The best tech I saw at CS twenty twenty four. We now know when Apple Vision Pro will go on sale. Bitcoin is back, plus your tech questions answered.
What's going on?
I'm Rich Demiro and this is Rich on Tech broadcasting live from Las Vegas.
Coast to coast.
This is the show where I talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about. It's also the place where I answer your questions about technology. I believe that tech should be interesting, useful, and fun. Let's open up the phone lines triple eight.
Rich one oh one.
That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Give me a call. If you have a question about technology, email also open. Just go to rich on tech dot tv, hit the contact link, submit your message. It goes right to my inbox and I will answer some of those on the show. If you have a comment about the show, submit it there as well. I will put it in the feedback segment, which is at the end of today's show.
Got some great guests this week.
Gary Shapiro, President and CEO at the Consumer Technology Association. We'll talk about this year's CES. Michael Fisher, superstar on YouTube. He does all the mobile phone reviews. He has a new product. He's the creator and co founder of Clicks, a physical keyboard for the iPhone. Are you ready to bring back the physical keyboard? Michael Fisher will talk about why he's doing that. And Samir Sama, he is the general manager and Vice president of Android Ecosystem at Google.
He will be talking to us about all the Google announcements at CES. Yeah, we got a lot of guests today. Illi Oposen, creator and co founder of Telly. Remember this free ad supported television set I told you about couple months ago, Well, now they are in people's homes. We'll get an update from Ilia about how that is working out and how you can get your hands on a free TV. And later on, Ben Weiss's CEO of coin Flip, is going to talk about the big movements this week
with bitcoin. If you haven't checked your bitcoin lately, if you have some, now might be a good time. And by the way, we might also have a special guest on the show, a very special guest. If I can convince this guest to come on, I will get them to come on. And I think you'll enjoy this because it's a person very near and dear to my heart. And you've heard me talk about them a lot, so I think it'd be fun if they came on.
One year of the show.
Now, I told you last week we're celebrating one year of this show. What I did not tell you was the news that I got this week that we have expanded this show in a big way. We have added multiple multiple stations across the US. Yes, we are syndicated across now three hundred and fifty affiliates. So thanks to you for making this show the best tech show. We've had a little ways to go before we take over some of the big guys out there, but I think
that we are doing really, really well. Thank you, Bobo. I love this quote from Julie Talbot. This is the president of Premieer Networks, the company that syndicates this show. We are so proud of the continued growth and success of Rich on Tech. We partnered with rich DeMuro to create a fresh, intelligent, and entertaining program covering the world of technology, and we couldn't be happier with the result.
We look forward to celebrating many more milestones together. And I said that the secret to this show is really you. It's the emails, it's the questions, it's the comments because that keeps me sort of. I see all this tech stuff at the tech shows and the products I cover, but it's you that tells me what you need to know about this stuff. So, yeah, you have an iPhone, but how do you do this? What about this app? Or what about that for my computer? Or you know,
what's the best TV to get? So that's really fun and very excited about that. This week has been CS here in Las Vegas. What a week it's been. I mean, Las Vegas definitely the coldest I have ever experienced.
During CS, so that's been interesting.
But this was a big show because it was kind of like the CES that we have been missing in previous years because of the pandemic, because of you know, coming back from the pandemic. This year it was one hundred percent back, one hundred and thirty five thousand attendees, forty three hundred exhibitors. So I'm going to do my best throughout this show to tell you about some of the best stuff I saw.
But the show has.
Wrapped, a lot of people have gone home, some people have stayed for the weekend. But it was a big show this year and there's a lot to see, so I will be going over a lot of that. And by the way, they already announced next year's date, CS twenty twenty five happening January seventh through tenth, and I'm already booking my hotel room. By the way, if you want to see some of the things that I saw here at CS that I thought were pretty interesting, I've
been posting them on my Instagram. So if you go to Instagram at Richon Tech, you can go and check out all little things that I've posted, all the reels that have been posted to my Instagram, So those are things that I think are interesting enough for a reel. But then if you go to my profile page, you'll see this little circle it says CS twenty twenty four.
That's called a highlight.
That's on my Instagram page and it has all the stories that I posted, so everything that I posted. You know, stories on Instagram go away after like twenty four hours, so this way they stick around forever, well until I delete them. But you can watch all the different stories that I posted there. What else, Oh, finally got to go to the sphere, so I did a story on the sphere. I'm sure you've seen that unless you live
under a Rock. This is that giant dome that looms over Las Vegas, five hundred and sixteen feet wide, three hundred six six feet tall, seating for seventeen thousand, six hundred with standing room for twenty thousand. And the big big thing about this is the exterior is completely programmable, five hundred and eighty thousand square feet of LEDs.
And so you've seen the videos.
I posted one on my Twitter at Richon Tech where they're playing Tetris on the exterior. It's been a whole bunch of stuff. You know, you've seen these videos on social media and the news. Now the inside has a sixteen x sixteen k ultra resolution LED screen and it's got all these other things. So it's got like wind, it's got scent, your seats move. So I was invited. We got to see the movie that they're showing this. It's really an immersive experience. It's called Postcard from Earth.
It's fifty minutes and I do recommend it. It is a completely different way of storytelling. There are some surprises. I'm not gonna reveal those, but it is really quite incredible. So the camera, I got a little hands on time with a camera and an interview with some folks at Sphere, which I'll err on KTLA soon. But the camera itself is just absolutely wild. I mean, it records so much video. It one drive only records I think like seventeen seconds
of video or something wild like that. It's it's really, it's really quite incredible. So you go inside this sphere and there's an entire like pre show where you interact with these robots and you know, you make like a virtual avatar of yourself.
And then once you go.
Into the show, that's when it starts, and you're in this big dome like experience and it's not unlike anything you've ever seen. The best way I can describe it, it had a little bit of a hint of that ride at Disney the Sore and over California. And then also, you know, if you've ever been on like Back to the Future back in the day a Universal Studios, it's kind of like that, but like think about that times one hundred using today's technology, and this is stuff that's
really never been done before. The screen is so big it just takes up the entire inside of this sphere and you're all in there and it's you know, the audience is just kind of all. No one's ever experienced something like this before, so it really was quite incredible. It's expensive, that is the other side of this.
The tickets.
You know, you're watching a movie and tickets could be one hundred to one hundred and seventy dollars so and maybe even more, I'm not sure, but it's a very expensive experience. But it was funny because I was asking some people afterwards, just you know, random people kind of after you know, we were milling about getting out of there, and I said, ah, what do you think and they said, oh, it's a lot cheaper than the Disney World. And so, you know, you come to Vegas, you want to try
something different, and this is definitely something to try. By the way, the resolution for that camera is eighteen k so's it's just wild, wild, wild stuff that you see there, so highly recommended if you come to Vegas to check out sphere. That is definitely something that is a must do here.
What else?
Okay, So CS I talked to you about that part of CS is really making friends, schmoozing, seeing old friends, and I did a couple of things regarding that, and one of them was this YouTube dinner I went to. Now YouTube, you know, YouTubers are all over cs, you know, social media. It's such a big thing to just create little videos of the stuff you see at CS. And so I've become friends with some of these YouTubers, and you know, I got invited to this dinner and it
was all these like very famous tech YouTubers. Like if you watch anything technology related on YouTube, you've seen a lot of these faces in this room. And so I felt like a little bit of a spy because I was the only non YouTuber in attendance at this dinner. But since I hang with these people and I see them at every event I go to, you know, we're all friends and we kind of know each other, and so, you know, somehow got invited. But it was really fun. I ate a lot of stuff I don't typically eat,
by the way. But what's cool about this And the reason I tell you this is because, by the way, Andrew Edwards on YouTube, thanks so much for organizing all of But the reason I tell you this is because I get to learn from people.
You know, I do TV, I.
Do radio, but YouTube is a whole different beast, and so by hearing what they do and what they go through and what their methods are. It was really interesting to kind of see how things work for them versus me. And also just talking with like minded tech people is really fun. Because I posted a picture on my Instagram stories, you know, we're sitting there chatting and like all four of us were wearing an Apple Watch Ultra. It's like,
when do you see that in a room? You know, So it's just stuff like that where you get to actually talk about the technology that you're covering, and it's it's in a very like, you know, a place where you can say what you want and you don't have to worry about you know, you can compare notes and that's always really fun.
So I've really always enjoyed that.
The other thing we did and I'll get some more tech stuff in a second here, but the other thing we did that was really fun.
Last night.
We have a little tradition where my wife meets me out after CS ends and we kind of enjoy like a dinner, nice dinner to celebrate, you know, a week of hell week. I guess if you can call it, you know, I'm doing twenty thousand steps a day here in the city. It's it's wild and I'm working like eighteen twenty hour days, so it's it's pretty wild. So we go out to like a nice dinner the last night of CS, and we checked out a new restaurant, Peter Lugers, which is in Caesar's Palace. This is like
a famous steakhouse out of New York City. I heard about it growing up, you know, It's one of those places that like a lot of people have heard of, and now they have it at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas. We went last night and it was incredible, the service, the whole atmosphere it was.
It was pretty amazing.
Eighty seven hundred square foot restaurant seats over three hundred people. Looks like the Brooklyn location. Are sort of inspired by the Brooklyn location, and they built a one million dollar dry aging room below the restaurant, so they I mean, this place is like top notch. It is a splurge. I will tell you that right now. But what isn't In Las Vegas. Everything has gotten so expensive here. But I will say this is a splurge, but it is
completely worth it. The restaurant was packed. I mean you're talking this place is brand new, and there wasn't. I don't think there's an open seat in the entire house, and it seats a lot of people. The other thing I thought was really cool about this location. I thought this was brilliant the way they built the restaurant. They have sort of these frosted glass window doors that can open and close. So let's say you're there on a
Tuesday night, nobody's really there. They can kind of close these window panels and they're frosted so you still see a little depth behind them, but it looks like that is the wall of the restaurant. So I thought that was a very brilliant design key because I don't know if you've ever been in a restaurant where there are not a lot of people in there and it's a giant restaurant, it feels like you don't want to be there because it's too big and there's no one there,
and you feel like, well, why am I here? And so by making that design choice of being able to close these these industrial sort of windows, I thought that was very very smart. So if you're in Vegas, definitely check it out. We really really enjoyed it and we had such a nice time there. All right, Let me tell you about this. Oh gosh, this thing, this Rabbit device. Okay,
this is the Rabbit R one AI companion. This was launched at CS and I did not go hands on with this sadly, but it's an AI companion device and it runs this thing called rabbit OS and what it does is it aims to provide an app free experience using a large language model, so basically sort of a chat gpt AI. And so what it did was they taught this thing by looking at how humans use their apps on their smartphone, and then the device learned how
to do that. So now you can say, oh, call me an uber and it will just do that and it will figure out what you would press on the app to do that. But it does it all on this little tiny device, So it carries out digital tasks through rabbits. These are personal AI agents that are trained for specific apps and workflows. It has a touchscreen, it has a push to talk button, it has a little camera, and it also has Wi Fi and cellular and so this is one hundred ninety nine dollars.
