Faking Zoom connection issues

topics on a daily basis. I also post stuff to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. I'm having a lot of fun there lately because, oh, let me just tell a quick story. I had no idea this book was so impactful. Story. My kid and I are in Target and this has nothing to do with tech, but we're in Target and my kid sees a book that he wants to get two of them. One was like a dinosaur book. The other one was this book called Love You Forever. And so I get him the books and my wife I didn't have a

chance to read it to him first. My wife read it to him the next night or so, and he comes into my office the next morning and he just puts the book on my desk. He goes, Dad, can you please return this? I said, what why? I just I don't want it. I didn't know it was so sad. I'm like, oh, okay, So I take the book and I you know, at dinner that night, I'm talking to my wife about the book, and I'm like, what's the deal. She's like, oh, just go ahead, try to read it

to him. So I started reading this book called Love You Forever. And let's just say it is nearly impossible to get through this book without needing at least a box of tissues. And I don't know what it is. If it's the words, if it's the way it's written, if it's the combination of the pictures. But I was like, I was, Oh my gosh, it was really really interesting. And so I said, wow, if this happened to me, I wonder if someone else out there has ever heard

of this book or had this happen. And I posted my Facebook and sure enough, the comments just come flooding in. And clearly I was very late to the train with with the Love You Forever book. Because it's been around forever. People know it, people know it to be a tear

jerker and just the way it is. So anyway, if you really want to challenge yourself, I think there needs to be a TikTok challenge with this book because you can't make it through the end without If your eyes are dry by the end, there might be something wrong with you. I'm just saying. So, I think there should be a TikTok challenge once these kids discover this book, because well they wouldn't be it probably wouldn't affect them,

but they should give it to their parents. The TikTok challenge should be they give this book to their pay parents, record them reading it and see how far they get before Niagara falls. Anyway, I hope you're having a fantastic day. I hope you're having a great week and everything's good over here. Just really excited about where the future lies with this whole pandemic, you know, getting through it. It feels like there's a little light at the end of

the tunnel at this point. I mean, people I know that are close to me have gotten the vaccine and that is very exciting. And I just the numbers where I live in Los Angeles have been dropping, so that's good. Restaurants, I got a haircut the other day. Can't believe that little ding for the haircut. And anyway, so it's good. I'm feeling good and I have a lot of hope for things getting better. Speaking of the pandemic Apple with the iPhone, they're now letting you use your Apple Watch

as a way to unlock your iPhone. This is a new feature coming to iOS fourteen point five, which'll be the next version of the mobile operating system. They did come out with a beta for developers and a public beta, but I don't really recommend that you download the public

beta unless I don't know. I always find that they're exciting, but you know, then you kind of regret it at the end of the day because now your phone is not on the standard track, and it's you know, unless you're a real real techi that it's just it's kind of a headache sometimes because there's a little bug that affects something that you want to do, it's going to be a problem. And so that's for that reason I just kind of stay away. I used to do the

public betas, but I don't really do it anymore. If you have a test device, fine, but this new feature will allow you to put on a in Settings on the Apple Watch or Settings on the iPhone, rather under face ID and passcode, you can opt into iPhone unlock with Apple Watch, and so the iPhone will recognize when you are wearing a mask and you try to unlock your iPhone, and it will default to checking to see

if the Apple Watch is on your wrist. If it's on your wrist and it's unlocked, and you haven't removed it from your wrist, and you know, I'm sure Apple has some little secret security baked into this whole process, it will then go ahead and unlock your phone. You'll feel a haptic feedback on your watch or on your wrist, so that you know that your watch has unlocked your phone. I think this is fantastic. It's not a new idea. I mean, Android has had this forever. It's smart unlock.

I mean they've had this forever, forever, forever. But the difference here is you know they're using I guess they're using Bluetooth to do it. The other thing is that this feature already works with the Mac, which I'm not even sure it ever works right with me. I sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I don't know. I don't even notice. But I had the idea for this last month in January, and I tweeted out, I said, you know, Apple, and I said exactly this, and so for that reason,

thank you for listening. Apple. You did what I said. And although I'm not going to be downloading it anytime soon until the real software comes out, I should say the final software comes out, that is exciting because it is a pain to type in your password so many times. And I noticed this mostly at the grocery store when I've got some sort of list on my phone of what i want to buy, and I'm constantly unlocking my iPhone like with the passcode, and it's kind of a lot.

The other thing is that let's see here, so Apple Pay does not work using this method, so you can't be at the checkout and just you know, do Apple Pay from your phone. But if you have Apple Pay set up on your watch, then you can do it that way anyway. So there you have it easier to wear a mask and use your iPhone. All right, let's get to our first question. Let's see here. Oh, well, it's not on here. Let me get it here. I had to restart my computer because it actually was like

frozen or something. I don't know what happened. That was where I've got all these extensions inslved right now, which I think are messing up everything because I'm testing them for like these shopping add ons. So I'm doing a segment for KTLA or planning a segment about that. So I've been testing all these shopping add ons from like, you know what is this retail me not or at Tucin.

