Backing up your phone is the best decision you can make

tech reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles. Come in to you today live everywhere on Facebook and the podcast. If you're listening live, thanks for tuning in. If you're listening on the podcast, thanks for tuning in. This is where I just get a little bit more time to complete my thoughts. So you know me from TV on KTLA and other stations nationwide, but this is where I get to kind of talk about things a little bit longer, give you the information I think you need to know.

And this week a couple of things happened. Number One, I upgraded my internet, which was a big deal because my internet here was fine at my house. But I got an offer, not an offer, but they basically wired my neighborhood for like a thousand, this gigabit internet, and I said, you know what, I want a thousand. And the reason why I wanted the faster internet not really because my download speeds were bad at all. They were

actually fine. It's really the upload speeds that when you're with most companies, they give you a fast download and then the upload is a little bit slower. And so with this service, my upload and download is the same. It's a thousand both ways. And yeah, I checked, I'm getting a thousand. The only problem is my internet totally was terrible for the first week, and I've been noticing some quirks with that. I don't know what it is.

I'm still working through it. Today I'm getting a new I always recommend EUO, so today I am getting a new euro so I can put it in my office and see if that makes things better. The one thing I've realized that I did not know is that most of these most of these euro Internet systems, like these MESH systems, are only rated for about five hundred megabits per second, and so mine being a thousand was not getting through. So what I needed to do is upgrade

to what's called a tryband. I know this is getting in the weeds here, but anyway, I did so much research cause I'm like, why am I not getting the fastest speed possible in my office? And this is what I came down to. Sounds like I need a new euro with a higher speed. It's called EUO Pro and you know, so anyway, that's arriving today. I'm very excited and hopefully I'll have perfect internet when that's all done.

The other little tip I want to give you, by the way, if you ever change your internet or change your router or whatever, use the same Wi Fi name and password and all of your products will follow through. So don't don't change your Wi Fi. I mean, if you have a terrible password and terrible you know system network name, you can change it. I used to change mine all the time, just for fun. My wife used to always give me a hard time. Why is the WiFi always changing? I just thought it was fun to

like change the network. That was back when I had like three things on the on the network. Now that you know, we all have so many devices in our homes. You know, when you change your Wi Fi network, you have to reconnect all these things. Chrome cast all this stuff. Oh my gosh, it's it's a pain. So if you use the same what they call SSID, your network and also your password, everything will follow through to the new network.

So a little bit of information for you there. The other thing I've been testing out this week is the new wisecam outdoor, which is just fantastic. By the way, one screw to put that thing up outside so easy, and you put the screw in. It's magnetic to the base. It's you know, yes, someone could pull that off the base easily, but hopefully people aren't doing that. I don't

really hear too many rings being stolen around town. I don't think people are walking around to people's houses stealing digital video cameras, but it could happen because it's just magnetically attached to the base. But the magnet is strong. People were asking about that. I'm still kind of testing it. It actually took me a little bit to figure out how the recording worked on the camera, the cloud recording. I finally found it and you have to actually go to the main part of the app, not into the

camera part of the app. So I figured that out, so now I'm testing it. The image is crystal clear. I'm gonna measure how far the camera is from my base because people were asking, since it's wireless, how much is the range? You have to have this little base station near your router, and then you put the camera wherever you want, and I think it's maybe. I don't know. I gotta check. I'm not even gonna say how far

it is because I'm not really sure. And then at this point, I can't imagine why I would not buy more wise outdoor cameras because each base station works with four cameras, and the cameras are forty dollars each, So why sent me the Tester camera and the Tester kit, which is fifty dollars to start? Each camera after that is forty So I'm gonna order a bunch of more cameras and put them everywhere. Why not? I mean at this price. The one thing I noticed, though, so they

give you free cloud storage. It's twelve seconds every time there's a motion. But there's what's called a cooling off period, and so if your camera records something for twelve seconds then waits, the default is five minutes until the next recording. So for some people that may not work I'm gonna tweak that. I gotta figure out if that's good, if that's bad. I mean most of the time that's just fine. Twelve seconds should be enough to kind of see what's

going on with your camera that's going on. The other thing is the earthquake. We had a big well it wasn't big, but we had an earthquake. We had several earthquakes here in Los Angeles this week, and wow, nothing like an earthquake to just rattle your bones, rattle your spirit, rattle your brain. And I was sitting right here at this very desk when the earthquake started shaking the house. And it wasn't a huge earthquake, but you never know

if they're going to be big or not. When they start, it just starts where you're just like, wait, was did someone just move something in the house not at four thirty am? Or is this an earthquake? And yes, it was an earthquake. The main thing that is concerning me about these earthquakes are these apps that people are downloading with the early warning. They seem to be all over the place. There are three major ones in Los Angeles,

the one from the city. There's one called Quake Alert, and then there's one called are there one called my shake or something like that. I should get these names right before I talk about them. And then there is the one that I use, which is quake Alert. Yeah, quake Alert, So that's the one I like. I've met the person who created this. They all use the same data from the USGS, but they work in slightly different ways.

And the main thing about these apps is that they are at the mercy of these cellular networks and the notifications may not be delivered in a timely manner, so that's the main thing. But I still think you should have one on your phone if you live in California. Anyway, the earthquake just shook everyone up. It was not that big of a deal, but we did have a bunch

of aftershocks too, which is kind of wild. Anyway. It just makes you realize you live in Los Angeles and I hope twenty twenty is not the year of the big one, because oh my gosh, it's like we've had enough here in Los Angeles. All right, let me get to the first big story of the week. Cees is going virtual and CS said that they were going to have the big gadget show in Las Vegas as normal, and guess what. After a couple of weeks they said, eh, you know what, nevermind, we're not going to do that.

