Speaker 1: High tech, pat insurance and epic Twitter hack, t mobile tackles,
Speaker 1: robocalls plus your tech questions answered?
Speaker 2: What's going on?
Speaker 1: I'm Rich Damiro and this is Rich on Tech, the
Speaker 1: podcast where I talk about the tech stuff I think
Speaker 1: you should know about. It's also the place where I
Speaker 1: answer the questions you send me. My name is Rich Damiro,
Speaker 1: tech reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles. Still
Speaker 1: safely at home for month number four? Now did anyone
Speaker 1: ever think this would go on this long? I don't
Speaker 1: know why I didn't think it would. So when I
Speaker 1: first came up to my boss back in March and said, Hey,
Speaker 1: are we doing this whole work from home kind of thing?
Speaker 2: I didn't know.
Speaker 1: What to expect him to say, And sure enough he said, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you should. And it was kind of a
Speaker 1: big departure from what I was used to. And now
Speaker 1: that I've been doing it four months, it's really wild
Speaker 1: to think how long did I think this was going
Speaker 1: to go on for? Did I think a global pandemic
Speaker 1: was going to be solved in two weeks? Now wondering
Speaker 1: when it's ever going to be solved. So I've been
Speaker 1: safely at home I've been learning a lot about myself,
Speaker 1: a lot about my family, a lot about friends who
Speaker 1: I never see anymore. But the biggest thing I think
Speaker 1: that I'm taking away from this is just how fragile
Speaker 1: everything in life is that we take for granted. Whether
Speaker 1: it's going out for dinner, whether it's going on a
Speaker 1: road trip, whether it's traveling somewhere, seeing my family. My
Speaker 1: family lives out in New Jersey, and just all those
Speaker 1: things are jobs, they've all been impacted.
Speaker 2: School, all these little things that.
Speaker 1: You just make up the fabric of everyday life have
Speaker 1: been impacted by this pandemic. Going to the dentist, going
Speaker 1: to the grocery store, going out in your car. I was,
Speaker 1: you know, I usually drive for stories to different places
Speaker 1: around Los Angeles, and I have not done that very often.
Speaker 1: We go to some stories, but every time I do,
Speaker 1: when I get in my car, it's just this feeling
Speaker 1: of like this is weird. I'm not used to being
Speaker 1: in my car. I've had my car sit for four
Speaker 1: or five days at a time now on the street
Speaker 1: without even a thought. Whereas it used to be every
Speaker 1: day you get in your car, you go to work,
Speaker 1: you drive, you commute, you come home, you go to
Speaker 1: the gym, all these things that we no longer do.
Speaker 1: I've been working out in the house. I mean, everything
Speaker 1: happens in our home right now. It's just weird. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I'm doing okay. I hope you're doing okay. I know
Speaker 1: that we're all getting used to this. I don't want
Speaker 1: to get used to it for too long. But with
Speaker 1: the school year coming up, the reality is that it
Speaker 1: sounds like the kids are going to be at home
Speaker 1: once again, which is going to create a lot of
Speaker 1: technical challenges for parents and especially working parents, especially to
Speaker 1: working parents.
Speaker 2: But we're gonna get through.
Speaker 1: This, and we're gonna figure it out, and I have
Speaker 1: no doubt life will be back to normal at some point,
Speaker 1: but at this point, it doesn't seem like that's ever
Speaker 1: going to be possible again. But it's you just have
Speaker 1: to take it every day. You got to take the good,
Speaker 1: you gotta take the bad. And I'm trying to keep
Speaker 1: a positive attitude throughout this whole thing. Some days, as
Speaker 1: I'm sure happens with you, are better than others, and
Speaker 1: on those days, you feel a little bit kind of
Speaker 1: out of sorts, just kind of thinking about everything that's happening,
Speaker 1: and then other days it's not so bad.
Speaker 2: When you're sitting there having.
Speaker 1: Dinner with your family or playing with your kids, it
Speaker 1: doesn't seem that bad. But then when I go to
Speaker 1: make a haircut appointment, all of a sudden, the reality
Speaker 1: sets in again that oh, salons are closed again.
Speaker 2: So we'll take the good, will take the bad.
Speaker 1: I hope you're doing okay, and I hope that this
Speaker 1: podcast is a tiny escape where again I like to
Speaker 1: talk about the stuff that happens in the tech world
Speaker 1: that I think consumers should know. This is not a
Speaker 1: nerds podcast, This is not a insider podcast. This is
Speaker 1: a podcast for people that just have a smartphone, are
Speaker 1: trying to figure out Zoom, trying to figure out the iPad.
Speaker 1: That's what this is all about. Let's get started with
Speaker 1: the first story of the and this comes from T Mobile.
Speaker 1: I watched their big T Mobile uncarrier move yesterday and
Speaker 1: I'm always curious what T Mobile is gonna do. This
Speaker 1: was the carrier that was kind of like the little
Speaker 1: engine that could for many years because they were the
Speaker 1: little guy.
Speaker 2: You had Verizon at.
Speaker 1: And T Sprint and then T Mobile, and T Mobile
Speaker 1: was always trying to challenge the status quo.
Speaker 2: Now that they own Sprint.
Speaker 1: I hope that that progress continues. I'm not so sure
Speaker 1: it's going to continue in as big of a way
Speaker 1: as it did previously when they were sort of the underdog.
Speaker 1: And now that they're just one of the big carriers
Speaker 1: like the other two big ones, will they do as
Speaker 1: many things that are in the interest of the consumer?
Speaker 2: I hope so.
Speaker 1: So the latest uncarrier move is something called scam shield
Speaker 1: and I do think this is cool, but you know,
Speaker 1: you see what you think of it. So number one,
Speaker 1: T Mobile is going to do free scam id and blocking.
Speaker 1: So if you get a suspicious call, and robo calls
Speaker 1: are a huge problem. I get them all the time.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you get them all the time, and it
Speaker 1: seems like we have the technology to get rid of
Speaker 1: these things, but why are we not. So T Mobile
Speaker 1: is doing something called free scam id and blocking, So
Speaker 1: suspicious calls are going to be flagged and it'll say
Speaker 1: that right on your phone as someone calls, hey, this
Speaker 1: is suspicious, this is potential spam. We're already seeing that
Speaker 1: from the major carriers, but T Mobiles taking it a
Speaker 1: step further by letting you block those calls so you
Speaker 1: never see them again again, something that I believe you
Speaker 1: can turn on with other carriers. I've been too lazy
Speaker 1: to do it, but maybe it's out there now. The
Speaker 1: feature I think that's really cool is free caller ID.
Speaker 1: So T Mobile is giving free enhanced caller ID to
Speaker 1: all of their customers on the higher end plans, which
Speaker 1: is basically they're unlimited plans, so you know what the
Speaker 1: number is that's calling, which, uh, I mean, why didn't
Speaker 1: hear that's what I meant to do? Why don't we
Speaker 1: have this before? I mean has been around on landlines forever.
Speaker 1: Remember when you have to sign up for it and
Speaker 1: pay for it if you still have a landline, maybe
Speaker 1: it's included now, but caller ID just seems like a given.
Speaker 1: Why do we have to pay for this? And with
Speaker 1: other carriers you do have to pay for it. T
Speaker 1: Mobile says that other carriers charge up to eight bucks
Speaker 1: a month. There's a whole bunch of apps you can
Speaker 1: download to get caller ID. But now if you're a
Speaker 1: T Mobile customer, it's included in these plans and that's fantastic.
