Google Pixel 8a Review & Unique Motion Sensor

one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Give me a call if you have a question about technology. Email is also open. Just go to Rich on tech dot TV and hit contact once again, Rich on tech dot TV Hit Contact. Guests coming up on this week's show include Drew Binski. He is a travel YouTuber who has visited every country in the world. He's got a new book out he's going to talk about that, plus his favorite tech tools,

and we've got the co creators of the Kinny. This is a really interesting little gadget. It's a wireless motion sensor. And before you think, okay, I've got that from my smart home, this is a little bit different and it's very unique and there are some really interesting use cases. So we will have the creators of the Kinnion a little bit later in the show. So many things happening. This week's theme is summertime. I know my kids are out for the summer. Lots of kids getting out for

the summer, so it is in full motion. Summer is in full swing here. Lots of things happening. Apple's WWDC Worldwide Developers Conference will happen this week, so it kicks off on Monday with a keynote. And the big rumor right now is that Apple is linking up with Open Ai, the makers of Chat GPT, to somehow make Siri smarter. Now we are not sure how that's gonna happen exactly, but that is the big rumor. Whether it's going to be just Chat GBT built into the iPhone or the

AI smarts. But I think people are ready for this. This is what Steve Jobs imagined when he came up with Siri, a smart assistant that can help you do anything on your phone. And over the years we've seen many of them. We've seen Quartana from Microsoft, we have seen Bixby from Samsung, we have seen the Google Assistant, which has now evolved into Gemini and Siri can do a lot of things and it's gotten smarter over the years, but it hasn't really reached that sort of personal assistant level.

So we will see if Apple really makes a big change with the iPhone. Spoiler alert, I don't want to say that this stuff isn't gonna happen soon, but even if they announce something next week, we're not going to see any changes until at least September, and potentially some of the rumors are saying twenty twenty five. So we will see. I know the iPhone nothing changes quickly with that, but I'm excited to see what's going to happen there. Just sent out the newsletter on the website rich on

tech dot tv. Two travel sites I mentioned in the newsletter this week. I'll mention them here because if you haven't signed up for the newsletter, go to rich on tech dot tv, hit the sign up button and it will arrive in your inbox. But two sites I mentioned this week. The first one is called Points. Yeah, so there is a website if you've got points, you know from your credit card or your frequent flyer programs or

your hotel programs. You may be figuring out how to use those and how to make the most of them. So there's a lot of times where let's say you have points on Delta, they may transfer to another program and that program may have a cheaper redemption rate than what Delta has. So real frequent flyers know that they don't just check the airline or the program that they

have points with. They check all the different programs so that they can see which ones might be the cheapest use of their points or the maximum value of their points. And so I've told you this before. I don't play the points game in a big way, but yes I do have points, and of course I want to use them. I end up not using them because I'm always worried about not getting the best value out of them, and so when I do use them, I try to make

the most out of them. And so this website points Yeah, is completely free and it lets you search through all these different programs. They have a whole bunch of them on there, all of the credit card programs, all of the airline programs, or a lot of the majority of the big airline programs, a lot of the hotel programs, and what's different about this site than some of the other ones is that the results are quick, so they'll be delivered to your screen at about twenty seconds. The

other one I like is called point me. The search can take a couple of minutes to complete, so that's what's really neat about this one. You can search across four days. So let's say you wanted to travel on Wednesday. You can search a couple of days on either side of that for free to see if maybe you left

on Thursday. It's half the points. And if you upgrade to a paid membership, which you don't have to, but if you do, you can search I think for eight days on either side, so total of like sixteen days going. And you know by the time anyway, there's a lot

of search on this website. It's very cool. It's just something to bookmark when you're looking for your hotels or flights this summer points Yeah Dot And you know, if you listen to the show that everything I mentioned on the show I link up on the website rich on tech dot TV. Hit the light bulb icon on the website at the top, and that will bring you to real time links to everything I mentioned. All right now.

The next one is if you don't like, if you're not the best flyer right, if you're kind of a person who's a little scared of the turbulence, and we've seen a lot more. I don't know, it seems like we've seen a lot more turbulence, at least in the news. But this is a website called turbly t r bli dot com got this through the Point Sky and they mentioned this website that lets you check the turbulence forecast

for your flight. So if you type in a flight, so let's say I type in from LAX to EWR, which is a common flight that I take, gives you a listing of all the different flights United Jet Blue Alaska. You tap on your flight and then it will tell you what the turbulence forecast is. And not just the turbulence forecast, but there's all kinds of other stuff. Tells you the route, tells you if it's going to be bumpy, tells you if the tailwind is going to be strong

so that means you might arrive earlier. Tells you if there's thunderstorms along the way, and if the takeoff and landing is going to be smooth because it tells you how much wind is on the landing. I was in a landing I think it was in either Japan or China, and it was so windy. I mean, we were just bouncing all around on the landing like I was like, are we gonna land this thing or what? But I do put a lot of faith in these amazing pilots that fly these planes. They know what they're doing. We

do not. And I know that whenever there's turbulence, what do you do? The best is when you're sitting next to like a pilot that is off. You know, they're just like in the seat next to you or something, and when you see that turbulence, you just kind of look over at them and they're just like it doesn't even phase them. You're like, all right, everything's good. Also, I'm sure you look at the flight attendants to see like if they're having a reaction. That's always kind of

like the main thing. Bobo's getting his mic ready? Do you have you have thoughts on this? Do you do?

seat gets on. They get on. So it doesn't happen often, but I've seen it, and they're never I mean they're never in first. You would think they would give that first, you know, Row one C A and uh yeah. By the way, it is my dream to fly first. I don't fly first most of the time. You don't know I fly. I am. I am like Rick Steve. I'm Rick Steve's I'm just fine with an aisle seat. Yes, I like the economy plus if I can get it with the little extra leg room that part. But I'm fine.

I'm totally I can go anywhere. I can go anywhere and first obviously live flat is amazing. But no, I'm a I'm a you know, I'm an easy flyer. I really like. My thing is like save the money so that you can spend it when you get there, because if you're spending all that money on, you know, an upgraded seat. Then you know it's just less money to spend when you get they're only in the plane for a couple hours. I mean, it's funny. You're the second person to ask me that in two days. So I

guess I give off that first class flying vibe. But you're rich, Demiro, why wouldn't you be first class? It's expensive. It's too expensive even I don't care. It's just unless your company is paying for it. Yes, the only times i've I've flown it is when I'm either taking some sort of upgrade or I have like a corporate, you know company that's paying for it. But otherwise you'll just see me and coach. All right, let me give you a review of some earbuds that I really like. These

are the nothing earbuds. So I test a lot of ear buds, especially on the plane. That's that's my main place to test these things, to see how the noise cancelation works. And ninety nine percent of the time I put the earbuds in my ears and I take them out after twenty minutes. Don't even like them. They go on the shelf and they're done. I'm not gonna recommend them, but the nothing earbuds are excellent. They make two versions, the nothing Ear and the nothing Ear A. The EARA

