Speaker 1: Amazon's Voice Assistant gets a major AI upgrade. It's the
Speaker 1: end of an era as Microsoft retires Skype. I'll tell
Speaker 1: you when it's going away. There's a much easier way
Speaker 1: to remove your personal details from Google, like your phone
Speaker 1: number and address. I'll tell you how. Plus your tech
Speaker 1: questions answered. What's going on. I'm Rich Demiro and this
Speaker 1: is Rich on Tech. This is the show where I
Speaker 1: talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about.
Speaker 1: It's also the place where I answer your questions about technology.
Speaker 1: I believe that tech should be interesting, useful, and fun.
Speaker 1: Let's open up those phone lines at T triple eight
Speaker 1: Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four
Speaker 1: to two four one zero one. Give me a call.
Speaker 1: If you have a question about technology, you need a recommendation,
Speaker 1: you're trying to figure out how to do something, whatever
Speaker 1: it is, I will try to help you out. Email
Speaker 1: is also an option. Just go to rich on Tech
Speaker 1: dot tv and hit contact guests. This week, Mike Prospero
Speaker 1: from Tom's Guide is going to join to talk all things. Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say the word already Alexa plus watch out
Speaker 1: smart speakers. Amazon's big AI upgrade. I'll tell you he'll
Speaker 1: tell you what's new, what's improved, and is it worth it?
Speaker 1: And then later in the show, Chris Gold of Geeks
Speaker 1: on Tour, we'll share expert tips on making the most
Speaker 1: of Google Photos. You know, I talk about that program
Speaker 1: a lot, so Chris will join. She is an expert
Speaker 1: in all things Google Photos. Is going to be a
Speaker 1: great interview there. Okay, Now, fair warning, if you have
Speaker 1: an Amazon Echo smart device nearby, you might want to
Speaker 1: press that mute button. I'm going to be saying the
Speaker 1: A word a lot.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: I flew to New York for Amazon's Alexa event this
Speaker 1: week and the entire thing was focused on a new
Speaker 1: AI version of Alexa called Alexa Plus. Now. The event
Speaker 1: started out with the new CEO of Amazon, Andy Jase.
Speaker 1: Did you know that we have a new CEO. It's
Speaker 1: not Jeff Bezos anymore. Andy actually took over. I had
Speaker 1: to look in the notes. Twenty twenty one spent four
Speaker 1: years of this new guy. Previously, he was in charge
Speaker 1: of one of the biggest growth areas for Amazon, which
Speaker 1: is Amazon Web Services. This is our cloud computing vision.
Speaker 1: He came on stage to say, look, we're Amazon, We've
Speaker 1: got a ton of experience in AI, and he set
Speaker 1: the stage for the newest member of the Amazon executive
Speaker 1: team to introduce Alexa Plus, and then Ponos Penney came
Speaker 1: on stage. Now, he used to be in charge of
Speaker 1: Microsoft's Surface devices. He was one of the key players
Speaker 1: behind that very successful device. I can't believe this, but
Speaker 1: he actually came to visit me at the TV station
Speaker 1: when Surface first launched. That was in like think about
Speaker 1: twenty twelve. And anyway, Ponos is a guy really he's
Speaker 1: like very passionate about the products that he's promoting or
Speaker 1: talking about. So of course these days he's all about Alexa.
Speaker 1: And the first thing he did was start out by
Speaker 1: talking about how magical that first Alexa experience was right
Speaker 1: back in the day. This was about ten years ago
Speaker 1: and they launched Alexa, and I remembered I was on
Speaker 1: a shoot in Kentucky and one of the producers had
Speaker 1: one of these echo speakers, the early one, I guess,
Speaker 1: the first one, and he said watch this, and they
Speaker 1: just set a song and all of a sudden, this
Speaker 1: thing springs to life and plays the song and we
Speaker 1: were like across the room and it sounded great, and
Speaker 1: I was like, wow, that is magical. And now, of
Speaker 1: course Alexa is in over six hundred million devices worldwide,
Speaker 1: and yes, she has helped a lot of people do
Speaker 1: things like turn on and off the lights, cue up music,
Speaker 1: set timers, and answer basic questions. If you ask me,
Speaker 1: it's never really progressed past that, right. It feels like
Speaker 1: it's helpful, but it's not truly smart. But now all
Speaker 1: of that is changing with Alexa plus. So this is
Speaker 1: using a large language model in the background. And what
Speaker 1: that is is something like a chat GBT. They're not
Speaker 1: using chat GBT, They're using some others because chat gibt
Speaker 1: is the competition. But now when you hear this voice,
Speaker 1: it sounds like one of these large language model, you know,
Speaker 1: AI chatbots that we're all using these days. It's smarter,
Speaker 1: it's more cheerful, it's helpful. Now I keep saying she.
Speaker 1: I was curious on stage, you know, you always wonder
Speaker 1: with these voice assistants, is it a he? Is it
Speaker 1: a she? They kept saying she, So I guess Alexa
Speaker 1: is truly she, So I'll refer to her as she.
Speaker 1: But now you're gonna be able to speak to Alexa
Speaker 1: in the way you would talk to a human, So
Speaker 1: instead of saying something very specific like turn on the
Speaker 1: left couch light, you might say something like turn on
Speaker 1: the light that's near the side of the couch. But
Speaker 1: that's just the beginning because also Alexa is now infused
Speaker 1: with all the world's knowledge. Now keep in mind, Amazon
Speaker 1: did all of these devices on a scor all these
Speaker 1: demos that they showed on screen based devices, so they're
Speaker 1: really pushing sort of the visual aspect of all this.
Speaker 1: But eventually Alexa Plus is gonna work on both screen
Speaker 1: based devices and non screen And speaking of those smart
Speaker 1: home devices, Amazon says, the new Alexa is gonna work
Speaker 1: with ten thousand platforms and devices, So all those skills
Speaker 1: that you know all about, you know, those are going
Speaker 1: to be kind of enhanced with AI. And I tell
Speaker 1: you this because we've got so much going on here
Speaker 1: with Alexa. You know, remember you had to kind of
Speaker 1: manually configure all of these things in the past, like
Speaker 1: if you wanted to use these skills. It seems like
Speaker 1: that's going to be mostly part of the past. So
Speaker 1: now you're gonna be able to seamlessly control not only
Speaker 1: things like your smart home devices like robot vacuums and lights,
Speaker 1: but also make reservations through services like open Table, listen
Speaker 1: to music from all kinds of services, order food, get
Speaker 1: event tickets, and even ask Alexa to review your ring
Speaker 1: footage to see if someone took out the dog and when.
Speaker 1: So these are all things that they showed off on stage. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's very ambitious, but to me, I think there is
Speaker 1: some helpfulness here, especially when it comes to routines. If
Speaker 1: I can say, hey, Alexa, every night at the time,
Speaker 1: turn on my outdoor holiday lights, turn off this, turn
Speaker 1: on that, you know, change this, make the coffee whatever,
Speaker 1: without having to program all that that's gonna be a
Speaker 1: big advantage. Now, we didn't get to see all that
Speaker 1: stuff in action, and what they did let us see
Speaker 1: was kind of interesting because they showed off these demos
Speaker 1: and I was very excited because when you're at an
Speaker 1: in person event, the most exciting thing is that you
Speaker 1: get to go hands on with this stuff. Afterwards, Well,
Speaker 1: it was weird because they basically did the same demos
Speaker 1: but in like smaller individual rooms, and I kept saying,
Speaker 1: can I try, Alexa, can I try doing this? And
Speaker 1: they were very worried about letting me just have like
Speaker 1: free access to this thing, like they didn't know what
Speaker 1: I was gonna do. I was like, well, I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna try some of the like I just want to
Speaker 1: talk to it and see. But anyway, we're gonna have
Speaker 1: to wait till it comes to our houses, I guess.
Speaker 1: So I think this is gonna be pretty helpful. But
Speaker 1: there's more. The system now learns as it goes along,
Speaker 1: so it understands your preferences, It remembers things about you
Speaker 1: and your family and when you come and when you go,
Speaker 1: and so all of that is being fed into this system,
Speaker 1: so it can truly be a smarter personal assistant. And
Speaker 1: the other thing that's pretty unique is that you can
Speaker 1: now feed knowledge into the system. So for example, let's
Speaker 1: say your kid is on a basketball team. You can
Speaker 1: send that schedule to Alexa and then she can add
Speaker 1: those games to your calendar or you can cross reference
Speaker 1: them at any time. So now imagine this smart speaker's
Speaker 1: in your house and you say, hey, alex Ay, you
Speaker 1: know when is my kid's next basketball game? And she says, oh,
Speaker 1: Thursday at two pm. Oh what school? And she'll tell you. Oh,
Speaker 1: now that's helpful. Am I on snack duty? Oh? No,
Speaker 1: you're not on snack duty this week, but next weekend
Speaker 1: you are. So that's really cool and I think that's
Speaker 1: very very useful, and you're wondering, We'll wait a second, Rich,
Speaker 1: how do I tell this stuff to Alexa? Like, how
Speaker 1: do I feed this stuff into her? There's going to
Speaker 1: be a new mobile app and a website at Alexa
Speaker 1: dot com where you'll be able to chat with her
Speaker 1: and upload documents. So it's kind of like, you know,
Speaker 1: now we're getting closer to the chatbox where already using
Speaker 1: from like Google, Gemini and also chat GBT. Now the
Speaker 1: thing this part is really interesting to me because it
Speaker 1: sounds like what Apple sort of talked about when they
Speaker 1: introduced Apple Intelligence. So the big play on Apple Intelligence was, Hey,
Speaker 1: here's your phone. We're gonna add AI to this and
Speaker 1: guess what. You've already got your emails on there. You've
Speaker 1: already got your text you've already got your photos. They're
Speaker 1: all on your phone, your messages, and so the idea
Speaker 1: is that Siri would generate an index of all that
Speaker 1: information and then you can ask about any of it. Hey,
Speaker 1: Siri showed me my email from last week that I
Speaker 1: sent to my boss or whatever, or hey, you know,
Speaker 1: catch me up to speed on on what do I
Speaker 1: need to know about my kids? You know, conference happening
Speaker 1: next week. Now, we haven't gotten there yet. With Apple,
Speaker 1: they're still kind of evolving their AI and we haven't
Speaker 1: gotten to that like exact moment yet, but that's what
Speaker 1: they're going to do in the future. And that's sort
Speaker 1: of what Google's doing because we store a lot of
Speaker 1: information on Google's cloud and they've built Gemini into a
Speaker 1: lot of their products. But right now, and I even
Speaker 1: try this again this morning, it's not super cohesive.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So I could be in my Gmail and there's a
Speaker 1: little Gemini icon I can ask about my email. It's
Speaker 1: not always perfect, but sometimes yes, it works, and it
Speaker 1: will find anything in your email. You can go into
Speaker 1: Google Docs and you can ask for information about your
Speaker 1: docs and it will find stuff like I needed my
Speaker 1: TSA pre check number. I said, hey, Google, can you
Speaker 1: find my TSA pre check number in my Google Drive?
Speaker 1: And sure enough, it found it. And then in Google
Speaker 1: Photos they've got Gemini built in and you can ask
Speaker 1: for any picture. Hey, show me my best picture from
Speaker 1: Hawaii last year. I want to post it to Instagram
Speaker 1: and it will show you those so it's working, and
Speaker 1: then CHATCHYBT of course could do something similar, but that
Speaker 1: would take a little bit of a leap of faith
Speaker 1: because you know, could you imagine chatchybt saying, hey, can
Speaker 1: we scan all of your email, all of your cloud storage,
Speaker 1: all of your photos, and all of your texts so
Speaker 1: you can ask about them?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 1: I think that would be very handy. But I mean,
Speaker 1: that's a lot of faith in that system, right because
Speaker 1: if there's a breach, that would be a problem. Now
Speaker 1: I tell you to tell you all of this because
Speaker 1: I feel like AI is all over the place in
Speaker 1: terms of its usefulness and its functionality. I'm using chat
Speaker 1: GBT for some things, Google for others, you know, Siri
Speaker 1: for less, but the list goes on and on. Right
Speaker 1: We're using all different things right now, and so I
Speaker 1: think the first AI to truly unify all this information
Speaker 1: about us, all of our devices, all of our smart
Speaker 1: home stuff, could win. Now. Alexa has a head start
Speaker 1: because they've got tons of smart speakers and homes, but
Speaker 1: so does Google, and Apple is rumored to be working
Speaker 1: on something there too. So at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: the question is will Alexa plus number one will people
Speaker 1: use it? Will they rely on it and will it
Speaker 1: live up to the hype. Time will tell if people
Speaker 1: start to use it past the basics, right, I think
Speaker 1: this is going to be a win. If Alexa can
Speaker 1: just turn on and off all your smart home stuff
Speaker 1: much easier than before. But if it can start to
Speaker 1: really weave itself into your life and become that personal assistant,
Speaker 1: then maybe this is a win. And also Amazon, you know,
Speaker 1: if it's working with Uber and door Dash and all
Speaker 1: these other companies, they probably collect a little bit of
Speaker 1: a percentage of any transactions you do through Alexa with
Speaker 1: those services. Now, the pricing is interesting, twenty dollars a month.
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone's gonna pay that standalone because it's
Speaker 1: gonna be included for free for Prime members. Prime is
Speaker 1: one hundred and forty bucks a year. If you paid
Speaker 1: for Alexa Plus standalone, that'd be two forty. So I
Speaker 1: think people will just either use this included in Prime
Speaker 1: or subscribe to Prime, which, by the way, of course
Speaker 1: helps Amazon's bottom line. So we're gonna have to see
Speaker 1: what happens with Alexa Plus. It's promising. If you want
Speaker 1: to get on the list, you got to go to
Speaker 1: Amazon Dot com slash new Alexa. They're going to prioritize
Speaker 1: folks that have one of these eco devices with a screen.
Speaker 1: They're gonna get it first. But it's coming out in
Speaker 1: the next few weeks. We'll see how it works, all right,
Speaker 1: coming up your questions at triple eight rich one on one.
Speaker 1: That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one
Speaker 1: zero one. You are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out
Speaker 1: with you, talking technology at triple eight rich one oh one.
Speaker 1: That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one
Speaker 1: zero one. I mentioned I was in New York City
Speaker 1: for the uh the Amazon event. What a fun city.
