Speaker 1: Google drop support for yet another product. Best Buy launches
Speaker 1: boxes that make it easy to recycle old gadgets, even cables.
Speaker 1: How to make your cell phone calls sound clearer. Plus
Speaker 1: your tech questions answered. What is going on? I'm Rich
Speaker 1: Demiro and this is Rich on Tech, the show where
Speaker 1: I talk about the tech stuff I think you should
Speaker 1: know about. It's also the place where I answer your
Speaker 1: questions about technology. I'm the tech reporter at ktlaight Channel
Speaker 1: five in Los Angeles. Welcome to the show. What a
Speaker 1: show it's going to be. Phone lines are now open.
Speaker 1: Let me press the magic button to open those triple
Speaker 1: A Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 2: Kim is standing by to screen your calls.
Speaker 1: Give me a call. If you have a question about technology.
Speaker 1: Email is also open. Send it to hello at on
Speaker 1: tech dot TV. You're really taking advantage of that email
Speaker 1: I've noticed. So yeah, you know the goal of this
Speaker 1: show was to get like less emails, but it's actually
Speaker 1: created more emails. So yes, I get to your email.
Speaker 1: It may take a bit, but I do read them.
Speaker 2: Believe me.
Speaker 1: If you follow me on social media, you know that
Speaker 1: I just go back from a family vacation to Hawaii.
Speaker 2: We plan this thing so long ago. It was so
Speaker 2: nice to go. But isn't it weird how when you're
Speaker 2: on vacation. Oh wow, that was weird.
Speaker 1: I just looked at my show clock here and it
Speaker 1: literally showed eight oh eight, which is the ZIP or.
Speaker 2: The area code for Hawaii. It was weird anyway. Isn't
Speaker 2: it odd that how when you go on vacation you
Speaker 2: are happy to come back home? Did you do you
Speaker 2: ever think that would happen?
Speaker 1: Like when you're planning a vacation, you think you want
Speaker 1: to stay there forever, but after a couple of days.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's just me. I don't know, but I'm always like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I can get back to my routine. I can get
Speaker 1: back to going to the gym. I can get back
Speaker 1: to eating like a standard meal and not you know,
Speaker 1: the most food you could ever imagine.
Speaker 2: But it was great on this trip.
Speaker 1: I challenged myself to disconnect, which is always a challenge
Speaker 1: for someone like myself because I'm trying to keep up
Speaker 1: with the news. I'm getting questions from a lot of
Speaker 1: people from all over the place.
Speaker 2: How did I do?
Speaker 1: I think I did pretty well, I said I was
Speaker 1: only going to use one phone the entire trip, which
Speaker 1: I pretty much did. I did bring two phones, but
Speaker 1: I only used one the whole time. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: always testing something, so I wanted to see you know,
Speaker 1: Samsung's got this new two hundred megapixel camera, so I
Speaker 1: was like, I want to see how it does. I
Speaker 1: also want to compare the selfie camera on both the
Speaker 1: Samsung and the iPhone. So I did that, and by
Speaker 1: the way, Samsung does a lot better. One of the
Speaker 1: things I've noticed much much better with HDR. So when
Speaker 1: you're taking a picture of like a sunset behind you
Speaker 1: or in front of you with a selfie, Samsung just
Speaker 1: does a little bit better processing on that.
Speaker 2: I don't know why, but that's just a thing.
Speaker 1: Also why I was able to disconnect, the signal was
Speaker 1: terrible all along the beach. My wife and I were
Speaker 1: like laughing, We're like, we found the one place in
Speaker 1: the world that has no signal, and so we pretty
Speaker 1: much were forced off of our phones because they just
Speaker 1: didn't work, and the Wi Fi was pretty much non
Speaker 1: existent unless we were in our place. So it was good.
Speaker 1: It was nice to disconnect for a little bit. I
Speaker 1: did a little tiny bit of work so I can
Speaker 1: prep for this show. Of course, if you want to
Speaker 1: see the highlights of my trip, I've got them on
Speaker 1: my Instagram stories. I did all that stuff, tried to
Speaker 1: do that towards the end of the trip, and I
Speaker 1: also challenged my kids to no roadblocks for the week,
Speaker 1: so I said, you know, let's see if you can
Speaker 1: do no roadblocks, which you know I'm not a fan of,
Speaker 1: and they did also know YouTube that one they were
Speaker 1: not so successful at. In fact, my kid at the
Speaker 1: end of the week with the roadblocks, he's like, Dad,
Speaker 1: you know what, I actually kind of liked not playing
Speaker 1: roadblocks all week. And I was like, okay, can we
Speaker 1: keep that going when we get home, and he said
Speaker 1: no because he was already on it this morning. I
Speaker 1: did encourage my kids to download Apple Arcade games. So
Speaker 1: if you're not familiar with Apple Arcade, the games there
Speaker 1: are pretty much free of any in app purchase is
Speaker 1: and also, as far as I know, you can use
Speaker 1: them without an Internet connection. So a lot of these
Speaker 1: games that are online on the iPad, you know, they
Speaker 1: show a lot of ads and they you need internet
Speaker 1: to play them. So if you're looking for something that's
Speaker 1: sort of offline. The Apple Arcade games are really good.
Speaker 1: It is like, I think five dollars a month to
Speaker 1: do that, but you can sign up for a free
Speaker 1: trial often if you look in the target app. I
Speaker 1: know it's weird, but if you look in the target
Speaker 1: app in the like kind of settings area, there's always
Speaker 1: like an offer for a couple of free months of
Speaker 1: Apple Arcade and Apple Fitness and Apple Music.
Speaker 2: So definitely check there.
Speaker 1: Also Best Buy a lot of times has deals where
Speaker 1: you can get a couple of free months of the
Speaker 1: Apple subscription stuff. The other thing that was really cool
Speaker 1: is this little device from Nintendo called the Game and Watch,
Speaker 1: and it's almost like a game Boy, but just for
Speaker 1: one game or maybe two or three. It has like
Speaker 1: three built in games. So we had the Mario one
Speaker 1: and it just has like the original old school Super
Speaker 1: Mario Brothers game, Super Mario Brothers two, and then some
Speaker 1: other game. But it's just a simple little device that
Speaker 1: you can charge up. I was surprised to see that
Speaker 1: it did use USBC, which was cool, and my kids
Speaker 1: loved it. So they would just swap and play and
Speaker 1: it was great. And I said, this is like old
Speaker 1: school days when you had to watch someone play video games,
Speaker 1: you would watch them play while you waited for your
Speaker 1: turn to play.
Speaker 2: And that's how it worked.
Speaker 1: Now when I travel, I even though I'm not working,
Speaker 1: I love to see the trends that are happening. So,
Speaker 1: for instance, I took United Airlines over there. They don't
Speaker 1: take cash on the plane, and for some reason, this
Speaker 1: always trips people up. You're supposed to store your credit
Speaker 1: card in the app before you go, so it's all
Speaker 1: contact lists, and for some reason, nobody could figure this out,
Speaker 1: Like it's very farign to like everyone on the plane,
Speaker 1: so everyone has their cash out and the flight attends
Speaker 1: they're like, oh, sorry, you can't take cash, and like what?
Speaker 1: And then you gotta go online. You gotta connect your
Speaker 1: device to the Wi Fi. You gotta download the app,
Speaker 1: which you can't do when you're in the air. You
Speaker 1: gotta link link up your credit card. So that always
Speaker 1: trips people up, which I always laugh at because I
Speaker 1: see it happen every single time I take United. The
Speaker 1: weather apps do not work at all in Hawaii. So
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about Apple's weather app, which had some
Speaker 1: issues this week. It was literally down for a couple
Speaker 1: of days. I did notice that but if you believe
Speaker 1: the weather forecast that we were looking at on the
Speaker 1: apps before we went to the island, we wouldn't have
Speaker 1: gone because it just seemed like it was horrendous, like
Speaker 1: really really bad, like windy, rainy, cold. And we got yes,
Speaker 1: we got wind, we got rain, we got cold. But
Speaker 1: as they say on the islands, if you don't like
Speaker 1: the weather, just wait five minutes.
Speaker 2: It literally changes.
Speaker 1: And so we had fantastic weather for I would say
Speaker 1: ninety nine percent of the time. But if we believe
Speaker 1: the weather app I'm not kidding, we would have diverted
Speaker 1: to a different destination. The other thing I noticed in
Speaker 1: this I absolutely love is kudos to whoever the Toast
Speaker 1: salesperson is on the island. And Toast is a tech
Speaker 1: company that does they do like, let's see, how do
Speaker 1: they describe themselves a restaurant point of sale and management system.
Speaker 1: So whoever their salesperson is in Hawaii is they get
Speaker 1: an A plus? Because I noticed a lot of restaurants
Speaker 1: were using their handheld order tablet, which is basically like
Speaker 1: a small kind of phone tablet kind of thingy that
Speaker 1: lets the waiters type in your order as you say it.
Speaker 1: So it's nice and a fission and it sends it
Speaker 1: straight to the kitchen. But then, better yet, at the end,
Speaker 1: when you're all done, you can just tap your card
Speaker 1: to this little device and they don't need to take
Speaker 1: your card away, which I love. And better yet than that,
Speaker 1: some of the restaurants were actually printing QR codes on
Speaker 1: the receipt which you can scan with your phone and
Speaker 1: then use Apple Pay or Google Pay or PayPal or
Speaker 1: Venmo to just take care of your bill immediately. Now,
Speaker 1: that only worked when you had a signal, which I
Speaker 1: didn't a lot of the time, so that was kind
Speaker 1: of tricky.
Speaker 2: But when it did work, it was awesome.
Speaker 1: And what was really cool is it would get you
Speaker 1: out of the restaurant faster, because you know, after you're done,
Speaker 1: you know you want to dine, We like to dine,
Speaker 1: but after you're done, when your bill comes, you're done.
Speaker 1: You want to get out of there. You know, the
Speaker 1: wine is gone, the food is gone, the plates are
Speaker 1: piled up. It's like, I want to get out of
Speaker 1: this restaurant, and so all you want to you don't
Speaker 1: want to wait for the waiter to come back ten
Speaker 1: minutes later with your bill because at that point they're
Speaker 1: done kind of serving you and it could take a while,
Speaker 1: so I love being able to do that. All right,
Speaker 1: let's see what else? Oh, this was good? The ways
Speaker 1: to find things to do? So Number one. I usually
Speaker 1: sort on Yelp by most reviewed, but I've noticed that
Speaker 1: sometimes these days, since everyone uses Yelp, it almost might
Speaker 1: be better to go to the second most reviewed restaurant
Speaker 1: because the first one has a line like Disneyland. So
Speaker 1: maybe give a little business to the second restaurant that's
Speaker 1: the most popular because the first is just slammed. Google
Speaker 1: Maps also pretty good. I use this the top rated
Speaker 1: filter to narrow down restaurants that I might like. And
Speaker 1: then on Instagram, this is a cool feature that I
Speaker 1: used to find a couple of places that we went to.
Speaker 1: You can actually search on Instagram. It's kind of a
Speaker 1: hidden feature. You do a search and then you click
Speaker 1: the city that you're going to, and then there's a
Speaker 1: big X. You click that, and then it shows you
Speaker 1: all of the most Instagram spots in that area, but
Speaker 1: you can sort them by restaurant attractions. Things like this,
Speaker 1: and that has found helped us find a couple of
Speaker 1: cool places too, particular on this trip, one place called
Speaker 1: Slappy Cakes, which I thought was a cool concept. You
Speaker 1: make pancakes on a griddle on your table, kind of
Speaker 1: like Benny Hanna, but at your own table for pancakes.
Speaker 1: And then this other thing called Maui Fruit Ninja, and
Speaker 1: this guy was like literally standing outside. It's like a
Speaker 1: pop up kind of shop that was standing outside of
Speaker 1: our hotel one day and I found it through Instagram.
Speaker 1: So Instagram does work if you're a business, to put
Speaker 1: the time into Instagram because people are on there, people
Speaker 1: are looking, people are noticing. So that is something that
Speaker 1: you should really put some time into marketing because people
Speaker 1: do find places on Instagram. And before you go, I
Speaker 1: should have followed my own advice, which I forgot to do.
Speaker 1: I said on Instagram, Oh, you should use offline maps
Speaker 1: your next trip, and sure enough, I forgot to download
Speaker 1: the offline maps, and so when I got there, I
Speaker 1: finally had.
Speaker 2: To do it because the signal was so bad.
Speaker 1: But definitely, before you go somewhere, download offline maps on
Speaker 1: Google because that basically saves the maps to your phone
Speaker 1: and that will mean that you'll be able to navigate
Speaker 1: a lot easier when you get to your place. I
Speaker 1: did also have one one wild thing that happened while
Speaker 1: I was on the beach, and I'm gonna tell you
Speaker 1: after the break because I've got to go to break here.
Speaker 1: But I actually had to help save a life. And
Speaker 1: this was not something that was planned obviously, and it's
Speaker 1: not something that you would ever think would happen, but
Speaker 1: I had to do it. And so I will tell
Speaker 1: you the story of how I had to save someone's
Speaker 1: life on the beach in Maui when we come back.
Speaker 1: But first, let me tell you about the show We've
Speaker 1: got coming up here. Lots of stuff going on, Google
Speaker 1: dropping support for another product.
Speaker 2: I'm going to tell you what that product is.
Speaker 1: I got lots of feedback, so later in the show,
Speaker 1: I will share the feedback that you have given me.
Speaker 1: And we've got great guests this week. Hyundai is going
Speaker 1: to join me to talk about their latest ev that
Speaker 1: they hope will take on the Tesla Model three. The
Speaker 1: CEO of an app that wants to bring I message
Speaker 1: to Android users is also going to joined me, and
Speaker 1: later in the show, my old pal Dan Akerman from CNET.
Speaker 1: He's gonna join us to talk all things Tetris, including
Speaker 1: the new Apple TV Plus movie that I watched on
Speaker 1: the plane. But first it's gonna be your turn. Your
Speaker 1: calls coming up next at triple eight rich one O one.
Speaker 1: That's eight eight eight seven four to two, four.
Speaker 2: To one zero one.
Speaker 1: I'm rich Dmiro and you are listening to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging
Speaker 1: out talking technology with you. You can find me on
Speaker 1: social media at rich on Tech. I'm on Instagram, Facebook,
Speaker 1: and Twitter, the website richon Tech dot TV. All right,
Speaker 1: so I said I was gonna tell you the story
Speaker 1: about saving a life in Hawaii, So let me let's
Speaker 1: go to Shirley first. Let's do that. Let's see, uh oh, Cheryl,
Speaker 1: let's go to Cheryl. Am I saying that right, Cheryl
Speaker 1: and Palmdale.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's correct. Thank you for taking my call.
Speaker 2: How's it going great.
Speaker 3: I'm looking forward to hearing the story, and I'm glad
Speaker 3: you were at the right place at the right time
Speaker 3: to save a life.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, it was I think my heart is
Speaker 1: still beating from what happened. But I'll tell the whole
Speaker 1: thing in my anyway. So tell me what's going on
Speaker 1: with you and then I'll get to that.
Speaker 3: I just want to know if there's some tips or
Speaker 3: anything that I should be doing to make my internet
Speaker 3: router safer. I'm trying to save money. So Verizon was
Speaker 3: having a deal to where I could try their Internet gateway,
Speaker 3: you know the five gear.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, yeah, or for a year.
Speaker 3: For free and if it works out, well, then I
Speaker 3: can cut my you know, internet cord and save myself
Speaker 3: like almost two hundred dollars a month.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, I got that same text, and I forgot to
Speaker 1: actually act on it. They said, hey, We're going to
Speaker 1: give you a year of like internet for free, and
Speaker 1: I said, wait what? And then they sent me a postcard.
Speaker 1: So I still haven't done it. But the problem is
Speaker 1: now where you are Do you get five G coverage?
Speaker 1: Because I don't where I live. Yeah, okay, see that's
Speaker 1: the thing. If you have five G that's amazing because
Speaker 1: you're going to get a speed that's pretty good.
Speaker 2: Where I live.
Speaker 1: I have only lteve available with Verizon, and so I
Speaker 1: don't get the fat like the speed is really not good.
Speaker 2: It's like maybe ten down or something.
Speaker 1: Are you getting? Have you done a speed test on
Speaker 1: this new wireless.
