"Pandemic pricing" on the Samsung Galaxy S21 lineup

and CS twenty twenty one all digital this year. If you follow me on social media, yeah, you're kind of up to speed on everything that was going on there. We did the show from up at the Microsoft studios just outside Seattle in Redmond. Beautiful, beautiful area. I really fell in love with the area up there.

Like I said, a little bit different this year. I was a host of the Digital I guess you call it the what was it the live anchor desk, So we kind of like intro the different you know, keynotes and you know, not like well, I don't know. It's just like basically like a newscast but for CS. So we were talking, you know, just kind of keeping everything moving, and I thought it was really cool. It was very different.

I think that the all digital CS format worked. But I think that people, you know, they enjoyed the break this year, but I think that people will be ready for going back to Vegas next year, and it will be in Vegas next year. I believe the dates are January fifth through eighth, but don't quote me on that. And if you're a journalist, you have to go for like three days before and three days after anyway, That's what happens to me. But it was it was really fun.

My co host was I Justine. She is awesome. I literally no joke, just tried to pick her brain all week long, so i'd ask her. You know, what's your favorite app for the iPhone? What's your How do you do this on social media? How do you do that? What do you how do you deal with this when it comes to your followers? Like I just wanted to know, Like this is a person that she I didn't even

realize how many followers she has, but let's see. So on Twitter, Let's see on Twitter, she's got one point seven million followers, on YouTube six point eight three million. Let's see on Instagram, and on Instagram one point seven million,

so across all those social media platforms. I mean, it's pretty amazing to have that any followers across all three platforms because a lot of if you look at a lot of like the YouTubers specifically, they'll amass this large following on YouTube, but they might not be as good at getting folks to follow them on like Twitter or Facebook or Instagram, I should say, so for her to get the trifecta there of millions across all three is

pretty pretty amazing. And when she tweets stuff for Instagram stuff, it just goes everywhere. I mean, it's pretty wild to watch, and she is always working. She's very smart, and it was interesting when she said to me that she sees herself as a mini startup, and I thought that was so interesting because I always wondered how, you know, these entrepreneurs think of themselves, and she is right on the money.

So Justine, thank you. She probably doesn't listen to this podcast, but anyway, it was really fun to work with her. And we also had Brian Tong, who obviously is a good friend of mine, and Naomi Kyle, who I did not know, but I got to know a little bit, not much because we you know, with COVID, they tried to keep us as separate as possible, so they had to follow all these precautions and it was very very buttoned up production. I was I was super duper impressed.

I wasn't really sure what to expect, but I have to say everyone from the Consumer Technology Association that puts on CES, you know, they had a bunch of people up there, to the actual folks that produced the show, to the Microsoft Studios folks. I mean, it was really, really an amazing experience. I am so glad that I was a part of it. And we're going to talk about some of the things in CES. I'm gonna start with the Samsung Galaxy S twenty one. Then I'll go

back to CES. But real quick, I just, you know, want to talk about because it was my first time flying and traveling in nine months since last March. I mean that was the last basically, February was the end of February. It was the last time I traveled last year. So was it weird? Yes? Did it feel really cool? Yes? Was I very excited? Yes? Everything felt great. I did not feel I was at risk for COVID at any

point in the trip. The airport, not not on the La end, but on the Seattle end, was quite busy, but again I was not close to people, and on my flights I was not really close to people. I did have to sit next to someone on the way out there. On the way back, the plane was totally empty. And overall, I mean, you know, I wore my N ninety five mask on the plane, and you know, you

it was great. I mean it really It's sad that the state of the you know what state of the world we're in right now when it comes to that, but I think that it made me realize that, no, I don't want to do this a lot, but of course I will do it for work, and you know, you just have to remain you know, vigilant about protecting yourself, you know, just just taking the proper precautions and just being aware of your surroundings and what you're doing, and

especially touching your face and all that stuff. And you know, when I was taking the car from the you know, the studio to the the the hotel, you know, I told the guys said, look, I'm opening the window because that's what I'm supposed to do and get some fresh air in here. And the driver they understand, everyone's in this together. So it was great experience. I had a blast. I hope they do something similar for twenty twenty two, and I hope that I'm on the short list for

someone that might be considered to help out again. So thank you CS and CTA. You guys were fantastic. All right, let's start with the device that I came home to, and I was very, very much excited for this, the Samsung Galaxy S twenty one. Samsung sent over the S twenty one and the S twenty one Ultra, so the lowest end and the highest end, and I've been playing

with these. I'm not at liberty to give my full review just yet, because well, let's be honest, it's only been like a couple hours, but it's a you know, I can give you my first impressions kind of the unboxing, and from what I've seen, this is is kind of a nice device. I mean, it reminds me of the Note. I love the Note twenty. It was just too big for me. This one is a little bit easier to manage in my hand, even though it's still a nice big screen six point eight inch screen. I'm talking about

the Ultra here. It's got four cameras on the back. It's got an ultra it's got a wide It's got a ten times optical telephoto lens, which is just amazing. I mean, ten times on a smartphone is for optical is just phenomenal. I love that. Then it also has a three times telephoto lens, so four lenses on this along with laser autofocus and the things that it ditches this year, which I was surprised. There's no charger in the box, which is fine. I have plenty of chargers.

