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 the tech should be interesting, useful, and fun. Phone lines are open at triple eight 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. Once again, the phone line is eight eight eight rich one oh one. Now, if you want to email, that's
also an option. Just go to Rich on tech dot tv hit contact Guests. This week, I'm gonna talk to journalists, creators, and analysts who attended Galaxy Unpacked in Paris for their take on Samsung's new gadgets. Later, we've got shopping expert Trey Bodge. She's gonna share smart tips to maximize this year's Amazon Prime Day. And later we've got the co founder of the Oco app. He's gonna explain how his
app helps the visually impaired safely cross streets. Well, this week I was in Paris, France, my first time ever. Samsung brought me there for Galaxy Unpacked. This is their event that they held in the basement of the Louver and are also sponsoring the Olympics, so I think it all seemed fitting for Samsung to have their event in Paris. This is where they showed off foldaboles, a new watch, a new ring, new earbuds, all kinds of great stuff. This was my first time in Paris. I'll share some
observations with you. Great historic city. The food was just as rich as I imagined.
It would be.
People love to sit outside at bistro tables and just talk and eat and drink all day long, it seems, and surprisingly smoke. Lots of smokers over there, like they did not get the message about how smoking is bad for you. So my first night sitting I sat downwind of like a table of well everyone was smoking outside so anyway, but I will say every time I take an international trip, technology continues to make international travel easier.
So this trip was I think the first or the second time that I did not have to go to an ATM even once. My Tap to pay on my phone worked every single time except once. Translation apps make it so much easier to understand signs. I was even able to download the Metro app for their subway there, buy a ticket on my phone and use tap to go all for my phone. I was so impressed, although I will say New York City's implementation is the best I've found because you do not need to do anything special.
They made it so that if you have a credit card or a debit card set up on your phone is tap to pay. That serves as your ticket to ride the subway. All you do is tap and go. And if you ride it like a certain amount of times, like let's say nine times in a week, there's like a cutoff. They will then just billy the flat rate for that week, so you're not getting overcharged if you take it a bunch. So I thought New York City did a really nice job there. My phone worked perfectly.
I did not need an eSIM this time around. I had enough days banked in my travel pass. But I did try out one of the sims that I talked about here on the show gig Sky. They offer a free one hundred megabyte e SIM, so I downloaded that just to try it out and see if it worked. It worked perfectly, but I will tell you one hundred megabytes is not enough to do anything overseas. It ran out of the megabytes without me doing anything, So anything that was happening in the background on my phone.
That burned it all up.
One of the cool things I did was board the plane using facial recognition outside of LAX so you've probably seen TSA using more facial recognition, but this was actually to get on the plane. I did not show my boarding pass. I literally just scanned my face and the
doors opened and I got on the plane. So instead of having a line of people and one person checking boarding passes, now it is just like four or five little areas you stand in and there's kind of like glass doors and you just show your If you're good, it turns green, the doors open up, you get on the plane. So watch for that to happen more often because guess what, less people needed to do anything, And that's kind of the trend we're seeing with technology.
Internet much more private in Europe.
I noticed that those cookie choice screens, you know when you go to a website it's like, hey, do you mind if we use cookies? Well over in Europe they have much stronger privacy protection and data protection laws, so it will tell you very clearly do you want to accept all the cookies or reject them? They don't play games with you like they do here in the US. Also, I noticed when your data is being shared, it tells
you how many people it's sharing that data with. So, for instance, I was setting up one of the Samsung test devices and I said, hey, do you mind if we share your data with these seven hundred and sixty eight partners we have.
I said, what, no comment there?
Everyone walking around Paris is looking at their phone, So that is a universal thing at this point, seems like phones are you know, phone zombies are everywhere. But I still think there's lots of opportunities to help people find their way around new cities with the smartphone, also learning about landmarks and helping people choose restaurants. I mean, it's I do not have a good method for finding good restaurants around me. Let's say I'm staying at a hotel.
It's really tough to vet restaurants and figure out like is this a tourist trap, is it a good place? Is it recommended? Does it just have a lot of reviews? Because you know it's on Instagram? So at the end of the day, how did I get most of my recommendations from other people and concierge? So there's still a lot of opportunities for technology to make that easier. Uber definitely making the world an easier place to get around.
I took Uber. I was in where was I last weekend?
Bendorgon last weekend, and we took so many Ubers because we decided not to rent a car, and this time in Paris. Of course I did not I'm not going to rent a car. Took it everywhere, and it's just it's truly remarkable to me how a product that was created here in the US is just had an impact around the world. There's a little bit of a language barrier. I was trying to meet my driver at the airport and they were in a different place than I was.
I could tell they were in a different place because of the bubble on the phone or the blue dot that shows you where they were and where I was. But they kept calling me, and I can't speak French, so I you know, there's like a language barrier there. But then we started texting through the Uber app because that seemed to be easier, and I noticed under our text is said translated from French to English, like, so
it's doing that on the fly. So literally, not only can you get a ride anywhere, but now you can chat with the driver and it's instantly going to translate that. I mean, it's just brilliant things like this that are making life a lot easier.
Thank you, Bobo.
Also, don't disregard the feature that lets you reserve an Uber in advance. A lot of people may not know about this, but basically, you can reserve a car so that it's there for you waiting, and it doesn't have to be a fancy car. I'm not talking like, you know, super expensive town car service. But you can just get a car in advance so you don't have to think about, you know, if you're waking up early trying to catch a flight. And what I liked about this, I'd never
seen this before. Uber was like, hey, try this new feature where you just type in your flight number and we'll take care of figuring out when to pick you up. Same thing on the back end, So just put in your flight number and we'll take care of when you land and.
When we should pick you up.
Now I will say the driver that picked me up, you know, because my flight was delayed. They said it didn't work out so perfectly. But for me on the front end, getting to the airport from my hotel to the Paris airport. I didn't really know, do I need to leave early? Do I need to you know, give myself enough time? And sure enough Uber figured it all out and it worked out perfectly, And yeah, I thought
that was great. The event itself well organized, but Samsung held this thing in the middle of a major tourist attraction. They unveiled multiple products, two foldable phones, two smart watches, two sets of your duds, and a new health tracking ring. All of the new products are going to be available on July twenty fourth, So just to give you a quick rundown, I've been playing with almost all of these products except the ring, the Flip six, and the Fold six.
These are their foldable phones. These new models are the slimmest and lightest yet. Also they have improved durability, so if you're not familiar, the Flip is the one that kind of looks like the old school Motorol eraser. It's got a small screen on the outside, big screen on the inside that got the most improvements. The cameras are finally on par now with the S twenty four, So if you're thinking about getting the entry level Samsung, you can go with this little Flippy phone and get the
same camera quality. They upgraded to a fifty megapixel main camera and a twelve megapixel ultra wide. I was taking this phone around Paris taking pictures. It works great. It's if you want something that's different. The Flip six is really cool. That starts at eleven hundred dollars. I know they went up by one hundred dollars. I can't believe. It is the one that opens and closes like a book, so you get this kind of narrow screen on the outside,
which has gotten wider over the years. But then when you open it up, it is a nice tablet sized screen seven point six inches on the inside. That is a huge screen. Now that is nineteen hundred dollars. They didn't really improve the cameras on this. They said they put AI on it to make the cameras better. But this is the phone for kind of This is the top of the line Samsung phone when it comes to technology. Maybe not the cameras because the S twenty four camera
ultra cameras are still better. But if you want something that's super unique and different, I think they got the form factor to a place where it feels.
Good in the hand, it's slim, it's light.
It's going to get better, but I think at this point they've made a device that is foldable and very, very usable. So again, that is the z Fold six nineteen hundred dollars. You're talking the price of a laptop for a phone. But the good news is you don't really need anything else besides that because it's going to function in so many great ways. They also talked about their AI features. Samsung really pushing AI, and they're pushing it in a different way than Apple because they're bringing
it to a lot of older models. So right now you can get all their AI features on the S twenty two, S twenty three series, S twenty four series, and the foldables, Whereas when Apple comes out with Apple Intelligence rumored for later this year or early next year, that's going to work on the iPhone fifteen Pro models and up, which means a lot of the older models are not going to get them. And no surprise here.
The number one AI feature that Samsung has introduced is called Circle to Search with Google, and it means you can circle anything on your screen. You can translate the text, you can reverse search the picture, you can search the text whatever you want to do.
It is very very useful.
In fact, it is one of the reasons why I have been loving the S twenty four Ultra so much, because, especially when you're traveling internationally, it is just like it's it feels very very smart, and it feels like a feature that we need on our phones and you get it there. All right, Coming up, I'll tell you some more about the products. We still have two more products to go through, an ultra watch and a ring, plus
some earbuds. Eight eight eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four two four one zero one.
This is rich On Tech.