Speaker 3: No I'm not.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well here let me want. Yeah, so let me
Speaker 2: tell you what to do. It's just go to the web.
Speaker 1: So when you're connected to this new Wi Fi, I
Speaker 1: assume you're running two right now, you have like your
Speaker 1: old and your new one running ye okay, so you
Speaker 1: can tell in your computer which one you're connected to.
Speaker 1: One's Verizon, one's the other the other brand.
Speaker 2: Yeah okay.
Speaker 1: So when you're on the Verizon one, just go to
Speaker 1: the website called fast dot com. And so if you
Speaker 1: go on that website on your computer, it will instantly
Speaker 1: do a quick speed test and you can see how
Speaker 1: fast your internet is through Verizon. And so so the
Speaker 1: first thing I would do is connect to Verizon, do
Speaker 1: the fast dot com, and then I would go to
Speaker 1: you know, connect to the other Wi Fi from your
Speaker 1: other provider, and go to the same website and compare
Speaker 1: the SPEEDSKA. Now, typically if you have five G it's
Speaker 1: going to be fine. You don't need a super high
Speaker 1: speed to do all this stuff like the Netflix, and
Speaker 1: unless you're uploading giant video files like I am because
Speaker 1: of my job, you really don't need very fast internet
Speaker 1: up or down. I mean it's you know, twenty five
Speaker 1: fifty will be just fine. You may get faster than that.
Speaker 1: With Verizon, I think they guarantee about anywhere from fifty
Speaker 1: two to one hundred maybe. Okay, anyway, so how to
Speaker 1: keep it secure? I actually think that the Verizon Internet
Speaker 1: is very secure because it's it's a wireless connection and
Speaker 1: it's just between you and the tower, and so there's
Speaker 1: really not much you need to do to secure that.
Speaker 1: I think what it really comes down to is what
Speaker 1: you're doing on the web and staying secure there. And
Speaker 1: ninety nine percent of the problems that I'm seeing from
Speaker 1: people right now have to do with people getting phished,
Speaker 1: some sort of phishing attack where they're clicking a link
Speaker 1: in an email and that's installing malware on their system
Speaker 1: or it's stealing their login or passwords. So that's what
Speaker 1: I'd be most careful about.
Speaker 3: Okay, So I opt on the side of caution and
Speaker 3: I don't click on Jack.
Speaker 1: Yeap, that's a that's a good I like that. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna get a bumper sticker. I don't click on Jack.
Speaker 3: Okay, But what about like that? You know, everything is
Speaker 3: like one nine two one six eight. Do I need
Speaker 3: to change that or anything with that?
Speaker 1: That's that's your IP address, that's basically that's how it
Speaker 1: assigns things into your network, like the different devices you have,
Speaker 1: so they all get a little addressed. That's basically how
Speaker 1: the network finds your your devices, and so that's only
Speaker 1: on your inside network and when it comes to your
Speaker 1: outside network, really nobody else can get into that unless
Speaker 1: you give them access, and they have access to your router.
Speaker 1: So once you know, the router kind of protects you
Speaker 1: from the outside world. There are devices that can make
Speaker 1: things a little bit more secure. There's a device called
Speaker 1: FIREWALLA if you really want to get you know, really
Speaker 1: want to get fancy and put like a basically a
Speaker 1: hard firewall between you and your internet connection or your
Speaker 1: internet connection in the outside world, you can get something
Speaker 1: like that. It's a little device starts at at like
Speaker 1: two hundred dollars. I don't know if you need it, though,
Speaker 1: I really don't. I think it's it's better to just
Speaker 1: kind of be aware because most of these modern routers
Speaker 1: have the privacy protections built in that you need. Now,
Speaker 1: if you're looking to say private as you surf, that's
Speaker 1: a whole nother story.
Speaker 2: That's where VPNs come in.
Speaker 1: But I don't think that the average person needs that
Speaker 1: unless you specifically want that. But for what most people
Speaker 1: are doing day to day, you know, just being on
Speaker 1: guard is really the best advice I have.
Speaker 3: Okay. And should I change like the password that's like
Speaker 3: on the bottom of the you know, the one that
Speaker 3: came with the box or that doesn't really matter?
Speaker 1: I would I mean, I don't think you have to,
Speaker 1: because nowadays a lot of those are are they make
Speaker 1: them pretty complex, But I would say that that's something
Speaker 1: that you could probably change, but make sure it's just
Speaker 1: as complex as the one on the bottom, okay.
Speaker 3: And so to change it, I would still need to
Speaker 3: log into that to the URURL.
Speaker 5: The one, nine, two whatever.
Speaker 3: And then oh yeah, my last question, because I know
Speaker 3: you have to go like there's WPA two and K
Speaker 3: and three, which one's the best one to get to have?
Speaker 2: So I would go with the what is the default one?
Speaker 2: What is it on right now?
Speaker 3: WPA two?
Speaker 1: Okay, So I would leave it there, So I don't
Speaker 1: think you need to change that. There's different there's different
Speaker 1: standards that come out over the years, but the old
Speaker 1: one was I believe w EP, which they had.
Speaker 2: But I would just leave it where it is.
Speaker 1: So I think WP A two might be I've got
Speaker 1: to look this up, but I think that's the most recent,
Speaker 1: but I would go with that one and stay there.
Speaker 3: Okay, thank you so much. All right, Cheryl, and I'm
Speaker 3: loving your show. I was bummed that Leo was leaving,
Speaker 3: but excited that you were stepping in. And I listened
Speaker 3: to you on your KFI segment. I can't catch you
Speaker 3: on the news because I might I might work. And
Speaker 3: then plus the five AM one is like I love
Speaker 3: you but I.
Speaker 6: Can't get well.
Speaker 2: I love you too.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much, Cheryl for listening and watching and all
Speaker 1: that good stuff. And coming up, we're going to talk
Speaker 1: to Hyundai about their new Ionic six.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to the show.
Speaker 1: Rich Demiro here, Rich on Tech on location in Phoenix, Arizona,
Speaker 1: where Hyundai has been doing media test drives of the
Speaker 1: new Ionic six EV. They brought me out here to
Speaker 1: test drive it and with me now is John Simmons
Speaker 1: of Hyundai to.
Speaker 2: Talk about it. John, thanks so much for joining me.
Speaker 7: It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you.
Speaker 2: Nice location.
Speaker 8: Oh it's beautiful out here. I mean we got the
Speaker 8: great weather. I hope it's not raining in California, but
Speaker 8: I hear it is.
Speaker 1: It has been for a while now, all right, Now,
Speaker 1: before we get to the ionics six EV Hondai recently
Speaker 1: became the world's third biggest car maker after Toyota and Volkswagen. Congratulations,
Speaker 1: And what do you attribute that to?
Speaker 7: I think, you know, just great products.
Speaker 8: I'm just committed to bringing products that customers really want
Speaker 8: to the market.
Speaker 1: Okay, So let's talk about this Ionic brand, because we've
Speaker 1: got this new car, but it's part of a EV
Speaker 1: brand that Hyundai is building, the Ionic.
Speaker 2: What does that mean and why?
Speaker 8: Well, we're dedicated to an electronic future, electric future in
Speaker 8: terms of vehicle transportation, and we see by twenty thirty
Speaker 8: the market will be at least fifty percent EV, so
Speaker 8: we're preparing for that. And this egm P platform which
Speaker 8: is underlying these three vehicles that we're planning under the brand,
Speaker 8: means these will be dedicated electric vehicles.
Speaker 1: Now in California, we've seen a lot of momentum with evs.
Speaker 1: Is that happening elsewhere in the US?
Speaker 7: You know it is.
Speaker 8: Urban areas, of course, are very attracted to it.
Speaker 7: It's a good solution.
Speaker 8: Ranges are getting longer and longer in terms of all
Speaker 8: electric range of the vehicles, and we're having more amenities
Speaker 8: available and people are seeing the reliable transportation that they
Speaker 8: can count on.
Speaker 1: Okay, so we're here to talk about the Ionic six.
Speaker 1: This is a car that you're putting up against the
Speaker 1: Tesla Model three and the poll Star two, two really
Speaker 1: nice cars.
Speaker 2: Tell me about some of the key features on.
Speaker 1: The Ionics six, and so some people might be confused.
Speaker 1: They might think, well, wait, I heard of the Ionic five.
Speaker 1: Is this the same car and upgrade to that car?
Speaker 1: So it's totally different car than the five.
Speaker 7: It is.
Speaker 8: It's a four door car. We call it a streamline concept.
Speaker 8: It's an aerodynamic four door. It has a trunk, so
Speaker 8: you know it'll anyone who's coming out of a Sonata
Speaker 8: or something like that will recognize it.
Speaker 1: It's got this unique design so it almost inside it's
Speaker 1: very sizable.
Speaker 2: Outside it looks.
Speaker 1: Pretty compact and the back has almost like a sport
Speaker 1: like design.
Speaker 2: Was that intentional?
Speaker 9: Yeah?
Speaker 8: Everything comes from the aerodynamics, the efficiency of the vehicle.
Speaker 8: You ask about the key aspects of the vehicle, the
Speaker 8: selling points. I think the ultra fast charging. We have
Speaker 8: eight hundred volt charging, ten to eighty percent charge in
Speaker 8: eighteen minutes. We also have a four hundred volt charging,
Speaker 8: which is kind of legacy fast charging, so that'll be
Speaker 8: a huge benefit for customers.
Speaker 1: Now, the eight hundred vault charging is that mostly for
Speaker 1: home or we see those on the road as well.
Speaker 8: Eight hundred volt is only available at charging stations that
Speaker 8: offer it, so it's something that is the next stage
Speaker 8: of ultrafast charging.
Speaker 2: So the car is sort of ready for that absolutely.
Speaker 7: Now.
Speaker 2: They talked up recycled materials in the car. I saw that.
Speaker 2: Do you recall any of those in there?
Speaker 8: Yeah, we, among other things, fishing nets, you know, which
Speaker 8: probably get dropped in the ocean a lot. I'm not
Speaker 8: sure the exact you know, composition chemically and nylon or something,
Speaker 8: but we utilize those two make the carpets in the car.
Speaker 2: It's interesting.
Speaker 1: It's definitely a trend I'm seeing with other automakers, and
Speaker 1: not just auto but also tech gadgets in general, a
Speaker 1: lot more recycled materials. Okay, I thought this was a
Speaker 1: cool feature, the phone as a key. So this utilizes
Speaker 1: Apple Wallet and also Samsung's pass where your phone literally
Speaker 1: becomes a key and you can lend the key to
Speaker 1: someone that way.
Speaker 8: That's right, you can send your send your key to
Speaker 8: someone with limited restrictions. If you want, you can rescind it,
Speaker 8: you can take it back. It really makes you know
Speaker 8: sharing your car or emergency situations, you can you can
Speaker 8: with your phone, you can get in and drive your car.
Speaker 1: Speaking of tech features, there is one thing that I
Speaker 1: think is kind of cool.
Speaker 2: I always love.
Speaker 1: Hitting Easter eggs, and there is one with this car.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of lighting and you call it something unique.
Speaker 1: Explain the lighting and also the Easter egg that people
Speaker 1: can look for sure.
Speaker 8: The vehicle has a theme of we call parametric pixels.
Speaker 8: You'll see these little dots of light all around the
Speaker 8: car at really over seven hundred of them, and it's
Speaker 8: pretty impressive and they're a design element. There's also a
Speaker 8: statement that this is an advanced, something different you haven't
Speaker 8: seen before. But on the steering where we didn't want
Speaker 8: to go with a conventional brand logo on the steering wheel,
Speaker 8: so we decided to put some dots to show some lighting,
Speaker 8: dots to show some interactivity with the car in terms
Speaker 8: of when you're when you're talking to the car to
Speaker 8: ask it to do something, it can recognize that. But
Speaker 8: we put four dots there and then we recognize that
Speaker 8: four dots is actually is actually h and Morris code.
Speaker 7: So it's a little easter egg for you.
Speaker 2: Awesome. And I was playing with some of the lighting
Speaker 2: last night.
Speaker 1: The ambient lighting people love, you know, switching the way
Speaker 1: the lighting looks inside the car. And the best way
Speaker 1: I can describe the parametric pixels is it's almost like
Speaker 1: an eight bit video game.
Speaker 2: It looks really cool and retro but also modern.
Speaker 8: Absolutely. I think that's the point. And to your point,
Speaker 8: the ambient lighting is really cool. You know, you've got
Speaker 8: sixty four colors times to over four thousand combinations. You've
Speaker 8: got some combinations that some designers have worked up for
Speaker 8: you to calm you or to energize you. So really
Speaker 8: cool features and lets you personalize the interior of the car.
Speaker 2: Okay, over the air updates.
Speaker 1: Is this something that Hyundai has done in the past,
Speaker 1: because I know you're promoting this as a big new
Speaker 1: feature for this car.
Speaker 8: Well, we've done it with navigation maps. We've had that
Speaker 8: for a few years, and now we're rolling it out
Speaker 8: to actually the car systems can be updated over the air.
Speaker 8: So that's a huge benefit. We think of it as
Speaker 8: the car being able to get better over time.
Speaker 2: I mean it's kind of like the smartphone.
Speaker 1: You know, you don't have to go into the store
Speaker 1: to update your phone.
Speaker 2: I mean it used to be to update I remember,
Speaker 2: you know, if.
Speaker 1: You had a navigation system, you'd have to go to
Speaker 1: the dealership and pay a fee to get that updated.
Speaker 1: And now, of course we just all get our phones
Speaker 1: updated overnight.
Speaker 8: Right in terms of navigation systems maps, that's you know,
Speaker 8: still happening. So it's really a recent development. So this
Speaker 8: is great. As the car is electrified, we become more
Speaker 8: like those gadgets that we have in our pockets.
Speaker 2: Okay, I love this feature.
Speaker 1: You actually showed it off yesterday in a demo where
Speaker 1: the car can become a giant power outlet. So one
Speaker 1: of the chargers you plug it into the side of
Speaker 1: the car and you can basically plug something into it
Speaker 1: to power it.
Speaker 7: That's right.
Speaker 8: Our model has a seventy seven point four kilowatt hour battery,
Speaker 8: which is pretty big. We'll power the car for three
Speaker 8: hundred and sixty one miles, which is for its class,
Speaker 8: leading for all electric range, and it eliminates range anxiety.
Speaker 8: But the what we call V to L, which is
Speaker 8: there's an accessory plug that you can take the charging
Speaker 8: port and you can plug it into your refrigerator in
Speaker 8: case of outages. You can take it on a can
Speaker 8: camping trip, all sorts of use cases, and you can
Speaker 8: set it so it won't run out your battery.
Speaker 1: Finally, Yeah, so you can say, like leave twenty percent
Speaker 1: on my battery so that you know I can get
Speaker 1: back home.
Speaker 7: Absolutely, you don't want to.
Speaker 8: You know, no one wants to run out their battery
Speaker 8: all the way and be stuck somewhere.
Speaker 1: So blue Link is sort of your connected subscription service
Speaker 1: that you've had.
Speaker 2: It's kind of the connectivity of the car.
Speaker 1: And there's some pretty major changes to that subscription where
Speaker 1: it's going to be included for the lifetime of the owner.
Speaker 2: That's a pretty sizable shift.
Speaker 8: Yeah, we've made a big investment in blue Link, you know,
Speaker 8: a decade ago, and we've gotten more and more subscribers.
Speaker 8: You know, allows you to turn on your car, remotely
Speaker 8: locate your car, turn on your air conditioning for certain models.
Speaker 8: It's really a great tells you when to service the car.
Speaker 8: And now what we've done is we've made it a
Speaker 8: part of the car. We've made it standard. No subscription
Speaker 8: fees after the initial trial period whether you know, we
Speaker 8: have a long trial period anyways, but you know this
Speaker 8: we go out to ten years now.
Speaker 1: So so the Ionic five was a top ten best
Speaker 1: selling EV in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 2: Do you think that will happen with the six?
Speaker 8: You know, we're not focused on volume. We're focused on satisfying,
Speaker 8: you know, what customers want. And this is an alternative
Speaker 8: Theonic five. It has a lot of the same characteristics.
Speaker 8: It has a little bit more range if you want that,
Speaker 8: and the interior has some pretty neat features to personalize it.