So CS twenty twenty one, which is January sixth through ninth, will be all digital. And I have no idea how this is going to work. I've been doing a bunch of digital briefings with various tech companies and it's just not the same. You can't go hands on with the gadgets, you can't really get a feel for things, and the event itself is like a snoozer. I mean, I'm saying, and you're checking my email while I'm watching some presentation on new TVs or a new phone or whatever. Just

not the same. And also CS is about the sites and sounds of CS. How do you have that in a virtual conference? So this year is going to be a dud. I'll just call it right now. The CS twenty twenty one will just be not very exciting for journalists, for people, for the media, for the coverage, for the companies. And that's kind of sad to me because I always look forward to that event no matter how much work it is, and it is a ton of work and this year. It's just not going to be a very

great experience for anyone all around. I'm sure CS is losing a ton of money on this, the Consumer Technology Association. I'm not crying for them, believe me. But it's one of these things where it's just it's another sign of the times. And this also extends this sort of pandemic into January, and people might say, well, Rich, there might be a vaccine by then, or it might be over this by then. We don't know. And the problem is

you have to plan right now for January. So I tell a company that's coming from Hong Kong, or a company that's coming from China, or a company that's coming from I don't know if Australia comes, but you know European companies. All these people have to converge to Las Vegas and they have to plan to come to Vegas. And if you don't have these things in process, you can't plan for January. When you don't know if things are gonna be good by November, you can't start November.

So that's why they did this CS again happening the first week of January. They say CS twenty twenty two will be back to a physical and a digital show. All right, let's get to the first question question today from Cindy. Cindy says, Hey, Rich, I have a quick question. I can't seem to access my old texts I have saved forever. I have saved forever, toggled on on my iPhone, I'm guessing. And I have my iCloud option as well on messages, and I logged onto my iCloud and the

option for messages is not there. Yes, you have to discovered something that is really quite annoying. And I don't know what Apple's deal is with text messages, but they love to hijack our texts and I don't know if it I don't know if it's because we just love text messaging and they feel like that's a really sticky area where they can get people locked into their phones. But for some reason, and this happens on Android too,

not so much. But text messaging is is just one of these things where you want it, like email, no matter where you log in, you just want to see your text messages. And clearly this is not happening. And so what you noticed is that you went to iCloud dot com. You would assume like you saw photos and you saw contacts that you would just see messages. Nope,

not there. I don't know why. It seems like it would be very simple for them to just put your messages into iCloud and say, hey, you can download them as you know, some sort of comma separated value file whatever. Just give me a way to download my messages. Can't find it. So the way that you access these messages is there's a couple ways. You can transfer them to a new iPhone during setup. Okay, you can download them to your Mac computer with I Messages, but again no

way to export. Or you can use a third party program to access the file that Apple puts in a secret place in your iTunes backup to get your messages. All three of these options are terrible and I don't know why our messages are hijacked. I find this to be very annoying. When you switch phones, you go from an Android to or sorry iOS to Android. Some of the manufacturers, like Samsung or Google, they try to extract your messages. Doesn't always work. I read these things all

the time. People are like, I can't get access to my messages. I don't know why the messages has become such a I don't know, it's just very tough to get a hold of anyway, Cindy, I don't have a very good explanation for you, but there's a if you look at a website called Wondershare dot com doctor Phone, they make a lot of software that can help you recover these things. And Jose is saying in the chat, not true for Google Voice, and Jose, you are so right.

In fact, I have almost wanted to switch over to Google Voice again. I used to use Google Voice religiously, but it got kind of annoying because you know, the whole like, it's just it's a lot to use Google Voice because the way it works. I'm not going to get into it, but yes, I almost want to switch back to Google Voice, just so I can finally have all of my texts in one place without having to think are they being deleted when I switch phones or which you know, when did you? How did you text me?

But the problem is people love I Message, and I Message is sort of the gold standard with messaging. But the fact is if you use it, your messages are hijacked by Apple forever until they figure out away or they know a way. But they don't want to give us access. I don't know why. So yes, Jose, I totally agree. Google Voice is a great solution. In fact, like I said, I'm thinking of switching back to that just for the idea of my text messages being in

one place, archived forever. I can search for a text that I wrote in twenty fifteen and it's still there, whereas with I Message every time. I finally set my messages on I Message to just be a year because I'm so sick of like, I can't do anything with these messages. Even though I'm saving them forever, I can't access them in an easy way, So what's the point of saving them forever? Not to mention the fact that they take up like seven gigs of your iCloud. So anyway,

that's the other solution. Now. The other thing is if you have an Android, it's much easier. You can use an app called SMS Backup and Restore. It's fantastic, and messages on Android are much more open source in nature, where you can actually download these back them up to Google Drive. I have this set to back up to Google Drive automatically. It's so easy SMS backup and restore is a super easy pro and it just works. It just takes your messages and puts them on a new phone.

I used to use an app called Pulse, which was an app that would save all your messages in the cloud as well. It was their cloud, but it was very easy and it worked. And this an independent developer and he does a really nice job of kind of putting all your messages in the cloud. So that's another option. But here's the other thing. Most people are not like me. They're not switching phones, not testing new phones. They don't really need their SMS messages across a whole bunch of devices.

But I do think it would be nice just to be able to have these things saved forever. All right, great question, Cindy. You got me really going here at the first question. Let me, since we're on this topic, let me talk about backing up your phone. You have no idea how many emails I get from people about losing stuff on their phone. Rich, I lost all my pictures, I lost all my voicemails, I lost all my texts.

I lost You gotta back up your phone. And I know now I'm preaching here, but the reality is people email me. I have to sit there and read the sad emails and say, I don't really think there's a way to get back your stuff. Yeah, you can take your phone to a repair clinic and see if they can maybe fish out some of your old emails, your old text your old pictures. You know, people email me that I lost all my pictures of my granddaughter, I lost all my pictures of my newborn. I can't really

help you if you don't back up your phone. You have to back up your phone. That is the only way that your phone will be backed up in case of a problem. So let me tell you about what Google's doing to kind of help you out with this. And they have a new feature called Google One, which this has been a feature for Google for a while, but now they're expanding it to make it a little bit easier to back up your phone whether you're on Android or iOS. So it's basically an app called Google One.

You install this on your Android phone and you can back up stuff. So you can back up various things. See let's see what can you back up. You can back up your photos, your videos, your contacts, and your calendar and so that is on the iPhone side, again, not your SMS messages, which would have been really nice for Google to try to figure out how to do that.

