Speaker 1: It's showtime for Apple. Meanwhile, Spotify isn't very happy with them.
Speaker 1: A genetic test for type two diabetes, Android Q, Verizon
Speaker 1: five G, a new tax sapp, and saving on spring Break.
Speaker 2: What's going on? I'm Rich Damiro.
Speaker 1: This is Rich on Tech, the podcast that tells you
Speaker 1: what you need to know about all the interesting little
Speaker 1: things that happened in tech.
Speaker 2: So this is not everything you need to know.
Speaker 1: About technology, but it's the stuff that I find interesting
Speaker 1: and for the average consumer, I think that it's stuff
Speaker 1: that you should at least be aware of. Omrich Damiro,
Speaker 1: the tech reporter at KTLA five News in Los Angeles.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much for tuning me in here.
Speaker 1: On the podcast. I do appreciate it. Got a lot
Speaker 1: of you listening, and a lot of loyal listeners, so
Speaker 1: thank you for that. I do appreciate it. And again,
Speaker 1: you know, if you've listened to this for a while,
Speaker 1: it is a work in progress. I don't take anything
Speaker 1: for granted here. This week, specifically, I will tell you
Speaker 1: that I was not able to take calls.
Speaker 2: Every week. You're like, okay's Rich gonna take calls this week?
Speaker 2: Is he not? But this week I do have an excuse.
Speaker 1: So Facebook was down on Wednesday for like almost all
Speaker 1: of the day, and that's the day that I normally
Speaker 1: do my live show where I get the phone calls
Speaker 1: for the podcast, and so if I don't have that,
Speaker 1: I'm not able to take the live calls. So we
Speaker 1: do have a reason because that was a crazy, big outage.
Speaker 1: Facebook says yesterday, as a result of a server configuration change,
Speaker 1: many people had trouble accessing our apps and services.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's playing it down.
Speaker 1: No Instagram, no Oculus, no Facebook.
Speaker 2: I mean it was rough. I turned to Twitter and
Speaker 2: LinkedIn personally.
Speaker 1: Facebook says we have resolved the issues and our systems
Speaker 1: are recovering. We're very sorry for the inconvenience and appreciate
Speaker 1: everyone's patience. I think it went on for about fourteen hours.
Speaker 1: For me, I just gave up. I was at the
Speaker 1: gym when I first kind of well, actually I first
Speaker 1: noticed it was a problem when I posted something to
Speaker 1: Facebook and I noticed it just kind of stopped after
Speaker 1: twenty six comments.
Speaker 2: That was it.
Speaker 1: It was like, no more comments. I'm like, that's kind
Speaker 1: of weird. And also the views kind of stopped. I
Speaker 1: was like, did Facebook cut me off? And then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, I realized I couldn't refresh my Instagram
Speaker 1: feed either, and so I just kept kind of trying,
Speaker 1: and I was like, Okay, something's going on here.
Speaker 2: Then it's when I realized when I.
Speaker 1: Went to Twitter that yeah, there was a problem. Anyway,
Speaker 1: let me know how you dealt with. The Facebook outage
Speaker 1: of twenty nineteen definitely affected this podcast, but nonetheless, we
Speaker 1: got lots of great stuff to talk about today, so
Speaker 1: let's get right to it. First things first, we now
Speaker 1: have a new Apple event coming up March twenty fifth,
Speaker 1: ten am. Apple's gonna hold a special event at their
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino, California. That's Northern California, and
Speaker 1: this is on their campus obviously. So the tagline every
Speaker 1: time they send one of these invitations that always has
Speaker 1: some little hint as to what they're going to reveal,
Speaker 1: and the tagline this time around was It's showtime. And
Speaker 1: they did a cool little animation of kind of find
Speaker 1: me a lot of the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland,
Speaker 1: where it has that old timey feel to the black
Speaker 1: and white sepiatoned kind of images. So this is a
Speaker 1: film reel that's kind of counting down like you know,
Speaker 1: like the old school films used to count down. So
Speaker 1: clearly Apple is hinting at a Hollywood play here, and
Speaker 1: from all the blogs and all the reporting and all
Speaker 1: the rumors and speculation, it sounds like we're gonna get
Speaker 1: two things out of Apple. Number one, some sort of
Speaker 1: news subscription service. So they bought Texture last year, which
Speaker 1: is a really cool app that I used for a while.
Speaker 2: By the way.
Speaker 1: It kind of gives you unlimited access to all the
Speaker 1: magazines you can imagine, for one price, like ten bucks
Speaker 1: a month. So they bought that company. We haven't really
Speaker 1: heard much about that since then. So we've got that.
Speaker 1: Now here's the question, is Apple going to launch something
Speaker 1: more than what Texture was?
Speaker 2: So they're going to build Texture into the news app,
Speaker 2: and we are.
