Episode 441 - Software as a Service - Does it Make Sense?

he vacations. He's taking the camera with him. He's got it all tricked out and does some really cool stuff with technology. So that's how he's enjoying this Memorial Day weekend as well. But I figured, you know what, let's go ahead and push forward and let's put together a show for you that maybe we can cover some of the stuff that you've been thinking about. And when it comes to technology, you wanted to get some answers with as well. And when we talk about answers, we talk

about those listener questions and we love those. Now, anytime you want to drop us a line, you can do that on our Facebook page Facebook dot com Forward slash tech Talkers. That's t E C H T A l K E R S. If you're not on the Facebook, but you have an email address. You can email us tech Guys T E C H, g U Y S at tech talk radio dot com. You know, so follow us on the worldwide web at tech talk radio dot com.

We had a form set up years ago that you could submit your questions there and then I'm not sure changes et cetera happened. Now hopefully we'll get that re implemented, so you could just do that right there on our website at tech talk radio dot com. Also, I just want to remind you too, if you want to see some cool videos, see videos from the shows that we do, you could find those on our web YouTube page, which is tech talk Radio. All right, So speaking to questions,

we have a question in from Cecilia. Cecilia has a mom that is a little older and does communicate with an iPhone. The only problem is Cecilia's mom ended up typing the wrong code on her iPhone. That's happened to me before. And mine was crazy because mine was in my pocket and it kept you know, I didn't have it the I didn't have it to go to sleep, so it was on. So and that could be bad because it could actually phone, you know, accidentally phone they

call it butt dialing. It could phone somebody, but it kept trying to log in with the wrong password, and next thing you knew, I was locked out. And that's what happens with your your iPhones. If you, you know, enter the wrong password after so many times, it will lock. And sometimes it'll say locked for twenty four hours, locked for forty eight, locked for twenty eight weeks either way. So and this could be a lifeline for a lot

of people. And unfortunately if this happens. What are the options. Well, one thing is you can usually re enable your device, if it's an iPhone or an iPad, and we're talking about the Apple platform here. You can re enable the device Cecilia by logging into the iCloud account on the computer. Now that's if there is a computer, and that is one way to do it. The problem is, and Cecilia's a full email tells us that her mom doesn't remember her user name. Now this might be a little investigating

on your part. You may have to go into your like again. You can check her computer if she has one, to see if she's ever sent out an email, if she's logged into her iCloud. If you type in you know iCloud dot com. Does it come up and autopropagate the user name. Even if it doesn't do the past ord, at least you have the username. That can be a benefit. But or if you've ever emailed you know Mom, sometimes

better just pick up the phone a call. But if you've ever emailed Mom, it might be in there as well. But if there is no go on that one one of the other options you have at this point, if it's completely locked out, and I will say this one that shouldn't go first, but you can reset the phone. Now. The problem with resetting the phone is if your mom has taken a lot of photos, Cecilia, your mom has notes, your mom likes to keep all her texts. If she does text, that can be a problem because then that

can wipe that all away. And that's why I always recommend you know backups. You know, get your your parents, your kids, whoever, yourself, if you've got an eye device, even an Android device too, to make backups because you never know when something like this happened. I've heard stories of people not only being locked out of their devices, but their devices being lost or stolen, and then you know they lose access to everything. So that's one way. The next step, and you can't expect it to work

right away. This could take actually a little bit of time. If you have the proof of purchase, if you have documentation, and if your mom could go with you, that's great. In this case, Cecilia said that her mom was a hospital bound. She was in the hospital, so she but you wanted her to have her smartphone. That one thing you could do is you could visit in an Apple store. Now, for those of us in the Tucson area, if you're listening outside of the Tucson area, you may want to

check to find out where your Apple store is. They can be helpful. You could go in there and you could explain the situation. If you have your mom's ID again proof of purchase, you may be able to appeal to one of the geniuses there and they may be able to help you get that phone reset. But again, there is a possibility you could lose all that. Now, there is some really good discussions on the Apple website. You may want to take a look and jump online

to support dot apple dot com. Again, you would need an internet connection, a cable that could charge the smartphone if it hasn't been charged. And again it can be MAC or PC. But that's that's one way to get her done. Now. Some people have said in the past, well, what about face ID if you're with your mom and it has a face ID set up, you could try that too. That could be another one where you know, you just look at the phone, it recognizes and it

