Alexa gets AI skills

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
iPhone fifteen now available. Maybe you're using one right now.
Plus iOS seventeen brings new features to older models. Amazon
gives let's just call her call it alex a a
new voice complete with AI and on Veil's a ton

(00:21):
of new products, plus the AI feature that can tell
you the year that old photo was taken. Your tech
questions answered, and much more. What's going on. I'm Rich
Demiro and this is Rich on Tech broadcasting live from
Los Angeles, coast to coast. This is the show where

(00:41):
I talk about the tech stuff I think you should
know about, and it's the place where I answer your
questions about technology. I believe that tech should be interesting, useful,
and fun. And boy do we get a lot of
technology this week. Major announcements from Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Apple,

(01:02):
so many things to talk about this week. Phone lines
are also open. We'll take some of your calls at
triple eight Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight
seven four to two four one zero one. If you
have a burning question about technology, give me a call.
I'll do my best to help you answer it. Email
also an option. Just go to Rich on tech dot tv,

(01:24):
hit the contact button, send me your email there. Get
it in for the feedback segment at the end of
the show, or if you just want to comment on
something or email your question, you can do it at
rich on tech dot TV hit the contact button. Guests
this week brought to you by the letter J. I
just noticed this in my notes. All of our guests

(01:45):
this week's their first name starts with Jay. Jefferson Graham
of Photo Walks TV is going to share his thoughts
on the iPhone fifteen cameras. Jamie simmonof the founder of
Ring he's now chief doorman at door Dot. We're gonna
talk about his new uh, his latest venture. And John Faulkner,
road test editor at Clean Fleet Report, will discuss the

(02:08):
car that I've been driving around for the past week,
the Ford mock E Mustang EV and boys at a
fun Car. I've been having a lot of fun in
that car. I love how it makes, uh, the sound
of a gas car, just that rumble, but it's not.
It's electric. You would never know the difference. All right,

(02:29):
So this week lots and lots of iPhone Apple news.
My photographer at KTLA yesterday was saying, Rich, can you
believe we did a full week of iPhone stories like
how wild is that? And I said, I know, and
not one person complaint. I mean, it's just like you
take for granted when the iPhone comes out, there's gonna
be a lot of coverage. Apple sort of commands the uh.

(02:50):
They just take all the uh. I don't know, why
do you say that. It all just the all eyes
are on them. That's what it is. And so I
get it. It's a it's a very popular phone. It's
a very big deal for the new iPhone to come out.
Some people have been waiting a year for the new phone.
Some people have been waiting three years. Some people are
upgrading from the eight No matter what, it's an individual
thing that if you want the new device and you

(03:12):
get it, it's very exciting. And it is in general,
even though the iPhone hasn't substantially changed. I mean, it's
evolved over time, but I mean when I set it up,
I was setting up the new device and I was like, wow,
this is like it's the same iPhone. Like I didn't
just copy everything over this time. I set it up
from scratch just to see what the process is like

(03:33):
and all that good stuff. And it's just interesting. It's
like a lot has changed but a lot has not
changed over the year, So we'll talk more about the
iPhone in iOS seventeen and all that stuff. But Amazon
this week lots and lots of news. They did an
event at their new headquarters in Virginia and they gave
a look at the future of I'm gonna call it

(03:54):
alex A. I don't want to I don't want to
trigger your speaker, so let's just call it alex A.
And they gave a look at the future of alex A, which,
of course, as you might expect, is going to include
a healthy dose of generative AI. So if you want
to try this in your home and you have an
Echo speaker, it may not work just yet, but this

(04:15):
is happening very soon. So if you're like me, if
you're a nerd, you're going to be asking this every
single day until you get this new feature. But you say,
alex A, let's chat, and magically you will now get
to try out this new AI alex A. And so
what does that mean. It means that it's going to
be more conversational. It's going to mean that you can

(04:36):
combine multiple requests into one, so you can say, hey,
close all the blinds, turn off all the lights and
start the vacuum. And before it wouldn't understand that. Now
it will. You can say I'm cold, and it will
turn up the temperature. And you could create and make
these routines all by voice. And routines are really fun.
I actually created a couple of them this morning for

(04:57):
some of our Halloween lights. I've got this little home
Depot sent me. You know how during the holiday season,
like Christmas time, they have those little like houses, like
people make those little like it's like a little town,
like a main street, USA, kind of like houses and stuff,
and they have the little lights inside. They're almost like
a ceramic house. Well, I guess Home Depot did that
for Halloween, and so it's like a home depot that's

(05:18):
all spooky and halloweeny and it's really cute. But you know,
it has like a little light bulb inside. And I said,
you know what, let me put a smart plug on
this thing, and let's make a routine to have it
turn on at night and turn off by the morning.
And so I did that this morning. I guess you'll
be able to do that very easily by your voice
very soon. All right, So some of the other things
that they announced is this new I Gaze feature. So

(05:41):
this is for customers with mobility or speech disabilities. Now
you'll be able to use alex A with your eyes
instead of your voice or touch. So this is going
to premiere on the fire Max eleven tablet, and I
guess they'll use the camera in the tablet and you'll
be able to control things just by looking at the tablet.
So you'll be able to play music and shows, control

(06:02):
your smart home, and even communicate with loved ones hands free.
Now it's going to be not every action you could
typically perform with the Voice assistant, but a subset of those.
And so if this works on the Firemax eleven tablet,
which is probably the most powerful tablet, it could be
a pretty neat new feature, So that's exciting. There's also

(06:24):
another feature called call Translation. This when you're using audio
and video calls, they can be captioned in real time,
but in different languages. So if you're chatting with someone
over in France and you want to they speak French
and you speak English, they can just talk in French
and you'll see the English translation on the bottom. That's

(06:44):
pretty cool. I think one of the most important new
features they are introducing is called ALEX, a emergency assist,
so you can just say ALEX a call for help,
And if you have an echo speaker in your house,
if it's a supported speaker, you can get directly connected
to an emergency response center. Now this is not going

(07:07):
to call nine will one directly, but it's going to
call sort of a call center with a dispatch that
can then relay your information to the right people. So
whether that's fire, whether that's emergency ambulance, nine one one, police,
whatever it is. So that's going to cost five ninety
nine a month or sixty dollars a year. So it's

(07:27):
kind of interesting because I feel like this is one
of those features that if you have a loved one
that lives alone, why would you not get them this?
And it's kind of weird that they didn't go all
the way and just make the speakers dial nine one
one directly because that would be free. But I understand
there are some limitations. And also this is supposedly better

(07:48):
because the dispatch officer will be able to get your
call to the right place, and also they will have
information about you, so if you have an allergy or
a medical history that they that will pop up on
their screen. Plus all of your information will pop up,
like your address and you know whatever if you have
a pet at home. So I guess it's a better

(08:09):
way than just dialing nine one one directly. Some of
the devices they introduced, the Echo Show eight. This is
just a new smart display. Then they've got this new
one called the Echo Hub. This is sort of an
iPad that you mount on your wall, so it's thin.
It's got an eight inch screen, it's touchscreen, and it's
kind of like a dashboard for your house, so you

(08:29):
can manage your smart home devices. You can arm your alarm,
start a routine, check out your security cameras, and when
it's not in use, it can show your personal photo collection,
which is kind of cool. Let's see, And that's something
that used to cost a lot of money back in
the day to get sort of the smart home automation
controller installed in your home. They've got a new version

(08:50):
of Echo frames. These are their smart glasses which I've tested,
not the new ones. I tested the last version. I
fell in love with them. I thought they were great.
The only thing is they let's see, did I really
have any problem with them? Not really, I thought they
were excellent. So these are slimmer, they've got better battery life,
better speakers, and you can hear them better. But I
thought these were really cool when I tested them. So

(09:11):
echo frames haven't really caught on in a big way,
but I do think that this idea of smart glasses,
you know, Facebook is doing it, and they're doing it
so some of the other things I thought were pretty cool.
Fire TV is getting AI powered search, so now you
can ask for movies and TV show recommendations, kind of
like the way you might have used to ask a
Blockbuster clerk. So you can say, hey, what about some

(09:32):
movies you know by this actor or this director, or
you know, I want to watch something for just a
rainy day, you know, animated movies, whatever. And another cool
feature is you can take all thanks to AI. Of course,
you can take one of your photos and say, hey,
can you change this into sort of a cyberpunk situation
or can you make this into a watercolor photo? And

(09:55):
the fire TV will use AI to change your picture
into you know, cool looking photo that you can have
on your screen. And that's the other thing that they're
doing that's really cool. And this is something that I
can't wait to get a new Fire TV to take
advantage of. Is the fireTV stick. The top of the
line stick will now give you this ambient experience, which
means even when you're not using your TV, it can

(10:17):
show information on your TV screen, it can show your photos,
it can show the weather. And that's a feature that
Samsung kind of pioneered with their Frame TV and then
Amazon offered it on some of their top of the
line omni TVs. But now it's coming to any TV
as long as you can plug in the fireTV stick.
Let's see what are they calling it. It is the

(10:39):
It's a Fire TV stick four K Max second generation.
Say that twenty times fast. But that's like a fifty
dollars maybe a sixty dollars plugin for your TV. And
now you can have your artwork and all kinds of stuff.
I am definitely going to do that. I cannot wait.
I've wanted that feature on my TV for so long
and I think that's going to be a great one.
They also introduced if you have bad WiFi home, the

(11:00):
Eero Max seven. This is like, oh my gosh, the
best Wi Fi mesh system you've ever seen. Is supports
Wi Fi seven ten gigabit Ethernet can download a four
K movie in ten seconds or a fifty gigabyte video
game in less than a minute. This will be available
in a one to two or three pack starting at
six hundred dollars. So if you really want some maximum

(11:24):
Wi Fi for your house, that's going to be at
the Eero Max seven. All right, So that's what Amazon announced.
Lots and lots of stuff from Amazon, so be on
the lookout for some of those new products. I'm sure
they'll be on the Amazon Home screen very very soon.

Speaker 2 (11:39):
All right.

Speaker 1 (11:39):
Coming up here on the show, the phone numbers are
open triple eight rich one one eight eight eight seven
four to two four one zero one. You want to
talk tech, give me a call. Coming up, we're going
to talk about what's new in iOS seventeen. My name
is rich Damiro and you are listening to rich on tech.

(12:00):
Come back to rich on Tech. Rech Deemuro here hanging
out with you talking technology at triple eight rich one
on one eight eight eight seven four two four one
zero one. I'm like, is this thing on? I had
my volume turned down. Let's go to Gloria in Pacoima, Gloria,

(12:21):
you're on with Rich.

Speaker 3 (12:23):
Bye. Rich. I'm having trouble. I have a new Samsung
Galaxy and I started with Verizon. But the service with
Verizon is terrible. I thought, after all these years that
it should be better, but it's not. So I thought, Okay,
I'll switch over to their alternate service, which is Visible.

(12:47):
I have been talking to this chat butt and it
sent me right back to the same problem in the
first place. I don't think I think that Visible is
that they're just not doing a good job.

Speaker 1 (13:04):
Well, they're not new, they've been around for a couple
of years, and it's fully owned by Verizon. So number one,
I would not recommend going with Visible because if you
had bad service through Verizon, you're gonna get the same
exact level of service, if not worse, from Visible because
it's the same exact network with the added fact of

(13:24):
Visible has no stores. They have no customer service in
a meaningful way, and for someone like yourself that's having trouble,
you may be in this trouble area forever and not
really get any meaningful help. They are all through chat,
they are all through online, they are all through the app,
so you can't really get help if you need it. Now,

(13:46):
I'm not saying that Visible is bad. I'm saying, in
your circumstances, Gloria, it sounds like this is not a
good fit for you. The network is not the network
that you want, because, like you said, Verizon's not working
for you. This is the same exact network that Verizon
on and you don't have a store to go into.
You can't go into a Verizon store and get help.
With Visible. You can't even really get someone on the

(14:08):
phone as far as I know. With Visible, it's all
done through chat and email. So, oh my god, this
is this is really a service that's aimed towards millennial
users that are very very hip and they want to
do everything sort of like without human interaction, and so
there's nothing wrong with it. It's you know, and you
save a ton of money. I mean, this is twenty

(14:28):
five dollars a month or thirty five dollars a month,
so it's it's really a money saving move. But okay,
it's forty five, got it. So here's what I'd recommend
for you, Gloria. Have you heard of Mint Mobile?