Speaker 1: And for folks wondering about Hyundai in general, what do
Speaker 1: you say to them, You've worked for different car companies,
Speaker 1: what do you say about the Hondai brand.
Speaker 8: Hundai moves fast and they provide quality products. It's it's
Speaker 8: really impressive. You know, they never stand still, they never
Speaker 8: take second best.
Speaker 2: All right, John Simmons of Hyundai, thanks so much for
Speaker 2: chatting with me today. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 7: Thank you.
Speaker 2: I'll have more rich on Tech right after this.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging
Speaker 1: out with you talking technology at Triple eight one O one.
Speaker 1: That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one
Speaker 1: zero one. No need to write the number down. You
Speaker 1: can also go to the website rich on tech dot
Speaker 1: tv the numbers right at the top. And yes, i
Speaker 1: will tell my story about saving a life, but I've
Speaker 1: got so many calls to go to here, so let's
Speaker 1: go to my leen first in Fontana, and I promise
Speaker 1: I'll do it at the end of this before the break, Eileen,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show.
Speaker 10: Hi, I'm waiting for your story. I did a Heimnik
Speaker 10: one time and felt like a hero too.
Speaker 1: Well, I don't feel like. I mean, my kids thought
Speaker 1: I was a hero, but I was just doing the
Speaker 1: right thing, so.
Speaker 10: Right, Okay, anyway, first thing, I think it was last
Speaker 10: week that you mentioned the flighty dot com website and
Speaker 10: it sounded really interesting. And when I go to that website,
Speaker 10: all I get is a h offer to buy the dolmazing.
Speaker 1: Okay, the app, it's called flight app dot com f
Speaker 1: L I g h T y app dot com.
Speaker 2: That's yep, that's the part.
Speaker 1: And I used it over the weekend too for the
Speaker 1: for the Hawaii trip and it was fantastic. In fact,
Speaker 1: it was only off by five minutes when we landed,
Speaker 1: which was amazing.
Speaker 11: Wow.
Speaker 10: So anyway, Oh that sounds so wonderful. Yeah, anyway, the
Speaker 10: other thing I have, I started a business about thirty
Speaker 10: five years ago and out of my home and would
Speaker 10: use that number, and at that time I don't. And
Speaker 10: then finally I got an eight hundred number also, but
Speaker 10: we're going to be moving about forty miles away, and
Speaker 10: I think that maybe a different telephone company. And I
Speaker 10: didn't know if landline numbers are portable at all, what
Speaker 10: to do to make it portable.
Speaker 1: I believe landline numbers are portable just like a cell
Speaker 1: phone number. So if you have a landline, I would
Speaker 1: contact a company that does it. And yeah, I believe
Speaker 1: you can just do it just the same way you
Speaker 1: would a cell phone number.
Speaker 10: Okay, I hadn't tried, so I hate to hate. I'm
Speaker 10: sorry to wasted your time.
Speaker 1: Well, no, no, no, it's a good it's a good
Speaker 1: question because I think that people, probably a lot of
Speaker 1: people probably keep these numbers because they're wondering if you can,
Speaker 1: and they're worried you can't.
Speaker 2: So if you know you can, it's a good you know,
Speaker 2: it's a good thing. If you want to switch it
Speaker 2: to a cell phone line, you can do that. The
Speaker 2: only thing to know about that is you probably have
Speaker 2: to call your provider and get some sort of pin
Speaker 2: number or account number. Just have everything that.
Speaker 1: Just call your provider and ask all the information that
Speaker 1: you need to support the number, because there are if
Speaker 1: you do it wrong, it could get hung up and
Speaker 1: like never never land. So just really know that information
Speaker 1: before you go into it.
Speaker 10: And here's something the thing that just happened recently and
Speaker 10: it's kind of frightened me. A friend of mine called
Speaker 10: me and was wanted to know about the money deal
Speaker 10: that I had offered, you know, told him about emailing
Speaker 10: him about and I hadn't done that. And anyway, he
Speaker 10: said that what I supposedly said him was here I
Speaker 10: got fifty thousand dollars out of this program. And then
Speaker 10: when he followed that, and then they were asking for
Speaker 10: fifteen thousand dollars deposit. And I don't know how that happened.
Speaker 2: Well, I'll tell you what happened.
Speaker 1: It sounds like your email got hacked, and so your
Speaker 1: email address got hacked, maybe an old one that you used,
Speaker 1: and what they did was once they hacked that email address,
Speaker 1: they used your account to send out emails to everyone
Speaker 1: in your contact book, and so to keep that from happening,
Speaker 1: you really need to Number one, get rid of old
Speaker 1: email accounts if you're not using them, or at least
Speaker 1: you know you can delete the account or at least
Speaker 1: lock them down as much as you can. So typical
Speaker 1: hacks at this point are a lot of social engineering attacks,
Speaker 1: which means that people get they get access to your Facebook,
Speaker 1: they get access to your Instagram, they get access to
Speaker 1: your email, and they use your good name to send
Speaker 1: out information to your friends and try to scam them
Speaker 1: because people will take a second look because it's coming
Speaker 1: from you. And so you want to be sure that
Speaker 1: you lock down your accounts both with a strong password
Speaker 1: and also to factor authentication on every and all accounts
Speaker 1: that are available, because that's really the best way to
Speaker 1: protect yourself. So that's what i'd recommend. Make sure you
Speaker 1: do it, Eileen, and find the flighty app and get
Speaker 1: that landline transferred. You can do it all right, Thanks
Speaker 1: for the call, appreciate it. Phone lines are open at
Speaker 1: eight eight eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight
Speaker 1: eight seven four to two four one zero one. I
Speaker 1: mentioned that Google is dropping support for yet another product,
Speaker 1: and I've talked about this on the show. This is
Speaker 1: my problem with Google. I love Google, but they have
Speaker 1: such a short attention span when it comes to things.
Speaker 1: Now you can argue that these things have been out
Speaker 1: since twenty twelve, and okay, fine, it's been a good
Speaker 1: ten years since people had these these things in their home.
Speaker 1: But the reality is yet another Google product is getting sunset,
Speaker 1: and this time it is Dropcam and Nest Secure. So
Speaker 1: in one year, on April eighth, twenty twenty four, you
Speaker 1: will not be able to use your Dropcam anymore or
Speaker 1: the Nest Secure home security system. Now, existing dropcam users,
Speaker 1: according to The Verge, will be able to keep using
Speaker 1: them until April eighth, twenty twenty four, after which you
Speaker 1: will not be able to access them with the next app.
Speaker 1: So Google, in the meantime is offering a free indoor
Speaker 1: wired Nestcam to Dropcam owners who subscribe to Nest Aware.
Speaker 1: So if you're not a subscriber, they'll give you a
Speaker 1: fifty percent off coupon. But if you're a subscriber like
Speaker 1: myself and I have a Nestcam, I can go on
Speaker 1: their website and I can get a free Oh sorry,
Speaker 1: I have a Dropcam. I can get a free wired Nestcam,
Speaker 1: so I will definitely be doing that. The promotion runs
Speaker 1: through May seventh, twenty twenty four, so you have a
Speaker 1: bunch of time. In fact, you have time even past
Speaker 1: when the dropcam will stop working. Now, the Dropcam, to
Speaker 1: its credit, did come out in twenty twelve. The pro
Speaker 1: version came out in twenty thirteen, and then of course
Speaker 1: Google bought this company. Everyone wondered what would happen to Dropcam.
Speaker 1: It sort of became Nest. Nest made their own cameras,
Speaker 1: they were more expensive, they had more features, more AI,
Speaker 1: and now Nest Cam is pretty much their brand. And
Speaker 1: then the next Secure. That's another story because I believe
Speaker 1: when Nest Secure came out and people were asking me
Speaker 1: should I subscribe to this?
Speaker 2: I said no.
Speaker 1: And the reason why is because I'm not sure I
Speaker 1: trust Google with something that you don't really want to
Speaker 1: buy a security system very often, and I've purchased two
Speaker 1: in my lifetime, and it's something that you don't really
Speaker 1: want to sit and replace and change.
Speaker 2: So here's a deal.
Speaker 1: Google recently signed a deal with ADT to offer this,
Speaker 1: you know, their own kind of security system. And let's see,
Speaker 1: do I have the name of that security system.
Speaker 2: Let's see.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I have it, but it's like
Speaker 1: it's like a self installed security system, kind of like
Speaker 1: what simply Safe offers, kind of like what Ring offers.
Speaker 1: But to be perfectly honest, if you're buying a self
Speaker 1: install security system, do you really want ADT? I mean,
Speaker 1: ADT is the company that people know that you have
Speaker 1: someone come to your house, they install the security system.
Speaker 2: It's a three year deal.
Speaker 1: You're not really paying for the system, but then you're
Speaker 1: paying the fifty five to seventy dollars or whatever it
Speaker 1: is a month for your security monitoring. And so people
Speaker 1: that wanted the alternative, they went to a company like
Speaker 1: Simply Safe, they went to a company like Ring, and
Speaker 1: now they're giving Nest Secure customers a free next generation
Speaker 1: security system from ad T or a two hundred dollars
Speaker 1: credit to use on the Google Store. I'd use the
Speaker 1: two hundred dollars credit on the Google Store, and personally,
Speaker 1: I would not go with the Nest Secure or whatever
Speaker 1: their new system is, and I would just go with
Speaker 1: something like Simply Safe, or I would go with Ring,
Speaker 1: because I think those companies are a little bit more
Speaker 1: dedicated when it comes to I mean, I think ADT
Speaker 1: is fine, but I just I don't. To me, I
Speaker 1: want something that's a little bit more forward thinking, something
Speaker 1: like a simply safe that was created as an alternative,
Speaker 1: or something like the ring system that I think is
Speaker 1: very good and it's an alternative. And again, you have
Speaker 1: to subscribe or you you know, there's options for it,
Speaker 1: but it's just easier. And Google says, yes, you can
Speaker 1: cancel the ADT subscription at any time. But the reality is,
Speaker 1: I would say, go out to work. All right, let
Speaker 1: me tell you the story about the life. Okay. So
Speaker 1: I'm on the beach in Hawaii, sipping on my tie
Speaker 1: and no joke, you know, I'm reading my book Sun
Speaker 1: is Shining, beautiful beach, and I hear like offen the
Speaker 1: you know, to the right, like help, and I'm like.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's a joke. Like who who says help on
Speaker 2: the beach?
Speaker 7: Right?
Speaker 1: Like unless it's a joke. And all then all of
Speaker 1: a sudden we hear help, my dad needs help, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, okay, I can't sit here, and I'm looking
Speaker 1: around and people are just standing there like not doing anything.
Speaker 1: And so I must have been a thousand feet from
Speaker 1: where this person is, and so they're out in the sea,
Speaker 1: and you know, I look and I'm like, oh gosh,
Speaker 1: like what just happened to this guy?
Speaker 2: Like a shark?
Speaker 1: Like what is going on? Like I don't know for
Speaker 1: this kid to scream? Right, So I just jump up,
Speaker 1: drop everything, and I run over to I was like,
Speaker 1: you know what this probably this person probably needs like
Speaker 1: one of those things, like those like life raft things.
Speaker 1: And I saw it on the beach when I was
Speaker 1: walking in, so I ran, I grabbed it.
Speaker 2: I swam out.
Speaker 1: And I'm not like a very physical guy, like I'm
Speaker 1: not like mister athletic, but I can run really fast,
Speaker 1: and so I ran and I can swim fast, and
Speaker 1: I swam to this guy and it was me and
Speaker 1: another person, and he kind of just swam out.
Speaker 2: But I had this little thing.
Speaker 1: I looked it up. It's called a rescue tube. And
Speaker 1: the person we were able to get on the tube
Speaker 1: and drag him back in to shore. And I guess
Speaker 1: this guy he was wearing a life jacket, so I
Speaker 1: don't know if he couldn't swim or what, but he
Speaker 1: was very thankful that we got him in. He was
Speaker 1: not bitten by a shark. He just I guess lost
Speaker 1: his footing he lost I don't know what he just lost.
Speaker 1: He just couldn't swim back to shore. And so we
Speaker 1: did kind of save his life. I guess in a way.
Speaker 1: I don't know what would have happened if we didn't.
Speaker 1: And believe me, I looked up on my Apple Watch
Speaker 1: after this whole situation to see kind of like where
Speaker 1: my heart rate was at that minute, and believe me,
Speaker 1: it was up. So that's my story from Hawaii.
Speaker 2: Do the right thing.
Speaker 1: Don't be the bystander effect when you see something happening,
Speaker 1: spring into help.
Speaker 2: A lot of people went and dialed nine one one.
Speaker 2: That's fine, but you do need some people that actually
Speaker 2: go and physically helped the person. I didn't know what
Speaker 2: I was running into, but I did it, and uh
Speaker 2: it was.
Speaker 1: All fine anyway, Thanks for listening. All right, rich On
Speaker 1: Tech phone number, Triple A rich.
Speaker 2: One O one.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich DeMuro here chatting
Speaker 1: technology with you at Triple A rich one O one
Speaker 1: eight eight eight seven four to two four to one
Speaker 1: zero one is the phone number email address Hello at
Speaker 1: Richon Tech dot TV. All right, so let's just go
Speaker 1: to Kevin in Walnut, California, to start off this hour.
Speaker 2: Kevin, you're on with Rich.
Speaker 5: Thank you Rich, and welcome belated welcome to KFI. So
Speaker 5: glad you were the replacement for Leo.
Speaker 6: And Happy Easter.
Speaker 2: Thank you. Christian.
Speaker 9: Is.
Speaker 5: I have a whole bunch of old cell phones, sensoring
Speaker 5: and other brands. I want to donate them or destroy
Speaker 5: them because I don't want any of the data context
Speaker 5: information going to somebody else.
Speaker 6: How should I do that?
Speaker 2: So the first question is can you turn these phones on?
Speaker 9: Yes?
Speaker 2: I can, Okay, So if you can turn them.
Speaker 1: On, then I would go through the settings on the
Speaker 1: Android and are they all Android?
Speaker 5: Yes?
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1: I would go through the settings and I would format
Speaker 1: them so you can go into settings and then it's basically,
Speaker 1: you know, there's different variations depending on the Android model,
Speaker 1: but usually you can go into Advanced.
Speaker 2: And then systems. Let's say I I have a Samsung
Speaker 2: right here.
Speaker 1: Let's see if we go into settings and then we
Speaker 1: go into let's see about phone and then reset and
Speaker 1: then it says reset all settings, reset, network settings, reset,
Speaker 1: accessibility settings, or factory data reset. Factory data reset is
Speaker 1: the one that you want and that will erase all
Speaker 1: of your data, including files and downloaded apps. And you
Speaker 1: can also do the same thing on the iPhone if
Speaker 1: you go into Settings General and then reset and then
Speaker 1: basically you're looking for the factory data reset make sure
Speaker 1: that all the important stuff you need is backed up.
Speaker 1: That's the way that you can, you know, get that
Speaker 1: stuff on a different phone. But if you really want
Speaker 1: to be secure, you know, you might want to do
Speaker 1: this process twice. But I think that once should probably
Speaker 1: be sufficient for most people. If especially if you're donating them.
Speaker 1: The second you donate these phones to a reputable organization,
Speaker 1: they're going to do the same thing.
Speaker 2: They're going to wipe them as well.
Speaker 5: So does that help, Yeah, definitely. And I have one
Speaker 5: more question, rich Sure, I got a IPTV service from
Speaker 5: a Canadian firm to watch mostly Asians programs like from
Speaker 5: India and also cricket. Is that illegal in US to
Speaker 5: do or is it legal?
Speaker 1: Well, it's tough to know based on how this box
Speaker 1: is working. But I call these black boxes IPTV, so
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily illegal. I mean that's a term that
Speaker 1: you know, it depends how they're taking this programming. So
Speaker 1: some of these boxes, you know, they offer a lot
Speaker 1: of programming based on streams, and they just put that
Speaker 1: stream in an easy way, or maybe they present it
Speaker 1: in a way that is not the way that the
Speaker 1: provider wants, Like maybe they take the stream outside of
Speaker 1: the app that the provider typically offers it through and
Speaker 1: they just make it easier to find, or they make
Speaker 1: it easier to watch.
Speaker 2: So it really depends.
