Speaker 1: New details on the next iPhone launch, plus a potential date.
Speaker 1: Google makes it easier to get rid of your personal
Speaker 1: information from their search results, a simple way to save
Speaker 1: on back to school shopping, plus your tech questions answered.
Speaker 2: What's going on?
Speaker 1: I'm Rich Dmiro and this is rich on Tech, the
Speaker 1: show where I talk about the tech stuff I think
Speaker 1: you should know about. It's also the place where I
Speaker 1: answer your questions about technology. I believe that tech should
Speaker 1: be easy, helpful, fun, and yes, sometimes inspiring. Phone lines
Speaker 1: are open at triple eight rich one oh one. That's
Speaker 1: eight eight eight seven four to two four to one
Speaker 1: zero one eight eight eight seven four to two four
Speaker 1: to one zero one. Give me a call. If you
Speaker 1: have a question about technology. Email is also open. You
Speaker 1: can send it to Hello at rich on tech dot
Speaker 1: tv website rich on tech dot tv, hit the contact
Speaker 1: page and you can send it that way as well.
Speaker 1: Coming up on the show this week, we've got Kimber
Speaker 1: Streams of Wirecutter to join to share top affordable laptops
Speaker 1: and chromebook picks. Yep, we're talking under one thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: under five hundred dollars. Kimber is the expert, and believe me,
Speaker 1: you can't wait to hear the picks. It's gonna be great.
Speaker 1: Then a concatadae better known as consanity on TikTok Okay,
Speaker 1: you know who this guy is. He says, here's another
Speaker 1: iPhone trick. I guarantee you didn't know about. Yep, he's
Speaker 1: that guy on TikTok He's going to join to talk
Speaker 1: about the top iPhone tips and tricks and of course
Speaker 1: news reviews, all the stuff that happened to me during
Speaker 1: the week. And you know, early in the show, I
Speaker 1: say that this stuff should be easy, it should be fun,
Speaker 1: it should be on complicated. But for many of us,
Speaker 1: technology is anything. But let me tell you. When I
Speaker 1: walk through the newsroom at KTLA, or when I just
Speaker 1: walk down the street, or I meet someone out and about,
Speaker 1: it's always the same thing. Hey, Rich, I like what
Speaker 1: you do, which I do like, okay, I enjoy that
Speaker 1: part of it. But then comes the question, Hey Rich,
Speaker 1: can you help me with this? And you know, I'm
Speaker 1: right in the middle of like making a slide show
Speaker 1: for my kid's birthday or something like that, or you know,
Speaker 1: planning a trip somewhere. No, you know, I'm just like, okay,
Speaker 1: sure I can help you. You know, I do have
Speaker 1: a radio show you can call in there, but hey,
Speaker 1: I'll help you right now too. No problem, And it
Speaker 1: happens all the time. So one example, a colleague at
Speaker 1: my work comes up to me and says, hey, Rich,
Speaker 1: I can't search on my iPhone anymore. There is no
Speaker 1: search functionality. Like I search for an app, it just
Speaker 1: doesn't come up. And I said, well, that's come on,
Speaker 1: that's easy to fix. Let me just go into your
Speaker 1: iPhone Syrian search and clearly something's turned off with Spotlight,
Speaker 1: and sure enough, ten minutes later, I'm stumped, like literally,
Speaker 1: it's a problem that I've never seen before. What would
Speaker 1: make the iPhone not able to search through apps? And
Speaker 1: everything I know to be true about the iPhone is
Speaker 1: just not Like everything I try is not working. And
Speaker 1: I'm like, dude, you stump me, Like, I don't know
Speaker 1: what is the deal here. Now, maybe it's just a
Speaker 1: thing where, you know, there's some sort of setting that
Speaker 1: I'm just not noticing or you know, I don't know about,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't seem to be the case. So in
Speaker 1: that case, I got to say I was completely stumped.
Speaker 1: I don't have all the answers, all the time, and
Speaker 1: I think the delineation. A lot of people think that
Speaker 1: if you're into technology, you have all the answers right,
Speaker 1: like you just know off the top of your head,
Speaker 1: here this is what you do, here's how you do it.
Speaker 1: But I think what's really different about tech folks is
Speaker 1: that they know the way to find the answer. They
Speaker 1: know the way to figure out the answer. And I
Speaker 1: think that's the big difference is that for me, it's not,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not nervous about trying to figure out
Speaker 1: this stuff. It's more about how do you figure it out?
Speaker 1: And it's actually kind of fun to do that. It's
Speaker 1: almost like a little bit of a mystery sometimes, like
Speaker 1: how do we do this? So that was one time
Speaker 1: where I was completely just I don't know, like this
Speaker 1: this problem is really just sitting with me and I said, Okay,
Speaker 1: do the software update on your phone. Do the updates
Speaker 1: on your phone, and come back to me and let's
Speaker 1: see if it's still there. And sure enough, still the same.
Speaker 1: Let's see.
Speaker 2: Oh this was another one.
Speaker 1: So I'm walking out of my work the other day
Speaker 1: and I'm hearing my colleagues's computer alarming, like there's this
Speaker 1: noise that's like, please do not turn off your computer,
Speaker 1: do not press power, do not exit, you will lose information.
Speaker 1: Your computer has been identified as a computer that is,
Speaker 1: you know, accessing identity theft information. And sure enough, this
Speaker 1: person had stumbled upon one of those websites that takes
Speaker 1: over your computer. In fact, Microsoft has an entire page
Speaker 1: about this tech support scams. Oh, we've talked about them
Speaker 1: on the show before. Now, this is where scammers use
Speaker 1: scare tactics to basically trick you into either paying money
Speaker 1: for unnecessary tech support or they fix your device with
Speaker 1: some sort of software download, and once you allow them
Speaker 1: access to your computer or you hand over any sort
Speaker 1: of information. Oh, it is a headache upon headaches. And
Speaker 1: so this person is sitting there. And many times people
Speaker 1: will tell me about this stuff afterwards, and so I
Speaker 1: don't get actually to see it in person. But this
Speaker 1: time I saw it happening in person. I said, ooh,
Speaker 1: let's figure out how to get out of this. And
Speaker 1: sure enough, you know, you can't really move your mouse,
Speaker 1: nothing works. You can't get out of the screen because
Speaker 1: they hijack the entire browser, and so it's a full
Speaker 1: screen browser and you can't do anything. And so I said,
Speaker 1: all right, try this. I said, press control all delete
Speaker 1: on your computer. That'll bring up task Manager, and sure
Speaker 1: enough it did. And then it says, you know, whatever
Speaker 1: browser they were using. I think it was Microsoft Edge
Speaker 1: or something, or maybe it wasn't Edge, maybe it was Chrumme,
Speaker 1: whatever it was, and you want to end that task,
Speaker 1: So okay, select that, press end task and you do it,
Speaker 1: and sure enough it all goes away. And the person
Speaker 1: was like, you know, this is really scary, like this
Speaker 1: was really scary, Like how did this happen? I said, Look,
Speaker 1: it happens through different websites that you go to, and
Speaker 1: a lot of it is just injected through ads on
Speaker 1: these websites. Malvertizing they call it, and that's how they
Speaker 1: take over your computer. And yes, all the advertising companies
Speaker 1: like Google and you know the other ones are hipped
Speaker 1: to this and they try to stop it, but they
Speaker 1: can't always stop it, and so that's how it happens.
Speaker 1: And so I said, oh, this is a good lesson
Speaker 1: to share because I've wanted to see this in person. Now,
Speaker 1: what happens If you can't figure that out?
Speaker 2: What do you do?
Speaker 3: Do?
Speaker 2: You just turn off your computer?
Speaker 1: You can literally press the power button on your computer,
Speaker 1: restart it, and this will not come back. But here's
Speaker 1: the thing. When you open up your web browser, it
Speaker 1: may say do you want us to open up your
Speaker 1: last tabs that you had open? You want to say
Speaker 1: no to that, because if you say yes and that
Speaker 1: website pops up again, what's going to happen? Your computer's
Speaker 1: going to get taken over again. So there is an
Speaker 1: entire Microsoft page all about these tech support scams. You
Speaker 1: don't want to fall for one of these things. If
Speaker 1: you do, it's it's a problem. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: things they try to make you install software. You know,
Speaker 1: you've got to scan your software from your computer from malware.
Speaker 1: You got to change your passwords, you got to call
Speaker 1: your credit card provider. There's a whole bunch of whole
Speaker 1: bunch of worm Let's see, how do you say that.
Speaker 1: It's a big can of worms that's unlocked if you
Speaker 1: do this. So please do not fall for these one.
Speaker 1: End out control all, delete, end the web browser, just
Speaker 1: end that task or restart your computer. That's the easiest way.
Speaker 1: Now you can also report this to Microsoft. They've got
Speaker 1: a website Microsoft dot com slash report a scam. But
Speaker 1: quite honestly, is that really gonna do much?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: But also I'll put this in the show notes. Everything
Speaker 1: is gonna be on the show notes Rich on tech
Speaker 1: dot TV. My mom she got an email, and my
Speaker 1: mom is in town, so we're kind of hanging out,
Speaker 1: you know, having a good time. Is my son's birthday
Speaker 1: this week, and so we went out for dinner or whatever.
Speaker 1: But my mom emailed me and she said, hey, my
Speaker 1: work wants me to turn on this thing called two
Speaker 1: factor authentication. It kind of looks scary, and I said, no, no,
Speaker 1: it's simple. You got to do this well, sure enough.
Speaker 1: And this is what I love again about doing this
Speaker 1: stuff in person, is that it did turn out to
Speaker 1: be tricky because she's running two different Google accounts on
Speaker 1: her phone, and so when she clicks in the email
Speaker 1: to turn on two factor, it's already turned on for
Speaker 1: her primary account, but she has to switch to her
Speaker 1: work account on her phone to be able to enable
Speaker 1: it there. Now, not many people would know that you
Speaker 1: have to tap in the upper right hand corner of
Speaker 1: your Google profile to switch to the other profile. And
Speaker 1: again that's tricky. And so the reason I tell you
Speaker 1: all of this stuff is because I want you to
Speaker 1: know that there are several types of people that listen
Speaker 1: to this show. Yeah, you've got the techies that sort
Speaker 1: of know the answers, they know what I'm talking about,
Speaker 1: they identify, they understand, and they're the ones that are
Speaker 1: teaching their friends about this stuff. Then you've got sort
Speaker 1: of the everyday person, the person that's just going to work.
Speaker 1: They use tech because they have to, and they want
Speaker 1: to learn more about this stuff.
Speaker 2: And I get it. It is tricky.
Speaker 1: It can be very tricky to figure this stuff out,
Speaker 1: even for me. And so with my mom, I said, Okay,
Speaker 1: here's how we're going to do it. Here's how we
Speaker 1: switched accounts, and we're going to set up two factor
Speaker 1: and I said, and now you're going to get a
Speaker 1: text message anytime you try to log in to your
Speaker 1: work account.
Speaker 2: And okay. It was still kind of scary for her.
Speaker 1: And then I got an email this week from a
Speaker 1: woman who said, Hey, Rich, how do I transfer a
Speaker 1: file to a flash drive? Like I've got this flash drive,
Speaker 1: I've got it, I've got my computer, Like how do
Speaker 1: I get a file to the flash drive? And I
Speaker 1: sat to myself and said, okay, someone trying to punk
Speaker 1: me here, like, come on, who doesn't know how to
Speaker 1: do that? But the reality is you may not know
Speaker 1: how to do it. And so the stuff that some
Speaker 1: people take for granted, like myself, I get it. Not
Speaker 1: everyone understands this stuff. And that's why I'm here to
Speaker 1: help you figure this out. There are no dumb questions.
Speaker 1: There are only dumb answers from me. That's that's the
Speaker 1: bottom line. Sometimes the answers, you know, they may be
Speaker 1: you know, what you paid for. It's free, so you know,
Speaker 1: the answers may not be as good as you think.
Speaker 1: But I do my best and I try. And so
Speaker 1: my point is call with your questions. Don't feel like
Speaker 1: you're the only person in the world that wonders about
Speaker 1: this stuff. No answer is too simple. And the woman
Speaker 1: that I emailed back about the flash drive, I said, here,
Speaker 1: you put it in your computer. The only tricky part
Speaker 1: is it may not be formatted for your computer.
Speaker 2: If you're running a Mac.
Speaker 1: You put in a flash drive that's not formatted, it
Speaker 1: may not show up. So here's how you format it.
Speaker 1: Then you drag the file onto it. You're good to go.
Speaker 2: She emailed me back, and she.
Speaker 1: Said, Rich, it worked. I can't believe it. It worked perfectly,
Speaker 1: and I said, okay, I wasn't being punked. This is
Speaker 1: just someone that needed a little extra assistance. So give
Speaker 1: me a call Triple eight rich one on one eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one.
Speaker 1: We're gonna take some more of your calls. Plus, don't
Speaker 1: forget to visit me on social media. I am at
Speaker 1: rich on Tech and the website rich on tech dot TV.
Speaker 1: All the show notes for everything I mentioned are always
Speaker 1: listed right there. All right, we got a lot more
Speaker 1: for the show today, So many things to talk about. Oh,
Speaker 1: I got lots more scams where that came from. We've
Speaker 1: got a scam that involves parking and QR codes. We've
Speaker 1: got new details on the iPhone fifteen plus a potential
Speaker 1: date when that may be launching. And I'm gonna tell
Speaker 1: you how I sold my couches online and what I
Speaker 1: use to get my new couches delivered.
Speaker 2: So we'll talk about all of that. Right here.
Speaker 1: You are listening to rich on Tech. My name is
Speaker 1: rich Dumiro. Give me a call Triple eight rich one
Speaker 1: on one eight eight eight seven four to two, four
Speaker 1: to one zero one. Welcome back to Rich on tech.
Speaker 1: Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology at
Speaker 1: Triple eight Rich one O one eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four to two, four to one zero one. Let's go
Speaker 1: to Jennifer in Laguna Hills. Jennifer, you're on with.
Speaker 4: Rich Hi Rich. How are you doing today?
Speaker 2: I'm doing excellent. How are you good?
Speaker 4: Thanks? Happy Saturday. Yes, I probably half a dozen old
Speaker 4: cell phones that aren't worth selling.
Speaker 3: Nobody wants them.
Speaker 4: Before I take them for electronics recycling, I thought i'd
Speaker 4: ask if there's an organization that can repurpose these that
Speaker 4: you know of.
Speaker 1: You know, I I've heard of some places that will
Speaker 1: take donated cell phones. I have not personally done that. Typically,
Speaker 1: I'll just bring them to Goodwill if I have some
Speaker 1: old ones, which you know, I don't know what they
Speaker 1: do with them, but looking up online here let's see here.
Speaker 1: So you want to how old are these phones?
Speaker 4: Well, I've got a couple of iPhone five sieves.
Speaker 2: Okay, and.
Speaker 4: A weird old hand tech vibe.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, that's old. Yeah, I'm told you, hantack.
Speaker 4: You put them in a cupboard and then forget about them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they kind of just stay there forever. I mean,
Speaker 1: the thing is I think that. Let's see, it looks like, okay,
Speaker 1: there's a place called nine one one cell Phone Bank
Speaker 1: accepts donations of use cell phones to provide support and
Speaker 1: assistance to participating law enforcement entities. Okay, that's one. A
Speaker 1: donation is made for every phone received. Okay, so that's interesting.
