One messaging app to rule them all

into twenty twenty one. I'm still having trouble writing all the dates right now because they're very tricky. It's like one twenty two, twenty one, one, twenty three, twenty one, one, twenty four, twenty one, one, nineteen twenty one, one, twenty

twenty one, one, twenty one, twenty one. It's just been really funny, and I know there's like a whole bunch of like are they call palindromes where they're you know, the same forwards and backwards for all these dates recently anyway, So I guess I'm not alone and having trouble because there is something going on with the dates recently. But welcome to the show. If you're listening for the first time, thank you for finding me. If you're listening for the

second time, well thanks for tuning back in. If you're listening for the two hundredth time, I probably do have that many shows, actually, because I've been doing this podcast in one form or another for a very long time now, and it's gone. If you've listened throughout the years, it's gone through different kind of variations. I guess you can say sometimes it was like a ten minute daily thing.

Other times it was like an interview thing, and you know, now it's kind of settled upon this format, which I like. But honestly, if I had my way, if I had one hundred percent like the way Rich Demiro wants to do this show, I would do a live call in show every single day, and that's all I would do, and you know, just talk about some of the things happening in the tech world, plus do the calls live. But this is the next best thing because it's a

little bit what's the word is it asynchronous? You know, the let's see, asynchronous means not existing or happening at the same time, So that's kind of what it is, right now, so it's asynchronous because you can send me questions at any time and I can answer them on my schedule, which is really helpful because my schedule is kind of all the way over all over the place. But yeah, like today, I'm doing the podcast in just a slightly different time than typical, but it all works

out anyway. Welcome to the show. Thanks for tuning in and listening. And let's just get right to it, because it just seems like every week I get more and more questions. So let's just start with the Samsung Galaxy S twenty one Ultra. I think last week I talked about the phone, but I didn't give you my opinion on it. And my opinion on this phone is that I love it. So it's basically all the problems I had with a Samsung phone are gone, and honestly, I

kind of want to switch. The only thing that's keeping me right now is actually two things. The size of the device, and I feel like maybe I get used to that because I'm so used to the size of the iPhone at this point, and the quality of certain apps, and by certain I mean definitely social media apps are

not as good on Samsung. I don't know why that is, but it just they don't look as good and they don't perform as well, and I don't know why that is, and I mean, I kind of know why, but it's just really frustrating because this is a powerhouse of a phone. So everything that I had an issue with they have seemed to fix. And you know, for starters, it's got that big screen, it's got the crazy camera set up on the back, which is you know, like four cameras. Two are dedicated to zoom, so you can go up

to ten times optical. Then they've got up to one hundred times space zoom, which last year was unusual, and this year it actually works. Now I don't think you ever really need one hundred time zoom, but it actually does work physically, so when you're zooming in on something. Last year, you'd have to hold the phone really steady. Of course it would, you know, you couldn't at a hundred times because any tiny movement would would mess up

your subject. Well, this time around, they use AI to kind of focus lock on your subject, and it actually does that, so that works. There's so many features on the camera, it's just like you'll never use them all. I mean, if you go into more, I mean there's like ar doodle, there's a promo, there's panoramic, there's food, there's night, there's portrait, portrait video, pro video, super slow mo, slow motion, hyperlapse, director's view, and you know, it just

goes on and on. Then when you get into the settings, you've got you know you've got. You can take forty megapixel front facing camera photos. You can take one hundred and eight megapixel back camera photos. You can take three three quarters nine sixteen one to one square pictures or

full pictures. You can take selfies. By One of my favorite features actually on this device is that when you're taking a selfie, you can just hold up your hand like your palm to the camera and it recognizes that and then it snaps in a picture, which is just little things like that. Everyday pictures and videos I find work really well on this camera. They're not you know, are they one hundred percent as good as as iPhone?

Not always, but sometimes the iPhone messes up. So I mean it's like, you know, if you take a hundred pictures, sometimes you know you're gonna say, ah, the iPhone kind of did better, and other times you can say oh wow, the Samsung. You can't. You can't match it. So at this point it's kind of like, you know, some things the iPhone's gonna do better, some things the Samsung's gonna

do better. I posted a picture on my Twitter of my afternoon espresso and I don't have one every afternoon, but many I do, and you know, people are debating like which one's better, Like, oh this, the left is better, the right is better the left. They were almost identical with some subtle nuances to them, And again it comes down to like maybe the next picture you take the Samsung will be better versus the iPhone. So I really

am very happy with this device. I love the fact that you can use the stylus, even though you know I don't. I would have to get used to just keeping a stylus in my pocket, I think for that feature. The whole memory card being gone is definitely a bummer because it would have been nice to buy a cheaper phone and then put the memory card in the whole Samsung taking away the antenna for the Samsung pay eh,

I mean, it's fine. So many places take mobile payment now, it's fine, And honestly, it was quite tricky to use the Samsung Pay at a place that didn't accept mobile payments, because they'd always kind of like be like, no, no, we don't take mobile payments. You're like, no, no, let me try this, and they don't really like you fooling around with payments. The software features the object eraser is really cool. The ability to share pictures without revealing their

location is really cool. The build in Google Feed is really cool. So I have no problems recommending this phone. It's a really great device. And other than the size, I think it's perfect. And you know, it's heavy, it's big, but if you want a powerful phone, that's what you have to kind of go for. And I think the lesser models, you know, when it comes to like the S twenty and the S twenty or sorry, the S twenty one and the S twenty one plus. I didn't

extensively test those. They did send a S twenty for me to test, but honestly, if I was gonna go with that size, I'd probably go with the iPhone because it's going to be a better device. This has the S twenty one Ultra has everything you need and more than the iPhone. So that's the difference and why you'd

want to go with this device. If I'm gonna go with a smaller device that has you know, three time zoom and you know, a decent screen and whatever and no no memory card slot, I'd probably just go with the iPhone at that size. So if you want the bigger phone, the best, all these cool features, then you kind of have to go with the with the Ultra. And that's kind of the dilemma I see myself in. Also the Apple Watch and AirPods. I have been testing the Samsung answer to the AirPods, the new ones, the

