Speaker 1: Hands on with the Samsung Galaxy S twenty one CES
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one Wrap up, Google Speakers, get a guest
Speaker 1: mode plus your tech questions answered. What's going on? I'm
Speaker 1: Rich Damiro and this is Rich on Tech, the podcast
Speaker 1: where I talk about the tech stuff I think you
Speaker 1: should know about. It's also where I answer the questions
Speaker 1: that you send me. I'm the tech reporter at KTLA
Speaker 1: Channel five in Los Angeles. Back from the Seattle area
Speaker 1: and CS twenty twenty one all digital this year. If
Speaker 1: you follow me on social media, yeah, you're kind of
Speaker 1: up to speed on everything that was going on there.
Speaker 1: We did the show from up at the Microsoft studios
Speaker 1: just outside Seattle in Redmond. Beautiful, beautiful area. I really
Speaker 1: fell in love with the area up there.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: I used to live up there for about a year.
Speaker 1: I lived in Yakima, Washington, and so I was familiar
Speaker 1: with the Pacific Northwest. I remember it just being absolutely beautiful, beautiful, beautiful,
Speaker 1: clean fresh air. I mean it was just I took
Speaker 1: a run on this path that was behind the hotel,
Speaker 1: and it like rivaled any run I've taken anywhere in
Speaker 1: America because it was just so beautiful and it wasn't
Speaker 1: even anything. It was just like a run along a river,
Speaker 1: but really really nice. CS twenty twenty one, All Digital,
Speaker 1: Like I said, a little bit different this year. I
Speaker 1: was a host of the Digital I guess you call
Speaker 1: it the what was it the live anchor desk, So
Speaker 1: we kind of like intro the different you know, keynotes
Speaker 1: and you know, not like well, I don't know. It's
Speaker 1: just like basically like a newscast but for CS. So
Speaker 1: we were talking, you know, just kind of keeping everything moving,
Speaker 1: and I thought it was really cool. It was very different.
Speaker 1: I think that the all digital CS format worked. But
Speaker 1: I think that people, you know, they enjoyed the break
Speaker 1: this year, but I think that people will be ready
Speaker 1: for going back to Vegas next year, and it will
Speaker 1: be in Vegas next year. I believe the dates are
Speaker 1: January fifth through eighth, but don't quote me on that.
Speaker 1: And if you're a journalist, you have to go for
Speaker 1: like three days before and three days after anyway, That's
Speaker 1: what happens to me. But it was it was really fun.
Speaker 1: My co host was I Justine. She is awesome. I
Speaker 1: literally no joke, just tried to pick her brain all
Speaker 1: week long, so i'd ask her. You know, what's your
Speaker 1: favorite app for the iPhone? What's your How do you
Speaker 1: do this on social media? How do you do that?
Speaker 1: What do you how do you deal with this when
Speaker 1: it comes to your followers? Like I just wanted to know,
Speaker 1: Like this is a person that she I didn't even
Speaker 1: realize how many followers she has, but let's see. So
Speaker 1: on Twitter, Let's see on Twitter, she's got one point
Speaker 1: seven million followers, on YouTube six point eight three million.
Speaker 1: Let's see on Instagram, and on Instagram one point seven million,
Speaker 1: so across all those social media platforms. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: pretty amazing to have that any followers across all three
Speaker 1: platforms because a lot of if you look at a
Speaker 1: lot of like the YouTubers specifically, they'll amass this large
Speaker 1: following on YouTube, but they might not be as good
Speaker 1: at getting folks to follow them on like Twitter or
Speaker 1: Facebook or Instagram, I should say, so for her to
Speaker 1: get the trifecta there of millions across all three is
Speaker 1: pretty pretty amazing. And when she tweets stuff for Instagram stuff,
Speaker 1: it just goes everywhere. I mean, it's pretty wild to watch,
Speaker 1: and she is always working. She's very smart, and it
Speaker 1: was interesting when she said to me that she sees
Speaker 1: herself as a mini startup, and I thought that was
Speaker 1: so interesting because I always wondered how, you know, these
Speaker 1: entrepreneurs think of themselves, and she is right on the money.
Speaker 1: So Justine, thank you. She probably doesn't listen to this podcast,
Speaker 1: but anyway, it was really fun to work with her.
Speaker 1: And we also had Brian Tong, who obviously is a
Speaker 1: good friend of mine, and Naomi Kyle, who I did
Speaker 1: not know, but I got to know a little bit,
Speaker 1: not much because we you know, with COVID, they tried
Speaker 1: to keep us as separate as possible, so they had
Speaker 1: to follow all these precautions and it was very very
Speaker 1: buttoned up production. I was I was super duper impressed.
Speaker 1: I wasn't really sure what to expect, but I have
Speaker 1: to say everyone from the Consumer Technology Association that puts
Speaker 1: on CES, you know, they had a bunch of people
Speaker 1: up there, to the actual folks that produced the show,
Speaker 1: to the Microsoft Studios folks. I mean, it was really,
Speaker 1: really an amazing experience. I am so glad that I
Speaker 1: was a part of it. And we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about some of the things in CES. I'm gonna start
Speaker 1: with the Samsung Galaxy S twenty one. Then I'll go
Speaker 1: back to CES. But real quick, I just, you know,
Speaker 1: want to talk about because it was my first time
Speaker 1: flying and traveling in nine months since last March. I
Speaker 1: mean that was the last basically, February was the end
Speaker 1: of February. It was the last time I traveled last year.
Speaker 1: So was it weird? Yes? Did it feel really cool? Yes?
Speaker 1: Was I very excited? Yes? Everything felt great. I did
Speaker 1: not feel I was at risk for COVID at any
Speaker 1: point in the trip. The airport, not not on the
Speaker 1: La end, but on the Seattle end, was quite busy,
Speaker 1: but again I was not close to people, and on
Speaker 1: my flights I was not really close to people. I
Speaker 1: did have to sit next to someone on the way
Speaker 1: out there. On the way back, the plane was totally empty.
Speaker 1: And overall, I mean, you know, I wore my N
Speaker 1: ninety five mask on the plane, and you know, you
Speaker 1: it was great. I mean it really It's sad that
Speaker 1: the state of the you know what state of the
Speaker 1: world we're in right now when it comes to that,
Speaker 1: but I think that it made me realize that, no,
Speaker 1: I don't want to do this a lot, but of
Speaker 1: course I will do it for work, and you know,
Speaker 1: you just have to remain you know, vigilant about protecting yourself,
Speaker 1: you know, just just taking the proper precautions and just
Speaker 1: being aware of your surroundings and what you're doing, and
Speaker 1: especially touching your face and all that stuff. And you know,
Speaker 1: when I was taking the car from the you know,
Speaker 1: the studio to the the the hotel, you know, I
Speaker 1: told the guys said, look, I'm opening the window because
Speaker 1: that's what I'm supposed to do and get some fresh
Speaker 1: air in here. And the driver they understand, everyone's in
Speaker 1: this together. So it was great experience. I had a blast.
Speaker 1: I hope they do something similar for twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: and I hope that I'm on the short list for
Speaker 1: someone that might be considered to help out again. So
Speaker 1: thank you CS and CTA. You guys were fantastic. All right,
Speaker 1: let's start with the device that I came home to,
Speaker 1: and I was very, very much excited for this, the
Speaker 1: Samsung Galaxy S twenty one. Samsung sent over the S
Speaker 1: twenty one and the S twenty one Ultra, so the
Speaker 1: lowest end and the highest end, and I've been playing
Speaker 1: with these. I'm not at liberty to give my full
Speaker 1: review just yet, because well, let's be honest, it's only
Speaker 1: been like a couple hours, but it's a you know,
Speaker 1: I can give you my first impressions kind of the unboxing,
Speaker 1: and from what I've seen, this is is kind of
Speaker 1: a nice device. I mean, it reminds me of the Note.
Speaker 1: I love the Note twenty. It was just too big
Speaker 1: for me. This one is a little bit easier to
Speaker 1: manage in my hand, even though it's still a nice
Speaker 1: big screen six point eight inch screen. I'm talking about
Speaker 1: the Ultra here. It's got four cameras on the back.
Speaker 1: It's got an ultra it's got a wide It's got
Speaker 1: a ten times optical telephoto lens, which is just amazing.
Speaker 1: I mean, ten times on a smartphone is for optical
Speaker 1: is just phenomenal. I love that. Then it also has
Speaker 1: a three times telephoto lens, so four lenses on this
Speaker 1: along with laser autofocus and the things that it ditches
Speaker 1: this year, which I was surprised. There's no charger in
Speaker 1: the box, which is fine. I have plenty of chargers.