I don't need to get another charger just sitting around my house. And I think that a majority of people feel the same way. The other thing though that did surprise me is that they got rid of the the SD card slot, so there's no more micro SD cards expandable storage on any of these devices, which you know some people that was a big differentiator with the Samsungs and the fact that you could just buy the standard model and just pump up the memory with a card

was really cool. You can no longer do that. The other thing that they got rid of is the little antenna that enabled Samsung Pay to work in places that the other phones didn't work, the other Androids and the Apple iPhone. They had a special antenna inside the Samsung devices called MST and this antenna would basically recreate the magnetic field from the stripe on the back of your credit card and sort of emit that out to any

card reader anywhere. So this is why you could use tap to pay at Walmart even though they don't accept it, because the Samsung would actually emit it kind of mimicked what a credit card would do, and it kind of faked out the machines. Well, they got rid of that, so the competitive edge for Samsung Pay is now gone, and that's kind of a big deal. But otherwise this phone is one hundred percent loaded. It's you can just feel the quality of this device. It feels really nice

in your hand. The screen looks amazing. It's got all the things that you need, minus those two little things that they took a step back on. One thing that I really liked that they did was they added the Google Discover feed to the left of my home screen, which is just amazing for the launcher. So now when I swipe to the right, it all right, sorry, let's see. Wait, yeah, swipe to the right. It brings up all that Google Discover stuff, which I've loved forever, all the stories that

wants you to read and all that stuff. So that's a huge, huge plus for me because I did not like the Bixby stuff, so would just turn it off and you know, otherwise. There's other improvements that are small things that are really cool. It's got a five thousand million battery. Of course I had wireless charging. It's got the you know IP sixty eight water resistance. The price it starts at twelve hundred dollars, which is two hundred

dollars less than last year. So that's a pro right now during this economy where you know, it's been rough on a lot of folks. Let's see, they all have eight K video recording, and because you're recording eight K, they say you can pull a full resolution picture out of your video. So you know, sometimes you take a video and it's like it doesn't look very good if you try to get a screenshot out of that, But this will look just as good as a regular picture.

I haven't tried that yet, but I can't wait to try that. You know. Of course they always say that night mode is better, and all these pictures are better, but I'll be the judge of that, and I will be testing this out over the next couple of weeks to see just how much better. You can also use a stylust now with the S twenty one Ultra only the other two models you cannot use a stylist, but the S twenty one Ultra you can use a stylist.

Whether you buy a new one or you buy or maybe you have a stylist from an old note that will work as well, So that's kind of cool. The other thing that's neat is that when you share a picture through their gallery, it will ask you if you want to get rid of the the location data. Oh it's off by default, which is really nice. So that is a huge, huge thing for privacy. I love that.

Let's see what else? Eight K video. Oh, the it still does one hundred times zoom with with you know, their hybrid zoom system, but they've steadied it out so when you zoom in really far, it stays steady. And I will again. I've got a little bit of hands on time with that last night and it looks promising. It looks way better than the first model, but I'll have to see what the deal is with that. And then they have another cool feature called Director's View, which

I personally really love. I'll be shooting a lot of videos like that where you can see you can choose the two camera angles that you want, so you can choose to have, you know, like you can see yourself in the selfie camera, but also be shooting the other cameras as well, and can you change them live? Oh yes you can. Oh wow, that's pretty cool. So that's a neat little feature as well. And oh you can

change it to split view. So it's it's kind of the picture or the it's kind of the feature that they have on the iPhone with the double Take app. But now that's built into the latest Samsung devices. So overall, if you want the Samsung S twenty one or S twenty one plus, those start at let's see how much do those start at? Those start at seven ninety nine and then so the S twenty one is eight hundred, the S twenty one plus is one thousand, and then the S twenty one Ultra is twelve hundred, and the

memory is silver. Comes in twelve gigs a RAM plus one twenty eight gigs of storage, which you're gonna eat through that with EIGHTK video in minutes, Phantom Black twelve gigs of RAM, one twenty eight gigs of storage, or two fifty six twelve gigs of RAM, or you can get a five twelve gigabyte model with sixteen gigs a RAM. They also have exclusive colors on Samsung dot Com, including

Phantom Titanium, Phantom Navy, and Phantom Brown. That's for the S twenty one Ultra, the S twenty one and S twenty one plus, they come in a couple of different colors more fun colors Phantom Violet, gray, pink, white, and silver and black for the S twenty one plus. So anyway, and then Golden Platinum. So there's a lot of different there's a whole matrix of colors and things. But these companies are really funny about how they only give you

certain offerings with there's only certain combinations available. You can't just say, oh, I want gold in twelve fifty six. You can't do that. You have to kind of pick and choose based on the model number you're getting and the color you're getting. But I would recommend if you are going to purchase one of these to get the highest the highest storage you can because you cannot expand it. And that is kind of like the big thing that

you need to know about these right now. All right, So if you want to see some videos on those, I posted one to my Facebook, I did a live. I did a live on boxing there, and then on my Instagram I did a just a video kind of running through the features and the look of the phone. That's that rich on tech on both of those platforms. So I'm digging this phone so far. I have high hopes for it. I don't know. I told you I might switch, and I might be tempted if the camera

is good. I might be tempted because I'm ready for a little Google in my life again. I you know, when you're on the iPhone, you get way away from Google products and services because they try to, you know, kind of fight those at all at all turns. But I'm kind of ready for that integrated experience of like everything kind of working together with Google on the iPhone.

