Why you shouldn't store a bunch of money in those cash apps, what Ring did wrong and how they're moving forward, and why you might want to print your boarding pass or use your phone before you leave home. Plus your tech questions answered. What's going on. I'm Rich Demiro and this is rich on Tech, the show where I talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about. It's also the place where I answer your questions about technology.
I'm the tech.
Reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles. Welcome to the show. Let's check the notes here. This is show number twenty two. If this show is a baby, it would still be in diapers. Oh, I remember that that journey woo. That seems like forever ago for me. My kids are now eight and eleven, so that was a while back. Phone lines are open at triple eight Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Give me a call if
you have a question about technology. If you're shy, maybe you don't feel like calling me. Email is also open. You can send it to hello at richontech dot TV. Well, if you listen to this show a lot, you know I've really been into my movies lately. So my wife, actually, she's heard me talk about these movies so much that I'm seeing she made me sign her up for that like unlimited AMC pass, so now we both have it,
and we went to the movies last night. One movie I did not get to see in the theater, but I did watch it at home and it was excellent, excellent, excellent. You have to watch this movie. Do not waste another minute of your life without seeing the movie.
Air.
This is the story of how and this really has nothing to do with tech. It was just so phenomenal. This is the story of how Air Jordan's came to be through Nike. And you might I'd say, Rich, I'm not into sports, Rich, I don't care about Nike. Rich, I don't watch movies. I don't care what the excuses stream this movie. It was in the theaters. It is on Amazon Prime, so if you have a Prime membership,
it is free. It is inspiring, it's fun, it's nostalgic, it's a great story, and it forever changed the landscape of sports marketing. And again, you don't have to be in sports to enjoy this movie. It was just so good. Talk about a sleeper hit because I was telling people at work, did you see it?
Did you see it?
And some people saw it, some people didn't. I don't think the marketing around it was all that great. And as I sit and watch these movies on these streaming services, it amazes me that Amazon is making movies right. I mean, this was on Amazon Prime. How strange is it that Amazon, the company that has these trucks all over the country delivering products to people's homes, is in so many different businesses, as is Apple, as is Google.
It's the same thing.
When I watch an Apple show, I sort of just assume every product in the show is going to be Apple or Apple based or somehow an ad for Apple. And a little fun fact, the guy who runs Apple TV. I actually intern for him back in the day. It was one of my first internships ever, and I guess he did pretty well. I'm here, he's there. I'll never forget that we were with this show. Oh gosh, this
is really dating me. The show that was popular when when I was an intern at Columbia TriStar which is now where the Amazon studios are, was Dawson's Creek, and so I would watch the dailies they call him and the dailies. If you're in LA, it's like every day they would send back all the video that they shot that day, so the powers that be could watch, like how things are going. And so I'd sit there and watch the dailies of Pace and what was his name, Dawson?
I guess right, it was Dawson's Creek. Let's see what else is happening in my world today. Dog sitting. We've been dog sitting for the past week. My kids have wanted a dog forever and they finally got one, only for a week because the friends are off somewhere, and I was a little hesitant, but I said, you know what, let's just do it. We'll teach the kids a good lesson. And now, of course this dog has been fantastic, by the way, but now my kids want me to sign
up for this Rover, which is like this. You know, it's kind of like Airbnb for dogs, and you sign up and you're a host and people just drop their dogs off to your house and you watch them and I'm looking and it's like, you know, you might make like fifty sixty bucks a night, depending on you know, how if you have like a nice bed for this dog.
I don't know. I'm kind of into it.
I feeling like it's some nice extra cash and it teaches the kids and it's all. It's brought us together as a family because we've had to walk around every night, like every night after dinner. It's I gotta take the dog on a walk, and the kids are like, sure.
I want to walk them. I want to walk them. That's good news to me as a parent.
We got the Apple event coming up next week, so this is a huge this it could be potentially huge and transformative. Apple event next week expected to unveil a virtual reality or augmented reality headset. Many have tried this in the past. No one has succeeded in a huge way. Although we'll talk in a little bit about what's in the market right now and what's coming soon, but you know, it's Apple, and when Apple does something, they somehow move
mountains and they establish new standards. And that's probably what's gonna happen next week. So I'll be up there in Kuopertino. It's happening on Monday morning, and I can't go into too many details because I'm under so many like restrictions they call them NDAs where you can't really talk about
what you know. But with Apple everything is secretive, and so even how they tell you what you're gonna do, they can't even tell you where you're gonna be at a certain time because that gives them, that gives you too much information. So all I know is that I will be up there for a couple of days and that's it, and it's the rest is a surprise. But I assume we will see some new hardware, definitely new software.
We're going to find out what the next version of iOS is going to do, with the next version of the iPad operating system is going to do. They give us all the new features that are coming out, so that'll be exciting. And that's not all. In the next couple of months. This is the slide into the holidays. We've got a Samsung event coming up rumored. Of course, all this is rumored, but it kind of happens every
year like clockwork. And the rumor is this Samsung event is going to be in South Korea this year.
Usually they do their.
Events in New York or San Francisco, but word on the street is that they may be going home to do this one. Now of course, you know I want to go there. So that's happening supposedly later this summer. One plus, they've got a foldable phone supposedly they're launching. That'll be interesting. Then we've got Apple again for the new iPhones iPhone fifteen later in the year, that usually happened September. And then we've got Google with their new
Pixel phones that usually happens in October. And then that brings us into the tech slide, into the holidays, where we have to decide what's worth buying, what's not worth buying. And then, by the way, there might be another Amazon Prime Day in the middle of all that. So needless to say, I've got my work cut out for me in the next couple of months through the holidays, because there are going to be so many great products coming out, so many things to talk about, and so many foldable phones.
It's so wild how foldable is now a thing.
One other thing I was doing before I came to the show is backing up my backup of my photos. I know there's nothing sexy about doing backups, but let me tell you, I just have to remind you every so often. Please, if you have stuff in the Cloud, back your stuff up, back that photo up, because you don't want these things to go away. I'm telling you I've got I did it this morning. I did to take out a Google takeout of my photos in Google Photos.
I'm not leaving Google Photos, but I just want a physical copy of them on a drive that's not Googles. I don't think Google's going away anytime soon, but you know, it's just peace and assurance that my photos are in a couple of different places, so I've got them backed up. If you have Amazon Prime, you can back up your photos for free, unlimited, as long as you keep paying for that.
So that's a good way.
Just put that on your phone, open it up every once in a while, let your photos back up to Amazon Photos. You don't even have to use the service. Just let your photos go there, so that way you know you don't lose them, just you don't have to think about it. It's just free if you have Amazon Prime, so do that. Otherwise, if you're using iCloud or using Google Photos or any other photo storage online. At some point during the year, you only really have to do
this once a year. You could do it more if you want, but just download all those photos and back them up, and it's a big process. So for me personally, like I said, I got three point five perabytes? Did I say gigabytes earlier? Three point five terabytes? Now how long it takes to download that? It's seventy one individual files of fifty gigabytes each. Believe me, that is not something I feel like doing on my weekend, but yet
here I found myself doing it on the weekend. Because you want to have that backup, so please do that, all right, that's my reminder, that's my preach. Coming up on the show, We've got a lot to talk about. I'm going to talk about the latest government warning about why you shouldn't store a bunch of money in those cash apps, you know, those payment apps that you use that we love.
We've got some.
Great guests this week. Nick Sutrich is going to join us from Android Central. He's going to talk about the current state of VR. Ross Borden he works for Matador Network. He is going to tell us about this new AI travel chatbot I've absolutely been loving.
It's called guide Geek.
I'm going to tell you how to set that up on your phone and make you travel like a local anywhere you go. And later Trig Watson. This is a tech magician. I know magic doesn't really translate on radio. We're gonna find out. He had a recent appearance on America's Got Talent. He's gonna tell us why and how he uses tech in his magic act. He is a great guy and he's always working. But first it is your turn. We're gonna have your calls and questions coming
up next. If you haven't called in yet, give me a call. The phone lines are open. It's triple eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one. My name is Rich d'miro and you are doing something smart today. You are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. My name is Rich DeMuro, 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. So much to talk about today. Just to remind me that I do keep very good notes about what I mentioned. It's all on the website. Just go to rich on Tech dot TV. Once you're there, just look for rich on Tech Radio show and this is show number twenty two. You click that and you will see as we go along. I've got all of the notes listed and links to everything I mentioned. All right, let's kick it off with Brian. Brian's in Morino Valley, California. Brian, you're on with Rich.
Hi.
I have a kind of just a basic question. I've got some PCs and a couple of tablets that I've used in the past that I cannot operate anymore. They're broken as far as I know, but I've been hesitant to get rid of them because I didn't know if somebody else could get hold of them and potentially resurrect some of my personal information and make me kind of a risk for I ten e. How do I safely get rid of this stuff without endangering my personal information that might be trapped in there?
Good question? These are these are old devices that no longer power up.
Correct?
Okay?
Core?
All right, So a couple of things you want to do if you are getting rid of a computer or a tablet or anything the modern tablets and computers and phones, if you can turn them on, it's very simple. It's just a factory reset, and that is typically in the settings. It varies from device to device to device, but typically just you can Google factory reset and then device name, and you can do that and it will typically wipe
everything clean if you want to. You can log out of certain services before you do that, like any Google or websites that you're logged into. But you don't necessarily have to, but you could. I mean I typically don't, but it's good to do that. I know how to clean it up after. So if you don't, maybe you want to log out now. When it comes to things that you cannot turn on, I went through this a while back. My boss gave me a computer. I think I told this story before. My boss gave me a computer,
and he entrusted me with this computer. He said, Rich, I would like you to wipe this computer clean and get rid of it. And this computer, when you turned it on, had all of his personal information. And believe me, I was tempted you to look, but I didn't. I'm like a doctor, right, I respect your privacy, And so as much as I was tempted, I said, I'm not going to look at the spreadsheet that says here's how much money I make.
No, I'm just kidding, but it was really tempting.
So it took me a couple of months to figure it out because nothing I tried so many different ways. But with an older device, there is something called dban and this is a software free software that you can load up onto a flash drive or a CD if that will work, and you load it up and it will kind of wipe the computer clean, and so you can do that as well. Now that's a little bit
more complicated. So if you're not very techy, you probably want to get a tech friend to help you with that, or you know, there are sometimes nice people in neighborhoods that will just help you with this. So if you, you know, call up your local repair clinic or computer specialist, they may be willing to.
