Instagram now lets you hide likes

at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles. I get it. You see me on TV. You say, I'm gonna ask that guy a question, and you know what. That's what this podcast is all about. So thanks for sending him in, because if you didn't, I wouldn't be able to do this show. Well, I want to say thank you for

something that happened to me. You know, I post stuff on Instagram and I never you know, you never know what the reaction is going to be, right, and so you know, last night before bed, I was going through some of my memories on Google Photos as I sometimes do, and I came across a picture of me that I was like, what is that? And it said, thirteen years ago, and it was my headshot from when I started at another TV station here in Los Angeles called k CAL nine.

And I'll just tell you the story because I didn't I didn't tell the whole story on Instagram, but I kind of told a little bit of it. But I'll give you the kind of the cliffs notes version. But basically, you know, I was doing my job at CNET. I was working at CNET in New York City, and I'd been a reporter in other places, but I was now working for a website and I thought I had the best job ever. I mean, I would have stayed at c NET for the rest of my life. I worked

in New York City. My team was awesome. Everyone there was just amazing. And this was like in the early days of video and tech and all that stuff. And I'm just doing my job and lobby blah blah blah. I get a call from someone in Los Angeles at CA CAW and They're like, hey, can you do what you're doing over there here? And I'm like what, And

I mean, this is Los Angeles. My wife is from LA She had been kind of itching to get back a little bit, and so I was like, well, I think so, and so they fly me out to La me I think they flew me out. I can't really remember. But anyway, so I get out there, I get the job at CA CAL. Everything's fine, you know, I do my job for a year. My contract's up and no renewal. It's just like you're done. You're like, oh, okay, see you. So my wife and I, you know, we go home

and I'm sitting there. And this was, by the way, two thousand and eight, two thousand and nine, when like the entire economy collapsed and so there was no jobs to be had out there, and so it was like, okay, but I made a decision. I you know, we'd moved around several times in the world to you know, be

a reporter, and I'd lived in Washington State, Louisiana. We'd actually moved to LA another time before I moved back to New York for CNET, and so I was kind of done moving, and I said, you know what, but do you just want to like stick it out here and we'll just stay put in LA and just kind of see what happens. And she was like sure, And she had a job at the time, and so we did. We just stayed put. We stayed put in our little apartment. We just kept on going and I did some other things.

I worked for a website called tech Meme. I worked at CANBC as a producer, and all of a sudden, I get a call from the same person that called me the first time at k CAL, who is now working at KTLA, and said, hey, can we try this again? Can you do what you're doing again again? And I said, okay, but I have a good job again. So you know, by this time, I actually had a full time job at CANBC as a producer and it was a pretty decent job. And I said, oh gosh, I don't know.

I'm a little scared this time, and he said, no, it's going to be great. And so sure enough, it's been ten plus years since that conversation and it has been great, and I just want to say thank you. I posted the picture to Instagram and I don't even think most people knew I was on k CAL well, but the comments have just been pouring in, and I really I sometimes forget how many people kind of see what I do on TV, and it makes it very clear that you're watching, you're listening, and the things that

I do do have an impact on you. So thank you. I just want to say thanks. That's that's it. So all right, let's get to the first question or the first story of the week. Apple. Apple Apple. I know, of Rich you're such an Apple lover, Oh my gosh, but you know, Apple kind of commands everything. But Apple announced their Worldwide Developers Conference is going to be held on June seventh. Official invites went out to the media, including myself. Keno is at ten am on June seventh

Pacific time, which is nice. I mean Samsung when they do theirs, it's like seven am Pacific. Why, I mean, I guess they're more New York centric, But seven am or ten am on June seventh WWDC. This will be the second virtual WWDC, maybe the third. I don't even know now. Twenty nineteen was live, twenty twenty was in virtual, twenty twenty one was virtual or is going to be virtual?

So what are they going to announce? Well, of course we always get to see kind of what's next with the iPhone, and for my purposes, I think that's one of the biggest things is you know, the iPhone is kind of like the biggest product from Apple. So when we see the new features coming to like it's either going to be iOS fifteen perhaps or you know, maybe another version of iOS fourteen. Usually they go to the fifteen. But I mean, can you believe we're getting into like

fifteen major versions of iOS. I mean, it's just unbelievable. But it's not just iOS. There's also mac os. There's also iPad os, there's also tvOS, there's also watch os. So we get to see all the new features that are coming to all the different Apple products. They don't come overnight, but you know, we get a little glimpse into the future, and generally the new software launches, you know, sometime later in the year September October when the new

devices launch. But anyway, I find it really fun. It's it's usually a pretty pretty good keynote to get some some insight on new features, and it always really I was thinking about this, which keynote gets me the most amped up about their products, and it's it's a war between Apple and Google, because Google always gets me really excited for this idea that like Google is trying to sell. I think I talked about this, but may did I leave my last podcast with this. I hope I didn't. Uh,

maybe this was announced last week. No, No, it was Google that I talked about. That's right, Okay, it was Google i OWE and I kind of mentioned this, but I said, you know, Google, IOWE and Apple, they always get me so excited. It's like a very like positive, bright outlook on the future. I know, say what you will about privacy and all the issues with these tech companies and how they're monopolies and whatever antitrust, but at the end of the day, they do affect our lives

and pretty amazing ways. And the benefits are there. If you're if you're a typical consumer, you're you're getting a lot of benefits from these companies. And so yeah, there's people out there that say, oh, they're evil, they're they're terrible. But the reality is when I sit there and do a lot of the stuff that I do on a daily basis, I literally sit there and think to myself,

this is quite amazing. What I'm able to do with my phone right now, what I'm able to do with my house right now, what I'm able to do on my TV right now. It's just you know, with fitness, with with my photos, with my editing with Instagram, with Twitter, with Facebook. It's just quite amazing anyway. So June seventh, ten am, can't wait. We will have more info about what they announce in the next podcast. Let's get to

