Speaker 1: What's going on on rich dmiro And this is Rich
Speaker 1: on Tech. This is the show where I talk about
Speaker 1: the tech stuff I think you should know about. It's
Speaker 1: also the place where I answer your questions about technology.
Speaker 1: I believe that tech should be interesting, useful, and fun.
Speaker 1: Let's open up those phone lines at triple a rich
Speaker 1: one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to
Speaker 1: two four one zero one. Give me a call if
Speaker 1: you have a question about technology. Email is also open.
Speaker 1: Just go to rich on tech dot tv and hit contact.
Speaker 1: This show is all about you. I'm gonna be answering
Speaker 1: a lot of your questions. I've got a backlog of emails.
Speaker 1: I've got them ready to go.
Speaker 2: You have.
Speaker 1: You get in touch with me pretty much every day
Speaker 1: of the week, and so I figured I'd take this
Speaker 1: show to sort of just get through a bunch of
Speaker 1: these questions that I get that I think apply to
Speaker 1: a lot of people.
Speaker 2: So we can help some folks out.
Speaker 1: So email open, go to the website rich on tech
Speaker 1: dot tv, or if you want to call eight eight
Speaker 1: eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four
Speaker 1: to two four one zero one.
Speaker 2: We do have some guests this week.
Speaker 1: Three great guests in fact, tech journalists and podcaster Tom Merritt,
Speaker 1: host of the Daily Tech News Show, is going to
Speaker 1: talk about some of his favorite tech things recently, including
Speaker 1: the new x real glasses, and later, we've got technology
Speaker 1: journalists Sabrina Ortiz, senior editor at ZD Net. She's going
Speaker 1: to join to talk all things AI and UH. Later
Speaker 1: later in the show, we've got Josh Goren. He is
Speaker 1: with Walt Disney Imagineering. I told you I recently had
Speaker 1: the opportunity to take a tour meet up with those
Speaker 1: folks and got some cool inside looks at what you know,
Speaker 1: Disney does with cutting edge technology to bring all these
Speaker 1: experiences to life.
Speaker 2: So we're going to talk to Josh about that this week.
Speaker 1: I just got back from Kawai, Hawaii. Always fun to
Speaker 1: go to Hawaii. It's man. We celebrated My wife and
Speaker 1: I celebrated our twenty year wedding anniversary, which is just
Speaker 1: wild because I remember going to Hawaii for our anniversary.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Bobo, And it was great, really really nice.
Speaker 1: It's one of these things where you got to take
Speaker 1: the time to do these things and just celebrate. And
Speaker 1: you know, we felt bad leaving the kids. We felt
Speaker 1: bad leaving work. We had to change everything around the
Speaker 1: last minute because my wife is starting a new job,
Speaker 1: and so we had everything planned and we had actually
Speaker 1: a different place planned, and we had to just swap everything.
Speaker 1: And it's these little things in life that you kind
Speaker 1: of come up against and you just power through it
Speaker 1: and you do it. And we changed all the flights,
Speaker 1: we changed the hotel, and we did it all and
Speaker 1: it was great. We had such a nice and if
Speaker 1: you haven't been to Kawhi, it is it's quite the experience.
Speaker 1: I'm a big Jurassic Park fan, and so Kawai obviously
Speaker 1: is where they filmed a lot of that movie, and
Speaker 1: it is it is desolate. There's not a lot there
Speaker 1: and that's what we wanted, and so we were hiking
Speaker 1: to breakfast, which was really cool, just stayed at the
Speaker 1: hotel most of the time, went to places locally around there,
Speaker 1: but there's not a lot. There's not like chain restaurants.
Speaker 1: There's not a lot of places to go and eat.
Speaker 1: And I'm not really selling this place, but that's what
Speaker 1: we wanted. And it rained every day we were there,
Speaker 1: which was really cool. At night, went on a bunch
Speaker 1: of hikes which were just amazing. I cannot speak highly
Speaker 1: enough of all trails. If you are not if that,
Speaker 1: if that app is not on your phone, and you
Speaker 1: like to like hike at all, or even run or
Speaker 1: anything that's outdoors, that just opens up the world. Like
Speaker 1: I will tell you when my wife and I went
Speaker 1: to Kawai ten years ago, I think, or fifteen years ago,
Speaker 1: it was we went on this hike that we had
Speaker 1: no idea what we were in for. I'm talking this
Speaker 1: hike was about seven hours up and down mountains, muddy, slippery,
Speaker 1: going crossing rivers, and we were in crocs, we were
Speaker 1: in flip flops, and we had no idea what to
Speaker 1: expect out of this hike. And that was before technology
Speaker 1: gave you the ability to know what to expect in
Speaker 1: this world. And now you go on the hikes, you've
Speaker 1: got people leaving reviews from the day before saying, Hey,
Speaker 1: this is what you need to know, this is what
Speaker 1: you're up against. This area was muddy, here's the trail,
Speaker 1: you can follow it, you can download it on your phone.
Speaker 1: I mean, it really is quite incredible. It's the same
Speaker 1: way kind of like with Google Maps. I was talking
Speaker 1: to a couple on our vacation that was from you know,
Speaker 1: they lived in New York City, and I said, when
Speaker 1: I lived in New York City, it was so tough
Speaker 1: to get around before Google Maps. You literally had to
Speaker 1: print out your entire route on this website called hop stop.
Speaker 1: You would say where you're starting, where you're going, and
Speaker 1: it would print out directions to take the subway, and
Speaker 1: then you would exit the subway, you'd go the wrong way.
Speaker 1: You'd start walking down the street and invariably going the
Speaker 1: wrong way. So, I mean, our world has just gotten
Speaker 1: so much easier because of the smartphone and the apps,
Speaker 1: and it's it's just quite incredible now. The thing that
Speaker 1: I do struggle with, I will tell you when I'm
Speaker 1: on vacation is my email. So on this vacation specifically,
Speaker 1: I did not want to check my email. And I
Speaker 1: understand that my emails on my phone, so of course
Speaker 1: I was looking at that. But you know, I want
Speaker 1: it to be on vacation. I want to be disconnected.
Speaker 1: But the problem is I end up getting more stressed
Speaker 1: out watching all the.
Speaker 2: Emails pile up.
Speaker 1: And by the way, people are saying rich like I
Speaker 1: got someone that of your very nice thank you. They
Speaker 1: said they're a listener of the show, and they said,
Speaker 1: this is my second request, this is my third request.
Speaker 1: I'm like, excuse me, Like, okay, I get it, you're
Speaker 1: emailing me and you're not hearing back, but like, you
Speaker 1: have to understand that I am a human that is
Speaker 1: like going through life, and I have jobs and things
Speaker 1: and family, and like writing back to emails is not
Speaker 1: something I'm always able to do instantly. And so I'm
Speaker 1: on my trip and I'm like, I'm telling my wife.
Speaker 1: I'm like Lynn, I'm like, I really just need to
Speaker 1: bring my laptop and every day I just need to
Speaker 1: do my email for an hour in the morning and
Speaker 1: I'll be less stressed. I know I'm on vacation, but
Speaker 1: I have to do that just to sort of triage things.
Speaker 1: And she said, yeah, that's what my dad always did
Speaker 1: on vacation. They would sit there, my mom and dad
Speaker 1: would have a coffee in the morning and they would
Speaker 1: sit there with their email. And I didn't want to
Speaker 1: do that, but now I realize you kind of have to.
Speaker 1: So it's something that I've always struggled with because I
Speaker 1: don't leave. Some people do that thing where it says
Speaker 1: out of office. I don't do that because no one's
Speaker 1: really out of the office ever anymore. Right, Like there's
Speaker 1: a really truly important email it needed of responding to.
Speaker 1: Of course I'd reply to it. The other thing that
Speaker 1: I did is I tried watching movies on my phone.
Speaker 2: I watched Happy Gilmore Too, which it was funny.
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 1: Someone literally texted me I posted on my Instagram that
Speaker 1: I watched this movie. Someone was like, way to bow
Speaker 1: to the lowest common denominator in life. I'm like, you know,
Speaker 1: I can enjoy a silly movie, like these are the
Speaker 1: things you bobo's just walking out of the room. These
Speaker 1: are the things that you open yourself up to when
Speaker 1: you are a public person and posting on your social media. Right,
Speaker 1: I posted my anniversary, posted that I watched Happy Gilmore.
Speaker 1: I post all the time on my Instagram at richon
Speaker 1: Tech if you want to check it out. But yes,
Speaker 1: you open yourself up to people saying, oh, that movie
Speaker 1: was silly too.
Speaker 2: I thought it was funny. I enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: And also the people shaming you for watching a silly
Speaker 1: movie that, by the way, every single person in the
Speaker 1: United States watched Happy Gilmore on Friday night.
Speaker 2: Give me a break.
Speaker 1: When I looked at the top Google searches. Every single
Speaker 1: search was related to Happy Gilmore. And by the way,
Speaker 1: just how wild that, like thirty years later after the
Speaker 1: first movie, how much has changed in our world, Like
Speaker 1: just the age of people in that movie, the people
Speaker 1: that died, you know that were in the first original
Speaker 1: movie that are no longer with us. But I did
Speaker 1: try watching movie on my phone because I want to
Speaker 1: bring a tablet, And that was another mistake I made,
Speaker 1: because I'm sitting there on the plane and I'm watching
Speaker 1: this like tiny The first movie I watched and now
Speaker 1: I can't even remember what it was, but I'm watching it.
Speaker 1: It was like one of oh it was Sinners, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, was Sinners was interesting, That was an
Speaker 1: interesting movie. But I'm watching it and it's like letterboxed
Speaker 1: inside the screen. So not only are you watching it
Speaker 1: on a tiny screen, but there's also like two inches
Speaker 1: of border around the movie that you can't expand. And
Speaker 1: so my wife is sitting there, She's like, what is
Speaker 1: going on on your screen there? Like you're watching on
Speaker 1: a postage stamp. I said, yes, I know, Uh so
Speaker 1: I do need to bring a tablet. A one tip
Speaker 1: I will give you that I did. I did pick
Speaker 1: up while I was at the Hawaii went to this
Speaker 1: like random grocery store, and of course you come to
Speaker 1: the checkout and you know, you have to put in
Speaker 1: your club card number. And I'm telling you, and I've
Speaker 1: mentioned this before, but I'm going to tell you again
Speaker 1: because they're like, okay, club card, and it's always embarrassing
Speaker 1: to do this, but I'm telling you, you put in
Speaker 1: eight six, seven, five, three oh nine.
Speaker 2: It works every time. It works every single time.
Speaker 1: The only thing I had to know was the area
Speaker 1: code for Hawaii, and I guessed it really quickly. I
Speaker 1: think it was was it eight oh eight? I think
Speaker 1: it was eight oh eight Hawaii area code. Let me say,
Speaker 1: uh yeah, eight o waight, So I did eight OA.
Speaker 1: And you know, the person that to check out is
Speaker 1: like waiting for me, and I'm typing it in and
Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm just waiting for like some sort of
Speaker 1: alarm to go off, you know, like or the song
Speaker 1: to start like playing on the speakers in the in
Speaker 1: the grocery store. It didn't, but the guy's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: that worked, thank you. And I'm telling you, I've used
Speaker 1: that so many times when I travel. If it's not
Speaker 1: like one of the chain stores that you're you're you
Speaker 1: used to shopping in where your card may work.
Speaker 2: Try it. A six, seven, five, three oh nine works
Speaker 2: every time?
Speaker 4: Not sure?
Speaker 2: Why why is that number so prominent.
Speaker 1: The other thing I will tell you about the trip
Speaker 1: is hotels need to figure out tipping in a cashless society. Now,
Speaker 1: I will tell you this because the problem is housekeeping.
Speaker 1: You want to leave a tip. So first couple of
Speaker 1: days I had some cash on me and I'm like, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm leaving, you know, cash, And the problem is, if
Speaker 1: you don't get change, you can't really leave. You know,
Speaker 1: if you only have twenties, you only have one hundred,
Speaker 1: whatever you have on you, you may not be able
Speaker 1: to you know, you might not want to leave that
Speaker 1: for every single time you want to tip someone. Right,
Speaker 1: So I went around I'm not kidding. The last day,
Speaker 1: I really I wanted to leave a tip for the housekeeper.
Speaker 1: I went around to no less than like ten people
Speaker 1: around the like, I walked all around, all the bars,
Speaker 1: all the you know, the people around the pool. Nobody
Speaker 1: had cash. Sorry, can't make change. Sorry, can't make change. Sorry,
Speaker 1: can't make change. And so finally when I was I
Speaker 1: was getting the car from the valet guy. I was like, hey,
Speaker 1: do you have any change because I only have a twenty.
Speaker 1: He's like, no, not really, so I had to tip
Speaker 1: him even more than I would like. This guy that
Speaker 1: literally just brought me my car got like the biggest
Speaker 1: tip of the day just because I wasn't gonna not
Speaker 1: tip him.
Speaker 2: So I was like, Okay, well here here's it. You know,
Speaker 2: whatever you got.
Speaker 1: You know, It's just my point is we need I've
Speaker 1: been in hotels where they have QR codes in the room.
Speaker 1: I think every person that works at a hotel needs
Speaker 1: like a QR code to like be like, hey, yes,
Speaker 1: you can tip me, because the problem is you're just
Speaker 1: not getting as many tips as you used to get
Speaker 1: because people just don't have cash on them or they
Speaker 1: don't have an easy way to tip. People want to tip.
Speaker 1: They want to give you that money for helping them
Speaker 1: out and providing some sort of service, especially if it's
Speaker 1: a good service.
Speaker 2: So hotels really need to figure that out.
Speaker 1: My favorite thing on this trip watching people struggle to
Speaker 1: take selfies. That is always that's a pastime of mine.
Speaker 1: I will never it's so funny, especially in front of
Speaker 1: the sunset. No camera can do that all right.
Speaker 2: Eighty eight rich one oh one eighty eight seven four
Speaker 2: to two, four to one zero one. You coming up next.
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. I was reading capping my trip to
Speaker 1: Hawaii and the valet person who had no change for me,
Speaker 1: Ki Kim wrote me and said, uh, I got played.
Speaker 1: He's a valet guy. Of course he has plenty of change,
Speaker 1: and I will give him this. It was early in
Speaker 1: the morning. I was like one of the first people
Speaker 1: to get my car, and so I think that was it.
Speaker 1: And so because I did ask the valet person the
Speaker 1: first day I got there to break you know, break
Speaker 1: a hundred, and this guy pulled out a wad like
Speaker 1: I'm talking just tons of money, like he was embarrassed
Speaker 1: to show it.
Speaker 2: It was so much money, you know, so much cash there.
Speaker 1: And I remember when I was a waiter, I would
Speaker 1: always start my day with the right amount of change,
Speaker 1: right like that would be part of my preparation because
Speaker 1: you always wanted to be able to make change for
Speaker 1: folks that were paying their bill, and so you were prepared,
Speaker 1: so be prepared. But yeah, nowadays, I'm telling you everything
Speaker 1: has gotten so digital, and so you know, people just
Speaker 1: they're not prepared. And I think that some people think
Speaker 1: it might help them, which I guess in the case
Speaker 1: of the valet guy did.
Speaker 2: But some people just.
