Speaker 1: Google Gemini can now restore your old photos and remove
Speaker 1: fences from them. Amazon ends a prime shipping perk. I
Speaker 1: will end the confusion around that. Highlights from the home
Speaker 1: tech show Cedia twenty twenty five plus your tech questions answered.
Speaker 1: What's going on? I'm Richdmiro and this is Rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: This is the show where I talk about the tech
Speaker 1: stuff I think you should know about. It's also the
Speaker 1: place where I answer your questions about technology. I believe
Speaker 1: the tech should be interesting, useful and fun. With that
Speaker 1: in mind, let's open up those phone lines at triple
Speaker 1: eight Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four to two four one zero one. Give me a
Speaker 1: call if you have a question about technology. Email is
Speaker 1: also open. Just go to rich on tech dot TV
Speaker 1: and hit contact. Rich on tech dot TV hit contact.
Speaker 1: I guess you can also just send an email to
Speaker 1: hello at richon tech dot TV. Either way it'll make
Speaker 1: its way to my inbox. We've got some guests this week,
Speaker 1: including Julian Keel, founder and CEO of Points Path. I'm
Speaker 1: going to share some tips for smarter travel, including the
Speaker 1: tool they make that helps you decide when to book
Speaker 1: flights with cash or points you can install it right
Speaker 1: into Google Flights. When you search for flights, it'll say
Speaker 1: here's the points, that's a better deal, here's the cash
Speaker 1: that's a better deal. And of course we'll have you
Speaker 1: on the show as well well. This week I was
Speaker 1: in Denver, Colorado for CEDIA twenty twenty five. CEDIA have
Speaker 1: not been to this show in probably about a decade.
Speaker 1: The last time I went it was in Indianapolis, and
Speaker 1: it is a show that started out as sort of
Speaker 1: the home theater show. So these are all the people
Speaker 1: that would install home theaters at rich folks houses, and
Speaker 1: it's now become this big show where they show off
Speaker 1: just all kinds of technology for the home, but for
Speaker 1: still for people that install and all the people surrounding
Speaker 1: that business, right the people that sell it, people that
Speaker 1: install it, all that kind of stuff. So this is
Speaker 1: a trade show not open to the public, but think lighting,
Speaker 1: energy management, audio video, outdoor wellness, security systems, and a
Speaker 1: lot of the stuff that where you saw at the
Speaker 1: show is dealing with, like smarter lighting tied to circadian rhythms.
Speaker 1: I know that sounds silly, but the lighting in your
Speaker 1: home can now sort of reflect what's going on outside.
Speaker 1: When it's time to wake up, the lighting's really bright.
Speaker 1: When it's time to go to bed, the lighting gets warmer.
Speaker 1: Outdoor living that is a huge, huge growth area for
Speaker 1: this industry. You know, people are putting stuff that's typically
Speaker 1: inside outside. I mean we've always had a grill outside,
Speaker 1: but now we're talking TVs, refrigerators, all that good stuff. Lighting,
Speaker 1: better home networks. And also, you know, this is a
Speaker 1: new thing that we talked about on the show a
Speaker 1: couple months ago. But when I had a leak with
Speaker 1: my washer when I was out of town. But that
Speaker 1: idea of you can put these censors on your pipes
Speaker 1: that will detect if there is a leak, and not
Speaker 1: only the leak, but it's also going to tell you, you know,
Speaker 1: energy management if you put it on your your electricity stuff,
Speaker 1: and then you also have it for your your water
Speaker 1: pipes too. About three hundred exhibitors, not as large as CS,
Speaker 1: about fifteen to twenty thousand attendees. But here is what
Speaker 1: I think, you know, my takeaway. You know, many of
Speaker 1: us and I'll get to some of the gadgets I
Speaker 1: saw in a second, but many of us live with
Speaker 1: like sort of this mashup of just a bunch of
Speaker 1: random smart home gadgets that we've purchased. They work with Google,
Speaker 1: they might work with Alexa, they might work with Apple,
Speaker 1: and you know it works for us, right Like I've
Speaker 1: got lighting, I've got some smart speakers, I've got some
Speaker 1: you know, smart security stuff, the different cameras. But I
Speaker 1: think the idea of this show is you have a
Speaker 1: pro come and put all of this stuff in your
Speaker 1: home and make it all work together in harmony. And
Speaker 1: I think for most of us it feels like that's
Speaker 1: probably unattainable because it's very expensive to do that. But
Speaker 1: there are a lot of people out there that are
Speaker 1: doing this, and they build these multimillion dollar homes and
Speaker 1: then they spend another one hundred and fifty three hundred
Speaker 1: thousand or more on getting this technology built in. Now,
Speaker 1: I will tell you my problem with all this stuff.
Speaker 1: In the past, I personally thought it was really interesting
Speaker 1: that you would get all this technology, you know, this lighting,
Speaker 1: these speakers, and then you have to control it with
Speaker 1: like this really old school controller. Right Like when the
Speaker 1: phone came along, the phone was just such a better
Speaker 1: way of doing these controls and the voice, and so
Speaker 1: I always felt like it was funny that you would
Speaker 1: have all these people spend so much money on this
Speaker 1: high end home technology and then they have to use
Speaker 1: this like silly controller straight out of the eighties or
Speaker 1: nineties to control it all. But nowadays, I mean that's
Speaker 1: getting an upgrade too, all right, So what are some
Speaker 1: of the things that I saw? TCL was there. They
Speaker 1: were showing off their QM nine TV. This TV was
Speaker 1: super bright, their brightest yet. It also has the first
Speaker 1: to have Gemini built in, so basically AI built into
Speaker 1: the TV, which means you can search it using your
Speaker 1: natural language instead of searching, you know, by type. You know,
Speaker 1: just by saying the name of a movie. You can
Speaker 1: say like, oh, I want that movie where the guy
Speaker 1: travels back to the future, and it will or you
Speaker 1: can just say, hey, I'm feeling kind of like excited
Speaker 1: about the sports season. Give me some great sports movies
Speaker 1: from the eighties or whatever, and it'll give you that
Speaker 1: kind of information. They also had this Z one hundred
Speaker 1: wireless speakers. I get a kick out of that name
Speaker 1: because that's a big radio station I grew up with
Speaker 1: in New York City. But these are the name of
Speaker 1: the speakers Z one hundred. They're wireless speakers and they
Speaker 1: auto calibrate in about ten seconds. So they brought me
Speaker 1: into this room. You place the speakers wherever you want,
Speaker 1: so you plug them into the wall and basically they
Speaker 1: are wireless to the TV, but the TV listens for
Speaker 1: the speakers. So it sets up kind of like the
Speaker 1: perfect wireless setup with these speakers. And it sounded fantastic
Speaker 1: and it's doing Dolby autmost so that's amazing. That's going
Speaker 1: to save people a lot of headaches with running speaker wire.
Speaker 1: They're called flex Connect. By the way, four speakers plus
Speaker 1: a sub is about twelve hundred dollars. Let's see what else. Oh,
Speaker 1: outdoor TV. So I spent a long time talking to
Speaker 1: this representative from a company called Neptune TVs. They make
Speaker 1: these outdoor TVs, and he told me what to look
Speaker 1: for when you buy an outdoor TV. Sustain brightness, right,
Speaker 1: you want a TV that can stay bright, not just
Speaker 1: peak knits, which is basically saying, oh, we get to
Speaker 1: this brightness, but only for a second. You want something
Speaker 1: that can sustain that brightness. Commercial grade panels they last
Speaker 1: longer outside minimum of IP fifty four to keep out dugs,
Speaker 1: dust bugs, and moisture, and then if there's protective glass,
Speaker 1: it should be optically bonded or ventilated. That way you
Speaker 1: don't get condensation behind the screen. So ballpark prices a
Speaker 1: fifty five inch TV runs you about eleven twelve hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: Seventy five inch full sun about forty two hundred dollars
Speaker 1: next year. That's expensive lighting. Again, we talked about that,
Speaker 1: brands are pushing for this idea of following the sun
Speaker 1: so color temperatures to help you get a way, help
Speaker 1: you focus when you're working the afternoon and then wind down.
Speaker 1: So they have these lights that basically do all that.
Speaker 1: And we've seen smart bulbs that can do that, but
Speaker 1: now you know these are fixtures that they're putting in
Speaker 1: throughout your home, in the bathroom, in the kitchen that
Speaker 1: do all that stuff. Let's see I talk to simply safe.
Speaker 1: They're making a new outdoor camera. The big thing with
Speaker 1: outdoor cameras and security cameras is AI. So AI is
Speaker 1: now detecting what's happening on that camera screen or on
Speaker 1: that camera you know frame, and then the cloud is
Speaker 1: kind of checking, okay, is this typical for their home
Speaker 1: or is it you know, is this a familiar face
Speaker 1: or is it someone that we should probably flip this
Speaker 1: to an operator and then a live agent can come
Speaker 1: through and say, hey, what's happening, what's going on? Why
Speaker 1: are you on this property? And usually nine times out
Speaker 1: of ten the person runs away, but the AI or
Speaker 1: the AI the live agent can then you know, call
Speaker 1: for backup whatever they need. So we've seen this now,
Speaker 1: it's simply safe. Ring has a feature like that. And
Speaker 1: then it started with this company called Deep Sentinel. Deep
Speaker 1: Sentinel and they were also there. I didn't get to
Speaker 1: talk to them, but we did a story with them
Speaker 1: a while ago, but they kind of pioneered that idea
Speaker 1: of AI live video monitoring. Eero this is the company
Speaker 1: that I like for my Wi Fi signal. They have
Speaker 1: this new thing called the Eero Signal. This is a
Speaker 1: cellular backup module. So if your network at your house
Speaker 1: is always going in or out, this is going to
Speaker 1: save you and make sure that you're never without internet ever.
Speaker 1: So it's a little box that you sort of plug
Speaker 1: into your network and it takes in a signal from
Speaker 1: all three carriers, a wireless signal from AT and T, Verizon,
Speaker 1: a T Mobile and then if your Internet ever goes back,
Speaker 1: ever goes out, this just springs into action and just
Speaker 1: fills in the gap with a wireless cellular signal. So
Speaker 1: it's ninety nine dollars a year for a ten gigabyte
Speaker 1: backup total per year, or this is wild for two
Speaker 1: hundred dollars a year. You get one hundred gigabytes a
Speaker 1: month of backup data. So I guess it just really
Speaker 1: depends on how often your your your network goes out,
Speaker 1: whether you have Cale or fiber. If it goes out
Speaker 1: a lot, you might want to get that two hundred
Speaker 1: dollars month a year, or two hundred dollars a year.
Speaker 1: If it goes out a little bit, maybe just the
Speaker 1: ninety nine dollars a year. That's going to launch early
Speaker 1: next year. This was really cool. I spent way too
Speaker 1: much time at this. If you look something up, just
Speaker 1: look up vesta board. It's a mechanical flip tile message
Speaker 1: board that it kind of looks like those old message
Speaker 1: boards you would see at the airport. But this is
Speaker 1: for your home and so it shows whatever you want.
Speaker 1: You can send a little message from your phone. It'll
Speaker 1: show a text, it'll show weather, it'll show sports scores,
Speaker 1: now playing from Sons and they've sold a big version
Speaker 1: of this for the past couple of years for several
Speaker 1: thousand dollars. Now they have a new smaller version which
Speaker 1: is called the Note, and that's going to sell for
Speaker 1: about fifteen hundred dollars, but right now it's on pre
Speaker 1: order for about a thousand. And I'm telling you, I
Speaker 1: really want this thing. It's just so old school and
Speaker 1: retro looking, and the way the little tiles flip to
Speaker 1: display the message is just super super cool. I got
Speaker 1: to post a video of on my Instagram when I
Speaker 1: have it. Let's see gadget that made me smile. The
Speaker 1: laundry jet. I did post this on my Instagram at
Speaker 1: rich On Tech. This is sort of like a central
Speaker 1: vacuum back in the day, but for dirty close. So
Speaker 1: these little ports are in your room, you open them
Speaker 1: up and it sucks the dirty laundry right into your
Speaker 1: laundry room. I mean, who needs this? Come on, are
Speaker 1: we really that lazy that you can't put your laundry
Speaker 1: in a laundry basket and bring it to the laundry room.
Speaker 1: But that's really silly. And then if you want something
Speaker 1: that's actually gonna save you money. This company they make
Speaker 1: Soul Loucks, makes what's called the EOS. This is a
Speaker 1: smart awning, so you install it on your window outside
Speaker 1: above it. It's solar powered and basically, when it gets
Speaker 1: really hot and the sun comes out, the thing automatically
Speaker 1: extends an awning, and then when the sun goes down
Speaker 1: or it gets cool, it retracts the awning. So basically
Speaker 1: it keeps your glass cool, it cuts the amount of
Speaker 1: AC that you need to use, and it's all automatic,
Speaker 1: so it's doing everything by itself. And it'll even detect
Speaker 1: the wind so if it's too windy, it won't extend.
Speaker 1: About one thousand to two thousand dollars. So long story, short,
Speaker 1: fun time at CDIA. Lots of cool stuff to see.
Speaker 1: I'll put it all on the website. Rich on Tech
Speaker 1: dot TV. All right, coming up, Your call is eighty
Speaker 1: eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four
Speaker 1: to two four one zero one. Welcome back to rich
Speaker 1: on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking
Speaker 1: technology at triple eight Rich one oh one eight eight
Speaker 1: eight seven four to two four one zero one. I
Speaker 1: mentioned that I went to Denver this week, and uh,
Speaker 1: I gotta say Denver is a city that tries like
Speaker 1: so impressed with that city. I wrote about this in
Speaker 1: my newsletter that I love public transit, and so anytime
Speaker 1: I land in a new city, I always try to
Speaker 1: see if I can take public transit to my hotel.
Speaker 1: And sure enough, they built this giant airport in the
Speaker 1: middle of nowhere. But they said, you know what, We're
Speaker 1: gonna make it easy for you. We're gonna put a
Speaker 1: train directly from the airport right to downtown. And by
Speaker 1: the way, it's only gonna cost you ten bucks. Now,
Speaker 1: if you traveled that far, it was about a forty
Speaker 1: five minute train ride. If you travel that in any
Speaker 1: other city, you're talking, you know, fifty sixty if you're
Speaker 1: in you know, Los Angeles or New York, one hundred
Speaker 1: dollars uber ride. Right, this was ten bucks. And you know,
Speaker 1: they accommodate the luggage and all that because they know
Speaker 1: everyone's going right to the to the airport, which, by
Speaker 1: the way, is incredible, huge airport, beautiful, brand new as
Speaker 1: I don't know. Let's see, what was a Denver airport built.
Speaker 1: Let's see it was built in uh Okay. Well, now,
Speaker 1: there's no way nineteen ninety five that can't be right. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: maybe it's been there for a while, but anyway, it
Speaker 1: looked new. They were renovating it. Anyway, I say this
Speaker 1: because what's that they remodeled it? Maybe they remodeled it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: new Airport was a massive undertaking, eleven thousand workers, five
Speaker 1: billion dollars, sixteen months behind schedule, and significantly over budget.
Speaker 1: What isn't over budget when it's you know, built. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I just say this all because I just love visiting
Speaker 1: cities that try so hard to like be a great city,
Speaker 1: and it just has this fun vibe like it's just
Speaker 1: kind of this outdoor place. So anyway, I loved it.
