DeepSeek AI, Streaming the Big Game & Cell Plan Savings

Phone lines are open at triple eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one eight eight eight seven four to two four to one zero one, triple eight rich one oh one. Give me a call if you have a question about technology, you need some advice, you just want to talk. Well, I don't know. Kim may not let that throw, but we'll see. Why not try it?

he will talk about all of that. And uh, Philip Swan, the TV answer Man, is gonna join me to break down the latest streaming services, all the price hikes we've been hearing about, and what to expect for Super Bowl coverage. I think it's going to be easier than ever this year to watch the Super Bowl if you are a cord cutter. Well, the big story of the week is deep Seek. Yes, if you unless you live under a rock,

you have heard about this new AI. Deep Seek is a startup out of China, and it is taken the world by storm. It surprised a lot of folks and even sent tech stocks tumbling. Why well, they claim to have built an AI model for a fraction of what US companies like open Ai, Google and Meta have spent on similar technology. So their AI model, called R one, they say it costs them about six million dollars to develop, which you know, compare that to the one hundred million

spent by open Ai on their latest GPT four. That's a big difference. And by the way. They accomplished it using lower end chips. So I don't know if you've heard about this stock called Nvidia. A lot of people at one point, literally every person and their barber was recommending that you purchase this stock.

able to do this. So what does that mean. Well, it means that people were like, hold on, wait a second, everything we knew about building AI might not be right. Now, we'll continue to explain all this. So they also, by the way, open sourced their entire model, which means that anyone can take what they've accomplished and use it as

a foundation to build their own thing. So if you wanted to start your own AI app or your own AI technology, you can use what they've done at Deepseek as your basis for that technology, instead of paying another company like an open AI or another company that offers their AI that you can use and build upon, they charge for that. Now, of course, we saw stock prices go down. We saw Silicon Valley say wait a second.

We saw everyone say, hold on, we don't know if we've been doing everything right for the past two years in the US, and what's the outlook on AI because this company can come out of nowhere and do something that's very similar to what we've done. So the app, by the way, the deep Seek app, people downloaded like crazy, so it is currently the top app on both Apples App Store and Google Play. That is no easy feat for a startup, especially one out of China that no

one heard about more than a week ago. So of course when you hear this, you're thinking, wait a second, rich, I thought we had this whole thing with TikTok and the privacy and the national secrets and all this stuff, like, why are we now downloading this other app from China that, by the way, people are going to be dumping way more personal information into an AI chatbot than they ever were into TikTok. So where what are the privacy implications

of this? Well, we're not sure just yet. We don't know, but I I can imagine that people are probably typing a lot of stuff into deep Seek that's highly personal. By the way, how is deep Seek? If you look at it, I mean carbon copy of chat gibt. It literally looks just like chat gbt. You've got the side pain, the chats, the fonts. Everything looks almost identical to what chat gibt has done. The box, the text box. I mean, it's almost a carbon copy. And these are different companies.

And I typed in, you know, I said, who is Rich DeMuro? And it gave me a good answer. I'm looking at this answer and uh, everything is factual. Rich Demuro's approachable style and ability to break down complex tech topics into understandable information and made him a trusted source for many consumers looking to navigate the ever changing world of technology. I'll take that there, thank you, I said, what about his radio show and podcast? He also extends

his tech expertise to radio and podcasting. They got the station right call in format. He has a podcast. I mean, pretty impressive. Where are they getting this information from? We don't know. I mean they taught it. Now. The other thing that that Deep Seek did, and I've talked about almost my role on this show in a similar way. So Wall Street Journal was talking this morning about how

open AI. You know, they built this giant database, right, and imagine that you're chatting with the smartest person in the world that has all of the world's information. Right, it may take them a little bit of time to kind of figure out that information and to present it to you. Well, what Deep Seek did was they kind of turned that on its head. They said, well, we may not know all of the information right off the top of our head, but we know how to find

it when we need it. So therefore we didn't have to train everything all at once. And so that's kind of what I say on this show, like I may not have every single answer right off the top of my head, but I can understand what you're asking and figure out how to buying the right answer and also vet that answer in a way that I can trust it and say, Okay, here's what I think. So that's another side of this. So again, everything has been turned

upside down overnight. Silicon Valley on high alert, and so are some countries. You know, we've already, you know, because this is coming out of China. We do know that some of the topics that are sensitive with the government there have been either censored or blocked, and other countries have also been a little sensitive about letting folks use

this technology. So some corporations have been blocking access to this, some countries have been blocking access to this until we learn more and we figure out what this is all about. And the other thing, if you think about this, you're like, well, how did this happen? This has happened over and over in the tech world. I mean, remember MySpace that was the social network until Facebook came along. Remember Google that was the search engine. GBT disrupted that and they're still

feeling the ramifications of that. Remember DVRs, they were the way to watch TV until streaming and on demand took over. So the point that I made in my newsletter this morning is that technology is never set in stone. It's always evolving, it's always finding better and more efficient ways to do things, and this is just another example of it. We've seen a sizable shift in the AI industry. Am I switching to deep seek? No? Am I going to continue to watch it? Absolutely? Is it just one option

we now have in a c of AI. Absolutely, let me go over some of the notable AI models you now have access to as a general consumer. Chat GBT the original, the Kleenex of AI does everything. This is the one that I use on a daily basis. Google's Gemini. Now Google, you know, I said they've they've been disrupted. But Google has done a really interesting job of working AI into almost every product that it has, and it reaches a lot of people. When I'm on YouTube, I

don't watch a video anymore. It just tapped a little button underneath the video. It says summarize using AI, I get a summary of the video and I can ask questions to Gemini about the YouTube video. Claude is made by Anthropic. This is another Silicon Valley startup. This is the AI that I've used the most, other than Chat EBT and Claude is great for writing and it's just it has a great command of the English language. Then

you've got Microsoft Copilot. They've put that in all of their products and of course into Windows and so Copilot is kind of a flavor of Open AI, you know, a version of that. But Microsoft's own Meta Meta has their own AI. They use the Lama model that they created and they've opened sourced their model as well. And Meta of course has a ton of information, ton of posts that we've made on Instagram and Facebook and all the other things over the years that they have learned

from Mistral. This is one you don't hear about it much, but it's actually not bad and it's out of Paris. So yes, other countries are working on AI as well. US has been a leader here because of chat, GBT and open AI, but everyone wants in on this because it is the next big thing. All right, We're gonna have to keep track of what Deepseek is doing. I do have the app on my phone. I have been

playing with it. Like I said, am I switching today? No, but we'll keep an eye on this one because it has the ability to shake up everything that we know about AI. All right, coming up, we're gonna take some of your calls eight eight eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. You can't deny that we are living in exciting times. That's what I love about technology. What you take for granted one day can completely change the next, whether it's

a software update or a new app. I love it. Give me a call if you have a question about technology. My name is Rich Demiro. You are listening to Rich on Tech Tony in the Inland, the Empire Tony around.

