Yes, your car is spying on you

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
A review of Apple's new air tags. Your car is
spying on you, but you probably already knew that. How
to scan in your old slides? Plus your tech questions answered?
What's going on? I'm Rich Dumiro and this is Rich
on Tech, the podcast where I talk about the tech
stuff I think you should know about. It's also the

(00:30):
place where I answer the questions you send me. And
believe me, I say it all the time. You send
me a lot of them. I feel very loved. Although
maybe it's just because you like the free tech help.
I don't know, whatever it is, thanks for sending them in.
I will do my best to answer your questions here.
My name is Rich Dmiro, tech reporter at KTLA Channel

(00:51):
five in Los Angeles. Thank you so much for tuning
me in. Oh, I forgot to start a time or whatever.
I'll just do this on the fly. So I'm broadcasting
right now to Twitter spaces, which I have not used before,
but I figured, I don't know. I mean, it's kind
of a fun thing, right If you just want to
tune in hear the podcast being recorded, why not. It's

(01:13):
kind of fun. Lots going on in the tech world
this week. Got a little little Apple trial going on.
You know, you've got Apple battling or I guess you
got it's really Epic battling Apple. Epic makes Fortnite one
of the most popular games in the world. Apple makes
the iPhone one of the most popular phones in the world,

(01:35):
and of course the App Store. And what I find
fascinating about this entire little skirmish what do you want
to call it, you know between these two big companies,
is that Apple all the stuff coming out of the
trial is is kind of like making me like Apple less. Now.

(01:56):
I already knew that Apple was very you know, pacific
in the way that they deal with their stuff, you know,
the way they market things, the way that they you know,
kind of want to make you get in their ecosystem
with the iPhone, and I message not being you know,
everything Apple does is one sided, right they I mean,

(02:17):
they want to make sure that everything you use keeps
you in the Apple ecosystem. And just seeing the emails
come out of this trial and seeing the thought behind
all of this is like it's kind of icky, Like
it makes me like I'm reading it and I'm kind
of like cringing because it's so gross to me. Like
when I think about something like Google, and I think
about how open they are and how they are they literally,

(02:40):
when they do something, they do it for the entire
world at once, right, no matter what language you speak,
no matter what operating system you use, no matter what
style of phone you have, whether it's a really high
powered phone or whether it's a really an expensive phone
that might cost twenty five dollars in developing country. So
that's what I've always appreciated about Google. Now I appreciate

(03:01):
a lot about Apple. I think that they make some
amazing products. I mean, the Apple Watch is something that
I've I've talked about I just can't live without, and
you know, other things like the iPhone, the camera and
the video and just the quality of what they've built
is amazing. But it comes at a cost. And the
cost is they have engineered every step of the way

(03:21):
to make sure that they have figured out how to
keep people in their system in the best way possible.
And a lot of times that involves things like, hey,
you know, we don't want you to use a third
party payment system because that's too easy for you to
like move to a different system. If you've got a
whole bunch of apps that you know, work on iPhone
and Android or something like that. So anyway, I just

(03:46):
think that the the ramifications of this trial for me personally,
are just kind of like I'm trying not to read
so much of it because every time I read it,
I'm just like, I don't I don't know what I
think about this, but we'll keep we'll keep tabs on that,
and I don't know. I just I just feel like
I love Apple and I love what they do, but
I also see kind of like the dark side of Apple.

(04:08):
And I know it's not something that's new, but it's
just it's like when it's on display in these emails
in this trial, I just like, oh, like, there's a
reason why you can't subscribe to Netflix inside the Netflix app.
There's a reason why you can't buy a Kindle book
inside the Amazon app, you know, and it goes on
and on and on. There's a reason why maybe you

(04:29):
could subscribe to Spotify at this point, I don't know,
but there's a reason why all these little subscription costs,
you know, ten percent more, twenty percent more if you
subscribe through the iPhone versus you know, going on the web.
But you would never see those two prices on the
iPhone app because you know, Apple doesn't allow that. So
it's just little things like that. And you know, I
deal with the average consumer. You know, my my segment,

(04:50):
my spot in life with my tech stuff is for
the average person, and the average person is not keeping
up with all the little nuances of the differences of
life on iOS versus is Android, or the differences in
life between what Google is doing and what Apple's doing
or what other companies are doing. So that's why I
keep up with it. And I do notice the differences.
You know, I do switch between iPhone and Android quite often,

(05:11):
and so I'm noticing, you know, the limitations of both platforms.
So anyway, something to keep out an eye on. And
it's just been very very interesting for me to kind
of to keep track of that whole situation. All right,
let's get to the first question of the day. It
comes from Kristin. Kristin says, hey, Rich, I've been trying

(05:33):
to research any sound systems that would allow you to
separate music from dialogue. As a senior, I really need
to find a way to turn down the music and
TV and movies so I can hear the dialogue. I
have to believe someone has created a feature or device.
I wish you had the expertise to create one because
us baby boomers are in dire need of help. Is
this technology out there? Thanks Kristin. Yes, Kristin, it is

(05:56):
because it is a feature on my Son's soundbar. And
I was trying. You know, it's funny because you know
every movie is the same, right, or every TV show
when it's like a big especially if you're watching in
a house with like the kids, it's like you're sitting
there and you know you're watching this movie and the
loud scene, like the chase scene or the explosion scene

(06:17):
is like whoa, it's so loud. And then when people
are talking, you're like, wait, what are they saying? I
can't hear them. So this is not just a senior moment.
This is a moment for everyone. We've all experienced this.
And in in my soundbar. I've got the son soundbar.
It's it's an aging device at this point, it's been
around for a while. A lot of my son No
stuff is. In fact, I need to buy a new

(06:38):
speaker from them. Two new speakers were on my list,
the new son No's Rome, which is their Bluetooth speaker
I want to get, and then also I need a
new Play five, which is kind of their biggest standard speaker.
But they call it speech enhancement. So what it does
is it boosts the audio frequencies associated with the human voice.

(06:59):
Turning this feature on will make dialogue easier to hear.
So what I would do if you're going to get
a soundbar or even with your TV, just search your
TV name or your soundbar name along with speech enhancement
or like voice clarity or you know, hear speech better,
you know those kind of things, and you'll see if
that feature is available on your system. If it's not,

(07:22):
you could invest in a soundbar that would I think
any soundbar would help in general, just because the TV
speakers are generally terrible. But I think that look for
one that specifically has this feature. I can't recommend the
Sons one. I mean, as much as I love it,
it's just way too expensive. Now they do have a
cheaper so no soundbar that I've seen at Costco that's

(07:43):
sort of like a smaller one and I'm trying to
see here it is. I think it's called the Beam.
Is that the one? Yeah? The so No's Beam is
four hundred dollars, so it's still expensive, but you know,
I think it's it's less expensive, and I'm guessing that
they would have yeah, speech enhancement is oh wow. Beam
was specially tuned by Oscar winning sound engineers to emphasize

(08:05):
the sound of human voice. So you know what what
I would say, Kristen, if you are looking for a soundbar,
Sons Beam is the way you want to go three
ninety nine. You can finally hear your dialogue in your movies,
and I think that is going to be the best
way to go. If you're looking for a less expensive one,
just look for a sound clarity feature on that soundbar.

