Speaker 1: A new app brings I message to Android, but now
Speaker 1: it's a game of cat and mouse with Apple. The
Speaker 1: way a push notification can be used to spy on you.
Speaker 1: How to bring Ai Santa to your backyard, plus your
Speaker 1: tech questions answered. What's going on. I'm Rich Demiro and
Speaker 1: this is Rich on Tech broadcasting live from Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: coast to coast. This is the show where I talk
Speaker 1: about the tech stuff I think you should know about.
Speaker 1: It's also the place where I answer your questions about technology.
Speaker 1: I believe that tech should be interesting, useful, and fun.
Speaker 1: Phone lines are open at triple eight Rich one oh one.
Speaker 1: That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one
Speaker 1: zero one.
Speaker 2: Give me a call.
Speaker 1: If you have a question about technology. Email also open.
Speaker 1: Just go to richon tech dot TV hit contact. We've
Speaker 1: got a great show this week. We've got guests in voting.
Speaker 1: Eric Mitchagovski, the co founder of Beeper. He's going to
Speaker 1: talk about Beeper Mini. This is the app that brought
Speaker 1: my message to Android for a hot minute this week,
Speaker 1: and it is currently shut down by Apple apparently, and
Speaker 1: maybe back up and running by the time you listen
Speaker 1: to this.
Speaker 2: Who knows.
Speaker 1: If you're not listening live Mitch Lee, one of the
Speaker 1: founders of ARC. This is a startup building all electric
Speaker 1: performance speed boats. I had the chance to go out
Speaker 1: on one of their basically Tesla's of the Sea and
Speaker 1: it is wild. So we'll talk to Mitch about electrifying
Speaker 1: the boating industry. And we've got Steven Akino, a freelance
Speaker 1: tech journalist covering accessibility and assistive technologies. He's going to
Speaker 1: talk about Microsoft's Seeing Ai app, which is now on Android,
Speaker 1: Apple's personal voice feature, and PlayStation's new accessible controller.
Speaker 2: Well, I hope you're having a great week.
Speaker 1: Last week after the show, I went to dinner and
Speaker 1: a little wild story. So we're at dinner and basically
Speaker 1: I'm taking a picture outside as I typically do my wife,
Speaker 1: my kid, me taking a selfie outside this restaurant and
Speaker 1: someone comes up and they say, hey, do you want
Speaker 1: me to take your picture for you? As I always
Speaker 1: say sure, go ahead, and so they take my phone.
Speaker 1: They stand out in the street and they say, Hey,
Speaker 1: wouldn't it be wild if I just are you worried
Speaker 1: that I might just take your phone right now? And
Speaker 1: I was like, oh what? And I kind of like
Speaker 1: thought about this and I was like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: Like I just handed over my unlocked phone to some
Speaker 1: stranger and.
Speaker 2: I kept it cool.
Speaker 1: I played it cool and was like, no, it's fine,
Speaker 1: you could take it, and you know, just clearly the
Speaker 1: guy didn't look like he was going to take my phone,
Speaker 1: but I think he was just playing with me. But
Speaker 1: it really resonated with me, and it kind of struck
Speaker 1: a nerve because I realized that we give our phones
Speaker 1: to people all the time to take pictures, and most
Speaker 1: of the time it's kind of like unprompted, Like people
Speaker 1: will come up to us and say, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: can I take your picture, and we just take our
Speaker 1: unlocked phone and kind of hand it to them. This
Speaker 1: happens at you know, theme parks in the street in
Speaker 1: foreign countries, and it just made me realize that, like,
Speaker 1: that's kind of scary, Like what could someone do when
Speaker 1: they have your phone. Well, they can look at your
Speaker 1: personal information, your contacts, your emails, your messages, your photos.
Speaker 1: They might try to access your banking apps. Now, a
Speaker 1: lot of these apps do require another level of authorization,
Speaker 1: like a pin code or your face ID, so that
Speaker 1: does make a little bit more sense, but some of
Speaker 1: them do not so if you can inside your financial
Speaker 1: apps PayPal, Venmo, make sure that you have the secondary
Speaker 1: authentication on inside those apps.
Speaker 2: Social media.
Speaker 1: Imagine someone just takes my phone and they post start
Speaker 1: posting stuff on social media on my behalf.
Speaker 2: That would not be good.
Speaker 1: I've got a lot of followers on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
Speaker 2: I would not want them to do that.
Speaker 1: They could immediately try to change your passwords and lock
Speaker 1: you out of your phone. Wall Street Journal did a
Speaker 1: story about how if a thief basically has your passcode,
Speaker 1: they are able to reset your entire iCloud account and
Speaker 1: lock you out. That's pretty scary, but that does require
Speaker 1: your pass code. But think about it. We put our
Speaker 1: pass code in all the time. Maybe you just typed
Speaker 1: it in. They say, can I see your phone? And
Speaker 1: now you've got your passcode and your phone, they might
Speaker 1: try to install malware spyware.
Speaker 2: Of course.
Speaker 1: The first thing they might do is go into your
Speaker 1: settings and turn off the auto lock. Set it to
Speaker 1: never so that your phone doesn't lock. Because think about it,
Speaker 1: the good news is most of our phones are gonna
Speaker 1: lock after a couple of minutes, right, so at the
Speaker 1: worst comes to worse If they don't keep that screen
Speaker 1: on your phone is gonna lock. But I tell you
Speaker 1: all this because I'm not saying don't trust anyone, but
Speaker 1: it's one of those things that our phone is our
Speaker 1: life and just to hand it over to some stranger
Speaker 1: is kind of weird that we do that. So I
Speaker 1: guess my bigger point is if you can member to
Speaker 1: do this, If you're going to hand your phone to
Speaker 1: a stranger to take your picture, make sure your phone
Speaker 1: is locked, right so there is a way to access
Speaker 1: the camera on most iPhones and Androids with the screen locked,
Speaker 1: and on iPhone it's a little tricky because as soon
Speaker 1: as you look at your phone, it's gonna unlock. So
Speaker 1: what you have to do is you have to make
Speaker 1: sure your phone is locked, angle it away from you,
Speaker 1: light up the screen, and then swipe over to access
Speaker 1: the camera or tap the camera short cut, all while
Speaker 1: aiming the screen away from you so that face ID
Speaker 1: does not identify you. On Android, it's a little bit
Speaker 1: easier because you can double click the power button on
Speaker 1: the right side on most Android phones and that will
Speaker 1: bring you to the camera without unlocking the phone.
Speaker 2: So it's a little food for thought.
Speaker 1: I posted it to my ex at Rich on Tech
Speaker 1: and a lot of people were kind of chiming in
Speaker 1: talked about it on TV, and again, it's one of
Speaker 1: those things. I don't think people are bad. I think
Speaker 1: most people are actually good, but you can never be
Speaker 1: too safe, especially when someone offers to do this for you.
Speaker 1: What else this week, Oh, we got to talk about
Speaker 1: this whole I Message on Android thing. I'm going to
Speaker 1: talk about that in a little bit because I've got
Speaker 1: an interview with the guy who created the app Beeper Mini,
Speaker 1: which brings I Message to Android. We tape the interview
Speaker 1: and I said, can we please do this interview live?
Speaker 1: And he just wasn't available to do it live, so
Speaker 1: we taped it and I said, I hope things don't
Speaker 1: change before the show airs, And of course things have
Speaker 1: changed because the app was available and next thing, you know,
Speaker 1: Apple somehow shut it down, so it's not available as
Speaker 1: I speak right now, but they are working on it
Speaker 1: and it may be back available. But I thought the
Speaker 1: interview was still interesting because you can hear what his
Speaker 1: standpoint is on this entire situation, like why he thinks
Speaker 1: that Android users should get access to blue bubbles on
Speaker 1: the iPhone. Right before I came in to do the show.
Speaker 1: I got a phone call from a family member that
Speaker 1: was attempting to watch a sports game. And when you
Speaker 1: don't have cable, it is really tough to watch sports.
Speaker 1: And that is part of a strategy by the cable
Speaker 1: companies and the sports and all this good stuff to
Speaker 1: get you to spend money.
Speaker 2: And I get it. Sports are very expensive.
Speaker 1: It's not cheap to have that broadcast live from various
Speaker 1: places across the US every weekend, day in, day out,
Speaker 1: But there's a lot of money riding on sports and
Speaker 1: that has been kind of the one major holdout when
Speaker 1: people cut the cord. Right So for me, I cut
Speaker 1: the cord a long time ago. I can get almost
Speaker 1: anything I want to watch over the air on antenna
Speaker 1: or by streaming, or by some of these free apps
Speaker 1: just cobbling things together. But when it comes to sports,
Speaker 1: it's really tough because typically games are on one place,
Speaker 1: one channel, and you have to subscribe to get that.
Speaker 1: Now Amazon has been doing something really cool and it's
Speaker 1: kind of neat where they do with Thursday night Football game,
Speaker 1: and it is available to all Prime members across any
Speaker 1: device that you can watch Prime on, whether it's a
Speaker 1: cell phone or a Roku or an Apple TV. Apple
Speaker 1: kind of did the same thing with their MLS. They
Speaker 1: bought the Major League Soccer and they made it available
Speaker 1: across any device using the Apple TV app. And so
Speaker 1: that was interesting because it was kind of the first
Speaker 1: time that there were no blackouts. You could watch the
Speaker 1: game no matter where you were on the device you wanted.
Speaker 1: But so I'm explaining to this family member about YouTube
Speaker 1: TV and they say, I can't believe YouTube TV is
Speaker 1: seventy three dollars a month. I said, yeah, let's basically
Speaker 1: cable except through the internet. And they said, wait, what
Speaker 1: what does that mean. I said, well, you get this
Speaker 1: through the internet. And they said, well, how do I
Speaker 1: sign up? I said, okay, you go to YouTube TV.
Speaker 2: On the internet. Oh, on the internet, not on my phone.
Speaker 1: I said, well, you can go on your phone, but
Speaker 1: it's probably easier from a desktop. Oh, okay, you sign
Speaker 1: it with your Google account and now you sign up
Speaker 1: and you pay the money and they will charge you
Speaker 1: and now you have access to these channels.
Speaker 2: Well how do I get it on the TV?
Speaker 1: I said, well, you download the YouTube TV app and
Speaker 1: then you sign in on the app on your screen. Wait,
Speaker 1: what how do I do that it's very complicated. And
Speaker 1: as I'm explaining all of this to my family member,
Speaker 1: I realized just how wildly complicated this stuff sounds to
Speaker 1: someone that doesn't really understand. And this was the best
Speaker 1: two questions I got from the family member. They said, well,
Speaker 1: hold on, how am I going to get TV delivered
Speaker 1: to my TV without a cable? And I said, well,
Speaker 1: it comes through the internet. It doesn't come through a
Speaker 1: cable anymore. But you also, he said, but I also
Speaker 1: have to have internet though, right, I said, yes, you
Speaker 1: have to continue paying for the Internet to get this
Speaker 1: TV delivered over the Internet.
Speaker 2: And then this was the kicker on the whole thing.
Speaker 1: He goes, well, hold on, I already subscribed to YouTube
Speaker 1: TV once and I went to my YouTube and I
Speaker 1: still had ads, so I don't get it. And I said, well,
Speaker 1: YouTube TV does not get rid of ads on YouTube,
Speaker 1: which does not make any sense whatsoever. I remember a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago, I was sitting in the audience
Speaker 1: at YouTube headquarters here in Los Angeles where they do
Speaker 1: all the YouTube TV stuff, and they were announcing YouTube
Speaker 1: TV and back then, by the way, it was thirty
Speaker 1: five dollars, and they took us in a room and
Speaker 1: they had a Q and A. And after I listened
Speaker 1: to all of this information about YouTube TV, I said,
Speaker 1: hold on, stupid question. I said, is YouTube ad free
Speaker 1: included in YouTube TV? And they said, oh no, that's
Speaker 1: still a separate charge. So if you want YouTube TV
Speaker 1: and YouTube without ads, YouTube without ads is something like,
Speaker 1: you know, ten fifteen bucks a month, and then YouTube
Speaker 1: TV is another seventy three dollars a month. You're talking
Speaker 1: almost one hundred dollars a month for just one service.
Speaker 1: Now that may be cheaper than what you're paying for
Speaker 1: cable and some aspects. But my point is this stuff
Speaker 1: is complicated, and it made me realize to say, the
Speaker 1: emails I get, the questions I get. I take for
Speaker 1: granted that I am in the thick of this stuff
Speaker 1: every day and it makes so much sense to me.
Speaker 1: But I understand your woes. So give me a call
Speaker 1: if you have a question about technology. It's triple eight
Speaker 1: rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to
Speaker 1: two four one zero one. There is no such thing
Speaker 1: as a stupid tech question. My name is rich Demiro.
Speaker 2: Give me a call.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging
Speaker 1: out with you, talking Technology at triple eight rich one
Speaker 1: oh one. That's eight eight eight seven.
Speaker 2: Four to two four to one zero one.
Speaker 1: Getting a lot of messages recently about Amazon getting hacked.
Speaker 1: I guess a lot of people are posting on social
Speaker 1: media that if you look inside your Amazon account, there
Speaker 1: are a bunch of Amazon lockers that have been added
Speaker 1: to your address book, and so people are saying, you
Speaker 1: got hacked, your account was accessed by a hacker. They
Speaker 1: added these lockers to your account so that they can
Speaker 1: deliver stuff from your account to these lockers and pick
Speaker 1: it up without you ever knowing. And it turns out
Speaker 1: that's not really true. So I did look in my
Speaker 1: account and sure enough, there were a couple of Amazon
Speaker 1: lockers that were added, and I kind of thought that Amazon.
Speaker 2: Put these in there.
Speaker 1: It's because they've been really pushing me to pick up
Speaker 1: my stuff instead of delivering it to me. And I said, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: that's not how the situation works. Like you were started
Speaker 1: as a company to deliver stuff to my house. I
Speaker 1: don't want to go out and pick up stuff. That's
Speaker 1: why you're delivering.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Every time I place an order right now, Amazon sends
Speaker 1: me a notification that says Hey, we're delivering this order
Speaker 1: to you, but would you like to pick it up
Speaker 1: at a locker? And I say no, I don't want
Speaker 1: to pick it up, and I just ignore the text.
