Speaker 1: Sony reinvents the earbuds for an always on world. Google's
Speaker 1: new software turns any computer into a Chromebook, an app
Speaker 1: that lets you do an I test right from your smartphone,
Speaker 1: plus your tech questions answered. What's going on? I'm Rich
Speaker 1: Schemiro and this is Rich on Tech, the podcast where
Speaker 1: I talk about the tech stuff I think you should
Speaker 1: know about. It's also the place where I answer the
Speaker 1: questions you send me. I'm a tech reporter at KTLA
Speaker 1: Channel five in Los Angeles. Welcome to the show man.
Speaker 1: It feels good to be doing a show that's proper
Speaker 1: this week, because last week was just you have no idea.
Speaker 1: So I so I had a problem with my board
Speaker 1: where whenever I would talk or even not talk, it
Speaker 1: would just have this like hum and so it sounded
Speaker 1: just like a metallic I don't know what the deal was,
Speaker 1: and so I spent like two hours trying different MIC setups,
Speaker 1: doing different things, moving the board into different plug outlets.
Speaker 1: I thought maybe it was like the wiring or something,
Speaker 1: and nothing worked. So I ended up recording the podcast
Speaker 1: like directly into my computer with like a USB MIC.
Speaker 1: I think I don't even remember how I did it
Speaker 1: because I blocked it all out. But long story short,
Speaker 1: when I picked up the board to like put it
Speaker 1: away later on, somehow it shook and I heard like
Speaker 1: a rattling inside my podcasting board and so my mixer,
Speaker 1: and so I'm like, wait a second to what's going on.
Speaker 1: And I think it's some sort of like little piece
Speaker 1: that came detached inside, probably from my lack of proper
Speaker 1: transport when I took it to different places like Chattanooga,
Speaker 1: in Las Vegas and other places. I've taken it back
Speaker 1: and forth to the station, and so I think that
Speaker 1: whatever that little metal thing is in there, whenever it
Speaker 1: hits something else, it creates some sort of circuit in
Speaker 1: the board that makes the hum. So anyway, what I
Speaker 1: did was, this is my hack, which I can't believe
Speaker 1: I'm saying this even, but I shook the board to
Speaker 1: get the little rattling part like into the corner of
Speaker 1: the board so that hopefully it just stays in like
Speaker 1: a corner, not touching any metal. And I left my board.
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, I can't believe that's what I'm doing. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have the engineers at the station take a
Speaker 1: look at it. Hopefully they can take this thing apart
Speaker 1: and see what's inside there. I'll be curious what actually
Speaker 1: what actually messed this thing up. Anyway, So if you
Speaker 1: saw me on Instagram or Facebook at rich on Tech,
Speaker 1: you already know this. But this is my This week
Speaker 1: marks my eleventh year at KTLA Los Angeles. I cannot
Speaker 1: believe it. So, since you're the podcast listener and this
Speaker 1: doesn't you go out wide, I can tell you a
Speaker 1: little secret story. But when I joined KTLA, they literally
Speaker 1: offered me ninety days. Ninety days now, given I had
Speaker 1: a fantastic job at another station across town. I wasn't
Speaker 1: on air, but I was behind the scenes and I
Speaker 1: had a very very good gig, and it was something
Speaker 1: that was, you know, I'd never done before. It was
Speaker 1: you know, as a producer basically, but it was really cool.
Speaker 1: And you know, I was building something and they come
Speaker 1: to me and they're like, hey, you want to do
Speaker 1: this really cool thing. It's it was like everything I
Speaker 1: wanted to do. It's like my dream to be on
Speaker 1: air doing technology. But the reality was they were like, Okay,
Speaker 1: we'll try you out for ninety days and we'll go
Speaker 1: from there. I'm like, who wha hold on I'm not
Speaker 1: leaving a really good job, and I had a kid
Speaker 1: on the way. I'm not leaving a really good job
Speaker 1: to go somewhere that's you know, offering me ninety days
Speaker 1: like that is not going to happen. So I knew
Speaker 1: that this was a great opportunity, but I really had
Speaker 1: to just be firm in that because I didn't want
Speaker 1: to mess up my life, especially with a kid on
Speaker 1: the way. And quickly I realized as an adult, you
Speaker 1: mess up your life in many different ways. But I
Speaker 1: was a little bit younger and you know, didn't realize that.
Speaker 1: But anyway, I digress, So long story short. I think
Speaker 1: they gave me like a year or two contract, and yeah,
Speaker 1: it's been eleven ever since. So anyway, I don't want
Speaker 1: to bore you with all my details in my life,
Speaker 1: but it's been an amazing ride. It's been a really
Speaker 1: fun time there. KTLA for the most part, has not
Speaker 1: changed since I've been there. I mean, yeah, there's been
Speaker 1: like some changes in management and things like that, but
Speaker 1: my core job has remained the same, and quite honestly,
Speaker 1: it's really funny because the easy way to do my
Speaker 1: job is to just scare people all day long. And
Speaker 1: to tell them the worst things about technology and how
Speaker 1: your phone is spying on you and all this good stuff.
Speaker 1: But I don't do any of that. I actually take
Speaker 1: a much more positive approach to technology. But I also
Speaker 1: let people know what I think they need to know
Speaker 1: and not just the lowest common denominator of trying to
Speaker 1: scare you every chance I can. Now, I think that
Speaker 1: it's very smart for people to be informed, but I
Speaker 1: also kind of cut through a lot of the clutter
Speaker 1: of stuff that I don't think you need to really
Speaker 1: care about, and so I'm not going to give that
Speaker 1: stuff the light of day. Honestly, for many many years,
Speaker 1: I didn't even cover Apple rumors because I had a
Speaker 1: rule that if it was a rumor, like why would
Speaker 1: I cover it? It's not something that's happened, Like, well,
Speaker 1: this is literally speculation, and so I didn't do that
Speaker 1: for a long time. The Apple rumors are kind of
Speaker 1: avoidable at this point, which you know, and people kind
Speaker 1: of like them, myself included so and quite frankly, a
Speaker 1: lot of them come true at this point. So anyway,
Speaker 1: that's my story, My my entire goal. Every story that
Speaker 1: I present on air is something or on my Facebook
Speaker 1: or on my Twitter or on whatever it is, is
Speaker 1: really something that either I find interesting, is something that
Speaker 1: is an indicator of something to come, or is something
Speaker 1: that you know you should find useful when it comes
Speaker 1: to tech. So that's really what guides me, not just
Speaker 1: the flash and trash that so many other people just
Speaker 1: do to get clicks and listens and all that stuff
Speaker 1: and views. And maybe that's why I'm not more popular.
Speaker 1: Maybe I should start trying that for the next ten years.
Speaker 1: But no, I'm just kidding. So let's get to the
Speaker 1: first story of the week, Sony earbuds. These link buds
Speaker 1: they're called. This was an interesting one because Sony comes
Speaker 1: to me, and now that this is all out there,
Speaker 1: I can give you a little bit of the backstory.
Speaker 1: But Sony comes to me and they're like, Okay, we've
Speaker 1: got something super secretive, you know, can you sign this,
Speaker 1: can you talk? You know, can you do this? And
Speaker 1: it's like, okay, sure, what what is this? They wouldn't
Speaker 1: tell me a thing before they sent me whatever the
Speaker 1: thing was, and so I'm like, all right, I haven't
Speaker 1: heard from Sony in a long time. I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: sort of trust them to send me something that's interesting
Speaker 1: and we'll see I mean, obviously I don't have to
Speaker 1: cover it if I open this thing up and it's
Speaker 1: not very cool. So I get this box that is
Speaker 1: just like super heavy. I'm like, what in the world
Speaker 1: is this? And you know, open up this box you
Speaker 1: can see some other people. I don't do a lot
Speaker 1: of unboxings, but some other you know folks do, so
Speaker 1: you can see what they did with the unboxing. But
Speaker 1: it's like it came in this like wildly, like a
Speaker 1: lie laborate locked box that you opened and there's some
Speaker 1: sort of like Sony's take on an NFT in there.