(08:25):
It's definitely there. Believe me. If you hear meowing in
my home today, yes I'm working from home. If you
hear me owing near the studio, my wife yesterday thought
it was a good idea. She's been having an eye
on fostering cats or kittens specifically. My kids really want
a pet, but I've been saying no because you know,

(08:49):
we travel a lot. We were always out and it's
just it's tough to to have a pet in believing
we've had a dog in the past, and it's it's
a lot of work, especially when you go away on
the weekends. You know, you're sitting there bringing the dog
to a kennel or not a kettle. That's it's probably
not a nice word anymore. What's a border? I don't know.
We used to bring them to like this little place
that was like, you know, at some point it was

(09:10):
someone's house, and then you know, now we've got we
had a place that was you know, a little bit
bigger than that. But anyway, it's a lot. So anyway,
my wife thought that fostering kittens would be a good
idea for the kids, and so she did, and she
picked up not one, not two, but three kittens yesterday,
and the kids, I will say, my two sons were

(09:31):
absolutely loving them. They were just I mean, I've never
seen them on better behavior yesterday than in my entire life,
and they were just so good. They played with them
the entire afternoon. I cuddled with them while I watched
TV last night. I mean, yes, they're fun, but they
are all over the place. I mean, three little tiny
cats that are like, I don't know, a couple weeks old,

(09:51):
and I have to feed them something called gruel, which
is like mixed up wet cat food. I don't know.
I haven't done it yet, but I have to do
it today. So anyway, if you hear the me owing,
that's the story. And I do. Look, I love little
animals like this, They're so cute, but it's just it's
so much work already. Like my kids were exhausted, they
were they were begging me to go to sleep last night.

(10:11):
And to me, that's a win in my book. All Right, Ah,
I digress. Let's talk about Apple's AirTag tracker now. And
my last couple of podcasts I talked about how I
think this is just the most amazing product to ever
be invented when it comes to trackers, and I know,
I got so much stuff on my Facebook page, like

(10:32):
people challenging me like well, how is this any different
than the tile? And I'm like, look, I mean I
get it. Yes, Tyle came up with this idea many
many years ago. This is not a new thing. GPS
trackers have been around for a long time. This is
not a GPS tracker. But the beauty of this device,
this twenty nine dollars AirTag, is that it is working

(10:53):
with the find my network and to find. My network
is comprised of nearly a billion Apple gadgets helping to
locate your stuff. Now. Apple sent me a few devices
to test out. I've been testing them for the past
bit and I will say they're amazing. I mean I
put them on my keys, I put them in my backpack.
I gave my wife one to test on her keys,
and they're simply amazing. I mean they are something that

(11:17):
will make you never lose your stuff ever again. Now,
in my review on ktla dot com slash tech, I
said that they're great for stuff, not so good for people.
The reason I said they're not so great for people
is because there are some privacy concerns and I'm not gonna,
you know, rehash all the privacy concerns, but yeah, it's

(11:38):
like you slip this into someone's bag and you will
know where they are and it may be a while
before they realize that this thing is with them. So
you know, it's good and it's bad, and it's like
all technology. And I've said that before. So the device,
in case you're not familiar, has a small user replaceable battery.

(11:58):
It lasts for a year. You can up to sixteen
of them to an Apple ID and then once you
have that linked up, you can see the location of
your item on a map. There's no monthly fees. You
can ping the device when it's nearby. So the number
one used case scenario is that your keys are in
your house and you're looking for them. You go on
your phone, you press ping my air tag, and you

(12:19):
hear the little sound that the air tag makes and
you find it. Now, if you have a newer iPhone
eleven or twelve, you can use the precision finding feature,
which uses this special ultra wideband chip on both these
devices to literally lead you to the device. It's like
your phone will say turn to the left, Okay, go
one hundred feet or whatever, and it's not that far,
but you know that works when it's close by. Then finally,

(12:42):
if you want to call in the network, you can
do that and you can see the air tag on
the bigger network. And like I said, when I tested
it with my wife on her key chain, with her
you know, of course approval, I was able to see
where she was pretty much at all times. This is
not real time. There's no GPS here, but Apple's network
is so vast and so thorough that chances are you

(13:03):
will pretty much see where this thing is all the time.
Now again, I said that there's some some safeguards built
in to keep people from abusing these, but the reality
is people are going to abuse these. And you know,
I was trying to think, like, Okay, let's say worst
case scenario, have got an X right, an X situation,
and you know that person already knows where you live

(13:24):
and where you work, and so it's not like this
would be new information. But the reality is, yeah, there's
definitely some like icky ways that these things could be used.
So I think Apple is going to continue to kind
of hone these things in, you know, not to use
a pun, but you know, hone in on the software,
make it better, make you know, learn from the situations

(13:44):
that happen out there. But I think they're amazing. And
if you're in the Apple ecosystem, which by the way,
this will lock you in. This will this will lock
you in and throw out the key. Once you've got
an air tag, you are not switching to anything else
because the fact that you can just see all your
stuff on a map, it's gonna be hard to replicate
that with anything else, even the competing trackers. So once

(14:07):
you're in, I think you'll really like these, all right,
Mark says Rich. Question, sir, I have a movie projector
that I used outside with an inflatable movie screen, but
I'd like to use it. Will my kids wearing wireless
use it with my kids wearing wireless headphones and not
having loudspeakers disturbing our neighbors. Is there device to use

(14:30):
for multiple Bluetooth speakers from one source, respectfully? Mark? Uh? Yeah, Mark,
you can just go on Amazon and search Bluetooth transmitter
and I would type in multiple Bluetooth transmitter for multiple devices. Uh.
The one that I see is two devices, So I'm

(14:53):
sure there's one that has more, but in general, I
think two would probably be the best. If you're gonna
get more. I mean, look, I they know they do
more than two, because I've done a story with this
thing called a uh, oh my gosh, what's it called.
It's a silent like disco. Yeah, that's what it was,
a silent disco. And everyone at the silent disco, I'm
talking like, you know, one hundred people had headphones on

(15:14):
with Bluetooth that were listening to the DJ. And so
clearly there is some sort of system that can broadcast
Bluetooth to a lot of different devices, So I don't
think you need that. That's a little little extreme, but
you can definitely get a system that has multiple devices.
From what I'm just seeing with a quick search here,
it looks like two devices is kind of the standard.

(15:36):
So I didn't know. You didn't say how many kids
you have, But if you got two kids they both
want to listen, there you go. Now, some of the
headphones out there, you can kind of chain them together.
So I think I'm wondering if the pure ones do this,
but you know, you basically the kids can have one
of them is Bluetooth, and then you can kind of

(15:57):
take up cable and connect that to the other headphone
and that would give you maybe four headphones. So there's
lots of ways to do it. I just search Bluetooth
transmitter multiple devices on Amazon, and as long as your
projector has a Bluetooth connection or actually, you know what,
you don't even need Bluetooth connection. You probably just plug
it in with the headphone jack and then it would

(16:17):
bluetooth out. So there might be a little latency there.
I don't think it'll be too much of a big deal,
but yeah, those the movie nights are starting up again.
We did this last summer and it's just so much fun.
The kids love it. There's something great about having that
giant screen in the backyard with the movie playing. It's
just such a fun experience, Like even if you've watched
the movie before, Because if you've listened to my podcast,

(16:39):
you know, I'd ever like to pay for anything like streaming,
Like I like to whatever is on my streaming services
I subscribe to. That's what we're watching. And so maybe
I'll break this out tonight. I don't know how cold
it's going to be, but maybe it'd be fun to
watch that. What's that new movie everyone's talking about Mitchell's
Versus the Machines on Netflix. I've gotten like no less