I haven't had that in a while, sorry, on the Samsung, because I've been using iPhone for so long now that I'm kind of ready to go back and just see what the other side is like, just for a little bit, because you know, it helps me as as a tech person to get to understand both sides, and I've done that historically. So we'll see. Stay tuned. I'll have my full roundup and review of the s twenty one line up very very soon. All right, let's get to our first question. As you can see, I have all my

stuff back up running. Last week was a you know, from the hotel room kind of podcast, which was great. I use the Tula microphone, which I'm not sure if I said or not, but I've been testing that out and I thought it sounded pretty darn good for being in a hotel room. But we're back this week all right, Kathleen says, I'm trying to find a password generator for personal use. Any suggestions. What is your opinion on Keeper? Heard it was top rated, thought I would ask you

you haven't steered me wrong in the past. Keep up the great work. You are my go to tech guy. Thanks Kathleen. So Keeper, Hm, who is Keeper? I don't know Keeper. I mean I have seen them, but I don't know what their deal is. When I think of the password managers, the number one, the number three, three come to mind. I'll tell you what they are, dash Lane, last pass and one password and that's one password with

a one and then password. Those are the three that I would I would use and I would just you have to get into a groove with these things. There's no way around it. You just have to get into a groove. So pick one, stick to it, put all your passwords in there, start using it to generate passwords, and do not stray. The problem when you stray is you when you use it half the time, it doesn't work. You need to use this one hundred percent of the time.

You need to install it on all your devices. And the way that most of these password managers work is they all say oh we're free, free, free, free, free, and you go, oh cool, I'll use you for free. And then when you really get down to the nitty gritty of them, here's how they're free. They're free to use on one device, and then when you start using

them on other devices, it can get very expensive. So, for instance, last Pass seems to be free across all the devices, but there's got to be a catch to that. You know, it doesn't seem like there is a catch. So last Pass, if you want totally totally free and across all your devices, is you know, go last pass. One password. Let's see what's going on there. One password used to be primarily iPhone, now it's Android and iPhone,

but it is personal. A personal account is three dollars a month, build annually annually, so that's twelve times threes thirty six dollars for the year. And the family account, which you probably want because you want your you know, significant other to be using this as well, that is five dollars a month for a family of five, and you can get that build annually or it has to be builled annually, so that's sixty dollars a year. Then dash Lane, dash Lane is a little trickier to find

the pricing. Let me see plans individual they have. Okay, they've got free, but here's a thing. On free, you only get up to fifty passwords and one device. So if you want to be able to easily, you know, use these passwords on your on your laptop, you want to pay. And they're the most expensive, it seems, because it's six fifty a month times twelve for the premium, So six point fifty times twelve is seventy eight dollars,

So that's seventy eight for the year. Family is nine dollars a month, so I mean, and you get a VPN as well with with dash Lane. I'm not sure if the other one's offer a VPN included. But you know, just look at these different devices or these different software solutions and see which one works for you. If you are one hundred percent Apple or one hundred percent Android and Google, you can use what they have built in

password management in those two operating systems. So with Apple it's a keychain and it works pretty well, but again you're locked into the Apple ecosystem if you only use Apple products. I'd go with that, and then on on the Android or Google Slash side of things, you would have to use Chrome along with Android. Great question. All right, let's get back to CES. So CS twenty twenty one

again all digital show. We did the show out of the studios in Edmond, and it was different this year because it was all digital and so you had to sort of go off of, you know, the videos that they released, which they did a great job of organizing things. In fact, I mean, I don't want to say that this was easier to cover this year than in previous years,

but it kind of was the difference. The biggest difference is that you just didn't get to go hands on with these gadgets, and let's be honest, that is the beauty of CS is actually getting to see these things in the flesh in person and getting to play with them before anyone else. So with that said, here are some of the highlights of the show. My takeaway is that a lot of this stuff was COVID related, It

was touchless, it was big picture autonomous cars, TVs. I would say actually TV's took a back seat this year because usually the TV's wow us because you can see them, but you know, without being there and seeing these giant screens. You know, the TVs did not steal the show this year. But with that said, let me go through a couple of things that caught my I. TCL they showed off like a concept phone screen that you kind of stretch out that becomes bigger, which I thought was kind of cool.

Obviously prototype E. They also showed off a seventeen inch screen that rolls out like a scroll, which is kind of cool. Samsung showed off these things, these bots. There's a bot Care and then handy Bot, and these are robots for your house. The handybot was kind of you know, the robot that you want in your home, you know, cleaning up after you, getting you a glass of wine, pouring a glass of water, picking up your clothes. But again, these are things that we're probably not going to see

anytime soon their self. Their vacuum, their robotic vacuum that that Samsung unveiled was pretty cool because it uses AI to avoid things like cables. I know, my room, but eats up cables all the time and little objects and it just it gets smarter as it goes along because it has AI. So that's pretty cool. Let's see what else here. Oh, this was pretty cool. The Autonomous Indie Autonomous Challenge. This is like a race at the ND five hundred that will use autonomous race cars and there's

like a million dollar prize. Little things like jay Labs jbuds frames. These are a lot of people really like those bos sunglass speakers. I forget what they're called, but they they're like basically sunglasses with bows, little speakers and Bluetooth built in so you can listen to your music and take calls. Well, JLab has a way to turn any glasses into that with these fifty dollars frames they call me. Just pop them on the side of your pair of glasses and now you've got connected glasses. And

let's see. Justine really liked when I told her about the smart pepper spray. This is from Saber and when you spray this pepper spray automatically notifies the police with your GPS coordinates and also some trusted contacts. So that's you know, it's like everything is connected. All right. Let's see what else do we see? LG teased a rollable phone just like TCL. The thing that stole all the publicity is this cold Snap ice cream machine that's kind

