May 23, 2025 • 55 mins
This Week on TechtalkRadio: Memorial Day Weekend Edition:
Andy flies solo this week while Shawn enjoys a well-earned, tech-savvy escape to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Kicking things off, Andy tackles a listener question from Cecilia, whose mom got locked out of her iPhone after too many failed passcode attempts. He shares some helpful tips for recovering a locked iPhone—yes, even without the iCloud login—and explains when it makes sense to reset the device. This can be a experience that is not always solved overnight and could require a visit to an Apple Store.
Then it’s time to talk subscriptions: Andy digs into the rise of Software as a Service (SaaS) and how companies like Intuit (Quickbooks) and Microsoft (Office) have moved from one-time software purchases to ongoing subscriptions—raising the question, what does that mean for small business users and the consumer on a tight budget however needing the software to get the job done?
Andy found after building a new machine to replace a Windows 10 Setup in the Studio and upgrading to Windows 11, he was not able to install the still powerful Adobe Creative Suite Master Collection 5.5. With the Activation Servers turned off, this can cause problems for those wanted to run this software which still works great and force an option to subscribe to The Adobe Creative Cloud. Instead, Andy explored some fantastic software alternatives. Sites like AlternativeTo.net help users find free or affordable replacements for popular programs like Photoshop, Adobe Audition, Word and more. He gives shout-outs to trusted tools like GIMP, Audacity, Reaper, and even Pro Tools Intro which shipped with his Mixer, which surprised him with its power and polish. There are solutions and while Software as a Service may have you feeling like you are caught in a Netflix/Hulu type streaming war, the Alternative to Subscribe to some of these services could reap benefits for the innovation behind the software. We have seen this with Generative Fill in Adobe Photoshop CC and other new features.
In gear talk, Andy shares his experience with the Fifine AM8 USB/XLR mic—an impressive budget find with RGB flair—and compares mixers, ultimately recommending the Mackie ProFX6v3 for its solid performance and versatility. He also teases a future review of the Shure SM7dB, the modern take on the legendary SM7B mic, now with built-in active pre-amplifier.
To wrap up the show, it’s the Website of the Week—and this one’s just for fun: TheUselessWeb.com. One click takes you to a completely random and often ridiculous website. From the “Long Doge Challenge” to judging hilariously real books by their covers (like How to Talk to Your Cat About Gun Safety), it’s a rabbit hole of time-wasting gold. Try it out and let Andy know what you find—just email techguys@techtalkradio.com.
Finally, a heartfelt tribute to those we honor this Memorial Day. Thank you to the brave individuals who made the ultimate sacrifice. We remember you.
Andy flies solo this week while Shawn enjoys a well-earned, tech-savvy escape to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Kicking things off, Andy tackles a listener question from Cecilia, whose mom got locked out of her iPhone after too many failed passcode attempts. He shares some helpful tips for recovering a locked iPhone—yes, even without the iCloud login—and explains when it makes sense to reset the device. This can be a experience that is not always solved overnight and could require a visit to an Apple Store.
Then it’s time to talk subscriptions: Andy digs into the rise of Software as a Service (SaaS) and how companies like Intuit (Quickbooks) and Microsoft (Office) have moved from one-time software purchases to ongoing subscriptions—raising the question, what does that mean for small business users and the consumer on a tight budget however needing the software to get the job done?
Andy found after building a new machine to replace a Windows 10 Setup in the Studio and upgrading to Windows 11, he was not able to install the still powerful Adobe Creative Suite Master Collection 5.5. With the Activation Servers turned off, this can cause problems for those wanted to run this software which still works great and force an option to subscribe to The Adobe Creative Cloud. Instead, Andy explored some fantastic software alternatives. Sites like AlternativeTo.net help users find free or affordable replacements for popular programs like Photoshop, Adobe Audition, Word and more. He gives shout-outs to trusted tools like GIMP, Audacity, Reaper, and even Pro Tools Intro which shipped with his Mixer, which surprised him with its power and polish. There are solutions and while Software as a Service may have you feeling like you are caught in a Netflix/Hulu type streaming war, the Alternative to Subscribe to some of these services could reap benefits for the innovation behind the software. We have seen this with Generative Fill in Adobe Photoshop CC and other new features.
In gear talk, Andy shares his experience with the Fifine AM8 USB/XLR mic—an impressive budget find with RGB flair—and compares mixers, ultimately recommending the Mackie ProFX6v3 for its solid performance and versatility. He also teases a future review of the Shure SM7dB, the modern take on the legendary SM7B mic, now with built-in active pre-amplifier.
To wrap up the show, it’s the Website of the Week—and this one’s just for fun: TheUselessWeb.com. One click takes you to a completely random and often ridiculous website. From the “Long Doge Challenge” to judging hilariously real books by their covers (like How to Talk to Your Cat About Gun Safety), it’s a rabbit hole of time-wasting gold. Try it out and let Andy know what you find—just email techguys@techtalkradio.com.
Finally, a heartfelt tribute to those we honor this Memorial Day. Thank you to the brave individuals who made the ultimate sacrifice. We remember you.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The following program is produced by the Tech Talk Radio Network. Hi,
this is Bill Gates and I listened to tech talk Radio.
Welcome to another episode of tech talk Radio. We are
the show that talks about computers, technology, and the Internet.
Of course, on this Memorial Day weekend, a lot of
people doing stuff. Of course, Sean is heading up to
(00:21):
the I believe he calls it the Upper Peninsula where
he vacations. He's taking the camera with him. He's got
it all tricked out and does some really cool stuff
with technology. So that's how he's enjoying this Memorial Day
weekend as well. But I figured, you know what, let's
go ahead and push forward and let's put together a
(00:43):
show for you that maybe we can cover some of
the stuff that you've been thinking about. And when it
comes to technology, you wanted to get some answers with
as well. And when we talk about answers, we talk
about those listener questions and we love those. Now, anytime
you want to drop us a line, you can do
that on our Facebook page Facebook dot com Forward slash
(01:03):
tech Talkers. That's t E C H T A l
K E R S. If you're not on the Facebook,
but you have an email address. You can email us
tech Guys T E C H, g U Y S
at tech talk radio dot com. You know, so follow
us on the worldwide web at tech talk radio dot com.
We had a form set up years ago that you
(01:24):
could submit your questions there and then I'm not sure
changes et cetera happened. Now hopefully we'll get that re implemented,
so you could just do that right there on our
website at tech talk radio dot com. Also, I just
want to remind you too, if you want to see
some cool videos, see videos from the shows that we do,
you could find those on our web YouTube page, which
(01:47):
is tech talk Radio. All right, So speaking to questions,
we have a question in from Cecilia. Cecilia has a
mom that is a little older and does communicate with
an iPhone. The only problem is Cecilia's mom ended up
typing the wrong code on her iPhone. That's happened to
(02:08):
me before. And mine was crazy because mine was in
my pocket and it kept you know, I didn't have
it the I didn't have it to go to sleep,
so it was on. So and that could be bad
because it could actually phone, you know, accidentally phone they
call it butt dialing. It could phone somebody, but it
kept trying to log in with the wrong password, and
(02:29):
next thing you knew, I was locked out. And that's
what happens with your your iPhones. If you, you know,
enter the wrong password after so many times, it will lock.
And sometimes it'll say locked for twenty four hours, locked
for forty eight, locked for twenty eight weeks either way.
So and this could be a lifeline for a lot
(02:51):
of people. And unfortunately if this happens. What are the options. Well,
one thing is you can usually re enable your device,
if it's an iPhone or an iPad, and we're talking
about the Apple platform here. You can re enable the
device Cecilia by logging into the iCloud account on the computer.
(03:16):
Now that's if there is a computer, and that is
one way to do it. The problem is, and Cecilia's
a full email tells us that her mom doesn't remember
her user name. Now this might be a little investigating
on your part. You may have to go into your like again.
(03:39):
You can check her computer if she has one, to
see if she's ever sent out an email, if she's
logged into her iCloud. If you type in you know
iCloud dot com. Does it come up and autopropagate the
user name. Even if it doesn't do the past ord,
at least you have the username. That can be a benefit.
But or if you've ever emailed you know Mom, sometimes
(04:03):
better just pick up the phone a call. But if
you've ever emailed Mom, it might be in there as well.
But if there is no go on that one one
of the other options you have at this point, if
it's completely locked out, and I will say this one
that shouldn't go first, but you can reset the phone. Now.
(04:24):
The problem with resetting the phone is if your mom
has taken a lot of photos, Cecilia, your mom has notes,
your mom likes to keep all her texts. If she
does text, that can be a problem because then that
can wipe that all away. And that's why I always
recommend you know backups. You know, get your your parents,
(04:48):
your kids, whoever, yourself, if you've got an eye device,
even an Android device too, to make backups because you
never know when something like this happened. I've heard stories
of people not only being locked out of their devices,
but their devices being lost or stolen, and then you
know they lose access to everything. So that's one way.
(05:09):
The next step, and you can't expect it to work
right away. This could take actually a little bit of time.
If you have the proof of purchase, if you have documentation,
and if your mom could go with you, that's great.
In this case, Cecilia said that her mom was a
(05:30):
hospital bound. She was in the hospital, so she but
you wanted her to have her smartphone. That one thing
you could do is you could visit in an Apple store. Now,
for those of us in the Tucson area, if you're
listening outside of the Tucson area, you may want to
check to find out where your Apple store is. They
(05:50):
can be helpful. You could go in there and you
could explain the situation. If you have your mom's ID
again proof of purchase, you may be able to appeal
to one of the geniuses there and they may be
able to help you get that phone reset. But again,
there is a possibility you could lose all that. Now,
there is some really good discussions on the Apple website.
(06:12):
You may want to take a look and jump online
to support dot apple dot com. Again, you would need
an internet connection, a cable that could charge the smartphone
if it hasn't been charged. And again it can be
MAC or PC. But that's that's one way to get
her done. Now. Some people have said in the past, well,
(06:34):
what about face ID if you're with your mom and
it has a face ID set up, you could try
that too. That could be another one where you know,
you just look at the phone, it recognizes and it
can reset that way, so you know, I'm sorry. So, yeah,
that's a terrible That's honestly a really bad thing to
happen when it gets locked out and can be super frustrating.
(06:56):
But hopefully that will help you. I'd love to know
you know how that worked out for you. In our
TV tech segment that we do on News thirteen, you
could see those generally every Monday. We do those on
Chemist by Fox eleven, right after the eight o'clock hour.
We've been doing those since I want to say, we
started in two thousand and four. We started at KWBA.