(17:00):
and two text messages from friends saying have you watched
this yet? And I'm like, no, I didn't even know
about it. And comedy sci fi, and it sounds sounds great.
A quirky, dysfunctional families road trip is upended when they
find themselves in the middle of the robot apocalypse. That
sounds fantastic. Can't wait to watch that. Any movie that

(17:20):
is a kid's movie that I can watch with my
kids is a win in my book, because there's not
many of them, and so I just I love it
when I can find a movie hopefully what was the
rating on that? I didn't even check it. Let's see
PG perfect, Okay, love it all right, so we'll be
watching that. But yeah, Mark, that's what i'd recommend, and
good luck. Let me know what you find. Okay, all right,

(17:42):
let's move on to your car. Now. This is something
that I've sort of known for a while, but it's
always it's always interesting to see it in print. And
this is an article out of the Intercept. Actually a
guy named Sam Biddle who I used to I worked
with him once at We did a CEES show for
Spike TV back in the day. This was ces like

(18:04):
oh my gosh, two thousand and twelve, I think or
something like that. So we worked together a long long
time ago. But Sam has done really well for himself.
He writes a lot of this stuff, investigation type pieces.
This is one of them. Law enforcement agencies are purchasing
this technology called iv ive. It's a vehicle forensics kit
and once you hook it up to a car, it

(18:25):
can extract all kinds of information. And he says it
can sync the data from your phone, like if you
connected your phone to your I always wonder about this, Like,
you know, when I get a rental car, you know,
first thing you do, you plug in your phone, right, Well,
how much of the data from my phone stays on
that rental car? Is it? Like the contents of my
text messages? Is it? You know, all of my contacts?

(18:48):
Like how much is actually synced to that car? Versus
just displayed on that car? And I'm very unclear on that, honestly.
And I always say no when a car says, oh,
we have access to your messages, I said no, can
we have access to your contacts? No? I say no
to all of those things. I'm not gonna let some
random car just you know, suck all the data out

(19:10):
of my phone. Then, of course, when you return the car,
the rental car, you forget to clear the phone off
of it. You should always do that in general. But
of course I just returned a rental car, and I
didn't do that. Twice to rental cars in last month. Uh,
Hawaii won, by the way, very expensive. I cannot believe
how much I actually I have another rental car coming
up soon, and it's also very Actually all three have

(19:33):
been very, very expensive. I could have bought a car.
I could have bought a car for a year for
the amount I've paid now in rental car prices. And
it's just one of these things where what are you
gonna do? Like my wife and I, like, you know,
when we go on a trip, like, what are you
gonna do not get a rental car? Like we went
to Hawaii? What are you gonna do not drive around?
Like the one day you're sitting there, like, oh, be
so nice to go to that giant state park. That's

(19:55):
amazing that we flew five thousand, three thousand miles here
for Yeah, we'll just stay here. I mean, you know,
if you use it a couple of days out of
your trip, like it doesn't pay for itself, but it
certainly feels like it's worth it. Anyway. I digress. I
digress a lot on this show, in case you didn't
know that anyway, So can download this is the other

(20:17):
part your car if you have like an even like
the older cars, they are all basically recording everything about
what's happening in that car, the speed, when you turn
on the lights, when you open the doors, and the
system works with all the popular car brands, and the
main thing is that civil liberty groups are concerned that

(20:38):
law enforcement might not use a search warrant to access
the data. Now that's just one side of this. Imagine
your insurance company, and I've thought about this a lot.
So let's say you have a you know, some sort
of accident, right, it doesn't even have to be a
bad one. Let's just say that there's a you know,
there's a payout that's involved there, and the insurance company says, yeah, well,
to get your money, we've got to connect this little

(21:01):
thing to your car and kind of you know, collect
the data from your car. And you're like, what, hey,
it was in the terms and conditions that you agree
to and you say, oh, I didn't read those. Of
course nobody does. And they say, yeah, if you want
your you know, we're gonna give you a five thousand
dollars payout, but got it, We've got to check this
data first. And then they check the data like, oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

(21:22):
We saw that you had your phone connected to the system,
and the phone says that you're actually using it to
text while you're driving, So therefore that nullifies your claim
and you're like, oh, okay. And so this is how
this kind of stuff that you're like, well, I don't
do anything bad, I'm I'm you know, I'm okay. I
don't need to worry about this stuff. No, you do
need to worry because this is where it comes into

(21:44):
play in everyday situations. And so this is you know,
I've always talked about even when I was a kid,
I talked about the concept of what keeps you know,
what keeps law enforcement or even a city or whatever
a state from just autumn printing out tickets. Right, the
technology is there. Your car speeds, it's got some sort

(22:04):
of sensor transponder, they calculate the license plate whatever, They
have a camera on the freeway and it just goes, okay,
there you go. We're mailing a ticket to your house
because you went over seventy miles an hour. So how
are the laws created? Like, are the laws created? Do
they say you're not allowed to speed only when a
police officer's watching and they catch you, or is it no,
you're not allowed to speed at all and we can

(22:25):
use any means possible to ticket you for that. I
don't know. But again, these are the kind of things
that we're going to address in the future as technology
just continues to get better and better when it comes
to doing things automatically. Already, a lot of cities in
America and in the world, probably you know, they've outfitted
their their cars that, you know, whatever city cars they

(22:47):
have driving around with cameras that can do a lot
of different things. They use AI to identify stuff they identify,
you know, it could be they scan every license plate
and just look for stolen cars. And hey, these people
are driving around the city anyway, like our our ticket people,
So why don't we just scan cars while we're driving around?

(23:08):
So I just find this stuff super duper fascinating. That's
why I mention it. I don't know what the answer is.
I don't know what the answer is. But when I
was a kid, I always imagined that cars in the future.
I always said, like, what's to keep your car from
just spitting out a ticket on your dashboard in the future?
Like what we have the tech, I don't know, lots
lots to think about in our high tech world. Robert says, Hello, Rich,

(23:33):
can you walk me through setting up a new T mobile?
Galaxy S twenty one five G phone and transferring data
from my Galaxy No. Eight h Robert, I don't need
to walk you through because there's a there's an app
called smart Switch that is just phenomenal. This is from Samsung,
and if you're going to Samsung to Samsung, you are

(23:54):
really really doing well. I mean everything when you when
you turn on that S twenty one to five G
and you follow the prompts and you make sure that
you you smart switch with your old phone which have
it nearby. It can be wireless. I prefer wired because
it's just faster and simpler and it'll be easier. You
literally plug the two phones into each other and it's

(24:16):
going to transfer over everything, and it's going to not
just transfer everything, like your background's going to be there,
the placement of your apps is going to be there.
Everything's going to be literally like you just took this
phone and just took the new one and kind of merged,
you know whatever. It's just you just swapped out the
hardware and it works really well with smart Switch. So

(24:38):
now I've had mixed results with this. This also works
really well iPhone to iPhone and it you know, it
also somewhat works on other Androids, like if you went Android,
you know, like a Samsung to one plus or one
plus to pixel or you know whatever these random Android
devices are. So it works, O OK. It sometimes will

(25:01):
bring the whole screen in. Sometimes it won't, like your
your icons may or may not be placed where they were.
It's always kind of random. But if you're going Samsung
to Samsung, You're gonna be just fine. Super simple process. Robert,
let me know how it goes. And congrats on the
new phone. That's a good upgrade cycle. You went No. Eight,
you kept that for a while, and you went S
twenty one standard. I've got my eye. I keep looking up.

