Visiting Europe's biggest tech show

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Top tech from IFA twenty twenty three in Berlin, Germany.
Apple and Google announced dates for their next big events.
The day the government will blast you with an emergency
text message, plus your tech questions answered. What's going on?
I'm Rich dmiro and this is rich on Tech, the

(00:20):
show where I talk about the tech stuff I think
you should know about. It's also the place where I
answer your questions about technology. I believe that tech should
be interesting, useful and fun. Phone lines are now open
at triple eight Rich one oh one. That's eight eight
eight seven four to two, four to one zero one.

(00:42):
Give me a call if you have a question about technology.
Email is also open. Just go to my website rich
on Tech dot TV, hit contact and your message will
make it right to my inbox instantly, no delay. There.
Guests this week on the show Oliver Merlin, Managing director

(01:03):
of EFA Management, and Mark Vina, principal analyst at Smart
Tech Research. They will join me to talk about what
I'm doing here and where am I? Berlin, Germany. That's
right coming to you live from Berlin site of IFA
twenty twenty three. This is Europe's version of CES. So

(01:24):
hear me talk about CS in Las Vegas. Every year
Europe does their own show called EFA and it is
a big, big show. Believe me, my legs are tired
from walking it. More than two thousand exhibitors from forty
eight countries, twenty six halls, So when you go to
CS it's a couple of big giant halls. In Las

(01:45):
Vegas used to be three basically three giant halls plus
some stuff scattered throughout the city. This is twenty six halls,
different levels in each hall, and they're kind of like
little little kind of rooms and you just make your
way through all this one hundred and thirty thousand square
meters of stuff to see. It is kind of like
a tech festival. There is food, there is drink. And

(02:08):
the big difference between this show and the show in
Las Vegas is that visitors are welcome. The public is
invited to buy a ticket to this show, so it's
kind of like going to the largest best buy you've
ever seen. With one hundred and eighty thousand people over
five days, it's pretty pretty wild. They also have a

(02:30):
summer garden in the middle of it all. Excuse my
boord German. I haven't learned too many words since I've
been here. It's been a fun trip, it's been a
fun event. And I love doing stuff like this because
it really gives you so much perspective on the different
companies and the different brands, not just in the US

(02:51):
but around the world. Now. Whenever I do a trip
like this, I always get lots of thoughts on international travel,
and a lot of the questions I get are about
international travel because it's something that many people do maybe
once twice a year, and I have the ability to
do it a couple of times.

Speaker 2 (03:08):
You know.

Speaker 1 (03:08):
It's actually been a lot more recently when COVID was happening,
it was like everything stopped, you know, even domestic travel.
But I did get to try for the first time
on my way out here, my new California digital driver's license.
So a couple of states, just a handful of states,
have been testing digital driver's licenses, and I downloaded the

(03:29):
what is it called, It's like the DMV my wallet app,
and you download that, you scan your driver's license, you
scan your face, and then somehow State of California verifies
you are who you say you are, and they give
you a digital copy of your driver's license on your phone. Now,
before you get too excited. California, I don't know why

(03:50):
they're not doing this, but they are not part of
Apple's wallet, so many of the other states that have
done this. You can get this inside your Apple wallet
or eventually your Google wallet, which makes it very easy.
It's kind of like using your tap to pay cards,
like your debit or credit card, but this is a
separate app. So I went to TSA and I, you know,

(04:10):
went up to the guy and I was like, hey,
do you mind if I use this digital driver's license.
Expecting a little bit of grief, he said, no, that's fine.
Let me let me fire up the machine because I'm
curious how it works. I've never used it before. And
so he turned on the machine and they you know,
you open up your app. It's called the California DMV app.
It generates a QR code. So I think there's a
couple of ways to verify. I think one of them

(04:31):
is tap. One of them is a QR code. We
use the QR code, so you scan the code with
this little machine and then you look at a camera
and then I guess it somehow matches those things up.
But the main thing to know if you ever try
to do this, and I'm sure you probably never will
maybe eventually in a couple of years. But when you
scan the QR code, you get a little pop up

(04:51):
on your phone that says, hey, do you want to
hand over your personal information? But the problem is you're
looking at the camera and the TSA person is also
looking at their screen waiting for you to do something.
So the first time I did this, it timed out,
and so I was like, really, you know, of course
I'm holding up the line and I'm starting to like,
oh no, is this not going to work? And so

(05:12):
he said, well, let's try it again. We tried it again,
and I saw the little pop up the second time,
and I said, okay, I have to agree to hand
over my information to you. So we did it twice,
but it worked very well the second time, and I've
got to say it's kind of cool, although you really
can't use it anywhere. The only two places I know
of that you can use it right now are San
Francisco Airport and LAX and of course a smattering of

(05:34):
other airports across the nation. But it's not a very
good system just yet. But I don't know if you've noticed,
if you traveled. Lately, they're not even asking you to
scan your boarding pass anymore. When you go to an airport,
they just basically take your ID. They scan your ID
somehow that matches up with the flight records, and they
send you on your merry way. So that was interesting.

(05:57):
Let's see what else you travel. You really have to
have a tech plan figured out in advance, because if
you mess up on even one of these things, if
you trip, it's gonna cost you. So Number one E
SIM I talked about this. This is an electronic SIM card.
Buy those before you leave. Now in the old days,
you would buy a SIM when you got your destination,

(06:19):
usually in the airport, and you would pop this little
card into your phone. So Number one your cell phone provider,
and many times, if you have T Mobile, your phone's
just gonna work and it's gonna be included in your plan. Overseas,
Verizon in AT and T typically charge about ten dollars
a day to use your phone in a foreign country.
That can add up very quickly, and you can purchase

(06:40):
a prepaid eSIM for a lot cheaper than that now
on your plan. Also, you may have banks of days
that you get included if you've been a customer for
a long time, they might accrue over time, so be
sure to check before you leave and before you buy anything.
If AT and T or Verizon has some like free
days included in your plan. For me, as soon as

(07:01):
I landed, it said hey, you have like sixteen days left,
and I said, oh wow, that's pretty cool. So for
my primary phone, I just left it on that and
for my other phone, I use the eSIM. The other thing,
obviously a travel plug adapter. There are two types. There's
a voltage adapter and there's just a regular adapter. If
you're just traveling with standard electronics like your iPhone charger

(07:21):
and all that stuff, you just need a travel plug adapter.
They're like twenty five dollars. You have to have a
portable battery bank, that's for sure, and a USB cable
for the plane. Now keep in mind on the plane,
many of the planes are still using the old style USB,
which is like the big adapter at the end. Many
of us are using at home USB C because that's

(07:42):
what the phones have been coming with. So just keep
in mind if you're going to charge on the plane,
you either need a USBC adapter or you need to
bring an old school cable, So take one of your
older cables that charges your phone. That's what I did,
and so I use that. That was great. Same thing
for earbuds. If you want to use the seatback entertainment
and use your own Bluetooth earbuds, you're gonna need an

(08:05):
adapter because most of the seatback entertainment systems do not
allow you to connect via Bluetooth. It's still wired. Now.
Some of the new planes, especially on United and some
of the other carriers, are getting Bluetooth, but it's very
hit or miss. So if you want to make sure
you want to use your own stuff, you can get
an adapter like this thing called the Airfly from a

(08:26):
company named twelve South. The person sitting next to me
was using it, and it's about fifty dollars. You plug
it into the little USB and it becomes a Bluetooth
receiver for your earbuds. I guess a receiver and a transmitter,
so it goes back and forth. So it's kind of
like a mid middleman between the seatback entertainment and your earbuds. Now,
I will tell you something that's a little interesting about me.

(08:49):
I do not watch movies on the seatback. I know
it's a weird thing, and I feel like I've been
doing it for so long where I refuse to do
it that I still don't do it even if I
see a movie I want to see there, I said, no,
I'm favoring my own entertainment. And for this trip, I
took the Pixel Fold from Google. I've been testing this out.
This is a foldable phone, and I wanted to see

(09:10):
what it was like to use a foldable phone to
watch a movie. So I watched the new Adam Sandler
movie on Netflix, which I thought was pretty funny, although
when I texted with a couple of family members on
our group chat, they disagreed with me. I still think
it's funny. But I watched this on the fold, and yeah,
it's interesting. So I love the size of this phone,

(09:31):
and the outer screen is very usable compared to what
Samsung has, which is very narrow. But the Pixel Fold
is heavy. It gets hot, and it's very slippery because
it's such a smooth, slick phone. But if you put
a case on it, it's too big. So it's one
of these things where people are trying to push the
carriers and the companies are trying to push foldable phones.

(09:54):
I'm not sure they're there just yet. And there's another
reason why I'm using the inside screen may a couple
of times a day, whereas if you're getting a foldable phone,
you probably want to use that inside screen a lot. Now.
It is good for a lot of things like watching videos,
looking at photos, checking your email, but I'm just not
opening it enough. And by the way, in just a
couple of weeks i've had this sample unit from Google,

(10:17):
I already got something caught in the middle of the
screens because it kind of pushed in in the middle.
It's like a little tiny looks like a little piece
of sand gotten there or something and just made an indentation.
And of course that's not very fun. It looks very
annoying when I look at the screen. Now, all right,
we've got plenty more to talk about on my trip here.
We've got plenty of guests lined up for the show.

(10:39):
I'm going to talk about Apple and Google. They have
both announced the dates when they are going to launch
their next phones, and I'm seeing a lot of pixel
phones over here in Europe, of course, a lot of
iPhones as well. But first it is your turn give
me a phone call at Triple A rich one oh one.
It is eight eight eight seven four to two for

(11:00):
one zero one. Give me a call if you have
a question about technology. Even though I am so far
away today, it will still be a free call for
you anywhere you are in the US. My name is
rich Dumuro and you are listening to Rich on Tech.
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging
out with you talking technology at triple eight rich one

(11:21):
oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two
four one zero one, broadcasting live from Berlin, Germany today.
But don't let that dissuade you from calling in. John
from a Brainerd, Minnesota is online one. John, You're on.

Speaker 2 (11:39):
With rich.

Speaker 3 (11:42):
Information.

Speaker 4 (11:44):
The situation I got going on is I listened to
podcasts in some music on my Android phone on occasion,
and I have two yearbuds, separate ones, and a set
of Bowen and duck headset after Shock brand name whatever.
And the problem I'm having is I'll be listening to

(12:06):
it and all of a sudden it'll shut off, it'll
turn back on, it'll shut off, turn back on, random time,
random length of time. And I've been buy my phone
at the bottom of the phone. If I see it,
it'll say Google Assistant is here to assist you.

Speaker 1 (12:22):
Please turn on.

Speaker 4 (12:24):
Well, I believe that it's something similar to Siri, and
I don't want it.

Speaker 3 (12:28):
I don't want to listen to me.

Speaker 4 (12:29):
But that's beyond the point. But it keeps coming up.
And one of the more annoying things is if I
haven't shut off, I'll be walking around my workshop here
working all of a sudden I'll hear on ear piece
it says calling last number dials, and it does it,
and sometimes just clicks it on for a second, or

(12:52):
sometimes it stays on for a while. And I've gotten
a point now where I call my landlines so I'm
not calling somebody accidentally, or it's not calling somebody accidentally
to know them. But I've never subscribed to it. I've
gone on my settings. It's not turned on, but it
it keeps coming up, and only when I have these

(13:16):
the Aftershock headset on.

Speaker 1 (13:19):
Okay, well, a couple of things here. Number one, I
just was talking with the Aftershock folks yesterday. They were
here at at EPHA, so they were showing off some
new new headsets. These are These are kind of uh
a lot of them are aimed for like swimming and
underwater and any sort of like they're very like durable
in wet conditions. Is that correct?

Speaker 3 (13:41):
Well?

Speaker 4 (13:41):
I like them because like where I'm in a machining
welding shop, self employed. And what I like about them
is I can put in earplugs and actually the celling
gets better through the through the bone induction system, and uh,
you know, I can still do about my work and
be able to listen good in the.

Speaker 5 (14:02):
Song quality I think is decent.

Speaker 1 (14:04):
Yeah, I mean they're known, they're known to be good. Okay,
So here's what I think A couple of things that
I think need to be done. Number one, have you
downloaded the aftershocks app? Do they have a specific app
that you can download to maybe update the firmware and
also change any settings on these devices because built in
by default it looks like these want to activate the
Google Assistant. Okay, I have not.