Speaker 1: They already have the news app on the iPhone, so
Speaker 1: they've got the base there. A lot of people check
Speaker 1: that Apple to tell me how popular that is, and
Speaker 1: I'm sure it is because it's kind of the default
Speaker 1: news app that they push on the iPhone.
Speaker 2: So you've got that going on. Will people pay more
Speaker 2: though to access more news? Now?
Speaker 1: A lot of people these days have a subscription to
Speaker 1: some sort of online newspaper like maybe the La Times
Speaker 1: or the Wall Street Journal, the Washington.
Speaker 2: Post, New York Times.
Speaker 1: But how much are people willing to pay for straight
Speaker 1: up news nine ninety nine a month, fifteen ninety nine
Speaker 1: a month. I don't know right now. I do not
Speaker 1: have a subscription to any of those services. So I
Speaker 1: kind of go with what's free online. What I change
Speaker 1: my mind for a higher quality service or something that
Speaker 1: included all the magazines. Maybe Now, the reason why I
Speaker 1: end up canceling texture is because it was too much.
Speaker 1: You get every magazine known to man. So what I
Speaker 1: do is I'd sit down, I'd look at the iPad,
Speaker 1: and number one, I'd be overwhelmed by all the magazines
Speaker 1: on there because there's just so many. And don't get
Speaker 1: me wrong, magazines are fantastic to browse through. But what
Speaker 1: happened is it would consume all of my time, All
Speaker 1: of my free time went to browsing these magazines. And
Speaker 1: so I would just look at all these magazines and
Speaker 1: never catch up. Yeah, sure, I found a lot of stuff.
Speaker 1: I also found myself buying a lot of stuff because
Speaker 1: what are magazines primarily there to do for? You?
Speaker 2: Sell stuff? Right?
Speaker 1: So that was that I canceled that. I think they
Speaker 1: offered me a five dollars fee to stay. I did
Speaker 1: that for a while and then I finally canceled it
Speaker 1: all together.
Speaker 2: So what I subscribe again? Perhaps, but I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: The other thing that they're announcing is some sort of
Speaker 1: Apple streaming service.
Speaker 2: For TV shows and movies.
Speaker 1: And we know that Apple's shooting a lot of TV shows.
Speaker 1: I don't know about movies, but they're doing a lot
Speaker 1: of TV shows right now here in Hollywood, and I'm
Speaker 1: sure they're stockpiling a lot of stuff. But again, are
Speaker 1: we ready and willing for another subscription service right now?
Speaker 1: I've got my Direct TV now, I've got Netflix, I've
Speaker 1: got amon I've got Spotify, I've got Apple Music, I've
Speaker 1: got YouTube Premium. So again, all these subscriptions add up,
Speaker 1: and it comes down to subscription fatigue. How many subscriptions
Speaker 1: can one person have? And it's kind of funny because
Speaker 1: we're getting back to this day of like the cable,
Speaker 1: where you paid one price and you got all these
Speaker 1: different things bundled in whether you watch them or not.
Speaker 2: So will we go back to that?
Speaker 1: And with that in mind, it looks like Apple is
Speaker 1: going to kind of have some of its own stuff,
Speaker 1: but then some other stuff as well. So you know,
Speaker 1: Amazon has channels, Roku has premium channels, like you could
Speaker 1: subscribe to different you know, premium networks through there. So
Speaker 1: Apple wants to do the same thing apparently with this
Speaker 1: new service. But the question is with Apple, is Apple
Speaker 1: an enemy or a friend of these studios? So remember
Speaker 1: when Netflix first came out, all these studios dumped all
Speaker 1: their old stuff on Netflix. Yeah, sure, you gonna have
Speaker 1: the old back catalog of all this garbage.
Speaker 2: And Netflix was so happy to.
Speaker 1: Accept all that stuff, right, and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: Netflix started doing their own stuff. And now they've eclipsed
Speaker 1: some of the studios, not eclipse, but you know, they
Speaker 1: definitely have become a force to be reckoned with in Hollywood.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's an understatement. They are huge in Hollywood. As
Speaker 1: I speak, this just mirror feet from the building that
Speaker 1: they built for Netflix, which is like fourteen stories high
Speaker 1: towering over Hollywood, and they continue to build more. This
Speaker 1: place is enormous. So again, can Apple compete? And also
Speaker 1: the way Apple does things is a little bit different.
Speaker 1: Apple is very secretive kind of so is Netflix.
Speaker 2: Netflix. They have a good PR team, but they are much.
Speaker 1: More secretive, I think than a lot of studios are,
Speaker 1: and Apple even more secretive.
Speaker 2: So this is.
