Visiting Europe's biggest tech show

be interesting, useful and fun. Phone lines are now open at triple eight Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one. Give me a call if you have a question about technology. Email is also open. Just go to my website rich on Tech dot TV, hit contact and your message will make it right to my inbox instantly, no delay. There. Guests this week on the show Oliver Merlin, Managing director of EFA Management, and Mark Vina, principal analyst at Smart

Tech Research. They will join me to talk about what I'm doing here and where am I? Berlin, Germany. That's right coming to you live from Berlin site of IFA twenty twenty three. This is Europe's version of CES. So hear me talk about CS in Las Vegas. Every year Europe does their own show called EFA and it is a big, big show. Believe me, my legs are tired from walking it. More than two thousand exhibitors from forty eight countries, twenty six halls, So when you go to

CS it's a couple of big giant halls. In Las Vegas used to be three basically three giant halls plus some stuff scattered throughout the city. This is twenty six halls, different levels in each hall, and they're kind of like little little kind of rooms and you just make your way through all this one hundred and thirty thousand square meters of stuff to see. It is kind of like a tech festival. There is food, there is drink. And the big difference between this show and the show in

Las Vegas is that visitors are welcome. The public is invited to buy a ticket to this show, so it's kind of like going to the largest best buy you've ever seen. With one hundred and eighty thousand people over five days, it's pretty pretty wild. They also have a summer garden in the middle of it all. Excuse my boord German. I haven't learned too many words since I've been here. It's been a fun trip, it's been a

fun event. And I love doing stuff like this because it really gives you so much perspective on the different companies and the different brands, not just in the US but around the world. Now. Whenever I do a trip like this, I always get lots of thoughts on international travel, and a lot of the questions I get are about international travel because it's something that many people do maybe once twice a year, and I have the ability to do it a couple of times.

So a couple of states, just a handful of states, have been testing digital driver's licenses, and I downloaded the what is it called, It's like the DMV my wallet app, and you download that, you scan your driver's license, you scan your face, and then somehow State of California verifies you are who you say you are, and they give you a digital copy of your driver's license on your phone. Now,

before you get too excited. California, I don't know why they're not doing this, but they are not part of Apple's wallet, so many of the other states that have done this. You can get this inside your Apple wallet or eventually your Google wallet, which makes it very easy. It's kind of like using your tap to pay cards, like your debit or credit card, but this is a

separate app. So I went to TSA and I, you know, went up to the guy and I was like, hey, do you mind if I use this digital driver's license. Expecting a little bit of grief, he said, no, that's fine. Let me let me fire up the machine because I'm curious how it works. I've never used it before. And so he turned on the machine and they you know, you open up your app. It's called the California DMV app. It generates a QR code. So I think there's a couple of ways to verify. I think one of them

is tap. One of them is a QR code. We use the QR code, so you scan the code with this little machine and then you look at a camera and then I guess it somehow matches those things up. But the main thing to know if you ever try to do this, and I'm sure you probably never will maybe eventually in a couple of years. But when you scan the QR code, you get a little pop up on your phone that says, hey, do you want to

hand over your personal information? But the problem is you're looking at the camera and the TSA person is also looking at their screen waiting for you to do something. So the first time I did this, it timed out, and so I was like, really, you know, of course I'm holding up the line and I'm starting to like, oh no, is this not going to work? And so he said, well, let's try it again. We tried it again, and I saw the little pop up the second time, and I said, okay, I have to agree to hand

over my information to you. So we did it twice, but it worked very well the second time, and I've got to say it's kind of cool, although you really can't use it anywhere. The only two places I know of that you can use it right now are San Francisco Airport and LAX and of course a smattering of other airports across the nation. But it's not a very good system just yet. But I don't know if you've noticed, if you traveled. Lately, they're not even asking you to

scan your boarding pass anymore. When you go to an airport, they just basically take your ID. They scan your ID somehow that matches up with the flight records, and they send you on your merry way. So that was interesting. Let's see what else you travel. You really have to have a tech plan figured out in advance, because if you mess up on even one of these things, if you trip, it's gonna cost you. So Number one E SIM I talked about this. This is an electronic SIM card.

Buy those before you leave. Now in the old days, you would buy a SIM when you got your destination, usually in the airport, and you would pop this little card into your phone. So Number one your cell phone provider, and many times, if you have T Mobile, your phone's just gonna work and it's gonna be included in your plan. Overseas, Verizon in AT and T typically charge about ten dollars a day to use your phone in a foreign country.

That can add up very quickly, and you can purchase a prepaid eSIM for a lot cheaper than that now on your plan. Also, you may have banks of days that you get included if you've been a customer for a long time, they might accrue over time, so be sure to check before you leave and before you buy anything. If AT and T or Verizon has some like free days included in your plan. For me, as soon as I landed, it said hey, you have like sixteen days left,

and I said, oh wow, that's pretty cool. So for my primary phone, I just left it on that and for my other phone, I use the eSIM. The other thing, obviously a travel plug adapter. There are two types. There's a voltage adapter and there's just a regular adapter. If you're just traveling with standard electronics like your iPhone charger and all that stuff, you just need a travel plug adapter.

