than that, but it's it's quite incredible
what he's built there. But the thing that really got

(02:05):
me number one, I learned a couple things about myself.
Small talk is really really taxing. There was about eighty
of us invited to this event and it was invitation only,
which was really cool. So it's a bunch of people
kind of making a difference in the world, doing different
things in social media and radio and TV and all

(02:25):
this stuff, and you know, you had to get to
know everyone, and it was just kind of like a
lot of time to you know, talk to people, engage
with them, exchange stories, whatever, and two things. Number one
small talk, So you have to talk to these people.
You got to figure out what they're doing. And I
had to do a lot of that, and I realized
that is a lot of that takes a lot of

(02:46):
energy for me. So we're gonna have a guest later
on give me some tips on how to be better
at that and if I'm the only one that it
takes a lot of energy out of the Other thing
I had to do was a group speaking exercise. This
was just a five minute I had to tell a
story in front of a small group of people, including
some executives, which made it very nerve wracking. But I'm

(03:07):
not kidding. I can talk on the radio all day,
I could talk on TV all day. My heart rate
was double what it typically is. I'm looking at my
Apple Watch and I'm just like, what is happening here?
I have never been so nervous. I had cotton mouth.
I literally could not speak. It was that bad. I'm like,
where's the water here? But I got through it. It

(03:28):
was fun and it made me realize that speaking in
front of a large or even a small group is
very different than speaking into a microphone. So now that's
something I will work on for sure, because I want
to give I want to start giving some of these
groups speaking kind of presentations. I've got a lot to say.
Let me see some of my observations from traveling. I

(03:48):
always have a lot of thoughts when it comes to traveling.
So first off, scheduling an uber seems to be more
expensive than just grabbing an uber. I mean, it's nice
that you can schedule an uber so that it comes
at the right, exact time you want, but it seems
to be more expensive for that privilege. So just know
that the other way that I actually figure out when
to leave for the airport. I'm gonna give you my
little secret here. I look at my boarding pass, I

(04:09):
see what time I board, and then I backtrack. Now
I only need about an hour from the time I
get there to the boarding time. You may need more,
you know, if you're traveling with your kids or you
want more time, sure, just take that extra time. But
what I do is I use ways. They've got this
great feature called go later, So if you type in
where you're going, you can actually say I want to

(04:31):
arrive at let's say eight am, and it will tell
you what time you need to leave from your location
to get there by eight am. It's a very very
handy feature. I use it on a daily basis. Again,
it's go later, so you type in the address and
then you hit go later, and it should help you
figure out when to go. TSA at Lax had this

(04:51):
interesting facial recognition system that I guess I've heard of
but I haven't seen in person. But you slide it's
all self service. Basically, you slide your ID into this
reader and then you stand in front of an iPad
and it takes your picture and it compares the picture
that it just took of you to the picture on
your ID. And by the way, this took forever. It's

(05:12):
much faster to have the person just look at you
and say, okay, you are who you say you are,
and have you come through. But it made me realize
that we are in for a future I believe of
fully automated TSA lines. I do think that's coming where
kind of like a self checkout system, you have one
person that's kind of monitoring a lot of different checkouts.

(05:34):
I think that's what's going to happen with the TSA lines. Hey,
we got someone that doesn't look like they match their ID,
Come on over to the person and they'll manually check.
So I'm just saying that right now, let's see. Oh,
when you're on your flight, this is important. Always connect
to the in flight Wi Fi, even if you're not
going to pay for it. You may get free messaging.
A lot of these airlines give you free messaging. If

(05:55):
you're a T Mobile customer, a lot of times you
get free WiFi. But you'll notice you'll also get your notifications.
For some reason, those seemed to come through on the
iPhone no matter what, and even on androids. Sometimes, even
if you're not paying for Wi Fi, you may not
be able to act on those notifications if you're not
actually paying, but it's helpful, like you can see what's
going on with those notifications. Now, I will tell you

(06:16):
one thing that was a little bit concerning. When I
landed in Nashville, Okay, I took a ride share to
the hotel and it was fine. The guy was very
nice and we get to the area where I'm staying
and I said, Wow, I'm impressed with this little area
it's really cute, Like, what's the deal with this area?
And I kid you not. He goes, Oh, I don't know.

(06:37):
I'm just driving for my brother. He's actually in the hospital.
I was like, wait, what hold on? So apparently the
person who was driving me was not the person in
the app. Now I had never thought of this possibility before,
but that is a major major issue if that's true,

(06:57):
If that's what was happening. He said, Oh, no, I
in a different city. I'm just down here for the
weekend while my brother is, you know, doing this thing
in the hospital, and I'm just helping them out. So
and I was playing it cool because I was like,
at this point, just get me to the hotel and
let me out of this car. But that's like how
a murder starts happening, you know, like one of these
like Netflix murder shows. It's like, oh, yeah, I'm just

(07:18):
helping them out, and it just makes eye contact with
you in the rear view mirror and I'm like, oh gosh,
and then the door's lock. That did not happen, thankfully,
but it was very concerning. And now I'm wondering do
these services have a system in place where they verify
the driver is who they say they are. Like, when
you step into your ride share shift, do you have

(07:40):
to scan your face against the ID and they say, Okay,
you're who you say you are on your ID. It's
almost like back to that TSA thing. So it was
all fine. The person was very nice, and I didn't
want to report this to the ride share company, but
I'm just kind of telling you, maybe check the photo
of the person and kind of look at the person

(08:01):
when you get in the car and just make sure
those two things look similar. Now in this case, they did,
so I didn't really think. I mean, they're brothers, so
they look similar. But that's kind of concerning that that's
even a thing that could happen. Ah, So that's that
just might kind of be aware of that. The other
thing that I thought was pretty cool on my flight
back is we were taking off and the pilot gets

(08:25):
on almost like in an urgent manner, and he's like, hey,
you might want to look outside your right window right now,
because I was like, what's happening right now? They were
launching Starlink satellites, and so there's a whole bunch of
Starlink satellites. There's like twelve in a row. It looked
like launching up into the air, and I kid you not,
it looked like Santa and his sleigh. It was all

(08:45):
these twinkly starlight satellites going up into the space. And
if you're not familiar with starlink, that is Elon Musk's
wireless Internet beam from outer space. And they need like hundreds,
if not thou of these satellites just orbiting the Earth
so that you can have Internet on any location you
can think of, beamed wirelessly. And it's pretty fast compared

(09:08):
to previous wireless internet from the space. But I thought
that was pretty neat. And then one more thing I
want to comment on Southwest. They are running a dark pattern. Now,
I love I love me some Southwest. Don't get me wrong.
They will get you from point A to point B.
It's like a bus. You get on, you find your C.
You know, it's it's no frills, it's nice. The flight

(09:30):
attendants are always so nice. But they do run a
little bit of a dark pattern. And I'll tell you
what that is. When you get your little check in
situation where it's a B or C. The way they
check you in is not like a typical airline that
assigns you a seat in advance, they give you a
number and when you get that number, it's either A
B or C a letter and a number, and then
it's like A through one through sixty, B one through sixty,

(09:52):
C one through sixty. And the lower you are on
the totem pole, the less chance you have of getting
a good seat on that plane. One gets, you know,
whatever pick they want, A two, the next best seat
a three, and so on. Well, when you check in,
like I checked in immediately and I still got like
B twenty five, and so now I'm nervous. I'm like, oh,
am I gonna have some overhead space? Am I gonna

(10:14):
get a middle seat? Am I gonna have a horrible
seat in the back? And they say, oh, well, you
can upgrade to a better number for sixty bucks, sixty
dollars to sit in a better seat. Absolutely not my wife.
The last time we flew Southwest, she's like, can we
please upgrade so we can sit together? I said, oh no,
I'm not playing this game. No, no, no, we will
sit apart for two hours if we have to. Yes,

(10:36):
that's how cheap I am. Sometimes. And so I got
on board B twenty five. There were so many people
getting on board this little plane, and sure enough, what
did I get? I got an exit row seat with
a ton of extra leg room. Nobody was next to me,
there was a ton of overhead space, and if I
would have paid that sixty dollars, I would have felt really,
really dumb. So my point is, Southwest, I love you,

(10:59):
but you're running a bit of a dark pattern because
you don't know how many people are actually boarding that plane,
how much luggage they have, and what seats they're going
to choose. Every single time this has happened to me,
I've really had a pretty good experience with finding a
decent seat. You may have to sit in the middle
once in a while, but most of the time you're
gonna find something unless you're in that sea. But if
you're in that sea, you didn't even try to check

(11:20):
in on time, so you kind of deserve that, all right.
Coming up on today's show, I'm going to talk about
why Tesla's charging network is quickly becoming the new standard.
We've got some great guests this week, see net. Scott
Stein is going to join us to talk about his
review of the Google Pixel tablet, best selling author Deborah
Fine is going to join me to talk about how
technology is impacting the art of small talk. And then

(11:42):
Julie Ramhold, consumer analysts with deal News, is going to
talk about Amazon Prime Day. We now have a date
for that next big event. It's also your turn. Your
calls coming up next at Triple eight Rich one oh one.
Give me a call if you have a question about technology.
The phone number is eight eight eight four to one
zero one. My name is Rich d'muro and you are

(12:05):
doing something smart. You are listening to rich on Tech.
Welcome back to rich on Tech. My name is Rich
DeMuro talking technology with you at Triple eight Rich one
oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two
four to one zero one, or you can email hello
at Richontech dot tv. You've got lots of your calls,

(12:28):
We've got lots of your emails. I've got lots of
news to talk about this week, plus some great interviews.
You can follow me on social media. I am at
rich on Tech on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. Let's have
Tom kick off the show this hour. Tom, you're on riverside.
Welcome to the show.

Speaker 2 (12:49):
Thanks Rich, Good talk to you.

Speaker 1 (12:50):
Hey, thanks for coming on What can I help you
with great.

Speaker 2 (12:56):
So Rich, I've got a couple of daughters, all in
college a couple of years that'll all be getting out
into the job market. And I was trying to figure
out with my oldest some software platforms that she might
you know, take some classes in or get proficient and
that's gonna help her with that career search. One of

(13:19):
the ones that we use at my office is Salesforce,
and you know, the Salesforce administrator at my office is
an absolute godsend. And it dawned on me that it
is a it's kind of been I don't know if
it's emerging anymore. It's been around long enough, but it
seems to have skyrocketed from the day it hit the

(13:40):
hit the market, and I was just curious if you
had any indications, you know, from where you sit, if
that skyrocketing is gonna plateau or keep going, or if
that Salesforce administrator position is something that's going to just
thrive for a really long time.

Speaker 1 (13:56):
Great question. How old is your daughter? She's in college?

Speaker 2 (14:00):
Yeah, I've got I've got three rich nineteen twenty one
and twenty two.

Speaker 1 (14:05):
Oh man, you got you got a lot of weddings
to pay for intuitions at once in college. Yeah, so
here's the thing, and they do. They all show interest
in doing something in the tech world.

Speaker 2 (14:20):
The oldest for sure. For sure, she's going to graduate
with a computational mathematics and computer science degree.

Speaker 1 (14:28):
Wow, smart cookie, you know I.

Speaker 2 (14:31):
Yeah, amen, you know, I've got a real good sense
of the type of worker. She is very task oriented,
kind of a dog with a bone type of situation.
So it did feel like a pretty decent fit.