Speaker 1: Something to watch. I'm going up to the event. I'm
Speaker 1: curious to see what they have. This is the first
Speaker 1: time I'm going to an Apple event where I don't
Speaker 1: think the excitement for what Apple is launching will match
Speaker 1: the event. Usually you go up to an event for
Speaker 1: Apple and you know you're gonna get some sort of
Speaker 1: crazy new hardware, whether it's an iPhone upgrade. Even if
Speaker 1: you know the whole thing, you're excited for it. This
Speaker 1: new subscription eh and I'm in the news business, by
Speaker 1: the way. And then also a new streaming service. Eh
Speaker 1: and if I think about Apple's first to stream or
Speaker 1: first two attempts at some sort of entertainment, which was
Speaker 1: Planet of the Apps that show and also Carpool Karaoke,
Speaker 1: the series they did a spinoff, just didn't really work
Speaker 1: both of them.
Speaker 2: They don't break out numbers, they never said it's a hit.
Speaker 1: So again, March twenty fifth, all questions will be answered
Speaker 1: at the Apple event in Kopertino. Maybe the most exciting
Speaker 1: things for me would be a new iPad Mini. If
Speaker 1: they come out with that, because my kids could probably
Speaker 1: use a new one.
Speaker 2: Theirs is going on four.
Speaker 1: Years old, and AirPods too, people would probably be excited
Speaker 1: to have a new version of AirPods.
Speaker 2: Well, there is one company that's.
Speaker 1: Not very happy about what Apple is doing, and that
Speaker 1: is Spotify. And this is a really and I said earlier,
Speaker 1: how you know these companies have to wonder if Apple
Speaker 1: is their friend at this point or their enemy at
Speaker 1: this point, or are they frenemies. So I would say
Speaker 1: that something like Apple and Google are frenemies because Google
Speaker 1: knows that they need Apple to run their apps on
Speaker 1: their phones. They need it for all that search traffic
Speaker 1: that they get from Google being the default search on iPhone,
Speaker 1: which by the way, they paid dearly for in the
Speaker 1: billions of dollars to be that default search. Because think
Speaker 1: about it, with one tiny line of programming code, Apple
Speaker 1: could change the default search on iPhone to Bing or
Speaker 1: Yahoo and just ruin everyone's lives. And you know, I
Speaker 1: mean if they did that, that would be bad for
Speaker 1: the iPhone because those search engines are not very good.
Speaker 1: But yeah, Google pays for that to be the default
Speaker 1: search engine on Safari. So anyway, Spotify they came out
Speaker 1: and said, you know what, We're not gonna play nice anymore.
Speaker 1: We're finally gonna It reminded me of like kind of an.
Speaker 2: X or like a whistleblower, like a tell all.
Speaker 1: It's like, look, I've been treated like this for so long,
Speaker 1: and now I'm finally just going to come out and
Speaker 1: tell you my story.
Speaker 2: And that's what Spotify is doing.
Speaker 1: They came out with the website that calls it's It
Speaker 1: says it's time to play fair, and they kind of
Speaker 1: went into all these facts and things about how Apple
Speaker 1: does not play fair with their app. So of course
Speaker 1: anyone can create an app, Apple has to approve it.
Speaker 1: It's a very closed system with Apple, and they have
Speaker 1: very specific rules, and Spotify is saying all those rules
Speaker 1: are meant to make it tougher for someone like Spotify
Speaker 1: to do business, and I will say I agree.
Speaker 2: So here's their first thing. Apple charges a discriminatory tax.
Speaker 1: So of course, if you have an app through Apple
Speaker 1: and you want to take an in app purchase, Apple
Speaker 1: takes thirty.
Speaker 2: Percent of that.
Speaker 1: So for Spotify, if they want to charge ten dollars,
Speaker 1: Spotify is going to get seven dollars of your subscription
Speaker 1: money because Apple is getting the three dollars. Now, I
Speaker 1: would say in general, I mean Apple did build the platform,
Speaker 1: so they have to get something for that.
Speaker 2: It's not like they can just give this stuff away
Speaker 2: for free. So I do.
Speaker 1: I see both sides of that argument. But here's the
Speaker 1: other thing. You notice this with something like Amazon. This
Speaker 1: is where it gets very tricky for consumers because consumers
Speaker 1: probably don't realize that you cannot buy a Kindle on
Speaker 1: You cannot buy a Kindle ebook on the iPhone.
Speaker 2: Nope, you can't. It's almost impossible to do that.
Speaker 1: Why because Apple has to take their thirty percent and
Speaker 1: Amazon does not want to give them that thirty percent.
Speaker 1: So if you download the Kindle app, wouldn't it be
Speaker 1: so nice if you can just buy a Kindle ebook
Speaker 1: through the app.
Speaker 2: Yes, but you can't. You have to go to a
Speaker 2: website and you got to buy it that way.
Speaker 1: I figured that out the hard way when I sold
Speaker 1: my book one hundred and one Handy Tech Tips for
Speaker 1: the iPhone as an ebook and everyone's like, oh, I
Speaker 1: can't buy this through the Kindle app. And I didn't
Speaker 1: want to explain to them, like how crazy it is.
