July 4, 2019 • 45 mins
FaceTime’s Creepy New Eye Contact FeatureSamsung announces details for the Note 10 launch event; WhatsApp drops support for older devices; How to tell if your favorite websites and services are really down; Amazon says it keeps Alexa voice recordings forever; the app to stream local channels for free; Clip on lenses for smartphones; a review of Walmart’s $64 tablet; Faxing with a VoIP phone line; FaceTime’s creepy new AR feature in iOS 13 and a walk down Walkman memory lane.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Samsung ready to launch a new phone, and it's not
the Fold, the new app that lets you stream all
of your local channels for free. Walmart has a sixty
four dollars tablet, and my opinion of it might surprise you.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
We're gonna take a trip.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Down memory lane with the Walkman and answer your pressing
tech questions.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
What's going on. I'm Rich Demiro.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
This is Rich on Tech, the podcast where I talk
about this stuff I think you should know about happening
in the tech world. Plus, as you know, I answer
your tech questions. Producer Megan is on vacation this week,
so I will be handling the entire show solo this
time around, and I say, we just jump right into things.
(00:43):
We've got Samsung with their announcement that their next event
will be happening August seventh in New York City. They
call these Unpacked events. I got the invitation. It's happening
at the same place it happened last year. I feel
like I was just in New York shown off the
Note nine, but now we're going to see the Note ten. Well,
we think we're going to see the Note ten. They
(01:04):
don't necessarily say what they're going to unveil at these things, but.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
We're pretty sure it's the Note ten.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
The invitation was a stylust that was animated showing a
stylus kind of touching what looks to be a camera
that was centered on a white background. So this of
course made people speculate what that could mean. Is there
a centered selfie cam? Are there four cameras? Is there
a camera on the stylus?
Speaker 2 (01:28):
We don't know.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
But what we do know about the Note ten and
the Note in general, is that this is where Samsung
unveils all of their latest and greatest technology. All the
innovations happen on the Note ten or the Note and
then they trickle down into the Samsung Galaxy S line.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Now this is a little.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Bit different, and this is kind of an awkward situation
for Samsung because they've got the Galaxy Fold, which is
kind of a failure to launch. So they launched, They
tried to launch that a couple months back.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
That didn't work.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
They recalled it from reporters that they sent it out to,
and they kind of did some more work on it,
and I'm seeing reports that say they've figured out the problem.
They've made this hinge work better. They've made it so
the hinge does not impact the screen on that device,
so they're ready to relaunch it. But are they going
to do that now right before the August seventh event?
I mean, they only have four weeks to do that,
(02:19):
So this is kind of an awkward situation for Samsung.
Not sure what they're going to do or how they're
going to handle this. Maybe they'll launch both devices at
the same time at the event, so they'll tell us
what happened with the fold and explain that and apologize,
and then of course launched the Note ten as well.
But last year's Note nine was an expensive device, over
(02:42):
one thousand bucks, and I think we're going to see
that same thing happen here. But what can they add
to the Note ten to make it crazier, to make
it better? I mean, the cameras have gotten so good
on these devices. I mean, clearly there's always room for
improvement with the cameras, though, to make them even better
at full proof pictures. The screens are just phenomenal at
(03:03):
this point. Battery life, I mean, if you have a
Note you've got such a large battery in there, the
battery life isn't even an issue, so what could they
do to really make this thing better?
Speaker 2 (03:12):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Could they make the stylists better, could they make software better?
Could they make the camera lenses even crazier? So maybe
get four or five holographic screens and longer batteries. That's
what I'm saying we need on these new devices, But
who knows. So we'll see Samsung again Unpacked event happening
August seventh in New York City Barclay Center in Brooklyn.
(03:35):
And I get excited over these things, even though these
launches have not gotten The excitement of these launches has
sort of toned down over the years because people know
it's another phone. There's a lot of leaks before it
is unveiled. But I still get excited because it's still
fun to actually see the device that these companies have
been working on for a while and actually see it
in reality.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
So I'm looking forward to that one. All right.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
So let's take a quest question. This is from Nelly.
This is from Nelly on Let's see. She just emailed me.
She says, Hey, Rich, can you tell me about WhatsApp
taking out of service people with old phones? I have
a Samsung S five and this took me. I had
to do a little research on this because I didn't
(04:19):
see anything about this. I haven't heard of WhatsApp, but
I guess if you're using WhatsApp, maybe you've got a
notification or something. But here's the deal. So I did
some research and here's what I found. WhatsApp is apparently
dropping support for older phone models and anytime that you
have a headline like this and a napp like WhatsApp,
which a lot of people use. Not so much in
(04:42):
the US. I mean, if you have an international friend,
you probably use it. But in the US I messages
king when it comes to messaging, but internationally WhatsApp is very,
very strong and very prevalent. So clearly this is happening,
and it's happening. Let's see it's happening February first, twenty two,
so you have some time, but you've got the recommended
(05:04):
requirements for WhatsApp is Android four point zero, which is
super old, iOS eight plus which is super old, and
Windows Phone eight one, so WhatsApp will no longer support
phones running Android two, Windows Phone eight, iPhone three GS
and iOS six and BlackBerry OS and BlackBerry ten. So
(05:24):
the reality is especially for you, Nelly, you said, you
have a Samsung S five, You are going to be
just fine. They're not taking away support for the S
five anytime soon. I think the reality is with this
update is that they just want WhatsApp to run and
be able to do everything and can do smoothly on
a variety of phones, and some of these older phones
with the especially with the security and stuff, they're just
(05:47):
not supporting the newer features. But you're talking really old
phones here, I mean Android two, I don't even know.
I mean, when did that launch? I mean that had
to be a long long time ago. I mean I
don't even know what that was. But yeah, that's that's
a while ago. So you're gonna be just okay.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
All right. So what happened? Man?
Speaker 1 (06:07):
This was This was wild if you were following things
or tried to access social media, depending on when you
listen to this, this happened yesterday, but you know you
probably have it in recent memory. But Facebook, Instagram and
other social networks all went down, including WhatsApp and also
Facebook Messenger, and they all went down. This was on Wednesday,
(06:29):
July third. They went down for a really long time.
And I know how I figured this out. I was
trying to upload a story to Instagram and it was
from my niece, whose birthday it was, and I kept,
you know, uploading the story, and it just would not work.
I was uploading a picture and I was convinced it
was the phone I was. I was using an Android device,
and I was like, you gotta be kidding me this.
(06:49):
I can't believe this doesn't work. Watch how easy this
is on the iPhone. And I switched to my iPhone
and the same thing happens. I got an upload failed,
and I was like, okay, well, clearly it's not these things.
Then I checked my WiFi and I said, okay, well,
maybe I'm on corporate Wi Fi. Maybe that's not working.
Turn that off. Nope, still didn't load. Okay, well, maybe
Verizon's having a problem. Maybe the Verizon network's not working.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
All these things.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Until I do a quick little search on Twitter and
find out that yes, a lot of people were having
problem with Instagram and Facebook.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Again, this was early in the morning.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
You know, I'm on the early news, So I discovered
this early, and then clearly throughout the day it just
kept going and going and going. And so what did
people see? They saw blank pictures? You couldn't scroll your
likes and all that stuff wasn't being updated. Now, this
wasn't something where it was totally out one hundred percent.
Some things and some aspects still worked, and they worked intermittently,
(07:43):
but overall a lot of people had trouble accessing these
social networks. So the Next Web did a great little
article about how to know if this is happening. So
if I was smart, I would have gone right to
Facebook's Developer dashboard, which is what they recommend, And if
you want to get that, you can just google Facebook
Developer Dashboard and it gives you a status update of
(08:06):
everything that's going on.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
And the reason why they have this not.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Really for regular people, but regular people can use it. It's
for app developers. So if you have an app and
something's a little wonky with the app, you can go
to the app dashboard and see or sorry, the developer,
let's see first. You can head to Yeah, so you
can go to the developer dashboard and kind of see, hey,
what's going on here, like what's going on? Platform status
(08:30):
it's called and so Facebook platform is healthy since ten
hours ago, so clearly things were messed up, and it
gives you a history of the downtime and what happened,
and it said degraded performance across platform resolved, and so
that was the big issue there. Twitter has a developer
status board for its APIs. Then there's a website called
down Detector. You probably see this quoted in the news
(08:53):
a lot. Down Detector kind of just sees what people
are doing with various websites and if it's working. And
I guess pings the websites regularly and just figures out
if people are having problems with them. But you can
go on there and see a little line of if
people are having trouble with accessing some of these services,
and they give some of the big services Spectrum, Verizon, Comcast,
(09:14):
T Mobile, Sprint, COS, Snapchat, Google, YouTube, everything is pretty
much represented on there, so you can figure out if
it's me and not you, or if it's them and
not you.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
I should say, by the way, there's also Apple dot com.
This is a good one.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
If your I message isn't working or something's a little
crazy on your iPhone, you can go to Apple dot
com slash support slash system status and that's a good
one because it tells you what's going on with all
of your stuff on your iPhone, so system status and
so you can see if I Message is working. I
(09:49):
mean it has everything, so there's a green dot if
things are working properly. But it's everything from Apple TV
to Beats one to I Message to Siri to map
search to Maps traffic. So again, these are good little
tools to know about in case you have a problem
with something and you can actually.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
See if it's you there. Used to be I used
to use.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
This thing called like down for okay, here it is
down for everyone or just me. That's a good one.
Down for everyone or just me. And now you go
to that website and you type in something like snapchat
and then it says, is Snapchat.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Down right now? Nope, it's just you. Snapchat is up.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
So it actually checks the website for you to see
if it's down for everyone or.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
If it's just you. So if it's just you, you
know that.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
There's something wrong with your internet connection or your setup
and not the setup of the servers on their end.
Oh sorry, wrong one doing the show myself today. This
is what happens folks. All right, this message comes in
from not a David she said, mentioned on KFI this morning.
