The AI pin.
The tech world is divided on the new cable box that blends live TV plus streaming all in one place. Does Apple owe you money for a new gift card settlement? Plus your tech questions answered? What's going on? I'm Rich to Muro and this is Rich on Tech broadcasting live from Los Angeles, coast to coast. This is where I talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about. It's also the place where I answer your questions about technology.
I believe that tech should be interesting, useful, and fun. I believe that you should feel smart about technology. Phone lines are open at triple eight rich one oh one. That is eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Give me a call if you have a question about technology. Email also an option. Just go to rich on tech dot tv and hit the link that says contact once again, that's Rich on tech dot TV. Hit contact or triple e rich one oh one. Guests
this week include Jeremy Kaplan. He writes the wonder Tools newsletter. This is a newsletter all about cool AI tools, so we'll hear all about those. Brian Heater, hardware editor at tech Crunch, we'll talk about his hands on time with the Humane AI pin. This is the device that the tech world is going gaga over, either in a good way or in a bad way. Jefferson Graham friend of
the show, He's a with Photo Walks TV. He's gonna explain how he captured an epic ten day time laps in Manhattan Beach, California with both the iPhone and the Samsung. He's gonna share tips on how to take similar videos and dish on which phone performed better.
Well.
I don't know how you spent your weekend, but I was at Chuck E Cheese last night felt like I was a kid again. Not just for any old reason, but it came to my attention that Chuck E Cheese is moving away from animatronics. What I could remember being a kid being both memorized, mesmerized and also scared out of my mind looking at these large moving mice and
dogs and whatever these things were. The moose, the band this is the Munches Make Believe band, and this band is, you know, just something that only the eighties could really bring about in this world. Right. So, we were at the Northridge, California location last night with the CEO of Chuck E Cheese and also Nolan Bushnell, the founder of
Chuck E Cheese. He also founded Atari, so he has been instrumental in all things technology throughout the years, and he came up with the idea of this these animatronics. But here's the deal. Chuck E Cheese is changing with the times. They are ditching the animatronics for something they call Chuck E Cheese two point zero. Bobo definitely a kid of the eighties doesn't want this to go away. I know, I know four hundred Chuck E Cheese locations.
Many of them have already gotten the upgrade, and the upgrades are now an interactive dance floor and a video wall. So the I guess the entertainment is going to be on this video wall.
But here's the good news.
For those of you that live in California, specifically Los Angeles, you can visit the Northridge, California location and see Munch's Make Believe Band in all their glory. This is going to stick around permanently. There you go. And I had to go back in my files of because we had my kids like sixth party, a sixth birthday party at this Chuck E Cheese location, and I had to go back and look, because last night, I will tell you, this band was really spruced up, like they looked good.
They were in there, like everything was clean. It looked like this was like brand new. And so I looked back in my pictures and sure enough, this band is completely cleaned up from the way it was six years ago. Like this is the best case scenario of a Chuck E Cheese band. It's bright, they are all kind of clean and working, and you know, all the outfits are brand new. And so they really revamped this band to make them look their best. So last night with the
was the grand reopening. Like I said, the CEO was there,
no one was there. They explained this whole thing. They explained the changeover where they're changing with the times, and now this Northridge location is going to be a place that people will stop at when they come to California, when they come to Los Angeles, when they come to Hollywood, this Chuck E Cheese location will be a place they want to stop mostly for the parents, because the kids they don't really remember this stuff, they don't even know
about this stuff. But for parents of a certain age, Chuck E Cheese was a big part of their childhood. Going into this darkly lit place that had games in pizza and food and the cake that I remember that was so delicious. It's all kind of changing, and it's the tickets are gone, the physical tickets are gone. The games are more fun, they're new. I mean, let's be honest, they're competing with the iPad. That is no easy feat.
Kids are like they see animatronics are like really a thing that kind of moves with pneumatics, like come on. So anyway, that is the story. If you want to see it, it's on my Instagram at rich On Tech. You can check out the band in all of their glory.
And when you come to Los Angeles, when you come to Hollywood, you have to make a stop in little Old Northridge, California to see this Chuck E Cheese location, the only one in the nation that will feature the original animatronic band and by the way, the future of Chuck E Cheese. They announced it last night. Trampolines. They're going to be adding trampolines at their locations, which is interesting, but I guess they want to keep kids active and
give them a place to jump around. And I know that those like sort of sky zone places are very popular. But anyway, it's always fascinating to me when you see places changing with the times. And we'll see, we'll see how it all works out. Oh, I thought this was really interesting. So Google has a new way to shop. And it takes a lot to impress me with shopping tools,
but this one does. And I got to say, Google obviously is scouring the web on a daily basis, and if you search in shop deals on Google, this is a brand new destination where they are. They're always looking at the prices of things online because in the course of searching the web, they are noticing what the prices of popular products are.
And of course if.
It goes down from one week to the next or one day to the next, Google sees a trend. And so now someone at Google got the smart idea of saying, you know what, why don't we put all of these things that we're tracking on one page and tell people about the items that have the biggest price drops.
And so that's what they're doing.
So if you go to Google dot com and search shop deals, you will see a bunch of popular categories. I'm looking at cell phones, I'm looking at cameras, I'm looking at laptops. I'm looking at tablets, headphones, all kinds of categories, TVs, watches, toys. You can see the products that have the best price drops. So, for instance, in the TV category, this uh wow Insignia TV forty nine ninety nine thirty seven percent off, Samsung q Leeds Smart
TV thirteen hundred bucks, thirty five percent off. When you look at headphones, Apple Beats Solo three fifty percent off ninety nine dollars. Tablets a Samsung Galaxy tab A seven light one hundred thirty bucks, thirty five percent off.
Let's see what else?
A chromebook fifty percent off one hundred and fifty bucks at best Buy, on and on and on, Samsung Galaxy S twenty two three ninety nine forty two percent off. So again, shop deals is the magic search. If you're looking for a specific thing, just put that title in between shop deals. So for instance, shop Apple Watch deals will bring up the cheapest Apple watches. Now you have to remember the top line is always going to be sponsored.
So if you don't want the sponsored stuff, which you know, that's fine, but you can move down past and you'll see the actual stuff that Google is cataloging. That is percentage off. So I thought that was pretty interesting. I thought that was pretty useful. I'm always on the lookout for better shopping tools, especially as we are heading into this season of shopping, and this was also interesting. I had a friend at work say, hey, Rich, is there any way to get a document that I have onto
my Kindle? How do I get a document like a word document or anything else a pdf onto my Kindle?
I said, It's very very easy. You go to.
Amazon dot com slash send to Kindle. So if you have a PDF, you've got a document, you've got a text file, whatever you have, even JPEGs and anything you have up to two hundred megabytes, you can just drag and drop on this website and it will send it to your Kindle. So if you need to read a large document for work, you have an ebook, someone gave you, whatever you've got, just go to Amazon dot com slash send to Kindle.
That is the letter's t o send to Kindle.
You drag and drop and you can now read anything you want that you have as a document on your Kindle.
Why do you want to do that? Well, the Kindle's so nice.
The Kindle has a great screen, it's not a table it's a it's not like a tablet screen like your iPad. It's much easier on the eyes because it is a paper sort of looking document. So again, you want to send something to your kindle Amazon dot com slash send to kindle, very very easy. He tried it that night and he said, Rich it worked. I said, well, yeah, I mean, come on, I told you it would.
All right. Coming up, Uh, I got to tell you about this new AI pin.
This thing has taken the tech world by storm, for better or for worse. You got to see what you think about this device. It is AI on a device that you wear. So we'll talk about that. Plus we'll take your questions at triple eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here talking technology at triple eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two
four one zero one. If you have a question about technology, give me a call. We got Kim standing by to get you on the air. So I told you about this device called Humane AI, and we're gonna have a guest talk about this. They went hands on with this thing, but I'll tell you what it's all about, because it is kind of like one of the biggest stories in the tech world right now, and it's a head scratcher. This is a startup called Humane h u m an E.
It's called the AI Pin. This is a new wearable AI assistant device and it's kind of an entirely new platform. So the way that the iPhone introduced apps, they are hoping that this new device might be similar to that. And so you wear this device and the best way to describe it, I mean, it's really tough to describe what it looks like.
It looks like a.
Tiny it's a pin. I don't know, it's a seven hundred Oh I should tell you the price, seven hundred dollars. So this is a seven hundred dollars pin that has microphones, It has a laser projector on it, it has no screen, has some lights, and it has a speaker. And the idea behind this device is that you can sort of ditch your smartphone and be more present and use AI
to help you out in this world. So it is screenless and it has a voice activated AI assistant on it, so you can ask it things like Hey, catch me up on my email, or Hey, what was the name of the twenty third president, and it will search the web, search AI and bring that information back to you. It can also play music, it can also take pictures. It can do real time translation. So it is kind of a device of the future that really capitalizes on artificial intelligence.
And some of the biggest backers are Microsoft, Open AI, Qualcom. T Mobile provides the data connectivity. So it's six hundred and ninety nine dollars and twenty four dollars a month for this device. And so as I understand it, you can put your hand out in front of you. It will project out the screen onto your hand, so you can read little things or see little things.
It can take pictures.
It's got an apparently all day battery use, so you can swap the battery as you're using it, and that way you can use.
It all day.
And they said they've put a strong focus on privacy and security, so apparently it's not listening all the time, but you can ask it to do stuff at any time.
So I'm not sure how that works. And the bottom line.
About this device is that the people who got to try it out first sort of got to see it in action, but they didn't necessarily get to try it in action, so they got to see a lot of demos of how this stuff works. But this is kind of like the first big major startup that is leaning very heavily into AI.
I don't know. I'm kind of unsold on this thing.
But we're gonna have Brian Heater of tech Crunch to talk about this a little bit later in the show because he went hands on, or I should say I guess eyes on in a demo, and it's it's one of those things where you kind of have to see it to understand it. I don't really get it. I feel like we've got our phones. People are a very much attached to their phones.
I get it.
