Apple Stumbles; Earthquake App; CES 2019 Trends; Robots Delivering Snacks

Didn't have to wake up at any specific time, had some nice time off, had my mom in town from New Jersey for the holidays, so that was cool, and we got to see a couple of shows. I mean, it was really nice. And we're gonna talk some tech. Let's get started. I mean, there's not too much going on. This is the week between the New Year and CS or the holidays in CS, so not a whole lot happens, but we will go through some of the things that

I thought were interesting. This is the show where I kind of talk about this that I think you should know about apps, gadgets, just tech news in general, and I'll take some time to kind of discuss those things. I do want to address one thing that did happen over the holidays. That was an absolute tragedy. And if you're in the LA area listening to this, you heard about it. But my colleague Chris Burrows at KTLA passed away truly truly tragic circumstances. And Chris and I had

worked together for many years here in Los Angeles. We actually worked together before he came to LA. He was on a TV show that I did. I do segments for various TV stations, so he worked at the one in New York City, so we actually kind of knew each other before he even came here. And just very tragic circumstances of his passing. And I just want to say that I'm still in shock over what happened. I'm angry.

Here's a guy that was at the height or just beginning a very successful career, really had so many things going for him, and to see what happened was just absolutely unbelievable to me. I mean, I woke up to text messages from friends and I just could not believe it.

And I still don't believe it. It's been over a week, and I just everything I think about is just all the interactions we had over the years and the conversations we had, and I keep searching for clues or anything that could have led me to maybe help him, and I obviously that probably would not happen. But I do want to say my takeaway, and I've already kind of shared my thoughts on my Facebook page, my Instagram and Twitter.

But my takeaway is just be the friend now that you want to be to people, and don't wait, because life is very short and things like this just kind of reiterate that. So Chris Burrows, thinking of you, man, and you were a very big inspiration to me here because you were so successful and the way that you had such an ease and air about yourself on air is something that not many journalists can do. So am thinking of you. All right, let's talk about CS twenty nineteen.

This is happening next week, and man, this is I've been covering CS now for probably a decade, if not more. I can't remember it. It might be about a decade now, so maybe a little bit more, maybe eleven years, but I don't want to count because it is the craziest time of my year. Every year, the whole tech industry

descends upon Las Vegas. There's a million tech companies. This show just keeps getting bigger and bigger because there's so many accessory makers and smart home and just about everything you can think of. It's all there in one place, And how does a journalist like myself even attempt to

cover something like this? Now, in recent years, you set a lot of stuff up, You get a lot of advanced meetings with the Samsungs of the world, and you know, whatever big companies that you have relationships with, you can get in and kind of see what they're doing. But the reality is, you never really know what's going to be big at CS until you actually get there on the ground and you start covering stuff and you start experiencing things. Because all these pitches that we get in

our email it's tough to tell. I mean, they all sound great, but are they really that good? So what are we going to see at this year CS? I think the big theme this year is really going to be five G. And five G is the successor to four G, which is basically faster internet on our phones but also for our homes, our cars, basically everything. And so five G is going to be a big kind of catch all phrase that we're going to see all

over the place. Five G is going to happen in twenty nineteen, but I don't think in a huge meaningful way it will be there. But I think we're still on a longer runway when it comes to five G. So that's one thing. Health technology that'll be another one. Robots there, of course, everywhere, all over the floor. So I always try to find cool stuff about robots and fun little videos to post digital assistance. So this is a big one because Alexa and Google are kind of

fighting it out for the market share. Personally, I'm on the Google side. I think Alexa has done some really great things and Amazon has done a great job of getting her everywhere. But the thing is I'm seeing is kind of like assistant fatigue. I mean, every device, I'm getting pitches from every single company about these assistants being built into the devices. And a couple of years ago it was all about the Internet getting built into these devices,

so we saw that happen. Now we see the assistants, and then of course next year, who knows what'll be, but the assistance that will be big because we'll see kind of like where they're building them in. I didn't think they can put them in anything else, but who knows, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and of course driverless cars. I'm getting some driverless car kind of rides at CES as well this year, So those are the kind of the

big trends that I'll be on the lookout for. I like to find the little gadgets that just kind of help you out in everyday life that are really you know, not like the thousand dollars things or the big picture things, but a lot of the little things, they're just cool gadgets that every company is out there showing off their stuff. I like to discover the little things that I'll show throughout the year, and a lot of things you get a preview of, so you see stuff before it actually