Speaker 1: I think, I don't know, but anyway, you open it
Speaker 1: up and finally get smaller and smaller. So you find
Speaker 1: these little link buds, and these are wireless earbuds that
Speaker 1: have a really unique design and style, and the whole
Speaker 1: point of them is that you leave them in your
Speaker 1: ears pretty much all day long so that you can
Speaker 1: listen to your music, take phone calls, but also hear
Speaker 1: the world around you. So they've got this really unique
Speaker 1: open ring design they call it, which kind of pops
Speaker 1: into your ear. It almost looks like you rotated the
Speaker 1: link buds apart and they're small, they're lightweight. Obviously it's sony,
Speaker 1: so they have really good audio quality and they don't
Speaker 1: they're not noise cancellation headphones because that would require them
Speaker 1: to be always on, but they are, you know, they
Speaker 1: do kind of I guess they have like a clear
Speaker 1: voice functionality so that you can, you know, people can
Speaker 1: hear you better when you talk. But a couple of
Speaker 1: the unique features three of them that I want to
Speaker 1: talk about adaptive volume control, so this automatically brings up
Speaker 1: the volume higher and lower based on your surroundings. Then
Speaker 1: there's this thing they call wide tap area, so there's
Speaker 1: a little sensor inside these link buds. Usually you have
Speaker 1: to kind of tap the actual earbud, but that puts
Speaker 1: some pressure on your ear every time you do it.
Speaker 1: So with this, you can actually tap on your cheekbone
Speaker 1: right in front of the earbud, and there's a little
Speaker 1: vibration sensor inside the link buds that you will know
Speaker 1: if you're double tapping or triple tapping to pause your
Speaker 1: music or do something else. And then finally there's something
Speaker 1: called speak to Chat, and this I thought at first
Speaker 1: was really really cool because what it does is when
Speaker 1: you talk, it pauses your music. Oh my gosh, amazing.
Speaker 1: Well then I quickly realized on my first run that
Speaker 1: number one, I talk to myself a lot. Anytime you
Speaker 1: talk to yourself, the earbuds are going to pause. Anytime
Speaker 1: you cough, they're gonna pause. If you talk to someone else,
Speaker 1: they're gonna pause, which is kind of the point, but
Speaker 1: I actually ended up having to turn that feature off
Speaker 1: because it just wasn't working enough for me. So anyway,
Speaker 1: really really neat earbuds. There are one hundred and eighty
Speaker 1: to me, I will say I don't find them to
Speaker 1: be the most comfortable in my ears. They're They're just fine.
Speaker 1: I think that some other earbuds feel better. Personally, I'm
Speaker 1: not a big earbuds person in general, Like I am
Speaker 1: not one of those people that keeps earbuds in all
Speaker 1: the time, even if I'm in the airport or whatever.
Speaker 1: I just I put them in when I need them,
Speaker 1: I take them out when I don't, And honestly, I
Speaker 1: just I'm not a huge, huge earbuds person. And so
Speaker 1: these are cool, and I love that Sony is trying
Speaker 1: something totally new and refreshing and different. And I think
Speaker 1: they've succeeded, honestly. And this is the other thing about
Speaker 1: doing reviews kind of under embargo, is that I had
Speaker 1: these in my hand, and you know, I didn't know
Speaker 1: what anyone else was gonna think of them. So I
Speaker 1: had to write my review and come up with all
Speaker 1: this stuff before you know, you see anyone else's and
Speaker 1: that's typically what I do in general. But it's just
Speaker 1: really interesting. When I saw some of the first reviews
Speaker 1: coming out, I was like, okay, these you know, I
Speaker 1: didn't really read them, but I saw some of the
Speaker 1: headlines and it seemed like everyone sort of agrees that
Speaker 1: these things are pretty well done, and Sony is definitely
Speaker 1: doing a pretty good job of doing something different here.
Speaker 1: So anyway, Sony link Bud's if you want to learn
Speaker 1: more information about them. All right, so far this is
Speaker 1: going so much better than the last one. So happy.
Speaker 1: It's like my board is just working properly and that's
Speaker 1: exciting enough. First question, Hey, Rich, without telling me too
Speaker 1: many trade secrets, can you help me decide on a
Speaker 1: new phone? I usually purchase them out right, so I
Speaker 1: want to keep the cost around five hundred. Here's what
Speaker 1: I need. Number one got to be Android. I had
Speaker 1: Apple one time and hated it. Number two with like
Speaker 1: five G keeping up with the Joneses. Number three basic features.
Speaker 1: I'm not that worried about a fancy camera or waking
Speaker 1: me up on time. Just making calls and taking pictures.
Speaker 1: That's interesting. Number four maybe waterproof. I might drop it
Speaker 1: in a puddle or a pool if you can help me.
Speaker 1: Would like to know your thoughts. Thank you, Larry. Larry,
Speaker 1: I have one word for you, and that is Pixel six.
Speaker 1: That is going to be the best phone for you. Now,
Speaker 1: it's a little more expensive than your budget, which is
Speaker 1: five hundred, but this phone is six hundred. You might
Speaker 1: be able to find it, you know, if you trade
Speaker 1: in something, or you know, maybe someone has it on
Speaker 1: a deal if you sign up for five or something.
Speaker 1: But I think that's gonna be the best. And the
Speaker 1: reason why I think that's the best case scenario for
Speaker 1: you is that you want Android, you want five G,
Speaker 1: you want basic features. This has very simple software that's
Speaker 1: constantly updated, or at least it should be by Google
Speaker 1: for at least I think it's five years. It's going
Speaker 1: to be well water resistant. Nothing's truly waterproof, but it's fine.
Speaker 1: It's got a good level of water resistance, It's a
Speaker 1: decently smaller size than the Pixel six Pro. It's got
Speaker 1: a good camera probably well, it's got the best camera
Speaker 1: you can get out there, so that's good news. And yes,
Speaker 1: it will wake you up on time, even though it's
Speaker 1: not important to you, but you never know when you
Speaker 1: want to set an alarm. Now. The closest competition to
Speaker 1: this phone would probably be the Samsung Galaxy S twenty
Speaker 1: one fe. It is the same price typically on so
Speaker 1: it's six hundred dollars on sale. The only difference, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's really a matter of preference. Do you want Samsung,
Speaker 1: do you want Google. I would go with Google just
Speaker 1: because it's a little bit more, it's a little bit
Speaker 1: simpler to kind of use than a Samsung. But if
Speaker 1: you want Samsung, if you prefer that, and go ahead.
Speaker 1: I am absolutely loving the latest Samsung S twenty two series,
Speaker 1: and so I have no problem recommending the Samsung. The
Speaker 1: S twenty one is excellent as well. It's a great phone.
Speaker 1: I do think the camera is going to be better
Speaker 1: on the pixel for that price, so that's what I'd recommend.
Speaker 1: Those two phones are probably the best bang for your
Speaker 1: book at that price. Tag. All right, speaking of Google,
Speaker 1: this I think is just phenomenal. I can't get over
Speaker 1: how exciting this is. Maybe not for me, but for
Speaker 1: a lot of people out there that have either an
Speaker 1: older computer or that work at some sort of nonprofit
Speaker 1: or a school or even a business. Maybe not so much.
Speaker 1: I mean they want it for business anyway. This is
Speaker 1: Chrome os flex. This is a chrome basically, it's software
Speaker 1: from Google that turns any old Mac or PC into
Speaker 1: a chromebook. And you're probably familiar with the idea of
Speaker 1: a chromebook. All the kids were using them during the pandemic.