We're trying to be a little bit more screenless, we're trying to be a little bit more present, But at the same time, it feels like you can replicate a lot of what this device does using a smart watch or your phone or a combination of both. And to go and spend seven hundred dollars on a new device to do all this stuff, I just don't know. So again, Humane AI Pin, We'll have to watch that one. Angie in Wisconsin, writes in on the website rich on tech
dot TV. I'm ten years behind great show. I keep my phone in the side pocket of my yoga pants while cleaning houses for work. I'm done having kids, but wondered if that's still a carcinogen risk having the phone in the side pocket. I have AirPods and a watch, but with them both, I like the phone close. I admire your positivity. Angie in Wisconsin. Well, Angie, I am no expert in all things health, and I would be remiss if I didn't say I've thought about this before,
and I'm sure many people have. We've seen a whole cottage industry of gadgets pop up that purport to take the radiation away from phones or angle it away from your face or your head or whatever. And yes, many of us do carry our phones in our pockets.
I don't know.
I mean, I've heard from experts that we're okay, and we have gone thirty years with these smartphones, and the conclusion is still sort of that we haven't seen an increased connection between cancer and the smartphone. And so I want to believe that we can believe that. But I will say my one concern that I do have is
the fact that I wear an Apple Watch on my wrist. Now, with the phone, I go eight, ten, twelve, fourteen hours where it's not in my pocket, whereas with my Apple Watch, it is on my wrist the entire day and except for when I sleep, and for some people it is on their wrist when they sleep. And so I will say I am more concerned about that being so close to my wrist and the potential for issues there because
it is on your body at all times. Now, the AirPods, you know, with the Bluetooth, I'm not really concerned about that. You know, you put them in and you take them out. I don't really think that's doing much. But I will say with the specifically cellular connection on your wrist, that does concern me a little bit. Especially kids. They're having these things on their wrist for a long long time.
In their lifetime.
So, Jerry still out, good question. I think it's important to be concerned with this stuff, but not, you know, too concern all right, coming up, Jeremy Kaplan Wonder Tools Newsletter, Let's learn about AI. You're listening to Rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out talking technology with you at triple eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one one zero one. Give me a call if
you have a question about technology. Joining me now is Jeremy Kaplan, director of Teacher, Teaching and Learning at Qune's Grad School of Journalism. He is the creator and writer of wonder Tools on substack. This is a great AI newsletter where he shares all kinds of useful tools that have to do with AI.
Jeremy, thanks so much for joining me.
Great to be here with you.
So what made you start this newsletter on subsac.
There's a huge amount of technology coming at us every day. It can be overwhelming, and I want to help people understand it and make the most of it.
And so when you first heard about chat GBT, is that what got you into this. I mean, it's only been less than a year since that launched.
It's been definitely something that got me really excited about AI.
But I actually started the newsletter when the pandemic hit. I was alone in my home and.
People were alone in their homes all over the country and trying to figure out how to live online.
And I wanted to help people.
So I've now written two hundred posts to help people in different ways with technology, including AI.
Okay, so did you sort of when you first started it was AI the focus or did you kind of pivot to that.
I pivoted to that first.
It was Zoom and figuring out, you know, how do we have online meetings, how do we teach online, how do we work online? How do we live online and have fun online and meet people? So it was all of that online living, and then when AI hit with chagpt, it just became the AI revolution.
Wow, and during the pandemic, bring us back to that time because it was such a you know, no one knew what was next, and so of course everyone was hopping on Zoom and all these different tools. We all learned how to work online and remote. What was it like for this newsletter?
You know, it was a way for me to connect with people and to help people. You know, I couldn't necessarily volunteer in hospitals. I don't have a medical background, but I was a teacher, and I saw other teachers struggling, including you know, my kindergartener had a teacher who just didn't even know how to work our computer, and so I just saw all these teachers and other people who needed help with technology, and that was something that I
could try to help them with. And so that was the purpose of the newsletter and step by step, one tool at a time each week, giving them some guidance, giving them some gestions and practical tips for just ordinary people, not for technology experts.
That's the key right there. So what you know, how do you find these new tools? I mean, there's so many obviously coming out every week. How do you find them? And how do you decide what to feature?
Well?
I love exploring technology. Some people like phishing, some people like driving. I love technology. So I explore technology, you know, in the free hours that I have, and when I stumble upon something that makes me say wow, or or that I see has a really useful application or way to use it, I stop and dig in. And I call it pickstick and dig as the approach. So I picked something, I really stick with it for a while and then dig into how it can be useful.
So before you kind of talk about some of these you know, apps and things that you really like and you use on a daily basis, tell me about AI. I mean, because people are concerned about it, They worry about it. They don't know what the future of AI is. What's your take on AI?
So I think it's a tool like any other tool. The phone is a tool, the mobile phone is a tool, laptop is a tool. All of those can be used well, or they can be misused. They can be used to send spam, or they can be used to be to send a life saving message to somebody.
So I think, like all those other tools, AI.
Can be used for great purposes, for efficiency, for creativity, and it can also be misused and used to create misinformation or to recavoc So it's all a matter of how we use it and setting some guidelines and some best practices.
So we've got the main you know, chat EBT, you've got clawed from Anthropic, you've got barred from Google.
What do you make of those tools?
So they're all fantastic in their own way. So, for example, claud allows you to upload up to seventy thousand words, so you can give it an entire book or a huge PDF with your whole company set of company policies, and guide a new person to your company with here are some of the key principles, right, So they don't have to read seventy thousand words of a giant PDF,
for example. Or you can upload a huge amount of data that you're just trying to get a sense of and understand, or a document in multiple languages that you may not speak so for the purpose of understanding large giant documents. Claude is fantastic and I've written about it in Wonder Tools. Chat GPT has something that's really unique, which is this app store. So there are more than a thousand different apps now that plug into chat GPT, and they do things like connect to Canva, for example.
So you can ask chat gpt to create a drawing for you, or a design for your company, or a poster or a slide or any number of visuals. So that's something that's unique to chat gpt for example. So each of them has their unique capabilities. And now there's a whole of other AI tools beyond just the chat tools as well.
So the more I think about AI and specifically Google, the more I kind of realize why Google was slow to roll out something like chat GBT, Because once you get on board with like even Bard, you realize that it completely changes the way you search the Internet. You know right Now, when you search the Internet, it's kind of like you know, hunt and peck, right, You're looking and you click a link and you don't find what you need, and you go back and you click another one.
And that's great for Google's business model. But when you go to like one of these AI tools and you ask for information, and yes, I understand that sometimes that information can be false or you know, hallucinations, but it's a totally different way of finding information versus that kind of clicking a lot of links that might lead you to a sponsored link or you know, a paid post.
What do you think about that idea?
I think you're absolutely right, Rich. I think the web can be overwhelming. And when you search Google and get a thousand different links and you have no way of verifying you know, one from another, it's just overwhelming. And it's a lot more efficient in many cases if you can tailor a specific request to an AI engine that you can actually trust. Now, the question is can you actually trust the results? And what I've found is that the AI engines work best as language engines and work
not quite as well as knowledge engines. So that's where there's a distinction with what Google's doing. And so when you're putting in a piece of language and saying, hey, help me make this paragraph more concise, or help me make sure I've got the grammar and the spelling of this language, or help me translate this language, or help me summarize this complicated scientific language. For those language purposes, the AI works terrifically well as a kind of language engine.
When you get into the factual questions, you know, explain to me the history of this topic. In many cases you will get a majority, you know, accurate kind of piece of information. But the fact that you get a little bit of that hallucination up to three percent in a recent research study of content that you get back when you ask a knowledge based question is hallucinated information.
So if you have that.
Three percent faulty rate, it's not as trustworthy. Now, of course, when you search Google, you could land on a site that has information that itself is not trustworthy.
So we always have to be a skeptic. In the end.
It's always up to us to kind of use our skepticism and judge for ourselves what's accurate and what might not be.
And as a journalist, you know, you got to fact check everything you can't just take it at face value here, okay, So can you share some tools that people might not have heard of that are useful, fun interesting? Do you have anything that you can talk about?
Absolutely?
So.
Oasis is one of these new tools that I use almost every day. It's a what I call a bionic dictation tool, which basically means it's a voice recorder or a dictation tool, just like your voice memos app, for example, on your phone, but it does something really powerful in addition to that, So instead of just recording your voice, it also transcribes what you're saying, and in addition to transcribing what you're saying, it will transform what you're saying.
So what I use it for is to list out ideas thoughts I have for article, or for a letter I'm writing, or for a class I'm teaching, whatever I'm thinking about planning, ideating a presentation, and it will give me multiple versions of that content. So we'll give me that content just as a transcript, but it will also summarize the key points that I've said, it will put it in an outline format, it will create a blog post version of that or an email version of that.
And recently I was doing a couple of vertical videos. I asked it to give me a vertical videoscript format of that ideation that I was doing, and it did that as well. So the key thing here is it's my own ideas. It's not pulling that information from somewhere online. It's taking my own idea, but it's just transforming the way that language is presented. It's putting it in a summary format or an outline format or a script format.
So that's super.
Useful as a way to augment my own ideation process and to help me basically organize my ideas more efficiently. And it's been a super super helpful part of my brainstorming and my creative process recently. And it's called Oasis, and you can use it completely for free, and I have no affiliation with them, by the way, it's.
Just something I use in life.
You can use it completely for free, or you can pay a five buck a month, you know, kind of freemium payment to use it a little bit more.
And so that's a great one.
There's another tool it's very similar, called audio Pen and they both do essentially the same kind of idea of bionic transcription, where you essentially are using your voice and generating you know, the materials for yourself in a new way with AI.
That's awesome. Okay, we have time for one more. You have one more you want to talk about?
Sure? Sure.
Another one that I use and really like is called blocks b l oks dot app, And what that does is allow me to record any meeting, either an in person meeting or a meeting online. And it sits on my laptop so that it doesn't have to join the meeting for example, So it works on any platform, but it also works in an in person meeting. Of course, you need the permission of the person. You don't want to record people surreptitiously, but you ask if it's okay.
And usually what I tell people is, I'd love to send you a summary of this conversation. Is it okay if I record it so that I can transcribe it and summarize it and share that with you. And it creates a nice transcription of that, a summary of the meeting. It even will include action points, and then you can query it. You can say, what were the three things we talked about when we came at the toward the end of the meeting, You can ask it questions and get just that.
