From CES 2022 in Las Vegas

Las Vegas. I love my setup in this hotel room because I've got this bar, and no it's not stocked with cocktails. It's stocked with all the equipment I need to do this podcast. So I've got this standing desk, I've got the board, my computer, my little timer. I mean this is better than my at home set up for the podcast. So welcome to a New Year twenty twenty two. I hope you had a great holiday get together. Well, I mean ours were derailed, so I'm sure many others were,

so we made the best of it. It was definitely an interesting holiday season, that's for sure. I think New Year's let's see Christmas Eve was impacted, Christmas Day was impacted, and New Year's Eve were all impacted by COVID. Not anyone in my family, thankfully, but lots of friends and family. So they're all doing okay, which is nice. But Man Man Man really just kind of took its toll on so many people's plans and things like that. So I hope you're doing well. It's twenty twenty two, it's a

new year. I don't really do a lot of resolutions. The show, as you can see, doesn't feel or sound much different. Although you know, when I was little, when I was little, when I was younger, and you know, my favorite thing about any sort of like media, know, like if I watched like a TV show or something, was always when they got like a new set or like new music or like a new look for the graphics. Like I always thought that was so cool. But we've

got none of that. There's absolutely Oh the music, look at this, the music is still going there. You go, same old sound effects, same old music, same old everything, but same old rich which is good. So you get the rich on tech that you're looking for. Here. The questions answered, the stories that we talk about on the show So if your first time listener, the show format is pretty simple. People send me questions, I answer those questions, and I also talk about some of the stories of

note from that week. So this week it's all about CES. I mean, I'm here in Las Vegas and there's so many haters, so many haters on CES this year, so many people did not come to the show. Very small show this year, even though there's still don't get me wrong, there's still a lot of people here. It's not like this place is a ghost town. Believe me, it is packed. It's just not as packed as in your past. So

there's definitely room to walk in the aisles. There's not like a huge weight at booths to see stuff or to talk to people, which is all really nice. But of course the sad part is it's all because of a pandemic. So CES has a bunch of these new rules in place. You had to show your vaccination card to get in. You had to Uh, let's see what else, oh masks. Every day everyone's wearing the kN ninety fives because apparently those are better for you. Uh. And then

let's see what else they gave you. They gave you COVID tests which you didn't have to take. They were just sort of for you to have, and you know, if you wanted to test yourself. Some people I know have been testing themselves every day. And then there's this little thing. I tweeted out these new stickers that you can put on your badge. So I thought this was pretty brilliant. Actually, there's three stickers you can choose from. The first is a green sticker and it says I'm

okay with handshakes. The second is a yellow sticker it says I'm okay with elbow and fist bumps. And the third is a red sticker that says no touching, I'm happy just waving hello. Now, I've been seeing people and talking to people. Everyone has a different level of comfort with this pandemic and with you know, just in general, and so everyone does something different when you first say hi to them, and so I've been doing kind of

the elbow or fist bump. I think that's a good safe middle ground, and so that's what I've been doing. I put the yellow sticker on my badge and I don't think anyone noticed it or said anything, but I just found it today on the last day of cees, so maybe that's why I didn't have it for the other two days. The other thing I wanted to mention about Las Vegas is man, oh man, they have been very busy upgrading at least the Verizon network here. So I've got Verizon five G on my phone and I'm

not kidding. I have never seen more five g UW signal anywhere in my entire life. It is unbelievable. Now. The thing I don't like about it is that it's super fast on the download, which is amazing for ninety nine point nine percent of people. But my life is all about the upload because I'm uploading to social media and I found that no joke. I'm just looking at

my speed test here. I went to Allegiant Stadium, which is nice and really new and you know, Home of the Raiders, really cool place, and I did a speed test in the parking lot and it was I kid you, not two point five gigabits down. That's twenty five hundred down. That's really fast. Like at home. Most people have like, you know, two four hundred something like that. If they're lucky, sometimes they have a gig, but a lot of times people have like twenty five forty whatever, So two point

five down is like unbelievably, it's unheard of. I've never seen anything like that before. But the upload speed was a paltry forty six, which is just a tiny, tiny upload speed. I mean, it's fine, but again, it would be nice if that was like one hundred. Now, I get it most of the time with these the way these networks work is that the download speed is really fast because that's what people care about the most, and then the upload speed is not as fast. But for me,

I'm all about the upload speed. We were trying to upload a video today at the convention Center and for some reason we were like in this whole spot where the signal was just not that good and so it just took forever. And even at the convention Center when I had a really fast download speed, the upload was still not that good. So I don't know if they've tweaked that just to make it, you know, to make

people be able to download stuff. But the reality is, I've never seen such a large presence of five GUW in my life, and I think it's because Vegas is really flat or something. So I remember, like when Sprint first came out with their advanced network. They launched it first in Las Vegas, and I think T Mobile did the same. So there's something about Vegas. Maybe it's just

easy to launch networks here. I don't know. But whatever you're doing for Eizon here in town, keep it up and please expand it to the rest of the US, because we all need these speeds. They are just so amazing. All right, let's get to the first question of the week. Hey rich all your tips and look forward to seeing you on the WGN Chicago midnight News. Thank you. I also have your website bookmarked on my computer. Thanks. Lately, it seems that Yahoo mail is not blocking sexual spam

with a UK extension. I've been job searching for the past several months. I'm wondering if I got on some hackers list through a job website. I've started blocking the email addresses on Yahoo security, but it's very frustrating anyway. I thought maybe changing my Yahoo email address would help, but I cannot, for the life of me, find the place in the Yahoo mail to change my password. Do

you know where that option lives? Wendy, Wendy, you can't change your email address, you could change your password and so if you want to do that on the web, you can go to your Yahoo account security page, click change password and to your new password, and there you go. If you're on the Yahoo mobile app, you can look at the obviously you go into the menu icon usually it's on the side of the menu, and then if you're using the mail app, it's manage Accounts, account infos

curity settings. You'll get a code tap change password and then tap I would rather change my password, enter the new password and its confirmation and tap continue. So it is a little bit of a convoluted system to change the password for Yahoo. They probably do that to protect you. But if if you want to do that, I would do that. But I don't think that this person has

access to your account. I think that they. I think that you probably have gotten on some lists, but I also find that a lot of this spam comes and goes. It may not be this list from your job searching. It may just be that your Yahoo email address got out there in the wild from some other data hack. There's so many data breaches on a regular basis at this point, and the best website to look to look and see if your email address has been you know, released on the Open Web is a website name Have