Speaker 1: But typically I don't recommend those boxes because they do
Speaker 1: operate in a gray area and so you don't really
Speaker 1: know what you're getting, and well, I don't think someone's
Speaker 1: going to come to your front door and arrest you
Speaker 1: for it. I don't feel good using something like that
Speaker 1: just because it's not the way it's intended. Like if
Speaker 1: you're getting a service for free that you should be
Speaker 1: paying for, then yeah, there's probably a problem there, like
Speaker 1: it's something that you probably shouldn't be doing. But if
Speaker 1: it's just being presented in a different way, like if
Speaker 1: they're just putting YouTube streams on there or channels in
Speaker 1: a different way that they are and then they're typically presented,
Speaker 1: then you know, again it's a gray area. So the
Speaker 1: main thing about those boxes is that sometimes the software
Speaker 1: is not up to date, they're the service or the
Speaker 1: support can can be all over the place. I just
Speaker 1: personally don't recommend them because of that reason. So it
Speaker 1: sort of comes down to a personal Uh, you know
Speaker 1: what you're comfortable doing. But I, you know, I work
Speaker 1: in the content creation world, and so personally, I like
Speaker 1: to pay for the stuff that I'm streaming. And it
Speaker 1: sounds like Kevin, because you're you're wondering about this, you
Speaker 1: probably already know the answer. So I hope that helps,
Speaker 1: and I do appreciate calling and thanks for the kind words.
Speaker 1: All right, if you want to call in Triple eight
Speaker 1: Rich one oh one is the phone number. That's eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: This is something that's affecting a lot of folks right now.
Speaker 1: If you have a Western Digital hard drive, they're my
Speaker 1: cloud service has been down for a while. It's been
Speaker 1: down for apparently more than twenty four I know that
Speaker 1: I've been getting emails about this for about a week,
Speaker 1: so I think it's been closer to a week now.
Speaker 1: And I just got an email yesterday from Western Digital
Speaker 1: because I had one of their drives in the past
Speaker 1: that I was testing. It was called the eb which
Speaker 1: I really liked and I didn't even know they were
Speaker 1: still supporting it, but they sent an email about this
Speaker 1: whole situation. But according to Ours Technica, folks are locked
Speaker 1: out of their local drives many times because of this
Speaker 1: my Cloud system. So Western Digital issued a release saying
Speaker 1: that the company learned there's been an unauthorized third party
Speaker 1: that gained access to a number of the company's systems
Speaker 1: AKA they were hacked, and the company believes that the
Speaker 1: unauthorized party obtained certain data from its systems and they're
Speaker 1: working to understand the nature and scope of that data
Speaker 1: AKA they're trying to figure out how many passwords and
Speaker 1: usernames were taken and if folks, if these hackers were
Speaker 1: able to access the data on people's drives or that
Speaker 1: was stored in the cloud. So, as you can see,
Speaker 1: this could be a major problem. This is affecting the
Speaker 1: my Cloud, the my Cloud Home, the MyCloud Home duo,
Speaker 1: the sand Disk eb and the sand Disk I expand
Speaker 1: wireless charger. And I'm a big fan of these sand
Speaker 1: disk products. The eb I was a huge fan of
Speaker 1: when it came out. When it SYNCD with Google Photos,
Speaker 1: that functionality went away, so I didn't really recommend it anymore,
Speaker 1: but I still recommend the sand disc I expand not
Speaker 1: necessarily the wireless charger, but I do like their little
Speaker 1: drive that they have. So the outage means that users
Speaker 1: cannot access data stored in my cloud, and it also
Speaker 1: extends to some of these things that you need around
Speaker 1: my cloud. And so the log in service is just
Speaker 1: not available, and so people are saying, hey, wait, I
Speaker 1: can't access my hard drive that's sitting in my living room,
Speaker 1: but it's not letting me access it because I need
Speaker 1: to log in through the my Drive service or the
Speaker 1: MyCloud service. So what I got from Western Digital and
Speaker 1: I'm not sure this effects or this will extend to everything,
Speaker 1: but there is a feature that allows you to access
Speaker 1: your stored files locally using a feature called local access.
Speaker 1: And this feature allows you to directly access your personal
Speaker 1: files from a Windows or Mac computer that's connected to
Speaker 1: the same network as your device. But you have to
Speaker 1: enable it. So you go to your browser and you
Speaker 1: connect to your device's dashboard.
Speaker 2: And remember we were talking about this earlier.
Speaker 1: It's usually a number of IP address that's printed on
Speaker 1: the bottom of the device, so you navigate there and
Speaker 1: look for the local access feature. You enable that feature
Speaker 1: and you can create a new local access account and
Speaker 1: then using that account, you can go through and access
Speaker 1: the files on your drive. But this is again not
Speaker 1: very good. We're seeing this more and more and I
Speaker 1: just can't believe how many times I'm seeing these companies
Speaker 1: that are getting hacked. And it's a problem because these
Speaker 1: online services that we rely on are not usable during
Speaker 1: that time, could be a week, could be a couple
Speaker 1: of days. But also your information is then put at risk.
Speaker 1: So if you're using the same login information for this
Speaker 1: MyCloud service as you use for other services, if they
Speaker 1: were able to get this information from Western Digital, now
Speaker 1: they've got your log in for another service that you
Speaker 1: use the same log in and password for. So the
Speaker 1: big thing to know here is that you always want
Speaker 1: to use unique log in, unique password for everything that
Speaker 1: you're logging into because that way, if one of these
Speaker 1: services gets hacked, they can't use it on a different service.
Speaker 1: And Disney Plus moving on now is launching with ads
Speaker 1: on Roku. So if you are waiting for Disney Plus
Speaker 1: and that AD supported plan, which is a little bit
Speaker 1: cheaper than the AD free plan, actually it's not, it's
Speaker 1: the same price. They just made it ad supported, but
Speaker 1: it is available on Roku, and so Roku users can
Speaker 1: now use Disney Plus with or without ads. It took
Speaker 1: them about four months to get this going. The reason
Speaker 1: probably because Roku likes to get a cut of ad revenue.
Speaker 1: So the way Roku works is that all the ads
Speaker 1: that are shown on there, some of them make money
Speaker 1: for Roku. So let's say you're Disney Plus and you
Speaker 1: stream a show and it has, you know, six minutes
Speaker 1: of commercials. Roku gets a small cut of the commercials
Speaker 1: and that ad time on that service, even though it's
Speaker 1: Disney Plus. It's a unique way that they kind of
Speaker 1: came up with stuff. So Roku is really an advertising platform.
Speaker 1: And that's why those Roku boxes are so cheap, because
Speaker 1: Roku sells you those at an inexpensive cost, and then
Speaker 1: they make it up on the services that you subscribe to.
Speaker 1: In fact, they may even get a cut of the
Speaker 1: price you pay to Disney Plus for this plan. And
Speaker 1: so that's probably why it took so long, because Disney
Speaker 1: Plus is probably like, ah, we're big, we don't need
Speaker 1: to pay you anything, and Roku is like, now, we're
Speaker 1: not gonna put you on our platform unless you pay US,
Speaker 1: and Disney Plus said, Okayku, you're pretty big, so we'll
Speaker 1: give you a little cut of that money. It's all
Speaker 1: about recurring revenue streams at this point, because it started
Speaker 1: out where the services would just put the apps on
Speaker 1: there and they didn't really care because it was good
Speaker 1: for everyone. They would sell the hardware, they'd sell other
Speaker 1: movies and things on the side. But now someone like
Speaker 1: Roku is saying, yeah, we're pretty big out there, We're
Speaker 1: like one of the top streaming platforms. We're going to
Speaker 1: take a cut of some of this money that people
Speaker 1: are spending on these things. So that's what's happening there.
Speaker 1: But if you have Roku, you can now use Disney
Speaker 1: Plus with ads.
Speaker 2: I believe is it six.
Speaker 1: Ninety nine still when it came out, it was six
Speaker 1: ninety nine, so I'm not sure how much it is
Speaker 1: at this point. I pay for like the Disney Bundle.
Speaker 1: According to GameSpot back on December eighth, it was eight
Speaker 1: dollars a month.
Speaker 2: Anyway, I got to look that up.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure, but it's it's one of these things
Speaker 1: where Disney Plus added the ads supported plan, but it
Speaker 1: was the same price as pep or paying before they
Speaker 1: had ads, so it was like ad free. So anyway, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's confusing. All I know is every month you get
Speaker 1: these these bills and you're like, did I watch Disney
Speaker 1: Plus this month?
Speaker 2: Did I?
Speaker 4: All?
Speaker 9: Right?
Speaker 1: Coming up on the show, we still get a lot
Speaker 1: more to talk about. We're going to talk to the
Speaker 1: CEO of a company that is attempting to bring I
Speaker 1: message to Android users.
Speaker 2: And then later in the.
Speaker 1: Show, we're going to talk about the movie that I
Speaker 1: watched on the plane, Tetris on Apple TV. Plus my
Speaker 1: friend Dan Ackerman from CNAT we'll talk He wrote a
Speaker 1: book on Tetris, so we'll talk all about that, plus
Speaker 1: your calls at Triple eight rich one on one eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four two.
Speaker 2: Four one zero one. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich Demiro here chatting about technology with you at Triple
Speaker 1: eight rich one oh one. Max is in Newport Beach, California. Max,
Speaker 1: Welcome to rich on Tech.
Speaker 6: Thank you for taking my call.
Speaker 9: Rich.
Speaker 6: I'm a little older guy. If I know what button
Speaker 6: used to push, I'm good. Otherwise I'm not ethnically savvy.
Speaker 7: Read more.
Speaker 6: My homes seven years ago got new TVs and new
Speaker 6: stereo stuff and everything I want to cut the cord.
Speaker 6: I'm apprehensive because I don't know I need help. I
Speaker 6: don't know who to call. I know what I want
Speaker 6: to do, but I have no clue what to do
Speaker 6: or how to do it. Okay, how do I find
Speaker 6: somebody that can come to my house and help me?
Speaker 2: Okay? You want someone?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean most of the time people di why this,
Speaker 1: Because that's what's so great about it is that you
Speaker 1: don't really need someone.
Speaker 2: So how many TVs are we talking here?
Speaker 9: Four?
Speaker 2: Okay, so you got four TVs and you want to
Speaker 2: have the same programming across all of them?
Speaker 6: Yeah, and I have I have Sono system in the house.
Speaker 1: Also, Oh wow, you've got sons one of my favorites.
Speaker 1: I mean, I was just playing with mine this morning.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 6: Okay, I need somebody to come out and really show
Speaker 6: me how to work stuff, okay, because I'm confused.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, I mean, look, there's a lot of there's
Speaker 1: a lot of local people that can do that. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of national services that can do that. If
Speaker 1: you want someone that's you know, local, I would just
Speaker 1: go to yelp and find someone that maybe that mounts
Speaker 1: TVs that runs a service like that that can do
Speaker 1: you know, they do more than mount TV's, they run cable.
Speaker 1: They really know their stuff. So if you want someone
Speaker 1: to kind of, you know, a little bit more handholding
Speaker 1: to get through this, that's who i'd recommend someone.
Speaker 7: What do I look under on Yelp?
Speaker 1: I would search let's see here, let me let me
Speaker 1: actually search here. It's probably someone that like cable installation,
Speaker 1: let's see, or video camera installation, because those people are
Speaker 1: usually you know, the people that know what they're doing
Speaker 1: with all this stuff. They don't do just that, you know,
Speaker 1: like the people that I had come mount my TV,
Speaker 1: they would do all kinds of stuff, they would run
Speaker 1: video cameras IP. So I would search something like that.
Speaker 1: You can also, let's see if you search tech support,
Speaker 1: like tech support in home tech support. You can do that,
Speaker 1: and there's people like that'll bring up a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of a whole bunch of stuff. Network. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: computer I T services. I mean there's a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of people that will do that. Your computer guy, I
Speaker 1: mean there's a lot. So I would search something like that,
Speaker 1: But realistically, I think it's easier than that. I think
Speaker 1: what you need to do do you watch cable? Do
Speaker 1: you need cable TV or like certain channels?
Speaker 6: I want sports, I want to I want to get
Speaker 6: you know, I want to get some of the local channels, okay,
Speaker 6: you know, like HGTV and the golf channel and some
Speaker 6: of the sports.
Speaker 5: But we only used to.
Speaker 6: Be to streaming services Netflix and Prime for some reason.
Speaker 6: My Prime thing it's very slow and uh everything. But
Speaker 6: but I want to be able to get some of
Speaker 6: the local channels and to get my streaming. But I
Speaker 6: want to cut the cable.
Speaker 1: Okay, well you mean the cable like the s Yeah,
Speaker 1: the cable is yeah, yeah, exactly. Now here's the thing
Speaker 1: with cutting the cable is that when you cut the cable,
Speaker 1: typically the internet price goes up, and so that could
Speaker 1: be a little bit of an issue. So right now
Speaker 1: you're probably on some sort of bundle deal that they
Speaker 1: give you the cable and the internet all in one.
Speaker 1: When you call them up and say, okay, I'm cutting
Speaker 1: the cable part, they say, okay, well your internet's.
Speaker 2: Going to go up to this price.
Speaker 1: So you know what you need to do is really
Speaker 1: have the cable ready to go. You live in Newport Beach,
Speaker 1: you may be able to get the Verizon five G
Speaker 1: like the wireless box we were talking about, or the
Speaker 1: T Mobile Home Internet, So that could be a way
Speaker 1: to save on some of your cable costs. But I
Speaker 1: think that at the end of the day, you need
Speaker 1: to pick a streaming device, which I'd recommend either a
Speaker 1: Roku or an Apple TV would kind of get expensive,
Speaker 1: but you told me you have so nos so that
Speaker 1: tells me that you've got, you know, a decent setup
Speaker 1: there and you're not afraid to spend money, so that's good.
Speaker 1: Maybe an Apple TV that's kind of simple, and then
Speaker 1: a Fire TV that's also really easy that's from Amazon.
Speaker 1: And then you need the cable service. If you want
Speaker 1: to get something like HGTV and you want to get
Speaker 1: something like the Golf Channel, you're probably going to have
Speaker 1: to look into a service like YouTube TV, which is
Speaker 1: going to run like eighty bucks a month. There are
Speaker 1: other services out there. There are services that are cheaper
Speaker 1: like Filo. Filo TV is another one, and that will
Speaker 1: give you some of the channels. It doesn't do a
Speaker 1: lot with sports, and so this is seventy channels for
Speaker 1: fifty bucks a month.
Speaker 2: And if let's just I'm just going to look up
Speaker 2: and see if golf is in there. So Golf channel
Speaker 2: is not on there, and so what you want to
Speaker 2: do is I would look up golf channel streaming service
Speaker 2: and see which channel, which streaming provider has that that's
Speaker 2: the cheapest.
Speaker 1: And so if you go on their website, it will
Speaker 1: should tell you that I'm looking at this right now.
Speaker 1: So you need to figure that out. And then you
Speaker 1: need to just once you get all those things in line,
Speaker 1: connect them all up. So you've got you UG in
Speaker 1: the streaming stick, and then you've got your service, and
Speaker 1: then you've got you already said you have Netflix and Prime.
Speaker 1: Now the only other thing you said is that your
Speaker 1: Prime is really slow. So that tells me you may
Speaker 1: have an issue with your router. And since you're going
Speaker 1: fully streaming, you may want to upgrade your network to
Speaker 1: something like a mesh network system.
Speaker 2: I recommend systems from.
Speaker 1: Euro E E r O and also Villo v I
Speaker 1: l O, but there are many others that will do it,
Speaker 1: like Neckgear ORB. But also you may be able to
Speaker 1: just go through Spectrum and ask them for a Wi
Speaker 1: Fi extender and they have those as well.
Speaker 2: All right, good question coming up.
Speaker 1: We are going to talk to the CEO of Sunbird Messaging.
Speaker 1: They are bringing I message to Android. You're listening to
Speaker 1: rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich
Speaker 1: DeMuro here hanging out talking technology with you at Triple
Speaker 1: A Rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four
Speaker 1: to two four to one zero one. Email address hello
Speaker 1: at rich On Tech TV. Tom wrote in and said, Hey,
Speaker 1: I was listening to your description on the show regarding
Speaker 1: United Airlines and the purchase of snacks using a credit card. So,
Speaker 1: if I understand correctly, you have to use United Airline
Speaker 1: app United Airlines app with a card attached. You can't
Speaker 1: pay with a credit card by itself.