Speaker 1: If it's if it's not going to get changed, they're
Speaker 1: just like, okay, never mind, but yeah, let's go to uh,
Speaker 1: let's go to Tarin in Tennessee. Tarn You're on with rich.
Speaker 5: By a little on about three to four acres. I'm
Speaker 5: currently inside my home using the Aero product okay for
Speaker 5: my WiFi extenders and router and using Spectrum. I recently
Speaker 5: had an Ethernet cable installed outside, so now I'm looking
Speaker 5: for some sort of hardwired Wi Fi extender weather proof
Speaker 5: to attached to the house to extend the Wi Fi projecting.
Speaker 2: Out super easy. You already have euro Euro has it.
Speaker 1: They've got what's called the Outdoor seven and this is
Speaker 1: specifically meant for an outdoor setup, exactly what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: And the good news is it sounds like you are
Speaker 1: and ready to just install this because you've already got
Speaker 1: the Ethernet, which means you're going to get a nice, clean,
Speaker 1: fast connection to this outdoor extender. This thing works. Let's see,
Speaker 1: it's Outdoor seven, that's what it's called. Operates negative forty
Speaker 1: degrees to one hundred and thirty one degrees, so hopefully
Speaker 1: you're within that range. If you're getting hotter than one
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty one degrees in Tennessee, then that that
Speaker 1: could be a problem. It also provides up to fifteen
Speaker 1: thousand square feet of outdoor coveraging can connect up to
Speaker 1: one hundred devices. I've not personally tested this, but I
Speaker 1: was actually just talking to someone that that has and
Speaker 1: it's it's getting great reviews. So it's expensive. It's three
Speaker 1: hundred and ninety nine dollars for one of these. But
Speaker 1: it sounds like you've got a pretty good setup there.
Speaker 1: Sounds like you've got a lot of outdoor space. If
Speaker 1: you want those gadgets to connect properly, this is the
Speaker 1: way to do it. And it doesn't sound like you're
Speaker 1: gonna need a lot of installation like it sounds like
Speaker 1: this is something you can do yourself since you already
Speaker 1: have the Ethernet jack. The only thing is you may
Speaker 1: have to the only thing is you may have to get.
Speaker 1: I'm looking to see if there's a plug that's required.
Speaker 1: That might be the only thing you have to do
Speaker 1: is get a plug for this. So but yeah, three
Speaker 1: hundred nine and nine bucks called the Eero Outdoor seven.
Speaker 1: I think that'll solve all of your problems. Taran Terran.
Speaker 1: By the way, my sister's name is Arran. You spell
Speaker 1: it t r e n. My sister spells t r
Speaker 1: y n. So unique name. Thanks for the call today,
Speaker 1: appreciate it. Uh, let's go to uh, let's see here
Speaker 1: Super Super and Berkeley.
Speaker 2: You're on with her rye Hie.
Speaker 6: Show.
Speaker 2: Thank you love to hear that. What's going on?
Speaker 7: Well, so I'm visually in treed to I my friends
Speaker 7: let me use the raven of metaglasses. Okay, And so
Speaker 7: I find out via my Instagram account and on Facebook.
Speaker 7: And I was just thinking enough a college friend that
Speaker 7: I haven't talked to you in a while, and the
Speaker 7: only way I could get a hold of them is
Speaker 7: via Facebook. So I went on to Facebook. They sent
Speaker 7: me a code to type it in. But then it
Speaker 7: looked like I created a new account and an account
Speaker 7: I don't see my old e fent from college. I'm confused.
Speaker 1: Okay, so it sounds like it sounds like you either
Speaker 1: have a different account or two accounts. The way the
Speaker 1: meta quest works, is it or sorry, the meta glasses
Speaker 1: is they use your Facebook account to log in typically
Speaker 1: as far as I know. So it sounds to me like,
Speaker 1: have you downloaded the app to your phone? I'm sure
Speaker 1: you have, because you needed to sign up for these things.
Speaker 7: Right, Yeah, I have the meta AI, but it's a
Speaker 7: meta through the glasses are through my Instagram now.
Speaker 1: Okay, right, talking about Facebook, right, okay, so it sounds
Speaker 1: like you need to switch the account that you're using
Speaker 1: on these glasses.
Speaker 2: So if you open up that meta.
Speaker 7: Oh, they're not related. They're not related at all. What
Speaker 7: happened was that I haven't been on Facebook in a while,
Speaker 7: and but them getting the meta glasses inspired me to
Speaker 7: look up some college friends. So when I when they
Speaker 7: sent me on my phone, they sent me a code.
Speaker 7: I typed it in and it looked like I created
Speaker 7: a new account instead of my old account with all
Speaker 7: my college friends that I was trying to look for.
Speaker 7: I'm not related, Okay, it just inspired me to get
Speaker 7: onto Facebook.
Speaker 2: I got it, got it, got it, Okay, But you're sorry.
Speaker 2: That you're enjoying the glasses.
Speaker 8: I am.
Speaker 1: Yeah, those things are incredible. And you said you're you
Speaker 1: said your vision impaired.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I'm totally blind. So I was been reading menus
Speaker 7: and reading stuff off the store, and I even went
Speaker 7: to a small convenience serve out my house and pretty
Speaker 7: much ninety five percent it at myself. Just grabbed a
Speaker 7: couple of baggageips and I drink and I had the
Speaker 7: glasses read it.
Speaker 1: I love to hear it. Super I've got to run,
Speaker 1: but I love to hear it. I'm glad you're having
Speaker 1: a great experience with them. Back after this with tom
Speaker 1: Merritt's Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here
Speaker 1: hanging out with you talking technology at triple eight rich
Speaker 1: one O one eight eight eight seven four to two
Speaker 1: four one zero one the website rich on Tech dot TV.
Speaker 1: Sarah writes in rude and I thought she was talking
Speaker 1: to me, but she said, I just heard you say
Speaker 1: some people repeat their email questions to you two or
Speaker 1: three times. You're on vacation, your advice is free. What's
Speaker 1: wrong with people? Always grateful for any help I can get,
Speaker 1: either from you directly or your amazing.
Speaker 2: Tip filled show best Sarah. Thank you, Sarah.
Speaker 1: I know I feel bad even sharing that, but you
Speaker 1: know it's it's comical sometimes, like I am not like
Speaker 1: sitting here as an operator like waiting for your emails
Speaker 1: to like write back, but yes I do right back
Speaker 1: to a lot of them.
Speaker 2: So thanks for that. Now I'm not going to get
Speaker 2: any emails anymore. Bobo. That's it.
Speaker 1: We're done with the emails now. Good news is I
Speaker 1: have a backlog of like ten years of them. Let's join.
Speaker 1: Let's bring Tom Merritt on the show. Tom Merrit is
Speaker 1: host of the Daily Tech News Show and a former
Speaker 1: colleague of mine at SNET way way back.
Speaker 2: Tom, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: Thanks Rich, good to be here. Man, good talk to
Speaker 3: you again.
Speaker 1: So how is the show going. You've been doing that
Speaker 1: for how long now? How long has Daily Tech News
Speaker 1: Show been going on?
Speaker 3: Eleven years now? Oh my gosh, yeah, we've been keeping
Speaker 3: it consistent. My co host Sarah Lane, my producer Roger
Speaker 3: Chang still with us. So yeah, it's been going great.
Speaker 3: We'd love it.
Speaker 1: Now, would you call this Do you ever feel like
Speaker 1: there's ever a slow newsweek?
Speaker 3: That is a point of contention with me and everyone else.
Speaker 3: I always look at the news every day and I'm like,
Speaker 3: there's more things I want to talk about than I
Speaker 3: have time for. But there are definitely times where it
Speaker 3: gets closer to manageable versus like overwhelming. But that's just
Speaker 3: because I'm a news junkie and I love all this stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel the same way with this show.
Speaker 1: Like I come in with like one hundred things printed
Speaker 1: out and like ready to go, and I might get
Speaker 1: to like just a fraction of them.
Speaker 2: I want to mention that. I want to mention that.
Speaker 1: Oh I wanted to mention that, And it's like you
Speaker 1: just can't get to it all, even though time is
Speaker 1: unlimited on podcasting, and I guess, I mean not really
Speaker 1: on the radio, but I mean if you wanted like
Speaker 1: a seventeen hour podcast, I guess you could get through
Speaker 1: it all.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, I mean you could do it. I don't
Speaker 3: know if anyone will listen to it, but you you
Speaker 3: can make one for sure.
Speaker 1: So you've got a newsletter this weekend. You did your
Speaker 1: newsletter on some of your favorite apps, So tell me, well,
Speaker 1: first off, tell me your setup, because I see you
Speaker 1: on Instagram. You're often taking pictures on like a pixel fold, right,
Speaker 1: don't you use like a dual phone set up or what?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I have an iPhone sixteen Promax that I use,
Speaker 3: and I have a pixel fold original. I haven't upgraded
Speaker 3: it to the new one. Although everyone says the new
Speaker 3: one's a little more powerful. I like it, and I
Speaker 3: just I really like using the pixel fold when I
Speaker 3: travel because then I can do a little video without
Speaker 3: having to pull out a tablet or a laptop, just
Speaker 3: by unfolding it and increase I don't even see anymore.
Speaker 1: What do you think of the foldable kind of You know,
Speaker 1: we had the new fold hooles come out from Samsung,
Speaker 1: and you know there really trying to make that happen.
Speaker 2: It's been six years, I think, yeah.
Speaker 1: And then of course Apple is going to come out
Speaker 1: with the next year and everyone's gonna go, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: what's a fold of ball?
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, as always happens when Apple finally jumps on
Speaker 3: the train. I think they're too expensive, that's my main
Speaker 3: complaint with them. But I find the book style foldable
Speaker 3: like I have to be really useful in replacing the
Speaker 3: small tablet. I don't know if you remember the Next
Speaker 3: to seven way back in the day, Wow, I loved
Speaker 3: reading books on that and stuff, and this kind of
Speaker 3: fills that spot that I haven't had a gadget to
Speaker 3: fill in a long time. And I think even the flips,
Speaker 3: like the Razor the Samsung Galaxy Flip are popular. My
Speaker 3: wife has the Samsung Galaxy Flip and just loves it
Speaker 3: because it's compact but then folds out into a regular
Speaker 3: phone size not taking up as much room.
Speaker 1: And the Flip. And I'm doing my reviews of those
Speaker 1: phones soon, but I've realized the Fold for me is
Speaker 1: like it's great and it's amazing, and I think Samsung
Speaker 1: did a great It's just not for me personally, Like
Speaker 1: I just don't need that. Yeah, But the Flip, I've noticed,
Speaker 1: actually does have utility for content creation, and that is
Speaker 1: the fact that it kind of stands on its own.
Speaker 1: It can take pictures with the best cameras at all times.
Speaker 1: Like I did a quick little video where I just
Speaker 1: you know, set the phone up and was able to
Speaker 1: see myself and record it. And that is actually a
Speaker 1: physical like difference between that and like every other phone
Speaker 1: I've ever tested.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the fact that you can do like selfies and
Speaker 3: selfie videos and everything, and it's built in stand is
Speaker 3: is pretty useful. Sometimes.
Speaker 1: I didn't really want to use the word selfie because
Speaker 1: I know Bobo will laugh at me for saying that,
Speaker 1: but yes, it is good for all of that stuff.
Speaker 2: It really. Yeah.
Speaker 1: By the way, that the tablet that I've been testing
Speaker 1: that I kind of like for travel is called this
Speaker 1: TCL Tab ten and it's basically a smaller sized tablet
Speaker 1: that's Android and so it's perfect for like just watching
Speaker 1: movies and like it actually has this I don't know
Speaker 1: if you've heard of this next paper from TC from TCL. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're like almost mimics like a Kindle screen on it.
Speaker 1: So that's interesting too, is you can almost use it
Speaker 1: as a Kindle not as good as like the standard
Speaker 1: Kindle display like the e ink, but it and it's
Speaker 1: not bad.
Speaker 3: So yeah, if I remember right, because I think I
Speaker 3: saw it at CES. I haven't been able to use
Speaker 3: it myself. It looks kind of like e ink, but
Speaker 3: it has the refresh rate of a regular screen where
Speaker 3: e ink is so slow, so you kind of get
Speaker 3: the best of both worlds.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, and you can flip it into the different
Speaker 1: modes like you can have it like where it's just
Speaker 1: black and white or gray scale, and then you can
Speaker 1: have it like as a full color tablet, but the
Speaker 1: screen is not completely the same as like a standard
Speaker 1: I would guess it's probably closer to like what they're
Speaker 1: doing with the color soft Now, so tell me any
Speaker 1: apps in the newsletter that you should clue us into
Speaker 1: that are pretty handy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not sure how many of these will be surprises,
Speaker 3: especially to you. But the one that I swear by,
Speaker 3: and I was looking at my stats, you know, and
Speaker 3: like below the messages up and the Safari app on
Speaker 3: the iPhone, the one I use the most is called Feedley.
Speaker 3: Are you familiar?
Speaker 2: Is that like an RSS reader? Yeah?
Speaker 9: It is.
Speaker 3: It's an RSS reader. But they've done a great job
Speaker 3: over the years because they launched when Google Reader went
Speaker 3: away years and years ago, and they've done a great
Speaker 3: job over the years of expanding what it can do. So, yes,
Speaker 3: you can still plug in your own RSS feeds and
Speaker 3: find RSS feeds, but they also can pull from blue
Speaker 3: Sky or x or something and put a feed in
Speaker 3: that way. And they've got a few other sources. So
Speaker 3: even if an outlet's say Reuter's, doesn't offer its RSS
Speaker 3: feeds anymore. You can get their stories in other ways.
Speaker 3: And it's great because for me, I just select all
Speaker 3: the stuff that I want to read and it becomes
Speaker 3: my news reader. I use it for preparing daily tech
Speaker 3: news show, of course, because I have a technology section,
Speaker 3: but also have a sports section and a music section
Speaker 3: and a personal blog section that I can pop in on.
Speaker 3: And it solves that problem of being overwhelmed by too
Speaker 3: many sources for me. Well, yeah, that that sure eats
Speaker 3: my system, which is I have a folder here with
Speaker 3: seventy one blogs I open all the same time. So
Speaker 3: I just opened seventy one tabs and go through them
Speaker 3: because I get a lot. So much better to have
Speaker 3: seventy one blogs in one folder in an RSS reader.
Speaker 1: To be overwhelmed, yes, no matter what, we will be overwhelmed.
Speaker 1: And then my favorite part is when I when I
Speaker 1: want to read something later because I may not it
Speaker 1: may not be good for the show or whatever, but
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, I want to read this article. It's
Speaker 1: a long read, and I put it in my you know,
Speaker 1: I used to I'm flipping through so many different like
Speaker 1: insta paper pocket went away. Now I'm using one called folio.
Speaker 1: But the problem is Once I put an article in there,
Speaker 1: I'm guaranteed to never look at it again.
Speaker 3: It just goes down the memory hole. I know, I
Speaker 3: know what you're meaning.
Speaker 2: Okay, so fee way, that's cool.