Speaker 1: They're not actually taking the phones perhaps, but they are.
Speaker 1: They're taking the phones, but then they're kind of caching
Speaker 1: them in so that they get a donation. Let's see,
Speaker 1: National Coalition Against Domestic Violence takes donated cell phones and
Speaker 1: sells them through a cellular recycle. Okay, so they raise
Speaker 1: money again, so they're not actually cell phones for soldiers
Speaker 1: collects use cell phones. Donations are sold to a business
Speaker 1: that recycles. So it looks like any of these places
Speaker 1: that you give them to for donations are actually just
Speaker 1: get caching in the phones, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: So they're not necessarily using the phone itself. That's what
Speaker 1: it sounds like.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I agree, but you know what that would be
Speaker 4: Okay too, I take it to goodwill, it's just going
Speaker 4: to go for electronics recycling and nobody gets the benefit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's true. So I mean, you could take
Speaker 1: it to one of these companies. It's a website called
Speaker 1: Love to Know. I'll put the link in the show notes.
Speaker 1: But they've got a couple of these different different let's
Speaker 1: see one million project dedicated to providing mobile devices to
Speaker 1: high school children in low income communities. You can donate
Speaker 1: and they will give you a shipping label as well
Speaker 1: as donates funds.
Speaker 2: Straight to the project.
Speaker 1: So again, it looks like many of these places will
Speaker 1: just take the donation and get the money for it,
Speaker 1: which is kind of like, I mean, it's better I guess,
Speaker 1: like you're saying, than just getting these getting rid of them.
Speaker 1: So I would check out this list on this website,
Speaker 1: see which one you think you want to support charity wise. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm just going to tell you, I don't know if
Speaker 1: these phones are worth very much like an iPhone five C.
Speaker 2: Have you looked it up on a place?
Speaker 5: Yes, because they.
Speaker 4: All won't buy anything older than an iPhone six and
Speaker 4: so that's why. But I'm willing to give it a
Speaker 4: try if there's a possibility somebody will benefit from it. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I'm looking up.
Speaker 1: Okay, So there's a website called gizmo Go which I
Speaker 1: really like, which they recycle prep yeah, and even for them,
Speaker 1: oh wow, the iPhone VIC gives zero sense, so they
Speaker 1: will take it, but they you know, and recycle it.
Speaker 2: But you're not gonna get much.
Speaker 1: So the bottom line, I think with a lot of
Speaker 1: these things, you're not you can donate them and see,
Speaker 1: but I don't know if they're going to get a
Speaker 1: ton of value out of them for donations because they
Speaker 1: are kind of older. So I think for the rest
Speaker 1: of you that have an old phone, you can do
Speaker 1: the same thing.
Speaker 2: I'll put the links to the charities. But and you
Speaker 2: can also like go.
Speaker 1: Local, like super local, like ask your church or ask
Speaker 1: your school if they need a phone. But some of
Speaker 1: the places that I like that you can maybe get
Speaker 1: some cash or just straight up recycle these again. Gizmo
Speaker 1: Go this is a place that will pretty much take
Speaker 1: any electronics. They'll either give you cash for it or
Speaker 1: they'll just take it and recycle it properly. Best Buy
Speaker 1: actually has this new service where you can and it's
Speaker 1: going to cost you some money, but you can buy
Speaker 1: a box. So if you've got a bunch of old
Speaker 1: stuff laying around, cables, phones, whatever, either a twenty three
Speaker 1: dollars box or a thirty dollars box that's a little
Speaker 1: bit bigger, and you can just dump all of your
Speaker 1: stuff in this box and send it in and they
Speaker 1: will recycle it properly. So that's best by mail in
Speaker 1: recycling service and that's brand new as of like maybe
Speaker 1: six or eight months ago. Eco ATM. This is actually
Speaker 1: owned by Gazelle. You might have seen them in a
Speaker 1: place like a Walmart or a grocery store or a
Speaker 1: Westfield mall. These are ATMs that scan your phone and
Speaker 1: they will tell you what it's worth. And there's five
Speaker 1: thousand of them around the nation. So if they don't
Speaker 1: give you anything for your phone, they will just recycle
Speaker 1: it for you as well. So those are some of
Speaker 1: the places you can do this. Those are some of
Speaker 1: the ideas, but again ask around. I mean there's also
Speaker 1: maybe family members that need them. Sometimes you can turn
Speaker 1: them into an extra security camera or something like that.
Speaker 1: But the number one thing that I should get across
Speaker 1: is to recycle these. So don't just don't just throw
Speaker 1: them out in the trash, because they do have lithium
Speaker 1: ion batteries in them and you do not want them
Speaker 1: to go into the land fell.
Speaker 2: Good question, Jennifer, Thanks so much. All right, if you
Speaker 2: have a question, give me a call.
Speaker 1: Triple eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four to two four to one zero one. Coming up,
Speaker 1: I'm going to talk about the service I used to
Speaker 1: not only get my new couch is delivered, but I
Speaker 1: also sold my couches online. I'll tell you all about
Speaker 1: how that process went. Coming up right here on rich
Speaker 1: on Tech. Welcome back to a rich on Tech. Rich
Speaker 1: Demiro here talking technology with you at Triple eight rich
Speaker 1: one on one eight eight eight seven four to two
Speaker 1: four one zero one website richon Tech dot tv. There
Speaker 1: you can find show notes for everything I mentioned.
Speaker 6: Here.
Speaker 1: You can also see some stories I do for television
Speaker 1: and check out past episodes of the podcast. That's all
Speaker 1: at richon tech dot TV. Let's go to Marta. Let's
Speaker 1: see here Line three. Marta in Laguna Miguel, California. Marta,
Speaker 1: you around with.
Speaker 7: Rich Thank you for taking my call. Well, I have
Speaker 7: a mother that is now elderly and she having memory problems.
Speaker 7: She have an Android phone, but I'm willing not to
Speaker 7: buy her iPhone if necessary. I want to know if
Speaker 7: there is any app that yes, verbally you can say
Speaker 7: remind me on Monday I have to go to the
Speaker 7: doctor at ten and at ten on Monday, the phone
Speaker 7: allow will say that.
Speaker 1: Yes, So, I mean it's basically just instead of a
Speaker 1: reminder with text, you want a reminder that has audio.
Speaker 7: Yes, okay, I saw one. I forgot the name. But
Speaker 7: if you have to do all these steps manually, and
Speaker 7: I want her to do it, just the whole.
Speaker 2: Thing, right, Oh you want ohs you want her to
Speaker 2: be able to do it?
Speaker 6: Yes?
Speaker 2: Oh okay.
Speaker 1: That's where it's gonna get a little tricky because okay,
Speaker 1: there's there's two types of alarm systems on the phones.
Speaker 1: I mean you have to the text to speech, you know,
Speaker 1: you can you can easily set a reminder with your voice, right,
Speaker 1: but it's going to play that or it's not going
Speaker 1: to play it back, but it's just going to remind
Speaker 1: you with a visual on the screen.
Speaker 2: Right, That's not what you want.
Speaker 1: So now when it comes to actually setting like an
Speaker 1: alarm clock, I mean it's really kind of a manual process.
Speaker 1: And I'm looking at this app. And that's the beauty
Speaker 1: of Android, by the way, is that there's so many
Speaker 1: different apps that can kind of allow you to do
Speaker 1: things that the iPhone may not allow you to do.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 1: This app is called Talking Alarm Clock Beyond. Have you
Speaker 1: tried that one? Not talking alarm talking Talking Alarm Clock Beyond. Now,
Speaker 1: this does exactly what you need. The difference is that
Speaker 1: you are going to have to set these things. And
Speaker 1: so that is the issue is that you know, I'm
Speaker 1: looking at this and it's very very simple to do this,
Speaker 1: but you can. You can set these alarms and the
Speaker 1: alarm label will be spoken, So whatever you want it
Speaker 1: to be will be spoken. So if you want it
Speaker 1: to say, you know, go to the doctor at this time,
Speaker 1: go to you know whatever, and it can repeat it too.
Speaker 1: So but the difference is that you are going to
Speaker 1: have to set that manually at the beginning. Now, so
Speaker 1: these are things, these are things that are happening on
Speaker 1: a weekly basis, or they all separate and individual.
Speaker 7: Oh no, it could be separate. Since so I when
Speaker 7: she knows it, I wanted her to like get her
Speaker 7: phone and say verbally, hey, you know on Tuesday, I
Speaker 7: have my memory class at it remind me on Thursday
Speaker 7: to call black person, you know, right, So that was
Speaker 7: ideal because yes, sometimes when she's touching the phone, she
Speaker 7: touched stuff.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, oh, I know, believe me.
Speaker 1: It's it's one of these things where it's like even
Speaker 1: when someone hands me their phone to like figure out
Speaker 1: what's happening on it, they touched something and I'm like, wait,
Speaker 1: the screen went away. So, I mean, it's tough because
Speaker 1: you can do reminders on the phones very easily, but
Speaker 1: those reminders usually show up as a as a text,
Speaker 1: you know, as a box or a prompt or something.
Speaker 1: What about I mean, this is kind of an interesting
Speaker 1: Does she live alone?
Speaker 8: Yes, it's okay because somebody.
Speaker 9: Yeah, you have somebody who she ran a room too,
Speaker 9: But yes.
Speaker 1: Okay, because you could do something where if she there's
Speaker 1: a Google Nest that is like a little screen and
Speaker 1: you could set that up in like her kitchen. And
Speaker 1: when I set voice reminders on my phone, like if
Speaker 1: I just say to my phone, remind me to do
Speaker 1: this on this day and this time, it will show
Speaker 1: on that screen my reminder because it's it's like it's
Speaker 1: not verbal, but you can't miss it because it's visual
Speaker 1: and it will also it can also ring as well,
Speaker 1: but it is you know, it is displayed, and it's
Speaker 1: a constant display until you you know, until you get
Speaker 1: rid of it. I guess, but again, it's not gonna
Speaker 1: it's not gonna yell out and say what you need
Speaker 1: to do.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: There may be a way to do this that I'm
Speaker 1: not aware of just yet, and I think there there
Speaker 1: are manual ways of setting it. But for you to
Speaker 1: just say to your phone, hey, remind me on Friday
Speaker 1: to go to the doctor at eleven am and then
Speaker 1: to have your phone speak that out, you know, five
Speaker 1: minutes before that, that is something that is much more
Speaker 1: manual as far as I know at this point, and
Speaker 1: this app definitely does it. It's just a matter of
Speaker 1: you do have to set that app.
Speaker 7: Bright Talking alarm clock bones.
Speaker 1: Yeah, talking alarm Clock beyond. And that's just one. There's
Speaker 1: another one too. There's one called Talking Recordable Voice Alarm
Speaker 1: Voice Memo Reminder. I mean, there are a bunch of
Speaker 1: these things in the app store and this one. Okay,
Speaker 1: so this one voice memo reminder might actually work pretty well.
Speaker 1: This one says quickly record a note and set it
Speaker 1: to play at a later time and date. But the
Speaker 1: different that again, someone is going to have to program
Speaker 1: when that voice reminder pops up. And I'm looking at
Speaker 1: this app again, it's very easy to do, but you
Speaker 1: have to set that date in time, and so I
Speaker 1: think when it comes to something that she's going to
Speaker 1: be able to do verbally very easily, it doesn't look
Speaker 1: like there's something that's that easy right now. Now we
Speaker 1: are on the cusp of all this AI stuff and
Speaker 1: all of this, you know, all of these virtual assistants
Speaker 1: are getting much much better. So there may be something
Speaker 1: that gets better very quickly. But if you're listening and
Speaker 1: you have a solution of this, obviously email me. We'll
Speaker 1: talk about it in the feed feedback segment later in
Speaker 1: the show. So Rich on tech dot TV, hit that
Speaker 1: contact button and let me know if you have a
Speaker 1: solution for a talking voice reminder that can also be
Speaker 1: not only set by voice, but then prompts with the voice.
Speaker 1: MARTA good question. Thanks so much for calling in today.
Speaker 1: Appreciate it. Phone lines are open triple eight Rich one
Speaker 1: one eight eight eight seven four to two four to
Speaker 1: one zero one. So I got some couches delivered the
Speaker 1: other day. It's been a long time coming, we said,
Speaker 1: after the pandemic, because we lived on these couches for
Speaker 1: so long, like you know, like all of our meals
Speaker 1: were on these couches and the kids were sitting on there.
Speaker 1: There was actually an indentation where my kids sat for
Speaker 1: so long on his iPad during the pandemic. It was
Speaker 1: time to get rid of these couches. So we went,
Speaker 1: we looked, we finally figured it out, we measured all
Speaker 1: this good stuff and we ended up getting new couches.
Speaker 1: And when it came to delivery, I actually had a
Speaker 1: credit on this app called lug and so this app
Speaker 1: is called lug Lugg, and it's basically a non demand
Speaker 1: moving app. It's kind of like Uber, but they send
Speaker 1: a couple of people to your house and they'll move whatever.
Speaker 1: And you can also send them to a place like
Speaker 1: Costco or any of these these furniture places to pick
Speaker 1: up your stuff. And so of course the furniture place
Speaker 1: wants you to use their people, which I get and
Speaker 1: it's the easiest. But I was like, let me try
Speaker 1: this out because I want to be able to tell
Speaker 1: people about this app, and so I tried it out.
Speaker 1: The furniture place really did not like the idea of this, so, like,
Speaker 1: you're gonna send two people with a truck to pick
Speaker 1: this up? I said, yeah, but they do it every day.
Speaker 1: They said, well, what is this app? And I said
Speaker 1: it's called lug. They said, I never heard of it.
Speaker 1: I said, well, let me just try it.
Speaker 2: Let's see.
Speaker 1: If it doesn't work, your people can deliver it. Sure enough,
Speaker 1: I scheduled everything out. They gave me the estimate. It's
Speaker 1: not cheap, but it's like a base fee. And then
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, twenty five thirty five cents a minute,
Speaker 1: and you can pick a big truck, a small truck,
Speaker 1: or an extra large truck. And so it it goes
Speaker 1: by time and the actual distance. So they've got this
Speaker 1: light pickup truck which is four hundred pounds, ten boxes,
Speaker 1: six feet long. They've got a bigger pickup truck which
Speaker 1: comes with two people. Then they've got a van, and
Speaker 1: they've got the Excel van which comes with two people.
Speaker 1: And they can move your whole apartment. It's all on demand.
Speaker 1: And so sure enough, the morning came for the delivery
Speaker 1: and these two guys they went to the furniture place,
Speaker 1: they picked it up.
Speaker 2: Everything was fine.
Speaker 1: He sent them like a confirmation code, confirmation screenshot off
Speaker 1: your order. Then they came to the house. Everything was fine.
Speaker 1: They actually moved the old couches out of the house
Speaker 1: into the driveway. They moved the new couches in and
Speaker 1: everything was great until they had to screw the legs
Speaker 1: onto the bottom of the couch and they didn't have
Speaker 1: the right tool. And so this is where my wife
Speaker 1: looks at me and she's like, I told you, I
Speaker 1: knew this wouldn't work. And I said, no, this will work.
Speaker 1: He's like, well, do you have a long screwdriver. I'm like, no,
Speaker 1: do you have a screw gun? No, do you have
Speaker 1: a you know whatever. I didn't have any of this stuff.
