Speaker 1: What it's like to be at CS twenty twenty two
Speaker 1: in Las Vegas in person, BMW's color changing car, the
Speaker 1: ring alarm system gets legitimate. Finally, plus your tech questions answered.
Speaker 1: What is going on? I'm Rich Jamiro and this is
Speaker 1: Rich on Tech, the podcast where I talk about the
Speaker 1: tech stuff I think you should know about. It's also
Speaker 1: the place where I answer the questions you send me.
Speaker 1: I'm the tech reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: coming to you today from CEES twenty twenty two in
Speaker 1: Las Vegas. I love my setup in this hotel room
Speaker 1: because I've got this bar, and no it's not stocked
Speaker 1: with cocktails. It's stocked with all the equipment I need
Speaker 1: to do this podcast. So I've got this standing desk,
Speaker 1: I've got the board, my computer, my little timer. I
Speaker 1: mean this is better than my at home set up
Speaker 1: for the podcast. So welcome to a New Year twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two. I hope you had a great holiday get together. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean ours were derailed, so I'm sure many others were,
Speaker 1: so we made the best of it. It was definitely
Speaker 1: an interesting holiday season, that's for sure. I think New
Speaker 1: Year's let's see Christmas Eve was impacted, Christmas Day was impacted,
Speaker 1: and New Year's Eve were all impacted by COVID. Not
Speaker 1: anyone in my family, thankfully, but lots of friends and family.
Speaker 1: So they're all doing okay, which is nice. But Man
Speaker 1: Man Man really just kind of took its toll on
Speaker 1: so many people's plans and things like that. So I
Speaker 1: hope you're doing well. It's twenty twenty two, it's a
Speaker 1: new year. I don't really do a lot of resolutions.
Speaker 1: The show, as you can see, doesn't feel or sound
Speaker 1: much different. Although you know, when I was little, when
Speaker 1: I was little, when I was younger, and you know,
Speaker 1: my favorite thing about any sort of like media, know,
Speaker 1: like if I watched like a TV show or something,
Speaker 1: was always when they got like a new set or
Speaker 1: like new music or like a new look for the graphics.
Speaker 1: Like I always thought that was so cool. But we've
Speaker 1: got none of that. There's absolutely Oh the music, look
Speaker 1: at this, the music is still going there. You go,
Speaker 1: same old sound effects, same old music, same old everything,
Speaker 1: but same old rich which is good. So you get
Speaker 1: the rich on tech that you're looking for. Here. The
Speaker 1: questions answered, the stories that we talk about on the
Speaker 1: show So if your first time listener, the show format
Speaker 1: is pretty simple. People send me questions, I answer those questions,
Speaker 1: and I also talk about some of the stories of
Speaker 1: note from that week. So this week it's all about CES.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm here in Las Vegas and there's so
Speaker 1: many haters, so many haters on CES this year, so
Speaker 1: many people did not come to the show. Very small
Speaker 1: show this year, even though there's still don't get me wrong,
Speaker 1: there's still a lot of people here. It's not like
Speaker 1: this place is a ghost town. Believe me, it is packed.
Speaker 1: It's just not as packed as in your past. So
Speaker 1: there's definitely room to walk in the aisles. There's not
Speaker 1: like a huge weight at booths to see stuff or
Speaker 1: to talk to people, which is all really nice. But
Speaker 1: of course the sad part is it's all because of
Speaker 1: a pandemic. So CES has a bunch of these new
Speaker 1: rules in place. You had to show your vaccination card
Speaker 1: to get in. You had to Uh, let's see what else,
Speaker 1: oh masks. Every day everyone's wearing the kN ninety fives
Speaker 1: because apparently those are better for you. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: let's see what else they gave you. They gave you
Speaker 1: COVID tests which you didn't have to take. They were
Speaker 1: just sort of for you to have, and you know,
Speaker 1: if you wanted to test yourself. Some people I know
Speaker 1: have been testing themselves every day. And then there's this
Speaker 1: little thing. I tweeted out these new stickers that you
Speaker 1: can put on your badge. So I thought this was
Speaker 1: pretty brilliant. Actually, there's three stickers you can choose from.
Speaker 1: The first is a green sticker and it says I'm
Speaker 1: okay with handshakes. The second is a yellow sticker it
Speaker 1: says I'm okay with elbow and fist bumps. And the
Speaker 1: third is a red sticker that says no touching, I'm
Speaker 1: happy just waving hello. Now, I've been seeing people and
Speaker 1: talking to people. Everyone has a different level of comfort
Speaker 1: with this pandemic and with you know, just in general,
Speaker 1: and so everyone does something different when you first say
Speaker 1: hi to them, and so I've been doing kind of
Speaker 1: the elbow or fist bump. I think that's a good
Speaker 1: safe middle ground, and so that's what I've been doing.
Speaker 1: I put the yellow sticker on my badge and I
Speaker 1: don't think anyone noticed it or said anything, but I
Speaker 1: just found it today on the last day of cees,
Speaker 1: so maybe that's why I didn't have it for the
Speaker 1: other two days. The other thing I wanted to mention
Speaker 1: about Las Vegas is man, oh man, they have been
Speaker 1: very busy upgrading at least the Verizon network here. So
Speaker 1: I've got Verizon five G on my phone and I'm
Speaker 1: not kidding. I have never seen more five g UW
Speaker 1: signal anywhere in my entire life. It is unbelievable. Now.
Speaker 1: The thing I don't like about it is that it's
Speaker 1: super fast on the download, which is amazing for ninety
Speaker 1: nine point nine percent of people. But my life is
Speaker 1: all about the upload because I'm uploading to social media
Speaker 1: and I found that no joke. I'm just looking at
Speaker 1: my speed test here. I went to Allegiant Stadium, which
Speaker 1: is nice and really new and you know, Home of
Speaker 1: the Raiders, really cool place, and I did a speed
Speaker 1: test in the parking lot and it was I kid you,
Speaker 1: not two point five gigabits down. That's twenty five hundred down.
Speaker 1: That's really fast. Like at home. Most people have like,
Speaker 1: you know, two four hundred something like that. If they're lucky,
Speaker 1: sometimes they have a gig, but a lot of times
Speaker 1: people have like twenty five forty whatever, So two point
Speaker 1: five down is like unbelievably, it's unheard of. I've never
Speaker 1: seen anything like that before. But the upload speed was
Speaker 1: a paltry forty six, which is just a tiny, tiny
Speaker 1: upload speed. I mean, it's fine, but again, it would
Speaker 1: be nice if that was like one hundred. Now, I
Speaker 1: get it most of the time with these the way
Speaker 1: these networks work is that the download speed is really
Speaker 1: fast because that's what people care about the most, and
Speaker 1: then the upload speed is not as fast. But for me,
Speaker 1: I'm all about the upload speed. We were trying to
Speaker 1: upload a video today at the convention Center and for
Speaker 1: some reason we were like in this whole spot where
Speaker 1: the signal was just not that good and so it
Speaker 1: just took forever. And even at the convention Center when
Speaker 1: I had a really fast download speed, the upload was
Speaker 1: still not that good. So I don't know if they've
Speaker 1: tweaked that just to make it, you know, to make
Speaker 1: people be able to download stuff. But the reality is,
Speaker 1: I've never seen such a large presence of five GUW
Speaker 1: in my life, and I think it's because Vegas is
Speaker 1: really flat or something. So I remember, like when Sprint
Speaker 1: first came out with their advanced network. They launched it
Speaker 1: first in Las Vegas, and I think T Mobile did
Speaker 1: the same. So there's something about Vegas. Maybe it's just
Speaker 1: easy to launch networks here. I don't know. But whatever
Speaker 1: you're doing for Eizon here in town, keep it up
Speaker 1: and please expand it to the rest of the US,
Speaker 1: because we all need these speeds. They are just so amazing.
Speaker 1: All right, let's get to the first question of the week.
Speaker 1: Hey rich all your tips and look forward to seeing
Speaker 1: you on the WGN Chicago midnight News. Thank you. I
Speaker 1: also have your website bookmarked on my computer. Thanks. Lately,
Speaker 1: it seems that Yahoo mail is not blocking sexual spam
Speaker 1: with a UK extension. I've been job searching for the
Speaker 1: past several months. I'm wondering if I got on some
Speaker 1: hackers list through a job website. I've started blocking the
Speaker 1: email addresses on Yahoo security, but it's very frustrating anyway.