Speaker 4 (14:42):
You know what?

Speaker 3 (14:43):
I had Mint and then T Mobile took over and
I've had nothing but trouble with T Mobile. Well, took
over my phone and so on, I'm I switched, and
I'm like, I'm in a world of trouble because right
here in the foothills, sure, and I have difficulty getting

(15:03):
good receptions.

Speaker 1 (15:05):
Okay, Well, so here's what I would recommend. If you
have difficulty getting good reception. Number one, you know, I
would talk to some neighbors and see what service works
for them. That's that's what I would do. Because if
you're in an area where it's tricky, like there are
portions of the US where only one network is very strong.
Sometimes that may be AT and T. And here in

(15:27):
the US we only have three networks to speak of.
We have AT and T, we have Tea Mobile, and
we have Verizon. Everything else you hear about is one
of those networks what they call MVNOs mobile virtual network operators.
So they just lease the network space from a Verizon,
from an AT and T, from a Team Mobile, and
then they resell it and they repackage it with their

(15:48):
own marketing and their own plans. So what I would
do is talk to some of your friends in the area.
Just knock on your neighbor's doors and say, hey, what
service do you use and does it work in the
same Maybe it's AT and T. It sounds like it's
not Verizon. It sounds like it's not T Mobile. Now
if T Mobile was just issues with sort of like
customer service and things like that, I think that Mint

(16:10):
Mobile is a really strong deal for you can get
unlimited through them for thirty dollars a month, which which
I really really enjoy. So that's what I would do.
I would check to see who has the best service
in your area and go with that. And it sounds
like if you're having a lot of trouble and you
need a little bit more help with your service, you

(16:31):
may want a full service carrier, and that is directly
dealing with a place that has stores and that would
be Metro BYPC Metro PCs, that would be Cricket, that
would be Verizon, that would be AT and T. You
could even go into Walmart and get one of their plans.
They have a lot of prepaid plans you can get.
But it sounds like that may be the route you

(16:52):
want to go is figure out what works best in
your area and go with that carrier. And you may
want to go with one that it could be a
little bit more expensive, but if you can walk into
a store and get the help that you need with
your phone, that may be the best scenario for you, Gloria.
So I hope you figure it out. Gloria, thanks for
the call today. Triple eight rich one O one eight

(17:13):
eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.

Speaker 5 (17:18):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (17:18):
Coming up, we are going to talk to Jefferson Graham.
He runs a website called photo Walks TV. He's always
testing the latest smartphone cameras and he got his hands
on the iPhone fifteen Promax. We're going to talk to
Jefferson Graham to see how the pictures look on this
new iPhone. You are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome

(17:39):
back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here talking technology
and uh, do you have the new iPhone fifteen? Many
people got it on launch day and putting it through
its paces, checking out all the new features. So even
if you don't have a new iPhone, there's iOS seventeen
and there's a t there's new software for the Apple TVs.

(18:03):
Let's see, there's new software for the watches. So I
mean there's a whole bunch of new stuff. If you
have the iPhone fifteen. So I actually interviewed someone from
Apple about this, one of the product managers, and he
was saying and I was very surprised that he said this.
So a couple takeaways. Number One, you can use any
USBC cable to charge the phone. The one that comes

(18:24):
in the box is going to be the standard USBC.
If you have an iPhone fifteen Pro and you want
to get faster data transfer speeds, you can get a
USBC three cable and that will give you really fast
data transfer that's only on the Promax. And then when
you want to charge the phone, would you want if
you want to use a third party charger, you want

(18:45):
to get the USB c PD that's power delivery. So
a lot of people are thinking that the iPhone fifteen's
are going to charge faster because you're USBC. That is
not the case. It does not look like Apple has
improved the charging speeds on these phones now that could
you know. That's one of those things that Apple doesn't
really give us all the specs. In fact, one of

(19:07):
the things that the product manager said, he goes, look,
we don't really want you to care about any of
the specs on these phones. We just want you to
have that magical experience of the phone just working. Let's
bring up Jefferson Graham here. Jefferson is uh with Photo
Walks TV. Longtime at the USA today. Jefferson, welcome to
the show.

Speaker 6 (19:27):
Thank you for having me.

Speaker 4 (19:29):
Rich.

Speaker 1 (19:29):
So you got your hands on the iPhone fifteen Promax?
Which one? Did you? Which one? We're using the Promax right?
Which color?

Speaker 4 (19:37):
Which?

Speaker 6 (19:37):
I'm a photographer, There's no way I would use the
other one got I actually did the other one a
little bit, but it's the prom accident I'm most interested in.
I don't think in previous years they were as heavy handed.
Is basically saying this is the one, all the best
features on the pomp of the lying one, with the

(19:59):
with the FI, the zoom, you know, and there's a
few other features in there as well. But I've been
using it for two and a half days, and you know,
it's a cliche that every person in the interview is
a rich It's best him what it is.

Speaker 1 (20:15):
And well, of course it is. It better be they
better not go back in time and give us a
worse iPhone in the last year. I hope you're not
talking on it right now because the connection's not very good.

Speaker 6 (20:26):
I'm talking to you on the fourteen.

Speaker 1 (20:28):
Okay, good, So of the fifteen would probably sound a
lot better. All right. So you took it to Venice
Beach and you tried the ultra wide, the telephoto lenses, uh,
and the new zoom which is five x. But you
were kind of sad that you couldn't find the three
X zoom anymore.

Speaker 6 (20:45):
I don't think I'll be the only one. I mean,
their marketing materials and the leading they said there's seven
lenses and there's only three, and then people say, okay, well,
and they've mentioned three xs being a bunch of the marketing,
and three x is what anybody who had the Icon
fourteen Pro Max had, which was a seventy seven millimeter.

(21:08):
And also it's not there. It's not on the new one.
It's I think it's on the fifteen Pro, but it's
not on the fifteen Pro Max.

Speaker 1 (21:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (21:17):
And the only way you can get to with digital zoom,
which is basically just crop in the image, and that's
not that's not anything that I want to do. No
so bad.

Speaker 1 (21:29):
Yeah, I mean, look so on the on the new
iPhone fifteen Pro Max, they kind of diverge the fifteen
Pro goes up to three X zoom. The pro max
goes up to five and so the seven lenses they're
talking about are all sort of optical zoom ranges. So
you get a white ultra wide angle at point five,
then you get one at twenty four millimeters, then you

(21:50):
get twenty eight millimeters. You can tap it again at
one point two X. You can tap it again to
get thirty five millimeters, which is one point five X.
Then you can tap two X, and then you can
tap five X. So those are the seven lenses they're
talking about. I know it's a little odd because you
look on the back and you say, hold on, there's
only three lenses. But they're saying that they're cropping in
because the processor the sensor is so big. Even when

(22:12):
they crop in at these different kind of predefined ranges,
the photos are going to look like they were taken
with that dedicated lens. So what are the pictures any different?
Are they meaningfully different than the previous model?

Speaker 6 (22:26):
I thought, well, you know, I've only had to do it,
But the I thought the telephono stuff I got close
up of the skaters were particularly good. Okay, I mean,
I'm not photographed. That's gonna go to work for him.
But I thought they were sharp, and those are hard
to get somebody skating in front of you really bad.
They were there and they were good. And I thought

(22:49):
the low lights stuff was good.

Speaker 1 (22:51):
And the lens flare. I know that they talked about
the lens flair. I in my limited testing. I you know,
I aimed it at some lights at our studio at KTLA.
I still saw a pretty big lens flare.

Speaker 6 (23:01):
Sure so did I. It's less than on the fourteen,
but it's still there. And the hip the solution they
always tell me. If you're shooting a sun set and
you get the lens flare and it bothers, you reposition
the phone the camera to get that lens flare into
the sun and the sun will make it.

Speaker 1 (23:22):
Oh that's a good idea. Okay, you tried the USB sport.
Now did you use did you use the cable they
gave you or did you try one of the speedier
cables they gave me? Oh, they gave you the speed here,
so you did get a chance or was it really fast?

Speaker 6 (23:36):
Or what I hit? And this? So right now I'm
having a hard time calling up image capture and making
it work. What they did was that what I was
able to do, which would connect my external sc drive
to the phone. And I think your listeners should hear

(23:56):
about what you have to go to do this because
they don't cont So you take it to terabyte, one terabyte,
whatever and you plug it into the UFC and that's great.
Now what Okay, So first of all, you have to
reformat the hard up before you put it and you
have that. You do that in utilities, just utilities, and
you have to format it to x back. I always

(24:22):
had my drive format it the mac os journals.

Speaker 1 (24:25):
So x fat will work across uh pretty much Windows
and Mac. It's more universal than the journal.

Speaker 4 (24:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (24:31):
So once you do that, then you put it back
into the phone and then you open the files and
in the file tap under locations you will now see
the DROST.

Speaker 4 (24:42):
Great.

Speaker 6 (24:43):
Now you want to back up a bunch of photos
and videos that you took that day on your iPhone,
You go to the photos app, you select them, then
you go to the share menu and you call it
and you click exports unmodified the original. Wow, that was
a lot of steps, but it worked.

Speaker 1 (25:04):
Okay, it sounds complicated, but I know I know, it's
it's a look. That's that's kind of a pro thing.
That's something that pro people will do. I was also
testing out the feature where you can make an edit
to one photo and then copy it to a bunch
of photos, which I thought was kind of cool. But
you should watch Jefferson's video he made. He made it
at Venice Beach. Quick turnaround. You got your phone, you

(25:25):
headed to Venice Beach and you took a whole bunch
of pictures and videos. And I like to tip about
the burst mode because that was not turned on on
my phone. So you can go into settings and the
camera and turn on burst modes. When you press the
volume up key, it will take a burst of pictures. Right.

Speaker 4 (25:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (25:42):
I mean your alternative is you could lightly lightly press
the shutter fly the shutter. For most people when they
touched the shutter the white button end up clicking record videos.
It's very hard, but the side buy in buttons fantastic.

Speaker 1 (25:59):
Yeah, that's a good to do it. And then of
course you got the action button too, which you can
use as a shutter. Jefferson, thanks for joining me today.
Photo walks dot tv is Jefferson's website. He does a
lot of great oh photowalkstv dot com. No wonder what, Okay, Well,
I just go to Jefferson Graham dot com. So that's
that's the other way to get it. So again, tell
me the website again photos dot com dot com. Okay,

(26:22):
And you can follow Jefferson on YouTube and see his
video the UH shot at Venice Beach with the new iPhone.
So I took out the new iPhone UH yesterday and
I compared it against the old iPhone iPhone fourteen, and
you know, there's a little bit of improvement. But then
I took it out against the Samsung, and I fully
expected the iPhone to just sort of like blow away

(26:43):
the Samsung S twenty three Ultro because it's a brand
new device. The Samsung's been out for you know, eight
months now, whatever it's been. And so when I got
home and started comparing the pictures, I was like, wow,
these are not like it was not just cut and dry,
like one is better than the other. There are certain
circumstances where the iPhone performs better, there are certain places

(27:04):
where the Samsung performs better. But in general, they kind
of took very similar pictures and in some ways the
Samsung even looked better in various support in various pictures.
So I ended up posting all these to my Instagram.
If you want to check them out, just go to
at rich on tech. If it disappears by the time
you see it, it is available as a highlight on
my profile page. It says iPhone fifteen versus And I'm

(27:27):
going to continue to update this with all the different
phones that I can. So I'm going to do like
the Pixel, I'm going to do some of the other
phones that I can find to compare it to, because
I think it really it gives you a little perspective
that you know, the iPhone is great and people get
really excited about it, but it's not the end all
camera out there. Like people love their iPhones, but when

(27:49):
you look at these other phones, they like the Pixel
and the Samsung. They do a really nice job too
in a lot of circumstances. So if you got something
that you like, you don't need to feel that fomo
of like, oh, I'm not with the latest iPhone or whatever,
even eve an older iPhone. According to the product manager
that I spoke to, he said, basically, if you have

(28:09):
an iPhone thirteen or fourteen, you don't necessarily need to upgrade.
He said. If you're on an older phone like the
iPhone eleven or twelve, that's when you'll start to see
some of the improvements with the camera quality. Now, by
the way, I had people respond with their thoughts about
the comparison of the different types of photos, and I
got tons of responses, and so I went through the

(28:31):
painstaking process. There's no easy way of doing this. I
copied and pasted all of their responses into one giant document.
Then I fed that into AI and I had AI
analyze what people said and to see the trends, and
so I posted that on my Instagram and it was
quite interesting what people said. Overall. I'll just give you
the main takeaway that it said, because I thought this

(28:51):
was pretty interesting. It said, if I can find it here,
I'm going live to my Instagram right here. I know,
very compelling to search through my own Instagram while I'm
on the radio here, But let me see what I said. Okay, uh,
it's said in summary, the consensus seems to be that
this Samsung camera produces superior image quality and performance compared

(29:12):
to the iPhone, even amongst iPhone users and fans. Oh
there we go. Uh, some iPhone loyalists still prefer the
iPhone despite admitting Samsung's technical superiority. So what it comes
down to really again, and this is something I've noticed

(29:33):
over the years, is that people just have a loyalty.
They like what brand they have. All right, Triple eight
Rich one on one eighty eight seven four to two
four one zero one. You have a question, you have
a comment about technology, give me a call. This is
Rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich
DeMuro here talking technology at Triple eight rich one oh one.