So it's like having an assistant.
Next to you helping you and keeping track of your meetings and your notes, so you don't have to manually write down everything and you don't forget anything. So that's a free tool and I really love it. I'm using it regularly for most of my meetings these days. So that's another super helpful AI tool that you.
May not have heard of. And I've written about these in wonder tools, so if.
People are interested, they can they can dig into that further on the newsletter.
All right, Jeremy Kaplan, thanks so much for joining me today.
Thanks Rich, it's been great talking with you.
And if you want to get Jeremy's substack newsletter, just go to wondertools dot substack dot com. I love reading it every time it arrives to my inbox. Very very helpful stuff. Triple eight Rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four two four one zero one. More of your calls after this. Welcome back to Rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here talking technology with you at triple eight Rich one oh one. That's eighty eight seven four to two four to one zero one. You can find me
on social media and follow me there. I'm at rich on tech on Instagram, Facebook.
X and threads. Let's go to Jeff in Jackson, Mississippi. Jeff, you're on with rich.
Hey rich fand your show today. I got a had a desire to get a new TV to the bedroom, but I'm not sure what to look for and look at and one's an advice.
Well, thanks for finding the show. You're you're looking for a TV.
Som TV, something that you know get into the twenty first stating okay.
And so do you have a TV in another room that has kind of the smarts or do you like what are you using for your prime Mary TV?
Yeah, as a just a flat string TV and the dand is a smart TV. But the bedroom is not not that new of the TV. I'm not sure what it is. I was gonna buys one, but I was talking with some people and they said be careful about buying from Walmart, Target places like that. They'll have they have older, you know, TVs, and I don't know what to look for. I'm just wanting to buy.
Okay, Well, I think the main thing you have to think about when it comes to a TV is do you want the smarts to be built into the TV or do you want to add the smarts later. So if you're if you're looking for the smarts to be built into the TV, you've got a couple of options. You've got Roku, You've got Google TV, and you've got fire TV, and those are kind of like the three main operating systems in addition to you know, the operating
systems that the TV manufacturers have. So then you have Visio they have their own operating system, and also LG has one called web OS. So it's a lot to think about because if you get one of these TVs with this built in, you have to like both the TV and the operating system behind the TV, and then you have to figure out, well, does the operating system
have the apps that I want? Now, every TV in the world is going to have access to things like Netflix, but then when it comes to you know, more obscure apps, that's where you may have to make sure the TV platform that you want has what you need. So if you like something like you know, Curiosity stream or you know some sort of like documentary streaming service, you want to make sure that it's available on these So my
personal preference, I think Roku is very very popular. They have a good combination of TVs that are inexpensive, good value TCL that's kind of the TCL Roku TVs. Those have always been a very very strong TV choice. I think when it comes to Amazon, if you're looking to buy one online, the Fire TVs, I like the software, you know, the TV itself doesn't get the best reviews necessarily,
but they're always a good value. And we are coming up into Black Friday, the Cyber Monday, the holiday shopping season. There's going to be a lot of deals on TV, so I would wait until this shopping season sort of starts. And by the way, Amazon's kicking it off a week early this year on the seventeenth, so that's when we're
going to start seeing a lot of deals on these TVs. Now, when it comes to the best, best best TVs, which I don't think you need in the bedroom, the LG O LEDs are clearly ranked number one all the time. The G three specifically is probably the top of the line, as is the Sony A ninety five K. That's what are the last time we had a TV editor on that's what they recommended. Now when it comes to mid range TVs, that's probably what you want in the secondary room, So I would say a TCL or a high Sense
might be the best case scenario. Now, personally, I like to add my smarts later on to the TV because I like to pick the device that I'm using for my platform, and I really like the fireTV platform, so you can get a fire TV stick to add to this. What's really cool is that the new Fire TV stick, the four K Max, has what's called ambient technology, so when you're not using the fire stick, your TV sort of turns into a picture frame, and that's really cool.
Google also does that with their Chrome Cast, their Google TV device, not the regular Chrome Cast, but the Google TV, and it's great if you use Google Photos. Apple TV is another way to get it. If you're an iPhone person, you know, Apple TV obviously is going to work very nicely with the iPhone, But the Apple TV itself is much more expensive than any of the other streaming devices.
But when it comes to buying.
The TV at Walmart or Target, I think, to be quite honest, it really comes down to looking up some reviews online of the best TVs that you can buy, and places like Wirecutter offer great reviews. Digital Trends has great reviews of TVs. There is no plethora, there's no shortage of TV reviews online. So I think it comes down to the brand that you get and the model that you get. And also it used to be very important when it came to like how many HDMI ports
and things that were on TVs. That's getting less important as people are streaming everything. So I think you find a size at a price that you like, and you make sure it has the features that you like. Obviously you want something that's four K and something that you can add one of these streaming devices to. I think that's gonna be your best bet. So good luck with the TV. I am in the I'm in the market for a TV myself, and I'll be quite honest, I think I'm gonna go with the High Sense U eight
K because it's getting great review use High Sense. I know it's a brand that not many people have heard of, but they are definitely making some progress here in the US. So thanks for the call, Jeff over there in Jackson, Mississippi. Spotify this week added two hundred thousand audiobooks for premium users, So if you are a Spotify subscriber in the US, you can now listen to audiobooks for free. You get fifteen hours of listening per month included, and they say
they have seventy percent of the best selling titles. That doesn't mean you get to listen to seventy percent of the book. It means that if you're looking at the most popular titles available as audiobooks, they say they have seventy percent of those represented. And they also have a whole bunch of genres gen Z and millennials lead and audiobook listening. They say people like to listen to audiobooks for relaxation, comfort, the cognitive benefits. And now Spotify has music,
podcasts and audiobooks all in one place. So if you are a premium subscriber that is a perk, you should probably take advantage of listen to your fifteen hours of books each month. All right, we'll have more of your calls coming up. This is rich on Tech at triple A Rich one O one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. If you haven't visited the website yet, it is richon tech dot tv.
There you can see all of the stories that I do for television and you can also see previous episodes of this show, and of course we are available as a podcast as well. And if you are looking for something I mentioned in a previous episode, all of the show notes are right there Triple A Rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. My name is rich dmiro more rich on Tech coming up right after this.
What's going on?
Rich Dedmiro here rich on Tech talkin technology with you at Triple A Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one website, rich on tech dot TV. If you want to email me, you can hit the contact button up at the top.
Patty did just that.
Patty says, what are your thoughts on the three dollars version of total AV for the iPad? Patty, My thought is that you do not need it. I know, the way that the iPhone and iOS and iPad is set up, there is no need for antivirus.
It just doesn't work that way.
The antivirus program itself cannot even scan the entire system because it's what's called sandboxed, and so that means that this total AV can't really do anything.
Let's see, what do they promised to do.
I get this total av they advertise so heavily, I must get fifteen questions about it a week. Let's see smart scan data, breach, check photos and videos, clean up, duplicate contact finder, webshield, QR code, Private can action, VPN. All those are premium features. I don't think you need any of this stuff. Honestly. The biggest thing you can do to protect yourself on any device is to watch
the places where you log in. Make sure you're not logging into a website that's trying to trick you, and watch out for those texts that come in that try to make you click a link and hand over your personal information. But if you think this is anti virus for the iPad, it's just not, so you can go ahead and skip it. Good question, though, Let's go to Let's go to Joan in San Diego.
Joan, you're on with Rich.
Hi, thank you. I have this printer that I bought a few years ago. It's an epsom Et twenty and I absolutely love it. But something, an airring, fell in the back and stammed it and I pulled that out and what happened is now the paper when you go to print something. It just scrunches up in bunches and it won't come out. So I'll tech support and they immediately realized that I was not under warranty. We tried to troubleshoot it, but it didn't work first, and so
I asked him. I said, I have a cabinet full of the five twenty two inc. Because I sort of got it on auto order on Amazon.
Yeah, and you got like a whole bunch.
Yeah, but I thought I loved the printer. No big deal. And he looked one and back and looked at printers and he said, well, and I don't believe this because I've found otherwise on Google, but I want to I want to verify it. He said, the five twenty two inc. That you have will not work in any other EPSOM printers.
Well, that's not true, okay.
I just wonder what my options are. Should I try to fix this or should I just try to find another one that'll take that ink the new one?
How long have you had this printer?
I think it's three years okay, probably just outside the warranty.
Yeah, of course, usually everything breaks just outside the warranty. It works perfectly while it's in warranty. So I'm looking on Amazon for this five twenty two inc. And it says it works with the twenty seven to twenty, the twenty eight hundred, the twenty eight oh three, the twenty eight to forty, the forty seven hundred, the forty eight hundred, the forty eight ten. So I think that you can
find another printer. What they may have been referencing is that perhaps this this you know, there's not a current printer that uses this ink. You know, maybe the newer models use the five twenty three or something like that, but there are definitely models that use this, including the same printer that you have. I mean, you can still just buy a new printer if you want. This one's been discontinued, but of course people are going to still
sell it for a little bit. But what I would do is I would go I just did a quick search on THEPPS on the Amazon website, but I would go on the EPs and website for the five twenty two listing, and I'm sure and I can try to find this quickly here.
But another one.
I found other ones too, and I just he's double checked, and I don't know what he must have just been having an off day or something.
Well, now here's the other question I have.
So I'm looking at the Yeah, so now I'm looking at the website, and it does have all these printers that are listed the twenty four hundred. I mean there's there's at least one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine ten printers.
So what I would do is just go through each.
One of those printers on this page on the EPSOM website and just search and see how much they cost, and go with one that has the features that you want. Some have a scanner, some have the automatic document feed or whatever you need. But yes, you can use this ink. Now on the flip side, you know, depending on how much ink you have, you may just want to say, you know what, let's just call this a total loss and let's just go to cost Go and buy a new printer and just you know, start over.
Yeah.
Yeah, Costco had when I really liked on sale. It doesn't take my ink.