Speaker 1: I was only there for two days, but I really
Speaker 1: really enjoyed it. Didn't get to do anything outdoors, but
Speaker 1: now I want to go back. But I will tell
Speaker 1: you I had one of the best steaks of my life,
Speaker 1: best stakes of my life at this restaurant. It was
Speaker 1: called Guard and Grace, And I don't know what they did,
Speaker 1: they they did it perfectly and it was just so good.
Speaker 1: That kudos to you, because I do like to test
Speaker 1: a steakhouse when I go to a new city and
Speaker 1: they can't all get them right, and this one was perfect,
Speaker 1: Like I'm talking perfect. Anyway, if you're in Denver, check
Speaker 1: it out. There's also one in Houston apparently, and they're
Speaker 1: building one in Charlotte. Okay, so I talked I want
Speaker 1: to talk about this because it's really important Amazon. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of talk going around about how Amazon is
Speaker 1: ending this free Prime shipping outside your home, Okay, and
Speaker 1: there's a lot of confusion around it. But let me
Speaker 1: just explain what this is all Aboutazon is ending what
Speaker 1: they called their invite program. Okay, So if you were
Speaker 1: a Prime member in the past, you were able to
Speaker 1: invite just random people to share your membership for free. So,
Speaker 1: for instance, I had two family members back on the
Speaker 1: East Coast that just basically had free Amazon Prime. So
Speaker 1: because you had a Prime membership, they said, oh, you
Speaker 1: could share it with like I think it was like
Speaker 1: two or three or four people, whatever it was. And
Speaker 1: so I used that and I said, hey, why pay
Speaker 1: for Prime when they're letting you do this. This was
Speaker 1: not illegal, It was not like under the table. It
Speaker 1: was like a program that Amazon had and this was
Speaker 1: for many, many years. So I think my family members
Speaker 1: had free Prime for like ten years. Prime is like
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty bucks a year, so they were
Speaker 1: saving a significant amount of money. Not anymore. Amazon says
Speaker 1: it's ending that program as of October first, twenty twenty five. Now,
Speaker 1: if you were part of this program, you already know
Speaker 1: because you're frustrated because you got an email from Amazon
Speaker 1: that said, hey, the free ride is over. Now you
Speaker 1: got to pay for your own Prime membership. It wasn't
Speaker 1: It's not like they've found people that were doing this
Speaker 1: illegally or under the table or whatever. They are just
Speaker 1: ending something that legitimately you could do in the past,
Speaker 1: and now they're just saying, no, you can't do this anymore.
Speaker 1: So invitees will You'll have to sign up for your
Speaker 1: own Prime. They are giving you a discount. It is
Speaker 1: fifteen dollars for the first year, but then after that
Speaker 1: it's fifteen dollars a month, so it's like eighty five
Speaker 1: percent off. Yeah, it's a very good deal for the
Speaker 1: first year, because they're saying, we get it. This is
Speaker 1: a big change. You're going from paying nothing to paying
Speaker 1: for your own Prime. So they do have what's called
Speaker 1: Amazon Family, which is replacing the Amazon Invitee program, but
Speaker 1: only people that live at your same address qualify for this,
Speaker 1: So that means you can share with one other adult
Speaker 1: in your house. So you know, if your mom lived
Speaker 1: with you, sure you can share with her, but it's
Speaker 1: mostly for like a spouse or a partner whatever. And
Speaker 1: then you can also share with children and teenagers, but
Speaker 1: that's very limited. Like children, yes, like what kid is
Speaker 1: gonna have their own Prime account? But teenagers they really
Speaker 1: want them to have their own. So it's kind of
Speaker 1: like the way I see this. Streaming services started to
Speaker 1: crack down on password sharing, and now Amazon's doing the same.
Speaker 1: Why because they want to grow the memberships. They know
Speaker 1: that there's probably another fifty million people out there who
Speaker 1: knows sharing Prime memberships that now they're going to force
Speaker 1: a certain percentage of them to sign up for their own,
Speaker 1: which means more money for Amazon. So you know, if
Speaker 1: you're one of those people, Rick writes in what is
Speaker 1: the name of the service that will help keep track
Speaker 1: of your subscriptions and ask you if you want to
Speaker 1: request cancelation. I've got so many out there, I've lost track, Rick.
Speaker 1: It is called Rocket Money. You link up all of
Speaker 1: your accounts, your credit card, your bank accounts, and then
Speaker 1: it finds your subscriptions, your recurring subscriptions, and then you
Speaker 1: can decide if you want to keep them or cancel them.
Speaker 1: It will also help you do that as well. Again,
Speaker 1: it's called rocket Money. It is a really nice app.
Speaker 1: I found an app that I like better. Actually now
Speaker 1: it doesn't help you cancel subscriptions, but it does help
Speaker 1: you keep everything in one place with your with your finances.
Speaker 1: The difference is Rocket Money is free. The new one
Speaker 1: I found is not. It's called monarch Money. But I
Speaker 1: will tell you I am completely obsessed. If you want
Speaker 1: to track all of your bank accounts, do all your budgeting,
Speaker 1: see your net worth, monarch Money is absolutely incredible. I'll
Speaker 1: put a link to it on the website rich on
Speaker 1: tech dot TV. All right, eighty to eight rich one
Speaker 1: O one eight eight eight seven four to two four
Speaker 1: one zero one. Your calls next, Welcome back to rich
Speaker 1: on tech rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking
Speaker 1: technology at triple eight rich one oh one. That's eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: Phone lines are open. Email is also an option. Just
Speaker 1: go to the website rich on tech dot TV. It's
Speaker 1: also where I take great notes. So if you want
Speaker 1: to anything. I mentioned that restaurant in Denver, the money
Speaker 1: app that I like, it's all there. This is episode
Speaker 1: one eight Rich on tech dot TV. All right, let's
Speaker 1: go to Tim in Huntington Beach. You're on with Rich.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you, Rich, I love your show.
Speaker 3: Thank you calling today because I have a very old
Speaker 3: computers two thousand and two. It's a desktop as half
Speaker 3: a terrabite of hard memory, and Windows of course is
Speaker 3: telling me that they're ready to update by October. By
Speaker 3: the way, I pay a monthly for Windows. The question
Speaker 3: is will lift older computer be able to handle Windows eleven.
Speaker 1: I don't think so. I don't think that it will.
Speaker 1: But there is a way that you can check. There's
Speaker 1: an app that you can download called the PC health
Speaker 1: Check app. So, yeah, PC health Check app. I'll link
Speaker 1: it up. Just make sure you get the official one
Speaker 1: because there might be some imposters out there. But it's
Speaker 1: called the PC health Check. Once you install that, it
Speaker 1: will scan your computer. And I'm doing this right now,
Speaker 1: and it will scan your computer and tell you if
Speaker 1: it's a fit for Windows eleven. So I'm pressing check
Speaker 1: now now. My computer already has Windows eleven, so it's
Speaker 1: saying great, news it's already there. So this PC meets
Speaker 1: Windows eleven requirements. But that's what I would do. And
Speaker 1: basically it tells you exactly which requirements your computer meets
Speaker 1: in which one it does not. So it says, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a couple things. The main thing that Windows eleven
Speaker 1: needs is this secure boot thing and this TPM two
Speaker 1: point zero, and that basically means that your computer is
Speaker 1: much more secure than it has been in the past.
Speaker 1: And so a lot of the older computers do not
Speaker 1: support that, but they might, so, you know. So here's
Speaker 1: what it says. This PC supports secure boot, TPM two
Speaker 1: point zero is enabled on this PC. The processor is
Speaker 1: supported for Windows eleven. There's at least four gigs of
Speaker 1: system memory, the system disc is sixty four gigs or larger,
Speaker 1: and the processor has two or more. Course, so those
Speaker 1: are the things that it's looking for on your computer.
Speaker 1: Do you think your computer meets those specs or no?
Speaker 4: I'm not sure.
Speaker 3: I'm not even sure a gigabyte was available in two
Speaker 3: thousand and two, but I can check.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, there are some ways to force Windows eleven
Speaker 1: onto a unsupported PC, and I'll link that up as well.
Speaker 1: There's a there's an article, great article from edbo at
Speaker 1: zd net. He explains how he can do that, and
Speaker 1: I've got I've got two articles that explain how to
Speaker 1: do that. So I would say for a two thousand
Speaker 1: and two computer, there's two things you can do. By
Speaker 1: the way, you can try to force upgrade Windows eleven
Speaker 1: on it. I don't think it's going to run very
Speaker 1: well at all, but it may. The second thing is
Speaker 1: that you can you can sign up for one more
Speaker 1: year of support directly through Windows. Have you heard about that?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: Okay. So if you go back back into your search
Speaker 1: and you type in Windows Update, okay, and if you
Speaker 1: go to check for updates, there should be a screen there.
Speaker 1: I don't have it on my computer, but in your
Speaker 1: Windows Update screen it should say that you can extend
Speaker 1: updates for one more year, and you can go through
Speaker 1: and you can sign up. In the way they do that,
Speaker 1: they give you three options. You can either pay thirty
Speaker 1: dollars for the additional year and they'll give you through
Speaker 1: October of twenty twenty six. You can redeem it's a
Speaker 1: certain amount of Being Rewards points and you may have those.
Speaker 1: If you just search Being Rewards, you might have those
Speaker 1: like already banked, so I think you have to redeem
Speaker 1: like a thousand or two thousand of them. You might
Speaker 1: even have them already. And the third thing you can
Speaker 1: do is just upload some of your data to one
Speaker 1: drive and it will give you an extra year if
Speaker 1: you do that. So those are the three things. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna link it all up, Tim, because I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people are in your same shoes right now.
Speaker 1: So does that help?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that helps a lot. Thank you so much.
Speaker 4: It gives me some recourse. You're at least to search it.
Speaker 1: And if you still want that, yeah, if you still
Speaker 1: want to use this computer, you can also transform it
Speaker 1: into a Chrome os Flex computer as well, So I'll
Speaker 1: put that link as well. Lots of options. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's so many things you can do. I know everyone's
Speaker 1: in this kind of like turning point with Windows where
Speaker 1: you know they're going to stop supporting Windows ten in October.
Speaker 1: So that's coming up next month. Wow, we're already in September.
Speaker 1: So October fourteenth, twenty twenty five, Windows will no longer
Speaker 1: provide free software updates. So here's the thing. Windows ten
Speaker 1: will continue to work after that date. The problem is
Speaker 1: you are putting yourself, your data, and your computer at
Speaker 1: risk of any sort of hacking issue or security issue,
Speaker 1: and then programs are going to start saying, no, we
Speaker 1: don't run on that Windows because it's no longer supported.
Speaker 1: So if you want to continue getting those software updates,
Speaker 1: I'm going to put all the links on the website
Speaker 1: rich on tech dot TV. This just gave me a
Speaker 1: great idea for my TV segment because so many people
Speaker 1: are emailing me right now about this this changeover, and
Speaker 1: I really need to give all the options. I mean,
Speaker 1: I just laid them out for Tim, but I know
Speaker 1: that there's so many more. You know, everyone wants to
Speaker 1: see their path, like what they're going to do, and
Speaker 1: it's a little bit differently for everyone. So I'll lay
Speaker 1: it all out. I'll link it up on the website
Speaker 1: rich on tech dot TV. It'll be there in the
Speaker 1: next couple of minutes or so. Thanks for the call, Tim,
Speaker 1: really appreciate it. Let's see what do we have a
Speaker 1: couple of minutes here? I think I could take another
Speaker 1: call right, Let's go to h Drew in Orange County.
Speaker 1: This looks like a pretty simple one.
Speaker 5: Drew.
Speaker 6: What's up, hey, Rich how you doing glad you had
Speaker 6: good time in Denver. I hope you were able to
Speaker 6: eat some of those good restaurants from the Denver Airport.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. Yeah, Well, funny you should say that
Speaker 1: I ended up going into the United Club because I
Speaker 1: needed to work. I had like three hours. But I
Speaker 1: loved it because it had it was like kind of
Speaker 1: based on a lodge, kind of like a you know,
Speaker 1: wilderness lodge, so it was pretty cool. But I spent
Speaker 1: like three hours sitting there writing my newsletter, so it
Speaker 1: was great. Unfortunately I did not take advantage of the
Speaker 1: free drinks, which I really.
Speaker 7: At least the view was good.
Speaker 6: I know that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the view and the and the snacks were great.
Speaker 1: So yes, what can I help you with? TROW?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 6: My question is I'm no longer in the day to
Speaker 6: day business environments, so I really don't need a computer.
Speaker 6: I don't want to buy a new one, but I'm
Speaker 6: thinking about, uh getting a tablet that I can just use.
Speaker 7: Uh.
Speaker 6: I'm not doing any access databases or big Excel spreadsheets
Speaker 6: any more in my life, thank god.
Speaker 1: Uh, thank god.
Speaker 6: I'm looking at me. Yeah, right, so I'm looking at
Speaker 6: the Samsung Galaxy nine Plus and the Galaxy s tn
Speaker 6: f E. Just like to get your thoughts on on
Speaker 6: the two of those.
Speaker 1: Uh, let's see that. So the the fee is the
Speaker 1: one i'd recommend. That's the one that I've used, and
Speaker 1: it's basically the It's it's perfectly fine. It's been out
Speaker 1: for a while, so it's not going to be the
Speaker 1: most powerful. But if you're are you what are you
Speaker 1: doing on this thing? Watching videos and just some some
Speaker 1: emails and searching the web?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I'll do I'll do some emails, YouTube, read the
Speaker 6: La Times. Uh you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's gonna be great. It's gonna be
Speaker 1: great for all those things. I think the fee is
Speaker 1: probably the way go. The A nine plus is I'm
Speaker 1: thinking it's cheaper. Let's see that.
Speaker 6: One is got a bigger screen, I think.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's you know what, this one, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: recommend this one because it's gonna be it's probably gonna
Speaker 1: be too too underpowered for you, Like you're gonna get
Speaker 1: frustrated with this. So I would just spend a little
Speaker 1: bit extra and go with that fee model. It's gonna
Speaker 1: it's gonna be a little bit more expensive. But I
Speaker 1: think if you're using this as like your main device.
Speaker 1: You're gonna be happy you did that because it's gonna
Speaker 1: have just a little bit more horsepower and features that.
Speaker 1: I think the screen is gonna be better, like just
Speaker 1: everything's gonna be better about it. I'd say go with
Speaker 1: that way.
Speaker 7: Uh.
Speaker 1: My only downside is it is a little bulkier than
Speaker 1: you know, a standard kind of iPad. But it's not
Speaker 1: a deal breaker. It's fine. It's just a little heavy.
Speaker 1: That's it. That's my only downside. But I think it
Speaker 1: all right, And you don't.
Speaker 6: I'm not flowing on airplane about carrying it anymore.
Speaker 1: Okay, but you don't you don't want an iPad, do you?
Speaker 1: You want Samsung specifically?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I had an iPad and I don't know. I
Speaker 6: just fill constraint with the the Apple locations.
Speaker 1: Oh I hear you, yep, Yeah, I get it totally. Okay. Well,
Speaker 1: I think the the fe is gonna be the way
Speaker 1: to go, and I think you're gonna enjoy it.