Speaker 1 (14:44):
Okay, well, a couple of things. So, first off, I mean,
Salesforce is just one of many many software platforms out there.
These are software as a service, so that you know,
it used to be companies would buy software in a
box installed on a computer and run it. And then
these companies came out with software that runs in the cloud,

(15:04):
and Salesforce is an example of that. There are many
others SAP and so it's much more modular. Companies can
expand what they need, they can get rid of what
they don't need, they can add different things to it.
And yes, Salesforce did do very well. They built that giant,
sixty one story skyscraper in San Francisco over a billion

(15:27):
dollars but here's the thing I don't know. I would
think for your daughters, they are probably going to show
some interest in something. I think they should probably dip
their toes into different classes that do these things. So
I would look at something like data analytics because that
is a huge, huge growth area for companies. Every single
company needs data analytics and someone that understands that. If

(15:48):
they want to do coding, that's a separate world in itself.
Coding is obviously very popular, but that's something they can
try and see if they like that. It doesn't sound
like that's what your oldest daughter wants to do. Then
you've got stuff like these project management platforms, so companies
need project managers for their different initiatives, and so they
always need someone that knows how to run the software

(16:10):
that does project management. And then of course you've got
cloud computing, which is you know, the Amazon AWS. I
was actually just down in Anaheim. They had a big
AWS convention and so a lot of smart people there.
They all look like they were doing very well if
you ask me, they're all in very nice suits. So
AWS is a huge growing area, and that's just one
cloud service out there. And of course there's design things

(16:33):
like Adobe, Photoshop and all that stuff. But I think
AI is also the place where they should start looking too,
because that is going to have an impact on just
about every single job category that I mentioned. And I
think for your oldest daughter, if she's really getting into
the job force, I think she looks at some jobs
that appeal to her and cross reference the skills that

(16:54):
are inside those job descriptions and then check out some
classes that have to do with that. Because this stuff
is rapidly changing. But I think if you have that
analytical mind, you would want to do something with the
analytical side of things. If you have the management mind,
you want to do something with project management or AI
is really going to have an impact on all of

(17:14):
these different job things. So if you're into that, definitely
start taking a look at some of those tools. Great question, Tom,
if you have a question. Eight eight to eight Rich
one oh one. You're listening to rich on Tech. Welcome
back to rich on Tech, rich Demiro talking technology with
you and joining me now is Scott Stein, editor at

(17:36):
Large at c NEET, to talk about Google's new Pixel tablet. Scott,
thanks so much for joining me today. Hey, thanks Rich,
So let's talk about Google's majestic return to the world
of tablets. I remember one of my favorite tablets was
their tiny little It was like an eight inch Nexus

(17:57):
tablet back in the day. Do you remember that one?

Speaker 3 (17:59):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (18:00):
Yeah, next to seven was great. I think I have
one sitting in a Jerusalem where you know. That was
wonderful and it was affordable. It was before phones got
really big and doubled this tablet and it just feel
like that the ball kip keeps being dropped when it
comes to Android tablets in their progress.

Speaker 1 (18:19):
Yeah, what is the deal? So last week we were
talking about Amazon's fire tablet, which the new Max eleven
has a really good kind of hardware profile, but the
software is almost unusable. And so now we have a
Pixel tablet which has amazing software, Like, this thing was
really fun. The iPad is amazing, but there are some

(18:41):
things about the the iOS software with the tablet that
is good for apps but bad for sort of other things.
But anyway, what is your initial thought on this tablet?
This is a four hundred and ninety nine dollars tablet
that has a dock built in are kind of attached
to it, So give me your initial thoughts on this thing.

Speaker 4 (18:59):
Yeah, grew with you. I think the most exciting thing
is Google's focus on software for tablets here, and I
think that it just felt using it at home, it
felt fun, it felt friendly, and I think that's something
in the Android tablet landscape has been missing. I think
you have a lot of technologically capable tablets, but like

(19:21):
you said, a lot of the software tends to be
very tablets specific or a little bit wonky. And I
like the fact that this also can be a home hub.

Speaker 2 (19:32):
Even though the people have used.

Speaker 4 (19:34):
It for the smart on features have said that the
assistant software, the Assistant Voice AI, could be a lot
better there. I think that the idea of it being
dockable is a different use is something that Apple hasn't
done with the iPad. And also the ability to switch
accounts on Android tablets I really appreciate.

Speaker 1 (19:54):
Yeah, that was a recurring That was a recurring theme
across all the reviews that people said, why doesn't the
iPad have a way to have multiple users?

Speaker 4 (20:02):
Yes, it's baffling, and so for kids especially, you know,
we share, I mean a lot of people share tablet.

Speaker 1 (20:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (20:08):
Google is observing in their statistics, and that's what this
is about, is that Hey, whoever wants to pick it
up can use it, which is fantastic, and I think
that that's great. The split app multitasking worked really well,
although not all apps use it, And that's the question
here is, you know, Google is reinvesting in that idea,

(20:29):
and it looks like it's also the impetus behind what
they're doing with the folding phone. So hopefully there's some
consistency there in app support.

Speaker 1 (20:37):
So to your point about the multiple users, I've got
a tablet set up in the workout area, like on
the workout bike, that has my I message logged in,
and literally my wife is using Peloton the whole time.
She's just seeing all my messages fly by. And I'm like, oh,
that's not that I'm doing anything like weird with the messaging,
but it's just a little strange to have someone watch.
She's like, hey, I'm just watching you text back and

(20:58):
forth the whole day.

Speaker 4 (21:00):
Yeah, there should be a really easy way without having
to log out and you know, add another ye club.
There should be a way to quickly switch profiles like
we do with game consoles and you know, pretty much
everything else, but the iPad it makes it really difficult.
So I think I wish the price on the Pixel
tablet were a little bit lower, Yeah, because I think
that five hundred is not expensive, but it's not an

(21:23):
impulse purchase. And so I think a lot of tablets
for families and kids, people want to get the most
affordable thing possible. That there's a cheaper iPad than that,
even though it's older. There's the Kindle, you know, the
fire tablets. So that's one thing I think is you know,
would be on a wish list for me.

Speaker 1 (21:42):
Yeah, it kind of turns people off to see that
high price point because now if you really break it down,
I know there's some people that are kind of arguing
this point. But it comes with a tablet, and then
it also comes with a dock, and the dock sells
for what one hundred and twenty nine dollars on its.

Speaker 5 (21:57):
Own, Yeah, so exactly.

Speaker 4 (22:00):
I think that's that's where they sort of talk about
the value for it. For me, I looked at it like,
you know, I love the case that that Google is
making for this, a nice kickstandcase, but that's eighty dollars,
so you know, that's expensive and kind of iPad case territory,
and that that plus getting an extra amount of storage

(22:20):
for one hundred dollars more. These can ramp it up.
I almost would have maybe thought about throwing in a
case or something else in lieu of the of the dock,
or having a different price equation. Yeah, I mean that's
an interesting question.

Speaker 1 (22:34):
But the good news is the doc is actually kind
of genius. And I will tell you this. So number one,
I so let me just kind of paint the picture
of what this tablet looks like. So it's a it's
a really nicely designed it almost looks like a big
pixel phone. And then it magnetically attaches to this little
dock that looks like you can just pull the front
off of a Google Nest Hub, so it almost looks

(22:56):
like when you're when it's docked, that it's a Nest Hub,
you know, like when those Google Smart Home kind of devices.
And so the genius of it is that it's always charged,
and then when you're not using it, it's a screen
saver for whatever you want. So I have my Google
Photos collection on there. It can show the weather, all
these different types of things. Plus you can ask it things,
you know, the voice commands and what I thought would

(23:19):
happen and it did is I started playing music on
the tablet and then I magnetically attached it to the
DOC and the music just magically transferred to the DOC speaker,
which is much louder and richer. And so it's a
really smart idea that you always have this tablet that's
ready to go. But not everyone wants to spend five
hundred dollars on a tablet, and I think that's going
to keep them from getting this.

Speaker 4 (23:41):
Yeah, I think on the flip side, if you think,
you know, if you're using a lot of stuff in
Google ecosystem and you don't want to get it phone
another phone or you know, something like that, that's not
a lot to spend. And I think that the idea
that it can be a home hub, You're right, is
a huge advantage. The speaker sounded nice. You know, we
got really into just somebody playing music or even just

(24:02):
playing YouTube video. You know, we started to just kind
of gather around and the kids started gathering around it,
and I said, you could detach the tablet, but there's
you know, it's definitely a kitchen counter friendly type thing.
Who were kind of hovers off the dock, so it's
not touching the counter and I think that there's a
lot of ways that it could be useful in that regard.

(24:24):
So so yeah, I think that there's like a lot,
a lot of plus to it.

Speaker 1 (24:27):
And what do you think of the cameras. I'm I'm
loving this feature on Google Meat that it's like the
backgrounds on Google Meat are so good, like these three
sixty backgrounds, Like they're moving like I have mindset as
like this castle and like a medieval castle with like
a dragon like flap, you know, flap flapping his wings
behind me. And the cameras I thought were pretty good.

(24:47):
And I thought that experience was pretty good. What do
you make of it?

Speaker 4 (24:50):
Yeah, me too. It seemed a tiny bit betterund Meat
than on Zoom, but maybe it was just when I
was running it. But the you know, I was looking
at this pre release, the camera quality looks really good.
It's positioned on the right spot, which is you know,
when you dock it, it's going to be centered like
Apple started doing with their with their I've had in
the fall. Yeah, it's it's very convenient. I even think

(25:11):
on the dock it was a pretty easy one to
use for for for quick spontaneous video chats with people,
and I know I used other types of devices like
that in the past, you know, portally that I'm playing
around with, and I think there, it's really convenient, and
so I thought that was a lot of fun and
definitely the way that I'd want to use this.

Speaker 1 (25:34):
And the only thing I thought was kind of interesting too,
is I I found myself trying to figure out and
maybe this is just muscle memory for using it. After
using it for a while, i'd be more comfortable. But
I was trying to figure out like where the fingerprint
sensor was, like on the power button, because sometimes they
just pick it up and not really know because it's
so symmetrical. Did you have that issue at all?

Speaker 4 (25:53):
Yeah, a little bit that I told myself, Okay, right
finger on top corner is good, but yeah, you know
that's the thing is, depending on which you're holding it,
you might start fumbling around for that.

Speaker 2 (26:03):
I mean.

Speaker 4 (26:03):
The good news of the fingerprints sensor was really fast,
and I found it was just like instant log in,
and then again with the guest accounts and the other modes,
you can bypass that. So I found that was a
really nice solution. Sometimes I don't like the face log
and stuff at all. I find that it gets in
the way of the flow and sometimes doesn't register. So

(26:24):
I'm glad that this had that. I do wish the
whole thing had a keyboard though. That's that's one thing
that I'm regretting that Google left out.

Speaker 1 (26:33):
I just wonder if you're trying, like I feel like
they're not really positioning this as a productivity device, you know,
which is funny because the Amazon Fire Max is and
it's like anything but and this could be because it's
got such clean software. It's got all the Google products
and services on it, So it could be a really
nice little email machine.

Speaker 4 (26:52):
It really could. And more like it's it's a very
capable processor. The multitasking works really well, waste dictation worked great,
similar to how well it works on Pixel phones. And
you know, at Google had focused on this productivity a
thing the last time with the Pixel Slate, which was
a failed product but I thought was interesting, kind of
like a chromebook mett Android tablet back in twenty eighteen,

(27:14):
twenty nineteen, And now they move completely in the opposite direction,
nailing so much of the everyday casual tablet use. But
I think with kids, a lot of them, you know,
my kids work on things or write things, and they'll
set up a keyboards. I think it can work with
other keyboards, but I think there's a big opportunity there.

(27:34):
I would think to enable this for that and just
add to abuse.

Speaker 1 (27:38):
Yeah, well hopefully they're working on that, Scott. We're going
to leave it there, Scott Stein of cnet telp Folks.
How they can find you online?

Speaker 5 (27:46):
Sure?

Speaker 4 (27:46):
Well, you can find me a Twitter jet Scott. You
can also find me mastadon and blue Sky, and you
can also find me and Seema dot com. I have
an author profile there.

Speaker 1 (27:55):
Awesome. Thanks so much for joining me today. Appreciate it.

Speaker 4 (27:58):
Hey, thank you.

Speaker 1 (27:59):
All right, Coming up, I'm gonna tell you why the
FTC is mad at Amazon again. Plus more of your
calls at Triple eight rich one O one. You are
listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich On Tech.
Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology at

(28:19):
triple eight rich one O one. That's eight eight eight
seven four to two four one zero one. Let's see.
Let's go to uh stan Stan is in Bettsville, Ohio.
Stand you're on with rich.