Speaker 1: That's what the schools were handing out like candy. And
Speaker 1: so it's a very simple computer. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: what I was talking about with the pixel. It's simple,
Speaker 1: it works, it's fast, it's speedy. So even on an
Speaker 1: old computer, this can work. I read up to like
Speaker 1: computers up to thirteen years old. Let's just say ten
Speaker 1: years old. Ten year old computers pretty old. But you
Speaker 1: put this Chrome os flex on it, which is a
Speaker 1: free operating system that you download from Google. It's primarily
Speaker 1: aimed at businesses in schools, but I think it looks
Speaker 1: like anyone can just download it and install it, but
Speaker 1: you get all the benefits of sort of a Chromebook
Speaker 1: on these old PCs or max which those benefits are
Speaker 1: that it boots up really fast, it doesn't slow down
Speaker 1: that much over time time, system updates happen in the background.
Speaker 1: There's no worry about viruses because everything is sandboxed, and
Speaker 1: you know, it's all. It doesn't even have much to
Speaker 1: like run on the system. It's like mostly running from
Speaker 1: the cloud. Now, the downside of this is that it's
Speaker 1: mostly meant for things very simple tasks web surfing, watching YouTube,
Speaker 1: you know, looking at photos, doing your emails, those kind
Speaker 1: of things. You're not going to be editing a wildly
Speaker 1: elaborate video on this thing. You're not going to be
Speaker 1: doing photoshop on it. Yes, you can do those things
Speaker 1: if they operate in the cloud, but this is primarily
Speaker 1: a cloud computer. I think you can install some Android
Speaker 1: apps on there, so that would work as well. But
Speaker 1: the reality is, and of course you have Google Assistant.
Speaker 1: This is just such a cool way that Google has
Speaker 1: immediately breathed, breathed, given a breath of new life. I
Speaker 1: don't know how to say that, but just some breathe
Speaker 1: some fresh air into an old computer. So if you
Speaker 1: have an old computer around your house you might have
Speaker 1: thrown away. This is an amazing way that you can
Speaker 1: now install this software on that computer and give it
Speaker 1: to someone, give it to a young kid, or you
Speaker 1: can give it donate it to a charity, or you know,
Speaker 1: just whatever. There's so many great things about this and
Speaker 1: the fact that Google is fully supporting this, at least
Speaker 1: for now. We all know Google has a very short
Speaker 1: attention span, but I do think that they will see
Speaker 1: that this is very popular and continue to kind of
Speaker 1: work on this system. Again. It's called Chrome os Flex
Speaker 1: And just by mentioning this on TV just a response
Speaker 1: I got clearly there onto something now. I did a
Speaker 1: story a couple of years ago with a guy named
Speaker 1: the Laptop Elf, and he does this on the side,
Speaker 1: so he would take donations of old computers and he
Speaker 1: would really go to town on getting everything installed in
Speaker 1: that computer. But it was not easy because there was
Speaker 1: no sort of like Chrome os that you could just
Speaker 1: download and easily install it was. There were some variations
Speaker 1: on it out there, but nothing official from Google that
Speaker 1: you can do. So Google making this official and offering
Speaker 1: it up for free, I think is a huge win
Speaker 1: for so many people out there, so thank you Google
Speaker 1: and check it out Chrome os Flex. You can actually
Speaker 1: just try it out on your current computer, which I'm
Speaker 1: going to do by running it off off of a
Speaker 1: USB drive. You can boot your computer up directly from
Speaker 1: there and then or I guess you can boot Chrome
Speaker 1: os flex directly from there and then if you like it,
Speaker 1: you can actually install it on your Mac or PC.
Speaker 1: All right, let's get to the next question. Carol says, Hey, Rich,
Speaker 1: I just saw your segment on Amazon Prime rate increases.
Speaker 1: One of your suggestions was to combine household accounts. I'm
Speaker 1: wondering if we combine ours, would one of us lose
Speaker 1: our shopping history. Always enjoy your news spots. Thank you, Carol, Carol,
Speaker 1: good question. Yes, Today on the news, I talked about
Speaker 1: how Amazon Prime is raising prices for their membership from
Speaker 1: one nineteen a year to one thirty nine a year
Speaker 1: with tax in California, that's about one hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: bucks a year. And this charge always gets me by
Speaker 1: surprise because it happens on like January second, and I
Speaker 1: get a charge for like one hundred and forty bucks
Speaker 1: or this year was one hundred and thirty and I
Speaker 1: was like, wait, what I buy for one hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty dollars? I was hacked and then I realized, oh, no,
Speaker 1: Prime just renewed. Now, I will tell you I did
Speaker 1: two hundred and thirty five orders on Prime last year.
Speaker 1: There's no way I'm giving up Amazon Prime. I ordered
Speaker 1: something two things this week, well, many many things this week.
Speaker 1: I probably placed four orders this week. But you know,
Speaker 1: in La where I live, the orders literally come either
Speaker 1: well same day. I'm not seeing as much anymore, but
Speaker 1: especially next day. I mean same day used to be
Speaker 1: a thing. I don't. It definitely doesn't show up as
Speaker 1: much on many products as I order, but the next
Speaker 1: day definitely is like kind of the standard same day sometimes.
Speaker 1: And then of course you know you've got Amazon the
Speaker 1: groceries with the two hour delivery. I mean, there's just
Speaker 1: so many benefits backup of the pictures. I use that
Speaker 1: as my kind of my photo backup for my backup
Speaker 1: of my backup. I watched like one or two Amazon
Speaker 1: Prime movies last year, so that's cool. I mean, if
Speaker 1: those are like five six bucks each, if you rented them,
Speaker 1: then there you go. That's twelve dollars right there. So
Speaker 1: there are so many benefits to Amazon. I don't think
Speaker 1: anyone can keep up with them or catch up to
Speaker 1: them at this point. It's gonna take a lot Like Walmart,
Speaker 1: Target they are, it's gonna take a while for them
Speaker 1: to figure out the logistics of this. I mean, Amazon
Speaker 1: has it down. I mean ninety nine percent of the
Speaker 1: deliveries now come from Amazon vans or the flex workers
Speaker 1: you know, the gig workers whatever. I mean, it's quite amazing,
Speaker 1: or the uh postal people. So no matter what it is,
Speaker 1: really really like fast and it's efficient. Like they know
Speaker 1: that if something is small, lightweight and they can just
Speaker 1: slide it into the post office, it arrives with your
Speaker 1: your postal carrier, you know, the next day or something.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's pretty pretty remarkable anyway. So yes, they're
Speaker 1: raising their rate to one point forty. And one of
Speaker 1: the things I mentioned is this lesser known option with
Speaker 1: Amazon that lets you share your membership with one adult
Speaker 1: in your household and a couple of teenagers and a
Speaker 1: couple kids. Now, yes, did Amazon imagine this to be
Speaker 1: so that mom and dad could have their own accounts, probably,
Speaker 1: But the reality is Amazon is very loose about the
Speaker 1: definition of household and I looked at all their documentation.
Speaker 1: It never says you need to live under the same roof.
Speaker 1: It never says that. Now. I'm sure Amazon has ways
Speaker 1: of cross checking people and making sure you're not just
Speaker 1: selling half of your membership to someone on eBay or whatever,
Speaker 1: but the reality is you are. I just said that
Speaker 1: like seventeen times. But here's the thing, I'll just switch
Speaker 1: to another cliche. If you have someone like this woman
Speaker 1: is saying, like Carol is saying, can we you know,
Speaker 1: it sounds like they have two different accounts in their household,
Speaker 1: Like that's wild. Why are you paying double? No combine
Speaker 1: those accounts and would they lose your shopping history? I
Speaker 1: don't think so. I mean, think about it. This is
Speaker 1: just a premium upgrade to an account you already have.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like upgrading to Spotify premium or any
Speaker 1: other any other online service where it has a basic
Speaker 1: free service and then you can upgrade to a paid plan.