Speaker 2: Is that correct?
Speaker 1: Yes, that's what I was trying to explain. So that's
Speaker 1: what trips people up, is that you cannot present a
Speaker 1: credit card on United Airlines to pay for snacks and
Speaker 1: so and by the way, they do give you some
Speaker 1: free snacks.
Speaker 2: You don't have to do this. This is if you
Speaker 2: want to.
Speaker 1: Buy one of their boxes or a burger or something
Speaker 1: like that. But yes, you need to have the credit
Speaker 1: card stored inside the app before you get on the
Speaker 1: airline because you cannot even though there is Wi Fi
Speaker 1: on the airline, you can't download the United Airlines app
Speaker 1: once you're on the airline, so once you're in flight,
Speaker 1: it doesn't work, so you have to set this all
Speaker 1: up before and so literally I just watched people, you know,
Speaker 1: as the flight attents are going down the aisles, and
Speaker 1: they're just explaining this to everyone because it is kind
Speaker 1: of confusing, like when are you not able to for something?
Speaker 1: So it'd be nice. I get why they're trying to
Speaker 1: do the contact list payment stuff, but it would be
Speaker 1: nice if they were able to accept credit cards. But
Speaker 1: they've got all kinds of stuff they even accept. I
Speaker 1: think it's like Venmo or PayPal by like QR codes,
Speaker 1: so they do give you options just if you're flying United.
Speaker 1: My advice download any airline you go on, download, even
Speaker 1: if it's just a one time thing, download the app
Speaker 1: before you get on the plane because a lot of
Speaker 1: times you do get some benefits and features by downloading
Speaker 1: the app that you wouldn't typically get if you didn't.
Speaker 1: Like for Southwest, for example, you can activate free messaging
Speaker 1: on the airline even if you don't pay for the Internet.
Speaker 1: You can still get like I message and stuff and
Speaker 1: some other things as well. Same thing on United, even
Speaker 1: if you don't pay for the Internet. You can still
Speaker 1: activate free messaging, but you have to activate it first.
Speaker 1: So that's that's how it all works, all right. Speaking
Speaker 1: of messaging on the line, we've got Danny Misra. He
Speaker 1: is the CEO of Sunbird Messaging. They are bringing I
Speaker 1: Message and other messaging apps to one messaging app called Sunbird,
Speaker 1: which is available on Android.
Speaker 2: And Danny, welcome to the show.
Speaker 12: Yeah, thank you, Rich, thank you for having me, and
Speaker 12: happy holladays all those celebrating.
Speaker 2: Thank you. So let's talk about Sunbird.
Speaker 1: So this has been an app that a lot of
Speaker 1: people are excited about because not only does it bring
Speaker 1: I Message to Android, but it brings a unified messaging
Speaker 1: we've gotten there's so many messaging apps at this point,
Speaker 1: and so tell me what you're building with Sunbird.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 12: Absolutely, we are so very excited. And so you know,
Speaker 12: there's a massive, massive, pent up demand to fix messaging
Speaker 12: between androids and iPhones. I've never had an iPhone personally.
Speaker 12: I've had an Android my whole adult life here and
Speaker 12: so I was one of those people that had to
Speaker 12: ask my parents who were maybe babysitting my kids, who
Speaker 12: were sending me videos blow resolutions you know, being in
Speaker 12: the group chat where everyone basically made fun of me
Speaker 12: and you know, kept on doing like to emphasize dislike.
Speaker 12: If you know, if you have an Android, then you
Speaker 12: know what I'm talking about. You know that that kind
Speaker 12: of torture. And and so Garn and I, who have
Speaker 12: known each other for you know, over a decade, and uh,
Speaker 12: and he has this background in messaging and I have
Speaker 12: a background in cybersecurity and it, et cetera, said we
Speaker 12: can solve this problem. But then that the way that
Speaker 12: we solved it meant that we can do the same
Speaker 12: thing for any messaging type. That was the big aha
Speaker 12: moment there. So I Message is actually just you know,
Speaker 12: maybe you can call it the prototype for some bird,
Speaker 12: but it happens to be just this ridiculous demand for
Speaker 12: androids and iPhones to finally communicate well with each other.
Speaker 1: Right yeah, well, okay, so let's talk about that whole situation.
Speaker 1: Because Apple overnight can launch I Message on androids and
Speaker 1: they would be the number one messaging app pretty much
Speaker 1: in the US. Maybe I don't know about in the world,
Speaker 1: because there's a big emphasis on I Message here in
Speaker 1: the US, which is just not present anywhere else in
Speaker 1: the world. So why is Apple not releasing that. Let's
Speaker 1: start with that.
Speaker 12: Well, I can't really speak for them. I just know
Speaker 12: that they've been asked about it, and you know they've
Speaker 12: said it's not a priority for their users, right, So
Speaker 12: Apple focuses on their users and their ecosystem. If they
Speaker 12: were to create let's say, an API where it opens
Speaker 12: up I message to the world, that's a huge business
Speaker 12: in itself, and that would take a couple of years. Similarly,
Speaker 12: you saw you know, Google do that with OURCS, right,
Speaker 12: create a messaging protocol based on opening up an API,
Speaker 12: and there's only one company that actually has access to API,
Speaker 12: which is faandsome. So you know, to create a business
Speaker 12: around an API, it takes years, and by then, we
Speaker 12: do believe we'll have millions and millions of users that launched.
Speaker 12: We know we're going to have millions of users.
Speaker 2: So okay, I guess my big question is, well, how
Speaker 2: does it work? Number one?
Speaker 1: So you sign up on I mean right now, it's
Speaker 1: a wait list, so there's some beta users and I
Speaker 1: got a little taste of this. I got to try
Speaker 1: this out myself, and so it's pretty simple. You just
Speaker 1: kind of sign in with your Apple ID. But let's
Speaker 1: talk about security because that you know, Apple doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: allow that per se like they don't. It's not like
Speaker 1: with Google where they allow you know, you can authorize
Speaker 1: third party apps with your Google app or your Google
Speaker 1: logging right, like Apple doesn't really have that provision for this,
Speaker 1: So you're sort of doing something that Apple may not like.
Speaker 1: But I mean, tell me how that's how that's gonna work.
Speaker 12: Yeah, I mean it's it's a little hard to get
Speaker 12: into the technical weeds, but at the end of the day,
Speaker 12: that's what the invention is.
Speaker 7: And so.
Speaker 12: Two parts of this right privacy, security and confidentiality being
Speaker 12: one of them. You know, Darren the inventor is twenty
Speaker 12: years in fintech dealing with banks and technology before ten
Speaker 12: years of messaging, and me personally, I have twenty years
Speaker 12: in it, you know, in the last ten of which
Speaker 12: has been in cybersecurity and compliance, you know, dealing with
Speaker 12: things like GDPR in Europe and ISO twenty seven thousand
Speaker 12: and one, auditing and stock to readiness right and the
Speaker 12: California Consumer Protection So I know, privacy in and out,
Speaker 12: and a huge part of this app is not storing data,
Speaker 12: so that ties into the second part of your question,
Speaker 12: which is the actual invention here? So what is the invention?
Speaker 12: So the invention is maintaining encryption, right, So using the
Speaker 12: native authentication. So for you, when you logged into I message,
Speaker 12: it's user name, password and two factor authentication. But when
Speaker 12: you add what's app into some bird, you're just scanning
Speaker 12: the QR code so without getting two and that same idea.
Speaker 12: Now it's in some bird also, so the next app
Speaker 12: it's going to be using their authentication. So we're basically
Speaker 12: building let's call it relay services in the cloud, right,
Speaker 12: So relay services that get and this is what we
Speaker 12: have a patent filed on as well. Right, So relay
Speaker 12: services in the cloud that automatically open up the relay
Speaker 12: maintain the encryption, right. And the cool thing is is
Speaker 12: that as soon as it goes through our servers, it
Speaker 12: automatically gets purged from our servers at the same time,
Speaker 12: because if you're not storing data, you can't have compliance issues.
Speaker 12: You can have hacking issues, right if you don't store data.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 1: My guest right now is Danny Mezrahi, CEO of Sunbird,
Speaker 1: and they are building a messaging app that not only
Speaker 1: brings I message to Android, but also a unified inbox
Speaker 1: for all different types of messengers including WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger,
Speaker 1: your text messages, later, Telegram, Discord, RCS, slack. You want
Speaker 1: one place for all messages.
Speaker 2: That's what you're.
Speaker 4: Building, right, Rich.
Speaker 12: Remember when we first got Outlook for the first time,
Speaker 12: and I don't know your age, but you know I'm
Speaker 12: old enough to have had Outlook with you know, I
Speaker 12: attached my AOL address. You know, that's maybe too much
Speaker 12: information now really show on my age, but you know
Speaker 12: I attached my AOL, I touched my hot Hotmail, I
Speaker 12: attached my Yahoo all to Outlook, right, which is called
Speaker 12: the thin client. So think some bird as a thin client.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 12: So it's it's just the window to see all these messages.
Speaker 9: Right.
Speaker 12: But when you look at all the data and you
Speaker 12: see that people are spending four point two hours every
Speaker 12: day scrolling through their messaging apps, going back and forth
Speaker 12: between them, right, we want to claim a couple of
Speaker 12: those hours. We want to make it a little easier
Speaker 12: for people to say I don't have to go or
Speaker 12: you know, we have I have a friend that said
Speaker 12: that he got a message from a Facebook friend and
Speaker 12: it was a very important message, and it was a
Speaker 12: very timely message and basically a friend was in need
Speaker 12: and he didn't have any other people that he communicated
Speaker 12: on Facebook Messenger with.
Speaker 2: Right, so you have it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I missed it, right, And this happens a lot
Speaker 1: with LinkedIn messages. You know, these these services that you
Speaker 1: sign up for and you may not check very often,
Speaker 1: but if they're all in one place, of course you're
Speaker 1: going to see them much much quicker. What about cost
Speaker 1: for all this? Are you going to charge for this
Speaker 1: service when it comes out? And when do we expect
Speaker 1: to see this?
Speaker 11: Yeah?
Speaker 12: I mean right now, it's a free app and it
Speaker 12: plans to be free through launch, and you know, with
Speaker 12: millions and millions of users, frankly, we can keep it
Speaker 12: free because then we have funding. I mean, you know
Speaker 12: this is not brain surgery, right, so you know we
Speaker 12: want to keep it free. We want to get the
Speaker 12: user count up, and we want to keep our costs
Speaker 12: a little. You know, we're getting our costs lower and lower,
Speaker 12: which has been great, and so we're going to keep
Speaker 12: it free.
Speaker 7: Now.
Speaker 12: We do think we're going to have some premium premium features.
Speaker 12: I don't want to, you know, do too much spoilers
Speaker 12: in terms of you know, what are going to be
Speaker 12: premium premium. I mean, we have some really cool features
Speaker 12: like chat, GPT, changing the tone of a message, and
Speaker 12: you know, face Android to Android face time, right, we
Speaker 12: have some really cool features and store. The big, the
Speaker 12: big subscription model that we do four C for now
Speaker 12: would be unlocking the rest of the apps. We know
Speaker 12: at launch we're going to do, you know, I Message
Speaker 12: and WhatsApp or and or WhatsApp and Facebook and or
Speaker 12: SMS and or r cs. Right, we think there's going
Speaker 12: to be four or five you know, free apps at launch,
Speaker 12: and we can get tens and tens of millions of
Speaker 12: users just based on that, and that's what we want.
Speaker 6: That's absolutely what.
Speaker 9: We want, you know.
Speaker 12: And then after that, if you want to unlock Telegram, Signal, line, discord, right, LinkedIn, messaging,
Speaker 12: team spaces, all of these are doable, right the way
Speaker 12: that the invention is any messaging app that we want
Speaker 12: to bring into it, we can do that based on
Speaker 12: the invention.
Speaker 1: Interesting, all right, We're gonna have to leave it there,
Speaker 1: but it's very intriguing. And you know, like I said,
Speaker 1: I did get to try the I Message on there
Speaker 1: and it works.
Speaker 2: My messages were coming through.
Speaker 1: I was sitting there texting from an Android phone and
Speaker 1: my wife and kid were getting the messages on their
Speaker 1: iPhones and they were in blue, so blue bubbles on
Speaker 1: Android both ways, it did work. Danny Mezrahi from Sunbird Messaging,
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for joining me today.
Speaker 2: How can folks find the app?
Speaker 6: Yeah, sumbird app.
Speaker 12: I mean you could put some bird messaging into Google.
Speaker 12: At this point, we're coming up a lot. You know,
Speaker 12: we've been very very fortunate with a lot of great
Speaker 12: you know, coverage and and but you know slombird app
Speaker 12: dot com. You know, share this with your Android friends,
Speaker 12: share this with you know, anyone who's you know, making
Speaker 12: green bubbles in the group chat, and we love more
Speaker 12: people on the wait list, and soon we're going to
Speaker 12: get the app there everyone. We're working, you know what,
Speaker 12: off on making sure that that happens.
Speaker 2: All right, Thanks so much for joining me today. Appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Coming up, we are going to talk about best Buy
Speaker 1: launching recycle by mailboxes. So if you have a bunch
Speaker 1: of cords and cables and gadgets laying around the house,
Speaker 1: you can now send them in for recycling. Details on
Speaker 1: that coming up. Oh, rich Demiro here Rich On Tech
Speaker 1: triple eight Rich one O one eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four to two, four to one zero one.
Speaker 2: Good song.
Speaker 1: Courtney recommended that we play how to Save a Life
Speaker 1: by the Fray thanks to my story about helping to
Speaker 1: save a life in Hawaii. But I'm telling you, I
Speaker 1: know I'm laughing now. But the thing the thing to
Speaker 1: know this thing, where's my note? I wrote this down.
Speaker 1: What it's called a rescue tube. That is what it's called.
Speaker 1: I took a picture of this thing. It's like kind
Speaker 1: of that long floaty thing that is. That was the
Speaker 1: key to the entire rescue operation because I knew that
Speaker 1: this adult I would not be able to swim back
Speaker 1: to shore. But with the rescue tube, that floaty thing
Speaker 1: that was, I told him to grab onto that and
Speaker 1: I pulled that had a nice big cable like a cord,
Speaker 1: and so I basically pulled him back into shore with that. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: learn where the rescue tube is. When you go to
Speaker 1: a beach, learn where the rescue tube is. That's my
Speaker 1: advice to you. All right, let's go to Ron in
Speaker 1: Orange County. Ron You're on with Rich Welcome.
Speaker 5: To the show. Oh, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 2: Hold on and take you off to speak of Okay,
Speaker 2: take off speaking.
Speaker 11: I have a small business, sure, and I've been operating
Speaker 11: it for years, and I'm trying to get better organized. Essentially,
Speaker 11: when someone calls in, I want to be able to
Speaker 11: input in some type of software, some affordable software that
Speaker 11: I can dis log everything in, name, the phone number,
Speaker 11: what they're calling about, so forth.
Speaker 2: And do you have this software already?
Speaker 11: No, I'm asking you, Okay, what would you recommend an
Speaker 11: affordable software?
Speaker 9: If not free?
Speaker 1: Well, the good news is we live in an amazing
Speaker 1: time right now, with so many great software options. So
Speaker 1: I think what you're talking about is CRM software. Have
Speaker 1: you heard that term?
Speaker 2: I assume have.
Speaker 1: I believe now you know this is not a small
Speaker 1: business show. I'm not a small business owner. Well actually
Speaker 1: I am, but I you know CRM is like customer
Speaker 1: relationship management or something like that, right, And so you
Speaker 1: know you want to put this information in there and
Speaker 1: be able to remember the last time you talked to
Speaker 1: this person, remember the last time they called, what they're
Speaker 1: you know, and just it's it's kind of an address book,
Speaker 1: but with more features, right right? Okay, So the big
Speaker 1: company that I think revolutionized this world is Salesforce. They
Speaker 1: came out with CRM software that was, you know, all
Speaker 1: in the cloud and very different. So I think that
Speaker 1: that's probably a you know, kind of the basic CRM
Speaker 1: software that everyone knows, right and you have you heard
Speaker 1: of that company Salesforce?
Speaker 9: No? No, I haven't, all.