is ready for the public. So we'll see stuff that might come out, you know, in the second half of the year, the third half, the third of the year, third half, I don't think there's a third half of the year. I think we'll just leave it at second half. But my advice for CS is stay as healthy as possible. I'm probably gonna be big on Instagram this year, so if you're not following me there, find me on Instagram. I'm at rich on Tech and I will show you all the good stuff when it comes to CS twenty

nineteen in Las Vegas. And if you see me there, say hi for sure. Even if I look busy, Believe me, I'm always willing to say hi to folks. Let's talk about a new app available to the city of Los Angeles and residents here. It's called Shake alert LA. And this is getting a lot of publicity because it's a mobile app that sends alerts to users in La County if there's an earthquake of magnitude five or more. And

this is not an earthquake alert app. This is supposed to give you a little bit of a heads up that you may soon feel shaking. So does it work. I don't know. I've downloaded it to my phone. It seems like it's pretty straightforward. The thing that a lot of people are a little bit concerned about are the privacy concerns, and I agree, because when you download this app, you have to agree to give up your location at

all times. And I'm not sure why that is. I guess so they can see the proximity of the earthquake to you so they can give you a better alert, or I guess so they can use your location services to only deliver to you if you're in the LA area. But here's the deal with these apps. And I did a story on another app, which is I'm trying to get some clarity on it. But there's another app, let's see quake Alert. And this is an app that was also done in partnership with the US Geological Survey. Let's see,

let's see quake Alert. I'm I'm on the beta program. And so when I was talking to the folks at Quake Alert, they were saying that it's really tough to do an app like this because the notifications on Android and iOS are not a perfect system. So you can send a notification to a phone, but there is no guarantee from the cellular providers or iOS or Android that that alert will be received, or that notification will be

received in a timely manner. Now, I always wondered about that because it seems like when you do these things where you get a text message confirmation or a push alert from like Facebook, they come through pretty much immediately. But I think the problem is when you're talking about a lot of people, like half a million people or a million people, you can't really guarantee that all those people are going to get that notification at the same time.

But they say it's an official pilot, So again, what does pilot mean. It means that it may not work. This is not a guarantee that you're going to get a one minute alert of an earthquake. You know, you're not guaranteed anything. But this is definitely probably going to help. I think once we have the first quake that triggers an alert on this app, we'll have a lot more data about the effectiveness of this app. So if you want to download it, it's available for Android and iOS.

It is called shake alert La Shake Alert La. And again, this is a pilot program, so it's not going to be perfect. And if you're worried about your privacy and we're you know, the city and all these companies or whoever is creating this app having access to your location at all times, you may want to skip it because you do have to enable that for it to work. All right, let's go to the emails now. Ruth says, hey, Rich, happy New Year along with your family. My question to

you is what internet company do you recommend? I have Spectrum four hundred megabits per second and I'm paying eighty dollars. I've been having problems with the Wi Fi. They've come out to quote unquote fix it, but continues with the buffering. Therefore, my ring isn't at its best. Help. Thank you, Ruth. Okay, Ruth. I think the problem is not your internet, because four hundred megabits per second is actually really fast. So at my house, I only have one hundred. I wish I

had four hundred, But it's not your internet. I don't think that there's a problem with the actual speed that's coming in. And you can confirm this by hooking your computer up with an Ethernet cable to the modem that Spectrum provides and doing a quick speed test. And you can do a speed test by just going to fast dot com and seeing what that speed comes up as. I don't think that's going to be your problem. I think your problem is actually that your WiFi does not

your ring doorbell. And this is very common because the routers that Spectrum and other companies provide are not necessarily the best at blanket blanketing your entire home with internet. Yeah it works around the device, and yeah it'll probably work upstairs downstairs, but if you really look at these things, half the time, you're getting really just half the speed

and maybe not in all portions of your home. So Ruth I would recommend, if you really want to get the value out of your eighty dollars a month, you got to upgrade to one of these mesh networking systems like ero ee Ro, Google Wi Fi or Netgear or b I think those will definitely fix the issue and it will make the Wi Fi reach the ring outside your front door. I think that's going to really solve all your problems. And here's a little quick tip for you if you don't want to change the log in.