This really got a lot of buzz.
At the show because so many companies are trying to figure out a way of making us less reliant on our screens because we are so addicted to our smartphones. But how can you do the stuff that we do on our smartphones, Hey, send a message to this person, catch me up on my email? How do you do
that without actually looking at a screen. So the idea here is that the AI does everything you would do, taps all those buttons, but it's all happening in the background, and nothing is actually showing on the screen except the information you need to know. So again, this is called the Rabbit R one and they've already sold like twenty thousand of these in pre orders one hundred ninety nine dollars,
and the next pre order is open now. But you can't even get these things that to like may pretty wild.
Stuff, all right?
Coming up your questions Triple eight rich one one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Submit your questions on the website rich on tech dot TV.
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My name is rich Dmiro and you are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you talking technology at Triple eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Website richon Tech dot TV. You can find me on social media at rich on tech. All right, so this week I interviewed Gary Shapiro, President and CEO at the Consumer Technology Association. This is the
trade group that puts on CES every year. Let's hear what he had to say about this year's show.
Explain CS for someone who's never been.
Well CS, try and explain is like trying to explain ice cream to someone who's never had it.
It's called it's fun, it tastes great.
CES is exciting, it's all about innovation. It's where the world gathers for the business of technology. We'll have up to one hundred three thousand people from around the world and they will be able to see four thousand plus different companies exhibiting on the show floor.
And the show floor is huge.
It's two convention centers plus some several hotels, and that will have two point five million net square feet of exhibit space, which for the average person doesn't it's about thirty plus football fields of exhibit space.
Is there any way for a mere mortal to see it all?
No, it's impossible.
We have to have In a few years, we'll have an artificial intelligence robot that.
Will do the whole thing in four days.
Okay, so you've already hinted about the themes. Give me the big themes of this year's show.
Well, the overall envelope is sustainability and a better world through fundamental human securities like food, clean air and clean water, healthcare, things like mobility. And this is UN the UN is represented here and that's what it's about, is making the
world better for people. But the ingredient that's really big this year that really wasn't around us last year is the new type of AI AI plus and basically artificial intelligence but that learns, machine learning, others and now will be the best example people could understand is, you know there's cars that actually are self driving. There's navigational systems we'll familiar with. But how do you get to that, Well, you learn the car navigational systems.
They don't learn.
Now, you always go a certain way the car wants to take you the way it wants to take you to.
Cars will learn.
Cars will learn about and make you better for healthcare, they'll learn what actually works for you individually or people with your demographics, blood type, DNA, everything, they'll learn educationally how kids learn what's best. They'll learn from a safety perspective. You know, the seat in your car may figure out that you're about to get sick, and here's the steps you should take.
And of course they'll.
They'll learn in many others fields of human endeavor that will make us better.
Tell me about the importance of an in person gathering like this.
Well, I feel we're back in a big way because it's been a long haul since COVID. Obviously, we had one pure digital event and then we had other events that we're not as encouraging as they should because there was a lot of issues surrounding them. This one is back bigger. It's up double digits by every measure over our last year's edition, and we are basically have established at the CEO level of companies now a view that
getting together in person is super important. Look, I'm the paid cheerleader for the technology world, and I believe strongly that you have to have face to face not only to build a deeper relationship, but also to discover to have serendipity and things about what you don't know see people.
And also what we need in the technology world to succeed is you need to have cross industry relationships developed because there's so much intellectual property, there's so many pounds you have to go across industries to develop something even better, that's comprehensive and will serve your customers better. You add that to the fact that CEOs want to see their own employees working together occasionally because so many people are
working from home. The trade shows and CES isn't the only one, are really very strong right now because of that pent up desire for face to face contact and discovery and moving forward in a very competitive business environment. I am super charged because this kicks off a tremendous amount of excitement, optimism, and hope for the future. At a time when our country and our world are divided, it's nice to see people from around the world come.
We'll have over forty thousand people from outside of the United States coming here in a very positive way, wanting to do business with each other, and we don't feel that tension that we seem to feel in the rest of the world or frank leaving in our own country.
Again.
That was Gary Shapiro, president of the Consumer Technology Association. They are the trade organization that puts on CES I've worked with Gary closely. I did actually host a digital CES during the pandemic. I told you about this last week,
so I knew. I got to know Gary pretty well throughout that, and I like his sense of optimism and he really is on kind of the bleeding edge when it comes to technology because he's working with all these companies from around the world to get them here, which is no easy feet.
I mean, there are literally exhibitors.
From every corner of this planet that all come here and this is their big moment. You've got tons of media here and tons of people like me with a camera and a microphone, and they want to get that media attention because if you're a small startup, your video going viral can really change things. So thanks to Gary for chatting with me, and I'll have more of sort of my CS coverage throughout the show, so I will have plenty, plenty more of the coolest stuff I saw.
But I have to mention this leave it to Apple to steal the thunder from CEES. I thought this was such an interesting move by Apple. First day of CS, they put out a press release and what does it say, Here's when Apple Vision pro is coming to the market, and that is news that a lot of people have been waiting for. They want to know the date when this Apple Vision Pro headset is going to launch, and
the date is February second. Now, if you're not familiar with what Apple Vision Pro is, this is what's Apple calling a spatial computer. I really call it a VR virtual reality or augmented reality headset. It does both, but it's a new way of experiencing things.
You can work in it.
You can put a computer screen in there, you can watch your movies in there, experience entertainment, you can look at your photos in this thing. They're going to have a bunch of apps available at launch. Disney is on board. You'll be able to do a ton of this pretty much, all kinds of new things. What's unique is that it's really high quality. You control it by your eyes. You can actually look on the screen to the thing you want to select and it will notice that, and you
can select it using your hand. You can kind of tap your fingers together. There's also voice navigation. Hope it's a little bit better than Siri.
You have gaming.
It's an infinite canvas, so you can put screens in your entire vision area. And it's just it's a wild experience. I did it once, hope to be doing it again very soon before this thing launches, hopefully. But it's really transformative. But here's the thing. It is thirty five hundred dollars, so that is going to limit the amount of people that are going to purchase this in a big way, at least at the start pre orders open on January nineteenth.
It is going to be available February second and Apple stores. If you have prescription lenses, that's going to be an extra one hundred and fifty dollars. If you have readers, that's an extra ninety nine dollars for the lenses that you need to see this thing. But it's kind of like having a four K lens on each eye. And it's incredible, there's no doubt about it. Apple has done their homework and they're doing this better than any company I've seen that is doing any sort of VR or
AR headset. But here's the thing. This is going to start a new trend in the industry where there's going to be a whole lot of these types of machinery out there there. And we saw it a see. Yes, there's a whole bunch of these glasses that are like these, you know, spatial and not spatial computing. Well yeah, I guess they were actually, but just these glasses you put on that put a computer in front of your face, and and entertainment Netflix.
I put a couple of them on.
None of them are as good as Apple, but they're all promising, and I think that this entire genre of putting glasses on and seeing stuff is going to be quite incredible. All right, let's do a question emailed in from Steven Hey Rich love your show. I use Apple Wallet all the time, but I have store cards that I can't store there.
What would be the best digital wallet app for that? Thank you?
Okay, there is an app called stow Card st o c A r D st o c A r D And if you haven't Android, Google Wallet will do a lot of this. But this this one is kind of cool because it does have a lot of retailers on board with this. So I'm looking at the mainscreen, It's got Duncan's got Gold, Jim cvs, Kroger, Starbucks, Walgreens, Triple A, big,
lots AARP. Now, if you look in a lot of the apps that you download, from these companies, a lot of them have an option to send to Google Wallet or send to Apple.
Wallet, so I would try that first.
Like, for instance, Walgreens, they have that and the benefit there is that you get the tap to use it. So, for instance, at Walgreens, if you have your Walgreens cards stored in Apple Wallet or Google Pay, you'll be able to tap at the register to share your number with the register. But if you want something that holds all these cards, mostly just for organization too. Again, the app is called stoke Card sto Card, and it's a great way to get organized. I've got a lot of my
stuff in Apple Wallet. It's funny because I use my Apple Wallet the other day Apple Pay and the person I was sharing my contact information with an app called Popple popl it's like a digital business card, and the person's like, oh, you have a lot of cards in your wallet. I was like, well, yeah, I carry as many as I can. I've got like, you know, my Starbucks, I've got my Walgreens, I've got my seven to eleven, I've got CVS. I mean, any of these cards that I can carry in a digital way to me is
a much better way of doing that, all right. If you want a link to anything I mentioned here on the show, you can go to keep notes in real time. So if you heard me mention something like an app like I just did, you can go to what's the wiki? It's rich on tech dot tv slash wiki wiki. If you want more information on a guest, it is all updated in real time. If you want to see information about the show after it airs, you can go to rich on tech dot tv. There's usually an episode page
there with all the links there as well. But I try to put these links in as much as possible because I know you're listening, and I know that you want to get these links, and you're not listening with a pencil and paper, So it's a much easier way of right or getting the information that I talk about.
All right, Coming up, we still got lots of great guests.
We've got Michael Fisher, who created a physical keyboard for the iPhone.
We're going to hear an interview with him.
Plus I'm going to tell you about some more of the stuff I saw at CS, including a self rocking baby stroller. You don't even have to rock your baby anymore. You're listening to Rich on Tech. Welcome back to Rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology live from Las Vegas today, recovering from CS twenty twenty four. Let's go to line too. Melody is in Carlsbad, Melody. You're on with Rich.
Melody. Are you there?
I am here, Oh there you are.
Hello, Welcome to the show.
Thank you.
Several years ago I retired, and during my tenure as a worker for forty some years, I had.
To use I used.
The Microsoft Word program to do a lot of documents and newsletters, et cetera. And those were on my home computer. And so I've continued with that software. But at some point, maybe about three or four years ago, they changed it to a subscription program where I had to pay sixty some bucks a year to continue to use the software. But sure, I no longer have to do documents and newsletters, and I really don't.
