Palm Comes Back, Adobe Premieres Rush & Your Emails

the Google Pixel three. All of the reviews are out, the embargo has been lifted, and we're getting a lot of different opinions on this phone, but they all seem to center around the same thing. The camera, of course, is amazing. There are little tweaks, little things that have been improved, and of course there are some things that people don't like, most notably the notch. Everyone's going crazy over that. Now. Personally, I've been testing the smaller of

the two, the Google Pixel three. I will say that Google has improved pretty much everything that I had a problem with personally on the last devices. So for me, it was mainly the fact that I could not use this as a content creation tool because it did not have the ability to have an external mic input on the native camera app, and I am very excited to announce that, yes, you can finally use an external mic input on the video camera. Now for most people that's

not a big deal, but for me it is. And I also think it's a bigger deal in the scheme of things because think about it. When you think about all these YouTubers, what phone are they using. They're all using the iPhone because they're plugging accessories in, they're recording themselves, they're vlogging. And if you try out a PIXEL and you realize that you can't do these things with it, well, guess what, You're not really going to use it much.

So in my day to day I will say that I found that the phone is a bit laggy, which is kind of odd, and I feel like it wasn't laggy before. So maybe in the next couple of days, when Google puts out their big software update for day one of the Pixel, some of those things will be fixed.

But I actually had to reformat my device, so I said it up when I was in New York when I got it, and then when I got home, I just could not deal with what kind of like the jumpiness that was happening on it, and so I ended up wiping it clean, and instead of doing a restore for my old device, my old Android, I just ended up installing everything again, which is kind of a pain because you have to log into every app and download every app, and set up your home screens and go

through every single alarm and every single setting and redo it all. And I don't particularly like doing that every single time. But I felt like I wanted to give this thing the full benefit of the doubt and see if it was something that got transferred over that was kind of weird, or if it was the actual device. I would say I'm getting less of the problem now, but it's still a little bit jumpy compared to the way I think it should be, and I think that

hopefully that will be improved. But otherwise, so what can I say about the Pixel? I mean, personally, I think I'm gonna start recommending this device more so than ever because I find that it really does everything you need, and I think the camera is really amazing. Software is nice and polished, the apps they leave a little bit to be desired. I know that's not Google's fault, but when you look at what you can accomplish on the

apps on the iPhone, they're just better. I mean almost every single app that is made by a big company outside of Google. So when you look at Google apps, those are all better on Android. When it comes to Gmail, when it comes to things like Google Voice, when it comes to Google Photos, Calendar maps, all of those things are better on the Android. But when it comes to these other apps like Instagram and Twitter, even something like Audible which I use for my audiobooks, Spotify kind of

on the fence. I think that works very similar on both of them. Yelp pretty similar, Netflix, pretty similar. YouTube. Obviously Google apps, so that's going to work better. The one app that I have a major problem with is Facebook. I use Creator on the iPhone and it's just amazing.

If you want to keep in touch with people, keep in touch with your fans, Facebook Pages is terrible on the Android, and so is the Creator port so to me, and again, I'm coming from sort of the content creator journalism kind of world where I am looking to do content creation on my devices. So for the average person, probably the camera is going to be the most important aspect in some of these other apps. But I understand when it comes from switching to the Android platform from

the iOS platform. It's tough, and especially giving up things like FaceTime and I Message. I Message. You can basically I message almost anyone in the world, right because they seem to be on there. And when it comes to Android, it's like, you know, when I go to text someone, I'm not really sure which number is the right one. On iOS, it just sort of highlights in blue the number that's the right one for them get to get

to their I message, and that's really helpful. I just find that I kind of missed that when I'm using my Android device. So not a deal breaker, but it's definitely one of those things that does make life a little more complicated. And then FaceTime. Of course, you know, my entire f family is on iPhone back in New Jersey, and you know, I'm not gonna it's really tough to

get them to download Duo. I was talking to someone at work today and he was joking that, you know who's on duo, you know, like, who says duo me? No one that never comes up. Taking a look at some of the headlines on tech meme, so, I mean the Verge saying the best camera gets a better phone with a far better screen, loud speakers, but the notch is doofy. I don't know. I don't have the one with the notch, so I really can't talk much about that.