Speaker 1: Right, So Salesforce, I think is kind of like the
Speaker 1: gold standard when it comes to this, and I'm just
Speaker 1: going off of what I've heard in the past, what
Speaker 1: I know, but Salesforce is kind of like the big one. Now,
Speaker 1: with that said, there may be competitors that offer stuff
Speaker 1: that is cheaper. You said you wanted something that is
Speaker 1: less expensive, and so I'm looking at theirs. They're big
Speaker 1: product customer three sixty, and I'm trying to look for pricing.
Speaker 1: And that's where it gets a little tricky because it's
Speaker 1: saying try for free, but it's not really saying how
Speaker 1: much this is going to cost me. And so what
Speaker 1: I would do is you can do a free trial,
Speaker 1: which on their website, but I would look for some
Speaker 1: other alternatives to this. And so when I look for alternatives,
Speaker 1: I'm seeing something called HubSpot hub Spot, and HubSpot puts
Speaker 1: the pricing right on the front page.
Speaker 9: Now this.
Speaker 1: H that's yeah, that's that's a little expensive for that one.
Speaker 1: So you're talking eight hundred dollars a month. That's probably
Speaker 1: not something you want to do. Then you've got something
Speaker 1: called Zoho Zho and I'm looking at that. That's fourteen
Speaker 1: bucks a month. That's sounding probably a little bit better.
Speaker 5: Huh huh.
Speaker 2: Okay, So Zoho is something that's no, it's flexible, so
Speaker 2: there's no lock in, and it's looks like it's something
Speaker 2: that might be worthwhile looking at. But those are just
Speaker 2: a couple of the companies that I would look at.
Speaker 2: And the thing that I would do too is have
Speaker 2: you ever used the search the versus search versus versus?
Speaker 1: So if you type in something on Google Salesforce versus,
Speaker 1: and then it comes up with all of the other
Speaker 1: companies that compete against that, So it's saying Salesforce versus,
Speaker 1: HubSpot Service, now, Zendesk, Shopify, So one of those companies
Speaker 1: may be something. So it's just a little bit of research.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Also, if you go on YouTube and you search hey,
Speaker 1: best CRM software Small Business twenty twenty three, that's another
Speaker 1: way to look for the companies that people are recommending,
Speaker 1: and also you get a little taste of what they
Speaker 1: can do and a little idea of the features, and
Speaker 1: you say, oh, yeah, that's the feature I want.
Speaker 2: That's that's the cool thing.
Speaker 1: Some of these may be more complicated than you need,
Speaker 1: but that's the way that I would sort of research
Speaker 1: that situation.
Speaker 2: And you know what kind of company you're running.
Speaker 9: I have a legal service business.
Speaker 1: Okay, so legal services, so you know you want to
Speaker 1: keep track of your customers and all the things that
Speaker 1: they need and maybe even include some documents in this
Speaker 1: online service as well. So but that does that help
Speaker 1: you to kind of get you on the past?
Speaker 9: Great your he I do appreciate.
Speaker 1: All right, Ron, good luck with the legal services. People
Speaker 1: need them, you know when you need them. You don't
Speaker 1: want to need them, but sometimes you do, and when
Speaker 1: you do, you know it all right. Before we go
Speaker 1: to break here, let me tell you about best Buy
Speaker 1: launching these new recycle by mail technology boxes. This is
Speaker 1: so cool because someone like me, I have so much
Speaker 1: I don't want to call it garbage, but so much
Speaker 1: stuff laying around the house. You know, you get these
Speaker 1: cables that you don't want to part with. You've got
Speaker 1: an old gadget here and there that you just don't
Speaker 1: You can't really throw out gadgets in the trash. You
Speaker 1: don't want to for environmental reasons. You want to recycle
Speaker 1: them properly, and so the first thing to do is
Speaker 1: to donate them if you can. But if they're not
Speaker 1: something that you would donate but you've just been holding
Speaker 1: on to. They now have these prepaid boxes from best
Speaker 1: buy dot com two options. A small box is twenty
Speaker 1: three bucks. It carries up to six pounds. A medium
Speaker 1: box can carry up to fifteen pounds. You order the box,
Speaker 1: you pay it. When it gets to your house, you
Speaker 1: fill it up with all your old gadgets lying around
Speaker 1: the house, whether it's a tablet, cords, keyboards, whatever it is,
Speaker 1: and they've got a full list of products that they
Speaker 1: will recycle. You take the prepaid box to your nearest
Speaker 1: UPS drop off or you schedule a pick up with UPS,
Speaker 1: and boom, your electronics are recycled. Best Buy says they
Speaker 1: are the nation's largest collector of e waste. They've recycled
Speaker 1: more than two point seven billion pounds of electronics. This
Speaker 1: is a pilot program, so we don't know if this
Speaker 1: is going to continue. But there's also other ways you
Speaker 1: can recycle stuff. You can drop off old electronics at
Speaker 1: best Buy. Sometimes they may charge you for some of
Speaker 1: that stuff, so it depends what it is like. If
Speaker 1: it's a big TV, they may charge you a little bit.
Speaker 1: There's an online service called gizmo Go that I recommend.
Speaker 1: I've been to their recycling facilities gizmogo dot com. When
Speaker 1: I had to recycle my mom's computer, I brought it
Speaker 1: to Staples and it was completely free. And I know
Speaker 1: that they ended or they stopped the program during the
Speaker 1: COVID pandemic, but check out Staples as well because they
Speaker 1: have a really good recycling program. Hopefully they've started again.
Speaker 1: All right, Coming up later in the show, we're going
Speaker 1: to talk Tetris. I watched the movie on the plane.
Speaker 1: It's on Apple TV plus. We're going to talk to
Speaker 1: my friend Dan Ackerman about all things Tetris plus. Walmart
Speaker 1: the next place you might charge your EV. You're listening
Speaker 1: to Rich on Tech, Give me a call eighty eight
Speaker 1: rich one O one. All right, now we're getting into
Speaker 1: the weeds with these songs. Ah oh, you know, you
Speaker 1: don't know how you feel after you help save someone's life.
Speaker 1: Until you do it. And I'm telling you that handshake.
Speaker 1: I got a handshake from the guy. He was just
Speaker 1: like thank you. And you know, my kids and my
Speaker 1: wife they were by my side.
Speaker 2: They felt like a movie. We were running off into
Speaker 2: the sunset.
Speaker 1: And then I ran to my chair and finished my
Speaker 1: my tie. But I'm telling you, I looked at my
Speaker 1: Apple Watch my heart rate and I could see the
Speaker 1: exact time when I darted up from my chair to
Speaker 1: run out into the water. And again, like I said,
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not like a mister athlete, but I
Speaker 1: can run fast. I do run and I can swim
Speaker 1: decently fast too. Anyway, let's go to a welcome back,
Speaker 1: by the way, Rich DeMuro here, Rich on Tech Talking
Speaker 1: Technology triple eight Rich one O one eight eight eight
Speaker 1: seven four to two for to one zero one.
Speaker 2: Doug is in San Jose. Doug, you're on with Rich.
Speaker 9: Hi there, Thanks for taking my call.
Speaker 2: Thanks for calling.
Speaker 9: I'm wondering if you are aware of any problem nationwide
Speaker 9: with comcasts keeping their system up and running. And the
Speaker 9: reason I asked is because there's been an ongoing problem
Speaker 9: in my area of San Jose, which is ironic giving
Speaker 9: it the capital of Silicon Valley.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is.
Speaker 9: And the just in the past three or four days
Speaker 9: there have been system attages. This one is going on
Speaker 9: twenty four hours.
Speaker 2: Oh wow. Okay, so and this happens quite often.
Speaker 11: Now.
Speaker 1: I've heard people complain about this service up there, but
Speaker 1: I you know, I don't live up there, so I
Speaker 1: don't really know. And I feel like internet service can't
Speaker 1: really be out nationwide for a long way or for
Speaker 1: a long time, because you know, that would be pretty wild.
Speaker 1: So how long has it been out for you? And
Speaker 1: why is it out?
Speaker 9: I have no idea why it's out. Contasts will never
Speaker 9: provide that information. A few months ago they came through
Speaker 9: and upgraded the system to quote unquote improve your experience.
Speaker 9: Hasn't exactly hasn't exactly done that interesting? I mean I've
Speaker 9: been on the phone with their phone techs who are
Speaker 9: ten thousand miles away, and then I've talked to their headquarters,
Speaker 9: which is I think is in Minneapolis. I'm not sure.
Speaker 9: I mean, I've been up and down the system, even
Speaker 9: complained to the FCC, and that's because I'm a cranky
Speaker 9: old man. But I need my I need my Internet.
Speaker 1: I get it. Yeah, it's frustrating. It's totally frustrating. And
Speaker 1: this is the reason why I hate the fact that
Speaker 1: many people only have one option for Internet at their home,
Speaker 1: maybe too if you're lucky, I mean, and the second
Speaker 1: one may not be that good. But we are seeing
Speaker 1: more options come along with these wireless companies, the verizons
Speaker 1: of the world, the t mobiles, even the satellite Internet
Speaker 1: and some of these wireless internet companies. But I think
Speaker 1: one of them is not doing too well, so that's
Speaker 1: not really worked out pretty good. So most people, like
Speaker 1: I said, they don't have that many options, and so
Speaker 1: you're kind of stuck with this service. And also, you know,
Speaker 1: it comes down to the price you pay. Like you know,
Speaker 1: maybe you have a different option, but it's more expensive.
Speaker 1: But let me kind of bring this out so that
Speaker 1: if you're having trouble with your service, you understand there's
Speaker 1: a couple of things you can do. So first off,
Speaker 1: I know that Exfinity has an outage map and you
Speaker 1: can put your address in so a lot of times,
Speaker 1: if you're having trouble with your internet Internet it can
Speaker 1: be localized to your home or to your neighborhood. Something
Speaker 1: that's happening there. You know, someone runs into a power
Speaker 1: line and you know, brings down the line. So I
Speaker 1: understand that these things are going to happen, but if
Speaker 1: it's going out over and over, it could either be
Speaker 1: the hardware on your end, it could be your neighborhood,
Speaker 1: or you know, it's just something is not right. And
Speaker 1: so the first thing I would do is check the
Speaker 1: Infinity outage map, and I would say almost every single
Speaker 1: service at this point that's online, you know, including ones
Speaker 1: that you don't pay for something like an I message,
Speaker 1: they all have these status maps. So if you type
Speaker 1: in like Apple service status on the website on Google,
Speaker 1: it will tell you if these things are functioning properly.
Speaker 1: So you can see a system status right now for
Speaker 1: everything that Apple offers, the app Store, Apple Account, Apple Arcade, FaceTime,
Speaker 1: Find My game Center, home Kit. It will tell you
Speaker 1: if these things are down. So if you're having a
Speaker 1: problem with I Message, you can go there and see, Okay,
Speaker 1: is it just me or is it everyone that's having
Speaker 1: a problem with this stuff. So that's one way of
Speaker 1: doing it. Again. Infinity has its own which I'm looking up.
Speaker 1: It's exfinity dot com slash slash status map and you
Speaker 1: type in your address and it will tell you if
Speaker 1: that address is having a problem. And so in this case, Doug,
Speaker 1: you can type in your actual service address. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to ask you for that on the radio, but
Speaker 1: you can type that in and it will tell you
Speaker 1: is this a problem for everyone or just you?
Speaker 2: So that's Exfinity.
Speaker 1: Whether whether your service is Infinity or AT and T
Speaker 1: or whatever, they should have something similar to that. The
Speaker 1: other thing is a website called down Detector, and this
Speaker 1: website is a sort of a bigger website that will
Speaker 1: tell you what's having trouble at any given time. And
Speaker 1: if you look the top things that are having trouble
Speaker 1: at any given time or always the Internet services themselves.
Speaker 1: So I'm looking at the top kind of things that
Speaker 1: are down. Spectrum, Verizon, Starlink, T Mobile, AT and T
Speaker 1: is on there, and then you go down Inxfinity is
Speaker 1: actually lower on the list cos you know it has everything.
Speaker 1: But you can see a little line of when people
Speaker 1: submit things that are wrong with these services. So if
Speaker 1: you see a spike and the line looks like it's red,
Speaker 1: that means there's a problem at any given time. And
Speaker 1: so this is downdetector dot com. You can type in
Speaker 1: the service you're having problem with. Let's say, or Instagram
Speaker 1: isn't working.
Speaker 2: I N S T A g r M.
Speaker 1: You type in Instagram and it will show you if
Speaker 1: Instagram is having trouble, and let's see, does it go
Speaker 1: by Instagram Maybe it doesn't, Maybe it just goes by
Speaker 1: Facebook or Meta.
Speaker 2: Let's see.
Speaker 1: I'll type in Facebook, and so here's Facebook telling you
Speaker 1: you know, and then you can type in a problem.
Speaker 1: You can say I'm having a problem with Facebook, website, app, login,
Speaker 1: something else, and then it gives you the outage reports
Speaker 1: for the last twenty four hours. You can see if
Speaker 1: you're having trouble, and there's been a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: people that are saying we have outages as well. You
Speaker 1: can understand that. So that's a website called downdetector dot com.
Speaker 1: And then this is another website that's really good. So
Speaker 1: if you're having trouble accessing website, like people will tell me, hey, Rich,
Speaker 1: I'm having trouble accessing Rich on tech dot tv and
Speaker 1: I go on my phone and it's working just fine
Speaker 1: for me. So this website, if you go to down
Speaker 1: for Everyone or just me dot com, you can type
Speaker 1: in a website so I'm gonna type in rich on
Speaker 1: tech dot tv and it goes to that website from
Speaker 1: its own browser, and so it checks to see is
Speaker 1: it down for everyone or just you? And it's telling
Speaker 1: me it's just you. Rich on tech dot tv is up.
Speaker 1: And you can check a different website if you want,
Speaker 1: so if you're having trouble with a specific website, you
Speaker 1: can see if it's for everyone or just you. So
Speaker 1: those are three good resources for looking up you know,
Speaker 1: what's going on in your area, Doug. I know it's frustrating,
Speaker 1: and especially with Internet, it's really frustrating when it goes down.
Speaker 1: Thankfully we have our phones. You can pop into that
Speaker 1: hotspot if you need it. But when it's going on
Speaker 1: a couple of days or you know, weeks even, or
Speaker 1: if it's just happening over and over, that's when it's
Speaker 1: time to try to figure out what exactly is going on.
Speaker 1: So good question. Thanks for in and appreciate the call.
Speaker 1: Walmart launching coast to coast EV fast Charging network across
Speaker 1: all of its stores, so they are building their own
Speaker 1: coast to coast EV fast Charging network by twenty thirty,
Speaker 1: so basically you will be able to go to a
Speaker 1: Walmart store and charge your car fast. And this is
Speaker 1: kind of the trend that we're seeing with these fast chargers.
Speaker 1: They're starting to pop up at more and more stores.
Speaker 1: So Walmart says they already have thirteen hundred fast charging
Speaker 1: stations across two hundred and eighty retail stores with Electrify America.
Speaker 1: But this is going to be a coast to coast
Speaker 1: kind of thing. So Walmart says that they have, let's see,
Speaker 1: by twenty thirty, they're going to build this. They say
Speaker 1: they have a store club located within ten miles of
Speaker 1: approximately ninety percent of Americans, okay, and it'll be at
Speaker 1: super centers, neighborhood markets, and Sam's Club, so you'll be
Speaker 1: able to go into the store and charge while you
Speaker 1: go into the store. They didn't say if it's going
Speaker 1: to oh, yep, in line with our purpose, we aim
Speaker 1: to offer everyday low price charging, so this is not
Speaker 1: going to be free charging, but they will have low prices,
Speaker 1: and we know Walmart definitely has low prices, so it
Speaker 1: should hopefully be pretty reasonable. But again, this is the
Speaker 1: charge that we're seeing. You know, these chargers are showing
Speaker 1: up at more and more stores, which I think is
Speaker 1: very convenient because they have the space, They've got the
Speaker 1: parking lots, and it's very easy to charge inside these
Speaker 1: stores because you know, are outside these stores because you
Speaker 1: can run in for something. And really, when it comes
Speaker 1: to electric car charging, let's be honest, most people are
Speaker 1: charging at home or at work. This is for when
Speaker 1: you're on a road trip or you just need a.
Speaker 2: Quick fill up.
