Speaker 1: Everything old is new again. At Airbnb, Apple and Google
Speaker 1: team up to make air tags less stalky. Is that
Speaker 1: a word? I don't know, but we're going with it.
Speaker 1: And how to download your entire Netflix history if you
Speaker 1: dare plus your tech questions answered? What's going on? I'm
Speaker 1: Rich Demiro and this is Rich on Tech, the show
Speaker 1: where I talk about the tech stuff I think you
Speaker 1: should know about. It's also the place where I answer
Speaker 1: your questions about technology. I'm the tech reporter at KTLA
Speaker 1: Channel five in Los Angeles. Welcome to the show. Show
Speaker 1: number eighteen. Phone lines are open at Triple eight Rich
Speaker 1: one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to
Speaker 1: two four one zero one. Give me a call. If
Speaker 1: you have a question about technology, you can also email me.
Speaker 1: Email is now open. Send the email to hello at
Speaker 1: richontech dot tv. So I'm getting a good number of
Speaker 1: you around town saying that you're listening to the show,
Speaker 1: that you like the show. I mean, friends and family
Speaker 1: tell me that. But you know, I discount that because
Speaker 1: they sort of have to say that. But when I
Speaker 1: hear it from you, it means a lot because you
Speaker 1: don't have to and it's an extra step.
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 1: You see me on TV. You know what I've decided.
Speaker 1: You see me on TV, you get to know me
Speaker 1: here because TV is short, this is long, and it
Speaker 1: just gives me a little bit more time to kind
Speaker 1: of tell you about my thoughts. And that's kind of
Speaker 1: the form out of this show. It's me telling you
Speaker 1: what I think you should know. But it's also your
Speaker 1: show because you get to call in and ask me questions.
Speaker 1: And these questions don't have to be like how do
Speaker 1: I get my printer driver to work? I mean, you
Speaker 1: know you can call and ask that, but you know,
Speaker 1: maybe you're deciding between two security cameras, maybe you're trying
Speaker 1: to find an app that does something special, maybe you're
Speaker 1: just stumped on something that you're trying to figure out,
Speaker 1: or maybe it's more, you know, a longer ended question
Speaker 1: and like an open ended question like the effect of
Speaker 1: AI on your job or something like that. So give
Speaker 1: me a call Triple eight Rich one oh one. That's
Speaker 1: eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: I'll also put the phone number up on the website
Speaker 1: if you want to go to the website. It is
Speaker 1: Rich on tech dot TV. So in case you can't
Speaker 1: remember the phone number right now there it is. So
Speaker 1: this week I got to tell you a story because
Speaker 1: this was kind of funny. This happened to me yesterday.
Speaker 1: And I'm a big fan of that show, Curb Your Enthusiasm,
Speaker 1: Like I just watched like every one of those episodes,
Speaker 1: and just that sense of humor, and if you've watched it,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a very particular sense of humor. That's
Speaker 1: my sense of humor. Larry David always getting into trouble
Speaker 1: and you know, he's the guy behind Seinfeld, and so
Speaker 1: it's a very specific type of humor where it's just
Speaker 1: kind of a observation on life and the little weird,
Speaker 1: funny things that happen to you sometimes and a lot
Speaker 1: of times, you know, these things happen and it's kind
Speaker 1: of like just you and you're just you and your
Speaker 1: brain kind of going over them. And so I was
Speaker 1: at the grocery store yesterday, and of course I'm at
Speaker 1: the high tech grocery store. I'm at the Amazon Fresh,
Speaker 1: which is a grocery store that is fully automated. So
Speaker 1: you walk in and there's a bunch of cameras on
Speaker 1: the ceiling and they all figure out what you take,
Speaker 1: and then you just walk right out with the stuff
Speaker 1: that you want and it charges your card. It's all
Speaker 1: pretty high tech. It's pretty amazing. Who knows how long
Speaker 1: it'll be around. I know that Amazon has a history
Speaker 1: of starting things and then just getting rid of them,
Speaker 1: but I'm loving it while it's here because it's literally
Speaker 1: the fastest way that you can go into the grocery store,
Speaker 1: grab what you need, and get out. The only thing
Speaker 1: I don't like is you never know how much you're
Speaker 1: spending until you get the receipt about an hour later.
Speaker 1: It's not instance. You don't have any sort of like
Speaker 1: running total of what you're getting. That's the only downside.
Speaker 1: You know, if you ever at the cashier and you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: I just spent a lot, maybe i'll put that back. Yahble,
Speaker 1: I'll put that carton of eggs back. I don't know
Speaker 1: if that would save you bunch. But anyway, so I'm
Speaker 1: in the store, and we've used this store a bunch
Speaker 1: of times, so I knew that one time. You always
Speaker 1: have to check to see your receipt, and they send
Speaker 1: you an automated receipt that says, here's all the items
Speaker 1: that you picked up, and here's how much we're charging
Speaker 1: you for them, and ninety nine percent of the time.
Speaker 1: I will tell you, I am quite impressed with this technology.
Speaker 1: They somehow figure out when you pick up a stick
Speaker 1: of butter, the exact brand and how many you took.
Speaker 1: Even if you take this thing off the shelf, look
Speaker 1: at it and put it back, somehow the computers figure
Speaker 1: that out. Now, when I talk to the people at Amazon,
Speaker 1: they said that it's obviously there's some secret sauce going
Speaker 1: on there, but you are almost like a human cart,
Speaker 1: like if you were shopping online adding things to a cart.
Speaker 1: You are the car. So when you go into that store,
Speaker 1: even if you go in with your two kids, you
Speaker 1: all become the same car. And so if they pick
Speaker 1: something off off the shelves, it will register that to you.
Speaker 1: So it's it's pretty impressive what they've done. Anyway, I
Speaker 1: tell you this because if there's ever something that's a mistake,
Speaker 1: you can just go in on your phone and say
Speaker 1: I didn't grab that item, and they will just credit you.
Speaker 1: They'll give you a refund for that item. Well, one time,
Speaker 1: you know, you always go through your receipt. My wife
Speaker 1: went in and I said, hey, did you buy this?
Speaker 1: And it was kind of an odd item that we
Speaker 1: don't usually purchase. She goes, no, I actually took that
Speaker 1: off the shelf for someone else, and I said, wait what?
Speaker 1: And so she took it off the shelf that was
Speaker 1: up high and handed it to someone and we got
Speaker 1: charged for it because once it goes in your hand,
Speaker 1: it is linked to you the basket, even if you
Speaker 1: hand it to another person. I asked Amazon about that
Speaker 1: and they were like, huh, yeah, I guess that would happen.
Speaker 1: So I don't know if they fixed this problem. But
Speaker 1: yesterday I'm in the store and this kind old woman says,
Speaker 1: excuse me, can you reach up to that shelf and
Speaker 1: grab that salsa down for me? And I feel so
Speaker 1: bad even saying this, but I said, oh, ma'am, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: but I can't because I will get charged for that item.
Speaker 1: And she looked at me like I was like I
Speaker 1: was an alien, and she just like was like not
Speaker 1: understanding what I was saying. I was like, I'm so sorry,
Speaker 1: but like the way this store works, it's high tech.
Speaker 1: If I grab that item and hand it to you,
Speaker 1: I will pay for it. And she just didn't get it,
Speaker 1: and so I felt so bad and I probably, yes,
Speaker 1: I probably, looking back, could have eat the cost of
Speaker 1: the three dollars saucea that I was going to pull
Speaker 1: down from the shelf for her. But it was the
Speaker 1: principle of the technology. And so I'm sitting there and
Speaker 1: I'm like, this is such a Larry David moment. This
Speaker 1: is such a curb your enthusiasm moment where this woman
Speaker 1: I hope she doesn't recognize me from TV because she
Speaker 1: will have a story to tell forever that this friendly
Speaker 1: TV guy would not grab the thing off the shelf.
Speaker 1: So what I did. I actually went over to an
Speaker 1: Amazon associate and I said, excuse me, can you please
Speaker 1: grab this thing off the shelf for her? Because if
Speaker 1: I do it, I know I'm going to get charged.
Speaker 1: If you do it, I don't know what's going to happen,
Speaker 1: but it's better you than me. So moral of the
Speaker 1: story is, I hope Amazon fixes this technology, but it
Speaker 1: is the loophole in You know, my wife and I
Speaker 1: were discussing this later as we laughed about it that
Speaker 1: if you ever want something for free, just ask someone
Speaker 1: else to grab it for you that doesn't know. So
Speaker 1: if you're in an Amazon store, Amazon Fresh, that's automated
Speaker 1: and someone asks you, hey, can you grab that off
Speaker 1: the shell for me? Don't fall for the trap because
Speaker 1: I don't know if I was getting scammed or not. No,
Speaker 1: I'm just kidding. I wasn't getting scammed. But oh man,
Speaker 1: so I'm sorry. This is my formal this is my
Speaker 1: formal apology to you, ma'am that I did not mean
Speaker 1: to not take the thing off the shelf. But you know,
Speaker 1: this technology is still evolving. And I love the Amazon Store,
Speaker 1: but they need to figure that out because I will
Speaker 1: gladly take things off the shelf for people at any
Speaker 1: other store, just not the Amazon Fresh. Okay, I had
Speaker 1: to get that off my chest. Let's see what else
Speaker 1: this week. Couple of things. So, I saw the return
Speaker 1: of the Jedi movie, which is back in theaters. And
Speaker 1: I'm not one of these big like Star Wars folks.
Speaker 1: Like I know. I've got a lot of friends. I
Speaker 1: live in Los Angeles, I went to USC. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of Star Wars folks among me, right among my
Speaker 1: friend group. I'm not one of them, but I love
Speaker 1: the movies and I've seen them. But after watching this
Speaker 1: movie in the theater, I realize that I know nothing
Speaker 1: about Star Wars like I must have watched these things
Speaker 1: when I was a kid and forgot everything, and I'm
Speaker 1: back in So I saw Return of the Jedi they're
Speaker 1: currently doing like it on the big screen, because it
Speaker 1: was the whole like May the Fourth be with you
Speaker 1: the fortieth anniversary. And I just subscribe to that AMC thing,
Speaker 1: that a list where you get to see as many
Speaker 1: movies as you want. So I'm trying to get my
Speaker 1: money's worth for the twenty five bucks a month. I'm
Speaker 1: now paying to see movies that I don't see. And
Speaker 1: so I'm like, all right, fine, I've got a free
Speaker 1: Wednesday afternoon, let me go to the movies. So I go.
Speaker 1: I felt guilty it was after work, but you know,
Speaker 1: I'm going by myself whatever, and I go to the
Speaker 1: movie theater and it was great. I had such a
Speaker 1: great experience. It was so relaxing. But now that I
Speaker 1: saw this Return of the Jedi, which is out of
Speaker 1: order because that's like the third movie, I want to
Speaker 1: see them. Well, I know the Star Wars folks will
Speaker 1: tell me that was like the sixth movie, but really,
Speaker 1: to me, growing up with the original Star Wars, that's
Speaker 1: the third movie. So now I want to see the
Speaker 1: first twobe I'm like, should I wait for them to
Speaker 1: be in the theater? But I got to say number one,
Speaker 1: the movie totally held up like it was such a
Speaker 1: fantastic ride from start to finish. It looks so good
Speaker 1: on the big screen. I gotta say it was just fantastic.
Speaker 1: Couple other little things. Number one movies by yourself. I
Speaker 1: didn't know what to think of that because it's not
Speaker 1: something I typically do, And so I pulled folks on
Speaker 1: my Instagram and I said, would you go to a
Speaker 1: movie by yourself? And about seventy five percent of you said, absolutely,
Speaker 1: no problem. I love going to movies by myself. Or
Speaker 1: I would go to a movie by myself. Twenty five
Speaker 1: percent of you said no, I would not do that,
Speaker 1: and a lot of you dm me to say that
Speaker 1: your husbands do it, but you don't. So maybe there's
Speaker 1: sort of like a divide there between men and women
Speaker 1: with the whole going to the movies by yourself. For
Speaker 1: the record, there's only about four of us in the
Speaker 1: movie theater, by the way, which was awesome because it
Speaker 1: felt like a private movie showing. The other thing is
Speaker 1: that AMC now accepts tap to pay, So round of
Speaker 1: applause for AMC theaters finally getting with the you know,
Speaker 1: the year twenty twenty three or I should say, like,
Speaker 1: I don't know when did I cover a tap to pay?
Speaker 1: Probably like five, six, seven years ago. So anyway, I'm
Speaker 1: glad they're finally on board because it just makes life
Speaker 1: a lot easier. So I was able to do that,
Speaker 1: So if you haven't been to an AMC, they do that.
Speaker 1: And the other thing that people didn't know about because
Speaker 1: I posted this to the Instagram at rich On Tech
Speaker 1: as well, is there's a little secret movie bundle you
Speaker 1: can get with a drink and a soda for five
Speaker 1: bucks and it's called like the Cameo Combo, and it's
Speaker 1: only for folks that are part of the AMC like rewards.
Speaker 1: You don't have to pay for it, you just like
Speaker 1: maybe you do, I don't know, but if you're part
Speaker 1: of like the A list or the stubs whatever, you
Speaker 1: can ask for this. And it took the guy a
Speaker 1: little bit to like it was almost like a secret
Speaker 1: society thing where I'm like, do you do the cameo combo?
Speaker 1: He's like, what's that? I'm like, oh, you know, like
Speaker 1: the small drink the small popcorn. He's like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think we can do that. And it was like this
Speaker 1: weird thing where it was like a secret thing where
Speaker 1: I don't know. So anyway, if you're going to the movies,
Speaker 1: you go solo, cameo, combo. You'll see me there by
Speaker 1: the way, say hi, because I am now going to
Speaker 1: the movies as much as humanly possible. I liken it
Speaker 1: to going to the gym, except for the mind. It's relaxing,
Speaker 1: it's therapeutic, it's nice, and I don't care what setup
Speaker 1: you have at home, it does not beat the actual
Speaker 1: movie theater setup and that movie theater experience. So that
Speaker 1: was a lot of fun. All right, what's coming up
Speaker 1: on the show today? Where are my notes for what's
Speaker 1: coming up on the show. We've got so much. Number One,
Speaker 1: we've got let's see, I had this all written down
Speaker 1: and now, of course I can't find it. Coming up
Speaker 1: on the show, We've got a couple of great guests.
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk to the CEO of Farmers Fridge. So
Speaker 1: Farmers Fridge is in the airports. They do this refrigerator
Speaker 1: that has refrigerated salads that are healthy and fresh. So
Speaker 1: that's gonna be awesome. We're also gonna go to the Actxpo.