Speaker 1: So that's going to help a lot, especially with business numbers,
Speaker 1: you know, if it's a verified business. The other thing
Speaker 1: they're doing is called a T Mobile proxy. This is
Speaker 1: a secondary phone number, and this is a virtual phone
Speaker 1: number that they're giving to you on your account. And
Speaker 1: this is a phone number that you can freely give
Speaker 1: out anywhere without worrying about it. Because guess what, you
Speaker 1: can turn off the ability for this phone number to ring.
Speaker 2: It will still ring.
Speaker 1: It will You'll still get your voicemails from it, you'll
Speaker 1: still get your text messages from it, but it's all
Speaker 1: virtual and inside and app So the default is that
Speaker 1: this will ring your primary number, but you can turn
Speaker 1: that off in a heartbeat.
Speaker 2: So how is this good? Well, when you sign up.
Speaker 1: For car dealership inquiries, when you sign up for a
Speaker 1: supermarket club card, when you give your number out to
Speaker 1: the gym wherever, it's still a real working phone number
Speaker 1: that people can reach you on, but you give it
Speaker 1: out to those folks that might share it with others
Speaker 1: and in turn might get you more robo calls. That's
Speaker 1: pretty brilliant. You do have to activate that. Then you
Speaker 1: can also change your number for free. So I think
Speaker 1: it's about fifteen dollars. Last email I got from a
Speaker 1: viewer said, you know, at and T or Verizon wants
Speaker 1: to charge me fifteen bucks to change my phone number,
Speaker 1: and I said, well, that seems crazy. Well, Tea Mobile's
Speaker 1: doing that for free. They're doing a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: other things, but that's the reality. Those are the big changes.
Speaker 1: That's the scam shield protection. I think it's great, and
Speaker 1: to be honest, I'm actually considering a switch to T
Speaker 1: Mobile because I do believe that they have the customer's
Speaker 1: interest at hand. I don't know if they have the
Speaker 1: network to back up the quality and coverage that I want.
Speaker 1: I'm very happy with what I have right now, but
Speaker 1: I'm willing to give up maybe just a little bit
Speaker 1: of that for a company that I feel like does
Speaker 1: have the customer's best interest at mind. And also hopefully
Speaker 1: these things force the other carriers into doing similar things.
Speaker 1: I know that Verizon T Mobile was the first to
Speaker 1: kind of push the unlimited envelope, and then everyone else
Speaker 1: followed suit. Now the other thing that's changing, and I
Speaker 1: think this is very important for consumers, is that Sprint
Speaker 1: is going away on August second. August second, twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: say goodbye to Sprint and it will be T Mobile. Now, now,
Speaker 1: before you go crazy and worry about your whole plan
Speaker 1: and everything, all that stuff is going to stay the same. Yes,
Speaker 1: they're going to try to eventually push you to a
Speaker 1: T Mobile plan, but right now, if you have Sprint,
Speaker 1: they're not saying that anything's going to change. You will
Speaker 1: get your service just fine. Everything will work exactly the
Speaker 1: way it works. But as a company, they are going
Speaker 1: to switch over to T Mobile, including all their stores.
Speaker 1: So if you have a Sprint store in your neighborhood, boom,
Speaker 1: it's going to be a Tea Mobile store and they're
Speaker 1: going to paint them all that T Mobile magenta. Now,
Speaker 1: for me, this is kind of sad because I'll be
Speaker 1: very honest, when Sprint first came out in the United
Speaker 1: States and cell phones were just kind of starting. I remember,
Speaker 1: and you may remember this, Sprint PCs as it was called,
Speaker 1: had all these billboards around town and they were all
Speaker 1: clear and they said, the difference is clear.
Speaker 2: And what I loved about Sprint.
Speaker 1: PCs, even though the network was kind of garbage back then,
Speaker 1: was that it was a all digital network. And to me,
Speaker 1: as a nerd, as a teenager, whatever I was, I
Speaker 1: loved the idea of being on a brand new purely
Speaker 1: digital network PCs Personal Communications Service I believe is what
Speaker 1: it was called.
Speaker 2: So I switched to Sprint.
Speaker 1: I had them for many years and they were kind
Speaker 1: of horrible because the service was either you had it
Speaker 1: or you didn't. With cellular, when analog cellular was around,
Speaker 1: and I know if you're too young to remember this,
Speaker 1: analog cellular, the signal went in and out.
Speaker 2: It was like.
Speaker 1: Shyn hear, hear you. It was like it was a
Speaker 1: radio signal. And when digital came out to me, it
Speaker 1: was just so cool. It was either all or none.
Speaker 1: You either had it or you didn't. And that's when
Speaker 1: we started hearing that, which is what we have right now.
Speaker 2: So long story store.
Speaker 1: I'm kind of sad to see sees the Sprint brand
Speaker 1: go away, but it's still you know, we'll see. All right,
Speaker 1: Let's move on to the first question from a listener,
Speaker 1: and this is Jerrelyn. Jerlyn says, I was emailed an
Speaker 1: e gift card for one hundred fifty dollars from Sam's
Speaker 1: Club as a promo for purchasing an iPhone. Two days later,
Speaker 1: someone in Allentown, Pennsylvania, charged purchases using the entire amount.
Speaker 1: My email does not appear to be hacked, but I'm
Speaker 1: more worried about my email account than one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty dollars. How should I go about ensuring none of
Speaker 1: our other email documents have been compromised?
Speaker 2: Well, that's a good.
Speaker 1: Question, and I know that there are there are a
Speaker 1: lot of issues with gift cards, and if you're getting
Speaker 1: an e gift card that's email to you, it seems
Speaker 1: like that should be pretty straightforward. And if it's getting
Speaker 1: email to you in a secure way to your email account,
Speaker 1: you should be fine. But the fact that someone was
Speaker 1: able to use this amount two days after you got
Speaker 1: it is very scary to me, and I would think
Speaker 1: about that when it comes to your email, because there
Speaker 1: could be someone with access to your email if this
Speaker 1: account or if this card was used. Now, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I feel like that is a stretch. Maybe this was
Speaker 1: just a fluke, and I hope you can get your
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty bucks back from Sam's Club. But
Speaker 1: what I would do is go into your email account
Speaker 1: and check the permissions, and number one, I would go
Speaker 1: into security settings, no matter what email account you have,
Speaker 1: and log out your account from all other locations. So
Speaker 1: there should be something in the settings that says log
Speaker 1: out all other sessions of this email.
Speaker 2: So maybe you left your email open on a pub computer.
Speaker 1: Maybe you left it open on cell phone that you
Speaker 1: sold to someone and they're still somehow accessing it. That
Speaker 1: could be one way. I don't think that's very realistic,
Speaker 1: but that could be the first thing I would do.
Speaker 1: Second thing I would do is check the permissions, see
Speaker 1: which apps you have granted access to your email and
Speaker 1: get rid of the ones that you don't recognize or
Speaker 1: don't need anymore. And that usually in your email settings
Speaker 1: will look like something like third party apps or authorized apps.
