Rich's Favorite Apps & Best Portable Battery Chargers

It's also the place where I answer your questions about technology. I believe that tech should be interesting, useful, and fun. The phone number to the show is triple eight Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. You can also email me. Just go to Rich on tech dot tv hit the link that says contact. We've got some great guests this week. Jacob Palm of Best Reviews dot com will join us to share top rated gift ideas that you can shop

for this holiday season. Jen Collchrider of Mozilla Foundation's Privacy Not Included. We'll talk about their new report, which highlights gadget privacy concerns with all the smart stuff that we're buying, and Matt Swider of the shortcut dot Com we'll talk about some of the best holiday shopping strategies. I hope you had a RESTful, enjoyable, and gratitude filled Thanksgiving. I wanted to talk to you about some of my favorite

apps on my phone. I figured, since it is a holiday weekend, maybe you're doing some shopping, maybe you're doing some personalization on your phone, maybe you're getting things set up the way you want on your smartphone. Maybe you got a new smartphone already. But I figured ou'd go over some of the apps that I keep on my phone that I really like. And I'm pretty particular. I've really like apps that are cross platform, which means they work equally well on both iPhone and Android. The reason

for that is pretty simple. I don't want to be locked into any one platform. Some of these apps are only available on one platform or another, but for the majority of them, they are available on both. Some of them do require a subscription fee, others are completely free. Let's go through some of the apps that I really enjoy so and these are in no particular order, but the first app is called Artifact. Artifact and this is

a personalized news app. It's all powered by AI. It was started by some of the same folks behind Instagram, and so the idea is that it's kind of like an Instagram but for articles. So the more you look at and read different articles, the more it will serve you up similar articles. And that does work across Android and iOS. All right, so I know there's a big question about which photo storage app to use. My favorite has been for many, many years, ever since it was

Kasa back in the day, is Google Photos. I love Google Photos because it is cross platform, it works really well. It ties into my Google storage. I think that these search capabilities are unmatched on this app, So get your photos into Google Photos. My only downside is the more photos you have inside here backed up, the tougher it is to actually get them out using takeout. But I'll figure that out one of these days. Chat GBT installed on my phones. I love this AI chatbot. It is

just an impressive, impressive debut of AI. If you don't have the official chat GPT app on your phone, I highly recommend you download it. I pay for a subscription to chat GBT, which gives me access to a couple more features, but they did just make one premium feature free, and that is voice chat. So if you want to chat with an AI bot using your voice, download the chat GBT app and hit the microphone icon and you can do just that. This is a relatively new app

looking for a good read it later app. So I was using Pocket for a long time, but I just switched to this app called omnivore O m n i v ore. It is cross platform. It works a little bit better on iOS as some apps do, but this is a free, open source read it later app and I really like it because they are privacy focused. You can throw anything you want in there, whether it's a

PDF or an article. It formats it in a nice way that you can read it later, and it also has labels so you can categorize your items into labels. And I just find that I don't know, I discovered it and it's it's a pretty cool app. So omnivore for reading it later. Email me. This is a great app, and I wish, wish wish this was cross platform. This is only available on the iPhone for some reason. There is a similar app on Android, but I don't necessarily like it as much. And I haven't found one that

I like as much as this one. But email Me is just such a great app, and it's just an easy way to email yourself notes, links, anything you want.

My email inbox is kind of my to do list, like an ongoing like I'm always going to see whatever's in there, and so if I email myself an article or whatever it is, anything, I can just deal with it when I'm sitting down at my computer and I have a chance to look at my inbox and say, oh, yeah, I want to read this, or I want to act on this, or I want to do this or whatever. Telegram is my preferred chat app. We picked this a long time ago with my family, so we're all on there.

We have a nice, big group chat and I just love it because it works the same way across iPhone and Android, so no matter what phone my family members are using, we all have the same exact chat day one. I wish I use this more. This is a journaling app,

but it's just really simple. It's very clean, it's easy, and if you want to start journaling in the new year again, it's cross platform and I like that Apple is adding a journal app to their seventeen, but it's not cross platform, so anything you do in there will be stuck on iPhone forever. I like Day one because it goes with me. Libby is a great app if you haven't downloaded Libby, it is such a great resource for free books and audiobooks. I absolutely love Libby. Let's

see Opener. This is a again. This is an iOS only app. Opener is an app that lets you open up the link in the proper app. So, for instance, on iOS, everything's sort of sandboxed, and that means that if you go to a YouTube video on an app, it may just open inside a small browser inside that app. With Opener, you can actually open that up in the proper app by just pressing the share button, and then it will figure out which app it should open up in and it will do that. It's a really handy app.

I think it costs about two dollars. There's an app called What three Words. I really wish more people knew about. What three Words divides the world into small three meter by three meter squares, and each one of them has a unique three word address, which means you can tell someone where you are exactly using three words. But I find that it's very handy for directing people to a

certain entrance somewhere. So if you're meeting someone at say a big park, you know GPS is only going to get you to the park with what three words, you can show them the exact place you are at that park, whether it's a certain entrance or a certain area. It is really really handy. Whisper Memos I love this app. I have it installed on my Apple Watch. And again this is a an iOS only but it is so great. It uses AI to record and transcribe audio notes and

memos and it's just really really incredible at what it does. Again, you get some for free, but then they do charge you just a little bit. Sunshine Contacts is a great contact app. This helps you manage your contacts by automatically updating their information by looking in their signature in your email and so if they have a new phone number or something in there, it will attempt to merge all that information. It's not perfect, but it does work and

it's pretty good. I like that. Run out of time here, but Amazon Photos is great for free unlimited photo storage if you are a Prime member. Backdrops is great for wallpaper. Splice is great for video editing. Touch Retouch is great to remove unwanted objects from your photos. It is so easy. Fly fin Ai is a great app if you're a freelancer and you have expenses that you want to remember for tax time. Upside is a great app if you want to get cash back on your gas and grocery purchases.

Let's see Real Good is my preferred streaming service guide, so I use that to keep track of all the movies I want to see. Recipe Keeper is incredible. You can forward a URL to a recipe and it parses the data in that recipe and puts it in an easy to follow format and organizes it all. It is really good at what it does. Two more apps. One is called All Trails. It's great for finding hiking, walking, and running trails no matter where you are in the world.

And Flighty, which will help you get around the world. It is a great flight tracker. It's available on iOS only. It is beautifully designed. I hope they come to Android. You can find links to all of the apps I just mentioned on my website. Just go to Rich on tech dot TV. Coming up on the show, we'll talk to Matt Swider of the shortcut about holiday shopping strategies. But first it's your turn. Your calls up next. My name is rich D Muro and you are listening to

rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology at triple eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Email is also an option. You can go to the website rich on Tech dot TV. Hit contact. Let's see. Let's get to a question here. You guys send me so many questions, so let's see. Isabelle says, my daughter has a brand new Apple Watch. She does know I want to use. I would like

to use it because I think they are very nice looking. However, I have an Android cell phone. I don't care to connect it, nor do I care to switch to an Apple cell phone. My question is can I still use it? The only thing I actually want to use is the time and the watch. I only want to see the time. Is this possible, please help Isabelle. Yes, it is possible, and there is a setting for the Apple Watch. You do need an iPhone to set up an Apple Watch, but once it's set up, it will work on its own.

