Speaker 1: Google goes after Ring TikTok takes flight plus your tech
Speaker 1: questions answered? What's going on? I'm Rich Dmiro and this
Speaker 1: is Rich on Tech, the podcast where I talk about
Speaker 1: the tech stuff I think you should know about. It's
Speaker 1: also the place where I answer the questions you send me.
Speaker 1: My name is Rich Dmiro, tech reporter at KTLA Channel
Speaker 1: five in Los Angeles. Thanks so much for tuning into
Speaker 1: the show. I gotta say, I don't know what happened
Speaker 1: last week. Was it the title of the show.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Most downloads ever for an episode of this show in
Speaker 1: one week, I mean, I don't know. It was double
Speaker 1: what it typically was. So the only change I could
Speaker 1: discern is that Facebook's little podcast thing started to kick in,
Speaker 1: where basically I put my RSS feed on to my
Speaker 1: Facebook page and every time I publish a new episode,
Speaker 1: Facebook imports it and then lets it be playable through
Speaker 1: my Facebook page. And I've got a lot of people
Speaker 1: on my Facebook page, so perhaps that boosted things up,
Speaker 1: but I don't know. So anyway, whatever it is, if
Speaker 1: you're new to the show, welcome, Thank you. We'll see
Speaker 1: if that was just a fluke next week. But I
Speaker 1: enjoyed seeing the increase in numbers. That was kind of fun.
Speaker 1: One thing that was kind of ironic about last week
Speaker 1: is that I actually did a little experiment. So I
Speaker 1: have been spending a lot of time on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter,
Speaker 1: all these things, and I decided to try deleting them
Speaker 1: from my phone to see what would happen with my life.
Speaker 1: Now I'm on TV, and of course I am in
Speaker 1: the public eye all the time, always the pressure to
Speaker 1: post and to kind of share things that are happening
Speaker 1: in my life. And I enjoyed doing it, don't get
Speaker 1: me wrong, but it become a thing where I am,
Speaker 1: you know, always looking at this. I'm always on it.
Speaker 1: I'm getting messages twenty four to seven from folks, and
Speaker 1: so I just figured, okay, let me just see what
Speaker 1: life is like without these, and I will tell you,
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, it is very interesting. It is very
Speaker 1: freeing because I did not feel pressure in any way,
Speaker 1: shape or form to be on my phone, to check
Speaker 1: my phone, to post on my phone, to check what
Speaker 1: people are saying about what I posted. And it was
Speaker 1: very very i don't know, like it made me become
Speaker 1: more in the moment. And I've got them back on
Speaker 1: my phone at this point. But I don't know what
Speaker 1: the solution is because I don't have my notifications turned on.
Speaker 1: I'm not sitting there, you know, every time someone texts
Speaker 1: me or tweets me, you know, I don't see that instantly.
Speaker 2: So I'm not really sure what the answer is.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess it's just a way to figure
Speaker 1: out how to limit yourself to checking, you know, once
Speaker 1: or twice or three times a day or certain times
Speaker 1: throughout the day. But I just find that these these
Speaker 1: programs really really suck you in, and they suck you
Speaker 1: into a world where you are just you know, you're
Speaker 1: keeping up with people, but you're not. You're keeping up
Speaker 1: with things, but you're not. And it really is one
Speaker 1: of these things where when I look around at people
Speaker 1: out and about in the world, they are just all
Speaker 1: looking at Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok. And it's funny because
Speaker 1: when I'm out and about, I always kind of look
Speaker 1: to see what people are doing on their phones. And
Speaker 1: I was at the Santa Cruz Amusement Park. It's called
Speaker 1: the Boardwalk Fun Place by the way. It was really nice,
Speaker 1: but everyone was just kind of on their phones, and
Speaker 1: I get it, you're in line, so what are you
Speaker 1: gonna do? But I noticed that Facebook is still king.
Speaker 1: I think Facebook and Instagram are still king when it
Speaker 1: comes to.
Speaker 2: All this stuff.
Speaker 1: Anyway, I'm not gonna stop posting, I'm not gonna stop
Speaker 1: being there, but I just like to see, you know,
Speaker 1: for my own reasons, how things are and what things
Speaker 1: do and all that good stuff. So it was kind
Speaker 1: of fun to be off for a week and see
Speaker 1: how that affected my life.
Speaker 2: And I will say it.
Speaker 1: Feels positive, but you also feel like you're left out.
Speaker 1: And I also did notice me checking other things more.
Speaker 1: So I would check LinkedIn more, I would check Google
Speaker 1: News more. And so it's not like it's a zero
Speaker 1: sum game where just because you don't have these things,
Speaker 1: you're not on your phone, you just I think, gravitate
Speaker 1: towards other places. So anyway, let's get to the first
Speaker 1: story of the week. New from Google Nest. They've got
Speaker 1: a couple of new cameras and doorbells, and everything they're
Speaker 1: doing is basically.
Speaker 2: A direct attack at Ring Ring.
Speaker 1: I always have talked about on the show doing really
Speaker 1: really cool things, really pushing the envelope when it comes
Speaker 1: to home security and all the different things that they
Speaker 1: bundle together. You know, it works with the you know
Speaker 1: alex A, and it works with you know, just so
Speaker 1: many different things. The ecosystem with Ring is is kind
Speaker 1: of like unsurpassed, right, And so I know there's a
Speaker 1: lot to talk about how people some people don't like
Speaker 1: what Ring is doing with privacy, but I don't have
Speaker 1: those problems, and I actually really enjoy what I've got
Speaker 1: going on with Ring at my house. So, and I
Speaker 1: also have some of these nestcams too. But the problem
Speaker 1: with the nestcam in the past, and they did address this,
Speaker 1: is that they're basically worthless unless you are subscribing to
Speaker 1: their service because the Nest camps only let you live
Speaker 1: stream and they don't record anything unless you pay. Now
Speaker 1: that has changed, not with the old cameras, but with
Speaker 1: the new cameras. So let me just tell you about
Speaker 1: the cameras they've got. So they've got a new Google
Speaker 1: Nest Cam with a battery and this is an indoor,
Speaker 1: outdoor battery powered camera that's going to be one hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty dollars. Then they've got the Google Nest doorbell,
Speaker 1: which used to be called the the I think it
Speaker 1: was called the Hello. This is a battery powered doorbell,
Speaker 1: which is also a first that's one hundred and eighty dollars.
Speaker 1: Then they've got a Google Nest Cam with a floodlight
Speaker 1: which is basically Ring's floodlight cam which they've had forever.
Speaker 1: That is two hundred and seventy nine hundred and eighty dollars.