Speaker 1: So I said, all right, just go.
Speaker 2: It's fine.
Speaker 1: You guys did your job. Everything was perfect. And so
Speaker 1: next thing you know, I'm going to home depot to
Speaker 1: buy a screw gun or what do you call, like
Speaker 1: a drill and I need a long drill bit that
Speaker 1: I can screw these things into the couch. And so
Speaker 1: I get there. No one at the home did I
Speaker 1: already say that where I went, I didn't want to
Speaker 1: say the name because they were so unhelpful. The person
Speaker 1: that helped me find the bit that I needed was
Speaker 1: actually a viewer who was like, rich on Tech, what's up.
Speaker 1: I'm like, dude, I'm out of my I don't even
Speaker 1: know what I'm doing in this store because I know
Speaker 1: about tech, I don't know about home improvement. And he's like,
Speaker 1: what do you need help with? I said, here this,
Speaker 1: I need to screw this screw into this thing, and
Speaker 1: he said, here, here's what you need. He picked it
Speaker 1: out in one second. No one at the store could
Speaker 1: help me pick it out. So I get home. It
Speaker 1: took me thirty seconds to screw these things into the
Speaker 1: bottom of the couch, a little feet on the couch.
Speaker 1: It was so easy, and it's like, you know, I
Speaker 1: sounded like like a true like you know, like I
Speaker 1: was like Tim the toolman tailor, Yeah, handyman rich over here.
Speaker 1: It was like, you know, like stopped at the end.
Speaker 1: I felt so great and it worked perfectly. I was
Speaker 1: out like another one hundred bucks because I bought this
Speaker 1: this drill basically plus this piece. It came out to like,
Speaker 1: you know, eighty bucks, ninety bucks. And so my wife,
Speaker 1: of course, the whole time, was like, see, I told
Speaker 1: you you should have used their delivery people. And I said, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's fine, but it almost all worked out. And so
Speaker 1: I will say LUG actually very very convenient for moving
Speaker 1: if you have a big thing that you want to
Speaker 1: buy at Costco or another store, they can easily bring
Speaker 1: it to your house.
Speaker 2: It was scheduled, they were right on time.
Speaker 1: Again, a little bit expensive, but you know, it wasn't
Speaker 1: It was on par with what the furniture place would
Speaker 1: have done. But I think that in the end, at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, the furniture place probably would
Speaker 1: have had the right tool. But overall, I was very
Speaker 1: impressed with them. And by the way, I sold my
Speaker 1: old couches on offer up. I got eighty bucks for them.
Speaker 1: And I'm very proud of myself because I was just
Speaker 1: going to throw them out in the trash and I said,
Speaker 1: you know what, let me just try to sell these things.
Speaker 1: I put them on offer up, and I'm not kidding.
Speaker 1: Within a minute, I had fifteen, twenty thirty people saying
Speaker 1: can I pick up your couches? Can I pick up
Speaker 1: your couches? And sold it. In a couple of days,
Speaker 1: eighty bucks at all were out, so offer up lug.
Speaker 1: You know, one person's trash another's treasure. Not that these
Speaker 1: couches were trash, but my point is here, I was
Speaker 1: ready to just recycle them and someone else purchased them,
Speaker 1: so went in doubt. Try to sell this stuff. It's
Speaker 1: better to give it a second home than just send
Speaker 1: it to the landfill. All right, more of your calls
Speaker 1: coming up next. Eight eight eight rich one on one
Speaker 1: eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one
Speaker 1: zero one. This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: a rich On Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you,
Speaker 1: talking technology and uh.
Speaker 2: This week, Ah, such a good song.
Speaker 1: We were watching Imagine Dragons last night on Hulu in
Speaker 1: concert and for the first five or seven minutes, I
Speaker 1: was telling my mom because she's in town. I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is the concert I saw them in in Las Vegas,
Speaker 1: because they were playing in Las Vegas. And it took
Speaker 1: me about ten minutes of watching. When they showed like
Speaker 1: a big wide shot, I was like, oh, wait, that's
Speaker 1: not the concert I was at.
Speaker 2: It was a different show. So the whole time like, oh,
Speaker 2: I remember when he came out of the stage.
Speaker 1: Like that, and it was all like, I guess it
Speaker 1: was similar to the one I saw, but it wasn't. Uh.
Speaker 1: iPhone fifteen iPhone fifteen coming up very soon, if you
Speaker 1: can believe it. Here we are in August, usually the
Speaker 1: second or third week of September is when Apple announces
Speaker 1: their new iPhones, which I cannot believe were this close
Speaker 1: to that time. The rumor right now is September thirteenth,
Speaker 1: and I don't know.
Speaker 2: We'll see.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they do it on Monday, sometimes they do it
Speaker 1: on Tuesday. Sometimes they do it on Wednesday. I feel
Speaker 1: like Apple likes to do it earlier in the week
Speaker 1: because then they command the news cycle for the entire
Speaker 1: rest of that week, where the news people are just
Speaker 1: all talking about iPhone stuff. So on Wednesday they kind
Speaker 1: of short change themselves because then they only have Thursday
Speaker 1: Friday for the news to talk about it. So we'll see.
Speaker 1: I'm predicting it'll be on September. Let's see, where are
Speaker 1: we here, we are September. I'm predicting September eleventh. That's
Speaker 1: usually they've done it in the past around there, September tenth,
Speaker 1: So we'll see. Maybe it'll be the twelfth. Mark German
Speaker 1: at Bloomberg always has the inside scoop on what Apple
Speaker 1: is launching. Don't know how he does it, but he's
Speaker 1: got some good inside contacts. Even the people at Apple
Speaker 1: tell me that they listen to Mark for what's going
Speaker 1: to happen because Apple is very secretive. The biggest changes
Speaker 1: on the iPhone fifteen. The standard model will trade the
Speaker 1: notch for the dynamic island, which was introduced last year.
Speaker 2: On the high end models. Let's see, that's pretty much it.
Speaker 1: For the low end model, it's going to get a
Speaker 1: new processor, but it's going to be last year's now.
Speaker 1: On the iPhone fifteen and fifteen Pro, this is where
Speaker 1: the big changes are going to happen. Okay, major camera
Speaker 1: improvements and also lightning connector is gone in favor of USB.
Speaker 1: So yes, no matter which new iPhone you purchase, you're
Speaker 1: gonna have to get new charging stuff because everything's going
Speaker 1: to switch over to USBC, which is what's standard on
Speaker 1: Android devices and pretty much every other electronic for the
Speaker 1: past five years, including a lot of Apple stuff. Apple
Speaker 1: has already swapped out all or many of their iPads,
Speaker 1: all their computers, and almost everything is now USBC. The
Speaker 1: new iPhone Pro models will be titanium instead of the
Speaker 1: standard stainless steel. Let's see what else Camera upgrades including
Speaker 1: oh wow, they're doing something that Samsung did many many
Speaker 1: years ago. The optical zoom is gonna get more. They
Speaker 1: might even have a periscope zoom. Now, see I joke.
Speaker 1: I joke because whenever Apple does something, it becomes the thing.
Speaker 1: But if you look at the trends of Apple and Samsung,
Speaker 1: Samsung actually did a lot of things before.
Speaker 2: Apple.
Speaker 1: And I'm talking things like water resistance, things like wireless charging.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's so many things. There's a whole list
Speaker 1: of stuff that Apple had done before, or sorry, that
Speaker 1: Samsung had done before. Apple producer Bobo are our resident
Speaker 1: Samsung fan. So you know, look, it's it's a competition
Speaker 1: between these two companies. Samsung does things very early, especially
Speaker 1: with like foldables and stuff like they've been doing those
Speaker 1: now for like four years, and one of these days
Speaker 1: Apple may do that, but we'll see.
Speaker 2: So anyway, mark your calendars.
Speaker 1: Now is not the best time to buy a new
Speaker 1: iPhone if you're thinking of making the switch. Sharon's in Williamsburg, Ohio.
Speaker 2: Sharon, you're on with Rich.
Speaker 3: Oh thank you for taking my call.
Speaker 6: Rich.
Speaker 3: I really like your program and I've already learned quite
Speaker 3: a bit from you. Oh, thank you for continuing this.
Speaker 2: Where's that clapping again? Thank you?
Speaker 3: I just wanted to I listened to you usually on
Speaker 3: the podcast because a lot of times I'm missing on Saturday.
Speaker 3: But but I had to find out to answer to this,
Speaker 3: and I'm hoping you can help me. I had Direct
Speaker 3: TV and my WiFi and everything was through that, and
Speaker 3: then all too what they call alta Fiber has taken over.
Speaker 3: I changed it and everything was fine except that brinks.
Speaker 3: My home security system, the doors and everything works through there,
Speaker 3: but the the cameras do not. And my TV keeps
Speaker 3: going off and it's a Samsung TV. I love Samsung also,
Speaker 3: and it keeps going off and I have to keep
Speaker 3: taking out the Wi Fi.
Speaker 1: So you've got so you've got new Wi Fi and
Speaker 1: it's not working like the old WiFi exactly.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: Where is your WiFi emanate from? Is it in the
Speaker 1: same place as the old one?
Speaker 10: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Okay? And where is that.
Speaker 3: It's well, it's in my it's not too far from
Speaker 3: my TV.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: Is it sort of like hidden? Is it out in
Speaker 1: the open?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 10: It is?
Speaker 3: I well that this little round Oh I don't know
Speaker 3: what they call those extender Yeah, like I guess okay,
Speaker 3: they have that and I also and I also have
Speaker 3: ring and they even sent me.
Speaker 11: Another thing that extra Yeah.
Speaker 1: Okay, so it sounds like, Uh, did you use the
Speaker 1: same Wi Fi and password for your new system?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: Okay, So it sounds like it sounds like this signal
Speaker 1: is not as strong as your old signal. So it
Speaker 1: sounds like the system they gave you is not as powerful.
Speaker 1: I would recommend moving it out into the middle of
Speaker 1: you know, a more central area, see if that helps,
Speaker 1: or get a new system like an Euro or a
Speaker 1: Villo to help get that signal better. I'll talk more
Speaker 1: about this at the top the show. But this is
Speaker 1: rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich
Speaker 1: Demiro here talking technology with you at triple eight Rich
Speaker 1: one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two.
Speaker 2: Four to one zero one. Phone lines are open, email
Speaker 2: is open.
Speaker 1: Hello at Richontech dot tv website rich on Tech dot TV.
Speaker 1: We've got Kimber Streams coming up of Wirecutter. Kimber is
Speaker 1: gonna join to share top affordable laptop and chromebook picks.
Speaker 2: It's back to school time.
Speaker 1: I know you want those computers that are under one thousand,
Speaker 1: under five hundred bucks. Kimber has the top picks and
Speaker 1: they are brand new and updated. And then later on
Speaker 1: we've got iPhone tips and tricks from the person that
Speaker 1: has made quite the following on TikTok saying saying, here's
Speaker 1: another iPhone trick I guarantee you didn't know about before
Speaker 1: the break we had Sharon and Ohio wanted to know
Speaker 1: about her Wi Fi signal. It just kind of took
Speaker 1: a downturn when she switched providers, and so it sounds
Speaker 1: like there's either interference with her Wi Fi router. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's not as strong of a signal as it was before.
Speaker 1: And I'm not talking the speed, I'm talking the actual signal,
Speaker 1: Like the box that she has is just not putting
Speaker 1: out as good of a signal. So a couple things
Speaker 1: you could do to remedy that is to move that,
Speaker 1: you know, wherever the internet, like the Wi Fi comes
Speaker 1: out of, like the box that it physically emanates from,
Speaker 1: just move that into a more central location in the home.
Speaker 2: So maybe if it's behind the.
Speaker 1: TV or under the TV, or in a closet or
Speaker 1: in a drawer or behind a cabinet, take it out
Speaker 1: of there and elevate it just a little bit. If
Speaker 1: you think about a Wi Fi signal, it sort of
Speaker 1: goes out as a donut shape. So if you think
Speaker 1: about that donut. If it's if it's being blocked, you're
Speaker 1: not going to get that Wi Fi signal. Wi Fi
Speaker 1: signal sort of the higher it is the better because
Speaker 1: it will come down, but it's not going to necessarily
Speaker 1: rise up as easily. So get that into a more
Speaker 1: central location and hopefully those things will work better. If
Speaker 1: they don't, then I would look into a system like
Speaker 1: EO E E R O if you want something a
Speaker 1: little bit less expensive. I also like Villo VLO. That's
Speaker 1: another one you can check out as well. Let's go
Speaker 1: to David in Orange, California. David, you're on with Rich.
Speaker 11: Oh well, Rich, my question has to do with privacy.
Speaker 11: I understand as a consumer when I call a toll
Speaker 11: free number that business has a right to my information
Speaker 11: and my phone number. But for years, whenever I look
Speaker 11: for a car, I call a dealership. It doesn't matter
Speaker 11: which dealership. I'm having a lot of problems with Honda
Speaker 11: and Subaru. My number is blocked. I don't use their
Speaker 11: toll free number, I use the local number, and they
Speaker 11: still call me back with that. To me, that's like
Speaker 11: hacking my information?
Speaker 6: Is that legal?
Speaker 11: I don't know how they do this when I'm not
Speaker 11: calling a toll free number.
Speaker 1: Well, I think if you're calling them, you have started
Speaker 1: a business relationship with them, and so that I you know,
Speaker 1: and I'm not a lawyer, and nor do I know
Speaker 1: what tactic they're using. But the way I would see
Speaker 1: it is that once you initiate that call, you are
Speaker 1: now a customer. And if you look in almost all
Speaker 1: of these privacy terms and conditions of almost any website
Speaker 1: or any business, it says that once we have a
Speaker 1: business relationship, we may continue to contact you for the
Speaker 1: purpose of that business relationship. And so I think that
Speaker 1: that is what they're using to continue to call you.
Speaker 1: And also, David, a lot of these dealerships are no
Speaker 1: longer independent. They are part of large conglomerates. They may
Speaker 1: be nationwide, and so once your number is in that
Speaker 1: hopper for the one dealership that may seem local, it
Speaker 1: is being shared amongst all of those dealerships nationwide, and
Speaker 1: it's going into some sort of database.
Speaker 2: So yeah, so what I do.
Speaker 1: When I was Now you're talking about getting it sounds
Speaker 1: like you're getting something repaired or replaced. But when I
Speaker 1: was shopping for a car, I was using a Google
Speaker 1: Voice number or a Burner number. You can use an app,
Speaker 1: the app called Burner b r Ner. You can set
Speaker 1: up a temporary phone number and that way everything goes
Speaker 1: to that temporary number and they will only be able
Speaker 1: to call that number wall it's active, and with Burner specifically,
Speaker 1: it can it can actually deactivate that phone number after
Speaker 1: a certain amount of time, so let's say a week,
Speaker 1: two weeks. A lot of people use it for dating
Speaker 1: apps or you know, anytime you want a little bit
Speaker 1: of privacy, Craigslist something like that. But yeah, when I
Speaker 1: was using when I was shopping for a car, these people,
Speaker 1: it's unbelievable. I mean, if you go to a website
Speaker 1: and pop your information in there to say I'm interested
Speaker 1: in a car, you will have twenty five emails in
Speaker 1: less than a minute. And they're all automated, and they're
Speaker 1: all like escalating. So it's like this funnel of sales
Speaker 1: that's just like, Okay, here's our first email, thank you
Speaker 1: for putting your information, and we'll have someone look into that.
