Meta’s AI image blunder, DuckDuckGo battles YouTube ads & simplifying an old iPhone (182, July 11, 2026)

This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. What's up, fam? It's sports journalist Ari Chambers. Hey, what's up, y'all? It's your girl, Sam Jay. And we're the hosts of Everyone Watches Women's Sports, a new podcast from Together. We're breaking down the biggest headlines, the viral moments, and the stories everyone's talking about across women's sports. From game-changing performances to culture-shifting conversations, we'll give you our takes, our debates, and a few laughs along the way. Because everyone watches women's sports. Listen to Everyone Watches Women's Sports on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Emily Oster. I'm an economist and data expert. And I'm Perry Wilson. I'm a medical doctor. And this is our new podcast, Wellness Actually. You're getting a staggering amount of health and wellness information, and some of it is awesome. And some of it is, well, actually, bulls**t. Fortunately, we're both people who know how to read studies and can tell you what's worth trying out and what you can safely ignore. Listen to Wellness Actually on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. From daily news to dating fails, conspiracy theories to cooking with celebrities who can't actually cook, Amazon Music's got the most ad-free top podcasts ready to entertain, included with Prime. meta makes a big mistake with an ai image feature that uses your face without your permission duck duck go goes to battle with youtube and now blocks most of its ads and how to turn an old iphone into a simple phone that's great for kids or seniors what's going on i'm rich demiro and This is Rich on Tech. This is the show where I talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about. It's also the place where I answer your questions about technology. I believe the tech should be interesting, useful, and fun. All right, let's do it. Coast to coast, let's open up those phone lines. 888-RICH-101-888-742-4101. Give me a call if you have a question about technology. Email is also open. Just go to richontech.tv and hit contact. Again, richontech.tv and hit contact. We've got some great guests this week to talk about getting better deals on travel and also the tech tips you need to know to travel smarter. And we've got later in the show an accessibility expert to talk about all kinds of things that we should know about making devices easier to use, especially as we age. Well, in case you haven't noticed, maybe the show sounds a little bit different this time around. We are coming to you live from New York City. I am here for a, yes, I am from New Jersey, and I figured it would be a good idea to make the ultimate pilgrimage as a former New Jersey resident, and that is to see Bon Jovi in concert at some point in my life. And yes, I'm bringing my mom, so I just figured that would make for a fun weekend. So here we are broadcasting from New York City. Well, this week in the news, we got a really interesting story. Meta launched this new AI image generator. It was called, it still is, it's called Muse Image. And this was built from the ground up by Meta's super intelligence labs. They've been pouring gobs and gobs of money into this. It's available through Meta AI. That's their standalone app on iPhone and Android. And it's also available on the web and Instagram stories and WhatsApp and eventually Facebook and Messenger. But this is an AI image generator like all the others. It can generate images from text prompts. It can edit photos, combine multiple photos, and generate all kinds of content. And that's pretty smart because, think about it, where are people sharing all these images? All across the meta properties like Instagram stories and Facebook. Now, you can try it out. It's at meta.ai. It's pretty good. It makes images really fast, has a bunch of image editing suggestions. and I tried restoring images with it and it's especially good at that. But one feature really popped out at me. It's this feature where you could type someone's username. So you can add someone, any public Instagram account basically, and Muse would use that person's public photos as a visual reference to generate brand new AI images. So for instance, if you wanna make me rich on tech into a circus clown, in seconds, all you had to do was tag me and you'd have an AI image of me as a clown. And I would never know the better if you didn't tag me in the final picture that you post. And by the way, you don't have to upload anything. All of my Instagram photos instantly became a reference point for this AI to make something new. Now, Meta said the goal was creative expression. Think prompts like show this person on the moon or turn them into a comic book superhero, which of course is handy for making silly photos of your friends for say a birthday post. But we all know what could go wrong here. And I figured that out immediately. So the big problem that I noticed was that this feature was turned on by default if you have a public Instagram account. So users had to opt out instead of opting in. And in my book, that's a big no-no, especially when they're using your likeness to make new AI images. So what I do, I posted instructions to Instagram on how to turn this feature off. And, of course, those instructions quickly went viral as people started to learn of this. But I wasn't the only one. It's not like I'm the only one that realized this was kind of strange. Critics immediately pointed out the risks. Deep fakes, impersonation, scams, harassment, fake endorsements, revenge imagery, and just, you know, unauthorized commercial use of someone's likeness. I mean, you could have tagged Mr. Beast and boom, you're sitting in a car with Mr. Beast. And yeah, I think I did that one. So of course, Hollywood responded. SAG-AFTRA, the talent agencies, managers all argued, hey, this is ignoring basic principles of consent and digital likeness rights, especially as we know Hollywood is fighting all of this AI replication going on, voice and likeness and video. And privacy advocates, of course, warn that everyday users, not just celebrities, could become targets because anyone with a public profile could be used as inspiration for AI-generated images. And then, as I was out to dinner, what did I get? A text from a friend saying, hey, did you see that Meta just got rid of that feature? I said, what? And sure enough, Meta came out with a big post and said, okay, fine, this feature missed the mark. We're going to remove this Instagram reference capability entirely. But, of course, we'll leave the rest of our image generation tool available. Now, this is a big deal because, first off, it's one of the few times I've seen Meta reverse course so quickly. We are so used to these tech companies just doing things and saying, no, this is the new reality. This is how it is. And, no, we're not changing it. You adopt. But also, is everyone at Meta brain dead? I mean, how did this make it through so many layers of people there and not one person stood up and said, hold on. I don't think this is the best thing to do for our billions of users. I don't think this is a smart thing to do. Now, I see how this feature can be fun, but this is a big win for consumers to have this turned off. And it's also another way Meta is losing the way with the public. public perception of this company saying, we don't really do things in the best interest of our users. We do things that are in the best interest of us and growing our platforms. Now, yes, we all love to scroll through Instagram and Facebook, or I should say many of us. It's connected so many of us in many ways. And it's even built businesses for influencers that make a living off of this platform. I get to connect with you on there, of course, at Rich DeMuro or at Rich on Tech, I should say. How do I not know my own Instagram username? Yes, at Rich on Tech. But this is a company that needs to figure out some way of rebuilding trust with the average consumer. Everyone just assumes that Meta is taking every bit of data from our interactions and using it to their advantage. And doing something like this does not help their