Help you do this.
Now, you can also take these devices to a trusted recycling facility. Best Buy and Staples both say that even if you bring them a computer that has information on it, they will securely wipe that information for you. Now, if you're like me, you're probably not going to want to leave a lot of that to chance, but you might want to put some trust in the system, some faith in the system and hope that they will do that
for you. The other thing you can do, Brian, and this is kind of like the bottom line thing you might be able to do with these devices is just pop out the hard drive. So if you've got a screwdriver, this a laptop or a desktop, you know, open up this thing and just find the hard drive I've disconnected, take out the screws. It's only a couple of screws, and then once you have that hard drive, just either hold on to it or you can bring it to
a hard drive shredding facility. Many cities have those. I've actually seen this in person. It's very cool. They put these hard drives into a big machine. It's like it costs like ten bucks and they let you watch your hard drive get pulverized. And it's unbelievable how this thing just shreds this hard drive to pieces. And I'm telling you, if you do that, you'll know that your stuff is gone and everything's good. So those are kind of the ways to do it if you want to di wy
the hard drive. And I can't say I've done this myself, although I have a few that I'm gonna try to do with my father in law. You can take a screwdriver through the soft side of the hard drive and drill a screw through it, and that should do it. But again, these are not things that you do if you're using a screw sorry, a screwdriver up drill for the first time. That's something if you're a little bit skilled, you've got a vice grip in your garage, you know
how to do that kind of stuff. I'm not recommending that average person does that in your garage. Please do not hurt yourself trying to get rid of these hard drives. But those are the best ways I know of getting rid of the old devices. Either recycle, find someone to do it, or you can DIY. Great question, Brian, thanks for kicking us off today in Marino Valley. All right,
let's talk about these payment to payment apps. There is a new warning from the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, and they're basically saying that when you store money in these apps, and they mention a bunch of them, Okay, you know what they are, PayPal, Venmo, cash App, Apple pay. When you keep money in those apps, you don't know if
that money is ensured by Federal deposit insurance. And so this was always my biggest issue with Venmo, that when you pay someone, let's say you have one hundred dollars in your Venmo account and you have to pay someone one hundred and fifty, they will take that full one hundred and fifty dollars fresh from your bank account, instead of taking the one hundred dollars from your account and then taking just fifty. I always thought that was really weird.
Why do they do that. They do that because they earn interest on the money that you're keeping inside that account, and they make it tough for you to get rid of that money. They don't automatically sweep any money. So sometimes I'll log into my Venmo and be like, oh, I didn't realize I had like one hundred and ten
dollars in there or something. But the bottom line of this entire article and warning that they put out I guess they call it the findings, is that you do not want to keep a large amount of money in these apps because if these apps ever went under, you may not get your money back.
Now.
I don't know a lot of people keeping, you know, ten thousand, twenty thousand dollars inside these apps. Maybe if you run a business, you do, but just be aware of that. Be aware that this is not a regular bank where your money is insured up to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Now, I don't think that Venmo or PayPal or Google Pay or Apple Pay are going to fail anytime soon, or the cash app. But I think it's just good to be aware of this stuff.
That's the important part. So don't keep your money in there, and get it out of there as soon as you can. Rich on Tech more coming up right after this. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology at triple eight Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one. Let's go to Kirk in Denver, Colorado. Kirk, you're on with Rich Rich.
How are you to day?
I am doing fantastic. How are you out there?
And great?
Thank you good?
What can I help you with?
But my question is on the air a few minutes ago you said you backed up your phones with a three point something to aerobyte system.
Yeah, how the heck can I afford that?
And how do I do that?
Well?
Okay, I said, I'm in the process of it, because it is a long process. I downloaded. So okay, Number one, I have my photos in Google Photos, and Google Photos does not make it very easy to sync to another.
Service.
So I mean you can, but you can sync to like one drive or Dropbox, but to get three point five terabytes on those services, it's going to cost you a lot of money. So what I did is I got a hard drive, a five terabyte hard drive, and that's how I'm doing it. And so you have to go to Google Takeout and you say I want to copy of all my data, and you just select your photos. It may take a day or twenty four hours for it to compile it, and then once you do, it'll
send you an email. And I got seventy one individual download files of fifty gigs each, So now I'm in the process of downloading each one of those and then transferring them to that five terabyte hard drive. It is not a fast process. But the good news is once I have this done, I don't necessarily need to do it again another year, and I'll have all of my photos up from the beginning of time until now on that drive. And then next year maybe something better will
come along, maybe a lot faster Internet, who knows. But that's the system I'm using, and it's gonna be a little different for every you know cloud provider you have, but that's what I'm doing and it's gonna be a while. I'll keep you posted because it's gonna take a long time for me to do this. All right, thanks so much for the question. Now let's talk about virtual reality. Nick Sutrich is the content producer for Android Central. Nick, thanks for joining me today.
Hey Rich, how you doing? Thanks for having me on.
I am doing fantastic.
You cover VR for a living, so and I know you work for a website with Android in the name, But are you excited for this event next week to see what Apple might unveil when it comes to virtual reality?
Definitely, really really looking forward to it.
And why what do you think I mean?
Because we have headsets kind of Let's first off talk about the state of VR right now. So we've got what's called virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality. Can you explain what all three of those are?
Sure?
Yep.
So while some headsets can do both, these two things are actually very different.
Surprisingly, right.
VR is a way to replace the reality that you're in with a virtual one.
It's something that puts you in the game instead of just staring at a screen across the room.
So like if you're playing Minecraft in VR, you'd actually chop a tree with an axe to get wood, or swipe at an enemy with a sword to attack them instead of just pressing buttons on a controller. AR, or augmented reality, is a way to place virtual objects in
the real world. This is usually something that only you can see because it's done with a pair of glasses, and those glasses usually have like a small screen lens or something with AR, Like you can do a home workout in your living room right and while you're doing that, you could see your trainer standing next to you, even
though they're not physically there. But the difference here is that you'll also still see your living room during that time, so you're not gonna run into your couch or run into a wall or something like that, unlike VR, where your living room will be replaced with something else, like in the virtual room or something like that. So that that's kind of what separates those two. And then usually when you hear the term mixed reality, that's a little muddy, right,
like sometimes it also means AR. Some of these terms are kind of funny normally, though, when you combine these two into one headset, it's called.
XR oh and that's what Google and Samsung are working on too, right, they're calling it that.
Yeah, and I've also heard that referred to for the assumed Apple headset.
It's going to be announced probably Monday, right, right.
And so okay, So what's going to be different about Apple's headset version is what we already have because we've seen adoption of this. We've seen that the Metaquest has sold pretty well, the PlayStation headsets have sold pretty well, but it feels like it hasn't taken off in a huge way. So why do you think that is and what do you think Apple do differently to make that happen?
Okay, So I think like size, weight, and general convenience are probably the biggest holdups right now for really both of these. So you know, a VR headset has to cover your eyes to immerse you in a virtual world, but a ton of headsets are very heavy, and you know.
They're still not comfortable over a long time.
Meta actually just unveiled the Quest three and that starts to solve two of those problems, particularly the size and the convenience, And it's expected that Apples headset will do the same.
I'm not sure about weight, but I know.
There's also been been rumors that Apples headset will put the battery on your hip or somewhere else to kind of take some of that weight. And you know, in phones and a lot of devices like that, the battery is what takes up at least half of the weight on the thing, so that that would be pretty cool to see.
Now, Apple also has a lot of stores that they can feature this in. They also have a lot of marketing power. They also have the developer base. They also have the marketing money. So there's a lot of things Apple can do here that not saying Meta or these other companies can't.
But it's Apple.
When they talk, the world sort of listens, and if they're coming out with the new product, they can play the long game. And I think that's what they're going to do here with this because it's expected to cost about three thousand dollars, which is way more than anyone wants to spend on a headset, but you know they can they can lower that price as the years go along. Now you mentioned something you mentioned this Meta quest three. I call them Facebook, but Meta sort of like surprise
unveiled this. They're like hold on before Apple announces THEIRS we have this and they showed off their new headset. Did they give us all the details on this thing or what.
They did not?
I think we got more details than we were expecting. A lot of people were expected then to at least show it off officially because they just had a game showcase this week and they announced a bunch of big games, and so they gave us I would say, maybe half of sort of all the expected details, but definitely more than.
We originally thought.
So now we know what it looks like, we know how it tracks, we know a couple of other things about it, like it's forty percent smaller than the Quest two, so there's a lot of improvements there. And then back to that convenience thing I mentioned before, it's now able to automatically sense the room you're in instead of you having to manually tell it, oh, here's my wall, here's
my couch. It can automatically do that, so you don't run into those things in VR if you, you know, don't set it up correctly, and you don't have to do that all the time.
It just automatically does that.
Now when you look at someone using VR, obviously they look kind of silly because they're moving around and it's always like a joke. But these things are really cool when you're inside them. So can you kind of paint us a picture of what you think people will be doing in VR in the future.
Sure?
Right now?
So going along with metas like metaverse concept, right, there are things that already exist that are the same type of thing you have Fortnite, Minecraft roadblocks, right, and there's a lot of other more VR centric things that are like that.
I could see some people doing that.
Personally, I almost never spend time in a social space like that, although I know a lot of people who do. For me, it's more of multiplayer gaming, so when people like to play Call of Duty on their TV, I'm more in that line of things, except in VR. And I know for me, playing this in VR makes a big difference because you actually feel like you're next to the person because their voice comes from a direction, like
you can hear the sound of them. Oh, they're to my right, and you look over it and you see them in their avatar, and it feels more like you're actually playing a game with someone rather than you sitting on a couch talking to them through a microphone.
And a couple of things that I'm very excited for are things like and I've tried this inside the metaquest, like the giant Netflix theater. So I was sitting there watching a movie like in like a it was snowing outside in like this giant log cabin I was in, and like that was just so cool, but I couldn't. It wasn't comfortable enough for me to watch a whole movie, but it was still really neat to imagine that you
would be able to do that. The other thing I think is for travel, just to be able to walk through a city before you visit it, or if you're trying to decide whether you want to stay at a hotel or a resort, to just be able to walk through that property before you pay money for it, I think is going to be a jerry. And that those are just two tiny examples of this technology.
Yeah, And I think that's the thing too, is like we can sit here and talk about things that we think will happen. And I think as we've seen from you know, even smartphones and smart watches and stuff.