And tip quickly this is with you know if you think about like a public page versus a private person. So, for instance, on my Facebook page, Facebook dot com slash rich on tech. Everyone is a follower, they are not my friend. I know that sounds bad, but it's not a two way street. Like when you follow me, I don't immediately start to see all of your you know, kids pictures and your vacation pictures in my Facebook feed. So that is really the main difference between those. Now,

I believe that, and it's been a while. I actually don't have like I don't. I have a personal Facebook, but I don't really use it mostly on Instagram there. So I believe that you can probably follow a person as well, and so any posts that they make that's public you would be able to see versus their private posts. So on Facebook, I don't think a lot of people play with the public versus you know, the private kind of posting when they do that. Let me see if

I can switch into my Facebook real quick. It's been a while. I got to dust off the cup webs here. But okay, so let's say I do a post on Facebook and it says at the top friends, Okay, there it is, so it says friends and then public. So if I tapped public, that means that my friends would see that in their feed. But also anyone that's following me would see that as well, So that's really the main delineation. Just think of following as a one way street.

You're seeing what that person is putting out into the world. Friends, you are mutual, you are both. It's a two way street. You are both seeing what you're posting on each other's feed. So hopefully that answers the question, Tony, thanks for the call today in the Inland Empire eighted eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Let's go to let's see here, Let's go to Jeff in Anaheim, California.

it into a different outlet or something. Sometimes you just you know, if it's completely dead, you may just have to leave it on there for a little bit longer. And if it's I'm looking at the Amazon factory reset Astro. If the device is on responsive, press and hold the volume up and volume down for fifteen seconds. So once you maybe do that even while it's on the charger to see if you can breathe some life into this. If not, I get in touch with Amazon see if

they can give you a new one. Just say, hey, can you make a one time exception and swap this thing out. I love it. You can take this one to see what went wrong, sell it that way, and if not, maybe just you got to figure out how they can. I don't know what your warranty options are here Amazon Astro. Good question, Jeff, Thanks for that. Hopefully you get your little guy up and running again. This is rich on tech. Amazon Music onlimited raising prices. This

was the last holdout. It was the cheapest music service you could get. Now they are raising their prices to be in line with everyone else. So Prime members, this is the new pricing will be eleven dollars a month, up from ten dollars a month. Non Prime members twelve dollars a month, up from eleven dollars a month, So basically a dollar increase no matter what. If you're on the family plan, that's going up by three dollars a month. So you used to be seventeen, now it's twenty. The

new prices are already in effect for new subscribers. Existing customers will see the increase next month, starting in March. Now, keep in mind, the best way to save is to pre pay, so you can prepay for a year of Amazon if you're Prime for one hundred and nine dollars used to be ninety nine. But still that's the best way to save on a monthly basis. And Prime members, you might be saying, rich, hold on, I get Amazon Music. Why why am I paying for anything? Why do people pay?

pretty much just Spotify full on demand. They give you the best audio quality and unlimited skips, so with a free service you may not be able to skip as many songs as you want. You can download songs offline. You also get free audio books, so again, this is a price increase happening with Amazon Music Unlimited. You can go ahead look somewhere else for a better price or

better service, but they're all pretty much the same right now. Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon might actually still be the best deal if you prepay, so I'm not even sure you could prepay with the other ones, but of course depends on what you want. There you go, Okay, let's go to Katie in Garden Grove. Katie and Garden Grove, you're on with Rich.

So if your phone supports SIM. The good news is that you can just buy a SIM card online and so through an app I like the one called erlo A I R A l O. Very simple. I have done that with the with Japan like in Japan, and it's very simple. You buy it from the app and when you get to Japan. You literally just toggle this SIM on. So that is what in eSIM is now if you if your phone does not support an eSIM,

So it's it's interesting. With the newer iPhones, they only have SIM and eSIM means electronic SIM the one that you were talking about, Katie, that you slide into the side of the phone. That's just called a SIM card and you know, it basically identifies your phone to the network. But now all the new phones they just do it electronically instead of actually having to put that physical SIM in your phone. But no matter what, you're going to

be covered. So when you land at the airport in Japan, they will have a place set up where you can buy a physical SIM card and they will help you pop it into your phone. And so that is what they're talking about when they say get a SIM in another country. What's your wireless service that.

their Vota phone or whatever it is. They will immediately put that into your phone for you and help you out with that. Less people are doing that just because every phone is down eSIM. But if you want, I would download the Aralow app and see what the process is like. I will tell you my mom traveled internationally. I set it up for her from AFAR. I said, download this app, download this eSIM toggle go into your settings.

So all I have to do is turn off your Spectrum SIM and turn on your Aerlo SIM when you arrive, and it will find the network and you'll be online. So either way, but you'll be covered, Katie, no matter what. Good with that? I lost you there? Okay, all right, good luck and enjoy. Japan one of my favorite places to go. Tokyo is incredible. It is a safe place, it is high tech, it's futuristic. The oh my gosh, everyone is so friendly and respectful. That is the thing,

Like when you go and clean like everything. It's just like like I literally take the train in Japan anywhere, and every single train car, every person on there is respectful of each other, and the train car is so clean. We joke that you can eat off the floor because it's just so not that I would recommend doing that, but that's the idea of Japan. It's just like it's

so it's a very nice culture, so enjoy. But yeah, the whole thing about the eSIM is that there's a lot of companies that, you know, let you do this. And I've used eSIMs all over Japan, I will tell you is actually a little tricky when it comes to eSIMs. So I had two phones when I went to Japan. One was a Pixel and one was one was an Android, I don't know if it was. I think it was a Pixel, and the other was an iPhone. The iPhone had no problem getting on the eSIM, whereas the Pixel

was giving me real trouble. So iPhone will be just fine, it'll be very simple. But just the main thing to know when you travel is when you get on the airplane, turn off your domestic SIM card, right like, turn off that domestic connection because you don't want your phone when you land to try connecting to that network back home, because they may immediately charge you an access fee whether

you use it or not. It may just be as soon as you start, you know, as soon as it exchanges some data, you'll be on the hook for ten dollars a day connection fee. So if you don't want that to happen, I recommend that you download the e SIM before you land, you know, get it set up in the US, get it on your phone, toggle both of those SIM cards off in your settings. You'll see this. Your phone can actually handle multiple SIM cards. And then as soon as you land, just toggle on the one

roaming SIM, which is the ERL or whatever company. And there's so many that can do this. I've tested the ARA low and there's just yeah, there's a million million different companies that can do this. You know what Google five, I think someone told me that they'll give you like a free SIM as well, Like I think you get like seven days for free or something. I don't quote me on that because it's been a while since I

use that one. But there's a whole bunch if you look up e SIM online, there's a whole bunch of companies at offer it all right, good question eight eight eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Remember if you want links to anything I mentioned, just go to the website Rich on tech dot tv. This is episode one oh seven. I will put links to all the things that I mentioned there. We'll get to more callers. Plus, the Pebble

smart watch is making a comeback. I'll explain coming up right here on rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here talking technology at Triple eight Rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. The website for the show is rich on tech dot tv. You can hit contact there and send me a message. That's what Lisa did. Hey, Rich our favorite tech guy. What do you know about these types of one plus phones and would they be