Speaker 1: I don't need to get another charger just sitting around
Speaker 1: my house. And I think that a majority of people
Speaker 1: feel the same way. The other thing though that did
Speaker 1: surprise me is that they got rid of the the
Speaker 1: SD card slot, so there's no more micro SD cards
Speaker 1: expandable storage on any of these devices, which you know
Speaker 1: some people that was a big differentiator with the Samsungs
Speaker 1: and the fact that you could just buy the standard
Speaker 1: model and just pump up the memory with a card
Speaker 1: was really cool. You can no longer do that. The
Speaker 1: other thing that they got rid of is the little
Speaker 1: antenna that enabled Samsung Pay to work in places that
Speaker 1: the other phones didn't work, the other Androids and the
Speaker 1: Apple iPhone. They had a special antenna inside the Samsung
Speaker 1: devices called MST and this antenna would basically recreate the
Speaker 1: magnetic field from the stripe on the back of your
Speaker 1: credit card and sort of emit that out to any
Speaker 1: card reader anywhere. So this is why you could use
Speaker 1: tap to pay at Walmart even though they don't accept it,
Speaker 1: because the Samsung would actually emit it kind of mimicked
Speaker 1: what a credit card would do, and it kind of
Speaker 1: faked out the machines. Well, they got rid of that,
Speaker 1: so the competitive edge for Samsung Pay is now gone,
Speaker 1: and that's kind of a big deal. But otherwise this
Speaker 1: phone is one hundred percent loaded. It's you can just
Speaker 1: feel the quality of this device. It feels really nice
Speaker 1: in your hand. The screen looks amazing. It's got all
Speaker 1: the things that you need, minus those two little things
Speaker 1: that they took a step back on. One thing that
Speaker 1: I really liked that they did was they added the
Speaker 1: Google Discover feed to the left of my home screen,
Speaker 1: which is just amazing for the launcher. So now when
Speaker 1: I swipe to the right, it all right, sorry, let's see. Wait, yeah,
Speaker 1: swipe to the right. It brings up all that Google
Speaker 1: Discover stuff, which I've loved forever, all the stories that
Speaker 1: wants you to read and all that stuff. So that's
Speaker 1: a huge, huge plus for me because I did not
Speaker 1: like the Bixby stuff, so would just turn it off
Speaker 1: and you know, otherwise. There's other improvements that are small
Speaker 1: things that are really cool. It's got a five thousand
Speaker 1: million battery. Of course I had wireless charging. It's got
Speaker 1: the you know IP sixty eight water resistance. The price
Speaker 1: it starts at twelve hundred dollars, which is two hundred
Speaker 1: dollars less than last year. So that's a pro right
Speaker 1: now during this economy where you know, it's been rough
Speaker 1: on a lot of folks. Let's see, they all have
Speaker 1: eight K video recording, and because you're recording eight K,
Speaker 1: they say you can pull a full resolution picture out
Speaker 1: of your video. So you know, sometimes you take a
Speaker 1: video and it's like it doesn't look very good if
Speaker 1: you try to get a screenshot out of that, But
Speaker 1: this will look just as good as a regular picture.
Speaker 1: I haven't tried that yet, but I can't wait to
Speaker 1: try that. You know. Of course they always say that
Speaker 1: night mode is better, and all these pictures are better,
Speaker 1: but I'll be the judge of that, and I will
Speaker 1: be testing this out over the next couple of weeks
Speaker 1: to see just how much better. You can also use
Speaker 1: a stylust now with the S twenty one Ultra only
Speaker 1: the other two models you cannot use a stylist, but
Speaker 1: the S twenty one Ultra you can use a stylist.
Speaker 1: Whether you buy a new one or you buy or
Speaker 1: maybe you have a stylist from an old note that
Speaker 1: will work as well, So that's kind of cool. The
Speaker 1: other thing that's neat is that when you share a
Speaker 1: picture through their gallery, it will ask you if you
Speaker 1: want to get rid of the the location data. Oh
Speaker 1: it's off by default, which is really nice. So that
Speaker 1: is a huge, huge thing for privacy. I love that.
Speaker 1: Let's see what else? Eight K video. Oh, the it
Speaker 1: still does one hundred times zoom with with you know,
Speaker 1: their hybrid zoom system, but they've steadied it out so
Speaker 1: when you zoom in really far, it stays steady. And
Speaker 1: I will again. I've got a little bit of hands
Speaker 1: on time with that last night and it looks promising.
Speaker 1: It looks way better than the first model, but I'll
Speaker 1: have to see what the deal is with that. And
Speaker 1: then they have another cool feature called Director's View, which
Speaker 1: I personally really love. I'll be shooting a lot of
Speaker 1: videos like that where you can see you can choose
Speaker 1: the two camera angles that you want, so you can
Speaker 1: choose to have, you know, like you can see yourself
Speaker 1: in the selfie camera, but also be shooting the other
Speaker 1: cameras as well, and can you change them live? Oh
Speaker 1: yes you can. Oh wow, that's pretty cool. So that's
Speaker 1: a neat little feature as well. And oh you can
Speaker 1: change it to split view. So it's it's kind of
Speaker 1: the picture or the it's kind of the feature that
Speaker 1: they have on the iPhone with the double Take app.
Speaker 1: But now that's built into the latest Samsung devices. So overall,
Speaker 1: if you want the Samsung S twenty one or S
Speaker 1: twenty one plus, those start at let's see how much
Speaker 1: do those start at? Those start at seven ninety nine
Speaker 1: and then so the S twenty one is eight hundred,
Speaker 1: the S twenty one plus is one thousand, and then
Speaker 1: the S twenty one Ultra is twelve hundred, and the
Speaker 1: memory is silver. Comes in twelve gigs a RAM plus
Speaker 1: one twenty eight gigs of storage, which you're gonna eat
Speaker 1: through that with EIGHTK video in minutes, Phantom Black twelve
Speaker 1: gigs of RAM, one twenty eight gigs of storage, or
Speaker 1: two fifty six twelve gigs of RAM, or you can
Speaker 1: get a five twelve gigabyte model with sixteen gigs a RAM.
Speaker 1: They also have exclusive colors on Samsung dot Com, including
Speaker 1: Phantom Titanium, Phantom Navy, and Phantom Brown. That's for the
Speaker 1: S twenty one Ultra, the S twenty one and S
Speaker 1: twenty one plus, they come in a couple of different
Speaker 1: colors more fun colors Phantom Violet, gray, pink, white, and
Speaker 1: silver and black for the S twenty one plus. So anyway,
Speaker 1: and then Golden Platinum. So there's a lot of different
Speaker 1: there's a whole matrix of colors and things. But these
Speaker 1: companies are really funny about how they only give you
Speaker 1: certain offerings with there's only certain combinations available. You can't
Speaker 1: just say, oh, I want gold in twelve fifty six.
Speaker 1: You can't do that. You have to kind of pick
Speaker 1: and choose based on the model number you're getting and
Speaker 1: the color you're getting. But I would recommend if you
Speaker 1: are going to purchase one of these to get the
Speaker 1: highest the highest storage you can because you cannot expand it.
Speaker 1: And that is kind of like the big thing that
Speaker 1: you need to know about these right now. All right,
Speaker 1: So if you want to see some videos on those,
Speaker 1: I posted one to my Facebook, I did a live.
Speaker 1: I did a live on boxing there, and then on
Speaker 1: my Instagram I did a just a video kind of
Speaker 1: running through the features and the look of the phone.
Speaker 1: That's that rich on tech on both of those platforms.
Speaker 1: So I'm digging this phone so far. I have high
Speaker 1: hopes for it. I don't know. I told you I
Speaker 1: might switch, and I might be tempted if the camera
Speaker 1: is good. I might be tempted because I'm ready for
Speaker 1: a little Google in my life again. I you know,
Speaker 1: when you're on the iPhone, you get way away from
Speaker 1: Google products and services because they try to, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of fight those at all at all turns. But
Speaker 1: I'm kind of ready for that integrated experience of like
Speaker 1: everything kind of working together with Google on the iPhone.
Speaker 1: I haven't had that in a while, sorry, on the Samsung,
Speaker 1: because I've been using iPhone for so long now that
Speaker 1: I'm kind of ready to go back and just see
Speaker 1: what the other side is like, just for a little bit,
Speaker 1: because you know, it helps me as as a tech
Speaker 1: person to get to understand both sides, and I've done
Speaker 1: that historically. So we'll see. Stay tuned. I'll have my
Speaker 1: full roundup and review of the s twenty one line
Speaker 1: up very very soon. All right, let's get to our
Speaker 1: first question. As you can see, I have all my
Speaker 1: stuff back up running. Last week was a you know,
Speaker 1: from the hotel room kind of podcast, which was great.
