005 Rich on Tech Radio Show - February 4, 2023 - podcast episode cover

005 Rich on Tech Radio Show - February 4, 2023

Feb 05, 20231 hr 51 min
--:--
--:--
Download Metacast podcast app
Listen to this episode in Metacast mobile app
Don't just listen to podcasts. Learn from them with transcripts, summaries, and chapters for every episode. Skim, search, and bookmark insights. Learn more

Episode description

A recap of Samsung's S23 launch event and hands on with the new devices; MLS Season Pass on Apple TV App; ChatGPT launches a $20 paid version; Malvertising on Google search; Netflix gives some hints on how it will crack down on password sharing; how to enable Gmail package tracking.Guests are Jacklyn Dallas from Nothing But Tech to talk about Samsung S23 impressions; creator Brian Tong to discuss how the new HomePod sounds; True App CEO Bret Cox explains why his app makes a great alternative to Facebook.Follow Rich:richontech.tvMentioned:https://raindrop.io/richontech/rich-on-tech-2-4-23-31350114See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Get full access to Rich on Tech at richontech.tv/subscribe

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

Speaker 1

Samsung on veils it's latest smartphone with a two hundred megapixel camera. The malware making its way into computers through Google Ads, the new software to detect if something was written by AI or a human. Plus your tech questions answered, What's going on? I'm Rich Demiro and this is Rich on Tech, the show where I talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about. It's also the place where I answer your questions.

Speaker 2

I'm the tech.

Speaker 1

Reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles. Welcome to the show. And how about this show number five? So that's meant to be right? Channel five, show number five. It's all good today. My dad's birthday actually, so happy birthday dad. Phone lines are open at triple A Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one. This was a really exciting fighting week in technology because I got to travel. It was a big event. Samsung held its first in person

event in three years. This happened up in San Francisco. It was on Wednesday, And you know, I told you I was in San Francisco last week, so that was now, I guess I can tell you that was to get a little sneak peek at the new phones. So not every company, I don't even know if I'm allowed to tell you this, but not every company does this. But some companies will give tech folks sort of a hands on preview of gadgets before they launched them. And every

company is different. So for instance, Apple, as far as I know, nobody gets hands on with stuff before it's unveiled to the world, Like unless I'm not on some list somewhere, that is just not happening. Like they used

to have back in the day. There was a couple of really big time mainstream journalists that Apple would give early access to their gadgets, but not before they were announced as far as I knowed know, like it was maybe right after they were announced, and nowadays, you know, it might be a day after or the same day that they announced them. During the pandemic, everything changed, of course, because used to have to go to these companies to pick these things up in person and talk to them

and you know, do what's called a briefing. And then they just kind of changed it where they would ship you the stuff, but of course, you know, then they don't get to talk to you as much about it and explain the features, and go through it. So ideally, these companies want to want to kind of talk to you in person so they can explain the different features

on these gadgets. Because I know that I've never read a manual or an instruction book, so there's there's things that I miss sometimes and I'm checking these things out. But anyway, so the week before I went up, I saw the phones. Of course, you're under sort of what's called an NDA where you can't really talk about this

stuff until a certain time. But it helps you as a journalist because you understand what's coming out, what's going to be announced, what's there, and you can start to form kind of the questions in your head about these products and also talk to people immediately about them. So anyway, so that was the week before. Then on Wednesday we went up for the actual event, and so I went up early in the morning. The event started at ten. It was in San Francisco, and of course I asked

Twitter the best way to get into San Francisco. I was there the week before, but I wanted to try a different way this time, and so I flew into Oakland. I took public transit because if you know, me. You know that I love to take public transit whenever possible, much to the people around me not liking that very much, namely my wife and my photographer and anyone else I travel with on a regular basis. I'm always like, the train,

it goes right there, it's right here, let's go. And they're like, can't we just take like an uber or like a lyft it's like direct. I'm like, it's kind of fun to be on the train. I mean, the train's going to go anyway, you just have to hop on. So I took the train to San Francisco, took it to this event center which had not been there before. I'm going to mess up the name. I think it's gosh, Masonic Temple. I think that was it our Masonic lodge in San Francisco, or let's see temple, and so it

was in Masonic Temple. Masonic Temple. Yeah, I don't know how to say that. But anyway, so that was where it was, and it was a smaller venue than in year's past. So in years past these events would be really really big. And the last one that Samsung did was actually right before everything closed down for COVID. It was like February nineteenth or something like twenty nineteen, and so that was like the last event. And at that event, people were like, oh, you might want to wear a mask,

might want to sanitize your hands. We'll take your temperature, and then everything shut down right after that. So this was kind of a big deal for Samsung to have an in person event one more time, and it was small. It was very, very small, and I think that just reflects the fact that a lot of people aren't traveling anymore. They don't you know, they don't see the need to go to these in person things anymore. But I love it.

I feel like it's the best time to see people, to meet with people in person, to talk with people that you see online. And I mean every tech person that's either on YouTube or a journalist that covers Samsung or just tech in general, most of them are there,

or many of them are there, i should say. And so it's kind of fun because you get to see these people in person that you see online all the time and just chat and actually talk to them in person about you know, what'd you think about this, what'd you think about that? For me, with the new radio show, I'm always like, hey, will you come on the radio show and talk about these different products, And so a couple of people were talking to today were some of the people at this show as well.

Speaker 2

So the show was smaller.

Speaker 1

And it you know, they announced their new S twenty three Ultra, the S twenty three Plus and the S twenty three, and the upgrades were really in the camera system. And I actually find a little fault with what Samsung did because I don't know if I really like it. So they had these like big time directors that used the Samsung phones, the new ones to shoot like everything in the presentation, which is great and it just goes

to show like how high quality these cares are. But the reality is, no average person is going to be shooting stuff with these cameras the way that Samsung showed them off. So most people are going to be using these cameras at their kid's birthday parties, or their kids play and or you know, just somewhere at a restaurant that's darkly lit and it's going to be all handheld.

The way that they showed them off was these directors using like super big time Hollywood rigs, lighting stabilizers, all kinds of filters and lenses, and it's like, nobody's going to use these phones like that. That's an average person that's trying to buy these things. The average person just wants to know, Hey, is this S twenty three Ultra worth an upgrade for my S twenty two Ultra or is it worth an upgrade from my Samsung S nine or S ten or whatever you've got, And of course

that answer is yes. So so anyway, it was neat to see the fact that these cameras can be used in a big time way, and Apple has done similar things in the past. But the reality is, show me how this camera performs at a birthday party with just candles in a dimly lit area. Show me how it works at my kids play where I'm sitting in the back row and I want to get a closer shot to the front.

Speaker 2

Show me how it works.

Speaker 1

And I'm on a boat and it's shaky and it's moving and I'm trying to, you know, record some video. And those are the circumstances where you know, reporters like myself come into play, because that's where I'm going to go and test these things out. So I'm going to use this as a regular person. I've got the phone in my hand right now. I've been using it for the past week, and I've got to say I'm impressed. It is a good camera. Is it infinitely better than before?

Speaker 3

No?

Speaker 1

But is it generating some really nice pictures?

Speaker 2

Yeah?

Speaker 1

Is the two hundred megapixels something that I need? Probably not. Unless you're blowing up pictures to be billboard sized, you probably don't really need that. But the way that Samsung is taking those two hundred megapixels, they're taking them and they're kind of collecting them into little groups to make this a standard. It's kind of sixteen megapixel picture at the end of the day. So you're not going to get a full two hundred many a pixel picture every

time you snap a shot unless you want that. And if you want that, they have the option. And honestly, after using this phone for a week or a couple of days, now, was it Wednesday, Thursday, Friday?

Speaker 2

A couple of days.

Speaker 1

The biggest difference between the Androids and the iPhone is just it's kind of refreshing to be on Android for a little bit because it is just a different way of doing things, you know, it just kind of has a lot of options. I mean, this Samsung phone just has so many options built in, like so many different ways of doing things where I'm just like, oh yeah, I kind of forgot that that takes like six or seven steps on an iPhone, but it takes two steps

on an Android. So they've got their pros and cons. And believe me, whenever I switch phones and I start texting my friends when I'm on a test device, I get the hate.

Speaker 2

I get the hate. Believe me.

Speaker 1

My friend this morning he said, when are you gonna get off this this? I can't say what you said, Android phone, I said, dude, like fifty percent of America or the world, you know, half the people are using an Android, half the people are using iPhone. Everyone has a different preference, you know. And so anyway, I will continue to test out the S twenty three Ultra. If you want to see some of the pictures, I've posted them to my Twitter and my Facebook and my Instagram at rich on Tech.

Speaker 2

But save the hate, you know.

Speaker 1

It's just like, enjoy the fact that we all have different preferences. Some people are gonna like the Android, some people are gonna like iPhone. It doesn't make you a bad person, you see that green or blue Bubble pop up.

Speaker 2

Don't judge, just enjoy.

Speaker 1

All Right, we got a great show for you this week. I've got so many great guests. We're gonna talk to Jacqueline Dallas, YouTuber extraordinaire. She is from Nothing but Tech. She's gonna discuss the S twenty three, the new Samsung phones with me. Brian Tong is back. He's going to talk about the HomePod. We've been testing that this week, and later in the show, we're gonna talk to the makers of an app called True. If you're looking for an alternative to Facebook that has no ads and no tracking,

this might be the app for you. Plus, we're gonna have your calls coming up next at triple eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one. My name is Rich Shamiro. You are listening to Rich on Tech. Welcome back to Rich on Tech. My name is Rich Damiro. Thanks for joining me here on the show where we are talking about technology. Phone lines are open at triple eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two.

Speaker 2

Four to one zero one.

Speaker 1

We've got Mark in Monrovia, California. Mark, You're on with rich.

Speaker 4

Hi, you're rich. So I've got this problem with video. Let's see make sure I from.

Speaker 5

My radio DWN here sorry okay, And I'm on a Windows ten Dell laptop and you know, of course i's the video is just don't start, whether it's YouTube or coming out of Twitter or I don't know, various seasons. But and I've got good download speed. I've got something like damn in twenty five up. And I just don't understand it.

Speaker 4

I mean, I'll start a video and the first thing it showed me is like the volume is muted, and so I'll go ahead and unmus the volume, but then the video wants to start over, and that's when it started doing so the long buffering and it goes on and then said, you know, if you have any problem, try restarting your device. But that doesn't do. But it's it's really strange. I'm not sure. It's only about two.

Speaker 2

Year old machine did this?

Speaker 1

So did it ever work? Has it ever worked?

Speaker 3

So?

Speaker 1

I mean the the videos so like YouTube, like you've had this machine for two years? Has the has it ever worked before? Like the videos have they played you know like normally?

Speaker 4

Yeah? Yeah, it was it was great everything would launch just immediately. That's just the way I expected it. Of course, you know, brand new machine. But in about the last six months, maybe it's when it's been just really acting up. Of course I've got that. I was thinking of turning that off and going with Windows Defender or something.

Speaker 1

Yeah, so I think it sounds like you may have what what browser? Does it happen with every video on all different sites?

Speaker 4

Yes, like even coming out of like.

Speaker 1

Okay, all right, so it's it sounds like it is a browser issue. So here's how I would troubleshoot something like this. So first off, I would I would disable any extensions I have on my browser. So uh well, actually, before I even do that, I would probably go through in my list of software on this Windows computer and I would uninstall. And I always say to do this, uninstall any program that you no longer need, want, or programs that you don't really recognize.

Speaker 2

You're like, wait a second, why is this on my computer?

Speaker 6

Now?

