Google explains how it will be bold yet responsible with AI, and unveils a five hundred dollars pixel, a foldable pixel, and a pixel tablet. The best anti virus programs, and watch out for this new Chrome scan that might install mildware on your computer. It can trick anyone. Oh yeah, plus your tech questions answered. What's going on on 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 KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles. Welcome to the show. This is show number nineteen. Whoo number nineteen. Phone lines are open at triple eight Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Give me a call. If you have a question about technology, email is also open. Just send it to hello at richon Tech dot TV. Well hello there from Austin, Texas. Yeah, here for the Iheartcountry Festival. This is a concert that
we are going to. Very exciting. So of course Austin a little bit different than Los Angeles. So we got in and we immediately went and got some barbecue and What I love about the world of Instagram and social media is that there are so many suggestions from folks. It makes it really easy to pick where to go.
So I put a.
Story on my Instagram saying, hey, where do you think we should go to eat while we're in Austin? And I got lots of good suggestions, and so of course I just took the best ones that bubbled up to the top, that were the most. So if I got the most suggestions for a place, clearly a lot of people like it, a lot of people have been there. So we picked our barbecue place last night based on you and it was excellent. It was exactly what I want,
cafeteria style. You walk through the line, it kind of snakes through all the different food, and then they carve up the barbecue right in front of you.
And it was.
Delicious, so so good. So thank you for your suggestions on my Instagram.
At rich on.
Tech last night, we also went out for a little bit. You know, it's a very lively city and I've been here a bunch of times for south By Southwest. My wife has never been here, so it was kind of exciting for her to see it for the first time. And of course we took in some live music, which is there are many many places to do that here.
But I noticed something that's kind of interesting that the performers now instead of sort of a tip jar, which they still kind of have, but they all have these QR codes that you can scan to tip them via Venmo or the cash app. And I thought that was interesting because, I mean, the tip the cash tip is still.
I think the best thing out there.
Now.
There's a lot of reasons why you want to have that QR code. It's because people aren't carrying as much cash these days, and so I get that, but it just feels weird to scan a code and give someone a tip versus just going up there and giving them a couple of bucks.
And I get it.
Maybe people tip more because it's Venmo, and like, are you really going to tip a dollar on Venmo?
Now?
You're probably gonna give like five bucks.
So maybe it's a better thing that they have both options, but I just thought that was interesting. Also, the hotel where we're saying is kind of cool. It has a record player in the room. So I chose the hotel because that was kind of the the thing that I thought was really neat to have a record player in the room. So we actually got to our first room and the first thing I looked for was the record player,
and lo and behold, no record player. And I was like, wait what The one thing I wanted at this hotel was the record player in the room. They didn't have it in the room, and so I called down to the front desk. I said, no, it's there. Just look around. I said, I can see the entire room where I'm standing right now, and I don't see a record player.
Oh, we can bring one up.
So I went back down to the room, went back down and said, you know, can you just give us a room that has it? And they said, sure, we'll give you a different room. So we get in the other room and sure enough, record players right there. They also have a record concierge, so they have a person whose job it is to help you select records.
So you go down to the lobby.
The person standing there, obviously they know music, and gave us about five or six albums. Said hey, start the night out with this and the night with this. And it was so great because I'm putting on records something I haven't done well. I mean, look, I grew up
with record with a record player in my home. It was not something I typically used, like my era started a little bit more with tapes and then CDs and then MP three's and then streaming so and of course you know FM radio, so delivering my newspapers, listening to my FM radio walkman. But the record player was something we had and it was really neat, so I was aware of how it worked, and so I didn't know if I was going to know how to put the record on and play it. But sure enough, I put
the little record on, I moved the needle. You get that little crackly sound at the beginning, and it plays the music and it just was really fun because it's a record and it's not something that you typically do.
But the problem with the record, and.
I remember this from one of my best friends who happens to be from Texas, and he would always have a record playing when we went to dinner at his place and we'd go over there and you know, he'd play the record and the problem was the record would stop after about a half an hour. And you know, I don't know what a side of a record last. It didn't seem like it's more than a half an hour. But we've become so accustomed to unlimited music that it's
kind of odd to have something stop. But on the flip side, when you are putting a record on, it is very is a very mindful activity, right. You can't just randomly listen to music. When you're putting a record on. You have to select the record, you have to take it out of its sleeve, you have to place it on the record player, you have to move that needle
and you are playing something. If you're using one of these music apps, there's no way you just press shuffle and it starts and it goes on forever and ever and ever. This is a much more mindful way of listening to music, so you know the album, you know the artist, and it's a different experience. So I highly recommend if you have not played with the record player
in a long time to try it now. Myself, I have a Sonos system at home, and when I was at CES, I saw this record player that connects to Sonos. It's let's see, what's the brand here, Victrola, which obviously that's a brand that's been around forever. I'm not sure if it's the same company ownership as it was back in the day. But they have a turntable, the Aunks that works with Sonos, so this wirelessly connects to your
sons Now. The reason I didn't buy it immediately when I saw it at CES, even though I thought it was cool, is because it's six hundred dollars. But after talking to my wife last night and how much we enjoyed this record hair situation, I think I may have convinced her to let me invest in this record player. And it does work with my Sonos system. But then, of course now I have to start buying albums and
I've got to do that whole thing. But there's just something so classic and so fun about listening to vinyl that it's a very very neat experience.
So I may do this. Ah, so much fun stuff this week.
Google Io was this week, which is Google's big developers conference. This was the first time in four years that Google did something in person. So they've done their developers conference throughout the pandemic, but it just wasn't really a big deal. They still had announcements, but this was the first time in four years that you could go up there, and so I did. I was in Mountain View earlier this week.
Google does this at a place called Shoreline Amphitheater and it's a big kind of outdoor amphitheater that they do concerts at, but they also do Google Io and Google Io is where they have developers come to sort of see what tools are available to them to code apps, to code search things, to code Android, just what tools Google is working on to let developers use in whatever they're making that works with Google.
And so it was really fun.
It was such a great experience to go up there and not just see all of the products, because they announced three new products, a five hundred dollars pixel phone, a brand new eighteen hundred dollars foldable pixel phone that's something I'm also trying to maybe that might be my next phone, and also a pixel tablet. But by going to these events, it gives me the perspective I need
to be able to talk about these products. And later in the show we're going to talk to someone else that was there as well and talk to them and kind of get their thoughts on all these different things. And this show is going to be very Google heavy, I will admit, So if you don't like Google or you have a problem with Google. You may not like the show today, but I promise it's still going to be fun. It's still going to be interesting, and we're still going to have lots of calls and lots of
stuff to talk about. These events that I go to. It's a lot, you know. You go up there, there's a lot of other journalists. We're all trying to get our stories filed. I had to file mine for TV for the next day. I was actually shooting my entire story myself, So I went up there solo recorded everything and then wrote the story and then sent it back to my editor in Los Angeles. He edited it, and then I flew back and then we were on the news in the morning. So it's a lot, but it
was a lot of fun. It was a lot of challenge. But the best thing was that the internet was so slow this year. I don't know why. I was on Wi Fi and I had like twelve gigs of stuff. I had to send twelve gigabytes of stuff like video that I just sent down to Los Angeles, and it just wasn't happening. It was giving me like hours and hours of time that it was going to take. And I was like that's not going to work. So I found a wired Ethernet connection. I plugged my computer in
and I'm not kidding. It was the fastest Internet I think I've ever seen in my life. Because the twelve gigabytes that was taking about seventeen hours to go up via the Wi Fi. It went up in about I would say less than a minute. It was maybe sixty seconds. And I texted my photographer and I said, hey, everything's up. It's ready to go, and he's like, what changed? I said, I found some Ethernet. So if you ever need stuff to go up much faster, just find an Ethernet connection
and I'm sure that will take care of it. All right, I've got lots more to talk about with Google throughout the show. I'm gonna talk about all the different hardware announcements, the way AI is gonna get into more things. We're gonna talk about how search is changing. There is so much to talk about when it comes to Google. So we're gonna talk about all of that. But I've got some great guests as well coming up on today's show. So we're gonna do the Pixel, We're gonna do the
Pixel tablet, We're gonna do the pixel fold. Then I've got some great guests. We've got Miriam Juar of the Mobile Tech Podcast. They're gonna join me to talk all things Google, especially that pixel seven A and that fold. I've got n gadget Sherlyn Lowe to explain the difference, to explain her experience with Project Starline. This is Google's holographic version of Zoom. It's quite incredible. It's quite interesting, uh, Sherilyn.
We will talk about that and then later. If you've got a gamer in your life, they're playing one of two games right now. They're either playing Zelda or they're playing the new game from Pokemon Go Paradot. So we're gonna talk to Eric Switzer ofthegamer dot com about those two games, which are a lot of fun.
But first it is your turn.
We've got your phone calls coming up next at triple eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
You are listening to rich on Tech. I'm Rich Demiro. We'll talk to you coming up next. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Rich Demiro here hanging out with you talking technology from Austin, Texas. The phone lines are open at triple eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four to one zero one. Welcome to the show Google Io held this week up in Mountain View, California. I was there, and everyone's sort of wondering what Google is going to do with AI. Google has some of the best AI
engineers in the world. They've been talking about AI long before it was cool, long before every other company has jumped on the bandwagon.
And I don't think that.
Google is going to get AI wrong because number one, they're already using it in so many little ways in their products. Maybe they didn't talk it up as much, but they've always infused AI into a lot of their things. And so here are some of the new things coming out with AI in Google. So number one, they showed off this feature called help me Write in Gmail. So in twenty seventeen we got something I can't believe it's been that long.
Called smart Reply.
So these are the little replies when you're on the Gmail app or the website that if someone says, hey, is lunch at twelve thirty, good for you, and at the bottom it might say good for me. Sounds good, yep, And so you can just tap one of those and send off the email, and that's called a smart reply. Then came smart Compose, which if you're typing an email,
it will kind of complete your sentence. So if I say something like sure, that sounds really good, it'll complete that or great, it'll say to hear from you, and you just press tab and it will complete your Gmail typing. So that's really cool. But now they've got help Me Write. This is an AI feature that will write your entire email. And what's neat about this is that it can use details from a previous email. So the example they gave is, let's say your airline canceled your flight or changed your
flight or something. They said, hey, we're going to give you a seventy five dollars credit. Well, you can respond to that email and then say Google, help me write. Gmail helped Me Write, and it will take the details from that previous email, your flight info, how much they offered you, all that good stuff, and it will compose an entire email with a couple of things from you. So you might say, help me write an email back to this airline that says I don't think your seventy
five dollars is good enough. I think I deserve a thousand dollars flight credit, and it will write the entire email. And then you can go ahead, after it writes the entire email, say can you be more persuasive, and it will even tweak it further. You can say can you be more conversational? Can you be more fun? Whatever you want. So that is a really cool feature that's just going to help people write entire emails. And like we've said before,
everything is going to start with a first draft. From now on, you're never gonna have to really write anything from scratch, which is kind of wild because that's a big departure from what we've experienced in the past. All right, in Google Maps, they've got this new immersive view. So let's say, for instance, last night we were here in Austin. We were wondering if we can walk to the restaurant, and you're kind of curious, like, what are you walking through?