Speaker 1: This is where all of the future of clean fleet
Speaker 1: transportation is on display. It's so cool. I'm gonna take
Speaker 1: you there. Plus later in the show, so we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk to the founders of one of my favorite gadgets,
Speaker 1: the Aura Frame. This is a great gift for Mother's Day.
Speaker 1: So if you're thinking of trying to find something for
Speaker 1: that person that's tough to find a gift for, uh,
Speaker 1: you'd want to stay tuned for that. And of course,
Speaker 1: phone lines are open at Triple eight Rich one O
Speaker 1: one eight eight eight seven four to two four one
Speaker 1: zero one. You're listening to Rich on Tech. Coming up
Speaker 1: your calls. Plus, I'm gonna tell you why AI is
Speaker 1: becoming a problem not only in Hollywood but pretty much everywhere.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich
Speaker 1: on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you talking
Speaker 1: technology at Triple eight rich one oh one 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: I'm gonna be talking about the topics of the week
Speaker 1: in the tech world that I think you should know
Speaker 1: about and uh websites. Rich on tech dot TV, Robert
Speaker 1: kicks off this show in Mira, Mesa, California. Robert, you're
Speaker 1: on with Rich.
Speaker 3: Hi, Rich, thank you for taking my call. I have
Speaker 3: an uncle that I'm researching for. My uncle became blind
Speaker 3: in both eyes.
Speaker 1: Oh, sorry to hear that, really blind.
Speaker 3: And so what we were looking for my uncle was
Speaker 3: something that would scan a page, okay, and would read
Speaker 3: the print text on that page. I've investigated. I don't
Speaker 3: have a computer, so I usually have to go to
Speaker 3: the library or use a friend's computer. I've investigate. Actually
Speaker 3: ordered OrCam from Israel, but it had a lot of
Speaker 3: flaws and it really didn't work out for my own Plus,
Speaker 3: the battery would run low after about ten minutes. And
Speaker 3: then National Federation of the Blind developed an application that
Speaker 3: you could load onto an iPad or a smartphone. Sure,
Speaker 3: but they no longer support the application.
Speaker 1: Okay, So you're wanting an app that can read something
Speaker 1: off of a printed page. Is that what I'm understanding?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 1: Or do you want to throw a document there?
Speaker 3: And I mean he has a huge library of books,
Speaker 3: but unfortunately practically all the books they're not available in
Speaker 3: audio books are audio streaming, and he would like to
Speaker 3: be able to read those books understandable.
Speaker 1: How's he doing with this change in his life. It's
Speaker 1: a major change, isn't it.
Speaker 3: It's a major change. And the thing is is that
Speaker 3: he wants to be able to read again, or have
Speaker 3: a device read for him. Wondering if you've seen anything
Speaker 3: or you know, could suggest anything or perhaps point me
Speaker 3: in a direction to research.
Speaker 1: Sure, yeah, okay, So and this is your uncle, you said,
Speaker 1: So they have a smartphone, they have iPhone, Android.
Speaker 3: We can get him he doesn't have a smartphone, we
Speaker 3: can get him a smartphone or an Android, you know,
Speaker 3: or an iPad or you know, tablet whatever, something that
Speaker 3: would take a scan of the page.
Speaker 1: And then yeah, sure, okay, Well let me give you
Speaker 1: a couple options. So I think the number one thing
Speaker 1: is I would go with an iPhone because iPhone not
Speaker 1: only has some built in really really good built in
Speaker 1: accessibility features, so does Android, but I think iPhone really
Speaker 1: puts a lot of effort into these features. And yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so I would go with the iPhone. And I don't
Speaker 1: know if you need an iPad? Is there any level
Speaker 1: of visual can he see anything anymore?
Speaker 3: Or no?
Speaker 1: Okay? So then I don't really see the point of
Speaker 1: an iPad, because yeah, I mean the point of an iPad.
Speaker 1: It's like, it's such a big screen. Is there really
Speaker 1: a point to that if you can't see. So I
Speaker 1: wouldn't use that. I would just get a standard iPhone
Speaker 1: just kind of look and see what they've got, maybe
Speaker 1: an older model. You probably don't need one with the
Speaker 1: best camera, but a couple things. So there's a website
Speaker 1: called voice Dream, and so they seem to make a
Speaker 1: very popular app that does exactly what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: And it's a scanner app. Now I can tell it's
Speaker 1: a good one because they charge ten bucks right off
Speaker 1: the bat. So there's not even a free version of
Speaker 1: that app. So that's called voice Dream Scanner, and it's
Speaker 1: exactly what you're saying. You scan the page and it
Speaker 1: will read it back to you. Now, they also have
Speaker 1: a free version of that, which is a voice Dream
Speaker 1: app as well. So there's a free version, but that's
Speaker 1: one where you have to feed a page into it.
Speaker 1: So that's for something that you've already had that is scanned.
Speaker 1: And by the way, the iPhone has a scanner functionality
Speaker 1: on it. If you go into the files app you
Speaker 1: can actually scan documents. So if you want kind of
Speaker 1: a free workaround, you can get the free app from
Speaker 1: voice Stream and then you can just combine that with
Speaker 1: the scanner or the free app and scan the stuff
Speaker 1: in the other one is natural Reader Naturalreaders dot Com.
Speaker 1: They have a free app that is very very popular,
Speaker 1: and that one can read any text that's on that app,
Speaker 1: so you can copy and paste, or you can use
Speaker 1: something like a PDF or a document to put that
Speaker 1: in there as well. And then the other thing is
Speaker 1: called read Speaker. I don't have much experience with that one,
Speaker 1: but that's a text to speech that's more of a
Speaker 1: voice solution, So I don't think that that's going to
Speaker 1: be exactly what you need, but it's something to investigate.
Speaker 1: But those two things, so look up voice Stream and
Speaker 1: also naturalreaders dot com. I think you're going to find
Speaker 1: the solution you need. And thanks for calling in today, Robert,
Speaker 1: appreciate it all.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 1: Coming up next, we're going to go to the ace
Speaker 1: etxpo and learn about clean fleet transportation. You're listening to
Speaker 1: rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Recently
Speaker 1: I headed to Anaheim for the actxpo, a trade show
Speaker 1: focused on how commercial industries are trying to go green. First,
Speaker 1: I spoke with Eric Neandros, who's in charge of.
Speaker 6: The Expo ACTXPO is where the commercial transportation industry comes
Speaker 6: together to see and learn about all the latest technologies
Speaker 6: and clean fuels to run their business.
Speaker 1: What kind of progress are we seeing in this space.
Speaker 7: Well, we've seen pretty amazing progress in the last couple
Speaker 7: of years. The industry has continue to grow. There's three things.
Speaker 6: One, the manufacturers are investing billions of dollars to make
Speaker 6: this product.
Speaker 7: They obviously want to now sell it to return that money.
Speaker 6: To regulations, State of California is sort of leading the
Speaker 6: charge and saying everyone must get to zero missions, and
Speaker 6: there are much more strict regulations coming every single day.
Speaker 6: And then three of the companies that run these trucks
Speaker 6: these fleets are trying to be more sustainable on it,
Speaker 6: and many of the big leaders have set goals they
Speaker 6: want their operations to be zero missions by twenty forty
Speaker 6: or so. So there's an alignment there between the buyers
Speaker 6: and the sellers. They want to buy the product, the
Speaker 6: seller obviously wants to sell it, and they're making it
Speaker 6: and that's what really is making this pretty exciting right now.
Speaker 6: There are a few options. Battery electric is definitely one
Speaker 6: of the big ones. There's a big push on hydrogen
Speaker 6: fuel cell vehicles, which we see in both passenger and
Speaker 6: the commercial sector.
Speaker 5: And then we have all kinds of.
Speaker 7: Other biofuels that have pretty low carbon that we.
Speaker 5: Can use in combustion engines today.
Speaker 6: So it's all in play right now. But we're all
Speaker 6: trying to figure out how do we get to zero.
Speaker 1: And what's the biggest challenge you're seeing.
Speaker 7: There's a couple of big challenges. One, this stuff costs
Speaker 7: a lot of money.
Speaker 6: It's expensive, and so as a business goes out to
Speaker 6: make an investment, we have to figure out how does
Speaker 6: this make business sense right, how do we make it
Speaker 6: economically sustainable in addition to environmentally sustainable.
Speaker 5: And then on the.
Speaker 6: Electrification side, infrastructure is a big challenge. It's a lot
Speaker 6: of electricity to charge, particularly these big trucks, and that
Speaker 6: electricity is not necessarily available on every corner, so there's
Speaker 6: a lot of work that has to be done on
Speaker 6: the utility side to be able to provide the electricity
Speaker 6: to make all this work.
Speaker 1: Marcy Willard is with lightning emotors. They're partnering with AMR
Speaker 1: to show off an electric ambulance.
Speaker 8: So we have our Class three ambulance in partnership with AMR.
Speaker 8: It's one of the first electric ambulances in the entire world.
Speaker 8: And this is a Class three size has a range
Speaker 8: of about one hundred and forty to one hundred and
Speaker 8: sixty miles.
Speaker 1: What's the benefit of an electric ambulance.
Speaker 8: Well, firstly at zero emission, so we're talking air pollution,
Speaker 8: we're talking climate change, but we're also talking about the
Speaker 8: health of people in and around the vehicle. And so
Speaker 8: if you can imagine you're already dealing with health issues
Speaker 8: with an ambulance, this gets rid of the diesel and
Speaker 8: the gas emissions and makes it just a much more
Speaker 8: holistic solution to all of those issues.
Speaker 1: Are any cities using this so far?
Speaker 8: We do have several operating in California in different districts,
Speaker 8: and we actually featured one at the World Cup and
Speaker 8: Cutter last fall for the soccer so we were really
Speaker 8: excited to be featured there as well.
Speaker 1: If you could name the truck, there was a green
Speaker 1: version on display school buses, delivery trucks, utility trucks and
Speaker 1: even concrete mixing trucks. But these fleets need to be charged,
Speaker 1: which is where enviro charge comes in. Here's Michelle Brown.
Speaker 1: We have the ev power pod.
Speaker 9: It is an off grid DCFC, so a direct current
Speaker 9: fast charger for fleets, utilities and municipalities.
Speaker 1: Where the grid is.
Speaker 9: Challenged to keep up with the charging infrastructure. For these fleets.
Speaker 9: We have a solution that's powered by renewable propane.
Speaker 1: So all these trucks need to be charged, and they're
Speaker 1: like heavy duty.
Speaker 9: Charging, yes, absolutely, and they need a fast charge, so
Speaker 9: they need a direct current. You can do level two,
Speaker 9: which is kind of charging overnight in the yard, but
Speaker 9: a lot of these trucks, especially going in and out
Speaker 9: of the ports, they need to charge sometime during the
Speaker 9: day and they can't sit for hours and wait for
Speaker 9: a charge.
Speaker 1: And so your solution is what, how's it work.
Speaker 9: It's a we're fuel agnostics, so we can use pretty
Speaker 9: much renewal propane, natural gas, any sort of fuel. And
Speaker 9: we're also charge agnostics, so we can use any type
Speaker 9: of charger that the customer prefers for.
Speaker 1: Us to use. And the idea is you can put
Speaker 1: this anywhere.
Speaker 9: Absolutely it's completely grid free mobile and wherever you need
Speaker 9: a charge, even if you're waiting for your infrastructure, you
Speaker 9: can use this solution until your infrastructure is in place,
Speaker 9: and then we can move it to the next yard,
Speaker 9: next customer, next location.
Speaker 1: Fermata Energy is working on a way to help ev
Speaker 1: owners make money off of their vehicles by selling back
Speaker 1: energy to the grid during peak times. George Miller explains.
Speaker 4: So here we are a bi directional charging company. We
Speaker 4: do vehicle to grid services, and we have a bidirectional
Speaker 4: charger here. We have been charging on the Nissan Leaf
Speaker 4: with for the last three years. On a Nissan Leaf
Speaker 4: we can make between twenty five hundred up to about
Speaker 4: eight thousand dollars per year using just the battery when
Speaker 4: you're not using it as a car. So that is
Speaker 4: called vehicle to grid services, capable on this vehicle now
Speaker 4: and capable on many more vehicles coming soon.
Speaker 1: Okay, so hold on explain that in layman's terms, what
Speaker 1: does that mean? If my car's parked, it's making money
Speaker 1: for who.
Speaker 4: It makes money for you. So your car is parked
Speaker 4: and the utility says, hey, we need energy at this
Speaker 4: specific time, this two hour window in the afternoon in
Speaker 4: the summertime, if you can push power out into the
Speaker 4: grid because you're not using your vehicle at that time.
Speaker 4: They'll give you a check at the end of the
Speaker 4: summer as a part of a demand response program, and
Speaker 4: then you can recharge your vehicle and it actually runs
Speaker 4: the meter backwards, so you're not even paying for that
Speaker 4: electricity twice.
Speaker 1: So do you think we're going to see more people
Speaker 1: making money off of their evs in the future.
Speaker 5: Absolutely. Yeah.
Speaker 4: It's been a concept thought about for the last twenty
Speaker 4: years since the original GM EV one. It's taken a
Speaker 4: long time to get automakers, utilities at charger makers, and
Speaker 4: vehicle owners to all come together, and we're now just
Speaker 4: getting chargers that are certified. We should have a residential
Speaker 4: solution here in probably two to three months for chargers.
Speaker 4: So right now it's been commercial, but we should have
Speaker 4: a residential offering later this year.
Speaker 1: And how much can I make with my car?
Speaker 4: You can make between two to eight thousand dollars, It's
Speaker 4: entirely dependent upon where you live and what the utility
Speaker 4: has enabled. Actually, in San Diego you can make twelve
Speaker 4: thousand a year. Michael Marsal is president of excel lifts.
Speaker 4: So you've been doing electric forklifts for how many years?
Speaker 5: Five years now, that's when the development started.
Speaker 1: What have you learned in those five years.
Speaker 10: Well, we have learned that the infrastructure has been the
Speaker 10: toughest thing for the ports and shipyards. Getting the energy
Speaker 10: manufacturer and the forkliffs have actually.
Speaker 5: Been the easy things to do.
Speaker 10: It's getting the ports in state of California to support
Speaker 10: the electric infrastructure for charging the big equipment.
Speaker 1: And so how do you solve that.
Speaker 10: We're working with all the local air resource districts to
Speaker 10: help get more funding to help subsidize the cost for
Speaker 10: our customers.
Speaker 1: And so what's the benefit of the electric forklift?
Speaker 5: Basically, it helps our climate.
Speaker 10: You know, we get rid of all the toxins that
Speaker 10: you see in all the ports and shipyards in California.
