Speaker 1: Amazon hikes it's prime membership price. Netflix gives users a
Speaker 1: small but useful feature. Who's selling the most tablets, phones,
Speaker 1: and chromebooks? The latest numbers are in Plus your tech
Speaker 1: questions answered? What is going on on Rich Jamiro And
Speaker 1: This is Rich on Tech, the podcast where I talk
Speaker 1: about the tech stuff I think you should know about.
Speaker 1: It's also the place where I answer the questions you
Speaker 1: send me. I'm the tech reporter at KTLA Channel five
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles. In case you don't know that, in
Speaker 1: case you're just tuning in, I'm broadcasting on Twitter spaces
Speaker 1: as well. Last time I broadcast the whole show on
Speaker 1: Twitter Spaces and I didn't realize till the end that
Speaker 1: the microphone is off by default. Now I don't know
Speaker 1: why that would be, but I guess to to save
Speaker 1: you any troubles of a mic that you didn't know
Speaker 1: was on. But let me tell you, I hope you
Speaker 1: don't have all your savings in Facebook, Snapchat or bitcoin
Speaker 1: this week, because man, what a rough week for the markets.
Speaker 1: I guess it started last week and it just kind
Speaker 1: of continued. But I personally have not looked at anything
Speaker 1: in the past two weeks.
Speaker 2: I don't want to know. I mean, I've got a
Speaker 2: long time.
Speaker 1: All I have is retirement stuff, So I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: not looking to access any of the savings for a
Speaker 1: very long time, thankfully, But if I did, I'd be
Speaker 1: kind of sad right now. But I'm just not looking
Speaker 1: at anything. I'm just gonna let it ride. Let it
Speaker 1: ride until retirement, and that's it. I'll check it then
Speaker 1: and hopefully some of these things will be figured out
Speaker 1: by then. I took the Tesla up to San Francisco
Speaker 1: this week. I shot a bunch of stories up there.
Speaker 2: It was great.
Speaker 1: I actually shot an entire vlog about driving the Tesla
Speaker 1: to San Francisco.
Speaker 2: I think that's the longest I've driven it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Vegas was previously the longest, so San Francisco definitely
Speaker 1: the longest. Had to charge I think two times on
Speaker 1: the way up, two times on the way back, and
Speaker 1: I got home with less than thirty miles I think
Speaker 1: twenty seven miles on the tank, so to say. And
Speaker 1: it was kind of nerve wracking because it was it
Speaker 1: was really down to the wire and so it worked out.
Speaker 1: I got home, it was all fine. I was a
Speaker 1: little nervous, but a good thing. The last part of
Speaker 1: the trip was downhill. They call it the grapevine here
Speaker 1: in California. It's like, you know this, you weave through
Speaker 1: these mountains, but at the end when you're coming back,
Speaker 1: it's like you're basically going downhill. So I picked up
Speaker 1: a lot of miles going downhill there.
Speaker 2: So that's cool. Look for that video soon.
Speaker 1: And last week on the show, I talked about reformatting
Speaker 1: my computer. Let's just say that did not work. There's
Speaker 1: some sort of lock on the hard drive on the
Speaker 1: newest MacBook pros that have this like security chip on them,
Speaker 1: and then the new I don't have the M one
Speaker 1: chip yet, but it's got this T two chip and
Speaker 1: apparently you can't just like reformat it the way you
Speaker 1: used to. You have to like go through all these
Speaker 1: hoops to do it. And I remember doing that last time,
Speaker 1: but somehow I figured it out.
Speaker 2: This time.
Speaker 1: I just didn't feel like figuring it out. It takes
Speaker 1: a really long time. And I was doing it like
Speaker 1: on a Friday afternoon after the podcast, and I was
Speaker 1: sitting there at the table and you know, I'm like,
Speaker 1: I got to format my computer now to my wife,
Speaker 1: and you know, we had like two or three hours
Speaker 1: before we are going out for the night.
Speaker 2: So it's like, I don't think it's the.
Speaker 1: Right time to try to figure this whole thing out
Speaker 1: right now. So all I did in the meantime was
Speaker 1: switched to Brave the browser. It's a lot faster than Chrome,
Speaker 1: but I'm definitely missing Chrome because there's so many little
Speaker 1: features I use on Chrome that I just I want
Speaker 1: to like Brave and it's cool and it's actually a
Speaker 1: lot faster.
Speaker 2: I just can't keep myself to it.
Speaker 1: So I downloaded Chrome again today and eventually I'll get
Speaker 1: back to that, but I haven't installed it yet. Let's
Speaker 1: talk about the big story of the week, the big talker,
Speaker 1: Amazon raising the price of its Prime membership by twenty
Speaker 1: dollars to one hundred and thirty nine a year. So
Speaker 1: this is so ironic because just a couple of days
Speaker 1: ago I paid for my Prime membership and it was
Speaker 1: like one hundred and nineteen dollars one hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: with tax, and I tweeted, like, just renewed my Prime membership.
Speaker 1: You know, it's still worth it to me, And the
Speaker 1: next thing, you know, they raised the price, and so
Speaker 1: I spoke too soon.
Speaker 2: I guess. But the reality is I.
Speaker 1: Still feel like I get a pretty good value out
Speaker 1: of my one hundred and thirty dollars a year soon
Speaker 1: to be probably one fifty with tax here in California,
Speaker 1: So I think that's probably fine. I think that, you know,
Speaker 1: I did a little tweet about the last time they
Speaker 1: raised prices, and so people have been retweeting that and
Speaker 1: discussing it, and on my Facebook page especially, a lot
Speaker 1: of people have been discussing whether this is worth it.
Speaker 1: So let's just say it started in two thousand and
Speaker 1: six at seventy nine dollars. The first time they raised
Speaker 1: the price was in twenty fourteen to ninety nine dollars,
Speaker 1: and they rose it in twenty eighteen to one hundred
Speaker 1: and nineteen, which it's been until twenty twenty two, which
Speaker 1: is one hundred and thirty nine. So it looks like
Speaker 1: they're on that cadence. It's getting shorter and shorter, because
Speaker 1: at first it was like six years. Well let's see
Speaker 1: one two, three, four, five, six, seven eight years, nine years,
Speaker 1: ten years. No one two three, four, five, six, seven
Speaker 1: eight years, then one two three four years, then one
Speaker 1: two three four years. Yeah, so we're on like a
Speaker 1: four year cadence, So I mean and look for one
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty nine dollars. I did a bunch of
Speaker 1: orders last year. I put it in my tweet just
Speaker 1: how many orders I did. I can't really find that
Speaker 1: tweet right now, but I think it was like one
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty. If you go to Amazon dot com
Speaker 1: and then you click returns and orders and then you
Speaker 1: just look at your orders and it s has forty
Speaker 1: six orders placed in the past three months. So I
Speaker 1: just did twenty twenty one and I placed two hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty five orders in twenty twenty one. So one
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty divided by two hundred and I say
Speaker 1: two hundred and thirty five, So that's fifty five cents
Speaker 1: shipping for each order. That's that's pretty good.
Speaker 2: I'll take that. I'll take that, so fifty five cents.
Speaker 1: So even if it's one fifty divided by two thirty five,
Speaker 1: that's sixty four cents in order for shipping. I'll definitely
Speaker 1: do that. And here's the thing someone asked me on Twitter.
Speaker 1: They said, hey, do you do a lot of like
Speaker 1: one item orders? And I said, yeah, I do, because
Speaker 1: I said, here's how how Prime actually saves me money.
Speaker 1: When I walk into Target for one thing, which is
Speaker 1: nearly impossible to do, you're going to walk out of
Speaker 1: there spending an extra fifty sixty bucks. That's just me
Speaker 1: so because you, oh this looks really cool. Oh that
Speaker 1: looks cool. Oh I need this. Oh yeah I need that,
Speaker 1: and you walk out and you've spent a bunch of
Speaker 1: extra money. With Amazon, you buy the thing that you need.
Speaker 1: So my kid wanted a computer keyboard the other day,
Speaker 1: and I.
