Home security will never be the same

have planned for you today? Well, yeah, sure, okay. You know I plan these things throughout the week, and I always want to think about, like, oh, what should I talk about at the beginning of the show, And then of course I kind of forget. I don't I have yet to master a place where I can just keep notes, like I have so many little note taking I actually

went back to ever Note, which is just wild. But I've got ever Note, I've got Google Keep, I've got the notes on my you know whatever, the Apple what's the apple one called notes? Is it just literally called notes? Yes, it is called notes. Then I got an email from Notion the other day. I signed up for them to take notes, and I've got reminders in my calendar, I've got my to do list for Microsoft. Then I have Google keep did I mentioned that one? Then I have

posted notes I don't know what to do. Then I have voice memos that I have reminders. I mean, seriously, how do you keep track of all the different places where you take notes? Like? Do you have just one place where you take your notes? I don't. It seems like that's a problem for me. I just I can't. The problem is in you know, you might say, oh, Rich, just use the notes app on on you know, the Apple or the iPhone. Well, I like to have cross platform things like I don't like to use anything that's

locked into a platform. So honestly, as I use the iPhone, if I just used all Apple stuff, it would be perfect, like the calendar, you know, the contacts, the email like everything like it would just be so easy. But the problem is I don't want to do that because then I am beholden to one company, and so I like to use things that are cross platform. And I also like to find the best that's out there. So when I was looking at to do lists, you know, you think, oh,

just use Google to do because you use Gmail. Well, no, when I started looking at what you can do with the Microsoft one, it's just so much better. I mean it's like really really good. Like it's definitely my favorite. I've tested them all, believe me, and the Microsoft to Do app is just fantastic because it lets you do every single thing you need. And my favorite feature is how every day you get a fresh start so you

can have all your tasks. Let's say you I have nineteen tasks right now, but on my day where it says my day, it's clean, so there's no tasks on there now, so I can add tasks just to my day, but after that day they fall into my main like you know, all the different tasks in the background, so and then you can always go back to those. I'm not describing it very well, but anyway, it's the best.

So my point is I don't know how to keep track of the stuff that I want to talk about here on the show, But maybe one of these days, I mean I've done three hundred episodes, so maybe one of these days I'll get better at it. I just saw that on the podcast app on Apple, three hundred episodes of this. Wow, I am fostering kittens. If you've been following me on Instagram, you know that that's happening.

I'm now growing my own plants. I'm doing some research for a segment i'm doing on these in home gardens, and so Rise Gardens sent an in home growing system and I'm just I am amazed. I am amazed that I am growing plants right now. I'm looking at them. When the little buds first came up, like the little I forget which one was the first one to kind of pop, I couldn't believe it. It's like being a kid all over again, growing a garden out in your backyard.

And then my kids came in and they couldn't believe it. And the little pods that they give you tell you how many days it takes for them to like sprout, and so some of them were five, some of them are eight. So I'm still waiting for the eight. But it's just amazing. Anyway, let's talk about the first story

of the week. I know you heard about this major hack, and this is a consumer tech news podcast, so I'm not going to really go into the whole geopolitical situation with our gas and things like that, but I do want to talk about this hacking group and kind of just how scary it's getting when it comes to cybersecurity and why you really really need to protect yourself and I'm not even convinced we can protect ourselves, Like I'm sure that people are just so smart out there that

it's like a losing battle, like you have to do everything you can, and I believe me. I get emails on a daily basis from people that say their Facebook account is hacked, their Instagram account is hacked. People trying to log in to their accounts and they get the email that says, hey, did you just try to log in from whatever random city in the world And you're like no, And that's a scary thing to get. So this hacker group called dark Side is the one that's

behind this cyber attack on that colonial pipeline. CNBC had an interesting little article about them where they try to position themselves as an ethical hacker group. Now I saw something this morning about how maybe they're not even hacking anymore,

so that this could all be moot. But they were saying that, you know, they operated kind of like a software as a service, like they would just make this software that helped anyone hack into things, and it was kind of like a little startup, like a like an evil Silicon Valley startup, which is, you know, kind of weird. But they said that a couple things were off limits. Number one, they weren't political, okay, but of course the

gas thing became very political. But the things they said were off limits protected organizations not to be harmed include hospitals, hospices, schools, universities, nonprofits, and government agencies. So basically that means all for profit companies here in the US are they are at risk. And if I ran a giant company, it's like, you know, I would make sure that my stuff is pretty locked down.

They also say that they're going to donate a portion of their profits to charity, although what charity is going to accept a donation from a hacking group. I don't really think that that's something that they would do. So how these hacking groups work is they typically lock up people's computers or corporation's computers, and then they demand ransom to unlock those computers, and if they don't get the ransom, then they say that they are going to release that

data into the wild. I actually did a demo with a company, Oh Gosh, Silance I think was their name, and they showed me a demo of live ransomware software, like it was actually on the computer that they were showing me, and they showed me how their software could stop it, but it was scary to see how it actually starts working. And this one in particular that they showed me was you get it through like a Microsoft

word file. And so what happens is like you basically enable a macro and all of a sudden, it just takes over your system and it's scary and it takes it over in a big way. And once that happens, it's it's just game over. So my advice to you is to use a password manager strong password as your master password. Definitely use two factor authentication, and honestly, I don't even think you should be using texts for two factor anymore. You have to use an app, an authenticator app.

So there's things like Google Authenticator, there's Authie, there's Microsoft Authenticator. I think what's the Microsoft one called. I don't know, maybe it's just authenticator. But I'm telling you use one of these apps, and you got to secure your stuff. I know it's tough. I know it's annoying. When my kids want to download an app on their iPad, it's like the biggest process ever, and they're just so annoyed.