And I don't think you're gonna get the full benefit of having an Apple Watch. But if you just want the time, like you're saying, then sup. You can absolutely do this and it will do some other basic things as well. Now, I do think you're gonna need to set up an iCloud account to do this, so if you don't have that, it's free, you can do that. But the feature is called family setup, and you actually

need to use your daughter's iPhone to do this. So once you reset the Apple Watch, go into settings and factory reset it. That'll bring it to like a fresh start. Use your phone, your daughter's iPhone to set up the Apple Watch, and it will say are you setting this

up for yourself or a family member? And you are the family member, so say yes, I'm setting this up for a family member, and it will guide you through the process of setting up that phone for you and not her phone, so all of your stuff will be just on the watch. It will be separate from anything that she has on her account. But like I said, you will need to log in with your own iCloud account just so that Apple can keep track of everything and make sure that you've got your own account on there.

So you can set that up for free during the setup time, and if you just want to use the time and the watch, that's fine, but you can use other features. I mean, you could use like you know, the Stopwatch, the calendar. My kids have Apple Watches and they use them independent of a phone, and they do a whole bunch of stuff. They've even downloaded little games on there. So there are definitely things you can do on the Apple Watch even if you don't have an iPhone.

And this is because a lot of people use these for their kids or even adults that you know may have a disability or something like that. You want to be able to keep track of them or have this watch on their wrist. But they're not necessarily using an iPhone. So there are many many reasons why you might want to set this up this way, but it can be done very easily. A good question Isabelle, thanks so much

for writing. Let's see. Rob from Los Angeles says, Hey, Rich, I follow you on social media and your podcast, and I think you're pretty funny and informative. Oh well, thank you, Rob. I have a question about two factor authentication apps. I use two fa open source app and Microsoft Authenticator app. On my accounts. What if I want to stop using

Microsoft Authenticator and switch to the two FA app? Will that create conflict since my accounts were accepting codes generated by the app the Microsoft app before, or do I have to stick with the same authenticator app once I attach the account to one app. Please explain. Thanks in advance. Rob in Los Angeles, Rob, great question. Now it's interesting because I don't talk about the two factor authentication apps too much, but I think they are very, very important.

And if you've heard of me talk about securing your online accounts, there are two ways you do that. Number one very strong password, unique password for every account, and then the second way is with a two factor authentication enabled on your account. And there are two ways of doing that. And this is why it gets a little bit complicated. And I don't want to I don't want people to be detracted from doing this right like I want them to do this. So I want to make

it as simple as possible. And the simplest way to do two factor authentication is with the text message code. And so you put in your phone number on something like Instagram and it says, hey, we're going to text you every time you try to log in. If you don't give us that secret code that we text you,

we're not going to allow this log in to happen. Well, the problem is that the cell phones and phone numbers are a little bit easier hacked than we'd like, and so some people could get a hold of your cell phone number or intercept that code and hack you still even if you have two factor on, but it's still a very good way to protect your account in most,

like ninety nine percent of cases. But if you really want to be safe and secure, what you want to do is use one of these two factor authentication apps. And what these apps do is they generate a unique code every thirty seconds or so, and when you want to log in, you just go to this app and you check out the code and you just type it in and again that's the second factor. The first is you logging into the account. The second is this app that is generating a code. Now, the app is nice

because it is independent of your phone number. So if you switch phone lines, if you get a different carrier, if you get rid of your phone number altogether, you don't lose those ways to log into your account because you can no longer access those codes. You can get them on this app no matter what service you're using. So that's why I like to use this service whenever possible. And there are apps called Authie, there are Google Authenticator,

there's Microsoft Authenticator. There are several of these authentication apps out there. You just have to pick one that you like. I would personally say pick one that does not have any any sort of cost because you don't want to be paying for this down the line over time. So

the question rob is can you switch apps? And I had to do some research on this one, but I looked up on Wired had an article about this, and it's funny because I've been not wanting to switch because it is a time consuming process, but it can be done. And so, as I suspected, you basically have to disable the two factor authentication temporarily and then re enable it

using the new app. And the way that you do that is, once you enable it, typically you just scan a QR code on your screen to enable this two factor authentication. It links up and then all of your codes are right on that app. So, for instance, I use an app and I've got all of my codes on here for Twitter, I've got it for my Facebook I've got it for my website at work, I've got it for my Instagram, And so, of course the number one thing you're thinking is, well, what if someone hacks

that app? Yeah, you've got to be careful. And this is why you have to have password on your phone or face ID or a fingerprint scanner, and there is a log in for that app as well. So again, all of these things do require a little bit of planning, a little bit of kind of just setting things up so that they work. And I know people get very hesitant to set this stuff up because it sounds so complicated and it feels like you're never gonna be able

to get into your logins when you need to. But believe me, I will tell you I get emails every single day, every single day from people that get hacked on Facebook, on Instagram, on their email. And when you do that, there is no guarantee that you're getting that

account back. And I have people that are saying, rich, I have my photos on there, I have my emails, I have all kinds of personal data that I will never be able to get back, And I say, you know what, I'm sorry, but the reality is you have to lock down these accounts, and most people just don't want to and if you don't, you will be hacked telling you that because it's not not like they're they're targeting you, they are just coming after a lot of people.

Rich on Tech is my website, rich on tech dot tv. Go ahead, check me out on Instagram at rich on tech. Earlier, we had a question about running an older software operating system on a computer and I found a good website, end of life dot Date. And this has the end of life dates for every platform you could ever imagine, the iPhone, the iPad iOS, iPadOS, macOS, Windows. I mean, this is pretty thorough. So someone clearly does their homework

with this website end of life dot date. And so if you look at Apple macOS, it says all the different releases you got Sonoma, Ventura, Monterey, Big Sur and Catalina, and it tells you the service status, if it's still being serviced, and when it got its latest software update. So if you look at this, macOS eleven, twelve, thirteen, and fourteen are still all getting software updates. And Big Sir was so released two years and eleven months ago.

Service status yes, latest update was September eleventh. Then September twenty first for the Quanarey, Ventura, Sonoma. So anyway, great website to see if the software you want to run is still being secure, supported with active security updates. Triple eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Give me a call. Do you have a question about technology? My name is rich Dmiro and you are listening to rich on Tech.

Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you talking technology at Triple eight rich one oh one.

you know, been lower before. I use that a lot, but a lot of price tracking tools on Twitter, that's what I use. I use a discord and I have like things pinging me, so I take that information from a discord where it's automatically tracking the prices and putting it out on Twitter and sending people notifications.

commerce revenue. Well, that really helps out a lot of people because they'll they'll always tell you the lowest price.