Speaker 1: That's what you want to look for to kind of
Speaker 1: figure out if anyone has access, and if you see
Speaker 1: something in there that's kind of weird, just get rid
Speaker 1: of it. I think between those two things that should
Speaker 1: secure your email. But I would call Sam's Club see
Speaker 1: what happened, and at the end of the day, unless
Speaker 1: you gave this out, I would really argue pretty heavily
Speaker 1: that you should not be responsible for this one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty bucks that was taken from you. All right,
Speaker 1: good question. Let's move on to Oh, this was big
Speaker 1: this week, this big Twitter hack. This Twitter hack was
Speaker 1: kind of an epic Twitter hack. And by the way,
Speaker 1: I'm looking at the comments on YouTube, and Tony says
Speaker 1: he would also change your email password and set up
Speaker 1: two factor authentication. That is one hundred percent right. I
Speaker 1: should have mentioned that, yes, change your email password. After
Speaker 1: you do all that stuff, make sure it's a strong password.
Speaker 1: Two factor authentication I always talk about, and I just
Speaker 1: maybe I just think that's a given at this point,
Speaker 1: but you should always have two factor authentication set up
Speaker 1: on any account that supports it. And what two factor
Speaker 1: authentication does is it will send you a text message
Speaker 1: when someone tries to log into your account, even if
Speaker 1: that someone is you, and that login will not proceed
Speaker 1: unless that code is entered. And the idea being is
Speaker 1: that the person might have access to your password, but
Speaker 1: they don't have access to your smartphone. So if they
Speaker 1: have both, then you're in trouble. But hopefully they only
Speaker 1: have one and it will stop the login, so good
Speaker 1: good ad there. In fact, it kind of leads me
Speaker 1: into this whole Twitter hack, because when I first heard
Speaker 1: word that Twitter was hacked, I thought that it was
Speaker 1: maybe a two factor authentication thing, a password thing, a
Speaker 1: pretty simple hack, but it turns out it might have
Speaker 1: been an inside job. Now I feel like Twitter and
Speaker 1: I call this a consumer show. I don't feel like
Speaker 1: Twitter is very consumer. I feel like Twitter is very
Speaker 1: different than Instagram and Facebook and YouTube, even when it
Speaker 1: comes to being a social media platform. To me, Twitter
Speaker 1: is for people that are super interested in news, politics,
Speaker 1: technology topics, and is not your everyday consumer that is
Speaker 1: on Twitter. So I rarely do stories about Twitter and
Speaker 1: new Twitter features because most people are just not that
Speaker 1: excited about Twitter. They don't have that many users when
Speaker 1: you compare them to Facebook and Instagram and YouTube or TikTok,
Speaker 1: and so I kind of leave Twitter out. But I
Speaker 1: do think this is important because this is scary. What
Speaker 1: happened is on Wednesday of this week, a bunch of
Speaker 1: very high profile accounts started tweeting out a scam tweet
Speaker 1: that said, Hey, if you send me a thousand bitcoins
Speaker 1: or one thousand dollars in bitcoins, I will send you
Speaker 1: back two thousand dollars or something to that effect. And
Speaker 1: by the way, this went out from accounts that were
Speaker 1: huge Joe Biden, Jeff Bezos, Barack Obama, Elon Musk, Michael Bloomberg,
Speaker 1: Warren Buffett all kinds of big name Twitter account holders,
Speaker 1: which was crazy. How can you get access to all
Speaker 1: those people? Did none of them have two factor authentication?
Speaker 1: Did all of them have terrible passwords? No? It turns
Speaker 1: out this looks like an inside job old school, where
Speaker 1: someone paid someone an employee of Twitter on the inside,
Speaker 1: to actually go in there to their what I would
Speaker 1: call the God panel, this god control panel that controls
Speaker 1: everything inside Twitter and sent out those tweets from it
Speaker 1: and really kind of caused some problems for Twitter. So
Speaker 1: Twitter ended up having to kind of go into a
Speaker 1: scramble mode of what's going on here? And again, these
Speaker 1: are high profile accounts, so social engineering attack, that's what
Speaker 1: they're calling it. This means that they either tricked one
Speaker 1: of the employees or they paid one of the employees,
Speaker 1: we don't know yet, and they went in there and
Speaker 1: just tweeted these things out, and then Twitter had to
Speaker 1: go through and lock people's accounts out, and they had
Speaker 1: to lock up including mine. Anyone that was verified was
Speaker 1: not able to tweet for a certain amount of time
Speaker 1: in the afternoon because they were worried that maybe everyone
Speaker 1: that was verified was at risk, which maybe they were
Speaker 1: and what did the hackers do. They made off with
Speaker 1: about one hundred and seventeen thousand dollars. People actually did
Speaker 1: send bitcoin to these addresses, if you can believe it.
Speaker 1: There's not much more about this story right now, is
Speaker 1: that it just kind of reiterates the fact that to me,
Speaker 1: it's scary that even if you take all of the
Speaker 1: proper precautions as a consumer with your account, which is
Speaker 1: a strong password and two factor authentication and not sharing
Speaker 1: your account with a bunch of people, there can still
Speaker 1: be potential for a hack at this level. And when
Speaker 1: you hear heard those names that I mentioned, Elon Musk
Speaker 1: and Bill Gates, I mean, imagine sitting there on their
Speaker 1: end and you're watching your Twitter account be taken over,
Speaker 1: and you know you have a strong password, and you
Speaker 1: know you got two factor, and there's nothing you can
Speaker 1: do about it.
Speaker 2: That is scary.
Speaker 1: And so this just leads me to a bigger thought
Speaker 1: about everything that you do online. Whether you think you're secure,
Speaker 1: you're really not. And that's what you have to just
Speaker 1: think about. And I always say, when you send a text,
Speaker 1: and when you send a DM and when you send
Speaker 1: anything through the internet, what if that appeared on the
Speaker 1: front page of a major newspaper.
Speaker 2: How would that make you look? You have to keep
Speaker 2: that in mind.
Speaker 1: No matter what, even Snapchat and all these things that
Speaker 1: you know, oh well, you can't screenshot it. It's all safe.
Speaker 1: It disappears. Instagram stories number one, nothing really disappears. So
Speaker 1: you have to keep that in mind. And that is
Speaker 1: the main thing that I take from this is that
Speaker 1: you just have to be as as protect your accounts
Speaker 1: best you can, but also just keep in mind that
Speaker 1: no matter what you do, there's always a back end
Speaker 1: system that these companies have to manage their systems that yeah,
Speaker 1: if someone wants to look at your Instagram stories from
Speaker 1: a year ago, they're going to be able to do that,
Speaker 1: including governments whatever, if these companies want to hand them
Speaker 1: over if they choose to. So you just have to
Speaker 1: keep that in mind. I'm not saying do bad things.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that at all. I'm not saying break
Speaker 1: the law or be secret about it. No, no, no, I'm
Speaker 1: just saying that you need to be aware that on
Speaker 1: the Internet, if it's traveling through the Internet, chances are
Speaker 1: there is potential for things to go wrong.
Speaker 2: That's what I want you to keep in mind.
Speaker 1: All right, let's get to the next question from John.
Speaker 1: John says, I'm a sixty nine year old guy who
Speaker 1: enters a Zoom meeting once a month for cancer support
Speaker 1: group that I'm invited to from an email I receive.
Speaker 1: I'm using a PC with Windows ten. I have to
Speaker 1: call in with a landline phone and use a special
Speaker 1: code or number in the email. People do not see me,
Speaker 1: but they're able to hear me when the host addresses me.
Speaker 1: I finally found out where the mute button is. My
Speaker 1: question is does my computer come with a built in
Speaker 1: camera or not? How do I get it set up
Speaker 1: for video and audio for this meeting? Hopefully it's very simple. Now,
Speaker 1: you said you're using a PC, which is usually a desktop.
Speaker 1: I would think if you said if you had a laptop,
Speaker 1: I would think you would have said, I use a laptop.
