Big Mobile sells out to T Mobile, YouTube TV hikes prices, the FCC fights to stop robotexts, plus your tech questions answered.
What's going on.
I'm Rich Dmiro and this is Rich on Tech, the show where I talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about and answer your questions about technology. I'm the tech reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles. Welcome to the show. Phone lines are now open one eight eight eight Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Give me a call if you have a question about technology or otherwise just want to chat.
A big news this week.
Two big stories, actually a lot of big stories, but two that really resonated on my Twitter, and that's usually where I figure out what people care about, for better or for worse. But T Mobile is buying mint Mobile, which the irony is so strong here because Mint Mobile was for folks who wanted to stick it to the man by not subscribing to a big wireless company. And now Mint Mobile sells out to the man. So Mint Mobile, which you know, you know them for their quirky advertising.
Ryan Reynolds is an owner. They had these plans that were kind of like Costco. The more you bought in advance, the cheaper it was. So if you bought three months of service, six months of service, you paid for a year in advance. That's how you saved money. They had plans as low as fifteen bucks a month. It was a good value. In fact, I have a Mint line as a tester line, not my main line, and I've got a family member that has been on Mint for
many years. And they would tell a lot of people about Mint saying I pay fifteen bucks a month, and you know, I get everything I need And people would be like, how do you do that? I don't understand. That's of course with some limited data. But T Mobile why did they buy Mint Mobile? Well, they want their marketing. They want the way that they market things. That's really what they purchased here for oh a cool one point three five billion dollars.
So Ryan Reynolds made out in this deal.
They also get two other companies that this two other brands that this company owns. Kayena Corporation is the is the parent company. They get Mint Mobile, Ultramobile, and then a wholesaler called Plum. So this is the quote that really stuck with me over the long term will benefit from applying the marketing formula Mint has become famous for across more parts of T Mobile, so that's what they want.
They want the marketing, they want the way that Mint Mobile does business, and they're going to keep the Mint Mobile brands around. But realistically, the way I see this not good for consumers. It's never good for consumers when a big company gobbles up a competitor, small company because people went to that small company. They didn't want to be with the big company, and now they have no choice. They are folded into them, and many people probably wondering
do I stick with Mint Mobile. Nothing's going to change overnight, but over time realistically T Mobile are they going to compete with themselves? I mean, these are two different kind of segments. T Mobile trying to push the ultra premium you know, eighty dollars a month plans for unlimited everything, whereas Mint Mobile is pushing the lower end plans for the value oriented consumer. So, if you're with Mint Mobile,
do you need to switch right now? Probably not, but you might have your eye on a different carrier, a more independent brand. Even though we all know that all of these brands are the same. They all run on one of three networks in America, which is T Mobile, Verizon or AT and T. I've got a guest coming on the show from whistle Out, Sherry Riggs.
She is going to talk more about this. It's not really a merger.
I guess it's a purchase and some of the alternative plans out there, and just kind of get her take on this whole thing. She covers wireless all day long, so we'll hear what she has to say. The other big story is a price increase, and we've gotten a lot of these price increases. YouTube TV now the latest to raise their prices. I was very excited about YouTube TV.
I'm a subscriber there as well, and it was very exciting because the other company I work for, KTLA in Los Angeles, they announced that they are coming to YouTube tv, so the channel I work for on TV would be available streaming first time ever, and that was exciting. At sixty five dollars a month, now it's going to seventy two to ninety nine a month, So we take the good,
we take the bad. Eight extra dollars a month not make or break for a lot of folks, but it's the principle of things, you're getting more and are you really watching eight more dollars worth of stuff?
I don't know.
Current subscribers will see this new update on April eighteenth. That's when the price change kicks in to soften the blow a little bit. The four K add on, which used to be twenty dollars a month, which is wild, is only nine to ninety nine now. So realistically, if you're subscribing to YouTube TV, you're now paying seventy three dollars a month for one hundred channels you don't watch and three channels that you actually watch. And YouTube TV
is fantastic, don't get me wrong. They give you unlimited DVR. They just gave you the new feature where I can watch four different things at once, which is perfect timing with the final four happening March Madness.
So it's cool, but is it worth seventy three dollars a month?
I mean, we all canceled cable because we wanted to get away from these giant cable prices, and now here they are again. So I don't know, but this made me think about the idea of the bundle.
Right.
Companies love bundling because math is hard for us. We all wanted a la carte, right, this is what we all went to streaming for. But now, as we've all realized, you start subscribing to all these individual streaming services and they add up really fast. See, you get more money for a bundle, but you also get stuff that you don't need. For example, the Triple Play. How many people have paid for phone lines they don't need, just to get that deal on cable TV and Internet. I know
many many people, including myself, did this. The Triple Play was like ninety nine bucks for everything you needed Internet, cable TV, your phone line that you never needed, and if you bought them separately, it'd be way more. YouTube Premium. I've got a subscription to that. I get YouTube music included.
I don't need YouTube music. I already pay for another music service, but yet there it is, and I feel guilty because I need to stream on it, because I need to pay, you know, get my money's worth YouTube Premium. By the way, price for that just went up. Apple One, I'm a subscriber there. I pay like thirty three dollars
a month. I know it's absolutely insane how much I pay for Apple One, but I need two out of these seven things I get included there, I get two terabytes of storage, which I love because my kids have their iPads and they're recording things all the time. And you know, you get that message on your iPhone that you're out of iCloud storage. And we had that for many years because I resisted, and now I finally gave in. We don't get the message anymore. But now we have
Apple News. We have Apple Fitness, which I do like. We have Apple Music, which again don't really want, but I have and I use it. Nothing against Apple Music, but it's just one of these things that I feel guilty because I pay for it that I want to use it.
What else do I get with Apple One?
I get like, a, oh, there's so many things Apple News I mentioned that I get.
Let me let me look down the list here.
Oh, Apple TV. My wife watches one show on there, so we get that Apple Arcade. My kids used to play games on that iCloud. Okay, we use that Apple News plus three hundred newspapers and magazines. I haven't looked at one of them. Apple Fitness plus I do like and I do use. So again, a couple of things I like, but I don't need it all. Verizon now they're doing a bundle. They're giving people Netflix free for a year, but you have to described to something else to get that.
Disney Plus.
I subscribe to Disney plus, Hulu plus, ESPN plus, so many pluses in these things. It's cheaper to get them together than to get them separate. Bundles are sticky. Companies know this. They know we love the bundle because it feels like we're getting a value. T Mobile plans, they include Netflix, they include Major League Soccer. Airlines they offer a bundle. You buy a ticket. They say, hey, for an extra sixty bucks, you can board the plane faster, you can get a better seat. In the end, we
are spending more, but we're probably using less. But yet, as consumers, we have these brains that are just wired a certain way. You feel good when you're getting a value. You go to a fast food place. It's cheaper to buy the value meal than it is to buy the fries and the burger by themselves.
It's just the way it works.
It's marketing one oh one, and we fall hook line and sinker. So YouTube TV, yes, what I like to just choose the fifteen channels that I might actually watch on YouTube TV for ten fifteen twenty dollars a month. Absolutely, will they ever let me do that? No, nobody lets you do that. You always have to buy a bundle. All right, Well, this show is a package deal. We've got three hours of tech to talk about coming up on today's show. We've got so much great stuff to
talk about. The FCC has new rules to help stop robotexts. We'll see if those are gonna work. I've got three great guests this week. Ben Parr is gonna join us. He's gonna talk AI and the impact on your job. Yes, it's gonna affect me, it's gonna affect you, It's gonna affect everyone this week alone, Microsoft, Google, and Chat GPT all have brand new developments when it comes to AI.
Like I mentioned, Sherry Riggs from Whistle Out, She's gonna join us to talk alternatives to mint Mobile and just talk about the state of the wireless industry in general. And then later Ember CEO Klay Alexander is gonna join us. He's gonna talk about their new self warming baby bottle. Now, thankfully I am out of that stage with the whole baby bottle thing. But I remember warming these things up. They're like a gremlin. The baby bottle you can't you
can't put it in the microwave. There's so many rules about the baby bottle. So we're going to talk about that as well. You are listening to Rich on Tech. Your calls at triple eight Rich.
One oh one.
The phone lines are open right now. Give me a call eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. If you have a question, you've got a thought about technology, I want to hear from you. We've got so much more to talk about in this show. Ah, can you tell them fired up today? Yes, that's the energy I want on this show. Give me a call if you share that enthusiasm. You're listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. My name is Rich
dmiro online at richontech dot tv. You can find me on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, all the regular places. Taking your calls right now at triple eight Rich one O one. That's eight eight eight seven four two four one zero one. Gilda is in La Mesa, California. Gilda, you are on with Rich How you doing?
Excuse me? Hi, Thank you for taking my call. I need to purchase a new modem, and I'm wondering if a separate router is better or just a combo of a modem and router together and it whichever, And also if you could recommend a brand to me?
Okay, So what company are you going?
With?
Cox? From my internet service?
And so they offer you, pardon me, they offer you a selection of Is it a rental fee every.
Month or what?
No?
I buy my own?
Oh so you have to buy your own?
No, I don't have to, but I prefer to buy my own.
Why And they.
Did send me a list of all the compatible products is quite a huge list.
Yeah, well, why do you want to buy your own? I'm just curious.
Mine is about fifteen years old and it's been kind of slowing down. So when I contacted them, they could tell on my end that my router is making my internet flow. And I don't have cable, I just stream everything. I have Roku, right.
And so, how you've been with this company for how many years? Fifteen?
You said?
Oh, my router, I mean my modem is about fifteen, but I've been with cos for probably like twenty five years.
Oh wow, okay, So, and do they charge a rental fee? I don't know, because every company's a little differ.
They do. How much is that do?
I really don't know. I would imagine about fifteen dollars a month.
Okay, Well, at fifteen dollars a month, you should probably purchase because.
You'll break you.
I would rather do the math.
So okay.
So the question is do you get an all in one or do you get you know, two separate devices. I personally would get one that's all in one. I mean that isn't that just a little bit easier?
Oh? Yeah, I prefer to have an all in one.
