Speaker 1: After twenty five years, Netflix says goodbye to the DVD.
Speaker 1: Twitter goes back to the basics the new EV with
Speaker 1: no rear window. We're not talking hitchcock here. Plus your
Speaker 1: tech questions answered? What is going on? I'm Rich Demiro
Speaker 1: and this is Rich on Tech, the show where I
Speaker 1: talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about.
Speaker 1: It's also the place where I answer your questions about technology.
Speaker 1: I'm the tech reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show. We've got Kim on phones, We've
Speaker 1: got Bobo on the board. Plus you phone lines are
Speaker 1: open at triple eight rich one oh one. That's eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 2: Give me a call.
Speaker 1: You have a question about technology, trying to find an
Speaker 1: app to do something, trying to side on an EV. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I should make that decision for you,
Speaker 1: but I can help. Maybe you're just trying to figure
Speaker 1: something out. Maybe you're trying to decide between two things.
Speaker 1: Just give me a call. Triple eight rich one oh
Speaker 1: one eight eight eight seven four to two four one
Speaker 1: zero one is the phone number. Email is also open.
Speaker 1: Send it to hello at richontech dot TV every week.
Speaker 1: I mentioned the email, the feedback section continues to grow,
Speaker 1: so we will do feedback at the end of the show.
Speaker 2: Ah, what a great day.
Speaker 1: Good song to open up the show, because it is
Speaker 1: a glorious day here in Los Angeles. The weather has
Speaker 1: finally turned, that's for sure. I got a little father
Speaker 1: son night last night. My wife was out with my
Speaker 1: other son, so it was just me and my older child.
Speaker 1: So we had all these plans like what you know,
Speaker 1: I said, Hey, what do you want to do? And
Speaker 1: of course we went through the list of you know,
Speaker 1: going to like an amusement park, going bowling, this and that.
Speaker 1: None of those were but we did go to habachi,
Speaker 1: which I think is always a good, easy, kind of
Speaker 1: like enjoyable evening. And I've never been with just my
Speaker 1: son by ourselves, and we had a great time. And
Speaker 1: it got me to thinking two things. Number One, habachi
Speaker 1: is all about the chef that you get right, like
Speaker 1: they have to be into it. If they're not into it,
Speaker 1: and they're just kind of doing like the beating har
Speaker 1: and the you know, the throwing the shrimp at your
Speaker 1: head and all that stuff just kind of like okay,
Speaker 1: going through the motions it's not very fun. But this
Speaker 1: person we had last night was fantastic. Must have been
Speaker 1: brand new because he really enjoyed it, and so he
Speaker 1: was doing like the I feel like in California they
Speaker 1: banned that flaming volcano for a while, like they weren't
Speaker 1: allowed to use real fire, they were just using steam.
Speaker 2: And last night, oh it was the fire was back.
Speaker 2: So that was great.
Speaker 1: And then it got me to thinking, how come we
Speaker 1: don't tip this chef, like if I've been doing habachi
Speaker 1: wrong my whole life and not tipping the chef, because
Speaker 1: when it came to the end, of course you tipped
Speaker 1: the waiter, but I was like, should we be tipping
Speaker 1: this person anyway? So let me know if I was
Speaker 1: doing that wrong. I hope I'm not. But afterwards we
Speaker 1: went to pinball. I figured, you know what, let me
Speaker 1: introduce my kid to pinball. And so they've got a
Speaker 1: couple of places in Los Angeles that are restaurants that
Speaker 1: also have like a pinball room, and so we went
Speaker 1: to this one restaurant that I actually heard about at
Speaker 1: CES this year, and the person told me, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: you live in La go to this It's a Korean
Speaker 1: barbecue place. That also has a pin ball room, and
Speaker 1: I was like, what, They've got two locations in Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: So we go to one of them. We make the
Speaker 1: trek there and I get there and the place is packed,
Speaker 1: but there are two pinball machines in the waiting area,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, you gotta be kidding me. This is
Speaker 1: the this is the pinball room that this person told
Speaker 1: me about. And thankfully I asked because we were going
Speaker 1: to walk right out, and I asked the host and
Speaker 1: they said, oh no, there's a whole room of pinball
Speaker 1: machines that way.
Speaker 2: So we walked past.
Speaker 1: This restaurant was just filled with people grilling meats at
Speaker 1: their tables. I have not done that yet, but one
Speaker 1: of these days. And we get to this room and
Speaker 1: sure enough, I don't know, there must have been twenty
Speaker 1: pinball machines in there. And of course I'm expecting these
Speaker 1: pinball machines to be overpriced and expensive and this and that,
Speaker 1: and they weren't. They were very reasonable fifty cents a game.
Speaker 1: So we got change and we played pinball and it
Speaker 1: was so much fun because pinball is like, it's not
Speaker 1: really that high tech, but it kind of is. Because
Speaker 1: this company that makes these pinball machines, Stern Pinball. They're
Speaker 1: the ones that actually told me about this place. At
Speaker 1: CS they actually have on pinball machines where you can
Speaker 1: scan a QR coach. So you join this club they
Speaker 1: call it the let's see, it's called the Insider Connected.
Speaker 1: And so you join this club. And what's cool about
Speaker 1: it is that they actually keep your score not only
Speaker 1: across that machine, but across a leaderboard that is local
Speaker 1: but also national. So in the corner of the room
Speaker 1: there's a screen that has everyone's scores from like across
Speaker 1: the nation or maybe worldwide, who knows.
Speaker 2: So I thought that was kind of cool.
Speaker 1: I did not get on the leader board, but kind
Speaker 1: of neat that now they keep score in various ways,
Speaker 1: your personal score and also how you compare to people
Speaker 1: that are playing these games across the nation. If you
Speaker 1: want to check out what it looked like in there,
Speaker 1: I put it on my Instagram. At rich On Tech
Speaker 1: we had a blast, and then of course my son
Speaker 1: convinced me to go to Walmart, and I said, please
Speaker 1: do not make me go into Walmart, because I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna spend money that I don't need to spend. And
Speaker 1: sure enough, we go into Walmart, and right off the bat,
Speaker 1: it's like, I don't want to get one of those
Speaker 1: carts because I'm just gonna put stuff in there, and
Speaker 1: we ended up buying a whole bunch of stuff. Walmart,
Speaker 1: by the way, the last holdout I think in America
Speaker 1: that does not do tap to pay. I'm going to
Speaker 1: talk about tap to pay in a little bit later
Speaker 1: in the show about some of the quirks of tap
Speaker 1: to pay. But Kroger, which is the big grocery company
Speaker 1: that owns like grocery stores in every city in America,
Speaker 1: including Ralph's here locally in Los Angeles and probably a
Speaker 1: grocery store near you, they finally broke down and accepted
Speaker 1: Apple pay. Now, I've not been in the Ralphs to
Speaker 1: confirm this, but I tweeted it and many people confirm that, yes,
Speaker 1: Ralphs finally takes tap to pay, So thank you. Ralph's
Speaker 1: one of the last holdouts. You can go almost anywhere now,
Speaker 1: I think, and do tap to pay, even at the
Speaker 1: Habachi place. I was talking about this on last week's
Speaker 1: show or the week before. How in Hawaii a lot
Speaker 1: of the restaurants are using that handheld kind of tablet
Speaker 1: to take your order but also let you pay from
Speaker 1: your table. And sure enough Habachi place we went to
Speaker 1: was doing that as well, and so I love it.
Speaker 2: It's just so much better.
Speaker 1: Although I still think it's funny because the waiter took
Speaker 1: my card and tapped it for me, I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure.
Speaker 2: I think I can do that myself.
Speaker 3: Ah.
Speaker 1: This week, Twitter finally made good. And I said, I
Speaker 1: wasn't gonna talk about Twitter a lot on this show
Speaker 1: because there's a lot of gossip and a lot of
Speaker 1: just like the dust hasn't settled around Twitter, So I
Speaker 1: wasn't going to follow all the tiny nuances of Twitter
Speaker 1: as Elon took over and all the stuff, the ups
Speaker 1: and the downs. But I do think this is a
Speaker 1: big deal. So Twitter this week and Elon Musk made
Speaker 1: good on his promise to get rid of the blue
Speaker 1: check mark, and the blue check mark for legacy folks.
Speaker 1: They still have it, but I'll explain the blue check
Speaker 1: mark for legacy folks like myself, and that blue check
Speaker 1: mark meant that you were verified. This meant that you
Speaker 1: went through some sort of process to get that blue
Speaker 1: check mark. People knew when you saw Rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: On Twitter, I was who I say I am. Now
Speaker 1: they have stripped that from pretty much everyone unless you
Speaker 1: pay eight dollars a month for the privilege of having
Speaker 1: a blue check mark in the Twitter Blue program. Now
Speaker 1: they call this verified, but it is anything, but it
Speaker 1: means absolutely nothing at this point. So when you're scrolling
Speaker 1: Twitter and you see a blue check mark, that means nothing.
Speaker 1: All it means is that that person is paying to
Speaker 1: get that check mark. Yes, they have verified the fact
Speaker 1: that they have a credit card and a phone number
Speaker 1: and an email address, but that's it. That person is
Speaker 1: not necessarily who they say they are. Now, why is
Speaker 1: this a problem. It's a problem because anyone can now
Speaker 1: make a username like rich on tech with two h's,
Speaker 1: get the verification, get the blue check mark, and when
Speaker 1: you're scrolling through now it looks like that's me. And
Speaker 1: this presents a lot of problems because you can no
Speaker 1: longer trust what you're seeing at a glance. And this
Speaker 1: is a problem we're seeing with the tech world at
Speaker 1: large right now, with AI and AI created images and
Speaker 1: videos and audio.
Speaker 2: At this point, we just.
Speaker 1: Don't know what's real anymore, and it's going to be
Speaker 1: a big, big problem and so Twitter with people like
Speaker 1: myself you could see that blue check mark and you
Speaker 1: knew it was me.
Speaker 2: That's no longer the case.
Speaker 1: So my thesis there is just please, when you're scrolling
Speaker 1: through Twitter, if you're continuing to use it, which at
Speaker 1: this point I'm on the fence, just beware or be weary,
Speaker 1: I guess, because you just don't know. And already this
Speaker 1: has presented problems. People are, you know, quoting things, and
Speaker 1: journalists use Twitter a lot to find sources and to
Speaker 1: get official statements and things like that. But you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know what the National park Service official Twitter is,
Speaker 1: do you no? But if I searched National Park Service
Speaker 1: and I saw that blue check mark and go, oh okay,
Speaker 1: that's the National Park Service, now I may not know
Speaker 1: because there is no blue check mark.
Speaker 2: So just be be aware. Ah.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that was a big change. Snapchat big week
Speaker 1: this week for Snapchat. Went to their event Snapchat. I
Speaker 1: think this was the first time I've ever been invited
Speaker 1: to a Snapchat event, and they held it in Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: where Snapchat is headquartered, and it was a preview night,
Speaker 1: so it was like a press night where I went
Speaker 1: to and then it was the big event at the
Speaker 1: a place called the Barker Hanger. It's this big, giant
Speaker 1: like hangar next to an airfield. And it's interesting because
Speaker 1: I've been to so many tech events over the years.
Speaker 1: I've been to Apple, I've been to Google, I've been
Speaker 1: to Samsung, so many companies that have thrown these things,
Speaker 1: and they each do it in a different way, but
Speaker 1: the common theme is that they are showing off what
Speaker 1: they're doing in the best possible light. And the reason
Speaker 1: why I like to be there is because I get
Speaker 1: to go hands on with this stuff before anyone else
Speaker 1: and see how it really works. So, for instance, they
Speaker 1: showed off a vending machine that is in partnership with
Speaker 1: Coca Cola that is augmented reality powered, and so I
Speaker 1: got to test that out.
Speaker 2: It's cool, but is it groundbreaking. I'm not sure. We'll see.
Speaker 1: I also got to try out these magic mirrors they
Speaker 1: have where you can try and close in stores with
Speaker 1: augmented reality, and it's cool. And again, you're gonna see
Speaker 1: a lot of news about this stuff, and we'll talk
Speaker 1: about it more later in the show. But it's one
Speaker 1: of these things where I got to try out because
Speaker 1: unless you can go to a men's warehouse where they're
Speaker 1: testing it here in Los Angeles, one location. You're probably
Speaker 1: not going to see this thing for a bit, and
Speaker 1: so it's kind of cool. And it all leads into
Speaker 1: this kind of knowledge that I have about technology that
Speaker 1: helps me figure out what's important to you. And it
Speaker 1: goes back to this show. The show where I talk
Speaker 1: about the tech stuff I think you should know about.
Speaker 1: And so by getting a handle on this stuff, that's
Speaker 1: how I know to talk about and give you that
Speaker 1: perspective of what's important and what's changing. And there's a
Speaker 1: lot of it. So I'll talk more about Snapchat and
Speaker 1: a little bit. I think one of the coolest things
Speaker 1: they did is they put this AI in everyone's pocket.
Speaker 1: So if you've heard about chat GPT, they made a
Speaker 1: chatbot that is now open to anyone in the Snapchat app.
Speaker 1: So if you have Snapchat installed on your phone, open
Speaker 1: it up and you have this thing called my AI
Speaker 1: and it's a chatbot. It's kind of like a friend
Speaker 1: that's always there, always on. You can chat with it.
Speaker 1: I've been chatting with it for the past couple of
Speaker 1: weeks and it's wild. You can ask it anything. Should
Speaker 1: I go to the gym after work? Should I go
Speaker 1: to a movie? What movie should I see? Where should
Speaker 1: I eat? But they do lie, They really lie right
Speaker 1: through their teeth, so be careful. They don't mean to
Speaker 1: do it, but they call it hallucination. They just make
Speaker 1: stuff up. And this morning I asked her a question
Speaker 1: and just made up an answer. So pretty wild there,
Speaker 1: all right, We got lots coming up on today's show.
Speaker 1: Netflix after twenty five years is saying goodbye to the DVD.
Speaker 1: Got great guests this week. Jasmine Enberg is gonna join me.
Speaker 1: She's gonna break down Snapchat's announcements. We've got the father
Speaker 1: of the smartphone, Marty Cooper is going to join me live,
Speaker 1: and later we're going to talk to David Koff of
Speaker 1: Tech Talk about how to remove your personal information from
Speaker 1: the Internet. I see it already. The phone lines are
Speaker 1: opening up. Your call's coming up next at Triple eight.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging
Speaker 1: out with you, talking technology. And if you listen to
Speaker 1: this show a lot more, it's not just tech. Well
Speaker 1: it is mostly tech, but you know it's also whatever
Speaker 1: I feel like. It is the rich On Tech Show,
Speaker 1: So you know, there is that Liberty. There Phone lines
Speaker 1: are open at triple eight rich one O one eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one.
