Microsoft's new feature wins the metaverse

slash rich on Tech. I am live streaming today's show on the page. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. It just sort of depends on how I'm feeling. But I do want to say thank you for listening to this podcast. So I've been doing this podcast for I think about three hundred and something episodes. It has changed form factors, well not form factors. It's always been audio. Well, it's been audio and video. It's changed kind of formats so

many different times over the years. Went from like a shorter podcast to a longer podcast, to a interview format. But this seems to be the best one right here. I do wish that I well, anyway, I tell you all this because October was the best month ever for the show, so we had the most downloads and it's been on an upward trajectory for the past I don't know, well since it started. Actually, So thank you for listening. I appreciate you tuning in and giving me a listen.

And the goal of this show has always been to take live calls. But live calls are a tricky thing because you have to do the show at a certain time each week. You got to get people to call in, which is not too tough, but you know, it's just one of those things where the questions that people send me have you know, that way I can pick the ones that I like that people send. I mean, I get so many of them, but I try to pick ones that have like the broadest appeal to other people

as well, and they're just interesting in whatever. Anyway, So thank you for listening to the show. I do appreciate it, and thanks for your continued downloads and listening and emails. I do want to say that after all my complaining, I did get a Pixel six pro in my hands. So here it is. Oh you can't see on the podcast because you're you're listening, but it is a It is definitely, I will say, the best phone that Google has ever made. There's just no doubt about it. I

can already tells it's excellent. The photo quality is excellent, the screen is really nice, the software is nice. But with that said, there are a lot of quirks on this phone that I think ninety nine percent of them will be fixed with software updates, so I'm not too worried. I mean, the fingerprint reader is just as slow as other reviewers have said. That's probably the biggest downside of this phone at this pay point. The second biggest downside

is the size. It is a huge, huge, huge phone, and I'm I'm okay with big phones, but I've sort of gotten used to the sweet form factor of the standard iPhone. I call it the two in the middle, the iPhone thirteen and the thirteen Pro, and last year the twelve and the twelve Pro. But I don't know, It's just one of these things where having a smaller I love the big screen because you can do a lot more on it. You know, you can watch videos.

It just gives you a bigger canvas for things. But I don't like it because it's just so much tougher to sort of manipulate on a daily basis. Like today, I was trying to take a selfie. I know, bad example, but you know, it's things that we do, and typically I just I can easily hold my iPhone in one hand take a selfie, no problem. I can do it all one handed. There's no you know, there's no kind of wrangling the phone with two hands, and with this phone,

there's just a lot of wrangling with two hands. So I think it's one of those things you can get used to. I've also got really used to these squared off edges on the iPhone, and I'm going back to round edges on here, and that's also tough because it's just not as comfortable in your hand. But overall, if you want an Android phone, I've only had this for twenty four hours and I can already tell you it's

the best Android phone probably of the past decade. Well maybe not that the first pixel was really sort of magical for me because it really showed the power of Google, and maybe the second pixel, but this one is really really fantastic. So if you can deal with the large size, I think you'll really like it. I'm still forming my full review these are just sort of my initial impressions after twenty four hours. The other thing is, I don't know, if you need the Pro, you could probably go at

the slightly smaller six. They did not send me the six, so I don't have that to compare the size, but I imagine it's just a little bit smaller than the Pro, and the Pro really only gives you a faster refresh rate and the improved zoom camera. So if you don't need those two things, save the three hundred dollars and

go with the lesser one. Anyway, that's kind of the first impression of the Pixel six Pro, and I just think that it's like one of these things where it finally feels like Google made a phone that like is really good, like not just the camera, like the software is really nice. Battery life leaves a little to be desired right now, but some people are saying there's like a two week kind of break in period where it

learns your battery use and gets better. But it's just very googly, and I'm looking forward to trying this out, although it's going to be tough for me to give up the iPhone and I'm not sure I'm gonna do that I will let you know I've not switched my sim card at this point. All right, let's get into the first story of the week, Facebook by any other name ditching the facial recognition of their business. So this is kind of a surprise announcement. But you know, Facebook

is now called Meta. I didn't cover that in last week's episode because it happened after my deadline, basically after I recorded the show. But Facebook parent company is now called Meta. You know that you've seen it in the news. Nothing is changing about the apps that you use from Facebook. They are all continuing to be called what they're called, so Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus. They are all just now under a bigger umbrella of a company named Meta instead

of Facebook. I know, not really that confusing, but it just seems like it would be. But it's not. So. Meta said that they're shutting down the face recognition system on Facebook, and they say it's part of a company wide move to limit the use of facial recognition in their products. And the main way that you saw facial recognition on Facebook was when you uploaded a picture, you would see your friends suggested in tags. Now it's been

a while since I've used Facebook personally. I use it for my public page, but personally I don't really use it. I've kind of switched over to Instagram for that. So it's been a while. But this was really the first introduction that many of us had to face recognition, and when those little tags popped up, we were like, whoa, what is that? Wow? How do they know? Well, it's not that tough, I mean facial recognition. At this point, we're ten years in. It's pretty standard. I mean Google

Photos has I mean everything has it. Google Photos has it, Apple Photos has it. You've got it on your iPhone to unlock it. It was on the pixel last year to unlock it. So it's it's been around, but Facebook or a meta. The reason they are giving for this change is they say, you know what, there's so many concerns about the place of this in society, and regulators are still trying to figure out rules governing its use.