It looked like we were walking through a campus of a college, and so can you do that? Well now on Google Maps, because they've all of these images from street view, and they've got all of these satellite images, they fuse them together for something called immersive view for routes. So you can actually take a look at the route and take a bird's eye flyover view and see exactly what it's going to look like to walk, drive, or
bicycle a certain route. Now, this reminds me of a feature that All Trails recently put on their app, and I told you about it on the show. I forget what it's called, but it's like an immersive view as well. But you can take a look at what a trail is going to look like before you hike that trail.
And it's a very similar feature that Google has now introduced.
So in the future we're gonna be able to ride or drive or fly over a route before we actually ever take it.
So that's interesting.
So that's maps that's going to roll out this summer launch in fifteen cities by the end of the year, including London, New York, Tokyo, and San Francisco. The other cool thing, of course, this is quite googly. You can check the air quality, traffic, and weather to see how they might change depending on the time of day that you are taking that route. So they showed off that as well. If it's going to be raining, you can see that on the route and then in Google Photos
they've got this new Magic Editor experience. So this was first introduced. The magic eraser was first introduced on Google Photos. That's where you can just circle something and have it erase what's in a picture. But this is much more thorough. This will kind of transform everything in the picture. And so the example they used is, let's say you've got
this kid sitting on a bench. Took a picture of your kid holding some balloons on a bench, but you kind of were a little bit too over, so the balloons are cut off and you want to center up the child a little bit more in the picture. Well you literally just just take, you know, hover over the child and then pull them over to the right into the center of the picture, and AI will generate what's
missing from the left side of the picture. So all of the balloons, it'll complete them, it will complete the bench, and the child can move over. And then of course it will make the entire picture kind of smoothed out so it doesn't look.
Like you edited it.
It will kind of make the lighting look right and the sky look right, whatever you want. And this is called Magic Editor, and that's coming out soon. It looks like that is going to come out to Pixel owners first, so if you have a Pixel smartphone, that will come to you first. But again, these are just some of the small examples of AI that are coming to Google products.
Those were the three big ones. They also showed off what search is going to look like, and search is now going to have AI at the top of your results, and then at the bottom are going to be those ten blue links. So if you want to try these things now, they actually have a certain website you can go to. If you're searching on Google, you will see a little kind of experimental beaker in the upper left hand corner of your search. You tap that and you can sign up to try some of these new features.
First.
All right, coming up, we've got Miriam Juar to talk all things Google. Miriam's from the Mobile Tech podcast that's coming up next right here on rich on Tech on Rich Demiro plus your calls at triple eight rich one O one. Welcome back to rich on Tech, Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology at triple eight Rich one O one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one. If you have
a question about technology, give me a call. Maybe you're trying to decide between two gadgets, figuring out if an app can do something. Maybe you're stumped on something, give me a call triple eight Rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four to one zero one. You can also email hello at richontech dot TV. All right, My next guest is host of Mobile Tech podcast, Miriam Juwar was up there in Mountain View with me at the Google event and welcome to the show.
Miriam.
Hi, Why Rich?
How's it going?
It is going fantastic, So so much to talk about from Google's big events. Where should we start. What was your initial impression of sort of the event at large?
Lots of AI? I was like, why if I had to summarize it, you know, lots of AI and some cool devices, that would be my summary.
And how do you think Google delivered with the AI stuff? Because you know a lot of people are wondering this is a big change in the way Google does business because potentially, when you're asking AI for answers, you know there might not be room for as much advertising as there is in traditional search. So do you feel like that's a threat to Google's kind of prime business?
I think ultimately it is, but I think they were prepared for it, you know they have. When they announced bart I thought, hey, there, this is this is the first shoe to drop, and the second shoe will be adding you know, some sort of eye to search. And then of course, you know, there's the whole they've been working on Palm, you know now that Palm two, which is there, you know, a large language model for a while now, and that seems to be getting integrated in
so many products. That's the thing that really surprised me. It wasn't just search, but they have, like, you know, ways for Gmail to improve your email writing. They have ways for you to create documents and Google docs. They have ways to if you're a Google Cloud customer, to integrate the AI into that. So it's not just a consumer play, it's like a business play. They're going basically all in and it makes sense. They don't really have a choice.
Yeah, and also they're really good at AI, and it kind of makes sense for what the products that they offer. They've always been largely infused with a sort of an AI machine learning kind of stuff, but nowadays it's like, okay, AI is the hot thing, so let's let's just go all in on that. Okay, So we also saw a lot of products, well three products in particular. We saw a five hundred dollars Pixel seven A, and we saw an eighteen hundred dollars Pixel fold which is a foldable phone,
and then we also saw a Pixel tablet. So let's start with that seven A. So this is the five hundred dollars kind of entry level Pixel phone. They made some improvements this year, things like face unlock, it's got a little bit more ram, it's got a better display. But this is a I think, from everything I've heard from everyone talking about it, a really solid choice for an entry level phone, even though it is fifty dollars more than it was, you know, in years past.
So what do you make of this phone?
Well, I think it's a proper flagship for five hundred dollars, which is quite the feat. You know. I think that the Pixel A series with this seven as finally gone from you know, a mid ranges phone with some flagship features to a proper flagship and fifty dollars more. For that,
I think it's worth it. But it tells me another story, and the story is that, you know, Google's try to simplify a little bit all those new products include the same new ten Sergy two chip that came with the Pixel seven and seven Pro in the fall, so they're using a flagship chip on everything. And in addition to that, you know, we're seeing these this this Pixel seven A gaining things like high refresh rate niney hertz display, like
wireless charging. So that tells me the Pixel eight right that is going to replace the seven which is right now only one hundred dollars more than this new seven A is probably going to cost more and might have more features, because it would be nice to space them
two hundred dollars apart right now. You know, the seven A starts at five hundred, then you had six hundred, you got the seven which is you know, almost identical really, and then you know, like the nine hundred dollars you have the seven Pro and that's a big jump, right, So I'm thinking two hundred dollars apart once they eight
and eight pro land in October. But for now, I think this is a killer phone if you can, you know, kind of pry yourself away from Apple or Samsung, which are the two dominant phonemakers in North America and the US in particular. I would say, this is a killer package for the money. It has absolutely everything you need.
It is the phone that I trust my mom with, so I get her the Google the kind of the A or one of the pixels.
Every year or not every year, every.
Time she upgrades, and it's always it's always a fantastic device, and people are always saying like, how are your pictures so good?
How are your pictures so good?
The thing that she doesn't get is the like you mentioned, the whole I message world, which you know, Apple has been really really good about keeping that exclusive to their products, and it makes sense because it keeps a lot of people on their devices. All right now, this pixel fold this is an eighteen hundred dollars device. This is not going to be for everyone, but it's actually pretty good. I mean, I'm sitting here like, could this be my next phone? Because I'm ready. I'm kind of bored with
the standard phones at this point. I've tested all of them, and this one is really unique because it opens up to a giant seven point six inch screen, so that's kind of like a tablet size. On the outside of the phone, you get a nice I think it's a five point eight in screen that's actually usable, unlike the Samsung one.
So tell me your thoughts about this phone.
Well, you know, I'm a pixel user. I have a Pixel seven pro, so obviously very interested in a folding pixel.
This is it.
There are obviously some things that could be better, but overall, I think this is a proper competitor to Samsung's Galaxy z Fold four, which will be soon, you know, be followed by a z Fold five. So let's see what happens there. But I think, as you kind of nailed it, the thing that really matters here is the form factor.
Right abroad in China and other countries in Europe, there's a company named Oppo, and they make a folding phone that has a similar form factor, more like a passport so basically shorter height, a little wider rather than that super skinny form factor that Samsung has been using with
the z fold series. And personally, I think this is a better form factor because you can use it one handed when it's shut, and then you can up to this huge tablet experience I mean usual relatively speaking for something that unfolds, and I think that's going to differentiate this phone. And it's about the same price as the Galaxy Z Fold. So you know, in that sense, I
think it's it's a pretty good competitor. You know, the pixel, the tensor G two chip, the chip that runs the show here is not as powerful as what Qualcom and Media Tech can deliver these days, or even Apple with their chips. So there's a bit of that, but I think it mostly reflects in terms of battery life. So we'll see in our reviews how battery life folds up. We know the cameras are going to be killer, and then you know, there's the other thing that I think
could be improved is the charging speed. Twenty one wht is a little slow these days in the flagship space, but look for a first try. It's one of the thinnest falling phones you can buy six millimeters or something slightly thicker than the Champion, which is a phone out of China called the Chami Mi Mix to fold. And so you know, like you can complain. I think Google did their homework and it does everything, has it does have everything, and the kitchen sink.
So so the fold.
It's kind of funny because it's eighteen hundred dollars, but they're giving you this this watch with it right, the Pixel Watch, which is like three hundred and fifty to four hundred dollars. So a lot of people are saying, why don't you just not give me the watch and take four hundred dollars off the price of this phone, because fourteen hundred dollars seems a lot better. That's like much more achievable if you really want something that's high end.
Well, you know, that's the thing that's been happening. A lot of people are buying these flagship phones, whether they're Pixels or Samsung or Apple even iPhones, you know, with trade ins and getting deals right, and that they have a lot of Pixel watches sitting around. It hasn't been a super popular product, even though it's a great android to watch right. So I think they're probably like, this is a great way to kind of satisfy people without
you know, having to drop the price. And if you look at the Pixel seven A, there's some great deals too. If you get it directly from Google, you can get a custom color called Coral, which is this orange superb color, and then you can get a pair of Pixel buds a for free. And I think if you buy it from best Buy, you get a fifty dollars rebate like a card you can use. So I think this is kind of part for the course. I don't think this watch thing is you know, a replacement for selling this.
That fourteen hundred is just kind of like, well, let's sweeten the deal. But we I think they're not making any money on this phone. There's no way, you know.
