Speaker 1: The smart ring that's like a virtual notebook for your finger,
Speaker 1: the latest pet tracker from a familiar name, and Google's
Speaker 1: Pixel smartphone reaches a milestone. Plus your tech questions answered.
Speaker 1: What's going on? I'm Rich Demiro and this is rich
Speaker 1: on Tech. This is the show where I talk about
Speaker 1: the tech stuff I think you should know about. It's
Speaker 1: also the place where I answer your questions about technology.
Speaker 1: I believe that tech should be interesting, useful and fun.
Speaker 1: All right, let's do it. Let's open up those phone
Speaker 1: lines at triple eight rich one oh one. That's eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: Give me a call if you have a question about technology.
Speaker 1: Eight eight eight rich one oh one. Email is also open.
Speaker 1: Just go to rich on Tech dot tv and hit
Speaker 1: contact guests. This week, we've got c NEETs AI reporter
Speaker 1: to break down the rise of AI video generators like Sora,
Speaker 1: and later in the show, Bran Putnam, founder of Mirror
Speaker 1: and the New Thing Bored, is going to share how
Speaker 1: she's reinventing family game night with her new console. Well,
Speaker 1: I hope you are having a fantastic week. Today's one
Speaker 1: of those days where I woke up and I just
Speaker 1: felt good. Don't you love those days when you get
Speaker 1: up and you're just like, all right, this is the
Speaker 1: way I wish I felt every day. And I do
Speaker 1: feel good most days, but you know some days are
Speaker 1: just you're just like, I don't know what's going on.
Speaker 1: What did I do differently this week? I know I
Speaker 1: did one thing. I tried a new workout workout class,
Speaker 1: and I think it really I don't know it did
Speaker 1: well for me because I still have energy from it. So,
Speaker 1: and I usually do my routine where I go for
Speaker 1: a run before the show. I did that. So it's
Speaker 1: just all adding up to feeling good. I hope you're
Speaker 1: feeling good. I hope you're ready for some tech. I
Speaker 1: hope you're ready for questions and answers most importantly, so
Speaker 1: get those questions in now. This happened this week. Whenever
Speaker 1: I get flooded with messages. I've told you this before.
Speaker 1: Whenever I get flooded with messages about something, I know
Speaker 1: I have to address it right. And so this week,
Speaker 1: when I read my ten thousandth DM from you saying, Rich,
Speaker 1: what's the deal with this? Is this true? I know
Speaker 1: I have to kind of talk about this. So these
Speaker 1: were all about Meta privacy. There is a viral post
Speaker 1: or there is a viral post going around that says
Speaker 1: Meta will start reading your DMS on December sixteenth. Every conversation,
Speaker 1: every photo, every voice message fed into AI used for profit.
Speaker 1: Here's how to stop it now. Number one, we know
Speaker 1: if you're using anything on the Internet that you're not
Speaker 1: paying for. Yeah, they're using your data for profit. That's
Speaker 1: the agreement we have with them. We've always had this
Speaker 1: agreement with Meta. But I get it people are worried. Now.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing about most things I see on line
Speaker 1: that go viral, there is a tiny thread of truth
Speaker 1: to them, but that's it. Then the rest is all nonsense. Now,
Speaker 1: if you follow the instructions that this person gives you.
Speaker 1: Number one, I couldn't find any of the settings that
Speaker 1: they say to change. Change all these settings, Like, I
Speaker 1: couldn't find any of them. Now I know, because I
Speaker 1: post stuff all the time online about how to change settings.
Speaker 1: I go through them with a fine tooth comb to
Speaker 1: make sure the setting is where I say it is.
Speaker 1: All these settings none of them are like there. So
Speaker 1: I don't even understand, like how this person can tell
Speaker 1: you to do this when there's nothing there to change anyway.
Speaker 1: Meta did announce a December sixteenth update, so this is
Speaker 1: coming soon. But it's all about Meta AI, not your
Speaker 1: private messages. And we've talked about this on the show.
Speaker 1: Meta is going to start using your chats with Meta AI,
Speaker 1: and that's built into Facebook, it's built into Instagram, it's
Speaker 1: built into WhatsApp, it's in Messenger. They're gonna use whatever
Speaker 1: you say to Meta AI to personalize your ads incommendations. Yes,
Speaker 1: AI is the new search, so it makes sense that
Speaker 1: whatever you talk about with AI, they're going to capitalize
Speaker 1: on that. So if you talk about hiking, yes, you're
Speaker 1: going to start seeing ads for hiking boots in your feed.
Speaker 1: It makes sense right now, there's no way for US
Speaker 1: users to opt out. In Europe. Apparently you can, but
Speaker 1: they have much stronger privacy laws over there in the US.
Speaker 1: You know, we just don't have that. It's not new.
Speaker 1: Meta has been using what you post, what you like,
Speaker 1: and what you share for years to shape your feed.
Speaker 1: We know this. If you've ever posted a photo on Instagram,
Speaker 1: do you notice how it instantly tells you what song
Speaker 1: you should accompany that photo with Because it reads the picture.
Speaker 1: It looks at that picture using AI. I posted a
Speaker 1: picture of the moon the other night. It said, hey,
Speaker 1: you should use the song Harvest Moon. I said, Oh,
Speaker 1: how'd you know that? Yeah, you're looking at the picture. Now,
Speaker 1: keep in mind this update only affects the meta AI
Speaker 1: conversations you're having, not your private chats with friends or family.
Speaker 1: Now I had to look this up. I knew WhatsApp
Speaker 1: was end to endingcrypted, which means nobody can look at
Speaker 1: those messages, not even meta if they wanted to, They
Speaker 1: couldn't even look at them. Turns out Messenger is the
Speaker 1: same way Instagram. They're working on making the messages on
Speaker 1: Instagram and encryptid. They're not there just yet, but that
Speaker 1: is apparently coming and you can toggle that on if
Speaker 1: you want. If you notice at the end of the
Speaker 1: viral post they push a privacy scan tool. Hey, here's
Speaker 1: thirty seconds. So what it's really trying to do is
Speaker 1: grab your attention and then sell you something. So you
Speaker 1: can check to see if your data has been leaked
Speaker 1: out on the open web using a free website like
Speaker 1: have I Been Poned Pwned? That will tell you if
Speaker 1: your email address and some of your other information has
Speaker 1: been out there because of one of these data breaches.
Speaker 1: That's an easy freeway to do it, but it's all
Speaker 1: part of a bigger trend what they're trying to say,
Speaker 1: of using your chat data to personalize your experiences. I've
Speaker 1: noticed when I search on Google now all my AI
Speaker 1: results are personalized to me. Now Chat GBT, same thing.
Speaker 1: They're all mentioning things that I've searched in the past,
Speaker 1: or who I am and what I search regularly in
Speaker 1: my answers, which is a little weird. And I get it.
Speaker 1: People are still nervous about meta and data because of
Speaker 1: that whole Cambridge Analytica thing, So I get there's good reason,
Speaker 1: but you have to kind of look beyond the viral
Speaker 1: nature and the eye catching attention of this and see
Speaker 1: what's really happening here. And we've known this forever. If
Speaker 1: you are not paying for the product, you are the product.
Speaker 1: That's the way it goes. Now. I don't know about you,
Speaker 1: but my posts on Facebook and Instagram are pretty casual, right, friends,
Speaker 1: family photos. Meta's job is to take the information that
Speaker 1: I give it and sell me stuff against it, and yes,
Speaker 1: it works. Half the time. I see these ads on
Speaker 1: meta and I'm like, oh, that's that looks cool now.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you saw this story about Meta.
Speaker 1: This was a report from Reuters saying that Meta shows
Speaker 1: an estimated fifteen billion scam ads every single day. And
Speaker 1: I believe it because people send me these ads and
Speaker 1: they say, rich, is this true? Can I really get
Speaker 1: an iPhone seventeen for five fifty dollars it's advertised here
Speaker 1: on Instagram stories? No, you can't. If it's too good
Speaker 1: to be true, it probably is. Meta they found promotes
Speaker 1: fake investments, counterfeit products, phony brand offers, and if you
Speaker 1: click on one scam ad, their system shows you more.
Speaker 1: And apparently Meta knew this is happening, or knows this
Speaker 1: is happening. Their internal docs that Reuter showed say ten
Speaker 1: percent of their Meta's revenue comes from a scam or
Speaker 1: band ads seven billion dollars a year. Meta says it's improving.
Speaker 1: They've removed one hundred and thirty four million scam ads,
Speaker 1: but critics say it's still not enough. So if you're
Speaker 1: looking at these ads on Instagram, on Facebook, anywhere online,
Speaker 1: if they're too good to be true, they probably are,
Speaker 1: and you're emailing me about them on a daily basis,
Speaker 1: and I see them now. I would say this is
Speaker 1: the biggest reason to just block ads completely online. You
Speaker 1: are protecting yourself. There is an argument that you are
Speaker 1: protecting yourself by having an ad blocker, so I'm all
Speaker 1: for it. So I believe that privacy matters online. Of
Speaker 1: course it does. I think you know, as Apple says,
Speaker 1: privacy is a fundamental human right. You have a right
Speaker 1: to privacy. You don't your stuff, The things that you do,
Speaker 1: the things that you say, don't need to be on
Speaker 1: the front page of the New York Times right now.
Speaker 1: You have to understand when things could be there. So
Speaker 1: think before you post anything online can live forever. We
Speaker 1: know that if you're logging into your bank or your
Speaker 1: you know, your financial accounts, don't use public Wi Fi,
Speaker 1: use cellular, use your hotspot, or use your home network
Speaker 1: and make sure that's locked down. Firefox Focus this is
Speaker 1: a great app. I know they've got it for the
Speaker 1: mobile phones, but for me, if I'm ever looking up
Speaker 1: something that is, you know, medical related, something health related,
Speaker 1: I'm using Firefox Focus because I don't want any of
Speaker 1: that information into my Google account, right I don't want
Speaker 1: it going into my pipeline. Of all the stuff that
Speaker 1: Google and all these other apps know about me, they
Speaker 1: don't need to know that. So use Firefox focus on
Speaker 1: your mobile phone. If you're looking up something sensitive or
Speaker 1: something that's medical related, or in chat GBT, you can
Speaker 1: use a temporary chat right if you don't want that
Speaker 1: to live on forever. You can also use incognito mode.
Speaker 1: But remember that doesn't necessarily protect Google from seeing everything
Speaker 1: you're doing. It just doesn't save that information to your computer.
Speaker 1: So just remember that. Also, you have to watch out
Speaker 1: for these malicious ads. I think that these are the
Speaker 1: bigger threat. Malicious ads, fake browser extensions or deceitful browser
Speaker 1: extensions that are trying to steal your data, phishing links,
Speaker 1: this is all the stuff that we are up against
Speaker 1: on a daily basis. When you're signing up for services,
Speaker 1: use the secondary email address. Duck Duck go has a
Speaker 1: nice free email address you can use and that'll block
Speaker 1: out all the trackers. Proton Mail. You can sign up
Speaker 1: for a free email through there, and that's nice. In
Speaker 1: private Google Voice, sign up for a Google Voice or
Speaker 1: another phone number that's a secondary number. Give that out
Speaker 1: to all the stuff you sign up for. That's just nonsense.
Speaker 1: All the grocery store, phone numbers and things they want.
Speaker 1: Use that to sign up for them. Consider a VPN
Speaker 1: if you want some extra protection, and in chat, GBT
Speaker 1: and all the AI tools, make sure you go into
Speaker 1: the settings and turn off the setting that says we
Speaker 1: can train on your data. Why do you want them
Speaker 1: to train on your data. There's enough people using it
Speaker 1: out there that aren't going to turn that off. Let
Speaker 1: them let it train on their data. Doesn't need to
Speaker 1: be trained on my data. I think the real foundation
Speaker 1: of privacy is not just some viral posts that you
Speaker 1: see and you switch a whole bunch of settings. It's
Speaker 1: you being aware of what's happening and using smart habits
Speaker 1: in your everyday life to protect your privacy when you can.
Speaker 1: It's not always possible. If you're using a free product,
Speaker 1: you know they are collecting data on you. That's just
Speaker 1: the way it works. But if you understand that exchange,
Speaker 1: you can better protect yourself. Also, it might be worth
Speaker 1: it after the show to take a couple of minutes
Speaker 1: to visit Metas Privacy Center or Google's Privacy Checkup to
Speaker 1: kind of look around and see what those settings are
Speaker 1: and tweak the things to work. In your benefit eight
Speaker 1: eight eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four to two four one zero one. My name is
Speaker 1: Rich dmiro. You are doing something smart today. You are
Speaker 1: listening to Rich on Tech back after this. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to Rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with
Speaker 1: you talking technology at Triple eight Rich one O one
Speaker 1: eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: The website for the show is rich on tech dot tv.
Speaker 1: There you can go and get all the show notes.
Speaker 1: And while you're there, be sure to sign up for
Speaker 1: my free new Let's go to Shelton in Covina. You're
Speaker 1: on with Rich.
Speaker 2: Good morning, wage. It's nice to talk to you, and
Speaker 2: thanks a lot for your help with all the text
Speaker 2: stuff every week.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 2: I have a question, you know, I make a lot
Speaker 2: of payments online, especially like the taxes, like the property
Speaker 2: taxes of La County, and also some donations to various outfits,
Speaker 2: so I do it online. The way it is done
Speaker 2: on any website is you go and then you make
Speaker 2: the payment. But there's no way to log in or
Speaker 2: log out. So with all these camps going on, I'm
Speaker 2: just wondering how safe is it to continue to do
Speaker 2: this so if I should do something.
Speaker 1: Else, Okay, good question. I think you know. The main
Speaker 1: thing is if you're logging into your own website, like
Speaker 1: your own bank's website, obviously you want to log out
Speaker 1: when you're done because that'll clear the session. Make sure
Speaker 1: that you know the server says, okay, we're done here.
Speaker 1: If someone went to this website again right after you
Speaker 1: were done, it would not that session would not continue.
Speaker 1: And then, of course if you're using a public or
Speaker 1: shared computer, it's even more important to do that. And
Speaker 1: what I would recommend is if you're ever doing anything
Speaker 1: financially related on a public computer, is to use an
Speaker 1: incognito window so that nothing is saved after that session.
Speaker 1: That's number one. If you can, don't do that because
Speaker 1: you don't really want to do any sort of banking
Speaker 1: or financial stuff on a public computer. But I understand
Speaker 1: sometimes you have to. So when it comes to these websites,
Speaker 1: and I know what you're talking about because I've I've
Speaker 1: definitely paid the taxes, I've made some donations online and
Speaker 1: you're looking, you know, the DMV and sometimes you're looking
Speaker 1: for a way to exit the website. So always look
Speaker 1: for on that page if it says exit or close.