Speaker 1

There may be some like system stuff you don't have to get rid of those, but you know, stuff that you just don't need or use, Like you may have installed something that interfering with your browser. And then once you do that, restart your computer, obviously, make sure your computer's up to date with all the latest software updates. And then I would go to my browser and I would go on the browser and look at all the extensions you've got installed, and I would uninstall or at

least pause the extensions. And you can do that on Chrome by clicking extensions and then manage extensions, and you can just turn them all off, you know, and you can just toggle them off and on. And if you're not familiar with what extensions are, these are little pieces of helper software that you can install on your web browser. Whether it's Chrome, whether it's Firefox, whether it's Safari. They all support extensions in some way. But sometimes these extensions

can interfere with how our machine operates. And it sounds like there's an extension that's interfering with the video streaming on your entire browser. Now it could also be malware that's interfering as well. So I've often gone to folks computers that are having trouble and they're like, what's going on? And sometimes their homepage has been hijacked or their search has been hijacked, And a lot of times it's because you've installed some sort of helper app that is not helping.

Speaker 2

It's hurting.

Speaker 1

And so what I do whenever I'm troubleshooting something is just turn everything off. Like let's say I go to a website and it's just not functioning the way I think it should. I'll turn off some of the extensions. Sometimes that could be an AD blocker that's messing it up, and you can turn that off and then the website will work again. So once you toggle all those extensions off, obviously close out the browser, open it again, try the

videos on YouTube. I mean, YouTube is a pretty universal website, so I think that it should work pretty much flawlessly across the board. So if it's not, there's definitely something interfering. Now once you do all the extensions, if that's still not working, if the videos are just not playing, then

I would download or try a different browser. And so if you're using Chrome, let's say I would open up Edge or Firefox on your Windows computer and then try YouTube or the news website or whatever you're looking for inside those browsers. And if it's not working there, then you might have a bigger problem on your hands. But I think that those solutions are going.

Speaker 2

To solve it.

Speaker 1

Also, make sure that your browser is up to date. So if you're using Chrome, you can click into the settings on Chrome and if you go to about Chrome, it will check for updates. And right now, mind saying up to date. And so that could be another issue, is whether this browser is up to date, because sometimes if it's not running the latest software, it just may not play nicely with the websites that you're trying to watch stuff on. But that's the way I would do it, Mark,

and hopefully it will work. I mean, this laptop's only two years old. There is no reason why this thing should not be working properly. So try out those things and then let me know if that's going to work. All right, Speaking of watching stuff, Netflix sent the Internet into a tizzy this week over its proposed passwords sharing rules. So we've been hearing over and over that Netflix is really going to start enforcing some sort of rules for sharing your account and.

Speaker 2

You know who you are.

Speaker 1

There's, by one estimate, one hundred million people are leeching off of other people's Netflix accounts.

Speaker 2

And I'm not saying it's a bad thing.

Speaker 1

Look, Netflix has let this happen for many, many years, and there's a lot of arguments why people share their accounts, whether it's a kid off to college, whether it's a friend that you're helping out, whether it's a family member. They didn't really have steadfast rules, like they didn't say, like, you can't do this, because, believe me, Netflix can detect when people outside your household are using your account. It's

not that tough. I mean, there's IP addresses, there's you know, you're streaming at the same time as one of your family members two different shows. I mean, they have ways of detecting this stuff. But anyway, one of the things they posted was some new rules that were suppose going to be enforced in their help center, and one of them was that you would have to log in with the device every thirty one days for it to continue working.

And so of course people that are maybe using your account in other states and things that would be tough and then they would have to be pushed to their own Netflix account. Well, Netflix came out and said, look, we pushed those rules to the website just a little early, so we don't really have any rules to say just yet.

But at the same time, yes, these are coming, so don't worry about it just yet if you're sharing or you're a sharer, but yes, just keep in mind that you may want to put a little line on in your budget that may include Netflix in the next couple of months, because these companies are not fooling around anymore. All right, Coming up, we've got an interview with Jacqueline Dallas from Nothing But Tech. We're going to talk about the new Samsung Galaxy S twenty three lineup and get

her impressions about the new camera. You're listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. My name is rich Jamiro. Listening to the show where we talk about technology and take your questions about all things gadgets, electronics, cell phones.

Speaker 2

Whatever you got.

Speaker 1

I mean, everything's electronic these days, right all right on the line. I've got a great guest, Jacqueline Dallas is a YouTuber extraordinaire. She also does a podcast, and she is going to talk to me about the new Samsung Galaxy S twenty three lineup.

Speaker 2

Jacqueline, welcome to the show.

Speaker 7

Genuinely so honored to be on and I was listening to it before I came on, and you're an incredible host. I'm so blown to it.

Speaker 1

Oh well, thank you. Now tell me this. Did you just turn twenty one?

Speaker 7

I did just turn twenty one.

Speaker 2

Happy birthday.

Speaker 1

I saw the picture on your Instagram in the in the liquor store, so yeah, but you were just camera testing.

Speaker 7

Just camera testing, completely sober.

Speaker 1

No.

Speaker 7

I was doing a the S twenty three Ultra, like a day life review. And one of the new features of this phone is like improved performance. And I feel like liquor stores never have good like lighting quality. It's always like the dimmest of lighting. So we went in there to test out the new camera. But cold Brew has my heart. That's like my diversi of choice.

Speaker 2

Oh, we know.

Speaker 1

If you follow Jacqueline on her YouTube channel, there's lots of pictures of coffee and cold brew. So, Jacqueline, you were at the event at the at Samsung. I missed you somehow, but it was a sad smaller event than typical. But what are your impressions of this phone? You did a video on your YouTube channel where you kind of did your initial testing in San Francisco, and a couple

of things stood out. The camera, battery life you didn't think was as good as you thought it might be, and the camera the shutter lag in low light was a little bit surprising, So tell me about those two things.

Speaker 7

Well, thank you so much for watching the video. Your genuinely invest I was loking you out at the events. I'm so sad that we miss each other. But yeah, So basically I put the phone in like a real day in a live scenario where I I was taking a lot of photos videos, also just using it throughout

the day, and the battery life was not incredible. But one of the things that people in the comments were mentioning that igroue with is that it does have something called adaptive batteries, which basically means after like the two week mark of using the phone, it kind of understands what your usage habits are like and then it supposedly can get better. So the journey still out on that not positive yet, but in my initial testing it wasn't amazing. I was doing a lot of four K video and

that drained it a lot. So I think like the average user, battery life will be decent. Definitely a one day phone, but not like a two day phone because also the million powers is not increased over last year. Ye Sampsling was saying that batteries could be better because they just optimized it more. But since it's still the same actual battery size, I didn't notice the staffic of an improvement.

Speaker 1

But here's the thing. Here's the thing about the battery life on the Samsung. So I would agree that I think that Samsung is kind of chewed through the battery a lot faster than the iPhone. I think that's part of the architecture of Android in general versus iOS, like nothing gets to run in the background on iOS, whereas on Android things can and so. But here's the difference. So I was at the airport flying back from San Francisco and I plugged in the Android and also the iPhone.

The iPhone charges a lot slower than the Samsung. I mean, the Samsung is like super super speedy charging. Yeah, So to me, I don't think it's that big of a deal. As long as you have access to a charger at some point during the day, you'll be fine, and you'll be at like one hundred percent quickly or close to it, faster than you would on an iPhone.

Speaker 7

That's a really good point. Yeah, that's very true. I think battery life is one of those things where it's like you either need super fast charging or really big battery. You don't necessarily need both. But also there are like some reports that if you do fast charging all the time, you can kind of like degrade the battery cycle or like make it faster, meaning like the battery would become less good over time. Yeah, I feel like that's important to know too, Like fast charging isn't.

Speaker 1

Always what you want to do, that is true, And most of the time I'm trickle charging on a on a you know, wireless anyway. All right, so let's talk about the camp So two hundred megapixel camera. Are we seeing this thing? Just blowing away the iPhone right out of the gate?

Speaker 7

Who Honestly, it was really good. The thing that was most impressive to me was the zoom quality, and I think it's because it had like this dedicated optical zoom lens.

The tours of megapixels is more so there for either really really high right shots if you want to print something, or more likely, I think most people will use it in the pixel binning mode, which is basically it takes the tours or megapixels and it combines either sixteen pixels into one or four pixels into one depending on the in lighting environment, and the idea there is that by combining the pixels you're able to get better dynamic range

and exposure throughout the shots. I thought the images looked really good in a lot of fers scenarios, and the video quality was also excellent. The one area that you mentioned earlier that I noticed a little bit was like the shutter lag issue where I'd like hit the button and then the photo would be a little bit delayed, so it would look maybe a little bit blurry. But I would say that in general, in like normal lighting environment mid lighting environment, images are genuinely incredible.

Speaker 1

Yeah, and I do think I okay, So first off on the zoom situation, So this phone, the Ultra, has a ten times optical zoom. It can zoom up to one hundred times, but the ten times is incredible because again, like I was saying earlier in the show, if you're a parent that's sitting in the you know, in a back row at your kids play, that ten times zoom really comes into handy, and not just for that, but so many scenarios where you're not close up and you can get a lot closer and optical is always going

to look better than digital zoom for the most part. Yeah, just for reference, the iPhone, like the latest iPhone has what like a three time zoom right optical?

Speaker 7

Yeah, three times? Oh, actually, maybe I'm the it could be five times. It's somewhere between three or five times. I think it's three.

Speaker 1

Yeah, I think it's three on the pro phone, So I mean the regular one is even less than that. Okay, So now last night I took my phone out. My wife is is a good companion for me because she's always like testing of this stuff. And so we went out to dinner at like a dimly lit restaurant and I was like, all right, I got to take pictures of all this stuff. And I will say she noticed when we took a selfie, she was like, why is

it taking so long? And it's like, you know, in that moment that's when you get the blur is if it takes too long and you're trying to hold the phone. I think that these are things that Samsung will tweak with software because this is such a new sensor. I always think the Samsung phones get better six months in.

Speaker 7

Yeah, I totally agree. I think charlag has been something that people have kind of complained about for a couple of years of the phones, and I think in the past years it may have been more of a hardware issue where they had to have the shutter open for a long time to get like that lighting environment. But now since the center is updated, I think that you're right, like, they definitely could just push out a software update to lower the amount of time that it takes to take a picture.

Speaker 1

All right, we're talking to Jacqueline Dallas. She is a YouTuber and she has a YouTube channel called nothing but Tech with a lot of subscribers and a lot of enthusiasm and a lot of creativity. So thanks for joining me today. We're talking about the Galaxy S twenty three lineup.

So S twenty three starts at eight hundred dollars, the S twenty three Plus, which is the mid middle of the line phone with a was six point six inch screen that is one thousand dollars, and then the top of the line, Galaxy S twenty three Ultra, starts at twelve hundred dollars. You get two hundred and fifty six gigs of storage, you get a six point eight inch screen, you get the sty list, you get it all with

this phone. So and the phones are out on February seventeenth, Go ahead, No, it's like a kitchen thing phone.

Speaker 7

I feel like it's like you want all the features, and this is like the epitomy of that.

Speaker 1

Absolutely, And that's what I think really gets me about this phone. Like I've kind of fallen in love with it over the past couple of days. Because while you use an iPhone quite regularly, every time I use like a Samsung, I just remember how many cool things it does. And this is a small thing that like, I know nobody else may care about this, but I love the fact that when I take a picture, it goes up into the cloud immediately, like it backs up on Google Photos.