So I was talking about Samsung and some of the products that they unveiled. They unveiled a lot of stuff, and I will tell you that this is Samsung's moment. They now have an ecosystem that is so rich and so wide ranging that you are not giving up anything by being in it. The reason why this Ultra watch fills a need of people that want kind of a nicer watch that's more geared towards hiking and on all
the extreme sports kind of stuff. And then the ring is they are the first major company to have a ring that sort of integrates with everything else. So, yes, there's the Aura ring out there, but you know, you're using its own app, and it's kind of like a it's an island, and there's nothing wrong with Aura. That's kind of the big ring right now. But the fact that Samsung has one that works in their ecosystem and
it works with the watch. So if you're wearing the watch and the ring, they will take the best readings off of whichever device is working at the best at time. So if you're sleeping, it'd probably be the ring. If you're out on a bike ride, it'd probably be the watch. So let me tell you about this Ultra Watch. This is six hundred and fifty dollars. It's fantastic. It's it's got a titanium frame. It's got good water resistance, it's got good altitude so you can go from five hundred
meters below sea level to nine thousand meters high. It's got all kinds of different tracking, so it's got really accurate tracking. It's got the addition of a quick button, which means you can instantly start a workout. Yes, just like the Apple Watch. Ultra It's got an emergency siren. Yes, just like the Apple Watch Ultra. It's got a bright display up to three thousand knits which is actually very bright, yes,
just like the Ultra from Apple. And it's got the longest battery life on a Galaxy Watch, so up to one hundred hours in power saving mode. Now that's not gonna be realistic for most people because you want to track your stuff, but it's nice to have that option otherwise you're gonna get for me after a whole day of travel yesterday, I was down to about I think it was about fifty percent sixty percent, and you're talking almost twenty four hours of travel yesterday. So but I
didn't do a workout. So again, six hundred and fifty dollars. There isn't LTE version, which means cellular, so you can leave your phone behind and still get your text and your calls. It's a forty seven millimeters watch size. It's available in gray, white, and silver. My choice is the gray. I really like that. The white is really cool too. I don't think I saw the silver. Let's see what else, Okay, now,
the Galaxy ring. So this is the Galaxy ring. And if you've seen like the Aura Ring, it's just like that twenty four to seven health monitoring, up to seven days battery life. It's lightweight. I tried it on. It's weird because Samsung says, oh, these sizes are not standard, so you have to get a sizing kit or you have to go to a store to get sized before we'll let you order this thing. But I was like, oh, give me size ten and sure it up. It fit me just like a size ten ring. So take it
for what it's worth. But you're not going to be able to order this apparently without getting some sort of sizing kit first, and I think that's because they don't want to deal with all the returns on the wrong sizes. But this is really a big thing to track your sleep. So it's got sleep tracking, it's got skin temperature monitoring, it's got this new energy score, which all of these rings are doing. Kind of this like energy score. Aura
has it, the Amaze fit has it. But that's kind of a score of your day, So how are you doing? And this is looking at your sleep, your activity, your sleeping heart rate, and your sleeping heart rate variability to let you know how prepped you are for your day. So if your scores a little low, it's going to say, you know what, maybe today is not the best day to work out. Maybe take it as a recovery day.
It also has automatic walking and running tracking. It's got heart rate alerts, so it will give you a real time notification if you have an unusual heart rate issue happening.
And gesture controls.
So if you have this ring on and you set your phone up on a tripod or you just have your phone in your hand for a selfie, you can pinch your two fingers together and that will take a photo. You could also pinch your two fingers together to dismiss the alarm on your smartphone, which I think is a very dangerous feature because I think people are going to be doing that a lot.
Might want to.
Disable that one. The Rain comes in three colors, silver, gold, and black. It is four hundred dollars. There are no subscription fees. That was a big rumor that Samsung was going to start charging subscription fees. That is not the case, so that into consideration again. All of these products from Samsung are available on July twenty fourth, And you know, like I said, I've been playing with them and I've been really impressed. I wore the Galaxy uh Buds three
Pro all day on the plane yesterday. They sounded fantastic. They have two new Galaxy Buds Pro. They now have a stalk which before they come they almost look like beans before that you put in your ear. Now they look like, you know, very standard earbuds. So again that's kind of a wrap up on the Samsung stuff. You have any questions about it, give me a call. Eight eight eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven
four to two four one zero one. Now to continue with the Samsung I know it's a lot coming up. We're going to talk to some of the folks that were at the event with me to get their take on this stuff. You're listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology at triple eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four to one zero one. We'll get back to the phone lines in just a moment, but first let's take you back
to Paris for a deeper dive into Samsung's announcements. They showed off two new foldable phones, plus an ultra watch, earbuds and a smart ring. First up, I talked to Bob O'Donnell, President and chief analyst at TECHnalysis Research. Bob shares his thoughts on Samsung's focus on digital health. You know, I thought the event was great.
I mean doing it in Paris right before the Olympics, of course was exciting. It gave it an international feel and flair, and it's important for Samsung. I mean, Europe is their second largest market, so I think that was great. Obviously, do we end the louver made it even more exciting, So I thought that was great, you know, And then the big story for me is digital health. Like they really focused on digital health. Obviously, they added the ring,
which is the big new edition. They added the Watch Ultra with fis looks just like Apple's Watch Ultra, but I wish they would have did a little bit different design. But anyway, it's still important to their whole digital whole hell story. And of course they focused on AI. But the interesting thing for me was, hey, it's censors from wearables with AI to do digital health, and that is I think a really interesting story and frankly it puts them ahead of everybody else because they're the only big
company that's got that complete suite. You know of devices with the watch ring and of course the smartphone with the app that's it's combining all that data. So to me, that's the big takeaway from this show, and it was pretty exciting.
In that regard.
I've been a big foldable fan for a long time, and frankly, this year's iteration is a pretty modest upgrade compared to previous ones. But then I also have to remember, look for the mainstream audience, foldables are still kind of a new thing and we're really just starting to see
it take off. And the fact that Samsung now has more competition from other vendors is actually making the foldable market one of the few areas of the smartphone market that's act growing because it as a small base to grow from, but it's a new and different form factor and a lot of people are excited by that.
You know.
I think a couple of things are going to make that foldable purchases happen. Number one, of course, the price points are kind of high and that's a challenge for a lot of people. But as we start to see applications, and I think some of the AI applications that can leverage the foldable screen, like the interpreter application, those kinds of things that leverage those two screens that are foldable has and then combine that with AI. All of a sudden, there are things you can do with that phone that
you cannot do with any other phone. It's not about just having a bigger screen.
It's a completely.
Different experience, and I think those kinds of things is what will trigger it. But look, at the end of the day, it's going to be a price point. Obviously we've seen some level of component price issues. That's always a factor. But I think Samsung also is trying to make clear that they've got a premium line of devices and prices are not quite as big of an issue for those premium phone buyers. So I think they're continuing
to position the foldables there. The big question will be when will they go to a mainstream price point for those foldables, And we'll see maybe next.
Year next I talked to Rebecca Isaac's consumer tech and electronics editor at Forbes Vetted.
Rebecca gives us her.
Take on the Galaxy Ring and its potential impact on the wearable tech market.
Oh my gosh, the ring is really exciting. It's the person it's kind from Samsung. I mean, sure, we've seen products like the Aura Ring Gen three, and there are a few others out there, like Ring Kong produces the one that I'm aware of, but the first one from Samsung. It feels light to wear, It's really comfortable, It's made of a super durable titanium fild, and daring my hands on of it, it felt very sturdy, like it's not going to break, It's not going to slide off of
my hand as I'm washing the dishes. I really like the battery life. That seven day battery like that it promises is really exciting because I don't know about you, but I'm always forgetting to charge my watch, very guilty of daki, but I'm really excited for it. It's gonna have some really great use cases for someone who maybe wants the smart technology but doesn't want to wear a bulky watch on their wrist.
Now.
I love social media content creator Parker Burton. He makes Android focused content on TikTok and Instagram. He told me he appreciates the refinements in Samsung's latest foldables, but something has to give.
For people to really want one.
And at this event, I'm really excited for the refinements with the Z flip and.
The Z fold.
I love the flattened up edges and the matt rails and the map backs, heels a lot more premium than before. Also love the ring and how it's like now connecting with the watch, so you don't need a separate app for your ring and a separate app for your watch. They all connect together, which is great. And the earbuds a little bit interesting. It looks like some other earbut that we know. But I guess I'll try them out
and see if they're good. I think once they introduce a lot more features that could be more compelling, Like I mean, they've showed us features like taking hands free selfies, which that can be compelling. But I think for people who aren't already fold or flip users, there's got to be something big that people are like, oh yeah, now I want it, which I don't know if we're there
yet for some people. For some people, yes, for sure they love their folds and flips, but for others, I don't know what's gonna make them switch.
But in the future we could get something come.
I mean, there's probably people who want a folding phone, but just because of the price, they just like can't get it, and so if somehow the price goes down, then there's people that'll probably just snatch at it immediately.
Next up at abung Ata also known as thunder E from Board at Work.
And this impact was quite interesting because we saw some really new stuff, some upgrades, and honestly, I've got a little mixed feelings on it. I love the ring, I love the idea of the ring. I like when it's smart rings, the buds. I like the improvements I'm seeing there. The new Watch Ultra looks kind of similar, but I still love the fact there's a ton of features.
Now.
When it comes to the Galaxy Z Flip six Z Fold six as well, I kind of I'm leaning towards the Flip six. I think there's more upgrades on that device. The fifty megapixel, new sensor, the new ultra, why you know, just a little accents on the design look really nice. The fold is thinner and lighter, but I'm gonna lean to the Flip six overall. I think this is pretty good on the health department from Samsong. When it comes to the phones, we just have to wait and see.
As an Android used, I like the flexibility that Android brings, and Samsung, as the market leader, does bring a lot of features in a more polished fashion. Plus they have honestly the best camera on an Android device. And I've been using the Galaxy Notes since the very first note, So for me, the S twenty four Ultra makes sense. I write a lot of notes. I still try and write something or else, you know, I'll forget how to write anything at all, So I love it for that feature.
Finally, lance Yulenov, Editor at large at tech Radar, He's particularly impressed with Samsung's progress in creating a cohesive ecosystem of devices.
So I think, you know, the ring is really the hot thing to me because it follows the trend of you know, lower impact or you don't have to have a screen where you can go to bed with the tracking device because we really don't want to sleep with our watches, you know, because if we look at that Samsung Galaxy Watch Aultra, that thing is a beef thing. I'm not going to sleep with that. But the ring I'll sleep with. Then seven days of battery life. That's kind of exciting.
I like the new.
Help you know technology, They've got the AI stuff that's built into it. I also like that Samsung is starting to really deliver on the ecosystem idea either getting closer to doing that thing that's going to excite people about owning a whole bunch of Samsung devices. ICE is going to be a big leason. Guess what, the Samsung Galaxy D fault six just got one hundred dollars more expensive.
I'm honestly really.
Success, you know, surprised about that.
I do like the device.
I think the design is really good.
I like that then, or I like that it's lighter.
They did not really upgrade the cameras to what I wanted, So I'm not really sure why I'm going to spend one hundred dollars more.
If they want to expand the.
Market, they've got to make these things cheaper.
Well, it's good.