cause. Now, if your Instagram account is private, it was never eligible for this feature. So you didn't have to worry about this. It really only mattered if you had a public account, which is a lot of people. But the bigger story here is where AI is headed in general. Every major tech company is trying to make AI more personal by using your photos, your videos, and your social media content, but they need to tread lightly. And this is a good example of that. Consumers are just saying, hold on, where does all of this creativity end and where does our permission begin? And that's not just with pictures, but it's pretty much with everything we are doing online. So much of the internet is now being scoured and repurposed for AI content. People are just searching, they get the AI answer, and they're not visiting the websites that originally sourced that information. Fact check what you get, check things over, be aware of the fact that AI is so pervasive in everything we do. And believe me, I love some of the features and productivity that I'm getting out of AI. I just don't like when they introduce a feature that clearly infringes on us and we're the ones left to pick up the pieces in this manner. Now, I think Meta did the right thing by pulling back on this. I think that in some cases this would have been fun, but already we've seen two major tries now at something like this with Sora from OpenAI. They quickly shut that down. And now Meta quickly shut this down. There is still one more feature that's very similar. It's from Google on Gemini. They have a feature called Avatars. And you can take a picture of yourself from a couple different angles and talk, and it will ultimately do the same thing. The big difference there is that you choose to upload your picture. You choose to say, I want this to be something that happens and you can create images using your own likeness or videos. It's not some random person that can do that. Now, don't get me wrong. There are plenty of tools out there that may allow you to upload pictures of someone as a quote unquote reference and say, make someone that looks like this person into a, you know, an artist or Picasso or a space traveler or whatever. And yes, you can still do this stuff. Meta just happened to make it easier than ever before. So we'll see how this all kind of shakes out. I think that the reaction time for Meta was good on this. I think it was smart of them when they realized that the public did not like what they were doing. And the pressure just came on way too fast. And it was just too much for them to handle. So good for them for changing that. I'm happy about that. You can see what it was all about on my Instagram, at Rich on Tech. But at this point, we do not have to worry about this. But who knows what the next tech company will be that tries to do something very similar. All right. We've got lots of great show for you today. Again, we're coming to you live from New York City. It's a little rainy in the city today, a little overcast, but the weather has been otherwise perfect in New York. But I hear it's hot in Los Angeles. So stay cool out there. All right. 888-RICH-101. Kim is standing by to take your calls. 888-RICH-101 website, richontech.tv. This is show number 182. So richontech.tv slash 182 will bring you right to the show notes. And coming up, I'll tell you about my new favorite voice-to-text app that's free right here on Rich on Tech. Welcome back to Rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here, hanging out with you talking technology at 888-RICH-101-888-742-4101. Yes, coming to you from New York City. And I think we're going to kick things off with line three. We've got Christine in Monterey, California. Christine, are you there? Welcome to the show. Hi. Hi. Thank you for taking my call. So my question is, I have a Samsung phone, and recently they switched the text messaging to Google. They no longer let us use the Samsung messages. But I want to save space on my phone now because now I have two messaging apps on there, and one I can't use, and I can't uninstall the Samsung messages, even though it's not allowing me to use them, but forcing me to use the Google Messages. Okay, so yeah, because the Samsung Messages was built in on your phone, and so they're not letting you uninstall like a typical app. Is that what you're finding when you go in there to do that? Yes. Okay. What do you think of the new Google Messages? Are you okay with it? Because I'm getting a lot of messages from folks. So basically, just to give a little background for folks listening, Samsung discontinued their messaging app, Samsung Messages, on I believe it was July 6th. And they said, okay, everyone has to move over to Google Messages or whatever you want. It's Android, so you can pick a third-party messaging app. You're just not going to get all the benefits of the RCS functionality, which means typing indicators, sharing large photos and videos with iPhone users, all the read receipts and things like that. So that's mainly what they're asking people to do. Of course, you are free to choose any texting app on Android. So long story short, because this app was pre-installed on your phone, your phone is probably recognizing it as a system app, the Samsung messages, and that's why it's not letting you delete it. But have all of your text messages gone over to the Google messages? Yes. Okay, so you're up and running. Everything's good. So do you have your Samsung phone with you? Yes, I do. Okay, so if you press and hold on the Samsung Messages app, you probably see some options there. Does it say remove or no? Yeah, it does say remove, but then it goes away. I press and hold on it, and then it just briefly shows me a little square box. And then it goes away. I select message, and it gives a name of people that I frequently message, and it says remove, but I can't. When I go to click remove, it disappears. Right. Okay, well, you need to go into the actual, like, drawer of messages. So if you press and hold on the app icon, you'll see there's a little I in a circle in the upper right-hand corner. If you tap that, it will bring you to sort of all of the app info. Now, down at the bottom, if you're using a system app, if it doesn't let you uninstall the app, you can go ahead and tap where it says Storage, and it's got all of the app storage in there. So it should say how much space that app is using up, whether it's, like I'm looking at the Southwest app, that's got 186 megabytes of storage. So if I tap Clear Data and Clear Cache, that's going to delete out all the data from that app, which is all your text messages, and it's going to make it so that app is sort of reset. Now, before you do that, you may want to back up your messages on Google. Do you care if you lose your messages? Yeah, I do. Okay. So there's an app called SMS Backup and Restore. You might want to download that and back up your messages to that just to have a copy of them in case when you do this it removes all your messages. I don't think it will, but it may just because these two may share a database on your phone. So that's what I would recommend to do is back up your messages. Then you go into the Samsung messages app. You press and hold on the icon, tap that little I, and then you go down to where it says storage. And that way you can clear out the data and the cache. And basically once you do that, all your messages should go away out of that Samsung messages app. and then you can just ignore it and use the Google messages from now on. So tell me how that goes. Definitely send me an email. Let me know how that process goes at richontech.tv. But I am getting a lot of messages about this Samsung messages changing over because a lot of people don't necessarily like the new Google messages because not every feature is there, not every functionality is there. And so anytime there's change, people get upset. And I understand that because if you got a Samsung phone and you liked the messaging experience, now you're being forced to use a different messaging app and you're like, ugh. But I will say the benefit is that you're going to have much better cross messaging or cross platform functionality with the