Speaker 1: Google reinvents search with a brand new AI mode and
Speaker 1: it might change everything. A new app you need to
Speaker 1: download right now, and the fan favorite that's shutting down forever.
Speaker 1: And a simple charging cable that fixes one of tech's
Speaker 1: most annoying problems. Plus your tech questions answered. What's going on?
Speaker 1: I'm Richdmiro and this is Rich on Tech. This is
Speaker 1: the show where I talk about the tech stuff I
Speaker 1: think you should know about. It's also the place where
Speaker 1: I answer your questions about technology. I believe that tech
Speaker 1: should be interesting, useful, and fun. Let's open up those
Speaker 1: phone lines on this Memorial Day weekend at triple eight
Speaker 1: rich one O one.
Speaker 2: That's eight eight eight seven.
Speaker 1: Four to two four one zero one, triple eight rich
Speaker 1: one O one. Give me a call if you have
Speaker 1: a question about technology. Email is also open. Just go
Speaker 1: to richon Tech dot tv and hit contact. This week
Speaker 1: on the show, we've got some great guests. Dave Citron,
Speaker 1: senior director of product management for the Gemini app, that's
Speaker 1: their AI app at Google, is going to talk about
Speaker 1: how they're making the app even more intelligent with the
Speaker 1: Gemini Live mode. We'll talk to him about all that,
Speaker 1: and my former boss at KTLA TV. Jason Ball will
Speaker 1: join us to talk about life after TV and how
Speaker 1: he's using AI newsletters and off the tech, off the
Speaker 1: shelf tech to reinvent himself as a creator. He's got
Speaker 1: a new podcast that I listened to and it's very good.
Speaker 1: So we'll talk to Jason Ball a bit later. Well,
Speaker 1: I hope you're having a relaxing Memorial Day weekend. This
Speaker 1: week I did a road trip in honor of Memorial
Speaker 1: Day weekend.
Speaker 2: You know everyone's driving. I went up.
Speaker 1: To Google headquarters for their big IO event. This is
Speaker 1: the company's annual tech festival. Now it's mainly aimed at
Speaker 1: developers and partners and anyone that works with Google or
Speaker 1: makes something with products, but also the media is there
Speaker 1: and there's a big keynote that lets you know about
Speaker 1: all the cool things that Google has been working on. Now,
Speaker 1: typically hear about search, Android and all these new features,
Speaker 1: but this year it was basically one big AI showcase
Speaker 1: from start to finish. You know, Google has been sort
Speaker 1: of reinventing themselves with all this AI stuff, building it
Speaker 1: into just about everything you can think of. If you
Speaker 1: see that little sparkly icon it's in your Gmail, it's
Speaker 1: in docs. It's everywhere I always held at the Shoreline,
Speaker 1: Amphitheater and Mountain View. This is funny because it's like
Speaker 1: a concert venue that they transform into like what I
Speaker 1: call it, like a tech festival. It's almost like a
Speaker 1: carnival or circus atmosphere. So of course they have that
Speaker 1: major keynote and then there's demos of pretty much everything
Speaker 1: that you can think of that they talk about, so
Speaker 1: you get to go hands on with all of these tools.
Speaker 1: And of course it's Google, so they do things in
Speaker 1: like a fun way. There's like, you know, people driving
Speaker 1: around like refreshment card and you know they've got little
Speaker 1: snacks and things. I mean, it's really really cool. The
Speaker 1: thing I love the most is that once the keynote
Speaker 1: is over, you can sort of browse around and talk
Speaker 1: to all the engineers and designers who really build this stuff,
Speaker 1: whether it's the phones, whether it's the search tools, whether
Speaker 1: it's the robots, whatever it is. So you can just
Speaker 1: kind of get hands on with this stuff and ask
Speaker 1: them like, hey, why did you do this or why
Speaker 1: does this work this way? And you know I'll even
Speaker 1: tell them be like hey, do you ever think about
Speaker 1: this for Google Maps? Like all right, move on, but
Speaker 1: don't let this festival vibe fool you. Google is under
Speaker 1: a lot of pressure right now. And who is it
Speaker 1: from chat gpt? You didn't hear that name once at
Speaker 1: the Google event. But chat gbt has changed everything for Google,
Speaker 1: and now Google is forced to sort of, you know,
Speaker 1: reinvent itself like I said, and make itself an AI
Speaker 1: first company. They've got the technology, they had it for
Speaker 1: many years, but chat gbt forced their hand because why
Speaker 1: change a good thing? Google search for many years was
Speaker 1: the thing, and now they are forced to change it.
Speaker 1: And they did something really interesting and you can try
Speaker 1: this right now. It's called AI mode. I've talked about
Speaker 1: it on this show before, but back then it was
Speaker 1: just an experiment. Now it is becoming sort of the
Speaker 1: premiere way to search Google. This is an entirely new
Speaker 1: way to search. So it sort of blends that classic
Speaker 1: Google search that you know and you love with chat
Speaker 1: like responses. So the neat thing about this is that
Speaker 1: you can ask really complicated questions, stuff that you could
Speaker 1: never ask before to that standard search box, and instead
Speaker 1: of getting a bunch of links back, you will get
Speaker 1: the answer to your question back. Summarize with all kinds
Speaker 1: of relevant information. And Google was very clear to say, look,
Speaker 1: we've got the whole web indexed, plus we have real
Speaker 1: time information, plus we have maps, information, place information. We've
Speaker 1: got it all and now we're using this new AI
Speaker 1: mode to bring it all together. So, for example, before
Speaker 1: you might have asked to Google family friendly weekend trips
Speaker 1: from LA and everything was sort of like a keyword.
Speaker 1: Right now you might say family friendly weekend trips from
Speaker 1: LA two hours away, good for kids ages ten and thirteen,
Speaker 1: And it will use all that information to sort through
Speaker 1: the web and find the answer for you and summarize it.
Speaker 1: And I love that they added this new little feature
Speaker 1: whereas it's searching, it will tell you how many websites
Speaker 1: it's searching through to come up with the answer. I
Speaker 1: just love that little so you get the understanding that, look,
Speaker 1: we're doing this search for you. But the big question
Speaker 1: is because this is so good, because the answers are
Speaker 1: so succinct, and really you don't need to do much
Speaker 1: more after that, even though you can't ask a follow
Speaker 1: up question, how does Google make money on this?
Speaker 2: The old model was.
Speaker 1: All about clicking links at the top that were paid,
Speaker 1: and you might click a few of those make some
Speaker 1: money for Google, and then you might find your answer.
Speaker 1: This new style is cleaner, it's faster, but less monetized,
Speaker 1: and we don't even know how they're going to monetize this.
Speaker 1: So from a user's perspective, it's awesome, but from Google's perspective,
Speaker 1: it's like, uh, we're gonna lose a lot of money
Speaker 1: on this. But if you want to try this out,
Speaker 1: Google dot com slash AI mode, or when you just
Speaker 1: go to the standard Google page, now you should see
Speaker 1: a tab that says AI mode or a button that
Speaker 1: says AI mode. Definitely check it out. Now. The other
Speaker 1: big thing a universal AI assistant, So they're really pushing
Speaker 1: this Gemini as a universal AI assistant that can help
Speaker 1: you with everything. And Gemini Live is sort of the
Speaker 1: live embodiment of AI with a voice that you can
Speaker 1: talk to. And not only can you talk to it,
Speaker 1: you've been able to do that for a while, but
Speaker 1: now you can share your camera or screen with it.
Speaker 1: So think about this. You can point your phone at
Speaker 1: a landmark, your outfit, or even a broken device like
Speaker 1: a car part that you don't even know how to
Speaker 1: describe what that part is, and say, hey, what is
Speaker 1: this and how do I fix it? And the AI
Speaker 1: will take a look through your camera and give you
Speaker 1: that information. So you can be at a museum with
Speaker 1: a piece of art and say, hey, tell me about
Speaker 1: the background of this artist, or just explain this portrait
Speaker 1: to me. I mean, this is really interesting stuff, stuff
Speaker 1: you might have been able to do before with your phone,
Speaker 1: but now it is much more streamlined and just much
Speaker 1: more interactive. So this Gemini Live feature used to be
Speaker 1: Android only, but now it is on the iPhone as well.
Speaker 1: So if you want to try this, and I think
Speaker 1: you should open up the Gemini app on your phone,
Speaker 1: tap the little button next to the microphone and then
Speaker 1: you'll see it'll say you want to share your camera
Speaker 1: or your screen. So the feature is rolling out like
Speaker 1: every other tech feature I talk about. So it may
Speaker 1: not be on your phone immediately. Don't send me an
Speaker 1: angry email, but that's really going to change the way
Speaker 1: that you interact with AI. Let's see what else did
Speaker 1: I did a couple pieces of hardware up there. I
Speaker 1: tried on two new things. A pair of augmented reality glasses.
Speaker 1: These are a prototype. Google was very clear about that,
Speaker 1: and then a new headset that they're coming out with
Speaker 1: from Samsung. So the glasses were pretty incredible. They look
Speaker 1: like regular glasses, but they've got a built in microphone.
Speaker 1: They've got it built in speaker, built in camera, and
Speaker 1: a built in screen, which is the really cool part.
Speaker 1: So this little tiny screen on one of the lenses
Speaker 1: let you see stuff. So they connect to your phone,
Speaker 1: and again the idea is, now you can ditch your
Speaker 1: phone that painting. I was saying that you can aim
Speaker 1: your phone at. Now you can just look at that
Speaker 1: painting and say, hey, tell me about this painting. You
Speaker 1: can look at turn by turned directions that are projected
Speaker 1: into your real worldview. So I saw notifications, I saw
Speaker 1: the weather, and it was really clear. I was very
Speaker 1: very impressed with the clarity. Even though these are just prototypes.
Speaker 1: But they already said, look, they're coming out with these
Speaker 1: things from WARB Parker and a couple of other I
Speaker 1: think gentle Monster was the company. Those are very popular
Speaker 1: glasses apparently, but they're gonna you know, Google's apparently not
Speaker 1: gonna make these themselves, even though eventually they probably will,
Speaker 1: but they're partnering with companies to say, hey, here's all
Speaker 1: the tools you build the glasses. You know how to
Speaker 1: build the glasses, we know the technology, so I think
Speaker 1: that's going to be really really cool. We know how
Speaker 1: popular the ray band metas are. Those do not have
Speaker 1: a screen, although a new version may, but the fact
Speaker 1: that these have a screen make them really really useful,
Speaker 1: and hopefully the price is right. I think they're going
Speaker 1: to open up a world of accessibility features too. Then
Speaker 1: you've got this Samsung Project Mohan. This is their upcoming
Speaker 1: XR headset Extended Reality. So it's kind of like a lighter,
Speaker 1: cheaper take on the Apple Vision Pro. It's nothing we
Speaker 1: haven't seen before, but this is Google and Samsung's version.
Speaker 1: They've been talking about this thing forever. But I put
Speaker 1: it on. It's like a helmet, you know. It's just
Speaker 1: like the Apple Vision Pro. It's got What's neat about
Speaker 1: it that I thought was interesting is it has the
Speaker 1: Google apps built in, so Google Maps. I tried like
Speaker 1: just kind of it was so weird. You're standing over
Speaker 1: like the pyramids in Egypt, and then you would like
Speaker 1: kind of just almost like swim through them and like
Speaker 1: see like you can move around and just look through everything.
Speaker 1: So it's like bringing together like all these three DViews
Speaker 1: that Google has been collecting YouTube videos.
Speaker 2: I watch one of those. And then the coolest thing
Speaker 2: is that you can.
Speaker 1: Browse through your Google Photos collection, which is where I
Speaker 1: have all my photos, So that would be really fun.
Speaker 2: So it's all cool, but it's not totally new.
Speaker 1: If you've seen what Apple has been doing, this doing
Speaker 1: with this, but with Google apps built in and potentially
Speaker 1: hopefully it's a lower price tag, this could be you know,
Speaker 1: a good option for folks. And then there was more.
Speaker 1: They talked about real time language translation and Google Meet
Speaker 1: and also through the glasses. They tried demoing it on
Speaker 1: the stage live. It kind of worked, it kind of didn't,
Speaker 1: but you know, these are the things that will work
Speaker 1: in the future. Then they also showed a new tool
Speaker 1: where you can virtually try on clothes as you shop
Speaker 1: on the internet, which we'll see we'll see if people
Speaker 1: actually use that. And then they also have a new
Speaker 1: three D video call system that they're going to launch
Speaker 1: with businesses, sort of like a three D version of Zoom.
Speaker 1: And then this was the kicker. They have a new
Speaker 1: premium AI tier. You can now subscribe to all of
Speaker 1: Google's AI features for two hundred and fifty dollars a month.
Speaker 1: You really got to make some money on that stuff
Speaker 1: to justify two hundred and fifty dollars a month. But overall,
Speaker 1: my takeaway is that Google said, look, we are not
Speaker 1: fooling around here. We are putting AI into everything, and
Speaker 1: we're gonna make AI a part of your every day
Speaker 1: life no matter what. That's the future, all right, coming
Speaker 1: up your turn your calls eight eight eight rich one
Speaker 1: O one eight eight eight seven four to two four
Speaker 1: one zero one. Plus the beloved app that is shutting
Speaker 1: down forever. This is Rich on Tech. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: Rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you,
Speaker 1: talking technology at Triple eight Rich one O one eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: Give me a call if you have a question about technology.
Speaker 1: Operators are standing by. Actually, just Kim So gets you on.
Speaker 1: Kim's here on phones, Bobo's there on the board. Yes,
Speaker 1: we are running a live show this Memorial Day weekend,
Speaker 1: so thanks for tuning in. Name is Rich Demiro and
Speaker 1: the website for the show rich on Tech dot tv. There.
Speaker 1: I've got a fresh newsletter, so if you're not subscribed,
Speaker 1: definitely do that. This is a kind of a big
Speaker 1: deal for me because this is an app that I use,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure a lot of other people used it too.
Speaker 2: Pocket is shutting down.
Speaker 1: This is a popular read it later app that is
Speaker 1: owned by Mozilla, the same company behind Firefox. They said,
Speaker 1: that is it. It's the end of the line. We're
Speaker 1: focusing on other things and not this. I don't know why.
Speaker 1: I mean, this didn't seem like it was a lot
Speaker 1: to maintain, but I guess it was. But this is
Speaker 1: one of those apps that lets you bookmark an article
Speaker 1: and save it for later. Now, for me, personally, I
Speaker 1: love this. The idea was to read these articles at
Speaker 1: some point, but I inevitably never would. But then I
Speaker 1: got it into my system of like, hey, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm going to try opening up this app when I'm
Speaker 1: bored on my phone instead of scrolling, and so I
Speaker 1: put out on my home screen as of like a
Speaker 1: couple weeks ago, and now it's going away. So if
Speaker 1: you are using this app, you can export your saved
Speaker 1: data until October eighth this year, but after that everything's
Speaker 1: going to be deleted. If you have a premium subscription,
Speaker 1: that will automatically be canceled. And then there is a
Speaker 1: rumor from tech Crunch. They report that dig founder Kevin
Speaker 1: Rose has offered to buy Pocket from Mozilla, so there
Speaker 1: is a chance it could be saved, but we'll see.