Speaker 1: But there are accounts that do have these lockers in them,
Speaker 1: and it's making the rounds on social media. And as
Speaker 1: soon as I get a whole bunch of messages about this,
Speaker 1: I have to do some research. And my research brought
Speaker 1: me to Snopes and so apparently this is not Amazon
Speaker 1: did not get hacked, but it did happen, and according
Speaker 1: to Amazon, there is let's see a small number of
Speaker 1: customer accounts that got lockers added in error. We are
Speaker 1: working to fix the issue. That's what they told Snopes.
Speaker 1: Now I don't really believe that. I think that Amazon
Speaker 1: did add lockers to a lot of people's accounts. And
Speaker 1: you can go into your Amazon account and check. There
Speaker 1: is no harm that these lockers are in there. It's
Speaker 1: not the default shipping, it's not your stuff is not
Speaker 1: being sent to these lockers automatically. Hackers are not ordering
Speaker 1: stuff to these lockers. So your account remains secure as
Speaker 1: long as you have a strong password, two factor authentication.
Speaker 1: Turn it on for your Amazon account. Don't click the
Speaker 1: links in your email that say.
Speaker 2: Hey, we have an Amazon order for you.
Speaker 1: We need you to confirm everything from your Social Security
Speaker 1: number to your data birth.
Speaker 2: Don't do it. It is not ah.
Speaker 1: Let's see, let's go to uh, let's go. Let's take
Speaker 1: a call. Let's go to Ian in Durango, Colorado. Ian
Speaker 1: you're on with Rich?
Speaker 3: Hey, Rich, I just wanted to put my two cents
Speaker 3: on the whole internet cable thing.
Speaker 2: Sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if if you want to, you know, make things happen.
Speaker 3: If you're just a casual you know, consumer of media
Speaker 3: or whatever, if you want to do it on a budget,
Speaker 3: my recommend dation is, you know, just pay for your internet,
Speaker 3: you know, don't buy any fancy subscriptions unless you know
Speaker 3: you got a friend or something that's let you.
Speaker 2: Borrow theirs or which to do.
Speaker 4: But yeah, well yeah, exactly if you do.
Speaker 3: But I recommend Internet archive dot org. I believe it's
Speaker 3: dot org. I gotta I have to Google again. But
Speaker 3: Internet archives is a fantastic.
Speaker 4: Website to use.
Speaker 3: If there's just some movie you want to watch, some
Speaker 3: show you want to watch, some music you want to
Speaker 3: listen to. There's just a lot of stuff on there.
Speaker 3: That they just archive and they have it off on free,
Speaker 3: you know, commercial free. You know, for like during the
Speaker 3: Halloween season, I could watch every Friday the thirteenth free
Speaker 3: of charge. Really, it's all it's just a historical like
Speaker 3: project and so they just archive film, movies, websites.
Speaker 5: It's just a fantastic wow.
Speaker 2: I'm looking at it, it's said.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm familiar with Internet Archive because they do
Speaker 1: the wayback machine. So if you want to see like
Speaker 1: an old version of a website, you can pop in
Speaker 1: the URL and it will show you like what Yahoo looked.
Speaker 2: Like in nineteen ninety seven or something.
Speaker 1: But this is saying they've got thirty nine million books,
Speaker 1: eleven million films, fifteen million pieces of music, two point
Speaker 1: six something of TV software, photos, audio. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't realize they have all this stuff on here.
Speaker 1: So that's a great way to, uh to find stuff,
Speaker 1: especially if.
Speaker 3: It's like something older and you're looking you're looking for
Speaker 3: an older black and white film or something and you
Speaker 3: don't want to pay the five bucks to get it
Speaker 3: on a streaming service. You know, google it.
Speaker 6: There you go.
Speaker 1: They most likely have it, all right, and thank you, good, good,
Speaker 1: good free resource and since it's news to me, I'm
Speaker 1: guessing it's news to others. I know the website. I
Speaker 1: didn't realize they have all this stuff. The website is
Speaker 1: archive dot org, Archive dot org. A lot of stuff there.
Speaker 2: Wow. Good good, Uh good call.
Speaker 1: If you use Gmail, their AI spam detection is getting
Speaker 1: a major upgrade.
Speaker 2: So I don't know if you remember these emails.
Speaker 1: We were getting them for a while, but they would
Speaker 1: be emails that would just be like an image or
Speaker 1: some kind of like, you know, you want a gift
Speaker 1: card or something, and so it was really tough for
Speaker 1: Gmail filters to find these things and figure them out.
Speaker 1: They're called adversarial text manipulations. These are emails that are
Speaker 1: full of special characters and emojis. Well, now Gmail has
Speaker 1: a new AI system called retvec and they say it's
Speaker 1: a thirty eight percent improvement in spam detection, and so
Speaker 1: Google says this is their largest defense upgrade in recent years,
Speaker 1: and apparently it's open source, so they're going to use
Speaker 1: it in other applications. Other email systems can use this.
Speaker 1: But the upgrade makes it much harder for spammers to
Speaker 1: trick Gmail, and the system is apparently very efficient, so
Speaker 1: it can kind of look for things instead of just
Speaker 1: scanning the email for like words like, uh, you know, promotion,
Speaker 1: gift card, free, whatever. Now it's actually looking at the
Speaker 1: email like a human would look at it and say, oh,
Speaker 1: this is total garbage, and it will send it to spam.
Speaker 2: So less of those things are gonna get through. That's
Speaker 2: a good thing, all right.
Speaker 1: Coming up, I'm gonna tell you about this whole Beeper
Speaker 1: Mini controversy, the app that tried to get I message
Speaker 1: to Android. We're going to talk to the co founder
Speaker 1: of Beeper coming up next. You are listening to rich
Speaker 1: on Tech eighty to eight rich one oh one. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out
Speaker 1: with you talking technology at triple eight rich one O one.
Speaker 1: That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one
Speaker 1: zero one. Give me a call if you have a
Speaker 1: question about technology. The website rich on Tech dot TV.
Speaker 1: So we got an app this week called Beeper Mini.
Speaker 1: This app brings blue bubbles to Android and it was
Speaker 1: working really well for just about twenty four hours and
Speaker 1: then everyone said, oh, Apple's going to shut this down,
Speaker 1: and sure enough, without saying a word. By the way,
Speaker 1: Apple somehow tweaked their system and took this down. So
Speaker 1: a lot of people that were testing it, like myself,
Speaker 1: some people actually installed it and started using it and
Speaker 1: were very excited it all came down. So Beeper says
Speaker 1: they are working to get this up and running again,
Speaker 1: but we don't know if they will be able to
Speaker 1: do that. But I do have an interview that I
Speaker 1: conducted with Eric Midchiakowski.
Speaker 2: This is the co founder of Beeper.
Speaker 1: I still think it's relevant because he explains why he's
Speaker 1: doing this and why they want to bring I Message
Speaker 1: to Android. So let's hear from Eric.
Speaker 7: So I've been working in startups for a while. I
Speaker 7: started a company called Pebble back in the day, we
Speaker 7: made smart watches, and ever since then, I've kind of
Speaker 7: looked down at my phone and seen that I have
Speaker 7: this folder full of chat apps. You know, I have Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp.
Speaker 7: I all kind of do the same thing, but I
Speaker 7: have a different section of my contact list on each one,
Speaker 7: so I have to keep them all installed. And a
Speaker 7: couple of years ago, I said, I just want to
Speaker 7: have one app that I can use to chat with
Speaker 7: anyone on any chat never. I don't want to have
Speaker 7: to remember you know who's on WhatsApp and who's on
Speaker 7: I Message, and it's just a hassle. So I started
Speaker 7: building an app called Beeper. Beeper lets you chat with
Speaker 7: anyone on any chat, all from one single app on
Speaker 7: your phone or your computer.
Speaker 1: And I noticed that when I DMed you via Twitter,
Speaker 1: I got an immediate response, which is quite rare. And
Speaker 1: I'm assuming that's because it routed through your Beeper.
Speaker 4: That's it.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I spend a lot of time chatting, and all
Speaker 7: of my chat apps go to the same inbox, so
Speaker 7: I just have one place to check.
Speaker 2: And I noticed this personally.
Speaker 1: I was testing Beeper and I linked up a bunch
Speaker 1: of my accounts Instagram, LinkedIn and several others, and for
Speaker 1: the first time ever, I had someone text me and
Speaker 1: I did even realize that it was coming through LinkedIn,
Speaker 1: and I responded back and forth immediately, and then I
Speaker 1: realized later on, I said, oh, wow, that came in
Speaker 1: through LinkedIn. I never respond to LinkedIn messages typically because
Speaker 1: I just don't think to check them, and here it is.
Speaker 1: It just kind of opened up that entire way of responding.
Speaker 7: But that's what we started working on a couple of
Speaker 7: years ago. But one of the problems that we ran
Speaker 7: into is well, I mean, to be completely honest, I'll
Speaker 7: just put it out there. I'm an Android user. I'm
Speaker 7: a proud Android user, and I've been one for twelve
Speaker 7: years now. I have never been able to chat with
Speaker 7: people on iPhones in the same way that iPhone users
Speaker 7: can chat. I know that when people add me to
Speaker 7: group chats, my ANDROIDNSS causes the whole group chat to
Speaker 7: turn into a green bubble, and that, you know, I
Speaker 7: hate to say it is a bit of a turn off.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 7: iPhone users are used to blue bubbles, and they expect them,
Speaker 7: and so when there's a green bubble in the midst
Speaker 7: it's a little bit weird. We wanted to solve that.
Speaker 7: Chat is about bringing people together, it's about you know,
Speaker 7: connecting people, it's about you know, just just hanging out
Speaker 7: and chatting, and we didn't want this thing to come
Speaker 7: in the way of that. So we set out to
Speaker 7: build the first app for Android that lets you send
Speaker 7: and receive blue bubble messages to iPhones. It's literally as
Speaker 7: easy as going to the play Store, searching for Deeper
Speaker 7: Mini and downloading the app on your Android phone. As
Speaker 7: soon as you download it, you press a couple buttons
Speaker 7: and you can start chatting with all of your iPhone
Speaker 7: friends with a blue bubble. That means that you can
Speaker 7: send full resolution images, videos, no more staticky you know,
Speaker 7: small videos anymore. You can send emoji reactions, you can
Speaker 7: participate in threads. All of your chats are now encrypted
Speaker 7: so no one else can read them. And best of all,
Speaker 7: your iPhone friends, when they type in your phone number,
Speaker 7: you'll show up as a blue bubble, and you're probably
Speaker 7: going to be more likely to be added to group chats.
Speaker 7: I certainly have found that.
Speaker 1: Okay, So, Eric, I'm imagining that you did not go
Speaker 1: to WWDC Apple's developer conference and get the blessing of
Speaker 1: Apple to do this. So how did you make this
Speaker 1: possible for these Android users?
Speaker 7: Actually a pretty interesting story. So up until deeper many
Speaker 7: the only devices that could send blue bubble messages were
Speaker 7: iPhones and Max. But over the summer, a sixteen year
Speaker 7: old security reacher researcher actually uncovered the secret to how
Speaker 7: I message works, and he wrote up a blog post
Speaker 7: and created a kind of open source project that describes it.
Speaker 7: We found it. Actually he contacted us, and well, I
Speaker 7: mean we hired him as this sixteen year old kid
Speaker 7: to work with us to help us crack the code
Speaker 7: and figure out how to get this to work on
Speaker 7: Android phones. So over the last few months we've been
Speaker 7: working furiously on that, and just this week we announced
Speaker 7: the app for the first time.
Speaker 2: Is there any sort of security issue here?
Speaker 1: Is there any sort of worrisome aspect of this other
Speaker 1: than the fact that Apple may or may not shut
Speaker 1: this down?
Speaker 2: And I guess that's my other question. Can Apple shut
Speaker 2: this down?
Speaker 7: Well, here's how I look at it. Rich iPhone users today,
Speaker 7: when they send a message to a friend on an
Speaker 7: Android phone, they get a worse experience. It's not great.
Speaker 7: You know, there's no like I said, there's no high
Speaker 7: resolution pictures, Your messages are unencrypted. When your Android friend
Speaker 7: downloads peper Mini, all of a sudden, you get a
Speaker 7: better experience on your iPhone. And now I think it
Speaker 7: would be kind of crazy to stop something like that.
Speaker 7: Bper Mini is an app that makes both Android users
Speaker 7: lives better as well as iPhone users. So I think
Speaker 7: it'd be like, I think it'd be nuts to stop
Speaker 7: something like that. It's just a net positive for the world,
Speaker 7: and in terms of security, we have gone out of
Speaker 7: our way to make this as secure and private as possible.
Speaker 7: So the most important thing that we've done is we
Speaker 7: do something called end to end encryption. That means that
Speaker 7: when you send a message using deeper Mini, your message
Speaker 7: is encrypted before it gets sent. That means that no
Speaker 7: one can read your message. We can't read it. Apple
Speaker 7: can't read it, your internet provider, your cell phone plan
Speaker 7: can't read that message. No one can read the message
Speaker 7: except for the recipient, except for the person that you're
Speaker 7: sending it to. And that's really important. And up until now,
Speaker 7: if you are an Android user sending a message to
Speaker 7: an iPhone user, your message wouldn't be encrypted. Basically everyone
Speaker 7: could read it. It's like a postcard. And so peeper
Speaker 7: Mini actually brings a lot more security to the average
Speaker 7: group chat or direct message.
Speaker 2: Why didn't Apple make this app?
Speaker 7: I mean they kind of are. So there was some
Speaker 7: news two weeks ago where Apple said that they're going
Speaker 7: to adopt an open standard for messaging called RCS, the
Speaker 7: Rich Chat Service Protocol. They didn't say exactly when they're
Speaker 7: going to do this, maybe by the end of twenty
Speaker 7: twenty four, so fingers crossed, you know, it would be
Speaker 7: a lot easier for us to do our jobs if
Speaker 7: there was an open standard for messaging. So we're excited
Speaker 7: by the possibility that Apple will do this, but we
Speaker 7: just just said we couldn't wait. We had to do
Speaker 7: it now.
Speaker 1: All right, There you have it, Beeper Mini. It was
Speaker 1: working really well for about twenty four hours, and you
Speaker 1: heard the question, I said, is Apple going to shut
Speaker 1: this down? And indeed they seem to have shut this down.