You know, when you change out your Wi Fi system, you're gonna have to go around to all your different gadgets and reconnect them with the new network credentials. The network the Wi Fi I know network name and also the password. So if you don't want to do that, you can just name your new Wi Fi network the same exact name as your old one and set the

password the same exact as your old network password. Once you make the network name and also the password the same, your devices should seamlessly find that new network on your new equipment and log in as usual, it should be pretty seamless. I did that at my place. I know it's not the most secure thing to do because I always recommend changing passwords when you upgrade stuff. But if you don't want to go through the hassle of changing all your smart home devices, you can definitely do that

and everything will follow in line. So that's a little tip for you there. Now. I mentioned CS twenty nineteen is happening very soon, but already companies are coming out with some of their announcements, and this one I really like because c Byge is a brand that was not around for very long. But I was very very impressed with the light bulbs that they sent me, and these were the first generation of their life light bulbs. They were basically just your standard light bulbs that kind of

you can use Google Home to adjust right. But the secret of these light bulbs is that they do not need a hub, and the Google Home app finds them instantly. So if you haven't set up any of these smart home devices like smart light bulbs, what happens is you either need some sort of hub like Phillips Hugh. You have a hub that you have to connect to your network.

The light bulbs talk to that hub, and then the Google Home app or the Google Assistant will interface with the I know it's kind of complicated, but they'll interface on the back end with the hub and talk to those light bulbs kind of through a third party. Right now, with Ge, the way they do it is their bulbs actually interface with Google Assistant directly. So here's how it worked.

I put one of the light bulbs in a socket at my home, I opened up the Google Home app on my phone and boom, right on the Google Home app is said, Hey, we found a light bulb. Do you want to set this thing up? And I was so impressed because generally that's not the way it works. You have to go to the h app, set up the light bulb there, and then link the h app to your Google Assistant and then it can then control those devices. So this is kind of cutting out the middleman.

And now c BYGE has new light bulbs. These are full color LEDs, and these are gonna come out. Now they're not available right away, but they will come out this quarter, so first quarter of twenty nineteen. So full color LEDs. They're gonna have millions of color options, plus tunable whites in sixty wah equivalent A nineteen a BR thirty for recessed cans, and a custom sized light strip.

And these are all controllable with your voice or through the app, or with custom routines and schedules, so that's really cool. And the price point on these bulbs they haven't said yet, but the original bulbs that they sent me were a very good price. So I would say definitely look into these things if you want something that's super simple, especially if setting something up for someone else in your family. Definitely check out c by ge because

I was very impressed. I love that they are seamlessly integrated with Google Assistant. And again this is all working through Bluetooth, so the bulbs have Bluetooth built into them, so that your phone can recognize a Bluetooth bulb nearby and then connect it to Google Assistant. Some other devices

that they're gonna have is a smart switch. So this is really cool too, because a lot of times if you're using these bulbs with the switches in, like for instance, in my office at home, I have a bunch of smart bulbs, but it's kind of a pain because sometimes I turn off the light switch in the office, and sometimes I leave it on and turn off the bulbs with my voice. So when I turn off the light switch, I can't then turn on the bulbs with my voice.

And if I leave them on and turn them off with my voice, then the switch I have to flip it down and then back up to turn them on. So with these new smart switches, they will actually allow you to turn your lights on and off. You can dim them and control them away from home with just the voice assistant or an app. And what's really cool about that is that, let's say you have someone come to your house and turn off all the light switches like they normally would do when they leave a room,

then you can't control your light bulbs from afar. So let's say you wanna Let's say you're on vage. Okay, let me give you a scenario. Let's say I don't know. Let's say I'm in New York City. My wife is going to meet me in New York. Right, I'm there day early for work. Right, she comes out of the house, she turns off all the lights, and then she meets me in New York And I said, oh no, I want to leave those lights on so I can make it look like someone's at our house, right and have

these lights turn on and off throughout the day. Well, if you have one of these smart switches, even if she flipped the switch off, you'll still be able to control those light bulbs from afar using the app or your voice or whatever. And I think that's pretty useful. So in fact, it's nice too because you don't even

have to wire your house for new switches. You just use the switches that GE has and you can now dim your lights and turn them on, turn them off whatever you want, and it's fully controllable from the app or the light switches. So I think that's a really nice edition. So again c by GE, I think they're doing some cool stuff and we're gonna see a lot more of this in the future as well. Let's talk

about Apple. Oh my gosh, Apple, Apple Apple. This was one of the biggest stories of the week because Apple revised their earnings estimates and they basically said that they were gonna make about up to nine billion dollars less than they originally thought. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not crying for Apple here. They are still making a ton of money. But what happened with Apple is that sales of iPhones were not as good as they expected.