Speaker 1: I use the Tula microphone, which I'm not sure if
Speaker 1: I said or not, but I've been testing that out
Speaker 1: and I thought it sounded pretty darn good for being
Speaker 1: in a hotel room. But we're back this week all right,
Speaker 1: Kathleen says, I'm trying to find a password generator for
Speaker 1: personal use. Any suggestions. What is your opinion on Keeper?
Speaker 1: Heard it was top rated, thought I would ask you
Speaker 1: you haven't steered me wrong in the past. Keep up
Speaker 1: the great work. You are my go to tech guy.
Speaker 1: Thanks Kathleen. So Keeper, Hm, who is Keeper? I don't
Speaker 1: know Keeper. I mean I have seen them, but I
Speaker 1: don't know what their deal is. When I think of
Speaker 1: the password managers, the number one, the number three, three
Speaker 1: come to mind. I'll tell you what they are, dash Lane,
Speaker 1: last pass and one password and that's one password with
Speaker 1: a one and then password. Those are the three that
Speaker 1: I would I would use and I would just you
Speaker 1: have to get into a groove with these things. There's
Speaker 1: no way around it. You just have to get into
Speaker 1: a groove. So pick one, stick to it, put all
Speaker 1: your passwords in there, start using it to generate passwords,
Speaker 1: and do not stray. The problem when you stray is
Speaker 1: you when you use it half the time, it doesn't work.
Speaker 1: You need to use this one hundred percent of the time.
Speaker 1: You need to install it on all your devices. And
Speaker 1: the way that most of these password managers work is
Speaker 1: they all say oh we're free, free, free, free, free,
Speaker 1: and you go, oh cool, I'll use you for free.
Speaker 1: And then when you really get down to the nitty
Speaker 1: gritty of them, here's how they're free. They're free to
Speaker 1: use on one device, and then when you start using
Speaker 1: them on other devices, it can get very expensive. So,
Speaker 1: for instance, last Pass seems to be free across all
Speaker 1: the devices, but there's got to be a catch to that.
Speaker 1: You know, it doesn't seem like there is a catch.
Speaker 1: So last Pass, if you want totally totally free and
Speaker 1: across all your devices, is you know, go last pass.
Speaker 1: One password. Let's see what's going on there. One password
Speaker 1: used to be primarily iPhone, now it's Android and iPhone,
Speaker 1: but it is personal. A personal account is three dollars
Speaker 1: a month, build annually annually, so that's twelve times threes
Speaker 1: thirty six dollars for the year. And the family account,
Speaker 1: which you probably want because you want your you know,
Speaker 1: significant other to be using this as well, that is
Speaker 1: five dollars a month for a family of five, and
Speaker 1: you can get that build annually or it has to
Speaker 1: be builled annually, so that's sixty dollars a year. Then
Speaker 1: dash Lane, dash Lane is a little trickier to find
Speaker 1: the pricing. Let me see plans individual they have. Okay,
Speaker 1: they've got free, but here's a thing. On free, you
Speaker 1: only get up to fifty passwords and one device. So
Speaker 1: if you want to be able to easily, you know,
Speaker 1: use these passwords on your on your laptop, you want
Speaker 1: to pay. And they're the most expensive, it seems, because
Speaker 1: it's six fifty a month times twelve for the premium,
Speaker 1: So six point fifty times twelve is seventy eight dollars,
Speaker 1: So that's seventy eight for the year. Family is nine
Speaker 1: dollars a month, so I mean, and you get a
Speaker 1: VPN as well with with dash Lane. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: if the other one's offer a VPN included. But you know,
Speaker 1: just look at these different devices or these different software
Speaker 1: solutions and see which one works for you. If you
Speaker 1: are one hundred percent Apple or one hundred percent Android
Speaker 1: and Google, you can use what they have built in
Speaker 1: password management in those two operating systems. So with Apple
Speaker 1: it's a keychain and it works pretty well, but again
Speaker 1: you're locked into the Apple ecosystem if you only use
Speaker 1: Apple products. I'd go with that, and then on on
Speaker 1: the Android or Google Slash side of things, you would
Speaker 1: have to use Chrome along with Android. Great question. All right,
Speaker 1: let's get back to CES. So CS twenty twenty one
Speaker 1: again all digital show. We did the show out of
Speaker 1: the studios in Edmond, and it was different this year
Speaker 1: because it was all digital and so you had to
Speaker 1: sort of go off of, you know, the videos that
Speaker 1: they released, which they did a great job of organizing things.
Speaker 1: In fact, I mean, I don't want to say that
Speaker 1: this was easier to cover this year than in previous years,
Speaker 1: but it kind of was the difference. The biggest difference
Speaker 1: is that you just didn't get to go hands on
Speaker 1: with these gadgets, and let's be honest, that is the
Speaker 1: beauty of CS is actually getting to see these things
Speaker 1: in the flesh in person and getting to play with
Speaker 1: them before anyone else. So with that said, here are
Speaker 1: some of the highlights of the show. My takeaway is
Speaker 1: that a lot of this stuff was COVID related, It
Speaker 1: was touchless, it was big picture autonomous cars, TVs. I
Speaker 1: would say actually TV's took a back seat this year
Speaker 1: because usually the TV's wow us because you can see them,
Speaker 1: but you know, without being there and seeing these giant screens.
Speaker 1: You know, the TVs did not steal the show this year.
Speaker 1: But with that said, let me go through a couple
Speaker 1: of things that caught my I. TCL they showed off
Speaker 1: like a concept phone screen that you kind of stretch
Speaker 1: out that becomes bigger, which I thought was kind of cool.
Speaker 1: Obviously prototype E. They also showed off a seventeen inch
Speaker 1: screen that rolls out like a scroll, which is kind
Speaker 1: of cool. Samsung showed off these things, these bots. There's
Speaker 1: a bot Care and then handy Bot, and these are
Speaker 1: robots for your house. The handybot was kind of you know,
Speaker 1: the robot that you want in your home, you know,
Speaker 1: cleaning up after you, getting you a glass of wine,
Speaker 1: pouring a glass of water, picking up your clothes. But again,
Speaker 1: these are things that we're probably not going to see
Speaker 1: anytime soon their self. Their vacuum, their robotic vacuum that
Speaker 1: that Samsung unveiled was pretty cool because it uses AI
Speaker 1: to avoid things like cables. I know, my room, but
Speaker 1: eats up cables all the time and little objects and
Speaker 1: it just it gets smarter as it goes along because
Speaker 1: it has AI. So that's pretty cool. Let's see what
Speaker 1: else here. Oh, this was pretty cool. The Autonomous Indie
Speaker 1: Autonomous Challenge. This is like a race at the ND
Speaker 1: five hundred that will use autonomous race cars and there's
Speaker 1: like a million dollar prize. Little things like jay Labs
Speaker 1: jbuds frames. These are a lot of people really like
Speaker 1: those bos sunglass speakers. I forget what they're called, but
Speaker 1: they they're like basically sunglasses with bows, little speakers and
Speaker 1: Bluetooth built in so you can listen to your music
Speaker 1: and take calls. Well, JLab has a way to turn
Speaker 1: any glasses into that with these fifty dollars frames they
Speaker 1: call me. Just pop them on the side of your
Speaker 1: pair of glasses and now you've got connected glasses. And
Speaker 1: let's see. Justine really liked when I told her about
Speaker 1: the smart pepper spray. This is from Saber and when
Speaker 1: you spray this pepper spray automatically notifies the police with
Speaker 1: your GPS coordinates and also some trusted contacts. So that's
Speaker 1: you know, it's like everything is connected. All right. Let's
Speaker 1: see what else do we see? LG teased a rollable
Speaker 1: phone just like TCL. The thing that stole all the
Speaker 1: publicity is this cold Snap ice cream machine that's kind
Speaker 1: of like a k Cup for ice cream. Now, this
Speaker 1: is an example of something that I would have to
Speaker 1: try out because if you're at CS, they would be
Speaker 1: making you this ice cream and you try it and
Speaker 1: you'd see how awesome it is. We only got to
Speaker 1: see a video, and of course it looks really cool.
Speaker 1: But I will tell you this, when I did a
Speaker 1: story with a company that was making frozen yogurt this
Speaker 1: same way. Let me say I'm typing in frozen yogurt
Speaker 1: ktla DeMuro and here it is. It was a frozen
Speaker 1: yogurt gadget. This was in twenty seventeen, and it's very similar,
Speaker 1: and it was called the Wim. Is the startup wim
Speaker 1: frozen yogurt. So let's see if they're even around and no,
Speaker 1: let's see are they I don't know if they're still around.
