Google and Apple name the best apps of twenty twenty three. The cyber truck is here. WhatsApp has a secret new feature you need to know about. Plus your tech questions answered. What's going on? I'm Rich Demiro and this is Rich on Tech broadcasting live from Los Angeles, coast to coast. This is the show where I talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about. It's also the place where I answer your questions about technology. I believe
that tech should be interesting, useful, and fun. Phone lines are now open. Let's hit the button triple A Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Give me a call if you have a question about technology. Maybe you need an app recommendation, maybe you're looking for a gift, maybe you just want to say hi. Just kim let those calls through. I don't know, we'll find out. Email is also open.
Just go to Rich on tech dot TV, hit the contact button and you will be directed to my inbox.
We've got some great guests this week.
Steve Churchin of Zypro Technology is going to talk about the whole name drop fiasco. You probably saw the warnings on social media. We'll talk about that face ID security, physical phone security, and all about open Wi Fi networks and whether you should use a VPN. Then we've got Scott Nap, Amazon's director of worldwide Buyer Risk Prevention. He's going to explain the top three holiday shopping scams that involve Amazon, and you want to hear about this so
you can avoid them. And finally, a fun interview with Aj Forsyth of Coop. He's got a smart chicken coop that he has invented and it's a lot of fun. You'll hear all about how you can raise chickens in your backyard. And yes, I am tempted to do that. So I went to jingle Ball last night. If you heard the opening music, Yes, we are thick into the holiday season. Can you believe it? Kim is going to give me a hard time for saying, can you believe
it's already December? Yes, it happens every year, and yes it happens quicker than I think every single year. Jingle Ball was a fun concert. It's the kids could not We brought the kids. They could not stay up as late as my wife and I. They were literally begging us to go home because they were so tired.
My wife and I were.
Like, no, we're gonna miss the final two acts, which we had to leave. Now, on the plus side, getting out of the stadium was easy because we were the first to leave. But that concert when I was a kid, was the hottest ticket in town. And I grew up outside New York City Z one hundred powerhouse radio station, and that's all you heard about. And I remember going
as a youngster and it was so much fun. At the means, if you know that we were talking, I was talking about this with my wife back in the day. You know, these venues were named after places and people and things in the area you grew up in, and now everything is a brand. So we have, for instance, in Los Angeles Sofi Stadium that has never been known by a different name. But back when I grew up, it was you know, Metalands Arena, then it became Continental
Airlines Arena. Every arena now has a name. You know, Staple Center was a big one when they built that. It was Staple Center. Now it's Crypto dot Com. But it's just really interesting how the naming rights of stadiums have now kind of taken away from the place they're in and now it's just a brand. It's just a little shift. So this arena we went to last night was called the Kia form, when back in the day it was just the form. That's what it was, right,
great way, Oh Bobo corrected me. It was a great Western form always forever.
Okay, there you go. See so anyway, so look, it's.
Been intertwined, I guess, ever since the beginning of time. But let's see, I've got my ugly Windows holiday sweater on, so if you want to see that, you can find me on x at rich on Tech if you want to see what that looks like. Windows has been sending me their ugly Christmas sweater now for probably five or six years, and it is a hit. Every time I go to a holiday party. It is always a hit, so much fun to wear. This year, I got a medium, so it's a just a little bit tighter than in yours past.
But I think I'll go with the large again next year. All right.
If you want to follow along with the show today, rich on tech dot tv slash wiki is where you can find everything I talk about.
I figured I'm gonna see how much time I have here.
I want to talk about some of the holiday gifts that I like, some of the things that I think are tried and true, some of the gifts I like. I've got them all linked up on my website, rich on tech dot, TV slash Shop, and these are the things that I've tested that I like, I think are cool, and I'm just gonna go through them. I know it's gonna be a lot, but I'll try to get through as many as possible. This I thought was really interesting
from a company called twelve South. They make a lot of accessories for iOS and Apple products.
They have what's called the time Porter.
So if you're like Bobo who changes his sneakers every day to match his outfit, maybe you change your Apple watch band to match what you're wearing. And this is a wall mount where you can display your Apple watch bands and hold them in there. It's called the time Porter. That's thirty bucks. I thought that was pretty cool. If you have one of these Amazon firetvs, I highly recommend you upgrade your remote control, or if you know someone that has a fireTV. The Alexa Voice Remote Pro is
really really good. You know why because it has a few upgrades over the standard remote that comes in the box.
This is thirty bucks.
And not only does it have which I think is the best feature, a remote finder, so you can ask your fireTV, hey, where's my remote?
And your remote will beep?
How many times has your remote got caught in the seat cushions of your couch?
Mine? Many times this has saved me.
It also has backlit buttons, so that means you can actually see them in the dark. And it's got two customizable buttons, so yes, they have a couple of buttons. You can't change like a Netflix shortcut, but you can program one and.
Two, so whatever you like.
Let's say your favorite streaming service, you can just program that into the button there, and that means you can go to that quickly. And yes, I say button weird. I'm from Jersey. What can I say? It's just who I am. Another product from twelve South I really really like and I wish I had this during the Zoom days, during the pandemic. It's called the high Rise and this is a little you know how you stacked up boxes to put your computer higher so that the webcam would
look you in the eyes better. Well, this is It's called the high Rise and it's an adjustable stand for your computer, and again with all of these products, I would wait for them to go on sale. So if you go to that website I mentioned rich on tech dot tv last Shop, it's going to bring you my Amazon page. Make sure that you look for stuff that says on sale or lower price or thirty percent off. Because I don't recommend buying anything at full price. Just wait for it to go on sale, put it in
your cart, wait for the price to drop. I've been playing with the Metaquest three. This is Facebook's newest virtual reality headset. It's five hundred dollars, so yes, it is expensive, but it is pretty good. And it's not maybe as good as the Apple one that's going to come out. But this is five hundred compared to thirty five hundred, so what do you expect. It's like a quarter a fraction of the price. The big improvement with this headset is the pass through, so now it's much more mixed
reality compared to the old one. The old one you couldn't the cameras weren't that good if you were looking at your area around you. This you can actually see the room you're in and everything is augmented on top of that. Okay, if you want something really inexpensive that every single person on your list can use. It is called the cord brick cord bric. This is a weighted
chord holder. You know how you put a chord on your desk and as soon as you unplug it from your computer or laptop or phone, it falls off the back of the desk and it slides down. Well, this is a little holder. It's kind of a weighted brick. It's almost like a rubbery brick that you just put the cord in and you can put multiple cords in there so that when you're not using them they actually stay on your desk. That's twelve bucks. I think you go buy that without a going on sale. A lot
of people ask me about an antenna for TV. And this is a company that I have loved for so long. It's called Mohuhu. They make a compact antenna that is just about thirty dollars. You plug it into your back of your TV and it gets all the local stations you know, depending on how far you are and what your signal looks like. But I plug this into my TV to test it out. I've got maybe you know, thirty forty stations that it picked up and some.
Of them will come in clearer than others.
But with digital TV, it's either you get it or you don't, and they make one that's a thirty mile range or a fifty mile range. This is a great microphone that I have discovered if you're trying to get into podcasting or doing something like that. It's called Austrian Audio Me Creator MI Creator Studio USB MIC. This is incredible. It's two hundred dollars, so it's a little on the price your side, but this is probably one of the best microphones that I have tested. If you're trying to
do a podcast or anything else. Some of the segments you hear on this show that are pre recorded, I record them at home on that and it is incredible. So it's again the Austrian Audio Me Creator Studio USBC MIC. So if you have someone in your life that's trying to start a podcast, it is a great microphone for that. Now, this is a lot of fun Minioki. I have broken this out at some of the dinner parties I have
at my house. At the end of the night, when everyone you knows feeling no pain, having a good time, I break out the Sway Minioki led Go Mini Karaoke. This is a portable karaoke system forty five bucks and it has a nice light on. It's got a microphone and you just link it up to your Bluetooth phone and next thing you know, you are doing karaoke. Crowd pleaser for forty five dollars. So the Sway Minioki is really fun. Nintendo Switch old ed can't go wrong with that.
It's the highest Nintendo switch. I think next year they're coming out with the new switch, but this one is still really fun and people just love this thing. Speaking of the Fire TV if you need a new one, the fireTV stick four K Max is the newest, latest, greatest. It's sixty dollars. Wait for it to go on sale. Okay, oh wow. They actually have a cheaper savings code, so
if you press redeem, looks like it's thirty dollars. So the thing about this Fire TV stick four K Max, which is better than the previous ones, is that it has what Amazon calls an ambient experience, which means it shows stuff on your screen when you're not using it. I've got this tripod selfie stick standing up right in front of me, right now. I use it to take my picture on Twitter right now. It's called the Tone of sixty inch cell phone selfie stick. And this is
a compact tripod. It's really really good. It's twenty three ninety nine. I keep this in my bag at all times. If you ever need a sixty inch tripod, it is incredible and I just keep it in my bag and you always got a way to do stuff. Now if you want a smaller tripod, this one is really great. It's called the Tentacle Pro and I love this tripod. It is thirty dollars and it's a flexible suction mount tripod. It sticks anywhere and holds your phone, it holds your GoPro.
It is one of the most creative tripods I've ever used. I keep this in my bag as well. And they have a brand new model, the Tentacle Pro. This was on Shark Tank. I've been in touch with the guy who started it. He has a great story. He had like I think ten dollars to his name in his bank account when he went on Shark Tank and guess what, he got a deal and the rest is history. He's doing he's doing pretty well ever since. Let's see oh anchor nanopower bank. You gotta get one of these. You
plug it into the bottom of your phone. It keeps it charged, all right. It's all linked up on the website rich on tech dot tv h slash shop eighty eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. 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 eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one. If you don't get through the first time, be sure to give us another call
because Kim is busy answering those lines. And uh sometimes you know, it goes to voicemail or it goes to the I don't even know what it does when it doesn't when you get too many people. But anyway, if you don't get through the first time, just give it another call. Eighty eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. You can also go to the website rich on tech dot TV.