the first question of the day. All right, Bob says, Hey, Rich, my wife is a nanny and the parents just move to a new house in Stevenson's Ranch. That's an area in Los Angeles. I think it's like a nice area too, and cannot seem to get coverage for her phone. Do you possibly know what alternative she has in order to get a signal to use her iPhone? Thank you, Bob, Bob. What she needs to do is latch onto their WiFi and turn on Wi Fi calling. So most of the

carriers offer it. I'm pretty sure that the if she's a nanny, I'm pretty sure she's either already on their WiFi or it would be a polite ask to get on their WiFi. But I think if if there's any issue with that, you know, if they're like, no, you cannot have our WiFi, I mean, that would be indicative of a bigger issue. I think would trust but I would ask to get on the Wi Fi and then go into iPhone and turn on Wi Fi calling. So the way that you do that is, let's see here,

turn on Wi Fi calling. Let's see you open. Oh gosh, that's for your Mac. You can do that on your Mac. Let's see iPhone. I know it's in somewhere in your phone. Okay, settings Phone, No, that's not it. Oh, come on Wi Fi calling, Apple Support, Okay, Wi Fi calling. Go into settings phone, Wi Fi calling. That's it. Now. You may have to once you toggle it on for the first time,

you may have to set up an emergency address. And so because she's a nanny at this house, and you know, God forbid she ever had to make a call for an emergency, I would set their address as my emergency address, because you know that would help. Now, just so you know, the Wi Fi calling is going to continue at home, So there's two options, you know, And if she ever had to call nine one one from home, it would deliver that the Stevenson's Ranch address to the nine one

one call or dispatch. So you have to kind of think about that with the with respect to the address, but I think because she's a nanny, it's probably more important to have it go to the address of the Stevenson ranch. But she could turn on and off Wi Fi calling, like maybe just make it part of her day. So every day that she gets to the house, she turns on Wi Fi calling. When she exits, she just turns it off. And that's kind of like part of

the routine. So anyway, good question, and it's surprising to me how many people don't have Wi Fi calling on. I actually I by default like it off because I'm like, if I'm paying for my service, right like, if I'm paying for Verizon, I would like my calls to be routed through Verizon towers and not freeload on my Wi Fi.

But where my in laws live, there is no cell phone service on Verizon, and so I have to turn it on for that And so for that reason, my calls do go through my Wi Fi at home, so I can see my phone right now, says Verizon Wi Fi, which is kind of a misnomer because it's not really Verizon Wi Fi. It's Verizon and Wi Fi because my WiFi is not Verizon. But anyway, so anyway, I have a little you know, I generally if you don't need Wi Fi calling at home, I would just leave it off.

There's no real benefit except you're just saving your carrier. And with money, which I mean we pay them enough, I think they can afford it. So that's my thoughts on that. All right, let's talk about Instagram now. It's ironic that the photo I was just talking about on my Instagram of my old headshot for Kkel is like one of the most liked photos I've posted in a

long time. And the irony is that I actually turned off the ability for people to see how many likes my photos are getting because of a new feature on Instagram. So Instagram and Facebook have done this, but I think it's most important. On Instagram. They are giving folks the ability to hide the like counts on their posts, and not just that, you can also hide all the like counts that you see as you scroll through. So I have turned on the hiding. There's two ways to do this.

You can turn on you know, as you scroll through Instagram, you don't see any likes. It just says liked by one of your you know, one random person plus others. That's what we'll say, instead of liked by you know someone plus seventy hundred twenty five others. It'll just say others. So that's the number one thing. And to turn that on, you go into click your little profile profile icon. Then you click the three little lines that look like a well I call it a hamburger, but it's like a menu.

Then you go into settings, and then you go into gosh, there's a privacy. Then you go into privacy. Then you go into posts and then it says likes and views, hide like and view count. I mean, could they have made that any tougher to find? But they are going to put like a banner on your home screen as well that says do you want to hide likes? So okay, So I did that and now when I scroll through,

I don't see any likes when I'm scrolling through. And I will tell you, after twenty four hours of this setup, I really do like it. And I'll tell you why. It frees my mind. It frees my mind to actually look at the content and not worry about how popular this person is. And so when I see a big account that I know has thousands and hundreds of thousands of likes that I just feel really, you know, like

insignificant or what's the word. I don't know, you know, I just feel like I'm not as good, like why is this person have so many in one minute? But it doesn't. I don't do that anymore because I don't have to think about it. So and the best part is the smaller accounts are now elevated in my head because it doesn't matter. They're the same. So let me

give you an example. A peloton instructor that gets, you know, thirty four thousand likes in an hour is now on the same playing field as an old friend from high school who might get twenty five likes in an hour. It doesn't matter. And so now I don't feel bad like my brain used to just feel bad for the one person and like a little bit jealous of the other person, And now my brain doesn't have that knowledge, so it's like whatever, I just look at the post and if I like it, I'll like it or a

comment on it. So I think it's actually a really good thing to turn that on and just test it with yourself and see, I think it's good for the mind. The second thing you can do so is even if someone doesn't turn off the ability to see likes and view counts, you can turn them off on your posts.