Speaker 1: If you have a question about technology, trying to decide something,
Speaker 1: trying to figure something out, trying to find an app
Speaker 1: for something, a solution, just give me a call Triple
Speaker 1: eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four
Speaker 1: to two four one zero one. That phone number is
Speaker 1: also on the website Rich on tech dot TV. Jeff
Speaker 1: is in California. Jeff, you're on with Rich.
Speaker 4: Hey, Rich, Yeah, I wanted to ask you. I think
Speaker 4: you've seen a lot of things on Twitter and I'm
Speaker 4: beginning a lot of Google ads about this new biometric
Speaker 4: handgun that supposedly reads your fingerprints or poem. Remember like
Speaker 4: in what was this Stillon movie where the gun could
Speaker 4: he could only shoot the gun. Yeah, it's basically that
Speaker 4: somebody came up with that.
Speaker 5: And I was.
Speaker 4: Wondering, is it too soon to bring out a technology
Speaker 4: like this or you know, like is it kind of
Speaker 4: an AI thing or what's your opinion?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean this has been talked about for a
Speaker 1: long time. I mean I haven't you know, I haven't
Speaker 1: seen the Instagram ads, but they're definitely. This technology has
Speaker 1: been talked about for a really long time. But I
Speaker 1: think there's some challenges. I mean, you know, obviously it's
Speaker 1: not a perfect technology. Some people might think it's slower
Speaker 1: than you know, standard technology for a gun. You know,
Speaker 1: it's more expensive. Of course, do you have to charge
Speaker 1: this thing? I mean, obviously there's probably charging involved. So
Speaker 1: I think there's a lot of pros and cons. But
Speaker 1: I think, you know, the pros obviously are the safety
Speaker 1: aspects that only the owner would be able to use
Speaker 1: this device, and I think that's the biggest appeal to
Speaker 1: a lot of people. But you know, Jeff, by asking
Speaker 1: this question that the are going to be people on
Speaker 1: both sides of this in a very very profound way.
Speaker 2: What are your thoughts on it?
Speaker 6: Oh?
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I like the idea from a safety aspect.
Speaker 4: I'm in the firms industry, and uh I look at
Speaker 4: it as I don't know if it's something that it's
Speaker 4: they're trying to fix a problem that isn't really a
Speaker 4: problem yet. I say that uh in that uh they're
Speaker 4: trying to uh market a gun to your Uh. Non
Speaker 4: the people that say I'll never have a gun in
Speaker 4: my house because it's too dangerous. They're trying to get
Speaker 4: to that market because anybody who really wants to have
Speaker 4: a gun should always get training, uh and other education
Speaker 4: before even purchasing the gun.
Speaker 1: Right, So I guess that I guess that that begs
Speaker 1: the question. Then it's like, then who is this for?
Speaker 1: Because if you, okay, let me put myself in these shoes.
Speaker 1: So if I if I am a gun advocate and
Speaker 1: I have a gun, and I you know, I train
Speaker 1: and I get this thing, I I probably believe that
Speaker 1: I'm gonna take care of this thing in a certain
Speaker 1: way that nobody else is going to get access to
Speaker 1: that gun, and nobody else will be able to have
Speaker 1: that and I don't need this feature on that right exactly.
Speaker 4: It's just like the people who are saying, well, I
Speaker 4: don't need to go learn how to drive because the.
Speaker 2: Tesla will drive for me, which by the way, is
Speaker 2: not true.
Speaker 1: We know that we know that the Tesla does not drive,
Speaker 1: and so and so again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so I see your point. Yeah, it's a mentality.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean do you think Look, I think that
Speaker 1: there there are so many issues when it comes to
Speaker 1: firearms that people are either very for them or very
Speaker 1: against them. I think that technology has ways of helping
Speaker 1: various industries. I would say, you know, maybe this technology
Speaker 1: or a version of it, if it was inexpensive enough,
Speaker 1: could work for certain types of firearms.
Speaker 2: But I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just one of these things where it
Speaker 1: just seems like it's probably cost prohibitive.
Speaker 4: One of the things. Okay, because like one of the
Speaker 4: things I'm seeing is that people are coming in to
Speaker 4: buy firearms now, especially handguns. And these are the people
Speaker 4: who are the the White Mobile upward so forth that
Speaker 4: said before that I'll never have a gun in my house.
Speaker 4: They're not wanting to buy a gun because they're the
Speaker 4: only ones that haven't bought a gun yet in California,
Speaker 4: and they don't want to be you know, they they're
Speaker 4: considering it like it's the musical chairs. They don't want
Speaker 4: to be caught without one without a chair when the
Speaker 4: music stops and the Zombia poclyps, the marauders show up.
Speaker 1: The Uh all right, I got I got it, Jeff,
Speaker 1: I got to leave it there. They're they're playing me off.
Speaker 1: But great question. Uh, so many implications of that. Coming
Speaker 1: up next, we are going to talk more about snapchat
Speaker 1: and the implications of all of their announcements this week.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich
Speaker 1: on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology.
Speaker 1: Let's go to Paul in Burbank. Paul, you're on with Rich.
Speaker 7: Hey, Rich, thank you for taking the call.
Speaker 8: Yeah, Hey, I work at one of the studios that've
Speaker 8: been with Mac tech for fifteen years.
Speaker 5: You shoed to work at Apple and have you.
Speaker 8: Seen the new system Preferences or Macawestern tour have I?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 8: Now, imagine having to work with that every day for
Speaker 8: you know, tons of issues and you got to keep
Speaker 8: trying to prowd through that. I know they're trying to
Speaker 8: do the mobile equivocal of the OS, but man oh Manette,
Speaker 8: Apple has really seemed to lost their way about the
Speaker 8: intuitiveness of their OS and their products.
Speaker 5: What do you think I.
Speaker 1: Would agree with that? I think, uh, I think it's
Speaker 1: all over the place at this point. And when specifically,
Speaker 1: the system preferences are where you go for all the
Speaker 1: settings and things on Mac. And it used to be
Speaker 1: one format which I thought was pretty easy to understand,
Speaker 1: and now it's just all over the place. It's in
Speaker 1: this list, it does not make any sense. I I
Speaker 1: you know, I just don't like it. And I'm sure
Speaker 1: that there's a lot of people, and you know, some
Speaker 1: of us. You know, people might say, oh, Paul and Rich,
Speaker 1: you just don't like change, But the reality.
Speaker 5: Is I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't mind change. I just don't like when it's
Speaker 1: when there's no reason for it.
Speaker 2: Why, you know, yeah, right, how.
Speaker 8: Does that improve functionality or efficacy? It doesn't, it does.
Speaker 8: Progressiveness means progress, and even if you're a conservative republic
Speaker 8: or whatever, you still want things to be better, better change,
Speaker 8: not just change.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, yeah, And I think we see a lot
Speaker 1: of that stuff now. You know, I've I have my
Speaker 1: greater thoughts on Apple in general, with how they control
Speaker 1: the situation in many ways, but I you know, this
Speaker 1: show is not long.
Speaker 2: Enough for those thoughts.
Speaker 1: But so, uh yeah, you're just you're just struggling with
Speaker 1: this change as much as I am. And it's it
Speaker 1: took me a while to go to this uh this
Speaker 1: new os because you know, I used to do it
Speaker 1: the day of and now I'm like, eh, I don't
Speaker 1: need it the day of, and it's it's fine, but
Speaker 1: it's just you know it again, it's a little confusing,
Speaker 1: So I hear you.
Speaker 8: I would say the same thing as attacheple. When I
Speaker 8: worked at Apple, I I would not go to the
Speaker 8: latest os because you know, there's a revisions that are
Speaker 8: going to come out, but everybody uses it. Oh yeah,
Speaker 8: so chill out, you know, let it work its way
Speaker 8: through the you know, the ranks for a month or so.
Speaker 8: But I really am thinking about putting a petition together
Speaker 8: to send to Apple and seeing if we can get
Speaker 8: some other people on board with the concept of you
Speaker 8: remember five o'clup pro right, You remember how destroyed that?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean I've gotten used to that at
Speaker 1: this point, but yes, there was a lot. But you
Speaker 1: know what, here's the deal Apple, And I will say this.
Speaker 1: They did with the keyboard on the MacBook. I did
Speaker 1: hate that and they did end up finally changing it.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's still the best, but it
Speaker 1: was like one of those things where they're like, no, no,
Speaker 1: it's fine, it's fine, it's fine until they changed it.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of how Apple operates. It's like every
Speaker 1: they kind of question you, you question yourself, and then
Speaker 1: they change it and you're like, oh, I was right
Speaker 1: the whole time.
Speaker 8: Well, it's like the Titanic, you know, they they have
Speaker 8: I'm sure there's so there's so much bureaucrat and infrastructure
Speaker 8: in place now that if you have a change order
Speaker 8: in is an act of God.
Speaker 9: You know.
Speaker 8: To keyboards on the MacBook pros, you know, they wore
Speaker 8: out from your foil, from your finger, the letters would
Speaker 8: come on. Yeah, and the keys was great. The new
Speaker 8: Mac and one they have a nicer keyboard for sure.
Speaker 2: For sure.
Speaker 8: The throw isn't is good and the strokes, but you
Speaker 8: know it is nicer than the old, no doubt.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: All right, Paul, thanks for the call, appreciate it. Uh,
Speaker 1: we can talk Apple stuff all day. It's just yeah,
Speaker 1: the keyboard, my my, my, I always give my old
Speaker 1: computers to my family members. And my dad is still
Speaker 1: mad that the command key is as like there's no
Speaker 1: there's no command on it anymore.
Speaker 2: It's like, why is this like empty? Anyway?
Speaker 1: All right, let's go to uh, let's go to Snapchat again.
Speaker 1: This is an interview I did with Jasmine. She is
Speaker 1: with Insider Intelligence and this is all about the changes
Speaker 1: at Snapchat. Welcome back to rich on Tech on location
Speaker 1: in Santa Monica at the Snap Partners Summit. Joining me
Speaker 1: now is Jasmine en Berg, principal analyst with Insider Intelligence.
Speaker 2: Jasmin, thanks for joining.
Speaker 10: Me, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Okay, so we just had a big keynote from Snapchat
Speaker 1: talking about all their new features, including AI AR and
Speaker 1: all of the creators they have here.
Speaker 2: What was your big takeaway from this event?
Speaker 11: So it's really exciting to see so many people excited
Speaker 11: about social media again. I think a lot of the
Speaker 11: time in the news, we hear about all the negative
Speaker 11: aspects of social media, and.
Speaker 10: Here we're really celebrating all.
Speaker 11: Of the good things that social media can do, talking
Speaker 11: about creators, augmented reality, as you mentioned, generative AI in
Speaker 11: the future. But I do think, you know, there is
Speaker 11: still a big question considering we barely heard anything about advertisers,
Speaker 11: and advertising, of course is Snapchat's primary business. It's how
Speaker 11: they make almost all of their money, and they have
Speaker 11: Earnix coming up next week.
Speaker 1: Well, they certainly threw some big numbers at US seven
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty million monthly active users, texting, snapping, video
Speaker 1: and voice calls one hundred million minutes per day of
Speaker 1: calling on average on Snapchat, so people are certainly using
Speaker 1: this app.
Speaker 11: Yeah, Snapchat users love Snapchat. I think they proved that
Speaker 11: time and time again, and especially most of the Snapchat
Speaker 11: users are gen Z of course, you know, it's it's
Speaker 11: been really appealing to a young audience who have really
Speaker 11: grown up with the app. We've seen even though other
Speaker 11: contenders have come in to compete for a gen Z's attention,
Speaker 11: TikTok of course being one of the big ones, gen
Speaker 11: Z are still using Snapchat. Of course, they use it
Speaker 11: for a little bit of a different purpose and they
Speaker 11: would use TikTok or other social media services. And we
Speaker 11: heard the executives talk about that today too. Snapchat is
Speaker 11: more for messaging, it's not so much for public facing content,
Speaker 11: although they did make some big announcements about how they're
Speaker 11: improving those public facing surfaces, especially as they're trying to
Speaker 11: be more attractive to creators.
Speaker 1: So they did talk about that the idea of a
Speaker 1: public story, So being not a huge user of Snapchat,
Speaker 1: that is something that's new where you can basically now
Speaker 1: present your stories to.
Speaker 2: The public, which is a pretty sizable shift.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 11: Absolutely, And you know, one of the big challenges in
Speaker 11: attracting creators in particular for Snapchat has been the fact
Speaker 11: that they don't have many places where they can post
Speaker 11: public content, stories being one of them. Now you have
Speaker 11: any user ages eighteen and over being able to post
Speaker 11: a public story if they so choose, that will help.
Speaker 11: I do think that there are some potential challenges to
Speaker 11: that though, in terms of privacy on the app, and
Speaker 11: I think there'll be some questions that will be raised
Speaker 11: about how they're going to mitigate some of those concerns
Speaker 11: potentially in the future.
Speaker 1: A couple of features I thought were quite neat and useful.
Speaker 1: This idea that you can see the popular destinations on
Speaker 1: a map. Because they have a lot of data about
Speaker 1: where people go, you can see places and save them
Speaker 1: for later, which I really liked. And then they also
Speaker 1: have this idea of the always on location without the
Speaker 1: app open. So you've been able to sort of see
Speaker 1: your friends on a map, but now you can set
Speaker 1: a duration and say I want to share my location
Speaker 1: for four hours or eight hours. There's some privacy implications
Speaker 1: with that as well.
Speaker 11: Yes, I imagine there will be some privacy concerns raised
Speaker 11: about that as well. They were very careful distress of course,
Speaker 11: that this is a feature that you would have to
Speaker 11: turn on that by default, your low isn't shared.
Speaker 10: But you know, given.
Speaker 11: The problems that we've seen with social media and with privacy,
Speaker 11: especially among young people, as well as you know, other
Speaker 11: negative impacts of social media among young people, I imagine
Speaker 11: this is something that they're going to have to really
Speaker 11: take into consideration as this feature rolls out.
Speaker 1: One of the things they kept reiterating on stage, Several
Speaker 1: of the executives mentioned it is how the app opens
Speaker 1: up into the camera versus TikTok versus Instagram, where you're
Speaker 1: looking at other people's feeds.
Speaker 2: So what do you make of that?
Speaker 11: So back in the day, Snapchat used to pitch itself
Speaker 11: as a camera app, and it's you know, it is
Speaker 11: very true. It does open up into the camera, and
Speaker 11: I do think that's one of the things that sets
Speaker 11: it apart from these other apps. And it's also you know,
Speaker 11: one of the ways that they're trying to pitch themselves.
Speaker 10: Now as a creator platform.
Speaker 11: Now, Snapchat isn't a place for creators and influencers the
Speaker 11: way that TikTok is, the way that Instagram is, and
Speaker 11: the way.
Speaker 10: That YouTube is.