(10:57):
So you guys know, I do a segment on KFI
on twoesday morning and Wednesday morning.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
Tuesday morning, I'm on with.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
Bill Handle at eight let's see it's eight am. And
then on Wednesday I'm on with Jennifer Jones Lee at
five twenty am, right before I go on KTLA. So
I talk about, you know, all the stuff in the
news happening in the tech world there as well. It's
a lot of fun. So if you're listening to KFI,
you hear me there. I get a lot of people
that come up to me and say, oh, I hear
(11:23):
you on KFI. So a lot of people listen to that. Okay,
so not a David said, Hello, I cannot find this
on your website, but this morning you mentioned an app
that can be downloaded to watch local TV channels for free.
Would you please send me the name of that app.
The app is called low cast, and I discovered this
I saw an article in I think it was TV
(11:44):
news Check, one of the TV industry websites that I
read on a daily basis, and it just had a
small mention for this low cast dot org. But it
mentioned that you can stream your local channels and that
it launched in La. I was like, oh, that's interesting.
So I went and I checked it out, and sure
enough ktla is on there, which is really rare because
ktla is not on any of the streaming services. So
(12:05):
did a little research and found out that this operates
kind of how this other service used to operate called
hos it Areo, and this was a service that they
were They were oh gosh, I forget what the what
it was called exactly areo antenna. Yeah, areo, and so
(12:27):
what they did this is really interesting.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
So this was a company.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Back in the day that would set up like a
farm of tiny little antennas on a roof and then
stream and then take each one of the feeds from
those antennas and stream it to people and sell them
service so they can get all their local channels.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
For whatever it was, five six, seven, eight bucks a month.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Well, the cable companies and the TV companies were like,
uh uh uh, not so fast, that's not really how
this works, and so they actually shut down that company.
So now low Cast is taking a different approach. This
is a nonprofit and they're doing this as quote a
public service so that people who cut the cord and
don't have an antenna, can still watch the local channels.
(13:07):
How long is this gonna last? I don't know, but
it seems legit. The guy who's running it is a
former executive with some TV companies and cable companies, so
it seems legitimate. Will it last, I'm not sure, but
at this point it works, and it works really well.
So you can download the low cast app for fireTV,
Apple TV, the iPad, the iPhone, Android. It works across
(13:32):
pretty much everything, and you log in, you create a
sign up, They beg you and beg you and beg
you to donate five bucks a month or more to
help the service run. And after a little fifteen second
spot to help you, you know, to ask you to donate,
next thing, you know, you are watching the local channel.
So again, this works for all the local channels in LA,
(13:52):
including like the dot the dot channels which I call
like you know, like like five, dot one, four, dot two, eleven,
dot three whatever they have. Those are there as well,
and so it works. It's nice the pictures in HD.
It seems legitimate, and I mean I don't have a
use for it because I've got an antenna along with
Amazon TV, fire Recast TV, but it is a great
(14:15):
thing to have and it's really simple. So again, you
do have to sign up though, and some people said that,
you know, I was getting some feedback because I put
this video on my Instagram at rich On Tech, and
I got some feedback from folks and they were saying that, oh,
it only.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
Works for fifteen minutes and then they bug you again.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
So I don't know. I'm not watching this thing for
a long period of time. So I have no idea
how if they limit you to, say, you know, a
couple hours a week before you have to pay or donate.
But again, check it out if you want. It's low cast.
Lcast dot org is the website. If you have one
of those Amazon Echo devices, you might be wondering just
(14:52):
how long that Amazon keeps the things that you say.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
To you know who. I'm not going to say her name.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
I don't want to activate her in all of your houses.
But a congress person, let's see a Democrat Senator Chris
Coons sent a letter to Amazon asking how long voice
recordings and transcripts are kept when you talk to this device?
And guess what the answer was. They keep them forever
(15:19):
unless you delete them. So the thing is a lot
of us now that we have these microphones in our homes.
We've got these phones that are tracking us.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Everywhere we go.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
America and the world at large is sort of having
a better understanding. We're just Privacy is at the forefront now.
In Europe, they've got these crazy laws that are very
strict about privacy, and a lot of that is trickling
down into America because they're shining the light on these
tech companies over there because they have to. But then
(15:51):
Americans are saying, oh, interesting, I didn't know that was happening.
I didn't know that was going on. And so we
may not have the same types of laws here, but
people have a heightened awaywareness here because of the fact
that things are happening over there regulation wise. So we understand,
you know, we just have a better understanding over here.
So the thing about Amazon, so if you do delete
(16:13):
the recordings, the other thing is that the transcripts are
still kept, which is kind of odd. So even if
you let's say, you know, you said something to your
echo and you say, okay, I want to get that
out of the system, and you delete that using Amazon's website,
the transcript of that is still kept seemingly indefinitely, and
(16:34):
so why do they keep that, Well, they use that
for training purposes to see when you asked, you know,
your echo a certain thing, did they respond in the
right way. And so they have people that go through
these transcripts to see what you said and how the
device responded. And apparently a lot of those transcripts are
they're not anonymous, fully, but they do have some identifying
(16:58):
information on them, which again makes people a little bit weary.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
So if you do want to.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Check out your Alexa privacy settings, there's a separate website
that Amazon set up. It's called Amazon dot com Slash
Alexa Privacy Settings, And if you go to Amazon dot
com Slash Alexa Privacy Settings, that will take you to
all of the privacy settings and most importantly where you
can see a list of all of your recordings, all
(17:23):
the things you've said to her, and then you can
go through and delete those as well. So really interesting.
I mean, I personally, I find this fascinating because while
you may not think, you know, I'm not doing anything
wrong in my house, whatever, the reality is it's kind
of weird to think that someone has access to what
(17:45):
you're saying in your private residence. And I get that
for transcription, I get for like making these products better.
At some point, some people do have to listen to
these recordings. But I do like the idea of having
the ability to delete things and have them gone. And
I'm not sure at this point if that's ever truly
the case. So you just have to be aware that
(18:06):
this this thing is not this system is not foolproof,
and it's very new, so it's it's still evolving. Got
a message from Sue Vance who wrote me on my
website rich on tech dot TV. She said, is there
a lens you can connect to a phone to have
better quality and zoom in pictures? My phone is an Android,
(18:28):
a Moto five. First time on your site, some really
great info. Hoping to get the time to check it out.
Thanks Sue. So we did a story with a company
that makes they made the first lens, the first snap
on lens for the iPhone called Oloclip.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
They are a O L L O clip. So Oloclip
made the first snap on lens.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
Oh gosh, this was a while ago. I think it
was for the iPhone like five. And we did a
story and the guy just hography guy and just wanted
to make a you know, he loves the iPhone, big
Apple fan, and just wanted to make it better and
easier to have wide angle, macro, all kinds of different lenses.
I mean it started out I think with just like
(19:14):
a sort of fish fish eye, and it's expanded way
way way past that. So that's the biggest company is Oloclip.
You snap these things on. They used to start at
fifty bucks. I think now they're like, you know, some
of the nicer ones are one hundred dollars, but you
snap this onto your phone and this one. They have
support right now for the iPhone ten R ten, s
iPhone ten eight seven, and se. So they do not
(19:38):
have they were going to have interesting, they still don't have. Samsung.
They were, oh, multi device, here we go. They do
have a multi device, so there is a device that
works with multi a clip that works with multiple devices
and over many thin cases. So they do have that,
and I think this would work on your device, So Sue,
(20:01):
I think that would work.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
It depends. Now here's the thing.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
It all depends on where the lens is located on
your phone. And here's the thing I figured out about
these clip on because I was gonna say. You can
also go to Amazon and just search for something like
clip on phone lens. But the problem is what I
found with these clip on lenses, You're gonna use it
once and you're never gonna use it again because the
problem is, and I'm not talking oloclip the ones that
(20:25):
are made specifically for device, but the multi device clips
are very tricky because you have to see these things
on your camera lens just right, and you don't want
them to move. If they move, you're gonna have a
black ring on the side of your photos, or you're
gonna have just some of the photo might be there
might be a blockage of the lens because this thing
(20:47):
moves ever so slightly, and then it's not perfectly centered
on your lens. So I think these things are great.
When I did the story with oloclip, I had used
it in the past, and I used it for a
while after that, and I think if you're a creator
and you're trying to get different angles and you're trying
to get you know, your your stuff to look different
than everyone else's stuff, I think that these are fantastic.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
But for the average person that's.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Just taking pictures and posting to Instagram and is not
trying to stand out, you know, in front of the world,
in front of everyone. Then you know these things are
they've kind of become unnecessary and they kind of end
up in a drawer. So that's just kind of my
overall advice. But look at the types of lenses they
have with oloclip now they have fish eye, Macro, Macro
(21:32):
seven times, Macro, ten times, Macro, fourteen, fifteen, and twenty
one times, Telephoto, two times telephoto, two times, Pro Wide Angle,
Wide Angle, Intro, super Wide, super Wide, Pro, and Ultra wide.
So they have a lot to choose from if you
want your pictures to look different. And again, if you're
a creator, you're making videos and you want to create
(21:54):
everything right through your iPhone, these are going to be fantastic.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
Something like a Moto five, it's going to.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
Be a little bit tougher because you need one of
these clip on lenses and they just might not work
as well with your phone. With that said, there's a
lot of companies that make these things. Moment is another one,
and they have lenses, and the secret with a lot
of these companies is they're making cases that let you
screw on the lens or clip the lens in a
way that it does not move, so it's very fixed
(22:21):
and in that case's going to work fine. Then you
have something else happening, which is the makers of the
cell phones. The manufacturers like Samsung and Huawei and all
these other companies and Apple, they're all making two, three
four lenses on phones now, so there's less of a
need for separate lenses that you clip on because, for instance,
(22:43):
on the Samsung Galaxy S ten plus, you've got a
wide angle, you've got your standard, and you've got a
two time zoom. On the one plus you've got a
three time zoom plus a wide angle plus the standard.