I don't find the notches on any other device has ever bothered me, so it's really not that big of a deal. The screen is definitely better the phone. You know. Here's the thing. I call this a sort of boring device, and it kind of is. It's not the most exciting device out there, but it's it's like a quiet confidence. Like I've said before in my previous podcast, it's just

one of these things that it works. The pictures are pretty amazing, the software works overall, and it's just one of these devices that just kind of you don't have to think much about it. Can you do as many of the crazy cool things you can do on the iPhone? Probably not, but in other aspects it does really cool

things like the call screening feature. So generally I'm always kind of avoiding those calls, which I kind of still believe you should because if you think about it, when you get scam calls and spam calls and robo calls, I've always recommended to people to never pick them up, because if you pick them up, it signifies to them

that your phone number is live, right. And I'm sure if these people have these computer systems, maybe they're not that sophisticated to know that, okay, this number picked up, let's hammer them now with a lot more calls. Maybe they're not that smart, but to me, it seems like

they probably are. And I've noticed, you know, I get a couple of these robo calls, you know, every couple of days, and I've been using the screen, the call screen feature on the PIXEL, and it's actually kind of fun, and I don't mind having the computer pick it up because at least I know if the call is is a robo call or not, and I can kind of

decide whether to answer it. So today I had a call that I was unsure of came from a number that was near mind, and I was like, I don't know, it could be someone that I called, could be a person called me back. But the other thing on the PIXEL is that if you have you know, basically Pixel has like free caller ID, and if a phone number comes in without any call or ID on it, it's kind of a giveaway that that's going to be a problem.

Let's see what else c neet Pixel three XL big phone with a fantastic camera and a big notch Gizmoto the other way to make a killer phone. And by that they're probably alluding to the software versus the hardware, because the hardware on the Pixel is not anything special. I mean, I'm happy that they upgraded the processor, but it's not like it's not like where the iPhone kind of evolves and just gets better and better with all these cool new features. No, it looks almost identical to

last year's model. And Gadget says Google's hardware takes a backseat to software. Android Police says, come for the camera, stay for everything else. Ours Technica says Google software deserves better than this hardware. I agree. If it was up to me, I would go with the Samsung hardware and the Google software. That to me is kind of the killer Android combination. And I remember back in the day, I had one of those I bought back when Samsung was doing this. They would do a gosh I forget

what it was called. It was like a not pure Android. It was vanilla Android. It maybe it was pure. Basically, they were installing Stock Android on a Galaxy device and I can't remember which one I bought. That was it. It was like, you know, eight hundred bucks or something like that, and I scratched the screen and I was so mad because I really that was like one of my favorite devices because I had the Google Stock software, but I had the beauty of being the Samsung hardware.

And I think that Google and and Samsung should really think about this a little bit harder because Samsung is just killing it with the hardware and Google is just killing it with the software. So why don't we bring something back like this? I mean, we're trying to compete against iOS and iPhone dominance, and I get it dominance, I mean here in the US. But the reality is why not put everything you got towards that and do something like a stock Android version of a Samsung device?

And the other thing. The other idea is why not make the pixel camera you know, ported officially to these other devices and make it an option, because it seems like a lot of this stuff is software oriented. People are already porting the camera app to other devices like the Essential and the one plus phone, So why not just give these phonemakers access to this camera and kind of I think it would just expand the Android kind

of ecosystem in a much better way. And I think more people would would kind of take it more seriously if they knew they were getting an amazing device that has the hardware, amazing software that has the hardware that they want. One thing that's been kind of hit or missed for me personally on the Pixel three is the charging stand. So I actually had to move it away from my bed and into my office because it was

just unreliable. So the Pixel charging stand is basically a new wireless charging stand for the Pixel that kind of reacts specifically to it. So when you place your phone on there, up pops a special screen that you can kind of set up so you can have it become a photo frame while you're not using it. You can have it basically it displays a couple of little assistant one touch features down below, so you can, you know, play your favorite playlist, whatever it predicts or thinks that

you want to do. Those buttons will be right on screen. And I love this, and I love the fact that they added wireless charging to the Pixel three, but I still think in general wireless charging is very unreliable because if your phone is off the charger, even by a mirror like a millimeter, it's like your phone may not charge. And to me, I thought my phone was charging. There was two nights out of like maybe five nights where

it just didn't charge, and that's very unacceptable. I woke up with a sixty percent battery, which was basically where I went to sleep on the thing, and that's a surprise, and I found that I was like trying to recover the whole day. When you don't start with a full battery, you're trying to recover the whole day basically from that

battery situation. So I moved the pixel the charging stand to my office, so I like my phone on there as kind of a place to see it and just kind of have it charging and I can monitor it more like I just popped it on there and it's it says charging rapidly. And the thing that popped up with the assistant is tell me a joke, So I guess it thinks that in the afternoon on a Monday, I want to hear a joke from my phone. So

that's eighty dollars. I definitely recommend it. I mean, if you don't care about the stuff on screen, the special kind of assistant mode that it pops into, you can use any wireless charger with the PIXEL you'll be just fine. But again, personally, I think at night bedside, I'm just going with the regular plug in charge because that, to me, is more reliable. I know my phone is plugged in, I know it's going to work, and I don't really have to think about it. But bottom line, and I can't,