You've never heard of it before, but at least there's some sort of testimonial there.

be cheaper in the store for some reason. Usually they're pretty good at keeping parody with you know, in store prices and online prices, but if it happens to be cheaper in the store, then you can just cancel that order when you get there and pick it up for a store price, So you know, you get in the best of both worlds by shopping that way.

to one hundred dollars a year. They used to be one hundred dollars a year, but they dropped down fifty for the time being, and they were, you know, locking really key deals. And they're continuing to do that at least for three hours during the Black Friday push. So they're saying, okay, we're not making a lot of money off of electronics. At least we're making fifty dollars ahead

off of each household. So that is a tactic that consumers don't love, but they in the end do love the benefits because fifty dollars a year for something that's equivalent to Amazon Prime is a pretty good deal.

always alternatives out there. And that's my you know, big suggestion for people is you know there's there's something to you know, put under the tree or to to you know, a gift to give somebody, because there are a lot of options out there when it comes to technology that you know, even if you can't find that perfect gift, there's there's something out there to you know, fulfill that wish list.

multiple SIMS on your phone. You can have a bunch of them. I had I think like two or three on my phone at one time, and you can activate them, you can deactivate them, you can keep going on there for a long time and just activate it when you go to a different country. But the way you install it is you just you know, let's say you have one of your main carriers here, that's you know, Verizon, T Mobile, any you know, Mint Mobile, whatever it is.

You've got your main SIM, and then you can add a secondary SIM, and that secondary SIM could be an international SIM, it could be even a secondary cellular line here in America. So let's say you wanted one SIM for your phone calls and one for your data, or even two for your data. You can set that up,

so it's really unlimited what you can do. But the way it works overseas, in particular, what I do is I typically turn off my main SIM and then flip on the international SIM and then that way I can still use my data through the international SIM and not pay the roaming charges. And there's a lot of different ways to do this, but that's kind of generally how

it works. If you're traveling internationally to a different country, you can pick up a local eSIM there, or you can use one of these companies that lets you activate an eSIM right from your phone. So the one I always talk about is airlow US Mobile also has one, but there are many many different companies that do this, And so if you just look up e SIM for the country you want to go to, you can do that and set it up very easily here in the States before you leave. But I think that it's a

very simple system. The only place where it gets a little complicated is if you want to continue. Most of these eSIMs are data only, but that's also changing, so the eSIM that you get for overseas might just candle data and not calls. But that makes sense because you don't want to give someone a different phone number just when you're overseas. They just want to call your regular phone number. So in that case, I recommend that you turn on your Rome. You're not your roaming but your

Wi Fi calling. Jony on Twitter at rich on Tech or x I should say, says, is there any way to take low resolution photos on the new iPhone? Those three point eight megapixel photos eat up storage and I don't always need the high res thanks rich on Tech. Well,

the photos aren't three point eight megapixels. I think the storage space is three point eight And yes, on the new iPhone, the default megapixels is twenty four now, which is amazing because you're getting so much more data on your photos, which means you can zoom in, you can crop, you just have a lot more flexibility with the amount of data these photos carry because they are twenty four

megapixels by default. If you don't want them to be twenty four megapixels, if you want to go back to twelve, you can. You go to settings, you go to camera, and you go to formats and then inside there it says photo capture photo mode twenty four megapixels. You tap there and you can tap twelve and you can take your twelve megapixel photos just like before. According to Apple, a twelve megapixel photo will be about two megabytes, a

twenty four megapixel photo will be about three megabytes. But like you said, Jony, it's probably closer to about three point eight. Let me see on my phone here what my latest picture is. So if I just pick one of these photos here and uh, let's see this photo is oh five point eight mega five point eight megabytes. Wow, So Apple, Apple's really being conservative in their estimates. But again with today's storage on the phones, I would say

take the bigger photos. But if you don't need to need that, just go ahead and you can change that in the settings. Let's go to Tatiana in Banning, California, Line one, Tatiana your own with Wretch.

I have either to unblock or to switch to Prime membership and I already have Prime membership and I keep telling them sort of, and they said, report the issue if it's not correct, and I keep reporting that, Hello, I am a pro, I have Prime membership, and you keep blocking me because sometimes they block block and yesterday I was not able to watch YouTube at all. And not that I you know, but the point is that

why should I? You know, I have my Prime membership and the worst thing is to reach anybody on YouTube by a phone is not possible. They offer you chat, and the chat, you know, I tell him, Okay, I have Prime membership. Why you are you want me to switch to Prime if I already have fun and you are blocking me? And she says you have to remove ad blocks, but okay, I show them up.

They have changed the name to YouTube Premium. And the way that you can check if you have YouTube Premium, if you are paying, I believe I pay twenty two to ninety nine a month. I don't know how much. I think it's fifteen ninety nine a month for the standard I've got the family plan. But let's see the standard plan individuals. Yeah, thirteen ninety nine a month. Family

is twenty two ninety nine a month. So you can check to see if you are on a YouTube Premium plan which gives you YouTube and YouTube music ad free offline and in the background. You can go to YouTube dot com slash premium and when I go to that page, it says you have YouTube Premium managed. So that's the first thing, Tatiana. If you don't see that when you go to that website, you don't have YouTube Premium. Now.

The second way to check is to go to YouTube dot com and in the left hand corner, in the upper left corner, your YouTube icon changes from YouTube to a little icon of the YouTube screen and it says premium. So that's number one. We just need to make sure that you're actually referring to what you have. If you have Amazon Prime, that does not give you access to YouTube Premium. Now the second part of what you're talking about,

the ad blocker. YouTube has been cracking down on people using ad blockers to get rid of ads on YouTube. Why because YouTube and Google make a whole lot of money on serving up ads during YouTube videos, and in the past people were able to get around some of those ads by putting an ad blocker on on their computer. Well, YouTube does not like that, so they are cracking down, not on everyone, not in every instance, not on every time, but they are cracking down on some of the use

of ad blockers on YouTube. So if you do have an ad blocker on your system and you're trying to access YouTube, you will have to pause that ad blocker, and you can do that by tapping your ad blocker, and usually you can you can what's called allow list the website, so you can say, do not use this ad blocker on the YouTube dot com website because it will not function properly. And in general, if you're using an ad blocker on your computer, you can disable that

for a website. If a website you visit is not working or it feels a little wonky, then it's probably your AD blocker that is interfering. Thanks for the call today, Tatiana. You are listening to Rich on Tech. Give me a call. It's triple a Richt to Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology. This is the show where I talk about the tech stuff that I think you should know about. It's also the place where I answer your questions. And that's exactly what

I'm gonna do. Right now. You can go to the website rich on Tech dot tv, hit the link that says contact and send me your question. And that's exactly what Sierra did. Sierra says, Hey, Rich love your tech shows. I listen to you every week for important tech updates. My question is what browser do you prefer? Chrome, Safari, Firefox, et cetera. And why. Thanks for all that you do. Well, I will tell you that Chrome is my preferred web browser and that is because of several reasons. Number one,

I like how it integrates with Google products. I like the extensions that you can get for it. And it was very slow for a while. I think that Google was very aware of that, especially on the Mac side of things, it consumed a lot of resources. It still kind of does, but I think it has gotten better, maybe through a combination of some software updates and a better computer that I have. But I like Chrome because it's what I'm used to and it's what works for me.

I also like, like I said, the extensions that are available for it. I personally would recommend that you block your third party cookies if you are using Chrome. That way, your browsing history is not passed along to different websites, or at least it's a little more private as far as I can tell.

But it's funny because Chrome pretty much does the same thing. But since I use more Google products, it doesn't bother me as much. So the browser that you want to use, I think really comes down to personal preference, and any of them are good. I think that the main thing to know is just be aware of the privacy setting and tweak those so that you are protecting your privacy as you browse the web. Thanks for the question, Sierra. Up next is Ed. Ed says, great show as usual.