(29:55):
Later in the show, we're going to talk about Oh,
we're going to talk to the founder of Ring and
he's going to talk about his latest venture. Plus, we're
going to talk about some of the Microsoft announcements, some
of the Google announcements, and a cool photo tool that
can take an old picture and using AI tell you
what you're that picture was taken. Kind of fun. Let's

(30:18):
go to Daniel and receive that. Daniel, you're on with Rich.

Speaker 7 (30:21):
Hey, Rich, thanks for taking my call.

Speaker 6 (30:23):
Man.

Speaker 7 (30:23):
Yeah, so I live an apartment building. It's pretty sketch
and I've been meaning to place a doorbell cam. Sure,
but we're not allowed a drilling to the walls or
the doors.

Speaker 8 (30:39):
Some people do it and they have been getting their
units stolen.

Speaker 4 (30:43):
So I have kind of two questions.

Speaker 8 (30:46):
One is, do you know any way to actually secure
the camera without having to drill into the door. And
I really don't want to pay in another subscription for
like a wind.

Speaker 6 (30:57):
Door bill or anything.

Speaker 8 (30:58):
Yeah, something that can record locally, any idea?

Speaker 1 (31:03):
Yeah, so I think, I mean on your first thing
with the uh, you know, the the doorbell being taken,
there's not much you can do if you're if you're
not able to drill into the wall. I mean, no
matter what however you place it, it's going to be,
you know, removable.

Speaker 8 (31:21):
Now I've seen so it kind of looks like a
metal case that of patches onto the traditional width of
the door.

Speaker 1 (31:28):
I don't know, Okay, Yeah, I mean there might be
an accessory on Amazon, and I'm sure there is like
that that actually probably sounds like the best way to
do it is some sort of like almost like a strap,
like a metal strap that somehow connects and then you
connect the device to that. You could probably get something
like that, I would, Yeah, that's something that you could
probably get. But the the video doorbell that i'd recommend
because you want something that you don't want to pay

(31:50):
for the subscription. I think probably the best brand is Blink.
Have you heard of them?

Speaker 4 (31:56):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (31:57):
So Blink is kind of Amazon on sub brand for
their you know kind of like it's kind of like
Ring but it's a little different. So the deal with
Blink is that they're claim to fame is that a
couple of batteries in this thing last like two years.
Like I don't know how they do it, but yeah,
so you don't have to replace the batteries very very often.

(32:19):
And I actually interviewed the you know, the guy founded
Blink or whatever, and I was like, how do you
doing this? And that's like there, That's why Amazon paid
so much to acquire this company because it's like their
magic sauce is the fact that they've somehow figured out
how to like sip a triple a or double a
battery over two years versus like you know, for me
with my video doorbell and replacing the battery like every

(32:40):
three months at this point. So I think that's the
one to go with. It's sixty bucks. But here's the thing,
So it doesn't have local storage. You have to get
this little module. It's called a sink module, and so
this blinks. Now here's I think this is on the
pro side of what you're talking about earlier with your

(33:01):
you know, this thing getting stolen. So this little so
you have the doorbell, you put that on your door, right,
however you want to attach it with that accessory or whatever.
And then you get this sink module that sits in
your home and that connects to your WiFi, and that
sink module kind of powers this device and also stores
the SD card or a flash drive, so that the

(33:21):
video goes from the doorbell to this sink drive, right,
and so it's off it's off site. It's off of
the doorbell, which means if someone actually stole this doorbell,
you'd have a little video of them. Not that you're
really that. You know, police aren't going to go after
someone that stole a doorbell, I don't think, but I mean,
but you'll at least have a little video that you can,
you know, print out and put on your front door

(33:43):
and be like, hey, give me this back. But I
think that's the way to go. So in that sink module,
I'm not sure. I got to look up the price
on that but you know, it's probably another fifty sixty bucks,
but you're looking at maybe one d one hundred and
fifty dollars including a little accessory for the door, and
that way you won't have to pay subscription fee, but
you will have local storage of your videos in your

(34:06):
house as well, and of course you can access them
through your phone and all that good stuff. But I
think that's the way to go. If you go Ring,
if you go Whys, I believe is all wired. I
don't know if they have a wireless one. There's another
brand called Kangaroo, but I believe that they. I don't
believe that that's a solution that you need. I think

(34:29):
that they don't have the local storage that you want,
but I think that's the way to do it. Check
out the Blink camera. Check out a way to install it.
I'm gonna look up some ways now I'm curious. I
know that Ring has like a peephole cam for exactly
what you're talking about, so that you can install it
without drilling or making any holes in your door. You
just use the existing people that's on your door, and

(34:50):
you can just replace that with the camera, and then
when you move out of the apartment, you can just
put the peopole back. But you know, I was I've
lived in apartments for many years, and I was always
so like hesitant to drill into the walls because of
these big fees and stuff like that. And honestly, if
you've ever painted a wall, it's really not that big
of a deal. You seal it up, you paint over it.
It's like, a hole is not the end of the

(35:12):
world in a wall. And if it makes it more
secure to install this thing, maybe just go for it
and deal with the repercussions later. That's what I would do,
because that's what I decided to do. I like my
old apartment. I was like so careful about every single
like I was using like those command strips for everything.
And then when I got into my house, I was like, oh,
I'm drilling everything into the wall, and you know who cares?
And now I just you know, I did that in

(35:33):
one room and I have so many holes in the wall.
I finally painted over all of it, but you know,
you little spackle, little little sandpaper, and it's all good
to go. Let's see what else. Oh, I want to
tell you about one feature that I thought was pretty cool.
On the new TV OS. So this is on the
new Apple TV. If you have an Apple TV four K.
For the first time ever, you can use FaceTime on

(35:55):
your TV. So Apple TV will let you FaceTime. I
don't know why this wasn't available years ago, but the
trick is you can't just use any old webcam. You
have to use like an iPhone to be your webcam.
So of course, you know, Apple loves to like, you know,
do all that kind of stuff. The other thing that's
kind of cool is you can now locate your remote control.
So if you have a newer remote and a newer

(36:17):
Apple TV, you can use your phone to find your
SERI remote. This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to
rich on Tech. This is the show where I talk
about the tech stuff I think you should know about.
It's also the place where I answer your questions. My
name is rich Demiro. You can find me on social
media at rich on Tech. I'm on Instagram, Facebook X

(36:43):
sometimes threads, mostly on Instagram Stories. That's really where I
put a lot on my effort. But I realized it's funny.
I realized with Instagram Stories, you can't share my stories.
So I share a lot of like useful information, and
it's great if you're a follower of mine, but if
if you're a follower, you can't share that out to
other people. And so I've started to actually share stuff

(37:06):
that I wouldn't typically share in the feed, like in
the regular feed. I always thought that was just for
like pictures and videos, but now I'm doing like tech
stuff because you can actually share that information. So if
you see something useful that I share, you can send
it off to your friends on your stories, whereas if
I share that on my stories, you can't do that.
So it's a small little change. But if you do

(37:26):
follow me on Instagram, that is the reasoning behind why
I'm starting to share more of my stuff on the
main feed, because it just makes it easier. I guess
the other way you'd have to do it is like
take a screenshot of my story and then post that
on your stories. But who does that? I don't two
people do that. Maybe you can also listen to this
show as a podcast. Be sure to subscribe. Just go

(37:47):
to richontech dot tv click the podcast icon. There's also
show notes and links to everything I mentioned. You can
also just search rich on tech in your favorite audio
app of course you can listen right here as well.
Own lines are open triple eight rich one O one
eight eight eight seven four two four one zero one.

(38:07):
Let's go to uh Stephen in San Diego. You have
a suggestion, Stephen.

Speaker 4 (38:12):
Yeah, Ty, how you doing?

Speaker 1 (38:14):
I'm doing great? What's up?

Speaker 9 (38:16):
So this is a you had a couple of callers ago,
Gloria when I was listening itself so bad for I
had a same similar situations where I have T Mobile
and a lot of the time like I'm in foothills
and you have zero service, but they offer you a

(38:36):
device for free that you've connected to your Wi Fi
and has a little wired transponder that you put on
the wall and it's for satellite.

Speaker 6 (38:47):
And then boom, you have perfect helf service.

Speaker 9 (38:52):
In your home and you can turn Wi Fi off
on your phone and have full bars LTE five everything
that you made.

Speaker 1 (39:03):
Yeah, that's a good, good idea. These were popular back
in the day. I feel like I'm surprised if they
still do these. I'm trying to think of what the
term is that they and what you would do is, yeah,
you would plug it into your home Internet and then
it would put out basically would replicate the cellular signal
in your home, and that's how it would work. You know,

(39:25):
a booster, I guess they're called, but those have really
gone out of favor, largely because so many people have
now what's called Wi Fi calling on their phone. So
I was going to suggest that to Gloria earlier, to
turn make sure she has Wi Fi calling on, which
you can turn on on Android or iOS by going
into your cellular settings. But the thing about Wi Fi calling,

(39:48):
that only works when you're at your home. So if
you're in sort of like the foothills, or you're in
an area that doesn't have strong signal to begin with,
the Wi Fi calling is not really going to help.
Or these boosters aren't going to help because they're really
just for your house. And so with the booster, it's great,
but it's you know, it's largely replaced by the Wi
Fi calling. So it's a great suggestion, Stephen, Thank you.

(40:10):
I appreciate that, but it doesn't get to the bigger
issue of you need a signal that works in your area,
and so I was trying to come up with some
ways of figuring that out. I think asking friends and
family that are in the area is the best way. So,
for instance, where I work, there are certain carriers that

(40:31):
work really well and certain that don't. And the way
I've figured that out over the years is well, I've
had test phones that I can test them on, but
I've also just asked people like, hey, is your service
work well here? And who do you have? And people
they love to share that information. But a couple of
other places you can look. There's a website called open Signal.
They have an app that you can kind of it's

(40:53):
a crowdsourced coverage map, and so basically, if you install
this app on your phone, you you can kind of
submit some of your tests of your network to the app,
and then they use that and share it with other people.
And so you can also go on the app and
see who has the best data in your area. Now,

(41:13):
I was just doing a little search to see if
there's anything similar online, and there's one called coverage map
dot com. I've never heard of this one, but they
seem to have coverage maps for all the different carriers.
You can pop in your zip code and see what
Verizon looks like, what AT and T looks like, and
what T Mobile looks like. It's all color coded and
you can then narrow down by five g LTE and

(41:36):
you can also click best and see which carrier has
the best coverage in your area, and then if you
click it'll give you all the information about that carrier speed.
So again that's coverage map dot com. The other one
I mentioned is called open signal dot com. So thanks Steven,
great question, great comment, and there's so many. Look, I mean,

(41:59):
I think at the end of the day, signals have
gotten really good in most places, Like people have a
pretty good cellular signal, and people don't mind dealing with
a bad signal for a little bit, and then they'll
kind of reconnect. They'll say, hey, let me you know,
I've got a bad signal, let me call you back.
So it's not like the old days where we used
to just deal with like really bad signals for like

(42:21):
entire conversations. Now, if you have a bad signal, you say,
you know what, let me call you back when I
get to a better signal. And most of the time
that's only maybe one hundred feet or a mile away,
or you know, depending on where you are. You just
have to get to a better place, or you switch
carriers all together and you just find the one that's
best for your house. I always say to people, find
the carrier that works best at your house, where you
work and where you live, and that covers like ninety

(42:43):
percent of the time that you spend. For instance, my
dad just switched carriers recently because he was so tired
of his carrier not working where he would spend his weekends.
And so he finally said, hey, which carrier works up here?
And he got it and now it works great. Triple
eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four
to two four one zero one is the phone number

(43:08):
Google Bard this week. If you're familiar with Google Bard,
we've talked about it on this show. Google Bard is
Google's answer to chat GPT. It's free, go to bard
dot Google dot com to access it, and this week
it got a new feature. And the big difference between
Google Bard and chat GBT is that Google Bard has
access to the real time Internet. Chat GBT does not.