We are just going to drop it for now until things sort of settle down and we can figure out how best to use this. They're not going to press delete on the face recognition software on their servers. They're not going to get rid of all the work that they've done over the past ten years, but they are going to stop using it and they are going to delete all of the faces that they have recognized. So they're going to delete more than a billion people's individual

facial recognition templates in this process. So if they have been able to recognize you in the past, they will be deleting that stockpile of data around faces. So that's pretty interesting. Is this a surprise? So I think that it's a bit of a surprise, but Facebook is really trying to change its image at this point. I think that there's been a lot of They've been bounced around in the news a lot, and I see the writing

on the wall. I mean, I think it's a really they're in a really tough spot because Facebook, for so many years was the de facto standard and it's still pretty much is for a social network. But in my experience, just looking at my group of friends, we're not really on Facebook. We're not really exchanging things on Facebook like we used to, and so I think that that's a

pretty big deal for them that they need to figure out. Okay, our users are going to TikTok, well, not even going to TikTok, they're new users are going right to TikTok. Existing users are still there, but they're kind of phasing it out of their lives. And then when it comes to Instagram, it's still pretty much a powerhouse, but there's a lot of danger there in people leaving Instagram and

it's not the same as Facebook. Facebook still has a place for sharing certain things like stories and pictures and this and that, but I don't know. So anyway, that's what they're doing, and no more facial recognition on Facebook, and we'll continue to watch and see what happens with that. Oh and by the way, Facebook says that things like the iPhone that do facial recognition, it's all happening on the device, and so they think that that's a better

model instead of building these databases of people's faces. So that's something that I would probably agree with. All right, First question of the day, high Rich, please help I get at least five Instagram follow requests a day. I have a private account. I searched on Google how to stop them. I thought I took care of it, but I still get the requests. I would appreciate your help. Thank you as always. Marsha Marsha Marsha. Marsha, I'm not sure there is a way to blanket stop follow requests

on Instagram. You have a private account, which means people can't see what you're posting. You're probably already friends with the people that you want to be friends with. So I would say, except for the nuisance of notifications, which I believe you can probably turn off in settings, I would think that's the best way to do it, and just once a month go through and delete the friend requests. I was going to say, I'm not even sure. I never even saw friend requests, but my account is public,

so I wouldn't have any friend requests on Facebook. But if you have them, I would just go through, maybe once a month, and just delete the friend requests that you have. So if we look at notifications here, let's see followers and following. So it looks like you might be able to change some of those things in your notifications settings. I can't seem to tell just because I don't have that enabled on my account. Like, my account is public, so anyone they don't have to request me,

they just have to basically, you know, that's it. They just basically have to follow me. And so I don't know, maybe Facebook, I think this would be an interesting I mean, it goes against their sort of the whole point of Instagram and all these companies is they want to grow. They want to grow the network, and the more people that you have in your network, the more you're going to use it, the more you're gonna check in. So it's kind of one of those things that is counterintuitive

to what they want to accomplish. But we've seen them change things before in the past that are counterintuitive, so things like saying, hey, you've been on here, or you're all caught up, or you know, timers and how much you've been on your account. So it's not out of the question that they might add a setting that lets

you turn off all follow requests. But at the same time, I don't think it's that huge of a priority for them, because if you have these notifications turned off, then it's not that big of a deal because they're not really

doing any harm. It's probably mostly bots, to be honest, But I can see how in the case of maybe a younger user, say for instance, a minor that's just you know, starting out with their account, maybe someone that's thirteen, they get these bots that are, you know, usually scantily clad women requesting, you know, a friendship on Instagram, and then you click and there's of course spam, and it's a website that you might not want your child going to.

So I can see that argument for why Instagram should take care of this problem and let people turn off follow requests completely. But at the same time, you know, friend requests are are part and parcel of both Instagram, Facebook and almost all of the social media networks out there, so it might be tough for them to completely completely stop this. But good question, and thanks for asking. All right, let's talk about Microsoft Mesh Mesh for Microsoft teams, and

I actually think this is really really cool. And so we've heard of this idea of the metaverse. The metaverse is this Internet that exists in a virtual world, and so what can you do in the metaverse. You can it's kind of like virtual reality, it's kind of like mixed reality. It's whatever you want it to be. The metaverse is imagine the Internet, but much more three dimensional, much more a place you can explore in VR ar XR, which I guess is kind of like a mixed reality.

So this is going to take a while. For us to all get used to the idea of and also of course get in there. And if you've used a virtual reality headset, sure you've been in a portion of it. But until you've actually interacted with other humans in the metaverse or explored places that are much more interactive, I don't think that we've really truly gotten to appreciate what this world will hold for us. And these companies are

working on it. We know that Facebook was really the first to popularize popularize the word, and now Microsoft is using the same word, and so they specifically called out the metaverse and said here's what we think is our idea of it. And they're starting small, but it's a really cool idea. And the idea is that in Microsoft Teams, you can create an avatar of yourself that you can use to video chat. And you might say, rich, there's been companies that can do this, and there's been ways

of doing this, absolutely, but this is Microsoft Teams. This is a big deal. This is a program that a lot of companies use. And I think that what's magical about this solution is that it's almost like so simple

that why did we not think of this before? And so what you do is you create your little avatar and right now it's just a torso they're leaving out the bottom half and you kind of float around this world where you can meet up in a virtual room or at the very basic functionality of this, instead of logging onto your standard video chat on teams or you know zoom as we call it, or more commonly call it, you would show up as a as an avatar. And

so what does that mean. Well, it means that you can be in your pajamas and you can be in, you know, something that might not be you know, the not appropriate. I'm not saying you should show up in something that's not appropriate for work, but something that you know, you may just be more casual. But the reality is you're in your avatar and so you look very professional because you're wearing a suit or however you design yourself

to look and that avatar. Think of this, it's so brilliant that it's it's kind of tough for me to explain, but think of this as remember how blurring your back was such a big deal in the Zoom days. Well, imagine this is the digital equivalent of blurring your background. But you're blurring your entire being, so that you can show up and sit in front of your computer and have your microphone on and talk to people, but the avatar is what they see, and so your mouth is moving.