of like a k Cup for ice cream. Now, this is an example of something that I would have to try out because if you're at CS, they would be making you this ice cream and you try it and you'd see how awesome it is. We only got to see a video, and of course it looks really cool. But I will tell you this, when I did a story with a company that was making frozen yogurt this same way. Let me say I'm typing in frozen yogurt ktla DeMuro and here it is. It was a frozen

yogurt gadget. This was in twenty seventeen, and it's very similar, and it was called the Wim. Is the startup wim frozen yogurt. So let's see if they're even around and no, let's see are they I don't know if they're still around. August twenty seventh was the last post. It doesn't maybe they are, yeah, yeah, I don't really see any place to buy it, so yeah. August twenty nineteenth was August

twenty nineteen was their last post. So yeah, again, didn't really probably work out as well as they thought it would. And I have a feeling that this may be the same, but who knows if it's good. It's five hundred dollars and it's basically a cuic I don't know if it's probably not from the same company, but it's called cold Snap and you know, it's cool. But I had my memory of the one that I tested and it was

not very good. But I think if this is like able to partner with some of these big companies that make ice cream and make it at home, I mean, that's pretty cool. Oh this was cool at Samsung in their twenty twenty one TVs. Instead of using batteries, they're making them solar and the solar panel works inside, so your remote is always powered by and that's way less you know, batteries to replace, not like you have to replace batteries a lot, but it's less batteries that go

in the landfill, which is pretty cool. The other two things that got all the attention was this smart pet door from my Queue. It's like three thousand dollars though it uses like a little Bluetooth tag on your pet to you know, so they can open the door, but nothing else does, which that's gonna be limited. But in the future, of course, everyone's gonna have that that, you know,

when they build these things into homes. They're gonna be a lot cheaper, and then Toto, they make the toilets they've been trying to I feel like they've been trying to really capture America's attention for a while now with their with their different toilet technology, and I'm not sure that they've had one breakthrough thing. But now they will let's just say, examine what comes out and you know, tell you some feedback on that, like, you know, if

you're healthier or not. I don't know, that's that's kind of weird, but you know, again, it's one of those things that sounds really weird right now. But I fully imagine every toilet in the future to be smart and give us feedback on exactly what's going on all right. Next question here comes from Nancy. She says, I'm looking for a place to shred my personal documents. I would like to watch them being shredded and not just drop them off to a locked box. Do you know of

any place or event where I can do this? From Nancy, Nancy, this is funny you say this because I literally literally just did this in my neighborhood a couple of weeks ago. I was driving home, and from time to time I see in the park a shredding truck and I go, oh, that's cool. So I can just bring my stuff there

to get shredded. Because I had an experience where I brought my stuff to the UPS store formerly Mailboxes, et cetera, if you remember that name, and I brought my stuff there and I said, you know, they said they have shredding services, and I said, okay, cool, So I go there. They weigh my stuff, you know whatever. It was a couple pounds, I pay the fifty ten bucks and they dump it into this lock box. I was like, oh, wait, you don't actually shred it, and they said no, no,

the company comes and shreds it. I said, oh, because think about it, there is a there is room for error there. You know, maybe someone doesn't lock up the box, or maybe you know, the box gets unlocked somehow, or maybe the papers fall out. I don't know. So after that experience, I really wanted to go somewhere where they shred it in front of me. And so the van that I found in my neighborhood they do it, you know every I don't know, twice a year or something,

where you can bring your stuff. I brought my stuff and I said, hey, here it is, and it was just a tiny amount of stuff. It was like, you know, a couple pounds, and they said, oh, normally it's you know, I think it was like fifty dollars for everything you have, which is great if you have like a giant office full of stuff. But I think she let me off at like twenty bucks or something. But it was great, and I watched it being shredded in person. I mean

I could see the camera shredding. They had a little camera inside the truck that you can watch your stuff being shredded, which was really really cool. And so that's what I would recommend. I would look into shredding events in your neighborhood. I'm not sure where you live, but just you know, google your neighborhood and you know, shredding event and see what comes up. And usually, you know, a couple times a year they'll do these things. And

be prepared to pay a nominal amount for that. The other thing to do is just look on Yelp and look up shredding services and just be you know, be critical in looking up these services and see which ones actually shred on site. So you want to say in person on site shredding, and then call them up and confirm that when you bring your stuff there, you will watch them shred your stuff right in front of you.

Very very cool and good point. You want to shread this stuff because you do not want you know, we're not getting as much paper as we used to do. But at the same time, you want to shred it because you don't want to just throw this stuff in your trash can and who knows what happens to it after that? All right, now, I think are these the

touch tones? Yes? All right, So we've got the pod page voicemails, which you can find at Rich on tech Dart TV slash podcast rich on tech Dart TV slash Podcast and look in the lower right hand corner and you will see that there is a microphone and when you tap that mic you can leave me a voicemail just like Scott Dead.

a half. I really like your podcast a lot and and hour and a half would be great because you could answer more questions and people could post their questions and things like that. So sort of to thank you again for such a great podcast, keep up the awesome work, and I wanted to wish you and your family a very merry Christmas and a happy meeear. Thanks very much.