(07:21):
We did a couple of segments there and it was
a lot of fun. Apple sent us. I remember the
first one we did. They sent us the big, old,
huge iMac, which was great. We got a chance to
talk about those. But again we're talking way back, you know,
two thousand and three, two thousand and four, and then
over time we ended up the producer who put that
(07:43):
segment together. Stephanie ended up moving over to KOLD and
she brought me on to KLD and we would do
a segment. We called it Tech Tuesday, So every Tuesday
we would go in and we'd chose something and back
then in the mid two thousand towards Slate two thousands,
it was so easy to get product because, I mean,
(08:07):
the Internet was growing, influencers were not really a thing yet,
so me as a little guy doing a you know,
doing a TV segment in southern Arizona, I could just
jump on the phone and call it representative at Apple.
I could call it representative at Verizon. I could call
it representative at Microsoft. I could call it representative at
(08:30):
Adobe and just say, hey, I'm putting together the segment.
I want to feature the product. And they would just
do all kinds of great stuff and they would send
over the product and we get a chance to look
at it for a couple of weeks and send it back.
But it was always easy to get stuff in our hands.
And boy, that has changed TV kind of. It's still
a we love our segment and TV segments have been great,
(08:54):
but the influencers kind of took over that because here
I am in a TV market, and yes, we do
put our segments online and people do watch them, uh,
but the TV, the TV market takes a back door
to influencers. They reach a wide audience with TikTok and
(09:16):
Facebook and Instagram reels and Snap. Well Snap, I don't
know if Snap really is used by influencers, but but
I mean, you really, really really YouTube shorts I have
done a great job in building their audiences. And there's
some really great uh YouTuber YouTubers out there that do
(09:37):
great job with information about tech. Uh, and they've they've
done a great job with it. But it used to
be used to be super easy. It's not as much
this this you know anymore, but it was cool. We
were able to put together a segment this past Monday
and we talked about a growing trend in the tech
world called software as a service. Now you may remember
(10:02):
in years past you would go and you would buy
a software for doing a task. We'll take for example,
I'll just take one big example was into It into It,
which their tech support I believe was located here in Tucson.
I don't know if it still is, but say QuickBooks.
For many that were starting a small business, quick Books
(10:26):
was one of the easiest to use, one of the
most full featured. You would go out and you would
buy the software, and I want to say, we could
run anywhere from one hundred and fifty three four hundred dollars,
all right, but you could use it for as long
as you had it. Now, over time, a company like
(10:47):
QuickBooks or into it would introduce new features like if
you want to do job costing, you want to just
share it whether the other users maybe in your office
that would put together statement or quotes or invoices, and
you can have more users that would be using it.
And of course Microsoft are into it, changed its business
(11:08):
model to make that available. A lot of people loved it.
I mean I loved it. I was a quick Books
user from the very beginning, and software as a service
came along. And what happened is, you know, and it's
only taken me recently to realize that, Okay, it makes sense.
(11:30):
And I know that's probably taken off some people who
have bought software and they get upset because maybe they're
not able to use that software anymore. And I'll get
to that in a second. But and I've talked about
the issues I did have with Adobe. But what happens
is these companies they continue to innovate. They don't just
(11:53):
put out of software and say here's the software, use
it now. For many of us, that was great. Quick
Books was phenomenal. It did exactly what you needed it
to do. I go back on my years past and
I look at some of the invoices for my business.
I had a first desktop publishing business, then computer repair
(12:17):
business that I would do even here at this radio
station that we broadcast on. I was actually hired as
a videographer before I was ever a DJ on this station.
I had done radio, and I love the story about
this one. I had done radio at in Tucson. We
had a number one morning show for a couple of years.
(12:38):
We were you know, we had a lot of listeners
that would tune in, and we had moved here from
Palm Springs where we also did very good Me and
my former partner Barry Donovan, who is no longer with us,
but we had a pretty great morning show. And then
when things changed started to change in radio and the
market kind of went boom and bust. Then it was
(13:01):
trying different things, went over to a couple of different stations.
This show somehow just kept surviving and would show up
at different stations and it was great. The station the show,
if you don't know, came with me from Pump Springs
and it was cool. And I ended up doing a
(13:23):
lot of video. It's what I was doing in the
late eighties. And we're talking analog editing on three quarter
its videotape. And I saw an ad in a radio
magazine that would hire radio talent and the ad was
for videographer and it was for the station here. I thought, oh,
(13:44):
I'll go find out what's going on, and so I
went and met with the owner of the station and
we talked about video and told me some of the
things he wanted to do, and I was hired and
it was. It was on a piece by piece basis.
It was great. I would go ahead and he'd say, Okay,
can you go over to Dwight's Auto Glass or here
(14:05):
was out of family restaurant, and I would go in
there and I would shoot videos and it was It
was awesome. And the pay wasn't that great, sorry, boss,
but it was still good because It kept me working
and I was able to do other radio things as well,
and we ended up doing tech talk radio just on
the web at that point, and it was a lot
(14:25):
of fun. And one day I was talking to our
former program director here, Tom Lang, and we were I
was videotaping an event for them over at Desertdemic Casino,
and I told Tom, I said, boy, I miss radio,
and he goes, wait, you did radio And I said yeah,
and I said, did radio in Tucson, And he'd never
heard of the show. I had done so much for
(14:47):
our number one ratings, and he said, well, heck, if
we ever have a part time position, you know, open
up or a filling, you want to do it. I'm like, yeah, absolutely,
And that's how they found out A did radio, and
I ended up doing radio here at this station. I've
been with the station now since two thousand and nine.
Brought tech Talk over here, I want to say about
(15:09):
twenty fourteen. It was something I always wanted to do,
is bring it to the station, which just matter of
having the right slot and the right spot. So I'm
very appreciative for the owners letting us do this tech show,
and I hope I do hope this helps some of
you that when you run into a tech situation, we're
able to do that for you. Now, I kind of
strayed a little from the story, but you know how
(15:31):
software as a service has changed things. We looked at
QuickBooks and quick books. Yeah, it was great for a
lot of us that just needed to do an invoice.
And I'll be honest with you, I went ahead and
I moved to the subscription model, and the sscerptions started
off relatively inexpensive, but every year they added new features
(15:54):
that I wasn't using, and the price continued to grow,
and I find decided to opt out. When we got
to I want to say, it was about I want
to say, four hundred maybe five hundred dollars a year
to use the software. Oh yeah, So you might remember
quick books, and you might remember when you could go
(16:15):
into the computer store and it wasn't that much. Now
you know you want a subscription to that, it's going
to cost you a lot more. Now the engineers have
done some more things, but as a small business, it
may not be exactly what you really needed. We saw
the same thing with Microsoft Microsoft Office. Might remember having
(16:36):
Microsoft Office when you would go and you would buy
Office two thousand and three, two thousand and four, and
you would all buy that. You got Microsoft Word, you
got Microsoft Excel, power Point, you got some of the
other programs that came with that outlook, and it was great.
But then they continued to innovate and you suddenly needed
(16:59):
to buy a subscription to be able to use the
Microsoft platform. Well, a lot of people hung on to
using Microsoft Words, some of the older versions, and it
can still be done. People are still doing it. Same
goes with into It. As a matter of fact, I'll
be honest with you, I still use into It the
(17:22):
Quick Books twenty thirteen. It works for me. I'm not
paying a subscription. It's the old one I had. They
didn't do dirty pool by turning off their activation servers
at least at the time when I installed it a
few years back, and it worked for me, so that
that worked out pretty good. Then you came across some
(17:43):
companies that when you bought a software, you'd have to
register it and activate it and you can have it
on one computer, maybe two computers or four, or maybe
you'd be able to use it on multiple computers, but
never at the same time. So whenever you logged in
to your program would send a log in to that company.
(18:03):
And one of those companies that had done that in
the past that you could buy the software direct to
just buy it and use it forever was Adobe. And
I had issues and I've talked about with Adobe because
what I ran into is they turned off their activation servers.
So say you had a program and in the radio business,
(18:24):
Adobe Audition was one of the finest audio editing programs
for just getting commercials made. You would do it for
even podcasters could use it. And what happened is an
Audition one point five and Audition three they turned off
the activation servers. So what happens is to say you
(18:46):
had to reinstall your computer and you didn't you uninstall it.
You ran into these issues, and if your hard drive died,
you had to reinstall. You didn't have a backup. You
suddenly may not be able to use that program anymore,
and you had to switch to software as a service
and use their creative Cloud program. And that's what a
(19:07):
lot of people had to do. Well, we know that
October coming up is going to be the big Microsoft
change from Windows ten to Windows eleven. And I know
a lot of you are on Windows ten and your
computers may up qualified to upgrade to Windows eleven. It's
a couple of things you need. Ed Bot over at
(19:27):
zd net put together a great article about that. I
recommend taking a look again ed Bot Bott. You can
do a Google search for that and zd net and
just do Google search for upgrading to Windows eleven ed Bot,
and he kind of breaks down the entire process for
you and why maybe you're not able to or what
(19:48):
you need to do to make it possible. Don't know
if Microsoft's going to change too much before that happens
when it comes to the requirements, but it's going to
cause a lot mayhem for a lot of people. I
ended up deciding, okay, I needed to have Windows eleven
in my studio, especially when suddenly my networking stopped working.
(20:10):
And after one of the updates from Microsoft, I've since
got it working, so I'm happy with that. But I thought, yeah,
maybe it's time. So I went to PC parts Picker,
which is a great website to go if you want
to build your own computer. I decided, okay, I'm going
to build a system, then I'm going to install Windows eleven.
(20:32):
I ended up going to Stack Social, whis a great
place to go find some of those software programs, although
they've run into some of that software as a service
issue with some other software that they were selling. And
I got it installed and it was great out a
Windows eleven machine running super fast, newer processor, newer than
(20:56):
the Windows ted machine I had in the studio that
had the Adobe Audition Creative Suite five point five on it,
and I loved it. Well. When I want to install
the Creative Sweet five point five from Adobe, I could
not install it anymore, said I had too many activations.