That's a race of AI, right, So we have, you know, the Galaxy AI versus Apple Intelligence, and Samsung seems like maybe they're going to deliver some of these features sooner than what Apple's capable of. Some of our Apple Intelligence features again puts to twenty twenty five, so maybe Samsung gets a lead there. But it's really about how many people are using these things. Will they use them on
the Samsung Galaxy devices? And that depends on how easy they are to find and how effective they are every time they use them.
Samsung has always been on the cutting edge with new features, new products, and just overall putting a lot out there. Apple might be considered the more premium ecosystem, but Samsung continues to push the envelope and deliver new ideas, sometimes years before the competition. Keep in mind, these foldables have been around now for five years and they just seem to be getting started. I'm rich Demiro more rich on Tech right after this, Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology at Triple A Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four two four one zero one. I know you're anxious for me to get to the phone lines. I had a lot to get through with the Samsung stuff. Hopefully that explained a lot of it, and you have a better understanding of all the products that they have put out and the website for the show rich on
Tech dot TV. I've got everything that I mentioned written up in today's newsletter, So just go to the website rich on Tech dot tv UH. You can find the newsletter there and if you want to read more about the Samsung stuff, it is all there. Let's go to Sally in Los Angeles. Sally, you're on.
With Rich.
Hi.
Hi. So my question is I'm traveling to China in a few weeks and I know there's a lot of apps or website or band in China that we can use here in the US. So I'm trying to figure out what is the best Do I purchase at ethan, do I get a VPN? What is the best way so that I can still use all the apps that I can use here?
There good question.
So if you are using your cellular service that you have here, pretty much everything is going to work as normal. So that it's weird because when I was last over there, there were things that if I was on my cellular everything would work just fine. And I don't know if that's because it's an American cellular company or what, but in general things worked pretty well. So I was able to access a lot of the stuff that you typically
you can't there. Now if you're not if you're not using your own cellular, like if you are going to get like an eSIM, that's for China, then yes, you'll probably need to use like a VPN to access things like Twitter, to access Google, to access Facebook. I mean pretty much everything over there is banned. So what are you going for? Is it work or fun?
Or what for fun?
Okay, so I'm going for a couple.
Of weeks, Okay, So yeah, so it might be just mostly social media that you're going to be impacted, obviously, Google, Google Maps, things like that. It's been a while since I was at in China, so it's I'm trying to remember. Like the last time I was there, I felt I felt like everything pretty much worked as long as I was on my cellular. But if I wasn't on cellular, like if I was on the work or the hotel
Wi Fi, that's when things stopped working. So I personally, just to prepare, would get the VPN, and that way, when you're over there in China, you would log onto the VPN and you would choose a US server as your host on that VPN. So if you want to look at, you know, some of the recommended VPNs, I've got I've got an article that you can you can google just Ktla DeMuro VPN and uh.
The article is.
It says, do you do you need a VPN, here's what the experts recommend, and there's some recommendations for what you should look for in a VPN, So you know, that's that's probably what I would do, just to be sure and make sure that your VPN is working before you go over there. And then for e SIM I like arlow A I R A l O. You've probably heard me talk about them on the show. Let me check if they have one for China. Let's see if they have a VPN for China or sorry, a.
SIM China for a low because I'm going to China and after China, I'm going to Japan. Uh, what they have when an ethan that will work in both countries or in China is a very.
Specific sometimes they do. So there are regions, so if you type in China, it will give you all of the all of the SIMS that will work there. So I think China is kind of its own thing. So I'm looking on the website and it doesn't look like they have a regional one. So and Japan, by the way, is a little tricky with eSIMs. So when I was there, do you have an iPhone or an Android, Okay, you should be fine because on Android specifically, pixels in Japan
with the eSIMs do not like to work. And it was driving me nuts the last time I was there because I all, you know, typically I travel with an Android in an iPhone and my iPhone I fired up the eSIM, no problem. Then all of a sudden, I get to the pixel and it's like it's just not working, and I'm like, what is the problem here? And then I finally cross reference talked to a couple of friends and they said, yeah, for some reason, the pixel specifically just has it or did have an issue with this
with this Aralow sim. If you look on the sim, if you and read the terms on the sim card, it will tell you that certain devices do not work with that sim. So for my purposes, the pixel was one of those devices. It just did not work on there. So, but it's gotten a lot easier. You can buy all these things before you go, so that you're ready to go. You're all set up. What service do you have on
your cellular? Is it AT and T, Verizon, T Mobile, AT and T Okay, so with AT and T, depending on the plan you're on, I would call them and see if you have any like what your data passes, because sometimes you know, if you're only there for a week or so, it might you might get a couple of free days on their on their roaming.
So call AT and T. Yeah.
So on my last trip to Paris on my account, I had twelve days of free roaming.
So it depends on your play.
Yeah, so call The first thing to do is call AT and T say hey, do I have any international days included in my plan? And they will look that up and say, oh, yeah, you've got five days free, so you know, you know that you've got Yeah, So that's that's good to know.
So as long as I let's let's just say I I call AT and T let them know I'm traveling, and I stay on my cellular plan while I'm in China, everything should work.
It should.
I mean, I'm just you know, I'm telling you from my memory of when I was on my US you know SIM, when I was just roaming. It seemed to work because I don't know if they have like you know, because you're on an American SIM card. It's like, oh, okay, well you're an American, you have access to these things. But I you know, okay, but I'd be prepared just for the you know, for the for the reality of the VPN, but in general, you know, and things have
it might have changed over there. I'm not really sure, but you know, in general, be prepared with the VPNs that you have connections no matter what, and that you can access to things that are important to you once you're over there.
It's a it's a little bit of a.
It's a vp in like a pretty easy like do I just turn it on while I'm there and then instead? Do I need to do any settings on my iPhone in order for the VPN to work.
No, but you you know, you have to set it up, set up everything here so that when you get there you just have to toggle it on. And so it's very Most of the VPNs are very very simple to use. Once you install it on your phone, it will say hey, can we install a VPN profile? You install that VPN profile, and then some apps will say, hey, do you want us to be on all the time. I don't recommend that, but you know, there's a way to toggle on inside
the app. Usually I have like a big power button looking thing you press that you'll see VPN in the upper right hand corner of your phone.
You know you're.
Connected to the VPN, and then you know you can you can go on as normal. But again I would set this all up here so that you kind of have an idea you could try the VPN out here. Okay, So so try all this stuff here and get familiar with it before you get there. And again the first stop is to call your cellular company and just see what they say about roaming in China, to say, hey,
do I have any days included? Don't make the mistake I did of leaving my dry box on because I racked up an eight hundred dollars bill because it tried to upload all of my photos in the background.
So that's another thing. When you're traveling internationally.
If you have any sort of backup running on your phone, like a photos program like Amazon Photos or Google Photos or iCloud, make sure that cellular is turned off for that sinking, because you do not want it sinking over cellular. Make sure you have it turned on where it's just backing up over Wi Fi. Very important, or you're gonna run through all your data or get a huge bill. Eight to eight rich one on one eight eight eight
seven four to two poor one zero one. Coming up, I'll talk about the AT and T data breach how it might affect you. Welcome back to rich on tech eight to eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four two four one zero one. The website rich on tech dot TV. If you want links to anything I mentioned, hit the light bulb. If you want to prouse the stories I do for TV, they are there. Also my newsletter. Be sure to sign up for that and you can get that delivered to your inbox every week.
It includes a lot of great information, just like I share on this show Richontech dot TV. This week, AT and T revealed another massive data breach affecting millions of customers. AT and T is in the process of notifying about one hundred and ten million customers about this new data breach. The stolen data includes phone numbers and call and text records from May one, twenty twenty two, to October thirty first, twenty twenty two. Some data from January twenty twenty three
was also compromised. This affects both cellular and landline customers, including those who used another carrier on AT and t's network. Like a cricket so what did they get metadata such as who you called, who you texted, and how long you talk to them for. Some of the records also include cell site identification numbers, which might be able to be used to reveal your approximate locations of where you made those calls.
Now.
AT and T says they learned of the data breach on April nineteenth, twenty twenty four. They say that the stolen data does not contain the contents of calls or the contents of the texts. This is the second security incident for AT and T in twenty twenty four. They had that passcode reset earlier in the year. So AT and T says the stolen data is not currently publicly available, which means you can't search through it. Lots of thoughts
on this number one. You just have to assume that your data is going to be out there at some point, because we are entering a world where it's not a matter of who might get breached, it's a matter of when. Also, you got to be careful about the information that you share. I've been watching the documentary on Netflix, the Ashley Madison data breach. That was just devastating to people. Not defending
what Ashley Madison was doing. But at the same time, thirty seven million people that kind of data out there. It was a big deal, and this is just going to continue to happen. It's just going to continue to happen. Now you can check to see if your data was included in this. AT and T set up a special website. You can go to AT and T dot com slash event, slash lander, l A n d Er and I checked my account. I got a big green check. Marcus as accounts not affected. Bobo checked his account and it says
sure enough, account affected. So you can go to this website ATT dot com slash event slash lander to see if your data was involved in this breach.
It's the good news is here.
It doesn't sound like they got names, addresses, social Security numbers, credit card information. Doesn't sound like they got that. But they did get a lot of call data. So theoretically, I'm just you know, looking to the most nefarious purpose of this. Someone could theoretically set up a database if this data gets out where you'd be able to search and see if someone you know called a phone number that you also know. So that's just one way and
just on this same note. While we're here surf Shark, this is a VPN company. They introduced a new feature called alternative Number. So this is a new tool to protect your real phone number from online threats and spam. They basically will give you a virtual US based phone number that you can access through the app. You can receive phone calls, you can receive messages, and you can reply to messages with this alternative phone number. And the whole purpose here is to help you safeguard your real
phone number from strangers, spam, and untrusted websites. You cannot use this phone number to make outgoing calls or to initiate messages. It's just for incoming and to reply. So why would you want this, Well, you can use it in place of your real phone number anywhere where you don't think your real phone number is necessary. So maybe you're signing up for a club card at a grocery store, or you're just signing up for you know, online sweepsteakes, whatever,
you can use this phone number. So right now, it only works with US phone numbers. It's anywhere from three to five dollars a month. And I'm telling you this idea of using a secondary phone number.
I do it.
