November 16, 2018 • 31 mins
Amazon announces seven days of early Black Friday deals, plus some extra perks for Prime subscribers. Rich puts the iPhone Xs camera to the test versus the Google Pixel 3 in a Time Square camera shoot. Details on Uber's new Rewards program, plus other tech news items of the week in this longer form podcast.Links:Amazon's Pre-Black Friday Dealshttps://press.aboutamazon.com/news-releases/news-release-details/amazons-seven-days-black-friday-deals-more-50-deals-day-andSpotify on Apple Watchhttps://newsroom.spotify.com/2018-11-13/spotify-for-apple-watch-helps-you-keep-time-with-the-music/?ref=producthuntSMS Database leakedhttps://techcrunch.com/2018/11/15/millions-sms-text-messages-leaked-two-factor-codes/Uber Rewards Programhttps://www.uber.com/newsroom/uber-rewards/Pixel vs iPhonehttps://ktla.com/2018/11/16/camera-comparison-iphone-xs-vs-pixel-3/https://www.blog.google/products/pixel/see-light-night-sight/Roku Wireless Speakershttps://newsroom.roku.com/press-release/press-releases-usa/roku-tv-wireless-speakers-begin-shippingSocial Media ToolsBuffer Storieshttps://blog.bufferapp.com/buffer-stories-creatorAdobe Spark Posthttps://spark.adobe.com/about/postStoryluxehttps://itunes.apple.com/us/app/storyluxe/id1324447436?mt=8Follow Rich on Social Media:Facebook: http://facebook.com/RichOnTechTwitter: http://twitter.com/richdemuroInstagram: http://instagram.com/richontech Easy ways to listen on your phone or smart speaker:"Hey Google, Play the Rich on Tech Podcast""Hey Siri, Play the Rich on Tech Podcast""Alexa, Enable the Rich on Tech Flash Briefing"
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
A camera shootout iPhone versus Pixel. Uber launches a rewards program.
Apple recalls some of its gadgets. Amazon kicks off Black
Friday early, and Spotify comes to the Apple Watch well
kind of sort of what's going on. I'm Rich Demiro.
This is Rich on Tech and this is a longer
(00:25):
version of the show where I'm gonna go over some
of the hottest topics in the tech world happening this week.
Not everything, but this is the stuff that I think
you should know about. And let's start with Amazon, because
they are kicking off Black Friday a little bit early.
Seven days of deals. They've got lots of them. They're
calling it seven Days of Black Friday Deals, and now
(00:48):
through November twenty third, which is Black Friday. Amazon is
just really trying to do a lot of stuff to
get you to shop on their website. And Amazon is
kind of a powerhouse when it comes to to Black Friday.
They do all these exclusive deals. Prime members, I feel
like have been a little bit edged out this year
because now Amazon is offering free shipping with no minimum
(01:10):
purchase to everyone, not just Prime members this holiday season,
and for Prime members they're giving free same day shipping,
so I did order something the other day. It was
actually thirty five dollars for free same day shipping, and
I saw the credit on my order where it said
it will give me that for free. So if you're
a Prime member, you're not totally out. They are giving
(01:32):
you some perks as well for that one hundred and
twenty dollars you pay for the year.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
So what are some of these.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Deals that Amazon has going on. Well, the majority of
them are on Amazon devices. Obviously, this is when Amazon
pulls out all the stops, so they are discounting these heavily.
Let me go over some of those Amazon devices. So
starting November sixteenth, if you have your eye on one
of the Fire tablets, those are anywhere from thirty to
(01:58):
fifty dollars off. So, for instance, the all new Fire
HD ten tablet is one hundred bucks versus one fifty
starting November eighteenth, the new fireTV Stick four K, which
is kind of their highest powered stick, is fifteen dollars off,
so that's only thirty five dollars. On November twenty second,
you can get the all new Echo Dot for twenty
(02:19):
four dollars. You can get the all new Echo Plus
for one hundred and nine dollars, which is forty dollars off.
You can get an Amazon Smart plug for just five
dollars with any Echo purchase, or you can get the
Kindle paper White for forty dollars off. That's eighty dollars.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Now.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
One of the things that I actually purchased is this
new fireTV recast, which is their new DVR for over
the air. I paid two hundred and twenty nine dollars
for that, and it's on sale now for one hundred
and eighty dollars. So I'm actually gonna go ahead and
call up Amazon and see if they will honor the
new price, because that's fifty dollars. That's a significant amount
(02:56):
of money. They also have some deals on TVs. Fifty
dollars off a Toshiba thirty two inch TV, the fireTV Edition,
which I really like. By the way, this has Amazon
software built into it. That's only one hundred and thirty dollars.
Or if you want a bigger TV, you can get
a Toshiba fifty inch four KTV, again a fireTV Edition,
for only three hundred dollars. And if you have Amazon's
(03:19):
assistant lurking in your house, and if you have Amazon's
assistant in your house, I will not say the name
starting November seventeenth at nine pm Pacific until November twenty.
First you can ask her what are my deals, and
Prime members will get exclusive early access to some Amazon
device deals. Moving on to Apple now, they've launched a
(03:42):
couple of repair programs to know about. The first is
for the thirteen inch non touchbar MacBook Pro. That's the
computer that I have. Apparently these have an issue with
their solid state drives, which basically might crash. And when
a solid state drive crashes, it is not pretty.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
You do lo everything.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
It's not like a regular hard drive where you might
be able to recover some of the data on it.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
So this is serious.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
If you have a MacBook Pro one of the newer
models between June twenty seventeen and June twenty eighteen, you'd
definitely want to go to this Apple website, pop in
your serial number and see if it's one of those affected.
It's only the one twenty eight gigabyte and two fifty
six gigabyte size hard drives on those devices, So if
you have one of those that sounds like your MacBook
(04:28):
Pro even remotely, you might as well just pop your
serial number in.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
I put mine in.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
I actually have a five hundred and twelve gigabyte drive,
so mine was not affected according to the Apple website,
but if it is, they will do a free repair.
And on the iPhone ten, Apple says some devices might
have touch issues because of a component inside that is failing.
The display might not respond to your touch, it might
respond only sometimes, or it might react like you're touching
(04:55):
it even though you're not. So again, this is something
that Apple will repair for, and you can put your
serial number into their website. It will tell you if
it's affected. But if you have an issue with your phone,
like a crack screen, they're not just gonna go ahead
and give you a new device. In fact, I found
this out the hard way when I brought my wife's
device in for a repair. I thought they would just
(05:16):
give me a fully refurbished model, just swap it out.
They said, oh no, we noticed there's a scratch on
her screen. We will actually repair the device inside after
you accept our terms. And I got back the same
exact phone that I dropped off there. So don't think
you're gonna get an upgrade just because Apple is repairing
your device. This I thought was pretty interesting. Uber is
(05:39):
launching a rewards program, and I am a rewards program guy.
I think a lot of people are out there. I
think American Airlines actually invented the first major airline rewards program,
and now we know that just about every product, service, website,
retailer they love these rewards programs.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Why because they get in there.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
And if you think about it, the way that all
these rewards programs work is they kind of muddle the math,
so you don't really know. Like let's say, for instance, Walgreens.