Speaker 1: And I'm trying to think how much I paid for
Speaker 1: the Nest cam that I got. The are sorry the Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Nest floodlight cam. I think it was two fifty
Speaker 1: but I think they also have a model that's one
Speaker 1: ninety nine now. But anyway, so now Google has their
Speaker 1: answer to that. And then they have the Google Nestcam,
Speaker 1: which is kind of their standard camera. That's the wired
Speaker 1: camera for inside, and that's going to be one hundred
Speaker 1: dollars and that's their lowest price ever. But quite honestly,
Speaker 1: you can get a Ring Cam, I think for sixty
Speaker 1: dollars for indoor. Now, there is a difference here the
Speaker 1: Ring cams. You know, they let you live stream, but
Speaker 1: they don't record like continuously, so you can get the
Speaker 1: events from them, but you can't get like the last
Speaker 1: three hours and just scroll through like you can with
Speaker 1: the Nest cams. So the nestcams now include three hours
Speaker 1: of recorded events for free, and that is a big
Speaker 1: change because it used to be had to pay to
Speaker 1: get any sort of recording on the Nest cam.
Speaker 2: So that is it.
Speaker 1: That's a win right there. The other thing is that
Speaker 1: some of these are available now. Basically, the battery powered
Speaker 1: nestcam and the doorbell will go on sail August twenty fourth.
Speaker 1: The floodlight and the wired indoor cam are coming soon.
Speaker 2: So what else.
Speaker 1: The other big thing about this is that you know,
Speaker 1: if you have a ring camera, you know that the
Speaker 1: alerts are very very hit or miss. They've gotten pretty
Speaker 1: good with emotion alerts, but it does not have any
Speaker 1: idea if it's a person, if it's a package, if
Speaker 1: it's an animal. So for me personally, I'm getting alerts
Speaker 1: all day long, especially in my backyard. Anytime the wind blows,
Speaker 1: I get an alert with a tree branch moving in
Speaker 1: front of my camera and that is just no good.
Speaker 1: So Google knows this, and they showed me a demo
Speaker 1: of their AI that is on camera now, which means
Speaker 1: it's not going off your camera to figure out what's
Speaker 1: happening in the frame and they showed me a little
Speaker 1: clip of a FedEx truck pulling up to the front
Speaker 1: of the house. And as the truck pulls up, the
Speaker 1: machine learning and artificial intelligence knows that that is a
Speaker 1: delivery truck. Then it anticipates that it knows someone's going
Speaker 1: to be walking up to your front door, and then
Speaker 1: it knows that a package is going to be dropped off.
Speaker 1: And so the alerts now can discern between people, animals, vehicles,
Speaker 1: and also packages in the case of the Nest door bell,
Speaker 1: And that's a big deal. It may sound like, ah, Rich,
Speaker 1: that's not that big of a deal, but I do
Speaker 1: believe it is because I, you know, I get these alerts,
Speaker 1: especially when you're on vacation of you know, motion at
Speaker 1: your cameras with your ring cameras, and they're pretty much
Speaker 1: useless because I'm getting them twenty four to seven all
Speaker 1: day long. So because a camera can tell that it's
Speaker 1: an actual person or an animal, or a vehicle or
Speaker 1: a package, that is very helpful. And by the way,
Speaker 1: these are again being processed on device. You do not
Speaker 1: need a subscription for these types of alerts anymore. So
Speaker 1: the most important alerts are actually going to be included
Speaker 1: with these cameras, which is a big deal. Now, the
Speaker 1: other thing that still requires a subscription is the familiar
Speaker 1: Faces alerts, and that will require subscription because it does
Speaker 1: use some cloud processing to do that. And that's when
Speaker 1: you have you know, you can you can what's the word,
Speaker 1: sort out whether it's actually a friend or a family
Speaker 1: member coming to the door, or a stranger that's coming
Speaker 1: for the first time. Now, there's one more thing that's
Speaker 1: kind of interesting about these new cameras is that they
Speaker 1: have local storage fallback. So the Nest doorbell, the nestcams,
Speaker 1: and the floodlight will record one hour of events on device.
Speaker 1: So that's pretty interesting. And that means that if the
Speaker 1: I guess they've got some internal memory on these things,
Speaker 1: that will help them record to the device if the
Speaker 1: power goes out and you know, if it has a
Speaker 1: battery in it obviously, and so that's a cool feature
Speaker 1: as well, because you don't miss anything in case the
Speaker 1: power goes out. So anyway, cheaper prices, more features, more
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence. That's the story with the new nestcams. And
Speaker 1: I think that it's it's competitive. I think that for
Speaker 1: me personally, Google is just all over the place when
Speaker 1: it comes with their with their gadgets. So I feel
Speaker 1: like Ring is much more focused in here's what we're doing,
Speaker 1: here's what we deliver, Here's you know, our old stuff,
Speaker 1: here's our new stuff. It all works together. Whereas Google,
Speaker 1: you know you can invest in this stuff. And I've
Speaker 1: had a nestcam at my house for years now. It's fine,
Speaker 1: But is it my favorite and is it the best?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think that my Ring stuff is better. So anyway,
Speaker 1: it's a personal choice depending on the ecosystem you're already in.
Speaker 1: But those are the new the new offerings from Nest. Well,
Speaker 1: let's get to the first question from Let's take a
Speaker 1: question from Instagram. Marianne via Instagram at richon Tech says, Hey,
Speaker 1: I keep seeing ads for pogo where you get cash
Speaker 1: back for your purchases. Do you know anything about this?
Speaker 1: I'm not sure it's safe you link it to all
Speaker 1: of your credit and debit cards. The website is earnwipogo
Speaker 1: dot com. Yeah, the website seems legitimate. The site and
Speaker 1: the features is not something new. We've seen this many
Speaker 1: many times. There's an app folk featured called drop and
Speaker 1: it's very similar and there's so many of these rewards apps,
Speaker 1: and the endgame with all of these apps is basically
Speaker 1: the same. They are taking your data in exchange for
Speaker 1: giving you a little bit of rewards. And so, yeah,
Speaker 1: your data is worth a lot of money and these
Speaker 1: companies know it, especially as the iPhone and all this
Speaker 1: tracking is kind of cracked down on. That means that
Speaker 1: you handing over your data willingly is going to be
Speaker 1: even more valuable these days. And what kind of data
Speaker 1: are they collecting? Well, this company actually has it on
Speaker 1: their front page and it says, here's what we're collecting.
Speaker 1: We are collecting your receipts and purchases and that's the
Speaker 1: thing we Oh, they also serve your relevant ads. So
Speaker 1: what they don't do is share your contact information, access
Speaker 1: your bank credentials, or withdraw funds. So to make this work,
Speaker 1: and the way that a lot of these things work
Speaker 1: is that you have to connect your bank account to
Speaker 1: this service. And so once you connect your bank account,
Speaker 1: they go through they see all your transactions. You know,
Speaker 1: they even know how much money you make because they
Speaker 1: see your paychecks. You know, you connect your credit cards,
Speaker 1: you can see you know, your transactions there. So what
Speaker 1: happens is they get a great idea of just how
Speaker 1: much money you have and where you spend that money,
Speaker 1: and they, you know, the credit card companies know this
Speaker 1: and they share it and aggregate. But for a third
Speaker 1: party company like Pogo to understand that, it's very valuable
Speaker 1: so they can sell if they have a lot of people,
Speaker 1: they can sell a lot of information across you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of data across a lot of different people.