I don't know all these other ones anyway. All right, Pete says Rich, could you please tell us about this new security app total av for iPhones for three dollars seems too good to be true. Check on this for your followers please. I have an iPhone twelve. Pete. I've said this once before and I will say it again. Here's my thoughts about total av. You do not need this for your iPhone. You do not need it for your iPhone. Let me say it one more time. You

do not need this for your iPhone. Nothing against Total AV. I'm sure they make great products, but the fact is, there just is not a need for antivirus software on an iPhone. Now. The reason I say this is because the iPhone's operating system architecture is totally different than something like a Windows computer, And even the Mac computer is so locked down now that I would actually be surprised.

I'm sure there's more ways into a Mac, but your iPhone, there's really only two ways to kind of exploit this if you have everything running as the standard kind of set up, like if you're not if you're not jail broken, you don't have like third party apps that you've sideloaded somehow.

But really, realistically, the two ways someone could you know, hack into your phone is through your messages and I Message and then through Safari, and I Message has been really really locked down in iOS fourteen, so that's even more secure. And then in Safari they do find some exploits every once in a while, but again it's not something generally that could like take over your whole phone

unless it's a major, major exploit. So for the average person that's just sitting there thinking that they might get a virus on their phone, on their iPhone specifically, it just doesn't really happen. And so I think when it comes comes to the iPhone and this total av I just don't think you need it. I think it's a

lot to do for something that is just it. You're paying for something that just doesn't really do much on an iPhone because the architecture of the iPhone is that a program can't sit there and like constantly scan everything that's happening on it because everything is so locked down. Let me see how much? What are the features that they say, okay, Total av iOS and iPhone app helps you keep you safe from online criminals through VPN and website filtering, as well as anti fraud and theft services

such as data breach alerts and Locate Device Location tracker. Well, device location is already it's already built into the iPhone with find my iPhone, data breach check, webshield, device locator system, security, secure search browser. I don't want to use this random

third party browser. Photo manager, Battery monitor, I mean it tells you how much battery I've left on the iPhone, Private connection VPN okay, Total av Free, I mean, so I just again, I think the main thing here is to get you to do that in app purchase for a lot of stuff that you may not necessarily need on your phone. How much are they charging for this in app purchase? Fifty three ninety nine for the year.

So what they do is they get you to get the the app, perhaps for free or for three dollars like you said, and then next thing you know, they're hitting you up for fifty three dollars. So I would say, Pete, just skip it. That's my advice until I'm proven wrong. I'm actually gonna do a segment where I talk to an iPhone security expert and I'm gonna challenge it. I'm gonna say, like, do people need this stuff? I don't think they do. That's been my advice for many years now.

And I'm talking specifically on the iPhone Android, a little questionable Mac computers, a little questionable Windows computers. Most of the time, I just recommend that you use the built in defender program, but specifically iPhones. Like I said, if you are not sideloading stuff, I just don't think you need this stuff. So good question, Thanks for asking it, and hopefully I'll have a segment soon where I get

answers from an iPhone security expert. Well, you probably heard the news this week that Jeff Bezos is stepping down from role of CEO at Amazon. He has done some amazing things at this company, and this is a company that if you could remember, several years ago, people actually wondered if Amazon would ever make money. How wild is that? And now we've gone from that to an Amazon that can deliver almost anything you can imagine to your front

door in two hours to one day. I mean, we have the super speedy delivery because we live in Los Angeles, and it's just unbelievable how fast things can get to your house from Amazon when you live in an area that they fully service, where they are fully up and running, an area that's still you know, more suburban when they get it, when they get into things like you know, the little delivery robots and the delivery drones and people

on bikes. I mean, it's just it's unlimited what this company can do right now, there's a lot of momentum behind them. It is. If you have an Amazon Prime membership, basically that's your shopping search engine. You don't even care to look anywhere else. And I found myself trying to

look for things in other places. You know, if I'm buying a TV, or if I'm buying anything, but if it's something that's pretty simple and I know that it's going to be on Amazon, that's pretty much where I go, and I remember when Amazon Prime first came out, it was I think it was fifty nine bucks, maybe it was even less. But now it's up to I think one point thirty nine or something like that. But it's well worth it. People over last they said one hundred

million people pay for that. Just that alone is amazing. In his letter to employees, Jeff says, the journey began twenty seven years ago. Amazon was just an idea. It had no name. Now they employ one point three million people. Invention is the root of our success. We pioneered customer reviews, one click personalized recommendations, which I still don't think they're

there just yet. I still think there is a huge opportunity on Amazon to upsell folks with more recommendations based on what they are, what they've purchased in the past, and things like that. I don't see a lot of that. When I shop on Amazon, I basically buy the stuff that I come in for and that's it. Prime shipping, walk out shopping, Climate, Pledge, Kindle, Alexa, Marketplace, I mean so many things not to mention Aws. Now they have