They're like, why is this so annoying? And I said, well, because we got to stay protected and I'm just trying to do the best I can in protecting these digital assets. So anyway, all right, let's get to the first question of the day. This comes from let's see here, Christine. Hey, rich, I'm thinking of getting a Joby grip tight one, oh tight one gorilla pod stan. Wow, that's quite the name. Joby Grip Tight one Gorilla pod stand for our upcoming

Disney trip, Disneyland trip in a few weeks. I recently got an S twenty one Samsung Ultra five G and I'm wondering if you could advise if the Joby is compatible. We'll hold up my phone since it's bigger and heavier than most phones. Thank you. Any help you could provide would be greatly appreciated. Christine, Christine, good question. The Joby's are fine. Let me look up this specific one. This

is the Joby Grip Tight one Gorilla pod stand. And that's a good concern that you have because you know that your phone is a little bit bigger than the rest, So yes, this will probably hold up your phone. But honestly, and this is twenty five bucks. It's a small one, so it may not be like the most heavy duty for your big phone, but I'll be honest. My favorite mount right now is from a company called tenacol t E n I k l E So Tenacle three sixty,

and it's a little more expensive, it's forty bucks. But this thing is phenomenal. I love it, love it, love it. And it's basically kind of like the Jobe except it has a more kind of a flexible bottom mount similar, but it's a different kind of flexibility, but it has suction cups on it. And so these suction cups give you that added benefit of being able to suction your

phone to different things. Now, like you said, you've got this giant phone, you gotta be a little careful because you definitely don't want to have your brand new S twenty one ultra fall. And that thing is a that's a that's a heavy phone. That's a big, big, big phone. And so it'll work because I've I used the Tentacle three sixty with it when I had my test unit of the Samsung. I did use it with this thing

and it does work. But yes, you do need to be a little bit more aware of where you're sticking this and making sure it's stuck for real. And even if you're you're hooking it onto something, you just have to be very careful. But again, it's tentacle t E n I k l E Tenacle three sixty. The guy who invented it, he lives here in southern California, and I interviewed him for a segment on KTLA, and I just number one, I love this is what I love about my job. I love the fact that I can

just I love this device. And all of a sudden, I just call the guy that invents it, and he talks to me like that's so cool to me, right, And he was telling me the story about how he invented it, and he was on a hiking trip and he wanted, well, first off, he tried to put his phone like in a tree or something, and it just fell and it fell into like rocks and it broke all over the place. So he's like, all right, it's

got to be a better way. And then he's like why can't I use the same thing in my car for amount that I use in my that I use like take it out of the car. And so he came up with this thing with the stickies and he had to go through a whole bunch of iterations. But this is this has become my absolute favorite tool in my back. So I carry this thing and I do not go anywhere without it because you can use it as a tripod, a stabilizer, so many different things. It

is just really really good. So again about forty dollars, they had a code rich on tech. I don't know if it still works. Let me see, let me see if they have a place to put in my code. Proceed to check out. Let's see is there a place Let's see rich on tech apply and the code still works for ten percent off. It looks like, so there you go ten percent on tech. Anyway, that's what I would recommend, and check it out and have fun at Disneyland.

I we're kind of we're like debating whether to go, Like we're like, do we think it's going to be good? Do we not think it's going to be fun? But let me know, let me know how it is. Christine, all Right, let's talk about this new government program that gives eligible households fifty dollars off their monthly internet bill. This is called the Emergency Broadband Benefit. You probably couldn't go anywhere this week without hearing about it. FCC set

aside three point two billion dollars. All the major providers are participating at and T spectrum. They're pretty much all on board. And if you have low income, or if you lost your job or you somehow are participating in a federal program and some sort of low income program, you're probably eligible for this bill. And so that could be if you're you know, I think it's like near the poverty level. Oh yeah, income that is added below one hundred and thirty five percent of the poverty level.

So it's not even it could be a little bit above.

But if you're in snap, Medicaid aid, the Lifeline program, you get free lunch, you know, all these different things, even if you experienced a loss of income in the past year since February twenty ninth, twenty twenty, and the income level is reasonably high ninety nine thousand for single filers, one hundred and ninety eight thousand for joint So again, if you feel like you might qualify for this program, or more importantly, since you're listening to this podcast, if

you know someone that might be eligible, get them signed up. It's online. You go to the website get Emergency Broadband dot org. You can apply right online. And I got so many emails from people telling me after we did this story on TV that they took advantage of this and they got it, and I just felt so great, Like for my job, if I can get if I can just affect one person a day with some kind of help I give them, that is my ultimate goal.

And I love that, like I love getting emails from people saying, rich, I heard about this program, I applied, I got it, and now you just save me fifty bucks a month and thank you, thank you, thank you, And so I just I love that, and you know, it's just it's one of those things where you feel good knowing that you've helped someone. And so I definitely helped a bunch of people with that. And it's not like I'm the only one talking about it. Believe me,

everyone is, but not everyone listens to everyone. If they happen to listen to me and they heard it from me, then that's what matters. Right, I'll take that as the the win in my book. But anyway, that's the program again, is called Emergency Broadband Benefit. You got friends or family members that may be eligible, definitely tell them about it, help them through and get them on that program if they can, because the money is good until it runs out.

So the money is good until it runs out, which means it could last you know, six months, could last a year depending on how many people sign up. Again, three point two billion dollars that's earmarked. Good luck with that. All right, let's get to the next question. This is not so much a question, but this is something that I've always found really interesting. So the whole cell phone thing, right, so we know that the carriers gave up the on

the whole idea of doing contracts. Right, So a couple of years ago, when remember when the iPhone, it went from like you would pay one hundred ninety nine dollars every time you upgraded to like, oh wait, now I have to pay this full amount, like it's a seven hundred dollars phone. And everyone was like, so what what The phone was always seven hundred, but the carrier was subsidizing a portion of that in exchange for your two

year contract. And then when they did away with the two year contracts, they just made the price of the phone they lowered. Okay, so they lowered the price of your monthly service. Then they made you pay for the phone, so it ended up being about the same every month. But it's just a different way of looking at it. So but they also got to advertise no more contracts, which is totally at this point kind of bogus. And

here's why. So the reason I say this is because lots of these cell phone companies, like Okay, Verizon's the latest example. They're doing this program that says you broke your phone. So Verizon is breaking the rules, yay, And so if you have a damage phone or a cracked phone, whatever, you can still bring that phone to Verizon and you'll get up to one thousand dollars off a new phone. Sounds amazing, right, But here's what they're actually doing. And this is thanks to my friend Jim Lawson, who I