And I really fell in love with the Samsung by the way, except for that tiny outside screen. I was doing everything on the Fold. I was doing you know, I was reading, like I used it as a kindle. It was great because you can watch movies and videos on it on the plane without any sort of like extra you know, accessories, And it was just that outside
screen was so small. So the fact that Google made this outside screen usable and it feels great in your hand, like it's easy to hold, I think this phone is actually an early winner. It's just the price point is going to turn off so many people.
But then again, the price point turns off a lot of people from the Galaxy Fold, you know. So I think I think it's it's more it's harder to you know, to accept that price when you know it's a pixel, right. I think that's the problem. I think we're conditioned to take whatever pricing Apple and Samsung gives us, and I think this is something we should revisit because Google has to make money. They can't just be completely losing money, although I'm pretty sure they are not making money on this,
at least not much. I have used that Apple Find and End two that has the same form factor as the pixel and I tell you it's a much better form factor than the Z fold from Samsung. So I'm very excited about the pixel fold having this new form factor because I think for some you know, everybody's got a different thing. Some people will prefer the fold, no doubt, but for me, this is a better form factor for sure.
All right, Miriam Jouir of the Mobile Tech Podcast, how can folks follow you online?
Simple?
The podcast leaves at Mobile tech podcast dot com and we're on all the major platforms, so your podcast needs just look for it.
It's called the.
Mobile Tech Podcast. And then of course you can find me on Twitter at tank Girl, like the comic book character, but you drop all the vowels, who ends up being t NK g R L. And that's also my Instagram if you want to see pretty pictures of phones and cars and things I reviewed.
Awesome, You're always somewhere. Thanks so much for joining me today. Miriam Duir of the Mobile Tech podcast. Coming up more of your calls at Triple eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
I'm gonna tell you.
About a new Chrome update error attack. You gotta watch out for this one. It can fool anyone. You're listening to Rich DeMuro here on rich on Techy. Welcome back to rich on tech Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology.
At triple eight rich one oh one.
That's eight eight eight eight two four one zero one. You can also email hello at richon tech dot TV. Tom did just that, he said, I'm an executive level IT leader, typically a chief information officer. My recruiter resources are lacking contacts who can take my background and old resume and overhaul it so it's great and scores high when application tracking systems ATS evaluate it. That's sort of those automated systems.
I'm hoping you know someone.
Or a tool that can help me overhaul my resume asap.
Thoughts.
Uh so, Tom, I think uh a service I did a story with the guy who started the latterers dot com, which is like a job search website, and he's got a service called Leaked Resumes l E E t resumes dot com. And I know this sounds kind of weird, but they will help you write your resume for free. I know it's so wild. There's not even a way
to pay. But here's what they do. So they will, you know, you give them your old resume, you answer a couple questions, they rewrite your resume, and of course it's all driven for these, like you said, these ats system these application tracking systems. And then if you like your resume, you tip your writer. And that's how it works.
They say the average tip is forty dollars. And you know in the facts on the website it says, you know what's the catch and it says, basically, if you take your how much you make, let's see here what's the hidden cost. So if you like your resume, we recommend tipping your writer. Your salary in thousands divided by two, So for instance, if you make eighty thousand dollars a year, we recommend a forty dollars tip. So in addition, we'll make introductions to job boards that can provide jobs with
titles you're looking for. So that's that's it. Lead Resumes L E. E. Tmes dot com is the website.
Check it out.
I have not personally used this because I have not written a resume in a long time, and I'm sure chat, GPT and all these things can help you write it, but it's kind of nice to have a human actually help you write a resume, because it's just you need that human touch every once in a while. A new Chrome update error attack. I got to tell you about this one because I'm looking at my Chrome right now on my computer and it says update in the upper
right hand corner. And the way that Chrome updates is it downloads the software in the background, the update to the to the Chrome web browser, and then it gives you this little message that says update, and then you just relaunch Chrome to update it. It's very simple process. It's very easy. Well well, well, of course, the scam artists have figured out a way to socially engineer the
Chrome updates. And here's what happens. This is according to trend Micro, the new attack campaign distributes malware by posing as a Chrome update error message. It started a couple of months ago and it's impacting a lot of people. The message displayed reads update exception and error occurred in Chrome Automatic update. And you say, oh, interesting, Okay, I know Chrome updates automatically, but there's an error. I better
spring into action. It says, please update, Please install the update package manually later or wait for the next automatic update. And then a link is provided at the bottom of this fake error message that takes the user to a what's misrepresented as a link that will help you do a Chrome manual update, But that link downloads file that will put malware on your system that might degrade your performance, but it can also potentially compromise your sensitive information potentially
the way that you log into websites. Now this is installed on your computer. Now here's what's so brilliant about this campaign, and this is what all of these socially engineered phishing attacks, smishing attacks, all these little scams that are going around, they all play to something that is somewhat true. We know that if we use Chrome, it needs to update every once in a while, and typically it works just fine. It's a very simple process. But this one is a little error message that says, oh,
something went wrong with the automatic update. Here, manually do it, and you don't want to be unprotected on your computer, so you go ahead and do it.
So why this is.
So effective is because it's it looks routine, it looks like it's innocent. There's no big threat window. It doesn't blank red like some of these ransomware attacks. It just says, hey, your update failed. Here, go ahead and install it. And then there you go. You install it and it really messes up your computer. So the reality is we can never be off our guard when it comes to any sort of thing that we are doing on our computer, whether we.
Are installing software.
Don't, like I say, do not just go through those whenever you're installing something. Don't just go through the motions of pressing go, go, go, go go, because that will get you into trouble. That will be a major problem.
Don't do it. That's that's the issue that I talk about, because you just it's not good.
So again, if you're looking at Chrome and you see this thing, just be sure you're on guard all right.
Phone number by the way, triple.
Eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four to one zero one I'll get to some of your calls in just a moment here, But first I watched this this Apple movie.
It's called Ghosted. You know, it's funny.
With all the reviews and ratings and things out there, it's it's very tricky because you want to watch something that's highly reviewed, highly regarded, highly rated, and sometimes you just want something that's fun. So every time I opened up Apple TV Plus on my computer or on my TV, I would see this ad for a movie called Ghosted.
And I never heard of it. I never knew what it was.
It just looks like an action kind of you know, romantic action movie, whatever that means. And so I was like, oh, this looks interesting. Of course, all the app all the reviews for it are not very good, but I'm like, I'll give it a try because it just looked like something I want something that was kind of like no brainer movie.
Right, Well, this is an Apple show. So this is an Apple movie.
And every time you watch something on Apple TV plus, any of the original programming from Apple.
It features a heavy dose of Apple products.
I mean they just give these producers like here, take an iPad, take a an iMac, take a take ten iPhones, everything happens with these Apple products in these Apple movies, which is kind of distracting, but I get it. It's synergy. It's like if someone on an Amazon movie was shopping on you know.
Best buy dot com. It wouldn't really wouldn't feel right.
Well, anyway, every Apple movie is an ad for all things Apple, except when it's not in their favor. And on this Ghosted movie, what do they use for the tracking device? It's a tile, It's not an air tag, because they didn't want to seem like their products were being put in a bad light. So I just thought that was really funny. So if you watch the movie Ghosted, I recommend it. I thought it was pretty good. But just notice that. Notice that little quirk. Why didn't they
use an air tag? Didn't fall in Apple's favor. You're listening to rich on Tech. More of your calls up next at Triple eight.
Rich one O one.
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here talking technology with you at Triple eight rich one on one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one. The show coming to you today from Austin, Texas, site of the iHeart Country Fest, which I will be attending. I'm very excited for that. Also excited for barbecue. You can't have enough barbecue when you're here, that's for sure. The only question is what kind of sauce you want on it?
Oh, I don't know.
I don't want to get into like a big barbecue debate. I know there's like dry I mean, barbecue people are very very serious about their craft, and I don't tend.
To be a barbecue expert.
All I know is that I will eat the brisket with some sort of barbecue sauce slathered on it, and I will be a very happy person. All right, enough about me, Let's go to Pat in Laguna Hills. Pat, you're on with Rich.
Pat? Are you there? Pat? And Laguna Hills?
Okay, I can't hear you, Pat, but okay, maybe we'll get you on in a second. Here, let's talk while we're waiting for Pat. Oh, there you are, Hello, Pat, Welcome.
I don't know what happened.
You know, we're you know there's the show is if you if you knew the technology behind this show, it's quite impressive. We've got people in all corners of the US today. We've got Kim up in near San Francisco. We've got Bobo producing the show in Los Angeles, and we've got myself sitting in Austin. And then somehow, you know, the show goes up to a satellite somewhere it comes back down through the road.
I don't know, because you're in auction. Yeah, I imagine.
We'll believe it on Texas. What's up?
Yeah?
Okay. I have a Chromebook since twenty fifteen. I bought another one last year because I have one upstairs and one downstairs. I want to give my twenty fifteen Chromebook to a friend to practice on and in buying a new one. I see this. There's two hard drives, an SSD and an eMMC if in fact, that is a hard drive e m MC. And I do banking on this CHLME book, and I prefer the chrome book only
because I think it's safer with all the updates. Yes, and I only use the one that's updated, not the other one for banking so or paying bills and stuff. So that's that's my question. I don't know what to.
Buy now, Okay, Well, good question. I like that you're thinking about safety and security with this device, and I would agree that it is a safe device, because there's not I don't think there's any viruses for a chromebook at this point, So I mean, you could still get caught into phishing emails and all that stuff. So you still have to be on cars.
And thank you for what you said before about I didn't know about the era, Thank you very much.
Yeah, Look, these people are tricky. They will figure out ways of I mean a lot of these ninety nine percent of the attacks that I hear about are either your password you didn't have two factor authentication, or you hand over your password with some sort of social engineering attack where you're logging into a website that looks legitimate and you just don't realize anyway, onto these chromebooks. So, okay, there's two different things you're talking about here, eMMC and
also SSD. So these are in fact they are a hard drive in a colloquial term like it is a storage device. But these are both sort of solid state flash you know, they're both solid state drives. There's no moving parts on these. eMMC is a type of flash memory, whereas an SSD is a solid state drive. It's also memory, but these things don't move, not like the old hard
drives that's spun right. eMMC is going to be a little bit slower, but it's going to be a little bit cheaper, And there's also some size limitations there, so you may not get a drive that's as big, whereas SSD is kind of like you know, it's a much higher end technology that is in much higher end devices. So if you're comparing these two chromebooks, I'm guessing that the SSD is more expensive.
