025 Rich on Tech Radio Show - June 24, 2023

and that tech can be while worthy. Phone lines are now open at triple eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one. Give me a call if you have a question about technology. Email is also open. Leader can send it to hello at Richontech dot TV. Welcome to show number twenty five. We got the whole team in place. We got Kim on phones, we got Bobo on the board, and we've got Ai breathing down our backs, just watching

what we do so we can take over everything. So this week I was in Nashville. For much of the week. I was at a conference put on by Dave Ramsey if you know who that is. So a lot of fun learning from the best and every time I go to a city now, I look up and see if our show is on there, and yes it is. So I want to give a shout out w LAC Talk Radio ninety eight three fifteen ten, So thanks for listening there, Nashville.

I didn't really make it into Nashville because this was like a full on, three days, nine to five kind of conference, nine to six, nine to seven, and it was a lot So we learned all about how, you know, Dave built his show and how they do things over there, a lot of research, a lot of a lot of people. I think they have like eleven hundred people working all from a single radio show. I mean, he's grown it into my more than that, but it's it's quite incredible

what he's built there. But the thing that really got me number one, I learned a couple things about myself. Small talk is really really taxing. There was about eighty of us invited to this event and it was invitation only,

which was really cool. So it's a bunch of people kind of making a difference in the world, doing different things in social media and radio and TV and all this stuff, and you know, you had to get to know everyone, and it was just kind of like a lot of time to you know, talk to people, engage with them, exchange stories, whatever, and two things. Number one small talk, So you have to talk to these people.

You got to figure out what they're doing. And I had to do a lot of that, and I realized that is a lot of that takes a lot of energy for me. So we're gonna have a guest later on give me some tips on how to be better at that and if I'm the only one that it takes a lot of energy out of the Other thing I had to do was a group speaking exercise. This was just a five minute I had to tell a story in front of a small group of people, including some executives, which made it very nerve wracking. But I'm

not kidding. I can talk on the radio all day, I could talk on TV all day. My heart rate was double what it typically is. I'm looking at my Apple Watch and I'm just like, what is happening here? I have never been so nervous. I had cotton mouth. I literally could not speak. It was that bad. I'm like, where's the water here? But I got through it. It was fun and it made me realize that speaking in front of a large or even a small group is

very different than speaking into a microphone. So now that's something I will work on for sure, because I want to give I want to start giving some of these groups speaking kind of presentations. I've got a lot to say. Let me see some of my observations from traveling. I always have a lot of thoughts when it comes to traveling. So first off, scheduling an uber seems to be more

expensive than just grabbing an uber. I mean, it's nice that you can schedule an uber so that it comes at the right, exact time you want, but it seems to be more expensive for that privilege. So just know that the other way that I actually figure out when to leave for the airport. I'm gonna give you my little secret here. I look at my boarding pass, I see what time I board, and then I backtrack. Now I only need about an hour from the time I

get there to the boarding time. You may need more, you know, if you're traveling with your kids or you want more time, sure, just take that extra time. But what I do is I use ways. They've got this great feature called go later, So if you type in where you're going, you can actually say I want to arrive at let's say eight am, and it will tell you what time you need to leave from your location to get there by eight am. It's a very very

handy feature. I use it on a daily basis. Again, it's go later, so you type in the address and then you hit go later, and it should help you figure out when to go. TSA at Lax had this interesting facial recognition system that I guess I've heard of but I haven't seen in person. But you slide it's all self service. Basically, you slide your ID into this reader and then you stand in front of an iPad and it takes your picture and it compares the picture that it just took of you to the picture on

your ID. And by the way, this took forever. It's much faster to have the person just look at you and say, okay, you are who you say you are, and have you come through. But it made me realize that we are in for a future I believe of fully automated TSA lines. I do think that's coming where kind of like a self checkout system, you have one person that's kind of monitoring a lot of different checkouts.

I think that's what's going to happen with the TSA lines. Hey, we got someone that doesn't look like they match their ID, Come on over to the person and they'll manually check. So I'm just saying that right now, let's see. Oh, when you're on your flight, this is important. Always connect to the in flight Wi Fi, even if you're not going to pay for it. You may get free messaging. A lot of these airlines give you free messaging. If you're a T Mobile customer, a lot of times you

get free WiFi. But you'll notice you'll also get your notifications. For some reason, those seemed to come through on the iPhone no matter what, and even on androids. Sometimes, even if you're not paying for Wi Fi, you may not be able to act on those notifications if you're not actually paying, but it's helpful, like you can see what's going on with those notifications. Now, I will tell you one thing that was a little bit concerning. When I landed in Nashville, Okay, I took a ride share to

the hotel and it was fine. The guy was very nice and we get to the area where I'm staying and I said, Wow, I'm impressed with this little area it's really cute, Like, what's the deal with this area? And I kid you not. He goes, Oh, I don't know. I'm just driving for my brother. He's actually in the hospital. I was like, wait, what hold on? So apparently the person who was driving me was not the person in

the app. Now I had never thought of this possibility before, but that is a major major issue if that's true, If that's what was happening. He said, Oh, no, I in a different city. I'm just down here for the weekend while my brother is, you know, doing this thing in the hospital, and I'm just helping them out. So and I was playing it cool because I was like, at this point, just get me to the hotel and

let me out of this car. But that's like how a murder starts happening, you know, like one of these like Netflix murder shows. It's like, oh, yeah, I'm just helping them out, and it just makes eye contact with you in the rear view mirror and I'm like, oh gosh, and then the door's lock. That did not happen, thankfully, but it was very concerning. And now I'm wondering do these services have a system in place where they verify

the driver is who they say they are. Like, when you step into your ride share shift, do you have to scan your face against the ID and they say, Okay, you're who you say you are on your ID. It's almost like back to that TSA thing. So it was all fine. The person was very nice, and I didn't want to report this to the ride share company, but I'm just kind of telling you, maybe check the photo of the person and kind of look at the person when you get in the car and just make sure

those two things look similar. Now in this case, they did, so I didn't really think. I mean, they're brothers, so they look similar. But that's kind of concerning that that's even a thing that could happen. Ah, So that's that just might kind of be aware of that. The other thing that I thought was pretty cool on my flight back is we were taking off and the pilot gets on almost like in an urgent manner, and he's like, hey, you might want to look outside your right window right now,

because I was like, what's happening right now? They were launching Starlink satellites, and so there's a whole bunch of Starlink satellites. There's like twelve in a row. It looked like launching up into the air, and I kid you not, it looked like Santa and his sleigh. It was all these twinkly starlight satellites going up into the space. And if you're not familiar with starlink, that is Elon Musk's

wireless Internet beam from outer space. And they need like hundreds, if not thou of these satellites just orbiting the Earth so that you can have Internet on any location you can think of, beamed wirelessly. And it's pretty fast compared to previous wireless internet from the space. But I thought that was pretty neat. And then one more thing I want to comment on Southwest. They are running a dark pattern. Now, I love I love me some Southwest. Don't get me wrong.