Speaker 1: By the way, I love visiting York because, well, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm from New Jersey, but I'm very familiar. But I
Speaker 1: love the fact that you can just get around anywhere
Speaker 1: anywhere you want. You can get around, whether that's you know,
Speaker 1: in a taxi uber nowadays subway walking. And of course
Speaker 1: it was raining a little bit, so I had planned
Speaker 1: on walking like this big old walk like a couple
Speaker 1: miles and it was raining, so I went as far
Speaker 1: as I could before I was like, all right, I
Speaker 1: gotta get on the subway here, but what a fun
Speaker 1: I mean. And then I stay at this hotel that
Speaker 1: ended up having a rooftop kind of area where you
Speaker 1: can just stand outside, and it was just like photogenic,
Speaker 1: like I was taking pictures up there. I mean, it
Speaker 1: was just it really really was. And the food, of course,
Speaker 1: you know, ended up going out to dinner with my family,
Speaker 1: went to this place. I always look for a place
Speaker 1: that's the closest to my hotel to walk to, just
Speaker 1: to be easy, and so it was literally around the
Speaker 1: corner and we had such a nice night. And this
Speaker 1: is the other thing I love about New York, these
Speaker 1: unassuming places like this, this little tiny restaurant. You know,
Speaker 1: you can barely see it from the street, and you
Speaker 1: go inside, it's like this whole world inside. Right, it
Speaker 1: was like two floors, all these people are having dinner,
Speaker 1: having a great time. So always always fun to be there.
Speaker 1: News this week that Microsoft is shutting down Skype. Now,
Speaker 1: I guess this is not really a surprise, like Skype is. Definitely.
Speaker 1: It's so weird because when you were using Skype back
Speaker 1: in the day, you were ahead of the curve, right
Speaker 1: like you thought you were beating the system. Because back
Speaker 1: in the day, there was like something called long distance
Speaker 1: charges for calls, and so the fact that you could
Speaker 1: do video and audio calls to anyone in the world
Speaker 1: for free was unheard of and you felt like you were,
Speaker 1: you know, ahead of the curve. And now, of course,
Speaker 1: after twenty three years, you know, we take for granted
Speaker 1: that you can call anyone, you can text anyone, you
Speaker 1: can use a million different services to video chat or
Speaker 1: to make an audio call, and so people have moved
Speaker 1: away from Skype. They were the market leader in this area,
Speaker 1: and somehow they did not capture the wave of like
Speaker 1: the next thing, right, I mean, Zoom. If you think
Speaker 1: about in recent years, what's really one out of anything?
Speaker 1: They really won during COVID, So people didn't turn to Skype.
Speaker 1: They you know, teams. Teams won, but mostly because of
Speaker 1: the Microsoft connection, because they were so connected to companies
Speaker 1: that paid for Microsoft that teams was their preferred way
Speaker 1: of doing things. But most people use Skype or Zoom
Speaker 1: no matter what. So after twenty three years, Skype is
Speaker 1: shutting down for good on May fifth, and Microsoft, of
Speaker 1: course they bought Skype about fourteen years ago, they are
Speaker 1: retiring it officially and putting all their focus on teams,
Speaker 1: and I get it. For Microsoft to do this, it
Speaker 1: makes sense. Teams is where the growth is. I mean,
Speaker 1: the last time I used I did all of my
Speaker 1: interviews during COVID on Skype and the reason why is
Speaker 1: because I thought that the video quality was superior to
Speaker 1: what Zoom had. And also a lot of the nerds,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of the tech people that I
Speaker 1: was interviewing, they were kind of like Skype people, Like
Speaker 1: they all had Skype. We all had an old Skype
Speaker 1: user name, you know, is the first time we used
Speaker 1: it during COVID, and so that was what I turned to.
Speaker 1: So the last day of service May fifth, twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: so you basically have about ten weeks to figure out
Speaker 1: what you're gonna do. Gosh, Skype once had three hundred
Speaker 1: million users, and you're basically gonna be able to migrate
Speaker 1: your contacts and your chats to teams or you can
Speaker 1: download your data. So if you don't want to be
Speaker 1: part of teams, you can just go in and just
Speaker 1: download your stuff. Now, phone call functionality is not going
Speaker 1: to be included in the free version of Teams, So
Speaker 1: if you're thinking you can still make you free phone calls.
Speaker 1: You're gonna have to find a different way of doing that.
Speaker 1: I mean, you could use Google Voice. There's so many
Speaker 1: ways you can make a phone call nowadays. If you
Speaker 1: have Skype credits, apparently they stopped charging for that in December,
Speaker 1: but you can continue using these until your next renewal period.
Speaker 1: Skype credit users can continue using their remaining Skype credit
Speaker 1: after May fifth. They're going to have the Skype dial
Speaker 1: pad still available to paid users within the Skype Web
Speaker 1: portal and within teams, so you'll still have a little
Speaker 1: bit just to use up your credit now. I did
Speaker 1: get one question about someone saying, what about my phone number?
Speaker 1: I guess if you had a Skype phone number at
Speaker 1: one point, you could have a phone number through them.
Speaker 1: I was looking online to see if you can like
Speaker 1: port that to a different service. Seemed very all over
Speaker 1: the place, like I couldn't find anything anything official, But
Speaker 1: people had some thoughts where, you know, the main thing
Speaker 1: you need is when you poured a phone number to
Speaker 1: a different company, is your account number and your PIN.
Speaker 1: And some people were saying the account number was the
Speaker 1: Skype phone number itself, and the PIN was zero zero
Speaker 1: zero zero. I don't know if that's true, because that
Speaker 1: would mean anyone could just poort out a Skype number
Speaker 1: even if it's not there. So there must be some
Speaker 1: level of protection in there somehow. But maybe they text
Speaker 1: the number or something. But yeah, end of an era.
Speaker 1: Skype shutting down May fifth, twenty twenty five. If you
Speaker 1: want to download your history, get in there, do it now,
Speaker 1: export it out all right? Eight eight eight rich one
Speaker 1: O one eight eight eight seven four to two four
Speaker 1: one zero one. Coming up. I'll tell you how it's
Speaker 1: easier than to remove your personal information from Google. You're
Speaker 1: listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich Demiro here talking technology with you at triple A
Speaker 1: Rich one on one. That's eight eight eight seven four
Speaker 1: two four one zero one. If you want links to
Speaker 1: anything I mentioned on the show, go to the website
Speaker 1: rich on Tech dot tv. While you're there, be sure
Speaker 1: to sign up for my free newsletter. That way we
Speaker 1: can keep in touch. Let's go to Jeff in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Jeff,
Speaker 1: you're on with Rich.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Rich, I recommendation I got for a password manager,
Speaker 3: which I got from Kim Commando was a Nord passed.
Speaker 3: Oh well, it gets good ratings. All over the place.
Speaker 3: But I tried to set it up, and the setup
Speaker 3: feature is very Uh. I couldn't understand what they wanted,
Speaker 3: and I didn't manage to get one app. One website
Speaker 3: entered into it, and it obviously recognized it because it
Speaker 3: had the whole website's logo.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: But when I tried to log onto it, it the
Speaker 3: auto field suggested that the nord past password, and of course,
Speaker 3: and then it came back and said password not recognized,
Speaker 3: but my and my old password still work. So I
Speaker 3: guess probably when I set it up. I don't know
Speaker 3: how you get the website to recognize the nord past password.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, did you change the password with the website?
Speaker 3: Yes, I took the one that they auto suggested.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, so I will I will tell you, Jeff.
Speaker 1: I do think that password managers are a little tricky
Speaker 1: to get started with because it's a it's a departure
Speaker 1: from what you're used to and how you're typically signing
Speaker 1: up for websites. So it does take a little bit
Speaker 1: longer when you sign up, but in the end it helps.
Speaker 1: So I think nord Pass is a completely fine password manager.
Speaker 1: Are you on iPhone, Android a combination of.
Speaker 3: Things iPhone and the thing I really didn't like about
Speaker 3: it was the the help center, of course, and they
Speaker 3: don't have a phone number that you can talk to
Speaker 3: a person.
Speaker 5: But the chat the.
Speaker 3: Guy was chatting with on the health center, he obviously
Speaker 3: had no idea what my issue was. He was asking
Speaker 3: me questions like, have you cleared your the catch in
Speaker 3: your browser? Have you hit the auto field? Have you
Speaker 3: extended the auto field time?
Speaker 6: Which had?
Speaker 3: I sent him a picture of the error message I got,
Speaker 3: and that has nothing to.
Speaker 5: Do with my issue.
Speaker 1: Well, okay, so are you only using the iPhone for this.
Speaker 7: Right now?
Speaker 3: That's I began with just the iPhone and that's as
Speaker 3: far as I got. I eventually gonna put it on
Speaker 3: my desktop too.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you're gonna put on your desktop too, Okay?
Speaker 1: All right, So I think you can still use nord pass.
Speaker 1: I think that that's going to be a fine option
Speaker 1: for you if you don't mind paying. I mean, there
Speaker 1: are you know, there are free alternatives and I on
Speaker 1: my website if you hit the search icon and just
Speaker 1: type in password manager, I have a full post on
Speaker 1: you know what my recommendations are. But in general, there's
Speaker 1: there's three free options that I recommend to people, which
Speaker 1: is Apple Passwords app if you only use Apple products.
Speaker 1: The Google Password Manager is completely free if you're using Android,
Speaker 1: iPhone and Chrome, like a combination of those things. And
Speaker 1: then if you just want something that's free that you
Speaker 1: never have to pay for, Bitwarden will always have a
Speaker 1: free version and it's open source, which is nice, and
Speaker 1: it works on all platforms. So if you don't want
Speaker 1: to get on this train of like paying for your
Speaker 1: passwords forever, you can use one of those three free options. Now,
Speaker 1: when it comes to paid options, I think nord pass
Speaker 1: is fine. I put it in my recommendations. I like
Speaker 1: dash Lane as well, and one password that's the number one,
Speaker 1: and then password. Those are all three popular paid options. Now,
Speaker 1: when it comes to actually using this, Jeff, it gets
Speaker 1: a little complicated because you have to make sure that
Speaker 1: your phone is up to autofill from the password manager
Speaker 1: or you can copy and paste. So if you go
Speaker 1: on the iPhone and you look at the settings, the
Speaker 1: first thing you need to do is search for autofill
Speaker 1: and where it says passwords, make sure that it says
Speaker 1: autofill from and then make sure that Nord pass is
Speaker 1: highlighted and you should turn off the other one. So
Speaker 1: on my phone, I've got passwords, which is the Apple one,
Speaker 1: I've got another password manager. I've got Chrome and Google,
Speaker 1: so turn off all of those and just have your
Speaker 1: nord Pass highlighted and toggled on. So that's the first thing. Now,
Speaker 1: when you go in to create a password, the first
Speaker 1: thing you have to do is actually generate a password
Speaker 1: for the website and then save that into the password manager. Now,
Speaker 1: what happens sometimes is you go to a website. Let's
Speaker 1: say you go to you know, Yahoo dot com, right,
Speaker 1: and you generate a password and you save it in
Speaker 1: your password manager, and then you go back to Yahoo.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you might be on Yahoo Finance or you might
Speaker 1: be on Yahoo Entertainment, and it might not link up
Speaker 1: the website properly, the website properly, and so in that
Speaker 1: case you might have to go in to nord Pass,
Speaker 1: search for Yahoo, copy the password, and then paste it
Speaker 1: into the website. Now, on desktop, it's a little bit
Speaker 1: easier because your browser takes care a lot of this stuff,
Speaker 1: and so it's just due to the architecture of the
Speaker 1: iPhone that's a little trickier to do that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: But in general, I think that what you're talking about
Speaker 1: is you have to first change the password, make sure
Speaker 1: it's saved in your password manager, and then the next
Speaker 1: time you go to that website, use that password. And
Speaker 1: most of the time the password manager should spring into
Speaker 1: action if it's recognizing the website that you're going to.
Speaker 1: The way they're set up is that it will just
Speaker 1: spring into action above your keyboard and say, hey, do
Speaker 1: you want to auto fill this, and typically it should
Speaker 1: find that, or you can do a little search on
Speaker 1: your password manager for that website and it should fill
Speaker 1: in that information. If it's not doing all that stuff,
Speaker 1: you know, it's I would check those autofill settings. That's
Speaker 1: really what's happening. But again I understand that password managers
Speaker 1: do take a little bit more setup and they're not
Speaker 1: the easiest thing to use if you're not used to
Speaker 1: using them, and you have to get used to it,
Speaker 1: and you have to continue to use it and set
Speaker 1: this up for every website, or change the password for
Speaker 1: your existing websites, and you have to save it and
Speaker 1: you have to just continue doing it. And this is
Speaker 1: why when you go to websites it says sign in
Speaker 1: with Apple sign in with Google, because it's so much
Speaker 1: easier to do that because it's one click and it's
Speaker 1: using the account you already have that you're logged into
Speaker 1: Google or Apple or some other services. Sometimes you see
Speaker 1: on there, but I don't recommend that, because it's better
Speaker 1: to keep these websites insulated from each other and separate.
Speaker 1: And I get it in a pinch. I've been guilty
Speaker 1: of it myself. I will log in with Google when
Speaker 1: I'm signing up very quickly, but in general, take the
Speaker 1: extra two seconds to make a password on the password manager,
Speaker 1: save that password on your password manager, and the next
Speaker 1: time you go to log in, and it should find that.
Speaker 1: And by the way, Jeff, when you sign up for
Speaker 1: a website fresh, there should be a little setting on
Speaker 1: your password manager that says a plus sign, and so
Speaker 1: you press that plus sign and that's how it links
Speaker 1: that website to the new password that you're linking or
Speaker 1: that you're generating. I know it all sounds very complicated
Speaker 1: now that I'm speaking this, I'm like, this sounds more
Speaker 1: complicated to use a password manager than to not use
Speaker 1: a password manager. But I think at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, once you get used to it. It will
Speaker 1: become second nature. And I'm using it. My wife uses one,
Speaker 1: you know, I've got my mom to use one, and
Speaker 1: a bunch of other people I know. So it's something
Speaker 1: that just takes a little bit of time and a
Speaker 1: little bit of routine. But I think nord pass is
Speaker 1: a fine suggestion. I think you'll be good with that.
Speaker 1: Thanks for the call, Jeff, appreciate it, and continue to
Speaker 1: make sure you install the extension too on your web browser.
Speaker 1: So nord pass will have an extension that you install
Speaker 1: on your web browser that will help auto fill on
Speaker 1: the web as well. And maybe if you're top you
Speaker 1: know five six websites like yours, five or six logins,
Speaker 1: go to the web and start doing it there and
Speaker 1: then go back to your phone. But there's gonna be
Speaker 1: a lot of copying pasting when you use a password manager,
Speaker 1: that's for sure. Jose writes in from Los Angeles. I'm
Speaker 1: considering the Riyoko Portable Wi Fi hot Spot? Is it
Speaker 1: any good? So I have to look this one up.
Speaker 1: Ryoko they do have it the right. Ryoko pro Portable
Speaker 1: Wi Fi hot Spot offers global Internet access, allowing you
Speaker 1: to connect to any device anywhere and it's oh, seventy
Speaker 1: percent off. Get a seventy percent discount, don't miss out already.