Speaker 1: So Beeper was tweeting over the overnight saying that they
Speaker 1: are working on getting this back up and running. But
Speaker 1: at this point it's kind of a game of cat
Speaker 1: and mouse because Apple sort of refuses to bring this
Speaker 1: to Android when they know they can and make a
Speaker 1: lot of lives better. I mean, the divide between you know,
Speaker 1: the green bubble and the blue bubble. It's a real
Speaker 1: thing and it's really annoying. And it's like the debate
Speaker 1: I posted on my Instagram at rich on Tech a
Speaker 1: simple question, I said, iPhone versus Android, And you can't
Speaker 1: believe that in the year twenty twenty three, people are
Speaker 1: still debating the merits of these two platforms. Now, I
Speaker 1: don't mind if you have a preference for the phone
Speaker 1: that you want. That's fine. There's a lot of options
Speaker 1: on either side, but the fact that our messaging does
Speaker 1: not work in the same way, and I feel like
Speaker 1: a broken record because I've talked about this so much.
Speaker 2: It's just not right now.
Speaker 1: Apple is bringing RCS to the iPhone next year, they
Speaker 1: said late next year. That's still another possible six, seven, eight, nine,
Speaker 1: ten months that people have to deal with this. And
Speaker 1: even when RCS comes to the iPhone, which means Android
Speaker 1: users will be able to exchange high quality photos and
Speaker 1: videos with iPhone users, they will also be able to
Speaker 1: get those you know, everything's just gonna work nice. So
Speaker 1: that's basically it is. You'll be able to, you know,
Speaker 1: exchange the videos and photos and not have them look
Speaker 1: like a postage stamp. That will be the big advantage.
Speaker 1: But the messages are still going to turn up green.
Speaker 1: So Beeper was onto something. They were trying something. We'll see,
Speaker 1: we'll continue to see if this works out. By the way,
Speaker 1: they are charging two dollars a month, something else that
Speaker 1: Apple probably doesn't like. All right, if you have a
Speaker 1: question for me, give me a call. Triple eight rich
Speaker 1: one O one that's eighty eight seven.
Speaker 2: Four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: You can also go to the website rich on Tech
Speaker 1: dot TV, hit the contact link and you can send
Speaker 1: me your email.
Speaker 2: More rich on Tech coming your way right after this.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech, Rich to Miuro here
Speaker 1: talking technology. Triple eight Rich one oh one is the
Speaker 1: phone number for the show. That's eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four to two four one zero one. This is show
Speaker 1: number forty nine. By the way, if you can believe it,
Speaker 1: it's almost been a full year of this show, which
Speaker 1: I want to say thank you for inviting me into
Speaker 1: your home and your car and your speakers and your
Speaker 1: phone and your earbuds and all the other places you
Speaker 1: might listen. It has truly been an honor. And uh,
Speaker 1: it's not over. It's not like this is not like
Speaker 1: a goodbye, It's go. It kind of started to sound
Speaker 1: like I thought Bobo was gonna play me out for
Speaker 1: a second there. No, I'm just saying thank you. I
Speaker 1: just can't believe a year has gone by that fast
Speaker 1: playing me out music. Let's go to uh John in
Speaker 1: more Park.
Speaker 9: John, You're on with rich Thank you Rich taking my call.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 9: I use YouTube. I listened to it via Wi Fi
Speaker 9: and whatever. Normally it works just fine. But every once
Speaker 9: in a while they speed up the the velocity of
Speaker 9: their speech. There's doubles of their time, and I have
Speaker 9: hard time at normal speed even either that's too fast
Speaker 9: for me. I'm so slow. Is there any way I
Speaker 9: can get around that? A trait of YouTube's feeding me up.
Speaker 9: So it happens a few seconds and then they go
Speaker 9: back to normal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think, I think I know what's happening here.
Speaker 1: There's well, there's a couple of things, and I actually
Speaker 1: think I have a solution to your you know, if
Speaker 1: you want to listen to things slower too, there's actually
Speaker 1: a solution for that. But so, what's happening I think,
Speaker 1: And I've seen this before on my Instagram. I have
Speaker 1: a really bad connection at one of the places why
Speaker 1: I look at Instagram and my stories and like the
Speaker 1: same thing happens. Like I'm watching a reel and it's
Speaker 1: like super fast, and all of a sudden it slows down,
Speaker 1: and then it speeds up and it slows down. And
Speaker 1: what's happening, I think, is an unstable internet connection. So
Speaker 1: it's buffering, and so it's getting all that stuff and
Speaker 1: it starts to play it and then it slows down
Speaker 1: and it starts to play it again. So I think
Speaker 1: that's what's happening here. So what you can do is
Speaker 1: you can try to improve your Internet connection wherever you're
Speaker 1: using this, So I know, if it's a TV or
Speaker 1: something or a computer, you know, you may not be
Speaker 1: able to move it to a different place, but that
Speaker 1: might be it. But you might want to just kind
Speaker 1: of like clear the cookies and the cash on your
Speaker 1: computer and on your web browser, I should say, And
Speaker 1: maybe that will help kind of clear things out and
Speaker 1: make YouTube run smooth again. Now, if you want to
Speaker 1: listen to things a little bit slower on YouTube, actually
Speaker 1: is a way to do that. And I'm not sure
Speaker 1: if this is just a premium feature. I pay for
Speaker 1: like YouTube premium, so I'm seeing this on my account,
Speaker 1: but it may be available to everyone. But if you
Speaker 1: are watching a video, there's a little gear icon and
Speaker 1: it says playback speed, and you can playback normal. Some
Speaker 1: people like to listen to things faster, so they'll do
Speaker 1: like a two X, but you can choose anything from
Speaker 1: point two five to two X. So if you want
Speaker 1: to listen to something slower, that is a way to
Speaker 1: do it. And that's just a built into YouTube. I
Speaker 1: don't know if that's a premium feature though, I do
Speaker 1: not have information on that right now, but I know
Speaker 1: it's on my account.
Speaker 2: I guess I can go into like a you know
Speaker 2: what I can do. Let me try this.
Speaker 1: I'm going to go into a incognito web browser and
Speaker 1: see if that's still available, and sure enough it is,
Speaker 1: So there you go. So John, just tap that little
Speaker 1: gear icon in the on the screen when you're watching
Speaker 1: a video and it will say playback speed, which is
Speaker 1: anywhere from point two five to two.
Speaker 2: Good question. Thanks for calling in today. Let's go to
Speaker 2: Bob in the San Fernando Valley. Bob, you're on with.
Speaker 5: Rich A Rich Happy forty nine and happy happy holidays.
Speaker 2: Thank you you too. What can I help you?
Speaker 5: I'm I'm a big fan of the show, both on
Speaker 5: TV here as well as the radio and this. I
Speaker 5: have been with Time Warner on the East Coast and
Speaker 5: then Time Warner here on the West Coast, and then
Speaker 5: ultimately Spectrum. All this time I've been able to record
Speaker 5: anything I wanted from television using cable and a recorder
Speaker 5: of EHS or DVD recorder. On the end of the
Speaker 5: middle of May of this year, I get an email
Speaker 5: from Spectrum saying your item will arrive on Wednesday. Well,
Speaker 5: I didn't order anything. When it arrived, there was a
Speaker 5: huge box. Ok, I didn't open it. I called them
Speaker 5: and said, well, if you didn't order that, you can
Speaker 5: take it back, just drop it off. So I was
Speaker 5: in and out of the Midwest and back, and on
Speaker 5: May thirtieth, I got an email saying your new account
Speaker 5: will start tomorrow. On June first, and I lost service
Speaker 5: and I ended up calling Spectrum at like one in
Speaker 5: the morning and talked to a tech for three hours.
Speaker 5: He said open the box. And the box was a
Speaker 5: new cable box. And the one thing about the cable
Speaker 5: box is it did not have a coaxial cable out.
Speaker 5: There was a table in TV out. That's the way
Speaker 5: it's always been. Apparently I was considered a legacy account holder,
Speaker 5: and so they stopped digital adapters which had both cable in.
Speaker 2: TV out there just doing digital out.
Speaker 5: Yeah. So basically I now cannot record or time shift
Speaker 5: anything to the recorder or disc because I would do
Speaker 5: that for historical reasons. Basically time shift my work patterns
Speaker 5: would be second shift, third shift, so I could record
Speaker 5: what I needed to look at when I got home.
Speaker 2: And now you have no way of doing that, no
Speaker 2: way of doing it.
Speaker 5: And that's a program they are introducing across the country.
Speaker 5: So when I was in the Midwest, I went to
Speaker 5: a Spectrum store and told them that do you have
Speaker 5: a cable box, And the one that they presented me
Speaker 5: was to act cable in TV out to cables.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 5: And then they said, because you are in California, we
Speaker 5: can't do anything about it. Otherwise I'm sure they would
Speaker 5: give me the box.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 5: They started in California. They're introducing it across the country.
Speaker 5: So by the middle of twenty twenty four or the
Speaker 5: end of twenty twenty four, nobody will be able to
Speaker 5: record to DVD or VHS. If you have it, I
Speaker 5: have a combination right.
Speaker 1: Well, look, I mean I think it makes sense. I
Speaker 1: think it's thank you for the warning. By the way,
Speaker 1: I think this makes sense as we make this digital transition.
Speaker 1: I do think that less people are probably using the
Speaker 1: coax out from their cable box and they're just using
Speaker 1: HDMI into the back of their TV for the box.
Speaker 1: And it's funny because I was just in a Spectrum
Speaker 1: store and they showed me the cable box, and I'm
Speaker 1: trying to look in my pictures to see if I
Speaker 1: have a picture of the back of it.
Speaker 2: I didn't look. Oh man, I wish I did. I don't.
Speaker 2: I don't have a picture of the back of the
Speaker 2: cable box.
Speaker 1: But I'm curious now because I'm I didn't notice that
Speaker 1: that it didn't have an out. So if you don't
Speaker 1: have those outs, you can't bring this into like any
Speaker 1: sort of recorder, which makes sense, but I mean, look,
Speaker 1: there there are may be some ways around this if
Speaker 1: you gosh. I mean with HDMI, there are a lot
Speaker 1: more copyright protections on the signal and also on the cable,
Speaker 1: so it probably will not give you away. I can't
Speaker 1: even think there's a recorder that would take that signal
Speaker 1: in and let your record like, especially like a DVD
Speaker 1: recorder or something like that. I would say, maybe the
Speaker 1: only way to round this is to do something like
Speaker 1: a TiVo that might have a cable card, but I
Speaker 1: don't even think they offer cable card anymore. At the
Speaker 1: end of the day, these these companies want you to
Speaker 1: use their products and services, and as we get more
Speaker 1: into this on demand world and this world of cloud DVRs,
Speaker 1: the companies control that, and that's what they want because
Speaker 1: now you have to pay them. And also you don't
Speaker 1: have as much flexibility. You can no longer keep that
Speaker 1: recording for as long as you want. So, Bob, thanks
Speaker 1: for the information, and now we know we've got the
Speaker 1: fair warning.
Speaker 2: Not gonna be able to do your own recording soon.
Speaker 1: All right, Coming up next, how police can spy on
Speaker 1: your push notifications eighty to eight rich one on one.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to rich On Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology at
Speaker 1: Triple eight rich one O one eight eight seven four
Speaker 1: to two four to one zero one. Man, the phones
Speaker 1: are on fire today, just so many calls.
Speaker 2: I do want to get to them. I will try.
Speaker 1: It's always a dance because I want to answer the calls,
Speaker 1: I want to answer the emails. But I also want
Speaker 1: to tell you all the news that I brought in,
Speaker 1: and I have tons of it. I mean, it's all
Speaker 1: just like sitting here, like I have tons of little
Speaker 1: topics I want to bring up like this. This week,
Speaker 1: there was a bit of a revelation that governments can
Speaker 1: basically spy on you through a push notification. So this
Speaker 1: all came to light this week because US senator out
Speaker 1: of Oregon sent a letter. I don't know who he
Speaker 1: sent it to, but he sent it to someone or
Speaker 1: maybe it was Apple and Google, but he said, hey,
Speaker 1: you guys should really reveal the fact that you hand
Speaker 1: over information on individuals if governments ask for it, and
Speaker 1: the way they do this is really tricky and I
Speaker 1: never really thought about this. Okay, So basically, let's say
Speaker 1: you sign up for an app anonymously on your iPhone
Speaker 1: or Android, okay, a messaging app, and you send a
Speaker 1: bunch of messages and now all of a sudden you
Speaker 1: get a notification. Well, that notification has to go through
Speaker 1: Google or Apple servers. They're kind of like the post office,
Speaker 1: and they know the address to your phone and what
Speaker 1: do they also know? Well, they also know your account
Speaker 1: information that you use to sign up for that Google
Speaker 1: account or that Apple account. And so government's got hip
Speaker 1: to this and said, hey, can you share that information
Speaker 1: with us when we need it? And why would they
Speaker 1: need it? Well, maybe there's some sort of dissident in
Speaker 1: their government or an activist or anyone that they may
Speaker 1: be interested in getting information on. And Apple and Google
Speaker 1: apparently comply with these requests. Now for Apple and Google,
Speaker 1: it depends on how they receive the request. With Apple,
Speaker 1: I believe they need a subpoena and with Google they
Speaker 1: need a court order. But the reality is if you
Speaker 1: sign up anonymously, but then that notification comes to your
Speaker 1: phone and you have an iPhone or an Android, there
Speaker 1: is information that these companies can then share about you
Speaker 1: because they know your account information. It's just wild that
Speaker 1: this happens. And so my point is, if you think
Speaker 1: you are being anonymous on your phone, you are probably not.
Speaker 1: And I thought this was also interesting that Google and
Speaker 1: Apple had this secret deal with the government that was
Speaker 1: not previously disclosed until this senator said hey, you should
Speaker 1: probably disclose this. And then Apple and Google came clean
Speaker 1: and said, yeah, we do have this program, and now
Speaker 1: we know about it. And now you just have to
Speaker 1: realize that you're never really being anonymous online. Let's go
Speaker 1: to Robin in Fallbrook, California. Robin, you're on with Rich.
Speaker 4: Hey there, Bruton, is this okay if I'm talking through
Speaker 4: my phone on my car?
Speaker 2: Yeah sounds great.
Speaker 10: Oh perfect, Okay, I learned something new.
Speaker 11: All right.
Speaker 10: I have Spectrum at home internet. I have the right
Speaker 10: internet only at my studio office, and now I want
Speaker 10: and then I have a Verizon cell phone service for
Speaker 10: just my husband and I and I'm kind of getting nailed.