Use it that much.
But yes, don't want to pay that money, right, But will I be able.
To reference the documents I have previously made with Words if I do not have the subscription?
Absolutely?
Absolutely.
This used to be very complicated in the past. It is not anymore thanks to so many free tools out there, so you'll be just fine. You can continue to make these documents in the word format as much as you want, and there will be many ways to access them later. The easiest way do you have a Gmail or a Google account? Yeah, okay, easiest way Google Docs. So take these. You can actually do this right now if you want.
You can go to Google Drive, or you can go to Google Docs and you can drag and drop one of these files into the screen and it will put it into Google Drive, Google Docs, and then you can open it and Google will make it so that you can edit that file, you can read that file, whatever you need to do. It will convert it for you on the fly, and so you'll be able to edit, you'll be able to read it, you'll be able to access it. There will be no there will be no
issues here whatsoever. So Melody, you can continue to do this, but I would recommend that there are many other ways as well. If you have a Mac computer, you can use pay There are some free office suites online. There are some popular ones like open Office and things like that. So I mean there's a lot out there, but I
think that Google Docs is the easiest. That's the one that I use, and I think that you're gonna find it very very simple to just open these documents, edit them right in your web browser and have no problem with that whatsoever. Thanks for the call, Melody, appreciate it. Let's see here. Oh so many things that I talked about this week.
I just wanted to share one quick tip. Okay.
I was in a briefing and someone did something on their smartphone and I'd never seen that before. And what they did was this is on Android, by the way, And what they did was they were in their messaging app okay, and you can try this if you have an Android phone, go ahead, follow along with me. So go to your messages app, okay, open up a text messaging thread, and just pinch on the page to zoom like you would pinch on a picture to zoom out or zoo in, and the text gets bigger or smaller.
I had never seen that before. I've been covering this stuff for so long, I have never seen that tip before. So I posted to my Instagram at rich on Tech, and you know a lot of people said, hey, where if you've been demro, come on, I know all about that, but you know the reality is, if I had not seen that before. I am sure there are other people that have not seen that before. Now, if you try this on an iPhone, it does not work. So Apple,
I know you're listening. Please give us this feature on the iPhone as well, because you know people want Sometimes you want to zoom in, sometimes you want to zoom out, depending on you know, whether we'rearing glasses or not, or you want to just see something more clearly. But this is a very easy way on Android, Samsung Pixel, any Android phone. It's kind of built into the messaging app.
Just go ahead.
If you ever need to zoom in on something, just select the message and pinch to zoom in or out. You can see that little quick tip on my instagram at rich On Tech. Let's see here this this is something that I saw at see Yes, this was probably one of the first gadgets. I'm probably gonna butcher the name here, but it's called the glux Kin and g l ux ki nd I said glux kind. That is not how you say it. It's gluck skin. This is
a smart self rocking stroller. Now, this company made waves, I think about last year because they had a viral video that showed the stroller being pushed by itself, and I did clarify with the company. This thing is an AI stroller that has three main things it can do. Number one, this is the new version by the way. Number one, it has an electric motor to help you push it, so it's like an e bike. You push this stroller. The harder you push it, the more it
helps you. So if you're trying to go up a hill, you're trying to go on a long stroller walk with your kid, this is basically an e bike of strollers. That's wild. Number two, it has a built in speaker that plays white noise to soothe your baby, so you know that's kind of cool. Number Three, it rocks itself so it can put your baby to sleep. There's also a front camera on this thing, so if someone tries to push your baby stroller that is not you, it
won't move. So strangers can't push this baby stroller, unless, of course, you authorize them if you have a babysitter or something like that. This is about thirty three hundred dollars. It is again it's called the Glux Can. I think there's two names. There's the Ella and then there's another one. Now this one, this is I guess, a cheaper version of the one that we saw last year in the viral video that actually will push your baby by itself. Now here's the thing. It does not push the stroller
when the baby is insides. There must be some sort of weight sensor in the stroller, because I did clarify with the person who runs the company and he said, no, no, no, we are not pushing the baby by itself. And I think that's why that video went viral because people just assume that this stroller was pushing the baby by itself. It was not doing that. So again, Gluxkin smart self
rocking stroller. I think a lot of people it was getting a lot of attention at the show because people were just sitting there like, wait, what is happening here right now? What is this stroller doing all by itself? All right? If you want links to anything I mentioned again, the website is rich on Tech dot TV. If you want to see the stuff I posted on Instagram from CS you can go to my instagram at rich on Tech.
There I've posted everything. Let me see what's gone the most sort of viral here so far?
It looks like I'll just tell you the stuff that I posted.
So I posted a the LG clear transparent TVs, a foldable TV. Oh, the guy kicking the robot. They've got this robot that you can kick and it will still stay up standing. And that was really scary because we know these robots are gonna kick back one day.
Let's see, we've got an ice cream robot machine.
Some fun little plugs that look like an old school Apple computer that have a screen on them. Oh.
The one that did really well too is this lock.
It's a lock that has a fingerprint on it, so it's like a TSA lock for your luggage, but you can just use your fingerprint to unlock. Its company called Benji Lock. All right, Triple eight rich one on one eighty eight seven four to two four to one zero one. More rich on Tech coming your way live from Las Vegas right after this. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology at Triple eight rich one o one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one website, richon Tech dot TV. Hit the contact link to send me an email. I will hopefully get to it on today's show.
Let's see.
We are broadcasting live from Las Vegas. Recovering from CS got an email from Michelle Listener Michelle, and Michelle says about CES, please talk about the expense of even going to CS and who can go? It is a major production and expensive hotel room, resort fees, shoes. Who can attend? Yes, it is very very expensive and in fact, I used to roll with a crew of about five people at CS. I think we're now down to two. Well, I know we're now down to two, and we do a lot.
We do a lot. We are working very long days. It is very expensive, it really really is. And you know, I try to keep things under control cost wise. I try to take you know, public transit, the monorail, all that good stuff, but it can add up quick. And who can go? So it is open to industry professionals, so people in the tech world, people that are journalists and also exhibitors, so you do have to be one
of those. Is not open to the public, although every year I tell CS, I said, hey, open one day to the public.
You will make a ton of money.
One of the.
Gadgets that was unveiled here is clicks. It brings a real keyboard to the iPhone and this connects to your iPhone. It's kind of like a case, although they don't call it that, and it's one hundred and thirty nine dollars and it brings a physical keyboard to the iPhone. This was invented by Mobile Tech reviewers including Mister Mobile, Michael Fisher, and Crackberry. Kevin and I got to talk to Michael Fisher mister Mobile about this new Clicks keyboard. Let's hear why he came up with this.
Clicks is a creator keyboard made for the iPhone to give you a physical, quirity keyboard that gives you shortcuts and more sensation when typing and gives you your screen space back. Every phone today kind of looks the same, and every phone today is quite capable. We had to throw buttons away about seventeen years to do that as a society, but in doing so, we sacrificed a lot of the utility and frankly a lot of the fun that buttons still provide. So we thought why not bring
them back. The deal with adding a keyboard to a phone is that you have to attach it somehow, right, so you can make a standalone keyboard that just plugs in, but that introduces some challenges, there's durability issues, and most people do use a case on their phone, So we don't call this a case because that has different criteria.
There's different things you have to you know, guarantee, but.
It is it will protect it scratches, certainly, it'll do most things that people expect a case to do. While adding the thing we want to do for generation one, which is a physical keyboard.
So do you expect people to keep this on their phone all the time or put it on when they need it.
I tend to keep it on all the time. But what is nice is that you can remove it or add it with very little hassle. So similar to an iPad. You know, you see an iPad people use a magic keyboard. Sometimes people pop it off when they don't need it. It's just as easy to do that with clicks. So you can kind of have your own experience.
What's the benefit of a physical keyboard on the iPhone?
What's nice is when you add a physical keyboard to the iPhone, you get all kinds of surprises, like keyboard shortcuts that work on your MacBook or on your mac or on your iPad also work here. Command space lets you search for something if you're in Safari and you want to open up a new tab command and does that. So these kind of muscle memory things that have been built in over twenty years of using computers and iPads
also work here. And when you're doing that, say you're in a long message thread, you start typing, and you still have your entire screen. If you don't have clicks attached to your virtual keyboard, pops up and it uses up half of your available screen real estate. So having the physical keyboard allows you to keep all of that. And also, look, I'm kind of an old timer. I came up on quarity keyboards that were physical in nature.
It's more fun to type on, it's a more tactle, it's a more personal it's more human experience for me than typing on glass.
And if you need to type on glass, you can still do that.
Now you've done a long time without a physical keyboard on a phone. Yeah, So do you think people are ready to bring this back into their lives?
Is everyone ready to do it?
No?
And it's you know, it's not a product for everybody for sure, But.
I think people who have missed a physical keyboard will find this not only nostalgic but also useful in a way that you know the old physical keyboards used to be, and people who have never used them before will, I think, also find a great deal of pleasure, not just in the utility, in the screen space, the things that are pragmatic, but also the fun. Fun should be a consideration when you're buying a phone, shouldn't that.
Speaking of which, you review products for a living. Yeah, you sort of reviewed your own product for your launch sort of, Yes, what is it like to be on the other side of putting out a product versus reviewing someone else's product?
It was astute segue because it is fun.
It is I've been doing reviews for twelve years and I've been sitting there saying like, okay, well thank you, oh impress me, what did you make?
Oh?
Okay, well this is kind of okay, but all right.
Being on the other side gives you a real clear window into how difficult it is to build something, how much compromise might be required, but also how fun it is to collaborate with people who are better at different things than you. And it's very satisfying to ship something you can actually touch instead of a creative product which is you know more ethereal. This is our first product. We built a company, we didn't just build a product. So this is the beginning of something that I'm very
satisfied with. But there's a lot more to come that we're not talking about YETNA, I'm even more excited for that.
All right, Thanks mister Mobile. That is mister Mobile. Michael Fisher, creator of the Clicks keyboard accessory for iPhone. One hundred and thirty nine dollars ships on February first. I did have a chance to try typing on it, and yeah, it feels like the old school BlackBerry. It's tactile, you feel it. It does free up the screen real estate. I never really thought about that on the iPhone, how much the keyboard takes up on the screen. But the question is are you ready to go back to that.