go on for that long? So I kind of do this podcast the way that I think about podcasts and when I see an hour and a half show or a two hour show or a three hour show, I just go, oh my gosh, I can't begin to completely fish that podcast. So for me, you know, the time of this podcast has gently creeped up over you know, the past couple of months. Like to I try to keep it to about fifty five minutes because I feel like that's just under an hour. It doesn't feel as

intimidating as that over the post hour mark. So that's my feeling, and I totally agree. I would love to get to more questions every week and do that, but you know, it's just it's more intimidating, and it's also a time thing for me because I you know, it does take some prep work to do this show, and you know, by extending in a half an hour, it would take even more prep work, so you know, I have to get everything ready, and you know, I do this on my own. So I like it. I like

the suggestion, and I do appreciate you. I love the fact that you want to listen to more. I really do. And you know, I will see if maybe in twenty twenty one, I decide to extend it. If you think that that's a good idea, let me know. But you know, right now, I'm keeping the show at about an hour little bit less, and I think that's where it's going to stay for now. But I'm I'm totally open to

doing more. I mean, I love talking, I love doing this show, and so if I could do this show every day, I would if it fit into my schedule, if this has been my goal. If I could do a one hour live call and show every single day, maybe you know, Monday through Friday, I would do it because you you just hear the podcast once a week where I kind of curate the questions that I get from folks, but they come in fast and furious on

all platforms all day long. I mean, what I do on a daily basis is I just sit there on Instagram or you know, YouTube or not YouTube, Facebook, I barely respond to. But the amount of questions that are in my comments, that are in my dms, that are replies to my stories, that are on my Twitter, it's

pretty phenomenal. And the just how many questions are out there is amazing, because when you think we've answered them over and over and over, it's like you really haven't, because there's so many people in this world and they all want to know, like what the deal is, and so I again, that would be my goal. If I had a way to like know it. Every day at three pm, I could sit down and do an hour show, it'd be great. So but I just I'm not at that place in my life, which I wish I was,

but I'm just not. All right, you know, my number one goal in this world is to do my stories for KTLA. Those are my one hundred percent priority because that is my job, and so all this other stuff that I do the podcast is part of KTLA, but you know, we do an hour a week. That's kind of the deal. So I would do more, but it's just it's tough because it anytime I do more things, it takes away from my KTLA time, and believe me,

KTLA takes a long time. I you know, I put a lot of work into my stories for that that station. All right, let's talk more about CS. I did a segment on pandemic gadgets at CS and pandemic stuff was was very apparent at this year's CES, which is so wild because when you go to CS, they always have all these booths with like you know how and wellness stuff that you just kind of ignore, and this year no nobody ignored it. Like masks and air purifiers and

all that kind of stuff was very popular. So let me go over some of the things that caught my eye. The LG keynote, they showed this thing called the pure Care Wearable Air Purifier. This is a smart mask that has a rechargeable battery that cleans the air that you breathe in and out fro up to eight hours. They haven't said if it's going to be available in the US, but it looked kind of it looked, you know, it

looked like it would be really cool to have. But as someone who wore an N ninety five mask on the plane for two hours there and back to Seattle, you know that that's pretty tight on your face, and it doesn't feel heavy, but it feels tight, and so I imagine that this would probably feel a combination of those two things. And with masks, you know, there is mask fatigue the longer you wear these things, and so I'd be curious about that, but at the same time

it's kind of a cool idea. Then there's something called the mask Phone fon E. This is a mask that has built in earbuds, so you can you know, make a phone call with Bluetooth and you don't have to like lift or you know, people can hear you. It's it's just you know, it's two and one. Then, of course, the touchless tech is everywhere. So Arlow is making a touchless video doorbell, which I just think this is wild.

The doorbell when you approach, it uses a proximity sensor to recognize you and it makes an audible chime, so it's like or whatever. I don't know what that sound is, but it kind of like so you're like, oh, wait, hold on, this thing is doing something. And then it rings itself so you don't have to touch it, and it gives you like a visible thing that you know

that it's been pressed. And then Coler, you know, they make all the water faucets and stuff they're bringing you know, we've seen touchless in corporate settings forever and even even the kitchen, but now they're bringing it to the bathroom so that we'll have a single faucet that's touchless, and which is great for families, you know, I mean, as long as it works well, you know, because sometimes those bathroom ones that the airport and stuff can be come annoying,

like they don't necessarily work all the time, and also getting the water to run for a longer period. But you know they're doing that, which is great because you know, the less you touch hopefully the less you know stuff that's getting moved around. And they're also making a retro fit kit so you can turn any recent single control color bathroom faucet touchless. Then you've got targets. They are

making a UVC light for your desk. It sits kind of on top of your keyboard and at the end of every hour, it just goes to town and uh sanitize your desk for five minutes. And it has a little motion sensor so that if someone's around, they're not going they're gonna you know, it's not gonna trigger because UV light is not good for your eyes. And then

this one's kind of cool. This uh, I don't know, if you've seen all these airports and stuff, they always show that shot of the person like using some sort of fogger to like deep you know, deep clean the areas and disinfect everything. Well that's of course filled with chemicals, but scosh. They make a lot of these these UH devices for your car, these accessories. They have the Magic foger.

This is a portable antibacterial sanitizer and the mist is organic and it's they say it's a hundred times stronger than bleach, but organic and safe for humans, animals, and

the environment. And I do believe that because I saw a pitch on a story about this stuff that like literally takes I think it's regular water and maybe like a tablespoon of vinegar or something and like turns it into like a disinfectant and it like somehow charges it up or I don't know, but it's it seemed pretty cool, and so I think that's working along the same lines.