iPhone. That's the big upgrade here. And also, you know, privacy and security. If you're using the Samsung messages app, it's not necessarily end to end encrypted. whereas if you're using the Google Messages app, it is, which means it's much tougher for people to read your messages or third-party folks to read your messages. Thanks for the call today. I really appreciate it. 888-RICH-101, 888-742-4101. The website, richontech.tv if you want to email in your question. DuckDuckGo, they are now blocking most ads on YouTube right in the browser. So it's built in. If you have the DuckDuckGo app installed, you don't have to install an ad blocker extension. It just works on the YouTube website. Keep in mind, it does not work on the YouTube app. So on iPhone, most of the YouTube links will automatically open in the YouTube app, so you need to open them in the DuckDuck browser if you want this to happen. But the feature is enabled by default on the latest versions of DuckDuckGo for Mac, Windows, and iPhone. On Android, it's kind of available, but you have to manually turn it on in the settings until the rollout is complete. So DuckDuckGo says it's using Ublock origin filters along with its own tweaks, but the company says it's not perfect. You may see occasional buffering, playback glitches, or an ad slip through while the filter catches up with YouTube's latest changes. Of course, this is another chapter in the long-running cat-and-mouse game between Google and ad blockers. obviously Google does not want you to use ad blockers on YouTube because that's how they make their money. So they've gotten much more aggressive about detecting and limiting this functionality over the past couple of years. DuckDuckGo is a big platform. The fact that they're doing this sends a big message to Google, like this is all out war between these two companies. And Google might say, hey, this violates our terms of service. But you as an end user, I don't think that really affects you. You should be okay using this, but again, personal preference there. So DuckDuckGo doing something very interesting by blocking those ads. 888-RICH-101. More Rich on Tech coming your way right after this. Welcome back to Rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology. 888-RICH-101-888-742-4101. Coming to you live from New York City this weekend here for a Bon Jovi concert. Quick story time. So I grew up in New Jersey. We had the flagship radio station that I listened to. It was called Z100. Still a powerhouse here in New York City. But they would always say, you know, broadcasting from the top of the Empire State Building. And so as a kid, that was really interesting to me, right? I could see the Empire State Building from my house, from the top of my street. And eventually in high school, my friends and I would make our way into the city, and we went up to the top of the Empire State Building. And I was so excited to see this studio where all these cool DJs were hanging out, looking over the city and broadcasting live. And so we get up there, and I'm looking around at the observatory, and I'm asking the security guard, like, hey, where's the Z100 Studios? They said, kid, they're not up here. I said, what do you mean? Listen closely. They're broadcasting live from the top of the Empire State Building, not they are sitting live at the top of the Empire State Building. And that was really interesting to me because it taught me a lot about radio. It taught me a lot about, you know, listening closely and understanding things. But it was just such a little twist on words. The antennas are at the top of the Empire State Building. So they weren't lying. They are broadcasting live from the top of the Empire State Building. But I thought that was just so smart and just so interesting as a kid. And I don't know. So I'm broadcasting live from the top of a Marriott Hotel in New York City. That's where we're broadcasting live from today. 888-RICH-101, 888-742-4101. Let's go to line three, Susan in San Clemente. Susan, are you there? I'm here. Thanks for taking my call. I currently have Internet and TV with my local cable company, and they offer me a speed of 500 megabytes, which I think is pretty good. But because I'm a senior, AT&T now has a senior plan for people who have Ramline phones to get rid of them and go to cellular. And they offer a senior 55-plus plan. that includes two cell phones and internet for $99 a month. For how long? Great deal. Yeah. The problem is I'm concerned that going from their internet to the one that I have might not be the best for me. They offer, there's this 5G over the air. It's not fibers, over the air. I'm about 1,000 feet from a hill with all these cellular antennas on it, which doesn't mean that that's where my signal will come from. But they only say you can get anywhere from $90 to $300, depending on the traffic on their cellular system. Yes. So that doesn't sound like a good deal to me, but I'm just curious what you think. Okay. How much are you paying for your current Internet? $94. So $94. So this would be basically the same price for two phone lines and your Internet connection. Right, plus the fact that I'm paying $74 for my cell phone. For your landline or cell phone? For my cell phone. What about the landline? My landline, I'm paying $104. Oh, my gosh. Okay, so you're going from $298 plus $74, so $298. So almost $300 to $99 for everything? That's correct. I mean, what are you doing on your Internet connection? What do you use it for? I use it to track my investments. I use it for research. I use it for communications, e-mails. But you're not uploading, you're not a video editor. You're not uploading like giant video files? I am not. Are you gaming? No. No. Okay. No call of duty? No. No. No, I don't do that one. Okay. So it sounds to me like you do not – now, obviously, I'm assuming you stream, like, YouTube or Netflix or something like that. I don't even stream Netflix. I once in a while will watch a YouTube video on that. Sometimes it's even on my cell phone. Okay. But part of the reason why I called them, AT&T, was that my landline phones, they keep telling me, are no longer going to be available come, I think it is October of 2027. Yeah, they're trying to get rid of those. They're trying to get rid of those copper cables. But $100 a month. Yeah, I can go to the cable company and sign up for their phones, but I can't be guaranteed that they're going to work either because I don't understand that. Okay. Well, so you've got a bunch of things happening here, but at the end of the day, I think that this is a fantastic deal. The only thing that's keeping me from saying 100% do it is, do you have AT&T right now? Yeah. Okay. As your cell phone? Yeah. Okay. So here's your homework. You have to do a speed test in your home to see what kind of speed you get on that phone up and down, And that's going to give you an indication of how fast this home Internet is going to be to your home. Now, you told me you're 1,000 feet from a bunch of antennas, but you also said that you're not sure if those are the antennas that serve your home. Do you have five bars on your phone? Yes. Well, I don't know. Let's see what I've got right now. I have four. Okay. So those are probably not the antennas then for your AT&T because you would definitely have five if you were that close to them. But what I would do is, okay, there's a couple things. There's an app. You can do two things. You can go to your open up browser on your phone and just go to speedtest.net and check the up and the down signal. So you want to see, just press go, and it will give you a speed test of the up and the down. And you can see how fast your Internet's going to be. Okay, that's speedtest.net. Correct. Okay, so what am I looking for? So that's number one. What are you looking for is you want a good speed. So you're saying that your current Internet is 500 down, and I'm guessing unless it's fiber, it's probably a slower speed up. If you have Cox, it's probably anywhere 30 to 40 up. So you want a download speed that's reasonable. You know, I'd say, I don't know, 100 down is probably fine. And then up, you maybe want something like 40 or 50. So those numbers are probably going to be