So every time that you make a post, there's now an option to hide the like count, So you can do that while you post, or you can do it after you post by going to one of your posts hitting the three little dots and it says hide like count. And so that's a really nice way to do it as well. So I don't know, I'm testing it out. I'm gonna see how it works, but so far, I'm kind of digging it, and I think that it's a

good thing for people to at least test this. I think especially you know, my wife and I were debating this last night, like is it good for teenagers? And you know, she said it was, but they're not going to do it, And I said, well, I think it's good for adults too, because I think that no matter what the way that our brain works as a human, that's just programmed a certain way. You look at the

picture and then you immediately look at the likes. It's just the way we've been programmed, because that's what the app is all about. So the fact that you don't have to do that anymore, I think really frees up your brain to do other stuff. All right, let's get to another question Sean, with the subject line, Android says, how about a wireless service that actually works and reliable? They are all horrible. Okay, Well, I don't necessarily agree

with that. I mean, I've been around the world with varying wireless services, mostly at and T and Verizon, and I am actually quite amazed at where I've been in the world and have a cell phone signal, and so just to kind of just say a blanket statement that they're all horrible, I just can't agree with. I actually think it's quite magical that it's getting harder and harder to escape from the connected world that we live in, and so these services are quite amazing. They connect people,

they help people. You know, there's there was a story about and I forget but there was like a car that had crashed, and you know, these cars have like there's a couple of ways that it can do it. Like you know, your Apple Watch can help respond. Now your car can have like on Star on the pixel. They've got the the crash feature where if you're you know, you crash, it'll call for help. And all of those things rely on sort of a signal. And so if you don't have a signal, that's going to be a problem.

And and most of the time there is a signal now and yes, in some of the rural areas there it's spotty. I mentioned where my in laws live, they don't have a signal there. But the funny thing is they actually so for many many years they didn't have a signal. But now T Mobile works one hundred percent there, and at and T works I think pretty well like ninety percent. And Verizon works if you stand in like a certain place, but only a little tiny bit like

you might get a notification. So yeah, Verizon, you know, is the odd man out there. But the reality is it just can you know, it's continued to get better over the years. You know, in the past ten years, I've seen that it's gotten better. And now when it comes to these new five G networks, like yeah, people say,

oh they're not that fast, it's not that great. But yeah, if you get like if you capture one of those like five G ultra wideband signals from Verizon, I mean, it's it's like lightning in a bottle, it's so fast. And so you know, and again I've I've been all over the place. I've been all over the place, and I would say ninety nine point nine percent of the

time there's a signal. Now, calls used to drop back in the day, like yes, of course I used to, you know, even driving over the four or five, like, there used to be one spot where every single time the call would drop, and that's been patched. I mean, so it's you know, these carriers, say what you will. I mean, I think we pay too much for some of this cell service unless you're you know, on a

on a smaller carrier or on a smaller plan. I think the it's expensive, but you know, the service are providing I think has gotten better over the years, and I think that you know, you could debate me on that, but just you know, send in your info. What do you think, I mean, send in your your thoughts. Has service gotten better at your house? Has there been a place where you used to drop out? Or you don't?

You know. So I don't think they're all horrible. Now, I will say, I do think that Verizon and AT and T are are really good. I think a T mobile is coming up, but you know, the uh, it's just one of these things. Well, I guess T Mobile

now they have Sprint. I mean, it's probably even getting better and it's funny because most of the test lines that you know, when they send me a phone to test, generally they send like a you know, thirty days of service or something so you can test out the phone, and a lot of times, I would say nine out

of ten it's T Mobile. So if I'm testing a phone, I'm using like the Tea Mobile network, and I will admit, I mean, I'm just gonna be honest, I do notice that my Verizon or AT and T signals are better, Like the latency I've noticed the latency, the availability of a good signal, and the latency on and the speed some most of the time is just a little bit

better on the two historic carriers. But then again, a lot of times T Mobile charge less than the two biggest and so you know, it's it's one of these things that's trade off. Not everyone needs like the best, latest, greatest everything. So I'm not knocking T Mobile in any way. I actually, if I had my preference for how I like a company run, T Mobile actually kind of I really like how they run their company, like the way that they kind of approach their customers and their customer

service and the way they do things. I really do like. So it's all good, and I you know, I just anyway, that's a that's a long answer for a kind of a one line question, but or a one line statement, I should say. But there you have it. You're listening to the Rich on Tech show. Oh so you're gonna get rich on tech. All right, let's talk about one of the big, big, big stories of the week, Amazon acquiring MGM. I mean, this is just wild. It's just

the fact that we have these tech companies. And I tweeted about this, you know, I said that here we are. It's just wild to me that literally tech is just eating through Hollywood. I mean, think about what they've done over the years. They totally changed the way music is. They totally changed the way movies are delivered. They totally changed the way movies are made. I mean, Netflix just took everything and just abended it. Now by the way, they did it twice. They did it the first time

with the whole DVD situation. Then they did it again with the way they produce things, the way they distribute things. Who you can't put movies out on a streaming service first, Oh, now HBO Max does it too, Now Disney does too. I mean it's it's pretty wild to watch how tech has just chumped through Hollywood. And when you really think about it, none, almost. I can't think of one example where the innovation that that we are living with today when it comes to entertainment has anything to do with

a historic company that was started in Hollywood. Nothing almost nothing. I mean think about it, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, all the ways were entertained Netflix. They were all invented by tech companies, not by the historic companies. What does that tell you? It tells you that these people made a lot of money and they get comfortable and they just really can't innovate because guess what, when you're printing DVDs and you're selling them for twenty bucks a pop, it's

really tough to give that up. And I totally understand that. And I feel like this with my job. You know, I've been at my job for ten years now at KTLA, and I feel like, I, Hey, I'm sure there are people out there that are looking at me saying, ugh, this guy does the same been doing the same thing for ten years, doesn't know anything new, doesn't care to try anything different, And honestly, like that's my biggest fear is I don't want to become that because I want

to be. I constantly want to be innovating, and I want to be you know, even to this day trying new ways of reporting or new ways of gathering my reports are coming up with reports or the even the reports I do. I mean, I really like. This is why when people are always like, oh, you did a report on a beer brewery, how's that tech, It's like, well, that's the thing. Like I like to challenge myself and find the tech in different places. Yes, it's easy to find tech in a smartphone. I can do that every

day of the week. But when I can get out there and really find novel ways of telling tech stories that don't involve a smartphone, that's really fun and that you know, it gets me going. And So anyway, Amazon acquiring MGM for eight and a half billion dollars, according to CNBC's second largest acquisition since it paid nearly fourteen billion dollars for Whole Foods in twenty seventeen. I can't believe that MGM is worth that much. I mean, this