You can show things off, you can show off your PowerPoint, you can do a presentation, and it's just one step into the metaverse. It's kind of like a very easy tiptoe for people because if you're in a place, let's say you're taking a conference call at your home, or you're taking a conference call in your car as a passenger of course, or maybe in the backseat of an uber as you drive to the airport, why do you

have to show up as yourself? Why can't you show up as your avatar and people can just see you and hear you, but you know, they get that sort of cartoonized version of you. So I think this is a really brilliant idea. This is going to roll out in twenty twenty two in something called Mesh for Microsoft Teams, but there's a whole bunch of other features as well. You can have virtual meeting rooms. So I just think

this is a great idea. It's so smart. I think Zoom needs to do something very similar because a lot of people use Zoom and there are programs that allow you to do this kind of as a third party, so you can get like a helper program for your video camera that would enable you to become anything. And one of the big ones is actually made from Snapchat. It's oh gosh, what is it called video? It's like Snapchat avatar app. Let me see what it's actually called.

It's not bit moji, but it was the app. Remember this story with the person who turned into a potato. That was this app. Oh, snap camera app. That's what it's called. Now, before you install it, I would just warn against installing it because once you install this app on your computer, it will turn you into a potato and you will be showing up on your Zoom calls as a potato because you will not be able to

figure out how to turn this thing off. Believe me me as a tech person, it's complicated to turn this off. Your webcam always sort of defaults. Think of it as a program that sort of takes over your webcam and kind of inserts a new image in between you and Zoom. And so if you're not totally savvy on your computer, it could be a little tricky to turn that off, and that's why that person turned into a potato last year and they couldn't get that off their screen because

they didn't know how to turn this feature off. But it does work, and they have a whole bunch of different lenses and they're pretty wild. I mean, you could turn yourself into so many different things. So if you want a similar feature, that's kind of where you can get it right now. But I just think this is a really simple, fun, interesting way of getting people into this quote unquote metaverse. It's fun, it's easy, and in fact, I think it would be really cool if I had

you know, I should do this right now. I should just do this with a snap camera. I should just start doing my podcast weekly, because when I'm doing my podcast, do I really feel like sitting there in front of a camera every week? I don't know. I mean, I sit in front of a camera all day for my my TV job. My podcast is supposed to be more relaxed because I'm I don't need to be in front of the camera. But it is kind of fun if you were watching it on YouTube to kind of see

a an avatar representation of me. And maybe maybe this is something that I would do, so kind of cool. Oh, I don't know what happened there, something something when went awry on the uh on the Facebook page. So the live room stopped, but I will continue going. Matthew has some feedback on the podcast. I got a couple of

emails about the last podcast I was talking about. I was giving an answer to a question about someone asked if you can schedule a text message on the iPhone and I said, no, not easily, and on the Android, it's just sort of build into Android messages. You long pressed the little arrow when you go to send, and

it will give you the option to schedule. Well, Matthew wrote in and said that one question someone had I had heard on your podcast last week about being able to set up a text message at a different time. You can actually do that with the shortcuts app that Apple has, And you're right, Matthew, that is one way of doing it. But remember I gear this podcast towards the average tech consumer, and to be quite honest, the shortcuts functionality on the iPhone is very, very powerful and

it's actually pretty amazing what Apple did with that. It reminded me when it first came out of the Tasker functionality on Android, which for Android power users was always such an amazing app because you could schedule your phone to do all kinds of stuff automatically. And the iPhone came out with a much more streamlined, and some would say much more maybe not as powerful, much more consumer friendly version of shortcuts, but it never really took off.

But yes, you can do all kinds of stuff with shortcuts if you put your mind to it, and if you actually program them in, or you can just find them online and adopt them as your own. And Marvin also chimed in and say, hey, Rich, you can send delayed texts on an iPhone. I do it every day and night. Just set up a shortcut automation. It's easy. Thanks, love your shows, Marvin. And yes, Marvin again, I agree you could do it. I know you say it's easy, but I just don't know if for the average person

it's very easy. So I did also have one more person send me a text that basically said they created their own shortcuts and they sent me them. I never really tested it out, but you can do it. It's definitely doable. So yes, I'm always open to responses to the answers. I give on the podcast, and in some cases, I'm you know, sometimes I'm looking for answers myself, and so the more we can get people to collaborate, the better,

See says Holiday. Tech spending is going to reach one hundred and forty two point five billion dollars in twenty twenty one, which is a half of a percentage increased from twenty twenty. Now, the fact that it's actually increasing is it's probably not a surprise. I mean, we've we've heard so much with the economy and with inflation right now. So far tech gadgets have not price wise been fully impacted, like we're seeing prices sort of stay the same, except

for Sonos. They actually did raise the price on all of their products. Tesla, the Tesla that I purchased, actually was perfect timing because the price went up no less than four thousand dollars on the exact car that I purchased. And the reason for that is because Tesla you know, typically have to wait you know, three to six months to get a Tesla, and so they are hedging against

future inflation. So yeah, the car might not cost two thousand dollars more four thousand dollars more right now, to make, but in six months when people actually pay their bills for those Teslas they ordered right now, the economy or whatever, the parts may have gotten to a place where they are more expensive. And so I think I had perfect timing with mine. And by the way, I continue to absolutely,

absolutely love my car. I got my first software update, I think I mentioned it last week in the show. And I also installed the charger now in my garage. So it's just it literally like once you have all this stuff set up, like I really really want to get my wife one of these cars because I love it so much, but she does not need a new car. So I am resisting and we're not doing that right now, right, We're not doing it. No, we are not. Okay, So, what are the top five tech wish list items for