Speaker 1: To have a location like Walmart is very convenient because
Speaker 1: if you know where one is, or if you're even
Speaker 1: on a road trip you see that Walmart sign on
Speaker 1: the side of the road, you know, Okay, I'll take
Speaker 1: a little pit stop at Walmart, I'll charge my car
Speaker 1: and I'll be on my way, and I know it's
Speaker 1: going to be a pretty good price. So glad that
Speaker 1: Walmart is doing that.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: Coming up on the show, we're going to talk to
Speaker 1: my pal Dan Ackerman from CNET.
Speaker 2: My day's at c NEET.
Speaker 1: It feels like it's further and further away, but we're
Speaker 1: going to talk to Dan Ackerman. He wrote a book
Speaker 1: about Tetris, and then when I saw the movie, I said,
Speaker 1: we got to talk to Dan about the movie and
Speaker 1: Tetris in general. All these years later, I'm still playing
Speaker 1: Tetris and yes I had the original game Boy, so
Speaker 1: we'll talk to him. And we'll also talk about Google
Speaker 1: bringing air Drop, their version of air drop to Windows.
Speaker 1: So if you have an Android phone, it is now
Speaker 1: much easier to transfer files from your Android phone to
Speaker 1: your Windows computer. All that plus your calls at triple
Speaker 1: eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four
Speaker 1: to two, four to one zero one. If you have
Speaker 1: a question about technology, give me a call. Phone lines
Speaker 1: are opening. You're listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here talking technology with
Speaker 1: you at triple eight rich one oh one eight eight
Speaker 1: eight seven four to two, four to one zero one.
Speaker 1: We were talking about recycling Earlier. I mentioned the Staples
Speaker 1: recycling and it went away during COVID, but.
Speaker 2: It is back.
Speaker 1: So probably one of the easiest places to recycle stuff
Speaker 1: is your local Staples store. So they said that they
Speaker 1: have recycled one hundred and fifty three million is that million? Yeah,
Speaker 1: pounds of technology since twenty twelve, and you can basically
Speaker 1: just bring it in for free as far yeah free.
Speaker 1: I was pretty impressed. We brought back my mom's computer
Speaker 1: and I couldn't believe how easy it was. In fact,
Speaker 1: look at this. They'll give you five bucks in rewards
Speaker 1: when you recycle or shred in store. And this is
Speaker 1: not We're not you know, you can do like things
Speaker 1: like ink cartridges, but this will. They'll take back almost anything.
Speaker 1: Adapters and cables, all in one, computers, battery backup cable,
Speaker 1: satellite receivers, calculators, camquarders, E readers, fax machines, GPS devices,
Speaker 1: all this stuff that you have sitting there and you
Speaker 1: don't want to throw in the trash because it's bad
Speaker 1: for the environment. You can now it to a staple store.
Speaker 1: So what can't be recycled there? Air conditioners, alkaline batteries, appliances,
Speaker 1: floor model, printers and copiers. Can you imagine? Can you
Speaker 1: imagine unloading that from your car? Like here you go,
Speaker 1: let me, here's my copyer, my xerox machine, kitchen, appliances, lamps,
Speaker 1: large servers, large speakers, smoke detectors, televisions. Don't bring TVs there,
Speaker 1: they cannot recycle them at staples. Computers, yes, how about monitors, yes, monitors,
Speaker 1: you can printers, all that good stuff. So anyway, really
Speaker 1: easy to recycle there. I was quite impressed, but the
Speaker 1: box now we have options. In fact, next week I'm
Speaker 1: going to a recycling plant down in Carlsbad, and so
Speaker 1: I'm going to see first hand. You know, Earth Days
Speaker 1: coming up, so I'm going to see firsthand how they
Speaker 1: recycle some of this stuff.
Speaker 2: And it's pretty wild. I mean they it's like melting
Speaker 2: and shredding and all this good stuff.
Speaker 1: Better Business Bureau put out some tips about how to
Speaker 1: give yourself a spring digital makeover. They're teaming up the
Speaker 1: National Cybersecurity Alliance to remind you that not only when
Speaker 1: you spring clean like this today, I opened up my
Speaker 1: garage and I said, we got to get rid of
Speaker 1: some of this stuff. And so not only do you
Speaker 1: want to get rid of all of your physical clutter
Speaker 1: in your house when you spring clean, remember the digital
Speaker 1: clutter and also security. So they gave a couple of tips.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna read some of them here because I thought
Speaker 1: they were pretty good. I mean, it's stuff you've heard before,
Speaker 1: but I think that it's good to reiterate this stuff.
Speaker 1: So Number one, lock down your login, so make sure
Speaker 1: that your logins are complex and unique. So if you're
Speaker 1: having trouble with this concept, I'm telling you you can't
Speaker 1: add a one or a exclamation point to your word
Speaker 1: that you use over and over and expect it to
Speaker 1: be safe. That is just not the case. So please
Speaker 1: use complex passwords. You can generate them even if you
Speaker 1: don't use a password generator. Okay, if you just type
Speaker 1: in password generator on the way and you go to
Speaker 1: a website like Norton Password Generator, one Password password Generator,
Speaker 1: Bitwarden Password Generator, all of these websites have password generators
Speaker 1: online and you can just go there and generate a
Speaker 1: secure password. So even if you don't want to use
Speaker 1: one of those apps, I always recommend you can actually
Speaker 1: just do this online and write down the password. That's
Speaker 1: better than nothing. So do that two factor authentication. I've
Speaker 1: talked about it a million times. Please please please put
Speaker 1: that on any account that will accept it. Update your
Speaker 1: system and software, update your software.
Speaker 2: You have to do it.
Speaker 1: I know we don't like change, but you have to
Speaker 1: do this because that's what keeps your software secure and safe,
Speaker 1: and it's what the hackers do.
Speaker 2: They use exploits.
Speaker 1: So when software gets old, there are known exploits, there
Speaker 1: are known ways of cracking that software and getting in
Speaker 1: and doing bad stuff, and so if you update your software,
Speaker 1: you're staying at least a little step ahead of some
Speaker 1: of the problems that have been found and they're patched.
Speaker 2: Back it up.
Speaker 1: Back up your personal and workplace data by making electronic
Speaker 1: copies backups of your most important files. Use the three
Speaker 1: two one rule to help guide you. You want three
Speaker 1: backup copies. I know it sounds like a lot, two
Speaker 1: different media types and one offline in a separate location.
Speaker 1: Let me give you an example of the iPhone. Okay,
Speaker 1: now when you say three different places, so one of
Speaker 1: those places could be your phone, and then you want
Speaker 1: it in two other places. So maybe you plug your
Speaker 1: phone into your computer and you do a full backup
Speaker 1: of that computer or that phone that is stored on
Speaker 1: your computer.
Speaker 2: Okay, now that's two.
Speaker 1: Now you've got your data on your phone, you've got
Speaker 1: it on your computer, and then you want it in
Speaker 1: a third place. So let's say you use Google Photos
Speaker 1: for your photos, use iCloud for your important files. That
Speaker 1: would be three places that would be sufficient. So again,
Speaker 1: I know we don't want to do this stuff, we
Speaker 1: don't want to pay for storage online, but do it
Speaker 1: because if it has weepens to you and you'll lose
Speaker 1: your stuff. And believe me, I get the emails. It's
Speaker 1: not fun people lose this stuff.
Speaker 2: We had an email.
Speaker 1: We had a person the other day who said they lost,
Speaker 1: you know, thirteen thousand photos on their phone.
Speaker 2: Because they just didn't check the backup.
Speaker 1: At the very least, if you're an Amazon Prime customer,
Speaker 1: just download the Amazon Photos app. It's free and it
Speaker 1: will download your photos or will it will back up
Speaker 1: your photos to the cloud unlimited. It's not going to
Speaker 1: do videos unlimited, but it will do photos unlimited. If
Speaker 1: you're an Amazon Prime customer, take advantage of that. At
Speaker 1: least get the pictures uploaded. And by the way, you
Speaker 1: can't just download this app and never open it again.
Speaker 1: You have to open up the app every once in
Speaker 1: a while to make sure that you are actually backing
Speaker 1: up your pictures.
Speaker 2: I also like Google Photos.
Speaker 1: Of course you've heard me talk about that clean up
Speaker 1: your online presence. So this is a good one too.
Speaker 1: And this is something that I do often on my phone.
Speaker 1: I will just go through my phone and just kind
Speaker 1: of delete apps that I don't use anymore. That's good
Speaker 1: to do because if an app you know has access
Speaker 1: to your contacts, your photos, you're not using it, you
Speaker 1: don't really want that.
Speaker 2: Also, make sure that.
Speaker 1: You get rid of old accounts, and so if you're
Speaker 1: not using an account anymore, just go ahead and delete it.
Speaker 1: There are ways to delete these accounts. There used to
Speaker 1: be a website that I've liked. Believe it's just delete me.
Speaker 1: And so if you go to just delete me, just
Speaker 1: delete dot me, it will give you a whole list
Speaker 1: of ways to delete accounts. So if you want to
Speaker 1: delete your Instagram or your Aol or anything Adobe, it
Speaker 1: will tell you how to do that.
Speaker 2: There was another one I liked.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to remember what the other one wash Gosh,
Speaker 1: I can't remember right now off the top of my head,
Speaker 1: But there was a there was another website that would
Speaker 1: help you delete these things. But if you just google
Speaker 1: the service that you want to delete, along with delete,
Speaker 1: you should find instructions online with how to delete that stuff.
Speaker 2: So please do these.
Speaker 1: Things, clean up your online presence, and just get these
Speaker 1: things in order before it's too late. All right, Coming up,
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk to Dan Ackerman. He is author of
Speaker 1: The Tetris Effect. We're going to talk all things Tetris.
Speaker 1: Coming up, one of my favorite games in the world.
Speaker 1: You're listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich
Speaker 1: On Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology.
Speaker 1: We're gonna get to the feedback section of the show
Speaker 1: coming up a little bit later, but first we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about one of my favorite games in the world, Tetris.
Speaker 1: I watched the new Apple TV Plus movie on the airplane,
Speaker 1: and I thoroughly enjoyed it. A little nostalgic, little fun,
Speaker 1: little action, little intrigue, little saga. Here to talk about
Speaker 1: all of it is Dan Ackerman, who I used to
Speaker 1: work with at Cenet. He wrote the book called The
Speaker 1: Tetris Effect, which is available on Amazon way before the
Speaker 1: movie came out.
Speaker 2: Dan, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 4: Hey, Rich good to talk to you.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: Dan, let's just be clear the show was not based
Speaker 1: on your book, but since you're the Tetris expert, I
Speaker 1: figured we'd chat about Tetris.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly. The producers of the movie did a great job.
Speaker 4: They did not license my book, but it covers the
Speaker 4: story in a very similar way.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about Tetris. First off, what drew you
Speaker 1: to this game to write a book about it?
Speaker 4: You know, what I was really interested in is Less
Speaker 4: the game, which is an important game, one of the
Speaker 4: most important games ever, but really the story behind it,
Speaker 4: which reminded me of kind of a Silicon Alley tech
Speaker 4: startup story, except it took place in the Cold War
Speaker 4: Soviet Union in the nineteen eighties. But the parallels between
Speaker 4: this and you know, the story of the service Facebook
Speaker 4: or any other social media company or a big tech
Speaker 4: company really jumped out at me.
Speaker 1: And so was the movie. The movie is called Tetris.
Speaker 1: It's on Apple TV plus. Was it did it say
Speaker 1: based on a true story? I think it did so.
Speaker 1: I mean, how much of this was true as you
Speaker 1: watched it?
Speaker 11: Yeah?
Speaker 4: I got to say most of it was pretty was
Speaker 4: tracking pretty well with the history as I wrote it,
Speaker 4: up until maybe like the last twenty minutes where they
Speaker 4: get into the the KDP agents beating people up and
Speaker 4: the car chases. Everything up until then is actually pretty
Speaker 4: dead on, even though it seems like you have these cartoonists,
Speaker 4: you know, characters in the Soviet Union trying to shake
Speaker 4: people down, and you have all this confusion about all
Speaker 4: these people buying for the rights of the game. Really,
Speaker 4: I'd say seventy five eighty percent of that stuff happened
Speaker 4: pretty darn close to how they put it in that movie.
Speaker 2: Wow. So how did you do research for your book?
Speaker 4: You know, when I was sitting down to tell this
Speaker 4: story in my book, obviously I got in touch with
Speaker 4: a lot of the primary people in the you know,
Speaker 4: in the story, and a lot of the characters usually
Speaker 4: portrayed in the film are people I interviewed for the book.
Speaker 4: Henk Rogers, like Depositov, even Starter Maya, our Colla from Nintendo,
Speaker 4: Howard Lincoln, So a lot of the characters, and they
Speaker 4: all had great stories to tell, and they all told
Speaker 4: the stories from their own point of view, so there
Speaker 4: were some discrepancies and you kind of have to go
Speaker 4: through it and say, this guy remembers it this way,
Speaker 4: this guy remembers it that way, and try to figure
Speaker 4: out what the most likely version of the truth.
Speaker 2: Wash and what is so great about Tetris? I mean,
Speaker 2: I know what I mean.
Speaker 1: So of course I got the Game Boy back in
Speaker 1: I don't know what year it was, but that was
Speaker 1: kind of like the first thing I remember having as
Speaker 1: a kid was like this, I think it was ninety dollars.
Speaker 1: I bought a like KB toy store, and I think
Speaker 1: Tetris was the game that was included with it, right,
Speaker 1: I mean that was a.
Speaker 4: Real big part of Tetris's long term success was getting
Speaker 4: packed in with that game boy. And it happens very
Speaker 4: much like you saw in the Texas movie where Hank
Speaker 4: Rogers convinced Nintendo to put this new game in Tetris
Speaker 4: instead of something like a Donkey Kong game or a
Speaker 4: Mario game or a Zelda game, even though those games
Speaker 4: have huge built in audiences. And the pitch was this
Speaker 4: is a game for people who would never call themselves gamers,
Speaker 4: you know, parents, teachers, people who didn't have game console.
Speaker 4: It's really more of a puzzle. And if they think, oh,
Speaker 4: I'm just playing this little box I bought at like
Speaker 4: you said, a KB twys or ninety bucks, but it's
Speaker 4: a puzzle, almost like a crossword and not a video game,
Speaker 4: well then I'm into it. And that's why so many
Speaker 4: people played Tetris. But you they would never call themselves gamers.
Speaker 1: Interesting, I mean, because yeah, anyone can play it, anyone
Speaker 1: can pick it up. It's been made into so many
Speaker 1: different variations. I mean I was playing, you know, a Tetris,
Speaker 1: I think I've played it on every single device I've
Speaker 1: had since the Game Boy, whether it's a console box
Speaker 1: or whether it is a I'm just trying to think,
Speaker 1: like all the different ways I've played over the year, so,
Speaker 1: you know, smartphones, cell phones, and it's all had different names.
Speaker 1: Is the Tetris Company still around and are they still likened?
Speaker 1: Like what's the deal with Tetris at this point in time?
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 4: One of the nice things about the company and the
Speaker 4: game is that there's a Tetris company and it's run
Speaker 4: by Hank Rogers and his daughter, and the LECTIPOSIV was
Speaker 4: a partner in that, and these two guys who were
Speaker 4: the protagonist of that film and the protagonist of my book,
Speaker 4: and I think the agonists in real life ended up
Speaker 4: owning the rights to the game and they've been administering
Speaker 4: it ever since. So it's one of these great stories
Speaker 4: about you know, creative ip where the good guys actually win.
Speaker 1: And what is it about Tetris that I mean you
Speaker 1: said that anyone can play it. I mean it's a
Speaker 1: puzzle and it's simple, but I still can't get enough,
Speaker 1: you know, thirty years.
Speaker 4: Later, you know it's it's the geometic spatial you know,
Speaker 4: you know, recognition of the patterns. Scientists study how the
Speaker 4: game affects your brain, and they've shown that it can
Speaker 4: help people prevent them from developing PTSD after traumatic incident
Speaker 4: because it rewires and rewrites some of the you know,
Speaker 4: memory pathways in the brain that are traumatic event would
Speaker 4: would write to you know, long term, so you'd have flashbacks.
Speaker 4: And other scientists have studied how your brain is more
Speaker 4: efficient playing Tetris. It's not that you get better at
Speaker 4: the game, it's that your brain uses less power to
Speaker 4: do the same amount of mental work in the game.