Speaker 2: Bought the computer keyboard.
Speaker 1: It was fourteen dollars and twenty cents Amazon Basics, and
Speaker 1: it was it was there the next day, it arrived
Speaker 1: the next day, and so super simple, super easy.
Speaker 2: I didn't spend a lot of money.
Speaker 1: If I went into any other store for that one
Speaker 1: little thing, I would have spent a lot more. So, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Amazon's raising the price. You get a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: stuff for that money. Personally, it's still worth it for me.
Speaker 1: But when you look at these subscriptions as a whole,
Speaker 1: you know, when you look at Amazon and you look
Speaker 1: at you know, Hulu, and you look at Netflix, and
Speaker 1: you look at Disney and you look at Spotify and
Speaker 1: you look at YouTube, all these things that I pay
Speaker 1: for when you put them in aggregate, it's still not
Speaker 1: that much money yearly, but you know, or monthly, I
Speaker 1: should say, but it's you know, it all adds up,
Speaker 1: and all of these prices are going up. And it
Speaker 1: used to be Cable was so evil. Cable always raises prices.
Speaker 1: But now we're just seeing the same thing with all
Speaker 1: these other services. It's just a dollar here, two dollars there.
Speaker 1: It's not as like a parent as it was with
Speaker 1: cable because people just I don't know, they really got
Speaker 1: to know their cable bill apparently. So so that's a
Speaker 1: big story with Amazon. Still think that Amazon is going
Speaker 1: to it is still going to keep most of the
Speaker 1: people or a majority of people that are on Prime.
Speaker 1: They've got a lot of memberships there. I also wrote
Speaker 1: on my Facebook page how much they made last year
Speaker 1: and let's see what was it? Oh gosh, oh okay,
Speaker 1: I can't find it. It's the way that they organize
Speaker 1: things on Facebook. I just can't find. But a lot
Speaker 1: of comments when I asked people if Amazon Prime was
Speaker 1: still worth it to them, and I think a majority
Speaker 1: of them said they were annoyed by the up by
Speaker 1: the fee, but they still get a lot of value
Speaker 1: out of it. So that's pretty much where it's at all. Right,
Speaker 1: let's get to the first question of the show. Dominic says,
Speaker 1: what are the best options or apps to use for
Speaker 1: pixelating text on photos when posting pictures on social media?
Speaker 1: Thanks Dominic, this was such a well timed email.
Speaker 2: I can't believe it.
Speaker 1: I got this email right as I was scheduling my newsletter,
Speaker 1: which if you haven't subscribed, just go to rich on
Speaker 1: tech dot com dot com and you can subscribe to
Speaker 1: my newsletter.
Speaker 2: It's free.
Speaker 1: And it used to be I was trying to send
Speaker 1: out like this big, lofty newsletter at the end of
Speaker 1: every week.
Speaker 2: Well guess what.
Speaker 1: I gave up after a couple of years because it
Speaker 1: just became too much. And then I thought, well, wait
Speaker 1: a second. All these little things pop into my head,
Speaker 1: like ooh, I should share with people how to do
Speaker 1: a speed test. I should share with them how to
Speaker 1: redact a photo. And I said, oh my gosh, I
Speaker 1: have the perfect place for this.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: I post a lot of this stuff on social media,
Speaker 1: but it's not always the easiest on social media because
Speaker 1: you're scrolling through whatever. With the newsletter, I can just
Speaker 1: send out something really quick and it's just like one
Speaker 1: little tip and it really helps a lot of people.
Speaker 1: And so far I've been keeping myself to this. I
Speaker 1: think I've sent out three newsletters so far in the
Speaker 1: new newsletter system and yeah, one, two, three, and it's
Speaker 1: been you know, January twenty eighth to February fourth, so
Speaker 1: it's been pretty good. I thought I was gonna do
Speaker 1: it every day, but I feel like that's way too
Speaker 1: much for people. So I've been doing it kind of like,
Speaker 1: you know, every other day, every three days whatever, three
Speaker 1: times a week. So that's the cadence. I'm gonna try
Speaker 1: to keep rich on tech dot substack dot com. But
Speaker 1: to answer the question, the tip I shared today is
Speaker 1: a website called Redact dot Photo. Now I've used a
Speaker 1: lot of ways to cover up things in photos over
Speaker 1: the years. This one is definitely the easiest. For a while,
Speaker 1: Skitch was my favorite. That was the ever no app,
Speaker 1: but they've discontinued support for that one. But that was
Speaker 1: pretty good. I actually had an app on my computer
Speaker 1: called redacted, but I don't think that's around anymore. And
Speaker 1: so now this redact dot photo is super super easy.
Speaker 2: You drag and drop a.
Speaker 1: Picture in there, you hover your mouse over the part
Speaker 1: that you want to blur, it blurs it out, and
Speaker 1: the guy who created it or the person who created
Speaker 1: it explains kind of how they do it and why
Speaker 1: it's private, and it's just fantastic. It works perfectly, so
Speaker 1: redact photo if you need to get rid of something
Speaker 1: in a picture before you share it on social media,
Speaker 1: and you can even like rotate the blur area or
Speaker 1: expand it. So it makes it really really easy, super simple,
Speaker 1: and it's just one of those things that you just bookmark.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of the tips you're going to
Speaker 1: get through the newsletter are just going to be things
Speaker 1: that you'd bookmark, and like you might not need them
Speaker 1: that day, but you know when you need them, they'll
Speaker 1: be there for you. All Right, Another big story of
Speaker 1: the week. I'm not going to spend a lot of
Speaker 1: time on this, but I just thought it was interesting
Speaker 1: and it just goes to show that when you've got
Speaker 1: a dream, or I guess I should say the American
Speaker 1: dream is still alive and very well and it's very
Speaker 1: much evidenced by Wardle. So we talked about this story
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks ago. This was the word game
Speaker 1: that kind of blew up and everyone was playing Josh Wardle.
Speaker 1: So the guy who created is Josh Wardle, but the
Speaker 1: game is Wordle. So w A R D L E
Speaker 1: and the game is w O R D L E.
Speaker 1: So kind of funny there, But you know, everyone started
Speaker 1: playing this game and it's like basically this little game
Speaker 1: that gives you six tries to guess a five letter word. Well,
Speaker 1: guess what New York Times is purchasing it to go
Speaker 1: into their game's portfolio. So this software developer out of Brooklyn,
Speaker 1: Josh Wardele, released this game in October twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1: Ninety people were playing it on November first, two months later,
Speaker 1: three hundred thousand people were playing it. And now the
Speaker 1: puzzle has millions of daily players. And he got a
Speaker 1: seven figure buyout from New York Times, which is just unbelievable.
Speaker 2: Congrats to you, Josh. That is amazing.
Speaker 1: You came up with a fun game, and New York
Speaker 1: Times says it's going to be free to play for
Speaker 1: new and existing players and no changes will be made
Speaker 1: to the gameplay. At the time it moved to the
Speaker 1: New York Times, so they didn't say what's going to
Speaker 1: happen in the future, but who knows. They could do
Speaker 1: different variations on this. But the good news is what
Speaker 1: a cool experience. This guy wrote a game that I
Speaker 1: think it was for his friends, or maybe it was
Speaker 1: his girlfriend at the beginning or partner. And then next thing,
Speaker 1: you know, this thing just blew up and so many
Speaker 1: people started playing it.
Speaker 2: New York Times takes notice and isn't that cool?
Speaker 1: So this person, just by doing something that was fun
Speaker 1: to them, is now going to be living very comfortably
Speaker 1: for hopefully the rest of their life. I did a
Speaker 1: similar story up in San Francisco. I interviewed this developer,
Speaker 1: twenty two year old who came up with an app
Speaker 1: and same thing. I mean, this kid, I call him
Speaker 1: a kid because he's twenty two, no disrespect there, but
Speaker 1: you know, he's a young, young person and came up
Speaker 1: with an app, actually wrote it to exchange pictures with
Speaker 1: his girlfriend. And now he hasn't been bought out yet.