Speaker 1: And the thing I liked about Pocket versus all the
Speaker 1: other read it later apps is they had this uncanny
Speaker 1: way of uncovering the article no matter what, even if
Speaker 1: it was paywalled, if you put it in Pocket, somehow
Speaker 1: you were able to read it. The other ones don't
Speaker 1: really do that. I don't know what magic they had
Speaker 1: behind the scenes, but that was the best part about it,
Speaker 1: So that's shutting down. If you're looking for an alternative.
Speaker 1: I think the best alternative is probably an app called
Speaker 1: insta Paper, and that was like one of the original
Speaker 1: read it Later apps, but it's only on iOS for
Speaker 1: a very long time. Now it's available across all platforms,
Speaker 1: but insta Paper is probably your best bet. The other
Speaker 1: one is some people like raindrop dot io that's more
Speaker 1: of a bookmarking site, but you can use it to
Speaker 1: save articles. Read Wise Reader is also very popular, but
Speaker 1: the problem with that one is that they want you
Speaker 1: to pay, so you're not really going to get a
Speaker 1: free level there. As far as I can tell, and
Speaker 1: then Safari and Chrome do have some built in reading
Speaker 1: list tools. I don't like them. I mean, if you're
Speaker 1: all Apple, sure, the Safari one might work, but the
Speaker 1: Chrome one, I don't know. It's just not as good,
Speaker 1: like it's not dedicated. So anyway, Pocket is shutting down,
Speaker 1: you might want to look into an alternative before that
Speaker 1: goes away. Google, on the flip side, has launched a
Speaker 1: really useful app called Notebook LM. So Notebook LM I
Speaker 1: talked about it on this show before. It's basically an
Speaker 1: AI notebook that you can populate with your own data
Speaker 1: and information and then ask questions about that. But the
Speaker 1: real killer feature are these audio overviews that they do.
Speaker 1: So as soon as anyone sends me a PDF or
Speaker 1: a handbook or anything reviewers guide, I drop it into
Speaker 1: Notebook LM and I get this audio overview, which is
Speaker 1: basically a podcast about that topic. And so it can
Speaker 1: really help you understand anything PDFs, web pages, YouTube videos,
Speaker 1: whatever you want. Great for students, researchers, or anyone who
Speaker 1: really wants to dig into all this information that they
Speaker 1: have to sort through. And they have this really cool
Speaker 1: feature on the app where you can join the conversation
Speaker 1: to ask questions about the topic. So it's almost like
Speaker 1: just asking the podcasters like calling in. So I think
Speaker 1: that's really cool. It's a great app. It's available for
Speaker 1: iOS and Android. They also have offline playback, which is
Speaker 1: really cool. So for me, I was downloading all these
Speaker 1: podcasts and then putting it into my podcast app. Now,
Speaker 1: if you have this app installed, you can just save
Speaker 1: it and listen on this sub way. Uh, let's go
Speaker 1: to Brandon in Corona. Brandon, you're on.
Speaker 2: With Rich.
Speaker 3: Cat Rich.
Speaker 4: Do you think getting into coding now is absolute? Oh?
Speaker 1: Good question. You mean with all the AI coding tools
Speaker 1: out there. Yeah, I mean it's a great question. I
Speaker 1: think the idea is still that you have to have
Speaker 1: a base knowledge of coding, right, I mean, to understand
Speaker 1: what these tools are doing. So I think that maybe
Speaker 1: the level of knowledge that you need might be a
Speaker 1: little bit less, and you know, but I think at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, it's kind of like anything,
Speaker 1: you still need that base knowledge, even if AI is
Speaker 1: helping you do it. So let's say you were writing,
Speaker 1: you would still want to be a writer and understand
Speaker 1: good writing, and then maybe you're using AI to polish
Speaker 1: your writing. Same thing with coding. You still need a
Speaker 1: base knowledge of coding and then use the app to
Speaker 1: help you code. And I think that that's really what's
Speaker 1: happening now. I think there's always going to be a
Speaker 1: need for someone that understands the basics of this stuff
Speaker 1: and also, uh, even further than that. So I don't
Speaker 1: think it's a it's a bad thing to understand that.
Speaker 1: But yes, coding has been really changed by AI because
Speaker 1: these tools can literally you can describe what you want
Speaker 1: and they can create it. Eighty eight rich one O
Speaker 1: one eight eight eight seven four to two four one
Speaker 1: zero one. This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you,
Speaker 1: talking technology at Triple eight rich one O one eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 5: Let's go to.
Speaker 2: Benny in Burbank. Benny, you're on with Rich.
Speaker 6: Oh okay, Hi Rich, Hi, Yes, my day, Benny. And
Speaker 6: I'm blind and do wonder if if you knew if
Speaker 6: you know anything a ball any dyviye for me to
Speaker 6: be able to read newspaper or any coming to my apartment.
Speaker 1: Oh, you mean like something where you can put the
Speaker 1: paper underneath and it like reads it to you.
Speaker 2: Yes, please, Oh okay.
Speaker 1: I don't know off the top of my head the
Speaker 1: name of the device, but I've seen them. I went
Speaker 1: to the Season Accessibility Expo and they usually have these
Speaker 1: devices that you can, you know, put there and read.
Speaker 2: But here's the deal.
Speaker 1: If you have a smartphone, you could probably do this
Speaker 1: with AI if you just want to use like the
Speaker 1: Gemini I was talking about earlier, or chat GBT, if
Speaker 1: they can tap into your phone, you can just use
Speaker 1: that to sort of aim it at the paper and
Speaker 1: it will read it for you. So that's one aspect.
Speaker 1: But there are document readers that I saw there. I'd
Speaker 1: have to I need to look and see like kind
Speaker 1: of what the names of those were. But it looks
Speaker 1: like a almost like a thing where like the paper
Speaker 1: goes underneath and then the cameras at the top and
Speaker 1: it would just look down at it and read it
Speaker 1: to you. So I'm going to look into that and
Speaker 1: I'll figure that out. But the other thing is I
Speaker 1: think definitely check out the you know, the AI apps
Speaker 1: out there. The other thing is eleven Labs has an
Speaker 1: app and it basically will read anything aloud to you.
Speaker 1: And if you take a picture of something a document.
Speaker 1: It can read that out loud to you. So that
Speaker 1: is completely free and it wouldn't cost you anything. I
Speaker 1: think if you, Benny, if you look at these things
Speaker 1: I'm talking about, these accessibility gadgets, they're probably going to
Speaker 1: be pretty expensive. So I think that something like this
Speaker 1: would be a lot easier to use. So the eleven Labs,
Speaker 1: let me just confirm. I'm going to open it up
Speaker 1: on my phone. Here. This is like a startup and
Speaker 1: AI startup and okay, so I'm opening the app and okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: so literally I just pressed the plus sign at the
Speaker 1: bottom of the app. It says scanned text and I'm
Speaker 1: gonna just scan some text here and let's see if
Speaker 1: it works. Okay, So it says eleven Labs would like
Speaker 1: to access the camera. Okay, so I just did that.
Speaker 1: I just scanned the text, and now a little button
Speaker 1: that says listen, pops up. Let's see what happens. And
Speaker 1: so it's importing the content and.
Speaker 5: Monto.
Speaker 7: Two sub guests this week Henria Dave Citron, Senior director
Speaker 7: of product Management for the Gemini App at Google.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's pretty incredible. So I literally just scanned my
Speaker 1: paper that has my guests this week, which I printed
Speaker 1: out and it it's not perfect, but it's pretty good. So, Benny,
Speaker 1: I would say, just download that app if you have
Speaker 1: a smartphone, which you know, I'm sure you do, I
Speaker 1: would just download that app eleven Reader, and it's completely free.
Speaker 1: It's from eleven Labs elevenreader dot io. I mean, you
Speaker 1: could just scan on newspaper article and have it read
Speaker 1: to you for free. Why why spend any money to
Speaker 1: do that? And this has a whole bunch of different voices. Oh,
Speaker 1: it'll even create up an article. Oh interesting if they
Speaker 1: call it jen FM. So that is basically their version
Speaker 1: of what I was talking about with Google with notebook LM.
Speaker 1: And here's all the voices you've got. Oh Burt Reynolds.
Speaker 1: Look at that for the good old American life, for
Speaker 1: the money, for the wow. So you could have Burt
Speaker 1: Reynolds read you your stuff, Benny, that's cool.
Speaker 2: Uh okay, So anyway, that is the way to do it.
Speaker 1: Don't worry about all the other stuff. I think that's
Speaker 1: the way to do it, free and very very accessible.
Speaker 2: Thanks for the call.
Speaker 1: Appreciated eighty eight rich one on one eight eight eight
Speaker 1: seven four to two four, one zero one. This looks
Speaker 1: like a quick one. Here Andrea in Seami Valley. Andrea,
Speaker 1: you're on with Rich.
Speaker 8: Hi, how are you.
Speaker 2: I'm doing fantastic.
Speaker 1: I love that I hear myself in the background, which
Speaker 1: means you're listening.
Speaker 2: That's okay, what's up? I?
Speaker 8: You were talking about an app where you could upload
Speaker 8: a document like a PDF and then it'll just basically
Speaker 8: summarize it back to you and read like an audio. Yes, well,
Speaker 8: I didn't catch the name of that app.
Speaker 1: Note book LM. Note Book LM. It is free. It's
Speaker 1: on iOS and Android, you know, like all apps that
Speaker 1: I talk about, You know, every every app is like
Speaker 1: almost like a freemium thing where like you'll get you know,
Speaker 1: basic things for free, but if you really want to
Speaker 1: use it for a lot more, you have to sometimes
Speaker 1: pay or have some cloud storage on Google. So it's
Speaker 1: tough because I subscribe to Google. So I know there
Speaker 1: are some delineations on that app, like where you you know,
Speaker 1: you might higher usage limits and things like that, but
Speaker 1: the basic functionality is free, and so you can just
Speaker 1: download that app and it's it's just brand new. What
Speaker 1: are you trying to make information out of? Like a
Speaker 1: little podcast out of.
Speaker 8: I'm not even trying to do a podcast. I'm a
Speaker 8: licensed mortgage loan officer and so we have to do
Speaker 8: continuing your education, and I really like to know the law.
Speaker 8: So in my forty five minutes to an hour and
Speaker 8: a half drive every day, i'd like to be listening
Speaker 8: to it just so it could be playing in the background.
Speaker 8: So that's what I'm trying to trying to get at. Yes,
Speaker 8: I didn't want Yeah, I didn't want to use it
Speaker 8: as a podcast.
Speaker 2: Well, so what it'll do is it'll take that law.
Speaker 1: You can put the law into this notebook LM and
Speaker 1: then it will create its own mini podcast out of that.
Speaker 1: So it's not like but it uses the information in
Speaker 1: that law. So for instance, this Take It Down Act,
Speaker 1: which they just signed into law a couple this week,
Speaker 1: I believe it was. I took that whole bill and
Speaker 1: I put it into the notebook LM app and then
Speaker 1: I made a podcast out of it, and it literally
Speaker 1: went through the entire law and just explain every aspect
Speaker 1: about it. And so it's like these two hosts that
Speaker 1: are AI generated voices. They sound very real, but it is.
Speaker 1: It's incredible. It's probably the best way to learn that
Speaker 1: I've ever seen in my life because it's the way
Speaker 1: that people like to learn, which is just through audio
Speaker 1: and listening. And so I have now everything that I
Speaker 1: want to learn that's like kind of dense material, you know,
Speaker 1: like do I really want to read all this?
Speaker 2: You can put it in there and listen to it.
Speaker 1: And the thing is, since it's powered by just the
Speaker 1: stuff that you're putting in there, there's not a lot
Speaker 1: of hallucination. Like the hosts don't really make stuff up.
Speaker 1: They try to grab just from what you put in there,
Speaker 1: so it should stay factual.
Speaker 8: That's that's awesome, That's that's incredible. I appreciate the info,
Speaker 8: so thank you so much. And we just started. I
Speaker 8: just started listening to the AM channel and I appreciate
Speaker 8: all them.
Speaker 1: So that you're sharing, well, thank you. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: I will continue to share because that's what I love
Speaker 1: to do. I love those light bulb moments where you're
Speaker 1: sitting and they're like, wait a second, that sounds like
Speaker 1: something I could use. Now, I will say, Andrea, just
Speaker 1: be a little patient with the app because it is
Speaker 1: brand new, and I think Google got it out pretty
Speaker 1: quickly because people wanted this so badly, but I have
Speaker 1: noticed there. You know, there could be some quirks with it,
Speaker 1: Like you know, when you press play on the audio overview,
Speaker 1: it does take a couple seconds and sometimes it may
Speaker 1: not work. But it's They've already had one update to
Speaker 1: this app, so uh it is. It is happening quickly.
Speaker 1: Thanks for the call. Eighty to eight rich one oh
Speaker 1: one eight eight eight seven four to two four one
Speaker 1: zero one.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 1: Queen Ugly Duckling from Bronx, New York City writes in
Speaker 1: I'm aware it's twenty twenty five, but in your opinion,
Speaker 1: are there any chances a tech company will bring back
Speaker 1: a quirty keyboard smartphone with all the modern bells and whistles.
Speaker 1: I really missed the T Mobile sidekick. Nothing on the
Speaker 1: market today, interests may Queen Ugly Duckling, You're not alone.
Speaker 1: I think some people do miss the tactile feel of
Speaker 1: a real keyboard. There is a product that came out
Speaker 1: probably been around for a year or two now called
Speaker 1: Clicks c l I Cks clicks and it is basically
Speaker 1: a physical keyboard that you attached to a smartphone. So
Speaker 1: it started with the iPhone. You would slip it in
Speaker 1: there and it almost looks like a BlackBerry keyboard. They
Speaker 1: would never say that, obviously, but I can. But they
Speaker 1: also have now models for Samsung and Motorola, so it's
Speaker 1: not like a sidekick per se. You know that was
Speaker 1: the one who you flipped up. You know that thing
Speaker 1: was so hot, that phone. But that phone you said,
Speaker 1: modern smartphone. That was like, you know, proprietary software that
Speaker 1: this is. You know, you can attach this to a
Speaker 1: modern smartphone like an iPhone or a Samsung and get
Speaker 1: all the benefit of that phone with this little quirdy keyboard,
Speaker 1: So it's not you know, a phone that has it.
Speaker 1: And yes, your phone's going to be a little bit
Speaker 1: bigger because of this. But it's about one hundred, one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty dollars and the company says they've sold
Speaker 1: over one hundred thousand of them, so clearly people like this.
Speaker 1: We're actually going to have one of the founders of
Speaker 1: the company on the show so soon, so we'll talk
Speaker 1: to Clicks. Let's see what day, Oh here we go, uh, Saturday,
Speaker 1: June seventh, So the weekend of June seventh, we will
Speaker 1: have uh, let's see the CEO of Clicks on the show.