(43:31):
Everything that you're searching on there is back from like
twenty twenty one. So it's still great and it still
does a lot of stuff. But Bard, you can ask
it like what was the score of the game last
night and it can tell you. So Google Bard got
a new feature this week where it can now integrate
with Google apps including Gmail, Google Docs, and Google Maps
and YouTube. So now you can ask it to search

(43:53):
your Gmail. And I know it sounds kind of scary
because we also think about these AI services as sharing
what we talk to them about with other people, and
so you're like, wait a second if I put my
Gmail on here, are there people going to see my Gmail?
And Google says no, anything that you're doing that requires
your own data like Gmail or Drive, they're not going
to share with other people. But this allows you to

(44:14):
get sort of personalized information. So you can say, hey,
can you tell me Bart what's the main things I
need to know about my kids' school this week? Or
I asked it to analyze all of the conversations between
me and my wife over the years, and I said,
can you tell me some of the main takeaways? And
it's it like analyzed our entire relationship. I thought that
was pretty wild. So this is a new feature that

(44:36):
is free. You can enable it the first time you
go to bard dot Google dot com, and the idea
is just to give people a reason to access this.
It's odd that Google was so far advanced with their AI,
but they sort of fell behind because chat GBT came
out of the gate so strong and everyone was just like, oh,
chat GBT is where it's at. And so Google's like,

(44:59):
hold on, We've been doing AI forever, and so they
really had to kind of get into a position of
let's show people what we can do with our AI.
So now they have it in so many of their
different products, not just Bard. You can also do AI
search on Google. You can enable that, you can do
AI in your Gmail, you can have it help you

(45:20):
write your email, AI and docs and Drive, you can
have it help you come up with slideshows and all
that kinds of stuff. So again there's a lot of
different things you can do with Google with AI. It's
just people just they kind of identify AI as chat GBT,
but there's many of them out there. You've got Bing AI,
You've got Claude, which is one of my favorites by Anthropic,

(45:42):
and of course you've got Google Bard, So lots of
options for AI. I'm finding it to be very useful
in my life to summarize things and to also kind
of analyze a large amount of data. And Bing is
good just like Bard for sort of real time search
results that all so include AI check it out Google

(46:03):
bard Bar dot Google dot com. All right, give me
call Triple eight rich one O one eight eight eight
seven four to two four one zero one. Welcome back
to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you,
talking technology at Triple eight Rich one O one eight
eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one.
Coming up this hour, Jamie simmonof the founder of Ring Yeah,

(46:28):
the guy who basically put a video doorball on many
doors across America. He's got a new gig. He's now
chief doorman at door dot com. So we're gonna explain
what that means. He's gonna tell us all about his
new venture. Plus, this is why I love this show.
I love this show because of you. It is not
a one way street. This is a two way street.

(46:49):
And I love the immediate feedback I get from you
as the listeners. Uh So, Kelly just wrote in and
she on Amazon sent me a link to an anti
theft doorbell doormount for Blink video doorbell. No drill does
not block the doorbell sensor, and it's basically a little

(47:11):
kind of a strap of metal that it looks like
it kind of screws onto your door like with a
just a you know, kind of like a vice gript
kind of thing, and so you mount it. It goes
around the back of the door and around the side
of the door, and then the front has like the
plate that you put the blink video doorbell on. So

(47:31):
there you go. Twenty one to ninety nine. That's for
our caller earlier, Daniel and Rosita was asking for a
way to mount his video doorbell without drilling into the door.
So thanks for sending that along, Kelly. I'll put it
in the show notes at richontech dot TV. Let's go
to Joe in Glen Dora. Joe, You're on with rich Oh.

Speaker 4 (47:51):
Hi you Rich.

Speaker 10 (47:52):
I have an old Wolverine media player that has a
little screen to view videos and pictures, and I've got
a whole bunch of picktures that I put on there
a long time ago, because it has slots for SD
cards and things to put stuff on there. Sure, and
now I'd like to take stuff off and get it
to my computer and I connect the USB drive or

(48:15):
the USB cable that comes with it to the computer
and it's supposed to automatically work with McIntosh and Windows.

Speaker 4 (48:24):
But yet it's.

Speaker 10 (48:26):
Really so old that it has drivers for Windows ninety
eight and it doesn't say anything about Windows ten. It
says it's supposed to automatically work with Windows XP and
it's the old it's an MVP nine thousand series media player.

Speaker 1 (48:44):
Wow, and so you've got and this is called a Wolverine.
I've never heard of this thing.

Speaker 10 (48:49):
Oh yeah, yeah, they've got a line out now. They've
upgraded it now where it's even attached to a DVD
player and you can it's got a bigger screen and everything.

Speaker 1 (48:58):
Now, okay, I'm looking at this Wolverine data MVP nine
thousand with built in seven to one memory card reader
and writer. So that's the one you've got. And I'm
trying to see do they have a picture of the connection.
So you connect it to your computer and via USB
and nothing happens.

Speaker 10 (49:17):
Yes, that's that's true. Actually, what's weird though, is if
I run a particular disc utility that does see it,
and it says there's no media on it at all,
it's not partitioned or anything. And yet it's supposed to
automatically mount with Windows and Mac and I use Linux,

(49:39):
and it says it's supposed to work with Linux also,
and you know, the disc utility programs seem to see
it as a drive, but yet it doesn't mount on
the desktop for me to copy files off it.

Speaker 1 (49:54):
Interesting. Okay, well, so you've tried connecting this to which computers?

Speaker 10 (50:00):
Well, I've tried a Linux machine, a Windows machine, a
Macintosh and.

Speaker 1 (50:06):
None of them see it, right wow? Okay, so they
see and some of them see the device, but it
doesn't see any of the data on there.

Speaker 10 (50:13):
Yes, there's utility programs on Windows and Linux that both
see that the Wolverine is attached as a hard drive.
But yet you know, all I can do is format
it or partition it. I can't copy files off of
But when I go to file manager for Windows ten,
it doesn't see it, and the McIntosh desktop does not

(50:36):
mount it.

Speaker 1 (50:37):
That's frustrating. What now, this is kind of random, But
have you tried maybe plugging it into like a smartphone,
like an Android smartphone and seeing if that sees it?

Speaker 4 (50:50):
You mean via USB?

Speaker 1 (50:52):
Yeah, I mean they have a file you know, a
file viewer on Android and on iOS. Now, I mean
it might you know, you might be able to see
on those just out of curiosity, like I'm just trying
to get through all the different things that might be
able to identify this. My guess is that it's formatted
in a way that these things are just not reading
it because it's so old. Now I'm looking up this company.

(51:13):
They're based in Irvine, they're still around. Have you gotten
in touch with them about why you can't see this stuff?

Speaker 10 (51:20):
I've gone to their site and they don't really have
any way to you know, ask them any questions or anything.
And I'm going to in fact, that's my next step,
is to go to their site again to see if
there's some way that I can contact them.

Speaker 4 (51:34):
Yeah, so that is my next step.

Speaker 1 (51:36):
And they've got an email address. They've got an email
address and a phone number. I don't know about the
pone number. They're probably not going to be tech support
over the phone, but you might be able to email
them and just tell them that you have this older
model and see why it's not, you know, being shown.
I'm guessing it's the way it's formatted. Now. The other
thing I would ask is this does have an SD
card slot, right or a media card slot?

Speaker 4 (51:57):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (51:57):
Can you go? And everything's on the internal on this device?

Speaker 4 (52:01):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (52:02):
So is there any way to copy from the internal
drive to a memory card through the device.

Speaker 10 (52:10):
I've tried that and I put in an old two
gigabyte Fat thirty two s D card and it says
reading card and then it says failed to innit. And
it's supposed to mount on the hard you know, the
hard drive.

Speaker 1 (52:23):
Well, maybe maybe you format that drive that little card.
Maybe you format that. It's saying that this according to
the facts on their website. They're saying, you know, it
has to be format as FAT thirty two or ntfs,
which are two different, you know formats. Obviously x fat
is the newest one that's not really supported according to
this fact, but that might be the way to do it.

(52:46):
So format the drive is FAT or FAT thirty two.
I know it's an older format, but pop that in
and see. And also you might be able to see
if the Wolverine itself can actually format the SD card
and then you might be able to copy stuff over.
The other thing is if you can connect this to
a TV screen, you might be able to connect it
to a computer and just record this stuff like that.

(53:08):
But that's not the best solution. It sounds like you
got to get in touch with this company and see
if they have any updates to the software, if there's
a trick to getting this to display and to mount
on your computer, because you've tried a lot of different things,
none of them seem to be working. I've got the
same issue at home. I've got this old device that
I have a whole bunch of pictures on that I've

(53:28):
been meeting to get them off for many, many years now,
and I just don't because I know it doesn't connect
to my computer, it doesn't mount, and it's frustrating because
you know the stuff is on there that you want,
but you can't get to it. So again, this is
a good reason to back up stuff when you can,
because formats change, connections change, but we don't we continue going,

(53:49):
all right, Coming up, we're gonna talk to Jamie Simmonoff,
founder of Ring and now chief doorman at door dot com.
You're listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich
on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology.
Phone lines are open triple eight rich one oh one.

(54:09):
That's eight eight eight seven four to two four to
one zero one. Website's also an option rich on Tech
dot TV. Hit the contact button if you want to
email me something, get in your feedback for the feedback
segment at the end of the show. Always a fun
time there. Well, you know our next guest as the
founder of Ring, he is the person that put a

(54:33):
doorbell or video doorbell on many many doors across the
United States, and uh pretty much came up with that
entire genre of the video doorbell. Jamie Simmonoff is now
chief doorman at door dot com. Jamie, Welcome to the show.

Speaker 2 (54:52):
Thanks for having me Rich, good to be with you again.

Speaker 1 (54:54):
Yeah, so it's been I mean, you and I met.
Oh my gosh, it must have been. I mean I
remember so Ring started out. You first called it what
like Doorbaugh.

Speaker 11 (55:02):
I think it was called it was it was, Yeah,
it was not a great name, but I started out
with Doorbot.

Speaker 2 (55:07):
I improved from there.

Speaker 1 (55:09):
So yeah, I think you improved in a pretty good way.
We we did the story back in the day for
KTLA when you did the video doorbell, when it first
came out, you pretty much came up with that idea, right,
was there something on the market that was similar before
you came out with that or No.

Speaker 11 (55:25):
The funny thing is, I actually I did come up
with the idea, But I looked for something, Like I
was actually looking for one. I couldn't find one, so
I just built it for myself. But I to your point,
like I actually thought one would exist. I had an iPhone,
I couldn't hear the doorbell, and I felt like, I
just will buy a video doorbell that's Wi Fi connected.
It didn't exist, so I just kind of built one,

(55:47):
and then that became a thing.

Speaker 1 (55:49):
Did you ever imagine it would become as big of
a force that it did? I mean, did you have
an idea when you kind of like started along the
path in that thing, like developing it?

Speaker 2 (56:00):
Absolutely not. You know, I think anyone's hopeful that something.

Speaker 11 (56:05):
I would say, even in my wildest dreams, I could
have hoped for it to get to where it did,
which is you know, Ring is now, as far as
I can tell, the largest home security company in the world.