a new person stepping in to become CEO. Andy Jasse and you know, Jeff Bezos is still going to be on the executive board or let's see what's he going to yeah, chief of the Amazon chriff of the Amazon board. He said. The thing is, you know, being CEO of Amazon is a very big responsibility. It consumes you twenty four and he wants to spend his time on other things like you know, his fund, Blue Origin, all the space stuff, the Washington Post and some other things he

has going on. But he thinks Amazon's going to continue to figure out new and exciting ways of doing things. And it's always scary when the figurehead leaves a company like this. I mean, yes, he'll still be involved. But you know how much of this came from him? I don't know. At the beginning, sure a lot of it. But as it goes on, did it come from him or does it come from committees and ideas? Who knows? I guess time will tell. But my favorite is the

last lines of his letter. He said, keep inventing. Don't despair when at first the idea looks crazy, Remember to wander, let curiosity be your compass. It remains day one and I shared a note about this on my social media. It remains. Day one is just so powerful. Imagine I've been doing my job at KTLA for ten years now, and if I think of the next couple of years as today is day one, imagine what that does for

your thinking. You have a fresh outlook on things. This podcast is the first podcast, and how would you do it differently if you were just coming into this versus doing it for two hundred episodes? So I thought that was really powerful and it really resonated. And one of these days I'm going to print out all these little things that I clipped from Instagram, all these little inspirational quotes.

I want to put them in my office because they're only inspirational if you look at them and you reference them right. Otherwise you kind of forget about them. But it really does do a lot. I love the inspirational stuff, even if I find inspiration of things. I don't necessarily seek out inspirational quotes, but I do find things inspiring and those are the best kind for me, all right. Thomas writes in Hey, Rich, I love your show. Thank

you for providing such great information. I want to select and print one hundred family images for each year starting in twenty ten. I am worried that they will eventually be lost in the cloud if I print them and put them in albums. Should I buy a printer and print them myself or should I use the service like Shutterfly Nation's photo lab at Arama. The factors I want to consider are quality, durability, cost, time, investment, ease of use, and thank you so much for your guidance, best Thomas

Wow durability fifty years. I think that you should. I don't think I would go the printer route. If you're gonna, well, you're gonna print hundred images each year, you don't say that, you don't really say what size these pictures are gonna be. I would think that you should probably just go with a printing lab because since you are doing so many pictures,

I think it's probably easiest to just do that. So at Arama I have gotten pictures printed from because they did a unique size that I needed and I was very impressed because they are a photo company, a camera company, and so I thought they did a really great job. I forget what I ordered from there, so you know, I would definitely I would go with one of these systems, you know, like the adder. Where is the Adorama Prints.

Let's see, there we go photo printing. So uh oh they oh wow, well maybe they use Okay, they call it printiq p R I n T I q U E, And so I think I'd go with something I would test. Here's what I would do personally, I would try about three of these services myself and see which one I'm most impressed with. So pick the same picture and upload it to you know, this, uh printique. I would upload it to like a Shutterfly and Nation's photo Lab I'm not as familiar with, but I would upload it to that.

Now here's the other thing you can do, And this is a great search just to know in general. But if you type in Shutterfly into the search engine, you type and Shutterfly versus, and this will give you a whole list of similar printing places. I guess. So upcome Snapfish, MPIs, mixed book, Nations, photo Lab, chat books. Now some of these are actually oh, Amazon Photos, let's not forget about that one. So some of these are more for photo books.

But I'm not sure if you're you say you're gonna put them an album, So I'm guessing you just want the pictures. So that's what I would do so, I would look up Nations Photo Lab versus and that should bring up more of the professional ones, which is MPIs or Shutterfly. And we all know that Costco recently, or you maybe you don't know, but Costco recently stopped doing their in store printing. But of course you can still print not in store, you know, you can mail or

upload things to them. But once you get the pictures back from these various services, I would analyze them, see which one you like the best, see which one has the best mix of quality and also the price that you pay for it, and then go from there and also look on their website at their FAQs and see how long they say their pictures are going to last. Now, you know, to me, it seems like, you know, the

printed pictures last pretty long. I think if you're going the printer route, like a printer that you'd use at home, I'm sure they have all that information on the printer itself when you purchase it, how long these pictures are expected to last. And what you're talking about doing I've

wanted to do as well for many many years. I always say I want to print, you know, a bunch of pictures and put them in albums, and I want to do this once for every month, so you know, like January twenty twenty one, it's a great month to start and just pick out, you know, a bunch of pictures and print them and put them on your on your you know, shelf at home, and then when people come over, when people start coming over again, it's such a natural thing for people to just pull this off

your coffee table or off a shelf and just start flipping through all your great pictures. Now, I know Google will do this for you automatically. I believe they will pick a bunch of pictures out of your Google Photos and automatically send them to you. I haven't tested this, so I don't know if you can go in and kind of switch things out before you print them. But I also know that you can just say, like, hey,