Maybe that's if you use iCloud on the iPhone that happens. But I use Google Photos on the iPhone, and so it just bugs me that I have to like open Google Photos and like wait for it to upload. So it's little things like that. What else do you think?

Speaker 7

It's like a neat quality of life dings? What else do I think people should know? Hm, I would say one of the big ones that is important to know is that software updates are going to be a more regular, longer supported thing. I think one of the issues that I've noticed with a lot of Android for them that Island doesn't have is that over time they kind of

struggle to keep up with performance. Like I think Pixel is a great example, where it starts out so fast and then like a year in there are more glitches and feature issues even though software is supportive for a long time. But I think Stampling has a pretty good track record of having good lungevity with their phones in general, and so with this one it's the same. I think it's four years of software updates, definitely on the security end, yeah, and I think other features ahead.

Speaker 1

Yeah, they're promising four generations of operating system updates and five years of security updates. So that's a you know, do the math. That's a long time. And by the way, I mentioned the prices for these phones, I should also say that, like, don't pay full price for a Samsung, Like there's always some sort of deal out there or

like a trade in deal. So like if you're don't you know, the twelve hundred dollars, I know it sounds like a lot, and it is, but you have to somehow get that down with either a carrier deal or you know, some sort of rebate or trade in or just wait for a sale, because these do happen.

Speaker 7

Yeah, what do you think the S twenty two Ultra users should consider? Like, do you think that there's any scenario where S twenty two Ultra users should upgrade it? Or do you think that this is like for pass generation.

Speaker 2

That is a great question.

Speaker 1

I'm like, I come from the side of things where I always want an upgrade, and I always want the latest, greatest, So I would say, and I know that Samsung's not doing as good of a trade in this year, but

just see how much it is. If it's like a couple hundred bucks, Like if you can get into a new S twenty three Ultra for like three hundred bucks, if you're coming from the S twenty two, I think it's worth it because you do get the newer phone, you do get the newer camera tech, and I'm telling you this thing is going to continue to get better over the next six months to a year with software updates. All right, Jaqueline, I got a run, So tell folks how to find you online.

Speaker 7

Ooh, you're the best. Thanks much for having me on YouTube. It's nothing but tech and if you want to hear like a tech conversation podcast, it's called The Digital Dive.

Speaker 1

Thank you so much, True, thank you, thank you for being so positive. And by the way, Jacqueline started her channel when she was just thirteen, so she's been doing tech for ten years. I'm bad at math, but however many years that is. It's been a bit and she's been grown her channel. So awesome to see that. Thanks Jaqueline for joining me. You're listening to rich DeMuro here. Rich on Tech is the show? Give me a call at Triple eight rich one oh one. Welcome back to

rich on Tech. My name is rich Damuro here, tech reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles, hanging out with you, talking about technology, talking about life. You know, I have a mantra on life. What do people say? It's like abt That's what I say. Always be testing.

I'm always trying something out. And it's kind of funny because if you're around me, you know this, Like you know, I'm always pulling some random phone out of my pocket or I'm like, hey, can you come with me to this event or go with me to this thing, or can you try this computer or try this gadget, or let me do this. It's really it's kind of funny because if I didn't like this stuff, it would be really tough to do this because it's I mean, okay,

let me give me an example. So I go to the airport for the San Francisco trip, and you know, I drive an electric car, okay, And so I get to the airport and I'm like, ah, they just installed all these new electric charging stations at the airport. Now, just like any other person, I want to get to

my flight. I want to get there to the terminal, I want to get through security, but I also want to try out the new charging stations at the airport because that way I can talk about them and I can tell people like should you use it, should you not use it? How does it work? How much does it cost? And so I took the extra you know,

ten minutes to try this out. So I find a spot and they've got a ton of these charging stations now, I think they built a couple hundred at the Los Angeles Airport, and so you know, it was easy to find a spot. A lot of people don't even know about this yet, but I get there, I pull in my car and it's like, okay, you got to scan a QR code on the charger. I'm like, okay, By the way, I've used so many different chargers. If you're not using like a Tesla branded charger, like it's anything

goes right. And so half some of the chargers are free, which are amazing. Then some of the chargers are just you got to activate them somehow, that's easy. And then some of the chargers want you to like sign up for like this whole app and like load it up with money. And that's what I had to do here. So not only did I have to like download an app, I had to sign up for the app, and then I couldn't use like Apple pay or Google Pay to pay for it. I had to like put a credit card in.

Then I had to buy time, like which I'm not typically you know, I don't like pre paying for stuff before I use it. But I had to buy like a block of I guess credit on this app, and so I did that and then I and then I had to like set how long I wanted to charge for. I mean, it was a it was a process, and you know, if you're a person that's just trying to get to your flight. It's like, who wants to go through all this stuff?

Speaker 8

Now?

Speaker 2

I get it.

Speaker 1

The first time you set it up, it takes the longest the next couple times you do it.

Speaker 2

But by the way, it's also expensive.

Speaker 1

It's like forty five cents a kilowatt hour, which is quite pricey. And then you know, you got to pay two dollars just for the connection in addition, by the way, to the parking price at the airport, which has now gone up to sixty dollars for the day. So yeah, it was very expensive to test this out. But I'll tell you, it was kind of cool to come back to a fully charged car, and so that was nice throughout the whole situation. Once I came back to the

car and it was charged, that was nice. But the price, you know, I thought they could kind of throw people a bone at the airport, like you're already paying sixty bucks to park your car there for the day, Like why not just keep people free charging? I don't know, I mean, that's just I know it costs money to put in all these chargers, but I'm just saying, you know, I don't know if it costs sixty bucks to have that parking spot there. Anyway, let's go to Bonnie. Bonnie

is in Charleston, South Carolina. A beautiful city, Bonnie. Welcome to the show.

Speaker 3

And they're right where they're taking down the balloon. Do you want me to say the piece if it falls in my yard?

Speaker 1

Oh my gosh, you have the Chinese spy balloon is in your backyard.

Speaker 3

Well, they're taking it down. They've just canceled all flights in North Carolina and South Carolina. Nobody can fly in our air. Oh my, right now, because they're going to take down the balloon right here.

Speaker 1

How weird is that story? Like I came home last night from dinner and I see this story and I'm like, what is happening here?

Speaker 2

Like what is going on? Okay?

Speaker 1

Well, if you get a piece of that balloon, I would save it, and you know it's probably you're probably gonna have some people come to your front door and like, you know, like the men in black you know what I mean.

Speaker 2

And they're going to erase your mind a bit. Oh thank you, you never saw this. We're taking this from that.

Speaker 1

I called you rich, Okay, Well what'd you call me about?

Speaker 3

Okay? So I'm a pet portrait artist and I do a lot of pets that have crossed over to the Rainbow Bridge already. So people send me the photos of their pets, and some of these photos are in pretty bad shape because these dogs have been gone a long time. And so I tried to download an app that claims that it can, you know, perk up these photos a little so I can get a little more detail to do the pet portrait because I'm a watercolor artist and

I do very detailed work. Well, these these apps don't work. This app didn't work. Definitely, it didn't do anything. And I wonder if you know a better app.

Speaker 1

Okay, Well what app did you get? And what platform are you using.

Speaker 2

This app on?

Speaker 3

Well, I'm using it on my high pad.

Speaker 2

Okay, so an iPad me.

Speaker 3

Through Facebook or email send me the photos. So I get the photos that way, and then I copy them and keep them in my files. And so I don't you want me to say the name of the apps that I work? I didd okay. They actually gave me a ten day free day trial, a ten day free trial, and I put a pet portrait in there and it did nothing.

Speaker 1

Mmmm, Okay, Well, pet portraits. I mean, so I think a couple of things are happening here. So I think, you know, pet portraits could be unique because a lot of these programs are built like if you're using I mean number one, I would recommend something that's sort of using AI to restore these things. But I think that you know, this is still a growing area, and so

you know, the AI may not be trained. I know that that that animals can trick some of these systems sometimes because they're built for humans most of the time. So if you're trying to restore old pictures, you know, sometimes that can be a thing.

Speaker 2

Okay, So a couple of apps.

Speaker 1

I mean, there's so many great apps for video edit or for photo editing on the iPad. I mean, one of them that comes to mind is pixel Mater. That's like a number one kind of big app that a lot of people use that lets you do a lot of things.

Speaker 2

Obviously, Adobe light.

Speaker 1

Room is very popular, which you know is very very popular there. And then you have a lot of these newer apps that are sort of like these AI enhanced apps. One that I like to use onmine is called Prisma or sorry not Prisma. Pixart is one that I really like at p I C s ar T and I've I've thrown a lot at that app and it does pretty well. And another one that I really like is called snap seed, and so snap seed will let you do a lot. Now, it depends what you're trying to do.

If you're really trying to, you know, restore an old picture, there are some specialty AI programs I can do that, so I would look for something like that. But again, you know, it's it's an animal picture, so it could be a little bit tricky for these AI trained things that are trained mostly for humans. But those apps will get you started, I think, and you know, a lot of these apps you don't have to pay for if you want it the extra features. But I'm not familiar

with the app that you mentioned. But I would also just peruse on the iPad the list of the top photo apps and just kind of try them. I think the best, you know, the best way to do this is really trial and error. Just pop one of these pictures into these apps, try it, see if it does what you need, and if it does, stick with the app. That's really the best way I find of you know, identifying things that work.

Speaker 2

The best for me.

Speaker 1

All right, thanks Bonnie, watch out for that spy balloon. You're listening to rich on Tech. We'll have more right after this. Welcome back to rich on Tech. This is the show where we talk about technology, answer your questions, and just have a lot fun. Technology can be fun, Yes it can.

Speaker 2

I know.

Speaker 1

We're very far from the days of the blinking twelve o'clock on the VCR. Now our problems are a lot harder. That was easy back in the day. Now we've got you know, why's my phone doing this? Why is my computer doing this? Why am I doing this?

Speaker 2

There's a lot to answer.

Speaker 1

My name is Richard Miro and the check reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles. I cover this stuff for a living, live breathe. I haven't eaten tech, I don't think.

Speaker 2

I guess I have.

Speaker 1

I've eaten three D printed candy, So does that count as eating tech? I guess I have. So there we go. I've eaten this stuff. I don't recommend you eating technology though, well, I mean, unless it's edible. Don't don't take a bite out of your phone. Oh man, you can find me on social media. I am at rich on Tech every week. I like to talk about the stuff that I upload to my social media channels this week. On my Instagram, Let's see, I like to just look at this.

Speaker 2

And see what I Let's see.

Speaker 1

Oh, I think I uploaded a video of me taking a ride in the way most self driving car up in San Francisco.

Speaker 2

Let's see, I uploaded a.

Speaker 1

Video explaining the new Galaxy S twenty three lineup of smartphones. Oh, there's a cool new feature on the S twenty three lineup called Bixby Text Call. And this is this is a feature that telemarketers and robo callers are gonna hate. It basically lets you answer the phone with a digital assistant. So when someone's calling your phone, you just tap a button and it says, hey.

Speaker 2

I'm Bixby.