fine. They're probably even going to be more than you need. But my point is, if you're seeing a download and upload speed like of a 3 or a 2 or a 5, that's not going to be very good. It's not going to be very fast. But when you go to the speedtest.net, it's going to give you how things are going to work. So right now I can see on my Internet connection, it says browsing quality, great, gaming quality, good, streaming quality, good, and voice call quality, great. So that's what you want to look at and see what those ratings are. And if they're all at great or good, I would say go for this, try it out, switch everything over to the phone lines through AT&T for $99 a month. You can always sign up for cable again at a later time. But to me, I feel like there's something I'm missing here because that's a lot of connections for a very low price. It's called monthly plan. It's $65 per line, and then they give you a discount of $20 and another discount because they require you to have auto pay. Another discount. So your line per line is $35. So that's $70 plus the Internet. for a total of $99 for the first year. Of course, we all know that those are goodies. Got it. That was my other question is how long does it last? But Susan, I would try it, honestly. I mean, if you want to save money and if you want to do this, if you feel comfortable doing it, you're paying $100 just for your landline alone, and that's going to eventually go away. So I would say try it. It doesn't sound to me like you use your Internet in a huge way. That is, if you were saying to me, look, I edit videos, I edit trailers for movies, or I need to download giant files, I would say probably not. Or if you even told me you work from home. But these are all things that I think will be easily handled on the AT&T Internet Air, which is what their home Internet over 5G is called. So does your phone get a 5G signal at least? Right now it's on Internet, so I don't know. It does when I turn it on. It says 5G. But I do have another comment. They told me they could take my landline phone instead of having two cell phones and have it ring on my cell phone. Yeah, I mean, you could do that as well. I mean, you could transfer that number and put a secondary line on there. I got to run in about a couple seconds here, but here's the other thing. The other thing I would look at is make sure that when you do that speed test, you are only on cellular. Make sure that you toggle your Wi-Fi off. Go into the settings on your phone and make sure you turn the Wi-Fi off before you do that speed test that I mentioned. But, Susan, I would try it. Do the speed test. If you get good speeds, definitely go for it. I think $99 for the first year is a pretty sweet deal. I would also just make sure how much they're going to charge you in the future when that price jumps up. I remember when I had all my stuff on AT&T, I consolidated everything. This was back in the day. I had my cell phone. I had my Internet. And I had DirecTV all in one bill. And it took me a while to do that, to consolidate it. And then I got my first bill. It was close to like 500 bucks. I was like, never mind. Split these up. I don't want to see this all in one place. It was way too, I didn't realize I was paying one company that much every month. So anyway, 888-RICH-101, 888-742-4101. Coming up, ChatGPT's voice mode got a major upgrade. We are getting way closer to that movie, Her. Now it feels more like talking to a real person. We'll talk about that. And don't make the mistake I made with the new ChatGBT. I'll explain that. Plus more of your calls and questions at 888-RICH-101. More Rich on Tech coming your way right after this Welcome back to Rich on Tech Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology at 888 Now, if you've listened to me at all, you know I love my voice-to-text apps. Not just dictation, but AI voice-to-text. This is kind of like a new breed of voice typing that uses AI to listen to and understand what you're saying, so it cleans things up. Now, I've been using iOS 27, which I don't recommend you install on your daily driver like I did, but Dictation is much better in the next version of Apple software that will launch. There's going to be a public beta sometime this month, and then the final version in September. And also, in Android 17, they have a new Rambler feature, which is very similar to what I'm talking about, But I have that downloaded to a phone and I have not seen that either. But in the meantime, a lot of these apps you can download, like my favorite, Whisper Flow, they cost like about $15 a month. But they're really good. Like if you're doing a lot of emails, a lot of voice to text, they're excellent. But here's the thing. This week, Speechify, this is the app that's best known for reading articles out loud to you. They have a new free voice typing app called Speechify Voice Typing. And you can download it right now for the iPhone, for Mac, for Windows. And you can dictate into the app and it will paste it into whatever app or website you're using. It automatically uses AI to clean up your grammar, your punctuation, and all your filler words like I use, like um and uh. And the big, there you go. They need that for this show. The big selling point isn't just the speech to text. It's how it cleans up everything. And so it can add punctuation, capitalize things, add grammar and formatting before the text appears. Now, on Mac, it's super simple. You hold down the function key, and you start dictating. And on Windows, you can hold the alt key. Now, on Windows and Mac, it's a separate app. But on iOS, it's built into their regular Speechify app. So a lot of people were emailing me. I included this in my newsletter this morning. And people said, Rich, I've got to pay for this. No, you do not have to pay for Speechify voice to text. It is free. I don't know how it's free. I don't know for how long, but that's where we're at right now. It is free. So if you can talk, you can dictate. And this is really good dictation. It's going up against my favorite, Whisper Flow. I've been using Speechify exclusively on my computer for the past week just to see how good it is. And yeah, it's good. So I have no problem recommending this and I can't believe that it's free. So keep in mind, you can still use Apple, you know, their dictation. You could still use Android's dictation, but this is something a little bit more powerful. And the weird thing is, by the way, it's not on Android. The weird thing is on iOS, any of these AI voice dictation apps, because of the security of iPhone, you have to press the little globe to enable the speech-to-text app. Then you have to tap the speech-to-text microphone, swipe out of the app, and back into the other app you're using. I know it's kind of a pain, but you get used to it, and you understand it. It sounds a little complicated, but you get used to it after time. Let me just see what that is again. Okay, so let's say I want to make a voice note. So I tap the little globe in the left-hand corner, which selects your keyboard. Now I've got Speechify. Now I tap the microphone. It brings me to Speechify to kind of fire up the app. Then I have to swipe again to actually use it, and then I just press, and now everything I just said is automatically transcribed. And it's fast. I'm very impressed with that. So check it out, Speechify. You can go to my website, richontech.tv. Let me make sure that I do that. Rich on Tech dot TV one eight two. Okay, I got it. I got to set that up so you can go right to that. But in the meantime, sort of rich on tech dot TV tap radio and you'll see episode one eight two. All right. Let's see here. Let's go to James in San Diego. James has a question about line four. Looks like a question on a printer. James, what's up? Yes. Hi, Rich. I wanted to find out, do you have any recommendations for a printer that can print on transparencies? What are you doing, like the old teacher transparencies? What are you printing exactly? Well, I have a small store on a military base, and on the refrigerators it has lights at the top that you could put things that would shine through, and I wanted to print the prices of what's in the refrigerators. Oh, interesting. Okay. Okay, and