008 Rich on Tech Radio Show - February 25, 2023

Channel five in Los Angeles. Still drying off from getting into the studio, Welcome to the show. Phone lines are open at one eight eight eight Rich one oh one. That's triple eight seven four to two four one zero one. Give me a call if you have a question about technology. We'll take your calls, answer your questions, and just be here for you. As you know, I'm broadcasting live from Los Angeles, typically known for its sun and fun, but the last couple of days it has been all about rain.

It has been snowing. There's been sleet, something called I think it's groppol. I don't know who calls it that. No one I know we has called it sleet. It has been non stop. It was so rainy over the past couple of days. You would not believe you're in Los Angeles. It's so rainy and wet in Los Angeles, the plants are like, okay, we'll never complain about being thirsty again. It's so rainy and wet in Los Angeles. At this point, the ocean is jealous of the land.

It is so rainy and wet. In Los Angeles. The four or five at this point is just one big slip in slide. It is so rainy and wet. In Los Angeles. Umbrellas, yes, umbrellas are refusing to go outside. It is so rainy in Los Angeles. The Hollywood Sign is now surrounded by a moat. It's so rainy. In Los Angeles, studios just greenlit Noah's Ark two and this one I got. It's so rainy in Los Angeles. California Pizza Kitchen is now the Rainforest Cafe, still serving the

same thing though it's so rainy. In Los Angeles, Apple rushed out a software update to enable underwater mode. Yeah, you'll find it right next to airplane mode. It's so rainy in Los Angeles. Weather apps just gave up. And it's so rainy in Los Angeles. I had to take Uber canoe to the studio today. All right, I don't know. You know, look, the rain gets you a little, you know, cooped up, Like I was inside all night last night. I was wondering if, like the roof is gonna fly

off with the wind. So I hope you enjoyed my dad jokes. I don't know, maybe let me know what you think. But in all seriousness, this rain is a very serious thing in California, in Los Angeles because we're just not used to it. So of course I'm a little introspective and thinking about weather apps. So I posted to my Instagram today at richon Tech a bunch of useful weather apps. Now here's the thing. Bill, one of the folks behind this show, actually talked about this very

idea for one of the first shows. He said, rich you should talk about how dark sky is no longer a thing and Apple bought them and you know, some alternative weather apps. And I was like, Bill, do people really care? Let's be honest, there's there are two types of people in this world. People that care about the weather forecast and people that do not care about the weather forecast. My wife is a weather forecast fanatic. She

checks her apps every minute of the day. It drives everything she does, from what she wears to work in the morning to what she plans for the afternoon to her drive. So let me give you a little background about dark Sky. So this was an app and a company that was very, very popular, and the reason they were popular is they had this really spot on notification technology that if it was going to start raining, they would send you a notification saying, hey, we're predicting rain

in your area in the next seventeen minutes. You'd be like, what, how do they know? How do they do this? I don't know how they do it? But it was so good and it was pretty much the favored weather app for both Android users and some iOS users until Apple decided, you know what, this is pretty good technology, let's purchase it. So they purchased this technology. I think it was like back in a couple of years ago, and then immediately

they shut down the Android app. So all the Android users were like, nap, sorry, no more, no more Dark Sky for you. And then they took the technology and they mixed it into their own weather app. So if you have an iPhone, you've probably seen those little notifications that say, hey, it's going to start raining your location in the next you know, eight minutes. That's all because

of dark Sky. And then they're going ahead and they're going to shut down these other what's called an API, So other weather apps were able to tap into dark Sky and use that information to make their apps better. That's called an API. Well, now Apple is going to shut that off as of according to the website March thirty first, twenty twenty three. But I think they actually extended that. I think that was supposed to happen last year, but I think because of the pandemic and all that stuff,

they said, Okay, we'll throw you a bone. We'll let it stay for a little bit longer. So all these apps that rely on dark Sky for this really cool technology are now suddenly like, okay, now what do we do? So I went through and I looked at some of my favorite apps and some of the useful apps out there, and I kind of did a little Instagram post. So if you want to check it out, go to go to my Instagram at rich on Tech and I'll go through some of these apps and some of them were

suggested by users as well. But the first one is called Windy. This app is really great if you love full screen visualization. So if you just like seeing what it looks like around you outside from space, this is just a fantastic app for that because it lets you scroll through all different kinds of visualizations, whether it's precipitation, whether it's wind, whether it's lightning, and it's just a nice big map to see that and that big map animation sort of like what you see on the news. Right.

So Windy is the app for you. If you like that. Then there's an app called Overdrop, and this is one of my favorites. This is a very minimalistic app. It's very beautiful. Some people are calling it the Dark Sky two point zero because it's easy to understand, it looks really good, it functions very good. All of the basics are on one page, so they've got these nice, beautiful animations.

At the top. You could see exactly what you need to know, like the current conditions, the hourly forecast, and then you can scroll down and see the rest of what you need. Plus they do precipitation notifications and so if you like those notifications that used to get especially on Android from Dark Sky, Overdrop can maybe fill that void now Overdrop is still powered by dark Sky, but I was reading on their website and they said, no, no,

we've got some tricks up our sleeve. We're gonna switch to some other providers once dark Guy goes away, but right now they're still able to use that one. Now, another app that's really bright and kind of fun, and this is a very good app. I recommended it to my mom and she used it for many many years is called Hello Weather, and again very much like Overdrop, but it's minimalistic. It's got nice, big kind of graphics.

