Rich's Favorite Apps & Best Portable Battery Chargers

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey their podcast listeners. Thanks so much for subscribing to
the show. So this week's show is recorded, but a
lot of it is brand new. So the intro is new,
the emails are new, the voicemails are new, the interviews
are new. The only thing that is previously recorded are
the calls. So enjoy the show. Thanks so much for

(00:21):
listening and subscribing. What's going on. I'm Rich Demiro and
this is Rich on Tech, the show where I talk
about the tech stuff I think you should know about.
It's also the place where I answer your questions about technology.
I believe that tech should be interesting, useful, and fun.
The phone number to the show is triple eight Rich

(00:42):
one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to
two four one zero one. You can also email me.
Just go to Rich on tech dot tv hit the
link that says contact. We've got some great guests this week.
Jacob Palm of Best Reviews dot com will join us

(01:03):
to share top rated gift ideas that you can shop
for this holiday season. Jen Collchrider of Mozilla Foundation's Privacy
Not Included. We'll talk about their new report, which highlights
gadget privacy concerns with all the smart stuff that we're buying,
and Matt Swider of the shortcut dot Com we'll talk

(01:26):
about some of the best holiday shopping strategies. I hope
you had a RESTful, enjoyable, and gratitude filled Thanksgiving. I
wanted to talk to you about some of my favorite
apps on my phone. I figured, since it is a
holiday weekend, maybe you're doing some shopping, maybe you're doing
some personalization on your phone, maybe you're getting things set

(01:49):
up the way you want on your smartphone. Maybe you
got a new smartphone already. But I figured ou'd go
over some of the apps that I keep on my
phone that I really like. And I'm pretty particular. I've
really like apps that are cross platform, which means they
work equally well on both iPhone and Android. The reason
for that is pretty simple. I don't want to be
locked into any one platform. Some of these apps are

(02:11):
only available on one platform or another, but for the
majority of them, they are available on both. Some of
them do require a subscription fee, others are completely free.
Let's go through some of the apps that I really
enjoy so and these are in no particular order, but
the first app is called Artifact. Artifact and this is
a personalized news app. It's all powered by AI. It

(02:35):
was started by some of the same folks behind Instagram,
and so the idea is that it's kind of like
an Instagram but for articles. So the more you look
at and read different articles, the more it will serve
you up similar articles. And that does work across Android
and iOS. All right, so I know there's a big
question about which photo storage app to use. My favorite

(02:57):
has been for many, many years, ever since it was
Kasa back in the day, is Google Photos. I love
Google Photos because it is cross platform, it works really well.
It ties into my Google storage. I think that these
search capabilities are unmatched on this app, So get your
photos into Google Photos. My only downside is the more

(03:18):
photos you have inside here backed up, the tougher it
is to actually get them out using takeout. But I'll
figure that out one of these days. Chat GBT installed
on my phones. I love this AI chatbot. It is
just an impressive, impressive debut of AI. If you don't
have the official chat GPT app on your phone, I

(03:38):
highly recommend you download it. I pay for a subscription
to chat GBT, which gives me access to a couple
more features, but they did just make one premium feature free,
and that is voice chat. So if you want to
chat with an AI bot using your voice, download the
chat GBT app and hit the microphone icon and you
can do just that. This is a relatively new app

(04:00):
looking for a good read it later app. So I
was using Pocket for a long time, but I just
switched to this app called omnivore O m n i
v ore. It is cross platform. It works a little
bit better on iOS as some apps do, but this
is a free, open source read it later app and
I really like it because they are privacy focused. You

(04:21):
can throw anything you want in there, whether it's a
PDF or an article. It formats it in a nice
way that you can read it later, and it also
has labels so you can categorize your items into labels.
And I just find that I don't know, I discovered
it and it's it's a pretty cool app. So omnivore
for reading it later. Email me. This is a great app,

(04:42):
and I wish, wish wish this was cross platform. This
is only available on the iPhone for some reason. There
is a similar app on Android, but I don't necessarily
like it as much. And I haven't found one that
I like as much as this one. But email Me
is just such a great app, and it's just an
easy way to email yourself notes, links, anything you want.

(05:05):
My email inbox is kind of my to do list,
like an ongoing like I'm always going to see whatever's
in there, and so if I email myself an article
or whatever it is, anything, I can just deal with
it when I'm sitting down at my computer and I
have a chance to look at my inbox and say, oh, yeah,
I want to read this, or I want to act
on this, or I want to do this or whatever.
Telegram is my preferred chat app. We picked this a

(05:29):
long time ago with my family, so we're all on there.
We have a nice, big group chat and I just
love it because it works the same way across iPhone
and Android, so no matter what phone my family members
are using, we all have the same exact chat day one.
I wish I use this more. This is a journaling app,
but it's just really simple. It's very clean, it's easy,

(05:52):
and if you want to start journaling in the new
year again, it's cross platform and I like that Apple
is adding a journal app to their seventeen, but it's
not cross platform, so anything you do in there will
be stuck on iPhone forever. I like Day one because
it goes with me. Libby is a great app if
you haven't downloaded Libby, it is such a great resource

(06:14):
for free books and audiobooks. I absolutely love Libby. Let's
see Opener. This is a again. This is an iOS
only app. Opener is an app that lets you open
up the link in the proper app. So, for instance,
on iOS, everything's sort of sandboxed, and that means that
if you go to a YouTube video on an app,

(06:34):
it may just open inside a small browser inside that app.
With Opener, you can actually open that up in the
proper app by just pressing the share button, and then
it will figure out which app it should open up
in and it will do that. It's a really handy app.
I think it costs about two dollars. There's an app
called What three Words. I really wish more people knew about.
What three Words divides the world into small three meter

(06:58):
by three meter squares, and each one of them has
a unique three word address, which means you can tell
someone where you are exactly using three words. But I
find that it's very handy for directing people to a
certain entrance somewhere. So if you're meeting someone at say
a big park, you know GPS is only going to
get you to the park with what three words, you
can show them the exact place you are at that park,

(07:19):
whether it's a certain entrance or a certain area. It
is really really handy. Whisper Memos I love this app.
I have it installed on my Apple Watch. And again
this is a an iOS only but it is so great.
It uses AI to record and transcribe audio notes and
memos and it's just really really incredible at what it does. Again,

(07:39):
you get some for free, but then they do charge
you just a little bit. Sunshine Contacts is a great
contact app. This helps you manage your contacts by automatically
updating their information by looking in their signature in your
email and so if they have a new phone number
or something in there, it will attempt to merge all
that information. It's not perfect, but it does work and
it's pretty good. I like that. Run out of time here,

(08:01):
but Amazon Photos is great for free unlimited photo storage
if you are a Prime member. Backdrops is great for wallpaper.
Splice is great for video editing. Touch Retouch is great
to remove unwanted objects from your photos. It is so easy.
Fly fin Ai is a great app if you're a

(08:22):
freelancer and you have expenses that you want to remember
for tax time. Upside is a great app if you
want to get cash back on your gas and grocery purchases.
Let's see Real Good is my preferred streaming service guide,
so I use that to keep track of all the
movies I want to see. Recipe Keeper is incredible. You

(08:43):
can forward a URL to a recipe and it parses
the data in that recipe and puts it in an
easy to follow format and organizes it all. It is
really good at what it does. Two more apps. One
is called All Trails. It's great for finding hiking, walking,
and running trails no matter where you are in the world.
And Flighty, which will help you get around the world.

(09:06):
It is a great flight tracker. It's available on iOS only.
It is beautifully designed. I hope they come to Android.
You can find links to all of the apps I
just mentioned on my website. Just go to Rich on
tech dot TV. Coming up on the show, we'll talk
to Matt Swider of the shortcut about holiday shopping strategies.
But first it's your turn. Your calls up next. My

(09:26):
name is rich D Muro and you are listening to
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 one zero one. Email is also an option.
You can go to the website rich on Tech dot TV.

(09:47):
Hit contact. Let's see. Let's get to a question here.
You guys send me so many questions, so let's see.
Isabelle says, my daughter has a brand new Apple Watch.
She does know I want to use. I would like
to use it because I think they are very nice looking. However,
I have an Android cell phone. I don't care to
connect it, nor do I care to switch to an

(10:08):
Apple cell phone. My question is can I still use it?
The only thing I actually want to use is the
time and the watch. I only want to see the time.
Is this possible, please help Isabelle. Yes, it is possible,
and there is a setting for the Apple Watch. You
do need an iPhone to set up an Apple Watch,
but once it's set up, it will work on its own.

(10:29):
And I don't think you're gonna get the full benefit
of having an Apple Watch. But if you just want
the time, like you're saying, then sup. You can absolutely
do this and it will do some other basic things
as well. Now, I do think you're gonna need to
set up an iCloud account to do this, so if
you don't have that, it's free, you can do that.
But the feature is called family setup, and you actually
need to use your daughter's iPhone to do this. So

(10:52):
once you reset the Apple Watch, go into settings and
factory reset it. That'll bring it to like a fresh start.
Use your phone, your daughter's iPhone to set up the
Apple Watch, and it will say are you setting this
up for yourself or a family member? And you are
the family member, so say yes, I'm setting this up
for a family member, and it will guide you through
the process of setting up that phone for you and

(11:14):
not her phone, so all of your stuff will be
just on the watch. It will be separate from anything
that she has on her account. But like I said,
you will need to log in with your own iCloud
account just so that Apple can keep track of everything
and make sure that you've got your own account on there.
So you can set that up for free during the
setup time, and if you just want to use the
time and the watch, that's fine, but you can use

(11:35):
other features. I mean, you could use like you know,
the Stopwatch, the calendar. My kids have Apple Watches and
they use them independent of a phone, and they do
a whole bunch of stuff. They've even downloaded little games
on there. So there are definitely things you can do
on the Apple Watch even if you don't have an iPhone.
And this is because a lot of people use these
for their kids or even adults that you know may

(11:57):
have a disability or something like that. You want to
be able to keep track of them or have this
watch on their wrist. But they're not necessarily using an iPhone.
So there are many many reasons why you might want
to set this up this way, but it can be
done very easily. A good question Isabelle, thanks so much
for writing. Let's see. Rob from Los Angeles says, Hey, Rich,

(12:18):
I follow you on social media and your podcast, and
I think you're pretty funny and informative. Oh well, thank you, Rob.
I have a question about two factor authentication apps. I
use two fa open source app and Microsoft Authenticator app.
On my accounts. What if I want to stop using
Microsoft Authenticator and switch to the two FA app? Will
that create conflict since my accounts were accepting codes generated

(12:41):
by the app the Microsoft app before, or do I
have to stick with the same authenticator app once I
attach the account to one app. Please explain. Thanks in advance.
Rob in Los Angeles, Rob, great question. Now it's interesting
because I don't talk about the two factor authentication apps
too much, but I think they are very, very important.

(13:02):
And if you've heard of me talk about securing your
online accounts, there are two ways you do that. Number
one very strong password, unique password for every account, and
then the second way is with a two factor authentication
enabled on your account. And there are two ways of
doing that. And this is why it gets a little
bit complicated. And I don't want to I don't want

(13:23):
people to be detracted from doing this right like I
want them to do this. So I want to make
it as simple as possible. And the simplest way to
do two factor authentication is with the text message code.
And so you put in your phone number on something
like Instagram and it says, hey, we're going to text
you every time you try to log in. If you
don't give us that secret code that we text you,
we're not going to allow this log in to happen. Well,
the problem is that the cell phones and phone numbers

(13:46):
are a little bit easier hacked than we'd like, and
so some people could get a hold of your cell
phone number or intercept that code and hack you still
even if you have two factor on, but it's still
a very good way to protect your account in most,
like ninety nine percent of cases. But if you really
want to be safe and secure, what you want to
do is use one of these two factor authentication apps.