They're like twenty five dollars. You have to have a portable battery bank, that's for sure, and a USB cable for the plane. Now keep in mind on the plane, many of the planes are still using the old style USB, which is like the big adapter at the end. Many of us are using at home USB C because that's what the phones have been coming with. So just keep in mind if you're going to charge on the plane, you either need a USBC adapter or you need to bring an old school cable, So take one of your

older cables that charges your phone. That's what I did, and so I use that. That was great. Same thing for earbuds. If you want to use the seatback entertainment and use your own Bluetooth earbuds, you're gonna need an adapter because most of the seatback entertainment systems do not allow you to connect via Bluetooth. It's still wired. Now. Some of the new planes, especially on United and some of the other carriers, are getting Bluetooth, but it's very

hit or miss. So if you want to make sure you want to use your own stuff, you can get an adapter like this thing called the Airfly from a company named twelve South. The person sitting next to me was using it, and it's about fifty dollars. You plug it into the little USB and it becomes a Bluetooth receiver for your earbuds. I guess a receiver and a transmitter, so it goes back and forth. So it's kind of

like a mid middleman between the seatback entertainment and your earbuds. Now, I will tell you something that's a little interesting about me. I do not watch movies on the seatback. I know it's a weird thing, and I feel like I've been doing it for so long where I refuse to do it that I still don't do it even if I see a movie I want to see there, I said, no, I'm favoring my own entertainment. And for this trip, I took the Pixel Fold from Google. I've been testing this out.

This is a foldable phone, and I wanted to see what it was like to use a foldable phone to watch a movie. So I watched the new Adam Sandler movie on Netflix, which I thought was pretty funny, although when I texted with a couple of family members on our group chat, they disagreed with me. I still think it's funny. But I watched this on the fold, and yeah, it's interesting. So I love the size of this phone, and the outer screen is very usable compared to what

Samsung has, which is very narrow. But the Pixel Fold is heavy. It gets hot, and it's very slippery because it's such a smooth, slick phone. But if you put a case on it, it's too big. So it's one of these things where people are trying to push the carriers and the companies are trying to push foldable phones. I'm not sure they're there just yet. And there's another reason why I'm using the inside screen may a couple of times a day, whereas if you're getting a foldable phone,

you probably want to use that inside screen a lot. Now. It is good for a lot of things like watching videos, looking at photos, checking your email, but I'm just not opening it enough. And by the way, in just a couple of weeks i've had this sample unit from Google, I already got something caught in the middle of the screens because it kind of pushed in in the middle. It's like a little tiny looks like a little piece of sand gotten there or something and just made an indentation.

And of course that's not very fun. It looks very annoying when I look at the screen. Now, all right, we've got plenty more to talk about on my trip here. We've got plenty of guests lined up for the show. I'm going to talk about Apple and Google. They have both announced the dates when they are going to launch their next phones, and I'm seeing a lot of pixel phones over here in Europe, of course, a lot of iPhones as well. But first it is your turn give me a phone call at Triple A rich one oh one.

It is eight eight eight seven four to two for one zero one. Give me a call if you have a question about technology. Even though I am so far away today, it will still be a free call for you anywhere you are in the US. My name is rich Dumuro and you are 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 one zero one, broadcasting live from Berlin, Germany today. But don't let that dissuade you from calling in. John from a Brainerd, Minnesota is online one. John, You're on.

at the bottom of the phone. If I see it, it'll say Google Assistant is here to assist you.

to know them. But I've never subscribed to it. I've gone on my settings. It's not turned on, but it it keeps coming up, and only when I have these the Aftershock headset on.

the Google Assistant trigger. Now, I will tell you it's funny you say this because I literally have been testing these Sony headphones and I was using them on my way here, and every time you push the side of the headphone, like if they're falling out of your ear a little bit, which I don't like about these headphones. But every time I would push it, the Google Assistant would trigger, and so it would of course stop your music, interrupt things. You'd have to make sure you remain quiet

so it doesn't get a false command. And so I went in, I downloaded the Sony app and I went in and disabled it from there. It took me a little bit to figure out how to do it, but that is one way.

thinking that you want to activate it. And when I look on their website, it says there's a couple of ways to activate. Obviously, it's hands free if you say the hot word, which is you know, I'm not going to say, because I don't want to activate everyone's headphones, but you know, it's usually it's something about Google. And then the other way is kind of pressing and holding a button on the side, or maybe pressing it twice. So those are the steps that I would take to

try to disable this from happening. But there are there are multiple ways that Google may trigger and usually if you download the native headphones app, that should really give you the most control over these headphones. Because headphones typically don't have Google Assistant built in, it's usually a special thing, and so because of that, they usually have the special software that will allow you to disable that and also tweak it, because not everyone wants that, as we all know.

Good question. Thanks so much for calling today from Minnesota. Appreciate the call.

But before you go to any other city, any any travel city, download Maps offline. That's a pro tip right there, so you don't need a cellular connection. More rich on Tech coming up next. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology. And it's a big week if you like phones and gadgets, because both Google and Apple announced separate events. Google's holding their event on October fourth. There they will announce the

Pixel eight and the Pixel watch too. Well expected to announce. They don't say what they're going to announce, but Google kind of. That'll happen in New York City. They called the Made by Google Event. It'll be ten am Eastern time. They'll live stream it. Google invited me. I typically go to these things they get that usually you get a little bit of hands on before the general public, maybe like a week or so before the phones go on sales,

so that's always nice. And then Apple announced they're doing their event on September twelfth, and they're gonna announce the iPhone. Well, of course they don't say what they're gonna announce, but it's the iPhone, the Apple Watch, and maybe some other goodies. Joining me now is Mark German from Bloomberg Technology reporter, and Mark, welcome to Welcome.