So Apple said they Now, you can read this a million different ways, and I'm not gonna go into it too too much because it's been said and said and over said. So I'm just gonna give you my quick thoughts on this. But the bottom line is Apple said, look, number one, our phones came out later in the year than usual, and so they shipped later, which means that in the fourth quarter of twenty eighteen, people didn't have as much opportunity to purchase their phones. Okay, that could

be true. Then they said that China was also not as strong as they expected, so weak economics in China contributed to this less revenue or they expect less revenue. And then they also said that folks upgraded their batteries because battery replacements. Remember that whole thing with the battery where they were throttling the phones and they said, okay, fine, we'll let you replace your battery for thirty bucks. Well that was throughout the end of the year, so that

ended actually on December thirty first. Now batteries go up to their normal price of I believe I put this in my book one hundred and one handy tech tips for the iPhone. I believe it was either fifty nine or oh gosh, now you're gonna make me find this, so let's see battery. I think it was fifty nine dollars. Nope, let's see seventy nine dollars. Seventy nine So yeah, So the batteries now are okay, between forty nine and seventy nine dollars for replacement, depending on your iPhone model. Before

they were charging twenty nine dollars. So they said a lot of people took advantage of that. I don't know if I'm buying that. I mean, yes, I think that people did take advantage of the battery replacement and it did make their phone feel newer because it wasn't as slow, But I don't think that is nine billion dollars worth. The other thing they did say is that consumers are adapting to a world with fewer carrier subsidies, and I

do agree with that. I think that once we saw these carriers stop charging two hundred dollars for a phone, and now that the phone is charging is costing closer to one thousand dollars, it does make people wait longer to upgrade their phone. We're seeing a longer upgrade cycle in general because phones are just getting better and you don't need a new one all the time. Even I see this with my wife, I mean her phone, except for the camera. She had an iPhone. What does she have?

A seven? And I did notice up to the the camera is a little bit better. But I think with like a ten R or a ten S, the I do think the camera actually got a lot better with the ten S and the ten R. So if you are thinking of upgrading for the camera and you have an older device, it is worth it. But the reality is you don't necessarily need that. If things are working

just fine for you, it's fine. So anyway, Apple was saying that a lot of these a lot of these things all came to fruition at the same time, and that impacted their quarterly revenue, and we don't know exactly what, you know. They haven't reported the full revenue just yet, but when they do, we'll kind of see what happened here. But I think the bottom line is people are upgrading their phones less and the iPhone is not as magical

as it used to be. There are so many other options for phones there are so many more people keeping their phones for longer, and there's not that one feature every year that people are upgrading for, and phones are costing a lot more. It's taking people two or three years to pay off a phone. So we're gonna follow Apple very closely. But I think that the reality is this company's still doing very well. I still think that

they have a lot of great products. But do they have that magical product in the pipeline that is just going to keep this company going at the speed that it was going at for so many years with the iPhone and the iPad? I don't know. So a question from Purple Butterfly, Let's see, Oh Pamela, Okay, Pamela, Purple Butterfly, Hello, Rich, is there's still a wish list on the iOS app store? I know there used to be one, but now I can't seem to find it. And the answer Pamela is no,

And I agree, what a bummer. Apparently Apple removed us this in iOS eleven. And I'm not sure why I loved having the wish list, because a lot of times you hear about apps that you're not necessarily ready to download, and you just want to keep them on like a little list so that you can refer to them later.

And I used to keep a lot of things on my wish list, but now it's gone, So I will be honest, I have not found a good way to keep these things in a I have lots of different lists and lots of different places, and when I need to find an app that I heard about, I can never seem to find it myself. So I think maybe the best thing to do is just share the app to you know, you can use the share button inside the app store to share it to whatever you like.