is a historic company. What they're really getting here, according to what Amazon is saying, is the IP which is the intellectual property, and they've got a lot of it. I mean movies like Basic Instinct, James Bond, Legally Blonde, Poulter Guy, RoboCop, Rocky, Silence of the Lamb, Stargate, Thelma Luis, tomb Raider, Pink Panther, Thomas Crown Affair. Along with seventeen thousand shows, four thousand films. They also own Fargo, Handsmade Tale and Handmade Handmaid's Tale and Vikings, So every one

of those things I just mentioned. Imagine there's going to be a reboot. I mean just it's going to be done, reboot, TV show whatever, and a lot of these movies will probably show up on Amazon Prime, which is really really good for the customer that's paying the one hundred and twenty bucks a year for Amazon Prime, which yeah, we'll probably see a price increase for that this year, I think, especially through the pandemic where Amazon had a little bit

of struggles, but they came out on top. You know, they're they're really doing a fantastic job. Like the delivery is so unbelievably reliable. And I talked about this in my last episode about ordering the soap from Doctor Squatch and it took you know, three weeks to get it, and I just couldn't believe it. Whereas I ordered something on Amazon yesterday morning at ten am and I got it by seven pm. And by the way, it's still

sitting in my mailbox, which is really sad. So but I need it for today because I'm gonna start testing something and you know, I just needed that part. But anyway, so I predict a little bit of a price increase, maybe five bucks this year on Amazon Prime memberships, just

because they're firing on all cylinders here. Amazon is just not slow going down, and you know, they've got a lot of cash, but they also need a lot of cash because they are they just continue to like, oh my gosh, there's no stopping in sight with this company. All right, let's see here. Uh, okay, okay, where am I here? Sandy says, Hey, Rich, you helped me before with your great advice and recommendations. I need a USB three point zero port hub plus USB C cable for

my new MacBook Air. I'm sure you're aware this laptop only has two ports and that's not enough to support my external devices. Thank you, Sandy from Culver City, Sandy super easy. You need you need a USB C hub, and you can. There's a million of these things. I've been using one from Vava va v A. They sent this over to me to test, and it's been great. It's super simple. It's got HDMI output, it's got uh,

let's see what else does I have. It's got three USB three point zero ports, it's got an SD card reader, it's got everything you need. So you just plug this into your computer and you get three USB slots as well, and so I say go with that. It's twenty five bucks. Looks like they even have it cheaper. But there's so many of these things. I mean, you can get them, you know, just just search USB three hub on Amazon and you can just you know, there's so many. But

you know, the Vava is very popular. It depends how many ports you need. You can get one as cheap as fifteen bucks. I'm looking at this one from Anchor, but that is not a USB C Nope, you don't want that one. You got to look for one that has a USB C connector that goes into your computer. So that's what you need. That's like the magical part. And so I have another one that I bought just

a random one on Amazon. I don't even know the name of it, but that's that's what you're looking for USB C hub and just go with the Vava one. That one's that one's pretty simple, they work great, and they're they're pretty good twenty five bucks. And yes, I am well aware. I had the before my current computer, I had the MacBook Pro that only I think it only had two yeah, because my new one has four,

two on each side. And actually I gave that one to my son and I was plugging it in the other day and I was like, wait, you only have two things on here, and they're both on one side. I'm like, ah, or maybe they're on I forget. I can't go over there and look. But anyway, Yes, Apple is known for really being a little skimpy on the ports on their computers and on their devices. They've over the years, if you think about it, Apple has just continually gotten rid of every single way to plug things

into their devices. And you can argue that that's to drive everything to the cloud, drive everything to their situation where you connect with their stuff, but the reality is it's it's kind of annoying, especially as as a quasi creator. I call myself. I mean, I'm not really a creator. I mean, I guess I am. I create stuff, not in a YouTube sense, but more on a I mean, I guess I do stuff for social media. So but I'm not like a standard creator like an I Justine,

you know, where she's you know, she's a creator. They term themselves that, where they're creating content on a daily basis. For I mean, I guess I am. I consider myself more like a journalist, you know, that's what historically you know as or a reporter, you know, but all the all the lines are blurred and you know how people see you nowadays. All right, let's talk about speaking of creating.

You know, my whole journey with Google Photos, and I'm now paying fifty dollars a month for ten terabytes of storage, which is fine. I mean, yeah, it's a lot, but it's one of these things where you know, when you look at the tools you need to do your job. I need this tool and I'm not going to sit there and try to figure out a way to hack together you know, a situation and all this stuff just to you know, save you know, what might amount to you know, thirty bucks a month or something. You know,

don't forget. It wasn't. I was already paying ten so and you're like, rich, well that's forty. But I get I get it. I get it. I know. It's one of these things. But here's the deal. It's I already paid. It's already been a month. I've already paid twice, I think, and so it's been fine. You know. It's just one of these things where when I look at my storage now I'm just I breathe a sigh of relief. I'm like, ah, Okay,

my stuff is in there. It's okay. Now my next thing is actually backing up all that stuff, and I have a whole plan for that, but I won't get into that right now. But you know, Google Photos, and this is how this all kind of started. Google Photos is no longer it's no longer an unlimited free ride, right so you still get fifteen gigabytes of free storage, and for a lot of people that's gonna be fine,

but now they're gonna start charging above that. Even there used to be an option in Google Photos to upload your photos in a compressed what they called high quality version, which would be unlimited and free forever. And yeah, that's not the case anymore. As of June first, even in that unlimited or I'm sorry, even that compressed high quality format, it is still counting against your storage quota. Now the trick is everything you uploaded before June first, in that

high quality format is still free. It's very confusing, very very confusing. But anyway, I'm above it no matter what. So what I'm trying to tell you here is that Google is very aware of this. They're not trying to be evil, They're just realizing that there's four trillion photos in Google Photos. And yes, was Google Photos promised at inception as a free, unlimited storage place forever. Yeah, they probably never used the word forever, but they kind of