They will get you from point A to point B. It's like a bus. You get on, you find your C. You know, it's it's no frills, it's nice. The flight attendants are always so nice. But they do run a little bit of a dark pattern. And I'll tell you

what that is. When you get your little check in situation where it's a B or C. The way they check you in is not like a typical airline that assigns you a seat in advance, they give you a number and when you get that number, it's either A B or C a letter and a number, and then it's like A through one through sixty, B one through sixty, C one through sixty. And the lower you are on the totem pole, the less chance you have of getting

a good seat on that plane. One gets, you know, whatever pick they want, A two, the next best seat a three, and so on. Well, when you check in, like I checked in immediately and I still got like B twenty five, and so now I'm nervous. I'm like, oh, am I gonna have some overhead space? Am I gonna get a middle seat? Am I gonna have a horrible seat in the back? And they say, oh, well, you can upgrade to a better number for sixty bucks, sixty dollars to sit in a better seat. Absolutely not my wife.

The last time we flew Southwest, she's like, can we please upgrade so we can sit together? I said, oh no, I'm not playing this game. No, no, no, we will sit apart for two hours if we have to. Yes, that's how cheap I am. Sometimes. And so I got on board B twenty five. There were so many people getting on board this little plane, and sure enough, what did I get? I got an exit row seat with

a ton of extra leg room. Nobody was next to me, there was a ton of overhead space, and if I would have paid that sixty dollars, I would have felt really, really dumb. So my point is, Southwest, I love you, but you're running a bit of a dark pattern because you don't know how many people are actually boarding that plane, how much luggage they have, and what seats they're going to choose. Every single time this has happened to me, I've really had a pretty good experience with finding a

decent seat. You may have to sit in the middle once in a while, but most of the time you're gonna find something unless you're in that sea. But if you're in that sea, you didn't even try to check in on time, so you kind of deserve that, all right. Coming up on today's show, I'm going to talk about why Tesla's charging network is quickly becoming the new standard.

We've got some great guests this week, see net. Scott Stein is going to join us to talk about his review of the Google Pixel tablet, best selling author Deborah Fine is going to join me to talk about how technology is impacting the art of small talk. And then Julie Ramhold, consumer analysts with deal News, is going to talk about Amazon Prime Day. We now have a date for that next big event. It's also your turn. Your calls coming up next at Triple eight Rich one oh one.

Give me a call if you have a question about technology. The phone number is eight eight eight four to one zero one. My name is Rich d'muro and you are doing something smart. You are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. My name is Rich DeMuro talking technology with you at Triple eight Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four to one zero one, or you can email hello at Richontech dot tv. You've got lots of your calls,

We've got lots of your emails. I've got lots of news to talk about this week, plus some great interviews. You can follow me on social media. I am at rich on Tech on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. Let's have Tom kick off the show this hour. Tom, you're on riverside. Welcome to the show.

an absolute godsend. And it dawned on me that it is a it's kind of been I don't know if it's emerging anymore. It's been around long enough, but it seems to have skyrocketed from the day it hit the hit the market, and I was just curious if you had any indications, you know, from where you sit, if that skyrocketing is gonna plateau or keep going, or if that Salesforce administrator position is something that's going to just thrive for a really long time.

others SAP and so it's much more modular. Companies can expand what they need, they can get rid of what they don't need, they can add different things to it. And yes, Salesforce did do very well. They built that giant, sixty one story skyscraper in San Francisco over a billion dollars but here's the thing I don't know. I would think for your daughters, they are probably going to show some interest in something. I think they should probably dip

their toes into different classes that do these things. So I would look at something like data analytics because that is a huge, huge growth area for companies. Every single company needs data analytics and someone that understands that. If they want to do coding, that's a separate world in itself. Coding is obviously very popular, but that's something they can try and see if they like that. It doesn't sound

like that's what your oldest daughter wants to do. Then you've got stuff like these project management platforms, so companies need project managers for their different initiatives, and so they always need someone that knows how to run the software that does project management. And then of course you've got cloud computing, which is you know, the Amazon AWS. I was actually just down in Anaheim. They had a big AWS convention and so a lot of smart people there.

They all look like they were doing very well if you ask me, they're all in very nice suits. So AWS is a huge growing area, and that's just one cloud service out there. And of course there's design things like Adobe, Photoshop and all that stuff. But I think AI is also the place where they should start looking too, because that is going to have an impact on just

about every single job category that I mentioned. And I think for your oldest daughter, if she's really getting into the job force, I think she looks at some jobs that appeal to her and cross reference the skills that are inside those job descriptions and then check out some classes that have to do with that. Because this stuff is rapidly changing. But I think if you have that analytical mind, you would want to do something with the

analytical side of things. If you have the management mind, you want to do something with project management or AI is really going to have an impact on all of these different job things. So if you're into that, definitely start taking a look at some of those tools. Great question, Tom, if you have a question. Eight eight to eight Rich one oh one. You're listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech, rich Demiro talking technology with you and joining me now is Scott Stein, editor at

Large at c NEET, to talk about Google's new Pixel tablet. Scott, thanks so much for joining me today. Hey, thanks Rich, So let's talk about Google's majestic return to the world of tablets. I remember one of my favorite tablets was their tiny little It was like an eight inch Nexus tablet back in the day. Do you remember that one?