Speaker 1: But the reality is it's gone so popular that there's
Speaker 1: going to be a great ending to this story.
Speaker 2: Hopefully. I mean, he's going to get noticed by.
Speaker 1: A Google or an I don't know, an Amazon, or
Speaker 1: a Facebook or a Twitter or an apple. I mean,
Speaker 1: who knows the possibilities are unlimited for this guy too.
Speaker 1: So just love doing stories like that because it just
Speaker 1: goes to show that when you've got passion and you've
Speaker 1: got drive, it's still a very good indicator of good
Speaker 1: things in life.
Speaker 2: And I know it's tough.
Speaker 1: It's been a really rough two years with the pandemic
Speaker 1: and people have been staying home and it just seems
Speaker 1: like there's so much closing in on us. But there
Speaker 1: is a world out there and things will clear up
Speaker 1: at some point and you still can do pretty amazing
Speaker 1: things and make some pretty big moves no matter what.
Speaker 2: It just takes a lot, believe me.
Speaker 1: It's you know, I get up early every day for
Speaker 1: ten years now working on KTLA and it's there's not an.
Speaker 2: Easy day, let's put it that way.
Speaker 1: But it's fun, it's enjoyable, it's dynamic, and I do
Speaker 1: love it. And so if you've got all those things going,
Speaker 1: no matter what you're doing in life, it hopefully will work.
Speaker 2: Out and be a good thing. So that's it. This
Speaker 2: is not a motivational podcast, so I.
Speaker 1: Could be, because you know, I feel like I'm a
Speaker 1: pretty positive person. I feel like you know, it's just
Speaker 1: there's so much to be thankful for in this world,
Speaker 1: and sometimes it's not clearly apparent what the end game
Speaker 1: is for anything we do, and so you really have
Speaker 1: to be on yourself and just kind of that fire
Speaker 1: has to come from inside. It's not always someone else's
Speaker 1: that's lighting it for you, all right, Dean says random
Speaker 1: music on my nine S Samsung. I've had issues as
Speaker 1: of the past month. My phone all of a sudden
Speaker 1: starts playing a musical tune over and over. I've deleted apps, games, contacts, etc.
Speaker 1: That I've added or added in the past month. I've
Speaker 1: gone to AT and T store. There's no help. I've
Speaker 1: followed YouTube instructions the best I can. Nothing works. There
Speaker 1: is no set time. It happens one pm, three am,
Speaker 1: eight pm one am. It's driving me crazy. The only
Speaker 1: way to stop it immediately is to restart my phone.
Speaker 1: If I don't, it just keeps playing. If I have
Speaker 1: the volume down, then i've volume. If I have the
Speaker 1: volume down, then I volume down everything I watch. I
Speaker 1: watch you as much as possible, and some of your
Speaker 1: tips have been very helpful. I don't recall you ever
Speaker 1: addressing this problem.
Speaker 2: Please.
Speaker 1: I'm begging you help me. Regards Diane from Newbury Park, Dianne,
Speaker 1: I feel for you. I don't know what is going on.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is quite the odd thing, but I
Speaker 1: will say what I think is happening is it's some
Speaker 1: sort of alarm that has been set and the alarm
Speaker 1: it could be an alarm or a timer, and at
Speaker 1: the end of the timer, it's playing this music. And
Speaker 1: the reason I say that is because my kid had
Speaker 1: something similar on his iPad and it was driving him
Speaker 1: nuts because his iPad was making a sound just randomly,
Speaker 1: like all the time, like we'd be sleeping and we'd
Speaker 1: hear his iPad. And it took a while for me,
Speaker 1: the tech person, to figure this out. I looked at
Speaker 1: his iPad, I was looking at his alarms, I was
Speaker 1: looking at his things. I was like, there's no alarm set.
Speaker 1: And finally I did find I think it was a
Speaker 1: timer that for some reason every time.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's just finally I got deleted. My kid was like, oh,
Speaker 1: you got it deleted. I thought that was just like
Speaker 1: a you know, a part of my iPad forever, and
Speaker 1: so I did get it deleted. And I think you
Speaker 1: should look in your clock app and your stopwatch app
Speaker 1: and your timer.
Speaker 2: And see if it's in any of those.
Speaker 1: Now, notwithstanding any of those things, what I would do
Speaker 1: is you can check your reminders as well. It sounds
Speaker 1: like some sort of notification has been programmed to play
Speaker 1: a song.
Speaker 2: If I can guess properly, I don't know.
Speaker 1: And I'm mentioning this on the podcast because maybe someone
Speaker 1: can chime in on Twitter or on you know, just
Speaker 1: email me hello at rich on tech dot TV what
Speaker 1: they think this is now, Dean, If you cannot figure
Speaker 1: this out, I don't know why the AT and T
Speaker 1: store couldn't help you. That seems odd. Maybe you just
Speaker 1: got someone that wasn't really wasn't really excited to help
Speaker 1: with this issue, because I think that a good tech person,
Speaker 1: any tech person that you know, I think if you
Speaker 1: bring their phone to them, they will look at a
Speaker 1: few of the settings and figure out what's going on
Speaker 1: here and why this is happening. Something has got to
Speaker 1: be playing this music on your phone. The other thing
Speaker 1: I would do, and this is kind of the nuclear option,
Speaker 1: is just reformat your entire phone so it's a nine
Speaker 1: Samsung nine S.
Speaker 2: I'm getting.
Speaker 1: I guessing that's an S nine, so Samsung Galaxy S nine,
Speaker 1: it's been around for a while. My advice would be
Speaker 1: to format the phone, make sure everything's backed up, any
Speaker 1: of the important stuff at least, I mean you could
Speaker 1: you know, you could probably do without your apps and settings.
Speaker 1: Just make sure your photos are backed up, any of
Speaker 1: your voice messages or your yeah voice messages, recordings, things
Speaker 1: like you might not think of, and then just give
Speaker 1: it an old format.
Speaker 2: Go into the.
Speaker 1: Settings and do a factory reset and it'll start fresh,
Speaker 1: and then you can start over, install the apps that
Speaker 1: you want, that you need, and hopefully you should be fine.
Speaker 1: I would recommend something like Google Photos for your photos
Speaker 1: if they're not backed up. There also Samsung Integrate with
Speaker 1: one Drive. You can back up your photos there, or
Speaker 1: you can download I Drive photos and you can pay.
Speaker 1: I think it's what is it now, Let's see how
Speaker 1: much it is. It's ninety nine cents for the first
Speaker 1: year of unlimited photo and video storage I Drive Photos,
Speaker 1: and then after that it's five bucks a year. So
Speaker 1: I would do that and you should be fine, hopefully.
Speaker 1: I don't think this phone is like possessed. I think
Speaker 1: there's some sort of explanation for it, and so.
Speaker 2: Hopefully that will be uh, that will be sufficient.
Speaker 1: All right, if you have Google Messages and you talk
Speaker 1: to someone that's on an iPhone, and I'm not going
Speaker 1: to get into the whole I message versus everything else debate,
Speaker 1: but the reality is when someone on I message likes
Speaker 1: if you're exchanging texts with them. And this means that
Speaker 1: if you're on an Android and you text someone on
Speaker 1: an iPhone and they like your comment or that your
Speaker 1: message or they there's a.
Speaker 2: Couple of things they can do.
Speaker 1: They can thumbs up, they can thumbs down, they can
Speaker 1: heart it, they can haha, they can send an exclamation point,
Speaker 1: or they can send a question mark. And when they
Speaker 1: do that, historically you will get a message on your
Speaker 1: Android that says, you know, Rich liked whatever you said,
Speaker 1: and it'll name the message or Rich disliked whatever you said,
Speaker 1: or rich hearted or loved or whatever. So it's kind
Speaker 1: of annoying because it's like this weird thing where your
Speaker 1: phone doesn't really know what to do. On an iPhone,
Speaker 1: if you have I message to I message, you just
Speaker 1: see a little thing that says haha or thumbs up
Speaker 1: or whatever. But if you're on Android, it's just like
Speaker 1: it writes out what people are doing, and this can
Speaker 1: get really annoying on group texts when you've got one
Speaker 1: person on Android and the restaurant iOS and they'd start
Speaker 1: doing this and it's just like a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: messages that are like nonsense. So in all of Google's smarts,
Speaker 1: they are now translating what people do on I message
Speaker 1: what's called I Message reactions into a reaction in the
Speaker 1: Google Messages app. So there's a couple of caveats here.