I use my Google Voice number when I sign up for almost anything as sort of a buffer between me and all of these data breaches. Because your real phone number is valuable, It's linked to a lot of things, and I think people are just understanding that if they want to protect their privacy, they have to start giving out information that is much much less linked to their real identity. Let's go to Dory in Westlake Village, California. Dory, what's your question?
Yes, I thank you for taking my call. My question may be a little funny.
That Samsung ring you were talking about? Can you wear it on your toe?
Oh? Like a toe ring? Interesting question that those rings really down match with the rings I always wear in my hand.
But I love the idea of that ring.
Yeah, that's a great question, and I totally get it because you know, not everyone would match with these things.
Let's see.
So I don't have the information from Samsung specifically, but Aura, who makes a smart ring. They replied in a tweet to someone that asked about this exact same question, and they said, we do not recommend wearing the ring on a toe because the toe differs from the fingers in the pulse signal it gives, so the readings are going to differ and they're not going to be as accurate as fingers. So bottom line, you probably could wear it as a toe ring. You're not going to get the
right readings. But you know, I just don't think the blood flow to the toe is as pronounced as it is to your fingers, because that's an extremity. And Bobo's just walking out. He's done, This show is over for him. Like that question, I thought it was as a it's a look, toe rings are a thing. In fact, we were joking at the Samsung event that they might come out with the nose ring.
That's a smart nose ring. Why not smart ring?
But the reason is because it doesn't match the jury that she already wears.
Well, look, people are particular. When we were looking at the rings, they have him in three colors. They've got black, silver, and gold, And because my wedding ring is silver, I was I like the black the most. It looks the best. It's like a nice matte black. But to me it's like, oh, I'd have to go silver because it matches my ring. Look, people want to match. You gotta Bobo, your your hat is matching your shirt? I noticed, are your sneakers matching
everything too? What you don't know about Bobo? Yes, he's a sneaker head and he comes in here every week with fully matching clothes. His shirt matches, his hat matches his sneakers. And yeah, if I wear my crocs here, they only match, you know, my cross.
All right, let's go to Mark and Woodland Hills. Mark, you're on with Writch.
Yes, good afternoon. My problem is is that a lot of the subsidies were dropped for telephone, and I only had bundled already landline and internet service. Now the landline prices are just going out of the roof costs wise. But I also recall when I used to have consumer cellular, they had a base unit that was that ran on wife. I believe it was or a cellular service. But there's
something similar I'm interested in. It's called Umama, and what apparently what it does is it uses your internet and I can have all my cordless phones all over the house, so I don't have to run around to get to one of them. And I was wondering if you had that or any other alternatives. I've seen all the videos on YouTube, but you never know what hucksterism is and what's right, So I thought i'd run it by you. You're the expert.
Absolutely. UMA is fantastic. It's been around forever. It works, it does what it says. You buy the unit. The way it works, you plug the unit into your Internet and they also actually have a Wi Fi unit at this point, so you don't even need to plug it into a physical ethernet jack, although I probably would recommend that just for the best signal. But you plug that in. It's a little box and that box takes that Internet
signal and gives you a phone line. So it's using voiceover IP, which you know, most of the cellular services and all of the voice services, almost all of them now are using voiceover IP. You know, the landlines, you know, the physical copper cables may not be, but everything else. If you're getting a line from Spectrum, if you're getting a line from your cable company, it's all using voiceover IP.
So UMA.
The interesting thing about the way they work is that you basically buy the device for anywhere from seventy to one hundred dollars and then the phone service is free. You just have to pay the monthly taxes and fees and you can put your phone number or your zip code in online and it will tell you how much the taxes and fees are. For where I live, It's under ten dollars a month, so highly recommend it. It will work with your phones. The other thing to look at is called magic Jack.
This.
When I first covered this, I was working at c Net decade probably over a decade ago, and I couldn't believe it, Like it's just like I couldn't believe that you can get something that turned Internet into a phone line. And of course now it's very common, but this would solve your problems if you want a home phone service that does not cost as much as getting something from the cable company. So again, UMA isom A. Like I said,
they've been around forever. I personally tested them. I had it in my house for a very long time, and it does exactly what it says it does. It's a it's a virtual phone number that basically lets you plug in a real phone, so you can go to Walmart, you can buy a cordless phone like the old school phones.
And that little jack, I forget what it's called, like the RJ oh gosh, what's a phone jack RJ something r J eleven is that it You plug that in to the back of this Uma and now you have a real phone line that is all going through the Internet. So the other one, like I said, magic Jack Vonage used to be the third. It does not look like they do a consumer product anymore. So those are the two I go with Mark, markn Widlin Hills, Thanks for
the call. Definitely to go for it all right. Eighty eight rich one on one oh one more tip wait until Amazon Prime Day because the Uma is sold on Amazon and it might be on sale on Amazon Prime Day.
You've got a couple of days to wait.
Eighty eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one more rich on Tech, come in your way right after this. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you talking technology. The phone line for the show eight eight eight rich one one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. I know you got a burning question about technology, something on your mind. Give me a call. The phone line is free, the call is
toll free. The answer is uh, you know who knows. It may not be worth as much may be worth the price of the phone call. Who knows you never know? Eight eight eight Rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. The website for the show rich on tech dot TV. The more you call, the more you keep our lovely call screener Kim Company. Uh, dark patterns? Are you familiar with what a dark pattern is? This is pretty much a manipulative,
manipulative design. And we see this all the time. I see this all the time.
Every day.
I download a lot of apps, I sign up for a lot of websites, and I notice these dark patterns almost every single time. And they're just and the FTC they support my thoughts that this is happening a lot. So Actually, the FTC teamed up with a whole bunch of international partners to study six hundred and forty two websites and mobile apps offering subscription services and guess what. Nearly seventy six percent of them employed at least one
possible dark pattern. Sixty seven percent used multiple dark patterns. Now, what's a dark pattern? It's something that makes you do something that you wouldn't normally do if you had all the information at your disposal. Let me explain the most common dark pattern. You are signing up for, or you download a new app and it says that screen where it says, hey, would you like to sign up for a free trial or a subscription, and you don't really want to, You just want to try out the app,
but you can't seem to get past that page. But if you look very closely, there's a very faint X in the corner that you don't see when you first look at that window, and so you think that you have to either sign up up for a free trial or sign up for a subscription to actually even just try out the use of that app.
But in reality, you can.
Click that little X and deal with that later and try the app and see what happens before you sign up for anything. That is one dark pattern, and that's
the most common I see. So if you're ever signing up for an app, and believe me, the reason I know this is because I try a lot of apps and I feature them on TV and of course here on the radio, and people will email me invariably and be like, Rich, I can't believe you're promoting an app that you can only you know you have to sign up for it and I said, oh, no, you missed the dark pattern. They had a little X that you
missed during that sign up flow. This happens a lot, so the two patterns, and I didn't know they had a term for this. The most that they encountered was called sneaking practices. This involves hiding or delaying the disclosure of information that might affect your purchase decision. That's the one I just talked about. And then interface interference. This is obscuring important information or pre selecting options in a frame that steers you towards making a decision that's more
favorable for the business. So if you're just clicking through all the next, next, next, next, next, next, next, all the stuff that's pre selected benefits the company. And I see this a lot when I'm setting up new phones. Every single new phone and almost every single tech device that I set up has an option that says, do you want us to send diagnostic data back to the company about how you use this product?
Now, you don't need to do that.
You don't need to be their little, you know, feedback response person for this stuff. Like you paid for this product, you you know, should get to use it without having to send back exactly how you're using this product. iPhone does it, Android does it, Samsung does it?
They all do that.
You I always unclick that box because why should I send you all this rich data about how I'm using this phone? Now, By the way, what are they collecting everything? Everything, how you swipe, the time you turn your phone on, the time you turn your phone off, when you use your phone, when you're not using your phone, how many apps you download. Everything's being collected if you're sending back that diagnostic data. And of course that box is checked
by default. In fact, here's another dark pattern. When you're setting up a product, it will say accept all. And when you press accept all, you think that you have to tap yes to all these different things.
You do not.
If you tap them individually, you'd notice only the first two are required. The rest are optional. So be very careful when you download stuff and sign up for stuff, because you are bombarded with these dark patterns and they.
Trip people up. Seventy six percent of sites have them. That's wild.
Xbox raising Xbox game Pass prices. So if your kid uses this like mine does, Yeah, typically this was seventeen bucks a month. Now it's going up to twenty dollars a month for the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. Now the PC Game Pass they're raising that from that's going up to twelve dollars a month previously ten. Now the nice thing they're doing is introducing a new tier that's cheaper than all of these tiers at fifteen dollars a month. And this is called Xbox Game Pass Standard. But what
are they doing. They're taking away your access to day one first party games. What does that mean. The news here is that everyone was so excited that the brand new Call of Duty was going to be available on Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, and everyone was chatting when they heard about this. They were tweeting saying, oh, Microsoft is so great because they're giving us access to this game on this service without raising prices. Well, they did a
dark pattern. They announced the exciting news a couple of weeks ago that Call of Duty would be available, but they held back the price increase until a couple of weeks later. And so now you get I mean, it's just these companies are wild and look, this is just the way of the world, folks. We are just paying and paying and paying and paying more. Like I say, the free ride is over. Those price increases start on
September twelfth. Eight of eight Rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
It's not all bad.
I'll tell you the free service that Google is making available to everyone.
Coming up.
Welcome back to Rich on tech. Rich Demiro here talking technology at eight eight eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. I see a holding on the lines. We'll get back to those in just a moment. But first, let's talk Amazon Prime Day tenth and well, i'd say annual, but they now do it a couple times a year. But this is their tenth Prime Day event. It's happening July sixteenth and seventeenth. Of course, they're promising millions of deals,
over five million deals available for Prime members. Remember you have to be a Prime member to take advantage UH savings on all kinds of stuff. To talk about this, I spoke with Deal's expert Trey Bodge. She had some great tips on how to maximize your savings. Prime Day obviously, it seems to be happening every year, sometimes twice a year. Why does Amazon do Prime Day?
Well, Amazon does Prime Day in an effort to create their own shopping holiday.