This is a four hundred and ninety nine dollars tablet that has a dock built in are kind of attached to it, So give me your initial thoughts on this thing.

impulse purchase. And so I think a lot of tablets for families and kids, people want to get the most affordable thing possible. That there's a cheaper iPad than that, even though it's older. There's the Kindle, you know, the fire tablets. So that's one thing I think is you know, would be on a wish list for me.

or having a different price equation. Yeah, I mean that's an interesting question.

pixel phone. And then it magnetically attaches to this little dock that looks like you can just pull the front off of a Google Nest Hub, so it almost looks like when you're when it's docked, that it's a Nest Hub, you know, like when those Google Smart Home kind of devices. And so the genius of it is that it's always charged, and then when you're not using it, it's a screen saver for whatever you want. So I have my Google Photos collection on there. It can show the weather, all

these different types of things. Plus you can ask it things, you know, the voice commands and what I thought would happen and it did is I started playing music on the tablet and then I magnetically attached it to the DOC and the music just magically transferred to the DOC speaker, which is much louder and richer. And so it's a really smart idea that you always have this tablet that's

ready to go. But not everyone wants to spend five hundred dollars on a tablet, and I think that's going to keep them from getting this.

playing YouTube video. You know, we started to just kind of gather around and the kids started gathering around it, and I said, you could detach the tablet, but there's you know, it's definitely a kitchen counter friendly type thing. Who were kind of hovers off the dock, so it's not touching the counter and I think that there's a lot of ways that it could be useful in that regard. So so yeah, I think that there's like a lot, a lot of plus to it.

the fall. Yeah, it's it's very convenient. I even think on the dock it was a pretty easy one to use for for for quick spontaneous video chats with people, and I know I used other types of devices like that in the past, you know, portally that I'm playing around with, and I think there, it's really convenient, and so I thought that was a lot of fun and definitely the way that I'd want to use this.

whole thing had a keyboard though. That's that's one thing that I'm regretting that Google left out.

nailing so much of the everyday casual tablet use. But I think with kids, a lot of them, you know, my kids work on things or write things, and they'll set up a keyboards. I think it can work with other keyboards, but I think there's a big opportunity there. I would think to enable this for that and just add to abuse.

and such address for some cryptic reason. So, long story short, I'm thinking about reinstalling Outlook, but I read somewhere or thought I did that I need to reinstall Microsoft three sixty five entirely, not just Outlook.

So what I would do is I would do a backup of your data before you do anything, and then try to uninstall all Outlook if you can't uninstall it by itself, which it may be linked to the three sixty five the whole suite. Then you know you're gonna have to uninstall that and reinstall. Is there what caused this problem?

So those are some things to try and see if they work. But that is frustrating when your email is coming back. If you're like me, you just forget to actually send your email. So I will set up an email and I will get distracted at work and I literally forget to hit send and next thing you know, people are like, hey, Rich, where's that email. It's like I thought I sent it, but I didn't. And sometimes that will happen as well. So thanks for the call, appreciate it. Let me tell you why the FTC is

mad at Amazon once again. A couple weeks ago they had to pay like thirty million bucks for some issues with Ring and some other privacy issues. Now they're saying that Amazon makes it tough for consumers to cancel their subscriptions to Prime. They filed a complaint that says Amazon has knowingly duped millions of consumers into unknowingly and rolling

into Amazon Prime. Now, I've had Amazon Prime for a long time, but I think what they're talking about is when you check out, if you don't have Prime, there's probably a little tiny checkbox that says include a free trial of Amazon Prime for overnight shipping or free shipping, and people do that, and then all of a sudden they see that credit card charge for fourteen ninety nine and they say, wait a second, what I thought I was just signed up for a free trial, or I

forgot that I signed up for a free trial. And then the FTC alleges that they make it really tough to cancel the subscription. Now that's the part that I'm not sure I agree with, because I feel like if you would chat with Amazon, you could cancel that pretty easily. But they say that, you know, this is a dark pattern that Amazon is using, and it really made it tough for consumers. I'm trying to figure out where they

say this. Oh, Consumers who attempted to cancel Prime were faced with multiple steps to actually accomplish the task of canceling. According to the complaint, they had to locate the cancelation flow, which Amazon of course hid. Then once they located it, they were redirected to multiple pages that presented offers to continue the subscription at a discounted price, or to turn off the auto renew feature, or to decide not to cancel, And then after clicking through all these pages, consumers could

finally cancel the service. That seems to be pretty common though online if you try to cancel anything. And so, I know the FTC is really singling out Amazon here, but I feel like a lot of companies do that. So if you felt like you were wronged by Amazon Prime Government, it's got You're back, rich tamiro here. You are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Tamuro here talking technology with you at triple eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight

seven four to two four one zero one. I hope you're having a fantastic day. Did you know that you can listen to this show as a podcast. Just search rich on Tech in your favorite audio app and be sure to subscribe. Then you can go to rich on Tech dot tv to find the show notes. I take very good notes about what we talk about here, So if you're looking for a link to something I mentioned, chances are it's in there because I try to get it all. We've got best selling author Deborah Fine joining

me this hour. She's going to talk about technology and how it's impacting the art of small talk. Because I don't know about you, but it's much easier in a crowd of folks to just kind of, you know, retreat to your smartphone and that endless scroll than it is to actually have that human connection with folks. And it's tough. It's not easy to talk to strangers. But we're going to see what Debra says about that. All right, let's kick off this hour with Julio in Los Angeles. Julio,

you're on with Wretch. I'm fantastic. How are you?

by the way, have this little rating. They've got this like radiation rating, so you can look it up by phone. It's like measured I think in microns. But different phones definitely have different sort of radiation levels that they emit. So you can check that out if you search online for the model number, and you know, there's a I'm trying to figure out what the let me see if I can find out iPhone radius level and let's see if they have the number. Um yeah, it's like yes,

So there's like a little like wattage number. Oh there it is. It's like, uh yeah, RF exposure information, So they all have SAR. SAAR value is what they call it, so you can look up the name of your phone plus SAR and specific absorption rate is what they call it. The rate to which the body absorbs RF energy radio frequency energy. The SAR limit on the iPhone twelve pro, for example, is one point six watts per kilogram in countries that set the limit averaged over one gram of

tissue and two watts per kilogram WOWS. This is a lot if you want to read about this, This is like you can go down a rabbit hole with all this stuff. But basically, they do test phones for this stuff, and they do tell you what the different levels are that come out of these phones, and they are very different. So if you want to check your phone, just google whatever phone model you have plus SAR and it will tell you what that number is for the head and

the body. So with all of that said, there are cases that can block these in and out radio waves. But here's the deal. They're often called a Faraday bag. It's going to block all signals, so you are not going to be able to get a signal from this phone. It is not going to ring when it's in this bag. If it's in your pocket. So if you're okay with that, you can check out these different companies that make these things. One of them is called Silent Pocket. I guess they've

just kind of rebranded as Silent now. And their website is SLNT dot com Silent slnt dot com, and they make a whole bunch of different Faraday bags, everything from sleeves for your keys, for your laptop, for your credit cards, and also your phone. And I have one of their phone bags, and yeah, when you put your phone in there, it is it immediately cuts off all signals to and

from that phone. The other company, and I'm not as familiar with their products, I haven't used them, but I know they make them is called off grid O F F g R I D dot c O and off grid is I believe they're based on and I think both these companies are like San Diego area. But these they make a wallet, they make a bag, they make a little cell phone case, they make a duffel bag, they make a backpack. Let's see what else here, a

window kit whatever that is. But these are these are some ways of kind of blocking all signals to and from your phone. So this could be used for security. It could also be used for something like you're talking about, Julio. I don't know if that would help. I don't know if you want to do that, but that is the solution that I can think of otherwise maybe. And I've thought about this before. Believe me, I'm not one of these like you know, you know, tin hat kind of guys.