Speaker 1: So they know how old you are, how much you make,
Speaker 1: where you spend your money, and that's very valuable, as
Speaker 1: you might expect. And they give you a piece of
Speaker 1: those rewards. How much do they give you? Let's see, Well,
Speaker 1: they give you points and then once you get those points,
Speaker 1: you can redeem them for various rewards cash out via
Speaker 1: Venmo or PayPal when you reach three dollars. So it
Speaker 1: just depends is you know, is it for you?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: It depends how much you value your private data. So
Speaker 1: for me personally, I used to be big into these things.
Speaker 1: Now I'm sort of a little bit more locked down
Speaker 1: because you know, why do they need I don't know
Speaker 1: if the rewards of three dollars or five dollars over
Speaker 1: a couple of months is really worth me handing over
Speaker 1: all of my transaction data. So for those reasons, I
Speaker 1: kind of got out of these apps. And I think
Speaker 1: there are also a lot of work sometimes because they're
Speaker 1: always bugging you. Some of them ask you to upload receipts.
Speaker 1: This one does not, but in general, you know, they
Speaker 1: might ask you for surveys and this and that. Now
Speaker 1: you can look on the flip side of this and
Speaker 1: basically it's free money for you know, just giving a
Speaker 1: little bit of your transactional data to these companies. So
Speaker 1: you might say, hey, rich, you know, that's not that
Speaker 1: big of a deal to me. But either way, most
Speaker 1: of them are legit. I would just be very careful
Speaker 1: when you look at these companies. The only thing about
Speaker 1: Pogo that I don't like is when I look on
Speaker 1: their website, I don't see anything about Facebook, Instagram or Twitter,
Speaker 1: and their only contact information is support at Earnwithpogo dot Com.
Speaker 1: So I don't like that. So for that reason, I
Speaker 1: personally would not be signing up with this website. Let's
Speaker 1: look at drop which is another website that I featured
Speaker 1: on KTLA, and let's see what their website has when
Speaker 1: it comes to you know, the information that I like.
Speaker 1: And so I'm looking at the bottom of their website
Speaker 1: and it has Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. It also
Speaker 1: has a fact it also has that do not sell
Speaker 1: my personal information at the bottom. So for this reason,
Speaker 1: I like Drop a lot more if you're going to
Speaker 1: go with one, because it seems a little bit more legit.
Speaker 1: The Pogo one I really do not like at all. Actually,
Speaker 1: they do have a privacy policy, uh and yeah, but
Speaker 1: I just I think it's a little lean on, kind
Speaker 1: of like the front facing information. In fact, I don't
Speaker 1: even see a way to I don't even see a
Speaker 1: link to the app before I sign up, and I
Speaker 1: don't like that either.
Speaker 2: So for that reason, I'm gonna say no on Pogo.
Speaker 1: But if you want to take a look at some
Speaker 1: of these other apps, they might work for you as well.
Speaker 1: All right, let's get to another question here. Next question
Speaker 1: comes from Patty via Instagram. I'll do a couple of
Speaker 1: Instagram questions takes. It's been a while and since I
Speaker 1: was off Instagram, I feel bad that I didn't write
Speaker 1: back to people for a while. Patty says, help, I
Speaker 1: lost my text chain with each of my three kids,
Speaker 1: I turned my phone off as that's the only fix
Speaker 1: I know, lol, but it didn't work. They still show
Speaker 1: up in group texts, but not individually. They are the
Speaker 1: top three in my contact favorites, but don't know if
Speaker 1: that matters. Sadly, I've lost all of our conversations and
Speaker 1: pictures they've sent. Is there any way to retrieve them?
Speaker 1: I don't know how you lost them? You know this
Speaker 1: is number one. I mean, I'm sorry that you lost
Speaker 1: these text chains. But text messaging. We have placed an
Speaker 1: enormous emphasis on the importance of text messaging in our society,
Speaker 1: and I don't really understand it because to me, text
Speaker 1: messages are fleeting, they're fast, they're quick, they are you know,
Speaker 1: something that I would not think should stick around forever,
Speaker 1: Like my email definitely is like kind of an archive
Speaker 1: of everything over the past ten or fifteen years. And
Speaker 1: so I understand that, but text messaging, in fact, I
Speaker 1: have mindset to expire after a year on my iPhone
Speaker 1: because you know, you keep three years of that stuff
Speaker 1: and it's it's weighing down. If you ever look at
Speaker 1: like this, this storage on your iPhone for text messages,
Speaker 1: it's enormous.
Speaker 2: It's too much. So.
Speaker 1: I do understand that people like to keep this stuff
Speaker 1: and it's kind of a memory and it's a record.
Speaker 1: But if you're going to do that, I would get
Speaker 1: your core friends to switch to an app like Telegram
Speaker 1: Number one. You can back up, you can export, you
Speaker 1: can see all your stuff more easily, and I get it.
Speaker 1: Apple has really doubled down on I Message and messages,
Speaker 1: and there's a reason for that. It's because they want
Speaker 1: to keep you locked into the iPhone. There's no other reason.
Speaker 1: They're not making it better just to make it better.
Speaker 1: They're making it better so that you don't go anywhere else.
Speaker 1: And the problem with that is that I Message is
Speaker 1: terrible when it comes to exporting messages. When it comes
Speaker 1: to your backup, yeah, it's backed up somewhere in iicloud,
Speaker 1: But how do you access that backup?
Speaker 2: You can't.
Speaker 1: You would think that you would be able to go
Speaker 1: onto iCloud dot com and click I Message and be
Speaker 1: able to search all of your messages.
Speaker 2: Right for a keyword or whatever. I can't find a
Speaker 2: way to do that.
Speaker 1: So if I can't find it, I'm sure nobody else can.
Speaker 1: Now there are apps that will let you kind of
Speaker 1: look into a backup of your iPhone and you could
Speaker 1: potentially do that, but for me personally, that was too
Speaker 1: complicated because you have to do a complete backup of
Speaker 1: your iPhone onto your computer and I just don't have
Speaker 1: enough room to do that, so I'd have to delete
Speaker 1: all my pictures before I was able to do that.
Speaker 1: So at the end of the day, Patty, I think
Speaker 1: that these are probably gone. You can look into your
Speaker 1: iCloud backup and see if you can use one of
Speaker 1: these programs to help you restore it. But the reality
Speaker 1: is these programs are you know you need a full backup.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you the program that I was testing
Speaker 1: that might work. It's called Imazing Imazig, and this will
Speaker 1: let you tap into a backup of your iPhone. The
Speaker 1: problem is, you need a backup of your iPhone and
Speaker 1: if you didn't do it before you lost these messages,
Speaker 1: you might not be able to access those again. So
Speaker 1: if there's another way, let me know. If you're listening
Speaker 1: and you say, Rich, here's the easy way. But to
Speaker 1: me personally, I would switch to an app like I
Speaker 1: would switch to Telegram, and that's where I do my messaging,
Speaker 1: and it's fantastic I've got an archive and never expires.
Speaker 1: It works no matter what phone I'm on, it works
Speaker 1: on my desktop, it works on my phone, and with
Speaker 1: messages and I message, it's just way too all over
Speaker 1: the place for me, and there's just no there's no standard, right,
Speaker 1: it doesn't, it doesn't. It doesn't adhere to any sort
Speaker 1: of standards for like exporting your messages that I can tell,
Speaker 1: And so for that reason, I just don't like it
Speaker 1: for my for a long term solution to like recording
Speaker 1: and seeing messages. It's fun for just you know, chatting
Speaker 1: back and forth with people, but I don't have any
Speaker 1: sort of indication that I'm ever gonna be able to
Speaker 1: search those messages find something I need or see them ever.