Speaker 1: So if you're using a laptop it has a camera
Speaker 1: built in, you would just have to go ahead and
Speaker 1: activate that camera inside Zoom. I get the feeling that
Speaker 1: you're using a desktop computer that does not have a
Speaker 1: camera built in. Most of them do not. If using
Speaker 1: an all in one computer, they do have them built
Speaker 1: in most of the time into the monitor, but it
Speaker 1: sounds like you're using a run of the mill PC
Speaker 1: that is just a desktop computer with a monitor that
Speaker 1: does not have a webcam. The easiest way to get
Speaker 1: your webcam up and running is to purchase a webcam
Speaker 1: that you put into your computer using USB.
Speaker 2: You just connect it with a cable and boom, you're
Speaker 2: up and running.
Speaker 1: Right now during the pandemic, webcams are really tough to
Speaker 1: come by. You go on Amazon, they're sold out, it's
Speaker 1: a pain. They're shipping in a month or two. So
Speaker 1: I mean you could try that. That would be the
Speaker 1: easiest way to do it. You already have the computer,
Speaker 1: buy the webcam. I don't want you to overpay for
Speaker 1: webcam right now. So that's my first solution. My second solution, though,
Speaker 1: is actually quite easy, and you can get this thing
Speaker 1: in your hands tomorrow. And what I'd recommend is buying
Speaker 1: a cheap Amazon fire tablet. I recently did a review
Speaker 1: on the fire Tablet eight. It is ninety dollars, it's
Speaker 1: from Amazon. It handles Zoom. It's simple, it's easy. You say,
Speaker 1: you're a guy that let's see a sixty nine year
Speaker 1: old guy that doesn't up Okay, I mean I think
Speaker 1: it's pretty easy. It sounds like you want something easy,
Speaker 1: so I think that's very easy. And what I would
Speaker 1: recommend is on Amazon if you type in Amazon Basics
Speaker 1: tablet state and you would find a tablet stand for
Speaker 1: their little tablet that is nine dollars and forty nine
Speaker 1: cents as of this recording, and by the way, both
Speaker 1: the fire tablet and the tablet stand are available in
Speaker 1: about two days. Versus a webcam that you're gonna go
Speaker 1: on Amazon, you're gonna search through a million listings and
Speaker 1: you're not gonna find one that's available very quickly.
Speaker 2: This is much easier. You install Zoom on.
Speaker 1: It, it works perfectly, and all you have to do
Speaker 1: is get your email on there, or you could even
Speaker 1: type in the Zoom code on the tablet and get
Speaker 1: connected that way.
Speaker 2: That's what I would do.
Speaker 1: I think that's pretty easy, and at this point it's
Speaker 1: probably easier than finding a webcam.
Speaker 2: So good question.
Speaker 1: All right, let's see. Speaking of webcams, this is actually
Speaker 1: another story I did on KTLA was turning your smartphone
Speaker 1: into a webcam, and a lot of people are doing
Speaker 1: that because they can't find a webcam and it's gonna
Speaker 1: with the school you're starting and all of these kids
Speaker 1: and people still working from home. These webcams are not
Speaker 1: going to get any easier to find. It's like a
Speaker 1: lot of things. We still can't get chlorox wipes half
Speaker 1: the time. You still can't get a lot of stuff.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just it's we're in different times right now.
Speaker 1: There's a new app called Camo c Amo and this
Speaker 1: app will turn your iPhone into a webcam for your computer.
Speaker 1: And this company made it very simple. They wanted it.
Speaker 1: You know, We've tested out a few apps that do
Speaker 1: this and I'll mention them again KTLA Webcam. Okay, so
Speaker 1: we tested out a couple of apps and I found
Speaker 1: them to be somewhat easy. They're not it's not like
Speaker 1: plug and play simple. But the two apps that we
Speaker 1: looked at were epoccam, epoccam and ivcam. They're okay, they're
Speaker 1: not perfect. This Camo looks to be a really nice solution.
Speaker 2: But guess what.
Speaker 1: You have to have an iPhone and you have to
Speaker 1: have a Mac computer. So if you have those two things,
Speaker 1: I mean, chances are you probably already have a webcam.
Speaker 1: But they're saying that this webcam is going to make
Speaker 1: your zooms look much better than the webcam on your computer,
Speaker 1: so I get it, But do you really need it?
Speaker 1: I don't know, but it sounds like it's simple. It's
Speaker 1: saying using your iPhone is gonna make a huge difference
Speaker 1: compared to regular webcams. Lets you look your best, and
Speaker 1: I get that again, You're probably gonna want a little
Speaker 1: stand for your iPhone so you can put it up,
Speaker 1: But it's also kind of nice to have it, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe on the side of your computer.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I feel like I kind of made fun of the
Speaker 1: dedicated zoom device, but I actually think it's kind of cool.
Speaker 1: I've got one of those Google Home Maxes with the
Speaker 1: video camera, and I love video chatting on that with
Speaker 1: my mom, who I actually want to buy one of
Speaker 1: the Maxes for her so that she doesn't have to
Speaker 1: hold her phone. The whole problem with video chatting on
Speaker 1: your phone is that it's very uncomfortable for long periods
Speaker 1: of time. People are moving, they're flipping their camera around,
Speaker 1: they're walking around. It's not very nice. It's perfect for
Speaker 1: short chats, but for long chats when you just want
Speaker 1: to relax and like at with someone, it's much easier
Speaker 1: to have something that's sort of sitting up and solid
Speaker 1: and not moving anyway. The app is called Camo Cimo
Speaker 1: and it just came out. I have not tested this,
Speaker 1: but it's from a company called Reincubate, and there's a
Speaker 1: free version and there's also a pro version that's forty dollars.
Speaker 1: So and they say that they're going to do a
Speaker 1: version for the Windows PCs. It looks like right now
Speaker 1: it's just yes, right now, it's just for Mac. So
Speaker 1: they're they're gonna do Windows a Camo for Windows soon,
Speaker 1: so you can get on the mailing list. But I
Speaker 1: would say that, okay, here's what it says, how can
Speaker 1: I mount my iPhone as a webcam? And we bought
Speaker 1: every type of phone mount on Amazon and tried them
Speaker 1: all and wrote up our experiences and recommendation.
Speaker 2: So I like this company.
Speaker 1: That's very cool that they recommend let's see, for laptops
Speaker 1: and desktops with no sticking required. This flexible arm for
Speaker 1: twenty dollars is my current choice. I'll put this in
Speaker 1: the notes and that's.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's funny.
Speaker 1: That's exactly what I have. Whatever they showed is exactly
Speaker 1: what I have. So if you're on the YouTube right now,
Speaker 1: you can watch this. But I've got this arm that's
Speaker 1: flexible that I bought for recording stuff. Mine is called
Speaker 1: banks b E NKS. Their's is called shaw Shawe, but
Speaker 1: it's a flexible. It's kind of like a holder that
Speaker 1: you grip onto your desk and then it's got a
Speaker 1: flexible what do they call it, like a goose goose
Speaker 1: neck kind of thing, a gooseneck mount, and then your
Speaker 1: phone just kind of pops into it.
Speaker 2: I love this.
Speaker 1: If you look at any of my stuff on Instagram
Speaker 1: at rich on Tech, all the stuff that you see
Speaker 1: that I'm recording on a smartphone screen which is kind
Speaker 1: of hands free, is always with this device, and I
Speaker 1: find it to be just easier than a tripod. So
Speaker 1: that's what they recommend. So look at that. I was
Speaker 1: using something that they tested everything and I just kind
Speaker 1: of picked this thing out.