are the budget models. They start at ninety nine dollars. The nothing Ear is one hundred and fifty dollars. Both of these models have a great fit, they're comfortable, the audio is excellent. They have a unique design. They've got active noise cancelation and transparency mode, and even a fun little audio I don't know chime when you switch between the different modes, whether it's transparency or noise cancelation. They've got fast charging. Ten minutes of plugging in will give

you ten hours of playback. If you've got the case, you get almost forty hours of playback because the case also charges them. It's got all of the premium stuff, so the pinch controls on the stems, the sensors that pause and play music when you insert them or remove them from your ears. They've got good water and dust resistance. They're just really great earbuds. So if you're looking for a pair of earbuds for an Android phone, I highly recommend these earbuds. Now, why do you go with the

premium ones? They offer a wireless charging case and a customized sound profile. So if you want the absolute best sound from Nothing, pay the extra fifty bucks go with the Nothing ear But otherwise the Nothing ear a are excellent, and they've got this great yellow color that they come in. They also come in black and white if you're not that adventurous, but I love the yellow color. It looks like something that would float if you threw it in

the water. It's a great, great set of earbuds. If you've got a Nothing phone, which I don't think you have, but if you did, you'd be able to set chat GPT as your default voice assistant when you use these earbuds, which is also really cool. Now you might be saying, Rich, what about iPhones? Should I buy these if I have an iPhone? Yes, you can buy them and they will will absolutely work if you have an iPhone. But here is the thing, why would you not get what works

with Apple's ecosystem, which are their own AirPods. That way you get access to Siri. That's why I like the Nothing buds for the Android phones the most. All right, coming up, I also have my review of the Google Pixel eight, a budget smartphone eight A eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology at Triple

eight Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one website for the show richon Tech dot TV. If you want a link to something I mentioned, hit the lightbulb icon. I just mentioned some handy travel sites. If you want to email me, just hit the contact link up at the top. Like I said, we're playing all summer songs today. It is

a summer travel season. I've got no less than two people today, friends that texted or emailed me asking for recommendations on a good portable battery charger for their phone, right, like a portable battery that you can bring along with you on your trip. So I've got these linked up on my website rich on Tech dot tv. There is a link on the side if you scroll down, it says shop and that'll bring you to my Amazon page. And the ones that I recommend the most are Anchor

a n K er. They make them in a couple of different ways. You can get like a mag safe one that will actually just magnetically attached to the back of your phone. That's great, but it's going to charge your phone slower than one that you plug in, and it's also going to be a little bit more expensive. So if you want something that you plug in which anyone can use, they've got a great one. It's about thirty dollars for that. The thing to look for, there's

a couple of different things. There's also one that plugs into the bottom of your phone that's cheaper, but it's going to have less of a charge. And then they've got one that is it's got like a little display on it so it can tell you how much of a charge it has, because most of these just typically have a couple of lights on them that lets you know how much of a charge you get, roughly like twenty five, fifty, seventy five or one hundred percent when

that thing's charge. The main things to look for the millionamp hours, So the higher the number, the more charges you're going to get. So let's say a typical smartphone has about a battery that's almost let's say four to five thousand millionp hours, So if you get one of these chargers, that's ten thousand MILLIONMP hours that's going to recharge your phone twice. If you get one that's twenty thousand million AMP hours, that's probably going to charge your

phone about four times. So again, let's just say five thousand millionp hours one charge on your phone, So every five thousand you're going to get an extra charge. Most people, you probably don't need the twenty thousand. I'd say for an average day, you might want the ten thousand. Five thousand's going to give you, you know, maybe one and a half charges. The other thing to look for is

USBC in and out. So a lot of these the cheaper ones have sort of the older style USB A that lets you plug in your cable that's going to charge your phone a lot slower, and when you're on the go and you're out and about, you want to charge your phone as fast as possible because you want to take this thing off your phone and use your phone again. So I would look for one that has USBC in and out. So read the descriptions very closely.

If you're buying one of these things on any website, make sure that you can charge it with USBC and you can charge your phone with USBC from it. Those are the main things to look for. But yeah, get a portable charger for your summer vacations. Let's go to Keith in andover Kansas. Keith, you're on with Rich.

twenty dollars a month. We're gonna come back. I'll talk more about these AI systems, So hang on the line there, Keith eighty to eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. I'll tell you my picks for the best AI coming up after the break. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology at triple eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven

four to two, four one zero one. If you have a question or comment for the show, you can go to the website rich on Tech dot tv hit the link that says contact. If you want to link to something I mentioned, just go to the website and hit the light bulb icon before the break we had Keith and Kansas ask about the best use of these AI systems. He wants to do research, he wants to look up medical questions, I believe he said, Bible study, and a

couple of other things. So he was wondering should he pay the twenty dollars a month and which one is best for him. So you've got a couple of different choices out there. You've got Gemini, which is Google's AI. Then you've got chat GPT, which obviously has become like Kleenex that's like a brand name for AI at this point. Then you've got Claude, which is another AI that's really good.

And you've got Mistroll, which is out of Europe, which is actually surprisingly great, Like I thought it was going to be much more like European Focus, but it's actually really good. And you've got one called Perplexity, and you've got Copilot, which is from Microsoft. So you've got a lot of choices out there. Let me break them down for you. So number one, Gemini from Google, I think is a great AI because it is loaded with the

information that Google has, and that's real time information. So if you're doing research, if you're looking for historical information, something that is factual. Gemini is really good because not only does Google have in place very strict standards for what they write into this chatbot, they have all the information, They've got the Knowledge Panel, they have all the stuff that they've been doing for many years, just now they

kind of translated that into a chatbot. So Gemini, I think, is a great, great choice if you're looking for real time information and factual information. Chat GBT is great kind of all around. So if you are just looking to chat with someone or something, or you just want to talk back and forth, or you just want some general information, chatchbt is great. The problem is it is not completely up to date in many aspects, so unless you're paying it may not surf the web and find those answers.

Sometimes it will, but chatchbt is kind of a generalist, right, It's going to have just a lot of general knowledge, and if you want to kind of use that, it's a great It's very polished, it's very smart, it's witty, it's silly. I mean, there's so many uses of it because that's probably the one that people are using the most, so it is evolving the fastest. Then you've got Claude, Claude dot ai. This is one of my favorites, but

Claude is. Oh and by the way, I should mention that chatchibt can also do a lot of things with images as well. If you're paying for it, it can create images. Now actually, I think even if you're not paying for it, you can create images for that as well, So it can be used to generate images. Oh, I forgot Meta has got theirs now too. Meta Ai. Claude is great if you're working with any sort of text, so you can throw a PDF in there, you can throw a long document into there, and Claude is really

good at handling those long documents. So if you're looking to summarize something, or you have a bunch of information you want to organize it, Claude dot ai is really good for that. You know, it doesn't have access to the Internet, so you can't really ask it to look up things. Of course, it has a basic amount of knowledge just like all these other ones, but it doesn't have that live access to the Internet. But Claude is.