can reset that way, so you know, I'm sorry. So, yeah, that's a terrible That's honestly a really bad thing to happen when it gets locked out and can be super frustrating. But hopefully that will help you. I'd love to know you know how that worked out for you. In our TV tech segment that we do on News thirteen, you could see those generally every Monday. We do those on Chemist by Fox eleven, right after the eight o'clock hour. We've been doing those since I want to say, we

started in two thousand and four. We started at KWBA. We did a couple of segments there and it was a lot of fun. Apple sent us. I remember the first one we did. They sent us the big, old, huge iMac, which was great. We got a chance to talk about those. But again we're talking way back, you know, two thousand and three, two thousand and four, and then over time we ended up the producer who put that

segment together. Stephanie ended up moving over to KOLD and she brought me on to KLD and we would do

a segment. We called it Tech Tuesday, So every Tuesday we would go in and we'd chose something and back then in the mid two thousand towards Slate two thousands, it was so easy to get product because, I mean, the Internet was growing, influencers were not really a thing yet, so me as a little guy doing a you know, doing a TV segment in southern Arizona, I could just jump on the phone and call it representative at Apple. I could call it representative at Verizon. I could call

it representative at Microsoft. I could call it representative at Adobe and just say, hey, I'm putting together the segment. I want to feature the product. And they would just do all kinds of great stuff and they would send over the product and we get a chance to look at it for a couple of weeks and send it back. But it was always easy to get stuff in our hands.

And boy, that has changed TV kind of. It's still a we love our segment and TV segments have been great, but the influencers kind of took over that because here I am in a TV market, and yes, we do put our segments online and people do watch them, uh, but the TV, the TV market takes a back door to influencers. They reach a wide audience with TikTok and

Facebook and Instagram reels and Snap. Well Snap, I don't know if Snap really is used by influencers, but but I mean, you really, really really YouTube shorts I have done a great job in building their audiences. And there's some really great uh YouTuber YouTubers out there that do great job with information about tech. Uh, and they've they've done a great job with it. But it used to be used to be super easy. It's not as much

this this you know anymore, but it was cool. We were able to put together a segment this past Monday and we talked about a growing trend in the tech world called software as a service. Now you may remember in years past you would go and you would buy a software for doing a task. We'll take for example, I'll just take one big example was into It into It, which their tech support I believe was located here in Tucson. I don't know if it still is, but say QuickBooks.

For many that were starting a small business, quick Books was one of the easiest to use, one of the most full featured. You would go out and you would buy the software, and I want to say, we could run anywhere from one hundred and fifty three four hundred dollars, all right, but you could use it for as long

as you had it. Now, over time, a company like QuickBooks or into it would introduce new features like if you want to do job costing, you want to just share it whether the other users maybe in your office that would put together statement or quotes or invoices, and you can have more users that would be using it. And of course Microsoft are into it, changed its business model to make that available. A lot of people loved it.

I mean I loved it. I was a quick Books user from the very beginning, and software as a service came along. And what happened is, you know, and it's only taken me recently to realize that, Okay, it makes sense. And I know that's probably taken off some people who have bought software and they get upset because maybe they're not able to use that software anymore. And I'll get to that in a second. But and I've talked about the issues I did have with Adobe. But what happens

is these companies they continue to innovate. They don't just put out of software and say here's the software, use it now. For many of us, that was great. Quick Books was phenomenal. It did exactly what you needed it to do. I go back on my years past and I look at some of the invoices for my business. I had a first desktop publishing business, then computer repair business that I would do even here at this radio

station that we broadcast on. I was actually hired as a videographer before I was ever a DJ on this station. I had done radio, and I love the story about this one. I had done radio at in Tucson. We had a number one morning show for a couple of years. We were you know, we had a lot of listeners that would tune in, and we had moved here from Palm Springs where we also did very good Me and my former partner Barry Donovan, who is no longer with us,

but we had a pretty great morning show. And then when things changed started to change in radio and the market kind of went boom and bust. Then it was trying different things, went over to a couple of different stations. This show somehow just kept surviving and would show up at different stations and it was great. The station the show, if you don't know, came with me from Pump Springs and it was cool. And I ended up doing a lot of video. It's what I was doing in the

late eighties. And we're talking analog editing on three quarter its videotape. And I saw an ad in a radio magazine that would hire radio talent and the ad was for videographer and it was for the station here. I thought, oh, I'll go find out what's going on, and so I went and met with the owner of the station and we talked about video and told me some of the things he wanted to do, and I was hired and it was. It was on a piece by piece basis.