Speaker 1: Next email, Hey, rich have you thought about this car?
Speaker 1: We have a great deal on it. Next one five
Speaker 1: minutes later, and then it keeps continuing. Then it just
Speaker 1: keeps going and going, and you can try to unsubscribe,
Speaker 1: and you can try to get your information off these lists.
Speaker 2: But I'm not kidding.
Speaker 1: I got two emails this week, no joke from a
Speaker 1: car that I sold. It must have been I mean
Speaker 1: it was two cars ago, so it was eight years ago.
Speaker 1: And I got an email and said, hey, how's your
Speaker 1: Volkswagen doing. It must have one hundred thousand miles on
Speaker 1: it by now. I said, what are you talking about?
Speaker 1: I sold this car eight years ago to you the dealership.
Speaker 1: So it's one of those things, David, where it's if
Speaker 1: you don't want your information out there, you've got to
Speaker 1: protect it at the outset. And you have to imagine
Speaker 1: anytime you put your information into any sort of marketing database,
Speaker 1: it is being shared with that company's affiliates, sometimes with
Speaker 1: third parties. And it's just one of these things where
Speaker 1: the bigger these companies are, the more they're sharing it with.
Speaker 1: And my kids today we're talking about this. They said, hey, Dad,
Speaker 1: how can you can find anyone's information online, like their
Speaker 1: phone number, their house, their address. I said, because these
Speaker 1: companies share it as soon as you apply for a loan,
Speaker 1: as soon as you get a credit card, as soon
Speaker 1: as you buy a house, it all goes into these databases,
Speaker 1: and so you just have to be aware of that
Speaker 1: and really at the outset, try to protect yourself.
Speaker 2: Just don't give out your information.
Speaker 1: In fact, you know, you know what, I'm not even
Speaker 1: going to go into it because it's just one of
Speaker 1: these things where please don't give out your infol Oh,
Speaker 1: this is a perfect segue, David, Thank you for that
Speaker 1: into what I wanted to talk about. With Google, They're
Speaker 1: actually going to make it easier to remove some of
Speaker 1: this personal information from their search results. Now I said,
Speaker 1: from their search results. This does not take down the
Speaker 1: information from the websites that have it. It only takes
Speaker 1: it out of Google's searches. But they're making it a
Speaker 1: lot easier to do this. So this is a feature
Speaker 1: called Results about You. This has been around for a while,
Speaker 1: but they're making it even better. So Results about You
Speaker 1: is a feature that Google has and you can access
Speaker 1: this on your phone if you open up the Google app.
Speaker 1: So I'll do this right now while I'm talking to you,
Speaker 1: so I can see how it looks. Open up the
Speaker 1: Google app, tap your profile picture in the upper right
Speaker 1: hand corner, and you will see something that says results
Speaker 1: about you, and it might be a little beta next
Speaker 1: to it as well. You tap that and this will
Speaker 1: actually show you the websites that you've tried to take
Speaker 1: off of Google Search results that have your information and online.
Speaker 1: I have two that I asked them to take down.
Speaker 1: One said it was approved, one said it was denied,
Speaker 1: and the approval and denial process, I'm not really sure
Speaker 1: what the reasoning is, but one they took off, one
Speaker 1: they didn't. So this is when you search for yourself
Speaker 1: and you can see your phone number, your address, your age,
Speaker 1: all that information on the these various websites that collect
Speaker 1: your data, you can ask Google to take those down
Speaker 1: and so again it won't take it out of the
Speaker 1: original website, but it'll take it off Google Search. So
Speaker 1: here's what they're doing. They're updating this results about You
Speaker 1: tool to be more proactive and easier. So it will
Speaker 1: show you the links that may have your personal information
Speaker 1: and you'll be able to say please take that down
Speaker 1: without you having to pop in that link like Google
Speaker 1: will say, hey, we found this new website that has
Speaker 1: your phone number on it. Would you like us to
Speaker 1: take that down? And to get them to do that,
Speaker 1: you can tell Google your phone number, your home address,
Speaker 1: your email even I believe you're social security number if
Speaker 1: you're using Google one, which I did not put in
Speaker 1: there because I'd rather not have that in Google's possession.
Speaker 2: But if you wanted to, you could do that.
Speaker 1: But again, there's a certain level of trust you have
Speaker 1: to have to even give Google this information, but they
Speaker 1: kind of know it anyway, so I feel like that's
Speaker 1: not totally a bad thing. So again, this little search
Speaker 1: result will show you when your information is shown up
Speaker 1: on Google, then you can quickly request the removal. They're
Speaker 1: also going to notify you when new results pop up
Speaker 1: on the web containing your personal information so that you
Speaker 1: can get those taken down. So again, go into the
Speaker 1: Google app, tap your Google account photo in the upper
Speaker 1: right hand corner and click results about you, and you
Speaker 1: will see how you can get this set up and
Speaker 1: figured out. Now, you're not Google's not going to tell
Speaker 1: you about the new results right away. This is rolling out,
Speaker 1: which means it's not going to be available today. It's
Speaker 1: going to be available in the next few days or
Speaker 1: a few weeks. So if you don't have the access
Speaker 1: right away, it may come up in a couple of
Speaker 1: days or a couple of weeks. The other thing that
Speaker 1: Google is doing, They're going to blur explicit imagery, adult
Speaker 1: imagery and search results by default from now on. So
Speaker 1: by default, safe search is typically turned on on Google,
Speaker 1: but now they're going to go a step further and
Speaker 1: anything that they deem is explicit or adult, they are
Speaker 1: going to blur those images. So even if your kid
Speaker 1: taps images somehow, they will blur that app out by default.
Speaker 1: You can turn this off if you're an adult and
Speaker 1: you don't mind seeing that, or you want to see it,
Speaker 1: you can go ahead and turn that off as well.
Speaker 1: They also made it easier to find parental controls right
Speaker 1: in search. So if you search for something like Google
Speaker 1: parntal Controls or Google family Link, Google will now put
Speaker 1: a box up that has information on how to manage
Speaker 1: your parntal controls. And then Google is also making it
Speaker 1: easier for you to submit these information requests. And so
Speaker 1: again this is all just a way that Google is
Speaker 1: trying to make life a little bit easier because Google
Speaker 1: is the first stop for most people when they're looking
Speaker 1: up information about someone. And by the way, this is
Speaker 1: a little interesting and I'm not sure this applies to
Speaker 1: a ton of people. But if you created an uploaded
Speaker 1: explicit content to a website and then deleted it, you
Speaker 1: can now request that Google takes that down if it's
Speaker 1: being published somewhere. So that gets kind of into the
Speaker 1: weeds a little bit. But basically, I guess if you
Speaker 1: had an OnlyFans account and you put a bunch of
Speaker 1: stuff out there and you now say, oh, never mind,
Speaker 1: Google will help you delete that stuff off the web.
Speaker 1: So I don't know that's that's like getting above my
Speaker 1: pay grade. But if you have a change of heart,
Speaker 1: I guess Google's saying, you know what, We're gonna help
Speaker 1: you figure that stuff out. Triple eight rich one O
Speaker 1: one eight eight eight seven four to two four to
Speaker 1: one zero one. If you have a question about technology,
Speaker 1: give me a call. My name is Rich DeMuro. You
Speaker 1: are listening to rich on Tech website, rich on tech
Speaker 1: dot TV eight eight eight rich one oh one eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging
Speaker 1: out with you talking tech. So many responses about the
Speaker 1: voice reminders, Just to bring you up to speed. Marda
Speaker 1: asked if there was an Android app that would let
Speaker 1: her set voice reminders and then have them announced at
Speaker 1: a certain time for her mom, who needed to have
Speaker 1: it both set by voice and also trigger the voice reminder.
Speaker 1: And so everyone says, got a lot. I think I
Speaker 1: got the most emails I've ever gotten about this. Everyone says,
Speaker 1: Alexa can do this. So let me see here, let
Speaker 1: me get some of these emails here. Let's see oh,
Speaker 1: Richard says, regarding the call for the voice reminders, Alexa
Speaker 1: does that. I tell it to remind me when to
Speaker 1: pay credit card bills, go to the doctor. Alexa speaks
Speaker 1: it back to you at the predetermined time, and it
Speaker 1: will come up on your phone as a reminder too.
Speaker 1: Steve says, if her mom has Wi Fi at home,
Speaker 1: why not just make it easy and get a Nest
Speaker 1: Mini speaker. If so, mom can say, create a reminder.
Speaker 1: The Google assistant will walk her through setting up the reminder.
Speaker 1: She can also ask what are my upcoming reminders? Let's
Speaker 1: see see this person. Carmel Valley I says, forget the phone.
Speaker 1: Alexa does exactly what she wants to do, all verbally.
Speaker 1: I'm elderly and I use it every day for reminders.
Speaker 1: I put one in every room. I even have my
Speaker 1: bedroom lights connected to it so I don't have to
Speaker 1: struggle in the night. It's worth its weight in gold.
Speaker 1: Jamie says, hey, there, regarding the woman that called in
Speaker 1: and wanted a verbal reminder for her daughter, I can
Speaker 1: tell my Google device to add a calendar event in
Speaker 1: the morning. I say hey, Google, good morning, and it
Speaker 1: tells me everything that's on my calendar for the day.
Speaker 2: Hope this helps.
Speaker 1: Jim says, I would place one more one or more
Speaker 1: echo devices in the mother's home, which she should be
Speaker 1: able to hear better than a reminder coming out of
Speaker 1: a single telephone. Also, the woman's daughter can set reminders
Speaker 1: by having the Alexa app on her phone logged into
Speaker 1: her mom's account, or she can even set up Alexa
Speaker 1: in her own home log into her mom's account just
Speaker 1: for setting reminders. Oh that's like next level, next level helping.
Speaker 1: So there you go, Alexa or Google Assistant. I actually
Speaker 1: think that Alexa might be better for that because it's a
Speaker 1: little bit more nuanced with the reminders. So there you go, easy,
Speaker 1: easy way. Let's go to let's see where are we
Speaker 1: Nick and Anaheim. You're on with rich.
Speaker 6: Rick. Thank God for you. I need your help.
Speaker 1: Okay, we'll see if I can help you. Okay, before
Speaker 1: we think, you know, I.
Speaker 6: Got two issues going here. First, I got a del
Speaker 6: Vostro that I was getting some data on off the internet.
Speaker 6: Screen popped up claiming to have taken over the computer,
Speaker 6: making my data inaccessible and would be released for our
Speaker 6: money demand. I immediately shut a system down to prevent
Speaker 6: any additional damage. Do you know, is there any kind
Speaker 6: of a repair shop you could recommend to retrieve my
Speaker 6: files or is any other way to get them. I
Speaker 6: do have other hard drives that I can use on
Speaker 6: the laptop, and I do have Millspec software to completely
Speaker 6: wipe drives clean.
Speaker 1: Okay, So on this computer, so did they actually install ransomware?
Speaker 6: It's what it appear to be. A window popped up
Speaker 6: and said that it took over the computer and send
Speaker 6: money or call this phone number or whatever the heck.
Speaker 6: I immediately pull the plug on the computer. There's no
Speaker 6: battery on that computer because.
Speaker 1: And you have you turned that computer back on. Okay,
Speaker 1: So what I would do first is turn that computer
Speaker 1: back on and see if that message comes up again.
Speaker 1: Because a lot of times these are these are just
Speaker 1: scare tactics and it's not actually taken over your computer. Now,
Speaker 1: sometimes they do actually take.
Speaker 2: Over your computer.
Speaker 1: I did a story a couple of years ago and
Speaker 1: they showed me an actual takeover and it's scary and
Speaker 1: it takes it literally takes over your computer and it says,
Speaker 1: here's the bitcoin address. Make sure you send this bitcoin
Speaker 1: to us, and we will unlock your system. So I
Speaker 1: would first actually see if this computer was locked up.
Speaker 1: And again I kind of talked about this earlier on
Speaker 1: the show, that you can, you know, restart the computer
Speaker 1: and if you open up, you know, if everything comes
Speaker 1: back up, normally you're okay, but you can if it says,
Speaker 1: you know, reopen your browser and it says, hey, do
Speaker 1: you want us to open the tabs that you had open,
Speaker 1: then I would definitely say no to that. And if
Speaker 1: everything's fine, then you should be okay. Now if this happens,
Speaker 1: If this did happen and you want to recover your files,
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously this is where backups come into play.
Speaker 2: So if you have a full backup.
Speaker 1: Of your computer, and this is why people do a
Speaker 1: full kind of a full full backup of their computer,
Speaker 1: they can format the computer and then just install the
Speaker 1: files from the backup, and that could be either a
Speaker 1: clone of the drive. You know, you have a program
Speaker 1: that clones the drive at regular intervals, and you could
Speaker 1: just literally copy that back over the drive and be
Speaker 1: you know, you basically set the date of the backup.
Speaker 1: You go back a day or an hour before this happened,
Speaker 1: and you just copy all that information over.
Speaker 2: That's number one.
Speaker 1: Or if you just have your stuff up in the cloud,
Speaker 1: you can just reformat the Windows and then copy everything
Speaker 1: over from the cloud. But at any rate, I would
Speaker 1: run a full security scan with Window Security to see
Speaker 1: if there's any malware. I would apply all the security
Speaker 1: updates to this computer by going into Windows Update. And
Speaker 1: it doesn't sound like you did anything with your passwords,
Speaker 1: but maybe change the password to your computer or even
Speaker 1: your Microsoft account password. But I think that this may
Speaker 1: be just as scare and your computer is okay, But
Speaker 1: if it's not, if it actually is locked up when
Speaker 1: you open it again, those are the steps that I
Speaker 1: would take. Nick, thanks for the call, appreciate it. Coming
Speaker 1: up Kimber Streams of Wirecutter, We're going to talk affordable
Speaker 1: laptops and chromebooks under one thousand bucks under five hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: You don't want to miss it. You're listening to rich
Speaker 1: on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro
Speaker 1: here hanging with you talking technology, and we've got a
Speaker 1: great topic here because it is back to school and
Speaker 1: just in general, everyone's always asking, you know, what's the
Speaker 1: best computer? Everyone wants the best computer, and I say, okay,
Speaker 1: here's the best computer. That says, oh, by the way,
Speaker 1: for like one thousand, under five hundred. And Kimber Streams
Speaker 1: is the senior staff writer at Wirecutter. Kimber has been
Speaker 1: covering laptops and gaming for WESH since twenty fourteen.
Speaker 2: Kimber, welcome to the show.
Speaker 12: Thank you.
Speaker 1: So you are testing these things all the time, and
Speaker 1: you we've done a segment on KTLA about some of
Speaker 1: these top picks. Obviously you're always changing kind of your
Speaker 1: picks to evolve with the times. So first off, let's
Speaker 1: just talk about can you get a good computer for
Speaker 1: under a thousand or under five hundred.
Speaker 12: So looking for.
Speaker 13: A laptop at that price range can be super stressful,
Speaker 13: kind of a craftshoot. But the good news is that
Speaker 13: now is particularly a good time to buy a budget laptop.