So basically last year's enhancements at a lower price. And then the high end phones, the Pro and Pro max is where they're actually going to make the new changes, the new stuff. It's going to have a titanium frame that makes the phone quite a bit lighter. They'll have a three nanimeter chip which is quite a bit more

efficient for better battery life. You're going to have a new screen technology called LPO, which is a new manufacturing process that allows them to make the borders around the display much thinner, and you're going to get that overall new design thinks of that titanium frame. So it's going to be quite an impressive upgrade, probably the biggest upgrade in a few years. And so I think a lot of people have been holding out and waiting for this phone.

So it should be a bit of a major cycle for Apple.

price differences. It's about two hundred dollars three hundred dollars delta between the low end phones and the high end phones. And then most of their sales now are on monthly plans or some sort of subsidy, and so you're talking about five to fifteen dollars difference per month, and so

a lot of people push up to the higher end phones. Anyways, But if you look at over time, these lower end phones, as those prices come down, but for instance, the fifteen to fifteen plus I think are going to be extraordinarily popular in like a year or two from now, right as those prices come down to the four hundred and five hundred dollars range.

or ninety hertz refresh rate. And it's so interesting because nobody knew that they wanted one hundred and twenty hertz refresh rate until they had it on the propones and on the iPad pro right right now, it's so impressive on the propones, and it's if you compare it side by side, it is such a big difference that you wouldn't know until you look at it.

lightning and USBC and all that. So this is going to be quite an improvement for consumers, but also a headache for those who are now going to need to buy new charging bricks and new accessories.

the European Commission. It is a law there, and then you're seeing more and more places try to bring this into law, believe it or not. I actually read the other day, actually yesterday, that California, just the state of California, they're bringing a bill to action next year related to USBC. And so this is something that was going to continue. It was going to be a drum beat, it was going to be something that would snowball and have a domino effect, and all sorts of countries were going to

push it this. I believe even India was talking about USBC as well as a bill.

zoom as well. I believe it's a twenty or thirty X, so quite impressive and better competition to the cameras on the Google devices that you mentioned, which they have pretty good cameras, and they have for years. Apple's doing a little bit of catch up.

If you're like me, and especially when you travel, I literally have to think about, Oh I need that lightning cable because it's the one thing I need everything else, even the iPads have gone over to USBC in recent years, so we'll be looking forward to that. That event again happens on September twelfth, and again I'm expected to be there. So a lot of things going on in the next couple of weeks. All right, let's take some more of

your calls at Triple eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one. You're listening to rich on Tech live from Berlin, Germany. Oh no, you didn't. Oh man, I think we're getting all German artists on this week's show. So funny story this is This is Milli Vanilla, right, yeah, so blame it on the rain. I'll never forget we were doing. This is such a long funny story anyway, I'll save

you the drama of it. But my friend and I, when we were in like middle school, we were gonna do like a talent show with this song and our teacher. We were so embarrassed to tell our teacher and then so we were gonna lip sync the song. And then we later found out that the whole thing was lip sync. So it was like this like meta kind of situation. Anyway, Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology from Berlin, Germany. What a

great city, really really interesting, lots of history. Obviously, people here like to be out in the streets. They like to I've seen a lot of families, a lot of kids, a lot of tourists, just a lot going on here and it's interesting. I took my walk the other day, my audio tour, which I really like to do when I go to these cities, and there was nobody out, I mean nobody. It was a weekday, and then today I was out and it's a weekend and there was just so many people in the same places where there

was almost no one the time before. And by the way, if you want to do these audio walking tours, which I highly recommend self guided, use your phone. The app that I use is called voicemap dot Me, so voicemap me, and it's just a really easy way you download the app. It's kind of like listening to a podcast, but it gives you step by step, turn by turn directions and if you get off court like I have it sometimes it just says, hey, you know, look at the map

and get back on course. You can leave your phone in your pocket pretty much the whole time you do this. It's very very cool VOICEMAP dot em and they have them for cities around the world. I've taken them in and here, let's see where it was at Austin, and I did one more somewhere else. All right, let's go to alex Innuay. Tell me if I'm saying this right, Nuevo California. I know you tried call them before. We had some trouble connecting. You're on with Rich line three.

of just the screen flashes. And there is an option to format the card on that MIC, but it doesn't always work. But if you take that same exact SD card and format it in a computer, somehow it figures it out and it formats it properly, and then it works in the MIC. So that would be what I'd recommend to do. Why did you lose anything on this card? Are you worried about the data on this card?

dollars on Amazon. So I understand it's frustrating. I understand that it's not ideal, but it could just be that this failed. It happens, especially if it maybe is an off brand. If I recommended getting an adapter, I probably wouldn't recommend that because the adapter is going to cost you more than the price of this card. So my advice is to see if you have a friend that has an adapter and a card reader and try doing the formatting there on a computer, whether it's a or

a PC. That might work. You can also try a disc repair on the same computer because that may work as well. But otherwise I would say, if you're not too attached, I'm glad you backed up your photos, and if you're not too attached to this thing, I would just call it a complete loss and move on because the cost of getting that adapter is going to be a lot more than just buying a new card. And hopefully this does not happen again. I rarely, rarely see

these things fry like that. So thanks for the call, appreciate it. Let's see what do we want to talk about real quick before we go to break here, Let's talk about Google raising prices of nest Aware and nest Aware Plus. These are the subscriptions if you have nest products. The basic nest Aware is now going to cost eight dollars a month, up from six bucks a month. That's eighty dollars a year or sixty dollars a year. The nest Aware Plus is going to be fifteen a month,

up from twelve dollars a month. The new price takes effect on November sixth, and uh new subscribers right now. Yep, every streaming service is going up in price. Give me a call triple eight, Rich one oh one. This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology. Welcome to the show. Our number two. I just got word from producer Bobo that Rob Thomas is indeed German, which I didn't believe, but I looked it up and sure enough,

he was born in Germany. Where's my bell? I always say that triple eight rich one O one is the phone line to call eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. There we go, We've got some boisterous applause. So this week, Verizon has come up with a new way to protect you from spammy email to texts. It's very, very simple. Have you ever gotten one of these things? It basically looks like a text message that comes from an email address and it's just annoying.

