Holiday Gift Picks, Google Under Fire & Apps to Simplify Your Life

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Instagram just got a reset button. Find out how the
new tool can refresh your feed and make your scrolling
feel brand new again. Want to snag the best holiday deals.
We've got the top insider tips to save big and
avoid Black Friday headaches this year. And there's a new
kind of transportation on the horizon that's about to change

(00:20):
how we travel, fast, silent and eco friendly. I'll tell
you where it's happening and when, plus your tech questions answered.
What's going on. I'm Richdmiro and this is rich on Tech.
This is the show where I talk about the tech
stuff I think you should know about. It's also the
place where I answer your questions about technology. I believe

(00:40):
the tech should be interesting, useful, and fun. Let's open
up those phone lines at triple eight Rich one oh one.
That's eight eight eight seven four to two, four to
one zero one. Give me a call if you have
a question about technology. Email is also open. Just go
to rich on Tech dot tv and hit contact guests.

(01:01):
This week, we've got Jacob Palmer from Best Reviews dot com.
He's gonna share some top holiday gift recommendations. Then in
the second hour, we've got Wirecutter to join us. Nathan
Burrow will be here to share strategies for finding the
best Black Friday deals and have some of their holiday
gift recommendations.

Speaker 2 (01:20):
And later in the show bake.

Speaker 1 (01:22):
Bot Ai creator but Bet Papi, we'll explain how artificial
intelligence is transforming the way that we bake and cook.
She's got a very cool tool called bake bot Ai
that we used it the other day. It was really fun.
It's basically a chat GBT voice but to help you
cook and it can modify recipes. She'll explain, very very cool. Well,

(01:47):
it is the kickoff to the holiday shopping season. Amazon
has started their sales, which means all of the other
retailers have followed in line. That means Walmart, Best Buy, Target,
just about every other store has to keep pace with
Amazon because their prices are so competitive. So when Amazon
kicks off their sales, the other stores do the same thing.

(02:09):
And the reverse is true. Whenever another store has a sale,
what does Amazon do? They pretty much match the price,
and I guarantee this is very frustrating for retailers who
negotiate exclusives and deals and then Amazon has a way
of matching exactly what they do now with all this
in mind, I've tested a lot of gadgets over the

(02:29):
past year, and I am presenting to you some of
my favorites. I think that these are all great gadgets
for the holidays. If you're looking for a gift for someone,
and don't just take my word for it. There are
lots of other places you can look for recommendations. I
figured I would just give you mine. Two other places
that I like to look. Amazon has this Top one

(02:49):
hundred Gift idea category and you can go through there,
scroll through and see what they like. And then Google.
This year, Google has something called the Holiday one hundred.
These are trending gifts. So these are based on all
the searches they saw. They looked at what people were
searching for, and they came up with a whole bunch
of gift ideas based on that. One of them is

(03:10):
the Lego Tuxedo Cat. That's pretty awesome. They've got a
Oh wow, see I just got an idea for my
kid Uno Elite NFL card game. How cool is that.
Let's see a pickleball paddle set. Yeah. So that's a
whole bunch of stuff that Google has put up. I'll
put the links on the website. Just go to rich

(03:32):
on Tech dot tv and hit the light bulb icon
up at the top. In real time you can find
links to anything I mentioned. All right, So, without further ado,
and this is also on my website. This is the
rich on Tech Ultimate Holiday Gift Guide. Let's start with
some essentials. I love this thing. It is on my desk,
the Amazon Echo Spot. This is a compact smart speaker

(03:53):
with a screen which shows you kind of the weather,
anything that's responding to with a question, a little bit
more information there, the music it's currently playing. It's just
really handy to have a screen on your echo speaker.
And this is forty five dollars on sale, perfect for
your desk or your bedside table. It is so great.
I love that thing. I use it every day in

(04:13):
my office.

Speaker 3 (04:15):
Now.

Speaker 1 (04:15):
When it comes to power banks, I am loving the
Anchor mag Go power bank. So what I love about
this and you can see that I love having information
at my fingertips.

Speaker 2 (04:25):
This also has a screen on it.

Speaker 1 (04:27):
So I'm not sure if you've used many power banks,
but most of the time they either have no information
at all about their battery level or it's it's very obscure.
It's like, you know, maybe four dots that light up
or two dots that light up, and letting you know
if it's twenty five percent seventy five percent. This has
a screen that not only tells you the exact battery level,
but also shows you what wattage it's using to charge

(04:49):
something else, So when you plug something in, you can
see if it's charging fast or slow, which I love.
It also has an Apple Watch charger built in, so
this not only has a cable USB you can plug
stuff in, but it has an Apple Watch charger, so
when you travel, that is one less cable you have
to bring. This is fifty five bucks on sale if
you're looking for a thin and lightweight Windows laptop with

(05:11):
great performance. I love the Asus zen Book. This is
five hundred dollars and it's slick. It's kind of like
the MacBook Air of the Windows world. Now, this next
thing is just the most tried and true gift I
can think of the Aura digital picture frame. If you
are stumped on what to get someone for the holidays,
this is incredible. I gave this to my dad a

(05:33):
couple of weeks ago when I was back home in
New Jersey. I have never seen someone like a gift
so much so quickly. He was adding pictures to this
thing in seconds. So this is a Wi Fi enabled frame.
You can upload unlimited photos to it. It's perfect for
your parents or grandparents because you can add not only
can they add photos to it, but you can too,

(05:55):
right from your phone. If you're on the Samsung side
of things and you want the gale Watch Ultra, it
is a fantastic deal right now, four hundred and ninety dollars.
It's typically six hundred and fifty. And this is their
most rugged design. It's got long battery life, it's got
cellular built in. Of course you have to pay for
a cellular plan, but that's built in. And it's just

(06:16):
a great watch. I really like. It's a it's a
beautiful watch if you have a Samsung phone. All right,
how about some of the unique and fun gift ideas.
So this is one that it's funny. I tested this
out of my home. It's called the below sixty air freshener,
and it's it looks like you know, you can get
an air freshener anywhere, but this one is promoted by
Hillary Duff or yeah, Hillary.

Speaker 2 (06:38):
Duff and my wife.

Speaker 1 (06:40):
When I stopped testing this thing, She's like, what happened
to that air freshener. I said, oh, you know, I'm
done with it. I tested it, I liked it. We
ran out of the sense. She goes, well, can you
order more? That's when you know a product is good.
So this not only looks cool, this is like a
very nice looking air freshener. It's got fun sent names
like Vanilla buys a timeshare in Paradise, so that's on well,

(07:00):
you can get it. It used to be like one of
those things you had to subscribe to. Now you can
just order it on Amason. This is really fantastic. It's
called the Clicker Phone Grip and Kickstand twenty bucks. Magnetically
attaches to the back of your phone and it just
lets you mount, like you know, prop up your phone
so you can watch movies on it and things like that.
The other one I like that's great for this is

(07:21):
called the Gator Grip. So if you don't have mag
Safe on your phone, get the Gator Grip. This is
basically an oversized clothes pin that you just clip to
the back of your phone and again twenty dollars lets
you have hands free entertainment on planes. I use either
one of these every single time I fly. It is
just the greatest thing to watch stuff on your phone.
I have Actually before I had these, was so desperate

(07:43):
one time I figured out how to fold the in
flight magazine to prop up my phone. I like took
the magazine, I folded it backwards and made like a
loop and then prop my phone up because you can't
watch your phone flat on the surface on the tray
in front of you. Now, this is that's something I
saw at the Verizon holiday event the other night. It's
called a mag Moji. Brilliant idea. It's a cute little

(08:06):
stuffed animal that magnetically attaches to the back of your
phone using mag Safe. These costs anywhere from fifteen to
thirty dollars and they are sort of like a little purse,
so there's like a little pocket that you can on
zip inside. But it's just fun. You got a kid
or a teenager, these are just kind of a fun
little way to you know, express yourself and have a
little stuffed animal on the back of your phone. That's

(08:27):
called the mag Moji. This was a hit at last
year's holiday party. Still going strong. At a much better price.
This Sway Miniochi Karaoke Set. So this is a tiny
karaoke machine. It fits in the palm of your hand.
It's got a microphone wireless microphone, and it's also got
cool led lights on it that light up while you sing.

(08:48):
This thing is just thirty dollars. If you are looking
for some karaoke fun at your next holiday party, check
out the Sway Minioki Karaoke mic set. We had such
a blast with this at our last holiday party. All right,
couple other accessories. I love the cord brick. So now
when you have a cable on your desk and you
unplug your phone, the cables and it, like you know,

(09:10):
sucks like a piece of spaghetti in your mouth, and
it just goes to the back of the desk. So
that is the cord brick. This is like a little
weighted piece of rubber that has a bunch of grooves
in it.

Speaker 2 (09:21):
You put your cords through those grooves.

Speaker 1 (09:23):
And now you can pull your cables out, but they're
not going to slide back behind the desk. This is
twelve bucks. I also spotted it at Low's but that's
a great little device. I have it on all of
my all of my desks. If you want a screen
protector that's super cheap and easy to install, I love
the Spegan screen protectors. They are sixteen dollars for a
two pack. If you have a cracked screen on your

(09:46):
phone right now, crack screen protector.

Speaker 2 (09:49):
Just buy this right now.

Speaker 1 (09:50):
Please. You don't need to have you don't need to
pay fifty dollars to have someone at the mall install
this thing for you. This Spgan is incredible. It does
a great job, and it's so easy to install. All right,
let's see what else here. Let's see before we go
wise products. Remember whyse This is the company that made
its name on a twenty dollars security camera. When that

(10:11):
thing first came out, people were asking me, rich, is
this legitimate? How can you have a security camera that's
twenty dollars? Yes, and it's even cheaper right now during
the holidays. Seventeen dollars for the Why's original security camera.
Let's see what else here. The Mophy three to one
travel charger. Last year, this was one hundred and fifty dollars.
Right now it's seventy five dollars. If you have an

(10:32):
iPhone on an Apple Watch, and AirPods. This is the
best way to charge them all on the go in
your hotel room. You plug one thing in and that's it.
That's all you need to do to charge all three
of those items. All right, I'll link up all of
my holiday gift picks and I'm gonna continue to update
that list.

Speaker 2 (10:48):
It's all on the website.

Speaker 1 (10:50):
Rich on Tech dot TV eight to eight rich one
one eight eight eight seven four to two four one
zero one. My name is rich Dmiro, and you are
listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology at
Triple A rich one oh one eight eight eight seven

(11:12):
four to two four one zero one. I am a
big believer in what's meant to be is meant to be.
I've often thought about that, like, think about this is
your life predetermined from the moment you get here until
the end? Or do you have the ability to affect
what happens in your life? That's a you know, there's

(11:32):
a lot to think about, but I am a big
believer in kind of what happens. Sometimes something happens to
you that you think is devastating or you think is
really not a good thing, and maybe it's a good thing.

Speaker 2 (11:45):
Maybe it all works out for the better.

Speaker 1 (11:47):
That is the reason I have my car. Now that's
the reason you have your car because of your philosophy.
What was my philosophy?

Speaker 4 (11:53):
Which meant to be will be?

Speaker 1 (11:54):
What? Tell me explain? Okay, this is bobo, this is weird.
You know my other car had a Camaro. As you
went out, me and my wife have been talking about children.
We want children, we want children, and I'm like, Okay,
I'll put it off for like two years, you know
what I mean, Like, let me, i can get a
car in two years, but I'm not trying to have
kids that old. All of a sudden. Okay, well, no

(12:15):
car dies, so I have no choice but to buy
a car, and I have to get a family friendly car.
There you go, and now we're in the process. Yeah.
I thought you were going to say you had a
butN in the oven.

Speaker 2 (12:27):
No, I wouldn't tell you like that. Oh I don't know.

Speaker 1 (12:30):
I didn't know where that was going. But it's exciting.
Now you're prepared. See, we are prepared. It all happens
for a reason. You know, who has to prepare for something? Google,
they have been under attack from the United States Justice Department.
Remember a couple months ago, I told you how a
judge did find that Google search ads were a monopoly.

(12:52):
He didn't have a problem with the fact that Google
runs a really good search engine, Like he said, Yeah,
the search engine's really good. But the problem is it's
so good and they've done all these deals and they've
solidified their dominance in the search market that pretty much
they have monopoly in those search ads. You know, those
little ads you see when you Google search something, it's
right at the top, those sponsored links. Well, now the

(13:15):
Justice Department is pushing for Google to sell its Chrome browser,
So this is, you know, they want them to divest
this to another company, which would be really tricky because
when you think Google, you think Chrome. When you think Chrome,
you think Google. And it kind of has a lot
of implications because is Chrome a business on its own?

Speaker 2 (13:37):
Would a company even want to buy that?

Speaker 1 (13:39):
And already, if you go on Chrome, you can, you know,
you can choose any search engine you want through Chrome.
Most people choose the search engine that's the default, which
is Google, because it's so good. You can try another
search engine, you usually come back. Now, I'm not saying
that Google isn't under a lot of pressure right now
from other AI companies, right Chat GBT just added search

(14:02):
on the web through THEIRS, of course you have to
be a paying member for that. You've got Perplexity, which
does really good web searches, and you've got a whole
plethora of other search engines out there that you can
choose from. But Google is still at this point the best.
So what else do they want Google to do? They
also want to prohibit Google from paying companies like Apple

(14:24):
and Samsung to make sure it's search engine is the
default on those devices. So like the iPhone, you buy that,
you fire it up, you do a search, it's going
to bring you to Google, Samsung, same thing. It's going
to be Google is your default search engine. But they
pay billions of dollars to be there, and so the
Justice Department wants that to stop, and some other things.