Speaker 2: So pretty good there.
Speaker 1: All right, let's move on to the next question. And again,
Speaker 1: anything I talk about I put in the show notes,
Speaker 1: So if you're watching this or listening to this on
Speaker 1: the podcast, you can just look in the show notes
Speaker 1: for links to everything that I talk about. Janet Rights, Hey,
Speaker 1: rich I need to buy two smartphones Samsung, one basic
Speaker 1: around three hundred dollars, the other around seven hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: We don't need all the fancy stuff, just want a good,
Speaker 1: reliable phone. We're retired on a fixed income, so don't
Speaker 1: want to pay thousands of dollars. Any suggestions would be
Speaker 1: greatly approved.
Speaker 2: Thanks.
Speaker 1: Well, at that price point, I would recommend something in
Speaker 1: the Samsung. If you want to stick to Samsung, I
Speaker 1: would recommend something in the A lineup. And so there
Speaker 1: are a couple of phones that they have in their
Speaker 1: A lineup. The main one is the A fifty one.
Speaker 1: And this is a phone that has, you know, pretty
Speaker 1: much what you need. It looks it almost looks like
Speaker 1: the latest Samsung Galaxy Ultra. It's got one, two, three,
Speaker 1: at least three cameras on the back. It looks like,
Speaker 1: let's see, it's got a six point five inch edge
Speaker 1: to edge screen, long lasting, battery, fast charging, higher storage,
Speaker 1: enhanced camera. And this is just the stuff that they're
Speaker 1: saying on there. But forty eight megapixel main lens. Oh,
Speaker 1: it's got a let's see, it's got a depth camera.
Speaker 1: It's got a main camera, ultra wide camera, macro camera.
Speaker 1: So I love the wide lens. I know that Google
Speaker 1: made fun of the wide lenses on cameras when they
Speaker 1: did their pixel event, but I love the wide camera.
Speaker 1: It's just so much fun. One hundred and twenty eight
Speaker 1: gigs of storage, four gigs a RAM. You can also
Speaker 1: add a micro SD card slot and you get six
Speaker 1: months to Spotify on them. So I think the A
Speaker 1: fifty one would be a fantastic device for you. And
Speaker 1: I'm looking at how much it costs, because that is
Speaker 1: the main factor here. It is three hundred and ninety
Speaker 1: nine dollars, so you can get that for three ninety nine,
Speaker 1: and that's probably what I recommend if you're looking and
Speaker 1: maybe just by two of those, you said that you
Speaker 1: wanted one that was A three hundred and one seven hundred,
Speaker 1: so that's a thousand. So if you divide those, if
Speaker 1: you divide it by two, that's five hundred on each phone.
Speaker 1: It's now you can both get it, and I think
Speaker 1: that would work out for you. There are some other
Speaker 1: phones in the A lineup. I'm trying to figure out
Speaker 1: where those are on the Samsung website.
Speaker 2: Let's see here, where do they? Okay, smartphones, watches, an audio,
Speaker 2: let's see Mobile Summer of Galaxy. Wow, there's so many. Okay, well,
Speaker 2: I'm not really finding that on the Samsung. Let's see
Speaker 2: if I can look it up here. A fifty one.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I have to go to my email and find
Speaker 1: stuff that way because you know, I get emailed from people,
Speaker 1: and it's it's much easier because they give me the direct.
Speaker 2: Links to stuff. All right, let's see the A fifty
Speaker 2: one is. Let's see here.
Speaker 1: So there's the in the A series. There is the
Speaker 1: A zero one, there is the that's one hundred and
Speaker 1: nine dollars, the A eleven, which is one hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy nine dollars, the A twenty one, which is two
Speaker 1: forty nine, and then you've got the A fifty one,
Speaker 1: which again is I can't see because my screen is
Speaker 1: all covered up here.
Speaker 2: Let's see.
Speaker 1: I I can't see the price on that one. But anyway,
Speaker 1: that's I just mentioned it three ninety nine. So that's
Speaker 1: what I would recommend. I think those are the phones
Speaker 1: that would be perfect for your question. Good question there.
Speaker 1: I always say good question. I mean I pick these questions,
Speaker 1: so most of the time I'm not going to pick
Speaker 1: a bad question. It's questions that I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people are wondering about, all right, this next thing
Speaker 1: I got beat up for on my Facebook page. I've
Speaker 1: noticed that people are beating me up on my Facebook
Speaker 1: page much more often now than before. And I get it.
Speaker 1: With the whole world of fake news and politics, everyone's
Speaker 1: very heated these days. Facebook used to not be as heated,
Speaker 1: especially for a tech guy, as it is now. And
Speaker 1: I think maybe, you know, politics change that, or maybe
Speaker 1: Cambridge Analytica changed that, But everyone's very skeptical, even of me.
Speaker 1: I am supposed to be a trusted news source for you,
Speaker 1: and you know, I've been reporting on technology for fifteen
Speaker 1: years now. You would think that when I put something
Speaker 1: out there, it's going to be factual. And I try
Speaker 1: to do that, and I think I've talked about this before,
Speaker 1: but the reality is people question what I choose to post.
Speaker 2: And that's fine. I get it.
Speaker 1: That's within your rights, and that's well within your rights
Speaker 1: as a person that's following me, because you know, with
Speaker 1: seven hundred thousand followers on Facebook, not every single person
Speaker 1: has seen me on TV, not every single person knows
Speaker 1: me personally. Sometimes you just saw some cool viral video
Speaker 1: that I shared, you followed me, and now you see
Speaker 1: some other posts six months later.
Speaker 2: You're like, who is this guy? What are you saying?
Speaker 1: So this happened when I talked about this new app
Speaker 1: called Uproad, and I said that this was so cool
Speaker 1: because this app lets you ditch the transponder on your
Speaker 1: car and take California toll roads just using your smartphone.
Speaker 1: I thought this was brilliant. Clearly I am the only
Speaker 1: person that thinks this is smart, because everyone on my
Speaker 1: Facebook page said rich. Number one, there are no more transponders.
Speaker 1: It's a little sticker that you stick on your car. Okay, fine,
Speaker 1: Number two, Why would I want to pay a premium
Speaker 1: to use an app to pay toll roads? And I'm
Speaker 1: already paying a premium? Four And let me explain myself.
Speaker 1: Number one, the sticker thing, it's still a transponder. There's
Speaker 1: still a little wire in that sticker that sends a
Speaker 1: signal or reflects a signal from the toll road to
Speaker 1: let them know that you.
Speaker 2: Have passed through the toll So technically I was correct
Speaker 2: on that. Number two. The whole thing about signing up.
Speaker 1: I have lived in California for going on I don't know,
Speaker 1: twenty years, and I have never signed up for a transponder,
Speaker 1: nor will I ever in my life put a piece
Speaker 1: of plastic from the California Toll Authority on my car
Speaker 1: because guess what, I use the tolls about zero times
Speaker 1: a year. Now, I use them zero times a year
Speaker 1: because I refuse to pay for a toll most of
Speaker 1: the time, because I've done it before.
Speaker 2: I learned my lesson.
Speaker 1: When I took the toll road and I forgot to
Speaker 1: pay and I got hit with that two hundred dollars
Speaker 1: fine and I get it. You call them up and
Speaker 1: it's like, no big deal. They just say, you know, okay,
Speaker 1: like this was the best. My wife, I get the
Speaker 1: fine in the mail for her. She took it last year,
Speaker 1: a year before. And I get the thing in the mail.