Speaker 1: This whole big war between Apple and Amazon. But that's
Speaker 1: what's happening behind the scenes. So a lot of apps
Speaker 1: that have a monthly subscription number one, you'll notice it's
Speaker 1: a little bit more expensive, so thirty percent more to
Speaker 1: do that in app subscription, or they just don't offer
Speaker 1: it at all. So Netflix being one of those companies
Speaker 1: where you can't even get a subscription through iOS. You
Speaker 1: can't just tap that little fingerprint sensor or use your
Speaker 1: face ID because they don't want to give a cut
Speaker 1: to Apple, which I understand if you're talking about millions
Speaker 1: of people. And by the way, what's the easiest way
Speaker 1: to subscribe to something on the iPhone? Of course it's
Speaker 1: going to be with an in app purchase, right, So
Speaker 1: these companies don't want to give away a huge amount
Speaker 1: of their subscription revenue to Apple.
Speaker 2: Okay, so that's the first one.
Speaker 1: Apple won't let us share Spotify deals, so anyway, that's
Speaker 1: a tough one to explain. Apple won't let you upgrade
Speaker 1: to Spotify Premium with ease. That's another one that kind
Speaker 1: of has to deal with the in app purchases. Apple
Speaker 1: rejects our app enhancements. So again, Apple kind of plays
Speaker 1: by their own rules with this stuff. And I think
Speaker 1: this is where it gets really interesting. Okay, I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna give you my kind of experience with Apple Music
Speaker 1: versus Spotify.
Speaker 2: So think about Spotify as an app.
Speaker 1: A lot of people are using that as their music
Speaker 1: app on the iPhone, right, but it can never truly
Speaker 1: become the default app on your iPhone because Apple does
Speaker 1: not allow that.
Speaker 2: They don't let you set defaults. Right.
Speaker 1: You can download the Chrome browser, but every link you
Speaker 1: click is going to take you to Safari. You can
Speaker 1: download Spotify, but you can't talk to Siri and have
Speaker 1: her play music through Spotify. Right, She's only gonna activate
Speaker 1: Apple Music. You can have an Apple Watch, but only
Speaker 1: your Apple Music is going to sync to your Apple Watch.
Speaker 1: And Spotify says that they've taken a lot of heat
Speaker 1: for all this stuff, and they are prohibited from streaming
Speaker 1: on the Apple Watch. They're prohibited from putting their music
Speaker 1: offline on the Apple Watch. Apple won't let them be
Speaker 1: on home pod. And so again, who's right here? I'm
Speaker 1: not sure so I think that, But if I had
Speaker 1: to explain from personal experience, if you look at Apple
Speaker 1: Music on the iPhone, the thing I can tell you
Speaker 1: is that when you sink a playlist on Apple Music
Speaker 1: and you say I want to download this music to
Speaker 1: my phone, it just magically downloads in the background to
Speaker 1: your device. On Spotify, that simply does not happen. You
Speaker 1: must have the Spotify app open and your phone unlocked
Speaker 1: for anything to download. It does not happen in the background.
Speaker 1: Same thing with Google Photos. You want to have Google
Speaker 1: Photos on your phone to back up all your stuff, sure,
Speaker 1: but guess what.
Speaker 2: Google Photos can.
Speaker 1: Only run on the background for a certain amount of time.
Speaker 1: Usually you have to open the app to kind of
Speaker 1: trigger things to make.
Speaker 2: It all work.
Speaker 1: Whereas iCloud, they're given preference. iCloud can do things in
Speaker 1: the background. Same thing with Dropbox. They can't do things
Speaker 1: in the background. iCloud can. So again, this is where
Speaker 1: it gets to be really interesting with Apple.
Speaker 2: They have created an amazing.
Speaker 1: Device, but if you want to be on it, you
Speaker 1: gotta play by Apple's rules.
Speaker 2: At least for now.
Speaker 1: Google is releasing new version of its Android software called
Speaker 1: Android Q. And just as a lot of people still
Speaker 1: don't even have the most current version, which is P,
Speaker 1: they're already onto Q. This is something that will be
Speaker 1: released in full later in the year, but right now
Speaker 1: they've got a beta, so all the nerds are installing
Speaker 1: it on their pixel phones and they're kind of finding
Speaker 1: out all the new little goodies built into this operating system.
Speaker 1: So a couple of things that the next Web is
Speaker 1: talking about. It's got support for foldable phones. It's got
Speaker 1: a basic theme engine, which means you can kind of
Speaker 1: make your device look a certain way throughout the whole device,
Speaker 1: kind of what Samsung already does. Location sharing is getting
Speaker 1: more granular, so on the iPhone, you can say, for
Speaker 1: most apps, hey, I only want to share my location
Speaker 1: when I'm actively using this app. Looks like Android's going
Speaker 1: to allow you to do that as well. And then
Speaker 1: it's looking like they're doing more support for portrait.