good in areas of low connectivity mountains, et cetera. They said something about being able to talk to another user if your phone carrier is out. Does that make sense, Lisa, Yes, Lisa, I just posted my review of the one plus thirteen. You can see it on my website rich on tech dot tv. In this phone, they have a feature called Beacon link b A b E A con beacon link, so this is on the one plus thirteen. It's a

walkie talkie functionality through Bluetooth. So this means that you can talk with other users over Bluetooth up to two hundred meters away. So this means it's good for hiking or anywhere near a coastline, which you know may have sparse cell connectivity. And right now you can chat with them, but you know walkie talkie functionality. But they're going to have an update in the future that lets you send

messages and photos via Bluetooth as well. So number one, this is an incredible feature that every phone should have. And I'm surprised that Apple. Apple actually did have a walkie talkie feature on the Apple Watch, which still went over cellular or Wi Fi. This maybe I don't think it ever defaulted to Bluetooth, but this is actually going through Bluetooth, which two hundred meters is pretty impressive for

a connection. Now here's the downside, Lisa, this is only going to work if the other person has a one plus thirteen phone as well, So that is the main thing to know is you need to have I think it's got to be a one plus thirteen because they didn't have this before. But if you both had these, that would work out nicely. So it's kind of a

cool feature. I think it's limited in scope because you both have to have the same exact phone, but it's cool and I wish that they would somehow open source this and make it available to everyone, or if someone had an app that could work like this for every phone. I don't know what magic they're using on the back end to make this work, but I mean it says

it's just using Bluetooth, which is pretty cool. Now the new smartphones also have satellite connectivity, so I would say, Lisa, the OnePlus would be nice to have this walkie talkie feature, but again, you both have to have that phone. The new smartphones the pixel, while the iPhone is going to give you messaging over satellite, so you can actually just text message with someone over I Message and just use

the satellite system. It's very it's a little bulky because you do have to have a direct connection to the sky, like you got to lock onto the satellite. It's not as easy as you think. But with Starlink coming along, and it looks like they're building starlink connections into the new Samsung has it and also the iPhone. I just read a report that it's supposedly getting it. It's not confirmed just yet, but Starlink's going to make it a lot easier because the big difference between what all these

phones are doing right now. And the starlink is that you'll be able to be connected to the satellite without looking at the sky, So your phone could theoretically be in your pocket and you'll still receive that message. So to explain, you know, when the fires were happening, I was texting with someone in a fire area over satellite and the problem was and what I realized is that they were not getting my messages unless they went to

actually check for those messages. Your phone does not give you an indication that you have a message because you have to go out into the sky, you know, get a clear view of the satellite, lock on, and wait for those messages to come in. So it's kind of

a very bulky process. Whereas when the starlink and these new satellite you know, these newer satellite networks come into play, you'll just have a constant connection to them, which means you'll get messages no matter what, whether you have cellular or not. So hopefully that explains that. Lisa appreciate it and the one plus thirteen, by the way, read the

full review. It's an excellent phone. It's just I had, you know, I thought the can or could be a little bit better, even though when it takes a good shot, it's really nice. Let's go to uh Susan in San Diego, Susan. You're on with Rich Hi there.

a lot of stuff. And so for me, I find myself taking the ring on and off a lot, Like if I go to work out, if I'm lifting weights or anything, you know, it's like hitting up against the weights. So it kind of bugs me because it's that's that's the problem that I had with it. Did you have that issue at all or no? I guess women are more used to rings.

with that. But for some reason, because these rings are a little bit thicker and there's a little bit more going on with them, and of course you have to charge them. You are taking it on and awful lot, So that was kind of my issue. But on the flip side, and the other thing is you look like et when you're sleeping because this thing is like blinking at night all the time, and when you're in a dark room, you're seeing like the light that it's you know,

using to read your your vitals. So the good news is about these rings is that they give you a lot of information about yourself. And it's twenty four to seven right now. The main competition is the Aura Ring, the Samsung Galaxy Ring, which is if you're using an iPhone, you're not gonna that's not gonna be an option. Then there's a brand called ring Con, which I have not tested personally, but I do have friends that have tested

it and they do seem to like it. And the other one that I've personally tested is called the Amaze fit Ama z Fit And what's nice about that ring is that it is a lot less expensive and I found that it was X So I would if you want something a little bit different, Susan, I might go with the Amaze fit Ama z Fi t and they have a great smart ring that you know is great. I mean, I think that they're all different, they're all

doing the same thing in a slightly different way. But I will tell you the Amaze Fit, I wore it for a couple of months and I was like, wait a second, why is this thing half the price of the competition, Like how and that it just it just is. They just do a great job. But if you want the market leader, the Aura ring is going to work with iPhone and Android, Samsung, just Android. The Amaze Fit is going to work with iPhone and Android. And this is of course a growing area we have not seen.

The thing about all this technology is that it's never truly legitimatized until Apple does it. And so right now we've had these companies come in and they've made these rings, but Apple has not done this in a big way just yet. And so the rumor is that Apple eventually come out with a smart ring, which there's no reason to believe they wouldn't. But when they come out with it, it's gonna be like, oh, now everyone's into smart rings.

But I think the benefit of them is that they're a little slicker than the watch and you can wear them twenty four to seven versus the watch. You know, you got to take off and the battery lasts a lot longer. So you're talking, you know, up just seven days of battery life with these great question Susan. And yeah, I'm you're making me want to wear my ring again, the smart ring, not the wedding ring. I do wear

that anyway. That sounded weird. Eighty eight rich one on one eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology. 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 at triple eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one, the website for the show rich on Tech dot TV. Well,

it's been a bit since I tested this out. Actually I went up there last month, I think the end of the month. But this Pebble flow is really cool. Now I'm not an RV guy, but I'm telling you this is such. This is the iPhone slash Tesla of RVs, and I want it because it is super cool. So Pebble Pebble got a lot of publicity when they first kind of launched this video of this device or this RV, I don't know, a couple of years ago, and everyone was like, oh my gosh, that's so cool because it

does a couple of magical things. So first off, it automatically hitches itself to your car. So if you look at this RV number one, it looks very futuristic. I think it's got these rounded edges. It's very like glass kind of forward. And the company was started by a bunch of folks that worked at Tesla, Rivian, SpaceX, NASA, Apple. I mean, these are really smart people that said, wait a second, why is r V so complicated? Why is

r ving so complicated? Why why do you need like, you know, you ever try to back up an RV or anything on a trailer, you have to like do it in reverse, like everything if you turn one way goes the other. Yeah. I've done the U haul thing and it's not easy for a lot of people. So I've never really had an interest in the RV because or you know, the trailer because I don't know, I'm just worried about it. But this solves all of those issues.