July.
Up until ten years ago, in the first Prime Day, July was kind of a sleepy time except for the July fourth weekend sales. But now, as you see, there's so much going on with Amazon Prime Day, and then we have Target Circle Week and Walmart Deals Week, and the list goes on and on. So Amazon has essentially created their own shopping season, and then they do it again in October, kicking off the holiday shopping season very early, so they're controlling the game here.
So what do you think are some of the best strategies for finding deals during Prime Day?
So because we're seeing so many competitive deals around Prime Day, I would make sure to look around. You want to use tools like Yahoo Shopping or Google Shopping to search for the items that you're looking for. Get a sense of the landscape of where those items are sold in for how much the best deal may be on Amazon or it may be elsewhere, so it's always worth taking
a moment to do that. You also want to pair that with using a deal site because often deal sites have cash back offers that can be combined with retailer sales. So one of my favorites is couponcabin dot com. They have cash back offers in the four to eight percent off range, and then sometimes they may have coupons that can be kind of layered on top of the coupons that retailers are offering. So I think that's a really
good thing to do as well. And then during this busy time, you just want to make sure to keep an eye on your shopping list and avoid impulse shopping because there's so much activity.
You certainly don't want to be kind.
Of going willy nilly and buying all sorts of things that you might rec Brett later.
You mentioned the other retailers, So this this event sort of has like a halo effect where like Target gets in on it and Walmart gets in on it. Can you talk about that a little bit? Like you know, if the price is a good price at Amazon, will be the same price at Target.
Per se it may be or it may be better, or it may not be as good. So it's really important to look around now. If you are planning to shop on Amazon Prime Day, you will find millions of deals across thirty five categories and Amazon specifically. A good tool to use is Camel Camel camel or their app is called the Camelizer. I believe that's a good place
to get a sense of what the prices are. What the prices were, you can set price alerts there and then pair that with the other efforts that you're making on Amazon to look for sales like they have. You know, you can set up wish lists and look for discounts on their app. And so there are lots of ways to save around Amazon Prime Day.
What do you think some of the biggest categories are that people should be looking at shopping for.
So on Amazon Prime Day, we've become accustomed to deals from Amazon's proprietary brands, and so your kindle, your fire, your ring, all of those items will be deeply discounted.
You'll see lots of bundling.
So maybe you can get a couple of echoes, for example, or you can get a fireTV and a fireTV stick or things like that. So I would look for those bundles to take advantage of. You do have to be an Amazon Prime member in order to enjoy these deals, So as you're shopping, look for those Amazon branded items, but then also look at other brands. We will see lots of deals on especially on small home appliances like your robotic vacuum or your air fryer. Things like that
will be discounted from multiple brands. So while you're within the Amazon ecosystem, make sure to shop around and look at different brands, read the reviews, and then you're making a smart decision.
You're ready to click buy.
How does Prime Day compare to something like a Cyber Monday or a Black Friday.
It depends, and so you know, it depends on how competitive the landscape is. Amazon tends to discount aggressively in both places. You know, I think around Black Friday Cyber Monday, you can sometimes expect deeper discounts because retailers are kind of entering the finish line for their annual sales, and so if they're having a great year, they may pull back on the discounts. If they're not having a great year,
those discounts will be deeper. So it really depends on what's going on in the in the climate at the moment. Make a list of the things that you need, and make a list of the things that you use regularly.
Because that's an interesting point.
On Amazon Prime Day, sometimes they get kind of a bad rap because you can find discounts on paper towels, but frankly, we all use paper towels, and so there's nothing wrong with saving on those paper towels on Amazon Prime Day. So I do like to have a list of sort of those aspirational itea that I'm looking for deals on, and then my regular go to grooming products and paper products, because if I can save on Amazon Prime Day, why wouldn't.
I any other tools or tips or tricks that you want to share that I haven't asked about.
Yeah, so Amazon has a bunch of different ways that you can save, and so I do think utilizing the Amazon app on Amazon Prime Day is a good idea because there are a few more features on the app that you can use to be alerted to available sales on the items that you've added to your lists. For example, you can use Alexa to let you know if something that you want is on sale. And then I would also say, you know, utilize all the tools that Amazon
is telling you about. They may not be telling people like me about these things just yet, but as Amazon Prime Day of rives, there might be maybe extra features that you should know about. It is a way to save on those items I know there is a new one, the Invite only that I mentioned. That's something that you can click on and close to the shopping car and then be randomly selected to be notified of a very
deep discount of an item. And then of course we have the Lightning deals as well, so we'll see some of that stuff happening on Amazon Prime Day as well.
Finally, Amazon Prime Day is really to sell Prime memberships. I know you can get a thirty eight free trial, but what do you think of the value of an Amazon Prime membership? Is it still sort of like the golden standard of memberships.
It's an interesting time right now because Amazon Prime is not the only membership out there. So we have Target Circle three sixty, we have Walmart Plus, and so as a shopper, it's really important for you to take a look at which platform or retailer you use the most and then consider getting that membership, and the membership on Amazon in particular.
I'm a member.
I find it to be worthwhile because I shop on Amazon very frequently. I get cash back at Whole Foods, and then there's the free streaming music, the movies, the free Kindle book every month, and so if you are a user of some or all of those benefits that that membership can really pay off.
But in my opinion, you shouldn't have more than one of those retail memberships.
You know, pick the one that serves you the best, and stick with that and shop with that retailer regularly to get the best bang for your bock out of that annual membership fee.
All right, Once again, that was Trey Bodge shopping expert sharing tips to maximize this year's Amazon Prime Day. I'll put a link to her website on mine. Just go to Rich on tech dot TV hit the light bulb. So my advice for Prime Day is the same every
single year. Start looking for the things you want now, add them to your shopping car, and then when Prime Day happens on July sixteenth and seventeenth, check your shopping car or your saved items to see if any of them dropped in price, and then you can purchase them. So instead of just looking on the website, like she said, just searching for stuff to spend money on, this is kind of like the re the reverse way of doing it. Also, you'll notice that things on Amazon when they are on
Prime Day, they will have a little banner. Next to the price, it might say something like limited time deal or with Prime or lightning deal. So that's how you can tell when something's on sale. I already made my first purchase. I bought the new Amazon Echo spot it's typically eighty bucks. It was on sale for forty five
through Prime Day, and I put a list. I actually went through because Amazon has not said what all the deals are going to be, but they put out like a release that says all the brands and stuff that will be on sale. So what I did was I made it easy for you. I went through and I linked up every single brand on my website. So I made this page that says Amazon Prime Day twenty twenty
four top brands to watch for deals. And if you scroll down, you'll see all my tips that I just mentioned, but you can see the different things that will be on sale already announced that you can just click and find that device or product or whatever, including the Ring, Spotlight Cams, Eero, Blank, fireTV, Echo, what else, Rumbas, Sony headphones, all Birds, and even.
Cosmetics and things.
So I put all those links on my website rich on tech dot tv. So check it out if you want to get a headstart on Prime Day coming up. I'll tell you about the Google service that used to cost money. Now they're making it free and it can help protect your privacy. This is 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. That's eight eight eight seven four two four one zero one.
The website for the show rich on Tech dot TV. Go there for all the stuff that I mentioned on the show, my TV segments, more information. I just post a lot of great stuff there so you can find a way to subscribe to my newsletter there as well, so you can get information in your inbox. It's just a wealth of information rich on Tech dot TV. Also feel free to follow me on social media. I am at rich on Tech on all of the major platforms. Sherry writes in Hello Rich, I love listening to your
program on KFI. I learned something every time. My father is nearly blind due to macular degeneration. He's ninety nine, but honestly very sharp and social.
Good for him.
I would love to find a cell phone for him to operate by voice. Is there such a thing, because he's obviously old school he's not interested in Alexa or any devices that listen or spy on him. Any recommendations you might have, yes, I have a great recommendation. The only issue is it's pricey, but it is perfect and it's exactly what you're looking for. It is a company called blind Shell B l I N D S H E l L. And they make a smartphone that is
specifically for the visually impaired and it is fantastic. I played with it at the Seasun Assist of Tech conference and it is very simple to use. It speaks everything that you do. It speaks everything on the screen. It's got a nice, bold, big screen. It's got nice easy to use physical buttons, so it's got the keypad so you can actually type phone numbers on here and I guess text as well, but you can also use voice to text if you need to.
But this is what you need.
The problem is it's five hundred and twenty nine dollars, so I get it. That's expensive, but it is going to solve the problem. I think your dat is worth it, and I think that this would be a great way to make him feel like he can use this phone to its maximum and not have any issues. The other thing you could do is just get a flip phone something simple. Did you say you wanted voice, Yeah, operate by voice. So I mean the flip phones is they're
not really going to have the voice operation. The other thing you might be able to do is get a Samsung device and they've got something called easy Mode. That's that's gonna make the phone easier. It's got a built in magnifier. The iPhone also has a lot of accessibility features, but it's not I mean that that might be too much horsepower for what you're looking at. I really do think the blind Shehell is going to be the way
to go. Sadly, this company does have a cheaper phone that they just introduced, like a lesser version of the Classic. It's called the Classic LTE that does not look like it's available in the United States, sadly, So that's the way to do it. The other thing you could do is you could go on Amazon and just look for a simple, you know, smartphone that might be good for your father. There they do have a couple of smartphones
that are specifically for senior citizens. So just be aware that you need to make sure that whatever service you get is going to work with that. So for instance, like Lively, that's a big company that sells a lot of phones under the Jitterbug name. That is a senior phone and you have to use their plan with that. Some of the phones are unlocked. You can put in any plan. So those are my recommendations. Check them out. And I think that that blind show would be great.