Yeah, I mean, look, here's the thing. I mean, these ink is not cheap. And I'm on this plan with HP where they send the ink. It's like five six I think it was paying like thirteen bucks a month. But it's like I went to I said, you know what, I'm sick of pain all this. Let me just buy the ink out right, And they wanted like two hundred dollars for the ink cartridges. And then, by the way, the ones in my printer would stop working, like it wouldn't use the ones that I already had, like I
had just send those back in. So I think you're doing better than I am because I'm stuck with what I have. You're sort of stuck with what you have. But the good news is, Joan, this ink will work in a different printer. I think that you just go on the website see which printers that it works with. Since you already have the ink, you're already halfway there. And this ink lasts for a long time. So I would just go ahead and find a new printer that
it works with and go that route. Thanks for the question, appreciate it. Let's go to Lewis in Riverside with an update about a call from Was this last week?
Lewis?
Yes, it was last week. Hi had a kid is a short story. His mom died unexpectedly, had an iPhone turned out it's an iPhone can, had it switched over, It had a lock on it.
Yes, and we were worried.
Ask you about that. We got it to him. Kids understand tech. It was like they speak that language. In less than a minute, he was punching the numbers so fast. Had it turned on. He's back online and it worked out great.
So we figured out the code to open the phone.
Yeah, he had the code. I didn't even try it because I had phones before. Where after you try so many times.
Yeah, it'll lock you out.
Oh yeah, So I didn't even try and he went in there. It was like his third try in less than a minute and turned on.
Now what did I say last week?
You had said that maybe they had If we couldn't get it, maybe we could go with them to like documentation. Hayes mom died. This was the phone, and it would have been a you know, I imagine we could have maybe we could have done something. But we're lucky we didn't.
You're lucky that he figured out the code and three tries, so very good.
I was concerned. I guess he was close with his mom, so he knew the information and got it.
Well.
I love that he figured it out.
I love that you can use his phone less waste in the in the you know, recycling bent of phones, and uh, I would.
Just and and the best thing, any information that was on there didn't get lost.
Yeah, that's that's well, back it up.
And uh at some point I would probably recommend backing up the information that's on there and then maybe starting over with his own account, if that's what you're gonna do.
But h Lewis, thanks for the update, appreciate it.
Hey, thank you Rich, thanks.
For listening there in Riverside. And UH, I do recall that I did give the advice to for the child to think about the number if he if he could figure out that pin code. But in the future, I will say the lesson learned from this is to set up what's called a legacy contact. So on iOS, on Facebook, and on Google, you can set up what's called a legacy contact. This is someone that can manage your online
accounts after you die. Not something you want to think about, right, but it's something that is important because yeah, there are systems for this. You can write to Apple, you can write to Google, you can show a death certificate. But realistically, a do you really want to be doing that for yourself or a loved one? I guess you wouldn't be doing it for yourself because you're not there. But you know what I mean. So, I mean there are systems,
but there's also ways of making these systems easier. So for instance, my wife and I have a binder with all of the important information, all of the accounts, everything we need to know for each other. And again it's not something you want to think about. I mean, who wants to make a binder this says open this up
in case I'm my death. Nobody does. But I will tell you your loved ones will be much happier for it because they will have, if you're okay with it, the passwords to the two important accounts, the accounts to look for all that good stuff. So Facebook, Google and
Apple for sure, look up legacy contact. Set someone as your legacy contact that if you stop accessing your account for a while, they will email them and say, hey, this account hasn't been used in a while and you have the ability to now take it over and get the data from there. So thanks for the call, Lewis, appreciate it all right. If you have a question for me, give me a call. It's triple eight rich one O one. That's eight eight eight seven, four to two, four to
one zero one. Coming up, I'll tell you about the Zoomo stream box. If you're clinging onto your cable box, this might be a good option for you. Amazon starting Cyber Monday deals a little bit earlier.
I'll tell you about that. And plus we're gonna talk.
To Brian Heter of tech Crunch about the Humane AI pin. Listening to rich on Tech, Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology. Before the break, we were talking about legacy contacts and how to set it. You can indeed set one for Facebook, Apple, and Google calls it Inactive Account Manager. It's all linked up on the website richon Tech dot tv. You can check the show notes for this week's show and everything
I mentioned is in there. Amazon is starting Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals a little bit earlier this year. Black Friday deals will start on November seventeenth. Cyber Monday deals will happen starting Saturday, November twenty fifth. Amazon, of course, is promising deals on popular brands Sony Disney, Peloton, Lego,
all the Amazon devices like Echo, ring fireTV. They'll be up to fifty percent off of course they kind of discount the older devices more or so than the newer devices, but again, be on the lookout for that.
And this is kind of cool.
You know, I'm not a huge sports guy, but I do think that part of that problem is that sports is just all over the place when it comes to where you can find the games, and like literally every game is on a different platform or a different channel or different streaming service, and it's kind of annoying. And
so this, I think is kind of cool. So the Amazon Prime Video, which they've been doing Thursday night football games, which I love because anyone with a Prime account can access that game and watch it and stream it from any device. And now they're going to apply that same logic on Black Friday. You can stream the Jets Dolphins game on Prime Video. But here's the difference. You don't need an Amazon Prime account to watch it, so all.
You need is an Amazon account.
So they're opening up this Prime game to anyone with an Amazon account. So that's kind of cool. Now, of course, they are going to have shopping during the game. And I was tuned into the Thursday night football game on Amazon Prime and yeah, in the commercials, they're like literally saying, hey, you can buy this, like, scan this QR code on the screen and it brings you right to Amazon to buy it. So that's kind of interesting. But I just
thought that was cool. Like it's so like streaming has made things so easy but also so complicated because there are a thousand different services and everything is on different services. Even if you follow one team, they can be playing on you know, five six different services throughout the course of a season.
Let's go to UH.
Let's go to Jerry in Hatfield, Pennsylvania.
Jerry, you're on with Rich?
Hi?
Rich, how you doing?
I'm doing great?
How are you well? I'd be happier if it can help me out. Rich. You ever hear of Olympia. It's a Filipino egg roll.
I have not.
Well, if you're ever going to chance to try when you want to what I've done, I've written a spreadsheet with all the ingredients on it, okay, in in Google sheets, with one sell UH for the user to adjust according to their to the recipe. If you have, i say, three pounds of meat, it'll put it in there, plugget and it'll just all your other vegetables and stuff like that.
Oh sure, sure, you put like the proportions, and you programmed it in credit, and.
I want to have a new machine so I can give the link to other people. And I've locked them spreadsheetings and that my problem is I want to go back into the sprindtsheet as a different user and see if my if my parameters are working as far as unlocking the lock of that. Some people can't change the other stuff I have on there.
You want to make sure before you share this that actually works for a random person.
Right, And I tried opening up I sent I sent the link to a different uh email that I have. It's not associated with it, and it's not working. I can open it up, but if I change it on the secondary email, I can see it change on the primary and I want to be able to well, what I want to say is that it's just a mirror of it. I want to make sure that.
I can type things in but not change the original.
Right now, how I do that?
Okay?
So what you want to do is there's two parts to your question. First off, you want to make this document so that you can share it around and not have someone change it, but they can use it. So that's the number one part. And then the second part is that you want to be able to try this out. So I think for the first part it depends how you share this. So in Google there is a in the upper right hand corner a share icon, and it gives you a couple of options on how to share.
So there is an option that says anyone with a link can view, and then there is anyone with a link and comment, and anyone with the link can edit. So you you probably want to make people a viewer, and when they view that link, you want to make sure that they can change those numbers inside that link. And that's the way you format. You format that the cell inside that spreadsheet. So the second part of the equation here is testing this out. So as you noticed,
you emailed it to yourself. So what I would do is I would just copy the link once you set the permissions, and once you copy the link, I would use what's called a private browsing window or an incognito window. So on your web browser, if you go to file, it should say you know. If you're using Safari, they call it a private window. If you're using Chrome, they call it an incognito window. So open up an incognito window. And then paste that URL in there, and you should
be able to see what's happening on that URL. Like, if you can't access it and you can't change the data the way you're saying, then you have to go back and reformat your your document. Now, if you don't want people to be able to save this stuff, you need to make sure that they are not an editor and they are just a viewer. But you need to make sure that when you make them a viewer, they can still change you know, the data inside those inside those parameters. So with that said, you would have to
figure that. Off the top of my head. I'm not sure if you can make a spreadsheet that people can pop in their own data. You may have to make it a template and that way people can copy it to their Google Docs account and then make the changes that they want to do.
That would probably be the best.
Way of handling this. So again, maybe a template or they have to just save it. You might just you just might make it so that they can see this document and then save it to their drive and then they can make the appropriate changes. I think that it's going to be the best way because if you think about it, you can't have fifteen people on there making changes at the same time, adjusting their ingredients and expecting this to work out because you can only have one
person at a time that's changing it. So I would make them just a viewer only once they copy it to their account, which there's a little icon for that up near the top, then they can then they can make.
The appropriate changes.
Let me know, Jerry, go on the website, rich On Tech dot TV email me with the update. All right, coming up Zumo stream box and oh we're going to talk to Brian Heater, hardware editor at tech Crunch. We're going to talk about the Humane AI pin. Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology at Triple eight Rich one oh one. Brian Heater is hardware editor at tech Crunch. He got to go hands on with the gadget that the entire tech
community is talking about. It's the Humane AI pin. Brian, thanks so much for joining me today.
Yeah, thanks for having me.
So can you explain you got to go hands on with this device. I'm sure it was a small group of people that got to do this up in San Francisco. Can you explain what the Humane AI pin is sure.
Yeah, let me let me caveat by saying, you know, I got to wear it and I got to see it in action, but I didn't really get to, you know, use it in a super meaningful way.
But it's a brand new startup.
They've actually been around since twenty eighteen, but they were made public earlier this year.
It's run by.
A couple of forber Apple executives and the pitch is effectively life beyond the smartphone. It's a little pin that sits on your lapel that hangs on there magnetically, and it uses AI.
To do a number of different actions.
You interact with it, primarily through voice, but there's also touch.
And the far and away.
The most visually interesting aspect of it is it actually has a projector, a laser projector in it that will project emails and even photos if you're getting a call during those times where you don't actually want to speak to the thing.
And so, would you actually replace your smartphone with this or do you think most people would have it in addition to their smartphone.