So number one, it hitches itself to the car, So you literally put this RV near the back of your car, uses cameras to self center and kind of find the hitch, and then lower itself on there. And all you have to do is connect those safety chains and you know whatever else that needs to be connected. It also moves around by remote control. So I took this thing up in a parking lot up in near San Francisco, and they gave me an iPad, and they didn't even tell me how to do it. They just said, here, try

to move this thing. And there's a couple of little controllers on the iPad on the screen, and you just move it like you would a remote controlled car. And the weirdest thing when I saw this thing start to move, your brain immediately goes into this idea because anytime it's seen something big rolling by itself, it just imagines it's going to roll into a wall, right, it's gonna slide down the hill. But this thing just moves and then when you take your finger off the iPad, it stops.

Move it some more, it stops. You can turn it around three hundred and sixty degrees, and the idea is that you can steer the trailer into anything you want, like a parking lot or a parking spot or your driveway without having to back it up. Oh my gosh, just that alone is enough to sell me on this thing.

Then they've got the active toe assist. So because this thing is fully electric, it has electric motors, and so when you're driving your car and they're imagining a lot of people are probably gonna have evs with this thing. That of course, having a giant trailer behind an EV takes a lot of energy off off the EV. So this has an electric motor that sort of pushes it forward.

So when they enable the electric motor. When I was taking my test drive, you can feel that the car just felt lighter because it wasn't dragging six thousand pounds behind it. I mean it still was, but it was being helped. So that was really cool. And then to top it all off, when you finally get to the camp site and want to set this thing up, you

press another button and it instantly levels itself out. So it has these little things that pop out of the bottom and it figures out the level nature of the ground and it just levels itself in less than two minutes. I mean really really cool stuff. Now here's the other thing it can do. I mean it doubles as a home office or a guesthouse when it's parked, because it's

all electric and it has solar on the top. It's got a large battery so it can charge your EV car or it can even power your house during a blockout. So the whole idea of this pebble flow is to make rving more accessible for someone like myself who doesn't necessarily want to deal with a traditional RV. Now. I know there's a lot of you listening that use an RV, drive an RV and you said, rich, come on, it's not that tough, it's not that big of a deal.

But there are people like myself that are intimidated by this. You don't want to do something wrong with a brand new, beautiful RV that you've either rented or purchased. By the way, the price on this not cheap starts at one hundred and nine thousand dollars. But when you think about all the possibilities of using it as a home office or mobile office or a guesthouse, yeah, might not be a bad idea anyway. It's a Pebble Flow. If you want to see my video on it, go to the website

Rich on tech dot tv. Check it out. I think it's really cool. I was very excited to try this thing. Let's go to Lou in Arizona. Lou, you're on with Rich.

want to look for the setting that says system. You tap that, and if you scroll down a little bit, it'll say software updates. Now my pixel says your pixel is up to date. So there's no software update available right now on the one I'm using, but on yours it would say system update pending, and you can tap into there and you should see that same exact screen that you were seeing before. But now you verify that

you went to the proper place to see it. So once again, go into your settings, then go into system, then go into software updates, and you should see the system update for your pixel. Now, I'm glad you brought this up, Lou, because there is currently a Chrome update

scam on the desktop computers. So hackers apparently have hijacked tens of thousands of WordPress sites because they have outdated plugins, and so they have figured out a way to get these websites to show a Chrome update notification claiming that the site needs something to You got to update your Chrome to function on this website. And when you click the update, you think you're updating Chrome, you're actually installing malware. So if you look closely, you'll notice that there's poor grammar,

incorrect capitalization, an unnecessary comma. But a lot of people probably fall for this stuff because they're getting tricked into downloading an update. This is what I always talk about with hackers and spammers. They mimic something that we know to be real. So, yes, every one of us has seen that message on our computer or on our Chrome browser or on our phone that says, hey, you got to update, got to update the software. This software is

out of date. And so they take that and they run with it, and they turn it on its side, and they trick you and they make the screen look like an update screen, but it's actually just bogus. And

so that's what they're doing here on Chrome. I have not heard of that happening on the Pixel, although on the iPhone and on you know, if you're just surfing the web on your phone, you might have come across a screen that says your phone is infected, you've got viruses on your phone, you have malware on your phone, tap to update or tap to fix. And that is just either malvertizing, which is malware that's been injected into advertising or it's just a bad website that somehow is

compromised and is serving up these messages. And so you need to be very careful when you see this stuff because you do not want to be tricked into downloading malware to your phone or your computer. Now, most of the time, on the phones, especially on the iPhone, it's going to be very tough to download a quote unquote virus to that phone because just the nature of the iOS operating system, you can't really install a virus on there.

It's nearly impossible unless your phone is jail broken, unless you are side loading it somehow, any of the apps from the app store. I don't think there's ever been a case where it's it's hidden malware. But you know, the main thing is that they exploit vulnerabilities in something like the web browser, a PDF viewer, and that's how they get to to get take over your phone or something like that. But it's very rare, let's put it that way. So people always ask me all the time, Hey, Rich,

join you a virus anti virus for the iPhone? No, you do not. You do not need anti virus for the iPhone. Android little bit different, a little bit of a different operating system. There's a little bit more freedom on Android, although out of the factory, the Samsungs of the world and the Googles of the world with a pixel they really lock down these phones so that it's very tough to install something on there outside of Google Play.

But and what a lot of people like about Android is that you can if you know what you're doing. So for me personally, I was installing an app the other day outside side of the Android Google Play and it gave me a couple of warnings saying, hey, you know you have to toggle these switches on for security reasons to make sure we know that you're understanding what

you're doing here by quote unquote sideloading an app. So, if you're just a regular person, when you see that message, you're going, huh wait a second, hold on, do I really want to do that? So just be careful for when it comes to Chrome. By the way, the way they update is you'll see it in the upper right hand corner. It'll it'll give you a message that as

update Chrome. And if you're ever in question about that, you can go to the settings on Chrome and tap about Chrome and it will check for updates and sure enough, mine has one right now, it'll say nearly up to date. Relaunch Chrome to finish updating. So there you go. Thanks for the call. Loon Arizona. I remember you from the comedian guy right you do the comedy shows. Very cool, Keep up the good work. Eighty eight Rich one O one eight eight eight seven four two four one zero one.

Coming up, I'll tell you about the Pebble smart watch making a comeback. I'll tell you why why do we need the Pebble in this day and age. I'll explain right here on rich On Tech eighty eight Rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one man two segments on Pebble. Huh another one with Pebble. Pebble smart watch is making a comeback. Pebble

founder Eric Mitchakowski, who has been on this show. Uh. He talked about his plans to bring back the original smart watch because he just doesn't like what's out there, and he says the Pebble smart watch would have an always on e ink display that, of course you can see in the sunlight, multi day battery life, physical buttons

for controlling music without looking at the screen. Tens of thousands of smart watch faces compared to Apple's Apple Watches zero third party face support an open source operating system, which means anyone can do whatever they want with it, build upon it. It will support iPhones. And this all happened because he, I guess, went to Google. So Pebble was a smart watch back in the day. It was one of the first reviews I did at KTLA, and it was like a big kickstarter device, and it was

just a cool looking watch. I mean, now it doesn't look that cool, but it used to. But I had an e ink display all these things he's talking about. And now, of course we've gone fully futuristic with the smart watches with apps and all this other stuff. But he just wants something simple that shows you your notifications, controls your music. The battery lasts for a long time, and it's just a very simple display that you can customize in a million different ways. So it's kind of cool.