Speaker 1: Definitely do that number one. If it doesn't have that,
Speaker 1: then it's probably just a one time session. You're not
Speaker 1: logging in any way, so once you send your information,
Speaker 1: it's going and it's done, so it's not going to
Speaker 1: be saved there in any particular way on that website.
Speaker 1: What I would say is if you are doing anything
Speaker 1: that requires your banking or financials, then for sure logout.
Speaker 1: Like don't just get lazy and say, okay, I'm done
Speaker 1: paying my bills online on my website, on my credit
Speaker 1: card or my bank account. Let me just close out
Speaker 1: that website and I'm done. Always log out of that website,
Speaker 1: because I think that that just sends that signal that, hey,
Speaker 1: this session is over.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: If you want to be you know, a little bit
Speaker 1: more secure, you could go ahead and clear all the
Speaker 1: cookies once you're done with that website. But I think
Speaker 1: that's a little bit unnecessary. I think it's more just
Speaker 1: using like kind of what I talked about earlier, just
Speaker 1: using your judgment. For if you are on a public
Speaker 1: or shared computer, make sure that you're not doing anything
Speaker 1: that leaves a trace there. But if you're on your
Speaker 1: personal computer, I think it should be okay. But also
Speaker 1: make sure the the type of connection you're on is secured.
Speaker 1: So if you're on a public Wi Fi connection, you
Speaker 1: probably don't want to do these things. Or use a VPN,
Speaker 1: or better yet, use the hot spot on your phone.
Speaker 1: I think that's always the best thing to do because
Speaker 1: that's the most secure. But I think in general, if
Speaker 1: a website doesn't offer that logout, you know, once you
Speaker 1: complete the transaction, you should be okay because, like I said,
Speaker 1: that information, as long as it's securely transmitted from your
Speaker 1: computer to their computer, that's it. It's done. There's nothing
Speaker 1: lingering on your computer with that website. Someone would have
Speaker 1: to go in and like even if you press the
Speaker 1: back button on that you probably would not find that
Speaker 1: it would fill in your credit card information again or
Speaker 1: anything like that. So Shelton, you should be okay. But again,
Speaker 1: anytime you have that option to log out, you should
Speaker 1: definitely be logging out for sure. That that is my advice.
Speaker 1: So thanks for the question today. Do you appreciate it?
Speaker 1: Eight eight eight rich one on one eight eight eight
Speaker 1: seven four to two four one zero one. Uh, let's
Speaker 1: go to Oh wait, we can't go to someone else.
Speaker 1: We'll hold you for the next one. So WhatsApp this
Speaker 1: week launched a full Apple Watch app. Wow. It's weird
Speaker 1: because when apple Watch first came out, we had all
Speaker 1: these apps on Instagram, Twitter back in the day. Obviously
Speaker 1: they were all for Apple Watch Uber, and then all
Speaker 1: these companies kind of said, you know what, nevermind, We're
Speaker 1: not going to do Apple Watch apps anymore. We don't
Speaker 1: need to do that because people were using their Apple
Speaker 1: Watch more for fitness and tracking and just notifications from
Speaker 1: the apps that were on their phone. But now we're
Speaker 1: seeing kind of a resurgence, and I think it's because
Speaker 1: people are starting to go out without their phones again
Speaker 1: and just using their Apple Watch to do things as
Speaker 1: like a way to stay focused. And so now WhatsApp
Speaker 1: has a dedicated Apple Watch app. You can read and
Speaker 1: reply to full messages, even long ones, record and send
Speaker 1: voice messages right from your wrist, get call notifications, at emoji, reactions,
Speaker 1: image and stickers are clear so and everything remains end
Speaker 1: to end ENCRYPTI. So if you want to just go
Speaker 1: out with your cellular Apple Watch with WhatsApp, you can.
Speaker 1: It's there. Eight eight eight rich one O one eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four two four one zero one coming up,
Speaker 1: more of your calls, plus we'll have the Gadget of
Speaker 1: the week right here on rich On Tech. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to rich On Tech. Uh, we've got a lot to
Speaker 1: get to in this segment, so let's go straight to
Speaker 1: Henry in Glendora. Henry your question, Yes, thank you.
Speaker 4: For taking my call. I'll call them because I have
Speaker 4: a lot of CDs I've been trying to convert into
Speaker 4: a ripping them from on the computer maybe onto a
Speaker 4: flash drive. And some of my CDs when I record them,
Speaker 4: they have a low volume, so I have to turn
Speaker 4: the volume very high on my radio to listen to them.
Speaker 4: Others are are too high and I need to have
Speaker 4: like volume control when I rip them, as well as
Speaker 4: possibly sorry, i'm moving water around.
Speaker 1: I thought you were getting winded just asking me the question.
Speaker 4: No, I'm filling up our water bottle, so I'm a
Speaker 4: little out of shape here.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh. We used to have when I was
Speaker 1: a kid, we had one of those water tank things
Speaker 1: where you're like, you know, you put the big gallon
Speaker 1: jug like whatever it was, and it was like, what
Speaker 1: I'm doing? Those things are heavy anyway, Yes, the r.
Speaker 4: But sorry about that. Yeah, I'm trying to find some
Speaker 4: software I'm using currently Windows seven and I'm looking to
Speaker 4: upgrade to possibly ten or eleven Windows.
Speaker 1: What what year are we in, Henry? Come on Windows seven?
Speaker 1: When when was the end of life on that?
Speaker 4: I don't know. It still works for me.
Speaker 1: Oh my, that's wild. Okay, So you're looking for some
Speaker 1: software that will that will make the all these MP
Speaker 1: three's the same level.
Speaker 4: Basically, Yes, I wanted to rip it in and possibly away.
Speaker 4: I want to put them on external hard drives because
Speaker 4: in the future I do want to have a server
Speaker 4: that I want to build eventually. Sure, sure, I want
Speaker 4: to be able to rip them in a permant that
Speaker 4: I want, Okay, but I don't want to pay a
Speaker 4: subscription service. I wanted just basically a standard over the
Speaker 4: counter software packet that I could download or burn from
Speaker 4: a bring in from the CD and be able to
Speaker 4: use it but at the same time control the volume control.
Speaker 1: All right, I'm going to give you. I'm going to
Speaker 1: give you a trio of programs that I recommend for
Speaker 1: this functionality, and it should do exactly what you need.
Speaker 1: Because I've gotten this question before from folks, and I've
Speaker 1: recommended it and I've gotten some feedback that it all works.
Speaker 1: So the first one is Exact Audio Copy. Exact Audio Copy,
Speaker 1: that's a good ripping program. It's maybe the one you're
Speaker 1: already using, but that'll you know. It'll read the CDs
Speaker 1: and rip them for you into MP three's and it
Speaker 1: gives you a lot of options, so that's great. Then
Speaker 1: there's another program called MP three tag dot de so
Speaker 1: MP three tag and I'll link this all up on
Speaker 1: the website rich on tech dot tv. But this will
Speaker 1: let you batch, tag and organize and get cover art
Speaker 1: whatever you want for these things that you rip. If
Speaker 1: Exact Audio Copy doesn't give you all that stuff, sometimes
Speaker 1: it will, sometimes it won't, but this will give you
Speaker 1: the full control over everything that you've gotten on your files.
Speaker 1: And then the final program, and I think this is
Speaker 1: the one that you're probably going to need first, is
Speaker 1: MP three Gain. So MP three gain you can. It'll
Speaker 1: analyze all your MP three files and adjust them so
Speaker 1: that they have the same volume. And the neat thing
Speaker 1: is that the changes are pretty simple, so I don't
Speaker 1: think it has to make all new files for you.
Speaker 1: But that's going to be the program that you want
Speaker 1: to use to get those to all be normalized or levelized,
Speaker 1: whatever you would call it. But I think those three
Speaker 1: programs Exact Audio Copy, MP three tag, and MP three
Speaker 1: Gain are the three programs that you want and I
Speaker 1: probably recommend. For what you're talking about with the cloud
Speaker 1: stuff is either something like PLEX, which I do think
Speaker 1: they they might have. You might have to charge, They
Speaker 1: might charge you for doing what you're talking about. If
Speaker 1: you want a free solution, you can literally go to
Speaker 1: YouTube Music and drag and drop your library of songs
Speaker 1: onto the website and it will put those in the
Speaker 1: cloud and you can access them from any device. So
Speaker 1: if you go to music dot YouTube dot com, literally
Speaker 1: try it. Just drag and drop an MP three file
Speaker 1: onto your browser window and it will put it into
Speaker 1: the file into the app, and you can download that
Speaker 1: app to any supported device, which is pretty much every device,
Speaker 1: and they're available everywhere, and that's completely free. All right,
Speaker 1: Good look, Henry, you got quite the project ahead of you.
Speaker 1: Tim listener Tim emailed and said he's been trying out
Speaker 1: all the headphones out there, all the noise canceling headphones,
Speaker 1: and he wanted to call in with his results. Tim.
Speaker 1: Are you there, Yeah? Sure, Hey, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: I know this took a while for us to get coordinated,
Speaker 1: but you've been compared herring headphones. What started you on
Speaker 1: this journey of trying to find the perfect noise canceling headphones.
Speaker 5: Well, unfortunately, Calwater decided to replace all the main waters,
Speaker 5: the water pipes on my street and the two adjacent streets,
Speaker 5: and it caused a great deal of noise and it
Speaker 5: was turgering. My tonightis it was difficult to work and
Speaker 5: concentrate with all the pounding.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, so you've you've tested out. You've got a
Speaker 1: list of bows, Apple, Sony, more Apple, more bows, more Apple,
Speaker 1: more Apple. So which one do you want to start with?
Speaker 1: What's your What's what's the one that you I guess
Speaker 1: got the lowest rating here?
Speaker 5: Well, the Apple beats got pretty terrible rating. The earpads
Speaker 5: were round, so they're probably great for a small child
Speaker 5: or a small woman or a small man, certainly not
Speaker 5: for me. My ear didn't even fit inside. Oh wow,
Speaker 5: that's it, and I know it's cancelation was minimal at best. Okay,
Speaker 5: so we go from there to what was next on
Speaker 5: your list after that? In terms of what I tested for,
Speaker 5: I was looking for mostly noise cancelation, not active or passive,
Speaker 5: but basically the combined. In other words, that did not differentiate.
Speaker 5: And I was looking for call quality and Bluetooth capability.
Speaker 1: Okay, so maybe just go through some of your findings.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're not a you know, a professional reviewer
Speaker 1: per se, but you've done some pretty good research. Did
Speaker 1: you buy all of these and then return them when
Speaker 1: you were done with them or what?
Speaker 5: And yes, I actually did all except for two of them.
Speaker 1: Okay, Oh so that's I'm assuming the ones that you
Speaker 1: didn't return are the best ones.
Speaker 5: Yeah, with a caveat that. The Apple AirPods Max, which
Speaker 5: your headphones were, Yes, the problem with them is that
Speaker 5: they're very heavy.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm and yes, I would say they're heavier than
Speaker 1: other headphones. I wouldn't say they're very heavy because I've
Speaker 1: used them. They're just heavier than other headphones out there.
Speaker 1: But they're still I mean, they're still pretty comfortable over time,
Speaker 1: I would say, yeah.
Speaker 5: I mean, it gets it's all relative. Maybe I have
Speaker 5: a soft head. I don't know, but yeah, wearing a
Speaker 5: mad hours a day was not tenable, Okay, wasn't It
Speaker 5: wasn't an option Okay.
Speaker 1: So but they but they you found that they had
Speaker 1: great noise cancelation, but just not the cafer wasn't all
Speaker 1: there for you.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they were amazing and Apple is rumored to actually
Speaker 5: come out with a lighter version of those in twenty
Speaker 5: twenty seven.
Speaker 1: Oh well, then let's just wait until then to finish this.
Speaker 1: Just kidding. Okay, okay, what about the Sony's because those
Speaker 1: are are quite popular. You know, you've you tested the
Speaker 1: XM fours now they're up to six. What did you
Speaker 1: find there?
Speaker 5: Yeah, the Sony's were good, but they weren't great. And
Speaker 5: one of the biggest problems with the Sony's is the
Speaker 5: controls were awful. They basically I couldn't get.
Speaker 1: Them to work because it's all touch, right, isn't it
Speaker 1: a lot of like touch controls all.
Speaker 5: Touch and it gets it just didn't like my touch.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, also, this is the thing, like I find
Speaker 1: that these these controls that are not necessarily like easy
Speaker 1: to find or do quickly is not the best because
Speaker 1: you have to you almost have to like get a
Speaker 1: PhD in the control touch situation to figure out like,
Speaker 1: oh I want to raise the volume my swiping, am
Speaker 1: I going up am I tapping? So I like the
Speaker 1: physical buttons if possible, but I know everything's changing to
Speaker 1: digital and touch stuff. So okay, So the Sony's, I'm
Speaker 1: looking at the ratings you gave me. The Sony's got
Speaker 1: a nine out of ten for noise cancelation, a seven
Speaker 1: for comfort. AirPods Max you gave a ten for noise canceling,
Speaker 1: a nine for comfort, but you said they were very heavy.
Speaker 1: What else do we have here? The Bows Quiet Comfort,
Speaker 1: I mean those are very popular. What did you find?
Speaker 1: They have a regular and an Ultra. What'd you find
Speaker 1: with those?
Speaker 5: Yeah, the Regular, both quiet comforts. I gave them a
Speaker 5: noise cancelation of eight and a comfort rating of seven.
Speaker 5: The Ultra was not much.
Speaker 1: Better than those in the set of the price or.
Speaker 5: What two hundred and twenty dollars more just wasn't worth it.
Speaker 1: But the people, I mean the Bows, I had those
Speaker 1: for a very long time. Very popular. Obviously they have
Speaker 1: the marketing behind them, so people see them a lot.
Speaker 1: What did you choose as your tops?
Speaker 5: Well, unfortunately the Apple AirPods Pro three wasn't available when
Speaker 5: I did my test, so I did end up choosing
Speaker 5: the Bow's Quiet Comfort and then I bought the error
Speaker 5: Pridz Pro three and I love them both, but for
Speaker 5: different reasons. The both quite comfort when I'm on a
Speaker 5: telephone call with someone, they can literally hear the drop
Speaker 5: of a of a pencil or a pen in the background.
Speaker 5: And they were awful. But I'm on my AirPods Pro
Speaker 5: three right now, and I'm sure you you couldn't hear
Speaker 5: that little noise I just made.
Speaker 1: No, it's that they have. I mean, it's actually quite
Speaker 1: interesting because people on their iPhone in general, because iPhone
Speaker 1: has this feature that's like, uh, if you swipe down
Speaker 1: from the upper right hand corner and you're in your headphones,
Speaker 1: it'll say like clear call or something like that, and
Speaker 1: it's really good, like it's uncannily good and so really
Speaker 1: good noise isolation. Yes, uh so those so that's the one.
Speaker 1: So but these are two different. One of these are
Speaker 1: like headphones. One is earbuds. So do you use them
Speaker 1: for different So the earbuds, you don't mind.
