Speaker 1: The one thing hackers want you to know about Bluetooth
Speaker 1: on the iPhone, When Disney will crack down on password sharing,
Speaker 1: and which music service is raising prices? Why you should
Speaker 1: clean your smartphone band, your smart watch band, I should say,
Speaker 1: and your tech questions answered? What's going on? I'm Rich
Speaker 1: Dimiro and this is Rich on Tech. You know the
Speaker 1: show is live because I make mistakes like a real human.
Speaker 2: No AI here.
Speaker 1: This is the show where I talk about the tech
Speaker 1: stuff I think you should know about. It's also the
Speaker 1: place where I answer your questions about technology.
Speaker 2: I believe that tech should.
Speaker 1: Be interesting, useful and fun. And guess what phone lines
Speaker 1: are now open so you can hop on and join in.
Speaker 1: It's triple eight Rich one oh one. That's eight eight
Speaker 1: eight seven four to two four one zero one. Give
Speaker 1: me a call if you have a question about technology.
Speaker 1: Email is also an option. Just go to rich on
Speaker 1: tech dot tv and hit contact. Saw the teenage Mutant
Speaker 1: Ninja Turtles movie last night, Mutant Mayhem, and the movie
Speaker 1: was fine. It was definitely a unique form of animation.
Speaker 1: Kids liked it. It was you know, brought back some
Speaker 1: memories from being a kid and all that eighties nostalgia.
Speaker 1: But what I really liked about the movie was the soundtrack.
Speaker 1: You could tell they really had some thought into the
Speaker 1: cool songs that they chose for that soundtrack. And so
Speaker 1: it's not very often that I watch a movie and
Speaker 1: then go ahead and download the soundtrack and listen to it.
Speaker 1: It's just very very cool. So we've got some great
Speaker 1: guests coming on this week. We're gonna talk about robocalls
Speaker 1: and spam calls. We've got a guest from True Caller,
Speaker 1: the app that can help you block some of that stuff.
Speaker 1: Then we've got Desmond Wheatley, President and CEO of Beam Global.
Speaker 1: I checked out their sustainable ev charging that fits into
Speaker 1: a standard parking spot. It's solar, it has a battery,
Speaker 1: and it charges cars. That's very cool. And later on
Speaker 1: in the show, Ben Showon is going to join us.
Speaker 1: He is from nine to five Google. He is going
Speaker 1: to have his review of the ADT self set up
Speaker 1: security system. Now, if you are following the news in
Speaker 1: any way, shape or form, you know that southern California
Speaker 1: is just going to be hit with some sort of
Speaker 1: tropical storm or hurricane. We're not really sure, but let
Speaker 1: me tell you how this all started I okay, it's
Speaker 1: just the wildest story. I am sitting at my house
Speaker 1: on I don't know what it was Wednesday night, Tuesday night,
Speaker 1: whatever it was earlier this week, and I'm testing out
Speaker 1: this new weather app. It's called Tomorrow Weather by Tomorrow,
Speaker 1: and I highly recommend you download it. It's tomorrow dot Io.
Speaker 1: Tomorrow dot Io is the app. And so someone told
Speaker 1: me about this app a couple of weeks ago. I've
Speaker 1: had it on my phone and so I was just
Speaker 1: kind of browsing the app because I really have grown
Speaker 1: to like the way this app presents things. And one
Speaker 1: of the cool features about this app is it has
Speaker 1: what's called a storm tracker, and you can tap this
Speaker 1: button on the app and next thing you know, it
Speaker 1: will show you where all the storms are. And actually,
Speaker 1: now I remember why I was doing this. I was
Speaker 1: looking at this app for my mom because she was
Speaker 1: flying out, and so I was kind of tracking the
Speaker 1: storm on the East coast and I tapped this storm
Speaker 1: tracker button and all of a sudden, I see this
Speaker 1: giant storm off the coast of not California, yet it
Speaker 1: was all the way down below, kind of near the
Speaker 1: tip of Mexico, Cabo and I'm like, wait a second,
Speaker 1: and it's showing the trajectory right towards southern California. And
Speaker 1: I said, well, this app isn't very good.
Speaker 2: This is a mistake.
Speaker 1: There's no storm barreling towards southern California. And sure enough,
Speaker 1: I go to a KTLA website and one minute before
Speaker 1: they had posted Hurricane Hillary or tropical storm headed towards
Speaker 1: southern California. And I said, wait, what when does this
Speaker 1: ever happen? And sure enough this app was right. And
Speaker 1: so now I'm really a fan of this app. So
Speaker 1: what's neat about this app is that it can do
Speaker 1: all kinds of weather predictions. It can track the storm,
Speaker 1: it can show you the trajectory. It just does it
Speaker 1: in a really nice way. I'm sure other apps do
Speaker 1: similar things, but I'm always on the lookout for a
Speaker 1: weather app that does stuff really nice and really neat. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I tell you all this not to get you to
Speaker 1: download that app, but to really kind of we don't
Speaker 1: know what's going to happen with this storm, but you
Speaker 1: have to be prepared, and with today's smartphones and everything,
Speaker 1: there are some ways you can prepare yourself. So I'm
Speaker 1: going to go through some of the things that I
Speaker 1: have researched to help you prepare. Number one, you gotta
Speaker 1: make sure your phone is charged in situations like this,
Speaker 1: don't go to sleep with your phone on five, ten,
Speaker 1: twenty percent, even halfway, just don't do it. The second
Speaker 1: thing you need to do charge up those portable batteries.
Speaker 1: So if you have a portable battery, charge it up.
Speaker 1: Make sure you know where those things are. Make sure
Speaker 1: that the flashlight is charged and ready to go, and
Speaker 1: you've got fresh batteries in there.
Speaker 2: Make sure you know where this stuff is.
Speaker 1: If you have one of those like portable like those
Speaker 1: giant battery packs like Jackerie is a company that makes
Speaker 1: them portable power, make sure you charge those up as well.
Speaker 1: And of course find your radio if you have a
Speaker 1: portable radio. Those are really good in situations like this. Now,
Speaker 1: there's an app that I tested which I thought would
Speaker 1: sound really cool. It's called Bridge Fi, and this is
Speaker 1: bri dg E f Y And this app is supposedly
Speaker 1: supposed to be good in a disaster situation because it
Speaker 1: uses Bluetooth on your phone and a phone nearby to
Speaker 1: let you chat with friends even when there's no Internet,
Speaker 1: so it works from a distance about three hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty feet this is a football field, and if you
Speaker 1: need to text someone that's further than that, it kind
Speaker 1: of hops your message among other users in the area.
Speaker 1: So the idea is that if everyone has this app
Speaker 1: on their phone, all their Bluetooth is working, it's creating
Speaker 1: a local network. The problem is I was not able
Speaker 1: to get this app to work. So you may be
Speaker 1: reading over the weekend a whole bunch of these emergency apps,
Speaker 1: and this is probably going to be mentioned over and over.
Speaker 1: I could not get it to work. But what's really
Speaker 1: neat about this app that if it worked, it would be.
Speaker 2: Really really useful.
Speaker 1: So I got my name to show up on different
Speaker 1: phones in my house, but I can never get the
Speaker 1: messages to carry through. But there's also a public group chat,
Speaker 1: which theoretically anyone in your neighborhood that has this app
Speaker 1: could hop on and chat. That would be really useful
Speaker 1: if the internet went out or if the power went out.
Speaker 1: But quite frankly, I could not get this to work.
Speaker 1: So you can download it, you can try it see
Speaker 1: if it works with your loved ones in your house.
Speaker 1: But for me personally, I could not get it to work.
Speaker 1: Maybe it was a setting on my phone. I don't know.
Speaker 1: The other app that a lot of people like is
Speaker 1: called Zelo Zello. This is an app that turns your
Speaker 1: phone into a walkie talkie. It's nothing new, it's been
Speaker 1: around for a long time. People really like it. It's
Speaker 1: available on iOS and Android. The problem with that is
Speaker 1: that it does need internet service, so if your mobile
Speaker 1: internet or your WiFi went down, that app would not
Speaker 1: be much help. But people do like it because it
Speaker 1: pretty much turns your phone into a walkie talkie. The
Speaker 1: FEMA app FEMA. This is from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Speaker 1: This is an app that provides you with all kinds
Speaker 1: of disaster resources. It's available for Apple and Android devices.
Speaker 1: You can get weather alerts in real time from the
Speaker 1: National Weather Service for up to five locations. You can
Speaker 1: learn about nearby shelters if you have to evacuate, and
Speaker 1: it also has a bunch of safety tips, disaster assistants,
Speaker 1: and preparedness reminders, so that's a good app as well.
Speaker 1: The FEMA app now red Cross also has an app
Speaker 1: called the First Aid App, and this puts expert advice
Speaker 1: for common emergencies on your phone, so you can kind
Speaker 1: of learn about this stuff before you actually need to
Speaker 1: use it. And it's really wild, Like I'm not trained
Speaker 1: in anything like CPR or things like that, but my
Speaker 1: wife is. And it's really reassuring to have someone around
Speaker 1: that kind of knows what they're doing in an emergency situation.
Speaker 1: So the more you can prepare that way, the better. Now,
Speaker 1: when it comes to location sharing, Life three sixty is
Speaker 1: a good app if you want to share location with
Speaker 1: friends and family that is cross platform.
Speaker 2: It works really well. If you're just.
Speaker 1: On iOS, you can use find my to see where
Speaker 1: friends and family are that are linked up with you,
Speaker 1: you know that are all on your Apple ID or
Speaker 1: people who have agreed to share their.
Speaker 2: Location with you.
Speaker 1: Now on Android, there's a little feature that's actually quite useful.
Speaker 1: This is on Google Maps. If you locate yourself, you'll
Speaker 1: see a blue circle on the map. If you tap
Speaker 1: that circle up will pop up a message that says
Speaker 1: share location. You can share your location with anyone for
Speaker 1: a predetermined amount of time. You can say share my
Speaker 1: location for an hour, or share my location until I
Speaker 1: turn this feature off. That's a really handy feature and
Speaker 1: it does work cross platforms, so that's very very nice to.
Speaker 2: Know out now.
Speaker 1: When it comes to SOS, this is there's a bunch
Speaker 1: of built in emergency features on the iPhone and Android.
Speaker 1: You should familiarize yourself with this. On the iPhone, if
Speaker 1: you press and hold the power button and the volume
Speaker 1: up button for a couple of seconds, you will see
Speaker 1: emergency call. So that way you can immediately activate the
Speaker 1: SOS feature on the iPhone. You can also turn on
Speaker 1: the option in settings to just press the side button
Speaker 1: five times, and so if you're just like in a
Speaker 1: hurry you don't really know how to dial nine one one,
Speaker 1: or if you're in a different country. This will work
Speaker 1: in any country because the iPhone kind of knows where
Speaker 1: you are and it will immediately dial emergency services. And
Speaker 1: you can set it to have a countdown time or
Speaker 1: you can just do it immediately. Again, you have to
Speaker 1: turn that on in settings, so definitely check that out
Speaker 1: now if you have a new iPhone, iPhone fourteen and
Speaker 1: fourteen pro and this saved a lot of lives over
Speaker 1: in Hawaii. Apparently, Emergency SOS via satellite this is a
Speaker 1: new feature, so this routes your emergency texts over a
Speaker 1: satellite see you have to have a clear view of
Speaker 1: the sky, and this is something that's a little bit
Speaker 1: tricky to do, so I would recommend if you have
Speaker 1: an iPhone fourteen or fourteen Pro, go into the settings,
Speaker 1: go into Settings SOS and scroll all the way down
Speaker 1: and if you see Emergency SOS via Satellite, you can
Speaker 1: try a demo of that feature. You can also share
Speaker 1: your location over satellite in the Find My app if
Speaker 1: you open the app and tap me, you can see that.
Speaker 1: Now on Android they have similar features, not the satellite
Speaker 1: just yet, but go ahead on Android and set up
Speaker 1: your emergency contacts in your settings, go to Settings Safety
Speaker 1: and Emergency and then of course they also have a
Speaker 1: similar Press the side button five times to activate. You
Speaker 1: go into Settings Safety and Emergency Emergency SOS and there's
Speaker 1: also a feature called Emergency Sharing. This will send your
Speaker 1: current location and a request for help to your emergency contacts.
Speaker 1: You can include a f in five seconds of audio.
Speaker 1: I tested this last weekend. I sent an emergency picture
Speaker 1: and audio to my mother in law by accident. She
Speaker 1: was very surprised. Thankfully the picture was of my legs
Speaker 1: and I had pants on, because that would have been
Speaker 1: really really emergent. Really that would have been a new emergency.
Speaker 1: And finally, on iPhone and Android, you might have gotten
Speaker 1: a wireless emergency alert in the past and you might
Speaker 1: have said I don't want these alerts on, and you
Speaker 1: might have turned them off in your haste. I would
Speaker 1: say it's probably a good time to turn them back on.
Speaker 1: Go into iPhone Settings and then Notifications and scroll all
Speaker 1: the way down past your list of apps. You'll see
Speaker 1: government alerts and you can turn on emergency alerts and
Speaker 1: public safety alerts. Android very similar. Go into Settings Safety
Speaker 1: and Emergency, wireless emergency alerts and you can turn those
Speaker 1: on again. If you're on Android, go into Settings Safety
Speaker 1: and Emergency. That is your friend today to check out
Speaker 1: all of the different safety features on iPhone notifications and
Speaker 1: also inside the SOS features SOS and Emergency that's where
Speaker 1: you're going to find all of those features as well.
Speaker 1: Emergency SOS is the actual label. All right, I know
Speaker 1: he gave you a lot. I put it all on
Speaker 1: my website rich on tech dot TV. Just hit the
Speaker 1: banner at the top and you can see links to
Speaker 1: everything that I mentioned in today's show. All right, coming
Speaker 1: up your calls at Triple eight. Rich One oh one
Speaker 1: eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one
Speaker 1: zero one. Give me a call if you have a
Speaker 1: question about technology. My name is rich DeMuro and you
Speaker 1: are listening to Rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich
Speaker 1: on Tech. Rich DeMuro here talking technology with you. I
Speaker 1: know I went through a lot in the first segment
Speaker 1: when it comes to emergency preparedness. And I'm not one
Speaker 1: of these people that you know. I'm not trying to
Speaker 1: say doom and gloom is happening, but you have to
Speaker 1: be prepared. And it's better to be informed about this
Speaker 1: and have nothing happen then to be scrambling if something
Speaker 1: does happen. We don't know what the extent of this
Speaker 1: storm is going to be, but it is always, always,
Speaker 1: always best to be prepared. And I'm getting a lot
Speaker 1: of questions from my kids because they're hearing a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff, they're seeing a lot of stuff. I'm sure
Speaker 1: you are too, So it's always best to just be
Speaker 1: in the driver's seat when it comes to all of
Speaker 1: this stuff. By the way, charge electric cars too and
Speaker 1: gas up. Those are two things I covered hurricanes back
Speaker 1: in my early days of my career, and I will
Speaker 1: never forget.