Speaker 1: It's like two hundred and twenty five dollars. I'm like, Lynn,
Speaker 1: what happened here? She's like, oh, yeah, I forgot to
Speaker 1: pay that. I'm like, of course you did. That's what
Speaker 1: they want everyone to do. So I call up the
Speaker 1: toll place and literally before I even said, hey, what
Speaker 1: can you do, the guys like, all right, we'll do
Speaker 1: it for twenty two dollars. I'm like, what like, I
Speaker 1: didn't even have to negotiate this, So they know that
Speaker 1: a lot of people go through these things and forget
Speaker 1: to pay.
Speaker 2: That's number one. Number two.
Speaker 1: I just don't like the idea of having to remember
Speaker 1: to pay within five days. I got a lot of
Speaker 1: things going on in my life and I can't remember that.
Speaker 1: So my thing has always been I want to pay
Speaker 1: then in there or this is amazing, this is to me.
Speaker 1: It's still brilliant because now I will actually take the
Speaker 1: toll roads. So here's how it works uproad. You sign
Speaker 1: up for it. It's an app. You put in your
Speaker 1: credit card, your debit card, your PayPal, your Venmo Boom.
Speaker 1: You are ready to take the toll roads in California,
Speaker 1: including if you live in southern California. You've heard of
Speaker 1: these the SR one thirty three, the two forty one,
Speaker 1: the two sixty one, and the seventy three. I'm only
Speaker 1: familiar with the seventy three. I've seen that one. It
Speaker 1: also works on the one twenty five in San Diego
Speaker 1: in northern California, which I've taken some of these bridges.
Speaker 1: It works on pretty much all the bridges that I've
Speaker 1: ever heard of, including the Bay Bridge, the Dumbarton, the
Speaker 1: Golden Gate Bridge. So again to me, when I go
Speaker 1: up to do Leo's show a couple times a year,
Speaker 1: I gotta pay, I gotta wait in the toll thing.
Speaker 1: I don't have a transponder. Yeah, well, I guess if
Speaker 1: I'm driving, I can do that. If I'm taking a
Speaker 1: rental car, it's a little more complicated. But the reality
Speaker 1: is you sign up for this boom, you're up and running,
Speaker 1: and you just have to register your license plate. You
Speaker 1: can register up to ten of them, so all the
Speaker 1: people in your family. And here is the brilliant part.
Speaker 1: And you go through a toll, it tells you on
Speaker 1: your phone with a notification that you just went through
Speaker 1: the toll on how much it costs?
Speaker 2: So how much does this cost?
Speaker 1: Well, Uproad charges a fifteen percent transaction fee on top
Speaker 1: of the toll fee. And before you go all crazy
Speaker 1: about that, for someone like myself who travels to San
Speaker 1: Diego twice a year, and I don't know how much
Speaker 1: the toll is. Maybe it's six seven dollars. Let's say
Speaker 1: it's eight dollars. Fifteen percent of eight dollars fifteen times
Speaker 1: eight is a dollar twenty So Okay, nine dollars and
Speaker 1: twenty cents.
Speaker 2: I mean, I get it.
Speaker 1: It's expensive as but one time, not that big of
Speaker 1: a deal to me. If I buy a soda on
Speaker 1: the way down there, which I probably wouldn't ID probably
Speaker 1: buy an energy drink, you know that's gonna be three dollars.
Speaker 1: Or you can pay two dollars a month or twenty
Speaker 1: dollars for a yearly membership and the transaction feed drops
Speaker 1: to four percent. So if you really want now, I
Speaker 1: get it. If you're traveling these roads all the time,
Speaker 1: you're saying, rich, this is stupid, Why would I need this?
Speaker 2: I get it. You have a transponder. You are not
Speaker 2: the toll.
Speaker 1: You're not the target of this, but now eventually you
Speaker 1: might be. Because here's what Uproad is doing. They are
Speaker 1: making this so that every road in America works with
Speaker 1: this app.
Speaker 2: That is the goal.
Speaker 1: Now, don't get me started on the whole should we
Speaker 1: have toll roads in general, because I'm not getting into
Speaker 1: that argument. I love the fact that I live in
Speaker 1: LA and the roads are free for the most part,
Speaker 1: even though they're crowded. I grew up in New Jersey
Speaker 1: where everything was a toll. I mean, just to go
Speaker 1: to the mall. It would cost Back in the day
Speaker 1: it was twenty five cents each way. Now it's they've
Speaker 1: taken the tolls off one side, and it's like a
Speaker 1: dollar to get to the mall and free to come
Speaker 1: back the mall. Of course that's where you go when
Speaker 1: you're in Jersey anyway. That is the uproad situation. I
Speaker 1: think it's brilliant, and I get it.
Speaker 2: You can.
Speaker 1: You can fight change like this all you want, but
Speaker 1: no pun intended with the tolls. But the reality is
Speaker 1: this makes much more sense to me that you can
Speaker 1: be on an app instantly up and running in two seconds,
Speaker 1: and versus filling out paperwork or some sort of online
Speaker 1: application for the toll road people waiting for your sticker
Speaker 1: in the mail, putting that sticker onto your car and
Speaker 1: using it and then waiting for them to charge you
Speaker 1: and to make sure, Oh did I go through the
Speaker 1: toll on that day? Yeah, I guess that was me.
Speaker 1: Or I can have an instant notification on my phone
Speaker 1: the bill is paid, it's done, boom, and yeah'm paying.
Speaker 2: A little premium for that.
Speaker 1: But for the three or four times a year that
Speaker 1: I might take a toll road and By the way,
Speaker 1: it's a big it's a big argument with me and
Speaker 1: my wife with these toll roads because when we're going
Speaker 1: down to San Diego, she's like, you gotta take the
Speaker 1: toll road. It saves twenty minutes. I said, uh ah,
Speaker 1: I don't play that game. I'm not doing the toll road.
Speaker 1: I'm not paying extra. I'm going down and I will
Speaker 1: take the regular road. I don't care how much traffic
Speaker 1: I got to sit in. I'm not paying the extra
Speaker 1: eight bucks. Now I probably will because guess what, I'm
Speaker 1: a sucker for being a tech guy that thinks this
Speaker 1: is really cool and now wants to try it.
Speaker 2: So there you got me? All right? Wow?
Speaker 1: Am I really heated up on this show today? I
Speaker 1: feel like I am. Oh my gosh, show's almost over. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's see Susan while watching Oh, Susan says, while watching
Speaker 1: your segment this morning, I noticed an object on the
Speaker 1: desk in your background that may have been one of
Speaker 1: the blocks air conditioners I've been reading about. If that's
Speaker 1: indeed what it is.
Speaker 2: Do you like it?
Speaker 1: Should I get one? The short hand, sir, Susan is
Speaker 1: absolutely not.
Speaker 2: Number one.
Speaker 1: This is not an air conditioner. If you're watching on
Speaker 1: the live stream. What I have behind me is a
Speaker 1: little radio called the Retro Mini from a website called
Speaker 1: MYVQ dot com. This is an homage to the fact
Speaker 1: that I love radio. I've always loved radio since I
Speaker 1: was a kid. If I was not on TV, I
Speaker 1: would be on the radio. In fact, I am on
Speaker 1: the radio with Kfi twice a week and with Leo
Speaker 1: filling in for him. But I would have a full
Speaker 1: time radio job if I want, If I want it now,
Speaker 1: someone would have to hire me.