I feel like so many people have gotten used to not having a keyboard for the iPhone, But at the same time, a lot of people are going mobile first, and so if you can just throw this in your bag, go on a trip, and it helps you type faster when you're back in your hotel room or whatever. I can see the allure one hundred and thirty nine dollars. Ships start February first. The website is clicks dot tech. Clicks dot tech if you want to check out the
new creator keyboard for the iPhone. All right, a couple other things I saw at CES I thought were quite interesting. Brunswick this is a boat company. They let me dock a boat. Well it actually a computer did it, because now they have self docking boat technology. And when I heard this, I said, no way. I was literally just talking about this. I did a story with that electric boat company ARC a couple of weeks ago, and I said, now I want a boat because this thing looks so cool,
this electric boat. But if you can figure out how to dock it automatically, then I'm in. Because I don't know how to dock a boat. And yeah, I could probably learn, but I feel like that is a sense a source of apprehension for many people that want to get a boat. They're just worried about docking it. It's not like parking a car, where it's pretty straightforward. You know, the boat is floating, it's moving, it can hit into
the dock. And so this technology is AI and sensors and so the way I tried it out was with a interactive simulator which was very very real by the way, got in this boat and you basically get to a dock. The system scans the dock and you choose a slip that you want to go into and says, hey, do you.
Want to back in or do you want to go in forward?
You choose that, and then the boat takes over and it literally controls the boat and docks it for you with very very precision steering. And it worked. Now, of course this was a simulator. I'm not out actually on the water trying this out. But you know, this is what's going to happen with boats. They are going to soon dock themselves in a very smart way. Again, this is from a company called Brunswick, and autonomous boat technology
is coming soon to a boat near you. And I got to say I was very impressed with their simulation because I thought it was going to be kind of hokey, and the whole room kind of lit up and it felt like I was on a boat, and actually the entire thing moved so like the whole like boat that I was standing in. I didn't realize that it was like moving, so it really did move. It was it was pretty wild. This was also interesting, but this was
more just eye candy. At ces A folding TV c Seed this is an Austrian company showed off a one hundred and thirty seven inch folding TV. So they say it's the world's first unfolding one hundred and thirty seven inch four K TV. It folds and unfolds in about ninety seconds, and it looked like it was like four TV screens, so it sort of folds up accordion style. Now, when I went to the booth, I said, hey, can you fold and unfold this thing for me?
And the guy gave me a hard time.
I said, dude, if you are showing off a foldable TV and you know someone comes up to you that wants to get video of this for TV and you know social media, you got to show the TV folding. They said, oh, we're only doing it once an hour. I said no, no, no, you gotta do this. Come on, and so he said, all right, fine, we'll do it. And so he folded it up and it's it's really cool. And I said, well, why does anyone need this? And he said, well, you know number one, if you have
like a penthouse. Yeah, we're talking very very rich situation here. If you have a penthouse and you have a view that you don't want interrupted by a TV, you put this TV in front of it. It folds up and the TV's gone. I said, all right, that's fine. He goes,
And honestly, it's the spectacle of the thing. So I guess if you have a penthouse and a foldable TV, you know you're living life in a large way and you're not worried about the Oh about two hundred thousand dollars for this thing, So not for me, but I thought it was really really cool. And I just love that these TV manufacturers just keep pushing the envelope with the form factor of the TV. So again, this company is C Seed, the letter C and the name Seed.
It is a company out of Austria. And they told me, they said, they're actually going to have a showroom in Los Angeles. You'll be able to actually see this thing. And why not, right, why not have a foldable TV for a couple hundred thousand dollars?
All right?
Coming up on the show, we still got many more guests. We got Samir Samant of Google. He's gonna talk about what's new when it comes to Android. We've got the creator and co founder of Telly. He's gonna talk about as free TV that you can get. And we're gonna talk bitcoin. What is going on with bitcoin? Big big moves this week eighty eight Rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
This is Rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, live from Las Vegas. I think I'm the only person that's not hungover this morning in Las Vegas. Believe me, you can tell people are like, you know, they're Dragon Vegas.
At night.
Oh, it's a party.
Everyone's happy, everyone's crazy, everyone's wild.
In the morning. Oh, it is a totally different story here. The sun, oh, the.
Sun, the you know, the the stragglers, people waking up late. Ugh, I mean, believe me, it's you know, I have my fair share of fun here, but uh, you know, not on a radio day. All right. Steve is in Glendale. Steve, you are on with Rich Welcome to the show.
Hello, Rich, Hello Steve.
What's up?
So I got a Facebook business page. I'm a professional handy man in Glendale, California, and I made a post and I've gotten this message before I got a message. I actually got four separate messages. Your Facebook page is expect to be permanently removed due to post the post violating our trademark rice blah blah blah. You know it's going to be removed, and and then you know it's But it's from It's at the top, it's headings from Katie Estes and it shows this weird logo support and
I think it's probably fishing. It's just trying to scare me, and I'm not and I'm I've learned not to click on strange links.
And how can I help?
It's from it's from Facebook dot t r.
O okay, and it sounds like a website, So how can I help? Did you get hacked?
Well, I mean I haven't. I'm just I'm just should I pay tention to that?
Okay, Okay, good question.
Just ignore them as spam yep, yep.
One hundred percent ignores spam.
These are these are very I'm telling you, Steve, there are so many scams happening with social media. It is it's almost become untenable to deal with all this stuff, and especially if you have a business account, any sort of Facebook page. So a couple of things. Number one, these are notifications that they're sending you. This says, hey, you're you're violating our terms and conditions, and they seem
scary because you're running a business. You might be getting some clients from this Facebook page, right, and so you you don't want your page to go away. And so what they want you to do is see this notification, click that notification without thinking, and then either log in or somehow do something that will either take over your account, hijack your account, or you know, otherwise steal your personal information.
So you can safely ignore these. I can guarantee you ninety nine percent of the time ninety nine point nine if there's something truly amiss with your Facebook account, Facebook will get in touch with you through a legitimate means, which is probably through some sort of pop up notification in the app or an email. So believe me, I do a lot of things on my Facebook page, Facebook dot com, slash rich on tech. I see these things all the time. There's a lot of scam artists also
that post on your page. So when you comment something, they may comment and say, hey, we can help with that, And those are scam artists as well, those I would block, but really these are mostly bots.
But it's a good lesson to learn.
And the thing that I would do is make sure if you have a Facebook account, two things I would do. Number one, set up two factor authentication. This means that you need a separate code to log in once you log in with your password. So let's say you fell for one of those notifications, you logged in with your password, they got it, they immediately try to hijack your account.
They wouldn't be able to because there would be a secondary code that is texted to your phone and that would make it so that they wouldn't be able to get in.
The other thing to.
Do if you have a Facebook business account is to get an admin on that account, someone you trust that is not you, And that way, if there's ever a problem with your Facebook account, because these are usually linked to a personal Facebook account, that way that other person will be able to help you get back in. And if you have a personal Facebook account, there's other others some excuse me, there's some other things you can do,
which is called trusted contacts. You can set those up to help you regain access to your Facebook account.
And if you have a problem with.
Your Facebook and it is hacked. The best place to go is Facebook dot com slash hacked. Facebook dot com slash hacked. All right, let's go to Jamie and Tampa. Jamie in Tampa, Florida.
Go ahead, Hey, Rich, how you doing today, man.
I'm doing great.
Yeah, I'm looking to help you brandel affiliate. I'm looking at a brand new affiliate.
Twelve to fifty w h n z oh I love it.
Yeah, man, I knew yeah, man, walk walk Welcome to the eight, one and three.
Baby, thank you.
It feels good. I feel the sun.
Yeah, thank you.
So we have cable, but I'm we're considering ditching it because you not expect your conspectum is getting more and more costas used by the minute. And so I'm looking to get a TV in tennant. I live in Tampa, Florida. But I don't exactly know what TV intendant could get or even why I should get one, because anyone's all well to go on Netflix or who we were this or that, but even that's getting expensive. Now, Oh, why should I get an antenna? And what kind of antenna do I need?
Doing it outdoor or great question? Well, it largely depends on where you live. Yeah, it largely depends on where you live and what kind of signal you can get. But I'll tell you the website that I like for antenna's Antennasdirect dot Com. I just tested their new Mohu Versa, Moho Versa. I used to love their Mohu Leaf. The Versa is a bit more versatile, and they have a
model for thirty mile range fifty mile range. They're very inexpensive anywhere from like you know, forty to sixty dollars depending on you know the model, and you'd be surprised how many and channels you can pick up in your home just putting this thing like near your TV. And so I would be that would be my first stop
Antennasdirect dot Com. The other thing I really like is called the Tableau TA b l O. This is a device that lets you record over the air signals and I just got a demo of a Curate ces t A b l O.
You get the antenna, you get the tableau.
You can forget all together about streaming because you'll have all the stuff you need. You are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich tamiro here hanging out with you talking technology at Triple eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. If you're one of our new listeners on a new station, thank you for joining us. Welcome to the party, Welcome to the inside track. This is a show where I talk about the tech stuff
I think you should know about. So you'll find that I don't talk about all the tech stuff. I don't answer all the tech questions. It's really consumer focused. It's the everyday user. If you're not a tech person, this show is perfect for you because it helps you understand what you're up against. So much technology in this world. I'm helping you understand it. Recently I talked to Samir Summat at Google. He is the general manager and vice president of Android Ecosystem. He told me all about the
new things that Google unveiled here at CES. First off, tell me about this year Android Google at CS.
What's kind of the mission here?
Yeah, Well, first of all, it's really good to see you, and we have a lot going on at CS or Android this year. We're here in the Android Experience Center. We made a bunch of announcements this morning. Android is all about an open ecosystem where you can buy the devices and products that work best for you and have
them all work better together. So, for example, many of your viewers may be familiar with Cast, which allows you to take the song you're listening to you or the video you're watching and put it on a big screen or a smart speaker that's in your house.
We made some improvements to CAST during this CES.
For example, the cast is now coming to more screens like lgtvs in twenty twenty four will support CAST, including those that you see in hotel rooms, so you can cast right to the TV in your hotel room. No logging in, no forgetting to log out when you leave the hotel.
Makes it super simple.
And the other thing that my kids are really excited about is TikTok is coming to Cast as well, so putting those latest dance moves on your big screen TV and learning together.
You can see that in your future too.
I heard there's some changes about quick share.
And the nearby share on Android, So tell me how those.
Two are sort of emerging.