You know they've got like a thousand points if you
buy this product, and five thousand points you have to
save up to get a dollar off whatever it is.
The reality is we can't do this math in our head.
It doesn't automatically translate for the money we're spending to
(06:21):
what the rewards we get. So it's kind of this
mystical thing where we just keep spending. Like the Starbucks
rewards program. I know it's one hundred and twenty five stars.
I don't know how I get those stars, but I do.
And once I get those stars, I know I get
that free drink, which, by the way, always buy the
most expensive drink. When you get those when you redeem
those stars, because it could be, you know, the most
(06:41):
expensive drink and you.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Still get it for free.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Uber Rewards is their first program. There's four membership levels.
You've got Blue, You've got Gold, You've got Platinum and Diamond,
and basically anyone can sign up for free. And once
you're in the program, you get one point per dollar
spent on Uber Pool and Uber Eats, two points for
Uber Uber XL, select three points for Black and Black
(07:04):
SUV and then once you get five hundred points, you
go from Blue to Gold. Then at twenty five hundred
points you go to Platinum. Then at seventy five hundred
points you get to Diamond, which is a status I
want to achieve. Earning speriods are six months long, so
basically you have six months to earn the points that
you need for the next kind of jump in your status,
(07:24):
and then once you get to that status, you get
to keep it for the rest of those six months
plus the next six months. So it's basically a rolling
six month program. So let's say it's February, you reach
the Platinum tier. Six months after you know, let's say
there's four months left for those six months, you would
have four months plus another six months after that. So
(07:46):
what are the perks of this new program. Well, the
number one thing you get when you reach Gold is
flexible cancelations. So that's kind of nice because right now
Uber has really kind of made canceling a little bit
tougher because if you cancel, you meet get hit with
this little fee that you can get reversed if you
go into the app, into the help section and say
hey Uber and you explain the situation, which I've done
(08:08):
many times, they will credit that fee almost instantly. But still,
this is kind of nice because it's it's pretty much
automatic that you get those fees or you get that
flexible cancelation. You also get priority support. Now once you
get to Gold, you get price protection on a route,
which is kind of cool, so you can lock in
lower prices between your two favorite places on uber x.
(08:30):
So let's say that you commute using uber x from
your house to work. You can use that as you're
two locked in locations, and whether it is surge pricing
or not, you're going to get a pretty good price
on your route between those two places. So that's kind
of a nice thing as well. Then once you're platinum,
you get priority pickups to reduce weight times at airports,
(08:52):
which is really nice. I know a lot of people
complain about how long it takes to get picked up
at Lax with Uber. I did this one. It did
take a long time. I ended up using the taxi
line after that, and I have gone back to Uber
on several occasions. I haven't found it to be that long,
but they do. They haven't been some sort of waiting
area that takes them a while to get through in Lax.
(09:12):
Traffic in general has gotten pretty bad around that horseshoe
if you're familiar with it, so I think that's part
of the problem as well. And if you want to
get to the highest level, this is diamond. Diamond gets
dedicated phone support twenty four to seven, and my favorite part,
complementary surprise upgrades from Uber X to premium products like
Uber Black at no extra charge. And I love this.
(09:37):
You get access to the best drivers, which I always
thought was kind of a good idea. I know when
Uber first started they said that the best passengers were
linked up with the best driver. So if you were
a five star passenger, their algorithm would try to pair
you with five star drivers. I don't think that happens anymore,
just based on personal experience where I have a pretty
decent score, but I can tell you I'm getting drivers
(09:59):
that are not very good. Sometimes it feels like it's
their first stage driving. So Uber Reward starts in nine
cities immediately. Those nine cities are Miami, New Jersey, Denver, Tampa,
New York, Washington, d C, Philadelphia, Atlanta, and San Diego.
The good news is if you're not on one of
those lists, they will be rolling it out everywhere very
(10:20):
soon in the next few months. But every dollar you
spend today will actually count towards your first status when
the program launches in your city, So that's kind of fun.
You're listening to the Rich on Tech podcast. This is
where I talk technology and help you get the most
out of your gadgets. We're talking about some of the
top tech stories this week and the things that I
(10:40):
think you should know. Moving on now, Spotify finally came
out with an app for Apple Watch. So if you
update your Spotify app on your iPhone, you'll notice there
is a new companion app for your Apple Watch.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
It's not the.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
App that everyone wanted. What everyone wants right now on
the Apple Watch is Spotify to allow you to download
your songs to your watch. So good case could use.
Case scenario would be me, I went for a run
yesterday just with the Apple Watch and the AirPods. It'd
be great if I could just use my Spotify playlist
on the Apple Watch, even though I don't have a
(11:15):
cellular connection as I kind of run along without my phone.
That's kind of the dream we're looking forward to here
that is not happening.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
What you do get is the.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Ability to control your playlist, so you can actually go
on your Apple Watch, choose one of your Spotify playlists,
have it start playing. Then you can direct where you
want that to play, whether it plays on sort of
a speaker, an airplay speaker, or your phone.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
You can do that.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
You can also listen to your podcast again basically just
controlling them. And you can also heart songs, so if
you see a song that you like, or you're listening
to your phone and you hear a song that you
like on Spotify, you can just lift up your watch
and from your wrist give that song a little heart
and it will be in your library so you can
find it again easy later. The reality is we can't
(12:02):
wait for the offline listening feature to come to the
Apple Watch. And they do say that this is kind
of the first version of this whole thing, and there
will be more updates coming soon.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
I cannot wait.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
And yes, one of those updates will be the ability
to listen to your music and podcasts offline. There are
so many great rivalries in this world. If you're in
the LA area this weekend, it's a big football weekend,
it's USC versus UCLA. Of course, you've got coke versus Pepsi.
But I like to think of the biggest one of all,
Google versus Apple, and that's when it comes to these smartphones.
(12:38):
I think a bigger rivalry is really Apple versus Samsung
in years past. But here's the thing. The iPhone has
the most popular camera in the world. Right This is
the camera that is in everyone's pocket. You pull it out,
you take a picture, you're on your merry way.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
Right.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Well, along comes the pixel from Google. And this really
shakes things up because the camera uh on the Google
pixel is so good. It's almost scary how good the
camera is on the pixel. And I'm not saying the
pictures always look better in every situation. I think that
the iPhone takes some fantastic, realistic looking pictures, but the
(13:14):
pixel really shows you what you can do with a
smartphone camera with one lens with a little bit of
artificial intelligence backing it up. Now, the new iPhone ten
S has this feature called smart HDR, which combines multiple
frames for one great looking shot on the pixel. They've
been doing this for a long time. They call it
HDR plus, and they kind of back this all, like
(13:36):
I said, with a little artificial intelligence. And so they're
taking several pictures at once, mixing the best attributes of
those pictures, and in Google's case, kind of bumping it
up just a little bit with what they've learned from
their computational awareness of these things. So Google does a
really nice job of kind of really making pictures pop,
(13:57):
and they are very clear. So I took both phones
to Times Square couple weeks ago to see, you know,
how they performed side by side. I bought this little
thing on Amazon, kind of a little holder where both
phones are able to snap in side by side and
you can hold it up and take both pictures at
the same exact time. And so the first thing I
did was take some video of me walking, and look,
(14:18):
the video looked perfect on both phones. Now, I used
to think that the Pixel had better stabilization than the iPhone,
but I'll be honest, when I was walking, I couldn't
really tell the difference between these two.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
The only thing I.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
Could really tell is that the audio definitely sounded better
on the iPhone for sure. So I also think the
video on the iPhone has a much more cinematic look
than it does on the Pixel. I think the Pixel
does a great job with the video, but I think
the iPhone just has much more of a Hollywood look
to it. Then we took some portrait shots. I had
(14:50):
my brother Justin on hand with me, so we took
some portrait shots of him, and again, both of these
things look great. The Pixel kind of looked brighter and
the shot from the p pixel is slightly wider, But again,
the portrait shot on both the Pixel and the iPhone
was great. On the iPhone, you can adjust the background
after you take it, which is kind of a nice
(15:10):
feature that they recently rolled out. Then we took a
picture of Times Square, just kind of a standard picture
that you know a million people take every single day.