consumers in twenty twenty one? Number one smartphones and so smartphones number one, number two, laptops and notebook computers number three, wearable devices, which actually jumped from fifth last year now they're up to number three, And I think the interest in the Apple Watch is a huge driver in that, although they don't specifically say that, Television's number four and

then tied video game consoles and tablets and e readers. Now, I'm guessing that video game console sort of drop down the list a little bit just because there is not a new, brand new console this year. We saw that last year during the holidays, and so maybe people who got those or that were interested already got those. But the reality is the Xbox and the PlayStation five still seem pretty elusive even this year, and so I'm sure

people will be purchasing those in big numbers. But when when you compare them to smartphones and laptops and wearables and TVs, definitely those are higher up on the list because I would say video game consoles are a little bit more niche for most people, Like if they want that, they've sort of you just go in and buy it, like you've you've wanted to have, You've you've had your

eye on that for a while now. The other interesting part about this release is that smartphone replacement rates are now reaching four plus years, so smartphone interest during this holiday season is expected to be strong. CTA says, these are the folks that put on cs. By the way, forty eight percent of holiday tech shoppers expect to purchase one as a gift, up from forty one percent in

twenty nineteen. And that makes a lot of sense because the iPhone thirteen and you've got you've got phones this year that were probably the best reviewed phones of any year I can remember. So you've got the iPhone thirteen, which is probably the best reviewed phone I've ever seen.

Then you've got the foldables from Samsung, which were very well received, especially the Z the z Flip three that's the smaller the fold great, but yeah, it's it's very so it's not totally mainstream, but the Flip people said, hey, this is a great alternative to the standard Samsung phones. The S twenty one Ultra well reviewed. And then you've got the Pixel six and Pixel six Pro, which are

also really well reviewed phones. And so I can definitely see I think this holiday season will probably be the highest sales we've ever seen for smartphones, just because all of the stars are aligned. You've got great phones, and

people are sort of looking for that upgrade. Maybe they held off and since they're seeing all the reviews come out for these phones equally as well, Like you can't go wrong whether you go with the S twenty one Ultra, whether you got the Pixel six Pro, whether you go with the flip or whether you go with the iPhone, you're going to get a fantastic phone. Now, there are preferences in there, and I have my preferences, but there's you know, you can't go wrong. If you want a foldable,

there you go. Twenty nine percent of people, according to this are going to buy a foldable. Also, work at home continues to play out according to the CTA. Printers, desktop computers, and monitors also high on the list of things that people will purchase. I just purchased a brand new HP printer. I talked about it on the show I Believe, and it's been good. I mean it's been it's been ten years I think since I purchased a printer.

It's one of those things that is not really top of the list, but when you get one, it's kind of nice. Kids are enjoying the color printing. Broaderick says Oculus would be cheaper to get it now or should I wait until the hollid Hollywood holiday sales? Thanks uh oh, Broaderick. This perfectly fits into what I was just talking about. But I would I would wait. Oculus is probably one of those things that will go down in price over

Black Friday and during the holiday shopping season. So what I would do is set up a couple of price alerts. So I would do, do they even sell this on ammaz on Oculus Let's see, let's see Oculus Quest two. Yes they do, Okay, So Oculus Quest two is two hundred and ninety nine dollars for the one hundred and twenty eight gigabyte version, and let's just see if the

price on that has gone down at all. So I'm going to Camel Camel Camel, and I'm gonna pop this into their little system and see if the price has ever gone down and ooh, it is not so interesting. Price has never changed on Amazon as long as this thing has been on Amazon. So I would say what

they might do. You might not get a discount, but you might get a bundle situation going on, or they might bundle like a you know, an extra maybe not an extra controller, but I don't know what you'd get bundled, maybe an extra game, maybe some sort of extra accessory. But at this point, it doesn't look like the price historically has gone down. But at the same time, uh, it probably will. I mean you'll probably get something for

oh wow, sorry, I'm a little distracted. I'm on Amazon's website right now, and my pal Tricia Hirschberger is on the banner. I guess she's on celebrating Amazon's or Alexa's birthday with Amazon Shopping Live. That's so funny. Trisha is a gosh. She's a friend that we used to run around a lot with. Oh there's a group of us in LA that used to run around a lot at these tech events and she was one of them. So anyway, that's cool. Good to see her doing so well. Anyway,

I digress as I typically do. But the yeah Oculus quest too. I don't know. It might go down in price, it might not, but I would definitely if you've waited this long, I would say just wait in general and just see what kind of deal you might get a you might get a discount somewhere, or some sort of gift card thrown in. I was trying to look and see if there was any sort of deals last year. I didn't at first glance, didn't really see that, but

you never know, so good question. Always at this point, always a good time to sort of wait through the holidays for some of those deals. If you've got your eye on a tech product. All right, So I talked about Facebook's new camera sunglasses called ray Band Stories. I'm not sure how much I went into them on the last show or previous shows. Maybe I mentioned that I was using them, but I will give you my review now. I did this review on KTLA, and so they're called

the ray Band Stories. These are Facebook sunglasses. There's a camera, there's a microphone, and there's speakers so you can capture what you see. So I put these on for probably warm for you know, on and off for two weeks, three weeks, whatever, and they're really fun. They are definitely the best camera sunglasses I've ever put on, and I've put on several pairs, especially the ones from Snapchat and maybe some others, but these are the best. They look

and feel like regular sunglasses. They're lightweight, they've got the everything was for a first generation these were These really nailed it. Now. The number one thing that I kind of figured is the privacy factor is a big one. So I kind of felt like when I put them on, like I was almost doing something wrong, Like I was a little not creepy, but you know, I was kind of like, I don't know, skirting the law or something like. People need to know that these have a camera in them.