have you tried this yet? Because I feel like any printer can do this as long as you get the right film. Do you have a printer right now? Have you tried to do this? Yeah, I tried to do it on my regular printer, the Synapse, and it just smeared off and faded away. Are you using inkjet transparency film paper? Inkjet transparency. I'm not sure what that is. Okay, so there is special paper. The problem is if you just print on any sort of like a transparency paper, if you just print on there, it's never going to dry. So it's just going to, you know, as soon as you tap that or as soon as you touch it with anything, the ink is just going to slide off because the paper is not meant to absorb the actual ink. So you need a special type of transparency paper that is meant for absorbing this ink and actually drying the ink. So if you look on Amazon, if you just type in what I type in, inkjet transparency paper, you can buy a 30-pack of that. It's special paper. It's one side will actually dry with the ink. And so once you get that, you can try printing with the same printer you have, and then you can cut these little labels that you're making and do it that way. So I would try that before you buy a new printer for sure. Okay. Okay. Yeah, that sounds great. Thank you. All right. Report back to me. Um, this is the kind of stuff that when I was a kid, I was obsessed with printing little things. And I'm just, I mean, I've always been a nerd, but I've always had like such odd, like things that I like to do. Like remember when those Dymo, what was it? Dymo printers. Oh my gosh. It was like a Dymo label maker. Remember when those came out? And by the way, I'm old enough to remember when there was a special type of label maker that it was almost like you would crunch it in your hand and it would imprint the label, especially, yeah, what's that? Bobo, oh, Bobo, oh, Bobo's telling me two minutes. I thought, Bobo remembered about this. Let's see if there's like what this thing was. Let's see. Now I have a high-tech version of this, but back in the day, it was like a little, it was like, yeah, it was just, oh, embossing. That's what it was. I don't remember none of that. You don't remember this, Bobo? Not at all. Maybe you weren't as much of a nerd as I was, but I labeled everything. But yeah, it had like a spinning wheel you would imprint. Basically, it would push through the bottom of the tape and make a little letter, and you would just repeat that until you printed something. There's actually a wine that does this. It probably drew my attention to it. It's called Saldo, S-A-L-D-O. So if you look up Saldo Wine Label, their label is a play on this. So look at images on Google, and you'll see the label actually looks like one of these old school label maker printouts. And so anyway, I thought that was pretty cool. And they used to, back in the day, the wine used to, this wine's been around for a while, they used to actually, it was more raised. Now I feel like it's not as raised anymore. But I still look up why they did that, what the story is behind that. But anyway, now the new labels, of course, do, they're all electronic and they print them out. But anyway, I love that kind of stuff. 888-RICH-101, 888-742-4101. The website for the show is richontech.tv. So if you want anything that I mention, I always link it up there. Just tap radio at the top. This is episode 182, so everything will be there. Coming up, we've got to talk about this new ChatGBT Live. It got a giant makeover, and we are getting closer to AI sounding more like humans when you chat with them. This is Rich on Tech. What's up, fam? I'm sports journalist Ari Chambers. Hey, what's up, y'all? It's your girl, Sam Jay. And we're the hosts of Everyone Watches Women's Sports, a new podcast from Together and I Heart Women's Sports. Because let's be real, women's sports is giving us way too much to talk about these days. The highlights, the rivalries, the breakout starts, the moments that take over your entire timeline. And the conversations that start during the game and somehow keep going all week. Every week, we're breaking down the biggest stories across women's sports. we'll give you our takes, our debates and probably a few disagreements we'll talk to athletes, celebrate big moments and get into what's happening on and off the field court, track and beyond because we're not just interested in what happened we're interested in why everyone's talking about it because everyone watches women's sports so if you're already a fan or you're just getting into the game there's a seat for you right here listen to everyone watches women's sports on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Emily Oster. I'm an economist and data expert. And I'm Perry Wilson. I'm a medical doctor. And this is our new podcast, Wellness Actually. Because you're getting a staggering amount of health and wellness information nowadays, and some of it is awesome. And some of it is, well, actually bullshit. Fortunately, we're both people who know how to read studies, parse data and can tell you what's worth trying out and what you can safely ignore. Each episode, we tackle the health news of the week and then take a deeper dive into a misunderstood health and wellness topic like... What's the deal with peptides? What's the deal with GLP-1s? What's the deal with creatine? What's the deal with cupping? What's the deal with sleep? So join us for a weekly dose of sanity. It might actually be just what the doctor... Or the economist... Ordered. Listen to Wellness Actually on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. From daily news to dating fails, conspiracy theories to cooking with celebrities who can't actually cook, Amazon Music's got the most ad-free top podcasts ready to entertain, included with Prime. Welcome back to Rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here, hanging out with you, talking technology at 888-RICH-101. 1-888-742-4101. The website for the show is richontech.tv. This is episode 182. So go to richontech.tv slash 182, and that will bring you right to the show notes this week. So, yes, we are broadcasting from New York City this week. I'm here for a Bon Jovi concert, bringing my mom. Very exciting as a New Jersey native. But my wife and I, my wife is here. she joined me. We went to Grand Central to purchase or to go to the Apple store. And she needed a new Apple Watch, which I know, I know, I know. I always give advice to people to buy Apple products as soon as they're launched because you want to get the latest, greatest technology. And of course, we know the new Apple Watches are coming out in September. But against my better judgment, my wife is not the type to upgrade her stuff. Like the last time we got her Apple Watch, I think was three or four years ago, at least. And it wasn't broken or ruined or anything. In fact, that's what I love about Apple products. I'm going to gift the old Apple watch to one of my sisters and then my wife gets the upgrade. And so that's the beauty of it. They were offering $90 if you trade it in. No, it's much more valuable if you give it to a family member. So anyway, we go to this store in Grand Central and I'm not kidding, beautiful store. It's like built into the side of the entire Grand Central station. And you get there and you wait in line for about a second for someone to come up to you. And in the midst of this entire place, which is so busy and all these people catching their trains and all this hub of activity and buzz, you have this one-to-one conversation with this Apple employee who is just like the time has stopped for just you and them to chat and to figure out what you want and the band you want and back and forth. And it was just so amazing, the customer service. And then when we're checking out, he's like, hey, do you work for a large company? I said, yeah, but I don't think they have any discounts through Apple. He said, well, let me check. He checked and then he said, well, what about education or anything like that? I said, oh yeah, my wife works in education. And he's like, well, she's eligible for a discount. I said, ah, we tried signing, you know, it's not the thing where the Apple used to just