Speaker 1: Apple cancels their plans for an electric car. They never
Speaker 1: said they were working on the smart watch with one
Speaker 1: hundred hours of battery life, the new Google Map setting
Speaker 1: you should turn on right now, plus your tech questions answered.
Speaker 2: What's going on?
Speaker 1: I'm Rich Demiro and this is Rich on Tech broadcasting
Speaker 1: live from Los Angeles.
Speaker 2: Coast to coast.
Speaker 1: This is the show where I talk about the tech
Speaker 1: stuff I think you should know about. It's also the
Speaker 1: place where I answer your questions about technology. I believe
Speaker 1: that tech should be interesting, useful, and fun. Let's open
Speaker 1: up those phone lines at triple eight rich one oh one.
Speaker 1: That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one
Speaker 1: zero one. Give me a call if you have a
Speaker 1: question about technology again, that's eight eight eight rich one
Speaker 1: oh one. Email is also open. Just go to Richontech
Speaker 1: dot tv and hit contact. Your message will make its
Speaker 1: way to my screen. We've got some great guests this week.
Speaker 1: Kate Kozych, managing editor at Tom's Guide, is going to
Speaker 1: talk about her trip to Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.
Speaker 1: Leo Roberts of the Laptop Elf Project will join me
Speaker 1: to discuss how to make an old computer new again
Speaker 1: with Chrome os Flex and Richard Schneider, president and founder
Speaker 1: of Antenna's Direct, is going to talk about the latest
Speaker 1: trends in cord cutting.
Speaker 2: Great great guests.
Speaker 1: Well, the other day I shared a post that said,
Speaker 1: it takes me longer to research the hotel I want
Speaker 1: to stay in than the actual time I will spend
Speaker 1: in that hotel. And that's kind of true because my
Speaker 1: wife gives me a hard time. But when I am
Speaker 1: booking travel, I am like a clinical doctor. I am
Speaker 1: checking all of the stats, the vitals, the signs. I
Speaker 1: am cross referred and sing. And this was a question
Speaker 1: that Joe asked me when I sent out my first newsletter,
Speaker 1: So thank you Joe for the inspiration for the second newsletter,
Speaker 1: I decided to go over the ways that I book
Speaker 1: my travel now. I am not a super premium Platinum
Speaker 1: gold K one k VIP on any particular airline I
Speaker 1: have been in the past, and I will tell you
Speaker 1: if you make that status two things. Number One, you
Speaker 1: are on the road all the time, something that I
Speaker 1: used to really enjoy, but now that I have kids,
Speaker 1: of course, you know, a trip for work used to
Speaker 1: be three to four days. Now it's like, can I
Speaker 1: fly up in the morning and fly back at that
Speaker 1: same night. Because you know, you've got kids, You've got
Speaker 1: things to do. You've got basketball games, football games, well
Speaker 1: not football, baseball, I guess I should say football games
Speaker 1: to watch. There you go, all right, So where do
Speaker 1: I start? I always start at flights dot Google dot com.
Speaker 1: This is because Google has a ton of information about flights.
Speaker 2: I don't even put in my dates.
Speaker 1: I actually just put in where I'm going, and I
Speaker 1: hit search just to see this calendar of the cheapest
Speaker 1: dates to travel.
Speaker 2: They will be highlighted in green.
Speaker 1: Now, most of the time I can't travel on those
Speaker 1: days because of work obligations or where I'm going, So
Speaker 1: I will just use those dates to kind of give
Speaker 1: me an idea of the absolute cheapest price. And then
Speaker 1: I'll further refine, so I'll put in my preferred airline,
Speaker 1: whether I want to carry on bag, so I get
Speaker 1: rid of those basic economy fares. Most of the time
Speaker 1: I want to go NonStop, and so I'll just use
Speaker 1: those filters, and then I'll go back to the calendar
Speaker 1: and see what's changed and see if I can find
Speaker 1: the flights that I want. From here, I'm gonna settle
Speaker 1: on my flights, then I'm going to go to the
Speaker 1: actual airline to book directly. Now, they do have a
Speaker 1: link on Google's website most of the time to the
Speaker 1: direct airline, so you're fine using that and Google gets
Speaker 1: a little cut of that obviously a little commission for
Speaker 1: helping you find this flight, but you can also go
Speaker 1: directly to the website as well. I try to stay
Speaker 1: away from third party airline booking websites because if there's
Speaker 1: ever an issue with your flight, it can be tricky
Speaker 1: to change. Like the other day, I had a Southwest
Speaker 1: flight that was booked through a travel agency and you
Speaker 1: can can't make the changes you want to make on
Speaker 1: the Southwest app. You actually have to go through that
Speaker 1: travel agency once again, so it does offer a little
Speaker 1: bit of inconvenience if you go through a third party. Now,
Speaker 1: for hotels, once again, I always go to Google Hotels.
Speaker 1: So in my experience, I do not book on this
Speaker 1: site because they index all these random travel websites for
Speaker 1: flight or for hotels, and most of the time when
Speaker 1: you go to that website, I have never heard of it.
Speaker 1: I can't vouch for the price, I don't know if
Speaker 1: it's real, so I will just do this as my
Speaker 1: kind of research. And so what I like about Google
Speaker 1: Hotels is that when you go to the list of
Speaker 1: hotels in that city, it will show you some hotel
Speaker 1: rooms marked as a deal. And when you see that,
Speaker 1: they kind of use all their google Ly data to
Speaker 1: tell you when a hotel room is a really good price.
Speaker 1: And so if I see like a nice five star
Speaker 1: or four star hotel that's marked deal because it's way
Speaker 1: cheaper than it typically is, it's abnormally cheap, I will
Speaker 1: try to book there. Now I narrow down using my
Speaker 1: preferred hotel chain, and of course star level depends. If
Speaker 1: I'm looking for a three star, four star, I mean
Speaker 1: five star would be amazing, but those are many times
Speaker 1: too expensive. But I'll use this as my starting point
Speaker 1: for any excellent deals on nice hotels in the city
Speaker 1: I want to go to.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Pro tip, once you have major filters on Google Hotels,
Speaker 1: you can bookmark that. So let's say you're a Marriotte
Speaker 1: member or you're a Hilton member, you can bookmark those
Speaker 1: filters and your star preferences so that next time you
Speaker 1: go back to the site, all you have to do
Speaker 1: is type in the city you're staying and you can
Speaker 1: see what hotels fit that filter. So that's a really
Speaker 1: nice tip. Now, my other method is trip Advisor. Trip
Speaker 1: Advisors kind of like the Holy Grail because so many
Speaker 1: people use it around the world. So I will go
Speaker 1: to the city that I want to stay in and
Speaker 1: I will look at the listings of all the hotels.
Speaker 1: But here's the important part. You have to change the
Speaker 1: way they sort the hotels by traveler ranked. They're going
Speaker 1: to do their proprietary ranking algorithm, which benefits them the
Speaker 1: most because the hotels that pay them the most, or
Speaker 1: the ones that get the biggest kickback from or the
Speaker 1: ones that advertise the most are going to be at
Speaker 1: the top of that list by default. So you want
Speaker 1: to go into traveler Ranked. And so once you do that,
Speaker 1: it will rank the hotels in a city by what
Speaker 1: travelers actually say. And so again I will do that,
Speaker 1: and then I will use the filters on the side
Speaker 1: to narrow my search by hotel chain, by stars, by neighborhood,
Speaker 1: and this will generally show you the top rated hotels
Speaker 1: in any given area. Once I settle on my hotel,
Speaker 1: once again, I will go directly to the hotel website
Speaker 1: book direct I'll use my triple A membership to save
Speaker 1: a few bucks. Sometimes it saves a lot, sometimes it
Speaker 1: saves a little, but it usually saves a couple of bucks.
Speaker 1: And I will never ever ever book a room that
Speaker 1: I cannot cancel. I know it's more expensive to do
Speaker 1: it that way, but it may save you in the
Speaker 1: long run because you're flexible and things change.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: We saw that throughout the pandemic, people's plans. I mean,
Speaker 1: all the hotels and things I had booked for trips,
Speaker 1: I had to cancel them all, and thankfully they were
Speaker 1: all refundable. Now, I will tell you that hotels dot
Speaker 1: Com used to have a feature I really like. For
Speaker 1: some reason, it's really tricky to see a list of
Speaker 1: hotels sorted by distance from where you want to go,
Speaker 1: but there is in Hotels dot Com used to do this,
Speaker 1: but they got rid of it. So now the only
Speaker 1: one I know that does this is booking dot Com.
Speaker 1: So if you go to Booking dot Com, let's say
Speaker 1: you're staying at the convention Center in downtown Detroit. I
Speaker 1: don't even know if they have one, but I'm guessing
Speaker 1: they do, and you want a hotel that is the
Speaker 1: closest to that convention center. You can type in on here.
Speaker 1: Let's see if I can actually do this. If I
Speaker 1: can type in Detroit d E T R O A
Speaker 1: T convention center. So you can type in the convention
Speaker 1: center that you're going to, and here it is McGregor
Speaker 1: Conference Center, and then you press search and then you
Speaker 1: can sort by distance. And that is a key thing
Speaker 1: because if you just want to stay at the absolute closest,
Speaker 1: so distance from Landmark is what they allow you to do.
Speaker 1: So I can see that these this hotel is er
Speaker 1: point three miles from the conference center there, So that
Speaker 1: is another way to do it if you want just
Speaker 1: the closest thing. If you just want to walk you're
Speaker 1: in a city for a night or two, that's the
Speaker 1: way to do it, all right. For rental cars, I
Speaker 1: am I'm kind of I'm kind of picky when it
Speaker 1: comes to rental cars. I like the idea that I
Speaker 1: can just walk off the plane and walk into my car.
Speaker 2: So I do use one company.
Speaker 1: I've got all my info save with them, and I
Speaker 1: just walk off the plane and I skip that long
Speaker 1: line at the rental counter. This is more expensive, but
Speaker 1: it saves me a lot of time. Otherwise, costco travel
Speaker 1: has really good rates. And there's a website called auto
Speaker 1: slash that does a really nice search of auto rates
Speaker 1: and they will continue to search for a reservation and
Speaker 1: see if there's a better deal and a better price
Speaker 1: up until the time that you travel.
Speaker 2: So that's really nice.
Speaker 1: When it comes to other websites, point dot me you've
Speaker 1: probably heard me talk about this. I really like this
Speaker 1: as a search engine for finding travel deals using the
Speaker 1: points that you already have. And then there's a website
Speaker 1: called going dot com and this is an amazing website
Speaker 1: that will deliver cheap flight deals right to your inbox.
Speaker 1: They do have a free level of service, but if
Speaker 1: you want the best deals, you have to pay. How
Speaker 1: about when a hotel was last renovated? Thanks to Wendy
Speaker 1: for this tip. You can search up the name of
Speaker 1: the hotel on travel Weekly and it will tell you
Speaker 1: when that hotel was last renovated. So if it was
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty five, maybe you don't want to stay there,
Speaker 1: or maybe you do because it's really cheap, or maybe
Speaker 1: everything old is new again and it's cool and you
Speaker 1: could do a TikTok video. Speaking of TikTok, I love
Speaker 1: to watch YouTube and TikTok and Instagram for videos on
Speaker 1: things to do in that city, and it's great. I mean,
Speaker 1: people go all over and they show you the coolest
Speaker 1: things to do in all these cities. Have gotten some
Speaker 1: really great ideas. I use Google Maps to save all
Speaker 1: the places that I want to go, so you can
Speaker 1: make a list of saved places in a city. I
Speaker 1: have ongoing lists for all the cities that I'm visiting
Speaker 1: or the cities I visited.
Speaker 2: It's really easy.
Speaker 1: If you look at Google Maps, you'll see a little
Speaker 1: saved bookmark icon the next time you search for a place.
Speaker 1: That's how you can start your list. Is the best
Speaker 1: flight tracking app for the iPhone. Flight Aware is really
Speaker 1: good for Android. A ward wallet is where I keep
Speaker 1: track of all of my reservations. They do this really
Speaker 1: cool list of all of your reservations for everywhere in order,
Speaker 1: and they tell you the amount of days until that reservation.
Speaker 1: So it's really cool because you can see exactly how
Speaker 1: many days until your next trip, which is kind of
Speaker 1: fun if you're driving. I Exit is a great app
Speaker 1: to tell you what fast food places are up at
Speaker 1: the stop ahead, so if you want a certain fast
Speaker 1: food place, you can look at this little app and
Speaker 1: it organizes it by exit so you can see what's
Speaker 1: up ahead. That's really handy. Google Maps. A little pro tip.
Speaker 1: You can search for the term scenic spot and this
Speaker 1: will help you find cool places to take photos wherever
Speaker 1: you go. So if you're into Instagram or you just
Speaker 1: want to see a cool view wherever you are, just
Speaker 1: search scenic spot and it will show you all the
Speaker 1: scenic spots nearby. And if you want to know what
Speaker 1: I listened to and I'm taking off on the plane,
Speaker 1: tichoy Cho, I've been doing it for years.
Speaker 4: All right.
Speaker 1: There you have it, my tips and tricks for booking travel.
Speaker 1: All right, let's hear from you. Triple eight rich one
Speaker 1: O one eight eight eight seven four to two four
Speaker 1: one zero one.
Speaker 2: You are listening to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich Demiro here, rich on Tech, Welcome back to the show.
Speaker 1: I know I gave you a lot of travel tips
Speaker 1: and tricks in the first segment. Hopefully you wrote that
Speaker 1: all down because I'm not saying it again. No, I'm
Speaker 1: just kidding. Just go to the website rich on Tech
Speaker 1: dot TV. Hit the link at the top. It is
Speaker 1: highlighted in red, and it will give you a link
Speaker 1: to all of those tips and tricks. They were actually
Speaker 1: featured in my newsletter sent out this morning, So if
Speaker 1: you're not subscribed to the rich on Tech newsletter, you
Speaker 1: can do that for free as well. Let's go to
Speaker 1: Benjamin in the Pacific Palisades. Benjamin, you're on with Rich.
Speaker 5: Hi, Rich, thanks for taking my call.
Speaker 2: Thanks for calling.
Speaker 5: I have Apple equipment all the way through Apple and
Speaker 5: one canter iPhone thirteen and for years I've just had
Speaker 5: DSL running into the house through the phone set up,
Speaker 5: and it's been fine, except when I make calls overseas
Speaker 5: through like a signal app or WhatsApp, then I have
Speaker 5: to move around the house. Sometimes there's dropouts. Recently, the
Speaker 5: company that services my phone line has put fiber optic
Speaker 5: right up to my roof and they came by last week.