talked about in the last podcast. I guess he's gonna get a mention in every show, but he told me that he upgraded his phone because T Mobile was doing something similar, and so he told me that he upgraded his phone and he got a new iPhone twelve Pro and I said, ooh, and he said, they gave me eight hundred and thirty dollars for his old iPhone ten S, which I thought, wow, that's that's like an extremely that's a lot of money for an old phone. And so here's how they did it, and this is what he

confirmed to me. So he got a eight hundred and thirty dollars promotional credit U. The one time bill credit was two hundred and twenty two dollars and that was off your U let's see, off your after two bill cycles. So that to me is probably the amount that they're actually paying for that iPhone ten sy, maybe a little bit more. But then he gets another twenty five dollars and thirty four cents off his next twenty four bills, and that's six hundred and eight dollars plus two twenty

two for a total of eight thirty. So what have we learned from this? We learned that this eight hundred and thirty dollars is actually just a different type of contract for the next twenty four months. Now, Jim is not going anywhere, he said, I'm sticking with T Mobile. I like him. Whatever people that go to Verizon, and I looked at the fine print on the Verizon deal, same thing. Here we go, trade in slash, Promo credits applied over twenty four months. Promo credit ends if eligibility

requirements are no longer met. So what does this tell us all these carriers are doing with these fancy, big, big, big big trade in numbers, is they are just moving the making it so that you are locked in for twenty four months. And you might say, rich, big deal.

I mean I'm gonna be anyway. Well, I think it is a big deal because I just did a segment on cheap cell phone plans and I was researching some of these really inexpensive plans, and yeah, you know a lot of us on these mainstream you know, Verizon, T Mobile, AT and T. There's only three of them now here in the US. Uh. You know those plans are like

ninety bucks a month for an unlimited Not everyone needs unlimited. Uh, but if you're on a plan and you've got your phone and you just pay your bill and it's one hundred and ten bucks a month or whatever it is, you just kind of feel like Okay, that's that's how much I pay. But doing research for these cheap phone plans, and I know firsthand, because you know I have. I've been testing this one called us US Mobile. I've already

spoken about my mom. She's on Mint Mobile. I mean she's paying uh, it's like unlimited for thirty dollars a month. Now she pays UH for the fifteen gigabyte plan. It's like two fifty two. I think we just paid two sixty five for the year, two hundred and sixty five dollars for the year of service. And she just can't imagine paying any more than that because she's been paying it for three years and she just thinks it's amazing.

And so it's again, these twenty four month lock in things kind of just keep you from moving on to a different carrier. And that's what I don't like. But look, I get it. You know, everyone kind of you know, is comfortable with what they do in a different way. I'm just trying to give you the knowledge so that you are prepared when it comes time to make one of these decisions. I'm not saying what you need to

do or whether it's right or wrong. I'm just giving you the knowledge, so you have all the information so before you say, oh yeah, I'll take eight thirty for my phone and then you know, oh wait, but that's gonna lock me in for two years, which means I can't ever go to a different carrier for two years. Like, oh okay, I better like this. You have to see what your opportunity cost is to stick with that carrier for two years. Anyway, thank you Jim for screenshotting the

order process and sending it to me. I do appreciate it. I love getting little insights into things like that because it just really is fascinating to just you know, it's all about just building up this knowledge right as a consumer, just understanding how things work. And again I'm not judging you either way. I'm not passing judgment on what these carriers are doing. I'm just getting letting you know, like, this is how things work. It's not just eight hundred

and thirty dollars for free. There is a purpose why they offer that as a promotion. Tesla this week stopped accepting bitcoin, and woo, the bitcoin bitcoin price went a little wild. Huh. Bitcoin is so fascinating to me because here it is this thing that's supposed to be like the future of money, cryptocurrency, but yet it's so volatile

that it's it's just how do you know? You put it in a thousand bucks and next thing you know, it's down to you know, eight hundred the next day when you wake up, and the next day you have twelve hundred in your wallet, and the next day you're a bitcoin millionaire. So it's like, how do you really know? Like do you ever want to spend this money? Like I always wonder like why would you ever spend bitcoin when it goes up in value? Is it going to

stop going up in value eventually? Perhaps? But this was a big blow to bitcoin when Elon Musk said on a tweet that, you know what, we can't accept bitcoin anymore because this stuff is just too expensive or too taxing on the government, on the government, on the environment. And you know the thing about bitcoin that's uh the system that they use to kind of verify it, which is called blockchain, it's it's completely independent, which is so amazing.

That's what's so No bank owns it, no one country owns it, no one person owns it. It's all just kind of like exists out there, kind of like the Internet, but the method that is used to kind of qualify all these transactions takes a lot of computing power, and so that's what he took issue with, saying that, you know, like somewhere somewhere, somehow coal is being shoved into an oven to create the energy necessary to power the blockchain.

And that's kind of the bottom line. So until the entire blockchain is like powered by solar, which maybe it will be the solar panels from from Elon's company, and maybe it'll be the what's the other thing he has? This is the solar wall, the power the Tesla power wall. You know, until it's all powered by that, you know, he's just not gonna accept it. So bitcoin price went way down. And again this is a consumer podcast, so I don't you know, I'm not telling you buy bitcoin

or not or invest in it or whatever. But these are the things that consumers are talking about. Like everyday people are like, are you in doge coin? Are you in bitcoin? Are you buying it? What do you think

of it? Do you think it's the future. So these are the these things that like used to be super duper nerdy have percolated and bubbled up to the surface of just like party conversation, you know, just like everyday people that are hanging out with their friends are talking about how much dose cooin they have, or how much Bitcoin they have, or whether they're gonna sell or whether they're gonna keep it. So we'll see. I mean, this

is just something to follow. I was also following the whole I don't have any doze coin, but I was following the the the whole situation on Saturday Night Live when when Elon was hosting and people were just literally, I mean the YouTube streams that I was on was literally a chart of dosee coin, which is another type of cryptocurrency. You've probably heard of it. It's one with a friendly little dog face and it's it sells for like under a dollar. So at one point it was

like a couple pennies. It went up to like I think the top I saw it was like seventy five cents or maybe sixty seven cents whatever it was. But if you bought it at ten cents, that's a huge increase, right, And so all these people were sitting there watching Saturday Night Live thinking that when Elon would mention dosee coin on TV boom, the price would pop, they could sell and they're next thing to another doze coin millionaire. That did not happen. In fact, the price went down really really bad.