Speaker 5 (28:36):
Hello rich On Tech. Hello, Hey, my outlook Microsoft Outlook
has gone rogue on me or something. It was operating
fine for the longest time, but recently seems like the
highest percentage of my outgoing mails come back to me
with an air message that couldn't be delivered to such
and such address for some cryptic reason. So, long story short,

(29:00):
I'm thinking about reinstalling Outlook, but I read somewhere or
thought I did that I need to reinstall Microsoft three
sixty five entirely, not just Outlook.

Speaker 6 (29:11):
What are your.

Speaker 5 (29:11):
Thoughts on that.

Speaker 1 (29:13):
Are You're on a Windows machine, I'm.

Speaker 5 (29:15):
Taking it, yeh, Windows ten.

Speaker 1 (29:17):
I'm running okay. And when you go to the list
of programs, is Outlook listed separately or is it not?

Speaker 5 (29:26):
I believe it's listed separately. I'm almost positive, okay.

Speaker 1 (29:31):
And have you tried to just say uninstall that?

Speaker 5 (29:35):
No, because I was afraid I'd lose past emails and
folders and all of that anything.

Speaker 4 (29:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (29:42):
Yeah, It depends on how your account is set up
if you're going to lose those folders and things. So
if your account is set up locally where you're downloading everything,
then yes, you would lose anything that you've set up.
If it's set up, if it's set up as an IMAP,
or if it's just mirroring the server, then any thing
that you've set up on the server side will just

(30:02):
mirror over once it comes back down. Do you know
what type of email address you're using? I mean I
assume you do.

Speaker 5 (30:10):
Yeah, it's a website that I set up, and the
email address is the my email address is the website name.

Speaker 1 (30:17):
Okay, And so when you set that up on that
email is it an IMAP or is it a POP three?
Do you know?

Speaker 7 (30:24):
Boy?

Speaker 5 (30:25):
I'm familiar with what you're asking, but I don't know.
But now I'm in front of my PC again, maybe
I can find out real quick.

Speaker 1 (30:33):
Well, So I would do some research on that and
just see if the email address how your provider sets
it up. Most of the time, I mean, it depends
with with your own website. A lot of the times
it could be POP, but IMAP is pretty common as well,
so it sort of depends. But I think that's going
to determine how much you're going to going to lose.
So what I would do is I would do a

(30:54):
backup of your data before you do anything, and then
try to uninstall all Outlook if you can't uninstall it
by itself, which it may be linked to the three
sixty five the whole suite. Then you know you're gonna
have to uninstall that and reinstall. Is there what caused
this problem?

Speaker 5 (31:15):
I don't know. It happened, oh several weeks ago, and
I've tried to work around it, and it's just seems
to be getting worse. Doesn't make sense to me. But
have you have no idea what caused it? But I
get all these bounce backs saying that it can't deliver
to SO and Sol's address, and it gives me a

(31:35):
reason that is like hieroglyphics.

Speaker 6 (31:37):
It doesn't.

Speaker 1 (31:38):
Yeah, probably doesn't make much sense. Have you installed any
plugins on this program that would cause this?

Speaker 3 (31:46):
No?

Speaker 5 (31:46):
Not, No, I don't believe I have ever.

Speaker 1 (31:49):
Okay, well I would. I would try to do the
uninstalled and see if that works. It seems like an
odd problem to just start happening out of nowhere. The
other thing the other thing can try to do is
have you tried, like downloading the Outlook app to your
phone or anything like that.

Speaker 5 (32:07):
I have, and I've had difficulty and right now I
can't get it downloaded to my phone.

Speaker 1 (32:12):
Oh that's interesting. What are using iPhone or Android? Android
boone and it just won't download. Interesting, well, that should
be available in the in the Google Play Store, but
you might try to log in and see if your
information is there, if it's storing it in the cloud,
and it may just carry down through there. So that's
another way.

Speaker 4 (32:31):
To do it.

Speaker 5 (32:32):
And did you suggest that to back up outlook first?

Speaker 4 (32:36):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (32:37):
Yeah, I would. I would. I would export everything and
just you know, save that file in case you can't
get things back. And then that way, at least you
have a backup that you can you can bring back
to you know, bring back to life in a little
bit of a way. So do you pay for Office
three sixty five or no? Did you? How are you
getting this program?

Speaker 5 (32:55):
I went in to try and find that out. I
think I did, and I think I said a very
nominal amount. But I can't see in my CRM package
where I'm paying for it or not. I don't know.

Speaker 1 (33:07):
Okay, yeah, usually it's only you know, it's a couple
like under ten dollars a month for that, or you
can pay for the hard gear in advance, but that
would give you access to downloading the app itself. It
seems like the app is part of the Suite on Windows,
but on a Mac, I know they just came out
with a standalone office or an outlook rather, So if

(33:29):
you have a Mac, you can try logging in there
as well and seeing but I know you can download
that on there as well because I played with it.
So those are some things to try and see if
they work. But that is frustrating when your email is
coming back. If you're like me, you just forget to
actually send your email. So I will set up an
email and I will get distracted at work and I
literally forget to hit send and next thing you know,

(33:51):
people are like, hey, Rich, where's that email. It's like
I thought I sent it, but I didn't. And sometimes
that will happen as well. So thanks for the call,
appreciate it. Let me tell you why the FTC is
mad at Amazon once again. A couple weeks ago they
had to pay like thirty million bucks for some issues
with Ring and some other privacy issues. Now they're saying

(34:16):
that Amazon makes it tough for consumers to cancel their
subscriptions to Prime. They filed a complaint that says Amazon
has knowingly duped millions of consumers into unknowingly and rolling
into Amazon Prime. Now, I've had Amazon Prime for a
long time, but I think what they're talking about is
when you check out, if you don't have Prime, there's
probably a little tiny checkbox that says include a free

(34:39):
trial of Amazon Prime for overnight shipping or free shipping,
and people do that, and then all of a sudden
they see that credit card charge for fourteen ninety nine
and they say, wait a second, what I thought I
was just signed up for a free trial, or I
forgot that I signed up for a free trial. And
then the FTC alleges that they make it really tough
to cancel the subscription. Now that's the part that I'm

(35:04):
not sure I agree with, because I feel like if
you would chat with Amazon, you could cancel that pretty easily.
But they say that, you know, this is a dark
pattern that Amazon is using, and it really made it
tough for consumers. I'm trying to figure out where they
say this. Oh, Consumers who attempted to cancel Prime were
faced with multiple steps to actually accomplish the task of canceling.

(35:26):
According to the complaint, they had to locate the cancelation flow,
which Amazon of course hid. Then once they located it,
they were redirected to multiple pages that presented offers to
continue the subscription at a discounted price, or to turn
off the auto renew feature, or to decide not to cancel,
And then after clicking through all these pages, consumers could
finally cancel the service. That seems to be pretty common

(35:47):
though online if you try to cancel anything. And so,
I know the FTC is really singling out Amazon here,
but I feel like a lot of companies do that.
So if you felt like you were wronged by Amazon
Prime Government, it's got You're back, rich tamiro here. You
are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich

(36:08):
on Tech. Rich Tamuro here talking technology with you at
triple eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight
seven four to two four one zero one. I hope
you're having a fantastic day. Did you know that you
can listen to this show as a podcast. Just search
rich on Tech in your favorite audio app and be

(36:28):
sure to subscribe. Then you can go to rich on
Tech dot tv to find the show notes. I take
very good notes about what we talk about here, So
if you're looking for a link to something I mentioned,
chances are it's in there because I try to get
it all. We've got best selling author Deborah Fine joining
me this hour. She's going to talk about technology and

(36:52):
how it's impacting the art of small talk. Because I
don't know about you, but it's much easier in a
crowd of folks to just kind of, you know, retreat
to your smartphone and that endless scroll than it is
to actually have that human connection with folks. And it's tough.
It's not easy to talk to strangers. But we're going
to see what Debra says about that. All right, let's
kick off this hour with Julio in Los Angeles. Julio,

(37:16):
you're on with Wretch. I'm fantastic. How are you?

Speaker 8 (37:21):
Ah, very good. I have a challenging question for you.

Speaker 1 (37:24):
Sure.

Speaker 8 (37:26):
I have Moscilla District okay, oh, sorry for nights okay,
And I've been living with it for many years and
I will for forty years into counting a problem. But
the problem is this, I have a I have a
cell phone, you know where I versus my wife had
en a plit phone, and we have a problem because

(37:47):
she suffers the same, you know, and when we put
it in a front pocket, I'll must start to hurt.
I got to he's very share the expicient phone that
I buy for it.

Speaker 1 (38:05):
Okay, so when you put your phone in your front pocket,
you're saying your body aches from it. Okay, Well there
is a solution. And now, look, I don't know if
there's a correlation. I mean, you're telling me this. I
don't know if other people are experiencing this, but there
are you know, there obviously are frequencies that are emitted

(38:26):
by your phone. You've got a flip phone, so I
feel like that's not as high powered as some of
the other smartphones out there. And all of the phones,
by the way, have this little rating. They've got this
like radiation rating, so you can look it up by phone.
It's like measured I think in microns. But different phones
definitely have different sort of radiation levels that they emit.

(38:50):
So you can check that out if you search online
for the model number, and you know, there's a I'm
trying to figure out what the let me see if
I can find out iPhone radius level and let's see
if they have the number. Um yeah, it's like yes,
So there's like a little like wattage number. Oh there
it is. It's like, uh yeah, RF exposure information, So

(39:12):
they all have SAR. SAAR value is what they call it,
so you can look up the name of your phone
plus SAR and specific absorption rate is what they call it.
The rate to which the body absorbs RF energy radio
frequency energy. The SAR limit on the iPhone twelve pro,
for example, is one point six watts per kilogram in

(39:35):
countries that set the limit averaged over one gram of
tissue and two watts per kilogram WOWS. This is a
lot if you want to read about this, This is
like you can go down a rabbit hole with all
this stuff. But basically, they do test phones for this stuff,
and they do tell you what the different levels are
that come out of these phones, and they are very different.

(39:55):
So if you want to check your phone, just google
whatever phone model you have plus SAR and it will
tell you what that number is for the head and
the body. So with all of that said, there are
cases that can block these in and out radio waves.
But here's the deal. They're often called a Faraday bag.
It's going to block all signals, so you are not

(40:17):
going to be able to get a signal from this phone.
It is not going to ring when it's in this bag.
If it's in your pocket. So if you're okay with that,
you can check out these different companies that make these things.
One of them is called Silent Pocket. I guess they've
just kind of rebranded as Silent now. And their website
is SLNT dot com Silent slnt dot com, and they

(40:43):
make a whole bunch of different Faraday bags, everything from
sleeves for your keys, for your laptop, for your credit cards,
and also your phone. And I have one of their
phone bags, and yeah, when you put your phone in there,
it is it immediately cuts off all signals to and
from that phone. The other company, and I'm not as

(41:03):
familiar with their products, I haven't used them, but I
know they make them is called off grid O F
F g R I D dot c O and off
grid is I believe they're based on and I think
both these companies are like San Diego area. But these
they make a wallet, they make a bag, they make
a little cell phone case, they make a duffel bag,

(41:25):
they make a backpack. Let's see what else here, a
window kit whatever that is. But these are these are
some ways of kind of blocking all signals to and
from your phone. So this could be used for security.
It could also be used for something like you're talking about, Julio.
I don't know if that would help. I don't know
if you want to do that, but that is the

(41:46):
solution that I can think of otherwise maybe. And I've
thought about this before. Believe me, I'm not one of
these like you know, you know, tin hat kind of guys.
But I have thought about, because I've kept my phone
in my pocket for so long, I have thought about,
maybe it's time to switch where I keep my phone
and not keep it, you know, near the the groin

(42:08):
area so much, and maybe have some sort of holster
on my ankle area. And I know it sounds crazy,
but it's like, you know, I don't know. I've had
a cell phone in my pocket now for twenty years
and it seems to be okay, but you don't want
to find out the hard way that it's not so good. Call, Julio.
Thanks so much for asking that interesting, interesting question. Let's see,

(42:32):
should we go to Do I have time for another call?
All right, let's go to let's see. Oh my gosh,
so many calls today.