you know, say one hundred percent. I've only been using the phone for a couple of days, but I will say that for me personally, the Pixel, other than all little issues that I mentioned when it comes to software and some of the bigger features on it, for me, they have fixed a lot of the stuff that would keep me on the iPhone side. So personally, I like the way that the Android operating system is more cohesive

than iOS iOS. I always feel like apps are trying to fit into that whole sandbox that Apple puts them in, which is great for security, but not so good for things like, you know, just various little tasks that you're trying to do on the iPhone sometimes can be more complicated. I think on the flip side, a lot of things are simpler because of the way they set things up, where you know that everything is just kind of sandboxed, and that's the way it is, right. So but personally

I will be recommending the Pixel for sure. I think that a lot of people will be happy with it. I'm glad they added headphones. That was an another big thing, because what a pain just to get a pair of headphones for this thing, right, I mean, USBC, I get it. Not everyone's plugging in headphones anymore, but the reality is it's nice to have a pair of headphones in the

box when you purchase a smartphone. I've been wearing the headphones a lot, even though I have a pair of AirPods that I can pair with my androids, But I really like the idea of just plugging in the headphones and they work and you go right, and plus they have assistant built in, which is really nice. So I think that overall, for the price and the features and what you're getting, especially when it comes to the camera,

the Pixel is really nice. I think that the iPhone is still the gold standard when it comes to mobile devices, but I think like the Pixel is definitely is definitely giving people a second option, you know, especially with Samsung out there. Samsung is great, but there's some little things I don't like about Samsung, and I think that the Pixel kind of addresses those. And again, like I said, for all the little things they corrected for me personally,

I think that they did a really nice job. And if you can live without the I Message of the World and the FaceTime of the world, and all the amazing app features that come with iOS and all of the slick integration with things like the Apple Watch and you know, your computer and your messages I Message on computer, all those little things, if you can live without those, the Pixel is kind of a nice alter. Now let's move on to a phone that's making a comeback. The Palm.

They are returning as a sort of a small what they're calling ultramobile smartphone. So this is a tiny, little palm sized device literally fits in the palm of your hand. It has just a tiny display three point three inches and this is being now produced by TCL. So that's the big Chinese conglomerate. They have some really popular TVs. They're a big electronics maker. They also own BlackBerry. They also own Alcatel, so all these brands in the mobile space,

that's the company behind them. But this new little phone is three hundred and fifty dollars and it's being seen as an accessory. So the common complaint nowadays is that we're all on our phones way too much, and on the weekends. And I've had this kind of this little theory too, is that you know, maybe on the weekends, i'd have a secondary phone. You know, have you have

you heard of that light phone. It's kind of like that phone that just has a dial tone, you know, or so to say, it's just a phone that can dial numbers. Right, So no camera, no no MP three player, no nothing. Now, the Palm does have a camera, it does have Android on it, so it is a real phone,

but it's not meant to be your primary phone. So you actually it's exclusive to Verizon and you link it up using I don't know what Verizon calls it, the number share kind of thing, where it's basically you're activating a second line, but it's the same phone number as your primary line. So that's an additional ten dollars a month.

It's kind of like what the Apple Watch does with the iPhone and the Apple Watch cellular is kind of the closest thing I can think of to this scenario where we're so addicted to our devices we actually have to rescue ourselves from ourselves, right, So if we're out of sight, out of mind, you don't really think about

it as much. So if you're wearing the Apple Watch with the cellular, you can still go out, enjoy your day, enjoy your life with your kids, but also be connected in case of an emergency or if you need a cell phone for anything. The downside to that is that there's no camera on the Apple Watch, and that's one of the main reasons people have a cell phone now on them is we want to be able to take pictures wherever we go. So this palm kind of addresses that. But the reality is I find this to be way

too complicated. I mean, two different cell phone devices are kind of crazy to have. You're gonna keep swapping them out, You're gonna keep what Okay, oh wait, I'm going hold on, let me think where I'm going tonight. Okay, do I want to take good pictures? Because you know, the camera on this thing is not going to be very good, right, So it doesn't even matter what the megapixels are, But the reality is it's a small device. It's not meant as your primary device. It's just not going to be

as capable as your normal phone. But it's one of those ideas that I can understand why people like the idea of it, right, they like the fantasy of having less distractions in their life. But the reality is we can't go without our phones. You know, it's kind of tough, especially your primary device. And then all of a sudden, now you're setting up two different devices. So every time

you switch between them, you're thinking. You know, your muscle memory is changing, the way you're using it is changing. You have to think about, oh, do I need Uber on this device? Yes, okay, it's it linked to my Uber account. It's just too much to think about. So I don't think this thing is going to do very well. I think it might have a lot of interest in circles where people talk about it, talk about wanting something like this, but no one's going to actually get this thing.