Speaker 1: I can tell from this website that I'm not a
Speaker 1: fan of it because I don't like the websites with
Speaker 1: the high pressure stuff that says your seventy percent discount
Speaker 1: has been applied, limited time offer, free delivery. It's all
Speaker 1: very vague, right, and it's all on one page, really
Speaker 1: trying to do the hard sell to get you to
Speaker 1: purchase this thing instantly and quickly. But here's the question
Speaker 1: I have. How much is the internet connection once I
Speaker 1: have this and I'm looking on the website, I cannot
Speaker 1: find that information anywhere. I can't find it in the
Speaker 1: bottom of the website. I can't find it on the
Speaker 1: top of the website. I can't find it anywhere. How
Speaker 1: much is it going to cost me to use this
Speaker 1: once I purchase this device? So for that reason, I
Speaker 1: can't tell you I would recommend getting this. I have
Speaker 1: tested one called Cemo s I M and that is
Speaker 1: a same thing. It's the mobile Internet, same exact thing.
Speaker 1: It's a little hot spot and if you look on
Speaker 1: their website, it tells you exactly how much it costs
Speaker 1: for the different countries that you're purchasing your coverage for.
Speaker 1: So I've used this, it works. I can tell you
Speaker 1: that I would go with something that you know the
Speaker 1: price for. By the way, Jose, you can also use
Speaker 1: your phone as a hotspot. You can also use your
Speaker 1: mobile you know mobile hotspot feature on your phone. You
Speaker 1: can all so just use your phone because a lot
Speaker 1: of phones now have this included in their international plan. So, uh,
Speaker 1: did you mention you're going out of town? No, So
Speaker 1: I would just be careful any website that here's my
Speaker 1: thing with any website that you go to make sure
Speaker 1: it has all the information that you're curious about. If
Speaker 1: they're making you hunt for information on the website that
Speaker 1: you think should be there very clearly, like how to
Speaker 1: cancel their phone number, their email address, a customer service contact.
Speaker 1: If all that stuff is hidden when you're trying to
Speaker 1: purchase the device or the thing, then that's a red flag.
Speaker 1: And also the first thing I noticed when I search
Speaker 1: for this on Google is uh is Reddit people asking
Speaker 1: you know, is this thing legit? So anytime the next
Speaker 1: search underneath you know the result is is this product legit?
Speaker 1: That's usually a red flag that it may not be
Speaker 1: the thing that you want. Eighty eight rich one oh
Speaker 1: one eight eight eight seven four to two four one
Speaker 1: zero one the website rich on Tech dot TV. I
Speaker 1: know I promised it before, but coming up I will
Speaker 1: tell you about the new easy way to remove personal
Speaker 1: information from Google Search. This is rich on Tech. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out
Speaker 1: with you, talking technology at eight eight eight rich one
Speaker 1: oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two
Speaker 1: four one zero one. So Google this week has made
Speaker 1: it much easier to remove information, your personal information like
Speaker 1: your phone number or your address in Google search results.
Speaker 1: So they've long had this tool for the past couple
Speaker 1: of years. I've talked about it many times, called Results
Speaker 1: about You. This is where you can put in your information.
Speaker 1: You sign up, you say, here's my name, here's my
Speaker 1: phone number, here's my address. If you find that online,
Speaker 1: send me an email or notification and give me the
Speaker 1: option to take that down. And so that's been working
Speaker 1: very nicely for a couple of years. But now they
Speaker 1: added another level of this. So now if you go
Speaker 1: to Google Search and you can try this. You can
Speaker 1: type in your name and then the word phone number,
Speaker 1: and you can scroll and see if one of those
Speaker 1: services shows up that says, you know like spokio or
Speaker 1: you know true people search all these different zoom info.
Speaker 1: Let's see, I've taken away so many of my results
Speaker 1: that I don't really have that come up anymore. But
Speaker 1: oh yeah, white pages. So if you find one of
Speaker 1: these results that has your personal information in it. Now,
Speaker 1: if you look at the search results, and you've probably
Speaker 1: never even noticed this before, there are three little dots
Speaker 1: next to the search result. You tap those three little dots,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden you see this new option
Speaker 1: that says remove result. So that is the new way
Speaker 1: that you can just get your information off of Google Search.
Speaker 1: And so you tap a remover result and it says,
Speaker 1: why do you want to remove this? And the option
Speaker 1: I see it shows my personal information and I don't
Speaker 1: want it there, or I have a legal removal request,
Speaker 1: or it's outdated and I want to request a refresh.
Speaker 1: And I'll explain that in a moment. But you can
Speaker 1: tap that first one. It shows my personal info and
Speaker 1: I don't want it there. And then it says, well
Speaker 1: what does it show? Contact info, government ID numbers, financial info, passwords,
Speaker 1: restricted records, other and so you can search or select
Speaker 1: one of those and submit it. And it does take
Speaker 1: a little bit and not everything's going to be removed,
Speaker 1: but in my experience, I have only had one denial request.
Speaker 1: But if your phone numbers on there, your email address,
Speaker 1: your home address, you can get these removed pretty easily.
Speaker 1: Now keep in mind this only removes the information from
Speaker 1: Google search results. It does not remove it from the
Speaker 1: original website. If you want to remove it from the
Speaker 1: original website, you have to do a takedown request at
Speaker 1: the original website. And if you go to a website
Speaker 1: like whitepages dot com, you'll notice at the bottom of
Speaker 1: the page it says something like, you know, do not
Speaker 1: sell my personal information or you can Actually it's probably
Speaker 1: they kind of hide this stuff sadly, but usually you
Speaker 1: can say something like takedown requests. So I would do
Speaker 1: something like white pages remove my information, and then that
Speaker 1: will bring up the page that will get your information
Speaker 1: off of there. So here's what it says White Pages
Speaker 1: Consumer Privacy Rights. You can opt out and have your
Speaker 1: listing removed. Copy and paste the URL of your profile,
Speaker 1: so that's how you can submit the request. They don't
Speaker 1: make it very easy to find on the website. But
Speaker 1: if you Google search for that, you know, I said,
Speaker 1: whatever the website is, remove my information, you should find
Speaker 1: that or opt out whatever. That's another way of looking
Speaker 1: at it. But again this is for Google, and ninety
Speaker 1: nine point nine percent of people are finding this through Google.
Speaker 1: So this is a nice easy way to get your
Speaker 1: information off of Google Search. I would also recommend signing
Speaker 1: up for the free Results about You feature from Google
Speaker 1: that is completely free, and this will proactively alert you
Speaker 1: anytime a new website pops up with your information on it.
Speaker 1: It will say, hey, well, we just found this information
Speaker 1: on the internet. Do you want us to remove it?
Speaker 1: And in one, one or two clicks you can say yes,
Speaker 1: please remove it. They will somehow do whatever they do
Speaker 1: on their back end to approve that or not approve it,
Speaker 1: and they'll get it removed and it works pretty well.
Speaker 1: So again that's called Google Results about You. But the
Speaker 1: new feature is the fact that when you're on any
Speaker 1: website search results, you can just tap those three dots
Speaker 1: and click removers all and that will bring you right
Speaker 1: to the option to get rid of it. Let's go
Speaker 1: to Patrick eight eight eight rich one On one eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two four one zero one,
Speaker 1: Patrick in Colorado Springs. You're on with Rich Fayvoritch.
Speaker 4: Thanks so much for your wisdom. I sure appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 4: A few months ago I got a new MacBook Pro,
Speaker 4: and then at a couple months ago I got the
Speaker 4: suite called Microsoft Office for Mac. Okay, and it works fine.
Speaker 4: But the thing I want to I have turned off
Speaker 4: the updates so they did not automatically update. You have
Speaker 4: to do it manually. But what I'd like to find
Speaker 4: out if I can turn it off, is can I
Speaker 4: turn off the updates so it doesn't even present the
Speaker 4: updates to me and tell me that I can manually
Speaker 4: download them.
Speaker 1: Oh that's a good question. Hmm. There is an option to.
Speaker 1: So you've already turned off the option to automatically keep
Speaker 1: the app up to date. Correct, so you have the
Speaker 1: thing where it's now it's just telling you, hey, there
Speaker 1: is an update, and you have to say no, I
Speaker 1: don't want that. Just close out of that screen. Yes,
Speaker 1: I don't know if there's a way to actually turn
Speaker 1: off the search for an update. I mean, you may
Speaker 1: be able to use like a third party program that
Speaker 1: keeps you know, the Office tool from phoning home. But
Speaker 1: as far as I know, there's probably not a way
Speaker 1: to just say, like, hey, please don't even check for updates,
Speaker 1: because most of these programs they want you to update
Speaker 1: because you know, it's mostly for security reasons that they're
Speaker 1: keeping them up to date. There's some sort of issue,
Speaker 1: but you're still seeing the auto update menu even though
Speaker 1: you said don't automatically install it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but it's just to say, well, what's the problem, pat,
Speaker 4: It's just a nuisance. It's constant. I've had it about
Speaker 4: two months now and I have eleven just for a Word,
Speaker 4: and there's a suite. I don't use any of the
Speaker 4: other programs in the suite. I only use Microsoft Word.
Speaker 4: But it's just a nuisance to constantly be having to
Speaker 4: deal with updates. And I don't need anything. That's said,
Speaker 4: I don't need perfection. I just need something to work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well I would, I would recommend, and I know,
Speaker 1: you know, I understand updates are annoying and this and that.
Speaker 1: But most of the time, when there's an update, you
Speaker 1: know there is a for it, and I know it
Speaker 1: changes features a lot of the times, which is why
Speaker 1: people are hesitant to do them. But it also most
Speaker 1: of the time they're patching any sort of security exploits
Speaker 1: or issues that they've found in that software. So for
Speaker 1: that reason, I would recommend that you do the updates.
Speaker 1: And I totally get it. I've got one program on
Speaker 1: my computer, it's a scanning program, and pretty much every
Speaker 1: time I turn on my computer, it's saying, hey, do
Speaker 1: you want to do the update? And I just press
Speaker 1: cancel because I barely use the program. So I understand
Speaker 1: where you're coming from. But in general, it is good
Speaker 1: to do those updates. But I think you're gonna be
Speaker 1: stuck with just xiting out of that screen. Thanks for
Speaker 1: the call, Patrick eight eight eight rich one on one
Speaker 1: eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: Coming up, I'll tell you about the new life saving
Speaker 1: feature on a smartwatch. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology. The
Speaker 1: website for the show rich on Tech dot TV. Be
Speaker 1: sure toscribe to the podcast so you can always listen
Speaker 1: no matter what. Just searching your favorite audio app for
Speaker 1: Rich on Tech hit subscribe. Obviously, the best way to
Speaker 1: listen is right here with me live. But if you
Speaker 1: can't make it or you want to catch the end
Speaker 1: of the show, just go to the podcast rich on Tech. Also,
Speaker 1: you can give me a call eight eight eight rich
Speaker 1: one O one eight eight eight seven four to two
Speaker 1: four one zero one. If you have a question about technology,
Speaker 1: give me a call. We'll get to the phone lines
Speaker 1: in just a moment. This hour, we've got Mike Prospero
Speaker 1: from Tom's Guide joining the show to talk all things Amazon.
Speaker 1: They made a big upgrade to their voice assistant. Mike
Speaker 1: covers that voice assistant. I'm trying not to say the name,
Speaker 1: but it's alex Ay. You know what it is. You've
Speaker 1: set up many times to control your lights. But she's
Speaker 1: getting a big old upgrade. AI, So we'll talk about that.
Speaker 1: Alison writes in on the website from Corona, I own
Speaker 1: a business in a remote area. I need cameras set
Speaker 1: up with no power on property. You can get cell
Speaker 1: reception up there. Hell lots of ways you can do this, Allison,
Speaker 1: but I would get a camera first off. I would
Speaker 1: if you need cell reception, like do a cellular camera.
Speaker 1: But obviously if you had Wi Fi access up there,
Speaker 1: which maybe you don't because there's no power, that would
Speaker 1: be a lot cheaper and easier. But two brands to
Speaker 1: check out. The first is Real Link R EO l
Speaker 1: I n K. They've got a four G camera that
Speaker 1: also has a solar panel, so you can get one
Speaker 1: of those. They look like they range from about two
Speaker 1: hundred about two hundred dollars for one of those. Now,
Speaker 1: don't forget, you're gonna have to pay for the cellular service.
Speaker 1: So let's see how much are they asking for it.
Speaker 1: It's probably listed on the monthly, but you know, keep
Speaker 1: in mind you're gonna have to put some sort of
Speaker 1: interesting It looks like it works with a bunch of
Speaker 1: different cellular providers, so you can put the simcard in
Speaker 1: there so you can get you know, you can shop around,
Speaker 1: but again this is a pretty easy solution. Solar plus
Speaker 1: a cellular camera is going to be great. Two hundred
Speaker 1: bucks for that. The other brand to look at is
Speaker 1: UFI EUFY and they've got a couple of cellular cameras
Speaker 1: with also solar and there they look like they're anywhere
Speaker 1: from one seventy five to about four hundred. And they've
Speaker 1: got a couple of them that have like a you know,
Speaker 1: different packages and things like that. So now again let's
Speaker 1: see what their cellular is. So again, these are the
Speaker 1: kind of things you should look for before you buy something.
Speaker 1: Is make sure that you see, like, Okay, I see
Speaker 1: that I can get this camera with the cellular, but
Speaker 1: can I bring my own cellular or am I forced
Speaker 1: to use the cellular that they want me to use?
Speaker 1: And so that's the main thing that you need to
Speaker 1: check on these cameras. And just quickly looking at this cellular. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to see you want to see the price? Okay,
Speaker 1: simcard included compatible with the three major networks in the US,
Speaker 1: no activation fee, no contract, one hundred megabyte trial data
Speaker 1: for seven days, and so I'm guessing you're going to
Speaker 1: have to yeah, see, this should really tell you how
Speaker 1: much this thing costs on the cellular after the seven days, right,
Speaker 1: Like you would think that would be front and center.
Speaker 1: But again, anyway, so that's what I would check for.
Speaker 1: Those are the two brands I would look into, Real
Speaker 1: Link and UFI. They both make a cellular camera that
Speaker 1: you can use and just set up. And once you
Speaker 1: set it up, it's pretty much set it and forget it.
Speaker 1: Thanks for the email. Let's go to John in Granada Hills, California.
Speaker 1: John you're on with Rich.
Speaker 8: Hi, Rich, long time, first time regarding my email address,
Speaker 8: which is decades old, getting a lot of course, as
Speaker 8: expected spam and some have an unsubscribe at the bottom,
Speaker 8: and you go to it and it takes you instead
Speaker 8: of taking you to the website, it takes you to
Speaker 8: a website where we're sorry to see you go enter
Speaker 8: your email too. So I have to enter my email now.