Speaker 10: I'm paying like one hundred and seventy five bucks a
Speaker 10: month and it's not even unlimited internet. So we have
Speaker 10: a place out in the middle of a desert where
Speaker 10: I have to take like a they call it like
Speaker 10: a jet path or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I don't want to do that anymore because it uses
Speaker 4: up all my.
Speaker 10: My my megabytes or data stuff for whatever they give
Speaker 10: you every month. And is there is there something that
Speaker 10: I can have that is like a portable internet that what's.
Speaker 4: That thing with Elon Musk that he has that.
Speaker 10: I forget what it's called like a link of starlink.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so a couple of things you can do here.
Speaker 1: So here's my question. So you're right now you're paying
Speaker 1: for what just your phone, your your Verizon serve and
Speaker 1: when you go to your house in the desert, it's
Speaker 1: using your jet pack, which is also on your account. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: and that's that's.
Speaker 4: I need something where I can get unlimited minutes, which
Speaker 4: I can do with consumer cellular for real cheap, but
Speaker 4: they don't have the jet packed capability, so I would
Speaker 4: have cheap internet and cheap cell phone unlimited, but then
Speaker 4: I can't get internet out.
Speaker 1: In the desert, right, Okay, Well, couple, yeah, a couple
Speaker 1: couple of suggestions for you. So Starlink is Elon Musk's
Speaker 1: satellite Internet. There's a couple of companies that provide satellite internet.
Speaker 1: It's Starlink, one of them is called hues Net, and
Speaker 1: then via sat. Now, I believe that the Starlink is
Speaker 1: the fastest of the three and the best technology, but
Speaker 1: you're going to be looking at some startup costs and
Speaker 1: also some monthly costs which are not cheap. So I
Speaker 1: believe the last time I looked at it, it was
Speaker 1: about one hundred dollars a month for your Internet through
Speaker 1: Starlink and then a setup fee which I think was
Speaker 1: close to a couple hundred dollars. So that's going to
Speaker 1: be a very expensive option if you're not using the
Speaker 1: Internet a ton out there, like if you're living there.
Speaker 2: I think that would be fine. But since you're telling.
Speaker 1: Me that you have the ability to use a jetpack
Speaker 1: at this location, a jet pack is basically just Verizon's
Speaker 1: branding for a mobile hot spot. So there's a couple
Speaker 1: things you could do. Number One, you can ask Verizon
Speaker 1: for a plan that has more hot spot. So what
Speaker 1: I would probably do is this would be this would
Speaker 1: be the order of things I would do. So, if
Speaker 1: you're already paying Verizon, see what plan you have, right,
Speaker 1: And Verizon has different Internet plans or different phone plans,
Speaker 1: and some of them include mobile hotspot. So if you're
Speaker 1: using an iPhone or an Android, there is the ability
Speaker 1: to turn your phone into a mobile hot spot, but
Speaker 1: you need to have a certain amount of data to
Speaker 1: do that, and all the companies used to kind of
Speaker 1: include that in the plans. Now it is separated out
Speaker 1: most of the time and you get a certain allotment
Speaker 1: of that. So with Verizon plans, they're unlimited plans. You
Speaker 1: may get thirty gigs of hot spot data or fifty
Speaker 1: gigs of hot spot data. It kind of depends on
Speaker 1: the plan you have with them. So I would go
Speaker 1: to Verizon and ask them and say, Hey, I've got
Speaker 1: this place in the desert and I want to use
Speaker 1: my phone as a hot spot. That's the keyword, my
Speaker 1: phone as a hot spot. Which plan do you think
Speaker 1: is best for that? And they may say okay, Well,
Speaker 1: if you're on the Unlimited Plus or the Unlimited Ultimate,
Speaker 1: you'll get a certain amount of hot spots. So this
Speaker 1: Ultimate plan includes sixty gigs of mobile hotspot. That's probably
Speaker 1: enough for a month. So that's per month. By the way,
Speaker 1: the middle plan with Verizon will give you oh wow,
Speaker 1: the Unlimited Plus gives you thirty gigs, but you can
Speaker 1: add an extra one hundred gigs of mobile hotspot. Anyway,
Speaker 1: It's very confusing because it all depends on your plan.
Speaker 1: So talk to someone at Verizon say hey, look, I
Speaker 1: want to use my phone as a mobile hotspot at
Speaker 1: my home. Now, when you get to your house, what
Speaker 1: you would do is you would plug in your phone
Speaker 1: and you would toggle the hot spot, and then your
Speaker 1: devices like your TV and you know, I'm guessing it's
Speaker 1: just your TV and your computer that you want to
Speaker 1: connect to this thing. They would connect to your phone
Speaker 1: and your phone would act as the mobile hotspot. I
Speaker 1: would recommend that you plug in your phone so that
Speaker 1: the battery doesn't go dead instantly.
Speaker 2: Now that's one way of doing it.
Speaker 1: The other way to do it is both Verizon, T
Speaker 1: Mobile and AT and T. They all have what's called
Speaker 1: five G home Internet, and Verizon is and T Mobile
Speaker 1: are especially aggressive in their pricing and their promotions with
Speaker 1: this home Internet. So if you already have a Verizon
Speaker 1: signal at this place in the desert, you might just
Speaker 1: want to get the Verizon Home Internet. And all that
Speaker 1: is is a hot spot, a jet pack that you
Speaker 1: plug in in that home. It pulls in the cellular
Speaker 1: connection and then it spits it out as a Wi
Speaker 1: Fi connection. So it's just an industrial hot spot for
Speaker 1: your entire house. And the good news is if you
Speaker 1: already have a Verizon account, the pricing is very is
Speaker 1: very aggressive on this, so it's really affordable because they're
Speaker 1: trying to get people to switch to this. So the pricing,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how much it is per month sort
Speaker 1: of depends on your Verizon plan, but I've seen it
Speaker 1: anywhere from like twenty five to fifty five dollars a month,
Speaker 1: but especially with the promotions for the first year, you
Speaker 1: can at least try that out see if it works.
Speaker 1: That's probably what I would do. Use your phone first.
Speaker 1: If that doesn't work, if you get really frustrated with that,
Speaker 1: then I would I would try the home Internet. If
Speaker 1: you're going to move to this place, or you're spending
Speaker 1: every single weekend there or weeks at a time there
Speaker 1: and you're doing work. Maybe check out something like starlink.
Speaker 1: That's probably the way to go. Question Robin and let
Speaker 1: me know what you do Rich on tech dot Tv.
Speaker 1: Hit contact and keep me posted.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: DoorDash, if you have DoorDash installed on your phone, you
Speaker 1: can get free pickup and returns for your packages right now.
Speaker 1: So if you want to do five free pickups from
Speaker 1: your house, you can use the code gift box. And
Speaker 1: if you have dash Pass, which is their subscription service,
Speaker 1: you can get unlimited free pickups of your packages until
Speaker 1: December thirtieth.
Speaker 2: So what does that mean.
Speaker 1: You've got to return something to a store like Macy's
Speaker 1: or Amazon. You've got the return code that you print
Speaker 1: out at your house or the label. All you have
Speaker 1: to do is stick that on the package, package it up.
Speaker 1: Someone from DoorDash will come to your house, pick it
Speaker 1: up and bring it to a FedEx, a UPS or
Speaker 1: a post office. This is for under thirty pounds under
Speaker 1: five hundred dollars. They will do everything you need. If
Speaker 1: they mess it up, you've got a five hundred dollars reimbursement.
Speaker 2: Claim that you can do.
Speaker 1: Uber also has a similar package return service. I checked
Speaker 1: on my Uber app and they are doing a promotion
Speaker 1: where they will give you the first package return for free.
Speaker 1: But I don't know if you're like me, but we
Speaker 1: order a bunch of stuff on Amazon, not all of
Speaker 1: it works out. So by the front door, we've got
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of stuff that we need to return
Speaker 1: to an Amazon Fresh store or a UPS store. And
Speaker 1: if you have that and you want someone to do
Speaker 1: that for you, you can have DoorDash to it, or
Speaker 1: you can have Uber do it. And it might be
Speaker 1: a nice time to try this out during the holiday.
Speaker 1: So again, the code is gift box or if you
Speaker 1: have dash pass, it is free and unlimited.
Speaker 2: This is all through December thirtieth.
Speaker 1: Rich on Tech, dot tv, slash wiki if you want
Speaker 1: to link to anything I mentioned here. The phone number
Speaker 1: to the show eight eight eight rich one oh one
Speaker 1: eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: More show coming up. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: My name is rich DeMuro, hanging out with you talking tech.
Speaker 1: Phone line to the show is eight eight eight rich
Speaker 1: one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two
Speaker 1: four one zero one. Caim will answer, and if you're
Speaker 1: really nice to her, she may let you throw. I
Speaker 1: know she's tough, but we get people on so I
Speaker 1: guess you know, some people are really really nice. You
Speaker 1: can follow me on social media. I am at rich
Speaker 1: on Tech. You can find me on Instagram. Yes, i
Speaker 1: am back on X in a big way. I've got
Speaker 1: the blue bubble or not the blue bubble, the blue
Speaker 1: check mark. Yes, I broke down and paid for the
Speaker 1: X because I will tell you why, bo bo. I
Speaker 1: will tell you why. I was pure pressured into it
Speaker 1: because I think I told this story. But I posted
Speaker 1: on there, and look, you know people are still on
Speaker 1: there and it's tough to argue that. And anyway, I'm
Speaker 1: having a lot of fun being on there again because
Speaker 1: I kind of gave up on it and now I'm back.
Speaker 1: So you know, I'm probably over correcting because now I'm
Speaker 1: posting like everything.
Speaker 2: I'm like, here's my breakfast. But I'm there.
Speaker 1: I'm also on Facebook at rich on Tech on all
Speaker 1: of these platforms.
Speaker 2: Let's see. We got an email from Michael.
Speaker 1: He said, Visible Wireless is the only phone plan with
Speaker 1: unlimited hotspot that I know of.
Speaker 2: It's twenty five dollars a month, and it's on Verizon.
Speaker 1: It should work in the desert, so yes, Verizon's Visible
Speaker 1: does have a good plan with unlimited hotspot. There are
Speaker 1: some limitations that you do need to know about. The
Speaker 1: speed is capped, so I believe the speed is about
Speaker 1: five megabits per second, which is slow, but it's probably
Speaker 1: enough for like most things like you can probably watch
Speaker 1: Netflix and stuff like that, but you may only be
Speaker 1: able to connect one device to your phone at a
Speaker 1: time with that, so check the fine print. There's always
Speaker 1: fine print with all of these situations. Might have gotten
Speaker 1: an email from Amazon that says Venmo is no longer
Speaker 1: accepted on Amazon dot Com starting January tenth, twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: Well that was fast. It's so wild how things change.
Speaker 1: I remember getting an email from Amazon saying, hey, we're
Speaker 1: accepting Venmo and we'll give you ten bucks if you
Speaker 1: add it to your account, and I said sure. So
Speaker 1: I authorized my Venmo with my Amazon which I would
Speaker 1: never do because why would I pay with Venmo? I
Speaker 1: don't need to just use your card. And I got
Speaker 1: ten dollars off my purchase. My Venmo was kind of
Speaker 1: lingering on my account. Actually, it's funny because I got
Speaker 1: a promo for adding Venmo to my Uber account and
Speaker 1: my Amazon account, and then, of course what happens is
Speaker 1: you set it as your payment method and you forget,
Speaker 1: and so you start doing charges and they all go
Speaker 1: through Venmo.
Speaker 2: So this happened with Uber, it happened with Amazon.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh shoot, I don't want to use
Speaker 1: Venmo for my Amazon account. And now it's no longer.
Speaker 1: I guess they're breaking up. That was like less than
Speaker 1: a year that lasted. I don't know what changed, but
Speaker 1: I guess it didn't work out. Nobody cared, nobody wanted it.
Speaker 1: Might have gotten an email from Ring this week. Ring
Speaker 1: says we are reassuring users. On June sixteenth, twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: we entered it into a settlement with the FTC to
Speaker 1: resolve allegations that employees and contractors had access to the
Speaker 1: stored videos collected by Ring cameras, and some of these
Speaker 1: employees viewed videos without permission and no business reason.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Basically, the FTC said that Ring employees were just kind
Speaker 1: of looking at videos of your doorbell cams without any
Speaker 1: sort of reason to do that. Now, yeah, that does
Speaker 1: not sound very nice. It says, these individuals are no
Speaker 1: longer employed by RING, and since twenty eighteen, back when
Speaker 1: this happened, we have significantly changed our access and review practices.
Speaker 1: Now only a small number of employees can access videos
Speaker 1: and in only limited circumstances. Does that sound very reassuring
Speaker 1: to you? Sounds like they can still watch my videos?
Speaker 1: So number one, is that a peeping tom? Is that
Speaker 1: a oh okay, that's crickets? Someone hiding in the bushes
Speaker 1: looking at your RING cameras. Now, look, in all seriousness,
Speaker 1: I do think that these companies that have these cameras.
Speaker 1: Number one, you have to be aware that there probably
Speaker 1: is a method that someone can look at your video
Speaker 1: streams if they need it to in the event that
Speaker 1: there is a government request, police request. I think the
Speaker 1: other thing to do here, if you really want to
Speaker 1: make sure that nobody can see your videos, you can
Speaker 1: enable what's called end to end encryption. It is not
Speaker 1: on by default, not every provider offers it. I do
Speaker 1: believe RING does offer that, but there are some downsides
Speaker 1: to that. Once you enable the end to end encryption,
Speaker 1: there are some things that are not possible when you
Speaker 1: enable that, and it has to do with how many
Speaker 1: different devices you can view your videos on and the
Speaker 1: notifications and the videos and all that stuff. So it
Speaker 1: is much easier if you don't enable that. But if
Speaker 1: you want the maximum protection and the maximum security of
Speaker 1: your cameras, then you know you can enable that.
Speaker 2: It is an option.
Speaker 1: But I do think that Ring has probably cleaned up
Speaker 1: their act and this was a couple of bad actors.
Speaker 1: You know, you're talking five years ago, and it's just
Speaker 1: one of those things where now that people know about it,
Speaker 1: it probably won't happen again. But we do know from
Speaker 1: history that the government and law enforcement if they do
Speaker 1: request these videos in a you know, in sort of
Speaker 1: a court order or subpoena, they can probably get their
Speaker 1: hands on them. So don't put them in your bedroom,
Speaker 1: that's the bottom line. Keep them aimed out the front door.