Speaker 5: You know, I love the earbuds, especially on phone calls.
Speaker 5: You aren't going to believe this. When I'm running my blender,
Speaker 5: I'll put the earbuds in and then I'll put the
Speaker 5: quiet comfort EarPods on top of them.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, I want two bunch now. Is this
Speaker 1: because of the tonightis or what?
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's mostly because the tonight is because that blender
Speaker 5: has a real high pitched sound and it'll trigger it.
Speaker 5: And if it triggers it them s with me for
Speaker 5: a day.
Speaker 1: Oh wow. Okay, interesting, Well, I will say, and I've
Speaker 1: and I've talked to Apple about this too. The actual
Speaker 1: the earbuds that seal up your ears actually function as
Speaker 1: hearing protection as well.
Speaker 5: So that is airing protection and hearing aids.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, so that's.
Speaker 5: The other thing. And I did get them, by the way,
Speaker 5: at Costco and saved about sixty dollars because Costco also
Speaker 5: gives you a two year Apple Care.
Speaker 6: Wow.
Speaker 5: So, and I would recommend that for the earbuds because
Speaker 5: they're they're easily lost and easily damaged. You know, it's
Speaker 5: it's so worth it.
Speaker 1: If you lose one. If you lose one, you will
Speaker 1: they replace it for with that Apple Care for free
Speaker 1: or not.
Speaker 5: That's what they say.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's that's good damage. Okay, that's pretty incredible. Actually,
Speaker 1: all right, well, Tim, thanks so much for calling in
Speaker 1: and sharing your your thoughts on all these headphones. Really
Speaker 1: appreciate it. I know it took a while to get
Speaker 1: to but it sounds like the AirPods Pro three are
Speaker 1: a winner. The Bows quiet comfort. Did you say the
Speaker 1: Ultra are the regular ones? Where your top the regular ones?
Speaker 1: It's very little different save the money. Okay, there you
Speaker 1: have it now we know, Thank you, Tim, appreciate it. Wow,
Speaker 1: there you go. You know I try all these things
Speaker 1: as well, and I will say the AirPods are tough
Speaker 1: to beat. They really really are. I know a lot
Speaker 1: of people like those. Sony's the XM six is. I
Speaker 1: have not tested them yet, but it's on my list.
Speaker 1: Eight and eight rich one O one eight eight eight
Speaker 1: seven four to two four one zero one Gadget of
Speaker 1: the Week A pet tracker. Coming up next. Gadget of
Speaker 1: the Week this week is the Life three sixty pet
Speaker 1: GPS tracker. Got it right here in my hands. It
Speaker 1: is tiny. Now you probably know Life three sixty. They
Speaker 1: recently purchased Tile, So this is a company that is
Speaker 1: known for tracking people with their app. You know, families
Speaker 1: love it. And then of course you have your items
Speaker 1: with the tile and now you've got pets with this
Speaker 1: GPS tracker, and what the difference is is that it
Speaker 1: uses cellular GPS, Wi Fi and Bluetooth, so that means
Speaker 1: you get real time tracking of your pet and on
Speaker 1: the same map that has things like your items and
Speaker 1: also your family members, so it's like a one stop shop.
Speaker 1: And I love this because if you have something like
Speaker 1: an air tag on your pet, that's not going to
Speaker 1: give you necessarily real time updates of where your pet is,
Speaker 1: especially if they go lost or missing, right, so you
Speaker 1: want that cellular connection. And in the past it's been
Speaker 1: kind of expensive or the battery life hasn't been very good.
Speaker 1: But I think from what I've seen, this little tracker
Speaker 1: is not only a great size, a great weight, but
Speaker 1: it has the functionality you need, So I think that's
Speaker 1: really cool. Battery life up to fourteen days, then once
Speaker 1: that runs out, it's got this low power Bluetooth Reserve
Speaker 1: mode that can give you tracking up to six months,
Speaker 1: So if your pet did go missing, you'd have fourteen
Speaker 1: days to find them in real time, and then six
Speaker 1: months in that Bluetooth reserve modes. That Bluetooth Reserve is
Speaker 1: kind of like a traditional air tag or tile tracker,
Speaker 1: and it's got all the features that you need. It
Speaker 1: is a great price too, by the way, fifty dollars
Speaker 1: plus either fifteen dollars a month or one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty dollars a year because you do have to pay
Speaker 1: for that cellular tracking. So again brand new from Life
Speaker 1: three sixty. It's called the Pet GPS Tracker. I think
Speaker 1: this is a winner. Just be careful obviously, if you're
Speaker 1: putting this on your pet's neck, you know they still
Speaker 1: might chew at it or something, so be careful because
Speaker 1: it is a size that you know a larger pet
Speaker 1: might be able to chew or eat or something, so
Speaker 1: just you know, be aware of that. But if you
Speaker 1: pop it off this little clip it has, you can
Speaker 1: charge it up. There's a USB C. Why can I
Speaker 1: get this open? There we go. There's a USB C
Speaker 1: plug on the back, so easy to charge. And again
Speaker 1: I think Life three sixty is doing a pretty good
Speaker 1: job with their tile trackers, now their app and also
Speaker 1: the pet Tracker the gadget of the week. This segment
Speaker 1: is sponsored by shop back. So if you're like me,
Speaker 1: you're always spending money online, isn't it nice to get
Speaker 1: money back? What if you open up an email and
Speaker 1: you had cash back inside. That's what happened to me
Speaker 1: this week. Just checking my emails the typically do and
Speaker 1: I said, hey, you've got ten dollars cash back on
Speaker 1: your recent Amazon purchases and it's all thanks to shop back.
Speaker 1: If you're not familiar, shop back is a tool that
Speaker 1: pays you back for shopping at your favorite places. They
Speaker 1: support a laundry list of popular shopping places like Nike, Lego,
Speaker 1: spy eBay, many many more online websites. All you have
Speaker 1: to do is sign up it is free. Then you
Speaker 1: download their mobile app, their Chrome extension, or all you
Speaker 1: have to do is click a link on their website
Speaker 1: before you shop, and then go ahead, get your best deal,
Speaker 1: use your promo codes, use your coupons, use the discounts
Speaker 1: that you already know about, and you're still going to
Speaker 1: get up to twenty percent cash back on top of
Speaker 1: your purchase. And by the way, this is the only
Speaker 1: major cash back app that works with Amazon. So set
Speaker 1: it up now before Black Friday and Cyber Monday so
Speaker 1: that you are smarter than other shoppers. Join shop back
Speaker 1: for free today. Visit shopback dot com that's shop back
Speaker 1: shopback dot com to download the mobile app, the desktop
Speaker 1: and the browser extension. And don't forget to use my
Speaker 1: code rich on Tech. That'll get you a twenty dollars
Speaker 1: bonus cash back if you're a new customer. After you
Speaker 1: accumulate five dollars in cash back, let's go to Gary
Speaker 1: in Redondo Beach. Gary, you're on with Rich.
Speaker 3: Hey.
Speaker 7: Rich.
Speaker 8: A couple of months ago, I had Bobby iPad Probe
Speaker 8: thirteen inch and I had two terabytes of storms. So
Speaker 8: I'm looking at my subscriptions and I have Apple one.
Speaker 1: Premier Okay, Oh nice, that's what I've got.
Speaker 8: Thirty seven ninety five a month. Yeah, which does not
Speaker 8: include the iCloud.
Speaker 1: Oh that does iCloud Yeah, Okay, I.
Speaker 8: Have another subscription for iCloud Plus. Okay, that is is
Speaker 8: that twenty nine ninety nine a month? And do I
Speaker 8: really need that? Since his all that's being saved on
Speaker 8: the I Cloud Plus, it's just what's on my iPad.
Speaker 1: Okay, And like, well number one, you're doubled up right now,
Speaker 1: beca because if you're paying thirty dollars for iCloud Plus,
Speaker 1: that's that's I think that's more than two terabytes of storage,
Speaker 1: isn't it.
Speaker 8: I count iCloud plus.
Speaker 1: I let's see United States. Hold on, I'm finding the
Speaker 1: price here. If you're paying thirty dollars for iCloud plus,
Speaker 1: that is six terabytes of online storage, okay. And if
Speaker 1: you're paying for Apple one, that is two terabytes of iCloud.
Speaker 1: So my feeling, if you want to have your stuff
Speaker 1: stored in the cloud, cancel one of these. I personally
Speaker 1: would cancel the iCloud plus for thirty dollars because Apple
Speaker 1: one includes everything that Apple has to offer, plus two
Speaker 1: terabytes of iCloud storage. So you're getting the music, you're
Speaker 1: getting Apple TV, you're getting Apple Arcade, Apple Fitness, Apple
Speaker 1: News plus plus that two terabytes of storage that you need.
Speaker 1: And yes, you probably want to have that. If your
Speaker 1: iPad is holding two terabytes, you probably want to have
Speaker 1: that mirrored in the cloud so that all of your data, photos,
Speaker 1: whatever you do on that iPad is going to be
Speaker 1: mirrored in the cloud and backed up safely. But I'd
Speaker 1: say cancel the iCloud Plus, stick with Apple one. Gary,
Speaker 1: You're saving yourself thirty dollars a month. Good question. Eight
Speaker 1: eight eight rich one on one back after this, Welcome
Speaker 1: back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out
Speaker 1: with you, talking technology. Triple eight Rich one O one
Speaker 1: eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one
Speaker 1: zero one. We are firing on all cylinders today. We
Speaker 1: got Bobo on the board, We've got Kim on phones,
Speaker 1: You've got me on the mic. We've got you listening.
Speaker 1: Thank you for that. Uh. The website rich on tech
Speaker 1: dot tv, UH lots to explore there. Number one, sign
Speaker 1: up for the newsletter for sure. UH just had a
Speaker 1: new issue this weekend. And also you can get notes
Speaker 1: for everything I talk about. So you heard earlier someone
Speaker 1: was asking about their MP three collection. I talked about
Speaker 1: the gadget of the week. It's all linked up on
Speaker 1: the website. Listener Tim shared his headphone recommendations. It is
Speaker 1: all right there rich on Tech dot TV. And if
Speaker 1: you're not following me on Instagram, do it rich on
Speaker 1: tech very easy. You can actually see the stuff that
Speaker 1: I talk about posted there. Let's go to let's see here.
Speaker 1: Let's go to Mark. Mark's been on hold for a while,
Speaker 1: Mark and Woodlandhills. You're on with Rich Hi. Rich.
Speaker 6: You know, before I started a family, like twenty five
Speaker 6: years ago, I had a unique profession that took me to,
Speaker 6: and I went to a website to click them all off,
Speaker 6: fifty three of the nations. Oh wow, So I'm pretty
Speaker 6: acquainted with travel, even though a lot of the developing
Speaker 6: world off the tourist track and grid, as it were.
Speaker 6: But you know, now it's a whole new world. You know,
Speaker 6: we have Google features that can help you translate foreign
Speaker 6: signs and foreign language to text, that sort of thing.
Speaker 6: And I was wondering if you have any suggestions. I'm
Speaker 6: not a complete luddite, but I guess I'm kind of
Speaker 6: more in the Thomas Guide.
Speaker 1: Hey, oh my gosh, the Thomas Guide. You gotta explain
Speaker 1: what that is for people that aren't from La.
Speaker 6: Well, I'm well, it's it was a fold out a
Speaker 6: pig by page, very good map system for finding places.
Speaker 6: They have them all over California, but predominantly it was
Speaker 6: in Southland, you know, La. Orange County, that's a riverside county.
Speaker 1: That's sort of like a thick book you would put
Speaker 1: in your car, and it would like if you move
Speaker 1: to La like I did, they would give you this
Speaker 1: book like well, you had to buy it, but like
Speaker 1: people would be like, hey, you got to get this book,
Speaker 1: and you would flip through the pages, and the way
Speaker 1: you got around was when you got to the edge
Speaker 1: of one road on the page, it would say like okay,
Speaker 1: now to continue, flip to like page you know, two
Speaker 1: forty seven f and you go there and it was
Speaker 1: like a grid system.
Speaker 7: It was.
Speaker 1: Thankfully we have Google Maps now. That's all I have.
Speaker 6: Here's my challen sir.
Speaker 1: Sure.
Speaker 6: I know it's a whole different world now, and I
Speaker 6: know that I've been looking up the TSA rules that
Speaker 6: they change constantly. I'm worried about having my power bank
Speaker 6: confiscated because most of them don't stamp on there what
Speaker 6: what the wattage is, and I know you can only
Speaker 6: have up to one hundred that sort of thing. I'm
Speaker 6: also thinking about getting some smart luggage that has a
Speaker 6: detachable battery so that they don't I wouldn't take it
Speaker 6: away as well. I'm looking for password generating secure thumb drives,
Speaker 6: and you know, I'm just you know, do you have
Speaker 6: any suggestions any place I can go and kind of
Speaker 6: get myself up up the snuff, because when you go
Speaker 6: around and you stay in small family run hotels and
Speaker 6: fiones and that sort of thing, I'd really love to
Speaker 6: be able to pull that up and some off the
Speaker 6: main drag sort of local restaurants, you know, because that's
Speaker 6: the way to really eat you Italy. Yeahh never had
Speaker 6: any bad never had any bad food in Italy, I
Speaker 6: got to tell you.
Speaker 1: No, I have never either. Yeah, and well, okay, so
Speaker 1: let's let's break down. I mean we don't you know
Speaker 1: some of the things you're talking about. I mean, like, look,
Speaker 1: international travel has gotten so much easier because of technology.
Speaker 1: So at the very least I would recommend not just
Speaker 1: the translators. I mean, you could download Google Translate, Apple
Speaker 1: Translate is built into every iPhone. Just make sure before
Speaker 1: you go somewhere you download the language offline so that
Speaker 1: it works great no matter what, whether you have a
Speaker 1: connection or not. But AI, to me is probably the
Speaker 1: better thing that's happening now when you travel. So when
Speaker 1: I was in Japan a couple of weeks ago, I
Speaker 1: was using Gemini AI and of course Chat GBT as well,
Speaker 1: but the Gemini Live stuff where it can look through
Speaker 1: your phone's camera and tell you what you're looking at
Speaker 1: and translate it instantly. It is like having the world's
Speaker 1: smartest person in your pocket at all times. So what
Speaker 1: I was doing at the end of the day. You
Speaker 1: don't even have to prompt these ais. Just take a
Speaker 1: picture of something and just upload it and it will
Speaker 1: say what you're looking at, and you know, it'll give
Speaker 1: you the information. If it's a menu, it'll give your recommendations.
Speaker 1: You can do it that way. But the live stuff
Speaker 1: is really wild. So if you have an iPhone or Android,
Speaker 1: just download the Google Gemini app and you'll see they
Speaker 1: have this feature called Gemini Live and it's next to
Speaker 1: the microphone. If you tap that, it looks like almost
Speaker 1: like a waveform and with a little star next to it.