(14:45):
They also want Android to change. They're not going to
say you got to sell Android, but they're saying you
got to stop mandating your own services on Android devices.
So typically when a manufacturer agrees to get Android for free,
the operating system they have to put Gmail on there,
They have to install a certain amount of Google apps
on that phone. It's like a package deal. It's like Gmail, YouTube,

(15:08):
Chrome Browser, obviously Google Play Store. And so if they
don't do that, they can't use Android for free. And
so the Justice Department is saying, maybe we should stop
that as well. So this is not gonna happen overnight.
I'm not sure it's gonna happen at all, but that
is what the Justice Department is pushing for. They want
Google to kind of change its ways. But I'll be honest,

(15:28):
and this is what always happens kind of with like
the law and tech. Tech is so ahead of the
law now already. I think Google runs a big business.
They are very dominant in their world. But the problem
is they are on the shakiest ground they have ever
been on in any point in their history because of AI.

(15:50):
And yes they have Gemini, Yes they're doing stuff of AI,
but you've got these competitors coming out of nowhere. And
by the way, they don't have the overhead that Google has,
so they can do things a little bit more lean,
they can do things differently. And so I do think
that we're gonna see some talk about this stuff with Google,
but I'm not sure anything's gonna happen. The earliest anything's
can even hear on this is in April of next year,

(16:13):
so we've got a while. Nothing's gonna change right now.
I got a question here from Dave in Colorado. Hey, Rich,
is there software or something where I can save a
website or URL forever, frozen in time so that I
can open it in the future and it remains the same,
or maybe a procedure I can use to save a
page from the Internet for viewing later in its original content.

(16:35):
Thank you, Dave. Yes, Dave, there is. The website is
it's called archive dot Today, Archive dot Today, and so
if you go there, you can pop in a URL
and that will save the URL forever. Now, I guess
as long as this website is around. So that's one

(16:57):
way to do it. The other way is you can
take a well, there's a couple apps. I like rain
Drop raindrop dot io. I don't think it snapshots the URL,
but it does save it's like a bookmarking site. So
that's also a good way to save you URLs. And
then Obsidian, they just came out with the web clipper.

(17:18):
Obsidian just came out with the web clipper. It's completely
free and that will save the web page. Maybe not
in the same exact format, but in very similar And
of course you can also use a screenshot app. What's
the one that I like? I'm trying to find the
name here, I'll come. I'll come up with it. After
the break. Rich on Tech dot TV eighty eight rich

(17:38):
one on one, Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich
DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology at Triple
eight rich one oh one. We'll get back to those
phone lines in just a moment, but let's talk deals
for the holiday shopping season. Joining me now is Jacob
Palmer from Best Reviews dot com. This holiday season, what

(17:58):
do you think are the deals there?

Speaker 3 (18:00):
Oh?

Speaker 5 (18:00):
Yeah, And the thing with this holiday season is is
that there's more of an impetus to jump early because
of how late Thanksgiving is. Right now is a great
time to buy, and especially if you have any concerns
about getting what you really want, the earlier you jump
out of the better because of how late Thanksgiving is.

Speaker 1 (18:15):
Any early trends that you're seeing with pricing or products
or what people are interested in, Yeah, basically across.

Speaker 3 (18:23):
The board is what we're so on.

Speaker 5 (18:24):
Pricing across the board we're seeing twenty percent is kind
of the starting point for a good deal, and that's
usually the case where we will usually say, hey, look
for twenty percent of starting point, But the retailers are
jumping at that now and they're making basically all of
that across the board. In terms of the kinds of
products that are really popular so far, obviously tech, obviously
home those are always going to be huge, but a
lot of luxury beauty right now and a lot of

(18:45):
wellness and personal care stuff is what we're seeing as
well in terms of what people are really jumping at,
because we are seeing really good markdowns there as well,
and it's such a competitive space that basically the sellers
have to be able to put these big deals up
to grab some market share.

Speaker 3 (18:59):
Let's start with what do you want to start with?

Speaker 5 (19:01):
So we should start with the best gift for kids.
What we've got here is the climbing Gecko, and I'm
excited to show you this one because it is just
straight up cool and it's perfect for the younger kids.
You know, if there's a teenager, they're not going to
be blown away by this, but it's a super straightforward thing.
It goes on to the wall and then you can
climb around the wall and it's remote controlled so you
can direct it all around the wall. It even works

(19:22):
on the ceiling, so you can have a crawl on
the ceiling. And I mean for a kid, you know,
my kid is two years old, and then all the
way up to you know, like that seven eight year
old range. Like, it is a lot of fun, even
if it is simple fun and it's a STEM gift. Yes,
what's the price point on that. It's going to be
around thirty dollars and so it's super reasonable, and you
know it's also going to be marked down while supplies last.

Speaker 3 (19:42):
What's next?

Speaker 5 (19:43):
So next up, we've got the best for frequent flyers.
It is the Beats Studio Pro over ear headphones. They
have incredible noise cancelation, you know, the kind of thing
that you expect. The technology there is so solid in
terms of what you expect there. It's also got all
the spatial audio, which I think has basically become kind
of table stakes for all kinds of headphones. But it's
got the audio quality, it's got the noise cancelation. But

(20:04):
the reason why we are naming it the best for
frequent flyers this holiday season is because of how comfortable
it is. And it's the kind of headphones that if
you fall asleep wearing them on the plane, you won't
you know, wake up with a headache about it. So
in the Bestity's testing lab, we've put it through about
a half dozen of this kind of headphones with the
biggest brands, you know, the biggest brands that you can
think of, and this was the one that came out

(20:26):
the top in terms of just comfortability, and so we
like it for that. You know, if you're gonna be
talking about the sound, and that's what you want to
be going for. The Bows was our favorite. And then
if you want compatibility with your iPhone, the AirPods Max
are really solid.

Speaker 3 (20:38):
And what's the price point on these?

Speaker 5 (20:39):
These are a couple hundred bucks right now, and we're
already seeing super good deals on these. And these are
coming down to around two hundred and fifty dollars right now,
down from their full list price.

Speaker 3 (20:48):
Which is closer to three hundred fifty three and hud
five dollars.

Speaker 1 (20:51):
This is a common problem even in Los Angeles. You
get to your kids ballgame and your hands are freezing.

Speaker 3 (20:56):
What if you got for that.

Speaker 5 (20:57):
Yeah, and so this is the Acopa handwarmer and they're rechargeable.
The perfect stocking stuffer is what we're calling them this
year because they're perfect for you know, the soccer mom,
the hockey mom, or really anybody. Maybe you're going out
to a tailgate and you're gonna be standing outside for
a while. We kind of hated the old handwarmers because
they're wasteful. You use them, they work for twenty minutes maybe,

(21:18):
and then you throw them out. This is great because
you know you've got it. You know that you know
no matter what events coming up, you're gonna be covered.
All you need to do is make sure you charge
it ahead of time. They charge really fast. You can
plug it in the car on the way to the
hockey game and you'll be covered.

Speaker 3 (21:31):
In those ranks which are freezings.

Speaker 1 (21:32):
Literally price point on these very cheap lesson twenty dollars.
Let's move on to the Fitbit. You've got a verse
of four here. Why do you like that?

Speaker 3 (21:39):
It's one of Fitbit's newest models.

Speaker 5 (21:41):
It comes with all the fitness tracking and wellness stats
that you've come to expect from Fitbit. You know, they
were one of the absolute first, when it comes to
this biometric hacking and checking that everybody is now into,
and the verse of four is a great kind of
evolution of it because it looks like the smart watches
that people have come to know. You can wear it
going to work and you're not gonna feel silly about

(22:03):
it and be wondering, you know, should I be wearing
this or not.

Speaker 3 (22:05):
But it also has great sleep tracking.

Speaker 5 (22:07):
When we put it to the test against a lot
of others, it was our favorite for the sleep tracking,
and I think what people are awakening to pardon the pun,
is that sleep tracking really does matter to the overall
wellness profile that people are putting together right now. So
we love it for that, and so it's our best
gift for the fitness enthusiast in your life, because you know,
we're great for the run. It's got the GPS built

(22:27):
into it, which we love as well, but it also
is super well suited to be able to help you
track your sleep and all those really important metrics that
are going to help you maximize your wellness.

Speaker 3 (22:36):
And it works with iPhone and Android.

Speaker 5 (22:38):
And we're seeing it now in that hundred dollar range,
so you know, more than one hundred dollars, but uh,
you know it's it's definitely marked on right now and
under two under two hundred and for the newest model.
I mean, that's something that we're pretty excited to see
on that price learrange.

Speaker 1 (22:51):
What is the lofty alarm clock?

Speaker 5 (22:53):
So the lofty alarm clock is basically the ultimate evolution
of those alarm clocks that you would see in every
hotel room that I think all of us grew up
having in our rooms. But instead of a harsh red
light beeping in your face and flashing in your face,
it is super customizable.

Speaker 3 (23:08):
It also works as a white.

Speaker 5 (23:10):
Noise machine, and it can also have a bunch of
different features on it that will allow you to really
figure out how do you want to wake up, so
you can set it to have a gentle reminder to
wake up at one point if you're the kind of
person who hits the snooze twenty times before you're willing
to get out of bed. So then it also gets
increasingly harsh, so you know you're not going to miss
your meeting if this thing's really going at you.

Speaker 1 (23:30):
Just now, does this have a display on it?

Speaker 3 (23:33):
It does?

Speaker 5 (23:33):
Okay, it does, and you can customize it so you
can use different color tones on it, you can pick
what information it's showing you, and then also you can
program it to go night blackout when you want to
be sleeping, because there's a lot of studies out there
now that any amount of light in your bedroom while
you're trying to sleep is harmful for your sleep.

Speaker 3 (23:49):
I love it.

Speaker 1 (23:50):
It's sort of like a modern alarm clock that's been
rethought for sort of how we work today.

Speaker 3 (23:55):
What's the price point. It's around one hundred and twiny
dollars right now. Is it Internet connected?

Speaker 6 (23:59):
Yes?

Speaker 5 (24:00):
Okay, yeah, it's connected to and then you can control
it from your phone as well. It's got like different
settings on it that you can use through an app.

Speaker 3 (24:06):
Okay, I want that.

Speaker 1 (24:07):
Yeah, gotta have some tunes. Tell me about the Soundcore speaker.

Speaker 5 (24:10):
So it's a Bluetooth speaker that I mean, as you
can see, this thing is not a small one that
you're gonna attach to your backpack. This is a formidable
piece of equipment that we've.

Speaker 3 (24:19):
Got right now.

Speaker 5 (24:20):
And this is our best gift from a hidden gem brand.
Because during these big shopping events, you're always looking to
figure out like is this deal worth it? Are these
you know, is this price too good to be true?
And it bestially because we're always testing products to figure
out like, is this lower price point product as good
as some of the bigger names, and Anchor fits that
bill perfectly because it sounds great.

Speaker 3 (24:42):
This is a powerful speaker.

Speaker 5 (24:43):
I mean, if you look in front of you, you can
power the entire party, whether you're at the park, you're
at a tailgate, you're in your backyard, wherever. This is
going to keep everybody going. So we love it for that.
But it's also super affordable, especially when you compare it
to some of those bigger names like Bows or Sonas
or something like that.

Speaker 1 (24:58):
I also like that it looks like there's some lights
on the sides. Is it light up while it's playing
the music?

Speaker 5 (25:02):
It will give you some lights on the side and
it will go with the you know, the rhythm of
the song that you're playing as well. So that's that's
another fun quirk that, frankly is another thing that's happened
with a lot of the higher end the Bluetooth speakers.
But you're getting all these features from Anchor, which is
always really impressive.

Speaker 1 (25:16):
Okay, so the Anchor Soundcore, what's the price point on this.

Speaker 5 (25:18):
This is gonna be a little bit more than one
hundred dollars as well. But when you're getting these bigger ones,
you know, over these holiday events, these can get up
to you know, from the JBLS and those brands like that,
these can get up to like two hundred, three hundred.

Speaker 3 (25:30):
Dollars depending on what you're looking at.

Speaker 1 (25:32):
Last, but not least, the theough gun. This looks like
a newer model. It's kind of a compact model.

Speaker 5 (25:37):
Yeah, And it seems like every year when we start
talking about gifts, I started talking about Thera guns because
of how well received they are. This is a model
that's a little bit more affordable. So you're gonna see
it around one hundred and sixty dollars right now marked down,
So it's coming down from the bigger price point. But
it also has evolved the technology itself, so on that
led screen it has right there, it'll self guide you

(25:58):
through the routine, and it's got all the other features
that you've come to expect from Thera gun, whether it's
the patent to triangular handle to help you kind of
get deep into your own muscles, or you know, it's
the way it helps the circulation or helps you get
a better night's sleep because of the relaxing factor. And
then it also comes with a few different attachments, so
depending on what you want to be doing in terms

(26:19):
of muscle relief, you can do it.