It's got big bar charts that just tell you what you need to know, so you get this nice, rich visualization of the week ahead. So I can see today we've got one hundred percent rain the forecast, Tomorrow it's fifty five percent. Monday it's back to one hundred percent, then Tuesday ninety five percent, Wednesday ninety percent. Oh my gosh, what is happening here in California? And then Thursday it'll be sunny. But I can see that really easily on this app. So that one is very nice and simple

to use. Now this next app, you're gonna love her hate. It's called Carrot Weather, and I actually interviewed the founder of this app a couple of years ago, and it's so funny. Nice guy, but you go on this app and it is sooner for snarky and people love that about this app. So, if you want your weather with personality, Carrot Weather is where you got to go. So you can choose from You've got this slider and you can

choose from whatever you want your weather to be. Like, okay, so you've got personality from just fun, sorry, just regular, Then you've got friendly, then you've got snarky, then you've got homicidal, and then you've got overkill, which may have the creative use of profanity in the forecasts. So if you like your forecast with profanity, Carrot Weather is the one you want. Now there's also a political slant to this one, so you can have a slider for how

do you like your weather delivered? You can have a political centrist, liberal, conservative, libertarian, communist, or anarchist. I don't know what that means when it comes to weather, but you can try it out weather and people like it because it's also very simple. Then you've got an app

called Underground. And the thing about Underground, it's actually I think it's like Weather Underground, but it's from the same folks that do the Weather Channel, which is now owned by IBM, which is not the same as the Weather Channel on your TV by the way, so they're different as far as I know. So the Weather Channel or Weather Underground Underground uses data from two hundred and fifty thousand personal weather stations, so they boast these hyper local

weather forecasts. It also collects some information from your phone sensors, and I know that the Weather Channel kind of got in trouble for that when people realized that they were using that information, so just be aware of that. But this one is really very simple. It's kind of basic, but it has all the information you need if you want to take that deep dive again, same company as the Weather Channel. And then finally we've got this app called climb Clime. This has a great radar imagery plus

all the vitals. So if you just want to scroll through and see the wind, the visibility, the AQI, the humidity, and the moon phase all in one place, you got it on this app, plus the big radar screen. It also has notifications for precipitation, so if you like that it has it. It also has notifications for major changes like lightning or other things that are happening with the weather. Now those require payment. Like a lot of these apps are kind of the freemium model, which means the basics

are free, but you're gonna pay for the rest. And this one out of all the apps, I mean, they all push kind of a paid product, but this one really pushes their paid product. I was getting a notification or a pop up screen to switch to the paid stuff like very very often on this one. So that's called climb anyway, let me know in the comments. Go to my Instagram at richon Tech, tell me which weather

app is your favorite. Of course, if you have a local TV station in your area, like I work for KTLA, they have their own weather apps as well, so you can check those out because people like those because there's a real human behind them in their neighborhood is helping to program that information. But again, weather apps, uh, if you use one, let me know. I know. My wife has her favorite. She's checking it all the time and it's just the Weather Channel. After I posted this today,

she goes, I'm just pretty basic. I used the Weather Channel. I said, that's fine. Whatever works for you. All right, phone lines are open at triple eight rich one O one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Got a lot coming up on this show, Great guests. This week, we're going to talk to the director of the Worldwide Day of Unplugging. We're going to talk about an app that's like Uber, but you can

make money doing other people's dirty laundry. Plus, we're going to talk about how young people continue to drive Apple sales. Plus your calls up next at triple eight rich one O one. You are listening to Rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. I'm Rich Demiro. This is the show where we talk about technology and answer the questions you have about technology. You can find me online at richontech dot TV. Alex is in Northridge kicking off

this hour, Alex. Welcome to the show. How can I help? Hello, Alex, am I doing something wrong? Okay? Do I hear you? Alex?

they advertised, and this commercial really landed with people. It was Google. They showed a whole bunch of pictures, whether it was including you know, some random person in the background or an x and they said, look, if you want to clean up your pictures and fix them up and get them right, try Magic Eraser. And this is a feature that's really been kind of the selling point

of Pixel phones for many years now. It was launched I don't know if it was launched with a Pixel six perhaps, but it was exclusive to that phone, and then it came to the Pixel seven. And you know, Google's gotten a lot of mileage out of this because it allows you to just highlight something in a picture, whether that's a person or an object, tap a button and it disappears. And of course Google using artificial intelligence and all their machine learning to figure out how to

do this and make the picture look pretty good. And so if you wanted this feature, you had to go to a Pixel and Samsung has a similar feature on their phones in Samsung Labs called Eraser, and it works pretty well. But again, Google kind of has the lock on this. Well now, they said in a blog post that Google Photos features are coming to not only more pixel phones, but anyone who pays for storage on Google

that has an Android or an iOS phone. So if you want to access Magic Eraser, all you have to do is download Google Photos and be a paying member of Google one. So this means that you're paying for storage above and beyond the fifteen gigs that Google typically gives you included. So the plans are one hundred gigs starts at two dollars a month, two hundred gigs of storage starts at three dollars a month, two terabytes starts

at ten dollars a month. And if you pay for any of those plans, you now have access to Magic Eraser, which is really cool on both Android and iOS. The other thing you're going to get is this new HDR video effect, So if you want to make your videos look better with HDR, you can now export them with this new effect, so it will balance dark foregrounds and bright backgrounds or vice. Versa and again machine learning, artificial intelligence. This is a huge deal that Google is now allowing

this feature to work on so many more phones. It's rolling out now. So if you don't have it in your Google Photos just yet, you know, keep checking and make sure you have those updates. All right, I'm told Alex is back. Alex is in north Ridge unless I'm doing something wrong with the phones? Can you hear me, Alex, Yes, sir, I can. How are you welcome to the show? What can I help you with?

finding that may work. There is a Microsoft app called Mouse Without Borders and this says it can control up to four computers with a single mouse and keyboard. This is a product that has been out for a while. Says it was released in September twenty eleven, and so you know, that's something you can try, and it may work with the mouse that you have already. That's probably the easiest way. Now, that's given that these are all

Microsoft computers, right are Windows computers? I should say if it's a combination of computers, then you might want to look at an app called Synergy. Synergy and Synergy lets you work up to three computers, and it does look like it works across Windows, Mac Os, Linux, and Raspberry Pie if you are running those Now you mentioned you're running a music program a lot of times if you're doing content creation, folks are working on a Mac computer.