Their Verizon says eighty percent of them are spam and it's just an easy way for people to spam because all it takes is for them to set up an email and so these most of the time are for like shipping confirmations, all this stuff. It's just total junk. So if you want to block these now and your this is only for Verizon customers, you text the word off off to forty forty. Again, if you want to stop these annoying spam email to text messages, just text

the word off to forty forty. If you're a Verizon customer, and that will disable email to text messages to your phone. Now you might be saying, Rich, why would I do that, I'm not going to get my texts. Eighty percent of those are bogus. So there may be an example of a legitimate company that uses this or legitimate use of that, but most of the time it's not. And you can always turn it back on. I believe you just text on to forty forty and it'll turn them back on.

But you can look it up online and see what they say about it. I'll put the link on the website. Rich on tech dot TV keep the show notes for the show so you can see what Verizon says about all of that. But a lot of people doing it. All right, Let's go to Reggie Line too in Charleston,

South Carolina. Reggie, you're on with Rich. And it's interesting that you say you're in Charleston, because I've fallen in love with European cities and I looked up today no joke, best US cities that feel like Europe, and Charleston was like on the top list. Welcome to the show.

You click the notification, you put in your password that was real, and as soon as you did that, these scam art It's got a hold of your account and then immediately either try to message everyone on that account or do something with it that Facebook recognized to be bad, and so they immediately block the account. That's where I think you stand. And the reason why that you were able to create a new account and it has a slightly different username is because that old account is still

percolating in the back end of the system somewhere. And so if you had like petit facebook dot com slash pet portraits, you know, they gave you pet portraits one because that other username is still sort of taken up. So what I recommend couple of things. Number One, you got to be very careful with notifications on Facebook about your password. It is very rare that Facebook asks you to just randomly put in your password. It's even rareer for them to send a notification that says you need

to put in your password. So yeah, there's pages that say, you know, if you're logging in from a different area or device, but it's it's pretty rare and usually those pages are pretty well marked. And always look at the URL when you're logging into any website to make sure that it is the website that you should be logging into. Now, on Facebook, people really try to trick folks with these

scam logins. What they'll do is they'll just they'll give you a notification that says, hey, your page, you know doesn't meet the community standards. Click here to to you know, dispute it, and then you have to log in. As soon as you log in, you're actually logging into a spammer's account or a scam artist account and they take over. Now, if this happens to you before you go ahead and create a new account. Number one to protect yourself, turn

on two factor authentication. I know I'm a broken record, I say it every week on this show, but you have to turn on two factor authentication. That will actually protect you from yourself because if you do log in next time with your password and they get it, it's going to send a code to your phone, and that will stop the bad guys from actually getting in because they won't have that code. Now, if you you know, they may message you and ask you for that code,

don't give it to them. Now, if you do get hacked on Facebook, you immediately want to go to Facebook dot com slash hacked. That is the official place to go. Now, you have to understand Facebook has almost three billion people using the platform, so to get someone on the phone is not possible. They don't do that. They do it all through email, They do it all through automated systems, and they do it all starting with Facebook dot com slash hacked. Go there, it'll tell you, it'll give you

a questionnaire about what's happening with your account. Many times people will regain access to their account, but it can take a while because it's not always the number one priority of Facebook to help people get back into their accounts. Now, if you had a high profile account, maybe, but just you know, your everyday account, you know it's not necessarily their profile. The other thing I would do is set if you're listening to this and you have any sort

of business presence on Facebook. Number one, always always have two factor authentication. On number two, you have to set a secondary admin for your Facebook page. What will that do If the person that manages your page gets locked out, the other person will be able to still get in. And so now, look, if you hand over your password to the scam artists, they know to check and see if there's an admin, and they may delete that person.

But it's better to have this on your page because I've gotten stories of the primary person that works at a business passing away, leaving the company, whatever happens, they get angry and they lock you out of the page. So you want someone else on there that's trusted, even if it's someone that you know, that can help you get back into your account if you get locked out. And sometimes Facebook might even text them or email them and say, hey, can you vouch for this person? Yeah,

believe me. Facebook has a lot of different ways of getting people back into their accounts. It's all very strange and a lot of it is undocumented, but it's it happens because I hear the stories all the time. So Reggie, I hope you can get back into your account. That is my advice for you and keep up the good work with the pet pictures. Sounds like a fun little business you got there, all right, give me a call. Triple eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven

four to two four one zero one. You're listening to rich on Tech broadcasting live from Berlin, Germany, where I'm here for IFA coming up later in the show. We're going to talk to the show organizers so you can get a better idea of what IFA twenty twenty three is all about. More rich on Tech Next, Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology live from Berlin, Germany. Triple eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four

to one zero one. If you want to join in, you can also go to the website rich on Tech dot tv and hit the contact link and you can send your email right to me. Also, if you have a comment about today's show, send it to me now and I'll get it In the feedback segment. I'm really

struggling if I should change that to the feedbag. So I like the idea of mail bag plus feedback equals feedbag, but all I can think about with feedbag when I say it is like a trough with like cows, and I'm just like dumping like a bunch of food in there. I don't know maybe that's the right thing, but it's These are the things I consider in my spare time. Also, if you want to follow me on Instagram at rich

on Tech is the place to go. I've posted all about my trip here to Germany, so you can see what I've been doing here, and also I post tech tips and various things there. So I've got the tech tip I'm in about how to turn off the spammy Verizon emails that is on their Instagram at rich on Tech. All right, without further ado, let's go to Greg and des Moines. Iowa Line one. Greg, you're on with rich.