Speaker 2: Eighty eight Rich one on one.
Speaker 1: Remember everything I mentioned is linked up on the website.
Speaker 1: So if you hear something I talk about and you
Speaker 1: want to get a link richon tech dot TV. This
Speaker 1: is episode one two. We'll be right back after this.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging
Speaker 1: out with you, talking technology at Triple eight Rich one
Speaker 1: O one eight eight eight seven four to two four
Speaker 1: one zero one.
Speaker 2: Uh, it is Memorial Day weekend.
Speaker 1: Uh. You know it's interesting we say Happy Memorial Day, right,
Speaker 1: And I looked that up because I you know, I
Speaker 1: write my newsletter. I'm like, is it is it appropriate
Speaker 1: to say Happy Memorial Day? Because sometimes you forget, like
Speaker 1: the true reason behind these holidays and Memorial Day is
Speaker 1: to honor, you know, the men and women who died
Speaker 1: while serving, you know, in the armed forces.
Speaker 2: And so it's a solemn day.
Speaker 1: But of course America we like to celebrate, you know,
Speaker 1: and so you know, it's a barbecue, it's this, it's that.
Speaker 1: So if I say Happy Memorial Day, obviously I am
Speaker 1: thinking of all of the folks who have you know,
Speaker 1: made sacrifices for this country and uh, to get us
Speaker 1: to where we are today. So that is not lost
Speaker 1: on me for any holiday. Fourth of July Memorial Day.
Speaker 1: There are so many out there that we I think,
Speaker 1: we work so hard that you know, these times that
Speaker 1: we have off we just sort of enjoy. But there
Speaker 1: are people out there that you know, have family members
Speaker 1: and you think people that are much more connected to
Speaker 1: this than some other people. So, uh, I am thinking
Speaker 1: about that today. Eighty eight Rich one oh one is
Speaker 1: the phone number eight eight eight seven four two four
Speaker 1: one zero one if you want to hop on the
Speaker 1: phone ask a question. Uh, let's see, let's go to
Speaker 1: Diana in Orange County. She dialed up, Diana, you're on
Speaker 1: with Rich.
Speaker 9: Thank you. Rich. Should be a quick question here. I
Speaker 9: was subjected to identity thefts and I'm in the process
Speaker 9: of recovering. Among the recommendations I received was to only
Speaker 9: use my cell phone or an iPad when I'm making
Speaker 9: purchases and accessing any of my financial accounts, not to
Speaker 9: use my laptop, and I wanted to know they were
Speaker 9: told me that it's more secure, and I wanted to
Speaker 9: know if you agree with that or if you have
Speaker 9: another recommendation.
Speaker 2: Who's telling you this?
Speaker 9: Tell me that, oh, the computer place where I took
Speaker 9: my laptop to be cleaned.
Speaker 2: So did you have malware on your laptop?
Speaker 9: I don't. Well, yeah, they showed me three or four
Speaker 9: different sites that they that the criminals loaded onto my laptop.
Speaker 1: Okay, and did you so did you fall for like
Speaker 1: some sort of tech support scam where they said, hey,
Speaker 1: we need to install it?
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 1: All right, So there there is a bit of truth
Speaker 1: to what they're saying. But if your computer does not
Speaker 1: have malware or a key logger on it, you'll be okay.
Speaker 1: But in general, I think what they're trying to say
Speaker 1: is that because your smartphone, did you have an iPhone?
Speaker 2: Or it's okay?
Speaker 1: So I mean, in general, you know, smartphones are less
Speaker 1: susceptible to spywear than a desktop computer. And so I
Speaker 1: think what they're trying to say is you're probably safer
Speaker 1: if you're on your phone because chances are nobody can
Speaker 1: see what you're doing or intercept your information. And so
Speaker 1: especially on the iPad, I mean, the the iOS operating
Speaker 1: system is pretty rock solid when it comes to what
Speaker 1: people can do or how they can spire or monitor
Speaker 1: anything you're doing, Like it's almost like non existent unless
Speaker 1: you are you know, a head of state, or you
Speaker 1: are sort of targeted in attack that they install malware
Speaker 1: on your phone, but most regular people are not. With
Speaker 1: that said, I think, you know, common sense kind of
Speaker 1: prevails in this case.
Speaker 2: So I have a rule with.
Speaker 1: My debit card versus my credit card, So and then
Speaker 1: bank account, you got to be really really careful with
Speaker 1: giving access to that, like that's almost like non existent
Speaker 1: because you don't want to do that. But when it
Speaker 1: comes to credit card versus debit card, if you're using
Speaker 1: your credit card to shop online, I mean number one,
Speaker 1: if someone gets your credit card number, it's not the
Speaker 1: end of the world. You're gonna it's gonna be a headache.
Speaker 1: But you call your credit card company, you say, hey,
Speaker 1: this was fraud. I'm not paying and they say yeah,
Speaker 1: and they just stop the charges. Now if it's your
Speaker 1: debit card, it's a little more annoying because that's connected
Speaker 1: directly to your bank account and so the money's gonna
Speaker 1: come out. Now you've got to deal with this headache
Speaker 1: of getting in touch with your bank and you got
Speaker 1: to kind of fight them on it because you know
Speaker 1: it's real money that has already gone out somewhere, so
Speaker 1: it is it could be a little trick here to
Speaker 1: recover that. So my rule of thumb in life and
Speaker 1: online is, if my card is leaving my hand, I
Speaker 1: use a credit card. If my card is staying in
Speaker 1: my hand, I'm using my debit card. So if you
Speaker 1: think about the internet, my card is pretty much leaving
Speaker 1: my hand. So I'm going to use my credit card.
Speaker 1: And I have shopped online for years. I've done my
Speaker 1: online banking for years. The main thing we have to
Speaker 1: be concerned about is other humans tricking us.
Speaker 2: This idea of.
Speaker 1: You know, just wandering around the web and something stealing
Speaker 1: your information, is it happens, but it's it's mostly people
Speaker 1: being tricked into giving up their information in some way.
Speaker 1: You're on a site that might not be legitimate because
Speaker 1: you find a great deal, but I think that that's
Speaker 1: really what we're up against the most. So long story short, Diana,
Speaker 1: I think at the end of the day, if you
Speaker 1: are practicing good hygiene when it comes to protecting your
Speaker 1: personal information online, I think you should be okay. Now,
Speaker 1: the other thing I would say is if you are
Speaker 1: out and about, if you are traveling, if you're doing anything,
Speaker 1: if you're going to be accessing your bank account, information,
Speaker 1: like if you're logging into your bank or your credit
Speaker 1: card or any sort of private financial stuff. You always
Speaker 1: want to be on a secure connection, so not a
Speaker 1: public Wi Fi connection. And if you're out and about
Speaker 1: with your phone, make sure you're on your cellular connection,
Speaker 1: not the Wi Fi at the hotel. Now, Wi Fi
Speaker 1: is pretty secure, but there are still more ways that
Speaker 1: people can get into that than the cellular connection. So
Speaker 1: whenever I'm checking my bank, whenever I'm doing this stuff,
Speaker 1: I usually switch to my cellular connection, and that is
Speaker 1: very private. It's very secure, and you should be okay
Speaker 1: with that.
Speaker 2: Does that help?
Speaker 9: Is that true for an iPad as well?
Speaker 2: iPad?
Speaker 1: If you're look, if you're on the Wi Fi on
Speaker 1: the iPad at home, you're fine. If you're on the
Speaker 1: Wi Fi at the hotel, you know, you're probably fine
Speaker 1: if you're using your bank account app. But you just
Speaker 1: have to be a little bit more cautious because there
Speaker 1: could what's called a man in the middle attack where
Speaker 1: someone has physically connected something to that router or the
Speaker 1: hotel Wi Fi that they can intercept your information. Now,
Speaker 1: most of the time it's encrypted anyway, but the reality
Speaker 1: is I'm just giving you the very broad strokes here
Speaker 1: of when you're you're truly secure and when you're less secure.
Speaker 1: People are checking their bank accounts on these on these
Speaker 1: public Wi Fi connections all day every day. Is everyone
Speaker 1: getting hacked? No, but there could be a bigger chance
Speaker 1: of that if you're doing that. So again, if you
Speaker 1: want to be truly secure, truly safe, I think number
Speaker 1: one is not falling victim to any sort of trickery
Speaker 1: that we are approached with on a daily basis. And
Speaker 1: if you if you follow me on Instagram, Diana, you
Speaker 1: know that I am posting all of these scams that
Speaker 1: people send me on a daily basis, and.
Speaker 2: They are brutal.
Speaker 1: I mean I just posted this one a couple days
Speaker 1: ago where it's like Amazon, and it's an email that says, hey,
Speaker 1: you have to update your payment and method to continue Prime.
Speaker 1: This email is so perfect, there's not a spelling error,
Speaker 1: the graphics are perfect, and then when you actually click,
Speaker 1: it's incredibly detailed and perfect down to.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when it's asking for your social and your mother's
Speaker 1: made a name and your phone number and your date
Speaker 1: of birth, you should be on high alert.
Speaker 2: Don't ever give that information.
Speaker 1: But then when you go to the if you made
Speaker 1: it to the Verify payment page, this website is so good,
Speaker 1: this fake website trying to steal your information that when
Speaker 1: you put in your credit card number, if it's it
Speaker 1: validates it instantly, and if it's not a valid number,
Speaker 1: you just type in some random stuff it says invalid,
Speaker 1: and then when you type in a number that works,
Speaker 1: it even changes the icon to the current logo of
Speaker 1: AMX Visa Masterpart eighty to eight rich one oh one.
Speaker 2: This is what we're up against. Welcome back to rich
Speaker 2: on Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you on this Memorial
Speaker 1: Day weekend, talking technology at Triple eight rich one oh
Speaker 1: one eight eight eight seven four to two for one
Speaker 1: zero one. The website for the show is rich on
Speaker 1: Tech dot tv. This is episode one twenty two. If
Speaker 1: you want notes to anything I mentioned, it is there
Speaker 1: on the website. Also, be sure to check out my
Speaker 1: latest newsletter. You can see it on the website. Sign
Speaker 1: up for free put your email address in. Every weekend
Speaker 1: I send a new newsletter. It is free and packed
Speaker 1: with information. A lot of the stuff that becomes part
Speaker 1: of this show is first in the newsletter, so the
Speaker 1: people that know get a little heads up. This hour,
Speaker 1: we've got Dave Citron. He is with Google. He's going
Speaker 1: to talk about all the new features of Gemini, their
Speaker 1: AI app. If you haven't downloaded it, it's worth a try.
Speaker 1: Even if you use chat GBT. This is Google's version
Speaker 1: of that, and they continue to evolve it. It's interesting
Speaker 1: all these AI companies. Every week they say they have
Speaker 1: a new model. The model is sort of like the
Speaker 1: the programming of the like the knowledge base of the AI.
Speaker 1: And every week they're like, our model has gotten so
Speaker 1: much better. It can do this and this and this
Speaker 1: and that. And it's like it's like, okay, we get it.
Speaker 1: You got a new model. It's like, just tell me
Speaker 1: when it can do this, tell me when it can
Speaker 1: do that. And these things are good, but they're not perfect.
Speaker 1: They're not flawless. They still make mistakes, and they're still
Speaker 1: a work in progress. Let's put it that way.
Speaker 2: Let's go to Shane in Colorado. Shane, what's up?
Speaker 10: Hi?
Speaker 4: Yeah, longtime fan, Thank you. Going back to dapoor. Oh wow, hey,
Speaker 4: I really enjoy watching my screen saver on the computer
Speaker 4: in my kitchen, seeing pictures of friends, family and uh.
Speaker 4: And it comes from a big file, big photo file,
Speaker 4: and quite often I'll see a picture of it's oh gosh,
Speaker 4: I want to put that picture out or send that
Speaker 4: picture to somebody, And of course the minute you click
Speaker 4: on the photo with the screen saver shutsdown. This is
Speaker 4: on Windows, the built in screensaver, and I'm wondering, is
Speaker 4: there either a third party screensaver or is there a
Speaker 4: way to get Windows to tell me where I can
Speaker 4: find that particular file.
Speaker 1: I don't think Windows will show you where that file is.
Speaker 1: It's interesting because if you look at what Microsoft does
Speaker 1: with the bing in the background, like if you set
Speaker 1: your background to like the bang photo of the day
Speaker 1: or whatever, it gives you, like you know where you
Speaker 1: can click and get more information about it. I don't
Speaker 1: see that functionality with the built in screen saver. So
Speaker 1: I think your best bet is to probably get a
Speaker 1: third party screen saver that will show the file name.
Speaker 1: They're all in the same folder. I'm guessing right right, Yes,
Speaker 1: you just basically need like a program that will show,
Speaker 1: like embed the file name sort of in like the
Speaker 1: lower right hand corner or something.
Speaker 2: I know that on my.
Speaker 1: TV use I use the Google Photos screensaver, and even
Speaker 1: on my Google Home like the little devices I have,
Speaker 1: and it puts like the the day and the location
Speaker 1: of the photo, so it gives me like an idea
Speaker 1: of when that photo was taken and where.
Speaker 4: Okay, so there's a Google Photos screensaver.
Speaker 1: Well not not that I know of for Windows. Well,
Speaker 1: now that I'm saying that that'd be, that'd be pretty
Speaker 1: pretty handy. Actually, I'm looking up some screensaver third party
Speaker 1: screensaver software. Let's see. There is one called g photoshow
Speaker 1: dot com. Gphotoshow dot com and it says that it
Speaker 1: will show the exif data of your picture, so customizable
Speaker 1: captions with EXIF support. So I'm guessing that you can
Speaker 1: have the file name display on that picture. So I'd
Speaker 1: be that would be good. I would I would check
Speaker 1: that one out. Let's see here, let's see here screensaver creator.
Speaker 1: Let's see Uh yeah, so let's see file. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: looks like you can customize what it's going to show
Speaker 1: on the on the screen, so that would probably be
Speaker 1: the best way to do it. Yeah, display displays information
Speaker 1: about the images, so there you go. Uh, let's see
Speaker 1: if does this have a cost. So by now it
Speaker 1: looks like you can download it try it out for free,
Speaker 1: and then the license is sixteen euros, so I mean
Speaker 1: for sixteen bucks. If you like this stuff, you know
Speaker 1: it might be worth it. The other thing.
Speaker 4: That's for Screensaver Creator or G photo.
Speaker 1: Show gphotoshow dot com. So okay, now, the other thing
Speaker 1: I would do is let me just see one thing,
Speaker 1: because there's usually a way to uh, I go to
Speaker 1: this website called alternative two dot net. Have you heard
Speaker 1: of that one? And this one will tell you all
Speaker 1: the alternatives for the screen saver or for that software.
Speaker 1: Let's see, there is one called wallpaper Slideshow LT. I
Speaker 1: don't know how old that is though. So what I
Speaker 1: do is, whenever I'm kind of sizing up some new
Speaker 1: software that I might Oh it's funny, it's the same company.