Maybe wait for a sale or discount on it to get it past that high price tag there. Google is expanding this dark web feature. In fact, as I mentioned this, I just got an email alert from Google about my information being on the dark web. You have new information, new personal information on the dark web, and sure enough, my phone number was involved in a data breach and my cell phone number is now available online for anyone to find. Thank you for the app that I actually
love that it's involved in. So what is Google doing. This is from a service called dark Web Report, and this is excellent. It will tell you if your social Security number, if your date of birth, if your address is found online somewhere, and there's not much you can do about it, because the problem is when your information is out there on the dark web, there's no way
of taking it back. But at least, if you know what's out there, you can be ready for what might happen, which is someone opening up an account in your name, someone spamming you, someone using your phone number, someone using your address. So this was something that was previously only available to paying subscribers of Google One. Now they are making it available to everyone for free. This is going to happen later this month. Highly highly recommend that you
sign up for it. So this is going to be part of their results about you. So it's a little bit confusing, but they're pretty much the same thing. So Google results about you, well, I guess they're a little bit different. Results about you. Google, if you sign up for it, will find your personal contact information in Google search results. So if your phone number shows up on one of those like spoke Yo or people find heer websites, Google will say, hey, we found your phone number on
this website. Do you want us to take that off of search results? So when someone's searching for you, it will not show hey, we can find rich Damiro's phone number on this website. And you click through that website and you know it's a whole thing to try to get the phone number. But Google will take down that search result for you. And so this is something that's
been free. I've been recommending it for years. It's a really useful thing if you want to kind of tame the information that's out there about you on the open web. It does not take down the original website, It does not take down your information from Spokyo or people Finder, all these other you know, data brokers out there, but it does take down that search result. And what do most people do. They're just looking at search results trying
to find information. Now, with this Dark Web report, you'll also get that information about your your per details on the dark web. It's not going to remove them, it can't, but at least you'll know that it's out there, and again you can be ready for the ramifications of that. So if you want to sign up for this stuff, I'll put the link on the website rich on tech dot tv and you can go to the light Bulb to get the information about it. At least start with
the results about you on Google. You sign up for that, and then later this month you'll get the dark web information as well. Really really handy. I am so happy that Google is making that available to everyone for free. I don't know if we have time for this, but let's go to PAM and venture of PAM, can you say your question about thirty seconds?
Yeah, I just have an iPhone six.
I want to know if it's outa day.
It has an episode of software on it of seventeen point five.
Seventeen point five, so you're still up to date at this point. The problem is, I don't think that that's going to be supported with iOS eighteen. So iOS eighteen starts with the iPhone ten are and up? Uh wait, you said you're you have the which.
Software do you have on there? It's an iPhone and you said you have iOS.
What seventeen point five point one.
On the on the iPhone six s Yeah, huh okay, I was not aware that that was up to date at this point.
Let me see. So iOS seventeen.
Uh, if it's supported and you're getting those updates, that's fine, But I don't think it's going to be supported with the next one. I would plan for a new phone, That's what I would do, because you're not going to get iOS eighteen.
You're not going to get this.
The uh the security updates, and that's the important part. So I would any recommendation, I would just get the iPhone, you know, a newer model.
When they uh. Sorry.
Welcome back to Rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology. I love that you're doing something smart for yourself and listening to this show because this is the information you need to know about how to protect yourself online, how to make sure you're not being scammed, how not to overspend on Amazon Prime Day, Like I noticed some of us will my wife. I was out in Paris and my wife's like, did you order a an echo spot from Amazon? I said, yes,
I already I ordered that sight. On scene they announced it.
It's this new Uh.
It's basically a new like alarm clock and I thought was kind of cool because it's a speaker, but it also is Alexa enabled, uh, and it's got a little display on it so it's colorful. It's got like a you know, customized clock faces. You can choose from six different colors orange, violet, magenta, lime, teal, and blue. You can see the weather, the song that's playing, or the
whatever's playing. You can set alarm play music. They've got four new custom alarm sounds, Aurora, Daybreak, Endeavor and flutter and you can tap this thing to turn it off for a snooze. It it's usually eighty bucks. It's forty five dollars for Prime members right now. And I just thought it was cool. I just thought it was kind
of nice to have. So that's the Echo Spot. I have not opened it yet, so I'm curious if they're What I think Amazon should have done is put a USB in the back so you can plug in your phone, but I don't know if they did that. So uh, anyway, thanks for listening. Eighty to eight Rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four two four one zero one. The website rich on tech dot TV. I know a lot of you are going for the Google Dark Web information. So the way to find that on the website go
to the website. Up at the top. There is a light bulb. If you tap that light bulb, it brings you to what's called the show wiki, so you know Wikipedia. I keep basically a show wiki for every episode that we've ever done. So this is show number eighty. You tap that, it should bring you right to the Let me tap and just see where it brings you. Actually, so I'm not saying the wrong thing here. If you tap that little light bulb, it will bring you to Oh yeah, it'll bring you right to the list of
every single show. So if you tap show number eighty, you'll see all the show notes. Everything I've mentioned is linked up there, and you can see at the bottom it says Google is making its Dark Web monitoring available to all. And so you can click that and get more information about that, read about it, sign up for it. And right now you can't sign up for the Dark Web unless you are paying member, but you can start with the feature I talked about, the results about you,
and then dark Web will come later this month. All right, I think we got all that. Oh I want to tell a funny story. So today I'm texting with my friend this morning, as we typically do on Saturday mornings, Jefferson Graham, friend of the show. He writes a great newsletter. He does all kind of you know, you worked for USA Today forever writing a column there, and now he
is on his own doing photo walks TV. And so we both have newsletters on our substacks, and so Saturday morning we usually send them out and we always compare notes, and so we're texting this morning and I'm like, wait, a second, are you on an iPhone right now? Because we are texting the way you would text on I message where I can see when he's typing. I can see when my messages are delivered. And he said, yeah, I'm running iOS eighteen. I said, you've got to be
kidding me. This is my first RCS text messaging ever in my life with an iPhone person.
What does that mean?
It means that finally, after many many years of this whole divide of iPhone versus Android when it comes to messaging, come September when everyone finally gets the iOS update. Right now, he is probably running a beta update. Then there's gonna be a public beta coming out any day now, probably you know soon, because they said it's gonna be sometime
in July. I don't recommend you install that on your primary phone though, unless you are a tinkerer or you know what you're doing with technology, because you really can't go back. So once you get that, it's very tough to roll back to a standard, you know, final software release. So wait until September. But come September, you will finally be able to text message between iPhone and Android in a way that everyone can enjoy.
The same thing.
You can see when they're typing, you can see when your messages are delivered, and most importantly, you can send photos and videos that actually look high quality between an Android and an iPhone. It's called RCS Rich Communications Services. It's a standard that Apple has not adopted until now. And so if you're Android to Android, you're already enjoying this.
If your iPhone to iPhone, you're already enjoying this. But finally, come September, iPhone to Android, Android to iPhone, text messaging will finally finally get better. And I'm telling you it was like a weight was lifted this morning as I just smiled knowing that text messaging is finally better. Let's go to Clark in Lancaster, California. Clark, you're on with Rich.
Hey, Rich, thanks for listening to this call.
Yeah, I've got a question about.
My home Wi Fi system. I wonder if there is an easy way for a non technical person to troubleshoot.
And see if.
An intermittent problem with Wi Fi is a problem with my router.
My WiFi router.
Well, your your your signal to us is pretty bad, so I may have to put you on hold. Here but what is specifically going wrong, like is it not working in certain places?
Is it not fast?
It seems to be up and down. It's intermittent. Sometimes I get the full mighte of what I'm paying for on my uh my uh internet from spectrum and other kinds of drops down to half that, and sometimes it's almost non existent. And like I said, it's intermitt and I can go days or weeks with no problem in them. Like today it seems to be up and down. And as you're saying, we've got a bad.
Call, yeah, with my.
Wife earlier and she complained that actually had to hang out.
Oh wow wow.
Okay, So so a couple of things. So first off, I'm going to put you on hold just because the interference there, So it sounds like there's something that's interfere with your Wi Fi. Now, I don't know if you were on a Wi Fi call with me, but it's been a long time since I actually heard interference on a cell call because everything's digital these days, so there's really no more static. I don't know if you remember back in the day, when you make a call on
an analog cell phone. Back in the day everything was analog, there would actually be static. You would somehow you know, hear the person through static, and nowadays you either hear the person or you don't, or it drops out because it's all digital. So number one, it sounds like something is interfering with your Wi Fi. And there's a lot of devices in the home that can do that, anything that's putting out a frequency, like a microwave or a TV. So if your router is not in a central location,
that's the first thing I would do. So if you have it in a cabinet, or if you have it behind your TV, get that bad boy out into the open so that it can spread its wings and fly. That signal needs to make its way around your house. And if it's constricted in some way by a piece of furniture or a wall, or it's in a corner,
nobody puts baby in a corner. Uh, you gotta you gotta put this thing out in the open, right And so uh, I love when I get Bobo on a reference when he's just sitting there, you know, doing his thing, and you know he liked that one. I guess you grew up with the dirty dancing household as I did.
Yes, I did. Yeah, that was that was big back in the day.
So anyway, so central location number one, get it off the floor, don't you know the the the signal for Wi Fi emanates out of your router in a doughnut shape, So think about that as those waves are sort of making their way throughout your house, So you want to have the least number of obstructions from that signal, and
again keep it away from electronics. So if you have a microwave going on, or a TV or any sort of like other device near your router, that can definitely impede it the way to try shoot And you mentioned that your speed is sometimes not as good, so typically the speed that you're going to get over Wi Fi is going to be about half of what you are
getting wired. So if your connection is three hundred through Spectrum or whoever your provider is that is coming into your router, your WiFi is probably only going to be one fifty when it's actually making its way to your device. And the reason is just it's not a perfect system. But what I would do is I would plug in your computer into your actual router, your modem, your router, whatever it is, and I would test the speed wired
on your computer. Go to a website like fast dot com or speed test dot net and see what your speed is and also check out the latency. And there's also some diagnostics on there that can give you an idea of if your signal is okay, because you know, you may have a wire or something that's freight or you might you know, chipmunk or something might have We have chipmunks California laying caster.
Yeah, we do, Okay, we have chipmunks, maybe more like one.
Are those things called a possum, you know, the things with like the really sharp teeth. Maybe they ate through the wires, you know. My point is all the yeah, some sort of rodent rap, you know whatever. You check for those things because that can all be affecting your
signal and if none of that is working. You can also get an app, a Wi Fi analyzer app, so if you're on Android, I don't think they have these for iPhone, but a Wi Fi Analyzer app you can download to an Android device and you can kind of walk around the house and see what's going on with your signal that way. So those are just a few of the ways that you can troubleshoot. If you want.