Speaker 1 (26:21):
And I've noticed a couple of improvements from the one
I have. This has USB C which is a nice improvement.
It's got the screen so you're kind of guided through
instead of using like the phone app. And it's really
small in compact, which is nice. What's the price point
on the theragun Sense right now? We're seeing it for
that one hundred and sixty hundred two hundred dollars range.
And I do expect as the shot shopping goes on

(26:43):
and as we get closer to the event, like especially
Cyber Monday, I do expect them to probably keep coming
down on that. Thank you, Jacob Palmer of best reviews
dot com and just full disclosure. Best Reviews is owned
by the same parent company as KTLA, the television station
I work for. All right, get those phone calls in
triple A Rich one one eight eight eight seven four
two four one zero one more rich on Tech coming

(27:05):
your way right after this. Welcome back to Rich on
tech Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking Technology.
The phone line for the show eight eight eight Rich
one O one eight eight eight seven four to two
four one zero one.

Speaker 2 (27:22):
The website for the show.

Speaker 1 (27:24):
Rich on tech dot tv doing the show notes a
little bit different today, so they're still in the same place.
If you hit the light bulb, it will take you
to the show notes. This is episode ninety nine, and
uh you can. It's just a little bit different. The
format's different, but all the notes are there. They're there
in real time. So if you want links to anything
that Jacob Palmer from Best Reviews just mentioned, you can

(27:47):
find them there, or anything that I mentioned earlier in
the show.

Speaker 2 (27:50):
It is all there.

Speaker 7 (27:52):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (27:52):
Dave in Uh, let's see. Dave writes in, I missed
it on your show. Please tell me the software you
use to answer emails with your voice. I would like
to compose emails with my voice and send them back.

Speaker 2 (28:03):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (28:04):
So the thing that I mentioned on the show is
called whisper flow wisp r flow that is available for
Mac only, So that is a Mac Mac format right now,
Windows and iOS and Android coming soon. It works really well.
It's very accurate. You get two thousand words for free.

(28:27):
I think a week after that you do have to
pay so or a month.

Speaker 2 (28:32):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (28:32):
There's there's some sort of free level. I have not
reached a point where I have to pay for anything,
so that it works just fine. If you're on Windows,
Windows and Mac by the way, both have built in
voice to text, it might not be as good as
this because this is AI powered. But on Windows, if
you want to try this, you can turn on voice
typing by pressing the Windows key plus H. That will

(28:53):
bring up the hardware keyboard on your computer screen, and
then press the microphone key next to the space bar,
so Windows H plus the microphone key, and that will
bring up the voice to text. On Windows eleven, let's
see what it's like on Windows ten. Windows ten, yeah,
same thing. So again that is how you do it

(29:15):
on there, you know, it's it's one of these things
where the dictation that we have, like especially on iPhone,
is just it's not that good. Like I really rarely
use it because it's not as fast as I want
it to be. On Android it's very fast. If you're
using g Board by Google, that's Google's keyboard, the voice
to text is like incredible and it's really fast, especially
if you're on a Pixel. If you're on a Samsung

(29:36):
and you're using it, it's good. The Pixel is like
somewhat I don't know a little bit better because it's
goes back to what we were talking about. It's Google's products,
so I guess they favored a little bit.

Speaker 3 (29:45):
Let's go to.

Speaker 2 (29:45):
Jerry in Irvine, California. Jerry, you're on with Rich HII Rich?

Speaker 8 (29:50):
How you doing today?

Speaker 2 (29:51):
I am doing fantastic.

Speaker 1 (29:53):
What's up?

Speaker 7 (29:54):
Oh?

Speaker 8 (29:55):
I have like the last five phones that I have
bought over the years, and they have made me more
or less use Gmail on them to activate them, and
now I don't use any of them anymore. And I've
been finding lately that when I've been trying to start

(30:15):
up a new account, they have blacked me because I've
already had a Gmail account. So how can I delete
like four or five of them and then start from.

Speaker 1 (30:28):
Scratch delete the Gmail account? Yeah, like the whole thing.

Speaker 8 (30:34):
But like the whole thing. Yeah, because the phones were
only used for a while until they died, and then
the account was still active, so the system seems to
think that I'm still using the account where the phone
get so there's like five or six accounts out there
with you know, they're basically connected to me that are

(30:56):
being used okay, and I can't get to them any more.

Speaker 3 (31:00):
They don't know what their.

Speaker 8 (31:01):
Password is or what the actual address is because they're
so old.

Speaker 1 (31:07):
Okay, Well, there's two things you can do here. So
there's number one. You can you can get rid of
a device that has access to your account by going
to Google dot com slash devices, and I recently did this,
and there's a whole bunch. This will give you a
list of every single device that has access to your
Google account.

Speaker 2 (31:24):
So I'm looking at mine.

Speaker 1 (31:26):
I've got four sessions on Mac computers right now, I've
got twelve sessions on Android devices. You know, I test
a lot of devices, and it'll even tell you how inactive.
Like so for instance, Google pixel fold says it's been
inactive for ninety nine days because I was a test phone.
I've not used it, and so that is a phone
that I would when I click, I can sign out.

(31:47):
I can sign myself out of Android. So that will
get rid of that device off of my Android account. Now,
in your in your case, these phones, if the batteries
are dead, you haven't turned them on in a while,
it doesn't matter. They're still going to be signed out
if that phone is ever turned on again. As soon
as it gets turned on and connected to the internet, boom,
it's not going to have access to anything. So now

(32:09):
the thing is, if there's stuff on those phones that
you know is residing on the physical drive there or
the storage on the phone, people would be able to
access that if they were able to unlock your phone
and open it and turn it on, so you know,
all those things would have to happen. They probably wouldn't
have your passcode. So anyway, that's the first way to
do it. So again, go to Google dot Com. And

(32:29):
this is something that's good to do in general. I
know most people are not activating as many devices as
I am, Like I'm always activating something on my account,
so I'm always going through and getting rid of those.
But that's Google dot Com slash devices. Okay. Now if
you want to delete these Gmail accounts, that's a whole
other thing. So that's actually deleting your Google account. And

(32:50):
I I'm trying to see if it immediately deletes I
feel like there's probably some sort of like waiting period
where it probably deletes and then it probably still link
for a while. I know Facebook did that for a while,
but I'm trying to find the direct link to this.
It's a support page. And if if you search for

(33:10):
delete your Google account, the support page that comes up,
which I'll put in the show notes, has a button
that says delete Google account. Now I'm not going to
tap that button because I don't want to start that process.
I don't even want Google to think I'm doing that.
But that's where you go. And so once you tap that,
you will log in with your Google information, there will
be some sort of verification, and then you will be
able to delete that account. So those are the two

(33:34):
places I would go to check to see if your
account if you need to get rid of those Gmail.

Speaker 8 (33:39):
If I have one quick question on my desktop, what's
a really good free email service to start with a
separate from the phone.

Speaker 1 (33:50):
I mean, I would say Yahoo is probably good after
Gmail if you don't want to use Gmail. Yahoo just
got like a big revamp, so they're really pushing there.

Speaker 8 (34:00):
Had cots for a while, and need transfer me o to.

Speaker 2 (34:02):
Yacht okay, so like automatically, So yeah.

Speaker 8 (34:07):
I want missing a few emails here and there, and
people call me out, you respond and I never got it.

Speaker 1 (34:13):
But okay, well the other you can you can use that.
There's proton Mail, which is very uh secure, and then
there's Outlook. So Outlook is obviously Microsoft's mail, so you
can use that as well. I mean, there's a lot
of different email providers out there. I'm not a big
fan of some of the smaller ones, just because you know,
it's just I think sticking with one of the bigger

(34:34):
ones is probably better just because their software is going
to be better. But I would I mean, if you
want something that's secure, tried proton Mail. A lot of
people are using that. There's a free level. Let's see
what you get for free. Uh so you get a
gig of storage for free. I would do that, do
proton proton Mail is uh, you know, it's nice and secure.
So and it's one gig for free, one user, one

(34:55):
email address, and that's completely free every month.

Speaker 2 (34:58):
So I would do that.

Speaker 7 (34:59):
Jerry, excellent, Thank.

Speaker 8 (35:01):
You, Rich, I appreciate your time.

Speaker 1 (35:03):
Have a great day, all right, Thank you, Jerry, appreciate it.
Eighty eight Rich one O one eight eight eight seven
four to two four one zero one A new trick
in phishing scams might bypass your email security. It's all
because it's hidden in image files. This is from a
bleeping computer. They say that hackers are now using what's

(35:23):
called SVG files. Those are scalable vector graphic files, and
they're sneaking malware into your inbox through these files. So
it typically when you get an email, it might have
an attachment like a PDF or a JPEG, or you know,
some other type of file name, and you recognize that

(35:43):
and you say, I wasn't looking for this doc file
or something. If you see an SVG file attached to
an email, just I would disregard it because unless you're
expecting it, it could be malware. It could be a problem.
SVG attachments could be dangerous.

Speaker 2 (35:58):
Be careful out there.

Speaker 1 (36:00):
Eighty eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven
four to two four one zero one. This is rich
on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro
here hanging out with you, talking technology. The phone line
for the show eight eight eight rich one oh one
eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.

(36:22):
The website for the show richon Tech dot tv. If
you want to link to anything I mentioned on the show.
Just hit the light bulb. If you want to email me,
hit contact and while you're there, be sure to sign
up for the newsletter. I also have my Ultimate Holiday
Gift Guide on the front page, so you can check
out and get some ideas for some of the gadgets

(36:43):
that I personally have tested and enjoy a lot, and
pretty much the majority of them are on sale right now.
John writes in Hey, Rich, I love to listen to
you on KFI. Thanks for being a helpful person. I
apparently locked myself out of my Facebook account. They just
keep asking me to change my password over and over.
I believe you said you can pay meta to access

(37:03):
help on this. Please let me know what that URL
would be. Thanks again, John. Okay, you are referring to
the story of the woman in San Francisco who walked
to Facebook headquarters because she was locked out of her account,
and she banged on the door there.

Speaker 2 (37:20):
And said, hey, can you help me, and they're like no,
and they gave.

Speaker 1 (37:22):
Her a print out actually with a piece of paper
that gave her like all the different ways to get
access to her account. The main way to get access
to your account that is hacked on Facebook is Facebook
Dot com slash hacked, Facebook dot com slash hacked. That
will also work for Instagram. People have varying degrees of

(37:44):
luck with that. Now here's how you get hacked. By
the way, hackers are not trying to get into your account.
What's happening is that you are clicking a link that
you thought was a notification for something, and you're logging
in and you're handing over your password and you don't
have two factor authentication enabled. So to protect your Facebook account,

(38:04):
Number one, do not log in to random Facebook account
questionnaire kind of things where it's like, hey, did you
see this picture someone shared of you? And you click
and it makes you log in. Do not do that. Also,
if you get a notification that says you've got a
copyright infringement, you gotta log you gotta verify that.

Speaker 2 (38:22):
Do that's fake.

Speaker 3 (38:23):
Do not do that.

Speaker 1 (38:24):
Anytime you have to log into a Facebook account, anytime
that login screen comes up, be very very critical of
that screen. In fact, I would never I would just
close out that screen and I would just go to
Facebook dot com and see if Facebook comes up, and
if it doesn't and you're there, then you can log in.
The Other way is to turn on two factor authentication
that will protect you if you did give your password out,

(38:47):
that will at least keep the hackers from being able
to access your account, and you can go back in
and change your password once you realize the foolishness that
you just participated in. Now to answer your question, what
the woman did was she signed up for some thing
called meta verified. This is a fifteen dollars a month
service that basically gets you, you know, the VIP service

(39:12):
for the help on your account. If you try to
contact someone at Facebook, you're not going to get any help.
But this has prioritized support, which means you can actually
speak to a person and get help about your account.
So what she did was she signed up for this,
got the help, and then I'm assuming she canceled it.

Speaker 2 (39:28):
Now here's the thing.

Speaker 1 (39:29):
You have to have a It looks like you have
to have a Facebook page, Instagram page, or a business profile.
So this is not necessarily for regular folks. So unless
you are running John a Facebook page for a business,
I don't know if this will work for you. You can
try it. You can go to the page, but it's
called Facebook. It's called meta verified. The website, I mean

(39:54):
the website's a little wonky, so I'll put it in
the show notes. But it's Facebook dot com, slash business,
slash tools, slash Meta, Dash verified dash for Dash business. Yeah,
you're not gonna remember that, so just search meta verified
and that should bring you to the page, says, Get
a verified blue check on Instagram, Facebook and Meta and

(40:14):
that maybe might help you get it back.

Speaker 2 (40:17):
Good question.

Speaker 1 (40:18):
Let's go to Jeff in Clearwater, Florida.

Speaker 2 (40:23):
Jeff, you're all with Rich?

Speaker 6 (40:25):
Hey Rich, how are you doing?

Speaker 1 (40:26):
I am doing fantastic, enjoy your show?