Like that, people had an initial vision.
Like when Apple launched the Apple Watch, they weren't fitness focused at all, and then all of a sudden somebody realized, Oh, this is what people are buying this thing for.
Let's go all in on this.
And that also kind of happened with the Quest two in twenty twenty when people bought it, a lot of people were using it for fitness, and they really pushed that hard for a while. So I think once these things come out, especially like with the Apple Heads, that we're expecting it to be a little sleeker, a little lighter, probably nicer to look at while you're wearing it, right, because people don't like to look goofy when they're wearing
this stuff. And I fully expect that once these things come out, we'll start finding more uses for them and we'll start going, oh, this works really well for this thing.
Let's double down on this and do more of it.
Absolutely, we're going to leave it there.
Nick Sutrich from uh Android Central covering VR for them. Where can folks find you online?
I'm on Twitter at Guanatu.
It's a funky name, I know, but you can find it if you go on Android Central.
I got a profile on it. I got a link to that in my Instagram.
I use the same name everywhere, so if you spell it right the first time, you get it right every time.
Awesome. Thanks so much for joining me today. I do appreciate it. Looking forward to seeing what Apple has up their sleeve. All right, coming up, I'm gonna tell you. I'm gonna tell you about ring they were slapped on the wrist with a pretty big fine from the FTC. I'm gonna tell you what they did wrong and what you can do to protect your account if you really want no one snooping on it, plus your calls a triple eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
I'm Rich Dmuro. This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology. Triple eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four to one zero one. Don't forget to sign up for my newsletter. Just go to rich on Tech dot tv, look for the uh sign up for my newsletter option, and there you go. I'll be sending out a newsletter very very soon. My friend Jefferson Graham, I was chatting with him formerly of USA today. He was saying, Rich, why aren't you doing your newsletter. I said,
I don't know. I don't have the time to do my newsletter. He said, well, you got to find the time because you got people that want to read the newsletter, and not everyone can tune into the radio show or watch on TV, but they want to keep up with what you're talking about. And so all right, I think, uh, I think I'll start the newsletter. So Rich on tech dot tv signed for the newsletter and hopefully there will
be one soon. Uh so told you about Ring if you might have heard the news this week, they were slapped with a I think it was about a six million dollar fine from the FTC.
Let's see. I don't want to make sure I get that right right.
This was Let's see, I was thirty million dollars total between Amazon for Alexa some issues with child privacy, and then Ring was I think about six million for itself. So here's the deal. Here's what happened. Okay, the FTC alleges and this was a settlement, so nothing was ever proven. But the alleged that Ring let employees and contractors access consumers private videos, so your doorbell people were able to
watch these things. Now, given I'm not defending Ring, but A lot of this stuff happened many many years ago. We're talking like twenty eighteen, so this was before Amazon purchased them. This was before they became this huge, huge company.
And you know, let's be honest, they were new, they were growing, and they probably didn't have the best things in place at that time, so they were They were accused of letting not only contractors watch the security camera feeds, but also the FTC says that they made it too
easy for hackers to hijack people's accounts. And I don't know if you remember this, but this was in the news a lot, and it was basically people that didn't change the default password on their RING people were just taking over their cameras, talking to them through their cameras, scaring them, looking at their feeds, all kinds of stuff.
And this was like big on the news and it was I'm not again, I'm not defending Ring, but this was people weren't changing their passwords when they got these things. It was like a default password that was super easy to crack. And so now since then, Ring says, Okay, we don't give people, you know, total access to all of your video, and we also make sure that you have to change that password when you first log in,
and we also require what's called two factor authentication. So a lot of this stuff has been sort of fixed in the meantime, but it is kind of wild when you read some of these antics that happened here. So bad actors not only viewed customers videos about fifty five thousand customer videos, but they also used RING cameras a functionality to harass, threatn and insult consumers, including elderly individuals
and children whose rooms were monitored by RING cameras. Can you imagine having one of these cameras in your house and someone just starts speaking to you through it. And again, this was happening in twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, and in twenty nineteen they put this multi factor authentication mandatory. Now, the other thing that was happening, and this was kind of wild too, is that they were letting humans sort
of review customer's private video recordings for various purposes. And Ring said that this was all under their terms of service under the Product Development and Improvement area, and so that kind of let people do that.
Oh here's what they were doing.
FTC alleges that one employee over several months, viewed thousands of video recordings belonging to female users of Ring cameras that surveiled intimate spaces in their homes, such as bathrooms or bedrooms. The employee wasn't stopped until another employee discovered the misconduct. Yeh, that's not good. Now here's the thing. I don't recommend putting security cameras in your bedrooms or your bathrooms as a general rule. That is not a
good place for security camera. I think for guests that come into your home, and also just the privacy of yourself in your home, those are never good places to put it. But apparently there were some people that were seeking out those sorts of names on cameras and looking at them. Now, what has Ring done? They had a response to all of this, and they said, look, we disagree with a lot of these allegations. We deny violating any laws, but we're settling this so we can focus
on innovating on behalf of our customers. So they said, in twenty twenty we became This is Ring's response. By the way, in twenty twenty, we became the first smart home security company to implement mandatory two factor authentication and we also offer end to end encryption of video, and they say you can delete your Ring videos from the
Ring app at any time. And they have very strict policies in control that restrict employee access to customers stored videos, and employees are unable to view, access or control live streams. So again, employees now are unable to view, access or control live streams. So your Ring cameras are pretty safe. Does that mean they're fail proof? No, it says if we discover any employee violating our policies, we will take appropriate and swift action, which can include firing them and
referring to law enforcement. Now I talked about end to end encryption. This is something that if you want to enable this on your camera, it will sort of be bulletproof.
This will mean that nobody.
Could see your video feeds except you on the device that you pair with your camera. Now, when you do this, it is not turned on by default. You have to turn it on, but you do lose some of the features, some of the key features of your Ring cameras, and that most notably is that you will not be able to view your videos with shared users. You can't view your encrypted videos on Ring dot Com, the Windows app or the MacApp. You can't use live view for multiple
mobile devices simultaneously. You can't see camera previews on your mobile app. You can't share videos or links. You can't use the event timeline. You can't see Rich event notifications. That's when they send a little snapshot to your phone for a notification, Hey, someone's in front of your camera. You can't watch your Ring videos on Amazon, Echo, Fire TV or Fire tablet or third party devices. So it does disable a lot of features that you may use.
But if you really want to secure your camera, go into the Ring app. You can turn on video end to end encryption and that will make it so only you only you can watch anything.
That comes over your Ring cameras.
All right, more of your calls coming up EIGHTA to eight Rich one oh one, Wow, we're closed. Not the first hour of the show already Hour two coming up here, triple eight seven four to two, four to one zero one. My name is Rich Jumiro. Get those calls in, we'll answer them. You're listening to Rich on tech soking technology with you. Phone lines are open if you have a call. If you have a question about technology. Phone lines are eight eight eight rich one oh one eight eight eight
seven four to two four one zero one. You can also email me hello at richon tech dot tv. Oh gosh, we got a lot, a lot of these email questions, so I'll get I'll get through some of those. You can also listen to the show as a podcast. Just subscribe at rich on tech dot tv click the podcast icon. They're also show notes to everything I mentioned here there filling up fast today. Look for show number twenty two. All right, let's get one of these email questions. We
have so many. This one. Okay, here we go. This is from Alex. He says, hey, here is a message below I receive today. Looks very suspicious. What do you think? And it says no reply? At Epic pay Zoom Video Communications Settlement. According to our records, you're eligible to receive a payment of thirty two dollars and thirty two cents in settlement for the matter entitled Zoom Video Privacy Litigation.
You will receive payment notification that contains a link to claim your payment electronically, and then it gives a website Zoom Meetingsclassaction dot com. Okay, so that is an interesting one because I have not heard of any class action settlement with Zoom. But if you do a quick search of this on Snopes, do you know the website Snopes?
So if you type in Snopes and then Zoom s n O p E S S N O p E s snopes dot com and it says is Zoom settlement email mentioning, epic pay a scam or legit, and it gives you the answer with a great big green check mark it is legit. So Alex, good question. You are getting your thirty two dollars and thirty two cents. Now,
I don't know what Zoom did wrong. I haven't really heard much about this, but these are where it's good to be a little critical of these emails that you get, because it's so easy to say, okay, here, we're going to give you one hundred bucks because of this, and then you start typing in your personal information and you
realize it could be a scam. Now, I will say many of these websites that are set up for these settlements typically do have a majority of your personal information already in there, and so that's a good indicator that this may be legitimate. But I would typically go to a website like Snopes and just make sure that this is legit. And that's just a quick Google search of a keyword, and also Snopes and you should find that. So good question, Alex. All right, let's go next to Todd.
Todd says, hey, Rich, thanks for always being a great resource. I finally broke down and bought a smart TV, thinking it would be as intuitive as my iPhone run my very fast home WiFi, and dramatically cheaper than the service I'm replacing. We don't watch a lot of TV in the house. Probably seventy percent is KTLA in the morning, oh thank you, while getting ready for the day, and then one of the Hallmark channel movies at night. All the other channels on TV are just a bonus and
we'll only watch them once in a while. What is the best way to get these two channels KTLA and Hallmark and get rid of my expensive Frontier subscription? I would like to keep the fast internet we have FiOS, the fastest they offer in my area. It's probably an excessive amount. Thanks for your help, Todd.
Great question.
So many people are looking to reduce their bills, especially when it comes to their cable internet. All these things, so now here's the thing. Typically, if you have a bundle with your high speed internet and your cable if you get rid of that bundle, you're probably going to pay more for your Internet. That doesn't always happen, but it may, and so just be aware that once you lop off this cable TV, they may say, now you've got to pay a little bit more. Now, don't be dissuaded.
They're saying that because they want you to do the bundle. But in the long term you'll be okay, and you may save more money by not doing the bundle, and you also have more freedom and I think it's just better. So what I would do keep the Internet service. Now you have a very easy situation because you're only asking for two channels. Ktla has an app called Ktla Plus.