So if that's maybe a list in reminders, maybe it's a list in ever note, Maybe it's your email and then you tag it with something so you can find it later, or maybe on your notes app, you can create a special list of you know, a list called wish list or a folder called wish list, however you

want to do it. But Pamela, I agree. I don't know why they got rid of that, but I guess, you know, Apple knows what people are using, so I guess maybe just people weren't using it as much, or they just figure people have their lists and their reminders in so many different places that they just don't need

a dedicated wish list inside the app store. Speaking of apps, it is a new year, so I know a lot of you are looking for ways to kind of, you know, change things up in twenty nineteen, get healthy again, get more mindful. So so on KTLA, we did a couple segments with some apps that we looked at. We researched a bunch of them. I narrowed it down to six that I kind of liked for getting fit and having some more wellness in your life and mindfulness in your

life in twenty nineteen. So let me go over some of these apps. Carrot Fit, this is kind of an interesting one. This is a developer we talked to out of Philadelphia, I believe, and he's got this whole bunch of apps, this whole family of apps based around this snarky character named Carrot, and this app rewards you for getting stuff done and punishes you for failing to get

stuff done. So his name is Brian Mueller. He is the founder of these Carrot apps, and he basically started out with a to do list, found that people like this kind of angry motivation or this snarky motivation, and came up with a whole bunch of other apps. So there's Carrot Fit, there's the to do List, and there's a weather app and maybe some others. But the thing about this Carrot app is it has a seven minute

workout which helps you out. So if you have seven minutes you want to get a little workout in, check out car Fit. Charity Miles is an app that is kind of cool because you're basically using your movements to help charities. So after you complete a workout, it will tell you how much money you raised for a charity that you choose, and they work with a whole bunch of different charities and the way they do this is various brands sponsor kind of the donations that they're gonna

give to the charity. So after your workout, it will tell you how much you raised and also who handed over that money on your behalf. Now, when it comes to music, I'm a big fan of music for my workouts and I'm always kind of trying to find the best music to get me motivated. This is a really cool app. It's called fit Radio and they have a whole bunch of playlists specifically for working out. And these

playlists are programmed by DJs. So it's got like clublike mixes that have certain beats, certain genres, all in an effort to help you move and you know, complement the exercise that you're doing. So if you're on a spinning by, it'll help you with that, if you're running, it'll help you with that, if you're you know, whatever you're doing working out. I personally always kind of like music remixes

for my workouts. So if there's like a pop song that I like, or any sort of song that I like, I usually like the remix of it for working out specifically because I think that it, you know, just speeds up the beat a little bit more when you're working out now when it comes to being more mindful. In

twenty nineteen, couple of apps to try. One of them is called pocket Yoga, and this is a very simple app, but it has two hundred illustrated poses or more than that, along with detailed voice instructions, so you can do all the different poses like bird of Paradise or sleeping swan or what's the other one, don't there's so warrior pose. I'm not a big yoga person. I would love to be, but I need to stretch more, but I guess yoga

to help me with that. But this is an app that's three dollars and it also runs on all the different platforms, so you've got Android, you got iOS and also Apple TV, so if you want to practice at home. But Yoga, I know a lot of people love it for when it comes to kind of mindfulness and just a general well being, So pocket Yoga can maybe help you with that. Headspace this is one of the more

popular mindfulness apps meditation. It's funny because I guess they all have to do with meditation, but you don't necessarily hear that word thrown around because it's very intimidating. And I agree meditation sounds like something that takes a lot of work and a lot of effort in something I might not know how to do as a layperson. So Headspace helps you practice mindfulness and it's one of the

more popular meditation apps out there. They've got all kinds of different little programs you can do, including a daily a daily program. Let's see. Do they even call it a daily meditation on there? I'm not sure, but I've had this on my phone and I will admit, oh, they call it everyday Headspace, so will and intention is today's but they have all kinds stuff. They've got courses,

basic courses. Then you can go into the library and find all kinds of things for stress and anxiety, a sleep, personal growth, growth, work and productivity, oh my gosh, physical health, students, kids. They even have Headspace Kids, which I've wanted to try with my kids. I've done a little bit, but I feel like they can't sis still enough to listen to

these things. But if you want to just try out Headspace without even downloading the app, you can actually just ask Lexa or Google just say open Headspace and you'll get a little sample of what you can expect. But according to the person we interviewed at Headspace, they say that you can reduce stress in just ten days of using the product for just ten minutes a day, So I say it's worth it. I'm going to try to do it this year, so I'll let you know how

it feels. But I know our society is so always on. It's really tough to just stop for a moment and just be But I'm gonna try to be better about that. But I find I get nervous even if I'm not doing something for like five ten minutes, so I need to get over that. And finally, one more app called Pacifica. This is a little bit more focused on kind of like serious stress and anxiety. So this app has daily

tools for stress, anxiety, and depression. It's based on cognitive behavioral therapy, so it has like deep breathing exercises, positive visualizations and more. But this is like a serious one. So Pacifica if you're really serious about stress and anxiety and you want to do something to help yourself with that. It's got a built in health tracker to help you track your daily mood so you can look for patterns.