Speaker 1

You know this caller, this, this phone user is using me to answer the call. Can you please tell them why you're calling? And then whatever they say is transcribed on your phone screen. So if it's like a robo caller or you know, someone trying to sell you something, you know, you can just go ahead and hang up on them, which is sad, but you know whatever, and then you can type things back. So if you say, hey,

can you explain further. It will speak whatever you say to the caller, and whatever the caller is says is transcribe. So it's also equally handy, like if you're in a meeting or in a quiet place and you just want to answer the phone you can't talk at that moment. Instead of just those sort of canned responses where you're just responding with the text, this actually says whatever you type out to the caller. So I've got a video demoing that, which I think is really cool. I could

use that all the time. People call me and you kind of get caught and you're just like, ah, I'm a nice person, but I really don't want to talk to you right now, and I'm trying to get you off the phone as soon as possible, and I'm going to hear your spiel for like a minute, but I just yeah, it's like, come on, Especially with us switching like cable riders and all that stuff, it happens all the time. Then I've got a video of me inside the Samsung Experience up in San Francisco. Can you see

the theme this week? Because Samsung had their big event, They've got this cool Samsung It's not really a store. I guess it's kind of a pop up store, but it's in San Francisco this month only. It's called the Samsung Galaxy Experience Space, and it's got a giant wall of Galaxy smartphones. You can see all the Samsung phones back to like the first Galaxy s back in twenty ten.

They've got this gaming center set up. They've got this cool like capsule you can stand in, then you put your phone in this little spinny thing and you take a recording and you spin the thing and it looks like you're floating in outer space. That's really cool. They've got this whole setup of a planet with an astronaut which you can take pictures.

Speaker 2

Of and with.

Speaker 1

It's really cool too. But the coolest thing was two cool things that are really really neat is this alleyway that's inspired by the streets of Soul, Korea, which is where you know Samsung's headquartered, and it just literally looks like you're there and you can take you know, pictures in there.

Speaker 2

Have fun.

Speaker 1

But there's also a video game in there. I think it was a pac Man game. And then they also have you know, it's kind of a place to test low light photography. That's the reason for it, but it just looks really cool. You'll take cool pictures. And then the other really neat thing is this immersive gallery. So they sit you down in this little room, they take a whole bunch of headshots using the S twenty three Ultra,

and then you walk into this room next door. It's filled with like, I don't know, thirty or forty different video screens. They look like picture frames, and all of a sudden, all your photos come up on those frames and it's all mirrored in there too, so you get really cool pictures inside there, and it's just a fun thing to see it.

Speaker 2

It'll put a smile on your face.

Speaker 1

So if you happen to be in San Francisco in the next month, definitely check out the Galaxy Experience Space. It's at one to eleven Powell Street.

Speaker 2

I thought it was pretty.

Speaker 1

Cool, So I love stuff like that, just like different unique I know, these like pop up things are kind of cheesy sometimes, like the little like nineties restaurants and stuff that they put up in town for a little bit, but this one was pretty cool. What else, What else do I want to talk about? I guess let's go to a call right now, Why don't we go to a call. We've got Carla. Carla is in the Los Angeles. Carla, welcome.

Speaker 9

Oh, thank you for taking my call.

Speaker 2

Hell, thanks for listening. I'm doing fantastic. How are you good?

Speaker 9

Okay? So, I know you guys already were talking about the phones before with the girl and then she left, so I caught the tell into that. But I have a friend who has the brand new iPhone fourteen, so and I finally upgraded from my Note eight to this Samsung Galaxy Ultra point two. Okay, So the colors are

different in the iPhone. Like we were testing out his videos, the colors were more vibrant, and I think there's probably something in the Samsung that you can switch to make the colors, you know, match what I saw on his phone.

Speaker 10

But what I was more.

Speaker 9

Interested in is blur the blurr in the background, because his head automatically did it, and I don't know where to find that in my phone or if it even does it.

Speaker 2

Okay, well, there's it, definitely does it.

Speaker 1

So the situation with color is, you know, that's gonna be sort of a product of the color tuning of the phone. So it's gonna be tough. Now, the iPhone has this thing called like photographic styles, and he may have chosen one of those that enhances kind of the way things look. You can choose that in the settings of your iPhone and it will change pretty much the way every picture looks. It'll apply like a bunch of filters and tuning to every single picture depending on what

you like. Some people like brighter, some people like more natural, some people like more vibrant. But when it comes to the Samsung, I mean, I think you can get some really good pictures out of that phone if you want the blurry background. I mean a couple things. First off, if you're just taking like a regular picture, depending on how you're taking it, the background should be somewhat blurred on the Samsung as long as it's not using what's

called focus enhancer. So if you see that pop up, that means that it's using sort of the wide angle lens to take the picture, and so it's gonna make it more flat and not sort of a blurry background. So that could be nonumber one number two. There's also a portrait mode on the phone, and some people I know just love to take pictures in portrait mode, and if you take it in portrait mode, that's actually applying

sort of an artificial blur to your picture. And so that will definitely apply a blur as well, but you have to you know, that's a little bit trickier to do that. Also, I would take a look in your settings. So if you go into your settings on your Samsung, I would take a look at the different things inside there. So they have all kinds of stuff. A scene optimizer. You can turn that on and off, and you can decide,

you know, if you want that to. You know, it'll notice if you're taking a picture of food, and it'll make food look a certain way. But there's also a way that you can go. Let's see, there's a way that you can go into your picture after you take it and add a blur. So I'm looking at a picture on the Samsung right now. If you go into the Samsung Gallery and you press the little menu, you'll see where it says add portrait effect, and you tap that,

and it's using sensor data. So it's using depth sensor data from your phone to separate the foreground from the background, and then it's blurring the background and you can adjust the level of blur that you want on the background and that I'm looking at this in real time and it looks pretty good. It's not going to get everything just perfect, but it's doing a pretty good job. Now, one other thing you can do if you want to

get that blurry background is in Google Photos. It has an option to give you a blurry background as well, and you can do this on pretty much any photo editing app. But just go into the edit function on Google Photos and then just go into your tools and you know, you can just tap blur and it will give you, you know, a blur if you want to do a depth blur or whatever you want. So but basically the feature you want is called portrait mode. So that's that's kind of the thing that you want to do.

I think that with a little bit of practice and a little bit of you know, using this phone a little bit, I think you're gonna take some pretty good pictures at rival your friend with the iPhone. But look, I mean, iPhone fourteen takes fantastic photos. So believe me, it's it's you know, their neck and neck, let's put it that way. But I think some of it is just getting used to the way that the Samsung works.

Speaker 2

So Carla, good question.

Speaker 1

Thanks so much for calling, and enjoy the new phone and I think you'll like it all right, phone lines are open triple eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Coming up, we're gonna talk to my friend Brian Tong about the home pod from Apple. We're gonna see how it sounds compared to the old one. Later, we're gonna talk about an alternative to Facebook. Plus, we're gonna talk about malvertizing. What's malvertizing? Find out? Coming up. Welcome back to rich

on Tech. This is the show where we talk about technology and answer your questions. At triple eight rich one O one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one. Laura sent me an email said, Hey, I saw your recently on San Francisco TV. How do I retrieve or receive your recommendation for using travel points? You mentioned the information was new to you. Looking forward to your reply. Oh, this was a website. It's actually

a really good website. I've used this several times. It's called point dot me. So I don't really play the points game in a big way like I if I get some points for you know, flights or using my card, whatever, I'll take them. But I'm not sitting there actively trying to rack them up. But if I have them, I'm gonna use them and I want to make the most of them. But this is a website did a story on and it's it's a new one. It's a point

dot me. And what's cool about this website is it helps you figure out ways of booking with your points that you may not think of. So if you have like let's say, Chase points or MX points, or you have United points or south you know, maybe not Southwest, but you know different airlines you know, it'll figure out you know the best ways to use those points for flights, and also taking into consideration transferring those points between different programs.

So even though you have United Points, you may be able to use those on an airline out of Japan and it might take less points to redeem for a ticket. So it goes through all that stuff for you. It takes a little bit to do the searches, but it's

because it's really like doing a deep dive. So I've used this personally to book at least two flights one time, was for my mom, and I couldn't believe, like I didn't even know she had the use of jet Blue points, Like I didn't even have a jet Blue account for her, and you know, whatever points she had somehow transferred into jet Blue and it was a fantastic deal compared to

the other flights that she typically took. And so we did that, and then in another flight I found sort of a premium seat at an economy amount of points, and so it will figure that out for you too. So again, the website is point dot me. It is a paid site. I think you can get a starter ass or I know there's a rich on tech code that they had at some point. I don't know if that still works, but you can try putting in promo code rich on Tech and see if that gets you,

like something for free. It might get you like a free month or something, or a month for a dollar, but definitely give it a try if you have a bunch of points and you're trying to book a trip. I would check this out because I was very impressed.

Speaker 2

With this this website, point dot me.

Speaker 1

And by the way I put all the websites, I tweet them out later on my Twitter so I bookmark everything that I mentioned in the show, and then I put the link on my Twitter at rich on Tech, so you can find that as well. All right, let's go to Jimmy. Jimmy is in Los Angeles. Jimmy, you're on with rich I am doing fantastic.

Speaker 6

How are you wonderful?

Speaker 2

What can I help?

Speaker 8

I want to see if you can an Apple wash into an Android like this?

Speaker 2

Oh?

Speaker 1

Good question. Uh, the short answer is not really what are you trying to do? You have an Android phone, but you want to use an Apple Watch? Yes, okay, So the only way I know that you could do this? Do you have an Apple ID?

Speaker 2

I'm not going to one, okay. Do you have a.

Speaker 1

Friend or a family member that has an iPhone?

Speaker 6

Yes?

Speaker 8

At home?

Speaker 2

Oh you do?

Speaker 1

Okay, So here's here's the best way to do it. That it's not going to be perfect. Like let's just let's just be clear. Android does not interface with Apple Watch in any way, shape or form. So it's not you're not going to get your notifications, uh that you know, like let's say, you know, your text messages and stuff like that are not going to come through to this watch or you're uh some notifications will depending on how

you set it up. But the only way that you can kind of hack this together is to set up the Apple Watch using your iPhone and then just using the Apple Watch on your wrist and then the Android as your phone. But the Apple Watches, once you take it out of range of that I phone, it's going to be very limited in what it can do. And

so what does that mean. It means that you can if you have a cellular connection on the Apple Watch, you'll be able to use things like you know, streaming music stuff like that, get some notifications on the go, maybe use Apple Maps.

Speaker 2

But if you just want to use the.

Speaker 1

Apple Watch to sort of track your steps or track your fitness on the go, it'll work for that. Or use it just as a time piece, it'll work for that as well, but it's not going to interface with the Android in a meaningful way. The other thing you can do is, you know, if you you can set it up what's called family setup, and so this is this is if you have a cellular Apple Watch and you want to use it on the go without an iPhone at all, you can do what's called the family setup.

And so this is a little bit more probably a little bit better of a setup if you're trying to use it with an Android phone, could because it'll work on its own without having the need for the iPhone nearby. And this is meant for family members setting up an Apple Watch for their kid, or maybe for an elderly adult, or for someone that just doesn't have an iPhone but wants an Apple Watch that's in the family and so you can set this thing up that way as well.

And that's the way my kid's Apple Watch is set up. It's called family set up, and he has cellular and he basically has a phone on there. He can text message, he can use limited apps. You know, not every app works on that sort of setup. But if you just want this thing to track your steps and just you know, do basic stuff on there, listen to music, you'll be able to do that. So that's the only way I

know of doing it. But it's it's definitely not ideal because it could be frustrating if you're trying to sync up the actual Android notifications to this watch. It's just not built that way. And you know, it's the same thing on the other side it used to be. I kind of remember that there was there used to be a way to use an Android watch with an iPhone for a certain period of time, and I don't think

that's the case anymore either. It was very limited, but nowadays, I mean, look, the name of the game nowadays is silos. Every tech company wants to silo you into their stuff, and Apple is pretty much the best at this. They have a couple of tricks up their sleeve when it comes to I Message, when it comes to FaceTime, when it comes to the Apple Watch. They give you these things that work really well together, but they don't work

with anything else dimensioned I message. That's probably the biggest one that gets people walked into the Apple ecosystem. And once they're on that blue bubble, they just don't want to ever get out of that blue bubble world. And when someone texts them with a green bubble, they get all annoyed. And Apple did that on purpose too. They made the bubbles different colors. Why they do that so that you knew, oh, this person's coming from an Android phone,

this person's coming from an iPhone. I am not a fan of that. I think that that's you know, it's just sad that people are judging each other based on the color of bubble coming through on their messaging stone purse.