Speaker 6 (40:29):
Quick? Thank you listening since the really beginning. Maybe you
could help me out a really perflexing problem I'm having
with Google Voice, trying to get it set up for
a little part time business that my wife and I
are running. We established a you know, a phone number,
a Google Voice phone number, which fortunately or unfortunately we've

(40:51):
printed on Business Courage and a couple other things, so
we've already invested in so it kind of stuck to
that number. What we want and are trying to accomplish,
is to port that Google Voice number over to a
personal T mobile iPhone. It had that ring on that iPhone. Uh,

(41:18):
and you know, cool, if we pick it up. But
if we're not available, we don't pick it up. We
want it to go and be answered by the Google
Voice you know, business message that we've left over at
Google Voice. Instead of doing that, it's being answered by

(41:40):
the personal you know message that we've left on our iPhone.
And it seems to me that I should be able
to do that, but I can't. It's it's driving me
in circle.

Speaker 1 (41:54):
Yeah, there is a way to do it. There is
a way to do it, but you can't. You can't
have both things. You can't port the phone number or
the Google Voice number to that device and have the
Google Voice pick up the Google voicemail. So what you
do is okay, the way you would set it up
is you basically have to you set up that phone.
So iPhone's a little weird with the Google Voice stuff

(42:15):
because everything has to go through the Google Voice app.

Speaker 2 (42:18):
You can't.

Speaker 1 (42:19):
It doesn't like integrate into the dialer like it does
on an Android phone. On Android phone, you can have
Google Voice take over that entire phone, so you make
calls from your native dialer, it will go through Google Voice.
You can get calls through Google Voice. It's very seamless.
But iPhone The way iPhone is set up is very
very particular because everything's sandbox. You can't have Google Voice

(42:41):
sort of take over the native dialer. Now, at that said,
you could do exactly what you need. So what I'm
hearing is you want people to be able to call
this Google Voice number. It's going to ring your personal
phone number, your personal phone, and then if you don't
pick up that phone, it's just gonna go to Google
Voice and not your personal voicemail.

Speaker 4 (43:00):
That's what we want, Okay, So there there.

Speaker 1 (43:03):
Is a setting that you have to go on your
Let me think about this. So it's like basically a
setting that you have to do on your T mobile,
which is like busy no answer forward to Google Voice.

Speaker 2 (43:16):
So now here's the thing. It's going to forward.

Speaker 1 (43:20):
It's probably going to forward your regular calls to that
line as well, if someone calls you like on your
personal line.

Speaker 6 (43:27):
Yeah, that's kind.

Speaker 2 (43:28):
But there's a way there there is.

Speaker 1 (43:30):
I think there's a way to do this because it's
it's like a lot of little settings, but I'm sure
there's a way to do what you're talking about. You're
basically I think it's the busy no answer forwarding. I
think that's what you want, because that means if you yeah,
let's see, so this will send incoming calls to another
number when your phone is busy or you don't answer

(43:51):
after a certain number of rings. So I'm trying to
figure out if they call your Google Voice and your phone,
you don't want your your regular voicemail to pick up.
That's what you don't want to happen.

Speaker 6 (44:04):
No, okay, And I think I want the business voicemail,
you know, message from the Google Voice to pick up.

Speaker 2 (44:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (44:13):
Well, the good news is, look, I think there is
a way to do this. I've got to look into
the It's been a while since I played with the
Google Voice settings. The thing is, it takes a little
bit to figure it out because there are a whole
bunch of settings both on your phone and also you know,
the Google Voice app. Now here's the other thing. Is
your iPhone doing that thing where it's screening the calls

(44:35):
on its own because Apple and iOS eighteen added like
a new voicemail feature where it's like screening the calls itself.

Speaker 6 (44:43):
Yeah, I know what you're talking about. We're using, by
the way, thirty iPhone thirteen. So I'm not sure we
have that full ability on thirteens. So I don't think
we're doing that, you know, I don't see that we
really have that ability. I know what you're talking about.

Speaker 1 (45:01):
Okay, I think the main thing that you have to
do here, and I'm really like I used to so
I was a Google Voice user from day one. It
used to be called grand Central, and I I use
this thing for years, I mean, and so I had
it all figured out where basically if my phone didn't,
I don't. I think the problem is I'm not sure
that you can have your phone not pick up the

(45:23):
Google Voice call but also not go to your regular voicemail.
I think it's either one or the other. Yeah, the game,
and why why do you want if this is a
call a phone line for work, why do you need
it to answer your Can't you just turn off your voicemail?

Speaker 6 (45:41):
Even turned off our person the personal voice bade? Yeah, yeah,
I suppose we could do that. Yeah, you know, it's
just kind of a half. I guess we want best
of both worlds, you know, service.

Speaker 1 (45:56):
But yeah, the only thing I can think of is
that I think this is what what thelution is from before,
is that there might be a way to have T
Mobile answer your calls like later, like it might take.
Like let's say, let's say Google voicemail will go to
Gmail or Google Voice will give it three rings before
it goes to its own voicemail. I think I think

(46:17):
you can ask T Mobile to pick up their voicemail
on the fourth ring. And I think that's sort of
like the hack. Have you asked them if you could
do that?

Speaker 6 (46:25):
You know, I didn't know who to talk to. I
wanted to talk to you first.

Speaker 1 (46:29):
Well, you're not going to find anyone at Google Voice.
I can guarantee that.

Speaker 6 (46:33):
Talk to After I talked to you, I should talk
to T Mobile.

Speaker 1 (46:37):
I would see if you could. I would see if
you can turn off or extend the calls the amount
of rings before T Mobile's voicemail picks up. So let's
say let's say right now, it's set up for three
three rings, and then T Mobile picks up Google Google
Voice by that time will go to its own voicemail.

Speaker 2 (46:56):
Okay, but I think I really do.

Speaker 1 (46:58):
I've got to think about this, and I don't want
to take too much more time on this call because
I know it's it's a very nuanced thing. But I
think there is a way you can do this. But
it turns out to be one of the sort of
conditional call forwarding features on your phone line. So I
think that's what it is. Jeff, send me an email.
Go to the website rich on Tech dot tv hit contact,
send me email.

Speaker 2 (47:19):
We will figure this out. I guarantee it.

Speaker 1 (47:21):
Eighty eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven
four to two four one zero one. This is rich
on Tech. Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich DeMuro
here hanging out with you, talking technology at triple eight
rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to
two four one zero one. Matthew and Murrieta call to

(47:41):
let me know. He confirmed that what I was saying,
uh is the right path for the Google Voice. So
he basically said, yes, set your T Mobile voicemail to
pick up in a longer number of rings than the
Google Voice. So if your Google Voice picks up after
three rings, set your T Mobile voicemail to pick up
after four or five rings. And there are short codes

(48:03):
on the website you can help to do that. Otherwise
you could probably call Team Mobile to reset that.

Speaker 2 (48:08):
Thank you, Matthew and Marietta.

Speaker 1 (48:10):
Yeah, it's been a while, so I was actually all
in on Google Voice for a while. The problem is
Google has not really updated Google Voice in a big way.
So yes, I still use it for a couple of
texts and things like that, but it's kind of like
if you're trying to integrate it into your car audio
and all that stuff, and you're not and you're using
an iPhone, it's really tricky. Android much easier because Android

(48:32):
it just becomes your phone line. It's very very simple,
but iPhone is very very tricky with that. If you
have Amazon Music Unlimited, you just got free audiobooks. So
Amazon is building Audible into Amazon Music Unlimited. So Amazon
Music Unlimited is there kind of their Spotify. It's ten
bucks a month for you know, all the music you

(48:53):
want to listen to. But now they are adding audio
books into the mix. So if you're a Prime member
and you've got Amazon Music Unlimited, you can basically listen
to one audiobook title a month. And it's kind of
weird because Spotify gives you fifteen hours of audiobooks a month,
you can listen to fifteen different books at an hour each.

(49:16):
This service through Amazon only lets you listen to one
title per month, so you can carry on into the
next month if you don't finish it. But it doesn't
sound like you can start a new book until the
next month. Again, so again, one audiobook per month from
Audible's catalog. And I had someone email me this morning saying, Rich,
I downloaded Audible. I'm a Prime member, I'm Amazon Music

(49:38):
Onlimited member. I don't see anything about being free, and
so I downloaded the Amazon app. I subscribe to the
free trial, which, by the way, they're doing three free
months right now, so you can just listen to three
months of books for free. But if you go into
Amazon Music, it's up at the top. It used to
say music and podcasts. Now it says music, Audible and podcasts.
You pop into Audible now you can listen. It says

(50:01):
audio books from Audible are now included with Amazon Music Unlimited.
Select one audiobook each month, so kind of a cool perk.
And it's just an all out war between Amazon Music
Unlimited and Spotify because Spotify added audiobooks a couple months ago.
I found the Spotify audiobooks to be very convoluted. It
kept it would not keep my place in the audiobook

(50:23):
and so for that reason I just gave up on it.
Now Audible works perfectly. It keeps your place across every device.
For some reason, Spotify just could not get that right,
so hopefully Amazon Music does. Uber is adding new features
just in time for the holiday season. They've got a
new car class Uber XXL. This has extra space. So

(50:44):
this is for when I was traveling with my kids
when they were younger. We had like literally a thousand
things we were bringing with us. Two car seats, ten
pieces of luggage, baby booms, boombox seat whatever they call
those things.

Speaker 2 (50:59):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (50:59):
There's so so many things. So now Uber XXL. So
I remember even when we got like the biggest car
you could get through Uber to go to the airport,
you still couldn't fit everything in there. We had luggage
on our laps. So now XXL has room for six
people and extra space. So it's probably like those like
those tahoes or those suburbans that have like the extra

(51:19):
extra back sprinter van. Yeah, there you go something big.
So Uber XXL if you're looking for extra trunk, extra
extra roomy seating, that's at sixty airports worldwide, and then
what else. Oh, they also have a feature which I've
already tested. This has been available in my Uber app
for a while. So you know how when you're trying

(51:40):
to get to the airport, you never know what time
to leave your house. Well, Uber will let you just
put in your flight number and they will say, here's
what time we think we should pick you up. And
so it kind of takes the legwork out of figuring
out the departure time. Now I have a whole system.
Now I also get to the airport about five minutes
before my flight boards, which I don't reckomon end. I

(52:00):
actually pride myself the last time I got to the airport,
I'm not kidding, I waited about seven minutes before we
board it, and I was I was last in line,
which kind of sucked, but whatever, it was fine. But
I pride myself on trying to ride that right up
until the end. I don't recommend it. Don't do that.
It's very stressful, but it's like a personal bragging right
that I can be like, oh, I got to the

(52:20):
airport like one minute to spare. No, don't do that.
Get there with a lot of time to spare, especially
if you don't fly a lot. But yeah, so I
have a whole system where I will look at my
boarding past time and I will do this whole math equation.
It takes like takes like Russell Crowe. It wasn't him,
beautiful mind takes like it takes like him to figure
out what time to leave for me. It's like it's

(52:41):
like a whiteboard with like thousands of dry erase equations
on it for me to be like, Okay, that's what
time I leave to the airport. No Google, Uh, Uber
will figure it out for you. Plan ahead. That's with
Uber Reserve, so that's if you're reserving a car, which,
by the way, you got to check for these promos
on Uber. They're doing a lot of promos these days,
so check the app if you're in compare against lyft

(53:02):
because it's not always the same price. Eighty to eight
rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to
two four one zero one. Coming up, we're going to
talk to Wirecutter about some holiday deals. Welcome back to
rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you
talking technology at triple eight rich one o one eight
eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.

(53:25):
I see you holding on the phones. We'll get back
to those in just a moment. If you want to
email me you can go to the website Rich on
tech dot tv. Hit contact if you want to link
to anything I mentioned, hit the light bulb that will
bring you to the show notes for this show, it
is episode ninety nine. Joining me now is Wirecutter Senior

(53:46):
Deals editor Nathan Burrow. Nathan, welcome to the show. I
bet this is a busy time of the year for you.

Speaker 4 (53:52):
Absolutely. Thanks for having me, Rich. It's great to be here.

Speaker 1 (53:55):
Absolutely. So let's let's talk Wirecutter. First off, explain we
talk about it a lot. I talk about it a
lot on the show because I refer to the reviews
and ratings you guys have.

Speaker 2 (54:05):
I guess it's not real. I guess it is ratings.
You don't.

Speaker 1 (54:07):
You don't give it a number rating, but you know
you rate stuff, so I'm a big fan. Explain what
Wirecutters all about.

Speaker 4 (54:14):
Yeah, Wirecutter is exactly what you said.

Speaker 9 (54:17):
We review products everything from bluetooth headphones to washing machines,
and we have experts in each of those respected beats
that take a look at all the options out there.

Speaker 4 (54:29):
We test the stuff that we review, so.

Speaker 9 (54:31):
It's not just you know, we're not We're not giving
it a ratings site unseen, and ultimately our goal is.

Speaker 3 (54:37):
To explain that.

Speaker 1 (54:38):
Explain that because you know, ever since you guys pioneered
this model, you know, every single newspaper, magazine, website has
the best of lists, and they're really getting those a
lot of the times by just literally looking at Amazon
and saying, you know, this has a thousand ratings, that
must mean it's a good product.

Speaker 3 (54:57):
Exactly.

Speaker 9 (54:58):
There are a lot of sites there, a lot of
review sites that are just basing things on Amazon reviews
or basing things, I mean.