You can download that stream Ktla for free. Now, if you live in a market that you have a different local news provider that you're watching, a lot of those providers have their own streaming or they're available on a service, So you may find that, you know, Amazon has really linked up with a lot of these providers and Pluto and Peacock. So depending on what affiliate your channel that you like is on, you may be able to get
them for free streaming through Roku or through Amazon. So what I would do is just search the name of your local provider. So if you like, let's just say KTLA and I would just type in KTLA free streaming
and see what it does. And it comes up with KTLA on Roku, fireTV, Apple TV, the mobile app, and those are the different ways that you can watch it and for your local channel that may come up and you may find that they have their own app, they may be on another app like a news app, or they may be on one of these paid services which you may have to pay to stream. Now, when it
comes to Hallmark, we go through this every Christmas. We want the Hallmark channel, and so we will go and I will look for the cheap way to get it, and the cheapest way I know to get it is the Friendly TV app and so friendly frn dly Friendly TV. It's a streaming service that has forty channels live and
on demand, and Hallmark Channel is one of them. They've got Hallmark, they've got the Hallmark movies and mysteries, they've got Hallmark Drama, and they have a bunch of other kind of random more off the beaten path channels that it's probably worth the six ninety nine year paying. They've got History Channel on there, They've got any and some other channels you may not have heard of. But if you want Hallmark, this is probably the best way to
do it. They also have unlimited DVR, so if you want to record those Hallmark movies that people love to watch, you can do that as well. So again, those are my suggestions for that. Pretty simple there, all right, man, We got a lot of email questions. This is from William. He says, Hey, Rich, my wife and I watch you all the time on air. We have a question for you, and I think a lot of others would like to
explore this online as well. I'm seeing a lot of commercials for e commerce businesses to make money, but I'm unsure if it's a viable source of income for retired people or anybody. Could you elaborate on this subject before me or anyone else decides to jump into us. It looks and sounds too good and easy to be true. Oh let me let me underline that. Hold on, It looks and sounds too good and easy to be true. Okay, we'll come back to that later. I mean if it's
as easy as they make it sound. Wouldn't everybody be wealthy as the people advertising it are? Is this the trend?
Is it real?
It would be great if you could do a segment on air before people get financially hurt. Thanks for your info and insight you give to the public.
William William William.
Well, let's put it this way, the old adage, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. I could tell you who's making money off this e commerce side hustle. It's the people advertising the e commerce side hustle. They're making lot of money. And I'm not saying you can't make any money, but the reality is there are a lot of people, or let's put it this way, there's a couple people making a lot of money and not a lot of people making some money, and the rest are just sort of doing this and
paying in and never doing anything. So, if you're seeing commercials on wherever, you're seeing these commercials to start an e commerce business.
If it was that easy, everyone would be doing it now.
Yes, you can start an e commerce business very easily these days. But if you're going to start one, if you ask me, you need something unique start something on Etsy, start something on your own website where you personalize stuff that's unique. But if you're just buying stuff from some sort of distributor in China and then you're just reselling that, I don't think that's a very good business. You can pretty much find anything you want on Amazon in about
two seconds. What would make someone find your e commerce website? Probably nothing. So if this is a program that you buy into and then you sell this stuff and you buy it from their distributors, I don't think you're going to make a lot of money on this. So again, if you're seeing commercials for this, I think the people at the top that are selling this program are probably making a lot of money. And this doesn't really apply just to e commerce. This applies to a whole bunch
of stuff. This applies to real estate. All these people you see hawking stuff, it's they're making money. You're probably not. And even if you could make money, it might take a lot of effort, and it might take too much time and you just kind of give up. And they're banking on the fact that they're going to collect, you know, one hundred two hundred dollars from a lot of these people that want to learn the program but then never do anything with it. Again, they get wealthy, you get nothing.
So again, I think etsy something like that is probably the best way to do it. Because if you've got something personal like my wife just oh you know what, I can't talk about that because it's a it's a present for someone that may be listening, so never mind. But personalized stuff is very very convenient. Let's see, do I have time for one more? Probably not, No, I don't okay, So all right, coming up on the show,
we've got lots more to talk about. Ooh, I've got this cool feature I discovered, Well I didn't discover it, but I discovered someone who discovered it, and it's really really cool. If you have an Android phone, it's a reading mode that's really really simple.
I'm gonna tell you how to enable that.
Plus I'm gonna tell you about this shutdown of my photo stream. It's an Apple service that would sink your photos across various devices that is shutting down. I'll tell you everything you need to know about that. Plus we've got some more great guests coming up. Ross Borden is gonna tell us about an AI travel chatbot that I am just loving it's called guide Geek. He's gonna join us live to talk about that, and later we're gonna have some magic on the show. Trig Watson, tech magician.
He was just on America's Got Talent. He's gonna tell us why and how how he uses tech in his magic act. Plus, if you want to call in, give me a call. Triple eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. More rich on Tech after this. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology A eight rich one oh one triple eight seven four to two four one zero one. Is that confusing
when I say two different ways? I think it is if I say eight eight eight rich one on one and then triple eight No, so I got to say eight eight eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. You know what's really fun if you have kids, just ask them things that make a lot of sense to us that make zero sense to them. So when I was telling them the phone number for the show Rich one O one, They're like, Dad, how's anyone going to know how to
dial that? And I said, well, you just look on the keypad. They said, no, you got to say the numbers the way the numbers are. You can't just say the name. I said, okay, well I think some people know that the anyway. It's just stuff that we take for granted. The other day, my kid, and this is how you tell if someone's older young, Super easy, very simple question. Just show them a pound sign and if they say pound sign, you know they're old. If they
say hashtag, you know they're young. My kids they were reading something the other day and they just said hashtag whatever. And I was like, I just there's these moments as a parent that you just laugh so hard at the things they say. And I really need to start writing these things down because they are so innocent and amazing that adults just it just really throws you. Let's go to Linda. Linda's in Costa Mesa. Linda, you're on with Rich.
How you doing? Okay?
I just wanted to know what kind of smartwash to buy in case I'm out without my phone or my phone falls away from.
Me and I'm in danger. I want to have a smart rush.
Oh good question. Do you have a smart I do you do? Okay?
Well, I think The best watch to get is really the Apple Watch if you have an iPhone. So there are several different types of watches available, but if you have an iPhone, I would recommend the Apple Watch because it pairs very nicely and it has what's called cellular capability, so you can get a cellular version of the Apple Watch that will work even if your phone isn't nearby. Now, Apple's a little tricky with this because there's a couple things you can do.
There's a couple of ways you can set up an Apple Watch.
So number one, if you just have an iPhone like I do, and you have an Apple Watch that has cellular, you can activate the cellular on that watch for usually anywhere from five to ten dollars a month. And what happens is when you activate that, your watch, even if you're nowhere near your phone, will still be able to make and receive phone calls, make and receive texts, and also do things like stream music, so you can listen to the radio that's streaming whatever you want because your
phone has its own cellular data plan. So Apple is a little strange because you can't you can do that on its own, but you kind of need an iPhone to activate it. But if you have an iPhone, very very easy, it's pretty simple. I would recommend Linda. If you want something that is very simple and basic, the Apple Watch se is the way to go. It's the most inexpensive out of all of the Apple Watches. It's going to have most of the features that you need,
and it starts at two hundred and fifty dollars. But if you want to get that cellular version, which is what you're talking about, you have to pay a little bit more because the cellular antenna costs more. So this cellular version is two hundred and ninety nine dollars, so it's an extra fifty bucks. Used to be an extra hundred now it's only extra fifty. So for three hundred dollars you would have the cellular version of the phone, and then of course you do have to pay that
monthly fee. Now here's the thing. You can also do this for a family member that does not have an iPhone. It's called family setup. So if you have a family member that you want to keep tabs on or get them an Apple Watch, you can do this, but you would not link it to your phone. When you go through setting up that Apple Watch. It would be called family setup, and I do this for my kid, so they have an Apple Watch with cellular, but it is it's independent, it doesn't need an iPhone to function, and
so that's what I'd recommend for that. If you're on Android, very very similar setup, you can get either a Samsung Watch or a Pixel Watch, and they have LTE cellular versions available as well. Now, if you're deciding you're like rich, do I need a cellular version of a watch, here's my delineation. Okay, if you often leave your phone at home and you are doing something with just your watch, then you probably want. For instance, I am a runner.
I often take a run like I did this morning with just my watch, right, I don't bring my phone with me, and so if I want an emergency service if I fell, and you know, my watch noticed that I fell, it would call nine one one, or if I needed to call someone, or if I had to you know, receive a text while I'm out there on my run, which hopefully I wouldn't have to. Those are the kind of things you can do because you have cellular. If you don't do anything without your phone nearby, you do not need to.
Pay extra for the cellular.
If your phone is always near your body, your your watch is just going to link to your phone to get all that connectivity. So again, if you're doing something without your phone, get the cellular version, like Linda you're asking for. If not, then you could just go with the regular one. But I think if you have an iPhone, I think that's probably the easiest way.
Go with the Apple Watch.
Se If you want something that's a little bit more, you know, the better one is this series eight that's the newest. If you want something that's the old to me, then you actually want the Apple Watch Ultra, which is eight hundred dollars, and that only comes in a cellular version. All right, let's see, I'm doing something kind of dangerous here. I'm going to line too. Here Rick is here. I only got a minute. Rick, you're saying something about.
What okay, so on your iPhone. I just did it when you said this. I just said call Triple eight rich one oh one, and it called you.
Oh wow.
I've done it before with my bank. With US Bank, you can say call eight hundred US banks and it'll do it. Or any other words. It just styles the words.
That is incredible.
Rick, I wrote a book about one hundred and one handy tech tips for the iPhone, and I still did not know that until just now. I wish I wish I had my ding here like my bell, because I would give.
You and the cool things are too because I'm blind and I use the accessibility on there sure and with voice over you can do a ton of stuff on the iPhone.
Oh, I know what I need to.
Joke and say, I'm blind. I should give a couple iPhones I could see. And then somebody showed me how iPhones work, and I'm like, fuly smoke.
Oh it's incredible, incredible, Rick, thanks so much for cal and I appreciate it.
Now we know.
Just say call rich one on one all right, you're listening to rich on tech more after this. Welcome back to rich on Tech. You're listening to Rich Demiro here talking technology with you at Triple eight rich one on one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Joining me on the show is Ross Borden. He is the founder and CEO of Mattador Network. They have a cool new tool called guide geek Ai. This is sort of like having a local travel buddy in
your pocket at all times. It's an AI chap bot. We did a story on KTLA about this and I've been using it ever since. It is so cool. But let's let let's let Ross explain what it is. Ross Welcome to the show.
Thanks Rich, Thanks for having me.
All right, So, first off, explain what Matador Network is. That's kind of the company behind this guide geek Ai.