(25:26):
I'm I'm every day I go on Amazon and I
look up the S twenty one Ultra and I just
I want it, but I you know, and it's like
they could deliver it same day. Right now. It's out
of stock, but it's two hundred dollars cheaper. It's nine
ninety nine right now. That's for the one twenty eight.
I want the five to twelve, which is totally out
of stock. They don't even have it. The two fifty

(25:47):
six you can get, no, totally out of stock. So
I think this little price cut of the of the
nine ninety nine it used to be twelve hundred. I
think a lot of people have purchased it. Yeah, this
one's even out of stock. But I've had my eye
in the s twenty one Ultra five because I just
I want that, like zoom, I want I don't know,
I'm just I'm getting antsy with my iPhone, like I
but it's tough, like I've said in the beginning of

(26:09):
the podcast, like I can't give up my Apple Watch,
so I'd have to come up with some weird scheme
to still use my Apple Watch with the Samsung. But
then I'm thinking the new pixels coming out, Pixel six,
which I'm very high hopes for, that will likely be
my next phone, as long as if it's an Apple
or sorry, if it's a Google designed processor. Oh my gosh,

(26:30):
I can't wait. I am I you know, phones, I
get it. They're not that exciting to people anymore. They're
still very exciting to me, especially especially the Pixel, because
it is just I feel like the Pixel is a
device that throw a phone in the dryer, and that's
the Pixel. It's just bouncing around. It's there's just no

(26:51):
there's no definitive trajectory for the Pixel. Every year the
Pixel come comes out, Google does some wild and weird
and wacky thing with that. You're just like, ah, I
thought this was gonna be the one. No, no, it's not.
I mean, I can't. I'm trying to think the last
time the Pixel was like the best phone I ever
like loved in my life, and it might have been

(27:12):
like the three. I don't know. It's like it was
a while ago. But I still love the idea of
the Pixel. I love how smart the Pixel is. And
so the Pixel five was a major disappointment for me,
even though it's a great little phone. And I'll be honest,
for a regular phone, like if you're just you know,
not a power user, but if you just want like
the best inexpensive camera on a phone, the Pixel four

(27:33):
A and the four A five G are just phenomenal phones,
you know. Like I've said, I've said this before. My
mom has a Pixel. She loves it. She loves her Pixel,
and she just doesn't understand everyone says her pictures are
so great. You know. She also has mint Mobile, which
she loves, you know, and it's just one of these
things she doesn't understand why people are like so obsessed

(27:54):
with like iPhone, and they're expensive data plans, and I'm like, mom,
I know, it's just you know, people don't realize they're
caught up in a lot of this hype. But like
your phone is fantastic, you know, like your phone is great,
your service is great. As long as your mint Mobile,
which runs on T Mobile, works where you go and
live and do things, You're fine. Yeah, fifteen bucks a month,
you're okay, Like why do you have to pay more?

(28:16):
She doesn't understand it, as she's like, why my friends
pay more for phone? I'm like, I don't know, I
know why I do. I have Verizon. I need Verizon.
The coverage is fantastic, and I have an Apple Watch.
So I can't go with one of these third party
mv and o's, these smaller carriers because they don't offer
all of the futures that I need. I need, you know,
full upload a video. I want HD video when I

(28:38):
watch videos on my phone, and some of these things
you just can't get when you're with a smaller carrier.
But they're the things that the average person who just
needs a connection, who's just checking Facebook, who's just looking
at Instagram, who's uploading a picture, who wants to make calls?
It all works, it's all all good. All right, let's
talk about Twitter. I don't talk too much about Twitter

(29:00):
because I feel like it's not very mainstream. Although if
I had to pick one social media network to stick
with forever, I think it would be Twitter. Even as
much as I love Instagram, everything is so you know,
they they make it so tough, right, there's no links
you get, it's just you've got stories you have. I mean,
just the amount of thought I have to put into

(29:22):
anything that I post to Instagram is so my brain literally.
Maybe that's why I gets headaches so much, because I
just feel like I have to sit here and think
about formats of video. So, like, you know, the new
thing on Instagram is you know, igtv is like how
they want you to post your videos, which, yes, you
can post your videos as Okay, I'll just I'll just

(29:45):
go off for a second here. So on Instagram, the
easiest video is is the sixty second square video, right,
And that is the easiest way to get a video
on Instagram because the most people will see it. It's simple,
it shows up in the feed, it plays the entire video,
but your limitations are it can't be more than sixty seconds.
It has to be square, which is fine, and you

(30:08):
know it shows the entire video when you're scrolling through
the feed, and it will show it to the most
people because it's in the feed. Then you have IGTV,
which of course they love, but it's so complicated because
if you post, you can post a full, you know,
rectangular sixteen by nine video. But guess what that looks
tiny on a phone screen. It looks like a thumb.
Uh what is it? A posted stamp? So who wants

(30:31):
to watch a video like that? Not me? So that's
why you rarely see me post videos like that unless
I'm being really lazy and I'm just like, I don't
feel like figuring this out, so I'm just gonna post
sixteen by nine. When I see other people post sixteen
by nine, guess what I do, I scroll right past it.
If you want to post a video on Instagram that
sort of really captures the eye, it's an IGTV video

(30:52):
in sixteen by nine, but vertical format, which we've been
taught as journalists and video creators our entire lives never
shoot vertical video. But yet that's the video format that
Instagram wants. Now, when I'm out there shooting my videos,
like today, i posted a video from inside Firestone Walker Brewery.
I'm sitting there in the brewery literally, I'm like, Okay,

(31:14):
do I shoot this sixteen by nine? Do I shoot
square so I can later edit it? Or do I
shoot up and down vertical so I can make a
longer video. Oh and by the way, if it's longer
on Instagram, if you want you know, the unlimited time
you go IGTV because then you get you're not within
that sixty seconds of timeframe. So this is the kind
of stuff that when you just see my stuff on

(31:36):
Instagram and it's oh, Rich posted something new, how cute,
Oh cool, let me like it. You have no idea
the psychological torture that is going on for me as
someone who is trying to deal with all these different
formats and noo. And then by the way, I want
to post the same thing to Facebook, and I'm like, ah,
do I want to post square? Because if people are
watching it on Facebook on their TV, it's gonna look

(31:57):
all messed up, or you know, it's gonna have the
wings we call them on the sides, you know where
it's like the blurry background, or if they're watching on
their computer, don't they want to watch it full screen?
So it is very, very complicated anyway. So I say
this all because Twitter just is so easy, Like you
just tweet and you can put links and you can

(32:18):
it's just everything just works so nicely. They don't try
to play games with you, right and they just you know,
it just works. You can have a conversation, people can comment,
you know, you can at people, you can tag places,
you can put videos in there, you can put pictures
in there, you can put links in there, you can
put audio in there. It just all works. But the
problem is it doesn't have the audience that Instagram and

(32:39):
Facebook have, especially for me. Now some people have built
their audiences on there. The problem is my audience is
more of a typical consumer, and the typical consumer is
on Instagram, not on Twitter. You're still there, okay. So
with all that said, Twitter has a really cool feature
now called tip jar, and this is how it sounds.