Speaker 3: When Pocket went away, I was like, should I try
Speaker 3: to recover? No, I'm just gonna there. I forgot what's
Speaker 3: in there. I'll just leave it at that. Open Vibe
Speaker 3: is another app and get this or Android and iOS
Speaker 3: that can cross post to blue Sky, Threads, Mastodon and Noster,
Speaker 3: which is a lesser known platform. It doesn't work on
Speaker 3: X because X has closed its API, but I use
Speaker 3: a lot to just cross post across all of those
Speaker 3: blogs or all those microblogs when I have a thought that,
Speaker 3: I'm like, yeah, it's appropriate for all those outlets.
Speaker 1: Well, that's interesting, and that is that sort of like
Speaker 1: open source. It's like free, you don't have to pay
Speaker 1: for that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's an open source project. App is free and
Speaker 3: when I first got it worked ninety five percent of
Speaker 3: the time. Every once in a while install out. But
Speaker 3: I have to say in the last month or so,
Speaker 3: they really tightened things up and it posts pretty fast
Speaker 3: and reliably all the time. Okay, cool, do you want
Speaker 3: to do another one, or you want to talk about
Speaker 3: these x ral We've got a couple minutes left here. Yeah,
Speaker 3: let's talk about the x Raal glasses. I was using
Speaker 3: these this morning for something that is of questionable use,
Speaker 3: which is watching an episode of Bob's Burger's while in
Speaker 3: the backyard playing with my dog. But I really just
Speaker 3: kind of wanted to see if I could do it.
Speaker 3: The x Raal glasses kind of look like sunglasses when
Speaker 3: you're wearing them, but they allow you to plug into
Speaker 3: anything with the USB C port and see what is
Speaker 3: on that device, so laptop, phone, whatever. I have been
Speaker 3: using them to watch video though, because I can get
Speaker 3: a big two hundred inch screen floating in space, I
Speaker 3: can have it sit in one spot, or I can
Speaker 3: have it follow me around like I did when I
Speaker 3: was playing with the dog, and then I get a
Speaker 3: really good video screen without having to find a big
Speaker 3: video screen or sit down in one particular place. So
Speaker 3: it's really allows for flexibility and the video is pretty good.
Speaker 3: It's not the highest resolution you could possibly get, of course,
Speaker 3: but it's decent for just watching TV.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say so, I mean cause I have
Speaker 1: the VR headsets and it's like The ideal would be
Speaker 1: to watch like a movie in like an Apple Vision
Speaker 1: Pro or something like that, but I never have gotten
Speaker 1: to that level of feeling comfortable enough or like, what's
Speaker 1: the advantage these I did get a chance to put
Speaker 1: them on at ces. They're instant, they're quick. They mirror
Speaker 1: what's on your phone, which I think is really nice
Speaker 1: because I already know how to use that and it's
Speaker 1: already set up and logged in. So have you watched
Speaker 1: like anything substantially long on there or is it more
Speaker 1: just for like just kind of zone out with some
Speaker 1: videos on YouTube or something. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I watched like three or four episodes in a row
Speaker 3: of Squid Game right when the latest season had come out,
Speaker 3: and I did get a little tired towards like the
Speaker 3: third hour. So I think they're good for a movie,
Speaker 3: but if you're going to go for more, at least
Speaker 3: for me, it started to get tire sim and I
Speaker 3: used them for work. I put him on and plugged
Speaker 3: him into my laptop and made it a second screen
Speaker 3: instead of mirroring, so I could just pull things up
Speaker 3: and it worked great for that because you can see down.
Speaker 3: They're not an entire headset. That's covering right. They're just glasses,
Speaker 3: so you can see down at your keyboard, you can
Speaker 3: see down at your desktop, but then you've got this
Speaker 3: huge monitor hanging in front of you. And it actually
Speaker 3: helped my posture a little because I wasn't having to
Speaker 3: figure out how to position the monitor. I could just
Speaker 3: have it where I'm looking.
Speaker 2: So it's almost like a solution for someone that wants
Speaker 2: VR to watch video but like or do like a
Speaker 2: little bit of light work with your computer instead of
Speaker 2: the entire VR setup that like is much more complicated
Speaker 2: to kind of get going with.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because these you just plug in the USBC cable,
Speaker 3: put them on your face, and you're you're done. You
Speaker 3: don't have to put a whole headset around you. You
Speaker 3: look a little weird because they are a bit thick,
Speaker 3: but you're gonna get fewer looks than you would with, like,
Speaker 3: you know, a quest on your head or something. The
Speaker 3: next thing for me is to try them on the airplane.
Speaker 3: I have some friends who've said they're great for, like,
Speaker 3: you know, watching movies on the airplane. They have their
Speaker 3: own built in audio which works really well around the house.
Speaker 3: I imagine on an airplane, I'm gonna have to use headphones,
Speaker 3: but you can do it that way.
Speaker 1: Too interesting, all right, I'm just looking up the prices
Speaker 1: on these things.
Speaker 2: What is it? What do they range from?
Speaker 3: Do you know? I think the ones I have these
Speaker 3: are the the x real Pro start at six ninety
Speaker 3: nine right now?
Speaker 1: Wow, okay, I'm trying to see what's the cheapest, do
Speaker 1: we know? Let's see here, six two ninety nine looks
Speaker 1: like the cheapest on their website.
Speaker 3: So yeah, that's the preview model. I think it's just
Speaker 3: a little lower resolution, little smaller field of view, but
Speaker 3: mostly the same tech.
Speaker 2: All right, Tom Merat, it's been fun.
Speaker 10: Uh.
Speaker 2: Where where can folks find you? Follow you all that
Speaker 2: good stuff?
Speaker 8: Yeah?
Speaker 3: If you if you want to catch us on the
Speaker 3: Daily Technews Show, where at Dailytechnews Show dot com or
Speaker 3: just put it in a search in your podcast catcher, YouTube, Twitch,
Speaker 3: anywhere like that, and you can find me at free Tomnewsletter,
Speaker 3: Free toomnewsletter dot com smart url.
Speaker 2: I like that one.
Speaker 1: Thanks Tom Merrett, thanks so much for joining me. Eighty
Speaker 1: eight rich one O one eighty eight seven four to
Speaker 1: two four one zero one more of your calls and
Speaker 1: emails after this. Welcome back to rich On tech Rich
Speaker 1: DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology at Triple
Speaker 1: eight Rich one O one eight eight eight seven four
Speaker 1: to two four one zero one. All the show notes
Speaker 1: on the website just go to rich on tech dot tv.
Speaker 1: This is episode one thirty one. So if you hear
Speaker 1: something mentioned on the show and you're like, wait, I
Speaker 1: want to link to that, just go right to the
Speaker 1: website rich on tech dot tv. Everything is linked up there.
Speaker 1: Got an email from Rick, he says, talking about the
Speaker 1: valet with a change. He said, I had a twenty
Speaker 1: dollars bill. I asked valet if he had fifteen dollars
Speaker 1: to give back to me. He said no, thinking he'd
Speaker 1: get my twenty. When it appeared he was getting nothing,
Speaker 1: he suddenly quote found a forgotten lot of bills in
Speaker 1: his left pocket.
Speaker 2: That's so funny.
Speaker 1: It's like, okay, I could you could either give me
Speaker 1: change or nothing. It's like, oh hold on, let me
Speaker 1: dig a little deeper into my pocket and find that change.
Speaker 2: But here's the thing.
Speaker 1: If you are, you know, in this in this sort
Speaker 1: of a service industry, have that change or have a
Speaker 1: way Like I'm not kidding the amount of people that
Speaker 1: grumble about accepting Venmo. I'm like, dude, like take it.
Speaker 1: It's so much easier, Like you will get paid more
Speaker 1: if you accept Venmo, and it's just amazing. Or any
Speaker 1: of these systems that let you take the money. When
Speaker 1: I was selling my book, I use Square and it
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, it costs a little bit of money.
Speaker 1: That's the other thing. All these companies, Like I noticed
Speaker 1: a trend in Hawaii. These companies are like, oh, I
Speaker 1: got to charge you, you know, four percent, three percent
Speaker 1: extra because we take a credit card.
Speaker 2: I'm like, hold on, that's called the cost of doing business.
Speaker 1: Just raise your prices by thirty cents and don't charge me,
Speaker 1: Like just it doesn't matter, Like we're already paying, Like
Speaker 1: we get it. It costs money to do this stuff,
Speaker 1: but it's always better.
Speaker 2: Where was I.
Speaker 1: They wanted cash and it's like, no, just pay with
Speaker 1: with my card. It's much easier tap to pay. Linda
Speaker 1: and Burbank, what's up?
Speaker 8: I heard something worse than what you were talking about
Speaker 8: earlier when you couldn't get fund and you can get.
Speaker 6: Get cash from people.
Speaker 10: Yeah, sometime it's.
Speaker 9: In a laws.
Speaker 8: On the other hand, Lenn Dix said, it's going through
Speaker 8: the tocause Congress passed it. The digital dollar.
Speaker 10: Oh well, and the digital dollar, you know, the government
Speaker 10: will track on everything we buy it and it will
Speaker 10: limit what we can buy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot of people that don't want the
Speaker 1: digital dollar.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Now here's the thing I'm I probably actually would not
Speaker 1: advocate for that because when you have a digital dollar,
Speaker 1: the government is really in control of everything you do
Speaker 1: and all of this spending. And I'm not sure that's
Speaker 1: something we want, right like number one cash, Yeah, well
Speaker 1: that's the thing, like that would be well, here you
Speaker 1: understand why they want to do a way of cash, right.
Speaker 10: To track down everything we buy.
Speaker 1: Exactly, and not just that, but also taxes because you know,
Speaker 1: there's there's a there's an element of cash is not
Speaker 1: necessarily trackable in a big way.
Speaker 2: I gues.
Speaker 1: I get if you win ten thousand dollars at the casino,
Speaker 1: they make you fill out a form. But you know,
Speaker 1: cash in general, small amounts has just kind of moved
Speaker 1: around freely, and with a digital dollar, that would not
Speaker 1: happen anymore. And I'm not sure we want to live
Speaker 1: in a world where the government knows where every single
Speaker 1: dollar you have to your name, where it goes, and
Speaker 1: you know where that was transferred to. There are governments
Speaker 1: that are trying this. I believe China has a pilot
Speaker 1: program with a digital currency, and I guess that makes
Speaker 1: sense for them. So for me personally, I'm all good
Speaker 1: with the Venmo tap to pay. I just want the options, right.
Speaker 1: There are times when cash is king and it's amazing
Speaker 1: to use, and it's great, and of course, you know
Speaker 1: you want to leave a tip for somewhere you want
Speaker 1: to pay in cash, great, but there's also times when
Speaker 1: it's just easier to tap to pay or use Venmo
Speaker 1: or whatever. But yeah, Linda, I don't think in the
Speaker 1: US right now, I don't think we're even experimenting with
Speaker 1: the digital dollar just yet. So hopefully it stays that
Speaker 1: way for a while. John Let's see. Johnny writes in
Speaker 1: from New York, New York. Hey, Rich, I'm trying to
Speaker 1: email a video file that's currently on my iPad. It's
Speaker 1: about one hundred and eighty megabytes. I downloaded the Compressed
Speaker 1: Video and re Size app and managed to compress the
Speaker 1: video to six megabyte. When I try to attach it
Speaker 1: to the Yahoo mail app, it thinks the attachment is
Speaker 1: over twenty five and will not attach. Do you have
Speaker 1: any suggestions on getting the video attached to email? I
Speaker 1: enjoyed one of your shows where you mentioned Gateway two thousand.
Speaker 1: They were great computers. Yes, what I would do, Johnny,
Speaker 1: is go to this website wormhole dot App. I know
Speaker 1: it sounds silly, wormhole dot app, but what you can
Speaker 1: do is upload the file there. They will give you
Speaker 1: a URL and you can just put that URL into
Speaker 1: the email. And what I like about this wormhole is
Speaker 1: that you don't have to sign up, you don't have to.
Speaker 2: Do anything special.
Speaker 1: It's super fast, it's super easy, and it's private, it's
Speaker 1: end to end encrypted, and you can send up to
Speaker 1: ten gigabytes of a file, So literally could not be easier.
Speaker 1: Just go to wormhole dot app, upload the file there,
Speaker 1: get the link and send it. You can even make
Speaker 1: it where the link expires after one or two downloads.
Speaker 1: Great question, rich On Tech dot TV. If you want
Speaker 1: to submit your questions, we'll have more of them coming
Speaker 1: up right after this. Welcome back to rich On Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, Talking Technology Triple
Speaker 1: eight Rich one one eight eight eight seven four to
Speaker 1: two four one zero one Guests on the show today
Speaker 1: include technology journalist Sabrina Ortiz, senior editor at ZD Net.
Speaker 1: She's going to talk about all things AI. And then
Speaker 1: later we've got Josh Goren. He is with Walt Disney Imagineering.
Speaker 1: He's going to talk about how Disney uses technology to
Speaker 1: bring all their experiences to life. What a cool place
Speaker 1: to visit, the Walt Disney Imagineering, Very very fun.
Speaker 2: You can find that stuff. By the way.
Speaker 1: You can see some of the videos I shot there
Speaker 1: on my Instagram at rich on Tech.
Speaker 2: Just check it out.
Speaker 1: I've got like the little robots that I saw there,
Speaker 1: also tried a lightsaber which was really cool.
Speaker 2: And then there's a floor.
Speaker 1: I don't think I posted the floor yet, but there's
Speaker 1: like a floor that lets you kind of walk infinitely
Speaker 1: in any direction, which is pretty cool. They haven't figured
Speaker 1: out how they're going to use that yet, but when
Speaker 1: they do, that'll be neat website for the show rich
Speaker 1: on Tech dot TV. There you can sign up for
Speaker 1: my free newsletter. You can also email me and that
Speaker 1: is what many of you do. You can also watch
Speaker 1: my TV segments. I've got them all there as well.
Speaker 1: So lots to do there. Let's take an email from
Speaker 1: Lucia writes in from South Carolina, listening on fifteen to ten.
Speaker 1: My ninety three year old mother who's in assisted living,
Speaker 1: has an older Google phone with incoming and outgoing calls.
Speaker 1: After they connect, she tries to press speaker, but frequently
Speaker 1: hits a different button and inadvertently hangs up. Is there
Speaker 1: an app that would automatically turn the volume all the
Speaker 1: way up and put the phone on speaker with each call?
Speaker 1: There is some assistance features built into smartphones, and I
Speaker 1: think on the pixel this would be under the accessibility settings.
Speaker 1: This is a feature called call routing, so basically, whenever
Speaker 1: you get a call, it would route it to the speaker.
Speaker 1: I think you can choose Bluetooth speaker or just standard
Speaker 1: so this in this case, you'd want to choose speaker,
Speaker 1: So go accessibility settings, accessibility touch, and then call audio routing.
Speaker 1: If that doesn't work, just search for audio routing and
Speaker 1: you should find speaker phone and that's probably the best
Speaker 1: way to do it. The other thing is the volume.
Speaker 1: I think you're just gonna have to leave that turned
Speaker 1: up one time, and there is a way to On
Speaker 1: most phones, there's a way to decouple the volume key
Speaker 1: from changing the volume for everything all at once, So
Speaker 1: look into the settings on that and just look at
Speaker 1: volume and see if there's an option to sort of
Speaker 1: say I don't want everything to be, you know, turned
Speaker 1: up or down by the volume key. I know they
Speaker 1: do it on the iPhone, and it's drives some people
Speaker 1: nuts because that's not the way it used to be,
Speaker 1: but that's the way it is now I think by default.