(21:17):
I got in touch with a representative that was offshore
for Adobe, and his exact thing for me was to
tell me, oh, okay, uninstall it on your computer. Deactivate it,
uninstall it and you'll be able to You should be
able to use it on the new computer. Those words
(21:40):
should should have been taken into account. Went ahead and
did that. So here I took it off a computer
that was working Windows ten. It was great. When to
install it, too many activations. So when I called back,
of course, I've got another tech support agent offshore told
me he could give me a great deal on the
(22:03):
Adobe Creative Cloud. And I said, I've got Adobe Creative Cloud,
which I do courtesy of our friends at Adobe, and
that expires this week, and I got a chance to
look at it and that was that was kind of cool,
and I'll get to that coming up. But I said, okay, well,
I just you know, removed it to activate it. And
(22:25):
he said, well, the problem is our activation server is
no longer working. So this guy tells me to remove
the software. I do, and it was working fine, and
then when I got to reinstall it on the new computer,
it won't install. There's nothing I can do, so PC
(22:46):
mover won't do it. You know, There's nothing I could
do on that case. So it was a little frustrating
and I decided, okay, well, I'm just gonna have to
stick with Creative Cloud. And I wasn't happy about it
because Creative Cloud was at the time looks like it
was going to cost me an investment of about six
hundred and seven hundred dollars. It's a lot of money
(23:08):
for software, and I started playing around with it. I
wanted to I wanted to learn it. In the meantime,
I also installed a couple of other software programs, but
I installed Adobe Creative Cloud on this new computer and
I got sold it is an amazing software program. And
I realized something. With software as a service, it's so
(23:30):
easy for us to say, wait a minute, I bought
this license, and this license was in a perpetual license.
That meant I could use this software forever and it
does exactly what I need. And that's true. But the
problem is the innovation that takes place with some of
these companies in the software. And I know that's probably
(23:53):
not going over well with some but the innovation is
pretty amazing. What they've been able to do with Premiere
Pro now put together videos Premiere Pro with the new
Generative Extend using AI features is pretty awesome. I tested
it out. I needed five seconds extra for a video project.
(24:15):
With Generative Extend, you have your video on the timeline
and you say, gosh, I need five more seconds. You
can highlight and tell it to a Generative Extend here
and again. It can take it and turn it into
whether it's a human being, a car, a sunrise. It
(24:35):
can give you that extra five seconds. You can now
caption your videos. You can also foreign language caption your
videos with Adobe Premiere Pro Creative Cloud. I was like, wow,
that's pretty amazing stuff. Photoshop with the generative fill again
adding to a photo, making it faster for you to
(24:59):
do your edit, giving you more control over those edits.
That is pretty amazing as well, Adobe Audition giving you
more features as well. But what really really blew me
away this past week is playing around with Firefly Adobe
Firefly and you could do the same thing and start
(25:21):
testing it out where it takes. And again, we know
a lot of us are not big fans of the
term when it comes to the you know, the the
AI artificial intelligence, but it can do some pretty amazing
things there text to video. I want to create something
(25:41):
that looks good. How about a sunrise over the cactus
in the sweltering deserts of Tucson. It did it? Or
a photo of an angry sun. It could be a
graphic you want to use for a flyer. So if
you are a professional, you may find that the Adobe
Creative Cloud Pro may be just what you really need
(26:04):
to use and you'll need. It's difficult to get out
of the mindset, well, it did everything before that I
needed and I don't need all this AI. Take a
look at it. The unfortunate side is the price just
went up in June. They're changing to the Adobe Creative
Cloud Pro, which will again give everything, but it's adding
(26:27):
about ten dollars a month to the program. You could
still end up spending about eight hundred dollars a month.
And you may have some features when it comes to
the artificial intelligence, maybe not all, but it is something
you may want to take a look at. There'll be
another tier of service for the Creative Cloud. You could
look at that as well. I don't know if and
(26:49):
I've asked the reps at Adobe, could they just turn
on the servers again, let people register their software that
had to upgrade to Windows eleven that still will be
fine using that. Don't know if that's gonna happen. I
have to assume it's not. But give Adobe Creative Cloud
a try. It's free trial for you to give it
(27:09):
a look, but take the time to actually get into
the program and use it and see if that maybe
works for you. And again, I did some video samples
on the segment for television this week. So when we
want to think software as a service, it's just a
way for them to get more money out of us. Yep,
they are. It's fueling that innovation, paying for the engineers
(27:30):
to do the creation of the software that can benefit
us more so something to think about. And again you
can find out more at Adobe dot com. Take a
look at Firefly that's on there, and again try the
trial version for that. We're gonna take quick break. We'll
come back with more of tech talk Radio. I'm Andy Taylor.
Find us on the web a tech talkRADIO dot com
(27:53):
and now back to tech talk Radio. Always like to
fill you in on software that you may want to
be checking out and hardware that has some cool things
that are a part of it. And one of them
that I thought actually was really pretty meat that you
may like is from a company called so Lease. And
(28:15):
we've talked about so Lease before. If you have a
smartphone that has a hot spot, you know what I'm
talking about, that hot spot that gives you ability to
access the World Wide Web from just about anywhere, which
makes it nice. You could also use your smartphone as
a hot spot so that your laptop can connect to it. Well.
(28:36):
Solease or Simo has put together what they're calling the
so lese Hub now here. Here's what it is, and
I kind of like this. It's what they're calling a
cutting edge home router featuring a four G LTE backup
powered by Cemos Virtual sim technology. So imagine you may
(29:00):
you have, you know, a cable service or you have
a satellite service that's providing you with your your Internet
and unfortunately it goes out and you're working on a project.
You've got to get this project finished. You want to
you know, get it all done well with this holeas hub.
And again this is this is a hub that can
(29:21):
you know, you could still power it off your your
regular Internet service, but when it goes down, you've got
that four G LTE backup powered by this virtual sim technology.
It keeps homes connected during Internet outages, gives you uninterrupted
connectivity when it's needed. And it looks just like a
(29:43):
regular home router, which I love. So it does four
G e LTE backup so it'll automatically switch to that
four G LTE during the Internet outages. And can you
give you download speeds up to three hundred megabits per
second and even upload speeds well some of it us
are saying, good, I get twenty megabits per second. It
could give you upload speed spending where you're at about
(30:05):
one hundred and fifty megabits per second. Features, dull band
Wi Fi six support, which means that like a router,
it's you know, connected in your home and you'll be
able to connect all your devices to this this router
that is normally working off your regular you know, subscribe services,
and then if those subscribe services go down, it switches
(30:26):
to the four G l T E backup. It can
do aight oh two doll eleven A A B, G N,
A C or A X for that performance. Now here's
what's really cool about it. Now, remember there is a
subscription that will go with this, but the product itself
you buy outright for one hundred and ninety nine bucks
at least that's the pricing that they're looking at. Uh,
(30:48):
it's available for purchase now. You can do CIMO dot
com or dot co co that's s I m O
dot Co. And then their plans that are available you
could get. And remember you wouldn't be I don't think
you would be using this all the time, right the
ten gigabit per month plan from solease to the soleise hub.
(31:10):
Remember it wouldn't be using it all the time. Only
if you know your internet goes out. We're coming up
on monsoon season, so that could happen ten gigabits per
month for only seven dollars, and that doesn't seem too
bad right now. If you don't use it, it doesn't
roll over. But ten gigabits for seven. If you need
the hot backup plan, which I'm not sure exactly what
(31:33):
that is, you'd have to find out on the Solease
website Simo dot co. That's ten gigabits per month for
twenty five dollars. I have a feeling that might be
your you know, your smartphones, et cetera. The primary plan though,
if you want to get that, that's one hundred gigabits
per month. That's a lot, a lot of data for
(31:54):
eighty nine dollars. So no matter what you're paying your
cable provider. Now, for some they might say that's going
to work out better for them, and then you would
use I guess you would use that all the time anyway.
That's something to think about. That is again from so Lease,
it's Cimo Simo dot co. If you want to get
(32:17):
more information about that product. Another one that I really
like that has been announced from Epsin And if you've
seen any of these segments I've done with the epsin
fast they got the epsin fast Photo, which is does
scanning photos very fast. I'm getting that and incorporating it
(32:38):
into my desktop publishing and website business and we're doing
digital scanning for people. But they've kind of gone in
different areas. They also have the EPs and Rapid Receipts
for you know, doing your receipts super fast. Well, now
they've introduced the sure color F ten seventy and what
(32:59):
this can do. And I got a friend that owns
Aladdin Graphics, and Aladdin Graphics does they specialize in this,
So I would still say contact them. But the shirt
color F ten seventy can print directly onto shirts. The
quality pretty impressive. So imagine you know, you're coaching a
(33:19):
little league team here in Green Valley, Sabudita, or you
get together with a company picnic and you want to
everybody have the same shirts. You're celebrating the anniversary of
your company, and you want to create your own shirts. Sure,
you go out, you buy the shirts, and then you
go ahead and you get them printed. You do the
printing right with the sure Color F ten to seventy.
(33:39):
You can look it up on the EPSOM website. But
here is the downside of that. And that's when you
might want to pick up the phone and call Troy
over at Aladdin Graphics. It will cost you about seventy
five hundred bucks to buy this printer. Now, some might say, well,
I'm a little entrepreneur. I could start doing my own
T shirt. That's something you can think about. Got to
(34:02):
take in project cost, how you're going to get that business,
et cetera. But epsom doing this so that people that
want to have full control over their printing process, or
again want to make their own shirts, they could do that.
But again, that's the sure color F ten seventy and
you'd be able to find that there. Let me tell
you about another product. Here we go, all right, not
(34:27):
long ago on television, I showed the Palm, and some
people said, whatever happened to the Palm? They got bought
by HP and that kind of Yeah, that was kind
of the end of that, right. Well, I had the
old Palm you might remember the Palm Pilot or the
Trio or the you know, the Palm smartphone, and I
(34:48):
ended up finding it and I you remembered, how you know,
when you text with the Palm, how easy it was.
You didn't have that on screen keyboard. Some of you
really hate that the Android or the iPhone on screen keyboard. Well,
the Pompilot or the Trio, you had actually keys. People
(35:10):
love that and you wanted to maybe switch to numbers.
You hit one button and you could do that, and
you could text with it very easily. Fit right in
the palm of your hands. You still had a nice
screen on. It wasn't as nice as the screen to
get now with the Androids like the Pixel nine or
the latest iPhone or even the Samsung Galaxy devices, but
(35:33):
it was cool to be able to have those keys. Well,
you can have those keys with the Clicks keyboard cases.
And if you've scrolled on the web and you've looked
for a placement phone, if you looked for mobile keyboards,
you probably have been fed in ad with the Clicks keyboard.
Now how it works, It's basically just looks just like
(35:56):
this keyboard, maybe a little bigger on the keys. Uh.
And it works with the Google nine, Pixel nine, Galaxy
S twenty five, motorole Eraser Plus. It doesn't look like
it's available on the pro XL yet. I don't know
if that could could have changed by press time, But
if you want to see these and you want to
(36:17):
actually use a keyboard, I would really recommend jumping onto
the World Wide Web and going to clicks dot tech
that clicks dot T e c H at c l
I c k s dot T e c H and
your phone actually plugs in, like kind of snaps in
to this device which holds your phone. Uh has I
(36:41):
believe it has the wireless on the back, so you could,
you know, smart charge it. You can, then you then
have a physical keyboard for your smartphone. So if you've
gotten to the point where you're just fed up with
that keyboard, I'm one of those. I use voice to
text quite a bit and it always gets it wrong.