Speaker 6: Drew, hey Rich, thanks a bunch, enjoying the show and
Speaker 6: have a great week.
Speaker 1: All right, Thanks you too. You know, the the Samsung
Speaker 1: Fi models, they are the kind of you know, Samsung
Speaker 1: comes out with a lot of lineups. So they've got
Speaker 1: the A models, which are their basic, like their cheapest
Speaker 1: I hate to say the word cheap, but it's just
Speaker 1: like the least expensive. Then you've got the S models, right,
Speaker 1: so anything that says S like the Samsung Galaxy S
Speaker 1: twenty five Ultra, that's their top of the line, the
Speaker 1: S models. Then you've got the Z models. Z is
Speaker 1: all of their foldable models. And then you've got the
Speaker 1: F E, which when it first came out from Samsung,
Speaker 1: that meant fan edition, but now they've just dropped that
Speaker 1: moniker that doesn't stand for anything. But now they come
Speaker 1: out with an FE version of most of their devices,
Speaker 1: whether it's their earbuds, whether it is their tablets, whether
Speaker 1: it's their phones, their foldables, they all have an F E,
Speaker 1: and F E means it's not going to be the
Speaker 1: best of the best, but it's going to be pretty
Speaker 1: darn close. And for most casual users, the FI is
Speaker 1: going to save you a lot of money. It might
Speaker 1: be a little bit of last year's technology, but it's
Speaker 1: going to be just as good, and ninety nine point
Speaker 1: nine percent of people are not going to know the difference.
Speaker 1: They're only going to notice it in their pocketbook or wallet,
Speaker 1: because you're going to save a bunch of money. With
Speaker 1: that said, With that said, Samsung this week came out
Speaker 1: with the S twenty five FE. So again, S twenty
Speaker 1: five FE launched this week. It's six hundred and fifty dollars.
Speaker 1: Positioned as an attainable flagship, so it has many of
Speaker 1: the S twenty five features. Of course, Galaxy AI is
Speaker 1: built in. It's got Gemini, it's got a twelve megapixel
Speaker 1: front camera, It's got all the lenses you need for
Speaker 1: the camera, all the I mean, it's just it's got
Speaker 1: a great camera on it. I'm not kidding. I've tested
Speaker 1: the fees and it's like I almost can't tell the difference.
Speaker 1: I'm like, wait a second, how is this so good
Speaker 1: for such an inexpensive price. You're getting a really nice
Speaker 1: Samsung device. They've got the audio eraser built in. They've
Speaker 1: got auto trim for video editing. It's got a forty
Speaker 1: nine hundred million battery, which is really big, super fast charging,
Speaker 1: wireless charging, a six point seven inch screen, maybe not
Speaker 1: their top of the line screen, but still gonna be
Speaker 1: really good. It's got an aluminum frame, IP sixty eight,
Speaker 1: water resistance seven years of operating system updates, comes in navy, jet, black, white,
Speaker 1: and Icy blue, and it comes with six months free
Speaker 1: of Google's AI. They're higher end AI. So again, if
Speaker 1: you're looking to get into those Samsung devices, you don't
Speaker 1: want to pay the high prices of the foldables or
Speaker 1: the the s line. The fe is a really nice
Speaker 1: way to have a really well equipped Samsung with all
Speaker 1: the things you need at a decent price. And by
Speaker 1: the way, they get discounted too, So I would not
Speaker 1: pay that six hundred and fifty dollars. Look for a discount,
Speaker 1: education discount, first responder discount. All those discounts are out there.
Speaker 1: Trade is eighty eight Rich one oh one eighty eight
Speaker 1: seven four to two four one zero one richontech dot TV,
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech Rich DeMuro here. Fifteen
Speaker 1: years later, Instagram finally has a proper iPad app. Why
Speaker 1: did it take so long? Well, for many years, uh,
Speaker 1: Facebook Meta, they said, Oh, we don't need an Instagram
Speaker 1: app on the iPad. Nobody cares, nobody wants it, nobody's
Speaker 1: asking for it. There's two little people using it. Well,
Speaker 1: now it's here, so clearly something changed. What changed? Oh,
Speaker 1: TikTok changed because the app opens directly to a feed
Speaker 1: of reels, not your standard Instagram feed, so you can
Speaker 1: sol access all that stuff. But as soon as you
Speaker 1: open up the app, boom, you're in it. You're into videos,
Speaker 1: so that is the main thing. Let's see bigger screen.
Speaker 1: Comments appear next to videos. Dms show the inbox plus
Speaker 1: chats side by side. So I guess that's good if
Speaker 1: you like that idea of like writing back to all
Speaker 1: your messages on your tablet. Meta says the same layout
Speaker 1: is coming soon to Android tablets. But you know, the
Speaker 1: message is pretty clear. They are all in on these reels.
Speaker 1: They are really trying to push these reels. I'm going
Speaker 1: to tell you about the how Google Gemini has some
Speaker 1: new tricks with photos. It's pretty incredible, like really incredible.
Speaker 1: But let's go to uh, let's see here. Let's go
Speaker 1: to Gary in Lagodo, Miguel Gary, you're on with Rich?
Speaker 7: Yes, Rich, I can tell you. I got back from
Speaker 7: Arizona on Sunday. I was over there for a week
Speaker 7: and a half and I was absolutely depressed on where
Speaker 7: are the areas that Verison used to cover? The I
Speaker 7: don't cover anymore? And I would like to know about
Speaker 7: these satellite phones. Maybe you can tell me about what's
Speaker 7: going on with what T Mobile and right and now have.
Speaker 7: Now how abine teens here are they're gonna be coming
Speaker 7: up with satellite phone.
Speaker 1: Well, okay, so it's not a satellite phone per se,
Speaker 1: but it's satellite backup. So let me let me explain.
Speaker 1: So the carriers, they all have a level of satellite connectivity. Okay,
Speaker 1: whether it's AT and T, whether it's Verizon, whether it's
Speaker 1: T Mobile. Now here's what makes this a little complicated. Okay,
Speaker 1: you got to start at the top level, which is
Speaker 1: your phone. If you have a pixel, a pixel nine
Speaker 1: or a Pixel ten, or you have an iPhone, iPhone
Speaker 1: fourteen and up, you have satellite connectivity built into your
Speaker 1: phone without your carrier even coming into the picture. So
Speaker 1: let's just say you had a Pixel nine. You're in
Speaker 1: the middle of nowhere, like you said in Arizona, and
Speaker 1: there's no signal from your carrier. Your pixel would still
Speaker 1: allow you to send and receive a message, and it's
Speaker 1: an emergency message on the pixel at this point, I believe.
Speaker 1: But on the iPhone you'd be able to send an
Speaker 1: I message. You just be able to send your message
Speaker 1: as you usually would. So that's at the top level
Speaker 1: where the phone itself is offering you that added layer
Speaker 1: of satellite connectivity. Then you have the carriers, so this
Speaker 1: is much more dependent on your plan. So let's say
Speaker 1: you have Verizon and you have to have a certain
Speaker 1: phone by the way, so it's not every it's not
Speaker 1: every phone that supports it. But let's say you're on Verizon,
Speaker 1: You've got a Samsung phone. If you go into your settings,
Speaker 1: it will tell you that you have satellite from your
Speaker 1: carrier as well. And so you can look into your
Speaker 1: settings if you go into your settings on your Android
Speaker 1: network and Internet and then go into your SIM and
Speaker 1: I believe if you tap your sin your sim, it
Speaker 1: should show you this satellite connectivity and whether you have
Speaker 1: that on your device. It's interesting because again it's like
Speaker 1: it's a little bit confusing because the phones have them,
Speaker 1: but also the carriers have them. So T Mobile let
Speaker 1: me go through them. T Mobiles working with SpaceX, so
Speaker 1: they are really pushing this, which means a lot of
Speaker 1: phones are supported, a little bit of data is supported,
Speaker 1: and coming soon calls are going to be supported, but
Speaker 1: that's still a ways off. But at the very least
Speaker 1: you might be able to. You know, the main thing
Speaker 1: you want to be able to do is get in
Speaker 1: touch with nine one one, whether that's through a call,
Speaker 1: whether that's through a message that you send them with
Speaker 1: emergency help. AT and T is partnering with something called
Speaker 1: AST Space Mobile, and they have launched some of their
Speaker 1: satellites in the US, and you know, you have to
Speaker 1: have a compatible phone for this, and so AT and
Speaker 1: T has their own flavor, and then Verizon they've rolled
Speaker 1: it out. You probably saw during the Super Bowl last
Speaker 1: year they had a big commercial. They're partnering with Skylow
Speaker 1: and AST Space Wars, so some of the same companies
Speaker 1: that AT and T is using. But again they have
Speaker 1: satellite text messaging on select Android phones. So it really
Speaker 1: depends on both your phone and your carrier. Your phone
Speaker 1: may offer satellite, or your carrier may offer satellite, or
Speaker 1: they may both offer satellite. And then there's a third option.
Speaker 1: T Mobile is letting anyone sign up for SpaceX. They
Speaker 1: call it TE Satellite is their brand name, no matter what.
Speaker 1: So if you want to just pay for satellite connectivity
Speaker 1: on your phone, you can you can go to T
Speaker 1: Mobile and just sign up. I think it's like twenty
Speaker 1: bucks a month. And now here's the caveat about all
Speaker 1: of this satellite messaging and satellite connectivity. It is pretty slow.
Speaker 1: It's not something where you just like you know, boom,
Speaker 1: you send a message. It takes two seconds, it goes through.
Speaker 1: I think T mobile satellite is probably the best out
Speaker 1: of all of them right now. But you've got to
Speaker 1: hold your phone up. You've got to angle it. You've
Speaker 1: got to have a clear vision of clear view of
Speaker 1: the sky. You hold your phone there, you type out
Speaker 1: your message. It says, hold on, hold on, hold on, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're sending, we're sending, we're sending. Okay, sent. Now move
Speaker 1: your phone a little bit. Follow the satellites in the sky. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're waiting for a message, waiting, waiting, wait, okay, it
Speaker 1: came back. So it's not a perfect system right now.
Speaker 1: But like you said, Gary, if you're in the middle
Speaker 1: of nowhere, if you're hiking, if you're a hiker, if
Speaker 1: you're a biker, if you are someone who's always camping
Speaker 1: out in the middle of nowhere, and you want that
Speaker 1: that little comfort blanket of knowing that if something ever
Speaker 1: happened that's really bad. You would be able to at
Speaker 1: the very least get in touch with emergency services or
Speaker 1: send your location to someone that can then send help.
Speaker 1: But again, check your carrier, check your phone. Check to
Speaker 1: see if you have satellite availability, because you might be
Speaker 1: able to breathe asier when you're out. And about eighty
Speaker 1: eight rich one oh one eighty eight seven four to
Speaker 1: two four one zero one. Coming up, I'll tell you
Speaker 1: how Gemini can restore old photos and even remove right
Speaker 1: here on rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology at
Speaker 1: triple eight rich.
Speaker 5: One oh one.
Speaker 1: That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one
Speaker 1: zero one. The website for the show rich on Tech
Speaker 1: dot tv. There you can do a lot of stuff.
Speaker 1: You can sign up for the newsletter, you can see
Speaker 1: the show notes, you can watch my TV segments, and
Speaker 1: you can also read my newsletter. I already mentioned that
Speaker 1: you can watch the weekly show. I've got a show
Speaker 1: called rich on Tech Weekly, And uh, let's see what
Speaker 1: else can you do there? Oh, you can listen to
Speaker 1: the radio show after so you can subscribe to the podcast.
Speaker 1: If you're not just search rich on Tech in your
Speaker 1: favorite audio app. It is right there and coming up
Speaker 1: later we are going to have Oh, this is a
Speaker 1: great guest. I'm always booking some sort of like you know,
Speaker 1: flight or something, and you know, it was just I
Speaker 1: was just walking my family through a flight that we're
Speaker 1: booking together and up and then do that. We've got
Speaker 1: Julian Keel later in the show to talk about points Path.
Speaker 1: This is an award flight search engine that basically when
Speaker 1: you're on Google Flights, it'll tell you if you should
Speaker 1: book with points or if you should book with dollars,
Speaker 1: which one's a better value for your money. So we'll
Speaker 1: have him on a little bit later in the show,
Speaker 1: but first you have to try this. This is just
Speaker 1: every so often there comes a feature that is just
Speaker 1: so cool that when I am wowed by it, I
Speaker 1: want to share it with you and make sure you're
Speaker 1: aware of this. So Gemini, that is Google's version. I
Speaker 1: hate to say this, but it just helps people understand
Speaker 1: what it is. But that's basically Google's version of chat
Speaker 1: GBT Gemini. It was called barred when it first came out.
Speaker 1: Now it's called Gemini and you can access it. People
Speaker 1: think that you can only access Google's AI on an
Speaker 1: Android phone. That is not true. You can download the
Speaker 1: Gemini app right now for the iPhone. Make sure you
Speaker 1: get the right one. There's also a Gemini cryptocurrency app.
Speaker 1: This is you know, make sure you're getting the Google
Speaker 1: Gemini AI app and the official one. But anyway, once
Speaker 1: you have that, you can do a whole bunch of things.
Speaker 1: You can search, you can ask you questions, you know,
Speaker 1: all the stuff you can do on chat GBT. But
Speaker 1: where Google has truly pulled ahead is in images, not
Speaker 1: just creating images, but also working with photos that you
Speaker 1: already have. So they had this big update okay called
Speaker 1: Nana Nano banana, Nano banana. I know it's silly, but
Speaker 1: Google Gemini when it got this Nano banana upgrade, which
Speaker 1: is just a silly name. I don't know if they
Speaker 1: just came up with that name. I think Nano is
Speaker 1: some sort of like tech term. But banana, I think
Speaker 1: they just had fun with just rhymed with nano. Well
Speaker 1: does it wait, nano banano, No, it doesn't, Nano banana
Speaker 1: doesn't rhyme. Anyway, when they came out with this upgrade,
Speaker 1: people went nuts because not only can it reimagine photos
Speaker 1: in any way you want to do, but it can
Speaker 1: maintain your look as you edit. So most of these
Speaker 1: AI image generators, they completely generate a new image right
Speaker 1: you feed it an image. It just recreates that image
Speaker 1: from scratch with the changes that you want. What Google
Speaker 1: is now doing with is nano banana. It is changing
Speaker 1: the actual image, so it's keeping the elements of the
Speaker 1: image intact, and then it's just changing the stuff that
Speaker 1: you want, which makes it very powerful. So I tell
Speaker 1: you that because there's two things that you need to
Speaker 1: try right now. Number one, it can restore an old photo.
Speaker 1: So if you have a faded or damaged image, the
Speaker 1: AI will bring back the color and detail. So you
Speaker 1: can do this right now for free. Go to Gemini
Speaker 1: dot Google dot com, tap create image and then tap
Speaker 1: the plus sign. Upload your photo and then type in
Speaker 1: restore this photo. So you can take an old black
Speaker 1: and white photo, you can take a damage photo. You
Speaker 1: can take any kind of picture from the past, put
Speaker 1: it in there and ask AI to restore it. Now.
Speaker 1: Is it going to be perfect? No, But is it
Speaker 1: going to do a pretty good job? Yes? Is it free? Yes?