Speaker 2: Okay, so same thing.
Speaker 1: So I think that's the best bet at this point
Speaker 1: is check out gphotoshow dot com.
Speaker 2: That is probably gonna do it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Or I mean, look, if you want kind of a
Speaker 1: free method of this, Shane, you can just use a
Speaker 1: website that watermarks the photo and every time you want
Speaker 1: to add a photo to that folder that you're making
Speaker 1: with all of your screensaver photos, and maybe you already
Speaker 1: have like one hundred of the men there and you don't
Speaker 1: want to do this. But for the moving forward pictures,
Speaker 1: you can run it through that website to put a
Speaker 1: little watermark on it with the name of the photo
Speaker 1: in the lower right hand corner, like the file name,
Speaker 1: and then that's that's a cheap and free way of
Speaker 1: doing this. So that's another option, and you can use
Speaker 1: like Canva dot com to do that for free. I'm
Speaker 1: sure there are plenty of photo watermarking websites that can
Speaker 1: do that as well. So those are some options.
Speaker 4: Alrighty, well great, this has been dragging me crazy for
Speaker 4: many years now.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, you you would think they would just
Speaker 1: put a little a little clickable area in the lower
Speaker 1: right hand corner that would take you right to that
Speaker 1: to that photo file, right, I mean, that makes a
Speaker 1: lot of sense.
Speaker 4: So you know what my workaround has been is to
Speaker 4: grab my phone and take a photo of the photo, yeah,
Speaker 4: which isn't very clean and you know, you lose a lot,
Speaker 4: but that's been my only out. So yeah, so this
Speaker 4: will definitely be good.
Speaker 1: Well, it sounds like you've got your homework and I
Speaker 1: expect a full report on what works thanks for the call, Shane,
Speaker 1: appreciate it. Eighty eight rich one oh one eight eight
Speaker 1: eight seven four to two four one zero one. We
Speaker 1: have a new law that bans deep fakes and non
Speaker 1: consensual images if you're sharing these. This is the Take
Speaker 1: It Down Act ban's non consensual sharing of intimate images,
Speaker 1: including AI generated deep fakes. Violators can face fines, jail time,
Speaker 1: and mandatory restitution. The other interesting thing about is that
Speaker 1: the law requires online platforms if you shared these, you know,
Speaker 1: like a Twitter or x I guess, to remove this
Speaker 1: content within forty eight hours if it's reported, and there
Speaker 1: are stricter penalties if this involves minors. The FTC is
Speaker 1: tasked with enforcing this law. The service providers, the online
Speaker 1: platforms have until twenty twenty six to come up with
Speaker 1: a way to let people report these things and also
Speaker 1: a system to help take them down. Now, of course,
Speaker 1: this is not without its criticism. Some people worry about
Speaker 1: the impact on free speech, privacy, and also encrypted messages
Speaker 1: because people find a way around this stuff. And then
Speaker 1: there's concerns from digital rights groups over how they're going
Speaker 1: to enforce this and also abuse of this. So is
Speaker 1: this automatic? Is it? But apparently from everything I read,
Speaker 1: this was got a lot of support from both sides.
Speaker 1: I think people knew we needed something like this because
Speaker 1: this is becoming such a problem in schools especially. I
Speaker 1: mean for adults it's a problem, but for for minors.
Speaker 1: These kids they're sharing these photos, sometimes not even realizing
Speaker 1: that you shouldn't be doing this, and a lot of
Speaker 1: times they don't realize the implications of doing something to
Speaker 1: this extent. So this is going to be interesting because
Speaker 1: federal crime is pretty serious, and the fact that these
Speaker 1: online platforms have to come up with a way to
Speaker 1: remove this content, that's that's interesting too. So that's something
Speaker 1: to follow. The other big news this week, and a
Speaker 1: lighter kind of turn of events, Johnny Ive is joining
Speaker 1: open Ai in a six billion dollar deal. This is wild.
Speaker 1: So Johnny Ive, if you're not familiar with the name,
Speaker 1: a legendary Apple designer. He was at Apple for like
Speaker 1: thirty years and he was credited with designing the iPhone
Speaker 1: and so many of the products, the look and feel
Speaker 1: of the products that Apple came out with over the
Speaker 1: past couple decades. And he left a couple of years
Speaker 1: ago start his own sort of hardware and design company.
Speaker 1: Open Eye is opening opening open Ai is acquiring his
Speaker 1: hardware startup, which is called Io in that deal that's
Speaker 1: worth six billion dollars. He still has his design company
Speaker 1: thing it's called love Form. But this is just wild
Speaker 1: and Sam Altman and Johnny Ive they came out this video.
Speaker 1: It's like a love letter. It's like they're just gushing
Speaker 1: over each other. It's really funny if you watch it, it's
Speaker 1: very over the top. They meet at this coffee place
Speaker 1: in San Francisco and they just chat about how much
Speaker 1: they love each other, how excited they are for this.
Speaker 1: So what they're planning on launching is a new AI
Speaker 1: device or devices that will use chat ebt, and they're
Speaker 1: saying it's probably not a phone, although it could be
Speaker 1: you never know, maybe not glasses, but something that's going
Speaker 1: to be compact and elegant. And this is all rumor
Speaker 1: and speculation at this point because they have not said
Speaker 1: what they are going to launch, but they said it's
Speaker 1: going to be some sort of accessory. And we've seen
Speaker 1: some of these AIS estuaries, like the pins and the
Speaker 1: little Rabbit device with a tiny screen. None of them
Speaker 1: have worked so far. Right now, the phone still seems
Speaker 1: to be the best form factor. But I think glasses
Speaker 1: could be a really interesting one. Some sort of tiny
Speaker 1: device that you talk to, but you don't always want
Speaker 1: to talk to a device. Maybe it could be earbuds.
Speaker 1: Who knows, but we'll see. But Johnny, I've hitting quite
Speaker 1: the jackpot. I mean, this guy's already rich. I mean,
Speaker 1: let's be honest. You worked at Apple for thirty years.
Speaker 1: If you designed the iPhone, you're you're doing okay to
Speaker 1: begin with. Now you just sold a company for six
Speaker 1: billion dollars. Probably ordered a double espresso at that place.
Speaker 1: The bar that they went to, the little coffee shop
Speaker 1: was something was a Copola place. It's like cafe. I
Speaker 1: think it was called zop zotrope z o e t
Speaker 1: r o p e zoa trope And that refers to
Speaker 1: the old school way they did film, like that thing
Speaker 1: that would spin around. You look at the film in
Speaker 1: there like anyway, it's all, oh yeah, it's a Francis
Speaker 1: Ford Coppola's cafe. There you go eighty eight rich one
Speaker 1: on one eighty eight seven four to two four one
Speaker 1: zero one. You got a question about technology, give me
Speaker 1: a call. Phone lines are open. We'll be reckoning welcome
Speaker 1: back to rich on Tech Rich DeMuro here hanging out
Speaker 1: with you talking technology triple eight Rich one O one
Speaker 1: eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: If you don't want to hop on the phone, you
Speaker 1: can hop online. The website is rich on Tech dot TV.
Speaker 1: Once you're there, just hit contact. You can send me
Speaker 1: an email that way. Yes, it does make its way
Speaker 1: to my inbox. And yes, the email address is feedback
Speaker 1: not feedback. If you listen to the show, you know
Speaker 1: why it's called feedback. That's a combination of feedback and
Speaker 1: mail bag.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I came up with it one of the early shows
Speaker 1: and it just sort of stuck. Uh, Lisa wrote in
Speaker 1: I caught the tail end of your last show where
Speaker 1: you mentioned a coinbase scam. Unfortunately, my elderly brother fell
Speaker 1: for it and lost thousands of dollars. I didn't get
Speaker 1: to write down the details. Could you share what people
Speaker 1: should do if they've been scammed? So, yeah, they came
Speaker 1: out this week. So last week they said they were
Speaker 1: they were hit with a Basically, hackers tricked their customer
Speaker 1: service representatives into handing over information or actually bribed them.
Speaker 1: I guess not tricked and bribed them, and then they
Speaker 1: used that information to access customer data and trick the
Speaker 1: customers into sort of sending them money. And so, I'm
Speaker 1: sorry this happened to your brother. It's very unfortunate. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess this week they came out and said that
Speaker 1: the breach affected sixty nine, four hundred and sixty one
Speaker 1: customers at least. So now that doesn't say that every
Speaker 1: one of them got tricked, but that means that's how
Speaker 1: much customer data was taken in this heist. And this
Speaker 1: started December twenty sixth, twenty twenty four. It was not
Speaker 1: detected until May of this year. The hackers made off
Speaker 1: of names, email addresses, phone numbers, addresses, government IDs, account balances,
Speaker 1: transaction data, and some information about the accounts, but not
Speaker 1: all of it was like clear. And then the hackers
Speaker 1: went to coinbase and said, look, we did this pas
Speaker 1: us twenty million dollars and this will all go away.
Speaker 1: And Coinbase said, nah, we're not going to do that.
Speaker 1: We're going to actually make good for these customers if
Speaker 1: they get in touch with us, we're gonna well, we're
Speaker 1: gonna get in touch with them. Number one. So to
Speaker 1: answer your question Coinbase sent out an email directly to
Speaker 1: the customers that were affected by this, So your brother
Speaker 1: should have gotten one if he did lose money. Now,
Speaker 1: if he didn't, I would still get in touch with Coinbase,
Speaker 1: and they've got a blog post on their website coinbase
Speaker 1: dot com to explain what to do. But the blog
Speaker 1: post is like protecting our customers and standing up to extortionists.
Speaker 1: That's what it is titled. So I would have him
Speaker 1: do that. But the main thing they're concerned about is that,
Speaker 1: you know, people with a lot of money in these
Speaker 1: accounts could be targeted because now they know how much
Speaker 1: people have in these Coinbase accounts, or at least some
Speaker 1: of them. So scary stuff, I mean, really, Again, the
Speaker 1: thing that I talk about a lot in this show
Speaker 1: is we have this idea of hackers like working to
Speaker 1: get our information twenty four to seven, right, like actively
Speaker 1: trying to like get into our computers, get into our phones.
Speaker 1: And yes, that does happen, but most often, more often
Speaker 1: than not for the average person, it's not necessarily that
Speaker 1: it's really being tricked into giving up your information, or
Speaker 1: they have some of your information and they somehow trick
Speaker 1: you into giving up the rest so because there's so
Speaker 1: much information about us floating around online, these hackers can
Speaker 1: build sort of a profile of us. So they may
Speaker 1: have a password but not the website that it works for,
Speaker 1: and they may just try it on some major websites.
Speaker 1: Or they may have, you know, a key piece of
Speaker 1: information and they try that somewhere else. Or they may
Speaker 1: contact you directly because they have your phone number and
Speaker 1: they know you have a Bank of America account, and
Speaker 1: they may even have the account number, and they trick
Speaker 1: you into giving up more information about how to access
Speaker 1: that account. So realistically, when people email me and say, hey,
Speaker 1: I've been hacked. My Facebook was hacked, my Instagram was hacked,
Speaker 1: most of the time you're not necessarily hacked. You're being
Speaker 1: tricked into giving up that information or giving up access
Speaker 1: to that account. So be aware of the ways that
Speaker 1: these hackers do this and you can really just be
Speaker 1: better off. Let's see, speaking of being hacked, Gerald writes
Speaker 1: in and see this stuff happens all the time. If
Speaker 1: someone accidentally gives a scammer remote access to their computer,
Speaker 1: something that always happens, does that scammer now have access
Speaker 1: to all the saved passwords and a password manager I
Speaker 1: had the person change their email and banking passwords, should
Speaker 1: they also change the master password and regenerate all their
Speaker 1: saved passwords? Great question. If the scammer had full access
Speaker 1: to their system and the password manager was unlocked, it
Speaker 1: is possible that these scam artists could have downloaded all
Speaker 1: of those passwords and the safe logins in that password manager,
Speaker 1: And if they did this quickly and without them knowing, yes,
Speaker 1: this could have happened. So what I would do is yes,
Speaker 1: I would definitely change the master password on that password
Speaker 1: manager immediately. I'd turn on two factor authentication if you can.
Speaker 1: I would go into the password manager security settings and
Speaker 1: log out of all other devices, so if they somehow
Speaker 1: logged in from another device with that information, they can
Speaker 1: no longer access that. But I would definitely update the
Speaker 1: passwords on any high risk accounts. It sounds like you
Speaker 1: already did that with the email and banking. I would
Speaker 1: continue to do that, especially for social media. It's probably
Speaker 1: better to be overly cautious here than to not. But yeah,
Speaker 1: you have to be very careful with these password managers.
Speaker 1: Don't leave them where they stay unlocked forever, like you
Speaker 1: want them to lock out after ten fifteen minutes. It's
Speaker 1: a pain that you have to keep unlocking them for
Speaker 1: a reason. And also I don't recommend mixing your password
Speaker 1: manager with your two factor authentication code generator. A lot
Speaker 1: of these password managers can also generate two factor authentication codes.
Speaker 1: Problem with that they get into your password manager, they've
Speaker 1: got your code as well, so use a secondary app
Speaker 1: for that. All right, Coming up, we're gonna talk Dave
Speaker 1: Citron of Google about new features in Gemini AI.
Speaker 2: This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich On Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology at
Speaker 1: Triple eight Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight
Speaker 1: seven four to two four one zero one. Hope you
Speaker 1: are having a fantastic day. I know I am. Just
Speaker 1: being here with you is exciting to me, so thanks
Speaker 1: for listening. Earlier I was talking about Google Io. By
Speaker 1: the way, we're gonna get back to the phone lines
Speaker 1: in just a moment. I've got a great interview. We
Speaker 1: were talking about Google Io earlier. Obviously, Google's putting a
Speaker 1: lot of emphasis on Gemini, which is their aim, and
Speaker 1: live brings it to iPhone and Android where you can
Speaker 1: show your camera to AI and also share your screen.
Speaker 1: They're bringing it into Chrome so it can summarize web pages.
Speaker 1: And then obviously they're wearables Android XR the glasses they
Speaker 1: showed off, and also a headset. So let's hear from
Speaker 1: Dave Citron. He's with Google. He's going to talk all
Speaker 1: about the new features in Gemini, their AI assistant. So
Speaker 1: let's talk Gemini. This is Google's big AI product. What
Speaker 1: is Gemini? I mean, Gemini is many things.
Speaker 11: First and foremost, it's a set of foundation models, and
Speaker 11: we're really excited about our latest two point five pro model.
Speaker 11: And then you probably heard today, but we announced a
Speaker 11: kind of a high end version of that model that
Speaker 11: we call you'd think that'll be available to our new
Speaker 11: Ultra plan that basically is at the top of the
Speaker 11: game with respect to benchmarks across kind of all measures.
Speaker 11: Jemini also represents an app, and so that's the that
Speaker 11: I'm on. We work on the Gemini app, which is
Speaker 11: really Google's vision of what the future of assistance looks
Speaker 11: like with respect to how AI can be a truly great, personal,
Speaker 11: proactive and powerful personal assistant.