(14:08):
And what these apps do is they generate a unique
code every thirty seconds or so, and when you want
to log in, you just go to this app and
you check out the code and you just type it
in and again that's the second factor. The first is
you logging into the account. The second is this app
that is generating a code. Now, the app is nice
because it is independent of your phone number. So if

(14:29):
you switch phone lines, if you get a different carrier,
if you get rid of your phone number altogether, you
don't lose those ways to log into your account because
you can no longer access those codes. You can get
them on this app no matter what service you're using.
So that's why I like to use this service whenever possible.
And there are apps called Authie, there are Google Authenticator,

(14:50):
there's Microsoft Authenticator. There are several of these authentication apps
out there. You just have to pick one that you like.
I would personally say pick one that does not have
any any sort of cost because you don't want to
be paying for this down the line over time. So
the question rob is can you switch apps? And I
had to do some research on this one, but I
looked up on Wired had an article about this, and

(15:13):
it's funny because I've been not wanting to switch because
it is a time consuming process, but it can be done.
And so, as I suspected, you basically have to disable
the two factor authentication temporarily and then re enable it
using the new app. And the way that you do
that is, once you enable it, typically you just scan
a QR code on your screen to enable this two

(15:34):
factor authentication. It links up and then all of your
codes are right on that app. So, for instance, I
use an app and I've got all of my codes
on here for Twitter, I've got it for my Facebook
I've got it for my website at work, I've got
it for my Instagram, And so, of course the number
one thing you're thinking is, well, what if someone hacks

(15:54):
that app? Yeah, you've got to be careful. And this
is why you have to have password on your phone
or face ID or a fingerprint scanner, and there is
a log in for that app as well. So again,
all of these things do require a little bit of planning,
a little bit of kind of just setting things up
so that they work. And I know people get very

(16:17):
hesitant to set this stuff up because it sounds so
complicated and it feels like you're never gonna be able
to get into your logins when you need to. But
believe me, I will tell you I get emails every
single day, every single day from people that get hacked
on Facebook, on Instagram, on their email. And when you

(16:37):
do that, there is no guarantee that you're getting that
account back. And I have people that are saying, rich,
I have my photos on there, I have my emails,
I have all kinds of personal data that I will
never be able to get back, And I say, you
know what, I'm sorry, but the reality is you have
to lock down these accounts, and most people just don't
want to and if you don't, you will be hacked

(17:00):
telling you that because it's not not like they're they're
targeting you, they are just coming after a lot of people.
Rich on Tech is my website, rich on tech dot tv.
Go ahead, check me out on Instagram at rich on tech. Earlier,
we had a question about running an older software operating
system on a computer and I found a good website,
end of life dot Date. And this has the end

(17:24):
of life dates for every platform you could ever imagine,
the iPhone, the iPad iOS, iPadOS, macOS, Windows. I mean,
this is pretty thorough. So someone clearly does their homework
with this website end of life dot date. And so
if you look at Apple macOS, it says all the

(17:46):
different releases you got Sonoma, Ventura, Monterey, Big Sur and Catalina,
and it tells you the service status, if it's still
being serviced, and when it got its latest software update.
So if you look at this, macOS eleven, twelve, thirteen,
and fourteen are still all getting software updates. And Big
Sir was so released two years and eleven months ago.

(18:09):
Service status yes, latest update was September eleventh. Then September
twenty first for the Quanarey, Ventura, Sonoma. So anyway, great
website to see if the software you want to run
is still being secure, supported with active security updates. Triple
eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four
to two four one zero one. Give me a call.

(18:32):
Do you have a question about technology? My name is
rich Dmiro and you are listening to 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.

Speaker 2 (18:44):
This is it.

Speaker 1 (18:44):
This is the holiday shopping season. We are in full swing,
in the thick of it. And joining me now is
Matt Swider of the Shortcut dot Com, a newsletter which
aims to simplify your life. Matt, thanks so much for joining.

Speaker 3 (18:58):
Me, Thanks for having me. This is graduated, all right.

Speaker 1 (19:01):
So tell me why you started the shortcut dot com.
You said to simplify folks lives. Do you think there's
an over abundance of information out there?

Speaker 4 (19:08):
Yeah, especially when you're reading content and the keyword, the
answer that you're looking for is buried in the fifth paragraph.

Speaker 1 (19:15):
It's not just you.

Speaker 3 (19:16):
That's really a tactic that people use to keep you
on the page. I want to give you the quickest answer.

Speaker 4 (19:22):
And when I was helping people find a PS five
in stock, I just was shooting out links so that
they would get the item they wanted. And that's happening
all over again with a bunch of other items that
people want, including the PlayStation portal, so trying to get
the people they answer as quickly as possible.

Speaker 1 (19:38):
So how are the deals shaping up this holiday shopping season.
They're pretty good.

Speaker 4 (19:43):
A lot of people really want cheap TVs and they
want that PlayStation portal. They also want a lot of
the Apple Watch is really popular, and of course every
year it's the air pods. AirPods are the number one
gift because it's an easy stocking stuffer. It counts as
the big gifts for a lot people. If you get
that airpod's pro too, and that's down to one hundred

(20:05):
and sixty nine dollars, So that's a really good price
if you find it out there for that because those
the stock on that is very limited.

Speaker 1 (20:11):
So we're kind of in the thick of it every
day we're tracking these prices. We know kind of like
how much these things sell for. But if you just
see a price online. You don't always know if that's
the best price, if it's kind of you know, you
see these wild discounts, you know, thirty percent off, forty
percent off. What was anyone actually paying that full price?
So how do we know when something's an actual deal
and not just marked up to be discounted.

Speaker 4 (20:34):
That's a great question, because, yeah, a lot of retailers,
especially the Samsungers of the world, will launch at a
huge price for those early adopters and then just drop
it off by half over the course of a year.
You'll see those launch prices and there will be the
list price. They'll be crossed out, and that's great. But
usually using tools like Camel Camel Camel, which I still

(20:56):
use tried and true, that will give you some insight
at least if the prices dropped recently or if it's
you know, been lower before. I use that a lot,
but a lot of price tracking tools on Twitter, that's
what I use. I use a discord and I have
like things pinging me, so I take that information from

(21:18):
a discord where it's automatically tracking the prices and putting
it out on Twitter and sending people notifications.

Speaker 1 (21:24):
What do you think are some of the best ways
to research a product to see if it's worthwhile.

Speaker 4 (21:30):
Yeah, a lot of reviews out there will tell you
if the price is going to be discount nowadays because
their method is sending you affiliate links, and that actually
acts as a really good way to get an updated review.
So a lot of the reviews and buying guides out
there still hold a lot of weight for a lot
of consumers because they google something, they find that information,

(21:52):
and now they're being updated a lot more than work
in past years because they want to fulfill that e
commerce revenue. Well, that really helps out a lot of
people because they'll they'll always tell you the lowest price.

Speaker 1 (22:03):
Okay, so this is something that I always get. People
email me a link to something and say, Rich, this
is a really good price. How do you know if
something is too good to be true? Is it just
based on the retailer. I don't want to like discount
you know, any company I haven't heard of and not
shop there ever again. But at the same time, I
don't want to get ripped off.

Speaker 4 (22:21):
Yeah, a simple Google search if you haven't heard of
the main brand, usually that's a bad sign. Yeah, you
want to shop at the you know, for the lowest price.
But there are some websites that are not well put together,
don't have anything in the footer, and look pretty scammy. Yeah,
if it's too good to be true, it usually is,

(22:41):
and I would avoid that as much as possible. Go
with places that you know until you're familiar with it,
until a friend says, I bought this at X shop.
You've never heard of it before, but at least there's
some sort of testimonial there.

Speaker 1 (22:54):
I always check for the return policy and the contact
information as well, because if you can't find those two
before you make a purchase, you're definitely not going to
find them after you make a purchase.

Speaker 3 (23:04):
Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (23:05):
What about the difference between shopping online and shopping in store.
I know that you love to take your pictures outside
the Best Buy and all these places where you find
these products. Do you have better luck one way or
the other?

Speaker 4 (23:19):
I have better luck online, And what I tell people
is shop online, reserve it for in store, pickup. That way,
you're guaranteed to get that price if it happens to
be cheaper in the store for some reason. Usually they're
pretty good at keeping parody with you know, in store
prices and online prices, but if it happens to be

(23:40):
cheaper in the store, then you can just cancel that
order when you get there and pick it up for
a store price, So you know, you get in the
best of both worlds by shopping that way.

Speaker 1 (23:49):
What about price matching? Do retailers even price match this
time of the year or they over that they do.

Speaker 4 (23:55):
There are some retailers that do, but a lot of
times the item has to be in stock. So if
you go to best Buy, for example, and something is
at Amazon but it's not quite in stock, but it
was in stock, well, they won't price match that.

Speaker 3 (24:08):
So that's a little bit of a caveat.

Speaker 4 (24:10):
But if you do your dute diligence and you you
screenshot something, maybe you'll talk to, you know, someone at
the retail shop and they'll they'll give you that best price.

Speaker 3 (24:19):
So always take screenshots. That's one of the big tips
out there.

Speaker 1 (24:23):
Now. One of the ways that you've amassed such a
large following was helping people find hard to find products.
Is it the case anymore? Are people? Are these products
sold out? You mentioned that the PlayStation portal is tough
to find. Tell me about some of the products to
year that we may have trouble getting our hands on
or are all of those inventory issues a thing in
the past.

Speaker 3 (24:43):
For the most part, the inventory issues are a thing
of the past.

Speaker 4 (24:45):
There's some key items, some you know, Disney merchandise that
people want that's really hard to get.

Speaker 3 (24:51):
PlayStation portal is the impossible.

Speaker 4 (24:55):
Thing to find right now, and besides that, it's finding
things that are usually readily available at the best possible price.
So if you're going to spend you know, two hundred
dollars on the AirPods, you're overpaying. But that one hundred
and sixty nine dollars deal for the AirPods Pro two,
well that's what's hard to get these days. So that's
where I still come in to play for a lot
of people.

Speaker 1 (25:15):
I noticed this trend of retailers reserving their best prices
for their members. Now Amazon's been doing that forever, but
now we're seeing Walmart Plus, we're seeing Best Buy, which
you just mentioned. They have some sort of program and
target obviously Target Circle, but that's free to join. So
tell me about this trend.

Speaker 4 (25:33):
Yeah, I think the margins are becoming slim at all
these retailers. You know, they made very little if nothing
on the PlayStation five, for example. So they said, all right,
we have these hot products, but we're not making any
money off of it. So what they were doing was
locking the hot products behind and their best deals behind
a paywall, which you know, for example, Walmart Plus, they

(25:54):
saw what Amazon was doing, they said, okay, let's encourage
people to get our two day free shipping pay fifty
to one hundred dollars a year. They used to be
one hundred dollars a year, but they dropped down fifty
for the time being, and they were, you know, locking
really key deals. And they're continuing to do that at
least for three hours during the Black Friday push. So

(26:14):
they're saying, okay, we're not making a lot of money
off of electronics. At least we're making fifty dollars ahead
off of each household. So that is a tactic that
consumers don't love, but they in the end do love
the benefits because fifty dollars a year for something that's
equivalent to Amazon Prime is a pretty good deal.

Speaker 3 (26:35):
If Walmart is your number one retailer.

Speaker 1 (26:37):
All right, so do you have any recommendations for us,
Do you have anything that we should be on the
lookout for.

Speaker 4 (26:42):
A lot of people want this PlayStation portal. My one
piece of advice if you can't find it, there is
something called the Backbone one controller and that's one hundred
dollars less, so it's actually on sale for thirty dollars
less on top of that, so you can get for
about sixty nine seventy dollars out there, depending on which
retail retailer you go with. But it turns your cell

(27:04):
phone into almost like a PlayStation portal. So you know,
if you can't get that number one gift, there are
always alternatives out there. And that's my you know, big
suggestion for people is you know there's there's something to
you know, put under the tree or to to you know,
a gift to give somebody, because there are a lot
of options out there when it comes to technology that
you know, even if you can't find that perfect gift,

(27:26):
there's there's something out there to you know, fulfill that
wish list.

Speaker 1 (27:29):
And what are you playing with this season? What's your
what's your top pick for yourself?

Speaker 4 (27:33):
I'm really looking forward to diving into Spider Man two.
That's the new PlayStation five video game that is really
really popular. Uh it is it's free if you buy
a PlayStation slim, so you're saving seventy dollars there. And uh,
I got a new tcl Roku TV, so I'm looking
forward to, you know, using that along with my PlayStation five.