Speaker 1: I hate that. It's literally my biggest pet peeve is
Speaker 1: what you're talking about, because why why should I have
Speaker 1: to put my email address in there? Right? Like, you
Speaker 1: know my email address? I just clicked a link on
Speaker 1: your email.
Speaker 8: But continue, So, yeah, I'm a paraid there sharing my
Speaker 8: email with more spammers.
Speaker 1: Okay, So here's my guidance on this. Okay, this is
Speaker 1: my guidance on all spam email, because it's a problem.
Speaker 1: What service do you use for your email?
Speaker 8: Dslscream dot com.
Speaker 1: Okay, So so generally when you have some of these
Speaker 1: smaller services, they may not have as robust spam filtering capabilities.
Speaker 1: But in general, here's what I do. Number one, Yes,
Speaker 1: what you're talking about. When you hit that unsubscribed link,
Speaker 1: it should immediately unsubscribe you from that email. You should
Speaker 1: not have to confirm your email address. You should not
Speaker 1: have to type in your email address, But yet some
Speaker 1: websites make you do that because what are they doing.
Speaker 1: They're putting a little bit of friction between you and
Speaker 1: the unsubscribed process. I don't like that because half the
Speaker 1: time I sit there and I go, well, why am
Speaker 1: I giving you my email address again? Like you said,
Speaker 1: is it going to give me more spam? Or why
Speaker 1: shouldn't you know? Why should I have to do this?
Speaker 1: And so or I wonder, oh, well, which email address
Speaker 1: did I sign up for? And now I have to
Speaker 1: go back to the email check it out, make sure
Speaker 1: I put in the right one. So my general rules
Speaker 1: of thumb when it comes to spam is number one,
Speaker 1: if it comes from a legitimate sender. And you can
Speaker 1: pretty much tell when a center is legitimate. It's a Macy's,
Speaker 1: it's a home depot, it's a best Buy, it's one
Speaker 1: of these companies that uses Mailchimp or anything that says
Speaker 1: safe unsubscribe at the bottom. Of course, you know that
Speaker 1: could be spoofed. But typically I can tell when an
Speaker 1: email comes from a legitimate cender. Right those I am
Speaker 1: completely fine with. Clicking that link. Hopefully it on subscribes
Speaker 1: in one second, you know, one click. If it does
Speaker 1: ask for the email address again, I will use my
Speaker 1: spidy senses to say is this a legitimate email or
Speaker 1: is this an unsolicited email that is doing something more?
Speaker 1: And I will not put my email address in there.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of like the first thing to do.
Speaker 1: Then once you do that, the other thing is that
Speaker 1: an if it's an email address that you know, you
Speaker 1: get this email and you have no idea why you're
Speaker 1: getting it, you have no idea why you're on the list,
Speaker 1: I would just report that as spam or even just
Speaker 1: delete it without doing anything. But reporting it as spam
Speaker 1: will at least send a signal to the email provider
Speaker 1: that hey, I don't know why I got this, I
Speaker 1: shouldn't be getting it, and it will, you know, it'll
Speaker 1: There is a system on the back end that's that's
Speaker 1: scoring all of these emails that you get, and by
Speaker 1: marking it as spam, maybe they won't let those through
Speaker 1: as much to other people, So you might be helping
Speaker 1: someone else out and in your account, you're probably not
Speaker 1: going to get that email again. That's my main two
Speaker 1: ways of doing it. The other thing that you can do,
Speaker 1: and not every email provider supports this, but I have
Speaker 1: remote images loading. I had that feature turned off. So basically,
Speaker 1: when someone emails you, and any company emails you, as
Speaker 1: soon as you open up that email, there is an
Speaker 1: image that phones home, could be called a tracking pixel
Speaker 1: or a tracking image, or just any sort of little
Speaker 1: tiny image in that email. You might not even see
Speaker 1: it that basically phones home and says, hey, Rich, just
Speaker 1: open this email. Let's send him more because he saw
Speaker 1: that email at ten oh one am, and so they
Speaker 1: can actually track how long you're sitting there looking at
Speaker 1: that email in some instances, depending on their level of sophistication.
Speaker 1: But so that's another thing you could do, is you
Speaker 1: can go into your settings and turn off the feature
Speaker 1: that's called remote image loading. And so once you turn
Speaker 1: that off, when you open up an email, they don't
Speaker 1: have a way of knowing that you opened up that
Speaker 1: email because that little tracker can't send a message home
Speaker 1: to say hey Rich, just open this, and so that
Speaker 1: also cuts down an email. So I will tell you,
Speaker 1: and of course your spam filtering should do the rest.
Speaker 1: But in general, like I just got an email from
Speaker 1: two right and of course, we all had to sign
Speaker 1: up for two B during the Super Bowl to get
Speaker 1: the free stream. Now I know that that was their
Speaker 1: entire plan, is to get me to sign up for
Speaker 1: this email, and then later on they will do a
Speaker 1: sell of getting me to watch something on two B
Speaker 1: that's not the Super Bowl. But if I scroll down
Speaker 1: to the bottom of that email, it says you're receiving
Speaker 1: this email because you're a valued member of the two
Speaker 1: B community. To stop receiving emails, unsubscribe from this list,
Speaker 1: and I'll click that link and it should probably unsubscribe me.
Speaker 1: Let's see if it does it. That's it. Sorry to
Speaker 1: see you go. You've successfully unsubscribed from two B emails. Now,
Speaker 1: if I go into my spam, there's going to be
Speaker 1: some emails there that are probably not as simple to
Speaker 1: unsubscribe to, Like, yeah, I'm looking at this one. No way,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to do that. I mean, there's just
Speaker 1: so many. So again, that's really my guidance. John on
Speaker 1: the unsubscribed links, you kind of have to use a
Speaker 1: little bit of your Spidey sense to figure out and
Speaker 1: if not, if you can't figure it out, just either
Speaker 1: market as spam or just delete it. But the main
Speaker 1: thing is you don't want to send any signal to
Speaker 1: these companies that are not legitimate. If they're legitimate, they're
Speaker 1: gonna honor the unsubscribed no problem. You sign up for
Speaker 1: best Buy, Yeah, they're gonna spam you every day until
Speaker 1: you buy something again. But at least they're gonna honor
Speaker 1: that unsubscribe as soon as you press unsubscribe. And I'll
Speaker 1: admit I, you know, I sometimes let things go a
Speaker 1: little bit longer than they should, like I'll sign up,
Speaker 1: especially when it comes to text messages. You know, though
Speaker 1: everyone wants your text because you're going to open and
Speaker 1: look at your texts a lot quicker than email, and
Speaker 1: so everyone wants your phone number to text you. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll get texts from companies that I've signed up for,
Speaker 1: and you can pre you can type stop to unsubscribe
Speaker 1: again to legitimate textures and they will honor that. And
Speaker 1: so if you get a text that you don't want,
Speaker 1: just type stop and send it to them and they
Speaker 1: will automatically recognize that and stop sending you text. So
Speaker 1: good question. And it's definitely something we need to be
Speaker 1: aware of because email is everything, and you know, I
Speaker 1: have a newsletter, and you know, of course I want
Speaker 1: to make it easy for people if they don't want to,
Speaker 1: if the don't want to be on there unsubscribed. I
Speaker 1: don't want to be you know, I don't want to
Speaker 1: be spamming you. You don't want spam. You want to
Speaker 1: be You want your email box to be a place
Speaker 1: that you go and enjoy, and there's information in there,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, see it. Now look at this.
Speaker 1: I just looked at my just looked at my spam,
Speaker 1: and I had a spam email. And now this is
Speaker 1: the other reason why you look in your spam every
Speaker 1: once in a while, because sometimes you've got emails in
Speaker 1: there that you actually need. And I just found one
Speaker 1: from our guest in the third hour saying, hey are
Speaker 1: we still on for this afternoon? Yes? So anyway, look
Speaker 1: at that eighty eight rich one O one eight eight
Speaker 1: eight seven four to two four one zero one. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you go to the website, lots of different resources
Speaker 1: on there. Uh, definitely sign up for the newsletter. Like
Speaker 1: I just said, as I'm telling you not to get spam,
Speaker 1: but that's not spam. It's useful, believe me.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 1: The other thing you can do is send me an email. Uh,
Speaker 1: just hit the contact link up at the top. And
Speaker 1: by the way, I get a lot of emails, and
Speaker 1: I get put on a lot of spam lists. People
Speaker 1: think it's funny to sign me up for you know, spam,
Speaker 1: and yeah, I will have don subscribe. Eighty to eight
Speaker 1: rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to
Speaker 1: two four one zero one. Welcome back to rich On Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich de Miro here talking technology. New feature coming to
Speaker 1: the pixel Watch three. This was announced with the pixel
Speaker 1: Watch three when it came out, but it was not
Speaker 1: approved in the US. It was approved out of the US,
Speaker 1: but now it's coming to the US. Pixel Watch three
Speaker 1: just got FDA clearance for a feature called pulse loss
Speaker 1: of pulse detection. Yeah, just what it sounds like. If
Speaker 1: your heart stops beating, this Google pixel Watch will call
Speaker 1: for help. Now you might think, wait a second, Rich,
Speaker 1: hold on, doesn't every smart watch do that if your
Speaker 1: heart stops beating, won't it like call for help?
Speaker 9: No?
Speaker 1: Surprisingly, I mean you would think, like when I heard
Speaker 1: this on stage from Good Well, I said, wey never
Speaker 1: really thought about that. Now it will most smart watches
Speaker 1: will detect when there is an abnormal heart rate, right,
Speaker 1: either high either low slow. But if it completely stops, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, when that happens, you know you've got
Speaker 1: a problem. I don't know. They don't do anything. Now,
Speaker 1: I guess if you think about it, there is a
Speaker 1: feature like a fall detection feature. So if your heart
Speaker 1: stopped and you fell, I guess the Apple Watch would
Speaker 1: call for help. But what if you're sitting down, what
Speaker 1: if you're on a couch. You know that, you know anyway,
Speaker 1: this is stuff we don't want to happen, obviously, But
Speaker 1: now you've got this on the Pixel Watch three. So
Speaker 1: the watch will detect if your heart stops beating, and
Speaker 1: it does this by three different ways. So first it
Speaker 1: will if no pulse is detected, it watches, it looks
Speaker 1: for movement. If there's no response, the watch makes an
Speaker 1: alarm and it starts a countdown. If there's still no response,
Speaker 1: then the watch or the connected phone to the watch
Speaker 1: will call nine one one and share your location. So
Speaker 1: this feature is opt in, it's designed for emergencies. It's
Speaker 1: rolling out in March, and of course this is part
Speaker 1: of a bigger push on these wearables to have all
Speaker 1: of these sort of life saving features. Fall detection, car
Speaker 1: crash detection, irregular heart rhythm notifications. So a lot of
Speaker 1: the smart watches that I test have these features, and
Speaker 1: if they don't, you know, there's a big delineation between
Speaker 1: the smart watches that have them and that don't have them.
Speaker 1: Most of the Samsungs and the Apple Watches and the
Speaker 1: pixel Watches have these features. It's some of the third
Speaker 1: party watches from names you might not recognize easily that
Speaker 1: don't have all of these features. But again, loss of
Speaker 1: pulse detection coming soon to the pixel Watch three. It
Speaker 1: will be a software update and then you'll have to
Speaker 1: opt in, but kind of a handy feature and I
Speaker 1: wouldn't be surprised if Apple eventually comes out with that
Speaker 1: as well. Let's go to Mike. Let's see what are
Speaker 1: we lyn to Mike in Austin, Texas, Mike with Rich.
Speaker 7: Hey, Rich, I have two Samsung Smart TVs, once to
Speaker 7: fifty five, one to sixty five. They're only a year
Speaker 7: and a half. When we first got them, our grand
Speaker 7: boys played baseball, so we watch them on Game Changer
Speaker 7: and I used to be able to mirror the game
Speaker 7: from my phone to the TVs, but now I can't anymore.
Speaker 7: And my son in law said he has the same problem.
Speaker 7: He can only do it on one of his TVs,
Speaker 7: and I was wondering. I tried to look it up,
Speaker 7: but I wonder if you knew a solution to that.
Speaker 1: So how are you? By the way, Game Changer is
Speaker 1: my kid uses that he plays baseball. Excellent app. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you're unfamiliar, you know, lets you watch the game.
Speaker 1: They can live stream the game to the app. It
Speaker 1: lets you keep you know, you don't even have to
Speaker 1: watch a live stream. You could just watch the score
Speaker 1: in real time. It's just a It's like a app
Speaker 1: that was created basically for sports teams to use to
Speaker 1: keep in touch with the team teammates and also keep
Speaker 1: track of the game. Like for me, if I'm at
Speaker 1: the radio show when my kid is playing, I can
Speaker 1: watch them on the little Game Changer app.
Speaker 7: It's a great site.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's great and it's actually owned by Dick's Sporting Goods.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you know that.
Speaker 7: Oh did one of my favorite stores too.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, if you have a kid in sports, they go
Speaker 1: hand in hand. Go figure. My wife's like, oh, we
Speaker 1: just got a coupon from the Game Changer app for
Speaker 1: Dix I'm like, oh, well, of course I'm.
Speaker 7: Gonna say it actually goes hand in your wallet.
Speaker 1: But anyway, yes, exactly. So here's the thing I'm looking
Speaker 1: on the website. So what were you using to stream?
Speaker 1: Were you chrome casting or were you like what? How
Speaker 1: were you streaming this to the TV?
Speaker 7: I just the TV's on, yep. I go up in
Speaker 7: that upper right hand corner, you know, and do that
Speaker 7: pull down where it's got the little mirroring thing and
Speaker 7: I just hit that.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you mirror it from your phone? You mean?
Speaker 5: Yes?
Speaker 1: Like on the settings of the phone. Yes, like where
Speaker 1: it says screen mirroring.
Speaker 7: Yeah, you know where you pulled down up a right
Speaker 7: hand corner and you can get your flashlight stuff.
Speaker 1: Brings you all the tiles and everything. So that's not
Speaker 1: working anymore. What can you mirror any other app? Or
Speaker 1: is it just the game changer black out? When you
Speaker 1: try to do it?
Speaker 7: You know that probably would have been smart to try
Speaker 7: another feature.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so that's what I would do. So a
Speaker 1: couple of things you can do here. Number one, I
Speaker 1: don't I don't have a TV here with chrome cast
Speaker 1: or Apple. But I'm gonna check this now when I
Speaker 1: get home. You know, some apps have the ability to
Speaker 1: cast or airplay built into the app itself. Like if
Speaker 1: you go to Netflix, as soon as you're on the
Speaker 1: same Wi Fi network as that TV, that little chrome
Speaker 1: cast icon or or now they call it cast or
Speaker 1: the airplay icon will show up inside Netflix and you
Speaker 1: can cast to your TV. Other apps, like some apps
Speaker 1: don't have that built in, but you're able to mirror
Speaker 1: your screen either through iOS or Android, and on the
Speaker 1: side of you know, Android, there's usually a cast screen
Speaker 1: that you can do. So if that functionality has gone away,
Speaker 1: I would take a look at your Wi Fi network,
Speaker 1: make sure you're on the same network, and I would
Speaker 1: also just try a different app, Mike, and see if
Speaker 1: that work. If the other app isn't mirroring, then it's
Speaker 1: a problem between your phone and the screen. But I
Speaker 1: am going to try this out when I get home,
Speaker 1: and I'll have some more answers in next week's show.