I find it to be really really good if you're doing anything with writing, if you're doing anything with your resume, if you're doing anything that requires rewriting or summarizing. It is really great at that. Let's see perplexity AI. I one hundred percent love this app, and I love it for one reason. It's got this great feature that kind of gives you a book report on anything you ask

it about. So if you ask a sample question like how do earthquakes occur, it shows you the sources that it uses to actually come up with its answer, and it comes up with a very nice, what I call book report answer. So if you want quote unquote a book report answer on a topic or anything, perplexity ai

is excellent. I've got it on my home screen on my phone, and I specifically love what they do called discover, So every day they have the hottest topics kind of trending out there in the world, and it gives you a little book report about those topics. And if you're looking to learn something, let's say you want to learn about a team or the history of something. It's such a great way to learn the history of something because

it gives you these great little reports. And again, all of these services that I'm talking about, they all offer a free level of service, but then you can pay that usually is about twenty bucks a month for that elevated service which is going to give you unlimited answers, unlimited access, and maybe some extras. And so I do pay for Chat GBT. I have paid for Claude in

the past. I kind of bop back and forth between those two for paying because claud is really great for all the research and work that I need to do with with documents. But Chat GBT I just got it because of the new voice system that they are going to be implementing soon, which lets you talk back and forth almost like a real human. Now, when it comes to a good overall system, Microsoft's Copilot is really good.

When it comes to surfing the web. The thing that you need to know is that they're using BING search results, which you know may be good, maybe bad, it depends. Bing is still out there, it's still a contender. Just a lot of people don't necessarily use it. But that's where Copilot from Microsoft gets a lot of their information, and it does have access to that real time information from being So that's an option, and it's built into

a lot of the Windows. A lot of the new ones have or all of the new ones have the Copilot key on there, so you can just tap that on your keyboard. It's right next to the space bar and that will bring up copilot. And that's really good. And then the new one on the block that I get a lot of angry emails about is meta AI. So Meta AI is built into Instagram, it's built into WhatsApp,

it's built into Facebook. A lot of people are asking me if you can turn that off, and the answer is no. It is at the top of your screen. And again this it's actually not that bad. Like I know people are hating on it, but let's think about it. Facebook has used all of the posts that we have made on Facebook and Instagram for the past I don't know,

twenty years or so to program their AI. So they know how people talk, they know how people comment, they know how people discuss topics, they know what's interesting to people, and so their AI is actually quite good. And it does give you sources and it uses Google for a

lot of its search. So I just did a search for or a recent search I did was I was looking for a great burger place in Redmond where I was staying up for the Microsoft event, and it gave me one, two, three, four, five places that was good for a burger, and it tells me where it got that information. Now, some of this information is, you know, a trip Advisor, an apartment complex up there, and then

Uber eats. So I don't know if that that's that great, but it also helps you search Google for that information as well. So those are my kind of main kind of talking points about each one of them. The Wall Street Journal also did sort of an independent review of each one of these. They came up with best Overall. Chat gibt Oh they sorry, they said, did not lead an overall performance despite its update. Oh that's the other

thing I like about chat GBT remembers your preferences. I was just telling my wife this, you can teach it things. So what I do is with chat GBT, I teach it and it remembers that. So if you say, hey, remember when I say this that I want you to do that, it will remember. So that's also a plus of chat GBT. Claude there, Yeah, Claude. They say strength designed to be inoffensive, which, yes, Claude is supposed to be a little bit friendlier than a lot of these.

Copilot good at creative writing. Let's see Gemini from Google Access to real time data. That's what I just said, perplexity, research Focus cites it sources. Wow. Wall Street Journal just said exactly pretty much what I said. Okay, so they say summary, health advice, best chat, GBT, that's scary, finance, Gemini, cooking chat GBT, work, perplexity, creative writing, copilot, summarization, perplexity,

current events, perplexity, coding perplexity, that's interesting, speed CHATCHYBT. So again, I think the main thing to know about paying for these is try them out, see what you like, see what the limitations are, because if you're not using it in a big way, you don't necessarily need to pay for these things, because now the name of the game is they're giving a lot of this away for free in hopes of getting that user base, and then eventually

they figure more paid features will come. Well, Keith, I think you get the award for the longest answer ever to a question on this show. So thanks for that question. Hopefully you've got some some clarity now on what to use there eight eight eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. My name is rich Dedmuro. You are listening to rich

on Tech Welcome back to Rich on tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology at triple eight Rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Let's go to Rockston in Ventura, Roxton. You're on with Wretch.

let me answer incoming calls. You know, I'm supposed to sweep up to answer and sweep down to decline, and it won't do that, and also won't take a fingerprint for ID for lockedout. And it shuts off the sound occasionally and right in the middle of talking, in the middle of a conversation.

There could be a problem with the screen if it's not swiping and the fingerprint readers not working, but that wouldn't really explain the sound not going on sometimes so you know, and it could be that the sound is being manipulated by the volume rocker. You know, sometimes you're adjusting volume. It could be adjusting the volume of the sound.

But what I would do is personally, I know this a little complicated, but I would go into the settings and I would format this phone, like so there's a setting that says factory reset, and so that's what I would do. And you would have to set this thing up from the beginning. And so that means signing into your Google account, your phone number and everything will still stay there, but it would mean signing into your Google account and then starting over signing in and then setting

up this phone fresh. Now, if you still have problems after you are able to do that, and you may need to enlist the help of someone that knows what they're doing to help you along with this. But once you do that, if the phone is still having the same exact issues, then you got to push on Motorola to get a replacement or Pure Talk to get a replacement, to just you know, tell them, hey, look, this hasn't worked since day one, and just what can you do? You know, I know they're gonna have to make an

exception to the rule of two weeks. But you know, I don't know how much you spent on this phone, but it might just be the easiest thing to do is just to convince them to give you a new one. You're staying as a customer. They're really just swapping out a device. They're going to see what's wrong with it and just give you another one. It's not that big of a deal. I don't know how expensive this phone is because I can't get a price on it on the website, but I think that that will probably be

just fine. But that's what I would do. Format it and start over and see if it still gives you those issues. And if it does, then you got to convince someone to get you new one oh one time payment. So it's about a two hundred and fifty dollars phone. This is not that expensive of a phone. So someone whether it's Motorola, they've probably got a one year warranty on this. You could probably at least get a refurbished

model from them if you swap it out. UH, keep me posted, go on the website, give me an update. Roxton appreciate the call today eight eight eight Rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Well, if you're using Instagram, you might see something new as you're scrolling, something that might be a little frustrating, something that actually stops you from using the app. It's an AD break. Yes, Instagram is testing what's called an AD break. This will actually stop you

from scrolling until you view an AD. A lot of people on x have been posting screenshots of this, also on Reddit, and Instagram spokesperson did confirm that they are testing this and uh, they don't know if they're gonna use this going far, but they probably will. So if you see this. The AD break includes a countdown timer indicating how long you have to sit there and wait before you can continue browsing. And apparently this is not just on the reels you know a video. This is

on when you're just scrolling through your your feed. And so you're just scrolling your feed and all of a sudden, your thumb goes up. But then the nothing on the on the screen moves because it is frozen in time, and you'll see that little countdown it says five four three two one. Un skippable ads are a part of the landscape now when it comes to a lot of other services, whether it is TikTok, whether it is YouTube.