Speaker 1: August twenty seventh was the last post. It doesn't maybe
Speaker 1: they are, yeah, yeah, I don't really see any place
Speaker 1: to buy it, so yeah. August twenty nineteenth was August
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen was their last post. So yeah, again, didn't
Speaker 1: really probably work out as well as they thought it would.
Speaker 1: And I have a feeling that this may be the same,
Speaker 1: but who knows if it's good. It's five hundred dollars
Speaker 1: and it's basically a cuic I don't know if it's
Speaker 1: probably not from the same company, but it's called cold
Speaker 1: Snap and you know, it's cool. But I had my
Speaker 1: memory of the one that I tested and it was
Speaker 1: not very good. But I think if this is like
Speaker 1: able to partner with some of these big companies that
Speaker 1: make ice cream and make it at home, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's pretty cool. Oh this was cool at Samsung in
Speaker 1: their twenty twenty one TVs. Instead of using batteries, they're
Speaker 1: making them solar and the solar panel works inside, so
Speaker 1: your remote is always powered by and that's way less
Speaker 1: you know, batteries to replace, not like you have to
Speaker 1: replace batteries a lot, but it's less batteries that go
Speaker 1: in the landfill, which is pretty cool. The other two
Speaker 1: things that got all the attention was this smart pet
Speaker 1: door from my Queue. It's like three thousand dollars though
Speaker 1: it uses like a little Bluetooth tag on your pet
Speaker 1: to you know, so they can open the door, but
Speaker 1: nothing else does, which that's gonna be limited. But in
Speaker 1: the future, of course, everyone's gonna have that that, you know,
Speaker 1: when they build these things into homes. They're gonna be
Speaker 1: a lot cheaper, and then Toto, they make the toilets
Speaker 1: they've been trying to I feel like they've been trying
Speaker 1: to really capture America's attention for a while now with
Speaker 1: their with their different toilet technology, and I'm not sure
Speaker 1: that they've had one breakthrough thing. But now they will
Speaker 1: let's just say, examine what comes out and you know,
Speaker 1: tell you some feedback on that, like, you know, if
Speaker 1: you're healthier or not. I don't know, that's that's kind
Speaker 1: of weird, but you know, again, it's one of those
Speaker 1: things that sounds really weird right now. But I fully
Speaker 1: imagine every toilet in the future to be smart and
Speaker 1: give us feedback on exactly what's going on all right.
Speaker 1: Next question here comes from Nancy. She says, I'm looking
Speaker 1: for a place to shred my personal documents. I would
Speaker 1: like to watch them being shredded and not just drop
Speaker 1: them off to a locked box. Do you know of
Speaker 1: any place or event where I can do this? From Nancy, Nancy,
Speaker 1: this is funny you say this because I literally literally
Speaker 1: just did this in my neighborhood a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 1: I was driving home, and from time to time I
Speaker 1: see in the park a shredding truck and I go, oh,
Speaker 1: that's cool. So I can just bring my stuff there
Speaker 1: to get shredded. Because I had an experience where I
Speaker 1: brought my stuff to the UPS store formerly Mailboxes, et cetera,
Speaker 1: if you remember that name, and I brought my stuff
Speaker 1: there and I said, you know, they said they have
Speaker 1: shredding services, and I said, okay, cool, So I go there.
Speaker 1: They weigh my stuff, you know whatever. It was a
Speaker 1: couple pounds, I pay the fifty ten bucks and they
Speaker 1: dump it into this lock box. I was like, oh, wait,
Speaker 1: you don't actually shred it, and they said no, no,
Speaker 1: the company comes and shreds it. I said, oh, because
Speaker 1: think about it, there is a there is room for
Speaker 1: error there. You know, maybe someone doesn't lock up the box,
Speaker 1: or maybe you know, the box gets unlocked somehow, or
Speaker 1: maybe the papers fall out. I don't know. So after
Speaker 1: that experience, I really wanted to go somewhere where they
Speaker 1: shred it in front of me. And so the van
Speaker 1: that I found in my neighborhood they do it, you
Speaker 1: know every I don't know, twice a year or something,
Speaker 1: where you can bring your stuff. I brought my stuff
Speaker 1: and I said, hey, here it is, and it was
Speaker 1: just a tiny amount of stuff. It was like, you know,
Speaker 1: a couple pounds, and they said, oh, normally it's you know,
Speaker 1: I think it was like fifty dollars for everything you have,
Speaker 1: which is great if you have like a giant office
Speaker 1: full of stuff. But I think she let me off
Speaker 1: at like twenty bucks or something. But it was great,
Speaker 1: and I watched it being shredded in person. I mean
Speaker 1: I could see the camera shredding. They had a little
Speaker 1: camera inside the truck that you can watch your stuff
Speaker 1: being shredded, which was really really cool. And so that's
Speaker 1: what I would recommend. I would look into shredding events
Speaker 1: in your neighborhood. I'm not sure where you live, but
Speaker 1: just you know, google your neighborhood and you know, shredding
Speaker 1: event and see what comes up. And usually, you know,
Speaker 1: a couple times a year they'll do these things. And
Speaker 1: be prepared to pay a nominal amount for that. The
Speaker 1: other thing to do is just look on Yelp and
Speaker 1: look up shredding services and just be you know, be
Speaker 1: critical in looking up these services and see which ones
Speaker 1: actually shred on site. So you want to say in
Speaker 1: person on site shredding, and then call them up and
Speaker 1: confirm that when you bring your stuff there, you will
Speaker 1: watch them shred your stuff right in front of you.
Speaker 1: Very very cool and good point. You want to shread
Speaker 1: this stuff because you do not want you know, we're
Speaker 1: not getting as much paper as we used to do.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, you want to shred it
Speaker 1: because you don't want to just throw this stuff in
Speaker 1: your trash can and who knows what happens to it
Speaker 1: after that? All right, now, I think are these the
Speaker 1: touch tones? Yes? All right, So we've got the pod
Speaker 1: page voicemails, which you can find at Rich on tech
Speaker 1: Dart TV slash podcast rich on tech Dart TV slash
Speaker 1: Podcast and look in the lower right hand corner and
Speaker 1: you will see that there is a microphone and when
Speaker 1: you tap that mic you can leave me a voicemail
Speaker 1: just like Scott Dead.
Speaker 3: Yeah, gooday, Rich Scott from Sydney, Australia here, just wanted
Speaker 3: to thank you for such an awesome podcast, which I
Speaker 3: found out about from Brian Tong when you were on
Speaker 3: his show a few months ago. Really enjoy your podcast.
Speaker 3: I listened to it every single week and I really
Speaker 3: enjoy the news items you present, and I really enjoy
Speaker 3: listening to all the questions that the listeners send in.
Speaker 3: I was wondering whether you could think about maybe extending
Speaker 3: the podcast by thirty minutes, so it's an hour and
Speaker 3: a half. I really like your podcast a lot and
Speaker 3: and hour and a half would be great because you
Speaker 3: could answer more questions and people could post their questions
Speaker 3: and things like that. So sort of to thank you
Speaker 3: again for such a great podcast, keep up the awesome work,
Speaker 3: and I wanted to wish you and your family a
Speaker 3: very merry Christmas and a happy meeear. Thanks very much.
Speaker 1: All right, thank you Scott, A great question and happy
Speaker 1: New Year to you. That was received I guess a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks ago, maybe, but okay, so here is
Speaker 1: the deal. Well, thanks. First off, I had no idea
Speaker 1: I had anyone listening in Australia, so that's really really cool.
Speaker 1: So thanks for listening all the way over there. I
Speaker 1: do appreciate you and your enthusiasm for the show, But
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, do people really want to hear me
Speaker 1: go on for that long? So I kind of do
Speaker 1: this podcast the way that I think about podcasts and
Speaker 1: when I see an hour and a half show or
Speaker 1: a two hour show or a three hour show, I
Speaker 1: just go, oh my gosh, I can't begin to completely
Speaker 1: fish that podcast. So for me, you know, the time
Speaker 1: of this podcast has gently creeped up over you know,
Speaker 1: the past couple of months. Like to I try to
Speaker 1: keep it to about fifty five minutes because I feel
Speaker 1: like that's just under an hour. It doesn't feel as
Speaker 1: intimidating as that over the post hour mark. So that's
Speaker 1: my feeling, and I totally agree. I would love to
Speaker 1: get to more questions every week and do that, but
Speaker 1: you know, it's just it's more intimidating, and it's also
Speaker 1: a time thing for me because I you know, it
Speaker 1: does take some prep work to do this show, and
Speaker 1: you know, by extending in a half an hour, it
Speaker 1: would take even more prep work, so you know, I
Speaker 1: have to get everything ready, and you know, I do
Speaker 1: this on my own. So I like it. I like
Speaker 1: the suggestion, and I do appreciate you. I love the
Speaker 1: fact that you want to listen to more. I really do.