Speaker 1: This is not like an official feature through any sort
Speaker 1: of SMS thing. It's just basically Google Messages. When they
Speaker 1: see that someone right, you know, when they see that
Speaker 1: syntax of like rich liked whatever, message, they're gonna now
Speaker 1: map it to an emoji. And so nine to five
Speaker 1: Google has the emojis that they map to it, which
Speaker 1: are kind of weird. The heart the heart emoji actually
Speaker 1: converts into let's see the smiling face with hard eyes haha,
Speaker 1: is the face with tears of joy. The exclamation marks
Speaker 1: becomes face with open mouth, and the question mark is
Speaker 1: thinking face thumbs up thumbs down is the same. So
Speaker 1: it's kind of a weird translation.
Speaker 2: A little bit.
Speaker 1: It reminds me of that movie Lost in Translation. It's like,
Speaker 1: why can't they just use a heart? Is there no
Speaker 1: heart emoji on the Android side of things? So if
Speaker 1: you notice that these things are happening, it's because you're
Speaker 1: using Google Messages and they're kind of doing a It's
Speaker 1: kind of like a little hack they're doing because it's
Speaker 1: not like an official thing. They're just kind of translating
Speaker 1: what's happening. Because iPhone makes it simple from iPhone to iPhone,
Speaker 1: but it's not simple from iPhone to Android. So if
Speaker 1: you notice those little reactions happening on your Google Messages app,
Speaker 1: that's what's going on now. Google Messages is not necessarily
Speaker 1: a default messaging app on all Androids, but I would
Speaker 1: recommend using it because it's pretty good. I wish that
Speaker 1: they would do like a maybe they do at this point,
Speaker 1: But if you have an Android, I would also recommend
Speaker 1: installing the Android one app.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure if Android Messages or sorry.
Speaker 1: Google Messages by default backs up to the cloud, but
Speaker 1: it's been a while since I used it, But if
Speaker 1: you have Google One, you can now set in there
Speaker 1: to back.
Speaker 2: Up your SMS messages.
Speaker 1: So I would do that because if you switch to
Speaker 1: a new Android phone. Your messages will be backed up
Speaker 1: as well and brought back to that new phone. If
Speaker 1: you're on Samsung to Samsung usually when you switch phones,
Speaker 1: it's fine because it's backing them up as well. I
Speaker 1: think it's using you used to use the Samsung Cloud
Speaker 1: now I think it's using one drive for all that stuff.
Speaker 1: But anyway, small thing, but good to know about.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: Next question, terroln says, any recommendations on the best in
Speaker 1: printes easiest way to download my one hundred plus CDs
Speaker 1: to my iPhone twelve?
Speaker 2: Tia, Oh, Tia.
Speaker 1: Tia, thanks in advance. I thought Tia was short for Arrelin.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: I don't always get it right on the podcast, but man, Terylin,
Speaker 1: you're a little late to the party here.
Speaker 2: Who still has CDs.
Speaker 1: That are going onto an iPhone twelve? You've got this amazingly,
Speaker 1: you know, new iPhone twelve and you've got one hundred
Speaker 1: plus CDs that you're bringing to it. But I understand,
Speaker 1: I get it. You've got your collection, you want to
Speaker 1: bring it to your phone. You're not paying for this,
Speaker 1: you're not paying for streaming, So the hundred the easiest
Speaker 1: way to do This is to rip these CDs to
Speaker 1: your computer and then to transfer them to your phone.
Speaker 2: So there's a couple of ways you can do this.
Speaker 1: As for CD I think the toughest part of the
Speaker 1: process is going to be does your computer still have
Speaker 1: a CD what is it?
Speaker 2: A CD ROM drive, a DVD.
Speaker 1: Drive like a way to rip these Like most computers
Speaker 1: in the past, like whenever, don't have these drives built
Speaker 1: in anymore.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: I actually purchased the external CD drive from my laptop
Speaker 1: because for you know, once in a while I'll need
Speaker 1: to use it for something.
Speaker 2: But you know, you can do that if you have.
Speaker 1: A computer, maybe like a Windows computer, like a desktop,
Speaker 1: maybe you'll have a CD drive built in. So if
Speaker 1: you have a CD drive built in, it's pretty simple.
Speaker 1: You can just use iTunes to do this. And even
Speaker 1: with the you know how iTunes is all weird, iTunes
Speaker 1: twelve point twelve on Windows will import songs from CDs
Speaker 1: into iTunes, So all you have to do is open
Speaker 1: up iTunes and then make sure you go into your preferences,
Speaker 1: then click general and when a CD is inserted, click
Speaker 1: when the CD is inserted, pop up menu and choose
Speaker 1: the option you can do show CD play CD as
Speaker 1: to import or import or import and eject, So I
Speaker 1: would choose the import and eject option.
Speaker 2: And so what happens is.
Speaker 1: It will import your CD and then as soon as
Speaker 1: it imports it onto your drive. And what I mean
Speaker 1: by import, it will copy the files from that CD,
Speaker 1: all those music files onto your hard drive, and then
Speaker 1: it will eject the CD and get ready for the
Speaker 1: new one. So it takes about ten minutes, Apple says,
Speaker 1: I'm reading the Apple support site, takes.
Speaker 2: About ten minutes.
Speaker 1: And then once it's done with that, now you can
Speaker 1: put these songs onto your iPhone. And so if you
Speaker 1: want to put them on your iPhone, you're gonna have
Speaker 1: to just use that setting in iTunes to do that
Speaker 1: as well. So pretty simple process. The other thing you
Speaker 1: can do is rip them with another piece of software.
Speaker 2: Let's see this Windows.
Speaker 1: I don't know if Windows ten even has that built in,
Speaker 1: but it looks like maybe you can get something in
Speaker 1: the Windows Store. Let's see Express CD ripper free. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it looks like it's available for free. So
Speaker 1: if you do that, you can use that. If you
Speaker 1: have a Mac. I'm just assuming you have Windows. If
Speaker 1: you have a Mac, computer. It's all the same. You know,
Speaker 1: you can use these similar things. But the other program
Speaker 1: I like, if you already have the files, is called
Speaker 1: Walter Walter Pro and this works with any file actually,
Speaker 1: and it's so easy. You can drag and drop to
Speaker 1: your iPhone. So it's Walter is from soft O Reno
Speaker 1: and it's really easy for any file. So if you
Speaker 1: have any basically anything that you want, you can drag
Speaker 1: and drop onto your iPhone. It's kind of a lot
Speaker 1: easier than anything else that you've used in the past.
Speaker 1: This is videos, this is music files. I think it
Speaker 1: even works with like PDFs and stuff. It just works
Speaker 1: with a whole bunch of stuff. Yeah, any file. Realistically,
Speaker 1: you can use pretty much anything, photos, kindle stuff. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just really really easy. So again it's a Walter
Speaker 1: Pro and it's just a simple, easy way.
Speaker 2: To drag and drop things onto your iPhone. Good question, great,
Speaker 2: great question.
Speaker 1: All right, speaking of phones, I dc out with their
Speaker 1: quarterly numbers, and I just you know, I'm kind of
Speaker 1: a numbers guy. I just you know, not that I'm
Speaker 1: good at math, but I just love like putting things
Speaker 1: into perspective, and I think that sales numbers really help
Speaker 1: us do that because if you live in the US,
Speaker 1: it's a very iPhone slash Apple centric world that we
Speaker 1: live in, and when you kind of zoom out to
Speaker 1: the bigger picture of things, you realize that there's a
Speaker 1: lot of other companies out there in the bigger world
Speaker 1: that are making things that people are purchasing. So with
Speaker 1: that said, Apple still dominates in a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of places. But let's look at top five tablet
Speaker 1: companies fourth quarter shipments. Apple did seventeen and a half
Speaker 1: million tablets, Samsung was behind them at seven point three.