Pixel really nailed that picture because when you think about
times square, there's kind of a sky in the background.
You've got a bunch of bright video screens all around you,
and then you have a bunch of things in the middle, people, places, stuff,
(15:33):
and it's really tough for a camera to get all
those things in focus and to also get them to
have the right levels all at the same time. So
on the iPhone, I noticed that a lot of the
bright video screens were blown out, But on the pixel,
it really nailed this shot. And this is where the
pixel excels when it is a complicated lighting situation. When
(15:53):
it's a complicated shot, maybe not too much light, the
pixel really performs very well in those circumstances. Definitely won
that one. Now, we took some selfies. Took a selfie
with my brother, and I will say that both of
them look great. Selfies on the pixel are very very clear,
even in lower light. So I think selfies on the
(16:13):
iPhone look great mainly in bright light. Right, So if
you look at the pixel, I think the skin looks
smoother on there. That could be what they're doing on
the pixel in post processing, but they both look fantastic.
The background was also more in focus on the pixel
as well. But here's where I think the iPhone is better.
I think faces look more realistic. So the shape of
(16:35):
our head actually seems to look more realistic the shape
of our face on the iPhone. And maybe that's due
to the lens. Maybe that's due that it's a slightly
it's not as wide of a shot as it is
on the pixel. But I thought that the shape of
our faces definitely look more realistic on iPhone. But the
one thing you can't do on iPhone, and this has
always been a problem, and I've talked about this for
(16:56):
so long, but on the iPhone, the selfie lens is
so close up and everyone's taking these group self picture
selfie pictures. It's really tough to get your friends in
the shot, right. So Google now has this thing called
super Wide, so you can actually take a super wide
picture with the selfie camera because there's two lenses on
the front. One's a super wide angle, and so you
(17:18):
just pop out basically to that other lens while you're
taking a selfie, and man, you can fit a lot
of people into those pictures. It's pretty amazing. So the
pixel wins on that one, for sure. But I've seen
people struggle with trying to fit a lot of people
into their iPhone shots many many times, and unless you
have a really long arm, it's impossible. That's why the
selfie stick was invented. See the selfie stick was made
(17:40):
for the iPhone. When you talk about the Samsungs of
the world, a lot of the Android devices always had
a wider front facing camera lens, and that's why you
could always kind of get a better shot on the
selfie camera when you had a group of people. When
it's just one person, I actually think the iPhone looks better,
but when you have a group of people definitely helps
have one of these Android cameras with the wider lens.
(18:02):
As for other pictures, just kind of standard shots, I
really thought the Pixel was going to blow away the iPhone,
but it didn't. I think they both look really really
good these days, and I think you'll be happy with
either one of them. I think slightly in more scenarios,
the Pixel is going to take clearer pictures, kind of
more vibrant pictures, but the iPhone is a very good
(18:26):
everyday shooter.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Now.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
One thing they just added to the Pixel, the Pixel
three and some other pixels as well. Is this feature
called night Sight, and I just got it on my
device today, and so I took a picture on the
rooftop of our garage and I wanted to see kind
of what it looked like, right, what it looked like
in almost near darkness. It was the city scape skyline
of Los Angeles. So I will tell you the iPhone
(18:49):
did a nice job right in basically near darkness, everything
is very clear, it's just not as bright. So when
you look at the one that was taken on the pixel,
it is very bright. And what the pixels do? They
have a whole blog post about this, but they're basically
making you hold the camera still for a little bit longer.
And this will take a bunch of different pictures, it'll
(19:10):
take a bunch of different data in and it is
then mixing all that data and capturing all that light
to sort of minimize noise. Let's see, before you press
the shutter button, nightsite measures your natural handshake. Oh, that's interesting,
as well as how much motion is in the scene.
If pixel is stable and the scene is still, night
Site will spend more time capturing light to minimize noise.
(19:32):
If there's more movement. Night Sight will use shorter exposure,
capturing less light to minimize blur. Anyway, your pictures are
gonna look fantastic if you're using that night site. But again,
it's not real life. Like what I saw in real
life looked different than what the pixel captured. It was
much brighter, much more vibrant. So and when it compared
to the iPhone, the iPhone was kind of darker than
(19:53):
what my eye saw. So I think the perfect picture
is somewhere in the middle. You guys know, I'm always
talking about two factor authentication. This is something that you
must absolutely, one hundred percent have turned on for all
of your accounts at this point. If you are still
just logging in with a password and a username, you
must stop because you need this extra layer of authentication.
(20:16):
And what it does is when you log into any
one of your accounts, you'll get a text to your
phone with a special code. You have to enter that
code before the login is approved and proceeds. So the
idea here is that if a bad person has access
to your account, they somehow got your password, they go
to log into your Google account. Google says, huh, that's weird.
(20:36):
This doesn't seem to be coming from the user's normal
computer or the normal location that user is in. We
send this code. So they send a text to the
phone of the user, and the user gets the text,
but the bad guy doesn't get it, and so the
bad guy just sits there waiting for this to go through.
It doesn't happen because that text is not entered. So
(20:58):
again it's two layers of authentic. It's called two factor authentication.
Almost all of the major apps and websites support it.
Definitely turn it on. But here's the problem. We now
have the issue with two factor authentication, and according to
tech Crunch, they found a major security lapse with a
massive database containing tens of millions of text messages, including
(21:21):
these two factor authentication codes. The server was from a
company in San Diego. It wasn't protected with a password,
and it's Voxox. I think it is the name of
the company. But basically they were able to kind of
go through this database and see a whole bunch of stuff,
including all these short codes that people had requested. And
(21:44):
the idea here is that if someone had access to
this database and was getting those codes in real time,
they could intercept these logins and use those codes, which
is very dangerous. It sounds very scary. Now, the reality is,
I don't think that anyone got these codes. They could have.