I mean it went I don't think it's recovered. And so that didn't really work out, and it was it was kind of funny to watch. I was actually going to purchase some just you know, it's kind of like a it's kind of like gambling. It's like you've got to be in it to win it. It's just kind of fun. And I was going to purchase, you know, like I don't know one hundred who knows. And I

went to robin Hood, which I have the app. I don't I don't have anything in the app, but I just you know, I signed up when I did a story on it many many years ago, so I still had an account. My login worked. Then when I went to buy it, it was like, oh, you have to verify your bank account. I was like, oh, and I did it, but it was like we need two to three days to do that, and that did not happen in time

for the for the giant fall of dose coins. So I guess it worked out in my benefit because I did not lose a whole bunch of money on the doge. All Right, Steve asks, Hey, Rich, what's your recommendation for a video download software for a Mac to pull videos off websites like YouTube. There seems to be a lot of shady ones out there that I'm afraid to load onto my Mac. Steve. All right, Steve, I will tell you the answer to this, but with the idea that

you know, this is a very legitimate app. It's my favorite. It works fantastically. In fact, once I tell you the name of this company, all of their software is really really spectacular and you will just be amazed at it. But the one that I like is called YouTube Converter two. It's by soft O Reno so soft O r I n O, and they make a bunch of products that are just really smart products. So they have two in

particular that I really like. Number one is called Walter Pro w A L t R pro And what that does is you plug in your iPhone and you can drag and drop any file you want onto your iPhone and it's filed away. Now, with the advent of iCloud, it's a little bit easier to kind of put documents and things on your phone. So you can just drag them from your computer onto iCloud and you know iCloud drive and it's on your phone and you can access

them through the files app. But music, MP three's videos, you know, home video, whatever, you can put it all on this app and it will just go to your iPhone. Now that's not what you asked. You asked for the ute tube pulling. Now, I can't recommend that you take videos off of YouTube, right unless there is a legitimate reason. Perhaps it's the video that you uploaded and it's your personal video and you want to make a backup of it. That's one way you could do it is with this app.

But what you do is your progative. I'm just telling you what's out there and what is really good. And this program has been out for a long time. It's great, it's legitimate, it's it really works well. It's called soft a Reno YouTube Converter two. And you're not going to get it for free. By the way, it is going to be twenty dollars oh yearly. Now wow, okay, so it's twenty dollars a year now, But you know that's just everything has become a recurring subscription it's kind of interesting.

Even with software, I think it's pretty rare to find any app these days that you purchase that is an outright purchase, except for my Final Cut still going strong. I purchased Final Cut so many years ago. I think it was two hundred and ninety nine dollars, and of course at the time, you know, I was a struggling student or whatever, maybe my first job, and oh my gosh, two hundred and ninety nine dollars was such a leap.

But I needed it, and I you know, cobbled together the funds I bought it, and I got to say, it's been it's been fantastic ever since. I have not paid for it again. I've installed it on all my machines, or I should say, all my computers that I get, like every time I get a new computer. It installs just fine, It gets updates, it keeps getting updates. So Apple, thank you for your continued service on Final Cut pro.

It has just been the most amazing thing I've ever purchased. Now, on the other hand, you know Premiere, you know, if you want to use that, which thankfully my company pays for, but they you know, that's like you got I don't think you can buy that outright anymore. I might be wrong, but I think almost every piece of software at this point you have to purchase on a yearly basis or some sort of recurring thing. And you know, that's the

the idea is these recurring subscriptions. Everyone wants them, and who wouldn't. I mean, it's so lucrative. You know, these people that sold you know, these ninety nine cent apps. It's like, Okay, how can we add something in that's just you know, a little bit more, a little bit more recurring than just ninety nine cents. So there you go, Steve, that's the answer. Amazon introduced new Echo Show devices. They've got the new Echo Show eight, they've got the Echo

Show five, and an Echo Show for kids. So the main thing about these these new Echo Shows is that the cameras are better for better video calling. And the cameras also digital pan and zoom zoom, so that means it kind of follows you around. So a lot of these cameras we've seen the first time I saw this was actually was it Facebook or was it Google? Either the Facebook portal or the Google Nest Hub. Max was the first one to do this, where the camera kind

of follows you around. So for me, if I'm cooking in the kitchen, I have my mom on the other end, and you know, she can see kind of like the camera follows me around as I'm moving around. So I'm cooking, She's like, you're always cooking? Yeah, ring a pandemic. I was always cooking. I still am. But yeah, so these these are you know the thing I take issue with all of these devices. And I was just in the

Amazon four Star store yesterday. I had to return something, and you know, they gave me a ten percent off coupon for any purchase that day, and I was like literally looking through the store for something to spend my money on. And I, you know, I was sitting there, I'm like, why am I going to buy something that I don't need? Right? And I had my eye on like an Echo Show five. I had my eye on the Echo Show ten. I had my eye on some stuff from Ring and then just some random assorted stuff.

But I ended up not getting anything. I was like, oh, I'm just gonna walk out, and so I did. I gave up the ten percent, but I was playing around a little bit with the I think it was the old Echo Show five, which they had for a pretty good deal. I think it was like fifty bucks forty five dollars, and you know, you tap it and I was like, oh, is this thing working? And it's like the delay on the screen like when you like. It's just these things seem to be very underpowered, and I

don't really understand why. You know, I've used them from you know, basically it's just Google and Amazon. And I'll be honest, I don't have an Echo Show. I've never actually had one in my place, so maybe it was just a fluke, but I just get the impression that these things are a little bit more underpowered than they need to be. And I feel like that within the Google Nest tub Max. I feel like that with the Google Nest Hub. It's just like the delay from when you swipe it or tap it is just like a

little bit. It's like kind of like a cheaper Android phone. You know, it doesn't responds as beautifully as the iPhone does. Like the iPhone and the OnePlus devices, you touch them and they're like boom, instant, instant. Everything's so fast and fluid. But the rest of the phones that I test are just a little bit like you're like, did I touch? Did I did? I? Wait? Hold, did I touch that? Did I? Okay, yeah I did? Because then it responds.