And three hundred and fifty dollars is a lot of money for a secondary device, and it's got a very underpowered processor. It's got a a last year's processor, so it just doesn't seem like something that a lot of people would get, but it seems like something that is solving a problem that we have, but the solution is not very good. So I think the solution in the future will probably probably be more kind of connected smart watches and not something like this. Now, an app that

was launched today was really interesting. This is from Adobe, and this is really cool for the content creators out there, including myself. And this is another problem that we have is you want to be able to create content on the go. And for me, I always talk about how I'm kind of locked into using a MacBook Pro right because a MacBook Pro gives me Final Cut, and that's

the program that I use to edit my videos. Right now, I'm not sitting there editing crazy amounts of videos, but I do want to make some things for social media, do a quick quick cut here and there, maybe add some graphics. Recently, I did a story on going to the the Amazon four Star store in New York City. If you haven't watched that, you can find it in the show notes. But that did take a lot of horsepower because I edited a whole bunch of stuff on Final Cut, but most of the time. I don't need

all that horsepower. And so this Adobe premiere rush CC is basically a little tiny app that works across all your platforms. So right now they're launching it on sort of the iPhone and the iPad, and it's going to be a desktop app and also on Android. And in the video they show, they show the social influencer that's using this kind of starting a video on her iPhone and then finishing it on her computer. And I find that really fascinating because that's not a bad idea at all,

something that I've never done. And the idea is that this takes advantage of the cloud. So all of your video, I guess, must go up to the cloud, which takes a while. Because that video that I did when I was in New York, I shot all my own stuff for the Pixel three and I overnighted it in dropbox to my photographer slash editor in Los Angeles at KTLA and it was like thirty five gigs and Mann did that take a long time. So I don't really know how this is gonna work. Maybe if you have short clips,

it's not that big of a deal. But I love this idea. I can't wait to try out this program Right now, it's only available for iOS, so I have to download it to my iPad, but I'm looking forward to this being across all platforms. It sounds really cool and a couple of things on the website when it comes to this program, it looked like there is a free version of it, but then there's also a paid version. So let's see share right from the app to your

favorite social media platforms. It looks like they have a whole bunch of cool graphics and easy kind of formatting built in for Instagram, so if you want to do something that's square, you can do that. I've got a bunch of styles which is really cool. Let's see everything is synced to the clouds. Your latest edit is always at your fingertips. Available on iOS, Mac, and DOS, so it looks like it's available now on those. Sign up to be notified when it's available on Android and Premiere.

Rush is included with Premiere Pro and as part of the Creative Cloud All Apps plan, So if you want to start for free, you can get three exports, two gigs of cloud storage, and Adobe fonts. If you get the Let's See Rush single app, I guess you can buy it all by itself with unlimited exports. See how much that is? I wonder if he even tells me, Oh, ten dollars a month, Okay, so you just have to go monthly plan is ten? Oh? I see, so the monthly plan is ten dollars for that if you want

the all access. I think the Creative Cloud is like twenty dollars. So I don't know. If you're an influencer and you're doing this kind of stuff, ten bucks a month is easily worth it if it makes your life just a little simpler. Moving on now to Microsoft. So this is the thing. I get these these tech support scam kind of emails all the time from people saying that they fell for it, And you think that nobody falls for this stuff, but you do. And I thought

this was just crazy. Microsoft came out with this little article about how they're going to partner with AARP to kind of stop these scams, but I thought this number was crazy. Each month, Microsoft receives about eleven thousand complaints from people across the globe who have been the victim of a tech support scam, with fraudsters pretending to be from reputable tech companies, including Microsoft, Dell and Apple eleven thousand complaints. That's from people who say they've been victims.