Speaker 1: This is weird. Windows, that's not funny. You don't you
Speaker 1: don't want cameras in your bedroom in general, Like that's
Speaker 1: kind of creepy, right. Windows bug renames printers to HP
Speaker 1: laser Jet. There's a Windows bug that is renaming printers
Speaker 1: to HP laser Jet, regardless of the actual brand model.
Speaker 1: This is affecting Windows ten and Windows eleven device. The
Speaker 1: bug also installs the HP smart app even if you
Speaker 1: don't need it. Microsoft is investigating and apparently you can
Speaker 1: still print, but double clicking on a printer may show
Speaker 1: a no tasks available error. This bug was first reported
Speaker 1: on December sixth. There's no estimated fixed time. If you're
Speaker 1: really techy, you can block access to the Microsoft Store
Speaker 1: and that will prevent the bug from renaming your printers.
Speaker 1: But if you're wondering why this happened, if you're scratching
Speaker 1: your head, you're like, what is going on here?
Speaker 2: It's a bug. You're not going crazy, all right?
Speaker 1: Coming up, we're going to talk to Mitch Lee, one
Speaker 1: of the founders of ARC. This is a startup that
Speaker 1: is building an all electric performance speedboat. I was on it.
Speaker 1: It is pretty fun, no fumes. We'll talk to Mitch
Speaker 1: Lee coming up next right here on rich On Tech.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to rich On Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology on location.
Speaker 1: We've done interviews in the plane. This is the first
Speaker 1: time I've done an inner view on a boat. We
Speaker 1: are in Long Beach and joining me now is Mitchley
Speaker 1: of ARC Boats.
Speaker 2: Thanks for joining me.
Speaker 6: It's great to be here and we are excited to
Speaker 6: have you out on our one of our boats.
Speaker 1: So this is an all electric boat. Describe what we
Speaker 1: are on right now.
Speaker 6: This boat that we're on now is called the ARC one.
Speaker 6: It is the first model boat that we brought to market.
Speaker 6: It's a twenty four foot fully electric power boat, capable
Speaker 6: of five hundred horsepower and software limited to forty miles
Speaker 6: an hour.
Speaker 1: And I've already been on it spoiler alert, and it's
Speaker 1: quite incredible. It's quiet, it's smooth, it's powerful. Tell me
Speaker 1: about the company. Let's start with ARC You're based in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, and what are you trying to do?
Speaker 6: This company didn't even exist three years ago, and at
Speaker 6: this point we have already manufactured and delivered the ARC
Speaker 6: one to our initial customers. The entire company is now
Speaker 6: focused on the next model we're bringing to market, which
Speaker 6: is a mass market wakesport boat. If you zoom back out,
Speaker 6: as a company, our goal is to electrify everything on
Speaker 6: the water. Electric boats make a ton more sense than
Speaker 6: gas boats across pretty much every aspect of boating. The
Speaker 6: ownership experience is much nicer. They're quiet, We can hold
Speaker 6: an interview on a boat. You're not smelling fumes. They're
Speaker 6: far more reliable, they're less expensive to operate, and the
Speaker 6: experience of operating one itself is so much better thanks
Speaker 6: to software and the technology on this boat. The hard
Speaker 6: part is actually putting enough energy on the boat to
Speaker 6: move through water at high speeds and with a lot
Speaker 6: of power. That is what we specialize in. We build
Speaker 6: our holes, our battery packs, and a lot of the
Speaker 6: systems that go into this boat in house in our
Speaker 6: manufacturing facility in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: So, Mitch, what made you wake up and say I
Speaker 1: would like to electrify a boat.
Speaker 6: I am a lifelong boating enthusiast. My parents were boating enthusiasts,
Speaker 6: and particularly water ski enthusiasts. They love to slalom ski.
Speaker 6: So I grew up out getting dragged behind a boat
Speaker 6: with wakeboarding and knee boarding and water skiing and wakesurfing.
Speaker 6: This is what I love to do with my time.
Speaker 6: I also have a degree in mechanical engineering and spent
Speaker 6: a while portion of my career as a software developer,
Speaker 6: and this is kind of the marriage of all of
Speaker 6: those things, my passion and my actual career.
Speaker 1: When I tell people I'm going out on an electric boat.
Speaker 1: They say, oh, a duffy because people think of a
Speaker 1: low powered or slower kind of boat. That's not what
Speaker 1: you set out to build.
Speaker 6: No, we absolutely want to change the perception of electric
Speaker 6: boats in the same way that most people associate electric
Speaker 6: cars with performance, with really fast zero to sixty times.
Speaker 6: We are here to change the perception of electric boats
Speaker 6: on the water, and hopefully your experience today made that point.
Speaker 2: So we're on the arc one.
Speaker 1: This is the boat that you initially sold. You made
Speaker 1: a couple dozen of them, and now you're onto Well,
Speaker 1: tell me some of the features of this unit that
Speaker 1: we're on.
Speaker 2: So this was a limited edition boat that.
Speaker 6: Was our first entrance into the market, into the marine space.
Speaker 6: It consists of two battery packs. Each one of those
Speaker 6: battery packs is larger than pretty much anything you'd find
Speaker 6: in an electric car. In total, it's two hundred and
Speaker 6: twenty kilowat hours of battery capacity, which, as a point
Speaker 6: of references, roughly three times the size of a Model
Speaker 6: Y battery pack. The boat is laid out in an
Speaker 6: open seating arrangement. Given that everything is packaged below the floor,
Speaker 6: that affords a lot of space, a lot of space
Speaker 6: for storage and a lot of space for seating on
Speaker 6: the boat of this size.
Speaker 1: It's a big boat. It's got a lot of space.
Speaker 1: It's got a lot of space for people. Again, it's fast,
Speaker 1: it's quiet. There is absolutely no scent to the boat.
Speaker 1: There's no fumes, there's none of that boating scent that
Speaker 1: you kind of associate with being out on the open water.
Speaker 1: It's a very simple setup. So you've got just the
Speaker 1: steering wheel, the throttle. You've got this nice big screen
Speaker 1: which is kind of very Tesla esque in the center,
Speaker 1: which is showing maps, music. There's even a backup camera.
Speaker 1: I guess if you can call it a back it's
Speaker 1: a back camera. I should say. You see your current speed,
Speaker 1: your current battery, You've got a compass, the water temperature,
Speaker 1: and also the water depth. Do you think that this
Speaker 1: appeals to someone who has grown up with an iPhone
Speaker 1: or someone who is driving a Tesla.
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 6: We want to make better boats and we hope that
Speaker 6: those boats and expect that those boats will appeal both
Speaker 6: to people that have grown up boating and people that
Speaker 6: are brand new to it. By making boats far easier
Speaker 6: to own and far less expensive to actually operate, opens
Speaker 6: up the market. These are simply better boats. They solve
Speaker 6: the main pain points with gas boats today.
Speaker 1: What about the charging situation? How long does it take
Speaker 1: to charge? How much time do you get out in
Speaker 1: the water on a charge?
Speaker 2: We think in terms of usage time.
Speaker 6: We want people to be able to use their boat
Speaker 6: exactly how they want to use it for a full day,
Speaker 6: plug in at the end of the day, and wake
Speaker 6: up the next morning with a boat that is ready
Speaker 6: to hit the water again. In practice, that tends to
Speaker 6: mean three to five hours of active usage time. That
Speaker 6: is a much better experience than what you gas boat
Speaker 6: owners deal with today, lugging gas cans down to a
Speaker 6: dock and filling it up manually, having to go twenty
Speaker 6: minutes away to the nearest marina to pay ten dollars
Speaker 6: a gallon, or any of the other creative solutions people
Speaker 6: come up with.
Speaker 2: Are the chargers readily accessible? Absolutely.
Speaker 6: This boat uses what's known as a CCS one charger.
Speaker 6: It is the same style of charger that you use
Speaker 6: for any electric car on the road today. And another
Speaker 6: awesome part about electric boats is that they tend to have.
Speaker 2: Easier access to power.
Speaker 6: When you look across a marina today, most of those
Speaker 6: marinas actually already are equipped with what is known as
Speaker 6: shore power, because even gas boats use electricity to power
Speaker 6: refrigerators or bilge pumps or other accessories on the boat.
Speaker 6: You can just plug straight into that, plug it into
Speaker 6: your boat, and again wake up the next morning with
Speaker 6: the charge. Boat docks tend to be the same way.
Speaker 1: You've got the ARC One already. People are using this
Speaker 1: out in the world. You're learning a lot of data
Speaker 1: from that, and you're now building your mass market electric boat.
Speaker 2: What can we expect from that.
Speaker 6: The next boat we're bringing to market is a mass
Speaker 6: market wakesport boat. We'll have more to share about that soon.
Speaker 6: But as with a lot of new technology, the goal
Speaker 6: is to, over the course of our development time, make
Speaker 6: the technology more accessible to more people. Our goal is
Speaker 6: eventually for every boat on the water to be electric.
Speaker 6: It makes sense from a customer perspective, from a product perspective,
Speaker 6: and from environment perspective. We want to make it happen,
Speaker 6: and we want to make it happen quickly.
Speaker 1: How much are we talking for this boat for the
Speaker 1: buyers that already have it, and also the upcoming model.
Speaker 6: This boat was the ARC One was three hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 6: That's a all in price that includes trailer delivery and
Speaker 6: best in class service.
Speaker 2: That might sound like a lot.
Speaker 6: But gas boats today of this size routinely sell for
Speaker 6: that amount of money. Boats just tend to be more
Speaker 6: expensive than automotive. Having said that, our goal is to
Speaker 6: drop the price of these boats over time.
Speaker 1: Performance wise, we were doing some what do you call
Speaker 1: them s turns, S curves, and it was pretty wild.
Speaker 1: This boat goes very fast, It has a lot of maneuverability.
Speaker 1: It feels like you have a lot of control in
Speaker 1: this boat. Advantages of the electric system.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so one of the things that we have designed
Speaker 6: into this boat is the ability to go quickly from
Speaker 6: zero up to top speed. You also get a lot
Speaker 6: of torque at low speeds, which makes it easy to
Speaker 6: pull a wake order water skier out of the water,
Speaker 6: and it also makes the acceleration quite fun. So we
Speaker 6: were out there doing what are known as hole shots,
Speaker 6: which is when you pin the throttle down and let
Speaker 6: the boats software take over and accelerate that boat up
Speaker 6: to top speed and then turn that into s turns
Speaker 6: where you're cranking the wheel left and right and going
Speaker 6: back and forth and really experiencing how sporty this boat is.
Speaker 6: We are not taking away from any part of your experience.
Speaker 6: This is absolutely better than what you're experiencing today on
Speaker 6: gas boats.
Speaker 1: All right, Mitch Lee, one of the founders of ARC.
Speaker 1: Tell folks how they can learn more about the company.
Speaker 6: Go to arcboats dot com.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for joining me today on the open water.
Speaker 1: If you want a link to that, I'll put on
Speaker 1: my website. Rich on Tech dot TV more rich on.
Speaker 2: Tech coming your way. Do you have a question about technology?
Speaker 2: Give me a call.
Speaker 1: The number is triple eight rich one O one eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 2: My name is Richdmuro and you are listening to rich
Speaker 2: on Tech.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Tomuro here hanging
Speaker 1: out with you talking technology. The phone line is triple
Speaker 1: eight rich one O one. That's eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four to two.
Speaker 2: Four one zero one. Ah. Did you like the electric boat?
Speaker 2: That thing was so fun?
Speaker 3: I was.
Speaker 1: I was loving it the entire time up until they
Speaker 1: said the price, and I just about I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: excuse me, wait why. I know boats are expensive, but uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's one of these things where it's like
Speaker 1: I wanted it so badly. Like now that I saw it,
Speaker 1: I was like, ah, this is great. U let's go
Speaker 1: to Chris in Glendale.
Speaker 11: Chris John with Rich high Rich, thank you continuing my call.
Speaker 8: I'm a bit of a text I know, so this
Speaker 8: might be user error and I can't keep calling my
Speaker 8: thirty year old daughter to resolve this.
Speaker 2: But when i'm that's usually what happens.
Speaker 8: It always happens. I'm out and about. I have an
Speaker 8: Apple phone, I have ways of application, I have Google Maps,
Speaker 8: I have the various apps. I'll be lost and I'm
Speaker 8: trying to get somewhere, and when I try to use
Speaker 8: these apps, it comes up with no Wi Fi connection. However,
Speaker 8: I have.
Speaker 11: My cellular data on my roaming on my personal hotspot on.
Speaker 11: I thought that because I have all those things on,
Speaker 11: I'm going to be connected to my carrier, to a
Speaker 11: Wi Fi signal. I guess that's not the case.
Speaker 1: Okay, So you're in a spot where you can't get
Speaker 1: the information you need from these apps because your phone
Speaker 1: looks like it's connected, but it's not getting the data
Speaker 1: needs right. Okay, Well, I have two solutions for you.
Speaker 1: Number One, You're not alone. This happens all the time,
Speaker 1: especially on the iPhone. Happens to me, and I will
Speaker 1: tell you it's actually kind of weird. Number One, I
Speaker 1: don't think the iPhone does a good job of ditching
Speaker 1: Wi Fi when there's not a good Wi Fi signal.
Speaker 1: So what's happening is your iPhone when you're using it,
Speaker 1: is managing your cellular and your Wi Fi all the time.
Speaker 1: It's toggling those and using the connections based on availability
Speaker 1: now most of the time. And let me give you
Speaker 1: an example of how this works. So let's say you
Speaker 1: are driving in your car and you have, you know,
Speaker 1: no Wi Fi signal around you. The iPhone recognizes that
Speaker 1: and it says, okay, we're going to use Chris's internet
Speaker 1: connection from Verizon or T Mobile or AT and T.
Speaker 1: And then all of a sudden, it finds when you
Speaker 1: come into your living room, says, oh, we noticed that
Speaker 1: Chris's Wi Fi signal at home is here.
Speaker 2: Let's use that.
Speaker 1: So then the phone we'll switch to using that signal
Speaker 1: because it's saying, well, we always want to use Wi
Speaker 1: Fi when it's available, because it's usually a better connection,
Speaker 1: it's cheaper, it's more readily available, whatever. But sometimes your
Speaker 1: phone gets tripped up and there's a Wi Fi signal
Speaker 1: that it thinks it can latch onto, but it's not
Speaker 1: valid or it's not usable. And this happens with my
Speaker 1: phone a lot because of spectrum has these hot spots
Speaker 1: all over the city, and I connected to it once
Speaker 1: and my phone thinks that it can always connect to that,
Speaker 1: but somehow it's not a valid connection or a Starbucks
Speaker 1: connection that you have to click into. So the reality
Speaker 1: is there's a lot of times when your phone does
Speaker 1: not have a connection when it thinks it does, and
Speaker 1: it should drop that Wi Fi but it doesn't.
