Google drop support for yet another product. Best Buy launches boxes that make it easy to recycle old gadgets, even cables. How to make your cell phone calls sound clearer. Plus your tech questions answered. What is going on? I'm Rich Demiro and this is Rich on Tech, the show where I talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about. It's also the place where I answer your questions about technology. I'm the tech reporter at ktlaight Channel five in Los Angeles. Welcome to the show. What a
show it's going to be. Phone lines are now open. Let me press the magic button to open those triple A Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Kim is standing by to screen your calls.
Give me a call. If you have a question about technology. Email is also open. Send it to hello at on tech dot TV. You're really taking advantage of that email I've noticed. So yeah, you know the goal of this show was to get like less emails, but it's actually created more emails. So yes, I get to your email. It may take a bit, but I do read them.
Believe me.
If you follow me on social media, you know that I just go back from a family vacation to Hawaii.
We plan this thing so long ago. It was so nice to go. But isn't it weird how when you're on vacation. Oh wow, that was weird.
I just looked at my show clock here and it literally showed eight oh eight, which is the ZIP or.
The area code for Hawaii. It was weird anyway. Isn't it odd that how when you go on vacation you are happy to come back home? Did you do you ever think that would happen?
Like when you're planning a vacation, you think you want to stay there forever, but after a couple of days. Maybe it's just me. I don't know, but I'm always like, Okay, I can get back to my routine. I can get back to going to the gym. I can get back to eating like a standard meal and not you know, the most food you could ever imagine.
But it was great on this trip.
I challenged myself to disconnect, which is always a challenge for someone like myself because I'm trying to keep up with the news. I'm getting questions from a lot of people from all over the place.
How did I do?
I think I did pretty well, I said I was only going to use one phone the entire trip, which I pretty much did. I did bring two phones, but I only used one the whole time. You know, I'm always testing something, so I wanted to see you know, Samsung's got this new two hundred megapixel camera, so I was like, I want to see how it does. I also want to compare the selfie camera on both the Samsung and the iPhone. So I did that, and by the way, Samsung does a lot better. One of the
things I've noticed much much better with HDR. So when you're taking a picture of like a sunset behind you or in front of you with a selfie, Samsung just does a little bit better processing on that.
I don't know why, but that's just a thing.
Also why I was able to disconnect, the signal was terrible all along the beach. My wife and I were like laughing, We're like, we found the one place in the world that has no signal, and so we pretty much were forced off of our phones because they just didn't work, and the Wi Fi was pretty much non existent unless we were in our place. So it was good. It was nice to disconnect for a little bit. I did a little tiny bit of work so I can
prep for this show. Of course, if you want to see the highlights of my trip, I've got them on my Instagram stories. I did all that stuff, tried to do that towards the end of the trip, and I also challenged my kids to no roadblocks for the week, so I said, you know, let's see if you can do no roadblocks, which you know I'm not a fan of, and they did also know YouTube that one they were
not so successful at. In fact, my kid at the end of the week with the roadblocks, he's like, Dad, you know what, I actually kind of liked not playing roadblocks all week. And I was like, okay, can we keep that going when we get home, and he said no because he was already on it this morning. I did encourage my kids to download Apple Arcade games. So if you're not familiar with Apple Arcade, the games there are pretty much free of any in app purchase is and also, as far as I know, you can use
them without an Internet connection. So a lot of these games that are online on the iPad, you know, they show a lot of ads and they you need internet to play them. So if you're looking for something that's sort of offline. The Apple Arcade games are really good. It is like, I think five dollars a month to do that, but you can sign up for a free
trial often if you look in the target app. I know it's weird, but if you look in the target app in the like kind of settings area, there's always like an offer for a couple of free months of Apple Arcade and Apple Fitness and Apple Music.
So definitely check there.
Also Best Buy a lot of times has deals where you can get a couple of free months of the Apple subscription stuff. The other thing that was really cool is this little device from Nintendo called the Game and Watch, and it's almost like a game Boy, but just for one game or maybe two or three. It has like three built in games. So we had the Mario one and it just has like the original old school Super Mario Brothers game, Super Mario Brothers two, and then some
other game. But it's just a simple little device that you can charge up. I was surprised to see that it did use USBC, which was cool, and my kids loved it. So they would just swap and play and it was great. And I said, this is like old school days when you had to watch someone play video games, you would watch them play while you waited for your turn to play.
And that's how it worked.
Now when I travel, I even though I'm not working, I love to see the trends that are happening. So, for instance, I took United Airlines over there. They don't take cash on the plane, and for some reason, this
always trips people up. You're supposed to store your credit card in the app before you go, so it's all contact lists, and for some reason, nobody could figure this out, Like it's very farign to like everyone on the plane, so everyone has their cash out and the flight attends they're like, oh, sorry, you can't take cash, and like what? And then you gotta go online. You gotta connect your device to the Wi Fi. You gotta download the app, which you can't do when you're in the air. You
gotta link link up your credit card. So that always trips people up, which I always laugh at because I see it happen every single time I take United. The weather apps do not work at all in Hawaii. So I'm not talking about Apple's weather app, which had some issues this week. It was literally down for a couple
of days. I did notice that but if you believe the weather forecast that we were looking at on the apps before we went to the island, we wouldn't have gone because it just seemed like it was horrendous, like really really bad, like windy, rainy, cold. And we got yes, we got wind, we got rain, we got cold. But as they say on the islands, if you don't like the weather, just wait five minutes.
It literally changes.
And so we had fantastic weather for I would say ninety nine percent of the time. But if we believe the weather app I'm not kidding, we would have diverted to a different destination. The other thing I noticed in this I absolutely love is kudos to whoever the Toast salesperson is on the island. And Toast is a tech company that does they do like, let's see, how do they describe themselves a restaurant point of sale and management system. So whoever their salesperson is in Hawaii is they get
an A plus? Because I noticed a lot of restaurants were using their handheld order tablet, which is basically like a small kind of phone tablet kind of thingy that lets the waiters type in your order as you say it. So it's nice and a fission and it sends it straight to the kitchen. But then, better yet, at the end, when you're all done, you can just tap your card to this little device and they don't need to take
your card away, which I love. And better yet than that, some of the restaurants were actually printing QR codes on the receipt which you can scan with your phone and then use Apple Pay or Google Pay or PayPal or Venmo to just take care of your bill immediately. Now, that only worked when you had a signal, which I didn't a lot of the time, so that was kind of tricky.
But when it did work, it was awesome.
And what was really cool is it would get you out of the restaurant faster, because you know, after you're done, you know you want to dine, We like to dine, but after you're done, when your bill comes, you're done. You want to get out of there. You know, the wine is gone, the food is gone, the plates are
piled up. It's like, I want to get out of this restaurant, and so all you want to you don't want to wait for the waiter to come back ten minutes later with your bill because at that point they're done kind of serving you and it could take a while, so I love being able to do that. All right, let's see what else? Oh, this was good? The ways
to find things to do? So Number one. I usually sort on Yelp by most reviewed, but I've noticed that sometimes these days, since everyone uses Yelp, it almost might be better to go to the second most reviewed restaurant because the first one has a line like Disneyland. So maybe give a little business to the second restaurant that's the most popular because the first is just slammed. Google Maps also pretty good. I use this the top rated
filter to narrow down restaurants that I might like. And then on Instagram, this is a cool feature that I used to find a couple of places that we went to. You can actually search on Instagram. It's kind of a hidden feature. You do a search and then you click the city that you're going to, and then there's a big X. You click that, and then it shows you all of the most Instagram spots in that area, but
you can sort them by restaurant attractions. Things like this, and that has found helped us find a couple of cool places too, particular on this trip, one place called Slappy Cakes, which I thought was a cool concept. You make pancakes on a griddle on your table, kind of like Benny Hanna, but at your own table for pancakes. And then this other thing called Maui Fruit Ninja, and
this guy was like literally standing outside. It's like a pop up kind of shop that was standing outside of our hotel one day and I found it through Instagram. So Instagram does work if you're a business, to put the time into Instagram because people are on there, people are looking, people are noticing. So that is something that you should really put some time into marketing because people do find places on Instagram. And before you go, I should have followed my own advice, which I forgot to do.
I said on Instagram, Oh, you should use offline maps your next trip, and sure enough, I forgot to download the offline maps, and so when I got there, I finally had.
To do it because the signal was so bad.
But definitely, before you go somewhere, download offline maps on Google because that basically saves the maps to your phone and that will mean that you'll be able to navigate a lot easier when you get to your place. I did also have one one wild thing that happened while I was on the beach, and I'm gonna tell you after the break because I've got to go to break here.
But I actually had to help save a life. And this was not something that was planned obviously, and it's not something that you would ever think would happen, but I had to do it. And so I will tell you the story of how I had to save someone's life on the beach in Maui when we come back. But first, let me tell you about the show We've got coming up here. Lots of stuff going on, Google dropping support for another product.
I'm going to tell you what that product is.
I got lots of feedback, so later in the show, I will share the feedback that you have given me. And we've got great guests this week. Hyundai is going to join me to talk about their latest ev that they hope will take on the Tesla Model three. The CEO of an app that wants to bring I message to Android users is also going to joined me, and later in the show, my old pal Dan Akerman from CNET. He's gonna join us to talk all things Tetris, including the new Apple TV Plus movie that I watched on
the plane. But first it's gonna be your turn. Your calls coming up next at triple eight rich one O one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two, four.
To one zero one.
I'm rich Dmiro and you are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out talking technology with you. You can find me on social media at rich on Tech. I'm on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, the website richon Tech dot TV. All right, so I said I was gonna tell you the story about saving a life in Hawaii, So let me let's go to Shirley first. Let's do that. Let's see, uh oh, Cheryl, let's go to Cheryl. Am I saying that right, Cheryl and Palmdale.
Yes, that's correct. Thank you for taking my call.
How's it going great.
I'm looking forward to hearing the story, and I'm glad you were at the right place at the right time to save a life.
Oh my gosh, it was I think my heart is still beating from what happened. But I'll tell the whole thing in my anyway. So tell me what's going on with you and then I'll get to that.
I just want to know if there's some tips or anything that I should be doing to make my internet router safer. I'm trying to save money. So Verizon was having a deal to where I could try their Internet gateway, you know the five gear.
Yeah yeah, yeah, or for a year.
For free and if it works out, well, then I can cut my you know, internet cord and save myself like almost two hundred dollars a month.
Yeah.
Well, I got that same text, and I forgot to actually act on it. They said, hey, We're going to give you a year of like internet for free, and I said, wait what? And then they sent me a postcard. So I still haven't done it. But the problem is now where you are Do you get five G coverage? Because I don't where I live. Yeah, okay, see that's the thing. If you have five G that's amazing because you're going to get a speed that's pretty good.
Where I live.
I have only lteve available with Verizon, and so I don't get the fat like the speed is really not good.
It's like maybe ten down or something.
Are you getting? Have you done a speed test on this new wireless.