Yeah, quick Share and nearby Share both try to solve the same problem, which is we have files and photos and you and I want to share them with each other, and we want to do that really simply. Samsung has had their own solution. Android has had its own solution as well. What's really cool that we just announced is that Samsung and Google are getting together. We're integrating both of those two solutions, quick Share and Nearby Share into a single solution that will work across.
All Androids devices.
We're keeping the name quick Share since it was really popular with consumers. Later this year, people their Android phones will get an update and you'll have that quick Share button and it'll work no matter what phone. Remember what Android phone the other user has. What is the purpose of quick Share? Quick Share makes it really simple to share photos and videos between you and your friends that are standing near body.
Does it work with other devices?
Like I'm always like, can I get this from my Mac? Is that in the future or is that impossible to architects, it's a really good question.
One of the things we've heard from consumers.
A lot is they want to be able to share easily from their phone.
To their laptops and their desktops.
So one thing we're adding with quick Shares. We're starting out with Windows PCs and chromebooks and so starting for example, with any Chromebook that you buy quick Share we'll work with, as well as a number of different Windows PCs, starting with PCs made by LG.
AI has become so big in our lives. What is Android doing when it comes to AI.
Yeah, you know, there's a lot that Google's been doing with AI for a number of years, and Android's been participating in a lot of that. You know, the things that we have on our phone today, a lot of them that work really well, like defending you from spam. We'll block two billion spam messages every month using AI on the phone, as well as smart replies that people are really fond of. All that has been AI powered
for a long time. What's new is all the new capabilities with generative AI, and we've really seen this progress leaps and bounds in the last year or so. We have some super cool stuff and Android that takes advantage of that. Android's always been known as a platform that helps you customize and express yourself. One thing I'm really excited about is our AI generated wallpapers. So you can ask Android to generate you a wallpaper that is just for you. You can give it a prompt bicycle made of
flowers in the woods sounds nuts. It can do it for you, and that wallpaper is just for you. There's none other like it in the whole world. The other feature that I really love is where AI really helps us get things done that we felt in the past was just impossible. You know what's impossible for me and my family is I have two young boys thirteen and eight, and getting a good family picture is impossible. With AI,
this has helped tremendously. So there's a feature with Google Pixel called best Take, And when you take a photo, doesn't just take one photo, takes a lot of photos without even you having to worry about it, and then helps you combine all those photos together so you get the one where everyone's smiling, not the one where you've got somebody doing the bunny years and someone else frowning.
You mentioned open ecosystem.
Open system is a big tenet of what Android is all about. In Google, we've had this whole thing about the blue bubble versus the Green bubble. Recently sort of bubbled up to use that. But Apple's also adopting rcs next year or yeah, this year sometime. What do you make of this whole debate and do you think messaging should be simpler?
Messaging definitely needs to be simpler. It really shouldn't matter what phone we're using. It for us to be able to communicate with each other, that's what phones are for.
So I should need to think about does this person have an Android phone? Do they have an iPhone?
When I send them a video or a photo in a text message, it should just all work.
And that's really what we've been advocating for around.
RCS, which is a new way of sending text messages, replaces SMS and mms, which are thirty year old technologies which never grew up to support all the things that we expect today, like high quality photos and videos and to end encryption. So we're really excited to hear that Apple will be supporting RCS. We think it'll make all of our lives a lot easier and we're excited to see them make good on that promise and roll it out later this year.
What will that mean for consumers? What will the difference be Because people like well, I got already text and I yeah, So what will that mean for consumers?
Well, one of the things today is when iPhones and androids text each other, you often get videos that are not high quality. You often get images which are degraded, and people complain. Ah, you know, the Green Bubble didn't do the greatest job at sending me the high quality information that I wanted. Well, it turns out that's because of SMS and MMS, which are thirty year old technologies.
When RCS replaces these, what we'll be able to do together is get all the features that we expect from a text messaging application, and so text messaging will become high quality videos, high quality photos, read receipts, typing, notifications, end end encryption, and so much more.
You excited about all this stuff? What keeps you going about all this?
You know?
I couldn't be more excited. There's over three billion users of Android around the world. Androids mission is really about helping bring computing to more people, and it's not just about phones anymore. What you'll see here today is TV, these cars, watches, and a whole lot more that makes this ecosystem really shine.
And how long after?
Thanks so much?
Thank you?
All right, that's Samir Samat, general manager and Vice president of Android Ecosystem at Google. Lots of cool Google is stuff. They're entire setup at CS look like kind of like a retro car hop. What do you want to call that?
On?
My Google phone is going off? When I say Google, I thought I had to say hey Google.
Oh now I'm saying hey.
Google, what's going off to? But it was like kind of a retro diner gas station kind of looking place. It was really cool, very open, and again what's great about CS is that you hear about these announcements, but you get to go hands on with this stuff early. So some of the things that they mentioned come out now,
some of them come out later. And so the idea is that you know, all these journalists and all these media people and just people attending in general get to go hands on with this stuff before anyone else.
And that's really fun.
One of the other things we saw at CES that is a real crowd attractor.
Is that a word? Is that a terms?
Anyone say that crowd attractor? It attracted a lot of crowds. LG world's first wireless transparent OLED TV. If you haven't checked out my instagram at rich On Tech, you gotta see this thing. They had like thirty of them all in this giant display. It is a wireless transparent four K OLED TV seventy seven inch has a transparent OLED screen and wireless audio and video, which means you can place it anywhere, but you still got to plug it in.
They're still plug It can go between transparent and opaque so you can display artwork or if you want, like OLED picture quality. So it has this like it looked like almost like a screen that came up from the back to like make it so it's you know, fully black on the back. And it was cool. But here's the thing, we don't know the price on this. Transparent TVs were big at CES this year. I think businesses would probably like these, but I don't know if the
average person needs it. Again, it goes back to that like Penthouse comparison, Like you know, you have a window that you don't want to mess up with a TV screen, but I don't know.
Seems like a stretch to me.
PJ writes in on the website at Richontech dot TV self docking boats you just talked about. They will be handy for those who already know what and how. In general, people who can't deal with docking have many other issues and do not understand how to safely operate a boat with lots of explanation marks have obsessed those have observed those things many times. Many factors come into play during all aspects of boating current, wind speed, wind direction, proximity
to other traffic, and other aspects. Many people only use their boats once or twice a year. They are dangerous to be around. I frequently observed these things as I've spent large amounts of time on boats since my twenties and for several years, and have also lived a board PJ. Yeah, I guess that's true. I mean, if you're not a boating person, you think that this autonomous docking is gonna help you or save you, or make you able to have a boat. Yeah, you still have to learn the
basics one hundred percent. I mean, it's like driving a car. You can't like, Yes, we Actually I don't know if that's totally true, because in the future, when we get to the really high levels of autonomous driving, you are not going to have to know how to operate that car because there's not gonna be controls to operate that car. So I think that this is You're right at this point. For safety reasons, of course, you should know how to
operate a boat and how to dock it. But this is a nice add on when you just want that smooth docking experience where you can just kind of sit back and relax and let the boat do the work.
It is a very handy.
Thing and it will it will only add to the amount of people who feel comfortable getting a boat, because now you know you've got the full package.
There Triple eight.
Rich one one one eighty eight seven four to two four to one zero one.
We got much more of the show coming up.
We're going to talk to the founder of Telly, the free ad supported television, plus the CEO of coin Flip is going to talk all things bitcoin. And I'm still trying to convince my special guests to come on the show, so we may have that coming up soon. You are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology at Triple eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. You can find
me on social media. I'm at rich on Tech on Instagram where I hang out a lot, Facebook x And if you want to see the segments that I did for television, just go to the wiki Rich on tech dot tv slash wiki. I linked up all of the video segments I did for KTLA in Los Angeles and our partner stations across the nation. So, uh, you might find me popping up on your local TV station. Yeah, because our our segments go out to a lot of different places.
Let's go to.
Uh, Ellie, Ellie is in your Belinda, Ellie, you're on with Rich?
Hi?
Good after you, Rich? How are you?
I am doing fantastic? How about you?
So far, so good?
But the day is young.
Yah, I like that outlook all right, what can I help you with?
All right?
I have a problem.
I live in a two story ho and I replaced my router that was provided by the cable company Spectrum because the signal was just interrupted. I also live next to the mountains. I live in the home of President Nixon the city.
So I'm President Nixon's home, Yes.
The library, and yes, yes he was born here. Correct.
Oh my gosh, okay, sweet.
So I had an interruption the signal because I'm really close to the mountains and I have a two story property. So I replaced the router from the Spectrum company, the cable company, and I bought my own, and I got this one from this company called the l NK S Y.
S Link says okay, yes.
And it gave me two towers to put one in the you know, above and one below the levels, and I still get interruption, and so I'm wondering what I can do to change that, because is when my kids come over and they're using their WiFi and stuff like that, they don't get the signal. And I don't know what I can do to change that.
Okay, well, what so Number one, the mountains don't have anything to do with your signal, so that is not causing the issue. What's causing the issue is the material of this home. So I'm guessing this is an older home and it has probably thick walls that are really tough to get this signal through. That's what I'm guessing. It also sounds like it's pretty large if it is
a former president's home, So that is the problem. You've got a lot of space and you've got a lot of challenges for a Wi Fi signal.
That is, it wasn't the president's home. It's said he's the city. He was born here, Oh, he was born there. Okay, but it is an older home and there is a lot of bricks involved.
Okay, there you go. That's the issue. Okay, yes, that is the issue. So you you sort of halfway solve this issue by going with the Lynx's system. It sounds like you have a mesh system, but that is what you need here, and you it sounds like you may need do you know how many square feet this house is?
Well, the lot is is big, but the house itself is thirty two hundred square.
Okay, that's that's pretty large.
So I would recommend are.
You trying to get internet on the lot or just in the house.
Well, I already have it in the house, but it's still an interruption. Okay, signal.
Okay. So here's what I would do. You need a mesh system the system that you have already. I would go online and look up the name of it and see if it is a mesh system that you can expand with more what are called access points.
Let me explain what a mesh system is.
So typical internet you get from Spectrum is just a router that sits below your TV and it just stays there and that's basically it.
It sends out the signal.
It does not reach very far because it's just the walls and everything else kind of me with it. So what most people are upgrading now to these days is called a mesh system, and a mesh system is kind of like think about the home base under your TV sends out the signal to all these little access points around your house, and they all talk to each other to kind of make sure that the signal completely blankets every corner of your home.
And with two of these and I'm not.