Speaker 3 (14:25):
I'm not too savvy.

Speaker 1 (14:27):
Okay, So I would go on the app. Are you
on You're on Android? You said? So I would go
on the Android Google Play and I would download. I
would go to you know, search for the after shocks app,
so look for that and then when you do that,
that may unlock all of the settings for these headphones,
and that's where you can go in and turn off

(14:48):
the Google Assistant trigger. Now, I will tell you it's
funny you say this because I literally have been testing
these Sony headphones and I was using them on my
way here, and every time you push the side of
the headphone, like if they're falling out of your ear
a little bit, which I don't like about these headphones.
But every time I would push it, the Google Assistant
would trigger, and so it would of course stop your music,

(15:10):
interrupt things. You'd have to make sure you remain quiet
so it doesn't get a false command. And so I
went in, I downloaded the Sony app and I went
in and disabled it from there. It took me a
little bit to figure out how to do it, but
that is one way.

Speaker 6 (15:23):
Now.

Speaker 1 (15:23):
The other way you can do it is usually in
Google Assistant. There is a setting, so if you tap in,
if you open up the Google app and tap settings
and then you look for Google Assistant, there is usually
a setting that says over headphones or over Bluetooth, and
you can disable it there as well. So those are
the main things that I would do. I don't think

(15:44):
these headphones. I don't think there's anything wrong with them.
I just think it is an errant command of Google
thinking that you want to activate it. And when I
look on their website, it says there's a couple of
ways to activate. Obviously, it's hands free if you say
the hot word, which is you know, I'm not going
to say, because I don't want to activate everyone's headphones,
but you know, it's usually it's something about Google. And

(16:06):
then the other way is kind of pressing and holding
a button on the side, or maybe pressing it twice.
So those are the steps that I would take to
try to disable this from happening. But there are there
are multiple ways that Google may trigger and usually if
you download the native headphones app, that should really give

(16:27):
you the most control over these headphones. Because headphones typically
don't have Google Assistant built in, it's usually a special thing,
and so because of that, they usually have the special
software that will allow you to disable that and also
tweak it, because not everyone wants that, as we all know.
Good question. Thanks so much for calling today from Minnesota.
Appreciate the call.

Speaker 7 (16:48):
John.

Speaker 1 (16:49):
More of your calls coming up next at Triple eight
rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four
to two four one zero one. I have mentioned that
I'm here in Berlin, Germany, and I'll tell you I've
been testing Apple Maps versus Google Maps, and I'm gonna
give the slight edge to Google Maps for public transportation.

(17:09):
But i will say that if you're walking, Apple Maps
is better with the turn by turn transit or turn
by turn walking directions if you have an Apple Watch.
But before you go to any other city, any any
travel city, download Maps offline. That's a pro tip right there,
so you don't need a cellular connection. More rich on

(17:31):
Tech coming up next. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology. And
it's a big week if you like phones and gadgets,
because both Google and Apple announced separate events. Google's holding
their event on October fourth. There they will announce the

(17:53):
Pixel eight and the Pixel watch too. Well expected to announce.
They don't say what they're going to announce, but Google
kind of. That'll happen in New York City. They called
the Made by Google Event. It'll be ten am Eastern time.
They'll live stream it. Google invited me. I typically go
to these things they get that usually you get a
little bit of hands on before the general public, maybe

(18:15):
like a week or so before the phones go on sales,
so that's always nice. And then Apple announced they're doing
their event on September twelfth, and they're gonna announce the iPhone. Well,
of course they don't say what they're gonna announce, but
it's the iPhone, the Apple Watch, and maybe some other goodies.
Joining me now is Mark German from Bloomberg Technology reporter,

(18:36):
and Mark, welcome to Welcome.

Speaker 6 (18:38):
Back to the show for having thank you for having me.

Speaker 1 (18:42):
All Right, so you are the expert in all things Apple.
You are known for your proven track record of basically
telling people in your weekly columns at Bloomberg and your
newsletter what Apple is going to announce before they announce it.
So I'm not going to ask you how you do
it because that's probably a proprietary secret. But you do it.

(19:05):
It's great and what can we expect from this event.

Speaker 6 (19:09):
Yeah, So for Apple September twelfth Wonderlust launch, there's going
to be three main areas, the phone, the iPhone fifteen,
the Apple Watch, as well as the AirPod. So you
will see the iPhone fifteen and fifteen Plus, as well
as fifteen Pro and Pro Macs. We'll see in Apple
Watch Series nine, we'll see a second generation Apple Watch Ultra,

(19:30):
and we'll also see new AirPods Pro with a USBC connector.
That's the new charging port that they're bringing to all
of the iPhones.

Speaker 1 (19:39):
Okay, so let's start with the iPhones because that's typically
what people are most excited about. So iPhone fifteen and
iPhone fifteen Pro, and then there's two versions of each
of those. What is going to be different about the
phones this year?

Speaker 6 (19:55):
Yeah, So for the base phones that's the fifteen and
fifteen plus, they're going to look the same almost as
the fourteen in fourteen plus with a few variations. So
the back is not going to be glossy anymore. It's
going to be a map back like the pro phones.
And then they're also going to get some of the
pro features from last year. Three main ones, the A

(20:15):
sixteen chip from the fourteen Pro, the dynamic Island, and
the new back camera system of that forty eight nigapixel camera,
So basically last year's enhancements at a lower price. And
then the high end phones, the Pro and Pro max
is where they're actually going to make the new changes,
the new stuff. It's going to have a titanium frame
that makes the phone quite a bit lighter. They'll have
a three nanimeter chip which is quite a bit more

(20:37):
efficient for better battery life. You're going to have a
new screen technology called LPO, which is a new manufacturing
process that allows them to make the borders around the
display much thinner, and you're going to get that overall
new design thinks of that titanium frame. So it's going
to be quite an impressive upgrade, probably the biggest upgrade
in a few years. And so I think a lot

(20:58):
of people have been holding out and waiting for this phone.
So it should be a bit of a major cycle
for Apple.

Speaker 1 (21:03):
So when it comes to the base phones, the iPhone
fifteen and the iPhone fifteen plus, these are the phones
that presumably most people buy, most people are interested in
because they are the I mean, they're not inexpensive, but
they're the least expensive of the new lineup. So they
get last year's chip, they get dynamic island, which is

(21:24):
that little pill shaped area in the top of the phone,
and they also get the better camera. So it's almost
like last year's phone, but in a new kind of body.

Speaker 6 (21:35):
It's essentially last year's phone in a less premium body
because it's an aluminum frame versus the steel frame of
last year the titanium frame of the pros this year.
So it is probably a pretty good value. My sense
actually though, is that from the get go, in terms
of purchases, in the first few months or so, most
of those purchases actually lean towards the pro phones. Believe

(21:57):
it or not, right, even though the thing is a
bit high. Yeah, I mean it's people look at the
price differences. It's about two hundred dollars three hundred dollars
delta between the low end phones and the high end phones.
And then most of their sales now are on monthly
plans or some sort of subsidy, and so you're talking
about five to fifteen dollars difference per month, and so
a lot of people push up to the higher end phones. Anyways,

(22:20):
But if you look at over time, these lower end phones,
as those prices come down, but for instance, the fifteen
to fifteen plus I think are going to be extraordinarily
popular in like a year or two from now, right
as those prices come down to the four hundred and
five hundred dollars range.

Speaker 1 (22:34):
Right right now. One thing I'm curious about is the
refresh rate on the standard phones. Has that caught up
to the premium the pros No, I.

Speaker 6 (22:45):
Believe they're about two years away from moving to the
one hundred and twenty hertz. On the lower end phones,
they're still going to be. I believe it's a sixty
or ninety hertz refresh rate. And it's so interesting because
nobody knew that they wanted one hundred and twenty hertz
refresh rate until they had it on the propones and
on the iPad pro right right now, it's so impressive
on the propones, and it's if you compare it side

(23:07):
by side, it is such a big difference that you
wouldn't know until you look at it.

Speaker 1 (23:11):
Yeah, I mean that's the thing. If you're using an iPhone,
you know, a standard one that doesn't have the higher
refresh rate, you would never really know. And my wife,
so every time I basically use my wife's phone, I
notice it and I'm like, wow, this almost feels like
it's slower than my phone because it just doesn't have
that smooth refresh rate.

Speaker 6 (23:28):
But if you're not refresh rates right, But the performance
is pretty good overall, but like when you just look
at it, it just looks so much different.

Speaker 1 (23:35):
Yeah, one hundred percent. Okay, So now what about the
USB C switchover? Is that going to happen with the phones?

Speaker 6 (23:43):
So the USBC change will happen across all four phones
in the air pods, and obviously this is because of
the European Union. The benefits to consumers now is you
can have one charging cable that will work on your map,
your iPad, and your iPhone and your ex generation AirPods.
You no longer you need to jump, you know, between
lightning and USBC and all that. So this is going

(24:03):
to be quite an improvement for consumers, but also a
headache for those who are now going to need to
buy new charging bricks and new accessories.

Speaker 2 (24:10):
And the like.

Speaker 1 (24:11):
Now people always joke, and I'm sure the mets will
come out that Apple continues to change the charging port
on the bottom. I remember when it happened from the
thirty pin connector to lightning. People are complaining, but it's
been a while since that happened.

Speaker 6 (24:25):
Right, It's been eleven years since the last charging change.
There was in twenty sixteen, the headphone jack removal. I
have to tell you, I don't think this is a
change that Apple wanted to make. I don't think this
is something that they would have chosen to do on
their own. I think there's a lot of drawbacks for
them from moving to USBC on the iPhone. This is
something that they're doing pretty much, almost exclusively to appease

(24:49):
the European Commission. It is a law there, and then
you're seeing more and more places try to bring this
into law, believe it or not. I actually read the
other day, actually yesterday, that California, just the state of California,
they're bringing a bill to action next year related to USBC.
And so this is something that was going to continue.
It was going to be a drum beat, it was
going to be something that would snowball and have a

(25:10):
domino effect, and all sorts of countries were going to
push it this. I believe even India was talking about
USBC as well as a bill.

Speaker 1 (25:17):
Well, it does eventually make things easier, obviously less proprietary.
What about the zoom on these phones are they going
to get Is the zoom going to get any better?

Speaker 6 (25:26):
The zoom is the same on the first three phones.
The top end phone, you're moving from a three X
lens to a six NX optical zoom. And why that's
so important is because if you do a digital zoom
right now, you can see how the quality quickly degrades,
but by using an optical hardware zoom, the quality actually
does not significantly when you zoom in up to the

(25:47):
six X and then you actually get an expanded digital
zoom as well. I believe it's a twenty or thirty X,
so quite impressive and better competition to the cameras on
the Google devices that you mentioned, which they have pretty
good cameras, and they have for years. Apple's doing a
little bit of catch up.

Speaker 1 (26:01):
Here, Okay, speaking of ketchup, you know, we're seeing a
big push with these foldable phones from Samsung, Google. You know,
obviously the Chinese companies are doing a lot of foldables,
and Motorola even has one, and of course one plus.
So are we going to see a foldable from Apple.

Speaker 6 (26:21):
I think we'll see some sort of foldable device from Apple.
In which form that takes, I think it's still a
little unclear. It could be an iPad, it could be
a type of a Mac. It could be a type
of an iPhone, but I don't see anything foldable from
Apple in the next twenty four months.

Speaker 1 (26:35):
All right, if you're into Apple stuff and you'd like
to hear what Apple's going to do before the company
even announces it. Mark German is your guy, chief correspondent
at Bloomberg. What's the best way for folks to follow you, Mark?

Speaker 6 (26:48):
No, thank you rich for having me. I truly appreciate it.
Twitter dot com or x dot com slash Mark German.
You can get updates most quickly there, but also subscribe
to my weekly column on Sundays. It's Bloomberg dot com slash. However,
on to sign up.

Speaker 1 (27:02):
All right, thanks so much for joining me today, Mark,
I appreciate it. There you have it, all of the
rumors and the speculation on the iPhone, but it usually
comes true. Mark knows his stuff. So if you're considering
the upgrade, you know it's probably going to be the
year to upgrade because of the entire USB c changeover.

(27:24):
If you're like me, and especially when you travel, I
literally have to think about, Oh I need that lightning
cable because it's the one thing I need everything else,
even the iPads have gone over to USBC in recent years,
so we'll be looking forward to that. That event again
happens on September twelfth, and again I'm expected to be there.