Speaker 2: Again, let's talk about Apple.
Speaker 1: Speaking of Apple, they've got kind of a controversial plan
Speaker 1: that leaked and I guess they did a blog post
Speaker 1: about it. But it's a plan to protect children from
Speaker 1: what they call child sexual abuse material. This they abbreviate
Speaker 1: as c SAM and what they you know, if you
Speaker 1: saw the news media account to this, they're saying they're
Speaker 1: scanning all the pictures on your iPhone for child pornography
Speaker 1: or anything you know, sexually explicit when it comes to
Speaker 1: children and minors. And of course that's you know, a
Speaker 1: smart thing for them to do when it comes to
Speaker 1: protecting children. Now, of course this is Apple, and they
Speaker 1: had to come up with a way that would protect
Speaker 1: people's you know, privacy, the average person's privacy, while also
Speaker 1: making sure that this kind of stuff doesn't happen on
Speaker 1: their devices. And so they've done a couple of smart things,
Speaker 1: and I think that it's being way overblown in the
Speaker 1: privacy aspect, and quite frankly when it comes to this stuff,
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, let's figure out a way to stop
Speaker 1: this from happening, because it's it's pretty gruesome. So what
Speaker 1: they're going to do. They've got a threefold plan. Number one,
Speaker 1: the Messages app is going to use on device learning
Speaker 1: to war and kids about sensitive content. So if someone
Speaker 1: sends them a message that is potentially explicit in nature
Speaker 1: when it comes to a photo, the phone will scan
Speaker 1: that and figure that out and say and blur it
Speaker 1: and tell the child, Hey, Number one, we think this
Speaker 1: is bad. Number two, we don't think you should open it.
Speaker 1: Number three, you don't have to open it. Number four
Speaker 1: we're going to tell your parents too, so that is
Speaker 1: that's one thing they're doing Siri and search.
Speaker 2: If you do search for some of.
Speaker 1: These types of things, it's going to stop you in
Speaker 1: your tracks and kind of give you a little check
Speaker 1: right there and say, hey, you shouldn't be doing this,
Speaker 1: and also we're not going to give you the results
Speaker 1: that you are looking for.
Speaker 2: Now. The most controversial part is the photos.
Speaker 1: So if you have photos on your phone and these
Speaker 1: photos contain any of this stuff that has been sort
Speaker 1: of identified as see SAM, the system will use all
Speaker 1: kinds of advanced cryptography to help limit this spread of
Speaker 1: this stuff. Now, Apple can't really do anything from people
Speaker 1: doing this on their phone. It's their private device, it's
Speaker 1: their private storage. But the part that they're going to
Speaker 1: crack down on is when you try to upload this
Speaker 1: stuff to iCloud. And Apple basically understands that when you
Speaker 1: upload this stuff to iCloud, it's being shared. Whether it's
Speaker 1: being shared or not, it doesn't really matter. They don't
Speaker 1: want it to spread, and so they will look at
Speaker 1: these images, do a machine learning scan on your phone
Speaker 1: as they're uploaded to iCloud, and anything that is potentially
Speaker 1: a problem will be identified and notified. So there are
Speaker 1: some ways that they're going to notify people. Let's see,
Speaker 1: so they're going to scan on device, they're going to
Speaker 1: compare them against images provided by child safety organizations, and
Speaker 1: then there's going to be what's called a voucher that's
Speaker 1: uploaded to iCloud along with the image.
Speaker 2: And so.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's really it's it's very complicated. Is going
Speaker 1: to eventually manually review the image, and then if there's
Speaker 1: a match, they will disable the user's account and send
Speaker 1: a report to the NCMEC, which is the gosh, what
Speaker 1: is that? The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
Speaker 1: So again, Apple is dancing here. They promote themselves on privacy,
Speaker 1: and you know, you do understand if you're using an iPhone,
Speaker 1: everything is very private. But I feel like they've come
Speaker 1: up with a system that takes the public interest into
Speaker 1: account by giving up a little bit of that privacy,
Speaker 1: especially when you're uploading things to the cloud. So I
Speaker 1: think they've done a pretty good job here. It's way
Speaker 1: too complicated for me to fully understand. But I think
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, what Apple's trying to
Speaker 1: do is, you know, anytime it comes to scanning photos
Speaker 1: or looking for things in photos, there's going to be
Speaker 1: a bit of controversy, but I think that the way
Speaker 1: Apple has decided to do this is a win win
Speaker 1: situation because it will stop the spread of a lot
Speaker 1: of this material. All right, let's get to another question.
Speaker 1: Donna via Instagram. All right, I'll just do a lot
Speaker 1: via Instagram today. We'll start out with those.
Speaker 2: She says, just.
Speaker 1: Wondering if you can help me on the differences between
Speaker 1: the Apple watches. I have an Apple iPhone eight. I'm
Speaker 1: not very tech savvy, nor am I into having the
Speaker 1: latest and greatest, but I need to watch and I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about getting an Apple Watch. And honestly, Donna, it's
Speaker 1: been a while since I kind of compared these watches.
Speaker 1: And the main thing to know about these watches is
Speaker 1: that you have the iPhone S and then the sorry,
Speaker 1: the Apple Watch S, and then the Apple Watch six
Speaker 1: is the latest version. Now, the Apple Watch six is
Speaker 1: going to be the one that basically has all the
Speaker 1: latest and greatest features, and not just the latest and
Speaker 1: greatest features, but also the always on display. And it
Speaker 1: has what's called an altimeter, which means it can show
Speaker 1: you how high you are walking or hi looking at
Speaker 1: that you know, exact moment. It also has the let's see,
Speaker 1: it has the blood oxygen level, and it has the
Speaker 1: what it has the EKG as well. Now you can
Speaker 1: go for the the SE. I think that one is
Speaker 1: going to be the best solution for you because you
Speaker 1: said you don't need the latest and greatest, and realistically,
Speaker 1: when you're looking at these things, you probably don't need
Speaker 1: all those top of the line features. And so again
Speaker 1: let me go over the differences. The blood oxygen sensor
Speaker 1: is in the Apple Watch six. The biggest difference is
Speaker 1: and this is according to an article I wrote for KTLA,
Speaker 1: the SE does not have the always on display, it
Speaker 1: doesn't have the blood oxygen and it doesn't have the ECG. Now,
Speaker 1: both watches are going to give you GPS, they're going
Speaker 1: to give you the heart rate sensor, the speaker, the microphone,
Speaker 1: and fall detection. So at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: you're going to save about one hundred and twenty dollars
Speaker 1: if not more, by going with the SE. So I
Speaker 1: would say the Apple Watch SE is the device that
Speaker 1: you should go with.
Speaker 2: This is kind of fun.