I Been Poned, and it's have I Been Pwned? And you basically type in your email and it will tell you all the different places that that email address has showed up in a large data breach, and you know it's it's the website is by the way, it's very respectable. So you're not gonna you're not gonna put yourself at risk by putting your email address into this website. Just make sure you go to the right one, which is have I Been Pwned dot com. But that's what I

would do for you, uh to see. But these things come and go. Sometimes you get a lot of spam. Sometimes you don't. Just make sure you report them as spam. All right, let's get back to CES. You know all almost all the stories are going to be CYES related because that's where I am, and there's just so much to see this year, and there's so like I said, there's so many haters that didn't actually come to the show, and they're sort of like couch hating, whereas like I'm

actually here, I'm on the ground. I saw a lot of cool stuff. It's like the first time I think Facebook like blocked me from sharing stuff because they were so sick of it, because they're like, wait, this guy hasn't shared much in like two years because you know, I've been at home for the pandemic and or not out and about as much. Like now of a sudden, he's sharing something like every hour. Let's block him. So I feel like my stuff is not reaching as many

people as i'd like it to. But I'm sure everyone feels that way. Anyway. BMW has a color changing car that I saw, so they essentially wrapped a BMW. I don't know if it was some sort of suv. They have in e ink, so that's the same ink that

they use on the kindle. And I asked the person in the engineer there's a doctor actually that did this, and she said that it was very challenging because the e ink is like a flat panel and cars are not flat panel, so getting the e ink to sort of wrap around all these different angles of the car was really the trickiest part. But she said that the e ink is very sustainable the way they make it apparently,

and also the energy efficiency of it. It's very energy efficient, and when you look at this car, it sort of changes from black to white, white to black, any gradient in there. And yes, it's just black and white right now. But in the future, you know, I asked, and she said, absolutely, you will have a color changing car in the future. And so that's pretty wild to think about that your car will change color, you know, go from you know, oh, I feel like having a red car today or I

want a yellow car today. And of course there are some real benefits of this, and one of them is that you can have your car black in the winter to sort of absorb the sun and keep it warm, and then white in the summer to reflect the sun. And so that's just one sort of real world case scenario.

Another one they gave is that let's say these cars were part of some sort of fleet, you know, like even an uber whatever, you know, the uber could drive up and on the side of the car would say your name or maybe a special code, so you knew that that was the car that you're looking for. Maybe it just says Uber on the side, or maybe when you're delivering pizza, says Dominoes on the side. I mean,

there's so many implications of this technology. It's really quite phenomenal, and I think That's definitely the video that has gone the most viral on my Twitter for sure, because people are just debating this and it looks really cool. I mean, I don't you know. It's one of these things where yes, it's very prototype e, very concept d right now, but the reality is it shows us what is going to happen in the future. Every I would say, so many of the things I've seen at CES, I'm just like, wow,

that's so wild. They end up happening, Like nine out of ten they end up happening. It might take five years, might take ten years, but they end up happening, and it's pretty wild. Now, there's a lot of stuff that doesn't end up happening, and a lot of this stuff changes and evolves, but the fact is BMW is on it. There's so many benefits to this technology, stuff we haven't even thought of. I Mean, one of the other examples they gave is, let's say there's a piece failing on

the car. Let's say it's the right door handle. Maybe the right door handle is circled on your car, and so you know when you walk up to your car that it's you know, there's a problem with that handle, and you can get it fixed. So little things like that. Again, if you want to check it out, check out my Twitter the BMW color changing car. All right, next question here comes from Jackie. Hey, Rich, Happy New Year to you and your family. I'd like to know if you've

previously reviewed the Omni Stick. Oh, here we go. My husband and I have lots of photos online and even old flip phones that we keep just for the photos they contain. We'd love to capture all of these photos and wonder if the Omni stick would work for our phones and our old dinosaur flip phones. Thanks Rich, Jackie. I have not reviewed the Omni Stick, but I believe I've heard of this thing. I think it's advertised and

all that good stuff. It's one of these things where I don't okay, the photostick omni So it's on Amazon, It's got one hundred and six reviews. If you look at it, it looks pretty old school. It's just not something that I would want to share or trust my memories on. So what I would say is go with the one that I like, which is the sand Disc. So sand Disc makes one called I Expand, and they make a couple different versions for various you know, whether

it's the iPhone, whether it's Android. They have a couple different versions. So just look up sand disc I expand and look for the new one if you can. The the flash drive Go I think is the newest one which goes between the the well. You'll see, it's just good. It's just a better one. So that's what I would recommend. Now when it comes to all, let me see what

did you say about your pictures? Now? The flip phones is gonna be tricky flip phones getting the photos off of those, you know, it's really depends on the phone. So I'm looking. I'm looking to see if there's anything like there used to be software. Oh okay, that's actually a good idea. A lot of people are saying use bluetooth to send the photos from your phone to your other phone. That's a cool way to do it. So

that's not too bad. That's a that's a good good idea. Also, you might be able to search for software specials, like search the model. What I would do is search the model of the flip phone and then say, you know, get photos off, and then the model of the flip phone, and then maybe software and then see if there's software

that will do that. Otherwise you might be able to you might be able to bring them in somewhere, So you might be able to bring them into like you know, a Best Buy or like a U break I fix, and you might be able to connect this phone to your computer with a USB cable. So that's another way to do it. But I think a lot of people the linking up the phone via Bluetooth to another device, perhaps with you know, either a computer or another phone,

just say send file, Just send them that way. It's a slow process, definitely not the best way to do it. But you probably didn't take that many pictures on these old phones anyway, because they were you know, now we take a thout. You know, I've taken so many pictures on my phone this week that I can't even believe it. But back in the day, you know, you took one phone photo a week, or one photo every you know, a couple of days. It's just the way we did things.