Speaker 4 (42:37):
Karen.

Speaker 1 (42:38):
Karen is in Thousand Oaks.

Speaker 3 (42:40):
Karen, You're on with Rich Hi there, thanks for taking
my call.

Speaker 1 (42:43):
Hey, thanks for calling.

Speaker 4 (42:44):
Sure.

Speaker 3 (42:45):
I have an iPhone. I've had one since two thousand
and seven and I have it backed up with iclouds
and my daughter got married and I decided that it
would be a great idea to back up the photos
somewhere else. Absolutely decided, Yeah, easy to do it on
Google Photos. So I started the process downloading it on

(43:08):
my phone, and it ran out a memory really fast
because it was backing up all my photos from my
phone and I had a lot, and so I stopped
the I stopped it, and I so I started playing
around a little bit and I deleted a photo and
it said, okay, we're going to delete the photo from iPhoto.

Speaker 8 (43:30):
So I stopped.

Speaker 3 (43:31):
I didn't delete anymore. But then it it took all
like on Google Photo. It was completely full, and it
wanted more money so to back up everything another ten
bucks a month. So now I feel like I'm being
held hostage by them, and so I stopped all the

(43:54):
access to photos from my iPhone to Google. Sure it's
just fine, but now it says that I can't get
my email or Google.

Speaker 1 (44:07):
Because our account is maxed out and they're connected exactly yeah. Okay.
So with Google you get fifteen gigs of storage I believe.

Speaker 3 (44:16):
Like included right right, But I'm I already pay.

Speaker 1 (44:21):
But you pay for iCloud.

Speaker 3 (44:23):
I do, can dog because I have twenty thousand photos.

Speaker 1 (44:26):
Yeah, okay, So here's the dilemma. So you've got these
basically you're kind of okay, So two things I guess
two part question here are you you're not going to
use Google anymore for this?

Speaker 3 (44:36):
Correct?

Speaker 1 (44:36):
Okay, so we can get those photos out of there.
The other thing is do you are you an Amazon
Prime member?

Speaker 3 (44:43):
I am?

Speaker 1 (44:44):
Okay, So have you heard of Amazon Photos?

Speaker 3 (44:47):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (44:47):
Have you used it?

Speaker 5 (44:49):
No?

Speaker 1 (44:49):
Okay? So I would recommend since you're an Amazon Prime
member and you're using this as your secondary backup, so
your photos are basically in they're almost in two places there.
Some of them are on your phone. I'm not sure
if your phone carries all twenty thousand physically on your device.
I don't know if you have that much storage on
your phone. It may or may not. But they are
backed up in iCloud. So that's one place they're backed up,

(45:11):
and of course you want them backed up in a
second place, which would be one of these cloud apps.
So since since you're already paying for Amazon, I would
say install the Amazon Photos app and let your photos
back up there, and that way you have a secondary copy.
Because I don't think icloud's going away anytime soon. I
don't think you're gonna have an issue with that, but

(45:31):
just in case, you will have a pretty sizeable backup
of your photos, especially as you take new ones on
your Amazon account as well. Now that will take care
of moving forward. So to get rid of these photos
out of Google, I would just go ahead delete the
Google Photos app off of your iPhone. You don't need
to do anything first before you do that, Just go

(45:53):
ahead and delete it.

Speaker 8 (45:54):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (45:55):
Then I would go to photos dot Google dot com
on your computer and you can go ahead and select
photos in there and delete them. And I believe once
you go in there, let me try this real quick.
If you select like one photo, you you should be
able to select a bunch at a time and just
go ahead and delete those. And when you delete them

(46:16):
from the web interface, they're not going to delete off
your iPhone at the same time because it can't talk
to your your iCloud anymore. Does that make sense?

Speaker 8 (46:26):
I think?

Speaker 3 (46:26):
So, let me just one other thing I have in iMac,
and I don't have iCloud on my Mac because I
didn't want them if I took if I deleted them
off on my phone, I didn't want them to delete
them off my computer.

Speaker 1 (46:41):
Okay, Well, the way that iCloud works is it's a
it's a everything syncs to iCloud. So if you're looking
at your photo collection on your Mac, it's going to
be the same exact collection that's on your phone. That's
if you go to iCloud dot com, it's all the same.
And it's very confusing for people because they think because
it's on an app on their phone, it's different than

(47:02):
what's in the cloud or what's on you know, their
computer if they're syncing it. So that is a little confusing.
But my main point here is that if you're if
you're not wanting to use the Google Photos aspect of anything,
just go to the Google Photos website and that anything
you do there will not connect through to iCloud. So
if you go through and delete all these pictures on

(47:24):
Google Photos, they will only delete on the Google Photos
cloud and it's not going to redelete them off of
your iCloud photo collection. Okay, So, and you can go
through and you know, try to bulk delete. I think
you can select a thousand at once or something like that.
But you can just go through and kind of delete
as many as possible. And I believe you can just

(47:45):
kind of click in the corner of the photo and
then drag over to kind of select multiple photos at
once and that then then just go ahead and delete them.
Then you can empty the trash and you should see
your storage kind of clean up there. So, uh, good question, Karen.
I know it's confusing. This phot cloud collection stuff is
really not easy, especially when you start using multiple different providers.

(48:06):
So good question there, and get that stuff cleaned up.
So your Gmail works again because it is connected, all right.
If you have a call, give me a or if
you have a question, give me a call. It's triple
eight rich one O one. That's eight eight eight seven
four to two four to one zero one. My name
is rich Dmuro and you are listening to rich on Tech.
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging

(48:28):
out with you talking technology at triple eight rich one
O one eight eight eight seven four to two four
one zero one. If you've got an iPhone, you want
to update your software immediately. Apple issued an emergency patch

(48:49):
this week UH to address alleged spyware vulnerability. So the
actual the allegers in this case is Russia. Their intelligence
service said that Apple was intentionally leaving this hole open
in their software so that people can spy on Russia

(49:10):
through it, which I mean take that claim with a
grain of salt. But there is a vulnerability on the
iPhone that should definitely be patched. So if you go
into your settings, so if you if you don't know
how to do this, sometimes it'll pop up on your
screen to tell you. But if it doesn't, you just
go into settings, you go into General and then software

(49:31):
update and you should be on iOS sixteen point five
point one again sixteen point five point one if you
want to be on the latest software. That's if you're
not running any betas, which you could be, but I don't,
but anyway, do that for sure. Researchers with the cyber

(49:53):
security firm Kaspersky, which is headquartered in Moscow, said that
they found the exploit while monitoring the network traffic of
their own corporate Wi Fi network dedicated for mobile devices.
So Apple did patch this of course they denied the
claims that they are intentionally leaving this flaw in iOS.
So the NSA and other US security agencies could compromise

(50:18):
phones in Russia. But who knows. It'd be more interesting
if they were doing that, right, but I don't think
they were so anyway, update your software. If you have
an iPhone, let's see if you have an a SOUS router,
update your firmware. Welcome to the update your software show
my home. My name is Rich DeMuro, but this is important.

(50:38):
I don't do all software updates, but I you know,
if these are like critical vulnerabilities, you need to do this.
And your router in your house is you know, that's
the the endpoint. You know, that's the place where someone
could get in. So you want to make sure it's
up to date. And we don't often think about updating
our routers unless you have one of these new mesh
systems that does it automatically. So if you have a
a SUS RT GTSZN WI FI and TUF router TUF,

(51:07):
that just sounds bad. I don't know what that means,
but that sounds bad. Yeah, if you have a tough router,
check for a firmware update as soon as possible. The
company released a security patch of resolving nine vulnerabilities that
could harm you. Someone could execute some remote code and
take over your network at your house. You don't want

(51:28):
that to happen. So if you don't know how to
do this, these these routers go back to twenty eighteen,
by the way, So you log into your router a
lot of times it's on the bottom of your router,
your router's IP address. I know this gets a little complicated,
but look on the bottom of your router and there's
a there's usually an address you can put in, and

(51:48):
you type that in, it'll bring you to your router's
interface and then you can update the software from there.
If you don't know how to find the IP address,
as US has a device to discoverutility, you can download that
or go to the website for that. And then once
you go to the website for your router, you'll see
a notification up here in the top right corner that
says a firmware update is available. Click firmware upgrade to

(52:12):
download install the patch and that should take just a
few minutes. But if you have an a SOUS router,
again definitely want to do the firmware update. If you
don't know how to do this yourself, find a kid
in your neighborhood that's good at tech and ask them
to help you do it. And I'm sure they'll be
happy to do that. All right, I don't think we
have enough time for a question, so let's do this.

(52:35):
Let's do an email question since we only have a minute. Hey, Rich,
we're allowing our grandson to use our car to get
to and from school in a part time job. Is
there a tracking device that can be covertly attached to
the vehicle in order to see if he's making any
side trips? Well, we have to pay a monthly monitoring fee.
Thank you, Roger. Roger, I cannot say that you should
track anyone. It is your car, so it's your progative.

(52:57):
But I don't think you should secretly track anyone. I
think that you should to talk to your grandson, tell
them that you want to track them, and that should
probably stop the side trips in general, like pretty quickly.
But there are some highly rated devices. There's a company
you could look into called Logistimatics Logistimatics dot com. And
then two highly rated products. One is called Bouncy bo

(53:19):
u n cie. That's under one hundred dollars. Plus you
have to pay eight bucks a month for the tracker
part and then track track you dot Com is thirty
dollars and that also has GPS, but keep in mind
you will need to pay a monthly fee. All right.
Coming up next, best selling author Deborah Fine is going
to tell us about the Fine Art of small talk.

(53:42):
out with you talking technology, which I can do pretty well,
but when it comes to small talk, man, I feel
like I am just not good at that. And I
was at this conference over the weekend or over the
week i should say, and it was three days of

(54:03):
non stop small talk. So they would do kind of
like you know, a breakfast small talk. Then they do
a talk on stage, break out small talk while you
wait for the next session, do another session on stage
small talk again, small talk during cocktail hour, small talk everywhere.
Joining me now is author Deborah Fine. She wrote the

(54:24):
book on small talk, The Fine Art of Small Talk,
And Deborah, thanks for joining me today. Is it your
birthday today?

Speaker 8 (54:31):
Rich?

Speaker 9 (54:31):
It's my birthday today.

Speaker 1 (54:33):
Happy day. Hey, that's a that's a great way to
start small talk. Hey it's your birthday, Happy birthday.

Speaker 9 (54:40):
So you can't use that a good one as an icebreaker,
and it's pretty self centered. I just use that to
tweet out today.

Speaker 1 (54:47):
Okay, So so already I'm self centered. See this is
my problem.

Speaker 9 (54:51):
Well I do that, then I'm self centered. It's all
about you right now, rich Okay, Well.

Speaker 1 (54:56):
Here's my first question for you. Right am I abnormal
in the fact that I feel like small talk can
be really tricky sometimes.

Speaker 9 (55:04):
Well not only tricky, but as I listened to you
describe your week, I was exhausted, But everyone listening was
just as exhausted, unless they're an extrovert, of course, or
unless they had more than one cocktail or five cocktails,
and it's not as exhausting, of course.

Speaker 1 (55:17):
But then you get then you run into like you know,
you don't want to do that either.

Speaker 9 (55:22):
You know, of course not. So here's here's the trick
to small talker, I mean, the many tricks. Number one
is to you decide how much time you're going to
invest in the energy you're going to invest. But then
you've got to do it right. So what I mean
by right is I turn it into a task. I'm
an introvert by nature. Who I hope sounds like an
extrovert right now. So when I walk into a networking event,

(55:44):
or that coffee break, or the reception before the dinner
or the awards or whatever you had to go through
this week, we're sitting in the auditorium waiting for the
next speaker, I approach that as a task. Here's the task.
Meet the person I right, meet the person on my left,
don't wait for them to introduce themselves. Walk into a
hospitality suite. Tell myself, I'm going to meet two new people.
I'm going to meet four new people. One new person.

