For the first time ever, you can dial a phone number to book an uber. The first state to ban TikTok, the first official chat GPT app hits the iPhone plus Your tech questions answered.
What's going on rich dmuro 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. What is going on on the Tech Reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles.
Welcome to the show.
I believe this is show number twenty.
Where's the applause? Hold on, I didn't hear it. Okay.
Phone lines are open at triple A 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, maybe you're trying to decide between two things, trying to figure something out, something's perplex you, whatever it is, I'm here triple eight rich one oh one. If you'd rather send an email, that's also open, send it to hello at rich on tech dot TV. And this week I'm trying to make things a little bit easier for
you to follow along. So if you go to the website rich On tech dot TV. Check out the radio show wiki and I've got the show number twenty. You click that, and while we're doing the show, I'm going to update this with what I'm talking about. So if I mentioned something on the air and you're like, oh, I got to write that down, just go to the website rich on tech dot TV, look in the notes for show number twenty and that should give you the link.
So this week I saw the BlackBerry Movie. I'm really getting my use out of this AMC membership I've got. I've seen now three movies in two months. That's pretty good. So I was very excited to see the BlackBerry Movie because of course we all went through our BlackBerry phase. And if I haven't mentioned this before, I am obsessed with cell phones. It's been a lifelong obsession, way before this show, way before I started covering technology. It's just
something I have always loved. And this movie really made me reflect on some of the phones that have really changed my life and had an impact on me over the years. We think iPhone, iPhone, iPhone, There's been many phones before and after the iPhone, and I remember getting
my first phone in high school. I might have like, maybe flubbed my age a little bit because I think you had to be eighteen to get a phone, and I might have told him I was eighteen, and I think it was like thirty dollars a month for thirty minutes or something ridiculous, and it didn't really work anywhere.
It was staticky.
This was back when you know, this was cellular like real before, like it was digital. I also sold cell phones at office depot back in the day when I was in high school, and I remember these were the days when cell phones were advertised for a penny. One penny got you a cell phone. So people would come in for some new ink for their printer. I would give them the sales pitch for a new phone. They'd of course get the phone because it was a penny,
and then guess what happened. Inevitably they would be back a month later because they got their bill and it was like three four hundred dollars because back of the day, everything was loaded up into that bill, all of your minutes. If you went over, it was extra money, the activation fee, the monthly fee, the first month, the last month.
There were so many fees.
Your bill was like a couple hundred bucks and so people would pay this one penny for the phone. I said, no, there's the one penny you paid, and some people would want to return it. Others would cool down after you explained to them.
But yeah, it was fun. Let's see.
The first phone I remember really really wanting, right, was the Treo. It was the Palm six hundred. This is a phone that I really wanted. I was living in Shreveport, Louisiana at the time. I was a reporter at one of the stations there and I said to my then girlfriend now wife, I said, hey, would you mind driving with me to go get this phone.
She's like, sure, no problem.
Well, it was like a two hour drive to go get this phone. She's like, where are we going. I was like, oh, they don't have a best Buy here in Shreveport. We got to go to I think it was like Longview, Texas or somewhere in Texas. And so we get to the cashier after this whole long drive, and you know, I'm paying full price for this phone, and it rang up and it was like I don't know, five ninety nine or something, and she was like, wait, what you didn't tell me this part. I said, well, yeah,
I'm out of contract. I gotta do this. So that was the first phone I got that I really really just loved, and it was not very good. You could even again, the cellular networks at this time were just not very good. After that was a Moto Q. This phone I was living in New York City. This was around that of the iPhone, I believe. But what I loved about this phone it was so thin, it was so light, it had this keyboard. It was an alternative
to the BlackBerry. It was so different. I could not get enough of this phone.
I watched.
This was when I really got into like watching all the little reviews and stuff online, reading everything I could about this phone before I got it. I also remember trying to stream music and music on it for the first time on the bus and I was using sling Box and it was just like such a bad experience because again the cellular networks were so bad.
Then.
Of course, two thousand and seven Rolls Around got the iPhone. I was there the first day. I was covering it for Cnet and it was incredible. The phone was just magical. This was before it had the App store. It was still amazing. No turn by turn directions but this phone really changed everything because it was finally just a piece of electronics that could be anything you wanted it to
be because it was just a screen. And so later on came all the excitement with face id, Touch id, the app store, but this thing was loaded with YouTube of web browser, and again the signal was so bad. I will never forget walking down the street to a dentist appointment calling my best friend and saying, hey, I'm on the new iPhone and he was like, well, you might want to switch back to your old phone because I can't hear anything you're saying.
And that was that.
Half the time it worked, half the time it didn't. How about Amazon, they got into the phone game. Do you remember that fire phone is what they called it. Their gimmick was a three D screen and I remember it had a bunch of cameras facing you to do
this three D kind of gimmick that it did. And it also came with free Prime membership, free photo backup, which I guess you still get if you have a Prime membership, and this thing called Firefly you could take a picture of anything and it would identify it to help you basically buy it on Amazon. That thing really crashed and burned. Now I'm not talking burning like the uh the Samsung Noe. I think it was a seven that really literally burned. But yes, the firefly feature, the
three D screen, none of that was enough. Amazon canceled that phone so fast it was not even around for very long. What else I remember the first Google phone? Well there was two first with Google. There was the first real Google phone, I think was the g One. I was a reporter in Los Angeles at the time at k COW and I remember getting sent that phone to test out, and I thought it was so cool. It was the first real competition to the iPhone. The
Android operating system. Camera was not very good. Camera was not very good on any of these phones back in the day until Google came out with what was called the Nexus, and I remember taking pictures on that. It was fine. But then they came out with the Pixel. So Google has had sort of like three names for their phones, but the Pixel. I remember taking the first selfie on that phone and I could not believe the quality of it. These camera, these areas were test out
the phone, so they have the demos. The lighting is always so bad and I couldn't believe what a good picture. It took in really easy time. After that, there was LG. They had so many little things in their phones. They were always trying something new. They had a phone that flexed. It was called the G Flex. It bent, It had a back that could heal, had a second screen phone they tried out that didn't work out.
One plus came along. That phone.
I'll never forget seeing in the back of a lift. It was up in San Francisco. I was going to the airport and said what kind of phone is that to the driver and they said, oh, it's a one plus. I said, oh my god. Things amazing, beautiful, sleek software, so nice.
Motorola.
Over the years they tried different things. They had one called the Moto X. You could customize all of it, the whole thing. You could put your name on the back of it, customized the colors. That failed too, So many of these things failed. HTC I was in love with HTC phones. Those were so beautiful, amazing designs. The software was so good. They even had an IR blaster on them so they could be a universal remote control.
They were one of the first to do live photos, so it took a little picture before and after Samsung. Oh my gosh, talk about experimentation. I mean, I think everything we've seen on the modern smartphone, all the features we've seen, came from Samsung at some point. First one hundred times zoom, replaceable batteries, memory cards, cameras. They were the first to add, like ten cameras on a phone. Software features galorey, the stylus. Everyone laughed at the stylus.
And guess what, so many devices have adopted or so many people have come to like that. All the things we take for granted nowadays, unlimited data, good photos, music on our phone, all these cameras, wireless charging, water resistance. These are things that are new. These are things that are relatively new in our world. But I was there for all of this stuff, and what a ride it's been.
Ah And now we're with our iPhones and the Samsungs, and quite honestly, phones have become pretty boring because they do what you need him to do. They take the picture, they hold their charge. They've lost some of the features that we liked over the years, but overall they're pretty boring. The iPhone slow evolution. Over the years, it's gotten better
and better, but it's a slow evolution. Anyway, I thought i'd take you down that little trip down memory lane because I had a fun time thinking about all those phones. And there's many many more, believe me, and I will continue to be obsessed, all right. Coming up on this week's show, we've got some great, great guests.
Billy Opposen of Telly.
He's going to talk about his new startup that is giving five hundred thousand people a free TV this year alone. Then one of our favorite guests, or one of your favorite guests, I should say, Jared Newman. He's going to talk about the plan to make passwords obsolete. And later Christina Warren is going to help me reminisce about the good old days of BlackBerry. We are going to talk about the BlackBerry movie, which I do believe you should see.
But up first, it is your turn.
Coming up next, it's triple eight rich one O one one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. My name is Rich Dmiro. You are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology, apps, gadgets, tech News.
Got a whole.
List of stuff I want to talk about with you today. At triple eight rich one O one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one. You're the best part of the show, So if you want to join in, give me a call. Mike kicks us off in Portland, Oregon. Mike, you're on with rich Hey.
Rich Hey. My wife and I play pick a ball a lot, and I like watching it on TV. But sometimes the tournaments, like there's one this weekend, it's on Amazon Prime. Sometimes it's on YouTube, and you can't record those stations or those those outlets, whatever you want to call them. Is there any way around that? Is there any divice for recording off of those channels?
Great question, so I'm sure, by the way, were you playing pickleball before it was popular or like, are you just jumping on this now?
No, actually we started a year ago.
Oh nice, Okay, Yeah.
We played an indoor facility and it's pretty fantastic.
What's the difference, by the way, between pickleball and racketball.
I've never played racketball, so I don't know. I think, be honest with you, I've watched racketball and I had the feeling you get hurt a lot worse in racketball. Than you could in pickleball.
Maybe racketball involves the wall too, So yeah, okay, So to answer your question, here is the deal. So I'm sure there are ways that you could set up some sort of device that would record the entire screen, like you would need a video capture device, but that's way too complicated. So what I'm going to recommend is something I've tried in the past, which is called play on p L A y N dot TV. This is a
cloud recorder and it records the various streaming services. So this will work with Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, HBO, Max, Disney Plus, and this is one way to do it. Now here's the thing. I'm not sure if this operates in a gray area or what the deal is with this.
Now.