Speaker 11: It has a long road ahead to be to catch
Speaker 11: up to it. But the more that it can position
Speaker 11: itself as a place for content creation, for being able
Speaker 11: to make fun and engage in content, as well as
Speaker 11: having an audience to consume that content and a way
Speaker 11: to make money, which is another big part of the presentation,
Speaker 11: the better chance it has of becoming a bigger player
Speaker 11: within the creator market.
Speaker 1: My guest right now is Jasmine Enberg. She is the
Speaker 1: principal analyst with Insider Intelligence. Let's talk about how they're
Speaker 1: building Snapchat experiences outside of the app. So in retail locations,
Speaker 1: we see a vending.
Speaker 2: Machine that they're building.
Speaker 1: A prototype vending machine with Coca Cola that uses augmented reality.
Speaker 1: You can kind of select what you want on screen,
Speaker 1: and then they have this mirror that lets you try
Speaker 1: on clothing and accessories in a store and also shoes.
Speaker 2: What do you make of those new experiences, So they're.
Speaker 11: A little bit different for me thinking about the Coca
Speaker 11: Cola vending machine, it's still kind of more a gimmick
Speaker 11: in a sense. I think it's a fun way to
Speaker 11: attract people to come to the Coca Cola machine, but
Speaker 11: I can't imagine that that is a reason to necessarily
Speaker 11: come back. I mean, you try it once and then
Speaker 11: that's probably it with the the AR mirror. Shopping with
Speaker 11: AR is not really a mainstream activity yet, but it
Speaker 11: is growing, and I think that retailers might be you know,
Speaker 11: more receptive to that, especially in stores, if snap can
Speaker 11: actually prove real value in increasing in store sales as
Speaker 11: well as reducing return rates. My one question about that
Speaker 11: is is there a reason for somebody to go into
Speaker 11: a store and try something on via AR for an
Speaker 11: in stock item. Probably not unless they want to play
Speaker 11: around with the AR mirror, but for out of stock items.
Speaker 11: So imagine you go into whatever store, they don't have
Speaker 11: your size, but you want to know if it fits
Speaker 11: before you order it online in store, I can imagine
Speaker 11: that would be a really good use case for an
Speaker 11: AR mirror.
Speaker 1: Where do you see Snapchat fitting into the large your
Speaker 1: social media landscape.
Speaker 10: Well, it depends how you look at it.
Speaker 11: Right from you know, the user perspective, it is very
Speaker 11: much a gen Z focused app. It's actually probably you know,
Speaker 11: the first real gen Z app that has risen onto
Speaker 11: the social media scene.
Speaker 10: Now, of course we're seeing.
Speaker 11: A lot more apps that are directed specifically towards that
Speaker 11: younger generation, but Snapchat really kind of pioneered that and
Speaker 11: it made that a core part of its value proposition.
Speaker 1: Finally, AI obviously the hottest topic in the tech world.
Speaker 2: Do you think that they mentioned enough about AI?
Speaker 1: They have this MYAI avatar or chatbot.
Speaker 2: That you can talk to.
Speaker 1: They did open that up to everyone, not just paying
Speaker 1: Snapchat subscribers. And also if you are a subscriber, you
Speaker 1: can send a snap which is like a picture, to
Speaker 1: the bot and it will send you back a picture,
Speaker 1: which I thought was kind of interesting.
Speaker 2: Do you think they're doing enough with AI?
Speaker 10: It's a great question.
Speaker 11: You know, there is a lot of hype around right now,
Speaker 11: and it's where the competition within social media is shifting to.
Speaker 10: But it's really early days and AI can.
Speaker 11: Still be pretty problematic. I do think it's exciting to
Speaker 11: hear what snap is planning with generative AI. I think,
Speaker 11: you know, its user base is one of the most
Speaker 11: receptive to these kinds of technologies, and we've clearly seen
Speaker 11: that Snapchat Plus subscribers have really you know, or Snapchat
Speaker 11: users have really.
Speaker 10: Already taken to the MII chat bot.
Speaker 11: I did a couple of calculations in my head, and
Speaker 11: it sounds like my AI was one of the big
Speaker 11: reason for Snapchat Plus plus is subscriber growth over the
Speaker 11: past two months or so.
Speaker 1: And they said they have about three million plus subscribers
Speaker 1: that pay what four dollars a month?
Speaker 11: It's about four dollars a month, I believe, And yeah,
Speaker 11: and that's up by one million since January thirty first,
Speaker 11: and my Ai launched too Snapchat Plus subscribers on February
Speaker 11: twenty seven, so that's a pretty big number that have
Speaker 11: signed up in just two months. And I suspect that
Speaker 11: my Ai had quite a bit to do with it.
Speaker 1: And one thing I took from the keynote though, they
Speaker 1: did mention that they look at all of the chats
Speaker 1: with the myai bot, so it's not really private.
Speaker 11: The other thing that I took away from that too
Speaker 11: is when Evan Spiegel said that don't ask for my
Speaker 11: don't ask for advice from my AI. So clearly they
Speaker 11: know that AI can be problematic. I'm sure there are
Speaker 11: working hard to fix it and mitigate a lot of
Speaker 11: the issues, but clearly there there is still potential for
Speaker 11: problems with my AI.
Speaker 1: So we have a company known for fun lenses trying
Speaker 1: to move past just that.
Speaker 11: Yes, absolutely, but not stray too far away from you know,
Speaker 11: what it has, what it originally was. And I think
Speaker 11: that's the challenge for Snapchat going forward is to remain
Speaker 11: true to its roots while still expanding, iterating, and creating
Speaker 11: something new for the future.
Speaker 1: All Right, Jasmine Enberg, principal analysts with Insider Intelligence, thanks
Speaker 1: so much for joining me today.
Speaker 10: Thank you so much.
Speaker 11: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: All Right, we'll have more of your calls coming up next.
Speaker 2: Give me a call.
Speaker 1: Triple eight rich one O one. You are listening to
Speaker 1: Rich on tech. Welcome back to Rich on Tech. Rich
Speaker 1: DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology. Triple A
Speaker 1: rich one O one. Phone lines are open eight eight
Speaker 1: eight seven four to two four one zero one. Scott
Speaker 1: is in Siam Valley, Scott, you're on with Rich.
Speaker 3: Thanks Rich.
Speaker 12: I'm calling because I have a family member that's going
Speaker 12: to be at sea on the East Coast working on
Speaker 12: a cruise ship for about seven months, and I'm looking
Speaker 12: for cell phone, talk, text internet service providers that you
Speaker 12: could recommend we look into while she's at c and import.
Speaker 1: Oh, while she's at c That's an interesting one because
Speaker 1: I don't think that there is one provider that work
Speaker 1: across you know, wherever they go. Now on the ship,
Speaker 1: do they they provide Wi Fi to the employees.
Speaker 12: Yes, but at this point she doesn't know what they're
Speaker 12: going to charge her. They told her it's it's available,
Speaker 12: but it's not free. So if she's going to be
Speaker 12: at c for six or seven months and it's three
Speaker 12: dollars a day, it's probably going to run up quite
Speaker 12: a tab.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's not something that she should probably do, okay,
Speaker 1: So while she's at sea, I would say, unless there's
Speaker 1: a provision on the ship where they give them, you know,
Speaker 1: an hour a day or you know, three dollars a
Speaker 1: day for the Wi Fi, I would say, on the ship,
Speaker 1: maybe activate Wi Fi calling and see if that will work.
Speaker 2: Has she talked about that on her phone?
Speaker 8: Yes?
Speaker 12: I actually did have a conversation with her, and they
Speaker 12: did tell her that it's unrestricted use, but there is
Speaker 12: a fee for it, but they didn't know what it was.
Speaker 12: They couldn't tell her what it would be.
Speaker 1: Okay, So if that's the case, does she so? I
Speaker 1: would say, while she's on the ship, it's probably going
Speaker 1: to be a matter of she's not really connecting to
Speaker 1: this on a daily basis. She sort of has to
Speaker 1: embrace the fact that she's out there, it costs money,
Speaker 1: and it's just not something that she can do while
Speaker 1: she's there the whole time. Now I'm not aware. I'd
Speaker 1: have to look more into this, but I'm curious what
Speaker 1: other people do. So maybe there's a form or something
Speaker 1: online where people can, you know, where other cruise ship
Speaker 1: employees talk about what they do to stay connected on
Speaker 1: the ship. So that's number one. Number two, when you
Speaker 1: are in port, there are various ways to tackle this.
Speaker 2: Number one.
Speaker 1: Her cell phone plan may include provisions for certain places
Speaker 1: she goes, so I would check to see what's included, specifically,
Speaker 1: Team Mobile.
Speaker 2: Okay, what companies she using?
Speaker 5: Do you know?
Speaker 9: Yeah?
Speaker 12: Right now, she is with Mobile.
Speaker 1: Okay, she's with US Mobile, so they're more of like
Speaker 1: an all a cart thing. So US Mobile may give
Speaker 1: you the option to add some international roaming. I'd definitely
Speaker 1: look into that, or you might even look into switching
Speaker 1: to something like T Mobile that offers the international roaming.
Speaker 1: The other thing you can do, and this is an
Speaker 1: app that's really really good that I've used around the world.
Speaker 1: It's called Aralo ai r Alo and they sell SIM
Speaker 1: cards for different places. So what she can do is
Speaker 1: activate a couple of these SIM cards on her phone.
Speaker 1: They're e sims.
Speaker 2: It's all electronic, it's all digital.
Speaker 1: And then when she goes if she's going to the
Speaker 1: same ports over and over, she can just activate that
Speaker 1: card once again. It may cost you know, ten bucks,
Speaker 1: five bucks here and there, but you know, for maybe
Speaker 1: some of the main places that she she's always stopping at,
Speaker 1: that might be a good idea. The other thing I'd
Speaker 1: recommend is just figure out the Wi Fi calling situation
Speaker 1: and when she gets to these different places, learn the
Speaker 1: different cafes and hotels that will offer Wi Fi for free.
Speaker 2: And just lean on them for the connectivity. So that's
Speaker 2: what I would do.
Speaker 1: I've been, you know, sort of around the world with
Speaker 1: cell phone connectivity. It has changed a lot in the
Speaker 1: past ten fifteen years. Used to be when I went
Speaker 1: to certain countries, I just knew I was out of touch.
Speaker 1: And at this point, I don't think there's really a
Speaker 1: place except out at sea where you need to be
Speaker 1: out of touch. So great question, Scott, and uh, hopefully
Speaker 1: she embraces and enjoys the fact that she's sort of
Speaker 1: disconnected from the world.
Speaker 2: When do we get a chance to do that? But
Speaker 2: knowing she can be reachable in an emergency.
Speaker 1: Phone lines are open triple eight Rich one on one
Speaker 1: eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one
Speaker 1: zero one.
Speaker 2: Give me a call.
Speaker 1: You're listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich
Speaker 1: on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking
Speaker 1: technology at triple eight rich one oh one. That's eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: Bring me right back to my middle school dances. All
Speaker 1: nervous trying to ask her to dance with you. Never
Speaker 1: I don't think I ever did so so nerve racking.
Speaker 1: And now my kid's going through that and I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: go go go ask, Just get in there, and you know,
Speaker 1: see what happens.
Speaker 2: Easier said than done. I know.
Speaker 13: Uh.
Speaker 2: Kind of funny.
Speaker 1: You ever just feel kind of like sometimes you did
Speaker 1: the wrong thing.
Speaker 2: So kind of a funny story.
Speaker 1: So I Samsung reached out to me and they said, hey,
Speaker 1: would you like to see your pictures on a billboard?
Speaker 1: And I said, of course, And they said, just take
Speaker 1: a couple of two hundred megapixel pictures with the S
Speaker 1: twenty three Ultra and send them to us, and We're
Speaker 1: going to do this billboard event in the UK. We're
Speaker 1: going to show your pictures on there, and obviously, since
Speaker 1: you can't be there, we'll snap a picture of your
Speaker 1: pictures on the billboard and we'll send it to you.
Speaker 1: And said, oh, that's really cool. So I'm in Hawaii.
Speaker 1: I take a couple of cool, like landscape photos. You
Speaker 1: could see these on my Instagram at rich On Tech.
Speaker 1: I send them in. I don't hear anything. I guess
Speaker 1: this weekend happens whatever.
Speaker 2: Whenever.
Speaker 1: It was last weekend, and finally get this email with
Speaker 1: the picture of the billboard and I was like, oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, that's so cool. And so I posted on
Speaker 1: Instagram and I knew other people were gonna get their
Speaker 1: pictures on this billboard too, it was going to rotate
Speaker 1: through them. Well, first off, I thought it was funny
Speaker 1: that they didn't put my or anyone's handle on the picture,
Speaker 1: so you just see my pictures, which is cool, But
Speaker 1: it doesn't say like rich On Tech anywhere whatever. I'm
Speaker 1: fine with that. It's still cool to see your pictures
Speaker 1: on a billboard. But the funny thing is I was
Speaker 1: flipping through other people's pictures that they put up there.
Speaker 1: Every other person took a picture of themselves because it
Speaker 1: makes sense. You see yourself on this giant billboard in
Speaker 1: the UK. Duh, Like anyone can see a picture of
Speaker 1: Hawaii anywhere, just open up like the Internet. But you know,
Speaker 1: to see yourself on this billboard is a lot cooler.
Speaker 1: So I felt like I went from feeling like really
Speaker 1: cool as I was scrolling through everyone else's pictures feeling
Speaker 1: kind of like, oh, whoops, I really miss you know,
Speaker 1: mess that one up, Sony. If you want to see
Speaker 1: the pictures, I still think they're nice, you can check
Speaker 1: them out on my Instagram at rich On Tech. Anyway,
Speaker 1: thank you Samsung for the cool opportunity. Uh this is
Speaker 1: the Piccadilly billboard in London. I don't think I saw
Speaker 1: that when I went to London. I was only in
Speaker 1: London for like forty eight hours once. I don't know
Speaker 1: if I remember that thing. Let's go to uh Eon
Speaker 1: in Norwalk.
Speaker 2: Eon? Am I saying that right?
Speaker 3: You're on with rich Yes, yes you are, thank you. Listen.
Speaker 3: I am a VISUALI in per and I want to
Speaker 3: know whether I can use the Sampson fond to get
Speaker 3: stop to it for research and dial Oh uh yeah
Speaker 3: I would.
Speaker 2: I would think you'll be able to do that.
Speaker 1: I I don't have as much experience on the Samsung
Speaker 1: side of things with the accessibility tools, but I would
Speaker 1: think that Samsung has just as many accessibility features as
Speaker 1: Andrew as a you know, iPhone, and also Pixel. So
Speaker 1: you're looking at You're looking at things like talk back,
Speaker 1: which we'll read what's on the screen.
Speaker 2: Is that what you need?