No I'm not.
Okay, Well here let me want. Yeah, so let me tell you what to do. It's just go to the web.
So when you're connected to this new Wi Fi, I assume you're running two right now, you have like your old and your new one running ye okay, so you can tell in your computer which one you're connected to. One's Verizon, one's the other the other brand.
Yeah okay.
So when you're on the Verizon one, just go to the website called fast dot com. And so if you go on that website on your computer, it will instantly do a quick speed test and you can see how fast your internet is through Verizon. And so so the first thing I would do is connect to Verizon, do the fast dot com, and then I would go to you know, connect to the other Wi Fi from your other provider, and go to the same website and compare the SPEEDSKA. Now, typically if you have five G it's
going to be fine. You don't need a super high speed to do all this stuff like the Netflix, and unless you're uploading giant video files like I am because of my job, you really don't need very fast internet up or down. I mean it's you know, twenty five fifty will be just fine. You may get faster than that. With Verizon, I think they guarantee about anywhere from fifty two to one hundred maybe. Okay, anyway, so how to
keep it secure? I actually think that the Verizon Internet is very secure because it's it's a wireless connection and it's just between you and the tower, and so there's really not much you need to do to secure that. I think what it really comes down to is what
you're doing on the web and staying secure there. And ninety nine percent of the problems that I'm seeing from people right now have to do with people getting phished, some sort of phishing attack where they're clicking a link in an email and that's installing malware on their system or it's stealing their login or passwords. So that's what I'd be most careful about.
Okay, So I opt on the side of caution and I don't click on Jack.
Yeap, that's a that's a good I like that. I'm gonna get a bumper sticker. I don't click on Jack.
Okay, But what about like that? You know, everything is like one nine two one six eight. Do I need to change that or anything with that?
That's that's your IP address, that's basically that's how it assigns things into your network, like the different devices you have, so they all get a little addressed. That's basically how the network finds your your devices, and so that's only on your inside network and when it comes to your outside network, really nobody else can get into that unless you give them access, and they have access to your router. So once you know, the router kind of protects you
from the outside world. There are devices that can make things a little bit more secure. There's a device called FIREWALLA if you really want to get you know, really want to get fancy and put like a basically a hard firewall between you and your internet connection or your internet connection in the outside world, you can get something like that. It's a little device starts at at like two hundred dollars. I don't know if you need it, though,
I really don't. I think it's it's better to just kind of be aware because most of these modern routers have the privacy protections built in that you need. Now, if you're looking to say private as you surf, that's a whole nother story.
That's where VPNs come in.
But I don't think that the average person needs that unless you specifically want that. But for what most people are doing day to day, you know, just being on guard is really the best advice I have.
Okay. And should I change like the password that's like on the bottom of the you know, the one that came with the box or that doesn't really matter?
I would I mean, I don't think you have to, because nowadays a lot of those are are they make them pretty complex, But I would say that that's something that you could probably change, but make sure it's just as complex as the one on the bottom, okay.
And so to change it, I would still need to log into that to the URURL.
The one, nine, two whatever.
And then oh yeah, my last question, because I know you have to go like there's WPA two and K and three, which one's the best one to get to have?
So I would go with the what is the default one? What is it on right now?
WPA two?
Okay, So I would leave it there, So I don't think you need to change that. There's different there's different standards that come out over the years, but the old one was I believe w EP, which they had.
But I would just leave it where it is.
So I think WP A two might be I've got to look this up, but I think that's the most recent, but I would go with that one and stay there.
Okay, thank you so much. All right, Cheryl, and I'm loving your show. I was bummed that Leo was leaving, but excited that you were stepping in. And I listened to you on your KFI segment. I can't catch you on the news because I might I might work. And then plus the five AM one is like I love you but I.
Can't get well.
I love you too.
Thanks so much, Cheryl for listening and watching and all that good stuff. And coming up, we're going to talk to Hyundai about their new Ionic six.
Welcome back to the show.
Rich Demiro here, Rich on Tech on location in Phoenix, Arizona, where Hyundai has been doing media test drives of the new Ionic six EV. They brought me out here to test drive it and with me now is John Simmons of Hyundai to.
Talk about it. John, thanks so much for joining me.
It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you.
Nice location.
Oh it's beautiful out here. I mean we got the great weather. I hope it's not raining in California, but I hear it is.
It has been for a while now, all right, Now, before we get to the ionics six EV Hondai recently became the world's third biggest car maker after Toyota and Volkswagen. Congratulations, And what do you attribute that to?
I think, you know, just great products.
I'm just committed to bringing products that customers really want to the market.
Okay, So let's talk about this Ionic brand, because we've got this new car, but it's part of a EV brand that Hyundai is building, the Ionic.
What does that mean and why?
Well, we're dedicated to an electronic future, electric future in terms of vehicle transportation, and we see by twenty thirty the market will be at least fifty percent EV, so we're preparing for that. And this egm P platform which is underlying these three vehicles that we're planning under the brand, means these will be dedicated electric vehicles.
Now in California, we've seen a lot of momentum with evs. Is that happening elsewhere in the US?
You know it is.
Urban areas, of course, are very attracted to it.
It's a good solution.
Ranges are getting longer and longer in terms of all electric range of the vehicles, and we're having more amenities available and people are seeing the reliable transportation that they can count on.
Okay, so we're here to talk about the Ionic six. This is a car that you're putting up against the Tesla Model three and the poll Star two, two really nice cars.
Tell me about some of the key features on.
The Ionics six, and so some people might be confused. They might think, well, wait, I heard of the Ionic five. Is this the same car and upgrade to that car? So it's totally different car than the five.
It is.
It's a four door car. We call it a streamline concept. It's an aerodynamic four door. It has a trunk, so you know it'll anyone who's coming out of a Sonata or something like that will recognize it.
It's got this unique design so it almost inside it's very sizable.
Outside it looks.
Pretty compact and the back has almost like a sport like design.
Was that intentional?
Yeah?
Everything comes from the aerodynamics, the efficiency of the vehicle. You ask about the key aspects of the vehicle, the selling points. I think the ultra fast charging. We have eight hundred volt charging, ten to eighty percent charge in eighteen minutes. We also have a four hundred volt charging, which is kind of legacy fast charging, so that'll be a huge benefit for customers.
Now, the eight hundred vault charging is that mostly for home or we see those on the road as well.
Eight hundred volt is only available at charging stations that offer it, so it's something that is the next stage of ultrafast charging.
So the car is sort of ready for that absolutely.
Now.
They talked up recycled materials in the car. I saw that. Do you recall any of those in there?
Yeah, we, among other things, fishing nets, you know, which probably get dropped in the ocean a lot. I'm not sure the exact you know, composition chemically and nylon or something, but we utilize those two make the carpets in the car.
It's interesting.
It's definitely a trend I'm seeing with other automakers, and not just auto but also tech gadgets in general, a lot more recycled materials. Okay, I thought this was a cool feature, the phone as a key. So this utilizes Apple Wallet and also Samsung's pass where your phone literally becomes a key and you can lend the key to someone that way.
That's right, you can send your send your key to someone with limited restrictions. If you want, you can rescind it, you can take it back. It really makes you know sharing your car or emergency situations, you can you can with your phone, you can get in and drive your car.
Speaking of tech features, there is one thing that I think is kind of cool.
I always love.
Hitting Easter eggs, and there is one with this car. There's a lot of lighting and you call it something unique. Explain the lighting and also the Easter egg that people can look for sure.
The vehicle has a theme of we call parametric pixels. You'll see these little dots of light all around the car at really over seven hundred of them, and it's pretty impressive and they're a design element. There's also a statement that this is an advanced, something different you haven't
seen before. But on the steering where we didn't want to go with a conventional brand logo on the steering wheel, so we decided to put some dots to show some lighting, dots to show some interactivity with the car in terms of when you're when you're talking to the car to ask it to do something, it can recognize that. But we put four dots there and then we recognize that four dots is actually is actually h and Morris code.
So it's a little easter egg for you.
Awesome. And I was playing with some of the lighting last night.
The ambient lighting people love, you know, switching the way the lighting looks inside the car. And the best way I can describe the parametric pixels is it's almost like an eight bit video game.
It looks really cool and retro but also modern.
Absolutely. I think that's the point. And to your point, the ambient lighting is really cool. You know, you've got sixty four colors times to over four thousand combinations. You've got some combinations that some designers have worked up for you to calm you or to energize you. So really cool features and lets you personalize the interior of the car.
Okay, over the air updates.
Is this something that Hyundai has done in the past, because I know you're promoting this as a big new feature for this car.
Well, we've done it with navigation maps. We've had that for a few years, and now we're rolling it out to actually the car systems can be updated over the air. So that's a huge benefit. We think of it as the car being able to get better over time.
I mean it's kind of like the smartphone.
You know, you don't have to go into the store to update your phone.
I mean it used to be to update I remember, you know, if.
You had a navigation system, you'd have to go to the dealership and pay a fee to get that updated. And now, of course we just all get our phones updated overnight.
Right in terms of navigation systems maps, that's you know, still happening. So it's really a recent development. So this is great. As the car is electrified, we become more like those gadgets that we have in our pockets.
Okay, I love this feature.
You actually showed it off yesterday in a demo where the car can become a giant power outlet. So one of the chargers you plug it into the side of the car and you can basically plug something into it to power it.
That's right.
Our model has a seventy seven point four kilowatt hour battery, which is pretty big. We'll power the car for three hundred and sixty one miles, which is for its class, leading for all electric range, and it eliminates range anxiety. But the what we call V to L, which is there's an accessory plug that you can take the charging port and you can plug it into your refrigerator in
case of outages. You can take it on a can camping trip, all sorts of use cases, and you can set it so it won't run out your battery.
Finally, Yeah, so you can say, like leave twenty percent on my battery so that you know I can get back home.
Absolutely, you don't want to.
You know, no one wants to run out their battery all the way and be stuck somewhere.
So blue Link is sort of your connected subscription service that you've had.
It's kind of the connectivity of the car.
And there's some pretty major changes to that subscription where it's going to be included for the lifetime of the owner.
That's a pretty sizable shift.
Yeah, we've made a big investment in blue Link, you know, a decade ago, and we've gotten more and more subscribers. You know, allows you to turn on your car, remotely locate your car, turn on your air conditioning for certain models. It's really a great tells you when to service the car. And now what we've done is we've made it a
part of the car. We've made it standard. No subscription fees after the initial trial period whether you know, we have a long trial period anyways, but you know this we go out to ten years now.
So so the Ionic five was a top ten best selling EV in twenty twenty two.
Do you think that will happen with the six?
You know, we're not focused on volume. We're focused on satisfying, you know, what customers want. And this is an alternative Theonic five. It has a lot of the same characteristics. It has a little bit more range if you want that, and the interior has some pretty neat features to personalize it.
And for folks wondering about Hyundai in general, what do you say to them, You've worked for different car companies, what do you say about the Hondai brand.