Speaker 1: And you know, I will see if maybe in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one, I decide to extend it. If you think
Speaker 1: that that's a good idea, let me know. But you know,
Speaker 1: right now, I'm keeping the show at about an hour
Speaker 1: little bit less, and I think that's where it's going
Speaker 1: to stay for now. But I'm I'm totally open to
Speaker 1: doing more. I mean, I love talking, I love doing
Speaker 1: this show, and so if I could do this show
Speaker 1: every day, I would if it fit into my schedule,
Speaker 1: if this has been my goal. If I could do
Speaker 1: a one hour live call and show every single day,
Speaker 1: maybe you know, Monday through Friday, I would do it
Speaker 1: because you you just hear the podcast once a week
Speaker 1: where I kind of curate the questions that I get
Speaker 1: from folks, but they come in fast and furious on
Speaker 1: all platforms all day long. I mean, what I do
Speaker 1: on a daily basis is I just sit there on
Speaker 1: Instagram or you know, YouTube or not YouTube, Facebook, I
Speaker 1: barely respond to. But the amount of questions that are
Speaker 1: in my comments, that are in my dms, that are
Speaker 1: replies to my stories, that are on my Twitter, it's
Speaker 1: pretty phenomenal. And the just how many questions are out
Speaker 1: there is amazing, because when you think we've answered them
Speaker 1: over and over and over, it's like you really haven't,
Speaker 1: because there's so many people in this world and they
Speaker 1: all want to know, like what the deal is, and
Speaker 1: so I again, that would be my goal. If I
Speaker 1: had a way to like know it. Every day at
Speaker 1: three pm, I could sit down and do an hour show,
Speaker 1: it'd be great. So but I just I'm not at
Speaker 1: that place in my life, which I wish I was,
Speaker 1: but I'm just not. All right, you know, my number
Speaker 1: one goal in this world is to do my stories
Speaker 1: for KTLA. Those are my one hundred percent priority because
Speaker 1: that is my job, and so all this other stuff
Speaker 1: that I do the podcast is part of KTLA, but
Speaker 1: you know, we do an hour a week. That's kind
Speaker 1: of the deal. So I would do more, but it's
Speaker 1: just it's tough because it anytime I do more things,
Speaker 1: it takes away from my KTLA time, and believe me,
Speaker 1: KTLA takes a long time. I you know, I put
Speaker 1: a lot of work into my stories for that that station.
Speaker 1: All right, let's talk more about CS. I did a
Speaker 1: segment on pandemic gadgets at CS and pandemic stuff was
Speaker 1: was very apparent at this year's CES, which is so
Speaker 1: wild because when you go to CS, they always have
Speaker 1: all these booths with like you know how and wellness
Speaker 1: stuff that you just kind of ignore, and this year
Speaker 1: no nobody ignored it. Like masks and air purifiers and
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff was very popular. So let
Speaker 1: me go over some of the things that caught my eye.
Speaker 1: The LG keynote, they showed this thing called the pure
Speaker 1: Care Wearable Air Purifier. This is a smart mask that
Speaker 1: has a rechargeable battery that cleans the air that you
Speaker 1: breathe in and out fro up to eight hours. They
Speaker 1: haven't said if it's going to be available in the US,
Speaker 1: but it looked kind of it looked, you know, it
Speaker 1: looked like it would be really cool to have. But
Speaker 1: as someone who wore an N ninety five mask on
Speaker 1: the plane for two hours there and back to Seattle,
Speaker 1: you know that that's pretty tight on your face, and
Speaker 1: it doesn't feel heavy, but it feels tight, and so
Speaker 1: I imagine that this would probably feel a combination of
Speaker 1: those two things. And with masks, you know, there is
Speaker 1: mask fatigue the longer you wear these things, and so
Speaker 1: I'd be curious about that, but at the same time
Speaker 1: it's kind of a cool idea. Then there's something called
Speaker 1: the mask Phone fon E. This is a mask that
Speaker 1: has built in earbuds, so you can you know, make
Speaker 1: a phone call with Bluetooth and you don't have to
Speaker 1: like lift or you know, people can hear you. It's
Speaker 1: it's just you know, it's two and one. Then, of course,
Speaker 1: the touchless tech is everywhere. So Arlow is making a
Speaker 1: touchless video doorbell, which I just think this is wild.
Speaker 1: The doorbell when you approach, it uses a proximity sensor
Speaker 1: to recognize you and it makes an audible chime, so
Speaker 1: it's like or whatever. I don't know what that sound is,
Speaker 1: but it kind of like so you're like, oh, wait,
Speaker 1: hold on, this thing is doing something. And then it
Speaker 1: rings itself so you don't have to touch it, and
Speaker 1: it gives you like a visible thing that you know
Speaker 1: that it's been pressed. And then Coler, you know, they
Speaker 1: make all the water faucets and stuff they're bringing you know,
Speaker 1: we've seen touchless in corporate settings forever and even even
Speaker 1: the kitchen, but now they're bringing it to the bathroom
Speaker 1: so that we'll have a single faucet that's touchless, and
Speaker 1: which is great for families, you know, I mean, as
Speaker 1: long as it works well, you know, because sometimes those
Speaker 1: bathroom ones that the airport and stuff can be come annoying,
Speaker 1: like they don't necessarily work all the time, and also
Speaker 1: getting the water to run for a longer period. But
Speaker 1: you know they're doing that, which is great because you know,
Speaker 1: the less you touch hopefully the less you know stuff
Speaker 1: that's getting moved around. And they're also making a retro
Speaker 1: fit kit so you can turn any recent single control
Speaker 1: color bathroom faucet touchless. Then you've got targets. They are
Speaker 1: making a UVC light for your desk. It sits kind
Speaker 1: of on top of your keyboard and at the end
Speaker 1: of every hour, it just goes to town and uh
Speaker 1: sanitize your desk for five minutes. And it has a
Speaker 1: little motion sensor so that if someone's around, they're not
Speaker 1: going they're gonna you know, it's not gonna trigger because
Speaker 1: UV light is not good for your eyes. And then
Speaker 1: this one's kind of cool. This uh, I don't know,
Speaker 1: if you've seen all these airports and stuff, they always
Speaker 1: show that shot of the person like using some sort
Speaker 1: of fogger to like deep you know, deep clean the
Speaker 1: areas and disinfect everything. Well that's of course filled with chemicals,
Speaker 1: but scosh. They make a lot of these these UH
Speaker 1: devices for your car, these accessories. They have the Magic foger.
Speaker 1: This is a portable antibacterial sanitizer and the mist is
Speaker 1: organic and it's they say it's a hundred times stronger
Speaker 1: than bleach, but organic and safe for humans, animals, and
Speaker 1: the environment. And I do believe that because I saw
Speaker 1: a pitch on a story about this stuff that like
Speaker 1: literally takes I think it's regular water and maybe like
Speaker 1: a tablespoon of vinegar or something and like turns it
Speaker 1: into like a disinfectant and it like somehow charges it
Speaker 1: up or I don't know, but it's it seemed pretty cool,
Speaker 1: and so I think that's working along the same lines.
Speaker 1: Let's get to another question. Let's see uh. Doreen says, Rich,
Speaker 1: have you done a segment on the RFID blocking cards
Speaker 1: that you put in your wallet and it protects all
Speaker 1: the cards in your wallet. There's so many different ones.
Speaker 1: I don't want to get them, and want to get
Speaker 1: them for the whole family, but don't want to waste
Speaker 1: my money on something that doesn't work to protect us.
Speaker 1: Thank you for all your help in the past, Doreen.