It was great. I would go ahead and he'd say, Okay, can you go over to Dwight's Auto Glass or here was out of family restaurant, and I would go in there and I would shoot videos and it was It was awesome. And the pay wasn't that great, sorry, boss, but it was still good because It kept me working and I was able to do other radio things as well, and we ended up doing tech talk radio just on the web at that point, and it was a lot

of fun. And one day I was talking to our former program director here, Tom Lang, and we were I was videotaping an event for them over at Desertdemic Casino, and I told Tom, I said, boy, I miss radio, and he goes, wait, you did radio And I said yeah, and I said, did radio in Tucson, And he'd never heard of the show. I had done so much for our number one ratings, and he said, well, heck, if we ever have a part time position, you know, open

up or a filling, you want to do it. I'm like, yeah, absolutely, And that's how they found out A did radio, and I ended up doing radio here at this station. I've been with the station now since two thousand and nine. Brought tech Talk over here, I want to say about twenty fourteen. It was something I always wanted to do, is bring it to the station, which just matter of

having the right slot and the right spot. So I'm very appreciative for the owners letting us do this tech show, and I hope I do hope this helps some of you that when you run into a tech situation, we're able to do that for you. Now, I kind of strayed a little from the story, but you know how software as a service has changed things. We looked at QuickBooks and quick books. Yeah, it was great for a lot of us that just needed to do an invoice.

And I'll be honest with you, I went ahead and I moved to the subscription model, and the sscerptions started off relatively inexpensive, but every year they added new features that I wasn't using, and the price continued to grow, and I find decided to opt out. When we got to I want to say, it was about I want to say, four hundred maybe five hundred dollars a year to use the software. Oh yeah, So you might remember quick books, and you might remember when you could go

into the computer store and it wasn't that much. Now you know you want a subscription to that, it's going to cost you a lot more. Now the engineers have done some more things, but as a small business, it may not be exactly what you really needed. We saw the same thing with Microsoft Microsoft Office. Might remember having Microsoft Office when you would go and you would buy Office two thousand and three, two thousand and four, and

you would all buy that. You got Microsoft Word, you got Microsoft Excel, power Point, you got some of the other programs that came with that outlook, and it was great. But then they continued to innovate and you suddenly needed to buy a subscription to be able to use the Microsoft platform. Well, a lot of people hung on to using Microsoft Words, some of the older versions, and it can still be done. People are still doing it. Same

goes with into It. As a matter of fact, I'll be honest with you, I still use into It the Quick Books twenty thirteen. It works for me. I'm not paying a subscription. It's the old one I had. They didn't do dirty pool by turning off their activation servers at least at the time when I installed it a few years back, and it worked for me, so that

that worked out pretty good. Then you came across some companies that when you bought a software, you'd have to register it and activate it and you can have it on one computer, maybe two computers or four, or maybe you'd be able to use it on multiple computers, but never at the same time. So whenever you logged in to your program would send a log in to that company. And one of those companies that had done that in the past that you could buy the software direct to

just buy it and use it forever was Adobe. And I had issues and I've talked about with Adobe because what I ran into is they turned off their activation servers. So say you had a program and in the radio business, Adobe Audition was one of the finest audio editing programs for just getting commercials made. You would do it for even podcasters could use it. And what happened is an Audition one point five and Audition three they turned off

the activation servers. So what happens is to say you had to reinstall your computer and you didn't you uninstall it. You ran into these issues, and if your hard drive died, you had to reinstall. You didn't have a backup. You suddenly may not be able to use that program anymore, and you had to switch to software as a service and use their creative Cloud program. And that's what a lot of people had to do. Well, we know that October coming up is going to be the big Microsoft

change from Windows ten to Windows eleven. And I know a lot of you are on Windows ten and your computers may up qualified to upgrade to Windows eleven. It's a couple of things you need. Ed Bot over at zd net put together a great article about that. I

recommend taking a look again ed Bot Bott. You can do a Google search for that and zd net and just do Google search for upgrading to Windows eleven ed Bot, and he kind of breaks down the entire process for you and why maybe you're not able to or what you need to do to make it possible. Don't know if Microsoft's going to change too much before that happens when it comes to the requirements, but it's going to

cause a lot mayhem for a lot of people. I ended up deciding, okay, I needed to have Windows eleven in my studio, especially when suddenly my networking stopped working. And after one of the updates from Microsoft, I've since got it working, so I'm happy with that. But I thought, yeah, maybe it's time. So I went to PC parts Picker, which is a great website to go if you want to build your own computer. I decided, okay, I'm going to build a system, then I'm going to install Windows eleven.