Hit contact and I know I gave you a lot of stuff earlier, so if you want to link to that, you can go to rich on Tech dot tv slash shop. Basically the website will give you all. Let's see here, Larry said, if I'm selling my iPhone fourteen promax, is it okay to give out the IMEI and serial number? Can the person asking for it program the phone in their name before paying me?
Is this a scam? Larry?
Typically the IMEI number is the main kind of number on a phone, on a smartphone, and there are some scams that can that could involve that, And in general, if you're selling a smartphone, you do have to be very careful about the information you give away. I don't think the person's going to be able to program the phone in their name because this is an iPhone and that's connected to you and your account.
So there is if you go to like swapa.
Dot com slash Imei, there is an Imei check which you can put the phone number in there and then show people that link. So maybe that's a good way of doing it. But a lot of people do ask for that serial number. I probably would not give them. I don't think they need that, But in general I did ask my friend who sells a lot of phones.
He said that the serial number is a big no no. The Imei is probably okay, but typically you would give it out after your paid, and that way the person can make sure that the Imei is clean, which means the phone is not stolen. But yeah, you gotta be careful, especially person to person transactions with smartphones, because there are just so many scam artists out there, and believe me, they do try to do some stuff that you and I can't even think about. Angelina says, what do you
think about the meta Quest three? My son wants it for Christmas, but he already has the two? Is it worth getting the three? So the Metaquest two versus the three? Like I mentioned earlier, the three is double the price right now, so it's five hundred dollars versus two fifty.
If he already has the two and he likes it, I mean, I would say probably sell that and get him the three because the three is going to have better resolution, it's going to have better pass through video, and it's going to be faster and so I it also has better controllers too, longer battery life. I mean, so there are some advantages, and I think that your son would probably if he enjoys the one that he has already, I think he's just gonna like this one
even more. My main concern is if he has the two and he's not really using it and done don't get him the three. But if he has the two and he loves it, then I think the three is going to be a really nice upgrade, and he can always sell the two on, you know, something like Facebook, Marketplace or whatever. Darren Roade in how do I deactivate the function on my Samsung Galaxy S twenty three plus that alerts someone who sends me a text that I read it. I don't want them to see that I
read it. I love your show, Thanks Darren. You can go into your settings. This is RCS chats. Everyone thinks only Apple has the lock on the chat messaging with I message, but no Android phones have this as well. They call it RCS messaging, and in fact Apple's going to adopt this as well. But if you go into your messages app on your Samsung phone, you go into
your settings and then tap RCS chats. RCS stands for Rich Communications Services, and so if you tap inside that chats, it says read receipts, and that's what you want to do. Some people say red receipts. I like to say read receipts. You know, I guess it's tomato tomato. But if you disable that functionality, they will not see when you read their message. You can also disable the typing indicator and
some other options in there. But there's a lot of real time options that they have built into the messages app now on both iPhone and Android, and coming next year, it's going to be much more universal with all of these features. So when you message someone from an iPhone to Android or vice versa, it'll work almost the same way next year. I cannot wait for that. That is going to be such a big deal. Coming up next,
we've got Steve's Churchin of zipro technology. He is going to talk about that whole name drop security warning you probably saw on social media. Eighty eight rich one o one eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one. This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking tech at eight eight eight rich one oh one eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one,
the website rich on Tech dot TV. Joining me now Steve Churchin of Zypro Technology.
Steve is a.
Cyber security expert and a great resource. Talk to him a bunch of times on TV. Welcome to the show, Steve Rich.
How are you doing.
I'm doing fantastic. How are you today?
Doing wonderful?
All right, So let's let's talk about this name Drop security warning. So this was a bunch of police I guess social media. Police departments posted a warning on like Facebook and Twitter and all these places about name Drop, this iOS seventeen feature that lets you bump two phones together to exchange contact information, and they said you should turn this off because it's dangerous. You could walk past someone and they can steal your identity or your at least your contact info.
What did you make of this situation?
Yeah, it's interesting how misconceptions can spread so quickly, especially in the social media world. This is a perfect example of how misinformation going viral causes unnecessary concern. I think the original post was from the Watertown, Massachusetts Police Department, where they warned parents in the public to turn this
feature off. And the way it was described in the Facebook post was anybody can essentially get close to your phone and steal your contact information, your picture, and other
aspects of it. And then this just went viral. Is every other police department, it seems like, reposted this without validating any of this information, and us looking at it from a cybersecurity and privacy point of view, started realizing, no, that's not really the case, and just one post just turned into something a lot of fear mongering out there.
Okay, real quick.
I just looked up the original post, okay, and I was wondering if they actually edited it since the original, and they did so. The original said, with this feature enabled, anyone can place their phone next to yours or your child's and automatically receive their contact information and it says their picture, phone, number, email, and more. And then if you look at the current iteration, it says oh, with
a tap of your unlocked screen. So they did change it because they knew that this was kind of fake information.
That's exactly right.
That's the post we woke up to Monday morning saying that anybody can walk by your child's phone and steal their information. Obviously not true, not the case, and Apple values privacy, consent in security immensely. That's why this feature was very well bought out. For this to work, both phones have to be unlocked, so you can't just walk up to a locked phone tap your phone on it and expect to take their information or their contact card
download that onto your phone. So both phones have to be unlocked, and the tops of both phones need to be touching, so they can be face to face. The tops can be touching or they can be on top of each other. The important part is both users will receive a prompt asking them what to do. Do you want to share or do you want to receive? Without approving that prompt, nothing is happening, No exchange is taking place,
and this only affects new contacts. So new contacts can be transferred from phone to phone, but doing name drop won't update a contact. And then each person, any person can pull their phone away and the transfer immediately stops. So you can hit the power button on the side to lock your phone and the transfer stops. So it's not as if the first what the first post made it out to be, where anybody can just walk by your phone and steal your child's information. It's not the case.
So privacy and consent we're a big part of this feature.
It's so wild how this stuff happens. Because I woke up to a bunch of people emailing me about this, and I thought I knew how this feature worked, and then I was like, well, wait a second, am I wrong?
Like did I?
There's no way Apple would do this, And so of course I grab my wife's phone and I started like tapping them together in like different ways, and I was like, no, the screens are they have to be unlocked and you have to press share for this to happen. And so of course I had to post on my Instagram to like clear the air. But by that time things had gone so viral. But I guess the tech world now agrees that this was pretty much a case of like misinformation.
Absolutely, and but it's not for not too because Apple does have a track record in the past of enabling features without really publicizing the how to use that feature or what it's about. So this one was a lot of hype for nothing. But there have been instances in the past where you take a look at a feature and go, I wish I knew about that before it was automatically turned on my phone.
Okay, now you have a post on your LinkedIn about basically what someone could do with your phone even if it's locked, And so do you want to do you want to talk about that a little.
Bit that's a great story too, and it's ironic that it happened to me, somebody who's been in the cyber security world for so long. So about a year ago, I was in London and I'm coming out of the underground station and just like anybody else does, I'm calling an uber so I can get to my next destination from the train station over to my hotel. So I called the uber, or I went into the app and ordered an Uber. And as the uber is getting close, I'm walking up to the curb to meet my right
I can see it coming down the street. Now it's Christmas time or holiday time, so London's immensely busy during that time. So as I'm walking up to the curb and I'm holding out my phone so i can see the license plate number matches what's on my app, I feel pressure on my hand and my phone immediately disappeared from my hand. Oh wow, guy on a bicycle came by and snatched the phone right out of my hand as I was standing on the curb to get.
Into my Uber.
Oh my gosh.
So panic sets in, going what do I do?
What do I do?
So I make my way to my hotel, I quickly get on my MacBook to try and track my phone. Well, this is where the fun starts. I don't remember my iCloud password. So let it be known that if you think I find my phone is going to help you in a situation like this. Unless you can log in from another device and know your password, you're not getting in.
You're not tracking that phone. So I was able to finally get in, reset my password, and I get in and I can see that the last destination of my phone was probably ten feet from where my phone was stolen. And I'm going, how is this possible? Because my phone was locked. My phone immediately as the screen, within ten seconds goes dark. How did somebody put my phone in airplane mode? So I called the phone company, or I
called T Mobile. I called all my banks and canceled everything, and then I made my way down to the Apple Store because I need a new phone. I'm stuck in London, I don't have a phone, and I've got work to do for the next week. I walked into the Apple store and I explained my situation to a very nice lady who's helping me, and she said, I'm the fifth person that evening to walk in with the exact same problem happening to them, their phone being snatched out of their hand.
So they snatched out of your hand when it's when it's unlocked.
Basically it was, Yes, it was unlocked, but it locks right away. As soon as the screen has flipped away or whatever the setting is, it locks right away.
Okay.
So I asked, what what are they going to do with the phone. It's a brick, it's locked, it's under my name, it's under my account.
What can they do?
Sure, she says, well, they send it off to China and there's a couple of folks out there that can rewrite whatever needs to be rewritten, and then they'll take those phones and then they'll sell sell them in other countries like Nigeria, like Iraq, like other places.
So the advice I give people in saying a phone an iPhone is worthless if it's stolen is not really true.
It's not really true apparently, And I could follow my So the interesting part was I could follow my phone on the Find my iPhone app. So I followed it from London to Abo. From Abu Dhabi it went to Shenzen, and from Shenzen it went to Legos, Nigeria. Now, I don't know what happened in the whole process, but apparently it's not what we thought. The phone's not a brick. The lesson learned here and I learned this the hard way is I thought, when my phone is locked, nobody
can do anything to it. But the default setting on iPhones is even if the phone is locked, you can get into control center and put the phone into airplane mode. So let it be known that if anybody takes your phone, they can immediately put it into airplane mode and that stops find my iPhone or anybody else from tracking that phone and knowing where it is. So, like I said, I learned in the hard way. But the setting is there.
I've got that setting on now or I've turned it off now where nothing can be done to my phone without me personally unlocking it.
And you can do that by going into settings, face ID and passcode, and there's a whole bunch of settings that says you know and they're all on by default, which is it's like, lets you look at the today view, notification center, control center, lockscreen, widgets, live activity, Siri, reply with messages, wallet, all these things that can be done when your phone is locked, so you want to turn that off, all those off basically if you don't want this.