Speaker 2: Mode and depth effects.
Speaker 1: I thought this was interesting from Mashable. They found a
Speaker 1: new feature that lets you share your Wi Fi via
Speaker 1: AQR code. And again this is in the Android Q beta,
Speaker 1: so not many people have access to that just yet.
Speaker 1: But you know, if you're at like an event and
Speaker 1: you've got, you know, your Wi Fi, you're connected to
Speaker 1: the network, and someone next to you wants to connect
Speaker 1: to the network, you can just tap share in the
Speaker 1: settings and it will generate a QR code and the
Speaker 1: other person just has to scan that QR code with
Speaker 1: their phone and they'll connect to the Wi Fi. So
Speaker 1: it's kind of an easier way instead of sharing like
Speaker 1: a long password or even a private password. But this
Speaker 1: only works with both phones running Android q which is
Speaker 1: like zero point zero zero zero one percent of phones
Speaker 1: in the world, and if you've been on iPhone lately,
Speaker 1: I think they're doing it in a very interesting and
Speaker 1: surprising way. So if you are next to someone that
Speaker 1: wants to log in or is trying to log into
Speaker 1: the Wi Fi on the network that you're on, they'll
Speaker 1: get a little pop up on their screen that says, hey,
Speaker 1: we're gonna ask Rich if he wants to share the.
Speaker 2: Wi Fi with you.
Speaker 1: You get a pop up on your screen that says, hey, Rich,
Speaker 1: this person in your contact is trying to join the
Speaker 1: Wi Fi.
Speaker 2: Do you want to share your password?
Speaker 1: And sure enough, it shares it, they get logged in
Speaker 1: and it's pretty seamless.
Speaker 2: It's kind of surprising.
Speaker 1: The first time I saw this, I thought it was
Speaker 1: really cool, and I think for most people that don't
Speaker 1: even know that's a feature, But it's just one of
Speaker 1: those things that kind of pops up on your iPhone
Speaker 1: and you're like yeah, sure, and there it goes. Moving
Speaker 1: on now to Verizon, They've got their five G mobile
Speaker 1: network going live on April eleventh in two cities, Chicago
Speaker 1: in Minneapolis. Now Chicago makes a lot of sense. That's
Speaker 1: where Motorola used to be headquartered. I assume they still are.
Speaker 1: And the first phone that it works on is Surprise, Surprise,
Speaker 1: the Moto Z three. So this is not something where
Speaker 1: they flip a switch and the whole city of Chicago
Speaker 1: has five G. Right, this is something where they will
Speaker 1: turn it on and just sections of the city will
Speaker 1: have it. But I think it'd be awesome. I would
Speaker 1: love to go to Chicago and try this out. In fact,
Speaker 1: i'm considering that because I would love to just have
Speaker 1: a five G phone next to my four G LTE
Speaker 1: phone and just do some standard things like download a
Speaker 1: movie on you know, on.
Speaker 2: Netflix, just do some speed tests.
Speaker 1: I would just love to see how fast five G is,
Speaker 1: because I'm fine with four G.
Speaker 2: I think it's awesome.
Speaker 1: You just don't realize how much better a faster connection
Speaker 1: can be for productivity, and that's what people are going
Speaker 1: to experience there so of course, of course, of course
Speaker 1: the new five G faster Internet comes with higher price tags.
Speaker 1: So it's going to be ten dollars more per month.
Speaker 1: And I don't know about you, but I feel like
Speaker 1: I'm already at the max of what I'm paying a
Speaker 1: Verizon for my monthly service.
Speaker 2: So I get it.
Speaker 1: Ten more dollars a month not make or break most
Speaker 1: people or many people, or maybe it does, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, to me, I don't want to pay a
Speaker 1: nickel more, right, but if it's really that much better,
Speaker 1: maybe I'm willing to do that. But again, I think
Speaker 1: it's one of these things where we knew it was coming.
Speaker 1: And of course Verizon spent all this money for the
Speaker 1: new network.
Speaker 2: They're going to charge people for it.
Speaker 1: So the other city, like I said, is Minneapolis, and
Speaker 1: I don't see many people using this network right away
Speaker 1: because it's kind of complicated to get on board. You
Speaker 1: can't use your typical phone, like I said, it's the
Speaker 1: Moto Z three. You also need a five G mod
Speaker 1: on top of that, so it's like this little snap
Speaker 1: on back to the phone that will give you the
Speaker 1: five G antennas and the five G capabilities. So again,
Speaker 1: a lot of people or many people do not have
Speaker 1: that on their phone, and it's only that one phone model.