insinuated it, and so yes, I'm a little annoyed. But at the same time, at this point, there's really no free unlimited storage anywhere. It's like any of these companies they used to hand out free storage like candy, and now it's like, nope, now we've got the cavities to fill. That sounded pretty good. That didn't make any sense, but hey,

you know, it kind of worked. So what I'm trying to tell you is you now have some new tools like Google is like you know, look, we understand we're kind of being a little bratty with this whole situation, but we're gonna help you. We're gonna help you kind of get rid of some of the fluff in your account. So now if you go into your Google Photos, you've got several new tools. You tap your little profile picture, then you tap account storage, and it brings you to

this new page that tells you a couple things. Number one, it tells you how many years you have left before your storage is going to be used up, and I have four years. Apparently I'm using about just under I'm using just under two terabytes of my ten and then it breaks it down, I'm using one point seventy five terabytes in Google Photos, and then one hundred and fifty gigabytes in Google Drive, Gmail and more. Then it tells me how I can clear up some of this stuff.

So you have four new options, large photos and videos, other apps, screen shots, and blurry photos. Blurry photos is the easiest one to start with. Just go in there and just delete blurry photos. You're not gonna save a ton of space, but you know you will save some space because some of my blurry photos, you know, they

could be pretty big. Now the screenshot, I've got a gigabyte of screenshots, which may not seem like a lot with ten terabytes used, But if you're in fifteen gigs of storage and you free up a gigabyte of screen shots, that's pretty good. And now some of these screenshots, I need a lot of screenshots to save. But a lot of my screen shots were like ten megabytes, so those

are significantly pretty big. Other apps, I'm not really sure how they delineate like what was from other apps, but it looks like all the videos that I've uploaded to Instagram. Somehow I identifies those I don't know. And then large photos and videos, and that's a big one. Now I've got my first my first like ten videos. First one is nine gigs, second one is seven gigs, six gigs,

five gigs, four five five five I guess five. And I can't really get rid of those because you know, they're all like my raw footage from like you know, different shoots and stuff. So but you can go through there, and it's a nice easy way to kind of just clean out your Google Drive Google photos and reclaim some space that you may need to either keep you under that fifteen gigabytes for free, or maybe you bumped up to one hundred gigabytes for like two bucks a month.

You want to stand er that. Or maybe you bumped up to the two terabytes for ten bucks a month. You want to stander that. Or maybe you're like me and you just gave up on the world and now you're paying fifty dollars a month to Google for storage. All right? Next question, Greg says, Hey, Rich, I really

enjoy your show. Is there a way to easily download monthly bills and bank and credit card statements without going to each site, logging on, navigating to where the statement is, downloading it, and finally organizing each statement into its proper folder. Oh you make this sound so tough. Right now, I received paper statements which I can scan, but I would like to avoid wasting all that paper. Thank you, Greg. Good question, And it's funny this is I actually kind

of gave up on downloading all this stuff. I used to do it, and it's kind of you know, it's one of these things where the companies, a lot of them, will only keep like a certain amount of back statements, So if you really need to go back, you may not be able to. I've noticed on some of mine they're like a year and a half, summer, two years, some are like unlimited, some are like six months. So it probably isn't your best interest to download these statements.

But then again, I don't know. I mean, it's it's kind of up to you. I look over my stuff and kind of like, I don't know. Sometimes I download them, sometimes I forget too. But I agree it would be nice if there was a system that can do all this.

But originally I was doing some research and I remember someone had emailed me about a website that does justice and they said they love it, and there may be different ones, but the one that I found was called file this, And originally I said that it had shut down because when I searched for it, it said file this pro or is going away, and it gave a list of alternatives. But now that I take a little bit of a closer look, it looks like that was

just the pro version. It seems like the consumer version is still up and running and it does exactly what you say. It will log into all your different bills, you know, Fidelity, PayPal, Chase, Comcast, American Express, Target, At and T, Amazon, says it connects with over seven hundred and fifty different institutions and it will download those and file them for you. And if you look at their plans, it's free for up to six connections and five hundred

gigs of five hundred megabytes of storage. You can pay two dollars a month or five dollars a month. My only concern this seems to do everything you need, and I actually think this looks really cool. I wish Google would buy this and just integrate it into clod Google Drive. But the only thing that concerns me is, like everything seems to be locked in, like twenty fifteen, like the

entire website. Like if I look at like their Facebook, Okay, the last time they Facebook was twenty seventeen, Twitter, twenty eight teen, Google Plus. They have a link to which come on that's not been around forever. LinkedIn is not even available YouTube. The last time I uploaded a video was six years ago. So I think that you know, it may do what you need, and I guess I can test it out, but I'd just be a little concerned.

I'm like, is this company still going? I did check their iOS app and it was updated in twenty twenty in June, so you know, that's a year ago. That's a little, you know, a little respectable. But anyway, again, the website is called file this, and it sounds like it does exactly what you need. Check it out, see if you're comfortable with it. But again, since it hasn't really done much in a couple of years, I'd be

a little concerned linking up all my bank accounts. But maybe just test it with one that you don't care about as much and see how it works. All right, let's talk about spam calls. I know so many people get them. I get them. They're a nuisance. I don't get as many as I think I would get, but I do get them, and they're annoying. And you know when you get them, when you pick up the phone, even though you see the number and you're like, is this a number in my area? It kind of looks

like a doctor, kind of looks like the school. I just pick it up, and you pick it up and you say hello, and immediately you know that you made a mistake because there's no one on the other end for like twenty seconds. And what's happening in that twenty seconds is the computer as it's dialing thousands and thousands of numbers, it's like we got one, we got one,

we got some of that picked up. And then they they forward that call to like some person that's sitting there with their laptop to go ahead and scam you or do whatever they do or sales pitch you or whatever. So and then by that time, I'm already like so compassionate for these people and I feel so bad that I can't just hang up on them. So they're like okay, They're like, like the other one the other day I picked up. It was like, hi, sir, you your Amazon.