Speaker 2: We were in what was would turn out to be Katrina.
Speaker 1: And we were in Mobile, Alabama, I believe when it hit,
Speaker 1: and it was or where we Pensacola, I can't remember.
Speaker 1: We were somewhere in the south and we were in place.
Speaker 1: And the toughest thing in the morning was when this
Speaker 1: storm was just beginning to hit, was trying to find gas.
Speaker 1: We must have driven for an hour to find gas.
Speaker 1: And so that is another thing that's always smart to
Speaker 1: gas up. I never, at this point in my life life,
Speaker 1: I never go to sleep without less, you know, less
Speaker 1: than like a quarter tank or something. But I you know,
Speaker 1: in emergency situations, always always always have a full tank.
Speaker 1: All right, let's go to Dennis. Dennis is in Corona, California. Dennis,
Speaker 1: you're on with Rich, very rich.
Speaker 3: So I have a I have two daughters, nine and eleven,
Speaker 3: and it seems like all their schoolmates have phones and
Speaker 3: they're not clamshells. They're all smartphones. I'd like to get
Speaker 3: your opinion on how to desk to monitor. I have
Speaker 3: two old old iPhone sevens that I was thinking about
Speaker 3: getting on and giving those to them, but you know,
Speaker 3: I don't want to have to ask for their phone
Speaker 3: and figure out something after the fact. You know, I'd
Speaker 3: like to be able to monitor their social media, their
Speaker 3: texts and just make sure there's nothing you know, with
Speaker 3: that independence comes some vulnerability. Yeah, so I just want
Speaker 3: to get your your opinion on I mean, I guess
Speaker 3: I might have to go through each of their social
Speaker 3: media apps and try to put rental controls on all
Speaker 3: of it. But I don't know if there's one encompassing
Speaker 3: app that sort of helps facilitate that.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, first off, good luck, because this is not easy,
Speaker 1: and I have two kids, and you know, I've got
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of precautions in place, and let me
Speaker 1: tell you, it's a headache. But it's also good at
Speaker 1: the same time, and it's also very, very complicated. Just today,
Speaker 1: my kids were complaining because they couldn't use Facebook Messenger
Speaker 1: to chat with their friends because I had it blocked
Speaker 1: at the network level, because you know, just because why
Speaker 1: do they need that? But now they're getting to the
Speaker 1: age where they want it. So a couple of things
Speaker 1: to look at. Number one, start with the screen time
Speaker 1: parental controls inside the iPhone. They're kind of complicated, but
Speaker 1: you can do a lot from there in limiting what
Speaker 1: they can do at the network level. You may want
Speaker 1: to look into a router that allows you to do
Speaker 1: things like block adult websites or block any sites. I've
Speaker 1: an EO and I can go through and block pretty
Speaker 1: much any popular website at the network level, which is
Speaker 1: really handy.
Speaker 2: And then if you want something that's.
Speaker 1: More full serviced, I would check out two services. The
Speaker 1: first is Bark b A RK. These are parntal controls
Speaker 1: that do all the things that you were talking about,
Speaker 1: monitor social media, texting, but you have to understand that
Speaker 1: some of those things are limited based on the iOS
Speaker 1: operating system. And the other one is AURA au Area,
Speaker 1: So I would check those things out. Those are the
Speaker 1: main platforms that I would look at, and I think
Speaker 1: using a combination of those things is going.
Speaker 2: To help you.
Speaker 1: The router that I like that has Bark built in
Speaker 1: is Villo Vilo, so you can check that out. They
Speaker 1: have a partnership with Bark and so you can get everything.
Speaker 2: Kind of all in one.
Speaker 1: But Dennis, no easy solution to this, but definitely I'm
Speaker 1: glad as a parent that you are looking into this
Speaker 1: and you are being proactive.
Speaker 2: Good luck with that, all.
Speaker 1: Right, coming up, we're going to talk about robo calls,
Speaker 1: why do we get them, and how to stop them
Speaker 1: right here on rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich
Speaker 1: On Tech. Rich DeMuro here talking technology with you at
Speaker 1: triple eight Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight
Speaker 1: seven four to two four one zero one. We've all
Speaker 1: had that phone call, the spam call, the scam call.
Speaker 2: The robo call.
Speaker 1: They are annoying and True Caller is one of the
Speaker 1: apps that is trying to battle these calls. On the
Speaker 1: line is Clayton Leah Bratton of True Caller. Thanks so
Speaker 1: much for joining me today, be.
Speaker 5: Rich, thanks for having me soho really great to be here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's talk about robo calls in general, because I
Speaker 1: don't understand in twenty twenty three why we're still getting them.
Speaker 2: Can you explain?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think the reason why we're getting them that is,
Speaker 6: as long as humans have had money, somebody else has
Speaker 6: wanted to take it from them. And the people who
Speaker 6: are perpetrating these fraudulent schemes are both astute technologists, so
Speaker 6: they know how to get through the systems, and they
Speaker 6: are very accomplished psychologists and social engineers, and so it's
Speaker 6: just a numbers game, right If they're able to get
Speaker 6: through to vulnerable people, and we think that we're not vulnerable,
Speaker 6: but at any given moment, you could be. And they're
Speaker 6: getting more sophisticated than their scams. So this is two
Speaker 6: thousand and nine. True Caller has now grown to over
Speaker 6: three hundred and fifty million monthly active users globally in
Speaker 6: forty two countries. This is a global problem, right, It's
Speaker 6: an international problem. So we're going to do something about it.
Speaker 1: So you mentioned that they're trying to you know, scam
Speaker 1: us or get money. I mean, is that really always
Speaker 1: what it comes down to, where they're trying to sell,
Speaker 1: like even like a sales pitch.
Speaker 2: Is that like a scam usually?
Speaker 6: Well, I think it's important for people to remember there
Speaker 6: are legitimate global calls, right. It could be a pharmacy,
Speaker 6: it could be traveling hospitality, and they use machines to
Speaker 6: dial masses of people for notifications. School systems aren't known
Speaker 6: for that. That's technically a robo call.
Speaker 5: But when they are.
Speaker 6: Used for nefarious purposes, they're not always outright fraud, like
Speaker 6: giving your credit card or send me an Apple gift
Speaker 6: card or something like that. Sometimes they're just collecting your
Speaker 6: personal information. So it could be a senior citizen, a
Speaker 6: medicare fraud scam, and all they really want to do
Speaker 6: is to get more detailed personal information they can leverage
Speaker 6: for identity theft in the future. So it's not always
Speaker 6: a clear cut of just asking for money, it's gathering
Speaker 6: more information.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: So the number one question I always get when it
Speaker 1: comes to robo calls and scam calls is how did
Speaker 1: they get my phone number?
Speaker 2: Where are they getting this from?
Speaker 6: Interestingly enough, right, there's they multi source this from anywhere
Speaker 6: you've ever put in So you've seen the data breaches
Speaker 6: that large communications and enterprises have had, large retailers have had, Right,
Speaker 6: maybe you put your phone number into a point of
Speaker 6: sale system for a loyalty club, some retailer, or what
Speaker 6: we really see now is that people have been trading
Speaker 6: their privacy for the convenience of social media, and they
Speaker 6: put so much information about themselves out in social media
Speaker 6: that it doesn't take a lot of mining to get
Speaker 6: very precise information. If you've given me somebody's phone for
Speaker 6: three days, I'll tell you more about them than the
Speaker 6: FBI or the NSA. Really, I mean, we put so
Speaker 6: much information out there about ourselves, and then we wonder
Speaker 6: why we're vulnerable.
Speaker 1: So, how do they make the phone number look like
Speaker 1: it's coming from either a number near me or my number?
Speaker 2: What does that? Why do they do that just to
Speaker 2: make me answer?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 7: So what?
Speaker 6: That's called neighbor spoofing, and it's just human nature to say, oh,
Speaker 6: that looks like it's from my area code.
Speaker 5: It's a much higher probability that that's someone.
Speaker 6: That might know me or that I might have a
Speaker 6: relationship with, might do business with, and that neighbor spoofing
Speaker 6: has proven very effective. Now I do have to credit
Speaker 6: the Federal Communications Commission and carriers for implementing something called stirshaken,
Speaker 6: which is basically a handshake protocol to say this is
Speaker 6: a very number, it does belong to this carrier, and
Speaker 6: that has greatly reduced at least the spoofing, if not
Speaker 6: the robo call volumes, because.
Speaker 8: There's other methods.
Speaker 6: And the reason you can do that is because as
Speaker 6: soon as we went to a voice over internet protocol
Speaker 6: or internet or internet phone right then you're not necessarily
Speaker 6: just some analog service over copper lines. You can put
Speaker 6: anything you want in the front of that message and
Speaker 6: the header message to say anything you want. And so again,
Speaker 6: enforcement is in. Policy are working to a certain extent,
Speaker 6: but you've got to be vigilant and you've got to
Speaker 6: have really that last line. It depends, like true caller,
Speaker 6: for the bad guys that get through.
Speaker 1: Okay, before we get to some of the things that
Speaker 1: true caller does, I want to know, do you have
Speaker 1: any general tips on how to like, do we just
Speaker 1: stop sharing our phone number?
Speaker 2: I mean that's kind of impossible.
Speaker 1: It's like the phone number is everything now, like every
Speaker 1: service wants us to log in with our number.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it really is your identifier. And I think that
Speaker 6: there's a difference between being paranoid and vigilant, right. I
Speaker 6: think that there's obvious cases where maybe you know, you
Speaker 6: might want to quesquestion. I wouldn't treat it quite as
Speaker 6: closely as they do my social Security number, but I
Speaker 6: would be selective about it, right. And of course, if
Speaker 6: it's an unknown call, it's easy to say, well, just
Speaker 6: don't answer unknown calls. But there's a lot of people
Speaker 6: out there and professionals who's livelihood depends on taking that
Speaker 6: next call. It might not be somebody in your contact,
Speaker 6: but it may be an opportunity and so what we
Speaker 6: want to try to do is to protect those folks
Speaker 6: if they could take the call, the calls.
Speaker 1: That matter, right, And that's the crutch of this whole thing,
Speaker 1: because Okay, so like my wife, she'll sit there and
Speaker 1: the phone will ring and it's a different number, and
Speaker 1: she'll be like, I'm not answering that. I said, wait
Speaker 1: a second, our kids are like at school or at
Speaker 1: their friend's house, Like we don't know whose number that is.
Speaker 1: Like my rule is like if my kids aren't with me,
Speaker 1: I always have to answer the number.
Speaker 5: Absolutely.
Speaker 6: If you you just describe, you know, called the soccer moment, Right,
Speaker 6: You've got all these play groups and teams and all
Speaker 6: the people that you know that aren't going to be
Speaker 6: in your contact right from the school and all the activities,
Speaker 6: and then you have somebody like you yourself, a journalist.
Speaker 6: You're getting blind calls all the time, callbacks all the time,
Speaker 6: and you can't afford not to answer the call. If
Speaker 6: you're a salesperson, if you're a realtor, right, your livelihood
Speaker 6: depends on communicating. And the robo callers and the scammers
Speaker 6: and the fronters have deprived us of that communication. So
Speaker 6: we've got to protect ourselves with smarter solutions.
Speaker 1: And so what do you make of the call filtering
Speaker 1: apps that the carriers put out versus what you put out?
Speaker 5: You know? So I think that the first of all,
Speaker 5: we are compatible with it.
Speaker 6: We are like, like I said, the last line of
Speaker 6: the fence or a layer, that last layer on top
Speaker 6: of those.
Speaker 5: So I think that they're okay, right. What they're trying
Speaker 5: to do is to maintain.
Speaker 6: A decent database of suspicious numbers and try to identify
Speaker 6: callers as they come in. And it's bundled into your plan,
Speaker 6: and it does a decent job, right. My concern is
Speaker 6: that sometimes they could be blocking calls you know, falls positive,
Speaker 6: or you could be blocking calls that they really should
Speaker 6: be getting through. I would be, you know, be mortified
Speaker 6: if my parents didn't get a medical call or a
Speaker 6: pharmacy call what they wanted. But overall, I think it's
Speaker 6: it's good, right, every every it's because it's a cat
Speaker 6: and mouse game and every under measure helps. What we
Speaker 6: do is, you know, with true caller is we've got
Speaker 6: this global database that's constantly updated and so we're looking
Speaker 6: at the patterns of billion and a half scam calls.
Speaker 6: Of data we see network right and making that available
Speaker 6: and machine learning and AI to make sure that that's available.
Speaker 6: So if something does slip through what you've already got,
Speaker 6: that we can catch it.
Speaker 1: Okay, So explain to me what True Caller does. And
Speaker 1: the reason why this whole thing came up is because
Speaker 1: I said on my previous show, I said, well, I
Speaker 1: was a little concerned with putting my phone number into
Speaker 1: True Caller because when you sign up, they want your
Speaker 1: phone number, and are they sharing that with spammers?
Speaker 2: Are they selling that?
Speaker 1: I mean, can you explain, you know, how this works
Speaker 1: and if that's actually happening, because I feel like that's
Speaker 1: a common thing I hear about.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think it is fairly common that there are
Speaker 6: apps out there who ask you to put your information
Speaker 6: in there and then they monetize that data.
Speaker 5: That absolutely does not happen a True Caller.
Speaker 6: I would say that the user and subscriber information is
Speaker 6: absolutely Sackri saying. The only reason it's there is that
Speaker 6: if you and I are both True Caller users, that
Speaker 6: we are verified with one another, we can communicate through
Speaker 6: the platform. There's a you can imagine there's many entities
Speaker 6: that would like to license this, you know, the largest
Speaker 6: caller idea and spam blocking data in the world. Absolutely not,
Speaker 6: and so the user data is off limits. But the
Speaker 6: patterns we see in the billions of calls that go
Speaker 6: across the network, just the numbers, right, Just if we
Speaker 6: see a number of block of numbers firing off hundreds
Speaker 6: of thousands of calls at last two seconds, I'm pretty
Speaker 6: sure that that's probably nefarious activity, right, right, right.
Speaker 1: And so this happens in real time, and just explain
Speaker 1: quickly how it works on your phone and does it
Speaker 1: work the same on Android and iOS?
Speaker 6: Oh, that's a really good question. Now it doesn't, and
Speaker 6: so you know, a true call. Ever since the birth
Speaker 6: of Android, we've been the most comprehensive communications management you know,
Speaker 6: spam blocking and caller idea application. And it's very feature
Speaker 6: rich because an Android, you can actually see the phone
Speaker 6: number coming in and then you can say you can
Speaker 6: quire the data, you can actually enrich that data as
Speaker 6: it comes in. On iOS, as you know, it's very
Speaker 6: locked down and so you can't do the same thing.
Speaker 5: So we spent a good bit.
Speaker 6: Of the last couple of years developing an iOS solution
Speaker 6: and it's quite clever.
Speaker 5: What we've done.