So I think that would be probably your best solution is either the switch or the Synergy. Alex. Sorry, I don't have time for your second questions. I got to run to break here, but thank you so much, and let me know if that works all right? Coming up, we are gonna do a great interview. This is something

that a lot of people have debated. The blue versus the Green bubble article went viral this week that says gen Z users are so loyal to the iPhone and those blue bubbles that they sell a lot of Apple products plus your phone calls at Triple eight Rich one on one eighty eight seven four to two, four to one zero one. You're listening to Rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. My name is Rich Demiro,

tech reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles. This is the show where we talk about technology and answer your questions. And one of the age old debates in technology is iPhone versus androids, specifically the green bubble versus the blue bubble or vice versa, depending on which side you're sitting on. And this was an article this week that went viral. It's in the Financial Times how Apple captured gen Z in the US and change their social circles.

Patrick McGee is the author. He's joining me now, Patrick, Welcome to the show.

them are really getting into the metaverse. Google is sort of being taken over by obviously chat GBT in the last few months, but even before that, you know TikTok where people are doing you know, sort of like video mapping as a way to sort of find a restaurant, right preferences are selected by people that they know or other TikTokers rather than a sort of Yelp type review

that you might find through Google. So it just seems like, you know, big tech is obviously massive, but it doesn't necessarily have the next generation until you look at Apple, where not only is it sort of continuing to have a hold on the next generation, it's got a massive stay change where you've got upwards of ninety percent of American teenagers already have an iPhone and continue to want an iPhone for the next hand set.

They would rather have an Apple Watch. But yeah, the Apple Watch Ultra is basically eating into the dominance that Garment has in watches for Ultra marath outons and the leg Now one.

sort of similar you know tool is I Message. So in a sense, Apple was actually just sort of like creating its own technology and releasing it to the iPhone at a time when I Message was superior to SMS, and so that was clever on their part. But what happened is, you know, I sort of like a sort of well, you know, so if you're messaging on I Message, all the messages are blue, just to show you, you know,

it's not sort of trying to build a community. It's just telling you that everything's operating through IM message, right, But if you are either sort of on Wi Fi or operating on an Android, it will just show that it's a green that it will show its green purely to indicate that it's a different messaging like default system. Then it's sort of how you and I and teenagers

sort of began to feel about that, right. And so what happens is it's not just this aesthetic thing between blue and green bubbles, and I think a lot of

people wrongly think that it is. It's that if you have a group of iPhone users and accept into the group chat a single Android user, everybody's message goes green, right, Which is to say that instead of the rich media service I Message, you have SMS, which means that even if you're an iPhone user sending a message to another iPhone user, you're going to have glitchy system where the definition of the video and the pictures that you take and are not as good as they would be with

I Message. So I just want to make that clear. It's not an aesthetic thing. And it was so sort of inadvertent on the part of Apple's part, But over the last decade, Apple has begun to understand that this is quite a selling point and that the sort of community elements that they inadvertently built has actually really paid off with them.

your smartphones? And basically Apple just ignored this whole campaign, and I think it sort of fell flat with consumers that didn't really resonate. Do you think Apple's to blame here for not including rcs and their phones at this point?

she is an Android. And Tipcok's answer, with a big laugh, was by your mom and iPhone.

find an issue with this. Now. I understand that I do like the whole IE message platform, and I do feel a certain way when I'm messaging people on I Message versus Android, because you just feel like you can exchange you know, a video or you know, a picture and it's going to come through at full resolution, and there's been problems like let's say you're at your kids baseball game and you know, you take a video of another kid and he gets a good you know, a

good hit or something, and the parents like, oh, you share that with me, and you're like, cool, I'll just air drop it, and you're like, oh, you've got Android. I can't do that. It's a it's a real thing, not just for gen Z. By the way, we're talking to Patrick McGee. He is a tech reporter for the Financial Times, and we're talking about his article about how Apple Basically he believe that sales of Apple products are just going to increase because of gen Z's loyalty to

these products. And one of the stats you put in your piece is that globally, for every one hundred iPhones shipped, Apple sells twenty six iPads, seventeen Apple watches, and thirty five AirPods. When it comes to Samsung, for every one hundred smartphones they ship, that leads to fewer than eleven tablets, six smart smart watches, and six wireless earbuds. That's probably because there's much more choice on the other side. I guess right, Oh.

buy more Apple products. That is very true true if you're in any of the Android universes.

I went to purchase an app on my Apple TV last night and it said, hey, just authorize this on the iPhone, and I thought, oh, that was really cool. You just kind of click and use your face ID. But Samsung is really doing a lot of this now with sort of Windows and the other side of things, Like they're going more towards like okay, well you've got the Apple stuff, we'll do the Windows stuff. And so I think that that Samsung is making progress in that area too.

the system, right, It's just from the ground level. Samsung just not gonna be able to do that if they're still working on Android, which is the well, actually, you know, I'll come back to that in a second. They're not going to be able to do that if they're working with with you know, Windows on computers. But the point I was just about to make that I sort of corrected myself on is when it comes to owning the ecosystem, just on Android. The problem isn't that they can't make

things work together. The problem is it doesn't have any walls in the garden, right, which is to say, things can work pretty well between Samsung devices, but any other Android maker can basically make that make the same push. Right. So with Apple, you're sort of locked in as a consumer, right. I know other computers that's going to run iOS. That's just not true, which.

direct messages on my Instagram at rich on Tech. Linda said, liked your dad jokes. Is dad joke a compliment or not? I don't know, but you know, kind of up there with the bot. I guess. I don't know. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Love your jokes, Christina wrote in Christina, thank you. I appreciate it. Those jokes came to me when I woke up this morning

because I listened. I think it was because I listened to the rain all night and I was just like, you know what, I just just was, So it was just comical, like we don't get this much rain where I live, and so you know, you got a joke about it. Let's tell you about PlayStation VR two. So you're probably familiar with the idea of virtual reality. You've got the Oculus well Sony has had another headset called the PlayStation VR and they're on their second generation of it.