Speaker 2: But the reality is I love radio.
Speaker 1: So that's my homage to the fact that I absolutely
Speaker 1: radio is so near and dear to my heart, and
Speaker 1: podcasting is kind of the closest thing you can get
Speaker 1: to it without actually being on the radio. So anyway,
Speaker 1: let me just really quick mention this blocks Blaux air conditioner.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I'm pronouncing that properly, but I've
Speaker 1: gotten a lot of emails about this thing, and I
Speaker 1: will tell you. To me, it looks like a utter
Speaker 1: and complete scam. And the reason why I say that
Speaker 1: is because Number One, it's a little tiny air conditioner
Speaker 1: that cools off any room. I mean, come on, really,
Speaker 1: Number two. Every you can't find a.
Speaker 2: Review of it.
Speaker 1: That is a red flag when you find I get
Speaker 1: emails about these products all the time. They do huge
Speaker 1: social media buys, which means they blast social media with
Speaker 1: advertisements that look so good to be true that you
Speaker 1: want to buy this thing in an instant and you
Speaker 1: go online, you search for some information about it. You
Speaker 1: can't seem to find anything, but you find the website,
Speaker 1: you find some write ups that they have placed, and
Speaker 1: next thing, you know, you want to buy it.
Speaker 2: Don't buy it. Don't fall for this stuff.
Speaker 1: I see it with headphones, I see it with with
Speaker 1: all these things. It's literally if you look, if you
Speaker 1: search Blaux on Google right now, number one ad for it,
Speaker 1: number two ad for it, number three, ad for it,
Speaker 1: number four. Do not buy this on YouTube, Number five
Speaker 1: in Amazon whatever. I don't know how if they sell
Speaker 1: it on there, if it's real or not. Number six
Speaker 1: AP news, Oh, that sounds promising, you click it. It's
Speaker 1: actually a press release that they released to AP news.
Speaker 1: And by the way, they keep doing it because the
Speaker 1: date is constantly updated so it looks fresh. But it's
Speaker 1: completely a scam. The next one Discover magazine, Oh sponsored
Speaker 1: Number next one tech Times dot com home reviews. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if that one's legit or not. Maybe it
Speaker 1: is the next one SF Examiner dot com marketplace again
Speaker 1: some kind of sponsored placement. The next one MarketWatch sponsored
Speaker 1: next one Mercurynews dot com sounds legit four days ago,
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2: Sponsored.
Speaker 1: These folks run such a smart marketing campaign that look
Speaker 1: like it's hip and it's fresh, and people are buying
Speaker 1: it and it's up to date. Do not fall for
Speaker 1: this stuff, folks, Google when you look at it, you
Speaker 1: really have to analyze what you are looking at. When
Speaker 1: you see Google, look for reviews from real places. What
Speaker 1: do I mean realplaces? Cnet dot com I know, kind
Speaker 1: of old school used to work there, still near and
Speaker 1: dear to my heart, the Verge, Wirecutter, tech crunch, digitize,
Speaker 1: all these websites, digital trends. They are going to review
Speaker 1: something that is sort of in the main consumer spotlight
Speaker 1: myself news channels. You don't see any of that stuff
Speaker 1: with this air conditioner. If this portable air conditioner was
Speaker 1: as good as it says it is, wouldn't you see
Speaker 1: a bunch of reviews for it?
Speaker 2: Do not buy that thing.
Speaker 1: I know, I'm going off on kind of a tangent here,
Speaker 1: but it just gets me so angry that it's so
Speaker 1: easy to make something look so amazing nowadays in the
Speaker 1: online world. This is why I like people like myself
Speaker 1: and other tech reviewers, is that you find someone that
Speaker 1: you like, you find someone that you trust. I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna build your trust overnight.
Speaker 2: That doesn't happen.
Speaker 1: You don't just see me on Instagram and say, oh,
Speaker 1: Rich posted something cool, let me trust him now.
Speaker 2: No, it takes years to build that trust or months.
Speaker 1: And so to me, my thing has always been that
Speaker 1: I want to show you stuff that I think is
Speaker 1: important for.
Speaker 2: You to know.
Speaker 1: That's what I do in this podcast, That's why I
Speaker 1: do in my tech report, and I want to explain
Speaker 1: stuff to you. And when I start seeing a bunch
Speaker 1: of emails about this stuff, yeah, you're gonna find someone
Speaker 1: on YouTube that says it's amazing, But do you know
Speaker 1: who that person is. That's what you have to be
Speaker 1: careful about. In today's day and age. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of opinions out there. Not all of them are good. Okay, wow,
Speaker 1: I can't believe we're almost done here. I didn't even
Speaker 1: get through half of my stuff, all right. I want
Speaker 1: you to mention this because I thought this was really cool.
Speaker 1: If you have a pet. Lemonade is a high tech
Speaker 1: insurance company. And I know that because they pitched me
Speaker 1: back in the day when they first started and it
Speaker 1: sounded just too good to be true. I believe that,
Speaker 1: I don't want to let me see. I believe that
Speaker 1: Ashton Kutcher was literally one of the original like investors
Speaker 1: in this. When they first sent it to me, it
Speaker 1: was like, wait what And if you want to look
Speaker 1: at like, oh I can't, that's really tough to search
Speaker 1: Lemonade in your email. Lemonade Insurance I NSU are a c.
Speaker 1: When you look at this insurance as homeowner's insurance, it's
Speaker 1: really cheap and you wonder, oh, yeah, Ashton Kutcher backed.
Speaker 1: I don't know if he's still an investor or not,
Speaker 1: but this launched back in twenty seventeen, and they are
Speaker 1: all digital. So to get this insurance, you go on
Speaker 1: their website or their app, and it is fantastic. It's
Speaker 1: really pretty amazing actually, and it's insurance for renters.
Speaker 2: And also homeowners.
Speaker 1: And what they do is they kind of they take
Speaker 1: a twenty percent flat fee of your rates and you returned.
Speaker 1: They return unclaimed money in an annual give back and
Speaker 1: they give them money to like, I think charity or
Speaker 1: I don't know, whatever somewhere.
Speaker 2: But it's really pretty slick.
Speaker 1: And when you try it out and you get your
Speaker 1: quote for your homeowners, you're gonna be like, why is
Speaker 1: this half of what I'm paying or you know, forty
Speaker 1: percent or what I'm paying or sixty percent whatever it is.
Speaker 1: But it's legit, it's real, and they have, you know,
Speaker 1: it's technology on their side. They've taken all the inefficiencies
Speaker 1: of your standard insurance from big companies and they just said,
Speaker 1: how can we make this more efficient using technology?
Speaker 2: And they did it.
Speaker 1: So now they're doing health insurance for cats and dogs. Again,
Speaker 1: I don't generally recommend dog or pet insurance, but a
Speaker 1: lot of people like it, and I if I had
Speaker 1: a pet at this point, I might think about getting
Speaker 1: this because it's starting at twelve dollars a month. You
Speaker 1: can get it for new customers, existing customers, and it
Speaker 1: just you know, it covers a bunch of stuff and
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's a it's a hassle.
Speaker 2: Fleet If I.
Speaker 1: Was going to buy pet insurance, I would do this,
Speaker 1: so you sign up digitally. It's available in thirty three states.