Sure linksis you know, I think the companies that I typically recommend for this are either orb O R B I or ero E E r O. Those are two of the best, and so I would look into maybe getting one of those systems. And you want probably three access points, so that would that would be three of these little devices that you would put around your house, and you know, I think that that's probably going to solve.
The other thing you can do if you really want to get this solved, is you know, you can hire someone to wire an Ethernet cable from the home base system, buy your TV or wherever your internet comes into your house, and then you can wire that to another room that is pretty far away and you can plug one of the access points into that and that way, it's going to get a nice strong signal that is actually like a really good signal, and it's gonna put that out
through your house as well. But that's gonna be a lot more expensive because you are getting someone to come to the house and drill and all that good stuff. So I would say you could probably solve this problem with a better mesh system that has three points to it. So again, look up and see if the mesh system that you have will allow a third access point. If it does, I would get that third access point, and
I would also look at where you're placing these. So with Internet, you really want to place the main signal in kind of the center of the house and also up off the floor and not obstructed by anything. And then the other two you want to put in different areas that are, you know, not too far away, but far enough where it can still get the signal and put it in that area of the house, but also reach the third one and put the signal there as well.
So if they're unobstructed, that would be ideal. Like if it's up like a staircase that you can see something like that, that would be ideal. But yeah, Wi Fi is it's tricky. It's not the signal. We are really stretching this signal to its maximum capacity at this point. It was really not intended to do all the things that we're doing with it. There is a new standard coming up called Wi Fi seven. It is very much emerging.
I don't know if you need to upgrade to that just yet because a lot of devices don't take advantage of that just yet. But a lot of these problems hopefully will be solved with Wi Fi seven. That handles this stuff a little bit better.
All right, Thanks for the question.
Melody, are Ellie in or bel Inda? I thought it was odd that you lived in the President's house, but I get it, orba Inda? Okay, president from there? I guess my uh, I guess my California. I guess that's national history. I don't know, it's all. It's all up in the r anyway. Eight and eight Rich one O one eight and eight seven four to two four one zero one.
You are listening to rich on Tech.
Welcome to another hour of rich on Tech. My name is rich Demiro, broadcasting live today from Las Vegas, site of CEES.
Twenty twenty four.
Now the show is closed, the show is everyone's maybe everyone's gone home, but it is still the place where cees took place all week long. I've been here for the whole week and uh saw a lot, met a lot of people, saw a lot of new gadgets, and it was a good show. One hundred and thirty five thousand attendees, forty three hundred exhibitors. There was a ton to see. And this thing spreads across the entire town.
It's not just the convention Center. It is the Venetian, the Expo Hall, and a whole bunch of hotel rooms because a lot of companies they may not get a booth at the show, but they rent like a hotel room, like a suite, and then they show people like you know, they meet up with people and show them what they've got. That's exactly what happened with Telly. This is the free ad supported television set they launched earlier in twenty twenty three,
and they have thousands of these TVs out in the wild. Yes, you can sign up for a free ad supported TV. Ili Oposen is the creator and co founder of Telly. I caught up with him at CS to get an update on the company ili Oposen, creator and co founder of Telly on the free ad supported television set. It's a fifty five inch set also has a soundbar in the middle, and the key is the secondary screen that shows ads.
Let's hear it.
So I'm Elio Posen. I'm the co founder and CEO of Telly.
So what made you create Telly?
So my last company is actually Pluto TV if you're familiar with that, where Pluto's ad support is streaming, right, and we proved that companies who are double dipping on revenue where they're charging for a subscription service and monetizing with advertising, that you could actually run a sustainable business on just one of those revenue streams. And for Pluto,
that was advertising. And when we looked at Telly in the TV market, the same thing happens right now when you're going to the store, you're buying a TV, right, and then your data is being monetized and that TV.
Is delivering ads.
And Telly wanted to prove the exact same thing that Pluto approved, where you can monetize and build a sustainable business model on just one revenue stream alone, in this case advertising.
What do you get with the TV.
Yeah, so Telly comes completely free, right. You get a fifty five inch four K HDR TV, you get a premium soundbar included by Harmon Cardon, and it comes with a second screen that's never been done before sys a dual screen TV. It also has a lot of extra features that you normally wouldn't get out of a TV, like a camera where you could do zoom calls and fitness and right out of your home, and a voice
assistant built in. And the cool thing about Telly is every single month we release software updates like a Tesla. This thing gets better and better and smarter and smarter every single month as time goes by. That's never really been done on a TV before.
Right.
Normally your TV.
Just kind of fixes bugs and things like that, and it ages and ages over time.
Telly actually gets better over time.
Is there any catch?
There's no catch.
Just so any other TV company, whether you're buying a Samsung or a Visio Roku, they monetize your data and they give you advertising. We do the exact same thing, except we're completely upfront with consumers. Right, So we deliver advertising, we monetize data, but we're very transparent. Everything is fully opt in. We don't do anything else than noyone else does except the one thing we do is we give you a completely free TV.
There's a camera on the front. Is there a microphone?
So there's a camera that's shut by default. If you want to use an app like Zoom or something, then it asks you if you.
Want to open it. We're very privacy first.
There's a microphone that if you want to use a voice assistant, recognizes a wake word like hey Telly, and then responds to your commands. But that's it. We don't actually cord listen. Nothing happens in the background. We're a privacy first company. And that's that's how we're operating.
What about the ad in the corner of the screen. Tell me how the add part of this works.
Yeah, so that's that's, you know, the secret sauce of our business model.
Right.
So we have two screens. The main screen, which is a fifty five inch TV. The best analogy and give is kind of like a car. That's your windshield right. The bottom screen that's your dash. It's where your spinnometer is, your radio or your nav. In this case, we show you sports scores, news weather, and yes, we have a portion of it for advertising. So we have advertising that
shows you relevant ads based on who you are. So you and I would both get different ads depending on who we are as people and where we live and all the different attributes of our profiles. And that's how we operate and monetize our business.
How many of these do you have out in the wild and how many do you expect.
To put out there?
Yeah?
So we just announced our company public in twenty twenty.
Three in May.
We're already in thousands and thousands of homes. Our TVs are used every single day for many many hours.
It's working. The business model works.
Twenty twenty three read was our year of validation and twenty twenty four is going to be the year we scale. So we're planning on going into millions of homes this year.
Can people still get one of these? How do they do that?
Yeah?
Absolutely, we have a big weightlist right now. But I would sign up and go to free Telly dot com to get on the waitlist because we're about to start shipping a lot of TVs.
All right.
Once again the website freetelly dot com, And I will say, going hands on with that TV, it is a nice TV. It's got a great picture. It has all the stuff you want on it. You can add your own streaming dongle if you want, like a fire TV or anything like that, or you can just use the one that they give you. But it seems very high quality and the sound was great, and I think what they're doing is quite interesting because it's something that everyone wants for free.
Why not have a free TV? Yeah, there are ads.
On the bottom.
The ads. You know, they're there all the time. So are they distracting? I don't think so. We're kind of used to ads at this point, so kind of a neat thing. Again. That was a creator and co founder of Telly. The website is freetelly dot com.
All right.
So one of the devices I saw at CS that is quite interesting reminds me of the future is a device from Wings called Bemo b E a m O BMO. This is a four and one health checkup device. It combines an ECG, blood oxygen level, stethoscope, and a thermometer. It allows you to measure your core vitals like temperature, heart rate, blood oxygen, and your lung and heart sounds, all at home medical grade health scants. It can detect
things like fever, arrhythmia, and abnormal heart rate. And it also keeps records so that you can share this with your doctor. So this is two hundred and fifty dollars. It's pending FDA clearance, which is expected middle of this year June twenty twenty four. But I got to go hands on with this and try it out, and it literally felt like I was touching something and using something from the future, something you'd see like on a sci
fi movie. Because you put this thing up to your heart or your lungs and it listens and it gives you a display and you do the ECG and I mean everything. Everything When you go to the doctor and they take your vitals, this thing will do. And so what is the whole point of this, Well, it is for telehealth. Imagine you want to get a quick appointment with your doctor and you know, you got a stuff he knows or whatever you got, you know, and they usually want you to come in to do all these
little vitals. Now you can take all these vitals right from this device. It sends it to the doctor's screen and you can get all this stuff that you weren't able to get before. I mean, I think, especially when it comes to the stuff like this. The I can't even say the word the heart and lung sounds the sethoscope part. Why is that so tough for me to pronounce? But like that part is really tricky to get it home.
I mean, you're not gonna listen to your own heart lungs right, So the fact that you can do this is quite incredible. Withings is a company that does all kinds of health stuff and they just continue to push the envelope when it comes to that. So I think we're gonna steal a big push in telehealth because there's so many things. Especially during the pandemic, we saw that there's just so many things that we can do at home,
and that is one way we can advance that. Samsung unveiled a new AI companion robot for your house called Bali. This is a AI robot assistant. It was first introduced in twenty twenty. They updated it. It's kind of weird looking. It looks like a little soccer ball that rolls around your house, follows you around, greets you at the door when you come home, like a dog, and it's your personal home assistance. You can ask it questions you can say something like, hey, show me a recipe for pizza,
and it will project the recipe on the wall. If someone comes to your door, it will project the video of the video doorbell, like a live stream of that. So it has strong R two D two vibes. You know, it's like one of these things that's just like always around. It's spinning around, it's following you. And the big new feature is the projection. So it's got that projector on it, so it can play videos on your walls and your floors.
It can play music, can help you answer phone calls, and of course this is one of those things that will it ever see the light of the day. I don't know, because typically if a tech company is going to introduce something that we are going to see, they're going to give us a price and an expected date.
We have none of that with Bali, but it's still pretty cool.
So Samsung Bali ai companion robot for the home, saw a short demo of it, and you know, I don't know, I'm i'm I feel like these home robot things really have to be useful for us to spend money on them, and they really have to be good. And I do think that will happen because of artificial intelligence like chat, GBT and all that stuff. But right now it is We're seeing a lot of ideas, but realistically, what is the use? What is the value of having something like that at your house?
All right?
Website is rich on Tech dot TV. This is rich Dmiro giving you updates from CS twenty twenty four here in Las Vegas. If you want to see the stuff that I posted to my Instagram from CS, you can go to my Instagram page at rich on Tech. Website for the show is rich on Tech dot TV. I'm gonna do the feedback segment soon. So if you have a comment about the show, submit it at the website. Go to rich on Tech dot tv, hit the contact button and you can submit it right there.
All right, I think.