You know, Tvo has been around for a long time. The idea of recording content has been around, and when Tvo first came out, people were up in arms about that. So I'm not sure where this stands on the you know, if these companies like what it's doing, but it's available. It's been around for a very long time because I've tried it years ago, and it does what it says. It's not always perfect and I'm not sure that it works with YouTube per se, but it does work with
a lot of the major streaming services. YouTube I don't see listed right off the bat, but that doesn't mean that that doesn't work with that. This is a paid service, so you're not going to be able to do this for free. There is a free trial so you can try that, and then you're gonna have to pay for They do it with recording credits, so it's like five bucks a month and then you can buy credits to
record something. So other than that, I think the other way to do it is some sort of video capture card, but that would you know, and Elgato is the big brand there, so if you want something from uh to do that with, I think E L G A. T O is the big brand there. But I think that this cloud service is gonna be the best. I'm trying to look if there's an alternative to play on, if they have like some sort of you know, competitor that
might do something similar. I'm not really finding that because I usually do my favorite search on Google, which is versus. So if you type in play on versus, usually a competitor will come up. But I'm not really seeing a competitor there, So I'm sure there's some other ways and maybe some listeners will have alternatives to this. If you want, you can email me Hello at richontech dot tv. But Mike, I think that's gonna probably s many of your issues,
especially with Amazon for recording those. So good question. Thanks for being the first caller there. Thanks a lot. All right, let's go to Henry in Temecula. Henry, you're on with Rich Rich.
Hello, thanks for taking my call. I've got a I'm using my laptop and I have a word pad program up and I did a lot of typing on it and I thought I had saved everything, but somehow I must have hit a hot key and I wiped everything out and I can't recover it. And I went to best Buy and spoke to one of the geeks there and they said, well, they happens to the best of us, and they don't have a recovery program either, and so you're my last hope to recover this thing.
Oh man, So what was this document?
No, there was just some typing. I was typing the story up and I had about ten pages over the course of a two weeks, and each time I got done, I would save it, and then when I came back to it, I was changing to another paragraph, and somehow, I guess my left hand must have touched one of the keys there and and disappeared right down.
Okay, and so you couldn't You couldn't undo this, there's no undo okay. So now next time, if if you know, if you notice that you do this, obviously, just go for the undue. But if you got rid of this file, have you tried recovery? Are is this Windows?
You said?
Yeah?
Okay, So if you go to the folder where these documents are typically saved, there might be a feature that can that can help you called restore previous versions. So if you go into the folder where you had these word pad documents saved, and if you don't know what folder that is, create a new word pad document, save it and see where it saves it, and then navigate to that folder in your Explorer and write click in there and see if you get an option that says
restore previous versions. And so you might see the full the file in there. Perhaps. Now if it was I'm not sure where this went, I would check the recycle bin obviously to see if it's in the recycle bin, because that's like you know where everything goes. But if it's not in the recycle bin, and it's not in the folder, then I would go ahead and write click and see if you have that, restore previous versions, and you might see previous versions of the folder displayed if
it did a save during that time. But it's unfortunate. If I were you, I'd use Google Docs to start writing your documents so that everything is saved automatically and you can just go to Google Docs that is free and everything's in the cloud, because, believe me, you don't want to lose stuff. I know I've done it before myself, and like the Geek Squad said, it does happen to the best of us. All right, Henry, thanks for your question. Appreciate that. Henry in Temecula.
All right.
Coming up, we are going to talk about free TVs. Yes, there is a startup that wants to give away five hundred thousand free TVs this year. We'll talk about how you can get a free TV. Coming up here, you are 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 two four one zero one. If you have a.
Question about technology, hop on the phone, give me a call. Website is rich on tech dot tv and the email address hello at richon tech dot TV. Well it's not every day that a startup takes the tech world by storm, but that's what happened this week when a company called Telly emerged from stealth to giveaway free TVs, free fifty five inch four K HDR TVs and really these are
ad supported. So let's bring on Illi Opposen. He is the co founder of Pluto TV and very successful there and now is starting something new.
Ilia. Thanks for joining me today, Thanks for having me Rich.
All right, so this is something that you know, it sounds too good to be true, but can you kind of give the what Telly is going to do?
Give us the breakdown here.
Yeah, and maybe we'll help if I give you the origin story. So, you know, back back in the day in twenty thirteen, it came up with the idea for Pluto TV and we launched it in twenty fourteen. And you know, division there was to bring ad supported streaming in the world where it seemed like everyone was going
to subscription you know, on demand paid services. What we looked at is we saw that cable companies were in fact double dipping, right they were charging the consumers, you know, a monthly fee for cable, and then you're also watching so much content you're actually generating over two hundred dollars worth of advertising per month, right for for the media
companies and a cable company. So at Pluto, we sought to prove that you can actually run a sustainable business model by cutting one of those things out right, and everyone thought we were crazy. We launched in twenty fourteen, and then five years later, Paramount you know, swooped up the company and those has continued to grow tremendously and has you know, done over a billion dollars in revenue
over eighty million years now. So you know, we proved out that you can run a very sustainable business and just ad alone.
Okay, hold on before you go, before you go further. You may not remember this, but I clearly remember this. You and I had lunch and you told me the idea for Pluto TV, and I was one of the people that did not believe you. I didn't understand it. I said, wait, what and Netflix is charging twenty dollars a month. How are you going to give away this stuff? And who's going to use it? And clearly I was wrong because we all know how the story goes after that.
But anyway, continue, Yeah, yeah, actually I do remember our nice little Mexican Mexican lunch over there in LA. But yeah, so the idea with you know, with Telly is pretty much the same thing right right now, when you when you buy a television, you're paying money for the TV and it comes with advertising. So we're here to prove out the exact same same approach where let's cut out the hardware costs and let's build a TV that's actually
completely better than any other TV on the market. Right right now, if you look at the TV industry, it's hit this commodity state. Let's be real that the TV is the largest screen in your home, but it's the dumbest, right Our phones, our computers, our tablets, there's so much smarter and they do so much more than what our TVs do. They're called smart TVs. But that that really happened over ten years ago, whenever Blu rays went online
and TV started stringing content. But you know they're not they don't do much more than just you know, just it's like a big screen in your home that just shows content. Right, So we wanted to prove out that we can build the world's smartest television. So don't be fooled by the by the price tag or free. It's not a low, low budget TV at all whatsoever. It's very high quality and in fact, to us, so much more than your television currently does. Right, We've got you know,
it's got a second screen. So while you watch TV, if we show you, you know, sports scores and weather and stocks, and if a movie is on, we show you actor information. Let's say you're watching sports, we pull up scores from around the country and imagine your fantasy sports right there front and center. Right. So, so our TVs go well beyond screaming. And in fact, they also have a camera that lets you do zoom calling. Right, you can call your friends and watch TV together from
across the country. Got a full assistant, over fifty video games, and so much more. So you know, Telly's shipping over five hundred thousand units this year. And yeah, we're disrupting the price point, we're also disrupting the product by building by far the world's smartest TV in the market.
Okay, so let me just paint a picture of what this TV physically looks like. So it's a fifty five in four K HD TV, So it's a display on top, then there's a soundbar, and then below that is the smart screen. And that smart screen is what you're referring to that has sort of like the sports scores, and there's also advertising on that screen. So advertising is a big part of this plan. Can you explain the role that advertising plays in this entire free TV?
Yeah, very very similar to Pluto, Right. The brands pay for the surface. That's why we're able to offer Pluto TV for free, because it's paid for by the brands.
Right.
So in this case, there is an ad in the bottom right corner of that smart screen there. Takes up a small portion that screen, but it's there, right, And those the brands that show up there are covering the cost of the TV. We'll believe that that our business model is similar to Pluto. We don't have to double dick, we don't have to sell you the hardware. There's really no margin on TV sales hardware anyway, right, so might
as well give it away. For free, we're able to capture a much bigger chunk of the markets, much quicker like we do with Pluro, and build a much stronger product. So the ads are there, they're relevant, they're there to support the business model, and that's kind of the value exchange, right, And we know it's already happening, right. TV makers are selling you a TV right now and then showing your advertising. Right, So we said, let's just cut out the sales part
of it. Let's give away the hardware and let the product be fully supported by the app.
Yeah, people may or may not realize that. When you get a smart TV, typically there's something called automatic content recognition that is sort of seeing what you're using the TV to watch, and then the companies are selling that data to third parties to sell you ads against that data. Is that is that all kind of true?
Yeah, that's completely right, And they kind of they're kind of a pike about it. You really don't know, right. The difference with us is we're fully transparent. We tell you we do it like the others, and then in fact we compensate you for it with a free TV.
And I guess people don't mind because you put out a pressure release, you said you had over one hundred thousand sign ups in the first thirty six hours. You're planning to give away five hundred thousand free TVs this year year and then in twenty twenty four millions of TVs. So how can people Well, I guess my first My other question is was there anything in the news. There's
so much reporting about your company. Was there anything in the news that you sort of took issue with or your thought was not really fair that you want to you know, talk about.
No, not at all. I think we've had amazing response. People really understood the product right, and and the other part in the in the initial sign ups that we saw that was phenomenal was that, you know, the type of consumer that was interested in Kelly is not they're they're not low income at all, right, They're they're actually, you know, very heavily indexing on gen Z and millennials and UH and in a higher income bracket than the
overall population in the US. So I think people understand that this is you know, they're savvy, they get that this is a you know, a disruptive business model and and something that is going to resonate with a very large ton of the population.
And also something that's interesting that you kind of picked up on with Pluto TV. Back in the day when everyone was doing paid streaming, you were kind of a pioneer of what we now call the fast the free ad supported streaming services, where now people are like, you know what, I'm paying too much for all these services. I don't mind a couple of commercials like the good old days of TV, where I will get this for
either less money or for free. So I think there is a little bit of you know, people are kind of pulling back on some of the spending with these streaming services.
That's right. And now if you look at the industry, even though Pluto was there first and everyone thought we were completely crazy, now literally every single media company including Google, Amazon, and now Disney actually you know, announced they're going there. They're launching that supported streaming service as well. So everyone's now even though everyone disagree with us, they're now doing they're not in that same business. So and we believe Kelly's going to do the exact same thing.
All right, We're chatting with Illi Opposen, the founder of Telly, which is giving away free TVs. The website is freetelly dot com. I'll link that up on my website at richon Tech dot tv. So Ellio, you fill out the form, you give some information. What's my chances of actually getting one of these TVs? And when would I get it?
I mean, the chances are pretty good. We're making a lot of them. We're starting to ship our initial units this summer. So I jump right on that. Go to the website and fill it out. Make sure you get your spot in our in our in our queue.
And is there any restrictions on how I can use this TV? I know you've got the HDMI ports on the back. Can I plug in my own streaming service? Do I have to use something that.
You do or what? No, not at all. It's it's a standard TV. You can watch whatever you want, plug in any devices. We have three hdiports, you know. We we want you to watch whatever you want on this TV. We don't even need you, you know, to be in our operating system anything like that. And we're there to provide you enhancements on your content viewing and and not restrict you from doing anything that you want.