Speaker 1: When it comes to Gemini, what do you think people
Speaker 1: need to know about what that is? Exactly? Yeah, what
Speaker 1: we do for you. Yeah, it's a great question.
Speaker 11: I mean, ultimately, we are really excited about Gemini as
Speaker 11: your personal AI assistant. We want Gemini app to be
Speaker 11: the best assistant that's personal, proactive and powerful and really
Speaker 11: the best place to try Google's latest and greatest AI models.
Speaker 1: So if I haven't tried Gemini yet, what can I
Speaker 1: do with it? Yeah?
Speaker 11: So, I mean a lot of people use it just
Speaker 11: to really understand the world a little bit better, whether
Speaker 11: that's asking civil questions about things. We just launched a
Speaker 11: new amazing feature where you can bring video.
Speaker 1: Sharing into Gemini Live.
Speaker 11: So Gemini Live is the ability for you to actually
Speaker 11: talk to Gemini like you would another human and it
Speaker 11: really sounds human like.
Speaker 1: It's really interactive and quite delightful.
Speaker 11: So we see a lot of our users just using
Speaker 11: it to chat about really nothing in particular, or maybe
Speaker 11: they're trying to ask about a topic or you know,
Speaker 11: deep dive on something, maybe role play for an interview.
Speaker 11: We just brought this new video sharing capability to that future.
Speaker 11: So while you're having a conversation with Gemini, you can
Speaker 11: turn on your camera and just point to anything and
Speaker 11: have a conversation about what you're seeing. It's almost like
Speaker 11: giving vision to Gemini as your assistant, and it's really
Speaker 11: really exciting. One example, just the other day, I was
Speaker 11: using it to play a board game with some family
Speaker 11: and they really stuck on the instructions.
Speaker 1: There was like five pages of instructions.
Speaker 11: No one wanted to read it, so I just turned
Speaker 11: it on camera mode in Gemini Live, showed it the instructions,
Speaker 11: and then basically to set it on the table and
Speaker 11: we all use it as kind of a you know,
Speaker 11: let's talk to an expert on how to play this game.
Speaker 11: I can even pick it up and show it the
Speaker 11: board during the game and it would help me kind
Speaker 11: of understand what I should do next and answer questions
Speaker 11: that I didn't even know as someone who played the
Speaker 11: game before. And that's a great example of an everyday
Speaker 11: use case where you can bring Gemini with this through
Speaker 11: camera future and really have it help you kind of
Speaker 11: assist through everyday types of interactions. And we're rolling it
Speaker 11: out now to everyone on both Android and iOS, so
Speaker 11: if you haven't tried to definitely recommend it.
Speaker 1: So it's almost like tapping into like this smart wealth
Speaker 1: of knowledge almost embodied in like a humanistic voice.
Speaker 11: Absolutely, absolutely, Yeah, And you know, because you're interacting with
Speaker 11: it with voice, you know, it's almost like it can
Speaker 11: and here, and then now with the camera future, it's
Speaker 11: like it can see.
Speaker 1: So, you know, it really is the closest we've ever.
Speaker 11: Had in terms of a Google product of being like
Speaker 11: a real assistant.
Speaker 1: So you're in this every day, you're you know, leading
Speaker 1: the product on this and understanding it. What do you
Speaker 1: think the average person should sort of start with when
Speaker 1: it comes to Gemini.
Speaker 11: Yeah, I think some of our most favorable interactions where
Speaker 11: you know, our users are telling us they love this product.
Speaker 1: Is that deeper understanding about the world.
Speaker 11: You know, Gemini can tap into Google's you know, trillions
Speaker 11: of data points about everything that's going on in the web,
Speaker 11: all of our maps data, you know, and all of
Speaker 11: the data that you have in Gmail and Drive. You know,
Speaker 11: with the user's permission, you can give all of that
Speaker 11: access to Gemini as well. So once it has access
Speaker 11: to all that information, you can now ask it any
Speaker 11: sort of questions.
Speaker 1: It never, you know, gets gets bored.
Speaker 11: It never you know, criticizes you for asking, you know,
Speaker 11: questions that it might find basic. You can do, you know,
Speaker 11: any sort of questioning you want for as long as
Speaker 11: you want. In fact, Gemini live that voice interaction I
Speaker 11: was talking about. What we're seeing is users who when
Speaker 11: they switch into that voice mode have five times longer
Speaker 11: conversations because it's such a great way to actually like
Speaker 11: probe about a topic, whether it's you know, something that's
Speaker 11: going on in the world or something that's happening in
Speaker 11: your Gmail. So I think that's maybe the best place
Speaker 11: to start, and then from there start experimenting with these
Speaker 11: you know, media generation features like Imagine four where you
Speaker 11: can create these stunning images, whether it's just for fun
Speaker 11: or that you want to share with others.
Speaker 1: There's so much information and it feels like this person
Speaker 1: is so genius. It almost to me feels like cheating
Speaker 1: on like the world, where you're like tapping into this
Speaker 1: knowledge base that you never really were able to do before.
Speaker 1: Did you feel that way with like the board game?
Speaker 1: Or should we feel guilty leaning on this resource that
Speaker 1: feels so like superhuman? It's a really good question.
Speaker 11: I mean, in general, you know, Google for the last
Speaker 11: you know, ten plus years, has been incorporating AI into
Speaker 11: its products, and you know, all these AI innovations even
Speaker 11: before Jenai and large language models were about bringing these
Speaker 11: superpowers to users at scale. You know, I think if
Speaker 11: any one of our products stagnated and stopped innovating with
Speaker 11: new futures, you know, you would never hear about these
Speaker 11: products anymore. But the reason why we have so many
Speaker 11: fans of Google products is because we're constantly delivering these
Speaker 11: types of innovations. I think large language models maybe are
Speaker 11: such a big breakthrough that it can feel like cheating,
Speaker 11: you know, in a way, it's just like it's always been.
Speaker 11: It's delivering these kind of breakthrough algorithms inside of our
Speaker 11: products in a magic way that just makes your life easier.
Speaker 11: It solves problems that you know, you didn't think technology
Speaker 11: could solve for you, but now can. So I don't
Speaker 11: think anyone should feel guilty. I think they should feel
Speaker 11: excited about having these superpowers.
Speaker 1: And what's fun about this for you? What do you
Speaker 1: like about all this stuff?
Speaker 11: I mean, I've always been in the product space because
Speaker 11: I like taking the cutting edge technology and delivering it
Speaker 11: in really magical, easy to use products and product experiences.
Speaker 11: And I think, as we were just describing, large language
Speaker 11: models are maybe one of the biggest breakthroughs we've had
Speaker 11: as an industry for you know, maybe in my career
Speaker 11: and so being at the forefront of trying to harness
Speaker 11: that technology and deliver it in a way that's easy
Speaker 11: to use. Again, not to continue talking about Gemini live
Speaker 11: again and again, but it's maybe one of it.
Speaker 1: It's a big thing. I mean, it's a paradigm shift
Speaker 1: in our world. So how we you know, I aimed
Speaker 1: it at something the other day and like explain the
Speaker 1: whole thing. I mean it's just like, wait, what, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't even know about that thing.
Speaker 11: Yeah, absolutely, I mean it's basically like having a real
Speaker 11: assistant and giving everyone an assistant again who has ears
Speaker 11: and eyes and can actually help you with your world.
Speaker 11: I mean we didn't even talk about the screen sharing
Speaker 11: capability on the phone, but you know, any kind of
Speaker 11: troubleshooting issue you're having on the phone where you're stuck
Speaker 11: and maybe you might need to go ask a tech
Speaker 11: friend how to fix something, now you can just open
Speaker 11: Gemini share your screen and get help yourself in a
Speaker 11: very conversational kind of intuitive way. Again, you can talk
Speaker 11: to it with any form of expertise. You know, you
Speaker 11: can be a novice. It's something or a deep expert
Speaker 11: and it will match you. So it's pretty incredible.
Speaker 1: So we're sharing our screen, we're sharing it looking at
Speaker 1: is there. How is Google protecting user privacy throughout all
Speaker 1: of this? Yeah, yeah, it's.
Speaker 11: A super important question and something we take seriously across
Speaker 11: you know, all of the ways we're integrating Gemini across
Speaker 11: all of Google products, not just the Gemini app, but
Speaker 11: in particular, you know, we kind of respect all of
Speaker 11: Google's existing zero trust cloud security paradigms. In fact, Google
Speaker 11: has been industry leading in terms of how it thinks
Speaker 11: about a zero trust posture to all the data that
Speaker 11: we store in Google's cloud, and Gemini is no exception
Speaker 11: to that. In terms of the types of data that
Speaker 11: you share with Gemini, all of that is within your control.
Speaker 1: So by default nothing is shared.
Speaker 11: And actually if you want to share things like your Gmail,
Speaker 11: you have to turn it on and you can turn
Speaker 11: it off at any time. And you know all the
Speaker 11: different data sets that you can share, Google Calendar, Google Keep,
Speaker 11: et cetera. Each of those have controls so that you
Speaker 11: feel in control the entire time. You can also at
Speaker 11: any time delete any of the conversation history you have
Speaker 11: and even turn conversation history off completely if you want
Speaker 11: a complete kind of no history type of experience. So
Speaker 11: you know, we're always innovating in ways of making the
Speaker 11: user feel in control of the entire experience.
Speaker 1: All right, Once again, that was Dave Citron at Google
Speaker 1: talking about Gemini, the company's AI assistant. So they are
Speaker 1: really building something that is quite incredible with the idea
Speaker 1: that you can use your phone screen or your camera
Speaker 1: to show the AI what you need help with. And
Speaker 1: again just think about the implications of that. So the
Speaker 1: other day, I was trying to program my sprinkler system.
Speaker 1: I literally just took a picture of the sprinkler and said, hey,
Speaker 1: can you tell me how to program this? And I
Speaker 1: gave it the zones around my house and it did
Speaker 1: it down to the zones, I mean, step by step
Speaker 1: without me doing anything. That used to require going online,
Speaker 1: finding a PDF the instructions reading them. Now I just
Speaker 1: got the step by step instructions from AI. So I've
Speaker 1: got Gemini live on my phone right here. And so
Speaker 1: what's interesting is that, I mean the accessibility idea behind
Speaker 1: this is incredible, Like what this opens up for people
Speaker 1: that may be a vision impaired or something like that.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm just showing it right now. I've got it,
Speaker 1: and I'm showing it something. Hey, Gemini, what am I
Speaker 1: showing you right now?
Speaker 7: You're showing me a teal highlighter marker? Are you looking
Speaker 7: to highlights some thing on your screen?
Speaker 1: I mean, so I just showed it a highlighter. It
Speaker 1: told me what color it is. And then what do
Speaker 1: you know about this protein bar that I'm showing you?
Speaker 1: Does it look like it's good for me?
Speaker 7: Okay, that's the Misfits caramel Fudge protein bar. It's plant based,
Speaker 7: gluten free and has fifteen grams of protein. Is there
Speaker 7: anything specific you're looking for in a protein bar?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean just this kind of information that it's
Speaker 1: like you're unlocking. It's like imagine just having the world's
Speaker 1: smartest friend at your disposal at all times. And the
Speaker 1: fact that they made this for free is also really impressive.
Speaker 2: So again, that's the Gemini app.
Speaker 1: iOS Android, download it, try it, just play with it.
Speaker 1: Eighty eight rich one O one will be back after this.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging
Speaker 1: out with you talking technology at triple eight rich one
Speaker 1: oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four
Speaker 1: one zero one. You know when I'm doing the finger dancing,
Speaker 1: I like the song Bobo just shakes his head. Finger dancing,
Speaker 1: you know, you just put your fingers in the air.
Speaker 1: You kind of dance with your fingers off rhythm, off rhythm. Well,
Speaker 1: nobody ever said I had rhythm.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're right, no.
Speaker 1: One did ever hear in the history, no one has
Speaker 1: ever said that let your fingers do the walking. Do
Speaker 1: you remember that Boboju does that ring a bell? It
Speaker 1: sounds bou It was the Yellow Pages back in the day. Oh,
Speaker 1: you're right, because the picture was a hand walking over
Speaker 1: the air.
Speaker 2: Yes, and like you let your fingers do the walking.
Speaker 1: And I know when I said the finger dancing, I
Speaker 1: was like, wait a second, finger dancing must be related
Speaker 1: to finger walking.
Speaker 2: Really.
Speaker 1: Okay, your name is Richard from now.
Speaker 2: You're not rich anymore. You're richer only my mom calls
Speaker 2: me Richard.
Speaker 1: You're acting your age now, rich ol Uh, let's go
Speaker 1: to Gina in Florida.
Speaker 2: Gina, you're on with rich Okay.
Speaker 9: My question is that.
Speaker 10: The particular one that you mentioned about downloading elevenreader dot ten.
Speaker 10: I found that that particular ability to download as well
Speaker 10: as so many others that I attempt to download come.
Speaker 6: With a catch.
Speaker 10: Yeah, that is that you have to agree to their
Speaker 10: affiliates marketing to you. In other words, you have to degree,
Speaker 10: excuse me, agree to all of the terms and all
Speaker 10: of their extra.
Speaker 1: Oh no, and Gina, Gina, can you move to a
Speaker 1: spot in your house where you can your phone works better?
Speaker 2: I can't. You're breaking up? No, I can't.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, so you're talking about agreeing to affiliate. I'm confused.
Speaker 1: I'm looking at the eleven labs and I'm not sure
Speaker 1: what you mean by that. So if you're yeah, okay.
Speaker 10: Right now, yeah, okay, okay, what do you mean downloading
Speaker 10: just like any other downloads that are free, they want
Speaker 10: to agree to the terms and conditions which allows them
Speaker 10: to market your your site to their affiliates, which causes
Speaker 10: ad intermittently for like thirty seconds. It's disruptive and is
Speaker 10: there any way to avoid that? Because if you can't
Speaker 10: move on unless you agree to their terms, which creates
Speaker 10: their affiliates contacting you.
Speaker 2: Well, here's the deal.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, if you're downloading a free app, you
Speaker 1: know if you don't agree to the terms and conditions,
Speaker 1: you can't use the app. Now, when it comes to
Speaker 1: marketing to you, I'm not sure. Like, if you're talking
Speaker 1: about the app that we mentioned, which is the eleven
Speaker 1: Labs the eleven Reader, was there something that said we're
Speaker 1: going to sell your information to someone.
Speaker 10: Well, whenever you see the terms and agreements that you
Speaker 10: agree that our affiliates, we don't even know who their
Speaker 10: affiliates are. It doesn't delineate whose affiliates are so they
Speaker 10: can telemarket, need to email, phone call.
Speaker 1: Well okay, so I just I just signed up for
Speaker 1: this app fresh and it didn't ask me to do
Speaker 1: any of that. I didn't have to agree to anything.
Speaker 1: So I'm not sure. Maybe you got the wrong app.