Speaker 3: No? Yeah, no, Y just research. Let's say that I
Speaker 3: want to listen to a YouTube video and you said
Speaker 3: YouTube and whatever video wanna?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I think you'll be able to use Bixby
Speaker 1: for those things easily. I think Bixby is actually pretty
Speaker 1: good for that. That's their voice assistant, So I think
Speaker 1: that that's a good way to do it. The other
Speaker 1: phone to look at is called the Pixel from Google.
Speaker 1: I would say look at that one as well and
Speaker 1: see kind of compare the features. But I think that
Speaker 1: the accessibility tools on Samsung are going to be are
Speaker 1: going to be pretty good for what you need.
Speaker 5: Have you ever pixel?
Speaker 3: Which one is better Pixel or.
Speaker 14: Which one?
Speaker 1: I mean, it depends. I M that's a good question
Speaker 1: specifically when it comes to the accessibility tools. I don't
Speaker 1: have a ton of experience with either of those tools.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've seen you know, Pixel has a lot
Speaker 1: of tools that will read things back to you, and
Speaker 1: also their Google Assistant is really good, and also text
Speaker 1: to speech is really good. But again, Samsung, you know,
Speaker 1: I think they've put a lot of work into this
Speaker 1: as well, and I think Bixby's pretty good. So have
Speaker 1: you ever used a cell phone or a smartphone before?
Speaker 9: No?
Speaker 3: No, I I when I when I when I used
Speaker 3: to see, uh, in college, right tech, the teacher would
Speaker 3: like talk to the phone, I said, Now that I'm
Speaker 3: usually impressed in maybe I can use something like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think most of the modern smartphones
Speaker 1: are going to have the text to speech and also
Speaker 1: the talkback features, which which pretty much reads what's on
Speaker 1: the screen back to you. And I think that getting
Speaker 1: used to those that functionality is probably going to be
Speaker 1: the toughest part is learning what it can do and
Speaker 1: also what it's capable of and how to use it.
Speaker 1: But for voice styling, that's pretty simple, that's going to
Speaker 1: be very straightforward.
Speaker 2: Really.
Speaker 1: When it comes to actually using the phone, the back
Speaker 1: and forth of what's on the screen, it's it telling me,
Speaker 1: you know, to do, and also being able to perform
Speaker 1: those functions all in a voice manner. It's probably going
Speaker 1: to be a little tricky at first, but I think,
Speaker 1: like anything else, you'll probably get used to it and
Speaker 1: understand the capabilities of what this thing can do. But
Speaker 1: from what I've seen, yeah, I think you'll you'll be
Speaker 1: pretty good with the Samsung if you have a Samsung
Speaker 1: in mind, So keep me.
Speaker 2: Posted on that. Okay, okay, thank you so much, Alrighteon,
Speaker 2: thank you appreciate that.
Speaker 1: Uh triple eight rich one O one eight eight eight
Speaker 1: seven four to two four one zero one. Most of
Speaker 1: the major smartphone companies have put a lot of thought
Speaker 1: into accessibility in making these phones easier to use than
Speaker 1: ever before. I mean, Pixel does it, Samsung, But you know,
Speaker 1: it's one of these things that if you're not actively
Speaker 1: using it and you don't necessarily need it, you don't
Speaker 1: really dive into those features. A lot of times when
Speaker 1: we look at these accessibility features, when you see them
Speaker 1: kind of spring up on places like Instagram and TikTok,
Speaker 1: it's mostly for sort of a hack using the phone.
Speaker 1: So there's like a lot of these accessibility features that
Speaker 1: are meant for people of varying abilities, and people find
Speaker 1: ways to use them, you know, for convenience, whether it's
Speaker 1: guided access, whether it's voiceover, whether it's the tapping the
Speaker 1: back of the phone to perform some sort of functionality.
Speaker 1: So that's most of the experience that I have with
Speaker 1: those things. But if you need to use it, I
Speaker 1: think it's a matter of learning and going to some
Speaker 1: of those resources that can help you with that stuff.
Speaker 1: All right, Netflix, can you believe it after twenty five
Speaker 1: years no more DVDs? Did you even know that Netflix
Speaker 1: still sent out DVDs? Yes, they do, And a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago they spun off this business to DVD
Speaker 1: dot com. They tried to change the name, I think
Speaker 1: it was Quickstir or something a couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: and that just went totally bad. And so they just said, okay,
Speaker 1: dvd dot com. But twenty five years and I was
Speaker 1: one of the first customers of Netflix when it came out.
Speaker 1: And I would love to show you my first email
Speaker 1: or tell you about my first email from Netflix, but
Speaker 1: my email does not go back that far. Gmail came
Speaker 1: out in April two thousand and four, so my earliest
Speaker 1: email I have from Netflix is Tuesday, July fifth, two
Speaker 1: thousand and five. I ordered the DVD Hitch with Will Smith.
Speaker 1: It was going to arrive on or around Wednesday, July sixth,
Speaker 1: two thousand and five. Remember that Netflix got really good
Speaker 1: and really fast about these DVDs. Basically, as soon as
Speaker 1: you put the DVD in the mail, the USPS would
Speaker 1: scan it and that would send the signal to Netflix
Speaker 1: to send you your next DVD.
Speaker 2: Remember, you had your.
Speaker 1: Queue, so you really didn't know what you were going
Speaker 1: to be watching on a Friday night. It basically was
Speaker 1: determined by what arrived, and if your movie didn't arrive
Speaker 1: in time, well you weren't watching it, and that happened often.
Speaker 1: But then of course you would upgrade to more a
Speaker 1: higher plan that offered more DVDs out at once, you'd
Speaker 1: get two or three of these things, but then when
Speaker 1: you were feeling like it was too expensive, you'd drop
Speaker 1: down to one. These were all the things we had
Speaker 1: to do. So Netflix is going to ship out their
Speaker 1: final discs on September twenty ninth, twenty twenty three. Netflix
Speaker 1: says that this changed the way people watch shows and
Speaker 1: movies at home.
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: We went from Blockbuster to the DVDs by mail, and
Speaker 1: then of course to streaming. When that came along when
Speaker 1: that was better. Let's see, the first DVD shipped was
Speaker 1: Beetlejuice March tenth, nineteen ninety eight. So I'm trying to
Speaker 1: remember the DVDs. I remember because I was such an
Speaker 1: early customer of Netflix. I thought it was such a
Speaker 1: cool kind of idea that the DVDs. Every time I
Speaker 1: got one, it would come in different packaging because they
Speaker 1: were experimenting with the early packaging to see what worked
Speaker 1: and what did it. So at one point when I
Speaker 1: first got the DVD, it was in all this padding
Speaker 1: and it was a really thick envelope with like foam inside.
Speaker 1: And then towards the end, they were literally just sending
Speaker 1: like DVDs through the mail like without anything because they're like, ah,
Speaker 1: we don't care if these things get damage, scratched, lost, whatever.
Speaker 2: They're so cheap.
Speaker 1: It was just literally the envelopes were so flimsy towards
Speaker 1: the end that it was just kind of a joke.
Speaker 1: Number of DVDs shipped five point two billion. Most popular title,
Speaker 1: The blind Side. Number of DVDs supported twenty main genres,
Speaker 1: five hundred and thirty subgenres. Unique subscribers over the year
Speaker 1: forty million so again, if you have some outstanding DVDs.
Speaker 1: September twenty ninth, twenty twenty three, end of an era.
Speaker 1: I don't even have a DVD player at this point,
Speaker 1: so I couldn't even play a DVD.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: Coming up on the show, we got lots more to
Speaker 1: talk about. I'm excited for this interview. We've got Martin Cooper.
Speaker 1: He is known as the father of the smartphone. Yes,
Speaker 1: he made one of the first cellular calls ever. He's
Speaker 1: gonna join me live to talk about that. Later, we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about how to remove your personal information from
Speaker 1: the Internet. But first your calls Triple eight rich one
Speaker 1: oh one. You are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to rich on Tech. This is the show where
Speaker 1: I talk about the tech stuff I think you should
Speaker 1: know about, and it's where I answer your questions about technology.
Speaker 1: You can find me online at rich on Tech, on Instagram, Twitter,
Speaker 1: yeah I'm still there, and Facebook, or go to rich
Speaker 1: on Tech dot tv. It's still me on Twitter. Even
Speaker 1: though my blue check mark that I've had for ten
Speaker 1: plus years is gone and I'm probably not gonna pay
Speaker 1: to get it back because I just don't think it's
Speaker 1: worth it, but whatever, those are my problems, not yours.
Speaker 2: Matthew is in your We had a Matthew You're on
Speaker 2: with Rich Hi.
Speaker 15: Rich have a question planning and upcoming family reunion this summer,
Speaker 15: and we're doing a bunch of back and forth emails
Speaker 15: that aren't working. Just wondering if you had any sort
Speaker 15: of messaging or any collaboration tool suggestion or planning a
Speaker 15: family reunion here in southern California.
Speaker 2: Oh, good question. We did this last year.
Speaker 1: We went up to Bend, Oregon with a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of people, and yeah, it was a mess. There was
Speaker 1: not one clear way. When we first started planning, someone
Speaker 1: suggested we all get on Signal, And I don't know
Speaker 1: if you know what Signal is, but it's like the
Speaker 1: most secure chat app in the world, and so I
Speaker 1: was just like, that's not going to work. Like that
Speaker 1: is just not going to work. So my recommendation is
Speaker 1: to get on a cross platform app that allows you
Speaker 1: to do everything the same, no matter if you're on
Speaker 1: iPhone or Android. Now, this group chat could get kind
Speaker 1: of filled up with a lot of different people and
Speaker 1: a lot of different thoughts, so that's definitely going to
Speaker 1: be an issue. But to have one place where you
Speaker 1: can go back and search what people said and suggestions
Speaker 1: and things like that. My favorite is Telegram. Have you
Speaker 1: heard of Telegram?
Speaker 15: Yes? I have?
Speaker 2: Are you on Telegram?
Speaker 15: I have it on my phone, but I haven't signed
Speaker 15: up for it yet.
Speaker 1: Okay, So that's probably the best thing I ever got
Speaker 1: my family to get on. About three years ago, right
Speaker 1: before the pandemic. We all signed up and we have
Speaker 1: a couple of different group chats, and you may want
Speaker 1: to create several group chats based on, you know, the
Speaker 1: people that are organizing versus people attending, and maybe you
Speaker 1: know different things like that. But what I love about
Speaker 1: this is not only can you chat back and forth
Speaker 1: and the features are the same on iPhone or Android,
Speaker 1: because you don't the last thing you want to do
Speaker 1: is use texting for this, because that's just not going
Speaker 1: to work. But if you tap into your your group chat,
Speaker 1: you can see all all the different things that people
Speaker 1: have exchanged. You can go and look at the media,
Speaker 1: which are the photos and videos that people have exchanged.
Speaker 1: We'll give you kind of a whole catalog of those,
Speaker 1: like an album. You've got files, So if you had
Speaker 1: a file that you want to put like a PDF
Speaker 1: or something like that.
Speaker 2: You can look in the files.
Speaker 1: There's voice messages, there are links, so if someone sends
Speaker 1: a link, you can easily look through and see the links.
Speaker 1: And of course gifts as well, so you can look
Speaker 1: through and see what people have done there. But there's
Speaker 1: also a search functionality, so you can search and see
Speaker 1: what people have said in the chats. And my favorite thing,
Speaker 1: not only do you have reactions and things like that,
Speaker 1: but you can pin stuff. So if there's something important
Speaker 1: that like, you know, where you're going to meet up
Speaker 1: or something that's you know, pertinent, you can pin, or
Speaker 1: a vote or a you know, whatever you want to do,
Speaker 1: you can pin that to the top of the chat.
Speaker 1: So I really like all that functionality. Now, the other
Speaker 1: thing that I'd probably recommend is a shared document, and
Speaker 1: so that would be something like Google Docs. Create a
Speaker 1: either a spreadsheet or some sort of shared folder file, whatever,
Speaker 1: and that way you can get everyone on the same
Speaker 1: page there with the itinerary. And then finally, the other
Speaker 1: thing that we did that I loved is we created
Speaker 1: a Google Photos album, and so when people took pictures,
Speaker 1: you just could drag and drop them into this album
Speaker 1: and then everyone could just download the pictures from that album. Now,
Speaker 1: now if that doesn't work, you can also just open
Speaker 1: up a Dropbox account and easily have everyone drag and
Speaker 1: drop their pictures into that shared folder and that way
Speaker 1: everyone could download the pictures as well. The problem is,
Speaker 1: I know you got a lot of folks on iPhones
Speaker 1: in the group because that's typically what happens, and they
Speaker 1: want to use all Apple stuff. The problem is Apple
Speaker 1: stuff does not play nicely with any other stuff. So
Speaker 1: my advice is to stay away from the Apple centric
Speaker 1: tools and to use stuff that is what I call
Speaker 1: cross platform. Matt Does that help you, Matthew, Yes it does.
Speaker 15: And what's something like like setting up a free web
Speaker 15: page through the Google web page? The system for an
Speaker 15: itinerary be a good system as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's a you know, like if you
Speaker 1: just use Google sites and just you know, make it
Speaker 1: so that only your family can access it.
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: Now, I'm sure there are some websites that are specifically
Speaker 1: tailored towards family reunion planning. The problem is there's those
Speaker 1: are probably operating on a freemium model, which means some
Speaker 1: of the stuff is going to be free and then
Speaker 1: some of the stuff you really want to use is
Speaker 1: going to cost you money, which you know you may
Speaker 1: or may not want to pay for. I think with
Speaker 1: all the free tools out there, you can easily do
Speaker 1: this stuff and make an itinerary if you want to
Speaker 1: do an itinerary that's shared with people. With folks, we
Speaker 1: talked about an app called Tripsy, and that might be
Speaker 1: a good way where you can share and put everyone's
Speaker 1: arrival information, hotel information, car rental whatever into one shared
Speaker 1: itinerary as well. So that's a good app. It's called
Speaker 1: Tripsy trips y last I checked, though, hold on, I
Speaker 1: might be actually, I might be contradicting myself because Tripsy
Speaker 1: might be just iOS and I think it is.
Speaker 15: Actually, if we had something like that, that would be
Speaker 15: perfect because we've got people coming from all corners of
Speaker 15: the country. Most people live in Orange County, but they're
Speaker 15: coming from Arizona, people from Baltimore, Portland, all over. And
Speaker 15: we're doing multiple events from Catalina Island to not Sperry
Speaker 15: Farm Cocktail Lounge and dinner night out in La because
Speaker 15: some of the family lives in LA. All kinds of
Speaker 15: things that get together just for the ants and uncles.
Speaker 15: Because my dad's one of nine kids. We're one. I'm
Speaker 15: one of twenty eight grandkids and twenty two great grandkids.