Speaker 4 (55:05):
To be frank on the work of people who have reviewed.

Speaker 9 (55:07):
The stuff elsewhere, whereas Wirecutter gets that stuff either in
the residences of our writers or at our office and
testing facility in New York, and we're actually testing the
stuff out. I was there last week and they were
testing the massage chairs, which was awesome. It was nice
to hit the sage chairs on a break.

Speaker 2 (55:28):
That's a good day to be in there.

Speaker 3 (55:29):
Why not.

Speaker 1 (55:30):
We had we had someone in the studio yesterday talking
about the thorough gun, you know, like that they've got.

Speaker 2 (55:37):
They've gotten a.

Speaker 1 (55:37):
Lot smaller over the years, but anyway, we were testing
that out, so that was great. Okay, So wirecutter. This
time of the year, this is when all the sales start.
Amazon already kicked off their Black Friday a couple of
days ago, which means all the other retailers follow suit.
So what are the trends you're seeing this early on.

Speaker 4 (55:57):
Yep, that's exactly right. Amazon kicked off on Thursday.

Speaker 9 (56:00):
We anticipate, uh, you know, other retailers matching Amazon prices,
and many already have. Walmart formally starts dair sale on
this coming Monday. But what we're seeing so far are
a couple of things.

Speaker 3 (56:11):
Uh.

Speaker 9 (56:12):
One, we're seeing the usual collection of electronics that are
always gonna pop off this time of year. Uh So
that means headphones, That means televisions.

Speaker 3 (56:21):
Uh.

Speaker 9 (56:21):
A brand called high Sense that we recommend, not necessarily
a super well known brand, but it's it's a great
value brand in TVs is offering amazing deals already, and
we're seeing those via best Buy, via Amazon and via
Walmart for that matter. We're also seeing kitchen appliances, uh,
you know, things like uh stand mixers are are already

(56:44):
seeing price drops toast drivens stuff like that. And and finally,
like we're seeing sort of those those household mbs like
air Pure fires, even even baby gear, uh you know,
personal grooming gear like razors. It's very typical to see
all that stuff go on sale.

Speaker 1 (57:02):
This time here, I've got the high sense and I
love it. Mine is great, it's perfect, and it was
so inexpensive. You know, when you used to buy a TV,
it was like a big deal, and this was like,
I'm not kidding. We bought the TV. I bought it
from the best Buy app and it was in my
house delivered within i'd say three hours.

Speaker 2 (57:21):
I was like, that is incredible.

Speaker 9 (57:22):
Yeah, absolutely, And that's one of the things that you
know most most listeners probably already know this, but you
really don't have to venture into stores to have a
good shopping experience during Black Friday. Shopping online can get
you the opportunity to quickly compare prices across retailers and
also to leverage other opportunities to save, whether it's Wirecunter's

(57:45):
deals coverage where we're highlighting the best prices out there,
or whether it's you know, price tracking applications. A few
of those that I personally use are called KIPA and
Camel Camel Camel and what those allow you to do
is they allow you to throw an Amazon URL into
a search field, and basically it'll give you a bar

(58:06):
graph of or a line graph rather of the price
of a given item over time.

Speaker 4 (58:12):
And so so you're seeing like you're seeing this.

Speaker 9 (58:14):
TV was nine hundred dollars, you know, three or four
months ago, and eight hundred dollars two months ago, and
finally it's seen that significant.

Speaker 4 (58:20):
Drop to six point fifty.

Speaker 9 (58:22):
We always expect electronics to go down over time, but
what we're looking for are those precipitous drops that are
that are more significant than they would be at other
times a year.

Speaker 1 (58:32):
Yeah, you can't go by the retail price or the
MSRP or whatever the price they like, the original price
they have listed there. I mean, ninety nine percent of
the time, nobody's ever paid that price for that product.
So it's better to look at these price drop charts
to see has this price gone down before? And that's
a good way to like kind of look forward. Like
for instance, if you have your eye on a product

(58:54):
and you pop the URL into like kipo or like
you mentioned, Camel, Camel Camel, and you notice that this
thing never goes on sale, you might as well just
get it right now if you notice it's been on
sale a bunch of times in the past and you
know now it's time to wait for it to go
on sale.

Speaker 3 (59:11):
Yep.

Speaker 9 (59:11):
Absolutely, I think that you have the capacity to anticipate
when certain things are going to go on sale, and
there are patterns that like I can identify and looking
at a keep a chart where you're just like, oh, okay,
this goes on sale every other month, and it's on
sale every other month of twenty percent off and to
your point, you know MSRP and generally like the percentages

(59:31):
that retailers put out there in terms of the amount
off during the season, really it's not something that I
would trust, you know, where retailer is going to throw
out a huge number like forty percent off, fifty percent off,
and those.

Speaker 4 (59:43):
Deals are really few and far between.

Speaker 9 (59:45):
I would say the average amount that we see off
and this is you know, these are deals that we
have vetted, these are deals that we verify are great
ones for our readers on Wirecutter picks usually falls between
about twenty and twenty five percent off. That's the that's
the best sort of you know, the media invest and
then only very rarely do we see better than that.

Speaker 1 (01:00:04):
So if you're seeing something like right now, my kid
wants a food composter, don't ask me why, but this
is what he wants, and it's saying it's forty nine
percent off. I guarantee. I bet if I put that
into Camel Camel Cammell, I bet you that thing has
gone on sale before. Because it's not really forty nine
percent off, it probably doesn't sell for the list price
the rest of the year. I'm guessing that's right.

Speaker 9 (01:00:28):
Especially like I imagine it might be that Vitamins FC fifty.
We covered that, I think at some point, but it's yeah,
that's that's a model that sees somewhat regular sales. There's
a new one that came out I believe, made by
a different brand in recent in recent months, and those
are likely to see regular sales during windows like this,

(01:00:49):
whether it's Black Friday or Amazon's events at at the
time of the year.

Speaker 1 (01:00:54):
And this is the thing, like, this is the time
to buy because after Cyber Monday, you're probably not going
to get as good deals through the rest of the
holiday shopping season. Is that usually true?

Speaker 9 (01:01:05):
Yes, I think you know. My personal feeling about Black
Friday and cyber Monday is that it's it really is
one of the last windows where you'll see great prices
across retailers, not just the big retailers, but smaller retailers get.

Speaker 4 (01:01:21):
In on the act as well.

Speaker 9 (01:01:22):
So if you're somebody who prefers to shop smaller, that's
an option. Or if you prefer to shop at direct
to consumer retailers that you know, like like mattress retailers
for instance, that that often are the only place where
their product is available, this is a great time to
do so. And then the sales are going to evaporate
and we're not going to see them again for a second.

Speaker 1 (01:01:43):
Now you are you're following, you know, shopping every day?
Are you following this new Netflix documentary? Have you heard
of this thing, the one about shopping?

Speaker 9 (01:01:53):
I have not.

Speaker 4 (01:01:55):
What's the deal with the netflixie?

Speaker 1 (01:01:57):
I don't know. It's called by now the Shopping Conspiracy.
And of course last night it was like, you know,
number two on the top list of Netflix stuff to watch,
because of course they put it out, you know, they
put it out right now during the holiday shopping season,
so it's all like the apparently it's like I don't know,
I haven't watched it, but apparently it's like controversial because
it's like basically all the ways that these retailers are

(01:02:18):
getting you to like buy stuff, which, well, I.

Speaker 4 (01:02:21):
Will definitely check it out.

Speaker 9 (01:02:23):
Like one thing that I can say from personal experience
is that these retailers are definitely trying to create what
I would describe as a false sense of urgency during
this time of year, where they really they really make
you feel like, you know, whether it's with a countdown
clock or whether it's with one of those bars that
tells you how much of a given product is left

(01:02:43):
that you have to grab it right now, and you
have to do so without comparison shopping, without taking a
more measured sort of research based approach, and I would
discourage people from doing that. I think that people can
can you know, take a beat really think about whether
this product fits their their life, but also take beat
to assess the prices that are out there on the internet,

(01:03:03):
to assess comparable products, and to consult review sites to
see if this product is something that's quality first and foremost.
You know, it doesn't matter how good a deal you
get if something is of an inferior quality.

Speaker 1 (01:03:15):
Yeah, that is true. They do definitely put that. I
will say the deals are there. There there are deals,
And the thing is if you had your eye on something,
that's when you can tell it's a deal. Because for me,
I keep a lot of stuff in my Amazon sort
of cart or that save for later, and so I
have an idea of the prices. But if you're just
going on these websites and you're just seeing you know,
sixty percent off, eighty percent off, seventy four percent off,

(01:03:37):
and you just say, oh, I got to get that.
It's not always that that's the case. And so I
think following things is probably a good thing to do,
and also keeping those things in your cart. All right,
Nathan Burrow from Wirecutter. Wirecutter dot com is the website
I know you're going to be busy this weekend.

Speaker 9 (01:03:58):
Absolutely, It's in Why Times dot com, forward slash Wirecutter,
and you can find our Black Friday coverage. We're covering
all the early sales right now. We're covering sales from
other retailers aside from Amazona Forest.

Speaker 4 (01:04:10):
All right, you're on the sale. I'm going so thank.

Speaker 1 (01:04:13):
You, Nathan, I appreciate it. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Rich Demiro here hanging out with you talking technology. The
phone line for the show eight eight eight rich one
on one eight eight eight seven four to two, four
to one zero one. Let's see the email for the show.

(01:04:34):
Just go to the website rich on tech dot tv
and hit contact. That will bring you right to my
email address and whatever you're right in there will go
to my uh inbox. And by the way, I know
you're wondering what was the high sense TV that I bought.
It was the U eight and it served me well.

(01:04:54):
We've had it for many, many months now, and I'm
happy to report that the price is exactly what I
paid still, so it's not any cheaper. But here's the thing,
and here's the trick. So it's saying the TV is
nine hundred dollars, was fifteen hundred, saved six hundred dollars. Nobody,
nobody really is paying fifteen hundred dollars like I paid

(01:05:15):
nine hundred six months ago.

Speaker 2 (01:05:17):
So but it's a great TV. Love it Ed in
Las Vegas. You're on with rich Ed. Welcome to the show.

Speaker 7 (01:05:25):
Thank you, rich I appreciate your time and your help.
So I've been a long time Windows user. I'm buying
by the way, rich. My wife sascept my email where
she's hotmail okay, and the news narrator so it can
read it to me. And we recently switched over to

(01:05:49):
to Mac. My wife's got a Mac Minnie, and I
am considering, you know, if she wants to go back
to the Windows, which is likely, then I don't want
to see in the machine back if I can use it.
But she has tried and says that narrator doesn't work
under Matt to read my email, so it wouldn't do

(01:06:11):
me any good. Is there an alternative?

Speaker 1 (01:06:16):
Well, there's a couple of ways that are built into
the Mac operating system, and one of them is they're
mostly in the accessibility area of the computer, so I
would look in there and see. But there's a there's
one called spoken content, and so you know, you can
select the text in that email and there's a shortcut

(01:06:38):
that will read that text to you. So that's number one.
So basically you just highlight any text and say, you know,
use the shortcut key to and it'll read that out
to you. So that's number one.

Speaker 7 (01:06:47):
Where I have to do that for every email or
is it continuous?

Speaker 1 (01:06:51):
No, it's every email because that's a one time thing. So,
and the second one is voiceover, which is similar, but
it's kind of like the same, you know as that
that says you it'll just start reading out whatever's on
the screen. That's a little bit more automatic as I
understand it, So that I mean.

Speaker 7 (01:07:10):
Other other things other than the email.

Speaker 1 (01:07:12):
Too, right, Yeah, I think so, because I you know,
I I've seen that feature in action and I think
it just starts to read everything that's on the screen.
So that's number two. The other thing is, uh, you know,
there's a third party app and I'm trying to see,
but this is the problem with this is that it's
it looks like the same thing where it's just you
have to feed the text into it, which is natural reader.

(01:07:34):
I'm sure you've heard of that one. And there's also
speech AFY which is similar. They're both natural reader and
speech of FI are both kind of like natural you know,
speech to text programs. So speech a FI might actually
be a pretty good way to do it. Let me
just see. I'm trying to see if they have like
a specific email a way to yeah, text to speech

(01:07:58):
email reader, Yeah, I think. I mean the problem is
again with this, you have to you have to put
the text into the program for it to work.

Speaker 3 (01:08:08):
Right, How would that work?

Speaker 7 (01:08:11):
I mean, if I'm trying to I just move down
an email now and I open it up, and then
I paint I arrow down to go to the next email,
you know, after I either leave the one that I've
just read or I deleted one or the other. But
then I get down to the next one.

Speaker 1 (01:08:30):
Right, and then when you go to the next one,
you'd have to highlight that. Basically, all the systems I'm
looking at you have to highlight the text for it
to read it too out loud.

Speaker 7 (01:08:39):
That wouldn't work for me. I can't see the screen.

Speaker 1 (01:08:42):
Right, So that's a problem. The other thing is what
about using the Outlook app? Like, have you tried that?
Because they have a read aloud functionality in the Outlook
app that I've got to see if it's on the
Mac side of things, But that is a functionality inside
the I'm looking here. Okay, this is uh, this is Windows.