Speaker 1: You're listening to rich on Tech. Coming up, we're going
Speaker 1: to talk more about changes coming to Alexa. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with
Speaker 1: you talking technology at Triple eight rich one oh one.
Speaker 1: That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one
Speaker 1: zero one. We'll get back to the phone lines in
Speaker 1: just a moment, but first joining me is Mike Prospero,
Speaker 1: us editor in chief at Tom's Guide covering all things
Speaker 1: smart home and especially alex A. Yes, I'll say it now,
Speaker 1: it'll probably activate your device, but it's Alexa.
Speaker 5: Mike.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining me today.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: So what was your initial reaction to the Alexa Plus event?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I was at the event, and unlike
Speaker 2: most other Amazon events where they give you two hundred
Speaker 2: new products, this was just about Alexa and just about
Speaker 2: its new smart assistant, and it's a real reimagining of
Speaker 2: what it can do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was surprising me. Surprising to me that there
Speaker 1: was no real hardware announcement. This was completely software based.
Speaker 1: And then we've got Alexa Plus, which is basically, how
Speaker 1: would you describe it to me? It feels like, you know,
Speaker 1: it's chat GBT in a speaker.
Speaker 2: Now, I mean, that's a fairly good way to describe it.
Speaker 2: I think Amazon is using anthropic for their model, but
Speaker 2: it's still the same concept. Basically, you can ask Alexa
Speaker 2: to do just about anything now, but beyond just answering
Speaker 2: questions for you. Alexa Plus is supposed to hook up
Speaker 2: with other services to sort of go beyond just what
Speaker 2: a smart speaker can do, and you connect you with
Speaker 2: the rest of the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean they really painted a picture where this
Speaker 1: thing is the personal assistant that we've sort of been
Speaker 1: waiting for. It can book an Uber, It can buy
Speaker 1: your tickets on Ticketmaster. It can get a restaurant reservation
Speaker 1: and a recommendation and send a text and remember stuff
Speaker 1: and remind you. Do you think this is too ambitious
Speaker 1: or do you think this will actually work? And did
Speaker 1: you get to try some of it? Because I kept
Speaker 1: asking can I try this? Can I try this? And
Speaker 1: they wouldn't really let me try it specifically. I mean
Speaker 1: I was able to ask it a few things, but
Speaker 1: nothing like I wanted to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was in the same boat as you and
Speaker 2: that they didn't. They didn't let me get his hands
Speaker 2: on with it as I would have liked. So I
Speaker 2: think a lot is going to remains to be seen
Speaker 2: when it finally rolls out in a few weeks from now.
Speaker 2: But I don't know. I think it's I think it's
Speaker 2: okay to be very ambitious, but I you know, when
Speaker 2: you're that ambitious. A lot of things have to go
Speaker 2: right in order for people to use it.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, look, they've already got the user base
Speaker 1: of many people that have these devices in their home.
Speaker 1: But then when you check the fine print, you know
Speaker 1: you have to have one of these Echo Show devices,
Speaker 1: which means one of their smart screen devices, and then
Speaker 1: maybe it'll work on the rest of your speakers that
Speaker 1: you have, depending on how old they are. Did you
Speaker 1: get an idea of how many devices this will work on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I was talking to Amazon representatives afterwards, and yes,
Speaker 2: initially it's going to be available on the Echo Show eight, ten, fifteen,
Speaker 2: and twenty one, but then they said they're going to
Speaker 2: roll it out to pretty much every other Echo device,
Speaker 2: with the exception for sort of first and second gen
Speaker 2: Echo devices. So if you have, you know, some of
Speaker 2: the OG models, you're not going to be able to
Speaker 2: use Alexa Plus on them, but it should work for
Speaker 2: most everything else.
Speaker 1: I think that there is room for a benefit to
Speaker 1: the AI aspect of this, where it understands what you're
Speaker 1: trying to say versus my My problem with Alexa, especially
Speaker 1: back in the early days, was you had to be
Speaker 1: very specific to what you were telling it to do,
Speaker 1: please turn off the light left couch light. You know
Speaker 1: who talks like that? No one. So I think that
Speaker 1: this natural language could be very beneficial.
Speaker 2: No, that's true. That's a good point. And I agree that.
Speaker 2: You know, there's I don't know how many times I've
Speaker 2: said turn off the living room lights and then said
Speaker 2: there are several things devices named living room lights. Which
Speaker 2: one do you mean? And you go through this circuit
Speaker 2: of you know, question and answer and you never actually
Speaker 2: get to the one you actually want. You know, it
Speaker 2: needs to be as simple as you know, turning off
Speaker 2: a light. And I think with the natural language use
Speaker 2: on this, we could actually get to that point.
Speaker 1: So there is one interesting feature that I thought was
Speaker 1: quite useful. Is this idea of uploading documents to Alexa
Speaker 1: for her to reference later. So it could be a
Speaker 1: school calendar, an events calendar, schedule, just data about anything
Speaker 1: in your life and then you can ask her to
Speaker 1: reference that later. So what did you think of that aspect?
Speaker 1: And also privacy that you know that you're uploading personal
Speaker 1: information now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I think I mean this is this is
Speaker 2: an area where AI is in general are can be
Speaker 2: very useful. Is taking a huge amount of data and
Speaker 2: analyzing it for you, you know, and doing something with
Speaker 2: it that you know you don't have to do, like
Speaker 2: taking away sort of the rote manual mundane task and
Speaker 2: making it more accessible, more easily for you. So, you know,
Speaker 2: if you're uploading your school kid your kid's calendar for
Speaker 2: school or something like that, rather than putting in, you know,
Speaker 2: what's for lunch each day, you know it can you can,
Speaker 2: You'll just upload it and it'll tell you, you know,
Speaker 2: by the same token. I'm not going to you know,
Speaker 2: upload my you know, healthcare documents or something like that
Speaker 2: to Alexa and you know, in trust to you know,
Speaker 2: keep everything private. And now Amazon did talk to me
Speaker 2: a little bit about privacy stuff, and they, you know,
Speaker 2: do have some safeguards in place, they said, but it's still,
Speaker 2: you know, there's data breaches everywhere all the time, you know,
Speaker 2: and you know, so I would be hesitant to upload
Speaker 2: certain things for risk of it getting out somehow.
Speaker 1: Is there anyone else that would have this technology? And
Speaker 1: do you think that Amazon is in the lead here
Speaker 1: or do you think this is still very much in
Speaker 1: open space.
Speaker 2: I think Amazon is somewhat in the lead just by
Speaker 2: the fact that so many people already have Echo devices
Speaker 2: in their homes, so they've got this base that's sort
Speaker 2: of ready to go. And plus the fact that they're
Speaker 2: giving Alexa Plus free to Amazon Prime members. You know,
Speaker 2: you know how many Amazon Prime members are there. I mean,
Speaker 2: there's got to be you know, millions of them. So
Speaker 2: it's going to be sort of automatically in people's homes,
Speaker 2: you know, in the in the coming months. You know,
Speaker 2: there's plenty of people who obviously use Google Assistant, and
Speaker 2: plenty of people who use Siri, but those are more
Speaker 2: limited to phones, you know, rather than smart speakers. And
Speaker 2: you know, I don't think, you know, even if Apple
Speaker 2: does come out with a new home pod in the
Speaker 2: next few months, it's still more of a niche device
Speaker 2: than all of the Amazon Echoes that are already out there.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about that price. So they announced a twenty
Speaker 1: dollars a month price or free to Prime members. A
Speaker 1: couple of thoughts here, Number one, who would pay twenty
Speaker 1: dollars a month for this? Number two, it's included with Prime.
Speaker 1: But if you do the math, twenty times twelve is
Speaker 1: two hundred and forty dollars a year, which is more
Speaker 1: than Prime So are we going to see a Prime
Speaker 1: price increase because of this?
Speaker 2: I mean, it's not outside of the realm of possibilit
Speaker 2: I wouldn't rule out an increasing price, especially if you
Speaker 2: don't get a lot of takers, maybe initially for Amazon
Speaker 2: Alexa plus.
Speaker 1: Do you think this is a value at twenty dollars standalone?
Speaker 1: I mean, why would you not just subscribe to Prime
Speaker 1: at that point?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know how many people would are gonna
Speaker 2: subscribe to this, as you know, on its own. I
Speaker 2: think I think the most majority of people are going
Speaker 2: to have Amazon Prime and try it that way. But
Speaker 2: I I am I don't know how many people are
Speaker 2: gonna say, oh, yeah, I want I'm going to pay
Speaker 2: twenty dollars a month, you know that. I think I
Speaker 2: think it's the case is going to be a lot
Speaker 2: of people who already have Amazon Echo devices in their
Speaker 2: home and subscribe to Prime will just start using it.
Speaker 2: And I think that's Amazon strategy.
Speaker 8: Here.
Speaker 2: Where Amazon has struggled with its smart assistance is that
Speaker 2: it's sold the devices at a loss, initially expecting that
Speaker 2: the services that people were gonna use through Alexa would
Speaker 2: help recoup that cost. That hasn't happened. You know, they
Speaker 2: they had to layoff, you know, tens of thousands of
Speaker 2: people over the last few years. So I think if
Speaker 2: Alexa Plus can get more people to you know, buy
Speaker 2: ubers or you know, order from Uber, you know, order
Speaker 2: from door Dash and use more services through Alexa, then
Speaker 2: they can start recouping those costs and you know, generate
Speaker 2: that revenue that they've been wanting for so long.
Speaker 1: All right, We're gonna leave it there. Mike Prospero from
Speaker 1: Tom's Guide, thanks so much for joining me the website
Speaker 1: Tom's Guide dot com. Get those calls in triple eight
Speaker 1: rich one O one eight eight eight seven four two
Speaker 1: or one zero one. We'll get back to the phone
Speaker 1: lines right after this. Welcome back to Rich on tech.
Speaker 1: Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology at
Speaker 1: triple A Rich one on one. That's eight eight eight
Speaker 1: seven four to two four one zero one. Let's go
Speaker 1: to Nile in Culver City, Nile. You're on with Rich.
Speaker 11: Oh, hey, Rich, thanks for taking my call. Yeah, got
Speaker 11: two separate I got two separate questions. I hope you
Speaker 11: can answer them. The first one is about Skype. Uh,
Speaker 11: the company I work for. Our department uses Skype daily
Speaker 11: like religiously, and then every two weeks we talked to
Speaker 11: our Asia team over a phone call, and I was
Speaker 11: kind of wondering what we can recommend as an alternative
Speaker 11: to this because someone mentioned discord. I've used another ones too,
Speaker 11: but what's like the one that you think is going
Speaker 11: to be more in service?
Speaker 1: Oh, for all your teammates, how how long are the calls? Typically?
Speaker 11: Well, an hour sometimes with the agent team, but our teammates,
Speaker 11: we we tech stock and fort or all the chat
Speaker 11: rooms that we have really like, you know, constantly during
Speaker 11: the day. We do have Gmail set up. I don't
Speaker 11: know if g chat has a call ability or what.
Speaker 11: I know that a lot of the teammates will chat
Speaker 11: in g Chat and then all of a sudden they
Speaker 11: say we want to make an email group. So I
Speaker 11: don't I don't know how you know reliable that is.
Speaker 11: I just wanted to get your take on that part.
Speaker 1: Well, so I think, now, were you paying for Skype
Speaker 1: at all or as.
Speaker 11: You used out now we're all using the freebies.
Speaker 1: You're all using the freebies. Okay, So yeah, so it
Speaker 1: sounds like you want to free you know, something that's free.
Speaker 1: I mean, here's the thing. You know, when it comes
Speaker 1: to business, if you're relying on this stuff, a lot
Speaker 1: of the consumer services have some sort of limitation on
Speaker 1: them in order, you know, for people like yourself that
Speaker 1: are running some sort of business aspect of it, they
Speaker 1: want you to pay. So Zoom when it first came out,
Speaker 1: you know, it was like, I think during the pandemic,
Speaker 1: it was let's see meeting limits. So it was like,
Speaker 1: I think they had they took their meeting limits off,
Speaker 1: but right now, you know, now they put them back on,
Speaker 1: and it looks like the meeting limit for free is
Speaker 1: forty minutes, so if you want to go above that,
Speaker 1: you would have to pay. But I think in general,
Speaker 1: you know, it depends what you want to do. If
Speaker 1: you're talking about chatting, you know, maybe something like a
Speaker 1: Slack would be best for chats, and then for video conferencing,
Speaker 1: maybe something like a Zoom would be good because you
Speaker 1: can get a whole bunch of people on there. Everyone's
Speaker 1: very familiar with the software. It's probably all installed on there.
Speaker 1: But Teams is also going to do all of that
Speaker 1: stuff as well, So you know, I'd have to look
Speaker 1: at the free level of Microsoft Teams because most of
Speaker 1: the time. People that have Teams are in a company,
Speaker 1: in a corporate environment, and so there's a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of features that come in there that are you know,
Speaker 1: because people are paying. But I'm looking at the free
Speaker 1: version of Teams, So group meetings with a time cap
Speaker 1: of sixty minutes, one on one meetings with a time
Speaker 1: limit for up to thirty hours, that's interesting maximum of
Speaker 1: one hundred people per meeting, unlimited chat via Microsoft Teams messaging.
Speaker 1: So it sounds to me, just off the top of
Speaker 1: my head that what they're pushing you to on Microsoft
Speaker 1: is Teams, and I think that that probably would work
Speaker 1: out best for you. And what I like about Teams
Speaker 1: compared to some of these other things is that it's
Speaker 1: built for businesses. So it's built for businesses like yours
Speaker 1: to keep in touch, and that means that they're going
Speaker 1: to have apps for both Mac, PC, iPhone Android. No
Speaker 1: matter how your workers want to connect, no matter where
Speaker 1: they are in the world, they're gonna be able to
Speaker 1: do that. So I'd probably recommend Microsoft Teams. You could
Speaker 1: probably get away with Zoom. I don't know if Zoom
Speaker 1: has as robust kind of chat features I'm looking at here.
Speaker 2: Oh, yep.