So again, a lot of times you don't need these
with the new devices, which puts these makers in an
interest position. They're becoming more creator devices and more expensive
(23:03):
because they're making them more premium and kind of giving
you an advantage that you wouldn't get if you just
used one of these cheap things or the included lens
on the phone. Walmart has a new tablet that's just
sixty four dollars, and they sent me two of these
tablets to check out, and one was an eight inch
(23:24):
tablet that's sixty four dollars. These are Android tablets, obviously.
Another one is a ten point one inch tablet, which
is just seventy nine dollars. So compare that to the
price of the entry level iPad, which is three hundred
and twenty nine dollars, you're talking a deal now. In general,
I do not recommend Android tablets at all. I just
don't even recommend them because they're so terrible, they're so cheap,
(23:46):
and they just are not very good.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
When you look at the iPad.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
The beauty of the iPad is not just the design,
but it's also the apps that you can get on
the iPad. And because there's not a huge market for
Android tablets, I'll get outside of the Amazon Fire tablets
and I'll get to that in a second. There's not
that many good Android apps for tablets, and yes, you'll
find some of the basic ones covered, but after that
(24:10):
it really goes downhill. Whereas with the iPad, you're getting
really really good apps that were developed for the iPad
from a wide range of app developers, and so I
generally recommend and three hundred and twenty nine dollars, I
know sounds like a lot, but when you really do
the math on an iPad, they can last four, maybe
even longer years, And so when you do the math,
(24:33):
divide it up, it's really not a bad deal and
you're getting a far superior product.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
Now at all. With all that said, the Walmart tablet is.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
Actually pretty good because it's an Android tablet that does
the trick. It's just a simple tablet that lets you
surf the web, it lets you watch videos, it lets
you look at social media, and that's about it. You
don't want to do much more on this device. Someone
asked me, can you play Candy Crush? I downloaded Candy
Crush to it. It works just fine. It wasn't hesitating,
(25:03):
so you can play simple games on it as well.
But again that's where it ends. But for sixty four dollars,
not a bad deal. Now what's the lifetime on this tablet?
Speaker 2 (25:12):
I'm not sure.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
I mean, it might last two years, three years, who knows,
depending on how.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
You use it. I will tell you that it's super
slow right out of the box.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
So you're getting a pretty bad processor one point three
gigahertz quad core processor. You're getting a screen that has
eight hundred by twelve eighty ips. You're getting a cameras
that are just a joke. A third of a megapixel
on the front and two megapixels on the back. That's
what I had, I think on my Motorola queue back
(25:39):
in I think like two thousand and five or two
thousand and three or two thousand and six, whatever it was.
You're getting a phone that or a camera that's just terrible.
So don't buy this thing for the camera. Two gigs
a RAM, but also sixteen gigs of storage. Now, the
sixteen gigs of storage I can look past because you
are getting expandable memory on this device. You can just
(26:00):
add an SD card and you'll be fine.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
But here's the beauty.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
They're running Android nine point zero PI, which is the
latest version of that operating system. The other thing I
liked about this is that there's an FM tuner inside,
so you can plug in headphones and just listen to
the radio. There's not a lot of bloatwear, so a
lot of these cheap. What happens during the holidays. You
see fifty dollars tablets, twenty five dollars tablets. All these
stores have tablets. Every store in America is selling an
(26:23):
Android tablet for fifty bucks. They're all crap, and they
have a lot of bloatwear on them as well. This
has almost no bloatwear, but it does have a bunch
of Walmart apps preinstalled Walmart, Walmart Grocery, Walmart Ebooks, Sam's Club,
and Voodoo. And there's even an extra little button at
the bottom that brings you to those apps immediately, which
(26:43):
I don't like. But again, the advantage of this tablet
over Amazon's Fire tablet, which I would argue is probably
slightly better, is that this has full access to the
Google Play Store, which Amazon's tablets do not. Now because
they're Android, you can still sideload, which means you can
put any app you want on there, but you have
to go outside of the App store, which is not
(27:06):
an easy thing for most average people to do. So
on the Walmart tablet, you get Google Play, you search
for an app, any app that Google has available on
Google Play you can install on the Walmart tablet very
quickly and very easily.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
So for that reason, I do like.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
These tablets, and for sixty four dollars, I think that
is not too bad of a deal. Question again through email.
This comes in through my website, rich on tech dot
TV with a subject line, I can't send a fax.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
This is from Dori.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
She says, Hey, Rich, I will I watch you on
KTLA and I look forward to what new tech items
you introduce us to.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
But I have a problem.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
I have an all in one HP I can ePrint
from my cell and laptop. But since I switched my
phone to Spectrum, I have not been able to send
a fax. I've spoken with HP for remote help. Okay,
I've had Spectrum over twice to check the setup. I
haven't gotten any help. And each one points fingers at
each other. The bottom line is no dial tone is detected.
(28:07):
If Google trying to find a solution, I've encountered numerous
queries of frustrating folks just like me in search of help,
Can you help me? And others that struggle to do
something simple like sending a FAXT please. So I have
not sent a fact through a machine like this in
a very long time. So my immediate thought is that
because with Spectrum phone, you say you switched over, they're
(28:30):
delivering phone service voiceover IP. And the way that a
fax machine works is over analog. So a fax machine
takes an image, converts it into an analog waveform, and
sends that waveform out over the regular phone line. The
other FACTS machine listens to that waveform and then converts
(28:51):
that back into something that is visible and printable, and
they print out the image. So the thing that I
see happening here is that Spectrum is doing voiceover IP,
which means there's no I think at the end of
the day, if your machine detected the dial tone, it
would probably work. But because it's not detecting a dial tone,
it's not going to work.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
So my thing, what my.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
Theory is here is that your hp printer is probably
older and not equipped to handle VOIPE faxing. And I
did a quick little search about voipe faxing, and it
seems like it's hit or miss. Sometimes it works, sometimes
it doesn't work, depending on the setup of the machine
and also the VOIPE line.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
So I'll tell you what I use. I use something
called Hello Facts.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
And if you already have a cell phone and your
eprinting from there, what I would recommend is just scan
whatever you need to fax through your smartphone, which do
you have an iPhone? Yeah, you have an iPhone, So
just scan on your iPhone, go into notes, compose a
new note, or you know it, just go ahead and
get the app called Scannable, which is a great little app.
You scan it through there and make PDF out of it,
(30:00):
do whatever you need to do, sign it, fill it out, whatever,
and then you can send that through Hello Facts and
just download the PDF there and it's it's very easy.
That's what I use, and it's it's super simple. I
looked up another one. There's let's see, there's facts Burner,
which that also that's free. So factx burner is free
(30:24):
to send and receive faxes and basically you get twenty
five pages inbound per month and five pages outbound and
they just give you a disposable phone number you send
your facts. It's on its way and that's it. If
you want to upgrade, if you need to do more,
it's ten dollars a month. I know you probably don't
want to pay that, so I wouldn't recommend that. And
then e facts is the other one that was man
(30:46):
remember when e fax came out was.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
Like such a big deal.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
That of course is still around but clearly not as popular.
But it's even more expensive. Epax Plus is sixteen ninety
five a month or twenty dollars a month.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
Do they have have.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
Efacts for free anymore. I don't even think they have
a free they might not even have a free service anymore.
So if they don't, you might be able to sign
up for a free trial and see if that works.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
But this was crazy. So I was at a doctor's.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
Office one time, getting like a I think it was
an X ray or something, whatever it was. I needed
the either a prescription or whatever something that my doctor
gave me I needed to give to this X ray
clinic right, And I didn't have it on me, but
I scan everything into my phone and so I said, well,
can you accept a fax? And she said sure. And
I'd never done this before, but I actually downloaded an
(31:36):
app on my Android phone and it was called tiny Facts,
and I just found the document in Google Drive and
I said, okay, what's your number. I popped it into
tiny facts and it worked. It sent her to the
facts and I said, can I just see it? I
want to see what it looks like. I was so
impressed with myself, and she was actually very nice, the receptionist,
so she was playing along and she was sharing my enthusiasm.
(31:57):
She was like, that's pretty cool that you were just
able to that. I'm like Oh, nobody sends faxes from
their phone. She's like, no, that's the first time I've
seen that. But you know, I'm the tech guy, so
I love doing stuff like that. But I like having options,
and so I get it. There are times when you
still need to send a fax. There are definitely those
little companies and transactions that require a fax machine. So again,
(32:19):
check out Hello Facts. That's one of my favorites. Hello Facts.
Hellofax dot com is their website. Then you've got faxburner
dot com. And the app I used on Android was
called tiny Facts. I don't know. Do they have a
tiny fax for iPhone. I don't know. Let's see if
they do. I'm looking to see productivity. I don't know
(32:45):
if they have one for it, but I'm sure I'm
sure you can find one for iPhone. There's so many
of these types of things for iPhone.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
So there you have it. Good question.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
I know faxes are going out, but there are still
times when you need them. Speaking of the iPhone, there
is a this is creepy new feature in iOS thirteen.
So do you ever notice when you are facetiming and
you're not really looking at the person on the screen
like you can't really make eye contact with them because
you're looking at yourself or you're looking in the corner
(33:14):
at their picture. So Apple is gonna correct this with
a feature called FaceTime Eye Contact Correction. And what this
does is it uses augmented reality to literally lift your
eyeballs up and make them look like you are looking
at the other person. How creepy is that? So according
(33:35):
to nine to five Mac who tested it out, what
this does or they I guess they looked at a
report of it. I don't know if they've actually tried it,
but it makes real time adjustments the image of your
eyes so that you appear to be looking at the
camera rather than the screen. This means you'll appear to
be making eye contact. I mean, it's so weird. And
the guy who this guy named Will Sigmund tweeted and
(34:00):
he raised and lowered a pair of frames like eyeglass
frames over his eyes and you could see the frame
kind of bending up a little bit through augmented reality.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
So I just I find this super weird.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
I actually downloaded the beta of iOS thirteen, so I
need to try this out.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
But it's super weird. Oh.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
Dave Shulkin, Dave Shuken was the guy who tried it out,
and it's just you gotta look at his little demo.