do the math. So this phone is one thousand bucks minus is six hundred dollars trading credit for your old phoneus how much you owe or I guess plus how much you owe. So you got to do the math and see if it's worth it to do that. So let's say this one thousand bucks minus six hundred, that'd be four hundred dollars. And let's say you owe two hundred. That means this phone be six hundred dollars. I know, I just did that math very quick, but you got

to figure out if that's worth it. Now, there may be some additional discounts available to you if you look on the Samsung offer programs. They've got education, government, military, employee, first responder, I'm not sure maybe veteran that might apply, but you can look into those as well. Now, your second quest question about the contacts. Google stores a backup

of your contacts, even if you delete them. So what I want you to do is go to Contacts dot Google dot com and you should be able to find a backup of your contacts that you deleted and you should be able to restore those contacts from there. So again, Contacts dot Google dot com is where you go to find a backup of your contacts. That is, given you're using Google Contacts, but since you're on an Android phone, that's typically how they're backed up. Greg and des Moines,

thanks so much for calling today. All right, coming up next, we are going to talk to Oliver Merlin. He is the guy who basically put on IFA twenty twenty three. So we're here in Berlin. IFA is the big tech trade show. Coming up. Oliver Merlin, Managing director of EFA Management, will tell you all about what EFA is here for. You're listening to Rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech, Rich DeMuro here on location in Berlin at EFA twenty twenty three. This is a massive tech show.

And joining me now is Oliver Merlin, Managing director for EFA Management. Thanks so much for joining me.

on the sustainability stage. And within that there's a Menda Repair shop where I think predominantly local people, right, I don't expect people have taken the plane with their washing machine, but Berliners and German people and maybe some people have come from Europe can bring their hair dryers, gaming consoles, you know, small things they might bring that are broken or it needed a bit of a TLC and they can take them to the Menda repair shop right there.

a place called Level Lvl. There's any of your listeners that know Berlin a little bit, a big gaming impouring where we're.

learn when you travel. Let's go to line three. Patty is in Santa Clarita, California, back home.

So I went to the Apple store and he was helping me out, and he said, it's something that needs to go to the next level because they can try to retrieve it from a different place that it gets stored. Even though I have my backups always on and I have my messages safe forever, they're no longer there. So I've had two people try to help me to try this, try this. Why didn't it back up? And how do I prevent this from happening in the future.

You cannot. You would think that they would allow a third party app to go in on your phone and download your messages for safe keeping. They do not. Now some of this is because of security reasons, but most of it is because of Apple's stubbornness. Here's what I think. Number one, do you have messages in iCloud enabled on your phone? That's my first question. I do, And are you okay? So have you gone to I have to

remember how to do this. I've gotta. So if you go to your Apple I D and you go to iCloud and then show all messages, is that toggled.

You toggle that on and it will attempt to download all of your messages from iCloud to your computer. That's one way. The other way. The other way is there's an app called Amazing, and this is a paid app, so it's gonna cost you some money, but I think it's about maybe thirty bucks. But you can download that and you can take that backup that you have from your computer and you can have this app analyze it

and see if those messages are there. So that's another way, but I would only do that as your last resort.

in a system that nobody knows how to access. And I love the Apple said, you know the escalation all this stuff like, I'm not really sure what that means, but you know, these are the places that you can look for these. But it sounds like you've got a gig of messages and I'm not sure how many messages. How long have you been using this new phone?

see if it can find the messages. But again it depends how valuable these messages are to you, because this is a lot of work, and it may be worth it to just kind of, you know, say this didn't work out and it's unfortunate. But it's definitely frustrating, that's for sure. It's one of those things where I wish I had a simple way. People ask me all the time, how do I back up my eye messages? How do

I print them out? How do I do all this stuff? Yes, third party programs can help you do it, but they are still not perfect, and they're expensive and they cost money, and they may not work. But the I Amazing is probably your best bet if you want to try to extract these messages from the old backup. Thanks so much for the call today, appreciate it. Sorry that happened. I

think you were doing the right thing. You had the backup on you had I message on you had the I message in the cloud on, but somehow this all got lost and it just shouldn't happen that way. Speaking of text messages, you are going to be getting an emergency test message very soon. FEMA and the FCC are

conducting a test of the emergency alert system. If you are in the Los Angeles well, this is nationwide, but my point is if you are if you were in the Los Angeles area over the past couple of weeks when we had the earthquakes and the tropical storm and the hurricane, you got a lot of these wireless alerts, so you're pretty familiar with them. But FEMA's going to do a nationwide test and this will be sent to all cell phones in English and Spanish. They're also going

to broadcast it on radio and TVs nationwide. This is the third and seventh test issued nationwide, so the third for the wireless emergency alerts, the seventh for the the one on TV, and basically they're just trying to make sure this all works. I have a feeling it does, and we're very familiar with it. But again, uh oh, I should probably tell you the date October fourth, Did I tell you that the message is going to say this is a test. It's gonna appear for thirty minutes.