Speaker 1: I thought maybe changing my Yahoo email address would help,
Speaker 1: but I cannot, for the life of me, find the
Speaker 1: place in the Yahoo mail to change my password. Do
Speaker 1: you know where that option lives? Wendy, Wendy, you can't
Speaker 1: change your email address, you could change your password and
Speaker 1: so if you want to do that on the web,
Speaker 1: you can go to your Yahoo account security page, click
Speaker 1: change password and to your new password, and there you go.
Speaker 1: If you're on the Yahoo mobile app, you can look
Speaker 1: at the obviously you go into the menu icon usually
Speaker 1: it's on the side of the menu, and then if
Speaker 1: you're using the mail app, it's manage Accounts, account infos
Speaker 1: curity settings. You'll get a code tap change password and
Speaker 1: then tap I would rather change my password, enter the
Speaker 1: new password and its confirmation and tap continue. So it
Speaker 1: is a little bit of a convoluted system to change
Speaker 1: the password for Yahoo. They probably do that to protect you.
Speaker 1: But if if you want to do that, I would
Speaker 1: do that. But I don't think that this person has
Speaker 1: access to your account. I think that they. I think
Speaker 1: that you probably have gotten on some lists, but I
Speaker 1: also find that a lot of this spam comes and goes.
Speaker 1: It may not be this list from your job searching.
Speaker 1: It may just be that your Yahoo email address got
Speaker 1: out there in the wild from some other data hack.
Speaker 1: There's so many data breaches on a regular basis at
Speaker 1: this point, and the best website to look to look
Speaker 1: and see if your email address has been you know,
Speaker 1: released on the Open Web is a website name Have
Speaker 1: I Been Poned, and it's have I Been Pwned? And
Speaker 1: you basically type in your email and it will tell
Speaker 1: you all the different places that that email address has
Speaker 1: showed up in a large data breach, and you know
Speaker 1: it's it's the website is by the way, it's very respectable.
Speaker 1: So you're not gonna you're not gonna put yourself at
Speaker 1: risk by putting your email address into this website. Just
Speaker 1: make sure you go to the right one, which is
Speaker 1: have I Been Pwned dot com. But that's what I
Speaker 1: would do for you, uh to see. But these things
Speaker 1: come and go. Sometimes you get a lot of spam.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you don't. Just make sure you report them as spam.
Speaker 1: All right, let's get back to CES. You know all
Speaker 1: almost all the stories are going to be CYES related
Speaker 1: because that's where I am, and there's just so much
Speaker 1: to see this year, and there's so like I said,
Speaker 1: there's so many haters that didn't actually come to the show,
Speaker 1: and they're sort of like couch hating, whereas like I'm
Speaker 1: actually here, I'm on the ground. I saw a lot
Speaker 1: of cool stuff. It's like the first time I think
Speaker 1: Facebook like blocked me from sharing stuff because they were
Speaker 1: so sick of it, because they're like, wait, this guy
Speaker 1: hasn't shared much in like two years because you know,
Speaker 1: I've been at home for the pandemic and or not
Speaker 1: out and about as much. Like now of a sudden,
Speaker 1: he's sharing something like every hour. Let's block him. So
Speaker 1: I feel like my stuff is not reaching as many
Speaker 1: people as i'd like it to. But I'm sure everyone
Speaker 1: feels that way. Anyway. BMW has a color changing car
Speaker 1: that I saw, so they essentially wrapped a BMW. I
Speaker 1: don't know if it was some sort of suv. They
Speaker 1: have in e ink, so that's the same ink that
Speaker 1: they use on the kindle. And I asked the person
Speaker 1: in the engineer there's a doctor actually that did this,
Speaker 1: and she said that it was very challenging because the
Speaker 1: e ink is like a flat panel and cars are
Speaker 1: not flat panel, so getting the e ink to sort
Speaker 1: of wrap around all these different angles of the car
Speaker 1: was really the trickiest part. But she said that the
Speaker 1: e ink is very sustainable the way they make it apparently,
Speaker 1: and also the energy efficiency of it. It's very energy efficient,
Speaker 1: and when you look at this car, it sort of
Speaker 1: changes from black to white, white to black, any gradient
Speaker 1: in there. And yes, it's just black and white right now.
Speaker 1: But in the future, you know, I asked, and she said, absolutely,
Speaker 1: you will have a color changing car in the future.
Speaker 1: And so that's pretty wild to think about that your
Speaker 1: car will change color, you know, go from you know, oh,
Speaker 1: I feel like having a red car today or I
Speaker 1: want a yellow car today. And of course there are
Speaker 1: some real benefits of this, and one of them is
Speaker 1: that you can have your car black in the winter
Speaker 1: to sort of absorb the sun and keep it warm,
Speaker 1: and then white in the summer to reflect the sun.
Speaker 1: And so that's just one sort of real world case scenario.
Speaker 1: Another one they gave is that let's say these cars
Speaker 1: were part of some sort of fleet, you know, like
Speaker 1: even an uber whatever, you know, the uber could drive
Speaker 1: up and on the side of the car would say
Speaker 1: your name or maybe a special code, so you knew
Speaker 1: that that was the car that you're looking for. Maybe
Speaker 1: it just says Uber on the side, or maybe when
Speaker 1: you're delivering pizza, says Dominoes on the side. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's so many implications of this technology. It's really quite phenomenal,
Speaker 1: and I think That's definitely the video that has gone
Speaker 1: the most viral on my Twitter for sure, because people
Speaker 1: are just debating this and it looks really cool. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't you know. It's one of these things where yes,
Speaker 1: it's very prototype e, very concept d right now, but
Speaker 1: the reality is it shows us what is going to
Speaker 1: happen in the future. Every I would say, so many
Speaker 1: of the things I've seen at CES, I'm just like, wow,
Speaker 1: that's so wild. They end up happening, Like nine out
Speaker 1: of ten they end up happening. It might take five years,
Speaker 1: might take ten years, but they end up happening, and
Speaker 1: it's pretty wild. Now, there's a lot of stuff that
Speaker 1: doesn't end up happening, and a lot of this stuff
Speaker 1: changes and evolves, but the fact is BMW is on it.
Speaker 1: There's so many benefits to this technology, stuff we haven't
Speaker 1: even thought of. I Mean, one of the other examples
Speaker 1: they gave is, let's say there's a piece failing on
Speaker 1: the car. Let's say it's the right door handle. Maybe
Speaker 1: the right door handle is circled on your car, and
Speaker 1: so you know when you walk up to your car
Speaker 1: that it's you know, there's a problem with that handle,
Speaker 1: and you can get it fixed. So little things like that. Again,
Speaker 1: if you want to check it out, check out my
Speaker 1: Twitter the BMW color changing car. All right, next question
Speaker 1: here comes from Jackie. Hey, Rich, Happy New Year to
Speaker 1: you and your family. I'd like to know if you've
Speaker 1: previously reviewed the Omni Stick. Oh, here we go. My
Speaker 1: husband and I have lots of photos online and even
Speaker 1: old flip phones that we keep just for the photos
Speaker 1: they contain. We'd love to capture all of these photos
Speaker 1: and wonder if the Omni stick would work for our
Speaker 1: phones and our old dinosaur flip phones. Thanks Rich, Jackie.
Speaker 1: I have not reviewed the Omni Stick, but I believe
Speaker 1: I've heard of this thing. I think it's advertised and
Speaker 1: all that good stuff. It's one of these things where
Speaker 1: I don't okay, the photostick omni So it's on Amazon,
Speaker 1: It's got one hundred and six reviews. If you look
Speaker 1: at it, it looks pretty old school. It's just not
Speaker 1: something that I would want to share or trust my
Speaker 1: memories on. So what I would say is go with
Speaker 1: the one that I like, which is the sand Disc.
Speaker 1: So sand Disc makes one called I Expand, and they
Speaker 1: make a couple different versions for various you know, whether
Speaker 1: it's the iPhone, whether it's Android. They have a couple
Speaker 1: different versions. So just look up sand disc I expand
Speaker 1: and look for the new one if you can. The
Speaker 1: the flash drive Go I think is the newest one
Speaker 1: which goes between the the well. You'll see, it's just good.
Speaker 1: It's just a better one. So that's what I would recommend.
Speaker 1: Now when it comes to all, let me see what
Speaker 1: did you say about your pictures? Now? The flip phones
Speaker 1: is gonna be tricky flip phones getting the photos off
Speaker 1: of those, you know, it's really depends on the phone.