Speaker 1: So again, this is this is really funny because this
Speaker 1: is again the kind of thing. I saw this product
Speaker 1: at CS no joke five years ago, it had to
Speaker 1: be And now just recently, we've seen a lot of
Speaker 1: people concerned about RFID. So I will tell you, do
Speaker 1: I think you necessarily need this? Probably not. I don't
Speaker 1: hear a lot of a lot of instances where people
Speaker 1: are getting hacked through their credit card with RFID stealers,
Speaker 1: but it could happen. And if you are going to
Speaker 1: buy one of these things. The ones that I like
Speaker 1: are from a company called Silent Pocket. We interviewed them
Speaker 1: for the News, met the guy and it was great.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is the guy that I talked to
Speaker 1: at CS like five years ago, and nobody cared about
Speaker 1: my story when I posted it to social media. And now,
Speaker 1: of course, you know, privacy is so big people care
Speaker 1: about this and so great. You know, it's just a
Speaker 1: little a little ahead of the curve there. But they
Speaker 1: make pockets for your phone, for your tablet, your laptop,
Speaker 1: your keys, accessories you know, like wallets. I mean, they
Speaker 1: make everything everything. So if you want RFID protection, you
Speaker 1: look at Silent Pocket and they have a card sleeve,
Speaker 1: a five pack. I think this is what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: For fifteen bucks, or you can get a wallet for
Speaker 1: twenty dollars, or you can get a lunch money pouch
Speaker 1: for twenty bucks, or you know all these things. They've
Speaker 1: got them all over their website. Again, it's called Silent Pocket.
Speaker 1: And if you want an RFID blocker, then go with them,
Speaker 1: and you know, see what you need. I have a
Speaker 1: card with RFID. I've got a card, my credit card
Speaker 1: has RFID on it and honestly it doesn't work. It
Speaker 1: somehow got deactivated because I've wanted to use it for
Speaker 1: tap to pay when my phone is either you know,
Speaker 1: I don't have my phone with me or I don't know,
Speaker 1: just some random reasons, and it does not It does
Speaker 1: not work. So I don't know what the problem is.
Speaker 1: Maybe I need new credit card that has it, but
Speaker 1: it's fine. I don't. I just don't use it. But anyway,
Speaker 1: that's that's the deal with RFID. Good question and thanks
Speaker 1: for asking. All right Rich on tech dot TV slash podcast,
Speaker 1: here is another question. Hey Rich, my name is Luise
Speaker 1: from Whittier.
Speaker 3: My question is what are your thoughts about the changes
Speaker 3: coming to the Google based apps like Google pay needing
Speaker 3: to download a whole new app instead of updating or
Speaker 3: even like Google Photos.
Speaker 1: Stopping the free storage this year.
Speaker 3: Are there any other Google app changes that we should
Speaker 3: know about in the coming year.
Speaker 2: Thanks for hearing me out, love the podcast and been
Speaker 2: a long time fan.
Speaker 1: Happy New Year, good question, and oh my gosh, uh wow,
Speaker 1: you kind of stumbled upon a loaded question here, because
Speaker 1: you know, when you think about these Google product the
Speaker 1: number one thing is that Google is all over the place.
Speaker 1: They have really killed it with search, but in YouTube,
Speaker 1: but other than that, almost every product that they come
Speaker 1: out with is kind of a mixed bag. And Google Photos,
Speaker 1: I would argue, is probably the Okay, so you've got
Speaker 1: Google Search, Gmail YouTube, and Google Photos. I think those
Speaker 1: are probably and obviously they're ad offerings, but you know,
Speaker 1: those are probably the four most popular consumer Google products.
Speaker 1: I guess Android I didn't understand. Oh wow, Google is
Speaker 1: talking to me that really? That really shook me up there. Ooh,
Speaker 1: I had I accomplished a personal goal in my home
Speaker 1: where I've always wanted all of the smart speakers lined
Speaker 1: up together so that I can ask them the same
Speaker 1: thing and see how they respond. So I've got the
Speaker 1: HomePod Mini, the you know, the one from Amazon, which
Speaker 1: I won't say the name because she triggers very quickly,
Speaker 1: and the Google one, and I love it because you
Speaker 1: can ask the same thing and just see how they respond.
Speaker 1: And it's like so good for me as a tech
Speaker 1: person to like see the nuances with these various devices.
Speaker 1: So anyway, I digress. But yeah, you know the Google
Speaker 1: Pay thing. I would give you more thoughts on that,
Speaker 1: but literally, I can't log in. I've tried and tried
Speaker 1: and tried. Something's wrong with my Google account. I cannot
Speaker 1: log into Google Pay with the new app. I don't
Speaker 1: know what the problem is and I have no idea
Speaker 1: how to fix that. I think Google Pay is cool,
Speaker 1: but again, it's like this all over the place thing.
Speaker 1: It's like, oh, let's get into payment apps because everyone
Speaker 1: else is ven most popular. And Google Photos it's like
Speaker 1: they promised all this free storage and it's like now
Speaker 1: they're changing that. And I think that Google should have
Speaker 1: kept the free storage for people that are giving up
Speaker 1: the quality on their photos. I mean, this is a
Speaker 1: huge company. I get it. They probably underestimated the popularity
Speaker 1: and just how much people would throw in there. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, you kind of started along those
Speaker 1: lines and then you switch gears and it really does
Speaker 1: not build a lot of confidence people. So that's that's
Speaker 1: just not right. And it's like this with everything with Google,
Speaker 1: they just kind of they're all over the place. And
Speaker 1: Google Maps has been pretty consistent. But again, even with
Speaker 1: something like Google Maps, you know, they're trying to be
Speaker 1: Yelp in Google Maps, and you know ninety to al
Speaker 1: percent of people probably don't use Google Maps for the
Speaker 1: ratings and reviews and all that stuff. But again, they
Speaker 1: have all these different things in there that they just
Speaker 1: try to you know, throw in and you know, build
Speaker 1: into their apps. It's like if they get a popular appy,
Speaker 1: they just try to change as much as possible to
Speaker 1: like kind of to kind of piggyback off that popularity
Speaker 1: in different ways. And I just think that they need
Speaker 1: to stick to what they're doing, you know, really focus
Speaker 1: and focus on the users and the user experience and
Speaker 1: what do users like about that app and and don't
Speaker 1: change it and in fact, just continue to make it better.
Speaker 1: And that's that's kind of my advice for Google. And
Speaker 1: so great question. It's just a matter of, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: you got to keep up with Google and their changes,
Speaker 1: and it's frustrating as a consumer because you just feel
Speaker 1: like when you get into a Google product, like it
Speaker 1: may not be there in a couple months, or it
Speaker 1: may be completely different in a couple months. And I
Speaker 1: think that that we're seeing that in a big way
Speaker 1: with Google Photos. Although I am sticking to it because
Speaker 1: I still think it is the best photo solution out
Speaker 1: there and I still love it. I'm just really trying
Speaker 1: to stay under that two terabytes of storage because I
Speaker 1: don't want to go over that. All right, speaking of Google,
Speaker 1: let me just talk about this because I just talked
Speaker 1: about the speaker. They have a new guest mode on
Speaker 1: the Google devices, which are the Google Smart displays and
Speaker 1: also the Smart speakers. So this is a smart little
Speaker 1: thing that you can do. So you can say, hey,
Speaker 1: g turn on guest mode, and anything you say to
Speaker 1: your Google assistant will not be saved to your account history.
Speaker 1: And so you know why would you need this, Well,
Speaker 1: maybe you have guests over and you don't want them
Speaker 1: accessing your personal information or whatever they ask Google. You
Speaker 1: don't want that to be saved into your account history,
Speaker 1: ruining your personalized recommendations. So with guest Mode, you can
Speaker 1: enjoy features like you can ask questions, you can control
Speaker 1: smart home devices, which I'm not sure how that's possible.
Speaker 1: You can set timers and play music, but your device
Speaker 1: won't show personal results like your calendar, entries or contacts
Speaker 1: until you turn the mode off. Once you have this
Speaker 1: mode on, your device has a special chime and you'll
Speaker 1: see a guest icon on the display. Let me try this, Hey, Google,
Speaker 1: turn on guest mode. Guest modes on. Okay, so now
Speaker 1: it says guest modes on. So let me ask a question, Hey,
Speaker 1: what time is it in Tokyo? And it's thinking. It's
Speaker 1: thinking really hard. That's not that tough of a question,
Speaker 1: is it. Oh that's a I don't think it likes
Speaker 1: guest mode. It's really thinking. All right, well that didn't
Speaker 1: really work. Now my time on Saturday? Okay. By the way,
Speaker 1: to hear about it upcoming events, just say oh calendar.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's that's the new thing. Because these assistants
Speaker 1: are getting so interesting with like they toss on, they
Speaker 1: throw something in at the end of your question or
Speaker 1: your answer, I should say so that you continue to
Speaker 1: like interact with them. It's like, hey, we know you
Speaker 1: just asked the weather up. By the way, did you
Speaker 1: know you can order great food from Panda Express. It's
Speaker 1: really tasty, and it's like, you can see where they're
Speaker 1: going with this. There will be ads at the end
Speaker 1: of the answers soon enough, when they can figure out
Speaker 1: how to do this without totally alienating everyone. But mark
Speaker 1: my words, that is what's coming with all of these assistants,
Speaker 1: with these smart speakers, Mark my words, January fifteenth, twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one. Well, I think that what it should do
Speaker 1: is it should have some sort of visual indication on
Speaker 1: the speaker that you're in guest mode. And also before
Speaker 1: it gives your answer, it should give you some sort
Speaker 1: of chime because now I'm gonna forget this in guest mode,
Speaker 1: and I guess maybe if I ask something personal, it
Speaker 1: would say, oh, sorry, you're in guest mode. I can't
Speaker 1: do that. But anyway, so that's a he G, turn
Speaker 1: on guest mode, and then if you want to turn
Speaker 1: it off, hey G, turn off guest mode. All right,
Speaker 1: let's see another question Shanna and Bob hey Rich, what's
Speaker 1: the safe place to copy my Facebook memories, photos and videos,
Speaker 1: Not Google or any large tech companies. Private and safe
Speaker 1: free would be great. Should I transfer to an external
Speaker 1: hard drive? What cord would I need with an iPhone eleven?