Speaker 2

And believe me, if you don't think it's a thing, it is.

Speaker 1

People get on these group texts and you know, one person's on Android and they get all bent out of shape in the group text saying, Ah, who's the person on Android here? That's that's messing up this group text. So it's a thing, and I think it puts a little undue pressure on folks, you know, maybe even teenagers that are getting their first phone. But that was the whole point, I guess, brilliant marketing by Apple. All right, coming up next, we're gonna talk about the home Pod.

This is a speaker made for Apple products. I've got my friend Brian Tongue coming on the show to talk about how the new HomePod sounds compared to the old home Pod.

Speaker 2

We'll we'll talk about that, plus we'll.

Speaker 1

Take more of your questions at triple eight Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four to one zero one. My name is Rich Dmiro. We've got so much more in the show to talk about. You can find me on social media. I am at rich on Tech. We'll have more of the show right after this. Welcome back to to Rich on Tech. My name is Rich Demiro.

Speaker 2

Joining me now.

Speaker 1

Is Brian Tongue, fellow tech friend and YouTuber.

Speaker 2

Brian. Welcome to the show.

Speaker 3

What's up? Rich?

Speaker 10

Thanks for having me.

Speaker 2

Man, Hey, you're.

Speaker 1

The first guest to be on twice woo.

Speaker 10

I feel very honored and I'll do it as as long as you ask me back and hopefully your listeners like, yeah, bring them back please, Otherwise I may not ever talk.

Speaker 1

To you again, right I think, well that will never happen. But welcome to the show. Brian is a YouTuber. He was up in San Francisco with me at the Samsung event. But we're not going to talk about that. We're going to talk about the home Pod because you've been testing these out in your home, brand new from Apple.

Speaker 2

So just to give you the rundown on the home Pod.

Speaker 1

We talked about it, I think last week, but you know, it's a two hundred and ninety nine dollars speaker that is a smart home speaker. It's got some new features, including a removable cable, which I think is actually I know it sounds like I'm making fun of it, but that's actually a good thing, so you can pull out the power cord and pop it back in. It's got spatial audio, it sounds good, it looks good, and it's a great companion for.

Speaker 2

The Apple ecosystem.

Speaker 1

Right, So, Brian, you tested this thing out. We texted each other. We had the same sort of reaction to this. We both think that the old home pod sounds better than the new pod.

Speaker 2

How could that be possible?

Speaker 10

You know, it could be possible in a few ways. Right from a technical standpoint, this new home Pod has two less tweeters than the original, but at the same time, because Apple is redesigned it, it leverages what's called computational audio, which basically means it can analyze the room and the best sound to deliver to you. It does not. For the record, it does.

Speaker 11

Not sound bad.

Speaker 10

It sounds really good. But when you and I, you know, you texted me right out of the gates and I had already gone through extensive I mean, I match it up against I think four different speaker sets, and it just didn't feels as full. When I say that, I just mean there, if you listen to music, you'll hear, you know, voices, but you also hear these things called mids which kind of round out the sound. You'll hear loads which give you some of that basin ump, and

the original HomePod just sounds better in that regard. But this is more than just the speaker. I think a lot of people have purchased this with the intention of I want a good sounding home smart speaker, so it goes beyond that, but from just the very basic level of how does the speaker sound, because I think that's what everyone wants to know. It sounds great, but the original HomePod just sounds better.

Speaker 2

Now.

Speaker 1

In your YouTube video, which was very in depth, you even enlisted the help of your fiance. She did like a sort of a blind, blindfolded listening test. And she's not necessarily a techie, she you know, she just was enlisted to help and you said, hey, which one of these sounds better? And she was kind of surprised because you compared it against the original HomePod, then the Amazon Echo speaker, and then the Google Nest speaker, which is

like the bigger one. And in all cases, did she not think that the other speaker sounded better.

Speaker 10

Than the than than the new HomePod?

Speaker 2

Yeah?

Speaker 10

Uh? The in Yeah, actually the nets, the Google Nest speaker did not is honestly the to sound the worst out.

Speaker 5

Of all of them.

Speaker 10

It was in a completely like lower tier. Okay, but surprisingly, the Amazon Echo sounded very good. And you know, when you listen to any speaker, it comes down to how you hear things. We all actually hear things differently, we all have different preferences to.

Speaker 4

The type of sound we like.

Speaker 10

But the Amazon Echo, in both my opinion and her opinion in these tests, actually sounded slightly better than the new home.

Speaker 1

Pod as well, which is just so wild. I mean, this thing is, you know, no matter which one you're looking at. I mean, the Echo fourth generation is a hunter Bucks. This speaker is is three hundred, which is fifty dollars less than the original home Pod that was discontinued back a couple of years ago.

Speaker 2

But here's the thing.

Speaker 1

I don't really think any of this matters to the Apple ecosystem user that wants a good speaker for their home that looks really nice, plays really nice with all of their Apple stuff, and it's going to sound good. And do you think that Apple can improve the audio on this speaker with software updates?

Speaker 2

Is that even a thing?

Speaker 10

I mean, because it is like you're alluding to computational audio. They can tweak it. I think that it will. A lot of people say, hey, you need to listen to a speaker for a long period of time to break it in to kind of help the base come in. And so, you know what, I'm going to give them the benefit of doubt, and I'm going to do another

speaker test. Let's give them like three or four months and revisit it and see if anything's changed, match them up with maybe some other speakers, like the Sono's one setup that is kind of in that tier when we talk about price point, the Echo Studio, which is kind of their larger speakers in that price point, but from just a basic level, when you turn it on and when you hear music, if you've owned the original home it sounds different. But people there's a lot of people

that do not own a HomePod. It never owned the original HomePod. There's a lot of people that own home pod. Minis that really that was their introduction to get involved with Apple's smart speakers and home smart speakers. So I think there's a lot of Mini owners that are like, I do want better sound now, and this HomePod is gonna be perfect for them.

Speaker 2

And here's the thing.

Speaker 1

Let's it sounds good, It's just it's different. Like okay, so the way I can describe it, and I'm not an audio file, but when I turned it on and played the first song, which I think was like Harry Styles as it was, I was a little bit surprised at the room filling nature was just not as apparent as it was on the first home Pod. Like the first HomePod, when I turned it on, I was like, wow, this is incredible, Like it just felt like the whole

room was filled with sound. With this new HomePod. I felt like I can pinpoint exactly where the HomePod was in the room and I can see where the audio was coming from. That's the best way I can describe it. And so it's not doesn't sound bad. It almost sounded like a less full than the original HomePod.

Speaker 2

Is that fair?

Speaker 8

Yeah?

Speaker 10

You know if for people that are really into I would say the different genres of music perform differently depending on how a speaker sounds, and the new HomePod does really emphasize the highs, which are like the voices, So the voices are really clear, they feel upfront. But the word that I used to describe how it's missing the aspect of when you're saying that it kind of feels like it's missing something is I use the word presence because when you're listening to the original HomePods, you feel

like the music is like surrounding you. You feel like you're right in the middle of the heart of it. And with the new HomePods, it doesn't establish that at all, and so you only know what you know. But you and I know, like, man, it just doesn't sound as good. But hopefully with some sort of tuning and over time maybe the speaker's breaking a little bit, maybe we start hearing a little some of those deeper tones. It helps

the audio quality. But if it's hard for I could never you know, looking at someone straight in the eye, I would never tell them that the new HomePod sounds as good as.

Speaker 4

The original one.

Speaker 1

That's that's really that's hurtful. Them are fighting words right there. We're talking to Briantongue YouTube dot com slash at Briantongue if you want to find his U tech videos there. Brian typically covers Apple in a big way, but also other tech as well, so definitely check out his videos. A couple other features real quick, I've got a couple of minutes here, uh, Enhanced audio return channel.

Speaker 2

I thought this was kind of cool. So if you have an.

Speaker 1

Apple TV four K, you can pair up the home pod with this and it's got this e ARC support, which means anything that's connected to that TV will actually run through the home pod. I thought that was kind of a cool feature. I don't know if you played with.

Speaker 10

That, you know what. I think that's imost forget that the Apple user, the general apper things to work and they don't even like they don't even care about ARC. But the fact that if you have an Apple TV and everything that kind of flows through that TV is played on your Apple speatures and you're and you might be going like, oh wow, I didn't have to plug

anything and it's just work. That's what Apple wants you to feel, right, And so that that's true to how they build their products for the general consumers.

Speaker 1

So I think feature the way I understand it, If I have my cable box plugged into the TV through HDMI and that cable box supports ARC, basically that audio will flow through the Apple TV and through the speakers as well.

Speaker 2

That's correct Okay, that's pretty cool.

Speaker 10

Yeah, And like I think there are people that won't even realize that's what's happening, but they'll be like, wow, this works everything right.

Speaker 1

Right, Okay, And finally we only have a minute here. But Matter is also built into this speaker, and you think that's going to be a pretty pretty good thing for the smart home ecosystem, huh.

Speaker 10

I think this is the biggest thing about Apple's Home home platform is that they really have been very lacking with smart devices that are compatible. When we're talking about doorbell cameras, thermostats, lights, wall plugs. Matter is going to allow all a lot of these devices that have never been compatible with Apple's Smart Home to finally be compatible

without you even listening to fingers. So I think as time goes on, this the actual home pod and this Matter smart home platform is going to really elevate it and make it just so much easier use. And this is Apple really getting serious about getting the smart home finally.

Speaker 2

Awesome.

Speaker 1

Brian tong thanks so much for joining me at Twitter dot com slash Briantongue. We used to be pals at c nets, so we've got a long history. Are you still in San Francisco, Like, are you on the cable car right now? That's what it sounds like.

Speaker 10

I'm not on the cable car, but I am in a car with my nephew. We are we are driving to get lunch right now?

Speaker 2

What kind of lunch are we talking? You're making me hungry?

Speaker 10

A little bit of country in a little breakfast for lunch. You know, I'm a breakfast.

Speaker 2

Guy, Rich, Oh, I love it. I love it.

Speaker 1

So am all right, Brian, thanks so much for joining me, and definitely check out Brian's videos and safe travels back here to Los Angeles. You are listening to Rich on Tech. My name is Rich Dmiro. The phone lines are open at triple eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. You got a tech question, give me a call. Welcome back to

Rich on Tech. My name is Rich Tomuro. You're listening to the show where we talk about technology and answer your calls at triple A Rich one O one eight eight rich one oh one. Let's go to Jay in Woodland Hills, California. Jay, you're on with Wretch.

Speaker 8

Thank you, Rich.

Speaker 2

How's going good?

Speaker 8

Thank you? I uh, this is a question regarding generated passwords on bit warten.

Speaker 2

Okay.

Speaker 8

So I went to my bank and I changed the password. And normally when you change the password, you know, you get that flag on the top of the screen.

Speaker 2

Sure updated youah updated. That didn't happen.

Speaker 8

And that didn't happen. So I'm out of my bank. So I googled how do retriees generated passwords? And I got this. It says, yes, you can view the history of the password generator from client applications generate a.

Speaker 2

Scream and it's not there.