Speaker 5: And I don't know if this is misinformation. He said, oh, yes,
Speaker 5: if we put the fiber optic in, it will definitely
Speaker 5: prove your download speed, but we can't guarantee that signal
Speaker 5: strength and dropouts like that will go away. Is he mistaken?
Speaker 5: Everybody else is saying, oh no, I'll get the fiber optic.
Speaker 5: It'll be five.
Speaker 1: Hundred, you know, oh yeah, I would one hundred percent
Speaker 1: go with a fiber optic. I mean, are you actually
Speaker 1: on DSL.
Speaker 5: Yes, I have a just a you know, a phone
Speaker 5: line directly into the computer and it's been great.
Speaker 2: I don't have to spout you get.
Speaker 6: I have Apple TV.
Speaker 5: I don't have any problem now. I did install four
Speaker 5: Google Nest devices.
Speaker 3: Okay, house, and.
Speaker 2: What do you know what kind of speed you're getting
Speaker 2: on that DSL?
Speaker 7: Oh?
Speaker 5: I mean when the guy put in the next devices,
Speaker 5: he couldn't believe we were getting any signal. It was
Speaker 5: very slow.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, yeah, I would.
Speaker 1: I would one hundred percent go with the with the fiber,
Speaker 1: and I one hundred percent think it will fix all
Speaker 1: of your latency issues with these with his void services
Speaker 1: that you're trying to use. I've had fiber since day
Speaker 1: one in my house and it is incredibly fast.
Speaker 4: It is.
Speaker 1: I mean, I can get up to I think it's
Speaker 1: five gigabits per second or you know whatever this like.
Speaker 1: It started out as a thousand, which I thought was cool.
Speaker 1: And by the way, the neat thing about fiber is
Speaker 1: that it's up and down the same speed. So with DSL,
Speaker 1: your download speed might be you know, at DSL might
Speaker 1: be ten, you know, it might be ten, but the
Speaker 1: upload might be like one or two. So, and that's
Speaker 1: the same thing with cable. Cable advertises these really fast
Speaker 1: download speeds, but the upload speed is much much slower.
Speaker 1: In fact, it's really tough to find the upload speed
Speaker 1: on the cable company's websites for that reason, because they
Speaker 1: know that they're not you know, they're they're kind of
Speaker 1: playing a game.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: I will tell you most people don't need the upload
Speaker 1: speeds that I need. I'm working with video all the time,
Speaker 1: and so I need to upload large files to my editor,
Speaker 1: and so it's that's why I really really like to
Speaker 1: have that speed.
Speaker 5: So he's mistaken the installer who said he would not
Speaker 5: necessarily eliminate these ropouts throughout the house. The fiber should
Speaker 5: eliminate that.
Speaker 1: I mean, Benjamin, here's a deal. You've got four Google nests,
Speaker 1: You've got fiber connection. There is nothing else you could
Speaker 1: do that would be better except wiring all of those
Speaker 1: nests with Ethernet to you know, otherwise you are you're
Speaker 1: in the best possible scenario. If Signal or any of
Speaker 1: these other apps can't give you a clear connection, there's
Speaker 1: something else going on.
Speaker 5: Okay, now, the nest the one complaint I have everyone.
Speaker 5: Once in a while, I'll be sitting in my living
Speaker 5: room and all of a sudden, a voice comes out
Speaker 5: of one of these nests. Is there somewhere you could
Speaker 5: recommend I could learn how to control. They didn't give
Speaker 5: me any instructions. I don't really like the idea that
Speaker 5: that you know, I can say the wrong word.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, they have. They have built in the hot
Speaker 1: word the Google. They will listen for that hot word.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's all of them or if
Speaker 1: it's just a couple of them. You can see some
Speaker 1: of them have the little holes on top that do
Speaker 1: the listening. You are able to go into the Google
Speaker 1: Home app and toggle that off. So you should be
Speaker 1: able to go in there and toggle that off. It's
Speaker 1: been a bit since I use the Google Homes, but
Speaker 1: I do know they have the Google you know, the
Speaker 1: Google hot word built in so that you can ask,
Speaker 1: you know, weather and things like that. But that's what
Speaker 1: I would do, is just download the Google app connected
Speaker 1: to the to the little repeaters, and you will have
Speaker 1: full control of all the things that they can do there.
Speaker 1: I think you'll love fiber Internet. I think it's going
Speaker 1: to be great. And so Benjamin, thanks for the call today.
Speaker 1: I appreciate it. Triple eight rich On eight eight eight
Speaker 1: seven four to two four one zero one. If you
Speaker 1: get an email from Netflix that says, hey, you got
Speaker 1: to stop paying through Apple, it is legitimate. Apple is
Speaker 1: no longer allowing existing customers to pay for their Basic
Speaker 1: Plan subscription through Apple. They have not allowed new sign
Speaker 1: ups for this in a very long time. But people,
Speaker 1: you know, they stick to what they got, especially because
Speaker 1: the price was good. But Netflix does not want to
Speaker 1: pay a thirty percent commission to Apple anymore. That's what
Speaker 1: they're paying every time you pay them. So you pay
Speaker 1: them ten bucks a month and they pay Apple three dollars.
Speaker 1: They're like, no, we're done with that. So they will
Speaker 1: ask you to switch to adding your credit or debit
Speaker 1: card directly through their website. So if you've see an
Speaker 1: email like that number one, it's not it's not. It
Speaker 1: is legitimate. But you have to also be careful because
Speaker 1: there could be phishing emails that prey upon this. They
Speaker 1: know that Netflix is sending out these emails, so you
Speaker 1: may get a bogus email. So when in doubt go
Speaker 1: directly to your Netflix dot Com log in on your
Speaker 1: web site.
Speaker 2: So go to a.
Speaker 1: Desktop computer, go to Netflix dot Com and go to
Speaker 1: change your payment information through there directly. If that's a possibility,
Speaker 1: the email should explain everything you need to know. But
Speaker 1: that is what's happening with Netflix. In fact, a lot
Speaker 1: of companies no longer want to let Apple handle their
Speaker 1: payments if possible, because they don't want to pay Apple.
Speaker 2: That that cut all right?
Speaker 1: Coming up, we are going to talk to Kate Kozych,
Speaker 1: Managing editor at Tom's Guide. She just got back from
Speaker 1: Barcelona at Mobile World Congress. We're going to talk about
Speaker 1: all the cool stuff she saw. You are listening to
Speaker 1: Rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich
Speaker 1: DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology. Phone lines
Speaker 1: are open at triple eight Rich one oh one eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: Joining me now is Kate Kozych, Managing editor at Tom's Guide.
Speaker 1: Kate just got back from Mobile World Congress. This is
Speaker 1: a big tech show that happens every year in Barcelona, Spain.
Speaker 2: Kate, welcome to the show.
Speaker 8: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 4: Rich.
Speaker 8: You know those travel tips you were given before were awesome.
Speaker 8: I think a little timely, because you know, I was
Speaker 8: just traveling for work.
Speaker 1: I was going to ask you, like, because I wondered
Speaker 1: if you heard that, if you you know, because here's
Speaker 1: the deal. Everyone has a different way of booking travel.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying my way is the only way. There
Speaker 1: are so many ways. But I figured i'd share because
Speaker 1: you know, I've traveled for a long time and that's
Speaker 1: kind of like what I go back to over and over.
Speaker 1: So I'm sure i'll get some emails with other people's tips,
Speaker 1: which of course I welcome. So tell me about Barcelona.
Speaker 2: How was it.
Speaker 8: It was a great trip. I'm sad to be back
Speaker 8: in rainy New York. I will say it was actually
Speaker 8: my first time at Mobile World Congress. It was a
Speaker 8: trade show, you know, I didn't know what to expect
Speaker 8: too much going into it. I've covered CEEUS, the Consumer
Speaker 8: Electronics Show for many years now, but this was this
Speaker 8: was a bit different.
Speaker 7: I feel like it.
Speaker 8: Had more of a focus on mobile technology, as the
Speaker 8: name suggests. What was really cool was to see these
Speaker 8: products showcased by companies that don't necessarily sell their products
Speaker 8: in the US, but are still such amazing innovators.
Speaker 1: Yeah, anytime I go to a show that's not in
Speaker 1: the US, you realize just how this stuff is very
Speaker 1: worldwide and there's brands that, like I still haven't heard
Speaker 1: of in different countries. It's funny because Mobile World Congress
Speaker 1: a I've never been. All these years i've covered technology,
Speaker 1: I have never ever been to Mobile World Congress. The
Speaker 1: reason is we spend so much money covering CS that
Speaker 1: I literally am like, my budget is like busted. So
Speaker 1: I'm like, I can't really go to Mobile and I'll
Speaker 1: be honest. In previous years it has not been that
Speaker 1: exciting a lot of you know, there's been some announcements,
Speaker 1: but this year there was a lot. So let's just
Speaker 1: start with Samsung the Galaxy Ring. This is their new
Speaker 1: fitness wearable. What were your impressions of this? They didn't
Speaker 1: let anyone take a picture of.
Speaker 8: It, that is true. The only place that you could
Speaker 8: see it and like see it published online, was on
Speaker 8: display at their booth. I hustled there in the morning
Speaker 8: when the show floor opened and it was crowded. Man,
Speaker 8: everyone wanted to see the Galaxy Ring up close. I
Speaker 8: had to be a little patient to get up to
Speaker 8: these display boxes. That they had, but you know, all
Speaker 8: that they were really showing at this time were the
Speaker 8: three color options in real life they have black, gold, silver,
Speaker 8: and then they also had all the nine sizes around
Speaker 8: sizes five through thirteen. I believe, I mean, I think
Speaker 8: they looked great, but it was more or less a
Speaker 8: tease of what's to be coming. I'm sure that we're
Speaker 8: going to hear a lot more very soon, and most
Speaker 8: signs are pointing to this Galaxy Ring coming out in
Speaker 8: the summertime.
Speaker 1: And only for Samsung phones right as far as I heard,
Speaker 1: it's not going to be for like other Androids or
Speaker 1: even the iPhone right off the bat.
Speaker 8: I don't believe so well, definitely not the iPhone. I
Speaker 8: think you know, they're going to be integrating it with
Speaker 8: their Galaxy Health app of it kind of like as
Speaker 8: an alternative to the Galaxy Watch, which you can technically
Speaker 8: use with other devices. But I think with all of
Speaker 8: these manufacturers, and we can talk about it a little
Speaker 8: bit more with you know, one plus and the one
Speaker 8: plus Watch, but we're seeing more and more that you
Speaker 8: want to stay within within these Android ecosystems, even you know,
Speaker 8: brand to brand.
Speaker 1: So which is so wild because Android's whole point was
Speaker 1: that you didn't have to do that. But they've all
Speaker 1: learned from Apple how apply things can be and how
Speaker 1: sticky it is to have people stick in the same lane.
Speaker 8: Seriously. But at the same time, I think, I think
Speaker 8: seeing this smart ring come out is going to push
Speaker 8: some other manufacturers to see if their customers would be
Speaker 8: interested in a similar alternative. But of course there's also
Speaker 8: brand of gnostic solutions like the RR ring that has
Speaker 8: really made this smart ring category mainstream.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's great and I wore it for a while.
Speaker 1: My wife actually got me one for my birthday. And
Speaker 1: I have a rule, don't please don't buy me tech
Speaker 1: like ever, because like I, you know, I test so
Speaker 1: much of it.
Speaker 2: You got me an or a ring.
Speaker 1: I actually ended up returning it, but I did review
Speaker 1: it and I loved wearing it, but it made me
Speaker 1: really stressed out because whenever I got a bad score,
Speaker 1: my day would be ruined. So if I had like
Speaker 1: a you know, bad readiness score or whatever. And also
Speaker 1: the chunkiness of the ring, Like I really do wish
Speaker 1: that they can get these things like thinner, So we'll see.
Speaker 2: Tell me about the bendable phone.
Speaker 1: This is a Motorola concept phone that what's the point
Speaker 1: of this thing?
Speaker 8: So they're actually not even calling it a smartphone. It's
Speaker 8: called the Motorola Adaptive Display concept. And I think that's
Speaker 8: because in many ways it doesn't have a lot of
Speaker 8: the normal smartphone features. It doesn't even have a camera
Speaker 8: system built in. I mean, when's the last time we
Speaker 8: saw a camera a phone with no camera.
Speaker 2: It's been a while.
Speaker 8: I think they're trying to showcase is that your single
Speaker 8: quote unquote smartphone can be every type of device you
Speaker 8: needed to be. So they first showed this concept off
Speaker 8: at Lenovo Tech World. Lenovo is the Motorola parent company,
Speaker 8: and that's what they gave us our first tease, showing
Speaker 8: it as like a lifestyle device, think in the same
Speaker 8: vein as the Motorol eraser. It's pitching you this, you know,
Speaker 8: fashionable tech item, and I feel like that's been kind
Speaker 8: of carried on to this adaptive display because what's cool
Speaker 8: about it. You can bend it around your wrist and
Speaker 8: wear it like a smart watch, and it takes this
Speaker 8: you know, almost it is ridiculous look ridiculous looking, I
Speaker 8: will say that much, but it eliminates the need almost
Speaker 8: to have a smart watch and a smartphone. You can
Speaker 8: just bend it around your wrist like a slap bracet
Speaker 8: from the from the nineties and have your phone right there.
Speaker 8: But they also demonstrated ways where it can bend like
Speaker 8: a tent, bend backwards, and then also stand up on
Speaker 8: its own. And I think what's cool about this compared
Speaker 8: to some of the other smartphone concepts we've seen is
Speaker 8: a lot of them are based on folding in, like
Speaker 8: the Galaxy Z fold five and the Motorole Eraser as
Speaker 8: I mentioned, but this one's all about bending out. I
Speaker 8: think we're we're going to see something like this not
Speaker 8: too far in the future.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's nice.
Speaker 1: Look, I mean, I'm I don't think it's realistic right now,
Speaker 1: but it's nice to see these manufacturers pushing the envelope
Speaker 1: and trying new things, because if you look at the
Speaker 1: iPhone from two thousand and seven to now, it really
Speaker 1: hasn't changed very much. And everyone's waiting for Apple to
Speaker 1: do something with the you know, foldable iPhone, which you
Speaker 1: know we may see finally, but you know, you look
Speaker 1: at these other companies like Samsung and OnePlus and Google,
Speaker 1: even with the foldables and you know, the huahwehs of
Speaker 1: the world, they're all trying new form factors and so
Speaker 1: it's nice to see that we're getting this innovation. It
Speaker 1: just has to get to a place where it's realistic.
Speaker 1: And this phone that you're talking about, you know, I
Speaker 1: saw it on your Instagram. You can find Kate by
Speaker 1: the way at Kate kozych ko z u c h
Speaker 1: on Instagram if you want to see what this looks like.