let you get an education discount by just showing some sort of ID or basically, I don't even think they verified that you were in education. But now they use Unidaze, which is an online verification service. And so I remember the process. I think there was like some point when we didn't want to really verify through there. And so he said, well, just try it. I'll wait. I said, well, I know everyone's busy. There's so many people waiting. We'll take the time to do this. And so my wife goes on her phone. She gets out her student ID. Basically, after a couple of minutes, she had to reset her password because somehow she already had an email with this company. She reset her password. They sent a confirmation code to her work email. And all of a sudden it was like, you're verified. I was like, oh, that was easy. I said, yeah, it only took about five minutes. And she saved like $70 off the price of this Apple Watch. And I said, well, thank you so much for doing this for us. And he said, well, this is my pleasure. And we walked out of there. It was great. So my point is that this company, there is something special in that aspect of things. Customer service is a lost art these days. 99% of the time you go out and people are asking for a tip when they didn't do anything. And here it is. You go to this Apple store that is so busy and one of the busiest places in the world, and it feels like you are the only person in there with this other employee. And to me, I thought that was pretty amazing. It's just a testament to why this company is so popular and why they do things so well because that's the kind of stuff they do. And by the way, they saved me $70, so I love that. Anyway, that's my story about the Apple store. And the watch is beautiful, by the way. Great watch. And now, of course, we have another one we can gift someone. 888-RICH-101, 888-742-4101. I've got a note from Kim that I should take line one, Kathy in Temecula. Kathy, are you there? I am here. I'm on my landline. Well, Kim really was impressed with you. She is smitten with you. So what did you say to her? Well, that makes me feel good at 82 years old. Here's my story. I heard the lady calling who said she was a senior, and she was trying to save money, and we need to do that. I have Spectrum TV streaming. I have the basic package. It's the local channels, and I don't watch much TV. I get it because I get the Dodgers. They come with Spectrum. That's a big deal to me. It might not be to others. I also have their... That's a big deal. That's why they paid billions of dollars for that. Yeah, exactly. But, by the way, they were exclusive to Spectrum for a long time, but now I believe, I know Fubo has Dodgers as well. So for a long time, the only way you could get them was through Spectrum. Anyway, that's opening up now. We had DirecTV for 22 years, auto pay, the whole thing. They were great. It just got so expensive, and I did some shopping. And actually, a young man came to my door, and he was just, you know, working hard. He really was on it, seemed very honest. Anyway, the package they offered me was for two years. I think it ends in January. Believe me, I used to negotiate all the time with DirecTV. I would call and tell them, look, look at my record. Anyway, I could wheedle, and I would usually get a good price up until the last. Anyway, I have Wi-Fi, a landline, and my TV. I pay $142 a month for those three things. I did the speed test that you said to do on the Wi-Fi and on, I guess, without the Wi-Fi, which I don't know what that means, but without, and they were both, oh, now I can't find the paper that I wrote it. Oh, here it is. My Internet, without the Internet, it was, I mean, without the Wi-Fi, the speeds were 19.6 on the down and 9.12 on the up. Then when I checked the Wi-Fi, it was 121 on the down and 38.2 on the up. And I have no idea what that means, but it said it was good. Yeah, well, 120 down, so typically with cable, 120 down. I don't know what you're paying for through Spectrum. You may not know. My total bill for a landline, the Wi-Fi, and the TV and the streaming is $142 a month. Yeah, that's pretty good. Now, you don't have your mobile through them either, do you? But I have my mobile through T-Mobile. I have an Android phone. I do not do all banking and all that on my phone. I do that on my laptop. It's just easier for an old person. And I think I pay $15.26 a month for a prepaid, which gives me unlimited talk and text. And I text a lot, and I talk to my kid a lot. And I get five gigs of data per month. And I am probably like that woman you talked to earlier, usually using Wi-Fi. So I've never run out. I do play Wordle, all the games on the New York Times thing. I shop. I look around. I'm always looking stuff up. I never, and I don't know, why do people have to pay $300? I know if you're doing your work and your business and all that. I hear you. This is my mom. I'm telling you, she uses Mint Mobile, and she pays for the entire year in advance. And it's, I think, I think last time we paid her bill, it was like two, I don't know, maybe $200, 300, at the most $300, $250 for the year. I'm talking for the year for her sell signal. And she's got everything she needs. Now, it's not unlimited. It's like maybe 15 or 17 gigs a month, whatever it is, just like you're saying, you got five a month. But she tells all of her friends, like, hey, you know, all of her friends are on AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile paying $100 a month. And she's telling all of her friends, like, hey, I pay like $250 for the whole year. And they're like, well, you don't get this and you don't get that. And she's like, no, I get everything. My phone works exactly the way yours does. And so it is funny. People, these large traditional companies, I get it. There are some people that need, like myself, I'm willing to pay a premium for certain things like premium hotspot, unlimited hotspot, but not everyone needs that. And so I think it does pay to shop around. It does pay to wheel and deal, like you mentioned. And it does pay to bundle in certain circumstances. but it's all depending on what's best for you, right? Like, Kathy, you're telling me what works for you. Some other people that work from home or edit large video files or game or something like that, it may not work for them. Or if their phone, they're always traveling, they may need international data or something like that on their phone, and they're not going to get that for $15 a month. So it really depends, but I think the good news is there are so many options out there, and people are very scared to move between services. And I can tell you, yes, it's a little scary sometimes to switch from something that you've had for so long, but at the end of the day, it's never been easier to switch through these services and to change your line and to move your line or to port it. And most of the time it works out. Yes, there are some hiccups here and there, but at the same time, if you're going to save a substantial amount of money, I would say maybe you don't have to do it every year, but maybe once every other year, just take a look at what's available to you and go from there. So thanks for the call, Kathy. Really appreciate it. 888-RICH-101, 888-742-4101. Still got to tell you about ChatGBT's voice upgrade. Plus, we got two new events coming up. We've got Samsung announcing their next event, plus Google announcing their next event. I'll tell you all about that, plus your calls. And we're going to talk travel this hour right here on Rich on Tech. Welcome back to Rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here, hanging out with you, talking technology. 