(33:03):
You basically connect a payment system, whether it's cash app, Patreon, PayPal, Venmo,
and people can leave you a tip. So if they
like what you're doing on Twitter, they can leave you
a tip. Now. This is enabled for me on Facebook.
I haven't really publicly mentioned this very much, but there's
something called stars that Facebook invited me to test, and
people can leave me stars, which somehow equates into money.

(33:26):
I haven't really seen the money from this, but it does.
Like if you leave me one hundred stars, I think
it's like a dollar. So I see them from time
to time, and I guess it works. I don't really
call them out, I don't really say anything about them,
so I'm not like actively pursuing stars. But I think
it's amazing if you made, if you make your living

(33:47):
as a creator, you want all these different avenues. You know,
if you have a video that goes totally viral, and
you know, look, if I love the idea of supporting
creators that I like, like I want people to be
independent if they can, right, if you can be independent
and do your job and love it, like, more power
to you, Like I want to support that. And if
it takes a buck for me to send you on

(34:07):
venmo or cash app or Patreon or whatever, cool. So
the thing that I think is interesting here is that
Twitter is not taking any cut of this tip jar,
which I think is kind of odd, like, I think
that's a missed opportunity for them. I get it, maybe
they don't need the money, but I feel like they
could have taken like even ten percent or one percent

(34:28):
and people still would have been happy to have this.
But hey, you know what, it's cool if they're doing it,
if you want to see if it's enabled for you.
Right now, they're doing it for journalists and experts. I'm
somehow not included in that. I didn't see it online,
but you can go to your profile, pick edit profile
and see if it's enabled for you. All right, shout

(34:52):
out to the folks in the spaces on Twitter. I
know I just talked about Twitter, so hey, it seems
like there's a couple of people in there. My mic
is actually working now. I understand what I'm doing on
spaces right now, which I'm broadcasting live to Twitter, is
totally anti to everything Spaces is about, right Spaces is
about conversations, and right now you're just listening to a

(35:13):
one way feed of what I have to say, and
you can't talk back. Now, maybe this could be something
I could do in the future, Like if someone raises
their hand, I guess I could bring them on the podcast,
which would be kind of cool. But I don't know.
I mean, I've never that would be an interesting thought.
Maybe I'll do it next time. But yeah, says tap
on an avatar to invite someone to speak. Oh yeah,

(35:34):
so people are like doing little waves and little like
symbols and stuff. It's really cool. Again one of the
reasons I love Twitter. It's just it's they've they've built
in all the things you need as like the best
communication system, right without fooling around, without trying to trick
people like Instagram and Facebook everything like Facebook, you know,
you put a YouTube video in there and somehow it

(35:56):
doesn't embed. You're telling me Facebook's engineering team can't figure
out how to make a Facebook video playable in Facebook
on the news feed. No, it's because Facebook doesn't want
you to play a YouTube video. In fact, they don't
want you to post a YouTube video. They'd rather you
upload a video natively to their platform so that they

(36:16):
get the recognition, they get the money, they get the ads,
they get the everything. And it's those little kind of
decisions that like, I just ugh, it makes my skin
crawl because now, by the way, videos used to play
embedded in Facebook, but they made a decision to take
it out. Same thing as Instagram. When you used to
tweet a picture on Instagram, yeah, it used to go

(36:38):
to Twitter, and of course they took that out. So again,
all these companies I talked about Apple in the beginning,
None of these companies are innocent. They all do things
that are that fly in the face of what's best
for the consumer. And as consumers, you may not realize that,
but I do. And this is why you know, I
keep on top of this stuff, and this is why

(36:59):
I talk about so that you understand that there's no
technical reason why a YouTube link that you paste into
your newsfeed should not play inside Facebook. They don't want
it to play inside Facebook. They want to make it
as horrible as an experience as possible, so that you
don't post a link to a YouTube video, or a
creator doesn't use Facebook to just put their YouTube links.

(37:22):
They don't want to do that. They want the creator
to use Facebook's platform. Okay, Christine says, hey, Rich, don't
even get me started on links on Instagram. Oh hey, Rich,
I'm looking at finally getting a streaming device since my
smart TV won't hold too many apps. I'm not sure
which one I should get. So I wanted to get
your advice. I saw your review of the new Apple

(37:43):
TV device. I'm not really sure that's worth the extra
money in your opinion, What is the best device to get,
Christine Christine Christine, Well, I think the Apple TV is
you're asking me, which is the best device? You know,
I probably that's a tough one. I think the Apple
TV is really really nice. I'm not it is expensive,

(38:06):
so I don't think it's worth it for the average
person to get. I love mine. I think that it's
really nice. I also really love the Chrome Cast with
Google TV, but I can't recommend that one because it's
such a newer. Like Okay, when you look at when
you look at the state of streaming devices, right, you've
got Roku, You've got Apple, and you've got Amazon. And

(38:30):
I will tell you out of those three, which are
the most popular. I mean, Chrome Cast is popular, but
that's definitely you know, people kind of like to have
these things with a remote control, and so I think
Google was smart to do the Google TV, but I
also don't think it's as prominent as these other ones.
So when I look at platforms, here's what I look
at Amazon and Roku are pretty much the top two. Now,

(38:53):
the reason why people love Roku and Amazon is because
they are cheap. They've got streaming sticks that are so
cheap you buy I am like a ten pack. It's
like a pack of gum and you just you know,
put them on the backs of all your TVs. Now,
I think that those those really cheap streaming sticks are horrible.
They're slow, they're jittery. Yeah, you don't need much power

(39:14):
to stream stuff. Like believe me, you can use a
streaming stick that's a couple of years old and it's fine,
but it's not going to be the smoothest experience. So
when it comes to the streaming sticks, I would go
a little higher and if you can spend fifty dollars
instead of twenty five, and you'll get a much better
experience on these sticks. Now, with that said, Roku versus Amazon,

(39:35):
that's a tough one. If you're an Amazon subscriber, like
a prime subscriber, I would probably go Amazon. The problem
is Amazon's their interface is all over the place. It's
just so like cluttered with like stuff. I'm like, it's
just like you're like bombarded with like do I watch this?
Do I watch that oh this is on Prime Video. Oh,
it's like so much. But I also like how they

(39:55):
highlight stuff from the services that you subscribe to, so
that's kind of cool. Roku, on the other hand, is
very simple. They're just ad filled. There's ads everywhere. It's
just ads galore. So it's like you just on that screen.
I just it's like, I hate seeing the ads on
the Roku. But with that said, I like the Roku
devices because they're universal, like pretty much. I think at

(40:17):
this point every app is on. There might be a
couple on missing, but all the major apps are on
Roku and Fire. I know that there's a little fight
right now between Roku and YouTube TV, so I'm sure
that will be figured out. That it's always a money thing.
It's always a money thing, so it will be figured out.
It's like back in the day when cable channels used

(40:39):
to fight with the cable systems. Right just notework is
taking away my Fox Sports. Well now that battle has
just moved to the streaming services. Because if you don't
think that Amazon and Roku are making a little cut
off of all these streaming services that they allow on
their device, oh yeah, they are. Believe me. That's why
it took so long for HBO Max to arrive on Fire.