Speaker 1: Team Chat does have it, so that may be a
Speaker 1: way to do it as well. I mean you could, yeah,
Speaker 1: you could chat and Zoom as well. So I think
Speaker 1: it comes down to for me is the amount of
Speaker 1: time you get. So what I'd do is I would
Speaker 1: compare teams to Zoom and see what you get for
Speaker 1: free and if that works. They both offer chat, they
Speaker 1: both offer video chat, they both offer calls, so just
Speaker 1: go ahead and pick one of them that works the
Speaker 1: best for your team. I think that that's gonna be
Speaker 1: the best way to do it. It's interesting a lot,
Speaker 1: you know, there's been so many changes to the calling
Speaker 1: landscape since Skype came out, and you know, I'm looking
Speaker 1: online for you know, it's interesting because you can call
Speaker 1: anyone in the world through an app for free, basically
Speaker 1: like WhatsApp. You can call anyone you want as long
Speaker 1: as you're on that app. There's many other ways you
Speaker 1: can do it as well. Google Voice, you can Viber.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's so many different apps out there that
Speaker 1: can do this. But when it comes to actually calling
Speaker 1: a physical phone, that's where it gets a little trickier
Speaker 1: because it's not always included because there are still costs
Speaker 1: associated with that phone line. So a good question. Thanks
Speaker 1: for the call today, appreciate it. Eight eight eight rich
Speaker 1: one O one eight eight eight seven four to two
Speaker 1: four one zero one. Let's see. We got an email
Speaker 1: here from Neil in Virginia. He said, I see many
Speaker 1: PCs are coming with a Qualcom processor. Do you recommend it?
Speaker 1: How do they compare with AMD and Intel? Do the
Speaker 1: Qualcom processors run all software that runs on Windows eleven?
Speaker 1: Great question. So you're talking about the new Snapdragon uh
Speaker 1: Elite chips excellite. Now are these are chips that are
Speaker 1: inspired by mobile phones. So snapdrag has had its chips
Speaker 1: in mobile phones for a long time. They made the
Speaker 1: leap to computers. I went to the event at Microsoft
Speaker 1: up in Seattle or Redmond where they introduced their new
Speaker 1: Copilot PCs with these chips, and the whole point is
Speaker 1: that these chips are built for efficiency, so battery life,
Speaker 1: processing efficiency, and also the AI aspects of them. Now,
Speaker 1: don't get me wrong, the AMD and Intel chips are great,
Speaker 1: but they're like powerhouses. These Snapdragon chips are more for
Speaker 1: the mobile kind of computing that people are doing today,
Speaker 1: and so there is that trade off of app compatibility
Speaker 1: now most Windows eleven apps are going to run just fine.
Speaker 1: And I think if you're using any of the Microsoft apps,
Speaker 1: any web based software, they're all going to be fine,
Speaker 1: and you're going to get good battery life and good
Speaker 1: power efficiency from these chips. And if you look at
Speaker 1: the Microsoft website, they of course have an entire way
Speaker 1: website dedicated to people asking this question because they know
Speaker 1: that people are worried about app compatibility. When when Apple
Speaker 1: first switched over to their own chips, they went from
Speaker 1: Intel to their Apple their own Silicon chips, they there
Speaker 1: was a lot of issues with compatibility and you had
Speaker 1: to download a special program I think it was called
Speaker 1: Rosetta to run a bunch of apps on your new
Speaker 1: m processors until the companies you know, eventually rewrite the
Speaker 1: apps to work natively anyway for most people. And this
Speaker 1: the website says, based on research for Microsoft, ninety percent
Speaker 1: of the total app minutes people spend today have native versions.
Speaker 1: And if you go on this website, you can scroll
Speaker 1: and just about every app you can ever imagine is
Speaker 1: on this website. One No Word, Excel, Outlook, Team Zoom, OneDrive, Dropbox, WhatsApp, Telegram, Bitwarden,
Speaker 1: all the Adobe apps, all the social media apps, web browsers,
Speaker 1: multimedia apps. So I think you're gonna be fine if
Speaker 1: you're running most apps. Now, if you're running some sort
Speaker 1: of specialty app Neil, like something that is from an
Speaker 1: older computer or something that is very specific, that may
Speaker 1: not work, and I would check with the manufacturer of
Speaker 1: that software and say, hey, how does this run on
Speaker 1: a Qualcom processor. But if you're running the basic apps
Speaker 1: that you're just downloading from the internet and running on
Speaker 1: your computer, you're probably gonna be just fine. And so again,
Speaker 1: you can go to this website it's Qualcomm dot com
Speaker 1: slash Snapdragon and then well it's kind of a long website,
Speaker 1: so but it's on there. But if you search Windows
Speaker 1: Snapdragon X compatibility, you should see this website pop up.
Speaker 1: I'll put it in the show notes as well. Rich
Speaker 1: on Tech dot TV. But I think you're gonna be okay.
Speaker 1: And I have one of these surfaces with the Qualcomm
Speaker 1: and I have no problem. I've got the Snapdragon, and
Speaker 1: you know, no problem with running anything I've run on there.
Speaker 1: Eighty eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four to two four one zero one more rich on
Speaker 1: Tech coming your way right after this. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here talking technology eighty eight
Speaker 1: rich one O one eight eight eight seven four two
Speaker 1: four one zero one the website rich on Tech dot tv.
Speaker 1: Also be sure to follow me on Instagram at rich
Speaker 1: on Tech. You guessed it. Coming up this hour, Chris
Speaker 1: Gold of Geeks on Tour is going to share some
Speaker 1: expert tips on making the most of Google Photos. That
Speaker 1: is my preferred Google, uh, my preferred photo storage and
Speaker 1: so I'm looking forward to learning something there. Let's go
Speaker 1: to Killy. Is it Killy Killy in Los Angeles or Kelly?
Speaker 6: You either want to work? Okay?
Speaker 5: So much?
Speaker 6: Yeah, appreciate this.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I've got a photostick with a whole bunch of photos
Speaker 6: on it and it will not register or when I
Speaker 6: when I plug it into my computer, have I lost everything?
Speaker 1: Now, when you say photostick, is it a specific device
Speaker 1: that you've purchased or are you just talking a flask
Speaker 1: drive with photos on it?
Speaker 6: No, it's a it's the photo stick brand.
Speaker 1: Okay, it is the photostick brand. Okay, So how is
Speaker 1: that thing? First off? Notwithstanding the current problem, Well.
Speaker 6: I don't know. I mean, I've had it for a
Speaker 6: long time, and the whole, the whole thing that got
Speaker 6: me sold on it was this idea that I that
Speaker 6: it would categorize the pictures for me and all that,
Speaker 6: But I don't know, I didn't. I didn't find it
Speaker 6: that good. But however, I mean, I didn't find it
Speaker 6: all that great for that particular purpose, and that's probably
Speaker 6: my fault.
Speaker 7: But the main.
Speaker 6: Thing was to you know, save these photos in a backup,
Speaker 6: backed up style. And now when I plug it in,
Speaker 6: to my horror, it's, well, it doesn't register.
Speaker 9: Now.
Speaker 6: The thing when when I plug it in, I do
Speaker 6: get you know what it'llllum It is that there's a
Speaker 6: red light that elluminates in the photo states. That's that's working, okay.
Speaker 6: And when I and you you hear that doorbell sound
Speaker 6: when you plug it in? Did it? Did it?
Speaker 1: So your computer is saying it's seeing that something's plunked in.
Speaker 6: I'm sorry, what was that?
Speaker 1: Your computer seeing that something's plugged in but nothing pops up?
Speaker 2: Correct?
Speaker 1: Now? Is there a special software that this runs that's
Speaker 1: that's supposed to come up? And that is that software
Speaker 1: coming up? Or are you just looking at the Windows Explorer.
Speaker 6: I'm just looking at the Windows Explorer.
Speaker 1: Okay, you know, so when you look at when you
Speaker 1: look at Windows Explorer, does the stick show up on
Speaker 1: the left hand side under like all the devices? And
Speaker 1: can you double click that?
Speaker 6: No?
Speaker 1: It doesn't, okay, okay. Have you tried restarting your computer? Yes,
Speaker 1: and it still doesn't show up?
Speaker 8: No?
Speaker 1: Okay. Have you tried a different computer?
Speaker 9: No?
Speaker 1: Okay, So that's what I would do first off. So
Speaker 1: a couple of things. Now, by the way, do you
Speaker 1: have these photos anywhere else or they just on this stick?
Speaker 6: Well, I don't know because I had you know, I
Speaker 6: haven't access to this. If it's a project I've taken
Speaker 6: on for myself. I've got thousands of photos and I've
Speaker 6: decided it's time to start because I've matched out my computer.
Speaker 6: That's another thing. Yeah, I need to start categorizing them
Speaker 6: and weeding out the ones I don't need. And that's
Speaker 6: why I, you know, picked this up to see what
Speaker 6: was on it, and I don't know, but I'm sure
Speaker 6: it's there are a lot of pictures I I thought
Speaker 6: were worth keeping.
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course. All right, Well, here's here's the steps
Speaker 1: I would I would take to see if you can
Speaker 1: rescue this thing. So first off, you know, restart your
Speaker 1: computer you already do. Make sure you have all the
Speaker 1: software updates on your computer, that's number one. And make
Speaker 1: sure that the software that whatever proprietary software that this
Speaker 1: thing runs, make sure that that's up to date as well.
Speaker 1: And then of course restart your computer. So if it's
Speaker 1: showing up and and the device is not showing up
Speaker 1: in your ex you know, in your file explorer, then
Speaker 1: that's kind of a problem. If so, what I would
Speaker 1: do is, first off, try a different computer, see if
Speaker 1: the device pops up there. And you might even try
Speaker 1: a different device, you know, if a friend has a computer, laptop, whatever,
Speaker 1: plug that photo stick in, see if you can see
Speaker 1: the files on that photostick, and if you're waiting for
Speaker 1: the computer to show up, you know, and open up
Speaker 1: those files. Just see if you can navigate to that
Speaker 1: device on your computer in the Windows file Explorer and
Speaker 1: see if you can double click and open up and
Speaker 1: see the files in there. That's number one. The other
Speaker 1: thing is do not format this device. So if you're
Speaker 1: trying to say, okay, let me format this to start over,
Speaker 1: you will definitely lose your pictures if you do that.
Speaker 1: So if you can't get this thing to show up.
Speaker 1: Let's say you try a different computer. You've tried restarting.
Speaker 1: If you can't get this thing to show up at all,
Speaker 1: then I would probably either try some data rescue software
Speaker 1: on it. You can run that, or maybe bring it
Speaker 1: to someone that's a data that runs a data rescue,
Speaker 1: you know business. So the program for the data rescue
Speaker 1: you can try as Recouva r CUVA. So install that
Speaker 1: on your computer, plug this little drive in and see
Speaker 1: if that brings it up, see if it shows up
Speaker 1: in there. And that's it. There's a reason why I
Speaker 1: don't like these little flash drives, and I get a
Speaker 1: million questions about them, And that's why I was asking
Speaker 1: about it, because I've not personally tested this device. But
Speaker 1: I don't like the website, I don't like the way
Speaker 1: they sell it, I don't like pretty much anything about it.
Speaker 1: So I personally think that the cloud is probably the
Speaker 1: best way of doing it. And I think the way
Speaker 1: they sell this to you is the fact that this
Speaker 1: software and if it does it, that's great. But this
Speaker 1: software you install on your computer, it will find all
Speaker 1: the pictures on your computer and kind of bring them
Speaker 1: onto this flash drive. I actually think that's a very
Speaker 1: helpful thing. But you can also accomplish that for free
Speaker 1: using Google Photos. And so Google Photos actually has a
Speaker 1: desktop software that will find the photos on your computer
Speaker 1: if you and install it, and if you install it
Speaker 1: on there to say, you know, here's my computer, find
Speaker 1: all the pictures, upload them to Google Photos, or you
Speaker 1: can dump them into that into a specific folder and
Speaker 1: you'll back them up. And the reason I like that
Speaker 1: is because now you have your photos in the cloud
Speaker 1: and they're safely backed up. So no matter what, I
Speaker 1: always kind of recommend that you would have your pictures
Speaker 1: in two places, which is the original location plus the cloud.
Speaker 1: Technically you're supposed to have them in three, but most
Speaker 1: people don't even have them in two. Most people don't
Speaker 1: even have any sort of backup plan for their pictures.
Speaker 1: But when it comes to achilly with the organization of photos,
Speaker 1: I don't really think that's necessary anymore, just because if
Speaker 1: you put these into something like a cloud storage, and
Speaker 1: you could choose whatever one you want. If you want iCloud, fine,
Speaker 1: if you want one drive, fine, if you want Google Photos,
Speaker 1: that's fine. Amazon Photos free with Prime membership, you can
Speaker 1: do that, but just get them in somewhere, and all
Speaker 1: of these systems have some level of AI organization, so
Speaker 1: they're going to look through these pictures and pick out
Speaker 1: the faces, pick out the places, the things, the objects,
Speaker 1: and so there's really no reason to organize these anymore
Speaker 1: into folders because if you want a picture of you
Speaker 1: in Rome, just type in Rome and even the old
Speaker 1: pictures that don't have the geotags on them, they'll still
Speaker 1: find those pictures based on things in those pictures. You know,
Speaker 1: it looks like Roman architecture or you know, anything from
Speaker 1: Rome that it picks out. It's not gonna be perfect,
Speaker 1: but it does a pretty good job. But I would
Speaker 1: also get in touch with the photostick folks and see
Speaker 1: if they have any customer service and see what they
Speaker 1: say about this not showing up. It could be something simple,
Speaker 1: but it sounds like something got a little bit. Maybe
Speaker 1: it wasn't ejected, and that could have been you know,
Speaker 1: a problem for this thing. So yeah, the main takeaway
Speaker 1: I have here is you have to have these things
Speaker 1: backed up because there's too many issues with photos where
Speaker 1: you know, you lose a password, you lose access to something,
Speaker 1: something crashes, and next thing you know, all of your
Speaker 1: photos are gone, but those are the main things I
Speaker 1: would do. I would check this on the different on
Speaker 1: a friend's computer number one and see if that if
Speaker 1: it finds the pictures there. If you're really, if you're
Speaker 1: you know, kind of advanced, you might be able to
Speaker 1: start up your computer in like safe mode and see
Speaker 1: if you can put the drive in there. Because maybe
Speaker 1: there's an app. You mean that your computer is making
Speaker 1: some sort of some sort of noise when you put
Speaker 1: this flask drive in it, so it definitely recognizes the
Speaker 1: flash drive that's being plugged in, it's just not showing
Speaker 1: you what's on there, So it could be an app
Speaker 1: that is interfering as well. Let's see, do I have
Speaker 1: time for another question or one more question? Okay, let's
Speaker 1: go to Bill and Hartford. Bill your own with Rich.