So so I would try that out and see what happens. All right, So I went over to the Samsung booth at CES and they had a lot of stuff. So the LG booth was really weird. It was I guess they made a last minute decision to sort of exit the show and so or I don't know when they made the decision, but the booth was was very, very sparse, and so there was just nothing there. It was like you went around the booth and you scanned QR codes

and I don't think anyone actually did it. So I'd love to see the number of people that actually did that, but I don't know if they did. So Samsung they went all out. They had a huge booth filled with stuff and some new stuff as well. A couple things I saw there. Number one, this new projector called the Freestyle. This is a projector that is super easy. It's on a hinge, It rotates one hundred and eighty degrees and you can It's got a speaker built in, and it

projects up to a one hundred inch screen. It's nine hundred dollars, which is super pricey, but again it's one of these things where you can see where we're going here. Projectors like this are going to just continue to get cheaper now that Samsung's doing it. We can expect these prices to drop and drop and drop to a place where basically, when your kid says oh, I want a TV in my room. You say, how about a giant

wall for your TV? And I'm not debating the merits of whether your kid should have a TV in the room or not. I'm just saying that's my example. Or maybe you're outside like we do once in a while, we have like a movie night out in the backyard, and you know, especially during the pandemic, and now you

can simply you know, it's not rechargeable. It may eventually come with a rechargeable battery like that you can connect to it, and I'm not sure what the feasibility is of plugging into like sort of a portable power bank. I mean, you might be able to do that, but it's really cool and I saw the other The other trick to this thing is that you can screw it

into a standard light bulb socket. So that's another you know, they now at home, you probably wouldn't want to do that, but if you had like a restaurant or something, you have like a light bulb in the ceiling, you can project a cool image on the floor or something like that. So there's a lot of both personal and business applications of this thing. But it's called the freestyle check it out.

It looks really cool and it does everything by itself, so it optimizes the screen size, it auto focuses, it levels the image when it's on an angle, so it does everything you need and you can access apps on it like Netflix and Spotify and all that stuff. And it's just one of those things that's like you see it and you're like, ah, I really want that, Like can you imagine bringing that to your hotel room and just being able to watch like TV on your wall.

That was always my dream in hotel rooms, like just to have like a giant like like, why I'm looking at my TV screen in the middle of this wall. I've turned it on exactly once the entire time. But wouldn't it be cool if that was just a blank wall and I could just put this projector on that wall. So and again, since it's you know, you can angle it one hundred and eighty and it also automatically adjusts

to fit the space. It's you know, you don't really have to sit there and adjust like what do they call a keystone or something like the way like angles in on the edges and stuff. So just a just a cool thing that they've done. There. The other thing I saw at Samsung is this Eco remote and it's a it's a remote control. This is so weird, but it has no batteries inside it. Actually it's called the Eco remote. It gets its energy from your Wi Fi signal,

so it does something called RF harvesting. They showed me, you know, the little uh dissected remote control with the parts. There's some sort of like antenna in there and then some sort of piece of like semiconductor and somehow it all the radio waves power the antenna and are sorry, the radio waves power the remote. Now there's no batteries, like I said, so I don't really know how that even does that. But you don't need to replace the

batteries in this remote ever. And it also has Wi Fi as well, so maybe if you're if your Wi Fi signal is not that good, it defaults or it goes back to the solar power and if your solar's not so good, maybe it uses the Wi Fi. But the bottom line is that what a cool thing. And this is a remote that's I guess packaged with some of their TVs in twenty twenty two or twenty twenty three.

So Samsung says that the remote could prevent ninety nine million triple A batteries from going into a landfill over the next seven years. That was the original remote, So now this one is even better, so it says according to this new Scientist article I'm looking at, it can capture the Wi Fi signals from a distance of up to forty meters, which means it can charge even in

dark rooms. So forty meters that seems like a really really far Yeah, that's a hundred feet one hundred and thirty one feet, So even if your router is really far away, you can still you can still harvest that energy. Pretty wild. Okay, next question, you're rich. Unfortunately, I have made a mess of my photos and find myself determined to straighten it out. This is my future gift to my grandchildren, a pictorial history of our family. My goal by a photo backup device that will hold my thousands

of photos. Transfer all my photos with the date they were taken from numerous drives, clouds, phones, etc. To this backup device. If possible, use a program to find and separate duplicate photos, build a photo library for my daughter and grandchildren. My question, what photo backup device is best to invest? In to save my numerous photos on is there a way to embed the date on the photo

that was taken on the photo? I'm sixty six confused by technology, especially saving pictures chronologically and not duplicating them in iCloud, Google, et cetera. It's a nightmare for me. Please, I'm in desperate need of help and asking for your professional advice. Greatly appreciate any recommendations. Thank you. Happy New Year, Catherine. Catherine, your issue is one that is shared by so many people out there, and it's actually sad that this issue

has not been solved and I don't understand it. I really don't like it should be solved. It should be easier. There's a couple of things. So there was a product that was pretty cool, but I think they I don't think they let me see if they still have it for sale. Oh, it's still for sale. Okay. So the product that I probably recommend for you is called eb Ibi, and this is from sand Disc. It's kind of like a almost like your own personal cloud, but for photos