Speaker 2: So a couple things you can do.
Speaker 1: And I know this is annoying, but if you're ever
Speaker 1: in this situation and you need a quick fix, you
Speaker 1: can swipe down from the upper right hand corner of
Speaker 1: your iPhone and you'll notice there's a Wi Fi signal.
Speaker 1: You can tap that Wi Fi signal and it should
Speaker 1: be blue if it's on. If you tap it, it
Speaker 1: will turn white, and that means the Wi Fi signal
Speaker 1: is off. Now, that does not turn off Wi Fi forever.
Speaker 1: That only turns it off temporarily to get you out
Speaker 1: of that situation. And then once your phone gets to
Speaker 1: a place where there is a valid Wi Fi signal
Speaker 1: that it recognizes. Again, like when you get home, your
Speaker 1: phone will automatically toggle the Wi Fi back on and
Speaker 1: it will connect to that Wi Fi.
Speaker 2: So that's number one.
Speaker 1: Number two I think is another solution that when you're
Speaker 1: running into this issue is what's called offline maps. Now
Speaker 1: on ways, I don't know if you can download offline maps.
Speaker 1: Let me see if you can do that. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure that you can do that. Let's see settings. Let's
Speaker 1: see do they have an offline I don't think they do,
Speaker 1: but and they might. But on Google Maps, there is
Speaker 1: something called offline maps, and I highly recommend that you
Speaker 1: download these for the areas that you frequent. So, for instance,
Speaker 1: if you live in Los Angeles, you can download pretty
Speaker 1: much all of the maps for Los Angeles, so they
Speaker 1: are on your phone. And there's two ways to do this.
Speaker 1: The first is kind of a secret way. So just
Speaker 1: go to your open up your Google Maps and you
Speaker 1: can type in okay maps, And if you type in
Speaker 1: that keyword, it's like a little hack. It's a little trick.
Speaker 1: It will say download this map, and now you can
Speaker 1: zoom out and download pretty much all of Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: and I highly recommend you do this because it's not
Speaker 1: going to take up much data on your phone, like
Speaker 1: for literally the entire area of LA. It's saying it's
Speaker 1: going to take up three hundred and twenty megabytes, and
Speaker 1: you can zoom in to just do like, you know,
Speaker 1: the basin. What I don't know, I don't I don't
Speaker 1: know why I call the basin And is that like
Speaker 1: a part of LA you know, just like whatever you want.
Speaker 1: And I also recommend that you do this for any
Speaker 1: city that you're visiting. So if you are visiting let's
Speaker 1: say Seattle in the next couple of weeks, I would
Speaker 1: type in Seattle and you can do the same exact thing.
Speaker 1: So if you type in Seattle and then you scroll up,
Speaker 1: you'll see where it says download offline map, and you
Speaker 1: can tap that, and that means all of Seattle would
Speaker 1: now be downloaded onto your phone. And so what that
Speaker 1: means is that anytime you're in Seattle or navigating, you'll
Speaker 1: always have the ability to get directions in that place,
Speaker 1: even if you don't have a valid cellular connection in
Speaker 1: that area. So highly recommend it. Two ways to do it. Again,
Speaker 1: the keyword is okay maps, and if you type it in,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like, you know, Google has all these
Speaker 1: engineers that are just kind of like, you know, they're
Speaker 1: nerdy like myself, and nerds love secret little hacks like
Speaker 1: that Okay Maps. It's like, you know, okay computer kind
Speaker 1: of thing. So you type in okay maps and it
Speaker 1: will bring up the secret way to download any map. Now,
Speaker 1: if you fancy Apple Maps, you can. They just added
Speaker 1: the ability to do offline maps. So the way to
Speaker 1: do it on Apple Maps is if you type in
Speaker 1: a city. Let's type in Seattle again and you'll see
Speaker 1: if you start typing in a city, it will come
Speaker 1: up with that city name and you can tap download
Speaker 1: and it will give you the downloaded maps for that city.
Speaker 1: I don't know if Ways offers offline maps. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: check real quick and I'll see offline maps are not
Speaker 1: available at this point in Ways. But a good question,
Speaker 1: and hopefully that will help you out the next time
Speaker 1: you are in a pinch with that situation. All right,
Speaker 1: if you have Disney Plus, you might have noticed on
Speaker 1: your TV screen a new Hulu icon on the Disney
Speaker 1: Plus app. And this is because Disney is actually going
Speaker 1: to merge these two services. Disney Plus and Hulu are
Speaker 1: going to be one app come March twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: but right now they're testing it with some people. I
Speaker 1: do not subscribe to Hulu at this point, so I
Speaker 1: don't have this, but I got a bunch of emails
Speaker 1: from people saying, rich, Hulu is now on my Disney screen. Yes,
Speaker 1: if you are a subscriber of both Disney Plus and Hulu,
Speaker 1: you might notice that that Hulu hub is now on
Speaker 1: your TV screen. So the reason they're doing this is
Speaker 1: because it makes sense. Disney owns both of these services,
Speaker 1: why not have them mixed into one place where you
Speaker 1: can watch the shows from all of them. So if
Speaker 1: you have it, you've got access to both, but you
Speaker 1: do have to pay. This is not something where you
Speaker 1: just have it if you don't pay. Let's see what
Speaker 1: else here. If you want to talk to Santa in
Speaker 1: augmented reality, this is really cute. If you go to
Speaker 1: the website ask Santa dot app, Ask Santa dot App,
Speaker 1: you go to this from your phone's web browser. There's
Speaker 1: no download necessary. This is an augmented reality Santa experience
Speaker 1: which lets you talk to Santa in real time and
Speaker 1: it's kind of cute the way they do it. You
Speaker 1: basically aim your phone at the sky. You have to
Speaker 1: aim your smart phone at the sky. You tap your
Speaker 1: phone screen and next thing you know, Santa will come
Speaker 1: down to your backyard and you can talk to Santa
Speaker 1: using AI. This is available now through January fifth. Again
Speaker 1: the website Asksanta dot App. This is from Nyantik, the
Speaker 1: creators of Pokemon Go. So it's kind of fun.
Speaker 2: Try it out.
Speaker 1: Ask Santa dot app. Eighty to eight rich one O one.
Speaker 1: You are listening to rich on Tech. We'll have more
Speaker 1: coming up right after this. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Another hour of the show coming your way. My name
Speaker 1: is rich Demiro, talking technology with you at triple eight
Speaker 1: rich one O one. That's eight eight eight seven four
Speaker 1: to two four one zero one. If you have a
Speaker 1: question about technology, you need advice, you need something that's
Speaker 1: not working, you need an app recommendation, a gadget gift,
Speaker 1: whatever you need, give me a call triple eight rich
Speaker 1: one O one eight eight eight seven four to two
Speaker 1: for one zero one. The website for the show rich
Speaker 1: Ontech dot TV. You can also send me an email
Speaker 1: there if you're too shy to call, and you can
Speaker 1: also find me on social media.
Speaker 2: I am at rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Jim sent an email about the whole Beeper Mini situation.
Speaker 1: This is the app that brings iMessage to Android, he said.
Speaker 1: The question is really about allocating resources to develop a
Speaker 1: superior product and then have companies with a lesser product
Speaker 1: wanting to use it and make money. If Apple users
Speaker 1: don't like that, their friends have green words and they
Speaker 1: are free to trade in their iPhones for an Android,
Speaker 1: and Android users who don't like the interface can buy
Speaker 1: an iPhone. I haven't talked to any iPhone users who
Speaker 1: complain or want to switch. Plus, Beeper money will make it.
Speaker 1: Beeper Mini will make a ton of money without the
Speaker 1: upfront cost of developing I message. If a company cannot
Speaker 1: develop a superior product and protect it, then no company
Speaker 1: will spend the money on development. Rich How would you
Speaker 1: feel if someone duplicated your show, called it Rich on
Speaker 1: Tech and aired it at the same time you aired
Speaker 1: and took your audience that you built up. Jim, Well,
Speaker 1: I don't think the radio show thing is the same.
Speaker 1: That's basically competition and bring it on. If someone wants
Speaker 1: to talk technology at the same time and compete for listeners,
Speaker 1: that's fine. I think the issue I take with I
Speaker 1: Message is that it is unnecessarily dividing the world. So
Speaker 1: technology is supposed to connect us, right. Imagine back in
Speaker 1: the day when we had telephones, like a telephone line
Speaker 1: that was in your house and you had AT and
Speaker 1: T and someone else had Verizon in your phone like
Speaker 1: a standard phone line, and you tried to call that person,
Speaker 1: they said, oh, sorry, you can't call them because they
Speaker 1: have Verizon. It doesn't work like No, everything works the same.
Speaker 1: You call them, it goes through. It works email, no
Speaker 1: matter if you send through Yahoo, Hotmail, Aol, Gmail, it
Speaker 1: all works the same. There are things that are standardized.
Speaker 1: You plug in an HDMI cable, it is standardized. You
Speaker 1: plug in a coax cable, it is standardized. Wi Fi
Speaker 1: is standardized. Messaging is standardized. There is a standard message protocol.
Speaker 1: Apple has booked that trend because they locked people into
Speaker 1: I Message. Now, yes, you can say you can opt out,
Speaker 1: but the thing is it's using your phone number and
Speaker 1: it's on the iPhone. So I just feel like it's
Speaker 1: just the way they went about it, and they knew
Speaker 1: what they had here, believe me, because they would have
Speaker 1: come up with an I message app years ago if
Speaker 1: they didn't think that this locked people into their phones.
Speaker 1: And yes, it's great and it works really nice.
Speaker 2: But by the way, you.
Speaker 1: Can get all of those features on WhatsApp, on Telegram,
Speaker 1: on Signal, on RCS, on Facebook Messenger, Instagram Messenger, any
Speaker 1: other app in the world will work like this. But
Speaker 1: the thing is the cross message functionality. The cross platform
Speaker 1: functionality is what I take issue with. When you're sending
Speaker 1: a text message, it should send the same way to
Speaker 1: any phone, and we have protocols in place for that
Speaker 1: to happen. Apple is adopting those protocols, but it's confusing
Speaker 1: to the average person that is just using their phone
Speaker 1: number on an iPhone and they don't understand why when
Speaker 1: they text someone a picture or a video to an
Speaker 1: Android it comes out all pixelated. They don't know why
Speaker 1: that's happening, and they think it's because Android is not good.
Speaker 1: And that's where I take issue with that. Let's go
Speaker 1: to nas in Irvine. Nas am I saying that right, Yes, you.
Speaker 8: Are saying it.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: You know what, You've got to move, You've got to
Speaker 1: move to a better place in your in your home
Speaker 1: so I can hear you better.
Speaker 2: I can.
Speaker 1: I'm really getting some breakup, So move to a better place.
Speaker 1: I'll come back to you in a moment. Let's go
Speaker 1: to Sarah and Ventura. Sarah, you're on with Rich.
Speaker 12: I was calling because I have a problem with I
Speaker 12: was trying to head trap off my Internet, and then
Speaker 12: I was logging back into it. And then when I was,
Speaker 12: it said suddenly that it was untrusted.
Speaker 2: What do you mean you turned off your Internet?
Speaker 12: I mean I turned off the router. Why there is
Speaker 12: something happening with it? Like I would be going to
Speaker 12: a page and then it would like kind of scroll
Speaker 12: backwards and go to the main screen like it would
Speaker 12: just It's like someone said, ah, I don't know what
Speaker 12: is it called? When we will?
Speaker 1: So what's happening now? You just you're just you can't
Speaker 1: serve the Internet on your computer or what?
Speaker 12: No. I I was trying to log into my Internet,
Speaker 12: and I said it so that it wouldn't log in automatically.
Speaker 12: I have to manually do that. So when I did tried,
Speaker 12: it said FFL is untrusted. Then on the page inside
Speaker 12: it's said data colon checks slash HTML.
Speaker 1: Why are you I'm confused. Why you need to log
Speaker 1: into your internet at home?
Speaker 2: Is this at home or a home? Okay? And who's
Speaker 2: your internet provider? Okay?
Speaker 1: And you're turning off Are you turning off your router regularly?
Speaker 12: Yeah, because I'm getting some kind of problem with it.
Speaker 12: And after talking to a test who came to here,
Speaker 12: he said I would check it and see if someone
Speaker 12: is gaining access to.
Speaker 1: Your No, no one's gaining access. I mean turning off
Speaker 1: your router is okay. But like I've had my Internet
Speaker 1: in my house for ten years, I've never turned it off.
Speaker 1: I mean, unless there's a power out, there's no reason
Speaker 1: to turn your internet. And if you're using uh, you
Speaker 1: know the way that these routers come from Spectrum or
Speaker 1: any company, they typically have secure passwords, and unless someone
Speaker 1: is physically gaining access to your house, they're not getting
Speaker 1: on your your internet at home. So I think you
Speaker 1: know what's happening here.
Speaker 2: It sounds like.
Speaker 1: By turning off your router and making it so you
Speaker 1: have to log into your Internet, it's just causing all
Speaker 1: kinds of problems. So you might have to pay Spectrum
Speaker 1: to come out there and kind of like reset things
Speaker 1: if you've changed settings. But it sounds like you've tweaked
Speaker 1: stuff that doesn't really need tweaking. These things should just
Speaker 1: be set it and forget it. If you want to
Speaker 1: secure your Internet, there's two things I recommend. Number one,
Speaker 1: when you come up with your Wi Fi password and SSID,
Speaker 1: if you're not using the one that Spectrum assigned to you,
Speaker 1: then you can change it. Make sure that that is secure.
Speaker 1: Make sure it's not something that's easily guessable. If you
Speaker 1: think that your neighbor is trying to latch onto your Internet,
Speaker 1: you can always do what's called hiding the SSID, which
Speaker 1: if you go into the settings on the router, there
Speaker 1: is an option to make it so that your router
Speaker 1: does not show your work to other computers. In fact,
Speaker 1: you won't even see it. You have to log in manually.