Speaker 1: I mean I do think that there are now look,
Speaker 1: I mean what you're saying is with terms and conditions. Yes,
Speaker 1: that is a very common thing on apps. And if
Speaker 1: you're getting something for free, you know, the adage is
Speaker 1: you are the product, right like your data is the product.
Speaker 1: So I'm not disputing the fact that if you're signing
Speaker 1: up for stuff with your email, yes there is a
Speaker 1: chance that you're you will be marketed to. And if
Speaker 1: you're giving your phone number, you're giving your address. These
Speaker 1: companies use that data to then remarket to you, and yes,
Speaker 1: that is true. Now the app I specifically mentioned does not.
Speaker 1: I didn't see any sort of terms and conditions you
Speaker 1: had to scroll through that said they're going to sell
Speaker 1: to you. So I don't maybe you got the wrong
Speaker 1: app on that, because there are and this happens all
Speaker 1: the time. You search for an app that I recommend
Speaker 1: on a show or on my website or on Instagram,
Speaker 1: you search for it. There's apps that sound similar or
Speaker 1: look similar, and these apps do this on purpose and
Speaker 1: they turn out to be totally bogus, and you got
Speaker 1: to be very careful with that. So I do want
Speaker 1: to give that warning. But you know, to your bigger question, Gina,
Speaker 1: I would say Number one, mask your email address whenever possible.
Speaker 1: So if you you know, if you have something like Google,
Speaker 1: you can use a plus sign and then some any
Speaker 1: code you want after that and it'll make a one
Speaker 1: time or a unique email address, or use something like
Speaker 1: ten minute mail to come up with a unique email.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean, the thing is, it's almost like
Speaker 1: an agreement with these companies. Nobody reads the terms and conditions,
Speaker 1: and yeah, they do reserve a lot of rights. Very
Speaker 1: often to use the information you provide to their best advantage,
Speaker 1: which maybe collating, collecting it, putting it together, grouping it
Speaker 1: with other people, coming up with like sort of who
Speaker 1: you are, and using that to market. Now, I think
Speaker 1: that in general, whenever you can opt out of any
Speaker 1: of that sharing, you know, opt out of it. If
Speaker 1: you can't, you have to decide is this product worth
Speaker 1: the what I'm giving up in using this product, something
Speaker 1: like eleven Labs reader. Like I said, I didn't see anything.
Speaker 1: I just signed up fresh and I didn't see anything
Speaker 1: that said, hey, We're going to sell your email. But yes,
Speaker 1: there are some apps that do say things like that.
Speaker 1: But what I would say is look at the terms
Speaker 1: and conditions and if you want, you can even throw
Speaker 1: them into chat EBT and say, hey, you know, like,
Speaker 1: what do I need to know? Is this dangerous? If
Speaker 1: are they going to sell my information? And I've done
Speaker 1: that for sure. I was signing up for something the
Speaker 1: other day, I think it was Verizon sent me a
Speaker 1: notice that said, hey, we're changing some things in the
Speaker 1: terms and conditions, and I popped it into chat gbts
Speaker 1: what does this mean exactly?
Speaker 2: And it explained you know. So I think that that's
Speaker 2: a good point, Gina.
Speaker 1: I think the the bigger point is to limit the
Speaker 1: amount of information you share. So Number one, get a
Speaker 1: secondary phone number, like a Google Voice number or a
Speaker 1: text now whatever. Get a secondary phone number and use
Speaker 1: that to sign up for stuff. You know, all that
Speaker 1: stuff at the grocery store, those little club cards and
Speaker 1: things like that. So do that. Get a cloaked or
Speaker 1: an email address that's disposable or secondary one.
Speaker 2: Duck dot com they have it. That's Duck. You know
Speaker 2: that Duck Duck duc Go website.
Speaker 1: They have an email address you can use that's sort
Speaker 1: of like a private email address. There's also that website
Speaker 1: we talked about in the show, cloaked dot com that
Speaker 1: helps you make an entirely new identity for every website
Speaker 1: that you go to.
Speaker 2: Do I spell that right, cloaked cloaked dot com.
Speaker 1: Eighty eight rich one on one eighty eight seven four
Speaker 1: to two four one zero one. This is rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging
Speaker 1: out with you, talking technology. Triple eight rich one oh
Speaker 1: one eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: It is Memorial Day weekend and Adobe says, yes, people
Speaker 1: will shop, There will be online deals.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: They expect this to be the first big e commerce
Speaker 1: weekend for discounts of twenty twenty five, and it's just
Speaker 1: the slide into the end of the year from this.
Speaker 1: I guess deals range from seven to ten percent off
Speaker 1: categories like electronics, apparel, and sporting goods, so not too much.
Speaker 1: Looks like clothing will be the most ten percent off,
Speaker 1: sporting goods nine percent, appliance is eight percent, and for
Speaker 1: the first time ever, more than half of sales this
Speaker 1: weekend expected to come from mobile phones.
Speaker 2: Do you shop a lot on your mobile phone? I don't.
Speaker 1: I still prefer the desktop for online shopping. I just
Speaker 1: feel like it's easier now. I will say there is
Speaker 1: one aspect I do like on the mobile phone better,
Speaker 1: and that is Apple Pay or Google Pay seems to
Speaker 1: work better like the checkout on the phone versus the desktop.
Speaker 1: Some websites support it, and it's getting a little easier,
Speaker 1: but I just feel like it's so much easier on
Speaker 1: the phone to shop. Like with the Apple Pay, especially
Speaker 1: Google Pay, I've noticed is popping up more on my
Speaker 1: desktop for some reason. But my wife, she actually was
Speaker 1: ordering something this weekend and she couldn't get the website
Speaker 1: to work on her desktop, and I said, let me
Speaker 1: try it for my phone. Sure enough, it worked just fine.
Speaker 1: Because sometimes there's other things running on your desktop as well,
Speaker 1: like on your browser. Like I have so many extensions
Speaker 1: that interfere with websites. Sometimes they're just not working. I'm like,
Speaker 1: it's probably one of my extensions. So I go to
Speaker 1: my phone. Everything works perfectly. So a little pro tip.
Speaker 1: If something's not working on your desktop, it's probably not
Speaker 1: the website. It's probably something on your computer. Go to
Speaker 1: your phone and try it. There. Data from Adobe Analytics
Speaker 1: they track over a trillion retail visits.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's a lot. And then other.
Speaker 1: News this week, Regeneron is buying the bankrupt twenty three
Speaker 1: and me for two hundred and fifty six million dollars
Speaker 1: and they say that they will keep the service running
Speaker 1: and uphold existing privacy policies. That's what a lot of
Speaker 1: people are wondering, like, what's going to be done with
Speaker 1: this treasure trove of DNA information that twenty three in
Speaker 1: meter is collected over the years twenty three and meters,
Speaker 1: by the way, was worth like six billion dollars. They
Speaker 1: sold it in bankruptcy for two hundred and fifty six million.
Speaker 1: How far they fell. The company, Regeneron wants to use
Speaker 1: this data to advance their genetic research. I guess they
Speaker 1: come up with drugs. They already have their own database
Speaker 1: of three million people. Let's see what else? Anything else? Yeah,
Speaker 1: they say they'll maintain the high standards of data privacy,
Speaker 1: security and ethical oversight. So again, Regeneron Biotech Giant is
Speaker 1: buying twenty three and meters for two hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: six million dollars. That includes all of their operations in
Speaker 1: his database of fifteen million customers. Let's go to Donald Now,
Speaker 1: it's interesting. Okay, wait, it looks like Donald in Arizona's
Speaker 1: not there anymore. Okay, yeah, I don't think that Donald
Speaker 1: is there. Let's go oh, yep, he's done. Let's go
Speaker 1: to Let's see what Wayne has to say in north Ridge.
Speaker 2: Wayne, you're on with Rich.
Speaker 3: Hi, Rich, Hi, thanks to take my call.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I just heard the last session about the AI and
Speaker 3: I'm just a little worried about that because it's like,
Speaker 3: whose truth is that going to be? I'm one of these,
Speaker 3: you know, conspiracy guys, and it's like, you know, your
Speaker 3: friend there's mentioned that the Google guy mentioned that he
Speaker 3: was circulating all of this algorithm throughout you know that
Speaker 3: all of Google has. And it's like people are wanting
Speaker 3: to know how the world is, and it's like, well,
Speaker 3: there's so much out there misinformation the right information that
Speaker 3: I don't know who's going to be are the Google
Speaker 3: team people putting in their thoughts on it, or I
Speaker 3: just don't know. I'm not a fan of AI.
Speaker 1: Well okay, yeah, and I understand. I hear where you're
Speaker 1: coming from. And I do think that inherently anything that
Speaker 1: is programmed by humans, there is bound to be you know,
Speaker 1: the human slant on that, right, because you're you're coming
Speaker 1: from a human perspective, So you're programming in only what
Speaker 1: you know. And so I understand where you're coming from.
Speaker 1: And I don't I'm not going to sit here and
Speaker 1: say that everything on AI is right or it's truthful,
Speaker 1: because again, it's a computer system. So and here's the thing.
Speaker 1: It's like, if you look at the way Google search
Speaker 1: worked in the past, right, you would type in something
Speaker 1: and it would give you a bunch of links, and
Speaker 1: you would click through those links and you would draw
Speaker 1: your own conclusion. I mean, let's just say you want
Speaker 1: an ant here to a basic question like is red
Speaker 1: Dye number five bad for you?
Speaker 2: Right? Like, how do we truly know?
Speaker 1: Like there's a million opinions on that out there, So
Speaker 1: how do you really know? Now if I asked the
Speaker 1: AI let's see, let's just ask that I asked is
Speaker 1: the world flat? And that I maybe? Now, Wayne, you
Speaker 1: said you're a conspiracy theorist?
Speaker 4: Do you is?
Speaker 2: Does it go that far? No?
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, so you're you're yeah, Okay, I've been to
Speaker 1: the moon and back. Okay, well there you go. So
Speaker 1: we have So let's just say, is red Die five?
Speaker 1: Is that what it's called? Or is it red Die forty?
Speaker 1: I think it's forty bad free?
Speaker 3: I think number five?
Speaker 1: Okay, uh well for some reason it corrected forty. Uh
Speaker 1: So it says whether red Die forty is bad for
Speaker 1: you is a complex question with no simple yes or no.
Speaker 1: It depends on individual sensitivities. And then they go through.
Speaker 1: Now this new AI that I was talking about, not
Speaker 1: the one he was talking about that's Gemini. This is
Speaker 1: AI mode on Google. It actually does a pretty thorough
Speaker 1: job of giving you sort of what people have come
Speaker 1: to the conclusion of and then the links to those
Speaker 1: different websites. So it's got concerns and potential negative impacts.
Speaker 1: Then it's got the FDA approval and safety, and then
Speaker 1: it's got important considerations and then a conclusion. So again,
Speaker 1: I think what the goal of these systems would be
Speaker 1: in a perfect world is to let people draw their
Speaker 1: own conclusions, but give them all the sides of the
Speaker 1: arguments to whatever you're talking about. Now, for things like
Speaker 1: is the Earth flat, I don't really think there's that
Speaker 1: much of a true debate about that, even though I
Speaker 1: do know that there are some people out there that
Speaker 1: do debate that. But I think that for those types
Speaker 1: of answers, it will give you, Like if I ask
Speaker 1: is the world flat, it's saying, no, the world is
Speaker 1: not flat. It is a sphere slightly bulging at the
Speaker 1: equator and flattened at the poles. There you go, and
Speaker 1: then it says the Earth's round shape is supported by
Speaker 1: several points. So for stuff like that, it will just
Speaker 1: give you maybe more of a definitive answer. But for
Speaker 1: things that you know you may wonder, like you said,
Speaker 1: conspiracy theorists, it may give you all the different angles.
Speaker 1: It may not come to a standard conclusion. And I think, again,
Speaker 1: there are biases in everything that a human is programming.
Speaker 1: That's just the reality, because there may be things that
Speaker 1: you're programming in that we don't even know are biases,
Speaker 1: and that is bound to happen. So I think that
Speaker 1: when you think about these different AI systems are we
Speaker 1: are trying to make them better, but they are only
Speaker 1: as perfect as we as humans can make them. And
Speaker 1: I do think that the different systems have different sort
Speaker 1: of worldviews, different thoughts. I mean, if you're programming something
Speaker 1: in America versus France or another country, you know, you
Speaker 1: bring a certain depth and background to your life that
Speaker 1: other places have different ones. So I think that that's
Speaker 1: a very valid point. And I think I think that
Speaker 1: AI is only as perfect as humans are perfect, which
Speaker 1: is to say we're not. And so that's a very
Speaker 1: long answer for I think that this stuff is still forming.
Speaker 1: And I think the more dangerous or the more concerning
Speaker 1: part to me is when AI starts to sort of
Speaker 1: think and act on its own. And that's when I
Speaker 1: will be a little bit more concerned because right now,
Speaker 1: if I ask a question to AI and it gives
Speaker 1: me an answer and I don't like it. I just
Speaker 1: you know, Okay, I'm done. But if it gets to
Speaker 1: a point where AI is doing things, and again, we
Speaker 1: are going to get to the point where AI is
Speaker 1: built into robots that will move like humans and think
Speaker 1: like humans and act like humans, that day is coming
Speaker 1: and it's going to be interesting. It's going to be
Speaker 1: really interesting. Speaking of AI, here's a couple of fails.
Speaker 1: I guess this is the fail section of the show.
Speaker 1: This story out of Chicago, Chicago Sun Times published a
Speaker 1: summer book reading list, and it had fake titles. It
Speaker 1: included nonexistent novels by real authors like Andy I think
Speaker 1: It's weir who I read the Martian and the writer
Speaker 1: admitted to using AI to help generate the list and
Speaker 1: didn't bother to fact check it. The author said the
Speaker 1: mistake was stupid. It was a stupid error, and accepted
Speaker 1: full accountability. This was And then of course the newspaper said,
Speaker 1: we got this from a third party and we just
Speaker 1: published it, so yes, we probably should have looked at
Speaker 1: it as well. So this went through the author that
Speaker 1: didn't look at it. Then that author's editor didn't look
Speaker 1: at it. The syndicator didn't look at it, and then
Speaker 1: the newspaper published it without looking at it. I mean,
Speaker 1: how many points of failure do we need for someone
Speaker 1: to realize that Andy Weir did not write a new
Speaker 1: book titled The Algorithm. I mean, I don't follow him
Speaker 1: very closely, but I'm pretty sure that when he writes
Speaker 1: a new book, I would be aware of the title,
Speaker 1: and I'd be curious because the guy wrote The Martian,
Speaker 1: a very popular book in Hail Mary, which I read
Speaker 1: and they were great. But it's like I think I
Speaker 1: would hear if the guy wrote a new book, even
Speaker 1: though I'm not one hundred percent sure on how to
Speaker 1: pronounce his last name. But that's just a me problem,
Speaker 1: as my kid would say. So the point is, if
Speaker 1: you're using AI in your job, especially faking it till
Speaker 1: you make it, please fact check it, double check what
Speaker 1: you're submitting to your bosses. And then another stupid news,
Speaker 1: the chromebook challenge. This is a new tick. I hate
Speaker 1: these TikTok trends. I don't use the word hate on
Speaker 1: this show very often because I think it's a strong word,
Speaker 1: but I hate these TikTok trends, stupid TikTok trends. These
Speaker 1: kids were told to stick things in the USB ports
Speaker 1: of their school issued chromebooks to cause them to smoke,
Speaker 1: to fire, to short circuit, to let out.