(41:00):
That's why it took re cool while to get I
forget what it was, but it was something they had
a problem with. But it's all about the money. It's
all about the money. So with that said, I would
I mean, if I had my way, I would go
with the Chrome Cast. I think that one's the best
because I feel like it when I use my Chrome
Cast with Google TV. I mean, the beauty of it

(41:21):
is that it suggests all content from services that you
pay for. And I just love that because I go
on the home screen of Google TV and I see
twenty five things I want to watch, and guess what
It clearly shows right underneath that that movie or TV
show if it's included in one of your streaming packages.
I love that. That is a major, major plus in

(41:45):
my book, because if you know me, you know I'm
not paying five ninety nine to stream a movie. Ever,
it just doesn't happen. I don't pay. I'm paying for
HBO Max, I'm paying for uh Hulu, I'm paying for
Disney Plus, I'm paying for NETFLI the most expensive one
with four K, which I don't even understand the difference.
It doesn't even look any different. But I've got like
twenty people on my account watching, so I mean, I

(42:07):
can't you know, I need as many simultaneous devices as
possible before they cut me off. I only had it
happen once where I sat down to watch Netflix and
it was like, sorry, your account was in use, and
I was like, what someone that I you know, I
get maybe maybe you share your password with a few
family members. And I was like, so I had to
call them in or a text them all, and I'm
like a group text who's watching Netflix? Someone needs to

(42:29):
log off? I'm watching I need to watch something, Okay,
but Christine, Uh, Okay. My bigger point about all these
streaming devices is you want to go with one that
is updated. Often. I don't like the smart TVs because
the software on them. Like, okay, this is the example

(42:49):
I always give your HBO max. Right, You've got eighty
percent of people watching on a Roku, twenty nineteen percent
watching on a fire, two percent watching on Apple TV,
and two percent watching on chrome Cast TV. Okay, which
app are you going to update with the newest features? First?
Probably the Roku app right, followed by the Amazon app,

(43:12):
and maybe you'll get to the other two later. Now,
I'm just that's just a you know, I think the
Apple TV apps are updated and are really good, but
the reality is like, as a developer, you know, you're
probably not gonna update the random video platform app from
you know, two thousand and nine. It's just it. Yeah,
it's on your TV, but it's probably not gonna be
updated very often. So that's why I like to get

(43:34):
one of these streaming devices, plug it into the TV,
and that way you get the best apps and features
that are readily available. So finally, I guess my my
summation of all this is go with which one you
like the best, whether it is Roku or Amazon. If

(43:54):
you're all Apple products, maybe you go with the Apple TV,
But like you said, you don't want to spend the
extra money and it is tough to justify. So and
I love the Chrome Cast one, especially with the remote.
That's the one i'd probably go with personally, but I
just feel like it's not going to be as updated
as frequently as the other two. But I don't know.
I mean, that's the one I feel like does the
best job of what I want. When I sit down

(44:15):
in front of the TV. All right, let's get to
another story. This is Google Assistant new features. A couple
of new features to tell you about. One of them
is broadcast. And this is not a new feature for
Google Assistant, but they're extending it. And so now it
used to be you could say, hey G, broadcast, how
about we go to lunch at noon or I'm coming

(44:37):
home soon, and it would it would say your little
voice on all your speakers. So let me give you scenario.
You are leaving work, you fire up Google Assistant on
your smartphone, whether you have an iPhone or Android. Yes,
there's a Google Assistant for iPhone. You can download the
app and use it, and you say to that Google Assistant,
hey G, broadcast, I'm coming home and I'll be home

(44:58):
in ten minutes. And at home your speakers all you know,
if you have a Google Home speaker or a Google
Nest Hub display, it will announce in your voice what
you just said. And that's a cool feature. It's been
around for a while. I don't think anyone uses it.
Maybe they do. I always forget about it. But now
they're extending this to phones, So on Android or iPhone,

(45:22):
you'll see the little notification with that pop up and
it'll say the same thing. So I thought that was
really cool. That's brand new. And I gotta remember I
scared the heck out of my family one time when
I tested this feature, because I tried it, you know,
and I was like, hey, everyone, what's up or whatever
I said, and everyone, like my wife said, she just
about you know, jumped out of the house when she

(45:43):
heard that because it was so out of there. Okay,
the other things, I mean, there's a bunch of features
that they're talking about, these new Google Assistant features. I'm
just going over the ones I think are cool for kids.
They've got new stories and this is kind of cool.
You can say, hey, gee, talk to who was hero?
And you can listen to stories about over one hundred

(46:05):
different people that are kind of like big in history.
And so that's really cool because I know the kids
love to play with these Google Assistant devices, but anytime
you can get them to learn something and enrich their
little brains, I think that's pretty cool. And then this
one's really fun. You can play the popular game show
Are You Smarter Than a fifth Grader on the Nest Hub,

(46:25):
so you just say, hey, gee, talk to are you
smarter than a fifth grader? And you can play that game.
And while I have on that topic, we played in
the car. If you have Android Auto, you can ask
to play games in the car. And I know it
sounds really scary and kind of dangerous, but I got
to say, once you're on like an open stretch of
the freeway, if you're on a road trip and you

(46:45):
know there's not a lot of traffic around, and you
can kind of, you know, play this game. We played.
It was like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? And
it was so much fun. We had a great time.
And it's it's really slick like how they do it.
You know, they basically ask questions, you say your answers,
and it's it's back and forth. It's very interactive. It's
a little odd that you're playing games in the car,

(47:07):
like while you're driving with your family, but you know,
it seemed relatively safe. I think it's mainly if you're
not really putting a lot of brain power into driving,
Like if you're just on like an open stretch right
where you're just kind of there's not a lot going on,
and you you know, you can I don't know, maybe
it's not meant for the driver. Maybe it's just passengers only.
So I'll leave it at that, all right, Genny says,

(47:33):
I have several Apple products to recycle or even get
a credit for. I've gone through Apple and receive the
shipping statement. It appears that I do not need to
remove my data and they will do it for me.
Do you think this is safe? If not, I do.
I just do a reset on all the products. Some
have the old charging connection and I don't know if
they will even power up. Thanks, Ginny, Ginny. Okay, So

(47:57):
my advice in general is if I'm ever sending something
in I want to you know, format it, like I
want that hard drive or that device wiped clean. Now,
the reality is, if if you have a password on
your device, chances are they're not gonna crack. They're not gonna,
you know, get to the recycling facility and someone's gonna
spend an hour trying to crack your password. I mean, yes,

(48:19):
that's a possibility, but most of these recycling facilities or
these uh, you know, refurbishing facilities have safeguards in place
to keep their employees from doing that, and it's just
not something that probably happens very often. It could, and
I think that you should take safeguards against it just
to be sure. And there will be some places like

(48:41):
I you know, like I've said, I've been to places
where I've left my computer and they said, hey, can
you write down your password? And I'm like, no, I'm
not writing down my password to my computer. So if
they ever ask you to do that, say no, and
they will figure out a way around it. Now, they
may have to format your drive, and you know, so
you want to make sure you have a backup of
this stuff if you're sent in Now in your situation,

(49:01):
you're sending stuff into recycle. So my advice is if
you can power it up, plug in the old charging cable.
If it's a really old gadget, you can't just plug
it in and expect it to power up. It may
take an hour for that thing to come alive because
it's the battery is so dead that it's going to
take a bit for it to even get to a
place where it can do anything on that screen. So

(49:22):
you may plug it in and it may look like
it's not charging, but just leave it there for a
solid hour and it may come to life with a
little charger symbol after an hour's I've noticed that with
my gadgets that I have very old that I'm kind
of trading in, not trading in, but like getting rid of,
and I or I haven't used them in a really
long time, and that's the case. And then yes, do

(49:43):
a reset. You want to go into your settings and
it's settings reset, and it's factory reset, so you can.
You can do that on most of the Apple gadgets
have that built in, or in fact, all of the
gadgets pretty much these days have some sort of factory
reset built in which will erase the data on them.