(27:44):
So a lot of things going on in the next
couple of weeks. All right, let's take some more of
your calls at Triple eight rich one oh one. That's
eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one
zero one. You're listening to rich on Tech live from Berlin, Germany.

(28:06):
Oh no, you didn't. Oh man, I think we're getting
all German artists on this week's show. So funny story
this is This is Milli Vanilla, right, yeah, so blame

(28:26):
it on the rain. I'll never forget we were doing.
This is such a long funny story anyway, I'll save
you the drama of it. But my friend and I,
when we were in like middle school, we were gonna
do like a talent show with this song and our teacher.
We were so embarrassed to tell our teacher and then
so we were gonna lip sync the song. And then

(28:48):
we later found out that the whole thing was lip sync.
So it was like this like meta kind of situation. Anyway,
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging
out with you talking technology from Berlin, Germany. What a
great city, really really interesting, lots of history. Obviously, people

(29:09):
here like to be out in the streets. They like
to I've seen a lot of families, a lot of kids,
a lot of tourists, just a lot going on here
and it's interesting. I took my walk the other day,
my audio tour, which I really like to do when
I go to these cities, and there was nobody out,
I mean nobody. It was a weekday, and then today

(29:31):
I was out and it's a weekend and there was
just so many people in the same places where there
was almost no one the time before. And by the way,
if you want to do these audio walking tours, which
I highly recommend self guided, use your phone. The app
that I use is called voicemap dot Me, so voicemap me,
and it's just a really easy way you download the app.

(29:53):
It's kind of like listening to a podcast, but it
gives you step by step, turn by turn directions and
if you get off court like I have it sometimes
it just says, hey, you know, look at the map
and get back on course. You can leave your phone
in your pocket pretty much the whole time you do this.
It's very very cool VOICEMAP dot em and they have
them for cities around the world. I've taken them in

(30:13):
and here, let's see where it was at Austin, and
I did one more somewhere else. All right, let's go
to alex Innuay. Tell me if I'm saying this right,
Nuevo California. I know you tried call them before. We
had some trouble connecting. You're on with Rich line three.

Speaker 8 (30:31):
Yes, Rich, I'm having problems with an SD card I
bothered about two and a half years ago. It was
working fine, and last weekend it quit. I've turned off
the phone, pulled the stem car SD card out, put

(30:51):
it back in, tried to reformat it. It gets up
to about twenty five percent, and then it says my
phone is not compatible with their SD card.

Speaker 1 (31:03):
How are you trying to reformat it?

Speaker 5 (31:08):
When it's a little icon comes up says format SD
card to use.

Speaker 1 (31:17):
Okay. So I'm saying, when you plug it into your phone,
are you formatting it?

Speaker 5 (31:21):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (31:22):
Okay? Have you tried formatting it using a computer?

Speaker 5 (31:26):
I don't have an adapter.

Speaker 1 (31:28):
Okay, Okay, so it sounds like this card has failed,
but that is just my preliminary thoughts. But the thing is,
you can't really tell unless you try to format this
in another device. So, for example, we have a special
microphone we use where you have to use an SD

(31:48):
card in it a thirty two gig maximum, and sometimes
when we put those cards in this MIC, it just
goes nuts and it can't recognize it, and it kind
of just the screen flashes. And there is an option
to format the card on that MIC, but it doesn't
always work. But if you take that same exact SD
card and format it in a computer, somehow it figures

(32:10):
it out and it formats it properly, and then it
works in the MIC. So that would be what I'd
recommend to do. Why did you lose anything on this card?
Are you worried about the data on this card?

Speaker 5 (32:23):
Well, apparently all the games I downloaded went to the card,
so I lost all the games, my photos and stuff
I backed up to a computer.

Speaker 1 (32:35):
Okay, very good, and all the rest of those stuff.

Speaker 5 (32:39):
It's just it's annoying. Yeah, I agree, and a half
two years and then all of a sudden, I'm getting
this there. Stupid things it's not recognizing the SD card.
Please format I try that. It gets up to about
twenty five and quits.

Speaker 1 (32:58):
Yeah, that is very frustrata. And I will tell you
that I've used many many SD cards in my time
and I have yet to see one fail. And so
I find it hard to believe that this has failed.
But it could happen. Is this a micro SD card.
I'm assuming it's a small one, like it's the size

(33:18):
of like a SIM card almost.

Speaker 9 (33:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (33:22):
Yeah, it's probably a core in the size of a
posty stamp. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (33:29):
So I mean, look at the end of the day,
and what's the size on this card? How big is it?

Speaker 5 (33:35):
I think it's uh thirty thirty or thirty two?

Speaker 1 (33:43):
Okay, and what brand is it?

Speaker 5 (33:48):
I picked it up at Walmart, like I said, a
couple of years ago.

Speaker 1 (33:52):
Okay, well, I would say, maybe bring it back to Walmart,
but I think it's been past the ninety days. Do
they have they may have a extended return policy. I
don't know, but.

Speaker 5 (34:03):
What I don't think so years.

Speaker 1 (34:07):
I mean, if you're straight up with them and just
say hey, look i've had this, you know, if you
go to Costco, they'll take it back. So maybe Walmart
will do the same. I was actually trying to figure
out what their return policy was. I looked it up
the other day. I think it's ninety standard. But look,
at the end of the day, I think if you're
if you're not concerned with what's on this card, a
new SD card, a thirty two gig is about ten bucks.

(34:28):
You can get a two pack of them for twelve
dollars on Amazon. So I understand it's frustrating. I understand
that it's not ideal, but it could just be that
this failed. It happens, especially if it maybe is an
off brand. If I recommended getting an adapter, I probably
wouldn't recommend that because the adapter is going to cost
you more than the price of this card. So my

(34:50):
advice is to see if you have a friend that
has an adapter and a card reader and try doing
the formatting there on a computer, whether it's a or
a PC. That might work. You can also try a
disc repair on the same computer because that may work
as well. But otherwise I would say, if you're not

(35:11):
too attached, I'm glad you backed up your photos, and
if you're not too attached to this thing, I would
just call it a complete loss and move on because
the cost of getting that adapter is going to be
a lot more than just buying a new card. And
hopefully this does not happen again. I rarely, rarely see
these things fry like that. So thanks for the call,
appreciate it. Let's see what do we want to talk

(35:33):
about real quick before we go to break here, Let's
talk about Google raising prices of nest Aware and nest
Aware Plus. These are the subscriptions if you have nest products.
The basic nest Aware is now going to cost eight
dollars a month, up from six bucks a month. That's
eighty dollars a year or sixty dollars a year. The
nest Aware Plus is going to be fifteen a month,

(35:56):
up from twelve dollars a month. The new price takes
effect on November sixth, and uh new subscribers right now. Yep,
every streaming service is going up in price. Give me
a call triple eight, Rich one oh one. This is
rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich

(36:17):
DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology. Welcome to
the show. Our number two. I just got word from
producer Bobo that Rob Thomas is indeed German, which I
didn't believe, but I looked it up and sure enough,
he was born in Germany. Where's my bell? I always

(36:39):
say that triple eight rich one O one is the
phone line to call eight eight eight seven four to
two four one zero one. There we go, We've got
some boisterous applause. So this week, Verizon has come up
with a new way to protect you from spammy email
to texts. It's very, very simple. Have you ever gotten

(37:01):
one of these things? It basically looks like a text
message that comes from an email address and it's just annoying.
Their Verizon says eighty percent of them are spam and
it's just an easy way for people to spam because
all it takes is for them to set up an
email and so these most of the time are for
like shipping confirmations, all this stuff. It's just total junk.

(37:23):
So if you want to block these now and your
this is only for Verizon customers, you text the word
off off to forty forty. Again, if you want to
stop these annoying spam email to text messages, just text
the word off to forty forty. If you're a Verizon customer,

(37:44):
and that will disable email to text messages to your phone.
Now you might be saying, Rich, why would I do that,
I'm not going to get my texts. Eighty percent of
those are bogus. So there may be an example of
a legitimate company that uses this or legitimate use of that,
but most of the time it's not. And you can
always turn it back on. I believe you just text

(38:06):
on to forty forty and it'll turn them back on.
But you can look it up online and see what
they say about it. I'll put the link on the website.
Rich on tech dot TV keep the show notes for
the show so you can see what Verizon says about
all of that. But a lot of people doing it.
All right, Let's go to Reggie Line too in Charleston,

(38:27):
South Carolina. Reggie, you're on with Rich. And it's interesting
that you say you're in Charleston, because I've fallen in
love with European cities and I looked up today no joke,
best US cities that feel like Europe, and Charleston was
like on the top list. Welcome to the show.

Speaker 10 (38:45):
It it's a gorgeous city, a little bit flood ridden
right now, but gorgeous, just the same. Oh no, your
producer asked me if I had called them before, and
I'll remember you helped me with the photo enhancing program.
I'm a pet porch artist.

Speaker 1 (39:01):
Oh yes, I remember, yes.

Speaker 10 (39:04):
And you did help me with that. But I had
a bigger problem this week. I went onto my Facebook
page where I do do marketing and use marketplace and
all my customers contact me there, and it asked for
a new password. I've done that before, put it in

(39:26):
a word.

Speaker 1 (39:27):
Why did I ask you for a new one?

Speaker 10 (39:30):
I don't know. Maybe I just forgot it. I don't remember.
But it asked me to put in my password, which
I had no idea why it did that, and I
may have forgotten it. So I went to put in
a new password, and it told me there was no
account under my email address. And I've had my email
address for a long time because I'm still with AOL so.

Speaker 1 (39:54):
Good old al America Online.

Speaker 10 (39:56):
All right, I've had it since I think ninety eight.
So it was gone. Everything was gone. All my customers,
all my friends, all my posts I've ever done, everything
had disappeared. I had no way to get You can't
get in touch with them, you know, I think you
know there's nook or Meta.

Speaker 1 (40:19):
No, nope. So wait, okay, let me get this straight.
Did you lose access to your page?

Speaker 10 (40:25):
Yes? Completely? You know, it was gone and even the
people that tried to contact me told me that it
said no messaging available. They they had blocked me once
before because they thought I was selling pets.

Speaker 1 (40:39):
Oh yeah, and you're not right, just to just to
confirm the portraits. I know we talked about that last time. Okay,
so where do you stand and what can I help
you with?

Speaker 10 (40:49):
Well, is there any way to get in touch with them?
I went, I opened a new page. I did it
under my old email, which is still my email. They
accept did all that, and I opened a new page
altering my name just a little bit, and try and
trying to get back in touch with all of my

(41:11):
customers and people that had contacted me. But I can't
get to them at all. When I posted that I
had the problem on Facebook, of course I got eight
hundred scammers who want three hundred and fifty dollars to
find my Facebook.