Is that true?
But is one more secure than the other? That's really what I want to know.
Well, I don't think that one is more secure than the other because at the end of the day, these are just storing your data, and so you know, when it comes to storing data, that's pretty much going to function in the same way. So I don't think you're gonna have a problem with this with the security of these two devices. I think it's really comes down to what you want out of a price and what you want out of the performance. So I think that the
SSD overall is going to be a better choice. If you have the money and it's in your budget and you're comparing two things, the SSD I think is going.
To be better. But if you're just not really caring.
You just want this thing to log onto your bank account and pay your bills and all that kind of stuff. In the standard eMMC, it's going to be just fine. I don't think that one is more secure than the other.
Okay, And what about using the Chrome browser? Should I use a different browser?
No?
I think the Chrome browser is a great browser to use. Keep it up to date, just keep away from those issues that I was talking about. And also when it comes to the extensions, if you're installing extensions on the Chrome browser, that's you know, those are the potential for you know, leaking information or putting.
Something on there.
Meaning what extension.
Extensions are little browser add ons that you can get that kind of help your browser do different things. For instance, I have one that will help me print a page or save something to the kindle.
I don't use them every time I do a banking transaction. I get out of it and shut it down and come back. Okay, that's how secure and the other very skeptical.
The other thing that I would recommend when it comes to doing the banking on the computer is I always try to keep that limited to at home or on a simular connection if you're out of that. So I wouldn't do that on like a public Wi Fi connection. That's kind of my rule of thumb with it.
Definitely not. And I just have one little question, what about a tablet? Is banking secure on a tablet since you're using a different you're using a cell uh yes, and a Wi Fi you're using the cell cell thing, right.
Well, it depends, I mean yeah on the table Well, on the tablet, you can use a hot spot or you can use Wi Fi, depending on where you are. I mean, if you're at your house, you might just use Wi Fi, but you can. You know a lot of people when they're out and about, they're just connecting their tablet to their phone. I think that's that's very
secure as well. Again number one, I mean we have we have millions and millions of people that are doing their online banking on a daily basis, and so these banks have gotten really good at trying to keep people secure. I think the online banking is not the the insecure part. It's really these money apps that are that are leaking money because people get requests and they send money to someone that's not the right person or the right phone number.
So I think in that case, you need to be really careful with with sending money.
To connect those too. I don't use zill and I don't I might do them though, I don't know. I have to research. But Zell is out.
Okay.
I used to really like zel and I I came to not like it as much because the problem with Zell is it's a one way street. So if there's a problem, it's these banks have really shown over and over that they're not really interested in getting your money back to you if you send it to the wrong person, or if there's a problem or if you you know, if you get some sort of scam attack and you send money to someone that you shouldn't have and you realize that it's it's really tough to get that money back.
With VENMO, I feel like there's a little bit more of a there's a little bit more of a barrier, almost like using a credit card versus a debit card.
Agreed, Okay, all right, I I totally agree with you. Then, so uh so, Yeah, I still don't want to send big amounts of money through them all.
I still write checks and send.
Them credit return, receive credit.
Yeah.
Smart, Well, Pat, you sound You sound like the perfect listener for the rich On Tech Radio show because you said you agree with everything I said, so I like that. Thumbs up to you, Pat, Thanks so much for listening today in Laguna Hills. Coming up, we've got a lot more to talk about. Apple is bringing Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro to the iPad, and later on.
We're going to talk about projects Starline.
This is Google's version of Zoom, but in a holographic way.
I call it holographic.
I'm not sure that that's the exact technology they're using, but we've got Sherylyn Low from ngadget. She actually experienced this up at Google Io and she's going to talk to us about that as well, so stay tuned for that. But I wanted to mention this real quick before we go to break Peloton recalling two million of its exercise bikes. This company cannot catch a pass. They just really can't.
So this Peloton bike, if you have one model PLO one that's pretty much the original one, the bike's seat post assembly can break during use, posing fall and injury hazards.
Yeah.
Yeah, Think you're on a bike seat and you're pedaling along, and if this thing has a problem. Yeah, you don't want to be on that bike seat when this happens. So they've got a repair as an issue to help you get that fixed. Recall two point two million of these Pelotons and so far they say consumers should immediately stop using the exercise bikes and contact Peloton for a
free repair. They'll give you a new seat post that can be self installed, and thirty five reports of the seat post breaking and detaching from the bike during use, thirteen reports of injuries, including a fractured wrist, lacerations and bruises due to falling from the bike. These were sold from January twenty eighteen to May twenty twenty three, pretty much the entire time during the pandemic. They were sold through Peloton, Amazon, and Dick Sporting Goods nationwide for about
fourteen hundred dollars. Ah, this is not good for Peloton because we've seen, you know, Peloton was was flying high during the pandemic and then after the pandemic things didn't go so well for them. And I still love Peloton, don't get me wrong, but if you got one of these bikes, definitely check to make sure if your model number pl zero one and you've been using this thing. You want to get this free repair because I'm know
about you. I don't want to be on a bike seat and have that thing break and there's a bar there that can really hurt you. So my wife and I were debating this last night. She said, well, only thirty five people. I said, do you want to be one of those thirty five people that got hurt on this thing?
I don't think so.
All right, more of your calls a triple eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. You are listening to rich on Tech pull in. Welcome back to rich on Tech, rich DeMuro.
Here.
You can find me online at richon Tech dot tv. You can find me on all the social media networks at rich on Tech. I posted a video this week on my Instagram, actually a couple a couple of videos this week on my Instagram. First is this little flick flick smart button. This was really cool testing this thing out. And it's a little smart button that you can program
to do a whole bunch of different things. So think of it as like a almost like a light switch, but it's a smart button, so you can make it turn on and off lights.
You can make it ring your phone.
You can make it play your sons, play a special playlist, whatever, all by programming it through your phone. I also posted the automated pancake maker at my hotel up in San Francisco. I never saw this before, and I thought it was so neat. You just press a button and it pops out too fresh pancakes that it kind of makes on a griddle that's inside this little robotic mechanism, So you
can watch that on my Instagram. And then I got this security tracker from u fee that's the size of a credit card, so it's basically an air tag but the size of a credit card.
You can it in your wallet.
I have another one from Chippolo already in use, but this was on sale on Amazon for sixteen ninety nine, and I get so many questions about these things. I ordered it came the next day. It's very very.
Simple when I like about it.
It uses the Apple Find My network, so you can find this thing on a map pretty much anywhere in the world because it uses all the other iPhone devices to locate it, so you can find those all on my Instagram at Richon Tech, and I got a lot of questions about the trackers because people are saying, Hey, Rich, you know, I want a tracker for Android. My advice in the Android tracker situation is just to wait. Because Google, we talked about this last week or the week before.
Google and Apple are working together to come up with a common framework.
So very soon there is going to be a whole bunch.
Of air tag style devices on the market that will work with both iPhone and Android much better than they do right now. Google at their annual event, the Io Event, announced that they're going to make the find My network use all of the Android phones to help you look devices from a wide variety of manufacturers, so Samsung, Tile, Chipolo, so you have the air tag for the iPhone. That's been about a couple of years now. Now everyone's going to have access to this same technology. So that's really
really cool. Triple eight Rich one O one eight eight eight seven four two four to one zero one. Ron is in Arizona.
Ron. You're on with Rich.
Hey, Rich, can you hear me?
I can hear you? What's up?
Our church has Wi Fi right now, but it's sketchy in some parts of the church. We have basically, you know, one router and then they they use some of those extenders. And I have a Mesh network. I have a Mesh network at home and it works really well to our house. Our house is not real big though, it's about nineteen hundred square feet. So I'm wondering the size of the building. That foundation size of our church building is about thirteen
thousand square feet. Can you take you know, just your standard Mesh network like a Google or something, and just add more modules to it to extend me because most of the time they talk about covering you know, forty five hundred, five thousand square feet something like that.
Yeah, I mean typically with something that big, you'd want more of a corporate you know, more of a professional solution. This may be somewhere in the middle. So if you go, which one do you have at home? Which which system?
The Google?
Oh?
You have the Google? Okay, So you know, it's interesting.
I think that you know, if you look at like euro which is kind of like the they kind of started this whole thing with the mesh networking systems for the home. You know, this might have been going on in the corporate kind of world for much longer. But if you look on Euro's website, you know, because I've got euro and I was wondering, like how many of these things can you add?
You know, just how large?
This says that you can add as many beacons or euros to your house as you'd like. Now they always say home, so they don't ever mention that this is for corporate now, you know, I think you can use it at a church if it's just something you want to try. The good news is this is all sort of off the shelf. You can buy it, you can
set it up, and if it works, that's great. You know, some homes are probably I don't know about thirteen thousand square feet, but I'm you know, I'm sure there's some pretty big homes that have you know, these mesh networks in them and it works. I think the problem with the church is that it, you know, the what's the foundation, Like what's the you know, is it a lot of concrete and brick and stone and things like that.
We've got one really large room where the services take place, and then we have a couple of like classrooms for the Sunday school, and then there's a an upstairs balcony where the sound equipment is and the you know, the computer for running the slide during the service and stuff like that, So we'd really like to reach all of
those areas fairly well. So I just kind of walked off the foundation just to see, well, how big, how big is the building itself, not just the total square footage like a realtor would estimate it right, right, And that's where I came up with that thirteen thousand.
Well I would recommend I mean, look you can you can kind of investigate the euro situation and see. I don't know if I would use Google because that's a much more consumer device. Ero kind of is in the middle there. They do a lot of like pro stuff as well. But I would also look at something like Ubiquity. Have you heard of that?
The name sounds familiar, so that.
Is sort of a it's more of a prosumer kind of model. And I'm looking on their website for the different devices that they have, and it seems like it would be much more suited. And it's not that expensive, so, I mean, these devices are anywhere from one hundred dollars to two hundred and seventy nine dollars for each device, depending on which one you want. So they've got a light a long range of professional and enterprise and then
the mesh hub. So I think that that's probably something to look at, and it's going to give you more a professional installation than something like an euro which is really meant for the home. This will give you some enterprise grade access tools and things, especially when you have a lot of people using it, including visitors, it might give you more of the tools that you need to manage that. So that's at UI dot Com. I would
check that out. Of course, the big one that comes to mind is a Ruba networks that is a much more corporate industrial solution as well. So I would check those two things out. And Ron great question. I know we've become so accustomed to these mesh networks. We need them everywhere, all right. Coming up, we're going to talk to Sherlyn Lowe about projects Starline, Google's new video chat that is just wild. 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 one zero one. You can also email me hello at rich on Tech dot tv. Maybe a little shy on the phone and you'd rather email, or maybe it's just something that's easier to email than call, but either way, Triple eight Rich one on one or Hello at Rich on tech dot TV. So there's this really cool demo up at Google Io that I did not get to do.