(01:09:04):
They just came out with the new Mac version of Outlook,
and so I'm wondering if okay, here we go, hold on,
this looks like it may have it.

Speaker 2 (01:09:11):
H Yeah, they do have a read aloud yep.

Speaker 1 (01:09:15):
So I would use that, can you can you can
you download the email? Yeah, this is it's like a
it's functionality built into Outlook, and so it's called read aloud.
And so if you download the Outlook out Outlook app
on your computer and you log in with your hotmail account, Uh,

(01:09:37):
then I would just use that that read aloud functionality. Okay,
I think that's going to do it. I think that's
probably the best way to do it.

Speaker 7 (01:09:48):
Okay, sounds good. Thank you very much, rich I appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (01:09:52):
All right, let me know if that works out for you,
Ed send me an email. Okay, all right, thanks for
listening there in Las Vegas, eighty eight rich one on
one eight eight eight.

Speaker 2 (01:10:02):
Seven four to two four one zero one.

Speaker 1 (01:10:04):
If there's one thing I've learned doing this show is
that there are many many ways to solve a problem,
and not every way is the best for everyone.

Speaker 2 (01:10:11):
So there's always and there's also always a way.

Speaker 1 (01:10:15):
That I don't know or I'm not aware of, and
which another reason I love this show is because someone
is bound to email and say this is the best
way to do it, or this is what works for me,
and so I really enjoy the community aspect. Of this
show that we can find solutions for people that are
that go beyond just what I can do on the
fly here or my knowledge base. Uh okay, if you

(01:10:36):
still have an iPhone with the iOS eight on it,
this is I mean, we're talking really really old at
this point because we're up to iOS eighteen, so you're
talking ten years ago.

Speaker 2 (01:10:46):
But you know there's a lot of people out there.

Speaker 1 (01:10:48):
If you're still having an old iPhone with iOS eight,
iCloud backups on this phone are not only going to stop,
but they're going to be deleted as well unless you update.
So starting December eighteenth, twenty twenty four, iCloud backups will
not work on iPhones running iOS eight or earlier. So
if you can update your device to iOS nine or newer,

(01:11:09):
you gotta do that. And if you can't update the device,
like if it doesn't update past iOS eight and you're
still using it somehow, you can back up your your
phone using a macor PC. So that is what what
I would do. But again, you're you're talking really really
old at this point.

Speaker 2 (01:11:27):
iOS eight.

Speaker 1 (01:11:29):
I mean, let's say iOS eight release date, you're talking
twenty fourteen, ten years So if you're still rocking, which
you may just be aware. You gotta fix your iCloud.
You got to get that backup somewhere else. Eighty eight
rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to
two four one zero one, rich on tech dot TV
more after this, Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich

(01:11:50):
DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology at Triple
eight rich one on one. That's eight eight eight seven
four to two four ones zero one. Coming up this hour,
We've got the creator of bake ba Ai.

Speaker 2 (01:12:06):
But bet Papi.

Speaker 1 (01:12:08):
She is gonna explain how Ai is taken over the kitchen,
and she'll probably tell me how to say her last
name better than I just butchered it. You know it happens.
I'm gonna tell you about the best recipe apps too.
But first I was looking around. We had ed in
Las Vegas asking about reading aloud the emails, and it

(01:12:30):
looks like that feature is not available anymore on the
Outlook for Mac. I don't know if they got rid
of it or what, but it is not there, and
I switched. There's a new version of Outlook and there's
a legacy Outlook. I looked in both and they're just
that read aloud button. Is just not there for some reason.
Now I know on the smartphone, you can look on

(01:12:50):
the help site and it says that they've gotten rid
of that on the smartphone. So I don't know why
why would they get rid of something that's this helpful. Now,
I did try to see what you could do with
an email, and sure enough, you know, you can select
text and just built in you can write, click it
and it says speech start.

Speaker 10 (01:13:09):
Speaking, CALLI first among us.

Speaker 1 (01:13:13):
So it'll just read. It'll just read that. I have
no idea how to stop it now that it's reading anyway,
So you could do that, but that again, Ed said
that he needs it to like read. So there's got
to be a program where it kind of knows like, okay,
I've advanced to the next email. I want to hear
this email out loud. And it might just be specialized

(01:13:33):
accessibility software versus what's built into the machine. All right,
So I got an email from gosh I got I
don't know the person's name, but they were in Alabama,
and let's see, they asked for a recipe management app
and they said that they basically, you know, find a

(01:13:54):
lot of recipes on TikTok and Instagram and they want
to save them in an app.

Speaker 2 (01:13:58):
So of course what did I do?

Speaker 1 (01:13:59):
I downloaded one, two, three, four, five, at least five
apps to see which one I like the best, So
I'm gonna go over them. Mela Emyla. This is an
app that's just for iOS and Mac. Now, all these
apps pretty much work the same way. They're free for
a limited amount of recipes. So what happens is you
start using it, you save your recipes, you like it,

(01:14:20):
and then all of a sudden you get your tenth
or your eleventh or twelfth recipe and it's like, oh,
got to pay up if you want to add this one.
You're like, ah, I wish I would have known that
at the beginning, So.

Speaker 2 (01:14:28):
Now you know.

Speaker 1 (01:14:29):
So Mela gives you ten recipes for free, five dollars
for more. Simple interface. Didn't work with the Instagram recipe,
but it worked with the Food Network recipe. So Mela
is good if you have iOS and Mac only. It
wasn't the best of the bunch, but you know it worked.
Recipe Keeper this one has been around forever. I think
recipe Keeper and Paprika are the two like og recipe

(01:14:51):
keeper apps. So the recipe Keeper works on all platforms,
but all the apps are sold separately, so if you have,
you know, a Mac computer and an I, you'd have
to buy those two apps separately, which is a little odd.
Free for up to twenty recipes, but let's you scan
recipes from PDFs, photos or websites.

Speaker 2 (01:15:11):
It did work with Instagram recipes.

Speaker 3 (01:15:12):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:15:13):
This website is probably handy just to have in general.
It's called just the recipe dot com. So you know
how you go to a recipe website, it's got all
the cluttered stuff on the recipe page. Well, you pop
the url into this website and it cleans it up,
and so it's completely free. It's got an Android app,
it's got an iPhone app. But here's the thing. If
you want to print out the recipe, it bugs you

(01:15:35):
to pay. You can't even do it, so you just
have to look at your screen. It's fine because it's
nice and cleaned up, but you have to look at
your screen. Crewton this is Apple Devices only, free from
up to ten recipes. The best design of the bunch,
really really nice design, and I love how it puts
all this step by step instructions on their own screen

(01:15:55):
so you can flip through really easily, and it supported
a lot of different ways of importing recipes. I really
like this one, but it's only available for iPhone, so
I can't really I can't consider that one Umami. This
one ended up becoming my favorite. So it works in
iOS and Android. It's got a great design. You could
use it for free, but they also have twenty bucks

(01:16:16):
for the lifetime of the app, which I think is
very fair. A lot of the other apps you have
to pay per year. And everything worked, the TikTok, Instagram
URLs worked, importing recipes was a little wonky at times,
didn't always work perfectly, but they also have a browser extension.
So overall, if you're gonna download one of these apps,
I think Umami is the best one to download.

Speaker 3 (01:16:37):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:16:38):
After I did this story, I found another app that
I actually really really like, and I actually think it's
the best. But it's called Flavorish fla vo rsh dot
ai and this hits all of the benchmarks I want.
It's available for iOS, it's available for Android, it's available

(01:16:58):
on the web. It's got ai I built in so
it can import a recipe and it just looks incredible.
But here's the catch. It is expensive. It's five bucks
a month or fifty dollars for the year, and you're
gonna get hooked on this. If you download this app,
you're gonna fall in love with it because it's so good.

(01:17:19):
It's so good at importing recipes from images. So if
you have grandma's old recipes sitting there on a piece
of paper printed out, you could take a picture of
that and it will import it perfectly. But again, you
only get five of those a month, or I guess
five in general, and of course you're gonna burn through
those pretty quick, and then you're gonna want to pay.

(01:17:40):
And fifty dollars a year is kind of a lot,
you know, if you add up over you know, ten years,
do the math, it's kind of a lot of money.
Let's see here, Let's let's let's go to Let's go
to Carla Carla and Costa Mesa.

Speaker 2 (01:17:58):
Carla. You're on with Rich.

Speaker 6 (01:18:01):
Rich.

Speaker 11 (01:18:01):
How nice to talk to you. Thank you so much
for taking my class.

Speaker 2 (01:18:05):
Absolutely low vision.

Speaker 11 (01:18:07):
I have been for like seven years. I have been
very proactive in finding out everything I can to get
because I can't drive anymore, read anymore, and so the
most recent thing that I discussed that I wanted to
pass along if everybody else knows about it. I have
a Pixel seven pro cell phone and that's my mainstay.

(01:18:31):
I discovered that all I need to do is ask
my phone to read what's on the screen.

Speaker 2 (01:18:37):
Yes, and it reads.

Speaker 6 (01:18:40):
What it is on my screen?

Speaker 1 (01:18:41):
Yes, Yes, this is This is one of the reasons
why I really like the the Android side of things.
They've a lot of little things built in like that.
Now I think iPhone has similar stuff. But yes, you
can ask your phone to read what's on the screen.
And what do you say, Just Hey Google, read what's
on my screen?

Speaker 7 (01:19:00):
Oh no, I don't.

Speaker 11 (01:19:01):
It's not people doing it. But my phone is a
Google phone. But all I have to do is say
read what's on my screen, and then it kind of
clicks and it and then it reads what's like a menu,
it's on my screen.

Speaker 2 (01:19:17):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:19:18):
And you're not using the voiceover feature or the talkback feature.
This is just you just say Hey Google.

Speaker 11 (01:19:25):
Right, it's not the Hey Google.

Speaker 7 (01:19:27):
Yeah, I'm with that.

Speaker 1 (01:19:28):
Yeah, okay, well you're breaking up a little bit.

Speaker 11 (01:19:30):
I just I just said, read what's on my screen? Damn,
my friend just read what was on the screen.

Speaker 1 (01:19:36):
Interesting, Okay, well that's another way to do it. You know,
there's also a an app on Android that's free and
let's say, I believe it's called the Google Reader. Yeah,
here it is. So so there's so many ways to
do this, but yeah, so on Google you can say
you can say, hey, Google, read this page, read it

(01:19:59):
or read aloud.

Speaker 2 (01:20:00):
You can do that.

Speaker 1 (01:20:02):
There's also the feature I just mentioned, the talkback feature.
And then there's also an Android Reader. There's an app,
so you can go into Google Play and search for Reader,
and I believe that's the app. ILL have to verify
because I get to look it up. But it's a
cool app. It's an accessibility app that works really well

(01:20:24):
and it will read any page. And then of course,
you know you can there's built in systems to do
this as well, but there are yeah, let's see here.
And then of course there's speech a FI. I mean,
there's so many ways to do this, but there's one
that Google makes that is probably the best one because
it's it's completely free and here it is. It's called

(01:20:45):
reading Mode. So if you have an Android phone, just
go into Google Play and search for reading Mode. And
this is completely free and not only does it read
out loud what's on your screen anything, it also makes
it easier to read it on the screen. So it
puts everything in like very simple big font and it

(01:21:05):
highlights as it's reading. So it's a real it's a
hidden gem. And I don't know why, you know, people
don't talk about this more, but it's called reading Mode
on Google Play. It's made by Google. So when you're
looking up this app, make sure you get the one
that is made by Google. All right, I'm gonna put
all these links on the website. Go to Rich on
tech dot tv. Hit the light bulb icon up at

(01:21:28):
the top if you want links to this show. It
is episode ninety nine. We have shared a lot of
great stuff here. I'm gonna put the recipe apps on
there so you can get that link as well. While
you're on the website, definitely sign up for the newsletter
that is free comes out basically every Saturday, so there's
a new issue right now, and if you want to
email me, you can do that under contact. I've got

(01:21:51):
the feedback today is just overflowing.

Speaker 3 (01:21:53):
I don't even know if.

Speaker 1 (01:21:54):
We're gonna be able to get to all of it
coming up. We are going to talk about how AI
is impacting the kitchen, plus more tech news. Right after this,
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging
out with you talking technology. The website for the show
is rich on Tech dot tv. And uh oh, just

(01:22:18):
got an email from rod in Ukaipa. He said, what
about Kurtana for outlook? Yes, that that is the way
to read it on Windows though, So yes, Windows has
it easily. Uh the Mac does not for some reason.
So I guess you got to use Max. You know,
with Mac it's just a little bit different because it's
they're built in tools that you have to use. But
I thought they had that read aloud feature. I guess

(01:22:40):
they don't. Uh, you've heard a blue sky. A lot
of people going to Blue Sky. I am on there
at rich on Tech last week.

Speaker 2 (01:22:47):
Uh, I don't know what.

Speaker 1 (01:22:48):
I have a thousand people on there? What do I
have now?