But Pebble went out of business around I think twenty sixteen. Fitbit purchased them during that time, and then Google ended up purchasing Fitbit for like, I don't know, a couple billion dollars a couple of years later, and so Eric, the original founder of Pebble, had to go to Google and convince them to open source the original Pebble operating system so that he can build the new Pebble smart watch. So if you're interested in this, Repebble, repebble dot com

is the website. I don't know. Would you trade your Apple Watch for a Pebble watch. I don't know if I'd do that at this point. I mean, I like the idea of simplicity. I like the idea that works with Android and iPhone. Apple Watch is very like you know, it's iPhone centric. It's a great watch, but it's very much like just iPhone. Michelle writes in I don't trust a lot of people online talking about Apple features. Just you.

I listened to your tech advice if it applies to me. Lately, I've seen video reels claiming Apple's latest update will automatically install Apple AI. Is that true? Can we really disable AI? Please ease my mind. This stuff is making me nervous. Michelle, thank you for trusting me. Your first mistake was watching reels because there's a lot of nonsense. There could be fun, but the amount of cleaning up I have to do. It's like mopping up the misinformation that people see on

TikTok and reels and all this stuff. Anyone could just put something out there and people have to figure out if it's real or fake. And so with tech news, of course, it's like, oh, this scary new feature or this new thing or that or whatever. Change this setting. Without giving you the basis of why you should do that or why you shouldn't do that. They just tell you to do it. But yes, you can disable yet. So you're right. Apple is automatically enabling the Apple Intelligence

with iOS eighteen point three. Used to be had to go in and toggle it on, but you can toggle it off. It's very simple. You just go into settings. You'll see an option for Apple Intelligence and Siri, and then you tap that and you'll see Apple Intelligence. You just toggle that off. Now, keep in mind, you can't even get Apple Intelligence unless you have an iPhone fifteen Pro or above, so iPhone fifteen Pro Promac and any

of the iPhone sixteen models. So even if they automatically force this upon your phone, you may not have access to it because your phone may be an older model. So good question, Michelle. Thank you for putting your trust in me. I do appreciate it. Pat from Sherman Oaks writes in can you recommend a good website to chart a trip on a map? Or is an app required? Road Trippers road trippers that is the best planning tool.

So that's the one I used last time. Great great features on there, so road trippers road trippers dot com. Let me make sure that's the website. Yep, road trippers dot com. Great website for planning a road trip. All right, coming up, we're gonna talk to We're gonna talk cell phone plans. You think you have a good plan, you

want something cheaper, you want something better. We're gonna have cell phone planned reviewers stets In dodge It on the line to talk about the latest offerings from carriers big and small. This is Rich on Tech. We'll get back to the phone lines in just a moment, but first let's bring on Stetson dodge It. He is a cell phone plan reviewer. He's been doing it since twenty fourteen, when he was researching the best plan to go along

with his iPhone five. Just to give you an idea of how long he's been covering this stuff, stets and welcome to the show. Rich thank you so much for having me.

you sign up for Boost, you'll get nationwide coverage. But their specific five G network is really just starting to light up predominantly in cities and more urban areas to cover as many people as possible.

you think people start? Do they download their bill? Like take a look at what That is a great question.

If you have multiple lines, that's where it can make sense to go with a big carrier like T Mobile, like AT and T, like Verizon, and you can do a phone trade deal. So every three years the new iPhone comes out, the new Samsung Galaxy comes out, you can trade in your old phone and get the new one, and the combination of the plan and doing the phone trade in deal ends up being pretty reasonable if you

have four more lines. But if you've got one, two, three lines, that's when you're starting to think about, Okay, maybe I buy the phone outright and I go with one of these lower costs cell phone carriers, because I'll save a lot of money over three years in the long run.

want to save money. The smaller carriers they're not going to do the one thousand dollars off promotions, but they will offer great value on the service itself, so you're not going to get the same kind of trade in deals with the smaller carriers. The second difference is how

you get support the big carriers. You can go to a physical store, walk into the AT and T store and be like, Hey, I want to do this trade in deal, or I need help with my service, or I'd like to get my friends set up with this new device.

to use to enable that feature. But some features aren't quite working and sometimes you won't be able to add things such as a tablet.

and then Bestphone Plans dot net. So definitely check those out to see, you know, what service has the best coverage in your area. But I want to hear like, sort of what are your favorite budget friendly plans right now?

flat per month, taxes and fees included. You can even get an annual version of this plan, which brings the cost down to just thirty three dollars per month, which is pretty good if you're looking to get the best plan with a free phone.

little bit more expensive, but overall rate value. If you're looking for something custom Mobile x less, you choose how many minutes, texts and megabytes of VITA you want per month, very affordable. A three gig plan would be thirteen dollars a month and again completely custom and the best cheap plan. If you want something very basic, maybe for your your kid or your grandparent who doesn't really use their phone

that much. US Mobile has a two gig plan for ten dollars flat and again your choice of coverage Verizon AT and T or T Mobile. So those are five options I think your audience would be interested in and can check out.

appreciate it. You're welcome back anytime. Eighty to eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two zero one. Coming up. I'll tell you if you had an Apple Watch with some battery issues, you might have some money coming your way. I'll tell you how to figure out if you're one of them. This is 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. Don't be shy. Go to the website rich on Tech dot tv. I just updated all of the mobile plans that we just talked about that Stetson. That Stetson mentioned are his favorites, ranging from ten dollars a month to sixty five dollars a month including a phone, so check them out on the website. Rich on Tech dot tv even mentioned a couple I was aware of, like that US mobile ten dollars a month. Wow, that's pretty good. So I've got them all linked up there.

We got an email from Steve in Durham, North Carolina. He says, Hey, Rich Friday, I and a bunch of others got an update that the T Mobile Starlink Beta I signed up for in January is now available on my Pixel nine pro. Here's an article about it, and apparently T Mobile and Starlink sent out a lot of invites to Pixel nine owners. So, if you have a Pixel nine, you've got T Mobile and you signed up

for the Starlink beta, check it out right now. Once you get it, you'll be able to message through Starlink on your phone. Voice calls will come later. Right now, it's just messaging. Now, don't forget On the Pixel you do have satellite messaging, but it is for emergencies only. And on the iPhone it used to be for emergencies only, and now it's available. You know, you can use it

just to text. And we still don't know the price of all these services, right, So all these carriers and phone companies have said, yeah, you've got satellite messaging, but nobody has put a price tag on this yet. And I think it's really tricky because let's say you're Apple, how do you put a price tag on if someone doesn't subscribe to this satellite messaging. They have an emergency and they need to use it. You can't keep them from using it. You don't want to do that, right,