And the other reality is that these codes are only
(22:06):
good for a short period of time and they're only
one time use. So when you get that code to
your phone, unless it's intercepted almost instantly by a breach
like this, someone would be able to use it, but
not the second time. So it only works one time
now for this reason, and I think we're going to
start hearing more about apps like this. You probably want
(22:26):
to start using and I know, another layer of protection,
another layer of complication. But there are apps out there
that actually let you generate these codes right on the app.
And if you've ever worked at a company that requires
one of these little they have these little keyfobs basically
that just set there and generate a different code every
(22:47):
twenty five thirty seconds, and you needed that code to
log in each Rate is a company that used to
give this out to some of their banking clients. Maybe
they still do, but now there are apps that can
do the same functionality on your So one of them
that's very popular is called authi au THHY And once
you authorize that it will generate all those codes on
(23:08):
your device, so they're not texted to you. You actually
go into this app. It's secure. You see the code
and you can use it, and the code changes every
couple of seconds. The other popular one is called Google Authenticator,
and Microsoft has an authenticator app. There's several of them
out there, but you basically link them up to your account.
The danger in all this versus the text message is
(23:30):
that if you somehow lose your log into that app,
it is kind of a pain to reset up all
those authentications because you have linked that app to your account,
and the accounts don't necessarily like when you get rid
of that because they see that as a potential security
flaw so or a security hole. Anyway, check them out
(23:51):
and definitely turn on the two factor authentication for sure.
There's so much good stuff happening. I got a demo
of these the Roku TV wireless speakers, went to Roku's
one of their satellite offices, I guess it was in
Santa Monica. They gave me a little demo of these things,
and I thought these were such a great idea. So
these are wireless speakers that Roku has come out with
(24:14):
and they're plug and play, so you literally just plug
them in behind your TV, or you know, I guess,
I guess you would plug them in on the sides
of your couch or maybe on the sides your TV.
Either way, whatever your setup is, if you want to
use them as in the front or on the back, whatever.
But the reality is they're usually two hundred dollars. Right now,
they're one hundred and fifty bucks from November sixteenth through
(24:36):
Cyber Monday November twenty sixth. So my advice, if you
have a Roku TV, think about getting these because they
will They will make your sound experience from that TV
so much better. And even the best TVs these days
still don't have good speakers. Think about it. A TV
is like ninety nine percent screen. The speakers aren't afterthought, right,
(24:57):
so you're not gonna get good sound quality. Personally, I
use Sonos and I've got the sons bar and I've
got the two speakers behind me on the either side
of my couch. That's actually a recent thing I set up.
It just came to me. I was like, wait, can
I use surround sound with Sonos? Sure enough, you can,
and it's just fantastic. You hear the little nuances of
the surround sound behind you, everything just sounds better. So
(25:19):
if you have a Roku TV, this is a way
to get that without setting things up, and the sonas
was pretty darn easy. It's also plug and play. But
if you're familiar with the concept of a standard surround
sound system, I have never ever recommended one of those
because they're so complicated. Who wants to run wires from
their TV all the way to the back of their
couch unless you are an expert in home wiring. I
(25:43):
don't even know how you get those wires there. It's
always been such a pain, not a clean setup, not easy.
This is super easy. So once it's paired, all the
audio from your TV is going through these wireless speakers.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
But here's the catch.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
This is not something that you can add to a
Roku box. And that was my first instinct when I
heard about these. I thought, oh my gosh, this is
such a great thing for all the Roku users out there,
and there are a lot of them, right not so
you have to have one of these Roku TVs, and
a lot of people do. Believe me, it's a very
popular device. But this is something that you should look
(26:18):
into if you have a Roku TV. I hope Roku
is somehow able to figure out how to do this
for all the Roku users out there, because this extra
speaker system is just so much nicer to have.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
It really does make life better.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
And finally, if you are a content creator, I know
everyone's trying to up their game on Instagram and on
Facebook and all these different Basically Instagram is where it's
at these days. But a app that I use called Buffer,
which is really handy. I've been using this thing for
several years now, but it helps you schedule your tweets,
it helps you tweet out using an app, It helps
(26:53):
you just do social media in.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
A little bit of a better way.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
But they always come out with some cool tools to
help you accomplish these things. Now they have this new
Instagram Stories creator.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
So if you're.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
Creating stories for Instagram for your job, for you know,
if you're in social media, or maybe just personally and
you want to kind of up your game, maybe you're
an influencer, or you know, it's just just for personal
use as well and you just want to make your
Instagram stories look better. Yes, there's a lot of tools
and apps and things that can help you do this,
but this is right online. It's a web tool again.
(27:27):
It's called stories Creator from Buffer and it helps you
create these little graphics very quickly. And they say they
wanted to focus on the foundation of a good story,
which are simple elements that keep your attention, which is
basically graphics, text, and a background image or color. So
you can basically choose kind of a template that they have.
(27:48):
You can add your picture, you can add you know,
your background image, like I said, some graphics, some text,
and then you can download them and share them to Instagram.
They have over twenty five different fonts, alignments. You can
even add a background highlight to make it stand out.
You could even use PNG, which is cool because PNG
(28:11):
a lot of times you can't really do that from
the iPhone, but you can do it from.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
This Story's Creator.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
And it also has an overlight which is really cool.
So this is my favorite part. It actually shows you
what is blocked by all the sort of user interface
elements on an Instagram story, which is you know, where
you can send a message, where your little profile is
in the upper left hand corner. All that good stuff
is shown on screen, so you can make sure that
(28:37):
none of your elements are blocked on these stories. So
all you have to do is create these things and
you can download and you know, air drop them to
your phone or however you get them to your phone,
email them to yourself, and then you can post them
to Instagram Stories. Now, this is a very simple tool.
I've kind of tried it out. It wasn't exactly working
properly yesterday for me when I first tried it. That
was probably because it was the first day. But I
(28:58):
do think that these kind of things are good to
know about. So again the Buffer Stories creator, and also
check out the Buffer app as well. It's a really
handy tool for scheduling tweets and things like that. I've
used it to kind of space out some of my
tweets since I don't want to bombarde you guys with everything,
but I know I don't want to forget to tweet something,
so I'll just kind of put them in my queue
(29:19):
and remember to tweet them later sometimes.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
And the other thing.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
If you want to really up your game when it
comes to Instagram and social media in general, there is
a fantastic, fantastic app called spark Post and this is
from Adobe, Adobe spark Post is the king of social
media apps when it comes to designing beautiful graphics, beautiful stories,
(29:43):
beautiful whatever.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
You can create it.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
You might spend a lot of time doing it, but
it will help you do it, and it is free,
but you do have to sign up for an account
through Adobe to make it happen. I've definitely used that
on occasion. I think that many times it's easier for
me to just kind of post a story organically and
use the tools that are built into Instagram, because sometimes
it just gets a little bit overwhelming to try to
(30:06):
create this amazing graphic that looks solely so overproduced, and
people don't necessarily care, especially for what I'm posting. I
think if you worked at a business or a brand,
maybe people would care more. But for me, I'm just
trying to get my stories out that I work on
in various ways, and it doesn't need to be super
super duper pretty. But again, I've used this in the past,
(30:27):
and it's called Adobe spark Post. The other thing that
I've been looking at with Instagram is this new app
called story locks. Well it's new to me, but this
actually gives you some templates for your stories very very simple,
but they do give you some templates that you can
add some pictures in make them look a little bit
better than what Instagram gives you. And finally, the other
(30:47):
Instagram tool that I've used in the past, and I'm
not a big hashtag person, I probably should be for
discoverability of my posts, but the one that I like
is called lee Tags Lee Tags. So again, if you're
doing any sort of social media for yourself, your company,
a business, a product, a brand, these are some of
the tools that you can use to kind of up
(31:09):
your game. All right, Thanks so much for listening to
the podcast. If you want more information on anything I
talked about here, you can go to my website richontech
dot tv, or you can check the show notes. Thank
you so much for listening. Hope you enjoyed this and
have a fantastic day, night, weekend, morning, wherever you are,
whatever you're doing however you're listening, Thanks so much.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
I'm rich Demiro. I'll talk to you real soon.