Speaker 1 (27:54):
Two very popular items. Matt Swider of the shortcut dot Com,
thanks so much for joining me today.

Speaker 5 (27:59):
Thanks.

Speaker 1 (28:00):
This is Allay rich I'll put a link to Matt's
website on mine. Just go to rich on Tech dot
tv to sign up to be a member of the
shortcut dot com or get his free newsletter More rich
on Tech coming your way.

Speaker 6 (28:11):
Right after this.

Speaker 1 (28:16):
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Triple eight rich one
O one eight eight eight seven four to two four
one zero one. Let's go to line one Feruza in
Los Angeles. Did I say that right?

Speaker 7 (28:29):
Yes?

Speaker 8 (28:29):
You did?

Speaker 7 (28:30):
Great?

Speaker 5 (28:31):
How much for taking my call?

Speaker 1 (28:33):
Absolutely? What can I help you with today?

Speaker 7 (28:36):
I have an iPhone six and this holiday season I'm
going to upgrade to an iPhone thirteen or fourteen. And
I'm particularly interested in the double Eastern feature because I
do travel internationally a fair bit and I just wanted
to understand is it the same on both the thirteen

(29:00):
and fourteen? And how does it work?

Speaker 1 (29:03):
Yeah, it is the same feature they've been I think
they've had this on the iPhone since the iPhone ten.
They did it secretly for many years just to test
it out, make sure it worked, and then they decided
to say no more SIM cards with the last year's phone.
So now there's no there's no physical SIM card slot
inside the iPhone anymore. But the way the eSIM works,

(29:24):
especially for travel, is that you would have your regular SIM,
which is still an e SIM, but you can have
multiple SIMS on your phone. You can have a bunch
of them. I had I think like two or three
on my phone at one time, and you can activate them,
you can deactivate them, you can keep going on there
for a long time and just activate it when you
go to a different country. But the way you install
it is you just you know, let's say you have

(29:45):
one of your main carriers here, that's you know, Verizon,
T Mobile, any you know, Mint Mobile, whatever it is.
You've got your main SIM, and then you can add
a secondary SIM, and that secondary SIM could be an
international SIM, it could be even a secondary cellular line
here in America. So let's say you wanted one SIM

(30:06):
for your phone calls and one for your data, or
even two for your data. You can set that up,
so it's really unlimited what you can do. But the
way it works overseas, in particular, what I do is
I typically turn off my main SIM and then flip
on the international SIM and then that way I can
still use my data through the international SIM and not

(30:26):
pay the roaming charges. And there's a lot of different
ways to do this, but that's kind of generally how
it works. If you're traveling internationally to a different country,
you can pick up a local eSIM there, or you
can use one of these companies that lets you activate
an eSIM right from your phone. So the one I
always talk about is airlow US Mobile also has one,

(30:49):
but there are many many different companies that do this,
And so if you just look up e SIM for
the country you want to go to, you can do
that and set it up very easily here in the
States before you leave. But I think that it's a
very simple system. The only place where it gets a
little complicated is if you want to continue. Most of
these eSIMs are data only, but that's also changing, so

(31:12):
the eSIM that you get for overseas might just candle
data and not calls. But that makes sense because you
don't want to give someone a different phone number just
when you're overseas. They just want to call your regular
phone number. So in that case, I recommend that you
turn on your Rome. You're not your roaming but your
Wi Fi calling. Jony on Twitter at rich on Tech

(31:32):
or x I should say, says, is there any way
to take low resolution photos on the new iPhone? Those
three point eight megapixel photos eat up storage and I
don't always need the high res thanks rich on Tech. Well,
the photos aren't three point eight megapixels. I think the
storage space is three point eight And yes, on the
new iPhone, the default megapixels is twenty four now, which

(31:56):
is amazing because you're getting so much more data on
your photos, which means you can zoom in, you can crop,
you just have a lot more flexibility with the amount
of data these photos carry because they are twenty four
megapixels by default. If you don't want them to be
twenty four megapixels, if you want to go back to twelve,
you can. You go to settings, you go to camera,

(32:17):
and you go to formats and then inside there it
says photo capture photo mode twenty four megapixels. You tap
there and you can tap twelve and you can take
your twelve megapixel photos just like before. According to Apple,
a twelve megapixel photo will be about two megabytes, a
twenty four megapixel photo will be about three megabytes. But

(32:37):
like you said, Jony, it's probably closer to about three
point eight. Let me see on my phone here what
my latest picture is. So if I just pick one
of these photos here and uh, let's see this photo
is oh five point eight mega five point eight megabytes. Wow,
So Apple, Apple's really being conservative in their estimates. But

(32:58):
again with today's storage on the phones, I would say
take the bigger photos. But if you don't need to
need that, just go ahead and you can change that
in the settings. Let's go to Tatiana in Banning, California,
Line one, Tatiana your own with Wretch.

Speaker 7 (33:13):
Hi.

Speaker 9 (33:13):
Well, I was calling about herb about YouTube. You know,
I wonder if you know if you could help me.
I have a prime membership with YouTube and it's worth fine.
Until last week and the last few days I keep
receiving all those you know, notification that I have end blockers.

(33:38):
I have either to unblock or to switch to Prime
membership and I already have Prime membership and I keep
telling them sort of, and they said, report the issue
if it's not correct, and I keep reporting that, Hello,
I am a pro, I have Prime membership, and you
keep blocking me because sometimes they block block and yesterday

(34:02):
I was not able to watch YouTube at all. And
not that I you know, but the point is that
why should I? You know, I have my Prime membership
and the worst thing is to reach anybody on YouTube
by a phone is not possible. They offer you chat,
and the chat, you know, I tell him, Okay, I

(34:25):
have Prime membership. Why you are you want me to
switch to Prime if I already have fun and you
are blocking me? And she says you have to remove
ad blocks, but okay, I show them up.

Speaker 10 (34:39):
You know.

Speaker 9 (34:40):
That's what you understand.

Speaker 1 (34:41):
Okay, teams. So a couple of things happening here. So
number one, you're referring to YouTube Prime membership. So Amazon
offers a Prime membership. So if you have an Amazon
Prime membership, that does not give you access to YouTube,
you know, without a So that's number one. So it

(35:01):
is a separate membership. So if you are talking about YouTube,
what it's called is YouTube Premium When it first was
introduced a couple of years ago, it was called YouTube Read.
They have changed the name to YouTube Premium. And the
way that you can check if you have YouTube Premium,
if you are paying, I believe I pay twenty two
to ninety nine a month. I don't know how much.
I think it's fifteen ninety nine a month for the

(35:22):
standard I've got the family plan. But let's see the
standard plan individuals. Yeah, thirteen ninety nine a month. Family
is twenty two ninety nine a month. So you can
check to see if you are on a YouTube Premium
plan which gives you YouTube and YouTube music ad free
offline and in the background. You can go to YouTube
dot com slash premium and when I go to that page,

(35:45):
it says you have YouTube Premium managed. So that's the
first thing, Tatiana. If you don't see that when you
go to that website, you don't have YouTube Premium. Now.
The second way to check is to go to YouTube
dot com and in the left hand corner, in the
upper left corner, your YouTube icon changes from YouTube to
a little icon of the YouTube screen and it says premium.

(36:08):
So that's number one. We just need to make sure
that you're actually referring to what you have. If you
have Amazon Prime, that does not give you access to
YouTube Premium. Now the second part of what you're talking about,
the ad blocker. YouTube has been cracking down on people
using ad blockers to get rid of ads on YouTube.
Why because YouTube and Google make a whole lot of

(36:30):
money on serving up ads during YouTube videos, and in
the past people were able to get around some of
those ads by putting an ad blocker on on their computer. Well,
YouTube does not like that, so they are cracking down,
not on everyone, not in every instance, not on every time,
but they are cracking down on some of the use
of ad blockers on YouTube. So if you do have

(36:50):
an ad blocker on your system and you're trying to
access YouTube, you will have to pause that ad blocker,
and you can do that by tapping your ad blocker,
and usually you can you can what's called allow list
the website, so you can say, do not use this
ad blocker on the YouTube dot com website because it
will not function properly. And in general, if you're using

(37:13):
an ad blocker on your computer, you can disable that
for a website. If a website you visit is not
working or it feels a little wonky, then it's probably
your AD blocker that is interfering. Thanks for the call today, Tatiana.
You are listening to Rich on Tech. Give me a call.
It's triple a Richt to Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology. This

(37:36):
is the show where I talk about the tech stuff
that I think you should know about. It's also the
place where I answer your questions. And that's exactly what
I'm gonna do. Right now. You can go to the
website rich on Tech dot tv, hit the link that
says contact and send me your question. And that's exactly
what Sierra did. Sierra says, Hey, Rich love your tech shows.
I listen to you every week for important tech updates.

(37:59):
My question is what browser do you prefer? Chrome, Safari, Firefox,
et cetera. And why. Thanks for all that you do. Well,
I will tell you that Chrome is my preferred web
browser and that is because of several reasons. Number one,
I like how it integrates with Google products. I like
the extensions that you can get for it. And it

(38:19):
was very slow for a while. I think that Google
was very aware of that, especially on the Mac side
of things, it consumed a lot of resources. It still
kind of does, but I think it has gotten better,
maybe through a combination of some software updates and a
better computer that I have. But I like Chrome because
it's what I'm used to and it's what works for me.
I also like, like I said, the extensions that are

(38:40):
available for it. I personally would recommend that you block
your third party cookies if you are using Chrome. That way,
your browsing history is not passed along to different websites,
or at least it's a little more private as far
as I can tell.

Speaker 10 (38:53):
Now.

Speaker 1 (38:54):
When it comes to Mozilla Firefox, I think there's more
privacy out of the gate, like I think the settings
are made in a way that protects user privacy just
a little bit more than Chrome. However, not as popular
as Chrome. I mean, Chrome is really the number one
browser with a very large market share. And then when
it comes to Safari, I think that the market share

(39:14):
is really tiny.

Speaker 8 (39:15):
There.

Speaker 1 (39:15):
On iPhone, it's huge because that is the default browser.
But on the MacBook computers and especially the Windows computers,
people use either Chrome or a Microsoft product. So Safari
is really fast. It's just not my preferred web browser now.
The other one that I really do like is called
Microsoft Edge and it is very similar to Chrome in

(39:36):
many ways. The only thing I don't like about it
is how they force a lot of Microsoft products on me.
But it's funny because Chrome pretty much does the same thing.
But since I use more Google products, it doesn't bother
me as much. So the browser that you want to use,
I think really comes down to personal preference, and any
of them are good. I think that the main thing
to know is just be aware of the privacy setting

(40:00):
and tweak those so that you are protecting your privacy
as you browse the web. Thanks for the question, Sierra.
Up next is Ed. Ed says, great show as usual.
My question is on my Gmail app on iPad, when
I swipe left, it goes to archive. I want to
swipe left to delete. Please help me with that. Also,
how do I access my archive to get rid of

(40:22):
those archived files? Well, first off, Ed, you can easily
switch this. In fact, this is one of the first
things I do anytime I set up a new phone.
By default, Gmail has certain swipes that I don't like,
so I like to swipe right to delete in my
Gmail and I like to swipe left to archive because

(40:42):
it just seems right to me. If I swipe right,
I'm trashing something. If I'm swiping left, I'm archiving it,
and that means I'm saving it for later. So to
do this, you open up your Gmail app on your
iPad or on your phone. You tap the menu, which
are the three lines in the upper left hand corner.
Then you scroll to settings and that's all the way down,

(41:03):
and then you go to inbox customizations. Now this is
a little bit different on Android versus iOS, but it's
very similar and you can do both the same things.
Tap inbox customizations and you will see mail swipe actions
and it says swipe right, swipe left, and you can
decide what those do. Now, for your second question, how

(41:24):
do I see all those archived files? Go back into
that original menu that I mentioned, and you will see
an item or a label I should say that says
all mail. All mail is all of your mail. So
when you archive something in Gmail, you're actually just marking
it with a label that does not keep it in
the main inbox. Because the way that Gmail works, just