But I have thought about, because I've kept my phone in my pocket for so long, I have thought about, maybe it's time to switch where I keep my phone and not keep it, you know, near the the groin area so much, and maybe have some sort of holster on my ankle area. And I know it sounds crazy, but it's like, you know, I don't know. I've had a cell phone in my pocket now for twenty years and it seems to be okay, but you don't want to find out the hard way that it's not so good. Call, Julio.

Thanks so much for asking that interesting, interesting question. Let's see, should we go to Do I have time for another call? All right, let's go to let's see. Oh my gosh, so many calls today.

Google Photos. So I started the process downloading it on my phone, and it ran out a memory really fast because it was backing up all my photos from my phone and I had a lot, and so I stopped the I stopped it, and I so I started playing around a little bit and I deleted a photo and it said, okay, we're going to delete the photo from iPhoto.

backed up in iCloud. So that's one place they're backed up, and of course you want them backed up in a second place, which would be one of these cloud apps. So since since you're already paying for Amazon, I would say install the Amazon Photos app and let your photos back up there, and that way you have a secondary copy.

Because I don't think icloud's going away anytime soon. I don't think you're gonna have an issue with that, but just in case, you will have a pretty sizeable backup of your photos, especially as you take new ones on your Amazon account as well. Now that will take care of moving forward. So to get rid of these photos out of Google, I would just go ahead delete the Google Photos app off of your iPhone. You don't need to do anything first before you do that, Just go ahead and delete it.

But my main point here is that if you're if you're not wanting to use the Google Photos aspect of anything, just go to the Google Photos website and that anything you do there will not connect through to iCloud. So if you go through and delete all these pictures on Google Photos, they will only delete on the Google Photos cloud and it's not going to redelete them off of your iCloud photo collection. Okay, So, and you can go

through and you know, try to bulk delete. I think you can select a thousand at once or something like that. But you can just go through and kind of delete as many as possible. And I believe you can just kind of click in the corner of the photo and then drag over to kind of select multiple photos at once and that then then just go ahead and delete them. Then you can empty the trash and you should see your storage kind of clean up there. So, uh, good question, Karen.

I know it's confusing. This phot cloud collection stuff is really not easy, especially when you start using multiple different providers. So good question there, and get that stuff cleaned up. So your Gmail works again because it is connected, all right. If you have a call, give me a or if you have a question, give me a call. It's triple eight rich one O one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four to one zero one. My name is rich Dmuro and you are listening to rich on Tech.

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 one zero one. If you've got an iPhone, you want to update your software immediately. Apple issued an emergency patch this week UH to address alleged spyware vulnerability. So the

actual the allegers in this case is Russia. Their intelligence service said that Apple was intentionally leaving this hole open in their software so that people can spy on Russia through it, which I mean take that claim with a grain of salt. But there is a vulnerability on the iPhone that should definitely be patched. So if you go into your settings, so if you if you don't know how to do this, sometimes it'll pop up on your

screen to tell you. But if it doesn't, you just go into settings, you go into General and then software update and you should be on iOS sixteen point five point one again sixteen point five point one if you want to be on the latest software. That's if you're not running any betas, which you could be, but I don't,

but anyway, do that for sure. Researchers with the cyber security firm Kaspersky, which is headquartered in Moscow, said that they found the exploit while monitoring the network traffic of their own corporate Wi Fi network dedicated for mobile devices. So Apple did patch this of course they denied the claims that they are intentionally leaving this flaw in iOS. So the NSA and other US security agencies could compromise

phones in Russia. But who knows. It'd be more interesting if they were doing that, right, but I don't think they were so anyway, update your software. If you have an iPhone, let's see if you have an a SOUS router, update your firmware. Welcome to the update your software show my home. My name is Rich DeMuro, but this is important. I don't do all software updates, but I you know, if these are like critical vulnerabilities, you need to do this. And your router in your house is you know, that's

the the endpoint. You know, that's the place where someone could get in. So you want to make sure it's up to date. And we don't often think about updating our routers unless you have one of these new mesh systems that does it automatically. So if you have a a SUS RT GTSZN WI FI and TUF router TUF, that just sounds bad. I don't know what that means, but that sounds bad. Yeah, if you have a tough router,

check for a firmware update as soon as possible. The company released a security patch of resolving nine vulnerabilities that could harm you. Someone could execute some remote code and take over your network at your house. You don't want that to happen. So if you don't know how to do this, these these routers go back to twenty eighteen, by the way, So you log into your router a lot of times it's on the bottom of your router,

your router's IP address. I know this gets a little complicated, but look on the bottom of your router and there's a there's usually an address you can put in, and you type that in, it'll bring you to your router's interface and then you can update the software from there. If you don't know how to find the IP address, as US has a device to discoverutility, you can download that

or go to the website for that. And then once you go to the website for your router, you'll see a notification up here in the top right corner that says a firmware update is available. Click firmware upgrade to download install the patch and that should take just a few minutes. But if you have an a SOUS router, again definitely want to do the firmware update. If you don't know how to do this yourself, find a kid in your neighborhood that's good at tech and ask them

to help you do it. And I'm sure they'll be happy to do that. All right, I don't think we have enough time for a question, so let's do this. Let's do an email question since we only have a minute. Hey, Rich, we're allowing our grandson to use our car to get to and from school in a part time job. Is there a tracking device that can be covertly attached to the vehicle in order to see if he's making any side trips? Well, we have to pay a monthly monitoring fee.

Thank you, Roger. Roger, I cannot say that you should track anyone. It is your car, so it's your progative. But I don't think you should secretly track anyone. I think that you should to talk to your grandson, tell them that you want to track them, and that should probably stop the side trips in general, like pretty quickly. But there are some highly rated devices. There's a company you could look into called Logistimatics Logistimatics dot com. And

then two highly rated products. One is called Bouncy bo u n cie. That's under one hundred dollars. Plus you have to pay eight bucks a month for the tracker part and then track track you dot Com is thirty dollars and that also has GPS, but keep in mind you will need to pay a monthly fee. All right. Coming up next, best selling author Deborah Fine is going to tell us about the Fine Art of small talk.

Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology, which I can do pretty well, but when it comes to small talk, man, I feel like I am just not good at that. And I was at this conference over the weekend or over the week i should say, and it was three days of non stop small talk. So they would do kind of

like you know, a breakfast small talk. Then they do a talk on stage, break out small talk while you wait for the next session, do another session on stage small talk again, small talk during cocktail hour, small talk everywhere. Joining me now is author Deborah Fine. She wrote the book on small talk, The Fine Art of Small Talk, And Deborah, thanks for joining me today. Is it your birthday today?

extrovert right now. So when I walk into a networking event, or that coffee break, or the reception before the dinner or the awards or whatever you had to go through this week, we're sitting in the auditorium waiting for the next speaker, I approach that as a task. Here's the task. Meet the person I right, meet the person on my left, don't wait for them to introduce themselves. Walk into a hospitality suite. Tell myself, I'm going to meet two new people.

I'm going to meet four new people. One new person. I get to decide the task, and then when my task is done, then I get to In my case, I do like to drink, so I'll go and drink or I'll leave early. How great would that be? So small talk it sounds like a waste of saliva to most people because it most of us think it's sports or the weather. But what small talk really is, I believe,

is the appetizer to a relationship. In your case, because you're at a business industry conference, it was the appetiser to business relationships. Although anything else is possible. But anytime we invest time in getting to know people or just frame conversations with small talk. So think about this before or after the picture frame of a business conversation, let's say, the provision of a service, the negotiation of a contract,

the evaluation of a candidate, before or after. If we use small talk, then we develop these business friendship, business relationships and all things, you know, being equal people do business with their friends and all things not being so equal,

people still do business with their friends. So it is a good investment of our time just to do it in a quality way when we choose to do it, and when we're spent exhausted done that, we should just tune out or go sit in the reception area, plan your device for a while, then come back in.

ask people what they do. All this good stuff and I find that there are an element of folks who sort of retreat into their phone because now it used to be you know, let's say you're in a standard kind of cocktail reception kind of thing. There's a couple tables set up, some people already kind of paired off, they know someone whatever, and then other people might just stand there and stare at their phone. So do you feel like we're seeing more of a trend of that

happening or has that always happened? And you know, is that okay to do or no? Should you really just not do that?

down at. There were a million crutches, rich, It's just that the crutch right now is a device. Do I think it's wrong. Absolutely, your device should not be out and about, even at a if I sit down with you to dine, it should not be out and about on the table. It should either be in a pocket, a handback, whatever it may be. It certainly should be

facing down and turned off. And if you wear an Apple Watch on your rist, please stop it, just because you're driving me nuts and I just really I cannot stand it, So for rich let me and people have forgotten this. A phone has a phone feature. I know we've forgotten this, but wouldn't it be grand. It's like as recently as yesterday, I got an inquiry in my business and instead of replying the email that's how it was delivered, I picked up the phone and used the

phone feature. Now asked me if she answered no. She did not, but I left a phone message and said I follow up by email. You know, we need to have this space to face interaction or this where I can just hearing your voice right now. I don't know you. Now you're in a you originally asked me a question about going to these functions, et cetera. You're at a disadvantage because I'm guessing this. I don't know you, we've never talked. I didn't even know who you were two

days ago. Sorry because I don't live in LA.

the speaker this morning? Or what other conferences do you attend. The free information I have is that you're at this conference, right, and so am I You know, what did you see the exhibit hall that caught your eye. So if I'm at a fundraiser, what got you involved in this fundraiser? How are you connected? If I'm at your party at your house, you just disclosed that you're married. By the way, everyone listening, don't ask people if they're married. Don't ask them.

If I found out Rich is married because he disclosed it, I am not going to ask him do you have any kids? Because folks, they either don't and you're headed down a rabbit hole, or they do and they won't shut up.

this food bank? What keeps you busy? So I meet you at back to school night with the kids. So outside of the kids, what keeps you busy? It's my favorite way to get to know somebody. They can disclose you know, I do yoga, I like to jog, I'm I'm in a book club, I have three kids, I like to travel. Whatever they disclose is now what you get to talk about with them?

you do because they're worried I don't do anything? Okay, So but if I had that wonderful opportunity to meet your wife, I would say, what keeps you busy? Outside of being dragged to these events with your husband?

to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here talking technology with you at Triple eight Rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. I feel like our conversation, our small talk conversation went off the rails the end there, So uh, Deborah was a good sport. All right, let's go to Angel in Gardena, California. Angel. You're Ama Fritch, Thank you Rich, big fan of yours question.

mention that and get get to you with that. But uh, for now, the the ones that are coming up, because ninety nine percent of earbuds have a microphone, especially the wireless ones, and I think wired, you're gonna easily be able to find a pair of wired earbuds. Like if you want something that's super cheap, Moondrop Quarks. These are highly rated, and these have no microphone for thirteen bucks. The problem is most phones like you alluded to, don't

have a headphone jack anymore. So if she wants one with a headphone jack and just wants a wired pair of earbuds, Moondrop Quarks, they are thirteen bucks, highly rated, no microphone on those whatsoever. Now, when it comes to Bluetooth, I found let's see here, I found two pairs, one I'm trying to see if this one has a microphone or not. This one, I think does not have a microphone. It looks like it's twenty bucks and it's a company called Ja Rabbit and it looks like they're sold at Walmart,

so that could be an option. But the one that is a little bit more well known ISO tunes and these are called free two point zero listen only, but these are expensive. These are one hundred and twenty dollars. So I'm trying to find from some of the companies that I know, like Belkin that makes earbuds Monoprice, if they make a solution without the microphone built in, and I'm just not finding them. So I see the frustration here because these are not easy to find. But here's

what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna pull my friend. She reviews all of the earbuds for Wirecutter, and I'm going to see what she comes up with, because I guarantee she's got something and I will mention it on next week's show. Angel or actually you know what, have Kim, get your phone number and your text or your email and I will definitely get in touch with you directly, and if you are listening, and you have a suggestion of earbuds that are Bluetooth that you love that do

not have a microphone. Let me know hello at richon tech dot TV and I'll get it into the feedback section of the show. Good question. That's a tricky one. That's a very complicated one, something that you know takes a little research to find out. Let me tell you about Rivian.