It'll appear for a minute on TV and cable and radio. But again, if you want to put it in your calendar October fourth, hopefully they'll do it when we're asleep. That would be very, very cruel. Hopefully it's during the day. But no matter what, even when you know this is coming, it still makes you jump because it's so jarring. You're listening to rich on Tech. Give me a call if you have a question about technology at triple eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two

four one zero one. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich to bureau here hanging out with you talking technology. 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. You can find me online at rich on Tech, on Instagram, Twitter, slash x, Facebook, or you can go to rich on Tech dot TV. Phone lines are open at one eight eight eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to

two four to one zero one. You can also email me. Just go to rich on Tech dot TV hit contact. That's what a lot of folks are doing let's see. Yeah, I'm broadcasting live from Berlin, Germany, my first time here. I've had more pretzels than I could ever imagine, than you could ever imagine. I've had pretzels for breakfast, let's just put it that way. Yesterday I had a pretzel for lunch, a butter pretzel, which I'd never had before.

And yeah, so it's it's been a good trip. Let's go to line three, Durango, Colorado, Downtown Brown.

phone supports it. An eSIM is basically something that you just activate from an app on your phone. My favorite app is called Rolo Ai r Alo. In fact, that is powering the show right now. This show is running off of an eSIM that I have purchased from them, so the data is going strong. It works well. And what you do is you buy that from your phone before you leave the country. So you download the Aerlow app. You type in the country or region that you're going to.

You can you know, it's basically cheaper to buy it for the specific country than the region, and you type that in. It tells you what your plans are. It's usually pre paid. You you know, pay fifteen bucks for five gigs of data, it lasts for a week. Maybe you're paying fifty dollars for thirty days that you know, twenty gigs of data. Whatever it is. They give you the options. Once you purchase it, you then install it on your phone. And the way you install it is

you just basically tap a link. It will install the SIM card, the eSIM and then you don't need to activate it until you get to the country that you're going to use it. And so once you get off the plane, what I do is I'll toggle off data roaming for my primary carrier, and that way I could still use Wi Fi calling and I'll get my texts through the Wi Fi and then you toggle on the eSIM and it will take a minute to kind of find the network and turn on and activate, and then

you're good to go. Now, esimsically only work with data, but I just actually open the airlow app and now they give you a phone number two if you want, so you can also roam with a foreign phone number as well. Now I don't really think you need that because you can easily just turn on your Wi Fi calling and still get your phone calls through Wi Fi of course, and your text messages through Wi Fi as well.

So it has gotten a lot easier to travel to different countries because of eSIMs, because of the way phones work, because of the roaming agreements. It used to be a very expensive, very prohibitive and phones just didn't work in different places. Now they work pretty much everywhere. Now. On a separate note, there's another way you could do it.

You can get a hot spot. So I've been testing this hot spot called Solace five G. SOLS Solace five G hotspot and it looks like almost like a battery bank with a screen and this has its own SIM inside. And what you do is you go on their website and you just say where you're going to go, and you can buy data on this and it becomes your own personal hotspot. You can connect up to sixteen different devices. And I think what this is handy for is if you are traveling with a family or a group, it's

much easier. Instead of buying everyone a simcard or an e SIM, you can just activate this, tell everyone to turn on their WiFi. You keep this in your backpack and everyone can hotspot off of this. So they would connect to the Wi Fi on this little device and the battery has lasted pretty long. It's also a battery bank as well. So the plans. Now, the downside to this Solas five G is that you have to go with their plans. And it's easier because it's simple, but

you know it's going to cost you a little bit more. So, convenience always comes with a cost, and that's what this gives you a lot of convenience. It works everywhere you can purchase one plan, you can go to a bunch of different countries, and the data lasts, let's see by the month, the day, or the gigabyte, and so they have a whole bunch of plans that you can purchase.

I think it's actually really cool. If you have a bunch of devices like myself, If you bring a tablet, a laptop, a phone, you know you can connect them all to this device and it'll work no matter where you go. So you just throw it in your backpack, set it forget it now. Keep in mind, when you're in the hotel room most of the time you're going to get free Wi Fi. And in fact, around Europe and many other countries, free Wi Fi is pretty ubiquitous, so you probably need less data than you think. I'm

looking at the data eSIM that I bought. I bought a twenty gigabyte card and I've only used about fourteen on my phone that I was using a lot. I told you I was testing the pixel fold. I mean I was using that a lot. Oh one pro tip you want to turn off if you're backing up your photos, especially through Google Photos or these other apps. You want to turn off roaming. Do not back up your pictures while you're roaming, and maybe turn off data backups completely

unless you're on Wi Fi. So there's an option in the settings to turn off cellular data backups on all these apps that back up your photos. You're on vacation or you're on a trip, you're taking a lot of pictures. If your phone is uploading all of those pictures in real time, not only is it going to burn through your battery instantly, but it's also going to burn through your data really really fast. So those are a couple

of the options that you have. They used to have another option where you could rent one of these Solas five G type devices and you can rent a hotspot. A lot of times, they are not doing that anymore. A lot of the companies that were renting them have gone out of business because data has gotten so cheap and eSIMs have gotten so easy, and finally, Downtown Brown, like you said, the other thing you can do is just buy a real SIM card and pop that into

your phone. And so you could typically at the airport they'll have people selling SIM cards and they will help you pop that into your phone. I think that's a little tricky because not every phone is unlocked. Not every phone works in every place, not every SIM card will work on your phone. So to me, I think the eSIM, if your phone supports it, is really the surefire way.