Speaker 1: So I'm looking. I'm looking to see if there's anything
Speaker 1: like there used to be software. Oh okay, that's actually
Speaker 1: a good idea. A lot of people are saying use
Speaker 1: bluetooth to send the photos from your phone to your
Speaker 1: other phone. That's a cool way to do it. So
Speaker 1: that's not too bad. That's a that's a good good idea. Also,
Speaker 1: you might be able to search for software specials, like
Speaker 1: search the model. What I would do is search the
Speaker 1: model of the flip phone and then say, you know,
Speaker 1: get photos off, and then the model of the flip phone,
Speaker 1: and then maybe software and then see if there's software
Speaker 1: that will do that. Otherwise you might be able to
Speaker 1: you might be able to bring them in somewhere, So
Speaker 1: you might be able to bring them into like you know,
Speaker 1: a Best Buy or like a U break I fix,
Speaker 1: and you might be able to connect this phone to
Speaker 1: your computer with a USB cable. So that's another way
Speaker 1: to do it. But I think a lot of people
Speaker 1: the linking up the phone via Bluetooth to another device,
Speaker 1: perhaps with you know, either a computer or another phone,
Speaker 1: just say send file, Just send them that way. It's
Speaker 1: a slow process, definitely not the best way to do it.
Speaker 1: But you probably didn't take that many pictures on these
Speaker 1: old phones anyway, because they were you know, now we
Speaker 1: take a thout. You know, I've taken so many pictures
Speaker 1: on my phone this week that I can't even believe it.
Speaker 1: But back in the day, you know, you took one
Speaker 1: phone photo a week, or one photo every you know,
Speaker 1: a couple of days. It's just the way we did things.
Speaker 1: So so I would try that out and see what happens.
Speaker 1: All right, So I went over to the Samsung booth
Speaker 1: at CES and they had a lot of stuff. So
Speaker 1: the LG booth was really weird. It was I guess
Speaker 1: they made a last minute decision to sort of exit
Speaker 1: the show and so or I don't know when they
Speaker 1: made the decision, but the booth was was very, very sparse,
Speaker 1: and so there was just nothing there. It was like
Speaker 1: you went around the booth and you scanned QR codes
Speaker 1: and I don't think anyone actually did it. So I'd
Speaker 1: love to see the number of people that actually did that,
Speaker 1: but I don't know if they did. So Samsung they
Speaker 1: went all out. They had a huge booth filled with
Speaker 1: stuff and some new stuff as well. A couple things
Speaker 1: I saw there. Number one, this new projector called the Freestyle.
Speaker 1: This is a projector that is super easy. It's on
Speaker 1: a hinge, It rotates one hundred and eighty degrees and
Speaker 1: you can It's got a speaker built in, and it
Speaker 1: projects up to a one hundred inch screen. It's nine
Speaker 1: hundred dollars, which is super pricey, but again it's one
Speaker 1: of these things where you can see where we're going here.
Speaker 1: Projectors like this are going to just continue to get
Speaker 1: cheaper now that Samsung's doing it. We can expect these
Speaker 1: prices to drop and drop and drop to a place
Speaker 1: where basically, when your kid says oh, I want a
Speaker 1: TV in my room. You say, how about a giant
Speaker 1: wall for your TV? And I'm not debating the merits
Speaker 1: of whether your kid should have a TV in the
Speaker 1: room or not. I'm just saying that's my example. Or
Speaker 1: maybe you're outside like we do once in a while,
Speaker 1: we have like a movie night out in the backyard,
Speaker 1: and you know, especially during the pandemic, and now you
Speaker 1: can simply you know, it's not rechargeable. It may eventually
Speaker 1: come with a rechargeable battery like that you can connect
Speaker 1: to it, and I'm not sure what the feasibility is
Speaker 1: of plugging into like sort of a portable power bank.
Speaker 1: I mean, you might be able to do that, but
Speaker 1: it's really cool and I saw the other The other
Speaker 1: trick to this thing is that you can screw it
Speaker 1: into a standard light bulb socket. So that's another you know,
Speaker 1: they now at home, you probably wouldn't want to do that,
Speaker 1: but if you had like a restaurant or something, you
Speaker 1: have like a light bulb in the ceiling, you can
Speaker 1: project a cool image on the floor or something like that.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of both personal and business applications
Speaker 1: of this thing. But it's called the freestyle check it out.
Speaker 1: It looks really cool and it does everything by itself,
Speaker 1: so it optimizes the screen size, it auto focuses, it
Speaker 1: levels the image when it's on an angle, so it
Speaker 1: does everything you need and you can access apps on
Speaker 1: it like Netflix and Spotify and all that stuff. And
Speaker 1: it's just one of those things that's like you see
Speaker 1: it and you're like, ah, I really want that, Like
Speaker 1: can you imagine bringing that to your hotel room and
Speaker 1: just being able to watch like TV on your wall.
Speaker 1: That was always my dream in hotel rooms, like just
Speaker 1: to have like a giant like like, why I'm looking
Speaker 1: at my TV screen in the middle of this wall.
Speaker 1: I've turned it on exactly once the entire time. But
Speaker 1: wouldn't it be cool if that was just a blank
Speaker 1: wall and I could just put this projector on that wall.
Speaker 1: So and again, since it's you know, you can angle
Speaker 1: it one hundred and eighty and it also automatically adjusts
Speaker 1: to fit the space. It's you know, you don't really
Speaker 1: have to sit there and adjust like what do they
Speaker 1: call a keystone or something like the way like angles
Speaker 1: in on the edges and stuff. So just a just
Speaker 1: a cool thing that they've done. There. The other thing
Speaker 1: I saw at Samsung is this Eco remote and it's
Speaker 1: a it's a remote control. This is so weird, but
Speaker 1: it has no batteries inside it. Actually it's called the
Speaker 1: Eco remote. It gets its energy from your Wi Fi signal,
Speaker 1: so it does something called RF harvesting. They showed me,
Speaker 1: you know, the little uh dissected remote control with the parts.
Speaker 1: There's some sort of like antenna in there and then
Speaker 1: some sort of piece of like semiconductor and somehow it
Speaker 1: all the radio waves power the antenna and are sorry,
Speaker 1: the radio waves power the remote. Now there's no batteries,
Speaker 1: like I said, so I don't really know how that
Speaker 1: even does that. But you don't need to replace the
Speaker 1: batteries in this remote ever. And it also has Wi
Speaker 1: Fi as well, so maybe if you're if your Wi
Speaker 1: Fi signal is not that good, it defaults or it
Speaker 1: goes back to the solar power and if your solar's
Speaker 1: not so good, maybe it uses the Wi Fi. But
Speaker 1: the bottom line is that what a cool thing. And
Speaker 1: this is a remote that's I guess packaged with some
Speaker 1: of their TVs in twenty twenty two or twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: So Samsung says that the remote could prevent ninety nine
Speaker 1: million triple A batteries from going into a landfill over
Speaker 1: the next seven years. That was the original remote, So
Speaker 1: now this one is even better, so it says according
Speaker 1: to this new Scientist article I'm looking at, it can
Speaker 1: capture the Wi Fi signals from a distance of up
Speaker 1: to forty meters, which means it can charge even in
Speaker 1: dark rooms. So forty meters that seems like a really
Speaker 1: really far Yeah, that's a hundred feet one hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty one feet, So even if your router is really
Speaker 1: far away, you can still you can still harvest that energy.
Speaker 1: Pretty wild. Okay, next question, you're rich. Unfortunately, I have
Speaker 1: made a mess of my photos and find myself determined
Speaker 1: to straighten it out. This is my future gift to
Speaker 1: my grandchildren, a pictorial history of our family. My goal
Speaker 1: by a photo backup device that will hold my thousands
Speaker 1: of photos. Transfer all my photos with the date they
Speaker 1: were taken from numerous drives, clouds, phones, etc. To this
Speaker 1: backup device. If possible, use a program to find and
Speaker 1: separate duplicate photos, build a photo library for my daughter
Speaker 1: and grandchildren. My question, what photo backup device is best
Speaker 1: to invest? In to save my numerous photos on is
Speaker 1: there a way to embed the date on the photo
Speaker 1: that was taken on the photo? I'm sixty six confused
Speaker 1: by technology, especially saving pictures chronologically and not duplicating them
Speaker 1: in iCloud, Google, et cetera. It's a nightmare for me. Please,
Speaker 1: I'm in desperate need of help and asking for your
Speaker 1: professional advice. Greatly appreciate any recommendations. Thank you. Happy New Year, Catherine. Catherine,
Speaker 1: your issue is one that is shared by so many
Speaker 1: people out there, and it's actually sad that this issue
Speaker 1: has not been solved and I don't understand it. I
Speaker 1: really don't like it should be solved. It should be easier.