Speaker 6: We have the ability to take the most frequently called
Speaker 6: numbers and spammers in a twenty four hour period and
Speaker 6: push them right to the device, right, And so that's
Speaker 6: just a couple of millions, so we're able to and
Speaker 6: it's constantly being updated.
Speaker 5: With AI and mL.
Speaker 6: Then we've also created a series shortcut right so that
Speaker 6: you can call it live call D and you can
Speaker 6: literally as a phone call is coming in.
Speaker 5: And say hey, serious or true caller.
Speaker 6: And that goes against our entire database of like seven
Speaker 6: billion numbers, right, So that's that's yeah. And then we've
Speaker 6: developed we've developed some advanced features like call screening where
Speaker 6: we can actually interact and engage with with the caller
Speaker 6: in a turn on whether you're going to take that
Speaker 6: call or not. That not only helps you take those
Speaker 6: calls that matter, but it's also something that just stops
Speaker 6: to get dead guys dead in their tracks, but you
Speaker 6: don't take the bad best. And then we've got other
Speaker 6: features that will be coming up around the corner that'll
Speaker 6: just make it easier to manage all your communications. And
Speaker 6: I think one of the things it's also worth talking
Speaker 6: about is the amount of spam text because you've seen
Speaker 6: as there's been some enforcement action and robo calling. This
Speaker 6: easy to send a text. It's even easier and cheapercent text.
Speaker 6: So we developed something called smart SMS and massive Message
Speaker 6: categorization and that allows us to detect those as well.
Speaker 1: All Right, we may have to leave that for another
Speaker 1: conversation because I'm out of time here, but thank you
Speaker 1: so much, Clayton Leah Bratton of True Caller. Check out
Speaker 1: the app. I'll put a link on the website Rich
Speaker 1: on tech dot TV. They do have a free level
Speaker 1: and then also some premium levels that do add some
Speaker 1: interesting features, including call recording and some other things.
Speaker 2: Clayton, thanks so much for joining me today.
Speaker 5: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 7: Rich.
Speaker 1: All right, more of your questions coming up next to
Speaker 1: triple eight Rich one O one. That's eight eight eight
Speaker 1: seven four to two four one zero one. Carmen is
Speaker 1: in Hollywood, California. Carmen, you're on with Rich.
Speaker 7: Thank you morning, Good morning.
Speaker 4: Question two questions thes prover up that might have to
Speaker 4: need internet whenever I need it, if I need it?
Speaker 2: Good question.
Speaker 1: So it depends on the emergency SOS you're using. So
Speaker 1: with the iPhone, if you're using the standard dialing nine
Speaker 1: one one. You actually all you need is access to
Speaker 1: any cellular service. So if you are on the latest
Speaker 1: software on the iPhone, if you ever notice at the
Speaker 1: top it says SOS when you don't have a signal,
Speaker 1: what that means is that your phone can tap into
Speaker 1: any of the three major wireless carriers to send out
Speaker 1: a nine one one emergency call. So let me repeat this,
Speaker 1: because in the US, the law says that phones have
Speaker 1: to be able to dial nine one one on any
Speaker 1: carrier's network. So let's say you have AT and T,
Speaker 1: you're in an area that has no AT and T
Speaker 1: service and you need to dial nine one one. Your
Speaker 1: phone is able to dial nine one one on Verizon
Speaker 1: or T Mobile. You don't know that's happening. It's just
Speaker 1: happening in the background. Now in other countries, they actually
Speaker 1: some of them don't allow that. And by the way,
Speaker 1: this even works on an unactivated phone. So if you
Speaker 1: had a phone in a drawer in your home and
Speaker 1: you powered it on and there is no active cellular
Speaker 1: plan on that phone, it would still be able to
Speaker 1: dial nine one one here in the US. Now, in
Speaker 1: different countries the rules are different. For instance, in Japan,
Speaker 1: I was told that they actually don't allow this sort
Speaker 1: of thing to happen, So you really need to check
Speaker 1: if you're going to a different country about dialing nine
Speaker 1: one one or their appropriate emergency service and making sure
Speaker 1: you have an active line that.
Speaker 2: Will go through as well texting.
Speaker 1: You can also text nine one one in a lot
Speaker 1: of places, so know about that. And then there is
Speaker 1: this new emergency it's called Emergency over SOS. Sorry, let
Speaker 1: me get the exact name. It's called Emergency SOS via
Speaker 1: Satellite and this is only on the iPhone fourteen and
Speaker 1: iPhone fourteen Pro models, and this is when you are
Speaker 1: outside of cellular and Wi Fi coverage, you will still
Speaker 1: be able to dial.
Speaker 2: It's not necessarily nine one.
Speaker 1: It is emergency services, but it's actually staffed by some
Speaker 1: folks that Apple has created and hired and set up,
Speaker 1: and so will they will receive. It's not a phone call,
Speaker 1: it's actually a text and that will work anywhere you
Speaker 1: have a clear view of the sky. And this is
Speaker 1: on the iPhone fourteen and fourteen Pro and so you
Speaker 1: can actually check this out inside the settings if you
Speaker 1: open up the settings app on your iphe phone, tap
Speaker 1: Emergency SOS and then if you look all the way
Speaker 1: down it says emergency SOS via satellite only if you
Speaker 1: have it, So if you have it, you can try
Speaker 1: a demo of it before you actually need it. And
Speaker 1: this will work in the United States, and you can
Speaker 1: go on the website to see exactly where this has coverage.
Speaker 1: But it's basically the entire US and in Canada and
Speaker 1: in other countries as well, So great question.
Speaker 2: It may not one caveat here.
Speaker 1: It says it may not work in places above sixty
Speaker 1: two degrees latitude, such as northern parts of Canada and Alaska.
Speaker 1: So hopefully you don't find yourself in a place where
Speaker 1: this doesn't work. But that's kind of like a fail
Speaker 1: safe place that does not require an Internet connection.
Speaker 2: Carmen, thanks for the question. Appreciate that.
Speaker 1: Let's go to Ted in South Dakota. Ted, you're on
Speaker 1: with Rich.
Speaker 4: Okay, I'm looking for UPS that can handle extreme temperatures hot,
Speaker 4: both hot and cold.
Speaker 1: So you want a UPS that actually works in different
Speaker 1: various conditions. So I'll tell you the way that I
Speaker 1: research products so that you can do the same. So
Speaker 1: I don't have a UPS, so I've never actually purchased
Speaker 1: one of these but this is an uninterruptible power supply,
Speaker 1: and this is basically a giant battery that you can
Speaker 1: connect to your electronics. So it has a connection for
Speaker 1: various gadgets that you can plug into this thing. And
Speaker 1: the idea is if the power goes out, this will
Speaker 1: still work. And a lot of the times that this
Speaker 1: will work for you know, maybe something like four hours.
Speaker 1: And so this, you know, you can plug in your
Speaker 1: main electronics, whether it's your modem, your router, your computer,
Speaker 1: a couple of things like that that you don't want
Speaker 1: to go down in the case of an emergency. And
Speaker 1: if you've ever worked at an office, you might have
Speaker 1: seen one of these things under or your desk or something.
Speaker 1: A lot of times they will have this, but this
Speaker 1: is for home. So the two sites that I would
Speaker 1: check out, actually I would check out three different websites
Speaker 1: and I kind of look at what they recommend and
Speaker 1: then also what Amazon is recommending as well. So the
Speaker 1: first website I go to is Wirecutter and their pick
Speaker 1: is won by cyber Power, and the second pick is
Speaker 1: by a company named APC, which you've probably heard of,
Speaker 1: And so both of these are about the cyber Power
Speaker 1: is actually pretty reasonable. It's one hundred and thirty nine dollars.
Speaker 1: The APC is about two hundred and seventy five dollars.
Speaker 1: Now you're gonna have to check to see what the
Speaker 1: temperature rating is on these things, because they may or
Speaker 1: may not work, you know, depending on the temperature that
Speaker 1: you need.
Speaker 2: There's a range for these.
Speaker 1: Now, if I go over to best Reviews dot com,
Speaker 1: which is owned by Nexstar, the company I work for
Speaker 1: on TV, they recommend APC as well and also CyberPower.
Speaker 1: So now this is telling me that APC and CyberPower
Speaker 1: are the two that I want, and they say the
Speaker 1: best of the best is the APC. And then they
Speaker 1: also have the CyberPower listed as a one that they
Speaker 1: like as well. And then if I go to Amazon
Speaker 1: and I search for a ups backup, the best seller
Speaker 1: is an APC model, but it's only sixty bucks. So
Speaker 1: if you want something that's really a little bit higher end,
Speaker 1: their popular brand pick is the cyber Power. And so
Speaker 1: again all roads are leading to the same two companies,
Speaker 1: CyberPower and APC. So that's where I would I would
Speaker 1: focus my efforts and research and to kind of narrow
Speaker 1: down to see which one of these is going to
Speaker 1: work with what I need. So that's the way I
Speaker 1: would do it. Ted in South Dakota. Thanks for the question,
Speaker 1: appreciate it.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: I talk about the website rich on tech dot tv.
Speaker 1: That is where you can go to get more information
Speaker 1: on anything I mentioned here. So if you go there,
Speaker 1: you can not only see the things that I mentioned
Speaker 1: on the show. At the top of the screen, it
Speaker 1: will say looking for something I mentioned on the radio,
Speaker 1: so you can tap that and in real time it
Speaker 1: is updated with the different things that people ask and
Speaker 1: the links that I put in to everything that I
Speaker 1: mentioned there. So rich on tech dot tv while you're there,
Speaker 1: if you want to subscribe to the podcast version of this,
Speaker 1: you can do that as well. You can listen later,
Speaker 1: and you can follow me on social media. I am
Speaker 1: at rich on tech on all the major social media networks.
Speaker 2: All right, coming up.
Speaker 1: On the next hour, I'm going to tell you about
Speaker 1: the one thing that hackers wants you to know about,
Speaker 1: how Bluetooth works on your iPhone. You're listening to rich
Speaker 1: on tech, all right, let's talk about the iPhone. And
Speaker 1: there's this big hacker conference called Defcon. This happened in
Speaker 1: Las Vegas over the last week and they.
Speaker 2: Did something interesting there.
Speaker 1: A security researcher used a small vice costs about seventy
Speaker 1: bucks to create pop up messages on nearby iPhones using Bluetooth. Now,
Speaker 1: these messages wanted people to share their Apple ID or
Speaker 1: password with a nearby Apple TV. And now, as you
Speaker 1: might expect, the people at attend this kind of conference
Speaker 1: are pretty smart, so they didn't fall for it.
Speaker 2: But it was an experiment.
Speaker 1: Number one to show that if you turn off Bluetooth
Speaker 1: on iPhones, there's actually two ways of doing it, and
Speaker 1: most of us do it the way that doesn't really
Speaker 1: turn it off. And I'll explain that in a second.
Speaker 1: So the way that most people use the Bluetooth on
Speaker 1: iPhone is you use what's called the Control Center, and
Speaker 1: that's when you swipe down from the upper right hand
Speaker 1: corner and you toggle the little Bluetooth icon. That doesn't
Speaker 1: actually turn off Bluetooth. If you really want to turn
Speaker 1: off Bluetooth, you have to go into settings and turn
Speaker 1: it off there and that completely turns off that Bluetooth radio. Now,
Speaker 1: the whole point of this was really to tell people,
Speaker 1: you know what number one, you're turning off Bluetooth.
Speaker 2: The wrong way.
Speaker 1: If you think it's off, it's not actually off, and
Speaker 1: that way, in that way, someone could still try to
Speaker 1: hack you. And number two, it's to show that there
Speaker 1: are many, many methods of trying to get us. And
Speaker 1: it's not just the spam text and it's not just
Speaker 1: the robo calls. It is stuff like this where they
Speaker 1: try to engineer or reverse engineer our phones and social
Speaker 1: engineer us. Because how many times have you been to
Speaker 1: a conference center or an office where you need to
Speaker 1: connect to an Apple TV or some sort of service
Speaker 1: to share your screen, and of course you do this.
Speaker 1: Now it might seem a little odd that it's asking
Speaker 1: you to put in your Apple ID and your password,
Speaker 1: but again you might say, oh, that's maybe what I
Speaker 1: have to do. So according to Tom's guy, what you're
Speaker 1: doing when you toggle the Bluetooth off in the control center,
Speaker 1: you're really just telling your iPhone to disconnect any devices
Speaker 1: that are currently connected. And so the reason this is
Speaker 1: so complicated, it's like there's not even easy way to
Speaker 1: explain it. But the reason why they do this on
Speaker 1: the iPhone, and this is a change from years ago,
Speaker 1: is because everyone's using these air pods and all these
Speaker 1: earbuds and Apple watches, and you know Tesla's to do
Speaker 1: the Bluetooth, you know nearby Bluetooth. So if you turn
Speaker 1: off Bluetooth completely on your iPhone, you lose the ability
Speaker 1: to connect to things like your AirPods and stuff when
Speaker 1: you want to, when they're nearby, And so the iPhone
Speaker 1: sort of stays dormant with Bluetooth unless you go into
Speaker 1: settings and completely turn it off. So if you want
Speaker 1: to disabled Bluetooth completely, you have to go into settings
Speaker 1: and turn off Bluetooth.
Speaker 2: And the same goes for Wi Fi.
Speaker 1: By the way, if you're toggling Wi Fi off in
Speaker 1: the control center, it's just toggling it off that connection
Speaker 1: that it's actively connected to. If you truly want to
Speaker 1: turn off any sort of Wi Fi on your phone,
Speaker 1: you have to go into settings. I know it's a
Speaker 1: weird delineation, but it's something that you know, people like
Speaker 1: myself know about, but I don't think a lot of
Speaker 1: other people even think about. I did something interesting this week.
Speaker 1: I signed up for a mobile driver's license through the
Speaker 1: state of California. And this is something that we're seeing
Speaker 1: happen in more and more places, more and more states.
Speaker 1: This idea of a digital driver's license digital ID. Now,
Speaker 1: college kids probably don't really want this, because I don't
Speaker 1: know about you, but when I was in college, if
Speaker 1: I had a fail proof way of a place verifying
Speaker 1: my age, probably wouldn't have liked that very much, you know.
Speaker 2: And let's put it this way.
Speaker 1: Anyone who checks an ID that is looking at that
Speaker 1: ID and looking at the person standing in front of them,
Speaker 1: the person is, you know, maybe not the age they
Speaker 1: need to be. You are not fooling anyone. Give me
Speaker 1: a break. I can tell how old someone is, and
Speaker 1: I can tell if someone is of a certain age.
Speaker 2: I get it, maybe if they're right on the cusp.
Speaker 1: But when you have a thing that says you're twenty
Speaker 1: six and you're really seventeen, come on, they know what's happening,
Speaker 1: and they're just letting it slide. Now, with the new
Speaker 1: digital driver's license and age checks, that is not gonna
Speaker 1: happen anymore because they're going to be scanning your license.