Speaker 15: So we've got a lot of cousins and second cousins
Speaker 15: getting together. We're doing multiple events, things for the adults,
Speaker 15: things for the adults with kids. So it would be
Speaker 15: nice to be able to know where people are saying,
Speaker 15: are you staying in a family members? How are you
Speaker 15: staying in a hotel? So we can all carpool because
Speaker 15: once you get to LA or Orange County, it's twenty
Speaker 15: five dollars to park, and that's very farm. It's thirty
Speaker 15: dollars to valet park in La at the carpool and
Speaker 15: save the money on the parking.
Speaker 2: It sounds like you've done your homework. Check out Trippet.
Speaker 1: I think that's going to be a better place for
Speaker 1: the shared itinerary because that's going to help you cross
Speaker 1: platform as well. It sounds like a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: I want to join you enjoy the family reunion.
Speaker 2: Matthew.
Speaker 1: All right, coming up, we are talking to Marty Cooper,
Speaker 1: the father of the smartphone. You're listening to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here with
Speaker 1: you talking technology at triple eight Rich one oh one
Speaker 1: eight eight eight seven.
Speaker 2: Four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: You know if you listen to this show, one of
Speaker 1: my favorite topics in the world is the smartphone. But
Speaker 1: before there were smartphones, there were cell phones. And joining
Speaker 1: me now very excited for Martin Cooper. He is known
Speaker 1: as as the father of the cell phone, author of
Speaker 1: cutting the cord. The cell phone has transformed humanity. Martin,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for joining me, Hi pleasure, Rich do
Speaker 1: you go by Martin or Marty?
Speaker 2: What can I call?
Speaker 13: You?
Speaker 9: Call me? Marty is the old friend?
Speaker 2: Okay? Perfect?
Speaker 1: So Marty, you made one of the first calls ever
Speaker 1: on a handheld device. Can you bring me back to
Speaker 1: that day?
Speaker 9: I sure can. It was very Actually not the first call, Rich,
Speaker 9: it was the first public call. And you can bet
Speaker 9: that seemed to pluck that clothes together. But are tested
Speaker 9: at a hand of times. And before we took after
Speaker 9: this is April third, Tetivity three, and the locale was
Speaker 9: the New York City instead of the New York And
Speaker 9: the purpose of our call let's demonstrate to the world
Speaker 9: that it was possible to have the freedom that comes
Speaker 9: from being able to talk anywhere. And he placed on
Speaker 9: a personal phone. At the time, if you wanted to
Speaker 9: have a wired phone, there was only one way to
Speaker 9: get in the US, and that one's mini filmed the
Speaker 9: monopoly AT and T have. Their vision of the feature was,
Speaker 9: won't believe it's car phone? Oh yeah, we did trapped
Speaker 9: in our houses in office by that wire for over
Speaker 9: one hundred years. And now to day a belt and
Speaker 9: created the first phone. And now they were going to
Speaker 9: trap it to Paris. Now that was ata we did.
Speaker 9: We go and we were trying to persuade the sec
Speaker 9: that the first of all, there should be a monopoly.
Speaker 9: The second of all the time was really for personal
Speaker 9: all portable boats. Wow, pumpassing our demastation.
Speaker 1: And so you were forty four years old, you stepped
Speaker 1: outside onto sixth Avenue outside the New York Hilton, and
Speaker 1: you made a call.
Speaker 9: To who uh you won't from majors And it was
Speaker 9: very deg We were so worried about whether the forward
Speaker 9: work in the first place. I never thought about who
Speaker 9: I was going to call, and I was competently reported
Speaker 9: as too rich, and I uh decided to call my
Speaker 9: counterparts in the Bell system, someone that worked for at
Speaker 9: T is say it to a ango, and Joe's role
Speaker 9: in at G was still shut up the Mary so
Speaker 9: Car telephone system. Certainly we disagree with each other, and
Speaker 9: not that he thought about it very often because he
Speaker 9: was representing the biggest company in the world and there
Speaker 9: was just a little billion dollar company that she taught of.
Speaker 9: So I reached in my back pockets to my telephone
Speaker 9: books that must give you a message, what's up? Don't
Speaker 9: go the phone. I won't call them, and remarkably be
Speaker 9: after the phone out of Secretary Joel Barnie Cooper. If
Speaker 9: I'm right, true, I'm calling you, Joe. If I'm a
Speaker 9: have he telephone, but a real help something on personal
Speaker 9: have hell portable cell phone, it's.
Speaker 5: I.
Speaker 9: It's ignored. But to this day Joe doesn't remember that call.
Speaker 9: He doesn't dispute it. I had it, but I really
Speaker 9: don't claim him.
Speaker 2: That's wild.
Speaker 1: So you called your competition to say, look, I'm calling
Speaker 1: you from a phone that's going to work eventually anywhere,
Speaker 1: versus your phones that you were pushing that would be
Speaker 1: installed in cars. And of course I remember the first
Speaker 1: phones were installed in cars, and of course it was
Speaker 1: a bag phone. But you called this first phone a
Speaker 1: shoe phone.
Speaker 2: Why.
Speaker 9: Oh, actually we didn't call it the sea. It was
Speaker 9: xual sponsor to there remember that ut sponsors. I'm not
Speaker 9: going to tell you about You're obviously too young. But
Speaker 9: he was a comedian, uh uh later a secret at
Speaker 9: and he had a telephone and the heel of a
Speaker 9: shoe and uh he actually called a phone of the
Speaker 9: brick because of all the brick way to found and
Speaker 9: it was shake pretty much like a brick. Uh, supe
Speaker 9: Max Spondent.
Speaker 2: So, Marty, how old are you now? I'm not Afore
Speaker 2: what do you make of what you've seen in the.
Speaker 1: History of the cell phone in your lifetime since you
Speaker 1: made this first call? I mean it has come so far.
Speaker 9: Well, first of all, you know, we were certain that
Speaker 9: the cell phone was going to be a big deal.
Speaker 9: We knew that everybody have one, So we told a
Speaker 9: story that some day when you're board, would designed the
Speaker 9: phone number if you didn't answer the phone for them.
Speaker 9: We're pretty close to that. To return to the people,
Speaker 9: I don't have so phones, but uh we could never
Speaker 9: have to addicted that then would be the Internet, digital cameras,
Speaker 9: a non scaling a greater circuit because none of those
Speaker 9: existed AD activities quite know. The marble at the tax
Speaker 9: you had a super computer you quote. I also marble
Speaker 9: at the fact we don't recognize that in the US
Speaker 9: important things to the country. In Africa. It has helped
Speaker 9: take a billion people on the poverty in the last
Speaker 9: five years. That's greatly important. So it's the only thing
Speaker 9: I have to believe. If they were always storied, it's revolution.
Speaker 9: We are about to rember, don't care. We're going to
Speaker 9: release their education, the whole concept of collaboration. It's going
Speaker 9: to make a smaller efficient. It's so that we will
Speaker 9: ultimately eliminate poverty. So we're just at the beginning gift.
Speaker 9: I hope.
Speaker 2: So I hope that's Uh, that's something that happens.
Speaker 1: It's funny because you you kind of expected when these
Speaker 1: phones were first coming out that they're going to be well,
Speaker 1: you knew they were going to be expensive, and obviously
Speaker 1: the first people to get them would be wealthier folks.
Speaker 1: But you said the biggest users. According to this Wall
Speaker 1: Street Journal article which was in last week's journal, from
Speaker 1: the shoot phone to the smartphone, Uh, the first folks
Speaker 1: to buy these were real estate people because you know
Speaker 1: they could make money off of these phones. But now
Speaker 1: obviously everyone pretty much has one here in the US.
Speaker 1: And addiction, cell phone addiction. I mean you go to
Speaker 1: a Starbucks, people are waiting in line. They're no longer
Speaker 1: talking to each other, they are looking at their phone.
Speaker 1: What do you make of things like TikTok and all
Speaker 1: of the addiction issues around cell phones.
Speaker 9: Well, this is not a new phenomen of this. Every
Speaker 9: time you have a new technology, there's some baggage. Let's
Speaker 9: have the personal way that addicted you're also to the
Speaker 9: I think community will be too young because by age,
Speaker 9: everybody is too young. But uh, you think about it.
Speaker 9: Maybe something months ago people were complaining about people of
Speaker 9: the teg addicted to television. Seriously, Yeah, people have a
Speaker 9: lot of people. Somehow society of the danage get over that.
Speaker 9: I think they're gonna get over the cell phone addiction
Speaker 9: as well. It's a problem, but uh, people are smart.
Speaker 9: You have to have comedy. People will work it out,
Speaker 9: and that's a benefits of cell phone.
Speaker 1: Somebody definitely, Well they've certainly they've certainly made our lives
Speaker 1: more efficient, They've made a more interesting.
Speaker 16: Uh.
Speaker 1: People make a living off of their smartphones in so
Speaker 1: many different ways. Uh, Marty Cooper, author of Cutting the
Speaker 1: Cord The Cell Phone has Transformed Humanity. Thanks so much
Speaker 1: for joining me today. I really appreciate Do you still
Speaker 1: do you still carry a phone?
Speaker 2: At this point.
Speaker 9: You're kidding, of course, committing this ton of the people
Speaker 9: of cell Phones Center, But I actually have the two
Speaker 9: cell phones that I and when I travel over to
Speaker 9: eight in one in the US, most things I'd like
Speaker 9: to play every different telephone in it. If you're a
Speaker 9: manufacturer and you come up with a new teacher that
Speaker 9: you always know, you could show one to Marty Cooper.
Speaker 9: I love it.
Speaker 2: Marty Cooper, thanks so much for joining me today. I
Speaker 2: really appreciate it. Again.
Speaker 1: The book is Cutting the Cord the Cell Phone has
Speaker 1: Transformed Humanity, available on Amazon.
Speaker 2: I mean, just so much history there.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think of my short history of owning
Speaker 1: cell phones and smartphones and to be there making one
Speaker 1: of the first public calls. Triple eight rich one on
Speaker 1: one eight eight eight seven four to two four one
Speaker 1: zero one. Give me a call on a cell phone
Speaker 1: or a landline. You're listening to rich on Tech.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: My name is rich DeMuro, hanging out with you talking
Speaker 1: technology and thanks to the magic of technology keeping an
Speaker 1: eye on my son's Little League game. How amazing is
Speaker 1: this the fact that we live in a world and
Speaker 1: a time where Little League games are streamed online. And
Speaker 1: when they told me this, I sat there and I said,
Speaker 1: who needs that? I mean, okay, grandparents, people watching from
Speaker 1: out of state, whatever. But now I see why it's
Speaker 1: right here in front of me and it's live. That's
Speaker 1: pretty incredible. So got to love this stuff, you really do.
Speaker 1: Phone lines are open at triple eight Rich one O
Speaker 1: one eight eight eight seven four to two four.
Speaker 2: One zero one. Glenn is in Las Vegas. Glenn, You're
Speaker 2: on with Rich Hi.
Speaker 5: Rich.
Speaker 14: When my wife is on the phone call in their
Speaker 14: home office.
Speaker 7: If I start up or car, it grabs the cell
Speaker 7: signal and it won't let go until I'm like, you know,
Speaker 7: out of range. Yeah, it's a way to decrease the
Speaker 7: range from thirty feet to ten feet, or to be
Speaker 7: able to signal blocker or something not that I know of.
Speaker 1: This is a problem in my house as well. It's
Speaker 1: really a problem because when my wife starts, well, when
Speaker 1: she starts my car and she's in it, somehow it's
Speaker 1: grabbing my phone inside and so all the settings are
Speaker 1: for me and not her, and so this is a
Speaker 1: pain and I really don't have an answer. I think
Speaker 1: now there are some provisions inside the car to have
Speaker 1: what's called a priority device. In certain cars, you may
Speaker 1: be able to look for that in the Bluetooth settings,
Speaker 1: but that doesn't really help because it doesn't go by proximity.
Speaker 1: It just goes by If it sees both devices at
Speaker 1: the same time, it'll choose the one that it says
Speaker 1: is priority.
Speaker 2: But I don't really have an answer for you.
Speaker 1: And this is kind of a going to be a
Speaker 1: bigger and bigger issue, I think for a lot of
Speaker 1: people because of these phones.
Speaker 2: So how do you get around it?
Speaker 9: Now?
Speaker 1: What do you do?
Speaker 7: We haven't figured it out, and that's why I'm calling you.
Speaker 7: I was hoping that somebody would have a Bluetooth signal
Speaker 7: blocker that wouldn't screw up Wi Fi signals, but apparently
Speaker 7: they're similar enough that you screw up when you screwed
Speaker 7: up everything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't think that that and that kind of
Speaker 1: thing would. It'd be kind of tricky to implement too,
Speaker 1: because it's just so like where do you put it
Speaker 1: and how does that work? And you know, what's the
Speaker 1: provisions on it? But Glenn, I don't really have a
Speaker 1: good answer. Now, maybe by putting this on the show,
Speaker 1: someone will email in and say, here's what I do.
Speaker 2: So I'll give my email address. It's hello at Rich
Speaker 2: on tech dot TV.
Speaker 1: If you've figured out a way to keep your phone
Speaker 1: from connecting to your spouse's car, your partner's car, or
Speaker 1: you know whatever, let us know, because it is a
Speaker 1: Every time I get into my car, I don't know
Speaker 1: why it chooses the wrong phone, Like it's just the
Speaker 1: it plays like the opposite game, Like if I'm getting
Speaker 1: in it's it's like, oh, let me pick Rich's wife's
Speaker 1: car or a wife's phone in the house. And also
Speaker 1: the phone is in the house, it's so far away,
Speaker 1: like why is it choosing that over the phone that's
Speaker 1: right next to it. So maybe the next level, Glenn,
Speaker 1: will be a proximity sensor in these cars to say, hey,
Speaker 1: we're measuring this bluetooth phone to be a foot away. Well,
Speaker 1: that one's thirty feet let's let's connect to the one
Speaker 1: that's a foot away. That would make more sense to me, right.
Speaker 7: Well, yeah, although if if I'm not on my phone,
Speaker 7: it'll still grab then the only the only signal that's
Speaker 7: coming through.
Speaker 2: I guess, yeah, I mean the only. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think you got to warn your wife when you
Speaker 1: go to start the car and say, hey, turn off
Speaker 1: the Bluetooth on your phone.
Speaker 2: I'm going to start the car. But that doesn't sound
Speaker 2: like a very good solution to me.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean turning it off and back on again
Speaker 7: is not a two second affair. No, especially when she's
Speaker 7: in the middle of a phone call.