and your videos. So you get a terabyte of storage for ninety bucks, which holds two hundred and fifty thousand photos. That's one thing you can do. And this has like this has like USB in the back, so you can stick in you know, like a USB drive and it'll it will take the pictures off of there. You can install the app on your phone, it'll take the pictures

from there. It used to import pictures from Google Photos, but Google Photos has since turned off any sort of outside access to Google Photos, which really really bugs me. And so you can't do that and Google Photos there's no easy way. So I'll be honest, I think that your project is I see you know stand that you're sixty six and you say your tech challenge, But I think it's a project that is nearly impossible for almost anyone without spending hours upon hours. Now, maybe if you

have the time, you can do it. But I'm I'm a tech professional, and I'm telling you my photo collection is pretty much a mess. I dump everything in Google Photos and just hope that one day Google will come out with a one click, magic fixed button and say, can we fix all of your pictures. We're gonna get rid of the duplicates, any of the blurry ones, any of this any that they've They've made strides towards doing that,

but it's still not completely there. Like Google Photos, if you drag in the same picture twice, it will have the intelligence to not import it twice, but only if it's pretty much identical. If it's a version of that picture, you know, maybe you cropped it, or you made it smaller or you you know, the resolutions different, it will still import. You'll still end up with. Like for me, for instance, I've got all these scanned pictures and I don't want to lose them, so I've got like more

ultiple multiple copies of them on my Google Cloud. So it's one of those things that it's it's just a problem. It's not easy, and it's just it's that's just the reality of it. So what I would recommend, Okay, so I would recommend maybe do the sand disc thing, maybe do the hard drive thing. But I think that Google Photos is probably going to be the easiest to sort of upload everything in because you can drag and drop

all your stuff. I like the web interface of Google Photos because you can just drag and drop stuff in and when you drag and drop stuff in, it will upload it, and it will also it will also sort through the duplicates and not put those in again. So you know, just get all your drives, get all your stuff, put them on your your computer, and then just drag them in or in. The beauty is it does exactly what you're saying. You want to put it all in

chronological order. So your pictures should have metadata in them that contains the date, and so that's how the Google Photo is going to know how to put them in order. And then when you're done with all that and everything's in, you can go through Google Photos. What I kind of do is just like spot check, Like I'll go to like a month and I'll just kind of like look through all delete photos I don't need. I'll rotate some

of them. I will, you know, if I see a couple that are duplicates in there, snuck in, I will get rid of. You know, if I took two or three pictures of the same thing, I'll get rid of some of those. So you can go through and kind of just like clean it up. But the reality is, I think that maybe you're never gonna have a perfect photo collection. You just really aren't, like unless unless you spend hours a day on this thing, it's never gonna

be perfect. So I would say get them all in one place, and yes, get them in order, and I think that's the best you're gonna do. So if you want, if you have Amazon and you want to use that for free, you can also use Amazon to upload. If you have Amazon Prime, you can use that to upload your pictures in there, and that's completely free. Google there will be a charge if you're over fifteen gigabytes of photos.

So I hope that helps. I don't think I answered everything, but it's really it's a tough thing and I wish I had the perfect answer. I really don't. You know, there's I could recommend, if you are super techy, something like a network attached storage drive, but that's way too complicated. So I really think that this is a problem that so many people have. I'm not sure that there's a

really good solution. And there's the reason why there's not a good solution is because there's too many people that are up against you, you know, like Google, for some reason I don't understand, just doesn't want to like help you. I don't know, export your pictures once they're in Google. I mean you can, but again it's not that easy. Like I'd like to sync them to an external drive. That would be So in an ideal world, Catherine, what I'd recommend is throw all your pictures in Google and

then synk them to an external drive and boom. You can hand that external drive over to your niece or your you know, your grandchildren when you decide to do that, and they have all the pictures. But again it's it's a little more complicated than that, and uh, just a little little tricky, but good question, thanks for asking. All right, So, at CS, I saw a robot and this robot is Amika or is it Amica? I keep now, I keep messing up the name. I think it's Oh gosh, the

robot is, Oh my gosh, where is the robot? I gotta I gotta look up this robot again because I had it and then I had the pronunciation, and I've said it a hundred times today and I still can't seem to remember what it is. Amica, No Amiica, Amika, am Amica anyway, A M E. C A. I said it in my videos a bunch of times because the people from the UK that created this were there. But this robot is pretty wild, so kind of weird. It's gone viral, and yes, it continues to go viral. At CES.

But it's this big robot that looks very humanoid. When you talk to it, it talks back. It's it's got these expressions that are very lifelike. It's got these eyes that just I mean, it's it's the most realistic robot that I've ever seen. It also has very fluid movements as well, doesn't it doesn't move from its spot, but the way it's arms move are very very human like. So all in all, this is probably the most impressive

robot humanoid that I've ever seen. And it's kind of scary because if this thing, you know, if you ever woke up in the middle of the night and saw this thing standing in your in your bedroom, you would be scared because you just wouldn't really know what's going on because you'd be like, uh, can I help you, and I don't know what would happen after that, I'd probably be game over. So they assured me that that's not gonna happen with this robot because they are friendly

and they're not programmed to murder us. So that's a good thing. But with that said, this robot is pretty amazing. Like if you put your hand in this robot's face, it moves backwards in such a fluid motion like you would if a human put a human you know, if another human put their hand in your face, it would be the same exact movement. I mean this, the way they program this thing is pretty phenomenal. The thing that

I was unsure about. Okay, they say that this thing has AI, but I don't know because you can ask any sort of question, and it was answering questions. I am ninety nine point nine percent sure that they had a voice performer behind the booth that was answering the questions, because there's no way that this robot would be able to come up with the answers in the way it did and answers to anything. You know, it was making little quips, it was funny, it was this, It was

you know. So it's definitely one of those things where and I asked them, I said, hey, what's the deal with this robot? Is it real? Is it AI that's answering this or is it a person? And they said, well, it can be programmed both ways. Well what's the way we're seeing here? And he's like, well, you tell me. So they wouldn't really tell me, but I think that there was definitely someone back there. But this is one of those things you kind of have to watch the video.