Speaker 1: But it's it's a little big right now. So again
Speaker 1: we'll see this evolve, all right. Tell me about the
Speaker 1: transparent laptop. This was from Lenovo, another concept, and this
Speaker 1: just looked like every movie the laptop I've ever seen
Speaker 1: where it's like, you know, Mission Impossible style, right.
Speaker 8: So it's a laptop that has a seventeen point three
Speaker 8: inch micro led transparent display that lets you see right
Speaker 8: through it to whatever's on the other side of the screen.
Speaker 8: It also has these AI features built in that it
Speaker 8: can read what's out beyond the screen and even let
Speaker 8: you interact with it on your screen. I was doodling
Speaker 8: with it at the show. It was pretty cool. So
Speaker 8: I actually posted a video of it on TikTok and
Speaker 8: it went viral, but a lot of comments were interesting.
Speaker 8: It was about the privacy or like lack thereof with
Speaker 8: a see through laptop. Lenovo told me there that hypothetically,
Speaker 8: because we have to speak in hypotheticals with concept devices,
Speaker 8: that there could be this type of polarizing filter on
Speaker 8: the back that limits how much you can see if
Speaker 8: you're looking in through the back, or perhaps a film
Speaker 8: kind of like we saw on LG's transparent olel ed
Speaker 8: TV that rolls up and down for optional privacy. So
Speaker 8: I think it was kind of this type of device
Speaker 8: came at this time to see it if people would
Speaker 8: want that or if that would be a concern, and
Speaker 8: I think it turns out it is. So if we
Speaker 8: see a next iteration of this laptop, I'm calling it
Speaker 8: now it's going to have some type of optional way
Speaker 8: that people from the outside can't actually see through it.
Speaker 2: What was the use case scenario?
Speaker 8: So the way that I saw it best use was
Speaker 8: it has this little camera on the bottom rear facing
Speaker 8: part of the laptop. Most laptops the camera is you know,
Speaker 8: selfie camera, so you can do video calls, but this
Speaker 8: one was on the bottom facing outward, and we had
Speaker 8: it pointed at a pot with flowers in it, and
Speaker 8: they opened up this AI software that had a butterfly
Speaker 8: flying and overlaid on this display that landed on a
Speaker 8: spot on the flower perfectly as though it was like
Speaker 8: in real life landing on that. So I think I
Speaker 8: think there's you know, a huge design benefit to that,
Speaker 8: and also for designers. They didn't confirm this to me necessarily,
Speaker 8: but the track pad and keyboard of the laptop is
Speaker 8: all a touch screen. It reminds me very much of
Speaker 8: a whack home tablet that you use for drawing. You
Speaker 8: could have your laptop screen looking out at you know
Speaker 8: whatever it may be the flower pot in this example,
Speaker 8: and you could start tracing it on your screen. If
Speaker 8: you're a graphic designer, how cool is that, Like you
Speaker 8: see it right in front of you. It's a built
Speaker 8: in tracer. I think that that was probably my favorite
Speaker 8: application of using it.
Speaker 2: That is cool, and I just want I'll take a
Speaker 2: transparent tablet one of these days. It's just cool.
Speaker 1: It looks cool, and I definitely want like the edges
Speaker 1: lit up, you know, so it's like it's like blue
Speaker 1: on the edges or something. But it's just I love
Speaker 1: all this stuff, Kate Kozych, We're gonna leave it there.
Speaker 1: How can folks follow you online? And what do you
Speaker 1: typically post about?
Speaker 8: Oh yeah, I'd write all about you know, wearables, conceptual tech,
Speaker 8: anything that's really trending online these days. I'm at social
Speaker 8: media at Kate Kozych. Except on TikTok, i am Kate
Speaker 8: underscore Kozych. Of course, I'm also at tomsguide dot com,
Speaker 8: where you can find my stories and some more of
Speaker 8: my MWC coverage.
Speaker 1: Awesome, Kate Kozych, Managing editor, Tom's Guy, thanks so much
Speaker 1: for joining me today to talk about Mobile World Congress. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, Triple eight Rich one O one eight eight
Speaker 1: eight seven four to two four one zero one. More
Speaker 1: rich on Tech coming your way right after this. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out
Speaker 1: with you talking technology at Triple eight Rich one oh
Speaker 1: one eight eight eight seven four to two four one
Speaker 1: zero one. Let's go to John and Carl's bad. John,
Speaker 1: You're on with Rich All Rich.
Speaker 2: Hi.
Speaker 9: I have a number of Google speakers throughout my home,
Speaker 9: and whenever I tell it to play music on Pandora,
Speaker 9: I get ads on Pandora and I know that there's
Speaker 9: a I think there's a Pandora Plus.
Speaker 5: It doesn't have ads, you.
Speaker 9: Know, paid subscription, but I don't know how to get
Speaker 9: that onto my Google Home That okay.
Speaker 1: So you would actually go to so are you signed
Speaker 1: up with Pandora? Yeah, okay, so you're signed up. So
Speaker 1: I would go to the Pandora website and go there,
Speaker 1: and you should see a thing for Pandora Plus and
Speaker 1: it's five dollars a month for let's see what they
Speaker 1: give you. Yeah, ad free, ten dollars a month is
Speaker 1: a little bit more for let's see what do you
Speaker 1: get for that? Make and share playlists okay? And unlimited skips. Oh,
Speaker 1: I guess you get unlimited skips with both. But for
Speaker 1: five bucks a month, it's pretty much what you need.
Speaker 1: If you just want to get rid of the ads,
Speaker 1: you're gonna pay five dollars a month. So just go
Speaker 1: to pandora dot com, log in, and then click upgrade.
Speaker 1: And once you upgrade, if you're not already linked up
Speaker 1: to the count on your Google Home you just open
Speaker 1: up the Google Home app and under the Google Home
Speaker 1: app there should be some settings and usually under the
Speaker 1: settings you can go to services and it says works
Speaker 1: with Google, and there's a sorry, let's see music there
Speaker 1: it is, and so you go to music and then
Speaker 1: you will have your different music services. So it says,
Speaker 1: you know, this works with everything, YouTube, Spotify, iHeart Apple Music, Pandora, Deezer,
Speaker 1: and you just link up. If your Pandora is already
Speaker 1: linked up, it's once you sign up for the Pandora Plus,
Speaker 1: it's going to follow over. If you're not linked up,
Speaker 1: then you will just link those up. You're gonna log
Speaker 1: into your Pandora account and it will be ad free
Speaker 1: the next time you do it. So that's the easiest way.
Speaker 1: So once again, go to the website, upgrade to Pandora Plus,
Speaker 1: put in your card number, all that good stuff, and
Speaker 1: then go to the Google Home app and go into
Speaker 1: your settings and then go under services it says music,
Speaker 1: and that's where you're going to link up your Pandora.
Speaker 1: It should already be linked up if you're already listening
Speaker 1: to music on Pandora through there, it should just follow
Speaker 1: follow through. But if you're not, then that's the way
Speaker 1: you'll link it up with the new account. All right, John,
Speaker 1: send me an email rich on tech dot tv and
Speaker 1: let me know if that worked, Let's go to Jamie
Speaker 1: in North Hollywood. Jamie, what's up?
Speaker 6: Hey?
Speaker 4: What's going on?
Speaker 7: Rich?
Speaker 10: How you doing?
Speaker 2: I'm doing excellent.
Speaker 3: It's amazing that Pandora is still a hit, and I
Speaker 3: think I know why. It really is still good. That
Speaker 3: algorithm just is very very good.
Speaker 2: Oh, it is good. It is good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I want to ask you. I want to ask
Speaker 3: you about well. Actually, this morning I was ordering a
Speaker 3: breakfast and I didn't couldn't understand why I couldn't delete
Speaker 3: a credit card on my Apple wallet. But what that
Speaker 3: wasn't really why I called. If you want to tackle
Speaker 3: that too, that's cool. But I actually called because I
Speaker 3: found this cool shortcut on my iPhone and I can't
Speaker 3: put it on It's on my work phone. I can't
Speaker 3: put it on a regular phone. But it's inaccessibility and
Speaker 3: I double tapped the back of it and it brings
Speaker 3: up the camera so I can bring up my camera
Speaker 3: as quick as I possibly can.
Speaker 1: That's that's built into the uh is does it have
Speaker 1: to be a shortcut? I thought you can just go
Speaker 1: into accessibility and do the triple tap on the back.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, I wasn't sure about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you go into let's see, I got to
Speaker 1: find where this is. So if you go into accessibility
Speaker 1: under settings, and there's usually a let's see, I gotta
Speaker 1: I've got to find it. But it's inaccessibility.
Speaker 3: I expect you to tackle it immediately because you know,
Speaker 3: I know, you have your your your Google people to
Speaker 3: you know, in your data rooms and your you know people,
Speaker 3: people who have that knowledge in a blog or something.
Speaker 2: But it's called backtap. That's that's what it's called.
Speaker 1: So if you go to settings and then accessibility, it's
Speaker 1: called and then touch, and then there's a thing called backtap.
Speaker 1: And if you go into backtap, let's see here it's
Speaker 1: right now.
Speaker 2: Minds off.
Speaker 1: I don't use this because I feel like I would
Speaker 1: just be tapping my phone way too often. But you
Speaker 1: can set a double tap or a triple tap. And
Speaker 1: so with a double tap you can do really anything
Speaker 1: you want. You could do an action button, you can
Speaker 1: do app switcher, you can do camera control center, flashlight,
Speaker 1: home lock rotation, lock screen notification center.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's so many things you can do. You
Speaker 2: can activate Siri.
Speaker 1: So let me do this. I'm gonna actually turn this
Speaker 1: on while I'm talking to you. So I'm gonna turn
Speaker 1: on camera and you can also set a triple tap
Speaker 1: as well. So now I've set camera as my double tap.
Speaker 1: So now I've got my phone in my hand. I
Speaker 1: double tapped the back of my phone and oh, there
Speaker 1: it goes. It launched the camera. It's actually not bad,
Speaker 1: so that's kind of cool. So again, if you want
Speaker 1: to turn this on, Jamie, go into Settings Accessibility and
Speaker 1: then you'll go into touch and then backtap. It's all
Speaker 1: the way down to the bottom. You can set a
Speaker 1: double tap or a triple tap, and there you have it.
Speaker 1: Good question. Thank you Jamie for calling today from North Hollywood.
Speaker 2: Wow. See, I mean I knew that was possible.
Speaker 1: I never actually tried it because I said, oh, I'll
Speaker 1: never use this feature, But now that I know it's there,
Speaker 1: I know it's like one more way to just activate
Speaker 1: something quickly on your phone. So I woke up this
Speaker 1: morning to a bunch of emails about a privacy alert
Speaker 1: when it comes to the new journal app on the iPhone,
Speaker 1: and I guess someone on Instagram, TikTok, whatever social media
Speaker 1: posted alert. If you have an iPhone, this is important.
Speaker 1: After downloading the latest update, there's a new feature called journaling,
Speaker 1: and if you have your settings, the default is you
Speaker 1: are discoverable by others. It's toggled on and it lets
Speaker 1: anyone near you know your full name and exactly where
Speaker 1: you're located. What Apple is letting anyone see exactly where
Speaker 1: everyone else is located. Turn this toggle off. This is
Speaker 1: messed up big time. Share with your friends if their iPhone.
Speaker 1: Very scary stuff. So of course I go into the settings.
Speaker 1: I'm like, really, Apple, I don't think they would do that.
Speaker 1: So I go into the settings and I educate myself
Speaker 1: on what this feature is all about. And I posted
Speaker 1: this on my Instagram at richon Tech if you want
Speaker 1: to read what I had to say. But the bottom
Speaker 1: line is no, Apple is not sharing your full name
Speaker 1: and they're not sharing your location with everyone. What they
Speaker 1: are doing is they are using signals from the iPhones
Speaker 1: around you. So when you are in a group setting
Speaker 1: or you are out with friends and it notices that
Speaker 1: your contacts are near you, it is using that to
Speaker 1: help figure out what it should suggest for you to
Speaker 1: journal about. It sounds scary, but it's not. It is
Speaker 1: not saving this information, It is not uploading this information
Speaker 1: to the cloud. Let me give you the best example.
Speaker 1: Let's say you go to lunch every day at a
Speaker 1: fast food restaurant by your work. Right when you go
Speaker 1: to your journal app on the iPhone. Your iPhone's not
Speaker 1: gonna say, hey, do you want to journal about that
Speaker 1: whopper you ate for lunch today again for the third time. No,
Speaker 1: because it doesn't make any sense. It's not unique. But
Speaker 1: if they see that you went to a lunch and
Speaker 1: there are a couple of friends around you with their
Speaker 1: iPhones and it says, hey, do you want to journal
Speaker 1: about that lunch that you had at this special place,
Speaker 1: that's when it will put that in there. Yes, you
Speaker 1: can turn this feature off. There is no privacy issue
Speaker 1: here whatsoever. But if you want to turn it off,
Speaker 1: at least you're educated about it. Check it out Instagram
Speaker 1: at Richontech. All right, that wraps up our number one.
Speaker 1: More of your calls at Triple eight rich one O
Speaker 1: one coming up next. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology. The
Speaker 1: phone line for the show is triple eight rich one
Speaker 1: oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four
Speaker 1: one zero one. You can also email the website richon
Speaker 1: Tech dot TV. Hit contact up at the top. You
Speaker 1: can find me on social media. I am at rich
Speaker 1: on tech, on Instagram, X and Facebook. Coming up this hour,
Speaker 1: Leo Roberts of the Laptop Elf Project is going to
Speaker 1: discuss how to make an old computer feel new again
Speaker 1: with Chrome os Flex. This is a free operating system
Speaker 1: from Google that pretty much turns your old computer into
Speaker 1: a modern Chromebook. But we'll get all the details on
Speaker 1: the pros and cons from Leo later in this hour.
Speaker 1: And speaking of X, doctor Annie wrote on X Expedia
Speaker 1: allows for sort by distance. It is definitely in sort
Speaker 1: sort by price, sort by distance. Oh, I guess they
Speaker 1: said hotels dot com still does it. Well, maybe the
Speaker 1: app doesn't do it anymore, but I used to use
Speaker 1: hotels dot Com for that feature. And yeah, Expedia, by
Speaker 1: the way, they own a lot of stuff. This was
Speaker 1: I believe this was spun off from Microsoft. I don't
Speaker 1: think they're still owned by Microsoft, but they were started
Speaker 1: by Microsoft back in the day. And here's what Expedia owns.
Speaker 1: Expedia dot Com, Hotels dot Com, Vrbo, the airbnb competitor.
Speaker 1: I did not realize that Travelocity, remember that one had
Speaker 1: a little gnome guy hot Wire. I used to love
Speaker 1: hot Wire that was a big competitive price line orbits
Speaker 1: again brand from back in the day eBookers.