The question is if you get in all in one. There's a list that they have on their website, so I mean, you know, you can't. It depends like kind of what you want out of this. Do you have like a mesh network already? Like are you using how like how many rooms are you trying to get this in?
Oh? Just in one room?
Oh? Okay, just in one room?
Yeah?
In that case you can go with one room. Okay.
In that case, you can go with a very simple router. I mean I'm looking at their list that they have on here of the combo ones, and I mean any of these will work. You probably want a Doosis three point oh. Have they mentioned that because that gives you the highest speeds?
No, they did, but yeah.
So there's different levels of modems, and the three point zero is the most recent one, So that's the one that I would recommend getting. As for the specific brand, I mean there's really any of these are going to work. A linksis you know, rus is the brand that they use that most of the time they give out, But realistically, any of these are going to work. I would just kind of see which one's available on Amazon, like just look down their list. I mean Cox has it on
their website of all the different cable modems that they certify. Okay, but I would definitely go with a three point zero to get the fastest speed, and that'll keep. Yeah, it's if it's fifteen years old, it's it's it doesn't. It just doesn't accommodate the faster speed. So you may upgrade to the one. What internet speed are you getting? What are you paying for?
I think is I have the lowest one. I think it's fifty fifty.
Okay, Well, I mean you don't need the three point oh to get the fifty, but I'm just future proofing things. If you ever feel like you want to upgrade to a faster speed, you'll want that faster modem.
But okay, excellent, But.
Yeah, I would just do a little quick price comparison of a couple of brands. You're when you start searching down the list of the ones that are available, you're going to see very quickly, like which one is on Amazon, quickly and easily, Like if it's Prime next day, that's a pretty popular one.
I just go with that.
I would stick to like the main brands, whether it's net Gear or I mean they have a TP link on here. I mean, there's so many that they give you. There's probably the list of like fifteen of them.
Okay, wonderful, Thank you so much for your health.
All right, Gilda, enjoy the new modem.
Okay, thank you.
All right, take care. All right.
Let me talk about the FCC with its new rules on scam text. This is such a problem that I don't know if the FCC is going to solve them with these new rules, but they are working to do it, and we've seen the amazing progress they've made with spam calls. Kind of kidding, we still get those two. But they do have new rules so these new rules are going to require mobile service providers to block certain robotext messages that are highly likely to be illegal. They say illegal.
I don't think anyone's gone to jail for setting a robotext. But you know, legitimate companies do by these rules. The problem is it's folks that are not legitimate that are sending these things.
They don't really care about the rules. The FCC says that.
Robotechs pose a unique threat to consumers because they are hard to ignore. That is very true. They also contain links to phishing websites or websites that inn install that can install malware, and of course we're tempted to click these links even though we know many of them are fake. The FCC the new rule requires blocking of text messages that appear to come from phone numbers that are unlikely to transmit text messages. This includes invalid, unallocated or unused numbers.
So they're going to go through sort of a process to figure out, Okay, is this number legitimate?
Should it be setting a text?
No, okay, We're going to criticize and look at this number a little bit closer and hopefully block those texts. And that's of course on the provider, so these providers have to start doing this. The FCC recommends that consumers take steps to protect themselves, and I would recommend this as well. Do not interact in any way with suspicious texts, do not click on the links, or do not write back to them.
That's the best thing you can do.
You can also forward unwanted spams to our spam texts to spam spam seven seven two six, and just delete suspicious texts. I know a lot of these things are going around right now because it says you've got a package delivery or your Netflix account is canceled.
You got to take action right now. Just ignore them.
The best thing to do is not to reply because, just like a spam email, the second you reply to these messages is sends a signal to these spammers that this is a good phone number. And you do not want them to know that your number is good because guess what they're going to send more?
All right, Coming up.
Next, we're going to talk to Ben Parr about AI and the impact on your job. Plus your calls triple eight Rich one oh one. You are listening to Rich on tech more or right after this welcome back to Rich on tech. My name is Rich DeMuro and another week in the tech world, and just another major announcement by tech companies when it comes to AI. In fact, three major announcements. Google they embedded AI into Docs and Gmail. Microsoft put AI into Office three six or now they
call it Microsoft three sixty five. We're talking word Excel, PowerPoint outlook, teams, all those good things. And then open Ai released GPT four, the next version of their AI, just as we're getting used to the old version. Let me let me tell you about some of these some of these developments here. Okay, So Google first off says that they are embedding generative AI into Google Docs and into Gmail. So, like I've mentioned on the show before, you no longer need to do a first draft of
anything AI is going to write that first draft. Then you've got Microsoft three sixty five. They're calling it Copilot, so they're embedding this in word Excel, PowerPoint Outlook, and teams and in teams specifically. This is how wild it is. The Copilot, which is their AI name, is gonna listen to what everyone's saying on that team's call and teams is kind of like zoom if you're not familiar with it.
They're gonna listen to what everyone's saying and discussing. Then if you come to the meeting late, the AI will just summarize what everyone's saying, and not just summarize, but also give you kind of an update. How are people feeling about this? Here to talk about all these developments is Ben Parr, journalist and author of The Social Analyst, a newsletter available on substack at benpar dot subsack dot com. I'll put the link on my website. Rich on tech
dot TV. All right, I think we got Ben here.
Ben?
Are you there? Yeah, okay, welcome to the show.
And congratulations, I heard that you just got engaged, faccurate.
Thank you really appreciate it.
That's the start of a whole new journey and very exciting. So congrats on that. Let's talk about AI. So these announcements by Google, Microsoft and Chat GPT to GPT four this week, which one struck you as the most interesting?
So GPT four is a fundamental change to the large language models that are powering this big raws and AI. So for everyone out there, GPT is the technology behind Chat. GPT the fastest growing tech product in human history. Which is crazy when you think about it. Oh yeah, and it was run on a product called GPT three and
GPT three point five. So this week the company behind chat GPT released GPT four and it is significantly better at sounding humans, at giving more detailed results, at not making mistakes and errors as often, at speaking other languages, and to do it can see And what that means is if you uploaded a picture to GPT four, as you asked what was going on in the picture.
It could tell you, which is incredible.
And you know, I kind of tweeted about this, but this whole reality of kind of implications of this, there's just so many. But I'm sure that like the social media networks like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok are all using AI to scan what we upload, especially images. You know, it's like we've used hashtags in the past, but do you think there will be a need for those in the future.
It's going in a crazy direction so fast it's hard to tell what will exactly happen. So let's break down a little bit. Both Google and Microsoft announced tools that will automatically help you write your documents and turn those documents into presentations and help you write your email. If it's in all of your Gmail, for example, a lot of your emails back and forth, you might be AI
generated or at least partially AI generated. You're going to see a whole different way in which people are doing productivity. I saw, for example, somebody earlier this week who asked GPT four or advice on how to make the most money possible and started following it's advice and started making money. I'm actually going to ask it to tell me how to triple my newsletter subscribers, and it gave really good advice. There's like a lot of crazy things that are happening all at once.
What's wild about this is it's so much more natural than the previous way of searching. Right if you wanted to look to see how to increase your newsletter subscribers, there's a million websites that can tell you little tips and things. But the way that this sort of summarizes and just makes it so clear is really what's most interesting to me. Like, for instance, i wanted to cook a dinner, a corn beef dinner right for Saint Patrick's Day, and I just asked the chat GPT and also being AI,
I just wanted to try them both. I said, hey, make me a shopping list for a traditional corn beef dinner, and sure enough, they both did it in different ways. But it's just that kind of idea of just asking our computers to do stuff and they really give us the results that we're kind of looking for very quickly and easily.
The chat is the most natural interface that we are used to and that we as humans used, and so it makes sense to have this go give me back and forth in chat, and I kind of think of chat GPT and some of the AI to was kind of like a brainstorming buddy, somebody who is not going to judge you, somebody who has access to the Internet and can give you lots of advice, will not always be right, but will often be correct. And I think that's how a lot more people are starting to use
it to boot too as well. It's just really smart at a lot of things. So GPT three point five it tested in the Mottom ten percent of test takers for the bar exam, GPT four tested in the top ten percent. That's how quickly this technology is advancing month by month.
It can also do ap calculus. According to your newsletter, the Social analyst. It can do AP calculus, AP chemistry, AP physics better. Like you said, it does the visual inputs, So now you can pop a picture into this and it can describe what's happening in that picture. My kid watched the video about Google Docs and how it was doing AI in there, and he was like, this is incredible, Dad, this is just wild what it's going to be able
to do. So what I've been saying is the first draft is pretty much always going to be AI at this point, and then we're going to be, as humans the ones to to sort of figure out, you know, how do we polish this, Which brings me to the job situation.
What is the impact on jobs when it comes to AI.
This is one of the big debates that we are all having right now. And the founder of Open AI, his name is Sam Maltman. He also founded an incubator called by Combinator. He's said before that he believes when there's this thing called AGI artificial general intelligence basically an AI where you could it's like a human, that the
idea of capitalism itself will will be obsolete. I'm not sure where I fall on that debate, but what I will say is that you can be two or four times as productive as you were before as a writer or a presentation maker or as an artist with AI. And the results may very well be that, while we're not going to eliminate all jaw that a company could be built with a lot less people, it's entirely plausible that someone builds a billion dollar company with just a
small handful of people as a result of AI. So there's real questions to be asked. Politicians and epsids are asking those questions. It's not like past times, in my opinion, where we were able to immediately find a whole brand new set of jobs.
We are going to.
Be navigating this in real time. It's going to be both. I was writing this in my newsletter. It's both bogs firing and a little scary.
Yeah, it's scary.
It's also scary how fast it's all changed and how and how right on it is. So, just for one example, so I write scripts for TV. I write like my little script of my we call it a package. It's a story that I air on TV, and it's written in a certain way for TV. Right, it's short, it's sweet, it's got sound bites. And then I asked chat ebt or rewrite this as a blog post yesterday, because then I post it to the website. But you know, you can't write a script on the website because it's just
it's not the way you read stuff. And so I watched this transform what I had written into something that was much more a blog post, and it was It was interesting to me because I'm sitting there going hmmm, this is like ready to go, but I didn't feel right using it because the AI wrote it. And so it's like these little questions we're going to have along the way of how do we navigate this new landscape?