Speaker 1: And I'm not talking the barcode on the back. This
Speaker 1: is a QR code that's on your phone. And so
Speaker 1: basically with California they're testing this new mobile driver's license.
Speaker 1: You can download the California DMV wallet app and you
Speaker 1: can sign up. And the way I signed up, you
Speaker 1: scan the front and back of your driver's license and
Speaker 1: then you basically take a picture of your face and
Speaker 1: they say they're scanning your face to match it up,
Speaker 1: and then it takes about a couple hours from me
Speaker 1: before they approve it. And I don't know if that's actually
Speaker 1: a human approving it on the back end or if.
Speaker 2: It's just a computer system.
Speaker 1: But this pilot is limited to one point five million participants.
Speaker 1: Now it's been going on for a couple of days. Now,
Speaker 1: they may have hit that already. As you might imagine,
Speaker 1: the comments on my Facebook page about this where wide ranging.
Speaker 1: A lot of people don't want to do this because
Speaker 1: why do they want to have more information out there
Speaker 1: than they need to Why do they want a digital
Speaker 1: driver's license when the physical one is just fine? And
Speaker 1: by the way, this does not work with Apple Wallet,
Speaker 1: it does not work with Google Wallet, so you can't
Speaker 1: actually store this on your phone in the same place
Speaker 1: you store your credit card. It's just stored inside this
Speaker 1: wallet app that the DMV has, so it's kind of weird.
Speaker 1: And by the way, there's almost nowhere you can use this.
Speaker 1: There's a couple of checkpoints that the TSA will allow
Speaker 1: this at at San Francisco Airport and LAX and also
Speaker 1: some places can allow you to verify your age as well.
Speaker 2: So why go through the whole hassle of all this.
Speaker 1: Well, I like to be on the cutting edge, I
Speaker 1: like to try new things, and I just wanted to
Speaker 1: see what this is all about.
Speaker 2: But at this point, even if you.
Speaker 1: Download and sign up for this, you still have to
Speaker 1: carry your physical driver's license. And you know, there's some
Speaker 1: there's some definite things that come along with this. Whether
Speaker 1: you like it or not, this is just a precursor
Speaker 1: to what's going to happen in the future, and that
Speaker 1: is that all driver's licenses will eventually be digital. That's
Speaker 1: just the bottom line. It's gonna happen, kind of like
Speaker 1: the way credit cards are now. It was like at
Speaker 1: the beginning of the wallets, the digital wallets, you could
Speaker 1: have an option of having it in there. Now it's
Speaker 1: pretty much tapped to pay is the way to go
Speaker 1: for like ninety nine percent of people, well maybe not
Speaker 1: maybe not ninety nine percent.
Speaker 2: But a lot of people.
Speaker 1: Let's see phone number triple eight rich one oh one
Speaker 1: eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: If you have a question about tech, give me a call.
Speaker 1: If you have Disney Plus, they are going to start
Speaker 1: the password sharing crackdown. Netflix is they were the first
Speaker 1: to take this dive, and they said, you know what,
Speaker 1: it worked. They converted a whole lot of people into
Speaker 1: paying Netflix members because they flipped a switch and when
Speaker 1: you logged in, it said, hmmm, this doesn't look like
Speaker 1: it's logging in from the account or the area that
Speaker 1: we think.
Speaker 2: It should be.
Speaker 1: Seems like you're a friend of a friend that's logging
Speaker 1: in on your friend's account. Hey, if you still want
Speaker 1: to keep using this, you got to pay. And what
Speaker 1: happened a lot of people just said never mind, okay, fine,
Speaker 1: I'm done, and a lot of other people said, okay, fine,
Speaker 1: I'll get my own password and my own sign up
Speaker 1: and my own payment. And so they got a lot
Speaker 1: of new people to subscribe. And so now Disney is saying, okay,
Speaker 1: now it's time for us to do the same. Disney
Speaker 1: chief Bob Iger said that they were putting a priority
Speaker 1: on finding ways to convert password borrowing users into paying customers.
Speaker 1: All this, according to Variety, they said, we're actively exploring
Speaker 1: ways to address account sharing and the best options for
Speaker 1: paying subscribers to share their accounts with friends and family.
Speaker 2: What does that mean, queue the.
Speaker 1: Cash register, chiching, because it means they will find ways
Speaker 1: to make people pay or stop streaming on their friends
Speaker 1: accounts right now. The only thing that Variety found in
Speaker 1: the customer agreement for Disney Plus, ESPN and Hulu says
Speaker 1: that customers may not share your log in credentials with
Speaker 1: third parties, but they don't specify if a third party
Speaker 1: is friends or family or someone that doesn't live in
Speaker 1: the same household. So again, come twenty twenty fourths, you've
Speaker 1: got about let's see what is it. August got a
Speaker 1: couple months before this is going to take effect. But
Speaker 1: in the case of Netflix, it took effect really quickly,
Speaker 1: like really quickly, like Netflix.
Speaker 2: I remember the first time it happened to me. I
Speaker 2: logged in.
Speaker 1: I was trying to log in on my VR headset
Speaker 1: and Netflix was I was like, oh, no, we're sorry,
Speaker 1: your household is in another state. You need to pay,
Speaker 1: And I said, wait, what I pay for this? And
Speaker 1: sure enough, when someone on my account had logged in
Speaker 1: it sets the household as their area, and I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's how it works, and so they said, yeah, confirm
Speaker 1: we're the household. And once you try to log in
Speaker 1: from an area that's not in that households area, the
Speaker 1: red flag goes up and it says you can't log
Speaker 1: in unless you pay up or you can reset your area.
Speaker 1: And so what I did, because I'm the owner of
Speaker 1: the account, I went in and I reset the household
Speaker 1: to mine, and that, of course kicked off everyone else
Speaker 1: that was streaming from a different place, you.
Speaker 2: Know, I mean, who knows. Maybe I shared the password
Speaker 2: with them a long time ago. I can't remember. It's
Speaker 2: tough to remember all this stuff.
Speaker 5: All right.
Speaker 2: Rich On Tech is the name of the show.
Speaker 1: You are listening to rich DeMuro here talking technology at
Speaker 1: triple eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight
Speaker 1: seven four to two four to one zero one.
Speaker 7: Uh.
Speaker 1: Coming up this hour, we are going to talk to
Speaker 1: Desmond Wheatley, President and CEO of Beam Global. They've got
Speaker 1: a really cool solution for ev charging that fits into
Speaker 1: a parking spot. You are listening to rich on Tech
Speaker 1: Triple eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four to two four to one zero one is the
Speaker 1: number if you want to hop on the line and
Speaker 1: ask me a question about technology. Let's go to Kevin
Speaker 1: in Las Vegas. Kevin, you're on with Rich.
Speaker 9: Hey, Rich, how are you? Thanks for taking the call.
Speaker 2: I'm doing great. Thanks for calling.
Speaker 9: I have a strange issue going on. I have a
Speaker 9: Phillips Hugh lights installed in my house. And just to
Speaker 9: give you a little background, last year I had the
Speaker 9: Geek Squad install for me echob thermostads, schleg door locks.
Speaker 9: I put that in Phillips Hugh sinkbox and lights around
Speaker 9: my TVs and then just lights in all the lambs.
Speaker 2: Oh you're in it. You're in a minute, right.
Speaker 9: So I took the sink boxes off because they just
Speaker 9: made the TV take minutes to start up, literally two
Speaker 9: or three minutes to get the TV to start. And
Speaker 9: I called the Geese Squad back once they tried to
Speaker 9: fix it, they saw it happen. So I just eventually took.
Speaker 4: That off.
Speaker 7: Largely.
Speaker 9: Okay, but here's the issue I have. I wake up
Speaker 9: in the morning and I hit a good morning thing
Speaker 9: that should turn on all the lamps in the house.
Speaker 9: And what will happen is they all turn on but
Speaker 9: then slowly and I can sit there and look at
Speaker 9: the app and I can see it happened. A light
Speaker 9: will turn on in the kitchen, then one'll go down
Speaker 9: to one percent in my office, and then the family
Speaker 9: room will you know, prove them will turn out and
Speaker 9: if I turn those back on, other ones go out.
Speaker 9: And then eventually, after I fool with this for about
Speaker 9: ten minutes, it happened every single morning, eventually they stay
Speaker 9: and you know, but it's like when I first wake
Speaker 9: up and first turn it on. This happens every single
Speaker 9: day and I and I have both the Apple Home
Speaker 9: app and the Phillips Shoe App, although I usually use
Speaker 9: it in the Phillips Shoe app. And I can literally
Speaker 9: see like the slider's moving to turn a light off
Speaker 9: or to dim a light, and I just have to
Speaker 9: manually go back in. And after I do this maybe
Speaker 9: four or five times in switch lights, it then seems
Speaker 9: to settle in and work for the rest of the day.
Speaker 9: And I know it's a crazy question, but I wonder
Speaker 9: if you have any idea.
Speaker 1: Well, okay, so when you say the good morning thing,
Speaker 1: is this a voice command?
Speaker 9: No, it's a it's a button. You know, I created
Speaker 9: a button, and I have all the lights on there.
Speaker 9: When I hate good morning or good night, it'll it'll
Speaker 9: turn them on or turn them off.
Speaker 2: Okay, And how did you create that?
Speaker 9: I created that in the Apple Home app. Okay, all right,
Speaker 9: So I put all the lights in there, and then
Speaker 9: you know, had them you know which ones I wanted
Speaker 9: to turn on, which ones I wanted to turn off
Speaker 9: when I said, you know, good night.
Speaker 2: Okay. So here's what I think is happening.
Speaker 1: And this this I think has to do with routines.
Speaker 1: So the way that these lights work is that it's
Speaker 1: you know, and Phillips, you are very great. I mean,
Speaker 1: they're really nice, and they in all of these lights.
Speaker 1: By the way, I've tested all the different brands, and
Speaker 1: none of them are perfect. I think that the Phillips
Speaker 1: are near perfect, Like they work really well, but they're
Speaker 1: also very expensive, which is why you know a lot
Speaker 1: of people are shy away from them, and they are
Speaker 1: the most popular brand. But at the same time, you know,
Speaker 1: they kind of invented this genre of lights. But I
Speaker 1: think this has to do with routines. The way that
Speaker 1: these lights work is that they typically take commands in
Speaker 1: kind of a sequence. So when it's like light on
Speaker 1: and then bring it up to one hundred percent and
Speaker 1: then change the color. So those things happen not at
Speaker 1: the same time, but sort of like in different sequences.
Speaker 1: And so that's what I think you're seeing happen with
Speaker 1: this situation. And I think that because it's going through
Speaker 1: that third party Apple Home Kit app. I think that's
Speaker 1: why it's that Home Kit or the Apple Home app
Speaker 1: is actually running sort of a sequence of commands to
Speaker 1: these lights. So it's saying, okay, fire the lights on, Okay,
Speaker 1: let's dim the lights, and that's why you're seeing those
Speaker 1: sliders move and everything kind of adjust for a little
Speaker 1: bit of time before it settles in.
Speaker 2: That's the way it works.
Speaker 1: And the only reason I say that is because I've
Speaker 1: got lights in my in my office that are on
Speaker 1: a routine through Google Home and it's really weird to
Speaker 1: when you when you when the routine works, it's fine,
Speaker 1: but when it doesn't work, when one of the lights
Speaker 1: is out, it will say all these weird things like
Speaker 1: light number one is not responding, or light number one
Speaker 1: is not dimming. Light number one can't change the color
Speaker 1: like it'll respond, And so I know that it's doing
Speaker 1: things in a sequence, and so.
Speaker 2: That is what I think is happening.
Speaker 1: The way to change that or solve it, I would
Speaker 1: make sure everything's updated because there are you know there
Speaker 1: there have been many many updates to these smart lights
Speaker 1: in the last couple of months, and I don't know
Speaker 1: is Phillips on with matter.
Speaker 2: Let's see the thing that's coming up yet. Matter.
Speaker 1: So matter is like the new kind of standard for
Speaker 1: all of these lights, and so if you could update
Speaker 1: these to work with matter, I think that might be
Speaker 1: a nice thing to do and see if it simplifies
Speaker 1: kind of this little system that you have that you've built.
Speaker 1: The other thing I would do is I would try
Speaker 1: to build a similar routine inside the Phillips Hoe app
Speaker 1: if that's possible. I've got a couple of my things
Speaker 1: on a routine there and it does seem to work
Speaker 1: more so than any other routine.
Speaker 2: I have the two routines that I have.
Speaker 1: That work the best I've built through Amazon Alexa and
Speaker 1: also through the just Phillips app. So might try playing
Speaker 1: with those things to see if that works. But I agree, Kevin,
Speaker 1: you've got a lot of things set up on here,
Speaker 1: so I think there's like a lot riding on the line,
Speaker 1: and none of this stuff is perfect. But if it's
Speaker 1: working at the end of the day, I think that's
Speaker 1: really what matters. But I know it's probably not something
Speaker 1: you want to do about, you know, like deleting these
Speaker 1: routines that you've created and putting them back up, but
Speaker 1: you may want to consider doing that. Thanks for the
Speaker 1: call today, Kevin in Las Vegas.
Speaker 2: Appreciate it real quick.
Speaker 1: If you have a smart watch or a fitbit, you
Speaker 1: might want to clean the band. A recent study by
Speaker 1: clean the band that sounds like a band name. Recent
Speaker 1: study by researchers found that almost all Apple watches and
Speaker 1: Fitbit wrist bands have harmful bacteria on them. They tested plastic, rubber, cloth, leather,
Speaker 1: and metal bands. Ninety five percent of them had dangerous bacteria.
Speaker 1: People who wore smart watches during workouts had the most bacteria.
Speaker 1: Let's see the type of material also affects bacteria. Rubber
Speaker 1: and plastic were the worst. Metal wrist bands, especially gold
Speaker 1: and silver, had less.
Speaker 10: Welcome back to Rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich DeMuro here hanging out talking technology with you on
Speaker 1: location in the city of Los Angeles.
Speaker 10: We are standing under a.
Speaker 1: Sustainable self contained ev charging solution. It is being deployed
Speaker 1: in cities across America and the world. And joining me
Speaker 1: now is Desmond Wheatley, the CEO of Beam Global.
Speaker 5: You make these things.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the show, Rich, Thanks very much for having me.
Speaker 11: Yes, we're very proud of this product to your Our
Speaker 11: ev ARC electric vehicle, autonomous renewable charger, invented, designed, engineered,
Speaker 11: and best of all manufactured here in the United States,
Speaker 11: providing the driving on sunshine experience to customers all over
Speaker 11: the US and as you said, increasingly internationally as well.
Speaker 1: So the device is self contained and sustainable. So it
Speaker 1: looks like a giant solar panel plus a battery on
Speaker 1: top of a flat panel that lays in a parking spot.
Speaker 1: So this fits in a standard parking spot, and you
Speaker 1: can deploy ev charging, and not just EV charging, but
Speaker 1: all types of charging pretty much anywhere you can place
Speaker 1: one of these.