So sometimes you can skip them, sometimes you can't, or sometimes you have to watch a little portion of it before you can actually skip it. So we were watching a movie last night. I think it was on Amazon Prime or no, it was on Peacock. And even though I pay for Peacock, you still have to watch some ads. Now, this ad was a long time. It was like one hundred and eighty seconds, but after that the movie was free of ads. So it was like one big ad and then you get to watch the movie. But yeah,

there's no skipping through that ad. And this is why these streaming services like on demand versus the DVR, which I've mentioned before, the DVR was all the rage. Why did all the streaming services and everyone move away from the dvr because that includes you recording something and then skipping through the ads. When you're watching on demand, there's no skipping through those ads because they control the experience. And in fact, on Peacock, when you pause, there's also

an ad. So when you sit and pause, you know, and your wife asks you something, you pause the screen. Next thing you know, on the on the TV. There's an ad and there's a big QR code and it's like, you know, make the most of your break or something. They you know, they're actually quite fun the ads that they have. But yeah, so Instagram be prepared those unskippable ads. And if you have an older Apple TV, speaking of streaming services, that you're running Netflix on, Netflix is ending

support for second and third generation Apple TVs. This is gonna happen on July thirty first, twenty twenty four. Don't don't get all out of shape here, because it's these are very old Apple TVs. These were released in twenty ten and twenty twelve, so you're talking over a decade old. So if you have one of these and you're still running Netflix on it, you will not be able to run Netflix on it after July thirty first, twenty twenty four.

The latest Apple TV was released in November twenty twenty two. It's the seventh generation Apple TV. Again, these are the second and third generation Apple TV, so you're going back a long time.

budget smartphone. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology at Triple eight Rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Give me a call if you have a question about technology. Something is bugging you, something is not working, you need a recommendation for something, or maybe you just want to say hi. Do we let those calls through? I don't know. Maybe we will today,

depends on how Kim is feeling. And Bobo and Me website for the show eight eighty US rich on tech dot tv rich on tech dot TV. There you can get links to anything I mentioned by hitting the light bulb. You can learn more about how to listen to this show as a podcast. If you'd like to listen again, you can watch my TV segments. You can get in touch by sending an email by hitting contact, and you can learn more about me all on the website Richontech dot tv and if you want to follow me on

social media at rich on Tech. Jay from Woodland Hills wrote in on the website, I have a Samsung S ten. I want to put an air tag equivalent in my car. Please advise which one I should use? Thanks? Great question, Jay, And you're just in time because Android just activated what's called the Find My Device Network. This is brand new from Google. So in fact, on your Android phone you may get a message that says, hey, do you want to be a part of this find my Device network?

And it uses all of the Android devices out there to help you find your stuff. Yes, this is what Apple did with the iPhone and all the Apple devices a couple of years ago with the Find My network. But those air tags are just going to work with the iPhone. Now, if you have an Android, you can finally get devices that will work with Googles Find my Device network. So which one do I recommend for you?

There are two that are very popular, pebbleb and Chipolo c Hipolo and pebble b. Now there's going to be many more where this came from, but these are two of the kind of out of the gate, right and so Chapolo makes one called the Chipolo one Point. It's twenty eight dollars for a one pack and it's basically identical to an air tag. The main thing you need to know is that the battery lasts about a year and the battery is a replaceable battery, so it's kind

of like the battery. Let's see what kind of battery it is. I'm guessing it's that that standard like two oh yep, there it is the CR two oh three to two, so that is the standard battery that it uses. It's twenty eight dollars. A four pack is seventy nine dollars, and that is basically the equivalent of an air tag. So that's uh. I actually have one of these at home. I'll be honest. I've had it for a week and I have not activated to test it yet, so I

wish I would have done it anticipating your question. But that is that's probably the one that you want to go with. Chippolo is great. They are a company that's been making these for a long time and now they've got these new ones. Now again, the only issue is these are not They're tough to get. That's the problem. All these companies are offering them, but they're not really

shipping them just yet. So reviewers like myself have gotten some of them, and some of the early early pre orders have gotten them, but right now this says this is shipping in mid July.

So again the main thing to know about these find my tags and trackers, whether it's from Android or whether it's from iOS. These do not give real time location. They are based on the last known location, which is at the mercy of a device that has seen this. So these do not have GPS on them. They do not have a cellular connection on them, so they're only

as good as the device is around them. So if you park your car in the middle of a field and you walk away and your phone will that that tag will not be updated unless someone else kind of walks by that car. That is part of the network, So you have to keep that in mind. So it's only as good as you know the network that it's on and the amount of phones and things that it

can pain. So if you're in a very dense location with a lot of smartphones nearby, then these things are going to be getting a location a lot and a very accurate location. But if you're kind of in the in a rural area or in the middle of nowhere, these things don't get updated by themselves. They rely on another device sort of seeing that and relaying that location information back up to the server and then when you look for it, you can see where that is, so

that you know. That's the main thing is just keeping that in mind. With a car, it's a good thing to have in there. Why not, It's better than not having it, I would say so. Again, Chippolo and Pebbleby go on the website. Pebbleby is shipping expected in two to four weeks, so again a lot of these are not shipping just yet, but we're going to see a whole bunch of them come on the market very soon. Let's go to Let's go to Sean in La Costa, California. Sean, you're on with Rich Yay.

my old Android. And then I've got stuff about important things on the iPhone. So is there something a concise way to do this? Is there software that you could recommend?

I think the text messages are the trickiest when it comes to the iPhone because everything's locked up in that I message. So there is a program that you can download that will help you extract all that information off of your off of the iPhone, and it's called i'mazing I M A Z I G. And then there's also another program that is from soft a Reno called alt tunes A L T T U N E S And both of those will help you get the stuff off

of your iPhone and onto your computer. And then if you want to transfer it to the to the Android later, you can do that. But the Android is much more forgiving because everything is sort of open and whereas the iPhone everything is closed, so it's not the easiest to sort of get that stuff out of there unless you're using that flow screen. Now, the reason I mentioned that screen set up on the pixel is because you're gonna

have a choice to make. You have to decide do you want to bring that information from the old Android over or do you want to bring the information from the iPhone. My advice is to bring the information from the Android from the iPhone over to the Android using the pixel switch screen, and then when it comes to Android, everything is easily moveable. With the text messages, there is a great program called SMS Backup and Restore. You can just load that onto the old Android phone. You can

upload all of your messages into this app. It is free, and then install that on the new pixel and say restore and it will bring those messages to that new pixel, or you'll just have them backed up in the loud on your Google Drive. So again I think you go with the iPhone as the restore point to the new Android.