Speaker 1 (56:15):
Wow, And it does, and of course you know many
more products. Now you have left Ring and you are
now chief doorman at door dot com. Can you tell
me about this?

Speaker 6 (56:26):
So?

Speaker 1 (56:26):
What does what does that mean exactly that you're the
chief doorman?

Speaker 12 (56:30):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (56:31):
Well, I you know I do, like I always had
my email on every box at ring.

Speaker 11 (56:34):
I like to be sort of with the customer and
customer centric and so the chief Doorman is also like
aligning myself, you know, with the customers. What door dot
com does is we have we started with locks for
apartment buildings and doing the software around that, so that
was called Latch, and then the rebranding to door dot

(56:55):
com is expanding the vision into other things and services
other than.

Speaker 1 (56:59):
Just like.

Speaker 2 (57:01):
Maids and dog walkers and things like that.

Speaker 11 (57:05):
And sort of having an app that the access control
and the services together.

Speaker 1 (57:09):
So explain what that means. What's the vision for this.

Speaker 11 (57:13):
So the vision is that you're living in an apartment
and you want to book a maid or a dog
walker and you can book, schedule, pay through the app
as well as the access control like the lock. If
someone wants to come to your house, come to your apartment,
that that will let them in automatically at that time.
Even with the best electronic locks, today people are basically
copying and pasting codes or going into another app to

(57:35):
give them access, and I think that services and lock
need to be put together. We launched our first service,
which is actually a driver's app called James, which which
sort of does that we were already working on that
before we combined with Lads, so that's why we did
that one. But we were always building the technologies that
we could combine all of this together into sort of

(57:56):
services and locks.

Speaker 1 (57:58):
And so James the James App. As I understand it,
it's like, okay, so let's say you take an uber
and you like love the driver, but you never see
that person ever again because of the way the platform works.
But with this you can kind of pick your favorites
and continue to use them over and over.

Speaker 2 (58:15):
Exactly.

Speaker 11 (58:16):
And the real benefit to the drive we call these
drivers the honest day's worker. The benefit to them is
that they get to keep most of the economics of
the ride. So we charge a five percent service fee
to the rider, but the driver gets to keep one
hundred percent of what they want to charge for the ride.

Speaker 2 (58:33):
So kind of for everybody, you get quality and trust, they.

Speaker 11 (58:37):
Get more of the economics, and they're able to be
sort of a true independent worker through the James App.

Speaker 2 (58:43):
And we believe that that is a great thing.

Speaker 11 (58:45):
For the honest day's worker what people would call, you know,
the gig worker independent contractors.

Speaker 1 (58:50):
So it's interesting because the quality part, let's say, you know,
because you are sort of your own boss in that aspect,
you and you want these repeat customers, you're actually going
to perform a higher level of service because you know,
you want to earn that trust in that relationship versus
and look, Uber is very popular, but sometimes you don't
know what you're gonna get. And the drivers could be

(59:12):
kind of all over the place sometimes because they know
that they'll never see you again. You know, they can
have a hundred rides that are just kind of not
very good, but they still did their hundred rides and
they made some money. But what are you going to
do at the end of the day if you had
a bad ride? I mean, give the person a bad
rating and move on, right, And.

Speaker 2 (59:30):
I think what we're seeing is that again.

Speaker 11 (59:33):
I think one of my favorite sayings right now is
show me an incentive and I'll show you the outcome.
And the incentive on all of these different platforms is
to basically do the minimum amount to be on the
platform and be successful.

Speaker 2 (59:46):
But it's not to do the maximum. And with James
it aligns you the other way, which is you get.

Speaker 11 (59:51):
All the economics and so that you can also invest
in delivering the best service, which means people will book
you more. So it's like this, it's this nice flywheel
effect that happened when you do that, because on these
other platforms, I will get, you know, a service worker,
a driver that is great at the whatever level you picked,
and then on the same level, same day, you get

(01:00:12):
someone who's not great, and so you're paying the same amount.

Speaker 2 (01:00:15):
Both those people are next to each other in the
same thing.

Speaker 11 (01:00:17):
And so I think allowing the person that really wants
to again I call it the honest day's worker, allowing
that person that wants to focus and hair is about
the experience that they're delivering, giving them the ability to
truly make the economics of it.

Speaker 2 (01:00:31):
That's that's kind of what's behind all the the stuff
that we're doing.

Speaker 1 (01:00:33):
And it makes a lot of sense. Where is that
available right now?

Speaker 11 (01:00:38):
So James is in the app store. It's you can
search James Rider and that will give you the app.

Speaker 2 (01:00:44):
Right now, we're going.

Speaker 11 (01:00:45):
More towards like drivers telling riders about it. So if
you if you download it, if you do have a
favorite driver, you can certainly download it and then just
contact your favorite driver and say, hey, do you want
to use this. It's certainly much easier. A lot of
people are doing this today, but they're texting. So a
driver will give you their number and then you have
to text them. Certainly not efficient for the rider or

(01:01:07):
the driver to do that.

Speaker 1 (01:01:08):
M interesting, all right, So back to door dot com.
So this service it sounds like it's more. Is it
more B to B because you're installing it on apartment
buildings or is this going to also be for people's homes.

Speaker 11 (01:01:23):
So everything we're doing right now is B to B.
So James is targeting the driver. Again, they have a
there's like a consumer side obviously, but that's really what
we look at is that we are providing technology to
superpower our honest day's worker to deliver the best experience
of their customer. Same thing with our locks in an
apartment building, you know, the honest day's worker, that person
that's building that building, that's that's you know, from three

(01:01:45):
units to three thousand units. We are superpowering them with
this you know automated uh, you know, Bluetooth enabled lock
that allows people to have the best experience there and
allows them to manage the building better and then layering
the services above that.

Speaker 1 (01:02:02):
All right, so you know you're you are like the
eternal entrepreneur. You have been in this world now, you know,
doing these entrepreneurial things for you know what, at least
a decade, fifteen years now. So what's your advice? Since
I graduate college, since you graduated college. Okay, so you're
doing stuff before even the ring, So what's your advice?
You know, someone's out there, they have an idea. I

(01:02:24):
mean it takes a lot. We've all watched Shark Tank.
You are on Shark Tank obviously, but like, what does
it take to really get something from idea to reality
in this world?

Speaker 2 (01:02:34):
I think, you know, realistically, it takes a lot of luck.
So I wouldn't want to look.

Speaker 11 (01:02:38):
I wouldn't want to You know, everyone gives advice of
all these different things, but in the end, like there's
a lot of luck.

Speaker 2 (01:02:44):
Timing is luck. People you run into all that, so
there is luck to it.

Speaker 11 (01:02:48):
I would say, doing something that you're passionate about and
that is going to in some way improve the world.
If you're able to do something with passion and that
has a benefit to the world, I feel like you
know that's it actually, and you work hard. Those sort
of three pieces seem to lead to successful outcomes for.

Speaker 2 (01:03:09):
People, and then obviously you have to go do it.

Speaker 11 (01:03:11):
A lot of people talk about business, they talk about
what they want to do, they talk about ideas.

Speaker 2 (01:03:16):
You know, at the end of the day, you have
to execute.

Speaker 1 (01:03:19):
Ah. I love that. Good advice. And uh, we'll be
looking forward to seeing more about what door dot com
does and also the James app sounds really interesting. Jamie Simonov,
thanks so much for joining me today. I appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (01:03:34):
Thanks Rich good to good to talk to you again.

Speaker 1 (01:03:35):
All right. Uh oh, such a such so many fond
memories of meeting up with Jamie in Santa Monica when
he was running ring. I remember like the first time
that he was showing me. I mean it was just
like a kid in a candy store showing me like
the whole like lab where they tested these video doorbells.
I mean, he had like this. They would literally like
melt them because they knew they were going to be

(01:03:56):
like in the sun all day, so they'd have like
this box where they put them in there and just
like see how hot they can get it before this
thing like stopped working, and it was just like it
was so cool. And then he'd had like people around him.
It was a small operation when I first met him,
but he'd have people around him be like James, you know, Jamie,
maybe you shouldn't show Rich that right now. You know
he is a reporter, like he was just showing me
like everything, so really really neat to see. And of

(01:04:17):
course Shark Tank. You can still see the clip of
that online on YouTube to see exactly what happened with
Ring and Shark Tank there. But and the first one
we you know, this was the thing about the first
ring doorbell that we tested. You know, you have to
remember Wi Fi was not the strongest back then we're talking,
you know, at least ten years ago at this point.

(01:04:39):
So people had their one little WiFi router that their
cable company gave them, and a lot of times that
signal did not reach to the front door. So people
would install these doorbells, these video doorbells, and it wouldn't
be that great of an experience because the Wi Fi
hadn't caught up to sort of the technology that they invented.
And it took a while, and of course you know
that Ring ended up you know saying company as Eero,

(01:05:00):
which is Amazon, and so it all kind of came
together and it was just fascinating to watch that as
a tech observer. So very cool stuff. Jamie Simmonoff you
can find him at door dot com. You have a question,
give me a call. It's triple eight rich one O
one eight eight eight seven four to two four one
zero one. This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to

(01:05:27):
rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here talking technology at triple
eight rich one O one. That's eight eight eight seven
four to two four one zero one. Be sure to
watch my segments that I do for TV. I cover
a variety of tech topics. You can go to richon
Tech dot tv to see that. Also, I mentioned earlier

(01:05:48):
that I am very I spent a lot of time
on Instagram posting a lot of stuff and I posted
something pretty interesting yesterday on iOS seventeen. There is now
a mental health questionnaire. So this is a new feature
in iOS seventeen, part of mental well being. So not

(01:06:09):
only can you log your state of mind during the day,
but also your daily mood. This is something you can
do on your iPhone now, so you can log your emotions,
you can log your moods, and I think that this
is really really valuable to gain insights onto how you
might be feeling and what's contributing to what is making

(01:06:32):
you feel that way. So, for instance, you can log
that you're happy and they'll say why are you happy,
and you can you know, has like different options. You
could say it's because of work or family or kids
or whatever. And on the flip side, if you log
that you're not feeling so great, you can explain why too.
Now this all goes into your private database on your iPhone,
but you can see the trends over time, so you

(01:06:54):
can see if you're getting into a mood when you, you know,
maybe go to work every day. You can understand why
that's happening because you're going to work and maybe you
need to figure out why your work is causing you
to feel that way, or maybe family gatherings or friends
or whatever it is. But the other interesting thing they
have is a depression and anxiety assessment. So this is
the same assessment that's often used in clinics. You can

(01:07:16):
now do this right from your iPhone. It's inside the
health app. You open up the Health app, you tap brows,
then you tap mental well Being and it's the mental
Mental Health questionnaire and it will ask you sixteen questions
about how you're feeling, whether you feel nervous, anxious, or
on edge in the past couple of weeks you have
trouble relaxing all these different questions and then it will

(01:07:39):
give you an assessment at the end and tell you
basically your level of anxiety risk and depression risk. And again,
this is all inside the health app on the iPhone,
and these are some big, big things and this is
not something to be taken lightly. So if you do
need help in that aspect, obviously we seek a trained professional.

(01:08:01):
This is more for kind of understanding your own feelings
and emotions throughout the day. So that's new in iOS seventeen.
And if you want the link to that, you can
go to my Instagram at rich on Tech. My wife
obviously is a counselor and she is big into mental
health and awareness and I feel like it's getting better

(01:08:22):
in America, but we're still just at the beginning of that.
So I'm doing my best to spread the word about
all this stuff. All right, let's go to Greg in
Des Moines. Greg, you're on with rich Welcome to the show. Greg. You' there. Nope, okay,
let's go to Linda. Linda is in Anaheim, Linda, you're

(01:08:45):
on with Rich.

Speaker 4 (01:08:49):
Hi.

Speaker 5 (01:08:49):
Rich.

Speaker 13 (01:08:50):
I have a problem with facetimed group called that It's
happened to me twice to my family, and I'm sorry,
I'm old. I don't even know how to do a
FaceTime group call, and of course they don't think that
I did it. I was three feet away from my
phone and I received a phone call, I thought, and

(01:09:12):
it was almost all of my family, and they said
I made.

Speaker 12 (01:09:17):
The phone call.

Speaker 1 (01:09:18):
Oh wow, And of course.