Speaker 2: I haven't heard of that one. Cheap tickets.
Speaker 1: I've heard of that. Car rentals dot Com have not
Speaker 1: heard of that. Trevago too interesting. That's the you see that.
Speaker 1: I feel like that's more geared towards the European market.
Speaker 1: But I remember seeing ads in the US for that.
Speaker 1: But I was trying to remember when you said Expedia.
Speaker 1: I remembered another brand from back in the day, and
Speaker 1: this is going to be a total blast from the past.
Speaker 1: Microsoft in Karda, And if you're of a certain age,
Speaker 1: this was a digital encyclopedia published by Microsoft. It came
Speaker 1: on a CD ROM or a DVD and you bought
Speaker 1: this thing and it had a bunch of articles about stuff,
Speaker 1: and I think later it was online. But Microsoft in
Speaker 1: Karda nineteen ninety three, according to UH Wikipedia nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: three to two thousand and nine. And this was like
Speaker 1: the way you got information. It was like after the
Speaker 1: World Book encyclopedia that was in your house, you went
Speaker 1: to this, and then you went to Wikipedia. And now
Speaker 1: you just don't. We don't seek out information anymore. We
Speaker 1: just go to TikTok. I'm just kidding. Please do not
Speaker 1: send me the angry emails. Yes, kids still can go
Speaker 1: for information places you don't have to. You don't have
Speaker 1: to send me the email. Just shortcut that. Eighty eight
Speaker 1: Rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to
Speaker 1: two four one zero one. Steve writes in on email, Hey, Rich,
Speaker 1: I keep getting a notification to update my Google Chrome
Speaker 1: browser from a company called hot Cleaner, and I'm wondering
Speaker 1: if this is legit.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Steve. No, Steve, this is totally bogus.
Speaker 1: I believe that this is a malware extension or some
Speaker 1: kind of extension that you do not need. So if
Speaker 1: you are seeing stuff on your Chrome web browser that
Speaker 1: seems a little wonky, you can go through Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I just went to this website. Don't go to these
Speaker 1: websites like I do. I go to test, but don't
Speaker 1: do it. So what you want to do is you
Speaker 1: want to go to your settings, and you want to
Speaker 1: go to settings on Chrome, and that's in the upper
Speaker 1: right hand corner. It looks like three little dots, and
Speaker 1: then you want to go to extensions and then manage extensions,
Speaker 1: and then once you're in here, it'll show you all
Speaker 1: of your extensions, and I've got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen,
Speaker 1: I've got sixteen extensions. If you do not recognize something
Speaker 1: that is in there, or you're not using something that's
Speaker 1: in there, remove it. If you don't want to remove
Speaker 1: it completely right away, there is a little toggle switch
Speaker 1: you can disable it, and that way it doesn't run.
Speaker 1: So an extension on Chrome is kind of like a
Speaker 1: little piece of helper software and it could be really useful.
Speaker 1: You can add things like You're a read it later,
Speaker 1: or a screenshotting tool, or something like honey that can
Speaker 1: help you get better prices. But there are also malicious
Speaker 1: ones or ones that pretend to be helpers but they're
Speaker 1: really not. They hijack your browser and they try to
Speaker 1: make it do things that you don't want it to do. Namely,
Speaker 1: they will inject advertising on your web pages, or they
Speaker 1: will change your default search engine to something that is
Speaker 1: more beneficial to them. So again, if you want to
Speaker 1: check your extensions on Chrome, go into settings three little
Speaker 1: dots upper right hand corner. Extensions. Manage extensions, get rid
Speaker 1: of any that you don't know, or don't use or
Speaker 1: don't recognize. There is a new smart watch from one plus.
Speaker 1: This is the one plus watch too. I am wearing
Speaker 1: it as we speak. It is probably the new Android
Speaker 1: smart watch to be. One plus made a smart watch
Speaker 1: about three years ago. It was great, but it was
Speaker 1: not full featured. It only ran their own operating system.
Speaker 1: This one now runs a version of ware OS, which
Speaker 1: is Google's you know, mobile operating system for watches. So
Speaker 1: the cool thing about this is it looks like a
Speaker 1: classic time piece. So if you like a nice big
Speaker 1: screen that looks like an actual watch, not a square watch,
Speaker 1: it looks like a watch. The basics are here. It's
Speaker 1: got a nice big screen, like I said, it's got
Speaker 1: good water resistance. It's got great fitness, sleep and stress tracking.
Speaker 1: The unique aspect is how this battery can last up
Speaker 1: to one hundred hours. How does it do that? Well,
Speaker 1: it's got a hybrid operating system. It's got two operating
Speaker 1: systems in salt. It's got that old one I told
Speaker 1: you about. Not old, but it's got an operating system
Speaker 1: that does the basics like the time, and then it's
Speaker 1: got a more intensive processor and an operating system to
Speaker 1: do the apps. So again, you can get up to
Speaker 1: twelve days of battery life on this thing if you
Speaker 1: put it in power save mode, which gives you just
Speaker 1: basic functionality. So if you put it into power Save,
Speaker 1: you can just have the time on your watch and
Speaker 1: some other basic features and you can go twelve days
Speaker 1: without charging it. So the downsides to this watch. I
Speaker 1: do think it's very snappy, it's well designed. I've really
Speaker 1: liked this thing, but one plus is only guaranteeing software
Speaker 1: update for two years on this watch when it's time
Speaker 1: to recharge. Really excellent. One plus gets the award for
Speaker 1: having the best smart watch charging adapter.
Speaker 2: Yet. It is a tiny little puck.
Speaker 1: It's square, and the cool thing about it, and the
Speaker 1: thing that they did that nobody else has done before,
Speaker 1: is that it is detachable, so you can use any
Speaker 1: USBC cable to plug this thing in.
Speaker 2: So what does that mean? All you have to do
Speaker 2: is throw.
Speaker 1: This tiny, little maybe one by one inch puck into
Speaker 1: your travel bag and when you get to where you
Speaker 1: need to go, you can plug your standard USBC adapter
Speaker 1: into this and charge your watch and it charges really
Speaker 1: really fast. One plus has kind of made a name
Speaker 1: for itself on fast charging. I averaged about three to
Speaker 1: four days of battery life. Now you might be saying, rich,
Speaker 1: you just said this thing has one hundred hours or
Speaker 1: twelve days, How are you only getting three to four hours. Well,
Speaker 1: if you want to use this thing to its maximum,
Speaker 1: you're going to get three to four days. Now, that's
Speaker 1: still double what any other smart watch on the market does.
Speaker 1: Most smart watches are doing about a day, maybe a
Speaker 1: day and a half at the most. But if you
Speaker 1: want sort of all the use of this thing with
Speaker 1: running and fitness and sleep tracking and music offline, all
Speaker 1: those things, I'd say about three to four days.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: The one thing I don't necessarily like is that OnePlus
Speaker 1: has their own app. It's called o Health, and this
Speaker 1: is an app that they develop themselves and is their
Speaker 1: fitness app. So it's their version of Fitbit. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like on the iPhone you have to use you know,
Speaker 1: Apple's fitness app to an activity app to h to
Speaker 1: use that with the Apple Watch.
Speaker 2: Same thing here.
Speaker 1: The cool thing is is that it does track a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff, over one hundred activities with very impressive detail,
Speaker 1: and it can get pretty specific.
Speaker 2: There is like there's all.
Speaker 1: There's a reminder right now sorry, I've got to take
Speaker 1: out the trash. There is all kinds of things like
Speaker 1: they have, like I mean stuff you can't like disc
Speaker 1: throwing and whatever. You know, take whatever. You can track
Speaker 1: anything you want. The watch faces are amazing. They gave
Speaker 1: you so many great watch faces that you can that
Speaker 1: you can customize. The main thing to know about the
Speaker 1: watch faces if you put third party complications. So let's
Speaker 1: say you have a favorite a like all trails, and
Speaker 1: you want to have like some sort of complication on
Speaker 1: your watch screen. A complication is kind of like a
Speaker 1: little widget. You can't necessarily do that unless you really
Speaker 1: want to cut down in your battery life. So the
Speaker 1: watch faces to get the maximum battery life, you have
Speaker 1: to use the ones they have, the complications they have,
Speaker 1: and a lot of stuff is covered like weather and
Speaker 1: your battery life and your step count.
Speaker 2: They have a lot your heart rate.
Speaker 1: It's just if you want to get really fancy and
Speaker 1: you have a specific app like on the Apple Watch,
Speaker 1: you can put any complication on there and your battery
Speaker 1: life is pretty much going to be the same. The
Speaker 1: thing is with this, it's going to be a little
Speaker 1: bit different. Downsides again, notifications can be slow to appear
Speaker 1: when you raise your wrist. The screen can be dim
Speaker 1: and bright light, and I feel like the vibrations on
Speaker 1: this thing are really weak compared to other smart watches,
Speaker 1: especially the Apple Watch. I hate to keep comparing everything
Speaker 1: to the Apple Watch, but it's kind of the gold
Speaker 1: standard of wearables. And while I like how Apple is
Speaker 1: a little bit more open with their ecosystem with their watch,
Speaker 1: you know, everyone's built around the Apple Watch as well,
Speaker 1: so it does a lot of stuff and there are
Speaker 1: many apps available for it. The other thing I wanted
Speaker 1: to mention is that with the watch faces, they have
Speaker 1: a bunch of different ones. I think they're all fine.
Speaker 1: I just think that, you know, the dim part in
Speaker 1: the in the bright light could be a little bit
Speaker 1: leaves a little bit to be desired. Like sometimes when
Speaker 1: I was on my run, I just wanted to glance
Speaker 1: at the watch and I'd have to like lance at
Speaker 1: it for a while, wait for it to come to
Speaker 1: life so I can actually see what's on there. But
Speaker 1: I think overall this has already gotten its first software update.
Speaker 1: This is a great watch, the one plus Watch two.
Speaker 1: Once again, it's three hundred dollars. It's available on Monday,
Speaker 1: March days. I think it's Monday, March fourth. And if
Speaker 1: you trade in any watch in any condition, they'll give
Speaker 1: you fifty dollars off. There is no cellular version of
Speaker 1: this watch available. All right, rich on Tech dot TV.
Speaker 1: If you want a link to the one plus watch.
Speaker 1: More of your calls coming up. Triple eight Rich one
Speaker 1: oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two
Speaker 1: four one zero one. This is rich on Tech. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out
Speaker 1: with you. If you notice, it's an all eighties weekend
Speaker 1: here on the rich On Tech Show.
Speaker 2: Hope you like it.
Speaker 1: If you're listening on the podcast, well just imagine all
Speaker 1: the eighties songs you know and love, and there they are.
Speaker 1: So we talked about the backtap feature on the iPhone
Speaker 1: and it is also available on the Pixel and the Samsung.
Speaker 1: So on the Pixel they call it quick Tap, and
Speaker 1: you can find it under system and then gestures, so
Speaker 1: System settings, System and then gestures and then it says
Speaker 1: quick tap to start actions and you can do all
Speaker 1: kinds of things. This is the idea where you can
Speaker 1: tap the back of your phone on iPhone. It's under
Speaker 1: Accessibility Pixel. It's sort of built in as a feature.
Speaker 1: It's called quick Tap and then I don't even know
Speaker 1: I had it. I have this turned on. It opens
Speaker 1: up my notesap and then on Samsung can get the feature,
Speaker 1: but you do need to download an app called Goodlock,
Speaker 1: which is kind of like their app for all things
Speaker 1: customization on the Samsung phone. So if you really want
Speaker 1: to customize your Samsung phone, download Goodlock and they have
Speaker 1: that is from Samsung, but they just don't bundle it
Speaker 1: with the phone because it gives you, like, really a
Speaker 1: lot of control over what your phone can do. Triple
Speaker 1: eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four
Speaker 1: to two four one zero one. Everything that I mentioned here,
Speaker 1: by the way, is on the show notes. You can
Speaker 1: always find them by going to the website rich on
Speaker 1: tech dot tv and up at the top you can
Speaker 1: hit the big red banner that says heard it on
Speaker 1: the radio.
Speaker 2: Let's see, uh, let's see. Where are we going here?
Speaker 2: Andrew and Moore Park, Andrew, you got a question.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Happy Saturday. Do you want your life to be
Speaker 4: more complicated?
Speaker 6: Never?
Speaker 4: I don't know. I don't know anybody who does. I
Speaker 4: think the same twelve year old who's decided to put
Speaker 4: gray text on a light background at Apple is the
Speaker 4: same person who might have decided to call things on
Speaker 4: watch complications. What's wrong with the word icons like everything else?
Speaker 1: I agree, And I never even heard that term, honestly
Speaker 1: until Apple came out with the Apple Watch and they
Speaker 1: called it a complication. And I'm like, ah, and of
Speaker 1: course I'm trying not to look stupid, so I'm like
Speaker 1: not really asking, like wait what, But here's the thing.
Speaker 1: So this is a watchmaking term. I think it originates
Speaker 1: from the old days of watches, like back in like
Speaker 1: it looks like almost like a French term. But anything
Speaker 1: that was adding increased complexity to a watch, like the
Speaker 1: date a stopwatch or moon phase indicator required additional gears, springs,
Speaker 1: and other intricate parts. And so that's why they called
Speaker 1: it a complication.
Speaker 4: It makes sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but yeah, I agree. For nowadays, we don't really
Speaker 1: need that because to me, it was just.
Speaker 4: Can I put my covered wagon?
Speaker 1: Well, you look, Andrew, I'm not. I'm not here to
Speaker 1: change the entire watchmaking industry. But until they come up
Speaker 1: with a better term, I would call them what would
Speaker 1: you call it?
Speaker 4: Kons icon all the other icons on everything.
Speaker 1: Else, But they're sort of interactive, so maybe it's like
Speaker 1: a widget. How about widget?
Speaker 4: Well, so, so are the icons on your desktop PC,
Speaker 4: Orn Mac?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess in this case they're they're displaying real
Speaker 1: time information. Thanks for the call, Andrew, appreciate it. I agree.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, it's one of these things where at
Speaker 1: least we can explain what it is and now you
Speaker 1: know so. But yes, we want things more simple, not
Speaker 1: not more complicated. Jerry in a New Jersey adjacent Jerry, you're.
Speaker 11: On with Rich Hell really in Pennsylvania, but i'd probly
Speaker 11: get your attention being a boy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well you did, because I'm like, what does New
Speaker 1: Jersey adjacent mean?
Speaker 2: But okay, you snuck in here? What's up?