Speaker 11: You're exactly right, So the ev ARC fits inside a
Speaker 11: standard legal sized parking space fantastically. It doesn't reduce available
Speaker 11: parking in any way at all, because the vehicle is
Speaker 11: actually able to park on the ballast and traction pad,
Speaker 11: which is what gives the unit stability and ensures it
Speaker 11: doesn't blow away in hurricane force winds or during an
Speaker 11: earthquake or something like that. So you're getting all of
Speaker 11: this power generation being fed into vehicles or into other devices.
Speaker 11: You're not losing any available parking, and crucially, you didn't
Speaker 11: have to do any construction or electrical work. You'll never
Speaker 11: get a utility bill, and this will keep your electric
Speaker 11: vehicles running during a blackout or a brownout.
Speaker 1: Tell me about the different components I mentioned kind of briefly.
Speaker 1: It has a solar panel on top. Explain to me
Speaker 1: what's happening with this beam device.
Speaker 11: Yes, we're converting sunlight into electricity. We're doing that in
Speaker 11: a hyper efficient way because we have a patented tracking solution,
Speaker 11: and that causes the solar array to follow the sun
Speaker 11: as it moves across the sky in a really clever way.
Speaker 11: That gives us about twenty five percent more electricity than
Speaker 11: we'd anticipate from a fixed solar array fix. Rolary is
Speaker 11: still good, but trackings even better because twenty five percent
Speaker 11: more electricity means twenty five percent more miles driven by
Speaker 11: the electric vehicle. Now, we obviously wanted the thing to
Speaker 11: work day or night, or during periods when the sun
Speaker 11: isn't shining inclement weather like we're about to have here
Speaker 11: this weekend, and so we have our own proprietary battery
Speaker 11: solutions that we build into the product as well. So
Speaker 11: we convert so light and electricity, we store that electricity
Speaker 11: in batteries, and then we convert the electricity into a
Speaker 11: format that's usable by electric vehicles, or by cell phones,
Speaker 11: or by life saving equipment or whatever else you might
Speaker 11: decide to plug into it.
Speaker 1: So you've got the battery and not only do you
Speaker 1: have at least two car chargers, but you also have
Speaker 1: plugs and USB. So someone if this was in a park,
Speaker 1: for instance, someone could come and charge their phone from
Speaker 1: this device. And there's also an emergency component as well.
Speaker 10: Explain that.
Speaker 11: Yeah, So actually we set them up to charge as
Speaker 11: many as six vehicles at the same time. So picture
Speaker 11: a flea operator like Los Angeles. Six fleet vehicles can
Speaker 11: plug in at the end of shift. The next time
Speaker 11: when they come back and use those vehicles, they'll be
Speaker 11: full again. We call this daily range replenishment. It's a
Speaker 11: fantastic way to.
Speaker 5: Fuel your vehicle.
Speaker 11: Gone are the days of going to the gas station
Speaker 11: and hanging around and pumping liquid, carcinogens and everything into
Speaker 11: a tank in your vehicle. Now you're just plugging in,
Speaker 11: just like you would plug in your cell phone while
Speaker 11: you're doing something else. Six vehicles charge. End of shift.
Speaker 11: But you're right, there are other things we can do
Speaker 11: with this as well. We have an emergency power panel,
Speaker 11: so if there is a blackout or a brownout or
Speaker 11: some other sort of disaster, first responders can come and
Speaker 11: connect to this and run life saving equipment, radios, computers,
Speaker 11: whatever else they need to do. And by the way,
Speaker 11: which that's happened, that's not just a story. We've had
Speaker 11: lots of instances where that's happened. And then a little
Speaker 11: bit more on the consumer side. Yes, we've got one
Speaker 11: hundred and twenty vol outlets and USB ports as well,
Speaker 11: so that you can charge your cell phone or your laptop.
Speaker 11: And it's surprising how often sometimes people are more excited
Speaker 11: about that than they are about being able to charge
Speaker 11: their cars.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's definitely interesting to have that ability as well.
Speaker 1: How much of a charge can one of these provide?
Speaker 11: An EVRC electric vehicle Autonomous Renewable charge is going to
Speaker 11: generate and store enough electricity to provide up to two
Speaker 11: hundred and sixty five driving miles in a day. Now,
Speaker 11: the average US sedan drives thirty point four miles per day.
Speaker 11: Fleet vehicles like we commonly charge around twenty miles a day.
Speaker 11: So you can see, with this single unit, in a
Speaker 11: single parking space, with no construction and no electrical work
Speaker 11: and no utility bill, we're able to charge six to
Speaker 11: ten fleet vehicles every day and give them that daily
Speaker 11: range replenishment. New York City is our biggest customer from
Speaker 11: a city point of view. Actually US Army is our
Speaker 11: biggest customer in total, but in New York City, even
Speaker 11: in the winter, we're recharging police cars there. So it's
Speaker 11: a very effective technology. Again, invented the United States and
Speaker 11: manufactured here. We're very proud of that.
Speaker 1: How much does one of these costs and how does
Speaker 1: that compare to actually digging and building out power lines?
Speaker 11: And that's that's exactly the right question, because the fact
Speaker 11: the matter is the answer to how much one of
Speaker 11: these things costs is less. It costs less than the
Speaker 11: voided costs of construction, less than digging the trenches, less
Speaker 11: than pulling the wires, less than pouring the concrete. The
Speaker 11: average selling price on This is about seventy thousand dollars.
Speaker 11: There are fantastic tax incentives associated with it. So if
Speaker 11: you have a tax liability, as many of our larger
Speaker 11: customers do, they're going to get about forty percent of
Speaker 11: that money back from in terms of out of pocket costs.
Speaker 11: And then of course you've got a lifetime of electricity
Speaker 11: or lifetime of fuel for your vehicles. You're never going
Speaker 11: to get a utility bill. And so in almost every instance,
Speaker 11: we have an awful lot of these things deployed across
Speaker 11: the United States and internationally. In almost every instance, the
Speaker 11: cost of the unit was less than the cost of
Speaker 11: digging the trenches and going through all that lengthy construction.
Speaker 5: Work and everything else.
Speaker 11: It takes about two years to deploy a grid tie
Speaker 11: charger in New York City by the time you go
Speaker 11: through planning and construction electrical work, which we do the
Speaker 11: same thing in under one hour and far less expensively.
Speaker 1: This is a big unit, Like I said, it fits
Speaker 1: in a standard parking spot, but you've got a big
Speaker 1: solar panel on top, you've got a battery.
Speaker 10: It's all kind of.
Speaker 1: On this hinge mechanism, I guess, or you know some
Speaker 1: sort of thing that holds it up this big bar,
Speaker 1: and then you've got this platform.
Speaker 10: Is this safe? Pople might wonder? Can I park under this?
Speaker 10: Can I step under?
Speaker 4: This?
Speaker 2: Is this safe?
Speaker 11: Designed, invented, engineered, manufactured in these United States of America.
Speaker 11: This is a very robust product. It's designed and in
Speaker 11: fact independently stamped to withstand wins of one hundred and
Speaker 11: sixty miles per hour. But it's done much better than that.
Speaker 11: In the Caribbean. It survived one hundred and eighty five
Speaker 11: mile in our Category five hurricane wins. It's flood proof
Speaker 11: to nine and a half feet, and there is nothing
Speaker 11: that an earthquake can do to hurt it. So this
Speaker 11: is an incredibly robust piece of equipment, built to the
Speaker 11: highest possible standards. Look, it's in the built environment. We
Speaker 11: know there are gonna be consumers and gonna be people
Speaker 11: wandering around these things, and we cannot let anybody get
Speaker 11: hurt by any of these things. We have never had
Speaker 11: a structural failure, and very proud of the team that
Speaker 11: builds them, and I am very proud of our factory facility,
Speaker 11: in the engineering that's gone into this.
Speaker 10: Tell me about that team you're based in San Diego.
Speaker 11: We're based in San Diego. Yeah, we're again fantastic. It's
Speaker 11: a meritocracy. We are for merit, but I think we
Speaker 11: seek out merit in places that some others ignore. We
Speaker 11: have veterans, we have workers disabilities, we have immigrants like me.
Speaker 11: We even have people who have had who have a
Speaker 11: dodgy history, but have paid their price to society. We're
Speaker 11: very proud of that team. With diversity, we get a
Speaker 11: lot of input. We got a lot of very clever
Speaker 11: ideas and their mission driven. I mean, we're letting Americans
Speaker 11: drive on sunshine. We're getting rid of their gasoline bills,
Speaker 11: We're getting rid of their reliance on foreign oil. This
Speaker 11: is about energy security. It's about cleaning up the environment
Speaker 11: if you care about that. But most importantly, it's about
Speaker 11: saving people a lot of money and giving them a
Speaker 11: great experience.
Speaker 5: Where is this being used well.
Speaker 11: At the moment, Better than half of our customers are
Speaker 11: fleet operators. So as I mentioned US Army, the Marine Corps.
Speaker 11: By the way, we are from the Marine Corps. Guys
Speaker 11: take off their uniforms and mirror mort and then they
Speaker 11: walk two miles to our factory and we put them
Speaker 11: in our Uniform Veterans Administration, so we have federal government.
Speaker 11: States of California's one of our biggest customers. I had
Speaker 11: the great honor of meeting the governor the other day
Speaker 11: because of the problems we're solving, not because of me,
Speaker 11: that's for sure. And then on the corporate side, customers
Speaker 11: like Google and Johnson and and others providing workplace charging
Speaker 11: for their employees so their employees can come in. We
Speaker 11: can plug in as many as six employees to this device.
Speaker 11: Every one of them will get their daily range replenishment
Speaker 11: before they leave to go home at the end of
Speaker 11: the day. And it didn't cost anybody anything. There's no
Speaker 11: unit costs to the energy because we're getting it from
Speaker 11: this glorious sunshine. So the way I like to think
Speaker 11: about this is this is an American product, taking American
Speaker 11: renewable energy and putting it into Americans vehicles with no
Speaker 11: unit costs of energy. I am absolutely certain that everybody
Speaker 11: will end up driving electric vehicle, and not because they're
Speaker 11: told to by the government or anybody else. They're going
Speaker 11: to do it because they're just way better, far more
Speaker 11: fun to drive. You never have to go to the
Speaker 11: gas station, you never have to do any maintenance on them.
Speaker 11: They're just super gadgets to own and you're going to
Speaker 11: love them.
Speaker 1: Them are some fighting words when it comes to, you know,
Speaker 1: traditional gas cars, but I will admit driving EV is
Speaker 1: a lot of fun. Where are you from, by the way.
Speaker 11: I'm from Scotland originally, and I'll say this about driving
Speaker 11: an EV driving there's only one thing better than driving
Speaker 11: an EV, driving on sunshine.
Speaker 5: That's what we provide.
Speaker 11: But yes, I'm from Scotland originally. America has been very
Speaker 11: very good to me. I'm trying to be good bye
Speaker 11: to it. So thank you for guys.
Speaker 1: Where can folks find out more about the ev RC and.
Speaker 11: Beam The best place, of course to go is our
Speaker 11: website which is Beam four all dot com. So that's
Speaker 11: b E A M F O R A L L
Speaker 11: dot com.
Speaker 10: Desmend weekly from Beam Global.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for joining me today.
Speaker 11: That's been my great pleasure.
Speaker 5: Rich thanks for having me.
Speaker 10: More rich on Tech coming your way.
Speaker 1: If you have a question about technology, give me a call.
Speaker 1: It's triple eight Rich one on one. That's eight eight
Speaker 1: eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 6: We'll be right back.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Speaker 10: Man.
Speaker 1: If I had just a tenth of the energy that
Speaker 1: our last interview had, maybe this show would be more
Speaker 1: popular or less.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: Uh triple eight Rich one on one eight eight eight
Speaker 1: seven four to two four one zero one. You can
Speaker 1: find me online at rich on tech dot tv. There
Speaker 1: you can see some of the stories I cover for television.
Speaker 1: You can see show notes for past shows, subscribe to
Speaker 1: the podcast, and you can find me on social media.
Speaker 1: I'm on Instagram x formerly Twitter, Facebook, threads all at.
Speaker 2: Rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Let's go to John in Newbury Park, California. John, you're
Speaker 1: on with Rich.
Speaker 8: Yeah, Hi, Rich, thank you. I just got a quick question.
Speaker 8: We've been using cable for a long time and the
Speaker 8: price just keeps going up and up and up, and
Speaker 8: I'm trying to get a sense of how streaming is different,
Speaker 8: maybe better than cable, and what's the downside of streaming.
Speaker 2: Good question.
Speaker 1: Well, there's a big report out this week that streaming
Speaker 1: has become more expensive than cable, and I do not
Speaker 1: believe that to be true. Here's the thing. When you
Speaker 1: are streaming, you are in control. You pay for cable,
Speaker 1: You're paying eighty five ninety bucks a month for a
Speaker 1: bunch of stuff you don't need. When you're paying for streaming,
Speaker 1: you're paying seventy five dollars for a bunch of stuff
Speaker 1: you don't need. That was a joke, no, I mean,
Speaker 1: but the reality is, yes, the prices of streaming services
Speaker 1: has gone up. Like I've said, the free ride is over.
Speaker 1: These things started out extremely cheap, and they the price
Speaker 1: on them keeps going up. But here's the big difference.
Speaker 1: The difference is do you need all that other stuff?
Speaker 8: You know?
Speaker 1: It used to be when you had cable you would pay,
Speaker 1: like I said, ninety bucks a month and you'd get
Speaker 1: all these channels whether you watch.
Speaker 2: Them or not.
Speaker 1: With streaming, you decide what you want to subscribe to.
Speaker 1: Now you've heard of the big streaming services like Netflix
Speaker 1: and YouTube TV and Sling TV, and you know all
Speaker 1: these other you know, Hulu and Disney Plus. But there
Speaker 1: are a whole bunch of smaller streaming services out there
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 2: So a couple of resources for you, John, Which number one?
Speaker 1: I say, just dive in and do it to cut
Speaker 1: the cord.
Speaker 2: You'll be very very happy.