Speaker 1: You tap that, it brings you into live mode. And
Speaker 1: there's two ways of working with live mode. You can
Speaker 1: either just talk to it like it's almost like a human,
Speaker 1: but it's obviously AI voice. But better yet, you can
Speaker 1: tap the video camera and now whatever you are looking
Speaker 1: at through this video camera, the AI is also looking
Speaker 1: at it with you. So imagine you have this person
Speaker 1: with you that's super smart and they're looking at the
Speaker 1: stuff that you're looking at, and you're like, hey, what
Speaker 1: do you think of this? What do you think I'd
Speaker 1: like on this menu? What is this sign saying? What's
Speaker 1: that landmark in front of me. You can do all that,
Speaker 1: and it's just it doesn't miss a beat. It's incredible
Speaker 1: whether whatever whatever lang which the sign you're looking at
Speaker 1: is in, it just knows and it figures it out.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's really mind blowing what this AI stuff
Speaker 1: can do. So it's a great, great helper when you're
Speaker 1: on your trip. The only thing I noticed is that
Speaker 1: it may not be available in all areas, and so again,
Speaker 1: if you have a VPN, it's great because when I
Speaker 1: was in Japan, what I ended up doing was I
Speaker 1: just had my VPN on the entire time and I
Speaker 1: set it to the US so that I didn't have
Speaker 1: to deal with the whole Google changing the results of
Speaker 1: my search. I didn't have to deal with AI mode
Speaker 1: not being available in certain places. I don't even know
Speaker 1: if Gemini is available or not in Japan. I think
Speaker 1: it is. But you don't have to worry about it
Speaker 1: because if it sees as you're it looks as if
Speaker 1: you're a US person, it's not going to skip a beat.
Speaker 1: It's going to give you everything that you're used to
Speaker 1: in the US, but just over in whatever country you're in.
Speaker 1: So that's number one now, the power bank stuff. I
Speaker 1: think if you're getting a power bank, that's I wouldn't
Speaker 1: travel with something that's more than like twenty thousand million hours.
Speaker 1: That's a lot, So I would just be careful with those.
Speaker 1: You don't want something that's bigger and that's gonna be
Speaker 1: too heavy anyway, and you're gonna be charging if you're
Speaker 1: going through more than twenty thousand million hours, that's a
Speaker 1: lot in a day. But I would say that this
Speaker 1: smart luggage I would skip. I'm not really I'm not
Speaker 1: really understanding why smart luggage is a thing.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: Yes, put an air tag in your luggage, but why
Speaker 1: is smart luggage? Why do you need a power bank
Speaker 1: in your luggage? Like, it doesn't take much more work
Speaker 1: to just have that power bank in your carry on
Speaker 1: and just plug stuff into it. That would be my recommendation.
Speaker 1: I think I got it all Mark. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: what else. But oh, when it comes to the restaurants,
Speaker 1: I will tell you have a few ways of finding restaurants,
Speaker 1: but AI is really good at this now. And you
Speaker 1: know I was using the AI on the phone to
Speaker 1: find restaurants nearby. We found an amazing ram in place
Speaker 1: thanks to the AI mode but also the way you
Speaker 1: can do it is if you're at a desktop computer.
Speaker 1: This is my new way of finding restaurants like nearby.
Speaker 1: Just type in the name of your hotel. So let's
Speaker 1: say you're in Tokyo. Let's say you're at the New
Speaker 1: Rich Carlton in Tokyo, right, I know, very fancy, but
Speaker 1: let's say you're there, and so I'm going on there.
Speaker 1: I search that on my desktop and then what you
Speaker 1: do is you see on the desktop computer on Google
Speaker 1: Maps that says restaurants up at the top, and so
Speaker 1: you can tap that and it now gives you all
Speaker 1: the notable restaurants in the area. But you see there's
Speaker 1: like a little toggle switch, so it shows walking. I
Speaker 1: want to be able to walk within fifteen minutes. I
Speaker 1: don't want to walk very far to go to a restaurant.
Speaker 1: So now you can zoom in. You can see all
Speaker 1: these restaurants that are within fifteen minutes of this hotel.
Speaker 1: And by the way, that's not in a very good
Speaker 1: location for restaurants. But then at the top you can
Speaker 1: narrow down. So if you want something that's just going
Speaker 1: to be great, you probably want to go with the
Speaker 1: four point five rating cuisine. You can put whatever you
Speaker 1: want there, all filters you can and you know, search
Speaker 1: if you want something like let's say you just want ramen, right,
Speaker 1: so I'm gonna tap ramen done, and now look at this.
Speaker 1: I find a restaurant that is eleven minutes walking and
Speaker 1: it's got great ratings for ramen done. Here's another one
Speaker 1: twenty minutes walking, which is a little bit more, but
Speaker 1: it's got a four point five one hundred and eighty
Speaker 1: nine reviews. Okay, and here we go. If you want
Speaker 1: to find the places that are the real you know,
Speaker 1: where tourists go or people go over and over, you
Speaker 1: look for those restaurants that have a couple thousand ratings
Speaker 1: like here we Go, a fury Rapongi Hills Ramen restaurant's
Speaker 1: got a four point five rating with nineteen hundred reviews.
Speaker 1: That place clearly people know about, now, Mark, you were saying,
Speaker 1: off the beaten path. Sometimes you know you want to
Speaker 1: take a chance, other times you don't. But this place
Speaker 1: is gonna be guaranteed. People clearly know about it. It's
Speaker 1: on a bunch of lists, it looks excellent, and it's
Speaker 1: it's like boom, I just found that in about ten
Speaker 1: ten seconds, and it's within walking distance from my hotel.
Speaker 1: How far is it? Twelve minute walk? So that is
Speaker 1: a fool proof way. I have used this method so
Speaker 1: many times to find great restaurants. It's all about those.
Speaker 1: If you see on Google it's got a couple thousand reviews.
Speaker 1: I'm not talking tourist traps because you want to make
Speaker 1: sure you get that rating four point five or higher.
Speaker 1: If you want to do tourist traps, yeah, they might
Speaker 1: have a lot of reviews, but they're not very good.
Speaker 1: The rating is not very high. So again, that's my
Speaker 1: foolproof method for finding great restaurants near my hotel. I
Speaker 1: always want to walk because it's so much easier. Save money,
Speaker 1: right save on the ubers, great question mark, Thanks for
Speaker 1: the call today, appreciate it. Eighty eight eight rich one
Speaker 1: O one eight eight eight seven four to two four
Speaker 1: one zero one. Coming up, I'm gonna tell you about
Speaker 1: T Mobile. They're opening up their satellite texting to nine
Speaker 1: one one for free to anyone. Plus, we've got talk
Speaker 1: about Sora. We've got c nets AI reporter joining us,
Speaker 1: plus much more right here on rich on Tech, Stay
Speaker 1: with us. Welcome back to rich On Tech. I'm laughing here.
Speaker 1: By the way, Boba, I don't know if you know this.
Speaker 1: This is my all time favorite song, mister Jones counting crows?
Speaker 1: What what is your all time favorite?
Speaker 9: That's a trick one?
Speaker 1: What's that that's a tricky one?
Speaker 10: Answer?
Speaker 1: Come on off the top of your head. If you
Speaker 1: had to pick one song, what's the song? Eric Sermon?
Speaker 1: Just like music? Or Stevie wonder ass? Oh okay, chew
Speaker 1: one of those up for all right? What's that?
Speaker 8: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Let me tell you about Starlink and T Mobile. So
Speaker 1: you know, Starlink and T Mobile have this like satellite
Speaker 1: texting feature which if you have a high end T
Speaker 1: Mobile plan you get it included and if you are
Speaker 1: anyone else you can pay ten dollars for it. And
Speaker 1: it gives you text to nine one one, It gives
Speaker 1: you texting via satellite. It gives you data, limited data,
Speaker 1: but still and it's a godsend. This thing is incredible.
Speaker 1: I've tested it. It's so fast, it's so easy. And
Speaker 1: now because T Mobile knows it's so good, they are
Speaker 1: now offering text to nine one one by satellite for
Speaker 1: free to any person that wants it. That as long
Speaker 1: as you have a compatible phone. So this works in
Speaker 1: the five hundred thousand square miles of US with no
Speaker 1: traditional cell coverage, and you can send nine one one
Speaker 1: text through T Satellite, So your phone basically connects to
Speaker 1: Starlink satellites. There's like six hundred of them, two hundred
Speaker 1: miles above the Earth. Yes, it's possible, and it's amazing
Speaker 1: and it's fast. No special setup, it's very simple. You
Speaker 1: would just text nine one one if you ever needed
Speaker 1: help when you're in the middle of nowhere and there's
Speaker 1: not traditional cellular connection. So again, anyone, even if you're
Speaker 1: a non T mobile customer, you can enroll in this
Speaker 1: for free at T Mobile's website, and I give you
Speaker 1: the website, but it's such a long website that it's
Speaker 1: kind of tricky to find, but I will link it
Speaker 1: up on richontech dot T. Now you might be saying, rich,
Speaker 1: I already have satellite texting. I've got an iPhone fourteen
Speaker 1: and up, or I've got a Google Pixel or I've
Speaker 1: got an Apple Watch Ultra three or I've got a
Speaker 1: Pixel Watch four. Yes, all of those devices have satellite texting,
Speaker 1: and to some extent it's just for emergencies or it's
Speaker 1: for actual you can text anyone with the case of Apple,
Speaker 1: but the difference is t mobiles is a lot faster
Speaker 1: and a lot easier, So it's it's much easier to
Speaker 1: connect to the satellites and stay connected and send your messages.
Speaker 1: So in general, bottom line, if you've got an older iPhone,
Speaker 1: you want to you know, you're always hiking something like that,
Speaker 1: you want to have this text by nine to one one.
Speaker 1: You know, the comfort of knowing that you can always
Speaker 1: get in touch with someone. I would get this for
Speaker 1: free for sure. All right, bobo, what is this? This
Speaker 1: is Stevie Wonder.
Speaker 4: Yah.
Speaker 1: Just the lyrics of the song are amazing. Okay, this
Speaker 1: is Stevie Wonder ask yeah as oh as yeah as Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you say it too much. It sortes sound like yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so we got that one.
Speaker 9: And then this is Eric Sherman just like music. The
Speaker 9: reason why I love this song is because he describes
Speaker 9: what music is like, but he compares it to love
Speaker 9: and it's just so dope.
Speaker 6: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I didn't realize you were such such a sappy guy.
Speaker 1: Actually I knew it. I knew that the.
Speaker 9: Hardcore that I put on the outside it's just a facadon.
Speaker 1: Oh well, I like this song. Okay, I know both
Speaker 1: these songs. This is great, all right. Now I'm gonna
Speaker 1: listen to the words of this song. So thank you. See,
Speaker 1: I knew you had a couple of favorites. By the
Speaker 1: way that Romen place that I happen to find walking distance,
Speaker 1: it's clearly a thing because they have locations in the
Speaker 1: US as well. So this a furry I don't know
Speaker 1: if I'm saying it right, af u R I coming
Speaker 1: to coast to Mesa, Manhattan, so New York City, they
Speaker 1: already have one in Brooklyn, Houston, Culver City, let's go, oh,
Speaker 1: downtown LA and then Portland. Let's go. Let's go try it. Now,
Speaker 1: we gotta try it. I mean, clearly it must be good.
Speaker 1: But here's my point. So clearly I found that restaurant
Speaker 1: in a couple of minutes, and it is a thing.
Speaker 1: So it's like, if they have all these locations in
Speaker 1: the US, it must be so good that it's you know,
Speaker 1: transcended Japan.
Speaker 9: So the best food that I had in Tokyo was
Speaker 9: actually Chinese food.
Speaker 1: Well, where they dropped the atomic bomb was dropped in
Speaker 1: what city? Really Hiroshima, Hiroshima.
Speaker 9: Yeah, we took a cruise and it took us to
Speaker 9: Hiroshima and it was a Chinese food restaurant and me
Speaker 9: and my wife went in. It was it was our
Speaker 9: honeymoon trip actually, and we went there. Best Chinese food
Speaker 9: I ever had. Best McDonald's I ever had was in Tokyo.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and people laugh because you know, oh, don't go
Speaker 1: to McDonald's when you go to a fig country. Always
Speaker 1: go to McDonald's country. By the way, it's just better.
Speaker 9: Way better.
Speaker 1: Taco bill blew me away everything. Ye, No, taco bill
Speaker 1: was careful? What you dude? You just used two terms
Speaker 1: to describe taco bell that I don't know. Taco bills
Speaker 1: fire and blew you away. I don't know about that.
Speaker 1: All right, Let's see, it's how long do we have.
Speaker 1: We've got two minutes. Let's see. Let's go to ann
Speaker 1: in Orange County and you're on.
Speaker 5: With Rich Hi.
Speaker 11: Rich Hi. I would like to know is it safe
Speaker 11: for me to go to pay bill on my bank
Speaker 11: and have all of my utilities and some donations with
Speaker 11: drawn automatically each month?
Speaker 12: Uh?
Speaker 1: Donations? Fine? I think if you're doing a recurring donation,
Speaker 1: that's fine. I think the utility bills I don't like
Speaker 1: to put on automatic payments. I don't like anything on
Speaker 1: automatic payments. I know some some places force you to,
Speaker 1: but at the online services, but utility bills in particular.
Speaker 1: Here's the reason why I don't like them automatic because
Speaker 1: they will take that money out and if there's a problem,
Speaker 1: now you've got to fight to get your money back. Sokay,
Speaker 1: that's the only reason. And you know it's a small reason,
Speaker 1: but I think that, like for me, I would rather
Speaker 1: just command my money and where it's going, versus being
Speaker 1: on the receiving end of Oh, this this thing is
Speaker 1: already getting charged to me. I don't really you know,
Speaker 1: now I going to call this company if there seems
Speaker 1: like there's an issue. Now, I will tell you I've
Speaker 1: been paying utility bills for many years. I can't really
Speaker 1: tell you the last time I called up the electric
Speaker 1: company and said, hey, you owe me one hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: This was wrong. So you'll probably be fine. But you know,
Speaker 1: it's just more of like a control factor. So that's
Speaker 1: really it. But I think it's safe. I just think
Speaker 1: it's it's all over the place sometimes, especially with the
Speaker 1: water and power bills that you know, at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, it's safe. Yes, but is it something
Speaker 1: i'd recommend. Probably not.
Speaker 11: Well, thank you so much. I really enjoy your show.