(50:04):
And that should be fine. Now, if you can't power
up a product it doesn't work, I think you'll be
okay sending it in again. If you had a pass
code on that product or a password at some point,
it should be fine. It's gonna get to the factory.
They're just gonna do the wipe, either manually somehow, or
they're even just gonna recycle it, you know, crunch it
up if it's so old that they don't need anymore.

(50:24):
So good question. I'm glad that you are, you know,
interested in protecting your privacy. I think that is very
very smart. Let's talk about this. This is just a
small story. Well I'll just do this one. We did
a story on KTLA about scanning in old slides, and
it depends, you know, if you're of a certain age,

(50:46):
like for me personally, I don't have any slides. I
never shot slides. I don't I never used them. I mean,
the only thing I remember is as a kid, we
did have I'll never forget my dad setting up a
slide show just once, like it wasn't even our projector.
I think it was his parents projector. And I remember
like looking at some slides, but that's really it. I mean,

(51:06):
my childhood was mostly film and then of course digital
cameras and now smartphones. But if you're of a certain
age and you have a bunch of slides laying around,
or you know your family might have left you slides
or they have slides, you know you can scan these
in and make them digital. And so we tested two
different methods. One was a one hundred and forty dollars

(51:26):
digital scanner. It was from a company called digit Now
Scan Slides. Let's see, I think I want to make
sure that was the name. So I okay, this is
this is what happens sometimes with stories. So I was
sent this scanner to test and I thought it was
forty dollars. For some reason, I don't know why I
missed the one and so I was like, oh, this
is such a great deal. It's so easy. Then I

(51:48):
saw that it was one hundred and forty dollars, which
you know, that's expensive for a standalone device, but it's
still not that expensive for converting your slides. So we
tested that. I thought it was great. You put the
slide in. It's a it's a time consuming process. You
have to slide each scan in manually, take a picture
of it, you know, it kind of lights it from behind.

(52:08):
It puts it on a memory card and then you
can put that on your computer. The quality is excellent,
it comes out great. It's simple, it's easy, and it's
done right. And then you can either put this on
eBay or give it to a friend or split the
price with a family member. It also does film, It
does all kinds of stuff, so that was great. Then
we tried, because I know I like giving people options,

(52:28):
we tried an app called slide scan and I could
not believe that an app could scan a slide. I
was like, how, well, here's how it does it. It uses
just your iPhone or Android. You hold your your slide
up to your computer screen and the slide scan app
gives you like a QR cod scan to just basically
take you to a blank white page on your browser.

(52:51):
So that's this nice bright white background. You hold your
scanner or your slide in front of that, and then
you hold your phone in front of the slide and
you you know, it's lit from behind, and you take
a picture of it with the app. It's not just
your regular camera. And then the app you know, performs
a little magic and AI to bring that slide back
to life as a digital file. And I gotta say

(53:12):
it works really well, like extremely well. Not as clear
as the scanner. But the main issue is that since
you're holding it in your hand, you're holding the slide
and you're holding your phone, it's like it's an you know,
it's a lesson in like steadiness, because I noticed with
my father in law, whose hands you know a little
bit shakier than mine. You know, he's a little bit older.

(53:35):
Nothing against him, it's just you know, when you get older,
you're not as like steady as you are when you're younger.
Maybe that's not everyone, but I feel like that's maybe
what happens. And so he had a little bit of
trouble kind of steadying the slide to get it perfect
for the phone, whereas I really didn't. But still then
you have glare and you have all these other things.
So bottom line, the slide scan app is pretty miraculous.

(53:56):
I mean, if you want to scan in like a
couple of slides, like, definitely it out. It's available for
iPhone and Android. You can try it for free, although
you do have to pay. It's like seven bucks a
month if you want to do unlimited slides. I would
recommend putting a towel over your like kind of using
Remember when people would take pictures back in the old days,
like the really old days, like the old West, where

(54:18):
they would like put their head underneath like a some
sort of I don't know, covering on the camera. Like
they would go underneath like a what do you call
like a tarp or something I don't know, like a blanket,
I don't know what you call that thing whatever it's
like attached to the camera and they would go they
would lift it up and they would go underneath like
a sheet. Well, that's kind of what you need to
do here with your with your phone scanning your slides,

(54:39):
because you don't want any external light on top of
the slide because it will reflect. And so I took
a towel, I put it over my head, I put
it over my computer, and I did the picture like
that and it came out great. It's just not as
clear as the slide scanner. But I got to say,
there were two really cool methods of getting those slides scanned.
And believe me, anytime you can get old things scanned

(54:59):
in digital, definitely do it. It is such a cool
thing people, you know, you send it to your friends
and family. I personally love to just dump all this
stuff into Google Photos and then it automatically slices and
dices it all. You can, you know, now, click on
the head of you know, the picture of the face
of someone that's in one of the pictures. It shows
you all the pictures that're in. You make a little album,

(55:20):
you send it off to them, and it's just such
a cool, cool thing to do, all right. Barbara asks,
is there a way to totally block YouTube from iPad
and our iPhone? My seven year old grandson watched things
that are not appropriate for him. Oh I'm laughing, but
I'm not. We've tried blocking, but where he goes on

(55:42):
the iPad or iPhone, he knows how to unblock it.
I'd rather just totally take it off so we can
see nothing regarding YouTube. We do have kids YouTube. Please help.
Barbara in Mount Prospect, Illinois. All right, Barbara, So I
think the easiest way to block YouTube is just too well,
there's two ways. If you have an app, you're gonna
have to set up screen time. This is like the simplest,

(56:02):
cheapest way. You don't have to buy any extra equipment.
But there's two things you gotta do. Number one, you
got to go on screen time. Set that up. You
can set that up from your phone. If he's on
your family plan, you can do it all from your
phone and then it'll carry over to his device. You know,
you just set them up as a family member and
you can do all the settings from your phone. If
he's not a family member, you could just go onto
his iPad set up screen time, and basically you have

(56:24):
to come up with a code. My kids have been
able to figure out the codes I've set up which
make them tricky and don't let them watch you type
them in. And then once you're done with that, you
can approve only certain websites that he can go to,
so you can block YouTube completely, or you can just
pick a list of like ten websites so he's allowed
to go to PBS kids or whatever. And then you
got to get rid of the app, so delete the app,

(56:45):
and then you have to change a setting on the
iPad that says they cannot install or delete apps, and
that will keep him from reinstalling the app. But my
kids also found another way around this. This is they're
really tricky. They what they do is they go into
my purchased apps. They can go into the family purchased
apps on my account through their iPad and search for

(57:08):
an app that they want to download, and then it
doesn't ask for permission from the parent. So I don't
know if that's like a They love finding hacks and
it seems to be a pretty good one. But you
can still block out any app with screen time by
saying you can limit the time on it, and that's
the easiest way that I'd recommend. If you're looking for
a little more control, you can block YouTube from the
entire network using Circle. This is a device that you

(57:31):
connect to your network, and this is what I have here,
and it is it's complicated, but it is very thorough
and you will have all the controls you need to
keep your kids in line, or most of them, I
should say. There's a website called next dns, dot Io
and Barber that's going to be a little bit more complicated,
but I'm just giving you options that will let you

(57:52):
control all the network settings and block certain websites from
your entire network. You also have Eero if you have
an ear or you know, one of your your routers
with the newer routers give you a lot of these
controls inside your router. So I subscribe to something called Eurosecure.
It's thirty bucks a year and it gives you a
lot of controls to filter things on your Internet at home.