I've convinced my special guest to come on the show. I think I'm gonna have a special guest coming up next. We're gonna do your questions in a rapid fire segment with a very special guest coming up right here on rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you talking technology. The website rich on Tech dot TV Broadcasting live from Las Vegas and for the very first time on this show in
twenty twenty four. It is a very special guest. It took a lot of convincing to get them on the show. Welcome my wife, Lindsey.
Thank you for having me.
Were you a.
Little apprehensive for coming on the show today?
Yes, I wonder how you do this on a regular basis. I've got to be honest.
Lindsay's been listening to the show, and you know she's here in Vegas with me. She usually meets me after SAT. Yes, we go out for a nice dinner to celebrate the week being over. And so I said, you know what, let's do a rapid fire question segment. So, without further ado, these are some of the emails I've gotten in the last couple of weeks from you. So let's get the first one.
Okay, Mollie Rights looking for an app keyboard for my iPhone which has the letters and numbers on one screen like a typewriter.
Great question, Mollie. We've actually had this before on the show. And the answer to this question is an app called swift Key. So swift key was originally an app that was independent and now it is owned by Taylor.
Swift just kidding.
It's owned by Microsoft, so Microsoft swift Key does have an option to put the number row on top of the letter row. So there you go. Swift Key, look it up. It's available for iPhone and Android.
Next question, Okay, this one's from Howard. Happy New Year, Rich. I'm cleansing my emails. I've become cautious and suspicious with unsubscribed options versus blocking email. Is it safe to click unsubscribe some required under email? I don't want to provide my email because I have a few emails. Thanks again for your tech insights, Howard.
Good question.
Here's my rule of thumb when it comes to unsubscribing from emails. You can safely unsubscribe to any email from a legitimate sender. That's a Macy's, that's a home depot, bed bath, and beyond those kind of emails that come from a large company or any company that is using an email service that is legitimate, like a mail or anything like that constant contact. Those are very safe to unsubscribe to. It is the emails that are unsolicited or
spam that sometimes have unsubscribe in the footer. What they're trying to do is trick you. They're trying to confirm that you open that email and you have a good email address, and then once you click on subscribe, they'll actually send you more emails. So for those emails, you can just throw them out, trash them, don't even open them. For the legitimate emails, you can safely unsubscribe. When it comes to entering your email address. That's a pet peeve
of mine. I don't think that should be the case. A lot of these email providers have switched to one click unsubscribe. Sometimes, if I can tell it's legitimate, I will put my email address in there to confirm. Otherwise I would just delete that email and hopefully it doesn't come back.
Next question, Okay, this one's from Nilda hi Rich Demiro. I daily watch Ketla five news and I enjoy your segments there. I was wondering if my books and my kindle fire are sinkable. Is that even a word to my iPad? Or are they transferable? Thanks again, thanks ahead if you can help.
This is from Nilda. Nilda, good question.
This is this is pretty wild because when I wrote my book for the iPhone, it was so complicated because people didn't realize how they could read a Kindle book if they didn't own a Kindle And so this is what's happening here. You've got a kind Kindle Fire, and you've got books that you purchased on those Yes, you can easily get those on your iPad. All you have
to do is download the Kindle app for iPad. Kindle has an app for pretty much every operating system out there, So if you're purchasing Kindle books from Amazon, yes, you can read them on almost any device out there. So just go ahead, download the Kindle app on your iPad. All of your books in your library will show up there, and it is sinkable. So if you get to page five hundred on your iPad, you open up your Kindle Fire.
As long as they're both connected to Wi Fi or the Internet, they will sync and you'll be exactly where you left off. Good question, Nilda. Let's to get another one, lindsay.
Eric, right, is there any way to add a flip phone to my iPhone account and have calls and texts forward to it? I don't want to add a line or a number, just roll calls and text. I have Verizon.
Okay, so this is this is possible, but it's not necessarily simple. So there are a limited amount of devices that you can share your mobile number with, and Verizon calls this number share. All of these cellular carriers have a slightly different way of treating this. But for Verizon you mentioned is it's called number share, and so they have a couple of devices and if you go to their website Verizon dot com and look up number share, it will tell you which devices you can share your
phone number with. Most of the devices and this feature pretty much launched with the Apple Watch. Most of them are watches, whether it's the Apple Watch, whether it's a pixel Watch, whether it's a Fossil Watch, but they are Samsung Galaxy watches. They do have a few that you can get and oh gosh, they get rid of the one that I was testing. Hold on, let me see, I think they got rid of it. Oh, I don't see it there anymore. There used to be a phone called the light Phone, and I don't know if that's
on the list anymore. But anyway, there are a couple of devices on the list. You can't typically just use any old flip phone to connect to this. You do have to find a device that is on this list, and it is limited. So if you find a device on there, I'm looking to see if they have a flip phone on here. I don't know if they have one that you can get. Let me see what this one is. I'm not really seeing a flip phone on here, so I'm not sure this is completely possible. It says
Palm Companion phone. What's that. I don't even know what that is. Oh wow, I don't even think they have that anymore. But you can go to the Verizon website. It is possible, but it is very, very limited, and it's all about money because they don't want you using a cheap flip phone because they charge you ten bucks a month. They don't want you using that. They want you to get a whole another line.
All right, next question, Okay, let's answer Chef Alex's question. First of all, let me let you know that you are amazing. I love finding out new gadgets, apps and new technology. Seriously, I check your page for new and fun staff, so thank you. My question is when do you recommend booking a fight and do you prefer Airbnb or verbo?
Thank you?
Oh, two part question.
So number one, recommend booking a flight? I recommend booking it as soon as you have the money and you are ready to do it, because flights go up and down all the time and price, and it's one price that's right for me may not be right for you, may not be right for someone else. So when you feel like it's a fair deal and it's working out for you, go ahead and book it. The place ide book flights flights dot Google dot com is the only
place I use to research my flights Airbnb versus Verbo. Honestly, I'm a hotel guy, so if I had to choose, I don't know, I probably Airbnb.
Thank you, Lindsey, thanks for having me.
It was fun.
My wife Lindsay On the show.
Coming up, we're going to talk to Ben Wye, CEO of coin Flip, to explain what happened with bitcoin. This week is rich on Tech.
Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology live from Las Vegas today. Here for CS twenty twenty four, which has is completed. It has finished, it is done.
A lot of people counting.
Their steps this week. We did a lot, but it was fun. We saw a lot of great stuff, but one of the big news stories of the week while we were here involves bitcoin. And yes, we've heard about bitcoin on and off for years now, but this is it seems like a very big shift in the entire crypto world. Let's bring on Ben Weis's CEO of coin flip to talk about it. Ben wi CEO of coin flip, thanks for joining me today. Hey, Rich, I'm doing great.
First off, tell me what coin flip does. What do you do at coin flip?
So, coin flip operates over five thousand big ms where people can physically perch bitcoin in other crypto and physical locations. We operate in nine countries and we have over five one hundred locations in California and about one hundred in Nevada.
Oh wow, Okay, so you do bitcoin atm so you're pretty well versed in this stuff. So let's talk about first off, the well, let's explain bitcoin first.
Yeah, and I've been now in this space for over a decade, since I was eighteen.
But bitcoin is a digital currency.
It's not owned or operated by a central bank or any private company. It's simply a decentralized currency on the blockchain. And it was the first crypto ever and it's the most popular crypto, and this week the SEC just approved eleven ETFs for bitcoin, which will make it more easy for people to buy.
Okay, that's the big news this week, and this was rumored for a while and why, you know, why is that significant and what does that mean exactly?
Yeah, So ETFs are exchange traded and for those of you who purchase stocks, you probably have bought ETFs with your online brokerage account or financial advisor on things like Vanguard in Fidelity and tdomrriort Trade, And until last week, there was no way to purchase bitcoin.
On any of those traditional brokerages.
So you had a lot of people who wanted to buy bitcoin, but didn't want to buy it that ples didn't want to have to worry about storing bitcoin on their own wallets.
I mean, Rich, I'm sure you've heard about.
The horror stories of people, especially earlier, earlier in the early days of bitcoin, who lost access to their crypto because they lost their hard drives and things like that.
So this allows.
People to get exposure to bitcoin and the upside of bitcoin without holding the coin themselves, because the coin is held by these exchange traded funds, and you're seeing some of the smartest companies in the world, like Blackrock, get into the space. So it's a huge day for crypto and this will make bitcoin and other cryptos more accessible for everyone.
Oh, that's an interesting aspect that I had not thought of because and by the way, I think you cut out when you said ETF that's exchange traded fund. These are like the hot product in the investment world. It's kind of like a mutual fund, I guess, but like with less fees and things like that, and it's kind of like automated too, right.
Yeah, So instead of buying individual stocks and having to manage that, the fund manages on those stocks, so you could have more diversified exposure to areas of the economy without having to buy and manage all the individual stocks yourself. So that was a concept that was pioneered in the traditional stock investing space. Is many of listeners probably have participated in that space, and now that whole concept is brought to bitcoin.
So instead of people having to buy.
Individual bitcoins and hold them on hot wallets and cold wallets and you know, on their phone and worry about losing them, they can.
Just buy that ETF that tracks the price.
Of bitcoin, so if bitcoin goes up, they'll get those gains and they won't have to worry about managing or holding bitcoin themselves.
And the industry has been pushing the.
SEC to approve some of these ETFs for years now, and actually about a couple months ago, a federal appeals court in DC said that the SEC improperly rejected in ETF So the SEC had to reconsider the ETFs and the first approvals came down this week.
Wow. So why do you think the government changed their course on this?
Well, I think at the end of the day, the SEC's all about consumer protection and this is a novel technology, right, and with novel technologies there could be increased risk to increase risk, so I think the SEC was taking their time.
And it's not uncommon to when.
Firms apply for whether it's an ETF, for approvals for other things, that the SEC will have commentary back, or we'll ask for a little bit of different change in business model. So there has been some back and forth there, and then there was the court decisions which provides more guidance as well. So it looks like with the changes to some of the applications and the court decisions, the SEC was finally satisfied to approve eleven of these ETFs, and.
I'm sure they'll be poor.
That was just for Bitcoin, So there's other cryptocurrencies. There's Etherorum, and I'm sure that people will be trying to get Ethereum and other crypto ETFs proved next.
I mean, so look, the bottom line is, if you have a retirement account or any sort of investment account, you can now easily get into crypto. And it seems like it's a very legitimate way to do this because, yes, there's been many ways of buying this in the past, but you had to sign up for, like you said, a secondary you know, any one of these programs or apps that would sell it to you that you may
not have done business with before. But if you're buying it through your you know, Fidelity or Vanguard or any of these like big brand names that you know, I feel like that means a lot of people will feel much more comfortable getting in on this or at least having some, you know, some of this in their portfolio. Is that the idea behind why we've seen the price go up with bitcoin.