Speaker 5 (01:09:19):
They thought that it was an emergency.

Speaker 1 (01:09:21):
Oh no, one time.

Speaker 13 (01:09:22):
Once Now it happened again.

Speaker 12 (01:09:24):
The other time. I was on the.

Speaker 5 (01:09:26):
Phone speaking to someone and all of a sudden, I go, oh,
let me call you back.

Speaker 13 (01:09:32):
I have a call for my grandson. And again it
was a whole group of the family and a couple
of friends.

Speaker 1 (01:09:38):
Okay, well, I think I know what's happening. I think,
well there is Okay, so this is happening when you're
on the phone.

Speaker 13 (01:09:46):
It happened one time when I was not on the phone.

Speaker 3 (01:09:50):
And it happened one time when I was on the phone.

Speaker 1 (01:09:53):
Okay. So there is a group FaceTime feature that is
on the iPhone, relatively new as of a couple of
years where you can have up to I think thirty
two people in the call. And so a couple of
ways you can start this is obviously from the FaceTime app,
and that would take some time to open up the
app and set up the call. But one of the
other ways you can do this is through the Messages app.

(01:10:16):
And so no, no, I know, but I'm saying, this
is how it's happening to you, and I think this
is this is my theory on what's happening. So I
feel like when you're on your phone, this is just
a theory. By the way, I don't know if this
is the exact way, but I feel like when you're
on your phone, there is a FaceTime video button in
the upper right hand corner, and that FaceTime video button

(01:10:39):
could be pressed by your ear when your phone is
up to your face, and I think that's what's happening.
And so when you have a bunch of people in
that group text, your ear is hitting that button and
it's starting, it's initiating that call. So that's one theory.
Another way you can start these calls is when you're
in a text. If you tap the people up at
the top, there's like a little kind of like an

(01:11:01):
info area where it says you can call them, you
can video chat them, you can mail them. So that
could be another way that that is getting activated, and
that's up at the top. So those are the two
ways I think it's being initiated. If you don't want
to use FaceTime and you don't want this to happen,
you know, you can also set the autolock on your
phone to be to be less of a time, so

(01:11:24):
a lock quicker. You could also turn off FaceTime completely
if you want, and you can turn off FaceTime by
going into settings and then FaceTime and you can turn
it off now. Of course that's going to make it
so that you can't use FaceTime until you turn it
back on. But that's one way. I don't know of
a way that FaceTime is initiating. There could be a
serie command that that's starting the FaceTime call. I don't

(01:11:49):
know if there is one. Let's see. Yeah, you could
say something like make a FaceTime call to Siri, and
so that could be happening. She could be misunderstanding you.
So there's a bunch of different things. If if you
don't want that to happen, you can keep your phone
in the face down position and that will stop any
Siri listening. So if you have an iPhone and you've

(01:12:09):
ever had this thing where Siri will chime in when
you say something because it thinks it hurd the term Siri.
And by the way, with the new iPhone iOS seventeen,
you no longer have to say hey Siri, it's just
Siri and she'll respond. So if you don't want that
to happen, you can put your phone face down. But
I think Linda, those are some of the ways that
you can try. I'm just trying to next time it happens,
just be aware of like what's happening on your phone screen,

(01:12:32):
and that way you can keep that from happening. Again.
This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology at
Triple eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven
four to two, four to one zero one. Coming up
this hour, We're going to talk about the Ford Mustang

(01:12:54):
mock E. This is the electric car I've been testing recently,
and uh wow, it's a fun one. I know it's
been out since like twenty twenty, and I didn't drive
it until the last two weeks, if you can believe that.
And I've been wanting to get into this thing, and
I gotta say I I'm a fan. By the way,
the song you just heard, we were listening to it
in the car yesterday and my nine year old just

(01:13:16):
starts singing the words. We're like, how do you know
this song? He's like, oh, hear on the radio. I
mean he just belted out all the words. It's a
good song. It's very soothing and relaxing. Also, coming to
this hour, I'll talk about the price increase. Well, okay,
it's a Amazon's doing something kind of fishy, so we'll
talk about that. Microsoft has some new devices. Plus there

(01:13:37):
is a free photo tool that can estimate the dates
of your historical photos using AI. Vladimir writes in on
my website. Rich on tech dot TV, Hey, Rich, would
you talk about why Apple changed the notification sounds on
iOS seventeen. My brain was already wired to the notification
sounds on Instagram, and now they're defaulted to a much
lower notification default that's so low, oh, it doesn't even work.

(01:14:01):
And Apple doesn't allow the user to set different notification
sounds for different apps, so it's a dead end for me.
It's a huge minus point for iOS seventeen. Thanks for
all your hard work, Vlad. Yes, getting a lot of
emails about this, and after like the third or fourth message,
I always kind of like, I'm like, all right, let
me see what there is to this, because you know,
sometimes you're ahead of me, Like I always have my

(01:14:23):
phone on silence, so I never hear the notifications. But
sure enough, after I got all these messages about it,
I said, let me see what's going on, and yeah,
you can't change the default notifications for a majority of
the apps in iOS seventeen. And the default notification sound
is now this weird, really low sound that doesn't make
any sense. So I have a feeling this I actually

(01:14:45):
mark my words. Let's say it right now. End of September,
Apple will come out with an update that will change
the way notification sounds work in iOS seventeen because this
system that they changed to is just not good. The
fact that you can't just go ahead and change notifications.
I couldn't believe that I could not change the default notification.
And if you go it's it's app by app, which

(01:15:08):
is really weird. So like some apps have like the
notification sounds in their app settings, and then some are
in the system settings, and some of you can't change
at all. And the new system settings for the notifications
are really really low. So I have a feeling Apple
will change that. So just hang in tight there, of
lad keep up with the software updates. And this was
a miss by Apple. The change to the sounds. Okay, fine,

(01:15:31):
but people, you know, they kind of know their iPhone
sounds and they don't really want those messed with, whether
you want to change them or not. You know, that
should be up to the user, not up to Apple
changing it for everyone. They should at least leave it
the same, and then if you want, you can opt
into the new changes. Let's go to uh oh, Greg
is back? Greg and des moines. You're on with Rich?

Speaker 4 (01:15:52):
Yeah? Can you hear me?

Speaker 6 (01:15:54):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:15:54):
Here you go. What's up?

Speaker 4 (01:15:55):
Oh yeah, we're on Mudeheacidently I'm the buying guy that
called you Germany. Oh Hi, how you doing? I got
my d flip tree walking. Now the question I have
I don't upload and I had to have some my
download for me because I don't know Lord Place doing

(01:16:16):
all that bounty stuff. Sure should I My phone is December.
I mean I'm trying to talk fast like you.

Speaker 1 (01:16:25):
Oh sorry, I know I do talk fast. I gotta
I gotta learn. I gotta learn to talk slower.

Speaker 4 (01:16:32):
February, my phone will be two years old and it
will be paid off. Okay, okay. Should I wait? This
phone's working good?

Speaker 12 (01:16:42):
Now?

Speaker 4 (01:16:42):
Should I wait for a year or two and get
a better gallarity? Or should I go to an iPhone?

Speaker 6 (01:16:51):
Now?

Speaker 4 (01:16:53):
I'm not sure how you walk the iPhone. Excuse me,
I'm not sure how you walk? You know iPhones. I
thought it out in nineteen eighty one, eighty two when
they had the bullet phone that came out. Oh wow,
the little flip phone and you got that. Yeah, I'm

(01:17:16):
in my you know mine, I'm passed. Doan me?

Speaker 1 (01:17:20):
Wow? Okay, Well, I mean so should you'd have to
learn some new things when it comes to the iPhone.
So your first question, should you keep the Flip three?
This is the Samsung. You said you have the Flip three?

Speaker 4 (01:17:34):
Yes, okay.

Speaker 1 (01:17:35):
So I mean what I would do is I think
that the Flip five is a sizeable upgrade from the three,
mainly to do with the outside screen. And I believe
we talked about do we talk about this a little bit.
The screen was bigger, that it would be more valuable
to you.

Speaker 4 (01:17:49):
Yeah, yeah, you did outside, Yeah you did it.

Speaker 1 (01:17:52):
We did, so I would say, I mean, you still
have a couple of months before this is paid off.
So I mean, if you got a trade in value
for it, you might you know, do the math and
see it might be a couple of hundred bucks to
get the new upgrade. I I think if the phone
is working for you and there's not a main feature
that you're you're wanting out of this phone, then maybe
just stick with what you got.

Speaker 4 (01:18:12):
It's already take pictures and I call y'all. Yeah, I mean,
I uh, this a Pandora.

Speaker 1 (01:18:21):
Yeah, it sounds like it's set up like that. Sounds
like it's set up the way you want it to work.
And so the fact is to have to go to
a new phone and to change it all and to
set it all up is you know, just I hear
the stress in your voice, just by the idea of
having to do all that.

Speaker 4 (01:18:38):
I don't know how they didn't have a computer when
I went to do you know, I'm showing me too.

Speaker 1 (01:18:45):
So well, now now the kids just skip the computers.
They go right to the phone. They don't even they
don't even use a computer anymore. It's just all about
the phone. So it's it's kind of come full circle,
I guess.

Speaker 4 (01:18:55):
But now my phone a computer. I mean he did
a phone computer, Well.

Speaker 1 (01:19:01):
I mean it's it's yeah, it's I'd say it's a
pocket computer. So I think, yeah, I mean, these these
things can do. Let's put it this way. You said
you're seventy one when the computers came out first in
your lifetime, the phone that you have is more powerful
than those computers that first came out. So these phones,
these phones that we have are very very powerful. How

(01:19:21):
are you with the accessibility features on the Samsung side?
Are they working for you?

Speaker 4 (01:19:27):
When I, let's say I call you call somebody, I
just say, well, calldy body, because you're in my time.
Pat okay, you know, it's not like that.

Speaker 1 (01:19:41):
So it works. So it's not like you're needing a
feature that the iPhone offers. Now, the iPhone does have
some good accessibility features for folks with low vision or
you know, uh dexterity issues, things like that, so it does.
They do have a fair amount of accessibility features built
into the iPhone. But it's all up to you. Do

(01:20:01):
you really want to learn something new? If if you
feel like that's a challenge and you want to do it,
then that's great. Otherwise I think you stick.

Speaker 4 (01:20:12):
Not all. It'd be nice if I can learn that,
but wow.

Speaker 1 (01:20:17):
Well yeah it might, it might take a little bit.
But I think I think you're good with what you
got right now. I think pay off the phone, enjoy
the paid off phone for a bit, as long as
it's not you know, frustrating you in any way or
not doing something that you want it to do. But
the only benefit I will say of Apple is, you know,
if you do end up going with the iPhone, is

(01:20:38):
that their stores really do have some great like sort
of lessons that you could go to in person. If
that's something that you're able to do, you could go
to the Apple store in person and learn and and
kind of understand the different features. So they have a
lot of these classes at the Apple Store. I think
they call it like Today at Apple or something like that.