And what about the second screen? People I've read say, oh, I'm just going to cover it up. I'm not going to look at it is that. I mean, what do you make of that whole situation.
I mean it's once you see it in you that your viewpoint will be completely different, right, So it completely enhances your content viewing experience. It's there to support you. We have data that over eighty percent of consumers while they watch TV, they have their phone or computer out anyway, right, So we put a lot of that information that you're looking at on your phone right there front and center, so you're less distracted. The add are a much a
very small chunk of that of that device. But we even want a step further, and we put all the controls that you typically see overlaying the top screen, like when you put volume up and down, and when you're trying to change inputs from one HDMI to the other or switch your settings. All that now happens on that bottom smart screen. So we cleaned up the top screen.
We call it a theater display. That's clean, and the bottom screen has all your controls, all this strau you know, information and support against what you're watching to really help and enhance that content viewing experience. So first of all, you won't want to cover it right such, and you really can't because that's where all your controls are. So we've built this in a way that that you know,
it completely makes your TV dealing experience better. I've been using it at my house alone for about four or five months, and I can just tell you it's very hard to go back to it to kind of standard boring dune display.
Eliahposen, We're going to leave it there. Thanks so much for joining me today. I appreciate it.
Thanks so much for having me Rich all right, If you want.
The website, it's free Telly dot com, or just go to rich on Tech dot tv look for show number twenty. It is linked up in the notes. Get on the list for a free TV. You are listening to rich on Tech. More of your calls at triple eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four two four one zero one. Give me a call, rich Demiro back with you here. Rich on Tech phone numbers triple eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven two four to one zero one. Phase is in Los Angeles.
Am I saying that right?
That's correct?
Sir?
Hey, how you doing good?
Good?
Welcome to the show. What can I help you with?
Uh, that's kind a quick question for you. I have a link smart home hub. Last shooters working fine, last few months, has been having issue on and off, like it goes out of service for.
Like weeks, maybe a month.
Right now it's down for service again and just kind of like set up with it. Trying to figure out what's the next step to change that zwave hub to something else?
Okay, so you want to you want to switch to something yeah? Well okay, so you're using wink, which what kind of stuff do you have connected to this?
Uh? That zbay switches like ge or Slovania, lightblubs.
Okay, so lights, a couple of plugs and everything is is what zigb or what? Oh? Z wave? Okay, got it? Z wave?
So so I'm looking at let's see, so you got wing and I'm looking at their Twitter and like every other tweet is basically we're having issues.
So that's kind of what you've been experiencing. Huh.
Yes, I mean it's a munchy service. So I don't mind paying five bucks a month, but you know, want it out and running.
Yeah, I get that. Okay, So have you heard of something called matter?
No?
Okay, so that's what I think you need to look into. So matter is the new smart home standard that is adopted by everyone. So Google's on board. These are names you don't really hear in the same sentence very often. Google's on board, Apples on board, Samsung's on board. Did I get them all?
I think so.
So when you have all three of the major tech companies on board, all of the devices are now going to work to get other And it's really quite incredible because in my home now I've started to try out some of these things with Matter and it's it's really really nice because A you don't have to pay a monthly fee like you're paying with Wink, and B all you need is a MATTER controller to start working with these devices. And the MATTER is kind of built into
a lot of the main devices. So the Apple the four K, sorry, the Apple TV has it, the Amazon Echo has it, the Google Nest has it. Samsung you can get a Smart Things hub that has it. Even some of their TVs and refrigerators have it. So as long as you have one device on your network that is kind of a matter hub, everything else works with that Matter. Now some of the devices you have may
get updates to work with Matter. So one of the plugs I had in my home was a home Kit plug, and then I did a software update and now it's magically a Matter plug. And what's really nice about it is you can of pick and choose. You no longer have to look on the packaging of these smart home products to see like, Okay, this one works with Google, this one works with Alexa, this one works with HomeKit.
No.
As long as it says Matter, it's going to work across the board with everything. So that's what I would be looking for. Number One, you can look in your home. Do you have an Echo? Do you have a Google Nest? Do you have an Apple TV? If you have one of those devices, you're already on board with this Matter situation, and all you have to do is kind of enable
it and just get it up and running. And then it's a matter of I'm saying Matter a lot, it's a matter of just getting these devices on board with it. And so some of them may not work with the new network, some of them may. And so that's what I look into. Matter is the future. It's super super easy. You basically the plug that I connected once I upgraded the software. Literally, I opened the Google Home app and I said, hey, do you want to connect this plug
to your network? And I said, wow, that was so easy. Other times you may just have to scan a QR code on the device itself. It is all so much easier than anything I've seen in the past. It's brand new, so it's not going to be you know, you talk to a couple people, they may not even have heard of this yet, but it is the future of everything in the home. After all, these companies were fighting for market share for the past you know, I don't know ten years of gadgets. They finally sat down and said,
you know what, We're gonna stop fighting. We're gonna make everything work together. So you can choose the app that you want to use to control everything, whether that's Apple, whether that is Google Home, whether that's the Alexa app, and then you can actually choose the devices you want from the brands you want, and they will all work together.
This is not something you need to do overnight. Maybe continue with the Wink, you know, but realize that if you're paying that five bucks a month whatever they're charging you for that begin to start to think about how you can switch over to this matter stuff, but it makes life a whole lot easier, much more reliable, and you can rea up about it on the web. But
it's a little complicated because there's two terms. There's something called matter and there's also something called thread, which sort of powers matter.
So that's where it gets a little weird.
But as long as you know about those things and start to research, you can definitely find some the products are all going to work together. So good question, and sorry you're going through some smart home issues. That's always frustrating, all right. I did want to address this whole TikTok ban in Montana, first state to ban the use of TikTok Montana. Yes, they are saying they're going to protect Montana's personal, private, and sensitive data from being gathered by
the Chinese Communist Party. So they signed a law that bans TikTok from operating in Montana. This will take effect on January first. Now it is too early to say whether this will actually happen, how it's going to happen, and what the penalty is going to be. So according to the new law, if TikTok is on the app store, they would be liable for fines of ten thousand dollars a day for violating this law. Individual TikTok users won't
be punished. So if you have TikTok on your phone in Montana, yeah you can use it, but you won't be fined. But if this state gets really serious about this, they may block TikTok at the network level, which means you wouldn't be able to log on. Now, this is very very new, this is very very complicated. We've never really seen something like this with an app. We've seen websites, we've seen things that you may not be able to access, but typically the only place I've seen this happen is
in China. When I visited China, you know, I couldn't access Facebook, couldn't access Twitter. So the fact that this is happening in the US is definitely very odd. First Amendment may be a challenge to that. Brich On Tech eight to eight rich one oh one. I don't even know what to say it this point. It's just such a weird thing.
We'll be right back. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Rich DeMuro here hanging out talking technology with you at Triple eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four two four one zero one. Kim is standing by waiting for your call to get you right here on this show. Claudia wrote in on Instagram and said, hey, what's the website for the free TV? I probably should have spelled it out. It is free Telly, Free Telly t E l l y dot com. Free Telly dot com is the website. Everything is linked up on my
website rich on Tech dot tv. I'm doing a very nice job with the show notes today, so please I'm gonna pat myself on the back there for that. You can follow me on social media. I am at rich on Tech. I'm on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. On Instagram this week posted a couple of fun things, including an automated bartender called the Rowtender. You got to see what you think about this. It mixes up drinks in twenty seconds or less. This is a startup that it almost
looks like a bartending jukebox. So you decide what you want on this little touchscreen. It spins around, there's lights flashing. It's a really a cool little show, and then it spits out your drink. That doesn't sound good. You don't you don't want a machine to spit out your drink. It dispenses your drink. Spit out would be kind of weird. Right then, I've got my most controversial post of the week. These classic cars that they get redone and made into
electric cars. And you don't know how controversial this is until you post an Instagram video about it. People don't necessarily like that. Some think it's really cool something that you're ruining the classic car experience. So anyway, that's all my Instagram at rich on Tech. Let's go to an email. Alex says, Hey, Rich can you recommend free a free Gmail third party application?
Just using web? Gmail is not user friendly? Okay, you know what.
I will tell you my answer to this, but before I do, I will tell you I also think that Gmail on the web is the best way to use Gmail. And the reason for that is because Gmail does things in a weird way when it comes to your email, the way it files things, the way you can snooze stuff, the way that it goes into different categories and labels. So I still think that the standard web application is the best. Now, I do think that it can be slow on certain computers. My old computer, Gmail was really
really slow and it got very annoying. So I did try switching to a third part app, third party application, but I always go back to the web app because it just seems to be the easiest for me, and it takes advantage of all those Gmail features. So you want something that's free, Let's start with what's built into your computer. So whether you have Windows or a Mac, you've got a mail program that is built in. So just on Windows or Mac, just search Mail and it
will bring up the program. You log in with your Gmail and you can check your Gmail on there. It's built in. There's nothing you have to download. It's pretty simple. Now, if you want to step it up from there, you can download Outlook. And so Outlook is I know it's free on the Mac. I'm not sure if it's free on Windows, but I think it's I know it's free on Mac. So you can download Outlook. Or you could even just use Outlook on the web and still log
into your Gmail account if you want to do that. Now, I think that gets kind of weird because you're using Outlook but you're checking your Gmail. So but you know, to each his own, you can do that. If you like Mozilla, they are the makers of Firefox. They have a free open source cross platform email program called Thunderbird and Underbird. It has been around for a very long time.
It's free, it works on Windows, it works on Mac and I haven't used this personally, but you know, it's a popular email program because it's free and it's from Mozilla, so they do all the research, they do all the open source stuff, so it's secure. It's been around for nineteen years. So if you want that, you can download that from the thunderbird dot net website. And then there
are some more specialized apps. So there are apps called Spark, Spark Mail, there is something called Edison Mail, and there's something called Newton. And all of these apps are going to cost you a little bit. So that's the only thing you said you wanted free. These may cost you something. Now, there are some features you can get for free on these and you can check that out on their websites.
But you know, sometimes they kind of push you to the freemium plan, which is, okay, we'll give you this for free, but you may have to pay to uh, you know, to get all the features. We're gonna have a great guest on a little bit, Jared Newman. He writes a very nice newsletter called Advisorator, and I'm gonna ask him what his favorite free email app. I'll put him on the spot because he kind of knows a lot about that kind of stuff. So great question, Alex.