But it's Project star Line.
So this is a video conferencing sort of I don't know what you call it, like contraption that Google has come up with that makes it look like the person is sitting in front of you and you can talk to them. So I'll just bring on Sharlen Lowe from n Gadget. She actually got to experience this. Charlyn, Welcome to the show.
Hey, rich thanks for having me.
Okay, so can you explain Project Starline better than I can, because you got to try this out and I just feel like it's holographic video conferencing, like this stuff you imagine would be around when I was a kid, Like, you know, talking face to face to someone that's not really there is that kind of it's accurate.
You're basically sitting in front of what's really big TV, like a forty ish inch TV, but instead of a regular screen is a light field display and that allows the sort of holographic projection to up here like a person is really there in three D in front of you. They're protruding out of the screen kind of Oh.
So it is Okay, I've been saying this is holographic. It is actually holographic. Okay, cool, all right, so I got something right. So you wrote all about this, uh in your experience with it, So take me from start to finish.
You walk in here in what happens?
Yeah, so I walked. These are a hush hush displays. Okay, they're not letting us teak photos or videos because it's hard to capture on camera, so we're gonna have to verbally describe it as best as we can. You walk into a room. There's this long office table or desk in front of the setup, the prototype. The news at schole i OWE this year is that there's newer prototypes.
Right.
Project styling was first and down about two years ago, and since then the prototypes have gone from requiring an entire room of space to being somewhat portable. I mean the take up more like a whiteboard amount of the space now. So I went in through my friend the chair, the office chair in front of the table and then the other person on the other side of the call, who themselves is sitting in front of another Project Starline prototype,
steps into frame. And when they're sitting down and I'm saying, now, we're both kind of like facing the screen dead on. There's no real sense that this is anything extra special. They look life size, They're like, you know, not like a little laptop size of a video call. But without kind of looking around, you don't get the sense that this is protruding. But everything changed when this person, the Google executive on the other side of the call, picked up an apple on his end and kind of reached
it through the screen in front of his face. It looked like it was coming right at me. It looked like I could grab it from his hand, because that's really what you felt, the spatial distance kind of change. And that's what's really different with Project Starline as opposed to your typical video conference is the holographic thing. This is supposed uh, more realistic, more in person experience way
of communicating. It's just really different. We tried other things tough, We tried high fiving, we tried fist bumping, and you know, again, this is Overcaul, He's not actually there. So I didn't actually grab his fist or touch his palm or whatever, but it felt like I could. I actually made virtual contact, my real palm sort of overlaid on top of his his virtual one, if that make sense.
Okay, I was gonna I was wondering about that, like when you put the apple out, like, did you go to reach for it and what hit him? Does it just feels like there's nothing there? Like does it does it break up the image?
Like what is?
Yeah?
Yeah?
So when I when I went to grab it, and when you know, he hadn't outstretched his uh hand that far yet, I just was kind of grabbing it and it wasn't The image wasn't breaking at all. What was happening was uh as you wouldn't realize when you cover something, it kind of like you block it from your vision, right, and it was happening here except when my hand wasn't grabbing anything with such a space. So it's kind of strange.
I think my brain didn't really process it, right. I will say that when he the caller, did outstretched his hand a little further, it would start to hit boundaries and it would his face would term blue, like as if you were hitting an outer limit and it gained you Oh wow, yeah, that's sort of feel. And also when I when I sat in my seat and I would move my body from side to side to kind of like you know, see him from the profile and stuff like that to see if it was more three D.
It wasn't. Indeed, more like a three D experience was protruding more, but you would get messages on screen that would tell you hate remain centered in the frame. Stop moving around your tea so much, because, uh, the experience is really tailored for a specific position because they're you know, a life of this way is you know, projecting all the themes to your eye, so it's kind of needing your perspective to be within a controllable area.
We're talking with Sharlen Lowe, editor at n Gadget about Project Starline. This is Google's holographic video conferencing exproment, which they showed off at Google Io in a very private way. This was something that you kind of had to sign up for and it was a you know, it was an appointment only kind of thing. So what do you think is the implication of this. I imagine it's very expensive,
it's very early technology. Google says that they've done several thousand hours of testing with this, but what do you think the impact of this is? Do we need this in our world?
Yeah?
So what's happening too is alongside the new prototype, Google also announced that some of these new prototypes have been shared with exclusive access partners like T Mobile. We work in salesforce and they're trying to see, you know, gather real world feedback to see how these work. In what
they're saying, are distributed a workforce or work workplaces. Right, So, I think the idea is that now that we're doing so much hybrid and remote work, that some sort of bridge between the video an alternative solution to the traditional video conferencing is necessary and their wholefully or they're thinking that this might provide them of that in person experience without really you know, short of teleporting, someone is giving you sort of that experience. My take though, I'm not
quite sure. I think, yeah, sure, it felt like a person was kind of in front of me, only their top half though, And yes, you can get more non verbal cues from a person if you have you know, I was making direct eye contact with the person that felt like you know, every little smirk, every little frown, you could really tell because it's just so much more detail in this experience. I don't know that we're still going to be able to fully replace in person call
or in person in chat with this. It might be better than a laptop call by quite a lot. It never has been a substitute the real real thing, you know.
Yeah.
I talked to someone else about this, and they said up at Google Io after they tested out, they said that it was like almost a little eerie to like look them in the eye, the other person, and so they had to look away at some point because it was like too much, it was too intense.
I think I think that was the demo person. They think. They were really trying to hammer home the point that I can make eye contact with you, you don't have to, right, But there is an uncanny Valley sort of aspect to this, because during my demo there were a little, you know, a few glitches here and there, your typical tech support technical era stuff, right like if we were both talking at the same time, I could tell if you couldn't hear anything.
I was saying.
And some of these issues can be talked up to the WI Fi at the event, which was very spotty. As you and I were both there, we know the Wi Fi struggled. And this to be clear, it is the cameras around the screen are gathering your data and then they're sending that information to the cloud, where it's then generating a three D model of you and the caller on the other side, and then beating that back
down to your respective light field display. So it's a lot of bandis that's necessary, a lot of processing that's happening, So some hiccups are understandable at the moment, I understand that. You know, there's going to be some sort of feriness or uncanny valley going on, and I don't think that that's ever going to go away, really.
Do you think? Well?
And by the way, I mentioned a story earlier about how when I was sending my video back for editing back to Los Angeles, it was so slow. Like Google is known for really good Wi Fi, and this year, I don't know what happened, but the Wi Fi was just really bad at the event that remember the first year they had like they had like one gigabit connections at like every seat.
At one point.
Yeah, yeah, do you think we're gonna have something like Project Starline in our homes at some point, and you could just I mean, as someone who lives far away from their family myself, like my parents live in New Jersey, I live in LA it'd be really cool to just like hop into this Project star Line and chat with them on a Saturday. Do you think we would ever have this in our homes?
I think one day. I think that that's Google's goal perhaps, but it is going to be a long way as the way. I think the over rich people will have them within the next three years, but regular your average people probably another I don't.
I wouldn't.
I wouldn't use the crime to do like a decade. And even then, you know, like it doesn't really take off because again, you don't if people want to be around other people, and this so far feels like a one person at a time experience, and you know, there's there's just something about social gatherings in person that technology can't fully replicate.
You just can't.
I agree, And I also mentioned that about Io, because half of it is just seeing the people that you see on Twitter, and it's like, you know, it's funny because even with the advent of social media, you feel like you know all of your friends and what they're up to. But even just spending ten minutes with someone in real life, you are caught up in a way that Instagram and Twitter and all these things can never catch you up.
I agree absolutely, and I have so much fun at IO. I mean, I think you and I met what for the first ish time there in person, and then you know, I got to see all my friends. I got to within like the said ten minutes, I met such a gamut of people at once without and getting to know them and getting the sense I pick up on vibes like to say, oh yeah, I.
Have everyone you know absolutely.
Sherlin Low, deputy editor at n Gadget. How can folks follow you online?
Yeah?
I am on Twitter still at c h e r l y n n l O W or my Instagram at c h r l i n N at t h e r e M.
Thanks for joining me today. I love the qualification, the qualifier with Twitter. I'm still on Twitter, I know, so am I yeah for now till anything changes, all right, thanks so much for joining me today.
Appreciate it.
Sherylyn, thanks for having me.
Betthew Saturday all.
Right, yes, you too. All right.
Coming up on the show, we are going to talk about Oh gosh, we have so much to talk about.
Still speak, you know me? Speaking of Twitter.
Twitter's got a new CEO, Linda Jacharino. That's really all there is to mention about that. Linda came from NBC Universal. She was advertising chief there and now in a couple of weeks she will take over as CEO of Twitter.
We'll see what changes happened there.
Coming up, I'll talk about Apple bringing Final Cut Pro to the iPad.
Finally, welcome back to Rich on Tech.
Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology, listening to some country music because the show is originating from Austin, Texas this weekend. Yep, I'm here for a country fest. iHeart country fest. Triple eight Rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. I've been to Austin many times for South by Southwest. This is the big music and interactive and what was it music, film and interactive.
I always went for the tech part.
And they've launched a lot of apps here, a lot of a lot of big apps launched here. I believe Twitter's square like a lot of these things originally started at south By Southwest where they showed them off to the world. Let's go to Sam in Hemmett, California. Sam, you're on with rich Sam?
Are you there?
Yes?
I am, sir. Thanks for taking my call.
Well, thanks for calling in. What can I help you with?
Okay?
I have an old phone that I'm about ready to just get rid of, but there are some games on there that I would like to save the progress on. They just cannot be attached to anything like Facebook or Twitter. I'm curious if I can if I put them onto a micro s D card, could I transfer them from the old device to a new one?
Well potentially, so, I mean the way that I mean, you'd have to get all the data along with the game, right and can you do that?
Are you sure you can?
You can move the game data and like the actual they call it on Android and APK, but can you grab that along with the data?
Do you know if you're able to do that?
I'm not a real tip savvy person, and so the best I could do is just tell you a little bit about each of the phones. The old one that I want the data off of I use in much the same way a person would use a tablet computer and it is a Samsung Galaxy a ten E on a three G system, and I want to move it from and I want to move it to a Google Pixel that's on five G.