Speaker 13: Sometimes it's impossible to find something that's decent for under
Speaker 13: five hundred dollars. But right now a lot of manufacturers
Speaker 13: are actually discounting models and having sales because they have
Speaker 13: excess inventory after so many people bought laptops during the
Speaker 13: pandemic and they aren't buying them right now. And earlier
Speaker 13: this year, actually Intel introduced a new batch of low
Speaker 13: end processors that are considerably more capable than in previous years,
Speaker 13: especially when you combo that with eight gigs of memory.
Speaker 2: Oh wow.
Speaker 1: Okay, so I mentioned that you've been testing these for
Speaker 1: wirecutters since twenty fourteen.
Speaker 2: How do you test them?
Speaker 12: So we use them like everybody uses a laptop. We
Speaker 12: do work on them.
Speaker 13: We do email docs, spreadsheets, We watch Netflix, we watch movies,
Speaker 13: listen to music, do a lot of zoom calls. And
Speaker 13: we also have a battery test that's designed to mimic
Speaker 13: the way that people use the Internet. They browse, they
Speaker 13: watch videos, a whole combination of those things. So we
Speaker 13: get numbers that reflect how actual.
Speaker 12: People use these laptops.
Speaker 1: Okay, so let's talk about just kind of basic specs
Speaker 1: because this kind of changes as the times change.
Speaker 2: So what do you think is kind of like, if.
Speaker 1: You're out at a store, you're out at Costco, you're
Speaker 1: at best Buy, you're at wherever you might be buying
Speaker 1: one of these computers or maybe online. What are kind
Speaker 1: of the things you should be looking for for good
Speaker 1: enough performance?
Speaker 13: Yes, so the first thing you want to look at
Speaker 13: is how much memory it has. Nowadays, you can get
Speaker 13: away with eight gigs of memory if you're on a budget,
Speaker 13: if you're looking for a laptop under five hundred dollars,
Speaker 13: under seven hundred dollars, that sort of price range, if
Speaker 13: you can't afford it, sixteen is actually going to last
Speaker 13: you a couple of years longer and perform better today.
Speaker 12: But you know there's realities of how much money you
Speaker 12: can spend.
Speaker 13: You also want to look for a solid state drive,
Speaker 13: definitely avoid a hard drive.
Speaker 12: And you want a good enough processor right now.
Speaker 13: That means a twelfth or thirteenth gen Intel Core I
Speaker 13: three or Core I five processor, or a seven thousand
Speaker 13: series AMD rise In three or rise In five processor.
Speaker 13: And you can find more details on specific processor models
Speaker 13: in our laptop guides at New York Times dot com
Speaker 13: slash wirecutter.
Speaker 1: Okay, now, when it comes to screen ten ADP obviously
Speaker 1: you want an HD screen and battery life you want.
Speaker 1: I mean, battery life continues to get better and better
Speaker 1: with these computers, doesn't it.
Speaker 13: Yes, though, as the processors get more powerful, they kind
Speaker 13: of stuck more battery too. So you definitely want to
Speaker 13: make sure that you find something that's going to last
Speaker 13: you through a full day of worker classes, and ideally,
Speaker 13: if you can swing it, you'll want to find one
Speaker 13: that's compact and light enough to take with you, though
Speaker 13: that does get rare the more budget restriction you have.
Speaker 1: Okay, So when it comes to laptops and you've got
Speaker 1: three different types, You've got Windows, You've got Chromebook, and
Speaker 1: you've got Mac.
Speaker 2: What are your thoughts on those three different types?
Speaker 1: I mean they all are they all created equally or
Speaker 1: are they good for different things?
Speaker 13: It's pretty much up to choice, I mean, whichever thing
Speaker 13: you're the most used to, whatever kind of fits your budget.
Speaker 13: Some Chromebooks tend to be better options if you're on
Speaker 13: a more restricted budget, though this year, Windows laptops, as
Speaker 13: I said, have gotten a lot better in that budget category,
Speaker 13: and you definitely can't get a Mac for less than
Speaker 13: five hundred bucks.
Speaker 1: What is your pick for a Windows laptop under five
Speaker 1: hundred dollars.
Speaker 13: So the best Windows laptop under five hundred dollars is
Speaker 13: the Acerus Fire three Spin fourteen. It's typically about four
Speaker 13: hundred and thirty dollars, but right now it actually happens
Speaker 13: to be on sale for three hundred and fifty, which
Speaker 13: is kind of a steal For how good this laptop is.
Speaker 12: The good thing is.
Speaker 13: About it, it's definitely fast enough. Most Windows laptops in
Speaker 13: this price range have less memory, terrible processors which can
Speaker 13: only open like one app or a handful of tabs
Speaker 13: at a time, but this will be able to do
Speaker 13: pretty much anything you need to do on it.
Speaker 12: In our tests.
Speaker 13: That also had eight and a half hours of battery life,
Speaker 13: which is definitely long enough to get through that full
Speaker 13: day of worker classes if three and a half or
Speaker 13: three point three pounds, which is definitely light and compact
Speaker 13: for this category. It has a nice fourteen inch touch screen,
Speaker 13: and it has a tall aspect ratio, which is extra
Speaker 13: convenient for web browsing document work, those things with that
Speaker 13: longer scroll.
Speaker 12: The downsides to this bottle are that it.
Speaker 13: Comes with Windows in S mode, which means you can
Speaker 13: only install apps directly. From the Windows Store. But it
Speaker 13: is free and easy to swap out and back to
Speaker 13: the regular Windows, so that's not too much of a downtay.
Speaker 2: Can you do that right from the Windows?
Speaker 12: Like?
Speaker 2: Can you is there setting inside Windows to do that?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 13: If you go into the start venu and you go
Speaker 13: to about your Computer, there'll be a little setting there
Speaker 13: that says you're in S mode, and there's a little
Speaker 13: button you click that says swap out.
Speaker 12: It'll take you directly to the Windows Store, and then
Speaker 12: you push.
Speaker 13: The little get button and that will swap you into
Speaker 13: the regular Windows where you can install any sort of
Speaker 13: app from anywhere.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So S mode with Windows is kind of I don't
Speaker 1: know if it stands for simple Mode or whatever, but
Speaker 1: it's basically it's kind of like an iPhone where it
Speaker 1: only allows you to install apps from the App Store
Speaker 1: the Windows Store, and then if you remove that, it
Speaker 1: kind of becomes a classic Windows computer that lets you
Speaker 1: install anything.
Speaker 2: Now do you recommend that everyone do that?
Speaker 1: Or only if you need to do that, like if
Speaker 1: you have a program that you need for work or
Speaker 1: something that's specific that's not in the Windows Store.
Speaker 10: Uh.
Speaker 13: Yeah, basically, only if you need an app for something specific.
Speaker 13: If you use like, for example, the Chrome browser, if
Speaker 13: you use a different browser than Windows Edge.
Speaker 1: Then you will need Oh oh wow, so you can't
Speaker 1: even get Chrome through the store.
Speaker 12: I don't believe you can.
Speaker 2: Wow. Do they do that on purpose?
Speaker 1: That's kind of like they should put that in there,
Speaker 1: because then people wouldn't have to like if you only
Speaker 1: wanted Chrome, which is like the first thing I download
Speaker 1: on anything, It's like they should. I mean, I know
Speaker 1: they want you to use Edge, but okay, now let's
Speaker 1: get to if you want Chrome, maybe you go with
Speaker 1: a chromebook because that's what it runs basically.
Speaker 2: Chromebook under five hundred dollars.
Speaker 13: Yes, so the best chromebook under five hundred dollars right
Speaker 13: now is the Lenovo Idea Pad Gaming Chrowbook sixteen inch.
Speaker 13: It's about four hundred and thirty dollars. One of the
Speaker 13: benefits to a Chromebook is that they don't come with
Speaker 13: the bloatwear that's typical of cheap Windows laptop, so you
Speaker 13: don't have to worry about that. It's going to run
Speaker 13: fast out of the box, so you're not gonna have
Speaker 13: to mess with it to get it to do that.
Speaker 13: The unique things about this model is that has a
Speaker 13: gigantic sixteen inch screen, which gives you a ton of
Speaker 13: room for doing work in side by side screens. You
Speaker 13: can enjoy your movies on a pretty big screen for
Speaker 13: a laptop. It also is a higher resolution screen and
Speaker 13: also a high refresh rate which makes scrolling and other
Speaker 13: actions look super duper smooth. It's pretty nice. It also
Speaker 13: has an rgbkeyword if you like the phone colors. If
Speaker 13: you think it's stacky, you can always turn it off.
Speaker 13: And it does come with a number pad too, if
Speaker 13: you do a lot of number entry. Like our other picks,
Speaker 13: this one has nine and a half hours of battery life,
Speaker 13: so it'll definitely last you a full day. But it
Speaker 13: is four pounds, so it is on the heavier, bulkier side.
Speaker 13: It's a little inconvenient if you do need to take
Speaker 13: a laptop with you.
Speaker 1: Okay, so, but that sounds pretty good for that price.
Speaker 1: I mean for four hundred and thirty dollars, you're getting
Speaker 1: a lot. Now, what's you get?
Speaker 12: A huge screen? It's great.
Speaker 1: What's the limitation of a Chromebook? Like, why would I
Speaker 1: go with Chromebook versus a Windows?
Speaker 12: Pretty much? If you already went to school, you're used
Speaker 12: to a chromebook. It's the thing you like.
Speaker 13: If you already spend all of your time pretty much
Speaker 13: in a Chrome browser, you're not really doing much stuff
Speaker 13: on other apps, and if you have a frequent Internet connection,
Speaker 13: those do. There are offline modes to work in documents
Speaker 13: and to save videos to watch locally, but chromebooks do
Speaker 13: tend to benefit from an Internet connection. They also can't
Speaker 13: run specific Mac or Windows programs, but in twenty twenty three,
Speaker 13: most things have browser or Android app equivalents to run
Speaker 13: on a chromebook, so there's not really as many limitations
Speaker 13: to a grunbook as their worst eight like five years ago.
Speaker 1: Okay, if you got money to burn, you got a
Speaker 1: thousand bucks? Which Windows computer am I getting?
Speaker 13: Well. Our favorite budget ultrabook, which is something that's by
Speaker 13: definition of thin and light laptop that already has great
Speaker 13: battery life, is the aces zen Book fourteen O LED
Speaker 13: and it runs from seven hundred to eight hundred and
Speaker 13: seventy dollars depending on which configuration you pick. This type
Speaker 13: of laptop is ideal for high school and college students
Speaker 13: specifically because it provides like the best laptop you can
Speaker 13: get for the least money. It's an excellent value, but
Speaker 13: it is great for anyone. My aunt always buys my
Speaker 13: budget ultra book picks. They're her favorite. So this model
Speaker 13: has fast performance with either eight gigs or sixteen gigs,
Speaker 13: depending on which model you choose to get. That more
Speaker 13: expensive model does have more memory, so if you can't
Speaker 13: afford it, it's going to last you a few years longer.
Speaker 13: This model is super thin and lights three pounds. It
Speaker 13: had eleven hours of battery life in our tests, which
Speaker 13: is deaf only going to get you through that full
Speaker 13: work workday, class day, if you're on a plane, it's
Speaker 13: going to last you. And it also has a vivid
Speaker 13: ole lad touch screen as well. It's high resolution. The
Speaker 13: colors are super super vivid. Reds are very red, blacks
Speaker 13: are very black. It looks excellent and is a fun
Speaker 13: bonus feature. This one actually has a touchpad that can
Speaker 13: double as a number pad, which is not something you
Speaker 13: see in very many laptops.
Speaker 1: All right, finally, I just got about thirty seconds here
Speaker 1: the top pick. You have a pick for the Apple
Speaker 1: MacBook air M one. It's on sale and I was
Speaker 1: just looking at this yesterday. I said, should we get my
Speaker 1: kid this MacBook because it's on sale for a pretty
Speaker 1: good deal.
Speaker 2: What's the deal on this one?
Speaker 13: Yes, it's absolutely the cheapest MacBook you can get. It's
Speaker 13: a few years old, but it's thin, light, has great
Speaker 13: battery life, and it's frequently on sale, like you said,
Speaker 13: for around seven hundred and fifty bucks right now. So
Speaker 13: it's definitely the cheapest MacBook you can get if that's
Speaker 13: what you need.
Speaker 1: All right, kimber Streams. We love that you test this
Speaker 1: to make our lives easier. Do you enjoy doing this?
Speaker 12: Yes? I love it.
Speaker 2: What's so what's fun about it for you?
Speaker 12: What's fun about it for me?
Speaker 13: I mean mostly getting to help people, Like buying a
Speaker 13: laptop is so stressful. Like I got into this job
Speaker 13: because I was stressed out buying laptop. I bought a
Speaker 13: crappy laptop. It died in two years. It was terrible.
Speaker 13: So I try to save people from that fate.
Speaker 1: That is such a good thing to save people from, because,
Speaker 1: like you, like, all these picks you just gave folks
Speaker 1: are going to actually last and they're gonna do their
Speaker 1: job and you're not spending a ton of money and
Speaker 1: you're getting a pretty good laptop there too, So Kimber Streams,
Speaker 1: senior staff writer for Wirecutter.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much for joining me today. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: You can follow Kimber online at New York Times dot
Speaker 1: com slash Wirecutter. All of Kimber's picks are there, and
Speaker 1: I'll put them on the website. Rich on Tech dot TV, thanks.
Speaker 2: So much for joining me today. Your calls coming up
Speaker 2: next at Triple eight rich one oh one.
Speaker 1: That's eight eight eight seven four to two, four to
Speaker 1: one zero one. If you have a question, give me
Speaker 1: a call. You are listening to Rich on tech. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here talking technology
Speaker 1: at Triple eight rich one oh one eight eight eight
Speaker 1: seven four to two, four one zero one. Patricia is
Speaker 1: in southern California. Patricia, you're on with.
Speaker 5: Rich Oh Hi, Rich.
Speaker 9: I'm calling because I discontinued my spectrum of TV and
Speaker 9: Wi Fi. But yet on my computer, the symbol that
Speaker 9: shows that I have Wi Fi with the same address,
Speaker 9: the symbol comes up and also the Wi Fi is
Speaker 9: that it's maximum strength.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 2: Okay, do you have a signal? Do you have an
Speaker 2: Internet connection on this computer?
Speaker 13: No?
Speaker 5: Not at all?
Speaker 1: Okay, So what is it? A computer? Is it Mac Windows,
Speaker 1: what is it?
Speaker 9: It's an Apple?
Speaker 2: Okay. So and you're talking a laptop or a laptop, Okay.
Speaker 9: It's a bet. There's no Wi Fi to my home, okay.
Speaker 9: And I had it turned off because people kept breaking
Speaker 9: into my Wi Fi. And another thing about it is
Speaker 9: that I have security cameras, but I have no control
Speaker 9: over them. Sometimes whenever I happen to be outside, instead
Speaker 9: of seeing the red lights from the camera, they go
Speaker 9: totally off. I have no idea what's going on here?
Speaker 1: So how are you accessing? Well, first off, let's let's
Speaker 1: tackle the computer. So the computer, the Wi Fi? How
Speaker 1: are you accessing Internet on this computer?
Speaker 9: I'm not.
Speaker 2: Oh you're not, okay, So you don't you don't want
Speaker 2: the Internet on there?
Speaker 9: Well, I do, but I don't want internet until I
Speaker 9: figure out what's going on. I need to clean the
Speaker 9: computer and you know, start all over. But I still
Speaker 9: need to find out what's going on.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: So when you look at the symbol of the Internet,
Speaker 1: is it is it a ghost symbol or is it
Speaker 1: like is it is this the Wi Fi signal all
Speaker 1: in black?