Speaker 1: Are there a million apps out there that can do this, yes,
Speaker 1: but a lot of them cost money. This is free,
Speaker 1: and it's there's no there that's going to say a
Speaker 1: word I probably shouldn't say on the radio, but it doesn't.
Speaker 1: There's no like ads, there's nothing on the screen. It's
Speaker 1: not trying to sell you anything. It just does what
Speaker 1: it needs to do. So that's number one. You can
Speaker 1: also do something like restore this photo to look like
Speaker 1: a modern color photo while keeping all original details, so
Speaker 1: that is number one. Number two. Finally, back in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: Google announced they showed this thing on stage at one
Speaker 1: of their events, where they said, this is our dream
Speaker 1: for pictures to be able to edit them like this,
Speaker 1: And they showed a picture of a kid playing baseball.
Speaker 1: And if you've ever had a kid in little league
Speaker 1: or baseball, you know that it's always behind a fence
Speaker 1: that you're watching the action. And so Google showed the
Speaker 1: fence and then it showed the fence dissolving away and
Speaker 1: seeing the kid there playing baseball, and they said, this
Speaker 1: is our dream, this is what we're trying to get towards.
Speaker 1: Why can't we just ask a photo editor to remove
Speaker 1: the fence and it removes it and guess what. It
Speaker 1: took a couple of years. It's twenty twenty five. They
Speaker 1: announced this back in twenty seventeen, but the promise is here.
Speaker 1: They have delivered on that promise. You can now remove
Speaker 1: fences from a photo. It is incredible. I did a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of them this morning. If you want to
Speaker 1: see the examples, go to rich on Tech on Instagram,
Speaker 1: go to my stories, and it is quite incredible. I
Speaker 1: have a picture of my kid looking at an animal
Speaker 1: through a fence. Fence is gone now it just looks
Speaker 1: like the kid and the animal are just face to face.
Speaker 1: Another one where this is this big, complicated fence is
Speaker 1: in front of this alleyway home. It's got all these
Speaker 1: things in the background. I don't know, statues, a heart, plants,
Speaker 1: all this stuff. Tin Man, I don't know why they
Speaker 1: have a tin Man statue, but it's all erased the
Speaker 1: fence and it looks perfect. Another one, my kid is
Speaker 1: looking out over the Hudson River and there's a big
Speaker 1: fence in front of him. Took away the whole fence
Speaker 1: except for the top rail. And then finally I did
Speaker 1: the actual dream photo, which is your kid playing baseball.
Speaker 1: Can you remove the fence in front of him playing baseball.
Speaker 1: Sure enough, it did it unbelievable. So if you want
Speaker 1: to do this, you can do this again on the app,
Speaker 1: or you can do it on your desktop. So Gemini
Speaker 1: dot Google dot com, upload the photo and just press
Speaker 1: that image button and say erase the fence, and just
Speaker 1: try it. I mean, it's quite incredible what you can do.
Speaker 1: And it's just I get it. It's you know, do
Speaker 1: you need this every day? Do you need this all
Speaker 1: the time? No, but the ability to now restore photos
Speaker 1: and to remove fences from photos simply and easily is
Speaker 1: pretty incredible to me. It really is. And the fact
Speaker 1: that it's free is just really really amazing. So if
Speaker 1: you haven't played with Gemini and the Image generation, just
Speaker 1: try it. Just that's your homework today. Just try it.
Speaker 1: Auto writes in I love the show and I tried
Speaker 1: calling but couldn't get through. I've been downloading MP three's
Speaker 1: and adding details in Windows File Explorer for a few files.
Speaker 1: Everything saves except the year. Restarting didn't help, and the
Speaker 1: files aren't marked read only here. Use a program called
Speaker 1: MP three tag. MP three tag. This program has been
Speaker 1: around forever. It is kind of like the you know,
Speaker 1: the Universal Tag Editor for Windows. So it adds all
Speaker 1: that metadata to your MP three So if you're still,
Speaker 1: you know, building an MP three collection, just use this
Speaker 1: and basically it will let you have full control over everything.
Speaker 1: So file name, the title, the artist, the album, the track,
Speaker 1: the year, the genre, whatever you want to do. What
Speaker 1: else can you put in comments directory? I guess that's
Speaker 1: where it's located. Disc number, You can change the album, artwork,
Speaker 1: the composer. I mean, this is like one of those
Speaker 1: things where if you really want to make your collection exact,
Speaker 1: this is what you need. And so it is Let's
Speaker 1: see is it free? It is free and they've got it.
Speaker 1: It's uh, oh, let's see they've Windows is the main area.
Speaker 1: So they've got it for free for Windows and it
Speaker 1: says MP three for Mac. Are you looking? Oh, you
Speaker 1: can even get it for Mac now, So there you go.
Speaker 1: So you can get it for Mac or Windows. So
Speaker 1: if you have your own MP three collection, you want
Speaker 1: to make sure that all the information on there is correct.
Speaker 1: You can do that, by the way. It all you
Speaker 1: don't have to type it all in yourself. You can
Speaker 1: also use a look up database so they connect to
Speaker 1: these databases like discogs, music Brains and free dB which
Speaker 1: lets you all automatically tag and download cover art for
Speaker 1: your music library. So this just gives you a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of options, and it is free as
Speaker 1: far as I can tell. And they just updated it
Speaker 1: August fifteenth, twenty twenty five. It was updated, so it's
Speaker 1: not like a you know, it's a program that when
Speaker 1: you look at it, you're like, Okay, this looks a
Speaker 1: little old school, but it's still being actively updated, which
Speaker 1: is really nice. So if you really like it, I
Speaker 1: guess you can donate it. But MP three tag has
Speaker 1: been around for twenty years now, so you can support
Speaker 1: you know, you can give them a couple bucks if
Speaker 1: you want to support them. I always like that. I
Speaker 1: love when people have a program like that and they
Speaker 1: you know, they just keep it updated and they say, look,
Speaker 1: I just love to do this. I want this out there.
Speaker 1: But if you can donate, donate, that'd be amazing. MP
Speaker 1: three tag dot de MP three tag dot de. I'll
Speaker 1: put the link on the website. Rich on tech dot
Speaker 1: tv once again, this is episode one thirty eight. Al R,
Speaker 1: I'm looking at my things that I tell you to
Speaker 1: do every week let's see, I already told you about
Speaker 1: the podcast. I already told you about the newsletter. The
Speaker 1: newsletter is really the thing that I think is the
Speaker 1: best way to keep in touch. You know, I've done
Speaker 1: a bunch of the Instagram. I mean really, at this point,
Speaker 1: here's where I'm updating. I'm updating Instagram and I'm updating
Speaker 1: the newsletter. That is like the two best ways, and
Speaker 1: of course this radio show the three best ways to
Speaker 1: keep in touch with what I'm talking about. And you'd
Speaker 1: be surprised. I'm not kidding. I get emails every single day,
Speaker 1: a lot of them from you. And I got this
Speaker 1: email this morning from someone, and I said, I can't
Speaker 1: believe I almost can't believe it because they asked me
Speaker 1: a question. They basically asked, Hey, do you have a
Speaker 1: recommendation for any app that can clean up my iPhone?
Speaker 1: Like the storage Now. I talked about it at length
Speaker 1: on the radio show last week, I did a segment
Speaker 1: on KTLA on TV. I posted it to my social
Speaker 1: media and what else the podcast, I mean, the newsletter,
Speaker 1: I mean everywhere. I was all over this. By the way,
Speaker 1: the app is called Clever Cleaner, all over it, and
Speaker 1: I said this person clearly does not follow me anywhere anyway.
Speaker 1: How did they find me? How did they email me
Speaker 1: on my website without even noticing the large giant blog
Speaker 1: post that says, here's my best cleaner for your iPhone,
Speaker 1: but anyway, it's called clever cleaner. Uh eighty eight rich
Speaker 1: one oh one eight eight eight seven four two four
Speaker 1: one zero one rich on tech dot tv. I'll tell
Speaker 1: you how you can get free Microsoft three sixty five
Speaker 1: Personal if you're a college student. Coming up next, really,
Speaker 1: welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging
Speaker 1: out with you talking technology. Well, sure, okay, you got
Speaker 1: a little bit of me and Bobo chatting. I'm leaving
Speaker 1: that in a podcast. Do you really have to edit
Speaker 1: the podcast?
Speaker 5: You don't.
Speaker 1: You don't have to do too much. Do you like
Speaker 1: most of the it sticks in?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 1: What's that?
Speaker 8: Just take commercials out?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Oh wait a second, don't tell people that. No,
Speaker 1: but they get replaced with other commercials. Yeah, otherwise you'd
Speaker 1: have commercials on commercials.
Speaker 8: Pretty much, and it'll be longer than a radio show.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing I mean, I mean, yeah, okay, I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna get into that. Let's go to Oscar in
Speaker 1: uh Oscar in Winchester. You're on with Rich.
Speaker 2: By Rich. I've got a Windows ten desktop system and
Speaker 2: I have over I use the Chrome browsers. I have
Speaker 2: over fifty windows open, and each window has ten or
Speaker 2: more tabs on it. I would like to be able
Speaker 2: to bookmark all those you know, windoors with tabs, so
Speaker 2: that I can click on a window to reopen it
Speaker 2: and it opens with all the tabs. Yeah, and also
Speaker 2: to be able to access them individually, because with all
Speaker 2: those that I have open, I want to clean up
Speaker 2: the Chrome installation that I have with all those open windows,
Speaker 2: because it's slowing down my system. So I want to
Speaker 2: put them all into bookmarks other than the regular Windows bookmark.
Speaker 2: And I've got a couple of questions after you're done.
Speaker 1: A couple of questions after I'm done.
Speaker 2: I don't know questions about that, but question.
Speaker 1: So your your main question is number one, what do
Speaker 1: you track it across fifty windows with ten tabs each?
Speaker 1: Just various topics and things.
Speaker 2: I do marketing, and I don't close. You know, you're
Speaker 2: just keeping doors when when I opened up and that
Speaker 2: sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: You're keeping track of a lot of stuff, right, Okay.
Speaker 2: So it's almost like my my like my storage. Yeah,
Speaker 2: because so I can go back to it, you know, quickly.
Speaker 1: Sure? Okay, So bottom line, you want to be able
Speaker 1: to open up multiple tabs at once quickly and easily
Speaker 1: and have those remembered as well.
Speaker 2: I want to be able to save them right first.
Speaker 7: Of all.
Speaker 2: With with the window so close you know, each of
Speaker 2: those windows, and close the tabs with them, right so
Speaker 2: when I click on that window and reopen it, it's
Speaker 2: open the tabs.
Speaker 1: Okay. Well, that I'm not sure as possible to do.
Speaker 1: I I don't know if a way to easily do that,
Speaker 1: but I can tell you what I do that in
Speaker 1: two methods that you that might work for you. Number one,
Speaker 1: I mean the easiest thing. Now you said you didn't
Speaker 1: want to keep these in the Chrome folders or what.
Speaker 1: You didn't want to keep these in the Chrome, but.
Speaker 2: You know, I don't care folder. It goes into just
Speaker 2: so that I can reopen them as I need them.
Speaker 1: Okay. So I think I think there's two things you
Speaker 1: can do here that that make this pretty easy. So
Speaker 1: Chrome has Number one, you can use a folder in
Speaker 1: your bookmark. So I've got a folder with seventy five
Speaker 1: bookmarks inside, and I have it on my bookmark bar
Speaker 1: and basically it you know, when I write click it, it
Speaker 1: says open up all seventy five bookmarks and it gives
Speaker 1: you the option to open in a new window. So
Speaker 1: that's number one. I think that's probably the easiest way
Speaker 1: to do it. You save these.
Speaker 2: One thing about that, it does not have them all
Speaker 2: as one folder. You know, the tabs are not all
Speaker 2: on one as one window.
Speaker 1: Well it does online. I just did it.
Speaker 2: If you yeah, yes, you have the window with all
Speaker 2: the tabs in it.
Speaker 1: Yep, just did it. So now the tabs are not
Speaker 1: gonna be Now if you're trying to save the state
Speaker 1: of the tab like let's say you have something in
Speaker 1: there and you're trying to close that window and reopen it,
Speaker 1: that's not gonna work. That's not gonna happen. You're gonna
Speaker 1: be You're gonna be opening these up fresh each time.
Speaker 1: So that's the number one way to do it. That's
Speaker 1: probably the easiest way to do it. So what you
Speaker 1: would do is in Chrome, you would just create a
Speaker 1: folder and then you would put all those you know,
Speaker 1: you said you have fifty windows with ten ten bookmarks
Speaker 1: in each one, So you would just put those bookmarks
Speaker 1: in that in that folder, and then you right click
Speaker 1: that folder and it gives you the option to open
Speaker 1: a new window. So once you open that in a
Speaker 1: new window, all those tabs are gonna open, and you've
Speaker 1: got that in that instance of all those tabs in
Speaker 1: one place. The other way you can do it is
Speaker 1: they have this feature on Chrome called tab groups. So
Speaker 1: if you create, go to the left hand side, it
Speaker 1: looks like four little squares tap tab groups. Create new
Speaker 1: tab group, and now you can put in all the tabs.
Speaker 1: You can put all the bookmarks in there, and they
Speaker 1: call you know, as tabs, and then you say it
Speaker 1: says move to new group, Move group to new window.
Speaker 1: So once you put them all in you say move
Speaker 1: to new window, it'll open up in that new window.
Speaker 1: Those are the two ways to do it. The other
Speaker 1: app i'd recommend is called Raindrop dot Io that might
Speaker 1: also be worth looking into. Eight to eight rich one
Speaker 1: o one eighty eight seven four to two four one
Speaker 1: zero one. Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich Demiro
Speaker 1: here hanging out with you, talking technology. Triple eight rich
Speaker 1: one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two
Speaker 1: four one zero one if you have a question you're
Speaker 1: trying to decide between something, looking for an app, whatever
Speaker 1: it is, comment, maybe we'll take a few of those. Uh,
Speaker 1: go to the website rich on tech dot tv. You
Speaker 1: can also send me an email there. I mentioned I
Speaker 1: was at CEDIA Expo twenty twenty five in Denver, Colorado
Speaker 1: this week.
Speaker 7: Uh.
Speaker 1: This is a big show focuses all on home like
Speaker 1: smart home goods, right, and this is really for people
Speaker 1: that are in this industry to see what they can
Speaker 1: install in people's homes. And so with all that, I
Speaker 1: interviewed Brian Pagel. He is executive vice president at Emerald.
Speaker 1: They put on the show every year and so we
Speaker 1: talked all about the latest trends and what Cedia is
Speaker 1: all about.
Speaker 9: So Cedio is a show dedicated to residential home technologies.
Speaker 9: Started off many years ago something around center around home theaters,
Speaker 9: and now it's of all every aspect of the home.
Speaker 9: So it's lighting, it's energy control, it's your home audio
Speaker 9: and video, it's going outside, it's wellness. So it's really
Speaker 9: creating that connected ecosystem within your home. Yeah, we've got
Speaker 9: over three hundred exhibitors leading brands throughout the home residential
Speaker 9: Technology space. We'll have about fifteen to twenty thousand guests
Speaker 9: here in Denver over the course of the week, all
Speaker 9: for the trade. So these are going to include builders, designers,
Speaker 9: and then residential home integrators.