I ended up going to Stack Social, whis a great place to go find some of those software programs, although they've run into some of that software as a service issue with some other software that they were selling. And I got it installed and it was great out a Windows eleven machine running super fast, newer processor, newer than the Windows ted machine I had in the studio that had the Adobe Audition Creative Suite five point five on it,

and I loved it. Well. When I want to install the Creative Sweet five point five from Adobe, I could not install it anymore, said I had too many activations. I got in touch with a representative that was offshore for Adobe, and his exact thing for me was to tell me, oh, okay, uninstall it on your computer. Deactivate it, uninstall it and you'll be able to You should be able to use it on the new computer. Those words should should have been taken into account. Went ahead and

did that. So here I took it off a computer that was working Windows ten. It was great. When to install it, too many activations. So when I called back, of course, I've got another tech support agent offshore told me he could give me a great deal on the Adobe Creative Cloud. And I said, I've got Adobe Creative Cloud, which I do courtesy of our friends at Adobe, and that expires this week, and I got a chance to look at it and that was that was kind of cool,

and I'll get to that coming up. But I said, okay, well, I just you know, removed it to activate it. And he said, well, the problem is our activation server is no longer working. So this guy tells me to remove the software. I do, and it was working fine, and then when I got to reinstall it on the new computer, it won't install. There's nothing I can do, so PC mover won't do it. You know, There's nothing I could

do on that case. So it was a little frustrating and I decided, okay, well, I'm just gonna have to stick with Creative Cloud. And I wasn't happy about it because Creative Cloud was at the time looks like it was going to cost me an investment of about six hundred and seven hundred dollars. It's a lot of money for software, and I started playing around with it. I

wanted to I wanted to learn it. In the meantime, I also installed a couple of other software programs, but I installed Adobe Creative Cloud on this new computer and I got sold it is an amazing software program. And I realized something. With software as a service, it's so easy for us to say, wait a minute, I bought this license, and this license was in a perpetual license. That meant I could use this software forever and it

does exactly what I need. And that's true. But the problem is the innovation that takes place with some of these companies in the software. And I know that's probably not going over well with some but the innovation is pretty amazing. What they've been able to do with Premiere Pro now put together videos Premiere Pro with the new Generative Extend using AI features is pretty awesome. I tested it out. I needed five seconds extra for a video project.

With Generative Extend, you have your video on the timeline and you say, gosh, I need five more seconds. You can highlight and tell it to a Generative Extend here and again. It can take it and turn it into whether it's a human being, a car, a sunrise. It can give you that extra five seconds. You can now caption your videos. You can also foreign language caption your videos with Adobe Premiere Pro Creative Cloud. I was like, wow,

that's pretty amazing stuff. Photoshop with the generative fill again adding to a photo, making it faster for you to do your edit, giving you more control over those edits. That is pretty amazing as well, Adobe Audition giving you more features as well. But what really really blew me away this past week is playing around with Firefly Adobe Firefly and you could do the same thing and start

testing it out where it takes. And again, we know a lot of us are not big fans of the term when it comes to the you know, the the AI artificial intelligence, but it can do some pretty amazing things there text to video. I want to create something that looks good. How about a sunrise over the cactus in the sweltering deserts of Tucson. It did it? Or a photo of an angry sun. It could be a

graphic you want to use for a flyer. So if you are a professional, you may find that the Adobe Creative Cloud Pro may be just what you really need to use and you'll need. It's difficult to get out of the mindset, well, it did everything before that I needed and I don't need all this AI. Take a look at it. The unfortunate side is the price just went up in June. They're changing to the Adobe Creative Cloud Pro, which will again give everything, but it's adding

about ten dollars a month to the program. You could still end up spending about eight hundred dollars a month. And you may have some features when it comes to the artificial intelligence, maybe not all, but it is something you may want to take a look at. There'll be another tier of service for the Creative Cloud. You could

look at that as well. I don't know if and I've asked the reps at Adobe, could they just turn on the servers again, let people register their software that had to upgrade to Windows eleven that still will be fine using that. Don't know if that's gonna happen. I have to assume it's not. But give Adobe Creative Cloud a try. It's free trial for you to give it a look, but take the time to actually get into the program and use it and see if that maybe works for you. And again, I did some video samples

on the segment for television this week. So when we want to think software as a service, it's just a way for them to get more money out of us. Yep, they are. It's fueling that innovation, paying for the engineers to do the creation of the software that can benefit us more so something to think about. And again you can find out more at Adobe dot com. Take a look at Firefly that's on there, and again try the trial version for that. We're gonna take quick break. We'll

come back with more of tech talk Radio. I'm Andy Taylor. Find us on the web a tech talkRADIO dot com and now back to tech talk Radio. Always like to fill you in on software that you may want to be checking out and hardware that has some cool things that are a part of it. And one of them that I thought actually was really pretty meat that you may like is from a company called so Lease. And

we've talked about so Lease before. If you have a smartphone that has a hot spot, you know what I'm talking about, that hot spot that gives you ability to access the World Wide Web from just about anywhere, which makes it nice. You could also use your smartphone as a hot spot so that your laptop can connect to it. Well. Solease or Simo has put together what they're calling the so lese Hub now here. Here's what it is, and