Hundai moves fast and they provide quality products. It's it's really impressive. You know, they never stand still, they never take second best.
All right, John Simmons of Hyundai, thanks so much for chatting with me today. I really appreciate it.
Thank you.
I'll have more rich on Tech right after this.
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology at Triple eight one O one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. No need to write the number down. You can also go to the website rich on tech dot
tv the numbers right at the top. And yes, i will tell my story about saving a life, but I've got so many calls to go to here, so let's go to my leen first in Fontana, and I promise I'll do it at the end of this before the break, Eileen, Welcome to the show.
Hi, I'm waiting for your story. I did a Heimnik one time and felt like a hero too.
Well, I don't feel like. I mean, my kids thought I was a hero, but I was just doing the right thing, so.
Right, Okay, anyway, first thing, I think it was last week that you mentioned the flighty dot com website and it sounded really interesting. And when I go to that website, all I get is a h offer to buy the dolmazing.
Okay, the app, it's called flight app dot com f L I g h T y app dot com.
That's yep, that's the part.
And I used it over the weekend too for the for the Hawaii trip and it was fantastic. In fact, it was only off by five minutes when we landed, which was amazing.
Wow.
So anyway, Oh that sounds so wonderful. Yeah, anyway, the other thing I have, I started a business about thirty five years ago and out of my home and would use that number, and at that time I don't. And then finally I got an eight hundred number also, but we're going to be moving about forty miles away, and I think that maybe a different telephone company. And I didn't know if landline numbers are portable at all, what to do to make it portable.
I believe landline numbers are portable just like a cell phone number. So if you have a landline, I would contact a company that does it. And yeah, I believe you can just do it just the same way you would a cell phone number.
Okay, I hadn't tried, so I hate to hate. I'm sorry to wasted your time.
Well, no, no, no, it's a good it's a good question because I think that people, probably a lot of people probably keep these numbers because they're wondering if you can, and they're worried you can't.
So if you know you can, it's a good you know, it's a good thing. If you want to switch it to a cell phone line, you can do that. The only thing to know about that is you probably have to call your provider and get some sort of pin number or account number. Just have everything that.
Just call your provider and ask all the information that you need to support the number, because there are if you do it wrong, it could get hung up and like never never land. So just really know that information before you go into it.
And here's something the thing that just happened recently and it's kind of frightened me. A friend of mine called me and was wanted to know about the money deal that I had offered, you know, told him about emailing him about and I hadn't done that. And anyway, he said that what I supposedly said him was here I got fifty thousand dollars out of this program. And then when he followed that, and then they were asking for fifteen thousand dollars deposit. And I don't know how that happened.
Well, I'll tell you what happened.
It sounds like your email got hacked, and so your email address got hacked, maybe an old one that you used, and what they did was once they hacked that email address, they used your account to send out emails to everyone in your contact book, and so to keep that from happening, you really need to Number one, get rid of old email accounts if you're not using them, or at least you know you can delete the account or at least
lock them down as much as you can. So typical hacks at this point are a lot of social engineering attacks, which means that people get they get access to your Facebook, they get access to your Instagram, they get access to your email, and they use your good name to send out information to your friends and try to scam them because people will take a second look because it's coming
from you. And so you want to be sure that you lock down your accounts both with a strong password and also to factor authentication on every and all accounts that are available, because that's really the best way to protect yourself. So that's what i'd recommend. Make sure you do it, Eileen, and find the flighty app and get that landline transferred. You can do it all right, Thanks for the call, appreciate it. Phone lines are open at eight eight eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight
eight seven four to two four one zero one. I mentioned that Google is dropping support for yet another product, and I've talked about this on the show. This is my problem with Google. I love Google, but they have such a short attention span when it comes to things. Now you can argue that these things have been out since twenty twelve, and okay, fine, it's been a good ten years since people had these these things in their home. But the reality is yet another Google product is getting sunset,
and this time it is Dropcam and Nest Secure. So in one year, on April eighth, twenty twenty four, you will not be able to use your Dropcam anymore or the Nest Secure home security system. Now, existing dropcam users, according to The Verge, will be able to keep using them until April eighth, twenty twenty four, after which you will not be able to access them with the next app. So Google, in the meantime is offering a free indoor wired Nestcam to Dropcam owners who subscribe to Nest Aware.
So if you're not a subscriber, they'll give you a fifty percent off coupon. But if you're a subscriber like myself and I have a Nestcam, I can go on their website and I can get a free Oh sorry, I have a Dropcam. I can get a free wired Nestcam, so I will definitely be doing that. The promotion runs through May seventh, twenty twenty four, so you have a bunch of time. In fact, you have time even past when the dropcam will stop working. Now, the Dropcam, to
its credit, did come out in twenty twelve. The pro version came out in twenty thirteen, and then of course Google bought this company. Everyone wondered what would happen to Dropcam. It sort of became Nest. Nest made their own cameras, they were more expensive, they had more features, more AI, and now Nest Cam is pretty much their brand. And then the next Secure. That's another story because I believe when Nest Secure came out and people were asking me should I subscribe to this?
I said no.
And the reason why is because I'm not sure I trust Google with something that you don't really want to buy a security system very often, and I've purchased two in my lifetime, and it's something that you don't really want to sit and replace and change.
So here's a deal.
Google recently signed a deal with ADT to offer this, you know, their own kind of security system. And let's see, do I have the name of that security system.
Let's see.
I don't know if I have it, but it's like it's like a self installed security system, kind of like what simply Safe offers, kind of like what Ring offers. But to be perfectly honest, if you're buying a self install security system, do you really want ADT? I mean, ADT is the company that people know that you have someone come to your house, they install the security system.
It's a three year deal.
You're not really paying for the system, but then you're paying the fifty five to seventy dollars or whatever it is a month for your security monitoring. And so people that wanted the alternative, they went to a company like Simply Safe, they went to a company like Ring, and now they're giving Nest Secure customers a free next generation security system from ad T or a two hundred dollars
credit to use on the Google Store. I'd use the two hundred dollars credit on the Google Store, and personally, I would not go with the Nest Secure or whatever their new system is, and I would just go with something like Simply Safe, or I would go with Ring, because I think those companies are a little bit more dedicated when it comes to I mean, I think ADT
is fine, but I just I don't. To me, I want something that's a little bit more forward thinking, something like a simply safe that was created as an alternative, or something like the ring system that I think is very good and it's an alternative. And again, you have to subscribe or you you know, there's options for it, but it's just easier. And Google says, yes, you can cancel the ADT subscription at any time. But the reality is, I would say, go out to work. All right, let
me tell you the story about the life. Okay. So I'm on the beach in Hawaii, sipping on my tie and no joke, you know, I'm reading my book Sun is Shining, beautiful beach, and I hear like offen the you know, to the right, like help, and I'm like.
Okay, that's a joke. Like who who says help on the beach?
Right?
Like unless it's a joke. And all then all of a sudden we hear help, my dad needs help, and I'm like, okay, I can't sit here, and I'm looking around and people are just standing there like not doing anything. And so I must have been a thousand feet from where this person is, and so they're out in the sea, and you know, I look and I'm like, oh gosh, like what just happened to this guy?
Like a shark?
Like what is going on? Like I don't know for this kid to scream? Right, So I just jump up, drop everything, and I run over to I was like, you know what this probably this person probably needs like one of those things, like those like life raft things. And I saw it on the beach when I was walking in, so I ran, I grabbed it.
I swam out.
And I'm not like a very physical guy, like I'm not like mister athletic, but I can run really fast, and so I ran and I can swim fast, and I swam to this guy and it was me and another person, and he kind of just swam out.
But I had this little thing.
I looked it up. It's called a rescue tube. And the person we were able to get on the tube and drag him back in to shore. And I guess this guy he was wearing a life jacket, so I don't know if he couldn't swim or what, but he was very thankful that we got him in. He was not bitten by a shark. He just I guess lost his footing he lost I don't know what he just lost. He just couldn't swim back to shore. And so we did kind of save his life. I guess in a way.
I don't know what would have happened if we didn't. And believe me, I looked up on my Apple Watch after this whole situation to see kind of like where my heart rate was at that minute, and believe me, it was up. So that's my story from Hawaii.
Do the right thing.
Don't be the bystander effect when you see something happening, spring into help.
A lot of people went and dialed nine one one. That's fine, but you do need some people that actually go and physically helped the person. I didn't know what I was running into, but I did it, and uh it was.
All fine anyway, Thanks for listening. All right, rich On Tech phone number, Triple A rich.
One O one.
Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich DeMuro here chatting technology with you at Triple A rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four to one zero one is the phone number email address Hello at Richon Tech dot TV. All right, so let's just go to Kevin in Walnut, California, to start off this hour.
Kevin, you're on with Rich.
Thank you Rich, and welcome belated welcome to KFI. So glad you were the replacement for Leo.
And Happy Easter.
Thank you. Christian.
Is.
I have a whole bunch of old cell phones, sensoring and other brands. I want to donate them or destroy them because I don't want any of the data context information going to somebody else.
How should I do that?
So the first question is can you turn these phones on?
Yes?
I can, Okay, So if you can turn them.
On, then I would go through the settings on the Android and are they all Android?
Yes?
Yeah, okay.
I would go through the settings and I would format them so you can go into settings and then it's basically, you know, there's different variations depending on the Android model, but usually you can go into Advanced.
And then systems. Let's say I I have a Samsung right here.
Let's see if we go into settings and then we go into let's see about phone and then reset and then it says reset all settings, reset, network settings, reset, accessibility settings, or factory data reset. Factory data reset is the one that you want and that will erase all
of your data, including files and downloaded apps. And you can also do the same thing on the iPhone if you go into Settings General and then reset and then basically you're looking for the factory data reset make sure that all the important stuff you need is backed up. That's the way that you can, you know, get that stuff on a different phone. But if you really want to be secure, you know, you might want to do this process twice. But I think that once should probably
be sufficient for most people. If especially if you're donating them. The second you donate these phones to a reputable organization, they're going to do the same thing.
They're going to wipe them as well.
So does that help, Yeah, definitely. And I have one more question, rich Sure, I got a IPTV service from a Canadian firm to watch mostly Asians programs like from India and also cricket. Is that illegal in US to do or is it legal?
Well, it's tough to know based on how this box is working. But I call these black boxes IPTV, so it's not necessarily illegal. I mean that's a term that
you know, it depends how they're taking this programming. So some of these boxes, you know, they offer a lot of programming based on streams, and they just put that stream in an easy way, or maybe they present it in a way that is not the way that the provider wants, Like maybe they take the stream outside of the app that the provider typically offers it through and they just make it easier to find, or they make it easier to watch.
So it really depends.