Oh?
Absolutely, and look, you know, the AI does not understand human condition. There are certain things like writing the you know, a super amazing script that people will love that the AI probably can't get to. It's still too generic, but it's getting more advanced, and if someone really knows how to talk to an AI like chow ChiPT, they can get a really strong first result and start moving from there. And yes, transforming content from one type to another is
a real strength of AI. I feel like in the next year, the idea that you would build a presentation from scratch, like a PowerPoint will not exist anymore. You will literally just type in some notes in a doc, ask it to translate into a presentation, and it's going to make that. And that's in the next couple months with both Microsoft and Google. Who knows what will happened three months from now.
Absolutely well, I think we're gonna leave it there.
I think a lot of people will be happy to not have to do a presentation ever. Again, well, this still have to make the presentation, they just won't have to build it. Ben Par, thanks so much for joining me today. I appreciate it.
Thank you and everyone.
It will be only right, I promise.
Thank you.
I'm glad we need that reassurance, all right, Benpar dot substack dot com. The newsletter is the Social Analyst. I'll put a link there on my website. Rich on tech dot TV.
All right, coming up.
If you have a comment or a question about technology, give me a call at triple eight rich.
One oh one.
That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. If you've got a Samsung or a Pixel phone, you want to hear about how hackers might be able to take control with just your phone number, I'll tell you about that and how to protect yourself. All coming up here. You are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro hanging out with you here talking technology. Let's see we got Ryan and North Hollywood. Ryan, you have a comment about the T mobile acquisition.
All right, Well, I'm a met Mobile customer and I'm gonna keep using online prepaid through October of twenty twenty three.
But I'm on Apple now.
But I kind of soured on them for security reasons about a month ago. Based on the custom APN. They have Android users user, they direct Android users use.
Oh what, well, what, what's what's wrong with that?
Well, there's stop instructions directly to an APN where if like if you just pop the sin cardon and go, or if you're using Apple that you know Apple's walled garden doesn't let you do that. But T Mobile by default forces you to connect using IBV six and the mobile custom APM has a i TV four connections that it shoots you to almost every time. And if you check like your IP address using third party site, that
shows the carrier. But if you look on internal Android settings, that APN redirects to IP addresses that four out of five times will show up as the Department of the Fense, and like that fifth or sixth time will show up as a Ministry.
Of Defense in the UK.
And if you who is query those IP addresses, like mornings come up saying you're not allowed to query this except for certain legal reasons. And I think it's because all these MVNOs there, a lot of them are sold to people traveling to the US that are not registering them or therefore GPS tracking the quip more alarm systems. But from a security standpoint, I don't think it's good. I think, you know, I'm not overly word. I'm going
to keep using them. I have private d DNS, I use encrypted chat, I'm on Apple.
You know, I feel.
Okay about it, but I think ultimately and the enos are not a good way to go forward with the.
Consumer Interesting, all right, well, that's uh, you got a lot packed in there, and I see wow. I mean there's a little bit of a conspiracy theory in there. I understand that, and I think that for most people it's probably you know, maybe not a consideration, but I would agree that if you feel like this is redirecting to places that may be monitoring your traffic. Then yeah, I would definitely use a VPN or use some sort
of cloaking mechanism if you're worried about that. But that's that's an interesting point, Ryan, and thank you for bringing that up. Just one more thing to think about when we when we make these decisions. All right, let's go to Dennis in Marina del Rey. Dennis, you're on with Rich.
Hey, Rich, I appreciate your program. You're doing a great job, my friend.
Oh, thank you.
Hey. I've got a Windows ten machine. It's a desktop machine, and it's a four K monitor, an LG monitor, and I but older guys seventy eight head cataract surgery, so I don't see things quite as clearly, even with corrective classes. But when I go in and I see the list. In other words, if I open a drive, I see the list of everything on the left hand side, and then if I click on a folder on the left hand side, it opens it on the right and you can adjust the size from small icons the larger icons
to a list. That's not a problem. How do I adjust the list on the left hand side so that it's much larger.
So you're talking when you're inside a folder, right Okay, well I think at this point you so, have you gone through the standard kind of right click the desktop going into view.
Have you done that?
Yeah?
Yeah, I have it, and it will work on the right hand side. It'll make the folders larger. But the list on the left hand side, the list all of the files on the drive, it's just too small.
Okay.
It sounds like this point you might want to go into the accessibility settings.
Have you gone into there? Okay?
So, uh, Windows Icon plus, set Windows icon settings, and then ease of access and I believe, I believe you can press Windows key plus you to get there directly. Uh you know the Windows key right, the little one next to the keyboard. So that is where you're going to find all of the bigger I should say, the deeper settings for specifically for accessibility. So we're talking ways to make the text bigger across everything, make everything bigger.
If you just want to make everything bigger on the screen, you can do that. If you want to change the size of the mouse pointer, the colors, the contrast, all that stuff. The main settings that you're seeing when you go into the view is just the standard kind of you know, do you want your icons bigger, smaller, whatever.
But accessibility is really where you're going to get those those fine controls, and I think that's what you're looking for at this point because that's going to make everything bigger on the screen, which is what you're saying right you need you need right now.
I appreciate that. And a great shout out to your screender at Kim chapter. She's still there, so she's doing a great job for you. Really love your program. Just wish you guys growing on Sunday too. I miss you on.
Sunday, man, I know, but you know I do work five days a week at my other job. So as much as my wife was excited to have me gone both days on the weekend, I said, I think one day is enough for three hours.
So absolutely all righty God bless you have a great day.
All right, Dennis, appreciate the call, Thank you, and thanks for the kind words.
So many things.
So what I love about this show is the unique aspect of what everyone everyone has different sort of like wants and needs when it comes to tech, and that's you know, we all come from this certain perspective that we have in our world. Because let's be honest, our
world revolves around us. And so what I love, and I also love this as a journalist is I get to see the world from so many different perspectives, and I love that aspect of things because if you're just involved in yourself, there's a whole nother world out there. Believe me, it's not just all about you. I mean sometimes it feels like it is, and in your life it is, but there's so much more out there. All right, let me tell you about this story, the Samsungs and
the Pixels. Okay, so there is a security issue that a lot of phones have already gotten an update, but some have not. So if you have a Google Pixel or a Samsung phone, Google has said hold on, there's a little bit of a problem. Hackers could take over your phone without you knowing. So there's a couple of vulnerabilities.
If you have a Samsung device S twenty two, the M thirty three, whole bunch of these M lines and the A lines, a Vivo device, or a Pixel six or a Pixel seven, or pretty much any phone that uses the Xenos Auto T five to one twenty three chipset. This is a motem inside the phone. Now, this bug lets hackers take over your phone. Pixel seven series already got thisecurity update to fix it. That's the March security update.
Pixel six series doesn't have it yet. Google says if you have that phone, you should disable voice over LTE and void and Wi Fi calling. So do that for the time being until you get your security updates. And do your security updates. This is why we do them. We don't want hackers to take over our phone, all right, more of your calls Triple eight rich one O one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four to one zero one. You are listening to Rich on tech
more after this, Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you. Uh our number two taking your calls at triple eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four.
One zero one.
You know I love telling you about when I find good new apps, right, so I'm gonna go over a couple of apps.
Kind of thought about this.
Last weekend was the Academy Awards, And I've talked about this before, but it's really tough to find things to watch, even if you subscribe to a bunch of streaming services. It's really really tricky because what you end up doing is going to Netflix checking to see if there's anything on there. Then you go to Hulu you see if there's anything on there. Then you go to HBO you see if there's anything on there. And I hate that method.
I hate like sitting down with you know, at the TV and trying to figure out something to watch at that moment. I want to have this all figured out before. So with that in mind, I did find my new absolute favorite, but I'm gonna save that for the last one. But I'm gonna tell you all the different solutions that you have. Okay, So number one and by the way, this all comes down to like making the most out of the streaming services that you already pay for.
That's what it's really about.
So the app that I've liked in the past that I've used is called Real Good ore e E l g oo D Real Good Get It Movie, Real Real Good. So what I like about this one is it's clean, it's modern, it's up to date. It works with over
three hundred streaming services according to them. I mean, I hope you don't pay for that many, but it's really nice because you can keep a watch list and it divides your watch list into two things, stuff that's on your streaming services and stuff that's not on them, and anything that becomes available, they'll move it to the other one.
So what I like about that is you can save any movie, whether it's on your streaming services or not, and then when it comes time to watch a movie, you just go to this little list you have and the ones that you want to watch that are on your services are at the top, and then you can sort them. You can sort them by your favor you know, the top rated, the most popular, however you want to sort. I usually do either top rated or most popular, and
then you can decide what to watch. And of course the movie that pops up at the top is never the thing I want to watch when when I sit down on the couch and watch TV. So that's real good. That's available for iOS and Android. Next up is this service called just Watch, and just Watch is another one
that I've used in the past that's pretty good. What's neat about this one is it shows you this matrix of streaming, rental and purchase options, so you can see how much this movie rents or is available for purchase on different services. So it's almost like buying a plane ticket, you know the dates and everything, but it shows you the price. So what I've noticed is most of the time the prices these days are the same, but sometimes they could be different, like it might be on sale
on YouTube or on sale and iTunes whatever. So that's just watch that's also available for iOS and Android. The neat thing about this, if you have caught up to all of your different services, you can see a timeline of new releases, so it literally shows you as you scroll down. Yesterday, these three movies were released on Netflix. These two movies were released on HBO Max, and so if you really want to up to this stuff, you can see that timeline. It also tracks sports if you're
into that. There's this app called ydeo y idio. Now, this is one of the early apps that track the streaming stuff, and I used to use it. When I revisited it for this comparison, not so great. The neat thing about this it does have preset filter, so if you're searching for the same sort of thing over and over, you can save that as a filter and then you can just tap that filter and.
It will show you those items.
So if you want to see new movies that are streaming on Netflix that are you know, indie films that are thrillers. You can save that and then you can just tap and see what's new in that preset filter. I feel like the interface on this app is a little confusing, so not the best one. I gave that one two stars out of five. And by the way, I put all of this on my Instagram at rich
On Tech. I did a little swipe through, so you can go to my Instagram profile and look for the movie Night, Popcorn and all these apps I'm talking about are there all right?