Speaker 1: First, I asked how the stuff on display at is
Speaker 1: different than the off the shelf things you might see
Speaker 1: at a place like best Buy or Amazon.
Speaker 9: Well, actually a lot of what you see here can
Speaker 9: be purchased at a best Buy or through retail. But
Speaker 9: as this also goes through the channel, you're going to
Speaker 9: see touch panel controls, You're going to see window automation,
Speaker 9: You're going to see certain lighting solutions that are only
Speaker 9: available through the trade. So it's really what's next, What's
Speaker 9: what's coming up in terms of the next greatest technology Next.
Speaker 1: I was curious how this idea of home automation has
Speaker 1: evolved over the years.
Speaker 9: It's really evolved based on digital natives coming up through
Speaker 9: the through the ranks and having that accessibility and the
Speaker 9: opportunity to invest in their homes. People want that experience
Speaker 9: to follow them from their car to their house, to
Speaker 9: their backyard to their office, and so as the technology
Speaker 9: has become more readily available over time, prices have come down,
Speaker 9: so it's far more accessible. I think Amazon has really
Speaker 9: led the charge in terms of opening up.
Speaker 5: To a wider audience.
Speaker 9: So you know, when you're trying to create these connected ecosystems,
Speaker 9: it first started off with av Yeah, so now it's
Speaker 9: getting into lighting control, so you can follow your tarcadian rhythms.
Speaker 9: It's going into your backyard, it's going into your your automobile.
Speaker 9: So there's so much new and you know, there's some
Speaker 9: emerging areas that I think people need to pay attention
Speaker 9: to energy management in your home, knowing that your HVAC
Speaker 9: is efficient, that you don't have a water leak under
Speaker 9: your sake, and then wellness. Ultimately, people want to age
Speaker 9: in place no one wants. No one wants to go
Speaker 9: into a retirement home. So it makes for safer environments
Speaker 9: because you know that Grandma slipped and fell. So I
Speaker 9: think we've just scratched the surface in terms of what's possible.
Speaker 9: I think it's just going to continue to growing involved
Speaker 9: as the technology changes.
Speaker 1: We've heard a lot about eight K over the years.
Speaker 1: I was just curious if that trend is actually taking off.
Speaker 9: AK it's big right now, You've got Sony, you got
Speaker 9: LG and a number of these brands are unveiling you
Speaker 9: AK products. I think one of the challenges still becomes
Speaker 9: an eight K content. There's not a lot of it
Speaker 9: out there, but it's an amazing experience.
Speaker 1: One big trend I did see it this year show
Speaker 1: outdoor technology, the idea of all that stuff you have
Speaker 1: inside but made for outside.
Speaker 9: People want indoor outdoor spaces and so as kitchens for example,
Speaker 9: your outdoor grilling areas, patios, et cetera. Have evolved and
Speaker 9: people are designing this. They want that same technology experience
Speaker 9: to follow them. So you know at the show you'll
Speaker 9: see televisions that are specifically designed for outdoor so they
Speaker 9: deal better with lighting, they do better with weather, so
Speaker 9: you can really take that experience from inside and bring
Speaker 9: it outside and that that is an absolute massive opportunity
Speaker 9: for this market.
Speaker 1: Another big trend is lighting. It can really change the
Speaker 1: dynamics of a home.
Speaker 9: So what we're finding is, and actually I've got some
Speaker 9: colleagues that work in this space. You see these homes
Speaker 9: are built in lightings in afterthought. Lighting is really the
Speaker 9: bridge between the design build side and the hometech integrator.
Speaker 9: And given that that's kind of that centerpiece. It can
Speaker 9: really change the experience. So if you have the wrong lighting,
Speaker 9: that beautiful paint color that you put in your your
Speaker 9: living room isn't gonna pop, or it's gonna maybe that
Speaker 9: piece of artwork isn't going to work.
Speaker 5: So lighting is really really key.
Speaker 9: And that to me is the one area that bridges
Speaker 9: the divide between the designer and builder and the home
Speaker 9: technology integrator, and so that can really bring together that
Speaker 9: holistic experience.
Speaker 1: Smart security has been around for a long time. At
Speaker 1: the high end. Obviously you could get those cameras installed
Speaker 1: by a professional, but then Ring came along and made
Speaker 1: home security accessible to everyone. So I was curious what
Speaker 1: we're seeing in that area these days.
Speaker 9: Well, they can tell you if someone is at your
Speaker 9: front door, it can tell you if your kids got
Speaker 9: Home security is one of the top consumer trends in
Speaker 9: terms of what they want in a connected environment, and
Speaker 9: so now with camera technology being what it is, it's
Speaker 9: so easy to integrate that and just to make sure
Speaker 9: that hey, you could be in Italy and check in
Speaker 9: to see who's at your front door. It's something that's
Speaker 9: very central and people were really looking for those safe
Speaker 9: spaces and the technology is there.
Speaker 1: It's now, it's twenty twenty five, and many of us
Speaker 1: have bits and pieces of that dreams smart home already
Speaker 1: in our homes. So I was just curious to get
Speaker 1: his take on what a dream smart home would actually
Speaker 1: be like from start to finish.
Speaker 9: The dream is to have an experience. It's all your own.
Speaker 9: You walk into your house, the lighting.
Speaker 5: Is the right tone. Speakers are playing your favorite music
Speaker 5: that you know.
Speaker 9: You can walk outside, you know, have your lights on
Speaker 9: in your outdoor area.
Speaker 5: You can turn on your grill before you get home. Right.
Speaker 5: It's it's the creature comforts.
Speaker 9: It means a little something different for everybody, but it's
Speaker 9: so important that this audience is all about creating that experience.
Speaker 9: It's very specific to you based on what you want.
Speaker 9: So if you're really into wellness, we can build a
Speaker 9: solution around that. If you have elderly parents, we can
Speaker 9: build something for you that's going to help to keep
Speaker 9: them safe. Or if you just want to sit there
Speaker 9: and immerse yourself in the you know the NFL football
Speaker 9: this season, you can do that as well. So there's
Speaker 9: something for everybody, and it goes well outside the home theater.
Speaker 9: It touches every aspect of the home.
Speaker 1: Now, CEDIA is all about pro installers, but many people
Speaker 1: have the perception that they just can't afford a luxury
Speaker 1: like this. So my question is how do you know
Speaker 1: when you should contact a professional versus just installing things yourself.
Speaker 5: So I've always used the rule of thumber.
Speaker 9: I look at some of the readily available products that
Speaker 9: are out there in the market that you can get.
Speaker 5: A vest by. That's that's your three series BMW.
Speaker 9: But as you decide that you want to do more
Speaker 9: or you need it to do something very specific where
Speaker 9: my ab limitations. That's the point when you call it
Speaker 9: an integrated Certainly Amazon, Google app will have great, very
Speaker 9: basic suites.
Speaker 5: But depending on what you need.
Speaker 9: You know, if you want to integrate lighting, if you
Speaker 9: want to integrate shade automation, that's when you need to bring.
Speaker 1: In an integrator.
Speaker 9: I would say when it comes to a show like CDIO,
Speaker 9: this is always about what's new, what's next, what's on
Speaker 9: the horizon.
Speaker 5: One of the things we haven't thought of yet.
Speaker 9: And you know you have a group that it was
Speaker 9: it came together in CDIA, the association started in nineteen
Speaker 9: ninety four. They can bring these ideas is to reality.
Speaker 9: So it's all about bringing that experience that is unique
Speaker 9: to you and doing your way. That's it's going to
Speaker 9: continue to grow with you as you evolve in your
Speaker 9: needs of aolt.
Speaker 1: All right, there you have it. Brian Pagel, Executive vice
Speaker 1: president at Emerald They put on CDA twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: If you want to see some of my coverage from
Speaker 1: this year's show, go to the website rich on tech
Speaker 1: dot tv. Check out the newsletter this week. All my
Speaker 1: favorite things that I saw there are listed all right
Speaker 1: eighty eight rich one on one eighty eight seven four
Speaker 1: to two four one zero one. Brenda writes in I
Speaker 1: recently had a bad experience at Tesla, so I posted
Speaker 1: about it on x Soon after, I got an email
Speaker 1: claiming they found the exact car I wanted, but when
Speaker 1: it came time to pay, they said the dealership only
Speaker 1: accepts cryptocurrency. The email came from a proton dot me address,
Speaker 1: which raised a red flag. Is this legit, Bobo? I'm
Speaker 1: gonna let you answer this one. No, you don't think
Speaker 1: it's legit that the dealership only accepts crypto Come on, really,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is just it's it's wild that people
Speaker 1: just I mean, I'm not saying Brenda, but like some
Speaker 1: person's out there like literally waiting for people to complain
Speaker 1: about Tesla on X and then swoop in and say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: here we can get you this car, pay me in crypto.
Speaker 1: Like come on, no, Brenda, that is a complete scam.
Speaker 1: I don't now. Here's the thing, And this is why
Speaker 1: I always say these scam artists, they always kind of
Speaker 1: prey upon the fact that they twist things around, right, Like, yes,
Speaker 1: at one point Tesla did accept bitcoin. I don't think
Speaker 1: they do anymore. Maybe they still do, but they they
Speaker 1: did at one point, so yes, they're and we know
Speaker 1: Elon is big into that stuff or I think he is.
Speaker 1: I don't know is he is Elon? I don't know anyway.
Speaker 1: But the point is it sounds like it could be legitimate.
Speaker 1: You're like, Okay, well I have to pay in crypto.
Speaker 1: I'm getting a Tesla. No, do not do that. Tesla's
Speaker 1: not gonna ask you to pay through crypto or use
Speaker 1: a proton dot me email address. Come on, what It's just.
Speaker 8: People are getting creative, The criminals are getting smart. They're
Speaker 8: trying new ways to get people to give them information.
Speaker 8: I don't know if I told you it is. But
Speaker 8: they called my phone looking for my mom. Oh, and
Speaker 8: they was like, yeah, somebody's trying to start a credit
Speaker 8: card in her name and we need some information to
Speaker 8: stop it from going through.
Speaker 1: Oh wow.
Speaker 8: And I'm like, just stop it, yeah, just stop. So
Speaker 8: we need to make sure that this is her. No,
Speaker 8: you don't, I'm telling you just to stop it. Well,
Speaker 8: we really need to speak to Cindy. And I was like,
Speaker 8: that's fine, I'm telling you as the person you called
Speaker 8: to stop it. Yeah, And they didn't want to stop it,
Speaker 8: and they had they had the last four of her social.
Speaker 1: Well okay, so that's something that you could probably find online. Yes, right,
Speaker 1: I mean now you can find with all these data
Speaker 1: breaches everything. Yeah, but that's interesting. So they they were
Speaker 1: trying to get the rest of the information.
Speaker 5: Yep.
Speaker 1: So hey, we've got we know you're so is two
Speaker 1: two seven two. We just need the rest to confirm
Speaker 1: before we go any further.
Speaker 5: Yep.
Speaker 1: That's exactly what they we're trying to do. That is unbelievable.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm telling you so, I don't know if
Speaker 1: if you follow me on Instagram at Ridge on Tech,
Speaker 1: you know that I love posting these scams because so
Speaker 1: many people are now sending me scams that I go
Speaker 1: through them and I will kind of filter out the
Speaker 1: ones that I haven't seen before. So, for instance, the
Speaker 1: other day, I saw one that I've never seen, which
Speaker 1: is State of California Franchise Tax Board says, your tax
Speaker 1: refund has been processed and approved. Please provide your accurate
Speaker 1: collection information and then we'll deposit the money into your
Speaker 1: bank account or get this email a paper check? What
Speaker 1: does that even mean? Email a paper check? And then
Speaker 1: it gives a website that kind of looks like the
Speaker 1: California website. And I was like, all right, I've never
Speaker 1: seen this one before. Let's let's put it out there.
Speaker 1: And sure enough people were I mean, it got shared
Speaker 1: like crazy because people were like, yeah, I'm getting that
Speaker 1: one too, and it's like they will just try whatever
Speaker 1: they can and if you go to the website. So
Speaker 1: what I do is when when you send me these things,
Speaker 1: and you can, you can send them to me hello
Speaker 1: at rich on tech dot tv. You can go to
Speaker 1: the website and email me rich on tech dot TV.
Speaker 1: But what I do is I actually go through and
Speaker 1: I do not recommend you do this, but I go
Speaker 1: through and I click the links in those phishing emails
Speaker 1: or those scams or those texts that you send me.
Speaker 1: Because I know what I'm doing. I'm gonna be careful
Speaker 1: and I will check to see what they're trying to do,
Speaker 1: like what's their endgame and in this one, and then
Speaker 1: I'll post it and I'll kind of break it all
Speaker 1: down for you so you understand exactly what they're trying
Speaker 1: to do here. And so for your instance with this, uh,
Speaker 1: with this, my phone is acting wonky right now, for instance,
Speaker 1: with this California one, basically they are trying to get
Speaker 1: you to hand over your personal information. This is so wird.
Speaker 1: Instagram is actually physically not working on my phone. I
Speaker 1: can't swipe, like this is one of those carousel swipes.
Speaker 1: I can't swipe, and my phone just won't let me.
Speaker 1: Let me try my other phone. You know, I have
Speaker 1: like three phones in front of me when I do this.
Speaker 1: Show that way when you call in you have a question,
Speaker 1: there it is that one's working. My iPhone's not working.
Speaker 1: Android is anyway, you click the link and of course
Speaker 1: it brings you to a bogus website that looks just
Speaker 1: like the California tax website. Then immediately it says, oh,
Speaker 1: check your status, and first thing it asked for social
Speaker 1: and all your address, and then it says, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: we found a refund of one thousand dollars and fifty
Speaker 1: How would you like us to send it to you
Speaker 1: bank or credit card? And the bank is great out
Speaker 1: it says, sorry, it's not working right now, so put
Speaker 1: your credit card in. You put your credit card in.
Speaker 1: Now what did you just do? If you made it
Speaker 1: to that last screen, you have given them your name,
Speaker 1: your address, your social your credit card information, and you've
Speaker 1: confirmed it all and now what are they doing? The
Speaker 1: last screen shows like a spinny ball while it's confirming.
Speaker 1: What do you think they're doing? During that spinny ball?
Speaker 1: They've got people in a room, hundreds of them, I
Speaker 1: don't know, or a bunch of them that are sitting
Speaker 1: there grabbing this information as it comes in live. We
Speaker 1: got a live one, We got a good one. And
Speaker 1: they literally try to hack you instantly as you're listening
Speaker 1: to them or as you're waiting for that thing to stop.
Speaker 1: So it's real and it happens every single day, So
Speaker 1: be careful. And yeah, I post all of these to
Speaker 1: my Instagram at rich On Tech. So if you want
Speaker 1: to keep you know, ahead of the curve, follow me
Speaker 1: there at rich On Tech. And I'm telling you, you know,
Speaker 1: send them my way, because I do investigate them and
Speaker 1: I only got you know. The other thing I recommend
Speaker 1: people always ask, oh, do I need antivirus? Do I
Speaker 1: need this? Do I need that? What you need is
Speaker 1: two things on your phone. Nord VPN has a great thing.