But typically I don't recommend those boxes because they do operate in a gray area and so you don't really know what you're getting, and well, I don't think someone's going to come to your front door and arrest you for it. I don't feel good using something like that just because it's not the way it's intended. Like if you're getting a service for free that you should be paying for, then yeah, there's probably a problem there, like
it's something that you probably shouldn't be doing. But if it's just being presented in a different way, like if they're just putting YouTube streams on there or channels in a different way that they are and then they're typically presented, then you know, again it's a gray area. So the main thing about those boxes is that sometimes the software is not up to date, they're the service or the support can can be all over the place. I just
personally don't recommend them because of that reason. So it sort of comes down to a personal Uh, you know what you're comfortable doing. But I, you know, I work in the content creation world, and so personally, I like to pay for the stuff that I'm streaming. And it sounds like Kevin, because you're you're wondering about this, you probably already know the answer. So I hope that helps, and I do appreciate calling and thanks for the kind words. All right, if you want to call in Triple eight
Rich one oh one is the phone number. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. This is something that's affecting a lot of folks right now. If you have a Western Digital hard drive, they're my cloud service has been down for a while. It's been down for apparently more than twenty four I know that I've been getting emails about this for about a week, so I think it's been closer to a week now.
And I just got an email yesterday from Western Digital because I had one of their drives in the past that I was testing. It was called the eb which I really liked and I didn't even know they were still supporting it, but they sent an email about this whole situation. But according to Ours Technica, folks are locked out of their local drives many times because of this
my Cloud system. So Western Digital issued a release saying that the company learned there's been an unauthorized third party that gained access to a number of the company's systems AKA they were hacked, and the company believes that the unauthorized party obtained certain data from its systems and they're working to understand the nature and scope of that data AKA they're trying to figure out how many passwords and usernames were taken and if folks, if these hackers were
able to access the data on people's drives or that was stored in the cloud. So, as you can see, this could be a major problem. This is affecting the my Cloud, the my Cloud Home, the MyCloud Home duo, the sand Disk eb and the sand Disk I expand wireless charger. And I'm a big fan of these sand disk products. The eb I was a huge fan of
when it came out. When it SYNCD with Google Photos, that functionality went away, so I didn't really recommend it anymore, but I still recommend the sand disc I expand not necessarily the wireless charger, but I do like their little drive that they have. So the outage means that users cannot access data stored in my cloud, and it also extends to some of these things that you need around
my cloud. And so the log in service is just not available, and so people are saying, hey, wait, I can't access my hard drive that's sitting in my living room, but it's not letting me access it because I need to log in through the my Drive service or the MyCloud service. So what I got from Western Digital and I'm not sure this effects or this will extend to everything, but there is a feature that allows you to access your stored files locally using a feature called local access.
And this feature allows you to directly access your personal files from a Windows or Mac computer that's connected to the same network as your device. But you have to enable it. So you go to your browser and you connect to your device's dashboard.
And remember we were talking about this earlier.
It's usually a number of IP address that's printed on the bottom of the device, so you navigate there and look for the local access feature. You enable that feature and you can create a new local access account and then using that account, you can go through and access the files on your drive. But this is again not very good. We're seeing this more and more and I just can't believe how many times I'm seeing these companies
that are getting hacked. And it's a problem because these online services that we rely on are not usable during that time, could be a week, could be a couple of days. But also your information is then put at risk. So if you're using the same login information for this MyCloud service as you use for other services, if they were able to get this information from Western Digital, now they've got your log in for another service that you
use the same log in and password for. So the big thing to know here is that you always want to use unique log in, unique password for everything that you're logging into because that way, if one of these services gets hacked, they can't use it on a different service. And Disney Plus moving on now is launching with ads on Roku. So if you are waiting for Disney Plus and that AD supported plan, which is a little bit cheaper than the AD free plan, actually it's not, it's
the same price. They just made it ad supported, but it is available on Roku, and so Roku users can now use Disney Plus with or without ads. It took them about four months to get this going. The reason probably because Roku likes to get a cut of ad revenue. So the way Roku works is that all the ads that are shown on there, some of them make money for Roku. So let's say you're Disney Plus and you stream a show and it has, you know, six minutes
of commercials. Roku gets a small cut of the commercials and that ad time on that service, even though it's Disney Plus. It's a unique way that they kind of came up with stuff. So Roku is really an advertising platform. And that's why those Roku boxes are so cheap, because Roku sells you those at an inexpensive cost, and then they make it up on the services that you subscribe to. In fact, they may even get a cut of the
price you pay to Disney Plus for this plan. And so that's probably why it took so long, because Disney Plus is probably like, ah, we're big, we don't need to pay you anything, and Roku is like, now, we're not gonna put you on our platform unless you pay US, and Disney Plus said, Okayku, you're pretty big, so we'll
give you a little cut of that money. It's all about recurring revenue streams at this point, because it started out where the services would just put the apps on there and they didn't really care because it was good for everyone. They would sell the hardware, they'd sell other movies and things on the side. But now someone like Roku is saying, yeah, we're pretty big out there, We're like one of the top streaming platforms. We're going to take a cut of some of this money that people
are spending on these things. So that's what's happening there. But if you have Roku, you can now use Disney Plus with ads.
I believe is it six.
Ninety nine still when it came out, it was six ninety nine, so I'm not sure how much it is at this point. I pay for like the Disney Bundle. According to GameSpot back on December eighth, it was eight dollars a month.
Anyway, I got to look that up.
I'm not sure, but it's it's one of these things where Disney Plus added the ads supported plan, but it was the same price as pep or paying before they had ads, so it was like ad free. So anyway, Yeah, it's confusing. All I know is every month you get these these bills and you're like, did I watch Disney Plus this month?
Did I?
All?
Right?
Coming up on the show, we still get a lot more to talk about. We're going to talk to the CEO of a company that is attempting to bring I message to Android users.
And then later in the.
Show, we're going to talk about the movie that I watched on the plane, Tetris on Apple TV. Plus my friend Dan Ackerman from CNAT we'll talk He wrote a book on Tetris, so we'll talk all about that, plus your calls at Triple eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four two.
Four one zero one. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Rich Demiro here chatting about technology with you at Triple eight rich one oh one. Max is in Newport Beach, California. Max, Welcome to rich on Tech.
Thank you for taking my call.
Rich.
I'm a little older guy. If I know what button used to push, I'm good. Otherwise I'm not ethnically savvy.
Read more.
My homes seven years ago got new TVs and new stereo stuff and everything I want to cut the cord. I'm apprehensive because I don't know I need help. I don't know who to call. I know what I want to do, but I have no clue what to do or how to do it. Okay, how do I find somebody that can come to my house and help me?
Okay? You want someone?
Well, I mean most of the time people di why this, Because that's what's so great about it is that you don't really need someone.
So how many TVs are we talking here?
Four?
Okay, so you got four TVs and you want to have the same programming across all of them?
Yeah, and I have I have Sono system in the house.
Also, Oh wow, you've got sons one of my favorites. I mean, I was just playing with mine this morning.
I love it.
Okay, I need somebody to come out and really show me how to work stuff, okay, because I'm confused.
Okay, Well, I mean, look, there's a lot of there's a lot of local people that can do that. There's a lot of national services that can do that. If you want someone that's you know, local, I would just go to yelp and find someone that maybe that mounts TVs that runs a service like that that can do you know, they do more than mount TV's, they run cable.
They really know their stuff. So if you want someone to kind of, you know, a little bit more handholding to get through this, that's who i'd recommend someone.
What do I look under on Yelp?
I would search let's see here, let me let me actually search here. It's probably someone that like cable installation, let's see, or video camera installation, because those people are usually you know, the people that know what they're doing with all this stuff. They don't do just that, you know, like the people that I had come mount my TV, they would do all kinds of stuff, they would run video cameras IP. So I would search something like that.
You can also, let's see if you search tech support, like tech support in home tech support. You can do that, and there's people like that'll bring up a whole bunch of a whole bunch of stuff. Network. I mean, there's computer I T services. I mean there's a whole bunch of people that will do that. Your computer guy, I mean there's a lot. So I would search something like that, But realistically, I think it's easier than that. I think
what you need to do do you watch cable? Do you need cable TV or like certain channels?
I want sports, I want to I want to get you know, I want to get some of the local channels, okay, you know, like HGTV and the golf channel and some of the sports.
But we only used to.
Be to streaming services Netflix and Prime for some reason. My Prime thing it's very slow and uh everything. But but I want to be able to get some of the local channels and to get my streaming. But I want to cut the cable.
Okay, well you mean the cable like the s Yeah, the cable is yeah, yeah, exactly. Now here's the thing with cutting the cable is that when you cut the cable, typically the internet price goes up, and so that could be a little bit of an issue. So right now you're probably on some sort of bundle deal that they give you the cable and the internet all in one. When you call them up and say, okay, I'm cutting the cable part, they say, okay, well your internet's.
Going to go up to this price.
So you know what you need to do is really have the cable ready to go. You live in Newport Beach, you may be able to get the Verizon five G like the wireless box we were talking about, or the T Mobile Home Internet, So that could be a way
to save on some of your cable costs. But I think that at the end of the day, you need to pick a streaming device, which I'd recommend either a Roku or an Apple TV would kind of get expensive, but you told me you have so nos so that tells me that you've got, you know, a decent setup there and you're not afraid to spend money, so that's good. Maybe an Apple TV that's kind of simple, and then a Fire TV that's also really easy that's from Amazon.
And then you need the cable service. If you want to get something like HGTV and you want to get something like the Golf Channel, you're probably going to have to look into a service like YouTube TV, which is going to run like eighty bucks a month. There are other services out there. There are services that are cheaper like Filo. Filo TV is another one, and that will give you some of the channels. It doesn't do a lot with sports, and so this is seventy channels for fifty bucks a month.
And if let's just I'm just going to look up and see if golf is in there. So Golf channel is not on there, and so what you want to do is I would look up golf channel streaming service and see which channel, which streaming provider has that that's the cheapest.
And so if you go on their website, it will should tell you that I'm looking at this right now. So you need to figure that out. And then you need to just once you get all those things in line, connect them all up. So you've got you UG in the streaming stick, and then you've got your service, and then you've got you already said you have Netflix and Prime. Now the only other thing you said is that your Prime is really slow. So that tells me you may
have an issue with your router. And since you're going fully streaming, you may want to upgrade your network to something like a mesh network system.
I recommend systems from.
Euro E E r O and also Villo v I l O, but there are many others that will do it, like Neckgear ORB. But also you may be able to just go through Spectrum and ask them for a Wi Fi extender and they have those as well.
All right, good question coming up.
We are going to talk to the CEO of Sunbird Messaging. They are bringing I message to Android. You're listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out talking technology with you at Triple A Rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four to one zero one. Email address hello at rich On Tech TV. Tom wrote in and said, Hey, I was listening to your description on the show regarding
United Airlines and the purchase of snacks using a credit card. So, if I understand correctly, you have to use United Airline app United Airlines app with a card attached. You can't pay with a credit card by itself.
Is that correct?
Yes, that's what I was trying to explain. So that's what trips people up, is that you cannot present a credit card on United Airlines to pay for snacks and so and by the way, they do give you some free snacks.