Speaker 1: Then Amazon was three point six million, so that's a
Speaker 1: pretty good number. Three point six million tablets that they sold,
Speaker 1: probably a fire tablets, and Samsung with their tabs, and
Speaker 1: then Apple of course with the iPad, they're just killing it.
Speaker 1: I mean they're really really doing an amazing job. And
Speaker 1: that's the only tablet I really recommend. Unless you want
Speaker 1: to go super cheapy, then go with the Amazon tablet.
Speaker 1: Like if you're only consuming content like watching videos on it,
Speaker 1: then the Amazon ones are fine. But if you're doing
Speaker 1: any sort of like education or playing games, you really
Speaker 1: want an iPad.
Speaker 2: Because they have the best software.
Speaker 1: So if we look at this by market share, thirty
Speaker 1: eight percent for Apple, sixteen percent for Samsung, and then
Speaker 1: eight percent for Amazon.
Speaker 2: So then we get into the let's see top five.
Speaker 1: Oh that's just hold on, that's just in the US
Speaker 1: top five tablet companies worldwide shipments, top five tablet companies, okay,
Speaker 1: and then they get into okay, so now let's get
Speaker 1: into chromebook So top five market share in Q four
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one, so ACER with chromebooks and they did
Speaker 1: one point three million, Dell number two at one million, Lenovo,
Speaker 1: then Samsung, then HP so Acer is killing it with
Speaker 1: the chromebooks.
Speaker 2: That's and then Dell, you know, a little bit after them.
Speaker 1: But it's interesting the chromebook shipments really went down, like
Speaker 1: you're talking. I mean the numbers are way down over
Speaker 1: over year over year, so down forty three percent, down,
Speaker 1: sixty percent, down seventy percent, down, twenty two percent, down
Speaker 1: eighty six percent for hp SO overall down sixty three
Speaker 1: percent over last year, so year over year.
Speaker 2: So what does that mean.
Speaker 1: It means that during the pandemic, people bought a lot
Speaker 1: of chromebooks, and this last three months of twenty twenty
Speaker 1: one not so much because they they were going back
Speaker 1: to school, they're going back to work. They just didn't
Speaker 1: need the chromebooks as much.
Speaker 2: I guess that's it. I thought it was gonna be phones.
Speaker 1: But anyway, so all right, we got chromebooks and tablets.
Speaker 1: So's the what's the message here? Chromebooks were popular during
Speaker 1: the pandemic and then people, you know, fell off a cliff,
Speaker 1: or the sales fell off a cliff, and when it
Speaker 1: comes to tablets, Apple is really really still king. Let's
Speaker 1: get to the next question analyin Amy Lynn. Let's see,
Speaker 1: Amy says cell phone booster. My husband and I both
Speaker 1: have iPhones. He's on Verizon, I'm on AT and T.
Speaker 1: Neither of us can talk on the phone due to
Speaker 1: poor signal. Would you recommend any cell phone signal that
Speaker 1: does not require an outside antenna. We're in a condominium.
Speaker 1: We can't add any kind of outside equipment. Amy, I
Speaker 1: don't think you need Oh wow, Amy said Tia as well.
Speaker 2: What is up with this?
Speaker 1: I I've never seen Tia more in messages in my life. Okay, Amy,
Speaker 1: I don't think you need a signal booster. So I
Speaker 1: think that all you have to do is turn on
Speaker 1: Wi Fi calling. Uh signal boosters used to be really
Speaker 1: popular back in the day, before the days of Wi
Speaker 1: Fi calling, But Wi Fi calling has been around forever.
Speaker 1: It's been perfected. I keep it on on my phone
Speaker 1: ninety nine percent of the time, and it's kind of annoying.
Speaker 1: I'll be honest that I'm like, why am I routing
Speaker 1: my I've said this before on the podcast, but like,
Speaker 1: why am I using my Wi Fi to make phone
Speaker 1: calls in my own house? Like your Verizon you're AT
Speaker 1: and T your two mobile? Yeah, can you figure out
Speaker 1: your networks that it works inside my house? I mean,
Speaker 1: come on, like, I gotta I got to use my
Speaker 1: Wi Fi from my wired connection to make calls at
Speaker 1: my house.
Speaker 2: Like I get it.
Speaker 1: I mean houses are you know, they're their own thing.
Speaker 1: You know, if it works, it works, if it doesn't.
Speaker 1: Every carrier is different. Like where my one family member lives.
Speaker 1: You know, they don't get any Verizon inside their house
Speaker 1: at all, But T Mobile works just perfectly, and AT
Speaker 1: and T kind of in the middle. And so when
Speaker 1: I'm there, I have to have my phone on Wi
Speaker 1: Fi calling no matter what because Verizon has zero signal there.
Speaker 1: Now things have changed a little bit with this whole
Speaker 1: you know, five G, the new network that they're opening
Speaker 1: up the nodes for because a lot of those are
Speaker 1: on telephone poles, so maybe they're closer to houses. I
Speaker 1: don't know, but the reality is amy, I think that
Speaker 1: if you just turn on Wi Fi calling, you should
Speaker 1: be fine. Now, if you're having trouble with Wi Fi calling,
Speaker 1: that's probably a router issue. So I would look at
Speaker 1: your router settings. I would make sure the speed that
Speaker 1: you're getting. But to make a phone call, you do
Speaker 1: not need a lot of bandwidth. Now, the late and
Speaker 1: see could be a problem if your latency on your
Speaker 1: signal on your Wi Fi is not very good, like
Speaker 1: if it's really slow to kind of like and latency
Speaker 1: means like when you go to a website like Google
Speaker 1: dot com, how long does it take for that website
Speaker 1: not to load but to basically yeah, I guess it is.
Speaker 1: It's not how to load, but like how long does
Speaker 1: it take to show up on your computer? A lot
Speaker 1: of that is latency, not speed. So speed sometimes is
Speaker 1: really fast, but the latency, like kind of that back
Speaker 1: and forth of when you click to what when something
Speaker 1: actually happens, could be a lot slower.
Speaker 2: So if you have latency issues.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you might have Wi Fi calling issues, but other
Speaker 1: than that, you shouldn't. Now if you really want a
Speaker 1: signal booster, the only signal booster company that I know
Speaker 1: of that I think you know may work is Wilson amplifiers,
Speaker 1: And so you can get those, but I don't think
Speaker 1: you need that. They're way too expensive, even like the
Speaker 1: cheapest one here is like seventy dollars, sixty dollars. I
Speaker 1: don't think you need that. I think you just turn
Speaker 1: on Wi Fi calling and you should be just fine.
Speaker 1: All right, let's talk Netflix, everyone's favorite topic. This is
Speaker 1: a very small, but you know, kind of a meaningful
Speaker 1: advancement for the Netflix app on TV. So you know
Speaker 1: that row that says continue watching. Have you ever just
Speaker 1: like sampled a show on Netflix and next thing you know,
Speaker 1: it is on your continue watching forever? Because there's no
Speaker 1: way to get it off of there on your TV screen. Now,
Speaker 1: if you want to your mobile device, on your iPhone Android, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can click the three little dots or whatever and
Speaker 1: get rid of it by saying remove from my you know,
Speaker 1: now watching or whatever however.
Speaker 2: They say it.
Speaker 1: It's always been easy to do it from your phone.
Speaker 1: Or mobile, but not from your TV, which is where
Speaker 1: ninety nine point nine percent of people actually manage what's
Speaker 1: going on in their Netflix and watch Netflix.
Speaker 2: Well maybe not watch, but anyway. So now on.
Speaker 1: Your TV screen, you can remove a TV show or
Speaker 1: movie from your continue watching row.