(56:06):
I get to decide the task, and then when my
task is done, then I get to In my case,
I do like to drink, so I'll go and drink
or I'll leave early. How great would that be? So
small talk it sounds like a waste of saliva to
most people because it most of us think it's sports
or the weather. But what small talk really is, I believe,

(56:27):
is the appetizer to a relationship. In your case, because
you're at a business industry conference, it was the appetiser
to business relationships. Although anything else is possible. But anytime
we invest time in getting to know people or just
frame conversations with small talk. So think about this before
or after the picture frame of a business conversation, let's say,

(56:50):
the provision of a service, the negotiation of a contract,
the evaluation of a candidate, before or after. If we
use small talk, then we develop these business friendship, business
relationships and all things, you know, being equal people do
business with their friends and all things not being so equal,
people still do business with their friends. So it is

(57:10):
a good investment of our time just to do it
in a quality way when we choose to do it,
and when we're spent exhausted done that, we should just
tune out or go sit in the reception area, plan
your device for a while, then come back in.

Speaker 1 (57:24):
Okay, you mentioned the device. So I feel like I'm
seeing when I go because I go to a lot
of I basically come home on a weekly basis and
explain to my wife how how many events I have
to go to where you really have to put yourself
out there, where you have to make these small talks.
You have to meet people, you have to introduce yourself,
ask people what they do. All this good stuff and

(57:45):
I find that there are an element of folks who
sort of retreat into their phone because now it used
to be you know, let's say you're in a standard
kind of cocktail reception kind of thing. There's a couple
tables set up, some people already kind of paired off,
they know someone whatever, and then other people might just
stand there and stare at their phone. So do you
feel like we're seeing more of a trend of that
happening or has that always happened? And you know, is

(58:08):
that okay to do or no? Should you really just
not do that?

Speaker 9 (58:12):
I think I'm not positive of this, but I believe
that people have that crutch of their phone that we
can view. But in the past, because I was one
of those people. You know, I was an engineer originally
in my profession, and I was an INTROVERTI shy person.
I stood over in the corner by myself, and you know,

(58:32):
I joked about drinking. I was not a drinker at
that time. But I do believe people would huddle at
the bar because they didn't have a device to look
down at. There were a million crutches, rich, It's just
that the crutch right now is a device. Do I
think it's wrong. Absolutely, your device should not be out
and about, even at a if I sit down with
you to dine, it should not be out and about
on the table. It should either be in a pocket,

(58:54):
a handback, whatever it may be. It certainly should be
facing down and turned off. And if you wear an
Apple Watch on your rist, please stop it, just because
you're driving me nuts and I just really I cannot
stand it, So for rich let me and people have
forgotten this. A phone has a phone feature. I know

(59:15):
we've forgotten this, but wouldn't it be grand. It's like
as recently as yesterday, I got an inquiry in my
business and instead of replying the email that's how it
was delivered, I picked up the phone and used the
phone feature. Now asked me if she answered no. She
did not, but I left a phone message and said
I follow up by email. You know, we need to
have this space to face interaction or this where I
can just hearing your voice right now. I don't know you.

(59:36):
Now you're in a you originally asked me a question
about going to these functions, et cetera. You're at a
disadvantage because I'm guessing this. I don't know you, we've
never talked. I didn't even know who you were two
days ago. Sorry because I don't live in LA.

Speaker 1 (59:49):
But no offense.

Speaker 9 (59:54):
Yeah, well those of us who are living Denver, who
are home of the NBA champion Denver Nuggets, everyone didn't
even exist, mister Laker fan. But nonetheless I move on.

Speaker 1 (01:00:04):
So I.

Speaker 9 (01:00:07):
Think you're probably recognizable. So you're at a disadvantage because
people must come around you, and so you're almost like
have to come up with small tuck more than.

Speaker 5 (01:00:13):
The rest of us.

Speaker 9 (01:00:14):
But I would say to people to walk in prepared,
come up with two to three things to talk about
when you walk into the situations at least that Riches
does describe. So, for instance, I call it free information.
So free information is the information that's free to all
of us. It's sort of a commonality. So if I'm
at a conference, I can say to anybody that I
introduce myself, say, so, is this your first time at

(01:00:35):
this conference, or what was your number one takeaway from
the speaker this morning? Or what other conferences do you attend.
The free information I have is that you're at this conference, right,
and so am I You know, what did you see
the exhibit hall that caught your eye. So if I'm
at a fundraiser, what got you involved in this fundraiser?
How are you connected? If I'm at your party at
your house, you just disclosed that you're married. By the way,

(01:00:56):
everyone listening, don't ask people if they're married. Don't ask them.
If I found out Rich is married because he disclosed it,
I am not going to ask him do you have
any kids? Because folks, they either don't and you're headed
down a rabbit hole, or they do and they won't
shut up.

Speaker 1 (01:01:12):
But I made that faux pas yesterday. I asked someone,
I said, oh, do you have kids? And as soon
as I asked it, and I realized because when I
looked up this person on their Instagram, their entire mo
is sort of like, uh, I don't need a man,
and the like I make my own money, this and that,
and I was like, oh wow, I really kind of
I really stepped into a bee's nest there.

Speaker 9 (01:01:33):
So want me to tell you my favorite way to
get to know someone with's out asking those kinds of questions.

Speaker 1 (01:01:38):
Yes, give us the tips because I.

Speaker 9 (01:01:41):
Sounded like I was joking around, but I'm not. I
don't think it's cool to ask people, are you married?

Speaker 10 (01:01:46):
I don't.

Speaker 9 (01:01:46):
Even if I'm in an industry conference, I'll ask you,
you know, what kind of work you do, because then
it's it's appropriate. But if I'm outside of an industry
conference or a work function, I don't. I'm not going
to start a conversation with what do you do?

Speaker 7 (01:01:58):
Rich?

Speaker 9 (01:01:59):
So my favorite way to get to know someone without
asking questions that you might put your foot in your
mouth or cause them any awkwardness or discomfort, is to say, like,
to you, Rich, I know enough about you professionally. I
happen to just learn you how to wife. But let's
put that aside for a second. My favorite way to
get to know you is to say, outside of work, Rich,
what keeps you busy? One day, I meet you at

(01:02:20):
a fundraiser, outside of you know, working on behalf of
this food bank? What keeps you busy? So I meet
you at back to school night with the kids. So
outside of the kids, what keeps you busy? It's my
favorite way to get to know somebody. They can disclose
you know, I do yoga, I like to jog, I'm
I'm in a book club, I have three kids, I

(01:02:42):
like to travel. Whatever they disclose is now what you
get to talk about with them?

Speaker 1 (01:02:46):
Oh I love that, And that is such a little
secret weapon right there. So now I know, outside of
you know, helping people with you know, let's say I
meet another tech person, outside of helping people with technology,
what keeps you busy? It's such an easy way to
get them to open out to function.

Speaker 9 (01:03:02):
Let's say your wife is there, so I don't know
her either, obviously, but I don't want to dismiss her.
Often people when I'm with my husband, who I don't
share his last name, and he happens to be a doctor,
so he gets all that energy. Right, You're fine. I
don't need to tell you what I do for a living.
That's all great. But what I observe is people never
say to me. They don't want to say what do
you do because they're worried I don't do anything? Okay,

(01:03:23):
So but if I had that wonderful opportunity to meet
your wife, I would say, what keeps you busy? Outside
of being dragged to these events with your husband?

Speaker 1 (01:03:30):
I love it. See, look at I just got two
things that I wish I knew all week long.

Speaker 9 (01:03:35):
Thank you Rich.

Speaker 1 (01:03:36):
Okay, Deborah, we're going to leave it there. Deborah Fine,
author of the Fine Art of Small Talk. How to
start a conversation, keep it going, build networking skills, and
leave a positive impression. It was recently updated this year,
so go ahead and check it out on Amazon. I
think we got some great takeaways from this conversation, Deborah,
and now I cannot wait from a next event.

Speaker 9 (01:03:56):
Thanks for finding me, Rich all right er, thanks.

Speaker 1 (01:03:59):
For being on todayppreciate it. Even though you knock to
the Lakers, that's okay, we won't hold it again.

Speaker 9 (01:04:06):
You guys, just you have no shame out there. The
NBA champions Okay, we're done.

Speaker 1 (01:04:12):
Okay, thanks Deva, appreciate it. Thank you, oh Deva Fine
on Amazon. My pretty sure said they have one championship.
This is not sports talk, so you know I'm I'm
already above my pay grade here. All right, coming up,
we're gonna take more of your calls at Triple eight
rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two,
four to one zero one. Remember that takeaway outside of

(01:04:35):
what brings you here? What keeps you busy? I love
that you. We're listening to Rich on Tech. Welcome back
to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here talking technology with
you at Triple eight Rich one on one eight eight
eight seven four to two four one zero one. I

(01:04:56):
feel like our conversation, our small talk conversation went off
the rails the end there, So uh, Deborah was a
good sport. All right, let's go to Angel in Gardena, California. Angel.
You're Ama Fritch, Thank you Rich, big fan of yours question.

Speaker 10 (01:05:16):
And my wife works as a factory where it's really noisy.
She uses airphones to get this stress level down, just
to listen to music. But recently they told all the
workers not to use their phones are at work to

(01:05:42):
make calls while they're working. So they told her not
to use airphones anymore unless they are only for music.
I've been looking for bluetooth airphones that don't have a phone,
and I haven't been able to find anything that connects

(01:06:04):
to and Android phone. Is there any help you can
give me?

Speaker 1 (01:06:11):
That's a good question. Most people want the uh want
the microphone.

Speaker 10 (01:06:16):
Yes, I know, but you know they want to get
intro so yeah, no, I understand that.

Speaker 1 (01:06:21):
And she doesn't want to use a wired one either, right, No, no.

Speaker 10 (01:06:25):
Because there's type of work it's better for her to
use wireless Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:06:32):
So I'm trying to find a couple of headphones. Now
I don't have experience with these headphones, so I can't
tell you if they're good or not. Some of them
do have good ratings, but most of the time, and
I will, I will pull a friend that I have
that knows more about this than I do, because they
test all the different earbuds. So I will, I will

(01:06:54):
mention that and get get to you with that. But uh,
for now, the the ones that are coming up, because
ninety nine percent of earbuds have a microphone, especially the
wireless ones, and I think wired, you're gonna easily be
able to find a pair of wired earbuds. Like if
you want something that's super cheap, Moondrop Quarks. These are

(01:07:18):
highly rated, and these have no microphone for thirteen bucks.
The problem is most phones like you alluded to, don't
have a headphone jack anymore. So if she wants one
with a headphone jack and just wants a wired pair
of earbuds, Moondrop Quarks, they are thirteen bucks, highly rated,

(01:07:38):
no microphone on those whatsoever. Now, when it comes to Bluetooth,
I found let's see here, I found two pairs, one
I'm trying to see if this one has a microphone
or not. This one, I think does not have a microphone.
It looks like it's twenty bucks and it's a company

(01:07:58):
called Ja Rabbit and it looks like they're sold at Walmart,
so that could be an option. But the one that
is a little bit more well known ISO tunes and
these are called free two point zero listen only, but
these are expensive. These are one hundred and twenty dollars.
So I'm trying to find from some of the companies

(01:08:19):
that I know, like Belkin that makes earbuds Monoprice, if
they make a solution without the microphone built in, and
I'm just not finding them. So I see the frustration
here because these are not easy to find. But here's
what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna pull my friend. She
reviews all of the earbuds for Wirecutter, and I'm going

(01:08:41):
to see what she comes up with, because I guarantee
she's got something and I will mention it on next
week's show. Angel or actually you know what, have Kim,
get your phone number and your text or your email
and I will definitely get in touch with you directly,
and if you are listening, and you have a suggestion
of earbuds that are Bluetooth that you love that do

(01:09:01):
not have a microphone. Let me know hello at richon
tech dot TV and I'll get it into the feedback
section of the show. Good question. That's a tricky one.
That's a very complicated one, something that you know takes
a little research to find out. Let me tell you
about Rivian.