Speaker 1 (41:27):
Page for Yeah, if you type in the word hacked
on if you post the word hacked on Facebook, they say, oh,
Johnny five, really helped me get unhacked, and it's like
this whole scam thing. These programs just look for keywords
and then post stuff on the page. Okay, so here's
what I think happened. I actually think you might have

(41:48):
gotten hacked. I think the notification that you saw was bogus.
You click the notification, you put in your password that
was real, and as soon as you did that, these
scam art It's got a hold of your account and
then immediately either try to message everyone on that account
or do something with it that Facebook recognized to be bad,

(42:11):
and so they immediately block the account. That's where I
think you stand. And the reason why that you were
able to create a new account and it has a
slightly different username is because that old account is still
percolating in the back end of the system somewhere. And
so if you had like petit facebook dot com slash
pet portraits, you know, they gave you pet portraits one

(42:32):
because that other username is still sort of taken up.
So what I recommend couple of things. Number One, you
got to be very careful with notifications on Facebook about
your password. It is very rare that Facebook asks you
to just randomly put in your password. It's even rareer
for them to send a notification that says you need

(42:55):
to put in your password. So yeah, there's pages that say,
you know, if you're logging in from a different area
or device, but it's it's pretty rare and usually those
pages are pretty well marked. And always look at the
URL when you're logging into any website to make sure
that it is the website that you should be logging into. Now,
on Facebook, people really try to trick folks with these

(43:16):
scam logins. What they'll do is they'll just they'll give
you a notification that says, hey, your page, you know
doesn't meet the community standards. Click here to to you know,
dispute it, and then you have to log in. As
soon as you log in, you're actually logging into a
spammer's account or a scam artist account and they take over. Now,
if this happens to you before you go ahead and

(43:38):
create a new account. Number one to protect yourself, turn
on two factor authentication. I know I'm a broken record,
I say it every week on this show, but you
have to turn on two factor authentication. That will actually
protect you from yourself because if you do log in
next time with your password and they get it, it's
going to send a code to your phone, and that

(44:00):
will stop the bad guys from actually getting in because
they won't have that code. Now, if you you know,
they may message you and ask you for that code,
don't give it to them. Now, if you do get
hacked on Facebook, you immediately want to go to Facebook
dot com slash hacked. That is the official place to go. Now,
you have to understand Facebook has almost three billion people

(44:23):
using the platform, so to get someone on the phone
is not possible. They don't do that. They do it
all through email, They do it all through automated systems,
and they do it all starting with Facebook dot com
slash hacked. Go there, it'll tell you, it'll give you
a questionnaire about what's happening with your account. Many times

(44:43):
people will regain access to their account, but it can
take a while because it's not always the number one
priority of Facebook to help people get back into their accounts. Now,
if you had a high profile account, maybe, but just
you know, your everyday account, you know it's not necessarily
their profile. The other thing I would do is set
if you're listening to this and you have any sort

(45:05):
of business presence on Facebook. Number one, always always have
two factor authentication. On number two, you have to set
a secondary admin for your Facebook page. What will that
do If the person that manages your page gets locked out,
the other person will be able to still get in.
And so now, look, if you hand over your password

(45:26):
to the scam artists, they know to check and see
if there's an admin, and they may delete that person.
But it's better to have this on your page because
I've gotten stories of the primary person that works at
a business passing away, leaving the company, whatever happens, they
get angry and they lock you out of the page.
So you want someone else on there that's trusted, even

(45:49):
if it's someone that you know, that can help you
get back into your account if you get locked out.
And sometimes Facebook might even text them or email them
and say, hey, can you vouch for this person? Yeah,
believe me. Facebook has a lot of different ways of
getting people back into their accounts. It's all very strange
and a lot of it is undocumented, but it's it

(46:09):
happens because I hear the stories all the time. So Reggie,
I hope you can get back into your account. That
is my advice for you and keep up the good
work with the pet pictures. Sounds like a fun little
business you got there, all right, give me a call.
Triple eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven
four to two four one zero one. You're listening to

(46:32):
rich on Tech broadcasting live from Berlin, Germany, where I'm
here for IFA coming up later in the show. We're
going to talk to the show organizers so you can
get a better idea of what IFA twenty twenty three
is all about. More rich on Tech Next, Welcome back
to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you,
talking technology live from Berlin, Germany. Triple eight rich one

(46:58):
O one eight eight eight seven four to two four
to one zero one. If you want to join in,
you can also go to the website rich on Tech
dot tv and hit the contact link and you can
send your email right to me. Also, if you have
a comment about today's show, send it to me now
and I'll get it In the feedback segment. I'm really

(47:20):
struggling if I should change that to the feedbag. So
I like the idea of mail bag plus feedback equals feedbag,
but all I can think about with feedbag when I
say it is like a trough with like cows, and
I'm just like dumping like a bunch of food in there.
I don't know maybe that's the right thing, but it's
These are the things I consider in my spare time. Also,

(47:44):
if you want to follow me on Instagram at rich
on Tech is the place to go. I've posted all
about my trip here to Germany, so you can see
what I've been doing here, and also I post tech
tips and various things there. So I've got the tech
tip I'm in about how to turn off the spammy
Verizon emails that is on their Instagram at rich on Tech.

(48:06):
All right, without further ado, let's go to Greg and
des Moines. Iowa Line one. Greg, you're on with rich.

Speaker 3 (48:14):
How you doing, Rich?

Speaker 1 (48:16):
I'm doing fantastic? Can you tell in my voice?

Speaker 3 (48:21):
Yeah? I hear you loud and clear. Excuse me, I
got a little cold. I hear you loud and clear.
And Juliani day, I know.

Speaker 1 (48:30):
Isn't it amazing what technology can do? We can go
live from pretty much anywhere. So what can I help
you with? Greg?

Speaker 3 (48:38):
I'm legally blond, okay, I got two friendship for you.
I'm paying on a d flip three and and Roy
is not great paid off. Now they have a d
flip five from Google Oteam Bowler bo pone. Uh is

(49:01):
that a good phone? Or should I just keep the
phone I have. I don't well ow any of that
because of my eyesight, you know what I mean. I'm
not fab here at computers.

Speaker 1 (49:15):
Okay, So what do you what are you doing on
the phone?

Speaker 3 (49:19):
I had my Norse stand up some apps for me.
When she comes in, I g if I want to
please can if I want Pandora? I talk to my
phone okay. And I don't know if this is a
good phone or not. I like the I like the

(49:41):
d flip five because it got that prolable front clean
and I don't want to get your apps on it
or not?

Speaker 1 (49:50):
Okay, that's a great question. So here's the thing. So
you've got the fold three, which is a couple of
years back, and now we're up to the five. So
the changes on the three to the five. So the
inside screen is identical, it's going to be the same size.
The outside screen is much bigger on the five. So

(50:12):
are you able to see the screen at all or no?

Speaker 3 (50:15):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (50:16):
Okay, So I think the bigger screen would actually be
a better thing for you, especially given the the eye condition.

Speaker 3 (50:25):
So I'm blinded one eye and I got doc coma
in my right eye down.

Speaker 1 (50:31):
Okay, Well, I think the bigger screen. I think the
bigger screen would serve you well otherwise. Okay, So that's
the next part I was going to get to.

Speaker 3 (50:42):
So, and I have one other question for you. Do
it very important for me?

Speaker 7 (50:47):
Okay?

Speaker 3 (50:48):
Okay, right right? I did mine. Take I I redeede
my incoming and out going calls so people don't get
in my phone and be knowed, you know what I mean? Sure,
And I adjectantly hit the content. Oh what do you

(51:10):
call it? Where you save your addresses or your phone numbers?

Speaker 1 (51:15):
And so yeah, sure, like the contact information.

Speaker 3 (51:20):
Contact contact, I deleted them all. So I went in
right away and said all the places that I want
to uh call, you know, like my hospital, my plan,
my cousins, you know. Okay, but the numbers show up

(51:44):
and let me give you the name bad.

Speaker 1 (51:49):
I will, I will tell you. Okay, So let me
let me answer your first question. So the first question
about the upgrade, Uh, I think that the outer screen
would probably be better. You'd probably enjoy it because it is bigger,
and it will probably be easier to see because it
is considerably larger. Now, you said you're still paying on
your old phone. Samsung is giving a pretty aggressive trade

(52:11):
in credit for your old phone six hundred dollars to
be exact, So depending on how much you got to
do the math. So this phone is one thousand bucks
minus is six hundred dollars trading credit for your old
phoneus how much you owe or I guess plus how
much you owe. So you got to do the math
and see if it's worth it to do that. So
let's say this one thousand bucks minus six hundred, that'd

(52:33):
be four hundred dollars. And let's say you owe two hundred.
That means this phone be six hundred dollars. I know,
I just did that math very quick, but you got
to figure out if that's worth it. Now, there may
be some additional discounts available to you if you look
on the Samsung offer programs. They've got education, government, military, employee,
first responder, I'm not sure maybe veteran that might apply,

(52:57):
but you can look into those as well. Now, your
second quest question about the contacts. Google stores a backup
of your contacts, even if you delete them. So what
I want you to do is go to Contacts dot
Google dot com and you should be able to find
a backup of your contacts that you deleted and you
should be able to restore those contacts from there. So again,

(53:20):
Contacts dot Google dot com is where you go to
find a backup of your contacts. That is, given you're
using Google Contacts, but since you're on an Android phone,
that's typically how they're backed up. Greg and des Moines,
thanks so much for calling today. All right, coming up next,
we are going to talk to Oliver Merlin. He is

(53:42):
the guy who basically put on IFA twenty twenty three.
So we're here in Berlin. IFA is the big tech
trade show. Coming up. Oliver Merlin, Managing director of EFA Management,
will tell you all about what EFA is here for.
You're listening to Rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich

(54:05):
on Tech, Rich DeMuro here on location in Berlin at
EFA twenty twenty three. This is a massive tech show.
And joining me now is Oliver Merlin, Managing director for
EFA Management. Thanks so much for joining me.

Speaker 7 (54:18):
Today, pleasure, Good morning, how are you.

Speaker 1 (54:20):
I'm doing great? So this is my first time to Berlin,
first time to EFA. Explain this show to someone who
hasn't been.

Speaker 7 (54:27):
Right sure, well, first of all, welcome, thank you for coming.

Speaker 11 (54:31):
EFA is the biggest consumer electronics and home appliances tech
show in the world.

Speaker 1 (54:36):
And so twenty six floors of things to see everything
from smart appliances, gadgets, healthcare. Is there any way to
see it all?

Speaker 7 (54:46):
Yeah?

Speaker 11 (54:46):
Absolutely, Bring lots of pairs and comfortable shoes and download
the app and you'll find your way around, no problem.

Speaker 1 (54:51):
Okay, So explain to me what is here and listen.

Speaker 11 (54:55):
Everything from gaming consoles to frich freezer's washing.

Speaker 7 (54:59):
Machines, smart living, Internet of Things.

Speaker 11 (55:01):
You've heard of all of these things, right, this is
where you come to see them all living and breathing.

Speaker 1 (55:06):
What are the trends you're seeing with this year's exhibitors.

Speaker 11 (55:08):
There's been two huge trends this year that have blown
almost everything else side of the world. Honestly, sustainability is
obviously the first one. Almost all of our exhibitors are
talking about sustainability, and the really enlightened ones are really
taking this so seriously. They know that consumers have put
sustainability at their number.

Speaker 7 (55:25):
One priority when it comes to perching.

Speaker 11 (55:27):
It's gone beyond brand or pricing or brand loyals or
anything like that.

Speaker 7 (55:30):
Now sustainability is right up there.

Speaker 11 (55:32):
If you haven't got a credible story about it, the
consumers will look elsewhere.

Speaker 7 (55:35):
So that's number one. The second one is AI. Right.

Speaker 11 (55:38):
Nobody was talking about AI year ago, and now AI
is everywhere. Everybody's grandmother is an expert on AI, right,
and everybody's scared AI is going to end the world.

Speaker 7 (55:46):
Those two are probably the biggest by far.

Speaker 1 (55:48):
Give me an idea for some of the numbers. This
is a very large show, a lot of exhibitors, and
a lot of people come from around the world to
see this.

Speaker 7 (55:56):
Yeah, it's incredible.

Speaker 11 (55:57):
So this whole we've taken every square centimeter that we
can good of the MESA Berlin.

Speaker 7 (56:01):
It's about one.

Speaker 11 (56:01):
Hundred and thirty thousand square meters. We've got two and
fifty nine exhibitors coming from forty eight countries, and we're
hoping for Again, these are projections because we don't know
until we get to the.

Speaker 7 (56:11):
End of the five days.

Speaker 11 (56:12):
Something like one hundred and eighty thousand people to come
through the door over the five days, right, So that's
an incredible amount of people from over one hundred countries.
I think maybe something like one hundred and forty countries
around the world.

Speaker 7 (56:23):
It's a truly, truly huge event.

Speaker 11 (56:25):
There are very few events of this size and scale
around in the industry, and certainly in this industry, and
this is the biggest.

Speaker 1 (56:31):
One of the unique aspects of EFA is that the
public is allowed to attend. Unlike a lot of other
shows trade shows, public isn't invaded. So what does that
add to the mix.

Speaker 11 (56:42):
Well, we've only believe that EFA is actually the best
trade show for consumer electronics and.

Speaker 7 (56:47):
Home appliances in the world.

Speaker 11 (56:48):
But really, you know, as events develop and face to
face comes back and people really want to return to
events and trade shows, that's not enough just being a
trade show, right, So we really think about the consumer.
We've always had the consumer at the heart of what
we do, and our customers, you know, they have.

Speaker 7 (57:02):
To think about the consumer. This is essentially a consumer industry.

Speaker 11 (57:05):
So the show runs from a Friday to a Tuesday,
and in the middle of that is a weekend, and
obviously most consumers will tend to come on the weekend.
They can actually come any of the five days, but
we feel that that gives us a really really nice feel.
We feel that in the future the balance between B
to B and B two Z is going to blur,
and so we encourage us a general mixing of all
different points of view that encourage our exhibitors to really
think about the consumers, not just their trade.