A camera shootout iPhone versus Pixel. Uber launches a rewards program.
Apple recalls some of its gadgets. Amazon kicks off Black
Friday early, and Spotify comes to the Apple Watch well
kind of sort of what's going on. I'm Rich Demiro.
This is Rich on Tech and this is a longer
(00:25):
version of the show where I'm gonna go over some
of the hottest topics in the tech world happening this week.
Not everything, but this is the stuff that I think
you should know about. And let's start with Amazon, because
they are kicking off Black Friday a little bit early.
Seven days of deals. They've got lots of them. They're
calling it seven Days of Black Friday Deals, and now
(00:48):
through November twenty third, which is Black Friday. Amazon is
just really trying to do a lot of stuff to
get you to shop on their website. And Amazon is
kind of a powerhouse when it comes to to Black Friday.
They do all these exclusive deals. Prime members, I feel
like have been a little bit edged out this year
because now Amazon is offering free shipping with no minimum
(01:10):
purchase to everyone, not just Prime members this holiday season,
and for Prime members they're giving free same day shipping,
so I did order something the other day. It was
actually thirty five dollars for free same day shipping, and
I saw the credit on my order where it said
it will give me that for free. So if you're
a Prime member, you're not totally out. They are giving
(01:32):
you some perks as well for that one hundred and
twenty dollars you pay for the year.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
So what are some of these.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Deals that Amazon has going on. Well, the majority of
them are on Amazon devices. Obviously, this is when Amazon
pulls out all the stops, so they are discounting these heavily.
Let me go over some of those Amazon devices. So
starting November sixteenth, if you have your eye on one
of the Fire tablets, those are anywhere from thirty to
(01:58):
fifty dollars off. So, for instance, the all new Fire
HD ten tablet is one hundred bucks versus one fifty
starting November eighteenth, the new fireTV Stick four K, which
is kind of their highest powered stick, is fifteen dollars off,
so that's only thirty five dollars. On November twenty second,
you can get the all new Echo Dot for twenty
(02:19):
four dollars. You can get the all new Echo Plus
for one hundred and nine dollars, which is forty dollars off.
You can get an Amazon Smart plug for just five
dollars with any Echo purchase, or you can get the
Kindle paper White for forty dollars off. That's eighty dollars.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Now.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
One of the things that I actually purchased is this
new fireTV recast, which is their new DVR for over
the air. I paid two hundred and twenty nine dollars
for that, and it's on sale now for one hundred
and eighty dollars. So I'm actually gonna go ahead and
call up Amazon and see if they will honor the
new price, because that's fifty dollars. That's a significant amount
(02:56):
of money. They also have some deals on TVs. Fifty
dollars off a Toshiba thirty two inch TV, the fireTV Edition,
which I really like. By the way, this has Amazon
software built into it. That's only one hundred and thirty dollars.
Or if you want a bigger TV, you can get
a Toshiba fifty inch four KTV, again a fireTV Edition,
for only three hundred dollars. And if you have Amazon's
(03:19):
assistant lurking in your house, and if you have Amazon's
assistant in your house, I will not say the name
starting November seventeenth at nine pm Pacific until November twenty.
First you can ask her what are my deals, and
Prime members will get exclusive early access to some Amazon
device deals. Moving on to Apple now, they've launched a
(03:42):
couple of repair programs to know about. The first is
for the thirteen inch non touchbar MacBook Pro. That's the
computer that I have. Apparently these have an issue with
their solid state drives, which basically might crash. And when
a solid state drive crashes, it is not pretty.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
You do lo everything.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
It's not like a regular hard drive where you might
be able to recover some of the data on it.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
So this is serious.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
If you have a MacBook Pro one of the newer
models between June twenty seventeen and June twenty eighteen, you'd
definitely want to go to this Apple website, pop in
your serial number and see if it's one of those affected.
It's only the one twenty eight gigabyte and two fifty
six gigabyte size hard drives on those devices, So if
you have one of those that sounds like your MacBook
(04:28):
Pro even remotely, you might as well just pop your
serial number in.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
I put mine in.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
I actually have a five hundred and twelve gigabyte drive,
so mine was not affected according to the Apple website,
but if it is, they will do a free repair.
And on the iPhone ten, Apple says some devices might
have touch issues because of a component inside that is failing.
The display might not respond to your touch, it might
respond only sometimes, or it might react like you're touching
(04:55):
it even though you're not. So again, this is something
that Apple will repair for, and you can put your
serial number into their website. It will tell you if
it's affected. But if you have an issue with your phone,
like a crack screen, they're not just gonna go ahead
and give you a new device. In fact, I found
this out the hard way when I brought my wife's
device in for a repair. I thought they would just
(05:16):
give me a fully refurbished model, just swap it out.
They said, oh no, we noticed there's a scratch on
her screen. We will actually repair the device inside after
you accept our terms. And I got back the same
exact phone that I dropped off there. So don't think
you're gonna get an upgrade just because Apple is repairing
your device. This I thought was pretty interesting. Uber is
(05:39):
launching a rewards program, and I am a rewards program guy.
I think a lot of people are out there. I
think American Airlines actually invented the first major airline rewards program,
and now we know that just about every product, service, website,
retailer they love these rewards programs.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Why because they get in there.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
And if you think about it, the way that all
these rewards programs work is they kind of muddle the math,
so you don't really know. Like let's say, for instance, Walgreens.
You know they've got like a thousand points if you
buy this product, and five thousand points you have to
save up to get a dollar off whatever it is.
The reality is we can't do this math in our head.
It doesn't automatically translate for the money we're spending to
(06:21):
what the rewards we get. So it's kind of this
mystical thing where we just keep spending. Like the Starbucks
rewards program. I know it's one hundred and twenty five stars.
I don't know how I get those stars, but I do.
And once I get those stars, I know I get
that free drink, which, by the way, always buy the
most expensive drink. When you get those when you redeem
those stars, because it could be, you know, the most
(06:41):
expensive drink and you.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Still get it for free.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Uber Rewards is their first program. There's four membership levels.