the Galaxy Buds Pro, and they're good. I mean, I don't think there is as my favorite as the AirPods. Just kind of the AirPods stick in my ears, they just like stay there. The Samsung ones fall out a little bit easier, but they still they work really well and they're they're good. So Samsung in twenty twenty one, you get a good job. I think that you're getting closer to what the Android lovers kind of want, but

also the everyday person kind of wants. And you know, if it wasn't for I Message and some of these other things like the Apple Watch that are really keeping people locked into the iPhone, you know, and the better app selection there. I think that you're doing a really good job, so keep up the good work. And I think that if you are looking for a Samsung S twenty one, I have no reservations with any of the devices that they made this year. I personally would lean

towards the Ultra. But if you want a smaller device the Ultra, the S twenty one plus is probably a good middle ground. I haven't tested that one. The S twenty one is you know about the size of an iPhone so or an iPhone twelve. I should say, all right, let's move on, wrong one. Let's move on to the first question. Let's see and via Facebook says Facebook dot com slash rich on tech. Did you know that Amazon eliminated their coal the lending library that was once a

benefit of Prime membership? It went away January fourth, twenty twenty one. Nice they let members know ahead of time. Oh yes. The Kindle lending library was kind of a small feature that was cool but most people did not

know about. And this feature specifically was if you owned a physical Kindle, they would let you lend out like I think it was one book at a time or something like that, and you can go on this Kindle Lending library and find things like free ebooks basically, and I did it for a couple of books, and I thought it was like kind of a secret little weapon that they had in there that was kind of cool,

like a little benefit. And I don't know if it ever expanded to like people that had, you know, the Kindle app, but I think it was anyway, I you know, they it looks like from an article I said, they replaced it with like Prime Reading, which I do get emails about that. But anyway, the Kindle Lending Library, honestly, it's cool, but it was always so limited anyway, and what you can get, and it was, you know, tricky because you can only have one thing out of a

time or something like that. So it's gone. It's I'm always sad when things go away. But you know, I'm sure Amazon had the details on how many people actually took advantage. And what I use now is called libby l Ibby, which is an amazing app that lets you

get pretty much any ebook for free. Anyway, it is limited because you're you're actually lending them out from your local library and there are time limits on that but I find that it's it's pretty amazing, and so that's what I've been using to read on my kindle ninety nine percent of the time. In fact, I went through my book. I just finished the Instagram book. It was

called I think it was called No Filter. Yeah, no Filter, and it's called The Inside Story of Instagram, which was great, and I read it for free through Libby, and when I was done, it was time for a new book. And the only downside I find to Libby is that your books, the books that are available, don't always match up with your timeframe of when you're done and ready

for a new book. So I ended up downloading a sample of another book I wanted to read through through face Sorry, I downloaded a sample through my you know, just Amazon. And then when I was done with the sample, it was like, oh, do you want to continue reading this for eleven dollars and fifty cents? And I couldn't bring myself to pay because I'm so used to Libby now and I like getting my stuff for free through Libby.

So but that book's not available right away, so anyway, I know, I know, but anyway, that's you know, sad that it's gone but I think that there must have been a certain amount of people that used it and didn't take advantage of it. So Amazon said goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. All right, so WhatsApp. You know, they had this big thing with WhatsApp where they wanted to change their privacy

policy because they I don't know if you can. I don't know if you can hear this, But I've got my son in the other room that he can play like you have no idea. He can play. You know, I'm working from home and my kid, my nine year old, I'm not kidding. He can play like you have no idea. He can take his toys and just play for an hour in his room and in between his zoom sessions at school, he goes into his room and he's just absolutely wild with his play. And it's fantastic. I love

it because it's real play. It gets a little wild, and you know, he crashes his toys around and stuff. But like, I don't care, Like my wife is, like his whole room, the walls are all messed up because he crashes his toys. Said, I don't care. He's playing with real toys. Kid does this these days, and so he screams he yells. He you know, he's got all these little things that he does with his toys, and I love it, love it, love it. So if you can hear that, that's why I'm laughing because it's just

so loud in the background. Anyway, you probably can't hear it because this mic is really good. But anyway, if you do, that's what's happening. And kudos to my kid.

I keep telling him start a YouTube channel. He does have a YouTube channel, but he does like you know, playing roadblocks and all these other well Roadblocks is banned in our house, but he does Minecraft, and so you know, I said, Parker, you really need to do a YouTube channel where you play with toys and kids just watch you play with them, because that's really interesting and that's

kind of a lost art with kids these days. My other kid, my six year old, you know, he'll play with him a little bit, but you know, these kids, like I used to play all the time, and my wife and I were discussing this, like we played NonStop, like that's all we did, you know, video games once in a while, but then we played. And anyway, so I love that he plays and he sets little Google home alarms that you know, tell him when it's time to go back to class. Anyway, I digress. If you

wanted a longer podcast, you got it. Okay. So WhatsApp, they tried to change their policy or their privacy policy, and people revolted and they said, WhatsApp, we're out now. I don't really think they need to do that. But a lot of people have been downloading Signal and Telegram, and so I did a story on KTLA kind of explaining the differences between these two apps, and there is a difference. And number one, I don't think that people need to flock from WhatsApp. If you're using it, stick

with it. You're fine, especially if you're using Instagram and Facebook. I mean, it's all the same company. And you know, if you're not worried about your privacy on Facebook and Instagram, then you shouldn't be worried about your privacy on Signal on WhatsApp. WhatsApp is actually very secure because it does use end to end encryption by default, and not many apps do that. And what that means is that nobody can see your messages, not even Facebook, even if they

ever wanted to. So it's very secure. And the reason why I didn't choose WhatsApp in the past as my preferred messenger is because it was too secure. I wanted to be able to access my messages on various devices at the same time, and when I tried that with WhatsApp, you couldn't. And that was why I never actually used it, And I kind of liked Facebook Messenger better because it's a privacy trade off. If you want to access your messages across a whole bunch of devices like I do,

you can't. You can use encryption, but you can't use end to end encryption, and that's what makes all these other apps. So I ended up using Telegram as my preferred messaging app for the past couple of years, which is fine, but I find out it doesn't have end to end and that's why now Signal does have end to end. And this is another one that a lot

of people are downloading. And Elon Musk famously tweeted, I say famously it was a couple of weeks ago, but he just said, you Signal and this app is end to end encrypted, and you know, again, it's very secure. It's the most secure messaging I think you can have online at this point for the average person. I'm sure there's something more high powered out there, but for the average person that could download an app to their iPhone, I think signal is the most secure. Telegram is secure,

it's just not end to end. Now, if you want end to end in telegram, before you message someone, you have to do something what's called a secret chat, and then that will be end to end. But when I tested that, my secret chats don't show up on my various devices because I think it has something to do with the end to end where it just it can't put those on various devices because of the encryption. So anyway,