888-RICH-101-888-742-4101. The website for the show is richontech.tv. This is episode 182. If you want the show notes, they're all there. You can also sign up for my free newsletter. While you're there, just pop in your email address. I promise not to spam you, and I will send you a newsletter each week packed with all of the information I think you should know. It's kind of like this show, but in a newsletter. Phone lines are open, 888-RICH-101, 888-742-4101. Today's show is sponsored by Incogni. One question I get all the time is, Rich, how did they get my phone number or how did they know my name? The answer is usually a lot less mysterious than you think. There's an entire industry of data brokers whose business is collecting your personal information and selling it. They gather details like your phone number, your home address, your email address, your age, and even information about your relatives from public records and other sources. Then they make it easy for marketers, strangers, and of course, sadly, scammers to find you. I've spent lots of time telling you how to block spam calls and recognize phishing scams, but it's even better to make yourself harder to find in the first place. Your phone number is sitting on data broker sites right now. So is your home address, your email, and all of it is searchable and for sale. Scammers don't need to be hackers to get it. They just need a search engine and five minutes. All these scams start with one thing, your personal info being available to the wrong person. So forget the spam filters and the call blockers. The real fix is to disappear. And that's what Incogni does. They contact hundreds of data brokers and legally force them to remove your information. I've been using Incogni to get my names and info away from these data brokers, and they've done a very good job of that. They can't spam you if they can't find you. Right now, get 60% off with an exclusive deal at incogni.com slash rich. Go to incogni.com slash rich and take back your privacy. That's incogni.com slash r-i-c-h. All right, let's go to line three. We've got Meredith in Thousand Oaks. Meredith, you're on with Rich. Good afternoon out here. I upgraded. I'm with Verizon or Frontier, whatever you want to call it, and I upgraded my Internet to whole house and more speed than I'll ever need. In the process, it dropped. All my other extensions dropped it, you know, like my printer and my lights and so forth. My problem now is my printer, when it comes up, there's two choices that have the same name on them. And I've tried both of them. I can't figure out what was wrong. My question is, I have an Epson printer. Is there a way to delete the previous Wi-Fi connection and then just start all over? Yes, it's a factory reset. So that's what I would do. It depends on the model, which is what the process is going to be. So you can factory reset. But it depends on – which model do you have? I can see if I can look it up real quick. Do you know? It's an ET2850. Okay. I'm making a one-time exception to our no printer question rule here. Oh. Because it's part of a bigger question, so that's fine. I'm having problems all over the house with this issue, but the printer is the most important. Well, now, who set this up for you? Who set up the Verizon? Did they just, like, mail this to you and leave it up to you, or did, like, a technician come out? No. Oh, I've had, I think, four technicians coming out through this whole process. Okay. So here's my general advice when it comes to switching your Wi-Fi. And I'm not sure if they told you this or they explained this, but in general, when you switch your Wi-Fi to a new router and a new system, The ideal thing, if you have a bunch of devices in your home already set up, is to use the same SSID, so the same Wi-Fi network name and password as your old system. And when you do that, guess what happens? All of your gadgets just carry over. They go, oh, here's the network. I've got it already, even if it's a different router. Did they not do that? I used the same name, but he told me to change passwords. Okay. So if you go back in, there's another way to do this. Now, did you go through and change the passwords on all your devices so far? You've reconnected? On the ones that are working, yes. Okay. So you still have some more to do. So there's two ways. At this time, Meredith, you can either, there's a fork in the road. You can either go back on your router and change the password to your old one and then restart your stuff, and everything will come back to life, and it'll find the new router. You can do that. or if you just want to fix them one by one, like you just need to get through this printer situation, you can do that as well. So if you want to keep the new password, you know, you can do this. But basically, if you have a little LCD display on this printer? Yes. Okay. So you're going to go to settings on that display, and then it says restore default settings, and then it says clear all data and settings. And so once you do that, that will basically, you know, you press the little home button on there. You'll see settings. You have to use those little tiny arrows. It's a very tiny display, I know, because I have one of these printers. Yeah, it's a pain. I don't know who gave the green light to approve something like that, leaving a factory. But, like, it's just impossible to even see or navigate. Those little buttons they have, I don't even understand what the icons are on them. So, anyway, one's up, one's down, left, right, you know, kind of thing. But go into your home button, settings, and look for restore default settings. And then usually it's going to be the clear all data and settings, and that should reset the printer to factory, and then you can just reset it up with your Internet connection. But, yeah, I wish they would have told you that. Yeah, I wish they had too. Yeah, either had me use a completely different name or because I keep running into this situation where it comes up with the name, but the password doesn't match, and I know what the password is. There's no question. In fact, I just put in a new item, and it loaded right up, no problem. Yeah, and it's a little confusing because, yes, it still knows the old user, the old Wi-Fi network name, but then the passwords change, and not every product is as smart. Some of them get really confused when this happens, And so I can see why that would create some issues. But, yeah, in the future, just, you know, for everyone else, that may be changing. And I did this exactly once, Meredith. I will tell you, as you might imagine, I have a bunch of smart home stuff that I test in my house. And the first time I ever did this, this was many years ago, I was like, all right, new Wi-Fi networks. You know, I got a new router. And I was like, okay, now we're going to do a whole new setup. And let me do a whole new name and everything. And I realized in about 10 seconds my mistake when every single light in my home, every single camera, every single thing that I had set up all had to be reset. And I was like, oh, no, why did I do that? And I will never do that again. That's exactly what happened to me. Every light, every so much. Oh, I'm sorry. Well, hopefully you can get this printer back up and running. And once you do that, I know printers are the toughest piece of smart home machinery that we have. So if you get that working, Meredith, I feel like everything else in your home will fall into place. Thank you so much, Rich. All right. Have a great day. And by the way, I have remembered that same label maker. Oh, you do? You remember it? It's embossed, right? I still have stickers on some of my old kitchen things. Yes, Dymo. Dymo Organizer Express Pro. Yeah, it's an embosser. That's what it's called. Yeah. Yeah. So I know. Stickers lasted forever. They did. That's why they got rid of it. All the good stuff back in the day lasted forever. That's why they got rid of it, because they want you to update everything nowadays and every year, you know? Okay. Thanks for the call. Appreciate it. 888 888 If you have ChatGPT on your phone or on your computer ChatGPT has a new voice experience It called ChatGPT Live And the biggest change is full duplex conversation That means it's not like a computer where it's like talk, wait for response, talk. You can now just have a back and forth conversation. If you want to know how to find this, just open up the ChatGPT app on your phone. And there is a next to the search box, there's a little blue icon. If it's lit up in blue, you know you have the new experience. Just try chatting with it. It is wild. We are getting much closer to an AI assistant that is just truly remarkable. Coming up, we're going to talk travel tips coming up