Speaker 1: No, that's definitely a pain. Well, if I find anything,
Speaker 1: I will mention it on the show. But that's a
Speaker 1: great question and hopefully we get some answers. The other
Speaker 1: problem I have is, for some reason, the cellular signal
Speaker 1: right in front of my house. It's got the Wi
Speaker 1: Fi and the cellular compete, and so I can't get
Speaker 1: anything to happen on my car until I drive down
Speaker 1: the street and it finally unlocks from my Wi Fi
Speaker 1: signal and gets on the cellular signal. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: a whole big thing with these cars. I'm telling you,
Speaker 1: we love this stuff, but yeah, it's tricky sometimes. All right,
Speaker 1: let's go to Nancy and Santa Monica. Nancy, you're on
Speaker 1: with Rich.
Speaker 3: Well, Hi, Rich.
Speaker 16: My question is about Wi Fi for your home. We
Speaker 16: have a three node links system and it's performing pretty well.
Speaker 16: But when we went through some technical issues a short
Speaker 16: time back, it was suggested to me that we get
Speaker 16: an another node which would become the main node and
Speaker 16: with links as they call it, the parent you know,
Speaker 16: versus the other nodes or the child nodes, Except that
Speaker 16: as I look at the parent node that they're suggesting,
Speaker 16: it indicates that it has a range of twenty seven
Speaker 16: one hundred square feet. Yeah, they say that, but the
Speaker 16: one I have says it will do six thousand square
Speaker 16: feet and it is doing the coverage that we need.
Speaker 16: I guess I'm wondering if I change out to this
Speaker 16: new node, which supposedly has better security and performance, but
Speaker 16: it's only twenty seven hundred in terms of its range,
Speaker 16: is it going to override the sixty six hundred that
Speaker 16: or the six thousand that I already have, or will
Speaker 16: will that stay?
Speaker 9: Well?
Speaker 2: Okay, so first off, what system do you have? You
Speaker 2: have a link SYS.
Speaker 16: What's it's I'm not sure how you say that? Velop
Speaker 16: the LP and so AC sixty six.
Speaker 2: Hundred and so why do you need the new one?
Speaker 2: What's what's not working?
Speaker 7: Well?
Speaker 16: It they think that I that I need more security,
Speaker 16: and I guess I'm not sure that that's really true.
Speaker 16: I mean, I'm not having anyone you know who.
Speaker 1: Thinks that you need more security links this? I mean,
Speaker 1: are they do they call you to tell you this?
Speaker 9: How do you know?
Speaker 5: Well?
Speaker 16: It was it was through the troubleshooting that we did
Speaker 16: with a problem that we had a couple months back
Speaker 16: working well, the system just like crashed.
Speaker 2: It crashed, yeah, but but we.
Speaker 16: Were able to bring it all back. But you have
Speaker 16: to go through this process of bringing up the parent
Speaker 16: node and then you have to bring all the child
Speaker 16: nodes next to the parent and okay, and you know,
Speaker 16: go through the of getting them all.
Speaker 1: Okay, So the coverage, the coverage that they're talking about
Speaker 1: is six thousand square feet combined for this entire system.
Speaker 2: I don't think it's one node that's giving you six thousand.
Speaker 2: So that's number one, okay, Okay.
Speaker 1: Number two? Is this system old? Is it not supported anymore?
Speaker 1: It looks like it was first available in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: So are they is this kind of like out of
Speaker 1: like they're not really supporting it much anymore?
Speaker 16: Is that what I'm well, we were able to get
Speaker 16: support for it in terms of, you know, help in
Speaker 16: restarting it, and they're not telling us that we have
Speaker 16: to throw away the nose that are part.
Speaker 8: Of what this is.
Speaker 16: It's just that they seem to think that, you know,
Speaker 16: we'd have better security and better performance, okay with adding
Speaker 16: this extra Okay.
Speaker 2: So here's my thoughts on this.
Speaker 1: Number One, if things are working the way you need
Speaker 1: them to and your software is up to date, then
Speaker 1: I think you're fine. I don't think you need to
Speaker 1: change any thing. I think what they're talking about is
Speaker 1: the nodes themselves are six thousand across, the three of them,
Speaker 1: and so if you're getting this new node and you're
Speaker 1: going to connect these two access points to it that
Speaker 1: you already have or three, you can you know, maybe
Speaker 1: use all three of them, right, You would just expand
Speaker 1: your coverage that way. So if they work with the
Speaker 1: new system and you feel like you want to get
Speaker 1: that and you want to improve security and improve coverage
Speaker 1: and all that good stuff, and it's a newer system,
Speaker 1: than go with it. Otherwise, if what you have is
Speaker 1: working and your software is up to date, I think
Speaker 1: you're just fine.
Speaker 2: So that would be my advice. Nancy, thanks so much
Speaker 2: for give me a call.
Speaker 1: Triple eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four to two, four to one zero one. Coming up,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about tap to pay and why some customers
Speaker 1: are saying their credit cards are being charged even through
Speaker 1: their bags.
Speaker 2: You're listening to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich On Tech. Phone lines are open
Speaker 1: at eight eight eight rich one O one eight eight
Speaker 1: eight seven four to two for one zero one. Don
Speaker 1: is in my home state of New Jersey.
Speaker 2: Don, you're on with rich Bitch.
Speaker 14: Hollr you Bud.
Speaker 2: I'm doing great.
Speaker 14: I'm back in my backyard in Mammouth County, New Jersey,
Speaker 14: taking out grass in my pavers nice to fix the
Speaker 14: water the water problem with one of my sprinkler heads.
Speaker 14: And I'm listening and I have the answer for the
Speaker 14: gentleman that just called. I play tennis in the morning,
Speaker 14: early birds they call it. And I'll use next DNS
Speaker 14: to take out some ads while I'm looking at threads
Speaker 14: and different things, so it's less ads to worry about, Okay,
Speaker 14: if I forget to turn off next dnx DNS, or
Speaker 14: you could use Google one if those that have a
Speaker 14: VPN any VPN that's left on will kill the connection.
Speaker 14: So if you put your phone on in your house
Speaker 14: with a VPN on it, it won't connect to your
Speaker 14: wife car or to your car while your wife using it.
Speaker 14: It blocks a signal.
Speaker 2: Now that would be for Wi Fi, but not necessarily Bluetooth.
Speaker 14: Right, definitely Wi Fi. But one of the problems that
Speaker 14: I get is the initial connection with Android auto starts
Speaker 14: with Bluetooth, I believe, and then then then connects to
Speaker 14: the VP or to the Wi Fi if.
Speaker 13: You're if you're doing wireless, you mean maybe yeah, and
Speaker 13: I do a wireless connection with gongle, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 13: I mean I could see that's a good solution for
Speaker 13: the Wi Fi portion of it.
Speaker 1: But the Bluetooth, I still think there's there's still an
Speaker 1: unknown uh an unknown there, so we still got to
Speaker 1: figure that out.
Speaker 14: But well, you could do a routine in one of
Speaker 14: I have routines on my Samsung phone because I have
Speaker 14: a Samsung Galaxy S twenty two Ultra. So if you
Speaker 14: did it when you connected to your car, because your
Speaker 14: car is one of your WiFi favorites, right, and then
Speaker 14: you could do a routine if it if it connects
Speaker 14: and but then again your inconvenience in yourself when you
Speaker 14: connect it like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, those routines are handy though. Those Uh I used
Speaker 1: to I used to use an app called Tasker.
Speaker 2: Have you ever heard of that?
Speaker 14: Oh yeah, yeah, a little advanced. So yeah, I tried
Speaker 14: it for a few things.
Speaker 2: Way advanced.
Speaker 1: So but I think I think Samsung did a really
Speaker 1: good job of making it very simple with the routines
Speaker 1: in Bixby, and then iPhone has something similar, like they
Speaker 1: call them shortcuts, but they're not really the same because
Speaker 1: I guess it's similar.
Speaker 2: It'll kind of run like a thing that you want
Speaker 2: it to do.
Speaker 1: It never really took off because I feel like the
Speaker 1: iPhone user is not as you know, they're not as
Speaker 1: into that they're the mainstream iPhone user, whereas Android users
Speaker 1: in the past. You know, they chose Android first and
Speaker 1: reason the fact that you can kind of tinker a
Speaker 1: little bit more.
Speaker 14: You know, well, you can also mess with if this
Speaker 14: then that and make it make a recipe an experiment
Speaker 14: with that. So there's a couple of ways that he
Speaker 14: could try to mess with that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, now you're getting real. That's that's yeah, I mean.
Speaker 14: There's well, they're fun it's more or less like, if
Speaker 14: this happens, if this Bluetooth connected car connects at a
Speaker 14: certain time, maybe the wife leaves between six am and
Speaker 14: eight am, then deny connection from that time, and then
Speaker 14: from eight oh one on allow the connection to happen.
Speaker 14: So you can make it a time based trigger.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that might work. I'm trying to think it.
Speaker 14: He always goes to work at a certain time, that
Speaker 14: might work.
Speaker 1: Sounds like she was working from home and he was
Speaker 1: leaving and then that was our Yeah. I don't Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: it sounds like there's definitely uh, there might be some
Speaker 1: options out there, but I think with the Bluetooth it
Speaker 1: does become a little tricky. I wish I wish there
Speaker 1: was a way for the car to sort of identify
Speaker 1: or the card to have more options about which one
Speaker 1: it connected to when, because that would that would really
Speaker 1: solve a lot of these problems.
Speaker 2: What's the what's the weather like in Jersey right.
Speaker 14: Now from me and Mammoth County. It's a little overcast,
Speaker 14: supposed to rain later And are you listening.
Speaker 2: On a radio station out there or is it through
Speaker 2: the iHeart app?
Speaker 14: This is this is Eyewitness weather. This is Don I'm
Speaker 14: looking up in this sky outside the awning over the
Speaker 14: patio back here with half without grass, half with grass.
Speaker 2: Now I meant, how are you listening to the show?
Speaker 2: Is it streaming or through through?
Speaker 14: iHeartRadio headset?
Speaker 2: Awesome?
Speaker 7: I have a.
Speaker 14: Bluetooth headset. One quick question I was when you were
Speaker 14: talking about the the travel app? Was it a few
Speaker 14: a few shows ago where it was only on iPhone available?
Speaker 2: Yes? For the Traveling Flighty?
Speaker 14: Flighty would would an emulator? Would an would a would
Speaker 14: an iOS emulator work on an Android phone where you
Speaker 14: could fool the Android phone into being in an iPhone
Speaker 14: and use the app because it's only it's only iOS
Speaker 14: right now.
Speaker 2: I have not tried that, but I would imagine if
Speaker 2: you had that event.
Speaker 14: Might be a workaround if those that want to try
Speaker 14: it that don't have an iPhone, you aren't as cool
Speaker 14: as the people that use Android.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I asked the developer, I said, you know, why
Speaker 1: aren't you coming out with Android? And he's just like,
Speaker 1: it's not a priority right now. But it is a
Speaker 1: great app. But honestly, I would I think there's a
Speaker 1: lot of I mean, look, Flighty is really nice. It's
Speaker 1: a great app. If you have iOS, but if you
Speaker 1: have Android, just use flight Aware. Also Google is pretty
Speaker 1: good about looking in your calendar and seeing when your
Speaker 1: next flight is. So I get a lot of notifications
Speaker 1: on my Android just from having Google, and that's another
Speaker 1: good way. And then a ward wall is my absolute favorite.
Speaker 1: That gives me a lot of notifications as well. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's trip it, there's so many. Don all right, Don,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for calling today.
Speaker 2: I appreciate it. Say hello to my family in Jersey.
Speaker 5: Okay, all right, thank you, take care.
Speaker 1: Let's see we've got an email question from Kathy. Kathy
Speaker 1: wrote in Hey, Rich, I love your show. I listen
Speaker 1: every Saturday. We're going to the island of Curasow in June. Reportedly,
Speaker 1: Spotify is available for streaming music while we are there.
Speaker 2: Do I need a VPN to do it? If so,
Speaker 2: which one do you recommend? Kathy? Kathy, I don't think
Speaker 2: you need a VPN to stream Spotify. And also it
Speaker 2: depends number one.
Speaker 1: When I travel, I don't, I don't stream, I download,
Speaker 1: So I if I were you, now you have to
Speaker 1: be a Spotify premium subscriber. You didn't say that in
Speaker 1: your email. If you're a Spotify premium or not. So
Speaker 1: if your premium, I would go ahead and just download
Speaker 1: the playlists that you want to listen to while you're
Speaker 1: on vacation, and I'm assuming that's going to be some
Speaker 1: Island style music.
Speaker 2: That's what I would do.
Speaker 1: If that's not you know, if that's not an option
Speaker 1: to you and you're streaming, I believe it would work
Speaker 1: without a VPN, but maybe for a limited amount of
Speaker 1: time because you're not, you know, a paying subscriber. But
Speaker 1: pretty much the way that these systems work. I remember
Speaker 1: back in the day, I had a problem when I
Speaker 1: went to Japan one time and I literally none of
Speaker 1: my music would work the entire week when I was there.
Speaker 2: I mean, this was like it was devastating.
Speaker 1: But things have gotten so kind of worldwide now that
Speaker 1: most things work pretty much everywhere you want to go.
Speaker 1: But the way I would do it is just download
Speaker 1: the music that you want before you go, and then
Speaker 1: that way you're able to listen to it while you're there.
Speaker 1: You can turn on your Wi Fi and see if
Speaker 1: you're able to stream once you're there, and that way
Speaker 1: you'll have your answer if you need a VPN. I
Speaker 1: would look into some of the things that you have.
Speaker 1: If you have Google one, they include a VPN. I've
Speaker 1: got an article on the best VPNs. So the expert
Speaker 1: I talked to recommended a VPN. What was it called,
Speaker 1: like molvat, movad m U l l v A D
Speaker 1: also IPVN, surf Chark and tunnel Bear. We're also recommendations.
Speaker 1: So if you want to get one, you can do that,
Speaker 1: but I don't think you'll need it for this solution.
Speaker 1: The other thing to do, Kathy, is just ditch Spotify
Speaker 1: for the week and go with some of the local music.
Speaker 1: Turn on a radio station. This is what I do
Speaker 1: when I go to a place like Hawaii. Just listen
Speaker 1: to the local stations. You get a little local, local
Speaker 1: flare in your life there. That's what I would do.
Speaker 2: But do both.
Speaker 1: You know you're gonna be on the plane. You're gonna
Speaker 1: watch your music there too, So download the Spotify playlists
Speaker 1: and there you go. Coming up, we're gonna talk about
Speaker 1: this idea of tap to pay. There's an there's an
Speaker 1: article that says some people are being charged for tap
Speaker 1: to pay even though they are not they're not using
Speaker 1: that card. Actually, I'll just tell you about this. Apparently
Speaker 1: I have enough time. This is an article out of
Speaker 1: San Francisco KGO seven on your side. These people are
Speaker 1: saying that their tap to pay credit cards are being
Speaker 1: activated even though they're in their purse or pocket. Now,
Speaker 1: if you would have told me this two weeks ago,
Speaker 1: I would have not believed it. I would have said
Speaker 1: that doesn't happen. But I will tell you this has
Speaker 1: happened to me twice in the last two weeks where
Speaker 1: I took out my card.