So the PlayStation VR two launched this week and it has some new features and unique features compared to some of the other VR headsets out there. Now, I saw this at CS, I did not try it out at CS, so I can't give you my personal opinion of this other than I think all of these products are very early stage. Unless you are an early adopter and you just love this stuff, I don't know if they're one hundred percent ready for prime time just yet, especially due

to the price tags. These things are very expensive. This headset is five hundred and fifty dollars and that does not include the PlayStation five that you need to use this headset. But with all that said, it's got controllers with haptic feedback, so you can feel what's happening in the game, like Sony gave the example of whether you're pulling a bow string or you know, the vibration effects during an epic boss battle. It also knows where your fingers are on the on the the actual device itself.

Then the headset itself has feedback. They're not calling it haptic feedback, but there's some vibrations that add an element of tactileness, so you can feel things like, you know, if something passes by your head, you can feel that, or if a you know, car whizz is by. You can feel that as well. Three D audio is also built in. Three D audio is a really cool feature which lets you hear audio all around you from coming

from different angles. Kind of like when you're in the movie theater and they play that opening thing and it says, you know, the audios all around you. That's kind of like what's happening with earbuds right now, the high end earbuds. And speaking of audio, there's no audio built into this headset. You do need to use earbuds with this headset that are you know, built in as well, but it's not a speaker like many of the VR headsets. There's also

eye tracking, so the headset knows where you're looking. It offers a display up to four k HDR, so pretty high resolution. That's one of the problems I have with the Oculus is the current Oculus. The resolution is not that great. You can definitely see the pixels for sure. Some of the games that launch include Horizon, Call of the Mountain, Grand Turismo, Star Wars, Resident Evil Village, and one I can't wait for Tetris Effect. I would play this,

that's for sure. Again, you do need a PS five for the PlayStation VR two headset, and the reviews I'm reading are sort of mixed on whether this thing is comfortable or not so, but most everyone agrees it is a big upgrade from the first model. All right, now, let's go to Suzanne. Suzanne, you're on with Rich Are you there?

satellite provider. You know, that's very slow and not very expensive, and that's probably not your best bet, although you know, you could look into Starlink if you have a backyard. That's Elon Musk's you know, satellite internet, which I think

is overkill. You live in a you know, a populated area, So the website that I would check out is allconnect dot com a L l C O n n ECT all connect dot com, and that is a website that sort of helps you figure out which providers are in your area, and so if you know if there's a provider that may you know. Sometimes these providers provide Internet in an area that are a smaller company, but they

maybe use the lines of a different company. So you're still getting the nice, unique service that you want, and it sounds like you want that kind of hands on service, but it's being delivered through a line that maybe AT and T operates or Frontier Spectrum or who knows. But that's probably the best place to look is all connect dot com. If that doesn't work, I would maybe talk to some neighbors and see what they have, see if

there's some local companies. Sometimes there's some companies that are just small businesses that serve There's one more company called Starry Internet. I don't know if they're by you, and I think they're having some trouble as well, but Storry Internet delivers internet wirelessly. You can check to see if they're available in your neighborhood. That's story dot com. But

those are the best places to go. You know, I think starlink is overkill for you, But if you refuse to use your local provider, there's not many There's just not many options right now. Until we get more satellite internet options, Susanne, it's just not gonna be a thing. Coming up on the show, we're gonna talk about the startup that helps you make money doing other people's dirty laundry. Plus i'm gonna tell you about the new Chrome features that will save your battery and maybe even make Chrome

run faster. Plus your calls at triple eight Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. You're listening to Rich on tech Michael. You are on with uh, I'm gonna call myself technical difficulties Rich today. How you doing pretty good?

they don't get a cut of that. But when it comes to digital goods, whether you are buying, you know, a subscription to a music service or a movie or pretty much anything an app for ninety nine cents. They are taking a cut of that. Whether it's you know, depends. Typically it's about thirty percent, sometimes could be fifteen, depending

on that. So this comes into play. This is horrible for consumers, by the way, because I experienced this when I wrote my book and I sold it as an ebook and people were telling me, hey, Rich, I can't buy it through the Amazon app, And I said, wait, why, what do you mean you can't buy it on iPhone. Now this back when I did my book a couple of years ago, it was different. On Android, you could buy the book through the Amazon app, but on iPhone

you couldn't. But because the book was called one hundred and one Handy Tech Tips for the iPhone, people are buying it for the iPhone, so they wanted to buy it through the iPhone. Well, when you went to the Amazon app on iPhone, what it's say this this book is not available for purchase through the Amazon app, and people will be like, wait, why not? But it didn't give any explanation as to how you can purchase it.