We're just confirming your Amazon order. And I'm like, oh, yes, please confirm. And they're like did you order a you know, two thousand dollars camera? And I'm like oh, yes, yes, like oh, and that of course threw them off because they want you to be like, no, stop this. Let me give you all my information so you can stop this. And so I said yes I did, and they said, oh, did you send it to a Michael Blue Block And I'm like yes, I did. In fact, like oh uh

do you know a Michael Blue Block? And I'm like yes I do. And it's just totally tripped them up and they hung up on me. Gotta have some fun anyway, So I consulted the privacy and security editor at Wirecutter, who wrote an article about stopping the calls. And the basic takeaway from this is that you have to download the free app that your wireless carrier provides. So they all have one. So on AT and T it's called AT and T Call Protect. They've got it for iOS

and Android. On Verizon it's called Verizon Call Filter, and on T Mobile it's called T Mobile Scam Shield. And those are the three apps that you should be downloading. I mean, just download the one that corresponds with your carrier and activate it, and they will try to upsell you. All these apps, almost all of them try to upsell you into more, and just say no, just just ignore it. You don't need more. It'll just work, you know, It'll just work the way it is now. There's a couple

other things you can do. If you have a landline, there's a service called Nomo Robo, and that's nothing new, it's been around forever. It is free for landlines only, not for phones. You can get it for phones like cell phones, but it's gonna cost you. On Android, you could do another thing, and this is kind of cool. So on Android you can download the basically replace your dialer app with Google's dialer and it has caller ID

and spam protection built in and it's free. And when I downloaded it to test it, I had to turn on the caller ID and spam protection. So you can do that in the settings. Now. If you're on Samsung, their dialer also has as a built in caller or you know, caller ID and spam protection, but it may not be turned on, so you have to turn it

on and activate it. And that's one of the things I love the most about Android versus iPhone is that for some reason there's no like maybe I can't maybe I have to pay for it on on iOS, but I can't figure out a way to get like caller ID on iOS runs on Android, like all the phones have it. I mean when you when I when I'm testing a Samsung and someone calls me, it's like, oh, whatever company it is, it like shows up on the thing. Now.

One thing they have on iOS that I love that doesn't on Android is you know, iOS sirie looks through all your emails and your text messages to look for names and phone numbers, and so if someone ever calls you and they put their phone number in their in their signature of their email, it'll say maybe it's this person you know on your caller ID, which I think is just amazing one of my favorite features on the

iPhone for sure. Uh Okay, there's another option for blocking these calls, and this is of course a very drastic option, and this is blocking all unknown callers. You can do that on iPhone and on Samsung. They both have. On iPhone it's called Silence Unknown Callers. On Samsung it's called block Unknown Callers, and that's inside the dialer in iOS, it's inside the settings. Now, the problem with this situation is, yeah, I mean, if you're if you don't have kids, maybe

that's fine. If you don't have loved ones that you need to like, you know, worry about or something, you know, if it just depends on your spot in life, right like, if you're not worried about, you know, being like the

emergency contact for anyone, sure turn it on. The problem is if you are, then it's going to be a problem because if you ever get an emergency call, it's not going to come through, and you know, so you've got that going on, and you've got the whole situation of let's say DoorDash, you order something from door dash and uh, you know, they call you to say, hey, we're outside, and it's just not going to go through.

You're not gonna get it. And so there are a couple of little situations where calls need to come through that are not in your address book or you haven't interacted with recently, and those may just not work. So just be aware of that and otherwise, you know, those are the best ways to get rid of these spam

calls for now. The one other thing to know and I kind of knew this and the Thorin let's say Thorin Klosowski, who I interviewed at Wirecutter, he said, the same thing, which is basically blocking the individual numbers, is not going to work. Like unless it's a particular like biller or someone that's calling you incessantly, like a car dealership for follow up, Like, yeah, blocking that number will work. But if it's just like blocking random spam numbers, it's

not going to do anything. Because they use this technology that they basically change the number every time they call, so it doesn't they're not calling from the same number twice like almost ever. So that's what you need to know about blocking spam calls. Hope it helps you all, right, Next question, let's see here, Mary says, airline flights. Hey, Rich, searching all your posts and finally found some posts where

they were old and no longer contained information I needed. Okay, I guess that's a Can you please send me some apps info on how to find the best price for air flights? Want to treat my son to Vegas for his fiftieth surprise birthday party. Oh I hope, hope he's not listening and I'm paying for his kid's airline flights. Wow, what a nice does she say her son? Okay, Wow,

what a nice mom. It's all happening in October, but with things finally getting back to normal, I don't want to wait until last minute and prices get out of control or reach. If you could provide some apps info, I would greatly appreciate it. Mary. Well, Mary, let me tell you Number one. I predict that we are going to see a major increase in airline prices this year, and I've noticed it just with myself casually booking flight for the next year, and it's it's just like the

nickel and diming is at an all time high. The prices are are good if you're on like the most random days, but if you're if you're on a day that's you know, an algorithm identified like hot day, you know, not hot temperature, but like, okay, this is a popular time to go. The algorithms are really juicing things up. And the reason is because these companies didn't make money for a year, and now they're saying, look, we're gonna

start making some money. And we know you guys want to travel because we know you've been locked up at home for a year. And so I've noticed. I just booked a flight for my mom to come out to LA and it was expensive, and it was just it just kept going up and we ended up choosing you know, different days and different times to make it a little bit more reasonable. But at the end of the day, some of these flights are getting very very expensive. Now.