So how many people are actually getting these things? And I'm not really sure what the point of this whole article is. I guess they're just talking about how they're fighting back with AARP. But they did release a new survey focused on these tech support scams, and okay, October's National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, so I guess that's why they're

talking about it. But let's see. So, if faced with unsolicited contacts from a reputable tech company, thirty eight percent of consumers would try to block that company from making contact in the future. I don't know that that means. I mean, what are you going to do? Block the phone number? They're just going to call back from a different one. Thirty three percent would look up the issue online. Forty six percent rely on search engines to research tech

support scams. None of that means anything to me, but it says that three out of five consumers has been exposed to a tech support scam of the previous twelve months. And what I've noticed is that I actually followed one of these things, like that got the phone call at work, and I wanted to see what they tried to do, and it was pretty wild. The lady had me immediately go to a website that I downloaded some software that

would like take over my computer. I didn't get to do all this stuff because obviously I don't want to take over my computer, but I was just kind of listening to what she said, and it was very convincing and just kind of crazy that I see how people can fall for this stuff, especially if you're of a certain generation or of a certain age, let's say. I mean, I think the younger kids probably wouldn't fall for it as much as the older people, which is why they're

teaming up with AARP to do this. But scammers, according to this Microsoft article, use changing technology and more sophisticated tactics with phishing emails. That's probably the main way phony websites and pop up windows to gain access. And that's the thing. So when you get one of these pop up windows, it kind of takes over your computer screen. Now, people like you know, my mom and dad wouldn't really understand how to do like a control alt delete or you know, just a way to figure out how to

get around that menu or that window. That's taking up their whole screen, right, so they think there's something wrong and they have to call that number, whereas you know, someone that's a little bit more tech savvy would just kind of get rid of that screen and move on with life. So anyway, I just thought that number was

really crazy, eleven thousand people every single month. But hopefully they'll figure out something with this, because it just feels like this is a major problem, and they give some tips on how to do this. You know, don't if you get an unsolicited pop up message on your device,

don't click it, don't call the number. But the reality is, you know, the tough part is that come companies are always using new technology to sort of help you get in touch with them, like, you know, like let's say you're out and about and now the new thing is that banks are texting you when you use your credit card somewhere. Right, Let's say you're using your credit card overseas and the first time you use it at a terminal, it like texts you and it says, hey, did you

just authorize that charge? And you text back it says text back yes or no. This happened with me with American Express the other day, and I said, yes, I just used my card there. And you know you might think, like, okay, well, that's interesting that they're doing that. I never really asked to have that happen. I guess I gave them my phone number at some point. Well, now you think about these scam artists. They take whatever is happening legitimately and

they spin it to their benefit. Right, so they know that pop up ads and all these pop up windows in your computer tell you when something's going wrong. They make theirs look just like it, and that's how they get past people because they're kind of doing stuff that looks similar to what's already happening, and that's how they hook people. Kodak, I think, okay, speaking, I guess we're on the older generation here, but this is really cool Kodak.

And I'm not sure if this is the way to go about it, but I just love the idea that people are getting hip to digitizing their old stuff. If you watch me on KTLA, you know that I was doing my own digitizing of some of my old videos and I used my own system I just bought in Elgado. It was a digital converter kind of thing that you hook up to your computer to the USB drive. Then you have to hook up like a a VCR or

a camcorder, pop in your tape. It records it to your computer and then you can go on with your Mary life and throw out the tape and you've got a digitized version of this thing that you can upload somewhere. Well. Now, Kodak has introduced the Kodak Digitizing Box, and this is a service where you just dump a whole bunch of media in this box, ship it to them, and they will send it back to you digitally convert it so you can get it on DVDs, you can get it as a digital download, you can get it on a

flash drive, and you also at all that stuff. Let's see, do they send back the tapes. I'm guessing they send back the tape. But this is neat because they have four options of service with nineteen different types of media that they can convert, including VHS tapes, real to real audio tape, super eight thirty five millimeters, slides, and picture negatives. So, if you think about it, this is a trusted company,

which you know obviously is Kodak. But Kodak is doing this weird thing nowadays where they just basically use their branding, so they're actually using a Oh interesting, Okay, that's interesting. So I'm looking at this. I just googled the amb media, right, which is what they're using to Okay, hold on, this is kind of interesting. So amb Media is what they're using to actually do the digitization. But when I google that, it comes up as Legacy Box, so, which is Legacy

Boxes pretty much the company that does all of this stuff. Yeah, and interesting. Okay, so this is basically just a Kodak branded version of Legacy Box. So that's interesting. So I wonder if the I wonder if the pricing is different. So Legacy Box, let's see the pricing there versus the Kodak. So Legacy Box, let's see pricing. Let's see so three piece starter is eighty seven dollars to convert up to three tapes. And if you look at the Kodak digitizing box,

let's see how much that one is get started. Let's see how much it is. So there's see pricing. So their pricing is three tapes is sixty nine ninety nine. Interesting, So maybe you go with the Kodak one. It's the same thing and you're gonna get it for cheaper. Now, I know Legacy Box has a lot of codes out there for discounts, so maybe theodac one does not. But anyway, that's it. So my only concern with all these things I love, and I recommend one hundred percent, by the way,