Speaker 1: Airlines kind of interesting these days if you're keeping track
Speaker 1: of the news. Seems like it's just they're all over
Speaker 1: the place. You know, you've got a lot of people
Speaker 1: flying right now, You've got a lot of people who
Speaker 1: haven't flown in a while. I've had no problems on
Speaker 1: my flights. I've taken four or five or six of
Speaker 1: them since coronavirus, or probably eight at this point, and
Speaker 1: I've had nothing but smooth sailing. So that's the good news.
Speaker 1: But the reality is, these things are packed tight. There
Speaker 1: are no open seats on flights right now, and flights
Speaker 1: are canceled if there are, and so you got to
Speaker 1: stay safe up there. There's a lot of people, a
Speaker 1: lot of drinking up there. I saw people on my
Speaker 1: last flight bringing their own alcohol onto the plane. So
Speaker 1: everyone deals with this kind of stuff differently, and so
Speaker 1: I'm cognizant of that. But also, you know, there used
Speaker 1: to be a certain demeanor that you would have in
Speaker 1: the skies. You know, maybe you were friendly, maybe you
Speaker 1: were respectful of others. Sometimes that is being lost these days,
Speaker 1: and that's being lost in a lot of different places
Speaker 1: across our society.
Speaker 2: And so I don't condone any of that.
Speaker 1: I try to be a nice person no matter what
Speaker 1: the situation is, respectful, but you know, that's the way
Speaker 1: I was raised, so maybe not everyone was raised like that. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I digress. I tell you all that because this is
Speaker 1: kind of fun. But American Airlines, and maybe I said
Speaker 1: all that because maybe this will take people's minds off
Speaker 1: of the in flight in the situation the sardines that
Speaker 1: they feel like sometimes on those flights. But American Airlines
Speaker 1: giving passengers free access to TikTok and so you can
Speaker 1: get free in flight access. Of course, this is a
Speaker 1: promotion which means it could go away at any time,
Speaker 1: but as of right now, as of this recording, American
Speaker 1: Airlines is using this to promote the fact that they
Speaker 1: have the fastest Wi Fi on more aircraft than any
Speaker 1: other US carrier. Now I'm not able to test that.
Speaker 1: When I'm on planes, I do not purchase the Wi
Speaker 1: Fi unless I absolutely have to for work, because I
Speaker 1: think it is a complete ripoff to pay fifty dollars
Speaker 1: for a cross country flight or even eight dollars for
Speaker 1: an hour. I know Jet Blue has free Wi Fi.
Speaker 1: I have never flown Jet Blue, so I don't know
Speaker 1: anything about that. I'm on United most of the time,
Speaker 1: and the Wi Fi situation has been fine. The times
Speaker 1: I've purchased it, but my kids always give me a
Speaker 1: hard time because I will not purchase the unlimited Wi
Speaker 1: Fi for the flight, because I refuse to pay the
Speaker 1: forty eight or fifty bucks for cross country flights some
Speaker 1: typically on So but I do like this, and yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of these, a lot of these airplanes, they
Speaker 1: will offer certain things for free, like I know that
Speaker 1: what is it Alaska airlines, Like they all give you
Speaker 1: like little certain things for free.
Speaker 2: And so anyway, TikTok is now free on.
Speaker 1: American airlines for half an hour, and you don't need
Speaker 1: to purchase the in flight Wi Fi to access this.
Speaker 1: I know, Southwest you can access live TV. I think
Speaker 1: it's still for free. They also give you free I
Speaker 1: messaging on your phone. So it's one of these things
Speaker 1: where it definitely benefits you to look up what is
Speaker 1: free on the Wi Fi before you take flight, because,
Speaker 1: for instance, my mom flew out here on Jet Blue
Speaker 1: and she had no idea that the WiFi was free.
Speaker 1: I said, yeah, we could have been chatting the whole time.
Speaker 1: And so just take a look, go to the you know,
Speaker 1: whatever airline you're flying, just search you know, let's say
Speaker 1: Southwest WiFi and just see what the procedures are, because, yeah,
Speaker 1: for the standard Internet, you're typically going to have to
Speaker 1: pay on most of the airlines, but they also offer
Speaker 1: a lot of little things for free. So it might
Speaker 1: be I Message, it could be Facebook Messenger, it could
Speaker 1: be TikTok it could be whatever the other thing is.
Speaker 1: You always want to download that company's app. So whatever
Speaker 1: you know, if you're on United, download the United app,
Speaker 1: download the American Airlines app, download the jet Blue app.
Speaker 1: Because a lot of these planes, if they don't have
Speaker 1: the seatback screens, they will let you stream the stuff
Speaker 1: through your phone using their app. But a lot of
Speaker 1: times you have to have the app before you get
Speaker 1: on the plane because the Wi Fi does not allow
Speaker 1: the app to be downloaded. But I thought this was interesting.
Speaker 1: American says that, so to enable this, you want to
Speaker 1: go to the in flight signal, then you're redirected to
Speaker 1: aainflight dot com and then simply click on the TikTok
Speaker 1: ad for free access to the platform. And if you
Speaker 1: don't have TikTok you can connect to AA in flight
Speaker 1: to download the app without having to pay for Wi Fi.
Speaker 1: And that's actually quite different than the way United says,
Speaker 1: they make you download the app before you take off,
Speaker 1: because once you're in the air, you cannot access the app. Now,
Speaker 1: once you have the app you can download, you can
Speaker 1: access the United website. So if you want to book
Speaker 1: a flight while you're in flight, you're free to do that.
Speaker 1: I've also noticed that some of my notifications come through
Speaker 1: every once in a while.
Speaker 2: I forget what app I was on.
Speaker 1: It was like Apple News or something, but like everything
Speaker 1: was working even though I didn't pay. So there are
Speaker 1: some little things like that anyway, So definitely check the
Speaker 1: inflight Wi Fi situation before you fly. And for me personally,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to stay off a plane as much as
Speaker 1: possible right now because I just, you know, I just
Speaker 1: think there's been too many incidents and people are getting
Speaker 1: a little unruly up there, and so I'm gonna wait
Speaker 1: till things calm down before I get that travel bug
Speaker 1: once again.
Speaker 2: Jr. Says, Hey, Rich, you're the best at what you do.
Speaker 1: I've helped, You've helped with questions I've sent you before.
Speaker 1: Here is the latest. I just got this message on
Speaker 1: my iPhone ten R. Have you heard of this any
Speaker 1: ideas on how to delete or stop this I've only
Speaker 1: had the phone for two months. Thanks for everything. He
Speaker 1: sent along a screenshot that says, calendar notifications, scan your
Speaker 1: device for viruses today at five twenty pm, security alert,
Speaker 1: you may have a virus on your phone. Scan your
Speaker 1: phone now to fix the problem. And I'm guessing there's
Speaker 1: a link to scan the phone for viruses. Then says calendar,
Speaker 1: do you want to continue receiving notifications?
Speaker 2: Yes? Or no?
Speaker 1: And I'm guessing when you click yes, it gives the
Speaker 1: spammers a access to your calendar. This is called calendar spam.
Speaker 1: It's been going on for a while. It's basically kind
Speaker 1: of the newest scam to hit phones, and.
Speaker 2: It's very very smart.