Speaker 1: I know you have to have a VPN, but they
Speaker 1: have a feature called Threat Detection, and what it does
Speaker 1: is in real time, it'll scan the things that you're
Speaker 1: clicking and it will look out for you. So if
Speaker 1: you're clicking on malware, it'll look out, it'll say sorry,
Speaker 1: you're malware. It also happens to block ads, which is
Speaker 1: really nice. And a lot of the ads, I hate
Speaker 1: to say, they're called malvertizing. They deliver malware to your phone.
Speaker 1: That's how a lot of these things happen as well.
Speaker 1: Now on your computer, same thing. I really recommend that
Speaker 1: you use Chrome because of this reason. Chrome has something
Speaker 1: called if you go into your settings, it is called
Speaker 1: safe browsing. Okay, under privacy and security, you've got let's
Speaker 1: see here it is security safe browsing, and they've got
Speaker 1: two they've got three levels no protection, which is not recommended.
Speaker 1: That means basically, you can click on anything in Chrome
Speaker 1: and it's not going to check it. It's not gonna
Speaker 1: say word to you. You want to go to website
Speaker 1: that steals myinformation dot com, it'll let you, no problem.
Speaker 1: Standard protection protects against the sites and the downloads that
Speaker 1: are known to be dangerous. So when you visit a website,
Speaker 1: Chrome just does like a quick little check and you know,
Speaker 1: tries to keep it as private as possible, and it says,
Speaker 1: we already know this website's pretty bad. Don't go there.
Speaker 1: Then the highest level, and if you're worried about all
Speaker 1: this stuff, I'd probably turn this up on. It's called
Speaker 1: Safe Browsing Enhanced Protection. Now, this is real time AI
Speaker 1: powered protection against dangerous websites, downloads, extensions. And what it
Speaker 1: does is it sends a little bit of the URL
Speaker 1: more than the other one, so it is a little
Speaker 1: bit more or I guess a little less private than
Speaker 1: the standard protection. So if you're worried about privacy, go
Speaker 1: with the standard. But if you want to protect yourself
Speaker 1: the most, go with the enhanced and this works nine
Speaker 1: out of ten times. When I click these links on
Speaker 1: these bogus emails, these scam text, it'll show up a big,
Speaker 1: bright red screen, rich, do not proceed. We think this
Speaker 1: site is dangerous. Now, if you know what you're doing,
Speaker 1: you got to click like three more times like I do.
Speaker 1: It'll bring you to the website. But for ninety nine
Speaker 1: percent of the people, that's enough for them to say, oh, oh,
Speaker 1: hold on, I'm not doing that. So again, go into Chrome,
Speaker 1: turn on safe browsing. Make sure you at least have
Speaker 1: the standard protection turned on. Enhanced protections good. I also
Speaker 1: like again the nord VPN. I know it's paid, but
Speaker 1: they've got this great threat protection built in and it
Speaker 1: basically just, you know, scans the websites that you're going
Speaker 1: to and we'll make sure that it alerts you if
Speaker 1: you're trying to do something. Most of the things are
Speaker 1: just trying to steal your data, your information, but some
Speaker 1: of them do actually download stuff to your computer. There's
Speaker 1: one scam that my son and I were investigating, and
Speaker 1: as soon as you click that link to download like
Speaker 1: a it was like, hey, we have your tax information
Speaker 1: or your Social Security statement. You click it. It immediately
Speaker 1: downloaded a virus to your computer that if you double
Speaker 1: click that to run it, it is like game over.
Speaker 1: They would get full access to everything. All right, I
Speaker 1: do want to tell you before we go to break
Speaker 1: that Microsoft is now giving Microsoft three sixty five Personal
Speaker 1: to all college students for free for a year. So
Speaker 1: we're talking all the stuff that comes with three sixty
Speaker 1: five Personal. You're talking the versions of Microsoft Word Excel,
Speaker 1: the terabytes of storage, one terabyte of cloud storage, the AI,
Speaker 1: the Copilot, all this stuff. Premium. Microsoft three sixty five
Speaker 1: Personal is now free. If you're a college student, you
Speaker 1: gotta claim it by October thirty. First, I'll put the
Speaker 1: link on the website because it's really long. Rich on
Speaker 1: Tech dot TV go to Show Notes, episode one thirty eight.
Speaker 1: If you're a college student, you might as well grab
Speaker 1: this eight eight eight rich one o one eight eight
Speaker 1: eight seven four to two four one zero one. I'll
Speaker 1: tell you when Gemini is replacing Google Assistant on Google
Speaker 1: Home Coming up. Welcome back to rich on Tech Rich
Speaker 1: DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology. Eight eight
Speaker 1: a rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four
Speaker 1: to two four one zero one. You gotta tech question.
Speaker 1: You gotta gadget. You're looking at an app. You need
Speaker 1: a recommendation on whatever it is. Give me a call
Speaker 1: eighty eight Rich one O one eighty eight seven four
Speaker 1: to two four one zero one. You can also go
Speaker 1: to the website rich on tech dot tv. This is
Speaker 1: turning out to be quite the program because we have
Speaker 1: gotten a lot of good recommendations so far. I talked
Speaker 1: about the money app that I like these days. If
Speaker 1: you're trying to figure out if your old Windows ten
Speaker 1: PC can handle Windows eleven. I talked about the app
Speaker 1: that can check that. Let's see what else. Oh, I
Speaker 1: got a message from follower Paulette on my Instagram and
Speaker 1: she just tried the remove fence in Gemini with the
Speaker 1: nano banana. Unbelievable. The picture she sent me, these are
Speaker 1: pictures of my boy forty years ago. It was a
Speaker 1: picture of her kid playing little League through a fence
Speaker 1: forty years ago. I'm not kidding. I'm looking at this picture.
Speaker 1: It's almost bringing tears to my eyes. It's that amazing
Speaker 1: the fact that you have a picture of your kid
Speaker 1: from forty years ago behind a fence that is obstructing
Speaker 1: him and now and it's a picture of the team too,
Speaker 1: and now seeing it without the fence, it's unbelievable. I'm
Speaker 1: believable that we can do this in today's day and age.
Speaker 1: It gives it's like a shiver down my back. It's
Speaker 1: just that wild to me anyway, Paula, I'm glad you're
Speaker 1: enjoying that. We talked about organizing MP three's how to
Speaker 1: Browse Safely and Chrome and coming up this hour, we're
Speaker 1: going to talk to Julian Keel, founder and CEO of
Speaker 1: Points Path. This is a cool extension for if you
Speaker 1: travel a lot, you book a lot of flights when
Speaker 1: you're on Google Flights, it basically inserts itself in there
Speaker 1: and it tells you if you should book with Points,
Speaker 1: if you have them, or if it's a better deal
Speaker 1: to actually pay for the flight. So we'll talk to
Speaker 1: him a little bit later on. I've been getting a
Speaker 1: lot of emails about Google Home and it's not really
Speaker 1: working as well as it used to. All these Google
Speaker 1: Home devices people have around their house, they've just kind
Speaker 1: of been defaulting to web answers for a while now,
Speaker 1: and they've just not been as full featured as people
Speaker 1: remember them being. And the reason is that Google has
Speaker 1: sort of been getting rid of some of the features
Speaker 1: of these devices and replacing it with Gemini. So Google
Speaker 1: Assistant used to control a whole bunch of stuff. Now
Speaker 1: they're kind of, you know, just switching it out for Gemini,
Speaker 1: which is going to be way smarter. And we finally
Speaker 1: have a date when that may happen. The date is
Speaker 1: October first, twenty twenty five. Gemini will officially replace Google
Speaker 1: Assistant on Google Home and Nest devices starting October first.
Speaker 1: This was announced a long time ago. I actually saw
Speaker 1: a demo last like holidays, like in New York City.
Speaker 1: I went to this event with Google and they showed
Speaker 1: me a little demo of Gemini on the speaker. I mean,
Speaker 1: you're talking a long time ago. That was nine months ago.
Speaker 1: But now we finally have a date. So if you
Speaker 1: have one of these Google Google Home devices a Nest
Speaker 1: device that uses Google Assistant in the past, Gemini will
Speaker 1: be way better, way better. I cannot wait for this
Speaker 1: to be able to just say, you know, h Google, whatever.
Speaker 1: Anything I would ask on Google on my phone, now
Speaker 1: I can ask on the smart speaker and it will
Speaker 1: actually give me an AI answer. I can't wait, and
Speaker 1: I think that. Hopefully controlling your smart home devices should
Speaker 1: be easier as well, So instead of saying very specific things,
Speaker 1: you can say things like, you know, turn off the
Speaker 1: back lights and also heat the pool. Not that I
Speaker 1: have that ability, but that would be cool if I did.
Speaker 1: But that's the kind of things that you'll be able
Speaker 1: to do. The other thing that you're not going to like, though,
Speaker 1: is that Apparently, according to Tom's guide, Google is hinting
Speaker 1: at paid versus free tiers. I don't know what that means,
Speaker 1: but they're saying it's unclear which features might require a subscription,
Speaker 1: so we'll see what happens there. Anyway, good news. I'm
Speaker 1: very excited about that. Speaking of AI, I guess we're
Speaker 1: getting through all the Google news today. This is amazing.
Speaker 1: I've been using this on the Pixel phone that I'm testing,
Speaker 1: and now it's available to everyone. But if you're using
Speaker 1: g Board, which is Google's keyboard on your Android device,
Speaker 1: there's a new little icon which looks like AI when
Speaker 1: you're typing. So if you type something out, let's say
Speaker 1: you're in like an email or something, and you type hey,
Speaker 1: what's up, you'll see there's a little it looks like
Speaker 1: a little pen with you know, stars around it. So
Speaker 1: that's like the universal icon for AI. So if you
Speaker 1: tap that, it's a new AI writing tool and it
Speaker 1: goes through whatever you just wrote, whether it's a text message,
Speaker 1: whatever text, and it just lets you start doing things
Speaker 1: with it. So not only does it proofread it right
Speaker 1: right off the bat. So I just wrote, Hey, what's up,
Speaker 1: and it corrected it to hey, coma what's up? Question
Speaker 1: mark and you can just tap use this and boom,
Speaker 1: it's in there, almost like grammarly, but anywhere on your
Speaker 1: phone right and for free. Then you can rephrase things,
Speaker 1: you can make it professional, make it friendly. Emogifi. Oh, emogifi.
Speaker 1: That's a good one. Let me try that. So now
Speaker 1: it just you tap that and it turns everything to emojis,
Speaker 1: Hey what's up? Hand ye I mean, this is such
Speaker 1: a cool feature. I am just I know everyone's scared
Speaker 1: about AI. It's changing things, it's changing everything that we do,
Speaker 1: and it's ruining jobs and it's just everything is like
Speaker 1: AI is just putting everything in flux. But at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, it is really handy in so
Speaker 1: many ways. So this AI writing tool, if you see
Speaker 1: it above your keyboard on Android, if you're using the
Speaker 1: g board. It is really handy. Tap it. I'm using
Speaker 1: it all the time. I just love it. Proofreading, spelling, grammar.
Speaker 1: One tap and everything happens on your device because you know,
Speaker 1: when you're doing a text or something, a lot of
Speaker 1: that's private. So Google's saying says that all processing is
Speaker 1: happening on the device, or everything's staying private. I love that.
Speaker 1: It kind of goes into what I was telling you
Speaker 1: last week. If you're in Gmail and you type a message,
Speaker 1: you gotta try the little the same little icon it's
Speaker 1: above your message. It looks like a pencil with a star.
Speaker 1: And basically I'm using that now for every message I write.
Speaker 1: I just speak it out and then I taped that
Speaker 1: little polish tool and Gmail looks at the person who's
Speaker 1: emailing me, they look at their question, they look at
Speaker 1: whatever the context is, and then it will polish it
Speaker 1: up with that data as well. So it is it
Speaker 1: is really really good. Let's go to Dan in Alabama. Dan,
Speaker 1: you're on with Rich.
Speaker 4: Hi, Rich, thanks for taking my call. Absolutely, I have
Speaker 4: an older computer. The last one I built was in
Speaker 4: twenty fifteen, and obviously my hardware is not going to
Speaker 4: allow me to upgrade to Windows eleven. So I was
Speaker 4: thinking about upgrading hardware. But I'm a little nervous because
Speaker 4: I don't want to lose my Microsoft Office sixteen and
Speaker 4: some of my other programs that I have on it.
Speaker 4: What would be the best way to transfer my C
Speaker 4: based drive to a new computer?
Speaker 1: Ooh, with those programs intact? Yes, sir, that could be tricky.
Speaker 1: So you're trying to get have you downloaded these programs
Speaker 1: or you just have them running on the old computer.
Speaker 4: Well, I downloaded the Office sixteen back in sixteen, okay,
Speaker 4: And so I don't know if I can still download it.
Speaker 4: I still have the key for it, but I don't
Speaker 4: know if I can continue if I could download it,
Speaker 4: because I don't even know if it's available from Microsoft anymore.
Speaker 1: Not officially, that's for sure. Yeah, yeah, I mean you really.
Speaker 1: You really can't directly transfer programs like that. It's just
Speaker 1: not it's not something that you can do. You can
Speaker 1: try to maybe run this hard drive on the new computer,
Speaker 1: like if you plug it in, you might be able
Speaker 1: to do that. I'm not even sure that would work.
Speaker 1: I don't really have a way to do that unless
Speaker 1: the program is physically downloadable or you have the physical
Speaker 1: media that you can, you know, install in the new
Speaker 1: drive and use the code. You may be able to
Speaker 1: find unofficial installations, but I yeah, I can't really recommend that.
Speaker 4: There's just wondered if like a Cronus or a drive
Speaker 4: duplicator would allow me to do that to the new
Speaker 4: hard drive on the new equipment.
Speaker 1: I was, I was wondering that like a drive like
Speaker 1: a disk image drive or something like a disc copy,
Speaker 1: Like if you like clone the drive, you mean that
Speaker 1: that may work. I have not personally done that, so
Speaker 1: I can't tell you if that's gonna work or not.
Speaker 1: So that's probably your best bet if you're so if
Speaker 1: you're trying to like, let's see, I'm trying to see
Speaker 1: I'm looking at a Cronus true image. The problem is,
Speaker 1: I just I haven't tried this, so I just don't
Speaker 1: know if it would work. I mean, it's it's maybe
Speaker 1: worth the fifty dollars to try it. If it's said,
Speaker 1: does it say it can do that? Does it say
Speaker 1: it can like run a program on a new computer
Speaker 1: if you clone it over.
Speaker 4: I don't know if it does or not. I mean,
Speaker 4: I've just been looking around at some of them commercially.
Speaker 4: I haven't purchased one yet, so yeah, I just you
Speaker 4: may have experienced this before or not.
Speaker 1: I mean, this says moved from a hard drive to
Speaker 1: an asset d drive, migration from a faulty drive. The
Speaker 1: problem is, here's what you're going to run into. Unless
Speaker 1: you're running the same exact operating system on the new device,
Speaker 1: you know that you almost have to run this old
Speaker 1: drive in its own instance, if that makes sense, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, Like it might have to be
Speaker 1: like a virtual drive. I'm not even sure that's possible, Dan,
Speaker 1: I just don't know on that one. That one's something
Speaker 1: that I got to look into and see if that's
Speaker 1: something you do. All I know is that you know,
Speaker 1: if you're running something from twenty sixteen, you know it's
Speaker 1: shown its age. It might be best to just keep
Speaker 1: that on the computer you have, let that run. Clearly,
Speaker 1: you're out of You're going to be out of updates anyway.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're not getting updates for that anyway. So
Speaker 1: the software and security aspect is already out the window.