Speaker 2: Or is it kind of ghosted out?
Speaker 9: No, it's got the lines, Like, are.
Speaker 2: Those lines gray or black.
Speaker 3: They're black?
Speaker 2: There are they are? Huh.
Speaker 1: Okay, so when you click on that, what does it say?
Speaker 1: What does it say? For Wi Fi?
Speaker 9: It's oh, I click on the symbol, and then all
Speaker 9: of the Wi Fi addresses in my neighborhood come up.
Speaker 2: Okay, yep.
Speaker 9: And it takes a few minutes for mine to come up.
Speaker 9: But I just continued mine and Spectrum told me don't
Speaker 9: cut the wires to the box. And I thought, yes,
Speaker 9: I am.
Speaker 1: Oh, okay, I see what's happening. Okay, so you still
Speaker 1: have Spectrum. You just discontinue the internet portion.
Speaker 9: Now I discontinued everything.
Speaker 2: And you still do you still have the box in
Speaker 2: your house?
Speaker 9: Yes? And so I talked to someone at one of
Speaker 9: the telephone companies and they said, get rid of the box. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 9: unplugged it a long time ago, and they said, And
Speaker 9: I figured out how to unscrew two parts to get inside,
Speaker 9: and I removed the battery. It's a huge battery. It's
Speaker 9: bigger than a man's hand. And so I removed the
Speaker 9: battery and then I cut the wire that goes outside.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, so you did cut the wire.
Speaker 9: Okay, I cut the wire there and I cut the
Speaker 9: wire from the electrical box where it wasn't on electricity,
Speaker 9: but it's near the electrical Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's where they.
Speaker 9: Even though Spectrum told me not just oh my gosh, okay,
Speaker 9: still have a full symbol of Wi Fi's symbol.
Speaker 1: Okay, well it Well that's a mystery because at this point,
Speaker 1: if the box is off and the signals cut, there
Speaker 1: should not be connection to your computer. Now, if there's
Speaker 1: still a connection, you're either connected to a secondary network
Speaker 1: or something else. So what I would do is go
Speaker 1: into your WiFi.
Speaker 9: I can't get Wi Fi from my computer, but I
Speaker 9: ran a chance the diagnostics and it says that there's
Speaker 9: a conflict with a country with another country in the world.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, well that's that's been going on at as
Speaker 1: long as time. That's more than just internet. But okay,
Speaker 1: what I would do is you got to go into
Speaker 1: your Wi Fi settings and you've got to delete some
Speaker 1: of these old Wi Fi networks. So if you go
Speaker 1: into your network settings on your Mac computer and oh gosh,
Speaker 1: they changed everything, it's kind of a pain the way
Speaker 1: they listed everything.
Speaker 2: I'm used to the old system.
Speaker 1: But if you go into Wi Fi, it will say
Speaker 1: advanced and if you go in there, you'll see all
Speaker 1: of your know networks. Like I'm looking at all the
Speaker 1: networks I've ever connected to at the different airports, different hotels.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, look at this is like a graveyard
Speaker 1: of internet networks that I've connected to.
Speaker 2: And you can go.
Speaker 6: That.
Speaker 1: You don't need Wi Fi to do this, So this
Speaker 1: is on your actual computer. So you go through, and
Speaker 1: you can go through and delete. And what I would
Speaker 1: do in your case, since you're having so many issues,
Speaker 1: I would delete all of the networks that you've connected to,
Speaker 1: and then I would turn Wi Fi off on your
Speaker 1: computer and then I would figure out your situation for
Speaker 1: how you're going to get internet on this computer again,
Speaker 1: because it sounds like Spectrum is going to have some
Speaker 1: issues trying to get your you know, your internet back
Speaker 1: if you've cut the wire.
Speaker 2: Now, what's going on with the cameras outside? How are those?
Speaker 2: How are you monitoring those?
Speaker 9: Well, there were several breakings into my home and it's
Speaker 9: someone in the neighborhood. Actually it's more than one person.
Speaker 9: It's a Boo Blue ring. And so what they do
Speaker 9: is they cut off my cameras at night because sometimes
Speaker 9: I wake up and I have work to do because
Speaker 9: I don't sleep like from nine to five or things
Speaker 9: like that. I just whenever I'm ready to do my work,
Speaker 9: I just do it. And so I don't get Wi
Speaker 9: Fi sometimes because someone has cut off the power to
Speaker 9: my cameras. I have a special on the meter. It
Speaker 9: says cameras with a flip.
Speaker 2: You know of Oh right, you haven't connected that way.
Speaker 9: Right, because I had my house rewired. So anyway, well,
Speaker 9: the electrician did is that way. And so when the
Speaker 9: guy came in and put in my cameras, he said
Speaker 9: he put boosters on several parts of the house. I
Speaker 9: don't have a big house, but he said he put
Speaker 9: a booster in certain places in the house. And anyway,
Speaker 9: I steel think someone has broken into my computer many
Speaker 9: times because I'm missing stuff.
Speaker 1: Well, here's what I'd recommend. I think that you got
Speaker 1: a lot of things going on here. I think that
Speaker 1: you need to figure out how this device is still
Speaker 1: connecting to the Wi Fi even though you don't have
Speaker 1: Wi Fi. I think that you need to go through
Speaker 1: get rid of those old things, and then when it
Speaker 1: comes to the network in your home, I'm going to
Speaker 1: recommend something called the fire walla. This is a physical
Speaker 1: device that goes between your Internet connection and all of
Speaker 1: your devices to put a firewall between you and everyone else.
Speaker 2: They're not cheap, but it sounds like something you need. Patricia,
Speaker 2: thanks for the call.
Speaker 1: Triple eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four to two, four to one zero one. You're listening
Speaker 1: to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich DeMuro here talking technology at Triple eight rich one
Speaker 1: on one eight eight eight seven four to two, four
Speaker 1: to one zero one. Patricia was our last caller. Lots
Speaker 1: of questions about her Wi Fi connection. She basically canceled
Speaker 1: her Wi Fi and it still seemed to be showing
Speaker 1: up on her computer even though she cut the cable,
Speaker 1: removed the box, took the battery out. But a couple
Speaker 1: of people chimed in and said, maybe she's on her
Speaker 1: neighbor's WiFi. Maybe jo Joe said, someone has a Wi
Speaker 1: Fi network that has the same as hers.
Speaker 2: That could be it.
Speaker 1: I mean, you'd have to have the same Wi Fi,
Speaker 1: use her name and password as your neighbor for that
Speaker 1: to happen.
Speaker 2: Maybe it did. I don't know.
Speaker 1: That seems very unlikely, but that could be it. But
Speaker 1: Usually when these accounts are set up, they have these
Speaker 1: random string of characters in the name. The passwords are
Speaker 1: pretty unique, but that could be it. Let's go to
Speaker 1: ud David's in Serrito's.
Speaker 2: David, You're on with Rich.
Speaker 11: Hello.
Speaker 2: Hello.
Speaker 5: I have a what I think is probably a pretty
Speaker 5: stupid question.
Speaker 2: There's no stupid questions, well.
Speaker 5: Okay, a stupid question or them. I just want to
Speaker 5: know how to find telephone number of friends of mine
Speaker 5: who have lost touch with I know their address, I
Speaker 5: used to know their telephone number. Now I don't know
Speaker 5: how to get their telephone number anymore.
Speaker 2: Good question.
Speaker 1: So there's a couple of ways to do this, and
Speaker 1: I've got do you have an let's see, do you
Speaker 1: have an iPhone.
Speaker 2: Or an Android?
Speaker 5: It's an Android Android Edge.
Speaker 2: Okay, so there's a couple of ways to do this.
Speaker 1: The first is if you have well the best I mean,
Speaker 1: I'll just tell you the easiest way.
Speaker 2: The thing.
Speaker 1: The thing that I use is an app called Sunshine Contacts.
Speaker 1: And this is an app that scans your phone, your email,
Speaker 1: your Google everything. It's just looking for wherever it can
Speaker 1: on your phone to find this information. And what it
Speaker 1: does is it compiles it all together. So when someone
Speaker 1: sends you an email and their phone numbers in that email,
Speaker 1: it will say, oh, this is John Smith, here's their email.
Speaker 1: All right, sorry, here's their phone number. Let's put this
Speaker 1: as their contact. And then when you go into Sunshine,
Speaker 1: it will give you all of your contacts and the
Speaker 1: information it found inside those, so you can search for
Speaker 1: anyone and you can find that information. And so it
Speaker 1: is really really good at doing that, and it's pretty
Speaker 1: much free. There are some paid upgrades to sync with
Speaker 1: your address book, but Sunshine Contacts, I find is phenomenal.
Speaker 1: It's pretty much my first stop when it comes to
Speaker 1: finding someone's phone number. Now that is given the idea
Speaker 1: that that person has somehow contacted you, whether it was
Speaker 1: through email or whether they were in your address book
Speaker 1: at some point. That's kind of the way that that works.
Speaker 1: So check out Sunshine Contacts. The other way to do
Speaker 1: it is if you have an iPhone. Now that's Android,
Speaker 1: so I guess I'll continue with Android. The other way
Speaker 1: to do it is if you go to a contacts
Speaker 1: dot Google dot com and you can find a list
Speaker 1: of all your contacts, even people who you didn't necessarily
Speaker 1: put in your address book because they've got a section
Speaker 1: called Other Contacts, and you can go in there and
Speaker 1: see all the people that you've emailed with, and that
Speaker 1: will give you their email address. Some of them may
Speaker 1: have a phone number listed there as well, but that
Speaker 1: way you can search for someone that you've emailed in
Speaker 1: the past. So if it's an old friend that you
Speaker 1: lost touch with, you can search for them and find
Speaker 1: their email there and then maybe email them and ask for.
Speaker 2: Their phone number. That way.
Speaker 1: The other thing you can do on the iPhone, and
Speaker 1: this is for iPhone users, This is very very interesting.
Speaker 2: One of my favorite features.
Speaker 1: If you've ever had someone call your iPhone and it
Speaker 1: says the person's name underneath their phone number, even though
Speaker 1: they're not in your address book, it says maybe, and
Speaker 1: then it has their phone number. This is a feature
Speaker 1: that came out years ago, and it's actually a serie feature,
Speaker 1: even though it's not necessarily that's what they branded as.
Speaker 1: But how this works is that if you have emailed
Speaker 1: with that person, Siri is indexing all of your emails
Speaker 1: and looking at all of the information in those emails,
Speaker 1: including people's phone numbers that they mentioned.
Speaker 2: So let's say I send you an email it says Hey,
Speaker 2: great to meet you. My name is Rich. Here's my
Speaker 2: phone number.
Speaker 1: Chat soon, and now I call your phone and it
Speaker 1: says and it comes from that number that I put
Speaker 1: in that email, and it says.
Speaker 2: Maybe this is Rich, And you go, how did it know?
Speaker 1: That's how it knows because it's looking and it's indexing
Speaker 1: everything in your email. So to set that up, you
Speaker 1: got to go into your settings, set up an email address,
Speaker 1: you know, whatever you use, Gmail, Yahoo, Aol, whatever, put
Speaker 1: that in there, and then you have to in the
Speaker 1: email settings or sorry, back in the main settings. You'll
Speaker 1: see one called Syrian Search, and then you scroll down
Speaker 1: to where it says mail m ail and you tap
Speaker 1: that and then it says while searching, and it says
Speaker 1: show search an app, show content and search, and that
Speaker 1: says suggestions, show an app, show on home screens, suggest app,
Speaker 1: suggest notifications. So and also learn from this app. So
Speaker 1: make sure all of those things are on and then
Speaker 1: the next time someone calls you and the numbers in there,
Speaker 1: you can find them.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 1: The other way you can do it is you can
Speaker 1: actually just search. So you can go to your contact
Speaker 1: on the iPhone and you can search for someone that's
Speaker 1: in there and you should get a serious suggestion depending
Speaker 1: on whether they had put that information in their email.
Speaker 1: And you can also just swipe down from the top
Speaker 1: of your phone and searched there and it will give
Speaker 1: you serious suggestions as well. So it will you can
Speaker 1: scroll down and see contacts messages. I mean, it's really
Speaker 1: phenomenal what they're doing to get this information. But Sunshine
Speaker 1: Contacts is kind of like that same exact feature that
Speaker 1: Siri gives you, but it's cross platform and it works
Speaker 1: with all of your different email addresses and all of
Speaker 1: your contact books. It kind of brings everything all together,
Speaker 1: which is really really smart. So I really like that app,
Speaker 1: and it just recently became available on an Android as well.
Speaker 1: The other thing you can do is you can check
Speaker 1: a site like whitepages dot com, so you can do
Speaker 1: a reverse address search, so maybe you know the person's
Speaker 1: address and you can type that in there. The only
Speaker 1: thing I don't like about this is I'm actually opposed
Speaker 1: to kind of these sites in general because they're so
Speaker 1: annoying and they're just really like, not nice, and so
Speaker 1: I'm kind of loath to recommend using those. But if
Speaker 1: you're looking for an old friend, it could definitely help.
Speaker 1: There's a million of these different types of sites. They
Speaker 1: may charge you for the privilege of getting the phone
Speaker 1: number looking up someone that I know right now, and
Speaker 1: sure enough, it actually.
Speaker 2: Was completely free.
Speaker 1: So I just looked up someone by their address, It
Speaker 1: said who lives there, I click their name, and now
Speaker 1: I have their phone numbers at the house. Now, if
Speaker 1: you want their cell phone number, that's where they may
Speaker 1: charge you. Cell phone number looks to be a premium
Speaker 1: add on. It says unlock, full report and one time
Speaker 1: access nine ninety nine contact info five dollars. So apparently
Speaker 1: David a lot of people like to find people's phone numbers.
Speaker 1: So the address thing through whitepages dot com is pretty good. Now,
Speaker 1: whitepages dot com, I recommend them because I actually think
Speaker 1: they're like the least evil out of all of those
Speaker 1: like peoplefinder sites, because I believe at one point they're
Speaker 1: actually rooted in the actual like white pages, like the
Speaker 1: you know, the phone company actually like had a something
Speaker 1: to do with them. So let's see, they've been around
Speaker 1: since nineteen ninety seven, thirty million monthly customers.
Speaker 6: Wow.
Speaker 1: So anyway, whitepages dot com, if you want to find
Speaker 1: that Sunshine Contacts Contacts dot Google dot com, and also
Speaker 1: the Serie search. Okay, something I learned this week. If
Speaker 1: you have a Samsung Galaxy phone, one of my biggest
Speaker 1: issues with these devices is the way that the drawer
Speaker 1: of apps looks. On every other Android phone in the world,
Speaker 1: when you swipe up from the bottom, everything is vertical,
Speaker 1: but for some reason, Samsung does it horizontal and it
Speaker 1: really bugs me. And you can get a third party launcher,
Speaker 1: you can, you know all that, but you can actually
Speaker 1: change this through Samsung.
Speaker 2: They have a way to do this.