Speaker 1: This is a very smart way of getting spammers and
Speaker 1: scams in front of your face.
Speaker 2: And so how do they do it.
Speaker 1: Well, you could have accidentally subscribed to a spam calendar,
Speaker 1: or you could just have a spammer that is including
Speaker 1: a calendar invite in your email, and those often show
Speaker 1: up on your calendar automatically. So they've gotten very very,
Speaker 1: very very smart about this. So, according to Apple, here's
Speaker 1: how you get rid of this. On iOS fourteen point six,
Speaker 1: you open the calendars app, you tap the unwanted calendar
Speaker 1: event and you say unsubscribed to this calendar at the
Speaker 1: bottom of the screen. Now you can do that. If
Speaker 1: you're in an earlier version of iOS, you can open
Speaker 1: the calendars app at the bottom of the screen, tap calendars,
Speaker 1: look for a calendar you don't recognize, and then tap
Speaker 1: to lete calendar.
Speaker 2: Now that is.
Speaker 1: That is not necessarily going to get rid of all
Speaker 1: this stuff, because these these scammers have gotten so smart
Speaker 1: where they basically include your email a calendar invite in
Speaker 1: your email and that will follow through to especially Gmail
Speaker 1: calendars or Google Calendars, and also if you have that
Speaker 1: linked up, that's going to follow through to your phone
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 2: So in that case.
Speaker 1: Google calendar spam, you just have to report those basically
Speaker 1: delete them, ignore them, and then you can you know,
Speaker 1: basically block that person from inviting you to things. Now,
Speaker 1: you can also go into your Google Calendar settings and
Speaker 1: there is a way that will take those out of there.
Speaker 1: So if you go into calendar app, you know in
Speaker 1: the web so calendar dot Google dot com, click settings
Speaker 1: and then for event settings, and then there's a setting
Speaker 1: that says automatically add invitations and so that means that
Speaker 1: any invitation you get in your Gmail will not automatically
Speaker 1: follow through to your calendar. Now that's a problem because
Speaker 1: for me personally, I get a lot of legitimate invitations
Speaker 1: from people for meetings and events and things that I
Speaker 1: can't turn this off. And it's been a while since
Speaker 1: I've actually seen one of these calendar spams. But that's
Speaker 1: how you do it, and so you can manually add
Speaker 1: these things to your calendar if you need it.
Speaker 2: But good question, JR.
Speaker 1: It's one of those things where, no matter what, these
Speaker 1: spammers spend all day trying to figure out the best
Speaker 1: ways to attack us, and they do a pretty good job.
Speaker 1: Because you get one of these things in your calendar
Speaker 1: and the first time you see it, you're like, oh wow, okay,
Speaker 1: let me scan, let me scan. That must be a
Speaker 1: notification from Apple, and so you scan. The real scam
Speaker 1: here is that whatever link is in these calendar events
Speaker 1: is the actual problem, the thing that they're trying to
Speaker 1: target you with. So it could be a website that's
Speaker 1: trying to steal your information, you know, trying to get
Speaker 1: you to log in. Whatever it is, don't fall for
Speaker 1: it and always be skeptical. Just that's the bottom line.
Speaker 1: You have to be very, very skeptical no matter what
Speaker 1: you see online. Just be just be on your guard,
Speaker 1: because that's that's the main thing you need to know.
Speaker 2: The crime gap.
Speaker 1: Citizen has a new offering called Citizen Protect, and I
Speaker 1: have a love hate relationship with Citizen. I've probably talked
Speaker 1: about it on the podcast. I think it's pretty darn cool.
Speaker 1: How you know, they tell you what's happening in your neighborhood,
Speaker 1: and this has been very handy many times now.
Speaker 2: Obviously there's a lot of fluff.
Speaker 1: Obviously, sometimes they kind of pump up the notifications just
Speaker 1: to scare you or just to get you to interact
Speaker 1: with the app. But I do think that overall they
Speaker 1: do a pretty nice job of alerting you to things
Speaker 1: that could be important in your neighborhood and just keeping
Speaker 1: you up to date on what's happened in your neighborhoods.
Speaker 1: As opposed to this is something like Nextdoor that I
Speaker 1: do not like at all. There's a lot of there's
Speaker 1: a lot of speculation, let's call it on Nextdoor about
Speaker 1: what's happening, and I don't think that that's very useful,
Speaker 1: Whereas what Citizen is doing is they are actually listening
Speaker 1: to police scanners in the area and using AI to
Speaker 1: figure out what's happening and then send you notifications based
Speaker 1: on that. Now they could be doing more at this
Speaker 1: point because Citizen has grown a lot in the five
Speaker 1: years since I covered them when they launched. But that
Speaker 1: was the idea back in the days that they would
Speaker 1: use artificial intelligence to listen to police scanners, parse out
Speaker 1: kind of the important stuff, geolocated all and send out
Speaker 1: notifications to the affected users in the area, versus the
Speaker 1: typical way that things work, where you would just see
Speaker 1: something happening in town that's not really near you, so
Speaker 1: it doesn't really affect you as much. Of course, it
Speaker 1: affects you on a certain level, but when it comes
Speaker 1: to your neighborhood, that's really where you're interested.
Speaker 2: In the goings on, especially when it comes to crime.
Speaker 1: So now they have this new service called Citizen Protect,
Speaker 1: and this is on demand personalized protection from their mobile
Speaker 1: app that gives you twenty four to seven access to
Speaker 1: a highly trained team of Protect agents and whenever you
Speaker 1: need one of these agents, you can activate them in
Speaker 1: different ways. So it's twenty dollars a month, which I
Speaker 1: think is way, way, way too much for a service
Speaker 1: like this, But then again, I don't know. Maybe if
Speaker 1: you need it, maybe if you're walking home late at night,
Speaker 1: you'd like to have it. But here's how it works
Speaker 1: several different ways. So you have it on the app.
Speaker 1: You can have emergency responders come to your exact location.
Speaker 1: So if you need help, these agents can get nine
Speaker 1: one one to you because they'll basically call them. They
Speaker 1: can notify your loved ones if you need help. It
Speaker 1: can guide you to a safe place if you're feeling
Speaker 1: unwell or unsafe. They can give you peace of mind.
Speaker 1: So if you just want someone to sort of virtually
Speaker 1: walk with you as you walk home from a dark place,
Speaker 1: they can do that. They can also alert nearby citizen
Speaker 1: users if your situation meets an alert criteria, which is
Speaker 1: you know, they don't describe what that criteria is, but.
Speaker 2: That's the way you do it.