Speaker 1: There's a couple of things. So there was a product
Speaker 1: that was pretty cool, but I think they I don't
Speaker 1: think they let me see if they still have it
Speaker 1: for sale. Oh, it's still for sale. Okay. So the
Speaker 1: product that I probably recommend for you is called eb Ibi,
Speaker 1: and this is from sand Disc. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: a almost like your own personal cloud, but for photos
Speaker 1: and your videos. So you get a terabyte of storage
Speaker 1: for ninety bucks, which holds two hundred and fifty thousand photos.
Speaker 1: That's one thing you can do. And this has like
Speaker 1: this has like USB in the back, so you can
Speaker 1: stick in you know, like a USB drive and it'll
Speaker 1: it will take the pictures off of there. You can
Speaker 1: install the app on your phone, it'll take the pictures
Speaker 1: from there. It used to import pictures from Google Photos,
Speaker 1: but Google Photos has since turned off any sort of
Speaker 1: outside access to Google Photos, which really really bugs me.
Speaker 1: And so you can't do that and Google Photos there's
Speaker 1: no easy way. So I'll be honest, I think that
Speaker 1: your project is I see you know stand that you're
Speaker 1: sixty six and you say your tech challenge, But I
Speaker 1: think it's a project that is nearly impossible for almost
Speaker 1: anyone without spending hours upon hours. Now, maybe if you
Speaker 1: have the time, you can do it. But I'm I'm
Speaker 1: a tech professional, and I'm telling you my photo collection
Speaker 1: is pretty much a mess. I dump everything in Google
Speaker 1: Photos and just hope that one day Google will come
Speaker 1: out with a one click, magic fixed button and say,
Speaker 1: can we fix all of your pictures. We're gonna get
Speaker 1: rid of the duplicates, any of the blurry ones, any
Speaker 1: of this any that they've They've made strides towards doing that,
Speaker 1: but it's still not completely there. Like Google Photos, if
Speaker 1: you drag in the same picture twice, it will have
Speaker 1: the intelligence to not import it twice, but only if
Speaker 1: it's pretty much identical. If it's a version of that picture,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe you cropped it, or you made it
Speaker 1: smaller or you you know, the resolutions different, it will
Speaker 1: still import. You'll still end up with. Like for me,
Speaker 1: for instance, I've got all these scanned pictures and I
Speaker 1: don't want to lose them, so I've got like more
Speaker 1: ultiple multiple copies of them on my Google Cloud. So
Speaker 1: it's one of those things that it's it's just a problem.
Speaker 1: It's not easy, and it's just it's that's just the
Speaker 1: reality of it. So what I would recommend, Okay, so
Speaker 1: I would recommend maybe do the sand disc thing, maybe
Speaker 1: do the hard drive thing. But I think that Google
Speaker 1: Photos is probably going to be the easiest to sort
Speaker 1: of upload everything in because you can drag and drop
Speaker 1: all your stuff. I like the web interface of Google
Speaker 1: Photos because you can just drag and drop stuff in
Speaker 1: and when you drag and drop stuff in, it will
Speaker 1: upload it, and it will also it will also sort
Speaker 1: through the duplicates and not put those in again. So
Speaker 1: you know, just get all your drives, get all your stuff,
Speaker 1: put them on your your computer, and then just drag
Speaker 1: them in or in. The beauty is it does exactly
Speaker 1: what you're saying. You want to put it all in
Speaker 1: chronological order. So your pictures should have metadata in them
Speaker 1: that contains the date, and so that's how the Google
Speaker 1: Photo is going to know how to put them in order.
Speaker 1: And then when you're done with all that and everything's in,
Speaker 1: you can go through Google Photos. What I kind of
Speaker 1: do is just like spot check, Like I'll go to
Speaker 1: like a month and I'll just kind of like look
Speaker 1: through all delete photos I don't need. I'll rotate some
Speaker 1: of them. I will, you know, if I see a
Speaker 1: couple that are duplicates in there, snuck in, I will
Speaker 1: get rid of. You know, if I took two or
Speaker 1: three pictures of the same thing, I'll get rid of
Speaker 1: some of those. So you can go through and kind
Speaker 1: of just like clean it up. But the reality is,
Speaker 1: I think that maybe you're never gonna have a perfect
Speaker 1: photo collection. You just really aren't, like unless unless you
Speaker 1: spend hours a day on this thing, it's never gonna
Speaker 1: be perfect. So I would say get them all in
Speaker 1: one place, and yes, get them in order, and I
Speaker 1: think that's the best you're gonna do. So if you want,
Speaker 1: if you have Amazon and you want to use that
Speaker 1: for free, you can also use Amazon to upload. If
Speaker 1: you have Amazon Prime, you can use that to upload
Speaker 1: your pictures in there, and that's completely free. Google there
Speaker 1: will be a charge if you're over fifteen gigabytes of photos.
Speaker 1: So I hope that helps. I don't think I answered everything,
Speaker 1: but it's really it's a tough thing and I wish
Speaker 1: I had the perfect answer. I really don't. You know,
Speaker 1: there's I could recommend, if you are super techy, something
Speaker 1: like a network attached storage drive, but that's way too complicated.
Speaker 1: So I really think that this is a problem that
Speaker 1: so many people have. I'm not sure that there's a
Speaker 1: really good solution. And there's the reason why there's not
Speaker 1: a good solution is because there's too many people that
Speaker 1: are up against you, you know, like Google, for some
Speaker 1: reason I don't understand, just doesn't want to like help you.
Speaker 1: I don't know, export your pictures once they're in Google.
Speaker 1: I mean you can, but again it's not that easy.
Speaker 1: Like I'd like to sync them to an external drive.
Speaker 1: That would be So in an ideal world, Catherine, what
Speaker 1: I'd recommend is throw all your pictures in Google and
Speaker 1: then synk them to an external drive and boom. You
Speaker 1: can hand that external drive over to your niece or
Speaker 1: your you know, your grandchildren when you decide to do that,
Speaker 1: and they have all the pictures. But again it's it's
Speaker 1: a little more complicated than that, and uh, just a
Speaker 1: little little tricky, but good question, thanks for asking. All right, So,
Speaker 1: at CS, I saw a robot and this robot is
Speaker 1: Amika or is it Amica? I keep now, I keep
Speaker 1: messing up the name. I think it's Oh gosh, the
Speaker 1: robot is, Oh my gosh, where is the robot? I
Speaker 1: gotta I gotta look up this robot again because I
Speaker 1: had it and then I had the pronunciation, and I've
Speaker 1: said it a hundred times today and I still can't
Speaker 1: seem to remember what it is. Amica, No Amiica, Amika,
Speaker 1: am Amica anyway, A M E. C A. I said
Speaker 1: it in my videos a bunch of times because the
Speaker 1: people from the UK that created this were there. But
Speaker 1: this robot is pretty wild, so kind of weird. It's
Speaker 1: gone viral, and yes, it continues to go viral. At CES.
Speaker 1: But it's this big robot that looks very humanoid. When
Speaker 1: you talk to it, it talks back. It's it's got
Speaker 1: these expressions that are very lifelike. It's got these eyes
Speaker 1: that just I mean, it's it's the most realistic robot
Speaker 1: that I've ever seen. It also has very fluid movements
Speaker 1: as well, doesn't it doesn't move from its spot, but
Speaker 1: the way it's arms move are very very human like.
Speaker 1: So all in all, this is probably the most impressive
Speaker 1: robot humanoid that I've ever seen. And it's kind of
Speaker 1: scary because if this thing, you know, if you ever
Speaker 1: woke up in the middle of the night and saw
Speaker 1: this thing standing in your in your bedroom, you would
Speaker 1: be scared because you just wouldn't really know what's going
Speaker 1: on because you'd be like, uh, can I help you,
Speaker 1: and I don't know what would happen after that, I'd
Speaker 1: probably be game over. So they assured me that that's
Speaker 1: not gonna happen with this robot because they are friendly
Speaker 1: and they're not programmed to murder us. So that's a
Speaker 1: good thing. But with that said, this robot is pretty amazing.
Speaker 1: Like if you put your hand in this robot's face,
Speaker 1: it moves backwards in such a fluid motion like you
Speaker 1: would if a human put a human you know, if
Speaker 1: another human put their hand in your face, it would
Speaker 1: be the same exact movement. I mean this, the way
Speaker 1: they program this thing is pretty phenomenal. The thing that
Speaker 1: I was unsure about. Okay, they say that this thing
Speaker 1: has AI, but I don't know because you can ask
Speaker 1: any sort of question, and it was answering questions. I
Speaker 1: am ninety nine point nine percent sure that they had
Speaker 1: a voice performer behind the booth that was answering the questions,
Speaker 1: because there's no way that this robot would be able
Speaker 1: to come up with the answers in the way it
Speaker 1: did and answers to anything. You know, it was making
Speaker 1: little quips, it was funny, it was this, It was
Speaker 1: you know. So it's definitely one of those things where
Speaker 1: and I asked them, I said, hey, what's the deal
Speaker 1: with this robot? Is it real? Is it AI that's
Speaker 1: answering this or is it a person? And they said, well,
Speaker 1: it can be programmed both ways. Well what's the way
Speaker 1: we're seeing here? And he's like, well, you tell me.