Speaker 1: The other phone that we know is coming out is
Speaker 1: the Samsung Galaxy S ten five G that will launch
Speaker 1: with Verizon exclusively.
Speaker 2: Will it launch on April eleventh alongside this new network?
Speaker 2: Who knows?
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe Samsung wants to tap into it and take
Speaker 1: advantage of all the publicity, but maybe not. But I
Speaker 1: don't think you need a five G phone in any way,
Speaker 1: shape or form in twenty nineteen. I know the year
Speaker 1: is kind of just started, but again we are you
Speaker 1: want to wait till these things are one generation in Okay,
Speaker 1: the very first phones that took advantage of three G
Speaker 1: and four G and four G LTE, they were all
Speaker 1: very basic compared to what we have now.
Speaker 2: So I say, wait until twenty twenty. Next phone, go
Speaker 2: with five G.
Speaker 1: Don't go with the first generation device, wait till the
Speaker 1: next one. Now, time to share a couple of handy
Speaker 1: tools I've discovered this week. The first is from Google.
Speaker 1: It looks like they have finally broken out Google Hotels
Speaker 1: as an actual tool on the Google website, So before
Speaker 1: to go to Google Hotels, they've always had it, but
Speaker 1: It's been kind of tough to find, right you had
Speaker 1: to do a search for like hotels near me or
Speaker 1: hotels Los Angeles, and then it would kind of pop up.
Speaker 1: Now you can just go to Google dot com slash hotels,
Speaker 1: and Google has built a very good hotel website, and
Speaker 1: of course they're using machine learning to make it really nice.
Speaker 1: So a couple of things I like about the Google
Speaker 1: website is that it gives you price insights. So Google
Speaker 1: is constantly tracking the prices for all these hotels, and
Speaker 1: that way it can tell you, yeah, this hotel is
Speaker 1: really expensive this weekend.
Speaker 2: And so if I'm you.
Speaker 1: Know, and you might say, well, I gotta travel there
Speaker 1: for work anyway, so what does it matter. Well, if
Speaker 1: you're a leisure traveler and you're planning a vacation, it's
Speaker 1: kind of nice to know, ooh, look at that weekend,
Speaker 1: that's really expensive to travel to Portland. But this weekend, Wow,
Speaker 1: that's really cheap. Let me go to the Portland.
Speaker 2: On that weekend.
Speaker 1: And these are the kind of price insights that you
Speaker 1: can get from Google, who is tracking.
Speaker 2: Them at all times. I love this stuff. So that's
Speaker 2: number one.
Speaker 1: Number two is you can kind of sort in various ways.
Speaker 1: My favorite filter and I don't always find it, but
Speaker 1: it's called deals. So of course, like I said, with
Speaker 1: Google kind of monitoring all the different prices and keeping
Speaker 1: track of that, it knows which hotels are deals and
Speaker 1: which are not. So I personally love getting a hotel
Speaker 1: that normally costs more for less, right everyone does, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think, but Google will tell you in the filter.
Speaker 1: I just want to see deals, so you can just
Speaker 1: see the hotels or deals. The other thing is if
Speaker 1: you're a Google one member, which if you have storage
Speaker 1: with Google, you have some specific deals that are just
Speaker 1: exclusive to you.
Speaker 2: These are better prices than you can get publicly.
Speaker 1: You also have hotel highlights, so you can see like
Speaker 1: if the hotel has a fancy pool, or if it's
Speaker 1: a luxury hotel, or if it's popular with families. Again,
Speaker 1: this is all stuff that Google is getting from machine
Speaker 1: learning because if they notice a lot of people mention
Speaker 1: their family in almost every review of a hotel, Google
Speaker 1: and their computers are going to say, oh, this hotel
Speaker 1: must be good for families, so that's smart. And you
Speaker 1: can also see which hotels are near a landmark. So
Speaker 1: if you say something like hotels near Disney World, Google
Speaker 1: will show you on Google Maps the hotels that are
Speaker 1: close to that landmark, so that's nice, and you can
Speaker 1: also get the walking and driving distances. Now, the only
Speaker 1: thing I'm a little bit uncertain about when it comes
Speaker 1: to Google hotels is are these are they using all
Speaker 1: the data available or is it just partner hotels. So
Speaker 1: Google in their blog posts says the filter uses machine
Speaker 1: learning to highlight hotels where one or more of our
Speaker 1: partners offer rates that are significantly lower than you usual price.
Speaker 1: So maybe I think they mean by partners like all
Speaker 1: the websites that they jump you off to to book
Speaker 1: your hotel. That's kind of what I'm guessing. But anyway,
Speaker 1: check it out Google dot com Slash hotels one more
Speaker 1: place to research. Firefox has a new handy way to
Speaker 1: send large files to friends totally free. Now there's a
Speaker 1: lot of ways to send folks files, but this one
Speaker 1: is super simple. It's called Firefox Send. It's something they've
Speaker 1: been testing.