Speaker 3 (01:22:52):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (01:22:52):
A thousand people? I'm just kidding. No, I've got one
point seven k that's not that much. I've seen a
lot of people blow up on this Blue Sky. I
guess their skies are bluer than mine. But here people
are using this app called blue Arc. Thank You. People
are using this app called blue Arc to move their

(01:23:13):
entire Twitter history to blue Sky. Why, Like, your tweets
are not that great. You do not need to pay
this is yet to pay a fee. It's like, I
don't know whatever it is, it's not worth it. Your
tweets are not that exciting, especially if there's something old
that you were younger and young minded. Yeah, it might
come back and bite chin, But I like the way
you think, like just delete, just to go ahead and

(01:23:36):
delete your tweet history.

Speaker 2 (01:23:37):
Yeah, I don't even have a Twitter anymore if anybody
has it.

Speaker 1 (01:23:40):
When I first started Twitter, I will I can't. I
will tell this story. I would delete my tweet right
after I wrote it because I thought that tweets were fleeting,
so I would write something like going on you know,
the Today Show to talk about technology in the next
seven minutes, and then I would delete it when I
was done, because like, why do you need to see
that when I'm done with that? And then I realized
that that was kind of silly. But anyway, you don't

(01:24:01):
need to You don't need to bring your tweets over Instagram.
You need a fresh start. They have a new feature
that lets you wipe your recommendations.

Speaker 2 (01:24:10):
I love this.

Speaker 1 (01:24:10):
It's called a recommendations reset. It basically gives you a
clean start. So all the stuff you know, you know
how on Instagram or Facebook, you tap one thing and
all of your posts start looking like that one thing.
So my wife she tapped one Christmas cocktail that looked interesting.
I think it was called like a moose Martini or something,

(01:24:30):
or a Reindeer teeny whatever it was. It was cute,
had like the little you know, cranberry you know, on it,
a little sprig of something. Next thing, you know, every
single thing in her feed is a Christmas cocktail and
she keeps showing them to me. It's like, you know,
Rudolph's Ruby Red, you know, grapefruit drink, do whatever it is.
You know what I'm saying. They all have these funny

(01:24:51):
little names. So this would be perfect for her. So
Recommendations Reset is going to be inside Instagram. They're testing
it right now. It's rolling out. You may have access
if you want to check. It'll reset everything, so it
won't you know, your followers will be there, all of
your your stuff, but it'll just reset the algorithm, so
that'll start giving you like new stuff in your feed.

(01:25:12):
So if you go into your settings, it'll be under
content preferences. So let's see if I have it yet. Okay, settings,
content preferences, and so far I do not have it,
So rolling out that means that's another word for like,
you may get it in the next six months or so.

Speaker 2 (01:25:29):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:25:29):
Roadblocks also rolling out some major updates to safety and
parental controls. And I'm I'm not a fan of Roadblocks
because I just don't like it.

Speaker 2 (01:25:39):
I do not like Roadblocks. My kids like it. I
do not.

Speaker 1 (01:25:42):
I think it's I think it's worthless. Honestly, I'll just
say it. I think that it's a it's a waste
of time to play these games.

Speaker 3 (01:25:50):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:25:51):
Oh, you like Roadblocks. I do play Robots with my goddaughter. Okay,
Fortnite heavily. Okay, Fortnite okay, but Fortnite is becoming a
newer Roadblocks. Okay, Well Fortnite's been around for a long time,
so it's Roadblocks. Yeah, I mean, look, and nothing against
the developers of Roadblocks games, which are other people. You know,
this is crowdsourced, but they're kind of nonsense. You let's

(01:26:12):
be honest, you're not accomplishing anything on a Roadblocks game
goal or no, thank you, the where's the bell?

Speaker 2 (01:26:21):
Yeah, we need the bell for that.

Speaker 1 (01:26:25):
Now, with a Nintendo game, you know, you you have
a beginning, a middle, and an end. You can beat
the game, you can, but these games just go on
and on, and quite honestly, kids get addicted to them,
and they and they can't stop playing, and the games
use tactics to keep them in. So with all that said,
I get it, millions of kids play these games every

(01:26:46):
single month. We're not going to stop this from happening.
It's going to happen. But I do like some of
these things that that Roadblocks has built in to help
parents manage it. So now you can remotely manage your
kids accounts. You can set up screen time limits, you
can monitor their friend list, and you can do it
through your account. So if you're an adult, you can
say say this is my kid's account, and you can

(01:27:08):
go on to your computer and do this. Now, I
will tell you in this way. I don't like Roadblocks.
When I told my kid I was doing this, he
was like, no, you're not, Like, I'm not going to
give you access to my account. So that's the other side,
and I think I have a feeling that he has
already set up to be his age is older than
he really is. Of course, because you can also say
the games that your kids can play, what maturity level.

(01:27:29):
And I have a feeling my kid has already set
to like seventeen because he's like, you're not taking away
my mature games, Like, how'd you even know that was
a possibility? He just knew taking away your system? Yeah, well,
good luck. Yeah, it's okay. Kids under thirteen can no
longer send direct messages outside of games. That was a

(01:27:49):
big problem you had, like adults like interacting with kids,
and that's you know, never necessarily a good thing on
these games. And they're gonna have better labels for the uh,
you know, the nature of in game experiences. So right
now they're just labeled like one way. They're going to
label them in a more direct way so you understand
exactly what's happening in the game. And I will say,
most of the games that I see my kids playing

(01:28:11):
on this is pretty innocent.

Speaker 2 (01:28:13):
Some of them are not.

Speaker 1 (01:28:14):
But again, I think any of these parental controls is
a good thing, all right. That's Rodblocks. Amazon unveiled the
Echo Show twenty one. This is the largest smart display yet.
They had the Echo Show fifteen. Now the twenty one
has a twenty one inch screen. This is huge, four
hundred dollars, and it's got a better camera, better audio,

(01:28:36):
and built in compatibility for your smart home devices including
Matter Zigbie and Wi Fi six e. So this acts
as a photo frame, calendar, to do list.

Speaker 2 (01:28:46):
And we could just watch.

Speaker 1 (01:28:48):
I mean, it's basically a TV screen at this point
that size four hundred bucks. The Echo Show fifteen is
still available at three hundred dollars.

Speaker 2 (01:28:56):
All right, coming up, we are.

Speaker 1 (01:28:57):
Going to talk about AI in the kitchen. We're gonna
talk about fixing up recipes and all the fun stuff
you can do right here on rich on Tech. Welcome
back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out
with you, talking technology. The website for the show rich
on Tech dot TV. While you're there, you can check
out my Ultimate Holiday Gift Guide, sign up for the newsletter.

(01:29:20):
Hit the light bulb icon if you want notes for
this show. This has show number ninety nine. I know
we're on the verge of something big. Triple digits. My
kid turned double digits and he was very excited, so triple.
That's a big deal, even though it's just shows. I
know it's not age, but hey, it means we've been
around for a while and you can still get in.

(01:29:40):
Actually i'd say you can get in on the feedback.
But it's so overflowing that it took Bobo. I mean
he was holding this thing up the stairs. He was
just dragging. I mean, just thousands. It was so overfilled
this week. So yeah, you're backers. There you go, all right,
joining me now in studio. But Pepie Pepie, Yes, yes,

(01:30:03):
I don't know why I stumble on your last name
because it's it.

Speaker 10 (01:30:05):
Doesn't look like it says Pepie.

Speaker 1 (01:30:07):
It's spelled pep a j.

Speaker 10 (01:30:09):
It's Albanian.

Speaker 1 (01:30:10):
Albeit, there you go. Okay, uh, bake bought AI creator
and also okay, so your website is bakespace dot com.
You've had this for many years, and we're going to
talk about sort of AI in the kitchen and how
it's changing things. I think it's done a lot for
I mean every industry, but cooking especially. So tell me
about bake space. First off, why did you come.

Speaker 6 (01:30:29):
Up with this?

Speaker 7 (01:30:29):
Sure?

Speaker 12 (01:30:30):
Also, thank you so much for this opportunity to talk
to your audience. I I I'm actually a fan as well.
I listened to the show all the time. So to
be here and see how the soup is being made
is a And to meet Bobo in person.

Speaker 10 (01:30:42):
No, that's that was like the highlight. That was awesome.

Speaker 1 (01:30:44):
It was a little weird that you brought the you know,
the Disney pen and the marker to get his autograph,
but you know, it's fine.

Speaker 10 (01:30:52):
Hey, here's a celebrity. Here's a celebrity. So bake Space
is a recipe community.

Speaker 12 (01:30:57):
So imagine like Facebook for foodies, where people can come
create their own online kitchen, upload their own recipes, and
swap them with the community of people who love to
cook and bake. So it's not just baking, it's cooking,
it's grilling. People make you know, homemade pet food.

Speaker 13 (01:31:12):
I mean there's oh my gosh, my kid was just
talking about that yesterday. Okay, that actually happens, yes all
the time. He was like, Dad, we should start a
YouTube page where we prepare pet food.

Speaker 2 (01:31:22):
I was like, what are you talking about? And I'm
not going to start and I don't care. No, I
barely want to pet Well, people.

Speaker 10 (01:31:29):
Want to share their recipes.

Speaker 12 (01:31:31):
Recipes are all different types of recipes, and they come
from all different places. Grandma, mom, you know, your favorite friend,
you go you know, you go out and meet a
friend and you're like, this recipe is amazing. You read
a cookbook and you're like, wow, this is fantastic. And
in two thousand and six when we launched, there really
wasn't anything that connected home cooks in real time. A
lot of things were blogs or forum posts, and also

(01:31:54):
general social networking sites like MySpace, where it was like
so big people would be like, how.

Speaker 3 (01:31:59):
Do I find them?

Speaker 12 (01:31:59):
People are into what I'm into, And so we launched
bake Space and over the years we've done a lot
of big innovations. You know, we launched a cookbook platform,
We made profiles so that people can highlight their recipes.
We also allowed them to sell their own cookbooks. And
as I was looking at AI and thinking about how
home cooks actually cook, most of what you see right

(01:32:22):
now are recipe generators where it's like they let you,
you know, select chicken and you know, coffee and whatever,
and it's like, let's see what it's gonna make coffee chicken,
I don't know, hey, maybe, and then it spits out
something and you're like, well, I need to make a modification,
and you're like, oh no, it only lets me make
three recipes a month.

Speaker 10 (01:32:42):
And you're like, well, this kind of sucks.

Speaker 12 (01:32:44):
So I actually looked at We've had, you know, many
years of working with home cooks directly, and I'm like,
how are home cooks actually cooking? They're making modifications, they're
asking cooking questions. They have a guest who's coming over,
who's gluten free, and they're like, well, I want to
make my recipe, but then how do I convert it?

Speaker 10 (01:33:03):
Yeah, all Bobo's going to be sad. But then, but
you know, also with recipes.

Speaker 2 (01:33:10):
I'm just kidding. I don't mind the gluten free. I
I like all the things. I mean, here's what we
were joking.

Speaker 1 (01:33:15):
We had a dinner party and legitimately, like you're literally
asking everyone like, what's your deal?

Speaker 2 (01:33:21):
What's your deal? By the end of the night, we
were drinking water.

Speaker 8 (01:33:24):
That was it.

Speaker 2 (01:33:24):
It's the only thing we could all have. Yeah, anyway,
that's sad.

Speaker 10 (01:33:28):
Well, you should come to one of my parties. I will,
I will, I will treat you right.

Speaker 12 (01:33:33):
But a lot of people, you know, when they're making recipes,
you know, they might go online and see like, oh,
for an egg substitute, I can use apple sauce, but
it's like, well, how much for that recipe? So when
we started thinking about AI and this like smart kitchen,
we started realizing that if we can empower home cooks
to be able to go I have a question I

(01:33:54):
have I want to make this recipe that just came
to me. Or I have a great recipe for my grandmother,
but I don't cook with lard, Like how can I
be closer to her and make this recipe?

Speaker 1 (01:34:04):
You know?

Speaker 12 (01:34:05):
So that's why we launched bake bot, and bakedot is
available on bakespace dot com. It's totally free. It's in
a couple of different places on the site. It's on
every page as a pop up chat where you can
just like ask your question, have it create a quick recipe.
It's great for emergencies when you're like cooking and you accidentally,
you know, you forget that the word divided is next

(01:34:26):
to an ingredient and you're like, oh no, I just
put the entire amount of salt in, Like what do
I do? Do I have to change my baking or
my cooking And that's that's a great place to use that.
But then we also have a whole suite of tools
that allow you to upload recipes and allow you to
really dive deep into recipe development. So if I have
an idea for something, I want to make pink cupcakes

(01:34:50):
that are a Taylor Swift theme and that have gluten
free frosting, and it's like, how am I going to
find that on the web? Like that's what my daughter
wants for her birthday. You can put something like that
in and it will start talking to you. It'll start
making the recipe perfectly. Once you make the recipe, it'll
also make a really cool picture as well. And then
the thing that we're really the proud of is that
you can actually it saves it as a real recipe

(01:35:11):
that's shaable, So it's not just like in a thread
somewhere on a chat gpt you know, you know where
you're never going to find it again, and you can't
really Yes, you might be able to share the thread,
but it doesn't really it doesn't. Yeah, you can exact exactly,
but but you with with your community, with your friends
and family, it's like it's hard for them to see that.

(01:35:33):
Plus with chatchept, when you ask for a recipe. It
doesn't know it's like a generalist. It doesn't know that
you're a home cook.

Speaker 2 (01:35:40):
Yeah, this is you have.