And I will tell you from experience. I don't want to put my mom on a blast here, but she went to Germany a while ago and she was able to activate her eSIM herself. And so it was one of these things where I was a little bit concerned because I set her up with it and I said, all you have to do is activate it when you get to the place you're going. And sure enough, it worked just fine, and it worked for her when people in her group could not figure out their text or

their their data. So that was pretty cool. Great question. Thanks for calling from Durango, Colorado. Today. Let me tell you about Google. This was a very popular story I did on TV and I think you probably want to know about it. Google has this new feature that lets you remove your personal information from their Google Search results. This is information like your phone number, your email, your

home address. Just go ahead and search yourself. You'll find all kinds of results with your personal information in it. Now Google is making it much easier to get this out of their search results. Now I say that specifically, it does not delete it from the website that posted it, but it makes it a lot tougher for people to find it because it's not going to show up when someone searches your name and address or phone number, and it won't show up in those search results. So this

is a free service. It's called Results about You. Google introduced it last year. It was much more complicated. Now it is much easier. Google will actually once you tell them your name, your phone number, your address, your email. You can put in multi variations. I know you have to trust Google to give them that information, but they say they're not going to use it for anything else.

But once you put that information in there, it will search the web on a daily basis to see if new sites pop up with your info, and if it does, it'll send you an alert and you can say, oh, can you get rid of that? And they will in many cases take it down, not all cases, but in many. So here's how you do this. Open up the Google app on your phone, iOS or Android, tap your profile icon in the upper right hand corner, and then select

the option for Results about You. It'll say that in the menu You follow the steps to put in your personal information, and then you sit back and you wait. Google will send you an alert when it has crawled the web for your information, and it will say do you want us to remove these? You select the ones that you want to remove, and you press submit and Google will send you an email letting you know if

they've removed them or not. This is not the end all to get your personal information off the internet, but it is a very good step in the right direction of of cleaning up some of that mess that you see on all these people find our websites. Again, it's not going to take it down off of those, but it will take it off Google search results, which is where ninety nine percent of people look when they're starting a search for someone. So again this is called Google

Results About You. If you want those step by step instructions one more time, I've posted them to my Instagram. Just find me at rich on Tech and the post says do this today to protect your personal information, very very easy. Got a ton of feedback from folks. Many were skeptical, but many said rich It took me a couple of days, but it worked. I got a lot of my data off of there you are listening to

Rich on Tech. The phone number to call in is triple eight Rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four to one zero one more rich on Tech coming your way from Berlin, Germany. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here at talking technology with you. Let's go to UH line to Sylvie in San Diego, California. Sylvie, you're on with Rich.

of them out there. They work well, They work across multiple phones, so if your husband wants to check it on his phone, you want to check it on your phone, you can do that. You can keep it pretty secure because they enable a two factor by default, which means other folks can't look at what's happening on your doorbell and they have that chime. So if you want to have it ring upstairs where you want to be, that's a good way to do it. You just plug in

the little chime, you hook it up. It's very very simple, activate it in the app, and now you can hear your doorbell anywhere in the home. It's funny because they didn't have that when it first came out. And when I first got this thing, I was like, wait a second, I have to have my phone, Like, what if there's like a babysitter in the house, how are they going

to hear the doorbell? Not that I really want them opening the door, but you know what I mean, Yes, does that sound like something that will work?

are now pushing the subscription side of things. More, I think that they've got a lot of accessories, They've got a lot of you know, and a lot of people using them, and so I think in a lot of different versions too, So it depends you can you can choose. You can go on their website and see all the different doorbells they have. They used to have one, but

now they've got, you know, several doorbells. And the cool thing is too, is that it does work with Alexa, it does work with other items in sort of their their ecosystem is is huge at this point, and so you can get lights, you can get cameras, so you can build upon the video doorbell, which is of course what they want you to do. So the basic video doorbell looks like it's about seventy bucks. They go up to one hundred and sixty. The new one is the

video Doorbell four and those are the wireless ones. And what I recommend pro tip is to get two batteries so that you can swap out the battery without having to wait to recharge. And I can't take credit for that idea. What's up?

the battery lasts anywhere between three and six months. Now that is a wide range, and it could last even less depending on how all often you have your device set to record, how long you're making these recordings, and also if your doorbells in direct sunlight, that will wear down the battery faster too, But in general you'll probably get around three to six months, depending on how much you're using this thing. I find that I get on the lower end. I would say probably at this point,

I'm getting like two months. But my batteries are a little bit older, and I do have it. My car got hit outside my house. That was a story I told in this radio show. And of course, you know, I like to have my thing running a little bit more these days because of that incident where it did not record because I had it set to not record as much. Anyway, that's my problem, Sylvie, not yours. Are you excited for this doorbell?

We're gonna talk about AI whole bunch of stuff coming up. Right here, you are listening to Rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech, Rich DeMuro on location here in Berlin at IFA twenty twenty three. We are on the show floor. Joining me now is Mark Vina, principal analyst at Smart Tech Research. Mark. Thanks so much for joining me.

your email. Let's say you had a party the night before without you telling it, it would know the following day you know you had a party, so you probably want to get to the living room back. So that's a very very interesting productive way that you were seeing and doing. It's being integrated into products in a very useful manner.

I think they'll be bringing some interesting technology. And they have to because, as you know, the smartphone category is flattening out. They have a very strong presence in the high end part of the smartphone market, and the only way you maintain that presidency you have to continue to innovate.

You know, silicon and silicon software is software. There's much more of a consumer flavor today than there was maybe twenty years ago with different products. So the consumerization of technology is much more prominent today than it was back in the day.