Speaker 1: I don't recommend that for like ninety nine point nine
Speaker 1: percent of people unless you are running some sort of
Speaker 1: like you know, security highly secure network at your house
Speaker 1: for some reason. Otherwise, I think what I would try
Speaker 1: to do is just factory reset the router. So there
Speaker 1: should be a push button on there that you can
Speaker 1: press and hold for a very long time and it
Speaker 1: will bring everything back to factory settings. I would do
Speaker 1: that and turn off your computer, reset your computer. You'll
Speaker 1: have to reconnect your computer and your other devices to
Speaker 1: this router. But in general, there is no reason to
Speaker 1: turn off your router. And if you're suspecting that your
Speaker 1: neighbor is on your router, there's typically a way to
Speaker 1: log in to your router on the back end using
Speaker 1: the information on the bottom of it and see a
Speaker 1: list of all of the devices that are currently accessing
Speaker 1: that router. And if you see neighbor Gym's computer on there,
Speaker 1: then you've got a problem. But ninety nine percent of
Speaker 1: the time that is not the case, Sarah. But I
Speaker 1: I would stop resetting the router unless you have like
Speaker 1: an Internet connection issue, like if your powers going out
Speaker 1: a lot, NAS in Irvine. Uh, you're on with Rich
Speaker 1: you there? Nas you there?
Speaker 10: Is it better?
Speaker 8: Is it better?
Speaker 2: Yes? Much better? Thank you?
Speaker 4: Okay, thank you so much for your great program.
Speaker 9: Very informative.
Speaker 11: I appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 11: I have a question regarding TV.
Speaker 8: We have a package with clocks. It's a basic cable.
Speaker 9: A landline phone, and a DVR that you can record
Speaker 9: our programs and also the internet.
Speaker 1: Do you recommend something else?
Speaker 10: If you don't want to.
Speaker 8: Stay with cocks but have the same page. That's something
Speaker 8: you can record.
Speaker 2: How much are you paying for this?
Speaker 4: I'm paying about two hundred dollars and fluctuates.
Speaker 2: That's why you're a little bit so yeah. I mean
Speaker 2: that's called the triple play.
Speaker 1: You've got the Internet, you've got the full cable package,
Speaker 1: and you've got your phone through them. About two hundred
Speaker 1: dollars is kind of like you know, the running cost
Speaker 1: for that. And the only way that you could save
Speaker 1: money here is if you switch to a different provider
Speaker 1: that is in your area and they have you know,
Speaker 1: twelve month promotional pricing fee and like it maybe it's
Speaker 1: fifty dollars a month or something for first twelve months.
Speaker 1: But the reality is if you stay with cos and
Speaker 1: you just keep the Internet and then you start getting
Speaker 1: streaming services, number one, your Internet is probably going to
Speaker 1: be more expensive. You know, they might charge you one
Speaker 1: hundred dollars a month for just the Internet, and then
Speaker 1: you're gonna start getting your streaming services on top of that.
Speaker 1: Netflix is going to be twenty dollars, Disney Plus is
Speaker 1: gonna be thirteen bucks, Hulu is going to be another
Speaker 1: couple bucks. So there are ways of doing that, but
Speaker 1: the triple play that you have is probably going to
Speaker 1: be the cheapest if you like all that stuff. If
Speaker 1: you don't need all that stuff, if you're not watching
Speaker 1: a ton of Bravo and a ton of ESPN a
Speaker 1: ton of sports, you probably don't need all of that
Speaker 1: cable package. But if you're just gonna go and sign
Speaker 1: up with these cable packages independently, like if you go
Speaker 1: with YouTube TV or Fubo or any of this stuff,
Speaker 1: it's probably gonna come out to the same price, if
Speaker 1: not more so. The only way to really save is
Speaker 1: to get internet only, drop the other two services and
Speaker 1: then bring on a couple of streaming services on top
Speaker 1: of that. But you're still talking, you know, one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty dollars if you're doing that. But I would
Speaker 1: check to see if there's any other providers in your
Speaker 1: area for the cheaper internet.
Speaker 2: Good question there.
Speaker 1: Nos eighty to eight rich one o one eight eight
Speaker 1: eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to rich On Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you at triple eight
Speaker 1: rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to
Speaker 1: two four one zero one. Free call from anywhere in
Speaker 1: the US. Remember when calls were not free, like in general,
Speaker 1: Like I remember, you used to have to choose a
Speaker 1: long distance operator, Like remember, MCI, when was the last
Speaker 1: time you heard that spoken out of someone's lips? MCI,
Speaker 1: what's that?
Speaker 8: Oh?
Speaker 13: That was that?
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, bobo.
Speaker 1: They had all these codes you could dial before your
Speaker 1: before your long distance call to like save money. Oh man,
Speaker 1: those were the good old days, right, And you didn't
Speaker 1: know how much your phone bill was. At the end
Speaker 1: of the month, you would get it and it would
Speaker 1: just be some random, arbitrary amount. Sometimes it was a lot,
Speaker 1: sometimes it was a little.
Speaker 2: You just didn't know.
Speaker 1: And by the way, people probably got ripped off a
Speaker 1: whole lot more back then, because who really looked at
Speaker 1: this stuff and took the time to call in and
Speaker 1: say like, hey, MCI, I'm noticing I got charged eighty
Speaker 1: five ninety nine for a call to my grandma and Idaho.
Speaker 1: And they'd be like, yeah, that's how much it costs
Speaker 1: to call her for three minutes. You're like, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: I remember the party line we had. This is before
Speaker 1: your time, Bobo, no bobo saying remember this. My grandma
Speaker 1: had a house like in the middle of like the woods,
Speaker 1: and you would lift up the phone line and there
Speaker 1: would be someone on the phone line, like a party line.
Speaker 1: You'd share the phone line, like what kind of craziness
Speaker 1: did we grow up with? You could listen to someone
Speaker 1: else's phone line like conversation what and we're worried about
Speaker 1: all this stuff? And to end encryption like no, you
Speaker 1: would just pick up the line and be like, hey,
Speaker 1: are you on?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Can you call it?
Speaker 1: Can you like pick up the line in five more minutes,
Speaker 1: I'll be done? What what kind of Oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: it's fun when you think about this stuff, and this
Speaker 1: is why you've got to talk to your grandparents and
Speaker 1: people and your family and just ask questions, like just
Speaker 1: to ask, you know, if you have a loved one
Speaker 1: around that was around before you, like what what was I.
Speaker 2: Like as a kid? What what was this like? Or what?
Speaker 2: It's just it's so wild, the stuff that just by.
Speaker 1: Exploring and being curious, like even though you think you
Speaker 1: remember all this stuff, you don't, and just by hearing it,
Speaker 1: sometimes out loud, it just brings back, you know, conjures
Speaker 1: up these memories. Uh, all right, let's get to some
Speaker 1: news items here. Verizon has a bundle with Netflix and
Speaker 1: Max for ten dollars a month. Verizon's got a new
Speaker 1: perk for My plan users. You can get an ad
Speaker 1: supported Max and Netflix for ten dollars a month. Sounds great.
Speaker 1: You gotta have an Unlimited Welcome, Unlimited Plus or Unlimited
Speaker 1: Ultimate plan. It's cheaper than subscribing to both services separately.
Speaker 1: It saves you about seven dollars a month. But here
Speaker 1: is the thing. This is what I don't like about this.
Speaker 1: I know it's so tempting because these companies want you
Speaker 1: to bundle. It's kind of like what we were talking
Speaker 1: about with NAS. It's like bundling saves money, and the
Speaker 1: cable companies were all about bundling, and now it's the
Speaker 1: cellular companies are all about bundling. But here's the problem.
Speaker 1: When you need to make a change, there's a little
Speaker 1: bit more friction.
Speaker 2: So, for instance, right.
Speaker 1: Now, I've got my Peloton and my Netflix bundled up
Speaker 1: through my wireless provider. Now I don't know when that ends,
Speaker 1: and so what's gonna happen is invariably I'm gonna wake
Speaker 1: up to a bill for my wireless provider. It's gonna
Speaker 1: be like another two hundred dollars and I'd be like, wait, what, Oh,
Speaker 1: I forgot to change my Peloton and my Netflix and
Speaker 1: whatever promotion I had is gonna expire. So that's why
Speaker 1: they like you to do it is because they are
Speaker 1: now in control. If you don't have this bundle, you
Speaker 1: can go to Peloton dot com or Max dot com
Speaker 1: and you can easily change things as you need. But
Speaker 1: once things are bundled, it gets a little bit more complicated.
Speaker 1: And that's it's that tiny bit of friction that companies
Speaker 1: like because you may be able to call the next
Speaker 1: time after you see that on your bill, but now
Speaker 1: they've just won one extra bill on you, and that
Speaker 1: one extra bill at ten, fifteen twenty dollars a month
Speaker 1: times millions of customers is a whole lot of money.
Speaker 1: So I personally do not like bundling. Even if it
Speaker 1: saves you money in the short term, it may not
Speaker 1: save you money.
Speaker 2: In the long term.
Speaker 1: Meta launches a free AI image generator called Imagine and
Speaker 1: guess what It's trained on all the pictures you've been
Speaker 1: uploading to Facebook and Instagram over the years. You knew
Speaker 1: this was happening. Nothing is really for free. All those
Speaker 1: pictures you've been uploading to Facebook and Instagram. If they're public,
Speaker 1: they might have trained this AI model called emu EMU.
Speaker 1: It's trained on one point one billion Facebook and Instagram
Speaker 1: user photos. You can try this out if you go
Speaker 1: to Imagine dot Meta dot com. You have to log
Speaker 1: in with your Facebook account. You can type in whatever
Speaker 1: you want it to create, plane flying over cotton, candy clouds,
Speaker 1: and it'll create four images for you, all for free.
Speaker 1: But if you notice that that picture looks like your
Speaker 1: old girlfriend or you know someone in your family that
Speaker 1: you uploaded earlier, make no mistake, it's because they train
Speaker 1: this AI model on these user uploaded pictures. Now, I'm
Speaker 1: just kidding, you're probably not going to find a picture
Speaker 1: that looks like someone you know. But the reality is
Speaker 1: when you are not paying for something, your data is
Speaker 1: the payment, and that's what happens here. Now I'm not
Speaker 1: saying this is bad, it's kind of what's happening. All
Speaker 1: these AI image generators have to be trained on something,
Speaker 1: and a lot of them are just scraping images from
Speaker 1: the web. But Meta had people upload a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff over the years that they can use for this.
Speaker 1: And by the way, you probably tagged your images too,
Speaker 1: with different things like descriptions, like maybe you uploaded a
Speaker 1: pizza and you said, oh, best pepperoni pizza from Sal's
Speaker 1: Pizzeria in Hoboken, And now they know exactly what that
Speaker 1: pizza looks like because you've described exactly.
Speaker 2: What that image contains. Very very smart.
Speaker 1: All right. Coming up next, we're going to talk accessibility,
Speaker 1: Microsoft's new app, Apple's personal voice feature, and a new
Speaker 1: controller from PlayStation. It's all coming up right here on
Speaker 1: the rich On Tech Radio show. Rich Demiro here hanging
Speaker 1: out with you, talking technology at Triple eight rich one
Speaker 1: oh one eighty eight seven four to two four one
Speaker 1: zero one. If you have some feedback for the show
Speaker 1: we'll get it in the feedback segment later on. Send
Speaker 1: it in right now on the website Richontech dot tv.
Speaker 1: Hit contact if you want to get your voice in
Speaker 1: on the show. Tell me what's good, what's bad, what
Speaker 1: you like or anything you want to comment about. All right,
Speaker 1: let's bring on Steven Aquino, freelance tech journalist covers accessibility
Speaker 1: and assist of technologies for outlets like Forbes. Steven, welcome
Speaker 1: to the show. Hey there, I am doing great. Thanks
Speaker 1: for joining me today. So tell me about your interest
Speaker 1: in covering accessibility.
Speaker 2: How did that come about?
Speaker 12: Sure, well, it.
Speaker 13: Really comes about because I was born freame much really
Speaker 13: and I have a whole host of us the build
Speaker 13: what it is that I've dealt with my entire life,
Speaker 13: and you know it. They have affect how I use
Speaker 13: you know, everything, and that includes technology. So I just
Speaker 13: want to show people that not everybody uses technology in
Speaker 13: the same way.
Speaker 1: And that is very true. And I think that technology
Speaker 1: has actually been a great you know, it's helped a
Speaker 1: lot of people with varying of abilities do things because
Speaker 1: you know, you've got stuff like larger text on screens, readers,
Speaker 1: all this stuff that has really I think done a lot.
Speaker 1: So let's talk first about this Seeing AI app. It's
Speaker 1: now available and Android. This is from Microsoft, and this
Speaker 1: app narrates the world for the blind and low vision.
Speaker 1: It can read text, it can identify products and describe photos.
Speaker 2: So what do you make of this app? Have you
Speaker 2: used it?
Speaker 1: I have not.
Speaker 13: I definitely reheard it and what it is is like
Speaker 13: just as you were saying, it basically helps people like
Speaker 13: me who have low eye sight or no vision you've
Speaker 13: been at all, to be able to identify by objects
Speaker 13: or even you know, other humans, you know in the
Speaker 13: real world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is now available on Android. It used
Speaker 1: to just be on iOS, so that is available now
Speaker 1: from Microsoft. It's called Seeing AI and it's available in
Speaker 1: eighteen languages. It's free to use, and you know, it's
Speaker 1: a great thing that you can aim it at something
Speaker 1: and have it read text, identify an object, or describe
Speaker 1: a picture. And it's also I guess they improved a
Speaker 1: little bit because they brought it to Android. They've got
Speaker 1: richer descriptions of photos and you can also kind of
Speaker 1: go back and forth with documents a little bit, so
Speaker 1: it does use some AI there.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about this feature on iOS.
Speaker 1: It's called Personal Voice and basically you can record. This
Speaker 1: is for folks that are at risk of losing their voice,
Speaker 1: and you can record your voice and kind of save
Speaker 1: it for later.
Speaker 2: What do you make of that feature?
Speaker 8: Sure, so.
Speaker 13: This feature isn't intended for When it first came out,
Speaker 13: Apple said that they worked with people at the l
Speaker 13: the teams patients helping people with als, and the whole
Speaker 13: idea here is that at some point someone with a
Speaker 13: LS is gonna lose their build goody to speak. So
Speaker 13: the idea with this software is that you record I
Speaker 13: think it's fifteen minutes of spoken text through your and then.
Speaker 2: The software will.