Yeah, I don't think anybody's getting rid of their smartphone at any point in the near future. But the device itself has a twenty four dollar a month subscription fee that includes a phone number. It's it's LTE, It's on the T Mobile network, and the idea is that you can at least leave the smartphone at home.
Yeah, so theoretically it does operate or I guess it does operate independently. Whether people would you know, end up doing that as another question. It's kind of like the Apple Watch. You could, you know, get the cellular and use that on a run or something without it without the phone being near by. So this is screenless, it's voice activated, and it's got a lot of AI built in and chat GBT. Open ai is one of the the backers of this startup as well.
Right, Yes, Sam.
Altman, the founder of open ai is I believe he's the largest shareholder at this point. The actual relationship between the two companies is an entirely clear. Asked them a few questions about that during our conversation yesterday. It seems like they largely built it independently. He believed in the idea. A lot of companies right now are trying to figure out how to actually bring a lot of these large language models generated AI systems like chatpt into the world.
I know that it is running.
It's using a lot of different AI models right now. I know that chat GPT is among them, and that at some point, I guess by the time that it actually launches early next year, it will likely be running some form of GPT for.
So some of the features of this device. You can use it for messaging. You can make phone calls. I'm guessing there's a catch up function for your inbox, so it will kind of summarize what's in your inbox, let you know the most pertinent information. You can listen to music through it, foreign language interpreter, and it can also identify food. Which of those items were you able to try and see in person?
I was able to see pretty much all of them, but you know, as I said at the top, it wasn't able to actually to do them myself.
I watched a few of the employees use them in front of.
Me, and was it impressive? I mean, did you you know you've covered this stuff for a while. Did you get the sense that this was the next iPad or the next you know, zoom?
Sure?
Yeah, Google Glass is the comparison that I hear you and I think I think it's a fair one because they're Google was trying to do something really similar.
You know.
The primary difference one the technology just wasn't there at the time. A lot of these AI models have come really long way since then. And the other one is that it was a head mount display. And this is there are a few companies kind of operatings in this space, but this is the first one that I've seen with what appears to be a viable product that just sits on the lapel. It's going to be there's going to
be a big learning curve. I will say that up top six hundred ninety nine dollars is a lot in smartphone land, but it is a lot when talking about, you know, an unproven first generation device, and then you add that the mandatory twenty four dollars a month on top of that, if you don't have the mobile subscription, then the thing is is basically bricked.
There's a lot of money here.
You know.
There are obviously a lot of really smart people here there. There there's Vision as well. I think a lot of people like the message around the company. They're effectively positioning themselves as being kind of, I guess in direct competition with Apple's Vision pro as far as the way that we you will interact with computers going forward. You know, Apple is taking the display and putting on your head and they're removing display altogether.
What was the projected kind of image? Like, I mean, did it look cool or was it tough to read? Or was it you know, where do you project it onto like a table in front of you or on your hand?
Yeah, So it's if you've ever you've probably seen one of these kinds of laser projectors in the world. There's there's advertisers that will do them. You know, you'll see it like projected on a sidewalk in front of you. It's it's very sharp. It functionality, it's it's somewhat limited. Like I said, you can look you can preview the pictures that you take with the device, but that's not you don't really want to actually use that to look
at the pictures. They're not super clear. Texta is pretty clear. The way it works is you you tap the device, you tap the touch screen.
Then it uses.
I believe it used to see motion tracking and object identification to tell they you've got your hands out in front of you, and then the projector turns on and projects onto your hands, and then while reading it that way, you can also use your hand to interact with it in a sense. You know, for example, you could pinch two fingers together to scroll, or you know, move your hands at an angle. There's a variety of different ways to interact with it once it's actually on the palm.
I'm just trying to figure out why someone would want this and not just use their smartphone with like an ear piece. And I love cool things, and I love new things, and I love new ways of thinking about things. But I'm just really struggling here to understand how this is better than the solutions we have.
And I haven't gone hands on, so maybe that's part of it.
Sure, I mean, I'm certainly not here to sell it to you, and I you know, I absolutely approach these things with skepticism. I will almost certainly be getting one of these things at some point to try out. I think most people are skeptical, and I think it's right. I don't know that the company has entirely figured out what the killer app.
Is right now.
There aren't a lot of hardware startps in the world, but the way you can think of all these devices are kind of really like whide beta testing with that first generation of people. It's a bit expensive to get there, but there are a lot of people who just get excited about tech and will be the first ones to try it.
There were a lot of.
Sign ups, you know, they had a waiting list that I think actually closed. During the event yesterday they said they had a one hundred and ten thousand sign ups. Now, again that doesn't actually equate to devices sold. You know, there's no money down, there's no commitment there, but there's certainly interest.
Are there any potential privacy concerns with this new device?
Yeah, I mean there are always privacy concerns when you're bringing a new form factor out with a camera on it and you're walking around with it at all times.
A couple of things I'll say and I don't.
I'm certainly not an expert on the privacy or security at the moment.
This is just based on the conversations that I've had so far.
But one of the key parts is that you have to actively engage with it, so it's not listening for a wake word the way you know, like Siri or Alexa or Google assystem is, so it's not constantly monitoring and it's certainly not constantly taking video, and when it does take video, it's got a privacy light on it, so you know, it's pretty clear. The light sortainly goes back and forth like a syloon on the top, So I people aren't going to know necessarily what's going on
or what they're looking at. That at least they'll be able to tell like something is going on with that device.
Brian Heater, hardware editor at tech Crunch, thanks so much for joining me today.
Yeah, thanks for having me. That's it.
The Humane Ai pin pre order start November sixteenth, six hundred ninety nine dollars twenty four dollars a month for unlimited calls, text and data through T Mobile. This is shipping in early twenty twenty four. Give me a call if you have a question about technology. Triple eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four two four to one zero one. You are listening to Rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro
here hanging out with you talking technology. Before the interview, we had Jerry in Hatfield, Pennsylvania, asking about Google Sheets. I learned a food that I had not heard of, Lumpia, a Filipino version of spring rolls. The rappers are made from flour, cornstarch, and water than in delicate but strong enough to hold fillings. They can be served fresh or fried. Kind of looks like a like a you know, like a what do you call a thing? An egg roll?
Like a spring roll? So now I'm hungry. Thanks, But Jerry, I think I found a more complete answer. So I mentioned that you should save and share this as a template. But the little trick, according to this website, conquer the digit empire dot com. When you create that link to share it okay, You then update the link at the end with slash copy at the end, and then you can share that updated link. And when they first take that link, it will say do you want to copy
this template to your Google Drive? And that makes the process a little easier, and it also makes it so that they can change the numbers like you did in your template without changing the original.
And I tested this.
I created like a very simple template, very simple Google spreadsheet. I put in a couple numbers with the you know we're at the end. It added them all up and then I was able to share this template and then I logged in you know with the incognito window like I mentioned, and made a copy and it completely worked. So I put the link on the website so you can find it in the show notes. But again, just add that slash copy to the end of the link when you share it out on Google when you generate it,
and that should work. Paul says, I have an iMac I bought in twenty twenty. When I'm using Safari, seems like it's infected with a virus called Searchalpha dot com, making it very difficult for me to search the web. What should I do, Paul, I think you have an extension on there that is bad. These are sometimes called search helpers, but realistically they're pretty much malware and sometimes you download them you don't realize and they.
Take over your search.
So open up Safari, go into the settings, click extensions, and if you see anything you don't need or don't recognize, delete it and just get rid of them. Same thing on Google Chrome you can go through and this is probably something you should do in general, is just check the extensions that are installed in your computer, make sure you recognize them. If you don't recognize them, get rid of them. You can do that by clicking there's a little puzzle piece icon in your toolbar. If you hover
over it, it'll say extensions. You can click that and it will show you all the extensions that are installed on your browser, and then you can click down below, or it says manage extensions to delete those and get rid of them. Alternatively, you can go into the menu on Chrome, which you can let's see. You could just go into the three dots in the upper right hand corner next to your profile icon, and then it says extensions,
and then it says manage extensions. You tap that and it will give you a list of all the extensions on your computer. I've got two four, six, eight, ten, twelve, fourteen, sixteen, eighteen twenty extensions. Not all of them are turned on, so you can either turn one off or you can just click or remove if you don't need it anymore. So if you see anything on there that says search helper, search Functions, search Buddy, you probably don't need it.
Get rid of it.
That is interfering with your searches, and it's also collecting data in the background that you don't need it to be doing. Let's go to Sarah in Ventura. Sarah you're on with rich Hi.
Hi Hi.
I was taking a class. In the morning it's a Google Suite and in the afternoon it's Microsoft Office Suite. It's just one day. It's in class with the teacher where assigned laptops. And I was wondering if maybe the teacher or this is at a job center, okay, And I was wondering if maybe someone is doing something because on the in the daytime, I mean in the morning part, I was on one network and then I turned it off, and when I came back, it was on another network.
And then I noticed that whenever I started the class August, whenever the teacher says pay attention to what I'm saying, the computer, the laptop I'm using, stops. It won't let me click anything, move anything, do anything, and then other things happen like so.
It sounds like it sounds like they have control over the computer. Are these are these handed out by them?
It's fair?
Yeah, okay, so they have they have software on this that allows them to control when you can do things and also to allow them to do whatever they want on this computer, Walt, It's in front of you. So it's it's pretty standard software that allows them to remain in control of the situation.
And when she needs to leave early, the battery suddenly goes down to where the battery is low, and then I would need to recharge it. So can I stop her from doing that?
No?
Not if it's their computer, it's are you Are you bringing this computer home?
No?
Okay, I'm not.
But I noticed when she feels bored she people just suddenly when she's looking up looking for something to do, nothing's happening. Then someone has a problem, and I think that she likes to feel useful, So I noticed it just seems like she's interfering with something that I need to learn when she just feels like, you know, talking to someone who needs to have help it.
Sarah, it sounds like it sounds like this teacher is not working out for you.
Do you like this teacher?
You know, she was very nice except when she started to teach Excel. I started when she was teaching Excel, and this is near the end of one cycle. They teach in cycles, and now that she's in Excel again, she all thistay's happened. But in between she's so sweet and nice, but suddenly she's not not quite that way. Yeah, well the battery.