Speaker 5 (01:09:20):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:09:21):
Rivian is the company that makes electric cars. They came
out with an electric pickup truck first, and then they
came out with an electric suv. They're very popular, but
they are very expensive. I've test driven them. These are
sort of like rugged vehicles. Amazon's a big investor in
this company, and they're very, very nice, and I've seen

(01:09:41):
more and more of them on the roads, at least
here in the California area. But they are now saying,
you know what, we are going to use Tesla's supercharger network.
So they signed an agreement this week to provide Rivian
drivers access to Tesla's super charger network. That's a huge deal.

(01:10:02):
Now they say they're going to continue to expand their
own what they call Adventure network. But last I checked,
they did not have a lot of chargers with that network,
and they're putting them mostly in places like national parks
and things like that. So here's the deal. The folks
that already have a Rivian R one T and an
R one S that's their truck R one, get it

(01:10:24):
our Rivian one truck, Rivian one suv. They will be
able to get an adapter to charge on Tesla's supercharger
network as early as spring twenty twenty four, and then
starting with their twenty twenty five vehicles, they are going
to have the Tesla charger built in, so you know,
the charging port is going to be Tesla's, so if

(01:10:45):
you pop this thing open, it's going to look like
a Tesla charger. It's called the North American Charging Standard,
which I find so ironic that Tesla came up with
that name way way long ago, and now it actually
is becoming the North American Charging Standard. Why because in
recent weeks we had GM was the first to say,
you know what, we're just going to go ahead and

(01:11:06):
use Tesla's charging infrastructure and their charge report, and then
Ford said, you know what, that's a good idea. We're
going to do the same exact thing. So now We've
got two three companies that are all using Tesla's supercharger network,
which I know some Tesla owners are probably not too
happy about that because now they're thinking, oh, great, does

(01:11:27):
this mean these chargers are going to be a lot
more crowded. Yeah. Probably, but this is going to be
a slow process. But what we're seeing here is, at
least in the US, the Tesla charging standard is becoming
the standard. So Tesla is winning the format war when
it comes to how we are going to charge our
cars in the future. And the fact that three major

(01:11:47):
companies are now going to use these chargers in their
car and that they can access that supercharger network, who's
going to be next? I guarantee other companies will fall
in line with this, because you don't want to be
left out at this point. And now, if you're choosing
a car, yeah, you probably want that ease of charging.
All right. If you have a question, give me a
call Triple eight rich one on one eighty eight seven

(01:12:09):
four to two four one zero one. You're listening to
rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich
DeMuro here hanging out talking technology with you at Triple
eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four
to two four one zero one. You are lighting up

(01:12:31):
the phone lines today. Do appreciate that?

Speaker 6 (01:12:35):
Uh?

Speaker 1 (01:12:35):
You know, I'm on TV as well, So if you
want to check out my TV segments where I cover
a variety of tech topics, just go to Rich on
tech dot TV. While you're there, you good follow me
on social media. I'm on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. What
did I post this week? Uh? Let's see, Well, not much.
I guess I was on kind of out of town,

(01:12:56):
so I did post a lot of stories, so you
can check those out while you're on my Instagram. All right,
let's kick off this hour with uh, let's see Barbara
in Manta Bello. Barbara, you're on with Rich.

Speaker 6 (01:13:09):
Thank you, Rich, Thank you for taking my call.

Speaker 1 (01:13:11):
Thanks for calling in.

Speaker 7 (01:13:13):
This will be regarding the victrola stream Onyx record player
that is supposed to work well with soos. Yes, yes,
I'm interested in purchasing it, but I do want to
know does it work uninterrupted excuse me, with unwired speakers
or do I have to actually wire solo speakers to it?

Speaker 1 (01:13:30):
Oh? Good question. So do you do you not have
a Sono system or do you expect to set.

Speaker 6 (01:13:34):
One up with us if I have quite a system already,
and based on you lucking it so much, I tried
my first SOS and I've been hooked ever since.

Speaker 1 (01:13:42):
Oh it's such a great system, So this will work.
Now when you say wired versus wireless, what do you
mean exactly?

Speaker 7 (01:13:50):
Well, I've read that. Say, for instance, I could just
play it without hooking it up to any actual SOS.

Speaker 1 (01:13:59):
Yeah, as far as I understand, that's the way it works.
So when I was given the demo of this at CES,
they is completely wireless, so it will connect to your
son speakers via Wi Fi and all you have to
have is one. You probably need a recent Do you
have a recent Sono speaker? Yeah, okay, so if you
have a recent son No speaker, it should be just fine.

(01:14:20):
It will connect over Wi Fi. And that's why this
is a little bit more expensive than similar record players.
But this is completely wireless, and the fact that it
works with sons, it is certified, so it's not like
a you know, kind of where they're just kind of
shoehorning it in. This is actually made to work with Sonos.
So I think this would be a great addition to

(01:14:40):
your collection if you don't mind spending the six hundred
dollars to buy it.

Speaker 6 (01:14:44):
Well, actually they have one that's a little bit less now,
the onyx or. I'm hoping with Amazon sale, maybe I
can pick one up.

Speaker 1 (01:14:51):
Ah, that's a good I like. I like how you think. So, yeah,
there are two versions of this, but there is a
difference between them. So let me see. I need to
look and refresh myself with this whole situation. So there
is the carbon and then okay, the carbon is the
more expensive one, and then the stream is the less expense.

(01:15:11):
I've got it. Okay, so the carbon is a little
bit more, little fancier, but for six hundred dollars. Yeah,
this thing. I've been tracking the price on this for
a while. It has not gone down, so I hope
that you're right. The only thing I did see when
I went to the website is there isn't a ten
percent off if you put your email address into the website.
So if worse comes to worse, if you can't get

(01:15:32):
this thing on sale during Prime Day, you can put
the email address and get ten percent off, which will
take sixty dollars off. But we do know the ways
to track Amazon purchases, so if you want if you
haven't your eye on something on Amazon. We'll probably talk
about this a little bit later because we're going to
talk about Prime Day. But what I do is I
either add it to my cart to be able to

(01:15:53):
watch the price over the time, or you can there's
actually a couple of ways. There's an extent called Honey
which you can add things to your wish list on
there and it will give you an email when the
price drops. Then there's something called Camel Camel, I know,
such a weird name, but you can put a price
in there an Amazon like a link to an Amazon product,

(01:16:16):
and it will send you an alert when that price changes.
And then finally Google, actually, if you're using Google Chrome,
they have a feature where they will track prices as well,
so you can track prices on Google Chrome itself. I
find that that is a little bit hit or miss.
Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes a little price

(01:16:37):
tracker shows up, other times it doesn't. So right now,
if I click on this Victrola stream ONYX, if I
click up in the URL, I'll see a little bell
that says track price. So now if I click that,
it says you're tracking this product. This page is saved
in other bookmarks, and it will alert you on your

(01:16:59):
phone or in Chrome if that price drops. So those
are a couple different ways of doing it. But Barbara,
you know I have my eye on this thing. So
now I'm tracking the price. Now I'm wondering if this
is going to go on sale for Prime. The only
thing I said about my whole record experience was that
I didn't like how they only last for like twenty minutes.
I'm so used to just unlimited music all day long.

(01:17:21):
So great question there. All right, if you have Visible,
this is kind of an issue. If you have Visible, they,
according to nine to five, Google, are disabling auto pay
if you're on one of these older plans. So for
about a year now, Visible, which is owed by Verizon,
has been transitioning to two new plans that apparently give

(01:17:43):
you better five G coverage, but you have to switch
your simcard out. So you've probably gotten some emails about this.
Maybe you've had to figure this out and do it.
But the price that you have to uh the plan
that you have to switch to also has a higher price.
It's about five dollars more a month. So it used
to be twenty five, now it's thirty all, oh, they're
giving you a temporary five dollars discount, so couple of things.

(01:18:05):
And I guess the author of this article uses Visible,
so that's why they're interested in this. But I thought
it was interesting because a lot of people do use Visible,
but their messaging has gotten more urgent, telling customers through
texts and emails that your service is going to be disconnected.
So the most dramatic part of this whole thing is
that Visible's website now gives you a notification that autopay

(01:18:29):
will be disabled as part of this switch. So basically,
they're forcing you to take notice because you will have
to log into the website to pay your bill. So
any payment due on or after July one, twenty twenty three,
if you're still on this old plan, must be made manually.
And because autopay payments are processed two days before, autopay

(01:18:49):
will be disabled as of June twenty ninth, which means
if you don't pay your auto pay, you're not going
to have your service. So they're trying to force you
into doing this. Now, here's the thing. If you're on
this original plan, you have to do something by September
because this old plan I guess this network will be
shut down in September. What network are they talking about?

(01:19:12):
Because Visible uses five G and four G. I don't know.
It's kind of an odd thing, but the reality is,
if you are using Visible and you're getting all of
these messages, it's probably best to just go ahead and
do the switchover. So if you have to get a
new SIM card, tell them, hey, you know, I'll take
the new SIM. You pop it in your phone and
it works. If your phone supports eSIM, it's probably easier

(01:19:35):
just to access the eSIM and just upgrade that way.
But Visible could be hit or miss. I mean, I
really like the pricing, but they've made a lot of
changes in recent years to you know, it's good. It's
a good option, but I know reviews are hit or
miss on this thing. And then United doing something cool.
United has a new mobile app feature that will be

(01:19:58):
a lot more useful if your travel plans are disrupted.
So starting now, if you've ever been on a flight
that is changed or delayed, you have to go in
this giant line to help you get options for delays
and cancelations, and you have to stand there with a

(01:20:18):
whole bunch of people who are also delayed and or canceled,
and they may give you a voucher, they may give
you a different flight, they may rebook you. But now,
and I don't know why this wasn't a thing before,
you'll get a text notification if you're on one of
these flights that is interrupted, and it will bring you
to the mobile app Orunited dot com and if your
reservation is impacted, you will get the ability to rebook

(01:20:43):
your flight or get a new flight, track your bag,
see where they are, or you'll get a voucher. And
this is the big important part is that they will
now give you vouchers through the app, so you can
get a hotel, meal or ride share voucher if you're eligible.
And that's really important because I remember my son and
I were delayed, delayed, delayed, delayed, And this is for

(01:21:06):
flights that are delayed I think more than sixty minutes. Yeah,
when a flight is delayed by more than sixty minutes
or canceled, this is when you're going to automatically see
this new option for delaying cancelations inside the United app.
But my son and I were delayed, and this was
before this obviously, and he was like four at the time,
I think, long story short, it just kept getting more

(01:21:27):
and more delayed. It was so annoying. We ended up
getting on the plane. We had to get off the
plane because like something happened with the airplane. And I said,
you know what, enough is enough? I called in. Everyone
was lining up. I called in and I said, you
know what, you got to book us on a different flight,
and by the way, i'd like first class. And I'm
not kidding. I actually got disconnected from the agent on

(01:21:47):
this call, which was ironic, but I'm not kidding. When
I looked at my app, I miraculously saw that our
itinerary had been refreshed and my ticket was rebooked and
we were in first class. And that is probably one
of my favorite stories. And that person will never get
a thank you because I don't know who they were
or their name or anything like that. And they didn't

(01:22:08):
even tell me that they did this. But it was
such a nice gesture because I asked for it. They
didn't really fight me on it, and we actually got disconnected.
They could have just literally waited till I called back,
and they didn't. They proactively gave us what I asked
for without even telling me and then when I got
on the plane, I was pleasantly surprised. And my kid
will never stop talking about that. By the way, he said, hey, Dad,

(01:22:31):
can we get the every time we fly now? Can
we get that seat where you get the free chicken?
Remember we got that free chicken that whole meal. I said, yes, son,
that doesn't happen very often. That was a fluke anyway,
United thanks for making it easier when folks are delayed
or canceled. All right, coming up next in this hour,
we are going to talk to Julie Ramhold. She is

(01:22:53):
the consumer analyst with Deal News. She's going to talk
Amazon Prime Day Plus. We have time for some more
of your questions at Triple A rich one on one
eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Coming up. You are sitting in the seat that gives
you a free chicken. You're listening to rich on Tech.
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here at

(01:23:14):
Triple eight rich one on one. That's eight eight eight
seven four to two, four to one zero one. It's
been quite the show so far. Let's see if you
listen to the podcast of this show, which I know
some of you do, uh do me a favor and
rate and review it and share it with your friends.
Let them know that you listen to this show and

(01:23:36):
why you listen. If you listen on the radio, take
a screenshot of you listening or a picture, anything, just
to let folks know that you do indeed listen and
that will help grow the show. All right, let's go
to uh Gary, Gary's in Redondo Beach. Gary, you're on with.