And yes, there's a little light on them that lets you know when you're that let other people know when you're recording as well as yourself. But do people expect to be recorded with a pair of sunglasses? Not necessarily, and so that was one thing. But you know, they are fun. They are three hundred dollars, so they're expensive, but they do look a lot like my regular ray bands. The stems are just a bit thicker. They also come in that charging case I mentioned, which charges it a

couple of times. I think maybe the rated is I don't know how many times, but it was fine. So you would plug in the charging case, charge them in there, and then it would charge them up a couple of times after you charge them. So battery life was just okay on the glasses, but I never I never like ran out. But if you have the the Hey Facebook functionality turned on, it definitely uses the battery much longer, are much faster than it does if you just press

the shutter button on it. And if you press the shutter button, it'll capture up to thirty seconds of video and you can also press a hold to capture photos, so video is definitely preferred. Let's be honest. These are They're called ray Band Stories. The whole point of these glasses is that you can share what's happening in front of you to your Instagram Stories or to your Facebook Stories. But you can also export this video to work on

any social media app. In fact, the app that you use to sort of sync these glasses is called Facebook. It's not even Facebook, it's just called View. And so when you open up this app, it'll show you all the stuff that you recorded. You can download that video to your phone and then edit it. It can make

little highlight reels, or it can share it out as well. Now, the process to share that or to sync that video from the glasses to your actual phone is a bit convoluted because they give you like a little preview thumbnail, but then it's like still downloading the background. So I kept like wondering, like, wait is this done? And on Android it downloads a lot better in the background, but

on iOS not so much. Just the way iOS is built, you have to kind of sit there with the app open and make sure that you download these things so the video images and videos look great in bright light quality is not so good in low light, and it's fun to capture life's little moments. I mean, there's no denying that these things are really fun, but the video is just okay. In fact, a lot of it is not usable. And even myself, who is a video professional, found myself with a lot of video that just was

too wobbly. It was all over the place. I'm looking around, I'm darting my eyes all around. And there's one weird thing about these glasses that I think you should know is that what you're looking at is not necessarily what the glasses are capturing. So I feel like the glasses are tuned to a bit of a higher point of

view than your eyes where they look naturally. And that's a problem because when I was looking at something like a smartphone, Let's say I had something in my hand that I wanted to show you, it would only capture like half of that because the glasses need to be like much further looking down, like she almost need to like really aim your neck down or your chin down

to capture what you're truly looking at. So that was kind of weird, and actually, I would say that's the biggest downside of these things, is that they just weren't really capturing what I was specifically looking at, which I think is kind of a problem. But otherwise they are really cool. I think they're going to continue to get better. I think they're going to work on the stabilization the image quality. But it does remove sort of that barrier to social sharing, and that may or may not be

a good thing. But three hundred dollars available now in a bunch of stores, including Sunglass Hut. All Right, Keith says, good afternoon, mister Demiro. My name is Keith. I'm a forty nine year old quadraplegic who has been mentoring, training, and co coaching basketball players for more than thirty years. Well at least I was until the pandemic, sooner than later. I hope to get back to doing what I love best, and I would like to be able to record my

activities in coaching, but also my adventures when traveling. My question for you, which cell phone would you suggest as best for someone who is a quadriplegic. I have no use in my upper body, but soon I hope to have a robotic arm, but until then I would need something that has the most accessibility with voice command. I look forward to your thoughts on the subject. Have a

great day, Keith. This person that emailed me has no use of their upper body, and I can tell just from this email that Keith is an amazing person with an amazing outlook on life. He has been mentoring, training,

and coaching basketball players for more than thirty years. I mean, just I don't even have words for this right now when I read this, and I'm just sitting here saying this person is amazing, And the fact that he's just emailing and explaining his situation in life, and just me understanding that I can already tell that Keith is a positive, amazing person is pretty cool that I can tell that through his email. So Keith, number one, keep up the

amazing work, keep up that amazing attitude. I bet you're an amazing coach for these players. With that said, which phone do I think is the best for someone like you? I have not. Now there's a couple of things here. You want to you record your activities in coaching and also your adventures when traveling, but you want voice command. Now, the iPhone is probably the best when it comes to video overall, and you know, recording things just setting it

and forgetting it. There's a lot of accessories that you can use, like a tripod to set it up. But when it comes to voice command, I'm not sure that that's the best phone out there. But you know, especially if you're going to be trying to do tech and things or just in general using your voice for this to command this phone. So Apple does have a lot of accessibility features, and I think they've done a really

great job with their accessibility features. In fact, some of them have become so popular they sort of crossed over into mainstream use. But with that said, I think that the phone to look at would maybe be the new Pixel six. And the reason for that is that the voice command on Google is pretty phenomenal, not just the transcription that you get, but also the things that you can do with this phone just by asking it to

do things. And it's interesting because Google did the entire announcement for the Pixel six without really putting a lot of emphasis into the Google Assistant as they had in

years past. But it's pretty powerful in reaching into the far corners of this phone in being able to do a lot of functionality that you might not be able to do on the iPhone and so so I would I would take a look at that, and if there's a way that you can, you know, get one of these phones to play with or take a look at, I would definitely do that before you make a purchase, and maybe also go to the Apple Store and kind of check out some of the accessibility settings on the

iPhone and see which one you think might do a better job in assisting you with what you're trying to accomplish. But you say voice command, I don't know, I'm thinking voice command. Google is pretty much the leader when it comes to voice control. So I would I would probably, I would probably look there first. Good question, Keith, thanks so much for listening. Zoom is going to start having advertisements. Yeah, we knew this was probably gonna happen. It's been a