here in the California area. But they are now saying, you know what, we are going to use Tesla's supercharger network. So they signed an agreement this week to provide Rivian drivers access to Tesla's super charger network. That's a huge deal. Now they say they're going to continue to expand their own what they call Adventure network. But last I checked, they did not have a lot of chargers with that network, and they're putting them mostly in places like national parks

and things like that. So here's the deal. The folks that already have a Rivian R one T and an R one S that's their truck R one, get it

our Rivian one truck, Rivian one suv. They will be able to get an adapter to charge on Tesla's supercharger network as early as spring twenty twenty four, and then starting with their twenty twenty five vehicles, they are going to have the Tesla charger built in, so you know, the charging port is going to be Tesla's, so if you pop this thing open, it's going to look like

a Tesla charger. It's called the North American Charging Standard, which I find so ironic that Tesla came up with that name way way long ago, and now it actually is becoming the North American Charging Standard. Why because in recent weeks we had GM was the first to say, you know what, we're just going to go ahead and use Tesla's charging infrastructure and their charge report, and then Ford said, you know what, that's a good idea. We're

going to do the same exact thing. So now We've got two three companies that are all using Tesla's supercharger network, which I know some Tesla owners are probably not too happy about that because now they're thinking, oh, great, does this mean these chargers are going to be a lot more crowded. Yeah. Probably, but this is going to be a slow process. But what we're seeing here is, at least in the US, the Tesla charging standard is becoming

the standard. So Tesla is winning the format war when it comes to how we are going to charge our cars in the future. And the fact that three major companies are now going to use these chargers in their car and that they can access that supercharger network, who's going to be next? I guarantee other companies will fall in line with this, because you don't want to be left out at this point. And now, if you're choosing a car, yeah, you probably want that ease of charging.

All right. If you have a question, give me a call Triple eight rich one on one eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one. You're listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out talking technology with you at Triple eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. You are lighting up the phone lines today. Do appreciate that?

in Manta Bello. Barbara, you're on with Rich.

But this is completely wireless, and the fact that it works with sons, it is certified, so it's not like a you know, kind of where they're just kind of shoehorning it in. This is actually made to work with Sonos. So I think this would be a great addition to your collection if you don't mind spending the six hundred dollars to buy it.

a while. It has not gone down, so I hope that you're right. The only thing I did see when I went to the website is there isn't a ten percent off if you put your email address into the website. So if worse comes to worse, if you can't get this thing on sale during Prime Day, you can put the email address and get ten percent off, which will take sixty dollars off. But we do know the ways to track Amazon purchases, so if you want if you

haven't your eye on something on Amazon. We'll probably talk about this a little bit later because we're going to talk about Prime Day. But what I do is I either add it to my cart to be able to watch the price over the time, or you can there's actually a couple of ways. There's an extent called Honey which you can add things to your wish list on there and it will give you an email when the

price drops. Then there's something called Camel Camel, I know, such a weird name, but you can put a price in there an Amazon like a link to an Amazon product, and it will send you an alert when that price changes. And then finally Google, actually, if you're using Google Chrome, they have a feature where they will track prices as well, so you can track prices on Google Chrome itself. I find that that is a little bit hit or miss.

Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes a little price tracker shows up, other times it doesn't. So right now, if I click on this Victrola stream ONYX, if I click up in the URL, I'll see a little bell that says track price. So now if I click that, it says you're tracking this product. This page is saved in other bookmarks, and it will alert you on your phone or in Chrome if that price drops. So those are a couple different ways of doing it. But Barbara,

you know I have my eye on this thing. So now I'm tracking the price. Now I'm wondering if this is going to go on sale for Prime. The only thing I said about my whole record experience was that I didn't like how they only last for like twenty minutes. I'm so used to just unlimited music all day long. So great question there. All right, if you have Visible, this is kind of an issue. If you have Visible, they, according to nine to five, Google, are disabling auto pay

if you're on one of these older plans. So for about a year now, Visible, which is owed by Verizon, has been transitioning to two new plans that apparently give you better five G coverage, but you have to switch your simcard out. So you've probably gotten some emails about this. Maybe you've had to figure this out and do it. But the price that you have to uh the plan that you have to switch to also has a higher price.

It's about five dollars more a month. So it used to be twenty five, now it's thirty all, oh, they're giving you a temporary five dollars discount, so couple of things. And I guess the author of this article uses Visible, so that's why they're interested in this. But I thought it was interesting because a lot of people do use Visible, but their messaging has gotten more urgent, telling customers through texts and emails that your service is going to be disconnected.

So the most dramatic part of this whole thing is that Visible's website now gives you a notification that autopay will be disabled as part of this switch. So basically, they're forcing you to take notice because you will have to log into the website to pay your bill. So any payment due on or after July one, twenty twenty three, if you're still on this old plan, must be made manually.

And because autopay payments are processed two days before, autopay will be disabled as of June twenty ninth, which means if you don't pay your auto pay, you're not going to have your service. So they're trying to force you into doing this. Now, here's the thing. If you're on this original plan, you have to do something by September because this old plan I guess this network will be shut down in September. What network are they talking about? Because Visible uses five G and four G. I don't know.

It's kind of an odd thing, but the reality is, if you are using Visible and you're getting all of these messages, it's probably best to just go ahead and do the switchover. So if you have to get a new SIM card, tell them, hey, you know, I'll take the new SIM. You pop it in your phone and it works. If your phone supports eSIM, it's probably easier just to access the eSIM and just upgrade that way. But Visible could be hit or miss. I mean, I really like the pricing, but they've made a lot of

changes in recent years to you know, it's good. It's a good option, but I know reviews are hit or miss on this thing. And then United doing something cool. United has a new mobile app feature that will be a lot more useful if your travel plans are disrupted.