Too, Yeah, that's the battery. The battery is interesting. I'm not sure about the battery. I don't think she has a switch, a magic switch on her computer to say, okay, now, drain everyone's battery on these computers. But when it comes to computers that are handed out, and this this is for anyone that has a company issued computer, a school issued computer, uh, there is a lot of software out there that keeps tabs on these computers. They may they
may take a screenshot at random intervals. They may be able to remotely access into your computer without you even knowing your Your company may have software that logs what you do. So my advice, if you are using a computer that is not completely yours, you treat it that way, and they have the ability to monitor what you're doing on there, to see anything that you do, anything that's on your screen. Schools do it, companies do it. They all do it. And it's mostly there because they are
the administrator of that computer. So it sounds like, Sarah, what you're talking about is, I think it sounds halfway between this teacher has this ability and also you're not a fan of this teacher and what she's doing. And so for the teacher part, I would just avoid classes with this teacher in the future. Finish up what you're doing. But for the computer part, no, you're not able to turn that off easily. I mean, yes, you can maybe hack into it and figure that out, but this is
a safety precaution. They are administrators on this computer, kind of like at work. When you can't install something on your computer at work, that's because you are not the administrator. If you want to be in charge of your computer, you have to buy it yourself. And I would even say if you are installing programs are apps on your devices from your company, you need to be aware of what you're installing because sometimes that can have implications as well.
You may get a notice on your computer that when you log in with your corporate account on something like Microsoft, that says, hey, can we uh can you can your work remotely wipe this device? So just be real careful with that kind of stuff, because if you want your own stuff, you got to have your own stuff.
And keep it that way.
Eight a eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Coming up, I'll tell you about the Zoomo stream box. You're listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here talking technology with you at Triple eight rich one on one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Coming up this hour of the show. Friend of the show, Jefferson Graham of Photo Walks TV is going to talk about how he
captured an epic ten day time laps. He did it on both the iPhone and the Samsung, and he's got some information about which one did it better, plus tips on how to take similar videos. I did a time lapse in my hotel room. I was in New York City and I had this cool view of the city, and so I just set up my phone on the window and did a time lapse.
It was pretty cool.
They're fun Triple eight rich one on one eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one. Howard says, can you send me the links from today's show? He emails, particularly the gas of the guests, Jeremy, with the newsletter and the other sites you were talking about.
You have an amazing show. Thank you well.
It made it really easy if you want to find links to the show in real time. Let's say I mentioned something. I keep everything in the notes. So if you go to rich on tech dot tv slash wiki wiki, this will bring you to the awesome show notes and they go back almost to the first show. I didn't start doing this until like maybe show number ten, but we've done forty five shows and so you can see the notes for every single show. Some shows even have a transcript, so if you want to see if I
mentioned something specific, you can search there. But all the notes and all the links are there. So rich on tech dot tv slash wiki, now that's the wiki, so that's like everything. But rich on tech dot tv the standard page eventually has the notes for that show, along with the audio of the show. Eva says, hey, Rich, enjoy everything you do. I have thousands of photos i'd like to scan into my laptop. What's the best scanner
I can buy? I want good quality resolution in case I want to print a photo later, example a four x six eight by ten eleven fourteen. Thank you, Eva, So yeah, if you're gonna print photos bigger than a four x six, most people are just scanning these things and then putting them on their phone. But if you are going to print, you probably want to scan at a higher dpi, probably six hundred. Most scanners default to about three hundred, and some can even go as low
as I believe, like seventy six. So you probably want to do a higher dpi if you're going to do those bigger pictures. I have a feeling, though, EVA, You're probably not gonna end up printing out all those pictures. I always think I'm gonna print out pictures, and I don't now. If you want the best, and you've got thousands of photos, like you said, and you want to do this at home, probably the best is this EPSN Fast Photo FF six't eighty W high speed scanning system.
But that's six hundred bucks, so you.
Can get it and then sell it or you know, split the price of the family member if you have a bunch of people that want to all scan their photos. This is like the Lamborghini of scanners. You feed in a whole bunch of pictures at once, it will scan through them really fast. I think it even does the front and back at the same time. So if you wrote stuff on the back of the pictures, that will do it. But six hundred bucks, nobody really wants to spend that on a scanner. So Trusty Amazon has a
couple of top picks for the scanners. Cannons are very popular. The cannon Cano scan lied l id E three hundred is fifty eight bucks. So, but that's a flatbed scanner, so you're gonna be you're gonna be putting pictures in there, one at a time, very slowly. And you also have they have a cheap O not a cheapo but a kind of like a third party brand I've never heard of that does do a feeder, but it looks like it's one picture at a time.
That's two hundred dollars.
Then they've got the epsom Perfection V nineteen that's ninety bucks, and that has higher resolution as well. So I would probably go with some sort of scanner where you can feed stuff in easily as opposed to a flatbed flatbed if you have thousands of pictures, those are going to take a while to get through.
Zuomo's stream box. All right.
So if you are clinging to the idea of cable, and I'm saying this with the idea of I personally prefer a completely cord cutting streaming service, So I like a fire TV or an Apple TV. But there are many people out there that still like traditional cable and they have a traditional cable box, but they still want to stream stuff. And so that means you have two
different items going on with your TV. You've got your cable box on one input and you've got a streaming stick on another input, and you're switching between those things. When you want to watch Netflix, you got to go to the stick. When you want to watch Channel five, you got to go to your cable box. So the cable companies they have banded together to come up with
this thing called Zumo. And I believe this was a startup and they purchased it or something like that, but Charter and Comcast are the two big companies that are behind this. And it's a box. It's called the Zumo stream Box, and it combines cable TV with popular streaming apps. So it doesn't have a Cox cable. It's all delivered over the internet. But what it essentially is is your cable service, like a streaming cable service, like if you have a YouTube TV, but it would be Spectrum's version
of that alongside these streaming apps. And there's three hundred streaming apps on this box. They're not all installed at once, but they're all on the screen. You it, it kind of installs it in the background and you're good to go. So the big difference here is that this comes from your cable company. So you have to have a cable plan, you have to have cable Internet, and you get this box.
The box is either five bucks a month as a service fee, which you would pay forever, or you can pay sixty dollars outright, but they're not going to help.
You if something goes wrong with the box.
So by paying the five dollars a month, you get kind of the backing of the cable company, just like you would a cable box. Something goes wrong, you exchange it.
It's nice.
I mean, I had a demo of this over at the Spectrum store and in the limited time I had it seems like a nice option if you still like a traditional cable TV experience.
So if you like all those.
Channels that are always streaming or I should say always kind of just playing something, you turn on your TV, it goes to a channel. Now, the funny thing is it goes to Spectrum's own Spectrum one News, which happens to be Channel one on their systems. If you don't have Spectrum News in your area, it's going to default to the first channel that you have, which is probably channel two. I think that they should let you customize that to your favorite channel. So let's say you love MTV,
you can have it go to that. Let's say you love channel five, you can have a default to that. That would be a nice thing for them to do. But again, these are cable companies. They're not always you know, they're not always thinking in I feel bad even saying it, but not every company is always, you know, thinking of their customer's best interest. Sometimes there's a little bit of a loaded, you know, a little bit bias towards their
own interests. But otherwise I like the idea that this has one remote control for everything, and it does have a keypad, so if you want to once you're in the cable side of things, you can just type in the cable channel number, so if you know the channels that you like, you can go straight to them. That's something that most I would say, I don't think I've ever seen that on a streaming stick. It's got voice search, and in the voice search that I looked at, it's
supposed to be really good it was okay. Maybe there are some issues, maybe it needs a software update, but it's like the ideas that you'd be able to use your voice to do almost everything. You can also add cloud DVR service for a monthly fee. And this is what I would consider a stop gap and in between technology.
So while people are still on cable, while people are still on streaming, the cable companies, of course want a piece of the action, and they want to offer you this box so that it kind of bridges both worlds, but they're still in the game versus you ditching your cable company, your traditional cable company and going with something like YouTube TV.
Now you can.
Email me and tell me Rich I can do all of this stuff on my Fire TV stick, and Rich I can do all of this stuff on my Apple TV.
Yes you can.
You can cobble together all the apps you want and all of the cable services you want. There's Fubo, there's Sling TV, there is you know, there's so many of them. But this is a little bit different because it's much more combined, it's much more integrated. It feels like traditional cable just a little bit more. Some people might like that, some people may not like that. I'm kind of in the middle. I think for some people that still have a cable box and a streamer streaming stick, go for it.
Why not.
Life Hacker explains the difference between a modem and a router. I thought this was pretty interesting. The modem connects your home network to your internet service provider. It translates the data between your devices and the Internet service provider. A router creates a local network in your home and connects all your devices together wirelessly or through Ethernet. It routes data between your devices and the modem. Modems just provide
the Internet connection. The routers enable the wireless networking and connect multiple devices. Most of the time, your Internet service provider is giving you a combined modem slash router device. And that's why it's a little confusing, because it's a modem that also sends out the Wi Fi signal that
all of your devices latch onto. If you're getting something like an ear row that is a that is a router and that will take your modem signal and put it out to all of your devices, you can get an upgraded signal, so if you want, you can buy your own modem from your cable company or your Internet service provider. You know, I'm kind of torn on that. You know, it's like one of these things where I
get it. Some of these ISPs charge five bucks a month ten bucks a month to rent the router or the modem rather and it's it may be cheaper to buy it if you're going to stick with them for a long time. You can buy it out right and have it yourself, but you know, if something goes wrong, you are on the hook. And they're also not going to provide support for you. And finally, mostly for my California listeners, well California, Washington, Oregon, the app Quake Alert
USA is shutting down. So as of November sixth, twenty twenty three, the free quake Alert USA app is decommissioned, which means you will no longer get earthquake early warning alerts through the This was one of the earliest apps that I covered with the Quake Alert system or the
Shake alert system. It's been operating for eight years. If you have it on your phone, you can delete it and if you have an Android you can actually just use the built in earthquake alerts under settings Safety and Emergency, Earthquake alerts and you can turn that offer on. Google has built that into Android, or I guess Android has built it into Android. If you're on an iPhone, the app that you want is called My Shake, My Shake, and Noah has nothing to do with a protein shake.