Let's get to another question. Let's see uh. Doreen says, Rich, have you done a segment on the RFID blocking cards that you put in your wallet and it protects all the cards in your wallet. There's so many different ones. I don't want to get them, and want to get them for the whole family, but don't want to waste my money on something that doesn't work to protect us. Thank you for all your help in the past, Doreen. So again, this is this is really funny because this

is again the kind of thing. I saw this product at CS no joke five years ago, it had to be And now just recently, we've seen a lot of people concerned about RFID. So I will tell you, do I think you necessarily need this? Probably not. I don't hear a lot of a lot of instances where people are getting hacked through their credit card with RFID stealers, but it could happen. And if you are going to buy one of these things. The ones that I like

are from a company called Silent Pocket. We interviewed them for the News, met the guy and it was great. I mean, this is the guy that I talked to at CS like five years ago, and nobody cared about my story when I posted it to social media. And now, of course, you know, privacy is so big people care about this and so great. You know, it's just a little a little ahead of the curve there. But they make pockets for your phone, for your tablet, your laptop,

your keys, accessories you know, like wallets. I mean, they make everything everything. So if you want RFID protection, you look at Silent Pocket and they have a card sleeve, a five pack. I think this is what you're talking about. For fifteen bucks, or you can get a wallet for twenty dollars, or you can get a lunch money pouch for twenty bucks, or you know all these things. They've got them all over their website. Again, it's called Silent Pocket.

And if you want an RFID blocker, then go with them, and you know, see what you need. I have a card with RFID. I've got a card, my credit card has RFID on it and honestly it doesn't work. It somehow got deactivated because I've wanted to use it for tap to pay when my phone is either you know, I don't have my phone with me or I don't know, just some random reasons, and it does not It does not work. So I don't know what the problem is. Maybe I need new credit card that has it, but

it's fine. I don't. I just don't use it. But anyway, that's that's the deal with RFID. Good question and thanks for asking. All right Rich on tech dot TV slash podcast, here is another question. Hey Rich, my name is Luise from Whittier.

Google Search, Gmail YouTube, and Google Photos. I think those are probably and obviously they're ad offerings, but you know, those are probably the four most popular consumer Google products. I guess Android I didn't understand. Oh wow, Google is talking to me that really? That really shook me up there. Ooh, I had I accomplished a personal goal in my home where I've always wanted all of the smart speakers lined up together so that I can ask them the same

thing and see how they respond. So I've got the HomePod Mini, the you know, the one from Amazon, which I won't say the name because she triggers very quickly, and the Google one, and I love it because you can ask the same thing and just see how they respond. And it's like so good for me as a tech person to like see the nuances with these various devices. So anyway, I digress. But yeah, you know the Google Pay thing. I would give you more thoughts on that,

but literally, I can't log in. I've tried and tried and tried. Something's wrong with my Google account. I cannot log into Google Pay with the new app. I don't know what the problem is and I have no idea how to fix that. I think Google Pay is cool, but again, it's like this all over the place thing. It's like, oh, let's get into payment apps because everyone else is ven most popular. And Google Photos it's like they promised all this free storage and it's like now

they're changing that. And I think that Google should have kept the free storage for people that are giving up the quality on their photos. I mean, this is a huge company. I get it. They probably underestimated the popularity and just how much people would throw in there. But at the same time, you kind of started along those lines and then you switch gears and it really does not build a lot of confidence people. So that's that's just not right. And it's like this with everything with Google,

they just kind of they're all over the place. And Google Maps has been pretty consistent. But again, even with something like Google Maps, you know, they're trying to be Yelp in Google Maps, and you know ninety to al percent of people probably don't use Google Maps for the ratings and reviews and all that stuff. But again, they have all these different things in there that they just try to you know, throw in and you know, build

into their apps. It's like if they get a popular appy, they just try to change as much as possible to like kind of to kind of piggyback off that popularity in different ways. And I just think that they need to stick to what they're doing, you know, really focus and focus on the users and the user experience and what do users like about that app and and don't change it and in fact, just continue to make it better. And that's that's kind of my advice for Google. And

so great question. It's just a matter of, uh, you know, you got to keep up with Google and their changes, and it's frustrating as a consumer because you just feel like when you get into a Google product, like it may not be there in a couple months, or it may be completely different in a couple months. And I think that that we're seeing that in a big way with Google Photos. Although I am sticking to it because I still think it is the best photo solution out

there and I still love it. I'm just really trying to stay under that two terabytes of storage because I don't want to go over that. All right, speaking of Google, let me just talk about this because I just talked about the speaker. They have a new guest mode on the Google devices, which are the Google Smart displays and also the Smart speakers. So this is a smart little

thing that you can do. So you can say, hey, g turn on guest mode, and anything you say to your Google assistant will not be saved to your account history. And so you know why would you need this, Well, maybe you have guests over and you don't want them accessing your personal information or whatever they ask Google. You don't want that to be saved into your account history,

ruining your personalized recommendations. So with guest Mode, you can enjoy features like you can ask questions, you can control smart home devices, which I'm not sure how that's possible. You can set timers and play music, but your device won't show personal results like your calendar, entries or contacts until you turn the mode off. Once you have this mode on, your device has a special chime and you'll see a guest icon on the display. Let me try this, Hey, Google,

turn on guest mode. Guest modes on. Okay, so now it says guest modes on. So let me ask a question, Hey, what time is it in Tokyo? And it's thinking. It's thinking really hard. That's not that tough of a question, is it. Oh that's a I don't think it likes guest mode. It's really thinking. All right, well that didn't really work. Now my time on Saturday? Okay. By the way, to hear about it upcoming events, just say oh calendar.