(41:46):
think of it as one ongoing list of all of
your messages. Some of them are visible, some are not.
Great question there, let's go to the next question. Ron says, Hey, Rich,
I'm wondering how my wife has been spying on my
text messages. I've found some of them printed out on paper.
I've also seen she's printed out messages from someone else's phone. Also,

(42:06):
how is she able to do this from her phone?
Thanks for your help, well, Ron, barring any conspiracy theory
or magical powers that your wife has, I think that
you are logged in using the same iCloud account, and
a lot of times families do this on their phones
where they have one log in to make things easy,

(42:27):
but then the text messages and the settings carry over
to all the different devices. So I'm assuming that your
wife somehow has access to your text messages based on
the same iCloud account and the other person's phone. I'm
guessing that's another family member. So if you don't want
this to happen, then I would create your own unique

(42:48):
iCloud account. You could still be on a family account
and still share a lot of the resources on your iCloud,
but if you want your own private iCloud account, you
do need to log in and create your own account.
Next up, Data says, when I go to Disneyland, my
iPhone fourteen pro dies after sending photos, et cetera. What
is the strongest charger, phone bank or what else would

(43:10):
work best? Thank you and happy holidays. Great question, Data.
I always bring a portable battery with me when I
go to a place like Disneyland. And here's the reason
why it's dying so quickly. It's because you're using your
phone more and a combination of the cellular signal and
the videos you're taking, all of these things are adding

(43:30):
up to just really tax the battery on your phone.
So you're taking more pictures, you're taking more videos, and
if your phone is set to back up those pictures
and videos, that is using a lot of charge from
your battery. Couple of recommendations. There are three types of
chargers you can get. One is a mag safe, one
is a plug, and one is a sort of a

(43:53):
portable battery pack that has a built in connector. So
for the recommendations here, I like the Anchor nano power
bank with a built in connector. That's a small battery
though it's only five thousand millionamp hours. That's basically going
to give you about one charge but the nice thing
is it's small and it plugs right into the bottom
of your phone. Second one is an anchor power bank
twenty thousand millionamp portable charger, and this you can use

(44:18):
with USBC. Make sure you find one that has USB
C in and out. That's going to give you the
fastest charge both ways, and you will need to bring
your own cable with this style portable charger. And then
finally you have a BLKAN wireless power bank with MagSafe.
This is going to magnetically attached to the back of
your phone and charge it that way. I don't know

(44:40):
what the millionamp hours is on this, but it's pretty low.
But you can get them in different levels. You know,
depending on how thick it is, it's going to give
you a bigger charge. The downside to the mag safe
is that it's going to be the slowest charge out
of all of these different methods. But definitely get one
of these, get them while they're on sale over the
Black Friday Cyber Monday shopping season, and just always keep

(45:04):
it charged up and with you. Sharon writes in can
you recommend a photostick flash drive? Thank you? Lots of
questions about pictures people love to take them, so I
get this question over and over and over. And while
I don't necessarily love a flash drive for backing up
my photos, it is an alternative to just backing up

(45:24):
to the cloud. Personally, I think you should have your
photos in the cloud and in a secondary place as well,
in addition to your phone. So what does that mean.
You can use something like iCloud and also Amazon Photos.
If you're a Prime member, you can get unlimited backup there,
but you also want to have your photos in two
places at once in addition to your phone, so one
of these flash drives can work as well. I don't

(45:46):
think it'd be best to have them only on a
flash drive. But the brand I like, sand Disc I Expand.
So the I Expand has various models Summer Lightning, some
are USBC depending on the phoney have you plug it
into the bottom of your phone. It brings up the
app and you can do a complete backup of your
photos and videos, So make sure you get the one

(46:08):
that's right for your phone. Pn Y also makes a
model that is similar. I think that the software that
sand Disc has is just slightly better. It works a
little bit better for me in my testing. All right,
coming up next, we've got more of your calls at
triple eight Rich one oh one. That's eighty eight seven
four to two, four to one zero one. My name
is Rich d'miro and you are listening to rich on Tech.

(46:32):
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here talking
technology with you at triple eight rich one oh one.
That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one
zero one. Free call from anywhere inside the US. Marvin
in Denver, Colorado. Marvin, you're on with Rich Hi.

Speaker 10 (46:51):
Rich, How you doing.

Speaker 1 (46:52):
I'm doing fantastic. How are you good?

Speaker 8 (46:55):
Say?

Speaker 10 (46:56):
I'm trying to get some information on a guest you
head on some time ago who had developed a computer
program for baseball cards, another sports member of Bilia. This
has been about a year ago. But I didn't catch
his phone number. I think his name might have been
Ted Mann, but I'm not positive of that. Yeah, good

(47:17):
memory out how to get in touch with that guest?

Speaker 1 (47:19):
Absolutely, Okay, So the good question, and thanks for calling.
But so I looked on the website if you go
to rich on Tech dot tv, that's where you can
typically find anything that I mentioned on the show. And
so I will tell you I typed in baseball to
find obviously you know baseball card scanning, and nothing came up.

(47:40):
So you are absolutely right, Marvin, you had one part
of the equation. But here's what happened. So the notes
are on there. And the app, by the way, is
called collect c l l X. This was invented by
a New Jersey dad and his son. You're right. His
name is Ted Man. We did a segment with him
both on tea and on the radio.

Speaker 7 (48:01):
Here.

Speaker 1 (48:01):
It's a really cool app that helps you scan your
cards and figure out what the value of them is
in seconds. So the app uses instant image recognition to
recognize the card and provides its current market value. You
can build and track your entire collection. One of my
friends kept texting me after I'd talked about this app.
I think it was up to like a couple thousand

(48:22):
bucks worth of cards on the app. And of course
you can use the app to connect with other collectors, buy, sell,
and trade cards, and there's a whole bunch of stuff.
This thing has just taken on a life of its own.
I think they added some new AI features as well.
But again, the app is called Collex co l l
X dot app and Tedman is on there. He's the founder,

(48:44):
like you said, and you can email him through the
website as well. But the reason why you couldn't find
it on my website is because baseball was not in
the description. I wrote it down as it says Tedman,
creator of the Collex app which lets you scan your
sports card collection. So I should have said I should
have said, I mean including baseball cards because I figured.

(49:08):
And by the way, that show was on February eleventh,
twenty twenty three. That was the sixth episode of the
radio show. So good memory, thanks for calling, appreciate that,
and good luck scanning your cards. Let's go to Melody
in Carlsbad. Melody You're on with Rich.

Speaker 8 (49:25):
Hi Rich listen.

Speaker 11 (49:26):
About probably nine months ago, I received a notice from
the post office that I had a registered letter. I
went there and the registered letter was from Geek Squad telling.

Speaker 2 (49:42):
Me that I needed to renew my account.

Speaker 11 (49:45):
Well, I saw that was really odd that they anybody
would be sending me a registered letter. I thought it
was a scam. I checked it out, and of course
it was a scam, so I did nothing with it.
Then about a month ago I got an email from

(50:05):
the Geek Squad saying I needed alerting me that my
account was going to expire and I needed to renew it. Well,
I ignored that because I knew the Geek Squad that
it was a scam. I don't have an account with
geek Squad. I've never done any business with geek Squad,

(50:27):
So then I ignored the email. A few days ago,
I get an email from an unknown person advising me
that my account has been restored or renewed and for

(50:48):
a charge of I think it was like two hundred
bucks one nine. Well, I I didn't do anything, you know,
I have taken any action on that.

Speaker 2 (51:02):
But I'm wondering what do I do?

Speaker 11 (51:05):
Yeah, the only thing I can think of is to
keep monitoring my credit card accounts. But I can't, you know,
unless they have I don't know if they have any
of my credit card information.

Speaker 1 (51:19):
Okay, this is I'm glad you brought this up, Melody,
because this is happening a lot, a lot, a lot,
and it is I'm seeing two of the major scams
out there. One involves a Geek Squad, the other involves
Norton Anti virus, And so it happens exactly like you're
saying you get an email that says, here's an invoice

(51:40):
for your geek Squad service renewal and it's some ungodly amount,
you know, three hundred ninety eight dollars for the year,
two hundred ninety eight dollars, whatever it is, and it
says this will be charged, you know, in the next
week unless you call this number. And so we call
this number. I'm actually looking at one right now. Okay.

(52:02):
It says geek Squad protect your tech, It's time for
renewal order ID product, geek Squad five year personal home
membership customer information. It has all your data on there,
including your name and your email address, and it says
we're ready to help whenever you need us, call us
at this phone number. And so what's happening is they
want you to see this email and say, wait a second,

(52:24):
I didn't subscribe to geek Squad, and you call that number,
and that's when the actual scam takes place, because you
think that you're confirming your credit card number or getting
this charge reversed, and they're actually collecting that information from you.
This has nothing to do with the geek Squad. They're
just using the geek Squad's good name to get your

(52:44):
information and to try to charge you. So, Melody, I
know this is happening to you, and you're getting these
letters in the mail and these emails, and you know
could even be a phone call. But the best thing
you can do is, like you said, monitor your credit
card for any real charges that may come about, which
there's probably not going to be any, and just keep

(53:05):
deleting these emails, don't don't unsubscribe to them, don't call
the phone number that's inside these emails. This is something
that I'm seeing on a daily basis. I'm getting these
emails and so it's coming. Like I said, the Geek
Squad and Norton are two of the biggest because those
are two of the biggest brand names out there. So
that's what's happening, Melody, you could safely ignore them. I'm

(53:25):
glad you brought it up so that people can't avoid this.
Thanks so much for the call today. Triple eight Rich
one O one eight eight eight seven four to two
four one zero one. Mark is in one NETCA, California.

Speaker 2 (53:38):
Mark you're on with Rich Well, good definite answer. I
generally speaking, I'm always researching and looking at different things,
and I may go to a website I don't have
time to look at at that point of time. Sure,
so I'll drag down one of the euros to the desktop.
I have so many things on my desktop here, but
I pulled down a couple of articles or stories from

(54:00):
Quitter months ago, and I pulled it down to the
desktop so I could go back to it later. And
now I can't get rid of them. They won't delete.
They won't even move off of the position that they're in.
I might be able to move around a little bit,
but it will not delete. It will not allow me
to watch it and then get rid of it. And

(54:21):
it's bad enough with YouTube not let me on talking
about malware bites. They won't even allow mailware bites. So
I'm kind of at a what kind of computer is
this laptop? That's you know, Windows?

Speaker 1 (54:34):
Okay, so Windows, So on a Windows computer, the best
way to delete these things, obviously, you can drag them
to the trash can. If it's a you know, if
it's a quick shortcut to a URL or any icon
that's on your desktop. The main ways to delete these
things are to drag them to the trash so you
can just pick one up and drag it to the
trash and of course I assume you've tried to do that,

(54:56):
because you're saying that this is not working. So the
second way to try to get rid of these URLs
on your desktop is to select one and then press
shift and the delete key at the same time. So
shift and delete to get rid of this. And it
says I'm trying this right now. It says, are you
sure you want to permanently delete this item? I press yes,
and my computer is saying access denied. And so this

(55:19):
may be what you're coming up against. You may need
to log in as an administrator to do this because
sometimes it does try to protect you from certain operations
on your computer that could have negative effects. Welcome back
to Rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you,
talking technology. Welcoming back to the show. Jen Calltrider with

(55:42):
the Mozilla Foundation, lead researcher at Privacy Not Included. Jen,
thanks so much for joining me again.

Speaker 5 (55:49):
Yeah, thanks for having me back.

Speaker 1 (55:52):
So you've got a new report out a nightmare before Christmas.
Mozilla researchers find many popular tech gifts perform worse on
privacy than ever before. Explain to me what the Privacy
Not Included Guide is all about.

Speaker 5 (56:08):
Yeah, we review the privacy and security out of all
those fun connected gadgets that you're shopping for at the holidays.
We've been doing that since twenty seventeen, and we try
and help people with our fun reviews at Privacy Not
Included dot Org know which smart watch is better at
protecting your privacy than another, which smart speaker, which fitness
equipment or or that the like of the like. So

(56:30):
just you know, we try and make help you smart
shops smart for connected devices.