If you could avoid that all together, personally, I would just set the phone up fresh and then just bring over things one at a time as you need them and download all the apps that you want and stuff, because I feel like when these things do it on their own, yeah, they do a good job, but you know, you get a lot of junk and stuff that maybe you tried out and downloaded that you don't necessarily need. So that's my advice. Yeah, Sean, I like that you're

going back. Nothing against iPhone, but it's just you know, you tried it and it wasn't for you. I think the Pixel is an incredible device. I'll give you my review of the Pixel eight a coming up after the break. Eight to eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you at Triple eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to

two four one zero one. You can find me online at Richontech dot tv. That's the website and social media at rich on Tech. Apple has revealed its minimum software support time frame for the iPhone, which apparently falls a little short compared to Samsung and Google. So Apple says they will provide security updates for a minimum of five years for iPhones. This starts with the iPhone fifteen series, and this is the first time that Apple has actually

committed to a minimum length of software support for its iPhones. Typically, they've been really good about this, they just haven't really published a timeframe. Now, if you look at the current phone that is supported by iOS seventeen, you're talking you're going back all the way to like I had it up on my computer here, Oh, the iPhone ten R, which was that launched in twenty eighteen, so you're talking

six years. So Apple has been really good, good about keeping its phones up to date for a very long time. But because the UK has this rule that you have to publish how long you're going to provide security and software updates, they had to come out with a number. And so that's why they came out with that five year minimum because it kind of covers their bases where you know, five years, even though they know they're going to do a little bit more, but five years is

a safe bet. So that means if you have the iPhone fifteen Pro Max that came out in September twenty twenty three, you'll get guaranteed updates until September twenty twenty eight. Now Samsung and app and Google have been on this March towards seven years, and so you know that's typically a little bit longer than what Apple has been doing. But this is a new thing. This just started in October with Google, and then Samsung got on board and

they said they're going to do the same thing. So with all that said, let me give you my review of the Pixel eight to A. This is Google's budget smartphone. It sells for five hundred dollars. I have it in my hand and I'm telling you it is the perfect size phone. It is also the perfect price. So if you're looking for a phone that does what you need, has an excellent camera, has clean software, look no further

than this device. It is so good. Now, I'm not going to say it's my absolute favorite Android phone for this year. That is definitely the Samsung Galaxy S twenty four Ultra, but that is also twice the size of this phone and also almost three times the price of this phone. So if you want something that is simple and just works, but also has all the AI features and by the way, is going to be supported for seven years, this is the phone to get. So let

me talk about the camera. That's the main thing that people like on these pixel phones. The camera is great. It's gonna take really nice pictures. It also has all the AI features that Google gives you, including Best Take, which means if you take like five pictures of a group of you and your friends, it's gonna literally chop the heads off of you and paste them on with

the smiles. So it's such a funny little feature. I'll be honest, I don't use it as much as I thought I would, but it's there if you need it. Probably during the holidays when you're trying to get that perfect holiday picture or birthday parties with your kids, whatever, the Best Take will be pretty nice. It's got the Magic Editor, so it will do all kinds of AI powered photo editing things on your photos. It's got the Magic Eraser, which can erase things out of your pictures,

people and also unwanted objects. It's got the photo Unblur, which I talked about a couple of weeks ago on the show, which is just incredible. It takes an old picture and just makes it if it's blurry. I did a couple of pictures that way and it just was incredible the results. It's got a six point one inch screen, so not the biggest screen in the world. But it's a nice size and it fits in your hands so well. Like I love this phone, I want to carry it

just because it's such a perfect size. The Samsung Ultra, as much as I love it, it is huge, and you put a case on that thing, it's even bigger. It also has one hundred and twenty Hurts display. And the main thing to know about that if you get this phone, because it was really bugging me because the phone was looking pretty choppy, you have to go into display and turn on what's called smooth display, or else your phone is going to look like something out of

the eighties. People give it a problem because it's got a big bezel that means there's like a big border around the edge of the screen. It's fine. It's not the best, but it's fine. It's powered by Google's latest and greatest chip called Google Tensor G three. Again, not the best chip out there compared to the Snap Dragons of the world for mobile phones, but it's still really good.

Memory eight gigabytes a RAM one hundred and twenty eight or two hundred and fifty six gigabyte options that charging on this phone is not that fast. Whether it's wired or wireless, not that fast. But again, great little device. It is pocket sized, it's five hundred dollars, and it might be cheaper. So I would say, do not buy this phone for five hundred dollars. Wait for it to go on sale. My price that I'm aiming for is for three hundred and fifty to four hundred and fifty dollars.

I do believe this phone will be sold for those prices, So watch the price, keep track of it, and get it when it is on sale. Because the Pixel eight, which is a little bit of a step above right now, is selling for five hundred and fifty dollars, that would be the better phone to get, but I think this phone will sell for even less on the other end, So three fifty to four hundred that's the Pixel eight.

A more on the website Richontech dot TV. Coming up Drew Binski, a travel YouTuber who has gone to every country in the world. This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you talking technology. Cool story. So I first met our next guest in twenty six He had been to seventy four countries. His name is Drew Binski. He was making a living basically sharing his travels on Snapchat and his goal was to visit every country in the world.

So I did a segment with him, interviewed him, and he eventually switched to YouTube as his main platform. But now he has reached his goal of visiting every country in the world. He's a young guy, probably in his either late twenties or early thirties, and now he's written a book about it. It's called Just Go. So here's my conversation with Drew Binski. So what inspired you to visit every country in the world.

So if you want to make sure you're not getting in the wrong taxi or something, you can check where you're going. And then for an eSIM card, I use air Low, which is basically a company that lets you have phone access in two hundred countries and territories and so you just arrived and you just press you know, I'm in Ethiopia and the phone works. So it's really helpful. You don't have to get those SIM cards to put in your phone anymore.

to do. So it's a good reference point. But I think everyone should be utilizing AI in whatever field they do, because if they if you don't use it, you're just going to fall behind the people that are using it, and of people I reluctant to AI, but I still think it's you just have to accept it because it's everywhere and it's going to continue helping our lives if you use it the right way.

like I can't imagine that. But like even just meeting face to face with people, that's what it's all about.

a book that people could read. And so basically it's untold stories from visiting every country, a lot of focus on the Middle East, Yemen, Afghanistan, Siria, Somalia, some of those countries where people might be too scared to visit. I tell really positive and uplifting stories in them, and then a lot of practical travel tips and advice and secrets that I've learned along the way. So it's an easy read, three hundred pages. Can read it in a

few hours, and there's some photos in there too. It's fun.