So the Echo Show eight is uh has a thirteen megapixel wide angle camera with this is a eight inch HD screen. It's got a built in shutter. It Oh, it has a new process or a new octacore processor. So there we go. Dual stereo speaker. So maybe I should go with the Echo Show eight and the camera pans and zooms when you're on calls. That's one hundred and twenty nine dollars. My advice with any Amazon product is to always always wait for them to go on sale.

The Amazon Amazon branded devices always go on sale no matter what. In fact, if you have an Amazon four Star store near you or whatever they call me, yeah Amazon Books, Amazon four Star, go visit the store because often I've seen in the store the prices are considerably less than the price you would pay online. And they do it on purpose because they want to get you in there and they say, oh wow, this has cool deals, like they don't want to make it like, oh, why

wouldn't I just shop on Amazon? Well, the reason to come into the store is because they have deals that are not available anywhere else. So in fact, when I went there to look at the Amazon Echo Show ten, it was on sale for one hundred and ninety nine dollars and I was like, wait, that's better than the website for two point fifteen. They said, yeah, it's an in store deal, and sure enough, that was the only price. Like when I went back home, you couldn't get that deal. Now.

I think the Echo Show went on sale for one ninety nine at some point on the website. But again, you know, set up some sort of alert to get an alert on these devices, either using honey or camel, camel camel, whatever you want to do, but just get it. Get an alert that tells you when these things go on sale. And that's when you buy ring products too, because those will often go on sale. So any Amazon stuff.

Echo Show five is eighty five bucks, and it's got a five point five inch display, and it's got a bunch of different colors charcoal, glacier white, and deep sea blue, and it has an upgraded HD camera with double the pixels. So I and then the kids won is ninety five bucks. And that comes to the two year worry free guarantee. And these are available in it looks like June. But here's the thing with all this stuff, So I've been really testing out the you know, the A word al

Exa versus Google and all their stuff versus Apple. And here's my thoughts. Apple is of course like the slickest of all three, right, but there's little little design things that I don't like. And I feel like their home app is like kind of confusing because it's just like it's a lot like and you have to like hard press to get certain features, and like a lot of stuff is like hidden and just not like you could

tell there's a lot to go there. Google I'm so used to because that's the one that I use and I have used for many years, and I just assumed it was the best. But then I started playing with the Amazon stuff and I'm like, wait a second. The app. Al Exa app is like very full featured, especially when

it comes to things like creating routines. I think it's very friendly, and I'm actually now tempted to switch my entire house over to al Exa for all the home stuff because I feel like I'm kind of missing out. Like I tried to do a routine on Google, and it's it's just horrible. It doesn't work half the time. It's like it's just weird, Like I they don't you have to like spell out commands, whereas with like Alexa.

Sorry now I said it. But the way it works on the Echo or whatever the Amazon app is that you just literally like pick and choose almost like puzzle pieces, you like pop them into your routine and it's got like everything listed. That's the way it should be because that's smart. But you know that's I don't know. So I will say I don't know if I'm gonna switch today, but I'm moving in that direction becausehen I first tested out you know Who, the response was not as good

as Google. Like Google gets like the commands, like nails them when it comes to voice commands. But it's just the automations I find are just really lacking on Google. And maybe it's just I hung out with my friend Dave Malcoff, who I always say he is nerdier than me in a good way, and he just inspires me to be nerdier because he's like, oh, I've got my whole house. Everything is automated with with you know who, and you know I say I say I'm leaving and it does this. And I say I'm home and it

does this. And every room has a you know, automatic light. So if the kids leave the lights on, and I'm like, why am I not doing this? Like I'm literally I've I've stalled on my home smart home improvements over the past like three years, Like I just stopped. I don't know why. Like I'm in my office in my kids room,

and my kids room is a great example. They have two smart lights and and a Google Home And why every night I say, change the lights and candle light when I'm reading to them, and then we change them to bright white during the day. But I'm like, Number one, that could be automated. Number two, why don't I have a smart switch in there that would notice when they leave the room and of course they inevitably leave the

lights on, and it would just turn the lights off. Now, yes, I will still teach my kids that they should turn off the lights when they leave the room, but honestly, like we're getting to this place in the world where you really don't have to turn off lights anywhere. You go to bathroom and the lights turn on, the water turns on, the soap automatically dispenses. So I get it.

These classic things of like turn off the light when you leave the room, but like, in the future, we probably won't have to do that because these lights are smart enough. Even with the Amazon or the Apple stuff. I noticed there's some sort of detector that tells when people leave the room. I don't know where it's getting that data from. I got to figure it out, but it's like, Oh, when the last person leaves the room, do you want us to turn everything off? That's an

option inside the Apple HomeKit. I'm like, wait, where are you getting that from? Hold on, how do you know when the last person leaves the room? Like are you listening? Is there some sort of motion sensor? And my fillips you hub like, because I think it's getting it from that, but I'm just not sure what was I talking about? Oh, the Amazon stuff. So anyway, this is the stuff that

keeps me up at night. If you've listened to this podcast, you know that the stuff that percolates in my brain is always just like, I really hate the idea that these tech companies are trying to ilo us into their little corners. I think we're gonna see that happening less and less even though it's it's this is what I find interesting. A lot of these light bulbs that you purchase even though they say like home Kit or Google

Assistant or you know, you know who compatible. I don't want to say her name because she pops up easily. A lot of them just work with each other without really saying it like they they A lot of them just are interchangeable, and I think people are getting hip

to that. But now they came up with this alliance Google, Apple and Amazon that they're going to start making stuff that all works together, which I think is a win for consumers because you know, if something better comes along, kind of like I was talking with the cell phone stuff. You want to be able to switch and you want to be able to, you know, be fluid and and move on. All right, Next question from Laura. She says, Hey, Rich,

I really enjoy your advice. I have a Fitbit watch that I enjoy, but then I have apps on my phone that only use the iOS data. What is the best and affordable way to get my fitbit data on my iOS on a continuous basis. The apps I like or Map, my run and Pacer I use the Fippit more for sleeping sleep monitoring. While I'm running, I carry my phone with me for those two apps. Please help.