Speaker 1: Oh well, thank you, and I really enjoy the fact
Speaker 1: that you said that. I. You know, people when I
Speaker 1: get an email and you might think that I just
Speaker 1: take it for granted. I do not. When someone tells
Speaker 1: me they love what I'm doing or they appreciate it
Speaker 1: it is. It means the world to me. Coming up,
Speaker 1: Caitlin shed Raw shed ro ROWI AI reporter CET is
Speaker 1: going to break down Sora, what it is and why
Speaker 1: it's going viral. That's coming up next. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: Rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you
Speaker 1: talking technology eight eight eight Rich one O one eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four two four one zero one. You
Speaker 1: are not shy on the phone today. We will get
Speaker 1: to more of your calls in just a moment. But
Speaker 1: first joining me Caitlin shed Rowie, c net's AI reporter,
Speaker 1: to talk about all things AI right now, especially Sora. Caitlin,
Speaker 1: welcome to the show.
Speaker 12: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: So this week, uh, Sora was became available on Android,
Speaker 1: So explain what Sora is First off, so.
Speaker 12: Sora is the sister app to Chat GPT. It's made
Speaker 12: by the same parent company, open Ai. Soora is a
Speaker 12: social media app, and it's a lot like TikTok. You
Speaker 12: can scroll through an endless speed of videos and like
Speaker 12: and comments on different videos. But there's one big catch.
Speaker 12: Nothing you see on Sora is real. Every video is
Speaker 12: AI generated. It is truly what of a kind?
Speaker 1: Which is so wild because when we first covered this,
Speaker 1: when it came out for the iPhone and it was
Speaker 1: invite only, I was like, why would anyone ever scroll
Speaker 1: through a bunch of AI videos? And sure enough I
Speaker 1: find myself doing it, Like every time I open up
Speaker 1: uh Sora, I'm like, I get caught. For a couple
Speaker 1: of minutes, I'm like, oh, these are really funny, Like
Speaker 1: some of them are funny, some are unique, some you
Speaker 1: can't believe. Do you need an invite? I've read that
Speaker 1: you don't need an invite on Android anymore? Is that true?
Speaker 12: No, you no longer you need an invite code for
Speaker 12: iPhone Android no matter what device you have, Sora is
Speaker 12: open for business, and I've certainly been caught in that
Speaker 12: same cycle of just scrolling through Sora, and I think
Speaker 12: part of the appeal is that you don't immediately notice
Speaker 12: that all of the videos are a They're very realistic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, so this is their video generator. I
Speaker 1: know it's got. I mean, I think they had a
Speaker 1: million downloads on iOS very quickly. I think I've read
Speaker 1: somewhere they might have had five hundred thousand downloads on Android,
Speaker 1: like instantly. So do you think people should download this
Speaker 1: to try it out? I know there's that other aspect
Speaker 1: of it, the cameo aspect, to explain that, which is
Speaker 1: a little controversial, I would say, yeah.
Speaker 12: So Sora's most popular feature is called cameo, and if
Speaker 12: you are a Sora user, when you sign up, the
Speaker 12: app will prompt you to record yourself, your face and
Speaker 12: your voice saying a random string of words. And from
Speaker 12: that recording, the Sora app can generate an AI version
Speaker 12: of your likeness, and if you want to, you can
Speaker 12: allow other Sora users to use your likeness and put
Speaker 12: you in nearly any AI generated video. You do not
Speaker 12: have to let people use your cameo, as it's called,
Speaker 12: but a number of people have, including open Ai ceo
Speaker 12: Sam Altman. It's how I was able to create an
Speaker 12: AI video of him saying that Gemini is better than
Speaker 12: chat GPT. Yeah, clearly that's not something he would say
Speaker 12: in real life, but he lets people use his likeness
Speaker 12: and you can do wild things like that if you
Speaker 12: want to.
Speaker 1: Now, we've heard so much about deep fakes and how
Speaker 1: dangerous they are and how they're, you know, changing the
Speaker 1: fabric of society. We don't know what to believe anymore.
Speaker 1: And here comes this big company that has a lot
Speaker 1: of money behind it and they say, you know what,
Speaker 1: anyone can make a deep fake of themselves and by
Speaker 1: the way, soa can your friends. So do we have
Speaker 1: a problem with this or is this just the reality
Speaker 1: of the future that we just have to give up
Speaker 1: all semblances of like trust.
Speaker 12: I hope that's not the case, but I will say
Speaker 12: we had deep fakes before of AI. They were just
Speaker 12: very expensive and costly and very hard to make. What
Speaker 12: these AI video tools have done, in part is made
Speaker 12: it a lot easier for anybody to make these AI videos.
Speaker 12: And as these models have improved, they're getting more and
Speaker 12: more realistic looking. So yes, there is a huge number
Speaker 12: of experts and advocates and users who are very worried
Speaker 12: about the ability for bad actors to take advantage of
Speaker 12: these tools and create potentially illegal or abusive content or
Speaker 12: spread misinformation.
Speaker 1: Now, I know open ai when it first came out,
Speaker 1: or the Sora app, it was sort of like a
Speaker 1: free for all with the copyright stuff, and I saw, like,
Speaker 1: you know, Jesus on there and like all these prominent
Speaker 1: figures from the past saying things and doing things. Is
Speaker 1: that still the case or have they clamped down on
Speaker 1: some of that stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 12: Open ai has definitely reversed course with its initial sort
Speaker 12: of policy, which was that if people didn't want their
Speaker 12: likeness to be used, and not just likeness, but big
Speaker 12: studios or entertainment companies, if they didn't want their protected
Speaker 12: characters to be able to be featured in AI videos,
Speaker 12: they had to opt out. That is not the case anymore,
Speaker 12: which is good because that's not really how copyright law works.
Speaker 12: So now we have some more guardrails in place to
Speaker 12: sort of prevent how likenesses are used, especially for celebrities
Speaker 12: and public figures.
Speaker 10: You know.
Speaker 12: One prominent example, in the first few weeks after the
Speaker 12: Sora app came out, we learned that the estate of
Speaker 12: civil rights leader Martin Luther King Junior had reached out
Speaker 12: to open Ai because they were really concerned about the
Speaker 12: number of inappropriate AI videos that were on the app.
Speaker 12: So his estate and and Open Ai had come up
Speaker 12: with a statement saying that they recognized this was a problem.
Speaker 12: They temporarily paused the ability to make videos featuring Keg
Speaker 12: and they had strengthened the guardrails behind the scenes to
Speaker 12: sort of make it harder to make those kinds of videos.
Speaker 12: And then a couple of weeks later we saw it
Speaker 12: again with Brian Cranston, who you might know as an
Speaker 12: actor from Breaking Bad. He and his actors' union sag
Speaker 12: Afra reached out to open Ai again. They put out
Speaker 12: another statement. So I think this is very much a
Speaker 12: concern not only for anybody online, but especially for celebrities
Speaker 12: and public figures.
Speaker 1: Which is ironic because so many of the early adopters
Speaker 1: of this app are prominent influencers and people like that,
Speaker 1: and they're all doing it. And I think part of
Speaker 1: it was that they got early access from Sora to like,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of hype this thing up. What about
Speaker 1: you know, you mentioned some prominent figures like Sam Altman
Speaker 1: is on there. What about like Trump, Elon Musk's Jeff
Speaker 1: are they can you generate videos of them? I have
Speaker 1: not tried that, but those would be like you know,
Speaker 1: powder keg.
Speaker 12: It depends on how you word the prompt. So for example,
Speaker 12: I tried to make a video of like me on
Speaker 12: stage with Taylor Swift and the moment I put Taylor
Speaker 12: Swift in that promp open AI kicked it back and said,
Speaker 12: absolutely not.
Speaker 13: You can't do that.
Speaker 12: But like you said, there are some celebrities on the
Speaker 12: app who let you use their likeness. So Mark Cuban
Speaker 12: from Shark Tank, he's on the app and he's decided
Speaker 12: to let people use his likeness. So if you scroll Sora,
Speaker 12: you might see a number of videos featuring Mark Cuban,
Speaker 12: which is.
Speaker 3: Kind of wild.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's so, it's such a wild thing. Okay, so
Speaker 1: you cover this AI stuff for cnet. Give me some
Speaker 1: thoughts on where we're at. I mean, we I always
Speaker 1: tell people we're just at the beginning of this stuff.
Speaker 12: Yeah, exactly, and this is the worst that these tools
Speaker 12: will ever be. And we actually come a very long
Speaker 12: way and a very short amount of time. Like it
Speaker 12: literally wasn't until May of this year that we got
Speaker 12: AI videos with sound, which for us, as like you know,
Speaker 12: social media users, that seems really obvious, like we don't
Speaker 12: want to listen to a video that doesn't have sound,
Speaker 12: But for AI companies, adding that AI generated synchronized audio
Speaker 12: to video is a very complex task, and Google was
Speaker 12: the first to sort of come out with a model
Speaker 12: that was able to do that. It's called VO three.
Speaker 12: It's very popular. Sora was sort of the second or
Speaker 12: third after Adobe, but also one of the bigger models
Speaker 12: that was able to include sound. So we've come a
Speaker 12: very long way in a short amount of time. So
Speaker 12: I expect in the future what we're gonna see is
Speaker 12: that these AI video models are gonna get better, meaning
Speaker 12: that we're gonna be able to generate longer videos. Right now,
Speaker 12: the sweet spot is sort of anywhere between five and
Speaker 12: fifteen seconds. I think maybe in the next couple of
Speaker 12: months we can maybe push that to thirty I think
Speaker 12: we're also going to see some videos at a higher resolution.
Speaker 12: There are some companies that offer the ability to natively
Speaker 12: generate in four K, which is really appealing to professional
Speaker 12: creators who want to use AI videos in their work.
Speaker 12: And I think, yeah, I think we're going to see
Speaker 12: a lot of improvements in the actual quality of these
Speaker 12: videos in the future.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you mentioned a couple of competitors. If you've
Speaker 1: heard of Sora and you want to try other things,
Speaker 1: You've got the vo three from Google, You've got Firefly
Speaker 1: from Adobe. How can people tell that a video is fake?
Speaker 1: Because this is the problem we're running into now. I
Speaker 1: know Soro, you know they put these little you know
Speaker 1: what do they call it, like a like a water
Speaker 1: mark that thank you Bobo, they put a watermark on it.
Speaker 1: But my kid is like, but you can just use
Speaker 1: a tool to remove that. So how do you tell?
Speaker 1: How do you tell if something's fake?
Speaker 12: I mean, the frustratingly honest answer is that you can't.
Speaker 12: And nobody is happy with this answer. I'm not happy
Speaker 12: with it, but it is the truth. It is very
Speaker 12: hard to spot an AI generated video, but there are
Speaker 12: some things you can look out for. Like you already mentioned,
Speaker 12: watermarks are one of the biggest things you can look for.
Speaker 12: There are water marks, but like you said, there are
Speaker 12: also tools that you can use to get rid of
Speaker 12: those watermarks, so that's not always a reliable method. Another
Speaker 12: thing you can do is look at an image or
Speaker 12: videos metadata, and I promise that's quicker and easier that
Speaker 12: it sounds. There's a number of websites and apps and
Speaker 12: tools that you can use that can very quickly scan
Speaker 12: an image or a file and it can sort of
Speaker 12: give you some insight into where that piece of content
Speaker 12: came from. And for sour videos in particular, they have
Speaker 12: signals in their video metadata that immediate disclose that this
Speaker 12: was made by open AI and this was.
Speaker 1: AI generated, right, But there's gonna be tools that you know,
Speaker 1: can can remove all of those things in the few
Speaker 1: I mean, if they're not already here. And then of
Speaker 1: course you have you know, nefarious folks that are building
Speaker 1: tools that don't abide by any of these rules or
Speaker 1: laws or whatever. So we are in for it, that
Speaker 1: is for sure. We are starting a very brave new
Speaker 1: future path here. And I think it's exciting because it's
Speaker 1: amazing what can be done. I mean, the Coca Cola ads,
Speaker 1: you know, they're they're making AI ads of their you know,
Speaker 1: Christmas ads. But yet at the same time you have
Speaker 1: people faking Mark Cuban and faking Sam Altman. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just our brains are not really wired to figure
Speaker 1: all this stuff out, Caitlin, We're gonna leave it there.
Speaker 1: Caitlin shed Rowy from seen at Artificial Intelligence Reporter Fantastic Conversation,
Speaker 1: Go follow her find her work. Thanks for joining me today, Caitlin, Yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you. All right, coming up, we're gonna take some
Speaker 1: more of your calls eighty eight rich one on one,
Speaker 1: eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one,
Speaker 1: and I'll tell you about the smart ring that records
Speaker 1: your thoughts. Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich DeMuro
Speaker 1: here hanging out with you talking technology eight eight eight.
Speaker 1: I don't even know if I should give out the number.
Speaker 1: I don't think we can get any more calls at
Speaker 1: this point. Eighty eight rich one on one eight eight
Speaker 1: eight seven four to two four one zero one. But
Speaker 1: go ahead, don't let it dissuade you. Always you always try.
Speaker 1: I shared a quote in my newsletter this week. I'm
Speaker 1: reading that book nineteen twenty nine about the stock market crash,
Speaker 1: and the quote is from John Rascob. He said, go
Speaker 1: ahead and do things, the bigger, the better. This is
Speaker 1: the guy who uh backed the Empire State Building. Can
Speaker 1: you imagine like building something one thousand feet high back
Speaker 1: in the day, in like the twenties. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: mind boggling. So go ahead and do things. The bigger
Speaker 1: the better. Let's go to Curtis and I've been waiting
Speaker 1: for a while. Curtis in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. You're on
Speaker 1: with Rich.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Rich, I've got a problem with my Samsung Android phone.
Speaker 3: I locked myself out and I don't know if there's anything.
Speaker 3: The only that I've heard so far is that I'll
Speaker 3: just need to clean everything off the phone and get
Speaker 3: rid of all my emails, my photos, my address, phone numbers,
Speaker 3: and start over. And I was hoping there was something
Speaker 3: that can be done. Besides that, I was missing around
Speaker 3: on my computer trying to get into my computer, and
Speaker 3: uh I was. I thought, well, maybe this would be easier.
Speaker 3: It gave me some the possibility of using face. I thought, well,
Speaker 3: maybe maybe I'll try face. Well, I put I type
Speaker 3: face on the computer and next thing I know, I
Speaker 3: locked my phone.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, so you have a Samsung phone and you
Speaker 1: cannot remember what the pin well.
Speaker 3: I don't I remember ever giving a Uh. It says
Speaker 3: that you have to be at least a four letter
Speaker 3: quote to get in there, and it has to have
Speaker 3: at least one. Look here what it says there you
Speaker 3: have to have a four characters including at least one
Speaker 3: letter and four character.
Speaker 1: Wait, hold on, four characters including one letter to unlock
Speaker 1: your phone. Yeah, and that's on the screen of your
Speaker 1: phone when you turn it on. Yeah, that's interesting because
Speaker 1: most people do not choose that method to lock their phone.
Speaker 1: It's usually a pin like it's usually four digits, maybe
Speaker 1: six digits. But to have a letter too, that's uh.
Speaker 3: And I never sat one up, you remember ever the
Speaker 3: computer ever asking me to set up a pin for it.