You've got Blue, You've got Gold, You've got Platinum and Diamond,
and basically anyone can sign up for free. And once
you're in the program, you get one point per dollar
spent on Uber Pool and Uber Eats, two points for
Uber Uber XL, select three points for Black and Black
(07:04):
SUV and then once you get five hundred points, you
go from Blue to Gold. Then at twenty five hundred
points you go to Platinum. Then at seventy five hundred
points you get to Diamond, which is a status I
want to achieve. Earning speriods are six months long, so
basically you have six months to earn the points that
you need for the next kind of jump in your status,
(07:24):
and then once you get to that status, you get
to keep it for the rest of those six months
plus the next six months. So it's basically a rolling
six month program. So let's say it's February, you reach
the Platinum tier. Six months after you know, let's say
there's four months left for those six months, you would
have four months plus another six months after that. So
(07:46):
what are the perks of this new program. Well, the
number one thing you get when you reach Gold is
flexible cancelations. So that's kind of nice because right now
Uber has really kind of made canceling a little bit
tougher because if you cancel, you meet get hit with
this little fee that you can get reversed if you
go into the app, into the help section and say
hey Uber and you explain the situation, which I've done
(08:08):
many times, they will credit that fee almost instantly. But still,
this is kind of nice because it's it's pretty much
automatic that you get those fees or you get that
flexible cancelation. You also get priority support. Now once you
get to Gold, you get price protection on a route,
which is kind of cool, so you can lock in
lower prices between your two favorite places on uber x.
(08:30):
So let's say that you commute using uber x from
your house to work. You can use that as you're
two locked in locations, and whether it is surge pricing
or not, you're going to get a pretty good price
on your route between those two places. So that's kind
of a nice thing as well. Then once you're platinum,
you get priority pickups to reduce weight times at airports,
(08:52):
which is really nice. I know a lot of people
complain about how long it takes to get picked up
at Lax with Uber. I did this one. It did
take a long time. I ended up using the taxi
line after that, and I have gone back to Uber
on several occasions. I haven't found it to be that long,
but they do. They haven't been some sort of waiting
area that takes them a while to get through in Lax.
(09:12):
Traffic in general has gotten pretty bad around that horseshoe
if you're familiar with it, so I think that's part
of the problem as well. And if you want to
get to the highest level, this is diamond. Diamond gets
dedicated phone support twenty four to seven, and my favorite part,
complementary surprise upgrades from Uber X to premium products like
Uber Black at no extra charge. And I love this.
(09:37):
You get access to the best drivers, which I always
thought was kind of a good idea. I know when
Uber first started they said that the best passengers were
linked up with the best driver. So if you were
a five star passenger, their algorithm would try to pair
you with five star drivers. I don't think that happens anymore,
just based on personal experience where I have a pretty
decent score, but I can tell you I'm getting drivers
(09:59):
that are not very good. Sometimes it feels like it's
their first stage driving. So Uber Reward starts in nine
cities immediately. Those nine cities are Miami, New Jersey, Denver, Tampa,
New York, Washington, d C, Philadelphia, Atlanta, and San Diego.
The good news is if you're not on one of
those lists, they will be rolling it out everywhere very
(10:20):
soon in the next few months. But every dollar you
spend today will actually count towards your first status when
the program launches in your city, So that's kind of fun.
You're listening to the Rich on Tech podcast. This is
where I talk technology and help you get the most
out of your gadgets. We're talking about some of the
top tech stories this week and the things that I
(10:40):
think you should know. Moving on now, Spotify finally came
out with an app for Apple Watch. So if you
update your Spotify app on your iPhone, you'll notice there
is a new companion app for your Apple Watch.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
It's not the.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
App that everyone wanted. What everyone wants right now on
the Apple Watch is Spotify to allow you to download
your songs to your watch. So good case could use.
Case scenario would be me, I went for a run
yesterday just with the Apple Watch and the AirPods. It'd
be great if I could just use my Spotify playlist
on the Apple Watch, even though I don't have a
(11:15):
cellular connection as I kind of run along without my phone.
That's kind of the dream we're looking forward to here
that is not happening.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
What you do get is the.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Ability to control your playlist, so you can actually go
on your Apple Watch, choose one of your Spotify playlists,
have it start playing. Then you can direct where you
want that to play, whether it plays on sort of
a speaker, an airplay speaker, or your phone.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
You can do that.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
You can also listen to your podcast again basically just
controlling them. And you can also heart songs, so if
you see a song that you like, or you're listening
to your phone and you hear a song that you
like on Spotify, you can just lift up your watch
and from your wrist give that song a little heart
and it will be in your library so you can
find it again easy later. The reality is we can't
(12:02):
wait for the offline listening feature to come to the
Apple Watch. And they do say that this is kind
of the first version of this whole thing, and there
will be more updates coming soon.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
I cannot wait.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
And yes, one of those updates will be the ability
to listen to your music and podcasts offline. There are
so many great rivalries in this world. If you're in
the LA area this weekend, it's a big football weekend,
it's USC versus UCLA. Of course, you've got coke versus Pepsi.
But I like to think of the biggest one of all,
Google versus Apple, and that's when it comes to these smartphones.
(12:38):
I think a bigger rivalry is really Apple versus Samsung
in years past. But here's the thing. The iPhone has
the most popular camera in the world. Right This is
the camera that is in everyone's pocket. You pull it out,
you take a picture, you're on your merry way.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
Right.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Well, along comes the pixel from Google. And this really
shakes things up because the camera uh on the Google
pixel is so good. It's almost scary how good the
camera is on the pixel. And I'm not saying the
pictures always look better in every situation. I think that
the iPhone takes some fantastic, realistic looking pictures, but the
(13:14):
pixel really shows you what you can do with a
smartphone camera with one lens with a little bit of
artificial intelligence backing it up. Now, the new iPhone ten
S has this feature called smart HDR, which combines multiple
frames for one great looking shot on the pixel. They've
been doing this for a long time. They call it
HDR plus, and they kind of back this all, like
(13:36):
I said, with a little artificial intelligence. And so they're
taking several pictures at once, mixing the best attributes of
those pictures, and in Google's case, kind of bumping it
up just a little bit with what they've learned from
their computational awareness of these things. So Google does a
really nice job of kind of really making pictures pop,
(13:57):
and they are very clear. So I took both phones
to Times Square couple weeks ago to see, you know,
how they performed side by side. I bought this little
thing on Amazon, kind of a little holder where both
phones are able to snap in side by side and
you can hold it up and take both pictures at
the same exact time. And so the first thing I
did was take some video of me walking, and look,
(14:18):
the video looked perfect on both phones. Now, I used
to think that the Pixel had better stabilization than the iPhone,
but I'll be honest, when I was walking, I couldn't
really tell the difference between these two.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
The only thing I.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
Could really tell is that the audio definitely sounded better
on the iPhone for sure. So I also think the
video on the iPhone has a much more cinematic look
than it does on the Pixel. I think the Pixel
does a great job with the video, but I think
the iPhone just has much more of a Hollywood look
to it. Then we took some portrait shots. I had
(14:50):
my brother Justin on hand with me, so we took
some portrait shots of him, and again, both of these
things look great. The Pixel kind of looked brighter and
the shot from the p pixel is slightly wider, But again,
the portrait shot on both the Pixel and the iPhone
was great. On the iPhone, you can adjust the background
after you take it, which is kind of a nice
(15:10):
feature that they recently rolled out. Then we took a
picture of Times Square, just kind of a standard picture
that you know a million people take every single day.