Apple TV app.
You might not realize, but you can actually use the Apple TV app to not only see where things are streaming, but also save those items in sort of a watch list. Now, of course this is Apple, so it only works on Apple devices, and it works best if you have an Apple TV as well. So Apple is really confusing at this point with the streaming because you've got the Apple TV box, which has been around forever. Then you have the Apple TV app, which is available across the iPhone
and the tablets that they have. But then you have Apple TV Plus, which is a streaming service, and that's available across a whole bunch of different platforms, not just Apple devices. Gets really really confusing with Apple. They need to sort of figure this stuff out. About the Apple TV app is, if you're totally invested in the Apple ecosystem, this is going to be a great way to keep track of things that you want to watch because you
can go on your phone. It's beautifully designed, as many Apple things are, and it will show you where that item is playing. So if you search for a movie in the Apple TV app, it'll tell you, oh, this is streaming on HBO Max and you can just open it up in HBO. The only streaming service that is really not there is Netflix, and that's a pretty big one. So I don't know what the war is between Apple and Netflix, but it seems like it's Apple against the world.
Sometimes it's like, Okay, you're either going to do it our way or you're not included in this. And Netflix has been out of this process since day one, so clearly, again frenemies, this is iOS only. So the Apple TV app is pretty handy. And the other cool thing is that if you add something to your what's called it up next list, which is sort of your watch list
when you sit down at your Apple TV. On your Apple TV home screen, you'll see the stuff that you want to watch and you can just click into it and watch it. Then you've got Google TV. Their app is very similar to Apple TV, except it's available across iOS and Android. It is one of the few apps that includes Rotten Tomatoes scores, so if you live and die by Rotten Tomatoes scores, which a lot of people like, those are included in the Google TV ratings, which is
kind of cool. Obviously it's Google. It's going to give you really good personalized recommendations. It's very easy to see what's free and what's paid. One more time, Netflix is notably absent, So I guess maybe it's not Apple. I take it back, it's really Netflix. That is kind of the person that's the problem here. What is a Taylor Swift song?
It's me? No, wait, what is it? It's me? It's no whatever, I can it's me. You, I'm the problem. It's me. That's it.
Okay, so Netflix should be singing that song from Taylor. And then the cool thing about this, kind of like Apple, the watch list sinks with chrome casts, so if you're a big chrome cast person, you can see.
All the stuff there.
Then of course Roku has their own app, so this is a great companion to Roku hardware. Their interface is okay, it's really focused on just getting you to watch stuff fast. Their search is good, it'll go across all the different providers and tell you where something is streaming, but they don't have many filters to narrow down all. Right, Now we get to the one that I've discovered doing this research, and I absolutely love it and this is my new favorite.
It is not an app, it's only a website, but it is called flick Metrics flick me t Rix, and this is I'm giving five stars to this website. It is the best that I've seen. What's great about this website is that it is fast, it's simple, it's easy, and it works across all the major providers, all the big ones Netflix, Amazon, Disney Plus, BritBox, Hulu, Paramount, Peacock, Showtime Stars, Hbo, iTunes, Apple TV, and Movie. And what's great about this is it's just very simple. You can
choose you want movies, you want TV shows. You can do the different categories, so if you want action, adventure, documentary and then so basically there's three things to do. You choose what you want to watch, then you choose the services that you want it on, and then you can choose the year and the rating, and it does an average rating among Metacritic, IMDb, Letterboxed, and critics and so it is super easy. It has found so many
great movies on the services that I subscribe to. You can also do a list like a watch list if you want. You can favorite things, you can mark things. This scene doesn't really give recommendations as far as I can tell, but you don't need them because now you can just sort by like all the stuff you want to watch again. The website is flick Metrics flick met ri i X. So far this has served me up two really good good movies. Well, i'd say one and
a half. My wife didn't like the movie you watched last night.
It was weird.
She's not really into weird movies. It was called Black Bear and it's starring what's her name. I keep forgetting her name, even though we've watched so many things with her. Aubrey Plaza. She's the actress from White Lotus and of course Parks and rec back in the day. But she was in this movie that was pretty quirky, very odd, and it's one of those movies that you kind of like you're watching and it's kind of like White Lotus where you're just you're watching because you're not sure if
it's gonna get good. It's like, but then you've gone the whole movie and you're like, Okay, I just watched that whole movie. I'm not sure if that's good, even though I watched the whole thing. So but the other movie it helped me find was called Vengeance, and this was a movie Oh gosh, how do you say it? Oh gosh, how you say it? Maybe it's maybe it's not. Anyway, it was. It takes place in Texas and it stars the guy from bj Novak, which is you know, from
the office. And I thought this was a great movie and I hadn't known about it, and this flick metrics helped me find it. Anyway, flick metrics is that my new top pick for finding movies. I think you'll like it. Let me know if you find a movie that you like. Through it again on Instagram at rich on Tech. Look for the movie logo on my profile and you can swipe through all those movie services that I just mentioned I'm all about finding the stuff that I'm paying for.
My kids are like, Dad, will you rent a movie? I said, no, I'm paying for all these services. I'm not paying six ninety nine to rent a movie. I barely want to go to the movie theater because I'm paying so much for these streaming services that when I when I watch a movie on one of these services, even if I watched just one a month, I am happy that.
I'm totally good.
Like if I got one good movie out of these services I pay for, I'm like, Okay, I'm good.
I made it.
Triple eight rich one oh one phone number to call eight eight eight seven four to two four to one zero one. Coming up, we're going to talk to Sherry Riggs of Allout. She's going to talk about some of the alternatives to mint Mobile and just kind of some of these low cost carriers in general, the pros, the cons, all that good stuff. Plus more of your calls. I'm gonna tell you about ways's new feature. If you have an EV you'll probably like it. You're listening to rich
on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. There's the song I was trying to think of the lyrics to how do I not know anti hero? My kids are singing this NonStop. My wife is singing it. I mean, if I admit it, I yes, I'm going to the Taylor Swift concert. You know, look, what can I say? My wife's a fan. I mean, I don't mind the music. I'm not gonna say.
No.
I think my wife wasted like two hours at work getting those tickets. You know, is that day when everyone was having trouble with ticket masters, somehow she got in. She only got two tickets, and then my kids are like, oh, we're not going. She's like, no, I didn't of you. When you have kids, everything is more expensive. It's like times four. Like when I used to fly by myself back home to New Jersey, it was like one ticket. Sure, it's you know, a couple hundred bucks. Now it's like
anywhere I go it is times that by four. And that's just the price of admission for anything. Yeah, kids are expensive. Eight eight eight rich one o one eight eight eight seven four to two four to one zero one. Michael is in Livermore, California. You didn't call to hear me complain, did you?
No? No, I didn't.
Well, how can I help?
I'm having an issue logging into my mode. I put in the user name, I put in the password, and when whenever I clicked the login button or even the enter button on my keyboard, it adds three extra characters to the password.
M like little asterisk or what? Okay, yeah, because it's it's not showing you what you're typing right.
Right?
So what why are you trying to log in just out of curiosity? Trying to change some settings or something?
The IP address on my devices?
Okay?
So, uh, there's apps that can do that, by the way, that can help. I can't remember the one I used off the top of my head, but there are some apps that can do that, like a network kind of sniffer app. Okay, So have you set the password on this modem or using the one that's built in?
I believe this one that's built in. It's been a long time since I've logged in. I don't think I've changed it from the basic one.
And is the motive is the password on the bottom of the modem and that's the one that you're trying to type in right. Interesting, now, when you type on your computer in general, are there extra characters kind of happening anywhere else.
No, And the thing is even if I've tried it on my phone also and it does the same thing.
Now, the password that you're entering, is it a small number of characters?
Like, is it like only like five digits or something.
Well, it's it's a Motorola modem and the password is Motorola.
Oh well, that's that's a great password.
Okay.
So what I would do in this case, and it's probably not I mean, it's probably not the easiest thing to do, But are you okay with trying to reset this modem to factory?
That wouldn't involve me having to call up my provider or anything.
No. There there's basically a little tiny pinhole on the back that you can press, you know, put like a paper clip into and press and hold for like thirty seconds, and it would bring it back to factory. That's probably the thing that I would do with this situation, because there's only so many times I could enter the same exact password and it's not working, and it just keeps giving me this page. Have you tried a different web browser? You said you try it on your phone?
I have, Yes, I have yet.
And the same thing every time. Huh.
Yep.
That's really frustrating. Hmm.
Yeah.
And were you ever able to log into this when I first got it.
I've had it for probably close to two years now.
Hm.
Now the other I mean, because the problem is once you reset this to factory, now, have you changed the the Wi Fi network that this puts out? Have you changed that to it's something custom?
Okay? You haven't, Okay. So the good news is when you.
Reset this fact to factory, it's going to put out the same Wi Fi password like SSI D and password for your for your devices, so those are going to.
Still connect to this.
So that's what I would do, and I would see if that works, because it seems like there's something going on here. Once you do that, by the way, and once you log in, I would also look to see if there's a software update for this modem because it might be that there's some sort of security thing going on here.
All right, Michael, all right, keep me posted.
Let me know, all right, thanks, alrighty, all right, Uh, that's that's an odd one. I've seen that I've seen that happen when I copy and paste a password into a field, and I've seen where I copy and paste one thing, but then it becomes like much longer and
clearly whenever that happens, there's something wrong. The other thing, Michael, you might want to try, and this could this could be a solution to to try is try typing out motorola on a on a website, like on a different page, copy it and then paste it into that field and see if that works. And maybe the act of pasting it will will work to get that password in it correctly and kind of trigger things to to log you in.
All right, I said, I was gonna mention this new feature on Ways, pretty simple feature but one that if you drive an EV you're gonna love. You can now put in your EV car type and plug type into the Ways app and it will find EV charging stations along your route that are compatible with your car. Now, you may not have this feature immediately. It is rolling out, which are my two most hated words in the tech world,
because you never know when you're gonna get it. But Ways is crowdsourced, so they're saying the information in there hopefully is more up to date, more comprehensive. And if you drive a non Tesla EV, the whole thing is that you want to find compatible charging stations along your route, which is different than just finding one somewhere that's where you're going. So update the ways app look for the
EV charging information inside your app. More calls a Triple eight rich one on one and we're gonna talk to Sherry Riggs of whistle Out about cheap cell phone provider plans.