Took me a while to figure out what was going on.
One of the developer notes that it might be limited
to the iPhone ten S and Max and ten are
and it might not work on the iPhone ten because
it uses ar Kit three, which is the latest version
of Apple's augmented reality tools.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
But it's a weird thing, and I get it.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
I mean, I feel like this is a problem with
I feel like, in general, I'm just not a fan
of FaceTime and all these video chats because I feel
like people are just not You're not trained to look
through a screen at someone else. It gets boring when
you're talking on the phone. You can talk on the
phone for an hour. When I'm on a video call,
I just feel the need to like get off the
(35:04):
phone or you know, just stop the call, because I
just don't I just don't feel like I can go
as long as I can on a phone call on
a video call. And maybe I'm the only one that
feels that way, but I just that's just the feeling
I get when I'm doing this.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
Now.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
Maybe that's because I'm not making it eye contact with
the person, and so maybe my body is thinking, well,
this is not a face to face thing, so let's
just finish this up.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
But maybe this will help. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
Got a note from Kevin through my website. Kevin said
the subject line was dji Osmo action please update your segment.
The dji Osmo action does let you change screens with
a verbal command, along with other functions. Frank Buckley even
suggested this option, and you still have an update dated
the info on subsequent segments. Okay, I will take the
(35:59):
good and take the bad, and Kevin, you have a
good point. So I did miss this in my review
of the dji Osmo cam. I reviewed this this week,
and the dji Osmo Action Cam is basically a go
pro with a front facing screen as well. So you've
got two screens on the front and the back. And
what that means is that if you want a vlog
(36:21):
or just in general get yourself into the shot, you
can just spin the camera around and then you have
the front facing screen and you can see yourself and
you can frame yourself up perfectly, which.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
Is a huge deal, especially if you're vlogging.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
If you're trying to vlog, or even if you're out
with a family, you're on a ski trip or something
and you're using this action cam and you just want
to be in the shot. You can be in the
shot now because you can spin this thing around and
see yourself. Well, my big problem with this feature was
that it was clunky to actually see the front facing
screen because you'd start out recording on the back screen,
(36:56):
you know, holding the camera your typical way, and then
you flip it around to the front. You have to
either tap on the back screen twice with two fingers fast,
and it took me a while to get the hang
of that one. Or you have to press this little
side button for two seconds, press and hold that and
that flips around to the front screen.
Speaker 2 (37:12):
Or you can use your voice. Now.
Speaker 1 (37:13):
I did not include the voice in there because I
hate voice commands on these things and I think they're
very clunky, so I didn't even include it in there.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
But yes, you can use your voice.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
And it became this whole thing with Frank Buckley, our
anchor here at Katla, saying Rich they should just make
it voice activated, and I should have said yes, but
I said no. I said they should just make it
so that the camera senses when you flip it around
and aim it towards yourself. There's a little sensor inside
that notices that and actually just flips the screen to
(37:41):
the front screen. There's a lot of ways to tackle
this one, but Kevin, you're right. I did make a
mistake on that one, and I did miss that in
my report. But I didn't think that a lot of
people would use that feature. Maybe they would, but you're right.
It is good to list all of the options, especially
when I'm critiquing it. So I get that and duly noted.
(38:04):
But overall, the Dji Osmo Action Cam, I'll give it
the same review I give all these things that that
mimic your cell phone. Your cell phone is easier, all
these little gadgets and doodads that you add to your
phone or that you use, you know, in addition to
your phone. At the end of the day, I find
that it's just easier to use your phone. And that's
what I found with the Dji Osmo Action Cam. If
(38:27):
you're a snowboarder, skateboarder, surfer, action sports guy, gal, whatever,
you're gonna love this thing. And it's fantastic But if
you're just a regular person that is thinking they're going
to use this on their vacation once a year, you're not,
because when you go to Hawaii, you're gonna use this
thing once and then you're gonna realize that everything else
your your you know, your batteries out, whatever, Your phone
(38:49):
is always charged, it works, it's always with you. And
guess what, it's way easier to share videos from your
phone than it is from one of these little cameras
because you have to transfer them somehow, so I always
end up just defaulting to my phone. And that's kind
of like I feel like a lot of people are
like that these things.
Speaker 2 (39:06):
Do you buy them?
Speaker 1 (39:07):
The cameras three hundred and fifty dollars and next thing know,
it sits in a drawer, just like I talked about
those clips for the camera lens. So just keep that
in mind when you're thinking about buying some of these things,
even something as simple as a Bluetooth speaker. I mean, yes,
when I'm out by the pool, I love having a
Bluetooth speaker, but like ninety nine percent of the time,
(39:29):
it's just easier to just put your phone really loud
wherever you are and you know, if you're not having
a giant party, it's really not that big of a deal.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
Use your phone.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
So again, it's like all these little things like microphones
and stuff. It's like, sometimes I just find it's easier
just to use what's built into the phone. And I'm
just giving you that advice because it might save you
some money. All right, let's take a trip down memory
lane real quick. The Walkman turned forty this month, and
(39:58):
I have very fun memories of the Walkman. My first
one from Sony was a CD player. I'll never forget
purchasing this from my friends. I don't know if it
was his uncle or something. I was in Florida on
a family trip with them, and his uncle had a
CD player from Sony and he said, I'll sell it
to you for twenty bucks.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
And I said done, And I bought this thing.
Speaker 1 (40:19):
And you couldn't walk around with this thing not skipping
for five seconds. I mean you just just the way
they were back then, you would.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
I put it in my car. I had to like mount.
Speaker 1 (40:27):
It perfectly so that it wouldn't skip, and it just
just skipped all the time. You couldn't run with it.
You can do anything. Then, I'm trying to remember what
I did between that. That was high school and college.
I don't really remember college too much with with music,
but I do remember out of college. As soon as
I got out, I did have the Rio, which was
that it was like Diamond Multimedia.
Speaker 2 (40:47):
I think it was this little red player and I.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
Thought it was so cool because you could add a
memory card to it and have unlimited storage and MP
three's and this and that.
Speaker 2 (40:55):
It was so great. Of course, transferring music to it
was a pain. All that could stuff.
Speaker 1 (40:59):
Then, of course I I had newer CD players that
didn't skip as much. I tried running with those that
didn't work. Then I got the mini disc player from Sony,
and I remember thinking, oh my gosh, this is the
future because you knew how a mini disc that didn't
skip as much. And I ran with that thing, and
that was a pain. And I went through a whole
bunch of iterations until I saw the iPad. A girl
(41:21):
in the airplane next to me was using the brand
new iPod. It was like one of those little iPod
minis that they had in different colors. I think she
had a pink one and I saw that and I said,
oh my gosh, what is that? And she explained it
was an iPod and I said, oh my gosh, I've
seen commercials for it, and you know what, I'm buying
this thing. And so I went out the next day
(41:42):
and I totally bought an iPod Mini for myself and
my wife. I think they were two hundred and fifty
dollars each at Best Buy.
Speaker 2 (41:48):
And that was it.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
That was the That was all I needed to say
goodbye to the whole Walkman and all my issues with
running and you know now, I mean, oh my gosh,
if you keep going. Now I've got the Apple I mean,
for a while I had my phone, which i'd run
in a band, you know, around my waist. And now
I literally walk out of my house with my AirPods
(42:09):
in and my Apple Watch and that's it. And I've
got Apple Music on the watch, cull other on the watch,
and the air pods and it's totally magical. And I
think back twenty years to when I was using the
CD player and the Rio and all the frustrations of
these music devices and how easy it is now. We
have come a long way since the Walkman launched forty
years ago, and it had its point in life. It
(42:31):
had its place in life, but it just didn't. Sony
just didn't get it right. I remember when Sony's Music
store came out compared to Apple's and it.
Speaker 2 (42:40):
Was just a joke.
Speaker 1 (42:41):
You couldn't even do anything on it. It was such
a pain to buy the music and a pain to
transfer the music. And it was just one of those
things where Apple did it right and it just worked
all right. One more question real quick before we go.
MS Jean says, have you done the Apple Beta update?
It's actually really good and on my Apple TV too. Yes,
(43:02):
I did the beta update on my iPhone because I'm
trying to figure out from going to write my new
book or not. I did start it a little bit,
and I went through all the new features on the
iOS thirteen and I found sixty eight so far new
features that are pretty compelling. And they did a nice job.
They did a lot of stuff. Some of them are
bigger than others. Like share your ETA with people. I mean,
(43:26):
you could do that in Google Maps forever. Let's see
what I'll search in messages? You can, it's easier now,
remember and messages. In my first book, one hundred and
one Handy Tech Tips for the iPhone. I talked about
how you could search your messages, but you really can
only search like one word at a time. So now
Messages is making it a lot easier to search. You've
got quick path, which means you can swipe along the keyboard.
(43:47):
So there's a lot of stuff. But yes, I have
not installed it on the iPad. That's another project. And
Apple TV. I don't know if I'll do it on
Apple TV, but maybe I will, just to see what
that's all about. Well, thanks so much for listening. That's
going to do it for this show. Please subscribe if
you haven't done so already. All you have to do
is search rich on Tech in your favorite podcast app.
That's Apple Podcasts, pocket Casts, and Overcast. Those are a
(44:11):
few of the good ones. Don't forget to sign up
for my newsletter at richontech dot tv. I send out
a newsletter usually every week, and it includes all the
stuff that I covered that week, all my little tidbits
and things, just easy to.
Speaker 2 (44:24):
See, easy to browse through.
Speaker 1 (44:26):
All the links are there, so if you saw me
talk about something on TV or on the radio, or
on my Instagram or on my Facebook, I put all
the best stuff right there. So you can say, oh, yeah, that's.
Speaker 2 (44:36):
What Rich was talking about. Okay, perfect.
Speaker 1 (44:39):
This is usually the point in the show where I
asked producer Meghan how she liked it. I'm just gonna
speak for her and say that she did not like
it because she was not in the show. So it
definitely is a little bit tougher to do it myself.