Speaker 1: So they wouldn't really tell me, but I think that
Speaker 1: there was definitely someone back there. But this is one
Speaker 1: of those things you kind of have to watch the video.
Speaker 1: I can talk about it forever, but it's it's not
Speaker 1: that exciting to talk about. It's more exciting to see
Speaker 1: and just experience. It's on my Facebook page, and or
Speaker 1: did I put on my YouTube as well? And I
Speaker 1: think on my Instagram, oh and on my Twitter, so
Speaker 1: I guess I put it everywhere. But it's just one
Speaker 1: of those things that just had such a crowd of
Speaker 1: people because it's so weird. It's like exactly how you'd
Speaker 1: imagine a humanoid robot would look and act, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's just one of those weird things. So I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's cool. It's just you got to watch the video
Speaker 1: and see what it's all about. So that's the company,
Speaker 1: by the way, is what is it? Engineered Arts? And
Speaker 1: it's an interesting name because the guy was very specific
Speaker 1: about how it's a mixture of engineering and arts, so
Speaker 1: it's kind of like that's the difference. It's not just
Speaker 1: a robot which is engineered, it's actually a work of
Speaker 1: art as well, because it is you know, it's a
Speaker 1: little sleight of hand with the person maybe speaking behind
Speaker 1: and also just the way it looks is very artistic
Speaker 1: because they've really paid attention to the emotions and everything
Speaker 1: that it looks like. So all right, next question, Sherry says, congratulations.
Speaker 1: I love your show. You get me knowledge that I
Speaker 1: can't get anywhere else. Thank you so much, Sherry. Oh okay,
Speaker 1: this is this must have been. I got a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of emails and messages from people saying congratulations, Oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, thank you for all your work. Oh god,
Speaker 1: I'm like, wait, what did did Katla like let me
Speaker 1: go on air and not tell me and say thank
Speaker 1: you rich for all of your your time and service.
Speaker 1: We appreciate your hard work, like over my vacation. I
Speaker 1: just didn't know because I wasn't watching. No, that's not
Speaker 1: what happened. They actually played apparently one of my ten
Speaker 1: year and might not one of my but my ten
Speaker 1: year anniversary video, which we did, I think over the summer,
Speaker 1: and so I guess they replayed that when I was off.
Speaker 1: They played a whole bunch of stories when I was
Speaker 1: off on my vacation for the holidays, the kind of
Speaker 1: the best of And so I was just getting all
Speaker 1: these emails from people like for stories that you know,
Speaker 1: aired like six months ago or three months ago, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, what's going on, And then it occurred
Speaker 1: to me. I'm like, oh, they must be running my
Speaker 1: pack my pieces and also the ten year anniversary, So Sherry,
Speaker 1: thank you. I do appreciate it. And you know what,
Speaker 1: I gotta say. The it's so weird because being at
Speaker 1: a show like this at CS, like, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: pretty autonomous with my job, Like I go to my
Speaker 1: studio and then I go on my shoots and then
Speaker 1: I go home, and so it's not like I'm interacting
Speaker 1: with a lot of people in public all the time.
Speaker 1: But it's funny because when I'm out and about, a
Speaker 1: lot of people do come up and you know, say like, hey,
Speaker 1: rich I see on TV. Especially here at CES. Obviously
Speaker 1: this is a room full of you know, the tech
Speaker 1: your people, so they kind of just have a knowledge
Speaker 1: of me. But it's really, you know, it's it's just
Speaker 1: a testament to the power of television number one, the
Speaker 1: power of social media number two, and also the fact
Speaker 1: that you know, I've just sort of been around for
Speaker 1: a while. So people like, oh, yeah, what rich on
Speaker 1: tech tech guy, right, And I'm like, yeah, that's something
Speaker 1: like that. And so anyway, it's it's an honor when
Speaker 1: people say, you know that they like what I'm doing,
Speaker 1: because it really means a lot. Because I put a
Speaker 1: lot of thought into the pieces that I put on TV,
Speaker 1: the way that I write them, the way that they air.
Speaker 1: I'm very detail oriented and none of it is by mistake.
Speaker 1: Like it's all very much like figured out, Like I
Speaker 1: figure out what do I think people need to know
Speaker 1: about this gadget? What do people need to know about
Speaker 1: in general? A lot of times I don't want to,
Speaker 1: you know, bag on the tech press, but like I
Speaker 1: call it the the like the gimme, gimmey, gimmey. It's
Speaker 1: like one person writes something and make or makes an
Speaker 1: observation and next thing you know, it's everywhere. Right, It's
Speaker 1: just like it's reblogged, it's re tweeted, it's it's everywhere,
Speaker 1: and like that. A lot of times some of those
Speaker 1: things are just sort of outrageous, Like it's a it's
Speaker 1: a tiny feature that nobody's really gonna use, but it's
Speaker 1: like sort of outrageous, so people are gonna click on
Speaker 1: it and read about it, and then they think that
Speaker 1: their privacy is at risk and all this stuff, and
Speaker 1: so you know, I take a much more steady approach
Speaker 1: to what I think people should know. Like I don't
Speaker 1: I don't really dabble in all the kind of the
Speaker 1: garbage e stuff that it's just like easy for clicks,
Speaker 1: but like, what do you really need to know? Like
Speaker 1: what do you really need to know about your gadgets?
Speaker 1: The privacy stuff is very important? What do you need
Speaker 1: to know about that? So I really try to stick to,
Speaker 1: you know, the facts and try not to get too much.
Speaker 1: Like this whole thing with CES, it just really bugs
Speaker 1: me that so many people are knocking it and you know,
Speaker 1: saying how terrible it is that they're holding it when
Speaker 1: they're not here. I mean, I'll be honest, like, yes,
Speaker 1: it's there's been a lot of interaction with people, and
Speaker 1: I'm not in the clear just yet. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I could come down with something in the next week.
Speaker 1: But the reality is I never felt like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: I can't believe what I did. I this decision I
Speaker 1: made to come here was not very smart. Like, no,
Speaker 1: I have my mask on, I'm not shaking hands with people,
Speaker 1: I'm not hugging people. I'm not, you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: a very like it feels like a very safe experience,
Speaker 1: as safe as you can be in a pandemic that's
Speaker 1: lasted two years. So I'm you know, and of course
Speaker 1: I'm protecting myself. I mean, I'm sitting here, you know.
Speaker 1: Of course I've all the boosters and all that stuff,
Speaker 1: but like, you know, the way I'm eating, the way
Speaker 1: I'm drinking, the way I'm hydrating, like all this stuff,
Speaker 1: taking my vitamin. So I'm trying to make sure that
Speaker 1: I'm putting my best body forward so that i can
Speaker 1: set myself up for success in this situation. And I
Speaker 1: understand that not everyone's going to do that, and so
Speaker 1: there are going to be you know, some some issues
Speaker 1: and some people that perhaps get sick. But just just
Speaker 1: say that CS is being you know, not you know,
Speaker 1: just the way that people knocked it was just really
Speaker 1: kind of bugging me because I was here and it
Speaker 1: was actually an amazing experience, Like I really like, I
Speaker 1: think I'll remember this CES because it's so unique and
Speaker 1: it's so interesting that it did happen during a pandemic
Speaker 1: and it's you know, I've been to big events during
Speaker 1: the pandemic. And I've been to some concerts and things,
Speaker 1: and this was definitely a big event. But it was
Speaker 1: really fascinating to see how you do a show this
Speaker 1: large and this hands on when you know it's it's
Speaker 1: very tricky. It's a very delicate situation. So all right,
Speaker 1: did I go off enough on that? I think I did. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's talk about Sony. At the show here, they showed
Speaker 1: off their vision S concept cars. So they've got two
Speaker 1: of them. One is a it's called the S. One
Speaker 1: one is the S too once a sedan. One's an suv.