Maybe they can't. So again, at the minimum, if you have an iPhone and you hate iCloud, at the minimum, just install this new iOS app called Google One on your iPhone and let it back up your photos, your videos, your contacts, and your calendar. Boom. It's free for fifteen gigabytes. This is on Android as well. I think Android goes a little bit further in what they allow you to

back up your on your phone. But to be honest, I've had this on my phone and I still can't really figure out like the backups like it shows me. My backups in Google Drive used to show it there, but I guess it doesn't anymore. But it's like anyway, just the iOS app is not out just yet, but the Android one is and they're upgrading this over the next So just be on the lookout for something called

Google One. At the very least, just back up your phone, use iCloud, use Google Photos for your pictures, use one Drive for your pictures, use Amazon Photos for your pictures. Get your pictures backed up. No matter what, it should be a priority that you check on your phone on

a daily basis. Because here's the other thing. If you have an iPhone, especially unless if you're not using iCloud and using one of these third party apps like Amazon or Google Photos, they're not necessarily backing up on a regular basis because iPhone puts them those apps to sleep and they're not able to do much in the background. So unless you're physically opening that app on a regular basis,

your pictures are just sitting there, not backed up. So remember you have to do that as well, So just back up your stuff. That's that's my final that's my final answer today. It's just please be sure you do that. All right, Let's get to a new question from Angel. Angel says, thanks for all you're covering from home these days. My college age daughter USC viturbe fight On, Fight On. I did go to USC. I don't mention that often,

but yes I did. My daughter has gotten the green light for a podcast on her favorite subject in the world, musical theater. She's got a laptop and learning how to edit everything on her dad's Mac. But do you have mic recommendations that are not going to break the bank? I know you didn't early piece on the sound in this pandemic, but everything feels like it was years ago,

even though it was four or five months. Angel in San Fernando, California, Home of the rude morning wake up call that we all got today, which yes, we all got that, and it was I wasn't a wake up call for me because I had been up for over an hour and a half. But it was a rude wake up call no matter what. Okay, So doing a podcast, I would say that your daughter should probably look at a website called Blue Microphones. So let's see Blue Microphones, and okay, I have a graphic on there. Let's see

Blue Microphones. And I think that these are easy because they plug into USB on your computer. They feature great sound. They've been kind of the standard for mics for you know, web stuff for a long time. But I would look at that and you can get Let's see what kinds they have here. They've got the yetti. Why can't I go in here? Let's see I'm having trouble actually scrolling through the website here, So let's see. You've got the yetti and the snowball are the two that I like?

And the YETI they have a whole bunch of different price points. They've got one starting at ninety nine, ninety nine all the way up to two hundred dollars if you want one that has kind of an arm. And then they have a snowball mic. They've got a whole bunch of snowball mics. They're great. I mean, I think that you're gonna be happy with any of these. Let's see. So for podcasting, they recommend the Yeah, the Snowball, which you can get one for as low as fifty dollars.

And my opinion, when it comes to podcasting, because everyone is all over the place with this stuff, you consistency is key, but it's tough to stay consistent. Maybe not now since we're all home, but I would start with a cheaper microphone and just build your way up. You don't need to buy all the best stuff at the beginning.

When I first started my podcast, I did it on my iPhone and I just recorded it into the microphone on the iPhone, and then I upgraded the microphones over the years to get to a place where you know it, where I'm doing it consistently, and the microphone also sounds the best. So again, just start with a simple one and move your way up as you get more into your podcast, and you know you're not gonna make money

off of it. I don't think most people don't, but you know, you can just upgrade as you get more comfortable with doing the podcast. But good luck with it and fight on. It's gonna be a weird, weird year for college kids this year because I can't imagine paying what USC costs and not getting to go into a classroom at USC. That is hopefully this is a time temporary thing where maybe we'll get to go back to school in January. But as a parent, and I know how much my parents paid for USC, it is it

is a lot. And if I was like, oh, yeah, I'm doing these by zoom, I don't think that would fly with them. I think I would have waited the year out. All right, let's move on to a new topic. Let's talk about the iPhone for a second. Apple released their whatever they call the quarterly results. I don't really keep track of that stuff because I do consumer stuff.

I don't really care how much money Apple makes. I know they make a ton of it, but I do care about the products that are coming out, and they did mention in their earnings release that the iPhone twelve, yes, is going to be a little bit delayed, not by much. The words that they used is a few weeks later than last year. So if we look at when the iPhone launched last year, iPhone eleven launch date, I believe

it was September. Here it is September twentieth, So if you think a few weeks after that, you're thinking October, and we kind of thought that this might be the case mid October. So if you're looking to get the iPhone twelve, if you're thinking about upgrading, it's probably gonna be a little bit later than you thought. The good news is they're probably won't be aiding waiting in line

because no one's going to stores right now. I don't even know if the Apple stores reopened or not, because I know they opened and then they closed and they back opened. But this is the uh, this, this is the reality of pandemic. I mean, a few weeks later is not going to make or break anyone. So I think you're okay. Don't forget a lot of this stuff

was planned way in advance. I mean, as soon as they launched the new iPhone, they probably take a week off they breathe, they go, and then they go all right, time to work on the new one, the next one. So I think what's going to happen in twenty twenty one is it's going to be a little interesting with the tech stuff because how much stuff can you really plan while everyone's at home. I don't know, but I guess we'll find out in twenty twenty one. So again,

that's about it with Apple. I think that, to be honest, I'm not sure what they can add to the new iPhone except for five G that's gonna make it much better. I think that the I still have my iPhone eleven promax that I've reviewed every phone that has come out in twenty since this phone, and this is still the best phone that I've ever used in my lifetime. And believe me, I've tried every single one of them. I

love the one plus eight Pro for certain things. I love the Samsung Galaxy S twenty Ultra, not for the camera, but for the screen and some other aspects. It's a powerhouse, but they just can get the camera right on that thing. S twenty S twenty plus seem to be better, but the S twenty plus Ultra is just like the camera is just not as good as it could be. And I'm not saying for every shot. Some shots look amazing, it's really when it comes down to particular situations where