You don't want that publicity of someone being stranded. They have satellite messaging, they weren't able to use it becau they didn't pay the bill. So there has to be some sort of like one time use scenario where they can just use it on demand. But then that keeps people from subscribing to it because they know they could just use it in an emergency. So it's a really tricky situation because we have this connectivity, but how do you price it? And by the way, the new Samsung

device does have the satellite connectivity as well. But right now they're doing it a little bit differently. They're doing it through the carriers. What did I do with my phone? I don't know where my Samsung phone went. It's missing. But yeah, so they're doing it a little bit differently. They're doing it through the carrier. So if you have a Samsung the S twenty five Ultra, I've got I see it here, Adam, I put it over there. But if you if you have the Ultra, the new one,

or the S twenty five series from Samsung. You do have satellite messaging. They didn't really advertise it in a big way. That's because they're not doing their own so Google and Apple sort of like baked it into their phone doing their own deals. Samsung is saying, no, if you have Verizon, you'll do it through them. If you have T Mobile, you'll do it through them. If you have AT and T, you'll do it through them. So it's a little bit different. And the MV and o's

that's an interesting delineation as well. Well. They have satellite messaging. Apple Watch Batteries swelling settlement, so if you had an Apple Watch back in the day, you could be eligible for up to fifty dollars from this new twenty million dollars settlement. Apple agreed to pay twenty million dollars on a settlement that certain Apple Watches the batteries swelled and

that damaged the screens. So if you had a first generation Apple Watch through an Apple Watch Series three and you reported swelling between April twenty fourth, twenty fifteen and February sixth, twenty twenty four, you can get fifty dollars per of So the trick here is you had to have had you you had to have had reported this issue to Apple to get this fifty dollars, which is kind of like a weird, you know thing, but it says no claim form is needed, payouts will be automatic,

but you should verify. You'll probably get an email. The website is watch settlement dot com. Watch Settlement dot com. Uh, let's go to Lynn. Looks like Lynn has a question just to kind of bookend what we were talking about with the MV and o's Lynn, you're on with Rich. What's up?

or not. The difference is with the main carrier, at some point you can march into a store and say, hey, fix this, whereas with the MV and O you are beholden to typically text chatting through their app or calling them through a phone number. Now what happened with me? My SIM got stuck in never never Land. I test a lot of phones. Sometimes I will switch my actual SIM into that phone, and if it's an e SIM,

it's a little bit trickier a physical sim. You could pop out of one phone and pop into Another problem is the new iPhones do not have a physical sim anymore, so you are you are not able to do that. You have to go eSIM and when it works, it's great, it just switches it right over. But when it doesn't work, it could be a problem. So in my instance, because my SIM went off of my phone, my eSIM and it did not make it to the other phone. Next thing you know, I had no signal on my phone,

and so what did that mean. I couldn't even call the carrier to get help. And when I got through the carrier because I used a different phone, they said, well, we can't verify you are who you say you are, because typically we send a text message to your phone, and I said, well, you can't because I don't have my phone line anymore. And so we ended up figuring that out. I convinced them after many I must have

spent two hours on the phone with them. But I'm telling you all this len because it's supposed to work, but if you are faint at heart with any of this tech stuff, it can be a little tricky. And you know, most of the time it works, but anytime you're switching a sim, especially in eSIM, there could be something that goes wrong and it could get stuck and next thing you know, you've got to figure out how to make this work. And by the way, I don't know if you've ever not had a phone for a

little bit, but it gets really gnarly very fast. Like for me, I was going to pick up my kids at school. I had no way of hearing, you know, if the school had to call me for some reason, I couldn't get a phone call, I couldn't text them, So I mean there are implications. Now, with all that said, it sounds very scary. Most of the time this works out just fine. So I did switch my wife from a traditional carrier to Envy and Z and she was

very concerned about it. And I'll tell you this is what keeps people from saving money because they're concerned just like you are, and so they just don't do it. It's that inertia of I'd rather just stick with what I got. I know it works. I don't want to save you know, it's forty bucks a month savings worth all the headache. But when it works, it works great. So to answer your question, hopefully it works. If not,

you know, you'll figure it out. But your phone calls and your contacts and all your photos and stuff that is not affected. Just your cellular connection is affected. This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology and having fun while I do it. Jacqueline writes in on the website richon Tech dot TV. Hey, Rich, I've recently discovered your program on nine to ten AM radio in Michigan.

I'm really enjoying it. Thanks for all you do. Here's my question. I had an iPhone twelve. It wasn't working. When I went to the store, the Exfinity store for help, they were not able to help me, and they suggested I got a new Samsung A thirty five. The phone is free. They did not have iPhone deals. The problem I have is they did not transfer all the photos from my iPhone to my Android. Initially, they told me it would take a few days for the transferring to

be completed. When I called back after seven days, they told me they couldn't help with that. They had done everything they could do. Is this something you can help me with? Thanks so much for your time, Jacqueline in Heartland, Michigan. Yes, Jacqueline, hopefully you have your old phone. The on the iPhone, install Google Photos and that that is the best way

to transfer. So once you install Google Photos on the iPhone twelve, have it download all of the photos from your collection, or I guess upload all the photos from your collection into Google Photos and then once it's in there, they should show up on your new Samsung phone. I mean, there's a million ways of doing this, but I think

that's probably the easiest. I mean, the other way you can do it is you can make sure all your photos are uploaded to iCloud on the iPhone and you can then go to iCloud dot com and download them and then upload them to photos dot Google dot com.

But basically your Samsung device. I mean, there's a way that you could Gosh, there's just so many ways to do this, but the easiest, I think is to just use Google Photos and put Google Photos on the iPhone twelve, upload all the pictures from there into Google Photos, and then when you open up Google Photos on the new

they should all be there. Now, if you don't want to use Google Photos for some reason, then you probably need to download the photos from the iPhone to a computer and then transfer them to the Android that way, and that would involve either plugging the Android into the computer and dragging them in from the computer folder. Or you can use a flash drive. I mean, there's just so many ways of doing this. You could use one drive, but you can also use the smart switch program on Android.

So on Samsung, they have a program called smart Switch, and you could run that program and then when it asks you to switch. You can say I want you could plug in your iPhone and it should kind of suck the pictures over to your device. So many many ways of doing this, but get a cable. I would try the Google Photos one first because I just like Google Photos because then your photos are backed up as well.

But if you want the I guess the smart switch is probably like the easiest wirelessly or wired solution to do that. So good question. Thanks for finding me there in Michigan. Let's see what was our other question here? I thought I had another one. Alan writes in from sandmis Hey, Rich, I'm sitting at home listening to your radio show. I have a quick question. I receive the iPhone sixteen Promax and an Apple Watch ten for Christmas.

When I receive texts, I only get the notification on my watch when I'm wearing it and no longer on my phone. Is there a way to change the setting so I can get messages on both at the same time.