(37:04):
But again, if you are fed up that and you
want to actually have a physical keyboard, you might want
to take a look at that they sell. They're not
inexpensive though. While you could go out and buy a
Logitech K four eighty for right around fifty bucks, this
sells for up around one hundred and thirty nine dollars.
But again, it plugs into your phone, plugs right into it,
(37:27):
and you can carry it around that way. So again
that might be something that you might want to think
about doing. One hundred and thirty nine dollars clicks dot teh.
You can get more information there about this device. And
again you may you may like that. All right. Top
ten passwords used in the United States have been revealed.
(37:51):
And I'm not looking at you, but if you use this,
you want to stop using it immediately. According to a
study that was put together by I want to say
this was malward? Was this malword? Bites? Well? Here here
it is. The second most common password in the US
(38:13):
is one two three four five six. That is ranked
the most number one common password in the world. I
know they're a pain in the butt. I know you
have so many different logins, whether it be a company
you do business with or you know, logging into pay
your smartphone bill, your bank account, you know the whole bit.
(38:37):
It could be a pain in the butt. One two
three four five six people are using that. That's the
most common password in the US and the number one
common password in the world. The easy to guess passwords
at ranked from third, fourth and fifth. The most common
in America are password. The next one is quirdy q
(39:01):
W e r t y one two three. And if
you're wondering where that comes from, quirdy was once used
as a demonstration on your username and password. Somebody said,
I'll use that as my password. Not good. Quirdy is
the top line next to the tab on your general
most keyboards q w e r T y. Then one
(39:23):
two three. Don't want to use that one as well.
All right, that is the fourth most common password in America.
The next one is quirdy number, and then just number
one q W e r t Y one. So if
you're wondering. Seventh and eighth on the list are one two, three, four, five,
(39:44):
six seven eight nine. That's sixth. Seventh is password one again,
don't use that. Then one two three, four, five sixty
seven eight comes it at number eight, ninth and tenth
on the most common passwords among Americans. Don't be writing
these down and using these. Please don't. If you're using them,
(40:04):
change them. They are one, two, three, four five, and
then ABC one two three. Now the thing is, you
may think, well, what does it matter? You know I'm
using this, I'm the only one who knows the user name.
People are phishing, which which basically means they're trying to
(40:24):
find out your user name. You may accidentally give that up,
and then once they have that It's all about finding
out which past you're using. The number one most common
password in the US. Do not use this. If you
were using it, please change it is secret, sec R
E T secret. Now here's what I'd recommend. Now you
(40:47):
may say, well, what about those password managers that are
a part of Google or even Microsoft Edge. I I
have used those in the past, and I would say, don't.
Somebody can get onto your browser if you're logged in,
and they can figure out those passwords, see them very quickly,
(41:07):
take screenshots. What I honestly recommend is a product called
one Password one the number one password. You don't want
to use that one either one password, but use the
software program you set it up. You have a secret
code to get in and then there are all your passwords.
(41:28):
Anytime you want to create a password, you could create
a super long password that within your browser it will
remember it. Within your smartphone it can remember it. And
you want to use difficult passwords, longer passwords to hack,
longer passwords for somebody to try and crack. And again
you can add this to your safe deposit box. So
(41:50):
in case of medical emergency and you don't have access
to your devices, somebody else does, they'll still be able
to access that with that long secret code that you
would be given one password. The software program itself not
very expensive, I want to say under fifty bucks, might
be like thirty nine dollars, but I'd really recommend installing that.
(42:11):
You could install it on all the browsers you use,
and it's a great way to maintain and secure your password.
So don't fall into that trap of just one, two,
three ABC secure your password? Are you going to take
another quick break? We come back with more of tech
Talk Radio, hopefully providing some great information for you on
this Saturday afternoon. Thanks for listening. Now back to TIEF
(42:34):
Talk Radio. After I decided I needed to take a
look at some different software programs that may enable me
the opportunity to create after I found out that my
we Creative Suite was no longer going to be able
to work because I wasn't able to install it on
the computer that I had up dated to Windows eleven,
(42:55):
and I sort of looking for other programs to do tasks.
Now we've mentioned it before, Sean told us about Alternative
two and you can go to on the Worldwide Web
Alternative t O dot net and what you do is
you enter the program name that maybe you're using, and
it will suggest some alternatives for you. So that way,
(43:18):
if you know, used to using one program to get
something done, like maybe you used Photoshop Express or Photoshop
or even some of the other program Correl that used
to use the Correll photopaint program, and you want to
use something else, well, you can type that in Gimp
may come up. People still use Gimp. They love Gimp.
(43:39):
It's an alternative too, that program. And so I ended
up just asking a couple of my friends that work
in the biz, and it was kind of interesting for
you know, radio. For me, it's always been Adobe Audition.
There is a program that I know of that's available
(43:59):
out there if you want to maybe you want to
create your own podcast and you would like to do stuff.
It's called Audacity. And again you'll find that available on
alternative to dot net, at least the link for that.
Make sure when you're getting software programs, you're getting it
from the authentic, authorized website. Got to be real careful
because fakes can be set up pretty easily that could
(44:21):
actually hurt your system. So Audacity is good. There's some
neat features on it. It's a matter of learning the
program and how it works differently than a w audition,
like when you export a project us export in the
file itself. I've had some people who have used Audacity
(44:43):
that send me a file and that file is still
in the Audacity format, so you know you're setting it
as a wave or an MP three that type of
that type of situation there. So again Audacity is pretty good.
But I did use a couple of programs that I
wanted to just give kind of the heads up of
the programs that I used. First off is a program
called Reaper r e a p e R. Now it's
(45:06):
not a free program. It is a paid program. They'll
give you a sixty day trial window to use it.
But the cost to acquire the Reaper program on your system,
which can be installed on two systems not at the
same time, is I want to say, around about seventy dollars.
(45:26):
But it will allow you to edit audio, which actually
I really got used to using the Reaper program. I
liked it. It has some great features, great you know,
great easy editing tools that are a part of it.
And again that's r e a p e R. You
can download it, give it a try for sixty days
(45:49):
and see if you like it and see if that's
something that you might want to use the other program
that I used for that, and I ended up stumbling
across this. So I have a small mini mixer that
I use when I do videos or when I'm doing
the podcast training sessions. I've taken it out with me
(46:10):
so that way the kids on the reservation that's where
I went last week, they end up being able to
talk into the microphones and I give them kind of
an overall about podcasting and how cool it is and
it's always a lot of fun knowledge and learning as
a group that put that together. John Proudstar is a
local artist and actor and he was out there as well,
(46:34):
so it was pretty cool. But I buy the Macki product,
and there's other I know there's other mixers on the
market and mixers. What that is is it takes your
audio input, so you have one mixer one microphone, right,
and then maybe you have another audio input, so you
put two microphones so you can do a discussion with
(46:56):
the both microphones and use the mixer to bring that
all down into one audio file. And Maki makes a
whole bunch of them. I previously used the MACI fourteen
oh two VLZ which was a multi channel mixer and
it was great, but it would plug in to the
computer using a scarlet box by focus right, or I
(47:19):
would have the Creative Labs external sound card and would
plug into that which would plug into the computer. It
was nice, but again just more cables laying around. What
I like about the one that I used for MACI
the pro FX six x three. It actually connects via
USB so you can record, you know, two microphones. You
(47:42):
could have another source as well for line in or
you could do you know, upgrade your your mixer, the
Pro eight, the Pro ten do you get more lines,
more microphones depending on what you're doing. But and then
it outputs via USB into the USB in and becomes
a sound device on your computer, so that works out
(48:04):
really good. You could even apply effects to it, the
whole bit. And I bought mine some years ago and
I've been using it. And the other day when I
was putting everything together to head on out to the
reservation over the Boys and Girls Club there in Levigne,
I noticed on the box it said pro Tools. You
(48:27):
got a license for pro tools that came with the mixer,
and it was pro Tools version Pro. There's different levels,
but I thought let's try that. So I installed it
on the computer and it is amazing. I used it
one time in a broadcast environment, not here, but in
another one, and I wasn't a big fan of it
(48:47):
because I didn't understand it. I didn't have the time
to go through it. But I've had the time to
sit and play and really kind of experiment and learn.
There's lots of great videos online, but pro Tools really
it kind of surprises me. So again, that is one
that's going on my new computer. Even though it looks
like I am going to bite the bullet and do
(49:09):
the Creative Cloud Pro, I will have this on another
computer and pro Tools for some basic editing and I
if you want to experiment, you want to play around
with some of this editing with audio and put together
a podcast, I recommend that now. I also showed some
(49:29):
products from Fuffine Fi Fi n E and not long ago,
I bought a microphone from fuf Fine from the super
sale bin store of course that we have here in
Green Valley Sawaudita and it was a great deal. I
got it for I want to say it was a
fifteen dollars day, so it was the opening day, but
(49:51):
I ended up getting this microphone and I love it.
I've since bought a mixer that they put out from
fuf Fine. It is not bad, but there is something
you need to know about that. And then the fuf
Fine am A microphone. The Fine am A microphone can
plug in via USB or USB C, or it can
(50:16):
plug in an XLR, which could be very helpful depending
on the mixer you're plugging it into. If you're using
a mixer. Uh. The mixer that for Fine put out
unfortunately has one input. That's it. And I would say, man,
don't waste your time. If you're gonna get a mixer,
get at least one that has two audio inputs. For microphones,
(50:39):
I would recommend that, and that's why I recommend the
pro FX six x three by mac E M A
C K I E. You can find more information about
that online. Uh, and not waste the time with the
fuf Fine mixer. But their Fine microphone. The pickup quality
that it is not bad. It's RGB, so if you're
doing video that goes along with your audio, it looks
(51:00):
pretty smart. I mean, it's got a nice color to it,
and the audio pickup on it is pretty good as well.
So again you can find those fine Fi Fi n E.
There is a better I will say, there is a
better microphone that's available on the market. Most radio broadcasters
you'll see them and even in podcasters you'll see them
using the SM seven B microphone. It's a pretty pricey microphone,
(51:25):
runs about three hundred and fifty four hundred dollars. You
may even be a little higher than that. That microphone's
got great pickups. So what I'm using right now and
it's good, but they have a better one out now
and I'm hoping to get my hands on one to
try it out. It's the Sure SM seven dB. And
what they basically take in is Cloudlifter, which is a
(51:45):
great device which gives a little more oomph, a little
more power to the audio chain. It's kind of built
in so you get this really dynamic sound and podcasters
radio broadcasters are so again that's the Sure SM seven D.