Speaker 8

So how do I access the client applications generator screen?

Speaker 2

Okay?

Speaker 1

So if you go now, do you have bitwarden installed as a Chrome extension?

Speaker 8

Yes?

Speaker 2

Okay.

Speaker 1

So, and just to give you know, give a little perspective on this, Bitwarden is a very popular, free and open source password management system. And I recommend if you're listening to this, that you use a password generating app.

Speaker 2

And I know that it sounds like rich.

Speaker 1

I don't really want to get into that because, you know, like Jay is saying, there can be some problems with this situation. You know, like these passwords that they generate are twelve fourteen characters, they're long. I can't remember them. But it's better believe me. So yes. What happens is most of the time when you are generating a password, these systems will once you put that password in, it'll say, hey,

do you want us to save it? Like the Well, notice that you've tried a new password or you've generated a new password, and the system will pop up a little notification that will say do you want to either right over the old password or save the new password or whatever. And sometimes that doesn't happen, just depending on the architecture of the website that you're on, it just

may block that notification or whatever. Well, these password generators have gotten pretty good over the years and they've realized that when you generate a password, it should probably save that password.

Speaker 2

In some way.

Speaker 1

So on the extension, click the extension and there's a little section called generator and that can be used to generate a password.

Speaker 2

But there should also be an area that.

Speaker 1

Says password history, and if you click that password history, that should give you a list of all the different passwords that have been generated recently. Now this may not be perfect. They may not all be there. In fact, the one that was generated with your bank may not be there. But that's the first place to look. And I'm looking at my password management system and it's given me all the different passwords that I've generated all the way back to December nineteenth, So that's my last twenty

generated passwords. If it's before that, it may not be on there, but Jay, that's the place to look. If you can't find it in that Bitwarden password generator history, then you're going to have to do a password reset on your you know, your bank password, and then do a new password. And I know that's not ideal, but sometimes these things do get lost in the system and the shuffle whatever you want to call it.

Speaker 2

And for that.

Speaker 1

Reason, and you know, I passwords are very tricky because you don't you want to be very careful about these generated passwords.

Speaker 2

But what I'll do is.

Speaker 1

Sometimes even I'm a little hesitant to give out this advice, but sometimes if I really want to make sure that the password I just generated is going to be saved, I will copy and paste it into sort of my notes app, and then I'll make sure it's saved in my password management software and then I will delete it out of my notes app. Now that can cause some issues because your notes app or wherever you paste this thing.

Just being on the clipboard of your computer could not be as secure as I'd like, but it's, you know, in some ways easier just to have that peace of mind that you have that password somewhere, especially if it's for a big account like a Google or a Twitter or an Instagram or a Facebook like you don't want to lose that password because resetting can sometimes be a pain with those websites. So that's the place to look, Jay.

I'm glad that you're using a password manager, and Bitwarden is a good one because it's free, it works across multiple devices, it's relatively easy to use. It's open source, which means a lot of people have looked into the security of that password generating software, and a lot of people like it. Other password management software includes dash Lane, which is good, but it is a little pricey. I think they've introduced some new plans that are a little

bit easier to manage because they're monthly. Let's see, one password is also a very popular one. So one password used to be primarily for just Apple products. Now they've sort of gone across all different platforms, so one Password is a really good one as well. And if you're just on if you're just using Apple products, just use iCloud keychain. I mean, you know, if you've ever used the iPhone, it popped up where it says, hey, do you want us to generate a password or save a password?

That's iCloud keychain, and you could just use that. If you're only using Apple products, that's fine. I'm totally fine with that. But if you're using a combination of Apple and Android, or Apple and Chrome, or iOS and Chrome, then I would recommend one of these cross platform password managers like I just mentioned the other.

Speaker 2

One you can use.

Speaker 1

Google also has their own, so they have Google Password Manager and that realy got an update, and so that used to be really good. I would recommend it if you only used Chrome, but now they actually made it so that it integrates nicely into iOS. And so if you use a lot of Google products, you can use Google's password manager. And where you want to look on

this is on your iPhone. If you go into your settings and you go to type in autofill and then passwords, and then you can look at your password options and you can see auto fill passwords. You can turn that on or off, and it gives you the options. It says, where do you want to allow filling from? And it'll

give you all the different options. And one of them, if you have Chrome installed on your phone, is from Chrome and it's it's kind of a sleeper kind of feature because they introduced it, i think late last year and they didn't really publicize it too much. But if you want a free option that works and you're you're using let's just give you a scenario. You're primarily a Chrome user on your desktop computer and then you use

Chrome on your iPhone. That's a great system where you can just use Chrome's password manager and it will work on your computer, it will work on your iPhone. It will automatically fill things on your iPhone, and it's totally free. Now, you may not like Google that much to trust it with that stuff, but you know it's gonna work, and it's you know, like I said, it's cross platform. It's

totally free. And some of these other ones, like the one Passwords of the World and the dash lanes, you know, they can cost fifty sixty bucks a year, So if you're not prepared to pay that, and once you get into these systems, you know it's tough to get out.

Speaker 2

Yes, you can.

Speaker 1

Export all your passwords, but you know it takes a little bit to switch. And so my recommendation is to really think about the products that you use, and these password managers are sort of a long term thing that you want.

Speaker 2

To Once you get into it, it's tough to get out.

Speaker 1

So Jay, anyway, thanks for bringing up the password manager, because I'm always ready to talk about that because password manager two factor authentication, two things that every iPhone user, Android user, and computer user should absolutely be thinking about how to keep their data private and their their accounts safe. All Right, we've got much more of the show, so much more to talk about. We're going to talk about malvertizing in the next hour. I'm going to tell you

how to stay safe from that. Open ai is going to launch a paid version of their popular chat GPT. Do you need to pay twenty bucks a month for chat GPT?

Speaker 2

I don't know. We'll talk about that. Plus, I've got.

Speaker 1

A great interview coming up with the founders of an app that is billing itself as an alternative to Facebook. If you want to protect your privacy, you are listening to Rich on Tech. Phone lines are open at triple eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one. You are listening

to Rich on Tech. My name is rich DeMuro, tech reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles, talking about technology and all all the cool stuff that happens on your phone, on your computer, on the web, pretty.

Speaker 2

Much anything these days. I mean, I can't think of something that tech doesn't touch at this point.

Speaker 1

You can find me on social media. I am at rich on Tech, my website rich on tech dot tv. There you can find links to all my social media podcast version of this show, as well as some of the segments I do on KTLA, and just anything that I mentioned I pretty much put again the website rich on tech dot TV. All right, let's talk about malvertizing. This is a pretty serious thing. I haven't seen it

in a while, but it definitely happens. And this is when you search something on Google and one of the ads at the top of the screen looks like it's what you're trying to find. And mostly this happens with software that you're trying to download, but it delivers malware to your computer system. And this is an article out of Space House Haus Dot com talking about how they're seeing a whole bunch of malvertizing happening right now across

Google Ads. Now, Google Ads is pretty smart. Google is pretty smart, but there are people that are trying to evade their systems at all times. And so as smart as Google can be, they can't find everything, you know, instantly, and so these you know, bad actors, so to say, find ways of exploiting the Google system, and you know they do. So here's how it happens. Let's say you search. Let's say you want to download a piece of software. And some of the software examples they give our Adobe Reader,

Microsoft Teams, let's see what else, Slack and Thunderbird. And so you search for that software on Google and the top thing right at the top, let's just.

Speaker 2

Try it Thunderbird, And that's like a.

Speaker 1

You search for that and the first result is from an advertisment. And so a lot of times two things are happening here. A lot of times companies like Mozilla or whatever, they'll take out ads so that when you're looking for their software, you'll find it right at the top. And you'll see this is typically ads are marked at the top of Google. You know, they say ad let's see what do they say.

Speaker 2

I think they just changed it recently. I mean, trying to search for something that'll bring up an AD. There we go. Yeah, they're marked AD.

Speaker 1

And so if you look at Google, and this is just general, you know, if you just look at Google at the top of your search results, just you're going to see AD right now. I just search for mattresses, I'm seeing AD, AD, AD AD, then places and then the first result comes up way after that for mattress warehouse.

Speaker 2

So you're talking.

Speaker 1

If you're just looking at Google and clicking the top thing every time, you're probably clicking an AD most of the time. And that's why Google makes billions of dollars by the way. They've come up with this brilliant system that most people are just clicking the top link, like you know, a large percent of searches result and the first link is what gets clicked. And that's why SEO search engine optimization. That's why it's such a big business,

because people just want to be that first result. Because people go to Google and they just click the first result they see, whether it's an AD or not. And that's what's so brilliant about their their system is that you just see an AD, and you know, most people don't distinguish between ads and actual results. We call them organic search results. Those are a little bit further down. So now if we scroll further down, we can see the first organic search result is, you know, like I said,

Mattress warehouse. So just in general, be aware of what you're clicking on Google. So don't always just click the first thing that you see, especially on your phone. Google is a little tricky about this because they want they want you to click that that's how they make their money. So they will make it so that the AD results look the same as what we call organics search results.

Organic search results are the results that companies have earned right they have made their way to the top because they're trusted because a lot of other websites link to them. Google doesn't exactly tell us the special sauce that goes into this whole. You know, what makes a link the number one, but we know there's certain factors that contribute to that.

Speaker 2

So anyway, so I'm telling.

Speaker 1

You all this stuff so that you understand when you click that first link, it's not always the link of the organic website. It could be an AD. And so what these bad actors are doing is they are buying ads that look like they are going to bring you that software, whether it's Adobe Reader, whether it's Microsoft Teams, whether it's Slack, whether it's Thunderbird, and you click it and then it loads. In one example, I saw it's actually a dropbox link and it'll load software onto your system.

It will actually download software. And this is what they call malvertizing. And I've seen this happen. It's actually happened to me before. I've actually witnessed it on my own computer. It's been a couple of years. But this is something to just look out for. And so if you're clicking, you know, software links, just be aware of this and

really just look at the URL that you're downloading. A lot of times these companies, these you know, malvertizing, they will they will buy domains that look very similar to the domain that you're trying to find, you know, whether it's software or whatever, and so they'll they'll try to trick you even further. So just really be aware of what you're clicking, what you're downloading. Anytime you're downloading something into your system, you really got to be aware of

that download because that's that's when the problems start. If you're just surfing the web, like most of the time, it's going to be fine. But if you're downloading something and running that on your computer, that's when the problems can start.

Speaker 2

So just be aware. All right. Now, let's talk about chat GPT, And this is kind of.

Speaker 1

An upfront to Google because Google, we've gotten so used to Google being a place where we go and let's say you're searching for something and you click links, and you click links and you look for results. Well, chat GPT sort of turns that upside down. Chat GPT makes it so that you don't really have to click any links.

And people have really gotten excited about this because instead of having to click a whole bunch of links, chat gpt just does all the work for you and says, like, if you ask what's the best mattress, it will look out on the web to see all the different resources that talk about good mattresses, and it will concisely give you the answer of okay, based on all of our observations of the web, here's what we think are the top mattresses. And I'm not even sure that chatchipt can

do this. What I'll just ask it. Let's just ask what are the top mattress brands? Now, remember chat GPT was they kind of stopped the research in twenty Let's see it's I think it was in twenty twenty one. So it's not like up to date per se with the results because this is still a research project. Don't forget they're still seeing how this works. But I just asked it. Here are some of the what are the

top mattress brands? That says, here are some of the top mattress brands Casper, Purple, Nectar, Tufted Needle, Lisa, Temperpedick, and brook Linnen. And there's a little warning on my chat GPT that's I don't know what that warning is, but it's but again, it's not giving me a website result that is telling me these top brands. It went out and it said, Okay, we see a lot of people mention Casper, we see a lot of people mentioned Purple.