WhatsApp has delayed its changes until May fifteenth. And if you really want to know the changes that WhatsApp wanted to do. What they wanted to do is keep your private messages private. So your personal messages person to person would still remain end to end encrypted, but the messages that you send to a business, Facebook wanted to be able to scan those messages so that they could sell ads against those messages. And why does that make a

lot of sense? Well, because they figured, Okay, if I'm a travel agency and I'm communicating with people through WhatsApp, well and let's say I text the well, let's say I'm the travel agency, and then you know, I'm the person on the other end that's texting the travel agency. While I text the travel agency, hey, do you have any deals to Maui Hawaii? And Facebook's little bots pick up on Maui Hawaii and next thing you know, now they're sending me ads based on Maui or they're selling

me ads sold against my Maui Hawaii interests. And it makes a lot of sense because you know, while even Facebook said a lot of people aren't private messaging businesses right now, but they do see that as a huge growth area in the future. And they are so right about that because we're already seeing this with Instagram, where when you message a business on Instagram or you follow a business, people just DM them, or on Twitter they dm them. And I think that Facebook sees the writing

on the wall when it comes to messaging businesses. It's going to become a very popular way to sort of get in touch with businesses quickly, and they want to be a to make money off of that. So I get it. And again it's it's like, do you really need those messages to be secure anyway? I mean, you're

sending them to a stranger. So I'm not advocating for less privacy, but I don't think that if you message a business, you have any sort of idea that that message would not be shared among a whole bunch of people. If I message United Airlines on Twitter, do I think one person is reading that message? No, many people are reading it. They're sending it through all kinds of systems that scan it for like, you know, various things, whatever I say, and getting it to the right department. And

you know, I think that Facebook, it's tricky. They bought WhatsApp for a lot of money and you know they want to make a return on that, and anyway, it makes a lot of sense. So there you have it. Now you know the difference. So if you want the most private, personalized or private messaging, you got to go Signal. But there are some downsides to that. Again, you know, I message is just as secure, it's very secure. Well maybe not just as secure as Signal, but it's very secure.

And so if you're on that, you know, the toughest part is getting your friends to switch to these various messaging apps. If they're not on there, they're useless. So if you can get them a switch, great. If you can't, just stick with what you got. As long as it's not text messaging. That's the most insecure messaging out there. Anyone can read anything you send through text, so don't

use text all right. Next question, Amber, via my Facebook page Facebook dot com slash rich on text says, with all the new plus channel streaming, HBO Max and Discovery Plus, for example, moving shows from cable, do you think cable services will become obsolete? The answer is probably yes at

some point. Amber, This is a very slow process. It's kind of like when people have been saying how newspapers are gonna die forever, and you know, they kind of have like the delivery to your doorstop, yeah, or your driveway, I should say, And you know, I was a paperboy when I was a kid, so believe me, I have a deep, deep love for newspapers, and I don't get any delivered. I love the newspaper, and I do read the Wall Street Journal on a regular basis. But do

I get it delivered? No? Do I love the app? Yes, I love what I love flipping through the newspapers when I was, you know, back in my New York city days, every day, and even very you know what, throughout my entire life, I always subscribe to newspapers because I love

the idea that it's not siloed. You can be flipping through the newspaper and you're reading a story that's interesting and your eyes move to a different part of the page and huh, I would never normally look up this story, but here it is on this page, and I'm gonna read about it. And it opens your mind to things that in this world these days, with our siloed media, we are we are just seeing the stuff that we want to see, and it's very important to see all

kinds of stuff. And that's what the newspaper to me, always embodied that I'd be reading about, you know, the stuff that I want to read about, but on that same page or my a tiny little article about a company that I don't necessarily know about or care about, but I'm gonna discover it. And I think that can be applied to various aspects of the paper and various sections of the newspaper. And so do I think cable is going away? Yes, slowly but surely. But I don't

think it's gonna go away right away. But you are seeing it tougher. Do I think anyone's starting a cable channel anytime soon? I don't think so. I mean, to me personally, when I see the programming grid on a you know, like a TVO kind of screen, I don't understand why you would need that anymore, because to me, everything's on demand now. When it comes to live sports or live news, that's a little bit different. I still

think those are best consumed live. But even on the evening News last night, I heard them say at the end, you know, if you don't catch us live, be sure to DVR us, And I thought that was interesting because they are recognizing that people do DVR, and you know, I think that there's a place for that too. I mean, you know, the station I work for, we're on almost all day, so I mean you can tune in and

pretty much catch the news at almost any time. But if you happen to get home at seven thirty and you know, we're not actively in a newscast and you TVO the seven PM or the six pm newscast and then played at seven thirty when you get home, that's fine. I mean, it makes sense you're probably not gonna watch it. Three days later, like you would show that you might might have historically recorded. So good question. I personally am all in on the streaming services. I love them. I

love the flexibility of them. I love how you can cancel and resubscribe. The only thing that I think someone does need to tackle is the whole idea of organization. It really is tough to find the stuff you want to watch and figure out where it's playing. And also, you know, shows could be on a much longer runway than they ever were for having people discover them. So Queen's Gambit, for instance, Queen is it Queen's Gambit or gamble Queen's Gambit? Right, yeah, Queen's Gambit. I had some

friends over socially distanced, very safe in our backyard. This was months ago, and they said, oh, you got to watch this show, The Queen's Gambit, And I was like, okay, I know, there's so many great shows. This was probably two months before anyone said, oh my gosh, it's the best show ever, which I still haven't watched, but I know people love it. So my point is, you know, how do we find out about these shows? It's kind of tough, you know, without just the main shows that

are on the main networks. Now there's so many ways to find new shows, So good question. All right, the play is still going strong with Fossil has launched a new LTE equipped smartwatch and this is exclusively on Verizon. It's called the Fossil Gen five LT Touchscreen smart Watch. Is that really the name of this thing. It's kind of a weird name, but it sounds pretty cool. It sounds like a nice smart watch for users on Android.