Thanks Laura, Laura, this is a great question and it's one that is so Fippit is kind of one of the holdouts with So what you're talking about is called Apple Health, and so if an app is made, you know, a fitness app on the iOS ecosystem, basically feeds data into Apple Health. And the idea is that Apple Health is kind of like this one stop shop to see all of your health related data, no matter which app

it came from. So it can come from the workout app built into the iPhone or the Apple Watch rather I guess both, or it can come from you know, Sweat with Kla. Is that the is that the app Sweat with Kayla? Yeah, Sweat with Kla. And then there's like, you know, there's so many fitness apps, right, and so they all feed you know, Peloton, they all feed into the Apple the health app using what's called HealthKit, but Fitbit does not. So how can you get around this

to get all your stuff in one place? What I would do is maybe just ditch Apple Health and switch over to Google Google Fit and Google Fit will work with fitbit. And the question is, well, it should actually import data from on my phone. It does. It imports the data from from Apple Health. So let me give you the scenario. Map my run and Pacer feed into Apple Health. They might also feed in directly to Google Fit. You can. Let's let's let me just do a quick

search and see. So map my run google Fit. Let's see if it works with it. Yes, it does. Okay, so you can you can do map my run directly into Google fit. And what's the other one. Pay I'm guessing Pacer goes into Google Fit. Let's see, Pacer goes into Google Fit. But that's with Pacer, Yeah, it might be just yeah, so you can feed all of these apps into Google Fit, and then your fitbit will also go into Google Fit. Now you might be saying, rich, I have an iPhone. I just said, I have an iPhone.

Why are you telling me about Google Fit? Well, google Fit works on the iPhone, I know, surprise, surprise. So I installed it on my iPhone when I was testing the one plus watch and I've left it on there. And it's actually kind of cool because I kind of like the way that they slice and dice your information. So once you have all this information flowing into the google Fit app, it's actually pretty it. It presents it in a nice manner and it also gives you insights

that I think are are pretty cool. Now, the Apple Health app is pretty good, but I just I think that if you're wanting your sleep and you want the maps of the runs and the pacer stuff all in one place, you got to go with google Fit download at your phone, connect all the apps or google Fit. If these if map my run and pacer on iOS do not feed directly into google Fit, which they may not,

that might just be an Android feature. You can just use the use them to keep talking to Apple Health and then google Fit will read the data from Apple Health. So again it's kind of like an aggregator, and that's what these apps were meant to be, and so is the Apple app. But that's the way I would do it and see if it'll work. And the sleep monitoring all fitbit is pretty good, so that should be pretty nice to see inside of the Google Fit app. All right,

I thought this was pretty cool. We did a story with this company called Deep Sentinel, and let me just make sure I didn't talk about this on my last podcast. I don't think I did, but I just want to be sure because let's see, did I talk about it? No? I did not. Okay, So we did a story with this security system called deep Sentinel, and I just thought this was the coolest, smartest idea ever. It's very expensive, I'll tell you upfront, but once you see these cameras,

you're like, wow, why doesn't every camera have that? So the guy who started this company is one of the co founders of redfin and I'm always amazed when these people meet up with me. By the way I talked earlier, how you know, the guy with tentacle, how they'll just you know, but some people actually fly in to like meet with Rich DeMuro to like talk about their stuff, and I'm always impressed when they do that. So thank

you when you decide to do that. I know I'm local news, but you know, it's kind of cool when you when you take things seriously enough that you don't mind flying in. So David, you know, co founder of Redfinn. I'm sure he made a bazillion dollars starting that company. He was the chief technical officer. So he was telling me some of the things that they came up with at Redfinn that are still like their patents, that are just phenomenal when it comes to like the way you

browse houses. And the main thing he was telling me is they came up with the idea of houses and they're pricing like laid out on a map like nobody had ever done that before. We can just roll down a street and see every house lined up and see how much each one of those homes either is selling

for or costs or is valued at. And I just I mean, it's just like little things like that we take for granted now that these people had to invent back in the day and come up with and he was one of them, so he did really well there anyway, So now he does this thing called Deep Sentinel. We met up and he showed me these cameras on a house here in La and the cameras come with a speaker on top and then the also there's AI. So there's a box in your house that's sort of like

a little computer box that the cameras feed into. That box is programmed with an algorithm that looks for any signs of trouble. And he wouldn't tell me exactly what it looks for. I'm sure that's proprietary with their algorithm, and who really knows what a sign of trouble is, Like, I mean, me running around the backyard with my kids. Like do they think that that looks like trouble? It

could be. So what happens is when the AI senses trouble, it flicks the feed from your house up to a virtual guard at station somewhere in you somewhere in the US. Like they're I don't know if they're working from home or some sort of office or whatever, but they start seeing the feed from your house and they kind of

analyze with their human eyes what's going on. So if they see me just running with the kids, okay, fine, But if they see a guy with a crowbar at the edge of the house, they're like, hey, what's going on? And they can immediately speak through the microphone on the camera on the speaker on the camera and question people talk to them do whatever. Now, you might say, well, rich a big deal. It's a security like what are

they gonna do. They're gonna stop. Well, if you're at someone's house and someone yells out through the speaker saying, hey, what are you doing? Here, you're gonna run. I mean, you're not gonna keep doing what you're doing. Chances are right. So he told me that they're stopping crimes on a

daily basis. I just when I think about this feature, it's just like wow, it's really like all these other security cameras I've talked about over the years now seem like they are child's play compared to this one, because it comes with a guard. Like, imagine that your cameras are monitored, Like that's so cool. They only do outside

for security reasons. They don't monitor inside cameras. A three pack, like a starter pack, is like seven hundred dollars for the three cameras, and then it's one hundred dollars a month for monitoring, which I know sounds super expensive, but even like if you're paying you know some of the ADT plans like fifty five sixty bucks a month, and you know that of course includes equipment a lot of times.