So if you're, you know, feeling down at your job every day and you're sitting there wondering like what's going on? I really, you know, I have good days, I have bad days. If you really want to track that and see, Okay, well maybe I notice like every Friday I'm happy, but the rest of the week I'm not so happy. So maybe you can kind of see the patterns, and this app can help you identify those patterns and help you

do something about them. I'm not a doctor, I'm not an expert, but I think that these things could definitely help you because it's not just about exercising or just about you know, being with friends. You know you have to look inside a little bit. In this day and age of twenty four to seven, always on all right? Another email here from Mark pawsin Hey Rich. As a solo operator of a small business, I use Google Suite, seventeen hats and a couple other third party providers. We

use iPhones, iPads and a MacBook. My question is what's your recommendation for backing everything up? Also the best affordable way to clean out all the crap on my aging MacBook, that is without having to go file by file which would take forever. Thanks for any help, Mark Powsin. Mark, I think it's tough to tell exactly what you want

to back up. But if you're backing up a business, so with something like a MacBook, well, I mean, if you have all three Apple products, I think iCloud is definitely the easiest to kind of just have an overall backup of whatever you've got on there. But then I think after that, when it comes to a MacBook, you're definitely gonna have to plug in external drive and do a time capsule backup and that will take a snapshot of your entire system, and I would definitely do that

as well. So I think with iPhone and iPad you're going to be covered with iCloud. With the MacBook, definitely do a time capsule backup. You can also do something like a you know, like a back blaze or something like that crash Plan, Carbonite backblaze. You know, there's so many of these little like all in one backup solutions online. You can check out one of those and see which one you think is going to work the best for you. But you know you want to have your stuff backed

up all the time. And also Google Photos if you just want to back up your pictures, you can use that. But the thing about your aging MacBook, if you want to do a nice clean out of that, I recommend clean my Mac. That's the program that I use, and I find it to be very helpful. It will ferret out all those old files, all the big files, clean up all the garbage, like you said, the crap, and I find that I've relied on that for many years

now and it does a great job. I think the best thing that you can do is if you have an aging MacBook, you probably want to format that hard drive and start all over at some point, So when you're mentally ready to do that, make sure you have a good backup, and then wipe the thing clean using utility,

which is built into the Mac. You have to come up with a way to restore the operating system on there, which you can create a little thumb drive and install like the latest Mac operating system on there and just literally do a full format of your entire system and then reinstall the latest operating system from the thumb drive. And when you do that, I think you're going to find that your computer is going to work a whole lot better. I actually do this as a rule pretty

much every year as the new systems come out. I did not do it with high Sierra, but I did do it with Mojave or Mahave, Mahave, Mojave. I don't know however you say that I didn't grow up in California, but I did do it with Mojave and it worked very nicely. And it's just nice because as you use your computer for a long time, a lot of stuff builds up on there, and it's just nice to kind of start fresh, get all that stuff off of there.

I'm always testing out a lot of apps, So the fact that I can go through and start fresh and install just the apps I need, it's nice. But the problem is you do lose a lot of stuff in the process, not files and stuff, but just configurations. You got to download and start over with everything. So maybe every other year is easier to do if you're running a business. Some people are really hesitant to do that. I personally love it with my phones and my computers

because I'm testing so much stuff. It's nice to have that clean start. Let's end things today with the snack Bot. So if you're a student at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California, there is a new visitor on campus. It is called the Snackbot. This is an outdoor, self driving robot that brings snacks and beverages right to students. And I would love this. When I was at USC, we did not have anything like this. You actually had

to go downstairs to pick up something. In fact, students are probably so spoiled now because you have all these delivery services that yeah, we had like delivery, but it was like pizza, Chinese food. It wasn't like now now it's like I think kids live on this grub Hub and all these different delivery services where you can have Postmates anything delivered to your dorm. And I didn't have