My question is on my Gmail app on iPad, when I swipe left, it goes to archive. I want to swipe left to delete. Please help me with that. Also, how do I access my archive to get rid of those archived files? Well, first off, Ed, you can easily switch this. In fact, this is one of the first things I do anytime I set up a new phone. By default, Gmail has certain swipes that I don't like, so I like to swipe right to delete in my Gmail and I like to swipe left to archive because

it just seems right to me. If I swipe right, I'm trashing something. If I'm swiping left, I'm archiving it, and that means I'm saving it for later. So to do this, you open up your Gmail app on your iPad or on your phone. You tap the menu, which are the three lines in the upper left hand corner. Then you scroll to settings and that's all the way down,

and then you go to inbox customizations. Now this is a little bit different on Android versus iOS, but it's very similar and you can do both the same things. Tap inbox customizations and you will see mail swipe actions and it says swipe right, swipe left, and you can decide what those do. Now, for your second question, how do I see all those archived files? Go back into that original menu that I mentioned, and you will see an item or a label I should say that says

all mail. All mail is all of your mail. So when you archive something in Gmail, you're actually just marking it with a label that does not keep it in the main inbox. Because the way that Gmail works, just think of it as one ongoing list of all of your messages. Some of them are visible, some are not. Great question there, let's go to the next question. Ron says, Hey, Rich, I'm wondering how my wife has been spying on my text messages. I've found some of them printed out on paper.

I've also seen she's printed out messages from someone else's phone. Also, how is she able to do this from her phone? Thanks for your help, well, Ron, barring any conspiracy theory or magical powers that your wife has, I think that you are logged in using the same iCloud account, and a lot of times families do this on their phones where they have one log in to make things easy, but then the text messages and the settings carry over

to all the different devices. So I'm assuming that your wife somehow has access to your text messages based on the same iCloud account and the other person's phone. I'm guessing that's another family member. So if you don't want this to happen, then I would create your own unique iCloud account. You could still be on a family account and still share a lot of the resources on your iCloud, but if you want your own private iCloud account, you do need to log in and create your own account.

Next up, Data says, when I go to Disneyland, my iPhone fourteen pro dies after sending photos, et cetera. What is the strongest charger, phone bank or what else would work best? Thank you and happy holidays. Great question, Data. I always bring a portable battery with me when I go to a place like Disneyland. And here's the reason

why it's dying so quickly. It's because you're using your phone more and a combination of the cellular signal and the videos you're taking, all of these things are adding up to just really tax the battery on your phone. So you're taking more pictures, you're taking more videos, and if your phone is set to back up those pictures and videos, that is using a lot of charge from your battery. Couple of recommendations. There are three types of

chargers you can get. One is a mag safe, one is a plug, and one is a sort of a portable battery pack that has a built in connector. So for the recommendations here, I like the Anchor nano power bank with a built in connector. That's a small battery though it's only five thousand millionamp hours. That's basically going to give you about one charge but the nice thing is it's small and it plugs right into the bottom

of your phone. Second one is an anchor power bank twenty thousand millionamp portable charger, and this you can use with USBC. Make sure you find one that has USB C in and out. That's going to give you the fastest charge both ways, and you will need to bring your own cable with this style portable charger. And then finally you have a BLKAN wireless power bank with MagSafe. This is going to magnetically attached to the back of

your phone and charge it that way. I don't know what the millionamp hours is on this, but it's pretty low. But you can get them in different levels. You know, depending on how thick it is, it's going to give you a bigger charge. The downside to the mag safe is that it's going to be the slowest charge out of all of these different methods. But definitely get one of these, get them while they're on sale over the Black Friday Cyber Monday shopping season, and just always keep

it charged up and with you. Sharon writes in can you recommend a photostick flash drive? Thank you? Lots of questions about pictures people love to take them, so I get this question over and over and over. And while I don't necessarily love a flash drive for backing up my photos, it is an alternative to just backing up to the cloud. Personally, I think you should have your photos in the cloud and in a secondary place as well, in addition to your phone. So what does that mean.

You can use something like iCloud and also Amazon Photos. If you're a Prime member, you can get unlimited backup there, but you also want to have your photos in two places at once in addition to your phone, so one of these flash drives can work as well. I don't think it'd be best to have them only on a flash drive. But the brand I like, sand Disc I Expand. So the I Expand has various models Summer Lightning, some are USBC depending on the phoney have you plug it

into the bottom of your phone. It brings up the app and you can do a complete backup of your photos and videos, So make sure you get the one that's right for your phone. Pn Y also makes a model that is similar. I think that the software that sand Disc has is just slightly better. It works a little bit better for me in my testing. All right, coming up next, we've got more of your calls at triple eight Rich one oh one. That's eighty eight seven

four to two, four to one zero one. My name is Rich d'miro and you are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here talking technology with you at triple eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Free call from anywhere inside the US. Marvin in Denver, Colorado. Marvin, you're on with Rich Hi.

are on there. And the app, by the way, is called collect c l l X. This was invented by a New Jersey dad and his son. You're right. His name is Ted Man. We did a segment with him both on tea and on the radio.

bucks worth of cards on the app. And of course you can use the app to connect with other collectors, buy, sell, and trade cards, and there's a whole bunch of stuff. This thing has just taken on a life of its own. I think they added some new AI features as well. But again, the app is called Collex co l l X dot app and Tedman is on there. He's the founder, like you said, and you can email him through the

website as well. But the reason why you couldn't find it on my website is because baseball was not in the description. I wrote it down as it says Tedman, creator of the Collex app which lets you scan your sports card collection. So I should have said I should have said, I mean including baseball cards because I figured. And by the way, that show was on February eleventh, twenty twenty three. That was the sixth episode of the radio show. So good memory, thanks for calling, appreciate that,

and good luck scanning your cards. Let's go to Melody in Carlsbad. Melody You're on with Rich.

So then I ignored the email. A few days ago, I get an email from an unknown person advising me that my account has been restored or renewed and for a charge of I think it was like two hundred bucks one nine. Well, I I didn't do anything, you know, I have taken any action on that.

out there. One involves a Geek Squad, the other involves Norton Anti virus, And so it happens exactly like you're saying you get an email that says, here's an invoice for your geek Squad service renewal and it's some ungodly amount, you know, three hundred ninety eight dollars for the year, two hundred ninety eight dollars, whatever it is, and it says this will be charged, you know, in the next week unless you call this number. And so we call

this number. I'm actually looking at one right now. Okay. It says geek Squad protect your tech, It's time for renewal order ID product, geek Squad five year personal home membership customer information. It has all your data on there, including your name and your email address, and it says we're ready to help whenever you need us, call us

at this phone number. And so what's happening is they want you to see this email and say, wait a second, I didn't subscribe to geek Squad, and you call that number, and that's when the actual scam takes place, because you think that you're confirming your credit card number or getting this charge reversed, and they're actually collecting that information from you. This has nothing to do with the geek Squad. They're just using the geek Squad's good name to get your

information and to try to charge you. So, Melody, I know this is happening to you, and you're getting these letters in the mail and these emails, and you know could even be a phone call. But the best thing you can do is, like you said, monitor your credit card for any real charges that may come about, which there's probably not going to be any, and just keep deleting these emails, don't don't unsubscribe to them, don't call the phone number that's inside these emails. This is something

that I'm seeing on a daily basis. I'm getting these emails and so it's coming. Like I said, the Geek Squad and Norton are two of the biggest because those are two of the biggest brand names out there. So that's what's happening, Melody, you could safely ignore them. I'm glad you brought it up so that people can't avoid this. Thanks so much for the call today. Triple eight Rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Mark is in one NETCA, California.