Speaker 2: With the click of a button.
Speaker 1: All you have to do is click on the show
Speaker 1: and then select remove from continue watching on the page options,
Speaker 1: and if you change your mind, you can undo that
Speaker 1: removal by clicking the back arrow. So the bottom line
Speaker 1: is that if you you know, if you get if
Speaker 1: you get lurered in by one of these little thumbnails,
Speaker 1: you know that they constantly change on the Netflix pages,
Speaker 1: and you just kind of click something and you know,
Speaker 1: it starts playing and then all of a sudden it's
Speaker 1: on your playing list forever or you're continue watching list,
Speaker 1: and you're just like.
Speaker 2: Oh, I don't didn't even care about that. I just
Speaker 2: I just I just tapped it to see like what
Speaker 2: the deal was, and it started.
Speaker 1: Playing and whatever. So now you can finally change that.
Speaker 1: It's funny the uh, the Netflix, let's see what I'm
Speaker 1: looking at, the top ten they now have like, you know,
Speaker 1: their top ten list of everything, and it's kind of funny.
Speaker 1: So top ten right now on films is The Royal Treatment,
Speaker 1: Home Team Munich, Don't Look Up. I watched that, The
Speaker 1: Secret Life of That's two, Red Notice, Hotel Transylvania three
Speaker 1: and Anyway. There's a couple more, but it's just the
Speaker 1: stuff that people will watch Netflix, Like we watched that
Speaker 1: Don't Look Up. It was I mean what I If
Speaker 1: I went to a movie theater and watched that, I'd
Speaker 1: probably be like a little disappointed. But because it's Netflix,
Speaker 1: I'm like, eh, I mean, it's like it's basically free.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: It's like, I mean, I hate to call Netflix free,
Speaker 1: but it's like it's like running water in your house,
Speaker 1: you know, if you're paying for it, it's just there.
Speaker 1: It's like anytime you watch something on it, it's a value,
Speaker 1: even if it's not that good. You're like, well, I
Speaker 1: got free entertainment, even though it's not free. I mean,
Speaker 1: we're paying for this, and now I think I'm paying
Speaker 1: twenty bucks a month.
Speaker 2: Didn't they just raise their prices too? So that's a lot.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's like twenty dollars a month. It's still okay,
Speaker 1: I say it's a lot, it's still not a lot.
Speaker 1: Compared to one movie ticket, especially in Los Angeles. But
Speaker 1: twenty dollars a month, I mean, for the rest of
Speaker 1: your life, is is a decent amount of money. Let's see,
Speaker 1: let's say I keep Netflix for Let's say I keep
Speaker 1: Netflix for thirty years. Okay, thirty times twelve is three
Speaker 1: sixty three sixty times twenty. That's only seventy two hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's really not that much. Seventy two hundred
Speaker 1: bucks for like all the entertainment you can imagine for
Speaker 1: thirty years. But the thing is, it's not just Netflix.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of other things too, So I mean
Speaker 1: you add all these things up, and believe me.
Speaker 2: It's it. Again.
Speaker 1: It doesn't add up to a ton of money, but
Speaker 1: it definitely adds up. And it's like one of these
Speaker 1: things where I'm always angling for, like what's the least
Speaker 1: I can spend every month on recurring subscriptions because the
Speaker 1: moment you get into a recurring subscription, it's tough to
Speaker 1: get out not to cancel. But like in general, it
Speaker 1: becomes a part of your life, like Spotify, Like I
Speaker 1: ran the I ran the idea of canceling Spotify by
Speaker 1: my wife. The other night, She's like, why do you
Speaker 1: always want to make life so complicated? Cancel these things
Speaker 1: that we've gotten used to. And I said, well, because
Speaker 1: we're paying for YouTube music and so why shouldn't we
Speaker 1: use that. But the problem is YouTube music is not
Speaker 1: available on the Apple Watch and we use.
Speaker 2: It for Apple Want and there's a whole big thing.
Speaker 1: Oh, needless to say, IM pain from the month of Spotify.
Speaker 1: Spotify survived, but you know, maybe not next time. All right,
Speaker 1: did I I can't remember what I just did?
Speaker 2: Did I just do Netflix? I do? I can't remember.
Speaker 2: I think we did the cell phone boosters and then
Speaker 2: we did Netflix.
Speaker 1: Okay, So Joseph, hey Rich, we have a challenge I'm
Speaker 1: sure resonates with many. We have about twenty years of
Speaker 1: email with our provider, Cox, likely some on the desktop
Speaker 1: and some still on the Cox server uncertain which is
Speaker 1: where the Coox dot net email addresses are linked with
Speaker 1: numerous accounts and account recovery processes. We are moving out
Speaker 1: of a state. We are moving out of state to
Speaker 1: an area where Cox does not provide service. They only
Speaker 1: provide forwarding for about thirty days and no other options
Speaker 1: to keep the email while setting up a new email
Speaker 1: and forwarding might solve some items, it would be much
Speaker 1: more preferable to keep the Cox email address. Is there
Speaker 1: a way to take the email address with us and
Speaker 1: have it reside on a different hosting service, similar to
Speaker 1: how you can take your phone number to another provider.
Speaker 1: If so, what would be the least painful and reasonable
Speaker 1: priced way to make this happen taking all of our
Speaker 1: old meal email and keeping access to the account and
Speaker 1: keeping the existing email address. Thank you, Joe, Joe, I
Speaker 1: think you're in a pickle here because I'm not really
Speaker 1: sure there is a way to do this, So I
Speaker 1: this is why I don't recommend. This is why I
Speaker 1: recommend that people never ever use the email address that
Speaker 1: comes with their ISP, because chances are you're setting yourself
Speaker 1: up for failure. Now you've had this for twenty years,
Speaker 1: that's that's pretty wild.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: When it comes to actually downloading the email, that part's
Speaker 1: pretty easy. You just log in with some sort of
Speaker 1: email app, whether it's on your computer or maybe it's
Speaker 1: a webmail app that will download the emails and that
Speaker 1: and for that you want to use pop three. So
Speaker 1: if you're using SMTP, that's going to be just checking
Speaker 1: the email and or sorry, imapp is going to be
Speaker 1: checking the email on the server. So if you want
Speaker 1: to download your actual emails from Cox and get them
Speaker 1: onto your computer, you got to use pop three and
Speaker 1: download all those And it depends COS may not. I
Speaker 1: don't know how far back they go, but you want
Speaker 1: to make sure you just download those. So that's that's
Speaker 1: an easier situation. The tougher part is with all these
Speaker 1: recovery emails, so you know most of the time you
Speaker 1: will be able to.
Speaker 2: Well try to think about that.
Speaker 1: You got to actually go through and get some of
Speaker 1: your bigger websites moved over.
Speaker 2: So what I would do is open up.
Speaker 1: A Gmail and start forwarding the COS to the Gmail
Speaker 1: number one, like, just do that right off the bat,
Speaker 1: and then I would go through your main accounts and
Speaker 1: change that email address. It's gonna be tricky because if
Speaker 1: you leave some of these on that account recovery email,
Speaker 1: they may have. Some of the bigger websites will have
Speaker 1: other ways to recover, but not often, so I would
Speaker 1: I would really try to make sure your main websites banking,
Speaker 1: you know, financial, you know, your other Facebook, social media,
Speaker 1: anything that you access on a regular basis. I would
Speaker 1: switch over that email address immediately. But this is a problem.
Speaker 1: You know, they may give you a little bit more
Speaker 1: grace period on these things, and you might want to
Speaker 1: call them and see what their deal is. I don't
Speaker 1: know personally, and maybe they maybe they let you keep
Speaker 1: it forever, maybe they let you pay a dollar a month.
Speaker 2: I don't think so.
Speaker 1: I think it's just one of these things where the
Speaker 1: whole point of these email addresses is to keep to
Speaker 1: keep the service sticky.
Speaker 2: And they will.
Speaker 1: That means that, you know, they want to keep you in.