(58:14):
So those are the things I'd recommend. Good luck. It
is an ongoing battle in my home with YouTube. It
took me so long to figure out how to block
YouTube on my smart displays because once you get into
like the way the Google Nest Hub works, it's fascinating.
They have like two different connections. It's like one is

(58:34):
like a chrome cast connection, and one is like another,
and anyway, it took me forever to figure out how
to block YouTube on those things. And then it's it's
very I don't want to get into it all, but
it's it's super complicated because when I want to sit
down and watch YouTube on the main TV, I can't
because it's blocked for my kids, and there's no easy
way for me to unblock it. So I had to

(58:55):
come up with a way of basically coming up with
a family the home profile that blocks out YouTube unless
I reward myself with fifteen minutes of time for YouTube.
I know, it's wild. This is the stuff I deal with,
and I understand it's so so complicated, and this is
why parents just let their kids have free roam because
they don't want to deal with it. And I understand that.

(59:15):
But you got to keep these kids in line with
this YouTube stuff because there is a lot of stuff
on there, and some of it they should not be watching.
All right, let's see, let's just it fire. Amazon has
a bunch of new Toshiba smart Fire TVs, and I
didn't want to spend a whole bunch of time on these,
but if you need it like a fire TV all
on one kind of thing. It's kind of cool, but

(59:37):
I thought this was neat. They have a new feature
called Live Picture and Picture and it will let you
see your video doorbell on your TV when someone rings it,
and I just thought that was so cool. They don't
say that it's a ring doorbell, but I'm guessing it
has to be ring. Maybe not, I don't know, but
I just thought that was so cool because I love
that feature that if someone rings your doorbell, you can

(59:59):
see the ring pop up on your TV screen. I mean,
that's such like a useful feature. But again, all these
tech companies love to put us in silos, right, so
if you want the most out of all of them,
you have to kind of stick with all their brands.
And that's kind of what I'm seeing here, I'm assuming.
But anyway, I've got a lot more questions, but we're

(01:00:20):
running out of time here, so I'm just gonna do
one more real quick. I'm gonna just gonna do an
article from a PetaPixel dot com. They name their best
smartphones first Photography in twenty twenty one, and I totally
agree with them, so I'm just gonna go over them
real quick best overall smartphone for photography Samsung Galaxy S
twenty one Ultra. One percent agree with this. It is
such a versatile phone. The pictures are phenomenal, but it's

(01:00:42):
not just the pictures, because I think the iPhone twelve
Pro has amazing pictures and video. But I think what's
different about the Ultra is it gives you more options,
you know, like there's just the zoom capabilities of that
phone are so phenomenal. You're just not gonna get that
on the iPhone. Now, not everyone needs that, but it's
again best overall smartphone for photography as twenty one Ultra

(01:01:05):
and what you know edges it out is really the
the zoom lens on that thing that is just so phenomenal.
Best for computational photography is the is the pixel Google
the Google Pixel five, And again I agree, computational photography
means this camera is not equipped with like the best lens,
the best sensor, the best anything. But somehow the pictures

(01:01:27):
from the Google Pixel five still look phenomenal, and it's
just it's just great. HDR on the Pixel five is
just amazing. It's better than any phone I've seen. It
just does if you want to point and shoot. That
just nails it every time. It's going to be the
Pixel five. But with that said, I would recommend the
what they say the best bang for the Bucks smartphone

(01:01:48):
for photography is the Google Pixel four A. Now i'd
probably go four A five G just because you know,
I think you should probably get on five G if
you're buying a new phone today. But the the fora
is just phenomenal, and if you're on a budget, it's
literally the best phone cameras money can buy less money
can buy. That's what they said, and I agree with

(01:02:08):
that because it's just it's just a simple phone. It
takes great pictures and it's not that expensive. There's not
a lot of fuss. Yeah, it's not as sexy as
the iPhone or the Samsung, but it does the job.
If you just want to take nice pictures and be
on your merry way, it's gonna take a great picture
every time. Then they say the best smartphone for video
is the iPhone twelve Pro Max, which is interesting. I

(01:02:30):
use the iPhone twelve Pro and they say the Max
is better because it's got a larger sensor forty seven
percent larger sensor in the ultra wide, which, yeah, that's
gonna bring in more light, and that means it's going
to be great to shoot footage with. But I gotta
say the phone that I've been using for the past year,
the uh, you know, the iPhone twelve pro or since

(01:02:52):
it came out. I mean, the video I shoot on
that is just so phenomenal. It's just so buttery. I
don't know how to explain it, but it's just it's buttery.
Like it just everyone always asks me on my Facebook
and Instagram, like what camera are you using, And I'm like,
it's just an iPhone. It just looks so good. Like
when I edit, it's like, ugh, I love it. And
it's That's one of the things that's kept me from

(01:03:12):
Android for a while is just the buttery video that
just looks so good on the iPhone. Oh listen to
that sound. That music means that's gonna do it. For
this episode of the show, if you would like to
submit a question for me to answer, two ways to
do just that. You can go to richon Tech dot tv,
Slash podcast, hit the microphone button to leave a voicemail,

(01:03:34):
or you can go to my Facebook page, Facebook dot com,
slash rich on Tech hit the big blue send email
button to send me your question. Also, I would love
it if you would rate and review this podcast to
help other people discover it. You can go to rate
this podcast dot com slash rich on Tech. Jimbo forty

(01:03:55):
two says informal and informative. I love rich informative podcast.
Always learn something new and useful. He's also got an awesome,
fun and informal approach which really enhances the information too.
I can't wait to hear what's coming next. Jimbo forty two,
thank you so much for your review. I think I
know who that is. I think it's a Jim Lawson

(01:04:16):
who is a fan of KTLA. We've become friends over
you know, we've seen each other in real life several times,
like at events and stuff. Anyway, I think that's you, Jim.
If it is, thank you for your review and of
course all of your support over the years. You can
find me on social media at rich on Tech, so
follow me. I know I complained about Facebook and Instagram

(01:04:39):
and Twitter, but I do love them, so find me
there no matter where you live in the US, you
can download the free KTLA Plus app on Apple, TV,
Fire tv, and Roku then you can scroll all the
way down to the technology section and watch my TV
segments on demand. And this is really fun. So if

(01:05:00):
you can't catch me on TV, just fire up that
KTLA plus app and you can watch my stories. They're
all there. It's really fun and it's just a neat
way to keep up with what I'm doing on TV.
My name is rich Dedimiro. Thanks so much for listening.
There are so many ways you can spend an hour
of your time. I do appreciate you spending it with me.
Stay safe and I will talk to you real soon.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Host

Rich DeMuro

Popular Podcasts

True Crime Tonight

Dateline NBC

Stuff You Should Know

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Yes, your car is spying on you