I don't know where you're coming from for Vegas, but the the only website, there's only one websit that I use to look at flights, and that is are you ready flights dot Google dot com. I don't think you need another website at all. Now with that said, I will tell you why a couple of reasons. Number one Google is they treat flights the way they treat all

their search information. They take it all in, they process it using AI, and they spit out the data and what happens there when you're searching for flights, it will tell you the cheapest times, the cheapest days. It'll even tell you, hey, if you leave this day and you leave that day, it'll be a little bit cheaper. And there's just not a lot of fluff on the website. Now you might say, yeah, Kayak does a lot of

that stuff. They've got the hacker fares. But Kayak is you know, it's good, but it's a little bit like it's all over the place. You know you're looking. It's like trying to sell you stuff to every other line is like an ad for something. And so, you know, I think Kayak's great, but I just don't think it has the power of Google. And I just really really look, I've been booking flights for twenty years and I think Google is my It's my first stop and pretty much

my only stop. Now let me give you the caveats. Southwest is not represented with pricing. Now sometimes I've noticed that Southwest will show up as a line item with the time the flight takes off, but not the price of the flight, which is really kind of worthless to me. I mean, it's nice to know sometimes there's an alternative.

So that's number one. So if you're talking about Southwest, I would you know, if you're talking about a Southwest destination and you fly Southwest, I would definitely go directly to the Southwest website. So and then there's other airlines too, like these New Breeze and a Veo a lot of times, or Jet Suite X or I guess they're called JSX. Now you're not going to find them. Sometimes you may

find them on Google. Sometimes you may not. You know, the smaller carriers sometimes do their own thing and they just kind of stick to themselves. So with that said, in this case, I would probably I would probably go to Southwest and see and if you're serviced by one of these new airlines, I would check their websites too if they're not represented on Google. But for me, my typical way to book is I will go to the

Google website, you know the flights. I will look at my preferred days, then I click to see a calendar, and on the calendar, it will give me the cheapest days to fly. So I generally see, can I do those days? If I can, I'll reselect those days, and then on those days, it'll highlight the cheapest flight times in green, and I'll try to choose those. But the best advice I can give you is to book right now. I don't think these things are going to get any cheaper.

And I think with some of the flexibility the airlines have given us with the change fees, it's just like, go ahead and book, and if you really need to, you can always change it. Now. The trick with the change is that you're never going to get your money back, but you will get it as a credit. But those credits, so it's like it's it's look, these airlines, they've made

things a little bit easier. But believe me, they are sitting there in their rooms, in there around these conference tables, just dreaming of new ways to wring this money from our pockets. And yes, they're so nice that they let us change our flights now, which to me never made any sense. Like, why is it a big deal if I book my flight? Why can't I just change it

to a different flight if I need to? And yeah, I have to pay the difference, but like, okay, fine, but I'd be willing to Like why did it take a pandemic for them to do that? I don't know. Southwest has had that flexibility forever, and it's like just such a nice flexibility. It also took away one of Southwest's biggest selling points, because now all the major airlines

pretty much do that. But then they get people with these bargain fairs, these you know, economy basics and the you know, the savier fairs whatever they call them on the different airlines, and you get in one of those, and it's gonna be tougher to change and tougher to get a seat and all this stuff. So and you're

nickel and dying with everything. So again they're just coming up with the the every time my search a flight, I'm just amazed at the new ways of I heard one on KTLA we mentioned this that this new airline has a nine dollars fee for printing out your boarding pass or whatever the fee what three dollars whatever it is but like okay, wow, and I get it, and maybe there's a larger calling for them, for the for the environment, and they're saying, hey, look we want you

to use your your phone as your boarding pass and that doesn't take any paper. But no, they're just trying to They're just trying to stick it to you and get a little extra cash at you. Yeah, isn't flying fun. I was on a flight the other day where they only took they didn't even take credit cards anymore. You had to have signed up with your credit card on the app for them to accept it. And this was on United and luckily I had my card in the app.

I was able to buy something, but it, yeah, you couldn't even use you know, cash has been like no way for a while now. Used to be just cards. Now it's like not even cards anymore. Now it's like you already have to have your profile. They look at your seat number and they say, okay, we're going to charge this to the card on your profile. And I

was like okay. Now, it was a test, but something tells me that will probably be next because think about it, I mean, less handling of things, you know, you number, you know, the other thing is they have your card now on file, so it's easier to upsell you in the air. So and it's it's also that idea of when you're not using cash or now even using a card, there's no pain, you know. Oh here, give me, give me a snack pack and just put it on my

seat and you'll figure it out later. Right. One plus has a new wallpaper called well Paper, and it kind of is a visual reminder of your digital well being and it's pretty cool. I installed it on one of my devices to test it out, and just imagine your wallpaper changes throughout the day and it's responding to how much you're using your phone. So they've got a bunch of different category lifestyle and communication, entertainment, information, social tools, games,

and they have three different designs. One is radial, one is glow, and one is tiles. And you know, based on what you're using throughout the day, the the wallpaper changes so you can see visually, like, okay, let me give an example. Entertainment is red. So if your whole phone screen is sort of taken up by red, by the red color, you've been spending a lot of time watching YouTube. And so if it's if it's all blue or purple. I can't really tell what this is. You

know that means or navy. Then your whole day has been taken up by social media. So it's just kind of a neat way to visualize and uh, you know, there's nothing wrong with that. It's kind of cool. I And the other thing you can do is like tap it. You can tap your phone screen like tap the wallpaper, and it will show you like usually there's nothing, there's no labels, but if you tap, it'll show you labels

of kind of what's going on. So it's called digital well paper w E L L P A P E R. I couldn't find it by search in the in the Google play store. I found it by a link, so maybe it's on search now. Maybe it just took a little bit for to like kind of get in there. But it's it's cool. You know. If you're trying to like limit the amount of time that you're on these things, then I think it's a good thing to try. Let's see, Okay,