Speaker 1: So that's pretty much the same thing that's happening here.
Speaker 1: You have an Amazon account, now you're just layering on
Speaker 1: Prime membership on top of it. I don't think there'd
Speaker 1: be any reason why they would suddenly just delete your
Speaker 1: entire shopping history. So if you have two accounts in
Speaker 1: your home, absolutely get that shared through your account, and
Speaker 1: you can do that. I'll put the link in the notes,
Speaker 1: but it's basically Amazon Household. I think you google Amazon
Speaker 1: Prime household and you can find the link through that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And you know, it's one of these things where I'll
Speaker 1: be quite honest, I believe there was a time when
Speaker 1: I did share my account with someone, a family member
Speaker 1: that maybe didn't live with me, and I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: it worked just fine. Now I'm not saying that was
Speaker 1: many many years ago. I wasn't really sure. Again, I
Speaker 1: kind of just saw that I said you could share.
Speaker 1: Maybe they've changed the wording, but back then it seemed
Speaker 1: like you just share your Prime membership with like six people.
Speaker 1: I think it was like six people at the time,
Speaker 1: And so I did. I shared it with a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of people, and they all had their own accounts,
Speaker 1: they all had their own ordering system. But I paid
Speaker 1: the bill at the end of the year, which is
Speaker 1: kind of a common theme with a lot of my
Speaker 1: family members on my accounts. That's another story for another day.
Speaker 1: All right, let's talk about Instagram. Instagram a very simple
Speaker 1: simple feature update. But Instagram is now allowing you to
Speaker 1: like stories. There's not much more to say other than that,
Speaker 1: and I will explain why I think that this is
Speaker 1: really important for someone like me. So I post a story,
Speaker 1: I've got a bunch of followers on Instagram, and people
Speaker 1: immediately start replying. Now, the only two ways to reply
Speaker 1: to a story historically on Instagram is to either use
Speaker 1: one of their pre programmed emojis that pops up when
Speaker 1: you tap into the little response field, or you can
Speaker 1: type a message in that same field. And so you
Speaker 1: can imagine with someone like me, with you know, over
Speaker 1: one hundred thousand people on Instagram, even if you know
Speaker 1: one percent of people respond, that's one hundred responses, right,
Speaker 1: And so that is all messages. And if people are
Speaker 1: just responding with a clapping hand emoji or a love
Speaker 1: or a you know whatever these little emojis they give you,
Speaker 1: or like a quick note that says like cool, awesome,
Speaker 1: thank you great, that's a lot for me to go
Speaker 1: through when it comes to looking at my dms, and
Speaker 1: so it really does kind of clutter up my dms,
Speaker 1: and I try to go through all of them to
Speaker 1: reply to everyone. And so sometimes they just like things
Speaker 1: back this or that. So now I think Instagram really
Speaker 1: has a user the user experience in mind, and kind
Speaker 1: of streamlining it with this feature. Because now if people
Speaker 1: like my story, which is kind of like a common
Speaker 1: thing to do, you just like it just like you
Speaker 1: would a picture. It will just go on your story
Speaker 1: page that only you can see, so you can see
Speaker 1: sort of the insights to your story, like how many
Speaker 1: people looked at it, how many people clicked your links,
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. This will just reside on there.
Speaker 1: So it's a very easy way to kind of just
Speaker 1: build some more analytics into your stories, but also let
Speaker 1: people respond to them in a way that's much more
Speaker 1: fluid if they don't really have anything to say. It's
Speaker 1: just easier and so a lot less clutter there. Now,
Speaker 1: the way you do it is you're gonna see a
Speaker 1: little heart icon right in between the text box under
Speaker 1: a story and the little airplane that lets you share
Speaker 1: that story to someone else. But or I guess send
Speaker 1: that story. I don't know what the little share thing does.
Speaker 1: I gotta look, but I guess I can check right now.
Speaker 1: I've got Instagram right here on my phone, so let's
Speaker 1: see if I go to someone's story. Okay, yeah, it
Speaker 1: lets you send it to someone else. So the point
Speaker 1: is this is just so much easier. I have not
Speaker 1: seen this yet up here on my Instagram, but usually
Speaker 1: Instagram is one of these I don't know why. Instagram
Speaker 1: is one of these services that announces things and then
Speaker 1: does it so much later, like it takes. It could
Speaker 1: take a month for this feature to show up on
Speaker 1: my Instagram. But at least now you know you've got
Speaker 1: the heads up. You'll soon be able to like stories
Speaker 1: on Instagram. And absolutely if you want to continue responding
Speaker 1: to my stories with emojis or a couple of words
Speaker 1: here and there, I will take it. But if you
Speaker 1: want to just like them and say, Rich, hey, I
Speaker 1: like this, thank you, don't even need whatever implied thank you,
Speaker 1: then I'm totally cool with that too, all right, Mark says, hey,
Speaker 1: Rich your recent review of the s twenty two, when
Speaker 1: you moved your iPhone simcard to the Samsung device, it
Speaker 1: got me thinking. Do service providers normally charge for an
Speaker 1: extra device when you do that, or do they only
Speaker 1: look at the simcard as the device, no matter what
Speaker 1: hardware it's plugged into. If the latter, I can see
Speaker 1: using whatever hardware suits the setting you're currently in, for instance,
Speaker 1: plugging your SIM into a tablet if you're taking class notes,
Speaker 1: then switching to a smartphone when you're on the run
Speaker 1: and want to use a smaller device. Thanks Mark, Mark.
Speaker 1: This opens up a fascinating discussion because I'll be quite honest,
Speaker 1: I have switched SIM cards into so many different devices
Speaker 1: over the years, but when I switched my iPhone SIM
Speaker 1: into the Galaxy S twenty two Ultra, it was the
Speaker 1: first time in years that I had switched a SIM
Speaker 1: card into not a non upgrade phone, And so the
Speaker 1: last time when I upgraded my phone to the new iPhone,
Speaker 1: I actually had to go into the Verizon store to
Speaker 1: complete the process because something about my SIM card with
Speaker 1: the old phone. I guess it was like a four
Speaker 1: G SIM card. They wanted to give me a five
Speaker 1: G SIM card my phone was not working properly. I
Speaker 1: don't think they charged me for that, but I do you.
Speaker 1: It's interesting because as soon as I put that simcard
Speaker 1: in the new phone, I got a text message from
Speaker 1: Verizon saying, hey, we noticed that you switched your SIM.
Speaker 1: Please go to the website to confirm that this was
Speaker 1: a change. I was like, Ah, they're gonna charge me
Speaker 1: thirty bucks, aren't they for switching the SIM. Now, I
Speaker 1: don't think they did that, but they could, and I
Speaker 1: think in the past with other providers, I have definitely
Speaker 1: swapped out simcards to different devices, and I've had no
Speaker 1: problems with that because usually the device registers itself on
Speaker 1: the network. But with all of that said, I don't
Speaker 1: recommend that you do this regularly because there's a couple things.
Speaker 1: Number One, they may flag your account for fraud and
Speaker 1: then you have a whole headache. Number Two, it's not
Speaker 1: very feasible to switch your SIM card from a tablet
Speaker 1: to a smaller device every time you need to do that.