Speaker 11 (01:23:53):
Rich Hey, Rich, Hey, love show.

Speaker 1 (01:23:57):
Thank you.

Speaker 11 (01:23:58):
Checking out the new Max book Air fifteen inch okay,
and that friend of mine I was saying, oh, this
sounds good, I should get it, and a friend of
mine said that it's the fifteen inches new.

Speaker 8 (01:24:11):
But the M.

Speaker 11 (01:24:11):
Two chip is it's going to be outdated soon by
the M three or whatever chip they're working on next.
So I wonder what your thought is about that.

Speaker 1 (01:24:22):
Well, that is true. But here's the thing. I mean,
what are you doing on this computer?

Speaker 5 (01:24:30):
Oh?

Speaker 11 (01:24:30):
Just zoom meaning nothing big, nothing, you know, earth shattering,
just personal use. I just like Apple products better than
than the PC's or Microsoft.

Speaker 1 (01:24:42):
Okay, So the M two chip was released on June sixth,
twenty twenty two, so that is over a year old.
It is in this new MacBook Air. And it's a
little confusing because I think number one, this MacBook Air
has gotten incredible reviews. So I think there is absolutely
no reason and not to get this. And the problem

(01:25:03):
is your your friend is right, and you know the
M two chip is is your friend? Do they happen
to not like Apple in general?

Speaker 5 (01:25:10):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (01:25:11):
No, they have all Apple Okay, so they're kind of
an Apple expert. I mean. So the thing is, it's
tough to say that you shouldn't get this because when
they come out with the new MacBook Air fifteen inch
next year, they're probably going to use a chip that
is older as well. Because the whole reason they're able
to offer this at this price is because they're using

(01:25:32):
a chip that has been around for a bit. Now,
if we look at the facts, Number one, they didn't
announce an M three this year, so we don't have
an idea that they're going to come out with an
M three MacBook next year. Now, they could do that,
and you may buy this, and you may be frustrated
and say, Rich you led me astray, like why'd you
do that? But I think that for what you need

(01:25:53):
out of this computer, this computer is going to serve
you pretty well. If you're doing something like if you
told me to video edit or something like that, I
would definitely recommend that you move up to a pro
system which definitely has the newer chips. So, for instance,
I've got the MacBook Pro fourteen inch, which I immediately
regretted because this is too small, but it has a

(01:26:15):
M two pro chip which came out a little bit later,
and it came out in this notebook. So but the
fifteen inch MacBook Air, I know it has some of
the older chips in it, but these chips are still
really good. And when you look at what Apple does
from start to finish with their software and their power
efficiency and these chips, I mean, this is going to

(01:26:35):
be a really good system for the price that they're
asking for. Have you decided on how much memory you
would get in this thing, because that's kind of the
big question.

Speaker 11 (01:26:45):
I wanted to get one parabyte.

Speaker 1 (01:26:48):
And what about the RAM Okay, So I think that's
a good decision. I think the because I think the
base is eight right right, yeah, So I think the
sixteen is probably going to help keep this thing faster
longer than getting the base storage on the Apple always
does this weird thing where they've got a good price

(01:27:08):
at the beginning, you know, the entry level device, but
if you pay just a little bit more, you're going
to get a lot more out of that device. So
I think that's smart. So I say, Gary, go for it.
I understand that it's a little bit older technology inside,
but it doesn't mean it's bad technology, and it doesn't
mean it's outdated technology. So for what you're using it for,
I think you'll be pretty happy.

Speaker 11 (01:27:29):
I really appreciate it.

Speaker 5 (01:27:30):
Thank you very much.

Speaker 1 (01:27:31):
All right, Gary, I appreciate you calling in today. Have
a great day you too, all right. Yeah, that's always
a tough thing with Apple products, is the timing of things.
When do you get it? You know, I always think
of Apple products as like you kind of have to
get it like the first day it comes out, because
they've got a time frame on them of like a

(01:27:52):
year before they come out with the new version of it.
So the website that I like to go to and
for Gary, this could probably be helpful too, even though
the fifteen inch mac Book Air is sort of in
a class of its own. But the website I like
is called Buyer's Guide by MacRumors, So if you go
to buyers Guide dot MacRumors dot com, they have listed
every single product that Apple makes and they tell you

(01:28:16):
buy now, caution, don't buy, or neutral. So if you're
looking at maccomputers, for instance, the fifteen inch MacBook Air
since it just came out, is buy now. The thirteen
inch MacBook Air is caution. And the reason why it's
caution is because you can look at the release dates
of this product in the past March twenty fifteen, June

(01:28:37):
twenty seventeen, October twenty eighteen, July twenty nineteen, March twenty twenty,
November twenty twenty, and it does an average of how
many days between those releases, which is four hundred and
forty six days between new thirteen inch back MacBook Airs,
and right now it's been three hundred and fifty one days,
So that tells you that in another one hundred days

(01:28:59):
they're would be a new thirteen inch MacBook Air. Is
it always perfect, Absolutely not, But it's a good kind
of gauge to see if you should spend your money
on something, and if you are going to spend your
money on something, perhaps it should be a little bit discounted. So,
for instance, if you look at the new home pod
buy now HomePod Mini Neutral. It's been nine hundred and

(01:29:21):
eighty four days since they released the home Pod Mini,
so I think that one is up for a refresh,
even though we have no history to go by, because
that's the first product in that cycle. So anyway, the
website is Buyer's Guide dot MacRumors dot com. Again, I
put all of these notes on my website. Rich Ontech

(01:29:41):
dot tv is the place to go.

Speaker 5 (01:29:44):
All right.

Speaker 1 (01:29:44):
Coming up, we're gonna talk Amazon Prime Day. Amazon Prime
Day is back on July eleventh and twelfth. Are you ready?
Is your wallet ready? Julie Ramhold, consumer analysts with dealnews
dot com. We'll join me next to talk Amazon Prime
Day twenty twenty three. You're listening to rich on Tech.

(01:30:06):
out with you, talking technology. Amazon Prime Day coming back
July eleventh and twelfth, Amazon says, will we be big
savings Amazon exclusive deals and celebrity product launches. Who doesn't

(01:30:27):
love a good celebrity product launch. Joining me now to
talk about this is Julie Ramhold, consumer analysts with dealnews
dot com. Julie, thanks so much for joining me today.

Speaker 12 (01:30:40):
About Prime Day.

Speaker 1 (01:30:42):
Yes, so Prime Day is this? Is this in the
cadence of sort of past Prime Days? I feel like
it's in It's been in like July and October, right
pretty much.

Speaker 12 (01:30:52):
It's been in July for the most part.

Speaker 13 (01:30:55):
In twenty twenty it shifted to October because of the pandemic,
and then.

Speaker 12 (01:31:00):
In twenty twenty one it was in June and October.

Speaker 13 (01:31:05):
In June, I want to say, the reasoning was because
of the Olympics that year, so they were trying to
not compete with that, and then they had a second
Prime Day event in October.

Speaker 1 (01:31:14):
So what do we think of the Prime Day event?
I know it's a you know, there are a lot
of people that shop on it. Do you feel like
it's delivered in recent years to you know, be this
big shopping day or what.

Speaker 12 (01:31:27):
I honestly think it has.

Speaker 13 (01:31:28):
I mean, every year we tend to see people complaining
that it seems like a garage sale, but also every
year Amazon manages to knock it out of the park
and have record profits and record shopping.

Speaker 12 (01:31:40):
So obviously people are still attracted to it. They're still
finding good deals, and I think part of.

Speaker 13 (01:31:47):
The problem with people who may not be really familiar
with Prime Day is they go in expecting it to
be sort of like an early Black Friday preview, and
it can be, but it's also just its own So
you end up with people expecting to see tons of
TVs on sale, and then they're disappointed that the selection

(01:32:08):
isn't as big as they hoped for, or a lot
of the deals seem to be in the home.

Speaker 12 (01:32:13):
And garden categories because that seems to be what dominates
for Prime Day.

Speaker 1 (01:32:17):
Yeah, I mean, everyone wants what they want to be
fifty percent off, and that's just not the case. I mean,
they couldn't do that. But I did get that TV.
I don't know if it was last year, the year
before the TV that was like ninety nine bucks the
forty three inch or whatever it was. I did get that.
I nabbed it and I was so proud of myself.
But my followers on social media were not happy because

(01:32:38):
they're like, how did you get it? And we didn't.
I said, well, I'm on my computer all day.

Speaker 13 (01:32:43):
They're bringing that back again this year, but the problem
is they're also introducing invite only deals and that's one
of them. So it's looking like this Prime Day, while
very similar to past ones, is also.

Speaker 12 (01:32:58):
Going to shake things up a bit.

Speaker 1 (01:32:59):
Okay, so what does that mean? What's this? I already
signed up for the invite only Prime deal on that TV.
But what does that mean? Like, are they do I guarantee?
I don't know, Like what does that mean exactly?

Speaker 13 (01:33:10):
We're honestly kind of waiting to see what it means ourselves.
As Amazon puts it, you know, if you're a Prime member,
then you can sign up for an invitation, and if
you're selected on Prime Day, you'll receive an email with
a special link that you can click and shop the
deal from there. But signing up for an invitation isn't
a guarantee, and we don't know what their selection process

(01:33:32):
is going to look like. So it could be that
they have a limited number of deals that they're you know,
willing to sell at this price, and by having people
sign up for invitations, it's on a first come, first
serve thing, or it could be some other way that
we just haven't even fathomed yet.

Speaker 1 (01:33:49):
So they could just put everything into like a hopper
and say, Okay, we're going to select one hundred people
to buy this and then once you get that, you
can purchase it, and if they don't purchase it, and
within that, we don't know how it's going to work exactly.
But the the invite only deals are seventy five percent
off an Amazon Fire TV forty three inch, sixty percent
off this watch, fifty five percent off these JBL Live

(01:34:10):
noise canceling headphones, and fifty percent off a four yo
Luna three facial cleansing brush, which I know sounds funny,
but my wife actually needs a new one of those,
So I need to sign up for that invite only.

Speaker 12 (01:34:23):
It was hard to see that one on there.

Speaker 13 (01:34:24):
I gotta be honest, like, I know those are cult
favorites for a lot of people, and I.

Speaker 12 (01:34:29):
Was like, oh, fifty percent off, that sounds good.

Speaker 13 (01:34:31):
And then I saw the original price and I was like, man,
you better jump home.

Speaker 12 (01:34:34):
Fifty percent off.

Speaker 1 (01:34:35):
Yeah, I think it was one hundred and twenty dollars
when I purchased the first one. I think those things
are not cheap. Okay, So we know this happens July eleventh,
at starting starting at three am. Oh wow, that's early
three am Eastern.

Speaker 12 (01:34:51):
That's the way Amazon does Prime Day.

Speaker 13 (01:34:52):
They'll they'll start it at around three am Eastern on
July eleventh, and then it'll run for forty eight hours
straight and at two fifty nine am Eastern on the thirteenth.

Speaker 1 (01:35:04):
Okay, so I know deal News is a great website
for finding sort of every do you guys scour the
web every day looking for the best stuff, and of
course you'll do that for Prime Day, But give me
some what's the methodology, Like, what should I do as
an average consumer to prepare myself for this and to
get the best deals.

Speaker 13 (01:35:22):
Honestly, when it comes to something like Prime Day, it
can be so overwhelming if you don't go in with
a plan. So I think it's well worth kind of
creating a wish list now for Prime Day, figuring out
what you want to look at, what you want to
focus on, and then start looking ahead.