Speaker 2: Let's see.
Speaker 1: Yeah, on iPhone, the feature is also audio routing, so
Speaker 1: just look under calling audio Routing speaker, and there's also
Speaker 1: an auto answer it looks like on the iPhone as well,
Speaker 1: so you can have it where the phone just automatically
Speaker 1: answers as well.
Speaker 2: So yeah, good.
Speaker 1: Question, Thanks for that, Let's see. Larry writes in from
Speaker 1: listening on KFI. Hey, Rich, I'll be starting a new
Speaker 1: job with a claims company that requires lots of photos
Speaker 1: of damaged property and contents. I currently have an Android,
Speaker 1: but we'll be purchasing a new phone for business use.
Speaker 1: What's your recommendation for best quality picks? Android or iPhone?
Speaker 1: Do you have a model preference? Thanks and continue, Thanks
Speaker 1: for continuing to enlighten us non tech listeners. Larry, I mean, look,
Speaker 1: I think any modern smartphone is going to work for this.
Speaker 1: I think if you want the absolute best camera out there,
Speaker 1: probably the iPhone. I mean, if you want the absolute
Speaker 1: best of the best, probably have to go to the
Speaker 1: iPhone sixteen pro. But I think that the iPhone sixteen's
Speaker 1: probably gonna be okay with this unless you need a
Speaker 1: bunch of zoom. So those are probably my two choices.
Speaker 1: I think the pixel would be fine. The thing is,
Speaker 1: the reason I would go with an iPhone in this
Speaker 1: case is because you're gonna want accessories and a case,
Speaker 1: and I think that when it comes to these phones,
Speaker 1: you're going to find that the iPhone has a lot
Speaker 1: of options out there, and just when you're using a
Speaker 1: job a phone for a job like this, it might
Speaker 1: just be the best. And you might also be texting
Speaker 1: or air dropping these photos to your computer. So I
Speaker 1: think it's just gonna be easier. I don't want to,
Speaker 1: you know, pooh pooh Android. I think it's great, But
Speaker 1: I think if you're trying to do something that's simple, streamlined,
Speaker 1: and a lot of your colleagues are probably gonna have
Speaker 1: the same or similar phone, the iPhone sixteen might be
Speaker 1: the best. So go iPhone sixteen if you don't need Zoom,
Speaker 1: if you just need like a standard camera, but if
Speaker 1: you need anything with Zoom, you probably got to go
Speaker 1: iPhone sixteen Pro. So yeah, that's that's what i'd recommend.
Speaker 1: Let's see, we just going through all these emails. Rosita
Speaker 1: writes in from upland, Hey, Rich, I'm seeking your expertise.
Speaker 1: I've an iPhone fifteen Pro that I need to free
Speaker 1: up some storage. I don't want to purchase a monthly subscription.
Speaker 1: I was looking for a device that I can transfer to.
Speaker 1: There are so many options. I'd like your advice on
Speaker 1: which one to purchase. So this email actually sparked an
Speaker 1: entire segment and Instagram video and a blog post because
Speaker 1: you would be surprised how many people email me about
Speaker 1: wanting to bypass the cloud or not using the cloud
Speaker 1: or freeing up storage.
Speaker 2: And I will say, number one, please use the cloud.
Speaker 1: It is easy, it is simple, it is safe, it
Speaker 1: is a good way to do this. And I understand
Speaker 1: that it gets annoying to have to pay the monthly,
Speaker 1: but I get so many emails from people on a
Speaker 1: daily basis that say, Rich, I lost my phone, I
Speaker 1: dropped my phone, I something happened. Everything got erased, and
Speaker 1: I don't have a backup. What can I do? There's
Speaker 1: nothing you can do. If you don't have your phone
Speaker 1: backed up, you are not recovering those pictures. It's just
Speaker 1: not happening. People's phones fall in the bottom of a lake.
Speaker 1: It's a summer, people are out, they're about, and you
Speaker 1: never think this is going to happen, right Like, you
Speaker 1: don't think this is going to happen to you, But
Speaker 1: it does and it can so at the very least,
Speaker 1: if you are truly against cloud storage, you can do
Speaker 1: what I'm about to tell you, But I think the
Speaker 1: cloud is the easiest way to do it. And there
Speaker 1: are many, many options, right, I mean, even if you're
Speaker 1: using Google, they have a feature on their Google Photos
Speaker 1: that's called Storage Saver. So if you are, let's see,
Speaker 1: there is a I'm gonna open up Google Photos. Here,
Speaker 1: go into my settings and okay photos settings, backing up, okay,
Speaker 1: so backup quality. You can do Storage Saver. And what
Speaker 1: it does is it compresses your photos to sixteen megabits
Speaker 1: megapixels sorry, and then your videos are high definition. So
Speaker 1: if you take a giant four K video, that's gonna
Speaker 1: gobble up a gig or two of your storage. When
Speaker 1: it goes into Google Photos to be backed up, it's
Speaker 1: just gonna.
Speaker 2: Compress it to be HD. Same thing with your photos.
Speaker 1: You take a giant two hundred megapixel photo, it's gonna
Speaker 1: compress it to sixteen megapixels and it's gonna save much
Speaker 1: more in the same space. So if you are looking
Speaker 1: to free up storage, like if you're using if you're
Speaker 1: using Google Photos, and you're just like you know, you
Speaker 1: don't want to pay for more storage, look into that
Speaker 1: storage saver setting. A lot of people say they can't
Speaker 1: even tell the difference. So the other option obviously is
Speaker 1: iCloud if you're on iPhone. But Amazon Photos offers a
Speaker 1: completely freeway to back up your photos unlimited if you
Speaker 1: are an Amazon Prime member, So yes, you do have
Speaker 1: to be a paying Amazon Prime member, but you can
Speaker 1: store unlimited photos there. Now for video, you only get
Speaker 1: five gigabytes. But the nice thing is that Amazon does
Speaker 1: give you an option to not even back.
Speaker 2: Up your videos.
Speaker 1: So if you don't want to deal with like the
Speaker 1: storage being full in about two seconds with your videos,
Speaker 1: you can just say, back up my photos and at
Speaker 1: the very.
Speaker 2: Least if something goes wrong. At least you have your photos.
Speaker 1: You won't have your videos if you drop your phone
Speaker 1: in the ocean, but you'll have your photos. The other
Speaker 1: thing is, I mean you still have flicker. Flicker is
Speaker 1: still there, and I think they're unlimited for like, let's
Speaker 1: see Flicker pro. Gosh, they even give you the come
Speaker 1: on Flicker, where's the price?
Speaker 2: I hate.
Speaker 1: I hate when websites don't give you the pricing, like
Speaker 1: right away, like it should always have Okay, here we go.
Speaker 1: Flicker Pro unlimited, full resolution photos, sharing and backup on
Speaker 1: all your devices. You can pay monthly ten dollars a month,
Speaker 1: annual six dollars a month two years, prepaid five dollars
Speaker 1: and fifty four cents a month, five dollars and fifty
Speaker 1: four cents a month for two years. So that would
Speaker 1: be six dollars times twenty four, one hundred and forty
Speaker 1: five dollars for two years of not worrying about your
Speaker 1: photos getting lost forever. Anyway, if you want to back
Speaker 1: them up to a flash drive, you can do that.
Speaker 1: I recommend the PNY Duo link. They've got a brand
Speaker 1: new one V three and it's super fast. You plug
Speaker 1: it into the bottom of your iPhone or your Android
Speaker 1: and you can copy the pictures over. There's actually an
Speaker 1: easy way to do this and I've linked it up
Speaker 1: on my Instagram at rich on Tech you can see
Speaker 1: how to do it, or you can just go to
Speaker 1: the website rich on tech dot tv. Look under popular
Speaker 1: and it says how to transfer photos from iPhone to
Speaker 1: flash drive And I put that on there, and let's
Speaker 1: see I put the Android one yet, No, but I'll
Speaker 1: put the Android one there as well. But basically, if
Speaker 1: you have a recent model phone with USBC, this is
Speaker 1: super simple. It's a little bit easier on Android than
Speaker 1: it is on iPhone. And the reason is Samsung gives
Speaker 1: you a select doll, so it shows you images and
Speaker 1: videos and it says select all, and you can select
Speaker 1: every image on your phone in one tap. iPhone doesn't
Speaker 1: give you that option. You got to select them manually.
Speaker 1: But there are some easier ways of doing that. If
Speaker 1: you have an older iPhone, you'll need what's called the
Speaker 1: sand disc I expand, which uses a lightning connector. But
Speaker 1: you can plug the flash drive into your phone, copy
Speaker 1: the photos over, and now you have them on a
Speaker 1: flash drive before you delete them from your phone. I
Speaker 1: do recommend that you have them backed up in the
Speaker 1: cloud or somewhere else. All right, I'll put that all
Speaker 1: on the website. Rich on Tech dot TV. Good question.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, plenty more of your questions coming up
Speaker 1: right here on this all feedback edition of Rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging
Speaker 1: out with you, talking technology triple eight Rich one oh
Speaker 1: one eight eight eight seven four two for one zero one.
Speaker 1: Also taking your emails at richon Tech dot TV. Hit contact.
Speaker 1: Let's go to Kathy and Los Angeles. You're on with Rich.
Speaker 8: Hey, Hi, Rich Hi, all right. I bought and returned
Speaker 8: a water leaf detection system.
Speaker 2: Called go v G o v e E okay, and.
Speaker 8: I set it up and it just wasn't connecting to
Speaker 8: the Wi Fi. And then I did a little bit
Speaker 8: more homework. I have a five G network and the
Speaker 8: GOVI only works on two point four.
Speaker 2: Ah.
Speaker 8: Yes, I did talk to Jane Sharp last week weekend
Speaker 8: and he said this no system that works on five G.
Speaker 8: So I'm thinking if can I get another like router
Speaker 8: or modem that can can go between two point four
Speaker 8: and five point zero?
Speaker 1: Well, okay, A couple things let's break this down. Number one,
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm being punked right now because I
Speaker 1: didn't mention this because I don't want to be a
Speaker 1: Debbie Downer. But we came back from our vacation to
Speaker 1: a giant water leak in our home. So and I'm
Speaker 1: laughing because I'm crying inside because you know the expense
Speaker 1: of cleaning up that disaster, because we actually had this
Speaker 1: happen once before in a different area of our home,
Speaker 1: and I actually got a water detector for that area,
Speaker 1: but not for the new area. So anyway, yes, I'm
Speaker 1: glad you're getting the water detectors because they this would
Speaker 1: have prevented you know, someone was actually coming to look
Speaker 1: at our house to check on it, and of course
Speaker 1: we would have known that this was going on. But
Speaker 1: so you're doing the right thing. But here's the deal.
Speaker 1: How do you know that your router does not support
Speaker 1: two point four at all? Like who's your provider for
Speaker 1: your router? Like what type of router?
Speaker 6: Do you?
Speaker 2: Okay? And have you called Spectrum and ask them about this?
Speaker 8: No?
Speaker 1: Okay, because typically on the router, if you go into
Speaker 1: the settings, there is a way to toggle on a
Speaker 1: two point four gigahertz network, even if it's just temporarily.
Speaker 1: So the smarter kind of routers nowadays, we'll figure out
Speaker 1: if something will only connect to two point four and
Speaker 1: it will connect. But the some of the you know,
Speaker 1: non smarter, you know, the ones they provide you from
Speaker 1: the cable company are not typically the best out there.
Speaker 1: And so you know, there may be a setting that
Speaker 1: you can toggle on this router. So if you're feeling no,
Speaker 1: it's typically it's typically a log in like if you
Speaker 1: look at them, yeah, and that's what I'm saying. So
Speaker 1: this is, you know, it's something that you may not
Speaker 1: want to tackle on your own, which is why if
Speaker 1: you call Spectrums customer service, they may be able to
Speaker 1: walk you through it. But typically on the bottom of
Speaker 1: your router there is a special address that lets you
Speaker 1: tap into the settings of that router, and inside those settings,
Speaker 1: it'll say two point four network, five gigahertz network, like
Speaker 1: do you want to activate those? And so that could
Speaker 1: be a possibility. The other thing is, yes, you're absolutely right.
Speaker 1: A lot of these smart home IoT devices, a lot
Speaker 1: of them only support that two point four because they're
Speaker 1: just they don't have the expensive antennas in them to
Speaker 1: support everything. So where are you at now with these censors?
Speaker 1: Do you have them anymore?
Speaker 2: You are no, I returned them.
Speaker 8: But here's the thing. I was on vacation also, and
Speaker 8: I have a house built in nineteen twenty nine, so
Speaker 8: I have a basement.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 8: I happened to go down the basement on Mother's Day
Speaker 8: to look for a base and I saw water. I
Speaker 8: had to replace the two water heaters, and so when
Speaker 8: the water heater guys came, they gave me these water
Speaker 8: detection sing them a jig okay, and it's very low tech.
Speaker 8: Place them on the floor, water hits it and this
Speaker 8: alarm goes off. Yeah, which is great. Yeah, if you're
Speaker 8: if you're I'm not home, Yeah, I'm screwed. Right, So
Speaker 8: right now I have nothing?
Speaker 1: Okay, Well there is Okay. So the one that I'm
Speaker 1: I use at my house is from zircon z I
Speaker 1: R co O N and it is uh, it is
Speaker 1: wi Fi. But I'm looking at it. I'm looking at
Speaker 1: the details. And this one's super easy because, like you said,
Speaker 1: it does sound an alarm, but it also will text
Speaker 1: you if there's a problem and if there's no monthly
Speaker 1: fear or anything like that.
Speaker 2: But here's the deal.
Speaker 1: I'm looking at it, and the specs say that it's
Speaker 1: only supporting two point four gigahertz as well, So I
Speaker 1: think you're probably going to find a lot of these
Speaker 1: water leak detectors do the same thing. And I don't
Speaker 1: have a good recommendation for another one, like another brand
Speaker 1: outside of it.
Speaker 8: Do you have a five gig or you have two
Speaker 8: points four in your house?
Speaker 1: I've got both my I use euro E E R
Speaker 1: O which supports both. So and I've only had one
Speaker 1: gadget that has not been able to connect to the
Speaker 1: to the dual network, which was an outdoor plug.
Speaker 8: But anyway, but yeah, where did you get zero?
Speaker 2: You can? You can get on Amazon. I wouldn't. You
Speaker 2: might not want to go that far. I would.
Speaker 1: What I would do is I would call Spectrum and
Speaker 1: just ask them just I know it's a pain to
Speaker 1: call them and wait on hold and all that stuff,
Speaker 1: but like I would just call them and say, hey, look,
Speaker 1: does my router support a two point four gigahertz network
Speaker 1: in anyway? Can I toggle that on through the settings
Speaker 1: and see if they will walk you through that, Because
Speaker 1: if you can just get these things to link up
Speaker 1: once that's all you need and then they will stay
Speaker 1: on that network, you know, forever.
Speaker 2: So that's probably the easiest way.