the money for that. I don't know how people would afford that, but you know, I was a broke college kid, so I was eating as many free meals as I could find. And yeah, anyway, so this is let's see, PepsiCo is putting these things on campus. So you might think, oh gosh, what are they stocked with? Well, Hello Goodness apparently is a portfolio of better stuff. Let's see Hello Goodness. So this is a portfolio I guess better foods for

you from Pepsi. So what are those foods? Smart Food, Baked Lays, sun Chips, Pure Leaf Tea, Bubbly Life water, and Starbucks cold Brew. Oh that's funny. We actually have this vending machine at KTLA. It's held Hello Goodness. I didn't realize that was like a brand from PepsiCo. So it's I guess the lighter stuff that they sell. That's you know, less sugar, you know, better for you kind of stuff. But those are the things that are inside

this little vending machine. And here's how it works. From nine to five nine am to five pm use the snackbot app on campus and it will deliver the items to more than fifty designated areas across the one hundred and seventy five acre campus. So let's say you have a break between classes. You can have this little snack bot show up at your class outside your class and you can just I guess, open the top of it

and pull out your snack. So it's fun. I mean, there's vending machines all around campus in general, but these are cool because they have a you know, they're rolling around. It's just cool looking. So they have a range of twenty miles on a charge, they have cameras and headlights that allow them to see and navigate in full dark or even the rain, and they have all wheel capabilities

so they can handle curbs and steep hills. So if you're at the University of the Pacific, you have to have one of their email addresses, so presumably a student or faculty. The app is available for iOS, but pretty cool. Robbie Technologies is the company I guess that's making the robot, So Robbie dot io if you want to learn more about that. But I just think this is a who the fact that these little robots are scurring around on campus.

I mean, how fun is that? Right? And I'm sure a lot of students are probably just trying this out just to see what it's all about. All right, couple of housekeeping notes before I go. First Off, thanks to everyone who purchased the book over the holidays. I know it was very much sold out through Amazon one hundred and one handy tech tips for the iPhone. The reviews are coming in. If you bought the book, please review

it on Amazon obviously, if it's a positive review. If it's a negative review, get in touch with me, because there's a couple of them on there that I'm kind of like, huh, it's kind of weird because you know, a couple of these negative reviews are a little suspect. They're very not very specific. So the reviews that people are leaving are very the positive reviews are very specific. The negative reviews are very vague, and so I'm kind

of like, Okay, did you really read it? Did you really don't like this book because it didn't have the one tip you needed? Whatever you're saying, So anyway, leave those reviews. It really helps people when they're finding this book. Thank you so much to everyone who purchased it. I really do appreciate it, and you guys for the most part. From what I'm seeing from the reviews and also the emails and tweets, you guys are loving it, so I'm glad I was able to do that for you guys.

I do have signed copies available as well, so if you want to sign copy from me, you can go to my website rich on tech dot Tv. There's a banner at the top that says order a signed copy and I will get that out to you as well. If you want to hear me on another podcast, I'm in a podcast called The News Director's Office. This is a podcast that they produce at KTLA with my boss Jason. He is the news director here, which is basically the person in charge of the news at KTLA. He interviews

interesting folks in the news business. So this is kind of more behind the scenes. So if you're interested in me as a human, how I got here, how my career started, and all that good stuff, then definitely check out the podcast. It's called The News Director's Office News Director's Office, and you can find it on Apple Podcasts. The episode that I was in was on January third, So again, if you want to hear more about me, learn more about me, how I got here, what it's

like to cover technology for a living. That's all in the podcast, and it's fun. It's a fun little listen, and you know, if you're curious about that stuff and me as a person a little bit more behind the scenes inside baseball, definitely check that one out. That's going to do it for this episode of the show. If you want notes to everything I talked about, check out

the show notes or go to my website rich on Tech. Again, this is the year of Instagram for me, So if you're not following me on Instagram, I am at rich on Tech. Thanks so much for all of your emails and tweets and messages. Keep them coming and let me know what you like. I'm also doing a lot more little videos on Instagram, kind of like how to's, behind the scenes, all that good stuff. So let me know what you think of those, and please share them with

your friends. Thanks so much for listening. I'm rich damiro This is rich on Tech. I'll talk to you real soon.