There you have it all right, phone number triple eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four to one zero one. This week was the third annual Go Get Go Get, that's what they call it from Uber. It's their annual product showcase where they showed off a whole bunch of new features. And let me go through some of those features. Because Uber is a very popular product around the world and it just continues to evolve. So first up, this is a
big one. It's called family profiles. Now, teenagers have been taking Uber for a long time, but I guess maybe the driver has to look the other way or the parent has to get the ride for them.
I'm not sure.
My kids are too young to take Uber by themselves, so I'm not really sure how it works what the age limits are. But now, for the first time, teens
can have their own profile underneath a guardian's account. So you can go in as a parent and set up a family profile for your kid and kids thirteen to seventeen can now have their kind of their own account, but it's under your account, and Uber says they're only going to used experienced and highly rated drivers to have these trips with teens, and every driver on the flip side has the ability to opt out, so if they want to be carrying kids around all the day, they
don't have to. There are all the safety features in place. They've got live trip tracking, which means, as the parent, you can track the trip's progress so you can see where your kid is at all times. Of course, there's support. This is going to start on May twenty second, so don't don't open the app up and try just yet. It's gonna take a couple of days for this to be in there. And the other thing that the kids can do, I call them kids, but I guess they're teens.
They can also link up an Uber Eats account underneath your account.
Now what does that mean?
Kids are gonna be ordering a whole lot of food on your credit card? Yep, so mom and dad are paying for this, the guardian is paying for this. But you know, you can decide how much they want to spend directly in the app. So that's the family profile, which I think will be a big help. I told my kidd he's eleven. I said, oh, two more years, and I'm not driving you around anymore. It's gonna be
Uber for you, buddy. Uber car seat. This is something that I know sounds a little weird, but my wife and I dealt with this when we had our little ones when they were very little, and we would visit New York City and we would take Uber to the
airport or whatever. And you know, you either have to take around one of these like blow up car seats, I forget what they call it, like a bubble seat or something, or you would have to just have your kid kind of like you know, you'd be like, uh uh, we can't anyway, I'm not going to get into that part. Sometimes you'd be like, yeah, they're sixty five pounds. Kid
is like two now, I'm just kidding. Or you have to bring around a car seat basically, and then the Uber gets to your house, you're latching in this car seat.
It was a whole big thing.
And I know, before you say rich, I mean, really you got to take your kid that's you know, one years old in an Uber. Yes, sometimes you have to if you're traveling, so beginning in New York City and Los Angeles, Uber car Seat is now an option. It lets you request and reserve a ride with a car seat in the car already. So that's for kids from five to sixty five pounds, so that's kind of a nice thing. And then the other new feature is this phone number. For the first time ever, you can use
a phone number to book an Uber. The phone number is one eight three three use Uber. Again, that's an eight three to three number. You don't really hear about those very often, So you can call this phone number and they will help you book the ride. And before you say rich, I mean really, who doesn't have a smartphone?
Who doesn't have an Uber app? I mean there's a lot of people out there that may not, or maybe it's just a one time thing, or maybe it's you know, your grandparent or someone that needs a ride just one time and they don't do Uber all the time. So now anyone can use this, So eight three three use Uber. Now here's the problem. I think there's gonna be some fraud with this because there are going to be scam
artists that play upon this phone number. They're going to set up numbers that sound very similar to the Uber number, and people are going to call them and they're going to give their credit card, and that credit card number is going to get stolen. So be very careful if you're going to use this. Know the phone number again, it's eight three to three. Use Uber, write it down, look it up, note it. If you're going to ever use this, do not dial a random number that you
find online because it may not be legitimate. So the other cool feature I thought that Uber introduced Uber Boat.
This is in Greece.
They're gonna have an Uber boat that you can book directly through the app. You can have up to eight people cruising popular destinations around the island.
Oh my gosh, do I know how to say this? How do you say this?
Mik and Os and Greece. I should know how to say that. I never saw my big fat Greek wedding, so I should know how to pronounce that.
But now I just thought of a good idea. I gotta go to Greece to try this out. Who's coming with me? Let's go.
I've never been. I know it's pretty nice, all right, So there's all the updates on Uber Once again. I'm writing all of this stuff down on my website. Rich on Tech dot TV. All right, coming up on the show, we've got a lot more to talk about. We've got Jared Newman. He writes a newsletter called Advisorator. He's going to talk to us about the plan to make passwords obsolete. This is something new that you can enable through Google and some other websites. So he'll talk about that and later.
Christina Warren film Girl on Twitter is gonna reminisce about the good old days of BlackBerry.
I have seen the movie. It is excellent.
It really exceeded my expectations. So we'll talk about the the good old days of bbming and pins and all that stuff. Plus lots more to talk about. On the news front, there is the first official chat GPT app for iOS. Yes, I'll tell you how to download that, and of course your calls at Triple eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four.
To two, four to one zero one. My name is Rich Dmiro. I'm booking a flight to Grease. You are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Rich Demiro here hanging out with you talking technology at Triple eight Rich one oh one, that's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Let's go to William in Nope, that's not William. Let's go do William in Costa Mesa. William, you're on with Rich.
William. You're there, Okay, let's see.
I'm I think I'm doing something wrong here, Okay, William, Hello, Hello, William, welcome to the show. Okay, we'll put you on hold here and let's go to Stephen in Los Angeles.
Steven, are you there, I'm here, there you go. It's not me, see, it's it's not me, it's them exactly.
I'd love to go to Greece, by the way, I you know what I said.
I was going to book a flight, but let's see. Let's just see how much Greece is right now. It's a lot. Travel is very expensive these days. Have you noticed?
What about taking an uber boat all away to Greece?
You know what?
That would be extremely expensive, But I'd love to. I really think I can convince you know, the powers that be that I need to try this uber boat. I mean, I could just see myself with those you know, isn't like the whole all the buildings like white in the background with the blue and me on the boat with whatever they drink over there and Greece. Anyway, I'm getting out of my Uh, let's see what do you need help with today?
So you know, I deal with a lot of data and I'm very new to NASH back up and redumancy. So my questions are I've been looking at i mean, making deals at the de waste cycling place except what all you know? Let me just put some hot drives in it and set up a mash. So I want to do I've been looking at something called two nats and plausibly checking up, setting up a second to act as a redundanty to back up the backup. What would you recommend?
So are you trying to do this all yourself or are you trying to get a product that you can use for this?
Well, I know two NASS is on software that you can download and you can inspire. I know there's something like you know, sonology, and yeah, you know, I've looked at both directions and I sort of enjoyed the di wise more than I enjoy the ready to go package. So I guess it's a two part question. One is what do you think the two nats. And the second part is I set up like a second as purely for the purposes.
Of backing up the first Well, I love that you're thinking about backing up everything, So I mean I think that that's uh, you know, it's very important in today's day and age.
Is this for sort of enterprise or is this for just personal personal?
But I do a lot of stuff at home, so my data is let's say, one hundred terbles.
Oh wow, you got a lot. Okay, that's all a lot.
So like I decided for all the smaller hard drive and get big one. Okay, So the idea is less drives more data.
Right, So.
In the same principle, if I have backup to that, I need somewhat equivalment to be on the other side.
Yeah, of course, because if you're doing one hundred you said one hundred terabytes? Yes, wow, what do you've got on all this stuff?
I mean, I've got a photo collection, but I'm only up to like three terabytes.
Photos, movie, you know, and obviously some work stuff and just you know, just think with.
Twenty years how much that Oh yeah, it's and the problem is with me especially, I went through this morning. I was looking at my Google Drive and it's like, I don't want to delete anything. And then this is the best part. I was literally looking for an address that I've had for ten years in my Google Drive and it's the one thing that I mistakenly deleted.
So I'm not kidding. It was not even anywhere to be found. Now.
I know I've been sending a Christmas card to this person for like the past ten years. And I remember a couple of years ago we were going through to do our Christmas cards and I couldn't find our address list.
I had thrown it out.
And I guess once I threw it out, I go through this thing where I like empty the trash to and it says this warning like this all be deleted in thirty days, and I go, nah, I'll just delete it all right now, let's clean. Let's sweep it clean anyway, all right. So ans to your question, So when it comes to backing up one hundred percent, like what you're doing, I like the idea of doing this, and you've got a lot of data, so you can use an off
the shelf product like Synology to do something. I have a little experience with the Synology just sort of the basic consumer NAS that they have, and NAS that's a fancy term for network attached storage, So that means that this is a small server that you sort of keep in your home. You know, if you work for a company, all that data that you're accessing on there, you know, you're navigating to these different folders and files on these servers.
That's really a server that you can kind of have at home with this NAS.
And so Snology is a big company that provides both, you know, consumer and prosumer solutions, and what you get from them would be a box that you can connect to your network with an Ethernet cable and then you go and you buy hard drives. Now, in this case one hundred terabyte drive. That's you know, that's going to be very expensive and you may need a couple of those. But what the Synology software does is it kind of
makes sure that everything on those drives is mirrored. So let's say you have, like me, if I have five gigabytes or five terabytes of stuff, I'd had one drive in there that's ten terabytes. All of my data's on there, and then there'd be another drive or redundant drive that everything is continuously copied to that second drive. So something fails on that first drive, all the data is there
on the second drive. So that's how that works. And then of course you want a backup that's somewhere not in your home, because what if something happened to your home, what if there's a flood. There are systems you can get that you can put these Synology drives in to keep them safe from fire and flood as well, but that's a whole other thing. As for the free software, I think Stephen, that you are a tinkerer. I think that you want to do this yourself, so I would
go with the free software. A true NASS like you mentioned, is a very popular one. I have not used it personally, but I think that that's probably what you're going to go with because that's something that you want to build on your own, and I think that that's what you're going to be more most happy with. And that's a lot of data. That's a lot of stuff to keep backed up, so you're going to need some big hard
drives for that. But I would do that and just continue to build this system the way that you want it and hopefully it'll continue to keep your stuff backed up. I don't think in your case with a hunterd terabytes, you can back that up off site. That's for sure, all right. I do want to mention before we get to our next guest, the chat GPT app for iOS. So chat GPT app for iOS is available. It's the first official app from chat GPT. You can now download
it for the iPhone. I will put the link on my website because if you search for it, it may be tough to find and you may get an imitation app. So rich on Tech dot tv for that. Coming back right after this, Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here talking technology with you. If you have a question, give me a call at triple eight Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four to.