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. I value your advice. I hope
Speaker 1: you and your family have a happy New Year. Well, Shanna,
Speaker 1: free is gonna be really tough because there's really no
Speaker 1: free place that I know of anymore that can just
Speaker 1: let you store an unlimited amount of things. Yes, a
Speaker 1: lot of these are free for up to a certain amount,
Speaker 1: but not for everything. And most of the free storage
Speaker 1: options are going to be from the big tech tech companies,
Speaker 1: like say a dropbox or a one drive or let's
Speaker 1: see what's the other one, Google Photos. Yeah, so any
Speaker 1: of these products you're probably going to pay for. But
Speaker 1: you said an external hard drive, I don't An external
Speaker 1: hard drive is fine, So I think that would work.
Speaker 1: But I think a better solution would be something like
Speaker 1: an eb ibi. And this is from sand Disk, and
Speaker 1: it's kind of a hard drive that's connected to the Internet.
Speaker 1: And the beauty of this is that it has the
Speaker 1: right software to help you automatically transfer your Facebook memory.
Speaker 1: So all of the stuff from Facebook you can transfer
Speaker 1: onto that hard drive and it will do it automatically
Speaker 1: and ongoing. So that's number one. That's I think it's
Speaker 1: like one hundred and two hundred bucks something like that,
Speaker 1: so that would be number one. And there's no ongoing fees,
Speaker 1: and it is private, like you said, and it is
Speaker 1: safe because nothing nothing goes up to the cloud. It's
Speaker 1: stored in your home. Now, the downside to that is
Speaker 1: that if you delete or something gets you know, messed
Speaker 1: up or corrupted with this EB, you've lost all of
Speaker 1: your your photos. So the other thing you can do
Speaker 1: on Facebook, they have a Facebook Data Transfer Tool. I
Speaker 1: forget what it's called. Let's see what is it called
Speaker 1: Facebook Data Portability Tool I think it's called. And when
Speaker 1: you go there you can transfer your stuff out of
Speaker 1: Facebook into a lot of other services. So you can
Speaker 1: just it's called the Photo Transfer Tool. So if you
Speaker 1: go to Facebook dot com slash dtp, Facebook dot com
Speaker 1: slash dtp and you go in there and you can
Speaker 1: see what you want to transfer photos, videos and choose
Speaker 1: a destination right now. The destinations are Koofer, which I
Speaker 1: think is a European thing, Backblaze, B two, Dropbox, and
Speaker 1: Google Photos and it will transfer them directly to those places.
Speaker 1: And so that saves you a little bit of time
Speaker 1: and effort because it's much easier just to trans from
Speaker 1: you know, right there, and yeah, that's what I would do,
Speaker 1: all right. And the hard drive is a good option,
Speaker 1: but it's just a little bit more manual, So instead
Speaker 1: of the destination, you would just kind of download your
Speaker 1: information directly and then throw it onto the hard drive.
Speaker 1: You can do that. That's fine, it's it's simple, it's easy.
Speaker 1: You just have to be a little bit more hands on.
Speaker 1: But there you go. That's what I would do, all right. Oh. Netflix,
Speaker 1: according to nine to five mac via iPhone soft says
Speaker 1: that they are going to be potentially testing spatial audio
Speaker 1: on the iPad and iPhone and apparently Netflix has been
Speaker 1: testing this since December. Now, if you're not familiar with
Speaker 1: spatial audio support, this is on the AirPods Pro and
Speaker 1: the AirPods Max, also known as kind of like three
Speaker 1: D audio. A lot of this is going to be
Speaker 1: the next big thing with the all the headphones are
Speaker 1: going to have this. But the reason I bring you
Speaker 1: the story is because when I was up in Washington,
Speaker 1: I actually watched my first movie with the AirPods in.
Speaker 1: I would not watch a movie with AirPods in right
Speaker 1: if I'm watching on my iPad, I would just kind
Speaker 1: of watch it with the speaker. But I was talking
Speaker 1: to Brian, was it Brian No. I was talking to
Speaker 1: Justine and she was saying how great the spatial audio was.
Speaker 1: She was like, you gotta check out Mandalorian with spatial audio.
Speaker 1: And I said, oh, okay, I would never think to
Speaker 1: where my AirPods, you know, with that with the you know,
Speaker 1: while I'm watching in like my hotel room. And sure enough,
Speaker 1: I fired up a movie on Hulu that had the
Speaker 1: spatial audio, and or I guess it sounded like it did.
Speaker 1: It was pretty phenomenal. I'm pretty sure it had the
Speaker 1: spatial audio because it sounded amazing and it literally you
Speaker 1: could hear the people talking and wherever you move the iPad,
Speaker 1: it would sound like that's where the audio is coming from.
Speaker 1: So I was impressed. And that's why I tell you
Speaker 1: the story, because with Netflix, this is really really cool stuff.
Speaker 1: And now I'm like all about the spatial audio. The
Speaker 1: movie I watched, by the way, it was called Bombshell.
Speaker 1: It was kind of that Roger al story. It took
Speaker 1: me a while, you know, in the news business, I
Speaker 1: wanted to see that. Took me a while to watch it,
Speaker 1: but I thought it was pretty good. I thought it
Speaker 1: was well done. I thought, I thought, seeing the uh
Speaker 1: they had like all the Fox News anchors, you know
Speaker 1: it portrayed in the in the movie, which I don't
Speaker 1: know how I feel if I was, you know, an
Speaker 1: anchor that was portrayed in a movie like that, because anyway,
Speaker 1: but it was. It was a good little movie. I
Speaker 1: thought it was pretty well done. And uh wow, very
Speaker 1: very interesting, especially given the current climate of what is progressed.
Speaker 1: Since that movie came along probably a year ago or two,
Speaker 1: so many they didn't even realize that they were just
Speaker 1: at the beginning of some of the some of the
Speaker 1: wackiness we've seen in the past year. All right, let's see,
Speaker 1: should we do another should we do another question? Let's
Speaker 1: do another question from the podcast page Rich on tech
Speaker 1: Dot TV slash podcast.
Speaker 2: Here we go, Hey, Rich, this is Jim from Arizona.
Speaker 2: I'd like to put some geotag information on some old
Speaker 2: digital photos. And I was wondering if you had a
Speaker 2: application that you could wreck man for either Windows or
Speaker 2: an iOS device. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Oh that's an interesting one. Okay, Well, let's see. On iOS,
Speaker 1: I would think that you could can you not add
Speaker 1: information to a picture once it's taken. If you swipe up,
Speaker 1: it's kind of interesting. Oh okay, let's see. Let me
Speaker 1: let me see this. So if I have my picture here,
Speaker 1: I swipe up, they don't allow you to edit. Huh.
Speaker 1: You can see where the picture was taken, but you
Speaker 1: can't edit. Wow, that's interesting. Okay. Now let me try
Speaker 1: that same thing on a Samsung. Let me go into
Speaker 1: a photo gallery and I'm gonna swipe up and it
Speaker 1: says location. Let's just press edit details Edit. You can
Speaker 1: remove the location, but I don't see the ability to
Speaker 1: oh yep, and then you can add location yep. Okay.
Speaker 1: So on Android it seems a lot easier to do this,
Speaker 1: but I'm sure on iOS there's some apps. I have
Speaker 1: not tested these apps, but I I'm sure there are
Speaker 1: some apps now. I also know on Facebook Photos all right, sorry,
Speaker 1: Google Photos, Jim, this might be a way to do it.