Speaker 1: That's just going to be a total pain, and I
Speaker 1: would not recommend doing that. I would recommend getting a
Speaker 1: data only line or just linking up your tablet to
Speaker 1: your phone with a hotspot situation. But Mark, it's so
Speaker 1: funny that you wrote me this because I literally thought
Speaker 1: of this same exact possibility when I switch that simcard,
Speaker 1: because I got that message on my phone. But typically,
Speaker 1: I will say, in my experience, I've never had a
Speaker 1: problem moving a SIM into a different device. The only
Speaker 1: time I've run into issues is with unreleased devices. So
Speaker 1: let's say someone like A OnePlus sends me a device
Speaker 1: that is before it's released, and it's you know, a
Speaker 1: couple weeks before the public has it. Sometimes I've seen
Speaker 1: that if a device is not approved on a you know,
Speaker 1: a carrier's network, And this really only happens with Verizon
Speaker 1: that and sometimes AT and T. But sometimes that device
Speaker 1: will not get all of the features. So it may
Speaker 1: not pick up a five G signal, it may not
Speaker 1: work with voicemail, it may not do Wi Fi calling.
Speaker 1: But those those things are pretty rare and they're pretty
Speaker 1: limited in scope, so I wouldn't worry about it too much.
Speaker 1: But in general, what I would do is if you
Speaker 1: move your SIM card, I would if you're just a
Speaker 1: regular person that's doing this, I would go on your account,
Speaker 1: make sure everything's on the up and up, and make
Speaker 1: sure your provider knows about it, just because you do
Speaker 1: your The thing is, you never want your phone to
Speaker 1: go out or stop working in a situation when you
Speaker 1: really need it. Now, all phones will dial nine one one,
Speaker 1: whether they have a simcard in them or not, at
Speaker 1: least that's my understanding, So you should be okay there,
Speaker 1: But in general I would say that nine one one
Speaker 1: is one level of sort of like Lifeline. You need that,
Speaker 1: but just being able to use your phone with data
Speaker 1: and calling someone else is a whole other thing, and
Speaker 1: you don't want to lose that access either. So good question,
Speaker 1: thanks for asking, and uh really really got me to
Speaker 1: think on that one. All right, let's talk Uber. So
Speaker 1: Uber is a service that I have used since day
Speaker 1: one when it launched in Los Angeles. I've probably told
Speaker 1: you the story before, but I will never forget. So
Speaker 1: I lived in New York before Los Angeles, and we
Speaker 1: had these things called car services, right, and so where
Speaker 1: I worked at snet, once in a while, they would
Speaker 1: give you this voucher that was like one of those
Speaker 1: old credit card vouchers, like the carbon copy papers, and
Speaker 1: they would say, here you go, Rich, we know you're
Speaker 1: working late tonight, go ahead, take a car service home.
Speaker 1: Or hey, Rich, we're having a holiday party. Don't drive home,
Speaker 1: or you know, take a don't take a cab home, here,
Speaker 1: take a car service. And so you get these little
Speaker 1: slips once in a while. It was extremely expensive. You know,
Speaker 1: you didn't even know what it costs because the car
Speaker 1: service would just charge your company. They had a deal
Speaker 1: in the back end to make it a little bit
Speaker 1: more reasonable, but it's very expensive. Then Uber comes along
Speaker 1: and Uber is like, oh, we're doing this for everyone.
Speaker 1: Wait what on demand? Wait what? And so I'll never
Speaker 1: forget getting picked up to go to this party in
Speaker 1: Santa Monica and the Uber picked me up and it
Speaker 1: was like a twenty five dollars ride and I was like, wait, what,
Speaker 1: how in the world is this possible? Now, maybe it
Speaker 1: was more than twenty five dollars. I can't really remember,
Speaker 1: but I know that. All I know is that I
Speaker 1: took Uber so much. And back in the day, it
Speaker 1: was just town cars, so it was this really like
Speaker 1: fancy service with a driver that would get out and
Speaker 1: open your door for you. And then they came out
Speaker 1: with Uber X, and you know, obviously it's just kind
Speaker 1: of expanded, and now they have different levels of service,
Speaker 1: so you can choose everything from the fanciest to a
Speaker 1: car pool. But I tell you all this because Uber.
Speaker 1: The idea of Uber has always been, well when it
Speaker 1: first started, was that you would rate the driver and
Speaker 1: the driver would rate you. And so they almost came
Speaker 1: up with this eBay esque perfect store system, whereas the
Speaker 1: best drivers would get the best passenger, So everyone was
Speaker 1: always striving to be better, right, and that would make
Speaker 1: the service kind of almost like at checks and balance, right,
Speaker 1: And so you saw this little rating. At one point,
Speaker 1: you never knew your rating. But then Uber finally showed
Speaker 1: you your rating, and that was a step and it
Speaker 1: was out of five. And then now today, starting now
Speaker 1: this week, you can actually see a breakdown of your ratings.
Speaker 1: So you can see out of your last five hundred drives,
Speaker 1: how drivers rated you. Now I have like a four
Speaker 1: point eighty five, you want to hover around a four
Speaker 1: point nine, four point eight five, anything higher than they think.
Speaker 1: You're a new writer, so they may not want to
Speaker 1: take you anything lower. And you know, you're kind of
Speaker 1: like you know, who knows. So you can see these
Speaker 1: ratings if you go into this what's called Privacy center.
Speaker 1: And I'm not sure why Uber did not just make
Speaker 1: it so that you tap on your rating on your
Speaker 1: profile and it brings you to see your breakdown. That
Speaker 1: would make the most sense, but they didn't do that.
Speaker 1: They made this like seventeen taps. So I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: I'll explain it here, but you have to go to
Speaker 1: my Instagram at rich on Tech to see the step
Speaker 1: by step instructions. But what you want to do is
Speaker 1: go to the settings menu, so you tap U. Oh gosh,
Speaker 1: you know, I actually wrote this down on my Instagram.
Speaker 1: It's much easier to understand than what let me just
Speaker 1: get to that, much easier to understand than what Uber
Speaker 1: themselves actually wrote down. So okay, so here's what you do.
Speaker 1: You go, you open the Uber app, you tap your
Speaker 1: profile picture, you tap Settings, you tap Privacy, then you
Speaker 1: tap Privacy Center, then you tap c summary, then you
Speaker 1: tap view my ratings. That's one, two, three, four, five, six,
Speaker 1: seven steps when they could have made this two steps.
Speaker 1: Open the app, tap your rating, Boom, you see your breakdown.
Speaker 1: But and what does this all mean? Not much? I mean,
Speaker 1: I do have some one stars in there. I have
Speaker 1: no idea how I got those, but it's just one
Speaker 1: of those things where you can see. I guess it's
Speaker 1: just giving us more transparency into this whole system, and
Speaker 1: that's kind of what the deal is. So if you
Speaker 1: want to see it, go to my Instagram and see
Speaker 1: the step by step instructions. I made a little video
Speaker 1: about it. But oh, I wanted to mention. The best
Speaker 1: way to avoid a bad rating ready, don't slam the door.
Speaker 1: Uber says it's easy to accidentally slam a door if
Speaker 1: you're not thinking about it, and drivers have consistently sighted
Speaker 1: door slams as a reason why they deduct stars. And
Speaker 1: I will tell you I often travel with my kids
Speaker 1: in the Uber and airports and things like that, and yes,
Speaker 1: they do slam the door a lot, and so or
Speaker 1: maybe my wife slams the door. I don't know if
Speaker 1: someone slam the door, that's for sure. All right, let's
Speaker 1: get to the next question on the podcast. Hey, Rich,
Speaker 1: I wonder if you can recommend a safe method to
Speaker 1: scan my iPhone twelve for any viruses and something to
Speaker 1: safely remove them if any are found. I've checked the internet,
Speaker 1: which I have difficulty trusting, and found these names recommended
Speaker 1: Total av Norton, McAfee, McAfee, sorry, Bitdefender, Panda. Obviously, I
Speaker 1: would prefer a free app, at least initially to see
Speaker 1: if there's anything there i'd recommend. I'd appreciate any guidance
Speaker 1: you can provide. Thank you very much, Jim. Jim, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna give you the big old You absolutely do not
Speaker 1: need to scan your iPhone for viruses. You just don't.