I kind of like this. It's what they're calling a cutting edge home router featuring a four G LTE backup powered by Cemos Virtual sim technology. So imagine you may you have, you know, a cable service or you have a satellite service that's providing you with your your Internet and unfortunately it goes out and you're working on a project. You've got to get this project finished. You want to you know, get it all done well with this holeas hub.

And again this is this is a hub that can you know, you could still power it off your your regular Internet service, but when it goes down, you've got that four G LTE backup powered by this virtual sim technology. It keeps homes connected during Internet outages, gives you uninterrupted connectivity when it's needed. And it looks just like a regular home router, which I love. So it does four G e LTE backup so it'll automatically switch to that

four G LTE during the Internet outages. And can you give you download speeds up to three hundred megabits per second and even upload speeds well some of it us are saying, good, I get twenty megabits per second. It could give you upload speed spending where you're at about

one hundred and fifty megabits per second. Features, dull band Wi Fi six support, which means that like a router, it's you know, connected in your home and you'll be able to connect all your devices to this this router that is normally working off your regular you know, subscribe services, and then if those subscribe services go down, it switches to the four G l T E backup. It can do aight oh two doll eleven A A B, G N, A C or A X for that performance. Now here's

what's really cool about it. Now, remember there is a subscription that will go with this, but the product itself you buy outright for one hundred and ninety nine bucks at least that's the pricing that they're looking at. Uh, it's available for purchase now. You can do CIMO dot com or dot co co that's s I m O dot Co. And then their plans that are available you

could get. And remember you wouldn't be I don't think you would be using this all the time, right the ten gigabit per month plan from solease to the soleise hub. Remember it wouldn't be using it all the time. Only if you know your internet goes out. We're coming up on monsoon season, so that could happen ten gigabits per month for only seven dollars, and that doesn't seem too bad right now. If you don't use it, it doesn't

roll over. But ten gigabits for seven. If you need the hot backup plan, which I'm not sure exactly what that is, you'd have to find out on the Solease website Simo dot co. That's ten gigabits per month for twenty five dollars. I have a feeling that might be your you know, your smartphones, et cetera. The primary plan though, if you want to get that, that's one hundred gigabits per month. That's a lot, a lot of data for eighty nine dollars. So no matter what you're paying your

cable provider. Now, for some they might say that's going to work out better for them, and then you would use I guess you would use that all the time anyway. That's something to think about. That is again from so Lease, it's Cimo Simo dot co. If you want to get more information about that product. Another one that I really like that has been announced from Epsin And if you've seen any of these segments I've done with the epsin fast they got the epsin fast Photo, which is does

scanning photos very fast. I'm getting that and incorporating it into my desktop publishing and website business and we're doing digital scanning for people. But they've kind of gone in different areas. They also have the EPs and Rapid Receipts for you know, doing your receipts super fast. Well, now they've introduced the sure color F ten seventy and what this can do. And I got a friend that owns Aladdin Graphics, and Aladdin Graphics does they specialize in this,

So I would still say contact them. But the shirt color F ten seventy can print directly onto shirts. The quality pretty impressive. So imagine you know, you're coaching a little league team here in Green Valley, Sabudita, or you get together with a company picnic and you want to everybody have the same shirts. You're celebrating the anniversary of your company, and you want to create your own shirts. Sure, you go out, you buy the shirts, and then you

go ahead and you get them printed. You do the printing right with the sure Color F ten to seventy. You can look it up on the EPSOM website. But here is the downside of that. And that's when you might want to pick up the phone and call Troy over at Aladdin Graphics. It will cost you about seventy five hundred bucks to buy this printer. Now, some might say, well, I'm a little entrepreneur. I could start doing my own