Speaker 1 (56:37):
What are some specific examples of popular tech gifts that
have not done so well on your Buyer's Guide this year?

Speaker 5 (56:44):
Oh gosh, Amazon products, they just keep disappointing us. You know,
the Amazon has a bunch of products. They're smart speakers,
they're tablets for kids, their kindles, things like that, and
you know, Amazon just they're track record just keeps getting
worse and worse at protecting privacy. They collect a ton
of data, they use that data to make money, and

(57:07):
they just keep getting in trouble with the FTC and
the like for not respecting our privacy with all that
data they collect. So they're they're pretty bad. We saw
Xbox this year gets our privacy not included ding. They
got fined big by the FTC this year because they
violated the children's privacy laws and that's that's not good.

(57:28):
And then we see, you know, the standards, the usuals
that that that aren't great. You've got some kids toys
on there that raise eyebrows. Smart watches for kids are
something that we especially looked at and have some concerns with. Yeah,
so lots of products that raise eyebrows, but there are
a few good ones.

Speaker 1 (57:47):
Okay, before we get to the good ones, I'm just
curious because I'm hearing a lot more about connected children's
toys and the personal data that they collect. What is
the implication of this, Like, you know, these things have
microphones on them and speakers and internet connections and cameras.
What does that all mean for kids and parents?

Speaker 5 (58:06):
It means that parents need to really pay attention when
they buy their kids a connected toy or a connected
smartwatch or any connected device. It's no fun to read
privacy policies. I can say that because I do it
for a living, and I don't wish it on anybody,
because they're confusing. There's a million of them. Out there.
It's really hard to understand, Okay, what data is being
collected on me as a parent through the app that

(58:28):
I have to download the control device, versus what data
is being collected on my kid. You know, did I
consent to have that data being used for personalization or advertising?

Speaker 1 (58:38):
You know?

Speaker 5 (58:38):
How do I delete it if I want to? And
so those are all big concerns that it makes it
difficult for parents to really kind of understand and know
what's best. And then there's some really creepy products that
we came across this year. I mentioned smart watches for kids.
We came across two different smart watches for kids. One
just flat out didn't have a privacy policy for the

(58:59):
device the app that the collects your GPS location as cameras, microphones, sensors,
and the other one had a barely a privacy policy
that super vague buried in the terms and conditions. And
you know, a privy policy is what a company uses
to say how they're going to collect your data, how
they're going to use it, what controls you have over it.
And the fact that we're finding devices that are so

(59:20):
invasive they're basically surveillance devices that don't have privacy policies
at all, shows that these companies are sketchy at best
and potentially really dangerous at worst.

Speaker 1 (59:31):
How does a parent know if something is going to
have a bad rap? They just look at your website.

Speaker 5 (59:38):
We try and help. That's a good place to start.
It is hard to know. I mean, I think asking
yourself as a parent, you know what level of data
collection am I okay with on my child? You know,
the Moxie robot that we review doesn't actually earn our
privacy not included warning label, but we were very close.
We were very on the fence about giving it that
because their privacy policy sounds okay, but at the same time,

(01:00:01):
they're sharing so incredibly much data. There's video, there's cameras.
It's marketed as a toy for your kids to help
them learn emotional intelligence and build relationships. But buried in
the privacy policy they say, oh, teach your kids never
to share personal information, and those things seem contradictory. And
so that's the kind of stuff that we see that

(01:00:22):
we would like parents to be wario. You know, there's
some good products out there, you know, the Tamagatchi Uni
or the Doggie that are still kind of fun interactive toys.
There's some coding kids that are fun interactive toys that
just don't collect a lot of personal information. And that's
the way I would go if I were a parent.

Speaker 1 (01:00:40):
And they had some previously top or positively rated companies
like Sono's and Bows and Ufi, but this year they
didn't do so well. So what changed?

Speaker 5 (01:00:50):
Yeah, it's interesting to see companies just getting more and
more into the game of collecting data and then trying
to make money off of it, you know, both is
an interesting one. You know, Boss makes headphones, that's what
they do. They make headphones and speakers, and you know,
reading through Boss privacy policy this year, we found the
line in there that says that they can collect data

(01:01:11):
on your head movements based on your your headphones. You're like,
why does those need to collect that data? But then
they go on and say that they could possibly sell
that data linked to potentially your email, and again it's like,
why do my headphones need to do that? They didn't
do that a few years ago, and now they're doing that,
And that's just kind of the slow creep of more technology,

(01:01:34):
more sensors, more data being collected from all our connected stuff,
even our headphones, and then it's how can we make
money off that? How can we you know, sell that
or share that for advertising or more. And so that's
what worries is we're seeing more and more of that
from companies that used to actually be pretty good. The
other thing that we're seeing that that's worrisome is some

(01:01:54):
of the good guys fit Bit and i Robot. I
Robot's been one of the best companies we've reviewed for
privacy for a long time. They were on our best
ult list. They're in the process of being bought by Amazon,
and so you have a company that's good at privacy
being bought by a company that's not good at privacy.
And your data is a business asset that will transfer,
and so that's a concern that got bought up by

(01:02:16):
Google a couple of years ago, and you're seeing that
marriage get closer and closer where you know now you'll
need a Google account to sign up for a new
fit that income, and you know that means your data
is going to start going to Google, and Google likes data.

Speaker 1 (01:02:31):
So what steps are you taking to ensure that consumers
are protected raise awareness about all of this.

Speaker 5 (01:02:39):
Well, I'm talking to you, Rich, I'm relying on people
like you to try and help get the word out
because people know you, they trust you, and you know,
I just sit here and do the research and I
rely on people like you, and I'm grateful for people
like you to help get the word out because it
is hard, you know. Like I said, I don't expect
parents to read privacy policies. They're incomprehensible. But I do

(01:02:59):
like the ceepeople ask questions and say, oh, I've heard
bad things. Maybe I'll just take a peek at this
privacy policy. They aren't completely horrible. You can determine what
data is being collected. You can do a search for
the word sell and see if your data is going
to be sold. Things like that. But really, I just
think sitting down and having a risk asseetment prossessment. I

(01:03:20):
have good products, you know, I have an Amazon Kindle.
You know, I'll bash Amazon for being bad at privacy,
which they are, But do I really care if Amazon
knows what books I read? I can live with that.

Speaker 1 (01:03:30):
This really all comes down to money. I mean, that's
really what it comes down to. Work exchanging our data
for product, and they are exchanging the data that we
give them for some sort of sale, whether you know,
even with Amazon your books, they want to recommend you
other books that you might purchase from them. In the
case of some of these things, it's a little more nuanced,

(01:03:51):
like the head tracking stuff. Why but it's probably to
develop better products that they can then make money off of.
So does it really all just come down to money?

Speaker 5 (01:04:00):
It comes down to money. I mean, at the end
of the day. What doesn't come down to money?

Speaker 10 (01:04:04):
Though? Right? Uh?

Speaker 5 (01:04:05):
But I also think you know, we're not The question
of consent is when I think a lot about is
a privacy researcher, and a lot of companies will say
we'll never open do this without your data, we'll never
share it, we'll not set up, never do anything with
it without your consent. But then you ask, point, when
did I consent to this? And that gets very nerky,
and so yes, it all comes down to money, and

(01:04:25):
what people should really be asking is do I consent
to this? When did I consent to this? And how
do I revoke my consent to this? Can I get
my data deleted? Because they're going to keep doing it,
that's not going to change, And unfortunately the onus is
on us to protect ourselves. So it should be we
need stronger federal privacy laws. We don't have federal privacy

(01:04:47):
laws here in the country. I mean, we have child
one and a healthcare and we don't have a consumer
and we need that and people should start demanding.

Speaker 1 (01:04:55):
Ten call triter. Thanks so much for joining me. What's
the website to go to?

Speaker 5 (01:04:59):
It's privacy.

Speaker 1 (01:05:01):
All right, take that list and check it twice. Thanks
so much for joining me today. More rich on Tech
coming your way right after this. What's going on? Welcome
back to rich On Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out
with you talking technology. Hope you're having a fantastic day.
Phone lines are open at triple eight rich one oh

(01:05:22):
one eight eight eight seven four to two four one
zero one is the phone number. It's a fun new game,
Super Mario Brothers Wonder So let me tell you about
this Nintendo game. This is the first two D side
scrolling Mario Brothers game in over ten years. This launched
for the Nintendo Switch. Mentioned it on the show last weekend,

(01:05:43):
but I hadn't had a chance to play it just yet,
and boy, when I got a chance to play it,
it was fun. My nine year old and I were
fighting over who got to play it next, because it
was just It's one of those games that you just
pick up and there's almost no learning curve, right, you
just know how to play instinctive. So if you played
the original Mario Brothers, or if you're looking for a

(01:06:03):
gift this holiday season, or no matter what you're celebrating,
people are going to be getting this as a gift.
The kids are going to start playing it, and the
parents or the adults are going to, wait a second,
I want to play that because it just looks fun
and it looks easy. I don't know if you've tried
to play one of these video games these days, but
you know there's like fifteen different controller settings, fifteen different
buttons on that thing. And it's not for the faint

(01:06:25):
of heart. Like you need to know how to play
video games for most of today's games, this one you
do not. It's got fun power ups like elephant fruit,
which turns Mario into an elephant with like a horn
or what do they call it, not a horn, elephant nose,
like a long elephant nose, a trunk, Thank you, Bobo.
Then they've got these wonder flowers that trigger effects. Now
I don't know what these designers over in Japan. We're

(01:06:50):
enjoying while they made this game. But those wonderflowers are
a little you know. I guess all video games are
kind of weird like that, right. There's up to four
players locally and twelve players online, so that's kind of fun.
The game is sixty dollars and this is gosh. It's
been thirty years since the launch of the original Super
Mario Brothers game on nes want to date yourself, There

(01:07:13):
you go, thirty years. So again, Super Mario Brothers. Wonder.
If you're looking for a gift this holiday season, I'm
telling you this is the one to get. Kids will
love it, adults will love it, and I think you're
gonna have fun playing this game, so I am, that's
for sure. Mike wrote in on the website. I have
a set of bows Q forty five quiet comfort noise
canceling headphones. I'm having connectivity issues with my Samsung S

(01:07:36):
ten smartphone. I'm trying to connect with Bluetooth. Sometimes it works,
sometimes it does not. On my phone. All my echo
dots show up in the list, even my TV, but
not my headphones. Last night it played somehow, even though
it never came up in the list. Out of curiosity,
I closed all the apps and it was still playing
help me please in bold letters, Mike, I think you

(01:07:59):
need to do what's called a network settings reset on
this Samsung Galaxy S ten smartphone. It's an older phone,
so you've probably connected things over the years to it
and something just doesn't seem to be playing right. So
what I'd recommend is doing what's called a network settings reset.
So you want to go into your Samsung phone, you

(01:08:20):
want to go into your settings. You swipe down from
the top. There's a little gear icon in the upper
right hand corner. You tap that and then you'll be
into your settings. Now, you scroll all the way down
until it says general Management, and then you scroll all
the way down again until it says reset. Now. I
know it's scary because it says reset, so you probably
didn't want to click that. But you can tap reset

(01:08:42):
and then you get a bunch of reset options. Or
you can do reset network settings and that will reset
the Wi Fi, the mobile data, and the Bluetooth. That's
the one I think you should tap. And so once
you tap that, it will clear out all the Bluetooth devices,
all the Wi Fi devices, all the connect devices on
that phone. Then I would go in and I would

(01:09:03):
repair the bow's headphones, and I think your connectivity issues
will hopefully be solved. Mary Jane in Fallbrook, California. You're
on with rich Oh, thank.

Speaker 12 (01:09:14):
You so much for taking my call. I have an
old Apple six. It wasn't holding I loved it. It
wasn't holding a charge anymore. So I went to your
sponsor and I bought a new phone. And why the
gentleman was transferring the information from one phone to the other.

(01:09:35):
He says, what's your security code number? I don't know
what he was talking about, don't. I went through some papers.
I don't see anything in regard to that. I wondered,
what do I do now? Both phones are inoperable and
I don't know what security code it's not. Well, I'm confused.