But I you know, I think I survived, all right,
Thanks so much for listening. I think that's going to
do it. I'm Richdimiro. Have a fantastic day. I'll talk
to you real soon.
Speaker 2 (45:00):
The sto
Samsung ready to launch a new phone, and it's not
the Fold, the new app that lets you stream all
of your local channels for free. Walmart has a sixty
four dollars tablet, and my opinion of it might surprise you.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
We're gonna take a trip.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Down memory lane with the Walkman and answer your pressing
tech questions.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
What's going on. I'm Rich Demiro.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
This is Rich on Tech, the podcast where I talk
about this stuff I think you should know about happening
in the tech world. Plus, as you know, I answer
your tech questions. Producer Megan is on vacation this week,
so I will be handling the entire show solo this
time around, and I say, we just jump right into things.
(00:43):
We've got Samsung with their announcement that their next event
will be happening August seventh in New York City. They
call these Unpacked events. I got the invitation. It's happening
at the same place it happened last year. I feel
like I was just in New York shown off the
Note nine, but now we're going to see the Note ten. Well,
we think we're going to see the Note ten. They
(01:04):
don't necessarily say what they're going to unveil at these things, but.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
We're pretty sure it's the Note ten.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
The invitation was a stylust that was animated showing a
stylus kind of touching what looks to be a camera
that was centered on a white background. So this of
course made people speculate what that could mean. Is there
a centered selfie cam? Are there four cameras? Is there
a camera on the stylus?
Speaker 2 (01:28):
We don't know.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
But what we do know about the Note ten and
the Note in general, is that this is where Samsung
unveils all of their latest and greatest technology. All the
innovations happen on the Note ten or the Note and
then they trickle down into the Samsung Galaxy S line.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Now this is a little.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Bit different, and this is kind of an awkward situation
for Samsung because they've got the Galaxy Fold, which is
kind of a failure to launch. So they launched, They
tried to launch that a couple months back.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
That didn't work.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
They recalled it from reporters that they sent it out to,
and they kind of did some more work on it,
and I'm seeing reports that say they've figured out the problem.
They've made this hinge work better. They've made it so
the hinge does not impact the screen on that device,
so they're ready to relaunch it. But are they going
to do that now right before the August seventh event?
I mean, they only have four weeks to do that,
(02:19):
So this is kind of an awkward situation for Samsung.
Not sure what they're going to do or how they're
going to handle this. Maybe they'll launch both devices at
the same time at the event, so they'll tell us
what happened with the fold and explain that and apologize,
and then of course launched the Note ten as well.
But last year's Note nine was an expensive device, over
(02:42):
one thousand bucks, and I think we're going to see
that same thing happen here. But what can they add
to the Note ten to make it crazier, to make
it better? I mean, the cameras have gotten so good
on these devices. I mean, clearly there's always room for
improvement with the cameras, though, to make them even better
at full proof pictures. The screens are just phenomenal at
(03:03):
this point. Battery life, I mean, if you have a
Note you've got such a large battery in there, the
battery life isn't even an issue, so what could they
do to really make this thing better?
Speaker 2 (03:12):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Could they make the stylists better, could they make software better?
Could they make the camera lenses even crazier? So maybe
get four or five holographic screens and longer batteries. That's
what I'm saying we need on these new devices, But
who knows. So we'll see Samsung again Unpacked event happening
August seventh in New York City Barclay Center in Brooklyn.
(03:35):
And I get excited over these things, even though these
launches have not gotten The excitement of these launches has
sort of toned down over the years because people know
it's another phone. There's a lot of leaks before it
is unveiled. But I still get excited because it's still
fun to actually see the device that these companies have
been working on for a while and actually see it
in reality.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
So I'm looking forward to that one. All right.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
So let's take a quest question. This is from Nelly.
This is from Nelly on Let's see. She just emailed me.
She says, Hey, Rich, can you tell me about WhatsApp
taking out of service people with old phones? I have
a Samsung S five and this took me. I had
to do a little research on this because I didn't
(04:19):
see anything about this. I haven't heard of WhatsApp, but
I guess if you're using WhatsApp, maybe you've got a
notification or something. But here's the deal. So I did
some research and here's what I found. WhatsApp is apparently
dropping support for older phone models and anytime that you
have a headline like this and a napp like WhatsApp,
which a lot of people use. Not so much in
(04:42):
the US. I mean, if you have an international friend,
you probably use it. But in the US I messages
king when it comes to messaging, but internationally WhatsApp is very,
very strong and very prevalent. So clearly this is happening,
and it's happening. Let's see it's happening February first, twenty two,
so you have some time, but you've got the recommended
(05:04):
requirements for WhatsApp is Android four point zero, which is
super old, iOS eight plus which is super old, and
Windows Phone eight one, so WhatsApp will no longer support
phones running Android two, Windows Phone eight, iPhone three GS
and iOS six and BlackBerry OS and BlackBerry ten. So
(05:24):
the reality is especially for you, Nelly, you said, you
have a Samsung S five, You are going to be
just fine. They're not taking away support for the S
five anytime soon. I think the reality is with this
update is that they just want WhatsApp to run and
be able to do everything and can do smoothly on
a variety of phones, and some of these older phones
with the especially with the security and stuff, they're just
(05:47):
not supporting the newer features. But you're talking really old
phones here, I mean Android two, I don't even know.
I mean, when did that launch? I mean that had
to be a long long time ago. I mean I
don't even know what that was. But yeah, that's that's
a while ago. So you're gonna be just okay.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
All right. So what happened? Man?
Speaker 1 (06:07):
This was This was wild if you were following things
or tried to access social media, depending on when you
listen to this, this happened yesterday, but you know you
probably have it in recent memory. But Facebook, Instagram and
other social networks all went down, including WhatsApp and also
Facebook Messenger, and they all went down. This was on Wednesday,
(06:29):
July third. They went down for a really long time.
And I know how I figured this out. I was
trying to upload a story to Instagram and it was
from my niece, whose birthday it was, and I kept,
you know, uploading the story, and it just would not work.
I was uploading a picture and I was convinced it
was the phone I was. I was using an Android device,
and I was like, you gotta be kidding me this.
(06:49):
I can't believe this doesn't work. Watch how easy this
is on the iPhone. And I switched to my iPhone
and the same thing happens. I got an upload failed,
and I was like, okay, well, clearly it's not these things.
Then I checked my WiFi and I said, okay, well,
maybe I'm on corporate Wi Fi. Maybe that's not working.
Turn that off. Nope, still didn't load. Okay, well, maybe
Verizon's having a problem. Maybe the Verizon network's not working.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
All these things.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Until I do a quick little search on Twitter and
find out that yes, a lot of people were having
problem with Instagram and Facebook.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Again, this was early in the morning.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
You know, I'm on the early news, So I discovered
this early, and then clearly throughout the day it just
kept going and going and going. And so what did
people see? They saw blank pictures? You couldn't scroll your
likes and all that stuff wasn't being updated. Now, this
wasn't something where it was totally out one hundred percent.
Some things and some aspects still worked, and they worked intermittently,
(07:43):
but overall a lot of people had trouble accessing these
social networks. So the Next Web did a great little
article about how to know if this is happening. So
if I was smart, I would have gone right to
Facebook's Developer dashboard, which is what they recommend, And if
you want to get that, you can just google Facebook
Developer Dashboard and it gives you a status update of
(08:06):
everything that's going on.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
And the reason why they have this not.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Really for regular people, but regular people can use it. It's
for app developers. So if you have an app and
something's a little wonky with the app, you can go
to the app dashboard and see or sorry, the developer,
let's see first. You can head to Yeah, so you
can go to the developer dashboard and kind of see, hey,
what's going on here, like what's going on? Platform status
(08:30):
it's called and so Facebook platform is healthy since ten
hours ago, so clearly things were messed up, and it
gives you a history of the downtime and what happened,
and it said degraded performance across platform resolved, and so
that was the big issue there. Twitter has a developer
status board for its APIs. Then there's a website called
down Detector. You probably see this quoted in the news
(08:53):
a lot. Down Detector kind of just sees what people
are doing with various websites and if it's working. And
I guess pings the websites regularly and just figures out
if people are having problems with them. But you can
go on there and see a little line of if
people are having trouble with accessing some of these services,
and they give some of the big services Spectrum, Verizon, Comcast,
(09:14):
T Mobile, Sprint, COS, Snapchat, Google, YouTube, everything is pretty
much represented on there, so you can figure out if
it's me and not you, or if it's them and
not you.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
I should say, by the way, there's also Apple dot com.
This is a good one.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
If your I message isn't working or something's a little
crazy on your iPhone, you can go to Apple dot
com slash support slash system status and that's a good
one because it tells you what's going on with all
of your stuff on your iPhone, so system status and
so you can see if I Message is working. I
(09:49):
mean it has everything, so there's a green dot if
things are working properly. But it's everything from Apple TV
to Beats one to I Message to Siri to map
search to Maps traffic. So again, these are good little
tools to know about in case you have a problem
with something and you can actually.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
See if it's you there. Used to be I used
to use.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
This thing called like down for okay, here it is
down for everyone or just me. That's a good one.
Down for everyone or just me. And now you go
to that website and you type in something like snapchat
and then it says, is Snapchat.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Down right now? Nope, it's just you. Snapchat is up.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
So it actually checks the website for you to see
if it's down for everyone or.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
If it's just you. So if it's just you, you
know that.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
There's something wrong with your internet connection or your setup
and not the setup of the servers on their end.
Oh sorry, wrong one doing the show myself today. This
is what happens folks. All right, this message comes in
from not a David she said, mentioned on KFI this morning.