Now here's the thing. The iPhone is so good with face ID. If you're looking at your phone and you want to use some of these functions, you'll be fine because it's going to unlock instantly. It's if it's it's with someone else trying to look at it, they won't be able to do this stuff.
That is exactly right.
Rich stuff.
You go into face ID settings, turn everything off because just like you said, you pick up the phone, it's going to recognize you, it's going to unlock the phone. Those features are going to be available to you but nobody else. So you're not losing any functionality by turning those settings off. You're gaining a lot of value in privacy and security turning those settings off.
And two other things I just wanted to touch upon real quick.
If you need to find your phone, it's iCloud dot com slash find from like a web browser, and on Android they have a similar functionality. If you go to Android dot com slash find, you can look at where all of your Android devices are. And then this is something that you actually inspired me, Steve, when I was reading about this turning off the stuff. You can actually ask an iPhone. You can ask Siri, whose phone is this?
And it'll tell you whose phone it is. Now, if your phone is locked, it will say just the person's first name, and if it's unlocked, it'll say the person's full name. And again you if you did turn off what you're saying, which is Siri when it's locked, they wouldn't be able to do this at all, so they won't even know whose phone it is either, right, exactly right,
So we got we gotta go. But in general, you know, you deal with security stuff all the time, and you just told a story of how something happened to you that was very basic. You know, someone you know taking your phone out of your hand. Do people need to be worried about this stuff? Should you be concerned about all your privacy?
Oh?
Absolutely?
I mean, especially with phones costing upwards of fifteen hundred dollars now almost two thousand dollars. Is absolutely is phones can be a huge area of huge privacy concern. We don't realize it, but our entire digital life is bound to our phone. We don't think about a day to day but if that phone went missing, even for a couple of hours, I guarantee you you'd be in panic mode.
Absolutely, So take shreat the time, take the time to go through your settings and set things up the way you want to. Steve Churchin of Zypro Technology, thanks so much for joining me today. I'll put a link to your socials on the website. Rich on Tech dot tv eighty eight rich one O one more rich on Tech right after this, welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you talking technology at triple eight rich one on one. That's eight eight eight seven
four to two four to one zero one. Lots of you like to email as well rich on Tech dot tv. Hit the contact link and you can submit your question right there. That is exactly what Robin did. She said, Please please, please talk about great apps for getting rid of duplicate photos on the iPhone. Love your show, Well, there is a built in method to do this on the iPhone. I don't think it's very good, but it's
a good place to start. So if you go into your photos app and you go into your albums, you can actually scroll down to where it says utilities and there's a link for duplicates, and so it'll show you the duplicates that it finds on your phone, and on mine, I have exactly four, so it's not really that great because I'm sure I have more than four, but it will give you the option to merge those or delete those.
The app that I think is probably the best one to do this is called Gemini Gemni Gemini Photos, and this app is really good because it uses a little bit of a to kind of figure out pictures that look similar, not just the exact pictures, so similar shots. You know how you take a whole bunch of pictures and then you keep them all in your camera roll. Well, this will show you those all together and you can
pick just the one that you want to keep. It can also help you with other stuff like blurry photos and things like that.
It's just a really great app.
The other thing I really like about it is that you can sort photos, so you can sort to see your largest videos on your phone, delete a couple of those, and free up space. Now, the thing about this app is that it's not going to be free. You're going to have to pay if you want to truly use the best features of it, So you know, it's either five dollars a month, twenty dollars a year, or thirty
five dollars for lifetime. But there is a free level of the app that you can use without paying, and so you can check it out and see if it works for you. Now, I've been testing another app that I don't like as much, but it is very high in the store. It's called Cleanup, and you know, you really basically have to pay to do this stuff.
So I also, I'm just not sure.
I don't have a good I don't have a good recommendation on that app just yet, but it is very popular on the App store list.
So again, it's called Cleanup.
I am still waiting for Google Photos to do this to give me a good way to sort through my similar photos.
Apparently it's coming.
They've got this feature called stacks, which is going to stack up the pictures together that look similar, which will kind of clean up your library, but it's not going to delete them, but then you could easily go through in that stack and kind of get rid of some of those. Now, there is an app that's really cool and easy and fun. It's called Swipe Wipe, Swipe Wipe, Swipe Wipe. And this is an app that's just kind of fun for iOS and Android. It's kind of like
a Tinder, but for your photos. So it will show you all of the photos that you took in a month and it will let you just swipe through those now. Again, this is an app that has a free level of service but also a paid level, but you can use it for free until you run into that.
Roadblock where it says you have to pay.
And pro tip, by the way, on a lot of these apps that try to get you to pay, look very closely in the corners. Many times it looks like you can't proceed using that app, when in reality there is a tiny, tiny X that you can't see in the corner. You tap that X and you can continue using the app. They're just trying to push you to pay, but most of the time you can still continue to use that app. But this one's called Swipe Wipe And what I try to do is just try to organize
your camera role as you go along. If you wait until the end of the year to try to go through all your pictures, it's going to be a nightmare. So just try to go through them, you know, just take ten minutes at the end of each day and just go through your pictures. I do it usually before I go to sleep, because I take a bunch of pictures throughout the day, screenshots, all these different things. I just go ahead and delead them all. All right, let's
go to uh Christine in Huntington Beach. Christine, you're on with rich Oh Hi, rich Oh.
I love your show.
Thank you.
I always learned so much from you.
Thank you. That means a lot.
Oh good.
Hey, I have a question. So I just recently updated my iPhone to the what what's.
Go to release? The seventeen Yes, seventeen yep. Yeah.
So I'm in sales. So when I call my customers for my cell phone and I go to leave a message, sometimes I'll do pound and I play it back because I want to see if my voicemail was you know, you know, you can hear it. There was no static, it didn't fade in or out. Or sometimes maybe I want to just change my voicemail, my voicemail that I leave for them, and it's not doing it anymore.
Yeah, so was there a change, Yes, there was a big change. Apple has hijacked everyone's voicemail and now voicemail is happening on your phone, and that's why you can't do this because this is called live voicemail. And just like we talked about earlier with name Drop, it is on by default. So what's happening is your voicemail is now being handled on the phone itself and not through
your carrier. So if now you can't turn this off for the person you're calling, but you can go into settings on your phone and if you want to see if this is on or off, you can go to settings and then phone and then you see what's called live voicemail. Now I've turned it off because I did not want that. This is tripping up so many people, Christine, and.
It is it is, yes, yes.
So Apple sneakily turned this on for everyone. So now what's happening is when someone calls your phone, your phone is answering that call, not your carrier. So if you want to turn it off again, Settings Phone, Live voicemail. Great question, a lot of people discovering that. Thanks for calling to rich On Tech eighty eight, rich one On one eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one.
All right, welcome back, Rich Rich Demurou here rich On Tech, talking technology with you at Triple eight rich one on one eighty eight seven.
Four to two four one zero one.
I'm giving producer Bobo the evil eye right now because this is only a song you break out when it is Christmas, like the day before. You would think it's the day before Christmas. Here we're only the We're only into December like the first weekend. But this is a classic. And yes, I love this song. It's just a matter of man, this song. It's so wild how long ago this song was recorded and it is still it's a classic.
I mean, I don't think there's been a Christmas song that is really like a new Christmas song that's really taken a hold like this one. This is probably the newest, and that's probably like twenty years ago. Rich Demiro here rich on Tech the website for the show rich on Tech dot tv. You can find me on social media. I am at rich on Tech on all of the major platforms. That's Instagram, that's Facebook, that is x And
you can listen to the show as a podcast. Just go to rich on tech dot tv, subscribe and you'll never miss a thing. And there are show notes, so I know I mentioned a lot of things on this show. Just go to rich on tech dot tv slash wiki and you can see the live show notes that I am mentioning in real time, and today I'm tweeting them as well, or exing them, whatever you want to call it.
I don't know what they call it these days.
Coming up this hour, we've got Scott Nap, Amazon's director of worldwide Buyer Risk Prevention. He's going to talk about the three Amazon holiday shopping scams. And I know him onto something when I get an email from someone on a topic that I'm about to cover on TV or the radio. So yesterday my mom texted me and she said, rich Richard. She calls me Richard. She said, I just got a phone call from someone at Amazon that said my account and this and that. I said, up, scam.
Just talk to the guy at Amazon, and that's a scam. So you will learn about these scams as well. I'm going to tell you about this WhatsApp feature that you kind of need to know about because if your partner is keeping some secrets from you, yeah, this is where they're going to do it. It is it's kind of like built for cheating. I hate to say that, but it really is. Let's go to Debbie in the Rocky Mountains of Tennessee.
Debbie, you're on with Rich.
Yes, Smoky Mountains of Tennessee.
Yes, smokey mountains. Where do we get rocky mountain? Rocky mountains is Colorado?
Isn't it right?
Right?
Smokey mountains? That sounds so nice?
Is it just always snowing in the smoky mountains with like a little fireplace like you know.
It's pretty. It's pretty nice right now, although it's very cloudy, hence the name smoky mountains. We had the smoky cloud out today, so yeah, we've gotten some much needed rain and is very pleasant here today.
Very nice. What can I help you with?
Well?
I had two things, but the most important one was my husband and I both have the same phone.
We charged for the second question.
Two. Yes, Android, everybody seeds to like the iPhones. Maybe we should switch over. I don't know.
No, stay strong, Debbie, don't don't fall.
The pure pressure was something that specifically Samsung related, But this happens to both of our phone. Okay, we have text messages come in. Oftentimes one or two will come in. You can hear the little click that have come in and then whoever I'm talking to on the phone can't hear me anymore, and it happens to him too, so I've got to hang up and redelling. In fact, I used the landline today just in case that happened when I was on the phone here. So does that? Is
that a typical thing that happened? What happens with Samsung's or Android phones?
So when okay, you're on the phone, a text message comes in, and now the person can't hear you ever.
Again, they can't hear me again. Well, I'll take it. Sometimes if I wait long enough and there's only been one or two texts come in, wait a long term time, we keep saying can you hear me? Kind of you know questions, and eventually they can usually hear me again. But usually what happens if we just hang up and call back again? Oh yeah, but if a string we have a couple of text strings that have quite a few people in it, so there's a barrage of those
coming in right right, Yeah, I forget it. You can't And I've tried turning off the what is it the note?