Speaker 4: So there's something very unique about how it's a game
Speaker 4: but there's no story and there's no characters. It really
Speaker 4: requires a lot of unconscious thinking and that's something that
Speaker 4: even a lot of twitch games don't have.
Speaker 1: So I was going to ask you, I'm gonna put
Speaker 1: you on the spot. Is there a game similar to
Speaker 1: Tetris that you've seen in the past couple of years
Speaker 1: that you would recommend people play, Like if you love Tetris,
Speaker 1: like something that you've seen that would be just as fun.
Speaker 4: You know, I always loved Luminous, and I think candy
Speaker 4: Crush style games have a little bit of that, you know,
Speaker 4: in spatial pattern Recognition Rush. It's really tough to beep
Speaker 4: the original, especially when there were still kind of interesting
Speaker 4: new versions coming out even all this time later.
Speaker 9: There's a game.
Speaker 4: Called Tetris Effect that there's a really nice job of
Speaker 4: updating and modernizing the game, and it actually works in
Speaker 4: virtual reality, which is a whole another level. And I
Speaker 4: think it's just really fantastic in the VR three D space.
Speaker 4: And you can do that on you know, Oculus and
Speaker 4: on PlayStation VR and regular PCVR.
Speaker 1: Oh, I have to try that one, okay, Hevin, I said,
Speaker 1: I played on all the platforms. I have not tried
Speaker 1: it in VR. Yeah, I kind of do that. Well, okay,
Speaker 1: so you said Candy Crush and what was the other one?
Speaker 2: Luminous.
Speaker 4: Luminous is a great one, and that's actually one of
Speaker 4: the guys who designed that new texas of that game.
Speaker 4: Luminus was one of his earlier games.
Speaker 1: What surprised you when you're writing the book, anything that
Speaker 1: you really were surprised at?
Speaker 4: You know, there are a couple of really surprising things
Speaker 4: that did not make it into the movie version that
Speaker 4: you saw. But Russia really wanted to get into the
Speaker 4: business and manufacturing Nintendo console, being in business with Nintendo
Speaker 4: in a big way. And they tried to convince Howard
Speaker 4: Lincoln and other people at Nintendo of this, and they
Speaker 4: took him, Howard Lincoln, who's in the film. They took
Speaker 4: him to one of the top secret cosmonaut training facilities
Speaker 4: and gave him a big tour and so, you know,
Speaker 4: we can put the Nintendo logo on the side of
Speaker 4: a rocket going up. You know, anything you want, we
Speaker 4: can do it. Let's make a deal. And of course
Speaker 4: that didn't happen because you can imagine how you know,
Speaker 4: not great a Soviet Union manufactured Nintendo entertainment system would be.
Speaker 4: But the fact that they did all that and gave
Speaker 4: him this, like the behind the scenes secret Cosna tour,
Speaker 4: I was always one of the wildest parts of the story.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, that is wild that we would have
Speaker 1: been forever change. We'd be talking about banning Nintendo at
Speaker 1: this point like we are with TikTok if that was
Speaker 1: the case. Okay, so do you recommend do you recommend
Speaker 1: that folks watched this movie on Apple TV bus I
Speaker 1: watched it on a plane, and so I have a
Speaker 1: different place in my brain for movies that I watch
Speaker 1: on the plane, because it's like, Okay, you know, I
Speaker 1: wasn't my regular self when I was watching this, but
Speaker 1: I still enjoyed it, and I thought some of it
Speaker 1: was like, actually, the characters were so over the top
Speaker 1: that I thought at some point it was almost like
Speaker 1: a characature of a character. But that's what part of
Speaker 1: the love. Part of what I liked about this movie
Speaker 1: was that, Yeah, what I.
Speaker 4: Liked about it was it really carries forward that Cold
Speaker 4: War spy thriller theme, which is the same way I
Speaker 4: wrote about the book, And I don't think anyone had
Speaker 4: really covered the Order of Texas like that before. But
Speaker 4: it's pretty dark, true to life. Some of the outrageous
Speaker 4: stuff really happened. Sometimes the characters are a little different
Speaker 4: than they kind of invented, like that KTB bad guy
Speaker 4: who you know most of his stuff was actually done
Speaker 4: by one of the other characters in there. But until
Speaker 4: you get to the car chases and like the fistfights,
Speaker 4: it really wasn't all that exaggerated. Shockingly wow.
Speaker 1: All right, if you want to try Apple TV Plus
Speaker 1: if you don't have a subscription, I just looked in
Speaker 1: the target app if you're a Target circle member, you
Speaker 1: can go into my Target on the app Apple tv
Speaker 1: Plus free for three months, so you can sign up
Speaker 1: watch this completely for free. So that's one way of
Speaker 1: doing it. I'm sure there's other ways of getting Apple
Speaker 1: tv Plus. Dan Ackerman is my guest from Cnet. Dan,
Speaker 1: how are things going since I left Cnet? Probably what
Speaker 1: fifteen years ago? At this point, I.
Speaker 4: Can't I can't imagine that it's been that long.
Speaker 6: That is crazy.
Speaker 4: But of course I always look running into you at
Speaker 4: Apple events and other type events. It seems like there's
Speaker 4: a huge network of NEET alumni out there and we
Speaker 4: all just keep you know, stay in touch and keep
Speaker 4: running into each other.
Speaker 2: And you're covering what over there at this point, you know, a.
Speaker 4: Lot of computer stuff and gaming, home entertainment, really a
Speaker 4: lot of that tra personal tech that you think of
Speaker 4: the brand.
Speaker 1: All right, absolutely go follow Dan Ackerman on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram,
Speaker 1: all the different social media platforms that he's on. And Dan,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for joining me today. I can't wait
Speaker 1: to play more Tetris now.
Speaker 2: All right, take care?
Speaker 1: All right, coming up, we're going to have the feedback
Speaker 1: section of the show. The more I do, the show,
Speaker 1: the more feedback we get. Plus, I'm going to tell
Speaker 1: you how Google is now guaranteeing that if you your
Speaker 1: flight price goes down, they will pay you the difference.
Speaker 1: I'll explain that coming up right here on rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich Demiro here closing
Speaker 1: out the show with you with the feedback segment. But first,
Speaker 1: before we get to that, I just want to tell
Speaker 1: you about the new feature on Google Flights, which, if
Speaker 1: you heard me talk about booking travel, I pretty much
Speaker 1: only use Google Flights to look up my flights, and
Speaker 1: so this is flights or I should say shop for
Speaker 1: flights flights dot Google dot com.
Speaker 2: I'm on there multiple times on.
Speaker 1: A daily basis, so I love this website and they're
Speaker 1: adding this new feature that basically, if your price goes
Speaker 1: down on the flight, they will reimburse you. So if
Speaker 1: you see a flight with this price guarantee badge, they
Speaker 1: are confident that the price you see will not get
Speaker 1: any lower. So Google, of course has a ton of data.
Speaker 1: They know they've been tracking historic pricing data for flights,
Speaker 1: and they bought a company that helps them do that,
Speaker 1: so they know that they think the price isn't going
Speaker 1: to go down before you fly, and so if it does,
Speaker 1: they will send you back the difference via Google pay.
Speaker 1: That's kind of annoying, but I'd rather have PayPal, but
Speaker 1: I'll take Google pay whatever. But you have to see
Speaker 1: this badge. You have to see this flight price guarantee badge.
Speaker 1: And it does not show up on every flight. In fact,
Speaker 1: I searched a whole bunch of flights. I didn't get
Speaker 1: it to show up once. But in their example they
Speaker 1: they showed like like a what was it like an
Speaker 1: Alaska Airlines flight. So if you see that little badge,
Speaker 1: you can do that.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: The other thing you can do on Google Flights is
Speaker 1: just track the price of your flight. But I've found
Speaker 1: a couple of times the price of the flight will
Speaker 1: go down when you track it. A lot of times
Speaker 1: it just goes up. So my advice stays with all
Speaker 1: you know, it's still the same all these years later.
Speaker 1: When it comes to booking a plane flight, if the
Speaker 1: price seems good to you at the time, go ahead
Speaker 1: and book it. Because it may go up, it may
Speaker 1: go down a little bit, But the reality is, if
Speaker 1: it feels like a fair price, go for it, because,
Speaker 1: believe me, I've tracked prices for a long long time,
Speaker 1: and sometimes they just never go down or they never change.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they just go up and up and up, and
Speaker 1: you just feel kind of like, why do I keep
Speaker 1: watching this price go up?
Speaker 2: You just got a book when it feels right to
Speaker 2: your Ruth.
Speaker 1: Wrote in feedback section, Hey, Rich, I watch you on
Speaker 1: WGNTV in Chicago and listen to your podcast. In the
Speaker 1: last three weeks, my visa card has been hacked repeatedly,
Speaker 1: which means issuing a new car every time. Chase has
Speaker 1: been good about sending fraud notices. Any suggestions. Also, I'm
Speaker 1: getting a second visa card so I'm not left with
Speaker 1: nothing while waiting for a new card. Thanks Ruth in
Speaker 1: Glenn Allen, Illinois. Ruth, my advice is to not use
Speaker 1: your the same card online that you're using out and about,
Speaker 1: so I would think about getting a separate card just
Speaker 1: for online purchases. Or you can use a website that
Speaker 1: I use. It's called privacy dot com and you have
Speaker 1: to link it up to your debit card or your
Speaker 1: checking account or I think a savings account. But it
Speaker 1: gives you a one time use virtual card number, So
Speaker 1: that's a way to get around this, and I don't
Speaker 1: think Chase offers virtual card numbers, but some of the
Speaker 1: other credit card companies do. But I would look into
Speaker 1: using virtual card numbers, so when you're shopping online, you
Speaker 1: can use a one time card number that does not
Speaker 1: give away your actual credit card because for some reason,
Speaker 1: I don't know what it is these I don't know
Speaker 1: why how they get it. But sometimes you use your
Speaker 1: credit card online, next thing you know, it's hacked. And
Speaker 1: it doesn't happen just online. It could happen in store too,
Speaker 1: so it just really depends. But I would try to
Speaker 1: limit the exposure to your credit card number. My rule
Speaker 1: of thumb I try to use my debit card as
Speaker 1: much as possible, So anytime my card leaves my hand,
Speaker 1: I typically like to use a credit card just to
Speaker 1: give me that little buffer between myself and that number.
Speaker 1: So a credit card, if it gets hacked, a lot easier.
Speaker 1: You don't really have to worry about as much. You
Speaker 1: just call your company and say, hey, look this happened,
Speaker 1: and they're going to reverse the charges. But if your
Speaker 1: debit card, it's a little trickier because the money already
Speaker 1: comes out of your account. So again my rule of
Speaker 1: thumb if the card leaves my hand, I usually like
Speaker 1: to use a credit card. The other way to do
Speaker 1: it is to use tap to pay, which protects both
Speaker 1: your debit card number and your credit card number equally well.
Speaker 1: And anytime you can online shop with something like Google
Speaker 1: Pay or Apple Pay, and a lot of times you
Speaker 1: have to shop from your phone to get that button
Speaker 1: to show up, but you can do that as well.
Speaker 1: Like on the Southwest app I was talking about it
Speaker 1: was booking a flight. It was very easy to book
Speaker 1: because I could just use Apple Pay right through my phone.
Speaker 1: So again, limit your exposure privacy dot com is also
Speaker 1: a good way to do that.
Speaker 2: Let's see here. I have so much feedback now from
Speaker 2: the show. John writes in.
Speaker 1: John from Appleton, Wisconsin says, another very informative show. You
Speaker 1: had a nice discussion about free and Paige streaming services
Speaker 1: with commercials or ad free. Here's my question. When TV
Speaker 1: shows are sold for syndication, there's content removed to make
Speaker 1: room for more commercials. Not sure if that's the case. Okay,
Speaker 1: Today when we stream Cheers, Friends, Seinfeld x Files, are
Speaker 1: we seeing shows in their entirety as they first appeared
Speaker 1: on network TV? Or are we seeing the edited version.
Speaker 1: I think you're seeing the shows in their entirety because
Speaker 1: with streaming they can do whatever they want, so there's
Speaker 1: no need to cut anything. It doesn't need to fit
Speaker 1: into this. You know, typically it's twenty three minutes of
Speaker 1: show seven minutes of commercials per hour, so I don't
Speaker 1: think they need to cut anything when it's streaming. In fact,
Speaker 1: I was watching Friends and Seinfeld on streaming services and
Speaker 1: it seemed like it was the entire entire show. So
Speaker 1: I think that that's probably your best bet. And these shows, man,
Speaker 1: they keep having a life.
Speaker 2: Huh.
Speaker 1: Many years after I did a show, I did a movie.
Speaker 1: I did It's gonna Sound funny. I was on the
Speaker 1: cutting room floor of Zoolander two, Like they didn't even
Speaker 1: use my part, and I'm still getting residual checks when
Speaker 1: people watch that movie.
Speaker 2: I don't know how.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess because they paid me to be
Speaker 1: in the movie. I somehow, even though I didn't end
Speaker 1: up in the movie. You know, when it comes to
Speaker 1: all this stuff, you still get your check. So I
Speaker 1: still just got to check. This weekend wasn't much, but
Speaker 1: still there. And it shows you all the places people
Speaker 1: watch it streaming is a big one. Mark says, I'm
Speaker 1: a bit behind. Listening to episode number twelve. Two observations.
Speaker 1: One woman had a friend with an iPad was asking
Speaker 1: about a chromebook. One option is maybe getting a keyboard
Speaker 1: case for the iPad instead of a chromebook. It's cheaper
Speaker 1: and no need to learn a new device. Any bluetooth
Speaker 1: keyboard would work with an iPad. Yeah, an iPad is
Speaker 1: a good alternative. I think if you're just consuming content,
Speaker 1: an iPad is really good. But I think a chromebook
Speaker 1: is a little bit easier if you're trying to do
Speaker 1: more on there, and so I think that's I'll recommend
Speaker 1: an iPad when I think it's necessary. But I think
Speaker 1: in that case, I actually forgot it might have been
Speaker 1: a good option. I just forgot completely. Second item was
Speaker 1: about the woman with a Lisa computer. Those are selling
Speaker 1: for up to fifty thousand dollars on the market for
Speaker 1: vintage technology these days.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: I don't know if she mentioned she had a Lisa
Speaker 1: or she worked on Alisa back in the day.
Speaker 2: So that's oh gosh, this is a long one.
Speaker 1: Robert, retired web developer, says, regarding the woman who called
Speaker 1: into your show, who asked for advice and how to
Speaker 1: monetize her idea for an app. Instead of creating a video,
Speaker 1: I would have suggested a catchy name for your app,
Speaker 1: register that domain typically twenty bucks a year, host that
Speaker 1: domain six a month, six bucks a month. Well, and
Speaker 1: then use a website builder to create a website, kind
Speaker 1: of a live website with placeholders to show people how
Speaker 1: the app would function. And then as time becomes available,
Speaker 1: she can build out the website more and more and
Speaker 1: higher a web designer as necessary. Okay, that's interesting, but
Speaker 1: most people, he says, do not know how to find
Speaker 1: a VC. Even if they did, a VC would not
Speaker 1: want to talk to them. Yeah, that's interesting advice, I guess.
Speaker 1: I mean that's one way. And then a lot of
Speaker 1: people wrote in about this whole two point four gigahertz
Speaker 1: versus five gigahertz stuff and gets a little complicated. But
Speaker 1: one person said a Lynksys MR nine thousand router worked
Speaker 1: well and they were able to split the signal and
Speaker 1: give each a separate name, So if you want to
Speaker 1: do that. And finally, oh, Mario said rich, I just
Speaker 1: wanted you to suggest resist ever calling yourself dumb and
Speaker 1: don't refer yourself as dumb. I guess I called myself.
Speaker 1: I said I felt dumb. I don't what it was about,
Speaker 1: but I did say I felt dumb.
Speaker 2: All right, that's gonna do it for this episode of
Speaker 2: the show. You can find me on social media at
Speaker 2: rich on tech, my website richon tech dot tv.
Speaker 1: Go there to watch my TV segments. My name is
Speaker 1: rich Merrol. Thanks so much for listening. There are so
Speaker 1: many ways you can spend your time. I do appreciate
Speaker 1: you spending it right here with me. I will talk
Speaker 1: to you real soon.