(01:20:59):
So great question, Greg, thanks for I'm honored to be
on your speed dial. Thank you so much. But I
say stick with what you got unless there's a reason
why you need to switch to the new phone, but
appreciate the call today, Greg in des moin thank you
before we go to break here Amazon Amazon is you know,
Prime Video has been ad free for many years and

(01:21:22):
it's been a perk of your Prime membership. Well guess what,
Starting next year, twenty twenty four, Amazon is going to
put ads in your movies and TV shows that you're
watching on Amazon Prime Video. So yeah, if you have
a show that you watch that's ad free, that is
going to end. And if you want to continue having

(01:21:43):
an ad free experience, you can pay an additional two
dollars and ninety nine cents a month. Now, if you've
been following this show since we started in January, you
know that we have talked about pretty much every major
streaming service has raised prices. And this is a real
head scratcher because this is a supposed to be included
in your Amazon Prime membership as a perk that you

(01:22:04):
pay fifteen dollars a month or one hundred and thirty
nine dollars a year for an Amazon Prime membership. Now
they're saying, oh, you can continue this nice system that
you have, but you're gonna have to pay an extra
three dollars a month. That is not something Prime members
want to hear. Now, Amazon knows that Prime members are
not just gonna go ahead and cancel their membership when

(01:22:25):
they hear this, and a lot of them are just
gonna put up with the Prime Video ads. But let's
be quite honest here. Maybe you found a show that
you love on Prime Video or a movie. Yeah, there's
some things that I've found and I'm like, oh, that's
cool that that's on there. But it's not like Prime
Video is a prime destination for you know, like a
Netflix or a Max or anything, or a you know,

(01:22:47):
Hulu whatever. This is kind of like you give it
a fair shake because it's included in your Amazon membership,
and you're like, all right, if I find one good
thing to watch in there, sure it's included. But three
dollars a month for something that is like already on
the fringe of like, it's not that great. Amazon, You're
putting us in a really tough position here. Now, they

(01:23:08):
do say the base Prime membership price is not going
to increase in twenty twenty four, So they're kind of
throwing people a bone there saying, look, you're not going
to pay any more for this, But it's one of
these things where you can no longer sell Prime Video
as being a part or a perk of my Prime
membership when you are now putting ads in this just
like any other place on the Internet where you find

(01:23:29):
stuff with ads, this is no longer a premium perk.
This is now just an everyday kind of thing. So
that's happening starting in twenty twenty four. If you want
ad free, you got to pay an extra three dollars
a month. Not fun, all right? Uh, you want to
give me a call, Pick up the phone triple eight
rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two,

(01:23:52):
four to one zero one. Still checking those emails rich
on Tech dot TV. Hit the contact button. Get those
feedback emails in for the feedback segment. Later on, we're
going to talk about the Ford Mustang Machi Plus your
calls coming up right here on rich On Tech. Welcome
back to rich on Tech. Uber eats is going to

(01:24:14):
accept snap payments in twenty twenty four. They work with
the government to do this. This, they say, is going
to improve access to fresh groceries for people that may
not be able to get to the store. Seniors, you know,
anyone who is on these government benefits that you know,
wants to kind of join the rest of the world
and getting stuff delivered the way that so many of

(01:24:37):
us are, so snap EBT payments twenty twenty four for Uber.
They're also looking to accept healthcare payments like flex spending
cards starting in twenty twenty four as well. So if
you order something like, you know, over the counter medication,
anything that's covered by that, you can use your Flex
spending card kind of the way Amazon does it. If
you don't know that, yes you can. You can put

(01:24:58):
your Flex Spending card in Amazon and they will let
you use it for approved items. I also like, what
is it Target and I think CVS they mark your
receipt if you buy something that's covered under Flex spending,
and they'll put at the bottom. So if you do
have access to a flex spending account, look at the
bottom of your receipt. You can submit your receipt your
Flex spending. They'll reimburse you for that. So it's I

(01:25:21):
don't know why every retailer doesn't do that, but it's
really handy. And then later on they're also launching an
AI assistant, so you can of course everyone's launching AI
with everything, but Uber eats is going to have AI
so you can ask them for you know, I don't
know what you'd ask, Hey, what's the best flavor of cupcake?
I don't know. And then they're also adding a sales
aisle so you can find the promos and deals in
one place. I mean, it's the irony of sales and

(01:25:45):
deals on Uber eats because it is probably the most
expensive way to eat. But I get it. This is
kind of what we do in our world. We get
things delivered, but it is a very very expensive way,
and I'm not knocking it, believe me. My wife and
I the other night we had like two hours to
our cells, so we're like, do we go out for
dinner or do we just like have something delivered? And
we just you know, it's like it's expensive to get

(01:26:06):
the stuff delivered, but it's actually cheaper than going to
eat out because you know, less of a tip. I
guess less, you know, I don't know, just less stuff
you have paid for. Let's go to Vanessa. Vanessa in
Great Falls. You're on with Rich Great Call Great I
should say Great Falls, Montana.

Speaker 14 (01:26:25):
Yes, I years and years ago.

Speaker 5 (01:26:29):
My first computer ever bought was a gateway.

Speaker 1 (01:26:32):
Oh nice, I love gateways the cows.

Speaker 14 (01:26:36):
And ye that started my oldest son on his pet career.
And now I see that they've someone is making gateways again.
And I recently bought two and one tablets laptops for
my grandchildren that are three and five.

Speaker 5 (01:26:53):
They can get started. Sure, what is the best way
to set that up? So they only have access to
the educational programs that we're putting on there for them.

Speaker 1 (01:27:04):
So this is a this is a Microsoft tablet or
is it a computer? Microsoft?

Speaker 5 (01:27:09):
It's it's a two and one. You can fold the
keyboard all the way back. It's almost like the surface
go and you can fold the keyboard back and use
it as a tablet or use the keyboard as a computer.

Speaker 1 (01:27:24):
Okay, So I've got this set up for my kids,
and I believe so on iOS you've got what's called
screen time. On Android, you've got what's called family Link.
And with Microsoft, I believe it is called family Safety.
And so you can set these up as you know,
you can set them up as a parent or a

(01:27:44):
grandparent to just allow them to do the things that
you want these kids to do on there. So in
most cases, and it's been a bit since I set
these up for my kids, but I believe that you
put in kind of like the age of your child
that's accessing it, and it will we'll kind of, you know,
it'll set some defaults like here's the stuff will allow,
here's the stuff we won't allow. But then you can

(01:28:06):
also go further and you could say, let's say they
like a certain website like PBS kids or something. You
can allow that specifically on the list of websites. But
it also gives you a rundown of what they search
online if you choose to allow that, or you can
of course block searches. You can limit the time that
they spend on these different apps and things, and of
course just make it so they can't install anything new.

(01:28:27):
But that's really what it starts with, is this Microsoft
Family Safety is getting that installed, setting it up. You
may have to create an account for the child, but
once you get that on there, you know you're in
control now for the most part, because sometimes it can
be a little tricky. It can be a little frustrating
because once you set this up, there may be something
the child wants to do on there where they can't

(01:28:49):
easily do it because it has all these restrictions in place,
but no matter what, if you are setting up. I
know there's a lot of parents that sort of give
up on this stuff because it can be a little
complicated to get set up, and so they say, you
know what, never mind, I'll just hand them the tablet
or the phone or their laptop. But please do not
do that, because there is just too much that they
can happen upon if you don't have these things locked down.

(01:29:12):
And I'm not saying they're even looking for stuff, but
it's a matter of things can be presented to them,
or they may search for something and it may just
bring up something that you don't want them to see
or they shouldn't be seeing at their age. So Family
Safety is Microsoft's version, and I think that's the place
to start with this. Now, by the way, Vanessa, there
are other means of doing this. You can use a

(01:29:34):
third party app like Bark. You can use something like
a secure app, like a family Safety app like that,
and that's another way of doing it. I have two levels.
I've got at the network level in my home and
also on the individual devices. But the fact that you're
calling me and getting these things set up and wanting
to set them up in this way is a good thing.

(01:29:54):
So two thumbs up to you, Vanessa. But check it
out Microsoft Family Safety. Get them set up Gateway two thousand.
Oh my gosh, that was the original name. But the
spotted boxes the cow boxes. Ugh, that was one of
my first computers ever. You are listening to rich on Tech.
Coming up next, we're talking Mustang mock e ev. Welcome

(01:30:17):
back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here talking tech.
If you have any Apple devices, you might have updated
your software this week with the iOS seventeen and the
tvOS that was talking about, but there's also the new
Watch OS ten. So if you have an Apple Watch,
I believe four and up, it's got new software available.
It's got this new They actually changed one of the

(01:30:39):
buttons functionality, which I know a lot of people are
going to be surprised at. When you press that side button,
it no longer brings up your recent apps. It now
brings up your control center. And there's a reason for
that because now when you swipe up from the bottom,
which used to bring up the control center, that brings
up something called the smart stack. This is kind of
like a stack of widgets that contain information. You can

(01:31:00):
customize that by swiping up and then pressing down. It
took me a minute to figure that out, but that's
how you can customize what is seen on those widgets,
like the weather and things like that, your calendar. There's
also five new watch faces. Snoopy is now a watch face,
so if you like Snoopy, you can switch to a
Snoopy watch face, Palette, Solar, Analog, Nike Globe, which is

(01:31:23):
kind of cool. It counts down the seconds on the screen.
And then if you have an Apple Watch Ultra, you
can use this new Modular Ultra, which is the one
that I'm using, and it is just like the most
information I've ever had on an Apple Watch screen. I've
got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight little
widgets of information. I've got the weather, I've got my

(01:31:45):
activity rings, I've got a place to take memos. I've
got the time, I've got the date, I've got a
well being check in, I've got the sunset, I've got
the UV rays, and i've got the seconds counting down. So,
needless to say, my wrist is the most stressful thing
you could ever imagine because there's just so much going
on it's like a little mission control right here. So anyway,

(01:32:05):
that's only if you have the Apple Watch Ultra. Let's
go to.

Speaker 4 (01:32:10):
This.

Speaker 1 (01:32:11):
John Faulkner is no stranger to the show here. He's
been on several times. He is with a Clean Fleet Report,
and recently he wrote a review of the Mustang mach E.
This is Ford's EV. He drove one ninety six miles
across four states. And this is also the car that

(01:32:33):
I've been driving for the past week and a half. John,
Welcome to the show. Oh, I gotta bring John up here. John,
Welcome to the show. There we are. Well, you think
it's my first time doing this, it is not. I
swear so you have been driving. You drove the Mustang Machi.
I gotta say this thing came out in like twenty twenty.

(01:32:53):
I never got a chance to drive it until now.
I gotta say. It's right up there with one of
my favorite evs, the Tesla. What do you make of
this car?

Speaker 15 (01:33:02):
It was the fourth time that I reviewed the Maki,
and I've never been disappointed in any way with the vehicle.

Speaker 12 (01:33:09):
It is.

Speaker 15 (01:33:11):
It's just it's a pleasure to drive. It's not all
the power you need and a lot of room inside
and I think it looks great.

Speaker 1 (01:33:20):
What kind of range were you getting on this car?

Speaker 15 (01:33:26):
I was the one that I drove to Moab from
southern California was the extended batteries and it and it
had right around three hundred miles of range. And since
I didn't know the vehicle, the temperature was warm. I
was doing almost all freeway driving. That means that your

(01:33:47):
efficiency is going to be lower than if you were
in town using regenerative braking and recharging the battery. So
we never let it go past about thirty a battery remaining,
and so we we timed out all of our stops
based on using the forward Pass app and blew Oval

(01:34:09):
charging network, and so we were able to just it
just it was absolutely seamless.

Speaker 12 (01:34:14):
It was so simple to do this.

Speaker 1 (01:34:16):
So that's an interesting note that I wasn't really aware of.
So when you drive in town with an EV, you're
getting more mileage or more like efficiency than driving on
the freeway or highway.

Speaker 12 (01:34:27):
Well, every time.

Speaker 15 (01:34:27):
That you slow, the motors then regenerate kinetic energy back
into the battery. So yes, you are you're putting you're
putting it back into the battery. Electricity, and so it's
a yeah, it's a good it's called one pedal driving,
and it's it's have you been.

Speaker 12 (01:34:47):
Doing that this week?

Speaker 1 (01:34:49):
Not as much. I don't actually saw that in the options.
I don't think I have that turned on. So you're
saying you just kind of instead of using the brake,
you let the car slow down.

Speaker 12 (01:34:57):
That is correct.

Speaker 1 (01:34:58):
Oh wow, that takes a little getting used. I've got
to say this car really has surprised me in so
many ways. Like number one, I feel like, I mean,
the screen in the middle is this big giant screen.
Everything looks good on there, like car plate, it's got
wireless car plate. It's got this great panoramic sunroof that
doesn't open, but it's still a nice big glass roof.
The styling on the car is excellent. The blue Cruise.

(01:35:21):
Did you have a chance to try that the autopilot
kind of situation.

Speaker 4 (01:35:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 12 (01:35:26):
Out of our seventy and ninety six miles we drove.

Speaker 15 (01:35:30):
My wife went with me on the trip. I would
say that we drove seventy five percent Hansbury and took
a little bit getting used to. Now I've driven other
manufacturers as well as Forward on the Lightning pickup also
using their system, so I'm familiar with it. But it
was really it was really a pleasure to drive so

(01:35:53):
many miles and not having to be holding on the
steering wheel and you have to build eat your relax
when when you're driving like that.