Speaker 13: Forward that and you'll be able to talk using your
Speaker 13: own voice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this is like in you know, if you
Speaker 1: have a a you know, a system that would do
Speaker 1: a generic kind of computerized voice. Now you can actually
Speaker 1: type something and speak it in your own voice, which
Speaker 1: is pretty incredible just how far we've come with that technology,
Speaker 1: especially since it's available on the iPhone. I did try
Speaker 1: this out and it did take It took a little
Speaker 1: bit longer than I thought, Like, you can't just do
Speaker 1: this like quickly, Like you have to be able to
Speaker 1: have some time to sit down and record this. But uh,
Speaker 1: you know again, if you are at risk of losing
Speaker 1: your voice due to some sort of illness like als,
Speaker 1: that is something that is an option. Now all right, finally,
Speaker 1: let's talk about this PlayStation controller. This is a new
Speaker 1: accessible controlller for PlayStation five. It looks like you wrote
Speaker 1: about this for Forbes, right.
Speaker 13: I did. I brod buttered a lot.
Speaker 1: So what.
Speaker 13: This is is is it's a specially designed roller for
Speaker 13: people who for some reason can't use the stock roller
Speaker 13: that comes with the system. So what it is is
Speaker 13: it's you've got its own shape and everything, and you
Speaker 13: can like swap out the different buttons and the sticks
Speaker 13: on the controller, and there's a whole lot you can
Speaker 13: do in software to sort of uh break your own
Speaker 13: like super controlled the Blue as it were, because you
Speaker 13: can like hailor it to your you know how you
Speaker 13: have to have.
Speaker 1: It so your abilities. It's configurable in a lot of
Speaker 1: different ways. And also, you know, the main point here
Speaker 1: is that one size does not fit all when it
Speaker 1: comes to controllers, Like if you have varying abilities or
Speaker 1: a disability, you know, you can program this and and
Speaker 1: kind of orient it in the way that you need.
Speaker 1: So there's a whole bunch of stuff that you can do,
Speaker 1: and it's just a really great way to open up
Speaker 1: gaming to a wider audience.
Speaker 2: Do you think this is going to be a good thing?
Speaker 14: Yeah, you know, uh greaming technology switchy is really important
Speaker 14: and it says a whole lot that these huge com.
Speaker 8: For these.
Speaker 13: Like Sony have you know, had time and effort to
Speaker 13: do this because uh, you know, as you were saying,
Speaker 13: it really fixed their games you know, accessible to to
Speaker 13: a to a audience.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And this is available for the PlayStation five. I've
Speaker 1: also been at Microsoft events. They have a lot of
Speaker 1: accessible kind of like, they have a lot of pushes
Speaker 1: into this accessibility idea, and so does Apple, and so
Speaker 1: does Google. So it really is amazing what these tech
Speaker 1: companies have done for bringing technology to more people and
Speaker 1: allowing more people to do things in the way that
Speaker 1: works for them. Steven Akino, thanks so much for joining
Speaker 1: me today. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 12: Great Rich.
Speaker 13: You for having me, sir.
Speaker 1: All right, find them online Steven Akino on Forbes. You
Speaker 1: can find them also on x and read uh and
Speaker 1: keep up on all of the accessibility and diversity options
Speaker 1: that are out there with technology.
Speaker 2: All right, thanks for joining me today. Let's uh, Oh,
Speaker 2: we're gonna go to break.
Speaker 1: Okay, we'll go to break and we'll come back and
Speaker 1: we'll do the feedback segment. Oh my gosh, that means
Speaker 1: it's almost the end of the show. Get those emails
Speaker 1: in rich on tech dot TV, hit contact if you
Speaker 1: want yours right on the air. Welcome back to rich
Speaker 1: On Tech time for the Oh well, we're gonna get
Speaker 1: to feedbag. And yes, I decided I think it is
Speaker 1: a feedback segment. Because this is what I've decided. It's feedback,
Speaker 1: but it's also mail bag. So the feedback plus the
Speaker 1: mail bag is feedbag. All right, let's get through a
Speaker 1: couple of stories before we get to the feedbag.
Speaker 2: YouTube Premium.
Speaker 1: If you're paying for YouTube premium and you were grandfathered in,
Speaker 1: well your price is going up in January. So if
Speaker 1: you're paying seven ninety nine a month or nine to
Speaker 1: ninety nine a month, those are both grandfathered in, you
Speaker 1: will be paying thirteen ninety nine a month, effective on
Speaker 1: in January twenty twenty four, so next month. So it
Speaker 1: was delayed. This was announced back in July, so don't
Speaker 1: get mad at me. This was something that was announced
Speaker 1: for many months now. But you were grandfathered in, which
Speaker 1: is pretty rare these days. Most of the time when
Speaker 1: these companies are announcing price hikes, it's like effective with
Speaker 1: your next billing cycle. So the fact that you got
Speaker 1: six months, you know you should be thanking me.
Speaker 2: No, it's not me that's doing it.
Speaker 1: Threads has added hashtags, but they don't call them hashtags,
Speaker 1: and they don't have the pound sign or the hashtag
Speaker 1: sign whatever you however you look at it, So they
Speaker 1: call hashtags tags. They're clickable blue links, not the traditional
Speaker 1: hashtag symbol. You can add one tag per post. The
Speaker 1: feature was rolled out and it's kind of confusing because
Speaker 1: why did they change a good thing.
Speaker 2: We all know what hashtags are.
Speaker 1: Every single online website uses hashtags, but not threads.
Speaker 2: They use tags. I don't like it.
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts arrives on Tesla next week. If you have
Speaker 1: a Tesla, you're gonna get a holiday software update and
Speaker 1: you will have Apple Podcasts, which is kind of nice.
Speaker 1: They added Apple Music last year. It does not work
Speaker 1: very well. I will tell you that hopefully this will
Speaker 1: be better. Apple music is very, very slow and just
Speaker 1: not very good at least in my experience in the Tesla.
Speaker 1: But Apple Podcasts it'll be nice to have. So you
Speaker 1: can listen to the show Rich on Tech. Search it
Speaker 1: up and if you'd like to listen to the podcast,
Speaker 1: you can do it in your Tesla. As of next week,
Speaker 1: if you have a pixel phone, two things one thing
Speaker 1: to do. There is a new feature where it will
Speaker 1: send critical data to first responders. You can share medical
Speaker 1: info and emergency contacts with nine one one.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: This is on the pixel phone in the personal safety
Speaker 1: app Pixel has or I guess they've somehow. There's a
Speaker 1: partnership with this rapid SOS company which sends medical info
Speaker 1: to the first responders. But it's been available on iPhone forever.
Speaker 1: I did a story with this years ago, but now
Speaker 1: it's finally coming to Android, starting with the Personal Safety
Speaker 1: App on Pixel. So if you go to open up
Speaker 1: the Personal Safety app, your info emergency info access share
Speaker 1: during emergency.
Speaker 2: Call, turn that on.
Speaker 1: That way, if you ever have to die on nine
Speaker 1: one one, it'll send more information. And Jimmy Stewart has
Speaker 1: a new bedtime story inside the call map. How is
Speaker 1: that possible?
Speaker 2: You ask?
Speaker 1: It's AI generated. They took Jimmy Stewart's voice, they recreated it,
Speaker 1: and now he's reading. It's a wonderful sleep story. It's
Speaker 1: a story about love, lost, hope and joy. Sounds like
Speaker 1: my life.
Speaker 2: Most of it.
Speaker 1: Stuart's family was okay with this. The AI voi was
Speaker 1: created by a company called Respeecher. It's pretty good. I
Speaker 1: listened to the little clip they put online and I
Speaker 1: got goosebumps because Jimmy Stewart is no longer with us,
Speaker 1: yet somehow he is now reading a new story.
Speaker 2: It's quite incredible.
Speaker 1: I know it's controversial because people, you know, some people
Speaker 1: say you're exploiting these actors that have passed away. But
Speaker 1: if their a state is okay with it, I guess
Speaker 1: it's fine. But anyway, you have to be a calm
Speaker 1: subscriber to hear the whole thing. All right, let's get
Speaker 1: to feedback. Bert says, please quit saying everyone hates X. Clearly,
Speaker 1: if you're getting a lot of interaction, everyone doesn't hate it.
Speaker 1: The beautiful thing is that you can get on X
Speaker 1: and say everyone hates X, and that's fine because free
Speaker 1: speech is alive and well on that platform. Thanks to Elon,
Speaker 1: the guy responsible for the car you love. Great show,
Speaker 1: minus the fake news.
Speaker 2: Bert. Thanks Bert, there's no fake news on this show.
Speaker 1: Gary says, Hey, Rick, Rick, I love when people call
Speaker 1: me because I've never called myself Rick, but so many
Speaker 1: people call me Rick.
Speaker 2: I like the radio show you do, Leo proud.
Speaker 1: I purchased a one plus phone on Amazon and it's
Speaker 1: locked to T Mobile. Is there a legal way to
Speaker 1: remove the carrier lock? I'll be returning this. If there's
Speaker 1: not an easy way to remove this, Gary, go to
Speaker 1: the unlocker dot com. The unlocker with Noe dot Com
Speaker 1: and he specializes in all things unlocking phones. Yes, you
Speaker 1: can unlock a phone. Just keep in mind it may
Speaker 1: not work on every network, so it'll probably work on
Speaker 1: T Mobile AT and T. It may not work on
Speaker 1: Verizon if you unlock it. You just have to be
Speaker 1: careful with that. Bruce says, I want to recommend fuel
Speaker 1: Rod rechargeable. I'm biased as I'm a maintenance tech that
Speaker 1: services the kiosks here in San Diego. No complaints, Charge
Speaker 1: it at home, or swap it for a used rod
Speaker 1: for a fully charged one for one buck. Love your show,
Speaker 1: Bruce and San Diego.
Speaker 2: Bruce.
Speaker 1: Yes, there's a couple of these companies around with kiosks
Speaker 1: that lets you get one of these portable batteries. It's
Speaker 1: very nice when you see them because you feel like
Speaker 1: you can use your phone and if worse comes to worse,
Speaker 1: you go to the vending machine, you pop out one
Speaker 1: of these portable batteries you can charge your phone. The
Speaker 1: main thing is most of them you do have to
Speaker 1: return at some point. But I've seen them all over
Speaker 1: the place. I've seen fuel Rod for sure. I did
Speaker 1: a story with another company that plays these things and
Speaker 1: it's a big business. Pine says constructive criticism from a fan.
Speaker 1: As I start this week this Monday, your segment comes on,
Speaker 1: I put down my coffee because I'm a fan. I'm
Speaker 1: only disappointed by you showing the same report you did
Speaker 1: on your Saturday radio show. It's happened many times. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you're lazy or they don't pay you enough,
Speaker 1: but it's annoying. I don't want to troll because I'm
Speaker 1: a fan. Can you fix this or at least tell
Speaker 1: me to avoid watching both shows? Okay, I think you're
Speaker 1: referring to the fact that I overlap. Like on the radio,
Speaker 1: I will do an interview with someone that I then
Speaker 1: show on TV.
Speaker 2: These are two different mediums. Radio.
Speaker 1: If you notice, the interviews are much longer, so you're
Speaker 1: getting kind of a deeper dive. TV the stories are
Speaker 1: two minutes, so I think it's called synergy.
Speaker 2: Like today we had the electric boat.
Speaker 1: If you like the electric boat that you heard about
Speaker 1: on this week on TV, you're going to see that
Speaker 1: electric boat segment. It's not laziness. And no nobody ever
Speaker 1: pays anyone enough, do they. No, people always want more,
Speaker 1: So it's not about laziness. It's just I think it's
Speaker 1: great that you can hear the story on the radio
Speaker 1: and learn more. Oh David has a reply to this.
Speaker 1: I'm older and not very tech savvy, but willing to learn.
Speaker 1: I find you interesting and informative. I listen on Fox
Speaker 1: fifty nine in Indianapolis. So David David likes the reports
Speaker 1: on TV. Let's see what else do we have here?
Speaker 1: So many things? Oh my god, these just keep going
Speaker 1: on and on and on. Okay, uh, let's see. Hi, Rich,
Speaker 1: I love your show and podcasts. I want to make
Speaker 1: a custom wall calendar for my hiking club, but I
Speaker 1: want members of the club to be able to order
Speaker 1: their own copies. There are many companies that will let
Speaker 1: me make a calendar, but the problem is to order it.
Speaker 2: Everyone needs to use my account.
Speaker 1: I don't want to give away my account number and
Speaker 1: password so they can order the calendar that I create.
Speaker 1: Is there a company that allows me to share my
Speaker 1: work so my company my friends can print the calendar, Dan, Dan,
Speaker 1: I think that Canva will handle this situation. So Canva
Speaker 1: dot com. You create your calendar on Canva. You share
Speaker 1: the link to that calendar with the people who want
Speaker 1: to order it. They can then sign in, they can
Speaker 1: do whatever tweaks they want. They want to add their
Speaker 1: birthdays to the calendar, and then they can print it
Speaker 1: out using their account and their phone number. So that's
Speaker 1: what I would recommend. Canva dot com is incredible. The
Speaker 1: problem is with Canva, a lot of it you might
Speaker 1: have to pay for, like the design you want. It's
Speaker 1: like it's a free it's a freemium kind of account thing.
Speaker 1: So just know that if you use things that cost
Speaker 1: money inside there, like the things with Little Star, people
Speaker 1: are gonna have to pay to print that out.
Speaker 2: All right, if you can believe it, that's going to
Speaker 2: do it.
Speaker 1: For this episode of the show, you can find links
Speaker 1: to everything I mentioned on my website. Just go to
Speaker 1: rich on tech dot tv for the show notes. You
Speaker 1: can also go to rich on tech dot tv slash
Speaker 1: wiki to see all of the show notes from over
Speaker 1: the last year. You can find me on social media.
Speaker 1: I am at rich on tech. Next week some great guests.
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk eBay with the person who has sold
Speaker 1: two million books about eBay, so we're gonna talk about
Speaker 1: eBay tips and tricks. Plus a really cool website guy
Speaker 1: runs a website with all kinds of spy accessories, so
Speaker 1: that's really fun. Thanks so much for listening. There are
Speaker 1: so many ways you can spend your time. I do
Speaker 1: appreciate you spending it right here with me. Thanks to
Speaker 1: everyone who makes this show possible. Bill, Bobo, Kim. My
Speaker 1: name is Richdmiro. I will talk to you real soon