You've been doing travel for a while. Huh.
Yeah, we've been doing travel for a while. We started a media company way back in two thousand and six. It's sort of a national geographic meets BuzzFeed, so we published article, city guides, videos about travel and adventure all over the world.
Okay, and now you came out with this thing called guide geek Ai. It's an AI chatbot. Kind of explain what it can do.
Yes, so you can just ask this thing just like I mean, most people are familiar at this point for chat GPT. It's like chat GPT, but specifically for travel, and it has up to date information so you can search live flights, hotels, Airbnb. But yeah, you can ask it any travel question, build it itinerary for you. It speaks,
you know, fluent in fifty languages. But most people are using it, you know, either to plan a big trip that would have taken days to plan otherwise and they can plan it in you know, twenty minutes chatting with with guy geek, or when they're traveling to look at you know, I'm in this neighborhood in Barcelona and I love a restaurant with great salads, so you can just
ask guye geek. It is essentially devoured the entire internet to read every hotel review, every restaurant review, and so you can just ask it very specific questions based on what you are interested in doing, and it will give you instant answers and it's free, so it's a great resource for travelers.
So I've been telling people about this just personally, and the first question I get is, well, why not just use chat GPT? So can you explain the difference, And you sort of did. You said that this has consumed more of the web, right, and it's more up to date.
So it is more up to date because we've integrated with different APIs. So if you want, you know, show me the best cheapest flights from LAX to JFK next Tuesday. If you know, chat GPT. The base model unless you're using the plugins, will not be able to do that because it has only information up to September twenty one. So you know, Guy geek connects to live and we're adding weather data, currency conversions, so all of this is live data. Also, the results are curated by the travel
experts and Matador. So again, Matador has been a leading travel publisher for a decade plus and we have our travel experts making all the suggestions better, improving it, updating it. And then finally you can just access through WhatsApp, so it's free. It will always be free of travelers and if they go to guygeek dot com, you can just
hit connector WhatsApp. It opens to WhatsApp. We're also launching Instagram, so through Instagram, dms can just follow us at guygeek dot ai on Instagram and then you'll be able to chat directly with us there and have full access to the AI.
That way, is that one live yet.
Instagram's coming soon. The account is live and it's getting a ton of attention, but we're excited. So right now there's just a link to the WhatsApp connect on Instagram. Again, it's Guygeek dot ai on Instagram and then soon you'll just be able to chat directly within Instagram.
I mean, it really is a very good service, and it feels like it is smart. It feels like you have a trusted kind of voice in these different places. I've asked it so many different questions for so many different cities, and the stuff that comes up with is really good. And what I like about AI, I think versus just searching online is number one. I love the chat interface. So the fact that this is on WhatsApp, it made me download whatsappened sign up, and then you know,
once you do that, it's very simple. You can just open this chatbot. It's like having another chat on like an instant messager. But what I love is that you can get super specific. So instead of saying, tell me the best things to do in London, you can say, I'm going to London for forty eight hours. I've got two kids with me. They're this age and we like cars.
Tell us what to do. And I did that kind of question and it gave me a whole list of things that involve cars in London, which I was just kind of making something up and I had no idea there's so much car culture there.
Right that are probably all the recommendations were also good for kids, So like, that's that's exactly how I think people are getting the most out of it rich So and it's fun. You can say, like I'm like, where would Anthony Bourdain eat in Mexico City for four days? You know, like you can even throw out really specific references to a travel style or Hey, my wife is vegan, my kids are seven and ten and sort of picky eaters,
and we're going to Buenos Aires for a week. You know, build me an itinerary a really big focus on fine dining. That's that's right for my family, and you know, boom it all two seconds later we'll deliver that full itinerary. So yeah, it really is if you can get specific with it's it's a very powerful tool.
So what do you make of this whole AI trend with travel, Because I think that AI is going to impact almost every industry out there, but for travel, this is just a small example of just how big an impact this can have.
Already.
Yeah, no doubt. I mean AI is going to for better for worse. It's going to sort of infiltrate and be added to every single service across every single industry, but in travel, I think it really is a positive if you think about it. The last major innovation and how we plan to research and book trips was really the launch of the OTAs like Expedia and Booking way back in the nineties. So there hasn't really been any
tremendous innovation within travel. It's still takes a really long time to find flights, it still takes a really long time to find airbnbs or hotels or just like have the confidence to that you're going to the right place for who you are and how you travel. So it's much overdue for a big technological innovation to sort of reshape travel, and we think that's exactly what this is.
So I just asked guide Geek on WhatsApp, I said, where would Giada eat in Rome for forty eight hours? And it responded it said Giada would definitely have some favorite restaurants in Rome as it's one of the top culinary destinations. Here's a few recommendations as recommended by locals and foodies, and then it gave me the first restaurant and it said this a must visit for cured Meat's excellent wine, Giada would enjoy the fresh Barada cheese, carbonara
or amitriana and homemade bread. So I mean, not only are you getting specific with your questions, but the answers are just so specific. There's no search engine in the world that can give you a response like that, right, I.
Mean, because it's read not only as you heard, it was recommending actual plates to get order at that specific restaurant. So it's not going to say this restaurant's great, it's going to say this restaurant's great for you because I know you love seafood and by the way, you know, have the hell of it. It's incredible with the capers, like it's going to have that level of detail because it's literally read all the reviews and it's read the menus.
Now, some other things that are really interesting as some specific examples. If you have, like I'm looking at the hot questions on your website and this says, I have a child with autism, can you help me find family friendly experiences in Washington, d C. So this is really good for people that have varying accessibility requirements as well.
Huh, totally yeah, And that question was one of the first questions that was asked the AI when we sort of unleashed it into the wild, and that one blew us away because, you know, think about the the challenges of traubling with a child with a disability like that and wanting to make sure that you know you're getting the most out of the city. You're not holding back, but you are, you know, have those things. You have
to have those things in mind. So the answer like it already knew every you know, sensory sensitive hours of every museum and special exhibits and outdoor activities that a child with autism would really enjoy. So that was like one of the early questions where we're like, Wow, this is a game changer.
This is really incredible stuff.
Things that would take so much research, so many different websites to kind of piece together all this information. The fact that you just have this in the palm of your hand and available to you for free wherever you are and in real time is pretty wild ross. So tell us real quick how to find this one more time?
Yeah, just guide geek dot com. So just go to the website and it's one click from there to open on WhatsApp. And like I said, we'll be live on Instagram soon, So if you want to follow us on Instagram and get ready for that launch, it's a guy geek dot ai. There's already one point three million followers. But yeah, it's it's super easy to there's nothing to install, it's not an app. Just go to guy geek dot com.
Okay, and I've got it linked up on my website as well. Rich on tech dot tv, you can look for the radio show notes for show number twenty two. You got to try this out now, Ross, I know you've got a little one that you just had, So are you traveling anywhere soon?
Yes, I'm planning her first trip. I also have a seven year old, so you've got seven year old and a newborn, and we'll be going to Mexico.
Will be uh my.
Daughter's first international trip. And then I'm going to swim with humpback whales in Tonga in July, just with with some folks from Matador because it is just unbelievable experience.
Because why not I'm going back.
Yeah, it's been closed down.
We haven't been able to get there throughout the pandemic, so we're really excited to go back and see our friends in.
Tonga that sounds amazing.
All right, Ross, good luck with the little ones. Ross Borden of Matador Network, creators of Guide geek dot com.
Check it out. It is such a cool travel resource. All right.
Coming up on the show, we'll have more of your calls at triple eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four to one zero one. Plus, I got a couple of new features to tell you about, including this reading mode on Android.
It is so cool.
I'll tell you about that, and Apple shutting down my photostream. I'll explain the deal with that. My name is rich Dumiro. 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 Chris in Miami. Chris, you're on with Rich.
Hey, thanks for taking the call. Boss Matt, you're absolutely crushing it. Talk about a global impact taking my com man.
Yeah, thank you, thanks for calling.
You're welcome. Kim's crushing it at her end, and you know I won't keep you. I know that you probably have a full line up today. You know, last time I called, we talked about the ring doorbell pro for my my condo here, and I probably have nothing to worry about, but uh, you know, it's going to be on the outside of the door. I don't have like Kennedy thinks.
Throughout the house.
But over the past couple of days, there's been this massive concern with Amazon and uh checking out the videos, checking out people's photos on a global level, and their system has been up, it's been down. I checked, it's up again. Should I have anything to be concerned about with the ring doorbell thing now with Amazon and this issue? Should I go with somebody else?
That's my question.
Appreciate taking a call.
Yeah, good, good question. I think I think it's a valid concern. I think with all of the news surrounding Ring and we talked about it a little bit earlier. You know, a lot of this stuff happened a long time ago, but I think that it's good to be aware of what could potentially happen. People are putting these cameras everywhere, and the question is who has access to these cameras. These are the questions you should be asking before you put any camera up. Who has access to
this video feed. Can they look at my feeds for you know, any sort of purpose, you know, whether it's research, development, making the product better. You know, nobody reads those terms of service, So read the terms of service or actually just Google and see what people are saying about the terms of service. And you know there are people that do read this the Verge whenever they review a product, they always put in the privacy policy, like what.
You need to know about that.
Now, with all of that said, I still think Ring makes some of the best video doorbells out there. I think that they still have one of the better ecosystems out there. But at the same time, it's part of Amazon. It's a big company, and some people may not be comfortable with all of their information and all of their privacy and safety, you know, behold into one company. That's fine,
but you have to look at your alternatives. So if you look at some of the top rated video doorbells out there, right, you've got the r Low Essential Video Doorbell Wired that's about a hundred bucks that gets top picks from across a lot of websites. I have not personally tested the r Low, but people do like the Rlow products and so that's something that you can look
into and see if that fits your needs. Now you also want to look at what else r low offers and how much their subscriptions are, because you will be paying most likely for a subscription. Then you've got you fee. You Fee is another company. I think they had some run ins with security as well, so that's a whole other topic. But you know, this is a more affordable battery camera as well, and it has local storage, which
people might like. So some of these cameras on these doorbells, you may want a local storage solution, something that doesn't send your video out to the web or out to the cloud. So that's another option. And the ring video doorbells are also very popular as well. Now, if you go to a couple of different sites and you see some of these other doorbells, you're going to see a lot of them are put out by big companies, so Nest, Nest video doorbells. I'm seeing a lot of them out there.