Speaker 1: You take a picture in Google Photos, you upload it
Speaker 1: there and you can sync it to your phone and
Speaker 1: you can edit the location data there. And I've done
Speaker 1: that for some of my photos. As for a standalone app,
Speaker 1: I would think on the on the you know, max
Speaker 1: side of things, the photos app obviously you can add data,
Speaker 1: But I would think it doesn't. Windows Photos just have
Speaker 1: like a don't they have like a photo app built
Speaker 1: into Windows. So Microsoft Photos, can't you just use that
Speaker 1: to just say edit the data and just edit the
Speaker 1: GPS data. Those are the places that I would look
Speaker 1: and try and you know, see if you can do it.
Speaker 1: I don't have I don't have a Windows PC handy
Speaker 1: right now. I mean I could try my kids he
Speaker 1: has Windows, so I can see if I can do
Speaker 1: it on there. But I was not prepared for your questions.
Speaker 1: So but those are the places I would look at.
Speaker 1: But I'm sure the only thing I would do is
Speaker 1: just be very careful about, you know, downloading random apps
Speaker 1: to let you add So if I would, if I
Speaker 1: would look Window x IF editor, it looks like there's
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of apps that you can do that.
Speaker 1: It looks like Microsoft Photos has it. Yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: there's oh wow, okay, even six free tools to change.
Speaker 1: Looks like there's a lot of tools that will let
Speaker 1: you do it if you have a bunch of photos
Speaker 1: that you want to do it with. It looks like
Speaker 1: they have a bunch for Windows that make it easy
Speaker 1: to change a whole bunch at once, but just be
Speaker 1: careful because these are your photos, and I would always
Speaker 1: have a backup before you change anything too drastically because
Speaker 1: you don't want to mess around with that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: But good question, Jim. Thanks for thanks for listening to
Speaker 1: the show and submitting your question at rich on tech
Speaker 1: dot TV slash podcast. All right, quick story here. Google
Speaker 1: completed its fitbit acquisition, which I know a lot of
Speaker 1: people are kind of weary about because, oh, here's an
Speaker 1: another big company gobbling up a company that was independent,
Speaker 1: and now what's going to happen to all of our data?
Speaker 1: So fitpit has twenty nine million users. I hope that
Speaker 1: they use this acquisition to actually make a product that
Speaker 1: rivals the Apple Watch, because right now we do not
Speaker 1: have that and we need that on the Android side,
Speaker 1: So Google says that fitness fitbits user health and wellness
Speaker 1: data will not be used for Google Ads, and this
Speaker 1: data will be separated from other Google Ads data. They
Speaker 1: also say they will maintain access to Android APIs, which
Speaker 1: means that fitness trackers and smart watches will still be
Speaker 1: able to interoperate with Android smartphones. That's nice, so not
Speaker 1: going to close off other wearables from working with Android,
Speaker 1: and they say they'll allow fitbit to continue working with
Speaker 1: third party services. That's also nice. They say they will
Speaker 1: hopefully the synergy will drive more competition and wearables and
Speaker 1: make the next generation of devices better and more affordable.
Speaker 1: Let's hope that everything you're saying here, Google is true
Speaker 1: and AIM's true, because here's what happens with a lot
Speaker 1: of these big companies. They put this out there January fourteenth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one, and then what happens in two years
Speaker 1: when everyone forgets They slowly but surely close things off,
Speaker 1: change things, and go against what they originally said. Let's
Speaker 1: hope that does not happen here. Let's just hope that
Speaker 1: Google builds an amazing smartwatch that works with you know,
Speaker 1: potentially iOS, but you know that's kind of tricky and
Speaker 1: Android and just continues to be good and we see
Speaker 1: more competition with the Android side of things. And let's
Speaker 1: just hope that they don't just close everything up, use
Speaker 1: your foot, use your fitness data for ads, and you know,
Speaker 1: go against everything that they said. Let's just hope that
Speaker 1: doesn't happen. So, all right, final question before we go here.
Speaker 1: This is from George also via my pod page, so
Speaker 1: that's also on the new podcast page is pretty amazing.
Speaker 1: So if you just go to rich on tech dot
Speaker 1: tv slash podcast, there's so many things you can do here.
Speaker 1: You can listen to the latest episode, you can subscribe
Speaker 1: using all the different methods. You can all also leave
Speaker 1: that voicemail as well, and there used to be a way,
Speaker 1: oh you can't well okay, well, I guess I have
Speaker 1: to pay if I want the contact stuff to still
Speaker 1: be in there. Used to be able to leave a
Speaker 1: message there, like a written message, but I guess that's
Speaker 1: only on the page. So I was on. I signed
Speaker 1: up for this thing called pod page, and they have
Speaker 1: a free service and also a paid service, and it
Speaker 1: looks like the paid my free trial dropped off and
Speaker 1: there's a lot of features that are no longer available here.
Speaker 1: But okay, I may have to look into subscribing because
Speaker 1: I like the fact that you can just go there
Speaker 1: and leave a message like George did. But anyway, George's
Speaker 1: message said, you can still email me hello at richontech
Speaker 1: dot tv or go to rich on tech dot tv
Speaker 1: and at the bottom there is an email form that
Speaker 1: you can use a little link to my email George said, hey, Rich,
Speaker 1: I was in Sweden six years ago, and every restaurant
Speaker 1: would bring a credit card reader to the table, so
Speaker 1: my card never left my site. Why has the US
Speaker 1: been so slow to adopt this technology. The answer, George
Speaker 1: is money. Restaurants just don't want to pay for the
Speaker 1: added expense of having these little credit card readers that
Speaker 1: you can bring to your table. The good news is
Speaker 1: because of the pandemic, for a while, when restaurants were
Speaker 1: actually open, we did see more adoption of this because
Speaker 1: they would finish the bill right at your table, or
Speaker 1: you could tap right at your table. I do expect
Speaker 1: to see more of this coming to the US now
Speaker 1: that you know, but these companies are on a cycle,
Speaker 1: like you know, if you're at like a CBK or something.
Speaker 1: I think actually CBK was the one that I was
Speaker 1: at the other day, back when my wife and I
Speaker 1: went to dinner or lunch the last day before LA
Speaker 1: shut down everything again, we went out to lunch outside
Speaker 1: and I do believe that the I think they brought
Speaker 1: a credit card reader to my table. I think they did.
Speaker 1: Maybe that was somewhere else, but anyway, I think we're
Speaker 1: going to see more restaurants news. But you're right, George.
Speaker 1: In the rest of the world, this has been the
Speaker 1: standard for many, many, many decades, and I don't know
Speaker 1: why it has been just so painfully slow in the US.
Speaker 1: Why does our credit card need to leave our hands,
Speaker 1: go into the hands of a server and then into
Speaker 1: some back room somewhere where who knows what happens. And
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that every server is, you know, snapping
Speaker 1: a picture of these things, but it could happen, and
Speaker 1: there is that opportunity and why not. And I also
Speaker 1: just like the idea that I can sit there and see,
Speaker 1: you know, in a post COVID society, you know, when
Speaker 1: we're actually touching things again, but I can, you know,
Speaker 1: tap my phone to this little device and then it says, hey,
Speaker 1: how much tip do you want to do? Do you want
Speaker 1: to do fifteen, twenty five percent? Whatever, And it's all
Speaker 1: calculated for me, and it's all really nice, and there's
Speaker 1: no like weird secondary receipt and all this weird stuff
Speaker 1: that we do that just makes no sense. I one
Speaker 1: hundred percent agree, George. It should be a machine that
Speaker 1: they bring to your table and it works that way.
Speaker 1: That that's the ideal, And yes, all over Europe when
Speaker 1: you travel there, or if you travel to Asia, this
Speaker 1: is the standard and it's so cool and I absolutely
Speaker 1: absolutely love it. And let's hope we see it here
Speaker 1: in the US. All right. That music means it is
Speaker 1: the end of the show. If you would like to
Speaker 1: submit a question for me to answer, just go to
Speaker 1: richon tech dot tv hit the email button at the
Speaker 1: bottom of the page. I'd also like it if you
Speaker 1: would rate and review this podcast to help other people
Speaker 1: discover it. Just go to iTunes or whatever your preferred
Speaker 1: way of listening and just look for the review button.
Speaker 1: That really does help. You can find me at rich
Speaker 1: on tech. That's me on all the social media networks.
Speaker 1: My name is rich dmiro. Thank you so much for listening,
Speaker 1: and have a fantastic day. I will talk to you
Speaker 1: real soon. Take care.