Speaker 1: So if you start signing up with like you know,
Speaker 1: dot att net or you know, bell South or whatever
Speaker 1: these things were back in the day, you know it
Speaker 1: keeps you on that service because you're like, all my
Speaker 1: email's here.
Speaker 2: So that's why I'd always.
Speaker 1: Recommend a third party independent email, you know, something like
Speaker 1: a Google, something like a Yahoo.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe I wouldn't recommend Yahoo so much. I mean, what
Speaker 1: is there? I say, Google and maybe outlook Google. Let's
Speaker 1: see Gmail, I'm going to use my Gmail. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: use my versus operator. So yeah, Gmail, I just type
Speaker 1: into Google Gmail Versus and Outlook. Yeah, I'd recommend that
Speaker 1: Yahoo maybe iCloud. That's okay if you're if you're Apple, uh,
Speaker 1: and you know there's other there's other email providers you
Speaker 1: can get. But I think that Gmail is probably gonna
Speaker 1: be the easiest. Outlook is pretty good one.
Speaker 2: Does Outlook get free.
Speaker 1: Outlook Yeah, free personal email and calendar for Microsoft. So
Speaker 1: I would say outlooker or Gmail is probably gonna be
Speaker 1: your best bet. Good question there. All right, this is interesting.
Speaker 1: So you know, if you've listened to this podcast, then
Speaker 1: I'm not a huge points person, right, Like I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't And this is kind of like tech but
Speaker 1: also finance a little bit. But you know, I'm not
Speaker 1: like I don't like spend for the points. I you know,
Speaker 1: I do have a credit card, but I am a
Speaker 1: big fan of like debit cards because I like to.
Speaker 2: Spend the money and be done with it.
Speaker 1: I don't want to have to look back and every month,
Speaker 1: you know, get this giant credit card bill. I know
Speaker 1: a lot of I know this is going against a
Speaker 1: lot of people, uh and how they think because points
Speaker 1: points points.
Speaker 2: I get it.
Speaker 1: There's an entire multi billion dollar industry made around points.
Speaker 1: But when it comes to debit cards, which is my preferred,
Speaker 1: the points are not there. And so when I spend
Speaker 1: money on my debit card, which is where I primarily
Speaker 1: spend money, it's like, that's it.
Speaker 2: It's done. It's not a big deal. It's not exciting.
Speaker 1: And part of that is that it keeps you from
Speaker 1: over spending, because when I'm spending money at Target and
Speaker 1: whatever the bill is, if it's not my credit card,
Speaker 1: I don't think about it.
Speaker 2: It's like, ah, yeah, sure, swipe.
Speaker 1: So swipe, Like the credit card just seems to like
Speaker 1: well back in the day when you swiped, or maybe
Speaker 1: even when you tap, it just goes through easier, right,
Speaker 1: It's just like it authorizes faster. There's no signature needed,
Speaker 1: there's no pin. When you use a debit card. It's like, eh,
Speaker 1: debit card's like you're not getting anything in response to it.
Speaker 1: You got to put your pin in all this stuff.
Speaker 1: So I stumbled upon this new thing called the point card,
Speaker 1: and it's a it's a debit card that gives you points.
Speaker 1: And so I thought that was pretty interesting. And so
Speaker 1: if you go to point dot app you can check
Speaker 1: it out. And I know for nine ton percent of people,
Speaker 1: you probably just don't even care, Like you just say, Rich,
Speaker 1: I use my credit card. Fine, I like it, but
Speaker 1: personally I want to be off the credit card. And
Speaker 1: one of the reasons I like the credit card is
Speaker 1: because it protects me for certain purchases, so especially travel purchases,
Speaker 1: rental cards, and so the interesting thing about this point
Speaker 1: card is that not only does it give you points
Speaker 1: for your you know, debit card usage, but it also
Speaker 1: gives you protection like a credit card on certain things.
Speaker 1: So you know, you get different different levels of points
Speaker 1: depending on what you're spending money on. And then you
Speaker 1: get like travel protection, you get purchase protection.
Speaker 2: And there's no fees.
Speaker 1: And the other thing that's interesting is that you can
Speaker 1: transfer money from your debit card.
Speaker 2: To this point card instantly.
Speaker 1: So if you've ever used something like a third party
Speaker 1: debit card, it takes like three to five days to
Speaker 1: transfer money typically, and so this does it instantly, so
Speaker 1: it's really cool. And for all those things. It does
Speaker 1: charge a monthly fee. That's kind of the only catch
Speaker 1: is that it's either ten bucks a month or ninety
Speaker 1: nine dollars for the year.
Speaker 2: So I don't know.
Speaker 1: I signed up up and I didn't get to the
Speaker 1: point where I paid for it yet because you can
Speaker 1: sign up and then decide on the on the and
Speaker 1: so I'm still kind of like, I don't know, So
Speaker 1: it's anyway, I tell you this because if you're if
Speaker 1: you're looking for a solution, that's a little bit better
Speaker 1: than a standard debit card, but not so much a
Speaker 1: credit card. And the other thing is you don't need
Speaker 1: a credit check with this, which is kind of cool
Speaker 1: too because even though they did ask for my social
Speaker 1: Security number, they didn't it wasn't a credit I guess
Speaker 1: they didn't check my credit but I don't know. But anyway,
Speaker 1: it has you know, you can use it with Apple Pay.
Speaker 1: It's got you know, no no international fees, so if
Speaker 1: you like use it overseas, you're not gonna pay that.
Speaker 1: You can get two free ATM withdrawals. So it's a
Speaker 1: really cool like way to kind of still be part
Speaker 1: of that points game, but you know, not being in the.
Speaker 2: Credit card game. So I may switch. We'll see.
Speaker 1: I'm still kind of deciding on this thing, but I
Speaker 1: just thought it was really interesting. It's one of these like,
Speaker 1: you know, tech companies, these like high tech companies that
Speaker 1: you know are redoing finance. Oh the other thing I
Speaker 1: really liked about it is that you get virtual card numbers,
Speaker 1: so you can use those for like purchases that you
Speaker 1: may want to do for like free trials or like
Speaker 1: one off things or sketchy websites.
Speaker 2: And then they also have the app.
Speaker 1: And this is really cool. I've always wanted this on
Speaker 1: my debit card. So I use my debit card kind
Speaker 1: of like a reversed credit card. So I'll put money
Speaker 1: on the debit card and then spend it, and so
Speaker 1: I always like to know what my balance is because
Speaker 1: that tells me how much I can spend. And so
Speaker 1: this actually puts your current balance right on your home
Speaker 1: screen of the app, so you can open the app
Speaker 1: and without having to actually log in, you can just
Speaker 1: see what you're or maybe you have to log in.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: It says it says heads up display, but it just
Speaker 1: seems like it's like right on the front page of
Speaker 1: the app. So that makes it really easy too. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Point Card is the website. I'll link it up in
Speaker 1: the show notes. But kind of cool. I know, I'm
Speaker 1: so weird that I don't like to use a credit card.
Speaker 1: I mean, don't get me wrong. I love using my
Speaker 1: credit card.
Speaker 2: I love it but that's why I don't like to
Speaker 2: use it, because I just don't. I don't like the
Speaker 2: idea of the bill, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: And I got into trouble when I was younger about
Speaker 1: overspending on credit card, so I will never let that
Speaker 1: happen again, even though I still think I spend too
Speaker 1: much when I'm using a credit card. All right, let's
Speaker 1: see Steve says settings on an LGO led TV by coincidence. Sunday,
Speaker 1: the day before we saw your segment on buying a
Speaker 1: new big screen, we bought a sixty five inch LGC one.
Speaker 1: Great choice, but OMG, the horrors of going through all
Speaker 1: the settings and options to fine tune the TV. Day
Speaker 1: two of going through them, and we're not close to
Speaker 1: a picture of perfect TV. There has to be a
Speaker 1: better way. What is out there to help with settings?
Speaker 1: The YouTube quote unquote experts have too many opinions and
Speaker 1: not enough how to Thanks.
Speaker 2: Steve, well, that's a great TV.