that you get your stuff digitized. Very very important to do that because these tapes are turning into mush not so much to film. Maybe I don't know. I don't have film, but I do have tapes, and I can tell you the VHS tapes are just about gone, So get those things digitized. Some of the other newer ones from the nineties, like the High eight and all those kind of tapes, those are still doing pretty well. But

just get this stuff digitized. It's so much easier, by the way, to not have a box of this stuff laying around your house. Right. That's getting hot, it's getting cold in the different seasons you probably have in your garage. It's not being kept at the proper temperatures and storage conditions it should be, so it's basically being abused. And these are your memories. So get this stuff done. You can do it yourself if you want to put the time into it. But again, that's the best way to

do it. I feel like because you can monitor the process. You can watch the process, you can see what happens. But you can also you don't have to let your tapes leave your your house, right, so you control them at all times. The problem with sending in the legacy box and the Kodak stuff is that, yes, I'm sure nine thousand times out of ten thousand times it's fine, or nine hundred ninety nine times out of ten thousand times it's fine. But the one time that it gets

lost in the mail, that's the problem. And if it's your problem, that's a big problem. So if you can find a place locally now in Los Angeles where I am, there's a ton of places that will do this. In smaller cities, it's going to be really tough. It's just not one of those things that's a huge business. So I don't know, I feel like just you got to maybe just send them out a couple at a time, and you know, obviously it's cheaper to do more because you know, you just they just send you a big box.

So if you do forty tapes is eleven hundred dollars, which is, by the way, a ton of money, so you can do it yourself for basically unlimited, for a lot cheaper. The problem is, and I've talked about this in a previous podcast, is you have to have the device to actually play the tape or the media, and especially with some of these old things, you just don't have that around your house. So it may be worth one thousand dollars, because when I was looking online for

a replacement camquarter, they were expensive. People know that that people want to buy these things to do this. So it's not necessarily cheap to digitize this stuff if you're doing it yourself, if you don't have the right equipment. So something to keep in mind. All right, moving on now, Ronald Reagan is back to life as a hologram at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Siami Valley, California. This is a library, his presidential Library, which I've been to.

It's just north of LA it's kind of out in the valley and it's kind of a hike, but it's you know, it's in the LA area, and now they have a hologram of Ronald Reagan. This costs one point five million dollars and basically you're put in this room, where a three D version of Reagan appears on the stage in one of three scenes. According to USA Today, he's either riding speaking from the back of a train during a nineteen eighty four tour, or he's in his

horse riding attire at his California ranch. Or he's at the Oval office after stepping off Marine one, which is the presidential helicopter. So I love this idea. I think that these holograms are becoming more and more realistic looking. And I just did a story for KTLA on Roy Orbison, who was transformed into a hologram for a new tour that they're doing. So this company that did this one was called Base Hologram. The one that's doing this Ronald

Reagan one is called Hologram USA. So there's a lot of these competing hologram companies out there because they see this as big business in the future because they can basically bring anyone back. Now, it's not easy. In the case of Reagan. You know, they did a body double that kind of moves and that's you know, and then they put a fake head that they had to make a model out of. But then they have to get

you know, the original audio. So basically they have to use they have to match up original audio with new kind of three D video because just because you have a video of someone that's passed away doesn't mean that it clearly one hundred percent matches up to what you need to do to make this thing look realistic. So with the case of Roy Orbison, same thing. It basically used an original recording that he had made, but then they had to recreate kind of everything else his likeness

around that. So anyway, but this is this is really interesting. And the other thing I noticed is that these companies are doing I did a story with another company that

was kind of beaming people in. Like Tony Robbins is a big believer in this apparently, where he can do a seminar or I guess a conference whatever he calls him, that he does where he is in you know, let's say he can be in his house in Beverly Hills and he can be doing a live interactive concert or a conference with people in Tokyo, right, so you don't have to travel as much, but to the people in that room in Tokyo, it feels like he's with them

for all intense purposes because he can interact with them. He can look at that, he could talk back and forth with them. That's you know, obviously, with a living person, it makes things a little bit more flexible. But the neat thing about this hologram stuff is that it just keeps getting better and better. And when I saw it in real life, it was pretty amazing. I saw myself up on a screen and I was beamed there live,

and that looked really cool. And then I saw the other people and it's quite convincing because it does look like they're there, and you know it's fake, but you know it's a hologram, but it's still is pretty cool to see in person. So I'll probably have to check this out at the Reagan Library just to see how it looks. But I'm sure the visitors there love it. They get four hundred thousand a year. According to this article I read Amazon, Alexa is going to tell you

when you're sick. So there's a new patent filing. And I don't really cover patent filings most of the time. I know there's always patent stuff for Apple and what all these companies are working on, so this one makes a lot of sense. Alexa can notice a user's illness by detecting a change in their voice. So apparently if it does, it can suggest medicine or a recipe for