Pixel really nailed that picture because when you think about
times square, there's kind of a sky in the background.
You've got a bunch of bright video screens all around you,
and then you have a bunch of things in the middle, people, places, stuff,
(15:33):
and it's really tough for a camera to get all
those things in focus and to also get them to
have the right levels all at the same time. So
on the iPhone, I noticed that a lot of the
bright video screens were blown out, But on the pixel,
it really nailed this shot. And this is where the
pixel excels when it is a complicated lighting situation. When
(15:53):
it's a complicated shot, maybe not too much light, the
pixel really performs very well in those circumstances. Definitely won
that one. Now, we took some selfies. Took a selfie
with my brother, and I will say that both of
them look great. Selfies on the pixel are very very clear,
even in lower light. So I think selfies on the
(16:13):
iPhone look great mainly in bright light. Right, So if
you look at the pixel, I think the skin looks
smoother on there. That could be what they're doing on
the pixel in post processing, but they both look fantastic.
The background was also more in focus on the pixel
as well. But here's where I think the iPhone is better.
I think faces look more realistic. So the shape of
(16:35):
our head actually seems to look more realistic the shape
of our face on the iPhone. And maybe that's due
to the lens. Maybe that's due that it's a slightly
it's not as wide of a shot as it is
on the pixel. But I thought that the shape of
our faces definitely look more realistic on iPhone. But the
one thing you can't do on iPhone, and this has
always been a problem, and I've talked about this for
(16:56):
so long, but on the iPhone, the selfie lens is
so close up and everyone's taking these group self picture
selfie pictures. It's really tough to get your friends in
the shot, right. So Google now has this thing called
super Wide, so you can actually take a super wide
picture with the selfie camera because there's two lenses on
the front. One's a super wide angle, and so you
(17:18):
just pop out basically to that other lens while you're
taking a selfie, and man, you can fit a lot
of people into those pictures. It's pretty amazing. So the
pixel wins on that one, for sure. But I've seen
people struggle with trying to fit a lot of people
into their iPhone shots many many times, and unless you
have a really long arm, it's impossible. That's why the
selfie stick was invented. See the selfie stick was made
(17:40):
for the iPhone. When you talk about the Samsungs of
the world, a lot of the Android devices always had
a wider front facing camera lens, and that's why you
could always kind of get a better shot on the
selfie camera when you had a group of people. When
it's just one person, I actually think the iPhone looks better,
but when you have a group of people definitely helps
have one of these Android cameras with the wider lens.
(18:02):
As for other pictures, just kind of standard shots, I
really thought the Pixel was going to blow away the iPhone,
but it didn't. I think they both look really really
good these days, and I think you'll be happy with
either one of them. I think slightly in more scenarios,
the Pixel is going to take clearer pictures, kind of
more vibrant pictures, but the iPhone is a very good
(18:26):
everyday shooter.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Now.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
One thing they just added to the Pixel, the Pixel
three and some other pixels as well. Is this feature
called night Sight, and I just got it on my
device today, and so I took a picture on the
rooftop of our garage and I wanted to see kind
of what it looked like, right, what it looked like
in almost near darkness. It was the city scape skyline
of Los Angeles. So I will tell you the iPhone
(18:49):
did a nice job right in basically near darkness, everything
is very clear, it's just not as bright. So when
you look at the one that was taken on the pixel,
it is very bright. And what the pixels do? They
have a whole blog post about this, but they're basically
making you hold the camera still for a little bit longer.
And this will take a bunch of different pictures, it'll
(19:10):
take a bunch of different data in and it is
then mixing all that data and capturing all that light
to sort of minimize noise. Let's see, before you press
the shutter button, nightsite measures your natural handshake. Oh, that's interesting,
as well as how much motion is in the scene.
If pixel is stable and the scene is still, night
Site will spend more time capturing light to minimize noise.
(19:32):
If there's more movement. Night Sight will use shorter exposure,
capturing less light to minimize blur. Anyway, your pictures are
gonna look fantastic if you're using that night site. But again,
it's not real life. Like what I saw in real
life looked different than what the pixel captured. It was
much brighter, much more vibrant. So and when it compared
to the iPhone, the iPhone was kind of darker than
(19:53):
what my eye saw. So I think the perfect picture
is somewhere in the middle. You guys know, I'm always
talking about two factor authentication. This is something that you
must absolutely, one hundred percent have turned on for all
of your accounts at this point. If you are still
just logging in with a password and a username, you
must stop because you need this extra layer of authentication.
(20:16):
And what it does is when you log into any
one of your accounts, you'll get a text to your
phone with a special code. You have to enter that
code before the login is approved and proceeds. So the
idea here is that if a bad person has access
to your account, they somehow got your password, they go
to log into your Google account. Google says, huh, that's weird.
(20:36):
This doesn't seem to be coming from the user's normal
computer or the normal location that user is in. We
send this code. So they send a text to the
phone of the user, and the user gets the text,
but the bad guy doesn't get it, and so the
bad guy just sits there waiting for this to go through.
It doesn't happen because that text is not entered. So
(20:58):
again it's two layers of authentic. It's called two factor authentication.
Almost all of the major apps and websites support it.
Definitely turn it on. But here's the problem. We now
have the issue with two factor authentication, and according to
tech Crunch, they found a major security lapse with a
massive database containing tens of millions of text messages, including
(21:21):
these two factor authentication codes. The server was from a
company in San Diego. It wasn't protected with a password,
and it's Voxox. I think it is the name of
the company. But basically they were able to kind of
go through this database and see a whole bunch of stuff,
including all these short codes that people had requested. And
(21:44):
the idea here is that if someone had access to
this database and was getting those codes in real time,
they could intercept these logins and use those codes, which
is very dangerous. It sounds very scary. Now, the reality is,
I don't think that anyone got these codes. They could have.
And the other reality is that these codes are only
(22:06):
good for a short period of time and they're only
one time use. So when you get that code to
your phone, unless it's intercepted almost instantly by a breach
like this, someone would be able to use it, but
not the second time. So it only works one time
now for this reason, and I think we're going to
start hearing more about apps like this. You probably want
(22:26):
to start using and I know, another layer of protection,
another layer of complication. But there are apps out there
that actually let you generate these codes right on the app.
And if you've ever worked at a company that requires
one of these little they have these little keyfobs basically
that just set there and generate a different code every
(22:47):
twenty five thirty seconds, and you needed that code to
log in each Rate is a company that used to
give this out to some of their banking clients. Maybe
they still do, but now there are apps that can
do the same functionality on your So one of them
that's very popular is called authi au THHY And once
you authorize that it will generate all those codes on
(23:08):
your device, so they're not texted to you. You actually
go into this app. It's secure. You see the code
and you can use it, and the code changes every
couple of seconds. The other popular one is called Google Authenticator,
and Microsoft has an authenticator app. There's several of them
out there, but you basically link them up to your account.