T shirt. That's something you can think about. Got to take in project cost, how you're going to get that business, et cetera. But epsom doing this so that people that want to have full control over their printing process, or again want to make their own shirts, they could do that. But again, that's the sure color F ten seventy and you'd be able to find that there. Let me tell you about another product. Here we go, all right, not long ago on television, I showed the Palm, and some

people said, whatever happened to the Palm? They got bought by HP and that kind of Yeah, that was kind of the end of that, right. Well, I had the old Palm you might remember the Palm Pilot or the Trio or the you know, the Palm smartphone, and I ended up finding it and I you remembered, how you know, when you text with the Palm, how easy it was. You didn't have that on screen keyboard. Some of you really hate that the Android or the iPhone on screen keyboard. Well,

the Pompilot or the Trio, you had actually keys. People love that and you wanted to maybe switch to numbers. You hit one button and you could do that, and you could text with it very easily. Fit right in the palm of your hands. You still had a nice screen on. It wasn't as nice as the screen to get now with the Androids like the Pixel nine or the latest iPhone or even the Samsung Galaxy devices, but

it was cool to be able to have those keys. Well, you can have those keys with the Clicks keyboard cases. And if you've scrolled on the web and you've looked for a placement phone, if you looked for mobile keyboards, you probably have been fed in ad with the Clicks keyboard. Now how it works, It's basically just looks just like this keyboard, maybe a little bigger on the keys. Uh. And it works with the Google nine, Pixel nine, Galaxy S twenty five, motorole Eraser Plus. It doesn't look like

it's available on the pro XL yet. I don't know if that could could have changed by press time, But if you want to see these and you want to actually use a keyboard, I would really recommend jumping onto the World Wide Web and going to clicks dot tech that clicks dot T e c H at c l I c k s dot T e c H and your phone actually plugs in, like kind of snaps in to this device which holds your phone. Uh has I believe it has the wireless on the back, so you could,

you know, smart charge it. You can, then you then have a physical keyboard for your smartphone. So if you've gotten to the point where you're just fed up with that keyboard, I'm one of those. I use voice to text quite a bit and it always gets it wrong. But again, if you are fed up that and you want to actually have a physical keyboard, you might want to take a look at that they sell. They're not

inexpensive though. While you could go out and buy a Logitech K four eighty for right around fifty bucks, this sells for up around one hundred and thirty nine dollars. But again, it plugs into your phone, plugs right into it, and you can carry it around that way. So again that might be something that you might want to think about doing. One hundred and thirty nine dollars clicks dot teh. You can get more information there about this device. And

again you may you may like that. All right. Top ten passwords used in the United States have been revealed. And I'm not looking at you, but if you use this, you want to stop using it immediately. According to a study that was put together by I want to say this was malward? Was this malword? Bites? Well? Here here it is. The second most common password in the US is one two three four five six. That is ranked the most number one common password in the world. I

know they're a pain in the butt. I know you have so many different logins, whether it be a company you do business with or you know, logging into pay your smartphone bill, your bank account, you know the whole bit. It could be a pain in the butt. One two three four five six people are using that. That's the most common password in the US and the number one common password in the world. The easy to guess passwords at ranked from third, fourth and fifth. The most common

in America are password. The next one is quirdy q W e r t y one two three. And if you're wondering where that comes from, quirdy was once used as a demonstration on your username and password. Somebody said, I'll use that as my password. Not good. Quirdy is the top line next to the tab on your general most keyboards q w e r T y. Then one two three. Don't want to use that one as well. All right, that is the fourth most common password in America.

The next one is quirdy number, and then just number one q W e r t Y one. So if you're wondering. Seventh and eighth on the list are one two, three, four, five, six seven eight nine. That's sixth. Seventh is password one again, don't use that. Then one two three, four, five sixty seven eight comes it at number eight, ninth and tenth on the most common passwords among Americans. Don't be writing these down and using these. Please don't. If you're using them,

change them. They are one, two, three, four five, and then ABC one two three. Now the thing is, you may think, well, what does it matter? You know I'm using this, I'm the only one who knows the user name. People are phishing, which which basically means they're trying to find out your user name. You may accidentally give that up, and then once they have that It's all about finding out which past you're using. The number one most common

password in the US. Do not use this. If you were using it, please change it is secret, sec R E T secret. Now here's what I'd recommend. Now you may say, well, what about those password managers that are a part of Google or even Microsoft Edge. I I have used those in the past, and I would say, don't. Somebody can get onto your browser if you're logged in, and they can figure out those passwords, see them very quickly, take screenshots. What I honestly recommend is a product called

one Password one the number one password. You don't want to use that one either one password, but use the software program you set it up. You have a secret code to get in and then there are all your passwords. Anytime you want to create a password, you could create a super long password that within your browser it will remember it. Within your smartphone it can remember it. And you want to use difficult passwords, longer passwords to hack,

longer passwords for somebody to try and crack. And again you can add this to your safe deposit box. So in case of medical emergency and you don't have access to your devices, somebody else does, they'll still be able to access that with that long secret code that you would be given one password. The software program itself not very expensive, I want to say under fifty bucks, might be like thirty nine dollars, but I'd really recommend installing that.