Speaker 1: You can go to a service like Real Good R
Speaker 1: E E, L, g OO D and you can see
Speaker 1: all of the streaming services that you can subscribe to
Speaker 1: now again the popular ones Netflix, Amazon Prime, Showtime, Hulu,
Speaker 1: FX Stars, crunchy Roll, But there are literally hundreds of
Speaker 1: streaming services like fandor Epics, Fear Factory, Let's see what else, Freeform,
Speaker 1: free V that's a free one, Fubuu TV, Funimation, there
Speaker 1: are so many scream Box Science, I mean things I've
Speaker 1: never even heard of, popcorn flix Plex. So there's a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of streaming services. You kind of build the
Speaker 1: catalog of things that you want, and if you don't
Speaker 1: like it, you get rid of it. Another good resource
Speaker 1: for you is called chord Cutter Weekly. Cord Cutter Weekly
Speaker 1: is written by techtjournalist Jared Newman. He's been on the
Speaker 1: show several times and he is a great resource for
Speaker 1: not only getting into this, but also finding the best
Speaker 1: deals and making the most of your streaming services. The
Speaker 1: other thing I like is called just Watch. This is
Speaker 1: a streaming guide for all of these streaming services. You
Speaker 1: can find it at just watch dot com. And the
Speaker 1: bottom line is that you are in control. If you're
Speaker 1: watching HBO Max and you're subscribing, and all of a
Speaker 1: sudden you decide you know what, HBO doesn't really have
Speaker 1: anything for me anymore. You go ahead, you go online
Speaker 1: and you cancel. Try doing that easily with cable it
Speaker 1: is impossible. You've got to call someone up. You've got
Speaker 1: to talk to them. They've got a sales team. They
Speaker 1: escalate you, they try to convince you, they give you
Speaker 1: two months free. All of this stuff with streaming is
Speaker 1: done online and at will, and so you have the
Speaker 1: ability to start and stop these services on your terms.
Speaker 7: Now.
Speaker 1: A couple things to keep in mind very quickly is
Speaker 1: cable TV bundles versus a streaming service like Netflix. There
Speaker 1: are services like YouTube TV, Sling TV, and Fubu that
Speaker 1: are basically replacing cable TV that gives you a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of channels that you would traditionally get from a
Speaker 1: cable TV provider, like the Food Network, HGTV, Bravo, all
Speaker 1: those different channels that you may or may not need.
Speaker 1: So personally, the way I do it is I just
Speaker 1: put together this streaming services that I want, like a Netflix,
Speaker 1: a Prime Video, HBO, Max, Disney Plus, oh gosh, I
Speaker 1: have a lot of them, Apple TV Plus and Hulu.
Speaker 1: Those are the services that I subscribe to. And pay
Speaker 1: for I was doing the YouTube TV for like I
Speaker 1: think it's like eighty five bucks a month, but I
Speaker 1: realized I just wasn't watching it as much. I don't
Speaker 1: need all that content. And when it comes to your
Speaker 1: local channels, you can typically find those streaming on other places,
Speaker 1: so for instance, hang on, let me grab this. For instance,
Speaker 1: Roku channel this week did a deal where they have
Speaker 1: forty new TV channels that you can watch for free.
Speaker 1: They partnered with CBS News and Fox TV stations, So
Speaker 1: if you're in a major city like New York, LA, Chicago,
Speaker 1: you can watch these stations for free.
Speaker 2: Same thing.
Speaker 1: The station I work for, KTLA has an app called
Speaker 1: Ktla Plus. You download that and you can watch for free.
Speaker 1: So I think this is kind of the thing that's
Speaker 1: happening across the nation, is that people want to be
Speaker 1: able to choose when and how and what they watch.
Speaker 1: And also they you know, they decide with their dollars
Speaker 1: what is important to them. If you don't want Netflix,
Speaker 1: if Netflix isn't making the kind of program that you
Speaker 1: want anymore, you can.
Speaker 2: Get rid of it. And it's very very easy.
Speaker 1: Good question, John, but I say go for it. I
Speaker 1: was a little hesitant to cut the cord. Probably gosh,
Speaker 1: there's probably been five years at this point. My wife
Speaker 1: was very much against it and would I would never
Speaker 1: look back at this point. All Right, A lot of
Speaker 1: you have emailed in let's see, Jill says, are all
Speaker 1: of the cell phone companies equal? I live in southern Cali, Alifornia.
Speaker 1: I'm currently an AT and T customer. I only have
Speaker 1: one line. I'm looking for less expensive service. What should
Speaker 1: I consider, Jill? You should consider what's called an MVN
Speaker 1: and know the services are not all equal. There are three.
Speaker 1: There's T Mobile, there's Verizon, and there's AT and T.
Speaker 1: They are all good for different things. AT and T
Speaker 1: is kind of in the middle. It's very broad range.
Speaker 1: You're gonna have a good signal pretty much everywhere you go.
Speaker 1: Verizon is really good in like, densely populated areas. They
Speaker 1: have super super fast service in many stadiums and downtowns
Speaker 1: and things like that, and then in rural areas they're
Speaker 1: really good, whereas T Mobile is really strong in kind
Speaker 1: of the city areas. So but for you personally, if
Speaker 1: you want to stick with AT and T, I would
Speaker 1: look into Cricket, which they own. But there are no
Speaker 1: contract and the plans are a lot cheaper. You just
Speaker 1: don't get maybe as many perks with those plans, but
Speaker 1: you can get a plan starting at thirty, forty, fifty
Speaker 1: five or sixty dollars month. The one that I really
Speaker 1: like is mint Mobile. I think they're fantastic. They were
Speaker 1: actually purchased by T Mobile that runs on T Mobile's network,
Speaker 1: but that's what I use for my secondary line, my
Speaker 1: test line, and it has been absolutely fantastic. Good question,
Speaker 1: Catherine says, how can I sync my iPad and iPhone
Speaker 1: so my text messages show up on my iPad? This
Speaker 1: is a feature called continuity. You can sign up for
Speaker 1: this feature in your settings on your iPhone and on
Speaker 1: your iPad. If you open up the settings on your iPhone,
Speaker 1: look for your messages, and there is a feature called
Speaker 1: continuity and it's a continuity and it's called handoff as well.
Speaker 1: And so if you look for that feature inside your settings,
Speaker 1: you are able to turn that on for your iPad
Speaker 1: and all of your text messages, whether it's an I
Speaker 1: message or just a standard text will actually show up
Speaker 1: on your other device. And Mary says, it's time for
Speaker 1: me to upgrade my iPhone. I was going to do
Speaker 1: go with the fourteen plus, but I just learned a
Speaker 1: new fifteen is coming out. Do you know what the
Speaker 1: differences will be between the fourteen and fifteen? Are they
Speaker 1: worth holding out for on purchasing until the fifteen comes out? Yes,
Speaker 1: only because you've got less than a month now. Usually
Speaker 1: the new iPhones come out end of September. I think
Speaker 1: you could wait one more month, and at the very
Speaker 1: least the prices will go down on the old models.
Speaker 1: But we don't know exactly what's going to happen with
Speaker 1: the fifteen, but there's definitely gonna be some improvements there,
Speaker 1: and at the very least, like.
Speaker 2: I said, the old models will be cheaper.
Speaker 1: All right. Coming up later this hour, we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about ady T and their new alarm system that
Speaker 1: you can install yourself, plus more of your questions at
Speaker 1: triple eight rich.
Speaker 2: One on one.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech, Rich DeMuro talking technology
Speaker 1: with you at triple eight Rich one O one. That's
Speaker 1: eighty eight eight seven four to four to one zero one.
Speaker 1: If you have a question about technology, give me a call.
Speaker 1: You can also email. Just go to rich on Tech
Speaker 1: dot tv hit the contact button there. You can follow
Speaker 1: me on social media at rich on Tech if you
Speaker 1: like what you hear. Let's see what else a lot
Speaker 1: to talk about. Oh, this hour we're gonna talk about
Speaker 1: Let's see. This is the ad T self setup. So
Speaker 1: this is a alarm system that you actually install yourself. Diy.
Speaker 1: I believe it's the first of its kind from ad T.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna have been shown of nine to five
Speaker 1: Google join me to talk about his experience with this program.
Speaker 1: And by the way, producer Adam, I emailed you a question,
Speaker 1: so you can you know, we're getting a lot of
Speaker 1: questions from folks, so I believe we're working on the
Speaker 1: ability to get the producer to be able to chime in.
Speaker 1: So if Adam, if you can get on your email,
Speaker 1: I'll have you chime in a little bit. Okay, time, yeah,
Speaker 1: you chime Okay. Let's see so many emails coming in.
Speaker 2: Let's go.
Speaker 1: Let's go to the phones first. Let's go to Paul.
Speaker 1: Let's go to Paul and Columbus, Ohio. Paul, you're on
Speaker 1: with Rich.
Speaker 12: Hey, Rich, good luck with the storm too. I hope
Speaker 12: that doesn't cost too much disaster out there.
Speaker 1: I appreciate that California. You can't deal with rain to
Speaker 1: begin with, by the way, So if it just exactly yeah,
Speaker 1: so you've seen the video. I mean, if it's like
Speaker 1: just regular rain, it's tough out here. So we'll hopefully
Speaker 1: we'll be okay, but we'll see. We don't know what
Speaker 1: can I help you with.
Speaker 12: Okay, I'm trying to help a friend. I'm semi techie.
Speaker 12: She's very non techy. He's got an all computer probably
Speaker 12: five years old, running Windows ten, and she has issues
Speaker 12: with the USB ports. There's eight ports all together, a
Speaker 12: couple in the front, couple and the some in the back,
Speaker 12: and they'll just stop working. And then so it can
Speaker 12: plug it into another port and it may or may
Speaker 12: not work. And then you go back later after turning
Speaker 12: a computer on and off or whatever, and it can
Speaker 12: do the same thing. Sometimes it'll work for hours and
Speaker 12: other times it just quits. And I had to look
Speaker 12: at the device manager to see if there was anything
Speaker 12: in there with the triangle or red mark or anything,
Speaker 12: and nothing showed up there. We cleaned up the computer
Speaker 12: with a bunch of old files, but I don't know
Speaker 12: that that would have had any any consequence or to
Speaker 12: the USD except that it did boot faster. So what
Speaker 12: might we be looking for?
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 1: Have you and so you physically went over there and
Speaker 1: checked them out?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: I had not, Okay, I think I think that might
Speaker 1: be a good first step.
Speaker 2: And you said, this was what type of computer?
Speaker 4: A Dell?
Speaker 12: Okay, that's a small tower.
Speaker 1: And it's about five years old, right, And are all
Speaker 1: of the us bees on one sort of I guess
Speaker 1: card on this computer or they in different places?
Speaker 2: Like are some in front, some and back?
Speaker 12: Yeah, there are some in front and someone back, So
Speaker 12: I'm guessing that it's not the same card, but I'm
Speaker 12: not positive about it, Okay.
Speaker 1: And has she plugged the peripherals into the front, Like
Speaker 1: if it do they all stop working? Because that seems
Speaker 1: really odd that they would all stop working, even the
Speaker 1: ones that are in different locations.
Speaker 12: That's what I thought too, But like I say, it's
Speaker 12: it's intermittent. Sometimes the back will work, sometimes the funnel work,
Speaker 12: and then sometimes none of them are working.
Speaker 1: Interesting, Okay, Well, it sounds like if it's you know,
Speaker 1: there's two things that could be happening here. It could
Speaker 1: either be a physical hardware issue or it could be
Speaker 1: a software issue. And it sounds like you kind of
Speaker 1: ran her through and got the system cleaned up and
Speaker 1: sort of figured out with that. Since this is a Dell,
Speaker 1: Dell does have some I'm just on Dell's support website
Speaker 1: for this, and you know, they do have some special
Speaker 1: software on the computer that can help you figure out
Speaker 1: if it's a you know, actual physical problem or a
Speaker 1: software problem. And so there's one app called Support Assist,
Speaker 1: and that can actually help you troubleshoot this as well.
Speaker 1: So if you're in Windows, type in support Assist and
Speaker 1: you can run that little computer test to see what's
Speaker 1: going on.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: In my experience, sometimes these little computer tests could be
Speaker 1: pretty bad. Like it comes up with either stuff that's
Speaker 1: just like give me a break, or it may come
Speaker 1: up with something that's real.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Uh, that's the first thing I would do. The other
Speaker 1: thing is, let's see there's another there's another. Okay, let's see.
Speaker 1: So they have like a list of like ten things
Speaker 1: to do. Obviously, you checked for physical damage.
Speaker 2: I would do that.
Speaker 1: Check the cable, you know, like, have her plug in
Speaker 1: something else that is different than what she's been plugging in.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's it. Okay, now you've got this hard Hardware
Speaker 1: Diagnostic Tool. Now this one you might need to be
Speaker 1: there for because it starting up the computer and then
Speaker 1: pressing F twelve while you are starting the computer to
Speaker 1: get into the you know, one time boot menu. So
Speaker 1: once you get into there, you can do the Dell
Speaker 1: Support Assist. And this is before the computer boots up,
Speaker 1: so basically none of the software is going to be running,
Speaker 1: and it can do a little bit of a better
Speaker 1: diagnostic on the computer without kind of drivers and things
Speaker 1: getting in the way.
Speaker 2: So that's another thing you could do. Again.
Speaker 1: That's called the Dell Support Assist, and that's when you
Speaker 1: boot up the system. Otherwise, I mean, you know, I
Speaker 1: would plug the USB device into a different computer. See
Speaker 1: if it stops working on that computer. Make sure Windows
Speaker 1: is up to date. There's a thing that you can
Speaker 1: refresh the USB controller. Let's see, disconnect all of the
Speaker 1: devices press Windows.
Speaker 2: Are Oh wow.
Speaker 1: This gets a little little tricky because you gotta you
Speaker 1: got oh wow. This is like getting into the Universal
Speaker 1: Serial Bus controllers and the Windows Device Manager. That might
Speaker 1: be something that you want to go over there, Paul
Speaker 1: and do yourself. But if you want, you can uninstall
Speaker 1: the USB host controller and then restart the computer and
Speaker 1: then reinstall that.
Speaker 2: I don't know that may be that maybe a little
Speaker 2: bit much.
Speaker 1: If it doesn't work after all that, maybe get someone
Speaker 1: from Dell to look at it.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: It doesn't sound like it's still in warranty, so I think,
Speaker 1: you know, it's one of these things where it's best
Speaker 1: to be in person. This is one of those issues
Speaker 1: that could be a million different things. And after you've
Speaker 1: gone through your standard troubleshooting, which it sounds like you've done,
Speaker 1: which is why you're calling me, it's it's just.
Speaker 2: Kind of a mystery.
Speaker 1: So I would get some physical help on this computer
Speaker 1: to see what's going on. Let's go to Brian in
Speaker 1: Long Beach, California.
Speaker 2: Brian, you're on with Rich.
Speaker 5: Hello, Rich, Hey, good afternoon.
Speaker 13: What I wanted to ask about. I had a broken
Speaker 13: phone and then I had to get the replace right
Speaker 13: and I got on replacement phone, use the same number
Speaker 13: and the new phone. It thinks Google accounts that I
Speaker 13: haven't used in three years, you know sometime way to
Speaker 13: say it up and I need to be able to
Speaker 13: think the Google counts that.
Speaker 8: I have been using for the last two and.
Speaker 4: A half years.
Speaker 1: Could you get me with that, so you've got Okay,
Speaker 1: So you had a Google account on your old phone,
Speaker 1: you broke the phone and you got a new phone. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: what kind of phone is this? Android or iPhone?
Speaker 4: Andrew it?
Speaker 2: Okay? And so what happened? Who logged into this new
Speaker 2: phone for you?
Speaker 13: I called the company and I want they did work
Speaker 13: through with me?