Speaker 7 (57:27):
Fuyers and charges consumers to come and.

Speaker 11 (57:29):
See the latest innovations and what their TVs might look
like next year and the year after, what robots are happening,
you know, what the latest tech really is.

Speaker 1 (57:37):
How do you balance the tradition of the show but
also innovation for the next year. You always want to
build upon it.

Speaker 11 (57:44):
Yeah, absolutely so. EFHA is a show that's actually been
going ninety nine years. Obviously, there's a few years they've
been interrupted, and for a while the show is every
other year. So there's a huge amount of history and
tradition that's associated with EFA. Albert Einstein, for example, was
one of the first openers, the keynote speakers of ef
and we've got some tremendous speakers going back through history.
Various Prime ministers have opened the show and.

Speaker 7 (58:04):
All those sorts of things.

Speaker 11 (58:05):
However, the bedrock of the show is innovation, what's going
to happen tomorrow, what's happening next year, what's happening in
the year after, Right, So we like to pride ourselves
on the fact of that, the historical association of EFO
with Berlin and this amazing venue, plus with the fact
that we're always looking forward.

Speaker 1 (58:20):
You've got also an area where you're fixing different devices.
Tell me about that.

Speaker 11 (58:25):
Yeah, yeah, So one of the things that we do
is that, you know, again going back to this idea
of the balancing the trade show with adding some new things.

Speaker 7 (58:32):
So the Mend and repair shop.

Speaker 11 (58:33):
That you refer to, we partner with the local Menda
Repair Cafe in Berlin, and the Menda Repair Shop sits
within the Sustainability Village.

Speaker 7 (58:39):
The Sustainability Village.

Speaker 11 (58:41):
Is a particular zone several thousand square meters in Hall
two where you can go and listen to all of
our exhibitors talking about sustainability, world experts and sustainability talking
on the sustainability stage. And within that there's a Menda
Repair shop where I think predominantly local people, right, I
don't expect people have taken the plane with their washing machine,
but Berliners and German people and maybe some people have

(59:02):
come from Europe can bring their hair dryers, gaming consoles,
you know, small things they might bring that are broken
or it needed a bit of a TLC and they
can take them to the Menda repair shop right there.

Speaker 1 (59:10):
And then can you give us a sneak peak of
what's to come for next year?

Speaker 7 (59:15):
Well?

Speaker 11 (59:15):
Next year is the one hundredth year obviously of EFO,
so it's going to be truly enormous. I think one
of the things we haven't focused on so much this
year is the outside area, which at Messer Berlin we've
got a tremendous kind of opportunity to use a fantastic garden. Generally,
thing ascross the weather is okay, you'll see a lot
of more use of the outdoor space.

Speaker 7 (59:34):
I don't want to give too much away, but in
terms of a kind.

Speaker 11 (59:36):
Of festival vibe, if you like concerts and things like that,
you'll see us majoring on that. And I think just
being the one hundredth year, you'll see also a lot
more activations within.

Speaker 7 (59:45):
And in and around the city of Berlin.

Speaker 1 (59:47):
As you've organized this and talked to these companies and
kind of gotten sneak peaks of what they're going to
show off anything that's really kind of caught your eye.

Speaker 11 (59:56):
Well, look, I think the thing is with technology, there
are periods where, you know, sort of like if you
look at when the advent of the smartphone happened, right,
all the technology is suddenly left right, And I think
you're going to see that in the next year, probably
to eighteen months with AI.

Speaker 5 (01:00:11):
Right.

Speaker 7 (01:00:11):
So, a lot of our big home appliance companies have
been talking about.

Speaker 11 (01:00:14):
The Internet of Things and smart things and smart homes
all these things. Now I don't think that's really, you know,
really caught fire.

Speaker 7 (01:00:22):
I think with the advent of AI that you're.

Speaker 11 (01:00:24):
Going to see that enormously in the next year or two,
and I think that will really power their businesses and
obviously for one hundred and one hundred and one as
we go along like that.

Speaker 1 (01:00:33):
And finally, let's talk Berlin for a moment. I don't
think you're from here, but you probably know this city
pretty well at this point. So what is Berlin all about?

Speaker 11 (01:00:43):
Yeah, well, I can't quite yet do the JFK. It
could be nine in Berlin. I mean, you know, so
I've been here for about a year now and I
love it, you know, it's I'm from London and it's
it's strange. It's got a lot of similarity to London,
many many different types of areas within the city, a
lot of vibrancy. You feel the history and you're wandering
around and you just feel that kind of you know,
intensity about the city.

Speaker 7 (01:01:04):
It really kind of lives and breathes. You really feel that.
And IFA has.

Speaker 11 (01:01:06):
Been here in IFA is at Berlin Institute if you like,
one of the first things that I did in my role,
because I've partnered with the city and you can become
a partner of the City of Berlin. And we've tried
to set up, as I said, this platform Berlin Tech
Week where we do various activations around the city. That
Iconic Platz is and there's a Soho house in Berlin
so doing things there. We've got a gaming afternoon at

(01:01:29):
a place called Level Lvl. There's any of your listeners
that know Berlin a little bit, a big gaming impouring
where we're.

Speaker 7 (01:01:34):
Doing some things there.

Speaker 11 (01:01:35):
So we're really trying to make that close association with
the city.

Speaker 7 (01:01:39):
You know, we have a really good advantage Berlin.

Speaker 11 (01:01:40):
It's one of those cities that really lends itself to
you know, it would be a shame to not use Berlin.

Speaker 1 (01:01:45):
If someone wants to come for next year, do you
already have the dates?

Speaker 11 (01:01:48):
Yes, it's the sixth to the tenth next year, so
slightly later for your listeners that want to come from
the US. I think there's no clash with Labour Day,
which sometimes you know, stops people coming from the US.
So yeah, sixth and tenth of September, Marketing and daries
please come.

Speaker 1 (01:02:02):
Oliver Merlin, Managing director for EFA Management, Thanks so much
for joining me today.

Speaker 7 (01:02:06):
Thanks very much. Be an absolute pleasure.

Speaker 5 (01:02:07):
All right.

Speaker 1 (01:02:08):
If you want to learn more about IFA twenty twenty
three or plan your trip for twenty twenty four, go
to my website for more information. Rich on Tech dot
TV more rich On Tech show coming up right after this.
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here talking

(01:02:29):
technology at triple eight Rich one oh one eight eight
eight seven four to two four one zero one and
I'm told Green Day also German. Wow, the things you'll
learn when you travel. Let's go to line three. Patty
is in Santa Clarita, California, back home.

Speaker 9 (01:02:49):
Welcome to the show, Patty, Hi, thank you so much,
so I'm hoping you can explain things in terms that
I can understand, because I just don't get it. I
got a new show because I went swimming with my
old phone and my iPhone, and so I restored them backup,
and none of my old text message threads came back.

(01:03:12):
So I went to the Apple store and he was
helping me out, and he said, it's something that needs
to go to the next level because they can try
to retrieve it from a different place that it gets stored.
Even though I have my backups always on and I
have my messages safe forever, they're no longer there. So
I've had two people try to help me to try this,

(01:03:33):
try this. Why didn't it back up? And how do
I prevent this from happening in the future.

Speaker 6 (01:03:39):
Well, number one way to get them?

Speaker 1 (01:03:42):
Well there may be a way. So, okay, you got
to explain number one, what happened to the old phone?
Because phones, you know, the most of them are water
resistant at this point, So what was it? An older device?

Speaker 6 (01:03:52):
Right?

Speaker 9 (01:03:53):
It was an older one. It was an iPhone eleven
and I guess it was in the water for too long.

Speaker 1 (01:04:00):
Okay, that that can explain it.

Speaker 9 (01:04:02):
So it got Yeah, so I couldn't transfer from that phone.

Speaker 1 (01:04:07):
Okay. So most phones are water resistant for about thirty
minutes in the water, so now they could last longer
depending on the situation and how deep it is. But basically,
the deeper the phone goes and the longer it's in
there are the deeper it is, the shorter it's going
to be okay, because it more pressure builds up on
the phone. So that's what's happening there. So the phone

(01:04:28):
was a total loss, Like they couldn't retrieve anything.

Speaker 9 (01:04:31):
I could not turn anything on, and it was not
like thirty minutes. It was like at the most ten
minutes in the water.

Speaker 3 (01:04:38):
But I tried.

Speaker 1 (01:04:41):
Yeah, okay, So how did you restore the new phone?

Speaker 10 (01:04:46):
To back it up?

Speaker 9 (01:04:47):
I mean went to back up from one of the
previous backups, like July twenty first, I had a backup
to like twenty eighth, there was a backup, okay, So
we tried to life eight. Didn't happen, was it?

Speaker 3 (01:05:00):
Yeah?

Speaker 9 (01:05:01):
From iCloud everything okay, always keep that up.

Speaker 1 (01:05:05):
Okay, And so do you have now you have that
in iCloud? Do you have the uh, let's see, do
you do you ever connect your phone to the computer
if you have a backup there.

Speaker 9 (01:05:17):
I do have a backup there. I didn't connect it
to the computer, but I try to access my messages
on iCloud and I couldn't find them there. There's no
there's no icon for I message when I go to iCloud.

Speaker 1 (01:05:32):
Yeah, oh, I know. This is the this is the
beauty of what Apple has done here. They've made this
incredible messaging service that is incredibly frustrating. Yeah, because people
don't know where their messages are. They don't know how
to find them. They're not. You would think you could
just go to iCloud dot com and they would all
be there, but of course they're not. You would think

(01:05:52):
that you would be able to just open up the
backup that they do on your computer and find your messages.
You cannot. You would think that they would allow a
third party app to go in on your phone and
download your messages for safe keeping. They do not. Now
some of this is because of security reasons, but most
of it is because of Apple's stubbornness. Here's what I think.
Number one, do you have messages in iCloud enabled on

(01:06:16):
your phone? That's my first question. I do, And are
you okay? So have you gone to I have to
remember how to do this. I've gotta. So if you
go to your Apple I D and you go to
iCloud and then show all messages, is that toggled.

Speaker 9 (01:06:34):
On on my phone?

Speaker 2 (01:06:37):
Yep?

Speaker 9 (01:06:39):
Yes, well it is now at least I mean I know,
I know I had it. I'm so sure that I
had it because I am and how much?

Speaker 1 (01:06:48):
Okay, can you go to your phone? Can you go
to your phone right now and see that? Because I'm
curious what it says about managed storage?

Speaker 9 (01:06:55):
Okay?

Speaker 6 (01:06:55):
Hold on, let me check.

Speaker 1 (01:06:56):
I guess my phone. Okay. So you go to settings
and then iCloud. Okay, that's the thing at the top.

Speaker 9 (01:07:04):
Okay, let me find it.

Speaker 1 (01:07:06):
Okay, I mean Apple ID, it says, he says settings
Apple ID at the top, and then iCloud okay, and
then show all apps using iCloud click show all Yes,
and now that okay. Now when you tap that, does
it say sync this phone? And how much managed storage
are you using? Up there?

Speaker 9 (01:07:26):
It says, yes, I think this sto managed storage? One
point four do the bikes?

Speaker 1 (01:07:31):
Okay? So one point four gigs? I have nine gigs, which, yeah,
so I'm not sure that your messages are are there. Right,
Here's what here's what I recommend if you want to
see if these are on there. There's a couple of
things you do. Do you do you have an Apple computer?
I do, okay, So on your Apple computer, there is

(01:07:53):
the same thing. If you go into your settings and
you can go into your messages and there is a
little I a little selection that says messages in the cloud.
You toggle that on and it will attempt to download
all of your messages from iCloud to your computer. That's
one way. The other way. The other way is there's
an app called Amazing, and this is a paid app,

(01:08:15):
so it's gonna cost you some money, but I think
it's about maybe thirty bucks. But you can download that
and you can take that backup that you have from
your computer and you can have this app analyze it
and see if those messages are there. So that's another way,
but I would only do that as your last resort.

Speaker 6 (01:08:33):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:08:33):
The other thing you can do is you can go
to something like an iPad and try to toggle on
and off the messages in the cloud and see if
they show up. But this is this is I'm telling you,
it's not just you, Patty, there is no easy way
to do this, and so I'm trying to explain it
in the simplest terms. But these things are locked away

(01:08:55):
in a system that nobody knows how to access. And
I love the Apple said, you know the escalation all
this stuff like, I'm not really sure what that means,
but you know, these are the places that you can
look for these. But it sounds like you've got a
gig of messages and I'm not sure how many messages.
How long have you been using this new phone?