You could install it on all the browsers you use, and it's a great way to maintain and secure your password. So don't fall into that trap of just one, two, three ABC secure your password? Are you going to take another quick break? We come back with more of tech Talk Radio, hopefully providing some great information for you on this Saturday afternoon. Thanks for listening. Now back to TIEF

Talk Radio. After I decided I needed to take a look at some different software programs that may enable me the opportunity to create after I found out that my we Creative Suite was no longer going to be able to work because I wasn't able to install it on the computer that I had up dated to Windows eleven, and I sort of looking for other programs to do tasks.

Now we've mentioned it before, Sean told us about Alternative two and you can go to on the Worldwide Web Alternative t O dot net and what you do is you enter the program name that maybe you're using, and

it will suggest some alternatives for you. So that way, if you know, used to using one program to get something done, like maybe you used Photoshop Express or Photoshop or even some of the other program Correl that used to use the Correll photopaint program, and you want to use something else, well, you can type that in Gimp may come up. People still use Gimp. They love Gimp.

It's an alternative too, that program. And so I ended up just asking a couple of my friends that work in the biz, and it was kind of interesting for you know, radio. For me, it's always been Adobe Audition. There is a program that I know of that's available out there if you want to maybe you want to create your own podcast and you would like to do stuff. It's called Audacity. And again you'll find that available on alternative to dot net, at least the link for that.

Make sure when you're getting software programs, you're getting it from the authentic, authorized website. Got to be real careful because fakes can be set up pretty easily that could actually hurt your system. So Audacity is good. There's some neat features on it. It's a matter of learning the program and how it works differently than a w audition, like when you export a project us export in the

file itself. I've had some people who have used Audacity that send me a file and that file is still in the Audacity format, so you know you're setting it as a wave or an MP three that type of that type of situation there. So again Audacity is pretty good. But I did use a couple of programs that I wanted to just give kind of the heads up of the programs that I used. First off is a program called Reaper r e a p e R. Now it's

not a free program. It is a paid program. They'll give you a sixty day trial window to use it. But the cost to acquire the Reaper program on your system, which can be installed on two systems not at the same time, is I want to say, around about seventy dollars. But it will allow you to edit audio, which actually I really got used to using the Reaper program. I liked it. It has some great features, great you know, great easy editing tools that are a part of it.

And again that's r e a p e R. You can download it, give it a try for sixty days and see if you like it and see if that's something that you might want to use the other program that I used for that, and I ended up stumbling across this. So I have a small mini mixer that I use when I do videos or when I'm doing

the podcast training sessions. I've taken it out with me so that way the kids on the reservation that's where I went last week, they end up being able to talk into the microphones and I give them kind of an overall about podcasting and how cool it is and it's always a lot of fun knowledge and learning as a group that put that together. John Proudstar is a local artist and actor and he was out there as well,

so it was pretty cool. But I buy the Macki product, and there's other I know there's other mixers on the market and mixers. What that is is it takes your audio input, so you have one mixer one microphone, right, and then maybe you have another audio input, so you put two microphones so you can do a discussion with the both microphones and use the mixer to bring that all down into one audio file. And Maki makes a

whole bunch of them. I previously used the MACI fourteen oh two VLZ which was a multi channel mixer and it was great, but it would plug in to the computer using a scarlet box by focus right, or I would have the Creative Labs external sound card and would plug into that which would plug into the computer. It was nice, but again just more cables laying around. What I like about the one that I used for MACI the pro FX six x three. It actually connects via

USB so you can record, you know, two microphones. You could have another source as well for line in or you could do you know, upgrade your your mixer, the Pro eight, the Pro ten do you get more lines, more microphones depending on what you're doing. But and then it outputs via USB into the USB in and becomes a sound device on your computer, so that works out really good. You could even apply effects to it, the whole bit. And I bought mine some years ago and