Speaker 12 (01:35:38):
You can go to the Today's.

Speaker 13 (01:35:40):
Deals section on Amazon's website and start browsing through upcoming
deals and mark any that you're interested in as watching.
And I mean you can do this every day. You
obviously don't have to wait for the Prime Day deals,
and there are some early Prime Day deals that you
can take advantage of now, But when it gets.

Speaker 12 (01:35:57):
Closer to the actual holiday.

Speaker 13 (01:35:59):
It definitely pays, you know, a day or two in
advance to start looking through them long before they pop up,
so you kind of know when you need to be
aware what you're looking at, what kind of deals you
can hopefully expect. The biggest thing is when you click
watching on those deals, you'll be able to receive a

(01:36:19):
notification from Amazon just before it goes live, so it
should give you a leg up and hopefully let you
get something before it has a chance to sell out.

Speaker 1 (01:36:27):
Now, everyone wants something different out of this. But one
thing that is for sure is that Amazon Devices and
I talk a lot about technology. They often go on
sale in a very big way, and of course they've
said some of these things already, like deals starting Oh
deal starting now, save up to fifty five percent on
select Alexa enabled devices, including the Echo Show five, the

(01:36:50):
Echo Pop sixty three percent off up to on kids devices,
Echo Glow Ring bundles, euro Wi Fi systems, blink outdoor cameras.
So I feel like if you have your eye on
an Amazon product, like a brand, you probably don't want
to buy that right now.

Speaker 13 (01:37:10):
No, I would wait unless there is an early Prime
Day deal going for something like that. Just because they're
not likely to offer a better deal when the holiday
itself rolls around. These early deals are kind of meant
to entice shoppers and get them paying attention. So if
there's something that you want that's currently on sale labeled
as an early Prime Day deal, you can probably go

(01:37:32):
ahead and safely take advantage of that and not worry
about seeing a lower price when July eleventh rolls around.
But that said, don't just restrict yourself to things like
Ring and Eero and the Blank cameras and the Alexa
enabled devices, because if it has Amazon's branding on it,
there's a really good chance we'll see some kind of

(01:37:52):
a deal. So if you're looking at a new Kindle,
it's a really good time to look at things like that,
And because is for Prime members, it's also a really
good time to look at Amazon services as well. So
if you're looking at a new Kindle, it's also a
good time to try Kindle Unlimited for you know, all

(01:38:13):
the reading that you could possibly want, and see if
you like that service enough to stick with it month
to month.

Speaker 1 (01:38:19):
And there's also obviously Alexa can help you with this,
so it says Prime members can ask Alexa for deal
notifications on products added to their wish list, So that's
kind of cool. So you can say, Alexa add whatever
product to my car and then ask Alexa to notify
you about the deal when it's live. And you'd also
ask Alexa for an event reminder, so you can say,

(01:38:40):
Alexa set a reminder for Prime Day and that will
help you. What do we make of the price of
Prime these days? It's one hundred and thirty nine dollars
a year or fifteen dollars a month. Is that still
worth it?

Speaker 13 (01:38:49):
Julie, It's it's going to be a little hard to say.
There's no easy way to say, yes, it's worth it. No,
it's not, because it's going to be subjective based on
individuals and what they want out of Prime. Basically, if
you're using everything that Prime offers, I would say it's
still worth it. But if you're only kind of leaning
into Amazon for the shopping.

Speaker 12 (01:39:10):
Capabilities, it's probably good to.

Speaker 13 (01:39:14):
Have Prime for a month to shop for Prime Day
or around Black Friday something like that, to take advantage
of deals and the perks that Prime members get around
shopping during those times. But other than that, it just
may not be reasonable to pay one hundred and thirty
nine dollars a year if you're not also taking advantage
of the Amazon Music, the Prime Video, all of those

(01:39:35):
different parts that you get.

Speaker 1 (01:39:37):
One thing to keep in mind, if you are on
government assistance, you can get Prime Access for six ninety
nine a month at Amazon dot com slash get Prime Access.
Julie Ramhold with dealnews dot com, thanks so much for
joining me today. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 12 (01:39:54):
Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 1 (01:39:55):
All right, and deal News is, by the way, one
of my stops. Every single day, I check it with
all of my bookmarks to see what deals are out there.
So they do a great job every day of unearthing deals,
not just on Prime Day. All right, coming up, it's
the end of the show. We're gonna do the feedback segment,
so we'll do that when we come back next Right here,

(01:40:15):
you are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to
rich on Tech, closing out the show with the feedback segment.
You love sending these emails to me at Hello at
Richontech dot tv. We're still looking to help Angel. Angel
was looking for some earbuds for his wife that do

(01:40:38):
not have a microphone. So if you have a good
pair of these. Let me know. Hello at richontech dot TV.
I pinged my friend over at Wirecutter. We'll see what
she has to say about it. Let's see what else.
Steve writes in Hey, Rich, I heard her call on
your show. The caller asked if Salesforce would be a
good platform for his college age daughter to learn salesforce

(01:40:59):
has changed in recent times. It's one of those career
things that's been flooded by all the companies offering training
programs to get people certified as salesforce administrators. Even with certification,
you're not going to get a job as an administrator
without several years experience working as an administrator. The training programs,
of course, won't tell you this, as they're making money
from selling their training programs. My wife has five Salesforce

(01:41:21):
certifications with three years of experience, and it's it was
still difficult to get a job. Many jobs want more
than just salesforce. It's not something that just anyone can do,
as the training programs advertise. Steve. Oh, great advice. Steve,
appreciate that because that's probably what our caller saw was Salesforce. Well,
he said he had it at his company. So, but

(01:41:43):
good advice. Yeah, these training programs don't necessarily mean you're
going to get a job. So I think that's why
for me personally, I would look at jobs that i'd
want to do and see what the skills are that
they want. Jim writes in Hey, Rich, I'm looking for
that Amazon gift card hack that involves Amazon gift card car.
I was watching KTLA the other morning and the discussion
was gift card balances. You mentioned a way that you

(01:42:05):
can load your Amazon account with your gift cards. How's
this done? I can't find a way to do this,
Thanks and advance, Jim. Yes, so this is specifically for
Amazon gift cards. So if you are sorry Visa gift cards.
So if you get one of these Visa gift cards,
let's say it's one hundred dollars, fifty dollars, it's really
tough to use unless you use that full amount all
the same time, you're going to be left with some

(01:42:26):
weird sort of balance on that card of like five
dollars and seventeen cents, And how do you use that?
Because a Visa card, it's not a standard gift card
like an Amazon card or like a shopping gift card
that's easy to use at the register. Now, some companies
will easily figure out how much is on this card
and let you scan it and use it. But I found, honestly,

(01:42:47):
it's much easier to skip that entire process and just
go to Amazon. And here's what I do. You go
to Amazon, you set the Visa gift card as a
payment method, and then you type in and buy a
reload account. Reload account with an Amazon gift card, okay,
and then you go to It'll be right at the

(01:43:09):
top reload Amazon gift card, and you say exactly how
much you want, So whatever exact amount is on that
Visa card, you type it in there and you say
buy now, and you make sure that you use that
Visa gift card that you just put in as a
payment method as the payment method for this new Amazon
reload and next thing you know, it will shift that
money from the Visa card to an Amazon gift card.

(01:43:31):
And that's much easier to spend because if you're like me,
you're on Amazon all the time. Now, I found that
sometimes it takes a little bit of time and it
may not work instantaneously, so it's not like if you're
buying a gift card. Sometimes it will it will work fast.
This may take five to ten minutes, sometimes I've noticed,
and sometimes it doesn't work at all, depending on the
brand of the Visa gift card. So again, you take

(01:43:54):
the Visa gift card, you set it as a payment method,
and then you enter that exact amount and buy a
gift card to reload your Amazon gift card balance and boom,
you've transferred that balance. So good question there. Hey Rich
From Paul in Santa Clarita. Quick question, I have many passwords.
What are your thoughts on a password manager? If you

(01:44:14):
think they're good, can you recommend one? Are they as
secure as they say they are? Absolutely, Paul, use a
password manager, get all your passwords in there. I know
it's tough to get it set up, but definitely definitely
use when they are secure. Make sure you pick a good,
strong password for the password manager, and then set up
two factor authentication for the password manager. If you are

(01:44:36):
just using Apple products, you can get away with the
iCloud keychain. If you're using Apple products and Chrome, then
I recommend just using the built in Google password manager
because that'll work on an iPhone And if you're using
a bunch of different devices than use a cross platform
password manager. I like bitwarden as a free option, and

(01:44:56):
then you can check out one Password and dash Lane.
Those are two good cross platform password managers, but you
will have to pay for those typically art rights in Hey, Rich,
please post the travel carbon monoxide detector. You put it
on Facebook reels and then it disappeared. There's probably a
lot of interest for it. Someone mentioned on a work

(01:45:19):
call today about getting one for travel, and I told
them I would send them the info and the one
you recommended. Yes, I posted this to Facebook my Instagram stories.
Really sad story about the couple from southern California that
passed away in a hotel room down in Mexico due
to carbon monoxide supposedly, so it might be a good
idea to carry one of these things. So I asked

(01:45:41):
my friend Zach Hoenig. He used to work at the Points.
Guy knows everything about travel, and he recommended this kitty
carbon monoxide detector that's battery powered and has a low
battery indicator, which is smart, It's portable, and it's twenty bucks.
So I'll put that link in the show notes as well.
Tech dot TV. Let's see Erica says, good morning, Rich,

(01:46:05):
I received this weird text. It's probably a scam. Thanks,
and the text says Hi, I'm Donovan Summerfield, the Walton
Family Grant Foundation Admin director. Ooh, you are chosen to
receive ten thousand dollars from the ongoing program aimed at
touching lives. Kindly text your email for confirmation and delivery
to this number NOE to receive your payment is free. Yeah, Erica,

(01:46:29):
as you suspected, that is definitely a weird text and
it's most definitely a scam. Please watch out for these
scam texts. So many my wife got one. Oh gosh,
they are just They are really really doing a lot
of scam texts these days, so be aware of those.
I think we have time for one more. Gale says, hey, Rich,
When you did your KTLA segment on air tags, I

(01:46:49):
thought about getting one for a fifteen day vacation. Of
course I did not end, so my luggage was lost
for ten days. You mentioned some other products that were
not as costly as Apple. With another trip in the work,
I need to purchase AirTags and would appreciate your recommendation.
Truly enjoy your segments. Gail Gail, listen to the advice
the first time around, because I'm telling you I get

(01:47:10):
emails like this all the time. Just do it when
you think you don't need it, do it because that's
when you need it. I would recommend AirTags for sure.
They are the best solution at this point. Later in
the year I may change my tune on that when
there are more standards for these things, but air tags
are the best. You said sent for my iPhone. Go
for the air tags. The four pack goes on sale
from time to time. You've got Prime Day coming up.

(01:47:33):
Search Google for AirTag deals and see if you can
find a deal in that four pack. Sometimes it's discounted,
and sometimes Costco has them as well. My name is
rich Demiro. Thanks so much for listening to the show
that's going to do it for this episode again, this
is show number twenty five. You can check out the
show notes at richon tech dot tv. I put everything
in there that I mentioned. Send your feedback to hello

(01:47:56):
at rich on tech dot tv, and I might just
read it on the next show. Next week, I'm going
to tell you about a website that can help you
rent out your backyard pool. But they're also now doing
tennis and pickleball. So if you want to make some
extra cash or just find a place to swim or play,
you can do that again. You can find me on
social media. I am at rich on Tech. My name

(01:48:16):
is rich Dedmiel. Thanks so much for listening. There are
so many ways you can spend your time. I do
appreciate you spending it right here to make with me.
Thanks to everyone who makes the show possible, including Bobo's
getting married next week. Congratulations. I'll talk to you real soon.

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025 Rich on Tech Radio Show - June 24, 2023

Episode Transcript

Host

Rich DeMuro

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