Speaker 10: So we're moving towards the twenty thirty mandate by the
Speaker 10: state of California to have all the ports and shipyards
Speaker 10: zero mission.
Speaker 1: And what about other states?
Speaker 10: We're the other states. There's a few of them that
Speaker 10: are starting to go that way. For instance, like Michigan
Speaker 10: is actually starting to go that way. Oregon and Washington
Speaker 10: are starting to lean that way. Because you typically the
Speaker 10: other states follow California's. Whatever California does, it rolls out there.
Speaker 10: Eventually Florida is also looking at doing it, and actually
Speaker 10: Texas is doing it as well. They bought product from
Speaker 10: US as well.
Speaker 1: Finally I got inside the Nicola fuel sell EV truck
Speaker 1: with engineer Ash Mackie. Keep in mind driving down the
Speaker 1: road while we recorded this interview, Notice how quiet it is.
Speaker 11: So right now you are in one of our beta
Speaker 11: builds for the fuel cell EV truck, which is of
Speaker 11: course we're coming in production in Q four of twenty
Speaker 11: twenty three.
Speaker 1: What's the benefit of hydrogen fuel cell?
Speaker 11: We see hydrogen as the future when it comes to
Speaker 11: the zero emission. There is abundant of hydrogen.
Speaker 5: I mean, it's the.
Speaker 12: Most available.
Speaker 11: Source of energy there is, so and then detail pipe
Speaker 11: at the end it comes out of the zero mission
Speaker 11: is really water. It's going to be as close to
Speaker 11: parity to diesel when it comes to range. So with
Speaker 11: our truck here, we're looking at coming off the gate
Speaker 11: with five hundred miles.
Speaker 1: But does it take a long time to refuel like electric?
Speaker 11: Oh no, absolutely, that's one of the differentiators. So we
Speaker 11: are looking to refuel this truck. We have seventy kilogram
Speaker 11: capacity in our trucks in less than twenty minutes.
Speaker 1: Is there safety concern with hydrogen? Oh, there is not
Speaker 1: at all.
Speaker 11: Not when it comes to the commercialization and how we
Speaker 11: put it into the truck. We do crash testing for
Speaker 11: the side saddle tanks. We do rollovers, and then the
Speaker 11: tanks themselves. They go through penetration with bullets to see
Speaker 11: exactly how much we could really damage the tanks if
Speaker 11: we can even heat, they have to stand almost one
Speaker 11: thousand c for two hours, and then there's venting systems.
Speaker 5: The minute the system.
Speaker 11: React to a crash, there's valves that would immediately dissipate
Speaker 11: all the hydrogen, so there's no any change of inflammables
Speaker 11: to happen to the truck.
Speaker 1: If you want to see my video from ACT Expo,
Speaker 1: just go to rich on Tech dot tv more rich
Speaker 1: on Tech coming up. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich Tomuro here talking technology with you at Triple A
Speaker 1: rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to
Speaker 1: two for one zero one. By the way, you just
Speaker 1: heard about the Clean Truck Expo. If you want to
Speaker 1: see a little video of just how quiet those trucks
Speaker 1: are in real life. Go to my Instagram at rich
Speaker 1: on Tech. I posted a reels last night and it's
Speaker 1: it's pretty wild just how quiet these trucks are because
Speaker 1: you're so You're so used to these big diesel trucks
Speaker 1: being loud. So if you want to hear what they're
Speaker 1: trying to do for the future, you can see see
Speaker 1: that there and hear it. Colleen writes in I listened
Speaker 1: to you on KFI and watch you on KTLA. Colleen
Speaker 1: in Tampa, Thank you. Colleen. Janet writes in, Hey, rich
Speaker 1: someone hacked my account, my Facebook account and used my
Speaker 1: photo and my account to sell tickets. I contacted Facebook online.
Speaker 1: I'm getting blocked from getting into my account. I tried
Speaker 1: a phone number, but the response was not answering calls
Speaker 1: at this time. Do I write a letter to Mark Zuckerberg?
Speaker 1: Thank you, Janet Janet. I don't think Mark is replying
Speaker 1: to letters right now due to accounts being hacked. So
Speaker 1: I think the place to go is Facebook dot com
Speaker 1: slash hacked. As far as I know, there is not
Speaker 1: a phone number that you can contact Facebook at to
Speaker 1: get help with that. The best thing that I know
Speaker 1: of is to go to Facebook dot com slash hacked.
Speaker 1: You follow the instructions there. I know it's tedious, it's
Speaker 1: time consuming, it's annoying, but that is the best way
Speaker 1: to get a hacked Facebook account back. And by the way,
Speaker 1: if you don't want your Facebook account hacked, set up
Speaker 1: two factor authentication. That is the best way to do it.
Speaker 1: Every single person I talk to that gets their Facebook
Speaker 1: account hacked is in one of several ways. Number one,
Speaker 1: they log in to a phishing email that says, hey,
Speaker 1: log into this page and it's through their Facebook account,
Speaker 1: and they just gave away their account information, or they
Speaker 1: don't have two factor authentication on and they don't get
Speaker 1: that secondary code, and once the hackers get in, it's
Speaker 1: a pain to get your account back. Let's go to
Speaker 1: Jim in Punta Gordo, Florida. Jim, you're on with Rich.
Speaker 13: Yeah, Hey, Rich, congratulations, I'm taking over the chair.
Speaker 1: Thank you. It's a different chair, but I did take over.
Speaker 13: So we got from the chair Leo.
Speaker 1: Leo keeps his chair.
Speaker 13: Yeah, I live on and prosperous.
Speaker 1: I say thanks.
Speaker 13: I've got a couple of questions. One of a simple questions.
Speaker 13: The other one gets a little more complicated. The simple one.
Speaker 13: It drives me crazy. It's I go into Google and
Speaker 13: I search, let's say rich on Tech, and I again
Speaker 13: a woman's voice that says, you know, rich on Tech
Speaker 13: is on the afternoon Saturday, Sunday, and I can't find
Speaker 13: anywhere to shut her off. I've looked and looked.
Speaker 1: And look, is this on a phone or on your
Speaker 1: computer on that iPhone? Okay, on your iPhone? Okay, that
Speaker 1: sounds like that is an accessibility feature. It's reading. Now
Speaker 1: are you well, are you using the app? What are
Speaker 1: you using to search?
Speaker 13: Well?
Speaker 14: Just Google?
Speaker 1: So Google app? Yeah, because there's different ways of searching
Speaker 1: on your phone, so on your Google app. It's interesting
Speaker 1: that it's it's okay, So there's a setting on your
Speaker 1: Google app. If you go and tap your profile on
Speaker 1: the upper right hand corner, it says read aloud and
Speaker 1: so turn that off and that should take care of that.
Speaker 13: Well, okay, I've been looking everywhere that I do not
Speaker 13: look for. Okay, the Google app is just going to
Speaker 13: settings and.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, there's two settings. There's a read aloud setting
Speaker 1: and then if you go into your Voice and Assistant settings,
Speaker 1: there's a setting that says spoken results, and mine is
Speaker 1: toggled on. It says results will be read aloud to you,
Speaker 1: so you can turn that off as well. So yeah,
Speaker 1: well this is what I do, Jim. Okay, all right,
Speaker 1: thanks for the question, and thanks for listening down in Florida.
Speaker 1: There phone lines are open at triple eight rich one
Speaker 1: oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two,
Speaker 1: four to one zero one. I just wanted to mention
Speaker 1: quickly this whole AI thing. I mean, this entire show
Speaker 1: could be about AI. Well, actually, I don't think I've
Speaker 1: tied to mention AI, so let's not do that. Let's
Speaker 1: come back after the break and talk about AI. In Hollywood.
Speaker 1: We've got a big strike going on here and AI
Speaker 1: is a part of it, so we'll talk about that.
Speaker 1: You're listening to rich on tech rich damiro here rich
Speaker 1: on tech Ah a new remake of such a good song.
Speaker 1: This is by Rita Aura, such a good song. That gosh,
Speaker 1: when did that original come out? Fat Boy Slam Praise you.
Speaker 1: There's a great music video two thousand and seven. Oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, wow, that was a while ago. Okay, So
Speaker 1: most of the people listening to that song, or many
Speaker 1: will not even know that there was an original but
Speaker 1: I guess that's how it is a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: in this world, right rich damiro here rich on tech
Speaker 1: eight eight eight rich one oh one eight eight eight
Speaker 1: seven four to four to one zero one. You also
Speaker 1: seem to like the email address, So hello at rich
Speaker 1: on tech dot tv is the email address. Let's go
Speaker 1: to Sarah in Ventura. Sarah, you're on with Rich.
Speaker 15: Hi, Hi, Hi, I actually have the question one the plot.
Speaker 15: This is not what I had asked originally, But do
Speaker 15: you have a suggestion for a portable radio that has
Speaker 15: n AA and Internet? And that's the regular radio? Whenever
Speaker 15: I go something, I can't go any place. I have
Speaker 15: to stay at home with my non portable radio. Do
Speaker 15: you have a suggestion for a radio that gets Internet?
Speaker 1: And the a radio that gets internet? There used to
Speaker 1: be one that did, but gosh, I'm trying to think
Speaker 1: of I mean, what about a smartphone? Do you want
Speaker 1: something that's powered? I mean, what are you trying to
Speaker 1: do exactly?
Speaker 15: Be able to go out of the house and take
Speaker 15: a walk in a park and not have to worry
Speaker 15: about the weather, be able to get internet.
Speaker 14: Showed?
Speaker 1: What what about a smartphone for that?
Speaker 3: I I don't I would.
Speaker 10: Like to just have a radio.
Speaker 1: Oh I don't. I'm trying to think off the top
Speaker 1: of my head of a radio that would get the
Speaker 1: Internet without being a smart device, and I really can't
Speaker 1: think of one. There may be something out there, but
Speaker 1: I'm not really I mean, a smartphone has sort of
Speaker 1: taken over that streaming world, so I really don't know
Speaker 1: of a device that would do that. There was a device.
Speaker 1: I actually kind of forgot about this device, but it
Speaker 1: was like I was it a squeeze box? Yeah? There,
Speaker 1: it was Logitech's Squeezebox radio. This was this was kind
Speaker 1: of like back in the day. I guess they still
Speaker 1: make this, No, but this was a little radio that
Speaker 1: you could put in your house and it would tune
Speaker 1: in the you know, any sort of Internet stream and
Speaker 1: just a wide variety of streams and it was like everything.
Speaker 1: But that they haven't made that a long time. That
Speaker 1: was by Logitech, but it says discontinued by manufacturer. That
Speaker 1: was the last thing that I remember. But as far
Speaker 1: as as far as a mobile device, I mean, you're
Speaker 1: better off with just a pocket radio. I mean, just
Speaker 1: get a radio that picks up regular over the air
Speaker 1: radio stations. I don't know if it would get the
Speaker 1: I think you said the NAA like the weather report
Speaker 1: from I think that's what you're talking about there, but
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I think that. Yeah, like just an
Speaker 1: FM tuner, just a standard walkman or something like that
Speaker 1: would be your best your best bet in that circumstance
Speaker 1: because the streaming is not going to work without the Internet.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean a smartphone is really what everyone's using.
Speaker 1: But if you don't want to do that, that's you know,
Speaker 1: that's not going to work. Thanks for the question, appreciate that. Uh,
Speaker 1: let's talk about AI because this is something that I
Speaker 1: know I could make the entire show about AI. It
Speaker 1: has really taken such a commanding role in not just
Speaker 1: the tech world, but the entire world, and everyone's trying
Speaker 1: to figure out how this is going to affect them,
Speaker 1: how it's going to affect their company, their bottom line,
Speaker 1: and the world at large. Because if you think that
Speaker 1: this is just going to be used for searching on
Speaker 1: the Internet and coming up with turn papers, well no,
Speaker 1: there's going to be a lot more that AI is
Speaker 1: going to be used for, and a lot of it's
Speaker 1: going to be good, whether it's medical, whether it's productivity,
Speaker 1: whether it's optimization, efficiency, all that stuff. AI is going
Speaker 1: to be great for that, but it's also going to
Speaker 1: be used in bad ways as well. And we're talking war,
Speaker 1: we're talking theft, we're talking crime, we're talking cybercrime. There's
Speaker 1: so many ways that this can be optimized. But the
Speaker 1: thing I want to talk about right now is this
Speaker 1: whole Hollywood strike. So I know that this is very
Speaker 1: highly WOULD centric because I'm based in Los Angeles and
Speaker 1: the strike literally, you know, happens outside the front doors
Speaker 1: of you know where I work. But this is something
Speaker 1: that affects you because if you've probably noticed that a
Speaker 1: lot of your TV shows are already in rerun, especially
Speaker 1: the late night shows, it's going to take a little
Speaker 1: longer to trickle down to other things. But some of
Speaker 1: those shows are just stopping, you know, they're they're just
Speaker 1: not making new episodes right now. But one of the
Speaker 1: things that the writers obviously a laundry list of things
Speaker 1: that they want, but one of the things that they're
Speaker 1: concerned about is this idea of AI writing scripts. And
Speaker 1: it's probably not happening in a huge way just yet,
Speaker 1: but I see the potential, and I see the potential
Speaker 1: in a couple different ways. Number One, the writers don't
Speaker 1: want to be the polisher upper of something that AI writes.
Speaker 1: So let's say you're a writer, this studio comes to
Speaker 1: you and they say, hey, can you polish up this script? Well,
Speaker 1: where did this script come from? Oh, we just got
Speaker 1: it out of our AI machine. It just came up
Speaker 1: with this new action adventure movie or romantic comedy, and
Speaker 1: we need you to kind of, you know, make sure
Speaker 1: everything sounds right and the lines sound good, and the
Speaker 1: characters are all potentially you know, figured out in the
Speaker 1: proper ways. And so, by the way, that polisher upper
Speaker 1: job is a lot less expensive than the person who
Speaker 1: writes the script job. And then this person has to
Speaker 1: go through all this AI and make sure everything's right
Speaker 1: and make sure it looks good and sounds good. So
Speaker 1: they don't want to be playing second fiddle to AI.
Speaker 1: I understand that. But the reality is, at some point
Speaker 1: this is going to be a force in Hollywood because
Speaker 1: think about it. AI can write things like trivia questions
Speaker 1: and think about this idea and this is not my
Speaker 1: idea per se, but this is something that's been kind
Speaker 1: of percolating. Is that let's say you're writing a screenplay
Speaker 1: off of a book. Well, in the past, the writer
Speaker 1: would read the book and come up with the screenplay. Well,
Speaker 1: what if you just fed that book into AI and
Speaker 1: it can pop out the screenplay instantly, or you know,
Speaker 1: matter of minutes and now you just need someone to
Speaker 1: go through and make sure everything kind of sounds good
Speaker 1: with that. Or what if you have a franchise right
Speaker 1: back to the Future. You feed it all of the
Speaker 1: Back to the Future movies and you say, now, right
Speaker 1: back to the Future four and it writes Back to
Speaker 1: the Future four based on one, two, and three, Or hey,
Speaker 1: write me a new Home alone based on all these movies,
Speaker 1: or a new Jurassic Park or a new Marvel movie.