It uses wear Os, it's got eight gigabytes of story Bridge, it's got the snap Dragon Wear thirty one hundred inside whatever that means. It has LTE, which means you can sync it with your smartphone using Varizon number Share. And I have this with my iPhone and what it does is it basically means that your iPhone and your Apple Watch are synced up. So if you get a call, you can leave your your iPhone at home and you can still just get all your texts and voice, you know,

calls when you're out and about. I love it and this is a nice alternative on the Android side of things. Comes in two colors, combination of black straps on a smoke tone stainless steel and blush straps on a rose gold case, so it sounds like they're targeting, you know, whatever your style is. There forty five millimeters case size,

endless strap options. Let's see. It's got a swim proof speaker so you can have calls functionality and responses from Google Assistant, which you know, that's kind of neat because you can hear this all through. So if you're out and about, you've got the speaker on it, you can just make your calls hands free through the speaker. It's got eight gigs of storage, which is fine. It's not that much, but it's probably good enough. It's got extended

battery mode. It's got daily mode, it's got a time only mode, so it sounds like they know battery life is sort of an issue with these things. But you know, I haven't tested it, so I can't tell you how it lasts. It's got a one point three inch touchscreen display. It is swim proof, like I said, which is pretty cool. It's got NFC so you can have your Tap to pay in there. It's got GPS, it's got heart rate accelerometer, gyroscope, ambient light, microphone, and speaker. So I think this sounds

like a winner if you're on Android. Three hundred and fifty dollars available at Verizon exclusively. So this does come with a couple of caveats. You have to be on Verizon, you have to be on Android. But I think the main thing that's lacking in the Android ecosystem right now is a nice smart watch that rivals the Apple Watch.

If you've listened to this podcast before, you know I've said that I love my Apple Watch, and in fact, it is one of the things that is the glue for the iOS ecosystem or the Apple ecosystem, and Apple knows this. Why do you think they haven't made I Message work with Android? Why do you think they don't make the iPhone work with Android? Yeah, they could say all day that it's proprietary and it needs the iPhone.

No it does not. They came out with the way of using the Apple Watch with the family set up. You set it up through the iPhone. It never needs to connect to the iPhone ever. Again, and it's limited, it's not as perfect, but again, you know, the Apple knows what they're doing. They're continuing to make their ecosystem. Whenever you hear the Apple ecosystem in the same line you always hear sticky or it keeps you in. These are the products that you know, kind of lock you

in lock in. With Android, we don't have any of that because there is no lock in. You can take all your stuff out of Android in about ten seconds and you can sign into an iPhone and your email is there, You're everything's there, you know. So I don't know my switching to the Fossil anytime soon. I don't think so, but I might want to test it out. I might request a review unit to test this thing out because I think that Android users need an alternative

and something that works nicely. And it sounds like this one, you know, checks off all the boxes of what you'd want. I don't. The other one is is Fitbit. You know. There they just got purchased by Google and that deal is done. So maybe we'll see a nice Fitbit smart watch that is really really good and a little bit closer to what Apple offers, especially with the apps and integrations.

I mean, that's really the magic of the Apple Watch is that they you know, they had a while where the apps were not really doing much on Apple Watch, and now they've gotten to the point where like there are some pretty useful things on Apple Watch. Well I take that back. Most of it is pretty much the standard stuff built in, but there are enough apps on there that there are functionality that you know sometimes you know you want to use and they work pretty well.

So all right, let's go to podpage dot com slash rich on tech podpage dot com slash rich on tech for a voice message. This is this is where you can leave a voicemail on my page and uh, I will I will hear it. So that's what Donald did. Let's hear you. Donald, Hey, you're rich. What do you think about the Microsoft Surface pro Dude?

They did not send me one for review. Purposes. I guess they figured my audience was not interested in this. But you know, it is kind of a niche device because it's expensive and it's a first generation, and I probably I might have talked a little bit of trash about it because I said that, you know, it's kind of a first generation, i'd stay away from it. So maybe they heard that and they just said, no, we're

not gonna even bother with you, Rich. But whatever the reason is, Justine said she actually likes it a lot. It's a great size, she loves how it opens up. And while she did not let me touch it because of COVID reasons, you know, it looked cool. But I'll be honest, she was on her iPhone most of the time, so I mean, you know, but she said she loves browsing the web on it and doing all that cool stuff. And I look, I think that this kind of device

is part of our future. There are definitely gonna be more iterations of this, and I think the biggest downside was the camera on that device. But otherwise, I mean, yeah, something that folds up and you can use it for texting and browsing the web and all that stuff. I think it's great now the Surface Pro if you were talking about that, I mean, Microsoft has had a lot of success with the Surface lineup, and I think they're

doing a great job. And I think, in fact, Microsoft in general is really doing a nice job with their top to bottom kind of integration of apps and services. And I really have not seen a dud out of Microsoft in a while, and I think that they are

doing a really nice job. I think they understand that there is a there's a large amount of people out there that do not necessarily need Apple products, and they want to be a little bit more productive, and they want something on the Windows side because they're more a little bit more business oriented. And so these Surface devices have been great because they double as a you know,

a tablet and a laptop. And I think we've seen Apple not copy, but we've seen inspiration because Surface was doing this way way long ago, where you had a device that could stand up on its own and has a keyboard case and a stylus. And we kind of see the identical thing now with Apple with their iPad pro and they all kind of support a stylist. They all have got the keyboard cases, they all can stand

up on their side. So again, different people need different things, and I think that these are are a great little device. And it kind of depends what you want to do. Are you in the Apple ecosystem or are you more business oriented with the Microsoft stuff because your company uses all Microsoft so and I think they've seen a lot of a lot of take up with the you know, with the business side of things with teams, especially during the pandemic. And also, let's not forget Microsoft Edge. I've