One zero one shows. Moving along here.
I just found my flight to Athens cheapest one I could find nine hundred ninety one bucks. No direct flights from lax but this is on a airline called air Transap.
Never heard of that one.
June third through seventh, So I guess I'll need a fill in for that weekend, or I guess I'll do the show from Athens. All right, on the show. Now joining me is Jared Newman one of my favorite newsletters. Most of the newsletters I get in my inbox, I just delete, like without reading them. Jared's never that never happens to his newsletter because it's so good.
There's two of them.
There's Cord Cutters Weekly and then there is Advisorator. Both of them are excellent. Jared, Welcome to the show.
Hey, Rich, thanks for saying that. I really appreciate it.
Hey, last time you're on, I think we crashed your website because so many people were trying to subscribe. So let's hope to do that again.
Yes, I did.
I did upgrade my website, so hopefully that won't happen again. Oh.
Perfect, Well, welcome to the show. So first off, let's what do you want to talk about? First, you want to talk about this idea of the passwordless future or do you want to.
Talk about what do you want to talk about? I'm open at anything passwordless?
All right, So this is a new feature, and I know we've heard about the idea of past you know, no passwords for so long now, and there's been many solutions in the past, but now we're getting a little step closer with Google. Can you explain what they did this in recent weeks.
Yeah, so Google and Apple and Microsoft and a bunch of industry players have worked together on this system called past keys, And the way it works is traditionally, you want to sign up for a website, you create a password, and you give that password to the website. They store it, and then you have to enter that password to log in. The way that passkeys work is is kind of like a password, but it's stored on your device instead of
stored with whatever website you're signing into. And so the best way to kind of think about it is you want to sign in to say eBay or what have you, You create a pass key on your phone, and then your phone says, hey, eBay, rich is who he says he is because we just checked his face ID, we've got his past key here, so let him into the website. So supposed to work really elegantly in the sense that there's no risk of your password being stolen in a
security breach. Theoretically, if passwords don't exist anymore, then you're resistant to phishing attempts. And it's also just you don't have to member of password anymore generated in a password manager. So in theory, this is all going to make our password headaches go away.
Wow.
Okay, so let's go back to the eBay example. Okay, so don't I have to create an account with a password to begin or you're saying in the future, you wouldn't even have to do that. They would just say, okay, you know, scan a QR code on your phone or something to link this up your passcode on your phone to this site.
How's that going to work?
Yeah, So in the future that is the idea. Pretty much every version of password lists that you see today there is still a password. And in fact, if you go to eBay now.
Wait, you're telling me that in the future with password lists, we still have a password.
Well, I think they want to get rid of passwords over time. But you know, one thing, which is what I wrote about, is that the whole implementation right now is really messy and not really conducive to getting rid of passwords entirely. You're still going to need that fallback for a while, just because there's a a lot of areas where trying to log in with this passwordless system just falls apart, and so you still need the old ways.
Okay, So who is supporting this?
So Apple on the sort of the system level. Apple supports it, Google supports it on Android, and Microsoft supports it. One thing that gets a little tricky is just it's all tied to whatever ecosystem you're in. So let's say you're using an Android phone you want to sign into eBay. That passkey is stored in Android. You want to use an iPad to log into your eBay account. That gets
a little messy in terms of how you access that passkey. Now, there's sort of like a Bluetooth QR code system where you need to transfer the passkey over, and there isn't really a way to switch all of your passkeys into a different ecosystem. So you know, if you have a password manager now, you use one password and you decide you want to switch to Orton, you can export all your passwords, move them over and just go about your business. There's nothing like that with passkeys now, So that is
one thing that needs to be figured out. The other thing is just the way it works with all these sites is entirely different. If you want to create a passkey with best Buy, So if you go to log in a best Buy now, you'll see that their login page has a button that says sign in with passkey.
That's cal passkey.
You have to actually go deep into this account settings page and go find the option. It's almost like deliberately hidden out of the way so that normal people don't find it.
Okay, I'm looking at some of the websites that support passkeys, according to Digital Trends, PayPal, Kayak, best Buy, eBay, go Daddy, Google, dash Lane, Safari, card pointers. That's not too many websites. But here's the other thing. So, because my phone is my passcode now or my past key, I should say what happens if I lose my phone.
This riles me up because I think there are systems to recover your pass keys, but they're just not really very clearly documented. I think what's gonna happen in the future is the ideal. Ideally, you have more than one device, right, so if you lose your phone, maybe you use your laptop to kind of reauthenticate a new phone, or maybe
you have some backup codes printed somewhere. As if your phone's only your only device, you have a contingency plan or like Apple has the concept of a trusted contact where you know, you go to your spouse or something and say, all right, this person can unlock my account if I lose my phone. But as it stands, it's just all of this is not really made clear to users when they're getting started, and that again comes back to we're still going to need these passwords, uh, to
kind of mitigate all that. I actually just ran into this the other day because I did the Google pass key setup and I set it up on an Android device, and then I I went to log into a new site on my iPhone and the website wanted to connect with my Google account, and so when I went to do that, this app had its own like sort of in ap browser to connect to my Google account, so I had to do the whole signing system from scratch.
And then Google recognized that I had a passkey, so it was like the default thing was sign in with your pass key, but the only way I could get that passkey from my Android phone was to display a QR code on the Android phone and scan it with my iPhone. And that's just like this is way too hard, Like I don't want to deal with any of that. So I ended up having to click through a bunch of options to get back to signing into my password. So I think that this whole idea is really sound.
I don't want to sound like somebody that thinks this will not take off. I think eventually it will work, but just right now it's in this phase where there's a lot of industry excitement. It doesn't really match up with the reality of what people will experience when they go try to use it.
Right off, like actually using it.
But the bottom line is, so your phone, now remember these things, these little like USB devices like a UB key that you would plug in or you know, not even that it's it's like, remember there's like a device that would like display a code every like a two factor I mean, there's been so many things over the years to try to secure our accounts. So what they're saying is your phone is sort of your security code now,
like it's it's your phone. If you have your phone, you should be able to sign into a place without thinking about a password.
Yeah, that's right. I think the idea is that you get rid of these two factor authentication steps. Because you have your phone, you unlock it with your face or your fingerprint, and that sufficiently proves who you are. At least that's that's the idea. In theory. There is some some nitpicking over the fact that you can get in with a pin and if somebody steals your pin, you're in trouble. So it's like, again, there's just a lot of layers here, and even me just trying to wrap
my head around. Okay, I've got you know, I've got three pas keys now stored in my Best Guy account because I've got three different device ecosystems, and then there's another set of passkeys for Google. And it's just like this is hard for me even as a techie.
It so bottom line, and I've got just about a minute here, So do you recommend people set this up or just kind of sit and wait on this.
I think if you're kind of experimental about it and want to give it a try, you can. Again, the passwords aren't going away, so there's not like a huge risk, but you might run into some of these things like I ran into where your pass is stored on one device and you get to jump through an extra hoop to like not use that pass key, but you're not going to get locked out of your account as is. As a result in that, all.
Right, switching gears real quick before we got to go, how do we get free Apple TV Plus?
I sent you a few links. Basically, there's all these three months or two month free trials out there. Apple just launched a two month trial. Best Buy and Target have had them for ages now, and you would think with these trials you could only redeem them once. My experience has been if you kind of cycle through them, you can just kind of keep redeeming them. I'm a little hesitant about saying this on a huge radio show, but so far I haven't paid for Apple TV yet.
I've watched pretty much everything that I wanted to watch over the past couple of years.
I'm always surprised, and I've been using your chord Cutter sign up codes that come in your newsletter to sign up for Paramount Plus. I must have signed up now three or four times, and every single time I'm surprised that it continues to work. But now that I said this, guess what, It'll probably stop working.
Well. See, I'm always just as surprised as you.
Are, all right, So I put all the links to everything. Jared Newman of Advisorator, thanks so much for joining me today. I'm putting all the links on the website. What's the best way for folks to get in.
Touch with you.
Oh, if you want to sign up for chord Cutter Weekly, it's just Chordcutterweekly dot com and you'll get a welcome email from me, so you can always just reply to that get in touch.
All right, thanks so much for joining me today. I appreciate it. Yeah, thanks, Rich all right. Jared Newman of Advisorator put him on the website. So if you go to rich on tech dot tv you can get the links to everything we just talked about. Past keys to sign up for the newsletter, and of course how to get free Apple TV. Plus I'm paying like thirty three dollars a month for all those Apple services, and I'm really trying to like cut down on that because I feel like I could do that.
But anyway, that's my problem, not yours.
All right.
Coming up later in the show, we're gonna talk the good old days of BlackBerry. We're gonna talk about some new Amazon products. Plus your calls at triple eight rich one on one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Rich Demiro here, Rich on Tech talking technology with you. The phone number to call is triple eight rich one on one that's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one, or you can email hello at Rich on tech dot TV. AL is in Woodland.
Hills, AL.
You're on with Rich Hey, rich Kin you doing?
I am doing fantastic.
How are you fine?
Love your show?
Oh? Thank you?
I watch you almost every morning.
Oh nice, I like to hear that. See you up early or.
What I recorded?
Ah, Okay, I don't get up better early. Well, I do, believe me. And it's if people say, oh, it gets easy, I don't think so, at least not in the twelve years I've been doing it. But it's it's a load of fun. So I you know, that's what keeps me going.
Glad you enjoy it. Okay. So I had a problem with chat apt which I thought was fantastic. That the problem was they cut me off and I said, I'm exercised my maximum amount of rere selections and I need to subscribe for nineteen nine and nine a month. But guess what, I just locked in now just to make sure and now I can get in. Okay, But that sounds new very inaccurate on certain things.
Yeah, Oh you mean when you're asking it stuff?
Oh A review of the movie Air. Yeah, click movie and they kip giving me an old sci fi thriller.
Well okay, so on that note, so a couple things. You got a lot to unpack here. So number one, chat GPT is only up to date until twenty twenty one, so it doesn't even know about the movie Air, so, which, by the way, I've heard is an excellent movie.
So there's my review.
Okay, I haven't watched yet, but I guess it's it's on Prime and it's in the theater so you can see it, you know, if you have Prime. So that's number one. Number two, what website are you using to access chat gpt? Because basically there have been so many kling on sites that sort of are playing upon this that there's a lot of stuff that people are accessing that are not necessarily the original.
So what websit are you using?