Speaker 1: So maybe just set up the new computer fresh so
Speaker 1: that you're good with security and all that stuff, and
Speaker 1: then when you need to run that program. You can
Speaker 1: run it there. There's also, by the way, and maybe
Speaker 1: this is not what you want to hear, but they
Speaker 1: also of a free version of Office Office Live on
Speaker 1: the web. Let me see if I can find the
Speaker 1: link for that. So if you go to U if
Speaker 1: you just it's so tough to find these things. I
Speaker 1: just searched Office Live on the web and it came
Speaker 1: up free Microsoft three sixty five online Word Excel PowerPoint,
Speaker 1: So you can actually use word Excel and PowerPoint on
Speaker 1: the web for free. A lot of people don't realize
Speaker 1: that Microsoft doesn't really advertise it, but it is the
Speaker 1: web version of the app, and you may not get
Speaker 1: all the features that you would get on the downloadable version.
Speaker 1: But that's another option. But yeah, that's a it's a
Speaker 1: good question. I'm just not sure that that's something that
Speaker 1: would be easily done with this new computer or something
Speaker 1: that you want to do. Actually. Eighty eight rich one
Speaker 1: O one eight eight eight seven four to two four
Speaker 1: one zero one. Coming up, I'll tell you about queues,
Speaker 1: new cheaper light bulbs, and we'll get to more of
Speaker 1: your questions right here on rich on Tech. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to rich On Tech. Eight eight eight rich one oh
Speaker 1: one eight eight eight seven four to two four one
Speaker 1: zero one, the website rich on tech dot TV. Let's
Speaker 1: go to I will mention these. I will tell you
Speaker 1: about the new Phillips Hoe lights. They're much cheaper. But
Speaker 1: let's go to Aldo in Los Angeles first. Although you're on.
Speaker 10: With Rich Hey, Rach, thanks for taking my call. Absolutely,
Speaker 10: I'll say like a first time, long time.
Speaker 1: Okay, I like that.
Speaker 10: I have a question if you have any recommendations for
Speaker 10: MP three players, like AMR day eight MP three players.
Speaker 10: I'm looking something for something stimular to like what an
Speaker 10: iPod used to be. That's just an MP three player
Speaker 10: knock next to the internet.
Speaker 2: That's something that's.
Speaker 10: Not going to distract me. If you have any recommendations,
Speaker 10: if you have like a high quality one and maybe
Speaker 10: something that's more uh efficient, would be cool.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, I mean, look, there's a lot of these
Speaker 1: out there. What are where are you going to source
Speaker 1: the music? Do you have your own collection or are
Speaker 1: you trying to link it up with you?
Speaker 10: Yeah, just like well it's like I'm gonna I found
Speaker 10: my own uh I found my old iPod mm hmm
Speaker 10: so and like I still have my old music collection.
Speaker 10: But you know, I'm downloading some uh music, have some
Speaker 10: CDs still available, I'm converting over.
Speaker 1: Okay, So here's the deal. I mean at this point,
Speaker 1: you know, you know the main answer is that they've
Speaker 1: got you know, everyone's using their phone, they're using their
Speaker 1: their Apple Watch or they're smart watch. But the good
Speaker 1: news is they still sell MP three players. The bad
Speaker 1: news is there's not one that's better than the rest,
Speaker 1: you know, one that like is known to be the best,
Speaker 1: because there's just so many. And if you look at
Speaker 1: the recommendations, like if you go to like a Scene
Speaker 1: or any of these websites and you look at the
Speaker 1: recommendations for MP three players, you won't recognize any of
Speaker 1: the brand names because they're all just random. I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna say fly by Night, but they're just random brands
Speaker 1: that you know, most of them are just kind of
Speaker 1: you never heard of them before. Let's put it that way.
Speaker 1: There is one that Sony does still make a you know,
Speaker 1: an MP three player, and you said you wanted one.
Speaker 1: That's the expensive one. That is it. So it looks like,
Speaker 1: let's see, it's the Sony nw AO three six four
Speaker 1: hundred dollars and it's high rese so it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's this is this is the closest thing you'll find
Speaker 1: to an iPod if you want like that experience of
Speaker 1: like a nice screen, you can load the music onto it,
Speaker 1: and it's just it looks slick and sleek, and it's
Speaker 1: got a micro SD card slot, it's got USBC. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's probably gonna be your best bet for high end.
Speaker 1: I personally cannot imagine spending four hundred dollars on that.
Speaker 1: That just seems way, way expensive. Because if you look
Speaker 1: on Amazon, you will find there are many, many MP
Speaker 1: three players for way cheaper. And the bottom line is,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to recommend one that I think you
Speaker 1: should get, but I would look at this list of
Speaker 1: MP three players and look for the features that you want.
Speaker 1: There are a few, in general, like two of them
Speaker 1: that are very highly regarded. They've got thousands of reviews,
Speaker 1: and the stars are just one of them's got three
Speaker 1: point eight, one of them's got Yeah, they both have
Speaker 1: three point eight stars. But again, at these prices, you're
Speaker 1: talking twenty seven bucks. So for twenty seven dollars, you
Speaker 1: buy it from Amazon. You see if it does what
Speaker 1: you need and you return it if it doesn't. This one,
Speaker 1: let's see this agp tis. You can't even pronounce the
Speaker 1: name on this one. This has got one hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty eight gigs of storage. The one hundred and sixty
Speaker 1: gigs storage one. You know, it looks like it's running
Speaker 1: a modified version of Android and that is uh yeah,
Speaker 1: it's sixty five ninety nine, so I'd probably go. And
Speaker 1: they've got them a whole bunch of different colors. That's interesting.
Speaker 1: So I would say search is going to be your
Speaker 1: best friend on here, Reviews are going to be your
Speaker 1: best friend. Find something that's highly rated for a decent price.
Speaker 1: The other way you can go. They do have a
Speaker 1: this product called Mighty m I g h T Y
Speaker 1: And this is actually really cool, but it does it
Speaker 1: does require Amazon Music or Spotify. But basically, if you
Speaker 1: remember what the iPod shuffle look like back in the day,
Speaker 1: it looks like that. So it's just a clip and
Speaker 1: it's got a little controller on the front, you know,
Speaker 1: play pause, forward, volume, up, down menu, and it's screen free.
Speaker 1: And what it does is you said you didn't want
Speaker 1: this to connect to the internet, but this one does,
Speaker 1: but in a cool way. So it basically connects to
Speaker 1: your Spotify or your Amazon Music and downloads that music
Speaker 1: to the device. And that way you can listen to
Speaker 1: music on the go just like you did back in
Speaker 1: the day, without any screen, without worrying about it anything.
Speaker 1: But it still uses. It pulls from that nice library
Speaker 1: that you have of pretty much every song in the world.
Speaker 1: They're selling it for Let's see the mighty one hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty bucks and yeah, I mean that to me
Speaker 1: is really really cool. Thousand songs. It holds premium audio. Again,
Speaker 1: those are your options, Mighty MP three players, random names
Speaker 1: or the Sony MP three player. All We'll do what
Speaker 1: you need. Thanks for the call. Although coming up we
Speaker 1: are going to talk about points versus miles and the
Speaker 1: tool that can help you decide. Right here on rich
Speaker 1: on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro
Speaker 1: here hanging out with you talking technology at well, So
Speaker 1: I give out the phone number now, Kim gets angry.
Speaker 1: So I won't because I don't think we can take
Speaker 1: any more calls. But you go to the website rich
Speaker 1: on Tech dot tv. You can still submit your email
Speaker 1: there and yes, we will get you on at some point.
Speaker 1: Here Joining me now is Julian Kiel, founder and CEO
Speaker 1: of points Path. This is a really cool extension that
Speaker 1: you can install in your computer and it does a
Speaker 1: lot of things, but the main thing it does is
Speaker 1: it tells you if you should book your travel with
Speaker 1: your points or pay. So, Julian, thanks for joining me today.
Speaker 5: Hey, Rich, thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: So tell me about points Path. First off, I discovered
Speaker 1: this and I have it installed on my Google Flights,
Speaker 1: and I love it because it's something I used to
Speaker 1: do manually. I used to say, like, okay, this flight
Speaker 1: is thirty thousand points or two hundred and eighty dollars,
Speaker 1: which one's better? This you kind of all figured out
Speaker 1: it's built in now.
Speaker 5: That's exactly right.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 11: There's two problems that everybody has when it comes to
Speaker 11: using Frequent Flyer miles right. Number one is that you
Speaker 11: can never find flights you actually want to use your
Speaker 11: miles on. And number two, even when you do, you
Speaker 11: can't figure out if you're getting a good deal. Should
Speaker 11: you use your miles here or should you save them
Speaker 11: for later and pay cash. So that's what points path
Speaker 11: is trying to do. It adds all the points prices
Speaker 11: into any search in Google Flights and then tells you
Speaker 11: which is the better deal of cash or points. Like
Speaker 11: you said, it's doing what a lot of people have
Speaker 11: manually or just sort of trying to eyeball it have
Speaker 11: been trying to do.
Speaker 5: Gives you that answer right.
Speaker 1: Away, because there is like a value proposition with points,
Speaker 1: like sometimes the points are worth more than the flight,
Speaker 1: sometimes they're not, and so you have to kind of
Speaker 1: know you're not getting ripped off.
Speaker 11: Well, that's exactly yeah, exactly right, because I think what
Speaker 11: a lot of people do realize is that points from
Speaker 11: different programs are worth different amounts. If you have Delta
Speaker 11: sky miles, they're not worth as much as United miles.
Speaker 11: The United miles aren't worth as much as American miles.
Speaker 11: Americans not worth as much as Alaska. Every program has
Speaker 11: its own sort of you know, currency that is worth
Speaker 11: a different amounts, a little bit like foreign exchange, except
Speaker 11: its points instead of cash. So you really have to
Speaker 11: not only know what you're doing and know what's worth what,
Speaker 11: but also then understand how to do the math. We're
Speaker 11: trying to solve all that for you and save you
Speaker 11: the trouble of doing it all manually just doing it
Speaker 11: for you automatically.
Speaker 1: And so you've got the six sension that works with
Speaker 1: all the major browsers. You install it, and then when
Speaker 1: you go to Google Flights, it pops up and what
Speaker 1: does it do?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 11: So once you install it, you really don't have to
Speaker 11: do anything else other than what you would normally do
Speaker 11: to find a flight. Most people start with Google Flights.
Speaker 11: It is the most popular search engine when it comes
Speaker 11: to doing flight searches, and all you have to do
Speaker 11: is act like you normally would do a search, like
Speaker 11: you normally would round trip, one way, international, domestic, doesn't matter.
Speaker 11: Once you get those results, points back will just automatically
Speaker 11: start adding retrieving and it's all live data and adding
Speaker 11: those points prices for you.
Speaker 5: And by the way, I always forget to measure this part.
Speaker 11: It is free, so make sure you give it a
Speaker 11: shot because that won't cost you a.
Speaker 1: Dot we do like free. Now, you just mentioned Google
Speaker 1: Flights because that's where I'm on there, like twenty four
Speaker 1: to seven. I'm always on Google flights. Is there a tool?
Speaker 1: Because everyone always says, like, rich, where do I book airfare?
Speaker 1: And I just say I always go to Google Flights
Speaker 1: And then I'll book directly with the airline. Is there
Speaker 1: a website that is like number two for searching for airfare?
Speaker 10: You know?
Speaker 5: To be honest, it really depends, right, So Google Flights.
Speaker 5: So what's beautiful about.
Speaker 11: Google Flights One, it's fast to it encompasses a lot
Speaker 11: of different search engines. I mean, in other words, if
Speaker 11: there's an Expedia price that's different than the airline price,
Speaker 11: it'll usually pop up on Google Flights, So it's trying
Speaker 11: to save you the trail of going from place to place.
Speaker 11: The other one that I would say is a little
Speaker 11: bit like that is Kayak, which does sort of the
Speaker 11: same thing. It tries to pull in all those different
Speaker 11: prices from different search engines, so that if you were
Speaker 11: looking for a number two for flights, that might be it.
Speaker 5: But you know, look, when it.
Speaker 11: Comes to travel, the biggest problem is that you do
Speaker 11: kind of have to search from place to place to
Speaker 11: find the best deal because everybody's sort of got a
Speaker 11: different deal going on.
Speaker 1: But all that stuff about booking on a Tuesday or
Speaker 1: this or that, or booking one way flights, you know,
Speaker 1: or using a VPN like all that stuff, I feel
Speaker 1: like a lot of it's bogus.
Speaker 11: It is a lot of it is bogus. There is
Speaker 11: definitely no best day to book your flight. That's leftover
Speaker 11: a myth from back forty years ago, thirty years ago,
Speaker 11: when airlines loaded all of their fares on a particular
Speaker 11: day and then didn't touch them for a week. That
Speaker 11: doesn't happen anymore. Airfares changed from hour to hour, even
Speaker 11: minute to minute. Now that being said, there is generally
Speaker 11: a best day to travel to actually fly, and that's
Speaker 11: Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and the reason for that is simply
Speaker 11: there's less demand on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. The worst days
Speaker 11: are Fridays and Sundays. That's when all the business travelers
Speaker 11: are either going home or trying to get to their
Speaker 11: next location. So there is a best day to get
Speaker 11: a deal to when you're flying, but not as far
Speaker 11: as booking.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And the only thing I know about booking is
Speaker 1: that as soon as I track a flight on Google,
Speaker 1: it's guaranteed to go up every single time. It's like,
Speaker 1: just book it when you see it the first time,
Speaker 1: because it's always going to go up for some reason. So, Julian,
Speaker 1: the other thing I really like about points Path is
Speaker 1: the emails that you send out. You guys put me
Speaker 1: on your newsletter, and I'm always finding great I think
Speaker 1: I've purchased a bunch of the stuff, like the little
Speaker 1: travel tools and things that you recommend. And it seems like,
Speaker 1: is it just you or do you have like a
Speaker 1: couple of people that are writing those newsletters as well?
Speaker 11: You know, it was just me to start and now
Speaker 11: because a lot of people, and thank you by the way,
Speaker 11: a lot of people have said what you're saying, which
Speaker 11: is we love that you know.
Speaker 5: Look you and I probably rich.
Speaker 11: Like you said, you have Google flights up in twenty
Speaker 11: four to seven, So do I even before I had
Speaker 11: a tool that worked on top of it.
Speaker 5: Because we travel a lot.
Speaker 11: Most people don't, right, Most people maybe fly once or
Speaker 11: twice a year, so they're not necessarily looking at those
Speaker 11: tools all the time. But they still want to talk
Speaker 11: about travel. They still want to know the tips and
Speaker 11: tricks how can they travel better. That's what the newsletter
Speaker 11: is trying to do. It's a daily email that you'll
Speaker 11: get and we cover all sorts of things, not just points.
Speaker 11: We even talk about you know, what's the best travel pillow? Like,
Speaker 11: you know, how can I get the most rest on
Speaker 11: a plane.