Oh yeah, that's that's the new thing. Because these assistants are getting so interesting with like they toss on, they throw something in at the end of your question or your answer, I should say so that you continue to like interact with them. It's like, hey, we know you just asked the weather up. By the way, did you know you can order great food from Panda Express. It's really tasty, and it's like, you can see where they're

going with this. There will be ads at the end of the answers soon enough, when they can figure out how to do this without totally alienating everyone. But mark my words, that is what's coming with all of these assistants, with these smart speakers, Mark my words, January fifteenth, twenty twenty one. Well, I think that what it should do is it should have some sort of visual indication on

the speaker that you're in guest mode. And also before it gives your answer, it should give you some sort of chime because now I'm gonna forget this in guest mode, and I guess maybe if I ask something personal, it would say, oh, sorry, you're in guest mode. I can't do that. But anyway, so that's a he G, turn on guest mode, and then if you want to turn

it off, hey G, turn off guest mode. All right, let's see another question Shanna and Bob hey Rich, what's the safe place to copy my Facebook memories, photos and videos, Not Google or any large tech companies. Private and safe free would be great. Should I transfer to an external hard drive? What cord would I need with an iPhone eleven? Thank you so much. I value your advice. I hope

you and your family have a happy New Year. Well, Shanna, free is gonna be really tough because there's really no free place that I know of anymore that can just let you store an unlimited amount of things. Yes, a lot of these are free for up to a certain amount, but not for everything. And most of the free storage options are going to be from the big tech tech companies, like say a dropbox or a one drive or let's see what's the other one, Google Photos. Yeah, so any

of these products you're probably going to pay for. But you said an external hard drive, I don't An external hard drive is fine, So I think that would work. But I think a better solution would be something like an eb ibi. And this is from sand Disk, and it's kind of a hard drive that's connected to the Internet. And the beauty of this is that it has the right software to help you automatically transfer your Facebook memory.

So all of the stuff from Facebook you can transfer onto that hard drive and it will do it automatically and ongoing. So that's number one. That's I think it's like one hundred and two hundred bucks something like that, so that would be number one. And there's no ongoing fees, and it is private, like you said, and it is safe because nothing nothing goes up to the cloud. It's

stored in your home. Now, the downside to that is that if you delete or something gets you know, messed up or corrupted with this EB, you've lost all of your your photos. So the other thing you can do on Facebook, they have a Facebook Data Transfer Tool. I forget what it's called. Let's see what is it called Facebook Data Portability Tool I think it's called. And when you go there you can transfer your stuff out of Facebook into a lot of other services. So you can

just it's called the Photo Transfer Tool. So if you go to Facebook dot com slash dtp, Facebook dot com slash dtp and you go in there and you can see what you want to transfer photos, videos and choose a destination right now. The destinations are Koofer, which I think is a European thing, Backblaze, B two, Dropbox, and Google Photos and it will transfer them directly to those places.

And so that saves you a little bit of time and effort because it's much easier just to trans from you know, right there, and yeah, that's what I would do, all right. And the hard drive is a good option, but it's just a little bit more manual, So instead of the destination, you would just kind of download your information directly and then throw it onto the hard drive. You can do that. That's fine, it's it's simple, it's easy. You just have to be a little bit more hands on.

But there you go. That's what I would do, all right. Oh. Netflix, according to nine to five mac via iPhone soft says that they are going to be potentially testing spatial audio on the iPad and iPhone and apparently Netflix has been testing this since December. Now, if you're not familiar with spatial audio support, this is on the AirPods Pro and the AirPods Max, also known as kind of like three D audio. A lot of this is going to be the next big thing with the all the headphones are

going to have this. But the reason I bring you the story is because when I was up in Washington, I actually watched my first movie with the AirPods in. I would not watch a movie with AirPods in right if I'm watching on my iPad, I would just kind of watch it with the speaker. But I was talking to Brian, was it Brian No. I was talking to Justine and she was saying how great the spatial audio was. She was like, you gotta check out Mandalorian with spatial audio.

And I said, oh, okay, I would never think to where my AirPods, you know, with that with the you know, while I'm watching in like my hotel room. And sure enough, I fired up a movie on Hulu that had the spatial audio, and or I guess it sounded like it did. It was pretty phenomenal. I'm pretty sure it had the spatial audio because it sounded amazing and it literally you could hear the people talking and wherever you move the iPad, it would sound like that's where the audio is coming from.

So I was impressed. And that's why I tell you the story, because with Netflix, this is really really cool stuff. And now I'm like all about the spatial audio. The movie I watched, by the way, it was called Bombshell. It was kind of that Roger al story. It took me a while, you know, in the news business, I wanted to see that. Took me a while to watch it, but I thought it was pretty good. I thought it

was well done. I thought, I thought, seeing the uh they had like all the Fox News anchors, you know it portrayed in the in the movie, which I don't know how I feel if I was, you know, an anchor that was portrayed in a movie like that, because anyway, but it was. It was a good little movie. I thought it was pretty well done. And uh wow, very very interesting, especially given the current climate of what is progressed.

Since that movie came along probably a year ago or two, so many they didn't even realize that they were just at the beginning of some of the some of the wackiness we've seen in the past year. All right, let's see, should we do another should we do another question? Let's do another question from the podcast page Rich on tech Dot TV slash podcast.

that same thing on a Samsung. Let me go into a photo gallery and I'm gonna swipe up and it says location. Let's just press edit details Edit. You can remove the location, but I don't see the ability to oh yep, and then you can add location yep. Okay. So on Android it seems a lot easier to do this, but I'm sure on iOS there's some apps. I have not tested these apps, but I I'm sure there are

some apps now. I also know on Facebook Photos all right, sorry, Google Photos, Jim, this might be a way to do it. You take a picture in Google Photos, you upload it there and you can sync it to your phone and you can edit the location data there. And I've done that for some of my photos. As for a standalone app, I would think on the on the you know, max side of things, the photos app obviously you can add data,

But I would think it doesn't. Windows Photos just have like a don't they have like a photo app built into Windows. So Microsoft Photos, can't you just use that to just say edit the data and just edit the GPS data. Those are the places that I would look and try and you know, see if you can do it. I don't have I don't have a Windows PC handy right now. I mean I could try my kids he has Windows, so I can see if I can do it on there. But I was not prepared for your questions.