What is that?
Notices?
It tell you a text like a notification.
Yeah, silence it and its okay.
I have not I mean, okay, so I've I've definitely experienced where if someone texts you, it might interrupt your call for like a fraction of a second while the text notification comes through, but I haven't seen where it continually disables the rest of your Like, that doesn't make any sense. That's not supposed to be a feature. It's weird that it's happening to your husband and you on.
Here, yes on this, And we had Samsung's before this, before we get the twenty twos. I forget what the which one, what models it was, but it was we both had those Samsung's and the same thing happened with those, so I thought it was something unique to Samsung.
No, I don't think so.
The only thing I would think of, Number one, I think on your messages app, I would try to mute the notifications for group messages because most of the time, you know, people get on a tangent and next thing you know, you're being barraged with notifications. You know, there's like just so like this happens with me, and you know I'm on a couple of group chats and it's just like whoa all of a sudden, so I have all of those muted.
That's the first thing I would do.
The other thing you can do is make sure that your software is up to date on your phone. I know they just came out with some new software on the Samsung. I just updated my test device to this new one UI six which is totally redesigns everything, so that may take care of it. I would do the software update on both. So there's a couple of places to do software updates on a Samsung, so make sure
you're up to date in all the different places. Number one, it's the main software update for the phone, which is the operating system that's under the setting software update. Then you have your app software update, so that is my apps under Google Play and you want to update all your apps there. And then the third place is actually the Galaxy Store. So if you open up the Galaxy Store, they will have app updates as well.
So make sure you're up to date on all those three things.
Then I would also go into the Messages app, which is what Samsung uses for your messages. Go into your settings there and just make sure that there's in the notifications. There's a couple of options in there, and so it says in app notification settings for messages, and so maybe you can turn off your outgoing and incoming message sounds. Maybe you that off inside your settings, and that might help with the problem you're having. So that could be
another way to do it. Now, if none of those things work, you might just do kind of a full settings reset on your phone. And you can go into your settings under reset and there is a reset all settings and that will reset your security, language, accounts, personal data.
But you actually you probably don't want to do that.
Well, actually it'll reset everything except your main settings, So all of your notification settings and stuff will be reset to kind of like the factory, but it's not going to erase anything on your phone.
But those are the steps that I would take for that to happen.
I think realistically, the best feature or the best setting to change is going to be inside your messages app and just look for anything that says, you know that one setting I mentioned about while you're on a call getting the notifications, because that's what's interrupting your call. So I think that's your main bet there. Thanks Debbie in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee.
Sounds like such a nice place.
Speaking of apps, Oh, let's see sh I tell you about the WhatsApp thing. I should tell you about this because this I found very interesting. So WhatsApp is introducing a new feature called secret code for chatlock. This means that people can set a unique password for their chats which locks them. Not only this, but they can also hide their secret chats from the chat list.
So anything that's locked will not even show up.
So let's just say you were looking over the shoulder of someone's phone and they this won't even show up in their list of chats. So again, this is called secret code for chatlock, and WhatsApp says this will enhance chat privacy, so they can set Users can now set a unique password for their lock chats, which is different from their phone on lock code. And then users can
take it a step further. They can choose to hide their locked chats from the chat list, which means you can only see these chats by entering a secret code into the search bar. Ooh, that's interesting. And you can lock a chat just by pressing and holding it with a long press. And so if you want to hide a certain chat on your WhatsApp chat list, just long press it and you can set up this lock chat. Now, this is not gonna be available immediately to everyone. It
is what's called rolling out. And in the tech world, I dislike the term rolling out because that means you may get it today, you may get it in three months. It just sort of depends. But to me, I do not like rolling out features because it means that you do not have them instantly.
You may, you may not.
But anyway, WhatsApp, if you have some trust issues with your partner, you may want to You may want to school up on this secret code for chat lock because it definitely seems like it is going to aid and a bet some some things that people may not want to think about happening in their relationships. Anyway, maybe there's some good uses of it. Maybe you just don't want your kids seeing your secret chat with uh, I don't know. Maybe you got a sexy chat going on. You don't
want your kids to see that. I'm not saying I do that, Believe me, I don't.
I don't.
I don't understand this whole new You know, these kids these days, they're sending these, you know, these texts that I just don't understand.
Do not send I look, you could do whatever you want. I'm just not doing that.
Rich On Tech. At rich On Tech, you can follow me on social media. Eighty eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Is this show officially off the rails? I think it is.
Ball Oh flow right up bringing down the house yesterday at Jingle Ball. I don't know what's happening today here on this show. Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you. I think I just talked for like a minute, but I was only talking to Bobo in the booth because I was pressing the button that only goes to him and not you.
On the flip side, it could have been worse.
I could have been saying something really bad and it would have gone off to you. Bobo has left the building. He is he has given up on this show. My name is rich Demiro. Can you see I have a lot of fun here on Saturdays and Sundays hanging out with you. It's just the way it is. It's it's my it's my happy place, and I hope it's yours. Where were we? We got guests coming up this hour. Scott Nap is going to talk about holiday shopping scams at Amazon.
For now, let's go to Fred and Camio. Fred. You're on with Rich.
Hey, Rich, how are you doing?
I am doing great, Thanks for calling.
Listen. I'm having a problem. I have an iPhone se second generation and a Samsung TV, and I used to be able to project anything, you know, throw it up onto the screen or it's like and all of a sudden, I'm only getting the audio. And that even says that there's a little thing that comes on the TV audio so I can use I can project Hulu fine from
my phone. But when I want to be part of like a web meeting where they send you a link, I used to be able to click on it and the picture would come up and I'd be fine, and all of a sudden, it's not.
A web meeting first, So it's okay, So you're using airplay, I take it, or well hold on. You have a Samsung TV though, so Samsung TVs don't typically support that, do they.
I Well, I'm sorry. I also have Apple TV.
Oh, okay, so you're using Apple TV. Yeah, so is the Apple TV? Okay, so you're going iPhone to Apple TV?
Correct?
Okay, Well, so it's dependent on the app, and so airplay is the is the protocol. So there's a couple of protocols for streaming something from your phone to a TV. So there is airplay, which is kind of you know, a protocol that Apple invented and that will you know, stream something from your phone to your TV.
Usually you see a little icon.
You have to be on the same Wi Fi network for that to work, and you'll see whatever programming you have on your phone on your TV.
Then there's also mirroring.
Mirroring is when your phone is literally just mirrored onto your TV, and that may or may not work inside of certain apps like a you know, a video app like HBO Max may not allow that. You have to go through their protocol to stream it to your TV. Then there's what's called casting, and that is what's from an an Android phone to It's called casting, so it goes to a usually a TV that has Chrome Cast built into that TV. So there's a couple of different protocols.
But when you are casting or using airplay, what you get is largely dependent on the app itself, what they've programmed into that app. So if you were able to do this before with an app like Zoom. It sounds like you might need to update your apps to get them to work again. Sounds like there might be something in the settings that you toggled that may not be
working at this point. But in general, if you're having issues with something like Airplay or Chrome Cast, you have to make sure that you are on the same Wi Fi network, because that's the number one thing. Number two, I mean, just try restarting everything. That typically helps, because if something is not working the way you expect and it used to work that way, it's usually either a
software change or some sort of network change that's causing it. Now, if you want to try, and this is for if you're just trying to cast something from your phone to your TV, there's an app called all Cast, Allcast, All Casts, and this is an app that is available for both Android and iOS, and this kind of helps you get around any issues you might have with casting. I do believe they charge after a certain amount of use. Oh wow, this app hasn't been updated in a long time. That's
not good. That's never a good sign when I look at an app and it hasn't been updated. So the Android app hasn't been updated since twenty twenty the iOS app.
It's still connecting, so I can't tell.
But in general, you know, casting and airplay is really dependent on what the app allows you to do. So Fred, if I was in your shoes, I would restart. Just update all the apps. Update the you know, the Apple TV apps, make sure those are up to date, make sure the Apple TV software is up to date, make sure the phone software is up to date, and the
app that you're using. So go through all that, and if it's still not working, it sounds like there's been some sort of change on the app that does not let you cast.
The video anymore.
Now, if it's a if it's a if it's an app that lets you, you know, video conference, there is no reason why they shouldn't let you do that on your big scre So sounds like there's something going on here that's a little bit more in depth than we can address here in Troubleshoot because I just can't see what's happening. Let's see Google Play and Apple have both named their Apps of the Year.
Let's start with Apple.
Apple's App of the Year is All Trails, and this is a fantastic app. I absolutely love All Trails. It's not new. I've been using it for a long time. I think they did this as the app of the year because it is getting us out of the house and it's kind of like an app that uses your screen but also gets you off the screen. So that's the number one iPhone app of the year.
Let's see.
The Mac app of the Year is photo Mater. The Apple Watch App of the Year is smart Jim. The iPhone game of the Year is Han Kai Starrail. This is an app a game that is based on anime, and by the way, that got the same exact top game for Google Play. Google Play's top app of the Year is called Imprint Learn Visually. Imprint Learn Visually. My
son actually downloaded this a couple months ago. He was ahead of the curve Chat GBT got user's Choice, but it did not get top app from either of these stores. More rich on Tech after this. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro 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. I promise if you're on hold, we will get to you after this. Scott Napp, Amazon's director of worldwide Buyer Risk Prevention. Recently, I chatted with Scott about some of the most popular holiday shopping scams that involve Amazon. First off, let's talk about the holiday shopping season. That's got to be one of the biggest seasons for Amazon when it comes to customers fulfilling order and also scams.
No doubt, the holiday season there's a reason we call it peak.
It's the busiest time of year. You know.
I'm sure you're seeing the same thing. My friends and family are already hard after it to try to shop some more and get some things under the tree, as it were. And as a result with all that increased activity, yes, we do see increased amounts of scams out there.
Tell me a little bit about your role at Amazon.
For buyer risk.