So starting now, if you've ever been on a flight that is changed or delayed, you have to go in this giant line to help you get options for delays and cancelations, and you have to stand there with a whole bunch of people who are also delayed and or canceled, and they may give you a voucher, they may give

you a different flight, they may rebook you. But now, and I don't know why this wasn't a thing before, you'll get a text notification if you're on one of these flights that is interrupted, and it will bring you to the mobile app Orunited dot com and if your reservation is impacted, you will get the ability to rebook your flight or get a new flight, track your bag,

see where they are, or you'll get a voucher. And this is the big important part is that they will now give you vouchers through the app, so you can get a hotel, meal or ride share voucher if you're eligible. And that's really important because I remember my son and I were delayed, delayed, delayed, delayed, And this is for

flights that are delayed I think more than sixty minutes. Yeah, when a flight is delayed by more than sixty minutes or canceled, this is when you're going to automatically see this new option for delaying cancelations inside the United app. But my son and I were delayed, and this was before this obviously, and he was like four at the time, I think, long story short, it just kept getting more and more delayed. It was so annoying. We ended up getting on the plane. We had to get off the

plane because like something happened with the airplane. And I said, you know what, enough is enough? I called in. Everyone was lining up. I called in and I said, you know what, you got to book us on a different flight, and by the way, i'd like first class. And I'm not kidding. I actually got disconnected from the agent on this call, which was ironic, but I'm not kidding. When I looked at my app, I miraculously saw that our itinerary had been refreshed and my ticket was rebooked and

we were in first class. And that is probably one of my favorite stories. And that person will never get a thank you because I don't know who they were or their name or anything like that. And they didn't even tell me that they did this. But it was such a nice gesture because I asked for it. They didn't really fight me on it, and we actually got disconnected. They could have just literally waited till I called back,

and they didn't. They proactively gave us what I asked for without even telling me and then when I got on the plane, I was pleasantly surprised. And my kid will never stop talking about that. By the way, he said, hey, Dad, can we get the every time we fly now? Can we get that seat where you get the free chicken? Remember we got that free chicken that whole meal. I said, yes, son, that doesn't happen very often. That was a fluke anyway, United thanks for making it easier when folks are delayed

or canceled. All right, coming up next in this hour, we are going to talk to Julie Ramhold. She is the consumer analyst with Deal News. She's going to talk Amazon Prime Day Plus. We have time for some more of your questions at Triple A rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Coming up. You are sitting in the seat that gives you a free chicken. You're listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here at

Triple eight rich one on one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one. It's been quite the show so far. Let's see if you listen to the podcast of this show, which I know some of you do, uh do me a favor and rate and review it and share it with your friends. Let them know that you listen to this show and why you listen. If you listen on the radio, take a screenshot of you listening or a picture, anything, just to let folks know that you do indeed listen and

that will help grow the show. All right, let's go to uh Gary, Gary's in Redondo Beach. Gary, you're on with.

a chip that has been around for a bit. Now, if we look at the facts, Number one, they didn't announce an M three this year, so we don't have an idea that they're going to come out with an M three MacBook next year. Now, they could do that, and you may buy this, and you may be frustrated and say, Rich you led me astray, like why'd you do that? But I think that for what you need out of this computer, this computer is going to serve

you pretty well. If you're doing something like if you told me to video edit or something like that, I would definitely recommend that you move up to a pro system which definitely has the newer chips. So, for instance, I've got the MacBook Pro fourteen inch, which I immediately regretted because this is too small, but it has a M two pro chip which came out a little bit later,

and it came out in this notebook. So but the fifteen inch MacBook Air, I know it has some of the older chips in it, but these chips are still really good. And when you look at what Apple does from start to finish with their software and their power efficiency and these chips, I mean, this is going to be a really good system for the price that they're asking for. Have you decided on how much memory you would get in this thing, because that's kind of the big question.

I think that's smart. So I say, Gary, go for it. I understand that it's a little bit older technology inside, but it doesn't mean it's bad technology, and it doesn't mean it's outdated technology. So for what you're using it for, I think you'll be pretty happy.

So the website that I like to go to and for Gary, this could probably be helpful too, even though the fifteen inch mac Book Air is sort of in a class of its own. But the website I like is called Buyer's Guide by MacRumors, So if you go to buyers Guide dot MacRumors dot com, they have listed every single product that Apple makes and they tell you buy now, caution, don't buy, or neutral. So if you're looking at maccomputers, for instance, the fifteen inch MacBook Air

since it just came out, is buy now. The thirteen

inch MacBook Air is caution. And the reason why it's caution is because you can look at the release dates of this product in the past March twenty fifteen, June twenty seventeen, October twenty eighteen, July twenty nineteen, March twenty twenty, November twenty twenty, and it does an average of how many days between those releases, which is four hundred and forty six days between new thirteen inch back MacBook Airs, and right now it's been three hundred and fifty one days,

So that tells you that in another one hundred days they're would be a new thirteen inch MacBook Air. Is it always perfect, Absolutely not, But it's a good kind of gauge to see if you should spend your money on something, and if you are going to spend your money on something, perhaps it should be a little bit discounted. So, for instance, if you look at the new home pod

buy now HomePod Mini Neutral. It's been nine hundred and eighty four days since they released the home Pod Mini, so I think that one is up for a refresh, even though we have no history to go by, because that's the first product in that cycle. So anyway, the website is Buyer's Guide dot MacRumors dot com. Again, I put all of these notes on my website. Rich Ontech dot tv is the place to go.

savings Amazon exclusive deals and celebrity product launches. Who doesn't love a good celebrity product launch. Joining me now to talk about this is Julie Ramhold, consumer analysts with dealnews dot com. Julie, thanks so much for joining me today.

is going to look like. So it could be that they have a limited number of deals that they're you know, willing to sell at this price, and by having people sign up for invitations, it's on a first come, first serve thing, or it could be some other way that we just haven't even fathomed yet.

But the the invite only deals are seventy five percent off an Amazon Fire TV forty three inch, sixty percent off this watch, fifty five percent off these JBL Live noise canceling headphones, and fifty percent off a four yo Luna three facial cleansing brush, which I know sounds funny, but my wife actually needs a new one of those, So I need to sign up for that invite only.

I talk a lot about technology. They often go on sale in a very big way, and of course they've said some of these things already, like deals starting Oh deal starting now, save up to fifty five percent on select Alexa enabled devices, including the Echo Show five, the Echo Pop sixty three percent off up to on kids devices, Echo Glow Ring bundles, euro Wi Fi systems, blink outdoor cameras.

So I feel like if you have your eye on an Amazon product, like a brand, you probably don't want to buy that right now.

But that said, don't just restrict yourself to things like Ring and Eero and the Blank cameras and the Alexa enabled devices, because if it has Amazon's branding on it, there's a really good chance we'll see some kind of a deal. So if you're looking at a new Kindle, it's a really good time to look at things like that, And because is for Prime members, it's also a really

good time to look at Amazon services as well. So if you're looking at a new Kindle, it's also a good time to try Kindle Unlimited for you know, all the reading that you could possibly want, and see if you like that service enough to stick with it month to month.

Prime these days? It's one hundred and thirty nine dollars a year or fifteen dollars a month. Is that still worth it?