(10:57):
So you guys know, I do a segment on KFI
on twoesday morning and Wednesday morning.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
Tuesday morning, I'm on with.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
Bill Handle at eight let's see it's eight am. And
then on Wednesday I'm on with Jennifer Jones Lee at
five twenty am, right before I go on KTLA. So
I talk about, you know, all the stuff in the
news happening in the tech world there as well. It's
a lot of fun. So if you're listening to KFI,
you hear me there. I get a lot of people
that come up to me and say, oh, I hear
(11:23):
you on KFI. So a lot of people listen to that. Okay,
so not a David said, Hello, I cannot find this
on your website, but this morning you mentioned an app
that can be downloaded to watch local TV channels for free.
Would you please send me the name of that app.
The app is called low cast, and I discovered this
I saw an article in I think it was TV
(11:44):
news Check, one of the TV industry websites that I
read on a daily basis, and it just had a
small mention for this low cast dot org. But it
mentioned that you can stream your local channels and that
it launched in La. I was like, oh, that's interesting.
So I went and I checked it out, and sure
enough ktla is on there, which is really rare because
ktla is not on any of the streaming services. So
(12:05):
did a little research and found out that this operates
kind of how this other service used to operate called
hos it Areo, and this was a service that they
were They were oh gosh, I forget what the what
it was called exactly areo antenna. Yeah, areo, and so
(12:27):
what they did this is really interesting.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
So this was a company.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Back in the day that would set up like a
farm of tiny little antennas on a roof and then
stream and then take each one of the feeds from
those antennas and stream it to people and sell them
service so they can get all their local channels.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
For whatever it was, five six, seven, eight bucks a month.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Well, the cable companies and the TV companies were like,
uh uh uh, not so fast, that's not really how
this works, and so they actually shut down that company.
So now low Cast is taking a different approach. This
is a nonprofit and they're doing this as quote a
public service so that people who cut the cord and
don't have an antenna, can still watch the local channels.
(13:07):
How long is this gonna last? I don't know, but
it seems legit. The guy who's running it is a
former executive with some TV companies and cable companies, so
it seems legitimate. Will it last, I'm not sure, but
at this point it works, and it works really well.
So you can download the low cast app for fireTV,
Apple TV, the iPad, the iPhone, Android. It works across
(13:32):
pretty much everything, and you log in, you create a
sign up, They beg you and beg you and beg
you to donate five bucks a month or more to
help the service run. And after a little fifteen second
spot to help you, you know, to ask you to donate,
next thing, you know, you are watching the local channel.
So again, this works for all the local channels in LA,
(13:52):
including like the dot the dot channels which I call
like you know, like like five, dot one, four, dot two, eleven,
dot three whatever they have. Those are there as well,
and so it works. It's nice the pictures in HD.
It seems legitimate, and I mean I don't have a
use for it because I've got an antenna along with
Amazon TV, fire Recast TV, but it is a great
(14:15):
thing to have and it's really simple. So again, you
do have to sign up though, and some people said that,
you know, I was getting some feedback because I put
this video on my Instagram at rich On Tech, and
I got some feedback from folks and they were saying that, oh,
it only.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
Works for fifteen minutes and then they bug you again.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
So I don't know. I'm not watching this thing for
a long period of time. So I have no idea
how if they limit you to, say, you know, a
couple hours a week before you have to pay or donate.
But again, check it out if you want. It's low cast.
Lcast dot org is the website. If you have one
of those Amazon Echo devices, you might be wondering just
(14:52):
how long that Amazon keeps the things that you say.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
To you know who. I'm not going to say her name.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
I don't want to activate her in all of your houses.
But a congress person, let's see a Democrat Senator Chris
Coons sent a letter to Amazon asking how long voice
recordings and transcripts are kept when you talk to this device?
And guess what the answer was. They keep them forever
(15:19):
unless you delete them. So the thing is a lot
of us now that we have these microphones in our homes.
We've got these phones that are tracking us.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Everywhere we go.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
America and the world at large is sort of having
a better understanding. We're just Privacy is at the forefront now.
In Europe, they've got these crazy laws that are very
strict about privacy, and a lot of that is trickling
down into America because they're shining the light on these
tech companies over there because they have to. But then
(15:51):
Americans are saying, oh, interesting, I didn't know that was happening.
I didn't know that was going on. And so we
may not have the same types of laws here, but
people have a heightened awaywareness here because of the fact
that things are happening over there regulation wise. So we understand,
you know, we just have a better understanding over here.
So the thing about Amazon, so if you do delete
(16:13):
the recordings, the other thing is that the transcripts are
still kept, which is kind of odd. So even if
you let's say, you know, you said something to your
echo and you say, okay, I want to get that
out of the system, and you delete that using Amazon's website,
the transcript of that is still kept seemingly indefinitely, and
(16:34):
so why do they keep that, Well, they use that
for training purposes to see when you asked, you know,
your echo a certain thing, did they respond in the
right way. And so they have people that go through
these transcripts to see what you said and how the
device responded. And apparently a lot of those transcripts are
they're not anonymous, fully, but they do have some identifying
(16:58):
information on them, which again makes people a little bit weary.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
So if you do want to.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Check out your Alexa privacy settings, there's a separate website
that Amazon set up. It's called Amazon dot com Slash
Alexa Privacy Settings, And if you go to Amazon dot
com Slash Alexa Privacy Settings, that will take you to
all of the privacy settings and most importantly where you
can see a list of all of your recordings, all
(17:23):
the things you've said to her, and then you can
go through and delete those as well. So really interesting.
I mean, I personally, I find this fascinating because while
you may not think, you know, I'm not doing anything
wrong in my house, whatever, the reality is it's kind
of weird to think that someone has access to what
(17:45):
you're saying in your private residence. And I get that
for transcription, I get for like making these products better.
At some point, some people do have to listen to
these recordings. But I do like the idea of having
the ability to delete things and have them gone. And
I'm not sure at this point if that's ever truly
the case. So you just have to be aware that
(18:06):
this this thing is not this system is not foolproof,
and it's very new, so it's it's still evolving. Got
a message from Sue Vance who wrote me on my
website rich on tech dot TV. She said, is there
a lens you can connect to a phone to have
better quality and zoom in pictures? My phone is an Android,
(18:28):
a Moto five. First time on your site, some really
great info. Hoping to get the time to check it out.
Thanks Sue. So we did a story with a company
that makes they made the first lens, the first snap
on lens for the iPhone called Oloclip.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
They are a O L L O clip. So Oloclip
made the first snap on lens.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
Oh gosh, this was a while ago. I think it
was for the iPhone like five. And we did a
story and the guy just hography guy and just wanted
to make a you know, he loves the iPhone, big
Apple fan, and just wanted to make it better and
easier to have wide angle, macro, all kinds of different lenses.
I mean it started out I think with just like
(19:14):
a sort of fish fish eye, and it's expanded way
way way past that. So that's the biggest company is Oloclip.
You snap these things on. They used to start at
fifty bucks. I think now they're like, you know, some
of the nicer ones are one hundred dollars, but you
snap this onto your phone and this one. They have
support right now for the iPhone ten R ten, s
iPhone ten eight seven, and se. So they do not
(19:38):
have they were going to have interesting, they still don't have. Samsung.
They were, oh, multi device, here we go. They do
have a multi device, so there is a device that
works with multi a clip that works with multiple devices
and over many thin cases. So they do have that,
and I think this would work on your device, So Sue,
(20:01):
I think that would work.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
It depends. Now here's the thing.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
It all depends on where the lens is located on
your phone. And here's the thing I figured out about
these clip on because I was gonna say. You can
also go to Amazon and just search for something like
clip on phone lens. But the problem is what I
found with these clip on lenses, You're gonna use it
once and you're never gonna use it again because the
problem is, and I'm not talking oloclip the ones that
(20:25):
are made specifically for device, but the multi device clips
are very tricky because you have to see these things
on your camera lens just right, and you don't want
them to move. If they move, you're gonna have a
black ring on the side of your photos, or you're
gonna have just some of the photo might be there
might be a blockage of the lens because this thing
(20:47):
moves ever so slightly, and then it's not perfectly centered
on your lens. So I think these things are great.
When I did the story with oloclip, I had used
it in the past, and I used it for a
while after that, and I think if you're a creator
and you're trying to get different angles and you're trying
to get you know, your your stuff to look different
than everyone else's stuff, I think that these are fantastic.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
But for the average person that's.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Just taking pictures and posting to Instagram and is not
trying to stand out, you know, in front of the world,
in front of everyone. Then you know these things are
they've kind of become unnecessary and they kind of end
up in a drawer. So that's just kind of my
overall advice. But look at the types of lenses they
have with oloclip now they have fish eye, Macro, Macro
(21:32):
seven times, Macro, ten times, Macro, fourteen, fifteen, and twenty
one times, Telephoto, two times telephoto, two times, Pro Wide Angle,
Wide Angle, Intro, super Wide, super Wide, Pro, and Ultra wide.
So they have a lot to choose from if you
want your pictures to look different. And again, if you're
a creator, you're making videos and you want to create
(21:54):
everything right through your iPhone, these are going to be fantastic.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
Something like a Moto five, it's going to.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
Be a little bit tougher because you need one of
these clip on lenses and they just might not work
as well with your phone. With that said, there's a
lot of companies that make these things. Moment is another one,
and they have lenses, and the secret with a lot
of these companies is they're making cases that let you
screw on the lens or clip the lens in a
way that it does not move, so it's very fixed
(22:21):
and in that case's going to work fine. Then you
have something else happening, which is the makers of the
cell phones. The manufacturers like Samsung and Huawei and all
these other companies and Apple, they're all making two, three
four lenses on phones now, so there's less of a
need for separate lenses that you clip on because, for instance,
(22:43):
on the Samsung Galaxy S ten plus, you've got a
wide angle, you've got your standard, and you've got a
two time zoom. On the one plus you've got a
three time zoom plus a wide angle plus the standard.
So again, a lot of times you don't need these
with the new devices, which puts these makers in an
interest position. They're becoming more creator devices and more expensive
(23:03):
because they're making them more premium and kind of giving
you an advantage that you wouldn't get if you just
used one of these cheap things or the included lens
on the phone. Walmart has a new tablet that's just
sixty four dollars, and they sent me two of these
tablets to check out, and one was an eight inch
(23:24):
tablet that's sixty four dollars. These are Android tablets, obviously.