You don't have to do this. This is if you want to.
Buy one of their boxes or a burger or something
like that. But yes, you need to have the credit card stored inside the app before you get on the airline because you cannot even though there is Wi Fi on the airline, you can't download the United Airlines app once you're on the airline, so once you're in flight, it doesn't work, so you have to set this all up before and so literally I just watched people, you know, as the flight attents are going down the aisles, and they're just explaining this to everyone because it is kind
of confusing, like when are you not able to for something? So it'd be nice. I get why they're trying to do the contact list payment stuff, but it would be nice if they were able to accept credit cards. But they've got all kinds of stuff they even accept. I think it's like Venmo or PayPal by like QR codes, so they do give you options just if you're flying United.
My advice download any airline you go on, download, even if it's just a one time thing, download the app before you get on the plane because a lot of times you do get some benefits and features by downloading the app that you wouldn't typically get if you didn't. Like for Southwest, for example, you can activate free messaging on the airline even if you don't pay for the Internet. You can still get like I message and stuff and some other things as well. Same thing on United, even
if you don't pay for the Internet. You can still activate free messaging, but you have to activate it first. So that's that's how it all works, all right. Speaking of messaging on the line, we've got Danny Misra. He is the CEO of Sunbird Messaging. They are bringing I Message and other messaging apps to one messaging app called Sunbird, which is available on Android.
And Danny, welcome to the show.
Yeah, thank you, Rich, thank you for having me, and happy holladays all those celebrating.
Thank you. So let's talk about Sunbird.
So this has been an app that a lot of people are excited about because not only does it bring I Message to Android, but it brings a unified messaging we've gotten there's so many messaging apps at this point, and so tell me what you're building with Sunbird.
Yeah.
Absolutely, we are so very excited. And so you know, there's a massive, massive, pent up demand to fix messaging between androids and iPhones. I've never had an iPhone personally. I've had an Android my whole adult life here and so I was one of those people that had to ask my parents who were maybe babysitting my kids, who were sending me videos blow resolutions you know, being in the group chat where everyone basically made fun of me and you know, kept on doing like to emphasize dislike.
If you know, if you have an Android, then you know what I'm talking about. You know that that kind of torture. And and so Garn and I, who have known each other for you know, over a decade, and uh, and he has this background in messaging and I have a background in cybersecurity and it, et cetera, said we can solve this problem. But then that the way that we solved it meant that we can do the same thing for any messaging type. That was the big aha
moment there. So I Message is actually just you know, maybe you can call it the prototype for some bird, but it happens to be just this ridiculous demand for androids and iPhones to finally communicate well with each other.
Right yeah, well, okay, so let's talk about that whole situation. Because Apple overnight can launch I Message on androids and they would be the number one messaging app pretty much in the US. Maybe I don't know about in the world, because there's a big emphasis on I Message here in the US, which is just not present anywhere else in the world. So why is Apple not releasing that. Let's start with that.
Well, I can't really speak for them. I just know that they've been asked about it, and you know they've said it's not a priority for their users, right, So Apple focuses on their users and their ecosystem. If they were to create let's say, an API where it opens up I message to the world, that's a huge business
in itself, and that would take a couple of years. Similarly, you saw you know, Google do that with OURCS, right, create a messaging protocol based on opening up an API, and there's only one company that actually has access to API, which is faandsome. So you know, to create a business around an API, it takes years, and by then, we do believe we'll have millions and millions of users that launched. We know we're going to have millions of users.
So okay, I guess my big question is, well, how does it work? Number one?
So you sign up on I mean right now, it's a wait list, so there's some beta users and I got a little taste of this. I got to try this out myself, and so it's pretty simple. You just kind of sign in with your Apple ID. But let's talk about security because that you know, Apple doesn't necessarily
allow that per se like they don't. It's not like with Google where they allow you know, you can authorize third party apps with your Google app or your Google logging right, like Apple doesn't really have that provision for this, So you're sort of doing something that Apple may not like. But I mean, tell me how that's how that's gonna work.
Yeah, I mean it's it's a little hard to get into the technical weeds, but at the end of the day, that's what the invention is.
And so.
Two parts of this right privacy, security and confidentiality being
one of them. You know, Darren the inventor is twenty years in fintech dealing with banks and technology before ten years of messaging, and me personally, I have twenty years in it, you know, in the last ten of which has been in cybersecurity and compliance, you know, dealing with things like GDPR in Europe and ISO twenty seven thousand and one, auditing and stock to readiness right and the California Consumer Protection So I know, privacy in and out,
and a huge part of this app is not storing data, so that ties into the second part of your question, which is the actual invention here? So what is the invention? So the invention is maintaining encryption, right, So using the native authentication. So for you, when you logged into I message, it's user name, password and two factor authentication. But when you add what's app into some bird, you're just scanning the QR code so without getting two and that same idea.
Now it's in some bird also, so the next app it's going to be using their authentication. So we're basically building let's call it relay services in the cloud, right, So relay services that get and this is what we have a patent filed on as well. Right, So relay services in the cloud that automatically open up the relay
maintain the encryption, right. And the cool thing is is that as soon as it goes through our servers, it automatically gets purged from our servers at the same time, because if you're not storing data, you can't have compliance issues. You can have hacking issues, right if you don't store data.
Right.
My guest right now is Danny Mezrahi, CEO of Sunbird, and they are building a messaging app that not only brings I message to Android, but also a unified inbox for all different types of messengers including WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, your text messages, later, Telegram, Discord, RCS, slack. You want one place for all messages.
That's what you're.
Building, right, Rich.
Remember when we first got Outlook for the first time, and I don't know your age, but you know I'm old enough to have had Outlook with you know, I attached my AOL address. You know, that's maybe too much information now really show on my age, but you know I attached my AOL, I touched my hot Hotmail, I attached my Yahoo all to Outlook, right, which is called the thin client. So think some bird as a thin client.
Right.
So it's it's just the window to see all these messages.
Right.
But when you look at all the data and you see that people are spending four point two hours every day scrolling through their messaging apps, going back and forth between them, right, we want to claim a couple of
those hours. We want to make it a little easier for people to say I don't have to go or you know, we have I have a friend that said that he got a message from a Facebook friend and it was a very important message, and it was a very timely message and basically a friend was in need and he didn't have any other people that he communicated on Facebook Messenger with.
Right, so you have it.
Yeah, I missed it, right, And this happens a lot with LinkedIn messages. You know, these these services that you sign up for and you may not check very often, but if they're all in one place, of course you're going to see them much much quicker. What about cost for all this? Are you going to charge for this service when it comes out? And when do we expect to see this?
Yeah?
I mean right now, it's a free app and it plans to be free through launch, and you know, with millions and millions of users, frankly, we can keep it free because then we have funding. I mean, you know this is not brain surgery, right, so you know we want to keep it free. We want to get the user count up, and we want to keep our costs a little. You know, we're getting our costs lower and lower, which has been great, and so we're going to keep it free.
Now.
We do think we're going to have some premium premium features. I don't want to, you know, do too much spoilers in terms of you know, what are going to be premium premium. I mean, we have some really cool features like chat, GPT, changing the tone of a message, and you know, face Android to Android face time, right, we have some really cool features and store. The big, the big subscription model that we do four C for now
would be unlocking the rest of the apps. We know at launch we're going to do, you know, I Message and WhatsApp or and or WhatsApp and Facebook and or SMS and or r cs. Right, we think there's going to be four or five you know, free apps at launch, and we can get tens and tens of millions of users just based on that, and that's what we want.
That's absolutely what.
We want, you know.
And then after that, if you want to unlock Telegram, Signal, line, discord, right, LinkedIn, messaging, team spaces, all of these are doable, right the way that the invention is any messaging app that we want to bring into it, we can do that based on the invention.
Interesting, all right, We're gonna have to leave it there, but it's very intriguing. And you know, like I said, I did get to try the I Message on there and it works.
My messages were coming through.
I was sitting there texting from an Android phone and my wife and kid were getting the messages on their iPhones and they were in blue, so blue bubbles on Android both ways, it did work. Danny Mezrahi from Sunbird Messaging, Thanks so much for joining me today.
How can folks find the app?
Yeah, sumbird app.
I mean you could put some bird messaging into Google. At this point, we're coming up a lot. You know, we've been very very fortunate with a lot of great you know, coverage and and but you know slombird app dot com. You know, share this with your Android friends, share this with you know, anyone who's you know, making green bubbles in the group chat, and we love more people on the wait list, and soon we're going to
get the app there everyone. We're working, you know what, off on making sure that that happens.
All right, Thanks so much for joining me today. Appreciate it.
Coming up, we are going to talk about best Buy launching recycle by mailboxes. So if you have a bunch of cords and cables and gadgets laying around the house, you can now send them in for recycling. Details on that coming up. Oh, rich Demiro here Rich On Tech triple eight Rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one.
Good song.
Courtney recommended that we play how to Save a Life by the Fray thanks to my story about helping to save a life in Hawaii. But I'm telling you, I know I'm laughing now. But the thing the thing to know this thing, where's my note? I wrote this down. What it's called a rescue tube. That is what it's called. I took a picture of this thing. It's like kind
of that long floaty thing that is. That was the key to the entire rescue operation because I knew that this adult I would not be able to swim back to shore. But with the rescue tube, that floaty thing that was, I told him to grab onto that and I pulled that had a nice big cable like a cord, and so I basically pulled him back into shore with that. So, yeah, learn where the rescue tube is. When you go to a beach, learn where the rescue tube is. That's my
advice to you. All right, let's go to Ron in Orange County. Ron You're on with Rich Welcome.
To the show. Oh, thank you, thank you.
Hold on and take you off to speak of Okay, take off speaking.
I have a small business, sure, and I've been operating it for years, and I'm trying to get better organized. Essentially, when someone calls in, I want to be able to input in some type of software, some affordable software that I can dis log everything in, name, the phone number, what they're calling about, so forth.
And do you have this software already?
No, I'm asking you, Okay, what would you recommend an affordable software?
If not free?
Well, the good news is we live in an amazing time right now, with so many great software options. So I think what you're talking about is CRM software. Have you heard that term?
I assume have.
I believe now you know this is not a small business show. I'm not a small business owner. Well actually I am, but I you know CRM is like customer relationship management or something like that, right, And so you know you want to put this information in there and be able to remember the last time you talked to this person, remember the last time they called, what they're you know, and just it's it's kind of an address book, but with more features, right right? Okay, So the big
company that I think revolutionized this world is Salesforce. They came out with CRM software that was, you know, all in the cloud and very different. So I think that that's probably a you know, kind of the basic CRM software that everyone knows, right and you have you heard of that company Salesforce?
No? No, I haven't, all.
Right, So Salesforce, I think is kind of like the gold standard when it comes to this, and I'm just going off of what I've heard in the past, what I know, but Salesforce is kind of like the big one. Now, with that said, there may be competitors that offer stuff that is cheaper. You said you wanted something that is less expensive, and so I'm looking at theirs. They're big product customer three sixty, and I'm trying to look for pricing.