free ride on Zoom for a very long time. So you have to keep in mind Zoom started out as a service for enterprise users. What does that mean enterprise? These are companies with big bucks. These are companies to say, hey, we're not going to create our own video chat system, we are going to use Zoom to video chat with colleagues. And when you think about it, video chat has always been around. We've been for a long time now. I mean we've had FaceTime, we've had Skype, we've had some

sort of video chat functionality for a long time. But when the pandemic hit, Zoom became a proprietary eponym for video chat or web chatting whatever you want, or video whatever you want to call it, video meetings, and now everyone says, you know, this is this is it, this is uh you know, when you want to take a

video call, it's Zoom. And free users have enjoyed a lot of the same features that paid users have enjoyed, with that exception of the forty minute limit on Zoom free meetings, but otherwise it's been pretty amazing how many people have used Zoom without paying a penny to Zoom. And that costs Room money. I mean, they've got to pay for servers, they've got to pay for develop and they've been kind of floating this bill for a long time,

but now they need to pay it. And so they said, beginning today, we are going to start rolling out ads on a browser page for free users, and so free users, so free to free users. So this is someone who is making a free call to another Zoom user. They will see an advertisement on their web browser at the end of the meeting, and it's very small. It's one little banner page right now and or one little banner ad right now, And that's how they're going to pay

for a portion of what they're doing. I don't think that's going to take in a lot of money. Maybe it will because there's so many calls being placed on Zoom, But the main thing that they want you to know is that this is rolling out. You may not see it immediately. They got to pay their bills. That's what they're explaining. And there is one thing that the blog

post says they want to be very clear about. They have updated their privacy statement to say they will not use meetings, webinars, or any messages that you send through Zoom, specifically audio, video files and messages, any chats for marketing promotions or third party advertising. So what they're saying is they're not going to use the contents of your meeting

to target ads against you. So if you were doing a meeting about you know, Instagram influencers and you were talking about you know, marketing tactics, they would not put an ad for hoot Suite on your on your page

because they know that you're talking about marketing. But that doesn't mean that you won't see that ad because there's other ways of targeting you, and that might involve cookies, that might involve third party content that you've you know, websites that you've gone to, So don't be surprised if you see stuff that could be related to your field of work. But they're saying that you know your your content is not being scanned to target these ads towards you,

which is nice. I'm glad they clarified that. But anyway, ads on Zoom coming soon or maybe already there. Ryan writes in Hello, how do I set my Android phone to announce who the caller is? I can't find it on your website? Sincerely, Ryan, Uh Ryan. I know the website is kind of tricky sometimes to find stuff, but here's the best way of finding something that I've mentioned on TV or on social media or anywhere that you

hear me. The best way is to google me. So google when I when someone says, uh, you know, caller ID, so I would type caller I d announce ktla DeMuro And when I do that, I see the story that I mentioned this I think I mentioned this in and this this is called how to uh here are some of the latest ways to stop spam calls. And so let's see, did I mention this. I didn't announce I didn't mention it in there, but let's see im now

maybe I mentioned it on TVs and passing or something. Anyway, So the way to do this on an Android phone is you have to download the phone by Google app. And if you download the phone by Google App, go into the settings. This will replace your standard phone call system on the Android. You can do that under Advanced you'll see something called caller ID announcement. You flip that on and then your phone will speak the caller ID

information when someone calls. I actually have this turned on on my iPhone, and you know, it's one of those things that's kind of nice. I don't get a ton of phone calls that I answer. I mean, I you know, most people text nowadays, and if they're calling you, they text you first, which is I find a little odd, but that's the way people do it. Whenever I call people, you know, this is kind of the scenario. Someone I'm emailing with, I'm like, hey, can I call you real quick?

And they're like no, They're like, uh, you can call next Tuesday at two o'clock. I'm like, oh, okay, I thought you were at your email. But today I did this. Just this morning, I emailed someone about a story. They wrote me back and I said, hey, you have a couple of minutes to hop on a call, and sure enough, I gave my phone number and they called right away. And so anyway, that's how you set it up. Download the phone by Google app, look under caller ID announcement

under advance. I don't think that Samsung has a way to do this built into their phones, so if they do, I could be mistaken. But you can just go into your phone settings on Samsung and see if they have anything that says caller ID announcement. They very well may. I just don't have a Samsung in front of me right now to test that. On iPhone you can do it as well. It is under the phone settings in your phone, so just go ahead and you can turn that on. I have it turned on. It's it's a

little jarring because it does announce publicly. You know, if someone's around you, they'll hear who's calling you, and so you may or may not like that. But that's how that's how you turn it on. Good question, Ryan, thanks listening to the show and asking. Oh, speaking of phone calls, this I thought was a really interesting new scam from reported by Vice Motherboard, which is their kind of tech

section there. Joseph Cox, Joseph Cox is the reporter on this, and this is a really interesting scam, one that I was not aware of, and it's it's quite brilliant actually. But here's what they do. So you know how, you're okay, there's so many layers to this, but you know how when you're I always say, don't use the same password over and over. Okay, Well there's a reason for that because right now on the internet, one of your old passwords is floating around with your email address. It just is.