Coming up next.
Welcome back to rich on Tech, rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology. Phone lines are open Triple eight Rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. My next guest is Sherry Riggs. She works for a website called whistle Out. This is a great website if you are looking to compare cell phone plans, internet plans, all that good stuff.
Sherry, Welcome to the show.
Hi, Yeah, I'm happy to be here.
So the mint Mobile news this week. It did you see that coming? Yeah?
Yeah, you know it.
There had been whispers of it, and I think it was only a matter of time before T Mobile was like, Ah, these guys are getting too big. We need to help them.
I mean, isn't it frustrating for folks that picked mint Mobile as an alternative to the big mobile companies and then they get purchased by the big mobile company even though the service always ran on the big mobile companies network, right.
So it's kind of a complicated relationship, I would say, because yeah, mint Mobile was a separate entity although it ran on T mobiles infrastructure. And I think the big worry for most people is that, Okay, now that one of the big three has acquired mint Mobile.
What's going to change?
And don't I don't think much is going to change. I think T Mobile is just still going to give the reins, mainly to mint Mobile to handle everything, and I think T Mobile just wanted a piece of the pie, really.
So explain the concept of an mv and O. This is what mint Mobile is pretty much. If you're not using T Mobile, Verizon or AT and T, if you have another company that's providing your service, it's an mv and O. Because we only have three networks here in the US. I think Dish is building their own, right.
Dish is trying, and you know, if that works out, then we'll have four again. But but yeah, So an MVNA is a mobile virtual network operator, basically meaning a smaller carrier rent space on a major carrier network. So mobile is a perfect example of that kind of because they aren't T Mobile. And then Visible Mobile is another good example of an MVNL and they rent space on Verizons network. So yeah, it's really like buying a generic cereal at a grocery store or something like that.
But the interesting thing is that Visible has always been owned by Verizon. And then you've got Cricket, which is I think AT and T purchased them, right, They weren't always AT and T.
Right, right, Yeah, Cricket was purchased by AT and T most recently. But yeah, so I think what's happening is the major carriers are seeing how much success can come with these smaller carriers offering lower prices, and they still just want a little bit more money, so they're they're dishing out and buying up these smaller guys and hopes of pumping up their own numbers.
So why do people go with one of these alternative carriers versus the big carriers?
Yeah, so, I.
Think mainly it is its costs. So all of these smaller carriers come at a cheaper price, and that's mainly. They offer the same service as the main carriers. It's the exact same coverage, So how do they keep it lower while with smaller carriers come less a customer service and potentially less help if you run into a problem. Most of these smaller guys all of it's run online and you kind of have to troubleshoot yourself if you
run into problems. So that's where you pay more money is generally the customer service with the big carriers, and even that doesn't go well people.
So the fact that I can walk into a Verizon store is to justifying the extra fifty bucks a month that you pay for a Verizon plan pretty much.
Yeah, yeah, that.
And generally the main carriers offer a bit more in terms of turks, like Verizon will give you the Disney Bundle and then T Mobile will offer Netflix, and so you do get a few other per along with those bigger cell phone plans. But but yeah, the big, in my opinion, the really big difference here is a is a brick and mortar store, a person to talk to.
Yeah, that was a big when I did a story. So the first like MV and O that I did a story with at KTLA was Visible, and I mean I'd heard of them, but Visible was very appealing because it was so cheap, and it was on Verizon's network, and I was like, and it was unlimited. So I'm like, wait, what's the catch here? And sure enough that you know, a lot of people did switch after our story. But the biggest feedback I got is that when they had any sort of problem, it was tough to you know,
you couldn't walk into a store. You had to do you had to troubleshoot everything, either online on the phone or through chat that you know which people if you're used to that hands on service at like a Verizon store, at and T store, it's like, uh, sorry.
Can't go. You can't get help with that inside the store.
All right, I'm looking at I'm looking at some of these whistle Out expert picks on the website. So can you explain what whistle out does, by the way, like how the website works.
Yeah?
Absolutely, So the best way to describe it is whistle Out compares cell phone plans and internet plans like Expedia can compare flights. So you can put in all of the requirements you want in a cell phone plan, and we have a database that will list out every single option for you, and you can sort it by price. You can sort it by carrier. It really helps simplify the process of either switching carriers or finding a new carrier.
Whistleout dot com is the website, so I'm going through some of your expert picture. Best unlimited phone plan is Visible by Verizon. Why does whistle out like that one?
So this is a new one. We recently changed this one, but we do love Visible because a it runs on Verizon's network and they have the most for GLT coverage in the country, so you'll pretty much always have coverage wherever you are. And then Visible's new cell phone plan options of Visible Plus offers some incredible perks in terms of data allotments and a gig a hotspot alignment as well, so you get a lot for the cost which is really low. I believe thirty five dollars a month.
Now, this one the best cheap phone plan. US Mobile.
I actually really like this company because it's all online. Obviously they rent from Verizon and T Mobile, but it's really good and it's like very customizable. So for five gigs of data it's just ten bucks a month. That's I mean, should we feel concerned going to US Mobile because we haven't heard of them before?
No, not at all. You know, US Mobile is one of those hidden gems. I like to call it. It's a unicorn cell phone carrier because their prices are so low and incredibly customizable, and on top of that, you get to choose which carrier you want to be with, either T Mobile or Verizon, and it's the same price across the board. So yeah, it can be scary going with a name you don't know, but it doesn't take away from how good they are as a carrier, and.
I've personally tested them and they were excellent. I've talked to the CEO of this company and it's just one of those companies that literally I never heard of because they don't advertise as far as I can tell, maybe online or something that I just haven't seen.
Yeah, they don't do a whole lot of advertising, I think mainly because the proof is in the pudding, as they say, once you've tested it out and looked at the prices and you make the switch, it's it's pretty incredible to see how much money you can save and still get incredible quality service. And in fact, US mobiles new Unlimited plan is one of my favorites at forty five dollars a month. You get premium data at one hundred gigabytes, a giant hotspot, a lotminut fifty and it's
one of the best deals out there. It's quickly going to the top of my list as most recommended unlimited plan.
Wow, okay, best fan plan. Reach Mobile. I've never heard of them.
Yeah, Reach is a small one, but Reach does some really great work. And they also have family pricing, which is which is awesome, and you don't often get that with MBN out so keeping that in mind, you don't with the major carriers. You generally get a discount for multiple lines. With many nbnos they don't do multi line discounts, but some do and that is an awesome perk.
And finally, the best prepaid phone plan, Mint Mobile, still has it right now, unlimited data. So I have a family member that has Mint and they've been telling all their friends about it because they've had it for years. And they pay once a year, so it's a one time fee. They pay for the whole year at once, and they love it because they don't have to think about their bill.
And people are like, I don't believe you.
I don't see how you can have the same service that I have for paying one bill a month, it's like three hundred bucks or whatever it is.
Right, Yeah, it's there. That can be an upside and a downside. Right, paying for service for one year might seem like a big bill at one point, but it is incredibly cheap. And once you just pay it, you set it aside for one year and you're good to go. That's one of the best things that I appreciate about mint Mobile is that you are able to buy in bulk and so far in advance, and if you love the service, it makes it that much easier and that much better.
In fact, I got an email for I have a mint Mobile test line, and I've got an email today. How funny is this that my three months? I guess I had three months that I bought and I got three months free and today is the anniversary of that date.
I don't know, so funny.
Thank you, so exciting.
And I've used an average of three point nine gigs a month on this test line, so anyway, Wow, I know, all right, Cherry, tell folks how they can find you. I know you do a lot of YouTube videos. Tell folks how they can find you on there?
Yeah, so we're on YouTube on the internet. You just need to search whistle Out USA and you will find us and you will hopefully find a better deal than you have right now. I promise we'se save you some money.
All right, Sherry Riggs of whistle Out, thanks so much for joining me today on the show.
Appreciate it.
All right, Coming up, I'm gonna tell you about a new podcast app that I really like. Plus, I'm going to dive into that Verizon deal where they're giving you like a free year of Netflix. I'm gonna explain what the catch is there, and we'll have more of your calls.
Give me a call.
Phone lines are opens triple eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. You're listening to Rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Timuro here hanging out with you, talking technology. I'm the tech reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles. All right, DK Wrights, Hey, Rich, I hope you read this. My niece accidentally deleted all thirteen thousand pictures on her phone. She has a Galaxy S twenty two Ultra. She has
tried everything she can to restore the photos. They were backed up to Google one eighteen hours ago, but when she checked there was nothing there. I'm hoping you might be able to help. Would greatly appreciate any suggestion. Thank you kindly, Debbie Huh. Okay, So first off, I'm very curious how thirteen thousand pictures were deleted because you got to work really hard to delete that many pictures off of your phone, and also it takes a while to
delete thirteen thousand pictures. So my first question is how did this happen because that's nearly impossible to I mean on the iPhone, you know, and all these phones, you basically have to go in, select all your photos and then say delete all. And there's like a couple of steps to do that. It doesn't just say like delete everything. So okay, that aside, I'm just curious about that. So what I would do is a couple of places. Number One, you said that they were backed up in Google one.
The good news about it an Android phone is that typically things are backed up automatically like it's it's pretty rare that they're not. So the first place I would go is one dot Google dot com, and once you go there, you can check to see your different devices. So go to storage and you have different It says your device backups and you should see the Galaxy S twenty two Ultra in there, and mine says backup incomplete. So if you see backup incomplete, that means that things are not.
Backed up properly.
So that's the first place I'd look and see if that backup is in there, and then you can click see details and it will show you photos and videos. In my case, it says they're in Google Photos. Now on the Samsungs, they have a thing where they also sync to one drive. Samsung has a deal with Microsoft, so your photos may be in one drive, and so that's what I would check as well, and look in one drive and see if your photo's there.
And that's one edrive.