Looks like a AI chat and it's got a most like op up Olympic Rings logo.
Okay, so the way the official website is chat dot OpenAI dot com.
Is that the one you're going to?
I'm not sure, but I'll try it again, okay dot com Okay, And this.
Is important for for many people because if you go online and search chat GBT, you may not get the official website the first time because there's so many other websites that are, you know, playing upon the popularity of this site, and there's other there's other things going on too. Some websites will use the power of chat GBT to power their own search chats and all that stuff.
Ai chat.
So if you want the original, if you want the official, it's chat dot open ai dot com.
Okay, I'll try that now when it comes Yeah, thing and barred.
Good question.
So I personally am really enjoying Bard because what I like about it is it's up to date, it's fast, and it's free. And so if you want to try that one, that is at Bard dot Google dot com, and just as of last week, they opened it up to everyone, so you no longer have to get on the wait list. You just go to Bard dot Google
dot com and you can start using it immediately. Now with Bing, if you want to access that one that is at bing dot com slash New and with that they're requiring you to download Microsoft Edge to use it.
For some reason.
I don't know why they're still doing that, but that is what you have to do, and Bang I thought was okay. And Bing actually uses chat GPT as their back end and it is up to date, so it does have the latest. If you looked up the review of Air on Bing, it should come up with the answer. But I found that Bing was a lot slower and the answers were just not as good is what I was getting from Google. So I personally have been using Google. I know that a lot of people like chat GBT,
but it really comes down to personal preference. Let's see, give me a review of the twenty twenty three movie Air, Let's see what it comes up with on Google, and let's see if it is going to do that. And sure enough, there it is. It gives me the whole thing. So yeah, so Google is very up to date on their information. But again it just kind of comes down
to personal preference. Chat GBT, I think right now, has the most apps that plug into it, so you can, you know, do different things with chat GBT, And like I mentioned, they also have the app, so if you want to get the app for chat GBT on the iPhone, it's only available for iPhone right now. It's not an Android just yet, but it is really good, so al, what do you think of the AI that you're seeing on this stuff? You think, I think it's pretty.
Cool or what?
Well, it's a combination of pretty cool and pretty dangerous. Yeah, the wrong hands.
Yeah.
I think that's the big concern right now is where this is going to go in the future. Right But I would I would cancel that twenty bucks a month. I don't think you need to be paying twenty dollars a month for this stuff.
I would refused.
Okay, okay, I would agree with that.
Thank you so much.
All right, thanks for asking. Very popular, very popular these days to talk AI. It's pretty much the only conversation that's happening almost everywhere. So how long do I have to before I can? I? Can I get one more thing in? I got a minute? Okay, let's see. Well, let me tell you about two things that are happening here with Echo. These are two new devices I want to tell you about. Echo Pop. This is from Amazon forty bucks. This is a new speaker and it's comes
in four different colors. And the cool thing about this Echo Pop is that if you have an euro network, it'll add to your Wi Fi network as a access point. So that's kind of Neat and the other new product from Amazon this week is the Echo Buds. These are fifty earbuds. I have not tested them, so I can't tell you how good they are. But what's cool is
that you know they're water resistant all this stuff. But they have this cool multi point pairing feature, which means you can pair your Echo buds to two different devices, say a laptop and a phone, and they will switch between the audio. So if you're listening to music on your phone and all of a sudden, a zoom call comes in on your laptop, it'll switch to that device. So that's kind of a cool feature that typically the more expensive earbuds have, and especially the air pods have.
So Echo Pop, New Speaker, Echo Buds, New earbuds, two new products from Amazon this week.
They come out with a lot of Alexa stuff.
They say they've got half a billion devices running Alexa at this point.
That's a lot. All right, give me a call triple eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four to one zero one.
That rounds out this hour. I'll be back in just a bit with more rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you talking technology at Triple eight Rich.
One oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one.
Welcome to our number three of the show. If you have a call or a question, give me a call. Everyone seemed to be looking at me this week with this story about car makers removing AM radio from their cars.
Everyone's like, Rich, what do you think about this?
Rich?
You just got a show on AM radio. What do you think?
I mean, I'm no expert, but I don't like it and I definitely am not a fan. And also it's one of these things where well, let me tell you the story. So BMW, Mazda, Volvo, Volkswagen, and Tesla have either removed AM radio from some of their electric cars
or they're going to. And Ford said that they're going to ditch AM radio in all cars, all new cars, gas or electric, and a lot of times, especially with Tesla, they mentioned that this is because of electromagnetic interference from with the evs and the electrical systems, and also the electric motors interfere with the AM frequencies which make them not sound so good. But there are four thousand AM radio stations out there that broadcast news, talk shows, sports,
my show. So what are people going to do, especially when it comes to emergencies. There's all the emergency weather alerts. The National Association of Broadcasters says AM radio is the backbone of the nation's emergency alert system. And also AM frequencies. They travel further, they go through more objects, so you can hear them in more places, so they just work better. But this is the debate why this is happening, whether it's going to continue, and what's going to happen to
AM radio. I don't have the answer, but I do know this. I grew up with AM radio. I grew up listening to it, my dad listening to it every single day on the way to school. Many people still listen here and in other places. And yes, times are changing. People are streaming, they're listening to satellite, they're listening to streaming podcasts, whatever. There are a million ways to listen. But why remove one of the options when people still
like it? And these car makers, Yeah, the whole interference and all that stuff. I mean, if someone's doing it, then they can do it now. I do know some of the stations will simulcast on an FM like an HD two or something like that. But it just seems to me as someone who's in the news when something is happening, right, when something's hitting the fan, you know what I'm talking about. You don't sit there and pull up Netflix.
What do you do?
You tune in to live broadcasts, over the air broadcasts. That's what we do, that's what we are trained to do, that's what we are, what we've been doing forever. And by not having that option, and let's say you've got this streaming on your car. And believe me, I love streaming,
don't get me wrong, it's great. But when it comes to live things that are happening in this world, we sort of turn to broadcasts that are happening in real time, that are over the air, that can be received by anything for free, and that's how we get that information and to have that go away. A. I don't think this is going to happen overnight. People are like, oh, it's gone, it's over, it's done. No, it doesn't happen overnight.
There are many cars out there that still have the ability to pick up these stations.
Now.
Maybe moving forward in the future there will be less, but it's not an overnight thing. It's not a cut and dry thing like oh, this is done, this is over, but it's it's definitely something to think about, especially as control goes away. So we have to think about that too. You know, when when you have something that's not available, you know, people when when it came to TV, people would say, like you know, the streaming, Oh just get YouTube TV or just get you know, Hulu, Well don't forget.
You know, those things cost money and you have to have equipment to have it, you know, to pick it up. Whereas an antenna, you know, you could put that anywhere and get the signal the same way no matter where you are. So anyway, I just I kind of want to address that, just because everyone's asking me what I think about that whole situation. There is some some bipartisan legislation to keep AM radio in cars. It's called the
AM for Every Vehicle Act. It would require that automakers maintain AM broadcast radio in their vehicles without a separate or additional payment fee or search arge. This is a bill that is making its way through I guess it hasn't happened yet obviously, but anyway, something to keep an eye on because it's it's definitely a topic of conversation that, Like I said, everyone's looking at me like I'm the expert.
I've only been on AM radio for six months, but you know, I hope to be on here for a very long time, or any radio.
I guess.
We talked about AI just a minute ago. So many hot topic issues in the tech world these days.
AI.
Sam Altman, the guy who created chat gpt, probably the fastest product in history to get the most users in the quickest amount of time. He was before lawmakers talking about AI and how everyone's kind of scared about what this could do, and we don't know. We really don't know right now. You type into a computer and ask a question. I asked for a review of the movie Air Okay, big deal. It gives me a quick review.
It looks at the Internet and summarizes what everyone else is saying about it, coming up with its own thoughts on it. It's just a good summarization of what other people have said. And a lot of times it's wrong. They call it hallucinating. These things just literally make up facts, and you don't know when you're reading it if it's real or not.
So you've got to be aware of this. Stuff.
Sam Altman was up there saying he welcomes regulation of this technology. He calls for independent audits, some sort of licensing system, and warnings like we have on food Okay, Like Google has a warning on the bottom of every page. It says Bard may display inaccurate or offensive information that doesn't represent Google's views. All it takes is one screenshot of something that Bard says that's just totally wild and wacky, and people are like, Google, why are you putting that
out in the world. Well, it's not us, it's it's they have a mind of their own.
These AI. Now, this is what I was getting at.
Someone's gonna build this AI into a role and that robot is going to think for itself quote unquote think and make decisions and do things. That is scary because I talked about hallucination. Hallucination. How do you say that word hallucination?
Right?
So, imagine this robot was trained to do one thing and then it decides to do something else. I know it sounds like a sci fi movie, but that is what we are going to be facing in the future here. And I'm not one of these people that's the conspiracy theorists. I'm not a fearmonger, none of those things. I am just someone who is realistic about this. There are going to be people that build this technology into things that
move and do stuff. It's gonna be airplanes, it's going to be all kinds of stuff.
Cars.
I mean, look at the debate over Tesla and there's self driving car. We never even really heard the term AI when it came to the self driving. Now, of course every car is gonna have AI built in for self driving, and that AI will have to make decisions. Sam Altman also addressed the election next year, saying how this is going to be a significant area of concern. It's gonna be the first election where AI is gonna have a huge impact. What we see, what we hear,
it's gonna be It's gonna be wild. It's gonna be a wild West of what can you believe? What can you not believe? There's gonna be videos on the Internet of politicians saying stuff and you don't know if they're real. I mean, that's wild. We've never seen that before in history. He said, Okay, let me see the video, and before it's like, I don't know, it's kind of grainy. No, now, it's gonna be them talking and you're like, Okay, I
don't know if that's real or not. He said when photoshop came on the scene, people were quite fooled by the images, but then people understood that images might be photoshopped.
But he said, this is going to be like that.
But on steroids, people are gonna really not understand what is happening in the world with AI.
Let's see what else.
If technology goes wrong, it can go quite wrong. We need to be on the right side of that. And yes, he said, chat GBT is going to entirely automate some jobs away, but he said that some jobs because of AI will be much better. And everyone's comparing the regulation of AI to what happened with sort of like social media networks and just kind of in general with technology over the past ten years. We kind of welcome this stuff, and now we're much more critical of it because we
realized what happened. These companies were able to grow and do things kind of on their own accord without much regulation, and this time around, everyone's kind of like, eh, let's kind of like, you know, maybe watch this a little bit more closely. AI is going to be really interesting. It's going to be really good in so many ways, but it's also going to have many, many implications in our lives, not all of them good.