We see a lot of good reviews for Nectar. Now, I don't know if these are the best brands in that order, but I mean again, it's coming up with that on the fly, whereas Google would make me kind of go to these different websites and look and see like, Okay, what does this person say about Casper? What does this person say about Purple? So it's a totally different way

of thinking about search. Well, anyway, chat GPT has really taken the world by storm because people are finding so many things they can do with it, creating essays, poems, you can write an email to say, hey, can you apply for this job? Write me a cover letter and it'll do that, lyrics to songs. So now they already have their first product, Chat GPT plus. If you've used chat GPT, you know that sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

Sometimes it's slow, sometimes it's not very good, and so you may be thinking, Gosh, I would really like a much more reliable version of chat GPT, and I'm willing to pay for that, because if you're a salesperson or I don't know anything practically, some of these things that chat GPT can do can really help you out in your job. And so for twenty bucks a month, that is the new product, chat GPT plus.

Speaker 2

Now it depends if.

Speaker 1

This is worth it for you, because if you're using chat GPT, a lot of people are using the free version and it's working just fine, but some people have really kind of honed in on that and they're saying, I'm using this on a daily basis. Like let's say you're a salesperson and you're writing like custom emails to sell people on stuff, or you know, custom cover letters or custom whatever. This may be worth it for twenty books a month. So what do you get for chat

GBT Plus. Well, you get better access even during peak times. There's a lot of times when chat GPT says, ah, we just can't work right now. Faster responses and priority access to new features and improvements. So chat GPT says, the free tier is here to stay. But now you've got Chat GPT Plus, which, by the way, you can't sign up for immediately.

Speaker 2

It's kind of a wait list.

Speaker 1

But twenty bucks a month for full access to chat GBT and all that power is pretty incredible. It's also incredible that we've been using Google for free for so long and here's this newcomer and they're already saying, hey, look, we're going to give you priority access to us for twenty bucks a month, And the fact that people are going to pay for that is pretty incredible as well. You're listening to rich on Tech is Rich Demiro. We're

talking technology. We've got more of your calls coming up at Triple eight rich one on one coming up next. Uh In the show, I've got a guest who's going to talk about the alternative to Facebook that they've built. It's an app that protects your privacy even when you post.

Speaker 2

We'll be back.

Speaker 1

Welcome back to rich on Tech. You're listening to the show where we talk about technology and answer your questions. Yogi is in Belmont Shore, California. Yogi, you're on with Rich.

Speaker 6

Hi there, Rich Hi, Hi?

Speaker 4

Hey you hear me?

Speaker 2

Good? Right, I hear you great?

Speaker 5

Okay, what's going on here?

Speaker 6

My question is simple. I'm a T Mobile customer and my wife is yeah, my daughter's Verizon and all that stuff. But I hear about Consumer Cellular and Pure Talk and all these other phone you know, arrangements. I guess we'll call them. So can you easily explain or just come kind of tell me what would be? Why would I do that, why would I change to that? And what's the advantage. I know they're supposed to be cheap of

well no, why is that they exist? And kind of like what's the whole story around them.

Speaker 1

Okay, great question. This is uh, this is a really good question. So these are called mv and os and that means mobile virtual network operator. And so in the US, for example, we pretty much have three networks. We have T Mobile, we have AT and T, and we have Verizon, and I believe Dish is building their own network as well, so that will be up and coming. But the reality is all of the cell phone service that we have

in America is pretty much these three companies. And so when you see all these advertisements about Visible and Cricket and US Mobile and like you said, Consumer Cellular, they are all running on one of these networks. And so what's the difference. Okay, think about it this way. Let's say that you know, you get a hamburger and you've got three friends. They all season that burger differently and

grill it differently and serve it to you differently. One of those might be better to you, might taste better, it might look better, it might be more appealing. So that's really the big difference. So I think it comes down to two things. Number One, you want to figure out which network do you like, and whether you know you can you can figure out online which of these networks these mv and o's run off of. So for instance, if you look up Visible, you'll find that that's actually

owned by Verizon. If you look up Cricket, you'll find that that's owned by AT and T. T Mobile probably has the most mv and os running off of their network. It's just I don't know why, it's just the way it is, but they just have a lot of these different companies that run off a T Mobile. I guess T Mobile resells their network a lot, so I would figure, you know, I'm just looking up a list of some

of these things. Mint Mobile, that's another big one. Ultra Boost Mobile Boost I believe is now owned by Dish Network. You've got Google five, You've got Red Pocket. I mean, there are so many different mv and os out there. So again, what it comes down.

Speaker 2

To is what's best for you.

Speaker 1

So what these companies do is the service of the line and also the features of the line. So for instance, there's an mv and O called US Mobile, and what they specialize in is that you can pretty much customize your plan with exactly the features that you need.

Speaker 2

So let's say you.

Speaker 1

Want, you know, just texting and calling and just a tiny bit of data. You can configure a line like that. Let's say you want unlimited everything. There are systems like that. Let's say you want unlimited everything for a very cheap price every month. Visible might be something that appeals to you. So it all comes down to the network that you want and also the features that you want, and which one of these companies packages it in a way that

appeals to you most. Now there is another side, and I was actually talking to the folks at one of the major cellular companies about this, the idea of do these third party companies have the same sort of access and priority to the line that you would have if you were a you know, a subscriber directly. So let's say you're on T Mobile and the person next to you is on Mint and you're both trying to access

the network in a crowded place. So there are some people that think that maybe these mv and o's don't have as much priority on the network as the you know, first party customers. And I don't know that to be true or not, Like I didn't really get that sense from the mobile carrier that I was talking to, Like they said, no, everyone pretty much has the same act access.

So but there could be a way like your if your network is way cheaper, that could be another place where they kind of save, like the priority is just not there. So what it really comes down to again to me, when it comes to, you know, choosing a cellular carrier, it's where does it work? Does it work where you live, does it work where you work? And does it work where you play? Those are the kind

of things that I think is the most important. So if you want to go with one of these third party carriers, you know, see if T Mobile works where you, you know, use your phone the most. See if AT and T works where your phone is the most, see if Verizon works where your phone is the most, and also travel. Some of these third party mv and os they may not have international data, or it may be really expensive, or they may not have perks like free Netflix and stuff like that, so you might not need

all that stuff. But that's really how I size up these networks. So for instance, I've got a family member who has been on Mint Mobile for a very long time, and every time she tells people about mint Mobile and how much she pays, I think it's like fifteen bucks a month. They're always like, wait, how do you pay fifteen bucks a month when I'm paying, you know, forty fifty sixty seventy eighty dollars a month for my phone line. And it's quite simple. The person who's on that line

just doesn't use a lot of data. She doesn't need a ton of data. So why pay for an unlimited data plan at sixty to eighty dollars a month when you're not using a lot of data. You're not streaming music, you're not streaming YouTube, you're not you know whatever, So why pay all that extra? So it really the main carriers have specialized in these unlimited plans that are very very pricey. They're very expensive, they're very premium, and they

come with a lot of stuff. You may not need all of that stuff, but it's just been the default forever to go to one of these big plans, and so that's that's what a lot of people kind of gravitate to, and they don't really understand, like, I can get the same level of cellular service from a different company that's may not be as well known or may not be as big of an advertiser on network TV.

Speaker 2

So anyway, look.

Speaker 1

Into them, see which company does what you need, and you know, try them out.

Speaker 2

You can always switch back. It's very easy to switch. You're listening to rich on Tech. My name is rich Demiro.

Speaker 1

We're talking technology, we're talking gadgets, and coming up, I'm going to tell you how to enable Gmail's new package tracking features, so if you use Gmail, it can now track your packages right inside your app. We're also going to talk to the CEO of an app named True. True bills itself as an alternative to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. It's an app that lets you share with your friends, but it does not collect your personal information. It does not sell you ads, it does not track you. I

am on there, should you be on there? We'll talk to the CEO of True. Coming up next, you're listening to Rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.

Speaker 2

My name is Tomiro.

Speaker 1

If you follow me on social media, you know that I've been testing out a new social media app called True. This is the anti Facebook. No tracking, no ads, doesn't collect a whole bunch of personal information, and.

Speaker 2

It's kind of slick. Let's bring on.

Speaker 1

Brett Coxy is the CEO of True, the San Francisco based app.

Speaker 2

Brett welcome to the show.

Speaker 11

Rich thanks for having me on.

Speaker 3

I appreciate it.

Speaker 1

All right, So True, can you explain what it is exactly?

Speaker 6

Sure?

Speaker 11

So kind of you know, over covid, I got so fed up with Facebook that I decided to build a replacement, if you can believe that. It may sound crazy, but you know, the thinking was, Wow. You know, we never agreed to allow these large companies to be in the middle of our friendships, to be in the middle of our relationships. Yet there they are. You know, they're watching every move that we and they're selling all that information through the highest bidder and making money through selling us

targeted advertising, our information through targeted advertising. And I thought that we could build something that respected user privacy and got back to those things that matter, which we felt were you know, real friends in real life without monetizing your personal information.

Speaker 1

Now I get a lot of pitches for new apps, especially apps that want to replace Facebook or social media whatever, and quite honestly, I don't do a lot of stories on them because I'm like, I take the let's wait and see kind of approach. But when I checked out True and you can go to the website try True dot com, slash rich on Tech. To see what we're talking about here, try true dot com slash rich on Tech. What drew me to doing a story with you for ktla is the fact that this app is well designed.

It works equally well on iOS and Android. It looks slick, and it seems like it has a chance of taking off in a big way because all the good boxes are checked like it's not tracking you. It really works nicely. It allows me to do what I want to do, which is create a group thread. You can have several of these, whether it's with your family members, whether it's with your friends, whether it's with your kids basketball team, and it lets you share again privately. So tell me

how has it been. What's been the reception of this app brand?

Speaker 11

Well, you know, it's funny. We lost it around in the summer last year and we were watching it grow and grow and grow over the holidays. It doubled and tripled and quadrupled in terms of the number of people using it, and recently it's just kind of exploded. You know. We said from the very very beginning that we thought we could build this product. Gone are the days where two guys in a garage can build the next big

thing in social These products are very complicated. You mentioned that it's a beautiful, functional product, and it's because we spent a lot of time and effort to make it that way. We realized that we had to make a social network that was on par in quality with the Facebook family of apps, but make it private, and so that's what True is. It's a very high quality product.

As you mentioned on both iOS and androids. It allows you to be as private or as public as you want to be, and a lot of thought and time has gone into it and we're pleased with the growth so far this year.

Speaker 1

So yeah, So the app is private by default, so when you set up a thread, it's private, and you can make it public if you want. Like I have a thread called rich on Techi's which I've been experimenting with. I've got a couple hundred people hanging out in there, and I can make a post and anyone can join this thread without me approving them.

Speaker 2

But if you.

Speaker 1

Want, let's say one with just your family members, you would invite them by sending them a link. They would you know, you would approve them, and then you would all be in this group together where you can chat. You can exchange pictures, you can exchange videos, you can comment on things. And you might be saying, well, rich, can I just use group messaging for that? Well, group messaging is fine, but cross platform if you're just using SMS, is not very good because pictures and videos will not

come through it a good resolution. You know, if everyone has an iPhone, sure you're using I message, but you know it can get messy because people text at different hours of the day. And so this is much more like a way where you can post something and people can comment and exchange ideas and thoughts at any time of the day, and you can come to when you have the chance to kind of look at this stuff.