make me a photo book. I mean, the photo printing on Amazon Is or on Google Photos is pretty elaborate, and they're using AI to pick your pictures, so I would also check into that one. All right, good question, And uh yeah, maybe I'll do that one of these days, because I used to print pictures a lot and I just kind of stopped, all right, let's get to some

of the rumor mill news. I don't typically do a lot of rumor mill stuff just because, you know, I try to make this show something of news you can use, like I like it to be informative, but like you know, helpful for your life. And all the Apple rumors in the world, there are so many podcasts dedicated to them, and that's fine if you want to keep up with all the rumors, that's great. Personally, you know, I keep an eye on the rumors, but this show is not

about rumors. It's about real life stuff. And the problem is, you know, there are some things that just bubble up to a place where you have to talk about them, and this Apple Car has sort of gotten to that place because we just keep hearing so much about the Apple Car. I'm not going to spend a whole bunch of time on it. But CNBC reporting that Apple is going to sign a deal or has sign a deal, or is very close to signing a deal with Hyundai Kia and they're going to make the Apple Car at

their plant in Georgia. And this is a multi billion dollar deal. It's not just a Kia or a Hyundai. That's sort of branded as Apple, and it's it's kind of like remember when the iPhone came out, and you know they use fox con to manufacture it, but AT and T was kind of the carrier. So imagine that Hyundai Kia. Their technology is the base of this car, but Apple is the developer and the designer, and they kind of dictate everything except for maybe how the car goes, right,

I'm not sure. I mean, we'll see, but the production they're saying is maybe gonna happen in twenty twenty four. And you know, this could be big for Apple if they if they capture a bit of the market place because it you know, cars are a huge market, and you know it has all the inklings of an Apple product. Right. It's a thing that people would like to be done better. It's a thing that could be electric, it's a thing that could be high tech. It's a thing that you

upgrade all the time. I mean, look at the least the phone least people lease their phones all the time. Now they can lease their cars. I mean they're already doing that too. So it has all the markings of a of an area that's ripe for disruption. But cars have been very tricky and Tesla I think has done a good job of disrupting. But and I think Apple can do it given the base they have and the money they have. But it's not like an overnight done deal.

But with all that said, would I buy an Apple Car? Probably? In fact, I've been saving up for a Tesla, and you know, maybe I'll just wait. I think I'm gonna wait a little bit longer to purchase. But if I did, I mean, maybe I'll just wait till twenty twenty four when one of these comes out. The only problem is buried inside all these headlines it says the Apple car, the Apple car, the Apple car is the fact that the first generation Apple car might only be for delivery companies.

They say it's going to be fully autonomous, which I don't know, we'll see. I mean, there's a lot to unpack with the Apple Car. But again, this is why I don't do too many rumors, because it could happen, it could never happen, and it could happen completely differently than whateveryone's reporting. All Right, Tammy says, Hello, I was wondering how I can control what my son does or sees,

or how much time he spends on his iPhone. I have an app called kids Lock, but I'm not very happy with it, and Tammy, the reason you're probably not very happy with it is because it's tough to lock down things on the iPhone. I'm assuming again with the iPhone, it's very tricky. On Android, you can do whatever you want,

Developers can make whatever you want happen. On iPhone, it's very tricky because there are very specific rules and regulations that developers have to abide by when it comes to the way that the apps interact with the rest of the phone. So I'm guessing that this app does everything through a VPN if I had to guess, because on the iPhone you can't just have an app come in and say, oh, we're going to restrict your time on YouTube,

We're going to restrict your calls and text. It just really can't do that kind of stuff as far as I know. Yeah, kids Block does not block basic functions like calling and texting. So if you can't block that, how can you really be called a kids lock, Right, So I think this must use a VPN. Yeah, that's some I'm guessing anyway, So what I use at my house, I'll just tell you what I use. I use a combination of things. I use screen time, which I think is probably your best bet if you're on the iPhone.

If your kid is on the iPhone, and it just takes a little bit of set up, you put them on the family plan, you set it up. You can do it all from your phone and then it just carries over to their device, and you can give them a certain amount of time for websites. You can give them a certain amount of time for apps. You can make down time, which means you know your kid can't do certain things at certain times. You can block all

websites except for ones that you approve. So maybe you only want PBS kids to be available, you can do that, or you can say I only want Apple approved dumb you know, kid sites, or you can say block adult sites. Whatever you want to do, you can pretty much do it. The main thing that you can't do, and I find that this is the toughest thing, is that, well you can you can sign you can assign time limits for apps, like for YouTube. But if your kid is like mine,

they use a combination of things. Like my kids also use a computer and they also use a TV, So I use a thing called Circle, which can do these things across everything. So it can it can put time limits across everything. It can you know, block out apps, it can block out certain you know, anything you want, and your opportunities are unlimited with Circle. But Circle is a device that physically plugs into your network and controls it that way. And so you do have to pay.