it just fails miserably. The pixel pixel four XL great camera, but overall that device just isn't as solid as the iPhone, and it just to me, I just don't know what they could do. The battery life on this thing is so good that I don't even think about charging it, except when I was on the beta, which is the whole nother story. When I was on the beta, it was pretty bad. I had to go back to the regular software. So again, don't put beta software on your

daily driver, because it just doesn't work. It just doesn't work. Find a spare phone if you have one. By the way, Apple sold a lot of those iPhone ses, and that's another great phone that I think a lot of people went to this year for four hundred dollars to get that iPhone. So again, lots of I just don't know

what they could do with the new iPhone. I mean, if it's gonna be incremental five G, I do think it'll be nice to have five G because at and T and T Mobile are getting their five G networks to a place that looks pretty appealing even to me. So I have Verizon, and I'm actually thinking, I know AT and T's five G is is actually pretty good, and I think that T Mobile is getting there well. And I just kind of, as a tech guy, I kind of want the five G because I'm like, well,

I want faster. So Verizon is kind of lagging in that area. But the iPhone, I think only the top of the line iphone' is gonna have five G. Maybe I'm wrong, but anyway, all right, let's get to a new question here. Rich been listening for a while now. I found you through a podcast when you were covering for Leo. I am from Louisiana, so good tie point

for us. Yes, I worked in Louisiana for three years KT a l television reporter there consumer I was called the troubleshooter there gu tigers and he spelled it gu g e a u x gau. I always see that as gayu, even though it's go tigers. Louisiana such a fun state, by the way, one of the most fun states. I've actually the most fun state I've ever lived in Those people know how to party. One quick suggestion you

can make about the wiscam. I know the manufacturer says not to lee it plugged in, but could but you could use a Wi Fi plug to power the camera. Then when you get a low battery, you could charge it by powering up the plug from the app on your phone. You could also set the Wi Fi plug to come on and off periodically to keep the camera charge. Not everyone can do that, but in some cases, I have a camera in an attic window, so plugging it

in just makes sense. This is how I get around the manufacturer's recommendation not to plug it, not to leave it plugged in. Bert from Cable Busters LLC. Now, I'm a little confused here because I think we're talking about two kind of different things here. When you talk about the WISE cam, there used to not be an outdoor camera. Now there is. And the outdoor camera is not meant to be plugged in twenty four to seven because it's weather proof, and at this point Wise does not have

a weather proof way of plugging that camera in. Now people get around this in all different ways. They will put a little case around it, a little outdoor weather proof covering, they'll put it under an awning. We live in southern California, so they think, no big deal, it never rains. But the reality is you are taking a risk if you put a camera that's an outdoor camera, it's not meant to be plugged in all the time

plugged in. That's a risk. And you are taking another risk if you use one of the wisecam indoors and put it outside and keep it plugged in. But either way, I get what he's saying. For his camera, it's in the attic, perfectly good way of keeping it charged. You just have this thing toggle on every other I don't know, every other week or something like that. But I'm not really sure why you can't leave the indoor cam plugged

in all the time. And I didn't think that was a thing now the outdoor cam, I know, there's kind of like a little rubber flap on the power area, which it's there for a reason because it's there to seal out the outside weather, which is rain, which is dust, which is you know, all that good stuff here in La smog. So anyway, it's a good solution. I mean, it's just one of those things to keep in minds, like I kind of forget about smart plugs in general.

They can be used to automate a lot of things that you do around the house, and it's just good. It's a good reminder, Burt that you're absolutely right. Why not use that to your advantage. I have a bunch of stuff around my house that comes on turns off because of them, because of the smart plugs. Have got a lot of lights plugged into those that just pop on at six pm, pop off at six am. So it's a good idea. It's a good reminder. So thank you Bert for that little reminder. All right, let's talk

about Roadblocks. If you have kids, they are probably playing Roadblocks, and Roadblocks just did their big developers conference, probably virtual, I'm guessing. And if you're not familiar with Roadblocks, it's a gaming platform where kids play games on it, but people also build the game. So Roadblocks literally just came up with the platform and people develop games for this

platform and they're doing it a lot. Because Roadblocks developers are on track to earn two hundred and fifty million dollars in twenty twenty, up from one hundred and ten million dollars in twenty nineteen, so they have more than doubled their payouts to developers, which shows you that this is growing at a very fast clip. And I'm going to tell you why I don't like roadblocks in a moment. So if you're a parent that's listening, hear me out,

because I'm not a fan of roadblocks. Roadblocks. Monthly average users active users one hundred and fifty million, and this is mostly kids from age nine to probably fourteen fifteen. I'm thinking, but my kids are even younger. My kid is five and he's playing this, And I'll tell you again why I don't like this premium payouts. They did that. Let's see, they launched a music label deal to bring

fifty plus tracks and roadblocks. Developers posted huge milestones in the first part of the year, with Adopt Me reaching one point six million concurrence. That means one point six million kids sitting at home on their iPads and tablets playing this game all the same time. And my kids play Adopt Me. I actually think Adopt Me is okay, but again I will tell you I don't like it. And then there's a game called Piggy. Oh Piggy sounds so nice, which was launched in January twenty twenty now

has close to five billion visits. Let me tell you why I do not like the game Piggy, and why I don't like a lot of the games on Roadblocks. And the reason I don't like them is because some of them are just downright evil if you ask me. And I don't think most parents realize that when they see Roadblocks, it looks so cute and innocent and sweet. And the games these kids are playing on there are horrible.

Some of them, like Piggy, for instance. The goal of Piggy is to run away from this maniacal pig that is trying to kill you. And I just watched a video about it on YouTube, and yeah, like my kid would tell me, oh, there's blood on the screen. I get splattered by Piggy. I'm running away. It's like it's like one of those like fear and horror movies come to life for your kids. And Jimmy's asking, what about Minecraft?