Okay, And are you trying to what are you trying to do? Exactly? What's you know? Because you can you want to keep the game.
From Yeah, I want to keep my games and the progress through those games, okay, and take them from the Samsung and put them into the Google Pixel.
Okay. So now number one, A lot of this depends.
So if you you've tried to have you tried to install the game on the new phone and see if it picks up where you left.
Off, Yes, and it won't do it.
Okay.
I was wondering that because some games, you know, it depends on the game's If it's a game that's relying on a cloud sync, it's going to just pick up where you left off. For instance, I've got the Pokemon all right. Sorry, the Paradot game installed on two phones and it's pretty much synked between the two phones. But that's a newer game. So these obviously, since these are on an old three G phone, these are much older games. I doubt that they have any sort of cloud sinking
involved in these things. So I would say, try there's a there's an app. Gosh, I've used it so long ago, I'm not even sure it's still around, but it's like a backup app. There's a couple of them on the Google Play Store. One of them is that I used to use as Titanium backup, and I'm just not sure it's been updated recently, because a lot of these things are so like you just don't need them anymore.
But that's what I was. Yeah, the last time.
This was updated, Oh gosh, this shows you how old this thing is November twenty four, twenty nineteen. But there are some apps that will help you back up from Google Play or from one phone to another. So I would try one of those and see if you can just grab the you know, go into the app. It should give you a list of all of the different apps installed in that phone, and then you select the app that you want to transfer over.
It will either upload it to.
The cloud, or you can transfer it, like you said, to a little flash drive at the bottom of the phone and then plug it into the new phone and carry that over.
But I'm not sure if all that data is going to come over.
I mean it's it's you know, it really sort of depends on how that game is architected and figured out.
Well.
Among them is the Bejewel game series.
M that's okay, yeah, what else are you playing there?
There's Checkers, Solitaire, Mageong, yacht Ti.
Yeah.
So it sounds like you have a whole bunch of these things.
So if if these if these games are linked to Google Play, if you can go into the settings and link them to any sort of account, I think that they would transfer over something like Bejeweled, especially because that's a that's a very popular game. And these these whether you're on Android or Apple, they both have these sort of game center things. And if you ever launch a game and it says like game center.
Okay, they're both. They're both Android phones. I prefer Android to Apple. Apple I think is more overrated than it really is. Okay, well that's to me, it's a better one.
It's funny I've been using I went to the Google event this week and I kind of retook a look at the Google Pixel seven. So I've been using that for a couple of days, and the difference between these operating systems is so apparent. And the best way I can put it is this Apple really and Apple's great. I think, look, there's Apple is a amazing A lot of people use Apple products and iPhones. It's it's kind
of like a standard issue here in America. But everything on Apple sort of pushes you to use Apple stuff right the way that Apple wants you to do things. And I've noticed with Google just using the last couple of days again from a fresh start, by the way, that it really just gives you a lot of options on how to do things and it doesn't necessarily push
you to one particular way of doing things. And so I can understand that some people may like that, and you know, may like that approach a little bit better than the Apple approach. Apple stuff works, and it works really well, and it's very simple because of that.
But a lot of times they.
Will just sort of push you towards their products, you know, whether it's Apple Maps, whether it's Safari, whether it's you know, Apple Mail. People just use the default apps that are built into the phone, and you know, they may stray if they if they feel like they know something better or they know how to do it better, but otherwise they just kind of build it in. But Sam, to answer your question, I think that it's a matter of
trying this download if you haven't downloaded this already. There's an app on Google called the Google Play Games app. Install that on the old phone and the new phone, and that may help save some.
Of your progress in these games. But that's that's what I would do.
And you can try one of these backup utilities, like a Titanium backup or some sort of backup and restore utility to see if that can get the game from one phone to another.
But I don't know. I haven't done that before. And most of the games that.
I've played are just sort of cloud based and pretty casual, so and I'm not a big gamer on these casual games to begin with, so that's not even something that I'm totally doing all the time. But great question, Sam, And congrats on the new Pixel. That's a fantastic phone,
one of my favorites. All right, coming up, we'll talk about oh Apple bringing Final Cut Pro to the iPad, plus more of your calls at Triple eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two four to one zero one three of rich On Tech.
Come in your way.
Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich DeMuro here talking technology at Triple eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Coming to you today from Austin, Texas. Welcome to our number three of the show. I mentioned earlier in the show that one of the cool things about the hotel room I'm staying in is that it has a record player, which I thought was kind of neat.
And they've got a little record not a.
Store, but almost like a record library where you can check out some cool records, and they have a curator there that can help you pick out some stuff. So we did this, but I will tell you last night it was raining. It was raining really hard here in Austin, Texas, and there's a lot of dripping sounds outside the room. Well, there was sort of this clicking sound all night long, and at one point I thought it was the dripping
of the rain outside. And at one point it just seemed way too like regular to be dripping of rain, and it just seemed to go on way too long, and it occurred to me that the record player was still on, so I had you forget and it just happened to me again, which is why I'm telling the story.
The record player.
When it's done playing the I guess the needle just goes to the middle and it just stays there and just like kind of clicks and just you know, I don't know anyway, So last night, in the middle of the night, I was like, Oh my gosh, this this record player has been on for hours, just kind of circling around and clicking and clicking and clicking.
So I guess that's one.
Of the uh analog technology a little bit different than you know, the new digital options we have out there. So that threw me for a loop last night. But I'm still all in on the record situation. I think it's pretty cool.
Let's go to Rich in Carol Stream, Illinois. Rich. You're on with Rich.
Rich. Thank you paying well. I really do appreciate your show.
Thanks for listening.
I've got a strange question. I wasn't trying to word it properly. I've got all my music files that you'll record, my CDs recorded.
To my PC.
I've got at least ten thousand to ten to eleven thousand songs on my PC and that was the iPad. I mean the iPod is discontinued, I believe, or it's no longer and the use is there a because I'm wondering, is there a way for me to listen to my music without anything relying on my PC? Because to port you know, to enjoy these songs on the go, like take them, you know, you know, take them as a portable.
Is there like a replacement for an iPod that I could maybe perhaps consider transfer these files to the device of some sort.
Oh good question. Now what do you mean what kind of device like your iPhone.
Or what well I want to use or if.
You want to use the files that you have somewhere else.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, the files on my PC, my Windows PC. But I don't I just I don't have an iPhone. I just have my my my S twenty one Galaxy.
But what about just loading them directly onto the phone?
Like what ten thousand songs really don't I'm not really well versed in terms of I may tarms of what ten thousand songs can eat up a lot of memory on a on an Android phone.
Uh well, I mean if you have an S twenty one, you know you've got a bunch of storage on there. You can put a subset of those songs. I mean, if each MP three is about you know, let's say it's three megabytes, four megabytes. If you got ten thousand, you want to put all ten thousand times four, that's forty thousand megabytes. You know, that's a couple gigs right there. That's not too bad. I mean, that's that's something that's
that's doable. There are there were in the past. Google had a system where you could upload your songs into something like Google Music Manager I think it was called, and you could you could upload all of your songs into there and then you can play them from any device. But I'm not sure that that's around anymore. Yeah, it looks like it was. Uh, looks like it was discontinued. Yeah, Google. Oh wow, yeah, I think that was gone. H Google play music Cloud. Yeah, this is something that you know,
I'm looking at this article. It's like from ten years ago. That was back in the day where you could you could physically upload all of your music. The other thing you could do is you could potentially maybe upload it something like Dropbox and then listen to it through there on the on a cloud player on your phone. I should know a better answer to this, because I feel like there's something that's simple that I'm just not thinking
about right off the top of my head here. But I know this was something that was popular a couple of years ago, but now, of course, with the advent of these streaming services, there's just not really a lot of other options.
That are left.
Yeah, but I would say I would just upload these to your phone and just have them on your phone and maybe make a couple playlists.
Maybe don't do all ten thousand. I mean you could see it.
I mean, go on their computer and see how much that those ten thousand songs are taking up on the hard drive, and then go to your Android phone, see how much storage you have, and then transfer, you know, a subset of them or all of them if you have enough storage. Now, the S twenty one, Does the S twenty one have an SD card slot or no? I'm trying to remember when they discontinued that.
I'll be yes, I haven't looked at I have to go to verify that.
No, I'm looking at an article and it's the twenty one was when they did away with it, So okay, Yeah, some of the older Samsungs had the SD card slot, but the S twenty one did not. That's yeah, because I would say otherwise you could just put it on an SD card and just throw that into your phone.
And now you've got all your music on there.
I see.
I'm coming up with a lot of a lot of dead ends to this. What what kind of music? How did you amass this collection just through the years?
I just you know, record you know, just uh copy my CD collections my PC over the years, and yeah, I just saved it over the years from my PC, one PC to another, and and some of my collective CDs. That's it. You'll be bigging from the nineteen eighties, mid nineteen eighties. So I've got to at least ten to eleven thousand songs by now, maybe a few donald. I don't really download it much material. Mostly it's just from the hard copy.
I'm looking at some of these alternatives to these things, and I'm just not really finding a ton of things that you can do. Now here's the thing. It's interesting because there is so it used to be that you could upload a bunch of songs into this Google you know, this music manager, and I'm wondering if if Google still lets you do that with their YouTube music which they've they've now switched to, but I'm just not seeing the ability to do that.
Oh wait, here we go, hold on, upload music, hold on, Oh we got it. Okay, So here's a solution.
They did switch it over music dot YouTube dot com and if you go to your profile on the upper right hand corner, it says upload music. So it looks like you can upload your music there and then use the YouTube music player on your phone to play the songs that you own. So I would go to this music dot YouTube dot com and then sign in. And I'm not sure if you have to be paid or not this I am paid on this, so I do have a membership. I'm not sure if that matters or not.
But you can go and check out hit your profile on the upper right hand corner. It says upload music. Drag a couple of MP threes in there, just to try it out, and then go to your phone, open up the YouTube music app and see if that lets you do it. But it seems like it's still there, at least on my end here, so that's actually pretty cool.
I'll go, I'll definitely I'll play with that and see if it works. Solfully.
Okay, so you got you got the directions down right. You go to music dot YouTube dot Com, go to the upper right hand corner, tap your profile and it says upload music. Drag a couple of MP threes in there, get them uploaded. And then once you have them on there, open up the YouTube music app on your phone and it should have a section of your own music in your library, and press play and see what happens there.
I'll give it a shut rich. Thank you so much for your time.