Speaker 1: Now, how do you get these agents? While there's a
Speaker 1: button on the phone, you can connect instantly. There's a
Speaker 1: protect mode if you have that on, you shake your
Speaker 1: phone and you can be connected to an agent. And
Speaker 1: then there's distress detection, and so this is letting your
Speaker 1: letting citizen monitor your the audio from your phone using
Speaker 1: AI and if they notice distress, they will then connect
Speaker 1: you to an agent and if you don't respond within
Speaker 1: ten seconds, they'll they'll connect to UH they'll basically send
Speaker 1: emergency help your way. Let's see, it's only available on
Speaker 1: iOS right now, the protect mode, but they will be
Speaker 1: adding functionality for Android. Now, this is something that's not
Speaker 1: necessarily new. Now they're using. The AI is kind of new,
Speaker 1: but it's also it's funny because the stuff that I,
Speaker 1: you know, covering this stuff for so long, I've seen
Speaker 1: different iterations of this stuff, so nothing I see is
Speaker 1: completely new all the time. So the AI portion of
Speaker 1: this is something that a company called Deep Centennial or
Speaker 1: is it Deep Sentinel, is using and they are a
Speaker 1: company started by one of the founders of Redfinn and
Speaker 1: they have security cameras they install it your house, and
Speaker 1: they're using AI to monitor what's happening in those security cameras,
Speaker 1: kind of like what I was talking about with Google
Speaker 1: earlier in the podcast, but this is much more real
Speaker 1: time and much more connected to a human being.
Speaker 2: So if the.
Speaker 1: Camera notices that someone is kind of looking suspicious around
Speaker 1: your house checking the windows, it will escalate that to
Speaker 1: a trained agent who will then go on your camera's
Speaker 1: microphone and say or speaker and say, hey, can I
Speaker 1: help you? Why are you looking through the mail? Can
Speaker 1: I help you with that? That's a federal crime or whatever.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that is, but you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. Now, this is also something the second side
Speaker 1: of this, the personal agent is something that we saw
Speaker 1: with an app called Bond and we did a story
Speaker 1: on this. It's called the Bond Security App and it
Speaker 1: looks like it's still around, but this is a personal
Speaker 1: security app and same thing where you basically subscribe to
Speaker 1: personal security agents. And so these personal security agents will
Speaker 1: monitor over you, listen to your phone while you're walking,
Speaker 1: or help you out, and then they will actually speak
Speaker 1: to someone that might be you know, I don't know,
Speaker 1: intruding on your space or whatever, and they will intervene.
Speaker 1: So again, these are all different ways of kind of
Speaker 1: doing the same thing. But I mark my words right now,
Speaker 1: we are going to see a lot more use of
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence in security because there's no way that if
Speaker 1: you're trying to start a company, you can scale someone
Speaker 1: watching over cameras or phones twenty four to seven. But
Speaker 1: you can have AI listen for certain things that would
Speaker 1: that would reveal distress and that AI can now kick
Speaker 1: that that stream up the ladder, so to say to
Speaker 1: an agent who can then take take control and kind
Speaker 1: of look at what's happening, assess the situation from a
Speaker 1: human standpoint, and figure out what needs to be done.
Speaker 1: All right, let's see what else do we want to
Speaker 1: talk about here, Sandra says, help. I downloaded the latest
Speaker 1: version on my iPhone and I lost one whole page
Speaker 1: of icons for apps that I use. They are there
Speaker 1: because I asked SyRI and she'll open them. The page
Speaker 1: of icons I used all the time. We're on that page.
Speaker 1: Thanks in advance for your help. I know you will
Speaker 1: find the answer. I went on Apple's page and I
Speaker 1: didn't understand what they said. Sandy, Uh, Sandy, Sandra, here's
Speaker 1: the thing. I think what happened is that your your
Speaker 1: layout of your home screen got reset. And I think
Speaker 1: that's what happened. So there's a couple things you can check.
Speaker 1: Number one, you can there's a couple of things I
Speaker 1: would look into. So number one, you can look at
Speaker 1: your home screen and you can swipe to the right,
Speaker 1: and if you swipe to the right, you'll notice there's
Speaker 1: an app library, which is in the latest version. Now,
Speaker 1: if you want to see what's going on, I would
Speaker 1: tap a hold on my screen and now everything's wiggling,
Speaker 1: and if you look down at the center, there's actually
Speaker 1: towards the bottom there's like a little highlighted area with
Speaker 1: some dots. If you tap that, it will actually show
Speaker 1: you all of the home screen pages on your iPhone.
Speaker 1: And I have actually one, two, three, four, five, six, seven,
Speaker 1: eight nine home screen pages, but I only show the
Speaker 1: first one, and you have to show one. But I
Speaker 1: think that's the first place to look. And so if
Speaker 1: you look there, you can see if maybe one of
Speaker 1: your home screens has been hidden, and you can tap
Speaker 1: the check mark to bring it back. Now that's the
Speaker 1: one way you can do it. The other way is
Speaker 1: that you can just go into your app library, look
Speaker 1: for the apps you you want, press and hold one
Speaker 1: and drag it onto a new home screen or your
Speaker 1: existing home screen. But those are the two things that
Speaker 1: I think happened. I think you just got reset there.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: The other way if you ever want to do this,
Speaker 1: and I've done this before on my phone, is I've
Speaker 1: actually reset my homescreen. I'm only using one page now
Speaker 1: for my home screen, because I find that it's a
Speaker 1: lot easier just to search for apps. So you can
Speaker 1: always pull down from the middle of your screen and
Speaker 1: search for an app if you need it.
Speaker 2: Or you can use.
Speaker 1: Your settings to reset your screen completely. And so if
Speaker 1: you want to do that, go into your Settings General
Speaker 1: all the way down, scroll to reset and you'll see
Speaker 1: one that says reset home screen layout.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Before you do this, just beware, it is going to
Speaker 1: reset all of your icons to Apple's defaults, and so
Speaker 1: it'll put all of Apple stuff on the first page,
Speaker 1: and then it will put all of your other apps
Speaker 1: in alphabetical order on the rest of your pages. And
Speaker 1: so that's if you ever want your stuff in alphabetical order.
Speaker 1: Of course, prioritizing apples apps as Apple would do at
Speaker 1: the beginning of the page would be the first page.
Speaker 1: So anyway, those are my solutions. Hopefully one of those
Speaker 1: works for you. And let's talk about Voodoo. Voodoo has
Speaker 1: become Roku's official movie and TV store as Fandango has
Speaker 1: killed off the Fandango brand. This is according to Variety.
Speaker 1: That's the headline from Todd Spangler. So the bottom line
Speaker 1: is that you now have Fandango now gone. If you
Speaker 1: had movies in there, you had a collection, everything's going
Speaker 1: to be.
Speaker 2: Moved over to Voodoo.
Speaker 1: And Voodoo used to be owned by Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: Voodoo has had quite the quite the uh the last ten, twelve, thirteen,
Speaker 1: fourteen years. So I covered Voodoo when it first started,
Speaker 1: and I'll give you a little history of Voodoo. Voodoo
Speaker 1: when it first started was a The difference in Voodoo
Speaker 1: was that they were downloading. It was a box. It
Speaker 1: was a special box you would get. It was very expensive.