I mean, I think you're one hundred percent like the early adopters of crypto. Maybe people who are very technically sophisticated, you know, they probably bought crypto already. They're comfortable self customing their own coins on wallets, on.
Their phone and things like that.
But for the average person it can be kind of intimidating and confusing. Like I know, someone like my you know, like my mom and dad, they you know, have been buying stocks and ETFs for a while, and they can just now log into their tdom Merrior Trader, you know, Vanguard and have the option to buy crypto.
It just makes it so much easier, and.
Then they don't have to worry about things like do I have to remember passwords and codes, you know, for my own wallets. So it just simplifies the process. And I do think it has a lot to do with the price increase. We're sueing bitcoin today just sitting under forty three thousand.
Dollars a coin. And just so your listeners know, you don't have to buy one coin at once.
The bitcoin's infinitely divisible, which means you could buy twenty dollars of it fifty dollars, one thousand dollars. But this adds so much legitimacy to the space, and this also opens up crypto and bitcoin to a bunch of investors who would have never considered it before.
Ben, I'm going to read you an email from you know, I have my Gmail account, which you know has an archive all my emails. This is from a friend that was in the bitcoin space. Early Thursday, November seventh, twenty thirteen. He says, I just want to put this on your radar. We're having another bitcoin meetup. Bitcoin is in the news a lot, and the price just hit a new high
at over three hundred dollars per bitcoin. I think the last time I talked to you about bitcoin, it was at one hundred and twenty five, so it is growing. He was trying to ask me to buy bitcoin back in twenty thirteen, and I didn't. But this goes to show that this thing has been around for a while. There have been people that have been tracking, like yourself and this person very closely.
Should I have bought back.
Then, Well, I think a lot of people think they should have bought back then, But you know, it's never too late, and I think people should do their research because you want to have conviction not just in bitcoin, but in any sort of financial asset you buy because you know, prices go up, prices go down. But if you have conviction in the financial asset you're buying, you're more likely to hold it long and have better returns.
But to your point, Bitcoin's been incredibly resilient. I mean, let's face it, crypto's had some horrible headlines in the past year or two, from FTX to binance. We've also had the interest rates go through to over five percent. And for bitcoin to be sitting at forty five thousand dollars today or forty three thousand dollars today, it wasn't
forty five thousand a couple of days ago. But to be sitting that high with you know, bad news, higher interest rates, some economic uncertainty, I think is an incredibly positive sign for crypto and for bitcoin. And now you have very legitimate players like black Rock, Chase, JP Morgan getting into the fray.
And then, for those of your listeners who don't know, this year twenty twenty.
Four, so every four years with bitcoin, there's something called the happening that means the rewards to minors, the supply of crypto that's generated every ten minutes actually cuts in half, So there's more scarcely every four years with bitcoin, and that's typically also in price as well, So there's a there's a lot of signs that have allowed bitcoin to really kind of break out from the fold.
Here.
All right, Ben Weiss, we're gonna leave it there, Thanks so much for joining me today.
Thanks so much, Rich, how a good one?
All right, Ben wi CEO and co founder of coin flip. This is a Bitcoin ATM provider. Is coin flip dot tech? Again? That was Ben Weiss, CEO and co founder of coin flip, the website coin flip dot tech. Do your research before you jump in. Like anything else that has to do with money, you gotta do your research. But it is certainly an interesting, interesting.
Place with bitcoin.
All right, coming up the feedback segment. Can't wait, rich on Tech, Rich Demiro here, we'll be right back. Welcome back to rich on Tech here, hanging out with you talking technology. As you can see, my special guest is still chatting into the microphone. That's my wife, Lindsay. She joined me today to read some of your questions. I think she did a very good job. I do have a warning though, for you. If you got gift cards over the holidays, check the balance immediately. This happened to us,
and it's quite scary. It's happening to a lot of people based on the comments on my Instagram and Facebook page. But basically what happens is scam artists go to the stores, they write down the numbers from gift cards, so like somehow open up the back of them, write down the number and then they'll record that number, keep it at home, and I guess they check on a daily basis to see if any money got charged up onto that card, and as soon as it does, they drain the funds.
So what happens when you get gift cards, right, you give them, you buy them at the store, You hold on to them for a week, You give it to a person at a birthday party or the holidays, that person gets it, they hold on to it for a couple of weeks. So, as you can see, there's a lot of time here for the scam artists to do their work. And so I've noticed that a lot of registers they will look at the cards, they will visually inspect them to make sure that they have not been
tampered with, but it doesn't always catch them. And so what you need to do. If you have a gift card that you got over the holidays. Number one, check the balance and make sure that it is valid, because if it's not. The quicker you do this, the more of a chance you might have of recovering those funds. The problem is gift cards are pretty much treated as cash. But if you have the receipt and you've got your information, some people say they are successful in getting the money back.
But this is a very very big issue that again it happened to us, and you know, it's just one of those things where there are so many gift cards. Gift cards are almost their own currency, and it's just it's very simple for these scam artists to do this apparently, and people buy these cards, they don't look at the back, they don't notice that numbers are scratched off and recorded, and they put the money on it and it's gone. So check for that for sure before we get to
the feedback. Two more things I saw at CES I thought were pretty cool. Zekes zox. This is a fully autonomous ride hailing vehicle made by Amazon owned Zekes. This is a vehicle with no human controls. There's no steering wheels, there's no pedals, there's four seats inside. The car goes up to seventy five miles an hour. It can go either way. So the lights on the front and the back changed from white to red so it can go back or forth. It's starting public service in twenty twenty
four in Las Vegas. And this is pretty wild. It's like basically a ride hailing taxi, but there's no human controls and no human inside. It's called zekes Zox that is coming soon from an Amazon owned company. And then this was pretty cool. An electric grill. So Current has a smart electric grill. It's called the Current Model G. It's Wi Fi enabled, fully electric, you can use it outside.
It's got a mobile app.
Preheats in ten minutes, reaches seven hundred degrees dual temperature zones. And again everything is going electric. Now the grill is going electric as well. And speaking of electric, how about indoor smoker. GE has an indoor smart smoker. This is an indoor electric smoker. It's got this filtration system on it that lets you smoke food inside. Can you imagine, I mean, you know.
When you smoke food.
I've never done it, but I've been around people that do. And it's a lot of smoke, but they figured out a way to kind of capture that smoke clean out the air. And I was near this thing, and you can smell the smoky flavor. But it's not like an outdoor smoker for sure. So now if you have an inside you know, don't have an outside, or you live in a condo or an apartment or whatever, you can now have an indoor smoker holds up to three racks of ribs or a fourteen pound pork butt. Is that
what people are making. It's got connected features and small footprints, a lot of it is dishwasher safe, and it's available for nine hundred ninety nine dollars. Again, that's the ge profile smart indoor smoker. And they were smoking a chicken in there or something like that. Maybe it was a pork butt. I don't know. All right, let's get to the feedbag segment. Joseph says, love the show. Just want to share with you my discovering of an amazing device.
After cutting the cord, audio video over the air broadcast quality has a much better than compressed cable. We get fantastic reception with our MOHU window antenna. The best is the seventy nine dollars Tableau TV with an indoor DVR and no monthly fees. It's amazing for setup an antenna, schedule recordings. Tableau will also release an app soon for Apple TV. Very impressed, easy to use without paying a lot of money. I hope you can get a demo from Tableau at CS. Yes, I did get a demo
from Tableau. It is a fantastic device and they're going to send me one of the new ones to test. Gretchen says I listened to your podcast every week, and your first podcast of twenty twenty four year comments about what you want the podcast to be for everyone, not just tech experts is right on the money. Your content is so helpful to me and the everyday person trying to navigate tech. I appreciate the balance between newsworthy alerts, how tos and expert guests you have on the show.
Thank you well, thank you, Gretchen. Tom says I love the show. You're doing a great job. It keeps getting better. Tom, thank you. Let's see Sandy from Culver City says Miniochi Karaoke. I just want to thank you for recommending this little karaoke speaker and microphone. I also followed your advice about using Apple Music Sing feature with the Minioki. I use it at my Christmas brunch party and everyone had a blast. It's very easy to use and added so much fun
to my gathering. All of your recommendations have been spot on. Thanks for your help and advice from your rich On Tech, Neil says, it's been a whole year. You've done a great job, a great public service.
I used.
I like to listen live because I want to cheer you on and the odd.
Questions come in then again on my podcast app to fully absorb the show's goodness. You don't have to be perfect. Love your show. Look forward to listening to many more. Thanks for all that you do, Neil from Ohio. All Right, if you can believe it, that's gonna do it. For this episode of the show, you can find links to everything I mentioned on my website. Just go to rich on Tech dot tv for the show notes. You can find me on social media. I am at rich on Tech.
Next week, Samsung launching its brand new Galaxy S twenty four smartphones. We're gonna go hands on with those. I cannot wait. Thanks so much for listening. There are so many ways you can spend your time. I do appreciate you spending it right here with me. Thanks to everyone who makes this show possible.
Kim, Bobo, Lindsey.
Say, hello, hello and goodbye. What'd you think of? What do you think about being on the show today? Did you like it?
I actually really liked it. It was really fun and fun to see you in action.
Yeah, and in live time. Have you ever watched me do the show before?
Uh?
Only when I brought the kids in that one day for a couple minutes, but not the entire show.
This was really fun, all right. What would you do differently.
Me personally?
Yeah?
Uh, be a little more relaxed, you know. Now the second time, I'll be.
A proud Okay. Well, oh I just heard it. Sounds like Lindsay's gonna come back. I think we didn't scare you away. I like that. Okay, Oh I have time for one more feedback. Thanks Lindsay for being on the show. Jim says, I popped into a store to buy cash to pay cash to buy a birthday card. When I got the receipt, it looks like the point of sale device tried to use two contactless cards before processing my cash transaction. Neither of the cards on the receipt match
what I carry in my RFID blocking wallet. I wonder if the poor cashier is going to see a large bill if the card he tries to tap were hers. Ooh, I have noticed those NFC credit cards are working from further and further away, it seems so yes, be careful when you put them by the register. All right.
My name is rich Demiro.
Find me on the website until next week. Rich on tech dot tv. Thanks so much for listening. I'll talk to you real soon.