I've been using it. And the other day when I was putting everything together to head on out to the reservation over the Boys and Girls Club there in Levigne, I noticed on the box it said pro Tools. You got a license for pro tools that came with the mixer, and it was pro Tools version Pro. There's different levels, but I thought let's try that. So I installed it

on the computer and it is amazing. I used it one time in a broadcast environment, not here, but in another one, and I wasn't a big fan of it because I didn't understand it. I didn't have the time to go through it. But I've had the time to sit and play and really kind of experiment and learn. There's lots of great videos online, but pro Tools really it kind of surprises me. So again, that is one

that's going on my new computer. Even though it looks like I am going to bite the bullet and do the Creative Cloud Pro, I will have this on another computer and pro Tools for some basic editing and I if you want to experiment, you want to play around with some of this editing with audio and put together

a podcast, I recommend that now. I also showed some products from Fuffine Fi Fi n E and not long ago, I bought a microphone from fuf Fine from the super sale bin store of course that we have here in Green Valley Sawaudita and it was a great deal. I got it for I want to say it was a fifteen dollars day, so it was the opening day, but I ended up getting this microphone and I love it. I've since bought a mixer that they put out from fuf Fine. It is not bad, but there is something

you need to know about that. And then the fuf Fine am A microphone. The Fine am A microphone can plug in via USB or USB C, or it can plug in an XLR, which could be very helpful depending on the mixer you're plugging it into. If you're using a mixer. Uh. The mixer that for Fine put out unfortunately has one input. That's it. And I would say, man, don't waste your time. If you're gonna get a mixer,

get at least one that has two audio inputs. For microphones, I would recommend that, and that's why I recommend the pro FX six x three by mac E M A C K I E. You can find more information about that online. Uh, and not waste the time with the fuf Fine mixer. But their Fine microphone. The pickup quality that it is not bad. It's RGB, so if you're doing video that goes along with your audio, it looks

pretty smart. I mean, it's got a nice color to it, and the audio pickup on it is pretty good as well. So again you can find those fine Fi Fi n E. There is a better I will say, there is a better microphone that's available on the market. Most radio broadcasters you'll see them and even in podcasters you'll see them using the SM seven B microphone. It's a pretty pricey microphone, runs about three hundred and fifty four hundred dollars. You may even be a little higher than that. That microphone's

got great pickups. So what I'm using right now and it's good, but they have a better one out now and I'm hoping to get my hands on one to try it out. It's the Sure SM seven dB. And what they basically take in is Cloudlifter, which is a great device which gives a little more oomph, a little more power to the audio chain. It's kind of built in so you get this really dynamic sound and podcasters radio broadcasters are so again that's the Sure SM seven D. Be all right, I got to take a quick break.

We come back with more of tech talk Radio, I mean Detaylor find us of the web at tech talk radio dot com. We'll be right back and now back to tech talk Radio. This is Stephen right you know, listening to tech talk radio. Yeah, some alung that line. Yeah, I guess that was it. All right, let's go with it. I love it. I'll say it anyway. All right, this is Stephen Wright and you're listening to tech Talk Radio.

But you know, I've already been saying that this is the time of the show that we'd like to share with you a cool website of the week. Sometimes it's a product of the week, and I decided I wanted to come up with a website that you could enjoy when this show is over, we're back to your familiar favorites that you could actually have some fun with and and tell your friends about. So there are lots of great websites that are out there. There are that you

can have some fun with. We've talked about some of those in the past, like the Lazy Fly, which I think is a good one. But here's one that is just a collection of just websites that you can you can find you go to the useless web dot com. The uselessweb dot com and it's gonna be different forever just about everybody. But I'm gonna go here and you'll you'll say, take me to another useless website. Please, So once you're there, you hit please and like for me,

it came up with sliding toys a daily puzzle. It has the date, shows that how many people have done that and that whole bit, so you could do that. One you don't like it, go to another one, the long Dodge challenge your doge, thank you and it just okay, there you go. You could print it again, useless website, go to another one. Always judge a book by its covers. Some books went awards, others some win our heart and others only serve to confuse. This book, it's an actual book,

how to talk to your cat about gun safety. And again you could find the link. You could actually listen to some of the book on audible. Another book that they have Outwitting Squirrels, more than one million squirrels outwitted. Here's another book, how to survive a garden gnome attack. Eating people is wrong, Crafting with cat hair, Cute handicrafts to make with your cat. And then one that I've actually heard of, this book and I saw this in there.

It's called Florida Man. And for any of you from Florida, I apologize here. But what is some of the crazy stories that always start off with a Florida man and then you go on from there and again. You can find it at the uselessweb dot com. Have some fun with that. Let me know what you come up with. Just drop me a line, Andy atech Talk radio dot com. In the meantime, have yourselves a wonderful weekend Memorial Day weekend. Thanks for all that have paid the ultimate sacrifice. They're

in our hearts this weekend. I'm Andy Taylor,