Be all right, I got to take a quick break.
(52:05):
We come back with more of tech talk Radio, I
mean Detaylor find us of the web at tech talk
radio dot com. We'll be right back and now back
to tech talk Radio. This is Stephen right you know,
listening to tech talk radio. Yeah, some alung that line. Yeah,
I guess that was it. All right, let's go with it.
(52:28):
I love it. I'll say it anyway. All right, this
is Stephen Wright and you're listening to tech Talk Radio.
But you know, I've already been saying that this is
the time of the show that we'd like to share
with you a cool website of the week. Sometimes it's
a product of the week, and I decided I wanted
(52:49):
to come up with a website that you could enjoy
when this show is over, we're back to your familiar
favorites that you could actually have some fun with and
and tell your friends about. So there are lots of
great websites that are out there. There are that you
can have some fun with. We've talked about some of
(53:10):
those in the past, like the Lazy Fly, which I
think is a good one. But here's one that is
just a collection of just websites that you can you
can find you go to the useless web dot com.
The uselessweb dot com and it's gonna be different forever
(53:31):
just about everybody. But I'm gonna go here and you'll
you'll say, take me to another useless website. Please, So
once you're there, you hit please and like for me,
it came up with sliding toys a daily puzzle. It
has the date, shows that how many people have done
that and that whole bit, so you could do that.
One you don't like it, go to another one, the
(53:53):
long Dodge challenge your doge, thank you and it just okay,
there you go. You could print it again, useless website,
go to another one. Always judge a book by its covers.
Some books went awards, others some win our heart and
others only serve to confuse. This book, it's an actual book,
(54:19):
how to talk to your cat about gun safety. And
again you could find the link. You could actually listen
to some of the book on audible. Another book that
they have Outwitting Squirrels, more than one million squirrels outwitted.
Here's another book, how to survive a garden gnome attack.
(54:40):
Eating people is wrong, Crafting with cat hair, Cute handicrafts
to make with your cat. And then one that I've
actually heard of, this book and I saw this in there.
It's called Florida Man. And for any of you from Florida,
I apologize here. But what is some of the crazy
stories that always start off with a Florida man and
(55:03):
then you go on from there and again. You can
find it at the uselessweb dot com. Have some fun
with that. Let me know what you come up with.
Just drop me a line, Andy atech Talk radio dot com.
In the meantime, have yourselves a wonderful weekend Memorial Day weekend.
Thanks for all that have paid the ultimate sacrifice. They're
in our hearts this weekend. I'm Andy Taylor,
The following program is produced by the Tech Talk Radio Network. Hi,
this is Bill Gates and I listened to tech talk Radio.
Welcome to another episode of tech talk Radio. We are
the show that talks about computers, technology, and the Internet.
Of course, on this Memorial Day weekend, a lot of
people doing stuff. Of course, Sean is heading up to
(00:21):
the I believe he calls it the Upper Peninsula where
he vacations. He's taking the camera with him. He's got
it all tricked out and does some really cool stuff
with technology. So that's how he's enjoying this Memorial Day
weekend as well. But I figured, you know what, let's
go ahead and push forward and let's put together a
(00:43):
show for you that maybe we can cover some of
the stuff that you've been thinking about. And when it
comes to technology, you wanted to get some answers with
as well. And when we talk about answers, we talk
about those listener questions and we love those. Now, anytime
you want to drop us a line, you can do
that on our Facebook page Facebook dot com Forward slash
(01:03):
tech Talkers. That's t E C H T A l
K E R S. If you're not on the Facebook,
but you have an email address. You can email us
tech Guys T E C H, g U Y S
at tech talk radio dot com. You know, so follow
us on the worldwide web at tech talk radio dot com.
We had a form set up years ago that you
(01:24):
could submit your questions there and then I'm not sure
changes et cetera happened. Now hopefully we'll get that re implemented,
so you could just do that right there on our
website at tech talk radio dot com. Also, I just
want to remind you too, if you want to see
some cool videos, see videos from the shows that we do,
you could find those on our web YouTube page, which
(01:47):
is tech talk Radio. All right, So speaking to questions,
we have a question in from Cecilia. Cecilia has a
mom that is a little older and does communicate with
an iPhone. The only problem is Cecilia's mom ended up
typing the wrong code on her iPhone. That's happened to
(02:08):
me before. And mine was crazy because mine was in
my pocket and it kept you know, I didn't have
it the I didn't have it to go to sleep,
so it was on. So and that could be bad
because it could actually phone, you know, accidentally phone they
call it butt dialing. It could phone somebody, but it
kept trying to log in with the wrong password, and
(02:29):
next thing you knew, I was locked out. And that's
what happens with your your iPhones. If you, you know,
enter the wrong password after so many times, it will lock.
And sometimes it'll say locked for twenty four hours, locked
for forty eight, locked for twenty eight weeks either way.
So and this could be a lifeline for a lot
(02:51):
of people. And unfortunately if this happens. What are the options. Well,
one thing is you can usually re enable your device,
if it's an iPhone or an iPad, and we're talking
about the Apple platform here. You can re enable the
device Cecilia by logging into the iCloud account on the computer.
(03:16):
Now that's if there is a computer, and that is
one way to do it. The problem is, and Cecilia's
a full email tells us that her mom doesn't remember
her user name. Now this might be a little investigating
on your part. You may have to go into your like again.
(03:39):
You can check her computer if she has one, to
see if she's ever sent out an email, if she's
logged into her iCloud. If you type in you know
iCloud dot com. Does it come up and autopropagate the
user name. Even if it doesn't do the past ord,
at least you have the username. That can be a benefit.
But or if you've ever emailed you know Mom, sometimes
(04:03):
better just pick up the phone a call. But if
you've ever emailed Mom, it might be in there as well.
But if there is no go on that one one
of the other options you have at this point, if
it's completely locked out, and I will say this one
that shouldn't go first, but you can reset the phone. Now.
(04:24):
The problem with resetting the phone is if your mom
has taken a lot of photos, Cecilia, your mom has notes,
your mom likes to keep all her texts. If she
does text, that can be a problem because then that
can wipe that all away. And that's why I always
recommend you know backups. You know, get your your parents,
(04:48):
your kids, whoever, yourself, if you've got an eye device,
even an Android device too, to make backups because you
never know when something like this happened. I've heard stories
of people not only being locked out of their devices,
but their devices being lost or stolen, and then you
know they lose access to everything. So that's one way.
(05:09):
The next step, and you can't expect it to work
right away. This could take actually a little bit of time.
If you have the proof of purchase, if you have documentation,
and if your mom could go with you, that's great.
In this case, Cecilia said that her mom was a
(05:30):
hospital bound. She was in the hospital, so she but
you wanted her to have her smartphone. That one thing
you could do is you could visit in an Apple store. Now,
for those of us in the Tucson area, if you're
listening outside of the Tucson area, you may want to
check to find out where your Apple store is. They
(05:50):
can be helpful. You could go in there and you
could explain the situation. If you have your mom's ID
again proof of purchase, you may be able to appeal
to one of the geniuses there and they may be
able to help you get that phone reset. But again,
there is a possibility you could lose all that. Now,
there is some really good discussions on the Apple website.
(06:12):
You may want to take a look and jump online
to support dot apple dot com. Again, you would need
an internet connection, a cable that could charge the smartphone
if it hasn't been charged. And again it can be
MAC or PC. But that's that's one way to get
her done. Now. Some people have said in the past, well,
(06:34):
what about face ID if you're with your mom and
it has a face ID set up, you could try
that too. That could be another one where you know,
you just look at the phone, it recognizes and it
can reset that way, so you know, I'm sorry. So, yeah,
that's a terrible That's honestly a really bad thing to
happen when it gets locked out and can be super frustrating.
(06:56):
But hopefully that will help you. I'd love to know
you know how that worked out for you. In our
TV tech segment that we do on News thirteen, you
could see those generally every Monday. We do those on
Chemist by Fox eleven, right after the eight o'clock hour.
We've been doing those since I want to say, we
started in two thousand and four. We started at KWBA.
(07:21):
We did a couple of segments there and it was
a lot of fun. Apple sent us. I remember the
first one we did. They sent us the big, old,
huge iMac, which was great. We got a chance to
talk about those. But again we're talking way back, you know,
two thousand and three, two thousand and four, and then
over time we ended up the producer who put that
(07:43):
segment together. Stephanie ended up moving over to KOLD and
she brought me on to KLD and we would do
a segment. We called it Tech Tuesday, So every Tuesday
we would go in and we'd chose something and back
then in the mid two thousand towards Slate two thousands,
it was so easy to get product because, I mean,
(08:07):
the Internet was growing, influencers were not really a thing yet,
so me as a little guy doing a you know,
doing a TV segment in southern Arizona, I could just
jump on the phone and call it representative at Apple.
I could call it representative at Verizon. I could call
it representative at Microsoft. I could call it representative at
(08:30):
Adobe and just say, hey, I'm putting together the segment.
I want to feature the product. And they would just
do all kinds of great stuff and they would send
over the product and we get a chance to look
at it for a couple of weeks and send it back.
But it was always easy to get stuff in our hands.
And boy, that has changed TV kind of. It's still
a we love our segment and TV segments have been great,
(08:54):
but the influencers kind of took over that because here
I am in a TV market, and yes, we do
put our segments online and people do watch them, uh,
but the TV, the TV market takes a back door
to influencers. They reach a wide audience with TikTok and
(09:16):
Facebook and Instagram reels and Snap. Well Snap, I don't
know if Snap really is used by influencers, but but
I mean, you really, really really YouTube shorts I have
done a great job in building their audiences. And there's
some really great uh YouTuber YouTubers out there that do
(09:37):
great job with information about tech. Uh, and they've they've
done a great job with it. But it used to
be used to be super easy. It's not as much
this this you know anymore, but it was cool. We
were able to put together a segment this past Monday
and we talked about a growing trend in the tech
world called software as a service. Now you may remember
(10:02):
in years past you would go and you would buy
a software for doing a task. We'll take for example,
I'll just take one big example was into It into It,
which their tech support I believe was located here in Tucson.
I don't know if it still is, but say QuickBooks.
For many that were starting a small business, quick Books
(10:26):
was one of the easiest to use, one of the
most full featured. You would go out and you would
buy the software, and I want to say, we could
run anywhere from one hundred and fifty three four hundred dollars,
all right, but you could use it for as long
as you had it. Now, over time, a company like
(10:47):
QuickBooks or into it would introduce new features like if
you want to do job costing, you want to just
share it whether the other users maybe in your office
that would put together statement or quotes or invoices, and
you can have more users that would be using it.