now I can't get rid of them. They won't delete. They won't even move off of the position that they're in. I might be able to move around a little bit, but it will not delete. It will not allow me to watch it and then get rid of it. And it's bad enough with YouTube not let me on talking about malware bites. They won't even allow mailware bites. So I'm kind of at a what kind of computer is this laptop? That's you know, Windows?

because you're saying that this is not working. So the second way to try to get rid of these URLs on your desktop is to select one and then press shift and the delete key at the same time. So shift and delete to get rid of this. And it says I'm trying this right now. It says, are you sure you want to permanently delete this item? I press yes, and my computer is saying access denied. And so this

may be what you're coming up against. You may need to log in as an administrator to do this because sometimes it does try to protect you from certain operations on your computer that could have negative effects. Welcome back to Rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology. Welcoming back to the show. Jen Calltrider with the Mozilla Foundation, lead researcher at Privacy Not Included. Jen, thanks so much for joining me again.

data they collect. So they're they're pretty bad. We saw Xbox this year gets our privacy not included ding. They got fined big by the FTC this year because they violated the children's privacy laws and that's that's not good. And then we see, you know, the standards, the usuals that that that aren't great. You've got some kids toys on there that raise eyebrows. Smart watches for kids are

something that we especially looked at and have some concerns with. Yeah, so lots of products that raise eyebrows, but there are a few good ones.

is being collected on my kid. You know, did I consent to have that data being used for personalization or advertising?

We came across two different smart watches for kids. One just flat out didn't have a privacy policy for the device the app that the collects your GPS location as cameras, microphones, sensors, and the other one had a barely a privacy policy that super vague buried in the terms and conditions. And you know, a privy policy is what a company uses to say how they're going to collect your data, how they're going to use it, what controls you have over it.

And the fact that we're finding devices that are so invasive they're basically surveillance devices that don't have privacy policies at all, shows that these companies are sketchy at best and potentially really dangerous at worst.

It's marketed as a toy for your kids to help them learn emotional intelligence and build relationships. But buried in the privacy policy they say, oh, teach your kids never to share personal information, and those things seem contradictory. And so that's the kind of stuff that we see that we would like parents to be wario. You know, there's some good products out there, you know, the Tamagatchi Uni or the Doggie that are still kind of fun interactive toys.

There's some coding kids that are fun interactive toys that just don't collect a lot of personal information. And that's the way I would go if I were a parent.

why does those need to collect that data? But then they go on and say that they could possibly sell that data linked to potentially your email, and again it's like, why do my headphones need to do that? They didn't do that a few years ago, and now they're doing that, And that's just kind of the slow creep of more technology, more sensors, more data being collected from all our connected stuff, even our headphones, and then it's how can we make money off that? How can we you know, sell that

or share that for advertising or more. And so that's what worries is we're seeing more and more of that from companies that used to actually be pretty good. The other thing that we're seeing that that's worrisome is some of the good guys fit Bit and i Robot. I Robot's been one of the best companies we've reviewed for privacy for a long time. They were on our best

ult list. They're in the process of being bought by Amazon, and so you have a company that's good at privacy being bought by a company that's not good at privacy.

And your data is a business asset that will transfer, and so that's a concern that got bought up by Google a couple of years ago, and you're seeing that marriage get closer and closer where you know now you'll need a Google account to sign up for a new fit that income, and you know that means your data is going to start going to Google, and Google likes data.

bad things. Maybe I'll just take a peek at this privacy policy. They aren't completely horrible. You can determine what data is being collected. You can do a search for the word sell and see if your data is going to be sold. Things like that. But really, I just think sitting down and having a risk asseetment prossessment. I have good products, you know, I have an Amazon Kindle. You know, I'll bash Amazon for being bad at privacy, which they are, But do I really care if Amazon

knows what books I read? I can live with that.

So does it really all just come down to money?

do I revoke my consent to this? Can I get my data deleted? Because they're going to keep doing it, that's not going to change, And unfortunately the onus is on us to protect ourselves. So it should be we need stronger federal privacy laws. We don't have federal privacy laws here in the country. I mean, we have child one and a healthcare and we don't have a consumer and we need that and people should start demanding.

this Nintendo game. This is the first two D side scrolling Mario Brothers game in over ten years. This launched for the Nintendo Switch. Mentioned it on the show last weekend, but I hadn't had a chance to play it just yet, and boy, when I got a chance to play it, it was fun. My nine year old and I were fighting over who got to play it next, because it was just It's one of those games that you just pick up and there's almost no learning curve, right, you

just know how to play instinctive. So if you played the original Mario Brothers, or if you're looking for a gift this holiday season, or no matter what you're celebrating, people are going to be getting this as a gift. The kids are going to start playing it, and the parents or the adults are going to, wait a second, I want to play that because it just looks fun

and it looks easy. I don't know if you've tried to play one of these video games these days, but you know there's like fifteen different controller settings, fifteen different buttons on that thing. And it's not for the faint of heart. Like you need to know how to play video games for most of today's games, this one you

do not. It's got fun power ups like elephant fruit, which turns Mario into an elephant with like a horn or what do they call it, not a horn, elephant nose, like a long elephant nose, a trunk, Thank you, Bobo. Then they've got these wonder flowers that trigger effects. Now I don't know what these designers over in Japan. We're enjoying while they made this game. But those wonderflowers are a little you know. I guess all video games are

kind of weird like that, right. There's up to four players locally and twelve players online, so that's kind of fun. The game is sixty dollars and this is gosh. It's been thirty years since the launch of the original Super Mario Brothers game on nes want to date yourself, There you go, thirty years. So again, Super Mario Brothers. Wonder. If you're looking for a gift this holiday season, I'm

telling you this is the one to get. Kids will love it, adults will love it, and I think you're gonna have fun playing this game, so I am, that's for sure. Mike wrote in on the website. I have a set of bows Q forty five quiet comfort noise canceling headphones. I'm having connectivity issues with my Samsung S ten smartphone. I'm trying to connect with Bluetooth. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. On my phone. All my echo dots show up in the list, even my TV, but

not my headphones. Last night it played somehow, even though it never came up in the list. Out of curiosity, I closed all the apps and it was still playing help me please in bold letters, Mike, I think you need to do what's called a network settings reset on this Samsung Galaxy S ten smartphone. It's an older phone, so you've probably connected things over the years to it and something just doesn't seem to be playing right. So what I'd recommend is doing what's called a network settings reset.