Speaker 1: When I did my story on the best big screens
Speaker 1: for the Super Bowl, I recommended the TCL six series
Speaker 1: and the lg C series and you got the C one.
Speaker 2: I saw this puppy at at Costco.
Speaker 1: It was eighteen hundred bucks and it's a beautiful, beautiful
Speaker 1: TV that was for sixty five inch, and the TCL
Speaker 1: series sixth series is like closer to I think eleven
Speaker 1: hundred bucks for a sixty five inch. The prices are
Speaker 1: actually up on that one, if you can believe it,
Speaker 1: or all TVs, I guess, but good TV choice and yes,
Speaker 1: the picture setting is this is an interesting thing about TVs.
Speaker 1: When you go to the store and see the TVs
Speaker 1: on display, they all look great because they all they
Speaker 1: do is just pump up every single option brightness, contrast, color,
Speaker 1: you know, whatever, sharpness, it's all just pumped up. And
Speaker 1: so when you get at home, clearly you're not going
Speaker 1: to watch your TV on one thousand percent brightness, and
Speaker 1: so you have to go through and adjust those settings. Now,
Speaker 1: it took me a while with my TV and so
Speaker 1: what I So, I used to work at c NEET
Speaker 1: and there's a guy there, David Katzmeyer, who is like
Speaker 1: the TV king. He's been there forever. He knows everything
Speaker 1: about TVs. And when I was there, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I was lucky enough when I bought my TV, I
Speaker 1: think it was a Visio Plasma TV just to go
Speaker 1: to show you how old that was. You know, he
Speaker 1: told me like the exact specifications, like the exact numbers
Speaker 1: on how to tune that TV. And he would actually
Speaker 1: do this online for a long time. He would say, Okay,
Speaker 1: here are the popular TVs, like here's the LG whatever,
Speaker 1: and here's how to tune the exact like put your
Speaker 1: black level at this, put your contrast level at this,
Speaker 1: put your color level at this, put your you know
Speaker 1: whatever brightness level at this, and it was amazing. So
Speaker 1: you'd get this finely tuned TV. So I don't think
Speaker 1: he does it like that anymore for all, like you know, every.
Speaker 2: Specific TV model.
Speaker 1: But I did find an article that he kind of
Speaker 1: still gives some like pointers on it, and I think
Speaker 1: that you can find other websites. So what I would
Speaker 1: do is I would search lg C one. Let's see
Speaker 1: picture settings, and you know it's got like yeah, like
Speaker 1: calibration settings. Oh, here you go, ratings, dot Com, r
Speaker 1: T I, n G S they do it, and so
Speaker 1: general settings they they do all the settings for this.
Speaker 1: Motion settings generally, what do they say, motion you should
Speaker 1: be off? Yep, So motion setting you typically want to
Speaker 1: have off unless you are watching sports and then I
Speaker 1: would put that on. And then another expert I talked
Speaker 1: to Will Greenwald, who I also worked.
Speaker 2: With a c net Now he works at PC mag.
Speaker 1: He said that cinema mode is the best kind of
Speaker 1: generic picture kind of setting if you wanted to use that.
Speaker 2: So, you know, cinema mode is kind of the the
Speaker 2: main one that you want to do.
Speaker 1: So all right, So there you have it. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's a lot you can do. It depends also on
Speaker 1: what you like. Like on my TV, I had it
Speaker 1: on cinema mode for so long, but it's kind of
Speaker 1: an old TV, so it's getting kind of, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of older, and so I decided to uh, to
Speaker 1: change it to vivid and it's like, whoa, this looks
Speaker 1: so much better. So anyway, that's that's that, all right.
Speaker 1: I got time for one more quick little thing and
Speaker 1: then we'll go. But if you're in the La area,
Speaker 1: I'm sure some of you listening are in LA. There's
Speaker 1: a new website that's really really cool. I've been waiting
Speaker 1: for this to come to LA.
Speaker 2: For so long.
Speaker 1: It's called good Eggs and it's a startup. I actually
Speaker 1: was in the Bay Area for a story one time,
Speaker 1: and I saw this van and it was a big
Speaker 1: van that said Good Eggs on it.
Speaker 2: I was like, oh my gosh, and it reminded me
Speaker 2: of this.
Speaker 1: Old service I used to get deliveries from called Milk
Speaker 1: and Eggs here in Los Angeles, and it was so
Speaker 1: cool because they would deliver like really really fresh stuff
Speaker 1: right to your front door. I'd get a delivery on
Speaker 1: Saturday morning of like, you know, some eggs, some bagels,
Speaker 1: some oranges, some bananas, and it was all really fresh,
Speaker 1: because what happens is throughout the week you go and
Speaker 1: like whatever you bought at the beginning of the week
Speaker 1: kind of like dwindles towards the end of the week.
Speaker 1: And then so it was so nice to wake up
Speaker 1: on a Saturday morning with all these like great fresh
Speaker 1: options for breakfast. Well that only lasted a little bit,
Speaker 1: and so I kind of kept track of this Good
Speaker 1: Eggs and they said they were coming to LA and
Speaker 1: by the way, they finally did, and so I actually
Speaker 1: did a story with them for KTLA where I went
Speaker 1: to their warehouse, which is amazing sixty thousand square feet.
Speaker 1: It's like one giant refrigerator and freezer.
Speaker 2: It's huge.
Speaker 1: They've got the best, like coolest stuff. Now, I will
Speaker 1: tell you right now, this is not inexpensive.
Speaker 2: You are not buying.
Speaker 1: This is not Amazon Prime grocery delivery that's like at
Speaker 1: your house in two hours. It's like, you know, super
Speaker 1: good prices this and that. I mean, you're this is
Speaker 1: a very high quality play. So if you are into
Speaker 1: like high quality meats, high quality cheeses, high quality prepared stuff,
Speaker 1: really really fresh produce, this is gonna be something you
Speaker 1: want to check out because I looked at it, and
Speaker 1: you know, the prices they're good, you know for someone
Speaker 1: bringing stuff to your front door. But believe me, there
Speaker 1: is definitely you can you can do cheaper, for sure,
Speaker 1: one hundred percent. So don't don't come yelling at me
Speaker 1: if you're like rich, are you kidding me?
Speaker 2: Like, don't do it then.
Speaker 1: But for me personally, like I I love the idea
Speaker 1: of really really high quality stuff. And I'm not gonna do,
Speaker 1: of course, all my shopping here, but I'm definitely gonna
Speaker 1: try to see how some of these these deliveries are.
Speaker 1: I did taste test a couple things that they gave me,
Speaker 1: and so far, I was very impressed. I tried an orange,
Speaker 1: I tried a salad all very very fresh, and so
Speaker 1: check it out.
Speaker 2: It's called good Eggs.
Speaker 1: I'll put a link in the in the show notes.
Speaker 1: I'm very excited to try it out. So they're delivering
Speaker 1: to a lot of Los Angeles, but they tell me
Speaker 1: they are going to expand to more areas, so if
Speaker 1: they're not in your zip code just yet, they hopefully
Speaker 1: will expand to more areas soon. Good Eggs again is
Speaker 1: the website. Gosh, is that really gonna do it? For
Speaker 1: this episode of the show. I can't believe how fast
Speaker 1: these things go. Yeah, I guess that music means that's it.
Speaker 1: If you'd like to submit a question for me to answer,
Speaker 1: you can go to my Facebook page, Facebook dot com,
Speaker 1: slash rich on Tech hit the big blue send email button,
Speaker 1: or you can go to rich on Tech dot tv
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Speaker 1: if you had a rate and review this podcast. Just
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Speaker 1: quick line about what you like about this show to
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Speaker 2: You can find me on social media.
Speaker 1: I am at all social media at rich on Tech,
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Speaker 1: tech section and watch all of my TV segments on demand.
Speaker 1: My name is rich Dmiro. Thanks so much for listening.
Speaker 1: There are so many ways you can spend an hour
Speaker 1: of your time. I appreciate you spending it with me.
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you real soon.