Speaker 2: For a while.
Speaker 1: But just bookmark this and you never know when you're
Speaker 1: gonna need it, but when you do, it's very handy.
Speaker 1: All it is is a super simple Dragon drop interface.
Speaker 1: You drag a file up to one gigabyte. It generates
Speaker 1: a link. You send that link to a friend they
Speaker 1: can download the file. There's no logins, there's no jumping
Speaker 1: through hoops, there's no giant ads on the screen, at
Speaker 1: least that I could see. And it's not trying to
Speaker 1: trick you into signing up for anything like some of
Speaker 1: these other services. But again, what Firefox is saying is,
Speaker 1: you know what we know. There's a lot of file
Speaker 1: transfer services out there. We just wanted to make and
Speaker 1: that was simple. That was private, Everything is encrypted. You
Speaker 1: have control over the file, so you can set an
Speaker 1: expiration date for your link, you can set the number
Speaker 1: of downloads, you can put a password on there if
Speaker 1: you want. But again, you can send up to one
Speaker 1: gigabyte files for free. If you want to send up
Speaker 1: to two and a half gigabyte files, you just have
Speaker 1: to sign up for a free Firefox account. So again
Speaker 1: it's send dot Firefox dot com. Next time you need
Speaker 1: to send a big file to someone, or just quickly
Speaker 1: want to send a file to someone, there you go.
Speaker 1: And this app I thought was kind of cool. It's
Speaker 1: called Keeper. This is a tax keeping app. And I
Speaker 1: know it's tax time. I'm going through all my receipts.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you are too, And every year I say
Speaker 1: the same thing, I'm going to keep track of all
Speaker 1: my receipts perfectly, and sometimes I do, sometimes they don't.
Speaker 1: I try to categorize things. I've been using an app
Speaker 1: called Everlance, which I really like, which tracks my expenses
Speaker 1: and my miles. But again, you have to go through
Speaker 1: and kind of categorize all the stuff keeper And by
Speaker 1: the way, I haven't tried this personally yet, but I
Speaker 1: just love I love the pitch on the website and
Speaker 1: it's from y Combinator, so I mean, you know, it's
Speaker 1: kind of a startup that's backed by.
Speaker 2: A very decent, decent organization. But here's what it does.
Speaker 1: You kind of log in with your bank account, your
Speaker 1: credit card, all that good stuff, and then it goes
Speaker 1: to work. It scans all your transactions and it looks
Speaker 1: for the stuff that it knows could be quote unquote written.
Speaker 2: Off right in various categories.
Speaker 1: So software expenses, transportation, industry, education subscriptions, home office expenses,
Speaker 1: working meals, and when it finds something that's kind of questionable,
Speaker 1: like let's say you went to Starbucks, it will text
Speaker 1: you and it will say, hey, we saw you went
Speaker 1: to Starbucks yesterday for fourteen dollars and thirty two cents.
Speaker 1: Was that a meeting with a business client? And you
Speaker 1: reply yes or no to that text and they will
Speaker 1: automatically categorize that for you. And apparently they're using a
Speaker 1: combination of machine learning algorithm but also real kind of
Speaker 1: bookkeeper accountants on the back end, so it automatically categorizes everything.
Speaker 1: You can export all your write offs into tools like
Speaker 1: TurboTax or H and R block at the end of
Speaker 1: the year, and they say this is great for real
Speaker 1: estate agents, actors, ride share drivers, scooter charge scooter chargers,
Speaker 1: freelance designers, freelance writers, photographers, Airbnb hosts.
Speaker 2: And I identify with this.
Speaker 1: So even though I've got a job at KTLA, I
Speaker 1: do a lot of freelance stuff.
Speaker 2: And you know, I wrote a book last year.
Speaker 1: I do a lot of speaking engagements. You know, I
Speaker 1: just I have a lot of little things that generate
Speaker 1: side income and these are things that I have to
Speaker 1: kind of keep track of. And it's not very easy,
Speaker 1: believe me, with full time job and two kids, you
Speaker 1: kind of let a lot of this stuff.
Speaker 2: I don't know is that an expense. Was that not
Speaker 2: an expense.
Speaker 1: But with an app like this, it makes it a
Speaker 1: lot easier to keep track of this stuff and come
Speaker 1: tax time, you know, it's much easier to just kind
Speaker 1: of hand this stuff over to an accountant or at
Speaker 1: least have base to help do this stuff yourself. So
Speaker 1: again it's called keeper tax dot com.
Speaker 2: That's the website, it's an app.
Speaker 1: It's ten dollars a month, which, by the way, I
Speaker 1: think is well worth it because this stuff does not
Speaker 1: come cheap. If you want to keep track of your
Speaker 1: taxes and all that stuff. I mean, you're talking one
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty dollars a year to keep track of
Speaker 1: all of your business expenses.