Speaker 1: I mean, these are things that it could do because software,
Speaker 1: it's smart and it's only getting better. So Hollywood, you know,
Speaker 1: it's not the only thing that they're picketing about, but
Speaker 1: this is definitely one of those things that they kind
Speaker 1: of want to figure out, like where does AI live
Speaker 1: in Hollywood? Can it write scripts? Can it write stuff?
Speaker 1: Do we have to polish this up? And so I
Speaker 1: think that that's going to be something that they're going
Speaker 1: to talk about. And I'm not sure that Hollywood is
Speaker 1: going to give up all the rights to AI right
Speaker 1: off the bat here because we're so early into AI.
Speaker 1: But it's one of those things that is definitely a
Speaker 1: maz consideration. And that's just for Hollywood. That's it's having
Speaker 1: an impact in almost every industry you can think of.
Speaker 1: The White House this week had a big summit to
Speaker 1: talk about AI. So it lasted roughly two hours. They
Speaker 1: had the President there, he stopped by, the Vice President
Speaker 1: stopped by. Then they had leaders from Google, Microsoft, Open AI,
Speaker 1: and also Anthropic, which is another startup. I believe that
Speaker 1: they also have Anthropic. I believe they do something similar
Speaker 1: to chat GPT. Yeah, so they all got in the
Speaker 1: room and kind of talked about this stuff. Biden said,
Speaker 1: what you're doing has enormous potential and enormous danger. I
Speaker 1: would agree with that. They're looking at ethical, moral, and
Speaker 1: legal obligations of this new technology, and nobody knows how
Speaker 1: it's going to be used. I mean, we see how
Speaker 1: it's being used right now for chat GPT, and people
Speaker 1: are doing all kinds of things, but we don't know
Speaker 1: truly how it can be used because we're so early
Speaker 1: into this stuff. Now, how do you regulate something that
Speaker 1: potentially has a mind of its own, and that's the
Speaker 1: way these AI systems feel. You program them, but then
Speaker 1: they go out into the world and people figure out
Speaker 1: ways of doing things with them that may not be
Speaker 1: what the people who program them intended. And we're seeing
Speaker 1: that with the Bangs of the world and the chat
Speaker 1: gbts and the bards. Now they put some guardrails on
Speaker 1: these systems that they're building, But again, what if someone
Speaker 1: builds these things on their own. I mean, you could
Speaker 1: regulate a company like Facebook and Twitter and chat GBT
Speaker 1: and Google and Microsoft, and they may follow the rules.
Speaker 1: But about someone who's just writing this stuff in their
Speaker 1: home and they write a program that does something that
Speaker 1: is against the rules or against the regulations. So I
Speaker 1: think that this stuff is really really big. And it's
Speaker 1: interesting because you had the Federal Trade Commission chairperson Lena Kahan.
Speaker 1: She they had a guest essay in the Times on Wednesday,
Speaker 1: and she talked about how when Google and Facebook were born,
Speaker 1: and this is true, everyone celebrated what they did. We
Speaker 1: loved what Google did, we loved what Facebook did, and
Speaker 1: I would agree with that. We just kind of let
Speaker 1: them do their thing. And then ten years later we
Speaker 1: all said, wait a second, hold on, what about the
Speaker 1: privacy implications of this? What about the security implications of this?
Speaker 1: What about the copyright implications? What about all these things
Speaker 1: that we didn't sort of think of when these first happened.
Speaker 1: And she said, now we have another option here with
Speaker 1: this AI. Let's start from the beginning and let's have
Speaker 1: kind of a critical eye towards this technology right off
Speaker 1: the bat. And I think that that's probably smart, because
Speaker 1: AI is going to be way more impactful than a Google,
Speaker 1: or than a YouTube, than a Twitter, than a Facebook.
Speaker 1: This stuff has far reaching implications that we are just
Speaker 1: beginning to understand now. I'm not saying I have the
Speaker 1: answer to how to make all this stuff work. I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone does at this point. I think
Speaker 1: we are all figuring this out as we go along.
Speaker 1: But the bottom line is that we can't let this
Speaker 1: just sort of happen in the way that we let
Speaker 1: other things happen. We need to all come together and
Speaker 1: figure out what is going to be right and what's
Speaker 1: going to be best. And believe me, what's right and
Speaker 1: best right now may not be what's right and best
Speaker 1: in a year when this stuff is more developed because
Speaker 1: we are just just at the beginning of this stuff.
Speaker 1: Woo and it's wild. I mean, I love watching this
Speaker 1: develop and the things people are doing with it. But man,
Speaker 1: I don't know where it's going to go. I don't
Speaker 1: think anyone does. All Right, coming up on the show,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk to the founder and CEO of
Speaker 1: a company called Farmer's Fridge. This is a company that's
Speaker 1: putting fresh food in more places. I tested it out.
Speaker 1: I tried out a solid it was delicious. We're going
Speaker 1: to do that. Plus Apple and Google coming together. You
Speaker 1: rarely hear this. They're coming together to make air tags safer.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about that, plus your questions at eight eight
Speaker 1: eight rich one oh one. You're listening to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging
Speaker 1: out with you, talking technology at triple eight rich one
Speaker 1: oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four
Speaker 1: to one zero one.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: Micah has a suggestion for a radio. Uh from our
Speaker 1: last caller, Micah, what's the radio?
Speaker 16: Yeah, there's an Ocean Digital radio. It's a WRDSH twenty
Speaker 16: three F that is a battery powered FM and bluetooth
Speaker 16: has Bluetooth on it and Wi Fi radio. But her
Speaker 16: issue is she's gonna need Wi Fi and that's the problem.
Speaker 16: You can't move, you know, you can't get a you know,
Speaker 16: a Wi Fi signal world your Wi Fi radio without
Speaker 16: having Wi Fi.
Speaker 1: But this will get the FM signal though, right, the FM.
Speaker 2: Signal you can get there's no oh okay, yeah, but
Speaker 2: if she wants a good Wi Fi radio, the one
Speaker 2: to get, the one that I'm listening to you on
Speaker 2: now is the Sea Crane Wi Fi radio.
Speaker 16: But it's not portable, it's got to be plugged in.
Speaker 16: But it's absolutely amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So we've got a couple of a couple of ways,
Speaker 1: but not exactly what she wants. I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: I don't think what she wants exists as far as
Speaker 1: I know. I mean, you can't pick up a streaming
Speaker 1: signal over Wi Fi and then if you've got the
Speaker 1: the NOAA signal, I you know, I just don't think
Speaker 1: that that that combo is out there. But I do
Speaker 1: like this, uh, this little ocean digital. This reminds me
Speaker 1: of man, this is bringing it way back. But my
Speaker 1: grandma used to sit at the kitchen table and listen
Speaker 1: to a tiny portable radio like this, and you know,
Speaker 1: didn't have the screen like the color screen, that's for sure,
Speaker 1: but it was just a little tiny and it had
Speaker 1: the antenna on it. And she used to every morning
Speaker 1: when I woke up, she would be there at the
Speaker 1: table listening to this radio.
Speaker 16: My grandma too, exactly the same way. In fact, I
Speaker 16: still have that radio.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, we'll keep that one.
Speaker 16: It's great and rich. Just so you know, this is
Speaker 16: Mike your main man. We've been in touch about travel,
Speaker 16: so if anything comes up with that, I'm your guy.
Speaker 1: Awesome. I figured that, I thought when I saw Micah
Speaker 1: and Main and I thought that, well, thanks for the
Speaker 1: Ocean Digital recommendation. I like that. And the Sea Crane stuff.
Speaker 1: I think that stuff i've heard. Yeah, let's see how
Speaker 1: expensive those are, these little am I mean they've got
Speaker 1: pocket radios, emergency radios. Yeah, I mean some of these
Speaker 1: things are a little expensive. But yeah, the pocket radio
Speaker 1: is seventy bucks, so that's not too bad. And this
Speaker 1: has the weather emergency radio on it as well. So yeah,
Speaker 1: Sea Crane definitely has some stuff. I remember I used
Speaker 1: to listen to a podcast they advertised Seacrane on there
Speaker 1: a lot, so that's a good suggestion. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: rich On location here at Crypto dot Com Arena formerly
Speaker 1: Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles. Joining me now is
Speaker 1: Luke Saunders. He is the founder and CEO of Farmers
Speaker 1: Fridge and we're here because they've got three Farmers Fridge
Speaker 1: locations here. Thanks for joining me, Yeah, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for having me. All right, so let's talk about
Speaker 1: Farmer's Fridge. I first saw this at LAX Los Angeles Airport,
Speaker 1: and it's a vending machine filled with healthy foods like
Speaker 1: fresh salads. And I was a little skeptical, I'll be honest,
Speaker 1: but I ended up getting one on my way out,
Speaker 1: and then I got one on my way home, so
Speaker 1: it worked and the salads are fresh. You've got locations
Speaker 1: all across the nation. Can you tell me how you
Speaker 1: describe what Farmer's Fridge is.
Speaker 17: Yeah, So, Farmers Fridge is a fresh food company. We
Speaker 17: make fresh food every single day in a centralized kitchen,
Speaker 17: and then we distribute that through a network of automated
Speaker 17: smart fridges and in retail locreations across the country.
Speaker 1: And really the idea is very simple.
Speaker 17: How do you make fresh, healthy food as accessible as
Speaker 17: it came Amar.
Speaker 1: How did you come up with the idea for this company?
Speaker 17: Yeah, so I came up with it because I was
Speaker 17: a traveling salesman. I was driving one thousand miles a week.
Speaker 17: I was flying all the time, and one of the
Speaker 17: biggest problems I had was trying to figure out what
Speaker 17: I was going to have for lunch every day, and
Speaker 17: how to have something that wasn't just fast food or
Speaker 17: some kind of snack from a gas station. And I
Speaker 17: realized you could make fresh food at scale and get
Speaker 17: it to more people. You just had to get it
Speaker 17: to the faster. And really the idea was if I
Speaker 17: built the entire business model around the concept of making
Speaker 17: real fresh food getting into people quickly, I could solve
Speaker 17: the problem. And then I backed into the idea for
Speaker 17: the vending machine because something like one hundred million people
Speaker 17: a day in the United States actually visit a vending
Speaker 17: machine to buy something, so clearly it's a very convenient
Speaker 17: way to get food and get it to more places.
Speaker 17: There's about eight million vending machines in the US, so
Speaker 17: that helped to just make it more convenient, more accessible,
Speaker 17: and lower the cost to serve fresh food.
Speaker 1: And so where was your first location, and how many
Speaker 1: locations do you have now and in what types of
Speaker 1: places are these smart fridges in?
Speaker 17: Yeah, So when I got started, I thought the best
Speaker 17: part of the idea was we were only going to
Speaker 17: take up twelve square feet and I could go pretty
Speaker 17: much anywhere and in a lot of places restaurants couldn't go.
Speaker 17: But it turns out that a lot of people were
Speaker 17: very skeptical about the idea of installing of any machine
Speaker 17: full of fresh food in their office building or the
Speaker 17: lobby of the hospital or something like that. So we
Speaker 17: ended up in a food court in downtown Chicago. It
Speaker 17: was objectively the worst food court in Chicago, but it
Speaker 17: was the only place that would take us, and we
Speaker 17: had one location, and it was really just to get
Speaker 17: people to try the food, get some feedback on the concept,
Speaker 17: and from there we've grown it now to over a
Speaker 17: thousand locations across the country. We're in major retail stores
Speaker 17: across the country, and also have about six hundred and
Speaker 17: fifty fridges that we operate in hospitals, universities, airports, even
Speaker 17: places like this arenas.
Speaker 1: So tell me about making this food. It's got to
Speaker 1: be fresh. You make it in Chicago, but somehow it
Speaker 1: makes its way to Los Angeles and it still tastes fresh.
Speaker 1: So how do you do that?
Speaker 17: Yeah, So when I started, at the very beginning, I
Speaker 17: was making the food, I was delivering the food. I
Speaker 17: was building the fridges, and we still do things pretty
Speaker 17: much the same way. So I would actually drive down
Speaker 17: to the produce terminal in the morning, get the freshest
Speaker 17: product I could get it in, chop it up, put
Speaker 17: it in the jar, and get it to that fridge.
Speaker 17: So we have just continued to do that business model,
Speaker 17: but now we just do it tens of thousands of
Speaker 17: times a day. So we get whole ingredients in, we
Speaker 17: make dressings from scratch. We're literally cutting up whole heads
Speaker 17: of lettuce and mixing avocados to make our fresh in
Speaker 17: house squacamole, and so the whole business is designed to
Speaker 17: facilitate having that be our process and then get it
Speaker 17: to people quickly. A huge component that's made it scalable
Speaker 17: as we built a lot of technology in terms of
Speaker 17: where to send all of the food that we're making,
Speaker 17: but also like how to get fees back from customers
Speaker 17: if things aren't fresh and improve that, or we can
Speaker 17: lock a fridge if it goes out of temperature remotely,
Speaker 17: so all of that has made it so that it's scalable.
Speaker 17: But the idea is exactly the same as it was
Speaker 17: at the beginning. You'd get a whole ingredient in make
Speaker 17: a dressing from scratch. It's going to taste good. You
Speaker 17: said to get it to people quickly so they have
Speaker 17: enough time to buy it before it goes bad.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about some of the food that's in this fridge.
Speaker 1: So these salads are served in sort of plastic jars.
Speaker 17: Is that what you'd call them, Yeah, it's a plastic jar.
Speaker 17: So the idea at the beginning, I was actually trying
Speaker 17: to figure out what kind of packaging to use that
Speaker 17: would help reinforce freshness, and my brother in law actually
Speaker 17: recommended these mason jar salads he had seen on Pinterest,
Speaker 17: and so I initially thought it was a crazy idea,
Speaker 17: but once I started testing with them, it just looks
Speaker 17: so beautiful. It actually helps keep the food fresh because
Speaker 17: you can layer ingredients, so we put like wet and
Speaker 17: acidic ingredients on the bottom, things like lettuce on the top.