It is the shake.
It works with the Shake Alert system, which is a whole bunch of sensors in California, Oregon, and Washington that detect earthquakes and send a alert to your phone anywhere between five and thirty seconds before you feel the shaking. So again, Quake Alert USA. If you have it on your phone, it no longer works. It's no longer going to send you alerts, so delete it and download My Shake. You can do that on iPhone or Android. But if you have Android, you've got earthquake alerts built right into
your operating system. Open up your settings, tap safety in emergency and you will find the earthquake alerts in there. And yes, the earthquake alert alerts work. I got one for the last to earthquake we had. It was like maybe five or six seconds before the earthquake. All right, coming up, Jefferson Graham is going to talk to us about his time lapse capture plus more tech news, tips, reviews.
Eighty eight rich on Tech.
Sorry, rich one on one, you're listening to rich on Tech.
Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, and then totally eighties Weekend. I'd give you the phone number, but I don't even know if we'll get to more calls. Eighty to eight rich one on one. Well, since I said it wrong before the break eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. The website rich on Tech. If you want to email me, you can go to the contact link. There a lot of you commenting on my Instagram about the story I broke at the beginning of the show about how Chuck E.
Cheese is doing away with animatronics.
This was news to me last night going to their event and the Northridge location. I can't believe it. It's like it's just so wild that something I grew up with is like no longer going to be a thing. I'm glad my kids were able to experience it, But as I explain to my instagram at richon Tech, the last location in the US that you'll be able to experience animatronics at Chuck E. Cheese will be the Northridge, California location. So I have a feeling it's going to
make it to a lot of lists. When people hit up California for travel, they're going to say, gotta stop there, bring my kids, And most of the time the kids won't really care.
It'll be the parents that care. Let's see here.
Well, I don't have the person's name, but they wrote in I travel frequently for work. Often I have the address of my client and they need to find it a nearby hotel. I'd like to search for a hotel based on brand to increase my loyalty points, and so let's see here. I've tried various methods on iOS, Google Maps, even map quest to find hotels in proximity, but I've not found an easy solution. I've spoken to fellow travelers
and they don't have good suggestions. If you have a tip app or anything else that resolves this, I bet your followers would be eager to learn about it. Yes, I do have a solution for this because I did the same exact thing. I was looking for a way to find hotel closest to where I am going for an event in a different city, and it's surprisingly tough and I think the reason why it's so tough is
because there's a lot of marketing money at stake. These websites like trip Advisor and all these other sites, they make money based on the hotel that you choose, and I don't want to make it easy for you to just find the closest hotel and book it. They want to make money based on They're presenting you a list of results that make them the most money in that order.
So what have I found?
Well, my favorite app for doing this used to be called hotels dot com. And you can put in the address of where you're going, and then hotels, of course would try to sort it by what's quote unquote recommended, which just means the sort that makes us the most money. But you could change that sort to distance and you can find the hotels directly closest to the area you want to stay in.
You know the thing.
Let's say you have a convention center, you know, convention at a convention center, you want the hotel that's walking distance to the convention center, right, so you can sort by distance, and then, like you're saying, you want to be able to sort even further by the hotel name or the Loyalty brand, and you'd be able to do that as well. But Hotels dot Com just got rid of this functionality, and so I've been searching for a new way to do this, and it seems like the
closest way is called Booking dot Com. And Booking dot Com will let you put in as on the website. I haven't checked this on the app, but on Booking dot Com you can type in an address and sort by distance from that address. So, for instance, if I say Las Vegas Convention Center and you can put that in there and check in date, let's just put any old date here and press search and it will show
your results on a map. Now, of course, again I said the the sort you want to do distance from place of interest, and so that's the that's the way you want to sort. And the closest hotel is the Residence in by Mariott Las Vegas Convention Center, point two miles from map center. Now, if you do the default, which is top picks that hotel is twenty miles away. I mean, on who wants to say twenty miles away from where they're going. So that is the way to do it. That's the only way I can do it.
I'm not saying you have to book on booking dot Com, but that will definitely help you find the hotel. Now, the other way I find hotels this is since I'm on the topic of hotels, I'll tell you my little secrets. So I go to I have actually two more secrets. So I go to trip Advisor. I type in the name of where I'm going. So let's say I'm going to Charleston, South Carolina. Okay, so char LSTN. So if you go to trip Advisor, you can type in Charleston,
and then up at the top it says hotels. You tap that, and then you can put in your dates. You don't have to, but you can put in your dates if you want. But you can see all the properties in Charleston one hundred and thirty seven and then it says sort by best value. Now I don't like that sort because I don't even know what that means. You can look up. You can change that sort to what's called traveler ranked, and that's the one that I like because that's going to show you the top hotel based
on what travelers you're doing. And then you can go in you can sort by the neighborhood, the rating, the hotel class or the brand. So those are my two little tricks for booking hotels. All right, Coming up next, Jefferson Graham, I'm going to talk about taking time lapses on your smartphone. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro,
that's my name, talking technology with you. Website is Richontech dot tv, and you can follow me on social media on all of the major platforms at rich on Tech got an email through the website from my k Rich regarding the caller on Saturday that asked about photo scanning. Did they indicate the medium of her pictures? We're actual photos or were they slides and negatives. I've scanned tens of thousands of slides and negatives and generally pick a
DEPI between twenty four thirty and thirty two hundred. I use an flatbed scanner and scan up to twelve slides at a time or twenty four photos on negatives at a time. Software product I use is called silver Fast that allows me to batch scan the slides and negatives. Ooh, silver Fast. That's a good one, So good question, Mike. I believe they said photos in the email, but I agree I should have mentioned the delineation between negatives and
also actual photos. I would say I think that negatives would be the better way to go because that's a much more kind of pure way of capturing what was originally in the picture. Jefferson Graham is with Photo Walks TV formerly of USA Today, recently captured an epic ten day time lapse with both the iPhone and Samsung. Jefferson is all about smartphone photography.
Did I say that right? Jefferson? Smartphones?
It's a new word. It's a new word, but I like it.
What A say song?
They've got something like they call phontography. Maybe I don't know. Welcome to the show.
Thank you great to be here.
Have you scanned?
Do you have a do you have a thought on UH scanning negatives versus the old the actual picture.
It's very funny because our friend who has this little UH scanning business is the is the place I go to.
I hate to give him plug and.
He's so pushy on this, but scan my photos dot Com is where I bring my stuff. I just had hundreds of negatives scanned and hundreds of slides and they clean up the image and they're really nice.
I mean, I would think that the negative would be better than the actual photo.
But all of your listeners, yes, but anyway.
Anyway, but as as I was remembering from what what you know, what I was told is that most people just have the pictures they you know, and look, you're looking at them on your smartphone ninety percent of the time.
So it's it's just as good.
Okay, So let's yeah this har as scanner goes, I don't have a scanner. I find it way too time consuming. Yeah, so that that's my answer to that. And you could take great photos of your of your photos on your phone.
That's true. You can use your phone to scan them. I mean, there's so many ways to do this, but it's just the reality is just get them scanned. That's the bottom line. Like, no matter what you do, it's gonna be better. Just don't do the thing where you take a picture with a flash and you have like this big giant like flash reflection on your pictures when you scan them.
There are definitely some better Also, stand further back because you'll get a shadow of yourself in the photo. So if you use your your Portraita telephoto lens and stand further back, you'll get a better image of the photo.
The two that's a great one. The two apps that I like. One is from Google. It's called photo Scan. It hasn't been updated in a while, so I think they gave up on it, but it still works. And then the other one that's actually really good is called photo Mind P h O T O M y n E. And I think you have to pay a little bit, but it's pretty good. And you can even scan negatives with that slide? Can you scan it? I think you could scan slides with it. Maybe not a negative, but a slide for sure.
Okay, let's talk about.
Your monthly subscription. Yes, let's talk about a tide lapse. Go for it.
So you took this epic ten date. What made you want to take a ten day time lapse?
Well, what happened was that I was visiting Nova Scotia. I was filming one of my episodes for Photo Walks TV on Nova Scotia, and the place we stayed in was they put on the TV one morning a thirty minute time lapse of Nova Scotia for you know, as we were eating breakfast, I said, you know I could do that in Manette Beach. Why don't I do something like that when I get home, and I have a friend who actually lives at the beach, and I said, may I put my camera on your deck for a
few days? And they said, well, we can go want better. Our next door neighbor upstairs neighbor is away for ten days, and why don't you put it up there on a second story. You don't have to worry about anybody stealing your phone. And I said, great, Now she's gone for ten days, so I'm going to use the ten days. Really, all I wanted to do was go from one day to the next, because when I do a time lapse, I let it go for about an hour and then I peter out. I just get tired of standing there.
And I wanted to see the sunset to the darkness of the night, to the night shifting today. That's really what I wanted. But since I had the opportunity to go for so long, I took it. And now I have a friend who lives at the beach. You don't, You probably don't, but you might have a friend.
Who has a balcony, who has a deck, who has.
Or you may have one of those things, and so if you could put the camera, let it roll. You're going to get some amazing footage of stuff that you would never see with your naked eye, primarily because you'll be asleep.
Asleep, and all this stuff happened.
So you did this with the iPhone and the Samsung, and I assume you set it up on a tripod. You had to make sure the tripod didn't blow over, you had to plug in the phones. I'm guessing, so what did you? Did you use any particular settings because I never know, like which time lap setting to use on the iPhone. I don't think they give you a setting, right.
Yeah, First of all, all you need is a tripod, a smartphone, a mount to go in the tripod to put the phone on top of it, and the extension cord.
That's it.
That is it.
And I kept going back every day to make sure that the cameras hadn't turned off, that they weren't overheating, and they weren't, so that was all good. That the iPhone will not let you make a decision beyond which lens to use, the ultra wide, the wide, or the telephoto.
I recommend the.
One X, which is the wide, because it's the sharpest lens and it's the best in low light. So that's what I use on the galaxy. There's thirty decisions. There's a lot of decisions.
I'm looking at the galaxy and is it under hyper laps?
It's under more. It's under more said, you know, after you go all the way to the end. Yes, under more. And it's called hyper laps.