I essentially, me and my team are lead efforts to root out fraud and abuse as it affects buyers specifically. So when we're talking about impersonation scams, we're talking about folks having account issues or doing different kinds of fraud on the site. Those are all things that we try to mitigate prevent from happening.
So what are some of the common scams or frauds that we should watch out for when we're hopping online this holiday season.
Sure, there's the three big ones. There's a perennial one that's really popular around the Amazon order confirmation scam, where you'll get some notice that there's a problem with your Amazon order and it's normally something kind of expensive, you know, maybe a tablet or a smartphone, and it's something you didn't order, so you get a little bit concerned that you might get charged for something, and then suddenly you're engaging with a bad actor.
So that one's kind of pretty steady state.
But one we've seen two things start to pop up more as more popular of late.
One is an email attachment scam.
Where they'll send you a note that says there's a problem and your Amazon account's getting ready to be shut down, and you have to open this attachment to see more details and the only and inside the attachment they embed a link that you need to click on to get more information or contact them.
The only problem is it directs that.
Right to a bad actor's website where they now can collect all kinds of information, including payment information from you, which isn't great. And then the final one that pops up has been popping up more this time of year is Prime membership scams. With the success of Prime Big Day deals and all the deals that are coming through the holidays. They'll send these notes that say there's a
problem with your Prime membership. You need to contact us to get it resolved, and part of that interaction involves you giving them credit card details or banking information. Some of them are bold enough to even say pretending to be Amazon and they'll say, Hey, you need to pay us a certain amount of money so we can fix your Prime membership. All these things result in bad actors getting hold of your payment information and then being able to use it for their own purposes.
Now I've seen some of these types of things come through my email, and not just with Amazon, but with various big companies' names, and to me, I can readily identify that they are a scam, but not everyone can and sometimes they can even be very tricky. And so do people fall for these? Why do you think people fall for them? And do these scam artists just keep getting better and better at what they're doing?
Rich they are getting better, Like I'm telling you that, I hear you some of them are super simple. I shouldn't say super simple they're easier to tell apart if you know what you're looking for. But they are getting better and better and better at looking extremely authentic. It's a real thing that they're getting better and we're seeing. Unfortunately, being a scam victim is an equal opportunity business. There's people believe that perhaps older custom consumers are more vulnerable.
That turns out to not necessarily be the case.
That it's it's pretty evenly spread across the population.
What about that idea of customer service from Amazon, because sometimes finding a phone number, most people want to just call a phone number, and that could prove to be tricky. It's an online website, and then people go searching on Google for a phone number, they find one that may lead them astray, and that could lead them right into a scam artist. So explain how to contact Amazon this holiday season if you need ye.
No, that's a great point. It's super great because you're exactly right. Search results can be super misleading people like so those bad actors are happy to send you phone numbers that aren't us. Going via the website dot com, going via the app, you can either go to the help pages or and there's down and contact us and then that will get you to our customer service, which you can trust. If you've gone that path, you know it's us, and then we can help you out.
So, because these scam artists continue to get better, how do we protect ourselves?
It's being vigilant, if you will, especially when you receive a communication you didn't expect or you're unsure about. Yes, Amazon, we do send order confirmation emails, but we don't send emails telling you there's a problem.
With your order and you need to click here.
So if you see a communication and you're not exactly sure or you didn't expect it when it comes to Amazon, go to You can always trust our website. Go to Amazon dot com or go to the app and look. If it's an order confirmation scam, you can verify your order right there. You don't need some crazy link or if there's some other kind of communication, it'll show up in the message center and that way you will know
that it's us. My biggest piece of advice for people is to pause, take a beat, and before you click on a link, before you respond to a text or a phone call, and just hey, was I expecting this?
And if not, check it out with the real thing again.
That was Scott Napp, Amazon's director of worldwide Buyer Risk Prevention. Thanks Scott for explaining to us some of these scams that involve Amazon. The bottom line is that any large company, whether it is Amazon, whether it is Walmart, whether it's Microsoft, whether it's Google, whether it's Apple, scam artists love to
latch on to the names of these companies. Why because they have a large base of customers, so they can just email a whole bunch of people at once, and some of those people get that email and say, oh, yeah, I do have an account with Amazon, and half the people are saying, no, I don't even have a Bank of America account. So that's one way. And then the
other thing is that it's recognizable. So when it's Amazon and it says an email that your account is going to be suspended, you kind of look and you open up the email and you check it out. So these kind of scams have been going on forever. Amazon is just the newest way to do it. But really really tricky stuff because, as Scott said, these scammers just continue to get better. Speaking of Amazon, their Black Friday Cyber Monday event, which ran eleven days, was its largest ever
compared to last year's event. Customers purchased over one billion items during this event, and they saved seventy percent more compared to last year. And I do believe that because I noticed this year on Amazon, the prices were really, really good. I had a lot of stuff in my cart, and I noticed a lot of price drops and stuff that dropped during those eleven days and then went right back up on Cyber After Cyber Monday was over, Amazon says they're going to continue to do deals up until
December twenty fourth. I'm gonna give you my best tip because I'm the worst gift giver, Like I just my wife has this way of like I will mention something in passing, Like I'll just be like, oh, I need a new button for this shirt, and literally Christmas morning, I'll have that button and I'm like, well, you remembered that I said that. So there are two people in
this world, two types of people. Some that remember the things that you say and like write it down secretly and then get you that gift later, and people like myself that just I don't.
I'm like clueless.
So there's this Amazon has this top one hundred ish gift picks, and I will link that up on the website rich on tech dot tv slash wiki and it has all of these great gift ideas and you could just scroll through here and I guarantee you'll find something for someone on your list. Again, it's the Amazon top one hundred ish gift list. Let's see Amazon. One other thing to know is that they extended the returns window.
So basically, if you buy anything between now and December thirty first, you can return it through January thirty first. So it's a little bit longer than their typical return window, which is really important because you buy the gift and then you want to make sure that they can return it in that time. All right, let's see, we've got the phone number to the show Triple eight Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. You can go to the website
rich on tech dot TV. There you can see all the stories that I do on TV. You could also see how you can subscribe to this show as a podcast. You can also follow me on social media. I am at rich on tech, I'm on Instagram, I'm on Facebook, i am on X and yes, I finally broke down and paid for the premium subscription on X. So if you notice I have a blue check next to my name. Soon you know, here's the thing. This is what put me over the edge because I was trying to move
over to threads right. I posted about new pens that I bought, literally pens, and I got so many responses and so much engagement that I was like, you know what, this platform still has people on, it still has people using it. Why am I going to give up on this platform just because everyone hates it?
Yeah, so I'm not.
So I'm still there at rich on Tech on X but you know, I figured it's it's just kind of you know, it's an option, let's put it that way. Coming up, we've got a couple of callers in the queue. We'll get to them. You are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here talking technology with you.
Let's go to Liz in San Jose. Liz, you're on with Rich.
Oh, hi Rich.
I bought an iPhone fifteen Pro recently, and I've been having some connectivity issues with my with my AirPods, my Apple airbuds, earbuds things. It just doesn't seem to hold the connection. Well, I've called Apple and done some troubleshooting with them, and I also called Verizon, my carrier, and made a few adjustments and changes with them on the phone, and I'm still having issues. I looked it up on the internet and there are a lot of other people must be having issues because the a.
Lot of tutorials on how to connect them and keep them connected and that kind of thing. Are you aware of any issues with connectivity? And I've got the newest earbuds, by the way, they're not old.
Well, first off, I'm curious. Well, number okay, a couple things.
Number One, you can find people complaining about anything online and specifically when you're searching for something like this, like you'll find other people and there's a million opinions on things. I don't think that AirPods as a mass market device have an issue with keeping a connection because this is not something that I've ever experienced.
Now.
The only thing I have experienced with AirPods is the switching issues. And sometimes AirPods like to switch to different devices and that is a pain, and I will say that that is annoying. Apple has made the switching faster and a little bit smarter with the with the latest updates. But that's the only thing I've seen. AirPods should one hundred percent connect to your phone and stay connected and work.
So I think that number one, you have to rule out whether there is a manufacturing defect on your AirPods. I'd also be curious what Verizon told you to do, because Verizon has nothing to do with this. Verizon handles the cellular connection on your phone and they don't really have anything to do with what's happening with these AirPods. So with all of that said, Liz, here are the steps that I would take to see if we can
get these AirPods to connect better. First off, I would disconnect the AirPods from my phone, so I would go into my settings Bluetooth, find the AirPods, press the little eye, and then say forget this device, and that would be the first thing I would do. Then I would factory reset the air pods. And so if you look on the AirPods case itself, there is a little button on the back and most of the time you never really even need to press this button unless you're pairing with
an end phone. But if you press and hold that button for about thirty seconds or sorry, if you let me get you the right directions here. Put the AirPods in the case, close the lid, wait thirty seconds for them to kind of settle down. Open the lid, don't take them out, and then press and hold that setup button on the back for about fifteen seconds until that status light flashes. It looks like it's gonna flash amber
and then white. And this is off the Apple support page which tells you how to reset your AirPods completely. So once you reset them completely, which means they are back to factory, then I would restart my phone and then I would reconnect these to your phone. And the way that you reconnect is just by opening up unlock your phone, open up the airpod's case next to your phone, and it should say do you want to connect now?
If it already has the name on them or anything like that, then you probably want to go back and do the reset again, because they shouldn't automatically connect to your phone at this point. They should almost be back to brand new where you're going to have to give them a name and everything. Those are the steps that I would take. And if you're still having problems you can do what's called a settings reset on your iPhone. So if you go into Settings General and then oops, sorry,
I pressed the wrong thing on my phone. Here, if you go to Settings General, transfer or reset phone, you'll see an option if you tap reset, it says reset all settings or reset Network settings. If you tap the reset Network settings, that is the one that will reset all of your Bluetooth settings. Now you're gonna have to reconnect to your Wi Fi, You're gonna have to reconnect all your other Bluetooth devices. But that's sort of a
nuclear option that can help you do that. But if you're still having problems, Liz, with these staying connected, I would suspect it's some other device that is nearby that is connecting to these and that's what's causing the disconnection. Or you've got a defective pair of AirPods, and I
would just petition to Apple to swap those out. Tell them what a great customer you are and how you want to use these things, and they're just giving you grief, and hopefully they will take mercy on you and give you a new pair. Keep me posted Rich on tech dot TV, Send me an email, let me know. Let's go to Rick in Clinton, Mississippi. Rick, you're on with Rich.