Speaker 1: And in the meantime, I'll see if I can get
Speaker 1: another recommendation for a Wi Fi sensor that says it
Speaker 1: supports the five gigaherts network. The problem is that maybe
Speaker 1: more expensive, so but let me let me look into that.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Kathy, and sorry that you had the same
Speaker 1: thing happen. It is a pain, it is. It is
Speaker 1: not fun to come home to any sort of water
Speaker 1: damage because you know that they're gonna have to tear
Speaker 1: so much up and replace things, and yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: not fun.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: Coming up technology journalist Sabrina Ortiz from zd net. We'll
Speaker 1: talk to her next about all things AI. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you,
Speaker 1: talking technology triple eight rich one oh one eight eight
Speaker 1: eight seven four to two four one zero one. Before
Speaker 1: the break, we had Kathy asking about connecting a smart
Speaker 1: device to her network and it was only on the
Speaker 1: two point four gigahertz frequency and she said her network
Speaker 1: didn't support that. Well, she has spectrum and I was
Speaker 1: able to in the break look up the support for
Speaker 1: Spectrum and yes, their routers do support two point four
Speaker 1: and five gigahertz frequencies. And so what you want to
Speaker 1: do is you can actually sign in to your Spectrum
Speaker 1: account on your services page, select Internet, navigate to the
Speaker 1: setup smart device two point four gigaherts, select switch to
Speaker 1: two point four gigaherts, and there you go.
Speaker 2: You can set it up.
Speaker 1: So they've thought of this before and they figured it out,
Speaker 1: so it's a lot easier. You can also log into
Speaker 1: your router and do it manually, but it looks like
Speaker 1: they've kind of taken care of this in a nice
Speaker 1: way for their customers. So again, if you have Spectrum,
Speaker 1: you're trying to connect one of those smart home devices
Speaker 1: and it's only got that one network, you can go
Speaker 1: into your settings and change it. It looks like right from
Speaker 1: your Spectrum account, which is kind of cool. So that's
Speaker 1: a good thing. Okay, we've got our guests. We're trying
Speaker 1: to work through some audio situation with that, but we've
Speaker 1: got Sabrina on hold. As soon as we get the
Speaker 1: audio up, we will bring her on. But we'll just
Speaker 1: give me the word when we've got that. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: let's go to jammy Hey rich a huge fan. Notice
Speaker 1: when I try to search for old emails in my Gmail,
Speaker 1: they are no longer there or they're not showing up.
Speaker 1: It will show emails from a few years ago, but
Speaker 1: not the one in the last six months. My husband
Speaker 1: is noticed this as well in his Gmail account. Any
Speaker 1: insight on this issue. Yes, this actually drove me nuts
Speaker 1: because I was looking for an email I sent to
Speaker 1: someone and it was literally not showing up, and I said,
Speaker 1: I know I sent an email to this person, and
Speaker 1: sure enough I realized what happened. Gmail recently made a
Speaker 1: change to how Gmail search works, so now it's using
Speaker 1: much more AI to prioritize emails that are the most
Speaker 1: relevant in your search results, not necessarily the results that
Speaker 1: are ordered by time. So if you are searching for
Speaker 1: an email that you know is in there, like I
Speaker 1: will search for this email and up at the top
Speaker 1: there's a toggle and it says most recent or most relevant.
Speaker 1: So it looks like they changed the default to most relevant,
Speaker 1: and that means it's going to show emails out of
Speaker 1: chronological order. So if you're like me and your brain
Speaker 1: sort of works like, Okay, I know I sent this
Speaker 1: person in an email. I want to see them in the
Speaker 1: order I sent them. You might want to change that
Speaker 1: toggle instead of most relevant to most recent. Now this
Speaker 1: is it's interesting because Gmail has always had sort of
Speaker 1: smart search. When you're up at the top and you're searching.
Speaker 1: While you're searching, you'll notice you'll get a list of
Speaker 1: the most relevant emails, and so that's always been the case.
Speaker 1: But now, but when you pressed actual search, it would
Speaker 1: then reorder those in the order that you were sent
Speaker 1: or received. Now it's actually putting that most relevant up
Speaker 1: at the top instead of putting them in the order
Speaker 1: of the receive. So Jammy, definitely you found something. You
Speaker 1: stumbled upon something that is a little tricky, and it
Speaker 1: is a major change on the way Gmail does stuff.
Speaker 1: So good, good question, because that is something that's really
Speaker 1: important for people to know. Let's go to Ron in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles. He says, Hey, Rich, I love your show.
Speaker 1: I listened on K and later on your podcast during
Speaker 1: my daily walks. I don't want to miss anything. I
Speaker 1: saw an ad for a smart watch called the ze
Speaker 1: Fit two. It looks full featured and it only costs
Speaker 1: about one hundred dollars. It claims to include an always
Speaker 1: on display and even blood pressure monitoring. And let's see here,
Speaker 1: what do you think of it? Well, here's the deal.
Speaker 1: Number one, I don't think that. I well, Number one,
Speaker 1: I've never heard of this brand, ze Fit. I've never
Speaker 1: heard of.
Speaker 2: Number two.
Speaker 1: I have not heard of blood pressure monitoring on a
Speaker 1: watch just yet. I know they're trying to do that,
Speaker 1: and I know there's some solutions for that that involve
Speaker 1: a cuff, but I personally would just recommend what's called
Speaker 1: the amaze Fit. They don't have the blood pressure monitoring,
Speaker 1: but a maze Fit I would say makes the best
Speaker 1: inexpensive smart watches. And there is a band that's coming
Speaker 1: out soon next year that's already for sale in Europe
Speaker 1: that will become the first wearable that lets you monitor
Speaker 1: blood pressure without a cuff. I think you use the
Speaker 1: cuff the first time and then later on and that's
Speaker 1: called high Low h I l O High Low band.
Speaker 1: All right, it looks like we have worked through some
Speaker 1: of our issues with audio and now welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Show Sabrina, hold on, I gotta mute myself. Sabrina Ortiz
Speaker 1: from zd net. Thanks for joining me, Hi, I'm.
Speaker 6: So excited to be here. Let's talk all things AI.
Speaker 1: Yes, So first off, just tell me what you do
Speaker 1: at zd net Totally.
Speaker 9: I leader AI coverage, which means I write about AI
Speaker 9: every day, I test the tools every day.
Speaker 6: I read about it, research it all the things.
Speaker 1: Okay, So I mean AI is a buzzword everywhere, and
Speaker 1: so I know there's a bunch of different brands of
Speaker 1: AI out there, from chat Gibt to Gemini Copilot Claude,
Speaker 1: you want to start with chat Gibt. What tell me
Speaker 1: about Chatchibt.
Speaker 9: Yeah, As you know, Chatchabt has almost become synonymous with
Speaker 9: generative AI, with AI chatbots, because it's really the first
Speaker 9: one that popular rise of technology, right e Luanda, November
Speaker 9: twenty twenty two. And since then, the term AI has exploded.
Speaker 9: And it's because of chatchipt's incredible capabilities, right, Like, it
Speaker 9: could do.
Speaker 6: Anything from answering how.
Speaker 9: A simple question, the way you would use Google with
Speaker 9: a conversational prompt, which is really what makes it unique
Speaker 9: and what drew I guess people to AI chatbox to
Speaker 9: composing an entire song, essay, research peoper, you name it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what's so wild is that it's become like
Speaker 1: everyone knows chatchibt. Here's the thing I've noticed though, when
Speaker 1: people download chatchibt to their phone or computer, they're not
Speaker 1: always getting like the actual, you know, official app. So
Speaker 1: people need to be aware that if you're not getting
Speaker 1: like go to chat Gibt's website and make sure you
Speaker 1: get the right app, because people pay money sometimes without
Speaker 1: even realizing like some third party for this.
Speaker 2: You can start for free.
Speaker 6: Rich.
Speaker 9: That's such incredible advice because there's so many different knockoffs
Speaker 9: on the App Store or the Google Play Store of
Speaker 9: people trying to impersonate chatch GPT.
Speaker 6: And again, the apps are free to download.
Speaker 9: So if first of all, first food flag if you
Speaker 9: see price to download, not open AI tax GPT. And
Speaker 9: then also, like you mentioned, there's different tiers, but you
Speaker 9: could always get started for free.
Speaker 6: The minute that there's a money.
Speaker 9: Pop up and that's like a block or two using it,
Speaker 9: then you're probably using the wrong thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's talk Gemini. So this is Google's what do
Speaker 1: you think Gemini strength is?
Speaker 9: You know, Google's positioned so well in the AI space
Speaker 9: right now because they have a product that we have
Speaker 9: multiple products, but the product Google Search up people use
Speaker 9: every single day, So people are already familiar with Google,
Speaker 9: and now you can access Gemini without even having to
Speaker 9: visit the individual chatbot. Right, Like, if you've ever Googled
Speaker 9: something and you see an AI summary on top or
Speaker 9: those like AI overviews, those are Gemini generated. I think
Speaker 9: that's a strength because you don't even have to go
Speaker 9: out of your way to access AI. Like we were
Speaker 9: just talking about downloading the chattypt app or going to
Speaker 9: the actual website in your browser.
Speaker 6: With Google, you're already using it and now it just
Speaker 6: pops up.
Speaker 9: But yeah, it's similar to chat ept in functionality, conversational responses,
Speaker 9: conversational prompts that you could enter, and yeah, it also
Speaker 9: uses Google Search, which is a really good advantage for
Speaker 9: people who trust, you know, search results and want their
Speaker 9: answer stuff link to.
Speaker 1: Google and also the stuff that you have in Google.
Speaker 1: It's a pretty powerful way to slice and dice that.
Speaker 1: Like I noticed I was I opened a PDF and
Speaker 1: like Google Drive and it literally like Gemini showed up
Speaker 1: on the side and it like summarized all this stuff.
Speaker 2: I was like, wait a second, I don't even asked
Speaker 2: for that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, did you like that?
Speaker 3: Though?
Speaker 9: Because I feel like that's also a two edged sword, right,
Speaker 9: Like I happen to also be a fan that in
Speaker 9: all of these workspace apps that I use every day
Speaker 9: for work, it's already there. But I also I think
Speaker 9: some people are kind of turned off, like, stop pushing
Speaker 9: throwing this on me. I didn't ask for this. I
Speaker 9: just wanted to use my Google doc in peace.
Speaker 2: Yeah. No, I totally understand that.
Speaker 1: And I you know, I think it's cool, But I
Speaker 1: think I could see the side of someone saying, hey,
Speaker 1: I didn't ask to use this, but you know, here
Speaker 1: it is popping up in front of me. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, if you get used to it and
Speaker 1: see the power of it, I think that's what they're
Speaker 1: trying to do is show you, like, hey, this is
Speaker 1: the benefit of AI in like a way that you're
Speaker 1: already using it could be beneficial. Now Copilot, now talk
Speaker 1: about you know, putting it everywhere. I mean, Microsoft is
Speaker 1: really pushing Copilot in everything from Windows to you know,
Speaker 1: Outlook to all of their services.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Copie it's a unique one.
Speaker 9: When it first came on the scene, there was a
Speaker 9: point in time where I would actually preach to the
Speaker 9: everybody that would listen that co Pilot was a stronger
Speaker 9: chatbot than chat GBT because it was actually using open
Speaker 9: ayes most advanced AI models for free in Copilot, where
Speaker 9: Chat Gypt you would have to pay for them, So
Speaker 9: at one point it was really really competitive.
Speaker 6: I think it's lost its edge a little bit.
Speaker 9: Like you mentioned, the strongest I guess appeal of it
Speaker 9: now is that if you are ready in an office
Speaker 9: Microsoft Office three sixty five user, where you know Excel,
Speaker 9: Microsoft Word PowerPoint, now it's embedded in there really seamlessly.
Speaker 9: So again for ease of access, it's great. But if
Speaker 9: you're going to access the standalone chatbot experience, I don't
Speaker 9: really know if there's many reasons to use it over
Speaker 9: Gemini or chat ept unless you're a diehard bing user,
Speaker 9: because then in that case you get to experience it
Speaker 9: the same way you would in Google.
Speaker 6: But I don't know how many people how many.
Speaker 1: Are AST's say, I don't think I've ever heard the
Speaker 1: term diehard bing user because I've never met someone. Most
Speaker 1: of the time, it's just kind of like, oh, I
Speaker 1: landed on being somehow now here. It's funny you said
Speaker 1: that about Copilot because I used to sing the praises
Speaker 1: of Claude. Like when chatch Ebt first came out, I
Speaker 1: was using Claude for everything, and I still think that
Speaker 1: it excels in like writing. But tell me what Claude's
Speaker 1: strengths are, you know, I.
Speaker 9: Still think that Claude is positioned really really well in
Speaker 9: this space.
Speaker 6: And I'll tell you a couple of its advantages.
Speaker 9: If you talk to anyone, I mean, like, not even
Speaker 9: people who are like hardcore devs, I mean anybody who
Speaker 9: has any interest in coding, even if just like for fun,
Speaker 9: if you want a vibe code, you know, use kind
Speaker 9: of natural language prompts to build your own app for stuff.
Speaker 9: Claud's a really powerful tool for coding. And I've heard
Speaker 9: this from again all the way, inspect from beginners to
Speaker 9: like people who live, eat, and breathe programming developers all that.
Speaker 6: So that's one unique aspect of it.
Speaker 9: And the second thing that I think really draws users
Speaker 9: is that security in privacy. They've never from the beginning,
Speaker 9: they've taken pride and never training on your input data.
Speaker 9: So for that, just you know, most of these models
Speaker 9: generated iMOS, they get smarter by using what you give it,
Speaker 9: and that's your personal information.
Speaker 6: A lot of time, and a lot of people don't
Speaker 6: want that.
Speaker 9: So there's been a lot of you know, you hear
Speaker 9: it all the time, people like I don't really want
Speaker 9: to feel comfortable using these fool I don't want to
Speaker 9: give my data From the beginning, Anthropic took that position.
Speaker 9: It still holds true to it, and I think that's
Speaker 9: really really it's draw and I think it's great that
Speaker 9: they're doing that. We we need somebody who seeking a
Speaker 9: slightly different approach.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a that's a good differentiator. And I wasn't
Speaker 1: aware of that as someone who has fed like pretty
Speaker 1: much all of my information into chat GBT because I'm like, ah, whatever,
Speaker 1: what are they gonna do with it?
Speaker 2: This time?
Speaker 1: I even't had someone needed like my like information for
Speaker 1: like flights to like book flights. I just said, hey,
Speaker 1: chat ebt, do you have all my information? Like can
Speaker 1: you just write down like my you know tsa pre
Speaker 1: check it. It didn't have it, but it didn't, like say,
Speaker 1: it remembered it.
Speaker 9: But anyway, that's a call out too because you could
Speaker 9: always turn off the settings in chat GBT to train
Speaker 9: it off so it doesn't train on your data like
Speaker 9: I have that off because I love chat to BT.
Speaker 6: I love its interface. It's probably what I go to
Speaker 6: the most.
Speaker 9: But if you still want privacy, you do have that option,
Speaker 9: you can turn it off.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's a great, a great tip.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna so go to your settings and let's see
Speaker 1: it says personalization, Let's see connectors, schedule security. All right,
Speaker 1: we got to I'll find that. I'll find that setting
Speaker 1: so I can tell people how to do that, because
Speaker 1: that's a really interesting one that I think I turned
Speaker 1: off at some point and it's probably a good pricy
Speaker 1: all right. Sabrina Ortiz from zd net. How can folks
Speaker 1: follow your work online?