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, it sounds like you so, and you're saying
Speaker 1: that the account on this phone is an old account
Speaker 1: that you used to use and you no longer use.
Speaker 13: Three years ago. I never did really use that did
Speaker 13: establish it though, but you.
Speaker 1: Never really used it, and you want to go back
Speaker 1: to the other account.
Speaker 4: Okay, I want.
Speaker 13: I wanted to count that I've been using for the
Speaker 13: last two years, got it?
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 1: So, uh in Google, if you go on your new phone, okay,
Speaker 1: now do you have the Do you have the information
Speaker 1: for this account that you want to use?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 13: Okay? And that then I run into the problem with
Speaker 13: the second authentication, that's the phone number have to use.
Speaker 13: I do have a password and I do have a
Speaker 13: screen name. But but some kind of way when the
Speaker 13: count was stayed up, I stayed up with a second authentication,
Speaker 13: but I no longer have that phone two years ago.
Speaker 13: And the second authentication is phone number of verification.
Speaker 2: And you don't have the phone.
Speaker 1: You don't so it's trying to send a two factor
Speaker 1: authentication to a device that you no longer have or
Speaker 1: a phone number you don't have.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, okay, okay, So what you need to do
Speaker 2: is go through Google.
Speaker 1: Account recovery and this may take some time because they're
Speaker 1: gonna have to verify you. So uh if you go,
Speaker 1: let's see here, So you've got to go. Gosh, you're
Speaker 1: gonna have some trouble with this, but you're it's it's
Speaker 1: gonna take some time.
Speaker 2: But basically you want to go.
Speaker 1: Uh, there's a link if you Google recover Google account, uh,
Speaker 1: and it will bring you to a help page on
Speaker 1: Google Support dot Google dot com.
Speaker 2: And I would give.
Speaker 1: You, uh the the web address is accounts dot Google
Speaker 1: dot com slash sign in slash recovery.
Speaker 2: Okay have you done this before? Have you done? Have
Speaker 2: you tried this yet? Okay?
Speaker 13: Count the web page and I learned information about the
Speaker 13: second authentications, but uh, when it told me, when it
Speaker 13: told me to go there, UH didn't ask me for
Speaker 13: password to get into the sign athentication where I could change.
Speaker 1: It, right, Okay, do you have do you Okay? So
Speaker 1: basically you have to do what's called an account recovery.
Speaker 1: You have to go to this account recovery page.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: This is not the standard sign in page that Google has.
Speaker 1: So the standard signing page is just going to say, hey,
Speaker 1: we need you to do this, and then it's going
Speaker 1: to say forget your password or you can't access it,
Speaker 1: and it's going to take you through some steps. This
Speaker 1: is a special place built just to get you to
Speaker 1: recover your account. So you go to this accounts dot
Speaker 1: Google dot com slash sign in, slash recovery, and you
Speaker 1: want to answer as many of the questions as you can.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: What you want to do is use a computer or
Speaker 1: a tablet where you might have signed in before it
Speaker 1: sounds like you can't do that, or a browser that
Speaker 1: you've signed in, or a location where you've previously signed in.
Speaker 1: What Google's looking for are clues that this is actually.
Speaker 2: You trying to do this.
Speaker 1: It may ask you for an old password, it may
Speaker 1: ask you for security questions, it may ask you to
Speaker 1: put in an email address that you've used. But that's
Speaker 1: what you want to do, and you want to answer
Speaker 1: as many of those questions as possible, and that's going
Speaker 1: to kick you through the process and hopefully recover this account.
Speaker 1: That is the best chance you have at getting this
Speaker 1: account back. The bigger advice I have if you're listening
Speaker 1: and are trying to, you know, get into your old
Speaker 1: accounts is you have to. There's things called a backup
Speaker 1: one time codes, and so when you set up two
Speaker 1: factor authentication on any account, they give you a list
Speaker 1: of like ten different unique codes that can always be
Speaker 1: used to access your account in the future. Keep those
Speaker 1: verification codes safe because those will work no matter what,
Speaker 1: even if you don't have access to your device, even
Speaker 1: if you don't have access to your email, those will
Speaker 1: always work because the idea is that only you have those.
Speaker 1: But Google does have a process for this, Brian, It's
Speaker 1: going to take a little bit of time, but again
Speaker 1: you got to go to that website to help figure
Speaker 1: it out. Accounts dot Google, dot Com, slash sign in,
Speaker 1: slash recovery. Make sure you are trying to do this
Speaker 1: from a place that you have signed in or a
Speaker 1: Wi Fi network that you have signed in before from
Speaker 1: and hopefully you should be able to get that two
Speaker 1: factor I like that you enabled the two factor authentication,
Speaker 1: but the fact that you can't sign in definitely is
Speaker 1: a problem. And by the way, on your Android phone,
Speaker 1: once you get this information figured out out, you can
Speaker 1: go into the settings. You tap Google and then you
Speaker 1: tap your account. It says manage your Google account or sorry,
Speaker 1: it says your your name. You tap your name and
Speaker 1: it says add another account, and you can tap that
Speaker 1: to add a secondary account to your phone. Once you
Speaker 1: add that secondary account to your Google phone, you can
Speaker 1: go back and delete the old account. Good question, Brian.
Speaker 1: Hopefully you get logged back in. Please keep me up
Speaker 1: to date on if that happens. Coming up more of
Speaker 1: your calls at Triple eight rich one oh one. That's
Speaker 1: eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one
Speaker 1: zero one. I'm gonna tell you which music service is
Speaker 1: raising prices?
Speaker 2: Coming up right here.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging
Speaker 1: out talking technology with you at Triple eight rich one
Speaker 1: O one eight eight eight seven four to two, four
Speaker 1: to one zero one. Email is at rich on tech
Speaker 1: dot tv. Hit the contact button and a lot of
Speaker 1: you like to email. So we've got producer Adam with
Speaker 1: one of the questions that you've emailed in Adam.
Speaker 14: Yeah, Rich, I got a question here from Michael. Michael.
Speaker 14: He says, I have a question regarding Wi Fi. What
Speaker 14: is the best way to get Wi Fi for my
Speaker 14: mother who is a senior at her residence. Besides the
Speaker 14: cable companies? Are there any government programs? So, Rich, how
Speaker 14: are you going to help Michael out with that good question?
Speaker 2: Let's see.
Speaker 1: So okay, okay, I thought he said she was at
Speaker 1: a senior residence, but it's just at her residence, so
Speaker 1: that okay. I mean, look, you don't have to necessarily
Speaker 1: go through the cable companies. That's kind of the traditional way.
Speaker 1: But there are some companies that are now offering wireless
Speaker 1: internet and this is all because of the new five
Speaker 1: G networks, even though they're offering them on a combination
Speaker 1: of five G and LTE. So one of them is
Speaker 1: team O Home Internet and this is put out by
Speaker 1: T Mobile. So you've heard of T Mobile, the wireless company.
Speaker 1: They have a box that you can install in your house.
Speaker 1: And when I say install, really that just means you
Speaker 1: literally plug this in to the wall and it pulls
Speaker 1: in a cellular signal. So it pulls Internet from the
Speaker 1: sky from the cellular system, and then it re sends
Speaker 1: it out as Wi Fi. So imagine it's basically the
Speaker 1: same box you've had for years underneath your TV, except
Speaker 1: there's no cable going into it from the ground.
Speaker 2: It's just wireless.
Speaker 1: It's pulling a cellular signal and then rebroadcasting that as
Speaker 1: Wi Fi. And this is best if you have a
Speaker 1: solid five G signal at your mom's house. And it's
Speaker 1: very inexpensive if you're doing auto pay. Wow, they just
Speaker 1: raise the price. You used to be twenty five Now
Speaker 1: it's thirty bucks a month. So you can check availability.
Speaker 1: If you go to t Mobile Home Internet, you can
Speaker 1: check availability there. I've not tested this one because it
Speaker 1: wasn't available at my home, but Verizon also has one,
Speaker 1: so Verizon Home Internet and this is five G now,
Speaker 1: their plans start at twenty five dollars a month.
Speaker 2: I don't know if that's if you have.
Speaker 1: Verizon for your cellular signal, but that is the same thing,
Speaker 1: except it's through Verizon. I did test this, and I
Speaker 1: tried this box out. It's very easy to plug it in.
Speaker 1: It puts out the Wi Fi signal and it's pretty good.
Speaker 1: So again, Verizon Home Internet and T Mobile Home Internet.
Speaker 1: Don't think AT and T has jumped on that yet.
Speaker 1: Now the second part of your question, are there any
Speaker 1: government programs with these two services? You could check out
Speaker 1: something called the Affordable Connectivity Program. This is an FCC
Speaker 1: benefit program. It gives a discount of up to thirty
Speaker 1: dollars a month towards Internet service for eligible households. What's
Speaker 1: an eligible household? Well, they have to be two hundred
Speaker 1: percent or below federal povert guidelines. There's also a bunch
Speaker 1: of criteria. Two of them are if they are on
Speaker 1: SNAP or Medicaid. So I'm not sure if mom qualifies
Speaker 1: for that, But Michael, those are a couple of things
Speaker 1: to look into and you can see if those work
Speaker 1: real quick before we go to break here. Amazon Music
Speaker 1: Unlimited the latest to raise prices. Prime members are now
Speaker 1: going to be paying ten dollars a month instead of nine.
Speaker 1: The family plan goes up from sixteen to seventeen dollars
Speaker 1: a month, and the annual prices where you can really
Speaker 1: save some money, those also went up as well. If
Speaker 1: you're a new customer, you're going to be paying the
Speaker 1: higher price. Now existing customers you'll probably see this on
Speaker 1: your next bill that will start on September nineteenth. So
Speaker 1: don't be surprised if your Amazon Music Unlimited subscription price
Speaker 1: goes up. All of these streaming services have been raising prices.
Speaker 1: I know Amazon really wants it to hold out, but
Speaker 1: pretty much at this point, every streaming service has raised
Speaker 1: prices in the past two years. All right, more of
Speaker 1: your calls coming up now at triple eight Rich one
Speaker 1: oh one.
Speaker 2: But first we're going to talk to Ben Shown of
Speaker 2: nine to five Google about.
Speaker 1: ADT self Set Up Security system.
Speaker 2: You are listening to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here talking
Speaker 1: technology with you. On the line is Ben Shown, senior
Speaker 1: editor at nine to five Google. Ben, thanks so much
Speaker 1: for joining me.
Speaker 7: Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1: All right, so let's talk about your review of the
Speaker 1: ADT self set Up Security System. This is a departure
Speaker 1: from ADT, which we typically think of as having really
Speaker 1: super long contracts, professional installation. What is this system all about?
Speaker 15: Yeah, so self setup is what the name implies. You
Speaker 15: get the delivery to your house comes in a box.
Speaker 15: You can set everything up through an app. You can
Speaker 15: put it all in yourself honestly, it doesn't take that long.
Speaker 15: If you just have a few sensors and stuff, it
Speaker 15: might take half an hour. It's just a quick and
Speaker 15: easy setup, and really it's like a do it yourself
Speaker 15: kind of approach.
Speaker 1: And this is competing against something like Ring, but it
Speaker 1: also replaces what Google used to have for their own
Speaker 1: Nest Secure.
Speaker 15: Yeah, so it's similar to Rings simply save all of
Speaker 15: those But in terms of what Google had, they had
Speaker 15: something called Nest Secure.
Speaker 7: It launched several years ago.
Speaker 15: It was a standalone security system that was kind of
Speaker 15: designed to self monitor, so you could do everything yourself.
Speaker 15: It didn't have to be monitored by somebody, but you
Speaker 15: could get monitoring for monthly fee. Google discontinued it after
Speaker 15: a few years of not really doing anything with it,
Speaker 15: and just I think next year it's going to shut down.
Speaker 15: It won't be accessible through.
Speaker 7: The app anymore.
Speaker 15: It really won't be working anymore, which is a shame,
Speaker 15: and it kind of left a lot of people out
Speaker 15: to dry. But Google gave out discounts with ADT because
Speaker 15: they are heavily invested in this system.
Speaker 7: With ADT, it's a.
Speaker 15: Tightly integrated system and the point is for it to
Speaker 15: be a replacement because Google is not making their own.
Speaker 1: Explain the hardware is this hardware ADT hardware, is it
Speaker 1: Google hardware? Is it a combination? And what types of
Speaker 1: sensors and cameras can you get with the system.
Speaker 15: Yeah, so it is a combination of the two. The
Speaker 15: security hardware is primarily ADT. You have a hub from
Speaker 15: ADT that is the center of every setup, and then
Speaker 15: you have sensors which can be door and windows sensors,
Speaker 15: motion sensors. I think they have a fire alarm, but
Speaker 15: they also have just a bunch of different security and
Speaker 15: smart home sensors. Those are all made by ADT and
Speaker 15: they're all controlled by ADT's app. The Google side of
Speaker 15: it is your cameras, your doorbell, all of that will
Speaker 15: be provided by Google and everything comes together in Adyt's app.
Speaker 15: But you also of course have Google stuff in Google's app.
Speaker 15: But yeah, the two integrate together. And the big appeal
Speaker 15: really of that is that we if the ADT side
Speaker 15: of it, you can have your cameras from Google monitored
Speaker 15: by ADT professionals. So you sign up through ADT and
Speaker 15: then you get the ability for ADT people to keep
Speaker 15: an eye on your cameras use them for verification. If
Speaker 15: the system goes off, they will look at your feed
Speaker 15: and they will be able to say, oh, is this
Speaker 15: a false alarm? Oh do we need to send the police,
Speaker 15: Oh do we need to send fire.
Speaker 1: So there's an element of professional monitoring here in addition
Speaker 1: to the kind of app alerts and things exactly.
Speaker 15: Yeah, you have the option to do it completely on
Speaker 15: your own for no costs. But if you want monitoring,
Speaker 15: you can pay twenty five dollars for ADT's monitoring just
Speaker 15: of alarms, and then you can pay an extra fee
Speaker 15: on top of that, depending on how much storage you
Speaker 15: want for them to.
Speaker 7: Be able to tap into your Google feed.
Speaker 1: And if you didn't want ADT, if you just wanted
Speaker 1: to self host this sort of say, can you do
Speaker 1: this without paying anything month?
Speaker 15: Yeah, So if you want to use it completely on
Speaker 15: your own, kind of like Nest Secure was, you can
Speaker 15: use it like that. You'll end up getting monitoring for
Speaker 15: like the first month or so as a free trial,
Speaker 15: but after that you don't have to pay anything. You
Speaker 15: just pay for the cost of the hardware, which depends
Speaker 15: on the package you buy.
Speaker 1: So how was it to install this yourself?
Speaker 15: It was really easy. It takes, you know, like I said,
Speaker 15: about a half an hour or so. It's all really
Speaker 15: well put through the app. You'll set up the hub
Speaker 15: wherever you want it, and then you'll set up each sensor.
Speaker 15: And the cool thing especially is they will when you
Speaker 15: buy the system. When it comes you sign into your account,
Speaker 15: it will show everything you bought already in the app.