It's like one hundred bucks one hundred and twenty bucks, but you get a year free and then after that you have to pay for the service. But I find that if you want the most control, you got to go with Circle, because, like in my house, sometimes we go through times where we completely block YouTube where it is just no dice, you can't get onto it, and you can just do that. We can also limit the

time on YouTube across all their devices. So let's say they spend fifteen minutes on their iPad watching YouTube, and then you know, fifteen minutes in the bedroom watching YouTube, and then fifteen minutes on the main TV watching YouTube. It will be smart enough to add all that time up to be to reach their forty five minute limit. Now, there are a lot of downsides to this, and believe me, I'm always giving my kids more time extra time, screen time.

You know, everything shuts down at six pm, so they give me a hard time for that. It is not easy. You know, the more you lock this stuff down, the more it does affect you as a parent because you have to then spend the time to unlock it or give them more time when they run out or when you know, on a weekend or something. So and it

does take a lot of time to set up. But I think at the end of the day, the easiest thing to do is just to start with screen time and if that doesn't do what you need, then you move on into some other aspects of limiting this stuff. But believe me, it is a struggle. Even in my home, we have effectively blocked roadblocks completely and you know, the rest of the stuff is all timed out. But believe me,

my kids get around it. What they've done now is, you know, since YouTube is timed on all the main TVs and all their computers, they now watch YouTube on the smart displays and so they'll just they'll just sit in one in front of one of the smart displays because we don't have those timed out. And the problem is if I time out the smart displays and put them under their profiles. Now, Dad can't look at a YouTube video on the smart display when I need to

see how to chop an onion or something. So it is. It is a struggle, and it's really tricky and complicated. But just know Tammy that you are not the only one that is struggling with this stuff. So and I'll check into kids Lock a little bit more and see what the deal is with that. But it's let's see, it's one hundred dollars for lifetime, sixty dollars for a year, six dollars for one month. But yeah, there you have

it all right, Let's move on to Instagram. Instagram is rolling out a new feature called recently Deleted and this is a feature to help you in two ways. Number One, if you delete something mistakenly, you can go back into this little folder within thirty days and find it. The other thing, and this is interesting, is that if someone hacks your account, apparently they delete everything in your account.

And these instagrammers get really sad because there goes all their work, right, all their stuff is gone that they've wor on their pretty layouts, all this stuff, and they can't get it back even if they happen to regain control of their account. So clearly Instagram knows this happens all the time, so they are making this recently deleted folder where you know, if the hacker comes in and they delete everything, it goes into that folder in thirty days,

and they can't just empty that folder. So to empty it, you actually have to somehow verify your identity, and Instagram does not say how you verify your identity. But the idea here is that let's say you lose access to your Instagram account, hacker gets access, they replace all your posts with like bitcoin advertisements and flood your feed. You get your account back, and now you delete all their stuff and now you have nothing. So somehow you will say to Instagram, yes, I am who I am, and

can I please now restore all this stuff? And so you can do that. I guess maybe they let you restore it, but not permanently delete it. That would make more sense, I guess. So to find this, I haven't seen this on my phone just yet, but when it's there, it'll be under Instagram settings. Account recently deleted and you'll have thirty days again to restore things on Instagram. All right, let's see Kim says, Hi, my sister and I want

to get the new iPads eighth generations. Have you heard when the ninth generation is coming out and we should wait? And it looks like there's a little kissy emoji there sent for my iPad. Okay, Kim, okay. So the thing I've said this before on the show, but the thing that I always look at when it comes to when

to purchase Apple products. I'm a big believer in the fact that you should always purchase Apple products like as close to the first day that they come out as possible, because apple products have a new life span of about a year and then an extended lifespan after that. But the fact is you want to get the most bang

for your buck by getting them in that first year. Now, when it comes to the iPad, the iPad standard iPad, if you look on this website buyers Guide dot MacRumors dot com, it has all the Apple products listed and then how many days since the last release the average

amount of time until they release a new one. So, for instance, iPhone the day since last release, it's been one hundred and twelve days since the iPhone twelve came out, which you can if you can believe that the average is three hundred and seventy one days, which if you think about it, yes, there's a new iPhone every single year, and so the average is about three hundred and seventy one days. Then you have the iPad Air. This was released alongside the new I think it was well around

the new iPhone one hundred and twelve days ago. I guess was it the same day? Yeah, I guess it was the same day, So iPad Air and average time for that is six hundred and thirty five days, So that's about two years. So every other year they're releasing a new iPad Air. Now the iPad this is the one that you're talking about days since release September twenty twenty. They did this a little bit before the iPhone. This has been one hundred and forty three days. The average

is five hundred and seventy nine. So I would say the answer to your question is go ahead, buy the iPad because it doesn't look like we're getting another one for about another year. Or I'd guess no. Well, let's see five seventy nine minus one forty three, so you got four hundred and thirty six days, So you basically have a year and a half before the new iPad, so I would buy the new iPad or right now. That way you get the most use out of it before the next one comes out. Again, that website is

Buyer's Guide dot MacRumors dot com. Let's see, do they have anything that's like the longest iPad Mini is probably the longest six hundred and ninety days since last release. That was March twenty nineteen, so six hundred and ninety days. And I think I bought my kids the iPad Mini in September twenty sixteen, so that's nine hundred and twenty two days ago. I do need to upgrade my one kid's iPad Mini to a newer model. He keeps bugging me about it because he's playing you know, more bigger games.