I love Minecraft? So Minecraft I am a hundred I will buy Okay, I have a rule in my house. Most of the time I have broken down, but I have a rule where I refuse to buy my kids roebucks roebucks. So That's my other reason why I don't like my Robock roadblocks is because the entire point of Roebucks is to get your kids to bug you to buy them roebucks. And what does Roebucks do It lets them buy a little InApp digital purchases and these games

could be anything, and I don't like that. And I know I'm sounding like an old man right now, but I just hear me out. I'm not sure what the point of these games they're playing are. To me, the point of Adopt Me seems like it's only to buy little critters that you can then trade with other people. And I get it, it's fun, it's games, it's kids, it's innocent, it's sweet. But to me, I want my kids to do a little bit more with their lives, and the Piggy game especially, I just don't see the

point of Adopt Me. It's cute, but in reality, and if you have kids that are playing this, they're just sitting on these things for hours on it, and they could sit My kid could sit and play Adopt Me for the entire day, literally without interruption. That's a problem. So I don't like it for that reason. Minecraft they're building stuff, I really like what they're doing in Minecraft. It's cool, it's I'm blown away. And I've said this

on the podcast before. Just ask your kids to show you what they're doing to Minecraft, and it blows me away. The stuff that they build, I mean, it's quite amazing. Roadblocks, I keep getting confused between Roebucks and roadblocks roadblocks. I just don't get it, Like I'm just watching it and it just seems like, eh, I don't really care for it.

So anyway, my idea with roadblocks is to kind of smoke them out, which is to refuse to buy roebucks because without it, they don't really care to play as much because they can't really do all the stuff they want to do. And most parents they sit there it's like it's ten dollars for a bunch of roebucks. Who cares. That's not that much money, right, But it just kind of feeds into this world of like nonsense that I believe. And I don't want to knock developers out there. I

don't want to knock people that are playing this. And don't feel bad if you're and your kids playing this. My kid's played every day, don't get me wrong. I'm just saying, I don't see the point, and I think there's better things to do with your life, and Minecraft is one of them. So I think it's amazing that Roadblocks has built this platform. I personally just don't get it. Jonathan asks, what do I think about Lego? I love Lego. Lego's amazing. Anything that actually has your kids kind of

doing something that's using their brain, I really like. I just don't understand the Adopt Me stuff, and I especially don't understand the Piggy stuff and the games of these kids. Oh. By the way, and here's my advice on Roadblocks if you're a parent, go into the settings and turn on restricted mode if your kid is younger, because it will block out some of these games that are not very not very good for little kids to be playing, like the Piggy game. And my kids they got so angry,

they got so annoyed with me. But guess what they found other games that they've played, like Adopt Me and this pizza making game and this house game that are much and much more innocent and not so violent. So anyway, that's it. That's my thought on Roadblocks. I you know, I that's my opinion. By the way, so that is my opinion. I am a parent. Every parent has different opinions, and I'm just giving you mine. You listen to the rich on Tech podcast, You're gonna get my opinion on stuff.

I am very open to hearing your opinion. And if you want to write to me and explain why you think roadblocks is just fine, let me know. Hello at richontech dot TV. All right, another question, here we go. Ruth says, I follow you and enjoy your posts very much. I read them every day. I've never asked you a question before, so I wonder if you're up for it. It's a problem on my LGX Power three. When I tap Playstore, I get no results found. This might be

because I've removed Google play Services by mistake. I've tried everything to get it back. I've downloaded a version of Google Play Services from the web, but that's didn't help. The result is that I can't download any new apps. Ruth. Okay, number one, Ruth, why did you delete Google Play Services. You need that to run anything that's Google on a Google phone. That is the backbone of all Google So you gotta you got it. I don't even know how you deleted it. I don't know. I didn't even know

you could delete Google Play Services. Google Play Services is the framework that powers the Google Play Store and everything on your Android phone. Android and iOS are a little bit different in the way their operating systems work. If you have an iPhone, you know that you get these updates all the time from Apple that upgrade and add new features to your iPhone and also update the built in apps on the iPhone. Android is very different Android.

Every manufacturer has their own operating system that they update independently. Google Play Services is sort of a backbone framework that Google says, hey, we we like some things on your phone that should be kind of like that help things work on the back end, but you can do whatever you want on the front end, and so Apple Google has now relied more on Google Play Services to sort of update Android phones in a more timely manner with

certain things like this recent COVID tracing stuff. Again, they did that through Google Play Services because Google doesn't necessarily have a way to just add new features to your phone by themselves. It's usually up to the manufacturer to do that, and anyway, that's beside the point. But anyway, since you removed Google Play services, which I'm not sure how you did it, and I don't even understand how

you downloaded a version of it from the web. I mean, if you're talking about downloading like an APK, maybe that's what you found and you tried installing that, like it's pretty cool, but Ruth, don't do that. You could really harm your phone by doing that. So my advice is to format your phone and start over and that should rea. That should definitely put well it will. It will put Google Play services back on your phone. So it's an

LGX Power three. I've not heard of this particular model, but usually go into the settings and you can just it says factory restart, like factory format, factory refresh, factory format reset to factory settings, one of those variations on that term. Do that. It's going to erase everything on your phone. So let's go back to what I was talking about in the beginning. Make sure everything's backed up now an Android, most things are backed up except for

your photos. Make sure that you're rocking Google Photos to get your photos backed up or something similar. Once everything's backed up, factory reset, and boom, everything's gonna be back to the day you bought the phone, reinstall it all, and you should be up and running. That's that's an interesting one because I don't hear people doing that too much.