Think about that.
All right, coming up, we're gonna talk after I get all the scary stuff out, Let's talk about the fun days when you BBN people.
He said, Hey, send me your pin.
We've got Christina Warren coming up to talk about the good old days of BlackBerry and of course the BlackBerry movie, which I just love.
More of your calls.
Phone lines are open Triple eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one. My name is rich d'miro. You are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here talking technology with you at triple eight rich one O one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one.
Don't forget to go to the website rich on Tech dot TV.
There.
I've got everything linked up to what I mentioned here on the show, and there is a lot. All right, coming up, we're gonna talk about BlackBerry, the movie and the device. If you haven't seen the movie yet, I don't know why I'm so excited about the movie.
It was just so good.
It was just really it overdid it for me. Like I just I didn't know what to expect, but I was just like wow, came away thinking how great it was. But I did want to tell you about this emails, phishing emails. Everyone always asks about antivirus software, and honestly, I feel like that was the past of how we used to get in trouble online. You know, the viruses, and it still happens, believe me. So you do need
to be on guard with that. But I think a majority of the scams these days are really emails and phishing emails specifically, and not just emails but also texts. So one of these training companies that a lot of corporations use, it's called no Before. If you ever gotten one of these emails from your company that says, hey, we need you to train on how to identify a
phishing email. It will just take twenty minutes of your time and then you have to like click through all these like little lessons and they try to like trick you you and quiz you and teach you all at the same time. Well that's what this company does. But even though you know it's kind of one of those things that no employee wants to do. It does teach you. And I had to take one the other day. It
was about phishing, and I literally slept through it. So like I can tell a phishing it was a phishing text kind of.
Education.
And it's just like, I, like, I could figure out a phishing text pretty easily, but I mean, you know, they're still tricky.
Okay.
So the reason I tell you this is because here are the emails they've seen in the first quarter of twenty twenty three that are trying to phish people, okay. And phishing is when they send you an email with either a link or a phone number in it that you click and you try to like do something like whether it's update your says, hey, your Amazon order can't ship. Can your credit card didn't get charged? Can you please update your number? And you go, what, my card's fine.
You go in, you click it and you type in your number and you press submit and then you go, oh, no, that was a phishing email.
Okay.
So the comment in the wild email headlines for Q one twenty twenty three Please review updated Financial Policies sounds innocent enough.
Zoom. The meeting has started, where are you? And sure enough you go in there, you click and it's a phishing link tries to get you to log in it laptop refresh. Ooh, I get a new laptop.
Yes, let me click and submit all my information. Oh wait, Meta suspicious activity. That's when I get all the time. It's always like a copyright thing or something like that. It's always through meta or Instagram. Share Point manager name has shared test data with you, and you go, what why are they sharing this with me? Let me open this up and see what that deal is. Microsoft Microsoft's new password requirements everyone uses Microsoft. Let's read about the new password requirements.
HR.
Please verify your banking information. Ugh, not verify your banking information to anyone, please, especially not a random email that you get. I don't think your your HR would ever do that.
You know.
One time I put in the wrong routing number on my paycheck.
And it went to someone else's account a couple hundred bucks because I did, like I it was like a separate account I had that I was like trying to save some money in or something, and I guess I typed in the numbers wrong, and so literally someone got a couple hundred dollars from me, and I called my bank, I called my HR There's nothing they could do. They this person literally got free money. I don't even believe that that's like something that could happen, but it did.
I was like what, So I was like a couple numbers off, I guess with my bank account. So please check your bank account numbers, the routing numbers twice before you submit, because there's not much you can do to get that money back. Uh, docu sign, DOCU sign account suspension notice. Oh, docu sign is really a big fishing one because is if you ever buy a house or a car or have to sign anything, you're using DocuSign and so you click there. Next thing you know, they're
taking you for a ride. Webmail security alert for and then your email address. Now that sounds kind of generic webmail, but when it has your email address in the headline, you might say, oh, they've got my email, so that must be important. But believe me, they can get your email in a variety of ways. And then finally, refund has been processed to your account. Refund has been processed
to your account. Oh, who doesn't want to refund? And then you see this large number and you say, wait, I don't think I had a refund for that amount. They say, we've seen a lot more business related email subjects coming from hr it and managers in the past year, so be careful if you see anything from hr IT your managers, it's because they play upon the stuff that we really get, and a lot of us really get emails from our hr and IT managers other us. Others
involve logins on new devices and password resets. Oh that's a good one. Hey, did you just log in on this phone and they give you some random phone and you say no, well click here to fix that, and next thing you know, you get that that phishing email. Again, tax related subjects were really popular. And again all of these attacks are effective according to no Before because they cause a person to react before thinking logically about the
legitimacy of the email. So again, these all prey upon stuff that we need to do immediately because you're like, wait a second, I didn't just log in. Wait a second, my routing number is wrong. I've got to sign this document. Suspicious activity. These are all things that want you to do stuff really fast, So don't do things fast online.
Do it slow.
When you go through I always say this when you go through sort of the the click pages that you know they want you to go through some sort of sign up or log in or flow screen, just just look at what you're doing. It's always very important to keep that in mind. Don't get fished, please, it happens to the best of us, believe me. All right, coming up, we are going to talk about the BlackBerry. I'm very excited. I know I've been hyping this up throughout the whole show.
There's a new movie called BlackBerry. I don't know if you need to see it in the theaters, but definitely put it on your list to see when it comes out on streaming. But if you want to see in the theaters I did. It was a great time. We're going to talk to Christina Warren. She is a tech expert. Many many years she had a BlackBerry and she wrote a great article about BlackBerry. Coming up, we're going to talk BlackBerry. You're listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back
to rich On Tech. Rich Demiro here talking technology with you.
And BlackBerry. Yes, do you remember your BlackBerry?
I do.
It's tough to remember just how exciting it was to have a BlackBerry in this iPhone world we live in. But there's a new movie called BlackBerry, which is really good. It's a fictional movie, but it's based on a true story.
I saw it this week. It was excellent.
Really surprised me with how good it was because I'm like, I'm a tech person, so of course I'm gonna enjoy this, but with like a random person enjoy and I think the answer is yes. Then I read this article by Christina Warren, who has been reporting on technology for many years and now as a developer, and I just had to bring her on the show to talk about this. Christina, Welcome to the show.
Thank you so much for having me, And I'm so glad to be able to talk about blinking hery.
Of all things, I know you, it's so wild.
So I remember you back from your Mashable days, obviously, and then on Twitter your film Girl, which forever lives with me, and I remember you wrote an article about why you use that name?
Right, Yeah, yeah, So I went to film school and I was in college when I started using Twitter, and that was just sort of like my name on various forums. And I didn't realize in two thousand and seven that that was going to become my identity, you know, basically for the rest of my career.
But it has. There we are, but here we are.
Here we are.
And in this case, because you know, we're talking about the BlackBerry movie, we're talking about BlackBerry. I'm film girl.
It works there you go, all right, So tell me about bring us back to the days of having a BlackBerry. It's kind of tough to remember, but they sort of paved the way for I Message and all these different I guess proprietary texting networks because BBM was really what made this device so amazing.
Right to me, it really was right.
So I wrote an article for Verse about how BlackBerry Messenger forever changed the way we text because after I saw the film, which I agree with you, I think it's just really really fair fantastic, whether you're you're end attach or just like these sorts of stories about balls from Grace. I was thinking about, how, you know, when you think about the BlackBerry, most of us think about the keyboard, and I think that's true, like that's an
intrinsic part of the device. But for me, and I think for many of us, what made it really sticky, the thing that made it a Crackberry was the fact that you had this always on messaging and for some people that was email. For a lot of us it was it was BBM, which was a BlackBerry Messenger. And this, you know, in two thousand and five when it was released, was actually pretty revolutionary because you basically had like I am the same way.
That we would have on our desktops or laptops back.
Then, you would have it on your phone. And this was in an era when text messages were between you know, five and twenty cents a piece, and some of them were more expensive. If you wanted to text to people in different countries and you couldn't really send, you know, photos or files, it was much more rudimentary. And in two thousand and five, BlackBerry had a way where you could text one person or you could be in groups of people, and you didn't have to pay per text.
It was unlimited. You could text as much as you wanted, you could sit files, you could send photos. One of the big innovations they created, and part of this was actually this comes from the book of Losing the Signal that the Black Gray film is loosely based off of.
But one of the innovations they came up with, which still stands with us today, was this idea of knowing if your message was received and then if it was read, and so they would have these these d icons were delivered and are for read and that basically was put into place to make sure the network was working, and
that's why that was originally there. But it then created this psychological thing with many of us, which was, you know, you found out if you were left on red, like, okay, I see that you read my message, I see that you are around.
Why have you not responded?
And you know that's something that that WhatsApp has, the Facebook messenger has, that I message has if you unless you turn off read receipts. And so it's it's really fun that this that that's sort of a you know, like UI paradigm is still a cultural thing with us eighteen years later.
And you know, I think there's also a kind of a gosh, what's the word for. I mean, when you see that a message was read, it just feels good because you know that it was either looked at and you know, understood, even if they don't reply back to you, which is a whole nother thing, right, but you know that it was it got in before someone's.
Eyes, right, absolutely, and it just absolutely it makes you feel better knowing that.
And so I think part of this whole thing with the blue bubble versus green bubble, you know, when you text from an iPhone to an Android or vice versas, that you don't see that, and there is something psychological about like, oh, I don't know if that was delivered, I don't know if that's the right phone number. I'm not sure if they ever saw that. And so there is something to the just kind of the the comfort in knowing that something was read or looked at, even if someone doesn't.
Reply to you. I totally agree, totally agree.
So in the movie, they talked about how they kind of hacked these cellular systems into working with these messages, right because they weren't really equipped at that time to handle all of these phones on a network with all these messages going by. So I thought that was a pretty interesting side of this whole thing.
What did you make of that?