But anyway, great website, and that is what I look to when I'm looking for those that buying guidance. All right, this is a This was kind of a fun thing that we talked about on social media on KTLA. But you know how you've been in zoom meetings and next thing you know, the person freezes or they lock up, or their microphone cuts in and out. Well, this is a an app that actually does this on purpose. It's called Freezing Cam and the founder Kevin Peachee Picky p I c c h I peach pick I can't say

it h Picchi. Let's call Picchi. So Kevin Picchi. He made this app. It's called freezing Cam. It's a simple app for your Mac computer. And when you're in a meeting and you know things are getting a little crazy, things are getting a little wide, do you need to kind of take a little breather. You can just press this freezing cam butt and it will freeze your camera or it will stutter your camera so it looks like

you're having connection issues. In the future, there will be an option to mess up with your mic as well. This works with Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, go to meeting wherebe or whereby, and WebEx works on mac os right now, And he said the idea came from a discussion with a bunch of friends who were complaining about the hassles of having to turn on their cameras during meetings.

Oh okay, earlier I read that he said that it was him wanting to turn on and off his camera during meetings to do random things, you know, like sometimes your kid comes nearby and you got to like, you know, wish them away or you know, kind of swosh them away, and then or they ask you something and you got

to talk to them. So it's just perfect. You just freeze your camera or make it stutter, and you know, you can do your business on the side, and then you can get back to your meeting and nobody, you know, they just assume that you you have a little problem with your connection. So again it's called freezing cam. I have not downloaded it because the last time I downloaded

one of these these camera add ons. The way they work is that they become a virtual camera for your computer, and once you get them on there, it's kind of like every time, it's kind of like it sees it as its own little webcam. So it could present some issues if you're trying to join meetings, and it's always going to default to that if you have that going on, and sometimes if you forget about it, it's just I had one. I downloaded two of these things to test

them out. One was from Snap and it was like their virtual camera, which is really cool, but it you know, it takes over your camera every time, and sometimes you'll show up as a potato head. And then the second one I did was just like Loomy. It was called I Think Loomy AI and again it was really cool, but I could never get it to work properly, but

it kept taking over my video camera. And so anyway, now I don't use these virtual cams because they can mess with your connections and what you need to do. So just know that before where you download it, and if you have a good way of uninstalling, you know, just know, like I use an app called clean my Mac, so that's always a good way to get that as well, to get those programs out of there when you're done using them. All right, let's get to another question from

uh Karna Happy Sunny Sunday. I love you and watch you all the time. I love your advice and your tips. I'm wondering if you could do a review on the regular Galaxy S twenty one, not the Ultra. I'm thinking of upgrading and the Ultra has some great features, but it's just too much money for me. I want to know how the S twenty one is. Thank you Karina, Well, thank you Karina for the email, and you're right. I when I did my review on TV of the SAMSUNGS. I did the S twenty one Ultra. That's the one

I primarily concentrated on. The reason for that is because I wanted to show off the latest and greatest features and features set that Samsung has and I was thinking from myself as a power user and to be completely honest. Once I did that and in I've here's the thing, this is the truth here. So when I'm doing my reviews for KTLA, I only have a minute and thirty seconds, right, so I do not have a long time to really

get into the nitty gritty of these devices. So I have to do the most top level information that I think the average person watching local news needs to know. And that gets very, very tricky because I'm a nerd. I you know, I know a lot about these devices. I use them, I compare them, and I you know, but the reality is I need to distill them in a way that is super easy and super fast for

my audience and that fits into my time slot. And so that's why generally I'll do more stuff on Facebook and social media and you'll see me post about my experience with these things along the way, so that if you're following me on social or listening to me on the podcast or my reviews online, you can actually get a bigger picture of what this is all about. Now.

In years past, with some of these devices, I've often done two in one, but I realized that that even does a bigger disservice because there's no way that you can compare and contrast these two things that quickly, and it gets very confusing for the end user because I have to say every single time what device I'm referencing.