Same thing with this Android. Now you're saying that it's telling you to go to the website to actually purchase the movie, which is a good thing because it's saying like, here's what you have to do. But on Apple's rules, a lot of the times you can't tell the customer that they need to go somewhere else. So let's say you want to subscribe to something inside an app, and that app maker doesn't want to pay the thirty percent to Apple. All they can say is, we're sorry, you

can't subscribe through this app. That's it. They can't say, hey, please go to www dot whatever dot com to subscribe. They can't say that because that's against Apple's rules. So this really comes into play with movies, with ebooks, with anything that is sort of a digital good that you're buying on your phone that's not happening through a web browser. If you're going through a web browser, it's fine, but most of the time people are buying things through apps,

and that's what you're experiencing. So, Michael, what's changed here is that Amazon has said, you know what, we don't really feel like paying this tax anymore, so we're not going to let you you know, we're not going to let you buy these things through this app. We're going to make you go to the Apple or the Amazon website and I'm trying to look here on you know, Let's say, if I want to that movie Megan, which

I know is available for rent or for purchase here. Okay, So if I go to Megan on the app here, the Prime app says available to buy, how do I watch this? And I click that it says how do I watch this rent or buy at Amazon dot com to watch in the Prime Video app? Now, if I go to the let's see, do I have the Prime Video app on my iPhone? I don't, so I have to download that to see what it says on there.

But the reality is I just encountered this the other day with Spotify, and I actually took a screenshot because I was so I couldn't believe how this stuff happens and how it's so bad for consumers that just don't know any better, Like they just go, wait, I can't subscribe to Spotify through the iPhone. So if you go on the iPhone and try to subscribe to Spotify, it says missing premium, you're in luck, and it tells you what you can do, and it says you can't upgrade

to premium in the app. We know it's not ideal, and that's it. Spotify cannot say anything else about how you can actually go to subscribe, which is just really really poor. If you go over to the Android side of things, it's a little bit better. You can subscribe inside the app and it says how do you want to pay? You can pay for premium directly through Spotify or using your Google Play account. Now, sometimes this is another thing that happens, and actually it's this is such

a great question, Michael. If you are subscribing to a service through the app on iOS, oftentimes you will pay more for that service just because you're subscribing through the app. So, for instance, I'm trying to think of a good example, if you subscribe through Hulu through the iOS app, right, it will sometimes charge you a little bit more than you would pay if you just subscribe to Hulu through Hulu dot Com. You might pay a dollar, two dollars,

three dollars more for that. So I don't even know if you can subscribe to Hulu anymore through iOS if you want. But the reality is this is a real, real problem, and I understand. Look, Apple came up with this incredible platform right, and Android has this incredible platform with so many customers that come through these doors because they're on Android or they're on the iPhone. So I understand why these companies believe that they deserve a cut

of that money. At the same time, it does make it very tricky for consumers to not even understand what's happening here. Why can't I subscribe on my phone? Why can't I buy this ebook on my phone? Why can't I rent this movie on my phone unless it's through Apple or unless it's through Google Play, you can, you know, shop till you drop on those things. Another good example is on if you have YouTube TV, you know, if you're on Android, you can upgrade right through the app.

If you're on iOS you can't. So there's a lot of different ways that this comes into play, and you just have to realize that these are big companies. There's a lot of money at stake. Thirty percent of a dollar times millions upon millions of people really adds up to a lot. And I feel like there's going to be some sort of change because it's really tough to think that. I mean, Fortnite is one of the biggest fighting this whole thing. But it's just really tough to

think that. You know, consumers are really losing here in the fact that things are just not easy for them to do that you think would be simple. You know, if you want to purchase through your phone or you want to purchase through your computer, it should be the same thing. But it's just not. And it all really comes down to these rules. All right. Coming up on the show, we are going to talk to the startup that lets you make money doing other people's dirty laundry.

Later in the show, podcasts are coming to another place, So I'll tell you the app that will soon have podcasts making it easier to listen to your favorite shows like this plus more of your questions At triple eight Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. You are listening to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here, Welcome back to Rich on Tech. There are a lot of ways to work from home, but this gig is pretty unique. It's called

Sudshare and it's the uber of laundry. Basically, you're picking up other people's laundry. You wash it at your house, then fold it and return it within twenty four hours. Then you get paid. Recently, I spoke with Sudshare CEO Mort Fertel about the company. My first question, how do you come up with the idea?

takes the longest that we hate the most, laundry. It's actually shocking if you think about it, that there's been We're in the midst of this technological revolution, and yet there's been no innovation in this space since the washer and dryer almost a century ago. And as a result, in America, we're spending thirteen billion hours and seventy five billion dollars a year doing something that literally no one wants to spend any time and money doing. There just

hasn't been a good alternative. We like to say that there are three things certain in life, death, taxes and laundry. So sud share solves laundry. It's incredibly simple. You just tap the app and it's done, wash, dry, fold, pick up and delivery. We call it Life Without Laundry, and it's powered by this nationwide network of over two hundred thousand professional launderers.

Somebody comes, when of our launderers comes, they pick it up, they wash it, dry it, fold it and return it to you the next day.

We have a lot of for example, a lot of stay at home moms that need to keep an eye on their kids and they want a little they want to earn some extra income while they're doing it.

deliver it, how you're supposed to communicate with customers. And then we have also an algorithm that is rating the performance of the launderers on dozens of different factors, and the highest rated launderers get ranked the highest and get access to most of the orders. So we actually have about twenty percent of the launderers doing eighty percent of the of the orders, So the vast majority of our customers are serviced by the most experienced in best launderers.

drive fold. All you have to do is get dressed, whereas with a local wash and fold, generally speaking, pick up and delivery is not included. And even if it is. We're a tech company, and so it's this seamless, frictionless experience on the app that makes everything so simple. And certainly your local fluff and fold company is not doesn't

have that. You know that that tech experience. Next is such share conserviace sheeting no matter where you are, so it's not just when you're home, but it's when you go on vacation, when you travel for business. We're in five hundred markets nationwide, So as long as you've got your phone with you and you've got the app on your phone. You've got a such Share account and you

can and you can place the laundry service order. So we have lots of people now that are traveling for business that are packing much lighter than they ever packed before because they're just using a laundry service while they're gone.

this was unbelievable. All I have to do is get dressed and I just freed up like two to three hours of my week. It's just this magical experience. And so what I've learned is just to answer your question, what I've learned is that this is a real pain point for people, and the relief they experience when they realize that all they have to do is tap an app and it's done is magical.