Love your show, Keep up the hard work, Allan. Yes, So, by default, when you put an Apple Watch on your wrist for reasons to not drive you crazy, they typically only deliver the notification to one of those devices, it'll still deliver it to the iPhone, but it's silent if you're wearing your watch, and so your watch would vibrate or make a sound and show you the notification. The idea being that while you're wearing a watch, so that's where we're going to send the notification because that's the

one that you're going to look at immediately. So that's the default. But you can change this, and you can easily change it by going into the watch app on your phone, so you know, just search Watch and then scroll down to where it says messages and instead of saying mirror my iPhone, say custom and then allow notifications

and then you can do the sound, haptic, whatever. But that's the main thing is that it's basically the iPhone is deciding when your Apple Watch is off if it doesn't sense it on your wrist, it's saying, Okay, let's deliver it to the iPhone and let's make a sound or vibrate on the phone. When your Apple watches on your wrist, it's saying, oh, they're wearing their Apple Watch, let's notify that device first, and let's not notify the

iPhone in the same way. Because then both would be ringing at the same time or vibrating at the same time, and that might be a little off putting. So if you want that, go ahead. But there's a reason why Apple did it is, as you know, people by default may just want a notification one place, otherwise they feel like they're getting buzzed all over the place. So good question, Alan, thanks for listening, and Sandymus and appreciate that. All right,

let's go to uh Chris in Long Beach. Chris, you're on with rich.

had a hard time understanding of them. So I don't know. Is it just that Google will.

any other program. It's actually looking at your computer setup. You said you have a Mac. Okay, Now have you gone into the system settings and looked at the printers there?

notification can it look for things on your network? Because the way Apple works now is that they kind of like keep everything very secure, So there might there might have been a setting when you first set up Chrome that said, hey, can we find stuff on your network, and you said no by accident, and now it's that's called permissions, by the way, so that could have been

what's happening and why it's blocking your printer. Now, when you go to your printers and scanners on this system settings, do you see the area that says your printer?

it says print when I go into Google. Yeah, so on your on your Google Chrome, hit the menu, and then it should bring up a whole menu for like new tab, passwords, history, there's one that says print. Do you see that?

going to bring you back to your system setting. So again it's all just going through your system setting. So once you pick a printer where it says select destination, that should work. Now there is one more option that you could try. Okay, there's two more. Actually, when you go into that printer that printer window, when you go to print something, it says more settings and you can tap that and then scroll down it says print using system dialogue. So now this is going to bypass Chrome

and it's actually going to use your Mac. Your Mac's default and built in printer dialogue, and so you can use that, and if that doesn't work, you've got a bigger problem. But I think that at the end of the day should work because if your printer is on your Mac. It's going to honor that when because you're using your default system dialogue for that. So it all sounds very complicated, but again, go into your settings on Chrome, press print and then tap more settings and then it

says print using system dialogue. If you can find your printer in there under printer, select it and then press print and you can print. That's the way you can print from Chrome from here on out. If you can't figure out how to get this to recognize your printer, Thanks for the call, appreciate it. Chris long Beach eighty to eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Coming up this hour,

we're going to talk super Bowl. Philip Swan, the TV answer man, is going to join us to talk about how you can stream the Super Bowl this year. Plus I'll tell you who has the fastest Internet speeds in the US. This is rich On Tech, who has the fastest Internet speeds in the US? New data from UKLA. These are the folks that do speed test dot net.

So when you go to speed test dot net and run a quick speed test to see they are logging all of that information on the back end so they can come up with reports about you know who has good Internet. So T Mobile ranked as the fastest mobile network in the US for the second half of twenty twenty four median five G download speed of two hundred

and eighty one megabits per second. When it came to fixed internet, AT and T Fiber is the fastest there that clocked in at three hundred and fifty seven megabits

for downloads and two eighty six for uploads. And I've talked about this before, but the main difference between a fiber connection like AT and T Fiber and a cable company connection is that typically the cable company will give you a really fast download speed but a much slower upload speed, whereas fiber connections are typically the same up and down. So when they say a five hundred plan,

that's usually five hundred megabits down and up. So if you're uploading large files back to the server back to the cloud, they should be just as fast as downloading. Pittsburgh had the fastest mobile speeds at three hundred and two megabits per second. Raleigh, North Carolina, had the fastest fixed internet speeds at three hundred and twenty nine megabits. This is median, so some people at faster, some at slower. Let's see Florida, let's see Ala, Alaska had the slowest

speeds for both mobile and fixed internet. That's sad. If you want to see the full speed test, I'll put on the website. It's again from Ukla Okla. Michael from Glasgow, Glasgow, Glasgow, Kentucky writes in I saw a Facebook ad for something called the car Tablet pro Max and was thinking about ordering it, but I wanted to get your feedback first. I have an older car without car play. I'm not really looking to pay for a full installation. Have you

heard of this product? Thanks for all you doing prayers to everyone affected by the California wildfires. I have not heard of this car Tablet Promax. Sounds interesting? Hm? Interesting? Okay. It looks like a little car play system.

the day. But it's got a camera on it and also CarPlay, So if you want to try it, try it. It sounds like you don't have a screen in your car, so if you want to get a car play adapter, like if you had a screen that you wanted to use with it, there's a wireless CarPlay adapter, I like call car link it, but I think that means that you already have. Oh Kim is saying they're all over

TikTok okay. So yeah, I'm a little I'm always a little weary about things, or I'm always concerned when things are advertised on these sites because there's no real way to vouch for them unless someone like me tests it and let's see if there's an actual, like legitimate review. Yeah. See, the first thing is like a Reddit asking yes. See. The problem is there's no one that's like actually reviewed this thing, like from like a verge or like a wirecutter.

So that tells me that I'd be concerned. I'd just be a little bit concerned about this thing. So be careful and maybe buy it with a credit card, so if there's ever an issue, you can get your money back and just you know, tell them that there's a problem. Luis writes in I enjoy your morning segments on TV. I have a question. Can you recommend a digital business card app? Hey, Luis, thank you for digital business cards.

I like two of them. Poppel is the one. I use popl so they were kind of the first to the market. They started out with NFC where you tap the back of your phone. Now they all use QR pretty much. Hi Hello is the other one. That one's a little bit more business friendly. But to be honest, what I do now is I just make a note on my phone with all my info and then when I meet someone out they just take a picture of it. So it's much easier than all these other apps, and

it's free. Coming up, we're going to talk Super Bowl and streaming services with the TV answer man. Right here, I'm rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology. The website for the show rich on Tech dot TV. If you want links to anything I mentioned, it's all right there. Super Bowl coming up super Bowl fifty nine. Here to talk about how to stream it, how to watch it, and all things streaming is the TV answer Man, Philip Swan.

Welcome to the show, Hi Rich, thanks for joining me once again. So did I get that right? Fifty nine? Right?

enabled Fire TV or Apple TV. If you don't have one of those products, you can't watch it in four K on.