Speaker 2: That's a pretty good deal.
Speaker 1: And the money it's gonna save you on the back
Speaker 1: end when it comes to headaches and all that stuff
Speaker 1: with your taxes probably a lot better. Finally, of note,
Speaker 1: HP is recalling seventy eight five hundred laptop batteries that
Speaker 1: can pose fire and burn hazards. So I'll let you
Speaker 1: go to the website to kind of see it's HP
Speaker 1: dot com Slash Go Slash Battery Program twenty eighteen. So
Speaker 1: this was something that they originally announced last year, but
Speaker 1: they have continued to kind of I guess get the
Speaker 1: word out about this recall. Maybe more batteries are recalled
Speaker 1: at this point, but again, it's laptops that were sold
Speaker 1: between twenty fifteen and twenty eighteen, HP ProBooks, HP Pavilion
Speaker 1: and HP eleven Notebook PCs and HP X three sixty,
Speaker 1: So again, couple of notable models of HP laptops. You
Speaker 1: can download software from HP's website in thirty seconds. It
Speaker 1: will tell you if your laptop is one of those affected.
Speaker 1: If you have an HP that you think you bought
Speaker 1: between twenty fifteen and twenty eighteen, it's probably worth it
Speaker 1: to just check it out and see if you can
Speaker 1: get a battery replacement. That's gonna do it for this
Speaker 1: week's show. Thanks so much for listening to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I do appreciate it, and let me know on social
Speaker 1: media what you think of the podcast.
Speaker 2: The best thing you can do is share this with
Speaker 2: your friends.
Speaker 1: I sincerely hope that you learn something every week and
Speaker 1: there's some sort of takeaway. I promise I will get
Speaker 1: the calls back on the show very soon.
Speaker 2: I do love taking the calls.
Speaker 1: That's the best part of my job is really helping
Speaker 1: folks out with their technology, because I'm following this stuff
Speaker 1: on a daily basis, So the least I can do
Speaker 1: is help you out. Ninety Nine percent of the emails
Speaker 1: I get are very simple to answer.
Speaker 2: It's just stuff that you know. I've got the basis.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm comparing different apps, I'm comparing different products
Speaker 1: and services. I've played around with ninety nine percent of
Speaker 1: this stuff. And so again, when you're asking me, hey, Rich,
Speaker 1: do I really need the iPhone ten S Max? Or
Speaker 1: will I be just fine with the ten R? I
Speaker 1: usually just send you back a couple of questions like, hey, well,
Speaker 1: what's most important to you?
Speaker 2: Is it? You know? Size? Is it pictures?
Speaker 1: Is it?
Speaker 2: Screen quality? And I can answer these things.
Speaker 1: It's the stuff that would take you, guys a lot
Speaker 1: of time to research, but I'm happy to do it
Speaker 1: for you. So again, the best thing you can do
Speaker 1: for me is to buy a copy of my book
Speaker 1: one hundred and one Handy Tech Tips for the iPhone.
Speaker 1: It's available on Amazon. It's got four and a half
Speaker 1: stars for ratings. A lot of people very happy with
Speaker 1: that book.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: If you've already purchased a copy I do appreciate it,
Speaker 1: or just spread the word on this podcast. So tell people, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm listening to this rich on Tech podcast. You should
Speaker 1: download it. It's for the average person. It doesn't get
Speaker 1: too mumbo jumbo techie, but it's stuff that's kind of
Speaker 1: interesting and hopefully you pick up a thing or two
Speaker 1: from every show. You kind of you know, stored way
Speaker 1: for the future and it helps you out in some
Speaker 1: way whenever, whenever you need it. But again, following me
Speaker 1: on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, all those good places I am
Speaker 1: at rich on Tech. You can also watch me on KTLA.
Speaker 1: I'm on the mornings five am, seven am, nine am hours.
Speaker 1: And thanks so much for all your likes and retweets
Speaker 1: and all the comments you leave me on Instagram. I'm
Speaker 1: trying to reply to all those dms. I know it's tough,
Speaker 1: all right. If you on links to anything I'll talk
Speaker 1: about here, go to my website rich on Tech dot tv.
Speaker 1: I have not been posting the links in the show
Speaker 1: notes because I feel like, if you're like me, I
Speaker 1: listen to a lot of podcasts. If I hear something interesting,
Speaker 1: I just go on Google. So if it's an HP recall,
Speaker 1: I just Google HP recall. I usually find the information.
Speaker 1: If it's something that's really obscure and you can't find
Speaker 1: anywhere else, I will post it in the show links.
Speaker 1: Other than that, let me know if that's working out
Speaker 1: for you or if it's not.
Speaker 2: I'm happy to hear your feedback.
Speaker 1: I'm rich tamiro Rich on tech dot TV. I'll talk
Speaker 1: to you real soon