Dot Microsoft dot com and you can log in there and it might be your Samsung log in. You might have a link to your Microsoft login, so check there. The other thing I would do is go to photos dot Google dot com and if these were backing up to Google Photos, they should still be in there, because even if you deleted them, they would be in the trash.
And so you can go to photos dot Google dot com, click the trash and items in the trash are deleted after sixty days, so all these thirteen thousand pictures should be in there now. If she went through and emptied the trash, that's a whole nother problem. And again, you know, these tech companies try to do their best to protect us from ourselves. And again there's a lot of steps involved in deleting thirteen thousand pictures. That process physically takes
a little bit of time. So hopefully it's in one of those places, Debbie. And once you find these pictures and recover them, please back up your photos. I know there's a lot of confusion when it comes to photos, but I'm just gonna give you my advice. On your phone, you want your photos backed up somewhere, choose a program to back them up. If you're on the iPhone, you can use iCloud. It's not my favorite, but you can
use it. And just remember, if you delete a picture off your phone on your iPhone, it mirrors iicloud, so it will delete it off iCloud as well. I personally like Google Photos. I think it's the best easiest way to figure out where your photos are. Yes, you might have to pay for a little bit of storage, but that to me is the best one. The other thing you can do is if you're an Amazon Prime member, you can use this as a secondary backup Amazon Photos.
Download it, sign in with your Amazon account. As long as you have an Amazon membership, that's a secondary place to do it. The only thing is on the iPhone, if you're using Amazon Photos, it doesn't automatically back up in the background necessarily. You do have to you open up the app every once in a while to back it up. Just remember that on the iPhone you have to open up the app. You can use one drive. I don't care if you use, you know, whatever app
you want to use. Just make sure that you open it up and check to make sure your stuff is backed up every once in a while.
All right.
I said that Verizon was giving away a free year of Netflix Premium twenty dollars a month value if you have a Verizon Unlimited plan. They're trying to promote this new Verizon Plus Play program that they have, which is a hub for all of your streaming subscriptions. So if you want to get free Netflix, the catch is that you have to subscribe to some other service. Those services include AMC Plus, Stars, Paramount Peloton. Subscribe to one of
those services, you'll get Netflix for free. The tricky part is the timing getting it all right. But if you want to save two hundred and forty bucks a year on Netflix, try it out. Go to the website. If you've got one of these other services anyway, you might as well. I'm gonna try it out. We'll see I do Peloton all right. Eight eight eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one. Give me a call if you got a tech question. More of your calls coming up next.
Welcome back to rich on Tech Rich DeMuro hanging out with you, talking technology. Eight eight eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Got a couple of guests coming up later this hour. Xavier Journ again. This is a really cool interview. Xavier is the Spotify's first AI DJ. So if you've got Spotify, you might have seen this new little feature. It's an AI DJ. It's a DJ that's personalized just
for you. Kind of interesting. So I talked to him about being that voice and what's that like and how they do it. Then I've got Clay Alexander He is the CEO and founder of Ember. You might know Ember as the company that the temperature controlled mug keeps your coffee or your tea at the same temperature the whole time. Well, now they have a new product. It's for babies, a baby bottle. So I'll talk about that. Ember, by the way, Westlake Village, California company.
They just moved to new offices and.
Wow, it reminded me of that movie or that TV show Severance on Apple TV.
I don't know if you saw it.
Very like futuristic like it just it looked like the headquarters of a tech company. It was just really cool lines and stuff. I put out my Instagram at rich on Tech if you want to see it. Apple this week introduced a new feature called Specialist Shop with a Specialist over Video. Say that ten times fast Shop with a Specialist over Video. This is a feature that's kind of like a video chat, but it's a one way video chat. They can't see you, but you can see them.
So the idea is you're on the Apple website or on your phone and you want to shop for a new phone. You don't feel like going into the store, so you can fire up one of these retail specialists. Their video pops up on your screen while you're browsing the website. It's a one way video shopping session. You can ask them to do things like, Hey, can you show me the difference between the iPhone fourteen and the fourteen plus? Hey? Can you show me the different colors
of the phones? Can I see them in hand so I can decide which one I want?
Hey?
Can you tell me about trade and offers different deals? And it's interesting A lot of people don't realize this, but you can go to the Apple Store and they can help you no matter which carrier you have, whether you have AT and T, Verizon, T Mobile, whatever. They can help you switch plans, switch to a new phone. You don't have to go to your carrier store. My sister was shopping for a phone and I told her that.
She's like, wait, what, I don't have to go to whatever come because she has so Yeah, you could just go to the Apple Store. And I think it's almost better because their retail associates kind of know the different plans and the different deals from all the different carriers, so they might be able to help you. So this shop with a specialist over video is available to customers
in the US seven am to seven pm Pacific every day. Again, they can't see you, you can see them, and it's all about just making things.
Easier to shop. It's interesting.
I mean, I wonder. I asked them, I said, hey, were these people located? Like where are they in the stores? And they didn't really answer the question. But it seems like it's a It seems like the retail associates are in stores and they're just you know, hey, can you go?
Man?
The website phone calls for an hour, but I guess video calls in this case. Minecraft is coming to the Chromebook. This is a long time coming for kids that have a Chrome Book, and this is an early access version of Minecraft. Minecraft is available in a lot of different places, but the Chromebook is not one of them historically. So
the Minecraft Bedrock Edition releasing on Chromebook. It'll give you access to cross device play with friends, the Minecraft marketplace, the ability to play on realms, and it's not going to be on all the chromebooks. I did check on my kids chromebook and it was available, so he's going to test it out for me. You can go to the Google Play Store and type in Minecraft. If you have a Chromebook and it will let you know if
it's available to you. It has to have a certain spec count on your Chromebook, so it's not all of them, and you can go to the Minecraft website and tell you it'll tell you exactly what.
The requirements are.
Let me look them up here, Chrome OS one eleven sixty four bit system architecture. You've got to have a certain process or Intel cleron Media Tech Qualcom, four gigs of RAM and one gig for game installation. So I know that doesn't sound like very high end specs, but chromebooks are known for having notoriously low end specs. It doesn't make them a bad machine. It's just chromebooks don't require too much to run, but you do need four I mean, those specs aren't totally wild, but you do
need those to run this. And the whole idea here is that they're going to test to see how the game performs on the chromebooks before they expand it to more.
So expect some bugs.
But if your kid is a fan of Minecraft and so far they have not been able to play it on their chromebook, it's kind of cool and some of the kids like having the keyboard because it's easier to play these games with a keyboard versus just having the touch screen on the iPad. So there you go. And then I told you that I found a new podcast app that's kind of cool. It's called Wonder This is from a of newsletter called Wonder Tools, and I suggest
you subscribe to it. It's really good. It's a substack snipped. It's called snipd snipd. What's cool about this podcast app is that it allows you to snip little interesting parts of the shows that you watch and either save them for later or you can share them out to social media so you can build. And I always love this idea because when I'm listening in my car to like an audiobook or something, sometimes I want to bookmark a place for later to like listen, and it's really tricky.
On the audiobook apps, you can do it, but it's not very easy. So same thing with podcasts. Like you hear something interesting, you're like, oh, I want to bookmark that for later, you can't.
Well, this lets you do it. So the app is called snipd.
What's also neat is that it actually does a transcript of the podcast, so you can kind of scour around and see if there's something interesting that the person talked about in the pot. So it seems to be free. I didn't take a deep dive into it, but I just kind of looked at it and tried it out and it was pretty cool. So SNIPD is the podcast.
All right, let's get to a question here. Tom writes in hey Rich, I'm looking to buy a Windows eleven Dell XPS laptop and wondering if it's better to buy it without the bloatwear for an additional charge or just remove it once I get it. Mainly it's the av software, Norton, etc.
That I do not need.
Thank you, good question. And the bloatwear on computers is out of control. I remember when I did a story with the Microsoft Store. They said, hey, by the way, you know, if you buy a computer here, we do not allow bloatwear to be pre installed. So if you want a good place to buy a computer, it's probably best to buy it for the Microsoft Store.
I said, wow, that's interesting.
And so the Microsoft stores, of course, have mostly gone out of business. They mostly just do their stuff online. Now. They might have a couple of them here and there, but they're not as elaborate as they used to be with their locations. So would I pay extra to get rid of the stuff I don't need? Absolutely, so I don't know how much. I didn't even know this was an option on Dell that you can say, hey, I don't want all this garbage on my computer. I mean,
that's interesting if they even give you that option. It's sad that all this stuff is included on these computers. Sometimes people might call it helpful, but no. This was a big problem on cell phones as well, especially the Samsungs of the world. They would come pre installed. Not just Samsung, almost every phone except the Pixel would come pre installed with all this junkie software that you didn't need. Why because these companies pay to put it on there.
So Facebook at some point would be pre installed on the Samsungs, they'd have LinkedIn Microsoft apps, whatever. And it's all because these companies pay for that placement, and as the end user, you're left with disabling it or trying to uninstall it. With the Samsung, I've noticed a lot of it's easily uninstalled nowadays. In fact, I don't think that there's a lot that comes on there if you
get it from your carrier. Yeah, there's probably a lot of like AT and T, T Mobile Verizon software that comes pre installed that they do deals to get this stuff on there, but most of the time you can uninstall it. But yes, I would pay the extra money to not have this stuff pre installed. There's a feature on Windows machines called fresh Start that will let you reset your computer and do a clean installation of Windows. But do you really want to do that right when you get your computer.
I don't know.
It seems like a lot, so it will get rid of most of the stuff on your computer that's not supposed to be there. If you do this clean Start, it's basically inside Windows eleven, Windows ten you can go to settings, System Recovery and reset the PC. But I don't know that that's like icky to have to do
that right when you get a new computer. So if Delle's giving you the option, yeah, I would say definitely take the option, because that's the other thing about the Chromebooks that people like is that they don't come installed. There's really no malware or viruses or things for these kind of computers because they don't come with stuff pre installed. It's just basically a Chrome web browser. But yeah, My favorite thing to do is a clean install. Mac computers
don't really come with a lot of bloatwear. I mean it comes with a lot of Mac software pre installed, like numbers, pages, iMovie, keynote, garage band. I don't really use any of that stuff, news books, I don't use any of that stuff stocks, iMovie. Maybe if you need a video editing program, but anyway, yes, I would do that.