(01:09:56):
I just don't know what to do.

Speaker 1 (01:09:58):
Okay, So explain to me. You have an iPhone six,
that's your phone. Are they both in your possession?

Speaker 13 (01:10:04):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (01:10:05):
Okay, And you have a new iPhone. What did you
get a new iPhone?

Speaker 8 (01:10:08):
Yeah?

Speaker 12 (01:10:09):
I just got a fifty. I got a new iPhone yet.

Speaker 1 (01:10:12):
A fifteen.

Speaker 12 (01:10:14):
I think they called it A fifty.

Speaker 1 (01:10:16):
Okay, uh, well the newest is the fifteen. Is the fifteen?
So is it an iPhone?

Speaker 10 (01:10:21):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:10:21):
Okay, great, all right, So I think what you're referring
to a security code on your phone. So iPhone is
very easy to you're trying to transfer all your data
from the old phone to the new one.

Speaker 12 (01:10:33):
Well that's twenty pros. So that wasn't completed and I'm
out two phones.

Speaker 1 (01:10:39):
Okay, do you have both phones in your possession?

Speaker 8 (01:10:42):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (01:10:43):
Okay, great, So what you want to do. The security
code that is I believe is being referred to is
your pin code, so you know how you code, Yes,
the code that you use to unlock your old phone.
When you go through the setup process on the iPhone
to transfer your data for security reasons, it asks you
what the pin code is on your old phone, and

(01:11:04):
so you type that in and that enables the phone
to decode your encrypted information off the old device. And
so that's what I believe is happening here. That is
the code. So whatever you type in and don't say
it on air, but whatever you type in on your
old phone, that's what you do. That's the code that
you put in on the new phone. So typically throughout
the little process of transferring all the data, it will say,

(01:11:28):
please enter the security code or the pin code from
your previous device, and so that's the code that you
type in, and that will help the new phone gather
the old data. So that's what I believe you could do. So,
Mary Jean, thanks so much for calling today. I hope
that that helps you figure it out. Let's go to
John in more Park, California. John, you're on with Rich.

Speaker 13 (01:11:50):
I have a question.

Speaker 10 (01:11:52):
I have a friend of mine.

Speaker 13 (01:11:53):
He only has one thing.

Speaker 5 (01:11:55):
He has an iPhone.

Speaker 6 (01:11:56):
But I was going to ask your advice on passboard managers.

Speaker 1 (01:12:00):
Good question, password manager. I was just talking about this
yesterday with a friend. So if he just has an iPhone,
I think the easiest, simplest password manager is built right
into the iPhone. It's called iCloud keychain, and if he's
using the iPhone, iCloud keychain will generate strong passwords. If
you're using an iPhone, you've probably seen this pop up

(01:12:21):
on your phone where it says it literally puts like
an email or a password in the box, like it's
like this long character and you just have to tap
to accept it. But iCloud keychain. If he's already using iPhone,
I think is going to be the simplest way to
do it. Now, when you're using more devices than just
the iPhone, I think it gets a little bit more complicated.
Then I would recommend something like bitwarden, b it wr

(01:12:44):
d n Bitwarden. And what bitwarden does is it will
generate a password, but you have to set it all up.
You need to create an account, you need to set
it up and make sure that the iPhone knows that
that's what you want to use to fill on the accounts.
That's a good way to go. If you're a big
Google user, a Google Chrome on the iPhone and Google

(01:13:05):
Chrome on the desktop, I would check out Google password manager,
so they have one built in. You can go to
passwords dot Google dot com. And Google just recently upgraded
this password manager so that works even better on the iPhone.
It used to be kind of not so easy, but
now it actually will fill in passwords across all devices

(01:13:26):
on the iPhone. And by the way, to check out
how you're using the password manager on your iPhone, you
go to settings and let's see, you go to passwords
and it's going to authorize you and then you can
see all the passwords that your iPhone has selected and
kept inside there. I've got a list of a couple
of them. But then if you go into password options,

(01:13:50):
now you can specify how you want to save and
also fill passwords on the iPhone. But that's what you
want to do is set up I personally always appreciate
third party products for everything, but John in your friend's case,
since he's just or they're just using an iPhone, I
think the iCloud keychain is probably gonna be the easiest.

(01:14:12):
But keep in mind it is linked to your iCloud account,
so if you forget your iCloud password, or if you
can't get into your iCloud account, we're gonna have a
lot of problems with all the other passports be able
to get into those either. Rich on Tech dot tv
is the website. If you want to contact the show,
send your email there eighty eight rich one O one
eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero.

(01:14:33):
And we still got lots more of the show, lots
more questions, lots more things to talk about. You're listening
to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Rich Demiro here hanging out with you talking technology. Some
of you have discovered on the website at richontech dot
TV that there is a microphone icon. You click the
icon and you can leave a voicemail for the show.

(01:14:55):
So I figured in this segment we would check the voicemail,
and let's start with David.

Speaker 7 (01:15:00):
Hey.

Speaker 1 (01:15:01):
Yeah, I was trying to find something on the new
five G home Wi Fi.

Speaker 4 (01:15:07):
I'm trying to compare T Mobile, Verizon, and now AT
and T is coming out with one, and I couldn't
find anything on your site.

Speaker 1 (01:15:14):
And I know you do all this kind of stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:15:16):
Take care, keep up the good work.

Speaker 1 (01:15:18):
Great question. These new home internet services are provided through
cellular versus a wired connection through something like your cable
company or your phone company. So T Mobile has theirs,
it's called T Mobile five G Home Internet, Verizon has
Verizon five G Home Internet, and AT and T is
the newest to offer it. They have AT and T
Internet Air, which I think is the coolest name out

(01:15:40):
of all of them. So again, if you have a
strong cellular signal to your home, this might be a
good alternative to a wired internet connection that you might
get from, like I said, your cable company or your
traditional phone company.

Speaker 10 (01:15:53):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:15:53):
In some cases your phone company maybe Verizon, it may
be AT, and T it may be T Mobile. So
the main thing you need to do is check to
see if these are available where you live. Have a
friend come over with that signal on their smartphone. Use
an app like Medior or speed test to test the
signal up and down, see if it's strong, and then
you can order this home internet. Maybe keep your old

(01:16:15):
internet just in case there's a problem. Most of these
systems are self installed. They send you a box, you
plug it in near your window. It pulls in that
cellular connection and then it spits it out as Wi
Fi and then your devices would connect to that. So
I think the connection through your wired internet is going
to be faster, but I think the price is going

(01:16:35):
to be better for this home internet situation. So you're
going to get unlimited data from most of these companies.
T Mobile right now is charging anywhere from thirty to
fifty dollars, Verizon sixty to eighty dollars, AT and T
fifty five dollars. Those prices do not include discounts for customers. Also,
keep in mind if you're eligible for the Affordable Connectivity Program,

(01:16:56):
these home internet services are eligible. That's a thirty dollars
a month discount if you have something like Snap or
you're on Medicaid. But like anything else, I predict the
prices of these services will go up as more people
get them. Right now, this is a very new thing.
They've only been around for a couple of years now.
I did have the chance to test out Verizons five

(01:17:16):
G Home Internet and it was great. I tested out
in various locations. The main thing is that if you
have a good signal, you're gonna have a good Internet connection. Now,
if you're doing a lot on your Internet at home,
like if you're constantly exchanging large files, like if you're
a video editor or something like that, I probably wouldn't
recommend this. But if you're just doing typical day to

(01:17:37):
day stuff like streaming Netflix and you know, doing your email,
the stuff you typically do on your smartphone, if it
works well on your smartphone, it's probably gonna work well
on the five G home Internet.

Speaker 14 (01:17:47):
Next up, let's go to k I'm trying to figure
out about Google Assistant interpret or mode. I've seen some
demonstrations where you speak and then you can hand the
phone to the other person and they will speak and
you will hear both sides, but in my Google Assistant interpreter,
I only get my side translated.

Speaker 3 (01:18:08):
Do you have anything like this you can help me with.

Speaker 1 (01:18:11):
What you're referring to is interpreter mode, and this is
basically real time translation on your phone. This is the
stuff that we saw in sci fi movies, but it
is available if you have Google Assistant on Android or iOS.
And this allows people to have back and forth conversations
with each person speaking their own respective language, and Google
will kind of be the in between and translate whatever

(01:18:34):
you're saying. So, if you want to activate interpreter mode,
there's a couple of ways you can do this. You
can say, hey G, be my German translator, or hey G,
help me speak Spanish. Replace the G with Google of course,
and then that translated conversation will be displayed on the
phone screen and also the device will speak it. Google
supports forty four languages for this. Now, if you want

(01:18:55):
to do another version of this, if you download the
Google Translate app. Typically, when you use the app, you
can just hit the big microphone icon and you can
say something in your language and it will translate it
into another language. But there's another icon in the lower
left hand corner that says conversation And now if you
put that on, it will listen to what you're saying

(01:19:16):
and put your side of the conversation in your language,
and then in real time translate that to the other side.
And if you tap auto, this will make it so
it's listening for both languages. So when you speak in
your language, it will translate it to the other language,
and when they speak in their language, it will translate
it to your language. By the way, Apple has a

(01:19:38):
translate app as well, so if you don't want to
download a new app on the iPhone, you can just
search for the translate app and it has similar features.
All right, Next up, let's go to Jim.

Speaker 15 (01:19:49):
Hey Rich, this is Jim from Prescott Valley. For years
I've uploaded pictures to Costco to make Christmas cards, and
this year they just continue that service. I was wondering
if you you had any suggestions on another place to
upload and create cards. Thanks and great job with the
podcast and the radio show.

Speaker 1 (01:20:07):
Ah. Yes, it is that time of year again when
we need to order our holiday cards. So I think
this is largely a question of how much you want
to spend, the convenience and how much time you want
to put into them. But I'll tell you the company
that I've used for the past couple of years simply
to impress dot Com. I believe they were a wirecutter

(01:20:28):
pick at some point and we started trying them and
we just kind of liked them. The other one that
we use before that was Minted, which I really like.
And I always look at the back of the cards
when we get them over the holidays to see where
people order their cards, and Minted is very popular. Shutterfly
obviously very popular. The other place people get them is

(01:20:49):
through the local drugstore, so a Walgreens, a CVS, a Target.
I think it comes down to how much you want
to spend, how fast you want to get them. But
I will give you my tips. Number One, I always
order these on Cyber Monday because I do believe that
they have the best price of the year on Cyber Monday,
no matter where you get them, So get those pictures

(01:21:09):
ready because you only have a day or two to
get those ready for Cyber Monday. Also, I never pay
for the faster shipping at the end of your order.
When you're all said and done, they're like, Oh, and
by the way, do you want to wait like six
weeks to get these or do you want them in
two days? Of course, the temptation is to upgrade and
pay a little bit more for that peace of mind
that you're going to get them in time to send
them out for the holidays. But I've never done that,

(01:21:31):
and they always arrive faster than I think. Of course,
because I'm telling you this, this is the year that
that won't happen. But it's always worked out for me.
I guess the only thing you have to figure out
is if you want to include a little personal note
with every picture. Next up in the voicemails, Josie, what is.

Speaker 3 (01:21:48):
A good free computer cleaner?

Speaker 1 (01:21:53):
You have to be careful when you're cleaning up your computer,
but yes, you want your computer to run nice and fast,
and sometimes these things do get bogged down. My number
one piece of advice is to do some maintenance. So
go into your settings, add and remove programs and get
rid of any programs that you no longer use or recognize.
Uninstall those, then restart your computer. See if that helps.

(01:22:15):
Do the same thing on your web browser. Get rid
of any extensions you don't use now when it comes
to programs that are free, A lot of people like
a program named bleach bit b l e ah bit
and that will clean your system and free up disc space.
Another very popular program is C Cleaner C Cleaner and
that will speed up your PC. It won't do everything

(01:22:38):
for free, it will basically just help speed up your computer.
You can pay for more features after that. And if
you're on the Mac side of things, the only thing
that I use is called clean my Mac, and I
don't believe it's completely free, but I do think they
have a free level of certain features that you can use.
Let's get to our last voicemail right now from Melissa

(01:22:58):
Hi Rich.