Speaker 1: So there's an app on Samsung called Goodlock Go d
Speaker 1: lock Lock good Lock. You can download this from the
Speaker 1: Samsung Galaxy Store on your phone. And what this app
Speaker 1: does is it lets you customize all kinds of things
Speaker 1: on your Samsung phone. But they make you download it
Speaker 1: separately because some of it's experimental, some of it is
Speaker 1: stuff that you wouldn't typically get because they want to
Speaker 1: keep these phones kind of simple. But they also want
Speaker 1: to give you some power kind of power options, and
Speaker 1: so a lot of these power options are inside the
Speaker 1: Goodlock app. And so you download this app and then
Speaker 1: there's a tab called Makeup and you select that and
Speaker 1: then there's a home up module and it's I know,
Speaker 1: home up. Get it home up, So you download that,
Speaker 1: enable the Home up and then you tap home screen
Speaker 1: and then there's an option for the app list that's enabled,
Speaker 1: so get it apps list, and then.
Speaker 2: Once you enable that your app drawer.
Speaker 1: And I know this sounds very complicated, but all this
Speaker 1: is doing is making it so that on your Android phone,
Speaker 1: on your Samsung, instead of when you swipe up the
Speaker 1: apps are all you have to then swipe left and
Speaker 1: right to scroll through your apps. All you can do
Speaker 1: now is scroll up. It is a glorious thing and
Speaker 1: is a small change. It came out earlier this year,
Speaker 1: but to me, that is like the biggest issue I
Speaker 1: had with Samsung devices was how that drawer worked. And
Speaker 1: this is so much easier, It's so much better. It's
Speaker 1: just so much more the way I use a phone.
Speaker 1: So definitely check out the good lock app. There's a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of things you can do through that app.
Speaker 1: You can change your lock screen, you can change your
Speaker 1: home screen, there's so many little like tweaks you can do.
Speaker 1: So definitely do that. Let's see what else do I do?
Speaker 1: I don't have enough time to go through anything else.
Speaker 1: But I will tell you one other thing. I'll just
Speaker 1: tell you the phone number Triple eight rich one on
Speaker 1: one eight eight eight seven four to two four to.
Speaker 2: One zero one.
Speaker 1: Uh, give me a call if you have a question
Speaker 1: about technology. My name is Rich d'muro. You are listening
Speaker 1: to Rich on Tech. Welcome back to Rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich DeMuro here at Triple A rich one O one
Speaker 1: eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: Coming up next. Uh, We've got the guy on TikTok
Speaker 1: and Instagram who is always handing out those iPhone tricks.
Speaker 1: I guarantee you didn't know about it goes by consanity.
Speaker 1: He's coming up on the show shortly. Right after the break,
Speaker 1: Let's get to Liz and riverside. Liz, you're on with Rich.
Speaker 5: Hi. Rich.
Speaker 3: Well, my question is.
Speaker 10: My husband passed away a few months ago, and.
Speaker 1: I sorry to hear that's.
Speaker 10: That's that's okay, But he was a techie and I
Speaker 10: have desktop and laptop and I want to get rid
Speaker 10: of them, but I want to make sure that our
Speaker 10: information is secured off of them. So what else do
Speaker 10: I take out of them besides the hard drive?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 10: Is there anything else? I need to take out of
Speaker 10: them before I like donate them or give them away,
Speaker 10: just so that it doesn't have our information.
Speaker 2: So you've already taken out the hard drives.
Speaker 10: Well not yet, okay, but I know how to.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, okay, Well if you're if you're taking out
Speaker 1: the hard drives, I think that's the important part. I
Speaker 1: don't think there's anything else inside there that you would
Speaker 1: need to remove, anything like RAM or system memory is
Speaker 1: not really going to hold any personal data. So the
Speaker 1: hard drive is really the key to the kingdom there,
Speaker 1: so I would definitely remove that. And what do you
Speaker 1: plan to do with these drives?
Speaker 10: So after, you know, before I take them, mad, I'm
Speaker 10: gonna you know, take pictures, you know, like pictures or
Speaker 10: videos or anything like that. That would be sincemental to me.
Speaker 10: But after that, I don't know.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: So there are various software programs that will format these drives.
Speaker 1: I think that they are kind of a pain and
Speaker 1: too long, and it's just a it's a process. So
Speaker 1: what I would recommend is once you remove these drives,
Speaker 1: and are these all desktops or some of them laptops?
Speaker 2: Oh wow?
Speaker 1: And so the laptops you're able to remove those drives
Speaker 1: from there too. Yeah, okay, okay, so you're a bit
Speaker 1: of a tech of yourself too, huh.
Speaker 10: I I try it, you know, take my way through it.
Speaker 2: Well, I would.
Speaker 1: I think that the easiest way to get once you
Speaker 1: get everything off of these drives, so you know, the
Speaker 1: process would be go through and maybe wait, you know,
Speaker 1: if I were you, I you know, you said this
Speaker 1: has only been a couple of months, Maybe wait a
Speaker 1: couple of months, just because it may be too painful,
Speaker 1: or it may not be the it's it's it might
Speaker 1: be tough to do this, you know, to go through
Speaker 1: and you know you're gonna be looking at some of
Speaker 1: these videos and photos. You may want to wait a
Speaker 1: little bit just to let, you know, let yourself grieve
Speaker 1: a bit. But when that's done, and when you can,
Speaker 1: you know, get to a place where you feel like
Speaker 1: you can tackle this project, you know, go through, get
Speaker 1: the videos off of there. I would put them in
Speaker 1: something like a Google Photos and that way it'll organize
Speaker 1: them by people in places and things and you can
Speaker 1: easily search them later. Once you have that all out
Speaker 1: of there, take the drives out and I personally would
Speaker 1: bring them to a hard drive shredding facility.
Speaker 2: Have you heard of this?
Speaker 1: No? Yeah, So there are places that you can take
Speaker 1: them and I've seen this in action.
Speaker 2: Are you in your in River? We're you're in Riverside.
Speaker 1: So look up hard drive shredding Riverside and see if
Speaker 1: you find a place, and make sure you find a
Speaker 1: place that lets you see them being shred. So for
Speaker 1: ten bucks, I think it was ten or twenty dollars,
Speaker 1: they will shred these in front of you. So you
Speaker 1: get to watch these drives get shred and so you
Speaker 1: know that they are not going to be There's no
Speaker 1: data that could be recovered off of these drives, but
Speaker 1: that's probably the easiest. Now, if you have a friend
Speaker 1: that can drill some holes through the drives and you
Speaker 1: know you want to have some fun doing it that way,
Speaker 1: you could probably do that as well. But that's a
Speaker 1: little bit more hands on, a little bit more. You know,
Speaker 1: you need to know some that knows how to do that.
Speaker 1: You got to put the drive in avice all that
Speaker 1: good stuff. But if you find a hard drive shredding company,
Speaker 1: it's like an e waste recycling company. Usually they have
Speaker 1: these industrial machines that you know a lot of corporations
Speaker 1: will come to them with a bunch of drives. They
Speaker 1: need them shredded, they will do that. So how does
Speaker 1: that sounds? That sound like a good.
Speaker 11: Solution, That sounds like an excellent So.
Speaker 1: I still I'll be honest, Liz, I still have a
Speaker 1: couple of hard drives from old computers that have been
Speaker 1: sitting in my place for about maybe ten years now,
Speaker 1: because I did bring I did bring one or two
Speaker 1: to this hard drive place. We did a story for TV.
Speaker 1: I did bring one or two and it was fun
Speaker 1: to watch them get shredded. But I need to bring
Speaker 1: them back because that's the most guaranteed way. Actually, I
Speaker 1: have my father in law. I've been meaning to do
Speaker 1: it with him with the with the drill, but you
Speaker 1: got to drill in a certain place, you know, to
Speaker 1: like make sure, so you got to cover your eyes,
Speaker 1: you know, all that kind of stuff. You know, don't
Speaker 1: want a piece of drive flinging into your face, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean?
Speaker 3: Absolutely?
Speaker 10: Yeah, no, And that that I've never heard of, So
Speaker 10: that's exce it. And I had been concerns about the
Speaker 10: SIM memory and stuff like that, so that helps knowing
Speaker 10: that it.
Speaker 2: Just were you talking about cell phones as well.
Speaker 1: No, okay, so I was gonna say, if it's a
Speaker 1: cell phone, you know there is if there was a
Speaker 1: SIM card and there were some contacts. You know, the
Speaker 1: older cell phones stored contacts on the sim cards sometimes,
Speaker 1: so you could, you know, you want to take that
Speaker 1: out of the phone as well. Now phones are prett
Speaker 1: easy because the built in formatting is very very simple.
Speaker 1: The factory restart, you could do that a couple times
Speaker 1: and erase all the data. But the hard drives they're
Speaker 1: definitely tricky. There are programs if you if you want
Speaker 1: to look into the programs. The big program is called
Speaker 1: Derek's Boot and Nuke, and so that is the big one.
Speaker 1: It's called DBAN for sure, and so Dban if you
Speaker 1: have a friend that's really techy and you want to
Speaker 1: kind of go down that line, you can look into DMan.
Speaker 1: But great question. Lots of ways to do this stuff. Basically,
Speaker 1: you want to rewrite the drive with lots of zeros
Speaker 1: in one so that nobody can retrieve the data on it.
Speaker 1: A simple format doesn't always do that. Thanks for the call.
Speaker 1: Is coming up next We're going to talk iPhone tips
Speaker 1: and tricks right here on rich on Tech Welcome back
Speaker 1: to rich On Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you,
Speaker 1: talking technology. I know this is Matchbox twenty, but is
Speaker 1: this This isn't push right, this is three am okay,
Speaker 1: because I don't want to give away too much about
Speaker 1: the Barbie movie. But a Matchbox twenty song played a
Speaker 1: role in that movie. Which is I think it was?
Speaker 1: Was it match right now? I'm confusing my movies. Maybe
Speaker 1: it was it there? Anyway, Yeah, I saw the Barbie movie,
Speaker 1: me and the rest.
Speaker 2: Of the world. Uh uh. Producer Bobo has not seen it.
Speaker 2: Not everyone's seen it. I mean, but a.
Speaker 1: Lot we'll see. I mean, everyone has different thoughts in
Speaker 1: that movie. Anyway, we're not here to talk Barbie. Visible
Speaker 1: by Verizon dropped prices. What everyone's raising prices? How did
Speaker 1: they drop prices? So Visible is owned by Verizon. This
Speaker 1: is what's called their MVNO Mobile Virtual Network Operator. But
Speaker 1: it's funny because they're actually owned by Verizon. They set
Speaker 1: up a secondary cellular company that was mainly aimed towards
Speaker 1: like millennials and people that wanted to do everything online.
Speaker 2: So there's no stores.
Speaker 1: The advertising is all sort of aimed at a certain demographic,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe the younger person, and it's people who
Speaker 1: you know, they just want an inexpensive cell phone service
Speaker 1: and it delivers. We did a story with them when
Speaker 1: they first came out, interviewed the guy who runs it,
Speaker 1: and it does what it says now. It debuted in
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen with a forty dollars a month's unlimited plan,
Speaker 1: which I thought was amazing. But now they have a
Speaker 1: twenty five dollars unlimited plan. So here's the thing. You
Speaker 1: have to have a phone that's compatible, which means it
Speaker 1: has to be compatible with Verizon. But if you have
Speaker 1: that and you want the Verizon network at twenty five
Speaker 1: dollars a month, you can get it. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: really really inexpensive. Now the twenty five dollars plan is
Speaker 1: pretty basic. So it's unlimited calls, unlimited texts, and let's
Speaker 1: see what else. You don't get the five G Ultra
Speaker 1: wide bands. You don't get their their fastest five G,
Speaker 1: but you still get five G access. Now, if you
Speaker 1: want that, you have to get the fun A Visible
Speaker 1: Plus plan, which is forty five dollars a month. They
Speaker 1: actually raise the plan price on the high end plan
Speaker 1: and dropped it on the low end plan. But anyway,
Speaker 1: I tell you all this because if you're looking for
Speaker 1: an inexpensive mobile service, twenty five dollars a month for
Speaker 1: unlimited is pretty good, and I think they're gonna you know,
Speaker 1: Mint Mobile I also really like, and they have an
Speaker 1: unlimited service for I think it's like thirty dollars a month,
Speaker 1: and so I wonder if they're gonna have to change
Speaker 1: to twenty five because of this. Mint Mobile is also
Speaker 1: pretty good. So when people tell you have to have
Speaker 1: like the big major like T Mobile, Verizon, AT and T,
Speaker 1: you don't.
Speaker 2: You can get by.
Speaker 1: With one of these smaller carriers that they don't have
Speaker 1: all the marketing, they don't have all the you know,
Speaker 1: the perks, like you know, the free Netflix and things
Speaker 1: like that. But you're just getting your service for a
Speaker 1: much lower price. So definitely don't discount these things. Visible
Speaker 1: twenty five dollars a month, they just lowered that price
Speaker 1: from thirty.
Speaker 2: I got to tell you.
Speaker 1: About this scam that involved QR codes that lets you
Speaker 1: pay for parking. This is from the Better Business Bureau
Speaker 1: scam tracker. They're seeing an influx of reports about these scams.
Speaker 1: Have you been to a parking lot lately, there's not
Speaker 1: even an attendant anymore. It's just a machine that lets
Speaker 1: you pay. Or there's a QR code that says, hey
Speaker 1: scan to pay for parking here, and now that because
Speaker 1: we've all gone through the pandemic, we know how to
Speaker 1: use QR codes. You say, oh, I'll try that. You
Speaker 1: scan the QR code, you pay for your parking. But
Speaker 1: guess what, it's a bogus QR code. It's all a scam.
Speaker 1: They're trying to get you to scan the code pay
Speaker 1: for parking, but you're actually just handing your credit card
Speaker 1: over to the scammers. And yeah, I mean it makes
Speaker 1: total sense. This is almost like the perfect scam, because
Speaker 1: how would you know I pay for parking this way?
Speaker 1: The other day I was in downtown and I scanned
Speaker 1: a QR code at the box and I paid for
Speaker 1: my parking. Now I could tell it was legit because
Speaker 1: it was legitimate, and so I knew it because I
Speaker 1: think it was like park Whiz or something like that.
Speaker 1: But if you see something weird, like some weird company
Speaker 1: or something you don't really understand, or it looks like
Speaker 1: an odd URL, do not use it, don't pay, don't
Speaker 1: try it, and don't get scammed. So again, if you
Speaker 1: see a QR code near a parking spot, just be
Speaker 1: on alert. It's probably legit, but it may not be.
Speaker 1: So how do you protect yourself? Pay for parking directly
Speaker 1: through the meter or through the scanning box, sorry, the
Speaker 1: credit card box like you know sometimes they have like
Speaker 1: a box there.
Speaker 2: Do that. Watch out for the links.
Speaker 1: If the QR code says it's going to open a
Speaker 1: shortened URL, make sure you know where it's bringing you
Speaker 1: to and look for any evidence of tampering. So if
Speaker 1: you know they put these QR codes, just make sure
Speaker 1: that it's like a sticker that's legitimate. I guess if
Speaker 1: it looks like a sticker that's just been placed there
Speaker 1: by someone random print it out, then maybe don't use it.