Speaker 5: Thank you taking a call.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Uh. Straight from the beginning, I tried to order a
Speaker 5: QR code online. Okay, I didn't recognize where the company
Speaker 5: was that was making the QR but evidently it's a
Speaker 5: European company. So all I'm getting is maybe if necessary
Speaker 5: text messages back and forth, no live contact. I ordered
Speaker 5: the QR code, had it printed up on vinyl. It worked,
Speaker 5: for a while, and then it set itself. It didn't
Speaker 5: necessarily set itself down totally. But now when I open it,
Speaker 5: instead of it opening up to the video presentation that
Speaker 5: I'm looking for to present, it opens up to bemo.
Speaker 5: I think it is a ve M or something. Yeah,
Speaker 5: and it's suggesting that you need to have a log in. Well,
Speaker 5: I never signed up for that. And if if I'm
Speaker 5: riding down the road and you see this on the
Speaker 5: back of my car and you don't, and you don't
Speaker 5: have a Vimeo, how do I remedy it this?
Speaker 1: Okay, so you've got you Okay, she printed, Oh wow,
Speaker 1: this is this is an interesting one. Okay, she printed
Speaker 1: the QR code. And now it's the QR code is
Speaker 1: leading to a place that you don't want it to lead,
Speaker 1: a different website than you wanted.
Speaker 5: No, well, the initial website pops up, but it will
Speaker 5: not run the video. It's initially now is calling for
Speaker 5: you to have a Vimeo account to open it up
Speaker 5: in order to see the video.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well then okay, then there's good news matters. If
Speaker 1: it's so number one, you can't change where a QR
Speaker 1: code goes to once it's created. It's not gonna unless
Speaker 1: you can do something with a QR code website that
Speaker 1: on the back end, and it depends how this QR
Speaker 1: code is made. So if the company made it where
Speaker 1: you know, they can change things on the back end.
Speaker 1: They could change the URL that this leads to. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's number one. So you would have to get in
Speaker 1: touch with them. But the thing is when you scan
Speaker 1: this code, and you can email me this code and
Speaker 1: I'll take a look. But when you scan this code,
Speaker 1: if it's going to the actual Vimeo video that you want,
Speaker 1: is that where your videos hosted Vimeo?
Speaker 5: Initially? No, it's not hosted at Vimeo. It's hosted to
Speaker 5: a business.
Speaker 1: Uh okay, well they may.
Speaker 5: Be business web adrift.
Speaker 1: They may be using Vimeo to to actually host that video.
Speaker 5: So no, I contacted them and they're not. And every
Speaker 5: time that I go back, if I go back into
Speaker 5: it outside of the QR code, I will go directly
Speaker 5: to the video. It will never Vimeo will never pop up, right, Okay,
Speaker 5: QR code that was that was developed.
Speaker 1: Did the QR code ever work?
Speaker 5: Yes?
Speaker 1: Okay, it did. Okay, So you got to get in
Speaker 1: touch with this QR code company because that's the only
Speaker 1: way that you can get them to change this link
Speaker 1: to the right link. So it sounds like they're probably
Speaker 1: using a proxy link that once someone scans this code,
Speaker 1: it brings it to where you want the code to go.
Speaker 1: It sounds like something got changed. Yeah, and so you've
Speaker 1: got to get in touch with that company to do it.
Speaker 1: Otherwise it's not You're not gonna be able to change
Speaker 1: this yourself. You can't change a QR code yourself. You
Speaker 1: have to go to the back end of where that
Speaker 1: thing is leading to and have them change it. So
Speaker 1: it's kind of a problem, Bill, But you got to
Speaker 1: get in touch with that company that made it and say, hey,
Speaker 1: look I need this to point to the right url.
Speaker 1: This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich Demiro here hanging out with you talking technology the
Speaker 1: website for the show rich on Tech dot TV. We've
Speaker 1: got an interview coming up with Chris Gold of Geeks
Speaker 1: on Tours. She's going to share some expert tips. I'm
Speaker 1: making the most to Google photos. Steve k writes in
Speaker 1: for the photostick problem, maybe look at Device Manager on
Speaker 1: Windows see if the photostick shows up there. It's a
Speaker 1: good avenue to check man so many issues. Like it's
Speaker 1: like when sometimes you get stuck in these things. It's
Speaker 1: like the QR code thing, It's like, that's a tough one,
Speaker 1: you know. This is why again, whenever you're going to
Speaker 1: do business with a company, make sure that you can
Speaker 1: get in touch with them before you pay, because if
Speaker 1: you can't get in touch with them before you pay,
Speaker 1: you're definitely not gonna be able to get in touch
Speaker 1: with them after you pay. A couple of items of note.
Speaker 1: This week, Photoshop has a new mobile app, Photoshop. Adobe
Speaker 1: launched Photoshop on the iPhone. Now this is an interesting
Speaker 1: story because I never used Photoshop on the iPhone. But
Speaker 1: they're saying Photoshop is launched on the iPhone. But if
Speaker 1: you look at the app store, Photoshop has been on
Speaker 1: the iPhone for a while. I don't think it was
Speaker 1: this level of what you can do on Photoshop, So
Speaker 1: it's a little weird that they keep saying Photoshop for
Speaker 1: the first time ever. Like, if you look at the
Speaker 1: version history of Photoshop, it's been on the iPhone since
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two at least. But I think this version
Speaker 1: is like a real version of Photoshop. So they say
Speaker 1: this is the first time a full featured, pro level
Speaker 1: image editing app, has been available for free on mobile now.
Speaker 1: Free is also an interesting word that they're using, because yes,
Speaker 1: you can get core access to Photoshop features like layering, masking, blending,
Speaker 1: and the AI generative fill features, but you are going
Speaker 1: to have to pay if you want to get the
Speaker 1: extra features. So everything, you know, if you look at
Speaker 1: apps like this, they're all freemium kind of things where
Speaker 1: you get some stuff for free. If you want to
Speaker 1: do some more, you got to pay some more. So
Speaker 1: the premium version is eight dollars a month or seventy
Speaker 1: dollars a year, and Adobe wants everyone to download this,
Speaker 1: you know, not just for the real professionals out there.
Speaker 1: They're saying, hey, look, even if you're just a casual creator,
Speaker 1: like try this out, like use this to edit your photos.
Speaker 1: And they're in an interesting place because there are a
Speaker 1: million and one photo editing apps now, and so they
Speaker 1: need to be here because so many apps are out
Speaker 1: there that let you edit your photos, especially with AI.
Speaker 1: And so now, of course these traditional companies, these companies
Speaker 1: that have been around forever, they're you know, they tried
Speaker 1: to do things their way for a long time and
Speaker 1: then they say, okay, fine, we'll try things a new
Speaker 1: way too, and I think that's what's happening here. But
Speaker 1: if you want to check it out Photoshop on mobile,
Speaker 1: I will have to download this. I haven't had a
Speaker 1: chance to download it yet, but I'll see. I always
Speaker 1: thought Photoshop was a little complicated for the average person,
Speaker 1: and that's why people went towards apps like Snapseed or
Speaker 1: the Radiant image that I recommend. One tap Google Photos
Speaker 1: has a one tap improved SODA's Apple Photos, So see
Speaker 1: what you need. DirecTV is launching some new TV packages.
Speaker 1: Now remember Direct tv has both you know, they've have
Speaker 1: the satellite business, but it's you know now they're focusing
Speaker 1: mostly on the streaming business. So now they have these
Speaker 1: new what they call genre packs, so they let you
Speaker 1: choose the content you want to watch instead of a
Speaker 1: giant bundle, and they start at thirty five bucks a month.
Speaker 1: So what can you get. They've got a My Entertainment
Speaker 1: which has forty channels, including Disney Plus and Hulu with ads.
Speaker 1: You've got My News forty dollars, includes all kinds of
Speaker 1: news services CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, CNBC. You've got a
Speaker 1: Spanish package sixty Spanish language channels for thirty five bucks.
Speaker 1: My Sports Now they launched this earlier that includes ESPN
Speaker 1: Plus and a whole bunch of sports channels, but not
Speaker 1: necessarily your regional sports channels. Then they've got some mini packs.
Speaker 1: My Cinema for ten dollars a month for classic movies.
Speaker 1: My Sports Now. Here's the thing that I'm excited for,
Speaker 1: the My Home Team mini pack, which includes those regional
Speaker 1: sports networks. That's opening, launching in time for MLB Opening Day.
Speaker 1: So when is MLB Opening day? Bobo? Do you know
Speaker 1: off the top of your head?
Speaker 9: No?
Speaker 1: Close, Let's see it looks like it is. You're very
Speaker 1: close May eighteenth, mark? Wait is twenty second Tuesday March eighteenth,
Speaker 1: and Wednesday, March nineteenth. Okay, so there you go, so close.
Speaker 1: That was a couple of days off. Looks like it's
Speaker 1: going to be in Tokyo. Is that the Dodgers playing Tokyo?
Speaker 1: I think we played a Cubs. Okay, there you go
Speaker 1: our residents sports guy, Bobo, where's that applause? So we
Speaker 1: need it. But that's the thing like these like we
Speaker 1: just had to subscribe to Fubo because you get your
Speaker 1: regional sports networks through Fubo. YouTube TV doesn't have that,
Speaker 1: so you pay for it. But here's the thing. I mean,
Speaker 1: all this is dancing around the fact that nobody really
Speaker 1: knows how to do this stuff with entertainment anymore. Because
Speaker 1: we used to have big, old cable packages that had everything.
Speaker 1: Then we went to individual streaming services. Those have gotten
Speaker 1: so expensive. Now people are going back to looking at
Speaker 1: these bundle packages and they're expensive, so not directvs. Trying
Speaker 1: smaller bundles. I mean, it's just crazy, what's happening with
Speaker 1: all this entertainment. All right, coming up, we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about Google Photos and how to make the most
Speaker 1: of it right here on rich on Tech. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to rich On Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you,
Speaker 1: talking technology. All right, We're going to talk Google Photos,
Speaker 1: one of my favorite topics because this is where I
Speaker 1: keep my pictures and I have for a long time,
Speaker 1: ever since the days of Picassa. Chris gold is with
Speaker 1: Geeks on Tour. Thanks for joining me.
Speaker 10: Yeah, thanks for having me. This is great. So I
Speaker 10: love talking about Google photos too.
Speaker 9: Oh.
Speaker 1: I know your website is very much packed with Google
Speaker 1: Photos tips and tricks and so definitely check out geeksontour
Speaker 1: dot com. But just tell me how'd you get involved
Speaker 1: in all this stuff?
Speaker 9: Hey?
Speaker 10: I love photography. I am a traveler.
Speaker 9: From two thousand and three to twenty seventeen, my husband
Speaker 9: and I lived in an RV and traveled around the country.
Speaker 9: And when you travel, you take lots and lots and
Speaker 9: lots of pictures. And I was with Picasa. I wrote
Speaker 9: a book on Picasa. I taught classes at RV rally,
Speaker 9: so I gained quite a following of people who wanted
Speaker 9: to learn how to manage their photos with Passa. And
Speaker 9: I even did a seminar at Google when Picasa was it.
Speaker 9: So when they decided to change from Picasa to Google Photos,
Speaker 9: I just jumped right on board. I figured, you know,
Speaker 9: they know what they're doing, they have the future in mind,
Speaker 9: so I want to see what's going on.
Speaker 6: I went.
Speaker 9: I jumped right in with Google Photos at the very
Speaker 9: beginning twenty fifteen.
Speaker 10: I started teaching that.
Speaker 9: I wrote a book on that, and I am now
Speaker 9: a Google Photos Product Expert Diamond level for Google.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, well, I'm going to tell you immediately off
Speaker 1: the bat my biggest pet peeve with Google Photos because
Speaker 1: I have all my pictures in there. I love it,
Speaker 1: but I have so many that to do a Google
Speaker 1: takeout backup, you know, if I want to like download
Speaker 1: them all, it's so many gigs I mean terabytes that
Speaker 1: it's almost impossible for me to do that because it's
Speaker 1: eighty files of like fifty gigs each and by the way,
Speaker 1: downloading that is no easy fee. So I suggested to Google, is,
Speaker 1: why don't you have some sort of hard drive that
Speaker 1: I can plug into Wi Fi? Right, like a hard
Speaker 1: drive I plug into the wall, connects to my WiFi.
Speaker 1: That just sinks my library all day long. So at
Speaker 1: any given moment, I just have my entire Google Photos
Speaker 1: library on this little drive in case, you know, something happens,
Speaker 1: something goes wrong. I'm like, oh, I've got my back
Speaker 1: up here. So anyway, what do you think of that idea?
Speaker 10: Well, good luck with that.
Speaker 9: I you know, I've been asking for a few features
Speaker 9: from Google ever since twenty fifteen, since it first came out,
Speaker 9: and I haven't gotten them yet.
Speaker 10: So I wouldn't hold my breath.
Speaker 9: And I have to say I do completely agree with
Speaker 9: you that takeout is completely unwieldy, and even I do
Speaker 9: have a tip though, yes, even if you do.
Speaker 10: Download all of that.
Speaker 9: Let's say you have a smaller library and you download
Speaker 9: all of your library using Google Takeout. It downloads all
Speaker 9: of your albums. Now, understand that albums in Google Photos
Speaker 9: are just a virtual construct. You'll only have one copy
Speaker 9: of a photo. It can show up in multiple albums
Speaker 9: when you use takeout. That is meant to store them
Speaker 9: on your hard drive. Hard drives work differently. Every album
Speaker 9: has to be a folder. So if you had one
Speaker 9: photo in three albums on Google Photos, you use takeout,
Speaker 9: you now have four copies of that photo, the one
Speaker 9: original and one for each what is now a folder.
Speaker 9: So yeah, my method of downloading is I make an
Speaker 9: album each month of my best photos.
Speaker 10: You know, I'm sure you're like me.
Speaker 9: You take dozens of photos when you see a good picture, right, Yeah,
Speaker 9: I don't want all those on my hard drive. I
Speaker 9: just want a backup on my hard drive of my
Speaker 9: best I mean, if the world should fall apart, I
Speaker 9: know I have.
Speaker 10: My best photos.
Speaker 9: So I make an album per month and I just
Speaker 9: use the Google album and download all to make a
Speaker 9: ZIP file of that monthly album onto my hard drive.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's that's not a bad idea that actually, you know,
Speaker 1: if yeah, all the world fell apart, you would at
Speaker 1: least have some basics of like your favorite pictures instead
Speaker 1: of the ten thousand receipts I have from last week
Speaker 1: in New York City and like, you know, these sort
Speaker 1: of things that I take pictures of. So what do
Speaker 1: you like about Google Photos for people? Because there's so
Speaker 1: many options out there, and cloud storage is confusing, you know,
Speaker 1: like even with Google Photos, people try it and they say, rich,
Speaker 1: Now I don't want it, And now I'm worried about
Speaker 1: deleting the app because I don't know if it's going
Speaker 1: to delete the photos off my phone. But what do
Speaker 1: you like about Google Photos, Like, what do you think
Speaker 1: it offers versus like iCloud or anything else out there.