I can talk about it forever, but it's it's not that exciting to talk about. It's more exciting to see and just experience. It's on my Facebook page, and or did I put on my YouTube as well? And I think on my Instagram, oh and on my Twitter, so I guess I put it everywhere. But it's just one of those things that just had such a crowd of people because it's so weird. It's like exactly how you'd imagine a humanoid robot would look and act, and you know,

it's just one of those weird things. So I don't know, it's cool. It's just you got to watch the video and see what it's all about. So that's the company, by the way, is what is it? Engineered Arts? And it's an interesting name because the guy was very specific about how it's a mixture of engineering and arts, so

it's kind of like that's the difference. It's not just a robot which is engineered, it's actually a work of art as well, because it is you know, it's a little sleight of hand with the person maybe speaking behind and also just the way it looks is very artistic because they've really paid attention to the emotions and everything that it looks like. So all right, next question, Sherry says, congratulations. I love your show. You get me knowledge that I

can't get anywhere else. Thank you so much, Sherry. Oh okay, this is this must have been. I got a whole bunch of emails and messages from people saying congratulations, Oh my gosh, thank you for all your work. Oh god, I'm like, wait, what did did Katla like let me go on air and not tell me and say thank you rich for all of your your time and service. We appreciate your hard work, like over my vacation. I just didn't know because I wasn't watching. No, that's not

what happened. They actually played apparently one of my ten year and might not one of my but my ten year anniversary video, which we did, I think over the summer, and so I guess they replayed that when I was off.

They played a whole bunch of stories when I was off on my vacation for the holidays, the kind of the best of And so I was just getting all these emails from people like for stories that you know, aired like six months ago or three months ago, and I'm like, oh, what's going on, And then it occurred to me. I'm like, oh, they must be running my pack my pieces and also the ten year anniversary, So Sherry, thank you. I do appreciate it. And you know what,

I gotta say. The it's so weird because being at a show like this at CS, like, you know, I'm pretty autonomous with my job, Like I go to my studio and then I go on my shoots and then I go home, and so it's not like I'm interacting with a lot of people in public all the time. But it's funny because when I'm out and about, a lot of people do come up and you know, say like, hey,

rich I see on TV. Especially here at CES. Obviously this is a room full of you know, the tech your people, so they kind of just have a knowledge of me. But it's really, you know, it's it's just a testament to the power of television number one, the power of social media number two, and also the fact that you know, I've just sort of been around for a while. So people like, oh, yeah, what rich on tech tech guy, right, And I'm like, yeah, that's something

like that. And so anyway, it's it's an honor when people say, you know that they like what I'm doing, because it really means a lot. Because I put a lot of thought into the pieces that I put on TV, the way that I write them, the way that they air. I'm very detail oriented and none of it is by mistake. Like it's all very much like figured out, Like I figure out what do I think people need to know about this gadget? What do people need to know about

in general? A lot of times I don't want to, you know, bag on the tech press, but like I call it the the like the gimme, gimmey, gimmey. It's like one person writes something and make or makes an observation and next thing you know, it's everywhere. Right, It's just like it's reblogged, it's re tweeted, it's it's everywhere,

and like that. A lot of times some of those things are just sort of outrageous, Like it's a it's a tiny feature that nobody's really gonna use, but it's like sort of outrageous, so people are gonna click on it and read about it, and then they think that their privacy is at risk and all this stuff, and so you know, I take a much more steady approach to what I think people should know. Like I don't I don't really dabble in all the kind of the garbage e stuff that it's just like easy for clicks,

but like, what do you really need to know? Like what do you really need to know about your gadgets? The privacy stuff is very important? What do you need to know about that? So I really try to stick to, you know, the facts and try not to get too much. Like this whole thing with CES, it just really bugs me that so many people are knocking it and you know, saying how terrible it is that they're holding it when

they're not here. I mean, I'll be honest, like, yes, it's there's been a lot of interaction with people, and I'm not in the clear just yet. I mean, you know, I could come down with something in the next week. But the reality is I never felt like, oh my gosh, I can't believe what I did. I this decision I made to come here was not very smart. Like, no, I have my mask on, I'm not shaking hands with people,

I'm not hugging people. I'm not, you know, it's it's a very like it feels like a very safe experience, as safe as you can be in a pandemic that's lasted two years. So I'm you know, and of course I'm protecting myself. I mean, I'm sitting here, you know. Of course I've all the boosters and all that stuff, but like, you know, the way I'm eating, the way I'm drinking, the way I'm hydrating, like all this stuff,

taking my vitamin. So I'm trying to make sure that I'm putting my best body forward so that i can set myself up for success in this situation. And I understand that not everyone's going to do that, and so there are going to be you know, some some issues

and some people that perhaps get sick. But just just say that CS is being you know, not you know, just the way that people knocked it was just really kind of bugging me because I was here and it was actually an amazing experience, Like I really like, I think I'll remember this CES because it's so unique and it's so interesting that it did happen during a pandemic and it's you know, I've been to big events during the pandemic. And I've been to some concerts and things,

and this was definitely a big event. But it was really fascinating to see how you do a show this large and this hands on when you know it's it's very tricky. It's a very delicate situation. So all right, did I go off enough on that? I think I did. Okay, let's talk about Sony. At the show here, they showed off their vision S concept cars. So they've got two of them. One is a it's called the S. One one is the S too once a sedan. One's an suv. And I'll be honest, just straight up, they look like

a mixture of a Tesla a Porsche. And what's the third one. It's really just like a Tesla, Porsche and maybe a tiny yeah, just just those two things. Maybe an Audi a little tiny bit, but it's just the you know, again, it's a slick looking car. And my problem with these concept cars, and I'm not a car guy, so I can't like say, maybe that's just how it starts. You gotta start with the concept. I get it, but there's just so many. There are a dime a dozen.

