Speaker 1: The apps that connect you with your neighbors. I'm rich
Speaker 1: jamiro This is Rich on Tech daily. Between high speed
Speaker 1: internet and Wi Fi cameras, our homes are better connected
Speaker 1: than ever, But what about our neighborhoods. Sure Facebook is
Speaker 1: great for connecting us to all the people we know,
Speaker 1: but think about the homes in your neighborhood. You probably
Speaker 1: know your neighbors to the left and to the right,
Speaker 1: maybe the person across the street, but go down a
Speaker 1: few houses, you probably don't know them. Or maybe over
Speaker 1: a few streets that's still your neighborhood, but you don't
Speaker 1: really know those people.
Speaker 2: Well, there's a whole bunch of.
Speaker 1: Apps that can connect you with the folks in your
Speaker 1: neighborhood for lots of reasons. Number one is crime, but
Speaker 1: there's many other uses of these apps, including if you
Speaker 1: want to get a recommendation for a service provider.
Speaker 2: That's a good use, or maybe you just want to
Speaker 2: sell your stuff.
Speaker 1: How easy is it for someone down the street to
Speaker 1: just collect an old bed that you have or a sofa?
Speaker 1: First off, let's start with nextdoor. This is a social
Speaker 1: network for your neighborhood. So maybe you've gotten an invitation
Speaker 1: for it maybe you're already on there, or maybe you
Speaker 1: don't use it that much even though you have an account.
Speaker 1: This one could be really handy, and this is probably
Speaker 1: like one of the best use case scenarios of the Internet,
Speaker 1: because the deal is it's connecting you to people that
Speaker 1: are nearby. These are the people that are in your neighborhood.
Speaker 1: They're day in, day out seeing what's going on. And
Speaker 1: it's good to chat with these people because you know,
Speaker 1: you're exchanging information like back in the old days, except
Speaker 1: now it's all online. So when you make a post,
Speaker 1: you can make it seen by just like your immediate neighborhood,
Speaker 1: or you can expand it out to include other neighborhoods
Speaker 1: around you. And the categories they have that are pretty
Speaker 1: popular include recommendations, So these are things like, hey, I
Speaker 1: had this plumber, he was great, use them for your
Speaker 1: house items, for sale events, so anything locally that's happening,
Speaker 1: and of course crime. When we talk to the company,
Speaker 1: they said they work with a bunch of agencies like
Speaker 1: local and official agencies, so they post a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff to the neighborhoods as well. So if you're on
Speaker 1: these for any reason at all, if you want to
Speaker 1: get into your community or more involved. This is a
Speaker 1: great way to do just that. Now, I see a
Speaker 1: lot of crime posts on here, so it's a lot
Speaker 1: of that stuff. And it's a lot of kind of
Speaker 1: things like Hey, did you just hear that sound down
Speaker 1: the street?
Speaker 2: Or why is there a helicopter flying over our neighborhood?
Speaker 2: So it's a lot of that stuff. It's kind of
Speaker 2: like a real time conversation with your neighbors.
Speaker 1: Next Door says they do their best to verify that
Speaker 1: people live in the neighborhood that they sign up for,
Speaker 1: and they do that in several ways. First off, you
Speaker 1: can get a referral from someone that lives in the
Speaker 1: neighborhood that's already signed up. They might mail you a postcard,
Speaker 1: they might do a phone call, but either way, they
Speaker 1: want you to use your real name when possible, and
Speaker 1: they also want you to list as much of your
Speaker 1: address as possible, so at least at the very least.
Speaker 2: It will say your name and your street.
Speaker 1: Some people even opt to put their exact house number
Speaker 1: on there as well. The company says they do this
Speaker 1: because by using the real name and a verified address,
Speaker 1: they think it helps people become a little bit better
Speaker 1: than all the anonymous stuff that's out there on the internet.
Speaker 1: So nextdoor dot com that's the first one. Now let's
Speaker 1: talk about a new future from Ring. And I was
Speaker 1: just taking a walk in my neighborhood yesterday and I
Speaker 1: can't believe how many people have these Ring video doorbells.
Speaker 1: Actually I can because I'm a big fan of them.
Speaker 1: I think they're really cool and they're everywhere. So now
Speaker 1: Ring has a new feature in their app. It's called
Speaker 1: Ring Safe Neighborhoods, and what they do is they actually
Speaker 1: let you share the videos that you're collecting with these
Speaker 1: Ring video doorbells, so you can share a little snippet
Speaker 1: of a clip to this sort of social network that's
Speaker 1: inside the app.
Speaker 2: You can also create text.
Speaker 1: Posts as well, but a lot of people use this
Speaker 1: to share their videos and also screenshots from the videos
Speaker 1: of things happening, basically crimes happening in their neighborhood or
Speaker 1: even weird stuff. You know, we see a lot of
Speaker 1: things happen on these cameras nowadays, so people are just
Speaker 1: sharing anything that's interesting. When we talk to Ring, they
Speaker 1: say their mission is to reduce crime in neighborhoods and
Speaker 1: they've done that.
Speaker 2: With products like their video doorbell.
Speaker 1: They also have these really cool floodlight cams as they're called,
Speaker 1: and these are really neat because it's a floodlight. So
Speaker 1: if you already have the wiring for a floodlight on
Speaker 1: the side of your house, well, you can easily connect
Speaker 1: the Ring floodlight cam and now you have floodlights with
Speaker 1: a video cam as well. So that's an easy way
Speaker 1: to get the security of a camera without adding a
Speaker 1: bunch of wires to your house. The ney thing about
Speaker 1: the Ring Neighborhoods app is that you don't have to
Speaker 1: have a Ring product to use it, so you can
Speaker 1: actually just sign up for the app and you can
Speaker 1: set your neighborhood and set a radius around your home
Speaker 1: and then you can see the videos that people are
Speaker 1: sharing nearby.
Speaker 2: Ring CEO and founder Jamie Simmonov, a very nice guy
Speaker 2: by the way, says it's a positive.
Speaker 1: Way for neighbors to come together around something that really matters,
Speaker 1: which is making neighborhoods safer. And by the way, right
Speaker 1: after we recorded our interview with Jamie, the news broke
Speaker 1: a couple days later that Amazon purchased Ring for like
Speaker 1: a reported one billion dollars, so expect to see many
Speaker 1: more ring video doorbells in your neighborhood in the near future.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much for listening. If you like this podcast, be.
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Speaker 1: app Rich on tech dot tv for links to everything
Speaker 1: I mentioned here.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much for listening. I'm Rich Damiro. I'll talk
Speaker 2: to you real soon.