Speaker 1: It's artific intelligence powered, so a lot of times you
Speaker 1: can submit a claim on Lemonade if you know your
Speaker 1: cat or dog needed something and they would like pay
Speaker 1: you out in like five minutes. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: how crazy advanced their system is because they use artificial
Speaker 1: intelligence to figure out, Okay, you said your cat broke
Speaker 1: their foot. We've seen this before. We don't think you're lying. Okay,
Speaker 1: here's your money.
Speaker 2: There you go. It's that fast.
Speaker 1: Now, I'm not saying I've experienced with that, but I've
Speaker 1: seen I've been following them throughout the years, and that's
Speaker 1: kind of what they say. And the okay, so they
Speaker 1: do lightning fast claims, best in class customer service, and
Speaker 1: a donation of leftover premiums go to animal focused charities
Speaker 1: Customers care about Again.
Speaker 2: It starts at twelve dollars a month, and you can do.
Speaker 1: Unique add ons, including a Preventative and Wellness package designed
Speaker 1: to keep your pet healthy, which includes the costs of
Speaker 1: routine wellness exams and vaccines. The Extended Accident and Illness
Speaker 1: Package covers pets recovery, including more advanced treatments and veterinary care.
Speaker 1: You know, if you've had a pet, which I've had
Speaker 1: a pet in the past, believe me, they can get
Speaker 1: very expensive. My father in law, long story short, but
Speaker 1: we had a dog and we moved to New York
Speaker 1: City and we couldn't have a dog in New York
Speaker 1: in our place, so my in laws took our dog.
Speaker 1: They watched her for many years, but we would still
Speaker 1: take care of her when it came to the vet
Speaker 1: and bills and all that stuff because they were watching her.
Speaker 1: So you get a call from your father in law
Speaker 1: and like a Friday afternoon, he's like, rich, Ali's paw
Speaker 1: is looking like she might have stepped in something or
Speaker 1: done something to it. It looks like it's kind of painful, okay,
Speaker 1: And it's like you bring her to the vet and
Speaker 1: it's seven hundred dollars later because her toenail was impacted
Speaker 1: or whatever it was she broke. I don't know, but
Speaker 1: it's those little things. And if you have a pet,
Speaker 1: you know, those happen all the time. Maybe not all
Speaker 1: the time, but they happen. And so if you have insurance,
Speaker 1: maybe it would cover something like that. And yes, you're
Speaker 1: paying for insurance on a monthly basis, but hopefully the
Speaker 1: amount you pay, maybe it's ten percent of the fee
Speaker 1: of whatever the seven hundred dollars is. It's seventy bucks
Speaker 1: at that time versus the seven hundred, it could be
Speaker 1: worth it. So anyway, Lemonade dot com slash pets, am
Speaker 1: I guessing, I'm guessing, or just go to let me
Speaker 1: just say, is it lemonade Lemonade dot com and you
Speaker 1: can just go on and look for where they have. Yeah,
Speaker 1: pet insurance is Lemonade dot com slash pets and you
Speaker 1: can just go ahead and get your quote right away
Speaker 1: if you have a pet. So good information there. And
Speaker 1: Tony by the way, on the Live podcast said, I've
Speaker 1: used Lemonade very easy and cheap. I've had my Facebook
Speaker 1: page for a couple of years now, and you get
Speaker 1: to know certain people. And it's funny because now Facebook
Speaker 1: tags people with either something called topfan or valued commenter or.
Speaker 2: Little things like that.
Speaker 1: You know the people that regularly check your page, which
Speaker 1: is kind of cool because the idea is that if
Speaker 1: you see a comment from them or a topfan badge,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be more app to kind of notice that
Speaker 1: and respond to it because you're sort of giving your
Speaker 1: time to me looking at my stuff and sharing it,
Speaker 1: and then I should give you some more of my
Speaker 1: time and attention because you're a top fan and it
Speaker 1: makes sense. Facebook is brilliant at this stuff. So I
Speaker 1: do recognize some of the regular names I see as
Speaker 1: we go along. I don't always get to say something
Speaker 1: to you, but you're there and I do appreciate you.
Speaker 1: And by the way, when I first started my Facebook page,
Speaker 1: which I'll never forget, the morning I was at KTLA,
Speaker 1: I was talking to my producer Jacob back in the day,
Speaker 1: and I was like, should I start a Facebook page?
Speaker 1: It's like sure, And I couldn't imagine having even more than, like,
Speaker 1: you know, a couple thousand followers on my page. That
Speaker 1: would be amazing, right, like five thousand. I was expecting
Speaker 1: maybe a couple hundred. And now when you look at
Speaker 1: the page it is up to which.
Speaker 2: Is just wild.
Speaker 1: Let me see here on my Facebook, six hundred and
Speaker 1: ninety five thousand, one hundred and three, six hundred and
Speaker 1: ninety five thousand people could potentially see what I say
Speaker 1: on Facebook. Now that doesn't always happen. My stuff is
Speaker 1: shown to an average, I would say a good post
Speaker 1: is probably it tells you how many people see it.
Speaker 1: A good post is probably seen by about fifty thousand people.
Speaker 1: Average post I would say for me is probably twenty
Speaker 1: five to thirty thousand people. A great post like my
Speaker 1: Nintendo post the other day, four hundred thousand people.
Speaker 2: A really good post.
Speaker 1: Okay, So the most engaging post from this month this
Speaker 1: little inside baseball but kind of fun four hundred thousand people,
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty thousand people, one hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: one thousand people. So it tells you how many people
Speaker 1: saw it, and then how many people actually did something
Speaker 1: with that post. They call it engagements and so on
Speaker 1: that post. So out of four hundred thousand people that
Speaker 1: saw my lego post, twenty two thousand people decided to
Speaker 1: do something with it, which is comment, share or like it.
Speaker 1: On my post that had one hundred and forty two
Speaker 1: thousand people that saw it, twenty thousand people decided to
Speaker 1: do something. So what I'm trying to say here is
Speaker 1: just because you have huge followings on the social media
Speaker 1: platforms does not mean that all those people see what
Speaker 1: you do or even care about what you do. So
Speaker 1: that is why I continue to fight and really try
Speaker 1: to post the best content that I can because the
Speaker 1: better stuff you post, the more people that interact with it,
Speaker 1: the more that Facebook shows it to more people, and
Speaker 1: it goes on and on. So that is how it
Speaker 1: all works. And now that you've listened to the end
Speaker 1: of the show, you get little tidbits of stuff like that,
Speaker 1: and Kenya believe it, the show is over. That's gonna
Speaker 1: do it for this episode of the show. If you'd
Speaker 1: like to submit a question for me to answer, all
Speaker 1: you have to do is go to rich on tech
Speaker 1: dot tv and hit the little email button at.
Speaker 2: The bottom of the page.
Speaker 1: And yes, as a guy from Jersey, it takes a
Speaker 1: lot for me to say the word button like that.
Speaker 1: I would say button, but you know sometimes people judge
Speaker 1: me for that. We would love it if you would
Speaker 1: rate and review this podcast to help other people discover it.
Speaker 1: We've got one hundred and seventy seven ratings on iTunes
Speaker 1: and by the way, five stars. So if you want
Speaker 1: to rate this show and have your rating or your
Speaker 1: little review read on the show, just go to rate
Speaker 1: this podcast dot com slash rich on tech, or you
Speaker 1: can just go to iTunes and do it and I'll
Speaker 1: read those on a future show. You can find me
Speaker 1: online everywhere at rich on Tech. My name is rich
Speaker 1: smiro On, behalf of everyone that gets this show to
Speaker 1: your ears.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you real
Speaker 2: soon