Hey, ho's going?
It is going great?
All right? After problem, I've started a little side hustle to supplement my retirement and I buy storage auctions. Okay, I found an iPhone seven in one and it powers up. It looks like it works, and but I need to reset it to factory settings. I don't have a password, I don't have any iTunes ID or any Apple ID with it. Is there an easy way to do it? I found a couple of apps that say they will do it from my computer, but they want you to subscribe to their service and all that, and.
Now no need to subscribe to service.
So there are there is a way to do this without the passcode, but it is going to erase everything on that device, which of course sounds like what you want.
Now.
The only thing is if this phone is locked to an account, which pretty much every iPhone is what's called has activation lock on it, which means once you get this phone factory reset, when you go to set this thing up and you go through the process of activating it, it is going to say this phone is locked to this Apple ID, and it will show you either a phone number with some of the digits blurred out, or an email address with some of the portion of that
email address basically redacted, and it will say you must confirm or get rid of this account activation before we can proceed, So that may happen. Now, I don't know if that's going to happen. Maybe the person deactivated this phone and just left it in this storage lock or whatever.
But here's the way to do it.
The first way to do it is probably the easiest way, and that's just to put your device into recovery mode. So most of the time, if you restart your device, it's not going to do this. But on the iPhone seven specifically, that's what you said. You press and hold the top button, which is the side button, and the
volume button at the same time. You just keep keep pressing and holding that as long as you can until you see that recovery mode screen, and then you can go through the process of connecting this to a computer and it will completely restore you want to restore, not update you want to restore, and it will bring that back to sort of factory settings, erase everything.
Uh.
The website iFixit dot com has a deeper method of doing this. It's called DFU restore Device Firmware Update, and this reloads the entire software and firmware of the device, and so just Google DFU restore and that's another way of doing this deeper recovery mode on this iPhone seven eight eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here at triple eight rich one oh one eighty eight seven four to two four
one zero one. You can follow along with the show online at richon Tech dot tv slash wiki. I put all the uh anything I talk about basically in the show notes. You can also find me on social media at rich on Tech. Brenda is in Anaheim, California. Brenda, you're on with Rich. Welcome to the show.
Hey, Rich, I had a question. I was thinking about getting the Galaxy the Fold, but then I heard you talking about the one Was it one plus open?
Sure yet come?
And so I was that's a little bit cheaper because the Galaxy didn't go on a Black Friday special. So I was thinking about getting that. But I'm a little concern first of all, because it's not wireless. I could live with that, yeah, but if something goes wrong, there's nowhere are really local to take and I think you have to send it in And I'm not really I don't have a tablet, so I wanted to phone. I like the screen, but I'm not really that savly with
the phone uses either. So what do you think about lee switch? Right now, I have an a seventy one Galaxy or not Samsung something. It's the older phone and it's it needs to be replaced.
Yeah, this would be a huge upgrade, you know, from that phone. So and I agree with you. The one of the downsides of the one plus brand is you know, there's no stores and if you do need help with repairs, I do believe you have to send it in now. I remember when we did the event with one plus, they were talking about how they're trying to make repairs a little bit easier. So I think that they have, you know, done something along those lines. Hopefully you don't
need that, you know. But I think when this, when you compare this phone to the the Samsung out there, you know, the z Fold five or the z Flip, they're not really the z Flip is not really in the same kind of category because that's more like a phone that shuts closed.
This is more like a book phone.
The only other phone to compare it to is the Google Pixel Fold, which I really like as well. So for me, it would be between the pixel Fold and the one plus Open. Now, I will tell you, I'm friends with a bunch of tech folks that are very serious about this stuff, and they love the one plus Open.
Like I'm not kidding.
I'm in a group chat and it is non stop just gushing over this phone. So they really do like it, and you know, I've used it and I think it's a great phone as well. I think one Plus has excellent software. The price is I think it's fifteen hundred right now, plus you can do a trade.
In, right it makes it cheaper than the Galaxy.
Yeah.
I don't know if you're Android, the A seven to one is going to get you a huge trade in, But I know they're doing a minimum of two hundred dollars on the trade in, no matter, no matter what phone. So I think what it comes down to really is, you know, if you're concerned about the repair situation, I would just do a little bit of research and just look at what they say on their website about the repair process. I do believe you have to send it in though, so let's see one plus repair service.
Well, I'm hopefully you should need repairs or that would even need an issue. I just didn't know how big of an issue it might be.
Yeah, I mean, look, the main thing is the screen, if there's any sort of like screen issue, you know, because this is a foldable phone. But yeah, and you may have to ship your device out and have it gone for you know, seven to nine days is what they're saying on there. So I mean that's really the biggest downside that I see. I think one Plus really makes a nice product. I think this phone in particular really captured the hearts of a lot of tech reviewers
because they thought that they did something. The Google phone is a little squat you know, it looks like a passport olmos. So the screen is kind of an odd size, and then the fold is really narrow, and so that's really an odd size too.
It is an outside because I was actually able to see it at the store.
Yeah, it's it's a little bit.
Yeah to me, it's unusable Brenda the outside screen on that on that Samsung.
So oh really, Okay, I think if you're willing to take a chance.
Is there a place to see this one plus in the store like we're able to sew?
No, I don't think there is. I mean I had people before I went there, and because I was asking her, why are you guys A would transfer it or they could even deal with this phone? And directly, yeah, that's not a problem. We can transfer it. That's my issue. So I would love to be able to see it in person. But I don't know anywhere that actually has a partem. I thought you only can get it online.
You might, I don't know if you can go to a best Buy and see it there. You might be able to do that, Okay. Also, you know one plus may do some sort of like pop up sometimes you know where you can see it there. But I mean, look, you can just you're an Anaheim. You just come to KTLA and I'll be happy to show you my model. Okay, you can take a look at it, take it out
a little test drive, you know, so. But I will tell you this, I think, out of all the phones that I've tested, I think that this is a really great phone.
I think that the camera is to me a.
Little bit better on the pixel fold but I think overall this phone is really nice. I think you're gonna be very happy with it. And again, it is expensive. You know, there's no denying that these foldable phones are very expensive. But if you are replacing a computer or a tablet with it, it can really do everything in a nice form factor. And know there is no wireless charging, but it does have really really fast wired charging, so you should be okay if you need to do that.
I think it is a bummer. And that was actually the biggest debate with all of the tech folks was the lack of wireless charging. We were pretty bummed out about that because every phone nowadays has wireless charging, I mean every single phone. So for me, it would be between the pixel fold and the one plus open. You know, it just comes down to a matter of personal preference. So good question, Brenda, and I'm glad you're not afraid
to take that jump into the world of foldaboles. Eighty eight Rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two four to one zero one. We got an email from Gary. Gary says, hey, Rich I've enjoyed many of your product reviews, like the Ring car camera. Sometimes when traveling and going into a restaurant, my wife and I leave our three year old Boston Terrier in her crate in the car, weather and temperature permitting.
In caps.
I will interrupt our meal a couple of times just to make sure she's safe. I'd like to mount a camera that will monitor her inside the vehicle and let me watch on my iPhone. Can you recommend the best product on the market today, Gary, Gary, I can't recommend the best product, but I can recommend a couple of options that you could look into, because depending on how much you want to spend.
And uh, you.
Know, you're talking about a cellular dash cam. This is kind of an emerging market of emerging category because people, you know, these these are complicated because they always have to be connected to power and you have to pay a monthly fee for the connection of the cellular. So the one that I have used and I think is actually really good is the ring carcam. It is expensive, it's two hundred and fifty dollars, but it works as expected if you have a ring system at your house.
This really integrates nicely into that. It is an extra six dollars a month for the cellular, but it works perfectly. I've tested this extensively and it is really great and it's that's a great start. So if you like the ring stuff, that's a good one. There's a company called Nextsar, which I also really like. They make one called the Nextsar one Connected dash Cam. This is a four K dash cam that is on sale right now. It's usually four hundred. It's two hundred and eighty dollars, and this
one has a connection, so it hasn't. It's a nine to ninety nine connection fee that's called Nextsar Connect and that will enable you to see your camera remotely. And again that is a two hundred and eighty dollars camera, plus ten dollars a month for the cellular option on that. But Nexsar is really great, and I think what makes Nexsar so good is their software is really really excellent, So that's what I like about them. Now, the other brand that kind of started this whole thing, but I
haven't really heard much about them. It's called Owlcam Owl like the animal owl cam, and they kind of came out with the first cellular connected dash cam, but it never really took off because it was very expensive. I think it was like close to like three four five hundred dollars when it first came out, and that's really expensive because, by the way, you can go on Amazon and get a dash cam for like fifty nine to ninety nine. So when this one came out, the tech
people loved it because it had the cellular connectivity. But it's very expensive. So you can check out that one right now. It looks like it's one hundred dollars or sorry, two hundred dollars, and then the monthly plan is fifteen dollars a month or one hundred and eighty dollars for the year. There is a Garmin, a Garman Dashcam Garman dash Cam Live. This made its premiere earlier this year three hundred and seventy dollars. See the trend with the
prices here. They are very very expensive, but this one is always connected. It does have an LTE connection inside and subscription plan required to use that LTE and I don't have the pricing on that just yet, but that is another option in Garman, obviously a big brand. I have not tested this one, but I would assume that their software is pretty good because it is Garment and that subscription is ten dollars a month. And finally there
is a brand called black View black View Vue. They have the LTE dashcams as well, and so those have built in four G LTE and Wi Fi and they have a couple different models. They've got a North American model, They've got a taxi model and a truck model. You probably don't need the taxi your truck model, you probably just need the North American model. And then they have a couple of other standard those look like a japan only.