Okay, so they call it hyper lapse. That's confusing. Shouldn't it be time lapse?
Okay?
Well, okay, it should, but it isn't.
Okay.
And there are so many decisions. Do you want to shoot one frame a second? Do you want to shoot five, ten, thirty? It goes on and on and on. Do you want to shoot for a minute? Do you want to shoot for ken? Do you want to shoot for twenty? I shot for Unlimited and I shot at one frame a second and it ran for days and days.
My file was HUMANUS sixty gigabytes.
Wow.
But once I finally got there, I got there.
That's really cool. I love that they give you all these options. I'm looking at this. You get automatic fifteen x, forty five five X, and then the time limit, so if you want to do it for a certain amount of time, you can do four K, or you can do just HD.
So which camera did it better?
The Galaxy by far, hands down. Now that's that's using the settings that I used in the Galaxy, and that's using the automatic settings in the iPhone. People have to know that Apple will actually screw you if you want to shoot for longer than an hour. No matter how long you shoot, whether it's for two hours, five hours, ten hours a day, three days, five days, your video will be thirty seconds.
So after it will be thirty seconds.
No matter what, no matter how long you leave it there. So if you leave it there and walk away, matter what. Okay, so you're only getting thirty seconds.
So they will take frames out out of your footage. They will do all sorts of weird things that will make it really really really fast, faster than it needs to be unless you go to a third party app. Once I discovered what was going on, I couldn't figure it out.
Hey, I just let it run for three days, I'll I have thirty seconds. Doesn't make any sense. So anyway, so.
I use an app called lapse it, which is well, it's sort of free, and it's a dollar for a week, and it's five dollars for the year, but it worked really well and it did everything I wanted to do.
There are other apps you can use, the Moment app.
You can use the new black Magic Camera app, which is complicated. The Lapset app is not, so back to back both of them.
Okay, so the the.
Lap to watch TV, go to the hour long.
Yeah we lost you for a second there, so you're you're saying the lapse laps it and then the Moment app and then the black Magic Camera app, and that one's like really high end.
So where can we see the fruits of your labor?
YouTube dot com, slash go to watch TV. I have a playlist and you can go to all of them. I had the ten day, I have the one hour which is that's laps and at the beginning then it goes to the galaxy and have a complete how too. So I think I'll answer all your questions there and if you have any more, just hit me up. Subscribe to the newsletter. Jefferson gram that substack dot com. I know we've had three substackers here today.
Yeah, go substack, Go sub stack. So I have a challenge for you.
There's a website called window dash swap dot com and I found this website and it basically has people's windows like they looking out their window. And so I think that this would be a fun thing for you to do, is to create one of these. You know, I think it's like tenor This is not a time lapse, but it's just like a ten or fifteen minute video outside your window. And since you live near the beach, you could have fun with this. And you can just see
a bunch of people's different windows throughout the world. And it's called windows Swap, Window dash Swap dot com, and so it's just kind of.
I will be happy to do that with YouTube at time lapse of Chucky Cheese at the end of the animatronics.
Oh I should I it's so sad, it's almost but when you look at those things up close, they are kind of creepy.
I'll tell you that.
The like I said, the last time laps I did, Jefferson was in my hotel room in New York City. I'll tell you why I got in so early. I got in it. I took a red eye. I got it at five am. I checked into my hotel at five point fifty five am. And the guy looks at the time he goes, you're here a little early, you know, check in is usually like four pm, he said, but I do have a room for you. And so I was so tired, but it was such a beautiful view outside my room that I was like, ooh, before I
go to sleep. Because I was going to take a nap. I said, let me set up the camera in the window and I'll see if I can get a time lapse. And so I set up the camera and it worked. It ran forever. I actually was using the nothing phone and it did a beautiful time lapse. I don't know where I posted that, maybe on my Instagram. Anyway, time lapses are fun. Thanks for coming on the show today. Appreciate it.
Thank you.
Jefferson Graham of Photo Walks TV.
Check him out. He's on YouTube. Friend of the show.
I think Jefferson has now been on the show more than anyone else. I think that was your fourth time coming up the feedback segment. You are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Time for the feed back segments. This is all the stuff that you email me throughout the week. I can't get to all of it, but I'll try to do my best. Let me just get through a couple of news stories first,
I wanted to mention a couple of Amazon stories. Amazon is introducing a new Prime health benefit with their new subsidiary called One Medical. They bought this company, I don't know, last year. This is a medical provider, and now they're adding nine dollars a month or ninety nine dollars a year for Prime members to get twenty four to seven on demand virtual care nationwide, or you can get an appointment for an in office visit at one Medical locations
across the US. You can use your insurance or you can pay out of pocket. They do accept a lot of insurance plans. The main thing here is that you can get unlimited access to virtual care at no cost. So if you have something simple that just requires a of you know, virtual care, you can do that quickly
and sign up now. Of course they want you to get your your prescriptions through Amazon Pharmacy, but nine bucks a month or ninety nine dollars a year, this is really if you are kind of you want like a more modern medical experience and you maybe don't go to the doctor as much.
That's the way I see it.
But Amazon's really been pushing hard into healthcare, and so far nobody's really made a huge dent in healthcare, like made it easy for someone like myself that I like everything to be sort of on demand. You know, you call your doctor to reschedule an appointment. They're like, Okay, we can get you in. Maybe this is just an LA thing. We can get you in, you know, next October. You're like, what what do you mean next October?
Like what I mean?
I literally called one time for you know, I had like a sore throat or something like, oh, we can't take you got to go to like a medi center.
It's like wait, what So anyway.
The one medical says you can get same day or next day appointments at the clinics too. Other Amazon News Amazon expanding it's grocery delivery and pickup from Amazon Fresh stores to all customers, even if you don't have a Prime membership. So it used to be you had to have a Prime membership to shop at Amazon Fresh online. You no longer need to have a Prime membership to do that. Now delivery is gonna cost you a fee. From what I can tell, pickup is free, so you
can go to the store and pick it up. Anyway, the main news here is that you can use Amazon Fresh for groceries delivery pickup even if you don't have a Prime membership. And they have redesigned the dash cart, which is the self checkout car. I love the killer new feature, which is it adds up your groceries as you're walking through the store. I've wanted that forever because I want to know how much I'm spending. You know, you go to the grocery store, you end up spending
so much more than you think. BUCkies and Mercedes Benz. Have you been to a BUCkies? Have you heard of BUCkies? Bobo has never heard of BUCkies. I never did either until I would land it in some Texas town and I said, what is this? It was like the Holy Grail of gas stations. I'm talking like one hundred pumps and this place was incredible. It's probably one of the earliest viral videos or videos I had go viral on my Facebook page because I was such a fish out
of water. I'm like, I'm like this, you know, kid from New Jersey in LA and I get to Texas and I'm like, wait, what is this? I stopped, I walked in. I'm like This is incredible. I'm talking all kinds of stuff. Anyway, if you haven't been to all BUCkies, you have to check it out when you go to Texas. And if you have been, you know what I'm talking about. Anyway, they're partnering with Mercedes Benz. They're gonna add ev charging at Buckies' locations by the end of twenty twenty four.
They're adding a whole bunch of them. They're gonna have over four hundred charging hubs nationwide by twenty twenty seven. They're gonna use charge Point and they're gonna have plugs for all different evs, not just Mercedes, but I guess they'll be Mercedes branded, so that's kind of cool. So they get to charge your car, and I will happily stop to charge my car. Yeah, Bobo says, this is huge. I would happily stop to charge my car for a
long time at a Buckie's. Apple gift card lawsuit settlement, You're probably gonna see a lot of ads about this if you bought a gift card for the app Store or iTunes. There is a new settlement which covers people who bought gift cards between March twenty eighteen and July twenty twenty and they had other people steal the cards from them, apparently unauthorized redemptions in California. It's from May twenty seventeen to February twenty eighteen. Apple's going to pay
one point eight million dollars total. Oh that's not that much, which each claimant receiving up to the face value of their card. So if you want to get settlement money, you got to submit a claim by January eighth, twenty twenty four. The gift the settlement is shay Gift Card Settlement dot com. But my advice watch out for scams because you know they're going to be capitalizing on this, so just be careful.
All right.
Some feedback, Wendy, I'm the least technical person in the world and I love listening to your show. Thanks so much. Well, thank you, Wendy. That is the goal. If you've noticed, this show is not for nerds. Nerds love it, but you can be a regular person and enjoy this show. You don't have to be in tech nerd. The whole point is that I'm making you help you understand technology and making you feel smarter about it. You know't say
I don't know technology at all. Brent says, hey, Rich, I saw your Rivian segment and you commented on the charging issues. I'm surprised you didn't call it the company Electrify America. The signage indicates the speeds, but like you said, they're inconsistent. Many are non operational or intentionally set below one hundred kilo hours. Please do a look seet into this company. There's not one EA that's not disappointing. Yeah, I've heard things about this Electrify America. I know it's
not a perfect system. Charles says, I enjoyed your segment on the Rivian with regards to evs. Where are the solar roofs and hoods? I read about corporating solar panels into rooftop surfaces a couple of years ago.
Than nothing, not a peep. It would help with range anxiety. Yeah. The problem, Charles is that solar.
Would not charge the battery fast enough or meaningful enough, and it would be too heavy.
I think that's why.
Joanne says, hey, Rich, I bought a Ring camera and it works perfectly, but Amazon and FedEx driver deliveries do not record.
Where's our X files? Music?
Ring User blog suspects that drivers are jamming the devices. I primarily wanted to see deliveries to prevent porch piracy. There are reports to the FCC. I learned Amazon and FedEx with the delivery tracking numbers since an Amazon products surprise, there's not been any sufficient response from ring complaints date back years.
Joanne Joeann.
That sounds like a major conspiracy. I doubt that FedEx and Amazon workers are sitting there trying to jam every ring doorbell they see. Alan says, I love listening to you talk about EV's and range. Do you even realize most evs are charged up by diesel generators, So all your electric dream is really a talk about that on your show. Look it up, Alan Oh, Alan, I don't want to end the show on a bad note, but that's going to do it. You can find links on the website rich on tech dot TV. Find me on
social media. I am at rich on tech.
Talk to you next week.