And that's where it gets a little tricky because it's saying try for free, but it's not really saying how much this is going to cost me. And so what I would do is you can do a free trial, which on their website, but I would look for some other alternatives to this. And so when I look for alternatives, I'm seeing something called HubSpot hub Spot, and HubSpot puts the pricing right on the front page.
Now this.
H that's yeah, that's that's a little expensive for that one. So you're talking eight hundred dollars a month. That's probably not something you want to do. Then you've got something called Zoho Zho and I'm looking at that. That's fourteen bucks a month. That's sounding probably a little bit better.
Huh huh.
Okay, So Zoho is something that's no, it's flexible, so there's no lock in, and it's looks like it's something that might be worthwhile looking at. But those are just a couple of the companies that I would look at. And the thing that I would do too is have you ever used the search the versus search versus versus?
So if you type in something on Google Salesforce versus, and then it comes up with all of the other companies that compete against that, So it's saying Salesforce versus, HubSpot Service, now, Zendesk, Shopify, So one of those companies may be something. So it's just a little bit of research.
Now.
Also, if you go on YouTube and you search hey, best CRM software Small Business twenty twenty three, that's another way to look for the companies that people are recommending, and also you get a little taste of what they can do and a little idea of the features, and you say, oh, yeah, that's the feature I want.
That's that's the cool thing.
Some of these may be more complicated than you need, but that's the way that I would sort of research that situation.
And you know what kind of company you're running.
I have a legal service business.
Okay, so legal services, so you know you want to keep track of your customers and all the things that they need and maybe even include some documents in this online service as well. So but that does that help you to kind of get you on the past?
Great your he I do appreciate.
All right, Ron, good luck with the legal services. People need them, you know when you need them. You don't want to need them, but sometimes you do, and when you do, you know it all right. Before we go to break here, let me tell you about best Buy launching these new recycle by mail technology boxes. This is so cool because someone like me, I have so much I don't want to call it garbage, but so much stuff laying around the house. You know, you get these
cables that you don't want to part with. You've got an old gadget here and there that you just don't You can't really throw out gadgets in the trash. You don't want to for environmental reasons. You want to recycle them properly, and so the first thing to do is to donate them if you can. But if they're not something that you would donate but you've just been holding on to. They now have these prepaid boxes from best buy dot com two options. A small box is twenty
three bucks. It carries up to six pounds. A medium box can carry up to fifteen pounds. You order the box, you pay it. When it gets to your house, you fill it up with all your old gadgets lying around the house, whether it's a tablet, cords, keyboards, whatever it is, and they've got a full list of products that they will recycle. You take the prepaid box to your nearest UPS drop off or you schedule a pick up with UPS, and boom, your electronics are recycled. Best Buy says they
are the nation's largest collector of e waste. They've recycled more than two point seven billion pounds of electronics. This is a pilot program, so we don't know if this is going to continue. But there's also other ways you can recycle stuff. You can drop off old electronics at best Buy. Sometimes they may charge you for some of that stuff, so it depends what it is like. If it's a big TV, they may charge you a little bit. There's an online service called gizmo Go that I recommend.
I've been to their recycling facilities gizmogo dot com. When I had to recycle my mom's computer, I brought it to Staples and it was completely free. And I know that they ended or they stopped the program during the COVID pandemic, but check out Staples as well because they have a really good recycling program. Hopefully they've started again. All right, Coming up later in the show, we're going to talk Tetris. I watched the movie on the plane. It's on Apple TV plus. We're going to talk to
my friend Dan Ackerman about all things Tetris plus. Walmart the next place you might charge your EV. You're listening to Rich on Tech, Give me a call eighty eight rich one O one. All right, now we're getting into the weeds with these songs. Ah oh, you know, you don't know how you feel after you help save someone's life. Until you do it. And I'm telling you that handshake. I got a handshake from the guy. He was just like thank you. And you know, my kids and my wife they were by my side.
They felt like a movie. We were running off into the sunset.
And then I ran to my chair and finished my my tie. But I'm telling you, I looked at my Apple Watch my heart rate and I could see the exact time when I darted up from my chair to run out into the water. And again, like I said, I'm not I'm not like a mister athlete, but I can run fast. I do run and I can swim
decently fast too. Anyway, let's go to a welcome back, by the way, Rich DeMuro here, Rich on Tech Talking Technology triple eight Rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two for to one zero one.
Doug is in San Jose. Doug, you're on with Rich.
Hi there, Thanks for taking my call.
Thanks for calling.
I'm wondering if you are aware of any problem nationwide with comcasts keeping their system up and running. And the reason I asked is because there's been an ongoing problem in my area of San Jose, which is ironic giving it the capital of Silicon Valley.
Yeah, that is.
And the just in the past three or four days there have been system attages. This one is going on twenty four hours.
Oh wow. Okay, so and this happens quite often.
Now.
I've heard people complain about this service up there, but I you know, I don't live up there, so I don't really know. And I feel like internet service can't really be out nationwide for a long way or for a long time, because you know, that would be pretty wild. So how long has it been out for you? And why is it out?
I have no idea why it's out. Contasts will never provide that information. A few months ago they came through and upgraded the system to quote unquote improve your experience. Hasn't exactly hasn't exactly done that interesting? I mean I've been on the phone with their phone techs who are ten thousand miles away, and then I've talked to their headquarters, which is I think is in Minneapolis. I'm not sure.
I mean, I've been up and down the system, even complained to the FCC, and that's because I'm a cranky old man. But I need my I need my Internet.
I get it. Yeah, it's frustrating. It's totally frustrating. And this is the reason why I hate the fact that many people only have one option for Internet at their home, maybe too if you're lucky, I mean, and the second one may not be that good. But we are seeing more options come along with these wireless companies, the verizons of the world, the t mobiles, even the satellite Internet and some of these wireless internet companies. But I think one of them is not doing too well, so that's
not really worked out pretty good. So most people, like I said, they don't have that many options, and so you're kind of stuck with this service. And also, you know, it comes down to the price you pay. Like you know, maybe you have a different option, but it's more expensive. But let me kind of bring this out so that if you're having trouble with your service, you understand there's
a couple of things you can do. So first off, I know that Exfinity has an outage map and you can put your address in so a lot of times, if you're having trouble with your internet Internet it can be localized to your home or to your neighborhood. Something that's happening there. You know, someone runs into a power
line and you know, brings down the line. So I understand that these things are going to happen, but if it's going out over and over, it could either be the hardware on your end, it could be your neighborhood, or you know, it's just something is not right. And so the first thing I would do is check the Infinity outage map, and I would say almost every single service at this point that's online, you know, including ones that you don't pay for something like an I message,
they all have these status maps. So if you type in like Apple service status on the website on Google, it will tell you if these things are functioning properly. So you can see a system status right now for everything that Apple offers, the app Store, Apple Account, Apple Arcade, FaceTime, Find My game Center, home Kit. It will tell you if these things are down. So if you're having a problem with I Message, you can go there and see, Okay, is it just me or is it everyone that's having
a problem with this stuff. So that's one way of doing it. Again. Infinity has its own which I'm looking up. It's exfinity dot com slash slash status map and you type in your address and it will tell you if that address is having a problem. And so in this case, Doug, you can type in your actual service address. I'm not going to ask you for that on the radio, but you can type that in and it will tell you is this a problem for everyone or just you?
So that's Exfinity.
Whether whether your service is Infinity or AT and T or whatever, they should have something similar to that. The other thing is a website called down Detector, and this website is a sort of a bigger website that will tell you what's having trouble at any given time. And if you look the top things that are having trouble at any given time or always the Internet services themselves. So I'm looking at the top kind of things that
are down. Spectrum, Verizon, Starlink, T Mobile, AT and T is on there, and then you go down Inxfinity is actually lower on the list cos you know it has everything. But you can see a little line of when people submit things that are wrong with these services. So if you see a spike and the line looks like it's red, that means there's a problem at any given time. And so this is downdetector dot com. You can type in the service you're having problem with. Let's say, or Instagram isn't working.
I N S T A g r M.
You type in Instagram and it will show you if Instagram is having trouble, and let's see, does it go by Instagram Maybe it doesn't, Maybe it just goes by Facebook or Meta.
Let's see.
I'll type in Facebook, and so here's Facebook telling you you know, and then you can type in a problem. You can say I'm having a problem with Facebook, website, app, login, something else, and then it gives you the outage reports for the last twenty four hours. You can see if you're having trouble, and there's been a whole bunch of people that are saying we have outages as well. You can understand that. So that's a website called downdetector dot com.
And then this is another website that's really good. So if you're having trouble accessing website, like people will tell me, hey, Rich, I'm having trouble accessing Rich on tech dot tv and I go on my phone and it's working just fine for me. So this website, if you go to down for Everyone or just me dot com, you can type in a website so I'm gonna type in rich on tech dot tv and it goes to that website from its own browser, and so it checks to see is
it down for everyone or just you? And it's telling me it's just you. Rich on tech dot tv is up. And you can check a different website if you want, so if you're having trouble with a specific website, you can see if it's for everyone or just you. So those are three good resources for looking up you know, what's going on in your area, Doug. I know it's frustrating, and especially with Internet, it's really frustrating when it goes down. Thankfully we have our phones. You can pop into that
hotspot if you need it. But when it's going on a couple of days or you know, weeks even, or if it's just happening over and over, that's when it's time to try to figure out what exactly is going on. So good question. Thanks for in and appreciate the call. Walmart launching coast to coast EV fast Charging network across all of its stores, so they are building their own coast to coast EV fast Charging network by twenty thirty, so basically you will be able to go to a
Walmart store and charge your car fast. And this is kind of the trend that we're seeing with these fast chargers. They're starting to pop up at more and more stores. So Walmart says they already have thirteen hundred fast charging stations across two hundred and eighty retail stores with Electrify America. But this is going to be a coast to coast kind of thing. So Walmart says that they have, let's see,
by twenty thirty, they're going to build this. They say they have a store club located within ten miles of approximately ninety percent of Americans, okay, and it'll be at super centers, neighborhood markets, and Sam's Club, so you'll be able to go into the store and charge while you
go into the store. They didn't say if it's going to oh, yep, in line with our purpose, we aim to offer everyday low price charging, so this is not going to be free charging, but they will have low prices, and we know Walmart definitely has low prices, so it should hopefully be pretty reasonable. But again, this is the
charge that we're seeing. You know, these chargers are showing up at more and more stores, which I think is very convenient because they have the space, They've got the parking lots, and it's very easy to charge inside these stores because you know, are outside these stores because you can run in for something. And really, when it comes to electric car charging, let's be honest, most people are charging at home or at work. This is for when you're on a road trip or you just need a.
Quick fill up.
To have a location like Walmart is very convenient because if you know where one is, or if you're even on a road trip you see that Walmart sign on the side of the road, you know, Okay, I'll take a little pit stop at Walmart, I'll charge my car and I'll be on my way, and I know it's going to be a pretty good price. So glad that Walmart is doing that.