And of course Microsoft are into it, changed its business
(11:08):
model to make that available. A lot of people loved it.
I mean I loved it. I was a quick Books
user from the very beginning, and software as a service
came along. And what happened is, you know, and it's
only taken me recently to realize that, Okay, it makes sense.
(11:30):
And I know that's probably taken off some people who
have bought software and they get upset because maybe they're
not able to use that software anymore. And I'll get
to that in a second. But and I've talked about
the issues I did have with Adobe. But what happens
is these companies they continue to innovate. They don't just
(11:53):
put out of software and say here's the software, use
it now. For many of us, that was great. Quick
Books was phenomenal. It did exactly what you needed it
to do. I go back on my years past and
I look at some of the invoices for my business.
I had a first desktop publishing business, then computer repair
(12:17):
business that I would do even here at this radio
station that we broadcast on. I was actually hired as
a videographer before I was ever a DJ on this station.
I had done radio, and I love the story about
this one. I had done radio at in Tucson. We
had a number one morning show for a couple of years.
(12:38):
We were you know, we had a lot of listeners
that would tune in, and we had moved here from
Palm Springs where we also did very good Me and
my former partner Barry Donovan, who is no longer with us,
but we had a pretty great morning show. And then
when things changed started to change in radio and the
market kind of went boom and bust. Then it was
(13:01):
trying different things, went over to a couple of different stations.
This show somehow just kept surviving and would show up
at different stations and it was great. The station the show,
if you don't know, came with me from Pump Springs
and it was cool. And I ended up doing a
(13:23):
lot of video. It's what I was doing in the
late eighties. And we're talking analog editing on three quarter
its videotape. And I saw an ad in a radio
magazine that would hire radio talent and the ad was
for videographer and it was for the station here. I thought, oh,
(13:44):
I'll go find out what's going on, and so I
went and met with the owner of the station and
we talked about video and told me some of the
things he wanted to do, and I was hired and
it was. It was on a piece by piece basis.
It was great. I would go ahead and he'd say, Okay,
can you go over to Dwight's Auto Glass or here
(14:05):
was out of family restaurant, and I would go in
there and I would shoot videos and it was It
was awesome. And the pay wasn't that great, sorry, boss,
but it was still good because It kept me working
and I was able to do other radio things as well,
and we ended up doing tech talk radio just on
the web at that point, and it was a lot
(14:25):
of fun. And one day I was talking to our
former program director here, Tom Lang, and we were I
was videotaping an event for them over at Desertdemic Casino,
and I told Tom, I said, boy, I miss radio,
and he goes, wait, you did radio And I said yeah,
and I said, did radio in Tucson, And he'd never
heard of the show. I had done so much for
(14:47):
our number one ratings, and he said, well, heck, if
we ever have a part time position, you know, open
up or a filling, you want to do it. I'm like, yeah, absolutely,
And that's how they found out A did radio, and
I ended up doing radio here at this station. I've
been with the station now since two thousand and nine.
Brought tech Talk over here, I want to say about
(15:09):
twenty fourteen. It was something I always wanted to do,
is bring it to the station, which just matter of
having the right slot and the right spot. So I'm
very appreciative for the owners letting us do this tech show,
and I hope I do hope this helps some of
you that when you run into a tech situation, we're
able to do that for you. Now, I kind of
strayed a little from the story, but you know how
(15:31):
software as a service has changed things. We looked at
QuickBooks and quick books. Yeah, it was great for a
lot of us that just needed to do an invoice.
And I'll be honest with you, I went ahead and
I moved to the subscription model, and the sscerptions started
off relatively inexpensive, but every year they added new features
(15:54):
that I wasn't using, and the price continued to grow,
and I find decided to opt out. When we got
to I want to say, it was about I want
to say, four hundred maybe five hundred dollars a year
to use the software. Oh yeah, So you might remember
quick books, and you might remember when you could go
(16:15):
into the computer store and it wasn't that much. Now
you know you want a subscription to that, it's going
to cost you a lot more. Now the engineers have
done some more things, but as a small business, it
may not be exactly what you really needed. We saw
the same thing with Microsoft Microsoft Office. Might remember having
(16:36):
Microsoft Office when you would go and you would buy
Office two thousand and three, two thousand and four, and
you would all buy that. You got Microsoft Word, you
got Microsoft Excel, power Point, you got some of the
other programs that came with that outlook, and it was great.
But then they continued to innovate and you suddenly needed
(16:59):
to buy a subscription to be able to use the
Microsoft platform. Well, a lot of people hung on to
using Microsoft Words, some of the older versions, and it
can still be done. People are still doing it. Same
goes with into It. As a matter of fact, I'll
be honest with you, I still use into It the
(17:22):
Quick Books twenty thirteen. It works for me. I'm not
paying a subscription. It's the old one I had. They
didn't do dirty pool by turning off their activation servers
at least at the time when I installed it a
few years back, and it worked for me, so that
that worked out pretty good. Then you came across some
(17:43):
companies that when you bought a software, you'd have to
register it and activate it and you can have it
on one computer, maybe two computers or four, or maybe
you'd be able to use it on multiple computers, but
never at the same time. So whenever you logged in
to your program would send a log in to that company.
(18:03):
And one of those companies that had done that in
the past that you could buy the software direct to
just buy it and use it forever was Adobe. And
I had issues and I've talked about with Adobe because
what I ran into is they turned off their activation servers.
So say you had a program and in the radio business,
(18:24):
Adobe Audition was one of the finest audio editing programs
for just getting commercials made. You would do it for
even podcasters could use it. And what happened is an
Audition one point five and Audition three they turned off
the activation servers. So what happens is to say you
(18:46):
had to reinstall your computer and you didn't you uninstall it.
You ran into these issues, and if your hard drive died,
you had to reinstall. You didn't have a backup. You
suddenly may not be able to use that program anymore,
and you had to switch to software as a service
and use their creative Cloud program. And that's what a
(19:07):
lot of people had to do. Well, we know that
October coming up is going to be the big Microsoft
change from Windows ten to Windows eleven. And I know
a lot of you are on Windows ten and your
computers may up qualified to upgrade to Windows eleven. It's
a couple of things you need. Ed Bot over at
(19:27):
zd net put together a great article about that. I
recommend taking a look again ed Bot Bott. You can
do a Google search for that and zd net and
just do Google search for upgrading to Windows eleven ed Bot,
and he kind of breaks down the entire process for
you and why maybe you're not able to or what
(19:48):
you need to do to make it possible. Don't know
if Microsoft's going to change too much before that happens
when it comes to the requirements, but it's going to
cause a lot mayhem for a lot of people. I
ended up deciding, okay, I needed to have Windows eleven
in my studio, especially when suddenly my networking stopped working.
(20:10):
And after one of the updates from Microsoft, I've since
got it working, so I'm happy with that. But I thought, yeah,
maybe it's time. So I went to PC parts Picker,
which is a great website to go if you want
to build your own computer. I decided, okay, I'm going
to build a system, then I'm going to install Windows eleven.
(20:32):
I ended up going to Stack Social, whis a great
place to go find some of those software programs, although
they've run into some of that software as a service
issue with some other software that they were selling. And
I got it installed and it was great out a
Windows eleven machine running super fast, newer processor, newer than
(20:56):
the Windows ted machine I had in the studio that
had the Adobe Audition Creative Suite five point five on it,
and I loved it. Well. When I want to install
the Creative Sweet five point five from Adobe, I could
not install it anymore, said I had too many activations.
(21:17):
I got in touch with a representative that was offshore
for Adobe, and his exact thing for me was to
tell me, oh, okay, uninstall it on your computer. Deactivate it,
uninstall it and you'll be able to You should be
able to use it on the new computer. Those words
(21:40):
should should have been taken into account. Went ahead and
did that. So here I took it off a computer
that was working Windows ten. It was great. When to
install it, too many activations. So when I called back,
of course, I've got another tech support agent offshore told
me he could give me a great deal on the
(22:03):
Adobe Creative Cloud. And I said, I've got Adobe Creative Cloud,
which I do courtesy of our friends at Adobe, and
that expires this week, and I got a chance to
look at it and that was that was kind of cool,
and I'll get to that coming up. But I said, okay, well,
I just you know, removed it to activate it. And
(22:25):
he said, well, the problem is our activation server is
no longer working. So this guy tells me to remove
the software. I do, and it was working fine, and
then when I got to reinstall it on the new computer,
it won't install. There's nothing I can do, so PC
(22:46):
mover won't do it. You know, There's nothing I could
do on that case. So it was a little frustrating
and I decided, okay, well, I'm just gonna have to
stick with Creative Cloud. And I wasn't happy about it
because Creative Cloud was at the time looks like it
was going to cost me an investment of about six
hundred and seven hundred dollars. It's a lot of money
(23:08):
for software, and I started playing around with it. I
wanted to I wanted to learn it. In the meantime,
I also installed a couple of other software programs, but
I installed Adobe Creative Cloud on this new computer and
I got sold it is an amazing software program. And
I realized something. With software as a service, it's so
(23:30):
easy for us to say, wait a minute, I bought
this license, and this license was in a perpetual license.
That meant I could use this software forever and it
does exactly what I need. And that's true. But the
problem is the innovation that takes place with some of
these companies in the software. And I know that's probably
(23:53):
not going over well with some but the innovation is
pretty amazing. What they've been able to do with Premiere
Pro now put together videos Premiere Pro with the new
Generative Extend using AI features is pretty awesome. I tested
it out. I needed five seconds extra for a video project.
(24:15):
With Generative Extend, you have your video on the timeline
and you say, gosh, I need five more seconds. You
can highlight and tell it to a Generative Extend here
and again. It can take it and turn it into
whether it's a human being, a car, a sunrise. It
(24:35):
can give you that extra five seconds. You can now
caption your videos. You can also foreign language caption your
videos with Adobe Premiere Pro Creative Cloud. I was like, wow,
that's pretty amazing stuff. Photoshop with the generative fill again
adding to a photo, making it faster for you to
(24:59):
do your edit, giving you more control over those edits.
That is pretty amazing as well, Adobe Audition giving you
more features as well. But what really really blew me
away this past week is playing around with Firefly Adobe
Firefly and you could do the same thing and start
(25:21):
testing it out where it takes. And again, we know
a lot of us are not big fans of the
term when it comes to the you know, the the
AI artificial intelligence, but it can do some pretty amazing
things there text to video. I want to create something
(25:41):
that looks good. How about a sunrise over the cactus
in the sweltering deserts of Tucson. It did it? Or
a photo of an angry sun. It could be a
graphic you want to use for a flyer. So if
you are a professional, you may find that the Adobe
Creative Cloud Pro may be just what you really need
(26:04):
to use and you'll need. It's difficult to get out
of the mindset, well, it did everything before that I
needed and I don't need all this AI. Take a
look at it. The unfortunate side is the price just
went up in June. They're changing to the Adobe Creative
Cloud Pro, which will again give everything, but it's adding
(26:27):
about ten dollars a month to the program. You could
still end up spending about eight hundred dollars a month.