So you want to go into your Samsung phone, you want to go into your settings. You swipe down from the top. There's a little gear icon in the upper right hand corner. You tap that and then you'll be into your settings. Now, you scroll all the way down until it says general Management, and then you scroll all the way down again until it says reset. Now. I know it's scary because it says reset, so you probably didn't want to click that. But you can tap reset

and then you get a bunch of reset options. Or you can do reset network settings and that will reset the Wi Fi, the mobile data, and the Bluetooth. That's the one I think you should tap. And so once you tap that, it will clear out all the Bluetooth devices, all the Wi Fi devices, all the connect devices on that phone. Then I would go in and I would repair the bow's headphones, and I think your connectivity issues

will hopefully be solved. Mary Jane in Fallbrook, California. You're on with rich Oh, thank.

I don't know what security code it's not. Well, I'm confused. I just don't know what to do.

so that's what I believe is happening here. That is the code. So whatever you type in and don't say it on air, but whatever you type in on your old phone, that's what you do. That's the code that you put in on the new phone. So typically throughout the little process of transferring all the data, it will say, please enter the security code or the pin code from your previous device, and so that's the code that you type in, and that will help the new phone gather

the old data. So that's what I believe you could do. So, Mary Jean, thanks so much for calling today. I hope that that helps you figure it out. Let's go to John in more Park, California. John, you're on with Rich.

using the iPhone, iCloud keychain will generate strong passwords. If you're using an iPhone, you've probably seen this pop up on your phone where it says it literally puts like an email or a password in the box, like it's like this long character and you just have to tap to accept it. But iCloud keychain. If he's already using iPhone, I think is going to be the simplest way to do it. Now, when you're using more devices than just the iPhone, I think it gets a little bit more complicated.

Then I would recommend something like bitwarden, b it wr d n Bitwarden. And what bitwarden does is it will generate a password, but you have to set it all up. You need to create an account, you need to set it up and make sure that the iPhone knows that that's what you want to use to fill on the accounts. That's a good way to go. If you're a big Google user, a Google Chrome on the iPhone and Google Chrome on the desktop, I would check out Google password manager,

so they have one built in. You can go to passwords dot Google dot com. And Google just recently upgraded this password manager so that works even better on the iPhone. It used to be kind of not so easy, but now it actually will fill in passwords across all devices

on the iPhone. And by the way, to check out how you're using the password manager on your iPhone, you go to settings and let's see, you go to passwords and it's going to authorize you and then you can see all the passwords that your iPhone has selected and kept inside there. I've got a list of a couple of them. But then if you go into password options, now you can specify how you want to save and

also fill passwords on the iPhone. But that's what you want to do is set up I personally always appreciate third party products for everything, but John in your friend's case, since he's just or they're just using an iPhone, I think the iCloud keychain is probably gonna be the easiest. But keep in mind it is linked to your iCloud account, so if you forget your iCloud password, or if you can't get into your iCloud account, we're gonna have a lot of problems with all the other passports be able

to get into those either. Rich on Tech dot tv is the website. If you want to contact the show, send your email there eighty eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero. And we still got lots more of the show, lots more questions, lots more things to talk about. You're listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you talking technology. Some of you have discovered on the website at richontech dot

TV that there is a microphone icon. You click the icon and you can leave a voicemail for the show. So I figured in this segment we would check the voicemail, and let's start with David.

of all of them. So again, if you have a strong cellular signal to your home, this might be a good alternative to a wired internet connection that you might get from, like I said, your cable company or your traditional phone company.

plug it in near your window. It pulls in that cellular connection and then it spits it out as Wi Fi and then your devices would connect to that. So I think the connection through your wired internet is going to be faster, but I think the price is going to be better for this home internet situation. So you're going to get unlimited data from most of these companies. T Mobile right now is charging anywhere from thirty to fifty dollars, Verizon sixty to eighty dollars, AT and T

fifty five dollars. Those prices do not include discounts for customers. Also, keep in mind if you're eligible for the Affordable Connectivity Program, these home internet services are eligible. That's a thirty dollars a month discount if you have something like Snap or you're on Medicaid. But like anything else, I predict the prices of these services will go up as more people get them. Right now, this is a very new thing. They've only been around for a couple of years now.

I did have the chance to test out Verizons five G Home Internet and it was great. I tested out in various locations. The main thing is that if you have a good signal, you're gonna have a good Internet connection. Now, if you're doing a lot on your Internet at home, like if you're constantly exchanging large files, like if you're a video editor or something like that, I probably wouldn't

recommend this. But if you're just doing typical day to day stuff like streaming Netflix and you know, doing your email, the stuff you typically do on your smartphone, if it works well on your smartphone, it's probably gonna work well on the five G home Internet.

there's a couple of ways you can do this. You can say, hey G, be my German translator, or hey G, help me speak Spanish. Replace the G with Google of course, and then that translated conversation will be displayed on the phone screen and also the device will speak it. Google supports forty four languages for this. Now, if you want to do another version of this, if you download the

Google Translate app. Typically, when you use the app, you can just hit the big microphone icon and you can say something in your language and it will translate it into another language. But there's another icon in the lower left hand corner that says conversation And now if you put that on, it will listen to what you're saying and put your side of the conversation in your language, and then in real time translate that to the other side. And if you tap auto, this will make it so

it's listening for both languages. So when you speak in your language, it will translate it to the other language, and when they speak in their language, it will translate it to your language. By the way, Apple has a translate app as well, so if you don't want to download a new app on the iPhone, you can just search for the translate app and it has similar features. All right, Next up, let's go to Jim.

And I always look at the back of the cards when we get them over the holidays to see where people order their cards, and Minted is very popular. Shutterfly obviously very popular. The other place people get them is through the local drugstore, so a Walgreens, a CVS, a Target. I think it comes down to how much you want to spend, how fast you want to get them. But

I will give you my tips. Number One, I always order these on Cyber Monday because I do believe that they have the best price of the year on Cyber Monday, no matter where you get them, So get those pictures ready because you only have a day or two to get those ready for Cyber Monday. Also, I never pay for the faster shipping at the end of your order. When you're all said and done, they're like, Oh, and by the way, do you want to wait like six weeks to get these or do you want them in

two days? Of course, the temptation is to upgrade and pay a little bit more for that peace of mind that you're going to get them in time to send them out for the holidays. But I've never done that, and they always arrive faster than I think. Of course, because I'm telling you this, this is the year that that won't happen. But it's always worked out for me. I guess the only thing you have to figure out is if you want to include a little personal note

with every picture. Next up in the voicemails, Josie, what is.

Do the same thing on your web browser. Get rid of any extensions you don't use now when it comes to programs that are free, A lot of people like a program named bleach bit b l e ah bit and that will clean your system and free up disc space. Another very popular program is C Cleaner C Cleaner and that will speed up your PC. It won't do everything for free, it will basically just help speed up your computer.

You can pay for more features after that. And if you're on the Mac side of things, the only thing that I use is called clean my Mac, and I don't believe it's completely free, but I do think they have a free level of certain features that you can use. Let's get to our last voicemail right now from Melissa Hi Rich.