But the reality is the guy I talked to you that had this said, look, it's it's like the price you pay, it's like you feel better, you feel like your family's safe. And I really like, this has really gotten to me because I love these cameras. I love all the Ring cameras and stuff. But I feel like, mark my words, either Ring will purchase this company or this will be built into more cameras in the future. Like this, this has to be a feature of these cameras, and it will probably be an add on or a

premium feature. Or I could even see Deep Sentinel being an add on to a Ring like you Ring my contract or I don't who knows or whys or one of these camera companies or any of them. Like imagine that you could just plug this service into any camera that you get. Now, I think there's some technical issues there because this camera has to feed into the AI first, because the AI is really what gets the trigger. So someone's not watching the camera all the time because that

would be prohibitively expensive. So again this is where David Smarts come in, Like he thought of, Okay, well, it's too expensive to have humans sitting there watching thousands of cameras across America at any good time. You can't even do that. But what if we had AI watching those cameras, which could be doing it twenty four to seven and then every time it senses a problem, it flips that feed up to a human. I mean, ah, this is

why I love this stuff. Just brilliant. So again expensive right now, but I think that this is a really really fascinating concept, and I think we're going to see more of this type of thing. All right, let's see good Morning Rich if you listen to the podcast I always joke about. Good Morning, Phil says, my mom has Windows ten and I'm still on Windows seven? Is this still possible for me to log into my mom's computer

with minimal steps? At many times I show her how to log into her laptop, she still needs my remote assistance. She even has trouble just logging into the computer with her four digit password. I currently use the free version of Team Viewer, but sometimes she has trouble finding the ID and password to successfully connect. There's got to be others like me with elderly parents who need remote assistance. Your recommendation is appreciated. Love all your techie content, respectfully,

Phil and Lyn. Great question. It's funny. This is how me and my brother log into my mom's computer when we need to give her tech support. And it's worked out pretty well. And my mom is not very techy. I talk about her often on the show. But she's a tech trooper and she's willing to participate in any tech that we will sort of you know, set her up with like she's not like no no, no, no, no no. Like so my brother set her up a Team viewer and you know, he uses it. I use

it and it's fantastic. But yes, there's two steps involved. Number one, computer has to be on. Number two, she probably has to be logged in. We haven't, I don't. I think we made it so that she doesn't really have a log in, like it just stays on all the time. And then number three, you need the password and the your ID. Now the idea is saved from session to session. The password is what changes. And so you're right, they do need to locate the password. Now.

In the past, my mom has said, oh I can't find the password. Where'd it go? It's usually she doesn't call it the tray, the system tray, but that's where it lives. And maybe Team Viewer like shut down or something, so it's not there or it kind of went behind, you know how. Sometimes Windows will consolidate the stuff in the system tray. Sometimes it does that and you have to expand it. But there's never been a problem, like

she's always been able to find it. Now when it comes to the logging into the computer with her four digit password, I would suggest changing that if you can to the Windows Hello, if you can do it with her face, like if she can just sit in front of the computer and log in with the face, that might help where it recognizes you and just logs in. Otherwise, the Team Viewer, I know you don't want to hear this, but you can. I think the trick is Team Viewer

for free. It changes the password every time, of course because they don't want people to get used to it. But I think if you pay for team Viewer, the password can stay the same. So you might consider maybe purchasing a subscription to team Viewer and you can attack it that way. Or I use Microsoft Remote Desktop for my computer at work and that works fantastic, and I believe it's free. So maybe you check out Microsoft Remote

Desktop and see if it's compatible with Windows seven. And if it is, that might be a little bit easier because you can log in with a username with her username and password, and so you can get in that way and it's it's free. So I would try that and see what happens. System requirements. Uh oh, Windows, yep, it looks like you do need Windows eight minimum, so that may not work, but you know they might have an older version that that could work. So those are

my two, uh my two pieces of advice. But thank

you for helping out your mom with her computer. I know it's it's definitely a struggle sometimes, and you know, I get frustrated sometimes when I'm when I'm helping her, and I have to think that like it's you know, you come from this idea of like everything just makes sense for you if you're a techie, and to literally just wipe that off the the what do you call the plate, I don't know, whatever you want to call it, just wipe that away and just like come from a

standpoint of I don't understand any of this stuff, like none of it. Like the biggest thing I see with people with their with their devices and their phones and their their computers is they don't want to mess anything up, right. They think that they're going to do one thing and everything's going to be messed. It keeps people from changing their passwords, It keeps people people from switching to a better system for something or switching to a new app.

It's like, nobody wants to mess up the status quo on their devices if they're not a techie. And I get it. We take for granted if you're a techie that, yeah, I want to break stuff every day. I want to try something new every day. I want to try a new pre you know, upgrade my software. There's there's people that don't want to update their iPhone software because it's gonna change something. And I get it, it's gonna Yeah.