Speaker 1: You would put this on your TV and it worked
Speaker 1: with any Internet connection speed. So the magic, the magic
Speaker 1: sauce of Voodoo was that they would download portions of
Speaker 1: popular movies or eventually movies that it figured you might
Speaker 1: watch to your Voodoo box. And so that way, when
Speaker 1: you press play on a movie that you want to watch,
Speaker 1: it would start faster because some of that movie was
Speaker 1: already on an internal hard drive, and so it would
Speaker 1: work twenty four to seven when you were not using
Speaker 1: the box to download a bunch of stuff. And so
Speaker 1: it would take a slow Internet connection and it wouldn't
Speaker 1: really matter. This was before internet connections got really fast
Speaker 1: and streaming got really good because half of Netflix's business
Speaker 1: is the proprietary way that they can download things super
Speaker 1: super fast or stream them, I should say on any
Speaker 1: Internet connection. That's part of you know, Netflix's little magic
Speaker 1: sauce inside secret sauce, I should say. Anyway, Voodoo ended
Speaker 1: up being purchased by Walmart many years later, and now
Speaker 1: they're purchased apparently by which I didn't know. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess NBC bought Voodoo. I had no idea that
Speaker 1: they had purchased them, So yeah, I guess. April twentieth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, NBC Fandango acquiring Voodoo from Walmart.
Speaker 2: So they bought Voodoo.
Speaker 1: They figured why would we run two separate movie services,
Speaker 1: and so they went with the Voodoo brand name, which
Speaker 1: I guess that makes more sense. Voodoo is a cooler name.
Speaker 1: And so anyway, all the collections are now in Voodoo.
Speaker 1: Don't be surprised if you see more of Voodoo, because
Speaker 1: that's that's where everything is at this point. So there
Speaker 1: you have it all, right, Before I go, one more
Speaker 1: thing I wanted to talk about. I thought this was
Speaker 1: really really cool and I wanted to share it with you.
Speaker 1: So I love the channels on SiriusXM. I love some
Speaker 1: of my favorite channels there. They just sort of play
Speaker 1: a blend of music that I really don't find anywhere else.
Speaker 1: And even with things like Spotify and you know, iHeart
Speaker 1: and all these different there are some my like at
Speaker 1: iHeart as well, but you know, I really have some
Speaker 1: of my favorites. My my all time favorite is called
Speaker 1: Serious XM Chill, which is channel fifty three. And I've
Speaker 1: never found a playlist that rivals what they do until now.
Speaker 1: And this is a website called xmplaylist dot com and
Speaker 1: a guy named uh, let's see, what's his name, Scott,
Speaker 1: he has, he's got it, he's rigged up. Away that
Speaker 1: listens to it must listen to Serious XM channels twenty
Speaker 1: four to seven and then catalog what they play. So
Speaker 1: you can go to this website and it tells me
Speaker 1: four minutes ago they played Beautiful Mistakes by Maroon five,
Speaker 1: seven minutes ago, it played Deja Vu by Olivia Rodrigo.
Speaker 1: Fifteen minutes ago it played Stay by Justin Bieber and
Speaker 1: the kid Leroy. So now that's cool in itself, but
Speaker 1: they take it a step further and somehow it actually
Speaker 1: makes a playlist on Spotify of the songs that the
Speaker 1: these stations are playing, and it's not fully updated because
Speaker 1: I'm looking at these stations and the last time it
Speaker 1: was updated, oh, it's three days ago.
Speaker 2: Okay, so it was.
Speaker 1: Actually they are updated, so they're regularly updated.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think this is so so cool.
Speaker 1: My mom said, isn't that illegal, because I was playing
Speaker 1: with this last night in the house, and I said, no,
Speaker 1: it's not illegal. I mean, they're not They're not recording
Speaker 1: the songs. They're just basically capturing the data of the
Speaker 1: playlist and then you know, repurposing it. And yeah, you
Speaker 1: can have a problem with that and say, well, don't
Speaker 1: you just subscribe to a Serious XM, which, by the way,
Speaker 1: I do, so I do have a subscription as Serious XM.
Speaker 2: I do have the app.
Speaker 1: But there's just something fun about having a playlist in
Speaker 1: Spotify that kind of mimics what's happening on my favorite channels.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: I have tested the Serious XM channel on the Spotify
Speaker 1: playlist and it sounds really good. You don't have the DJs,
Speaker 1: you don't have the you know, the stuff they do
Speaker 1: in the middle, like the stingers and stuff. Some people
Speaker 1: may like that. I kind of like that stuff, but
Speaker 1: you know, you don't get it. The channel I was
Speaker 1: listening to last night in the house is called The Blend,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, we're listening and a Christmas
Speaker 1: song comes up, and so that was a big I
Speaker 1: guess these things are not perfect, and I don't know who.
Speaker 1: I think it's all pretty much automated, so I guess
Speaker 1: the song has to take a certain amount of time
Speaker 1: to fall off, and clearly that Christmas song did not
Speaker 1: fall off.
Speaker 2: But that was pretty funny.
Speaker 1: That threw us off for a loop and we were like, Okay,
Speaker 1: well it's not perfect.
Speaker 2: But anyway.
Speaker 1: The website again, if you want to check it out,
Speaker 1: is called xmplaylist dot Com. I think it's really really
Speaker 1: cool and I will continue to explore. But I've got
Speaker 1: on my Sono system. I have all of my favorites
Speaker 1: kind of bookmarks, so I jump around. I love, you know,
Speaker 1: Sirius XM, the coffee House on the weekends.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I love this station on iHeart that's like a light station,
Speaker 1: It's like sunny. There's also another eclectic rock station on
Speaker 1: there that I really like. So there's a lot of
Speaker 1: different stations across all these music services. I feel like
Speaker 1: they all have their pros and cons when it comes
Speaker 1: to that.
Speaker 2: So there's just stuff I like everywhere. Oh listen to
Speaker 2: that sound. You know what that means. That's going to
Speaker 2: do it for this episode of the show.
Speaker 1: If you would like me to answer a question that
Speaker 1: you submit, just go to my Facebook page Facebook dot com,
Speaker 1: slash rich rich on tech and hit the big blue
Speaker 1: send email button. Or you can just go to rich
Speaker 1: on Tech dot tv and look for the email logo.
Speaker 1: Hit that and it will be on its way to
Speaker 1: my eyeballs. Also, I would love it if you would
Speaker 1: rate and review this podcast. It really helps people discover it.
Speaker 1: Just write a quick line about what you like about
Speaker 1: this show. That way it will help other people know
Speaker 1: why they should listen. Just go to rate this podcast
Speaker 1: dot com, slash rich on tech, or your favorite app
Speaker 1: but mostly iTunes, just go there or Apple Music or
Speaker 1: what is it Apple Podcasts and you can rate it
Speaker 1: right through there.
Speaker 2: You can find me on social media.
Speaker 1: I am at rich on Tech and no matter where
Speaker 1: you live in the US, you can download the free
Speaker 1: ktla plus app on Apple TV, fireTV, and Oku. You
Speaker 1: can scroll down to the Tech section and watch all
Speaker 1: of my TV segments on demand. It's fun to see
Speaker 1: me on social media and also listen to me here.
Speaker 1: But you gotta see what I do for my bread
Speaker 1: and butter my living, which is my segments on TV.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of fun, informative and we cover
Speaker 1: a wide range of things, so definitely check those out.
Speaker 1: My name is rich Demirol. Thanks so much for listening.
Speaker 1: I know there are so many ways you can spend
Speaker 1: an hour of your time. I do appreciate you spending
Speaker 1: it with me. Stay safe, I'll talk to you real soon.