Speaker 1 (01:35:41):
You have kind of modified you know, and we have
there are many AI chatbots out there. What you've done
is you've crafted the prompts on the back end to say, like,
here's the parameters. These are people that are cooking their
home cooks. You've given it like these parameters to work with.
So it's not just chatchabt general purpose everything. Yeah, this
knows who you are kind of because it knows what

(01:36:02):
you're trying to accomplish.

Speaker 12 (01:36:03):
Well, it's like we've empowered it to tap into all
the culinary knowledge. It's not just I just need any
kind of recipe's I need something that's good.

Speaker 10 (01:36:14):
I need something that understands cooking.

Speaker 12 (01:36:15):
I need something that might be based on what my
taste and my likes are, so it can really refine
that experience.

Speaker 10 (01:36:22):
And you don't have to say, Hi, I'm a salon,
I'm a chef. I need you to create this.

Speaker 12 (01:36:27):
Because I've done a ton of searches on with recipes
on some of the general Chutgypt and other sites. Copilot
a lot of them are really good, but when you
start looking at how they actually display the recipes, sometimes
it's missing ingredients, sometimes it's missing directions. Sometimes it has
no calorie, it has no serving size, And you don't

(01:36:48):
have to do that with bake Bot. It basically you
just say I need a cupcake recipe that's vanilla and
gluten free and it nut free and whatever it is
you need, and it will give you all that information
that you would normally expect in a recipe, and then
if you make a modification, it'll actually change it to
the size that you need. Lots of times you can go, oh,
I know it is a good replacement, but I don't
know how much of that to put in. So it'll

(01:37:10):
actually look at the recipe and go, oh, you only
need a half a cup. You know, that's very difficult
in the culinary world to be able to just look
at an ingredient.

Speaker 1 (01:37:17):
And go, what do I need to re sure that
we tested this with a so we did a segment
for TV that will air Monday on KTLA if you're
in the LA area. But we took a handwritten recipe
that was actually I didn't realize incomplete, like I only
had the ingredients they didn't have.

Speaker 10 (01:37:34):
The directions, and I was like, what am I supposed
to do with this? And I was like a big
bot thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:37:38):
It was for a rhubarb pie. And so it was
actually like Grandma McClellan's or something.

Speaker 3 (01:37:42):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:37:42):
I got it from my sister in law. I don't
know where she got it, but we took that. We
put it into baked Bot. It came up with the
actual directions for the pie, but it also we said
we wanted to make it vegan, just to kind of
test it out a little bit, and it substituted apple
sauce I think for the eggs right, and we made
it tasted great.

Speaker 6 (01:38:00):
It was good.

Speaker 10 (01:38:01):
I'd never had rhubarb before.

Speaker 1 (01:38:03):
And so I guess my question is a couple of
minutes remaining here, what impact do you think these are
going to have?

Speaker 4 (01:38:10):
You know?

Speaker 1 (01:38:11):
Like, who should use these tools?

Speaker 4 (01:38:13):
You know what?

Speaker 12 (01:38:14):
People who want to feel empowered in the kitchen, people
who you know. I can't tell you how many times
I've looked online at a recipe and I'm like, this
recipe looks amazing, but I don't have these ingredients, Like
what else can I put in place of those ingredients.
If I'm in the kitchen and I have a problem
or I don't know what to make, or I'm trying

(01:38:35):
to figure out I have ingredients and I want to
make something at home, and I want to kind of
like take my pantry and be like, I need to
get rid of this food before it spoils. Those are
the type of people I think would really benefit. When
I think of bake bot, I think of it as
imagine if you were in the kitchen and your best
friend was in the kitchen with you, and a professional

(01:38:55):
chef and your grandma, and they all were available twenty
four to seven to basically give you every culinary answer,
every recipe you know, and to give you confidence so
that you know that when you go into the kitchen,
like even if you don't have three of the ingredients,
you can still make the recipe and it's still it's
gonna be pretty darn good. So that that's the kind

(01:39:17):
of community. And it's also built upon a community too.
It's not just like you know, it's it's like a
generator where it's like going somewhere and then you don't
know where it's going.

Speaker 10 (01:39:26):
It's actually built on bakespace dot com so such.

Speaker 1 (01:39:29):
A change from the days when you wouldn't have an
ingredient you asked your neighbor, you know, hey, can I
get a cup of sugar or you know whatever.

Speaker 12 (01:39:34):
Many times I've been on pinterrest and I'm like, I
have to go back to another page and I'm like ah,
And that actually gave us the idea because people were
leaving comments on pinchrest going you're missing an ingredient or
you're missing something, and it will actually fill in the blank.
Like when you're on the chat bot, you can say
I love this recipe, it's chocolate, how can I make
it vanilla?

Speaker 10 (01:39:52):
And it will make it for you. In the chat
it will change it for you.

Speaker 12 (01:39:56):
And if you're logged into bake space, you can just
say save and it'll save to your account.

Speaker 2 (01:40:00):
That is wild.

Speaker 1 (01:40:00):
So again, you've got bakespace dot com is the website.
Bake Bot ai is the AI version of this. You've
got chat if you just want to ask a question.
You've got a recipe maker where you can actually make
a recipe from scratch or optimize one. I'm guessing pantry magic,
which is what you were talking about. You say, look,
I've got garlic I've got green beans, I've got flour.

Speaker 2 (01:40:24):
What can I make?

Speaker 12 (01:40:24):
And it'll actually use what you have on hand. It
won't be like I have three eggs and then I'll
use one egg. It will use three eggs to make
sure that you use that up.

Speaker 3 (01:40:33):
Oh wow.

Speaker 1 (01:40:33):
And then you've got the recipe Saver, which just saves
your recipe. I'm guessing. And then recipe Uploader, which is
what we used and it's kind of fun. It also
has a little mascot, the Little Baked Bop, a little
Bakebop mascot.

Speaker 2 (01:40:44):
Right, fun stuff, all right? But bet Papie Pepie, or.

Speaker 10 (01:40:49):
We should say on it like pie Pie.

Speaker 2 (01:40:51):
Why you just change your name.

Speaker 1 (01:40:54):
Pepie? Yes, there we go. Thank you, creator of bakespace
dot com. Check it out bakespace dot com if you
want AI in the kitchen. All right, coming up, it's
the feedback your comments up next, Welcome back to rich
on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology.

(01:41:16):
The website for the show Richontech dot tv. And if
you like this show, please do not keep us a secret.
Why keep a good thing a secret? No screenshot your
audio app if you're playing the show or listening to
it on the radio and share it on your Instagram stories,
or share link to the podcast, or share a photo
of your radio tune to the show.

Speaker 2 (01:41:35):
Don't do it while you're driving.

Speaker 1 (01:41:36):
Let other people know you are listening to rich on
Tech and you enjoy it, and that way we share
the wealth, we share the knowledge of this show and
the fun of this show. I appreciate you doing that,
and I'm at rich on Tech on social media if
you want to tag me there. Lake Tahoe is going
to get America's first flying electric ferry. So this is
the Candela P twelve ferry. It's the first electric hydrofoil

(01:42:00):
ferry in the US. And I can tell you I've
already taken a ride on this thing, which is really cool,
or at least their prototype, so if you're not familiar
with the hydrofoil, it uses underwater wings to sort of
lift the boat up and have it fly above the water.
The wings are in the water, but the whole of
the boat is actually up above the water, so that
reduces drag. It makes this much more energy efficient because

(01:42:25):
it's electric, it's zero mission, it's silent, creates little to
no wake, and it's going to cut travel time in
half at Lake Tahoe in California, so just thirty minutes
from north to south shore, which could take two hours
by car in winter.

Speaker 2 (01:42:41):
So this is going to come. It looks like next year.
Twenty twenty five.

Speaker 1 (01:42:45):
I took a ride on the Candela, just their prototype boat,
up in San Francisco. I think it was two years ago,
and it was pretty cool. I mean, this thing glides
pretty fast and it just looks neat like it starts
out in the water and then as it gets to speed,
it lifts up out of the water for that efficient ride,
and it's very quiet. Let's get to the feedback. Let's

(01:43:07):
open it up with let's see Sid here. Sid writes
in Hey Rich, my wife panicked when she opened her
notes app and found nothing. Thank you for covering the
topic in the recent podcast. I did turn the sink off,
which gave the scary warning that your changes will be deleted.

Speaker 2 (01:43:22):
My wife was nervous, but I told her not to fret.

Speaker 1 (01:43:24):
I trust Rich, turn the sink back on, reboot to
the phone, and voila, all the notes came back. Thanks
as always, I'm glad it worked out for you. Christine
writes in hey, thanks, for your kind words. I'll be
listening as always this weekend. We all appreciate your expertise,
good humor, and wonderfully down to earth style. Oh thank you, Christine.

(01:43:45):
Appreciate that. Sean writes in I did not pay her
a thing. Sewan writes in a tip about Google photo storage.
When I upgraded from my Pixel four A to a
Pixel eight Pro, I didn't want to lose my unlimited
photo backup. I discovered that as long as photos are
uploaded from the four A, they don't count towards storage,
even if taken on another device. So I quick share

(01:44:06):
photos from my Pixel eight Pro to my old phone
and let it handle the uploads. Now I have unlimited
storage and photos backed up on two devices. Sean, I
love your hack, and yes I have an old pixel
the original one that still has the unlimited storage. When
Pixels first came out, they promised unlimited Google Photos storage,
and of course that went away, but uh, yes, if

(01:44:27):
you upload the photos from an old phone, you still
get that unlimited storage.

Speaker 2 (01:44:31):
So I had like this whole setup.

Speaker 1 (01:44:32):
I was like, I'm gonna use sync sink thing and
like sink all the pictures and then I was like ah,
I'll just pay for the storage.

Speaker 2 (01:44:37):
But glad you're doing it.

Speaker 1 (01:44:38):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:44:39):
Pat writes in.

Speaker 1 (01:44:42):
Hello as a cat owner, I paid special attention to
your segment on cat trackers. Surprisingly, you failed to mention
radio frequency trackers.

Speaker 2 (01:44:49):
That's what my cats wear. The company is called tab Cat.

Speaker 1 (01:44:53):
Light and sound from the controller indicate when you're headed
in the right direction, and the signals intensify as you
get closer.

Speaker 2 (01:44:59):
No subscription required. I use it every night.

Speaker 1 (01:45:01):
Batteries are long lasting, looks like it's a range of
five hundred feet, and it's about one hundred bucks for
the tab Cat if you want to check it out.
Agnes writes in Hey Rich, I'm definitely not a techie, however,
as I listen to you every Saturday and always learn
something new. Just heard you talking about the Aura frame
you got for your dad. My kid got one for

(01:45:23):
my husband and me a couple of years ago, and
we love it. It sits on our kitchen table. It
brings a smile to our faces, seeing memories with our
kids and grandkids, and yes, all of us add to it,
which makes it amazing to see pictures we didn't add.
I'm actually looking at my Aura as I type this email.
Thanks for your great show and information. Thank you, Agnes.
Let's see here, let's see tu. Oh my gosh, so

(01:45:46):
many of these things, okay Dale. Dale writes in I
heard your broadcast about AI generated papers. I tested a
book I wrote years before AI existed. I tested it
through plagiarism tools and surprisingly at fled as one hundred
percent AI generated. Interestingly, when I dumbed it down to
my writing to a sixth grade level, it was recognized
as human writing. It suggests college students writing sophisticated papers

(01:46:11):
could falsely be accused of cheating. Like your show, very informative.
Let's see Ryan, Oh, we got to get this in
for Ryan, Ryan from Santa Anna. It is my birthday
on episode ninety nine. Can you give me a shout
out on the radio. You've done a good job for taking.

Speaker 2 (01:46:27):
Over for Leo.

Speaker 1 (01:46:27):
Thanks Ryan, consider this your shout out. Happy birthday, buddy,
Ryan from Santa Anna. Enjoy the day. There you go,
let's see here. Oh my gosh. Jonathan writes in Jonathan
from Pittsburgh about the caller who didn't have enough storage
to update to iOS. My first thought was to suggest

(01:46:48):
enabling optimized iPhone storage for photos. By the way, I
always enjoy when you suggest cool accessories for the tech
we already own. Those little things can make a big
difference in how we enjoy our device. Yesday, Ken, Jonathan,
and yes, if you're having trouble with doing something on
your phone, optimized storage does let Apple optimize the physical

(01:47:09):
storage on your phone. Let's see here.

Speaker 2 (01:47:12):
Do we have time for one more quick one?

Speaker 1 (01:47:16):
Sam says, I hear people ask about webcams all the
time on the show. One option you haven't heard, haven't
heard you mentioned is using an old phone. I use
an older phone and a phone holder behind below my
mirror and get a decent view of my drive wondering
if there's something I need to be aware of. I
can also be used as a home security camera with
the Alfred app. I used it to monitor my hotel
room when I'm out. Okay, all right, that's going to

(01:47:39):
do it for this episode of the show. Links to
everything I mentioned on the website rich on Tech dot tv.
I'm on social media at rich on tech. Thanks so
much for listening. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving. Take the time
to relax, enjoy being with your left ones. Don't forget
to recharge with some downtime happy Thanksgiving. Thanks to everyone
who makes this show possible. I'm Rich Tomiro. Talk to
you real soon.

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