Speaker 1: And I'll be honest, just straight up, they look like
Speaker 1: a mixture of a Tesla a Porsche. And what's the
Speaker 1: third one. It's really just like a Tesla, Porsche and
Speaker 1: maybe a tiny yeah, just just those two things. Maybe
Speaker 1: an Audi a little tiny bit, but it's just the
Speaker 1: you know, again, it's a slick looking car. And my
Speaker 1: problem with these concept cars, and I'm not a car guy,
Speaker 1: so I can't like say, maybe that's just how it starts.
Speaker 1: You gotta start with the concept. I get it, but
Speaker 1: there's just so many. There are a dime a dozen.
Speaker 1: You see these concept cars, They're amazing they look so cool,
Speaker 1: and then it's like, well they come to fruition and
Speaker 1: it's like half the features that made it like this car,
Speaker 1: this Sony car looks like it's set up for autonomous driving. Now.
Speaker 1: I don't know how far Sony is along with the
Speaker 1: autonomous stuff, but you know, you know, Tesla, which is
Speaker 1: maybe regarded as the best, still has a ways to
Speaker 1: go with a lot of this autonomous driving stuff. And
Speaker 1: so these cars they look cool. I mean they literally
Speaker 1: look like a Tesla. I hate to say, but it's
Speaker 1: kind of like a slicker looking Tesla. But again, it's
Speaker 1: a concept. So you get really excited. Sony is starting
Speaker 1: this new division called Sony Mobility, and it makes sense.
Speaker 1: I mean, Sony is an electronics company. Why not make
Speaker 1: a car, And I mean they know a couple things
Speaker 1: about electronics and batteries and components, and I mean they
Speaker 1: probably have half the components that are inside these cars.
Speaker 1: They probably have them that they've worked on for other things,
Speaker 1: you know, whether it's a display, whether it's a light,
Speaker 1: whether it's a stereo system. I mean, if you think
Speaker 1: about it, it does make a lot of sense that
Speaker 1: Sony would produce a car. Now, it also makes a
Speaker 1: lot of sense at Apple would produce a car because
Speaker 1: Apple has you know, they've they've got a lot of
Speaker 1: experience with components as well, and electronics and car play
Speaker 1: and all this other stuff and design. I mean, who's
Speaker 1: better at design than Apple? So it just makes sense
Speaker 1: that we're gonna see this second sort of I don't
Speaker 1: know what you call it, but it's like it's this
Speaker 1: new new world of elef cars. And they're not just
Speaker 1: you know, not just these historic companies. It's the big
Speaker 1: companies that are the sorry, the startups that are really
Speaker 1: doing a great job. And and you know, someone challenged me.
Speaker 1: They said, oh, well that Ford F one fifty lightning
Speaker 1: looks really good. And there's a big story John Reddinger,
Speaker 1: who does He started Techno Buffalo. He's since sold it,
Speaker 1: but you know, he's very famous on YouTube and sort
Speaker 1: of a tech entrepreneur. He had a big tweet thing
Speaker 1: about he went in to buy the Mercedes electric car
Speaker 1: the I think it's called the EQ something, and you know,
Speaker 1: he goes in, he had his deposit down and the
Speaker 1: dealer said, okay, well it's a fifty thousand dollars markup
Speaker 1: on this car. What he said, oh, come on, he's like,
Speaker 1: and they're like, well, you know, it's very it's very
Speaker 1: in demand. And I heard the same story about the
Speaker 1: Ford Mock. In fact, my wife loved the Ford Machi Mustang,
Speaker 1: the electric Mustang, and I said, I'm not even going
Speaker 1: to look at it. I'm not even considering it. I'll
Speaker 1: be honest. And here's why I said, I'm not dealing
Speaker 1: with a dealer. I'm not dealing with a dealer putting
Speaker 1: a ten thousand dollars search charge on this car just
Speaker 1: because it's popular. It's like almost everything that's wrong with
Speaker 1: the system when it comes to like trying to do
Speaker 1: something new and cool and different, you know, and it's
Speaker 1: just it just made no sense. And so when people
Speaker 1: challenge me and they say, well, you know, it's just
Speaker 1: a matter of time until the historic car companies catch
Speaker 1: up to the new age electric car companies, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, because personally, I'm not buying a car
Speaker 1: the old way anymore. I'm just not. I bought my
Speaker 1: Tesla fully online, one hundred percent. I didn't have to
Speaker 1: talk to anyone. I didn't have to negotiate with anyone.
Speaker 1: I did it all online. And they delivered it to
Speaker 1: my house and they walked away. They didn't even say anything.
Speaker 1: They just literally I waved to the guy and he
Speaker 1: walked away. And that now, that may be a foreign
Speaker 1: concept for a lot of people and say, no way,
Speaker 1: I don't want to do that. I want to do
Speaker 1: the dealer system. I want to do but I don't
Speaker 1: know the dealer system to me, my experience has not
Speaker 1: been very good. Now. The last couple of cars I will,
Speaker 1: I have purchased a couple of them with the same
Speaker 1: person and that actually went a long way because I
Speaker 1: had a relationship with her and it really, you know,
Speaker 1: it made the process a lot easier. But other than that,
Speaker 1: the other processes I've had have not been very nice.
Speaker 1: And so it's one of these things where I'm just like, ugh,
Speaker 1: like I'm not even considering. You know, this this Ford
Speaker 1: f one fifty that everyone's so excited about. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know what's that going to be like when
Speaker 1: when you know, these these MSRP searcharges come aboard. But anyway,
Speaker 1: back to the Sony. It looks like a really nice car.
Speaker 1: And the one thing I thought, there's so many screens inside,
Speaker 1: so there's you know, obviously everyone gets a screen. Sony
Speaker 1: has music, They've got you know, do they have a
Speaker 1: streaming service? I don't know. I don't think they do yet,
Speaker 1: which is weird. Why doesn't Sony have a streaming service? So,
Speaker 1: but they also have a PlayStation console, so you can, sorry,
Speaker 1: you can play video games on the PlayStation with a
Speaker 1: PlayStation controller using a remote I guess connection to it.
Speaker 1: But it's you know, it looks cool, it sounds cool,
Speaker 1: and we're just gonna have to see, like what comes
Speaker 1: of this. I mean, it's Sony's a big company, and
Speaker 1: I think that they could pull this off. But in there,
Speaker 1: I guess the road testing one of them already, which
Speaker 1: is really cool. But when I look at the picture
Speaker 1: of these two cars, they just looked Tesla very tesla
Speaker 1: esk All right, next question, Hello Rich, Happy New Year.
Speaker 1: I'm looking for an app that really works in removing
Speaker 1: those frustrating spam messages. I had Metro PCs and change
Speaker 1: to T Mobile. Once I made that change, numerous spam
Speaker 1: messages began at all times of the day and night.
Speaker 1: I contacted T Mobile. They suggested I download Google messaging app.
Speaker 1: I did, but they continue I don't wish to change
Speaker 1: my number. Please help Karina. All right, Karina, this is
Speaker 1: definitely a problem. It happens to everyone, and I think
Speaker 1: you know number one. I think that what T Mobile
Speaker 1: said was right. I think that downloading the Google Messaging
Speaker 1: app definitely helps, and so I would I would do
Speaker 1: that and make sure you're using it. So if you're
Speaker 1: on an Android, which it says sent for my Android,
Speaker 1: make sure that you are actually using the Google Messages app.
Speaker 1: It looks very similar to the Samsung Messaging app or
Speaker 1: the Messages There's a lot of apps that look similar,
Speaker 1: So make sure that when you open up that Google
Speaker 1: Messaging app, it is the one that you're opening that's
Speaker 1: Google and it's not a different app, because these apps
Speaker 1: can be tricky. And make sure that that's set is
Speaker 1: your default messaging app. Typically, the first time you open
Speaker 1: up Google Messages, it will say do you want this
Speaker 1: to be your default messaging app? So do that, make
Speaker 1: sure you're using it, and then make sure you're turning
Speaker 1: on the spam protection inside the app. There's a setting
Speaker 1: that you have to turn on to make sure that
Speaker 1: it's doing the spam protection. When you first set up,
Speaker 1: it may ask you that in the flow you might
Speaker 1: have said no. By accident, you might have just skipped
Speaker 1: over it. So make sure that you actually select that
Speaker 1: option to have it go through those messages and it
Speaker 1: uses I think AI on the phone to scan them
Speaker 1: to do that. Now, with spam robo calls, you can
Speaker 1: get an app and it will filter those out and
Speaker 1: it does a decent job, but it's still those robo
Speaker 1: calls get through. And with spam it's a little bit different.
Speaker 1: It's just a different system. It's a little bit trickier.