Speaker 6: Yeah? First again, all my coverage over at zd net.
Speaker 9: Every single day you will get a new story from
Speaker 9: me and even newsletters now too. But also on my
Speaker 9: personal please follow me on Instagram. I'm constantly sharing all
Speaker 9: my stories on there, Sabrina with an extra AFPN dot
Speaker 9: orts on Instagram and then also on Twitter or x
Speaker 9: so Sabrina actually at the end, underscore Ortiz there.
Speaker 1: Thanks a lot more rich on Tech right after this.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging
Speaker 1: out with you talking technology, triple eight Rich one oh
Speaker 1: one eight eight eight seven four to two four one
Speaker 1: zero one. The website for the show Rich on tech
Speaker 1: dot TV. If you want to email me there, you
Speaker 1: can do that, just hit contact. If you want to
Speaker 1: sign up for the free newsletter, you can do that.
Speaker 2: Also.
Speaker 1: You can look at the episode notes. This is episode
Speaker 1: one thirty one, So everything that I mentioned here is
Speaker 1: linked up there so you can easily go back and
Speaker 1: reference it.
Speaker 2: Later.
Speaker 1: We got a note from Kim said, a plumber called
Speaker 1: in and said about the water leaks, you can get
Speaker 1: a mowing flow.
Speaker 2: It works on spectrum and it should work.
Speaker 1: And yeah, this is actually you know, it's funny because
Speaker 1: covering technology for so long, pretty much every startup, every company,
Speaker 1: they come to me and they say, hey, can we do this?
Speaker 1: Can we install this at your house? Can we give
Speaker 1: you this to test out? Can you try this? And
Speaker 1: I can't do it all? And I remember these this
Speaker 1: flow type technology. I think the other one was finn
Speaker 1: pH y N And it's these systems that actually attach
Speaker 1: to your main water.
Speaker 2: Whatever you want to call it.
Speaker 1: You're you're you're in right your water pipe, and they
Speaker 1: basically monitor the water use on your system and if
Speaker 1: they notice something going wrong, it can actually turn off
Speaker 1: the water at the source.
Speaker 2: And so.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Finn p h y N is one of them,
Speaker 1: he said, the Mowen flow flo And so this is
Speaker 1: a smart device that monitors for leaks and immediately takes
Speaker 1: action to help prevent them. So it'll actually it'll go
Speaker 1: between your main you know, sort of water pipe and
Speaker 1: it will and it will turn off. It monitors interesting,
Speaker 1: it monitors a flow. So it uses like an algorithm
Speaker 1: to notice like, hey, number one, are using a ton
Speaker 1: of water this month more so than other months, and
Speaker 1: it will tell you that. And number two it will
Speaker 1: figure out if there's a leak and it will turn
Speaker 1: off the water. And this has this does have a
Speaker 1: monthly fee thirty dollars a month. Wow, that's that's a lot.
Speaker 1: Ultimate protection. The standard protection, I guess enhanced is twenty
Speaker 1: dollars a month. So it's not cheap. But when you're talking,
Speaker 1: when you're talking any sort of water damage at your home,
Speaker 1: it is not cheap. And even if you have insurance,
Speaker 1: you're still gonna be paying your deductible. And by the way,
Speaker 1: it's just it's a nightmare in general. Like we had
Speaker 1: this happen when our kid was born. We were at
Speaker 1: the hospital, so we didn't notice the leak until we
Speaker 1: came home and my wife stepped on the floor and
Speaker 1: it was soggy, and that that is a feeling you
Speaker 1: don't want. Jim from Orange County rights in or no Orange, California.
Speaker 1: First off, I enjoy enjoy your reports on KTLA, even
Speaker 1: when the tech doesn't apply to me. I still love
Speaker 1: hearing about what's new. I've been having a terrible time
Speaker 1: with Nitro pro pdf. I think my subscription expired but
Speaker 1: never got to notice. Support's impossible to reach. I was
Speaker 1: even shown a charge to a card that isn't mine.
Speaker 1: I've spent hours trying to sort it out, no luck.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of just starting over as a new user.
Speaker 1: Any advice, Jim, That does not sound good. But if
Speaker 1: you need to edit PDFs, it depends like what your
Speaker 1: level of need is. But if you're just casually trying
Speaker 1: to edit and do things with PDFs, check out a
Speaker 1: website called I lovepdf dot com. All the tools you
Speaker 1: need and they're free to do whatever you need. Merge PDFs,
Speaker 1: split PDFs, compress PDFs, convert PDFs, rotate, unlock, watermark, or
Speaker 1: even edit so you've got everything you need if you
Speaker 1: want a PDF to word, pdf to PowerPoint, create a pdf,
Speaker 1: watermark a PDF, and then edit pdf. Of course, if
Speaker 1: you want to add text, shapes, comments, and highlights, that'll
Speaker 1: do it. So those are the That's probably the website
Speaker 1: I'd recommend Nitro pdf. I'm not too familiar with, but
Speaker 1: it looks like it's just standard, you know, competition for Adobe.
Speaker 1: If you can get in touch with them, you like
Speaker 1: what they're doing, then yeah, go ahead. But if you
Speaker 1: don't like what they're doing, then just check out that website.
Speaker 1: I love pdfu dot com and you should be able
Speaker 1: to do a lot of stuff there.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 1: Adobe also has a level of free tools that you
Speaker 1: can use with their with PDFs there.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Don't forget a lot of these companies are going to
Speaker 1: try to make you pay at some point. So dependsing
Speaker 1: on depending on what you want to do. Like if
Speaker 1: you want to edit the actual PDF, you may have
Speaker 1: to pay for that functionality. Eighty eight rich one oh
Speaker 1: one eighty eight seven four to two four to one
Speaker 1: zero one more rich on Tech after this, Welcome back
Speaker 1: to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you,
Speaker 1: talking technology. Triple eight rich one o one eight eight
Speaker 1: eight seven four to two four one zero one. So
Speaker 1: far we've had quite the show, packed with a lot
Speaker 1: of your calls and emails, lots of great interviews. We
Speaker 1: have one more coming up this hour. Josh Goren from
Speaker 1: Walt Disney Imagineering is going to talk about the tech
Speaker 1: that Disney used to bring all their experiences to life.
Speaker 2: Also, we talked to.
Speaker 1: Sabrina over at zd net and she mentioned there was
Speaker 1: a setting inside chat gbt that you can turn off
Speaker 1: if you don't want chat gbt to train on your data.
Speaker 1: So if you don't want that to happen, which I
Speaker 1: did look and I did have that actually turned off already.
Speaker 1: But the setting is under data controls. So if you
Speaker 1: go to chatgbt dot com, tap your name in the
Speaker 1: lower left hand corner, tap settings, and go to data Controls.
Speaker 1: It says improve the model for everyone, and you can
Speaker 1: toggle that off, and if you don't, it says allow
Speaker 1: your content to be used to train our models, which
Speaker 1: makes chat gbt better for you and everyone who uses it.
Speaker 1: We take steps to protect your privacy. Learn more and
Speaker 1: if you tap here, it talks all about how it
Speaker 1: can use your data to basically improve their model, So
Speaker 1: it's learning from what you're doing. And so if you
Speaker 1: don't want to help open ai, and there are billions
Speaker 1: and billions of dollars of whatever they're doing, I mean, look,
Speaker 1: I love what open ai is doing. But I understand
Speaker 1: if if you're you know enough, people probably have this
Speaker 1: turned on where they're not going to hurt if I
Speaker 1: tell you that it's okay to turn this off. So
Speaker 1: if you turn off improve the model for everyone, they
Speaker 1: basically will not use your data to improve the model.
Speaker 1: And you know, you may not care, but some people might.
Speaker 1: And by the way, there's a whole bunch of options
Speaker 1: in here that you can look at, and you may
Speaker 1: not be familiar with a lot of these.
Speaker 2: There's so many.
Speaker 1: You can change themes, the language, the voice notifications, how
Speaker 1: it's personalized. You can even look at the memories that
Speaker 1: it has of you. So I can look, I'm scrolling
Speaker 1: through all the things that I've told chat GBT over
Speaker 1: the years, and it's or over the years. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: guess this is so random. Yeah, it's got a bunch
Speaker 1: of stuff in here. You can delete those. You've got connectors,
Speaker 1: so if you want to connect things like Gmail, Google Calendar, outlook.
Speaker 2: You can do that in there.
Speaker 1: You may have to be paid for some of those
Speaker 1: schedules data controls, so you can delete all the chats
Speaker 1: you've had with chat GBT security two fracture authentication. I
Speaker 1: would definitely, definitely, definitely turn that on. Just like any
Speaker 1: other website. If you log in and it doesn't recognize
Speaker 1: the log in, it will say, hey, let's text you
Speaker 1: a code or email you a code. You can also
Speaker 1: log out of all of your devices. So if you're
Speaker 1: like me, you log in from a bunch of different places,
Speaker 1: you can log out of all those from the website.
Speaker 1: You can also look at your account. Oh little hack,
Speaker 1: because I've got fifty percent off for the next three
Speaker 1: months if you go to cancel. If you're a paid
Speaker 1: subscriber of chat ebt, if you go to cancel your subscription,
Speaker 1: it may offer you fifty percent. Just it did it
Speaker 1: to me, So I've got fifty percent off until October third,
Speaker 1: So that's kind of cool.
Speaker 2: Now, someone emailed me.
Speaker 1: I think I mentioned that on my Instagram and someone said, hey,
Speaker 1: just cancel my account.
Speaker 2: Immediately said whoops.
Speaker 1: So your mileage may vary, but typically it will tell
Speaker 1: you what it's doing before it actually just cancels everything out.
Speaker 1: But yeah, there is a lot of stuff in here
Speaker 1: that you can check out with chat ebt.
Speaker 2: Yeah so much.
Speaker 1: I mean I do everything in there, So that's that's
Speaker 1: that's a popular service at this point, Janine writes in says,
Speaker 1: I received an email with a PDF attachment supposedly an
Speaker 1: invoice with a thank you for ordering. I use AOL
Speaker 1: email and Norton three sixty with LifeLock neither flagged it
Speaker 1: as spam. But I'm afraid to open the email or
Speaker 1: the attachment. How can I tell if it's legit or
Speaker 1: if someone's trying to scam me. The sender's address is
Speaker 1: just a Gmail account, Janine, I'm very proud of you
Speaker 1: for being on top of this, because this is a
Speaker 1: major problem. The invoice scam is a big one, and
Speaker 1: it doesn't come for just it comes from all kinds
Speaker 1: of things. I've seen it for geek Squad, from best Buy,
Speaker 1: confirmation that you've purchased an iPhone, confirmation of a some
Speaker 1: sort of anti virus order, and they send you an
Speaker 1: attachment that's basically looks like a receipt or an invoice,
Speaker 1: and it's saying thank you for your order. It's got
Speaker 1: your information on there, and sometimes it has all of
Speaker 1: your information like your address, your email, your phone number,
Speaker 1: depending on how much data they've scraped from data hacks
Speaker 1: out there, data breaches, and then what it wants you
Speaker 1: to do. And what the trick here is that you
Speaker 1: see this invoice and you go, I didn't order an
Speaker 1: anti virus. Wait, what do you mean three hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty seven dollars? You're charging my card? And it has
Speaker 1: a phone number says if there's any problem, call this number.
Speaker 1: And what people do is they call that phone number
Speaker 1: to say, hey, I didn't order this, Can you cancel this?
Speaker 1: What's happening? And that's when the scam starts. And that's
Speaker 1: when they say, Okay, no problem, ma'am. Let me just
Speaker 1: get some information from you. Give me your name, give
Speaker 1: me your email. Which credit card did you use? Is
Speaker 1: it the one ending in three two seven nine?
Speaker 2: Yes? Oh okay, can you confirm the rest of that? Yes?
Speaker 2: And by the time you go through.
Speaker 1: This whole rigamarole, you have now just given all of
Speaker 1: your information to these people, these scam artists, and they
Speaker 1: are now taking that information and running with it. So
Speaker 1: that is the scam So how do you tell if
Speaker 1: this is a scam? Number one, use your Spidey sense.
Speaker 1: You seem to do that with the Gmail account. So
Speaker 1: check the sender. That's the number one way. When you
Speaker 1: see one of these emails that you get, check the
Speaker 1: sender and see who sent it to you. Now, sometimes
Speaker 1: they will spoof the sender, but a lot of times
Speaker 1: you can tell pretty quickly that it is a spamy sender.
Speaker 1: So let's see if I can find one on here.
Speaker 1: I'm looking at my spam emails. Let's see here to do. No,
Speaker 1: that one's not it. So many, there's just so many,
Speaker 1: like there's just too many to go through. But anyway,
Speaker 1: what I would do is check the center number one.
Speaker 1: Number two, you can actually forward the email to a
Speaker 1: website called snitcher dot space. I think I mentioned this
Speaker 1: on the last show. Uh Snitcher dot space. You can
Speaker 1: email the Yeah, just forward the email to scan at
Speaker 1: snitcher dot space and they will analyze the email and
Speaker 1: reply to you with if they think it's fake or not. Now,
Speaker 1: there's also some other ones you can do out there.
Speaker 1: I think Norton actually has their own Norton Yeah, Norton
Speaker 1: Ai Genie and so Norton ai Genie is another one
Speaker 1: where you can just basically put the email in there
Speaker 1: and it will You can just copy and paste the
Speaker 1: entire email and it will take a look at that
Speaker 1: and tell you if it is bogus or not. And
Speaker 1: that's another way to do it. The other way you
Speaker 1: can do it is literally just copy and paste into
Speaker 1: chatchubt or Gemini and it will tell you say, hey,
Speaker 1: I got this email. I'm a little suspicious of it,
Speaker 1: and it will look at all the different kind of
Speaker 1: indicators on that email of whether they think it's fake
Speaker 1: or not, and it will tell you, now, ninety nine
Speaker 1: point nine percent of the time this stuff is fake.
Speaker 1: But I know because people forward me this stuff all
Speaker 1: the time. Sometimes it is legitimate. And that's what these
Speaker 1: scam artists do is they try to make it look
Speaker 1: like something we would receive and they imitate that, and
Speaker 1: then they get it to a place where you don't
Speaker 1: really know, and so you click a link not thinking, actually,
Speaker 1: I can tell you I got an email from someone
Speaker 1: a DM over the weekend or sorry, over the week
Speaker 1: when I was in Hawaii and they said, hey, let's
Speaker 1: see if I can find this. Okay, they said, rich,
Speaker 1: is this legitimate keeper. I guess Keeper is one of
Speaker 1: the brands of you know, the I'm trying to find
Speaker 1: this as Oh here it is. Okay, they said, hey,
Speaker 1: rich is keep her password manager a valid site. I
Speaker 1: got a message from them saying my Amazon account saying
Speaker 1: I need to log in to verify my account. Now,
Speaker 1: anytime you get an email like that, be very careful
Speaker 1: because what they want you to do is they're tricking
Speaker 1: you into logging into your Amazon account and then they're
Speaker 1: capturing your username and password. Which is why I always
Speaker 1: recommend that you have two factor turned on, because in
Speaker 1: that way, even if you logged in you would get
Speaker 1: the two factor code. They would not have that right
Speaker 1: because when you log into Amazon with two factor turned on,
Speaker 1: they send you a code to your email or your text.