chicken noodle soup. This is all according to the next Web who looked at the patent, and they can also detect or the patent wants to be able to detect things like emotional states, sub spotting things like happiness, joy sadness, anger, boredom, and fear, the user's voice, what it sounds like if they're sleepy or crying, and what the user is doing

by analyzing background noise. So this makes a lot of sense because these personal assistants are The goal of them is to make them more personal, and the more that they can do that, the better it is for the end user. Now, some of this stuff may sound creepy, like, oh my gosh, alex is going to know that I'm sick. Well, I mean, it just makes sense for what Amazon wants to do, which is either sell you stuff or suggest stuff,

or react in a certain way. I mean, if you're crying and you ask alexis something, you don't want her to have a joyful voice in telling you a joke. You want her to have some empathy, and it's just like a real person, would you want them to react to the way that you're sort of feeling. And so

that's why they're doing this. And I think that of course Google and Siri will do just about the same in the future, but it's just neat to kind of keep track of what they're looking at doing with these systems, because I love these systems. I don't think they're perfect just yet, but I do think that they are getting to a place where they're getting pretty useful to me.

And when they can, you know, make them kind of basically feel like a person that knows you really well, I think that that's going to be really cool when it comes to the all right email came in through my website, Rich on tech dot TV. This is from Mark. He says, Hey, Rich, I'm traveling to Italy on October twenty seventh. Verizon wants me to wants to charge me

seventy dollars to receive calls and data usage. With the time difference, I don't really know if I'll be receiving the calls unless I keep my phone on all night, which I don't want to do. Any recommendations, Mark, most of the wireless companies nowadays do something called the passport or international passport, and I know Verizon and AT and T do this, but it's basically ten dollars a day.

So if you're going to Italy on October twenty seventh, you said seventy dollars, I'm guessing you're going for seven days, and that's where they got that number from. But the reality the way this works is you just tell Verizon that you're traveling and make sure that international passport feature is activated on your account, and any of the days that you use your phone when you're overseas, that's when

you get charged at ten dollars. So they don't care if you use one megabyte of data or a bunch of megabytes or a bunch of phone calls, as long as you do something on that day, you're going to trigger that ten dollars charge. So personally, as someone who's done things both ways, where I've had the hot spot that I've rented, which is cool because you get unlimited data, but I rarely find I find that those aren't really in use much anymore because so many people are using

their regular carrier from home. This is something that's pretty relatively new. It used to be have these crazy roaming charges. Now the companies are just basically saying, hey, for ten dollars a day, you can use your phone pretty much the way you use it in the US. Now there are some limits on there. You're not gonna get a ton of you know, they will slow down your data if you use over a certain amount each day. I didn't run into any problems, though I did use my phone.

I think it was in Mexico. Well, in Mexico was included though, so I think it was in Where Do I Go? Last year Portugal where I use my phone, and it was just ten bucks a day. It was great. Everything worked just fine, and I was very impressed and I loved it because it was so convenient. Nobody had to text me to a different number. I didn't have to worry about finding Wi Fi hotspots. And I just say go for it. Just do the ten dollars a

day and be done with it. And again, if you don't use it one day, if you go a whole twenty four hours without using it, then you're fine. And so if you can, if you want to save the money, just make sure your phone is connected to Wi Fi when possible, and you don't really have to think about this too much. And if you do go into data, or you do get a couple of calls, you'll get charged at ten dollars. So I say go for it, and I think you'll be fine with that. So good question.

Let's see, Joanne emails in on richontech dot TV. Let's see, I have a home bound sister seventy five that lives out of state. Is the grand Pad by Consumer Cellular something that is a reasonably priced item. She is unable to use the computer because of back issues and shaking hands. So the grand Pad by Consumer Cellular, right, is kind of a tablet for seniors, So it's you know, grant uh.

Consumer Cellular is one of those companies that kind of they do all that stuff for like the you know, the cell phones that have the big keys and all that good stuff. So if we look at this grand Pad, I guess this started out interesting. This looks like they're just in a partnership with Consumer Cellular. So it's it's an it's a device that was actually created for grandparents, so it's a it's a tablet and they kind of

built like special things into it. So it's got, like, you know, a big kind of it looks like an Android tablet that has a custom skin on it. So it has simple video chatting. Let's see what else. Say, You can share photos, send send emails, popular games, customized music. Now, I don't know. I think that this is gonna be too much, you know, like it's and how much is it? Let's see how much it is? So the device is two hundred dollars plus forty dollars a month, so I

guess it has LTE built in. So I'm gonna say no, I'm sure this is great, but the reality is if they're sending photos, if they're making calls, if they're doing you know, video calls, I feel like you're gonna have to have the Companion app. On the other end, I would recommend maybe just getting a fire tablet from Amazon. And I think that if you said your sister is at home, she's home bound, so she's not using this

out of the house. And so I think that if she has Wi Fi in her house, she can save forty dollars a month minimum by going with a fire HD ten tablet, which is just one hundred and fifty bucks. You can get all the apps on there, and they're all universal apps, which means you know, it's Skype, it's Netflix, like all these apps that are actually like kind of the main apps. And maybe with the Grandpad you can install some of those, but I'm not sure if you can.