Tom. Probably a good idea to just pay the extra money to do that. All right.
Coming up, we're gonna talk to Xavier Journ again. He's gonna tell us what it's like to be Spotify's first AI DJ Plus, we'll talk about the new Ember product for babies, and yet another Google product is going away, one that I used personally. I'll tell you which one
they're sending to the trash can. Coming up, you got a question, Give me a call Triple eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four two four one zero one, or give me an email Hello at Richontech dot tv is the email address, or find me on social media at rich on Tech. You are listening to Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro Here at Triple eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four two four one zero one. Now you know, I'm
a real person sitting behind this microphone. But in the future, you might be listening to someone that is AI inn AI voice. In fact, Spotify recently announced that they have a new feature called ai DJ on their app.
I just got access to it this week.
And when you press it, the person that comes on sounds like they're talking to you. They say your name, they say, Hey, we know you've been listening to this lately. Let's give you more of this, or let's introduce you to this song. It's all AI. It's an AI voice model. And recently I talked to the person that served as the model for the voice, Xavier x journ Again. He did a podcast and a morning show over at Spotify.
He's also the head of Cultural Partnerships there, and he explained all about what it's like to be the voice of AIDJ.
Take a listen, So tell me about being the voice of AIDJ. What does that entail?
What entails in terms of how it works or how it came together. Let's start with how it came together, the way it came together. I've been at Spotify for six and a half years. I started out as the head of music editorial for play Listening.
So I did that for a while and then one day.
I got asked to host a podcast. Then that led to me getting as the host internal and external Spotify events, and then this came along and they said you're the perfect voice. It was a list of one they said you're the list, which is super flattering, and they said we're coming out with this thing. It's AIDJ and I had to wrap my mind around it, which was hard to because they're like, it's not voice recordings, it's text to voice and it's going to talk exactly like you.
Are you in Yes, Oh, you have a great voice.
Thank you. I have heard that for a while.
I heard that a few times, but you know what it was like, not just my voice, but my personality and the fact that I'm rooted in the music industry and entertainment. It gave it a sense of authenticity, you know what I mean that I'm really in an industry and not just a voice actor.
So it's really about.
Going into the booth, training the voice model pow to sound like me. What does a period sound like? What does a comma sound like? What do I sound like?
Excited? What I sound like calm.
So we had to train it and that was a lot, you know, a lot of different sessions that we did training the model. They took a lot of audio from other podcasts ideas and then they took all of that they fed it into the voice model and that's how it came into being.
And once my mama said it sounded like me, I knew it was legit.
So okay, your mom said it sounded like you, What do you think?
It sounds exactly like me. It blew me away. When we got to the final version, even the first version, we all thought, like everybody was like, don't head your beads, it's gonna be okay.
We were like, this is crazy, Like this is unreal.
Okay, So explain to me when you're introduced, Well, first off, what is the DJ doing?
Yes, so you get segments of five songs. I'll welcome you.
I'm your friend writing along with you. I may be slightly cooler than you because I know a little bit like a fun facts, know a little bit about the artists. It was very much built on my personality. So I'm giving you fun facts about the music. I'm giving you fun facts about how you listen. I'm giving you context because Spotify has been great in personalization for a long time. We're known for that. That's one of our hall But now you get the context. This is why you're getting
this song. I'm gonna take you back to twenty sixteen. Now, I'm gonna tell you about twenty sixteen and when you're gonna get what you listen to and when that comes together, magic happens. And we also introduce you to new artists, new music based on your listening habits. So we're gonna introduce you to that with the context, and we know through our data, through our history, when you have that context, you're most likely to check it out, follow that artist, and then become a fan.
Do you have to go in every day to say new things? Are you saying these artists names? Are you saying where they grew up, all these cities? You know what they're doing, who they collabed with? Did you have to say ten thousand words for all this suffer? Is it generating this based on new text?
That's what it is. It's generating it now.
I said a lot of different words, like when I was training the model, Like we said a lot of the artists names because they had to learn my intonation, my cadence, teach the voice model to learn all of that. But then once they learned it, Nope, it's a whole writer's room. Is generative AI that we use. We put in the hands of our music editors. So we put in the hands of our experts. I'm a part of
a writer's room and we write. We have cultural experts, we have data curators, we have a whole ux writing team, we have actual script writers, and we put that into the AI as well.
And as I get it, I'm just like my mind, I see it.
I see a lot like you're trying to process.
So have you had to go back in to re record like let's say a new artist comes out.
No, do you have to re record their name?
I do not.
We can do it on the back end. The AI knows how to do it. So if there's something like we can train it on the back end. Now, so there's enough data that we put in, okay, and then so if.
A name is pronounced a certain way, it puts the intonation somewhere else. If they can go in on the back end and tweak it and say, now that's.
Where you put the intonation that's exactly right, and and we want to be authentic.
We want to pronounce the names properly.
This is really new to a lot of people. They're going to feel like they know you.
Yes, I'm your friends.
That's what Like when I was recording, I thought about one person, not a group of people. I'm talking to one person. I want to connect with that one person. This is about connection. So I feel the sense of purpose in doing this work because if somebody feels this connection, they'll feel seen, they'll feel value, they'll feel heard, and that's what magic happens. So I feel purpose in it. It's a little wild because it's so big and like
it's blowing up. But I'm honored and humble to be the voice like around the World X, Around the World, X around the World.
US and Canada.
Start there, you go right.
There, you have it, Xavier a Journeygain voice of dj X on Spotify AI DJs. It's so weird to think about that that's happening in our world when here I am lending my voice for three hours to this show. I understand why Spotify is doing it, but as a radio lover, I really appreciate the sound of someone that's telling me the songs, the you know, the artists, they're giving me the background. Like I get that we live in this world of streaming music where there's just random
songs next to each other that play forever. But there's something so nice about someone behind the microphone that actually knows what that song is and introduces it for me. You're listening to rich on Tech. Coming up next, we're going to talk about Ember's new product for babies. Yes, the world's first self warming baby bottle. You're listening to rich on Tech. More of your calls and interviews after this. Rich Demiro here rich on Tech, Welcome back to the show.
I'm here in.
Westlake Village, California with Clay Alexander, CEO of Ember. You may know this company for its temperature controlled mugs, but now they are branching out into all kinds of temperature control systems. The latest product is a self warming baby bottle system.
Clay, welcome to the show.
Thank you for having me.
Rich.
I'm happy to be here. So a lot of folks may know Ember for the mugs.
This is the first product that I tried from Ember, and it's a temperature controlled mug, tell me the idea behind that.
So actually it started with scrambled eggs.
Okay.
So in two thousand and nine, I had just sold my light bulb to GE. It was the world's large, brightest led light bulb, and GE had bought the rights to it. And I was sitting there, you know, thinking, Okay, what am I going to do next with my life?
Right?
And I was eating scrambled eggs with my wife in the kitchen. I get about halfway through my eggs and my eggs get cold on my plate. This happens every time I eat scrambled eggs, so I thought. I remember looking down and thinking, okay, this is the twenty first century. At a bare minimum, my dinner plate should be able
to keep my food at a decent eating temperature. So I've been an inventor since Berth and I thought, okay, let me make I started strapping RC car batteries and temperature control circuitry to the bottom of the dinner plates in my kitchen.
I'm sure, I'm sure your wife loved you.
No, I was making a big giant mass in the kitchen with electronics and wires and benchtop powers supplies and all that good stuff. So I created the world's first self warming interplay, and I started eating my meals off of at steaks, salmon, etc. You get halfway through the meal, thirty minutes later, you're taking your time. You cut into the salmon, steam still comes out. It's the perfect temperature,
perfect bike. So I had invented this, and I remember thinking to myself looking around the kitchen going gosh, coffee mugs, soup bowls, shafing dishes, baby bottles, all the things that can benefit from temperature control. And the real question was, well, where do we start right And at that time, this is back in twenty fourteen fifteen when I was making this decision, coffee, high end coffee was on the rise
big time. So we created the world's first self warming coffee cup, and we made prototypes and I remember drinking out of it, carrying it around town, and it looked like a crazy invention. It had batteries strapped to the side and wires and circuitry, but the user experience was phenomenal because you know, you got thermusigetti and all these others,
and those are dual wall vacuum insulation. The temperature that you pour in is what it holds it at If you pour hot coffee, brood coffee comes out at one hundred and eighty degrees, burns your mouth, or you wait for a very long period of time for tacool, you get distracted, you go back, and now it's too cool cold. So I thought, gosh, what if I could What if we could create technology that actually locks your drinking temperature
in whatever your preferred specific drinking temperature is. You set it in a number mug one thirty five for instances mine, and every time I pour a cup of coffee, no matter where I am, and I poured a number mug, it goes to one hundred and thirty five degrees on the nose. And every sip, every sip, no matter where I go. It's battery powered, carried around the meetings, et cetera. Is at one hundred and thirty five degrees.
Okay, so let's talk about the self warming baby bottle system. This is brand new from Ember, over ten years in the making. Where did the idea for this come from?
Okay, this is a great story.
So my beautiful daughter Charlotte was born eleven years ago and my wife did most of the feedings. Every once in a while. It was Dad's turn, and I remember Charlotte waking up in the middle of the night crying, you know, starving. It's like I'm carrying her downstairs, going into the kitchen, getting a bowl of water, running the water in the sink, warming up the water, putting the baby bottle in the water. It's bobbing around because you know,
my wife didn't want me to use the microwave. And then you're like squirting milk on your wrists and you're going, I'm a new parent, I have all these other anxieties about parenthood, and I don't know if this temperature is right.
I'm just trying to sense it on my wrist.
So it was a very honestly, the anxiety level was very high at that time for me as a parent, and I thought, there's got to be a better way. And I thought, gosh, what if the baby bottle could warm the milk itself right up to the perfect body temperature and let you know when it's ready. And that was kind of the origin idea.
And so now we've got the baby bottle. It comes with this sort of warming puck on the bottom. Can you explain how it works?