Speaker 16 (01:23:00):
I just want to say you're so helpful and informative
and even for a Gen X or splash millennial who
thinks she knows some tech stuff. I you know, campare
myself free tech savvy, but you have a lot. And
also that segment on the ring and trying to get
my parents to get a ring, what's very helpful.

Speaker 14 (01:23:23):
So you rock.

Speaker 1 (01:23:24):
Thank you well, Thank you Melissa for listening, thank you
for learning, and I do appreciate the kind words. We'll
have more of your calls and questions coming up right
after this. Rich on Tech is where you can find
me on social media. My name is rich Dmiro and
you are doing something smart. You are listening to rich
on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. This is

(01:23:46):
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 sometimes threads, mostly on Instagram Stories.
That's really where I put a lot on my effort.
But I realized it's funny. I've realized with Instagram Stories,

(01:24:09):
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 you're a follower, you can't
share that out to other people. And so I've started
to actually share stuff 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

(01:24:29):
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 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.

(01:24:52):
You can also listen to this show as a podcast.
Be sure to subscribe. Just go to rich on tech
dot tv click the podcast icon so 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. Let's go to Linda.
Linda is in Anaheim. Linda, you're on with Rich.

Speaker 8 (01:25:12):
Hi.

Speaker 1 (01:25:13):
Rich.

Speaker 8 (01:25:14):
I have the problems with facetimed group call that.

Speaker 13 (01:25:19):
It's happened to me twice to my family, and.

Speaker 8 (01:25:23):
I'm sorry, I'm old. I don't even know how to
do a.

Speaker 13 (01:25:25):
FaceTime group call, and of course they don't think.

Speaker 1 (01:25:29):
That I did it.

Speaker 8 (01:25:30):
I was three feet away from my phone and I
received a phone call, I thought, and it was almost
all of my family, and they said I made the
phone call. Oh wow, And of course they thought that
it was an emergency. Oh no, one time once now
what happened again? The other time I was on the
phone speaking to someone and all.

Speaker 13 (01:25:53):
Of a sudden, I go, oh, let me call you back.

Speaker 8 (01:25:55):
I have a call from my grandson, and again it
was a whole group of them and a couple of friends.

Speaker 1 (01:26:01):
Okay, well I think, 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 (01:26:10):
It happened one time when I was not on the phone,
and it happened one time when I was on the phone.

Speaker 1 (01:26:16):
Okay. So there is a 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 the 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

(01:26:37):
through the messages app.

Speaker 10 (01:26:39):
And so no, I don't want to do that, No,
I know, but.

Speaker 1 (01:26:42):
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 could be pressed by your ear when your

(01:27:04):
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 info area where it says you can call them,

(01:27:27):
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

(01:27:48):
it will lock quicker. You can 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 eighty eight rich one on one eight
eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.

(01:28:09):
Blue Green sent me a DM on Instagram at rich
On Tech and it was a scammer impersonating Sandra Bullock.
And he said, Uh, why is this person trying so
hard to meet me? What happens if I chat with them?
Curious if they tried chatting with you? And what happens
if you talk to them? And good question number one.
I don't think you should engage with these people, these

(01:28:31):
scam artists that you know they're impersonating someone else on Instagram, Facebook, whatever.
But the bottom line is they are going to try
to scam you. So I did this the other day
a guy I know, he was you know, they set
up a bogus account that looked just like his, grabbed
his pictures and then he started chatting with me, and
so of course I'm just curious. So I chatted with him.

(01:28:52):
I said, Hey, how you doing, what's going on? I
missed you at the last Apple event, you know, bl blah,
blah blah, knowing he wasn't even there, and the person's like,
oh yeah, house work. And you know, we talked a
little little niceties back and forth, and I kept trying
to drop little things that I know only this person
would know, the real person, that this scam artist wouldn't,
but he kept ignoring those parts of the questioning anyway, Finally,

(01:29:14):
what did he get to? Hey, I've been really getting
into crypto, and you know, I think that it would
be great for you to do this. And what do
they want you to do? They want you to download
some app, they want you to transfer some money. They
want to scam you. Be careful, be aware. And it
looks like someone you know, they're not asking for help,
They're not, you know, just be aware. Let's go to Vanessa.

(01:29:39):
Vanessa in Great Falls. You're on with rich I should
say Great Falls Montana.

Speaker 11 (01:29:43):
I years and.

Speaker 17 (01:29:45):
Years ago, my first computer ever bought was a Gateway.

Speaker 1 (01:29:48):
Oh nice, I love gateways the cows and yeah, that
started my oldest son on his pet career.

Speaker 17 (01:29:57):
And now I see that they've someone is making gateways again.
And I recently bought two in one tablets laptops for
my grandchildren that are three and five, but they can
get started. Sure, what is the best way to set
that up? So they only have access to the educational

(01:30:17):
programs that we're putting on there for them.

Speaker 1 (01:30:20):
So this is a this is a Microsoft tablet or
is it a computer? Microsoft?

Speaker 13 (01:30:26):
It's it's a two in one. You can fold the
keyboard all the way back. It's almost like the surface
go and you can hold the keyboard back and use
it as a tablet or use the keyboard as a computer.

Speaker 1 (01:30:40):
Okay, so I've got this 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 grandparent to just

(01:31:03):
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 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 also go further

(01:31:23):
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. But that's really what

(01:31:45):
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
and 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 easily do it because it has

(01:32:07):
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, nevermind, 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

(01:32:27):
have these things locked down. 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. You are doing something smart today. You're
listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.

(01:32:48):
Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology and
joining me now is Jacob Palmer of best Reviews dot com. Jacob,
thanks so much for joining me.

Speaker 6 (01:32:58):
Thanks so much for having me.

Speaker 1 (01:32:59):
All Right, so explain what Best Reviews is all about
before we start talking about some of these items you
identified as being great for holiday gifts.

Speaker 6 (01:33:07):
Yeah. So, we spend all year trying to connect people
with the best products that are out there on the market,
and we do that to figure out what is the best.
We do that by testing side by side in real
world environments, so we can tell people, you know, this
is the best if that money can buy, this is
the best if you're trying to save some money and
you want to find the right value, and so we're
always trying to connect people with the best products at

(01:33:29):
the best prices. So this time of year is a
huge time for us because all that testing we did
around the clock all year long is now really coming
to a head because this is when people want to
get those absolute best products.

Speaker 1 (01:33:39):
Full disclosure, Best reviews dot Com is owned by the
same company that I work for on TV called Nextstar.
With that said, let's get to some of these recommendations.
Let's start with Dyson products. These are a premium product.
Why do you recommend these this holiday season?

Speaker 6 (01:33:54):
So the thing with Dyson is is that it's that
high end brand name that people love and really want
the hair shit, and this year we're expecting to see
huge discounts on them. So if you're looking for either
one of their top of the line vacuums or also
they have great air purifiers. They also have a line
of hair care products, whether it's blow dryers and things
like that, they're all gonna be marked down and I

(01:34:16):
think there's gonna be on a lot of people's lists.
So this is definitely a time to look out for.

Speaker 1 (01:34:20):
That now, these have been around for a while, thorough gun.
They sort of invented this genre of a massage gun.
I guess you'd call it. What do you like about these?

Speaker 6 (01:34:28):
Yeah, personal percussion massage guns essentially is what it is.
And what we love about it is that it's just
a great gift because it's something that people don't think
to buy for themselves. So we're always getting feedback. We're
always trying to hear from different users, different testers, and
what they gave in terms of gifts, and then what
was the feedback and what was the reaction to it,

(01:34:50):
And this always comes in as one of the absolute
most popular gifts. It's a little bit more expensive, but
for the last several years we've seen them do significant discounts.
You know, I'm talking about a great or more dollars
off on the full price. And so this is a
great time of year to be able to get this
and make somebody truly happy for when they're opening up
their presence.

Speaker 1 (01:35:08):
This is a fun gift and something I got my kids,
I believe last year. Fujifilm in stacks Mini twelve. It's
kind of like a Polaroid, but for today's.

Speaker 6 (01:35:16):
Generation and what we've seen from today's generation is they're
bringing back a lot of the cooler things of the
nineties and this is, you know, recapturing that magic from
when people would originally buy a polaroid and then the
camera itself would spit out the image almost instantly. This
allows the kids to be able to control their own space,
create their own art hanging up in their walls. And

(01:35:37):
it's not that expensive. It's a better piece of technology
than what we were messing with in the nineties. But
it's also, you know, really really popular right now because
for some reason, what's old is new again. So this
is a great one to consider for that nephew, you know,
the grand kids in your life.

Speaker 1 (01:35:52):
One thing that hasn't changed though the film is still
an expensive part.

Speaker 6 (01:35:55):
Of this, Yeah it is, and it's definitely something to
consider when you're buying it.

Speaker 1 (01:35:59):
Go Pro so Hero.

Speaker 6 (01:36:00):
Eleven this is the latest go Pro. What do you
like about this device? This is a great product for
that person in your life who's doing cool things. The
mountain climber, the person who loves to go surfing, loves
to hit the slopes and go skiing or snowboarding, and
so this most recent one is great because they've added
stabilization features to it. It shoots in really clear picture.

(01:36:21):
It's also incredibly durable. You know, we were testing it,
taking it down the mountain, we were testing it going
surfing and doing all these things. But then you see
the footage and you're like, I instantly get why people
want these and why we always say that these are
really cool for people doing cool things.

Speaker 1 (01:36:36):
Now, this is not necessarily technology, but it was made
popular through social media and TikTok. The Jumra cloud slippers.
Why do you like these so much? So?

Speaker 6 (01:36:46):
These are great, but they're just the most comfortable house
slipper you'll ever have. And it's you know, they're rubber
and they don't look like much, but when you put
your foot in it and you walk around the house,
it really does feel like you're walking on a cloud,
which is why they're called that. And you know, for
only at full price there about forty dollars. I expect
over the holiday shopping peak when things are really marked down,

(01:37:07):
they'll probably be available for fifteen or twenty bucks. And
it's another one of these things when we get our
user feedback, we've never had somebody say bad things about them.
And they only say, I've replaced all of my other
house slippers and these are the ones I'm walking around on.

Speaker 1 (01:37:19):
The Kindle is always a popular gift during the holiday
season for people that like to read. The Kindlescribe, I
think is the newest model. It's got the biggest screen.
You can write on it. What do you like about this?

Speaker 6 (01:37:30):
So this is perfect for the college students, the person
who's actively learning because it allows you for the first
time to annotate and really do it easily. You know,
it's not clicking in and then typing, and it's not complicated.
You're literally just writing on the screen. And so it's
great for that person who's learning and reading a lot
and needs to be able to write in the margins.
So we love the Kindle for this person's well because

(01:37:52):
also helps them kind of consolidate and not to have
to have too many books going at once.

Speaker 1 (01:37:56):
And I will add when the Kindlescribe first came out,
the reviews or mixed, but it was mostly because of
the software. And Amazon has continually evolved the software on
this device to make it better. For the golf lover
in your life. You've got a couple of Garmin products
to recommend tell me about the R ten and the rangefinder.

Speaker 6 (01:38:14):
Yeah, so these are products for that person who's really
growing their love of the game and embracing it in
big ways. The R ten is for somebody who wants
to fill out there at home practice setup that maybe
they've already got a net, they want to get some
data on what their shots are doing. It's an awesome
beginner's model.

Speaker 8 (01:38:31):
You know.

Speaker 6 (01:38:31):
It's way more affordable than what you're going to see
in all the competitors, so a lot of people don't
want to spend thousands and thousands of dollars. This is
a way to get that kind of technology for five
hundred tested out, see if you like it. And then
they also have a really interesting product which is their
rangefinder that you mentioned. That is interesting because it uses
augmented reality. So when you're looking through the rangefinder, you're

(01:38:51):
not just seeing what's in front of you, but you
can also see the map of the whole and you
can see, you know, the bunker. It automatically is telling
you you're this close to that bunker and that water trap.
So it adds a lot of different features that I
think is pretty innovative in terms of what we're seeing
from golf products, especially in the rangefinder space.