All right, speaking of phones and speaking of Google, I always say that, I always say, speaking of speaking of speaking out, Can I think of a better transition than just speaking of Uh. Google is teasing the Pixel for a unveil on August third, and that's all the news I have. So the Pixel four A, which has been delayed apparently for a long time this year, is Google's mid range phone, and quite frankly, I think that this

the last one. The three A was a really good move for Google because Google has the Pixel, which is the best camera you can get in a smartphone. But the problem is it's too expensive and it's not good enough for people to seek it out versus a Samsung, versus an LG, versus A one plus which to a lesser extent, and versus an iPhone. And the bottom line is, just because the camera's great, people see it and they go, wait, that's nine hundred bucks. I'm not buying that, Like, I'll

get an iPhone. And so they came up with this idea of having a mid range phone, which isn't as fast, which isn't as slick, doesn't have the top specs, but it still has that great camera and so people say, oh, and by the way, it's only four hundred bucks. Oh well, now you're talking. So that was pretty successful for Google last year. This is the follow up to that, the Pixel four A. I think the problem with this phone

they need to make it cheaper. So if this phone is not three hundred dollars, they're gonna have a problem. It's just not gonna sell. And the reason it's not gonna sell is because you've got the iPhone se at four hundred dollars. And overall, I will argue that is a better device than the Pixel four A. Pixel four A is a one trick pony. It's gonna give you a great camera. But guess what. That's it. You're not gonna have one thousand cases to choose from. You're not

gonna have a million accessories to choose from. You're not gonna have the best app store in the world to choose apps from. You're not gonna have the Apple Watch to go along with it. You are getting a good camera on the Google Pixel four A, and that's it. And that's a problem. So where do you compete. You compete on price. They can make this thing one hundred and ninety nine dollars would be amazing. Oh thank you Google. I'm glad you found that. But you can't compete on

a three ninety nine to three ninety nine. The iPhone is just better than the Pixel four A at three hundred ninety nine dollars. That's the bottom line. So they need to make this thing one hundred dollars cheaper. I hope they do, but we will find out on August third. I'm not gonna say much more than that, because you know, that's it. That's all. We don't know anything else. Everything else is speculation at this point. But it's gonna have the Pixel four features, just in a cheaper price, point

lesser processor, lesser display. Everything's gonna be lesser except the camera is still gonna be quite good. So that's that all right. Next question? Okay, oh speaking, I'm saying I caught myself. Stop it. Rich Sean says, hey, Rich, thanks for all the tips and email letters that have been subscribed since the start. By the way, I am doing my email newsletter again, so if you're not subscribed, go to Rich on tech dot TV and look for subscribe

to my email newsletter. It's free and you get I'm I'm trying to do it every other week now because every week just got to be too much. But I got so many people asking me Rich, where's your newsletter? That I finally started it again, and I want to do the newsletter. It was just a matter of like working it into my schedule, and every week was just too much. Every other week, I think I can handle. It's Friday as I record this. I'm going to get up tomorrow and do it. And I'm very excited because

the response is amazing. I mean, there's twelve thousand of you that are subscribed to it, which is great. I love that and not. Okay, so twelve thousand is great, but guess how many people actually open it? Which I'll tell you. So the last newsletter went out on July nineteenth, and a substack, which is what I used to do. The newsletter tells me how many people open it, and the last one, Oh okay, now you don't want to

work substack, Okay, whatever? Over twelve thousand. Wow, Well, anyway, it gives me a little subscriber like how many people actually opened it, which I thought was pretty cool. So I'm trying to find that anyway, while it's loading that I've been to my super high speed internet. Come on, hey, Rich My question is are there add on lenses for the camera on the Android S ten plus that you would recommend? Thank you again, Sean sent by Blue Mail

for Android. I haven't heard of BlueMail. That's an email app, I guess, so I would recommend a lens called the Moment lens mm e NT Moment lens S ten Oh did you ask for lens or case? What do you ask for? Uh, let's see add on lenses. Yeah. So the way moment lens works is remember the So the number one lens that was out there was the Olo clip and funny story, I'll go through it real quick, but it's the first email I ever got as a

tech reporter at KTLA. You're talking ten years ago, and the email said local boy does good by inventing Should I look it up oloclip? And this was back. I still have the email. I will sell here. It is local Boy invents cool new iPhone four lens system that Hollywood and soccer moms alike will love. May ninth, twenty eleven, sent to me by one Patrick O'Neill. Now, when I saw that, I just kind of I was like, Eh,

what does that mean? Give me a break. I did not even respond to this email sent May ninth, twenty eleven, Monday, nine fifty eight am. He said, I'm Patrick O'Neil from Huntington Beach and we watch you on KTLA. I invented the oloquip oloclip quick change lens system for the iPhone four. It has fishy, wide angle and macro all in a package that easily fits in your pocket. And it's only forty five dollars. Wow. Why did I not respond to this email? How naive was I to say, Oh, because

you're a local inventor, this can't be good. And it was amazing by the way. I interviewed Patrick many years later when I finally came to my senses, and the guy is amazing. He did very well with oloclip. They are the top seller. He has since sold the business, but he did really well with that little tiny idea of the local boy who invented the cool new iPhone four lens. Yeah, he did a pretty good job with that.

Millions of dollars later. Anyway, I don't know if Oloclip makes one for the Patrick was a very much iPhone guy, so everything was iPhone. He I think came up His main thing when I asked him why he didn't come up with Samsung versions of these lenses is because Samsung changes their phone design every year in such a big

way that it's too tough to keep up. Whereas the iPhone, he most of the time had two years to keep the lens because the way it snapped on had to be figured out by the iPhone because it was very slick how it snapped onto the iPhone. But oh wow, you're actually in luck. They do make a case a lens for the Galaxy S ten, so I would say check out the oloclip o Llo Cli Clip or the other one that makes a lot for Android. I guess

they make them for iPhone as well. Is Moment shopmoment dot com and just compare see which each one of those offer, and I think both of them are going to be great. You have the Android S ten plus, which I thought had a wide angle lens, so I'm not sure why you need the add on lens, but you know, maybe you want Macro, maybe you want whatever.