And so what happens is, there's been so many data breaches over the years. What these hackers do is they buy a whole bunch of user names and passwords and then they go ahead they try them, and so they try to see which combinations work and on different websites. So if you're using the same email address and password on a different website than the one that was originally hacked, well, now they have access to that website. And this has

happened to me. I can tell you firsthand because a website that I used was hacked and thankfully I had a specific password on that website. Because this password's out there. I know it is because I got an alert on my monitoring situation that I subscribe to, and so or monitoring service I should say. And so I said, hey, this password has been hacked. We found it not just with your password, but here's your email address and also your address and all this other information. And so they

have that. But I've always talked about how you should always use two factor authentication, and what that does is when someone logs in with your information, it will send you a code to your phone or you use your authentication app, which is a better way of doing it to authenticate this log in. Well, the scam artists know that people are starting to use this two factor authentication. So how do you get around that. Well, here's what

they do. They now log into your they now have let's say they have your website, your email and password, and they're ready to try to log into your bank account. So what they'll do is they will call you and say they'll use these automated bots. And so these automated bots will call you. You'll get a voice a message on your phone, not a message like a phone call that says, Hello, this is PayPal. Someone is trying to log into your account. Please, we have just texted you

with a one time password. Please type in that password so we can secure your account. And this might be for Apple, this might be for PayPal, Amazon, Coinbase, all kinds of different banks. And you say, oh gosh, oh my gosh, thank you for finding this this breach. Let me type in this code, and sure enough the code comes right, it's your phone. As you are listening to this message, you type in the code, and guess what just happened. You actually just gave access to your account

to the hackers. Because now they have the two factor authentication code to your account. And what are they going to do? Immediately? They're going to go ahead and change the password. They're going to turn off two factor or change it to their information. And now they're gonna they're going to take all your information that they can and all your money and whatever they can do. And so

this is something that's really scary. It's something that could trick even a smart savvy tech person, because it's so new and it's so unique, and so this is something that you just have to be aware of. Do not give those two factor authentication codes to anyone, and just be very anytime you're logging into a website. I know we want to do these things very quickly. And I know that people use these variations of passwords and they think they've got it down and they think it's not

going to happen to them. But I'm telling you, I've told you once, I've told you twice, I will tell you a thousand times. Please be careful with your credentials. Please use a password manager. Please use unique passwords for every website that you are logging into, even when you sign up on your phone. I know you want to

do it so fast. I'm guilty of this. Just take the extra sixty seconds to go into your password manager, create a password, save the log in information, copy and paste, and then put it into the field that says password, and then set up two factor authentication. And then anytime you're logging into one of your accounts, just just think before you type in any of this information, look at the website you're typing it into. Look at the two

factor authentication code. Make sure that you're actually trying to get into a website at the time you're being sent one of these things, and just take a deep breath and just realize that there are people that are actively trying to get a hold of your account. And if you can just take a little bit of extra time to create those passwords and those logins, and then take your extra time to log in with the two factor

and make sure everything is verified, it will. Believe me, it will save you a big headache in the future. So I'm gonna go ahead. I already contacted Joseph at Motherboard to do a story about this for TV. I think this is something that people really really need to know about on a very basic consumer level. The fact that this is happening is pretty scary. Brenda writes in Hey, Rich, I hope you and your family had a great Halloween. I've been debating about downloading the new iOS fifteen point

one to my iPhone eleven pro, but I finally caved in. Unfortunately, I keep getting an error message, so I don't really know what could be wrong. Hopefully you can give me some recommendations. PS. Thanks for always posting cool stuff Brenda s. Brenda also attached a screenshot that says unable to install update and error occurred installing iOS fifteen point one. Okay, hey, let's break this down. Brenda number one, hope you and

your family had a great Halloween. Yes we did. The kids went out with their friends, We had all the adults over, We had nice dinner before and then we all went out trick or treating, and then we came back and we continued to have some fun while the kids all looked at their candy dumped it on the floor. So it was really fun. The only thing that was missing this year was the brand new Pixel. So Halloween every year is literally when I get to test out

the nightsight prowess on the new Google Pixel. And since I didn't have mine in time, I was using the iPhone thirteen Pro, which I have to say has gotten really good. I mean, I just think that the iPhone thirteen Pro camera overall and the device is just so good. It's it's like, it's like pretty much my my perfect phone. Dare I say, except for some of the features of iOS, but even that has gotten so good that, you know, there are some things I like about Android better. But

iOS has gotten so good and the ecosystem. So anyway, we had a great time. Halloween was awesome and we didn't get a ton of trigger truders. But we came back to the house so late that we did the thing where we left out the candy on the doorstep, and people were respectful and took the candy. But I've got my video cameras anyway outside the front door, so I would have seen if anyone was too too wild with that. Thanks for posting cool stuff. I appreciate it.

I do try to post cool stuff, and it's funny when I post stuff to my social media, like good example, I posted a video of the cart escalator at Target, and I was in Target, and I've seen the cart escalator a thousand times, but it never ceases to amaze me because it's so mesmerizing. You know, you put your cart on this little escalator, it latches into the bottom of it and it brings it up to the second

floor or down to the first floor. Here in Los Angeles, they're very commonplace because you know, Land is at a very very tight premium here and so they build these Targets and other stores that are several floors high. You know, usually two floors maybe I don't think I've seen a three, but in other places they're not. But anyway, I just posted this saying like, hey, this never ceases to amaze me.

It's also quite frightening because I always think of like getting stuck in this thing and like just it ripping you apart, because it's like this machine that is just you know, it's grabbing this cart at the bottom, and like there's all these pieces and it's just really it's like an escalator somewhat exposed. So like, escalators are still dangerous.