You love sending these emails to me at Hello at Richontech dot tv. We're still looking to help Angel. Angel was looking for some earbuds for his wife that do not have a microphone. So if you have a good pair of these. Let me know. Hello at richontech dot TV. I pinged my friend over at Wirecutter. We'll see what she has to say about it. Let's see what else. Steve writes in Hey, Rich, I heard her call on

your show. The caller asked if Salesforce would be a good platform for his college age daughter to learn salesforce has changed in recent times. It's one of those career things that's been flooded by all the companies offering training programs to get people certified as salesforce administrators. Even with certification, you're not going to get a job as an administrator

without several years experience working as an administrator. The training programs, of course, won't tell you this, as they're making money from selling their training programs. My wife has five Salesforce certifications with three years of experience, and it's it was still difficult to get a job. Many jobs want more than just salesforce. It's not something that just anyone can do, as the training programs advertise. Steve. Oh, great advice. Steve,

appreciate that because that's probably what our caller saw was Salesforce. Well, he said he had it at his company. So, but good advice. Yeah, these training programs don't necessarily mean you're going to get a job. So I think that's why for me personally, I would look at jobs that i'd want to do and see what the skills are that they want. Jim writes in Hey, Rich, I'm looking for that Amazon gift card hack that involves Amazon gift card car.

I was watching KTLA the other morning and the discussion was gift card balances. You mentioned a way that you can load your Amazon account with your gift cards. How's this done? I can't find a way to do this, Thanks and advance, Jim. Yes, so this is specifically for Amazon gift cards. So if you are sorry Visa gift cards.

So if you get one of these Visa gift cards, let's say it's one hundred dollars, fifty dollars, it's really tough to use unless you use that full amount all the same time, you're going to be left with some weird sort of balance on that card of like five dollars and seventeen cents, And how do you use that? Because a Visa card, it's not a standard gift card like an Amazon card or like a shopping gift card

that's easy to use at the register. Now, some companies will easily figure out how much is on this card and let you scan it and use it. But I found, honestly, it's much easier to skip that entire process and just go to Amazon. And here's what I do. You go to Amazon, you set the Visa gift card as a payment method, and then you type in and buy a

reload account. Reload account with an Amazon gift card, okay, and then you go to It'll be right at the top reload Amazon gift card, and you say exactly how much you want, So whatever exact amount is on that Visa card, you type it in there and you say buy now, and you make sure that you use that Visa gift card that you just put in as a payment method as the payment method for this new Amazon reload and next thing you know, it will shift that money from the Visa card to an Amazon gift card.

And that's much easier to spend because if you're like me, you're on Amazon all the time. Now, I found that sometimes it takes a little bit of time and it may not work instantaneously, so it's not like if you're buying a gift card. Sometimes it will it will work fast. This may take five to ten minutes, sometimes I've noticed, and sometimes it doesn't work at all, depending on the

brand of the Visa gift card. So again, you take the Visa gift card, you set it as a payment method, and then you enter that exact amount and buy a gift card to reload your Amazon gift card balance and boom, you've transferred that balance. So good question there. Hey Rich From Paul in Santa Clarita. Quick question, I have many passwords. What are your thoughts on a password manager? If you think they're good, can you recommend one? Are they as secure as they say they are? Absolutely, Paul, use a

password manager, get all your passwords in there. I know it's tough to get it set up, but definitely definitely use when they are secure. Make sure you pick a good, strong password for the password manager, and then set up two factor authentication for the password manager. If you are just using Apple products, you can get away with the

iCloud keychain. If you're using Apple products and Chrome, then I recommend just using the built in Google password manager because that'll work on an iPhone And if you're using a bunch of different devices than use a cross platform password manager. I like bitwarden as a free option, and then you can check out one Password and dash Lane. Those are two good cross platform password managers, but you will have to pay for those typically art rights in Hey, Rich,

please post the travel carbon monoxide detector. You put it on Facebook reels and then it disappeared. There's probably a lot of interest for it. Someone mentioned on a work call today about getting one for travel, and I told them I would send them the info and the one you recommended. Yes, I posted this to Facebook my Instagram stories.

Really sad story about the couple from southern California that passed away in a hotel room down in Mexico due to carbon monoxide supposedly, so it might be a good idea to carry one of these things. So I asked my friend Zach Hoenig. He used to work at the Points. Guy knows everything about travel, and he recommended this kitty carbon monoxide detector that's battery powered and has a low battery indicator, which is smart, It's portable, and it's twenty bucks.

So I'll put that link in the show notes as well. Tech dot TV. Let's see Erica says, good morning, Rich, I received this weird text. It's probably a scam. Thanks, and the text says Hi, I'm Donovan Summerfield, the Walton Family Grant Foundation Admin director. Ooh, you are chosen to receive ten thousand dollars from the ongoing program aimed at touching lives. Kindly text your email for confirmation and delivery

to this number NOE to receive your payment is free. Yeah, Erica, as you suspected, that is definitely a weird text and it's most definitely a scam. Please watch out for these scam texts. So many my wife got one. Oh gosh, they are just They are really really doing a lot of scam texts these days, so be aware of those. I think we have time for one more. Gale says, hey, Rich, When you did your KTLA segment on air tags, I

thought about getting one for a fifteen day vacation. Of course I did not end, so my luggage was lost for ten days. You mentioned some other products that were not as costly as Apple. With another trip in the work, I need to purchase AirTags and would appreciate your recommendation. Truly enjoy your segments. Gail Gail, listen to the advice the first time around, because I'm telling you I get emails like this all the time. Just do it when you think you don't need it, do it because that's

when you need it. I would recommend AirTags for sure. They are the best solution at this point. Later in the year I may change my tune on that when there are more standards for these things, but air tags are the best. You said sent for my iPhone. Go for the air tags. The four pack goes on sale from time to time. You've got Prime Day coming up. Search Google for AirTag deals and see if you can find a deal in that four pack. Sometimes it's discounted,

and sometimes Costco has them as well. My name is rich Demiro. Thanks so much for listening to the show that's going to do it for this episode again, this is show number twenty five. You can check out the show notes at richon tech dot tv. I put everything in there that I mentioned. Send your feedback to hello at rich on tech dot tv, and I might just read it on the next show. Next week, I'm going to tell you about a website that can help you rent out your backyard pool. But they're also now doing

tennis and pickleball. So if you want to make some extra cash or just find a place to swim or play, you can do that again. You can find me on social media. I am at rich on Tech. My name is rich Dedmiel. Thanks so much for listening. There are so many ways you can spend your time. I do appreciate you spending it right here to make with me. Thanks to everyone who makes the show possible, including Bobo's getting married next week. Congratulations. I'll talk to you real soon.