Hulu Alive. Probably be at least a year before it gets approved by the FEDS, but that's coming, and I think it's going to be an interesting thing what happens with the live streaming category, whether you're going to have made a direct TV stream go well, you know, maybe we should be hooking up with Sling TV to combat Fubo and Hulu.

don't have all the sports channels. They don't have TVs, they don't have TNT, they don't even have CBS now and so consequently, if you're a sports fan, you're gonna miss a lot of great sports on direct TV's my sports plan. So it's it's an idea that makes sense in theory, but in execution right now, it's leaves a lot to be desired.

here on rich On Tech. Let's get to a couple of items before we open up the feedbag, which is just overflowing as usual. I'll get to as many of these as I can. But first off, helpful website to help you detect scam. So if you get a text message or an email, just take a screenshot of it and upload it to this website and it will analyze it using AI and tell you if it thinks it's real or not. And so the website is scam dot Ai.

It's brand new and it can tell you if a deep fake image is real, anything any image or screenshot, it'll analyze it and it's pretty good. I tried it with something and it worked. Another website that's helpful browser links online tools, so you know sometimes you have to like convert a picture or resize something, or replace text, or shuffle words or convert words to numbers. I mean, there's so many tools here and it's really really simple,

and it's all done through the browser. It's called onlinetools, dot com bookmarket. There are just so many tools you can search for what you want to do, but they've got them all listed there. I mean, there's so many tools, PNG tools, jpeg tools, text tools, image tools, list tools, time tools. I mean, there's just everything you could possibly imagine. And they get pretty nerdy too, like the fractal tools, integer tools. Anyway, it's all on there online tools dot com.

That's a great bookmark. And then finally, if you want to have some fun, search block Breaker on Google. They just added a hidden arcade style game and search. You don't have to download anything. Just search block Breaker on Google and tap play and it's basically, you know the old school game, the arcade style. It's kind of like Atari Breakout, but you know Google's version. All right, all that's linked up on the website. Rich on tech dot tv.

Let's open up the feedbag. Let's see Gary writes in I picked up the Pixel nine Pro for on sale for about nine hundred and fifty dollars. It's been a big upgrade from the Samsung S twenty four FE. The sound quality both for calls and media is better, no more shrill, tinny audio. The cameras also sharper, especially when taking pictures of my handwritten notes. The Pixel nine pros slightly smaller size and lighter weight makes it more pocketable,

which I appreciate. That said, I still prefer Samsung's UI. It's more customizable and what I'm used to, but overall, I am happy with the switch. Thanks for letting me know. Gary Germo from Los Angeles writes in Uber Eats gave me the run around after a delivery fail. I couldn't find a phone number to contact them, and when I finally emailed customer service, they told me I'd missed the forty eight hour window to report the issue. I disputed the charge with my credit card and got a refund.

But now Uber Eats wants their money and I can't use the app unless I pay them. Oh well, not hoping for this to happen again. I think Girmo was replying to me posting on Instagram a warning because I had a problem with my delivery order. I didn't say anything for over three days, and when I did, they were like, oh, sorry, forty eight hours. So if you have a problem with your Uber Eats, get in touch with them immediately, don't wait like I did. Let's see.

Rick writes in I bought the Samsung Galaxy Ultra unlocked five hundred and twelve gigs from Samsung dot Com for eight hundred dollars plus tax. That price includes my five hundred dollars trade in on the S twenty one, plus an eighty dollars credit for online purchases at check out. Thanks for the tip. All right, enjoy Rick, I think you're gonna love it, Sarah writes in don't knock cassettes. I use a radio cassette frequently to record a radio

show and listen later. No Wi Fi needed. I may not be in California, but I'm thankful for Wi Fi to catch your show. Oh you're recording my show. Oh my gosh, that's amazing. Someone's recording this show on cassette and listening to it. I love it, Sarah. I must have made fun of a cassette tape on another show, but I don't hate cassettes. I many many years using cassettes. George from Temple Rights in another family tear jerker is

the Disney film Old Yeller. When I was in when it was in theaters, kids and parents alike were left crying. If you haven't seen it, it's a great family movie. George is replying to my wild Robot recommendation last week, and it was great, but I don't know if I'm ready for another cry. I did watch a movie last night, The Saturday Night Movie by Jason Reitman. Excellent. If you like Starday Night Live or whatever, it's just great. Goes By flies by that movie. And by the way, another

recommendation the Letterboxed app. I don't know if you know this one letter Boxed. I think it's b letter box bo x D so no E letter boxed and it's for iPhone and Android. But it's now my favorite app for like following movies I want to watch and stuff like that. It's really great. It's very it's just it's excellent, all right. Moving on Blair from Santa Barbara writes in stop Drop is a great product to prevent losing things under your car seat, founded on Amazon for twenty five dollars.

Love your show. I think Blair was responding to the fact that I said, when I wear sweatpants in my car, I always all this stuff always drops out into the crevice between the seat and the door or the seat and the middle console. And I think stop Drop was a Shark Tank product thanks, maybe I'll get one. Let's see long, Ben wrights in. Long in the Tooth comes from the practice of checking a horse's age by examining

its teeth, where seeding gums made them appear longer. Similarly, don't look a gift Horse in the Mouth advises against assessing the value of a gift, encouraging gratitude instead of scrutiny. I must have used long, long in the tooth because I was talking about sayings that we say, and long in the tooth. It's like we say this stuff and like, wait, where did that come from? Long in the tooth? Now we know horses and Robert rights In. I'm listening in

Federal Heights, Colorado, while delivering mail. I love your show, well, Robert, thank you. I always wonder what the mail carriers listen to while they're delivering, because my guy does too. He's always listening to something or he's on the phone. But he always says hi, and we always say, Hey, how's it going, what's up? Always a smile on his face. John from Haines City rights in you recently talked about

charging cell phones in an emergency using battery packs. I'm surprised you didn't mention the most obvious option your car. Many cars, including my twenty year old Ford X Expedition, have live twelve volt outlets even when the ignition is off. Cars typically have large batteries, ranging from fifty to ninety Ah. I'm guessing that's ampier hours, making them a great resource for charging phones, even for the whole neighborhood. If the battery starts to run low, just charge the engine and

let it recharge at idle. Okay, you know, John, good tip, But I didn't think about that because you know, I do have an electric car, so of course you can always charge stuff from there. But I imagine in an emergency people might be conserving their gas or their battery. But yes, that is a great option. And I'm glad you didn't call it the cigarette lighter, because that's what I think of every time I see that. All right, that's going to do it for this episode of the show.

You can find links to everything I mentioned on my website. Just go to Richontech dot TV. Can find me on social media. I am at rich on Tech. I'm on Instagram, I'm on X I'm on Facebook, very active on Instagram, and don't forget This show is also available as a podcast, so if you miss an up, just search in your favorite podcast app or audio app for Rich on Tech. Next week, we're going to talk to YouTuber Jimmy is Promo. You might follow him for all of his Samsung stuff.

He's going to offer some Samsung tips and tricks for your new phone. Thanks so much for listening. There are so many ways you can spend your time. I appreciate you spending it right here with me. Thanks to everyone who makes this show possible. Adam in for Bobo this week. Kim on Phones. My name is Richdmiro. I'll talk to you real soon.