You can call your cable company or whatever. They may charge you, but you can say, hey, look my signal's just not working as well as it should be, and they may come out and help you troubleshoot, but they probably will charge you for that because they're going to do a test from their end saying nope, we're giving you the speed that you're paying for and it's on your end. So that's another way to look at it. But Clark, those are some of the suggestions. Thanks for
the call today, appreciate it. Eighty eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four two four one zero one. Coming up, we are going to talk to the founder of the Oco app. This is to help the visually impaired safely cross streets. Plus, I'm gonna tell you Spectrum is raising their cable and TV prices.
I'll tell you by how much.
And Google Maps gets a feature that can help you avoid a ticket for speeding. This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. One of my all time favorite wedding songs. Nothing says a good wedding like this song. Hey oh, if you're listening on the podcast, it's September by Earth Wind and Fire. Okay, so I
have a funny story about this song. So we had Earth Wind and Fire come to KTLA for a segment, and I love this song, and so I you know, when in my life did I ever think I would be face to face with the guys from earth Wind and Fire?
Right, like never?
But we have this restaurant in Los Angeles called earth Wind and Flower in West Los Angeles. It's a it's an Italian restaurant, and it's just a play on words, right, And so I'm like, you know what I got to ask these guys. So I go up to the guy from earth Wind and Fire. I'm like, Hey, are you aware of the restaurant called earth Wind and Flower? And
he's like, yeah, I've heard of it. I just thought that was so funny because like, I don't know, like, you have a restaurant that plays on your name of your band. Isn't that a lawsuit? Kinder n you could you could have that? I mean I don't. I don't think it's a lawsuit. And also it's been around forever. Changed my name to Demiro Rich DeMuro. This restaurant has been around forever. Like I'm talking, it's got to be thirty oh thirty five years there it is anyway, I
just thought that was funny. Like the guy kind of looked at me, like, really, you're asking me this, but yeah, you know, why not. It's so funny. Like working at kat La, you know, where we do a news you know, a morning news program, and there's always celebrities coming through, and most of them are pretty guarded, but you know, there's always moments when you can just kind of talk
to them whatever. And I've had more cool like oh my gosh, I can't believe I am coming face to face with this person who I watched their show when I was a kid, or they sing a song that I like, or it's just amazing that you meet these people. And most of them, I will tell you most people are a lot more shy than you think.
Not shy, but more like introverted.
Like you think just because you're a celebrity, they're like sitting there telling jokes and stuff.
They're not bubba.
I know.
You want to say something that was kind of same thing.
It's still weird to me being friends with Stevie Wonder and I have to.
Text him that's amazing. Now, that is the weirdest thing in the world.
And when he told me. I thought he was joking. What a text? Yeah, he always shows you like text me before you call.
He gave you his burner number. He's like, hold on, I can't remember this number off the top of my head.
Let me look at it.
But no, it's weird because you text him and he'll literally you get a text backer he'll just call you.
That's amazing.
My most LA story about that is I was in the movie uh Zoolander two, but I wasn't in it.
I didn't make the cut, but I was.
I had a small like news person role that I shot for the movie, and I didn't. I didn't make the final cut. They ended up using someone else. But I still recorded it all and everything check still got a check. And the best part was I got a text message from and this only in LA. I got a text message on my phone that says, HI, this is Blah Blah Blah's name, Ben Stiller's assistant.
Ben would like to go over the lines with you. Do you have a moment?
I said, only in Los Angeles, you get a text message like this, I screenshot it. I saved it forever and I will never forget. On the phone call with Ben Stiller, like I've who am I Rich Demiro speaking with Ben Stiller and he's just sitting there telling me how he, you know, his thought for like the person and all this stuff. And clearly it didn't work because I didn't I wasn't good enough. But anyway, I just thought that was so funny. It's just these la things.
I had another point that I was gonna make and now I forgot. But that's okay, you know what, It's all good. Let's see a spectrum I was gonna tell you about. This Spectrum is raising prices for cable TV and Internet. This of course depends on where you are on you know how much it's going up. But this is this is cord Cutter's News reporting that TV prices are raising by three dollars in certain states. Internet based prices will increase by three to four dollars depending on
the plan. Cost of renting your cable box will go up by a dollar a month, and Spectrum says rising programming call that's why they're passing along these increases. So number one, I would check to see if your prices are going up for ninety nine point nine percent of you, you're gonna say what can you do. You know, it's just another price increase, just add it to the list
of all the other things that have gone up. But if you want to get a little bit more you know, angry about this and do something about it, there are things you can switch to. You can switch to a streaming service like a DirecTV stream, Fubo, Hulu, Live TV, Filo, Sling TV, and YouTube TV. Those are all options. The problem is if you are watching cable TV and you
like cable TV, it's all pretty expensive now. Some of these smaller services, like a Sling TV or a Filo or a Friendly TV, they ditch the sports, they ditch the news, and you can pay a little bit less. But if you want stuff like your sports and your news, you're gonna be paying for it. Like direct TV stream is just the same price as having cable YouTube TV is just the same price. The only slight difference is that you can kind of pause it and restart your
membership at will versus spectrum. You know, you can't just call them up and say, hey, I want to pause. I mean, maybe you can, but I don't think you can. So it's a lot easier to kind of pause and decide when you want to pay for these things versus having a traditional cable company. When it comes to internet, you can check out five G Home Internet. Verizon, t Mobile, AT and t All offer five G wireless home Internet. That might be a way to save on your internet costs.
Eight to eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Coming up, we're going to talk to the founder of the o co app, which helps the visually impaired safely cross streets. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here talking tech with you. Recently, I was in Cooper Tino for Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference. While I was there, I spoke
with a developer who's making waves inaccessible technology. Willem van Demrop is based in Belgium and is co founder of Eyes. They make an app called Oco. This won an Apple Design Award for Inclusivity.
OCO. That's Oko uses.
AI and the iPhone's camera to help visually impaired people navigate streets and crosswalks safely. In our conversation, Wilhelm shared insights about this groundbreaking technology and his journey as a developer.
Yeah.
So, basically, the Oco application uses artificial intelligence and a back camera of the phone to recognize the walk and the don't walk signal for blind and vision impaired people, and then bring that information back to you with vibrations
and sounds. And then now, especially for dubbed up, we're actually launching a completely new version where we're also building up Apple Maps basically and adding more information on that combined with that artificial intelligence, so basically helping blind and vision impaired people to safely ride from A to B with that pedestrian navigation and also that pedestrian signal detection that we have originally. So it's a whole new, brand new version.
Of the app. Oh wow, And what spent What was kind of like the inspiration behind the app?
Yeah, So myself and my two co founders were AI engineers by trade. I used to work on medical computer vision, my co founder autuonnel driving trains, and a third co
founder as well on computer vision AI. And we were talking with a mutual friend of us who is officially impaired, and he told us about the biggest challenges that he had outdoors, and we just figured, well, hey, if a tes i can do it on the highway, why we do it for people on the sidewalk, and then we started building a hecky wearable device with lots of wires
sticking out of it a camera. But we quickly realized if we want to make it affordable and scalable so that it works for everyone, we need to be able to optimize the AI so that it runs locally on the phone that they already own. And so the moment that we were able to do that, we could our jobs and started full time.
Wow.
And the beauty of the app is the simplicity of it that it just uses the software and sensors on the iPhone, and so with that simplicity, it's pretty incredible what it's been able to do.
What has been the reaction to this app, It's.
Been pretty pretty amazing so far.
It's really cool.
For example, I have this one user who told me, like beforehand, I used to not be able to reach this farmer's market in this part of town. It was really like a lucked out zone, almost like in a video game. And now because of your app, I just am able to unlock this part of town, go to the farmer's market, and are able to reach all of those destinations. Other people just say without the app, I
can't cross anymore. So it's really amazing to see that we want to provide you with so much more information and we want to help you create that independence sometimes. Of course, it's so crucial to find that it can help at these super difficult intersections and just make it so much easier for some people.
So what goes into programming an app like this to work across you know, different languages, different places, you know, different types of walk signals?
How do you do all that? Yeah, so quite a lot.
Although it's quite simple, it's a very difficult application to build. It's building on computer vision, and it needs to be super stable and needs to make sure, of course that it's safe to use. So we start out by capturing a lot of data ourselves. So that's the rain, the sun, snow, all icy conditions, every scenario that you can imagine, and we build an AI model based on that, and then we optimize it so that it runs on the devices
that they already own. Of course, the entire world has pretty similar production signals except for the US and ken really yeah, so that's when when we started expanding here. We needed to travel a bit here to capture a lot of data here. To make sure that the algorithm is very powerful here as well. And then now, of course as people are using it, we're constantly gathering imaging information to maintain that algorithm to make sure that it stays performing.
What's different about the US with respect to our signals.
Here in the US it's a red hand which is the don't walk signal, and then a white walking man which is a walk signal. In Europe, Japan or similar places, it's just like a red guy which is don't walk, and then a green walking man which is the walk signal, and they're on top of each other. Is instead of one square pedession signal, So it's just like a whole different few and different colors, which the AI needs to.
Learn of course, and how accurate is the app.
We've helped cross more than three million streets now we haven't had any complaints, so we know that there's of course, there's so many safety buffers in place to make sure that it's not saying that wrong pedession signal. But very important is that it's another tool in the toolbox for so many binea visually impaired people. They are very independent, then they have so many tools at their disposal.
We're just trying to bring back more information to the user. So this is WWDC.
This is where developers come to kind of learn about the tools available to them. So what developer tools are you taking advantage of on the iPhone that enables this app?
So of course the COREML is a big aspect of it is that the possibility to run complex AI locally on the device that they already own. But now of course we're building on met Kit, but also voiceover and dynamic typing. Blindness is a spectrum, so that means that some people want to see the phone and have it super and large information, but we are able to make sure that the app really supports all that kind of information, all that sooming and I've been and stuff.