Speaker 1: Why is that, may I ask? Number one, if you
Speaker 1: look at any of these apps, if you search total
Speaker 1: av and I iPhone, you will never see the word virus. Okay,
Speaker 1: because guess what. There is not a known virus for
Speaker 1: the iPhone. There never has been, there probably won't be.
Speaker 1: There probably won't be. Now there are risks on the iPhone,
Speaker 1: and there are malware on the iPhone, which maybe you
Speaker 1: might think that's a virus, but the reality is the
Speaker 1: classic virus you don't even see. It doesn't even say.
Speaker 1: If I search virus on this website, does not bring
Speaker 1: up anything. And the reason why is because total av
Speaker 1: knows that they would be kicked out of the app
Speaker 1: store if they said the word virus, and so they don't.
Speaker 1: Now I will tell you, I get probably the most
Speaker 1: emails out of my entire life about total AV. So
Speaker 1: they are doing one heck of a job advertising all
Speaker 1: of the scary things that can happen to your iPhone.
Speaker 1: But let me tell you, there is almost nothing that
Speaker 1: can happen. The worst thing that can happen on the
Speaker 1: iPhone at this point are two major things. Number One,
Speaker 1: there is malicious software that is made by certain organizations
Speaker 1: that can infiltrate your phone without you knowing and can
Speaker 1: can log everything. Can you know, it can really kind
Speaker 1: of hack your phone in a way that is just
Speaker 1: you wouldn't even think of, but it can be done now.
Speaker 1: It is very rare and often it is targeted to
Speaker 1: highly specific individuals. Those individuals are heads of state, people
Speaker 1: with high net worths, people that are you know, high
Speaker 1: journalists that have you know that are that are you know,
Speaker 1: someone that's like a state department doesn't like them and
Speaker 1: they want to keep track of them. So those are
Speaker 1: kind of the threats that are out there for the
Speaker 1: average person. The biggest threat on your iPhone is you
Speaker 1: and and clicking things that are not meant to be clicked.
Speaker 1: So if you get a link on your phone from
Speaker 1: a spam text and you click it, that's going to
Speaker 1: be the biggest problem. And really the biggest problem there
Speaker 1: is probably going to be phishing because they say, oh, hey,
Speaker 1: jam you need to log into your Amazon account and
Speaker 1: just confirm this charge, and you click that and you
Speaker 1: log in without thinking. The next thing, you know, your
Speaker 1: phone your account is compromised. Now am I saying there's
Speaker 1: no such thing as a virus for the iPhone, absolutely not.
Speaker 1: There's always a possibility, there's always a potential. Just in
Speaker 1: my ten years of covering the iPhone, I have yet
Speaker 1: to see a wide, a mass market virus for the
Speaker 1: iPhone that a lot of people are getting infected with. Now.
Speaker 1: The other thing about the iPhone is that it is sandboxed,
Speaker 1: so every app sort of runs only in itself and
Speaker 1: it does not really interact with the other apps or
Speaker 1: even the operating system at large in a big way.
Speaker 1: So it's just almost impossible for someone to write a
Speaker 1: program that worms its way in. Now, there's always exploits,
Speaker 1: and there's always people that are trying to figure this
Speaker 1: stuff out, and yes, it could happen. But do you
Speaker 1: need one of these apps on your phone to scan
Speaker 1: for viruses? Absolutely not. What I would do is number one,
Speaker 1: if you want a VPN, that's fine. That's something totally
Speaker 1: different that that kind of protects your privacy and your browsing.
Speaker 1: If you want to protect your browsing, that's another thing.
Speaker 1: Use a use a web browser like Duck Duck Go
Speaker 1: or Firefox Focus that covers all your tracks. That's a
Speaker 1: that's a whole nother thing. But if you want something
Speaker 1: that's gonna scan your phone the way it scans a
Speaker 1: Windows PC for viruses, you just don't need it. Now.
Speaker 1: Don't take this just for me. I've gotten this question
Speaker 1: so many times that I did a segment and I
Speaker 1: called up a security person that knows iOS and knows
Speaker 1: security and they told me the same exact thing. They said, Yep, Rich,
Speaker 1: pretty much nobody needs it now. An Android, they did say,
Speaker 1: it's probably beneficial. Android operating system is totally different than
Speaker 1: the iOS operating system. They're getting similar, but they're not
Speaker 1: the same. iOS does not allow apps access to a
Speaker 1: lot of things, whereas Android it's much more integrated. So yes,
Speaker 1: apps do have a bit more freedom, and so there
Speaker 1: are more things that can go wrong, and we do
Speaker 1: see a lot more malware on the Android side of things.
Speaker 1: Most of the time it's stuff that's taking advantage of
Speaker 1: permissions or it's doing stuff in the background that it shouldn't.
Speaker 1: So the way against that is to again, just use
Speaker 1: your common sense when you download an app. And I'll
Speaker 1: be honest, I'm a tech a very savvy tech person,
Speaker 1: and I fell for this the other day. I downloaded
Speaker 1: an app. I was setting up the S twenty two
Speaker 1: Ultra and I wanted to download Google Calendar, and I
Speaker 1: guess I typed in Google Calendar and I clicked the
Speaker 1: first link that was you know, it looked like a link,
Speaker 1: but it was for Google Calendar. It was just an
Speaker 1: AD that was masquerading. I must have missed it. Maybe
Speaker 1: I was tired, whatever, just didn't notice a little ad symbol.
Speaker 1: I start installing this app and it's like, first thing
Speaker 1: I get is like a big AD and I'm like,
Speaker 1: wait what Google has ads? Wait what? And then it's like, okay,
Speaker 1: log into your calendar. I'm like, wait what. I've never
Speaker 1: had to log into Google Calendar. So I back out.
Speaker 1: The ic is so similar to Google Calendar icon and
Speaker 1: I look at the name of the app again and
Speaker 1: sure enough it was like, very similar to Google Calendar,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't. And I was like, look at this.
Speaker 1: If this can happen to me, yeah, this is how
Speaker 1: these people get preyed upon, All these people that download stuff. Again,
Speaker 1: Google billion billion, billion billions dollar business, right and their
Speaker 1: business all comes from ads. What do people do when
Speaker 1: they search on Google? They just look at the first
Speaker 1: link and Google knows it. They just click that link,
Speaker 1: and nine times out of ten it is an AD.
Speaker 1: It is not the organic search link are search result,
Speaker 1: I should say, And that is very important. And this
Speaker 1: is why, honestly I would recommend some sort of ad
Speaker 1: blocker on your system because these are just misleading people
Speaker 1: half the time. And so you know, it's just one
Speaker 1: of these things where I do think people are being
Speaker 1: very misled. And a lot of times it happens with travel.
Speaker 1: So when you star search for a hotel, you think
Speaker 1: you're making the reservation with the actual hotel. Now you
Speaker 1: just got a link from some random a travel site
Speaker 1: that's advertising top of the list, and now you're booking
Speaker 1: through them. You book your hotel room, it's non refundable,
Speaker 1: there's no there's no questions asked, there's no refunds, you
Speaker 1: can't get a hold of someone, and now you know
Speaker 1: you're you're out the two hundred bucks if you need
Speaker 1: to change your hotel room or switch things. So again,
Speaker 1: it takes a level of savviness that I'm not I'm
Speaker 1: not going to fault people for, but you know, some
Speaker 1: of these systems are built to help people fail, and
Speaker 1: you really really need to be on your guard and
Speaker 1: so yes, with iPhone twelve, you're not going to need
Speaker 1: a virus software. But does that mean nothing can happen
Speaker 1: to your phone? No, I think there's I think many
Speaker 1: worse things can happen than a virus. And ninety nine
Speaker 1: point nine percent of those things are you clicking a
Speaker 1: link that you shouldn't be clicking, or typing in information
Speaker 1: into a password that you shouldn't be clicking, or putting in,
Speaker 1: or getting fooled in some way. And so that's what
Speaker 1: I think is more important to focus on than installing
Speaker 1: some sort of app that you think is going to
Speaker 1: save you. Just you know, you just need to be
Speaker 1: you just need to realize this stuff. And so, Jim,
Speaker 1: I'm not picking on you. I'm just saying you raised
Speaker 1: a very good question, and these companies clearly advertise based
Speaker 1: on fear and saying, hey, you need something to protect
Speaker 1: your iPhone, when the reality is we need to learn
Speaker 1: more as humans about social engineering and how that is
Speaker 1: truly how I would say most people get hacked these days.