All right.
Coming up on the show, we're going to talk to my pal Dan Ackerman from CNET.
My day's at c NEET.
It feels like it's further and further away, but we're going to talk to Dan Ackerman. He wrote a book about Tetris, and then when I saw the movie, I said, we got to talk to Dan about the movie and Tetris in general. All these years later, I'm still playing Tetris and yes I had the original game Boy, so we'll talk to him. And we'll also talk about Google bringing air Drop, their version of air drop to Windows.
So if you have an Android phone, it is now much easier to transfer files from your Android phone to your Windows computer. All that plus your calls at triple eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one. If you have a question about technology, give me a call. Phone lines are opening. You're listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back
to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here talking technology with you at triple eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one. We were talking about recycling Earlier. I mentioned the Staples recycling and it went away during COVID, but.
It is back.
So probably one of the easiest places to recycle stuff is your local Staples store. So they said that they have recycled one hundred and fifty three million is that million? Yeah, pounds of technology since twenty twelve, and you can basically just bring it in for free as far yeah free. I was pretty impressed. We brought back my mom's computer and I couldn't believe how easy it was. In fact, look at this. They'll give you five bucks in rewards
when you recycle or shred in store. And this is not We're not you know, you can do like things like ink cartridges, but this will. They'll take back almost anything. Adapters and cables, all in one, computers, battery backup cable, satellite receivers, calculators, camquarders, E readers, fax machines, GPS devices, all this stuff that you have sitting there and you don't want to throw in the trash because it's bad for the environment. You can now it to a staple store.
So what can't be recycled there? Air conditioners, alkaline batteries, appliances, floor model, printers and copiers. Can you imagine? Can you imagine unloading that from your car? Like here you go, let me, here's my copyer, my xerox machine, kitchen, appliances, lamps, large servers, large speakers, smoke detectors, televisions. Don't bring TVs there, they cannot recycle them at staples. Computers, yes, how about monitors, yes, monitors, you can printers, all that good stuff. So anyway, really
easy to recycle there. I was quite impressed, but the box now we have options. In fact, next week I'm going to a recycling plant down in Carlsbad, and so I'm going to see first hand. You know, Earth Days coming up, so I'm going to see firsthand how they recycle some of this stuff.
And it's pretty wild. I mean they it's like melting and shredding and all this good stuff.
Better Business Bureau put out some tips about how to give yourself a spring digital makeover. They're teaming up the National Cybersecurity Alliance to remind you that not only when you spring clean like this today, I opened up my garage and I said, we got to get rid of some of this stuff. And so not only do you want to get rid of all of your physical clutter in your house when you spring clean, remember the digital clutter and also security. So they gave a couple of tips.
I'm gonna read some of them here because I thought they were pretty good. I mean, it's stuff you've heard before, but I think that it's good to reiterate this stuff. So Number one, lock down your login, so make sure that your logins are complex and unique. So if you're having trouble with this concept, I'm telling you you can't add a one or a exclamation point to your word that you use over and over and expect it to be safe. That is just not the case. So please
use complex passwords. You can generate them even if you don't use a password generator. Okay, if you just type in password generator on the way and you go to a website like Norton Password Generator, one Password password Generator, Bitwarden Password Generator, all of these websites have password generators online and you can just go there and generate a secure password. So even if you don't want to use one of those apps, I always recommend you can actually
just do this online and write down the password. That's better than nothing. So do that two factor authentication. I've talked about it a million times. Please please please put that on any account that will accept it. Update your system and software, update your software.
You have to do it.
I know we don't like change, but you have to do this because that's what keeps your software secure and safe, and it's what the hackers do.
They use exploits.
So when software gets old, there are known exploits, there are known ways of cracking that software and getting in and doing bad stuff, and so if you update your software, you're staying at least a little step ahead of some of the problems that have been found and they're patched.
Back it up.
Back up your personal and workplace data by making electronic copies backups of your most important files. Use the three two one rule to help guide you. You want three backup copies. I know it sounds like a lot, two different media types and one offline in a separate location. Let me give you an example of the iPhone. Okay, now when you say three different places, so one of those places could be your phone, and then you want
it in two other places. So maybe you plug your phone into your computer and you do a full backup of that computer or that phone that is stored on your computer.
Okay, now that's two.
Now you've got your data on your phone, you've got it on your computer, and then you want it in a third place. So let's say you use Google Photos for your photos, use iCloud for your important files. That would be three places that would be sufficient. So again, I know we don't want to do this stuff, we don't want to pay for storage online, but do it because if it has weepens to you and you'll lose your stuff. And believe me, I get the emails. It's not fun people lose this stuff.
We had an email.
We had a person the other day who said they lost, you know, thirteen thousand photos on their phone.
Because they just didn't check the backup.
At the very least, if you're an Amazon Prime customer, just download the Amazon Photos app. It's free and it will download your photos or will it will back up your photos to the cloud unlimited. It's not going to do videos unlimited, but it will do photos unlimited. If you're an Amazon Prime customer, take advantage of that. At least get the pictures uploaded. And by the way, you can't just download this app and never open it again.
You have to open up the app every once in a while to make sure that you are actually backing up your pictures.
I also like Google Photos.
Of course you've heard me talk about that clean up your online presence. So this is a good one too. And this is something that I do often on my phone. I will just go through my phone and just kind of delete apps that I don't use anymore. That's good to do because if an app you know has access to your contacts, your photos, you're not using it, you don't really want that.
Also, make sure that.
You get rid of old accounts, and so if you're not using an account anymore, just go ahead and delete it. There are ways to delete these accounts. There used to be a website that I've liked. Believe it's just delete me. And so if you go to just delete me, just delete dot me, it will give you a whole list of ways to delete accounts. So if you want to delete your Instagram or your Aol or anything Adobe, it will tell you how to do that.
There was another one I liked.
I'm trying to remember what the other one wash Gosh, I can't remember right now off the top of my head, But there was a there was another website that would help you delete these things. But if you just google the service that you want to delete, along with delete, you should find instructions online with how to delete that stuff.
So please do these.
Things, clean up your online presence, and just get these things in order before it's too late. All right, Coming up, we're gonna talk to Dan Ackerman. He is author of The Tetris Effect. We're going to talk all things Tetris. Coming up, one of my favorite games in the world. You're listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology.
We're gonna get to the feedback section of the show coming up a little bit later, but first we're gonna talk about one of my favorite games in the world, Tetris. I watched the new Apple TV Plus movie on the airplane, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. A little nostalgic, little fun, little action, little intrigue, little saga. Here to talk about all of it is Dan Ackerman, who I used to
work with at Cenet. He wrote the book called The Tetris Effect, which is available on Amazon way before the movie came out.
Dan, Welcome to the show.
Hey, Rich good to talk to you.
Now.
Dan, let's just be clear the show was not based on your book, but since you're the Tetris expert, I figured we'd chat about Tetris.
Yeah, exactly. The producers of the movie did a great job. They did not license my book, but it covers the story in a very similar way.
So let's talk about Tetris. First off, what drew you to this game to write a book about it?
You know, what I was really interested in is Less the game, which is an important game, one of the most important games ever, but really the story behind it, which reminded me of kind of a Silicon Alley tech startup story, except it took place in the Cold War Soviet Union in the nineteen eighties. But the parallels between this and you know, the story of the service Facebook or any other social media company or a big tech company really jumped out at me.
And so was the movie. The movie is called Tetris. It's on Apple TV plus. Was it did it say based on a true story? I think it did so. I mean, how much of this was true as you watched it?
Yeah?
I got to say most of it was pretty was tracking pretty well with the history as I wrote it, up until maybe like the last twenty minutes where they get into the the KDP agents beating people up and the car chases. Everything up until then is actually pretty dead on, even though it seems like you have these cartoonists, you know, characters in the Soviet Union trying to shake people down, and you have all this confusion about all
these people buying for the rights of the game. Really, I'd say seventy five eighty percent of that stuff happened pretty darn close to how they put it in that movie.
Wow. So how did you do research for your book?
You know, when I was sitting down to tell this story in my book, obviously I got in touch with a lot of the primary people in the you know, in the story, and a lot of the characters usually portrayed in the film are people I interviewed for the book.
Henk Rogers, like Depositov, even Starter Maya, our Colla from Nintendo, Howard Lincoln, So a lot of the characters, and they all had great stories to tell, and they all told the stories from their own point of view, so there were some discrepancies and you kind of have to go through it and say, this guy remembers it this way, this guy remembers it that way, and try to figure out what the most likely version of the truth.
Wash and what is so great about Tetris? I mean, I know what I mean.
So of course I got the Game Boy back in I don't know what year it was, but that was kind of like the first thing I remember having as a kid was like this, I think it was ninety dollars. I bought a like KB toy store, and I think Tetris was the game that was included with it, right, I mean that was a.
Real big part of Tetris's long term success was getting packed in with that game boy. And it happens very much like you saw in the Texas movie where Hank Rogers convinced Nintendo to put this new game in Tetris instead of something like a Donkey Kong game or a Mario game or a Zelda game, even though those games have huge built in audiences. And the pitch was this is a game for people who would never call themselves gamers, you know, parents, teachers, people who didn't have game console.
It's really more of a puzzle. And if they think, oh, I'm just playing this little box I bought at like you said, a KB twys or ninety bucks, but it's a puzzle, almost like a crossword and not a video game, well then I'm into it. And that's why so many people played Tetris. But you they would never call themselves gamers.
Interesting, I mean, because yeah, anyone can play it, anyone can pick it up. It's been made into so many different variations. I mean I was playing, you know, a Tetris, I think I've played it on every single device I've had since the Game Boy, whether it's a console box or whether it is a I'm just trying to think, like all the different ways I've played over the year, so, you know, smartphones, cell phones, and it's all had different names.
Is the Tetris Company still around and are they still likened? Like what's the deal with Tetris at this point in time?
Yeah.
One of the nice things about the company and the game is that there's a Tetris company and it's run by Hank Rogers and his daughter, and the LECTIPOSIV was a partner in that, and these two guys who were the protagonist of that film and the protagonist of my book, and I think the agonists in real life ended up owning the rights to the game and they've been administering it ever since. So it's one of these great stories about you know, creative ip where the good guys actually win.
And what is it about Tetris that I mean you said that anyone can play it. I mean it's a puzzle and it's simple, but I still can't get enough, you know, thirty years.
Later, you know it's it's the geometic spatial you know, you know, recognition of the patterns. Scientists study how the game affects your brain, and they've shown that it can help people prevent them from developing PTSD after traumatic incident because it rewires and rewrites some of the you know, memory pathways in the brain that are traumatic event would would write to you know, long term, so you'd have flashbacks. And other scientists have studied how your brain is more
efficient playing Tetris. It's not that you get better at the game, it's that your brain uses less power to do the same amount of mental work in the game. So there's something very unique about how it's a game but there's no story and there's no characters. It really requires a lot of unconscious thinking and that's something that even a lot of twitch games don't have.