My son updated his computer the other day and now he's a he's a digital native, so he's sitting there like, oh my gosh, this is the best update ever. Apple is just so amazing. Oh my gosh. Like he got big sur finally, Like I don't know if it forced him to or he just decided to do it, but his laptop got big sur and he's like, this is so cool, and he was just going off. And that's a reaction from someone who embraces and loves technology, whereas a lot of people are not like that. And you

have to keep that in mind. A lot of people sit there and they fear any change when it comes to tech. And I get it. I totally understand. I'm not like that, Like I am the person that's breaking stuff on a daily basis, and I love it. But it's just one of these things that you just have to keep in mind. There are different folks out there, all right, this is kind of cool. This is a new app from OnePlus, and here's here's the biggest thing, and I talk about I'm look, I'm probably gonna switch

to a Pixel phone when it comes out. I'm hoping next week when Google has their big event. They've got Google Io on let's see, I think it's on the eighteenth of May. And so usually historically they've either announced a phone during that event, or they haven't, or they've they've teased a phone, a new phone. Usually the Pixels

come out in October. But you know, all things are off the table at this point because Apple is so far ahead of the rest of these cell phone companies that they've all been forced to push up the release dates, like they are all releasing their phones earlier because the iphonees are just so good that they need something to compete with them. All these phones they've been putting out are just iPhones better. And so Samsung came out with

their phones earlier. OnePlus was a little earlier, I believe, and now hopefully we'll see Google do that as well. But anyway, I digress. But the one, you know, big difference between the iPhone and the Androids of the world is kind of the innercompatibility, interoperability with your laptop and other assorted devices, right, and so airdrop is like this magical thing that the Mac has with the iPhone and

with Android you really don't have that. Now Android to Android has finally gotten a feature called nearby Share, which I don't think anyone ever uses or knows about, but it's there and it works, and it works really well. But now we've got this program from one plus. It's called clipped clipt and this is a little app that lets you share text, photos and files between your computer and I have this installed in my Mac and also an Android phone. And what it does, it's kind of brilliant. Actually.

It uses your Google Drive to transfer the data in a secure and encrypted way, and so when you copy something, and you could use it as simple as the clipboard, So if you copy something on your computer, it will show up on your phone immediately, or you can take it a step further and send files and so you can send like large files. Now it's not air drop, it's not going direct Wi Fi, so it's not as fast, but it is efficient and it works and I don't know, I've had it on my phone for a bit now

and it's pretty cool. And you know, you can do large file sizes. And they've come up with a way to use Google Drive in a secure way where thank you OnePlus for the way they authenticate your Google Drive. And this is why I don't allow third party access to my Google Drive or Gmail is because they want to read all the contents re and access and be able to delete or modify all the contents of your drive.

And so if you ever see when you sign in with Google, which I don't recommend you doing anyway, but if you have to for something like this, if you ever see where it says read, write, modify and delete the entire contents of your Google Drive or your Gmail, say absolutely not. Now, these developers are being lazy or they're trying to steal your information. I say steal, I

mean scrape your information. A lot of times they're trying to scrape it so that they can, like with the case of Gmail, a lot of services want access to your full inbox so that they can gather information from your purchase history and then sell that data and whatever. So but the other group of developers are just being lazy, and the way they should develop their app in the way that Clipped did is it only has access to

the data that it creates. So it will create a little file folder inside Google Drive that says clipped and it can only access that, and it will say that on that authorization screen, it'll say full access, delete, read, write to the data that we create. That's what you want. That is safe. That is much better than just giving full No way, why do you want to get full access to your Google Drive? Huhuh that's that's like a

no no anyway. The uh So, the app Clipped works on Android and Mac, Android and Windows, and it's it's really cool and it's I've used it. I would check it out if you want like a kind of a little convenient and simple copy and paste or file sharing between Android and your Mac basically any computer that runs Chrome, because that's you get you get the Chrome extension on your computer and then you get the the little Clipped app on your phone and it works great. I'm I'm

loving it. So I've got you know, little Mac extension. It says text image file link and boom you can upload a file. It goes to your phone, vice versa. So it's pretty cool. So check it out. All right, I think we have time for one more question from Carol. Carol dear Rich. Years ago there was Gateway Computers. They had cowprint boxes and you can go to the store and get a whole computer set up in a box, tower, monitor, printer, mouse, keyboard,

et cetera. Is there anything like that now for seniors? Oh? That is a great, great question. I love. Can I just reminisce for a moment about Gateway Gateway two thousand. Back in the day, do you remember that Gateway two thousand? It was my favorite thing to look through the PC World magazine every month when it came to my house. And the thickest part of the magazine was the center, and the center had the Gateway two thousand ads and they were so good. They were thick card stocks. You

can find them super easily. Now, as the company sort of waned in the later years, the ads were less thick. They were just printed on the paper the standard pages but ted Waite was their founder and CEO. He was always in it. It was always these wild situations. It was almost like a story where I'm trying to remember. Most of the ones I remember right now were like the holiday scenes where it was just it's like, ah, it was just so cool. They were in Sioux Falls,

South Dakota. It was just h One of my favorite companies. E Machines ended up buying them, and then I believe Acer bought them. I don't know, but I think that's what happened to them. And yes, they had stores. At some point they had kind of the equivalent of the Apple stores. They had a bunch in Los Angeles called Gateway Country Stores, and one of them was it became I think a lot of them became relaxed. The back stores. If you're in LA and it's like a chain of

stores that's for like chairs and stuff. I don't know, I don't even think those are around anymore. But anyway, I digress. So I love Gateway. It was one of my first computers. It was my favorite computer. I love the motif of the cows. Uh. But what you're looking for. I was just at Costco yesterday. I always recommend go to Costco get a computer there. Now, they don't have the print in the box, but they will have the mouse and the keyboard and the computer. I was there yesterday,

and yeah, they're a little bit more expensive. I think the cheapest one I saw there was five seventy nine, But typically typically at Costco they have two all in one PCs that are a fantastic value. I saw two yesterday. I think one was five to seventy nine. One was six ninety nine, which I know is a little expensive, but not really for what you're getting. You're getting a really solid computer. And what the trick is about Costco versus like Best Buyer these other places, is that the

computer you're getting is just a little bit better. It's got the specs are just a little bit more specked out then, like you might be getting a bigger hard drive, more memory, slightly better processor. And it's Costco. They always negotiate sort of like better deals than everyone else. So it's kind of like anything you buy at Costco, it's gonna be just a little bit better quality than anywhere

else you get it. So that's what I would recommend, Carol, if you have a membership to Costco, check it out. And I know it might seem you know, people want these all in ones for like three hundred bucks, but believe me, I made that mistake of buying one of those once and it was garbage. So spend a little bit more, get something that's going to last just a little bit longer. Oh yeah, hear that sound. That means it's going to do it for this episode of the show.

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