Speaker 2: I was at Trader Joe's the other day.
Speaker 1: I literally just took my card out and put it
Speaker 1: just kind of in my hand, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: it beeped and it was done. Even the cashier at
Speaker 1: Trader Joe's was like, Wow, that was really far away.
Speaker 1: What do you have like a supercharged card? I said, no,
Speaker 1: I've never seen that happen before. And it happened again
Speaker 1: another time. So I don't know if I believe that
Speaker 1: these things are being activated. One viewer said, Matthews checked
Speaker 1: his bank accounts. Turned out the tap to pay card
Speaker 1: reader at Safeway ignored the debit card in his hand. Instead,
Speaker 1: it reached into Matthew's back pocket, through his wallet and
Speaker 1: charged his bank of America credit card tucked inside.
Speaker 2: Now that seems a little elaborate.
Speaker 1: You're telling me this ore, This NFC chip radio frequency
Speaker 1: went through his wallet in his back pocket. I don't
Speaker 1: know if I believe that, but the reality is, yes,
Speaker 1: tap to pay. I think it works most of the
Speaker 1: time pretty well. And I don't think that this is
Speaker 1: happening in a big way to people.
Speaker 2: But let me know.
Speaker 1: Hello at richon Tech dot TV. Tell me if you've
Speaker 1: gotten a surprise charge because of this. Now, by the way,
Speaker 1: if you're using a debit card, it's going to ask
Speaker 1: for your debit card number or your PIN number. Most
Speaker 1: of the time, Visa says you have to be two
Speaker 1: inches from the reader. And if you want something that
Speaker 1: protects look for an RFID protection wallet. Silent pocket makes
Speaker 1: them silent pocket eighty eight rich one O one eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two four to one zero one.
Speaker 1: You are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: rich on Tech. Rich Tamuro here talking technology with you.
Speaker 1: I'm the chech reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles. Also,
Speaker 1: if you're sitting there saying wait a second, I've seen
Speaker 1: you on a different station. Yes, the segments do go
Speaker 1: out to a variety of TV stations all over the place.
Speaker 1: So I get emails from people saying, I saw you
Speaker 1: when I was on vacation in Hawaii, or I saw
Speaker 1: you when I was in Saint Louis. Yeah, so you
Speaker 1: may see me in different places, but I am headquartered
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles. If you want to see my TV
Speaker 1: segments where I cover a variety of tech topics, just
Speaker 1: go to Rich on tech dot TV. Apple has a
Speaker 1: new high yield savings account. Now this is not a
Speaker 1: financial advice show, but I feel like this is It's
Speaker 1: like everything with Apple. They just continue to get into
Speaker 1: more areas. Apple got into the financial services area with
Speaker 1: their credit card a couple of years back. People seem
Speaker 1: to love it it. I do not have one, But
Speaker 1: now they are doing a high yield savings account and
Speaker 1: this is kind of put some people on on. Uh
Speaker 1: what's the term I'm looking for. I don't know, but
Speaker 1: people are now noticing that, you know this is this
Speaker 1: is offering four point one five interest, which is pretty good.
Speaker 1: Apple says that's more than ten times the national average.
Speaker 1: Now that's a little misleading, because, yeah, the national averages
Speaker 1: includes banks like Chase and Bank of America who don't
Speaker 1: really pay anything. But there's a lot of online banks
Speaker 1: that do pay a lot more than than the you know,
Speaker 1: one percent or whatever. So no fees, no minimum deposits,
Speaker 1: no minimum balance requirements. You can set it up on
Speaker 1: your iPhone.
Speaker 5: You have to.
Speaker 1: Here's the deal. You have to have an iPhone to
Speaker 1: get this savings account. You also have to have a
Speaker 1: credit card, the Apple credit card. They don't call it
Speaker 1: a credit card, they call it the Apple card. They
Speaker 1: don't want to put that dirty credit word in there,
Speaker 1: but yes, it's a credit card. Apple Card is a
Speaker 1: credit card. Once you do that, you can get your
Speaker 1: daily cash reward. So if you use your Apple credit
Speaker 1: card to pay for stuff, you get a tiny bit
Speaker 1: of cash back, and you can now have that cash
Speaker 1: back deposited into this savings account so it will grow interest.
Speaker 1: Now I'm not a financial advice person, but I will
Speaker 1: just give you my thoughts on this. I'm not getting
Speaker 1: a savings account that a requires an iPhone to have
Speaker 1: and b requires a credit card to have. Those are
Speaker 1: just two things that are not I just I'm not
Speaker 1: linking my account to having a certain type of phone
Speaker 1: or a certain type of credit card.
Speaker 2: That's just not happening.
Speaker 1: So with that said, if you want to get a
Speaker 1: high yield savings account like this, there are many other
Speaker 1: accounts that you can look up online that will give
Speaker 1: you similar interests that don't have all of these catches.
Speaker 1: According to MarketWatch, they say, CIT Bank gives you four
Speaker 1: point seventy five percent. BREAD Savings pays four point five upgrade,
Speaker 1: Premier Savings gives you four point five six uf B
Speaker 1: Premier Savings gives you four point eight one percent. CFG
Speaker 1: bank is giving five point oh two percent. Wow, that's
Speaker 1: pretty good.
Speaker 9: Now.
Speaker 1: The thing about a lot of these high yield savings
Speaker 1: accounts is that they require a whole bunch of things. Okay,
Speaker 1: so with this CFG, to get that five point zero
Speaker 1: two you have to have an initial deposit of ten
Speaker 1: one thousand dollars and maintain ten I don't keep saying
Speaker 1: ten thousand, one thousand dollars or you're gonna get a
Speaker 1: ten dollars monthly service fee. So I guess my bottom
Speaker 1: line is that if you're looking to get one of
Speaker 1: these accounts, to try to find one that does not
Speaker 1: have any sort of minimum and does not have any
Speaker 1: sort of fee, because you may say, oh, I've got
Speaker 1: the thousand bucks right now, I'll put that in there,
Speaker 1: and you know, life happens and things change and you
Speaker 1: may not have that thousand in there, and next thing
Speaker 1: you know, you're getting a ten dollars service fee, and
Speaker 1: over ten months that's one hundred bucks, and there goes
Speaker 1: all of your interests that you're getting. So I love
Speaker 1: savings accounts. I love saving money, but I look, if
Speaker 1: you have an iPhone and you've got the Apple credit card,
Speaker 1: you know, fine, but it's it sounds really good, but
Speaker 1: there are some catches, even though Apple says and also,
Speaker 1: I mean this money that you're getting from the daily cash,
Speaker 1: I mean, come on, it's one, two or three percent.
Speaker 1: How much are you transferring into this savings account because
Speaker 1: of that? I mean, if you're saving money based on
Speaker 1: spending money, that's a little little.
Speaker 2: Kind of odd to me. But who what do I know.
Speaker 1: I'm a tech person, not a financial person. Polestar four
Speaker 1: this is uh probably one of my favorite evs. Pollstar
Speaker 1: is owned by Volvo. I did a story on the Polestar.
Speaker 6: Two.
Speaker 1: Was it or the Polestar one? I can't remember at
Speaker 1: this point. Really really nice looking ev beautiful design. Now
Speaker 1: they've got the Polestar four, which is sort of a
Speaker 1: compact suv suv coop they call it. It's got no
Speaker 1: rear window. That's right, no rear window. Now there's not
Speaker 1: an open air part of this car. It is enclosed.
Speaker 1: But basically it's got the roof window which comes down
Speaker 1: and that's it. No traditional back window. And so Polestar
Speaker 1: says that they did this because they wanted to be unique.
Speaker 1: It also, I guess makes the car more aerodynamic. And
Speaker 1: they said, why do we need a rearview window? Why
Speaker 1: do we need it when people are looking at their
Speaker 1: cameras all the time. And so the rear view mirror
Speaker 1: is actually a video feed of a roof mounted rear
Speaker 1: camera and it gives a nice big view. And so
Speaker 1: I've seen this before in cars where the rear view
Speaker 1: mirror is a video feed. The difference is that you
Speaker 1: would flip a switch and it would become a traditional mirror,
Speaker 1: like on the Chevy Bolt one is a is a
Speaker 1: you know, a camera feed and then you flip the
Speaker 1: little you know, how you have that like light dark
Speaker 1: switch on the rear view mirror will instead of a
Speaker 1: light dark kind of thing night day kind of thing.
Speaker 1: It switches to the camera or to an actual mirror.
Speaker 1: So the uh Pollstar designers told Wired that it creates
Speaker 1: a cocoon for the backseat passengers. I also like this feature.
Speaker 1: The rooftop glass is electrochromic, so which means it's kind
Speaker 1: of like those windows if you've ever been on one
Speaker 1: of the new planes. They don't have the shades anymore.
Speaker 1: The windows are electronic, and so you press a button
Speaker 1: to actually close the shade, and it's not a shade,
Speaker 1: it's just like electronic, almost like an LCD liquid display
Speaker 1: that just.
Speaker 2: Goes into the window. Very cool stuff. All right, Coming up,
Speaker 2: we're going to talk to David Kaff of tech Talk.
Speaker 1: He's going to tell us how to remove our personal
Speaker 1: information from the Internet. Very important stuff. If you want
Speaker 1: to give me a call, I got time for a
Speaker 1: little bit more. Triple eight rich one On one eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four two four one zero one. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to rich On Tech rich Demiro here talking technology
Speaker 1: with you. Have you ever done a Google search on yourself?
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen how much information is out there
Speaker 1: on the Internet about you? This week Google emailed me
Speaker 1: and said that I've got this new feature called Dark
Speaker 1: Web monitoring, So it looks for my personal information on
Speaker 1: the dark Web and maybe on the web at large.
Speaker 1: And it's just eye opening. How much is out there.
Speaker 1: I mean, everything is out there, and it's it's pretty incredible.
Speaker 1: Joining me now is David Coff. He writes a newsletter
Speaker 1: at www dot technology Talk dot net, and he wrote
Speaker 1: an interesting newsletter this week about getting personal information off
Speaker 1: the Internet and why you should do this.
Speaker 2: David, thanks so much for joining me.
Speaker 5: Thank you for having me pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1: Okay, so let's talk about this PII. What does that
Speaker 1: stand for?
Speaker 5: Personally identifiable information? This is a shorthand acronyms. Some technology
Speaker 5: folks love their acronyms. Just think of it as any
Speaker 5: private or personal information you wouldn't want strangers to know.
Speaker 5: This can be your phone numbers, your email addresses, your
Speaker 5: physical mailing addresses and more.
Speaker 1: And this stuff is out there. How does it get
Speaker 1: on the Internet? And I'm just going to ask you
Speaker 1: if you can talk right into your phone, bes I'm
Speaker 1: having some trouble hearing you.
Speaker 5: I've got my earbuds in. We'll speak a little bit
Speaker 5: louder out.
Speaker 2: Of that perfect So tell me, how does this stuff
Speaker 2: get out there.
Speaker 5: Over time, data brokers collect your information based on harvesting
Speaker 5: publicly available information about you. And if you think about
Speaker 5: all the things that you do. You own a cell phone,
Speaker 5: you make phone calls, you have credit cards, you make purchases,
Speaker 5: you register to vote, you sign up for local, state,
Speaker 5: and federal elections. That information, in many cases.
Speaker 14: Is publicly available.
Speaker 5: What is int publicly available can be purchased from a
Speaker 5: variety of what I like to call feeder companies, so
Speaker 5: social media technology companies. You go online, you're leaving a
Speaker 5: digital trail. This information gets collected and harvested by companies
Speaker 5: known as data brokers, and then they sell that information
Speaker 5: and boy is it accurate. So over time, both public
Speaker 5: and private databases get collected, and a doctu about each
Speaker 5: and every one of us gets formed with an awful
Speaker 5: lot of information, including our credit histories in many examples.
Speaker 1: Now that's just the legitimate sources where these companies are
Speaker 1: going out and finding this stuff and putting it together.
Speaker 1: And if you know, you can just do a search
Speaker 1: like for a people finder, and there's all kinds of
Speaker 1: websites that pop up. But then there's also the stuff
Speaker 1: like I was just talking about like where it gets
Speaker 1: leaked online, like where there's a some sort of data
Speaker 1: breach and that information finds its way onto the internet
Speaker 1: as well. So let's talk about some of these ways
Speaker 1: you went down sort of this kind of trail of
Speaker 1: figuring out how to get this stuff off the internet.
Speaker 1: What's your number one kind of DIY solution?
Speaker 6: First off, So there are people who have taken an
Speaker 6: extremely detailed approach to this, and you can, and I
Speaker 6: have a list of instructions on my website.
Speaker 5: You can go through contact twenty to thirty largest data
Speaker 5: brokers on your own. You can make a written request.
Speaker 5: You can point to the link on their website that
Speaker 5: has your information, let them know that they do not
Speaker 5: have your permission to do it, and you read need
Speaker 5: to give them anywhere from seven to twenty eight days
Speaker 5: to scrub your data. They may ask for additional information
Speaker 5: about you, an ID or something to prove that you
Speaker 5: are who you are. But you can totally do this
Speaker 5: on your own. There are other ways of doing it though,
Speaker 5: for those that don't have the approximately fifteen to thirty
Speaker 5: hours of time that you're going to want to invest
Speaker 5: in doing this.
Speaker 1: Now, I did this myself so I went through and
Speaker 1: I did it for maybe the top five companies or so,
Speaker 1: and it is. It does work. It does take time,
Speaker 1: but you do have to find someone with instructions online.
Speaker 1: I believe I use the website that you talked about.
Speaker 1: I think it's like delete me or is it just
Speaker 1: delete me?
Speaker 5: Yeah, So there are for a small fee. There are
Speaker 5: certain companies to those who don't want to do it
Speaker 5: on your own, and I want to emphasize to your
Speaker 5: listeners you can totally do this for free on your own.
Speaker 5: You're just investing your time. For those that wish to
Speaker 5: invest somewhere between five and six dollars a month. There
Speaker 5: are two companies that I personally use. The first, which
Speaker 5: I prefer as a company called delete me and you
Speaker 5: will with delete me, and the second top choice that
Speaker 5: I use, which is called Incogniti, which is short for incognito.
Speaker 5: You're going to let these folks know who you are.
Speaker 5: You're going to need to provide them with your name,
Speaker 5: your phone number, your addresses, your previous residences, any previous
Speaker 5: emails and phone numbers that may be a red flag
Speaker 5: for some of your listeners. I want to make this
Speaker 5: clear because it's important that data is already publicly available.
Speaker 5: It's available on any one of your credit reports. So
Speaker 5: it's to your best interest if you're hiring a company
Speaker 5: to help you scrub your data, be upfront with them
Speaker 5: about any of your personal information currently and in the past.