I answer your questions. My name is rich Demiro. You can find me on social media at rich on Tech. I'm on Instagram, Facebook X sometimes threads, mostly on Instagram Stories. That's really where I put a lot on my effort. But I realized it's funny. I've realized with Instagram Stories, you can't share my stories. So I share a lot of like useful information and it's great if you're a follower of mine, but if you're a follower, you can't

share that out to other people. And so I've started to actually share stuff that I wouldn't typically share in the feed, like in the regular feed. I always thought that was just for like pictures and videos, but now I'm doing like tech stuff because you can actually share that information. So if you see something useful that I share, you can send it off to your friends on your stories, Whereas if I share that on my stories, you can't do that, so it's a small little change. But if

you do follow me on Instagram. That is the reasoning behind why I'm starting to share more of my stuff on the main feed, because it just makes it easier. You can also listen to this show as a podcast. Be sure to subscribe. Just go to rich on tech dot tv click the podcast icon so show notes and links to everything I mentioned. You can also just search rich on tech in your favorite audio app. Of course, you can listen right here as well. Let's go to Linda.

Linda is in Anaheim. Linda, you're on with Rich.

what's happening. And so when you have a bunch of people in that group text, your ear is hitting that button and it's starting, it's initiating that call. So that's one theory. Another way you can start these calls is when you're in a text, if you tap the people up at the top, there's like a little kind of like an info area where it says you can call them, you can video chat them, you can mail them. So that could be another way that that is getting activated,

and that's up at the top. So those are the two ways I think it's being initiated. If you don't want to use FaceTime and you don't want this to happen, you know, you can also set the autolock on your phone to be to be less of a time so it will lock quicker. You can also turn off FaceTime completely if you want, and you can turn off FaceTime by going into settings and then FaceTime and you can

turn it off now. Of course that's going to make it so that you can't use FaceTime until you turn it back on eighty eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Blue Green sent me a DM on Instagram at rich On Tech and it was a scammer impersonating Sandra Bullock. And he said, Uh, why is this person trying so hard to meet me? What happens if I chat with them? Curious if they tried chatting with you? And what happens

if you talk to them? And good question number one. I don't think you should engage with these people, these scam artists that you know they're impersonating someone else on Instagram, Facebook, whatever. But the bottom line is they are going to try to scam you. So I did this the other day a guy I know, he was you know, they set up a bogus account that looked just like his, grabbed his pictures and then he started chatting with me, and so of course I'm just curious. So I chatted with him.

I said, Hey, how you doing, what's going on? I missed you at the last Apple event, you know, bl blah, blah blah, knowing he wasn't even there, and the person's like, oh yeah, house work. And you know, we talked a little little niceties back and forth, and I kept trying to drop little things that I know only this person would know, the real person, that this scam artist wouldn't, but he kept ignoring those parts of the questioning anyway, Finally,

what did he get to? Hey, I've been really getting into crypto, and you know, I think that it would be great for you to do this. And what do they want you to do? They want you to download some app, they want you to transfer some money. They want to scam you. Be careful, be aware. And it looks like someone you know, they're not asking for help, They're not, you know, just be aware. Let's go to Vanessa. Vanessa in Great Falls. You're on with rich I should say Great Falls Montana.

kids to do on there. So in most cases, and it's been a bit since I set these up for my kids, but I believe that you put in kind of like the age of your child that's accessing it, and it will kind of, you know, it'll set some defaults like here's the stuff will allow, here's the stuff we won't allow. But then you can also go further and you could say, let's say they like a certain website like PBS kids or something. You can allow that

specifically on the list of websites. But it also gives you a rundown of what they search online if you choose to allow that, or you can of course block searches. You can limit the time that they spend on these different apps and things, and of course just make it so they can't install anything new. But that's really what it starts with, is this Microsoft Family Safety is getting

that installed, setting it up. You may have to create an account for the child, but once you get that on there, you know you're in control now for the most part, because sometimes it can be a little tricky and be a little frustrating because once you set this up, there may be something the child wants to do on there where they can't easily do it because it has

all these restrictions in place. But no matter what, if you are setting up I know there's a lot of parents that sort of give up on this stuff because it can be a little complicated to get set up, and so they say, you know what, nevermind, I'll just hand them the tablet or the phone or their laptop. But please do not do that because there is just too much that they can happen upon if you don't

have these things locked down. And I'm not saying they're even looking for stuff, but it's a matter of things can be presented to them, or they may search for something and it may just bring up something that you don't want them to see or they shouldn't be seeing at their age. You are doing something smart today. You're listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology and

joining me now is Jacob Palmer of best Reviews dot com. Jacob, thanks so much for joining me.

the best prices. So this time of year is a huge time for us because all that testing we did around the clock all year long is now really coming to a head because this is when people want to get those absolute best products.

So this is definitely a time to look out for.

most popular gifts. It's a little bit more expensive, but for the last several years we've seen them do significant discounts. You know, I'm talking about a great or more dollars off on the full price. And so this is a great time of year to be able to get this and make somebody truly happy for when they're opening up their presence.

than what we were messing with in the nineties. But it's also, you know, really really popular right now because for some reason, what's old is new again. So this is a great one to consider for that nephew, you know, the grand kids in your life.

surfing and doing all these things. But then you see the footage and you're like, I instantly get why people want these and why we always say that these are really cool for people doing cool things.

they'll probably be available for fifteen or twenty bucks. And it's another one of these things when we get our user feedback, we've never had somebody say bad things about them. And they only say, I've replaced all of my other house slippers and these are the ones I'm walking around on.

So we love the Kindle for this person's well because also helps them kind of consolidate and not to have to have too many books going at once.

augmented reality. So when you're looking through the rangefinder, you're not just seeing what's in front of you, but you can also see the map of the whole and you can see, you know, the bunker. It automatically is telling you you're this close to that bunker and that water trap. So it adds a lot of different features that I think is pretty innovative in terms of what we're seeing from golf products, especially in the rangefinder space.

You know, again, we use testers in real life environments, so we were giving this to a four year old and he just spent hours just playing with it, even if it is super simple. And the thing that parents love about it is is that it's not a screen, so you're not dealing with some of the same effects of you know, uh, putting an iPad, you know, giving him an iPad, giving them a different kind of tablet. So it's it's popular for both the kids and the parents,

is what we found so far. What's the price point on the bits b it he Ze. It's fairly affordable, you know, it's not going to be overly expensive. So it's one of these things that during the holiday period we're expecting to see it for less than fifty dollars.

it'll show you in real time. And then it also has a camera on it so it can host video chatting, which is great for folks that want to be able to set something up in the home of maybe a less tech savvy person in their life and still be able to share those moments, still be able to connect.

So we love it for all those reasons, But the number one reason why we love it and why it's in all of our holiday gift guides is it can be easily paired and command a smart thermostat, so you can save money on your heating bill, which you know, as those prices continue to rise, it's a great way to kind of control what you can control and limit a cost where you can.

So if you're looking to save money and when you're in the market for Apple products, that's not a bad idea. You know, we are thinking right now in terms of our testing that we're gonna recommend going for a slightly older version because you're still going to get a great product.

you for all of your emails throughout the week. While you're on the website, you can follow me on social media. I am at rich on Tech on Instagram, Facebook, threads, and pretty much any social media platform. And if you like what you hear on the radio show, be sure to watch my TV segments. I cover a variety of tech topics. Just go to rich on tech dot tv to watch those. You can also find them on YouTube. Okay, without further ado, let's get to some of the feedback.