That's going to be Google. You know, if you want something that's a little bit more private, I know that Apple is doing a lot with their privacy. So if you look at the Apple Home Kit video doorbells, A lot of those doorbells are end to end encrypted and it's not sent to the cloud at large. But the problem is, if you go to the Apple website at this point, there's literally one to choose from, and that
is the Logitech Circle View wired doorbell. Now I'm not gonna knock Logitech, but it's not the biggest name out there when it comes to video doorbells, so there are a lot of these to choose from. The other one, I gotta find the name because it's not It looks like Kangaroo, but it's not. But this is okay, it's can Garu k A n g.
A r o O.
And this is a company that you probably haven't heard much about, but their stuff is very inexpensive, and they have a video doorbell that I did test, and it was the one that I tested was actually more of a It took like a series of pictures for the doorbell, and that one was very, very inexpensive, and they make a whole bunch of very simple products. That's k A n G A r o O. I don't think that's Kangaroo. I think it's Kangaroo, not Kangaroo, So not to be confused,
but those are some of the options you have. But you know, look, I'll be honest. I really liked the Ring video doorbell. I was first on board with that back in the day when Ring called their video doorbell door bot. I did a story with Jamie who started the company, showed me how he tested these things. They did have good intentions from day one. It's just that when you grow really fast, sometimes you know you're a startup,
and you do make mistakes. And again, all this stuff we're hearing about Ring was stuff that happened many, many years ago, and I do think they're much more secure. But with that said, you do have a lot of options. I think it really comes down to who do you trust as a company, and also do they have all of the products you want for your solution? So that means do they have other cameras you can put around your house, do they have smart lights? Whatever you want.
You have to see if the company that you go with has other things. Now that's getting a better a little bit with this stuff called matter that we talked about in the show. But at the same time, if you want the eCos system, that's really what it comes down to.
For me.
Okay, good question. Thanks for calling in Chris from Miami. Let me tell you about this feature called reading Mode. Now I can't take credit for finding this. I got to give a shout out to Jimmy is Promo on YouTube. He covers all Samsung stuff and he had a great video about this reading mode that I.
Was not aware of, and it is really really cool.
So it basically makes any article on your Android phone easy to read, makes it big, and it takes out all the distractions, but it also reads it to you. And there have been ways of doing this before on Android, but this is very very simple, and it involves a Google app called reading Mode. So if you go to the Google Play Store, you search reading Mode, you select that reading Mode app, you install it, you open it up.
There are a couple little things to set it up, and basically what you need to do is just set up what you want the shortcut key to be to activate this feature. And on my phone, I set it up where the volume up and the power button. Now we're talking Android here, this is not iPhone. So on the Android you would set because power down and volume
down in power is the screenshot key. So I set it as volume up and power You press those two things together and instantly it will make whatever article you're reading super easy to look at with big fonts, whatever colors you want, if you want more contrast, whatever, and it can also read that article to you aloud. It cuts out colors, tones, and marks down the white to lower contrast to make this all easier on the eyes.
It is fantastic not just as an accessibility feature, but for anyone who just wants to listen to articles or just read articles in a much easier, bigger, less distracted mode. So again it's called reading Mode. Search for it in the Google Play Store. It is a Google app, So if there's other apps named reading Mode, look for the one from Google.
Again.
I'll put it all on the show notes go to Richontech dot tv for those all right, if you have a question, give me a call Triple eight rich one oh one eighty eight seven four to two four to one zero one hour two of rich on Tech in the can Hour three coming up next, back with you in a minute. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology at Triple eight rich one o one eight eight eight seven four to two four to one zero one. I'm the tech
reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles. Every weekend we talk tech, answer your questions, talk about the tech topics I think you should know about.
Uh.
You can follow me on social media. I am at rich on Tech, I'm on Instagram, I'm on Facebook, I'm on Twitter. I also have my newsletter. Just go to rich on tech dot tv look for the link that says sign up for my newsletter. I will restart that very soon. Had a tech friend that said, Rich, you gotta do it. You just got to do it, and there's a bunch of you on there, so I will do it. It's just a matter of finding the time right between my regular job and doing this on the
weekends and emailing many of you. It takes a lot, so I do want to do that though, because it is a lot of fun. The newsletter is great. Let's go to Kathy in Las Vegas to kick off this hour. Kathy, you're on with Rich. Hello Kathy, Kathy, check one two?
Do you hear me?
Okay?
I think Kathy is maybe has us on speaker phone or something like that. Well, Kathy, if you find us, pick up the phone because we are trying to get to your question.
But in the meeting.
Oh there you are.
Hello, apologies, I feel like we're using tin cans to talk. All right, can can you hear me? Okay, now I can hear you?
Great, okay, perfect. What what's on your mind?
Well, a, oh, Kathy might want you you might want to move to a different area because your your phone is cutting it out. So while you do that, tell me when you're back on and I will.
Uh, I'm actually sitting in my car.
Oh, well, there you go. It sounds better now, Oh, good, awesome.
Okay. I have a friend, a guy friend who seems to always know when I pick up my phone and I'm on it, even if I'm just doing my mail, I mean, and he'll pop in on Facebook Messenger and say, hey, what are you up to? And I'm like, don't you know I'm on my phone?
And what does he say?
Well, he's just.
But I.
Okay, Well, it's a good question. I think we're losing you a little bit there, but this is a good question. So there are many, many ways you can tell when someone is online, and a lot of it has to do with something called currently active, and so a lot of these systems like Facebook, Messenger or Telegram or Instagram even will tell you when someone's active.
Now.
The reason they do this is because they want you to interact with people and they want you to be on their services for as long as humanly possible. So they say, hey, did you know that this friend, this friend, and this friend are on right now? And they may not overtly say that, they may not text you and say that, but there are little cues. So a lot of these apps will have sort of an indicator icon,
even something as simple as LinkedIn. If you look at the people on LinkedIn, people who are active will have a little green dot next to them, and that means that, oh, they're on or they were just recently on, So why don't you mess them? Because they are live and they are there there, and so that's one way. On Instagram, there's something called scene, So when you go on Instagram and you can go into your settings and turn this off. But on Messenger, it will tell you when someone saw
your message. So if you're messaging back and forth, it will say scene, you know, and whatever time it was, scene just now, and you can turn that off. Now, here's what happens when you turn it off, though, Kathy, you don't get to see when other people see your stuff. So it's kind of a two way street on all of these platforms. If you turn off these active indicators, then you will not get to see when when people
are active. On the other end, and they won't get to see when you're active, but you won't get to see when they're active. So it's a two way street. So you can turn these things off. For instance, if you go into Instagram and you go into your settings, there is an option to you know, in the prime iacy to turn off the scene indicator, but it will tell you, hey, you know, if you turn this off, you're not gonna be able to see when people are on. So I don't know the exact way to do it
right now, I'm trying to look here with the accounts. Oh, they changed everything. They changed everything around on Instagram looks much more on now. It's all ner meta.
Wow.
Okay, so that's one thing you can do. I have a feeling if you're on Telegram and I do this with my friends on Telegram, it will tell me the last time they were active. So for instance, I'm looking at my brother right now and they said last scene eleven minutes ago, and I have my fellow colleague on Telegram and when he gets up in the morning, it'll tell me, you know, last scene, just now or just logged on, and so you can tell when they're active.
And then Facebook Messenger will do this. Even there is even a little section on on I Message that will let you know if someone's active in a weird way, so it will tell you they don't tell you if they're active, but it'll tell you if they are on a silent mode, so you can turn that on or off in the settings, and so on I Message, when you text someone sometimes it'll say this person has focus enabled and they're on silent mode.
Do you want to break through this? And you can do that.
So by seeing that they're on silent mode is giving you some insight into their life. Maybe they're taking a nap, maybe they are just trying to stay quiet, whatever, But there are things you can do with that. But yeah, Kim just texted me Kim our phone screen or extraordinary. There's a section on Facebook Messenger that says, see who's active. Let people see when you're active, recently active, or currently in the same chat. You'll see when they are too.
And you have the ability to turn that on or off. So what I would do, Kathy, is take a close look at some of these apps that you're on. If you're logged into Facebook, if you're logged into Messenger, if you're logged into Instagram, these apps could be giving people clues about when you are on and when you're active. And most of it is very innocent. It's probably just fine, but there could be some reasons why you don't want people to have access to that information. So great question,
Kathy in Las Vegas. Thanks so much for calling in today.
Appreciate it.
All right, moving on, let's talk about my photostream. So this is a feature that Apple is getting rid of. I have a feeling you have not used this feature in many, many years. But I'm going to tell you about this because you're probably gonna hear about it, and you're probably going to see stuff about it, and I want you to be informed so that you understand what you need to know. The thing you need to know about my photostream is that it is very old. Is
it launched back in twenty eleven. My photostream was a freeway to sync pictures between various Apple devices pretty much pre iCloud. Now people use iCloud photos. This was something that was a little bit more basic. You would take a picture on your iPhone and it would show up on the my photostream on the iPad or the Mac computer. It was just a very simple way to see your pictures in all these different places. But it wasn't all
of your pictures. It was only the last one thousand pictures that you took and the last thirty days of pictures that you took. So it was just this ongoing stream of all the stuff that you snapped on your iPhone that you could then use in other places on your you know, if you wanted to tweet out a picture, it happened to be on your desktop whatever. So this worked between the iPhone and the iPad, Apple TV, and Mac. So the thing to know about this my photostream it
did not sync photos in their full resolution. It was basically a lower resolution of this file. iCloud Photos is what pretty much replaced this. So what Apple is doing is they're shutting this my photostream down as of July twenty sixth. That's when it's gonna stop working now because it holds photos for thirty days it's gonna stop uploading any new photos on June twenty sixth.
Now what do you need to do?
Here's what I would do if I were you, I would go into the photo app on your iPhone. It's labeled photos, not Google Photos, the built in photos app, and then tap albums and look at your albums and see if you have an album called my photostream. And if you have an album called my photostream and there are some pictures in there, chances are those are backed
up somewhere else in your iCloud. But if you're wondering if they are, if you're worried that they're not anywhere else, you can go through there and pick out your most important pictures. Tap the share icon in the lower left hand corner and say save image. And if you tap that on an image, it will save that image to your camera roll. It will save it to your iCloud photos or your Google Photos wherever you happen to have your pictures back then up. But that's what I would do.