Speaker 1: Now, hold on, when you say computer, Well, I.
Speaker 3: Was on my computer trying trying to get into Gmail
Speaker 3: because I was having trouble with uh uh Chrome Google Chrome,
Speaker 3: and uh because I can only see half a screen.
Speaker 3: So I thought, well, i'll try I'll try this other one,
Speaker 3: which turned out to be Gmail, and then Gmail kept
Speaker 3: asking me, uh uh for I was getting in there fine.
Speaker 3: Then all of a sudden, I asked me for I
Speaker 3: turned it out again and asked me for a password.
Speaker 3: I put in the password that I had for it
Speaker 3: and did it work? So, uh, I think I changed
Speaker 3: it once and then and and that didn't work later,
Speaker 3: so so I got frustrated. I thought, well, I'll just
Speaker 3: try this. It says face, that's the ball, Okay, I
Speaker 3: can use my face, And so I went in there
Speaker 3: to set up for a face and next thing I know,
Speaker 3: it's it barely. Uh okay, so let's let's make it
Speaker 3: with my phone. And and then later on when I
Speaker 3: went into my phone to uh to use it, it
Speaker 3: was I was locked out and it says I need
Speaker 3: this password.
Speaker 1: Okay, So so right now, do you have access to
Speaker 1: your computer or not?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I got access to my computer.
Speaker 1: Computer's fine. The phone is locked and you can't unlock it.
Speaker 1: You don't. So if it's a Samsung phone, you go
Speaker 1: to the phone and you you go to unlock it,
Speaker 1: and it just says no, it's and there's not.
Speaker 3: I can get calls, people can call.
Speaker 1: Me right, but it's not you're not unlocking the phone.
Speaker 1: I can't call out right because you can't get in there,
Speaker 1: and you don't have a fingerprint on here, and you
Speaker 1: don't now when you talk about your stuff, was any
Speaker 1: of it backed up? I not on my phone, so typically.
Speaker 3: Thinks I got a card here to download my pictures,
Speaker 3: and it was confusing on how to use it. So
Speaker 3: I never got it. I never got it done.
Speaker 1: Okay, a couple of things. So first off, typically when
Speaker 1: your phone when you forget that. I'm looking at the
Speaker 1: Samsung right now and it says set a pin. Remember
Speaker 1: this pin. If you forget it, you'll need to reset
Speaker 1: your phone and all data will be erased. So that
Speaker 1: is typically what happens if you forget the pin to
Speaker 1: your phone. Now, there could be a world where you
Speaker 1: set up a remote unlock like a smart lock or
Speaker 1: find my mobile, but I don't think you did that,
Speaker 1: so that's not going to work. There really is not,
Speaker 1: because all the data on these phones is encrypted now,
Speaker 1: there's really not a way to tap into it. And
Speaker 1: the backup stuff. If your pictures weren't backed up to
Speaker 1: one drive, which you can check there because sometimes Samsung
Speaker 1: does that. Your your emails should be backed up if
Speaker 1: you're using Gmail, which just sounds like you are, so
Speaker 1: those are going to be safe, in your documents and
Speaker 1: things like that. But really the photos are the things
Speaker 1: I'm concerned about. I would see if there's a you
Speaker 1: can try to go to, like a data doctor in
Speaker 1: your area and see if they can help you with
Speaker 1: this or a you break I fix if they have
Speaker 1: one near you see what they say. But typically, Curtis,
Speaker 1: I'm sad to report that typically when you forget the
Speaker 1: pin to your phone, it is really impossible to get
Speaker 1: back into that device. Hopefully that is not the case here.
Speaker 1: Good luck and keep me posted eight eight eight rich
Speaker 1: one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two
Speaker 1: four one zero one. The ring for AI voice notes.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you about it next. Welcome back to rich
Speaker 1: on tech rich DeMuro here eight eight eight rich one
Speaker 1: on one eight eight eight seven four to two four
Speaker 1: one zero one. Coming up this hour, we've got Brand Putnam,
Speaker 1: founder of Mirror later sold to uh Lululemon, I believe,
Speaker 1: and now out with something new called Board. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like a high tech take on a family game night,
Speaker 1: you know, the board game. So we'll talk to Brand
Speaker 1: about that. What else eight eight eight rich one on
Speaker 1: one website, richon tech dot TV. All the show notes
Speaker 1: are there. I want to tell you about this stream ring.
Speaker 1: This is a two hundred and fifty dollars smart ring
Speaker 1: that you put on your finger, put a ring on it,
Speaker 1: and uh it lets you record your thoughts. So it
Speaker 1: got a little button on it in a microphone, and
Speaker 1: you basically press the button and talk into it and
Speaker 1: it uses AI to transcribe. It all goes back to
Speaker 1: your phone doubles as a music controller. Two hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty dollars gonna ship next year and this is from
Speaker 1: two former Meta enginess. Basically, you know, it's just a
Speaker 1: smart ring for notes, you know, using AI now personally,
Speaker 1: you know, I wish that it does not track anything
Speaker 1: health related. So I think it's kind of weird that
Speaker 1: there's no health aspect to this, because you're you're gonna
Speaker 1: wear this on your ring all the time. And also,
Speaker 1: I don't know about you, but I already wear an
Speaker 1: Apple Watch and I use Whisper and Memos on there
Speaker 1: to take all my notes, and I love that it
Speaker 1: goes right to my email. So I don't know, we'll see.
Speaker 1: I think everyone's trying right now to find new ways
Speaker 1: of computing that don't involve the phone, right like, don't
Speaker 1: involve the smartphone. And I just don't know if this
Speaker 1: is it. We'll see, but I've not tested it, so
Speaker 1: I can't really tell you. But it's just it's kind
Speaker 1: of an interesting take. iOS twenty six point one adds
Speaker 1: new liquid glass control. So if you downloaded iOS twenty
Speaker 1: six point one, I think you should because there's a
Speaker 1: lot of fixes in it. There is a new setting
Speaker 1: that can make liquid glass less liquidy. So if you're
Speaker 1: annoyed by how clear everything is, there's a transparency toggle,
Speaker 1: So go to settings once you download it, display brightness
Speaker 1: liquid glass, and you can switch from the traditional clear
Speaker 1: to a new tinted option. And tinted is less see through.
Speaker 1: Of course Apple had to say tinted instead of sea
Speaker 1: instead of you know, well, I guess opaque is a
Speaker 1: little bit. That's a weird word, but you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, Like they tinted sounds like it's still see through.
Speaker 1: It's not really. They just don't want to admit that
Speaker 1: not everyone likes liquid glass being see through because it's
Speaker 1: tough to see. It's it's cool looking, it's maybe not
Speaker 1: the most functionally visually that even makes sense. I don't
Speaker 1: know what else can you do camera setting. You could
Speaker 1: disable the lock screen swipe to open if you don't
Speaker 1: like that. And Airpod's live translation now supports more languages Italian, Chinese, Japanese,
Speaker 1: and Korean. Oh and the alarm is no longer a
Speaker 1: tap You swipe to disable the alarm. You know you
Speaker 1: don't like wake up in the middle of your alarm
Speaker 1: and just like tap it and then you sleep through
Speaker 1: your alarm. Let's go to let's see let's go to
Speaker 1: Don Don in Utah. You're on with Rich.
Speaker 3: I love you so much, Rich, you're the best.
Speaker 7: Grateful for your research you did ever wait for everybody?
Speaker 10: Thank you the first question.
Speaker 1: Okay, sorry, I think we lost him there. Let's go
Speaker 1: to Uh, let's go to Gina. Let's see line for
Speaker 1: Gina in Mission Vaho. Gina, you're on with Rich.
Speaker 10: Oh, hi, Rich, Okay, do you need me to say
Speaker 10: this question or do you already have it?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 1: I don't read minds, Gina. I wish I did I do,
Speaker 1: But the questions on the screen are like that number one.
Speaker 1: They never match it up to what people ask.
Speaker 10: Oh, okay, okay, I don't.
Speaker 1: Want to hear it, so let's hear what you got.
Speaker 10: Okay. Now, this is just because I'm not very high TechEd.
Speaker 10: I was on a trip recently to Vermont, and I
Speaker 10: brought two Apple iPhones.
Speaker 1: Uh oh, do we lose Gina too? Gina? What happened?
Speaker 1: What Bobo? What happened to Gina, Okay, what's happening here?
Speaker 1: Gina's gone okay, Uh, let's go to let's see who
Speaker 1: do we have here? Mark in Saint Petersburg, Florida. Mark,
Speaker 1: you're on with Rich? What is happening? This whole show
Speaker 1: just went down the tubes? Mark? Are you there?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm here.
Speaker 1: There you go, Please pop the slack here.
Speaker 7: Okay, no pressure, huh Okay. What I wanted to ask
Speaker 7: was with the holidays and everything going on. I know
Speaker 7: I used Chrome browser and uh Safari browser, and I
Speaker 7: know us they used to have extensions that that you
Speaker 7: could use to compare, do comparative shopping, you know, all
Speaker 7: across the web. But then is AI also kind of
Speaker 7: replacing that in some way. I'm just looking for something
Speaker 7: to be able to, you know, look at a certain
Speaker 7: look for a certain thing, and then say, okay, these
Speaker 7: ten places have it for this price. This is the
Speaker 7: best price at the store.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So here's the thing. It's a good question, and
Speaker 1: it's such a tough one because there's so many things
Speaker 1: going on. Like, Okay, so you've got the basics like
Speaker 1: Google shopping or Amazon, Yahoo shopping, right, So I just
Speaker 1: did a quick comparison and I typed in this video
Speaker 1: projector into Yahoo Shopping, and then I typed that same
Speaker 1: thing into Google Shopping. And I will tell you that
Speaker 1: I think Google Shopping definitely came up with better results.
Speaker 1: And if you've ever looked for a product on Google
Speaker 1: Shopping in general or on Google in general, I should say,
Speaker 1: you'll see when you look for a product, it'll sometimes
Speaker 1: come up on the side. Hold on, let me type
Speaker 1: this in again, It'll come up on the side with
Speaker 1: like pricing information. So I just looked up the x
Speaker 1: Jimmy mogo for projector, right, and I'm looking at the
Speaker 1: Google search results. It's got the traditional results. Then on
Speaker 1: the right side it notices that this is a product,
Speaker 1: and it's telling me all kinds of information typically four
Speaker 1: to seven ninety nine, and it's saying four ninety nine
Speaker 1: at x Jimmy, which is their website, four ninety nine
Speaker 1: at Walmart, seven ninety nine at best Buy, and then
Speaker 1: I can tap compare prices, and this brings me into
Speaker 1: Google Shopping, and it doesn't go much further than that.
Speaker 1: You've got BNH Photo and a couple other places. But
Speaker 1: here's the thing. So I think that these tools are good,
Speaker 1: and I think that what you really want is something
Speaker 1: to compare against the main websites, which is best Buy, Target, Walmart, Amazon,
Speaker 1: you know, the main websites, and of course the retailer's
Speaker 1: own website, and then sometimes you have something like a
Speaker 1: Cohles will sell electronics and stuff like that. I think
Speaker 1: the easiest way to do it is the Google Shopping Results,
Speaker 1: but I'm not completely certain that all of Google's shopping
Speaker 1: is organic. I think that some of it is sponsored.
Speaker 1: It's not going to have everything that you want on there.
Speaker 1: There's also the Honey. I used to use this Honey
Speaker 1: shopping assistant, so they have If you install Honey on
Speaker 1: your computer, this is from PayPal. It will pop up
Speaker 1: when you're on like an Amazon result and say, hey,
Speaker 1: we found this product at a cheaper price somewhere else.
Speaker 1: The thing that I'm concerned about is that you don't
Speaker 1: really want to be buying these products from a lot
Speaker 1: of random websites you haven't heard of that have really
Speaker 1: good prices. And I think that's what some of these trackers,
Speaker 1: these price trackers have done over the years, is that
Speaker 1: they just feed in a lot of nonsense that like,
Speaker 1: I don't really want to buy this from a random website.
Speaker 1: And I think that's the problem with why we don't
Speaker 1: see a lot more of these online anymore, is because
Speaker 1: it's just I don't think people are using them. Like
Speaker 1: if I have an Amazon Prime membership, I'm pretty much
Speaker 1: sticking to Prime. If I have a Walmart Plus, I'm
Speaker 1: probably buying from Walmart. I like best Buy, and I
Speaker 1: like the rewards program they have, I'm buying it best Buy.
Speaker 1: If I like Target, I've got Target three to sixty.
Speaker 1: I'm probably gonna stick there. And I think that just
Speaker 1: finding the price across those kind of major retailers is
Speaker 1: what most people are doing anyway. And I hate to say,
Speaker 1: but there's not a lot of change between those retailers,
Speaker 1: Like sometimes it's like the same exact price. So I
Speaker 1: think all of this is to say I don't have
Speaker 1: a place where I go to pop in a product
Speaker 1: and say this is going to give you the absolute
Speaker 1: best price. So that is kind of the end all
Speaker 1: this with this, you know, with shopping online, is that
Speaker 1: there's not necessarily a great place to pop in a
Speaker 1: product and get the best price. That's what I'm trying
Speaker 1: to tell you, Mark. What I would say is what
Speaker 1: I do This is what I tell people to do
Speaker 1: is if you have your your eye on something, Let's
Speaker 1: say you want the Apple Watch eleven, right, you type
Speaker 1: that into Google and then what I like to do
Speaker 1: is tap news. And what happens is all of these
Speaker 1: bloggers out there, because they get a commission on the
Speaker 1: prices that they're you know, posting, and the links to
Speaker 1: the affiliate links that they're posting, they're always blogging about
Speaker 1: the best price of things because it's in their best
Speaker 1: interest to have you find that when you search for
Speaker 1: it on Google. So I actually think that's usually the
Speaker 1: best way to do it is you could you can
Speaker 1: tap news, or you could even type in deal Apple
Speaker 1: Watch eleven deal, and it will give you the best
Speaker 1: deals on those because people are finding them and blogging
Speaker 1: about them. Or you can just leave out eleven, maybe
Speaker 1: just want an Apple Watch deal in general, and you
Speaker 1: can find them that way. So there's just there's so
Speaker 1: many ways of doing this. I can't tell you that
Speaker 1: there's one size fits all. I wish there was an
Speaker 1: extension that you can install on Chrome and it would
Speaker 1: pop up every single time there's a better price. I
Speaker 1: don't think there is, and I think that like you
Speaker 1: said AI is where a lot of people are starting
Speaker 1: their shopping searches nowadays, and you know, that's another way
Speaker 1: of doing it. But I think that there's just not
Speaker 1: one shop for everything, Like there used to be a
Speaker 1: lot of price crawlers out there on the web that
Speaker 1: you could pop a product into it it would compare
Speaker 1: against everything. I just don't think that those they exist, yes,
Speaker 1: but I don't think there's one that's like perfect that
Speaker 1: I could recommend to you because I just don't think
Speaker 1: there is a perfect one out there, and I think
Speaker 1: it really comes down to preferences of where you like
Speaker 1: to shop and how you like to buy things. A
Speaker 1: couple other products while we before we go to break here,
Speaker 1: there is one called save wise get savewise dot com
Speaker 1: so you can type in stores and help you get
Speaker 1: offers from your credit card and things like that. The
Speaker 1: other one is card pointers that can help you find
Speaker 1: some of the credit card offers that you have and
Speaker 1: that can help you save some money. And of course
Speaker 1: I like shop Back. We've talked about that on the show.