Speaker 5: That will enable them to go and target you and
Speaker 5: scrub you from every major and minor data broker and
Speaker 5: public databases.
Speaker 1: Now, what's this app from Consumer Reports? I was not
Speaker 1: aware of this app that you mentioned in your newsletter
Speaker 1: at Technology Talk dot net episode eighty seven.
Speaker 2: By the way, what is this app? It's called let's
Speaker 2: see where is it called Permission Slips? Okay, so what
Speaker 2: does that do?
Speaker 6: So for the record, I.
Speaker 5: Hadn't been aware of it either. One of my readers
Speaker 5: on my newsletter wrote to me and said, hey, are
Speaker 5: you familiar with this? It's from the great Consumer Reports?
Speaker 5: And most people know Consumer Reports is they've been around
Speaker 5: for decades testing on behalf of consumers so that you
Speaker 5: know which products are better than others. Well, they've created
Speaker 5: this free application for iOS and Android. It's called Permission Slip,
Speaker 5: and they do something that I would recommend that everyone
Speaker 5: do in addition to scrubbing their own data. They specifically
Speaker 5: scrub data from commercial websites. So, for example, I had
Speaker 5: a subscription to the Los Angeles Times, I had a
Speaker 5: purchase history and account with Guitar Center. When looking for jobs,
Speaker 5: I had an account on a website called.
Speaker 8: Zip Recruiter, on and on and on.
Speaker 5: And what permission slip does is instead of targeting public
Speaker 5: and private databases, it works with different companies that may
Speaker 5: have your information and basically does the same thing. Invites
Speaker 5: those people to know you don't want them to have
Speaker 5: their information, and they will help be the middleman to
Speaker 5: scrub your data from all of these commercial websites. And
Speaker 5: there are somewhere between thirty and seventy websites that permission
Speaker 5: slip I will help you scrub your data from.
Speaker 1: Very cool. So what did you learn in all this?
Speaker 1: Do you feel like you got to a good place
Speaker 1: with your personal data online or what?
Speaker 8: Yeah?
Speaker 5: I learned two things that's I think a good question.
Speaker 5: The first is anyone can do this and should. The
Speaker 5: second thing, which I think is worth sharing and maybe
Speaker 5: a little bit scary, is that this is something that
Speaker 5: needs to be done fairly regularly. And you were just
Speaker 5: saying there any number of data breaches websites get hacked,
Speaker 5: companies get hacked, credit unions get hacked. So when Equifax
Speaker 5: got hacked, hundreds of millions of Americans, so the personal
Speaker 5: data leaked under the dark web. This is something that
Speaker 5: you should be doing regularly, whether you do it yourself
Speaker 5: or whether you pay someone else to do it. Really
Speaker 5: is something that should become a monthly or at the
Speaker 5: very least a yearly part of what I like to
Speaker 5: call your digital.
Speaker 2: Hygieneugh monthly or yearly. I was lucky to do it
Speaker 2: once speak.
Speaker 1: It is a lot of work, but it does feel
Speaker 1: good when you start doing those Google searches and you
Speaker 1: are able to remove some of that personal data. Google
Speaker 1: also has a service in itself that lets you remove
Speaker 1: some of your personal data as well. I've talked about
Speaker 1: that in the past. I'll put a link to that
Speaker 1: on my website. David, thanks so much for joining me today.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna put a link to technology Talk dot net
Speaker 1: on my website at richon Tech dot tv coming up.
Speaker 2: I can't believe it's the end of the show.
Speaker 1: The feedback segment quickly becoming your favorite segment.
Speaker 2: You're listening to Rich on tech.
Speaker 1: That'll wake you up. Rich Demiro here rich On Tech,
Speaker 1: welcome back to the show. I was gonna give out
Speaker 1: the phone number, but this is the feedback time it
Speaker 1: is I'm getting. Feedback is quickly becoming a big part
Speaker 1: of the show because clearly you're listening.
Speaker 9: So I like that.
Speaker 1: Let me do one more story real quick. Two things
Speaker 1: I wanted to mention before I get to the feedback.
Speaker 1: First off, if you have a HomePod or a HomePod,
Speaker 1: Mini sound recognition is now available. So this is a
Speaker 1: feature that Apple promised a couple months back. But now
Speaker 1: the HomePod can listen for smoke or carbon monoxide alarms
Speaker 1: in your home. So if it here's those sounds, it
Speaker 1: will send a notification to your iPhone, your iPad, or
Speaker 1: your Apple Watch. And basically it's kind of just listening
Speaker 1: for these things. And then on iPhone and iPad you'll
Speaker 1: have the option to check in and hear what's happening.
Speaker 1: And this is really important. My wife and I one
Speaker 1: time we flew to New Jersey and there was a
Speaker 1: fire alarm that happened in our home and it was
Speaker 1: a mess because it called the alarm system, called the
Speaker 1: fire department. They arrived on scene, and I felt so
Speaker 1: helpless because I didn't know what was going on, and
Speaker 1: I didn't have cameras in my home at the time,
Speaker 1: so I had no way of knowing what was happening.
Speaker 1: I had my friend, how how old school is this?
Speaker 1: I had a friend drive over to my house and
Speaker 1: look and see what's happening. And he said, the fire
Speaker 1: department was just about to break the back door to
Speaker 1: get in, and he said, hold on, you know, it's
Speaker 1: like I've got Rich on the line. And anyway, it
Speaker 1: turned out to be a false alarm. But and I
Speaker 1: installved cameras to see so I can check in anyway.
Speaker 1: I tell you all that because you know, to be
Speaker 1: able to listen in to see what's going or to
Speaker 1: hear what's happening, that's good. But also if you have
Speaker 1: a homek camera in your home, the video feed will
Speaker 1: be included in the notification, so you can see what's happening.
Speaker 1: Something you don't want to think about, but you know,
Speaker 1: definitely see what's happening inside your house. So that is available.
Speaker 1: The audio analysis happens on device and if you check in,
Speaker 1: it's and encrypted. Apple says, so if you've got a
Speaker 1: homepot or a HomePod Mini set, up sound recognition inside
Speaker 1: the home app.
Speaker 2: So, so something that is just kind of an extra perk.
Speaker 1: All right, if you got an Android phone Samsung, specifically,
Speaker 1: check out this app called pixel Search.
Speaker 2: I found this this week.
Speaker 1: I can't remember how I found it, but someone mentioned
Speaker 1: it and I installed it on the Samsung and I
Speaker 1: love it. Not a huge fan of Samsung's Finder, but
Speaker 1: pixel Search will basically kind of transform the search on
Speaker 1: your Samsung phone into something that's more pixely, so you
Speaker 1: can search through your apps, your contacts, web suggestions, and files.
Speaker 1: It's really clean, it looks really great, and I love it.
Speaker 1: So the only thing I wish I could do is
Speaker 1: get it to work when you swipe up on the
Speaker 1: Samsung Home screen. That would be awesome. That would really
Speaker 1: make it more into a pixel. So again, the app
Speaker 1: is called pixel Search. It's on Google Play. I believe
Speaker 1: it's free to freemium. But check it out pixel Search
Speaker 1: if you want something that's closer to the pixel on
Speaker 1: your Samsung.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: Dominic writes in about Netflix ending DVD mail service. Hey,
Speaker 1: I'm hearing all the news about Netflix ending DVD service
Speaker 1: in the US. In the mail, the US Postal Service
Speaker 1: will lose business from Netflix as I work in the
Speaker 1: processing facility in San Diego and I see these DVDs
Speaker 1: coming through. Talk about how much business the postal service
Speaker 1: will lose, and if Netflix will put those DVDs that
Speaker 1: come in the mail on their clouds so people can
Speaker 1: stream them. That is why people get them in the mail,
Speaker 1: because they cannot be streamed. Thanks man for your work. Yeah, Dominic,
Speaker 1: you know, I work in the news and the video
Speaker 1: we showed for so many years was always, always, always,
Speaker 1: whenever we did a DVD Netflix story was always all
Speaker 1: of the DVDs that were being sorted in the post
Speaker 1: office and there was just thousands of them inside those
Speaker 1: you know, those bucket whatever those things are, those mail
Speaker 1: sorder kind of bins. But yeah, it's gonna have an impact.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be a lot less less DVD's going through
Speaker 1: the mail. Of course, a lot of business lost, as well,
Speaker 1: a lot of money that Netflix paid to the post
Speaker 1: service Postal service for this end of an error.
Speaker 2: For that's for sure.
Speaker 1: And yes, that's what people liked is that you can
Speaker 1: get anything on DVD that wasn't available necessarily on streaming
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff's on streaming of course it may
Speaker 1: cost you. That's the other big difference is that, yeah,
Speaker 1: you might be able to get on streaming, but for
Speaker 1: some of these obscure titles you have to pay. Steven
Speaker 1: palm Spring says, love, love, love you taking over for
Speaker 1: Leo on the talks on the Tech Show. I listen
Speaker 1: every week and you're doing a great job. Thank you Steve.
Speaker 1: By the way, Leo still does his shows on his
Speaker 1: own network. So I just took over the radio portion.
Speaker 1: I emailed you several weeks ago and expressed how pleased
Speaker 1: I was with the new format of the show. You're
Speaker 1: covering tech, computer and mobile, which is relevant for all
Speaker 1: of us. You throw in stories about evs again great.
Speaker 1: You tell personal stories like saving the guy in Hawaii,
Speaker 1: which are interesting and to the point. Keep doing what
Speaker 1: you're doing and most of us will be happy. Keep
Speaker 1: up the great work.
Speaker 2: Now my question.
Speaker 1: You indicated the show notes would be posted online. Oh,
Speaker 1: I knew you're gonna okay, So the nice comes with
Speaker 1: you know a you know, not so nice. I go
Speaker 1: to Rich on tech dot TV and it appears to
Speaker 1: me you're not They're not current, nor do they contain
Speaker 1: everything you spoke of on the show. Am I looking
Speaker 1: in the wrong place? Thanks rich for doing an awesome job.
Speaker 1: I'll admit it's me doing the notes, and sometimes they're thorough,
Speaker 1: sometimes they're not. I'm doing a better job. The best
Speaker 1: place this is put out as a podcast after it's
Speaker 1: on the show, and it's it's on podpage, dot com,
Speaker 1: slash rich on tech so I usually put that link
Speaker 1: on the rich on tech dot tv. It's a lot
Speaker 1: of different links, but hopefully rich on tech dot tv
Speaker 1: should be the clearinghouse for that. There is a little
Speaker 1: icon if you go to rich on tech dot tv,
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of icons. Look for the one that
Speaker 1: looks like a podcast. That's the one to click, and
Speaker 1: that will bring you to the show, which will bring
Speaker 1: you to the show notes. Vince writes, how do you
Speaker 1: stop ways from running after the car is turned off?
Speaker 1: I've got a twenty twenty one Nissan Rogue with wireless
Speaker 1: Apple car Play. I use Ways on an iPhone running
Speaker 1: the latest iOS update. My problem is Ways keeps running
Speaker 1: on my phone even after I turn off and exit
Speaker 1: the car after arriving at my destination. Is there a
Speaker 1: way to stop it from running in the background. I'm
Speaker 1: concerned about the impact on my battery drain. I would
Speaker 1: force clothes, but often I forget and it just keeps
Speaker 1: running in the background. Yeah, this is definitely an issue
Speaker 1: with Ways, but this is how Ways works.
Speaker 10: Ways.
Speaker 1: The whole thing is crowdsourced, and so they're collecting data
Speaker 1: off of your phone to help other Ways users, and
Speaker 1: so there is a way to stop Ways. And yes,
Speaker 1: this has happened to me, Dominic or Vince so many
Speaker 1: times where I get to my destination, my phone is
Speaker 1: in my pocket and all of a sudden, Ways starts
Speaker 1: spouting out some directions or something or some sort of
Speaker 1: like turn left at the next street. I'm like, wait,
Speaker 1: what So Ways is pretty much always running on your
Speaker 1: phone in the background unless you tell it not to.
Speaker 1: And the only way I know of to tell it
Speaker 1: not to is by going into the Ways app and
Speaker 1: then you tap my Ways and then there's a little
Speaker 1: power button. You press that power button, it goes into
Speaker 1: sleep mode. It says Ways is currently inactive, you are
Speaker 1: not using battery, contributing data, or earning points, and then
Speaker 1: you have to tap wake up. But otherwise, as far
Speaker 1: as I know, it's pretty much always running. I don't
Speaker 1: know how much on the iPhone. It's allowed to do
Speaker 1: in the background all the time, so it may end
Speaker 1: up stopping by itself at some point. But that's the
Speaker 1: best way I know of manually doing it, unless you
Speaker 1: just kind of force clothes. Like you said, not a
Speaker 1: perfect system, but that's how they kind of work. Let's see.
Speaker 1: Michael in Kentucky says, Hey, Rich, I love the show.
Speaker 1: Each week I listen to the podcast. I just want
Speaker 1: a chime in about your segment on juice jacking plugging
Speaker 1: into USB in the mall or airports. There was a
Speaker 1: show spin off from CSI called Cyber. There was an
Speaker 1: episode that featured someone stealing information and cloning phones when
Speaker 1: someone plugged into a place for a quick charge. The
Speaker 1: hackers used a router and portable hard drive to upload
Speaker 1: malware and download data from the phones. At the time
Speaker 1: this show was out, phones were not as secure as
Speaker 1: they are now, but I'm sure it could happen today.
Speaker 1: Thanks and keep up the great job. I'm still tech
Speaker 1: support for my friends and family. Yes, I think phones
Speaker 1: are more secure now than they were. And finally, Sally says,
Speaker 1: thanks Rich for the heads up on the drop cam
Speaker 1: slash Google update. FYI, they only provide you with two
Speaker 1: replacement cams. I had four drop cams, but now I'm
Speaker 1: listening to your show, I have two replacement cameras.
Speaker 2: I love the show. Rich.
Speaker 1: Thank you, sal Well, that's going to do it. I'm
Speaker 1: Rich Damiro. Thanks so much for listening to the show.
Speaker 1: So many ways you can spend your time. I really
Speaker 1: do appreciate you spending it here with me every week.
Speaker 1: I love the emails. I am just flooded with them
Speaker 1: every week. You have no idea. Like I thought doing
Speaker 1: a radio show would mean less emails because people would say, oh,
Speaker 1: Rich is you know he's doing the show, so I
Speaker 1: can just call him. But no, you're emailing me, which
Speaker 1: is great. Hello at richontech dot TV is Reagan. Find
Speaker 1: me on email at rich on tech is Reagan find
Speaker 1: me everywhere else. Thank you so much for listening. Thanks
Speaker 1: Kim for the phones, Thanks Bobo for the board. I'll
Speaker 1: see you next week.
Speaker 2: Take care,