Speaker 1 (01:36:02):
Yeah, I mean that takes a big paradigm shift because
we're so used to you know, obviously you're supposed to
always have your hands on the wheel. I was surprised
that it says hands free, like it tells you when
it's ready to take over, and so you do not
Like now there is sort of a camera system there
that that wants you to look at the road ahead right, Well,
it'll warn you if you're not.

Speaker 12 (01:36:24):
Yes, what will.

Speaker 15 (01:36:24):
Happen is that if you're if you take your eyes
off of the road for any like a short amount
of time, it will it will let you know that
the hands free.

Speaker 12 (01:36:33):
System is gone. It turned off.

Speaker 15 (01:36:35):
But the things you put your eyes back on, it
pops back on again.

Speaker 12 (01:36:39):
Now there are.

Speaker 15 (01:36:40):
Other manufacturers don't have that exact system, but I found
that once I once I got in the habit of
making sure that I was always looking forward, then I
was fine.

Speaker 12 (01:36:52):
Now I could look over my wife.

Speaker 15 (01:36:53):
You know, for a second or two and say something
to her then then look back out the windshield and
that that was all good.

Speaker 12 (01:36:59):
So, but it's like what they don't want is someone.

Speaker 15 (01:37:01):
Driving along end and looking down and you know, doing
text or or reading a book or doing something that
they shouldn't be doing.

Speaker 12 (01:37:11):
They want you to keep your eyes on the road.

Speaker 1 (01:37:14):
Yeah. All the shenanigans we see on the news of people,
you know, they I've heard of people. I actually saw
one time someone on on Twitter, like was boasting that
they put something on their wheel, like they some sort
of like attachment that would that would trick the Tesla
autopilot system so that they didn't have to keep their
hands on the wheels. Like, I don't really think you
should be, uh saying that you did that, because that's

(01:37:35):
not something you should really do. Okay, So you went
across these four different states. Now, tell me about all
these manufacturers are switching over to the Tesla superchargers. What
effect do you think that's going to have on this,
you know, on just the EV landscape in general. And
is Forward one of those manufacturers.

Speaker 15 (01:37:54):
They are one of those manufacturers, and that's going to
be coming.

Speaker 12 (01:37:57):
They're going to have the adapter and.

Speaker 15 (01:38:00):
Right around the end of this year and then they're
going to go strictly to the to the Tesla charging
protocol starting in twenty twenty five. What my opinion on
that is that every place that we charge looks back
up a little bit.

Speaker 12 (01:38:18):
I only used the.

Speaker 15 (01:38:20):
Electrify America charging network on this trip.

Speaker 12 (01:38:24):
It just made it easier for me. And they are
part of the with.

Speaker 15 (01:38:29):
Ford where all you do is you pull up, you
put in the charger, it recognizes the vehicle, it charges,
You're done, no payment, no pen, no nothing, You're just done.

Speaker 12 (01:38:41):
It's a wonderful system. But I stayed with EA on that.

Speaker 15 (01:38:45):
But every single place that we stopped there were.

Speaker 12 (01:38:50):
Maybe at the most a dozen EA.

Speaker 15 (01:38:54):
Chargers, and there was a there was twenty or twenty
five or more Tesla chargers. So what it's going to
do is it's going to open up the possibility of
being able to find more chargers. And the Tesla chargers
have a far better reliability record than do wortri By America,

(01:39:16):
Charge Point, EVgo and all the other brands.

Speaker 1 (01:39:20):
So do you think we're at the point where evs
can do road trips now that are non teslas or
do you think it's sort of it's still hit or miss.

Speaker 15 (01:39:29):
Well, you put on the number one issue, and that
is that in the states that has that have that
believe that electric electric vehicles as the future of propulsion
in this country, they are aggressively building out public charging systems.
California has the most robust in the country. There are

(01:39:49):
states in this country that the and again for the
political reasons, they're not doing it.

Speaker 12 (01:39:55):
So therefore.

Speaker 15 (01:39:57):
The trip that I took is made possible by the
fact that there was a lot of electrifying America chargers
and because in the states that I drove through, California, Arizona, Nevada,
and Utah, those four states they believe in electricity propelling vehicles.

Speaker 6 (01:40:19):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:40:20):
And finally, is this up there with your favorite evs
Oh by far. Yes, it's a fun car and it
feels like the best way I can describe it is
it feels like a gas car. It makes the propulsion sounds.
It is like I think, I think Ford nailed it,
and this is pretty much their first EV.

Speaker 12 (01:40:38):
Right it is, and they they actually right mail was
a really good word on this.

Speaker 15 (01:40:43):
And it's again built in America, so it's qualified for
all of the IRA Fedral tax rebate programs. And it's
and it's when you go buy your Ford dealer, you
can actually see inventory. You don't have to go in
and wait for one to be delivered. So down where

(01:41:03):
I live, we have four dealers nearby, and you can
see that there's several sitting there that are available to purchase,
which is which is really good for consumers.

Speaker 1 (01:41:12):
John Faulkner of Cleanfleet Report dot com check them out.
He does a lot of reviews on these things. What
do you test driving next?

Speaker 15 (01:41:20):
Well, I just got out of a Maserati Grkale Modena.

Speaker 12 (01:41:27):
Which is a mile hybrid. And I just got out of.

Speaker 15 (01:41:30):
The range Row or Sport PHV plug in hybrid.

Speaker 12 (01:41:34):
What a wonderful vehicle.

Speaker 15 (01:41:36):
Fifty one miles on pure electricity on this vehicle. Man,
it's we are rich. We're getting so close that gasoline.
You know, it's still going to be sold. If you
got a fifty five Chevy, you're always going to get
gas for it. But we're really getting to that tipping point.

Speaker 1 (01:41:54):
Yeah. And when I filled up my I have an
EV but I filled up my wife's car yesterday. Oh
those gas in California are no joke right now, so
I'm sure anytime the prices go up we see more
interest in these evs. John Faulkner of Cleanfleetreport dot com,
thanks so much for joining me. Appreciate it and go
check it out the Machy. I gotta say, I'm very

(01:42:15):
very impressed. All right, coming up here, we are gonna
do the feedback segment. We're gonna talk about some of
the emails you sent me throughout the week, some of
the feedback on the show, all that fun stuff right
here on rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology. Microsoft

(01:42:38):
this week announced a bunch of new things at an
event in New York City. Microsoft had kind of a
weird thing happen there. The guy who's been in charge
of their surface devices for a long time, panos Pine,
he just kind of up and left. He's like, you
know what, I'm out, and there's you know, people are
like speculating why he would do this right before a

(01:43:00):
big event, and of course, you know, the rumors came
out that maybe they were cutting some budget in his
department and he just didn't like the direction. And so
now the rumor is he's going to Amazon. We had
the chance to interview him. I'm not kidding. This was like, gosh,
when the Surface first launched, he came to KTLA to
bring a Surface and this was a Now we take

(01:43:21):
for granted this whole idea of a touchscreen kind of
laptop tablet hybrid, but back when he brought it to us,
it was something we had never seen before and it
was just like so different with a little, you know,
angular kind of stand you can pull out from the
back and only had like one angle back then. Anyway,
he did a good thing at Microsoft, and it'll be
interesting to see what he does at Amazon if that's true. Anyway,

(01:43:45):
I know that's inside baseball, but I just thought it
was interesting. But Microsoft announced a copilot. Their AI assistant
is now going to be making its way into Windows
Office and Edge. And this is going to bring all
kinds of AI experiences to Windows eleven, Microsoft three sixty five,
and bing An Edge. So there's gonna be a Windows

(01:44:07):
eleven update on September twenty sixth, and that's gonna bring
over one hundred and fifty new features, including that copilot.
So if you see an update, you like the idea
of AI on your computer, then go ahead and get
that update. On September twenty sixth, they also announced three
new surface devices, a surface Laptop Studio two, a Laptop
Go three, which a lot of people are saying looks

(01:44:29):
pretty awesome, kind of like the their version of the
MacBook Air, and then the Surface Hub three so or
maybe it's the MacBook just Pro. Who knows. I haven't
got hands on with these things yet, but hopefully I
will soon. So a lot of info from Microsoft. If
you're looking for a way to charge your iPhone, your
Apple Watch, and your air pods, check out the high

(01:44:51):
Rise three Deluxe had a chance to check this thing out,
and it's pretty cool because it's the first time that
you can mag safe charge your iphe but change the
angle that it's charging at. So this includes the adapter
and it can let you charge all three of these things. Also,
you might be looking for a stand because iOS seventeen
introduces this new standby mode that lets you see information

(01:45:14):
on your iPhone screen when it's not in use and
it's charging on its side. That's one hundred and fifty bucks,
but it is a cool device. Twelve South, high Rise
three Deluxe and then finally, my Heritage Photo Data. If
you have an old picture, you can pop it into
this AI and it will use clues in the picture
to try to figure out when that picture was taken,

(01:45:35):
anywhere from eighteen sixty to nineteen ninety with accuracy within
five years. It'll look for people, events, and things in
the pictures to try to figure out what date that
picture was taken. This could be a good thing for
like maybe an old picture of Grandma or grandpa, old
black and white photo you have around the house. It
also works with color pictures as well, but kind of neat.

(01:45:55):
So again it's called my Heritage Photo Data. I have
not tried that out personally, but I'd like to. Okay,
let's get to some of your feedback here. Let's see
Bob and San Diego says, I heard your segment on
KFI today about Bard. I decided to search myself. It
shows a lot of good information, but also says I
died last year. There's also some am I laughing? I'm sorry, Bob.

(01:46:19):
There's also a second listing that says I volunteer at
Elboa Park, but then says I also volunteer at to
other places. I never have I called Google Customer Service
and I'm on hold with them, and the person I
spoke to doesn't have a clue what bard is. He's
trying to transfer me, but it's totally confused. Bob, be careful.
You don't have Google on customer service. They don't have
a phone number like that. So I think you googled

(01:46:40):
Google Customer Service and some random phone number that's trying
to scam you. You are on the phone with them,
so please be careful. But yes, what you're talking about
is called hallucinations. These things literally make up stuff. Adrian says,
I have passwords saved on Google Chrome and I've lost them.
How can I get him back? Oh? Wait, I went
to delete my search history and I had the option

(01:47:02):
to delete save passwords checked as well. Ooh, be careful.
I didn't even realize you could do that save delete
all your passwords when you delete your search history, So
be careful. The place to check to see if you
have passwords stored on Google is passwords dot Google dot com. Oh.
If you got them all, I guess it's a good
chance to start over with some fresh new passwords. Paul

(01:47:22):
says you recommended voicemap a few weeks ago. We were
visiting a large US city and gave it a try.
We loved it. Thanks for the recommendation. Yeah, voicemap lets
you do audio tours in different cities. Let's see through Instagram.
I don't have the person's name, but they said I
was listening to you last Saturday and heard you struggling
how to describe the new Apple watch band. FYI, there

(01:47:44):
are two parts of Velcrow, the hooks and the loops.
The fuzzy parts are the loops. Have a great weekend.
Let's see here. Oh my gosh, so much. Debbie says,
I got a new iPhone fourteen. I installed a lens protector,
thinking it was a thing to do, but the glass shatter.
Now I can't get it off. If I checked YouTube,
it says to soften with the hairdryer, but that hasn't helped.

(01:48:05):
I don't want to scratch up my new phone. Help
me Rich, Thank you, Debbie. Debbie, I do not recommend
lens protectors on phones. I recommend a screen protector and
a case, but lens protectors I think are unnecessary. Apple
and other phone companies spend a lot of money on
the optics. Why are you gonna put like a little
plastic or glass protector between you and like millions of
dollars of R and D. So just take your chances

(01:48:27):
with the lenses. They do shatter from time to time,
but I think just take care of your phone, have
a good case, and you should be okay, all right,
if you can believe it, that's going to do it.
For this episode of the show. You can find everything
I mentioned on my website. Go to richontech dot tv.
You can find me on social media. I'm at rich
on tech. Next week we'll talk about more tech stuff,
anything that happens in the tech world, tips, tricks, whatever.

(01:48:49):
Thanks so much for listening. There are so many ways
you can spend your time. I do appreciate you spending
it right here with me. Thanks to everyone who makes
this show possible. My name is rich Demiro. I will
talk to you real soon.

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