And you may have some features when it comes to
the artificial intelligence, maybe not all, but it is something
you may want to take a look at. There'll be
another tier of service for the Creative Cloud. You could
look at that as well. I don't know if and
(26:49):
I've asked the reps at Adobe, could they just turn
on the servers again, let people register their software that
had to upgrade to Windows eleven that still will be
fine using that. Don't know if that's gonna happen. I
have to assume it's not. But give Adobe Creative Cloud
a try. It's free trial for you to give it
(27:09):
a look, but take the time to actually get into
the program and use it and see if that maybe
works for you. And again, I did some video samples
on the segment for television this week. So when we
want to think software as a service, it's just a
way for them to get more money out of us. Yep,
they are. It's fueling that innovation, paying for the engineers
(27:30):
to do the creation of the software that can benefit
us more so something to think about. And again you
can find out more at Adobe dot com. Take a
look at Firefly that's on there, and again try the
trial version for that. We're gonna take quick break. We'll
come back with more of tech talk Radio. I'm Andy Taylor.
Find us on the web a tech talkRADIO dot com
(27:53):
and now back to tech talk Radio. Always like to
fill you in on software that you may want to
be checking out and hardware that has some cool things
that are a part of it. And one of them
that I thought actually was really pretty meat that you
may like is from a company called so Lease. And
(28:15):
we've talked about so Lease before. If you have a
smartphone that has a hot spot, you know what I'm
talking about, that hot spot that gives you ability to
access the World Wide Web from just about anywhere, which
makes it nice. You could also use your smartphone as
a hot spot so that your laptop can connect to it. Well.
(28:36):
Solease or Simo has put together what they're calling the
so lese Hub now here. Here's what it is, and
I kind of like this. It's what they're calling a
cutting edge home router featuring a four G LTE backup
powered by Cemos Virtual sim technology. So imagine you may
(29:00):
you have, you know, a cable service or you have
a satellite service that's providing you with your your Internet
and unfortunately it goes out and you're working on a project.
You've got to get this project finished. You want to
you know, get it all done well with this holeas hub.
And again this is this is a hub that can
(29:21):
you know, you could still power it off your your
regular Internet service, but when it goes down, you've got
that four G LTE backup powered by this virtual sim technology.
It keeps homes connected during Internet outages, gives you uninterrupted
connectivity when it's needed. And it looks just like a
(29:43):
regular home router, which I love. So it does four
G e LTE backup so it'll automatically switch to that
four G LTE during the Internet outages. And can you
give you download speeds up to three hundred megabits per
second and even upload speeds well some of it us
are saying, good, I get twenty megabits per second. It
could give you upload speed spending where you're at about
(30:05):
one hundred and fifty megabits per second. Features, dull band
Wi Fi six support, which means that like a router,
it's you know, connected in your home and you'll be
able to connect all your devices to this this router
that is normally working off your regular you know, subscribe services,
and then if those subscribe services go down, it switches
(30:26):
to the four G l T E backup. It can
do aight oh two doll eleven A A B, G N,
A C or A X for that performance. Now here's
what's really cool about it. Now, remember there is a
subscription that will go with this, but the product itself
you buy outright for one hundred and ninety nine bucks
at least that's the pricing that they're looking at. Uh,
(30:48):
it's available for purchase now. You can do CIMO dot
com or dot co co that's s I m O
dot Co. And then their plans that are available you
could get. And remember you wouldn't be I don't think
you would be using this all the time, right the
ten gigabit per month plan from solease to the soleise hub.
(31:10):
Remember it wouldn't be using it all the time. Only
if you know your internet goes out. We're coming up
on monsoon season, so that could happen ten gigabits per
month for only seven dollars, and that doesn't seem too
bad right now. If you don't use it, it doesn't
roll over. But ten gigabits for seven. If you need
the hot backup plan, which I'm not sure exactly what
(31:33):
that is, you'd have to find out on the Solease
website Simo dot co. That's ten gigabits per month for
twenty five dollars. I have a feeling that might be
your you know, your smartphones, et cetera. The primary plan though,
if you want to get that, that's one hundred gigabits
per month. That's a lot, a lot of data for
(31:54):
eighty nine dollars. So no matter what you're paying your
cable provider. Now, for some they might say that's going
to work out better for them, and then you would
use I guess you would use that all the time anyway.
That's something to think about. That is again from so Lease,
it's Cimo Simo dot co. If you want to get
(32:17):
more information about that product. Another one that I really
like that has been announced from Epsin And if you've
seen any of these segments I've done with the epsin
fast they got the epsin fast Photo, which is does
scanning photos very fast. I'm getting that and incorporating it
(32:38):
into my desktop publishing and website business and we're doing
digital scanning for people. But they've kind of gone in
different areas. They also have the EPs and Rapid Receipts
for you know, doing your receipts super fast. Well, now
they've introduced the sure color F ten seventy and what
(32:59):
this can do. And I got a friend that owns
Aladdin Graphics, and Aladdin Graphics does they specialize in this,
So I would still say contact them. But the shirt
color F ten seventy can print directly onto shirts. The
quality pretty impressive. So imagine you know, you're coaching a
(33:19):
little league team here in Green Valley, Sabudita, or you
get together with a company picnic and you want to
everybody have the same shirts. You're celebrating the anniversary of
your company, and you want to create your own shirts. Sure,
you go out, you buy the shirts, and then you
go ahead and you get them printed. You do the
printing right with the sure Color F ten to seventy.
(33:39):
You can look it up on the EPSOM website. But
here is the downside of that. And that's when you
might want to pick up the phone and call Troy
over at Aladdin Graphics. It will cost you about seventy
five hundred bucks to buy this printer. Now, some might say, well,
I'm a little entrepreneur. I could start doing my own
T shirt. That's something you can think about. Got to
(34:02):
take in project cost, how you're going to get that business,
et cetera. But epsom doing this so that people that
want to have full control over their printing process, or
again want to make their own shirts, they could do that.
But again, that's the sure color F ten seventy and
you'd be able to find that there. Let me tell
you about another product. Here we go, all right, not
(34:27):
long ago on television, I showed the Palm, and some
people said, whatever happened to the Palm? They got bought
by HP and that kind of Yeah, that was kind
of the end of that, right. Well, I had the
old Palm you might remember the Palm Pilot or the
Trio or the you know, the Palm smartphone, and I
(34:48):
ended up finding it and I you remembered, how you know,
when you text with the Palm, how easy it was.
You didn't have that on screen keyboard. Some of you
really hate that the Android or the iPhone on screen keyboard. Well,
the Pompilot or the Trio, you had actually keys. People
(35:10):
love that and you wanted to maybe switch to numbers.
You hit one button and you could do that, and
you could text with it very easily. Fit right in
the palm of your hands. You still had a nice
screen on. It wasn't as nice as the screen to
get now with the Androids like the Pixel nine or
the latest iPhone or even the Samsung Galaxy devices, but
(35:33):
it was cool to be able to have those keys. Well,
you can have those keys with the Clicks keyboard cases.
And if you've scrolled on the web and you've looked
for a placement phone, if you looked for mobile keyboards,
you probably have been fed in ad with the Clicks keyboard.
Now how it works, It's basically just looks just like
(35:56):
this keyboard, maybe a little bigger on the keys. Uh.
And it works with the Google nine, Pixel nine, Galaxy
S twenty five, motorole Eraser Plus. It doesn't look like
it's available on the pro XL yet. I don't know
if that could could have changed by press time, But
if you want to see these and you want to
(36:17):
actually use a keyboard, I would really recommend jumping onto
the World Wide Web and going to clicks dot tech
that clicks dot T e c H at c l
I c k s dot T e c H and
your phone actually plugs in, like kind of snaps in
to this device which holds your phone. Uh has I
(36:41):
believe it has the wireless on the back, so you could,
you know, smart charge it. You can, then you then
have a physical keyboard for your smartphone. So if you've
gotten to the point where you're just fed up with
that keyboard, I'm one of those. I use voice to
text quite a bit and it always gets it wrong.
(37:04):
But again, if you are fed up that and you
want to actually have a physical keyboard, you might want
to take a look at that they sell. They're not
inexpensive though. While you could go out and buy a
Logitech K four eighty for right around fifty bucks, this
sells for up around one hundred and thirty nine dollars.
But again, it plugs into your phone, plugs right into it,
(37:27):
and you can carry it around that way. So again
that might be something that you might want to think
about doing. One hundred and thirty nine dollars clicks dot teh.
You can get more information there about this device. And
again you may you may like that. All right. Top
ten passwords used in the United States have been revealed.
(37:51):
And I'm not looking at you, but if you use this,
you want to stop using it immediately. According to a
study that was put together by I want to say
this was malward? Was this malword? Bites? Well? Here here
it is. The second most common password in the US
(38:13):
is one two three four five six. That is ranked
the most number one common password in the world. I
know they're a pain in the butt. I know you
have so many different logins, whether it be a company
you do business with or you know, logging into pay
your smartphone bill, your bank account, you know the whole bit.
(38:37):
It could be a pain in the butt. One two
three four five six people are using that. That's the
most common password in the US and the number one
common password in the world. The easy to guess passwords
at ranked from third, fourth and fifth. The most common
in America are password. The next one is quirdy q
(39:01):
W e r t y one two three. And if
you're wondering where that comes from, quirdy was once used
as a demonstration on your username and password. Somebody said,
I'll use that as my password. Not good. Quirdy is
the top line next to the tab on your general
most keyboards q w e r T y. Then one
(39:23):
two three. Don't want to use that one as well.
All right, that is the fourth most common password in America.
The next one is quirdy number, and then just number
one q W e r t Y one. So if
you're wondering. Seventh and eighth on the list are one two, three, four, five,
(39:44):
six seven eight nine. That's sixth. Seventh is password one again,
don't use that. Then one two three, four, five sixty
seven eight comes it at number eight, ninth and tenth
on the most common passwords among Americans. Don't be writing
these down and using these. Please don't. If you're using them,
(40:04):
change them. They are one, two, three, four five, and
then ABC one two three. Now the thing is, you
may think, well, what does it matter? You know I'm
using this, I'm the only one who knows the user name.