So yeah, the one that you want for North America is a black View sim and that means that you have to go through their LTE, which is depending on how much you want to spend on that, you're going to be paying a monthly cost as well. There so a couple of brands there. I think the one that I've the most experienced with is the ring Cam. I've also tested the NEXTSAR and I really like the software
on both of those. But there are options for this, and I think that this is going to be a growing option because more and more cars, I think, are going to have this sort of built into it. I know the Tesla does, I know some of the newer cars like the Mercedes have a level of dash cam built in, but they're getting more and more prevalent because if you get hit and run, you want that recording.
And for your situation where you're trying to monitor a dog inside, I'm not going to comment on leaving the dog in the car because I don't want to get the angry emails. So I will just say that I imagine you're doing the right thing and making sure that it's safe for this dog to be in there. I've seen that happen before, so I will leave that at that. Rich on Tech dot tv is the website eight eight eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four
to two four one zero one. Coming up this hour, we're gonna.
Talk to a J. Forsyth of Coop.
He's gonna tell us about a smart chicken coop that lets you raise chickens in your backyard.
Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology, listening to the artist we did not get to see last night because we had to leave early at jingle Ball, Olivia Rodrigo. She was kind of the headliner and my kids could not stay awake. We left to think it like maybe eleven or midnight.
I don't know.
I thought they could party, but I guess they can't keep up with old dad. Let's go to uh Mario on riverside.
You're on with Rich.
Rich likes to sticking my call.
So I have a question.
I was trying to delete a bunch of like music because I have like an external Seagate external drive, okay, and and doing so, I deleted a bunch of stuff that I didn't want, like old pictures and videos and stuff like that. Is there a program that I can purchase or a way to get recover that stuff?
So you just you just deleted them. You trashed them?
Yes, and did you go in the trash?
But they're not in the trash?
Okay, That's what I was going to ask, because you know, if it was in the trash, it would be as easy as restoring them from there.
Did you do this on a Mac or a PC?
PC?
Okay? So where did they go after you deleted them?
I have no idea. Okay, I've looked in the PC's trash, I've looked in the Seagate had like a separate kind of trash, But I have no idea where they win.
Okay.
The mystery of the deleted files, and this is always very unfortunate when this happens, it happens often. And there are a couple programs that you can try. Now, if you're not comfortable doing this yourself, I would say to go on Yelp, and there are what's called data recovery specialists, you know, data doctors kind of people. You can search on Yelp for someone near you that can do that. Obviously, that's going to cost you money. It may cost I don't even know if they charge just to see this
and just to look at it. But if this is truly like extremely important, like pictures of your newborn or something like that you know that you don't have a backup of, then maybe that's one of the routes you want to go. But if you're comfortable with just trying to see if you can do this yourself, there's a couple of programs you can download and see if they recover these files. And it doesn't sound like you've done
a lot to this drive. Like if you said you rewrote the whole drive with ones and zeros over every piece of data, then I'd say probably not. But if you just literally delete these and then you don't even remember emptying the trash, so hopefully they're still on there.
Because usually when.
You erase a file on a drive, it's not like abolishing that file immediately. It's just kind of erasing the address of that file, like if it was a street it it would erase the address to that file. And so the file is still there. You just a computer doesn't know how to get there, like navigate there, so you just need a program that can help it navigate there again. So the first program is called Recouva r E c u v A, and this is made by a company called c Cleaner, which is a pretty reputable
company for cleaning up computers and things like that. So this has a free All these programs have a free version and then a pro version, and obviously you'll be able to do some somewhat of the recovery with the free but if you really want to recover everything, you'll probably have to pay for the pro But that's Recouva r E c u v A, and you'll plug in your hard drive and it will scan the drive and
see what it can find. If you want to try another program, there is one called ease us e's E A S E U S Data Recovery Wizard, and this is a tool that of course again has a free trial and then a buy now and if you purchase it.
Let's see how much this costs. They have this for both Mac and PC by the way.
And let's see, so monthly seventy dollars, annually one hundred dollars, so one hundred bucks. Basically, you're not gonna want to pay monthly for this. You're gonna want to pay once, so one hundred dollars for the annual, which is a lot. I mean, that's a lot for one program, but if it recovers these files, it's probably worth it. Finally, there is an app called Stellar Data Recovery s t e l l a R. Stellar Recovery Data Recovery, and again this is a free download to just kind of preview
what it can do. So you're gonna have toy to actually use this, but you can download this program for free and see if it can find anything, and then once it finds it, you can pay to actually have that data recovered. And I'm trying to see how much this is to purchase, and it is again eighty nine ninety nine, So again you're talking about it looks like these.
Programs cost about one hundred dollars.
Let's see what the Recouva costs, because that one they have a free version as well that will do some sort of level. It says advanced fil recovery for free. Let's see four. Let's see how much it says this twenty five dollars. So that's not too bad. So maybe take a look at all three of these programs. See which one you think has the features and kind of looks like the one you want to use. Maybe you want to start with the twenty five dollars one, see if it works, and then if not, you can go
and try the one hundred dollars programs. But it is an expensive kind of thing to do. It's probably cheaper than hiring someone though, so Mario, good luck and in general, two two pieces of advice here. Number one, make sure things are back up, backed up. Number two, this can happen to anyone. I'll be honest, I did this the other day to my dropbox. I selected a whole bunch of files all at once, and I deleted them, and
I lost an entire year's worth of videos. And yes, drop box has a way to recover some of those, but it did not recover all of them. And it's when you're doing things very fast and you're just clicking through those menus or you're trying to be quick.
That's when you make mistakes.
Believe me, it can happen to anyone when your mass deleting stuff, be very slow and methodical and don't do it all at once.
You are listening to rich on Tech, Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Rich Demiro here hanging out with you talking technology on location right now in the Hollywood Hills, and I am looking at what is a smart chicken coop. Joining me now to talk about it is aj Forsyth of Coop.
Thanks for joining me.
Oh my gosh, thank you for having me.
So tell me what Coop is.
This is a startup that is basically turning anyone into a chicken farmer exactly.
So we look at Coop as like the fusion of smart home technology meets backyard agriculture. So we have an automatic door that opens and closes in the morning, lets the chickens out. We have camera systems that are constantly monitoring your chickens, so we're checking like are their eggs ready to be collected, Are their predators around?
Is the door open or closed?
And so it's like the goal of the companies to enable anyone with a backyard to be able to raise chickens.
And what gave you the idea to start this? Did you raise chickens as a kid?
So I started raising chickens in college in my apartment complex, which the complex wasn't super happy about. And the whole idea is that anyone with a backyard should be able to control their own food supply, so they should be able to provide for their families, reduce food waste. So
you can feed chickens just about anything. And most people might not know that the average chicken lays about two hundred and fifty to two hundred and seventy eggs a year, So if you have five chickens, you're looking at over twelve hundred eggs a year just from your backyard.
So tell me about the smart coop. Give me the aspects of what makes this smart totally.
So we have an artificial intelligence and computer vision that's constantly monitoring the chicken's health, predator detection, et cetera. So that's done with two cameras, one inside the coop and one outside. We have an automatic door that I mentioned opens in the morning and closes after the chickens roost themselves up at night. And then we have a super innovative litter tray. So like what normally takes thirty minutes to clean a coop now takes less than two minutes.
You just remove the compostable pulp litter tray, fold it in half, and you can either compost or throw it out, and it makes makes taking care of chickens like less than a couple of minutes a day.
Now, this is not your first startup.
You started a company called eye Cracked, which specialized in on site iPhone repairs.
Tell me about that company and what you learned there that you have now brought here totally.
So I started a tech company in college doing nationwide on demand phone repairs. We ended up launching smart home installations as well. So I think like ness, thermostats, ring cameras, et cetera. Built that expanded to a couple of countries, sold the company to All State in twenty nineteen.
And I've always wanted to. I've always dreamt of, like, how do you do this fusion of.
Technology and backyard agriculture, and so I've been, honestly, I've been wanting to start this company for the last ten years, and I'm finally at a point in my life where i get to wake up and smile every day because I get to work with chickens and enable anyone that is chicken curious, is what we joke about, enable anyone that wants to to be able to raise backyard chickens effortlessly right now.
So it may be that in.
Rural areas, people are familiar with this idea, this concept of backyard chickens. What about in urban places, because this is really for anywhere in America totally.
So right now in the US, ninety three percent of cities allow you to raise chickens. So you you do have issues some occasionally with the homeowners' associations.
Or hoas we are.
Our website actually generates letters that you can send to your homeowners association and basically they legally have to allow you to raise chickens if you have if your city does, which ninety three percent of cities do.
And what's super interesting is.
If you look at where our customers are is this is not like a rural area only product we're seeing people are actually wanting to raise chickens on their roofs of their apartment buildings. We don't really recommend that, but really, any if you have a backyard and you want to do this, this is meant for the suburban backyard. This is meant for the busy family that wants to take care of their health and nutrition. They want to teach
their kids about entrepreneurship raising. You take care of the chickens, they take care of you. It's really meant for anyone that wants to and our coop app makes it pretty effortless and easy to be able.
To do that.
Okay, so tell me about the product you get eggs. What's the deal with the eggs that you get out of the coop?
Totally?
So, the average egg in your refrigerator right now is about thirty to sixty days old, which is which to me is just crazy, Like I don't need any other protein that's thirty to sixty days old. And every day that you have an egg in a refrigerator, you're losing nutrients, micronutrients, vitamins.
You're seeing like protein reduction. And so this whole backyard to table model, which is we talk about backyard to table, but like every day you open up your coop and you have six fresh eggs that literally the food that you fed your chickens yesterday become eggs today. So we're super passionate about people being able to own their own food supply and take care of their families.
And where do I get the chickens?
That's funny, So you can get chickens at local feed stores.
So Tractor Supply has twenty one hundred stores around the US right now. There's also hatcheries, so we work with a number of hatcheries where you can order chickens online and they'll ship day old chicks. So a lot of people don't know that baby chicks don't need food or water for the first twenty four to forty eight hours, and so USPS will actually ship you chicks that arrive at your local post office and you just go pick them up on you typically on Wednesday mornings when they arrive.