and I think it's interesting. I can speak a bit of Korean from living in South Korea, and I just I'm obsessed with like the culture and the isolation of that country specifically, and you know, the situation there, So I'm fascinated by North Korea.

would love to visit. And the world is a big place, so there's a lot of even within California, Like I haven't been to northeastern California, central California. There's a lot of stories to be told there.

friends of friends. You should always try to find a local person because they know like the hidden gems of the place and you'll just have fun. It's a cultural exchange if you hang out with a local person. So that's what I recommend.

still like have a long way to go. So it just you got to post consistently often and just make content that you feel proud of, that you want to post about, and then you'll grow following. So the answer is yes. You also have to be willing to be on camera all the time like you are, like I am, but it's not for everyone. Some people might not want to be showing their face a lot, so yes, but it's definitely possible. And did you pick a favorite country or place? I have a few face rich The Philippines

is one of them. I really like Iran and Afghanistan and just the culture is so rich there, and in Africa, I like Ethiopia the best. I always like connecting with people, so if they just reach out to me at Drew Binski on any social I'm happy to respond. And yeah, I recommend people to visit places that they might not think about visiting. The first time. You know, Mexico is great. It's actually one of my favorite countries in the world.

But if you go a little farther south, you're in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and those countries are also really cool. So just stepping out of your comfort zone a little bit more is something I think is really rewarding.

Los Angeles. Carol, you're on with rich.

trying to remember what is called wallet gosh nerd wallet. No, it's not nerd wallet. I'm trying to remember. I'll think of it in a second, but uh it.

fine with social Security number, you know. I would be a little bit hesitant for that one, but that's I would do that. The other thing people do is they freeze their credit reports. I have not done that, but you know, I feel like a lot of people. I was just talking to someone who had their credit hacked and they said, absolute, you got to freeze your credit reports, like immediately, because if it happens to you, it is a pain to get all that stuff right.

little bogus. It'll tell you it'll say, oh, there's been a change to your credit report, and you go on it says your credit card was paid off for that month. So it's not like you know, they want to get you on the website. But again, it's a free service.

for that. And having identity theft insurance like that makes people feel better because it does take a lot of time to get your your identity back if something were to ever happen to you, and it's happening a lot like this is happening in large numbers on a daily basis. So I'm not going to fault anyone for taking the measures that they want to take to protect their name and their credit report and their information and their identity. But I really feel like it comes down to you know,

what you feel is responsible for yourself. So if you're if you think your social Security numbers out there and your personal information hasn't been involved in too many hacks and breaches, then go ahead and sign up for one of these things. If you feel like you can kind of get your credit report once in a while, take a look, make sure everything's okay and nothing seems fishy. Then you know, go with something like a wallet hub or just you know, dark web monitoring.

zero on the corrected wages. So how to go through this whole rigamoro? The ironic thing is I did get a response from them, like in two months later saying they had six everything, and they sent a letter with my social security full social security number. Yeah, and it came in an envelope. Nobody opened it. I guess it went through an automated system, you know, storting system. It was never stealed, so oh yeah, I've gotten that before.

stuff has been leaked. So now these companies are getting a little smarter. When you open up a credit card, it may it may ask you questions about people you know or places you lived, and it's been doing that for years, but now they're getting a little bit smarter

about how they do it. So, uh, my advice don't give out your number as much as possible, protect your information and keep an eye on your credit keep an eye on the information that's out there on the dark web especially, and just do the best you can to protect that stuff. Eighty' eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. More rich on Tech right after this, Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you

talking technology at triple eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. The website for the show rich on Tech dot TV. You can follow me on social media. I am at rich on Tech on Instagram, Facebook, and x And we got a little feedback here on the credit report conversation. H Jen in Los Angeles wrote in to say, I think you can get your credit reports every week and you don't need to call them. You can do it all online and you can freeze and on freeze for

an unlimited time for free right now. So I looked at the websites again. The Annualcreditreport dot com it does say free weekly online credit reports are available from all three of these providers, so I guess they change from annual to weekly. Maybe that was during the penn I'm not sure. And then if you look at USA dot gov slash credit freeze, it says you can place or lift a credit freeze by contacting each of the three major credit reporting agencies. You can submit your request online,

by phone or mail. How long does it take online or by phone? They must freeze within one business day, and then unfreeze requests they must lift the freeze within one hour. So it looks like if you're not sort of applying for anything that requires your credit report, it might be a good idea just to freeze it in

the meantime. I don't know what the ramifications are of that in in the bigger scheme of things, but if you can unfreeze it in an hour, that's a that's a pretty quick timeframe there to uh to get that unfrozen. All right, coming up this hour, we're going to talk to the creators of a device called Kinney. This is a wireless motion sensor. I've been testing it out. It's really cool, it's very it's really different. It's got privacy

in mind. And I will tell you the fact or the founders will explain why they came up with this device and what it could be used for. Again, that's coming up later in the show. Let's go to Mark Mark Mark, You're on with rich Oh.

you know. The only thing I could suggest is maybe getting a battery pack that kind of attaches to the back of your phone. They used to have these battery cases for Mophi that you can actually snap your phone in and it would give you more battery, but I don't even see those anymore.

So when you turn off the Pixel after a recent software update, there's a little message on it that says this is still findable and that's what the phone powered off. I mean, I think many people would be surprised that that is happening. And on the iPhone it's the same thing. Now, look, if you need to find your phone, that's a good thing. But on the flip side, these phones are still sort

of alive even when they're not. Now, to answer your first question mark about the ad blocker, there are some web browsers that do have built in AD blocking capabilities, like the Brave web browser. I know Firefox Focus has a built in AD blocker, and that could be what's messing with it. There's a couple other things that could be messing with it on the back end. If your router has an AD blocking system or service on the

entire network, that could be doing it. I know on Eero on Mine I do have that system wide AD blocking, and so it does mess with some websites. Sometimes even though I'm not actively running an ad blocker, it will say sorry, you're running an ad blocker. And that's on the network level, so I really can't get around that. The other thing is maybe you have an extension that you install that's also maybe it's a privacy extension that's also an AD blocker. Sometimes it can misinterpret a VPN

that's also filtering things out. That could be it JavaScript could be disabled by your web browser by to fault, and that could be causing it. Those are the main things. The other thing is that a lot of times on the Apple side of things, or on the Pixel side of things, they have what's called IP address privacy, and so Apple calls it what do they call it private relay. So sometimes if private relay is enabled, that will also

mess with these websites. So it's kind of gotten interesting when something when a website gives me an issue, I have come to the conclusion that it is not the website that is having trouble. It's something that I have running on my computer that is messing with that website, whether it is grammarly, whether it is an AD blocker, whether it is a JavaScript blocker, so you have to go through. And what I do is I will go into a web browser that I don't use typically and

test the website there. So if you're having trouble, maybe open up a browser that you don't use, like a Safari. On my computer, I don't have anything installed on there, so when I open up Safari, I can go in there and it's basically what's called. You know, it's clean and so the website acts as intended. And so that's the best indication of whether something is wrong with a website or it's just something on my computer that's messing with that website. And that happens a lot, a lot

a lot. Thanks for the call mark in Weinetka appreciate it. Two kind of issues this week that where we saw big companies respond to the the buzz online. Microsoft remember this recall feature that they're enabling on their aipcs. This is the feature that remembers everything you do on your computer. I talked about it at length on this show and talked about the privacy implications. If someone gets access to your computer, they can go through and search anything that

you've seen on your screen. There were some limitations like private browsing and things like that, and you can exclude certain apps. But clearly consumers were not happy with this, and Microsoft listened and early or at the end of the week, Microsoft put out a blog post and said, you know what, we are going to change the way that we launch recall on Windows computers. So number one, you are going to have to opt in. So no longer is this going to be turned on by default.