Speaker 11: Anyhow? At my time, I listened to a podcast on
Speaker 11: my Android phone using a third party app as opposed
Speaker 11: to the radio stations apps because mine is superior. And
Speaker 11: I used to listen to ky W and w PHT
Speaker 11: here in Philadelphia. But since they're an all of these stations,
Speaker 11: they've changed the r L. I used to be able
Speaker 11: to go rate click on the web page and do
Speaker 11: a little inspect inspect and I used to be able
Speaker 11: to get the r L out, but apparently it's not
Speaker 11: there anymore, or they've changed it, or they've hidden it.
Speaker 11: How can I find this?
Speaker 1: Well, I have a feeling that they're doing this on purpose.
Speaker 1: And the reason is because back in the day, you know,
Speaker 1: the signal would be streamed and it was pretty simple
Speaker 1: and it was just you know, it was just literally
Speaker 1: a streaming.
Speaker 2: Signal of the station.
Speaker 1: Now I have a feeling everything is much more on
Speaker 1: the up and up because of ratings and because of
Speaker 1: digital numbers and so, and also the way that they
Speaker 1: insert ads into these feeds.
Speaker 2: So that is my feeling.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I was gonna say you might be able
Speaker 1: to find a stream by right clicking the website and
Speaker 1: seeing what the actual URL is for the streaming link,
Speaker 1: But like you said, you already tried that, and so
Speaker 1: I think you're you're not gonna be able to get
Speaker 1: this link unless you maybe contacted the radio station and
Speaker 1: asked an engineer like, hey, a, is there a streaming
Speaker 1: link front facing that the public can access? But I
Speaker 1: think that's probably the answer. Most of these radio stations
Speaker 1: have either gone to apps, or they have gone to
Speaker 1: you know, a mega app, or they're on something like
Speaker 1: tune in, So that is how they prefer their listeners
Speaker 1: tune in if they're doing it digitally, I think for
Speaker 1: reasons that I just mentioned, So I don't think that
Speaker 1: you're gonna find it unless you find it on a
Speaker 1: forum somewhere that someone else was able to figure out.
Speaker 1: But I think that these streams are much more dynamic
Speaker 1: than they ever were, And it's kind of funny. I
Speaker 1: work for a radio organization, so maybe there's someone that
Speaker 1: can answer it. But I understand back in the day, yes,
Speaker 1: these were all very simple links that you would just
Speaker 1: pop into any sort of player that could handle real
Speaker 1: time streaming links and it would it would figure those out.
Speaker 1: Nowadays it is all through the app. So Jerry, I
Speaker 1: don't think I have a good answer for you, as
Speaker 1: much as I love you because you're New Jersey adjacent
Speaker 1: eight to eight rich one o one eight eight eight
Speaker 1: seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 2: This is rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging
Speaker 1: out with you, talking technology at triple eight rich one
Speaker 1: oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four
Speaker 1: one zero one. Joining me now is Leo Roberts of
Speaker 1: the Laptop Elf Project. Laptop Elf Project collects Windows and
Speaker 1: Mac laptop, all kinds of smart devices, working and non working,
Speaker 1: and they will actually refurbish them and then donate them
Speaker 1: to teachers and nonprofits who help low income families and individuals.
Speaker 1: And they have done all kinds of great stuff over
Speaker 1: the years. Leo, thanks so much for joining me.
Speaker 7: Well, it's a pleasure to be here. Rich thanks for
Speaker 7: having me.
Speaker 1: So what we're talking about today is one of the
Speaker 1: things that you might do to a computer to make
Speaker 1: an older computer feel new again, and that is installed
Speaker 1: Chrome os flex.
Speaker 2: So can you explain what Chrome os flex is?
Speaker 12: Sure, it's basically a Linux operating system that can be
Speaker 12: used on PCs and max.
Speaker 7: It's designed to be fast, secure, and easy to manage.
Speaker 12: In other words, it's turning your old computer into a
Speaker 12: Chromebook which will be faster, more secure, and infinite updateable.
Speaker 2: And what kind of devices can you install this on?
Speaker 12: You can install this on both Mac and Windows PCs.
Speaker 1: Okay, and you've done this now because we talked about this.
Speaker 1: We've been talking about this for like a year. It's
Speaker 1: been out for a while, your year and a half.
Speaker 1: How is Yeah, how's it advanced? Like explained to me?
Speaker 1: Because when it first came out. You said it was
Speaker 1: a little rough around the edges.
Speaker 7: Well, Number one, it's available on more devices, it's much
Speaker 7: more universally appliable.
Speaker 12: They have dramatically improved the installation process. It used to
Speaker 12: be a little bit techy, and now they've made it very,
Speaker 12: very simple to.
Speaker 7: Install and use.
Speaker 1: Can you explain that process a little bit, because if
Speaker 1: someone's listening, they're thinking, Hmm, I've got an old laptop.
Speaker 2: I wonder if I should do this. Explain what that
Speaker 2: process might look like.
Speaker 10: Sure.
Speaker 12: Assuming you're using either Chrome Browser or Edge or Safari
Speaker 12: on the on the Mac, you download as.
Speaker 7: An extension, the Chromebook Recovery Utility.
Speaker 12: That's an extension that you can get from the Google
Speaker 12: Play Store or the Apple App Store. And when that
Speaker 12: opens up, and you have previously a eight gigabyte or
Speaker 12: a greater USB drive, you open up that utility and
Speaker 12: it asks you to pick the model, and you pick
Speaker 12: Chromos Flex and asks you to pick the version it's
Speaker 12: you say Chromos Flex and click start and it will
Speaker 12: begin constructing a USB key that you will use to
Speaker 12: boot whatever computer you're trying to install it on, and
Speaker 12: it guides you through that installation.
Speaker 7: Shouldn't step by step.
Speaker 12: The beauty about this is that once you've booted your
Speaker 12: computer to that USB drive, you have a working, functional,
Speaker 12: Chrome os Flex computer, so you can test it. You
Speaker 12: can test all the features, you can make sure you
Speaker 12: like it, and once you determine you've done that, then
Speaker 12: you can click install and it will install on your computer.
Speaker 1: So you can effectively run this operating system off the
Speaker 1: USB drive to test it out, test, run it, see
Speaker 1: if you like it, and then if you do, you
Speaker 1: can actually install.
Speaker 7: It now exactly and it makes no changes to your computer.
Speaker 1: But just to be clear, once you do install it,
Speaker 1: you will lose all everything that's on your computer before,
Speaker 1: so you do have to get that stuff backed up.
Speaker 12: If you have old stuff on your computer that you
Speaker 12: want saved, you must do a backup because this will
Speaker 12: completely wipe out your hard disk and install chromes Flex.
Speaker 2: What kind of applications can you run on Chromos Flex?
Speaker 12: Oh, there are so many. You have access to the
Speaker 12: Chrome web Store. You can do things like photo editing
Speaker 12: with the Pixel photo editor. You can also use Adobe
Speaker 12: Express Online. You can use Google Docs where you can
Speaker 12: do spreadsheets, documents, PowerPoint presentations. You have access to Microsoft
Speaker 12: Office Online, where you get word Excel and PowerPoint. There
Speaker 12: are hundreds of online games you can play, and if
Speaker 12: you're a little bit techy, you can actually install Linux
Speaker 12: on your new computer new old computer and install all
Speaker 12: the apps that you can install with Linux, and.
Speaker 1: Of course it comes with all of the basic Google
Speaker 1: apps like Chrome. Like the Chrome web browser is pretty
Speaker 1: much there, so you can do anything you could do
Speaker 1: on the web. Check your email, go to YouTube.
Speaker 12: You can do absolutely anything you can do on the web,
Speaker 12: and you can even do so work offline.
Speaker 7: For example, if you're working in Google docs and online
Speaker 7: and then you have your computer somewhere where you don't
Speaker 7: have access, your recent documents will be available to you.
Speaker 7: You can work offline, and once you're reconnected to the internet,
Speaker 7: those documents will be added or modified.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, you just can't install Windows apps because
Speaker 1: it's not a Windows computer.
Speaker 7: So not Windows apps.
Speaker 12: But you will find that the Linux apps are almost
Speaker 12: identical to the Windows apps. You can do Firefox, you
Speaker 12: can do almost every app that's available.
Speaker 7: For Windows is available for Linux. But that just takes
Speaker 7: a little extra work and most likely won't be needed
Speaker 7: by by most people.
Speaker 1: So what about like hardware peripherals like let's say have
Speaker 1: a scanner that I like to use with my old laptop, Like,
Speaker 1: will that still work?
Speaker 7: Almost for sure? However, these are the kind of things
Speaker 7: you have to test. There's a list that.
Speaker 12: Google publishes of approved models you can check to see
Speaker 12: if your model is there. However, I have found dozens
Speaker 12: of models that are not there and everything works perfectly.
Speaker 12: They do not guarantee that peripherals will work, but I
Speaker 12: have found absolutely no problems. The one problem that I
Speaker 12: have found on Max is occasionally, depending on what Mac
Speaker 12: model you're putting this on, sometimes the camera doesn't work.
Speaker 2: Well, that's kind of a problem.
Speaker 12: I mean, I guess, and of course if if you
Speaker 12: find it that's the case, then you're not going and
Speaker 12: you need the camera.
Speaker 7: You're going to have to do something else.
Speaker 1: Okay, what about an external camera? Would that work? Like
Speaker 1: if you've plugged in a webcam?
Speaker 7: Possibly?
Speaker 2: Okay, possibly.
Speaker 7: These are not guaranteed.
Speaker 12: However, I have found that every peripheral I have plugged
Speaker 12: in to, most of the ones I've built, have worked
Speaker 12: just fine.
Speaker 1: So you've done a lot of these installations. Does it
Speaker 1: really make an old computer feel new again?
Speaker 12: It's absolutely remarkable. It speeds up the computer. I'm going
Speaker 12: to say immeasurably, but of course you can do benchmark
Speaker 12: tsks to see it becomes much more snappy, much more responsive,
Speaker 12: and you have a contemporary operating system.
Speaker 2: And one that is free of viruses and malware most
Speaker 2: of the time.
Speaker 12: Right exactly, it's essentially impossible to get a virus on
Speaker 12: one of these chrom os Flix systems. If somehow you
Speaker 12: do something that messes up, or you don't like what's
Speaker 12: going on, or it seems to have a problem, you
Speaker 12: can do what's called a power wash. It wipes out
Speaker 12: the everything on your computer and reinstalls it as a
Speaker 12: new computer, so you're you're protected that way.
Speaker 2: Man, they've really thought of everything with this.
Speaker 7: They have, indeed, so.
Speaker 12: I'm sorry when it first came out they did not
Speaker 12: have the power wash capability, and now they do.
Speaker 1: That's amazing. And so finally, just about thirty seconds here,
Speaker 1: who do you recommend does this?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 2: Who do you think this would be good for?
Speaker 12: Anybody who can get on the internet and read an
Speaker 12: email and click on a website can do this.
Speaker 2: And if you have an old computer kind of laying
Speaker 2: around that's not getting much use. I mean, this is
Speaker 2: a great.
Speaker 1: You know, gives it new life in a way that's simple, easy,
Speaker 1: and you know you'll get some more use out of it.
Speaker 2: And if you have a computer that you want to
Speaker 2: give a loved one, maybe you want to do this
Speaker 2: to it first.
Speaker 1: All right, exactly right, Leo Roberts of the Laptop Elf Project.
Speaker 1: You can find out more on their Facebook page. Just
Speaker 1: go to facebook dot com slash the Laptop Elf Project
Speaker 1: and you can learn how to you know, donate an
Speaker 1: old computer to them if you don't need it anymore,
Speaker 1: or if you want to make it work your own.
Speaker 1: It's just a good website to know about, or if
Speaker 1: you need a comput.
Speaker 12: In addition, we take phones, tablets, monitors, all laptops, so
Speaker 12: we really appreciate any donation your listeners have.
Speaker 1: Awesome Leo Roberts, thanks so much for joining me today
Speaker 1: of the Laptop Elf Project. Coming up more of your
Speaker 1: calls at Triple eight rich one O one eight eight
Speaker 1: eight seven four to two four one zero one. As
Speaker 1: always linked on my website, rich on Tech dot TV.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology at
Speaker 1: Triple eight rich one O one. That's eight eight eight
Speaker 1: seven four to two four one zero one. Google Maps
Speaker 1: has a new feature called Glansible directions. This puts the
Speaker 1: directions right on your lock screen. Now they've had some
Speaker 1: implementations of this in the past, but this is a
Speaker 1: more direct implementation. You can see your updated ETA and
Speaker 1: your next turn info from the route overview when your
Speaker 1: phone is open, but then when your phone is locked,
Speaker 1: you'll be able to still see your directions. Now, Apple
Speaker 1: Maps has done this for a long time, and the
Speaker 1: way Google Maps has gotten around it is they've sent
Speaker 1: notifications to your screen, but now it's integrated with the
Speaker 1: live activities and so this will be much much better
Speaker 1: on the iPhone side of things, and on Android it
Speaker 1: will just show persistent notification with your directions. So this
Speaker 1: works for walking, biking, and public transit. It updates automatically
Speaker 1: if you take a different route, and it is rolling
Speaker 1: out right now on Android and iOS. So basically this
Speaker 1: makes it easier to follow your directions without unlocking your
Speaker 1: phone every single time. So if you want to turn
Speaker 1: this on, you have to turn it on it it's
Speaker 1: not on by default for some odd reason. Open up
Speaker 1: Google Maps I both iPhone or the Android, tap your
Speaker 1: profile picture in the upper right hand corner and it
Speaker 1: says Settings. You tap Settings and then under Navigation scroll
Speaker 1: and you'll see it says glanceible directions while navigating, and
Speaker 1: you can turn that on and it will show up.
Speaker 1: It has not shown up on my iPhone just yet.
Speaker 1: The setting has, but the actual glanceible has not. So
Speaker 1: it is rolling out. So if you want to get
Speaker 1: prepared for it, and when you next time you do
Speaker 1: Google Maps directions, it will show up. You can turn
Speaker 1: on that toggle and you'll be pleasantly surprised again. Maps, Settings, Navigation,
Speaker 1: Glanceible Directions while navigating. Let's go to Robert in Data Point, California. Robert,
Speaker 1: you're on with Rich.
Speaker 6: Yes, thank you. I'm trying to update to a new
Speaker 6: operating system for my Minimac. I'm running a Mahabi right
Speaker 6: now and I need to go to Sonoma at least
Speaker 6: and it tells me that one, I don't have enough room,
Speaker 6: and I have an external hard drive Samsung a terrabyte.
Speaker 6: But yet when if I try it, I can't seem
Speaker 6: to It tells me I can't use that hard drive
Speaker 6: for doing that.
Speaker 2: It tells you you can't use the hard drive for
Speaker 2: doing what to install the.