How long has this journey been?
Right now, we're three years old, so we're really quite a young underdog, still a small team, but we're growing fast and where we get so many demands to expand to so many countries as soon as possible.
So it's going going great.
And what's been kind of the biggest challenge for you along the way, is it just figuring out all these different signals and all the different variables that go into this I would.
Say for us, the biggest challenge is expanding as soon as possible because there's so much demand for the app and we need to be able to to keep up with our resources to expand into those different areas.
So yeah, just.
Going as fast as possible is I think one of the biggest challenges.
So this app is it do you monetize this app? How is that going to work?
It's started out by wanting to help out our visually impaired friend, and we want to keep it for free for the end user. It's similar to kind of like a ways model, where you get a very interesting anonymized data that you can license to third parties to make sure that the stays for free for the end user.
But there is for example, like bigger companies, they can have very very useful information extracted out of the images that we capture, and that way you can maintain for example, your Google Maps, Apple Maps, and that way you can.
Keep the application for free for the end user. And what advice do you have to someone that has an idea for an app? Build it?
There's there's so many great ideas out there. There's always someone being hesitant, like should I build it? Should I try it. As long as you one percent miss every chance that you don't take, so just try it, go for it. I would have never imagined that after three years I would be get dubbed up, which is a livelong dream, and now I'm here, so it's super amazing.
How do you find the app?
Just search for Oco in the app Store and then you'll find Oco Accessible maps, accessible navigation.
And who do you think should download it?
I think everyone that knows someone who's bindo vision impaired can download it, try it out so that they can recommend it. Of course, if someone is blind and vision impaired themselves, they can try it out and have fun with it. Down the line, we're actually expanding to people with a mobility disability as well, because we find that there's so much information missing on accessible intersection and accessible routing that we want to help answer some of those
questions as well. So down the line will be expanding to helping the one in six Americans with a mobility disability as well.
That was my conversation with Willem van Demurop, co founder of Oco, an app that's revolutionizing street navigation for the visually impaired. It's truly inspiring to see how developers like this are using AI and smartphone technology to create more inclusive experiences.
Right now, the app is only available for the iPhone.
You can find it by searching Oko on the app store.
I'll put a link on my website.
Just go to rich on Tech dot tv and hit the light bulb at the top of the page to find it.
More rich on Tech coming your way right after this.
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology. The website for the show richon Tech dot tv. Can follow me online at rich on Tech. A couple more items before we get to the feedback. First off, Apple Launches worked with Google to launch a tool where you can now transfer your Google Photos directly to iCloud Photos. This is part of their
data transfer project. This is an open source initiative. A lot of the big tech companies are very slowly doing this, but you know they're trying to make it so that you have data portability between these companies.
It is a very slow process. It's very limited, but you know we're seeing some progress. But if you have Google Photos, you can now transfer your collection directly to iCloud photos.
Without downloading it first. It will do it on the back end for you. Process may take several hours to a few days. Your photos and videos are not deleted from Google Photos after the transfer. So the nice thing is if you wanted to sort of back up your Google Photos to iCloud, maybe you have some extra storage and you just want your photos in two places, which you should have, this is one way of doing it.
So again, apples are the new tool to transfer Google Photos to iCloud photos and also Google Maps introducing a speedometer and speed limits on the iPhone app. So this has been available and Android for a long time. If you're driving with Google Maps, you'll see in the lower left hand corner, it shows the speed limit for the road, but right next to it now on iPhone is going to show the speed that you're going. Yes, it's a little scary because now someone else is tracking your speed.
I don't know what the privacy policy is with that information. Google says it's informational only. You should actually mostly rely on your car's actual spinometer, and if you want to turn it off, you can go into Google Map settings under navigation driving options. The update is to help iPhone
users avoid speeding tickets. The ironic part is that Uber has a very similar feature for the Uber drivers, and I always get a kick out of watching them go faster than the speed limit signed and it's like in red and it's flashing and they're just they don't care. Kind of a funny story.
My mother in law.
We were out in Oregon last weekend for a wedding and my mother in law says, oh, by the way, my Apple Watch, I'm not getting notifications on it anymore. Said, huh, let me check it out. Let me just see if it's connected to your phone. So she gives me a watch and I say, this is not connected to your phone at all. When was the last time you got a notification on your Apple Watch. I don't know, a
year ago. Was that when you got your new phone. Yeah, well you never connected the Apple Watch to your new phone. So it is a whole I I just got to kick out of that, and it's it's the reason why I do this show, because to me, it's a no brainer that you know, if I'm not getting a notification on my watch, I'm troubleshooting. For the average person, it's taking them a year to figure this stuff out. And they didn't even realize. So my mother in law is a very smart person. It just goes to show that
technology is tricky. And I just got a good laugh out of that because I said, have you gotten any notifications? She said she wasn't getting her text. I said, have you gotten any notifications? No, Well that's because your phone is literally not connected to this watch. So I told her she had to format the watch and reconnect it to the new phone. Time for the feedback segment. This is your feedback plus the mail bag. These are the emails,
the comments, and the questions I get from you. If you want to submit yours, go to Rich on tech dot tv hit contact. I was talking about the TikTok ban last week at the VidCon conference, Frank writes in I think people should understand the reason for the TikTok ban. One could argue that content is the reason. But if that were the case, Apple and Google could have banned the app from their stores or set guidelines, which didn't happen. The real issue what are the laws governing TikTok to
protect privacy and who can access it? The preservation of privacy should be dealt with, but where's the law for that banning TikTok is just cough medicine for a cough caused by severe Capitol Hill pneumonia. That's not dealing with the underlying issue.
Wow. I like the analogy.
I talked to a friend who explained how the laws in China work, and I thought it to be true from the US media. What I thought to be true from the US media is not accurate. At one time I agreed with the ban. Now I disagree. The government should pass legislation that deals with the true issues. But the real issue here is that it's more political at this point and part of the posturing on both sides
for the election. That is very true, because let's be honest, TikTok is not collecting any more data than any other app on your phone. Somehow TikTok is a risk and all the other apps are not.
Hmm. Interesting.
Tony from Syracuse, New York writes in Rich, I love your show. I was listening and heard the call about a spectrum router that would not connect devices properly. Many ISPs, including Verizon, use a feature called SUN self Organizing Network that decides which network two point four or five to connect devices too While it works okay for some, it's often a problem for printers, doorbells, cameras, and thermostats. The best solution I've found is to turn this feature off
all together. You usually need to rename the five G network to distinguish it, then manually disconnect problematic device. Oh, manually connect problematic devices to the two point four network. You can typically do this to the router's login page. I hope that helps. It's great to listen to common tech problems and keep up to date. Plus US tech nerds can't help but absorb as much information as we can.
Another email about the two point four versus five Dylan from MESA, Arizona rights in regarding the person who had Cox or some other ISP with a router on those two point four and five gigahertz bands and their printer no longer worked. I found that some two point four gigahertz devices get confused, and if there's the networks have the same SSID. The workaround is to give each band a different name. For instance, my two point four is named mcwireless and my five G is named Mcwireless Fast.
All the devices still see each other. I segment my WiFi putting white bandwidth hogs like smart TVs on the fast network while smart appliances, bulbs and switches are on the two point four.
The setup works fine for me.
Ken writes in feedback on the gig Sky phone service unlimited Europlan fifty dollars. I went to Paris and Montpellier in France, London and the UK. I probably butchered that name and Venice in Italy. Like I said, Mercy in France to the guy making my omelet in the morning, I was like Mercy, he goes, you mean Merselle and I was like, ah, is that how you say? I'm so mad at that stuff. I was like, Mercy, No,
it's not Mercy bonjoor. It worked for the most part using iPhone eleven with good tech support via phone, call and email. There was an outage in Venice, but now it's working. Thanks for talking about it on the radio show. Yes, I tried gig sky while I was over there and it did work just fine.
So yeah, I will add that to my recommendations.
Michael from Florida writes in on your June show, you talked about getting data while traveling internationally. I bought a Soulless hot Spot about six months ago on sale for one hundred bucks. It comes with a lifetime one gigabyte a month international service at no cost. I've used it here in the US, Canada, and Jamaica. You can purchase additional data, which never expires. For me, it was the obvious choice for travel. I use WhatsApp to communicate, so all I need is the data. Yes, I did talk
about the Solace. I used that when I was in Berlin. I tested it and it worked great. I had the five G model, which I think is more expensive than the one you got. But yes, soulis. If you want your own hot spot, it's a great way to do it. Dan from Berkeley writes in Hey Rich, a few weeks ago, I heard you referenced Yakima, Washington. I did a double take when you said that. I was the principal at a high school and used to watch you on k NDO.
You even covered our high school while you were up here. Two thousand was a big year as we moved to our new home in September. It's always fun to recognize the names of people who are on TV. During my two stints in Yakima, keep up the great work on.
The radio show.
Oh my gosh, bringing back memories can doo my first job on TV in the middle of Washington State, Yakima, Washington. Let's see one more here. Brian from Watsonville writes in Rich, love the show. You're doing a terrific job. My two cents regarding Linux, no need to discuss it. It's great for those who use it, But I've been the tech guy for my family and workplace for years and I've never used it. None of the tech wizards I know
use it either. I appreciate that Leo loves it and talked about it every week, but you only have so much time with us. Every minute is precious and it's best spent talking about iOS, Android, Mac and PC. As my dad would say, Linux is the future of computing and it always will be.
Again, I'm not a hater. Linux works great for everybody.
Great, it's just not what I need help with Your tips on iOS and Mac have really helped me. Thank you, Brian. That's sort of exactly what I think. That's gonna do it for this episode of the show. You can find links to everything I mentioned on my website. Just go to Rich on tech dot TV. Once you're there, just hit the light bulb or after the show is posted with the podcast, you can listen to it again and also get the links there. You can find me on social media. I am at Rich on Tech. Thanks so
much for listening. There are so many ways you can spend your time. I do appreciate you spending it right here with me. Thanks to everyone who makes this show possible, Bobo, Kim.
The rest of the crew. Do we have more of a crew? I don't think so. My name is Rich Demiro. I'll talk to you real soon.