talked about how good that browser is. So I think no matter what she asked about Donald, whether it was the Duo or the Surface Pro, I think they're both great products. I think the Duo I would not recommend purchasing because I just don't think that it's there just yet. But I think it's something to watch. And again, just like Microsoft was pretty early with the original Surface, I think the Duo is a little bit early when it

comes to foldables. Even with Samsung, we saw their first foldable to the second gen, they did a great job of improving it. In fact, I was just watching a video with all the YouTubers saying with their favorite gadget of the year was, and a lot of them was the Z fold they really really the z Fold two specifically, they loved it, and I love that device when I had it. It's just again, it's not for me right now, but I think it's one of those things to keep

an eye on. So good question. All right, let's move on to I thought this was pretty interesting. Bark is a company that analyzes social media and apps that your kids are using. And they've got like kind of like, you know, a lot of parents will email me and say, hey, Rich, how do I monitor what my kid's doing on Snapchat and all these things. Bark will analyze like thirty plus apps and platforms to see kind of like what your kids are doing, and they could send you alerts based

on AI. So instead of having to go through every text message that your kids is that your kids are sending, AI will say this one looks a little sus you might you might want to look into that one. So they analyzed, uh, let's see, let's see. They analyzed children's online activity with a specific focus on kids ten to eighteen, and they analyzed more than I don't know two billion

messages across thirty apps. And here are the trends. Seventy six percent of teens and eighty two percent, oh, seventy six percent of tweens and eighty two percent of teens experienced cyber bullying. Forty five percent of tweens and six six percent of teens engaged in conversations about depression. Now, that was just unheard of when I was a kid. I mean, I honestly didn't even really know what that

was when I was a kid. And now my wife being a therapist, I mean I definitely or yeah, counselor therapist for teens, I mean I definitely hear more about that, which is just wild. Seventy percent of teens and eighty seven percent of teens encountered nudity or content of a sexual nature. That's scary, because again, when I was a kid, didn't really have that either. Forty one percent of tweens and sixty six percent of teens were involved in self

harm slash suicidal situation. That's really scary. Seventy eight percent of tweens, ninety one percent of teens engaged in conversations surrounding drugs and alcohol, and eighty eight percent of tweens and ninety four percent of teens expressed or experienced violent subject matter or thoughts. So I think the takeaway from this is that your kids are being exposed to a lot of stuff, whether you realize that not, especially being home,

especially being on computers, especially how connected they are. I mean, my kid the other day was on Minecraft and I was looking at his chats over his shoulder for a second, and the person on the other end was asking my kid if they can call them, and he was saying, I don't know. You know, I said, hold on, what's going on here? And the person was like, hey, you know, I don't really like to use voice to text. It's so much easier just to just to call. Can I

call you? And my kid doesn't know who this person is. And so my point is you have to be really on top of this stuff because I don't know who this person was that my kid was communicating with, which is scary as a parent to begin with. But you know, this person was sounding like someone I don't want my kid to talk to, and so my kid was like, well, he's just saying that he wants to you know, it's easier to talk. And I said, I don't know. That's that's a little weird. And anyway, so you gotta be

you gotta be careful about this stuff. Let's see. So the apps that are the scariest for all these different things I just talked about. Top app for flagged for suicidal stuff is Twitter. Top app for depression Twitter. These are apps that are flagged by ai as seeing the most conversations dealing with these things. Top app flagged for severe body concerns, body issue concerns, body image concerns, TikTok,

no surprise there, severe bullying Twitter. Let's see top apps. Okay, yeah, so, if I'm reading this correctly as a parent, Twitter is the problem. Instagram is a close second because a lot of kids are on there. But realistically, what this comes down to is where the kids communicating and it's yeah, I mean it's Twitter, it's Instagram. So you just got to be aware of this stuff. I don't have the answers.

I really don't, because I'm seeing what's happening with my kids in lockdown and they're on their computers more or they're just doing more things than I ever did at their age on devices, And I don't really have advice except that you have to kind of just monitor and stay on top of this stuff and do the best you can and just kind of be aware that it's happening, and just don't pretend that you don't think it's happening, because it's happening. All right, let's get to another question.

God really Debbie Downer over here in that section of the podcast, let's talk to Don. Don says, I live in Westchester very close. Oh shoot, well, I guess I could say where they live. I live in Westchester, very close to Lax. Today we had a sales guy from Starry Internet come by to offer us free internet for six months as they are beta testing in our area. I've never heard of them, Starry dot com. Do you

know anything about this service? You're the first person I thought to ask, sincerely, Don, Yes, Don, I do know about this service. So I was at an event back when you can go to a little get togethers, about probably three years ago at this point that the people from Starry were there, and they said, we're launching wireless internet in Los Angeles. That's going to be fifty megabits per second. And I said, what how are you doing that?

Like this was unheard of, right, even fifty megabits was like fast back then, And so I said, I don't think you could do that, and sure enough, a couple years later, they actually did. They showed me the little modem they had and I asked them how they were going to do it. I said, is this coming from the you know, is this coming from the sky, Like,

where's this coming from? And it was coming from wireless antennas that they installed on top of buildings and then that would, you know, somehow beam the Internet into the building with the wireless kind of router in your or so basically they've put an antenna somewhere, you know, either near your building or on top of it, and then they would give you a modem that was wireless and it would grab that signal from over the air and then put it into your house or your apartment. And

so they've done a pretty good job. They've expanded, for sure. I think it's back then they pitched it to me, it was like fifty bucks a month for fifty megabits per second, and I don't know if that's changed. I can, I guess I can look it up, but yeah, go for it. I mean, if they're giving you six months free, I would definitely do that. So now it looks like outrageous, Okay.

Their website says thirty dollars a month for fast internet, and that is up to one hundred megabits per second, and fifty dollars a month now gives you up to

two hundred megabits per second. And I guess they're using five G to accomplish this, So I'm guessing they're piggybacking on either you know, Verizons five G network or AT and T's five G. But again, this all goes into kind of the idea that I've talked about on the show for many years that when we get this five G super fast internet in a lot of places, it's going to be game changing because you are now going to have a choice at your house of T Mobile

as you're internet, Verizon as your internet, AT and T as your Internet, and that's huge. So you know, you don't have to do you don't have to go with just the people that can wire a line to your place, which you know right now, that's pretty much what most people are limited to. So it's gonna open up competition, it's gonna be great, It's gonna be you know, less contracts.