Michael says, I ordered the new iPhone fifteen promacs and would like to control the camera zoom now five times optical and focus from an external controller. I plan on using the phone in a small rig case and would like precise control over the camera functions. Love the show well, I told Michael I was not aware of a controller for the iPhone that would do this, but apparently he found one because he updated me with a new email and said, hey, I found a solution for the wireless

lens control for an iPhone camera. It is called the Nucleus Wireless Lens Control and he sent along a link from BH Photo and Video. It's expensive one hundred and sixty nine dollars, but it looks like it is a handwheel controller that will control the iPhone, and he says the black Magic Camera app will work as well with the controller, So there you go. That is definitely a pro setup. I think most people are just gonna pinch to zoom on their screen, but that is a great

way to go. I'm glad you found that, Michael, and we can share. Let's see. Leanne via Instagram says, I really enjoy your show on KFI. Your format and demeanor while explaining tech is refreshing. Well, thank you, LeAnn. KFI in Los Angeles, of course, one of our popular stations, and of course where I'm based. Let's see. Dave via Instagram says, upon your review recommendation, I just purchased Super Mario Wonder for my nephew and my daughter. They're playing it.

They're having a blast, So there you go. All right, Yes, that is a great game, and it's even been on sale throughout some of these Cyber Monday Black Friday specials, so see if you can get it at a discount. Greg says, listen to your podcast and heard you talk about the Mint application shutting down at the end of the year. You give a list of alternatives, but I want to give you one more for Windows ten Slash eleven. It's called Greg's Budget. It's available on the Microsoft Store

for thirty dollars with no subscription fees. I've been using it for years to stay on budget and plan for the future. Full disclosure, I did write this application, so I'm a little biased, but it is a great app. All right. Well, there you go Greg's Budget on the Microsoft Store. Yes, a lot of people looking for alternatives to Mint, and what I've seen is that almost all of them are paid this time around. So it's kind of odd to pay anywhere from thirty to one hundred

dollars a year for budgeting. But that is I guess, the new reality here. Let's see here via Instagram. Hey, rich, my brother is reporting I'm getting a lot of scam attempts on Venmo. Don't fall for it. Someone will send you one hundred dollars and claim it's an accident and they will ask for you to send the money back. Do not fall for it. There are YouTube videos on it.

It's usually from a stolen account. It's money that will end up being retrieved once the victim reports it, which leaves you without the money that you quote unquote sent back. Just an FYI, thanks love your work. Yes, so many of these scams on all these payment systems, whether it's Zell, whether it's Venmo, whether it's PayPal. If someone's offering to send you money and then says it's a mistake, or they send you money and they say can you send back and they send you more than they should and

you got to send back the difference. No matter what, it's all a scam. Do not fall for it. It's too good to be true. You're trying to get free money. Some people are greedy, They're going to fall for it. Do not fall for it. Jason says, thanks for the article about the Zumo. You can't get cloud storage through Spectrum unless you have a cable box. The joys of cable companies. One step forward, nine steps back. Maybe someday

they will figure it out. Enjoy your radio show on KFI. So, Jason, I had to check with Spectrum because I didn't think that was the case. Why would they make you have a cable box when the whole point of this zo is to replace your cable box. So I did confirm you can get cloud storage through the zoomo box. So I'm not sure where you're getting your information, but check it out again because Apparently you can get cloud storage, cloud DVR through Spectrum through the Zoomo box, and that

is x Umo, So check it out again. It's uh if you didn't catch the coverage on the Zoomo box. It's kind of a mix of a streaming box like an Apple TV, but a cable box as well. Of course, there is no cable box and everything is delivered through the internet. So if you're sticking with cable and you have Spectrum or Exfinity through Comcast, this is sort of a joint venture. It's their way of kind of putting out a box that's like a fire TV or a Roku or an Apple TV, but it is the cable

company's brand and it's called Zumo x Umo. Neil says, hey, Rich, interesting story that you told someone following for sending money I need is someone they don't know in order to clear up an account problem. How many stupidities are on that call? Let someone control your computer. The other common thing is I will send you extra money and we need to send some of it back, and you will have to send some of it back. Of course you will lose on that when the initial transaction is canceled.

We know that support numbers on Google are often fake numbers and ads. Basically, this person is falling for everything you tell us about online selling cash when the person arrives to pick up the goods, Facebook marketplace is a jungle. Neil, Yes, Neil, these are all the things I talk about. Not everyone is aware of everything, And yes, there are always going to be people that fall for this stuff. So that

is just the way it is, Charles. That's why you listen to this show, so you understand this stuff and you don't fall for it. Oh more comments about the Zumo box, Hey Rich, the Zumo streaming box is not ready for prime time. I picked up two to replace my set top boxes. Things went smoothly but took some time. I have Max and Showtime any Time as part of my Spectrum package. Activating Max was frustratingly slow. The Showtime Anytime app was nowhere to be found, so I called

Zumo Tech Help as Spectrum. She was pleasant, but knew very little about the box. After being put on hold several times, it turns out some Zumo boxes have Showtime Anytime, some don't. That's odd, but they don't know which ones have it and which ones don't. Also, you can't add apps to the Zoomo box like you can other streaming boxes. Spectrum solution was to keep exchanging Zoomo boxes until I

had one that had the Showtime Anytime on it. Spectrum's excuse was that these Zumo boxes are new and they're still learning. Seriously. Needless to say, I returned them via the UPS store, and then I was off to Walmart for a couple of Roku Expresses for twenty four dollars each. They may not have all the bells and whistles that the Zumo box has, but set up was easier and faster, adding apps as possible, and navigating it was at least

as quick as it was on Zumo. The box has potential, but it should not have been sold until its obvious short cummings are fixed and until spectrums Zoomo tech help people are familiar with it. Well, it's odd that they would not have showtime Anytime. I know that showtime has been mixed into Paramount Plus, so maybe you'd find it there. But I agree, I think that these boxes are good. Again, if you want to keep cable and you like that idea of cable, maybe we have time for one more.

Walt says, interesting comments about the Rivian. They do look cool. The price involved is truly the highest negative. That seems to be skip slash missed. Who in the population is truly spending fifty thousand dollars plus on a vehicle, let alone one hundred k? Or is this truly a leasing situation? Walt? Finally, one more, Sarafim says, looking for several solutions. I take videos and pictures with a Samsung S twenty three Ultra.

I need a better input tool, but need software to slow down the UAPs and morphing beings, apply motion tracking and zoom in and out. Sarahfim, I have no idea what you're talking about. I had to look this up. Unidentified anomalists phenomena morphing beings that can change their form or identity. It will Some examples include shape shifters. Oooh, this is way above my pay grade. I don't know what you're talking about, but yes, sometimes when you aim a camera on a smartphone at a bright light, you

do sometimes see a floating orb in the picture. That is something that is common based on the small lenses. Maybe you're seeing more than the rest of us. In that case, be careful out there, all right, that's gonna do it. For this episode of the show. You can find links to everything I mentioned on my website. Just go to Rich on tech dot tv for the show notes. Happy shopping, and research those deals before you jump on them. Thanks so much for listening. There are so many ways

you can spend your time. I do appreciate you spending it right here with me. Thanks to everyone who makes this show possible. My name is Rich Dmiro. I will talk to you very soon.