There's a puck that you can throw in your back pocket or anywhere, and you can basically throw the bottle on the puck and it warms milk or formula up to body temperature within less than five minutes. And part of the beauty of it is if you want to keep the milk cold for on the go, we also have that comes in the kit that we just launched, a what we call a thermal dome. So the cold milk comes out of the fridge with the bottle and you throw it on the puck, you throw the thermal
dome over it. It's all magnetic sucks together. The thermal dome will keep the milk in the bottle cold for up to four hours on the go. So you have this little like we call it like an infant feeding kit, throw in your diaper bag, throw it in your backpack on the go, and when your baby is hungry, you just open up your iPhone or Android device and you go to the Amber Baby app, you click warm Milk.
It actually warms the milk while the baby bottle is in your bag, and then it just notifies you when you're ready on either your connected watch or on your phone.
And if you don't want to necessarily use the app, which you probably want to because if you have something like this, you're into apps and phones and stuff. But there's also a physical button on the bottom of the puck that you can just.
Press five lights.
When they all light up, it lets you know that the milk is at the right temperature. The baby bottle is super lightweight, lighter than you would think.
It is all dishwashers safe.
All of the parts that touch the milk the puck obviously is the electronics, and you also the bulk of the electronics in the bottom, like the Bluetooth is not near the baby bottle itself.
That's right. So in early in the early days, in our first version of the Umber baby bottle, we put the battery technology and the Bluetooth radio and such in the bottom of the bottle is part of the bottle, just like an Emmer mug. Right, And in a lot of early focus groups, parents said, you know, I don't really want a Bluetooth radio near my baby's face. I
don't really want a batteries. So we pivoted and we re engineered the product so that we put the Bluetooth radio and the batteries and all that stuff into a little kind of hockey puck that you throw in your back pocket that's magnetic to the bottle. That way the bottle. The bottle has you know, a microprocessor, heaters and temperature control sensors all kind of embedded in there safely. But there's no you know, batteries or bluetooth radio or any
of that kind of stuff. So it's it's all solid state electronics in there.
And safety for this. This is something that you know, babies are going to be holding.
Yeah, So safety has been a number one priority for us from the very very beginning. And one of the things that we really wanted to make sure we got right is the heating.
Right.
We never wanted to be over body temperature, so you know, ninety eight point five degrees in this case. And so we actually designed the ember Baby bottle with three independent circuits that run inside the bottle. If the first circuit fails, right, if the milk goes up, you know, ninety eight point six boom, the second circuit kicks in senses that it went a point of a degree up and then opens
the circuit, essentially killing heating. If the second circuit fails, there is a third circuit that can then catch it, so it is absolutely bomb proof, never go it will never go above that body temperature. And so that took us actually probably almost two years to engineer just what I was saying right there, this triple redundancy.
The self forming baby bottle system from ember Cells for four hundred dollars.
Some people may balk at that price.
So in the future we'll launch less expensive versions that just have maybe one bottle and one puck, but at launch, we want to have an entire system that really takes care of you, and it's an infant feeding system.
Any advice for aspiring entrepreneurs.
I would say, honestly, grit to go from an idea in your mind to building a global brand. It's definitely the hardest thing I've ever done in my life X ten. And I would just say, you, like, the reason that I like can't sleep at night, work seven days a week, et cetera, is because of my passion of what I'm doing right Like, I'm so excited about every product that we create and launch. And if you don't have that passion, you're not going to have the grit and the determination
to actually pull it off. And especially when you go through tough times, you just got to keep pushing that big giant boulder up the hill.
Clay Alexander, CEO of EMBER and founder, thanks so much for joining me today.
Thank you, Rich It was great to have you all right.
If you want to learn more about what Ember's doing, check out the website. Just go to rich on Tech dot TV. I'm rich Tibureau more of rich on Tech after this welcome back to rich on Tech. I mentioned that a feature Google loves to just kill things. Google loves to kill products. Now they've got a new product they're killing Google trip summaries. This is a feature that I really liked. I thought it was kind of a
fun hidden feature on Google. And I guess it was too hidden, so either people aren't using it or they just couldn't make money off of it.
I don't know, but I like it.
I mean, I'm looking at my upcoming trip to Nashville, and what's cool about this is Google as long as you're getting your travel itineraries in your Gmail, it kind of parses the information and puts it into an itinerary on Google Travel. So if you go to let's see what the website is here, Google dot com slash travel, and you know, you'll see the different places that you're going to, so I can see my flights here to Nashville, I can see where I'm staying. And then at the
end it says discover Nashville. So it's using the you know, the itinerary information to give you ideas and what to see while you're there. And then it gives you what people ask see popular questions from Google search. Is Nashville worth visiting? What's the best best month to visit? What's the number one thing to do? Is three days enough? And then it gives you.
Top travel articles.
And I thought this was a really cool little feature, but apparently it's just not going to continue.
So as of May.
First, Google trip summaries are going away, and it's got this little message at the top of the screen that explains it says trip summaries won't be available anymore beginning May first, though, your travel reservations may still appear in other Google services, so that means that, in another word, they're scanning your Gmail travel reservations to still serve up ads based on where you might be going.
That's the way I interpret that.
To save a trip summary, click or tap on the share button, but you can only do that, by the way, if you put restaurant reservations, car travel, anything, it would just all go into there. It was really really a neat little feature. The other thing I would do, I guess, is just use an app like Tripsy trips Y, the one that I really like that I use. And this is probably why Google's going being done with this is
because I switched to a ward wallet. So a ward wallet has this great thing called Timeline and if you give it access to your Gmail, which I know there is a security risk there, but you have to figure out if you want to do that or not. And once you do that, it can scan your Gmail for any confirmations you get and it will put this all on one big timeline. I love this. I even have my ticket Master tickets in here. It'll even find those. It's got hotel rooms, it's got car rentals, it's got
car restaurant reservations, everything. Anything that gets sort of a confirmation email, Award Wallet will suck it up and put it into this great little timeline. It's really really convenient. So it's a good alternative as well. So Tripsy award Wallet, I mean, you can use tripe it as well. That'll do the same thing. Amazon this week showed off its
new project Kuiper. This is their competition for Starlink. So Amazon is putting into low or orbit orbit orbit orbitbit a satellite network so they will be able to deliver a broadband across the globe. So this is starting now. I mean they're just gonna start kind of working on this. This is not going to happen for another couple of years. First sort of customers looks like twenty twenty four, so next year, so it's not we got a while. But they showed off their satellite I guess receivers for the
home and so there's three different ones. Actually it's residential and small business, so there's three different receivers they have. So they've got this really high performance one that's the biggest one. They have five pounds without its bracking mounting bracket. It's one of the most powerful commercially available customer terminals of its size, delivering speeds up to four hundred megabits
per second. That's really fast for space internet. Amazon says they're going to produce these terminals for less than four hundred dollars each I don't know if that means they're going to sell it for that price or that's how much's going to cost them. Then they've got this ultra compact design. This is really cool. This is a seven inch square So this is Project Kuiper's smallest and most
affordable customer terminal. It weighs just a pound. It will give you speeds up to one hundred megabits per second. It's portability and affordability will create opportunities to serve even more customers around the world. This is for residential customers who want a low cost model.
So cool.
I mean, you could bring this thing anywhere, get speeds up to one hundred megabits anywhere you can see a satellite. That's really really cool. The fact that it's portable is fun. Then they've got this high bandwidth design. This is the biggest one they have. This measures nineteen inches by thirty inches. It will deliver speeds up to one gigabit per second for space Internet.
I love this.
I love the fact that Starlink is doing this. I love the fact that now Amazon is doing it, although I'm a little concerned about Amazon's following through with this. You know, Amazon likes to start a lot of things, but maybe not finish them, so I hope that they finished this. I think this is in their best interest because the more people that can get online around the world, the more people that can use Amazon products and services. So it's in their best interest to see this through.
And launching satellite internet is not cheap, so once they get those satellites up in space, it's probably something they want to continue doing. Amazon says we have built and shipped hundreds of millions of devices for customers, including low cost products like the Echo Dot and the Fire TV stick. Project Kiper is applying that experience to its customer terminal design and production process. They are so excited to build tens of millions of units for customers. I'm excited for this.
I mean, at this point, when it comes to home internet, you really have a couple of options. You've got the wired internet from the local providers, then you've got the five G Internet from the cellular providers. That's just sort
of starting. It's not even available where I live, and now you're going to have space Internet, and space internet typically is more expensive, so it's been reserved for people that live in sort of rural areas or underserved areas by tradition means so the fact that now we have Amazon and starlink as an alternative, it's just it's letting more people live wherever they want, and work wherever they want,
and do whatever they want in those places. You're no longer needing to run a line for something that's really cool.
So thank you Amazon. All right.
Final story Samsung this week, big brew haha about how Samsung phones take really good pictures of the moon, and a Reddit user said, not.
So fast, this is fake.
So what this user did is they took a picture of a moon picture on their computer screen from across the dark room and lo and behold the moon that they took a picture of looked amazing. All the details were there, even though it was a tiny picture to start, and so this of course made the rounds. Everyone was debating whether the samsungung photos are fake. So Samsum came out with a blog post and they explained how this
is happening. They said, okay, ever since the S twenty one series, we've used this scene optimizer to recognize the moon and take a good picture of it. They apply detail enhancement so to explain how it works. They said, look, we take ten images at a twenty five times zoom or higher, and it needs all those images to enhance the clarity and other details. When the moon is recognized,
this goes into effect. And they say they built their model on a whole bunch of shapes and sizes of moons, and they will actually at the last line they say, we're going to continue to make this better to reduce any potential confusion that may occur between the act of taking a picture of a real moon and an image of the moon. A reference to that Reddit thing. But yes, these Samsung phones do take really good pictures of the moon. They look very clear and very nice. I've done it.
I don't know how many images of a moon you need. All Right, that's gonna do it for this episode of the show. Thanks so much for listening. Next week we're gonna talk NFTs. I'm headed to the NFT Expo in Los Angeles. It's NFT LA. It's called Outer Edge LA this year. It's happening this week in Los Angeles. So I'm gonna hear about what the state of affairs is when it comes to NFTs. You can find me on social media. I am at rich on tech my website richontech dot TV. There you can see all the stuff
I talked about here, watch my TV segments. Find me on social media. My name is Richdmiro. 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.