Speaker 17: So that allows you to have a higher quality meal
Speaker 17: that lasts long, younger and it really just shows really
Speaker 17: well in the machine because what we found. I tried
Speaker 17: so many different ways to tell customers our food was
Speaker 17: fresh at the beginning, and over and over again. What
Speaker 17: we heard when we'd actually talk to the potential customers
Speaker 17: or people that were intimidated by the vending machine is
Speaker 17: I'm looking at your food and I want to see
Speaker 17: that that food looks fresh, and you can tell, like
Speaker 17: the greens are not wilted, they're not brown, things are
Speaker 17: clearly handmade. And we were getting that kind of feedback constantly,
Speaker 17: So that's a big part of why we packaged it
Speaker 17: that way.
Speaker 1: And so in the machine, I see all types of
Speaker 1: different salads. You've got wraps, you've got hard boiled eggs
Speaker 1: in there. Like you said, chips and guac. What's some
Speaker 1: of your top sellers.
Speaker 17: So actually the chips and guac is a top seller,
Speaker 17: which makes a lot of sense for us because we
Speaker 17: actually are making that Guacamolean house. We're adding pe go
Speaker 17: to the top. There's no preservatives, nothing, and then it's
Speaker 17: only I have a few days shelf life. So you
Speaker 17: cannot buy a product like that anywhere else. And I
Speaker 17: think the average price is for the Caesar salad is
Speaker 17: one of my personal favorites. It's just a very high
Speaker 17: quality caesar salad with chicken. But the idea is to
Speaker 17: have twenty five skews and have every single one of
Speaker 17: those be something that you're like, Wow, that was great,
Speaker 17: I'll buy it again.
Speaker 1: And what type of price point are we talking?
Speaker 17: So the products range in price from three dollars all
Speaker 17: the way up to about ten dollars on the high end.
Speaker 17: Our average item is about six fifty. You can also
Speaker 17: get a discount if you're using our app. There's a
Speaker 17: loyalty program, but then we also offer twenty five percent
Speaker 17: off at the airport. So on average, our average ticket
Speaker 17: is actually lower than McDonald's.
Speaker 1: So tell me about the tech that helps you get
Speaker 1: these salads in these machines.
Speaker 17: Yeah, So the core technology for Farmer's Fridge is really
Speaker 17: about inventory management, so we can see in real time
Speaker 17: what's in every single fridge across the country. And then
Speaker 17: every day we're making tens of thousands of meals, and
Speaker 17: so the idea is we don't actually know where they're
Speaker 17: going until the end of the day because that gives
Speaker 17: us as much time during the day to get the
Speaker 17: sales data from the fridges and then a cost function
Speaker 17: algorithm runs. So essentially it's looking at what's the inventory
Speaker 17: in the network, how many products did you produce, and
Speaker 17: things like the weather or tsa checkpoint traffic to say
Speaker 17: this is where we think you should send everything to
Speaker 17: maximize the profitability and reduce the amount of unsold inventory
Speaker 17: the next day. So imagine like we kind of get
Speaker 17: that report and everybody snaps into action. We're picking and
Speaker 17: packing the food, putting it onto trucks and getting it out.
Speaker 1: To the fridges.
Speaker 17: And over the last year we've even invested in pushing
Speaker 17: that prediction downstream. So what that means is we make
Speaker 17: it once at our initial production facility, but then we'll
Speaker 17: make it multiple points along the way. So when a
Speaker 17: driver gets to the airport, let's say a flight got
Speaker 17: in late and a bunch of people were hungry, bought
Speaker 17: ten salads. His drivers app he actually carries an iPad
Speaker 17: with him, will tell him here's where you should actually
Speaker 17: take this item from this fridge on your route and
Speaker 17: put it into this fridge on your route, and it's
Speaker 17: giving them all that feedback in real time. So from
Speaker 17: start to finish, the whole technology process is about how
Speaker 17: do you make fresh food scalable? And really that's about
Speaker 17: inventory management.
Speaker 1: The one question I had was when I bought my
Speaker 1: salad and I took it on my flight, how long
Speaker 1: do I have to eat this? How long can I
Speaker 1: keep this salad out of the fridge and still consume
Speaker 1: it safely?
Speaker 17: Yeah, so, I mean, obviously I recommend eating the salad
Speaker 17: when you get out of the fridge for just taste
Speaker 17: and quality, because it's cold and it's crisp. But generally speaking,
Speaker 17: the guidelines for fresh food or you want to keep
Speaker 17: it under forty degrees. If it's over forty degrees after
Speaker 17: four hours, you definitely want to throw it away. Us
Speaker 17: For example, the fridge actually if it goes above forty
Speaker 17: degrees for more than an hour will shut down.
Speaker 1: You cannot buy anything.
Speaker 17: So but in general, if you're a consumer, you're on
Speaker 17: your flight, you have before our flight, you bought that salad,
Speaker 17: you should still eat it. Is my recommendation.
Speaker 1: What's the goal of all this, what's the goal of
Speaker 1: Farmer's Fridge. The goal is really simple.
Speaker 17: Farmer's Fridge wants to make fresh, healthy food as accessible
Speaker 17: as a candy bar. And what that means is you
Speaker 17: should anytime you see a candy bar, have the option
Speaker 17: to also get a salad, not because you shouldn't have
Speaker 17: a candy bar, but just because we're going to give
Speaker 17: people the option. We don't even want you to think
Speaker 17: about this as healthy food. It's just something that's convenient
Speaker 17: and affordable and tastes good, and so you want to
Speaker 17: buy more of it, and so until we're kind of
Speaker 17: everywhere and that's true, we're gonna keep going.
Speaker 1: Luke Sanders from farmers Fridge dot com. Thanks so much
Speaker 1: for joining me today. Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: Appreciating on coming up more of your phone calls at
Speaker 1: triple eight rich one O one you are listening to
Speaker 1: rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich
Speaker 1: DeMuro here hanging with you talking technology at Triple A
Speaker 1: rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to
Speaker 1: two four one zero one. Uh, don't forget. You can
Speaker 1: follow me on social media at rich on Tech. I'm
Speaker 1: on Instagram, I'm on Facebook, I'm on Twitter, and you
Speaker 1: can always go to the website rich on Tech dot TV.
Speaker 1: Let's go to Courtney in Huntington Beach. Courtney, you're on
Speaker 1: with Rich Hi.
Speaker 18: Rich, I used to have a Nokia thirty three ten
Speaker 18: dumb phone, and I had to get rid of it
Speaker 18: since they did away with three G service. I've had
Speaker 18: an iPhone for the last year, and I'm ready to
Speaker 18: go back to a dumb phone and was hoping you
Speaker 18: could give me some recommendations.
Speaker 1: You're going back to a dumb phone after being on
Speaker 1: a smartphone?
Speaker 18: Why I am getting sucked into the vortex of technology?
Speaker 1: Uh, I hear you. I am. You know what it's
Speaker 1: I am the same way. I mean, I've made a
Speaker 1: living on it. But with that said, I will tell
Speaker 1: you when I am done with this show, usually around
Speaker 1: two o'clock in the afternoons, I literally go on this.
Speaker 1: I have this like I can't explain it, Like I
Speaker 1: feel like I need to have no phone for like
Speaker 1: the next twenty four hours because I've been now doing
Speaker 1: tech stuff for six days in a row. Right, So
Speaker 1: I understand where you're coming from, and I think there
Speaker 1: are some solutions to this, and I was looking at
Speaker 1: this for myself actually, So a couple things. Number One,
Speaker 1: you had the Nokia, the very famous thirty three ten
Speaker 1: that was a very very famous, you know, dumb phone.
Speaker 1: Nokia is a good place to start Now I'm not
Speaker 1: going to give you specific models because there's so many,
Speaker 1: but I will tell you you're not going to get five
Speaker 1: G on these phones, but you will get four G
Speaker 1: and so these phones will be supported. So the first thing,
Speaker 1: since you said you have an iPhone, what I would
Speaker 1: suggest is consider maybe taking a tiptoe away from the smartphone.
Speaker 1: And maybe that means getting an Apple Watch. And I
Speaker 1: know that may sound like it's going to bring you
Speaker 1: more into this world, but hear me out. So you
Speaker 1: get the Apple Watch with cellular. You have that on
Speaker 1: your wrist, and when you are fed up with the
Speaker 1: endless scrolling and the social media and all of these
Speaker 1: different things that we are sucked into on our phones,
Speaker 1: you put the phone away, you turn it off, and
Speaker 1: you put it in a drawer. And now you've got
Speaker 1: your phone on your wrist. So you can still get calls,
Speaker 1: you can still get texts, but you're not going to
Speaker 1: be scrolling Instagram. You're not going to be distracted because
Speaker 1: there's only so much you can do on that tiny
Speaker 1: Apple Watch. Now, it's not as drastic as going with
Speaker 1: a dumb phone, but it's kind of a nice middle ground.
Speaker 1: The thing that you miss in that situation is a camera,
Speaker 1: and that's really what it comes down to for me,
Speaker 1: is that I would like to have a camera with
Speaker 1: me because well, the journalist in me wants that, and
Speaker 1: just in general I want that. So if you don't
Speaker 1: want to go the Apple Watch route, and I think
Speaker 1: that's a nice way to do it if you want to.
Speaker 1: You know, like sometimes when I just want to focus
Speaker 1: on my kids, let's say I'm at like their basketball
Speaker 1: game or something like that, I will just keep the
Speaker 1: phone in the car and just have the Apple Watch
Speaker 1: and just try to It doesn't happen very often, believe me,
Speaker 1: but that's kind of one method that I'll use to
Speaker 1: focus the other thing. Nokia is a good brand. Alcaatel
Speaker 1: is another brand, alca Tel alcatl and they make a
Speaker 1: flip phone that is pretty basic. I have the older
Speaker 1: version of this, it's the Flip three. Now they're up
Speaker 1: to the Flip four, but this will work as well. Now, again,
Speaker 1: you can go to all these things, but it's definitely
Speaker 1: going to be a problem after being on the iPhone
Speaker 1: for a year. Maybe you'll love it. I don't know,
Speaker 1: but Nokia and Alcatel are the two places to start.
Speaker 1: Now there are some other options. There's something called the
Speaker 1: light Phone, and I've tested this. It's pretty much a
Speaker 1: Kindle screen, so it's got an e ink display. It's
Speaker 1: very small, it's very compact. There's no camera on it
Speaker 1: as far as I remember, and it's just a very
Speaker 1: simple device. The only problem on this device is really
Speaker 1: going to be texting. It's definitely not the best experience
Speaker 1: for texting, but then again, maybe you want to get
Speaker 1: away from texting by having one of these. Now, the
Speaker 1: light Phone is not cheap, so the Nokia and the
Speaker 1: alcatl options those are going to be. You can find
Speaker 1: stuff sub one hundred bucks, no problem. The light Phone,
Speaker 1: as far as I remember, is a couple hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: So let's see how much is this thing? North American model? Yeah,
Speaker 1: three hundred dollars unlocked, So that's considerably more expensive. And
Speaker 1: at that price, I think that's why one of these
Speaker 1: this has been a little bit tougher of a sell
Speaker 1: for people, because you're looking at this phone and you're like,
Speaker 1: why is this so expensive?
Speaker 12: Why is this?
Speaker 1: What makes this three hundred dollars? Now, there's another brand
Speaker 1: I just found on Amazon called the u. It looks
Speaker 1: like it's called Punked p U n KT and this
Speaker 1: phone is actually three hundred and ninety nine dollars. But
Speaker 1: this looks like a really nice option. It's got Wi Fi,
Speaker 1: it's unlocked. It's a four g minimalist mobile phone. It's
Speaker 1: got two gigs a RAM, sixteen gigs storage, and a
Speaker 1: pretty large battery. It comes in blue and black, and
Speaker 1: it looks this looks like the phone that I would like. Now,
Speaker 1: the problem with the light phone is that it's all screen,
Speaker 1: so you're dialing the numbers on the screen and all
Speaker 1: that stuff. The Punked phone, that's how I'm saying it right,
Speaker 1: actually has buttons on it, which I think are better
Speaker 1: in that case. And this looks like it was created
Speaker 1: just for that minimalist lifestyle. And so oh now look
Speaker 1: at this. Siri was listening on my watch the whole time. See,
Speaker 1: this is the problem with technology. Siri just kind of
Speaker 1: jumps in and gives her two cents on things. But
Speaker 1: those are the brands that I would look for. I
Speaker 1: think that all three of those, or all four of
Speaker 1: those are going to be good options. But I think
Speaker 1: don't discount the Apple Watch. I know that the Apple
Speaker 1: Watch seems like it would make you more enmeshed in
Speaker 1: this whole iPhone Apple world. But I actually think it's
Speaker 1: it's kind of like a secret way of being disconnected
Speaker 1: but still connected. And by the way, all of these devices,
Speaker 1: or many of these devices that you get, like the
Speaker 1: light phone and the punk phone, you may be able
Speaker 1: to add those as a number share on your account.
Speaker 1: So maybe talk to your carrier about a number share device.
Speaker 1: Because I was surprised since I was just looking at
Speaker 1: this for my carrier and I didn't realize, but you
Speaker 1: could have up to five devices as number sharing. I
Speaker 1: thought it was just the iPhone and the Apple Watch. No,
Speaker 1: it turns out if I wanted to, I could numbers
Speaker 1: share with the light phone as well. And that means
Speaker 1: that your same phone number will ring all phones. Now,
Speaker 1: your mileage may vary depending on your carrier, but those
Speaker 1: are you know, something to ask the question, just to
Speaker 1: see if that's a possibility, and go into your carrier
Speaker 1: store and just tell them what you're thinking and see
Speaker 1: what they say. They may say, Oh, we've got this
Speaker 1: alcatl that you can add to your account for you know,
Speaker 1: five bucks a month and that will share your phone number.
Speaker 1: See what they say, Great, question, Courtney. It's something that
Speaker 1: I think about very very often, because, believe me, I
Speaker 1: love being connected, but sometimes I just really enjoy being disconnected.
Speaker 1: And I'm telling you it's not easy. It could be
Speaker 1: tricky sometimes to do that because you just feel like
Speaker 1: you're missing out. All Right, Before we go to break here,
Speaker 1: I want to tell you about this because I was
Speaker 1: just talking about cell phones. Check your cell phone bill.
Speaker 1: I tweeted about this last week because I was going
Speaker 1: through my bill and sometimes i'll actually download like the
Speaker 1: PDF of my bill, and I noticed that I was
Speaker 1: being charged for my wife's Apple Watch that I disconnected
Speaker 1: three months ago. So she went from a cellular Apple
Speaker 1: Watch to a regular Apple Watch, a non cellular and
Speaker 1: I called up the carrier and I said, hey, can
Speaker 1: you cancel this line. I don't know if I called
Speaker 1: or I chatted. I couldn't really remember. Actually, I think
Speaker 1: I chatted with them online and they said, okay, we'll
Speaker 1: disconnect it. Well, my bill went down somehow, I don't
Speaker 1: know how, but sure enough I was still being charged.