I mean, right now, I don't think there's any contracts with any of these, but it's gonna be good, and so more competition is going to be better, and we're just gonna continue to see these five G networks build out in a bigger and better way. All right, let's go to the next story on my list here. This this is an interesting one. We've we've heard about these things before. They keep trying them. I'm telling you this just to be aware of it. But I don't think

it's gonna succeed. But hopefully it does, but I don't think so. So there's a new app called Beeper, and what they're trying to do is unify all of your messaging into one app. And it works with WhatsApp, Facebook, Messenger, I Message, Android Messages, Telegram, Twitter, Slack, Hangouts, Instagram, Skype, and a whole lot more. Now I don't know number one, the idea that one inbox can work with all these different messaging apps. I mean, I have got to see

it to believe it. We've seen this before and it's never as pretty or as good as you want. And the big one here that a lot of people are talking about is the fact that this will work with I Message. And you think to yourself, well, wait, nothing works with I Message. And the reality is how they're making it work with I message is a little bit

of foolery, a little bit of trickery here. And the trick here is that they are actually giving you an iPhone for s that is jailbroken, that you keep kind of like in your house, connected to the internet, so that that can be the relay for your I message at all times. Now, that is a very very scary thing because you know, it's it's weird. It's a workaround. Yes, does it work, probably, but will it will they find

a loophole or will Apple close loophole? Probably, So you can't really build a business on something like you know, kind of wedging. You're wedging a you know, you're wedging into a hole that you just can't really stay in, you know, because Apple is going to figure out a way around this. Now maybe they won't. Maybe because there's been other things over the years that do something similar.

And you know, there's these programs that make you install like a server on your computer to relay your eye messages, but your your computer has to be on the whole time, and that's just not very realistic. So I guess with the phone it kind of makes sense. You just keep the phone plugged in at all times in your house. It's on Wi Fi and somehow it relays the message. But again it has to be jail broken because there's nothing that would be able to tap into that I message.

That would just be an app you can standard install on your phone. So this gets very complicated. It's called Beeper. You can check it out. But again, it's also ten bucks a month. And people are excited because it sounds great to have all your messages in one place and finally be free of Apple's lock on your I message. But the reality is, I don't think it's gonna work. But we'll say maybe I'm wrong. Sometimes I am wrong.

All right, let's take another message from podpage dot com, slash rich on tech, podpage dot com, slash rich on tech. If you want to leave a voicemail, just look in the lower right hand corner for the microphone and you can leave a voicemail just like Michael did.

I would listen to so many podcasts. And because I'm not driving, it's really tough for me to listen. And I don't really listen to podcasts at home for some reason. I don't know if I'm programmed wrong or what, but I can't really listen to podcasts in the background. Number one. And I also can't listen to podcasts while I'm working. I can't have my ear like on a podcast, you know, with like headphones in while I'm trying to work, So

that just doesn't work with me. And if I listen while I'm working, like if I have it on like a smart speaker in the background, I don't listen to the podcast because I can't really hear it. So anyway, there's a there's a lot of stuff that I Anyway, I don't know what my point was, but thank you Michael for listening. I get so distracted. I'm not kidding. I'm sitting here doing this podcast. My watch is going off like crazy. I'm gonna take that off because it

just keeps vibrating. My computer keeps going off. I guess people are texting. Oh now, my phone's going on. I can't win. There's just too many things, Oh my gosh, too much technology surrounding me. I want to focus just for an hour so I can do this podcast. But Michael, thank you for that. And when I get to listening to podcasts more, believe me, I will listen to more. All right, let's get oh my gosh, another Michael, another Michael.

For the next question, Michael says, hey, Rich, I went to my carrier store of Verizon to see about up creating my old iPhone six plus and expected to pay the seven hundred dollars for a newer model. They said if I traded it in, they would give me five hundred dollars towards an iPhone twelve, but I'd have to sign up for a new unlimited plan that would last for two years. I really don't care about the two year commitment because I've been with them for twelve years.

But I don't see how they can give me five hundred dollars towards a new phone. I've always bought directly from Apple and they would only give me fifty dollars for it. I've never been on a monthly plan, so it's strange new territory for me. I'm sixty eight years old, I have a brother and sister. On my plan, I pay ninety five dollars for two gigs a month. However, they've given me an extra two gigs for being a

retired vet. Thank you for your service. I do appreciate that, Michael. Together, we use less than two gigs a month, so the data is not an incentive. They also said my monthly bill would only increase by five dollars. I've always believed that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. But I thought i'd write to see if you can enlighten me a bit on how these monthly plans work. Thank you for your time and information you

can give me. Michael, you are very smart for saying if it sounds too good to be true, probably is, And for this deal, I'd probably say, here's okay. Number one, these carriers are not just out of the kindness of their heart giving you a very expensive phone for very cheap. So you kind of nailed it in certain ways. You said that you have to sign up for a new unlimited plan. That's your first red flag and it would last for two years. Now you are kind of okay.

The thing is, the plan is contract free. There is no contract with the plan. But here's where they get you. That seven hundred dollars are giving you for that iPhone twelve towards the iPhone twelve. It is pro rated, which means it is spread out over twenty four months. So the way they do it is that if you cancel before those twenty four months are up, guess what You've lost your promotion, and now that promotion you have to pay it back and you owe, I don't know the

full amount, I think. And them telling you that your plan is only going to go up five dollars a month, I don't believe that at all. You've got three people on your plan. There is no way that you can get three people on a plan for one hundred dollars a month. That's just that's not possible through Verizon on an unlimited plan. Now, unlimited plans at Verizon might start at eighty dollars a month, and that's you know, for the three of you. But or they may say that

your plan's only going up five dollars. They didn't mention the other two plans that you also have to pay, So I you know, I think so. I used to sell cell phones a long time ago, and the joke was always, you know, we used to give the phones away for a penny and you sign up for the plan. And back then it was like minutes, you know, you got like three hundred minutes, probably like twenty five minutes,

whatever it was. It was so long ago, but like clockwork, people would get their phone for a penny and they'd come back into the store after a month when they got their first bill or a month and a half, they'd be like, what's this five hundred dollars bill? And they didn't realize that their whole, entire, the whole, the whole thing was that you got your phone for a penny,

but your monthly plan was so expensive. And by the way, you had to pay a month upfront, so you're pro rated by the time you got out of the store. I mean you were. You know this, this fifty dollars a month plan would turn into one hundred and fifty two hundred dollars and people would be like, why is my bill two hundred dollars? And then we politely explain all the details that we kind of glazed over. Now, I was never misleading, believe me, but I think some

people were. And those were the people I had to clean up after with their bills when they came in and so anyway, but I think that's what's happening here. I don't want to say that the person is being nefarious, but I think that they're leaving some things out and not explaining other things properly. But there is no such thing as just a free seven hundred dollars phone anymore.