When you set up that new computer, they're gonna say, hey, here's the recall feature. Do you want to turn it on? And you have to say yes if you want to turn it on. It also requires Windows Hello enrollment, and that means you have to scan your face to enter your computer. And that means that theoretically it should only be you getting into your computer, because if you have a pin or a password, anyone can know that or someone that someone could figure that out. But with Windows Hello,

it has to be you. And they're going to require proof of presence, which means if you're recalled data is being accessed, they have to see you sitting at your computer to access it, which means remote access would be denied. Let's see what else they're also implementing just in time decryption, which means that they're going to only decrypt a database right at the moment you're accessing something, which should make it safer and more private. Now, this was a good

move by Microsoft. I think it shows that they are listening to their customers. They are listening to people and is this is a new feature. It's a brave new world we are entering by having everything on your screen screenshotted moment by moments that you can access it later. But I think Microsoft has put in some pretty good controls here to help at least give people a sense of control and a little bit more security for Windows recall eight eight eight rich one oh one eight eight

eight seven four to two four one zero one. We still got a lot more coming up on the show, including some of your emails that you have asked me questions via the website. I will answer some of those. I'll tell you what Adobe did. They had some controversial terms going around online. They said, hey, we're going to clear this up. This is a little confusing. It's all right here on rich On Tech. Welcome back to rich

On Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology at triple eight Rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. We got Bobo Danton to this song happy. If you're listening on the podcast, you don't get to hear it. I did something kind of different yesterday. I bought my first hardcover book in a long time. So I was debating whether I wanted to purchase a hardcover book or just download this book to my kindle. The book is called Eruption.

I don't know if you've heard of it, but it is by It is by Michael Crichton. Now you might be saying, wait a second, Rich, Michael Crichton has passed away. Yes he did. I passed away in two thousand and eight, and this book is coming out in twenty twenty four. How well, his wife found pieces of this novel on his computer and she said, I want to get this written, and so she somehow linked up with James Patterson, you know,

the guy who has written so many great books. He took a look at what Michael Crichton had done and he finished the book. And so if you look at this book Eruption on the cover, it's Michael Crichton and James Patterson. Who would have ever thought you'd see those two names together. And I've read pretty much, I think, every single book that Michael Crichton has written, and I love them all. Obviously, he is the author of Jurassic Park and so he did a lot of great sci

fi books. I think, Yeah, I think I've read almost every single one of them. There's a couple that were just like okay, but yeah, he's written a lot. So actually, now that I look at this, I didn't read all of them. I read a lot, but not all of them. Wow, there's a lot anyway, So I was debating whether I should get this as a paper as a hardcover or

wait for the paperback. My favorite format is obviously the little paperback when it's a if it's a physical book, but I just love the kindle because it's so easy and you can adjust the size of the text. You can you know, you have that backlighting so you can read it in any light. But I was at Costco and I heard that Costco is doing away with books. By the way, I don't know if you heard this, but Costco is getting rid of physical books by the

by Christmas, I guess they're gonna that's it. That's that's the end of the line for those. Just like best Buy, I got rid of physical media, the DVDs and the CDs. If you go into best Buy one of these remodeled stores, it looks you're like, wait, what's missing. Oh, it's all of the physical media. It's all gone. And so that's what's happening with Costco, I guess and books. But I don't know about you. Every as much as a tech guy as I am, I still have this nostalgia for

like old school things like a book. So anyway, I don't know why I'm telling you all this, except for the fact that I am embarking on a new experience of reading a physical hardcover book, and I was trying to figure out last night what to do with the cover. You know this cover I dount if you've read a physical book lately, but you've got this like slippery cover on it, Like, do you take it off and put

it on your bookshelf until you're done? Some people were saying that you use the inside of the book cover to hold your pages, almost like a bookmark, but or do you throw it out? Like sometimes I'll just throw them out, And I'm like, well, that seems wasteful, But that's where I'm at. So I am reading this book Eruption, and I'm looking forward to to devouring it like the dinos devoured people in Jurassic Park. That's me with this book.

Adobe this week also came under fire. If you were online at all, you saw all of these people getting up in arms over Adobe's updated terms of service. It caused confusion and anger among creative cloud users who were worried that Adobe claimed rights over all of their work. That's what it looked like, it said. According to all of the screenshots that I saw, users had to agree

to these new terms to continue using their apps. People are all worried about forced consent without really understanding what Adobe meant by the terms of service. And Adobe initially kind of defended themselves. Their first response was very dismissive, stating, hey, we've had these terms forever. We only recently clarified them, so come on. And then Adobe kind of, you know, they took a step back, and they realized, Okay, hold on, we're at a moment here where a lot of our

users are unhappy. What should we do. They looked at the situation and they said, look, and then they issued a blog post that said, we are trying to be transparent about how we check this AI content to moderate it. And most of this involves moderation of AI content because people are starting to use all of these AI tools to generate stuff, and we've heard stories about how they're generating things like deep fakes and all kinds of stuff

that is not good. And so Adobe wants to be able to check and make sure that people are using these in a responsible manner, and so they want to make sure that they can knock people off of these systems if they're violating any terms of use. So Adobe has confirmed that they do not train their generative AI models on your customer content and they do not claim ownership of customers work. So if you generate something on Adobe, as a lot of people are screenshotting saying Adobe owns

everything I do, that is not true. Adobe made that clear that they do not say that they own everything that you do, So there you go. Also this week, the Apple Watch now pairs directly with the dex Comm G seven. This is a first, so if you have a dex Comm G seven glucose monitoring device, it can now pair directly with the Apple Watch. Eliminating the need for users to keep their iPhone nearby for glucose readings.

This is a first. These cgms provide glucose readings every five minutes, and it uses Bluetooth to connect directly to

the Apple Watch. This is a huge win if you are a person with diabetes because this means that you can now go out with just your Apple Watch and this reader on your arm or wherever you keep it, and you can still get those real time readings without going through the iPhone and Dexcom says that they are looking into doing similar functionality with both the Samsung watches and also the Android watches, but it takes a lot to do this, and so they started with the Apple Watch.