Speaker 1: And what I find is that these spam messages come
Speaker 1: and go in waves. So if you're getting slammed with
Speaker 1: a bunch of spam texts, you know, it could have
Speaker 1: been like I said earlier that you know your your
Speaker 1: phone number is out there on the open web. It
Speaker 1: was part of some sort of data breach and someone
Speaker 1: gets ahold of these numbers and they immediately start texting them.
Speaker 1: Or it could just be random. But the other thing
Speaker 1: to know so you can write it out, you know,
Speaker 1: if it's happening incessantly, yeah, it's a pain. But I
Speaker 1: find that on my phone, I get a bunch of
Speaker 1: spam texts one day or you know, a week, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, I don't get them again for
Speaker 1: a while, and all of a sudden I get them again,
Speaker 1: and then I don't get them. So the couple things
Speaker 1: you want to do is make sure that you don't
Speaker 1: reply or click the links in any of these messages.
Speaker 1: That is the most important thing you can do. So
Speaker 1: don't reply, don't click the links, and that way you
Speaker 1: don't give them any indication that that's a good phone number,
Speaker 1: that there's a live human behind you. Don't want to
Speaker 1: do that. The other thing you don't want to do,
Speaker 1: or you do want to do, is that if you know,
Speaker 1: if you're getting messages from any sort of legitimate service,
Speaker 1: like let's say you signed up for Sears appliance repair
Speaker 1: at some point and they said, oh, do you want
Speaker 1: us to text you when you're a repair man? Is
Speaker 1: a repair person is close? And you say sure, and
Speaker 1: now they keep texting you every once in a while, Hey,
Speaker 1: we've got ten percent off any repairs. Give us a call,
Speaker 1: and that's you know, some people might consider that spam,
Speaker 1: but that's actually a legitimate message that you signed up for.
Speaker 1: When you hand it over your phone number, it was
Speaker 1: probably in tiny, tiny print that said hey, you agree
Speaker 1: to let us text you a certain amount of times.
Speaker 1: Now I feel like, you know, I don't. I'm pretty
Speaker 1: liberal with my phone number, Like I give it out
Speaker 1: to a lot of things. I know some people keep
Speaker 1: it private. I should probably keep it more private, but
Speaker 1: I you know, I'm kind of like, eh, what are
Speaker 1: you gonna do? You know, So I sign up for
Speaker 1: a lot of those things, A lot of these things
Speaker 1: they want you to sign up for, you know, if
Speaker 1: you want like a coupon code or something, they want
Speaker 1: to text you because they getting that text number is
Speaker 1: really good because people look at their texts. They it's
Speaker 1: not like an email where it can just go into
Speaker 1: you know, a spam or you can just delete it quickly.
Speaker 1: Like texts, you know, they wring your phone and you
Speaker 1: see them and you kind of react to them immediately
Speaker 1: versus email. So so text is very uh, it's coveted,
Speaker 1: you know, for marketing. But my point is if you
Speaker 1: have signed up for some of these text messages from
Speaker 1: legitimate companies, those you can go through and type stop
Speaker 1: to and send that as a message and they should
Speaker 1: take you off their list. So if it's a legitimate
Speaker 1: company like best Buy or you know, T Mobile, or
Speaker 1: maybe not tea Mobile because that's your if that's your carrier,
Speaker 1: but you know like a best Buy or a Seers
Speaker 1: or anything, you know, a hotel that you stayed at.
Speaker 1: You can just you can any message you get from
Speaker 1: them at any time, just reply stop and you should
Speaker 1: get an automated text back that says, Okay, you've been
Speaker 1: taking off our list, no more messages from us. So
Speaker 1: that's what you can do in that and hopefully with
Speaker 1: a combination of those two things, along with the Google
Speaker 1: Messages app, you should be able to cut down on
Speaker 1: some of your spam, at least for the time being.
Speaker 1: All Right, I saw so many gadgets this week, Like
Speaker 1: when I tell you so many gadgets, Like I can't
Speaker 1: I cannot believe how many things I recorded on my phone,
Speaker 1: Like I don't know. I think I have stories for
Speaker 1: the rest of the year with all the gadgets I saw.
Speaker 1: I mean, I just saw so many. So it's like
Speaker 1: I can't talk about all of them because there's just
Speaker 1: too many. I've been posting them to my Instagram at
Speaker 1: rich on Tech. But the one that really stands out
Speaker 1: that I think they're gonna sell a lot of is
Speaker 1: this Chipolo. It's called the Chipolo card spot and this
Speaker 1: is a credit card sized tracker and looking you know,
Speaker 1: so you know what you're familiar with, the air tag.
Speaker 1: This is pretty much a version of the air tag
Speaker 1: that slips into your wallet. So it's about two credit
Speaker 1: cards thick. And before you say, rich, give me a break,
Speaker 1: Tile has that. Tiles had the credit card racking device
Speaker 1: for years. I have one in my wallet right now.
Speaker 1: Yes they do. But here's the difference. Tile does not
Speaker 1: use Apple's find my network and Chipolo does. And what
Speaker 1: does that mean. It means that when you lose your wallet,
Speaker 1: chances are you're probably gonna locate it. Now, I can't
Speaker 1: voucher the cash that might may or may not still
Speaker 1: be inside, but you may be able to locate your
Speaker 1: wallet because chances are the find my network is going
Speaker 1: to locate this Chipolo device. So this Chipolo device doesn't
Speaker 1: have GPS inside, but it has a Bluetooth beacon. And
Speaker 1: how this works is that the Bluetooth beacon, if your
Speaker 1: phone is nearby, it just talks directly to your phone.
Speaker 1: And if you're looking for your Chipolo wallet, you know,
Speaker 1: your wallet with a Chipolo inside, you just ring the
Speaker 1: sound and it will there's a there's a little speaker
Speaker 1: on the card. Actually it's pretty loud and it will
Speaker 1: it will chirp up to you know. It's like I
Speaker 1: think one hundred and five decibels, so it's a pretty
Speaker 1: loud chirp. So hopefully if you know you lose your
Speaker 1: wallet in your house, like where did I put that?
Speaker 1: You just press the button on your phone in the
Speaker 1: Apple Find My app and you say play sound, and
Speaker 1: it will play the sound on the chipolo. And that's
Speaker 1: if you're nearby. You know, there's a certain range you
Speaker 1: have to be in for that to work, so you'd
Speaker 1: have to walk around your house and kind of do that.
Speaker 1: The other way is that if if your wallet is
Speaker 1: disconnected from you, like let's say you put your wallet
Speaker 1: on the table at the restaurant, you get up and
Speaker 1: you go to the bathroom, or you just leave it there.
Speaker 1: When you leave the restaurant, you'll get a notification from
Speaker 1: apples Find My that says, hey, you left your wallet behind,
Speaker 1: And that's like sort of a media which is really nice.
Speaker 1: I get these notifications for my AirPods when I leave
Speaker 1: them behind in my back, like if I if I
Speaker 1: walk out of my you know whatever, you just leave behind,
Speaker 1: you get a little notification that says, hey, you left
Speaker 1: your air pods behind, So that will happen, and so
Speaker 1: that's a great feature. And the other way you can
Speaker 1: do it is if you're far away, like let's say
Speaker 1: you drop this thing and you just keep walking and
Speaker 1: you don't realize that it's disconnected from you. Then that's
Speaker 1: when you tap into the power of Apples find my
Speaker 1: network and so you say, locate my item, and it
Speaker 1: will basically all the phones that are nearby the item
Speaker 1: when it sees when that phone sort of scans the
Speaker 1: area for any Bluetooth devices, it will see this Bluetooth
Speaker 1: device and it will say, oh, Bluetooth device five nine
Speaker 1: four seven two nine two two two seven three is
Speaker 1: right here. Let me send that location to Apples servers
Speaker 1: and then that location and then your phone says, oh, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm checking in on five seven nine two two two
Speaker 1: seven three whatever. Do you have any location updates? And
Speaker 1: they say, sure, here's here's the location, and it's all encrypted.
Speaker 1: It's all secure. Apple says, even they can't see the
Speaker 1: location of these things if they wanted to. So, but
Speaker 1: that's how it works, and so now you can go
Speaker 1: navigate to that area where your wallet is and you
Speaker 1: can find it. So this is thirty five dollars. I
Speaker 1: have a feeling they're going to sell a ton of these,
Speaker 1: because it's pretty much I think the first wallet sized
Speaker 1: tracker that works with Apples find My. There's and a
Speaker 1: lot of when find My came out, So Apple used
Speaker 1: to reserve find my for themselves, and they opened up
Speaker 1: that network to anyone that wants to tap into it.