She get one hundred times zoom on the Ultra. You get a thirty time zoom on the S twenty one, and that becomes very confusing after your you know, by the time you get through your piece, all you've done is say what's on the one and what's on the what's not on the other. So with the S twenty one Ultra, I decided to do just the S twenty one Ultra, and it's it was kind of a disservice because I realized after using the S twenty one, that is a great phone for the for the typical person

and not necessarily the power user. In fact, that became my favorite phone due to the form factor and the size of it. I like the functionality on the S twenty one Ultra, but I like the size of the S twenty one better. But here's another thing. I can't really go ahead and do another segment on KTLA and for all my stations on another Samsung phone right after I just did a Samsung segment on the S twenty one Ultra and then I do an S twenty one

the next day. It would be very confusing. And also, you know that's a lot of It's just it's very, very tough, And these are the decisions that you know kind of are in the background that I don't necessarily talk about in a public way. But as the sort of editor in chief of my own segment that goes out to all these stations, I have to make the best decisions based on what I know to be kind

of what's happening. And I don't want to do a disservice to people out there that do want something that is better than the iPhone or comes up more closer against the iPhone. The S twenty one I see as a very good phone, but it's nothing like groundbreaking compared to what's out there, whereas the S twenty one really is. I mean, it's pretty fantastic as a device. So that's a long, long answer to or long explanation to. The simple answer is yes, the S twenty one is perfect.

It's fantastic. I don't have any problems with it. I would use it as my daily driver if mainly if it had more memory, perhaps because it only has eight gigs, which is enough, but I find that I to me, I just want the best, and when I'm using the iPhone twelve Pro, that's the best, and the Samsung S twenty one is not the best that Samsung has to offer. The S twenty one Ultra is and I want that in the form factor that is convenient to me, and

the S twenty one Ultra is just not convenient. It's so big that I just I want to use it and I can't. It's just too big on a daily basis. It doesn't fit in my pocket, it doesn't you can't hold it comfortably. And so for all those reasons, the S twenty one is my favorite, but I just can't really bring myself to using it because when I really think about it, it's not better than when I get off the iPhone twelve Pro, and that is my personal

experience and my personal situation. For you, if you want the if money is the most important thing, what you're saying, that's just too much money, then yes, the S twenty one is going to be just fantastic and it is a great phone. But I'm primarily interested in content creation. And again this is inside baseball, but I want to be able to do things that are unique and different

and not necessarily available to everyone. And by the Ultra, that's what you get because you get one hundred times zoom and all these other cool camera tricks that are very unique, and some of the things are not available on the iPhone and so even on the iPhone twelve pro. And so that's why I'd like to use it, because then you have some cool tricks that people look at your social media and say, oh, that's cool, how did you do that? You know this picture and picture mode

and things like that. So again that is my situation. But for you know, an average person who's just using this phone. It's their phone. You're not really cared about all that stuff. You're not really interested in trying to impress people with fancy, random features like I am. So again, S twenty one is a fantastic phone. It's Samsung's best ever, not just you know, it's just their best ever. They've never made a better phone than that device. And so that is a fantastic phone to get, and I highly

recommend you get it. All Right, I said earlier in the beginning of the in the beginning of the podcast, that there are some what I say, how did I call them? Oh, dangerous smart doorbells. And this is something that I've kind of alluded to, but this is some security research from Cyberscoop. They talk about vulnerabilities in Genie

and Mercury branded security cameras and smart doorbells. And I've often talked about how when you're looking at Internet of Things devices, the smaller companies or the let's say, the more inexpensive companies, you know, the stuff that's sold really cheap. And I know Mercury specifically because I was at Walmart and I bought one of their five dollars smart bulbs. But here is kind of the concern in the back

of my head. And I'm not saying it's always, but you think, okay, if these things are selling for really cheap, where are they cutting the corners? And in some cases, it could be the security of those devices. The software might not be as robust when it comes to security, it might not be as updated as much as some other devices like a ring or you know, a Nest camera or maybe like a Google Nest Audio like a

speaker from them. So you do have to be on your guard when it comes to these cheap, cheap devices. And so these researchers say that they found some vulnerabilities in the Genie and Mercury branded security cameras and smart doorbells that would allow hackers to take full control of these devices and remotely disabled cameras through a denial of service, and some exploits would even allow hackers to gain remote

access to a video stream of one of the affected doorbells. Now, with all this said, the company Genie told these folks the cyber Scoop or someone that we have no known exploits of any of these vulnerabilities. So a lot of times when you hear this scary stuff on the news, it's it's researchers that find these vulnerabilities, but they're not necessarily tested in the public, Like it's not just happening all the time. And you have to keep that in mind. Now,

that doesn't mean you should let your guard down. It is scary when these vulnerabilities are found because it only takes one one hacker to exploit them and to use it in a big way to their advantage, and you don't want to be on that train. So again, what does it come down to. By the way, Mercury spokesperson told Cyberscoop that the fixes should be available later this month, we're recording this in February, so hopefully by the end

of February. But again I think this is just more of a bigger word to the wise kind of explanation is that no matter what, you got to use different passwords for things, you got to set up two FO authentication, and you have to just more importantly keep in mind what you are doing. Any of these smart gadgets that you put on your network, if they are exposed or if someone has access to them, it could end up

exposing your entire network. And if you have something like I do, like a NASS on my network, and you know someone might be able to get access to that, So again you have to think down the line of what is the repercussion of someone getting access to one of my things on my network. So don't let your guard down and do what you can to fortify your network. Personally, I use a guest network when people come into my home.