TV segment linked up on my website. Just go to rich on tech dot tv. More of your phone calls at Triple eight Rich one oh one and more rich on Tech show coming up after this. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you with your calls at Triple eight Rich one O one eight eight eight seven four two four to one zero one. Sophia is in Temecula, Sophia, you're on with Rich. How can I help? Y?

saying you don't need much, this could work. So uh, you know, it has its limitations. You would have to basically reconnect every time. It's not super convenient. And if you're trying to do something like stream TV or something like that through another device, you would have to connect that pretty much every time before you want to use it.

The pairing process is once, but actually just making sure that it's connected would would probably take a little bit every time, unlike a typical you know, Wi Fi connection that would just always be there. So this one, this one kind of goes in and out.

little bit earlier. T Mobile has something called T Mobile Home Internet and they are advertising pretty inexpensive plans, So that is going to be I believe it starts at fifty dollars a month, so that's going to be a little bit less than what you're paying. So that's twelve dollars right there. Verizon is advertising their home Internet I believe as low as twenty five dollars a month. So

I think that's for customers only. It depends, like if you're a Verizon customer, but that may be something to look into. The Other thing you can do. I don't know what your income is, but there is a program through the FCC called the Affordable Connectivity Program so depending on your household income or also your eligibility for other programs.

For instance, if you are on Medicaid or SNAP or SSI, or you get Federal Housing Assistants, or you have a Lifeline phone line, you can apply for this program which gives you a disc count of up to thirty dollars a month off of your internet service. And again this program is called the Affordable Connectivity Program. It's through the FCC, it's relatively new, and it works for your internet service.

So if you're paying sixty two dollars a month and you qualify for this program, you can now pay thirty dollars less a month because you'll work with with your internet provider to give you that credit. So again that's called the FCC Affordable Connectivity Program. If you are eligible for there's a lot. There's a long list of eligibility, but the main ones are if you're on SNAP or Medicaid or WICK you do qualify for this program as well,

so that's something that's a little bit new. You can go to Affordableconnectivity dot gov to do your application there, but Sophie, I think the hot spot will work. You can also get a mobile hotspot from T Mobile and

even get a pay as you go one. But the problem is with that, it's just it's just a little bit like I feel like you don't really need that because you've already have it on your phone, So I don't really think that you need the separate hotspot, especially with how little you are using the internet according to what you're telling me here. So good question, check it out and hopefully one of those solutions works for you. All right, let's go to Mic in Los Angeles. Mike, you're on with Rich.

paying for the Microsoft subscription you have? I think, okay, so you're paying how much did you say a year? I lost you?

to kind of switch over. So I would say just dump it, and you don't really have to think twice because you're only using GoDaddy for the domain. I mean, I think that's the problem here is that you know, someone signs up for the domain, it costs them, you know, twenty thirty bucks for the year. The name of the game is to then upsell those customers to as many other things as possible, and by giving them these free trials, you know, you forget about it, and before you know it,

your credit card is charge for the seventy bucks. You're like, now, what's that ah, and you don't feel like calling in, and then they get the money and you'll call next year, and it's a whole you know, it's a whole big thing. This happens all the time.

I loved it because they bought a company, oh gosh, I can't even remember the name of it, but they had this one playlist that I loved. It was called the Blogged fifty and it was like the fifty hottest songs according to bloggers, and that was the reason why I loved YouTube Music. Now I still have a subscription, I don't use it as regularly, but it's one of those things that almost all of the other music apps

have podcasts built in, except for YouTube Music. And so now the fact that YouTube Music will be getting podcasts I think is a good thing. It'll help more people discover them, it'll help people have them all in one place. They didn't really say when this is going to happen, but the big question is will you be able to listen to the podcast even when your screen is locked, And according to what they mentioned at this on AirFest in Brooklyn, it sounds like you'll be able to. With YouTube.

The problem is if you're not a subscriber to YouTube and you're listening to a podcast that is uploaded to YouTube, if you lock your screen, you're not going to hear it, the audio stops. It doesn't continue in the background unless you're a premium subscriber. And so apparently with YouTube Music, you will get to be able to listen to the podcast even with your screen locked, and this is coming very soon in the US only. At this point, YouTube has been kind of tinkering with the idea of podcasts.

A lot of people upload shows like this to YouTube, even if there's no video. They'll just upload the audio and have kind of a waveform or something on there. I've even experimented with this because YouTube is just sort of a place where people listen and watch a lot of stuff, and so why not put your podcast up

there even though it doesn't have video. So YouTube is kind of warming up to that idea and helping creators have more tools to be able to do that in a more native way than right now, which you have to use a third party tool to kind of create we ate that video file that then uploads to YouTube, because you can't just upload the audio file. It doesn't accept that all right, Coming up on the show, We've got more of your calls at Triple eight rich one

oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one uh. Later in the show, we're going to talk to the founder of the Day of Unplugging. This is a day that's coming up next weekend that wants you to give up your smartphone for a single day, twenty four hours. Could you do it? I did it one year. I'll tell you about my thoughts. Plus how supermarkets. Yes, the supermarket loves your data. They might be worse than Google when it comes to slurping

up all of your data. You're listening to Rich on Tech. More of your calls and tech news after this. Welcome back to Rich on Tech. My name is Rich DeMuro, tech reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles, hanging out here talking technology, answering your questions at triple eight Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four four to one zero one. Typically in the show, I tell you what I posted to Instagram that week, but let's see this week, not much. I didn't really post

anything this week, so I will tell you. I'm Matt rich on Tech, but most of the time I'm posting stories, so sometimes I'll post actual posts. Vicky is in San Diego. Vicky, You're on with Rich. Hello, Vicky, Hi, Rich Hi, Hi.

r Low. I know Arlow has at least one model. I'm looking at this. Uh, it's got an LTE model. Would you want a camera that had built in cellular like would that work? Or is there no internet connection? Like no cellular connection in that area?