No, totally and that you know, parts of the movie are definitely embellished, and they changed the timeline around a little bit. But from what I've read from the book, Losing the Signal on some other things that I think was actually accurate. The original BlackBerry network was using a network called Mobitex and this was something that Bell South, I believe that they were the carrier who was responsible for it in the United States, and then there was
one of the Canadian carriers did it in Canada. And it was this kind of area of radio spectrum that could be used for primarily for text messaging. And so even though you might not have the spectrum to have
a bunch of voice calls at once. This was what was brilliant about research in Motion is they figured out we can compress these text packets and we can use this spectrum to send multiple asynchronous messages all the time, and we can have them flowing back and forth, and we can use this as kind of you know, this was nineteen ninety nine, two thousand. We can use this
as a very rudimentary data network. And this was, you know, a decade before most of the major wireless carriers did actually start to shift to away from voice and into being pure you know, data pipes.
Now, this just made me think of something because BlackBerry seemed unstoppable at the time. If you didn't have a BlackBerry, you were kind of like, you know, out of sorts. BBM was just it was like the only thing right, And now we think about today there are so many apps that do exactly this. But I Message seems to hold kind of like this crown because it's Apple and it's on the iPhone, it's proprietary. Could we see the
same thing happened to Apple? If something else better comes along, or if they they're not going to open up I message ever, we know that, yeah.
I mean I doubt that they would. I I think that they I don't know. I think about that because in one case, I don't think that they need to open up my message. I think that it is a good enough mote to say, this is a consistent experience that you have if you are on a Macro, an iPad or an iPhone, and you know, we have this better experience. We can do into end encryption, and we can transfer files, and we can FaceTime and all that stuff.
I don't know if they need to open it up to anywhere else at the same time, to your point, could something else usurfit? Definitely right? I mean a lot of these are cultural shifts, and depending on what part of the world you're in is kind of dependent on what messager you use. So even though iPhones sell very well, Like I have a lot of friends who live in parts of Europe and parts of Asia, who I message is not how they communicate, right They're using you know,
line or we chat or WhatsApp. And then I talk to friends of mine who have teenagers and a lot of their kids are on Discord and that has really become kind of their primary platform. So I think it's always possible that those things could be disrupted, you know, to your point, we have more of these than ever before. But I also feel like Apple is in a little bit of a different situation than BlackBerry.
BlackBerry.
The problem with BlackBerry was that the phones weren't good enough for people to have to remain on medium.
They were right on trick Pony, they had only BBM, whereas iPhone has I mean, iPhone is everything. It literally it's taken over twenty five different gadgets that we used to have exactly.
And it's arguably the best in class phone, right Like it's it's arguably like if you're in that ecosystem and you can have them for a long time, like you are getting a really great phone so I think that's a little bit different, but I definitely, you know, I remember a couple of years ago, I started getting invited to just tons and tons of Discord groups and I'm still in a bunch of them, and that is definitely replaced for for some of my friends.
And I like that is that is our group text.
Better than I message.
And that's when my kids, that's you know, they're younger, and that's you know, obviously, that's all they talk about is Discord. When can we get on Discord?
All right?
Which was your favorite BlackBerry gosh?
Okay, Well, I'll always have a soft spot for the for the first BlackBerry Curve because I love that phone. But I think the Bold, one of the Bolds, the BlackBerry Bold that had like the little uh like little mini track pad.
Yeah, I love that, And it had like a leather back.
It was just so slick.
It was just the leather back like it just it just was a great looking device, you know, so of its era. It's so funny to look at those now and go, man, we thought those were.
We looked cool.
They were like little tanks, they could take anything, and they had you know, removable batteries.
I mean the BlackBerry Pearl. Remember how like delicate that was. It was just half the size. Oh so cute. Okay, gotta go.
But Glenn Howardton, who played Jim Bacilli in the movie, he was incredible.
I was so good, I mean so good.
I just couldn't get over the performance of all the actors were great.
Them, No, they were great. He really sold the show.
When I saw the trailer, originally, I'm gonna be honest with you, I was a little bit worried. I was like, they are going to take this book that I love, right, and I see comedic actors. I was like, this is not going to be a good film. And I walked away seeing I was like, I want to see this again.
I want other people to see this.
I think that it's genuinely one of the best tech, you know, story movies that I've seen in a really, really long time.
Yeah, really fun.
It seems like they ride the line between really interesting, like almost like a characterature of these of these people, but it's it's done in a way that it actually works, and it's just it's great, So go see it. The movie is BlackBerry and Christina Warren film at Film Underscore Girl on Twitter. You can follow everything that you do there. Thanks for joining me today.
Thank you so much for having me.
All Right, the movie again, BlackBerry got to see it. Remember and tell me what your favorite BlackBerry was at me on Twitter, at rich on Tech or just BBM me here's my pin. Just kidding, don't have that anymore?
All right?
Oh gosh, I guess we're almost at the end of the show. Coming up, we're going to do feedback, one of your favorite segments right here on rich On Tech.
We'll be right back.
Welcome back to rich on Tech, closing out the show Man three hours. If you want three hours to go by really fast, just do a radio show. I mean, it's just speed time. I literally come in here equipped with about one hundred things I want to tell you about, and I leave with about ten every week that I just well may much more than ten. Anyway, let me get through a couple of things before we get to
the feedback segment. Apple this week showed off a couple of new features designed for folks with disabilities that will be coming later this year, and some of them are really interesting. Assistive Access This is a new experience on the eye iPhone and iPad that makes everything very simple. So they say it distills the iPhone and iPad apps just so their essential features in order to lighten cognitive load.
So it's a very simple to understand screen, home screen, and then when you go into the apps, everything is just one or two big buttons that are very easy to use. So that's going to be a very popular feature for a lot of folks out there. Then there's something called live speech and personal voice. So personal voice you probably heard about in the news. Live speech users can type whatever they want and have it spoken out loud.
There's been many apps that can do that in the past, but now that it's built in, that's going to be very handy. But they take it to the next level. You can spend fifteen minutes on the iPhone recording different phrases, and then the iPhone will use AI to make a model of your voice, so now your phone can speak out loud in your voice.
Now, before you get into.
The whole lot that's scary and AI and all this stuff, this is really aimed at folks who may be at risk of losing their speech because of some sort of medical diagnosis like als, so imagine, and it's very sad to even think about that, But imagine that's happening to a loved one and you can have them record their voice and now they can use this live speech to
actually sound like them. I know it's never going to be them, but it's the closest thing we can get things to technology, and Apple says it's all happening on the phone and it's secure in private. Then there's this point and speak feature. This is for users who are blind or low vision. This is built into the Magnifier app.
You can point to something like some sort of physical object like a microwave, and it will read out loud what is on there, So like if a button is labeled or something, it'll say, you know, thirty seconds popcorn or one, two, three, whatever it is. These are all coming later this year. They're not going to be on your phone just yet, but I figured i'd tell you about those because it's pretty interesting.
What they're doing.
Tsa testing facial recognition. So instead of the officer looking at your ID and comparing it against your face, the facial recognition will compare the two. So a lot of the airports, you just kind of slide your ID into a reader and then it tells you, you know, it tells the officer that you're on that flight or whatever. You can go through the checkpoint. But this will actually take it a step further. You stand in front of an iPad and it will compare the photo on your
ID to you standing there. Testing this at sixteen airports Baltimore, DC, Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Orlando, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, San Jose, and a couple in Mississippi. I could have sworn I saw it at the Austin Airport when I was going through there, but it wasn't in my line.
But you have the option of saying no if you're worried about privacy.
But they're trying to make checkpoints faster sead of having human compare the IDs. It's going to be an algorithm, so coming soon. Don't be surprised if you see it. Feedback time, schw says hello. Concerning smart plugs, I ran into a problem that could be a lot of problems for people out there.
We were out of town.
My smart plugs lost Wi Fi. I was able to remotely verify that my WiFi and router were okay, because my camera was still working. I expected these smart plugs would be smart enough to reconnect to Wi Fi, but they never did. When we got home, I had to unplug and replug all the smart plugs back in, and they reconnected. They're made by feet Fit Electric. I contacted them. They said, nope, the only thing you could do is unplug them and plug them back in. But this doesn't
work if you're out of town. They were used to control lamps, so when I came home they were all on. As a workaround, I put the smart plug into a digital timer that powers off and back on every twenty four seconds to reset the plug. And he thoughts, yeah, not all smart things are made equally, and when you leave the house, that's when these things to act up. Every single time. Ken says, hey, did you hear me on your last show yelling at my phone? The guy
with the ten thousand MP three files? He could have installed Plex or Mby or Jellyfinn to stream his music. I'm pretty sure uploading to YouTube music is not free. I believe it is, but those are good suggestions.
Thank you.
Neil says, hey, interesting session last week. The record brings back memories unfortunately memories of noise even in the silent places between songs. Also, they had record changers, which would allow you to stack up several records and it would move from one to the next. Hopefully, since we're making a comeback, someone will figure out how to make a record that doesn't have clicks and pops every time you try to play it. Keep it coming, Neil. Let's see,
Gary says Carol Stream, Illinois. Isn't this the place you were talking about today? Billing centers for AT and T and credit cards were located there. Those who pay by check would mail their payment.
Yes, that's what it was.
Mailed a lot of payments to Carol Stream. They got lots of my money. Mark says that record player in your hotel is a basic model. Since the earliest days, most had an automatic feature where the tone arm would return back to the rest position once the last song plays. The best record players can also automatically move and lower the tone arm onto the starting track with the press of a button. Such features existed even sixty years ago. Yours was a basic model. Yes it was, Mark, but
I still loved it. The record player.
Can you believe it?
That's gonna do? It for this episode of the show three hours gone by. Like that next week, I am getting turned into a hologram. I'll tell you about that experience. And check out the show notes. I put them at richon tech dot tv. This is show number twenty, so show number twenty. If you go to the website, let's see how it's labeled here.
Let me see.
You can either look at rich on Tech Radio show wiki or rich on Tech Radio Show twenty and you should see notes for everything I mentioned here. I took do very good notes like a little transcriptionist over here. So I've got links to everything I mentioned, including that free TV which I know you want. You can find me on social media. I am at rich on Tech I'm on Instagram, I'm on Twitter, I'm on Facebook. Find me there, chat with me, Engage with the show, and
tell your friends about this show. By the way, that's the only way we're going to really grow this show. I know you want to keep it to yourself, you want to keep it a secret, all this good technoledge, but please share it with your friends. Share it on social media, say hey, this is what I'm listening to. Just let people know, all right, my name is Richardimiro, thanks so much for listening. I know there are so many ways you can spend your time. I do appreciate
you spending it right here with me. Thanks to everyone who makes this show possible. I will talk to you real soon