But it's funny because these add on lenses were such a big deal and now we're seeing the trend of the manufacturers just kind of building them into the phones themselves, and we're just seeing more and more and that's cool. It's a great, great thing that they're doing. All right, good question. Let's talk about Swimply. This was a story we did on Ktla, and this is a website that's

kind of like Airbnb, but for private pools. And of course, as you might expect, it caused quite the controversy on my Facebook page because people are debating would they use this, would they not. Let me tell you the story and then you can think about whether you would use it or not. But it's kind of like airbing, except instead of renting out an entire place, you just rent out someone's private pool. And this goes both ways. If you have a pool in your backyard, you can rent it

to random strangers. And if you want a pool you want to take a dip, find a pool that's nearby, You drive there, you pay your thirty bucks whatever it is, forty five bucks for the hour, and you take a dip in someone else's pool. Sounds interesting. I personally probably would not do this, but I have access to a pool. My in laws have a pool. But if you didn't have access and you just wanted to go somewhere, why not in La I'd probably go to the beach. But

I don't know. I mean, but the beauty of ideas is that there are so many people in this world, and there are lots of people who either want this or need this, or are willing to use it or willing to put their pool up. And so the guy we interviewed, Asher Weinberger, who co founder, said we thought in the beginning that swimplely would help pay for help people pay for their pool cost. So that was his ideas, like, hey, people are maintaining their pools, they're not being used like

hours every day. Why don't we just have other people use those pools and help pay for the maintenance at least, well, guess what it's paying for people's entire mortgages. Because the couple we talked to, they said they made seven thousand

dollars so far renting out their pool, which pretty good money. Now, the founder said that he made twenty five thousand dollars in five weeks and I did the math on that, and that would come out to about two hundred dollars an hour for twenty four hours a day, seven days a week for the past five weeks. I don't know how he came up with that, but he must have a really nice pool that rents for a lot of money, and he probably does so, I don't know. I think

it's a cool idea. I think that the liability factor to me as a homeowner would be a little scary, But at the same time, I love the sharing economy. You've got this pool in your backyard that's so expensive, so costly. It's sitting there unused for twelve hours a day. I'm not including the night time hours. But you use it your kids going for an hour or two, okay, and then that's it. Same thing with a car. This is why Uber was brilliant. Same thing with uh what else? Airbnb.

You've got a rental house, you use it for one weekend out of the month. The rest it's just sitting there. Now you can rent it out, so it's it is an amazing sharing economy we have. This is taking it to levels of extreme that are pretty crazy, and I think it's a great idea, and I think that people are using it clearly because the website's around. My only concern with this website is that I'm a little bit concerned with Airbnb. What keeps them from instantly flipping a

switch and turning this feature on overnight? And now they've got the whole Airbnb platform, and you've got everyone that's on Airbnb and saying, hey, just here, rent my pool out. Now you can make that argument for almost any company out there, So it's not necessarily just an Airbnb thing. But you know, I guess it's scary anytime you start a company and you've got these big tech companies, bohemoths, bohemoths, behemoths, and you've got these big tech companies that could just

take you over in like a second. And I'm not saying buy you out. I'm saying, flip on a switch and start the same feature we saw. It happened with Instagram Stories. I mean that was basically Snapchat, and more people are using Instagram Stories in Snapchat. All right, let's see next question. Okay, this is a good one from Maureen. I'm a kindergarten teacher about to start the school year online. Good luck. I currently own an iPad pro and an iPad. I also have two boys who are going to be online.

That's going to be an interesting household. Huh. Got a teacher trying to teach with two kids that are going to be online for school. Yeah, see the problems here. I am currently looking for something for me to zoom. I import a lot of videos and interactive activities to keep my kinders engaged. It also needs to work easily with Google, Classroom, seesaw and all the other educational websites. Long story short, I wanted to know which is better. Oh,

I forgot to do this. I wanted to know which is better an iPad or a surface for what I need keeping my mind. And I'm a Catholic school teacher who teaches in a low income school. Needless to say, the budget is limited. Thank you in advance for your advice. Okay, so you got a lot of things going on here now. Because you said I import a lot of videos and interactive activities, that is leading me to go, oh, what's better iPad or surface? I would say a surface is

going to be better. You already have two iPads, so you're covered there. You need something that you can actually do work on and yes, you can do work on an iPad, but I still believe you can do more work and accomplish more things on a laptop, and the surface is going to do both. It's going to have a touch screen, it's going to have a keyboard if you get that, but and it's going to let you run Windows apps. So I think personally that a surface is going to be a better solution for you and

low income school limited budget. I don't know what to say about that. I've gotten so many emails from teachers and my heart goes out to all of you because you're scrambling to try to teach kids in a way that you've never taught them before from your house, on camera, with equipment, and it is just a recipe for disaster. I'm not saying it can't be done, but this is just not the way we've done things in the past. And every teacher is scrambling. My kids. Teachers were reading

books on their iPhone recording it. You gotta have a tripod, you gotta have a microphone, you gotta have It's crazy. It's so much work for you teachers in a job that is already so tough. And I know It's tough because I was sitting here with my kids watching them learn and teaching them as well, and it is not easy to teach kids. You have to be This is

why they say the heart of a teacher. I love Dave Ramsey and he always talks about having the heart of a teacher, and yeah, you have to have a heart of a teacher, which means patience, understanding, and I don't have any of those things. So it's really tough for me when I sit there with my kids and I'm trying to teach them stuff and I'm just not patient, and I'm like, it's so anyway, So throw in all the distance learning stuff, and it's really tricky. So I

would say probably a surface over an iPad. iPad only runs iPad apps. Surface is much more flexible with what you can install, and ideally I think the best would be maybe a MacBook Pro thirteen, which I think would help you do more with your videos if you're creating videos and editing videos. But again, that is that's tricky.

That's a tricky situation. And believe me, teachers, if you know a teachers, give them a hug for me, because the only thing I feel worse for our parents who have to have their kids at home while they're trying to work. But teachers, it's just not the natural way of teaching kids. They're in a classroom. It's just being from home is just not the same. All right, I'm running out of time here on the podcast. Let's see. I want to get this website in because I thought

this website was pretty cool. It's called now I gotta find it twice. Come on read Okay, here it is. The website is called read this twice dot com. If you follow me on Twitter, you know that I am always looking for a good book to read. I believe in consumption of books, and I think that you should be reading as much as humanly possible. And a lot

of my audience does read. I'm very very clear on that because I see when I ask for book recommendations on Twitter that a lot of people responded very quickly. So kudos to you for reading a lot. I have put all those book recommendations, by the way, in my ever note. So I've got the books Just Mercy by Brian Stevenson Olivia recommended. I've Got Barbarian Days by Craig nine two eight two one Oh, I'm guessing that's your zip code. I've got Katherine Graham's autobiography by Stephanie George.