The danger in all this versus the text message is
(23:30):
that if you somehow lose your log into that app,
it is kind of a pain to reset up all
those authentications because you have linked that app to your account,
and the accounts don't necessarily like when you get rid
of that because they see that as a potential security
flaw so or a security hole. Anyway, check them out
(23:51):
and definitely turn on the two factor authentication for sure.
There's so much good stuff happening. I got a demo
of these the Roku TV wireless speakers, went to Roku's
one of their satellite offices, I guess it was in
Santa Monica. They gave me a little demo of these things,
and I thought these were such a great idea. So
these are wireless speakers that Roku has come out with
(24:14):
and they're plug and play, so you literally just plug
them in behind your TV, or you know, I guess,
I guess you would plug them in on the sides
of your couch or maybe on the sides your TV.
Either way, whatever your setup is, if you want to
use them as in the front or on the back, whatever.
But the reality is they're usually two hundred dollars. Right now,
they're one hundred and fifty bucks from November sixteenth through
(24:36):
Cyber Monday November twenty sixth. So my advice, if you
have a Roku TV, think about getting these because they
will They will make your sound experience from that TV
so much better. And even the best TVs these days
still don't have good speakers. Think about it. A TV
is like ninety nine percent screen. The speakers aren't afterthought, right,
(24:57):
so you're not gonna get good sound quality. Personally, I
use Sonos and I've got the sons bar and I've
got the two speakers behind me on the either side
of my couch. That's actually a recent thing I set up.
It just came to me. I was like, wait, can
I use surround sound with Sonos? Sure enough, you can,
and it's just fantastic. You hear the little nuances of
the surround sound behind you, everything just sounds better. So
(25:19):
if you have a Roku TV, this is a way
to get that without setting things up, and the sonas
was pretty darn easy. It's also plug and play. But
if you're familiar with the concept of a standard surround
sound system, I have never ever recommended one of those
because they're so complicated. Who wants to run wires from
their TV all the way to the back of their
couch unless you are an expert in home wiring. I
(25:43):
don't even know how you get those wires there. It's
always been such a pain, not a clean setup, not easy.
This is super easy. So once it's paired, all the
audio from your TV is going through these wireless speakers.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
But here's the catch.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
This is not something that you can add to a
Roku box. And that was my first instinct when I
heard about these. I thought, oh my gosh, this is
such a great thing for all the Roku users out there,
and there are a lot of them, right not so
you have to have one of these Roku TVs, and
a lot of people do. Believe me, it's a very
popular device. But this is something that you should look
(26:18):
into if you have a Roku TV. I hope Roku
is somehow able to figure out how to do this
for all the Roku users out there, because this extra
speaker system is just so much nicer to have.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
It really does make life better.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
And finally, if you are a content creator, I know
everyone's trying to up their game on Instagram and on
Facebook and all these different Basically Instagram is where it's
at these days. But a app that I use called Buffer,
which is really handy. I've been using this thing for
several years now, but it helps you schedule your tweets,
it helps you tweet out using an app, It helps
(26:53):
you just do social media in.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
A little bit of a better way.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
But they always come out with some cool tools to
help you accomplish these things. Now they have this new
Instagram Stories creator.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
So if you're.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
Creating stories for Instagram for your job, for you know,
if you're in social media, or maybe just personally and
you want to kind of up your game, maybe you're
an influencer, or you know, it's just just for personal
use as well and you just want to make your
Instagram stories look better. Yes, there's a lot of tools
and apps and things that can help you do this,
but this is right online. It's a web tool again.
(27:27):
It's called stories Creator from Buffer and it helps you
create these little graphics very quickly. And they say they
wanted to focus on the foundation of a good story,
which are simple elements that keep your attention, which is
basically graphics, text, and a background image or color. So
you can basically choose kind of a template that they have.
(27:48):
You can add your picture, you can add you know,
your background image, like I said, some graphics, some text,
and then you can download them and share them to Instagram.
They have over twenty five different fonts, alignments. You can
even add a background highlight to make it stand out.
You could even use PNG, which is cool because PNG
(28:11):
a lot of times you can't really do that from
the iPhone, but you can do it from.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
This Story's Creator.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
And it also has an overlight which is really cool.
So this is my favorite part. It actually shows you
what is blocked by all the sort of user interface
elements on an Instagram story, which is you know, where
you can send a message, where your little profile is
in the upper left hand corner. All that good stuff
is shown on screen, so you can make sure that
(28:37):
none of your elements are blocked on these stories. So
all you have to do is create these things and
you can download and you know, air drop them to
your phone or however you get them to your phone,
email them to yourself, and then you can post them
to Instagram Stories. Now, this is a very simple tool.
I've kind of tried it out. It wasn't exactly working
properly yesterday for me when I first tried it. That
was probably because it was the first day. But I
(28:58):
do think that these kind of things are good to
know about. So again the Buffer Stories creator, and also
check out the Buffer app as well. It's a really
handy tool for scheduling tweets and things like that. I've
used it to kind of space out some of my
tweets since I don't want to bombarde you guys with everything,
but I know I don't want to forget to tweet something,
so I'll just kind of put them in my queue
(29:19):
and remember to tweet them later sometimes.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
And the other thing.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
If you want to really up your game when it
comes to Instagram and social media in general, there is
a fantastic, fantastic app called spark Post and this is
from Adobe, Adobe spark Post is the king of social
media apps when it comes to designing beautiful graphics, beautiful stories,
(29:43):
beautiful whatever.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
You can create it.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
You might spend a lot of time doing it, but
it will help you do it, and it is free,
but you do have to sign up for an account
through Adobe to make it happen. I've definitely used that
on occasion. I think that many times it's easier for
me to just kind of post a story organically and
use the tools that are built into Instagram, because sometimes
it just gets a little bit overwhelming to try to
(30:06):
create this amazing graphic that looks solely so overproduced, and
people don't necessarily care, especially for what I'm posting. I
think if you worked at a business or a brand,
maybe people would care more. But for me, I'm just
trying to get my stories out that I work on
in various ways, and it doesn't need to be super
super duper pretty. But again, I've used this in the past,
(30:27):
and it's called Adobe spark Post. The other thing that
I've been looking at with Instagram is this new app
called story locks. Well it's new to me, but this
actually gives you some templates for your stories very very simple,
but they do give you some templates that you can
add some pictures in make them look a little bit
better than what Instagram gives you. And finally, the other
(30:47):
Instagram tool that I've used in the past, and I'm
not a big hashtag person, I probably should be for
discoverability of my posts, but the one that I like
is called lee Tags Lee Tags. So again, if you're
doing any sort of social media for yourself, your company,
a business, a product, a brand, these are some of
the tools that you can use to kind of up
(31:09):
your game. All right, Thanks so much for listening to
the podcast. If you want more information on anything I
talked about here, you can go to my website richontech
dot tv, or you can check the show notes. Thank
you so much for listening. Hope you enjoyed this and
have a fantastic day, night, weekend, morning, wherever you are,
whatever you're doing however you're listening, Thanks so much.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
I'm rich Demiro. I'll talk to you real soon.
Host
Rich DeMuro
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