If you look up that that's canary c A n A R Y do I S. And there's also there's also another one. There's so many. It's so funny when I go to like c S, I see all these things. There's another one called it's it's not kangaroo, it's can garu k A n g A r o O. And that one. What's unique about that is it may not capture video per se, but it could capture like little clips and things. And they've got a whole bunch of products. They have an indoor outdoor camera as well. That might

work for you. So I gave you a lot of options. It just really depends on kind of this a very unique situation. So I think that it's just going to be a matter of which one sort of you look at the features, you say, oh that's gonna work. That's gonna work for my situation here.

taking your calls at Triple eight. Rich one on one. Weird Science one of my favorite movies as a kid. You know, when I was a kid, they played the same movies over and over. It's not like today, like last night, where I'm looking through one hundred and fifty streaming options to find something to watch. You just watched whatever was on TV at the time. And Weird Science.

All these movies were just like on HBO and like the cable channels, over and over and over, so you really got to know them too much choice nowadays, that's for sure. All right. Joining me now is Kim Annimberg Cavallo, the executive director of the Unplugged Collaborative, and this year, instead of the National Day of Unplugging. It is now the Global Day of Unplugging, a day when you are asked to go without your phone for a full twenty four hours. It is happening from sundown Friday, March third

to sundown Saturday, March fourth. Kim, thanks so much for joining me today.

phone for the first time. It's really almost like New Year's Eve, where you know, we reflect on kind of the year before, what were our tech habits and how do we want to change them and improve them.

You want to pay for something, got to have your phone. So tell me the benefits of unplugging from tech anology for a little bit.

of being connected twenty four to seven. But if you're scrolling on social media or you're incessantly answering texts or emails, you can get a sense of being isolated and lonely. And so what we encourage with Global dat I'm plugging is really to you know, our mission is to elevate human connection over digital engagement, and we want people to come together to really embrace the people around them in person.

We have a lot of people in different countries now that are taking this campaign and leading it in their country. So different parts of the world are doing different things, and we have an Unplugged Map, so people are putting their events on the map, so you can check out

things that are happening in your city. And if you don't see something in your city and you want to put something on there, maybe you do a meetup in the park and you encourage people to come and take a hike, or there's a lot of really fun things. We have about two hundred plus ideas of things to do on Global Day of Unplugging or any day of the year that you'd like to unplug, and so there's a lot of really fun ideas.

The website is Unplugcollaborative dot org. So you're you know, you're a tech entrepreneur. I mean, you know, in charge of this nonprofit. I assume you have to use your phone a lot. So how do you monitor and kind of you know, balance your own tech habits when you're dealing with all of this stuff. I'm sure people are emailing you and texting you all day about this.

outside of the bedroom. That doesn't necessarily bother everyone, but for me it really does because it's not so much about falling asleep, but it's the morning that gets me, because the alarm clock if I use it from my phone and then I pick it up and then for some reason, you know, an hour later, I've gone all the way through Instagram, I've made deposits and bank accounts.

I'm you know, it's just like searching for things to do on the phone, and I don't move as quickly and don't do all the things that my morning routine, which is meditate, do yoga, do the things that'll really set me up for a better day. So that's something that I had to just be extra cautious about during this time of the year. Yeah, I think that's that's

what I think is the hardest part about it. And when you say, you know, oh, people take you know, the twenty four hours, I think the other thing that we really are careful about is not shaming people because if you do take it and it's hard, that is a challenge and it would be illuminating to learn from that. But if for some reason it doesn't work out for the full twenty four hours, that's informative too, and it's

something to talk about. And you know, it's global day of I'm Plugging is one day a year because we do put a lot of effort into this, but it can be any day of the year, and we hope that people bring this habit into their daily lives as well.

let me check my email now. And these are things that don't necessarily need to be checked incessantly all day long. Now. I remember when I posted about the National Day of Unplugging when it was still national instead of global. You know, some people were negative about it. They said, Rich, why why bother? My phone is my life, My phone is everything. I don't have a problem. I don't need to do this. What do you say to that?

And it's the same for Global Day of Unplugging. It's an opportunity to bring people together around an idea that you know, yes, we want to have these habits on the daily and even if you don't want to have those habits, that's habits, that's okay too. But to elevate human connection, I don't know how anybody can argue about against that, and we should, you know, think about just ways. I mean, we have people for the last fourteen years, schools,

religious institutions, companies, other organizations, nonprofit organizations. They really take this opportunity every year to come together in person and do something screen free that will bring a deeper connection to each other and have fun.

to participate and just do it. Just try it, Just try even even half the day. Believe me, it is a challenge. You will feel so good and you'll definitely your hands will feel like you're like, what's going on. I don't know what to do with my hands because you're so used to just picking up your phone. All right, more of your phone calls. We're going to close out the show after this triple eight Rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.