Speaker 1: All right, let's move on to the next story. This
Speaker 1: is this is pretty wild. This. You know, we see
Speaker 1: lots of industries being impacted by the smartphone and things
Speaker 1: that you can do on your smartphone that you were
Speaker 1: never able to do before, and now you can take
Speaker 1: it an at home vision test through your smartphone. And
Speaker 1: so this is a first of its kind vision test
Speaker 1: for something call let's see if I can get this right?
Speaker 1: Press press be Oh did I get that right? Press bopia.
Speaker 1: That's we'll just call it that. So press biopia is
Speaker 1: an age related vision condition affecting eighty five percent of
Speaker 1: people over forty. And so what it does is if
Speaker 1: you know someone like this, you know what's happened. All
Speaker 1: of a sudden, They're holding their menu just a little bit.
Speaker 1: It's either let's see is it closer or further? Let's see?
Speaker 1: Uh it is, let's see it is. It causes people
Speaker 1: to have difficulties seeing up close, and they find themselves
Speaker 1: having to hold a menu, phone or book at arm's
Speaker 1: length distance to see properly. You probably know someone that
Speaker 1: you see that you've seen holding something a little far
Speaker 1: away and kind of adjusting their vision. So I tried
Speaker 1: out this app. It's actually really cool. It's called the
Speaker 1: my Reader Number app. It's three dollars by the way.
Speaker 1: It's from a company called iq e y e que.
Speaker 1: I'll put the link in the show notes. But you
Speaker 1: hold your phone up to your nose and then you
Speaker 1: and there's some text on the screen, and you just
Speaker 1: slowly bring your phone back until the item comes into focus.
Speaker 1: And it uses some sort of sensor on the iPhone.
Speaker 1: At least I think this is IOWA. Is it iOS only? Um?
Speaker 1: It doesn't save it. Yeah, it's only iOS for now,
Speaker 1: But it uses some sort of sensor. I'm guessing the
Speaker 1: depth sensor to see how far away your phone is
Speaker 1: and when your eyes come into focus. And so clearly
Speaker 1: there's a measurement of if you're you know, eighteen inches away,
Speaker 1: then clearly you might need some help. If you're five
Speaker 1: inches away, you probably don't. But I came up okay,
Speaker 1: So that's good news. But it's a really neat little
Speaker 1: test that you can take it home. It's three dollars,
Speaker 1: it's one time, and it's you can use it as
Speaker 1: many times as you want. It's a one time fee. Now,
Speaker 1: this this situation is very easy to fix. I guess
Speaker 1: just magnifying glasses can can fix it, like you know, lenses,
Speaker 1: magnifying lenses, I should say. And so I guess the
Speaker 1: bottom line for this app is to not only educate consumers,
Speaker 1: but also maybe there's a sales portion where they sell
Speaker 1: you glasses. They give you the information you need to
Speaker 1: figure out what reading glasses you should get, what strength
Speaker 1: you should get. So I guess they're saying that a
Speaker 1: lot of people. Yeah, it just looks like a lot
Speaker 1: of people just kind of guess at the store, like
Speaker 1: what prescription. I don't know if it's a prescription per se,
Speaker 1: but it's just you know, you just kind of pick
Speaker 1: out what might work for you, whereas this app can
Speaker 1: give you actual specifics on sort of what you need,
Speaker 1: like how much magnification you need. So anyway, I thought
Speaker 1: this was really cool. This is called the my iq
Speaker 1: My Reader Number app, and it's a personalized results for
Speaker 1: reading and computer glasses. So check it out. It's just
Speaker 1: something cool to try and see how it works for you.
Speaker 1: I'm not a doctor, so I can't vouch for the
Speaker 1: fact that it's a replacement obviously for any sort of
Speaker 1: professional opinion. But if it's something that you were just
Speaker 1: doing on your own and you want to supplement that,
Speaker 1: then kind of seems cool, all right, Bob writes in
Speaker 1: Google Chromebook Software. Hey, Rich I write this note from
Speaker 1: a very low end Dell inspa on fourteen that used
Speaker 1: to be too aggravating to use. It was very slow
Speaker 1: on the network and constantly telling me the disk space
Speaker 1: was too low. It had only three gigabytes available from
Speaker 1: the included Windows ten that came with it. I had
Speaker 1: to use an SD card to store files. After using
Speaker 1: the free Chromebook Google software, it is now a fantastic
Speaker 1: little laptop. Performance is very good and available disk space
Speaker 1: is around nineteen gigabytes. Google hit a home run with
Speaker 1: this one regards Bob desktop support person that is fantastic
Speaker 1: to hear. Bob, of course, is talking about the Chrome
Speaker 1: OS Flex, so it sounds like he was faster than
Speaker 1: me and installing this on his Dell in Sprawn the
Speaker 1: old computer. So I'll be quite honest, I may be
Speaker 1: installing this on my mom's computer because she does not
Speaker 1: do anything on her computer that requires the Windows software.
Speaker 1: It's been slow since day one when I bought her
Speaker 1: this computer, and this will make it much more secure,
Speaker 1: and pretty much all she does is use Chrome, so
Speaker 1: I think that this is a perfect use case to
Speaker 1: do that. In fact, I've been itching for a flight
Speaker 1: home to New Jersey. So maybe this is what I do.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'll go home, I'll do a story on installing
Speaker 1: the software on her computer. Sounds like a win when
Speaker 1: love when things work out like that. Anyway, Bob, thanks
Speaker 1: for the feedback. I cannot wait to try this again.
Speaker 1: It sounds exactly like what I was saying that It's
Speaker 1: just really one of these things that Google did a
Speaker 1: nice job for helping breathe new life into these old systems.
Speaker 1: All right, very quick story with Facebook. Facebook is renaming
Speaker 1: the news feed. It is now called ready for this,
Speaker 1: drum roll, please feed the feed. Not nothing, it's just feed.
Speaker 1: So they announced this on Twitter. They said, starting today,
Speaker 1: our newsfeed will now be known as feed happy Scrolling,
Speaker 1: and it has been known as the news feed since
Speaker 1: the feature was introduced more than fifteen years ago, according
Speaker 1: to The Verge, which is just wild that we've been
Speaker 1: using Facebook for that long. But here's the thing. I
Speaker 1: think that Facebook wants to get away from news in
Speaker 1: their in their language, because it delineates if there is
Speaker 1: a news product on Facebook, which I'm not sure there is.
Speaker 1: Is there a newsproductnews dot Facebook dot com? Let me say, uh,
Speaker 1: there is oh Facebook News? Interesting? Yeah, there totally is
Speaker 1: a news I didn't even know that. Wow, it's like
Speaker 1: a whole news thing. I guess it's interesting. It's from
Speaker 1: some of your so oh, that's really into It's like
Speaker 1: a news page. I keep saying that that Facebook is
Speaker 1: basically the AOL of twenty twenty two. It's the same thing.