Another one is a ten point one inch tablet, which
is just seventy nine dollars. So compare that to the
price of the entry level iPad, which is three hundred
and twenty nine dollars, you're talking a deal now. In general,
I do not recommend Android tablets at all. I just
don't even recommend them because they're so terrible, they're so cheap,
(23:46):
and they just are not very good.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
When you look at the iPad.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
The beauty of the iPad is not just the design,
but it's also the apps that you can get on
the iPad. And because there's not a huge market for
Android tablets, I'll get outside of the Amazon Fire tablets
and I'll get to that in a second. There's not
that many good Android apps for tablets, and yes, you'll
find some of the basic ones covered, but after that
(24:10):
it really goes downhill. Whereas with the iPad, you're getting
really really good apps that were developed for the iPad
from a wide range of app developers, and so I
generally recommend and three hundred and twenty nine dollars, I
know sounds like a lot, but when you really do
the math on an iPad, they can last four, maybe
even longer years, And so when you do the math,
(24:33):
divide it up, it's really not a bad deal and
you're getting a far superior product.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
Now at all. With all that said, the Walmart tablet is.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
Actually pretty good because it's an Android tablet that does
the trick. It's just a simple tablet that lets you
surf the web, it lets you watch videos, it lets
you look at social media, and that's about it. You
don't want to do much more on this device. Someone
asked me, can you play Candy Crush? I downloaded Candy
Crush to it. It works just fine. It wasn't hesitating,
(25:03):
so you can play simple games on it as well.
But again that's where it ends. But for sixty four dollars,
not a bad deal. Now what's the lifetime on this tablet?
Speaker 2 (25:12):
I'm not sure.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
I mean, it might last two years, three years, who knows,
depending on how.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
You use it. I will tell you that it's super
slow right out of the box.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
So you're getting a pretty bad processor one point three
gigahertz quad core processor. You're getting a screen that has
eight hundred by twelve eighty ips. You're getting a cameras
that are just a joke. A third of a megapixel
on the front and two megapixels on the back. That's
what I had, I think on my Motorola queue back
(25:39):
in I think like two thousand and five or two
thousand and three or two thousand and six, whatever it was.
You're getting a phone that or a camera that's just terrible.
So don't buy this thing for the camera. Two gigs
a RAM, but also sixteen gigs of storage. Now, the
sixteen gigs of storage I can look past because you
are getting expandable memory on this device. You can just
(26:00):
add an SD card and you'll be fine.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
But here's the beauty.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
They're running Android nine point zero PI, which is the
latest version of that operating system. The other thing I
liked about this is that there's an FM tuner inside,
so you can plug in headphones and just listen to
the radio. There's not a lot of bloatwear, so a
lot of these cheap. What happens during the holidays. You
see fifty dollars tablets, twenty five dollars tablets. All these
stores have tablets. Every store in America is selling an
(26:23):
Android tablet for fifty bucks. They're all crap, and they
have a lot of bloatwear on them as well. This
has almost no bloatwear, but it does have a bunch
of Walmart apps preinstalled Walmart, Walmart Grocery, Walmart Ebooks, Sam's Club,
and Voodoo. And there's even an extra little button at
the bottom that brings you to those apps immediately, which
(26:43):
I don't like. But again, the advantage of this tablet
over Amazon's Fire tablet, which I would argue is probably
slightly better, is that this has full access to the
Google Play Store, which Amazon's tablets do not. Now because
they're Android, you can still sideload, which means you can
put any app you want on there, but you have
to go outside of the App store, which is not
(27:06):
an easy thing for most average people to do. So
on the Walmart tablet, you get Google Play, you search
for an app, any app that Google has available on
Google Play you can install on the Walmart tablet very
quickly and very easily.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
So for that reason, I do like.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
These tablets, and for sixty four dollars, I think that
is not too bad of a deal. Question again through email.
This comes in through my website, rich on tech dot
TV with a subject line, I can't send a fax.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
This is from Dori.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
She says, Hey, Rich, I will I watch you on
KTLA and I look forward to what new tech items
you introduce us to.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
But I have a problem.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
I have an all in one HP I can ePrint
from my cell and laptop. But since I switched my
phone to Spectrum, I have not been able to send
a fax. I've spoken with HP for remote help. Okay,
I've had Spectrum over twice to check the setup. I
haven't gotten any help. And each one points fingers at
each other. The bottom line is no dial tone is detected.
(28:07):
If Google trying to find a solution, I've encountered numerous
queries of frustrating folks just like me in search of help,
Can you help me? And others that struggle to do
something simple like sending a FAXT please. So I have
not sent a fact through a machine like this in
a very long time. So my immediate thought is that
because with Spectrum phone, you say you switched over, they're
(28:30):
delivering phone service voiceover IP. And the way that a
fax machine works is over analog. So a fax machine
takes an image, converts it into an analog waveform, and
sends that waveform out over the regular phone line. The
other FACTS machine listens to that waveform and then converts
(28:51):
that back into something that is visible and printable, and
they print out the image. So the thing that I
see happening here is that Spectrum is doing voiceover IP,
which means there's no I think at the end of
the day, if your machine detected the dial tone, it
would probably work. But because it's not detecting a dial tone,
it's not going to work.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
So my thing, what my.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
Theory is here is that your hp printer is probably
older and not equipped to handle VOIPE faxing. And I
did a quick little search about voipe faxing, and it
seems like it's hit or miss. Sometimes it works, sometimes
it doesn't work, depending on the setup of the machine
and also the VOIPE line.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
So I'll tell you what I use. I use something
called Hello Facts.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
And if you already have a cell phone and your
eprinting from there, what I would recommend is just scan
whatever you need to fax through your smartphone, which do
you have an iPhone? Yeah, you have an iPhone, So
just scan on your iPhone, go into notes, compose a
new note, or you know it, just go ahead and
get the app called Scannable, which is a great little app.
You scan it through there and make PDF out of it,
(30:00):
do whatever you need to do, sign it, fill it out, whatever,
and then you can send that through Hello Facts and
just download the PDF there and it's it's very easy.
That's what I use, and it's it's super simple. I
looked up another one. There's let's see, there's facts Burner,
which that also that's free. So factx burner is free
(30:24):
to send and receive faxes and basically you get twenty
five pages inbound per month and five pages outbound and
they just give you a disposable phone number you send
your facts. It's on its way and that's it. If
you want to upgrade, if you need to do more,
it's ten dollars a month. I know you probably don't
want to pay that, so I wouldn't recommend that. And
then e facts is the other one that was man
(30:46):
remember when e fax came out was.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
Like such a big deal.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
That of course is still around but clearly not as popular.
But it's even more expensive. Epax Plus is sixteen ninety
five a month or twenty dollars a month.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
Do they have have.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
Efacts for free anymore. I don't even think they have
a free they might not even have a free service anymore.
So if they don't, you might be able to sign
up for a free trial and see if that works.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
But this was crazy. So I was at a doctor's.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
Office one time, getting like a I think it was
an X ray or something, whatever it was. I needed
the either a prescription or whatever something that my doctor
gave me I needed to give to this X ray
clinic right, And I didn't have it on me, but
I scan everything into my phone and so I said, well,
can you accept a fax? And she said sure. And
I'd never done this before, but I actually downloaded an
(31:36):
app on my Android phone and it was called tiny Facts,
and I just found the document in Google Drive and
I said, okay, what's your number. I popped it into
tiny facts and it worked. It sent her to the
facts and I said, can I just see it? I
want to see what it looks like. I was so
impressed with myself, and she was actually very nice, the receptionist,
so she was playing along and she was sharing my enthusiasm.
(31:57):
She was like, that's pretty cool that you were just
able to that. I'm like Oh, nobody sends faxes from
their phone. She's like, no, that's the first time I've
seen that. But you know, I'm the tech guy, so
I love doing stuff like that. But I like having options,
and so I get it. There are times when you
still need to send a fax. There are definitely those
little companies and transactions that require a fax machine. So again,
(32:19):
check out Hello Facts. That's one of my favorites. Hello Facts.
Hellofax dot com is their website. Then you've got faxburner
dot com. And the app I used on Android was
called tiny Facts. I don't know. Do they have a
tiny fax for iPhone. I don't know. Let's see if
they do. I'm looking to see productivity. I don't know
(32:45):
if they have one for it, but I'm sure I'm
sure you can find one for iPhone. There's so many
of these types of things for iPhone.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
So there you have it. Good question.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
I know faxes are going out, but there are still
times when you need them. Speaking of the iPhone, there
is a this is creepy new feature in iOS thirteen.
So do you ever notice when you are facetiming and
you're not really looking at the person on the screen
like you can't really make eye contact with them because
you're looking at yourself or you're looking in the corner
(33:14):
at their picture. So Apple is gonna correct this with
a feature called FaceTime Eye Contact Correction. And what this
does is it uses augmented reality to literally lift your
eyeballs up and make them look like you are looking
at the other person. How creepy is that? So according
(33:35):
to nine to five Mac who tested it out, what
this does or they I guess they looked at a
report of it. I don't know if they've actually tried it,
but it makes real time adjustments the image of your
eyes so that you appear to be looking at the
camera rather than the screen. This means you'll appear to
be making eye contact. I mean, it's so weird. And
the guy who this guy named Will Sigmund tweeted and
(34:00):
he raised and lowered a pair of frames like eyeglass
frames over his eyes and you could see the frame
kind of bending up a little bit through augmented reality.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
So I just I find this super weird.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
I actually downloaded the beta of iOS thirteen, so I
need to try this out.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
But it's super weird. Oh.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
Dave Shulkin, Dave Shuken was the guy who tried it out,
and it's just you gotta look at his little demo.
Took me a while to figure out what was going on.