They are getting you some way and in this case, they are making up the price of that phone over the increased charges to your monthly plan over time, and that's that's really what they're doing. I've seen people where they activate an additional line on like an iPad to get it for free, and it's never free. It is

never free. You're always paying in some way, even if you're paying more for your monthly service than you have to because for you, Michael, honestly, I would recommend switching to what's called Visible and you can get a unlimited plan for forty dollars a month, and if you have your brother and sister on it, it even drops down further because they take off five dollars a month for each additional person, so you can have you for forty and actually I think it goes down for all three of you,

so I think it would end up being like thirty dollars a month for each of you. So anyway, that's what I would look into, Michael, as as a way to really save money. You'll have to pay for your phone, but you can actually save money month in, month out and not really need to think about all this stuff. All right. I talked about Microsoft Edge and Microsoft just a little bit ago. But you know, so I ended up switching back to Chrome, which I'm kind of regretting,

even though I just love Chrome. But I should go back to Edge. But Edge they continue to do cool things. Now they're adding a password generator, and I'm getting a lot of questions in the new year about passwords and password management, and for good reason, because everyone's getting hip to the fact that we don't want to be hacked and we want our passwords to be strong. So use

a password program. You can use last pass, you can use Dashlane, you can use one password, or I recommend if you are on a platform, like if you're only using Google stuff an Android phone along with Chrome on your computer, you can use built into Chrome, they have a password function. So let's see where you find it. You go into more tools. You can go into let's see okay, sorry settings, and let's see autofill and then passwords, and you can say offer to save passwords, and boom.

You can just Chrome. When you come up against a website that needs a password, it will help you make one, it will save that for you, it will retrieve it the next time you try to log in. And you can also you know, copy and paste passwords out of Chrome into other products as well, and it all work on your Android phone. Now if you are using iOS stuff or an Apple stuff only, so I'm talking iOS Android or iOS iPhone and an Apple computer and iPad, then go ahead and use what's built into Apple, which

is their own password program. So you can go into settings and go into passwords and then it can say autofill passwords and just turn that on and make sure that iCloud keychain is turned on. And now again the same thing. When you get up against a password or a form that needs to be filled out with a password, or a new app you sign up for, it will say, hey, we'll suggest a password for you. It will save those, it will plug them back in when you need them,

and it's pretty simple. And on your desktop if using Safari or you know, Mac computer, it will do the same thing. Now, if you're using a bunch of different devices like I am, you want to use one of these third party services, So now Edge has one, so you can use that and you know, or you can use one of these other ones I mentioned, like last past, dash Lane or one Password. But anyway, in the new Microsoft Edge, they do have the new password generator and keeper,

so you can just use that as well. Yeah, there you have it. All right, let's get to another question here. So many questions. Hey rich love keeping up with you and all the updates and reviews. Question amber X, personal cloud storage. Have you had a chance to review these types of devices yet? Thank you for your time, Leo. So amber X, gotta look this one up because I was not aware of this. Your privacy first, personal cloud and the immediate thing I see on this website is indiegog.

So I'm gonna say nothing against indiegg or against kickstarters, but honestly, I don't know. I mean, I don't know if this is a thing that you want to purchase because it's is it available, is it shipping? Let's see estimated shipping April twenty twenty one, So maybe it's great, but you know, let's wait till April twenty twenty one

for our decision on this thing. It's basically, from what I can see, it looks like a file your own personal cloud storage device that you can put, you know, all your stuff in, and it's like kind of like

Google Drive, but from anywhere. Now, if you want something like this, there's a couple of things that are already available that do it already, and so I would recommend looking into something called EB which is IBI and they already have a device that will collect your photos and it's made by Western Digital, and so you know, it's a company that's reputable and it's private, nothing shared with the cloud, and that is ninety dollars for one terabyte

of storage and again no monthly fees. You can plug your stuff into the back of it, like your cards, and it will it will find all that stuff. Or you can put an app on your phone and it will find the stuff on your app as well. You know, the app will find the pictures that you take on your phone. So EB is the thing that I recommend. If you want a little bit of more of a industrial solution, there is a drive that I use called Sonology s y Nloguy and Sonology is more of a

build your own solution. It's basically a network attached storage drive that you put in your house and the magic is really their software. They do all kinds of stuff, but you put a hard drive in this or a couple and next thing you know, you can put all your stuff on there, save it, store it, and it will work. I don't use this anymore because I don't really have a reason too. But if you know, if you still want to have all your stuff private and on your own cloud, you know, those are the ways

to do it. I actually need to set this back up again because I need to sync my Google Drive to it. I used to have it synked back when Google Drive would sink your Google Photos. I would have a copy of my Google Photos sync to my Synology at all times. Ever since they made Google Photos its own thing and very locked up and you can't just synk it with anything, which is really unfortunate. I I'm kind of in a tough place right now because the only way to get your Google photos is to download

them completely. And I do think that Google needs to address this issue and make either an agreement with something like an eb or something like a Synology to let you sink your photos in your collection to a hard drive or I mean literally, they just need they just need to link up with a Wi Fi connected hard drive with software and say, you know, and just have one thing where you can just say a click and say, just please download a copy of my photos at all times,

like keep this in sync with my Google Photos, and I don't know why Google is not doing that, because it's kind of a major, a major issue for me as someone who has built up an entire collection inside Google Photos in the cloud. I need a physical copy of my photos somewhere and I need them with me at all times, and right now I don't have that, which is kind of a problem. So good question. But yet check out the alternatives that I mentioned. All right,