But that's a huge win. I know these things are expensive, but if if you want those real time readings, like if you're working out or doing something without your phone, this is a huge, huge benefit. All right, coming up, we're gonna talk to the creators of the Kinney wireless motion sensor and how you can use it in your everyday life. This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology. The website for the show Rich on tech

Dot TV. Well, I do test out a lot of gadgets, and it takes it takes something really unique for me to be interested in featuring it or talking about it, or you know, really recommending it. But I found one that's that it's kind of tough to explain, but it's really cool and it's very different. Joining me now, Maboud and Nikki Zabettian. They are the creators of a device called the Kinny. It's a wireless motion sensor and they're going to explain why they came up with this and

what it could be used for. Welcome to the show, Thank you, thank you to be here. Yeah, so, so tell me what the Kinni is like. What is this device exactly?

She was there and the kid who was hosting the party had shown everyone their dad's done, and she said that many of the kids had held it, and we were pretty shocked.

drawer was opened. But this is really unique because it's movement based.

sensor on that, which is probably quite visible. What are the implications of this, like, how are people using this?

where they're addicted to their phones or video games. So you could put a Kenny on top of the game controller, or you can stash those phones in a drawer overnight, and you can put Kenny in that drawer and you're just telling your kids about it, and that's going to deter them from even attempting to use either of those. But really, aside from parents, you know, Kenny can be used by anyone who has something they want to keep private. I mean, people can use it to monitor their work

related documents. I know, people use it for their confidential paperwork and their passports. Teachers have used it on their supply closets and their desks. On Airbnb, owners use it on the closet and their rental property that has their personal belongings in it.

starting on August seventeenth. The decision was driven by the high fees charged by American Express y US for processing credit card transaction. Sounds like a little spat between these two companies, but if you rely on American Express to pay for your eBay stuff, you will no longer be able to do that. As of August seventeenth, Max is raising their prices. Max's ad free monthly subscription is now seventeen dollars, the ultimate ad free is now twenty one dollars.

The annual plans are also going up. A lot of people are now picking and choosing which service that they subscribe to and dropping them based on the shows they're watching. These prices just keep going up. Spotify also raising prices. US subscribers will receive an email over the next month explaining the changes. Individual plan basically is going up a dollar now it is eleven twelve dollars up from eleven.

The duo plan is going to seventeen, up from fifteen, the Family plan twenty dollars a month, up from seventeen, and the student plan still remains the best deal in town six dollars a month unchanged. This is the second price increase within a year for Spotify, and the Better Business Bureau says they have recorded a significant increase in phishing reports, with over twenty three thousand reports since twenty twenty one, in more than nine thousand last year alone.

Keep in mind these are just people reporting these phishing methods, which include emails, texts, calls, voicemails, and even legitimate search engine tricks. This is when you search something on a webs on the on Google or any search engine, and it tricks you into calling a phone number that's actually leading to a scammer, or going to a website that leads to a scammer. How to avoid phishing scams. Be very cautious of unsolicited communications claiming suspicious activity on your

accounts or account problems. Look at the sender's email address, check for any typos, generic language, or if it seems like an odd website that could be strained that could be a telltale sign. Avoid clicking on links or providing financial information and response to unsolicited messages, and you can report suspected fraud to the relevant authorities. Let's get to the feedbag. I saved a message I actually got from my credit card when I did a transaction on it.

It said, is this fraud? And I'm telling you the email I got from my credit card looked very similar to a fraud email you might get from an actual scam artist and the text message they sent me. So this is the thing that the fraud stirs do. They send you an alert that looks very similar to what you actually might get. All they do is take the alert from Bank of America or Chase or any of these other banks or American Express and they just engineer it to look exactly the same. But it's leading to

their website. So to be very very careful anytime you click a link on a text message or a website, anytime, you just have to really really take very close look. Now time for the feedbag segment. Feedback plus the mail bag equals feedbag. These are the emails, the comments, and the questions I've gotten from you. If you want to submit yours, just go to Rich on tech dot tv

and hit contact. Haas from San Clemente writes in I have a Google Voice number, but when I use it on some sites, for example offer Up, they don't accept the number and they will not send the verification code. Thank you for your program educating us. Yes, a lot of the services will not accept a Google Voice number because it's voipe voiceover IP and these could be generated in seconds and they could be used for fraud, especially banks. They will not My bank will not text my Google

voice number. It will not do that. So the solution is to use your real cell phone number, and that's what they're trying to do on offer up. They're trying to make sure you are an actual human and not just someone trying to scam other people, so they want to use a real phone number. You can also sign up for a specific phone number, like from an app called Burner, which can give you a phone number that

could accept these one time codes. Yeah, they're doing it on purpose because they don't want you to be a fraud star. Eleanor from Los Angeles writes in I have a bunch of random old devices cell phones, tablets, Android and Apple. What's the easiest way to dispose of them? Do I need to wipe them clean?

and they will accept them. Gizmo Go is another website you can go to and check and see if there's any value to these devices. Gizmogo dot com. Best Way also has a used electronics box. You buy the box for like twenty twenty five or thirty dollars. I think something like that. They ship this box to your house. You dump all the old cables and cell phones and tablets and stuff into this box. You ship it off. Postage is paid and they will properly recycle that tech

Marian Tapanga rights in Hey Rich. Many times during Google searches, I want to go back and look at previous information I've found. How do you go back on a Google Pixel phone? I find that you have to initiate the search all over again. Go into Chrome on your phone, hit the three dots in the upper right hand corner, and you're gonna tap history. Once you tap history, you can search through your history if you remember a keyword

on that website. You can also go to myactivity dot Google dot com and search through your web history.

I've been using it ever since. It's great. It blocks ads, it blocks trackers, does a lot of great stuff all at once, and I haven't noticed many issues with it on my computer. But again, if you're using any sort of blocker or tracker blocker on your computer, if you have a problem with the website, there is an option to disable the blocker for that website so that you can use it properly. All right, if you can believe it, that's gonna do it. For this episode of the show.

You can find links to anything I mentioned on my website. Just go to rich on tech dot tv. If you're listening in real time, hit that light bulb. If you're listening later or to the podcast, just scroll down to where it said podcast and you will get links to everything I mentioned on the show. You can also listen to the show again. You can find me on social media. I am at Rich on Tech and next week I will give you the update of Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference.

This is where they are going to reveal all the new features coming to the iPhone, the iPad, the Apple Watch, the maccomputers, the Apple Vision Pro, all of the Apple products. You will find out what is coming soon to those products via a free software update. Thank you so much for listening. I know there are so many ways to spend your time. I really do appreciate you spending it

right here with me. I look forward to nothing more each week than well hanging out with my kids and my family, but also being right here in this studio talking to you about technology. Thanks to everyone who makes this show possible. My name is Richdmiro. I will talk to you real soon