People are phishing, which which basically means they're trying to
(40:24):
find out your user name. You may accidentally give that up,
and then once they have that It's all about finding
out which past you're using. The number one most common
password in the US. Do not use this. If you
were using it, please change it is secret, sec R
E T secret. Now here's what I'd recommend. Now you
(40:47):
may say, well, what about those password managers that are
a part of Google or even Microsoft Edge. I I
have used those in the past, and I would say, don't.
Somebody can get onto your browser if you're logged in,
and they can figure out those passwords, see them very quickly,
(41:07):
take screenshots. What I honestly recommend is a product called
one Password one the number one password. You don't want
to use that one either one password, but use the
software program you set it up. You have a secret
code to get in and then there are all your passwords.
(41:28):
Anytime you want to create a password, you could create
a super long password that within your browser it will
remember it. Within your smartphone it can remember it. And
you want to use difficult passwords, longer passwords to hack,
longer passwords for somebody to try and crack. And again
you can add this to your safe deposit box. So
(41:50):
in case of medical emergency and you don't have access
to your devices, somebody else does, they'll still be able
to access that with that long secret code that you
would be given one password. The software program itself not
very expensive, I want to say under fifty bucks, might
be like thirty nine dollars, but I'd really recommend installing that.
(42:11):
You could install it on all the browsers you use,
and it's a great way to maintain and secure your password.
So don't fall into that trap of just one, two,
three ABC secure your password? Are you going to take
another quick break? We come back with more of tech
Talk Radio, hopefully providing some great information for you on
this Saturday afternoon. Thanks for listening. Now back to TIEF
(42:34):
Talk Radio. After I decided I needed to take a
look at some different software programs that may enable me
the opportunity to create after I found out that my
we Creative Suite was no longer going to be able
to work because I wasn't able to install it on
the computer that I had up dated to Windows eleven,
(42:55):
and I sort of looking for other programs to do tasks.
Now we've mentioned it before, Sean told us about Alternative
two and you can go to on the Worldwide Web
Alternative t O dot net and what you do is
you enter the program name that maybe you're using, and
it will suggest some alternatives for you. So that way,
(43:18):
if you know, used to using one program to get
something done, like maybe you used Photoshop Express or Photoshop
or even some of the other program Correl that used
to use the Correll photopaint program, and you want to
use something else, well, you can type that in Gimp
may come up. People still use Gimp. They love Gimp.
(43:39):
It's an alternative too, that program. And so I ended
up just asking a couple of my friends that work
in the biz, and it was kind of interesting for
you know, radio. For me, it's always been Adobe Audition.
There is a program that I know of that's available
(43:59):
out there if you want to maybe you want to
create your own podcast and you would like to do stuff.
It's called Audacity. And again you'll find that available on
alternative to dot net, at least the link for that.
Make sure when you're getting software programs, you're getting it
from the authentic, authorized website. Got to be real careful
because fakes can be set up pretty easily that could
(44:21):
actually hurt your system. So Audacity is good. There's some
neat features on it. It's a matter of learning the
program and how it works differently than a w audition,
like when you export a project us export in the
file itself. I've had some people who have used Audacity
(44:43):
that send me a file and that file is still
in the Audacity format, so you know you're setting it
as a wave or an MP three that type of
that type of situation there. So again Audacity is pretty good.
But I did use a couple of programs that I
wanted to just give kind of the heads up of
the programs that I used. First off is a program
called Reaper r e a p e R. Now it's
(45:06):
not a free program. It is a paid program. They'll
give you a sixty day trial window to use it.
But the cost to acquire the Reaper program on your system,
which can be installed on two systems not at the
same time, is I want to say, around about seventy dollars.
(45:26):
But it will allow you to edit audio, which actually
I really got used to using the Reaper program. I
liked it. It has some great features, great you know,
great easy editing tools that are a part of it.
And again that's r e a p e R. You
can download it, give it a try for sixty days
(45:49):
and see if you like it and see if that's
something that you might want to use the other program
that I used for that, and I ended up stumbling
across this. So I have a small mini mixer that
I use when I do videos or when I'm doing
the podcast training sessions. I've taken it out with me
(46:10):
so that way the kids on the reservation that's where
I went last week, they end up being able to
talk into the microphones and I give them kind of
an overall about podcasting and how cool it is and
it's always a lot of fun knowledge and learning as
a group that put that together. John Proudstar is a
local artist and actor and he was out there as well,
(46:34):
so it was pretty cool. But I buy the Macki product,
and there's other I know there's other mixers on the
market and mixers. What that is is it takes your
audio input, so you have one mixer one microphone, right,
and then maybe you have another audio input, so you
put two microphones so you can do a discussion with
(46:56):
the both microphones and use the mixer to bring that
all down into one audio file. And Maki makes a
whole bunch of them. I previously used the MACI fourteen
oh two VLZ which was a multi channel mixer and
it was great, but it would plug in to the
computer using a scarlet box by focus right, or I
(47:19):
would have the Creative Labs external sound card and would
plug into that which would plug into the computer. It
was nice, but again just more cables laying around. What
I like about the one that I used for MACI
the pro FX six x three. It actually connects via
USB so you can record, you know, two microphones. You
(47:42):
could have another source as well for line in or
you could do you know, upgrade your your mixer, the
Pro eight, the Pro ten do you get more lines,
more microphones depending on what you're doing. But and then
it outputs via USB into the USB in and becomes
a sound device on your computer, so that works out
(48:04):
really good. You could even apply effects to it, the
whole bit. And I bought mine some years ago and
I've been using it. And the other day when I
was putting everything together to head on out to the
reservation over the Boys and Girls Club there in Levigne,
I noticed on the box it said pro Tools. You
(48:27):
got a license for pro tools that came with the mixer,
and it was pro Tools version Pro. There's different levels,
but I thought let's try that. So I installed it
on the computer and it is amazing. I used it
one time in a broadcast environment, not here, but in
another one, and I wasn't a big fan of it
(48:47):
because I didn't understand it. I didn't have the time
to go through it. But I've had the time to
sit and play and really kind of experiment and learn.
There's lots of great videos online, but pro Tools really
it kind of surprises me. So again, that is one
that's going on my new computer. Even though it looks
like I am going to bite the bullet and do
(49:09):
the Creative Cloud Pro, I will have this on another
computer and pro Tools for some basic editing and I
if you want to experiment, you want to play around
with some of this editing with audio and put together
a podcast, I recommend that now. I also showed some
(49:29):
products from Fuffine Fi Fi n E and not long ago,
I bought a microphone from fuf Fine from the super
sale bin store of course that we have here in
Green Valley Sawaudita and it was a great deal. I
got it for I want to say it was a
fifteen dollars day, so it was the opening day, but
(49:51):
I ended up getting this microphone and I love it.
I've since bought a mixer that they put out from
fuf Fine. It is not bad, but there is something
you need to know about that. And then the fuf
Fine am A microphone. The Fine am A microphone can
plug in via USB or USB C, or it can
(50:16):
plug in an XLR, which could be very helpful depending
on the mixer you're plugging it into. If you're using
a mixer. Uh. The mixer that for Fine put out
unfortunately has one input. That's it. And I would say, man,
don't waste your time. If you're gonna get a mixer,
get at least one that has two audio inputs. For microphones,
(50:39):
I would recommend that, and that's why I recommend the
pro FX six x three by mac E M A
C K I E. You can find more information about
that online. Uh, and not waste the time with the
fuf Fine mixer. But their Fine microphone. The pickup quality
that it is not bad. It's RGB, so if you're
doing video that goes along with your audio, it looks
(51:00):
pretty smart. I mean, it's got a nice color to it,
and the audio pickup on it is pretty good as well.
So again you can find those fine Fi Fi n E.
There is a better I will say, there is a
better microphone that's available on the market. Most radio broadcasters
you'll see them and even in podcasters you'll see them
using the SM seven B microphone. It's a pretty pricey microphone,
(51:25):
runs about three hundred and fifty four hundred dollars. You
may even be a little higher than that. That microphone's
got great pickups. So what I'm using right now and
it's good, but they have a better one out now
and I'm hoping to get my hands on one to
try it out. It's the Sure SM seven dB. And
what they basically take in is Cloudlifter, which is a
(51:45):
great device which gives a little more oomph, a little
more power to the audio chain. It's kind of built
in so you get this really dynamic sound and podcasters
radio broadcasters are so again that's the Sure SM seven D.
Be all right, I got to take a quick break.
(52:05):
We come back with more of tech talk Radio, I
mean Detaylor find us of the web at tech talk
radio dot com. We'll be right back and now back
to tech talk Radio. This is Stephen right you know,
listening to tech talk radio. Yeah, some alung that line. Yeah,
I guess that was it. All right, let's go with it.
(52:28):
I love it. I'll say it anyway. All right, this
is Stephen Wright and you're listening to tech Talk Radio.
But you know, I've already been saying that this is
the time of the show that we'd like to share
with you a cool website of the week. Sometimes it's
a product of the week, and I decided I wanted
(52:49):
to come up with a website that you could enjoy
when this show is over, we're back to your familiar
favorites that you could actually have some fun with and
and tell your friends about. So there are lots of
great websites that are out there. There are that you
can have some fun with. We've talked about some of
(53:10):
those in the past, like the Lazy Fly, which I
think is a good one. But here's one that is
just a collection of just websites that you can you
can find you go to the useless web dot com.
The uselessweb dot com and it's gonna be different forever
(53:31):
just about everybody. But I'm gonna go here and you'll
you'll say, take me to another useless website. Please, So
once you're there, you hit please and like for me,
it came up with sliding toys a daily puzzle. It
has the date, shows that how many people have done
that and that whole bit, so you could do that.
One you don't like it, go to another one, the
(53:53):
long Dodge challenge your doge, thank you and it just okay,
there you go. You could print it again, useless website,
go to another one. Always judge a book by its covers.
Some books went awards, others some win our heart and
others only serve to confuse. This book, it's an actual book,
(54:19):
how to talk to your cat about gun safety. And
again you could find the link. You could actually listen
to some of the book on audible. Another book that
they have Outwitting Squirrels, more than one million squirrels outwitted.
Here's another book, how to survive a garden gnome attack.
(54:40):
Eating people is wrong, Crafting with cat hair, Cute handicrafts
to make with your cat. And then one that I've
actually heard of, this book and I saw this in there.
It's called Florida Man. And for any of you from Florida,
I apologize here. But what is some of the crazy
stories that always start off with a Florida man and
(55:03):
then you go on from there and again. You can
find it at the uselessweb dot com. Have some fun
with that. Let me know what you come up with.
Just drop me a line, Andy atech Talk radio dot com.
In the meantime, have yourselves a wonderful weekend Memorial Day weekend.
Thanks for all that have paid the ultimate sacrifice. They're
in our hearts this weekend. I'm Andy Taylor,
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