Speaker 1: So the scam artists, if they captured your password, they
Speaker 1: would not get that two factor code, but they've gotten
Speaker 1: tricky about getting that from you as well. Anyway, she
Speaker 1: tapped the link that this keeper sent. It says, Hey,
Speaker 1: we've temporarily placed your Amazon account on hold and canceled
Speaker 1: any pending orders. We took this action because we detected
Speaker 1: unusual activity. Please log into your Amazon account to verify
Speaker 1: the requested information, and so she logged in and that's
Speaker 1: when Amazon said, hey, this is a scam, and so
Speaker 1: you have to be very careful with this stuff. And
Speaker 1: so I told her when she sent me the second screenshot,
Speaker 1: I can look at it, and it's actually pretty good.
Speaker 1: Her Google web browser, Google Chrome, actually jumped in and said, hey,
Speaker 1: you just entered your password on a deceptive website. So
Speaker 1: that was pretty good. So if you're using Chrome, they
Speaker 1: do scan for this stuff, but the problem is it's
Speaker 1: not always immediate and you may not get caught in time. So,
Speaker 1: by the way, when I saw the URL that she
Speaker 1: was trying to log into completely fake. I mean you
Speaker 1: could tell from this url it is not the official
Speaker 1: Amazon website. But again they try to trick you, so
Speaker 1: be careful with this stuff. Definitely ask a friend, family member,
Speaker 1: or use one of these websites I just mentioned, Norton, Genie, Snitcher,
Speaker 1: dot Space, or you can just copy the entire email
Speaker 1: into something like chat, gubt or Gemini and see what
Speaker 1: they say. Don't take what they say as you know,
Speaker 1: that is gospel. It may not be right every time,
Speaker 1: but it can help you understand. And there's a great
Speaker 1: website called scamspotter dot org scam scamspotter dot org, and
Speaker 1: that will help you understand these tactics that I just mentioned.
Speaker 1: And this has brought to you by Fight Cybercrime dot
Speaker 1: org and Google. They created this website to help you
Speaker 1: understand the scams that target users. So familiarize yourself with
Speaker 1: that and also send that to anyone in your family
Speaker 1: or friends that may not understand this stuff so they
Speaker 1: can understand these scams. Eighty eight rich one O one
Speaker 1: eighty eight seven four two four one zero one rich on.
Speaker 2: Tech dot TV back after this.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on tech rich Demiro here hanging
Speaker 1: out with you, talking technology. The website for the show
Speaker 1: is rich on tech dot TV. The email address, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I just go to the website rich on
Speaker 1: tech dot do you This is what happens when I
Speaker 1: get distracted. I'm trying to tell you something, I'm looking
Speaker 1: at my phone to try to look something up, and
Speaker 1: then I realize I'm like, wait a second, why am
Speaker 1: I giving this out again? But the website is rich
Speaker 1: on tech dot TV. Can go there and you can
Speaker 1: hit contact that will send your message directly to me.
Speaker 1: That's exactly what Tim did. He said, I was just
Speaker 1: listening to the show, and I have the flow smart
Speaker 1: shut off valve and I also have the optional flow
Speaker 1: leak detectors. There is an option for no monthly fee.
Speaker 1: The difference is they don't pay your deductible if there
Speaker 1: is a flood and the warranties only a year. The
Speaker 1: leak detectors are amazing. They are hooked up to your
Speaker 1: house Wi Fi. You place some new your water sources
Speaker 1: and if they get wet, they instantly shut the water
Speaker 1: off to your house. I have tested them. It takes
Speaker 1: about three seconds. Amazing show, my friend. Thanks for everything
Speaker 1: you do.
Speaker 2: Tim.
Speaker 1: Well, that's you know, but I think I'm going to
Speaker 1: install that today. I think you've sold me, Tim, because
Speaker 1: I you know, two water leaks is enough. I And
Speaker 1: it's funny because you know some of you listening maybe
Speaker 1: saying rich when you had the first leak, why didn't
Speaker 1: you install the stuff I did. I put a leak
Speaker 1: detector near the water heater. This time it wasn't the
Speaker 1: water heater, it was the washing machine. So I should
Speaker 1: have done the leak detector near the washing machine as well.
Speaker 1: But again it's you know, you live in your learn
Speaker 1: you know, these things are things that you hear about,
Speaker 1: you see on TV. You know, you got to protect
Speaker 1: this and that. And even if you have insurance, like
Speaker 1: I said, it's still expensive. They still want their deductible
Speaker 1: and in many cases that's going to be pretty expensive. So,
Speaker 1: no matter what, you're looking at a mess. And it's
Speaker 1: not just the money, it's also the time and energy
Speaker 1: and effort and everything that you have to go through
Speaker 1: to recover. And I call this kind of thing getting
Speaker 1: back to where you started. So it's like when you
Speaker 1: place the tires on your car, right, your car doesn't
Speaker 1: drive any better. I mean, yeah, maybe if you know
Speaker 1: you know, but like you know, I replaced the tires
Speaker 1: on my car a couple months ago, and it's like,
Speaker 1: you're spending all this money just to get back to
Speaker 1: where you started. I call that, you know, the repair
Speaker 1: that just literally it's like, Okay, let's say your alternator
Speaker 1: goes on your car. Your car is not driving any
Speaker 1: better with a new alternator, but you just spent fifteen hundred,
Speaker 1: two thousand bucks. I call it getting back to where
Speaker 1: you started, but just spent a whole bunch of money
Speaker 1: to do it. Also, by the way, if you want
Speaker 1: to follow me on Instagram at rich On Tech. John
Speaker 1: is in Newport Beach. What's up, John?
Speaker 4: Hi? I want to transfer an MP four file from
Speaker 4: a hard drive to a flash drive. Easy enough. Now,
Speaker 4: the MP four file is on my flash drive and
Speaker 4: I want to copy protected so that it cannot be
Speaker 4: duplicated from the flash drive. I'm using Windows eleven Home.
Speaker 1: Ah, okay, can you can you just make it read only?
Speaker 4: Perhaps you can make it read only on your on
Speaker 4: the security tab under properties if it's on your hard drive, right,
Speaker 4: But then you can't transfer to your flask drive. Once
Speaker 4: you transfer to your flask drive and you go to properties,
Speaker 4: there is no security tab to give it those attributes.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: See, I'm thinking this is this is almost like a
Speaker 1: copy protection thing. Like it's almost like, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: like these companies go through like really you know, they
Speaker 1: have their own DRM basically you know, if you're if
Speaker 1: you're a you know, Amazon or an MP three file
Speaker 1: whatever it is that they have where they make it
Speaker 1: where you can't really copy your transfer. But that's those
Speaker 1: are like really big systems. Have you found I don't
Speaker 1: know of an app off the top of my head
Speaker 1: that'll do this easily? I mean, I'm just doing a
Speaker 1: search and it. You know, there's there's one called Cockasoft.
Speaker 2: Did I see that?
Speaker 1: I try.
Speaker 4: I tried a free trial on that and I just
Speaker 4: didn't get anywhere with that.
Speaker 1: Interesting because this says USB copy protection for PDFs, office
Speaker 1: audio image files, EXSE.
Speaker 2: That comes up. It's that's how much was let's see.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean this one gives you like full access
Speaker 1: to everything per habit printing.
Speaker 2: This didn't work.
Speaker 4: Huh, Well, I think I was having trouble trying to
Speaker 4: use it. It might have been my fault. So maybe
Speaker 4: I'll just try that one again. But it appears not
Speaker 4: to be just a simple no setting or security setting
Speaker 4: that you can make. You've got to use some outside software.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's definitely not. It's not a simple setting.
Speaker 1: And now there are ways to you know, there are
Speaker 1: there are many ways like encrypt the drive make it
Speaker 1: so that it's like tough to access if someone just
Speaker 1: found it. But for actual copying of that file, if
Speaker 1: you don't have access to that functionality, it's really like
Speaker 1: I don't know off the top of my head how
Speaker 1: to do that. So that program seems to be I'm
Speaker 1: trying to see if there's like a free freeware version
Speaker 1: of that, and there may be. And that's the beauty
Speaker 1: of this show is that hopefully someone that's listening knows
Speaker 1: how to do this, and we'll say like, hey, you
Speaker 1: got to use this app, but I don't know off
Speaker 1: the top of my head, John. I will experiment a
Speaker 1: little bit with this and see if I can come
Speaker 1: up with something. But I'm not seeing something quick and
Speaker 1: easy that's sort of built into Windows. That's that's the
Speaker 1: main thing that, Yeah, that I'm coming up against. USB
Speaker 1: copy Yeah, Like even if I go I typically go
Speaker 1: into this website alternative to dot net to see if
Speaker 1: there's like a USB tool that we can use to
Speaker 1: do this, and I'm not finding something there. How about
Speaker 1: copy protect? Yeah, nothing interesting. None of this stuff's coming up.
Speaker 1: So this is definitely a tricky problem. But I will
Speaker 1: write this down in my notes. Now I've got homework
Speaker 1: to do, so I will figure out how we can
Speaker 1: make this video where you can't transfer it. Coming up next,
Speaker 1: we are going to talk to Josh Goren at Walt
Speaker 1: Disney Imagineering.
Speaker 2: This is rich On Tech.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging
Speaker 1: out with you, talking technology. Well, if you've been around
Speaker 1: this world for a while, you've probably heard the term imagineering.
Speaker 1: It sounds magical, mysterious, and of course very Disney. But
Speaker 1: what does it mean and who are the people behind
Speaker 1: the magic? Well, recently I had the chance to visit
Speaker 1: Walt Disney Imagineering in Glendale, California to see some of
Speaker 1: the cool stuff they're working on, and there I talked
Speaker 1: to Josh Goren, an executive R and D imagineer at
Speaker 1: Walt Disney Imagineering. He's one of these creative minds blending art,
Speaker 1: technology and engineering to bring Disney stories to life across
Speaker 1: all their properties, not just theme parks. Here's some of
Speaker 1: our conversation herm imagineering over the years. Imagineer sounds like
Speaker 1: this very magical, mysterious thing.
Speaker 2: What does that mean exactly?
Speaker 11: So, Imagineers are the people who conceive, design, and build
Speaker 11: Disney physical experiences all around the world. The rides, the lands,
Speaker 11: the theme parks, the hotels, the cruise ship those are
Speaker 11: made by imagineers, and imagineers are all over the world.
Speaker 11: We come from over one hundred different disciplines. So it's artists, designers, engineers, fabricators,
Speaker 11: all coming together to create these impossible worlds that you
Speaker 11: know from Disney Parks.
Speaker 1: A lot of this does involve technology and in different ways,
Speaker 1: but I also read that you can come up with
Speaker 1: any concepts, Like the way you come up with these
Speaker 1: rides and things is, hey, if we can do anything,
Speaker 1: this is how we do it.
Speaker 2: And then it goes into the process of how do
Speaker 2: we make this? Can you explain that a little bit?
Speaker 11: At Imagineering, everything starts with story. We are storytellers. Walt
Speaker 11: created Imagineering by pulling his favorite talent from the studios, artists, engineers,
Speaker 11: fabricators to create these imagined worlds and to bring them
Speaker 11: to life. At Imagineering we continue that today. So we
Speaker 11: don't start with how do we make this type of
Speaker 11: ride or use this type of robot? You start with
Speaker 11: what's the story? How do we want guests to feel?
Speaker 11: And even when you're adapting a Disney film for the parks,
Speaker 11: it's not just copy paste. Where would you want to
Speaker 11: be in this world? Who would you want to meet,
Speaker 11: who would you want to be, and what would you
Speaker 11: want to do? And so it starts there, what's the
Speaker 11: story we want to tell and how do we want
Speaker 11: to tell it and then the technology serves the story
Speaker 11: and hopefully, when we do our jobs correctly, the guests
Speaker 11: I'm going in saying wow, what amazing technology. Hopefully that
Speaker 11: technology stating to the background and they're just experiencing a story,
Speaker 11: a character, a world, interacting with their family, having a
Speaker 11: great time. That's what we ultimately create is emotions. Emotions
Speaker 11: are our product. Technology is just one more tool in
Speaker 11: our toolkit to make that happen.
Speaker 1: So interesting note on the technology side of things. During
Speaker 1: my tour here, we saw the Spider Man that is
Speaker 1: a robot that kind of does a flip at one
Speaker 1: of the theme Parks's California Adventure and I've seen that
Speaker 1: several times, never realizing that that was not a human
Speaker 1: or some sort I don't even know what I thought
Speaker 1: that was. But now that I know that's a robot
Speaker 1: that has been engineered in a way to do that
Speaker 1: flip every time perfectly, that's pretty wild. So that goes
Speaker 1: to show that the technology did blend into the background.
Speaker 11: For me, Yes, Centronics is such a great project because
Speaker 11: that was the goal to make you believe that Spider
Speaker 11: Man was doing these larger than life flips and the
Speaker 11: reality is a human performer could not physically withstand the
Speaker 11: g forces that that character goes through, much less twelve
Speaker 11: times a day. That was a story that could only
Speaker 11: be told through a stunt tronic, through an advanced character robot.
Speaker 11: But I'm so glad that it got you because that
Speaker 11: was the goal, was for anyone coming into Avengers campus
Speaker 11: to feel like they were part of a real world
Speaker 11: and getting to see Spider Man as they knew him
Speaker 11: from the films, even if that wouldn't have been physically
Speaker 11: possible with a human.
Speaker 1: How has technology aided what you do and how has
Speaker 1: that changed over the years.
Speaker 11: What's funny about technology in Disney is it's not new,
Speaker 11: it's super core to our history. Walt Disney was kind
Speaker 11: of obsessed with how to use the latest and greatest
Speaker 11: in technology to bring his stories to life in new ways.
Speaker 2: Even before the theme parks.
Speaker 11: You look at Snow White as the first feature length
Speaker 11: animated film, the multiplane camera that gave different levels of
Speaker 11: depth stereophonic sound in Fantasia. Walt had this very early
Speaker 11: fascination with using the latest tech of his day to
Speaker 11: bring these stories and characters to life. And we're just
Speaker 11: extending that legacy now, so we love technologies that make
Speaker 11: people believe anything as possible. One of my favorite quotes
Speaker 11: is from the science fiction author Arthur C. Clark, and
Speaker 11: he said, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Speaker 11: And here at Imaginary Research and Development, that's kind of
Speaker 11: our job to harness technology to make people believe magic
Speaker 11: is real.
Speaker 2: And so whether that's.
Speaker 11: Creating the next great advanced character robot or an illusion,
Speaker 11: an effect, or an interactive experience, that's what the people
Speaker 11: here do is try to make emotion through technology and
Speaker 11: to creatively apply them in new ways to bring those
Speaker 11: Disney stories characters in worlds to life.
Speaker 2: Something like the BDX robots.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's quite the undertaking because they feel so realistic.
Speaker 2: Give me a little insight into.