Believe me, I had to save someone of the lax one time who fell backwards and I caught them, thank god, but you know, I had to like hold them up, and it was you know, these things you can lose your Don't take an escalator for granted. They are very dangerous and if you lose your footing while on an escalator, especially with luggage or whatever, believe me, in a matter

of seconds you could be hurt. And so don't you know, don't think that an escalator, don't don't be on your phone, don't do anything like stay stay on task when you're on the escalator. It is. It is a dangerous piece of machinery, and I feel like the car escalator is even more dangerous because a lot of it's exposed to be able to grab onto the car. Anyway, I posted that video not thinking much about it, and it sort of blew up on social media because people were amazed

by it. They had not seen it before. They're also amazed by it if they had seen it. So anyway, I'm glad you like when I post cool stuff, because sometimes it just post stuff that I find interesting, and I have no idea if people are gonna like it. Anyway, what to do about this unable to install update. What I would recommend is you probably have filled up your phone and it's not able to get the space that it needs to actually download and install the software update

on your iPhone. That's what I'm guessing. It's one of those things where apples should probably be able to figure out a way around this, but they can't. And so I would go through and delete maybe a couple of apps, maybe a couple of big videos that are backed up, and try it again and see if you can install the update. All right, now, we're gonna get hungry and at the time i'm recording this, I am hungry. I'm really hungry. And yesterday I had a chance to try

the new mcplant Burger at McDonald's. And before you say, rich, rich, rich, how is all this food talk tech? Give me a break. You just like to go eat food at these places and talk about it, And yeah, that's part of it. I do. But I'm also fascinated. You know that I'm very much into this plant based stuff. Not because I am a vegetarian or a vegan. I'm not. I love a steak on a Saturday night. Believe me, my wife and I that's our favorite meal. So the mcplant burger

is now at McDonald's. It's at eight US restaurants. And the reason why this is tech is because they're using Beyond meat patty, and this patty is exclusive to McDonald's. This is not the same patty that you would buy in the grocery store from Beyond. So if you want to try this version of the patty, you have to go to McDonald's. And the reason once you taste this patty, you know that it is a McDonald's specific patty. So this burger has it's it's not a big mac it's

more like a quarter pounder with cheese. So it's got the beyond patty, which is made from let's see, what's it made from? Rice, peas, potatoes and other things. It's served on a sesame seed bun. It's got tomato, lettuce, pickles, onions, mayonnaise, ketchup, and mustard, and then a slice of American cheese. Now, notice some of those ingredients are not vegan. Mayonnaise and American cheese, So if you want to make this vegan,

it's not really possible. Even for the fact, well, you can leave those things out, but they do say that the meat is griddled on the same grill as the meat patties the standard burger. So if you're trying to be vegan, you know, maybe you don't care about that. I don't know, but I imagine some people do if you're a strict vegan. So I tasted this burger and I got to say it was excellent. It tasted just like what you would expect from a McDonald's burger. It was

really good. I actually ate one and a half of these burgers because I recorded all my videos for KTLA and then social media, so I had to eat one and then another Well, I didn't have to eat the full thing. I ate it because I liked it. It was really good. The burger itself is a little mushier. Yeah, the standard burger is probably going to be a little bit more satisfying, because if that's what you're used to. Like me, I am a meat eater, so I am used to the standard burger flavor and taste and the

way it feels. But at the same time, I also really appreciate a plant based burger if done well. And I think Beyond doing them really well. And Beyond is tech. Now I'm not saying this is a Franken patty, but the technology is used to recreate the feeling and taste of a meat product. And so I've been inside Beyond Meats facility, and believe me, they employ a lot of

food technologists. And what these food scientists do is they sit there all day breaking down meat to a molecular level to figure out what makes it taste this way, what makes it feel this way in your mouth, what makes it break up a certain way, what makes it smell a certain way, and what makes it smell another way when it cooks. And so for all these reasons. I'm not defending my segments on plant based food because it is technology. In fact, a lot of the food

that we eat today, sadly is technology. Sad or for better or worse, I should say not sadly. Some of it's really good because we're able to feed people in ways that we were never able to feed them in a mass way before. Now you can argue me on McDonald's whether it's good or bad, whether they should be doing this, but the reality is it's options. It's just

another option for people that go to McDonald's. If I go to McDonald's with my kids, and typically I'm not going to eat a burger, you know, because I've already had meat that day or whatever, this gives me another option to say, Okay, cool, I'll get the plant based burger. And the nutrition facts on this thing. It's about five hundred calories for this burger. It does have, you know, a decent amount of fat and saturated fat, not so

much cholesterol. I think it was like eight percent, about forty five percent of your sodium, and about twenty two grams of protein. So they're not there. There is nothing in the marketing materials at McDonald's or beyond that says this is a healthy alternative to a burger. No, they just say it is an option, and that's all it is at this point, is an option. McDonald's is testing

this at eight restaurants. I'll tell you the locations, Irving and Carrollton, Texas, Cedar Falls, Iowa, Jennings and Lake Charles, Louisiana, and then Elsigundo and Manhattan Beach, California. I visited the Manhattan Beach, California location. We will see if they expand this to more locations. I knew it there. It is that music means 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 hit the big blue send email button, or you can go to rich on Tech dot tv and hit the email icon. Also, I would love it if you would rate and review

the podcast. If you've been listening for a while and you've figured out what you like about this show, it would really help me out if you would go to the listening app of your choice and write a quick line about what you like about this show to help others understand why they should listen. There are so many podcasts out there, but if you explain what you like, even if it's just something very specific, that may help someone decide to subscribe or listen. You can find me

on social media. I am at rich on Tech on Facebook, on Instagram, on Twitter, and if you want to see my taste test of the McDonald's mcplant Berger and all the stuff I talk about, you can find most of those videos on Facebook and Instagram, and of course my website, and no matter where you live in the US, you can download the free KTLA plus app on Apple, TV, Fire TV, and Roku. Once you do, scroll down to the tech section and watch all of my TV segments on demand. I always say TV is where I do

my best work. It's definitely a big part of my life, so please watch my TV segments. They are a lot of fun. My name is Richard Demiro. Thanks so much for listening. There are so many ways you can spend an hour of your time. I do appreciate you spending with me. I will talk to you real soon.