My next question, Brett, is really about if you're not doing ads, if you're not tracking people, I mean, Facebook makes a lot of money on us, how are you going to keep this thing going right?

Speaker 11

So we have a plan to use keyword based advertising in public threads only. So if you think about it. When you start with truth, you sign up, you tell us you know what. The creator creates a thread on Truth, they decide exactly what keywords apply to it. So a running thread might have running keywords, a family something that has to do with hiking. Might have hiking keywords, and then whenever you look for threads to consume untrue that

are public, you also enter keywords. We're doing a system it's very similar tout got if you're familiar with this, which is a keyword based advertising system that people can see ads only in creator threads. The creator has to publish that thread to us, otherwise we have to approve it more to be released on the platform, but allows us to monetize through public content, but still keep private

content private and an ad free experience. So we've been saying for a while we can make enough money with this model to be wildly successful and you'll never see another advertisement in a private thread as long as you're on True, so all of your family, everything that you share with that group remains the same, that experience will remain the same, and then you can consume public content if you decide to.

Speaker 1

My guest right now is Brett Cox. He is the CEO of San Francisco based True, the website try True dot com, slash rich on tech. If you want to join my rich on techies group, you can also download the app there or become Brett's friend as well. So Brett, how are people using this.

Speaker 11

App right now? You know what we notice? Rich And by the way, congratulations on having one of the fastest growing threats I think we've ever seen on True. You went from zero to I think you're over three hundred and fifty getting closer to four hundred members, you know, in no time. But you know, what we're seeing is we saw people begin to get off the big social networks like Facebook, and they started moving to private messaging products,

specifically with their families. In other words, they did want to share their personal lives on blasts in a public form. They wanted to share pictures of their kids and their pets with smaller groups of families in a private way. And so I like to explain that True is a social platform that's organized like a private messaging platform. So this makes it id you'l for sharing privately, you know, if you kind of think about it, We don't broadcast

our authentic lives and public. We kind of share discreetly with groups of people we already know. And we also belong to different communities where we share different parts of ourselves. And so what we're seeing is people coming onto the product. They'll typically start with families and then they'll start to consume other contents they find interesting. And right now it's taking off. We couldn't be happier.

Speaker 1

So when you create a post on the app, once you sign up, you can post a picture or video, you can post a jiff, you can post a let's see. You can make your post public or private. And then you also have this little lifespan option, so you can say pick how long your post lives forever, a week or a day. So that's kind of a cool feature. Tell me about some of the options for posts.

Speaker 11

Sure, you know, if you think about it, all the larger companies they make money by mining all this information, keeping it for a long period of time, and then deciding how to sell things to you. Right, we don't have that. We don't keep any information. We don't monetize personal information. We don't we don't watch it, we don't mind it, we don't analyze it, we don't look at it, and certainly we don't share it with any third parties.

So in the example that you just gave, you can set a live span for your information and you can live in a bubble as you move through time with your post deleating themselves behind you, and no one will see the content forever, if you like. We have a variety of new things coming. We have the ability to do things like leave the easter eggs, and we have some interesting things coming around around them, attacking locations and

building interactive stories with your friends. One of the things I'm most excited about that we have coming up rich is a product called days which allows you to build an interactive story over a vacation or a period of time or a weekend collaboratively with friends, and then share that into a threat either privately, privately or publicly. It's things like this that I think will set us apart really strongly from other other big social networks.

Speaker 1

Okay, finally, how do you convince someone to try this, to download it? I mean, there's so many apps out there, it's another sign up, it's another thing to check. How do you convince someone to actually give this a chance?

Speaker 11

You know, what we've seen is that there's actually a built in cohort of people that have had enough. Right, They're fed up with this surveillance capitalism. They're fed up with being watched all the time. They're fed up with these companies knowing what they do before they do, and so they want there's a gap in the market right now that we think we can fill that that's caters to those kinds of people we see over and over again when people come on to the product, they say,

thank you, thank you, thank you. This is great. Please give us more of it. And what we're trying to do is explain to people like, look, there's great choices for sharing things publicly on Blast, Instagram, Facebook, they do that really, really well. But if you want to have a place that feels like home where you share your most intimate and genuine memories, True is that product for you. It allows you to do that with a smaller group

of people. We like to say that we're making social a safe place again without monetizing your personal information.

Speaker 1

All right, Brett, we're gonna leave it there. Thanks so much for joining me today. I do appreciate it. Brett Coox, CEO of San Francisco based True. If you want to check out the app we were talking about, it is, try True dot com slash rich on tech. You can join my rich on Techies group there. I'm still trying to figure out exactly what to share inside my True app, but it's kind of a cool place you're listening to rich on Tech. Coming up, we're going to close out

the show. We're going to talk about gmails, new package tracking, and Apple adds another streaming service. We'll talk about that when we come back. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Dmiro hanging out with you here talking technology. One of the things we should talk about is Gmail. They've got this. If you order as many packages as I do, you're always looking like when they're getting delivered, You're always tracking them, seeing if they've been delivered or seeing what

day they're supposed to arrive. And so now Gmail can do this all for you. So new feature inside Gmail. This was announced back in November, but now it's rolling out inside the Gmail app. So Google basically scans your emails for package tracking information like a UPS or a FedEx number, and then it will display that information right inside your inbox.

Speaker 2

And so this could be really helpful.

Speaker 1

Instead of, you know, if you're like me, you get these tracking emails, you archive them, and then maybe you'll look for them when you're.

Speaker 2

Like, wait, when's that thing coming again?

Speaker 1

So now this would just show it right in the inbox view, so you can just glance at your inbox and see, you know, okay, is it arriving, is it late?

Speaker 2

Is it delayed?

Speaker 1

And so Gmail sort of pings these little tracking numbers and will update the information in real time so that you don't have to click every single time you want to check the status of this package. So the feature is here, and you may see an option at the top of your inbox to activate it. If you want to activate this manually, you can do it. And I looked on my both on Android and iPhone and it wasn't active, which and I never saw any sort of like, hey,

do you want to activate this? So if you have an iPhone, you can open up your Gmail app, go into the menu on the left hand side and then click settings and then scroll all the way down to data Privacy, which they kind of put it in a scary place because who wants to like go into like data privacy and see something that's like inherently not that private, Like Google's going to look at your tracking numbers, but they've got your email, so I think it's probably fine.

And then once you go into data privacy, you'll see an option for package tracking. You can toggle that on now on Android it's very similar. You go to the Gmail settings, you go to general and then package tracking, and it says Gmail will share tracking numbers for your package with shipping carrier, and that's giving them the permission to look up these various tracking numbers. And so once you do that, Google will do it and put it in your inbox. You can always turn this off if

you don't like it. But I have yet to see a package show up with this information. I just ordered something today, so I'm embarrassed to say what it is, but i will.

Speaker 2

Yeah, I don't know if I yeah.

Speaker 1

Anyway, it's soaps. It's these soaps that I really like. It's it's a burly soap brand, like it has a let's put a sasquatch as their mascot.

Speaker 2

So if you know what I'm talking about, I just I you know, these.

Speaker 1

Soaps are They're more expensive than they should be, but I've grown to just kind of like them. And so now I'm ordering soap online and you know, ordering a bunch of bars at the same time, and they get shipped out. And the first time I did this, it was actually during the pandemic, and it took so long to get my delivery that.

Speaker 2

Uh, you know, I've always said that. I always think this is funny.

Speaker 1

If you ever want a toiletry that you have, whether it is toothpaste, deodorant, shampoo, some sort of face wash, if you ever want it to last a really long time, just go out and buy a new item, And for some reason, when you do that, your old item will last forever because you're excited to use the new one, whether it has a new scent, whether it's you know, something that hasn't improved formula, whatever it is, different brand, you're so excited to break into that new toothpaste or whatever,

that the old one just will last forever. Just to mess with you, And so just try it. I've tried this so many times. It is a theory that I have that just seems to work. You want your old thing to last, just buy the new one.

Speaker 2

Anyway.

Speaker 1

So that's what happened with this soap, is that I was running out of my old soap and the new one just would not arrive, and I kept checking and I'm like, what is going on. It turns out that during the pandemic, I guess this business just had a lot of business and they couldn't keep up and so now when I order it come in like a couple

of days. Like the last time I ordered it, I couldn't believe how fast it came like next day practically, But that will be the first probably use when I get this tracking number in my Gmail, it'll it'll be my first use of this new feature, so I can see where my where my soap is in the world. Okay, uh, and then let's talk about this Apple. Apple is just wild with their Their business just sees no end at this point. And so they've got they just purchased Major

League Soccer. Uh, they purchased the streaming rights to Major League Soccer. I think for like how many years it might be, is it ten years?

Speaker 2

So ten years?

Speaker 1

Major League Soccer is now going to be on Apple TV. And Apple TV is a little confusing because Apple TV is a box. But then you have Apple TV, which is a service now, and then you have Apple TV Plus, which is like the Apple you know, original programming. So this is now now inside the Apple TV app. You can get MLS season pass. Season kicks off February twenty fifth. And I'm not telling you this because I'm a big soccer fan or anything like that, although I do think

soccer is fun. But I'm telling you this because we are seeing the first shift in the sports world when it comes to streaming of sports. Now, sports are streaming in a lot of different places. We've seen Amazon purchase the rights to Thursday Night Football, We've seen NBA League Pass. There's a whole bunch of different ways to watch stuff. The Clippers here in Los Angeles, they've got their own

streaming service that they started this year. But there's one thing that Apple is doing very differently, and they are letting you watch every single game without any sort of exclusions. So typically when these companies negotiate rights, the games that are local to your area are still sort of kept on a service that is like a local channel or you know, it's not on them like not anyone can access that if you're in that area. So if you're

a sports fan, you know what I'm talking about. So what Apple did and they tried to buy I forget whatever what else it was, but they tried to buy another sports package, and the sports teams were just like, now, we're not giving you that because sports is evolving and they make a lot of money on these games, and so I guess with MLS. They saw an opportunity and so every single game will be aired. You'll be able to access them as a subscriber with consistent match times

and no blackouts. This is a first in live sports broadcasting. So you'll be able to see a couple of games for free. Actually, so you can go to a MLS Soccer dot com slash schedule to see the full schedule and which games are free on Apple TV the app during the first month. And Apple is also doing a whole bunch of other things where they've got stuff inside Apple Map where you can see different bars to watch

the games a and to like enjoy. They've got a new MySports section on the Apple tv app, and then they've got where you can.

Speaker 2

Ask Siri for information about MLS.

Speaker 1

So the first season is going to be fourteen ninety nine a month or ninety nine bucks for the whole season, or if you're an Apple TV Plus subscriber, you can subscribe for twelve ninety nine a month or seventy nine dollars for the whole season. All right, that is gonna do it for today's show if you can believe it, Wow, show number five in the can. Next week we're going to talk to the inventor of an app that lets you scan your sports cards and your Pokemon cards to find out their value.

Speaker 2

That is a really cool app. Once again, you can.

Speaker 1

Find me on social media at rich on tech across all the different platforms. I meant to tell you I did post something silly on Instagram today. I posted my chocolate sou fla from last night and all the name of testing the S twenty three Ultra. So if you want to see that video, go to my Instagram, my website rich on tech dot tv. There you can watch my TV segments. My name is rich Demiro. Thanks so much for listening. There are so many ways you can

spend your time. I do appreciate you spending it right here with me. I'll talk to you real soon.

Transcript source: Provided by creator in RSS feed: download file
For the best experience, listen in Metacast app for iOS or Android
Open in Metacast