Speaker 6: Outloading what I have on the computer so that I
Speaker 6: have enough room to install Sonoma.
Speaker 2: Okay, you want to move stuff to this hard drive?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I have photos on it. It seems to be automatic,
Speaker 6: but because that's the majority of my memory, it is photos.
Speaker 6: So I'm trying to find out why doesn't it Like,
Speaker 6: why can't I just download the whole computer to my
Speaker 6: terrabyte and then load it with all the new with
Speaker 6: a new program.
Speaker 2: You should be able to do. You know how this
Speaker 2: hard hard drive is formatted?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 6: I don't, and I think that's the issue.
Speaker 11: Yeah.
Speaker 6: One of the prompts I had that said you will
Speaker 6: lose everything on your external hard drive if you try
Speaker 6: to do it.
Speaker 2: Yep, and that's what's going to happen.
Speaker 1: So first off, on your Mac, you can go you
Speaker 1: can go onto your finder and select this hard drive
Speaker 1: and you can do a command I to see how
Speaker 1: that is formatted. Does it show up on your Mac
Speaker 1: at all when.
Speaker 2: You plug it in?
Speaker 6: Yes, it does show that the external hard drive.
Speaker 1: So it should read you know, most hard drives, but
Speaker 1: it may not be able to write to this drive
Speaker 1: if it's in a format that it doesn't like. So
Speaker 1: there are some formats that were, you know, incompatible in
Speaker 1: the past, but nowadays if you use a Mac OS,
Speaker 1: if you're only are you only using this hard drive
Speaker 1: with a Mac?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So there's a there's a utility on the Mac
Speaker 2: called disc utility. Have you used that?
Speaker 7: No?
Speaker 2: Okay? So do you know how to find that on
Speaker 2: your Mac? No? Okay.
Speaker 1: So if you press the uh the search icon in
Speaker 1: the upper right hand corner, if you have that, or
Speaker 1: you can use command space bar to bring it up,
Speaker 1: that'll bring up spotlight.
Speaker 2: On the Mac.
Speaker 1: You can type in disc utility and if you type
Speaker 1: in disc utility, you should see this drive on the
Speaker 1: left hand side of your computer screen and you can
Speaker 1: select that drive and it will tell you how it is.
Speaker 2: Format it.
Speaker 1: Now, the format that I like, if you're only using
Speaker 1: on a Mac OS is mac OS. I believe it's
Speaker 1: extended journaled and so you format it like that. Now,
Speaker 1: do you have stuff on this drive that you need?
Speaker 11: Yes?
Speaker 2: Okay, Well therein lies the issue because.
Speaker 6: You can't Yeah, it's all photographs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can't format that if you if you have that,
Speaker 2: you know if you need to save those? Okay?
Speaker 6: Is there another external hard drive. I could use it.
Speaker 6: I could just plug and play to basically get me
Speaker 6: out of the situation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean any drive you can go on if
Speaker 1: you know, you can go to best Buy or you know,
Speaker 1: Staples and buy any hard drive and format it. You
Speaker 1: can look for a Mac icon on the drive to
Speaker 1: see because not all drives are formatted for Mac out
Speaker 1: of the box. Most of them are formatted, you know.
Speaker 1: It just depends on the drive. But you can go
Speaker 1: get another hard drive and plug it in. If it
Speaker 1: doesn't work, you can format it with this disc utility
Speaker 1: and you would just press Once it's in, you would
Speaker 1: just do erase and it would say that you can,
Speaker 1: you know, format it in the in the format that
Speaker 1: would work on the Mac. So I'm trying. I wish
Speaker 1: I had a drive to plug in it. It's like
Speaker 1: over my in my bag and I can't run over there.
Speaker 1: But I would walk you through it a little bit more.
Speaker 2: But that's you.
Speaker 1: Basically, another hard drive would solve this pretty simply. Hard
Speaker 1: drives are about fifty nine bucks. You said this, you
Speaker 1: know you can easily copy stuff over you How are
Speaker 1: you going to install the new operating system?
Speaker 2: You just need to make room on your drive to.
Speaker 6: Do that room, then I could just get to Sonoma
Speaker 6: and you know, then you work your way up the
Speaker 6: chain to get to the most current. And another issue
Speaker 6: I have is, you know, I have that bug that
Speaker 6: comes up that says your McAfee is expired, and.
Speaker 2: Yeah, get rid of that, you can.
Speaker 6: I can't. I've tried to encapsulate it and deny it
Speaker 6: and I can't get rid of it.
Speaker 1: Well, you might consider what you might consider doing is
Speaker 1: just doing a full clean install of this entire operating system.
Speaker 1: And if you look up online, there's a especially if
Speaker 1: you're having you know, if you're getting all these like
Speaker 1: error messages and stuff and like these little fragments of
Speaker 1: old files, you might want to do a clean installation.
Speaker 1: You could do what's called a internet recovery. So if
Speaker 1: you look up clean installation of mac OS, you should
Speaker 1: get the mac Apple support that will tell you how
Speaker 1: to erase and reinstall mac OS.
Speaker 2: And there's a couple of ways of doing it.
Speaker 1: Basically, your computer as a version of the operating system
Speaker 1: on there that you can restore it from, or you
Speaker 1: can download it from the internet and do it that way.
Speaker 1: Or you can make what's called a bootable USB drive
Speaker 1: to do that, and the app I like for that,
Speaker 1: by the way, is called disk Drill that can help
Speaker 1: you do that. Giving you a lot of suggestions here,
Speaker 1: but the bottom line is if you can try to
Speaker 1: figure out how to get a new hard drive carry
Speaker 1: these files over to that hard drive to free up
Speaker 1: space on yours, you can do the upgrade that way.
Speaker 1: But I would recommend a clean install. That is what
Speaker 1: I think would be best for this computer, especially because
Speaker 1: it sounds like it's a little bit older. But again
Speaker 1: disk Drill, and the other app I mentioned is called
Speaker 1: disc Utility. You are listening to rich On Tech. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to rich On Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out
Speaker 1: with you, talking technology at Triple eight rich one oh
Speaker 1: one eight eight eight seven four to two four one
Speaker 1: zero one. Coming up this hour, we're gonna talk about
Speaker 1: chord cutting. We've got Richard Schneider, president and founder of
Speaker 1: Antenna's Direct. This is a company that I featured many
Speaker 1: many years ago on the Today Show many years ago,
Speaker 1: and they've been making some really cool antennas ever since.
Speaker 1: And uh yeah, we'll talk to Richard about the latest
Speaker 1: trends in chord cutting. So if you're curious about the
Speaker 1: latest with over the air, or you want to cut
Speaker 1: the cord, or you just want to know about antenna's
Speaker 1: in general.
Speaker 2: We'll get some good info from him.
Speaker 1: Phone line for the show Triple eight Rich one one
Speaker 1: eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: The website rich on tech dot tv. Go to the website.
Speaker 1: You can get links to anything I mentioned here. You
Speaker 1: can sign up to get the podcast, so if you
Speaker 1: want to listen later you missed an episode on the radio,
Speaker 1: whatever it is. You can watch my TV stories there,
Speaker 1: so you know, I do work as a TV tech reporter,
Speaker 1: so I've got a whole bunch of video stories there
Speaker 1: as well. And you can sign up for my newsletter,
Speaker 1: sent out two new issues in the last couple of weeks.
Speaker 1: A lot of people liking that. It's a newsletter that
Speaker 1: is just an update with some of the stuff. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like this show. It's just the stuff I
Speaker 1: think you should know. If you have a cheap video doorbell,
Speaker 1: you might want to reconsider it. Consumer reports found that
Speaker 1: these things have some pretty major security flaws. They were
Speaker 1: sold at Amazon, Walmart, and other sites under brands like
Speaker 1: Ekein and Tuck and the problem with these video doorbells
Speaker 1: is that they can expose your home IP address and
Speaker 1: your Wi Fi name of your home without encryption, which
Speaker 1: allows other people to remotely access the video doorbell. I mean,
Speaker 1: someone could take over the camera or even monitor your house.
Speaker 1: They could see everyone that comes and goes. The devices
Speaker 1: don't have an fcc ID number, which is legally required
Speaker 1: to sell electronics in the US. One of these even
Speaker 1: had Amazon's Choice badge on it. These were about thirty dollars.
Speaker 1: These doorbells. They come from China, and they're just not
Speaker 1: properly licensed. They are not properly secured. So here's what happens. Inevitably,
Speaker 1: I get someone that comes up to me, Hey, rich
Speaker 1: I want a video doorbell. Which one should I get? Oh,
Speaker 1: you should get something from Ring. You should get something
Speaker 1: from Nest or maybe Whys, even though they've had their
Speaker 1: own security issues. And then you go to the website,
Speaker 1: you look at the price and you go, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: not paying one hundred and thirty bucks for that. Look
Speaker 1: at this one for thirty dollars. It looks like the
Speaker 1: same looks like the same thing. And yes, you can
Speaker 1: find something that looks like the same thing, but the
Speaker 1: is the service going to be there? Is the support
Speaker 1: going to be there. I've had two people come up
Speaker 1: to me in the last coup weeks. They both came
Speaker 1: to me with the same exact Instagram ad for a camera,
Speaker 1: a video camera, like a home security camera that was
Speaker 1: really cheap and I had never heard of the brand.
Speaker 1: And both of them were like, Rich, I really want
Speaker 1: to get this because there's no monthly fee and it's
Speaker 1: really cheap. And I said, well, you can get it.
Speaker 1: But I've been covering technology for years now. I've been
Speaker 1: to every CS since twenty ten, and I've never seen
Speaker 1: that brand at any event I've ever been at in
Speaker 1: my tech life. You can go with that brand, but
Speaker 1: what are you getting? I don't know because nobody's heard
Speaker 1: of this brand. And that's the issue with going with
Speaker 1: something that I've never heard of and I've never seen.
Speaker 2: You don't know what the security is going to be like.
Speaker 1: And the other telltale sign is when you go to
Speaker 1: the website and the website's got all kinds of countdown banners,
Speaker 1: it's got buy one, get one free, it's you have
Speaker 1: to act soon. If you see that stuff on a
Speaker 1: website and it's an endless scroll website. You just keep
Speaker 1: scrolling and scrolling and scrolling, and it keeps trying to
Speaker 1: sell you on these products. It's probably not something I
Speaker 1: want to buy. You can take your chance, but as
Speaker 1: consumer reports found out, these things definitely have some issues,
Speaker 1: so be careful go with the brands that tech folks
Speaker 1: like myself recommend.
Speaker 12: HP.
Speaker 1: They already sell a subscription ink service which I subscribe to,
Speaker 1: by the way, pay like seven bucks a month, where
Speaker 1: I can get all the ink I need to print out.
Speaker 1: I don't know how many pages it is, but you
Speaker 1: get roll over to It's kind of like those old
Speaker 1: cell phone plans where you got a couple of minutes
Speaker 1: a month and then they would roll over to the
Speaker 1: next month.
Speaker 2: Remember those days. Well, HP does that with their ink plan.
Speaker 1: But what I like about the ink plan is that
Speaker 1: it's a lot cheaper than buying all the ink for
Speaker 1: these printers. If you add up all the four cartridges
Speaker 1: that I need for my ink printer, it's like fifty
Speaker 1: sixty you know, fifty bucks a peace. It's like two
Speaker 1: hundred dollars for ink, and then you got to buy
Speaker 1: it and keep it in stock at your house, So
Speaker 1: you need an extra one. So this ink subscription plan
Speaker 1: has worked out pretty well because what they do is
Speaker 1: they your computer, your printer has to be connected to
Speaker 1: the internet. When your ink gets low, they send you
Speaker 1: a new one before you need to replace it. So
Speaker 1: in my house right now, I have like a black ink,
Speaker 1: I've got a yellow, I've got a magenta. I don't
Speaker 1: know about blue. I don't maybe I just whatever the
Speaker 1: other color is, I don't. I guess I don't use
Speaker 1: it as much.
Speaker 2: But they're ready to go.
Speaker 1: And the black ink cartridge, by the way, is got
Speaker 1: so much ink in it that I've never seen a
Speaker 1: cartridge this much like loaded. So they give you a
Speaker 1: cartridge that carries more ink than the typical one you
Speaker 1: might get at the store, which is also really nice.
Speaker 1: So I tell you this because HP has now launched
Speaker 1: an all in one printer subscription plan.
Speaker 2: And so what does this do.
Speaker 1: It provides you a monthly page allowance and it automatically
Speaker 1: ships your replacement in cartridges. The price runs from seven
Speaker 1: dollars a month for basic printers and thirty six dollars
Speaker 1: a month for multifunction printers and seven hundred pages. So
Speaker 1: there are pros and cons to this system, your printer
Speaker 1: must stay connected to the internet so HP can monitor
Speaker 1: your usage and ink levels.
Speaker 2: Of course, okay, that's fine.
Speaker 1: After thirty days of a trial, you do have to
Speaker 1: have a certain amount of months where you keep this
Speaker 1: or else you have to pay a cancelation fee, and
Speaker 1: if you cancel this, you have to return the printer
Speaker 1: all together, which is kind of going to be a
Speaker 1: pain to return a printer. On the plus side, the
Speaker 1: plan does give you a next business day printer replacement
Speaker 1: if you have an issue, and you can upgrade to
Speaker 1: a new printer after two years. I can't say I
Speaker 1: recommend the printer rental plan, but if it works for
Speaker 1: you and you do the math and you think that
Speaker 1: this is something that just makes your life easier, I
Speaker 1: don't know. Maybe it's kind of nice to have. I
Speaker 1: guess it's good to have options. There's always going to
Speaker 1: be people that want to buy things and have them
Speaker 1: and you do it on their own.
Speaker 2: That's fine.
Speaker 1: And yes, is it probably cheaper in the long term
Speaker 1: to buy your own printer, use it as long as
Speaker 1: humanly possible, and buy your own refurbished ink. Yeah, probably,
Speaker 1: But if you just want that convenience and you know,
Speaker 1: maybe it's right off, maybe you have a startup, whatever,
Speaker 1: it might be easier.
Speaker 2: This is interesting Ford.