All right, I appreciate I've heard of Carol Stream Illinois so many times. What's what are they famous for? Was that like we're like Columbia like music? Like what was What's in Carol Stream Illinois that I know of?
Is that like a big customer service.
Uh, Billy Corgan went to high school and Carol Streams.
I don't know if that's what I was thinking of, But I love this. I love the Smashing Pumpkins just as much as the next person. But I'm not sure that was what it was.
Yeah, we're a western suburb of Chicago. We're about Miles's Chicago.
Maybe it's just where I send all the all my bills back in the day to Carroll's.
That makes sense because there is a major post office about here, and uh, that's where a lot of bills are being sent and you know, distribute area to the local area.
I sent many of my bills there back in the day. All right, Rich, thanks so much for calling in today. Appreciate it. Uh, coming up more of your calls at Triple A Rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to four to one zero one. Lots more to talk about on the show. I'm gonna tell you about a major change that Lift is making if you like to take cheap rides with them. Plus, we've got the best anti virus program, so if you're wondering what the
best anti virus program is, we'll talk about that as well. Plus, you can go to the website rich on tech dot tv if you want to see some of the stuff that I do for television.
You can watch my.
Stories there, and of course I post the podcast version of this show there.
Once it's done. You're listening to Rich on Tech. My name is Rich Dumurro.
Will have more of your calls coming up next and we're gonna talk Zelda. It's all coming up right here. Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich Demiro here enjoying one of the artists that will be at the iHeart Country Fest, Luke Brian, one of my wife's favorites.
You know that she were at breakfast and she said that the thought of meeting Luke.
Brian brought tier to her eyes, and I mean literally, like this is someone that she absolutely loves. And I said, well, I don't know if that's gonna happen, But I don't know, do I just like step aside, like what's the what do I do? I don't know because I I tears to her eyes. Wow, that's uh, that's.
A lot.
Triple eight rich one oh one eighty eight seven four two four one zero one. I've met a lot of people in my life, and I don't know if anyone's ever brought tears to my eyes just the idea of meeting them. But I'm in for something, that's for sure. Apple is bringing Final Cut Pro to the iPad. This is very exciting for mobile creators. This is a brand new version of Final Cut Pro with a touch interface. So it's got this new tool that they call, uh,
well it's nothing new. I mean, it's it's a new tool.
For final cut.
But the idea if it's not new it's a jog wheel, but it's digital, so that means you can, you know, since there's it's all touch on the editing, you know, this is a way to like kind of fine tune how you're editing things and editing clips. It's got a magnetic timeline. You can move clips around with just a tap of a finger. It's got multi touch. This is the coolest feature though to me, because I've been trying. I was trying to figure out how to do this
years ago on the iPad. Use the pencil. It's a feature called live drawing, which lets you use the pencil, the Apple pencil to draw graphics on your video. So let's say you're doing like one of those cool travel vlogs. You know, you can write with the Apple pencil on the sky and then it will be animated exactly how you wrote it. Now, if you have terrible handwriting like myself,
it probably wouldn't look very good. But if you have nice handwriting, this is such a cool, unique way to make some animations.
And so that's one of the features.
The other feature that they talk about is multiicam video, so they showed a demo where you can shoot multiicam video and just tap your finger to switch between.
The cameras, which is really neat.
It also takes advantage of the Apple Silicon, the really fast processors inside the new iPads. By the way, you need at least an Apple M one chip inside the iPad to use this, and really M two to get like the best use case scenario. But they also have this scene removal mask, so you know how you need a green screen to remove the background typically in something that you shoot, well you don't even need a green screen.
You can literally just say remove the background, and this system is so smart that it will be able to figure out what the background is and remove it. That is really cool. There's also an autocrop feature that will adjust your footage for vertical, square or other aspect ratios.
I mean, this is really cool. It also has professional soundtracks that automatically adjust to the length of a video, and you can start a project on the iPad and then move it to Final cut pro on your computer to finish it.
Now I get it.
This is mostly for either creative professionals or mobile professionals or influencers, so not necessarily the average person that's going to be using this, but I think more will because it's more accessible. A final cut on the desktop was like a several hundred dollars program. This will be five dollars a month or fifty dollars for the year. And I know there's a lot of people that are asking, are kind of complaining about the fact that this is
now subscription and they don't like that. But the reality is, I think that we've gotten so accustomed to subscriptions. Five dollars a month, free trial for a month. I think it's going to get a lot more people to try this out. Logic Pro is also coming to iPad, but since I don't really use that, I know it's for more audio editing.
I just don't use that.
So if you're into that, you'll be excited for that as well. Let's see antivirus programs. So this this is from this website that I really like called av test. Whenever people ask me, like, hey, Rich, what's the best antivirus program for my computer? I always say Windows Defender is pretty good because it's built in. Just activate it, make sure it's up to date, and that will protect you from most of the big stuff. But av test is where I send you if you say, well, I
want something else, something different. This is an independent organization that sort of looks at these different security programs and comes up with rankings. And they always have a great list of rankings on their website. It's av test, ava test dot org. And they do tests for all different systems, whether it is Mac, PC, Windows, sorry Android. You can see what's top rated. Well, this is interesting because a
lot of people use Microsoft Defender. That's great, but it turns out it uses up more system resources than some other popular antivirus programs. So av test test did eighteen different anti virus software for Windows ten. They tested the programs around twelve thousand different malware samples mixed into one point five million files to see which ones did the
best between differentiating between something bad and something good. The eighteen security packages were from some big names like on lab a, vast avg Bitdefender, Kespirski, malware Bytes, McAfee, Microsoft Defender, Norton. They gave these things all kinds of different points for their you know how they performed in different categories protection, performance,
and usability. So who came out on top, Well, the highest system load in the test was generated by Windows Defender Antivirus, which means this would take up the most resources on your computer.
Maybe use more battery, use more energy. Whatever.
The worst score was given to PC Mattic in the usability section. It got the lowest overall score. It also found two dozen false positives and blocked a bunch of applications that maybe you needed. Six products. Here's the best part. This is the parts you need to know. Six products got a perfect score of eighteen. So if you're looking to install an anti virus program on your computer, these
are the ones that they currently recommend. A Vira, which, by the way, those two are the same company at this point, Bitdefender, g Data, Kasperski, and trend Micro.
So those are the.
Top six that got a perfect score of eighteen. And by the way, Microsoft Defender was all the way down to the bottom, almost.
Number I guess it came in at sixteen.
Norton and McAfee were right in the middle, so a Vastdavira, those are the ones you want to install if you're looking for a free antivirus program.
I'll put the links on the website.
Rich on tech dot TV, all right, coming up, we're going to talk Zelda and the new game for the makers of POKEMONO. It's called Paradot. You're listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich DeMuro here talking technology with you at triple eight Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one. So a couple of games came out this week that are proving.
To be very popular. First off, Zelda.
This is a brand new Zelda game that is just the highly anticipated sequel to a game that came out many years ago, that launched with the switch in fact, and so everyone was downloading this at midnight on Thursday to play all day Friday and of course throughout the weekend. So if you know a gamer in your life, they're probably playing the Zelda game. There's also another game called Paradot, which is from the makers of Pokemon GO, and so that's another new game. Let's see, let's bring up Eric
Switcher from the gamer dot com. I'm not sure how we're connecting with Eric, but do we have Eric?
I'm here?
Oh hey, Eric, welcome to the show.
Hi, thanks so much.
We're doing the show remote today, so everything is sort of well, I'm just all over the place. Everyone else is very professional and calm and cool and collected. But I am I am just you know, it happens anyway. So tell me about the Which game do you want to start with? You want to start with Paradout or Zelda.
Let's start with Zelda.
Okay.
So every single person on my timeline that is any sort of gamer is was very, very excited for this new Zelda game. So why are people so excited for Zelda Tears.
Of the Kingdom.
Yeah, So, like you mentioned, it is a sequel to Breath of the Wild, which came out in twenty seventeen, and Breath of the Wild is a pretty important game in video game history. It's sold thirty million copies. It launched alongside the Nintendo Switch, so it kind of ushered in the new generation of Nintendo, which has become the biggest Nintendo council of all time. So there was a lot of anticipation for this game, and Nintendo was very secretive about it for the months leading up to it.
We really didn't know much about what the game would have to offer. So it's just sort of a perfect storm of coming off of a game that's so popular and on a Council. That's so popular.
People were really excited about it, and so it's getting like near perfect reviews.
Is that true?
Yeah? Yeah, I think the Metacritics score is at a ninety six, which gets it tied for third highest rated game of all time. There's quite a few games that have in ninety six, but it is quite quite high.
And why do you think, I mean, what are people saying about it? Why is it so good?
So there's a lot of new things that it has coming off of Breath of the Wild. I think that the big new feature that people are so excited about is an ability that the character link has. It's called ultrahand and it seems complicated, but what it really boils down to is that you can take any objects in the world and combine them together to make something new.
So it's really really unlocking people's creativity to invent new machines and come up with interesting vehicles, and it helps you to explore the world in creative ways.
Oh wow, that's I mean you I love how you said this is really complicated, but you made it sound so easy. I mean you you explained it very well. So that's a good job for explaining it. In that simple way now.
And it is so easy to use. Yeah, I think that the genius of it is that, you know, you can make these really complicated vehicles and machines and stuff, but it's a very intuitive and I think that's what people are really grabbing onto.
Now.
This is also the first Switch game that is at a higher price point, right, isn't this this the first seventy dollars game for the Switch?
Yeah, that's correct. That's a trend that the industry has been moving in. PA started doing that with the launch of the PS five. Xbox recently did that a couple of weeks ago with the release of a game called Redfall. So we're going to be seeing games come out at seventy dollars pretty consistently from here on out.
But the reality is, if you're listening and you have someone in your life that has a Switch and they like games, do you recommend that they would get this for a birthday gift or some sort of gift for the gamer in their life.
Yeah? Absolutely. You know, the beauty of Zelda is the way that it really crosses all ages. It's approachable for kids, and it has so much depth for experienced gamers. Too. It is a wonderful game, and it's also just sort of a cultural moment that I think people want to be a part of.
And when do you think we'll see a new Switch? I mean, this thing is going on many, many years old. They've come out with various versions of it throughout the years, but it's all pretty much basically the same.
Do you think we're going to see a new Switch? Maybe next year or no.
I think that's a pretty reasonable expectation. This has come out to be the longest council generation Nintendo has ever had, where we're coming up on seven years, and we've never had to wait that long for a new Nintendo. So I think it's pretty reasonable to assume we'll be seen a new one next year.