One of the developer notes that it might be limited
to the iPhone ten S and Max and ten are
and it might not work on the iPhone ten because
it uses ar Kit three, which is the latest version
of Apple's augmented reality tools.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
But it's a weird thing, and I get it.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
I mean, I feel like this is a problem with
I feel like, in general, I'm just not a fan
of FaceTime and all these video chats because I feel
like people are just not You're not trained to look
through a screen at someone else. It gets boring when
you're talking on the phone. You can talk on the
phone for an hour. When I'm on a video call,
I just feel the need to like get off the
(35:04):
phone or you know, just stop the call, because I
just don't I just don't feel like I can go
as long as I can on a phone call on
a video call. And maybe I'm the only one that
feels that way, but I just that's just the feeling
I get when I'm doing this.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
Now.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
Maybe that's because I'm not making it eye contact with
the person, and so maybe my body is thinking, well,
this is not a face to face thing, so let's
just finish this up.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
But maybe this will help. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
Got a note from Kevin through my website. Kevin said
the subject line was dji Osmo action please update your segment.
The dji Osmo action does let you change screens with
a verbal command, along with other functions. Frank Buckley even
suggested this option, and you still have an update dated
the info on subsequent segments. Okay, I will take the
(35:59):
good and take the bad, and Kevin, you have a
good point. So I did miss this in my review
of the dji Osmo cam. I reviewed this this week,
and the dji Osmo Action Cam is basically a go
pro with a front facing screen as well. So you've
got two screens on the front and the back. And
what that means is that if you want a vlog
(36:21):
or just in general get yourself into the shot, you
can just spin the camera around and then you have
the front facing screen and you can see yourself and
you can frame yourself up perfectly, which.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
Is a huge deal, especially if you're vlogging.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
If you're trying to vlog, or even if you're out
with a family, you're on a ski trip or something
and you're using this action cam and you just want
to be in the shot. You can be in the
shot now because you can spin this thing around and
see yourself. Well, my big problem with this feature was
that it was clunky to actually see the front facing
screen because you'd start out recording on the back screen,
(36:56):
you know, holding the camera your typical way, and then
you flip it around to the front. You have to
either tap on the back screen twice with two fingers fast,
and it took me a while to get the hang
of that one. Or you have to press this little
side button for two seconds, press and hold that and
that flips around to the front screen.
Speaker 2 (37:12):
Or you can use your voice. Now.
Speaker 1 (37:13):
I did not include the voice in there because I
hate voice commands on these things and I think they're
very clunky, so I didn't even include it in there.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
But yes, you can use your voice.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
And it became this whole thing with Frank Buckley, our
anchor here at Katla, saying Rich they should just make
it voice activated, and I should have said yes, but
I said no. I said they should just make it
so that the camera senses when you flip it around
and aim it towards yourself. There's a little sensor inside
that notices that and actually just flips the screen to
(37:41):
the front screen. There's a lot of ways to tackle
this one, but Kevin, you're right. I did make a
mistake on that one, and I did miss that in
my report. But I didn't think that a lot of
people would use that feature. Maybe they would, but you're right.
It is good to list all of the options, especially
when I'm critiquing it. So I get that and duly noted.
(38:04):
But overall, the Dji Osmo Action Cam, I'll give it
the same review I give all these things that that
mimic your cell phone. Your cell phone is easier, all
these little gadgets and doodads that you add to your
phone or that you use, you know, in addition to
your phone. At the end of the day, I find
that it's just easier to use your phone. And that's
what I found with the Dji Osmo Action Cam. If
(38:27):
you're a snowboarder, skateboarder, surfer, action sports guy, gal, whatever,
you're gonna love this thing. And it's fantastic But if
you're just a regular person that is thinking they're going
to use this on their vacation once a year, you're not,
because when you go to Hawaii, you're gonna use this
thing once and then you're gonna realize that everything else
your your you know, your batteries out, whatever, Your phone
(38:49):
is always charged, it works, it's always with you. And
guess what, it's way easier to share videos from your
phone than it is from one of these little cameras
because you have to transfer them somehow, so I always
end up just defaulting to my phone. And that's kind
of like I feel like a lot of people are
like that these things.
Speaker 2 (39:06):
Do you buy them?
Speaker 1 (39:07):
The cameras three hundred and fifty dollars and next thing know,
it sits in a drawer, just like I talked about
those clips for the camera lens. So just keep that
in mind when you're thinking about buying some of these things,
even something as simple as a Bluetooth speaker. I mean, yes,
when I'm out by the pool, I love having a
Bluetooth speaker, but like ninety nine percent of the time,
(39:29):
it's just easier to just put your phone really loud
wherever you are and you know, if you're not having
a giant party, it's really not that big of a deal.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
Use your phone.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
So again, it's like all these little things like microphones
and stuff. It's like, sometimes I just find it's easier
just to use what's built into the phone. And I'm
just giving you that advice because it might save you
some money. All right, let's take a trip down memory
lane real quick. The Walkman turned forty this month, and
(39:58):
I have very fun memories of the Walkman. My first
one from Sony was a CD player. I'll never forget
purchasing this from my friends. I don't know if it
was his uncle or something. I was in Florida on
a family trip with them, and his uncle had a
CD player from Sony and he said, I'll sell it
to you for twenty bucks.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
And I said done, And I bought this thing.
Speaker 1 (40:19):
And you couldn't walk around with this thing not skipping
for five seconds. I mean you just just the way
they were back then, you would.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
I put it in my car. I had to like mount.
Speaker 1 (40:27):
It perfectly so that it wouldn't skip, and it just
just skipped all the time. You couldn't run with it.
You can do anything. Then, I'm trying to remember what
I did between that. That was high school and college.
I don't really remember college too much with with music,
but I do remember out of college. As soon as
I got out, I did have the Rio, which was
that it was like Diamond Multimedia.
Speaker 2 (40:47):
I think it was this little red player and I.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
Thought it was so cool because you could add a
memory card to it and have unlimited storage and MP
three's and this and that.
Speaker 2 (40:55):
It was so great. Of course, transferring music to it
was a pain. All that could stuff.
Speaker 1 (40:59):
Then, of course I I had newer CD players that
didn't skip as much. I tried running with those that
didn't work. Then I got the mini disc player from Sony,
and I remember thinking, oh my gosh, this is the
future because you knew how a mini disc that didn't
skip as much. And I ran with that thing, and
that was a pain. And I went through a whole
bunch of iterations until I saw the iPad. A girl
(41:21):
in the airplane next to me was using the brand
new iPod. It was like one of those little iPod
minis that they had in different colors. I think she
had a pink one and I saw that and I said,
oh my gosh, what is that? And she explained it
was an iPod and I said, oh my gosh, I've
seen commercials for it, and you know what, I'm buying
this thing. And so I went out the next day
(41:42):
and I totally bought an iPod Mini for myself and
my wife. I think they were two hundred and fifty
dollars each at Best Buy.
Speaker 2 (41:48):
And that was it.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
That was the That was all I needed to say
goodbye to the whole Walkman and all my issues with
running and you know now, I mean, oh my gosh,
if you keep going. Now I've got the Apple I mean,
for a while I had my phone, which i'd run
in a band, you know, around my waist. And now
I literally walk out of my house with my AirPods
(42:09):
in and my Apple Watch and that's it. And I've
got Apple Music on the watch, cull other on the watch,
and the air pods and it's totally magical. And I
think back twenty years to when I was using the
CD player and the Rio and all the frustrations of
these music devices and how easy it is now. We
have come a long way since the Walkman launched forty
years ago, and it had its point in life. It
(42:31):
had its place in life, but it just didn't. Sony
just didn't get it right. I remember when Sony's Music
store came out compared to Apple's and it.
Speaker 2 (42:40):
Was just a joke.
Speaker 1 (42:41):
You couldn't even do anything on it. It was such
a pain to buy the music and a pain to
transfer the music. And it was just one of those
things where Apple did it right and it just worked
all right. One more question real quick before we go.
MS Jean says, have you done the Apple Beta update?
It's actually really good and on my Apple TV too. Yes,
(43:02):
I did the beta update on my iPhone because I'm
trying to figure out from going to write my new
book or not. I did start it a little bit,
and I went through all the new features on the
iOS thirteen and I found sixty eight so far new
features that are pretty compelling. And they did a nice job.
They did a lot of stuff. Some of them are
bigger than others. Like share your ETA with people. I mean,
(43:26):
you could do that in Google Maps forever. Let's see
what I'll search in messages? You can, it's easier now,
remember and messages. In my first book, one hundred and
one Handy Tech Tips for the iPhone. I talked about
how you could search your messages, but you really can
only search like one word at a time. So now
Messages is making it a lot easier to search. You've
got quick path, which means you can swipe along the keyboard.
(43:47):
So there's a lot of stuff. But yes, I have
not installed it on the iPad. That's another project. And
Apple TV. I don't know if I'll do it on
Apple TV, but maybe I will, just to see what
that's all about. Well, thanks so much for listening. That's
going to do it for this show. Please subscribe if
you haven't done so already. All you have to do
is search rich on Tech in your favorite podcast app.
That's Apple Podcasts, pocket Casts, and Overcast. Those are a
(44:11):
few of the good ones. Don't forget to sign up
for my newsletter at richontech dot tv. I send out
a newsletter usually every week, and it includes all the
stuff that I covered that week, all my little tidbits
and things, just easy to.
Speaker 2 (44:24):
See, easy to browse through.
Speaker 1 (44:26):
All the links are there, so if you saw me
talk about something on TV or on the radio, or
on my Instagram or on my Facebook, I put all
the best stuff right there. So you can say, oh, yeah, that's.
Speaker 2 (44:36):
What Rich was talking about. Okay, perfect.
Speaker 1 (44:39):
This is usually the point in the show where I
asked producer Meghan how she liked it. I'm just gonna
speak for her and say that she did not like
it because she was not in the show. So it
definitely is a little bit tougher to do it myself.
But I you know, I think I survived, all right,
Thanks so much for listening. I think that's going to
do it. I'm Richdimiro. Have a fantastic day. I'll talk
to you real soon.
Speaker 2 (45:00):
The sto
Host
Rich DeMuro
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