You know, oh, Rich, what's the Wi Fi password? Hold on, let me take the two seconds to actually get you on my guest network, which is insulated from my regular network, so that a you can't go in and change things or switch things, or you know, mess with my smart home stuff or access my resources on the network. You can have your own personal network. You can do whatever

you need to. And you know, let's say there was a some sort of malware or virus on your phone that would propagate to my network when you connect, it would just stay on the guest network. And that's why you have a guest network. So if you have one of those on your router, please set it up and use it. It's it's a pretty smart thing to do, all right. Let's see question from Joe Ann. I have an iPhone eight. I want to know what is the easiest way to

delete duplicate photos in my album? And my answer is an app. I feel like I just answered this question on another podcast. Maybe I even answered this question. But Gemini photos that is the That's the app that I

would recommend. The main thing I would say is make sure that you have a backup of your pictures on your computer before you go through and delete these duplicates because this you know, it's nice to let these apps do things on their own and let them kind of, you know, help us and do things in an automated manner. But you know, if something ever happened, you don't want to lose your picture. So Gemini g E M I ni Gemini Photos. I think, let's see how much they

charge for this app. Well, I can't really tell you because it's trying to force me into the app store, which I don't want to do. But in general I would do I would plug your iPhone into a computer, make a complete backup of your iPhone, and then I

would run Gemini Photos. And a regular listener of the show, Tony has pointed out to me that I often talk about Google Photos and how you should back your photos up to there and then you can clear out space on your iPhone by back by using their clear up space or clear up storage functionality, which deletes the photos off your phone. And Tony was saying, Rich, you know you might want to tell people that when you do that, it's probably going to delete their pictures out of iCloud

as well, and that's probably true. I don't use iCloud for my photos, so I don't really have a lot of experience there, but yes, if I had to think about that, if you are let's say you're on an iPhone, you save a picture to your iPhone and it's backed up to iCloud, and then you clear that picture out by uploading it to Google Photos and letting Google Photos reclaim your storage, it would delete that picture off your phone, which would then in fact delete the picture from iCloud storage.

So yes, you probably don't want to use Google's automated functionality to delete your pictures off your phone. You would want to go in and delete them manually, the ones that you don't need from your camera roll. But I would also say that you probably shouldn't need to do

that if you're using iCloud photos. There's a feature or an option in settings to optimize iPhone storage, So if you have that turned on with iCloud, it will offload your photos to iCloud and keep little thumbnails on your phone, but it'll keep the full rest pictures off on the cloud, so that's not taking up space on your phone. And then let's say you ever wanted to share one of the pictures or whatever, it'll immediately download it back to

your phone on demand when you need it. I know it all sounds very complicated, but yeah, good good delineation. Good thing to kind of think about. You know, if you're cleaning up your pictures on your phone, you don't want to see them go all over the place. Oh my gosh, is that it. I think it's time for the end of the show. Yes, it is. That's what that sound means. So I have any other things to talk about? No, I guess not I do. I mean, there's always more questions that I can answer. I mean,

the question is just keep coming. Facebook dot com, slash rich on Tech, Instagram dot com, slash rich on Tech, insta, let's the other on Twitter, rich on Tech. That's gonna do it for this episode of the show. If you have a question for me, you can submit it. Two

ways to do it. Go to richon Tech, dot tv, slash podcast, hit the microphone button in the lower right hand corner to leave a voicemail, or you can just email me Hello, at richon Tech dot tv or go to my Facebook page Facebook dot com, slash rich on tech and hit the big blue send email button. Also, if you want to rate and review this podcast to help other folks discover it, that would be fantastic. You. Also, you often email me saying how much you like it,

which is great and I love that. But tell the world you know, leave that leave that review on iTunes, that would be the best way to do it. You can find me on all social media at rich on Tech. I just want to say a quick note, by the way, kind of a little goodbye, not to you, but to my boss, Jason Ball. He is leaving KTLA. This is the person that hired me twelve years ago to do a tech job, to do my same job at KKEL,

and then I moved over to KTLA. It's been ten years there and he is leaving on his own accord. He is somewhat retiring, figuring out what to do next. He has been an inspiration at KTLA. He has let me fly. He is let my wings spread out and soar there. So thank you Jason for your hands off approach to day to day but swooping in when necessary to give us the guidance that we so often need

in this business. So thank you for that. Thank you for pushing me to do this podcast and really fighting to get it under the KTLA umbrella a couple of years ago. It's been fantastic. I will miss you, I will keep in touch with you, and best of luck no matter what is next for you. My name is rich Dedimiro. Thanks so much for listening. Stay safe, I will talk to you real soon