I don't see. Let's see, I don't know. The only thing is that the phone number, the dialing, and then the wireless, so I don't know. I still think it's a better deal just to go with a regular tablet. I think that's going to be a lot easier, and it's cheaper upfront, and it's cheaper over the monthly time. So hope that answers your question again, Joanne, thanks for

writing in. If you have a question for me, you can email me it's hello at richon tech dot tv, or just go to my website rich on tech dot tv and you can submit your question there. I get a lot of these things every day, so I'm not just I'm just picking out a couple that I got recently. But believe me, I do try to answer all my emails, but it sometimes takes me a couple days to get to them. I'll tell you that because it's a lot of stuff and you guys are always emailing me about

every decision you make. You're you're asking me before you make it, so I'm happy to help. Just know that sometimes it does take me a bit to get to those, but not always. Sometimes I write back like within a minute, and people are like, wha what was that. I just happened to be looking at my phone and you emailed me. And it's a simple question. I can just you know, pop off an answer really quick. So all right, finally today Android police out with the Google Assistant Easter eggs

when it comes to Halloween. So last year I was doing this and I tested these things out, and my house is filled with all the the Google stuff and the Google Assistant, and last year I thought one of the commands was pretty cool. It was like I feel I think it was like can we get spooky or something like that. And next thing you know, my entire house all the lights changed, the chrome casts fired up on the TVs, it started playing spooky music on the

Google homes. So my wife went crazy because I didn't realize this was happening across all my smart devices in every room of the house. So she comes running into my office, She's like, what are you doing, so maybe that one still works and I'll try it. But here are some of the commands that you can use for twenty eighteen which are new. So you can ask are you celebrating Halloween? You can just say boo, let's try

that one. Oh wait, I can't. I don't want to say the word on here because it'll activate all yours. Do you know any scary stories? Happy Halloween? It's almost Halloween? Scare me, trick or treat? What are you going to be for Halloween? What should I wear for Halloween? Do you have any monster fighting tips? I want to hear something spooky. Give me a Halloween sound, tell me a Halloween joke, tell me a Halloween fact. So all those

are fantastic. If you have kids like me that are obsessed with the Google assistant and get answers from her, then these will be great. And I always find this stuff kind of fun. This is kind of like the fun side of the assistance. But again it also shows the problem with these assistants is that you have to know all these specific things to ask to make these little easter eggs work. And I get it. Someone might, in passing say to their Google assistant, you know, hey,

do you know any scary stories? And they might get one of these responses. In the future, we won't necessarily have to think about commands and responses that are pre programmed. It'll just be like, you know, the point of the assistant is just to be there as an assistant and do stuff. No matter how you phrase the question or no matter what you're kind of looking for, you will get it. So again, this is from Android Police, Spooky Google Assistant East Eggs just in time. Oh what happened?

My phone did activate? I didn't think I said it, but there you have it. So all right, thanks so much for listening to this version of the podcast. Tell me what you think about it. I know it's a lot longer than the typical version, but maybe that's a better thing. I probably won't do something like this every day because it's kind of a deeper dive. But what happens is I check a lot of blogs every single day for stories that I like to talk about. I

don't always get to talk about them. Sometimes they talk about them on the radio on KFI. Sometimes I talk

about them on KTLA. Other times the talk about them just on my Facebook page, or I'll post them but this is kind of like a longer deep dive into those stories, the stuff that I find interesting, the stuff that I think you should know about, and whether it's a link to a new app or a website, or you know, some kind of news that's happening or a review, it's just kind of a bigger mix of stories and I can take a little bit more time to dive into them and explain stuff a little bit more. So,

if you like it, let me know. If not, I don't know. We'll see. We'll see how I feel the reaction is to this. So thanks so much for listening, and hopefully if you're not already doing so, follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Facebook is at rich on Tech, Twitter is at rich Demiro, and Instagram is at rich on Tech. Thanks so much for listening. I mrich Demiro, rich on Tech dot TV. I'll talk to you real soon. M