Speaker 1: Now it wasn't a ton of money, it was only
Speaker 1: like ten bucks a month whatever, but still I was
Speaker 1: paying for something that physically didn't even work, like her
Speaker 1: watch had no cellular connectivity. And so I asked the
Speaker 1: customer service person, I said, can you tell me the
Speaker 1: last time that her watch actually used any data for
Speaker 1: this ten dollars a month that I'm paying? And they said, well,
Speaker 1: it was about three months ago. I said, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: what I called to cancel this thing. Now, I will
Speaker 1: say the carrier was very nice. I remained calm. I
Speaker 1: was not mean. I was not, you know, accusing them
Speaker 1: of doing something wrong. I mean, there was just some
Speaker 1: sort of miscommunication. And in fact, I thought I was
Speaker 1: pretty pretty uh in the wrong for not noticing that
Speaker 1: my bill was, you know, something I was getting. I
Speaker 1: was paying for something I didn't even have, Like how
Speaker 1: did I miss that for three months? So what they
Speaker 1: did was I said, and I always say, I always
Speaker 1: try to be very nice to these customer service folks.
Speaker 1: I said, look, can you make a one time exception?
Speaker 1: Can you give me a credit? And they said, sure,
Speaker 1: you know what, We're going to give you a six
Speaker 1: month credit, and we're going to give you extra five
Speaker 1: bucks on top of that. So it pays to check
Speaker 1: your physical bills. Believe me, you never know when you
Speaker 1: might find a mistake and be nice when you call
Speaker 1: in to ask for a correction. I think these companies
Speaker 1: have a lot of money they can they can give
Speaker 1: you that sixty dollars credit. All right, more calls Triple
Speaker 1: eight Rich one on one, let's hear from you. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to rich on tech Rich Demiro here hanging out
Speaker 1: with you talking technology. Did you know you can listen
Speaker 1: to the show as a podcast. Yep, you can subscribe.
Speaker 1: Just go to rich on tech dot tv, click the
Speaker 1: podcast icon, and yes, I take good notes about what
Speaker 1: we talk about in this show, so those are reflected
Speaker 1: in the podcast as well. So if you've got a
Speaker 1: link that you're looking for something that I mentioned, or
Speaker 1: you want to correct me on something, you can find
Speaker 1: it all in there. Just go to rich on tech
Speaker 1: dot tv and hit the podcast icon. All right. Phone
Speaker 1: lines are open at Triple eight rich one O one
Speaker 1: eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: That's what Dale and Oceanside. Did he dial that number
Speaker 1: and now he's on Dale?
Speaker 12: Welcome, Hi, good afternoon, Rich Thank you for taking my call.
Speaker 1: Thanks for calling in. What's going on?
Speaker 12: I have a question about casting from an Android phone
Speaker 12: to a to new smart TVs. I used to be
Speaker 12: able to go to like my brother or sister's house
Speaker 12: and just put whatever I want on my screen and
Speaker 12: just you know, if it was an app, I would
Speaker 12: hit the little button that indicates to cast to the
Speaker 12: TV and it's easy. Or I would go into the
Speaker 12: Google Home app and hit the little button that says cast,
Speaker 12: and that way I could do anything on my screen.
Speaker 12: But the little in the last month, and I know
Speaker 12: because I did this some months ago, the last month,
Speaker 12: the little button where it says cast to the TV
Speaker 12: is gone from like all my apps except for YouTube.
Speaker 12: YouTube casts very easily, and the button that says cast
Speaker 12: in the Google Home app is gone.
Speaker 3: And I don't know if that's.
Speaker 12: Because they're they're redoing the Google Home app right now.
Speaker 1: What are your thoughts, HM, Well, my initial thought is
Speaker 1: I actually think that YouTube is I think that none
Speaker 1: of the casting is working. I think that YouTube is
Speaker 1: going around and doing something a little bit differently. I
Speaker 1: think that it's connecting with the TV kind of on
Speaker 1: the back end and not using cast. I think you're
Speaker 1: using it as a controller. I think that's just my theory.
Speaker 1: But now when it comes to Google Home, so a
Speaker 1: couple things what kind of phone are using? Are you
Speaker 1: using a Pixel or a Samsung? What are you using?
Speaker 12: It's a Galaxy two plus, okay, So.
Speaker 1: Because there used to be well on the pixel, there's
Speaker 1: an option to I don't have my Samsung with me.
Speaker 1: I've got the Pixel here, but you know, there's an
Speaker 1: option to just cast the screen right from the quick tiles.
Speaker 1: Does the Samsung have that?
Speaker 5: You know?
Speaker 12: I don't know where would I find it.
Speaker 1: So when you swipe down from the top of the
Speaker 1: screen and you swipe down again, you get all the
Speaker 1: tiles I say, like Internet, Bluetooth, flashlight, all those kind
Speaker 1: of airplane mode. So if you swipe through those on
Speaker 1: the pixel, I see one that says screen cast, and
Speaker 1: that's the way to just cast anything on your screen.
Speaker 1: That's kind of what you were talking about inside the
Speaker 1: Google Home app. But that's just another way of finding it.
Speaker 1: So and you may have to edit your tiles to
Speaker 1: see if Samsung offers that one. I'm not sure that
Speaker 1: they do. That may be a pixel thing. But that's
Speaker 1: number one, okay, So that's number one. Number two. Yes,
Speaker 1: the Home app has changed every single time I've opened
Speaker 1: it in the past, like three weeks. Every time I
Speaker 1: open it, it's doing something differently, So I'm I don't
Speaker 1: know if that feature is still in there or why
Speaker 1: they you know, everything, look, even when I go into
Speaker 1: it says settings have moved to the settings to have
Speaker 1: so And this morning it was like, do you want
Speaker 1: to update all of your items and do you want
Speaker 1: to choose your favorites? I was like, wait, what, hold on?
Speaker 1: Hold on? Now they call these things automations that used
Speaker 1: to be my routines. So I'm I'm still learning that
Speaker 1: app and all the new stuff it's doing, because clearly
Speaker 1: it is really really changed. So when it comes to
Speaker 1: the actual casting on the apps have I mean usually
Speaker 1: if you're on the Wi Fi and the TV's on
Speaker 1: the same Wi Fi, it's the app is the icon
Speaker 1: is going to show up, the little cast icon and
Speaker 1: you're saying, that's not happening anymore.
Speaker 3: I just can't.
Speaker 12: I can't seem to find it anymore. Used to be
Speaker 12: in the upper right hand corner, and I just don't,
Speaker 12: you know, the only one I'm trying to cast is
Speaker 12: ABO max and that's the one that's supposed to be
Speaker 12: easily castable, and I just don't see it. But I
Speaker 12: didn't know if that was maybe tied in or if
Speaker 12: that's just me.
Speaker 1: I don't think so. I think now have have the
Speaker 1: the TV that you're trying to do this on, has
Speaker 1: the Wi Fi connection changed? Because it all goes it
Speaker 1: has to be on the same Wi Fi network for
Speaker 1: that button to show up.
Speaker 12: It's on the same wife.
Speaker 1: It is one dent on the same Wi Fi. Okay,
Speaker 1: so what about now you're using, uh is the cast
Speaker 1: baked into the TV or is it a chrome cast device?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 12: I have a Chrome cast and I brought it down
Speaker 12: here to use it, but then I realized the TV
Speaker 12: would just accept the casting without the chrome cast. Okay,
Speaker 12: so I don't need I don't need the chrome. It's
Speaker 12: it's a really new TV.
Speaker 1: Okay, it's a really new TV. So a couple things.
Speaker 1: Are we sure that the Wi Fi did not get
Speaker 1: disconnected on that TV? Because can you access other Wi
Speaker 1: Fi enabled things on there?
Speaker 12: I'd have to figure out how to test that. I
Speaker 12: get that. Okay, that's a thought. I'll investigate that.
Speaker 1: So that's that's my initial thought, is that you know,
Speaker 1: like I have a TV in the office that I
Speaker 1: went to cast something and it wasn't working, and I
Speaker 1: was like, why isn't this working? And I realized I
Speaker 1: had turned the Wi Fi off for privacy reasons, because
Speaker 1: a lot of these new TVs they send all the
Speaker 1: data back to the manufacturer and they scan what you're
Speaker 1: watching and they send it back. So if you don't
Speaker 1: want that happening, you know, you just turned the Wi
Speaker 1: Fi off. And so I realized that I had turned
Speaker 1: that off, and now I turned it back on and
Speaker 1: the little cast button showed up. So a couple of
Speaker 1: things that I would do to troubleshoot, and I, you know,
Speaker 1: I think that the main thing is to make sure
Speaker 1: the Wi Fi is on the same networks on both
Speaker 1: of these devices. Obviously you said that's happening. If it's
Speaker 1: a device that's connected to the TV, like a Chrome CA,
Speaker 1: I just unplug it, plug it back in and maybe
Speaker 1: that will force the connection again. Otherwise, if it's the TV,
Speaker 1: check to see if the Wi Fi is on. But
Speaker 1: in general, Wi Fi the Wi Fi network has to
Speaker 1: be the same if you're casting something, and it's just
Speaker 1: one of those things where it shows up natively inside
Speaker 1: the app when it recognizes that it can connect to something.
Speaker 1: So if you're not seeing that cast icon inside different apps.
Speaker 1: I would also open up Netflix because that's the easiest
Speaker 1: to kind of see if the cast icon shows up there.
Speaker 1: I would open up that one and see. So you
Speaker 1: said it works on YouTube, which means there's some sort
Speaker 1: of life happening and there's some sort of connection happening
Speaker 1: between these two devices. But YouTube is Google. Cast is Google,
Speaker 1: so it's a little bit trickier because Google has some
Speaker 1: ways of making that connection more so than other apps
Speaker 1: that may just be using the cast framework there. So
Speaker 1: those are my suggestions, Dale, I think you're going to
Speaker 1: get this to work, maybe restart both devices as well
Speaker 1: and see if they come back up. And also maybe
Speaker 1: on that TV, get rid of any like forget any
Speaker 1: Wi Fi networks that it may have been connected to
Speaker 1: in the past that could be confusing it as well.
Speaker 1: But Google casts a great thing when it works, and
Speaker 1: it's one of those things that you don't realize how
Speaker 1: good it is until, Like we bring a Chrome cast
Speaker 1: to hotels, and not every hotel lets you do it,
Speaker 1: but you can just pop the Chrome cast into the
Speaker 1: back of the TV and cast anything. It's a little
Speaker 1: tricky because they do have to be on the same
Speaker 1: Wi Fi network. And I had some I'm trying to
Speaker 1: think how I got around that last time, but it
Speaker 1: was a little tricky because you can't necessarily use the
Speaker 1: Wi Fi that the hotel provides. I think I make
Speaker 1: my phone a hotspot. I think I did that. But
Speaker 1: the other thing is that a lot of these TVs.
Speaker 1: You go to these hotels now and they just have
Speaker 1: casting built in, like it's just a thing. You connect
Speaker 1: to the hotel Wi Fi, you say what room number
Speaker 1: you're in, and wow. Especially the I think was the
Speaker 1: Hyatt hotels that do this and it just has the casting.
Speaker 1: But I've seen it in different brands, so it's a
Speaker 1: great thing when it works and it's fun. Oh, speaking
Speaker 1: of Netflix, did you know that you can download your
Speaker 1: entire viewing history. Dwight Silverman in the Houston Chronicle talks
Speaker 1: about this. We had him on the show last week.
Speaker 1: This is really interesting. I was not aware of this
Speaker 1: until I read his column, and yes, you can download
Speaker 1: all of your personal data and he downloaded his. I
Speaker 1: downloaded mine over yesterday and you can see everything, everything
Speaker 1: you've watched, everything everyone on your account has watched. You
Speaker 1: can see every single device that is logged into your account.
Speaker 1: When they log in what they're doing when they're doing it,
Speaker 1: and it's pretty thorough. I was going through some of
Speaker 1: the files. There's a bunch of files. It's not it's
Speaker 1: not a large file, but it's just a lot of
Speaker 1: little files. So to do this, you can go to
Speaker 1: Netflix dot com, slash account, slash get my info. And
Speaker 1: there's no reason to do this except just for fun.
Speaker 1: This is not like I'm not telling you this like
Speaker 1: you should go snooping on all the people that are
Speaker 1: sharing your account. It's just kind of fun to see
Speaker 1: all the information that they're collecting because you kind of
Speaker 1: forget about this. And the reason why they're doing this
Speaker 1: is because, well A, I think they're mandated by you know,
Speaker 1: all these you know, freedom of like the thing where
Speaker 1: you can download your Google data all this stuff. But
Speaker 1: I think they're also kind of flexing a little bit
Speaker 1: because they're saying, yeah, we know every single IP address
Speaker 1: that's using your account, we know which device is using it,
Speaker 1: we know who's the profile, and yeah, we're going to
Speaker 1: use this information once we start cracking down onsload password freeloaders.
Speaker 1: So once you request your info, it's not instant, but
Speaker 1: they'll email you when it's ready and you can see
Speaker 1: your full viewing activity. It shows you everything that's happening
Speaker 1: on there, and then you've got the which shows you
Speaker 1: all the hardware. But as Dwight explains, the creepiest file
Speaker 1: on the batch is the one called clickstream. This literally
Speaker 1: shows you all of the actions taken by users on
Speaker 1: your account. You can see when someone looks at episode titles,
Speaker 1: read the description of a movie, or clicked playback, and
Speaker 1: it's like a it's like a play by play of
Speaker 1: exactly what they do on Netflix. It even says something
Speaker 1: like this trailer for this show auto played on their
Speaker 1: home screen.
Speaker 14: So it is.
Speaker 1: It is quite thorough. If you want to download your
Speaker 1: Netflix data again, just go to Netflix dot com, slash account,
Speaker 1: slash get my info and uh yeah, it's pretty eye opening,
Speaker 1: kind of fun just to see all the info that
Speaker 1: they're collecting on you. All right, coming up, we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about Apple and Google teaming up to prevent
Speaker 1: unwanted tracking with air tags and other trackers and Airbnb.