Okay, all right, we're talking with Eric Switzer. He is the features editor at the gamer dot com and your bio says that you specialize in Pokemon, So I imagine you are a big Pokemon player. But now that you've got this new game from the makers of Pokemon Go called Paradot, So what can you tell me about this game? Which I've been playing a little bit, but I'm still trying to figure out what it's all about.
Okay, cool, Yeah, I've been playing a lot of paradigt too. You know, it's pretty fascinating. Like you said, it's from the creators of Pokemon Go is a company called Iontic looking for their next big mobile game, and this is a I guess you would call it a pet simulator. Your audience might reach member of the Tamagatchi key chains in the nineties, when kids would walk around training their little pets and feeding them and playing with them. This
is sort of a modern evolution of that idea. So it's an augmented reality game, which means that you play it on your phone. Through your camera lens, you're looking at the real world, and then the game puts in virtual objects into your frame. So you have a virtual pet that can go on walks with you. You can feed it and play with it, and it's all through the lens of your camera.
And it's neat because I was looking at it. Because it's augmented reality, it says it can learn like your couch. It kind of knows the surfaces that it's looking at through your camera, and it kind of interacts with those surfaces in different ways. So it's a really unique spin on sort of the standard, you know, video game that you might play on your phone, because it is using that augmented reality to kind of do different things.
In the game.
Yeah, there's some really impressive technology that went into this game.
You know.
It recognize the differences between all kinds of different services, so it knows grass, water, concrete, shrubs, and the game will ask you to find certain things for your pet. Your pet will want to go look at a tree so it can scratch on it, and you'll have to go out into the real world and point your camera at a tree, and then you'll get to see your your pet run over dude and scratch on it. It's pretty impressive stuff.
I named my paradot. I guess they're called dots, but I named him Spot or them. I don't know if it's you know, it's it's what it is, but I named it Spot. And it's very cute, and it's sort of like modeled after various creatures in the real world, but it's it's definitely just a made up being, but it's it is very cute, it's very like affable, and
it's just kind of fun. I mean, I don't know what I'm doing in this game, to be honest, But it's it's fun and I like just you know, throwing the ball and having this little creature fetch it and putting the creature in these various places where I am it.
Just it looks like it's a part of the world that I'm in.
Yeah, you know, in terms of gameplay, it is pretty bare. You can walk with them, you can play with them, and you can see them. But the real hook of the game is the breeding function, because all of these dots that you described, they all have a series of unique traits and really no two dots are the same. So I think that the real hook of the game is finding other dots to mate with to make new dots that have more complex and interesting traits.
And I noticed on kind of the sharing aspect is that you can see dots that are nearby, and so I.
Was a little bit curious about that too.
There's like on a map you can see dots that were either visiting the same area or near the same area. My big question for you, Eric, do you think this will be a blockbuster hit the way that Pokemon Go was and still plays a big role in the mobile gaming world.
Yeah, it's a good question, and I'm sure that Niantic is wondering the same thing. You know, Pokemon Go's strength is the Pokemon ip and while I think Pokemon Go is a great game, it wouldn't be the game it was if the world didn't love Pokemon as much as we do. So Paradox has an uphill battle on that way. I think the tech is really impressive, the characters are super adorable. I think for them, what it's really going to come down to is how fair and reasonable their
monetization is. You know, more and more with mobile games, what is attracting players is the approachability aspect, and if they're asked to pay lots and lots of money to continue playing that game, it's what pushes them away. And I think paradoig is trying to find a way to balance that at the moment with what they're expecting their players to pay for.
All Right, Eric Switzer from TheGamer dot Com thanks so much for joining me today. I really appreciate it. So which game are you going to play next? Are you going to play more of Zelda or more of Paradox this weekend?
H I am hooked into Zelda. I can't put it down.
Oh, that's amazing. All right, I've got it loaded up on my switch here. I was not able to download it at the airport, so I had to wait. But I've got it on there and I just have to start playing and any tips you can give me, anything that I could kick off with.
There's a lot of big gumball machines that are scattered around the world, and if you interact with those, they'll give you lots and lots of extra parts that you can use to make fun machines. So don't ignore those when you see them, all right.
Eric Switzer from TheGamer dot Com, thanks for much for joining me today.
Coming up, we're going to close out the show.
We're going to do the feedback section, which is one of your favorite sections of the show. I'm gonna tell you about a traffic light that only turns green when you're driving at the right speed. You're listening to Rich Demiro here on rich on Tech.
More of the show coming up.
Next, Welcome back to Britcha on Tech. Rich Demiro here talking technology with you.
We have had it all country line up today.
For the most part, it's been a couple other little things sprinkled in here and there, But we got a lot of country in this Austin based show today. Got a couple of things to talk about, and then we'll get to the feedback section. First off, Lift making a lot of changes. Big change they're going to make. They are discontinuing pooled rides. These were the super duper cheap rides that would put you in there with someone else in the car, not just the driver, but a random
person that also needed to go somewhere. And yes, I've tried this. I've tried all of the different like Lift and Uber offerings throughout the years, and so I did this lift all I can't remember it was Left or Uber, one of them. But I did like the pool because it was so much cheaper. I was going to I believe it was an Apple event, going from the airport to the Apple of which was being held at like
the San Jose Convention Center. And I figured, everyone else that's landing with me right now at the airport must be going to the same place, So chances are I'm just going to be linked up with someone else that's going to the convention center and my ride is going to be like seven bucks instead of like thirty. And sure enough, it was great, it was fine. We didn't really chat with the person that was I didn't chat with the person in the car.
I might have said hi.
But ANYWAYT is discontinuing shared rides, they said this week. The reason it takes people out of their way because not every time you're going to be going to the same place as the person in the car with you. I mean they tried to make it to the same area, but not always the same place. Lift started these things
back in twenty fourteen. Uber followed with Uber pool. The companies both stopped doing these pooled rides during the pandemic for obvious reasons, and they gradually reintroduced them last year. But now Lift is saying no more. Yes, we'll still do this. If they still do it, I'm not really sure if they do it. But Lift is focusing on boosting their airport rides, which makes up about ten percent of their trips. They want to make it easier for customers to pre book a trip. I noticed that I
got a notification on my phone. I guess it was connected to my calendar, and it said, hey, do you want to book a ride to the airport. When I noticed that I was going to the airport. And the thing about these airport scheduled rides with Lift and Stuff and Uber is like, since Uber and Lyft are on demand, I always find.
It odd to schedule a ride.
It's like, why not just do it on demand because you can get a car most of the time pretty easily. I actually tested out a service called Alto for my ride to the airport this time, and this is super duper fancy stuff.
So this Alto situation.
Is a company that they have their own fleet of luxury vehicles and all of their drivers are w two employees, so they give them benefits like four oh one k's hourly pay and health benefits. This is operating in Houston, Dallas, LA, Miami, Washington, d C. And San Francisco. And so they have the guy picked me up. It was a scheduled ride. Way more I would say, way more expensive than sort of a Lift or an Uber at their cheapest tier, but maybe on par with an Uber Black or a Lift Lux,
you know where it's like the really high end. This is more like a car service if you're familiar with that. So Alto is much more of like a almost like a show first service. I would say women in safety. That's the main reason why people use Alto.
To.
Fifty five percent of Alto riders are women and Alto drivers eleven Let's see Alto.
What am I looking at here? Oh? That I thought this was cool. The Alto vehicles.
Come equipped with cameras in real time monitoring, so I thought that was neat, which is linked to a manned Alto dispatch center. They've got two thousand drivers and four hundred vehicles on the road. They have six hundred to hit the road in twenty twenty three. And you have to be a member, by the way, or you don't have to be, but it's cheaper if you're a member,
so they say seventy five percent are member. So anyway, Alto if you want an alternative to lift an uber, but just keep in mind it is more expensive, but it's more like a chauffeur. So this is like think fancy, fancy, fancy ride to the airport or fancy fancy ride to pick up someone from the airport. Okay, let's let me tell you about this new light. This traffic light in Quebec. It only turns green for safe drivers. This is in
the Canadian city of Brossard. Near Montreal, they have a new traffic light in a school zone that turns green for safe drivers. They call it fred. The light is red by default, but it turns green when the speed camera detects your car going at a speed limit that's under the posted speed. So it's not really a real signal per se, but it just makes you slow down.
I guess if you see a red light, you're probably gonna stop. I guess.
So. Similar signals have been used in Europe for years. This is on a ninety day trial in a two lane street that runs through a suburban area. The mayor said most vehicles go through that area at twenty five miles an hour, but in the past week average speeds have dropped to eighteen miles an hour. They say it doesn't record any private information. It's just a text that the vehicle is doing the speed it should to kind of help people just slow down in that area.
So kind of a smart idea. I like that.
All right, let's get to the feedback. Dion says, great show you put out Sunday. I'm listening in Montana. I heard a woman call in wanting to know how to get internet on her radio. I have not found a way to do this either. What I do want to share, I have a transistor radio which continuously picks up plays the weather that has picked.
Off picked up off of an FAA wave.
It's not Internet, but I'd say it's as close to as she's going to come with a radio device. Got a lot of feedback about the caller last week that was asking for some sort of radio that would pick up Internet radio streaming and also THEAA radio stream. Greg says, hey, Rich, I heard the segment with a woman that wanted anaa radio. Sporties dot com has some aviation radios. The cheapest one is one hundred and ninety nine dollars. They're kind of expensive.
And let's say I think there's one more on this, oh, Neil said, and this is about the Aura frame. The guest we had last week, the digital frame called Aura. He said, when we became grandparents, our daughter gifted us one of these frames. They seem expensive, but they work really well and they have all the features being spot on. Being ten hours away from our kids is balanced by receiving new pictures as grandchild grows. Neil so Neil liked
the guest talking about the Aura frames. I love that thing. Great gift. I can't believe that's going to do it for this show. Next week, I'm going to tell you about a website that lets you research and report scams you don't become a victim of them again. You can find me on social media. I am at rich on tech. The website to go to is richon tech dot tv.
You can check it out For notes to what I mentioned here, I also put them in the podcast, so if you're listening to the podcast version, looking the notes for anything that I talk about here on the show. This has been a fantastic show from Austin, Texas.
What a cool city.
I love traveling because it gives me so much perspective on the world. For instance, I can tell you prices in Austin, Texas are cheaper than prices in Los Angeles. That's the one thing I've noticed here so far. And people are very friendly. My name is rich Demiel. 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. Thanks to everyone everywhere who makes
this show possible. As they say in the South, I'm fixing to talk to you real soon take care
And