Speaker 9 (01:09:14):
Oh, just like a month?

Speaker 1 (01:09:17):
Okay. The other thing you can do is if you're
still are you still on your iPhone?

Speaker 3 (01:09:22):
Yes?

Speaker 7 (01:09:23):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:09:24):
So if you go to iCloud okay, okay, and it
says device backups. Do you see that?

Speaker 9 (01:09:31):
Get it again?

Speaker 1 (01:09:33):
It says device backups yes, and then it says iCloud backup.
If you tap that, it should give you a list
of the older phones. Do you see your old phone
in there?

Speaker 3 (01:09:43):
I do?

Speaker 1 (01:09:45):
Okay? How many gigs is that?

Speaker 9 (01:09:47):
It says fourteen gigs?

Speaker 1 (01:09:49):
Okay, So there's a chance there's there's a chance that
your messages are still in that backup. So if you
try to restore you can either. I mean, I wouldn't
want to do this, but you can try restoring that
back to your phone and see if something got hiccuped
during the transfer that's annoying. You should probably use an

(01:10:12):
app like I amazing to extract that backup and then
see if it can find the messages. But again it
depends how valuable these messages are to you, because this
is a lot of work, and it may be worth
it to just kind of, you know, say this didn't
work out and it's unfortunate. But it's definitely frustrating, that's

(01:10:32):
for sure. It's one of those things where I wish
I had a simple way. People ask me all the time,
how do I back up my eye messages? How do
I print them out? How do I do all this stuff? Yes,
third party programs can help you do it, but they
are still not perfect, and they're expensive and they cost money,
and they may not work. But the I Amazing is
probably your best bet if you want to try to

(01:10:54):
extract these messages from the old backup. Thanks so much
for the call today, appreciate it. Sorry that happened. I
think you were doing the right thing. You had the
backup on you had I message on you had the
I message in the cloud on, but somehow this all
got lost and it just shouldn't happen that way. Speaking
of text messages, you are going to be getting an

(01:11:16):
emergency test message very soon. FEMA and the FCC are
conducting a test of the emergency alert system. If you
are in the Los Angeles well, this is nationwide, but
my point is if you are if you were in
the Los Angeles area over the past couple of weeks
when we had the earthquakes and the tropical storm and

(01:11:37):
the hurricane, you got a lot of these wireless alerts,
so you're pretty familiar with them. But FEMA's going to
do a nationwide test and this will be sent to
all cell phones in English and Spanish. They're also going
to broadcast it on radio and TVs nationwide. This is
the third and seventh test issued nationwide, so the third

(01:12:00):
for the wireless emergency alerts, the seventh for the the
one on TV, and basically they're just trying to make
sure this all works. I have a feeling it does,
and we're very familiar with it. But again, uh oh,
I should probably tell you the date October fourth, Did
I tell you that the message is going to say
this is a test. It's gonna appear for thirty minutes.
It'll appear for a minute on TV and cable and radio.

(01:12:22):
But again, if you want to put it in your
calendar October fourth, hopefully they'll do it when we're asleep.
That would be very, very cruel. Hopefully it's during the day.
But no matter what, even when you know this is coming,
it still makes you jump because it's so jarring. You're
listening to rich on Tech. Give me a call if
you have a question about technology at triple eight rich

(01:12:43):
one O one eight eight eight seven four to two
four one zero one. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Rich to bureau here hanging out with you talking technology.
This is the show where I talk about the tech
stuff I think you should know about. It's also the
place where I answer your questions. You can find me
online at rich on Tech, on Instagram, Twitter, slash x, Facebook,

(01:13:09):
or you can go to rich on Tech dot TV.
Phone lines are open at one eight eight eight rich
one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to
two four to one zero one. You can also email me.
Just go to rich on Tech dot TV hit contact.
That's what a lot of folks are doing let's see. Yeah,

(01:13:33):
I'm broadcasting live from Berlin, Germany, my first time here.
I've had more pretzels than I could ever imagine, than
you could ever imagine. I've had pretzels for breakfast, let's
just put it that way. Yesterday I had a pretzel
for lunch, a butter pretzel, which I'd never had before.
And yeah, so it's it's been a good trip. Let's

(01:13:55):
go to line three, Durango, Colorado, Downtown Brown.

Speaker 12 (01:14:00):
You're on with rich Well Dudaben. Hey, I want to
ask you a question about if you're traveling to another
country like your you want to take your own phone.
Do you need to get a new SIM card or
do you need to rent a phone or what's the
best way to do it?

Speaker 1 (01:14:16):
Good question. So a couple of things you need to do.
Number One, call your carrier. Start with that, because depending
on your carrier, many of them either include some level
of international calling these days, or they'll charge you ten
dollars a day if you take your phone to a
different country. Now, for some people they may say, okay,
that sounds really easy. Just keep in mind the data

(01:14:39):
is typically limited when you do that. I think it's
easier to get what's called an eSIM, so if your
phone supports it. An eSIM is basically something that you
just activate from an app on your phone. My favorite
app is called Rolo Ai r Alo. In fact, that
is powering the show right now. This show is running

(01:15:01):
off of an eSIM that I have purchased from them,
so the data is going strong. It works well. And
what you do is you buy that from your phone
before you leave the country. So you download the Aerlow app.
You type in the country or region that you're going to.
You can you know, it's basically cheaper to buy it
for the specific country than the region, and you type

(01:15:24):
that in. It tells you what your plans are. It's
usually pre paid. You you know, pay fifteen bucks for
five gigs of data, it lasts for a week. Maybe
you're paying fifty dollars for thirty days that you know,
twenty gigs of data. Whatever it is. They give you
the options. Once you purchase it, you then install it
on your phone. And the way you install it is

(01:15:44):
you just basically tap a link. It will install the
SIM card, the eSIM and then you don't need to
activate it until you get to the country that you're
going to use it. And so once you get off
the plane, what I do is I'll toggle off data
roaming for my primary carrier, and that way I could
still use Wi Fi calling and I'll get my texts
through the Wi Fi and then you toggle on the

(01:16:06):
eSIM and it will take a minute to kind of
find the network and turn on and activate, and then
you're good to go. Now, esimsically only work with data,
but I just actually open the airlow app and now
they give you a phone number two if you want,
so you can also roam with a foreign phone number
as well. Now I don't really think you need that

(01:16:26):
because you can easily just turn on your Wi Fi
calling and still get your phone calls through Wi Fi
of course, and your text messages through Wi Fi as well.
So it has gotten a lot easier to travel to
different countries because of eSIMs, because of the way phones work,
because of the roaming agreements. It used to be a
very expensive, very prohibitive and phones just didn't work in

(01:16:48):
different places. Now they work pretty much everywhere. Now. On
a separate note, there's another way you could do it.
You can get a hot spot. So I've been testing
this hot spot called Solace five G. SOLS Solace five
G hotspot and it looks like almost like a battery
bank with a screen and this has its own SIM inside.

(01:17:11):
And what you do is you go on their website
and you just say where you're going to go, and
you can buy data on this and it becomes your
own personal hotspot. You can connect up to sixteen different devices.
And I think what this is handy for is if
you are traveling with a family or a group, it's
much easier. Instead of buying everyone a simcard or an

(01:17:33):
e SIM, you can just activate this, tell everyone to
turn on their WiFi. You keep this in your backpack
and everyone can hotspot off of this. So they would
connect to the Wi Fi on this little device and
the battery has lasted pretty long. It's also a battery
bank as well. So the plans. Now, the downside to

(01:17:54):
this Solas five G is that you have to go
with their plans. And it's easier because it's simple, but
you know it's going to cost you a little bit more. So,
convenience always comes with a cost, and that's what this
gives you a lot of convenience. It works everywhere you
can purchase one plan, you can go to a bunch
of different countries, and the data lasts, let's see by

(01:18:16):
the month, the day, or the gigabyte, and so they
have a whole bunch of plans that you can purchase.
I think it's actually really cool. If you have a
bunch of devices like myself, If you bring a tablet,
a laptop, a phone, you know you can connect them
all to this device and it'll work no matter where
you go. So you just throw it in your backpack,
set it forget it now. Keep in mind, when you're

(01:18:36):
in the hotel room most of the time you're going
to get free Wi Fi. And in fact, around Europe
and many other countries, free Wi Fi is pretty ubiquitous,
so you probably need less data than you think. I'm
looking at the data eSIM that I bought. I bought
a twenty gigabyte card and I've only used about fourteen
on my phone that I was using a lot. I

(01:18:57):
told you I was testing the pixel fold. I mean
I was using that a lot. Oh one pro tip
you want to turn off if you're backing up your photos,
especially through Google Photos or these other apps. You want
to turn off roaming. Do not back up your pictures
while you're roaming, and maybe turn off data backups completely

(01:19:17):
unless you're on Wi Fi. So there's an option in
the settings to turn off cellular data backups on all
these apps that back up your photos. You're on vacation
or you're on a trip, you're taking a lot of pictures.
If your phone is uploading all of those pictures in
real time, not only is it going to burn through
your battery instantly, but it's also going to burn through

(01:19:38):
your data really really fast. So those are a couple
of the options that you have. They used to have
another option where you could rent one of these Solas
five G type devices and you can rent a hotspot.
A lot of times, they are not doing that anymore.
A lot of the companies that were renting them have
gone out of business because data has gotten so cheap
and eSIMs have gotten so easy, and finally, Downtown Brown,

(01:20:01):
like you said, the other thing you can do is
just buy a real SIM card and pop that into
your phone. And so you could typically at the airport
they'll have people selling SIM cards and they will help
you pop that into your phone. I think that's a
little tricky because not every phone is unlocked. Not every
phone works in every place, not every SIM card will

(01:20:23):
work on your phone. So to me, I think the eSIM,
if your phone supports it, is really the surefire way.
And I will tell you from experience. I don't want
to put my mom on a blast here, but she
went to Germany a while ago and she was able
to activate her eSIM herself. And so it was one

(01:20:43):
of these things where I was a little bit concerned
because I set her up with it and I said,
all you have to do is activate it when you
get to the place you're going. And sure enough, it
worked just fine, and it worked for her when people
in her group could not figure out their text or
their their data. So that was pretty cool. Great question.
Thanks for calling from Durango, Colorado. Today. Let me tell

(01:21:04):
you about Google. This was a very popular story I
did on TV and I think you probably want to
know about it. Google has this new feature that lets
you remove your personal information from their Google Search results.
This is information like your phone number, your email, your
home address. Just go ahead and search yourself. You'll find
all kinds of results with your personal information in it.

(01:21:25):
Now Google is making it much easier to get this
out of their search results. Now I say that specifically,
it does not delete it from the website that posted it,
but it makes it a lot tougher for people to
find it because it's not going to show up when
someone searches your name and address or phone number, and
it won't show up in those search results. So this
is a free service. It's called Results about You. Google

(01:21:49):
introduced it last year. It was much more complicated. Now
it is much easier. Google will actually once you tell
them your name, your phone number, your address, your email.
You can put in multi variations. I know you have
to trust Google to give them that information, but they
say they're not going to use it for anything else.
But once you put that information in there, it will
search the web on a daily basis to see if

(01:22:11):
new sites pop up with your info, and if it does,
it'll send you an alert and you can say, oh,
can you get rid of that? And they will in
many cases take it down, not all cases, but in many.
So here's how you do this. Open up the Google
app on your phone, iOS or Android, tap your profile
icon in the upper right hand corner, and then select
the option for Results about You. It'll say that in

(01:22:34):
the menu You follow the steps to put in your
personal information, and then you sit back and you wait.
Google will send you an alert when it has crawled
the web for your information, and it will say do
you want us to remove these? You select the ones
that you want to remove, and you press submit and
Google will send you an email letting you know if
they've removed them or not. This is not the end
all to get your personal information off the internet, but

(01:22:56):
it is a very good step in the right direction
of of cleaning up some of that mess that you
see on all these people find our websites. Again, it's
not going to take it down off of those, but
it will take it off Google search results, which is
where ninety nine percent of people look when they're starting
a search for someone. So again this is called Google
Results About You. If you want those step by step

(01:23:17):
instructions one more time, I've posted them to my Instagram.
Just find me at rich on Tech and the post
says do this today to protect your personal information, very
very easy. Got a ton of feedback from folks. Many
were skeptical, but many said rich It took me a
couple of days, but it worked. I got a lot
of my data off of there you are listening to

(01:23:39):
Rich on Tech. The phone number to call in is
triple eight Rich one oh one eight eight eight seven
four to two four to one zero one more rich
on Tech coming your way from Berlin, Germany. Welcome back
to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here at talking technology

(01:24:01):
with you. Let's go to UH line to Sylvie in
San Diego, California. Sylvie, you're on with Rich.