Speaker 1: I'm sure there's obviously restrictions on how you can use
Speaker 1: it and all this good stuff. But like Chipolo typically
Speaker 1: would be seen as a competitor to Apple with their
Speaker 1: tracking devices, because once Apple came out with the air tag,
Speaker 1: it's like, oh now Chipolo is a you know, their
Speaker 1: product was a sort of an air tag many years ago.
Speaker 1: In fact, I remember covering Chipolo. This is a good
Speaker 1: example of things that I said. They happen at CES
Speaker 1: and they don't come along until years. So I covered Chipolo,
Speaker 1: no joke, probably eight years ago at CS, and back
Speaker 1: then it was such you know, it was like, okay, well,
Speaker 1: Tile's the big one. Why would you ever go at Chipolo?
Speaker 1: And I said, well, I had these features. Basically, I
Speaker 1: think the feature that was better was that the battery
Speaker 1: was user replaceable, and so I kind of presented it
Speaker 1: on TV. But it wasn't that sexy. It's not that exciting.
Speaker 1: It's like, oh, here's a tracker. Everyone's like, well, how's
Speaker 1: it better than Tile? Well, okay, you got to replaceable battery.
Speaker 1: Big deal, it's not. The finding network is never going
Speaker 1: to be as big because it's not just the product
Speaker 1: isn't as popular. So now when Apple came out with
Speaker 1: find My and the fact that Chippolo can tap into
Speaker 1: that network, that's a pretty big deal. Now Tyle is
Speaker 1: doing its own thing where they're tapping into Amazon sidewalk network,
Speaker 1: which we haven't really heard much about, so we're not
Speaker 1: sure how big that is. And then they're also tapping
Speaker 1: into they were purchased by Life three sixty, which is
Speaker 1: installed on like thirty million phones, so that's going to
Speaker 1: really expand their finding network. So the good news is
Speaker 1: for consumers, no matter what you choose, the chances of
Speaker 1: finding these little devices are better than ever before. And
Speaker 1: so I've got these air tags on my stuff. They're great,
Speaker 1: they're really fantastic, but I'm I don't know if I'm
Speaker 1: gonna put this Chipolo on my wallet, because my wallet
Speaker 1: is very minimalistic and so I actually don't have room
Speaker 1: for this in my wallet. But I do like the
Speaker 1: idea of having a tracker in my wallet, so I
Speaker 1: might have to I might have to ditch one of
Speaker 1: my cards in my wallet to fit this thing in there,
Speaker 1: because my wallet can literally only hold like one, two, three,
Speaker 1: four cards. So I've got to figure out how I'm
Speaker 1: gonna get this thing in there anyway. Chipolo card Spot,
Speaker 1: the I mentioned the battery situation. You cannot replace the
Speaker 1: battery on this device. It's so thin, there's no way
Speaker 1: you'd be able to do it. I'm not sure. There
Speaker 1: must be using a proprietary battery, but you can send
Speaker 1: it back in and get a new one. I think
Speaker 1: for like fifty percent less. The battery will lasts about
Speaker 1: two years. So there you have it, Chippolo card Spot.
Speaker 1: You heard it here. First thirty five dollars available in February. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get one just to check it out and
Speaker 1: just to have it. Definitely get one for my wife's
Speaker 1: wallet for sure. Oh Am, I supposed to have another question.
Speaker 1: Here we go, Penny says hey, Rich, Happy New Year.
Speaker 1: Can you check out the upsea warranty and let us
Speaker 1: know if it's worth the purchase for your cell phone
Speaker 1: instead of going through the cell phone carrier. Thank you
Speaker 1: in advance, Penny, Penny, good, good question. I never really
Speaker 1: favor the warranty sold by carriers because they're usually pretty
Speaker 1: expensive and you can sometimes get cheaper warranties through places
Speaker 1: like Square Trade. So Square Trade is now owned by
Speaker 1: all State, I believe, and so you know, they're if
Speaker 1: kind of all Square Trade was my go to for
Speaker 1: a long time. I really liked them because they they
Speaker 1: were just they were excellent and I met them. You know,
Speaker 1: whenever I meet with a company, I just like them
Speaker 1: better because I have an understanding of like how they
Speaker 1: run the company, who they are, the people behind the company,
Speaker 1: and so it just helps me like put a face
Speaker 1: to the name and really know that like there are
Speaker 1: like what makes them, you know click. So Square Trade
Speaker 1: is one to check out the trick with it Square
Speaker 1: Trade versus like the carrier ones. It may be cheaper,
Speaker 1: but typically you have to have your phone to get
Speaker 1: a replacement. So if you lost your phone or if
Speaker 1: it's stolen, they typically don't replace that. And that's the
Speaker 1: main question you need to ask when you get one
Speaker 1: of these warranties is do they replace your phone if
Speaker 1: it's lost or stolen. Most of the carrier plans do
Speaker 1: have that provision because they're more expensive, but some of
Speaker 1: these third party plans may not. So even with Upse,
Speaker 1: I'm not really I don't really know much about Upsy,
Speaker 1: to be honest, and so just looking at their website
Speaker 1: taking a look, I mean, it looks legitimate, says the
Speaker 1: Smarter Way to warranty, and it's a nice website. It
Speaker 1: looks like they've got warranties for all kinds of stuff
Speaker 1: they do, smartphones, laptops, tablets, appliances. It looks like they
Speaker 1: cover everything. So it's much much broader. I think Square
Speaker 1: Trade does as well. But the other one that I
Speaker 1: like is Ashurian, so they have warranties as well, so
Speaker 1: I would check into that one. So Assurian I know,
Speaker 1: and I know Square Trade, so I would check those
Speaker 1: two Upsey just kind of see what the deal is
Speaker 1: with Upsey, and again see see what the provision is
Speaker 1: if you lose your phone. The other main thing I
Speaker 1: want to mention is that with a Shurian if you
Speaker 1: have if you have that going on, a Shurian allows
Speaker 1: you to take your phone to the U Break I
Speaker 1: Fix stores and so that's a really nice thing where
Speaker 1: you have a physical location to take your phone to
Speaker 1: the store. So that's a nice thing as well. All right,
Speaker 1: let's see, do we have one more story before we go?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mentioned Ring. Okay, let's talk about this
Speaker 1: before I go. So Ring alarm system. I've been tempted
Speaker 1: to switch to this for a long time because I
Speaker 1: love what Ring is doing and I feel like it's
Speaker 1: a great value because their plan is like ten bucks
Speaker 1: a month and so it's a really good value. I
Speaker 1: don't know if it's I hope it's still ten dollars
Speaker 1: a month. But anyway, Ring came out with a glass
Speaker 1: break sensor. So this was the main sensor that they
Speaker 1: did not have that the other ones do, and so
Speaker 1: they had like a workaround where you can use the
Speaker 1: A word you know that Amazon assistant to use your
Speaker 1: echo speaker to monitor for glass break. But it wasn't
Speaker 1: really a slick enough solution for me. So anyway, glass
Speaker 1: break sensor coming from Ring on February sixteenth, I think
Speaker 1: it says, and it's forty bucks. So two pack is
Speaker 1: seventy and now you can finally have a complete ring
Speaker 1: security system for your house that does all the stuff
Speaker 1: that the other security systems do that I think was
Speaker 1: the missing piece to a really really good security system.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to look into switching to that. Perhaps. Oh,
Speaker 1: I can't believe it. It's already the end of the show.
Speaker 1: Still a lot of questions. That's gonna do it for
Speaker 1: this episode. If you'd like to submit a question for
Speaker 1: me to answer, go to my Facebook page, Facebook dot com,
Speaker 1: slash rich on Tech, hit the big blue send email button,
Speaker 1: or go to Richontech dot tv hit the email icon.
Speaker 1: I would love it if you would rate and review
Speaker 1: this podcast. Be the first reviewer of the new year.
Speaker 1: Just go to the listening app of your choice and
Speaker 1: write a quick line about what you like about this
Speaker 1: show to help other people understand why they should listen.
Speaker 1: You can find me on social media. I am at
Speaker 1: rich on Tech, and no matter where you live in
Speaker 1: the US, you can download the free ktla plus app
Speaker 1: on Apple, tv TV and Roku. Once you do, scroll
Speaker 1: to the tech section and you can watch all of
Speaker 1: my TV segments on demand. It's so exciting. My name
Speaker 1: is rich Demirol. Thanks so much for listening. There are
Speaker 1: so many ways you can spend an hour of your time.
Speaker 1: I appreciate you spending with me. Happy New Year. Hopefully
Speaker 1: we will have an amazing twenty twenty two. I will
Speaker 1: talk to you real soon