Speaker 1: They are a sponsor, so I do really like that
Speaker 1: because you can get shop money back there if you're
Speaker 1: trying to do just comparison shopping on Amazon Camel Camel
Speaker 1: Camel is a great place to go. And then there's
Speaker 1: websites like slick Deals and deal News, which gives you
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of the best deals out there on things,
Speaker 1: but not necessarily a thing you're looking for, although you
Speaker 1: can't type that in to the search bar. But Mark,
Speaker 1: I just threw a lot at the wall. There are
Speaker 1: so many ways of doing this. There's not one size
Speaker 1: fits all when it comes to online shopping. That is
Speaker 1: what I've decided. Thanks for the call today, appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Apologies about the other callers. I'm not sure what happened there.
Speaker 1: If you want to call back, a hop on the
Speaker 1: phone eighty to eight Rich one on one back after this,
Speaker 1: come back to Rich on tech rich DeMuro here we
Speaker 1: got an email from Jim. He said you mentioned the
Speaker 1: new slider to turn off the alarm on iOS twenty
Speaker 1: six point one. He says he actually liked the button better.
Speaker 1: Maybe you can mention for other people who might want
Speaker 1: to get the button back. This is how you do it.
Speaker 1: Go into Settings Accessibility touch and if you scroll all
Speaker 1: the way down to the bottom, it says prefer single
Speaker 1: touch actions and that'll get back the single touch alarm
Speaker 1: turnoff button. Okay, it's good to have options, Jim. I
Speaker 1: think here's what I think Apple is admitting with this
Speaker 1: whole update is that it's like everything that they've changed,
Speaker 1: they've given people the option to change back, which I
Speaker 1: think is great. I feel like that's kind of what
Speaker 1: Android has done forever, is give people options rather than
Speaker 1: just like an edict of here's how you do things,
Speaker 1: which is what iOS has been, you know, for a
Speaker 1: very long time. But I think they're getting to the
Speaker 1: point where they're giving people more options. I feel like
Speaker 1: with the last two updates, Apple has really kind of
Speaker 1: taken the lead and like, hey, we'll let you do
Speaker 1: a lot of things that you want to do the
Speaker 1: way you want to do them within reason. You know,
Speaker 1: they still control a lot of the sandboxing and stuff,
Speaker 1: which I think is good for security and privacy, but
Speaker 1: they let you choose a lot of the things that
Speaker 1: you want to do and custom customize the phone in
Speaker 1: the way that you want to do it. So again,
Speaker 1: if you want that single touch alarm turnoff button back
Speaker 1: instead of the slider settings diessibility touch for fer single
Speaker 1: touch actions, it looks like we got Gina back in
Speaker 1: mission via ho Gina, what's up? What happened? We got disconnected?
Speaker 10: Okay, I'll try to talk back here. Yeah, so I
Speaker 10: was in Lamont and trying to use my phones. I
Speaker 10: have two cell phones I brought. One is an iPhone eight,
Speaker 10: the others an iPhone XR Apple XR, and I noticed
Speaker 10: that the XR was able to work with it get
Speaker 10: keep the internet connection from I guess from the hotel
Speaker 10: because I logged into the hotel internet connection. But anyway,
Speaker 10: when I was using it to find using maps to
Speaker 10: make plot courses when I got outside of the hotel,
Speaker 10: only the XR version would work for that. The other
Speaker 10: phone that they eight had the message of no Internet.
Speaker 1: Connection when you were outside the hotel.
Speaker 10: Yeah, Like, I don't exactly win I noticed it. I
Speaker 10: mean I noticed it, but I mean because I was
Speaker 10: trying to use both phones because you know, the power
Speaker 10: I didn't have in case I ran out of power.
Speaker 1: Matter were you on Wi Fi or cellular?
Speaker 10: Okay, those are the kind of question Okay, when you're out, Okay,
Speaker 10: when you this is ride the terminology may get me
Speaker 10: when I'm outside of a hotel if I plugged into
Speaker 10: their internet and I want to leave the premises. Does
Speaker 10: it automatically And this sounds dumb, it does that mean
Speaker 10: it's already on Wi Fi?
Speaker 5: I don't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it depends, I mean so like So basically the
Speaker 1: way the cellular works versus Wi Fi cellular connection is constant.
Speaker 1: Like your phone is always basically on a cellular connection.
Speaker 1: If it's an iPhone, right, if it's if it's a smartphone, right,
Speaker 1: it always has a cellular connection as long as it
Speaker 1: has one physically, right or I guess wirelessly, however you
Speaker 1: want to say it Wi Fi, if you think about
Speaker 1: it, it almost rides on top of the cellular connection, and
Speaker 1: so you can use Wi Fi by itself and turn
Speaker 1: off the cellular of course, but it's almost like your
Speaker 1: phone is always going to favor Wi Fi when it
Speaker 1: has it, because it uses less battery and it uses
Speaker 1: less of the cellular data. It's just much more power efficient.
Speaker 1: So once you connect, let's say you let's say you
Speaker 1: check into a Let's say you get off a plane,
Speaker 1: and from the time you get off the plane to
Speaker 1: the time you ride to the hotel, your phone is
Speaker 1: probably on a cellular connection. Right soon as you get
Speaker 1: to that hotel, you check into your room, you log
Speaker 1: into the Wi Fi that's that's provided by the hotel.
Speaker 1: Now your phone goes, oh cool, we've got this nice
Speaker 1: Wi Fi connection. We're going to use that because typically faster,
Speaker 1: more power efficient, uses less data from our cellular and
Speaker 1: it's just easier on the whole system. And so now
Speaker 1: we're going to default to that whenever we see that connection. Now,
Speaker 1: your phone manages it by itself, So if the Wi
Speaker 1: Fi is not strong, it's going to just default back
Speaker 1: to the cellular. When the Wi Fi works, it's going
Speaker 1: to take the cellular. When you're outside that hotel, let's
Speaker 1: say you're laying out by the pool, it may have
Speaker 1: a Wi Fi connection if it's strong enough from the
Speaker 1: from the hotel, or it may not. But your phone's
Speaker 1: going to kind of decide. And so the reason these
Speaker 1: two phones had a different connection or different ability is
Speaker 1: probably comes down to the fact that they just have
Speaker 1: different hardware. And I'm guessing which phone had the better one,
Speaker 1: the XR the ten R well X working, Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: because it's a new and it's a newer model. So
Speaker 1: I think just the iPhone eight just didn't have the
Speaker 1: same strong connection because the specs of the hardware probably
Speaker 1: were not as good or the tuning. I mean it
Speaker 1: could be. I'm looking at the specs right now. Theoretically
Speaker 1: the specs are the same, but the hardware, the way
Speaker 1: it's designed, the way the antenna openings are all that
Speaker 1: stuff could just be more optimized on the ten are so.
Speaker 1: But I will tell you both of these phones, you know,
Speaker 1: are out of service when it comes to support and software.
Speaker 1: So I would look into just you know, for security
Speaker 1: and things like that. I would look into upgrading at
Speaker 1: some point with a newer device.
Speaker 10: Okay, what newer device if I because I'm trying to
Speaker 10: save money, what would be a newer device that isn't
Speaker 10: so extent, like you know, I don't want to go
Speaker 10: to the top?
Speaker 1: Is like a iPhone sixteen E will be great? So, yes,
Speaker 1: sixteen E and that's that's typically five ninety nine. You
Speaker 1: might find it cheaper during the holidays, maybe four ninety nine.
Speaker 1: So I would watch for any sort of deals on that.
Speaker 1: You might even get it for free on your from
Speaker 1: your carrier. How long have you had your carrier?
Speaker 10: Oh well I can't, I can't remember exactly, so few years.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well you might go to them, they might give
Speaker 1: you a free phone. The thing is, if you're not
Speaker 1: changing carriers, like if you don't like let's say, of
Speaker 1: AT and T, you don't want to switch, they may
Speaker 1: give you a new phone and just say, hey, you
Speaker 1: have to stick with us for another two years. If
Speaker 1: you're completely happy with your service and everything you got,
Speaker 1: might as well take the free phone and you're paying
Speaker 1: the same amount. This is rich on Tech. Coming up,
Speaker 1: we are going to talk about board, a new way
Speaker 1: to have family game night. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology. The
Speaker 1: website rich on tech dot TV. Everything I mentioned is
Speaker 1: linked up on there. So if I mentioned something like
Speaker 1: that Ramen place or you know, anything that I mentioned,
Speaker 1: the reporters we talk to, the people, we talk to,
Speaker 1: the products I mentioned. It's all on the website rich
Speaker 1: on tech dot TV. This is episode one forty seven,
Speaker 1: so you can easily find it there. Another thing, a
Speaker 1: thing I'll link up to. Lift and United Airlines are
Speaker 1: teaming up. So now if you ride Lift you can
Speaker 1: get miles on United Airlines. So mileage plus you can
Speaker 1: link your account in the Lift app. You get four
Speaker 1: miles per dollar on prescheduled airport rides three miles on
Speaker 1: lift black and black suv. Let's see, Okay, I was
Speaker 1: looking for the what you get for a standard trip.
Speaker 1: It's a dollar from Okay, so there you go. But
Speaker 1: if you are a new user, you can get a
Speaker 1: thousand bonus miles for linking and completing two rides within
Speaker 1: thirty days. Anyway, lyft dot com slash United. I don't
Speaker 1: know about you, but I fly United most of the time.
Speaker 1: I don't necessarily take Lyft all the time. But you know,
Speaker 1: maybe this is the whole point of these partnerships is
Speaker 1: to get you to use their products. Right, so we'll
Speaker 1: say all right. Joining me now is Brent Putnam, founder
Speaker 1: of Mirror. This is a product that was a fitness
Speaker 1: Well she can explain it better, but I believe it
Speaker 1: was a fitness board, a fitness mirror that Lululemon purchased,
Speaker 1: and now she's working on something completely new to reinvent
Speaker 1: family game night called bored. The website is boord dot fun,
Speaker 1: which I like the pun. There, Brin Putnam, thanks for
Speaker 1: joining me today.
Speaker 13: Thanks for having me rich.
Speaker 1: Okay, so tell me quickly Mirror this was I've seen it.
Speaker 1: I saw it at the Lula Lemon store. It's like
Speaker 1: a mirror that what you like work out in right,
Speaker 1: like work out with Yeah.
Speaker 14: It's an interactive fitness mirror where you could see yourself
Speaker 14: reflected and then a live instructor and it gave you
Speaker 14: feedback on your form, your intensity via connected heart rate
Speaker 14: monitor and weights. And we sold this a little Lemon
Speaker 14: in twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: Amazing. So I mean that was life changing. I'm sure,
Speaker 1: yeah it was.
Speaker 14: It was an incredible outcome for the for the product
Speaker 14: and the team.
Speaker 1: That's amazing. Okay, so you did that. I mean my
Speaker 1: family and I watched Shark Tank, so I mean we
Speaker 1: love like all the different products and things. Were you
Speaker 1: on that for that or No?
Speaker 13: No, I would love to be on Shark Tank though
Speaker 13: maybe with the next one.
Speaker 1: Well, at this point, now you're not gonna be on
Speaker 1: Sharks Tank for like your product. You're gonna be on
Speaker 1: as one of the sharks because you know, one of
Speaker 1: the guests people. Because now you've done so well. Okay,
Speaker 1: so now you're doing a new thing called Board. The
Speaker 1: website is Board dot Fun and so it's kind of
Speaker 1: like it looks to me like a digital reinvention of
Speaker 1: the board game. So explain Yeah.
Speaker 14: So Board is the first ever face to face game
Speaker 14: console that blends the best of board games and video
Speaker 14: games into one new platform. So how it works is
Speaker 14: it's a twenty four inch touch screen and a beautiful
Speaker 14: wood frame that sits on your table. And we spent
Speaker 14: two years training the screen to do something no other
Speaker 14: screen can do, which is recognize physical pieces game pieces.
Speaker 14: So when you put down a piece, it knows what
Speaker 14: the piece is, where it is on the board, and
Speaker 14: what orientation it's in in real time. So it's an
Speaker 14: entirely new way of playing games that mixes physical pieces
Speaker 14: with a digital screen.
Speaker 1: Now how are you able to do that? What is
Speaker 1: there something in the piece or does the board just
Speaker 1: feel the pressure of the piece.
Speaker 13: So it's a couple components.
Speaker 14: One, the piece has a unique capacitive signature on the
Speaker 14: bottom and the base that the screen then recognizes. And
Speaker 14: then we've trained our own AI models to run on
Speaker 14: the device to recognize what the piece is and what
Speaker 14: it's doing in real time. So we have a whole
Speaker 14: team of sort of computer vision machine learning engineer that
Speaker 14: are training these pieces to be recognizable by the screen.
Speaker 1: And so what types of games are available to play
Speaker 1: on the board.
Speaker 14: So the board at launch has twelve games included. They
Speaker 14: range from things like quick hit retro arcade games to
Speaker 14: deep strategy games to everything in between. And they scale
Speaker 14: from one player to many players.
Speaker 13: Young children up to adults.
Speaker 14: And the goals to get everyone sitting around the table, laughing, talking, collaborating,
Speaker 14: working together around this shared experience.
Speaker 1: Now it almost looks like when I'm looking at the website,
Speaker 1: it almost reminds me of you know, those like arcade
Speaker 1: games that are a console like where you sit like
Speaker 1: a mispac man or something where two people sit on
Speaker 1: either side. It's almost reminiscent of that has that occurred.
Speaker 14: To you at all, the old sort of pizza pizza parlor,
Speaker 14: tabletop arcade games which were so fun.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 14: Absolutely, I think there's a lot of sort of similarities
Speaker 14: in terms of just bringing back kind of the fun
Speaker 14: of sitting around this shared experience. So instead of you know,
Speaker 14: being in a corner on your phone or your iPad
Speaker 14: or sitting with hyphones on network to someone on your
Speaker 14: PC or your TV, you're sitting together face to face.
Speaker 13: Across the table.
Speaker 1: Now you kind of touched upon something because we're seeing
Speaker 1: this trend of people trying to be on screens less
Speaker 1: and be more present. And so I think, you know,
Speaker 1: when you think about a classic board game that like
Speaker 1: kind of hits all those things, and here you are
Speaker 1: coming out with a high tech version of that. So
Speaker 1: do you think you get the same sort of disconnection
Speaker 1: from the screen even though you're on a screen playing
Speaker 1: these games?