let's see, let's do maybe one more story. Netflix coming out with a shuffle button. And the only reason I mentioned this because I think it's cool, but I think they could go a step further so that you know, I'm sorry. But and maybe I've talked about this in the show. But if you're sitting down to Netflix with literally no clue as to what you want to watch, and you're so desperate you have to press a shuffle button to like have something start playing without you doing anything,

you've got a lot of time on your hands. So and yes, I sit down to the TV and sometimes I don't know to watch, and I do sit there in my limited time that I watch stuff, but I kind of have an idea of what I want to see, and especially with YouTube, you know, and all these things. They have personalized homepages to help you find that stuff, but like, you should be a little bit more targeted,

but you know, if you're not whatever. But what I do think would be cool is if they took this shuffle feature a little bit further and they actually shuffled movie scenes. I think that would be cool. So if I'm sitting down to watch Netflix and maybe or maybe I just want my TV on in the background, I can just hit shuffle, like shuffle sports movie scenes, shuffle notable you know, crime movie scenes, shuffle notable holiday scenes

for the holidays. I think that would be cool. And I don't think it would take much for Netflix to do that because all their stuff is probably cataloged anyway. But that's the future i'd like to see. I'm sorry to knock you if you think this. The shuffle feature

is really cool, but I don't know. I'm sorry, but I'm not gonna sit down and like discover a new movie by pressing a shuffle button and like next thing, you know, I'm like, oh wow, cool, I'll just sit here for the next two hours watching this, Like, don't don't think so. I like the idea of it more being in the background. The shuffle, the shuffle scene feature is what I want. And yeah, the stuff that they're shuffling, they say will be based on an algorithm of stuff

you've previously watched. But I can't imagine a world where I sit down on a Friday night and I just press a shuffle button on Netflix and let Netflix just play some random show for me. I just can't imagine that. So I guess it's popular enough where people want it, but for me personally, I just don't need that. All right, let's see here. Oh my gosh, so many questions, so many questions. Let's see what else. Okay, let's do this question.

That's my final question. Let's see. Patricia writes in a couple of questions regarding this year's CEO, of which I still miss attending for work. I saw the segment regarding the new Samsung Galaxy S twenty one Ultra. I am

not in need of a new phone. However, with the constant changes with the cameras, perhaps late twenty twenty one early twenty twenty two, I would consider, based on your tech experience between Apple users since two thousand and five and Samsung, which do you prefer would be used for phone camera and some store docs and minimal social network, maybe play a game once in a while. You could say I'm old school, I use the phone for basics.

So good question, Patricia. But I find that it's really tough for me to tell you whether you should go with Samsung or Apple, because I really think that it comes down to sort of your personal preference and a user's personal preference. So you know, what Apple fans like about Apple products is that it's simple, it works. All

the accessories kind of come from Apple. They all work together seamlessly, and there are also tons of third party options for accessories, things like cases and add ons and outs and lights and all kinds of stuff that works around the iPhone. I mean, it's in its entire industry. And you also have the best selection of apps on the iPhone. And I'm not just saying that to be facetious,

Like apps seem to work better on iOS. I don't know what it is if the developers take longer to code them, or if there's less devices to code for so they just work better and they seem prettier. But that's just the case now with Samsung. I think what you get there is you get sort of the anti iPhone, right. iPhone is the thing that a lot of people have. When you have a Samsung, you're kind of saying, I'm

not having an iPhone. Right when you see someone that has a Samsung, you kind of ask, oh, why, I don't know why. That's just the reason. It was kind of what we do. And so people have their reasons for, oh, I don't really care about phones, I just got this, or I like Samsung because I don't like Apple, or I like Samsung for this feature X feature, and I feel like with Samsung they are kind of known as

always pushing the envelope. So the features you see on the Samsung devices eventually come to Apple a couple years later. But Apple does put their own spin on them, and many times they perfect them, Like I wouldn't be surprised if we see a space zoom feature on the iPhone in a couple of years. But it might be perfected, you know, whereas we're seeing it right now for the past two years on Android with Samsung. But it's is it perfect?

then stick to iPhone. All your stuff's in there, You've got all the apps that you purchased. But if you want to change, you want to try something different, go with the S twenty and see how you like it. I don't think you need the Ultra because you said you're basic, and you know, if you don't need all

those extra features, why pay for them. And I do think if you were doing if you told me you're doing something like video capture or content creation or editing or social media posting, I would say iPhone is a little bit better for that. Or if you said I need a smart watch, I do think iPhone is better. But I think this Samsung is going to be perfectly

fine if you you know, if you so choose. I would also look into something like the Pixel five because or the Pixel four A five G because they have that has a slightly bigger screen, It's got great software, and it will probably do the things that you need. It really depends if you want to If you want to step away from iPhone, then I think you'll be fine.

On the Android side. At this point, they're between the Samsung Galaxy S twenty lineup or sorry, did I say S twenty this whole time S twenty one lineup and the Pixel the latest pixels. I think you're gonna find something that is gonna suit your needs. So good question. I don't get it very often anymore, but it is something that you know, people do wonder about. And for myself, I think that Samsung. You know, like I said, I love iPhone, I mean I really do. I think there's

so many amazing things you can do on it. But I also see the beauty of the operating system on Android that just kind of lets you do as you please. You know, you can really customize it to your to a great, great extent. All right, Well, that music means it is the end of the show. Thank you so much for listening. If you'd like to submit a question

for me to answer, you can do it. Two ways You can go to rich on Tech dot tv slash podcast, look for the little microphone button in the lower right hand corner of the screen and leave a voicemail for me, or you can email me just email hello at richon tech dot tv. Also, if you would rate and review this podcast, that will help other folks discover it. Just go to rate this podcast dot com slash rich on tech. You can find me on all social media platforms at

rich on Tech. That's Instagram, that Facebook, that's Twitter. I've been spending most of my time on Instagram these days, but I am popping in on all of them for sure. My name is rich Demiro. Thank you so much for listening. Have a fantastic day, Stay safe, and I will talk to you very soon.