If you don't see an album labeled my photostream, I don't think you have anything to worry about because you're not using it. I actually had to turn on this feature just to test it out to see what it was all about. But I have a feeling that you have not used this in yours If you are still using it, check it out, get those photos out of there, and that's what you need to know. You have until July twenty sixth to get those photos out of there.
Chances are, like I said, you're using something else to back up your photos, but there could be some reasons why you wanted to use this, and maybe you're still using it. I've also got on my Instagram. If you go to at richon tech on Instagram, there is an Instagram reeal that will explain what I just talked about. So just look for the reel that says my photostream will be shutting down on July twenty sixth. Tap play and you can see everything I just mentioned. I explain
it very clearly. All Right, there you go my photostream now, you know, tell your friends. Tell your friends about this show too. Just tell him to follow rich on tech and they too can share in this great information. All right, coming up, we've got much more to the show. I'm gonna tell you why some airlines are now charging for a printed boarding pass. Plus we've got tech magician Trig
Watson joining US live. He's going to talk about his recent appearance on America's Got Talent and how he incorporates tech into his magic show. Plus, we've got time for a couple more 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 d'miro. You are listening to Rich on Tech. Welcome back to Rich on Tech.
Rich DeMuro here talking technology each and every weekend with you. Phone number is triple eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one. We learned earlier from Rick. He called in and said, if you ask your iPhone to dial a number by voice, you can just say the number like with the name. So I just said earlier call one eight eight eight rich one oh one, and it figured out the numbers. So that's pretty cool. All right, Let's let's go to
Dan dan Is in Los Angeles. Dan, you're kicking off. Uh well, I would say you're kicking off this hour, but we're a couple of minutes into it, so you're not.
But welcome to the show.
Thank you.
I'll try to punt it through the goalpost for you. Uh Rich. I'm a Mac guy, but I had gotten my wife. She wanted a PC. I got her an HP desktop. It's still under warranty. It's about We've had about eight months and I'm going I've tried every trick I know to get a response. HP just it's terrible. They really don't care, and tech people say, no, give up, You're gonna have to pay for the repair. It has a black screen. It had showed high attempts even when
it wasn't warmed up and black screen intermittently. I won't bore you with the details, but it's impossible. I mean I copied some of their key executives and of course I end up apparently they've formed out their repairs or at least inquiries to the Philippines called a call center. And my frustration is after two weeks, I'm just gonna have to pay to get this thing.
No, no, no, no, this is under warranty. Yes sir, no, you're not going to pay. I mean, this is a problem that they have and people need to know that. You know, here's the reason why people like Apple is because you have a problem, you bring the computer to an Apple store.
It's in your neighborhood. I was in Japan.
My MacBook had a problem, and without even thinking, I just made an appointment at the Genius Bar, not even wondering, like, not even realizing, Wait, do these people speak English in Japan? Sure enough, the guy did. I mean, this is this is customer service. This is what wins over people, and this is why some companies are more professional than others.
Where did you buy this?
I think I bought it. I believe I direct directly from HP online. They had some special sale or whatever. It's a regular PC, you know, it's brand new. I got a very good price. It was extremely cheap.
Yeah, but that doesn't mean that it shouldn't work.
Exactly, and it did work. And I'm quite good at getting responses from corporation and I totally failed on this. I mean it's it's two and a half weeks now,
excuse me. And I've tried every trick. I know. Maybe you have a solution, because they already owe me ninety five bucks because I ended up having my local tech guy checked the software on it without touching the interior with the hardware, and he tweaked a couple of things, but it's still ended up permittently having a high tempt notice black screed, even though the machine wasn't really warmed up.
Well, here's what I would do. So I think you deserve a new computer. You deserve a replacement, and I think that's what you have to get from them. So what I would do is number one, get on the phone. And I'm sure you've done this, but I would keep on the phone until you get someone that can actually help you. So I'm sure you're getting the run around when you call them and they're just transferring you and
this and email and we'll get back to you. But I would keep what's called escalating the service call until someone gets on the phone that can actually help you. I had this same kind of issue with an airline over the holidays, and I called in about three times and I kept just saying, please give me someone that can escalate this, and of course they fight you and they say no, until I found someone and they become like this golden kind of like key to the city,
and this person could do anything. There is someone at HP that can help you. It's a matter of all these gatekeepers that are trying to keep them away from you, so I would do that. Number one, keep on it. Number two, send me an email, and I am going to do what I can do to get some help and inquire because I think that people, you know, this goes into people's purchasing habits whether they should buy an
HP machine. If you can't get service on something that has a year warranty and isn't working out of the gate, that's not very good.
Absolutely, that is why I call import.
You know, I.
Haven't run into this before. I've gotten responses. A lot of companies obviously use call centers in the Philippines are India. I did get a response and a escalation department, and the guy lied. He said he had tried to call me, you know, he sent me a lengthy note that and he it's impossible to get through. I'll try some more and I appreciate your words of wisdom, and I'll put an email together for you with the brief female with the details.
Yeah, do that, send the brief email hello at richon tech dot TV, and I'll see what I can do offline to you know, help you with this. But I think that it's it's important that people understand when you buy something, you should be able to get service and support. And you know, HP is a big company, they sell a lot of computers. I'm sure this is a misunderstanding, and I think that it's just a matter of reaching the right person that truly wants to help you with
this issue. But no matter how much this computer cost, if it costs you a little bit, it costs them even less to make it. So it's not that big of a deal for them to either repair this thing or give you a new one. And hopefully, Dan, we will be able to get you some help on this. But that's something to keep in mind where you purchase things, so you know, sometimes it does pay to stick to
some bigger retailers when you buy things. And also, no matter what I purchase, I always check the return policy and the warranty Before you buy something that costs you're pretty much going to be guaranteed support no matter what Online it can vary, so be sure to check those return and coverage warranties no matter where you purchase something. Thanks for the call, Dan, you're listening to rich on Tech. Coming up next, we got Trig Watson, tech magician. Welcome
back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here talking technology with you. And as you've noticed on this show, it's not all just like nerdy tech talk. It's the tech lifestyle. I mean, I'm just a tech person that enjoys a lot of different stuff movies, music, magic, and my next guest is all about that. Trig Watson is a tech magician. He'll explain what that means. But he was recently on America's Got Talent and I don't want to spoil anything,
but it already aired. He got four goes from the judges. Trig, welcome to the show.
Thanks so much, Rich, appreciate you having me.
What do they call it?
Four?
What are they call it?
Four?
OK's?
I like four ghos? Four acceptables?
No, four yeses, four yeses? That's right?
Well you made up the what did you make up? You made up a word during the show, right, yeah, Well, you.
Know, I had a little bit of an ad lib happy accident at the end.
I got how he gave me a yes, and then Heidi gave me a yes, and then Sophia gave me a yes. And then Simon looked at me and said, you're a magician. You should be able to tell me what am I gonna say? And I don't know what came over me, but I just said abraca yes because it felt cheesy and corny and right.
All at the same time. And now I have a feeling that catchphrase might come back to haunt me. No, maybe I need Arica yes T shirts.
Yeah, you're gonna have merch with Abraca yes on it all right. So, Trigg, we have done a story before. We did a story for KTLA couple of years back, and so I kind of know, you know what you're all about. But explain what a tech magician is, Like, what do you how do you incorporate technology into your act?
Yeah, well, you know, it's a little bit of an invented job description.
I sort of created the job and then applied for it. Basically, I use magic to explore the future. So I explore all the.
Technology that's out there and try to find ways to creatively combine it with my background as a magician. And the result is usually, you know, creating this fusion of you know, the latest technology along with you know, my sleight of hand and magic skills together to kind of try.
To make the modern world feel like magic again.
Because I think we get a little desensitized to it as amazing as it is, we start taking it for granted.
Well, so what kind of got you into that world, do you said? And I didn't know this when I first interviewed you. I didn't realize that you had a background in technology, like you worked in the tech world.
Yeah.
So I worked as a technology analyst and consultant for a big tech, big for consulting firm in the corporate world before I went full time with magic. I've been performing, I mean, if you can call it professionally, doing little kids' birthday parties. Getting hired when I was like eight years old, beform for six year olds at a before birthday cake. You know, that's really when my my, my magic career began. But I mean I think so, I think that's a
pretty universal story for magicians, for sure. But no, you know, I had a pretty conventional path. You know.
I took a while to accept that this crazy magic you know career.
Was for me.
I played everything pretty by the book. I went, you know, it was a good student, went to college on scholarship.
And and there was just a certain part of me that just wanted to know what it would be like to have a quote unquote normal job for a little while, so I figured I'd do my backup first and if I had the guts to say no to the salary, you know, after that, then I knew magic would be right for me. So it ended up working out though, because you know, my job was basically to help large companies, you know, on on teams use technology to solve their biggest problems.
So, you know, I got an insight into.
How, you know, really the magic that technology can have on making people's jobs easier. It could also make people's jobs harder, but it's best. It can also make people's jobs easier.
It can also be very frustrating for people.
Yeah, but it can be you.
Know, I think a lot of people are kind of afraid of you know, obviously change is scary, and you know, I think especially with you know, the talk about AI and you know, there's a lot of fear I think about tech. And my hope is that at least for thirty minutes to an hour when you come to my show, that you also get to see, you get a little bit of a tech optimists perspective, and you get to also see how how it can really I think as spark people's imaginations too.
Now, you've been on TV shows before, but this was probably the biggest appearance that you've done.
Correct, without question, this is certainly the biggest, the biggest opportunity for me that I've had. You know, it's just a whole nother scale, you know, I've I've performed on other shows. Is that you know, America's got talent.
Really feels like not only you know.
The country stage, but also the world stage. And what a treat to be able to share, you know, bring my ideas to life, you know, on that on that level.
So the act that you did was pretty much based on flipping through Instagram and whatever you saw on the Instagram sort of came to life, whether it was someone pouring orange juice in the Instagram reel and then you'd be pouring it through the screen into a real cup.
Stuff like that.
Just to give you an idea, paint a picture since we can't really see your magic on the radio here.
But what was sort of the reaction to that and how did you feel you did on the show?
Oh, overall, I'm really happy with you know, how it went. You know, I've gotten overwhelmingly really positive responses from people.
You know, I'd say the harshest criticism that I've got is from my own self, because you know, as as artists' performers, you know, we're always hyper self critical, and you know, the challenge with what I do is often you know, I'm jumping on technology that may not be fully well established yet maybe it hasn't been used in the performing arts in a way that I'm doing.