They announce the Eve Play. So this adds Airplay two capabilities to existing speakers with digital and analog outputs. It has Wi Fi, Ethernet, optical coacs, and RCAA connectors, so that means that you can connect basically your old speakers and make them modern. So with Airplay too, you could do multi room audio. You can also pair them with HomePods and other Airplay speakers. This is going to go on sale November fourteenth, twenty twenty three. That's well, that's

this year for one hundred and fifty bucks. This is called eve Play ev E. I've got a couple of things from Eve in the house. They were a big home kit producer and now they're doing everything with matter so that's the new smart home standard. Anyway, Eve Play. If you've got some old speakers you want to bring them into the modern world, you can do that with

their new system. Gosh, I saw a lot of stuff I'm gonna I'll talk more about the products I saw next week because that'll give me time to put them on KTLA and then that way you can see video of these things. But I'm also going to post them to my social media as well. All right, let's get to the feedback segment. Let's see Paul says, Hey, Rich,

I'm preparing for a cross country trip. I was wondering if you know of any route planning sites or app that would be good for identifying tourist attractions along possible routes for the trip.

tell you a little bit more about that. Indispensable is an app called I Exit. This is an app that will tell you what's up ahead at the exit. So if you want to find that Krispy Kreme or that Chick fil A or that specific as food place, that cinnabon, this will tell you what's up ahead and the gas prices, so you may be able to save a couple of bucks just by stop at a gas station. That's you know, two exits ahead instead of one. And finally, another one

is called Audio a u TiO. Kevin Costner actually had a hand in this app. This is ten thousand location based audio stories. So when you're driving through a place, it will give you little audio snippets of cool things that happened or the history or you know, interesting attractions. That's called Audio au TiO. Used to be called here

here I believe, and now it's called audio. The other one I would I would tell you that's incredible and I've been using it on this trip well, and we talked about on the show we didn't interview, but it's called guide geek dot ai and if you want a really smart travel assistant to ask a bunch of stuff too. I have been using this all week here in Berlin and it is really really cool. So there you go. I'll put all those on the website as well. Let's see.

Stephanie says, I'm currently going on a work related trip and we'll be leaving my children at the care of their nanny. Do you have any suggestions for a good discrete camera that has a long lasting battery for about two weeks? Stephanie, Well, I don't know. I guess I don't know if I can condone the spying on the nannycam, but if you have to, there's a website called spyguy dot com. Spy guy dot com. They made their name with a little camera thing that you can look for

hidden cameras and airbnbs and it's called Scout. But they also sell a whole bunch of hidden cameras that you can prouse on their website again, spy guy dot com. All right, now for some comments, let's see. Oh gosh, so many. Greg says, I took your recommendation for the Google Pixel tablet on Amazon Prime Day. Thank you for the recommendation. It's my first tablet. I'm very happy. Okay, cool. The Google Pixel is their return to tablets. Tom says, hey, Rich,

glad you had a safe journey to Berlin. I assume you went on United all the way. Did you have a chance to check out other carriers en route? Could you please tell me the name of that twelve South bluetooth transmitter for the airplane? Thank you, Tom. I did take United all the way very smooth. It was a connecting flight and I had no issues whatsoever. It was I love when that happens, when it was just literally comfortable from takeoff to landing both times and really really

no issues whatsoever. Thank you United for that. It's called the twelve airfly by twelve twelve South airfly is the bluetooth transmitter. Let's see em says when you're talking about the Rob Thomas being from Germany, you said, where's my bell? But they had applause instead. We could hear the applause. H Bobo, that's that's you know what. Look when you're when you're doing a show from Berlin. We've got people all over the world doing this show right now coordinating.

So I'm I'm just glad we got the show. But yeah, we're gonna we're gonna work on drops a little bit more. Bobo, I know likes doing them. We haven't really coordinated that so we will, we will coordinate more drops.

someone called me a yeoman. I called a yeoman. It's a yeoman. Thanks for that. Let's see. Ron says, I have a Note on my Samsung nine. I'm disappointed that I've had the phone three years, bought it new for one thousand bucks. Now they say they're not going to support it and do updates. These phone companies expect you to renew your phone every couple of years. I guess this phone for one thousand dollars should last me ten years. I like the Note nine because it has a headphone jack,

which the new ones do not. And if you want to get radio like talk radio. Yeah, I like that, and over the airwaves. The headphone acts like the antenna. In addition, when you upgrade to new phones, you lose information and apps. You have to redo everything. It's a real pain in the neck. Oh I should know, Ron, because I do that like every three weeks when I'm testing out a new phone. I agree, But I do

think phones last pretty long. Three years and a lot of the carriers now are or a lot of the phone makers are given like four years maybe five of security updates. I got to check on Samsung, though, but they are doing pretty well. Note nine has been out for a while. Let's see here. Randy says, someone asked about clean up tools for their Windows PC. Let me

give you my list. Did I already mention this? Bleach bit, auto runs, glary utilities, malware bytes, revo on installer, cleaning out all of the apps you do not use in the Window. Apps that come with Windows should be removed if you do not use them. I would agree with that, all right, if you can believe it, that is going to do it for this episode of the show. You can find links to everything I mentioned on my website. Just go to richontech dot TV. This is show number

thirty five. We're still a baby here. You can find me on social media. I am at rich on tech. If you want to see my Berlin trip in quite detail, I just made a highlight so if you go to my profile it says Berlin It's got the Pretzel. You can check out all the cool stuff I did here. I'll be back in the States next week gearing up for events from Apple and Google. Thank you so much for listening. There are so many ways you can spend your time. I do appreciate you spending it right here

with me. I know, believe me. I just read a small sample of the many, many messages I get every week via email, Instagram, text, whatever. Thank you. Thank you to everyone who makes this show possible, including Kim, Bobo, Bill and an army of engineers, especially when I'm halfway across the world from Berlin, Germany. My name is rich Dumuro. I'll talk to you real soon.