You see these concept cars, They're amazing they look so cool, and then it's like, well they come to fruition and it's like half the features that made it like this car, this Sony car looks like it's set up for autonomous driving. Now. I don't know how far Sony is along with the autonomous stuff, but you know, you know, Tesla, which is maybe regarded as the best, still has a ways to go with a lot of this autonomous driving stuff. And so these cars they look cool. I mean they literally

look like a Tesla. I hate to say, but it's kind of like a slicker looking Tesla. But again, it's a concept. So you get really excited. Sony is starting this new division called Sony Mobility, and it makes sense. I mean, Sony is an electronics company. Why not make a car, And I mean they know a couple things about electronics and batteries and components, and I mean they probably have half the components that are inside these cars.

They probably have them that they've worked on for other things, you know, whether it's a display, whether it's a light, whether it's a stereo system. I mean, if you think about it, it does make a lot of sense that Sony would produce a car. Now, it also makes a lot of sense at Apple would produce a car because Apple has you know, they've they've got a lot of experience with components as well, and electronics and car play and all this other stuff and design. I mean, who's

better at design than Apple? So it just makes sense that we're gonna see this second sort of I don't know what you call it, but it's like it's this new new world of elef cars. And they're not just you know, not just these historic companies. It's the big companies that are the sorry, the startups that are really doing a great job. And and you know, someone challenged me. They said, oh, well that Ford F one fifty lightning looks really good. And there's a big story John Reddinger,

who does He started Techno Buffalo. He's since sold it, but you know, he's very famous on YouTube and sort of a tech entrepreneur. He had a big tweet thing about he went in to buy the Mercedes electric car the I think it's called the EQ something, and you know, he goes in, he had his deposit down and the dealer said, okay, well it's a fifty thousand dollars markup on this car. What he said, oh, come on, he's like, and they're like, well, you know, it's very it's very

in demand. And I heard the same story about the Ford Mock. In fact, my wife loved the Ford Machi Mustang, the electric Mustang, and I said, I'm not even going to look at it. I'm not even considering it. I'll be honest. And here's why I said, I'm not dealing with a dealer. I'm not dealing with a dealer putting a ten thousand dollars search charge on this car just

because it's popular. It's like almost everything that's wrong with the system when it comes to like trying to do something new and cool and different, you know, and it's just it just made no sense. And so when people challenge me and they say, well, you know, it's just a matter of time until the historic car companies catch up to the new age electric car companies, and I'm like, I don't know, because personally, I'm not buying a car the old way anymore. I'm just not. I bought my

Tesla fully online, one hundred percent. I didn't have to talk to anyone. I didn't have to negotiate with anyone. I did it all online. And they delivered it to my house and they walked away. They didn't even say anything. They just literally I waved to the guy and he walked away. And that now, that may be a foreign concept for a lot of people and say, no way, I don't want to do that. I want to do the dealer system. I want to do but I don't know the dealer system to me, my experience has not

been very good. Now. The last couple of cars I will, I have purchased a couple of them with the same person and that actually went a long way because I had a relationship with her and it really, you know, it made the process a lot easier. But other than that, the other processes I've had have not been very nice. And so it's one of these things where I'm just like, ugh, like I'm not even considering. You know, this this Ford

f one fifty that everyone's so excited about. I mean, I don't know what's that going to be like when when you know, these these MSRP searcharges come aboard. But anyway, back to the Sony. It looks like a really nice car. And the one thing I thought, there's so many screens inside, so there's you know, obviously everyone gets a screen. Sony has music, They've got you know, do they have a streaming service? I don't know. I don't think they do yet,

which is weird. Why doesn't Sony have a streaming service? So, but they also have a PlayStation console, so you can, sorry, you can play video games on the PlayStation with a PlayStation controller using a remote I guess connection to it. But it's you know, it looks cool, it sounds cool, and we're just gonna have to see, like what comes of this. I mean, it's Sony's a big company, and I think that they could pull this off. But in there, I guess the road testing one of them already, which

is really cool. But when I look at the picture of these two cars, they just looked Tesla very tesla esk All right, next question, Hello Rich, Happy New Year. I'm looking for an app that really works in removing those frustrating spam messages. I had Metro PCs and change to T Mobile. Once I made that change, numerous spam messages began at all times of the day and night. I contacted T Mobile. They suggested I download Google messaging app. I did, but they continue I don't wish to change

my number. Please help Karina. All right, Karina, this is definitely a problem. It happens to everyone, and I think you know number one. I think that what T Mobile said was right. I think that downloading the Google Messaging app definitely helps, and so I would I would do that and make sure you're using it. So if you're on an Android, which it says sent for my Android, make sure that you are actually using the Google Messages app.

It looks very similar to the Samsung Messaging app or the Messages There's a lot of apps that look similar, So make sure that when you open up that Google Messaging app, it is the one that you're opening that's Google and it's not a different app, because these apps can be tricky. And make sure that that's set is your default messaging app. Typically, the first time you open up Google Messages, it will say do you want this

to be your default messaging app? So do that, make sure you're using it, and then make sure you're turning on the spam protection inside the app. There's a setting that you have to turn on to make sure that it's doing the spam protection. When you first set up, it may ask you that in the flow you might have said no. By accident, you might have just skipped

over it. So make sure that you actually select that option to have it go through those messages and it uses I think AI on the phone to scan them to do that. Now, with spam robo calls, you can get an app and it will filter those out and it does a decent job, but it's still those robo calls get through. And with spam it's a little bit different. It's just a different system. It's a little bit trickier. And what I find is that these spam messages come

and go in waves. So if you're getting slammed with a bunch of spam texts, you know, it could have been like I said earlier that you know your your phone number is out there on the open web. It was part of some sort of data breach and someone gets ahold of these numbers and they immediately start texting them. Or it could just be random. But the other thing to know so you can write it out, you know,

if it's happening incessantly, yeah, it's a pain. But I find that on my phone, I get a bunch of spam texts one day or you know, a week, and all of a sudden, I don't get them again for a while, and all of a sudden I get them again, and then I don't get them. So the couple things you want to do is make sure that you don't reply or click the links in any of these messages.