Speaker 1: Everything old is new again with Airbnb. So I'm gonna
Speaker 1: tell you the new feature that is coming back that'll
Speaker 1: make travel cheaper, plus your calls triple eight rich one
Speaker 1: O one eight eight eight seven four to two four
Speaker 1: to one zero one. You're listening to Rich on tech. Oh,
Speaker 1: I have a show to do. I could listen to
Speaker 1: this song forever. This is definitely on repeat. There's something
Speaker 1: about songs when they just have such a unique hook
Speaker 1: to them, like there's just you know, the songs are
Speaker 1: a dime a dozen, but there's just some that break
Speaker 1: out like this one. It's got such a unique sound
Speaker 1: and feel and energy to it that it's just you
Speaker 1: just can't get enough of it. You can just listen
Speaker 1: to it forever. Rich Tamiro here talking technology with you
Speaker 1: at eight eight eight rich one oh one. That's eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: Coming up later in the show, we're gonna talk to
Speaker 1: Josh auerback. He is the COO of Aura Free. This
Speaker 1: is one of my favorite gadgets of the past couple
Speaker 1: of years. And talking to Josh for a reason, because
Speaker 1: Mother's Day is coming up, and if you're looking for
Speaker 1: something that would be the perfect gift, not just for mom,
Speaker 1: this works for any family member, but it's such a
Speaker 1: great way to send your digital pictures to their frame
Speaker 1: in their home. It's really cool. So we'll talk about
Speaker 1: that in some of the new features there. Okay, let's
Speaker 1: get to Ryan in La Ryan you're on with Rich Hi.
Speaker 14: Rich, Hi, thank you for taking my call. I've been
Speaker 14: a long time viewer and now listener. Oh thanks, And
Speaker 14: I had a good question for you.
Speaker 10: What is it?
Speaker 1: So?
Speaker 14: I just recently rebuilt my computer and I did a
Speaker 14: motherboard change and a TPU change and GPU and everything,
Speaker 14: and I now have the remaining stuffs from like my
Speaker 14: last computer, and I've been recommended by using constantly that
Speaker 14: old computer for maybe sending up with server inside my
Speaker 14: house or like what would be a good use for
Speaker 14: a remaining computer like that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I think that the well, I mean,
Speaker 1: do you need a server? Because so is this a
Speaker 1: full computer, like ready to go, like it still works
Speaker 1: and everything.
Speaker 14: I would just need a case. That would be the
Speaker 14: main thing I'd be missing, is just a case to
Speaker 14: keep it in.
Speaker 1: Okay, And I imagine since you're building these things, this
Speaker 1: is still a pretty good computer.
Speaker 14: Yeah, it's it's a decent computer. I just it definitely
Speaker 14: could do most anything I would recommend it like doing
Speaker 14: like maybe cryptocurrency or but like I wasn't sure what
Speaker 14: would be a great use for something like that.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, so once you have a computer that
Speaker 1: is no longer necessary, my thing is that I will
Speaker 1: typically give it to a family member that needs it.
Speaker 1: That's kind of like the number one. Now that's referring
Speaker 1: to laptops usually, so typically I'll replace my laptop every
Speaker 1: three years or so, and I will give the old
Speaker 1: one to, you know, either my kid or my mom
Speaker 1: or my dad or anyone. I've given them to all
Speaker 1: of my FAMI family members at this point, so that's
Speaker 1: that's number one. Now, this is a desktop, This is
Speaker 1: a larger computer, so that may not be something that
Speaker 1: they want per se. I mean unless they have a
Speaker 1: desktop setup or whatever. But the other thing you could
Speaker 1: do if you you know, you talked about making a server.
Speaker 1: I think that the bottom line is do you need
Speaker 1: the server? And I think that in this day and age,
Speaker 1: it's good to have that in your home. I would
Speaker 1: be concerned about how much power this computer is consuming
Speaker 1: to to just run a server that you may or
Speaker 1: may not need, So that's kind of the consideration there.
Speaker 1: But in general, if you were using it as a server,
Speaker 1: it'd be good to sort of back up anything that's
Speaker 1: in the cloud, So whether it's Google Photos, whether it's uh,
Speaker 1: you know, anything that you're storing online, you can have
Speaker 1: it back up to that device. Otherwise, people, you know,
Speaker 1: you can run sort of a plex server on it
Speaker 1: or something like that to serve up your video and
Speaker 1: audio if you're doing that. But personally, I think that
Speaker 1: it's unless you absolutely one need this thing to be
Speaker 1: a server, I would probably find another use for it.
Speaker 1: And I know you're proud of this machine because you
Speaker 1: built it, so I would try to place this with
Speaker 1: someone that could really use it. So whether that's a
Speaker 1: family member or I would say something like a charity,
Speaker 1: like a school, maybe set this up for them. I
Speaker 1: think there's a lot of charities and schools out there
Speaker 1: that could use this and do that. Maybe a you know,
Speaker 1: a church, religious organization that could use it, So that
Speaker 1: would be probably a great use of it. Otherwise, I mean,
Speaker 1: you're not going to recycle this thing because it sounds
Speaker 1: like it's a really good device. So if you don't
Speaker 1: want to donate it and you want to make money
Speaker 1: off of it, maybe you could just use one of
Speaker 1: these sites like a you know, a Facebook marketplace or
Speaker 1: a let go that or offer up that you could
Speaker 1: sell this thing, but of course you'd want to have
Speaker 1: all your personal information off of there. But since you're
Speaker 1: building computers, I'm pretty sure you know how to delete
Speaker 1: the information off of this thing. But that those are
Speaker 1: my options for an an old computer. In fact, it's
Speaker 1: funny Ryan that you asked this question because I have
Speaker 1: an old laptop. So I just got a new laptop.
Speaker 1: I gave my old one to my kid and then
Speaker 1: his old one, which is still perfectly fine except for
Speaker 1: the battery. I've been trying to figure out a use
Speaker 1: for it, and I've been wondering if I should set
Speaker 1: it up as a server or I'm not sure.
Speaker 5: So it's a.
Speaker 1: Laptop, which doesn't necessarily make the best server in my opinion,
Speaker 1: but I do need to back up some things, so
Speaker 1: I was thinking that that's what I might use it for.
Speaker 1: So but otherwise, the other thing is I mentioned this
Speaker 1: on the show, but Chrome os flex turns an older
Speaker 1: computer into something that's more like a chromebook, so you
Speaker 1: could look into something like that. So there are a
Speaker 1: lot of ways to do this, and just depends. Since
Speaker 1: this is a big, powerful computer, you might want to
Speaker 1: place it in the hands of someone that knows the
Speaker 1: power of that computer and can do something good with it.
Speaker 1: So great question. Thanks so much for calling in today, Ryan,
Speaker 1: appreciate you watching me on KTLA. Apple and Google teaming
Speaker 1: up to address unwanted tracking with devices like air tags.
Speaker 1: So this is a new proposal that they are putting
Speaker 1: out there to the industry to build into iOS and
Speaker 1: Android a set of standards that would be able to
Speaker 1: use and alert users about all of these different trackers
Speaker 1: out there. So, whether it's a Samsung, whether it's a
Speaker 1: Tile Chipolo, Ufi Security, Pebbleby haven't even heard of that one,
Speaker 1: all of these devices, if they were near you, your
Speaker 1: phone would alert you, and you know, not just instantly,
Speaker 1: but after a while of it tracking you. So the
Speaker 1: problem is with these air tags, they're so popular. If
Speaker 1: you have an iPhone, it tells you that there's an
Speaker 1: unwanted one yearby do you have an Android, it doesn't
Speaker 1: tell you that. So now these two companies are working
Speaker 1: together hopefully by the end of the year, no matter
Speaker 1: which air tag is on you by accident or you know,
Speaker 1: if someone's using it for stalking, your phone would alert you.
Speaker 1: Smart Thanks Apple and Google for working together on this.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Rich on Tech coming up, Aura Frames
Speaker 1: up next. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro
Speaker 1: here hanging out with you talking technology.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: In addition to the radio, I am on KTLA Television
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles, and of course you can watch live
Speaker 1: in the mornings when I'm on, but if you're not here,
Speaker 1: you can watch my TV segments online. I cover a
Speaker 1: variety of consumer tech topics. Just like this show. It's fun,
Speaker 1: it's visual, it's interesting. I feel like it's always good information.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm the one making it, so I hope
Speaker 1: it is. Just go to rich on Tech dot tv
Speaker 1: and you can click to see all of my TV segments.
Speaker 1: We also have them on YouTube as well, so there's
Speaker 1: a YouTube playlist I'll link up on the website so
Speaker 1: you can subscribe to that and watch them there. All right,
Speaker 1: I'm excited for my next guest because Aura Frames is
Speaker 1: one of my favorite gadgets, and every time I mention
Speaker 1: on TV, people say, Rich this is the best thing
Speaker 1: I've ever purchased. It's so easy. It's a digital frame
Speaker 1: that you can display your pictures on. But it's super
Speaker 1: easy to get your pictures on the frame because you
Speaker 1: can send them right from your phone, via email or
Speaker 1: using the app. So let's bring up Josh hourback here.
Speaker 1: Coo of Aura frames. Josh, thanks for joining me.
Speaker 19: It's my pleasure. It's my pleasure.
Speaker 1: Okay. So how do you describe what Aura frames are?
Speaker 1: I described it in my way, but you describe it
Speaker 1: your way.
Speaker 19: Yeah, and I thought your way was terrific when I
Speaker 19: think about it. Aura is a really good Wi Fi
Speaker 19: connected digital picture frame, and so you can take each
Speaker 19: of those in part. But I think for people who
Speaker 19: have a lot of pictures around their house in you know,
Speaker 19: old fashioned printed photos. So the first part is it's
Speaker 19: a digital picture frame. Those have been around for twenty
Speaker 19: something years, right. The second is that it's Wi Fi connected,
Speaker 19: so that it connects to the Internet and you can
Speaker 19: add photos to it from anywhere in the world, and
Speaker 19: those have been around maybe for ten years. And the
Speaker 19: third is that it's really good, right, And we pay
Speaker 19: a lot attention to the little details, the picture quality
Speaker 19: and the quality of the groom itself, and so that's
Speaker 19: what that's what's important to us.
Speaker 1: So if you remember now you said that digital frames
Speaker 1: have been around for I think you said, do you
Speaker 1: say twenty years, but it's been a while.
Speaker 19: Yeah, yeah, I think they came out in the in
Speaker 19: the nineteen nineties.
Speaker 1: So I remember when everyone got one of these, including myself.
Speaker 1: We gifted our in laws and my mom one of
Speaker 1: these frames. And here's how it worked. You would load
Speaker 1: up the frame by putting pictures on like a USB
Speaker 1: drive and then pop that into the back of the frame.
Speaker 1: And I can guarantee you that I have millions of
Speaker 1: these frames that were sold back in the day. They
Speaker 1: were updated exactly once when they were gifted, and you
Speaker 1: never had new pictures, and that's where.
Speaker 19: Exactly and I think I had won myself. I had
Speaker 19: a standalone I think it was a Kodak digital camera
Speaker 19: in the very late nineties, and I had one of
Speaker 19: those frames that used I think it was a compact
Speaker 19: flash card whatever those were called way back. Yeah, and uh,
Speaker 19: And you're exactly right, and they were. They were actually
Speaker 19: a pretty big business for a very brief moment in time,
Speaker 19: and then they all got dusty and the pictures got stale,
Speaker 19: and they all got thrown out.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 19: There was a there was a boom and then a
Speaker 19: bus in this sector. And I think what really changed,
Speaker 19: obviously the technology got better and the image quality got better,
Speaker 19: but what really mattered was the advent of ubiquitous.
Speaker 1: Wi Fi mm hm. And so these Aura frames, you've
Speaker 1: got several different models, you know, they're all digital, they
Speaker 1: all have different kind of features, but the main thing
Speaker 1: is the ease of which you can get photos to
Speaker 1: these frames. And so, for instance, my in laws we
Speaker 1: gifted them one, and I can have the app on
Speaker 1: my phone that displays you know that I can send
Speaker 1: photos to their frame. But also my sister in law
Speaker 1: and brother in law can have the app on their
Speaker 1: phone and also send pictures to this frame. And I've
Speaker 1: noticed it's almost like a little friendly competition of whenever
Speaker 1: I get a notification that says that they send pictures,
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, I should send some pictures now. Do
Speaker 1: you find that happens with people?
Speaker 14: Yeah, and that the.
Speaker 19: Business itself. One of the things that I love most
Speaker 19: about it is that you very often find that someone
Speaker 19: will buy one for, you know, their parents one year,
Speaker 19: for the holidays or for Mother's Day, and they'll start
Speaker 19: sending pictures and then they realize, you know, the their
Speaker 19: siblings have started to add pictures to it. But then
Speaker 19: they go and buy one for their in laws and
Speaker 19: then the siblings I want for their in laws. Yeah,
Speaker 19: it just goes out from you know, from family to family,
Speaker 19: and we have cases, I think the biggest where it
Speaker 19: had gone across a hundred families, going from in lost
Speaker 19: and lost and laws. You know, these crazy excitement that
Speaker 19: people have for this product. Again, you know, as you said,
Speaker 19: you can add photos to it from anywhere and people
Speaker 19: just love that.
Speaker 1: And you don't, you know, if you're thinking like, ah,
Speaker 1: that's too complicated, I'm not going to be able to
Speaker 1: use an app to send them. I mean, at the base,
Speaker 1: you can send them through email. So this each frame
Speaker 1: has sort of like a personalized email address that you
Speaker 1: can just send the photo to that email address and
Speaker 1: it will show up on that frame.
Speaker 12: Correct, that's right, that's right.
Speaker 19: And for people who think this is somewhat exotic or different,
Speaker 19: it is very simple to use. And that's part I
Speaker 19: think of why the product has become so popular is
Speaker 19: that whether you're sending a picture to it from your
Speaker 19: phone via email or you use the app, it's extremely
Speaker 19: easy to send pictures to it. And the difference is,
Speaker 19: you know, if you send a photo to someone in
Speaker 19: a text message or I message. They'll see it once, right,
Speaker 19: maybe it'll scroll back to it, but it almost immediately
Speaker 19: disappears from the screen. And if you send it to
Speaker 19: their Aura, they can see it every day. And that's magic,
Speaker 19: particularly with parents' grandparents, those kinds of things where people
Speaker 19: get these pictures and they really would treasure them if
Speaker 19: they could treasure them, and that's what that's what Aura does.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's kind of fun too. When you're on vacation,
Speaker 1: you can send a photo directly to the frame, like
Speaker 1: we did that. We were in Hawaii a couple of
Speaker 1: weeks ago and we were sending pictures from our vacation
Speaker 1: right to the frame. Instead of text messaging, we just
Speaker 1: sent them to the frame. And it's kind of fun
Speaker 1: because you know that our in laws are sitting in
Speaker 1: their kitchen all of a sudden they see this new
Speaker 1: picture pop up and like, oh, that's cool, that's brand new.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about some of the new features. No, sure,
Speaker 1: let's talk about some of the new features. So you've
Speaker 1: got this colorizer feature which will take a black and
Speaker 1: white or a sepia image and colorize it.