Speaker 1: You've got your video chat, you've got your video messaging,
Speaker 1: you've got everything except email. You know, you're surfing different things,
Speaker 1: You're looking at people's posts, you're surfing the web in there.
Speaker 1: I mean not really, but you know, but it's basically
Speaker 1: if you installed it would not be too wild to
Speaker 1: have a Facebook operating system, right that just like the
Speaker 1: Chrome operating system that it just installs on a laptop
Speaker 1: and everything you do is through Facebook. If they had email,
Speaker 1: it would be possible. I meany, I've got videos on there,
Speaker 1: they've got news, they've got your feed, they've got messaging.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's so many things you can do on Facebook.
Speaker 1: It's just basically the AOL of twenty twenty two. But anyway,
Speaker 1: what was I saying, So the news feed? Yeah, so
Speaker 1: there is a news product. So I think that feed
Speaker 1: just represents something that is more you know, we had
Speaker 1: this whole thing with misinformation and fake news and the
Speaker 1: election and politics and Cambridge Analytica, and so I think
Speaker 1: they just want to get away from the fact that, hey, look,
Speaker 1: whatever's in this feed, like, we're not really the arbiters
Speaker 1: of all things fair and just in this feed, we're
Speaker 1: just sort of letting your friends have a free for all.
Speaker 1: And so that's why it's called the feed. It's not
Speaker 1: the news feed any more. So that's my take on it. Now,
Speaker 1: say what you will about Facebook, It's still a very
Speaker 1: popular place where people go. And I would venture to
Speaker 1: say that the number one place people get news these
Speaker 1: days is probably the Facebook feed, probably YouTube, probably Instagram.
Speaker 1: I mean it's kind of scary, quite honestly. And this
Speaker 1: is why it goes back to what I do as
Speaker 1: a reporter, is I try to, you know, put things
Speaker 1: out there that are that are good and factual. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's like the number one goal obviously, but not everyone
Speaker 1: does that. I mean I see stuff on TikTok that's
Speaker 1: just like it's is it true? And I'm not. I
Speaker 1: don't want to knock the younger generation, but I mean
Speaker 1: a lot of their information is coming from TikTok, and
Speaker 1: that is just scary because you see these things on TikTok,
Speaker 1: these new challenges, and my kids will you know, my
Speaker 1: kids will give me theories. My kid now says, hey, Dad,
Speaker 1: you know I saw on YouTube that this and this.
Speaker 1: I'm like, that's not true. Oh that is not true
Speaker 1: at all. Well it's just a theory. Well stop watching theories.
Speaker 1: But the problem is the YouTube algorithm will just keep
Speaker 1: serving up all the same garbage that you start watching,
Speaker 1: and it will just continue to feed on itself. It's
Speaker 1: like a it's just like a circular hamster wheel of
Speaker 1: like trash that it will just continue to feed to
Speaker 1: you if you go down that path. And you know,
Speaker 1: people do go down these paths. And it's like my
Speaker 1: feed is like ninety nine percent smartphone videos, you know,
Speaker 1: people reviewing phones and camera tests and all stuff, because
Speaker 1: that's what I primarily watch on YouTube. And so it's
Speaker 1: just one of these things where I don't know what
Speaker 1: the answer is. I don't have an answer. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think editors are the answer, obviously, and I think
Speaker 1: that that reputable news sources are the answer. But I
Speaker 1: will tell you that when I post stuff on Facebook
Speaker 1: in the news feed. People are always saying rich, that's
Speaker 1: not true. Like they're literally fighting me a newsperson, a
Speaker 1: journalist who is paid by a news organization to research
Speaker 1: and to post stuff that's factual, and they're saying rich,
Speaker 1: fake news, that's not real, or that's not new, there's
Speaker 1: nothing new to this, And I'm like, I don't even
Speaker 1: want to fight back because I'm like, I'm sorry, but
Speaker 1: this is real and it is new, and it is news,
Speaker 1: and whether you like to believe it or not, that's
Speaker 1: just the way it is. So all right, they go
Speaker 1: off enough there, all right, Hey, my name is Kitty.
Speaker 1: Hopefully you can help with a simple question about my
Speaker 1: Instagram account. Since I'm new to Instagram today, I noticed
Speaker 1: my clear search history was missing from the security section
Speaker 1: of my Instagram settings, and now I don't know where
Speaker 1: to find it. Is this a new upgrade for Instagram
Speaker 1: or did they do away with that? I don't know
Speaker 1: how to clear out my Instagram search history now. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Any info can help, Thank you, sincerely, Kitty g Ktla
Speaker 1: Rich Demiro viewer, So, Kitty, great question. In fact, you know,
Speaker 1: it could be quite embarrassing because you might search for
Speaker 1: something that maybe you don't want other people to see.
Speaker 1: Or maybe you just search for something quickly and now
Speaker 1: all of a sudden it's on your search history and
Speaker 1: if someone picks up your phone they see it, and
Speaker 1: you're just like, I don't you know you need to
Speaker 1: explain something. Why should you have to explain yourself. You're
Speaker 1: an adult. You can search whatever you want, okay, But
Speaker 1: the reality is that, uh, you know, if you want
Speaker 1: to clear this search history out, here's what you need
Speaker 1: to do. So, uh, go into your Instagram, tap in
Speaker 1: the search field and it says see all. So you
Speaker 1: tap there and then it will say recent searches clear all.
Speaker 1: You hit clear all and there you go and your
Speaker 1: searches will be cleared out. Good. Good question, kitty, And
Speaker 1: you know, hey, clear out that stuff. Do what you want.
Speaker 1: It's your life, and uh you know I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: fault you for it. All Right, time for one more question. Uh, Hey, Rich,
Speaker 1: my wife and I watch you regularly for many years
Speaker 1: on KTLA and always enjoy your tech updates. We need
Speaker 1: a recommendation for an inexpensive but clear video security camps.
Speaker 1: Anything you suggest is greatly appreciated. Thanks for your continuing excellence,
Speaker 1: Best regards Dwayne and Jackie in his spy Yeah, California,
Speaker 1: super easy. I'm just gonna recommend the Wyse cameras. Wy
Speaker 1: Z not to be confused with Ways, but Wyze is
Speaker 1: just fantastic. The cameras are twenty thirty bucks. You can
Speaker 1: get a whole bunch of them. They have every type
Speaker 1: of camera you need, whether it's wireless, completely wireless, or
Speaker 1: a camera you plug in, or a weather proof camera
Speaker 1: or a camera that pans back and forth, they will
Speaker 1: they have something for everything you need and it's just simple,
Speaker 1: it's easy. I think they're a great value. Camera quality
Speaker 1: is excellent, and they've just really done a nice job
Speaker 1: over the years of continuing to evolve their cameras. It's
Speaker 1: a bunch of guys or a bunch of people from
Speaker 1: they used to work at Amazon, and they saw clearly
Speaker 1: how Amazon created its own products and sold those very
Speaker 1: good deals when it comes to like the Echo stuff
Speaker 1: and all those and just said, hey, I think we
Speaker 1: can do that too, and they came up with cameras.
Speaker 1: And the cameras are very very good. I've been using
Speaker 1: them for a very long time and I've never had
Speaker 1: an issue, and I'm quite impressed with what they do.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, you know what that sound means. That's gonna
Speaker 1: do it for this episode of the show. If you
Speaker 1: would like to submit a question for me to answer,
Speaker 1: just go to my Facebook page, Facebook dot com slash
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Speaker 1: or go to rich on Tech dot tv and hit
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Speaker 1: You can find me on all social media at rich
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Speaker 1: watch all of my TV segments on demand. My name
Speaker 1: is rich Demiro. Thanks so much for listening. There are
Speaker 1: so many ways you can spend an hour of your time.
Speaker 1: I do appreciate you spending it with me. I will
Speaker 1: talk to you real soon.