Speaker 11: Those We love the BDX droids, so they are part
Speaker 11: of our Advanced Character Robotics program, which is how do
Speaker 11: we bring expressive, emotive characters to life using the latest
Speaker 11: and greatest in technology. What's really cool about the bd
Speaker 11: X droids is they've appeared in Disney parks all around
Speaker 11: the world, including our ships, and people just fall in
Speaker 11: love with them. They're so cute and they're based on
Speaker 11: some really cutting edge technology using reinforcement learning. So the
Speaker 11: way they learn to move is that we make a
Speaker 11: three D model of them and put them in a
Speaker 11: computer and train them how to walk in balance. But
Speaker 11: we don't just train them how to stay upright. We've
Speaker 11: put in the input of a Disney animator to give
Speaker 11: them that expressiveness, that personality, and so they learn how
Speaker 11: to walk and perform through that animator's guidance into what
Speaker 11: you see today. So again, at the end of the day,
Speaker 11: we don't want guests focusing on the technology, even though
Speaker 11: they're technically robots. We want them to focus on the
Speaker 11: characters and their person reality and to make an emotional connection.
Speaker 11: You know, the Disney Company started with this idea of animation,
Speaker 11: and animation is the illusion of life through movement, and
Speaker 11: so whether that sells on a page or images on
Speaker 11: a screen, or a robotic droid right in front of you,
Speaker 11: that's what we do. Create the illusion of life through movement,
Speaker 11: and the BDX terroids are one very cute example of
Speaker 11: that brought to life.
Speaker 1: Now, how do you keep what the traditionalive of certain
Speaker 1: things at Disney versus what you want to push forward
Speaker 1: with technology and newness?
Speaker 11: You know, We've always had one foot in the past
Speaker 11: and one foot looking to the future. Our legacy doesn't
Speaker 11: hold us back. It inspires us. We have this strong
Speaker 11: history of technologically enabled guest experiences, going back to opening
Speaker 11: day at Disneyland. The idea of Disneyland itself, the idea
Speaker 11: of a theme park, a place where you went in
Speaker 11: and experience the stories in immersive way that was at
Speaker 11: the time a new idea. So our legacy pushes us
Speaker 11: to keep trying harder, to keep exceeding expectations, to keep
Speaker 11: surprising and delighting.
Speaker 3: Things that don't change.
Speaker 11: Our commitment to story, our commitment to surprising and innovating,
Speaker 11: our commitment to quality and detail. That stays the same.
Speaker 11: The stories we tell as new films come out and
Speaker 11: new characters get popular, The technologies we use as we
Speaker 11: see new things happening in industry. The techniques those will
Speaker 11: change and evolve. But the core values that drive what
Speaker 11: we do as imagineers and the way we do it
Speaker 11: that stays constant.
Speaker 1: Well, can we look forward to seeing from your team
Speaker 1: and in your future at Disney Properties.
Speaker 11: I can't talk specifically about some of the things we're
Speaker 11: working on. We've got some real top secret stuff behind
Speaker 11: these walls. But what I can tell you is this
Speaker 11: is an incredibly exciting time to be an imagineer, an
Speaker 11: incredibly exciting time to be a Disney Parks fan. We
Speaker 11: have global expansion happening all over the world and on
Speaker 11: our ships, and new parks being announced like the one
Speaker 11: in Abu Dhabi that provide these amazing canvases to bring
Speaker 11: stories to life in new ways to surprise people.
Speaker 2: So while I.
Speaker 11: Can't get into the specifics top secret projects beyond these doors,
Speaker 11: I can tell you we are are so excited and
Speaker 11: can't wait for our guests to experience them themselves.
Speaker 1: If someone is interested in joining the team here, explain
Speaker 1: what that process is like and how is that even possible.
Speaker 11: Yeah, you know, every imagineer has a story of how
Speaker 11: they got here, and each one's unique. But imagineering is
Speaker 11: something that is possible. It's something that real people come
Speaker 11: and do. Usually it starts with finding what you're great
Speaker 11: at and getting really passionately involved in it, whether that's
Speaker 11: the robotics side or the creative side, the music choreography. Again,
Speaker 11: we have over one hundred disciplines here, so there's a
Speaker 11: high chance that something you do is represented at Imagineering.
Speaker 11: So for young people, what I always say is start
Speaker 11: making now. There are so many amazing tools and information
Speaker 11: resources available now for kids and aspiring imagineers to just
Speaker 11: start creating. We have, for example, Imagineering in a Box,
Speaker 11: which is a free educational program we developed with the
Speaker 11: CON Academy, which is hours and hours of programming about
Speaker 11: how we do what we do, with interactive lessons and guides,
Speaker 11: all available for free online. There's a ton of amazing
Speaker 11: books about imagineering, many written by imagineers that talk about
Speaker 11: our design process. We have the Imagination's College Program, which
Speaker 11: allows for college students to develop projects and potentially get
Speaker 11: a chance to be flown out to Imagineering and present
Speaker 11: to Imagineering leadership, potentially leading to an internship. So there
Speaker 11: are many roads to imagineering no matter what people study
Speaker 11: or what they do. As long as you're passionate and
Speaker 11: you work hard, and you're talented, you may be able
Speaker 11: to find your place here.
Speaker 2: There you have it.
Speaker 1: Josh Goorn from Walt Disney Imagineering once again he mentioned
Speaker 1: Imagineering in a Box that's a free online resource for
Speaker 1: future creators. You can find it on the CON academy website.
Speaker 1: I will put the link on mine rich on Tech
Speaker 1: dot tv, and if you want to see some of
Speaker 1: the videos that I took at Imagineering, just go to
Speaker 1: my instagram at rich on Tech.
Speaker 2: Coming up, we're.
Speaker 1: Opening up the feedback once again.
Speaker 2: For more of your comments.
Speaker 1: To close out the show, Welcome back to rich On Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, Talking technology. Got
Speaker 1: an email from Vincent talking about the callers question regarding
Speaker 1: copy protection. He says the potential solution could be with
Speaker 1: sand discs secure access software. So I looked up secure
Speaker 1: access from sand disc. Looks like they changed it now
Speaker 1: to private access, which it encrypts and password protects files
Speaker 1: on sand Disc USB flash drives. Doesn't necessarily say that
Speaker 1: you can't copy stuff on them, but that may be
Speaker 1: a feature. But you do need to use a sand
Speaker 1: Disc USB or I expand flash drive to use this
Speaker 1: private access software. But that's one more option. So again,
Speaker 1: private access if you don't want people to be able
Speaker 1: to copy the stuff. But I'll have to investigate that
Speaker 1: see if it works properly. Thanks for the email there.
Speaker 1: Open up the feedback now. We've got lots here. Tiffany
Speaker 1: writes in from Huntington Beach, Hey, Rich, just wants to
Speaker 1: alert you of a scary text that looks like a
Speaker 1: scam targeting moms. I received a text yesterday from a
Speaker 1: Boston phone number saying, Hi, Mom, my phone is broken.
Speaker 1: Text me now on this number right here, and it
Speaker 1: gives a phone number. My oldest is living in Baltimore
Speaker 1: and always refers to me as MA, so I knew
Speaker 1: it wasn't him.
Speaker 2: That's interesting.
Speaker 1: The scariest part is I almost fell for it, and
Speaker 1: I could easily see a mom worried about our kid
Speaker 1: and getting scammed. It feels like a personal assault on
Speaker 1: moms everywhere. Wow, Tiffany, thanks for that. Is that's scary because, yeah,
Speaker 1: think about it. Your kid might be living somewhere and
Speaker 1: they say, hey, my phone's broken, text me here. You
Speaker 1: may not think twice call them from there.
Speaker 2: Wow. Good warning there.
Speaker 1: Mark from Laguna Noguel, California writes in, Hey, Rich, thanks
Speaker 1: for warning listeners about simlocking.
Speaker 2: I wish I had known sooner.
Speaker 1: Back in February, someone ported my number without my approval
Speaker 1: and it's kicked off three months of stress and account takeovers.
Speaker 1: The attacker access my bank email, Amazon Google, PayPal, and more.
Speaker 1: Resetting passwords using my phone number. Even when I changed passwords,
Speaker 1: they just do a reset again. Mint said it would
Speaker 1: take forty eight hours to get my number back, but
Speaker 1: it took a full week, and once I had it,
Speaker 1: call still wouldn't come through. Eventually, I gave up and
Speaker 1: got a new number. Mark's advice lock your SIM with
Speaker 1: a carrier, use an authentication app instead of text based
Speaker 1: two factor authentication, keep emergency contact info for key accounts,
Speaker 1: and report things.
Speaker 2: To the FBI's IC three.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, Nicole writes in Hey Rich, I've been
Speaker 1: using a device called the PCI Tracker. It lets you
Speaker 1: control your PC completely with just your eyes, no hand
Speaker 1: movement needed. A friend gifted it to me, and I'm
Speaker 1: in love with it. I thought it might be something
Speaker 1: you want to check out or even feature, especially since
Speaker 1: it could be helpful to others. That's good to know,
Speaker 1: PCI Tracker. There's also I tracking built in to Apple
Speaker 1: with Settings Accessibility eye tracking, so no extra hardware necessary,
Speaker 1: so check that out Settings Accessibility, I Tracking. Mike from
Speaker 1: Denver new listener here, love your show. I listened to
Speaker 1: the podcast weekly and I'm learning so much. I followed
Speaker 1: your instructions to turn on simswap protection for Verizon, and
Speaker 1: while I was in my account, I noticed a bunch
Speaker 1: of other security and privacy settings I'd never looked at.
Speaker 1: Thanks to your heads up, I was able to enable
Speaker 1: number lock, set an account pen, and turn off a
Speaker 1: bunch of privacy default privacy settings like CPN, I sharing
Speaker 1: and custom Experience.
Speaker 2: Plus.
Speaker 1: Just wanted to say thank you and maybe remind listeners
Speaker 1: to log in and check those other privacy settings too.
Speaker 1: I'm glad I did. Great tip, Mike, thanks for being
Speaker 1: a new listener. And yes, just have some fun. Instead
Speaker 1: of going out on a Saturday night hanging out with friends,
Speaker 1: going out to the bar, restaurant, dinner with your family,
Speaker 1: just check the I, acy and data settings on all
Speaker 1: of your accounts. You know, just spend a Saturday night
Speaker 1: doing that and enjoy. Just see what you find. I'm kidding,
Speaker 1: but that's what I do. That's how nerdy I am.
Speaker 1: I go through my phones and I just go step
Speaker 1: by step every every single setting you can imagine. I
Speaker 1: just like to see what's available and just you know,
Speaker 1: see and I'm like, oh that's interesting, let's see.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Nerd for sure.
Speaker 1: Mark another interesting another mark about SIM swapping. Thanks rich
Speaker 1: for warning people to lock their SIM I didn't and
Speaker 1: I paid the price. My phone number was ported without
Speaker 1: my approval. In the next three months were a nightmare.
Speaker 1: Wait is that the same thing? I think that's the
Speaker 1: same email sounded like it. Richard from Ocean Side writes
Speaker 1: in I added the watch Duty app to my phone
Speaker 1: last week.
Speaker 2: Super easy.
Speaker 1: I got two alerts for a fire near La Mesa
Speaker 1: on July fourth, and two more on July fifth for
Speaker 1: a fire near the Ocean Side Airport. I haven't seen
Speaker 1: anything on the news or heard anything from my San
Speaker 1: Diego County emergency app. Thanks for having that guest on
Speaker 1: your show. Great recommendation. Yeah, watch Duty is essential if
Speaker 1: you live in an area that might have fires, and
Speaker 1: I think they're expanding to floods next, he said, Bruce,
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh. Another hacking story. Back in May, my
Speaker 1: Facebook account was hacked. The hacker changed the log in credentials,
Speaker 1: locking me out. I tried all the usual recovery routes
Speaker 1: and nothing worked. Everyone I talked to you said the
Speaker 1: only way back in was knowing someone on the inside
Speaker 1: at META. Eventually I tracked down a few email addresses
Speaker 1: for a few Meta attorneys and executives and explained my situation.
Speaker 1: A few days later, a real person for Meta support
Speaker 1: reached out and helped me recover the account. It wasn't
Speaker 1: smooth selling, but I finally got access back and added
Speaker 1: two factor authentication right away. Okay, yeah, tracked down those
Speaker 1: email addresses. Steve from Cincinnati writes in on your last show,
Speaker 1: you mentioned that Amazon now has price history. Well, camel
Speaker 1: Cammell Cambell has been doing it better for a while.
Speaker 1: Their browser extension, the Camelizer, gives you at least six months,
Speaker 1: sometimes a year, of price history. Thanks for the great show.
Speaker 2: Rich.
Speaker 1: By the way, my last name sounds like the word cool.
Speaker 1: I don't have his last name in here, but you
Speaker 1: are cool, Steve.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: I like the Amazon price history because it's simple and
Speaker 1: it's right there. But yes, there are many options out there.
Speaker 1: Ray writes in magic Jack is still around. It now
Speaker 1: connects directly to your router, not your computer using an
Speaker 1: Ethernet cable. You just need internet service. It's about fifty
Speaker 1: dollars a year with no monthly fee. I've used it
Speaker 1: for over fifty years with both corded and cordless phones,
Speaker 1: even an answering machine.
Speaker 2: I'll not say something.
Speaker 1: Yes, look at the monitor right to your left. H
Speaker 1: that's from tmz Dare you see this? This is okay?
Speaker 1: So this says your Google customer, Congratulations, you're one of
Speaker 1: one hundred users we have selected for free stuff.
Speaker 2: And it looks just like Google. It does.
Speaker 1: Man, if you look at the website, that's not a
Speaker 1: Google website, get mega love. Yeah, no, that is not.
Speaker 1: That is not You have to be careful, and this happens.
Speaker 1: This is really called malvertising. So advertisers inject stuff like
Speaker 1: this into legitimate advertising. But they do it so quickly
Speaker 1: that before the Google systems or any of the advertising
Speaker 1: systems have a chance to figure this out, they've already
Speaker 1: netted a couple people. That happens all the time, literally
Speaker 1: tmz dot com and opened it a few minutes later.
Speaker 2: It just popped up.
Speaker 1: It can happen on any website, even legitimate ones. Just
Speaker 1: be careful with that stuff. But if you get that
Speaker 1: thousand dollars gift card, you gotta split it with me.
Speaker 1: Leo from the South Bay says, great show. We've had
Speaker 1: uma for many years.
Speaker 2: It works great.
Speaker 1: Also, you overestimated the cost. We're only paying about seven
Speaker 1: to seventy five a month for free nationwide calls. Okay,
Speaker 1: good clarification, Leo, I mentioned ten to twelve dollars a
Speaker 1: month in taxes and fees.
Speaker 2: It could be lower depending on your location. Let's see.
Speaker 2: Do we have one more to get to before the
Speaker 2: break here? Oh?
Speaker 1: Danny writes in from Charlotte, North Carolina, and Rich, you
Speaker 1: can get good moon pictures with an iPhone, but it
Speaker 1: takes practice.
Speaker 2: A tripod works best.
Speaker 1: Adjust the exposure by tapping the screen to set the focus,
Speaker 1: then drag the exposure slider to manually just brightness. Eh,
Speaker 1: just get a Samsung S twenty five Ultra, gona take
Speaker 1: it all right.
Speaker 2: That's gonna do it for this episode.
Speaker 1: Next week, how AI is taking over the fast food
Speaker 1: drive through, and how it's helping you plan for long
Speaker 1: term care. Thanks to everyone who makes this show possible.
Speaker 1: Find me at rich on Tech. My name is Rich Dmiro.
Speaker 2: Talk to you real soon.