So but those are the places I would look at. But I'm sure the only thing I would do is just be very careful about, you know, downloading random apps to let you add So if I would, if I would look Window x IF editor, it looks like there's a whole bunch of apps that you can do that. It looks like Microsoft Photos has it. Yeah, there's a there's oh wow, okay, even six free tools to change. Looks like there's a lot of tools that will let you do it if you have a bunch of photos

that you want to do it with. It looks like they have a bunch for Windows that make it easy to change a whole bunch at once, but just be careful because these are your photos, and I would always have a backup before you change anything too drastically because you don't want to mess around with that kind of stuff. But good question, Jim. Thanks for thanks for listening to the show and submitting your question at rich on tech

dot TV slash podcast. All right, quick story here. Google completed its fitbit acquisition, which I know a lot of people are kind of weary about because, oh, here's an another big company gobbling up a company that was independent, and now what's going to happen to all of our data?

So fitpit has twenty nine million users. I hope that they use this acquisition to actually make a product that rivals the Apple Watch, because right now we do not have that and we need that on the Android side, So Google says that fitness fitbits user health and wellness data will not be used for Google Ads, and this data will be separated from other Google Ads data. They also say they will maintain access to Android APIs, which means that fitness trackers and smart watches will still be

able to interoperate with Android smartphones. That's nice, so not going to close off other wearables from working with Android, and they say they'll allow fitbit to continue working with third party services. That's also nice. They say they will hopefully the synergy will drive more competition and wearables and make the next generation of devices better and more affordable. Let's hope that everything you're saying here, Google is true and AIM's true, because here's what happens with a lot

of these big companies. They put this out there January fourteenth, twenty twenty one, and then what happens in two years when everyone forgets They slowly but surely close things off, change things, and go against what they originally said. Let's hope that does not happen here. Let's just hope that Google builds an amazing smartwatch that works with you know, potentially iOS, but you know that's kind of tricky and Android and just continues to be good and we see

more competition with the Android side of things. And let's just hope that they don't just close everything up, use your foot, use your fitness data for ads, and you know, go against everything that they said. Let's just hope that doesn't happen. So, all right, final question before we go here. This is from George also via my pod page, so that's also on the new podcast page is pretty amazing. So if you just go to rich on tech dot tv slash podcast, there's so many things you can do here.

You can listen to the latest episode, you can subscribe using all the different methods. You can all also leave that voicemail as well, and there used to be a way, oh you can't well okay, well, I guess I have to pay if I want the contact stuff to still be in there. Used to be able to leave a message there, like a written message, but I guess that's

only on the page. So I was on. I signed up for this thing called pod page, and they have a free service and also a paid service, and it looks like the paid my free trial dropped off and there's a lot of features that are no longer available here. But okay, I may have to look into subscribing because I like the fact that you can just go there

and leave a message like George did. But anyway, George's message said, you can still email me hello at richontech dot tv or go to rich on tech dot tv and at the bottom there is an email form that you can use a little link to my email George said, hey, Rich, I was in Sweden six years ago, and every restaurant would bring a credit card reader to the table, so my card never left my site. Why has the US been so slow to adopt this technology. The answer, George

is money. Restaurants just don't want to pay for the added expense of having these little credit card readers that you can bring to your table. The good news is because of the pandemic, for a while, when restaurants were actually open, we did see more adoption of this because they would finish the bill right at your table, or

you could tap right at your table. I do expect to see more of this coming to the US now that you know, but these companies are on a cycle, like you know, if you're at like a CBK or something. I think actually CBK was the one that I was at the other day, back when my wife and I went to dinner or lunch the last day before LA shut down everything again, we went out to lunch outside and I do believe that the I think they brought a credit card reader to my table. I think they did.

Maybe that was somewhere else, but anyway, I think we're going to see more restaurants news. But you're right, George. In the rest of the world, this has been the standard for many, many, many decades, and I don't know why it has been just so painfully slow in the US. Why does our credit card need to leave our hands, go into the hands of a server and then into

some back room somewhere where who knows what happens. And I'm not saying that every server is, you know, snapping a picture of these things, but it could happen, and there is that opportunity and why not. And I also just like the idea that I can sit there and see, you know, in a post COVID society, you know, when we're actually touching things again, but I can, you know, tap my phone to this little device and then it says, hey, how much tip do you want to do? Do you want

to do fifteen, twenty five percent? Whatever, And it's all calculated for me, and it's all really nice, and there's no like weird secondary receipt and all this weird stuff that we do that just makes no sense. I one hundred percent agree, George. It should be a machine that they bring to your table and it works that way. That that's the ideal, And yes, all over Europe when you travel there, or if you travel to Asia, this is the standard and it's so cool and I absolutely

absolutely love it. And let's hope we see it here in the US. All right. That music means it is the end of the show. If you would like to submit a question for me to answer, just go to richon tech dot tv hit the email button at the bottom of the page. I'd also like it if you would rate and review this podcast to help other people discover it. Just go to iTunes or whatever your preferred way of listening and just look for the review button. That really does help. You can find me at rich

on tech. That's me on all the social media networks. My name is rich dmiro. Thank you so much for listening, and have a fantastic day. I will talk to you real soon. Take care.