That is the most important thing you can do. So don't reply, don't click the links, and that way you don't give them any indication that that's a good phone number, that there's a live human behind you. Don't want to do that. The other thing you don't want to do, or you do want to do, is that if you know, if you're getting messages from any sort of legitimate service, like let's say you signed up for Sears appliance repair at some point and they said, oh, do you want

us to text you when you're a repair man? Is a repair person is close? And you say sure, and now they keep texting you every once in a while, Hey, we've got ten percent off any repairs. Give us a call, and that's you know, some people might consider that spam, but that's actually a legitimate message that you signed up for. When you hand it over your phone number, it was probably in tiny, tiny print that said hey, you agree to let us text you a certain amount of times.

Now I feel like, you know, I don't. I'm pretty liberal with my phone number, Like I give it out to a lot of things. I know some people keep it private. I should probably keep it more private, but I you know, I'm kind of like, eh, what are you gonna do? You know, So I sign up for a lot of those things, A lot of these things they want you to sign up for, you know, if you want like a coupon code or something, they want to text you because they getting that text number is

really good because people look at their texts. They it's not like an email where it can just go into you know, a spam or you can just delete it quickly. Like texts, you know, they wring your phone and you see them and you kind of react to them immediately versus email. So so text is very uh, it's coveted,

you know, for marketing. But my point is if you have signed up for some of these text messages from legitimate companies, those you can go through and type stop to and send that as a message and they should take you off their list. So if it's a legitimate company like best Buy or you know, T Mobile, or maybe not tea Mobile because that's your if that's your carrier, but you know like a best Buy or a Seers or anything, you know, a hotel that you stayed at.

You can just you can any message you get from them at any time, just reply stop and you should get an automated text back that says, Okay, you've been taking off our list, no more messages from us. So that's what you can do in that and hopefully with a combination of those two things, along with the Google Messages app, you should be able to cut down on some of your spam, at least for the time being.

All Right, I saw so many gadgets this week, Like when I tell you so many gadgets, Like I can't I cannot believe how many things I recorded on my phone, Like I don't know. I think I have stories for the rest of the year with all the gadgets I saw. I mean, I just saw so many. So it's like I can't talk about all of them because there's just too many. I've been posting them to my Instagram at rich on Tech. But the one that really stands out that I think they're gonna sell a lot of is

this Chipolo. It's called the Chipolo card spot and this is a credit card sized tracker and looking you know, so you know what you're familiar with, the air tag. This is pretty much a version of the air tag that slips into your wallet. So it's about two credit cards thick. And before you say, rich, give me a break, Tile has that. Tiles had the credit card racking device for years. I have one in my wallet right now. Yes they do. But here's the difference. Tile does not

use Apple's find my network and Chipolo does. And what does that mean. It means that when you lose your wallet, chances are you're probably gonna locate it. Now, I can't voucher the cash that might may or may not still be inside, but you may be able to locate your wallet because chances are the find my network is going to locate this Chipolo device. So this Chipolo device doesn't

have GPS inside, but it has a Bluetooth beacon. And how this works is that the Bluetooth beacon, if your phone is nearby, it just talks directly to your phone. And if you're looking for your Chipolo wallet, you know, your wallet with a Chipolo inside, you just ring the sound and it will there's a there's a little speaker on the card. Actually it's pretty loud and it will it will chirp up to you know. It's like I think one hundred and five decibels, so it's a pretty

loud chirp. So hopefully if you know you lose your wallet in your house, like where did I put that? You just press the button on your phone in the Apple Find My app and you say play sound, and it will play the sound on the chipolo. And that's if you're nearby. You know, there's a certain range you have to be in for that to work, so you'd have to walk around your house and kind of do that.

The other way is that if if your wallet is disconnected from you, like let's say you put your wallet on the table at the restaurant, you get up and you go to the bathroom, or you just leave it there. When you leave the restaurant, you'll get a notification from apples Find My that says, hey, you left your wallet behind, And that's like sort of a media which is really nice.

I get these notifications for my AirPods when I leave them behind in my back, like if I if I walk out of my you know whatever, you just leave behind, you get a little notification that says, hey, you left your air pods behind, So that will happen, and so that's a great feature. And the other way you can do it is if you're far away, like let's say you drop this thing and you just keep walking and

you don't realize that it's disconnected from you. Then that's when you tap into the power of Apples find my network and so you say, locate my item, and it will basically all the phones that are nearby the item when it sees when that phone sort of scans the area for any Bluetooth devices, it will see this Bluetooth device and it will say, oh, Bluetooth device five nine four seven two nine two two two seven three is

right here. Let me send that location to Apples servers and then that location and then your phone says, oh, hey, I'm checking in on five seven nine two two two seven three whatever. Do you have any location updates? And they say, sure, here's here's the location, and it's all encrypted. It's all secure. Apple says, even they can't see the location of these things if they wanted to. So, but that's how it works, and so now you can go navigate to that area where your wallet is and you

can find it. So this is thirty five dollars. I have a feeling they're going to sell a ton of these, because it's pretty much I think the first wallet sized tracker that works with Apples find My. There's and a lot of when find My came out, So Apple used to reserve find my for themselves, and they opened up that network to anyone that wants to tap into it. I'm sure there's obviously restrictions on how you can use