Speaker 2: Toxic chemical fumes.
Speaker 1: Why would you do this? You think it's funny. I
Speaker 1: guess you might when you're eight years old or ten
Speaker 1: years old.
Speaker 10: UH.
Speaker 1: Incidents reported across the US Colorado, Arizona, New Jersey. In California,
Speaker 1: one San Diego school district reported over seven thousand dollars
Speaker 1: in damage from sixteen to script.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 1: I dispute that sixteen chromebooks do not cost seventeen no.
Speaker 1: Hold on seven thousand divided by sixteen hold on, Okay,
Speaker 1: let me just do this seven thousand divided by sixteen okay, Oh, okay,
Speaker 1: four hundred and thirty seven dollars a chromebook. Okay, I
Speaker 1: I guess I was wrong. That could be true. Don't
Speaker 1: stick stuff in the side of your chromebook and tell
Speaker 1: your kids not to stick stuff in the side of
Speaker 1: your chromebook. Eighty eight rich one oh one eighty eight
Speaker 1: seven four to two four to one zero one more
Speaker 1: rich on Tech coming your way right after this. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to rich On Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out
Speaker 1: with you, talking technology. The website for the show Rich
Speaker 1: on tech dot TV. If you want to link to
Speaker 1: something I mentioned, just go to the website and you
Speaker 1: can see these show notes. This is episode one twenty two.
Speaker 1: Got an email from Rick in Arizona. He says, I
Speaker 1: just bought a new pickup and I couldn't figure out
Speaker 1: what two of the plugs on the rear bumper were for.
Speaker 1: I asked Facebook groups, two dealerships, and an auto parts store.
Speaker 2: Nobody knew.
Speaker 1: Then I showed them to Gemini AI through my phone
Speaker 1: camera and bam, it told me exactly what they were
Speaker 1: and what kind of plugs I needed.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 1: I guess this show brought to you by Gemini AI
Speaker 1: because we've talked about it a lot. But again, this
Speaker 1: is the kind of wow moments people are going to
Speaker 1: start to have with this stuff because you don't realize.
Speaker 1: Just like the other day, I was trying to fix
Speaker 1: something in my house and I just pointed the camera,
Speaker 1: the Gemini camera at the thing I wanted fix, and
Speaker 1: I said, who do I call to fix this? I mean,
Speaker 1: just something as simple as that, and it gave me
Speaker 1: a list of I said, who do I search for
Speaker 1: and YELP to fix this?
Speaker 2: And sure, enough.
Speaker 1: It gave me the person and I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I would have never thought about that. Turns out a
Speaker 1: plumber you need to fix a clog toilet. No, I'm
Speaker 1: just KIDDINGFA. You know, sometimes Bobo is like looking off
Speaker 1: and I just want to make sure he's listening. The
Speaker 1: smartest dumb guy I know, it's called dad jokes, you know,
Speaker 1: a couple other cool things.
Speaker 2: Okay, so coming up this hour, we've got a guest.
Speaker 1: Jason Ball, my old He is the guy that brought
Speaker 1: me to Los Angeles actually back in the day and
Speaker 1: hired me twice.
Speaker 2: This guy hired me twice. But now he's no longer
Speaker 2: my boss.
Speaker 1: I don't have to worry about I can, you know,
Speaker 1: ask him anything but longtime news executive and he is
Speaker 1: now reinventing himself doing a lot of different things. He's
Speaker 1: got a podcast, he's got a newsletter. So this idea
Speaker 1: of after having a career for so many years now
Speaker 1: he's like leaning on all these tech products like AI
Speaker 1: and all these newsletter things to like, you know, new stuff.
Speaker 1: So we'll hear his take on that wing. This was
Speaker 1: also at Google Io. This I've never seen before, but
Speaker 1: it was a drone delivery service and they were delivering
Speaker 1: pies across the They were delivering pies from one end
Speaker 1: of the sort of amphitheater to the other, and it
Speaker 1: was pretty cool. So I got to watch this and
Speaker 1: I couldn't believe it because these drones that they're using
Speaker 1: almost looked fake. They looked like a model airplane, but
Speaker 1: they were like super lightweight. The only weigh eleven pounds.
Speaker 1: And so what they did was and this was interesting,
Speaker 1: is that the drone it's almost it's almost like autonomous,
Speaker 1: I think, where it flies up into the air, it
Speaker 1: drops down a rope. There's a person there that clips
Speaker 1: the payload onto the rope, and then it shimmys it
Speaker 1: back up. It like sucks it back up, and then
Speaker 1: it flies over to the other area. And this is
Speaker 1: the thing that I realized. The drone does not land
Speaker 1: on the ground, like if you're getting a delivery, it's
Speaker 1: not gonna land on your front lawn. It hovers and
Speaker 1: then it drops using that rope the thing that you
Speaker 1: are getting delivered. It sort of like lowers it down
Speaker 1: to the ground and then somehow detaches it, I guess,
Speaker 1: and then it takes the rope back up. So again
Speaker 1: This is called Wing. This is one of Google's or Alphabet,
Speaker 1: you know, Google's parent company. They're sort of side bets
Speaker 1: and they're doing this in two cities right now, Dallas
Speaker 1: and Charlotte. They're actually delivering stuff from drones with Wing
Speaker 1: from Walmart and DoorDash. So the drones, like I said,
Speaker 1: weigh eleven pounds. They can deliver small packages up to
Speaker 1: two and a half pounds, and these things fly up
Speaker 1: to sixty five miles an hour. Most deliveries are in
Speaker 1: as little as fifteen minutes. And Google CEO said that
Speaker 1: also they helped deliver hurricane relief during hurricane season. So
Speaker 1: again it's not just like commercial use of this, it's
Speaker 1: like we can also help people like get things, get
Speaker 1: supplies to people in places that are really tricky.
Speaker 2: It's called Wing.
Speaker 1: If you want to check it out, see the video
Speaker 1: I put out on my Instagram at rich On Tech.
Speaker 2: Pretty wild.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've heard about the drone deliveries, but I've
Speaker 1: never actually seen it until now. Twelve South this is genius.
Speaker 1: I've been using this cable for a couple of weeks.
Speaker 1: Now I can finally tell you about it. It's called
Speaker 1: the twelve South Power cord, and it's so simple that
Speaker 1: you'd think to yourself, wait a second, why didn't someone
Speaker 1: come out with this before. So you know how when
Speaker 1: you go somewhere you're traveling, you need to bring a
Speaker 1: power chord, right, and you've got the power plug and
Speaker 1: then you've got the us SEA cable or whatever you
Speaker 1: need to plug into that plug. Well, this is just
Speaker 1: a single cable. It comes with a thirty watt USBC
Speaker 1: charger and cable all in one, so there's no brick
Speaker 1: to search for. And it's a really nice design. And
Speaker 1: this is the best part. It comes in two lengths
Speaker 1: four feet and a generous ten feet of cable. So
Speaker 1: I don't know about your kids, but my kids love
Speaker 1: to have their iPads plugged in while they're playing because
Speaker 1: those roadblocks and Fortnite or not Fortnite, what do they
Speaker 1: play roadblocks and uses so much power on their iPad
Speaker 1: it's always going dead, so they like to keep them
Speaker 1: plugged in. But like those little cables you get with
Speaker 1: the iPad are like, you know, just a couple of
Speaker 1: feet ten feet.
Speaker 2: This thing is great. Fifty bucks.
Speaker 1: It's called the twelve South power cord and it's now
Speaker 1: available anyway, brilliant simple idea. Coming up, We're going to
Speaker 1: talk to Jason Ball, news executive reinventing himself with a
Speaker 1: new podcast and newsletter.
Speaker 2: This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich On Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich Demurou here hanging out with you, talking technology on
Speaker 1: this Memorial Day weekend. Hope you're having a nice day.
Speaker 1: Hope you got something good planned. We are going to
Speaker 1: bring on a guest that I've known for a long time,
Speaker 1: a guy who has hired me twice, so thank you
Speaker 1: for that. Jason Ball no longer my boss, so all
Speaker 1: bets are off. I can say whatever I want at
Speaker 1: this point. But Jason Ball, welcome to the show.
Speaker 5: Thank you, thanks for having me so forward to it.
Speaker 1: Jason a longtime news executive. Believe he came to LA
Speaker 1: with k CAL nine and then KTLA for many years
Speaker 1: where I worked with him both places actually, But a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago we left the business to open
Speaker 1: up a hotel in Palm Springs, right, is that right?
Speaker 5: Yes, yep.
Speaker 12: We bought a hotel in April twenty twenty one and
Speaker 12: moved up to Palm Springs and we've been rand ever since.
Speaker 1: And you've been running that. But now you sort of
Speaker 1: got that itch again to do a couple of things
Speaker 1: with the Creator space. So now you've got a new
Speaker 1: podcast and you've got a newsletter that you're doing. So
Speaker 1: let's first talk about Life after TV News number one.
Speaker 2: What is it like?
Speaker 1: I mean to go from such a you know, that's
Speaker 1: a big shift you took in your life.
Speaker 5: I mean, he was a big change.
Speaker 12: I left in February twenty one, right after the pandemic.
Speaker 12: We're still kind of you know, the last part of
Speaker 12: of the pandemic.
Speaker 5: Things were starting to.
Speaker 12: Open up again, but it was just it was time
Speaker 12: for me to go do something else, and it was
Speaker 12: it was a little bit hard at first. I was like, who, well,
Speaker 12: if I'm not the news director at KJLA. So it
Speaker 12: took me a while, but yeah, four years later, I
Speaker 12: finally decided I need to get back in, dip my
Speaker 12: toe back in a little bit. So I created this
Speaker 12: podcast called Life after News about Life after News.
Speaker 5: My life.
Speaker 12: Lots of people's lives. Some people choose to leave, some
Speaker 12: people are you know, in this business, there's a lot
Speaker 12: of people laid off. There was a great resignation back
Speaker 12: in twenty twenty one. I was part of that and
Speaker 12: so many people were, So it's interesting that I like
Speaker 12: the idea of taking those skills that we learned in
Speaker 12: the newsroom and as journalists and using them for something else.
Speaker 1: As I say, sometimes the business leaves you. That's what
Speaker 1: I say. Yeah, if you're you know, not so nicely said,
Speaker 1: you got to go, it's time to go. But I
Speaker 1: listened to the first episode of the podcast with Jillian Barbary,
Speaker 1: obviously a legend here in the LA area, and you know,
Speaker 1: she had a lot of nationwide stuff as well. So
Speaker 1: creating a podcast, I know a lot of people this
Speaker 1: this is the beauty.
Speaker 2: Of the world we live in.
Speaker 1: And you were in the news business for a very
Speaker 1: long time, big cameras, reel to real I think film
Speaker 1: was probably a little bit before your time. But you
Speaker 1: know we started with like like I'm.
Speaker 5: Not that old.
Speaker 1: I know you're not at all, but I remember like
Speaker 1: when even when I started, like in high school, it
Speaker 1: was like tape to tape, right, I mean that was
Speaker 1: a reality. Now everything is digital. Everything is something that
Speaker 1: you can do on your own at home, and that's
Speaker 1: kind of what you're using to your advantage at this point,
Speaker 1: is things like I call off the shelf tech like AI,
Speaker 1: the stuff to make your podcast, the stuff to make
Speaker 1: the newsletter, So how do you navigate all that.
Speaker 12: I definitely could not have done this without the help
Speaker 12: of technology. I did a podcast while I was at
Speaker 12: Kitchile for a few years, but I had I literally
Speaker 12: I would book the guest and I would record it
Speaker 12: and then somebody else would handle everything else. But this
Speaker 12: I really did all on my own, and I definitely
Speaker 12: could not have done it at the three biggest things
Speaker 12: I used or Chat, gbating, Canva and Riverside dot fm.
Speaker 12: And Chat actually helped me refine my concept, help me.
Speaker 12: We built my graphics on Chat and then we use
Speaker 12: Canva to refine them and to do different variations of
Speaker 12: the of the graphics. So it's interesting to see that
Speaker 12: whole process too, just learning that and it's I mean
Speaker 12: I use it every day now, both of them every day.
Speaker 12: It's it is remarkable. And then Riverside dot Fm. I
Speaker 12: don't know if it's familiar with it, but it's a
Speaker 12: built for podcasters, but it also has an editor built
Speaker 12: into it and it's a as you go through the interview,
Speaker 12: it's got a rolling scroll of a transcript of the
Speaker 12: of the interview. And you can literally highlight a sentence
Speaker 12: and hit delete and it's gone, oh wow. Or you
Speaker 12: can copy it, you know, control C, and then you
Speaker 12: go to another spot and you go Caroll B and
Speaker 12: insert it. Editing could not be more easier. It is
Speaker 12: remarkable how easy it was.
Speaker 1: So you're almost editing with like the words, like the transcript.
Speaker 12: Right, you're you're falling along with the transcript, and you
Speaker 12: can just and you can search for keywords if you're
Speaker 12: looking for, you know, trying to remember where something is
Speaker 12: on an hour long interview.
Speaker 5: It's remarkable I can.
Speaker 12: And they're lightly edited anyway, It's not like we're doing
Speaker 12: a big production here, but it's.
Speaker 5: So it's lightly edited, but I can edit it an
Speaker 5: hour show in an hour and a half, two hours.
Speaker 5: It's remarkable.
Speaker 12: How and I'm not that I mean actually my first
Speaker 12: job was an editor, but to your point, it was
Speaker 12: a tape to tape editor, endpoint, out point, move on
Speaker 12: to the next record, onto the to the next tape.
Speaker 5: So it's the last time I actually edit anything was back.
Speaker 1: In the But it's a testament. It's it's amazing, just again,
Speaker 1: how anyone can do this. And I think about this
Speaker 1: with the news business a lot like you think about
Speaker 1: like I'm in a studio right now, that's you know,
Speaker 1: it's equipped, it's got a lot of very high end
Speaker 1: equipment in it. But at the same time, people are
Speaker 1: just starting things up in their house and it you
Speaker 1: know that you can reach an audience now and it
Speaker 1: used to be that sort of gatekeeper was there where
Speaker 1: you you couldn't. Just like you published your new your
Speaker 1: podcast and it's on all the major platforms instantly, and
Speaker 1: you know, it's pretty incredible. So we had a caller
Speaker 1: earlier that said, you know, they're a little weary about
Speaker 1: AI and chat GBT and things like that, but here
Speaker 1: you are sort of like embracing it.
Speaker 2: I mean, what do you.