Speaker 13 (01:24:10):
I'm wondering about a recommendation for a video doorbell. The
only one I'm really familiar with is ring, and then
I'd also would like to plug in somehow to hear
it upstairs when the doorbell rings.

Speaker 1 (01:24:28):
Okay, well it sounds like you want to ring, because
that's exactly what they do. I think ring. They invented
this genre of doorbells, and I still think they are
one of the best. So okay, there you know some
people you know. It depends kind of depends what ecosystem
you're in. Are Do you have any smart home products?

Speaker 3 (01:24:50):
Yes, like what.

Speaker 13 (01:24:54):
Sonos We have another door bell, but I can't hook
up to it, so I want to replace it.

Speaker 1 (01:25:04):
And what do you mean you can't hook up to it.

Speaker 13 (01:25:07):
On my phone? For some reason? Only my husband can
hook up to it, and it doesn't have the option
of it doesn't ring, so if I don't have my
phone near me, I don't hear it.

Speaker 1 (01:25:20):
Yeah, that's definitely a problem.

Speaker 13 (01:25:22):
Ring on my phone. It only rings on his.

Speaker 1 (01:25:26):
Now, do you want to do hardwired or do you
want to do wireless?

Speaker 13 (01:25:32):
Probably wireless. I don't think we have the wiring.

Speaker 1 (01:25:36):
Okay, I think the ring is probably your best bet.
The main thing is that you're probably going to have
to subscribe to their basic service, which is I think
it's anywhere between twenty to forty dollars a year at
this point. I know everyone has raised prices, so i'd
have to I have to check to see what the
price is at this point. But what I like about

(01:25:57):
the ring doorbell is it simple. It's ubiquitous. You know
a lot of people have them, so there's a lot
of them out there. They work well, They work across
multiple phones, so if your husband wants to check it
on his phone, you want to check it on your phone,
you can do that. You can keep it pretty secure
because they enable a two factor by default, which means

(01:26:18):
other folks can't look at what's happening on your doorbell
and they have that chime. So if you want to
have it ring upstairs where you want to be, that's
a good way to do it. You just plug in
the little chime, you hook it up. It's very very simple,
activate it in the app, and now you can hear
your doorbell anywhere in the home. It's funny because they
didn't have that when it first came out. And when

(01:26:38):
I first got this thing, I was like, wait a second,
I have to have my phone, Like, what if there's
like a babysitter in the house, how are they going
to hear the doorbell? Not that I really want them
opening the door, but you know what I mean, Yes,
does that sound like something that will work?

Speaker 13 (01:26:54):
Yes, it does. I know Ring was sold and so
I didn't know if it was still the same good company.

Speaker 1 (01:27:01):
Well yeah, I mean, look it's it's owned by Amazon now,
so there is some debate over you know, and the
founder recently left. So I mean that, you know, it
tells you something. But I will tell you that I
test a lot of stuff. I still think that the
Ring video doorbell has some of the best features. It's
the simplest and they, you know, as much as they

(01:27:22):
are now pushing the subscription side of things. More, I
think that they've got a lot of accessories, They've got
a lot of you know, and a lot of people
using them, and so I think in a lot of
different versions too, So it depends you can you can choose.
You can go on their website and see all the
different doorbells they have. They used to have one, but
now they've got, you know, several doorbells. And the cool
thing is too, is that it does work with Alexa,

(01:27:45):
it does work with other items in sort of their
their ecosystem is is huge at this point, and so
you can get lights, you can get cameras, so you
can build upon the video doorbell, which is of course
what they want you to do. So the basic video
doorbell looks like it's about seventy bucks. They go up
to one hundred and sixty. The new one is the

(01:28:07):
video Doorbell four and those are the wireless ones. And
what I recommend pro tip is to get two batteries
so that you can swap out the battery without having
to wait to recharge. And I can't take credit for
that idea. What's up?

Speaker 13 (01:28:23):
Well, I was going to ask you you can put
them anywhere you don't need a power source because their
battery yep, rechargeable.

Speaker 1 (01:28:32):
Exactly, yep, yep. Now I wish the battery recharged faster,
and I wish to recharge with USBC. Maybe the new
ones do, but mine does not. But I can't take
credit for the two battery set up. That was my
friend Brian when he came over and he said, hey,
you know, I said, oh, my ring. The only thing
is that you guys switched the battery out. Depending on
the battery lasts anywhere between three and six months. Now

(01:28:55):
that is a wide range, and it could last even
less depending on how all often you have your device
set to record, how long you're making these recordings, and
also if your doorbells in direct sunlight, that will wear
down the battery faster too, But in general you'll probably
get around three to six months, depending on how much

(01:29:18):
you're using this thing. I find that I get on
the lower end. I would say probably at this point,
I'm getting like two months. But my batteries are a
little bit older, and I do have it. My car
got hit outside my house. That was a story I
told in this radio show. And of course, you know,
I like to have my thing running a little bit
more these days because of that incident where it did

(01:29:39):
not record because I had it set to not record
as much. Anyway, that's my problem, Sylvie, not yours. Are
you excited for this doorbell?

Speaker 8 (01:29:48):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (01:29:49):
Yes, I think you'll like it all right. Thanks for
the call, Sylvie. Check it out ring video doorbell and
also get the chime and the secondary battery and I
think you'll be set up pretty well. Coming up on
the show, we are going to talk to Mark Vina.
He is the principal analyst at his own company, tech

(01:30:10):
smart Tech Research. Mark is a great guy. Met him
this week at IFA. Very smart guy. We're gonna talk
about the show. We're gonna talk about what Apple's doing.
We're gonna talk about AI whole bunch of stuff coming up.
Right here, you are listening to Rich on Tech. Welcome

(01:30:31):
back to rich on Tech, Rich DeMuro on location here
in Berlin at IFA twenty twenty three. We are on
the show floor. Joining me now is Mark Vina, principal
analyst at Smart Tech Research. Mark. Thanks so much for
joining me.

Speaker 2 (01:30:46):
Rich, Thank you for having me all right.

Speaker 1 (01:30:49):
So, IFA twenty twenty three, this is my first year here.
This is a large show, the only thing I really
have to compare it to is CEES. How are they different?

Speaker 14 (01:30:58):
It's a tough compare because she yes, Obviously, it really
caters to a US audience. It's a very much a
B to B type of event, so consumers technically can't
go to CEES. What I love about efan I've been
coming here many years, is that it's got a tremendous
international flavor, a lot of legacy. The show goes back
to nineteen twenty four.

Speaker 2 (01:31:17):
The first color.

Speaker 14 (01:31:19):
Television was introduced here, the first European car radio was
introduced here, So it really has kind of a not
only an international flavor, but it has a strong entrepreneurial
and innovative spirit. So not to say the cs IS
doesn't have an equal level of innovation, but it really
is a kind of different show because of the cultural
international aspect of it.

Speaker 1 (01:31:39):
Yeah, they really play up the fact that it takes
place in Berlin and also the public is allowed to
come to this show, which is one of the biggest
questions I get about CES every year. People see it
on TV and they say can I go, And I
say sorry, it's press only in analysts. What do you
make of the fact that the public is invited here.

Speaker 14 (01:31:56):
I think that's a huge differentiator and I wish CES
would do that, but they will. I think it's a
great way to be able to see things in action.
There's no substitute. Despite the Internet, despite surfing and exploring
and getting information on the web, there's nothing like touching
and feeling products. And for example, if you're interested in
the smart appliance for your kitchen, seeing just the incredible breadth.

Speaker 2 (01:32:19):
Of products around here, there's no substitute.

Speaker 1 (01:32:21):
For seeing that in person and also being able to
talk to someone immediately. So if you're on YouTube, if
you're online, you're reading a whole bunch of stuff. But
to be able to talk to someone from the company
and ask the questions that you have to me as
a journalist, I always find that invaluable.

Speaker 2 (01:32:34):
That's a huge deal.

Speaker 14 (01:32:35):
And in addition to that, I would also say competitive comparisons.
So you can go to LG, you can go to
with Samsung Boo if you can see Hire, which is
obviously a big European brand out here, and actually see
the different models that compete with each other in one
exact in one location.

Speaker 1 (01:32:50):
How has this show changed over the years, because in
years past. When I tell people about EPA, they say, yeah,
it's a lot of appliances. Has that changed?

Speaker 2 (01:32:58):
It has changed.

Speaker 14 (01:32:59):
I'd be going to the show for about just five
years and the show has evolved quite a bit.

Speaker 2 (01:33:04):
Now it has a.

Speaker 14 (01:33:05):
Very strong smart home flavor to it, a very strong
smart home component to it. I would say focus on sustainability.
Just about every vendor here is not only offering great
technology products that solve real problems, but sustainability, which is
a huge, huge deal Europe, is absolutely reflected in the
products that you see here. So that's become a big,
big tenant here.

Speaker 1 (01:33:25):
There's the irony of sustainability with you know, products that
you throw out or you know, people don't repair their
tech as much these days.

Speaker 2 (01:33:32):
That's exactly right, That's exactly right. And I think the
thing that folks.

Speaker 14 (01:33:36):
Don't realize just we're talking about smart smart appliances, it's
not just about convenience. The smart applying products, just to
focus on that for a second, are incredibly efficient. I mean,
without even ignoring the productivity advantages you get from the
smart aspect of it.

Speaker 2 (01:33:51):
That it can do certain.

Speaker 14 (01:33:52):
Things with AI and other capabilities that are interesting. Now,
if you're replacing a refrigerator at that's fifteen or twenty
years old, You're going to see your savings and I
would I would encourage people to check that out because
it's just a huge opportunity that some people just don't appreciate.

Speaker 1 (01:34:07):
AI is obviously a big part of things. What do
you make of the recent developments in AI? And do
you see that here?

Speaker 2 (01:34:14):
Yes, you do.

Speaker 14 (01:34:15):
I think you see in a very smart and intelligent
way here. Uh, the AI category I'm in love with.
I think it offers enormous advantages and productivity benefits.

Speaker 2 (01:34:26):
There are aspects of AI that.

Speaker 14 (01:34:28):
Concern me a bit in terms of deep fakes and
things like that that have obviously have a very negative
connotation to it. But the AI thing is here to stay,
and you see it actually integrated and a lot of
different products that are very very practical. For example, I
saw a demo the other day that they showed a
robot vacuum that was intelligent enough to know that Let's

(01:34:48):
say you it scanned your you gave it access to
your email. Let's say you had a party the night
before without you telling it, it would know the following
day you know you had a party, so you probably
want to get to the living room back. So that's
a very very interesting productive way that you were seeing
and doing. It's being integrated into products in a very
useful manner.

Speaker 1 (01:35:06):
I would have never thought vacuum would want access to
my email, but maybe my calendar. I'll start out slow now.
One of the things that's really interesting about all of
these tech trade shows is Apple. They pretty much don't
attend in a big way with a booth or anything
like that, but they really have an impact on every show.

Speaker 2 (01:35:27):
That's very interesting.

Speaker 14 (01:35:28):
You know, Apple does cast a very long shadow even
when they're not here, they are here.

Speaker 2 (01:35:32):
It's hard not to.

Speaker 14 (01:35:33):
Go into a booth here, regardless of what the product
is and not see that the vendor or fering the solution,
regardless of what it is, is not compatible in the
Apple ecosystem in some way.

Speaker 7 (01:35:43):
You have to be.

Speaker 2 (01:35:43):
It's almost like table stakes.

Speaker 14 (01:35:45):
If you're not part of the Apple ecosystem and you're
not compatible in some way, you know pretty much you
box yourself out from a pretty significant portion of the market.
So even though they're not here, and by the way,
there probably is Apple people here kind of checking things out.
You know, they don't wear identification, But I am sure
there are Apple pbo here because it's such.

Speaker 2 (01:36:02):
A big event.

Speaker 14 (01:36:03):
But every vendor here has an Apple element or an
Apple attribute to their presence here at the show.