it and all this good stuff. But like Chipolo typically would be seen as a competitor to Apple with their tracking devices, because once Apple came out with the air tag, it's like, oh now Chipolo is a you know, their product was a sort of an air tag many years ago. In fact, I remember covering Chipolo. This is a good example of things that I said. They happen at CES

and they don't come along until years. So I covered Chipolo, no joke, probably eight years ago at CS, and back then it was such you know, it was like, okay, well, Tile's the big one. Why would you ever go at Chipolo? And I said, well, I had these features. Basically, I think the feature that was better was that the battery was user replaceable, and so I kind of presented it on TV. But it wasn't that sexy. It's not that exciting. It's like, oh, here's a tracker. Everyone's like, well, how's

it better than Tile? Well, okay, you got to replaceable battery. Big deal, it's not. The finding network is never going to be as big because it's not just the product isn't as popular. So now when Apple came out with find My and the fact that Chippolo can tap into that network, that's a pretty big deal. Now Tyle is doing its own thing where they're tapping into Amazon sidewalk network, which we haven't really heard much about, so we're not

sure how big that is. And then they're also tapping into they were purchased by Life three sixty, which is installed on like thirty million phones, so that's going to really expand their finding network. So the good news is for consumers, no matter what you choose, the chances of finding these little devices are better than ever before. And

so I've got these air tags on my stuff. They're great, they're really fantastic, but I'm I don't know if I'm gonna put this Chipolo on my wallet, because my wallet is very minimalistic and so I actually don't have room for this in my wallet. But I do like the idea of having a tracker in my wallet, so I might have to I might have to ditch one of my cards in my wallet to fit this thing in there, because my wallet can literally only hold like one, two, three,

four cards. So I've got to figure out how I'm gonna get this thing in there anyway. Chipolo card Spot, the I mentioned the battery situation. You cannot replace the battery on this device. It's so thin, there's no way you'd be able to do it. I'm not sure. There must be using a proprietary battery, but you can send it back in and get a new one. I think for like fifty percent less. The battery will lasts about two years. So there you have it, Chippolo card Spot.

You heard it here. First thirty five dollars available in February. Yeah, I'm gonna get one just to check it out and just to have it. Definitely get one for my wife's wallet for sure. Oh Am, I supposed to have another question. Here we go, Penny says hey, Rich, Happy New Year. Can you check out the upsea warranty and let us know if it's worth the purchase for your cell phone instead of going through the cell phone carrier. Thank you

in advance, Penny, Penny, good, good question. I never really favor the warranty sold by carriers because they're usually pretty expensive and you can sometimes get cheaper warranties through places like Square Trade. So Square Trade is now owned by all State, I believe, and so you know, they're if kind of all Square Trade was my go to for a long time. I really liked them because they they

were just they were excellent and I met them. You know, whenever I meet with a company, I just like them better because I have an understanding of like how they run the company, who they are, the people behind the company, and so it just helps me like put a face to the name and really know that like there are like what makes them, you know click. So Square Trade is one to check out the trick with it Square

Trade versus like the carrier ones. It may be cheaper, but typically you have to have your phone to get a replacement. So if you lost your phone or if it's stolen, they typically don't replace that. And that's the main question you need to ask when you get one of these warranties is do they replace your phone if it's lost or stolen. Most of the carrier plans do have that provision because they're more expensive, but some of

these third party plans may not. So even with Upse, I'm not really I don't really know much about Upsy, to be honest, and so just looking at their website taking a look, I mean, it looks legitimate, says the Smarter Way to warranty, and it's a nice website. It looks like they've got warranties for all kinds of stuff they do, smartphones, laptops, tablets, appliances. It looks like they cover everything. So it's much much broader. I think Square

Trade does as well. But the other one that I like is Ashurian, so they have warranties as well, so I would check into that one. So Assurian I know, and I know Square Trade, so I would check those two Upsey just kind of see what the deal is with Upsey, and again see see what the provision is

if you lose your phone. The other main thing I want to mention is that with a Shurian if you have if you have that going on, a Shurian allows you to take your phone to the U Break I Fix stores and so that's a really nice thing where you have a physical location to take your phone to the store. So that's a nice thing as well. All right, let's see, do we have one more story before we go? Oh yeah, I mentioned Ring. Okay, let's talk about this

before I go. So Ring alarm system. I've been tempted to switch to this for a long time because I love what Ring is doing and I feel like it's a great value because their plan is like ten bucks a month and so it's a really good value. I don't know if it's I hope it's still ten dollars a month. But anyway, Ring came out with a glass

break sensor. So this was the main sensor that they did not have that the other ones do, and so they had like a workaround where you can use the A word you know that Amazon assistant to use your echo speaker to monitor for glass break. But it wasn't really a slick enough solution for me. So anyway, glass break sensor coming from Ring on February sixteenth, I think

it says, and it's forty bucks. So two pack is seventy and now you can finally have a complete ring security system for your house that does all the stuff that the other security systems do that I think was the missing piece to a really really good security system. So I'm going to look into switching to that. Perhaps. Oh, I can't believe it. It's already the end of the show. Still a lot of questions. That's gonna do it for

this episode. If you'd like to submit a question for me to answer, go to my Facebook page, Facebook dot com, slash rich on Tech, hit the big blue send email button, or go to Richontech dot tv hit the email icon. I would love it if you would rate and review this podcast. Be the first reviewer of the new year. Just go to the listening app of your choice and write a quick line about what you like about this show to help other people understand why they should listen.

You can find me on social media. I am at rich on Tech, and no matter where you live in the US, you can download the free ktla plus app on Apple, tv TV and Roku. Once you do, scroll to the tech section and you can watch all of my TV segments on demand. It's so exciting. My name is rich Demirol. Thanks so much for listening. There are so many ways you can spend an hour of your time. I appreciate you spending with me. Happy New Year. Hopefully

we will have an amazing twenty twenty two. I will talk to you real soon