Speaker 1 (01:39:07):
Now, you brought a fun little toy called the Bitsy
and I had not seen this, but I'm always on
the lookout for kind of a fun, unique techie toy,
and this fits all the bills.

Speaker 6 (01:39:16):
Yeah, it's really interesting and it's what we're expecting to
be the it holiday toy this year, so the one
that everybody's going to be talking about, whether you understand
it or not. And it's just a fun little device
that has a kind of mini little projector on it
and it puts interesting photos in front of you, interesting
little kind of illustrations for the kid to love and all.
You know, again, we use testers in real life environments,

(01:39:38):
so we were giving this to a four year old
and he just spent hours just playing with it, even
if it is super simple. And the thing that parents
love about it is is that it's not a screen,
so you're not dealing with some of the same effects
of you know, uh, putting an iPad, you know, giving
him an iPad, giving them a different kind of tablet.
So it's it's popular for both the kids and the parents,
is what we found so far. What's the price point

(01:39:58):
on the bits b it he Ze. It's fairly affordable,
you know, it's not going to be overly expensive. So
it's one of these things that during the holiday period
we're expecting to see it for less than fifty dollars.

Speaker 1 (01:40:08):
Nestub Max from Google is a product that's been around
for a while, but it does so many different things.
What I love about it is that it displays my
personal photo collection.

Speaker 6 (01:40:17):
What do you like about it? So it does that right,
and that's always a really popular gift is the smart
photo frind. But it also it has a solid speaker
on it. It also you can use it for a
normal just kind of at home voice assistance, so you
keep it in the kitchen and you're able to use
it as timers. You're able to have it show you,
you know, how do I dice an onion? And then
it'll show you in real time. And then it also

(01:40:39):
has a camera on it so it can host video chatting,
which is great for folks that want to be able
to set something up in the home of maybe a
less tech savvy person in their life and still be
able to share those moments, still be able to connect.
So we love it for all those reasons, But the
number one reason why we love it and why it's
in all of our holiday gift guides is it can
be easily paired and command a smart thermostat, so you

(01:40:59):
can save money on your heating bill, which you know,
as those prices continue to rise, it's a great way
to kind of control what you can control and limit
a cost where you can.

Speaker 1 (01:41:07):
So we love it for that as well, and always
a favor. I probably get more questions about this product
than anything else at this point. The Apple Watch.

Speaker 6 (01:41:15):
What we're seeing is that they're just truly, truly popular.
What we found in our testing. We have been testing
the brand new model, the nine, and we like it,
but we do think right now for this holiday season
we're recommending looking at the slightly you know, earlier version.
We love the Ultra, and then we also really like
the eight because it's just smooth, it's effective, and like

(01:41:37):
you said, it's going to be more discounted this holiday period.
So if you're looking to save money and when you're
in the market for Apple products, that's not a bad idea.
You know, we are thinking right now in terms of
our testing that we're gonna recommend going for a slightly
older version because you're still going to get a great product.

Speaker 1 (01:41:52):
Jacob Palmer of best Reviews dot com. You can find
all of their reviews and deals at the website best
Reviews dot com. Thanks so much for joining me and thanks.

Speaker 7 (01:42:01):
For having me.

Speaker 6 (01:42:01):
You know, this year's cyber Monday is going to be
a last call for saving. After that, a lot of
the companies are going to be taking the prices high again.
So you know, I understand if you wait. I wait
things out all the time, but you can't expect to
pay high or if you don't shop by cyber linking.

Speaker 1 (01:42:16):
All right, there you have it, Get those deals while
they're hot. More rich on Tech coming your way right
after this. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro
here hanging out with you, talking technology, and if you
can believe it, now it is time for the feedback segment.
These are the emails, the comments, and the questions I
have gotten from you, and if you'd like to submit yours,

(01:42:39):
just go to rich on Tech dot tv and hit
the contact link. Yes, you take advantage of this. Thank
you for all of your emails throughout the week. While
you're on the website, you can follow me on social media.
I am at rich on Tech on Instagram, Facebook, threads,
and pretty much any social media platform. And if you
like what you hear on the radio show, be sure

(01:43:01):
to watch my TV segments. I cover a variety of
tech topics. Just go to rich on tech dot tv
to watch those. You can also find them on YouTube. Okay,
without further ado, let's get to some of the feedback.
Michael says, I ordered the new iPhone fifteen promacs and
would like to control the camera zoom now five times
optical and focus from an external controller. I plan on

(01:43:23):
using the phone in a small rig case and would
like precise control over the camera functions. Love the show well,
I told Michael I was not aware of a controller
for the iPhone that would do this, but apparently he
found one because he updated me with a new email
and said, hey, I found a solution for the wireless
lens control for an iPhone camera. It is called the

(01:43:45):
Nucleus Wireless Lens Control and he sent along a link
from BH Photo and Video. It's expensive one hundred and
sixty nine dollars, but it looks like it is a
handwheel controller that will control the iPhone, and he says
the black Magic Camera app will work as well with

(01:44:06):
the controller, So there you go. That is definitely a
pro setup. I think most people are just gonna pinch
to zoom on their screen, but that is a great
way to go. I'm glad you found that, Michael, and
we can share. Let's see. Leanne via Instagram says, I
really enjoy your show on KFI. Your format and demeanor
while explaining tech is refreshing. Well, thank you, LeAnn. KFI

(01:44:28):
in Los Angeles, of course, one of our popular stations,
and of course where I'm based. Let's see. Dave via
Instagram says, upon your review recommendation, I just purchased Super
Mario Wonder for my nephew and my daughter. They're playing it.
They're having a blast, So there you go. All right, Yes,
that is a great game, and it's even been on

(01:44:49):
sale throughout some of these Cyber Monday Black Friday specials,
so see if you can get it at a discount.
Greg says, listen to your podcast and heard you talk
about the Mint application shutting down at the end of
the year. You give a list of alternatives, but I
want to give you one more for Windows ten Slash eleven.
It's called Greg's Budget. It's available on the Microsoft Store

(01:45:09):
for thirty dollars with no subscription fees. I've been using
it for years to stay on budget and plan for
the future. Full disclosure, I did write this application, so
I'm a little biased, but it is a great app.
All right. Well, there you go Greg's Budget on the
Microsoft Store. Yes, a lot of people looking for alternatives
to Mint, and what I've seen is that almost all

(01:45:29):
of them are paid this time around. So it's kind
of odd to pay anywhere from thirty to one hundred
dollars a year for budgeting. But that is I guess,
the new reality here. Let's see here via Instagram. Hey, rich,
my brother is reporting I'm getting a lot of scam
attempts on Venmo. Don't fall for it. Someone will send

(01:45:50):
you one hundred dollars and claim it's an accident and
they will ask for you to send the money back.
Do not fall for it. There are YouTube videos on it.
It's usually from a stolen account. It's money that will
end up being retrieved once the victim reports it, which
leaves you without the money that you quote unquote sent back.
Just an FYI, thanks love your work. Yes, so many

(01:46:11):
of these scams on all these payment systems, whether it's Zell,
whether it's Venmo, whether it's PayPal. If someone's offering to
send you money and then says it's a mistake, or
they send you money and they say can you send
back and they send you more than they should and
you got to send back the difference. No matter what,
it's all a scam. Do not fall for it. It's
too good to be true. You're trying to get free money.

(01:46:33):
Some people are greedy, They're going to fall for it.
Do not fall for it. Jason says, thanks for the
article about the Zumo. You can't get cloud storage through
Spectrum unless you have a cable box. The joys of
cable companies. One step forward, nine steps back. Maybe someday
they will figure it out. Enjoy your radio show on KFI. So, Jason,
I had to check with Spectrum because I didn't think

(01:46:56):
that was the case. Why would they make you have
a cable box when the whole point of this zo
is to replace your cable box. So I did confirm
you can get cloud storage through the zoomo box. So
I'm not sure where you're getting your information, but check
it out again because Apparently you can get cloud storage,
cloud DVR through Spectrum through the Zoomo box, and that

(01:47:19):
is x Umo, So check it out again. It's uh
if you didn't catch the coverage on the Zoomo box.
It's kind of a mix of a streaming box like
an Apple TV, but a cable box as well. Of course,
there is no cable box and everything is delivered through
the internet. So if you're sticking with cable and you
have Spectrum or Exfinity through Comcast, this is sort of

(01:47:41):
a joint venture. It's their way of kind of putting
out a box that's like a fire TV or a
Roku or an Apple TV, but it is the cable
company's brand and it's called Zumo x Umo. Neil says, hey, Rich,
interesting story that you told someone following for sending money
I need is someone they don't know in order to

(01:48:01):
clear up an account problem. How many stupidities are on
that call? Let someone control your computer. The other common
thing is I will send you extra money and we
need to send some of it back, and you will
have to send some of it back. Of course you
will lose on that when the initial transaction is canceled.
We know that support numbers on Google are often fake
numbers and ads. Basically, this person is falling for everything

(01:48:23):
you tell us about online selling cash when the person
arrives to pick up the goods, Facebook marketplace is a jungle. Neil, Yes, Neil,
these are all the things I talk about. Not everyone
is aware of everything, And yes, there are always going
to be people that fall for this stuff. So that
is just the way it is, Charles. That's why you

(01:48:43):
listen to this show, so you understand this stuff and
you don't fall for it. Oh more comments about the
Zumo box, Hey Rich, the Zumo streaming box is not
ready for prime time. I picked up two to replace
my set top boxes. Things went smoothly but took some time.
I have Max and Showtime any Time as part of
my Spectrum package. Activating Max was frustratingly slow. The Showtime

(01:49:05):
Anytime app was nowhere to be found, so I called
Zumo Tech Help as Spectrum. She was pleasant, but knew
very little about the box. After being put on hold
several times, it turns out some Zumo boxes have Showtime Anytime,
some don't. That's odd, but they don't know which ones
have it and which ones don't. Also, you can't add
apps to the Zoomo box like you can other streaming boxes.

(01:49:27):
Spectrum solution was to keep exchanging Zoomo boxes until I
had one that had the Showtime Anytime on it. Spectrum's
excuse was that these Zumo boxes are new and they're
still learning. Seriously. Needless to say, I returned them via
the UPS store, and then I was off to Walmart
for a couple of Roku Expresses for twenty four dollars each.
They may not have all the bells and whistles that
the Zumo box has, but set up was easier and faster,

(01:49:50):
adding apps as possible, and navigating it was at least
as quick as it was on Zumo. The box has potential,
but it should not have been sold until its obvious
short cummings are fixed and until spectrums Zoomo tech help
people are familiar with it. Well, it's odd that they
would not have showtime Anytime. I know that showtime has
been mixed into Paramount Plus, so maybe you'd find it there.

(01:50:12):
But I agree, I think that these boxes are good. Again,
if you want to keep cable and you like that
idea of cable, maybe we have time for one more.
Walt says, interesting comments about the Rivian. They do look cool.
The price involved is truly the highest negative. That seems
to be skip slash missed. Who in the population is
truly spending fifty thousand dollars plus on a vehicle, let

(01:50:34):
alone one hundred k? Or is this truly a leasing situation? Walt? Finally,
one more, Sarafim says, looking for several solutions. I take
videos and pictures with a Samsung S twenty three Ultra.
I need a better input tool, but need software to
slow down the UAPs and morphing beings, apply motion tracking
and zoom in and out. Sarahfim, I have no idea

(01:50:57):
what you're talking about. I had to look this up.
Unidentified anomalists phenomena morphing beings that can change their form
or identity. It will Some examples include shape shifters. Oooh,
this is way above my pay grade. I don't know
what you're talking about, but yes, sometimes when you aim
a camera on a smartphone at a bright light, you

(01:51:18):
do sometimes see a floating orb in the picture. That
is something that is common based on the small lenses.
Maybe you're seeing more than the rest of us. In
that case, be careful out there, all right, that's gonna
do it. For this episode of the show. You can
find links to everything I mentioned on my website. Just
go to Rich on tech dot tv for the show notes.

(01:51:40):
Happy shopping, and research those deals before you jump on them.
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 Dmiro. I will
talk to you very soon.

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