So I was going to ask you, I'm gonna put you on the spot. Is there a game similar to Tetris that you've seen in the past couple of years that you would recommend people play, Like if you love Tetris, like something that you've seen that would be just as fun.
You know, I always loved Luminous, and I think candy Crush style games have a little bit of that, you know, in spatial pattern Recognition Rush. It's really tough to beep the original, especially when there were still kind of interesting new versions coming out even all this time later.
There's a game.
Called Tetris Effect that there's a really nice job of updating and modernizing the game, and it actually works in virtual reality, which is a whole another level. And I think it's just really fantastic in the VR three D space. And you can do that on you know, Oculus and on PlayStation VR and regular PCVR.
Oh, I have to try that one, okay, Hevin, I said, I played on all the platforms. I have not tried it in VR. Yeah, I kind of do that. Well, okay, so you said Candy Crush and what was the other one?
Luminous.
Luminous is a great one, and that's actually one of the guys who designed that new texas of that game. Luminus was one of his earlier games.
What surprised you when you're writing the book, anything that you really were surprised at?
You know, there are a couple of really surprising things that did not make it into the movie version that you saw. But Russia really wanted to get into the business and manufacturing Nintendo console, being in business with Nintendo in a big way. And they tried to convince Howard Lincoln and other people at Nintendo of this, and they
took him, Howard Lincoln, who's in the film. They took him to one of the top secret cosmonaut training facilities and gave him a big tour and so, you know, we can put the Nintendo logo on the side of a rocket going up. You know, anything you want, we can do it. Let's make a deal. And of course that didn't happen because you can imagine how you know, not great a Soviet Union manufactured Nintendo entertainment system would be.
But the fact that they did all that and gave him this, like the behind the scenes secret Cosna tour, I was always one of the wildest parts of the story.
Oh my gosh, that is wild that we would have been forever change. We'd be talking about banning Nintendo at this point like we are with TikTok if that was
the case. Okay, so do you recommend do you recommend that folks watched this movie on Apple TV bus I watched it on a plane, and so I have a different place in my brain for movies that I watch on the plane, because it's like, Okay, you know, I wasn't my regular self when I was watching this, but I still enjoyed it, and I thought some of it was like, actually, the characters were so over the top that I thought at some point it was almost like a characature of a character. But that's what part of
the love. Part of what I liked about this movie was that, Yeah, what I.
Liked about it was it really carries forward that Cold War spy thriller theme, which is the same way I wrote about the book, And I don't think anyone had really covered the Order of Texas like that before. But it's pretty dark, true to life. Some of the outrageous stuff really happened. Sometimes the characters are a little different than they kind of invented, like that KTB bad guy who you know most of his stuff was actually done
by one of the other characters in there. But until you get to the car chases and like the fistfights, it really wasn't all that exaggerated. Shockingly wow.
All right, if you want to try Apple TV Plus if you don't have a subscription, I just looked in the target app if you're a Target circle member, you can go into my Target on the app Apple tv Plus free for three months, so you can sign up watch this completely for free. So that's one way of doing it. I'm sure there's other ways of getting Apple tv Plus. Dan Ackerman is my guest from Cnet. Dan, how are things going since I left Cnet? Probably what fifteen years ago? At this point, I.
Can't I can't imagine that it's been that long.
That is crazy.
But of course I always look running into you at Apple events and other type events. It seems like there's a huge network of NEET alumni out there and we all just keep you know, stay in touch and keep running into each other.
And you're covering what over there at this point, you know, a.
Lot of computer stuff and gaming, home entertainment, really a lot of that tra personal tech that you think of the brand.
All right, absolutely go follow Dan Ackerman on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, all the different social media platforms that he's on. And Dan, thanks so much for joining me today. I can't wait to play more Tetris now.
All right, take care?
All right, coming up, we're going to have the feedback section of the show. The more I do, the show, the more feedback we get. Plus, I'm going to tell you how Google is now guaranteeing that if you your flight price goes down, they will pay you the difference. I'll explain that coming up right here on rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich Demiro here closing
out the show with you with the feedback segment. But first, before we get to that, I just want to tell you about the new feature on Google Flights, which, if you heard me talk about booking travel, I pretty much only use Google Flights to look up my flights, and so this is flights or I should say shop for flights flights dot Google dot com.
I'm on there multiple times on.
A daily basis, so I love this website and they're adding this new feature that basically, if your price goes down on the flight, they will reimburse you. So if you see a flight with this price guarantee badge, they are confident that the price you see will not get any lower. So Google, of course has a ton of data.
They know they've been tracking historic pricing data for flights, and they bought a company that helps them do that, so they know that they think the price isn't going to go down before you fly, and so if it does, they will send you back the difference via Google pay. That's kind of annoying, but I'd rather have PayPal, but I'll take Google pay whatever. But you have to see this badge. You have to see this flight price guarantee badge. And it does not show up on every flight. In fact,
I searched a whole bunch of flights. I didn't get it to show up once. But in their example they they showed like like a what was it like an Alaska Airlines flight. So if you see that little badge, you can do that.
Now.
The other thing you can do on Google Flights is just track the price of your flight. But I've found a couple of times the price of the flight will go down when you track it. A lot of times it just goes up. So my advice stays with all you know, it's still the same all these years later. When it comes to booking a plane flight, if the price seems good to you at the time, go ahead
and book it. Because it may go up, it may go down a little bit, But the reality is, if it feels like a fair price, go for it, because, believe me, I've tracked prices for a long long time, and sometimes they just never go down or they never change. Sometimes they just go up and up and up, and you just feel kind of like, why do I keep watching this price go up?
You just got a book when it feels right to your Ruth.
Wrote in feedback section, Hey, Rich, I watch you on WGNTV in Chicago and listen to your podcast. In the last three weeks, my visa card has been hacked repeatedly, which means issuing a new car every time. Chase has been good about sending fraud notices. Any suggestions. Also, I'm getting a second visa card so I'm not left with nothing while waiting for a new card. Thanks Ruth in
Glenn Allen, Illinois. Ruth, my advice is to not use your the same card online that you're using out and about, so I would think about getting a separate card just for online purchases. Or you can use a website that I use. It's called privacy dot com and you have to link it up to your debit card or your
checking account or I think a savings account. But it gives you a one time use virtual card number, So that's a way to get around this, and I don't think Chase offers virtual card numbers, but some of the other credit card companies do. But I would look into using virtual card numbers, so when you're shopping online, you can use a one time card number that does not give away your actual credit card because for some reason, I don't know what it is these I don't know
why how they get it. But sometimes you use your credit card online, next thing you know, it's hacked. And it doesn't happen just online. It could happen in store too, so it just really depends. But I would try to limit the exposure to your credit card number. My rule of thumb I try to use my debit card as much as possible, So anytime my card leaves my hand, I typically like to use a credit card just to give me that little buffer between myself and that number.
So a credit card, if it gets hacked, a lot easier. You don't really have to worry about as much. You just call your company and say, hey, look this happened, and they're going to reverse the charges. But if your debit card, it's a little trickier because the money already comes out of your account. So again my rule of thumb if the card leaves my hand, I usually like
to use a credit card. The other way to do it is to use tap to pay, which protects both your debit card number and your credit card number equally well. And anytime you can online shop with something like Google Pay or Apple Pay, and a lot of times you have to shop from your phone to get that button to show up, but you can do that as well. Like on the Southwest app I was talking about it was booking a flight. It was very easy to book because I could just use Apple Pay right through my phone.
So again, limit your exposure privacy dot com is also a good way to do that.
Let's see here. I have so much feedback now from the show. John writes in.
John from Appleton, Wisconsin says, another very informative show. You had a nice discussion about free and Paige streaming services with commercials or ad free. Here's my question. When TV shows are sold for syndication, there's content removed to make room for more commercials. Not sure if that's the case. Okay, Today when we stream Cheers, Friends, Seinfeld x Files, are we seeing shows in their entirety as they first appeared on network TV? Or are we seeing the edited version.
I think you're seeing the shows in their entirety because with streaming they can do whatever they want, so there's no need to cut anything. It doesn't need to fit into this. You know, typically it's twenty three minutes of show seven minutes of commercials per hour, so I don't think they need to cut anything when it's streaming. In fact, I was watching Friends and Seinfeld on streaming services and it seemed like it was the entire entire show. So
I think that that's probably your best bet. And these shows, man, they keep having a life.
Huh.
Many years after I did a show, I did a movie. I did It's gonna Sound funny. I was on the cutting room floor of Zoolander two, Like they didn't even use my part, and I'm still getting residual checks when people watch that movie.
I don't know how.
I mean, I guess because they paid me to be in the movie. I somehow, even though I didn't end up in the movie. You know, when it comes to all this stuff, you still get your check. So I still just got to check. This weekend wasn't much, but still there. And it shows you all the places people watch it streaming is a big one. Mark says, I'm a bit behind. Listening to episode number twelve. Two observations. One woman had a friend with an iPad was asking
about a chromebook. One option is maybe getting a keyboard case for the iPad instead of a chromebook. It's cheaper and no need to learn a new device. Any bluetooth keyboard would work with an iPad. Yeah, an iPad is a good alternative. I think if you're just consuming content, an iPad is really good. But I think a chromebook is a little bit easier if you're trying to do more on there, and so I think that's I'll recommend
an iPad when I think it's necessary. But I think in that case, I actually forgot it might have been a good option. I just forgot completely. Second item was about the woman with a Lisa computer. Those are selling for up to fifty thousand dollars on the market for vintage technology these days.
Wow.
I don't know if she mentioned she had a Lisa or she worked on Alisa back in the day.
So that's oh gosh, this is a long one.
Robert, retired web developer, says, regarding the woman who called into your show, who asked for advice and how to monetize her idea for an app. Instead of creating a video, I would have suggested a catchy name for your app, register that domain typically twenty bucks a year, host that domain six a month, six bucks a month. Well, and then use a website builder to create a website, kind of a live website with placeholders to show people how
the app would function. And then as time becomes available, she can build out the website more and more and higher a web designer as necessary. Okay, that's interesting, but most people, he says, do not know how to find a VC. Even if they did, a VC would not want to talk to them. Yeah, that's interesting advice, I guess. I mean that's one way. And then a lot of people wrote in about this whole two point four gigahertz
versus five gigahertz stuff and gets a little complicated. But one person said a Lynksys MR nine thousand router worked well and they were able to split the signal and give each a separate name, So if you want to do that. And finally, oh, Mario said rich, I just wanted you to suggest resist ever calling yourself dumb and don't refer yourself as dumb. I guess I called myself. I said I felt dumb. I don't what it was about, but I did say I felt dumb.
All right, that's gonna do it for this episode of the show. You can find me on social media at rich on tech, my website richon tech dot tv.
Go there to watch my TV segments. My name is rich Merrol. 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 will talk to you real soon.