Speaker 7: You just have to pair it.
Speaker 1: So why do you think Google is doing this? Why
Speaker 1: do you think they're partnering with ADT? I mean it's
Speaker 1: a pretty big company. Obviously, I get the name recognition,
Speaker 1: but it seems like when I think of ADT, I
Speaker 1: think of big, long contract, very expensive. Maybe they come
Speaker 1: to your house to install it, which is nice. I
Speaker 1: mean professional installation always nice. But this is kind of
Speaker 1: like a one to eighty from everything they've done in
Speaker 1: the past.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I think it's kind of a benefit for everybody.
Speaker 15: I think ADT realizes that a lot of people don't
Speaker 15: want those long contracts, they don't want professional installation and
Speaker 15: you know, really expensive hardware. They sometimes they just want
Speaker 15: to know when their door has been tripped or something
Speaker 15: like that, and this makes that way more affordable and
Speaker 15: way easier to do uh. And I think Google's benefit
Speaker 15: for it is it puts Nest hardware in front of
Speaker 15: a lot more people because ADT, like you said, is
Speaker 15: a really recognizable brand and has a lot of people
Speaker 15: already in it's ecosystem.
Speaker 1: What about the track record of Google? We always speak
Speaker 1: about this. You know, Google has a history of you know,
Speaker 1: coming out with the product, supporting it for a while,
Speaker 1: and then kind of moving on or changing gears. Do
Speaker 1: you see that happening with this.
Speaker 7: That is a totally valid concern.
Speaker 15: I think the things that make it a.
Speaker 7: Little easier to trust in is won the eighty T name.
Speaker 15: Because ADT supports their products for years and years and years.
Speaker 15: You can replace things over time. And also Google actually
Speaker 15: does have a really good track record with supporting most
Speaker 15: Nest products. For instance, the nestcam that was released back
Speaker 15: in twenty fifteen, like a long time ago at this point,
Speaker 15: is still working. It's still getting updates today, and it
Speaker 15: actually will be poorted pretty soon into the Google Home app,
Speaker 15: so it'll work the same way as the modern mess cameras.
Speaker 1: I'm looking at some of the pricing on the ADT website,
Speaker 1: and if you start the kind of the cheapest package
Speaker 1: starts about one hundred and seventy five dollars with monitoring
Speaker 1: at twenty five. Then you've got this starter package which
Speaker 1: is four hundred and eight dollars plus thirty five dollars
Speaker 1: a month for monitoring, which I'm guessing that's the camera,
Speaker 1: and then a premium package for about five hundred dollars
Speaker 1: and that includes things like motion sensors, door and windows sensors,
Speaker 1: a Google Nest Hub, a Google Nest doorbell, a yard sign.
Speaker 1: Are people kind of comfortable with this idea of the
Speaker 1: DIY security system?
Speaker 12: Yeah?
Speaker 15: I think for some people doing it professionally will matter,
Speaker 15: will be important because you know it's securing your home,
Speaker 15: so it is an important thing. I think the appeal
Speaker 15: of this, like I said, is you know you're not
Speaker 15: signing a contract. It's something you can do yourself, which
Speaker 15: you know a lot of people are looking for that,
Speaker 15: and it's and it's just more affordable because you can
Speaker 15: do all of this really at a discount, Like you
Speaker 15: can create your setup the way you want it because
Speaker 15: the packages, yes start at you know, one hundred and
Speaker 15: seventy dollars, but you can choose exactly how many censors
Speaker 15: you want exactly how many the yard sign the stickers.
Speaker 7: All of that. It is completely up to you and
Speaker 7: you can customize it however you want.
Speaker 1: So for the money, who do you like best? Do
Speaker 1: you like ring? Do you like what Google's doing with
Speaker 1: ADT or simply Safe or is there another solution out
Speaker 1: there that you think is best.
Speaker 15: Actually I have trouble coming up with the idea of
Speaker 15: some ideal DIY security system.
Speaker 7: I don't think there is anything that's ideal.
Speaker 15: I really do like ADP is set up, though, because
Speaker 15: you have the option to just use it on its own.
Speaker 15: I was using a simply Safe system for a while,
Speaker 15: and really a lot of the good features are locked
Speaker 15: behind the subscription. But with this system for ADT, the
Speaker 15: only thing that you're paying for that monthly subscription is
Speaker 15: the monitoring. Everything else, the automations and the app to
Speaker 15: tie in with Google Nest, everything is still working even
Speaker 15: if you don't pay for it.
Speaker 1: Any other things that you found in the course of
Speaker 1: your review that you want to mention that you think
Speaker 1: people should know about, I think.
Speaker 15: The only thing you should know about is that the
Speaker 15: hub the keypad is not the most user friendly interface
Speaker 15: in the world.
Speaker 7: So it's going to be a little tricky when you
Speaker 7: have a guest come over.
Speaker 1: Ah, okay, that's actually one of the few times that
Speaker 1: my alarm system was tripped, was a house guest and
Speaker 1: they weren't able to turn off the alarm quickly enough.
Speaker 1: It wasn't this system, but I guess it can happen
Speaker 1: with any of them. So if you're not too familiar
Speaker 1: with that process, All right, Ben, how can folks find
Speaker 1: you online?
Speaker 7: Oh? You can find me every day at nine to
Speaker 7: five Google dot com.
Speaker 15: And I'm also on Twitter, threads, Instagram, everything else at Nexus.
Speaker 1: Ben ben Shone, Senior editor at nine to five Google.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for joining me today.
Speaker 7: Thanks for having me more rich.
Speaker 1: On Tech head in your way. If you have a
Speaker 1: question about technology, give me a call. It's triple eight
Speaker 1: Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four
Speaker 1: to two or one zero one. Welcome back to rich
Speaker 1: on Tech. Rich Demiro here talking technology with you. What
Speaker 1: a great show it's been so far, but there's still more.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: So there is a feature on my website richon Tech
Speaker 1: dot tv where you are able to leave me a voicemail.
Speaker 1: And uh, you've done that, so Adam, can we play
Speaker 1: one of these voicemails.
Speaker 16: What is a good free computer cleaner?
Speaker 2: Oh, good question. A couple of them.
Speaker 1: This was actually emailed to me several years ago by
Speaker 1: someone who does this on a daily basis, cleans out computers.
Speaker 1: And these are the programs that they recommended that I
Speaker 1: should recommend. So one of them is called C Cleaner,
Speaker 1: and this is they say the world's most popular PC cleaner.
Speaker 2: And there's a free version.
Speaker 1: Obviously there's a it's a freemium model, like everything works
Speaker 1: on a freemium model. You can get it for free,
Speaker 1: but of course they would like you to pay to
Speaker 1: get more features. But the free version will do the
Speaker 1: basics and try to get some of these things off
Speaker 1: your computer and cleaned up. So C Cleaner is number one.
Speaker 1: Then you've got this product called super Anti Spyware dot
Speaker 1: Com and that's if you've got some spyware on your computer,
Speaker 1: you can check to see if you've got things is
Speaker 1: going on there. And so again that's super Antispyware dot Com.
Speaker 1: And finally from malware bytes, they've got ADW Cleaner. I
Speaker 1: believe this was its own program, but malware bytes purchase them,
Speaker 1: and malware Bytes I also recommend for kind of a
Speaker 1: cleaning program too. They've got their you know, if you
Speaker 1: just download malware bytes, that's kind of the same as
Speaker 1: super anti spyware. So those are three good things to
Speaker 1: get you started that should help you clean up your computer.
Speaker 1: The other thing you can do just on your own
Speaker 1: is go into your list of programs and uninstall any
Speaker 1: program that you don't recognize or use anymore. Restart your
Speaker 1: computer after that same thing goes for your extensions on Chrome.
Speaker 1: If you look at your Chrome toolbar on your web
Speaker 1: browser or Edge, there should be a little puzzle piece.
Speaker 1: You tap that it's extensions, scroll down to where it
Speaker 1: says manage extensions and remove the ones that you no
Speaker 1: longer use, know or recognize. Good questions for leaving the voicemail?
Speaker 1: Do we have another one?
Speaker 16: Adam looking for a website to cancel background noises to
Speaker 16: hear a conversation in a video.
Speaker 1: I love how meta this question is because there are
Speaker 1: background conversations in his.
Speaker 2: Question.
Speaker 1: So was that a joke? I don't think so, that's
Speaker 1: I love that, Okay. I will tell you this is
Speaker 1: the best kept secret in the world, and you're gonna
Speaker 1: love this. It's called Is there even a name? For
Speaker 1: this thing I don't even know. It's called Adobe Adobe
Speaker 1: Enhance and it's a free tool. It removes noise from
Speaker 1: voice recordings with speech enhancement. And I'm not kidding. This
Speaker 1: thing is absolutely fantastic. You can upload audio files. You
Speaker 1: get one hour a day duration, five hundred megabytes maximum
Speaker 1: size and three hours total daily limit. You drag and
Speaker 1: drop and it will work its magic. It uses AI
Speaker 1: or whatever it does, and it is quite incredible to
Speaker 1: find it. You go to podcast dot Adobe dot com
Speaker 1: slash enhance and you can find it there and.
Speaker 2: It is just quite incredible.
Speaker 1: So that will remove the background information and it works
Speaker 1: really really well. All right, I've got a couple more questions.
Speaker 1: Did I email you another question?
Speaker 7: Or no?
Speaker 2: I don't think I did? Did I you did?
Speaker 7: Oh?
Speaker 2: I did?
Speaker 12: Oh?
Speaker 1: Okay, let's hear another. We get so many questions via email, Adam,
Speaker 1: go ahead.
Speaker 14: We have an email here from Jacqueline.
Speaker 2: What up?
Speaker 14: Jacqueline? Jacqueline says, is there a safe way to get
Speaker 14: all my years of photos safely off of my phone
Speaker 14: and iPad? I enjoy your TV tips. Thanks so rich.
Speaker 14: Jacqueline has to destroy some evidence, I guess can you
Speaker 14: help her?
Speaker 2: Let's see.
Speaker 1: Okay, I just got a new gadget, so this is
Speaker 1: a this is a very This might be the all
Speaker 1: time most popular question I've ever gotten in my history
Speaker 1: of reporting on technology.
Speaker 2: So basically, you see these ads.
Speaker 1: On late night TV and on the web for these
Speaker 1: little USB drives you can plug into your phone. I
Speaker 1: don't like any of those except for a couple. PNY
Speaker 1: just came out with a new one. You might recognize PNY.
Speaker 1: They make a lot of great memory type products. This
Speaker 1: is called the Duo link iOS USB three point two
Speaker 1: dual flash drive. Say that three times fast. It comes
Speaker 1: in sixty four one or two hundred and fifty six
Speaker 1: gigabyte variants, and you plug this into the bottom of
Speaker 1: your phone and you can transfer your photos from your
Speaker 1: phone to this drive. So on one side of this
Speaker 1: drive is a little lightning port, which is what goes
Speaker 1: into the bottom of the iPhone currently that's set to
Speaker 1: switch with the iPhone fifteen to USBC. And then the
Speaker 1: other side plugs into your computer, so you can basically
Speaker 1: free up the space or back up your photos by
Speaker 1: play lugging this into.
Speaker 2: Your iPhone.
Speaker 1: Now, remember I do like you to have your photos
Speaker 1: in several places, so don't just put it on this
Speaker 1: drive and have that as your only place. You should
Speaker 1: also back these up to the cloud. If you're an
Speaker 1: Amazon Prime member, you can use Amazon Photos for free
Speaker 1: unlimited to upload.
Speaker 2: As long as you keep paying for Amazon Prime.
Speaker 1: Again, that's called the duo link iOS USB three point
Speaker 1: two dual flash drive. That's what I'd recommend to get
Speaker 1: those off your phone. Sand Disc also makes something similar.
Speaker 1: I'll put this all on my website at richontech dot TV.
Speaker 1: All right, let's get to the feedback. Now, these are
Speaker 1: things that you have emailed me.
Speaker 2: Let's see.
Speaker 1: Aaron says, thank you for mentioning about the computer and
Speaker 1: malware advertisement scam for tech support. As I mentioned two
Speaker 1: weeks ago, this happened to me. Thank you for your
Speaker 1: advice on helping me fix the problem. Aaron, That's why
Speaker 1: I mentioned this stuff because you never know when it's
Speaker 1: going to happen to me. Page says, I'm glad you
Speaker 1: decided to answer the email about how to load a
Speaker 1: file onto a flash drive. Please don't assume everyone's a techie.
Speaker 1: Sometimes your answers to people get too technical when the
Speaker 1: person just needs the basics. Oh wow, Okay, that was
Speaker 1: like a kind of like a nice like a compliment,
Speaker 1: but also like a don't do that again. I listen
Speaker 1: every week. I'm glad you took over the show. Thanks Page,
Speaker 1: Thank you Paige for the reminder. No not everyone's a techee.
Speaker 1: I definitely agree with that. Let's see. Jim says, hey, Rich,
Speaker 1: you can also turn off Bluetooth completely by asking Siri
Speaker 1: to turn off Bluetooth. That's the same as going into
Speaker 1: settings and turning it off.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Jim.
Speaker 1: I would have to test that, but yes, if it
Speaker 1: turns it off in the settings, that would be great.
Speaker 1: That's one way to do it for sure. You can
Speaker 1: also ask Siri to restart your phone. That's very handy.
Speaker 1: Angela's commenting on the California driver's license. She says, I
Speaker 1: would like it if I could put it in my phone.
Speaker 1: The less stuff in my physical wallet, the better. One
Speaker 1: hundred percent agree, Angela. I can't wait to have everything digital.
Speaker 1: I literally carry no keys. I will tell you that
Speaker 1: it's amazing. So the only thing I carry that's that's
Speaker 1: physical is a little bit of cash sometimes, you know,
Speaker 1: don't just sometimes like a dollar, a credit card and
Speaker 1: a debit card and then my driver's license, and Jim says,
Speaker 1: outstanding show today. Thank you, Be safe and stay dry
Speaker 1: during the hurricane. We'll leave it there. If you can
Speaker 1: believe it. That's going to do it for this episode
Speaker 1: of the show. You can find links to everything I
Speaker 1: mentioned on my website. Just go to rich on tech
Speaker 1: dot tv. This is show number thirty three. Next week
Speaker 1: we're going to talk to a security expert about the
Speaker 1: most important things you should know about AI and hacking.
Speaker 1: Plus we'll get an update on where we are with
Speaker 1: evs and the progress we're making on batteries. My name
Speaker 1: is Rich Dmiro. You can find me on social media.
Speaker 1: I am at rich on tech. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for listening. There are so many ways you can spend
Speaker 1: your time. I do appreciate you spending it right here
Speaker 1: with me. Thanks to everyone who makes this possible, including
Speaker 1: producer Adam there in the booth today. My name is
Speaker 1: Rich DeMuro. I will talk to you real soon. Please
Speaker 1: stay safe out there. Thanks for listening.