Speaker 1: If you have a Ford electric vehicle, you can now
Speaker 1: use the Tesla superchargers. They turned on this functionality this week,
Speaker 1: which is very exciting because the Mustang mach E is
Speaker 1: my favorite EV that's not the Tesla. I mean there's
Speaker 1: other ones that I like, like the Lucid and the Rivian,
Speaker 1: but I think the Maki overall, when it comes to
Speaker 1: price and affordability and accessibility, it is everywhere, and so
Speaker 1: I think the Maki really really impressed me. But I've
Speaker 1: said this with all electric cars, I am not buying
Speaker 1: any electric car that does not work on Tesla's network
Speaker 1: because it can be a pain to charge these things
Speaker 1: and it's just not for me. You can argue me
Speaker 1: with that, but if you're on a road trip and
Speaker 1: you want fast, easy charging, you gotta go Tesla. Now,
Speaker 1: these other companies are going to work with Tesla. Ford
Speaker 1: is the first one, but all of them are pretty
Speaker 1: much going to do this. So if you have a
Speaker 1: Ford EV which is either the Machi or the Lightning,
Speaker 1: you can now charge at Tesla superchargers. You will need
Speaker 1: an adapter. You can get an adapter for free. This
Speaker 1: is a two hundred and thirty dollars value. The adapters
Speaker 1: are free right now until June thirtieth. So if you're
Speaker 1: listening to this and you have a Ford EV, go
Speaker 1: on the website, get the free adapter, put it in
Speaker 1: your trunk, and you can now charge at Tesla superchargers.
Speaker 1: The website Ford dot com Slash Fast Charging Adapter, Ford
Speaker 1: dot com Slash Fast Charging Adapter, and this adapter will
Speaker 1: work at Tesla super chargers. The charging is not free,
Speaker 1: by the way, that as far as I know, it
Speaker 1: is not free to charge at a Tesla supercharger. Maybe
Speaker 1: if you have an older Tesla that it was grandfathered in,
Speaker 1: but that's not the case. And I don't think Ford
Speaker 1: is giving any level of free charging away, but they
Speaker 1: are giving the charger away.
Speaker 2: So get the adapter if you have a Ford and
Speaker 2: that's pretty exciting.
Speaker 1: And next year's model years with a lot of these cars,
Speaker 1: the Tesla charger is going to be built into the car,
Speaker 1: so you don't need to have an adapter, but for
Speaker 1: now you need the adapter. And finally, Uber has launched
Speaker 1: its teen Rides feature. It is now available in California.
Speaker 1: It's always been available, or it's been available in the
Speaker 1: forty nine other states for a while. It is now
Speaker 1: launching in California, so it's available in nationwide. This allows
Speaker 1: a parent to invite their team to have their own
Speaker 1: Uber account, a teen Uber account, and they can request
Speaker 1: their own rides. This has got a bunch of safety
Speaker 1: features built in, so parents can always see driver details
Speaker 1: like their name, their vehicle info, and they can call
Speaker 1: Uber the Uber Safety Line if necessary now the thing
Speaker 1: about the drive, or they could also track their kid
Speaker 1: on a map. This is for kids thirteen to seventeen.
Speaker 1: Uber told me that only eligible drivers with thorough background checks,
Speaker 1: which is the same background checks they do for regular drivers,
Speaker 1: but the difference here is that they have to have
Speaker 1: high ratings and they have to be experienced drivers before
Speaker 1: they can accept teens. And any driver has the ability
Speaker 1: to say I don't want to accept teens altogether. The
Speaker 1: teen has to give the driver has to put in
Speaker 1: a four digit code that the teen gives them when
Speaker 1: they get in the car, and there's also this ride
Speaker 1: audio recording feature. It is not mandatory, but I highly
Speaker 1: highly recommend that if your teen is taking Uber Rides.
Speaker 1: You turn that feature on, it records the entire ride.
Speaker 1: The recording of audio is stored on the teen's phone.
Speaker 1: If there's ever an issue, you can send that recording
Speaker 1: to Uber again Uber teen Rides. You can get details
Speaker 1: on that on my Instagram at rich on Tech. My
Speaker 1: name is rich d'miro. You are listening to rich on
Speaker 1: Tech More show. Come in your way right after this.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here. Coming
Speaker 1: up next, Richard Schneider is going to join us. He's
Speaker 1: the president and founder of Antenna's Direct. He's going to
Speaker 1: talk about some of the latest trends in cord cutting
Speaker 1: and explain what it's like to go over the air
Speaker 1: in a world of streaming. All right, let's take a
Speaker 1: look at some of the emails we have gotten. Debra says, help.
Speaker 1: The navigation systems used by the food companies Grubhub, Door Dash,
Speaker 1: Postmates and others are routed to an area that cannot
Speaker 1: be accessed.
Speaker 2: To my home accessed.
Speaker 1: Sometime around twenty twenty one, the navigation system changed. I've
Speaker 1: tried contacting Google Maps, but nothing has been done. What
Speaker 1: do I need to do to get the navigation system corrected?
Speaker 1: For my home address. Well, I think I don't know
Speaker 1: how you contacted Google Maps, but I think you just
Speaker 1: need to change the marker on Google Maps. So I've
Speaker 1: done this a couple of times for different addresses, and
Speaker 1: it works. It just takes a little bit. So if
Speaker 1: you go into Google Maps and you search for your address,
Speaker 1: and once you find your address on Google Maps, you
Speaker 1: can scroll up and it says suggest an edit, and
Speaker 1: you tap that and it gives you a map with
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of options, and you can say fix
Speaker 1: an address, add or fix a road, and then you
Speaker 1: can add opinions. So I would say fix an address,
Speaker 1: and then it says drag the map to the position
Speaker 1: the marker should be in. So Google Maps will show
Speaker 1: you where it thinks it should be going. But let's
Speaker 1: say that's leading to like a backside or a different
Speaker 1: road or a different entrance. You can drag that to
Speaker 1: where you need it to go. So let's say there
Speaker 1: was two ways to get to your house. You might
Speaker 1: drag that marker to the front of it and then
Speaker 1: press next, and then it will show you if you'd
Speaker 1: submit that. Once you know, it'll show you all the
Speaker 1: information that you have, and you press submit. So I've
Speaker 1: done this for a couple of different things and it
Speaker 1: does work. I actually submitted a one way street one
Speaker 1: time because Google Maps made me go down a one
Speaker 1: way street the wrong way and all these people are
Speaker 1: honking at me. I was like, yes, hi, I'm rich
Speaker 1: from TV. Good to see it too, and they're like, no,
Speaker 1: you're going the wrong way. I was like, oh, whoops,
Speaker 1: just kidding, but yeah, people were honking at me, and
Speaker 1: so I said, oh my gosh, I can't believe that
Speaker 1: Google sent me on a right turn down that street.
Speaker 1: And so I submitted the correction and within a couple
Speaker 1: of days. I don't know, maybe it took longer than that,
Speaker 1: but it was corrected. So, Deborah, I think that's the
Speaker 1: way to do it. All these companies use the same
Speaker 1: the same Google Maps data, so I think once you
Speaker 1: fix it there, it will be fixed in other places.
Speaker 1: Let's see Tim says, hey, I briefly heard you talk
Speaker 1: about using Wi Fi calling internationally. I have a Motorola
Speaker 1: with Wi Fi calling my cell provider's consumer cellular, and
Speaker 1: when I call them, I get varying instructions. How does
Speaker 1: one use it without accruing charges? Do I want airplane mode.
Speaker 1: While using it, I'll get a local simcard as well
Speaker 1: for a second phone I travel with. I found your
Speaker 1: show recently on KXL in Portland, Oregon.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Tim. So Tim.
Speaker 1: We talked about Wi Fi calling last week on the show,
Speaker 1: and after doing some more research, it's interesting I was
Speaker 1: not aware that some of the companies will charge you
Speaker 1: for calling that is through Wi Fi calling, which is
Speaker 1: kind of news to me. So I think the way
Speaker 1: most of them work is that here's what I typically
Speaker 1: do when I get to a different place. Let's say
Speaker 1: I wasn't using a third party SIM on my phone,
Speaker 1: which I always use most of the time, I would
Speaker 1: flip my phone into airplane mode. I would turn on
Speaker 1: the Wi Fi and find a network right at the
Speaker 1: hotel or out and about in town or whatever. And
Speaker 1: I would also make sure that my phone has Wi
Speaker 1: Fi calling turned on. And you probably want to activate
Speaker 1: this before you go on your trip, but you should
Speaker 1: be able to turn it on. So once Wi Fi
Speaker 1: calling is on, the main thing you want to do
Speaker 1: is make sure that your roaming is turned off. Now,
Speaker 1: every company is a little bit different, and it seems
Speaker 1: like Consumer Cellular in particularly in particular.
Speaker 4: They're not so.
Speaker 2: Forgiving when it comes to these calls.
Speaker 1: Some companies will treat the calls as if you are
Speaker 1: as long as you're not calling international numbers, they'll be fine.
Speaker 1: So let's say you're in Italy and you're calling the US.
Speaker 1: Since it's a US number, they will just build that
Speaker 1: as your normal typical call that you would make. But
Speaker 1: I'm looking at this Consumer Cellular and when you look
Speaker 1: at Wi Fi calling, it says does Wi Fi calling
Speaker 1: use minutes from my phone? And it says Wi Fi
Speaker 1: calls are built the same as calls made over the
Speaker 1: cellular network. They do use minutes from your plan and
Speaker 1: will show usage. They will show in usage details. That's
Speaker 1: really interesting. So my advice is that I would if
Speaker 1: you have this in this particular instance, I would really
Speaker 1: I would call Consumer Cellular and ask them very specifically, say,
Speaker 1: if I'm in Italy on Wi Fi calling and I
Speaker 1: call a number in Italy, am I charged? And they
Speaker 1: may say, yes, you'll be charged an international call. If
Speaker 1: I call a number in the US, am I charge?
Speaker 1: And they say, well, it's charged against your minutes, but
Speaker 1: you have unlimited minutes, so it'll be fine.
Speaker 2: It'll be free.
Speaker 1: So I would no matter what provider you have, I
Speaker 1: would make sure you understand how Wi Fi calling works
Speaker 1: before you activate it. But in my experience it works
Speaker 1: pretty well for you making calls and also getting your texts.
Speaker 2: But just check with them to make sure.
Speaker 1: Speaking of calls, Barbie flip phone coming out this summer.
Speaker 1: Pink Barbie flip phone coming out in summer twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four from HMD. This is HMD and Mattel are teaming up.
Speaker 1: Do we need a pink Barbie flip phone?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 4: Why not?
Speaker 1: Remember the Motorol eraser that was pink. That was a
Speaker 1: flip phone that was popular. Coming up next, we're going
Speaker 1: to talk cord cutting. You are listening to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here talking technology.
Speaker 1: The website rich on tech dot tv. If you hear
Speaker 1: something mentioned that you want to link for, just go
Speaker 1: right there to the big red banner at the top
Speaker 1: and you can get the link. Coming up is the
Speaker 1: feedback segment. So if you heard me talk about something
Speaker 1: on the show you want to get your two cents in,
Speaker 1: go to the website rich on Tech dot tv, hit
Speaker 1: contact and submit your comments right now. We'll get to
Speaker 1: them right after this, but this is really exciting. A
Speaker 1: company is named Antenna's Direct. Richard Schneider is the president
Speaker 1: and founder. And it's ironic how much antennas have a
Speaker 1: place in our lives, with how much tech and streaming
Speaker 1: we have. But a lot of people like their antenna. Richard,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for joining me having me.
Speaker 10: Uh yeah, a lot of people think the age of
Speaker 10: antennas are behind us, and uh, I'm myself and this
Speaker 10: company doesn't seem to think so though.
Speaker 2: No, So tell me tell me about Antenna's Direct, Like,
Speaker 2: what made you start this?
Speaker 10: So actually it was a hobby that morphed into a business.
Speaker 10: So I was a hunk theater enthusiast and at the time,
Speaker 10: the only way to get high definition television was from
Speaker 10: an antenna. This actually pre preceded Blu ray, and the
Speaker 10: cable and satellite companies had not caught up yet. But
Speaker 10: there was wonderful uncompressed loops of these pollinating plants and
Speaker 10: things in two thousand and three, and it was me
Speaker 10: and maybe four other people in the in my market
Speaker 10: that we're watching the HD broadcast, and the broadcast engineer
Speaker 10: at the local CBS affiliates said, you know the only
Speaker 10: form of broadcasting I know where I know all my
Speaker 10: viewers on a first name basis.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so.
Speaker 10: We started making antennas for people in the home theater hobby.
Speaker 10: And I never thought it would actually amount to more
Speaker 10: than maybe twenty maybe twenty five antennas a month. And
Speaker 10: I was making them in my garage, and there were
Speaker 10: tuned to the frequencies on which the digital stations were broadcast,
Speaker 10: and the stuff you bought in the stores at the
Speaker 10: mass market really didn't work as well. And so what
Speaker 10: happened was people started telling the other limited fringe people
Speaker 10: on the home theater forums and it just started to
Speaker 10: spiral exponentially, and we actually were.
Speaker 7: On the.
Speaker 10: Forbes five hundred list four years in a row as
Speaker 10: fastest growing company. And all this time we had no
Speaker 10: venture capital, no investors, nothing like that. They we're just
Speaker 10: doing it out of cash flow, just credit card sales
Speaker 10: on our website. And then around two thousand and six,
Speaker 10: there was a Gadgets for Guys segment on the Today
Speaker 10: Show and Riche de Muro was the presenter. That was
Speaker 10: man there, I don't remember, and there was.
Speaker 2: A it was a it was a picture frame antenna.
Speaker 10: Very good, very good.
Speaker 1: And so I was in the makeup room that morning
Speaker 1: at the Today Show and uh, the makeup person I
Speaker 1: was like, Oh, this is so exciting because the whole
Speaker 1: point was that they had just gone to HD and
Speaker 1: like they you know, it was all kind of new.
Speaker 1: And so the makeup person, I'm sitting there in the
Speaker 1: makeup chair and I said, Hey, I'm like, how came
Speaker 1: you're not watching your show in HD.
Speaker 2: She's like, what do you mean?
Speaker 1: And I said, well, you got to change the channel
Speaker 1: to like the FOURD dot one whatever it was in
Speaker 1: New York City. And she's like what And I go,
Speaker 1: can I do it? And I pick up the remote
Speaker 1: and I change it and the whole thing just was like,
Speaker 1: you know, popped into like clarity, and she was like
Speaker 1: blown away and it was such a cool moment.
Speaker 2: So yeah, it stackers it.
Speaker 10: It was the imagination that people who work in broadcasting
Speaker 10: are not aware that they actually broadcast. This is my
Speaker 10: This is my biggest challenge. It's not other I'm not
Speaker 10: worried about competing with other antenna companies. My biggest challenge
Speaker 10: is that about sweet thing, about seventy percent of the
Speaker 10: population is completely unaware that over the air digital broadcasting exists.
Speaker 10: And in a market like Los Angeles, you need one
Speaker 10: hundred and fifty plus channels, and a small market where
Speaker 10: I live, it's Saint Louis is about fifty seven channels,
Speaker 10: And it absolutely it frustrates me. We've we've done morning
Speaker 10: news shows and the reporter doesn't isn't isn't aware? And
Speaker 10: I'm literally having their transmitting power in the background. Yeah,
Speaker 10: and the morning reporter is like, really, I can I
Speaker 10: can get TV from an antenna? Well do you think
Speaker 10: that thousand foot tall thickies?