I'm going to tell you how supermarkets, Yes, supermarkets are spying on you. You are listening to Rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Doug is in Torrents. Doug. You're on with Rich Hey.

and things. But the difference is you're gonna have to put up with ads, and you're not gonna be able to DVR stuff unless you're paying. As far as I know, there's not really an online DVR that is free. But with that said, I mean the first place to start is a site like or an app called Pluto TV. So I'd recommend that you have a whole bunch of channels it's owned by Viacoms. You're gonna get a whole bunch of CBS stuff as well. The thing is, you need to get a streaming stick first. You said you

have a smart TV, but I don't. I'd I'd rather you have a streaming stick. I think that either Roku or fire TV stick is going to be the best. You can get one for very inexpensive, you know, the fire TV stick maybe thirty five dollars, and then you can start to download these things. Pluto TV's my first stop. I'd install YouTube. YouTube has a ton of stuff. They have a ton of free streaming stuff. Live streams is on there, so you can watch a lot of live

streaming news through there. To Be to Be, I believe is owned by Fox and so to Be you're gonna get a lot of the Fox programming and they're gonna have a whole bunch of stuff to watch for free as well. Then Amazon has something called free V f R E E V E E Amazon Free V and so you're gonna get a whole bunch of the Amazon stuff streaming free through there. You see where I'm going here,

there's a lot of stuff that you can get. Now there's another site or another app called Crackle, and so Crackle will have a lot of Hollywood movies, so you can get a whole bunch of stuff there. Sometimes you're gonna have to deal with ads on there as well. And Crackle at one point was I guess it's still owned by Sony. Sony, so Crackle is Sony, so you'll probably get a lot of Sony things there as well. A new one that I talked about on the show last week is called Sling Free Stream. So this is

Sling TV. They have something called free Stream, which is their free streaming service, and you can just download the app. It's the Sling app and you can watch that for free as well. And finally there's one called Zoomo x U m O. This is owned by Comcast, and you can get that and they have a bunch of news programming on there. Now, if you're in the Los Angeles area, you might figure out, well, how do I watch like

my over the air channels? Many of the over the air channels will be included in some sort of app. But if you want something like KTLA, the channel that I'm on, we have our own app. It's called KTLA Plus, and so you can stream the news on there, and I was doing this yesterday and it works just fine, and you can download it. It's totally free. And again, this is a lot of stuff that I'm giving you. You don't necessarily need to download all of these, but

this is giving you a wide range of options. Now, if you're telling me you want to stream sports, like if you're really into following a certain sport, you may have to subscribe to that sports streaming package, and a lot of the major league sports have them. The challenges if you're in a local market, many times the games that are played locally you can't watch. So if it's a game that's happening here in Los Angeles, you probably

won't be able to watch that. Most of the time, you can watch the out of town games, so that gets a little bit tricky. Sports definitely gets a little tricky when you want free, but any other programming, there's really a lot of it. And I mentioned earlier when it comes to things like new movies, you may not be able to access those per se, but I can't even access them unless I pay. So you also mentioned some sort of box to get everything for free. I

know those are out there. I do not recommend them. People call them the black boxes or whatever, but it gets you know, all IPTV boxes. I don't recommend those. They're operating in a gray area. They may work, they may not. It's not going to be fun. The other thing I like about the Amazon Fire TV stick is

that includes a web browser. So anything that you may not be able to access through an app, you can just bring up on the web browser and so you can stream pretty much anything that's online, you'll be able to view it through there. So, Doug, that's a great question. I'm sorry you have to give up your free direct TV after so many years. Ugh. Free is always the best, isn't it. But hopefully I get you some apps that

you can get started on your streaming journey. All right, before we go, let me tell you about the supermarket. Can you believe that your supermarket is spying on you? Yes, it is big supermarket companies. They you know that little club card that you scan when you check out, That is not to give you coupons and to give you discounts. Yes, that's what it's doing on the surface, But what it's really doing is building a very big picture of who you are and what you shop for. And what you purchased.

And that's the reason why these companies want you to sign up. Almost every grocery store at this point, almost every store at this point, you go in there and they say, hey, we'll give you, you know, five percent off or ten percent off or you know, a coupon for signing up for our club card. And it used to be fun when these things first came out. It was great, but you had a whole keychain of remember your keychain was just filled with like one hundred and

fifty different club cards. They were all those tiny little things and they defined who you were, you know, whether you had your you know, whatever company that you like to shop at, well these cards. This is a great article. It's from the markup dot org and it says, forget milk and egg. Supermarkets are having a fire sale on data about you. Now. They focus on Kroger because it's

one of the biggest grocery companies. But what they say is that when you walk into that store, and this happens with a lot of stores, there are things called bluetooth beacons which record your presence. They ping your phone and that will help you get personalized offers. Your location in the store is tracked. Maybe even your facial recognition

data is tracked. Once you use that membership card, all that information gets siphoned off into this big data set and they know exactly what you purchased, and they can

help mix that with other data. So they may take data that they know about you from other sources, whether it's your credit report or whether it's your marketing databases that they've purchased from other companies, and they will mix all that stuff together to know that you just had a kid, you need diapers and baby formula, and they're going to send you more ads for that and or coupons for that stuff. If you look closely at a majority of these postcards you get in the mail from

big companies, they are printed uniquely for you. I got one the other day from a company, and it was filled with just the products that I had purchased from that retailer. And it looked like the same thing they send to everyone, but no, it was specifically just for me.

The Markup says on a website promoting Kroger's data business, they have thirty five plus petabytes of customer data and this is data that they say is sixty six percent larger than the US Library of Congress's digital collection, which clocked in at twenty one petabytes in twenty twenty two. So a grocery company knows more about Americans than the Library of Congress information. Yeah, these companies have a thing

or two. They know what they're doing. They employ very smart data scientists to get us to spend our hard earned cash. If you don't think it's happening to you, it absolutely is. Don't be fooled. All right, thanks so much for listening this week. That is Gonna do It. I know we had a couple of technical difficulties this show, but thanks for holding on and hanging on and listening to my dad jokes at the beginning of the show That's gonna do it for this week. You can find

me on social media. I am at rich on Tech. I put everything we talked about today on my website, rich on tech dot TV. Don't forget to check out my KTLA TV segments. My name is rich Demiro. Thanks so much for listening. There are so many ways you can spend a rainy day and your time. I do appreciate you spending it right here with me. I'll talk to you real soon.