Speaker 13: Yeah, So board for me was really born out of
Speaker 13: personal need.
Speaker 14: I have five kids, so I range from two and
Speaker 14: eight and then up to three older step kids seventeen
Speaker 14: nineteen twenty one. And we would try to play board games,
Speaker 14: but we'd have to play something easy enough for the
Speaker 14: littlest one to join, or we try to play video games,
Speaker 14: and the teenagers would smoke us because none of us
Speaker 14: were as good on sort of complicated modern controllers as
Speaker 14: the young inins.
Speaker 13: And so the question for me was, like, you know,
Speaker 13: is technology? Can technology be good? Here?
Speaker 14: Can we make the screen something that's helpful in facilitating
Speaker 14: interaction and connection rather than something that isolates us or
Speaker 14: makes us distracted? And so I think it's really about
Speaker 14: how the screen is used, and for us, the screen
Speaker 14: is there to make people talk and laugh, and work
Speaker 14: together rather than something that sort of takes you and
Speaker 14: puts you in you and your own physical bubble. So
Speaker 14: it's not anti tech. It's really about using tech to
Speaker 14: bring people together.
Speaker 1: And each one of these games, it looks like, has
Speaker 1: their own components, like physical components. Does that come with
Speaker 1: the board or do you purchase those separately?
Speaker 14: Yeah, so everything is included, so you get twelve games
Speaker 14: and each game has its own piece set. So Chop
Speaker 14: Chop is our cooperative cooking game, and you get knives
Speaker 14: and spoons and a little chef and a spice mill.
Speaker 13: Or the arcade games have robots and space ships.
Speaker 14: Or Spycraft is an adventure game with this spy kit
Speaker 14: that converts into a laser cutter and a safecracker, and
Speaker 14: that's all included for limited time at launch as part
Speaker 14: of the.
Speaker 13: Four ninety nine price.
Speaker 1: And when it comes to this the durability of the board,
Speaker 1: because you are playing on this surface, is there like
Speaker 1: a screen protector, Like is it replaceable? Explain that because
Speaker 1: it's got to be very durable to be able to
Speaker 1: play the games on here, and it's a display as well.
Speaker 14: Yeah, So the device went through a ton of testing
Speaker 14: of being dropped from very high heights, being submerged in water,
Speaker 14: being scratched up thousands of times, and so we feel
Speaker 14: very good that it's incredibly durable, but it also comes with,
Speaker 14: you know, when you're warranty and a lot of support
Speaker 14: if you should see it.
Speaker 1: Is there a subscription? Do I pay monthly to access
Speaker 1: these games? And right now I'm assuming you're developing all
Speaker 1: the games yourself. Is there going to be a third
Speaker 1: party sort of app store where developers can make things
Speaker 1: for this board?
Speaker 14: Yeah, so the twelve games are included with purchase. Then
Speaker 14: in early twenty twenty six, we roll out our game store,
Speaker 14: where you can purchase additional games as well as expansion
Speaker 14: content for the games you already own.
Speaker 13: And we're really building a platform.
Speaker 14: So we have an SDK available today and developers are
Speaker 14: already building on our SDK new experiences that take advantage
Speaker 14: of this shared screen and the physical interaction. So we're
Speaker 14: really excited to see kind of what the next generation
Speaker 14: of games brings.
Speaker 13: It could be reimagined.
Speaker 14: Classics like Chess or Monopoly brought to life on the board,
Speaker 14: or new native experience.
Speaker 13: As an IP that we haven't even imagined yet.
Speaker 1: You've got a lot of competition in the game kind
Speaker 1: of space. You've got everything from Amazon, Luna, they just
Speaker 1: came out with free games on your TV for prime
Speaker 1: subscribers with no hardware, no additional hardware other than the
Speaker 1: firestick or whatever. You know, You've got the iPad, you've
Speaker 1: got Nintendo, you've got Xbox, you've got Roadblocks, you've got Minecraft,
Speaker 1: you've got PlayStation. How do you see this fitting into
Speaker 1: all that world of gaming?
Speaker 14: I think it's really about the face to face interaction
Speaker 14: that is unique to board and the physical digital combination.
Speaker 14: So it's just an incredibly fun and intuitive way to play.
Speaker 14: So just like swiping on mobile brought in a whole
Speaker 14: new world of gamers, or the swing of the remote
Speaker 14: and we unlocked new ways of playing, I think sort
Speaker 14: of pieces in screen interaction really enables everyone to be
Speaker 14: a gamer. So for us, I think it's about bringing
Speaker 14: everyone together for regardless of age or skill, and for
Speaker 14: an experience that's face to face, which I think is
Speaker 14: just really unique amongst our competitors.
Speaker 1: Again, it's board dot fun. The price is four ninety nine,
Speaker 1: you get twelve games, got physical component and obviously a
Speaker 1: hardware component to it. And a digital component brand. I'm
Speaker 1: just curious for you as a entrepreneur. I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: you found great success with your last product. I always
Speaker 1: feel like it's it's tough. There's a lot of pressure
Speaker 1: for the next product, you know, like this, like it's
Speaker 1: like you want to have another home run. Do you
Speaker 1: feel that pressure and do you feel like you accomplish
Speaker 1: something great with your next venture?
Speaker 8: Here?
Speaker 3: Sure?
Speaker 14: I mean I think for me, you know, you want
Speaker 14: to build something that people love, that has a lasting
Speaker 14: impact on a lot of lives. And so I generally
Speaker 14: am kind of someone who thinks the score takes care
Speaker 14: of itself, So I don't think too much.
Speaker 13: About the end condition.
Speaker 14: It's more about just kind of waking up each day
Speaker 14: and setting a really high bar for execution for me
Speaker 14: and my team. And generally, I think if you deliver
Speaker 14: great experiences, people will enjoy them and thinks will go well.
Speaker 1: Any advice you got like less than a minute, any
Speaker 1: advice for entrepreneurs out there? Someone has an idea. I mean,
Speaker 1: you pretty much hit the pinnacle with your first product,
Speaker 1: and you know, any advice for people that have something
Speaker 1: that they want to do.
Speaker 14: I had no technical experience mirror was my first job
Speaker 14: with the team, and I think what you don't know
Speaker 14: is actually your greatest gift and your greatest asset, because
Speaker 14: you're brave and you see things that other people don't see.
Speaker 14: So let what you don't know create a sense of
Speaker 14: urgency and take the jump and give it a go.
Speaker 1: All right, I love that advice. Brinn Putnam, founder of
Speaker 1: Mirror and now boardboard dot Fun, Thanks so much for
Speaker 1: joining me today. Thanks rach all right, really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: All right, coming up, a couple more items of note
Speaker 1: in the news world, and then we'll get to the feedback.
Speaker 1: You are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: rich on Tech, rich Demro. Here a couple items of
Speaker 1: no before we open the feedback. First off, new research
Speaker 1: shows that smart watches could help doctors spot heart problems early.
Speaker 1: The doctors developed an AI algorithm that can detect structural
Speaker 1: heart disease like weak heart muscles or damaged valves only
Speaker 1: using a smart watches built in single lead ECG sensor.
Speaker 1: We know that censors and hospitals have like twelve leads,
Speaker 1: you know, they put those little things on you. This
Speaker 1: is just using a smartwatch, and so they took a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of data, they fed it into an algorithm,
Speaker 1: and then they tested it on a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: patients and sure enough it worked. So researchers say this
Speaker 1: could make heart screening more accessible basically your watch. It's
Speaker 1: not a done deal, but it just goes to show
Speaker 1: that with AI and this data that smart watches are collecting,
Speaker 1: even basic data, it can really go far. And then
Speaker 1: I want to just mention Google Google Pixel record sales
Speaker 1: in the US. Pixel sales in the US, according to
Speaker 1: Counterpoint Research, jumped twenty eight percent year over year in
Speaker 1: September twenty twenty five. That's a new single month record
Speaker 1: for Google. Google Sharing the six hundred dollars plus premium
Speaker 1: smartphone market hit six point one percent, So it's still
Speaker 1: pretty small compared to Apple and Samsung, but it was
Speaker 1: just point oh one percent point no point one percent
Speaker 1: three years ago. Why are people buying the Pixel? All
Speaker 1: those Gemini AI ads you see, I mean, have you
Speaker 1: seen them? They're all during the sports games. It's like
Speaker 1: they compare the iPhone to vanilla ice cream. So people
Speaker 1: are apparently it's resonating with folks. I know it does
Speaker 1: every time I see when I go. Yeah, that's why
Speaker 1: I love the pixel so much. Okay, let's open up
Speaker 1: the feedbag. Kevin writes in I almost got caught by
Speaker 1: a really convincing scam pretending to be from one password.
Speaker 1: The email claim there was a security issue and asked
Speaker 1: me to download an important update. It even looked real,
Speaker 1: except it was sent to my old address. I realized
Speaker 1: something was off, so instead of clicking the link, I
Speaker 1: updated the app directly through one password itself. Turns out
Speaker 1: the fake update would have installed malware. Ooh, good catch, Kevin.
Speaker 1: Never click those links and emails. Always go directly to
Speaker 1: the source. Joseph says, as a tip fear listeners, I
Speaker 1: use the open vibe app to follow both blue Sky
Speaker 1: and mastad On in one feed. I use mastadon for
Speaker 1: tech people and blue sky for everyone else. Between the
Speaker 1: two sources, I've completely replaced my old Twitter feed, no ads,
Speaker 1: no tracking, and a clean chronological view. Great tip, Joseph,
Speaker 1: open Vibe. I checked it out. I personally have not
Speaker 1: been using any of the socials except Instagram and Facebook lately,
Speaker 1: so but maybe one day I'll go back on I know.
Speaker 1: Dan from Palmdale says, thanks for your info on iTunes
Speaker 1: match in your latest newsletter. I've got a ton of
Speaker 1: MP three's and CDs I'd love to listen to across
Speaker 1: my devices. Twenty five dollars a year is an ideal,
Speaker 1: but if it works, well, I'll try it. I wanted
Speaker 1: to say, I enjoy everything you do. I see you,
Speaker 1: I hear you, I read you. Keep up the good work.
Speaker 1: Also random question, Bobo, you got to hear this. Do
Speaker 1: you remember the wave radio station from the nineties. There
Speaker 1: was a song with the lyrics it goes up, it
Speaker 1: goes down, never touching the ground elevator with all the
Speaker 1: ladies going uptown. I've been searching for it for years.
Speaker 1: I do not know that song. Okay, well, maybe someone
Speaker 1: listening at that rings a bell. But Google, you would think,
Speaker 1: but I already searched it, couldn't find it. Uh if
Speaker 1: you know how to sing it? Google picks up on
Speaker 1: the melody. No I know, come on, sing it goes up,
Speaker 1: it goes down, never touching the ground elevator with all
Speaker 1: the ladies going up town. Daniel writes in about the
Speaker 1: floating bubbles fix we mentioned a couple weeks ago. I
Speaker 1: had the same messaging issue on my Samsung Galaxy z
Speaker 1: flip seven. Great phone, by the way, Thanks for the
Speaker 1: tip to turn off floating bubbles. I was wondering why
Speaker 1: my messaging was so screwy and discombobulated. Thanks for the tip, Daniel.
Speaker 1: That's what we are here for, and that's what I
Speaker 1: love about this show. But Don from the Redlands another
Speaker 1: Saturday and another newsletter from the tech Master. Keep it up.
Speaker 1: It's a huge world to cover, but you always managed
Speaker 1: to tackle what challenges us most. Okay, they butter me up.
Speaker 1: Now here comes the bad part. Now, I was just kidding.
Speaker 1: My wife's five year old Android phone stopped making sounds
Speaker 1: for calls and texts. She didn't get any notifications and
Speaker 1: later discovered eighteen unheard voicemails and a long list of
Speaker 1: unread messages. We thought the phone was failing. We use
Speaker 1: Consumer Cellular, which gets top marks in consumer reports. After
Speaker 1: visiting a few locations, we finally found a target store
Speaker 1: in Fontana with a real service counter. The young woman
Speaker 1: there couldn't have been more helpful. She discovered do not
Speaker 1: Disturb was turned on, which blocked all alerts, and she
Speaker 1: even installed a new simcard to help update the phone system.
Speaker 1: She ran diagnostics fixed everything and didn't charge a dime.
Speaker 1: It's rare these days to get such genuine, no cost
Speaker 1: help from someone who cares big for Consumer Cellular and
Speaker 1: for us older folks. Don that story warms my heart. Yes,
Speaker 1: there are still people out there that are doing amazing
Speaker 1: things that are there to help people, and just they're
Speaker 1: still out there and I love hearing that. So big
Speaker 1: win for Consumer Cellular. Thank you Don for sharing that story.
Speaker 1: Michael from Baltimore says, I came across your radio show
Speaker 1: on my drive home from Baltimore. It was very helpful
Speaker 1: and informative, much appreciated. Well, thank you, Michael. You know
Speaker 1: I get a bunch of calls a week. We don't
Speaker 1: necessarily talk about this, but this show does air in
Speaker 1: various places across the country. Right, if you listen to LA,
Speaker 1: you listen to New York City, you know it's there,
Speaker 1: but there's all these other places that it airs, and
Speaker 1: you know, we don't necessarily mention it. But I love
Speaker 1: that because there's so many people out there and they
Speaker 1: drive I call them drive bys, right, they just find
Speaker 1: us and they say, oh my gosh, and we hope
Speaker 1: that you stick with us, and we're available for live broadcasts. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's gonna do it for this episode of the show.
Speaker 1: Oh if you want to submit to the feedback, just
Speaker 1: go to the website rich on tech dot tv. There
Speaker 1: you can also find links to everything I'll mentioned on
Speaker 1: my show again rich on tech dot tv. This is
Speaker 1: episode one forty seven. Everything is linked up there. You
Speaker 1: can find me on social media. I mentioned that. Yes,
Speaker 1: I am mostly on Instagram these days at rich on tech,
Speaker 1: so definitely follow me there. Coming up next week, we've
Speaker 1: got some great guests. Alison Johnson from the Verge is
Speaker 1: going to talk about the one plus fifteen. Then we've
Speaker 1: got Jamie Simonov, founder of Ring. He's got a brand
Speaker 1: new book called Ding Dong. We are going to talk
Speaker 1: to him about that. I can't wait. And we've got
Speaker 1: Nyu Stern professor Vissant Dar talking about his new book
Speaker 1: Thinking with Machines. Thank you so much for listening. There
Speaker 1: are so many ways you can spend your time. I
Speaker 1: do appreciate you spending it right here with me. Please
Speaker 1: don't drive distracted, put the phone down. Thanks to everyone
Speaker 1: who makes this show possible. My name is rich Dmiro.
Speaker 1: I will talk to you real soon