I've got let's see, I've got I'll Be Gone in the Dark from Monty's recommended that. I've got The Innovators by Jay He recommended that. So I've got a whole laundry list of books. Lacey recommended everything by Hugh Howley, which I can't wait. I think those are those look really good because they're sci fi and I love sci fi books. I'm reading right now, I'm reading, so I settled on one called Dark Matter right now, and I

love that anyway. So the book recommendation site that I know everyone knows Goodreads and but the book this is kind of cool because it's called read This Twice. And what they do is they just scour all the mentions that famous people put on their social media or in interviews about books they're reading or books they've liked, and they organize it. So, for instance, you can go to

let's see Emma Watson. Let's pick someone kind of random, but she mentioned she's an actress, and she recommended Harry potter Man search for meaning, let's see what else a thousand splendid sons which I read. The other one by this guy, which was the that was a fantastic book, Tiny Beautiful Things, half of this guy. And they tell you the book, not only the book, but they also tell you the source. So where did she mention it?

And if I click this one book, she mentioned this book, let's say on Twitter, and I love that you can just see the tweet as she mentioned this book. It's been less than three weeks and I devoured Tiny Torch, Tiny Beautiful Things, And while thank you Reese Witherspoon and Cheryl Straight straight ed. So I just love this idea.

It's just it's a simple thing. But it's just if you care about what celebrities your favorite personality thinks about books, you can see what they're recommending, and you know you can do everyone from Mark Cuban to Anna Kendrick to Anthony Bourdain, Rest in Peace, Joe Rogan, I don't know if you want to go there, Jack Dorsey. And it's

just a great way of slicing and dicing books. So again, read this twice dot com and already I found just looking through Elon Musk's recommendations, I found about six sci fi books I want to read all ready, so it's just a neat way of seeing. You can get recommendation from friends and family, but sometimes you want something a little bit different, so check it out. Read this twice dot com. All right, Do I have time for one

more question before I go? Sure? Rosio Oh? Rosio asks, Hey, rich, I would like to purchase a portable charger to charge my phone and my husband's phone for the most part, preferably twenty k to thirty k mh million hours. Wow. Good that you knew that whoop's wrong? One Uh? Can you send us a list of some different brands that you would recommend, or if you've not tested, can you review a few portable chargers and then your future We would like your input before purchasing. And I'm not gonna

tell you a whole bunch. I'm just gonna recommend a one brand Anchor. Anchor I think makes fantastic portable chargers. And again, I think that you guys know a little bit about technology because you said the twenty thousand to thirty thousand million hours, So good for you for knowing that term. The higher that number, the more times your charger is going to recharge your phone. So a lot of these little tiny um a lot of these little

tiny uh what is it like? You know, portable chargers, They don't really charge your phone that much, the smaller they are. So if you want something that's gonna have a little bit of bulk to it, not bulk, but a little bit of you know, it's gonna charge your phone a couple times, you're not gonna be recharging it all the time. Go with something in the twenty to

thirty thousand, ten thousand is pretty typical. The little ones you get, the little freeb's they hand out, maybe not to you, but to me, Like when I go to like a tech show, they give out little like portable chargers usually like charge your phone once or maybe half a time, and then, by the way, they're really slow. So if you have an Android phone, you want to look for something that's called USB CPD, which is power delivery. That's gonna charge your phone way faster than the typical USB.

If you have a newer iPhone, that's also gonna do your iPhone faster. So look for an iPhone charging cable that looks like this on the end the podcast, folks, But it's USB C to lightning and that's going to charge your phone usually faster than it will if you have USB regular to the lightning, and then wireless charging is still pretty slow, but the USB CPD is going to be the fastest charging at this point for any

of your devices. So just keep that in mind. If you're just plugging in an old cable into your iPhone into one of these chargers, it's going to be really slow, so look for look for that PD. Look for PD power delivery on these devices. These portable chargers are gonna be a little bit more expensive, but it's going to charge your phone and be way less frustrating when you're trying to get a quick charge in a faster way. So again, the brand is Anchor a n K er.

I really like their stuff and if you can believe it, that is going to do it for this episode of the show. If you're on Facebook, stick around. I will talk to you for a little bit after this, but that's going to do it for the podcast. If you'd like to submit an answer an answer, if you have answers,

definitely given to me. But if you have a question you'd like me to answer, just go to Rich on tech dot TV, hit the email button at the bottom of the page, and I will do my best to get your question in a show or at least respond to you. Oh, I'm doing something new, Okay, I'm going to do a code word. So because I really value your time as a listener to this show, especially someone who has listened this far in because let's be honest, it's been an hour and uh snooze alert. If you've

made it this far, I'm rewarding you. So I'm going to give you a code word to put in your email. So if you write me in the next week, put this code word in your email subject line somehow, and I will get to your email faster than everyone else's. And the code word this week is remote remote r E m ote remote, So put remote in caps. It doesn't have to be caps, but just put that in your subject line and I will get to your email faster than everyone else's because you are listening to this

show and I want to reward you for that. So thank you for that. Also, I would love it if you would rate and review this podcast to help other people discover it. Just go to rate this podcast dot com slash rich on Tech. You will find me at rich on tech on all social media. So if you're not following me on Instagram, if you're not following me on Twitter, if you're not following me on Facebook, which Instagram is where it's at for the most part, but

Facebook and Twitter, I'm also there. But Instagram, I am trying every day to put good stuff on there. I had someone tell me that she looks forward to what I put on Instagram every day, and I love hearing that. That is so music to my ears because I do sit there and I try to think, like, what would people like to see? What useful information can I impart in their brains today? My name is rich dmiro On behalf of everyone that gets this show to your ears.

Thanks so much for listening. I'll see you on KTLA. Stay safe, I'll talk to you real soon