let's get you another question. Stanley says a comment on today's segment, Sure a cheaper plan is possible and sounds great initially as someone who's gone down this route. I'm familiar with the pitfalls. After all, the savings have come from somewhere like customer service quality and data QoS. Oh, after all the savings have to come from somewhere like

customer service quality and data QoS. Under these mv and os, your data is a lower priority compared to customers with plans through Verizon AT and T, T Mobile, et cetera. Good luck even getting competent or time customer service. A shame these pitfalls weren't mentioned otherwise. I enjoy your segments. Thank you Stanley for the feedback. This is on a segment we did on some of the cheaper cell phone plans out there, like the the US Mobile, the Visible,

the Crickets, the you know what were the other ones? Cricket, the Mints, the Good to Go and what Stanley is saying is true. But when you're paying nine dollars a month for a cell phone plan, I don't think you're expecting to have the fastest data. I don't think you're you're worried about customer service as much. I don't think that you're interested in, you know, data throttling and all these things. I think you just want to pay nine bucks a month for a plan, And so I didn't

mention this in the report because what's the point. I mean, if you're you know, Stanley, you're clearly sounding like someone who knows this stuff because you use terms like QoS, MV and OS. You know, I think that you're a little bit ahead of the crowd when it comes to kind of some people are just looking to save money, and there's nothing wrong with that. And yes there are things like I did mention, you know, you're not going to get free Netflix. You know, it's not included with

the plan, you know, look out for. I gave the pitfalls that I think were the most important, which is, you know, number one, you need to be sure that your data. You need to know if your plan has data that's cut off completely or data that's just slowed down to a crawl. And I mentioned, you know, let's say you get a three gigabyte data plan and after that your data's cut off, you can't use data on

your phone. Now, I noticed most of the carriers are backed away from that because I think it's kind of a security thing, like you don't want to be trying to navigate and run out of your plan and next thing, you know, it's like you can't do anything on your phone. So I think most of them will at this point slow down your data. But they slow it down. And I mentioned this slow so slow that you can't do anything.

I mean I had this happen on one of my devices and it was like, oh my gosh, I literally can't do anything right now because it's so slow the data. But you know, I think I gave the pitfalls I think were the most important to most people. The fact that you know your data is a lower priority. I think you understand that when you're paying nine bucks a month or ten bucks a month, I think that you

just kind of get that. And yeah, if you're paying ninety bucks to Verizon AT and T or T Mobile a month, yeah, you do expect a higher quality of service. I think that comes with the territory. But when you're paying twenty five dollars a month for unlimited through Visible, I think that you're pleasantly surprised every month that you're paying just twenty five dollars for unlimited service. And yes, that's what Visible does. And now that you have to join a party pay plan, but you can join just

anyone's Party Play but a plan. But I'll tell you. I had a family member that I told about this, and they switched to the Visible and they switch to the Party Play for twenty five bucks a month, and they're impressed that every month they paid twenty five bucks for unlimited service on Verizon. And I have another family member that uses Mint Mobile and every month they pay fifteen dollars a month for their plan, and they can't

believe it. And they're not worried about their data being deprioritized or this or that or customer service because they're not expecting anything. They're like, oh my gosh, I can't believe I'm paying fifteen dollars a month for service. And when I test out these plans, you know, I've got a Mint Mobile test plan and it's it's thirty bucks a month for unlimited, and I sit there and I use it, and I'm like, this is unbelievable. Now. Is it as good as my Verizon full paid plan? No?

But is it just as amazing for the price, yes, if not better. So if I wasn't doing all kinds of uploads to social media and you know, all this stuff streaming, I would one hundred percent be on one of these plans one hundred percent, And would I expect the same service as one hundred dollars plan from Verizon or T Mobile or Att Absolutely not. But would I be pleasantly surprised every month and my service works for the price I'm paying. Yeah, And I'm totally good with that.

And I you know, this is this is again. You know, I get I get two minutes a day on TV, and so you know, when I do write blog posts are a little bit longer to kind of I don't know if it's flush things out or flush things out, whatever the term is, but you know, I try to like expand on it in the blog to kind of like you know, and TV, It's like I've got a limited amount of time to get across my points, and so I try to make the points that I do put in there like the most relevant to the most people.

And I think most people, especially since that story that you're talking about did extremely well, I think most people are just like, oh wow, I can get service for this cheap, like okay, sign me up. But and then they'll go to the blog and kind of see what the situation is with that service. But anyway, Stanley, Thank you for writing in and yes you're right what you what you come to the conclusion is not everything's for everyone, and you got to do your research no matter what.

Even if you hear tech guy on TV like myself, or on the radio, or on my Instagram or on my podcast talk about something, you got to do your own research and see if it's right for you. Whether that's a gadget, whether that's switching your service, whether that is a website I recommend, or anything that I recommend. You know, there has to be a level of you got to research it and see if it works for you. That's gonna do it for this episode of the show.

If you would like to submit a question for me to answer, just go to my Facebook page Facebook dot com slash rich on tech and hit the big blue send email button. Also, I would love it if you would rate and review this podcast. Do it right now, please, That will help other people discover it. Just go to rate thispodcast dot com slash rich on Tech. You can

find me on social media at rich on Tech. And remember, no matter where you live in the US, you can download the free Ktla plus app on Apple, TV, fireTV, and Oku, and you can watch all of my TV segments on demand. Once you open up the app, just scroll all the way down to where it says technology and you can see all of my previous segments. Just sit there on the couch and just watch them all binge.

Watch them so a whole bunch of them, and you'll you'll find you know, You'll you'll get to you'll get to know me a little bit better if you see the stuff that I put on TV. Also, thanks for listening to the podcast. This is trending to be the best month ever since the pandemic started, which probably means that more of you are driving to work on a daily basis and commuting and starting to listening to podcasts again.

So thanks for listening. My name is rich Damiro. There are so many ways you can spend an hour of your time. I really do appreciate you spending it with me. Stay safe, I'll talk to you real soon.