Speaker 1: They also have some apps that may scan the QR
Speaker 1: code that you're scanning from malicious software. I know that
Speaker 1: if you use something like Google Chrome, it's going to
Speaker 1: scan the link that you're going to to make sure
Speaker 1: it's okay, but it may not catch everything, so you
Speaker 1: do have to be on your own guard. The other
Speaker 1: thing I would add to this is that if you
Speaker 1: use something like Apple pay or Google Pay, the bogus
Speaker 1: companies are probably not going to be set up for
Speaker 1: Google Pay or Apple Pay. I could be wrong, but
Speaker 1: I would just I would try to use that because
Speaker 1: that'll put one more barrier between you and the actual
Speaker 1: bogus payment, so or the scam artist. I should say,
Speaker 1: let's go to let's see we've got Nina. Nina's in
Speaker 1: San Bernardino. Nina, you're on with Rich.
Speaker 8: Hi just have a quick question on tech challenges.
Speaker 1: I have to tell you I love the tech challenge
Speaker 1: because that's why I get to keep this show.
Speaker 8: Well, anyway, I have a laptop Dell. It's about six
Speaker 8: or seven years old and it's flows. But anyway, my
Speaker 8: question is about two weeks ago it started micro Edge.
Speaker 8: Microsoft seems to want me to use it use their email,
Speaker 8: So I I use the X close it down and
Speaker 8: then I'm able to hit my icon on Google and
Speaker 8: my email will outlook.
Speaker 5: Will come up.
Speaker 8: Well, about last week I got an error. It says
Speaker 8: error refreshed. So I found out that five I'm sorry
Speaker 8: f five refreshing or if I clicked my right.
Speaker 1: No and you go, yeah, yeah, you could control command
Speaker 1: will also.
Speaker 8: Do it okay, but also right now, all it does
Speaker 8: is error. Does that mean that Microsoft is Microsoft Edge
Speaker 8: really wants me use for my email? Is that what
Speaker 8: that means that they're trying to encourage me? Or should
Speaker 8: I take it into No?
Speaker 1: I use, I use UH. I use Outlook every single
Speaker 1: day on Chrome. So it sounds like there's an issue
Speaker 1: with the just the u r L. So if you
Speaker 1: refresh that page it should come back, close down Chrome
Speaker 1: and then reopen it and see if that does it.
Speaker 1: The other thing is just manually go to the u
Speaker 1: r L and type in Outlook dot office dot com
Speaker 1: and that should bring you to your mail box. Your inbox.
Speaker 1: You're talking about Outlook email right, yes, and you're yep,
Speaker 1: it's Outlook dot office dot com. And so I will
Speaker 1: tell you because I use this on my computer all
Speaker 1: the time. I have many many problems with it. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it loads, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes I get kicked out.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I got to relog in. So I think what
Speaker 1: happened is you got logged out and you need to
Speaker 1: log back in. And so if you go to Outlook
Speaker 1: dot office dot com, does that bring it back up?
Speaker 2: Have you been able to type that in?
Speaker 8: Well? Right now it's telling me total I don't know
Speaker 8: it's a PC tune up. I don't know.
Speaker 2: Oh, okay, Well in that case, hold on, May I.
Speaker 8: Try it and then I can pull you back next week.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but if you if it's saying PC tune up, this,
Speaker 1: this sounds like you.
Speaker 2: Have some malware on your machine. So are you using
Speaker 2: Google Chrome?
Speaker 5: Yes?
Speaker 2: Okay, So I.
Speaker 8: Also acape that just said that everything's.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well yes, but you could still have malware, so
Speaker 1: you could have an extension.
Speaker 2: I want you to Are you on Chrome right now?
Speaker 8: Well, right now, it's tune up and it's going total
Speaker 8: defense and it's updating and installing.
Speaker 3: So I don't know.
Speaker 8: What that means.
Speaker 1: Okay, So on Chrome, there's something called Chrome Extensions, and
Speaker 1: a lot of times when you install stuff there could
Speaker 1: be some uh malware that gets installed and it tries
Speaker 1: to hijack your browser. And so what I want you
Speaker 1: to do kind of in the upper right hand corner
Speaker 1: of your browser, there's a little icon that looks like
Speaker 1: a puzzle piece, and if you or over it, it
Speaker 1: says extensions. If you click that, it will tell you
Speaker 1: all of the software that is installed into your web browser,
Speaker 1: not on your computer, but on your web browser. These
Speaker 1: are called extensions. They extend the functionality of Google Chrome.
Speaker 1: So I want you to go through that list and
Speaker 1: if you see something you don't recognize, I want you
Speaker 1: to get rid of it, and you can do that
Speaker 1: by clicking Manage Extensions at the bottom of that list.
Speaker 1: It will bring up all the extensions. You can either
Speaker 1: click remove, or you can just toggle the switch underneath
Speaker 1: one of those and it will turn off that extension.
Speaker 1: If you see one for like search helper or PC
Speaker 1: tune up or any of those things that you were
Speaker 1: just talking about, either remove it or turn it off,
Speaker 1: and you can turn off all of these extensions, restart
Speaker 1: Chrome and see if that fixes it. But it sounds
Speaker 1: like something is hijacking your browser if you ask me,
Speaker 1: because you should not get a message that says PC
Speaker 1: tune up when you're trying to go to a website.
Speaker 1: That sounds to me like something is inner accepting your
Speaker 1: web address. Now, if you're asking how to set a
Speaker 1: default browser, if you're having trouble and you want to
Speaker 1: try Microsoft Edge because originally it looked like that's what
Speaker 1: you were trying to use, you can go into your
Speaker 1: start menu, Settings Apps and then default apps on Windows
Speaker 1: and you can set Microsoft Edge or Chrome as you're default.
Speaker 1: If it's trying to change your default browser to something else,
Speaker 1: that's how you change it back.
Speaker 2: But I use.
Speaker 1: Outlook on Chrome all the time. Yes, they want to
Speaker 1: push you to using Edge because that's Microsoft and Microsoft.
Speaker 1: But at the end of the day, it does work,
Speaker 1: and it does work just fine. So check those extensions,
Speaker 1: make sure they're okay, and delete the ones that you
Speaker 1: don't know about, or you don't recognize, or you don't need.
Speaker 1: You're listening to rich on Tech coming up. I cannot
Speaker 1: believe it. I say this every week, but it's the
Speaker 1: end of the show. We've got the feedback segment. All
Speaker 1: of your questions and emails.
Speaker 2: That you've sent me throughout the week. I will get
Speaker 2: to them. Coming up next.
Speaker 1: You're listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich
Speaker 1: on Tech. Rich DeMuro here talking technology with you.
Speaker 2: What a show. It's been.
Speaker 1: So many great calls, so many great emails. Thank you
Speaker 1: for that. I do appreciate it. Every week I can
Speaker 1: tell just a few more of you decide to tune in,
Speaker 1: and believe me, it's not lost on me. The emails
Speaker 1: I get throughout the week, it's just incredible. And they're
Speaker 1: from everywhere and from all kinds of folks, people that
Speaker 1: love technology, people that are new to technology, and so
Speaker 1: I do read them all. I'm not always able to
Speaker 1: reply to everyone, so I will read some of them here,
Speaker 1: but I do try to reply as much as possible.
Speaker 1: Rich on tech dot tv is my website. If you
Speaker 1: hit the contact button, you can email me through there.
Speaker 1: I'm also on social media at rich on Tech. I'm
Speaker 1: on Instagram, Facebook x formerly Twitter threads sometimes. And also
Speaker 1: you can get this show as a podcast, so you
Speaker 1: can go to your favorite podcasting app search rich on
Speaker 1: Tech and you can find this show there.
Speaker 2: Let's get to the feedback. Let's see here. Let's see.
Speaker 1: Let's start with some questions. Tony says, I've had a
Speaker 1: heart attack and two strokes. Are the heart monitor features
Speaker 1: on the Apple eight Watch worth the investment?
Speaker 2: Thanks TJ. Yes, I think so.
Speaker 1: I'm not a doctor, and I don't know if you know,
Speaker 1: it's something that a doctor would recommend, but I can't
Speaker 1: see how it could hurt. There are features on the
Speaker 1: Apple Watch that will monitor for high heart rate, low
Speaker 1: heart rate, irregular heart rate, all kinds of stuff, and
Speaker 1: so if you fell, you know, if you had another
Speaker 1: stroke and fell and you were immobile, it could also
Speaker 1: call nine one one. So I think those are just
Speaker 1: some of the reasons why it might be a good
Speaker 1: idea to have that. So I'd say yes, it's probably
Speaker 1: worth the investment. Just keep in mind the new Apple
Speaker 1: stuff is coming out in September, so you may want
Speaker 1: to wait until then.
Speaker 2: Let's see.
Speaker 1: Janine says, I enjoy listening and listening and learning from you.
Speaker 2: Have a question.
Speaker 1: I'm an Android owner and I recently purchased tickets for
Speaker 1: an event. It was suggested that I save my tickets
Speaker 1: in Google wallets. You think I should do that or
Speaker 1: save the email in a folder. Either way, I'm confused
Speaker 1: on how to accomplish this technology refuses to be my friend.
Speaker 1: Please help, Janine. Yes, you should absolutely save your tickets
Speaker 1: to your wallet. This is for iPhone and Android, whether
Speaker 1: it's ticket Master or any other digital ticket. A lot
Speaker 1: of people asking me this question with the Taylor Swift
Speaker 1: concerts and the first time you're using.
Speaker 2: Tickets in a while.
Speaker 1: But yes, tickets nowadays are all digital and so nobody
Speaker 1: really has physical tickets anymore. And the tickets are all
Speaker 1: high tech, and so if you take a screenshot of
Speaker 1: the ticket. They may not accept that at the door.
Speaker 1: And so what you want to do is you really
Speaker 1: want to save these tickets to your Google Wallet or
Speaker 1: your Apple wallet. And the way you do that is
Speaker 1: when you open up the ticket, there should be a
Speaker 1: little icon on it that says saved my wallet, and
Speaker 1: that means that that ticket will work on your phone,
Speaker 1: whether you have Wi Fi cellular signal or not. It'll
Speaker 1: keep you from having to get stopped at the door.
Speaker 1: And so on Google Wallet, I would open up that
Speaker 1: app first before you try to save your tickets, just
Speaker 1: to make sure it's all set up and that way
Speaker 1: it will save. Once it's saved in there, it's kind
Speaker 1: of like an airline ticket. It just is in there
Speaker 1: and it will pop up on that day. It may
Speaker 1: remind you, but to get that ticket again, all you
Speaker 1: have to do is open up your wallet, whether it's
Speaker 1: Apple Wallet or Google Wallet, and you'll be able to
Speaker 1: retrieve those tickets at the event. On you you can
Speaker 1: search for the wallet app as well, so just search
Speaker 1: for wallet on either phone, Android or iPhone. They also
Speaker 1: have Samsung Wallet. I don't know if that stores tickets though,
Speaker 1: but it does store credit cards and things like that,
Speaker 1: and also get your credit card in there or your
Speaker 1: debit card for sure.
Speaker 2: Recommend that.
Speaker 1: Let's See Ron says, is there a free QR code
Speaker 1: generator that will make an iPhone contact entry in turn
Speaker 1: it into a QR code that the recipient can scan
Speaker 1: and add to their contacts. If someone asked for my
Speaker 1: contact info, I'd like to be able to have them
Speaker 1: scan a QR code and they'll have all my contact info.
Speaker 1: But I don't want to subscribe to a QR code
Speaker 1: generator app.
Speaker 2: Ron.
Speaker 1: I like the app called Let's See. It's called Hi Hello, Hi,
Speaker 1: Hello dot me, Hi Hello dot Me, and I set
Speaker 1: up my email or my QR code business card, wherever
Speaker 1: you want to call it. You put the information you
Speaker 1: want in there, and it generates a QR code and
Speaker 1: you can text this to someone. You can put it
Speaker 1: in your Apple wallet, you can have them scan the
Speaker 1: code on your phone, you can put it in your email,
Speaker 1: you can copy the link. There's a million ways to
Speaker 1: do it. The best part about it is that I've
Speaker 1: tested all of them and this is my favorite. And
Speaker 1: this one's also free, so you can use it for free. Yes,
Speaker 1: they have paid upgrades, but at the very core service.
Speaker 1: It's free. I was using this in South Korea when
Speaker 1: I was meeting new folks. Hey scan the QR code
Speaker 1: on my phone. I saved it on my screen and
Speaker 1: it's very easy. And they can download the contact card
Speaker 1: as well if they'd liked to, so they can add
Speaker 1: it directly to their phone. They can save it, they
Speaker 1: can add the VCF whatever you want. But Ron Hi
Speaker 1: hellot me is the one that I like.
Speaker 2: Let's see.
Speaker 1: David says, how can I stop unsolicited emails on my iPhone?
Speaker 1: Please help? I do not open them. I tried blocking them,
Speaker 1: they change the senders and they send more.
Speaker 2: This is a tough one, David.
Speaker 1: My best advice is to report them as spam without
Speaker 1: opening them, and to also report as spam. And then
Speaker 1: the other thing is don't open them. And then you
Speaker 1: might want to turn off the feature that automatically loads
Speaker 1: remote images. You can do that on both the iPhone
Speaker 1: and Gmail and most providers. All right, let's see what
Speaker 1: else here. Let's see. Neil says, Hey, Rich, I have
Speaker 1: two Garman dash cams. I find the iPhone app to
Speaker 1: be quite flaky. I've only been able to do firmware
Speaker 1: updates on them once. Because of this flakiness, I'm also
Speaker 1: frequently having difficulty connecting them to the cameras to look
Speaker 1: at a recent capture. I think the caller was spot on.
Speaker 1: Love your show, Neil. Yes, we had a caller say
Speaker 1: that they couldn't really figure out the garment dash cams,
Speaker 1: and I guess they were right there. They are flaky,
Speaker 1: Gina says, dear Rich, I say down with the naysayers.
Speaker 1: You're not the other guy. Your program is yours and
Speaker 1: I like it being bada boom power to the people
Speaker 1: or not regards Gina.
Speaker 2: Thanks Gina, and let's see here.
Speaker 1: Mario says, I just want you to say I'm not
Speaker 1: I was not angered by the Twitter rant on your
Speaker 1: radio program. Did not stop me from wanting to hear
Speaker 1: the rest of your broadcast. I'm glad it did not
Speaker 1: let me do so because I had understood that any
Speaker 1: personal any person is vulnerable, vulnerable to being.
Speaker 2: Upset, and that you had apologized.
Speaker 1: Keep a note that says be calm near your show
Speaker 1: for future broadcasts.
Speaker 2: Be calm.
Speaker 1: I will try to remain calm. I was very upset.
Speaker 1: I think I was jet lagged. I was really thinking
Speaker 1: about that and Finally, Erica says, Hey, Rich, I want
Speaker 1: to let you know that AOLO worked out for me
Speaker 1: in Guatemala. I got phone calls and WhatsApp. It worked great.
Speaker 1: Thanks for the info. Here's a couple of pictures from
Speaker 1: my trip. Thanks the kids and I in Guatemala. Thank you, Erica.
Speaker 1: I'm Rich Dmiro. Thanks so much for listening to the show.
Speaker 1: Check out the notes at richontech dot tv. You can
Speaker 1: leave your feedback at richontech dot tv, go to the
Speaker 1: contact page. Find me on social media at rich on tech.
Speaker 1: My name is rich Dimiro. There are so many ways
Speaker 1: you can spend your time with me. With spend your time.
Speaker 1: I do appreciate you spending it right here with me.
Speaker 1: Thanks to everyone who makes this show possible. I'll talk
Speaker 1: to you real soon.