Speaker 9: Well, I think Google Photos has the right philosophy, which
Speaker 9: is a very different philosophy from iCloud, which maybe we'll
Speaker 9: get through in a minute. But Google Photos says we
Speaker 9: have cloud storage, and yes, you may have to pay
Speaker 9: when you get over a certain amount, but if you're
Speaker 9: willing to pay and small amounts, it's unlimited. So your
Speaker 9: entire lifetime of photos can be in your Google account
Speaker 9: in the cloud, regardless of what phone took it, what
Speaker 9: camera took it, what scanned you took it. I have
Speaker 9: pictures from when I was a baby in my mother's arms,
Speaker 9: all the way up until just today when I took
Speaker 9: a picture of the backyard, and I can find any
Speaker 9: of those. That is That is the number one biggest
Speaker 9: purpose of Google Photos is just one home for your
Speaker 9: lifetime of photos.
Speaker 10: Searchable, searchable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and with the AI. I mean I've been playing
Speaker 1: with the AI search on it. It's actually kind of cool.
Speaker 1: It doesn't always get it right, but it finds pictures
Speaker 1: really easily. Like I mean, you could literally ask like, hey,
Speaker 1: show me my best picture from New York City last week,
Speaker 1: or you know, I want to post to Instagram and
Speaker 1: it will find something that it thinks like according to AI,
Speaker 1: what it really likes. So what do you think people
Speaker 1: should know about Google Photos, Like if they want to
Speaker 1: get started with it, is there any mistakes people make
Speaker 1: getting started?
Speaker 9: Or oh yeah, oh yeah, there's two really really really
Speaker 9: big mistakes. Number one is that if people have an
Speaker 9: iPhone or a sam Song anyway, they come with their
Speaker 9: own photo management tools. iPhone has what I call Apple Photos,
Speaker 9: Samsung has Samsung Gallery for Photos, and Google Photos can
Speaker 9: work on both iPhone and Android, which is wonderful. I mean,
Speaker 9: I have both, and I know a lot of people
Speaker 9: that have gone back and forth during the last twenty
Speaker 9: years from iPhone to Android and back. If they were
Speaker 9: using Google Photos, all of their photos are in one.
Speaker 10: So that's great.
Speaker 9: But they don't realize when they take a picture with
Speaker 9: their iPhone and then still on the camera app, they
Speaker 9: tap the little miniature to.
Speaker 10: See the photo, they're not in Google Photos.
Speaker 8: You know.
Speaker 9: People say, oh, yeah, I use Google Photos, and I say, okay,
Speaker 9: so show me a photo and I'll show you how
Speaker 9: to edit it. And they open the photo and the
Speaker 9: editing tools in Google Photos isn't there because they're not
Speaker 9: using Google Photos.
Speaker 10: They exactly.
Speaker 9: So people have to get have to understand to get
Speaker 9: in the habit. You take a photo, then you go
Speaker 9: back to your home screen and open Google Photos if
Speaker 9: you want to see it, and use Google Photos.
Speaker 1: And manage your photos from there. So if you want
Speaker 1: to delight photos or you know, whatever you want to do,
Speaker 1: you have to do it from there. In fact, on
Speaker 1: the iPhone, there's an interesting delineation too, is that and
Speaker 1: this is an iPhone thing that it doesn't necessarily run
Speaker 1: Google Photos all the time in the background like it
Speaker 1: only does it like sometimes, and so there could be
Speaker 1: a you know, on Android, as soon as you take
Speaker 1: a picture, it's basically going to be uploaded to the
Speaker 1: cloud if you're on Wi Fi or depending on how
Speaker 1: you have it. But on iPhone, you know, apps go
Speaker 1: to a deep sleep, and so your Google Photos may
Speaker 1: not back up immediately. Sometimes for me, you would have
Speaker 1: to like open up Google Photos to get it to
Speaker 1: do to trigger that backup as well.
Speaker 9: Actually you do have to do that on Android as well.
Speaker 9: It's just more pronounced on the iPhone. And yeah, turning
Speaker 9: on what is it background app refresh doesn't.
Speaker 10: Really make a difference.
Speaker 9: You do have to open the app in order to
Speaker 9: trigger the backup. Then you can close the app and
Speaker 9: the backup will continue for at least a certain amount
Speaker 9: of time. But yeah, there are some people who install
Speaker 9: Google Photos on their iPhone or even on their Android
Speaker 9: Samsung and then never open it again. You know, they
Speaker 9: keep using the app that is the default app for
Speaker 9: the phone, and yeah, it doesn't work if you don't
Speaker 9: open it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you got to use it. Lets you use it.
Speaker 1: So the biggest issue people have is they run out
Speaker 1: of space on their phone. So what's the way to
Speaker 1: kind of free up space without deleting your pictures, you know,
Speaker 1: your important pictures.
Speaker 9: Well, that was the second big mistake that I didn't
Speaker 9: get to is in deleting people. People take a photo
Speaker 9: and they see it in their like Samsung Gallery or
Speaker 9: Apple Photos, and they also see it in their Google Photos.
Speaker 9: They go to Google Photos and they say, oh, I
Speaker 9: don't need it in Google Photos. I'm just going to
Speaker 9: keep it on my phone, and they delete, not realizing
Speaker 9: that using the trash can in Google Photos deletes it
Speaker 9: from everywhere. So understanding delete is a huge issue. But
Speaker 9: specifically to your question, Google Photos does allow, oh, you
Speaker 9: to delete from the device and still see the photo
Speaker 9: that's in the cloud, that is in your Google Photos account.
Speaker 9: Apple Photos does not. Apple Photos is a synchronizing tool.
Speaker 9: Take you know, add something to this device, it gets
Speaker 9: added to all.
Speaker 10: Of your Apple devices.
Speaker 9: Delete something from this device, it gets deleted from all.
Speaker 1: And that trips up a lot of people because they
Speaker 1: think that if they're deleting it from their gallery on
Speaker 1: the iPhone, it's deleting, it's not deleting from iCloud. But
Speaker 1: those are linked and you have to There is a
Speaker 1: setting where you can you know, optimize phone storage where
Speaker 1: iCloud will manage that. But yes, if you delete it,
Speaker 1: but we'll run out of time. But yeah, so explain
Speaker 1: that you know you were containing on.
Speaker 10: Your thoughts in Google Photos.
Speaker 9: There is an option called free up space. You know,
Speaker 9: I have to back up for an individual picture. You
Speaker 9: don't have to use the trash can. You can swipe
Speaker 9: up and you will see delete from device. That will
Speaker 9: delete it from device, leaving it in the cloud so
Speaker 9: you won't miss it.
Speaker 1: It's like if you had a big video file and
Speaker 1: you don't want it to take up storage space on
Speaker 1: your device, swipe up, tap that delete from a device.
Speaker 1: It'll keep it in Google Photos in the cloud, but
Speaker 1: it will free up that storage on your phone. But
Speaker 1: then now you're talking about the bigger way that you
Speaker 1: can Yeah.
Speaker 9: Exactly, but there is a if you want to do
Speaker 9: that with all of the photos that are on your phone,
Speaker 9: there is a free up space command.
Speaker 10: That will delete everything from your phone.
Speaker 9: But only for those photos that it knows made it
Speaker 9: to the cloud, so you won't be missing anything. However,
Speaker 9: please please please make an extra backup somewhere, because Google
Speaker 9: Photos is not a backup to me. A backup is
Speaker 9: a separate copy, an extra copy that you don't use.
Speaker 9: Google Photos is meant to be your working copy, the
Speaker 9: ones that you edit, change, delete, move, make albums.
Speaker 10: If you want to be safe, you need to have
Speaker 10: another backup.
Speaker 9: I use another cloud service like one drive or dropbox
Speaker 9: or Amazon, you know, or you could.
Speaker 10: Copy to hard drive.
Speaker 1: All right, Chris Gold, thank you so much. Geeks on
Speaker 1: Tour geeks on tour dot com, check it out. They've
Speaker 1: got great, great tips for using Google Photos. Thanks so
Speaker 1: much for joining me today.
Speaker 10: Thank you.
Speaker 1: All right, coming up, we're going to open up the
Speaker 1: feedback right here on rich on Tech. Hey, welcome back
Speaker 1: to rich on Tech. Rich on Tech dot tv is
Speaker 1: the website. You can send me an email right there,
Speaker 1: hit the contact button. Let's get through a few things.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 1: Sarah writes in and says, stupid question. I'm sure, but
Speaker 1: why Oh great show and I learned something every week? Oh,
Speaker 1: thank you, Sarah. Stupid question. I'm sure, but why can't
Speaker 1: the user set up a new wake up name for Alexa?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 1: I just man, the amount of times I said at
Speaker 1: this show. I feel so bad but you know, I
Speaker 1: feel like it's Amazon's issue, Like you shouldn't have a
Speaker 1: device that understands what I'm saying, like recognize the person
Speaker 1: in your house anyway. Yes, you can change the wake
Speaker 1: word on a lot of these devices, but they have
Speaker 1: to be very specific words. And so if you have
Speaker 1: an Alexa, you can open up the Alexa app, select devices,
Speaker 1: select your device, device settings, and it says wakeword and
Speaker 1: you get your choice of a couple of wake words.
Speaker 1: Last I checked, the wake words were ziggy, Echo, Amazon,
Speaker 1: or computer and the Ziggy one. Oh gosh, people are
Speaker 1: gonna give me a hard time because the Ziggy is
Speaker 1: a reference to Oh my gosh, I got to find
Speaker 1: out what what Ziggy is a reference to. I know, gosh,
Speaker 1: I should know this. Don't ask me. I definitely don't know. Okay,
Speaker 1: you don't know. I think it's Ziggy Marley, I think
Speaker 1: I know. Okay, interesting someone I don't know Ziggy start Ust,
Speaker 1: David Bowie. I don't know. Yeah, no, I don't know
Speaker 1: what that's a reference to. What I know there is
Speaker 1: a reference to something. Yeah, it looks like it is
Speaker 1: a It is a Yeah, Ziggy start us or the
Speaker 1: computer from the TV show quantum leap. Oh it's not
Speaker 1: a reference. Oh never mind, it's not Okay, never mind, Okay,
Speaker 1: now we're just spreading this information. Okay, so never mind,
Speaker 1: it's just it's just ziggy anyway. So you can change
Speaker 1: the word, but again, it takes a bit for these
Speaker 1: computers to be constantly scanning for these words, so you
Speaker 1: can't just change it to anything that you want. They
Speaker 1: want them to be very specific. Uh so, good, good question.
Speaker 1: There a couple of news notes before we get to
Speaker 1: the actual feedback. Clicks is bringing its iPhone keyboard case
Speaker 1: to Android devices. So we talked about this Click's keyboard
Speaker 1: case a couple of years ago. They've now sold over
Speaker 1: one hundred thousand keyboards. Kind of turns your your phone,
Speaker 1: your iPhone into a BlackBerry, like a BlackBerry style keyboard.
Speaker 1: So they sold one hundred thousand of these things. Wow.
Speaker 1: Now they're expanding to the Pixel nine, the Motorola Razor,
Speaker 1: and the Samsung Galaxy S twenty five. This adds a
Speaker 1: physical keyboard to your phone, so it does make your
Speaker 1: phone considerably larger, but you got back lit keys, you
Speaker 1: got shortcut keys, no need for charging or bluetooth. It
Speaker 1: connects via USBC. They launch in either March or April
Speaker 1: or June, and prices is about it looks like about
Speaker 1: ninety nine to one hundred and thirty nine dollars. So
Speaker 1: clicks dot tech if you want to get one. This
Speaker 1: was wild Blue Origin. This is you know, the space
Speaker 1: crew stuff you know they send, you know, like Jeff
Speaker 1: Bezos went on this. This is his you know, going
Speaker 1: into outer space. They're going to send six women to
Speaker 1: space on their next mission, including Ready Gail King, Katie Perry,
Speaker 1: and Laurence say Chez, none other than Jeff Bezos's wife
Speaker 1: or girlfriend, I'm not sure which one. How wild is
Speaker 1: that they're going to space? Would you go to space
Speaker 1: bobo on this thing?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I would. You would like tomorrow. If I'm like, look
Speaker 1: we got one bobo, this person dropped out, you you're
Speaker 1: going you would go?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I would, No problem? Wow, no issues. Okay, it's a
Speaker 1: little dicey, isn't it. No, this is the eleven.
Speaker 10: I think it's something that not too many people get
Speaker 10: the opportunity to do.
Speaker 1: The eleventh human space flight for Blue Origin. So you'd
Speaker 1: be one of eleven flights. I mean there's eleven. Yeah,
Speaker 1: first eleven and there's you know, there's been other people
Speaker 1: in space obviously, but anyway, this is happening. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: that's wild. All right, let's see here feedback. Oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: Drew from Sailine Valley, California, rights and I rationally switched
Speaker 1: from a Motorola Android to an iPhone sixteen, specifically for
Speaker 1: the satellite texting. I tested it out last week and
Speaker 1: it worked flawlessly, connecting to a satellite in about thirty seconds.
Speaker 1: I stayed in touch with my wife back in Oregon
Speaker 1: with no issues. I've already canceled my inReach plan and
Speaker 1: we'll scale back my spot program later this year. Thanks
Speaker 1: for the advice on this great new feature. Awesome. Yeah,
Speaker 1: satellite texting is awesome. I mean the fact that we
Speaker 1: can do this is pretty neat. Alejandro from California rites in.
Speaker 1: I was looking into satellite Wi Fi and came across
Speaker 1: hughes Net. I currently have Spectrum. Should I switch? Is
Speaker 1: hues net any good? The reviews seem mixed. No, if
Speaker 1: you have Spectrum, if you have that availability, do not
Speaker 1: switch to hughes Net. It is not gonna be a
Speaker 1: good alternative because it's gonna be slower and much more
Speaker 1: latency than spectrum. Most of the satellite stuff, except for starlink,
Speaker 1: is for people that don't have access to anything else,
Speaker 1: like the Huge Net is for people that live in well,
Speaker 1: I mean now you have starlink pretty much everywhere, so
Speaker 1: always go with that if you're gonna go with satellite,
Speaker 1: because it's gonna be the best the best speeds in latency.
Speaker 1: All right, that's gonna do it. For the episode of
Speaker 1: the show. You can find everything I mentioned on my website.
Speaker 1: Just go to richontech dot TV. Find me on social media.
Speaker 1: I am at rich on tech. Next week we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about the crisis of healthcare misinformation as I google
Speaker 1: my ailments on chat TVT and then digital citizenship for
Speaker 1: teens and social media. We'll talk about that. Thanks so
Speaker 1: much for listening. There are so many ways you can
Speaker 1: spend your time. I do appreciate you spending it right
Speaker 1: here with me. My name is rich Dedmiro. Talk to
Speaker 1: you real soon.