So a setup like this really appeals to someone like myself who may not consider growing and harvesting eggs in my backyard, but now that there's tech involved, you've got me interested. So do you feel like the tech aspect is really what brings people in and makes this easy. Do you think this could really make anyone a backyard farmer?
Yes, totally, So I think that with the camera systems and AI from what we're doing, it's peace of mind. So this is saying it does predator detection. We have about a six million image database of all different types of predators, so we can say, hey, rich raccoon's detected, all six chickens are safe, the door is closed, and it's just peace of mind, like you can see in real time what's happening in your coup.
Long term, we're gonna partner.
With feed stores and so think like a chewy dot com or tractor supply where we'll actually ship you food so you won't have to go to the store anymore. And then like cleaning is just like the easiest thing in the world. As I mentioned, it took a twenty minute job down to two minutes with our patented litter trays, which which people seem to like that they can spend a few minutes day adding food or water, and if the coop needs to be cleaned about once every two weeks, it makes it like super breezy.
Do you see this expanding into other animals, into other Are we gonna have a whole farm in the backyard.
So that's a great question. So we've never talked about that publicly. We do plan on using our camera systems for backyard monitoring. So think, hey, Rich, coyotes in your backyard, or hey, a possum is living under your house and it's and we're recording it. So we're we're definitely looking at other verticals, but for sure we're focused on chickens right now.
How much does a coop cost?
So right now our.
Coops are nineteen hundred and ninety five dollars, so just under two thousand dollars. What's what's interesting is we're getting a ton of feedback from our existing customers when they're like when they receive it, they're like, holy cow, the quality of this is like is incredible. You guys should charge more. I don't think we're going to. I'm actually trying to push the price down. But right now, two thousand dollars can get you a coup ship to your house as soon as tomorrow.
And what about subscriptions for the cameras anything else that includes.
We do a twenty dollars a month subscription, which is thirty days of video storage that covers the like the smart cameras, that covers the litter tray, so it makes cleaning super easy. And that is twenty dollars a month. And then we also for existing coop owners that don't have our product, we sell actually just the automatic door and camera system separately, so you can retrofit your existing coop with Coop's technology, and that's seven dollars a month.
Is this fun?
Is this more fun than your last startup?
I would say anything's more fun than my last startup.
Yeah.
I get to wake up every day smiling and laughing, Like who doesn't love chickens? Like it is the most fun company that I get to work on. And I have the best team in the world right now, Like I couldn't tell you how much I'm enjoying this.
And I imagine a lot of chicken jokes. The chicken puns are just there every day. What's the website that we can go to to learn more?
Totally?
So it's the company is called Coop and it's www dot Coop dot farm, So there's no dot com, it's just Coop dot farm.
And we'd love to have people check it out if you're interested.
Aj Forsy, thanks so much for joining me today.
Thank you for having me.
All right, you can learn more about Coop. I'll link it up on my website. Just go to rich on Tech dot tv.
What do you think of the idea of chickens in your backyard with a smart coop?
Let me know triple eight rich one oh one.
That's eight eight eight seven four to two four to one zero one more rich on Tech come your way right after this. Beyonce's got the new renaissance. You had Taylor Swift in the theaters, now you've got Beyonce in the theaters. I guess that's the new trend. I'll wait till they come out on the home video. So much easier, Uh, Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here talking technology with you, and it is time. Well not yet. We're gonna get to the feedback segment in just a minute.
You know, I go back and forth between the feedback and the feedbag, but you know you seem to like feedback. Maybe all we got chickens in the show, we've got feedbag all kinds of animal related stuff here. Let me just get through a few stories before we get to the feedbag. Tesla Cybertruck. Tesla deliveries have begun of the cyber truck. I think it took four years for this to come out. It's got a stainless steel frame, armored glass.
They showed I don't know if you saw the video of this, but they showed someone like just shooting up this car and it was just wild. Towing capacity eleven thousand pounds, let's see zero to sixty and as little as two point six seconds. I don't think the glass is like rock resistant, but it was. It's pretty resilient. Rear wheel drive is gonna start at fifty thousand with a two hundred and fifty mile range. That's gonna be
available in twenty twenty five. All wheel drives seven about seventy thousand deliveries next year, three hundred and forty mile range. The cyber Beast ninety seven thousand dollars three hundred and twenty mile range. Of course, all of those prices include the tax credit and the gas savings, which I don't like. How the Tesla website does that. Just give me like the real price. Let's see what else? Oh you gotay, two hundred and fifty dollars for a reservation if you
want one of these, and that's it. I think they delivered ten of them for the first event ever. Note you know, you heard my whole thing about Evernote with its you know, payment and all this stuff. Well now they are limiting free users to just fifty notes. So this is new restrictions. Free users get just fifty notes and one notebook per account that starts on December fourth, twenty twenty three. This is a significant reduction from the
previous free limit, which is already pretty limiting. Here's the problem. This is going to cause people to not use evernoe. Do they not want anyone to sign up for this? I don't know what their methodology is here. I'm paying like one hundred and thirty dollars a year for this program only because I love how it helps me organize this show. Otherwise I would use a different program if I was personally doing notes. You've got so many to choose from. I'd say Baar notes if you're on the iOS,
some Apple notes. If you're on iOS, Google, keep Notion, Obsidian. There are so many note taping apps, Joplin, open sourced and Google's Nest cameras can now monitor your garage door with AI. I don't know about you, but I always run outside to see if my garage door is open, and most of the time it's not, sometimes it is. Now you can just have your nestcam send you a notification starting now, so update your software set it up in the app. It will tell you when your garage
door is open or closed. Uses AI for that. All right, without further ado, Let's get to the feedbag feedback segment. Let's see we asked. I talked about my personal recommendations for apps last week, and people submitted theirs. Anna said she likes cam Scanner to scan email and file documents. Yes, that's a very popular one. Chris said. Two of my favorite apps. Scannable my number one favorite app, uses my
phone to scan and upload in PA for jpeg. Takes out the shadows and wrinkles nicely, automatically finds the scanned areas.
Scannable is from ever Note, or at least it was.
I'm not sure they're still updating that app, but that was one of my favorite scanning apps for a very long time. Let's see if it's been updated recently. I don't know why my internet is really slow today. While that's loading, let's go his other favorite app.
There.
It is last updated on December twenty twenty two. Okay, so it's still getting updated. Scannable is really really good.
I love that app.
Chris says his other favorite is Paprika three. This is an excellent recipe manager. I haven't tried the one you mentioned, but Paprika has so many incredible features and it grabs the just the necessary components of an online recipe. That's what I liked about the one I mentioned, which is a recipe keeper. You can see all the apps I like at rich on tech dot tv. Look for my favorite apps of twenty twenty three. Yvonne says RV Parky
for RV road trip planning. It's easy to use, and it supports exporting to a file that navigators like Garmin use and ground News collects news articles and rates their bias left right center and also their factual accuracy. It shows you how media coverages tilts based on their audience.
Interesting. Let's see.
Randall says, I have a z flip since day one. I've also traded in a Samsung S twenty three. I do not agree with your statement phone screen is unusable. I find it better than the S twenty three ps Apple phone suck.
Randall.
I did not say that z flip was unusable. I said the fold five was unusable to me, not to everyone. But I think that the narrow screen does present its challenges. But I think the z flip is excellent. In fact, I encourage you to get a z flip if you have a standard Samsung phone. It's basically a Samsung phone that folds in half.
So yeah, go for it.
Jefferson Graham, friend of the show, says, I was just listening to the podcast the woman who wanted a smaller file size on our photos. Apple defaults to hi C, which is the smaller size half the size of JPEG.
Did some testing.
You have a couple of options in your settings when it comes to your photos. You can go into settings Camera formats, and there is a format called in the new phone HCHIF, which is the efficient format, and then there's most compatible, which is JPEG. Jefferson photographer extraordinaire. He likes JPEG. It is much more widely universal. But the math is this default is twenty four megapixels on the
new phones. HIF is two point three megabytes. Twenty four megapixels of JPEG is four megabytes, so that's like almost double. Twelve megapixel ACHIF is one point seven megabytes, twelve megapixel JPEG is three point two. So if you want the most out of your phone, I would I would say go with the efficient one, which is the HIF or the hi C. It's just not always compatible with everything. Like I just try to post a picture to Twitter and I had to convert the HIF file to a JPEG.
Steve on Instagram says I wanted to quickly share my RV experience.
This past week.
We purchased a twenty twenty one Mustang mock Ex Route one model two years ago and just took our first long road trip to Lake Tahoe from South Orange County. Usually it's an eight to ten hour trip. It turned into a fifteen hour trip. The charge stations we found either didn't work or they took an hour to get a full charge, four stops to get to Tahoe. Once we made it, we found a charge point station which
was gonna take thirteen hours for a full charge. Don't want to bore you, but the point is they need to get the charge times down and safer charge points for filling, as well as maintenance on the stations. Before I purchased another one. Steve from Instagram Steve, I hear you, buddy, That's what I talked about de Rivian. They need to get this charging situation figured out. Tesla's got it and next year it's gonna get a lot better. But we'll see. Chuck says, I just bought the one plus fold and
I love it. Highly recommended.
There you go.
We had a caller earlier Brenda asked about that. There you go, Let's see what else do we have. Jeff from Frisco, Texas that I found this charger a few weeks ago and everyone loves it. Thought you might want to share. Love the show. A sent an Amazon link that has a portable charger that has all the different outputs USB, C micro, USB, Lightning might be overkilled, but it's thirty bucks. Not a bad deal, all right. If you can believe it, that's going to 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. You can find me on social media. I am on rich On tech on all of the socials. Coming up next week, I will talk about more technology. I don't know what I've planned, so we'll just leave it there. More of your calls, more of your text, all that good stuff. Thank you so much for listening. There are so many ways you can spend your time. I do appreciate you
spending it right here with me. Thank you to everyone who makes this show possible. We've got Kim on the phone lines. We've got Bobo Bobo on the board. My name is rich Demiro, and I think.
That does it.
We've got Bill I don't know. There's a lot of people that make this show possible. And thank you for listening to our holiday music this week. Anyway, get those emails to me Rich on tech dot TV. Hit contact. We'll see you next week.