Speaker 19: That's right, that's right, and it's very easy to do
Speaker 19: so I was using this actually earlier today. I had
Speaker 19: a picture of one of my aunts and it was
Speaker 19: in black and white. It was taken back in the forties,
Speaker 19: and I did sort of the most simple thing, which
Speaker 19: is that I took a picture of the picture. Right,
Speaker 19: It couldn't be much easier. I take a picture of
Speaker 19: the picture with my phone and then you see three
Speaker 19: little circles in the corner and you just tap on
Speaker 19: that and say colorized, and it adds just a little
Speaker 19: bit of color to the picture. And it's a nice
Speaker 19: It makes it seem a little bit more alive. I
Speaker 19: really enjoy it.
Speaker 1: What about this feature that restores old photos? So tell
Speaker 1: me about that. Is that similar?
Speaker 19: Yeah, yes, same kind of thing. And you'll have a
Speaker 19: picture that has a tear in it or a scratch
Speaker 19: something like that, and this just applies the you know
Speaker 19: a little bit of retouching to get rid of those
Speaker 19: kinds of scratches.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 19: So much of what we do at AURA, we try
Speaker 19: to use some high technology, some you know, fancy algorithm
Speaker 19: behind the scenes, but we want it to be very
Speaker 19: easy to use and essentially to make the technology aspect
Speaker 19: of it disappear. And this works exactly the same way
Speaker 19: about it.
Speaker 14: It's just one tap.
Speaker 19: It makes your photo look a little bit better of
Speaker 19: the you know, the end goal essentially is to let
Speaker 19: you enjoy your photos a little bit better than you
Speaker 19: would have been able to otherwise.
Speaker 1: And I love the idea. I never really thought about
Speaker 1: scanning the photos from the app because I just think
Speaker 1: about adding them for my camera role. But yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a little scanner icon in the upper right hand corner
Speaker 1: when you say add photos. And so if you're at
Speaker 1: say your grandma's house or your family member's house, you
Speaker 1: can and you see a that you want that's on
Speaker 1: their wall, that you want on your frame, just take
Speaker 1: a scan of it and add it's your own frame,
Speaker 1: which is kind of cool too.
Speaker 12: Yeah.
Speaker 19: Yeah, And that's a very very common use case, and
Speaker 19: it's a way you don't have to go through a
Speaker 19: lot of effort and the qualities you leave the quality
Speaker 19: is fine. And again what it brings to you is
Speaker 19: is the smile that you get from seeing that picture.
Speaker 14: Again.
Speaker 1: So the top selling frame is the Carver Matt and
Speaker 1: this is regularly one eighty. Right now it's one fifty
Speaker 1: for a Mother's Day deal. Then you've got the Mason
Speaker 1: which is one eighty, which is a nine inch screen.
Speaker 1: And then you've got the Mason Lux which is the
Speaker 1: highest photo clarity, so that has a two K display
Speaker 1: that's two twenty nine. But I think most people will
Speaker 1: be happy with any of these, obviously, whatever's in their
Speaker 1: price range. I also notice that, and I also.
Speaker 19: Know that you guys are We focus a lot on
Speaker 19: image quality, and so whichever one you buy, you're going
Speaker 19: to be happy with the.
Speaker 14: Way the pictures look on it.
Speaker 1: And I noticed last time I was in Costco, I
Speaker 1: saw them in there, and I thought that was pretty neat.
Speaker 19: Yes, yeah, we've got a great partnership with Costco, and
Speaker 19: you know, it's a terrific product for that for that's
Speaker 19: kind of store.
Speaker 1: All right, Josh, anything else you want to add before
Speaker 1: we head out here.
Speaker 19: No, I mean, I think this is a terrific gift
Speaker 19: for Mother's Day. People really love it, and I think
Speaker 19: that's what makes my job so rewarding.
Speaker 1: All right, Josh auerback from Aura Frames. I'll put a
Speaker 1: link on my website at richon tech dot TV. Thanks
Speaker 1: so much for joining me today, Josh, appreciate it.
Speaker 19: Thank you, Rich Bye.
Speaker 1: Okay, these frames, I mean it's just such a great gift.
Speaker 1: So if you're looking for something for Mother's Day, I mean,
Speaker 1: this is one of those things, or any day. I mean, honestly,
Speaker 1: these things. Every time I talk about this thing on TV,
Speaker 1: people just go wild over it because it's something that
Speaker 1: you kind of remember from back in the day, like
Speaker 1: we all had this digital frame. But once you get
Speaker 1: that ease of Wi Fi, it is really really nice.
Speaker 1: And I think Aura what sets them apart from some
Speaker 1: of the other frames that I've tested is really just
Speaker 1: the quality of not only the frame, but also the
Speaker 1: app and the way that you get your information to
Speaker 1: that frame. So again I'll put a link to Aura
Speaker 1: Frames on my website. Rich on Tech dot TV. All right,
Speaker 1: coming up, I can't believe it. We're gonna close out.
Speaker 5: The show.
Speaker 1: Eight to eight rich one, oh one, if we can
Speaker 1: sneak in one more question here, but otherwise I'll tell
Speaker 1: you some more things happening in the tech world coming
Speaker 1: up after this. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich
Speaker 1: Demiro here talking technology with you. If you can believe it,
Speaker 1: it's the end of the show. I can't believe it.
Speaker 1: It's three hours and it goes too fast. I don't
Speaker 1: know how that happens. There's just so many tech things
Speaker 1: to talk about every week, and of course your questions,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna try to get through some of the things
Speaker 1: I wanted to tell you about this week. Airbnb, let's
Speaker 1: talk about them. They are introducing over fifty new features
Speaker 1: based on feedback. Airbnb sort of started out as this
Speaker 1: darling and then there's been sort of a backlash because
Speaker 1: people complain that it's just as expensive as staying at
Speaker 1: a hotel. The list of things you have to do
Speaker 1: when you check out are just too much, and all
Speaker 1: the fees and all that kind of stuff has just
Speaker 1: gotten kind of out of control. And so Airbnb obviously
Speaker 1: knows that travel is ticking up and there's gonna be
Speaker 1: a lot of options out there, so they want to
Speaker 1: compete once again. So they've got these fifty different features
Speaker 1: and upgrades that address some of these pain points. But
Speaker 1: the main one is really the new feature called rooms
Speaker 1: Airbnb Rooms, and Airbnb is saying that this is going
Speaker 1: to make travel a lot cheaper, a lot more affordable.
Speaker 1: They say eighty percent of private rooms are under one
Speaker 1: hundred dollars a night, with an average rate of sixty
Speaker 1: seven dollars a night, and so they're pitching kind of
Speaker 1: like back to the basics, Like Airbnb started out as
Speaker 1: people renting rooms in their homes, and they're saying, look,
Speaker 1: this is still a great way to travel and a
Speaker 1: very inexpensive way to travel, and so we get it.
Speaker 1: It's kind of scary to stay with a random person,
Speaker 1: but they're trying to make it more approachable, and so
Speaker 1: they have this new thing called the host Passport, and
Speaker 1: the host passport lets you get to know the person
Speaker 1: that you're staying with, and so they have all kinds
Speaker 1: of fun things on there, like what they like to do,
Speaker 1: fun facts, where they went to school, what they do
Speaker 1: for work. There's larger pictures so you can get an
Speaker 1: idea of who this person is before you stay with them.
Speaker 1: And I'm not saying you're staying in their room. I
Speaker 1: mean it's a private room in their home. But they
Speaker 1: also have filters that let you see, does this private
Speaker 1: room have a bathroom? Does this private room have a
Speaker 1: lock on the door. So again, I mean, look, there's
Speaker 1: a time and a place for everything. And I think
Speaker 1: that some people will say, no way, I'll never do that,
Speaker 1: But there's a lot of people that will say yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of fun. And I was looking at some
Speaker 1: of the listings and some of these people, you know,
Speaker 1: they like one of the people was like an executive
Speaker 1: at uber, you know, and it's like they're they've rented
Speaker 1: for like years and it's like, Okay, well, I'd feel
Speaker 1: comfortable staying with them. But again, it depends on your
Speaker 1: level of for with this kind of stuff. Some of
Speaker 1: the other improvements total price, you can see what the
Speaker 1: price is with fees before taxes, the checkout, you can
Speaker 1: see the checkout instructions before you book, because sometimes these
Speaker 1: checkout instructions could be I always joke like, you know,
Speaker 1: can you please organize my photo collection before you check out?
Speaker 1: It's like that seems a little unreasonable. You can also
Speaker 1: see if people are getting low ratings for unreasonable chores,
Speaker 1: you'll be removed from Airbnb, and then if you stay
Speaker 1: over three months, the service fee will be a lot cheaper.
Speaker 1: And then they also have this new dedicated twenty four
Speaker 1: to seven support team which can give you priority access
Speaker 1: when you're on a trip, so if you need help
Speaker 1: while you're on the trip, you can get someone more easily.
Speaker 1: So Airbnb doing a bunch of stuff there on your iPhone.
Speaker 1: This week, you probably saw this Rapid Security Response update. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is brand new. So this is if you know
Speaker 1: about the iPhone updates, they can be a chore. They
Speaker 1: can take a really long time to install. So now
Speaker 1: they have this thing with iOS sixteen called Rapid Security
Speaker 1: Response Security Response. These are updates that address pressing issues
Speaker 1: on the iPhone, like security issues that are pretty major,
Speaker 1: but you can install them very rapidly and quickly and
Speaker 1: without a major restart most of the time. Now, this
Speaker 1: week's did require a restart, but in the future they
Speaker 1: may not, so these are much more smaller updates. You'll
Speaker 1: know because it'll say Rapid Security Response and it will
Speaker 1: also not have to reboot most of the time, so
Speaker 1: you should feel comfortable installing these. You'll know that it's
Speaker 1: a rapid response when it has the letter A at
Speaker 1: the end, so or I'm not sure if it's just
Speaker 1: a letter A or if it's going to be a
Speaker 1: letter at the end of it. So you'll know that
Speaker 1: it's a rapid response when it has a letter. But
Speaker 1: go ahead and install it. It's safe. That's what that's
Speaker 1: all about. Meanwhile, in Google, you might start noticing blue
Speaker 1: checks blue check marks next to a sender's name is
Speaker 1: This is to signify that the sender is verified, and
Speaker 1: so I think this is pretty smart. With all all
Speaker 1: the phishing emails out there. You'll probably notice this if
Speaker 1: you open up an email and it comes from a
Speaker 1: big brand like Amazon. I also noticed it for a
Speaker 1: financial website. It will have a blue check mark. You
Speaker 1: can hover over the blue check mark to make sure
Speaker 1: that that is a legitimate sender. You're also going to
Speaker 1: have this enabled on personal Google accounts soon, so that's
Speaker 1: a smart thing, So look for that blue check mark.
Speaker 1: Let's see here. I'm getting to the feedback section. Now,
Speaker 1: let's get to Dave. Dave says, hey, Rich, I love
Speaker 1: the show. You're doing a wonderful job. I'm addicted and
Speaker 1: your topics each week are terrific. Well, thank you, Dave.
Speaker 1: Last week you had a caller with questions about adding
Speaker 1: Android Auto to an older vehicle. This is what I
Speaker 1: used in my twenty twelve Toyota Prius and it works great.
Speaker 1: It's all wireless, except the head unit needs some power.
Speaker 1: It's plugged into the RCA jack to get the sound
Speaker 1: out into the car radio. Hence the two wires on
Speaker 1: the left side, and he sent a little picture. The
Speaker 1: mount is the CD slot, which of course I don't use,
Speaker 1: and it's totally stable. The company is car Pride from China.
Speaker 1: The service and shipping were excellent. I highly recommend I've
Speaker 1: had no issues so far. Why replace the entire radio
Speaker 1: if it's not needed? Thanks Dave, Dave, thanks for the feedback.
Speaker 1: That's excellent. It looks like a good installation. I like it,
Speaker 1: and I love how you have it mounted on top
Speaker 1: of the CD player because you don't need that. Let's
Speaker 1: see here. Hey, rich Dan says, I heard your thoughts
Speaker 1: about the ring dash cam. I have one that I
Speaker 1: pre ordered at a discount, but I haven't hooked it up.
Speaker 1: I'm not thrilled about paying six dollars a month. All
Speaker 1: these subscriptions add up. I can't afford a subscription for everything.
Speaker 1: Your comment on the battery drain has me thinking I
Speaker 1: only drive fifteen minutes to and from work. I'm thinking
Speaker 1: that maybe not enough time to charge my vehicle battery.
Speaker 1: I have an outdoor wireless wisecam that lasts about three
Speaker 1: months on the battery. I've been wishing for that in
Speaker 1: a dash cam. Where I parked there is Wi Fi
Speaker 1: so the camera can alert me when I'm home. And
Speaker 1: maybe that's not the perfect solution, but if the camera
Speaker 1: would keep recorded events on a memory card until we
Speaker 1: get back to Wi Fi, then that would be a
Speaker 1: I'd love Thanks for the info, Dan. Yeah, I have
Speaker 1: a feeling that Wise could really do a good dash
Speaker 1: cam because Wyse is a very smart company, and I
Speaker 1: think that's a great solution. Instead of paying that subscription,
Speaker 1: they would just record continuously on a loop. Then when
Speaker 1: you get to your Wi Fi, the camera would go
Speaker 1: ahead and upload those clips to the cloud. So Wyse
Speaker 1: has done some great things over the years. Very very
Speaker 1: good company. I love them. Thanks for the feedback, all right,
Speaker 1: if you have feedback for the show, Hello at rich
Speaker 1: on tech dot TV. All right, I'm Rich Demiro. That's
Speaker 1: gonna do it for this episode, can you believe it?
Speaker 1: Next week, I'm headed to Google Io. We're gonna have
Speaker 1: new foldable phones, probably plans for AI and much more.
Speaker 1: So be sure to check out the show next week
Speaker 1: when I give you the whole update from Google Io.
Speaker 1: You can find me on social media. I am at
Speaker 1: Rich on tech the website, rich on tech dot TV.
Speaker 1: Don't forget to check it out for everything I mentioned here,
Speaker 1: plus the TV segments. My name is rich Demiro. Thanks
Speaker 1: so much for listening. There are so many you can
Speaker 1: spend your time. I do appreciate you spending it right
Speaker 1: here with me. Thanks to everyone who makes this show possible.
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you real soon.