Speaker 12: Think you have to You have to embrace it because
Speaker 12: it's just it's it's here, and I think.
Speaker 5: You need to learn to use it.
Speaker 12: And I I mean, not maybe aul naive, but open AI.
Speaker 12: I kind of trust a little more than because it's
Speaker 12: you know, it's not not for it's not a nonprofit,
Speaker 12: but it's a in the public good corporation. So I
Speaker 12: feel like they're kind of doing the right thing. Maybe
Speaker 12: some of the others I will be a little more
Speaker 12: leery about because you you can't help but share personal
Speaker 12: information with it, because you're having these conversations and you're
Speaker 12: having this back and forth dialogue and they get to
Speaker 12: know you.
Speaker 5: And I actually even said, I'm like.
Speaker 12: You use too many adjectives, that I stopped using so
Speaker 12: many adjectives and in the and when they would refine
Speaker 12: a script, so it definitely gets to know you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we sort of build a relationship with these AI chatbots,
Speaker 1: and especially with chat Gibt, which is you know, they
Speaker 1: turned on the memory sort of. It used to be like, hey,
Speaker 1: remember to do this or remember that. Now the memory
Speaker 1: is sort of by default, it just remembers everything. And
Speaker 1: it's uncanny how much it sort of builds this profile
Speaker 1: of who you are, what you like, the answers that
Speaker 1: you like. And sometimes it's way too glowing, right. It's
Speaker 1: like people joke like you can say anything and like hey,
Speaker 1: I'm going to go, you know, spray paint my own car,
Speaker 1: and I'll be like, that's a great idea.
Speaker 2: Here's the spray paint you should use.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like these things sometimes they're a little
Speaker 1: bit too like glowing.
Speaker 2: Okay, so you've got the pot actually that I.
Speaker 12: Actually ask it not and I call it or I asked,
Speaker 12: what's your name and they told me to tell they
Speaker 12: call me whatever you want.
Speaker 5: And I'm like, no, you tell me your name. So
Speaker 5: they her name is Quinn.
Speaker 1: It came up with a name. Yeah, okay, that's interesting.
Speaker 1: I was trying to I was testing a site the
Speaker 1: other day, like one of those like fishing websites. I
Speaker 1: post these to my Instagram like how people get phished,
Speaker 1: and I was like, hey, just give me like some
Speaker 1: information so I can test this site, like a give
Speaker 1: me a fake name everything. It was like, I can't
Speaker 1: do that. But then you like prompt me. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm just testing. It's not for real. It's like, okay, well,
Speaker 1: if I was giving you information, here's what it would be.
Speaker 2: I'm like, thank you, that's what I needed.
Speaker 4: But I did.
Speaker 5: I'm like, please, don't be a suck a fan.
Speaker 12: Please challenge me if I have a bad idea, let
Speaker 12: me know if it's a bad idea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's smart. Nobody did that to you and you
Speaker 2: were executive.
Speaker 5: Huh, well, I asked people to do that too.
Speaker 1: I because I mean, everyone's surrounded by you know, yes
Speaker 1: folks most of the time and that's that's what keeps
Speaker 1: people from getting better in their lives, because you know,
Speaker 1: I feel like people need that sort of check, Like
Speaker 1: I think constructive criticism is a really good thing. And
Speaker 1: with that in mind, I've come up with a huge
Speaker 1: list of things that can make your podcast better.
Speaker 5: No, I'm just kidding.
Speaker 2: No, I thought the first episode was great.
Speaker 1: So, and of course Jillian's story is easy, because I mean,
Speaker 1: her story is not easy, but the listening to it
Speaker 1: is just she was such a large figure in LA
Speaker 1: that it's just the curiosity is there.
Speaker 5: She's no holds bar.
Speaker 12: She lays it all on the table, from leaving Good
Speaker 12: to LA to her fight with cancer and then I
Speaker 12: didn't even know this or her battle with the irs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was the worst thing.
Speaker 5: So it's it's remarkable.
Speaker 12: But there are other really great stories too, about people
Speaker 12: who really have reinvented themselves.
Speaker 5: The second episode is about a guy who was.
Speaker 12: An anchor in Phoenix and quit and created an art
Speaker 12: trauma program and it's now being used in the Arizona
Speaker 12: prison system to help rehabilitate felons.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, so you said you use chat Gibt said,
Speaker 1: you use the canva The river Side what about the newsletter?
Speaker 1: Tell me about like, how are you doing that? Because
Speaker 1: I have a newsletter. I love it. I think a
Speaker 1: newsletter is like the most incredible thing. But of course
Speaker 1: now everyone's sort of the newsletters like the new podcast, right,
Speaker 1: everyone has a newsletter in addition to the podcast. But
Speaker 1: tell me how you're doing the newsletter.
Speaker 12: Okay, so the newsletter is focused on Palm's Rings, but
Speaker 12: it's for people who visit at Palm Springs are also locals,
Speaker 12: And I use chat GBT two to help refine and
Speaker 12: flesh out ideas on that.
Speaker 5: But I use a I know you use substack, right,
Speaker 5: I use behive. It's b e e hii V and
Speaker 5: it's it's more yours is more for subscribers.
Speaker 12: I don't think I'm having subscribers, so I'm mind'sform for
Speaker 12: general audience and maybe from some advertisers at some point.
Speaker 5: But it's pretty cut and dry.
Speaker 12: I mean, you just I create it, and I create it,
Speaker 12: then I run it through Chat, and then I bring
Speaker 12: it back and refine it a little bit myself, and
Speaker 12: then you upload it and post.
Speaker 5: It and then it's it's easy. It's really ea easy.
Speaker 12: It'll be interesting to see how the ad component because
Speaker 12: now I have almost seventy five hundred subscribers. Oh wow,
Speaker 12: So it'll be interesting to see if I can monetize that.
Speaker 5: And that's the other thing that.
Speaker 12: I feel like a lot of people are, especially a
Speaker 12: lot of journalists. I don't know why, but we were
Speaker 12: a little afraid to we're selling out if you monetize
Speaker 12: or try to make money, and that's ridiculous. Needed lean
Speaker 12: into that, lean into that and figure out a way
Speaker 12: to make money, and they're I think they're it's that's
Speaker 12: the part. I'm interested now to figure that part out
Speaker 12: and see how you actually can or if you can
Speaker 12: make money out of it.
Speaker 1: Well, with something that's hyper local like a newsletter, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's to reach people these days is tougher and tougher
Speaker 1: because our attention is everywhere, and so I think that's
Speaker 1: why so many people are turning to like these things
Speaker 1: where it's like super local or hyper local or customized
Speaker 1: for them, where people they trust what you're saying in
Speaker 1: the Palm Springs newsletter. Okay, so we got to run,
Speaker 1: But tell me your advice for folks. I mean, you
Speaker 1: know you've done all this stuff, you reinvented yourself. Is
Speaker 1: it scary? Is there is there still life after what
Speaker 1: you thought life was going to be?
Speaker 5: Absolutely do it.
Speaker 12: It's scary and challenging, but I feel like I've learned
Speaker 12: more in the last month and a half and worked
Speaker 12: harder in the last month and a half than I
Speaker 12: haven't a long time. But it's been super rewarding. I'm
Speaker 12: in bed by nine o'clock and out like a light,
Speaker 12: but up ready to go five thirty the next More so.
Speaker 5: It's it's been invigerab But do it.
Speaker 12: But do your research, lean on your resources. You know,
Speaker 12: email people, ask questions. You have a problem, you can't
Speaker 12: figure something out, ask people, ask, and get in the Facebook.
Speaker 12: There's a face group for everything. Find the one that
Speaker 12: you need and they'll they'll they will help you. It
Speaker 12: is remarkable. The other thing I really learned about, too
Speaker 12: Rich is I don't really miss the news. I don't
Speaker 12: miss the craziness of that. I miss news people. So
Speaker 12: this has given me an opportunity to kind of reconnect
Speaker 12: with that and even just not even just the people
Speaker 12: I've interview, but like talking to you today, and and
Speaker 12: also like just the comments from social It's been a
Speaker 12: remarkable but great experience so far.
Speaker 1: All right, the podcast is Life After News. Subscribe check
Speaker 1: it out. Jason Ball, thanks so much for joining me today.
Speaker 5: Thank you appreciate the good work.
Speaker 1: All right, coming up, we're gonna open up the feedback.
Speaker 1: It is overflowing this week. We'll get through that right
Speaker 1: here on rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich Demro here hanging out with you, talking technology. The
Speaker 1: website for the show richon Tech dot tv links to
Speaker 1: everything I mentioned on the website. Just go there and
Speaker 1: just check for the show notes. It's under the headline
Speaker 1: radio show. This is episode one two. I put all
Speaker 1: the links to everything I mentioned. So if you're trying
Speaker 1: to get a link for Jason Balls podcast, the guest
Speaker 1: we just had on Life After News or a link,
Speaker 1: it is right there and everything I talk about. All right,
Speaker 1: Before we get to the feedback, couple of items of note,
Speaker 1: This was a great article from Let's see was it
Speaker 1: a fast Company? Four free Coursera classes if you want
Speaker 1: to learn more about AI, sort of dovetails into what
Speaker 1: we were talking about before. There's one called AI for Everyone,
Speaker 1: perfect for beginners, takes about six hours. Then you've got
Speaker 1: Google AI Essentials AI productivity, tools, prompting and ethical use.
Speaker 1: That's also six hours intro to Artificial Intelligence by IBM.
Speaker 1: That's a little bit more in depth with videos, labs
Speaker 1: and twelve hours of content intro to Generative AI, a
Speaker 1: quick course on the type of AI behind chatbots, image
Speaker 1: generators and more, chat GPT, generative pre trained Transformer so
Speaker 1: you can learn all about that. All courses are self paced,
Speaker 1: free to audit, and designed to be accessible. So if
Speaker 1: you're just curious about all this stuff, great, great courses
Speaker 1: for free on course Sera. Again, I'll put a link
Speaker 1: to that on the website. You can finally ditch apples
Speaker 1: Translate app on the iPhone and switch to Google Translate
Speaker 1: by default, so the feature is available in iOS eighteen
Speaker 1: point four. Apple has slowly but surely giving us the
Speaker 1: ability to change the default app options on the iPhone.
Speaker 1: Used to be Apple's way or the highway. Now you
Speaker 1: can change almost all of them except for the mapping app.
Speaker 1: I believe if you want to change your translation app,
Speaker 1: settings apps default apps translate, So if you go to settings,
Speaker 1: let me see which ones you can change. At this point,
Speaker 1: Settings settings, let's see apps. So we go to apps
Speaker 1: all the way at the bottom and then at the
Speaker 1: top says default apps. So right now you can change
Speaker 1: your email app, your messaging app, your calling app, your
Speaker 1: call filtering app, your browser app, your translation app, passwords app,
Speaker 1: contactless app, and your keyboards. That is incredible. I mean,
Speaker 1: what a change. Now.
Speaker 2: Apple did not want to make this change. Don't get
Speaker 2: me wrong.
Speaker 1: This was not out of Apple's generosity and kindness. This
Speaker 1: was because of the EU. They said, you got to
Speaker 1: give people an option on these things, and they did,
Speaker 1: and so they are sort of doing this for the EU,
Speaker 1: but everyone gets to benefit. So anyway, if you want
Speaker 1: to change from Apple to Google Translate, just install it
Speaker 1: on there and then you can switch it. All right,
Speaker 1: let's see here. Doctor Stephen Needle writes in am I
Speaker 1: laughing at that? What is the website you mentioned from
Speaker 1: your trip to New York that you used to find
Speaker 1: restaurants aside from Yelp? I don't remember if I set
Speaker 1: a specific website. Maybe it was the infatuation. I do
Speaker 1: like that, but I would say you can use AI
Speaker 1: search to do this now. I did use chat ebt,
Speaker 1: I have used the Google AI mode. You can say, like,
Speaker 1: what are the notable restaurant openings in New York City
Speaker 1: or the easiest way that I pick my restaurant is
Speaker 1: I literally go to maps dot Google dot com. You
Speaker 1: have to do this on a desktop computer, search for
Speaker 1: your hotel. So let's say you're saying at the High
Speaker 1: New York City Okay Times or a Hiatt and Times Square,
Speaker 1: whatever it is. Let's just find Okay Highatt Centric Times Square.
Speaker 1: Then you click that, and then once you have that,
Speaker 1: you should be able to see on the website. On
Speaker 1: Google Maps, it will have uh oh, my Google phone
Speaker 1: is there will be an option to actually look at
Speaker 1: places that are walking distance and you just filter by
Speaker 1: restaurants fifteen minute walking distance and boom, just find a
Speaker 1: place that's highly rateed near you. It always works. That's
Speaker 1: the way I've been doing it. Grace from Woodland Hills
Speaker 1: writes in I feel funny sending a compliment to a stranger,
Speaker 1: but I want to let you know I appreciate you.
Speaker 1: I saw your segment on What Not on April twenty
Speaker 1: first to twenty twenty five, and it changed my life.
Speaker 1: I found such interesting people to watch. I now follow
Speaker 1: three shows consistently, and I'm fascinated by how these sellers
Speaker 1: use technology in innovative ways. My Google phone is going
Speaker 1: off in the corner there. It's like it's just continuing
Speaker 1: to chat. Gail from Los Angeles writes in, I missed
Speaker 1: the name and author of the AI book you featured.
Speaker 1: I was doing Saturday chores and didn't have anything handy
Speaker 1: to write it down. I loved what he said about
Speaker 1: hold on, I gotta hold on. Uh okay, sorry, I
Speaker 1: never had to do that in the history of this
Speaker 1: show ever.
Speaker 2: But I'm not kiddus. This is wild. This thing just
Speaker 2: kept going on and on. Okay.
Speaker 1: The book was super transforming how we live, learn, and
Speaker 1: work in the age of intelligence. Steve Fisher was the author.
Speaker 1: You said a minute, Oh my gosh, okay, this I
Speaker 1: wanted again, And Michelle says, I've got an app. I
Speaker 1: want to share a helpful app I came across from
Speaker 1: my doctor's appointment for my ninety five five year old mom.
Speaker 2: It's called Ava Ava.
Speaker 1: It displays spoken words as live captions on a phone,
Speaker 1: perfect for the elderly or anyone who's hard of hearing.
Speaker 1: Ava app, Ava app. That's a great app. I did
Speaker 1: download it to check it out.
Speaker 2: Rod from La.
Speaker 1: Writes in, I listened to your show Saturdays here in
Speaker 1: La on KFI. Wonderful show. Caroline says, thanks for your expertise.
Speaker 1: I really appreciate your segments. And Rick says you have
Speaker 1: a great gift of explaining fixes in plain English.
Speaker 2: Keep it up.
Speaker 1: I never miss a show that's going.
Speaker 3: To do it.
Speaker 1: Next week we're going to talk about Apple in China,
Speaker 1: all things Microsoft. Thank you so much for listening. My
Speaker 1: name is rich Dumiro. I'll talk to you real soon.