So, you know, I.
Created that act between in the span of a few weeks. To be completely honest with you, you know, it was some new tech that I've been exploring and you know, thought that had a lot of potential to be used in a magical way. But I basically shared a very early concept with you know, some casting producers with AGT and they were excited enough to want to see the act, and I thought.
Oh, no, what have I done?
You know, So I worked really hard for a crazy, you know, a crazy month trying to basically take what was a cool concept and didn't really have a plot or a story, and figure out how to turn it into something that would resonate with people. You know, because at the end of the day, if you're a magician, just giving people a puzzle or showing them a cool gadget. You're not really you're not really capturing I think the
potential of what magic can do. So a good friend of mine, you know, just sort of off the cuffs. Why why do you like split through social media videos? You know that would make more sense flip through TikTok and I thought, oh that's interesting. But of course that through a wrench and everything I was planning, because that meant that I had to suddenly make the TV screen vertical to look like a phone screen, and it was presented a whole bunch of other you know, creative challenges.
But you know, I'm just over the wall, just really proud that I was able to get it out and really cool to see that it resonated with people.
So in your act, you've used zoom, you obviously use the iPhone. You've you've actually made like mechanical tricks that also kind of take advantage of some things that you showed me when I was doing the story with you. What other types of technology, like, what are you looking to incorporate into your shows?
Well, you can probably guess.
I mean if you look around, you know, I feel like, as my my job is to look around at what's you know, what people are talking about, what the what the global conversation is, and then find ways to playfully explore it in my show. So you know, I'm already thinking about, you know, what is the chat cheep each magic trick going to be in my show?
Yeah?
Uh, you know, what what am I going to do when I have a human eyed robot on? What if I have an audience member that's a robot? What that's what's that going to be like? You know, those are the questions I sort of asked myself. So you know, I think what's what's fun about sort of the chosen lane that I play in creatively is that I don't really have to do a lot of like out there brainstorming trying to come up with what topics am I
going to explore. My job is just to watch the news and read the newspaper and see what are people talking about, what's you know, what's developing out there, and try to get ahead of it so that I can turn it into something fun.
What about something like an electric car trick? You know, because like there's you know, evs are so big, like some sort of electric car like almost like a night rider.
There's something there. I'm not. I'm not producing your show. I'll just give you ideas.
I love it.
Keep them coming, I'll add them to the list.
So last time I met you, last time I was with you, you were head and off to somewhere. You have like a just a suitcase that's always packed. You're always going somewhere. So where are you doing your shows lately?
Yeah?
Well, you know, I actually I'm boarding a cruise ship tonight to perform on a region cruise going. I'm boarding the ship in Halifax, Nova, Scotia and sailing down to Montreal. And as you might imagine, you know, performing on a cruise ship is great fun. But with someone like me, I have to get very creative because you know, my audience members don't necessarily have cell phone service.
You know, I'm used in my show.
I I'm very interactive, you know, I incorporate people's phones and internet.
And access to Wi Fi.
So I have to I've done some pretty uh you know, behind the scenes Rube Goldberg sort of solutions to to try and get what I do on stage. Working on a ship where you know, we're a little bit more offline than.
Normal, that's a very exciting trig So what's next with America's Got Talent quickly.
We will only have it like a minute here.
Yeah, you know, I wish I knew, you know. I'm now waiting on.
The judges to go through a judge cuts round and decide whether they want to put me through to the live shows, which I won't know until June, at end of June.
Fortunately, or you know, for what it is. It is, what it is.
I can't afford to wait till lend of June to start preparing what I'm going to do in the next round, so I intend on making sure that I am prepared, you know, for the opportunity if it presents itself.
All right, very exciting, Trig. How can folks follow you? What's the best way to follow you?
I am on all the all the channels, all the usual channels, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, etc.
At Trig Watson, that's t R I GG Watson w A T S O N.
All right, very cool, and I'll put the link on the website where they can watch your performance on America's Got Talent and follow him on a Facebook and Instagram. It's really fun. So Trig, good luck with everything. We'll see in Vegas someday.
I assure it, looking forward to it.
Thanks for doing me today.
All right, coming up, Oh my gosh, we are closing out the show. Your favorite segment, the feedback segment coming up next. Plus I'm gonna explain the airlines that are now charging for a boarding pass. You better have your mobile boarding pass ready, don't print it at the airport.
It might cost you.
That's coming up, plus your feedback. Rich On Tech here be right back with you. Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich DeMuro closing out our number three with what has become your favorite segment, the feedback segment. Before we get to your feedback, I gotta tell you about this. You better print out your boarding pass at home if you're not using your phone now. I recommend using your phone. But I'm totally fine with the printed boarding pass. I think that some techies are all about you know, you
got to have everything on your phone. I think you're just fine. If you like the printed boarding pass, that's fine. It's easy, it's simple. You know it's going to work. You don't have to be fumbling with your phone. Many people have switched to the mobile boarding pass, which is great, but if you like to print it, it's fine, just
make sure you print it out at home. The problem is not everyone has a printer anymore at home, so you may have to print it at work, but you probably don't want them knowing where you're going, especially when you're taking a day off and it's a quote unquote unplanned and you may have to call in.
Not that anyone does that, but you know what I mean.
Wall Street Journal talks about a couple of airlines that are actually putting a new fee unprinted boarding passes.
So let's see here. Alaska Airlines.
They're not charging for the printed boarding pass, but it might be tough to print the boarding pass at the airport because they are overhauling their check in lobbies at one hundred and fifteen airports. They're removing those self service kiosk where you can print out your boarding pass, and they're replacing them with iPads that only print luggage tags. Now, they say that the customer service agent can still print you one at no charge, but of course you may
have to wait in line for that. Low cost carriers are of course nickel and diming for this. If you ever go on Google flights and you find a really cheap flight and then all of a sudden you add in the baggage fee, it could be like one hundred extra bucks. These low cost carriers are great if you just want to get somewhere cheap, but if you start
looking at the fees, they can add up. Breeze Airways charging three dollars to print a boarding pass, Allegiant Air charges five dollars unless you're current or retired military, and Spirit and Frontier can charge as much as twenty five dollars if a customer service rep has to print you
a boarding pass. So the bottom line, print your boarding pass before you get to the airport, or use the boarding pass online if you're worried about connectivity at the airport, if you download your boarding pass to something like wallet on or Google Wallet on Android, or Apple Pay on Apple or Apple Wallet, those work without a connectivity so
once you have that in that wallet, it should be fine. Now, some people, especially myself, when I go on like an international trip, I'll often print out the boarding pass because I just don't want to have any issues with connectivity. And most of the time, like I said, it will work. But sometimes it just feels good to hold that paper boarding pass. And some people like him as souvenirs as well. All right, let's get to your feedback section. So this
is interesting. We have so much feedback that was done live during the show. Tim says, Hey, Rich, your show is great. Prior I heard a promo where you're talking about some Apple service being discontinued. This brings up something I've been putting off. I have some pictures I put on the cloud when I had iPhones in the early two thousands, maybe up to twenty twelve. I have since switched to Android. How can I recover what I stored
in the cloud with Apple. I first heard about you from my mom, who's eighty one and sees you on KTLA. Tim go to iCloud dot com, log in with your Apple ID, and you can download anything that you have stored in there. That should do it for you. Thanks for listening. I'm glad that mom clued you into me. That's awesome. Christina says, I'm interested in receiving your newsletters. Thank you, Thank you. Just go to Rich on tech
dot tv look for the newsletter. Judy says, when I'm handling my iPhone, I sometimes inadvertently make it think I want to change the layout of the home screen. Because the apps start to wiggle, I might be afraid to delete something or scramble my layout by accident. Is there a setting I can change to make this less likely to happen, not that I know of. There may be a setting an accessibility to lock down the iPhone screen. I know there's something called guided access that's not gonna work,
but there may be a setting. But as far as I know, only androids allow you to lock down the home screen, specifically Samsung's I know do, and there's some third party launchers. But on the iPhone, I think you just have to watch out for that wig Old Judy sometimes just make myself laugh. Joe says, First off, I love the show. Check out the gab watch and phones. Good for kids and teens, but also a cheaper life alert for seniors. And it's a watch. It doesn't look
that bad. Thanks Joe, great advice. Gab watches and phones are excellent. I've done stories on them before, so good suggestion there. Michelle says, Rich a big thank you for helping Dan. Way to go, Rich, no need to reply. Oh well, I won't reply, but I'll mention it on air. Dan was the one with HP I didn't really help them just yet. I just gave some general advice, but I am known for helping folks get the solutions they need from time to time. Andrew says, Hey, what's a
pound symbol hashtag? Nope, pound sign, nope, octothorpe.
There you go.
In old world Europe, villages were laid out in this pattern to make them more defensible. Wow, there you go. We learned some the new every day. By the way, he said, Dan's call with the HP problem sounds like there's no thermal paste between the CPU and the heat sinc.
When it was factor assembled.
They didn't peel the protective plastic covering the thermal paste, putting the heat sync down in the CPU. Otherwise that's under warranty. The CPU's probably been damaged from running to Andrew, can you run the show when I'm not here?
Thank you for that.
And finally, let's see here we have Joyce. She says, thanks for all that you do to keep us informed. I'm finding myself speaking more on webinars will help me suggest a few simple teleprompters for use at home. Air is a must see movie, Joyce, Joyce. My favorite prompter is called prompt Smart p R O mpt s, m A r T dot com, promptsmart dot com. It's available for iOS and Android, and finally, oh two more here we got Becky. She says, just want to say thank you for the Villo recommendation.
I bought it. Set up was easy, it's working great. A great day. See you on the radio.
And Laurence says, awesome show on Saturday. This was with my son Parker. When you lay your head down to sleep at night, take a deep breath and realize you're doing a great job as you bring great things to thousands of people. I wish you and your son all the success in the world. Stay safe out there. Thank you again. I hope you have a great Memorial Day. Well, thank you, Lawrence, and I hope to bring my great stuff to hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions
as well. Thanks so much for listening today. That is going to do it for this show again. This was episode number twenty two. If you want to check out the show notes at richontech dot tv next week, I'll have everything that happened at Apple's big event, plus my hands on impression with any new software. You can find me on social media at rich on tech. My name is rich Dmiro. Thanks so much for listening. There are so many ways you can spend your time. I do
appreciate you spending it right here with me. I'll talk to you real soon.
Bye bye,