Speaker 5: So yeah, that's.
Speaker 11: What that email is about. It is now a whole
Speaker 11: slew of riders. I think we've got eight or ten
Speaker 11: riders in a managing editor. So it's really grown and
Speaker 11: it is a very popular part of the business.
Speaker 1: And for sure I've purchased. I'm thinking about what I
Speaker 1: bought because you always recommend like little gadgets and things,
Speaker 1: and I love it. I bought the the sleep masks
Speaker 1: you guys recommended a while back, so I have those.
Speaker 1: Those are great for naps. I haven't worn them on
Speaker 1: the plane yet because I'm a little bit like, okay,
Speaker 1: well but at home. And then I also bought the
Speaker 1: like the toiletry you know where you squeeze like the
Speaker 1: larger bottle into like the small bottle. What are those things? Yeah,
Speaker 1: like mini I don't know what do you call those?
Speaker 5: The silicon travel bombs?
Speaker 11: Yeah, yeah, so you can tick, Yeah, so you can
Speaker 11: take you know, you have your favorite shampoo, but it
Speaker 11: comes in a giant twelve ounce bottle. These are small
Speaker 11: three and a half ounce silicon travel bots that are
Speaker 11: good for you tsa security. You pour in just what
Speaker 11: you need, put them in your carry on ben.
Speaker 1: And they don't leak, but I do. I do draw
Speaker 1: the line Julian at shampoo, I do not need to
Speaker 1: bring my own shampoo. I don't understand that whole thing.
Speaker 1: I'm sure there's people that you know, they're they're loyal
Speaker 1: to their shampoo. I'm sorry, but I like using the
Speaker 1: shampoo that they give you there. I don't need to
Speaker 1: bring my own. Everything else, yes, I will bring my own,
Speaker 1: but shampoo, I'm like, come on, it's shampoo. It's like,
Speaker 1: how bad could it be?
Speaker 11: You know, I feel the same way. But I will say, Rich,
Speaker 11: I think your hair is better than mine. You have
Speaker 11: a lot better hair. I'm sort of, you know, at
Speaker 11: that age where I if I as long as I
Speaker 11: have some hair, I'm happy about it.
Speaker 1: So, Julian, what's your background? Why did you start this?
Speaker 1: You know, what's your world of travel?
Speaker 5: Like, yeah, you know, it's interesting.
Speaker 11: I fifteen years ago, I was actually a Hollywood director
Speaker 11: and writer, and one of the last gigs I did
Speaker 11: as part of that career was being a director for
Speaker 11: World Wrestling Entertainment of WWE, and I was on the
Speaker 11: road basically every single week, going from arena to arena
Speaker 11: and directing the background scenes for the Monday night raw
Speaker 11: on Friday night's backdown. Needless to say, when you're doing that,
Speaker 11: you very quickly learn your points in miles. The whole
Speaker 11: company knows pretty much. You know what the elite status
Speaker 11: is and hotel points and all of the above. So
Speaker 11: once I was done with that and was looking for
Speaker 11: something different to do. I had all this knowledge and
Speaker 11: experienced writing, but I hadn't didn't really have an out
Speaker 11: for it, so I started blogging for some small blogs.
Speaker 11: From there, I eventually got hired by The Points Guy,
Speaker 11: which is a big travel site that you and your audience.
Speaker 5: Is probably aware of.
Speaker 11: From there, I actually went to CNN and launched their
Speaker 11: travel rewards coverage for their e commerce site. CNN underscored
Speaker 11: and all look through all that time and these are
Speaker 11: all great sites, but it does mean somebody has to spend,
Speaker 11: you know, hours digging through that information to try and
Speaker 11: figure out how to use their points and miles. And
Speaker 11: that's where the idea for points path came along. I said, well,
Speaker 11: how can I, you know, do this in a way
Speaker 11: that we can use technology so that people don't have
Speaker 11: to spend their time figuring out the answer.
Speaker 1: It's funny you mentioned and I did not have that
Speaker 1: in my Bengo card by the way, the wrestling stuff.
Speaker 1: But I had this job one time where I was
Speaker 1: a reporter and I was traveling a lot, like I'm
Speaker 1: talking like a couple times a week, like for like
Speaker 1: five days a week basically like for different things, for
Speaker 1: you know, traveling around the US. And I remember, like
Speaker 1: the first trip or second trip, they're like, oh, we're
Speaker 1: going to go to I don't know whatever it was Austin.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, well, there's a direct flight on
Speaker 1: you know this airline, Like, oh no, we are taking
Speaker 1: a connecting flight through this city to get there. And
Speaker 1: I said, wait, why would we do that? Takes so
Speaker 1: much longer, they said, points in miles. I said what
Speaker 1: I said, I can't believe. And then of course once
Speaker 1: you start doing that, you get into that because you
Speaker 1: realize that when you travel so much, and there's a
Speaker 1: reason why they have the clubs and the airports, there
Speaker 1: is the reason why there's these priority lines and things
Speaker 1: like that, is because when you travel a lot, you
Speaker 1: don't want to waste all that time and energy, and
Speaker 1: by the way, you want to be rewarded on the
Speaker 1: back end. Like people that travel a lot their families
Speaker 1: travel for free when they go on their leisure trips
Speaker 1: because these people have sacrificed, you know, spending all their
Speaker 1: time in a plane and an airport.
Speaker 5: That's right.
Speaker 11: And you know, even to add on to that, when
Speaker 11: you do have your points in miles and you can
Speaker 11: book them for a family trip and you can get
Speaker 11: everyone up front in business class, then it really doesn't
Speaker 11: matter if you're connecting, because it's like flying in your
Speaker 11: living room. You're just sitting there, you know, being served
Speaker 11: champagne and then meals and whatever. It really is a
Speaker 11: very different tread experience, and I think it's this is
Speaker 11: where look and not everybody.
Speaker 5: Needs to do that.
Speaker 11: It's a great reward for people who are on the
Speaker 11: road all the time for business, but a lot of
Speaker 11: our folks just want to know, well, how can I
Speaker 11: use my points and miles to get home for Thanksgiving?
Speaker 11: Because the ticket prices are insane. That so there really
Speaker 11: are two pieces of the puzzle here, two parts of
Speaker 11: the equation.
Speaker 5: You know, we're trying to help both sides.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, we got about a minute left. If you
Speaker 1: have any other tools you want to recommend, or any
Speaker 1: other travel tips, or you can talk about how AI
Speaker 1: is kind of changing everything once again with this.
Speaker 11: Yeah, there are a ton This is the golden age
Speaker 11: of tools. When it comes to using technology for booking travel,
Speaker 11: Hopper is a great place where they actually try and
Speaker 11: predict in advance whether a price is going up or
Speaker 11: down in cash. They've been around for a long time
Speaker 11: and they really have billions of flight data, freight flace
Speaker 11: data to base that on.
Speaker 5: Another one that.
Speaker 11: I love is Flighty. Flighty is great for when you
Speaker 11: are actually traveling. It can actually tell you when you're
Speaker 11: light is going to be delayed or canceled before the
Speaker 11: airline does. He uses traffic patterns, weather reports where your
Speaker 11: aircraft is and can actually predict better than the airline does.
Speaker 11: So it's a great one to have. And when it
Speaker 11: comes to tips, there's a really simple one. The one
Speaker 11: positive thing that came out of the pandemic is that
Speaker 11: most airlines now have airfares that you can cancel and
Speaker 11: rebook with on a penalty. Don't book the basic economy fair.
Speaker 11: That's the one to stay away from, but pretty much
Speaker 11: anything else, even that economy can be canceled and rebooked.
Speaker 5: So find a flight you want.
Speaker 11: Book it but keep looking, keep checking those prices, because
Speaker 11: if it drops, you can cancel and rebook at a
Speaker 11: lower price.
Speaker 1: That is one of the best, probably the only good
Speaker 1: thing to come out of the pandemic. Julian Kill, We're
Speaker 1: gonna leave it there. Thanks so much for joining me.
Speaker 1: Pointspath dot com. Pointspath dot com. Sign up for their newsletter,
Speaker 1: download the extension for your browser, and maximize those points.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining me, toy, Julian. Thanks rich All right,
Speaker 1: coming up, we are going to open up the feedbag
Speaker 1: right here on rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich
Speaker 1: On Tech. A couple of things to get through before
Speaker 1: we open up the feedbag.
Speaker 5: Hugh.
Speaker 1: You know Phillips Hugh lights, very expensive but very reliable.
Speaker 1: Now they are finally coming out with cheaper versions of them,
Speaker 1: the new Essential line. This is designed to compete with
Speaker 1: competitors like Govy. Prices start at under twenty dollars, so
Speaker 1: bulbs a nineteen bulbs are going to be twenty five
Speaker 1: each or sixty for a four pack. They've got some bulbs,
Speaker 1: some spotlights, light strips. The trade offs slightly less dimming
Speaker 1: range norower right white spectrum, so it's not going to
Speaker 1: get the full spectrum there and not as good color accuracy,
Speaker 1: but it's still going to run on Hugh's platform, So
Speaker 1: that is a good thing, really really good that Hughes
Speaker 1: are a little bit cheaper because I love those. Those
Speaker 1: are the most reliable out of all the smart lights
Speaker 1: I've ever used. I thought this was interesting. Assurance says
Speaker 1: that people are trading in their phones a lot more
Speaker 1: sixty percent this year over last year, sixty percent increase.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing. People are also holding onto their
Speaker 1: devices even longer now three point eight eight years, up
Speaker 1: from three point seven years last year. That's forty seven
Speaker 1: months people are holding onto their phones on average. Popular
Speaker 1: models being traded in the iPhone thirteen and Samsung Galaxy
Speaker 1: S twenty two Ultra most common for four straight quarters now.
Speaker 1: But AI features are really pushing consumers to upgrade. That's
Speaker 1: why you're seeing AI advertise so much on TV, even
Speaker 1: if a company's not really delivering on that. Ooh, did
Speaker 1: I just say that Tesco is trialing an avocado ripeness scanner.
Speaker 1: This is the the big grocery store over in the UK.
Speaker 1: They have a scanner that basically lets you test to
Speaker 1: see if the avocado you want is ripe. Obviously, they're
Speaker 1: probably just doing this to sell more avocados, but it's
Speaker 1: probably you know, like what I do is I squeeze
Speaker 1: like every avocado till I find one, and then I
Speaker 1: squeezed the finalists like five more times. I'm sure they
Speaker 1: don't want everyone squeezing every avocado. So that's that's kind
Speaker 1: of a cool thing. Some people are saying it's a gimmick.
Speaker 1: All right, let's open up the feedbag. These are the emails,
Speaker 1: the comments, the questions you send to me on a
Speaker 1: weekly basis. Submit yours at richon tech dot tv, hit
Speaker 1: contact Pete wrights in. Apple photos does list videos by size,
Speaker 1: Go to settings General iPhone storage photos Mine does anyway.
Speaker 1: By the way, I love hearing about the Wizard of
Speaker 1: Oz at the Sphere. I saw Dead End Company last year.
Speaker 1: My floor ticket was three hundred and ninety five dollars.
Speaker 1: I thought that would be my only Sphere show, but
Speaker 1: now I'm thinking it'd be nice to see Oz too.
Speaker 1: I tune in every week, always downloading the podcast. Keep
Speaker 1: up the good work. You are a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: Thanks Pete, save that one. Forward it to my wife.
Speaker 1: Mark from Burbank rights In like so many others. I
Speaker 1: love listening to your show and look forward to it
Speaker 1: each weekend on KFI in Los Angeles and on the podcast.
Speaker 1: There's a regular caller with such a distinct voice that
Speaker 1: I can't help but picture him as an action hero,
Speaker 1: square jawed in a bomber jacket, ray ban aviators, leather
Speaker 1: gloves and a headset, commenteering a helicopter over La After
Speaker 1: a double cross, he's ejected, grabs the skids midair, pulls
Speaker 1: the pin on a grenade with his teeth, and still
Speaker 1: manages to drop safely into the Beverly Hills pool sunglasses intact.
Speaker 1: Next time he calls, please cue up some music from
Speaker 1: like the A Team. Quite the imagination. Mark Bob writes
Speaker 1: in from Victoria, Australia, listening on the podcast, enjoyed the
Speaker 1: show as usual, looking forward to your layman's explanation of
Speaker 1: how quantum computer works, because I came away more confused
Speaker 1: after your guest's explanation. I did get that there are
Speaker 1: things called quibbits, apparently little boxes with Schrodinger's cats inside
Speaker 1: that magically come up with answers faster than light. Maybe
Speaker 1: I wasn't paying close enough attention. Just like in high school,
Speaker 1: and I daydreamed about rc own for the next Star
Speaker 1: Trek episode. Also, I'd suggest asking callers who say their
Speaker 1: smartphones were quote taken over what they actually mean. Either
Speaker 1: they're important enough to be targeted by spy agencies, or
Speaker 1: they keep letting the same person install sneaky software. I
Speaker 1: love our emails this week. Oh my god. Tim in
Speaker 1: Richmond writes in recommending two free antivirus and malware tools
Speaker 1: directly from Microsoft. The first is the Microsoft Safety Scanner.
Speaker 1: The second is the Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool. He
Speaker 1: says you should download a fresh version each time so
Speaker 1: you've got the latest updates. He recommends running these weekly
Speaker 1: on his SSD, along with a full scan using Microsoft Defender.
Speaker 1: All right, Tim, thanks for that. I'll link that up
Speaker 1: on the website. A loyal listener in Richmond, Virginia says,
Speaker 1: I was intrigued by your interview with US Mobile. Based
Speaker 1: on your experience, I decided to switch. Unfortunately, it has
Speaker 1: not gone well. Even though Verizon's WARP network has five
Speaker 1: G I was only seeing two to three megabits down.
Speaker 1: I couldn't add my Wi Fi EI N I'm on
Speaker 1: one address. After four hours with Tech support nothing improved.
Speaker 1: They even had me reset my phone, which erased all
Speaker 1: my saved passwords. Tech support was polite, but troubleshooting felt
Speaker 1: like trial and error. I'm not feeling the same enthusiasm
Speaker 1: you had for US Mobile. I'm glad it's worked. I'll
Speaker 1: keep listening. I'm still a loyal fan. Thank you. John
Speaker 1: writes in finally listening from Wisconsin. We know that technology
Speaker 1: is useful. You make it interesting. After two and two
Speaker 1: thirds years, when does the fun begin other than the
Speaker 1: best ice cream in the country. Ps, you should hire
Speaker 1: your mother to select the music. Hey John, I think
Speaker 1: we have fun here and that's all that matters. Let's
Speaker 1: see we had one more here. Melissa writes in I
Speaker 1: look forward to your newsletter every Saturday morning. It's one
Speaker 1: of the highlights of my week. I read it first
Speaker 1: thing and immediately downloaded the Clever Cleaner app. It's amazing.
Speaker 1: I boosted my storage by almost forty percent, so easy
Speaker 1: to use. Felt like a trip down memory lane. Thank you, Melissa.
Speaker 1: That's going to do it for this episode of the
Speaker 1: show next week, all about the iPhone and Ai T
Speaker 1: travel insurance. Thanks so much for listening. My name is
Speaker 1: Rich Damiro, I will talk to you real soon