Speaker 1 (01:36:09):
Now, speaking of Apple, a couple of big changes. We
have a big event coming up from them on September twelfth.
USB C is rumored to be a major switch for
the iPhone and also Apple Vision Pro. Will we get
an update on that? First off, the USB C, what
impact do you think that's going to have on the
electronics world.

Speaker 14 (01:36:26):
Well, I can tell you for myself personally, They'll probably
be about ten pounds worth of cable, so I'll be
able to get out of my bag as we kiss
Lightning the Lightning interface goodbye.

Speaker 2 (01:36:35):
You know again.

Speaker 14 (01:36:37):
I doubt that will be the only announcement they make
as part of the iPhone fifteen refresh. There are rumors
around a much better camera, a telescoping lens for better
zooming quality that I'll be interesting to see.

Speaker 1 (01:36:48):
They're not going to go one hundred times like Samsung though, Oh.

Speaker 2 (01:36:50):
I doubt they'll do that.

Speaker 14 (01:36:52):
I think that's going to be interesting is that there
is some rumors that the price points may be going up.
They may be adding kind of a iPhone Pro ultra Moniker,
which that's a translation for we can raise the price
one hundred and two hundred dollars. So I know the
Apple's not immune to inflation. It's probably infecting them that way.
But they want to continue to innovate, of course, and

(01:37:14):
I think they'll be bringing some interesting technology. And they
have to because, as you know, the smartphone category is
flattening out. They have a very strong presence in the
high end part of the smartphone market, and the only
way you maintain that presidency you have to continue to innovate.

Speaker 1 (01:37:28):
Apple Vision Pro this is there. They don't call it VR,
but it's VR ar headset. You got a demo, I
got a demo. It's pretty incredible. Do you think we'll
get an update on the progress at this year's event.

Speaker 2 (01:37:41):
I think we'll see something.

Speaker 14 (01:37:42):
I think we'll get some type of feedback on how
they're doing with developers. I mean, there's been some news
reported recently that the developers who have gotten demo units
are freaking out in a positive way over.

Speaker 2 (01:37:55):
What they get, what they can play with.

Speaker 14 (01:37:57):
Because I'll remind the audience here that Vision is a
literally a spatial computer that sits on your head. This
is not just an accessory like an Oculus quest or
some of the other hear this out there. It's really
meant to be a computer in many, many different ways.
And when you're if you're a developer and you have
access to that type of technology, the applications are.

Speaker 2 (01:38:17):
Just mind blowing in terms of what we'll see.

Speaker 14 (01:38:19):
So I suspect we'll probably get an update on the
developer component to it that they announced at WWDC.

Speaker 1 (01:38:26):
Okay, back here to IFA, twenty six different halls, one
hundred and thirty thousand square meters. There is a lot
to see here? Is there any way to see it all?

Speaker 2 (01:38:39):
You know?

Speaker 14 (01:38:40):
The advice I give people who are lucky enough to
come to this show is you have to almost treat.

Speaker 2 (01:38:43):
It like a trip to Disney World.

Speaker 14 (01:38:45):
You know, you've got the Magic Kingdom, you've got to
have Cut Center, and then a.

Speaker 2 (01:38:48):
Number of other parks.

Speaker 14 (01:38:49):
You really can't knock it off from one day.

Speaker 1 (01:38:51):
All right, Now, maybe I'm nostalgic about, you know, the
days of tech past, But because I was watching that
movie BlackBerry, and then I watched Tetris. You've been doing
this for a while. How do you think the tech
industry has changed over the years.

Speaker 14 (01:39:05):
In some ways, it's different in many ways. It's rise
and repeat, you know, from a technology standpoint. You know,
when I walk around and I look at going to
and see different products. You know, I was involved with
a lot of the early consumer computers at Compac and
at Dell years ago. And while the devices have gotten
smaller and more efficient, the battery life have gotten longer.
You know, silicon and silicon software is software. There's much

(01:39:28):
more of a consumer flavor today than there was maybe
twenty years ago with different products. So the consumerization of
technology is much more prominent today than it was back
in the day.

Speaker 1 (01:39:38):
Mark Vina, a principal analyst at Smart Tech Research. How
can folks find your podcast?

Speaker 14 (01:39:44):
They can find me on my YouTube channel at a
smart Tech Check podcast, Very very popular.

Speaker 2 (01:39:49):
Well, it's free, please.

Speaker 14 (01:39:50):
Sign up and you can find me on Twitter or
x as it's now called at Marketing the Tech don
All right.

Speaker 1 (01:39:56):
Mark, thanks so much for joining me today at IFA
more Rich on Tech come in your way right after this.
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here closing
out the show from Berlin, Germany, wanted to tell you
about one product that I saw here that was pretty cool.

(01:40:17):
A lot of people know it's getting a lot of
press because it's kind of nice. You can turn your
old speakers into Airplay compatible speakers. It's from a company
named Eve. They make a bunch of smart home devices.
They announce the Eve Play. So this adds Airplay two
capabilities to existing speakers with digital and analog outputs. It

(01:40:41):
has Wi Fi, Ethernet, optical coacs, and RCAA connectors, so
that means that you can connect basically your old speakers
and make them modern. So with Airplay too, you could
do multi room audio. You can also pair them with
HomePods and other Airplay speakers. This is going to go
on sale November fourteenth, twenty twenty three. That's well, that's

(01:41:06):
this year for one hundred and fifty bucks. This is
called eve Play ev E. I've got a couple of
things from Eve in the house. They were a big
home kit producer and now they're doing everything with matter
so that's the new smart home standard. Anyway, Eve Play.

(01:41:28):
If you've got some old speakers you want to bring
them into the modern world, you can do that with
their new system. Gosh, I saw a lot of stuff
I'm gonna I'll talk more about the products I saw
next week because that'll give me time to put them
on KTLA and then that way you can see video
of these things. But I'm also going to post them
to my social media as well. All right, let's get

(01:41:48):
to the feedback segment. Let's see Paul says, Hey, Rich,
I'm preparing for a cross country trip. I was wondering
if you know of any route planning sites or app
that would be good for identifying tourist attractions along possible
routes for the trip.

Speaker 7 (01:42:05):
Oh, yes, I do.

Speaker 1 (01:42:08):
I did a story about this a couple years ago,
and I've used a bunch of these apps. The first
one is Roadsideamerica dot com. This will give you offbeat
kind of things to find, you know, like the largest
ball of twine. Then there's Atlas Obscura. This has twenty
four thousand curious and unexpected places. You can get that

(01:42:31):
on your phone as well. Atlas Obscura road Trippers is
a good planning guide. They have three hundred extraordinary places.
They also say they've been to these places, so they
tell you a little bit more about that. Indispensable is
an app called I Exit. This is an app that

(01:42:52):
will tell you what's up ahead at the exit. So
if you want to find that Krispy Kreme or that
Chick fil A or that specific as food place, that cinnabon,
this will tell you what's up ahead and the gas prices,
so you may be able to save a couple of
bucks just by stop at a gas station. That's you know,

(01:43:13):
two exits ahead instead of one. And finally, another one
is called Audio a u TiO. Kevin Costner actually had
a hand in this app. This is ten thousand location
based audio stories. So when you're driving through a place,
it will give you little audio snippets of cool things

(01:43:35):
that happened or the history or you know, interesting attractions.
That's called Audio au TiO. Used to be called here
here I believe, and now it's called audio. The other
one I would I would tell you that's incredible and
I've been using it on this trip well, and we
talked about on the show we didn't interview, but it's
called guide geek dot ai and if you want a

(01:43:55):
really smart travel assistant to ask a bunch of stuff too.
I have been using this all week here in Berlin
and it is really really cool. So there you go.
I'll put all those on the website as well. Let's see.
Stephanie says, I'm currently going on a work related trip
and we'll be leaving my children at the care of
their nanny. Do you have any suggestions for a good

(01:44:18):
discrete camera that has a long lasting battery for about
two weeks? Stephanie, Well, I don't know. I guess I
don't know if I can condone the spying on the nannycam,
but if you have to, there's a website called spyguy
dot com. Spy guy dot com. They made their name
with a little camera thing that you can look for

(01:44:40):
hidden cameras and airbnbs and it's called Scout. But they
also sell a whole bunch of hidden cameras that you
can prouse on their website again, spy guy dot com.
All right, now for some comments, let's see. Oh gosh,
so many. Greg says, I took your recommendation for the
Google Pixel tablet on Amazon Prime Day. Thank you for

(01:45:01):
the recommendation. It's my first tablet. I'm very happy. Okay, cool.
The Google Pixel is their return to tablets. Tom says, hey, Rich,
glad you had a safe journey to Berlin. I assume
you went on United all the way. Did you have
a chance to check out other carriers en route? Could
you please tell me the name of that twelve South
bluetooth transmitter for the airplane? Thank you, Tom. I did

(01:45:24):
take United all the way very smooth. It was a
connecting flight and I had no issues whatsoever. It was
I love when that happens, when it was just literally
comfortable from takeoff to landing both times and really really
no issues whatsoever. Thank you United for that. It's called
the twelve airfly by twelve twelve South airfly is the

(01:45:49):
bluetooth transmitter. Let's see em says when you're talking about
the Rob Thomas being from Germany, you said, where's my bell?
But they had applause instead. We could hear the applause.
H Bobo, that's that's you know what. Look when you're
when you're doing a show from Berlin. We've got people
all over the world doing this show right now coordinating.

(01:46:09):
So I'm I'm just glad we got the show. But yeah,
we're gonna we're gonna work on drops a little bit more. Bobo,
I know likes doing them. We haven't really coordinated that
so we will, we will coordinate more drops.

Speaker 7 (01:46:21):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:46:21):
Stephen says Rich, I listened to you all the time,
but could you improve your show by pausing between sentences
some silence and try to cut out. But you know
and so well, but you know, so Stephen, you do
the show. It's tough. I'm a TV guy. I'm learning radio,
so you know. There you go. Jim says, hey, it's

(01:46:42):
actually pronounced yeomen. Oh this was from last week. I
said yeoman. I guess what does that mean? Yeomen yeoman.
That means uh, a servant in a royal or noble household. Okay, oh,
someone called me a yeoman. I called a yeoman. It's
a yeoman. Thanks for that. Let's see. Ron says, I

(01:47:05):
have a Note on my Samsung nine. I'm disappointed that
I've had the phone three years, bought it new for
one thousand bucks. Now they say they're not going to
support it and do updates. These phone companies expect you
to renew your phone every couple of years. I guess
this phone for one thousand dollars should last me ten years.
I like the Note nine because it has a headphone jack,
which the new ones do not. And if you want

(01:47:26):
to get radio like talk radio. Yeah, I like that,
and over the airwaves. The headphone acts like the antenna.
In addition, when you upgrade to new phones, you lose
information and apps. You have to redo everything. It's a
real pain in the neck. Oh I should know, Ron,
because I do that like every three weeks when I'm
testing out a new phone. I agree, But I do
think phones last pretty long. Three years and a lot

(01:47:47):
of the carriers now are or a lot of the
phone makers are given like four years maybe five of
security updates. I got to check on Samsung, though, but
they are doing pretty well. Note nine has been out
for a while. Let's see here. Randy says, someone asked
about clean up tools for their Windows PC. Let me
give you my list. Did I already mention this? Bleach bit,

(01:48:08):
auto runs, glary utilities, malware bytes, revo on installer, cleaning
out all of the apps you do not use in
the Window. Apps that come with Windows should be removed
if you do not use them. I would agree with that,
all right, if you can believe it, that is going
to do it for this episode of the show. You
can find links to everything I mentioned on my website.

(01:48:29):
Just go to richontech dot TV. This is show number
thirty five. We're still a baby here. You can find
me on social media. I am at rich on tech.
If you want to see my Berlin trip in quite detail,
I just made a highlight so if you go to
my profile it says Berlin It's got the Pretzel. You
can check out all the cool stuff I did here.

(01:48:49):
I'll be back in the States next week gearing up
for events from Apple and Google. Thank you so much
for listening. There are so many ways you can spend
your time. I do appreciate you spending it right here
with me. I know, believe me. I just read a
small sample of the many, many messages I get every
week via email, Instagram, text, whatever. Thank you. Thank you

(01:49:12):
to everyone who makes this show possible, including Kim, Bobo,
Bill and an army of engineers, especially when I'm halfway
across the world from Berlin, Germany. My name is rich Dumuro.
I'll talk to you real soon.

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Rich DeMuro

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