Speaker 2: So what let's what do you think? Okay?
Speaker 1: Because people think of antennas as they don't work. They
Speaker 1: the signal is fuzzy. See, you know it's tough to
Speaker 1: get these channels. What do you think people need to
Speaker 1: know about antennas today?
Speaker 10: Okay? So the picture quality is actually better than that
Speaker 10: a satellite or cable. There's little to no compression, and
Speaker 10: that's a technical word of how they have to squeeze
Speaker 10: the bits and bites down the pipeline. So if you
Speaker 10: watch over the air versus cable or satellite or even streaming,
Speaker 10: if you switch back and forth, you'll notice it pops.
Speaker 10: It's just the vibrancy and the details greater over the ear.
Speaker 10: Now the challenge is the frequencies are a little bit
Speaker 10: higher than they were in the old analog days, so
Speaker 10: they don't penetrate building materials or hills as well, So
Speaker 10: you're going to be it'll be more reliable. If you
Speaker 10: can get an antenna near a window. Outdoors is always
Speaker 10: the most reliable. And the good news is the science
Speaker 10: of antenna development has really advanced a lot in the
Speaker 10: last twenty years, and so antennas are you know, ten
Speaker 10: percent of the size they would have been in your
Speaker 10: grandparents day, and they're much more powerful. And then they're
Speaker 10: more aesthetics, so you don't really have to worry about
Speaker 10: having one in your house or on your roof. It
Speaker 10: won't it won't look like something from the I Love
Speaker 10: Losey days. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'm always impressed when I plug an antenna in on
Speaker 1: a TV and a random room in my house and
Speaker 1: it does pull in like a majority of the channels
Speaker 1: and with great fidelity.
Speaker 10: Yeah, and and our system of broadcasting again, you know
Speaker 10: the good news and the bad news is, you know,
Speaker 10: if you want every channel, you just need to get
Speaker 10: it away from metallic objects or or you know, masonry
Speaker 10: structures or things like that. But it's really not that hard.
Speaker 10: A window you can you know, we've we required Mohu
Speaker 10: a few years ago and they invented an antennae just
Speaker 10: it just sticks in the in the window glass. It's
Speaker 10: a bin film antenna and it works great. So you
Speaker 10: don't really need to be a tech technical person to
Speaker 10: be able to get over the air. And but again
Speaker 10: the challenge a lot of people think it's illegal. And
Speaker 10: we have a problem in that our TikTok videos are
Speaker 10: constantly being taken down because people are reporting that we're
Speaker 10: that we were promoting illegal activities, piracy and and in
Speaker 10: the various activities, and it's really frustrating. We got our
Speaker 10: TikTok accounts suspended for over a month.
Speaker 2: That's wild.
Speaker 10: It's just really I'm trying to tell the story and
Speaker 10: not just that an attendance exists. That is, you're not
Speaker 10: breaking the law, there's no there's no catch.
Speaker 2: That's wild.
Speaker 1: It is that like okay, okay, well what about this
Speaker 1: ATSC three point zero have you?
Speaker 2: What's the deal with that?
Speaker 10: So I get to sit on the meetings we are
Speaker 10: I'm I'm a member of that of the it's called
Speaker 10: the Advanced Television Standards Committee, And uh, what's it's the
Speaker 10: new new format and what it's going to allow. It's
Speaker 10: it's what they call spectral efficient, meaning you can fit
Speaker 10: more bits of bytes through the same television channel six
Speaker 10: megahertz channel that a station broadcast. They can fit anywhere
Speaker 10: from you know, thirty to one hundred percent more data through,
Speaker 10: so that means they can broadcast in four K. They
Speaker 10: can provide metadata, you know. Uh, and it's IP based,
Speaker 10: so it's essentially over the year streaming. It's Internet broadcasting
Speaker 10: using using odd IP broad broadcasting standards, and and there'll
Speaker 10: be all kinds of ways you could interact with the programming.
Speaker 10: It can also allow yours TV to be addressed in
Speaker 10: times of emergency, if there's a typhoon or a hurricane.
Speaker 10: It can actually have the ability to wake up your
Speaker 10: television for people who live in that in that in
Speaker 10: the path of a tornado. Obviously, they're also going to
Speaker 10: use geo targeting to probably narrow cast some marketing, so
Speaker 10: you might see a different ad than your neighbor might
Speaker 10: might see. That's interesting, yeah, and I you know, it
Speaker 10: helps pay for the pre broadcasting is you might see
Speaker 10: ads for pickup trucks, and your neighbors might might see
Speaker 10: something for for lawnmowers. I don't know whatever your interests are,
Speaker 10: so but but the being more spectful efficient means it
Speaker 10: has the capacity for more channels and it will be
Speaker 10: bi directional, so you can you can interact with your
Speaker 10: programming and there will be ways of if you know,
Speaker 10: interacting with the ads like you do essentially on the computer.
Speaker 10: And uh, it's it's gonna have a lot of features,
Speaker 10: uh that will be comparable to paid streaming.
Speaker 1: Awesome, all right, Richard, I've got a run but final
Speaker 1: piece of advice for consumers.
Speaker 10: Well, it's not as difficult as you think. You dumber
Speaker 10: people than you have figured this out.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 10: And the pitchure quality, you'll be shocked. It's going to
Speaker 10: be better than pay television.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: Richard Schneider, President and founder of Antenna's Direct. Check them
Speaker 1: out Antenna's Direct, find what works for you. You could
Speaker 1: pop in your zip code, they'll recommend the best antenna
Speaker 1: for you and grab that free over the air signal.
Speaker 1: Don't always have to pay for streaming. Coming up next,
Speaker 1: we are going to open up the feedback. You are
Speaker 1: listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Bit of news this week that Apple canceled its electric
Speaker 1: car project after a decade of work on it. This
Speaker 1: is the project they never publicly announced, but apparently they
Speaker 1: were building an electric car for ten years and they
Speaker 1: spent many, many many dollars on this project, Project Titan.
Speaker 1: Apparently they had almost two thousand people working on this.
Speaker 1: But again none of this was ever mentioned by Apple.
Speaker 1: So did it really happen. We don't know, but this
Speaker 1: is the report out of Bloomberg that they are closing
Speaker 1: down their work on their electric car project.
Speaker 2: How sad.
Speaker 1: So team members are going to shift their focus to
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence. That makes a lot of sense. Why did
Speaker 1: they not do this? Cooling ev demand, manufacturing issues, profitability concerns,
Speaker 1: and times have changed. You know, it's tough when they
Speaker 1: probably started this, if they ever started this, very skeptical.
Speaker 1: You know, times are different. Now you've got some pretty
Speaker 1: big players in the electric car world. I think Apple
Speaker 1: could easily be up there, and I think they should
Speaker 1: just buy Lucid and they can change that car to
Speaker 1: the Apple car.
Speaker 2: That's really what they want to build. Anyway. UFI has a.
Speaker 1: New three hundred and sixty degree four K camera that
Speaker 1: does not need Wi Fi or power outlets. This is
Speaker 1: a two hundred and fifty dollars four K camera called
Speaker 1: the Ufee four G LTE Cam S three P thirty
Speaker 1: three hundred and sixty degree views seventy degree tilt. Can
Speaker 1: connect to LTE cellular networks instead of Wi Fi, so
Speaker 1: you can put it anywhere. It's got a solar panel
Speaker 1: so you can charge the battery anywhere it is, and
Speaker 1: uses AI to detect people. It's got Google and Alexa integration.
Speaker 1: It can sort recordings locally for up to eight months
Speaker 1: on a micro SD card. Now, uf has had some
Speaker 1: privacy issues in the past, but it sounds like every
Speaker 1: single security camera company at this point has I can't
Speaker 1: think of one that has not had an issue. They've
Speaker 1: all had their lapses. But it's kind of cool. If
Speaker 1: you need a four G LTE camera on your property somewhere,
Speaker 1: that's another option. I have not tested it, so I
Speaker 1: can't vouch for it.
Speaker 2: Let's see.
Speaker 1: Schwalby says, Rich, can you tell me how to turn
Speaker 1: Can you tell me how to turn off the microphone
Speaker 1: on my iPhone? So sound and voices will not be
Speaker 1: recorded while I'm videoing. I need to do an inspection,
Speaker 1: and they don't want me to record their voices in
Speaker 1: case they say something confidential. Your shows are awesome. I
Speaker 1: watch you on TV and listen to your weekend shows,
Speaker 1: and I check out the website. There is not a
Speaker 1: way that I know of to turn off the microphone
Speaker 1: while recording on the iPhone. Couple of options. You can
Speaker 1: use a third party app that may give you that ability,
Speaker 1: something like Film Micpro Camera. Plus there's a lot of
Speaker 1: apps that can let you record on the iPhone. They
Speaker 1: may give you the ability to turn off the sound
Speaker 1: before you record it. You can also mute the sound
Speaker 1: after the fact, so you can go into a video
Speaker 1: on the iPhone and press edit and there's a little
Speaker 1: like it looks like a speaker icon. You just tap
Speaker 1: that and that will mute the audio, and then you
Speaker 1: can save that video without the audio. Or you can
Speaker 1: get some kind of microphone that you can plug into
Speaker 1: the phone and have that muted, and you know that
Speaker 1: would mute the sound as well. Joe says a longtime listener,
Speaker 1: I've consistently found value in your discussions. Today's topic on
Speaker 1: locating stream URLs particularly picked my interest. I thought it
Speaker 1: might be beneficial to share my personal setup with you
Speaker 1: and your audience. I use an application called stream Writer
Speaker 1: on my Windows system for listening to streams and to
Speaker 1: capture the stream RL. I rely on the Bulk Media
Speaker 1: Downloader extension on Chrome. This hope this information proves useful
Speaker 1: to you as well as others.
Speaker 2: Thanks Joe, Thanks Joe. Interesting.
Speaker 1: Leo said he forgot to mention a couple things in
Speaker 1: his interview. This was about Chrome os flex installation is
Speaker 1: totally successful about eighty to ninety five percent of times.
Speaker 1: I was going to mention Chrome os Flex combined with
Speaker 1: an SSD, a solid state drive can really make an
Speaker 1: old machine fly as opposed to the disc based hard drive.
Speaker 1: You may get calls from people who are trying to
Speaker 1: install this on their Mac computer. I didn't make it
Speaker 1: clear that on a Mac you would first download the
Speaker 1: Chrome browser and then use the Chromebook Recovery utility from
Speaker 1: there out.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Leo.
Speaker 1: Shane says, speaking of Wi Fi doorbells and security, it
Speaker 1: applies to kids watches too. Parents should not buy Chinese
Speaker 1: made connected kids watches because the server that allows the
Speaker 1: watch to communicate with parent apps might not be safe,
Speaker 1: and it connects to the manufacturer servers in China. The
Speaker 1: best is to buy from US mobile operators offering kids
Speaker 1: watches because they're certified in the US by mobile operators too.
Speaker 1: All US mobile operators must use their own servers in
Speaker 1: the US and make sure they're always secure due to
Speaker 1: COPA and CCPA certification. I know this because I have
Speaker 1: twenty years experience in connected wearables and my company provides
Speaker 1: the back end platforms and servers to all mobile operators
Speaker 1: in the US and Europe. Thank you, Shane. That's interesting. Wow,
Speaker 1: good to know. Yes, look, I think a lot of this.
Speaker 1: You know, you just have to be aware of security
Speaker 1: issues when you're buying a third party product that may
Speaker 1: not adhere to the same standards we have in the US.
Speaker 1: Dawn Marie says, Hey, Rich, I watch you every day.
Speaker 1: I'm curious why can't all phones have the SOS help
Speaker 1: Why is it just for iPhones? I have a Samsung.
Speaker 1: I feel it's important for everyone to have this option
Speaker 1: for safety.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much.
Speaker 5: So.
Speaker 1: Dawn is referring to the SOS emergence and see help
Speaker 1: over Satellite that the iPhone fourteen and fifteen have it
Speaker 1: looks like that feature is coming soon to Android. Just
Speaker 1: this week, some of the blogs found out that the
Speaker 1: Pixel phones, it looks like they are getting that first.
Speaker 1: It'll probably be a big feature on the new Pixel phones.
Speaker 2: Let's see. Laurel says, thanks for your tech smart program.
Speaker 1: I just saw your video clip on kron up here
Speaker 1: in San Francisco about subscribing to social media. I don't
Speaker 1: subscribe to any social media. There are too many whackos
Speaker 1: and bad guys out there on the Internet. And like
Speaker 1: a fool, I opened an email message from a person
Speaker 1: unknown to me who turned out to be a hacker.
Speaker 1: Yahoo is now trying to fix the email address of mine,
Speaker 1: which the hacker hacked. I'm eighty two years old. There
Speaker 1: was no internet, electronic devices, or television sets when I
Speaker 1: was growing up in the nineteen forties and nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1: I'm beginning to think the world was a better place
Speaker 1: back then. Well, it's certainly a different place, and I
Speaker 1: thought TV came out in the fifties.
Speaker 2: But I get it. I see what you're saying, Laurel.
Speaker 2: I get it. The world has changed.
Speaker 1: Not all of it's good, but UH get on TikTok
Speaker 1: and just check it out now as you kiddick, you
Speaker 1: don't have to get on board with all this stuff,
Speaker 1: but I appreciate you watching and believe me. I sit
Speaker 1: there on days and I sit there and say, wow,
Speaker 1: things used to be different. I think many things are better.
Speaker 1: In fact, Laurel, the fact that you can email me
Speaker 1: without sending a stamp or you know, buying a stamp
Speaker 1: for a couple, you know, sixty five cents whatever they are, Now,
Speaker 1: that's a pretty amazing thing. You couldn't do that back
Speaker 1: in the day. If you can believe it, that is
Speaker 1: going to do it. For this episode of the show.
Speaker 1: You can find links to everything I mentioned all on
Speaker 1: my website. Just go to rich on tech dot tv
Speaker 1: for the show notes. You can find me on social
Speaker 1: media twenty four to seven, Laurel, hide your ears. I
Speaker 1: am at rich on Tech, on Instagram, on x on Facebook, everywhere.
Speaker 1: Next week Rivian is on veiling their newest ev Will
Speaker 1: it be enough to save that company? Thanks so much
Speaker 1: for listening. There are so many ways you can spend
Speaker 1: your time. I do appreciate you spending it right here
Speaker 1: with me. Thanks to everyone who makes this show. Possible
Speaker 1: Bobo Kim Bill. Everyone, my name is rich Demiro. I
Speaker 1: will talk to you real soon