next. Welcome back to Rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology, 888-RICH-101, 888-742-4101. Coming to you live from New York City this weekend. We've got two big events coming up. Samsung announced Galaxy Unpacked Wednesday, July 22nd in London. Yes, I will be there. Very exciting. The official invitation is a new shape unfolds. Yes, we're probably getting a new wider Galaxy Z foldable. So more of a widescreen foldable when you open it, which is going to be great for watching movies. Also expected the Z Flip 8, maybe a new watch, maybe a preview of Samsung's smart glasses. And if you want, if you think you're going to buy one of these foldable phones from Samsung, you might want to sign up, put your email address. You can get a $30 Samsung, I believe it's a Samsung credit towards the new phone. And then not to be outdone, Google has their event happening. They announced theirs, made by Google, Wednesday, August 12th, right here in New York City. Keynote begins at 6 p.m. Interesting. They're doing a nighttime one. It will be live streamed, but of course, this is going to be for the next generation of Pixel devices, Pixel 11, Pixel 11 Pro, Pro XL, the Pro Fold, and a Pixel Watch 5. None of that's been announced publicly, but of course, that's what we're expecting. Keep in mind, this is a little bit earlier than last year's Pixel launch, which I can remember going to. They had Jimmy Fallon host it. It was like a Tonight Show takeoff, but launching phones. And this is all a prelude to what Apple is going to do in September. They're expected to have a foldable phone. So my advice right now, if you are buying or in the market for a smartphone, you probably want to wait until September because then you'll see what Apple's doing, what Samsung's doing, and what Google's doing. And you'll have all the information at hand to make a great decision. All right. With that said, we've got Marissa Strang. She is a travel blogger and founder of the Marissa Daily. And she talks a lot about how technology can help travelers find deals. Marissa, welcome to the show. Hi, Rich. Thanks for having me. Thanks for being here. You're on the East Coast, aren't you? I am. I'm in the D.C. area. Okay, nice. So tell us a little bit about yourself. How did you get started in this whole travel world and giving people tips on this? Yeah. So essentially I grew up traveling with my family and always loved it. And then fast forwarding in grad school, I started a blog where I talked about lifestyle, travel, all these different things. But I noticed the more I talked about trips, the more I talked about travel planning, people really just wanted to know, how are you doing this? How are you booking cheap flights? How are you always on the go? and how can I do that for myself? So I continue to grow my platform, sharing all the resources I can to help other people make memories. And, you know, six years later, here we are. I quit my corporate job in 2022 and now I do it full time. Wow. I love hearing that. Not that I'm saying you should quit your job, but I love hearing that, you know, you, there is, there's a world out there where you can make a living doing something like this, doing something you love and it's on your own accord. I mean, you knew what it was like to work for someone else. And now I'm sure it's even tougher to work for yourself, but much more satisfying for sure. Where can we find you online, by the way? What's the best way to follow you? Yeah, the best platform to find me is on Instagram at marissa.daily. That's one R, two S's, daily like every day. Or if people are interested in reading longer travel guides, I have a lot of great guides on themarissadaily.com. All right. So give us all your secrets. First off, I mean, I know everyone's using AI to plan trips, what do you make of that? Do you think it's reliable? Do you think it's good? Yeah, I think it's so interesting, right? Technology has evolved so much in the travel planning sphere. I mean, before, you know, people relied on travel agents, side books, an amalgamation of a million Google searches. But now, a lot of the times you can get everything in one area, whether you're using Google and it has this new controversial AI tool where it kind of scrubs all the websites and compiles it into one answer. Or a lot of people are using ChatGPT and Gemini. So it's really interesting to see these chatbots kind of arrive on the scene where they scrape all this information and bring it together. Now, the question of whether it's reliable is a little touchy, right? Because a lot of the times I think AI kind of lacks the nuance or the really human touch of what someone might need to, like, understand what is real and what's not, whether something's a tourist trap and what's not, whether something's open and what's not. Is it going to send you all the way through the seven boroughs in one day, and it doesn't make sense because it doesn't have always the perspective of, like, what's close to each other. And then also there was a story recently where a couple didn't know, AI didn't essentially tell them they needed a visa to get into a country, or I think it said the country was visa-free, and then they arrived to the border and they weren't let in. And so it's really interesting. I think that AI is a very powerful tool, and I do think it's a great tool for travel planning, but it's so important to do your own due diligence and not just accept it at face value. Yeah, that is very, very true. And two notes on that. First off, yes, double check what it's telling you. Like my kid was asking about going into Canada, and he's like, oh, I think you only need this. And I was like, well, I don't know. You might want to double check that, like, on the official Canadian website, right? Like don't just take what that AI overview is telling you. And then yesterday, my wife and I were going for some ice cream, and I looked up. I wanted vegan soft serve with rainbow sprinkles. And so I looked it up. I found this little place, and it said it had vegan ube ice cream. I think I'm saying that right, or soft serve. We walk all the way over there. It was like 20 minutes, and it turns out the vegan ice cream was just regular ice cream. It wasn't the soft serve. And so AI got something a little bit right. They did have something vegan that was really unique and interesting, but it was not exactly what I looked for. And, like, I didn't cross-reference. We just went right on this one, you know, search I did. But anyway, so cross-reference, double-check everything for sure. What about some, I mean, everyone wants to know how to book the best flight deals. Like, what's your advice there? Yeah, so, I mean, Google Flights is always the best place to start, in my opinion. I do like to use Skyscanners sometimes, but Google Flights have been kind of my primary place to look for flight deals. I love that when you go on the app, there's now like this new AI feature, actually, where you could type in and say, hey, I mean, me being in the D.C. area, I'd love to have a seven-day trip to the Caribbean in the next four months. Can you look for some flight deals? And it'll pull up some great deals. Now, sometimes the route might be 27 hours, so you just go back in, you change the prompt, and you say, I definitely want the route to be less than eight hours. And it will kind of compile all these different flight options for you. But outside of that feature, it's just amazing that it has this calendar where you can kind of look and choose your home airport, choose where you want to go, and then essentially look at each day and see which days have the cheapest site routes. It's just so amazing to have all of that in one place rather than going to 20 different airline websites and trying to compile it yourself. What about some apps? Do you have any apps that you really rely on? I know Flighty is a popular app that people like for travel. Is there anything that you kind of like your secret weapon when you travel? Yeah. I mean, before the trip, I love to use Hopper also sometimes to, like, track flights because it's really good for those notifications. Like, hey, your flight is dropped. Google Flights also has that. But sometimes the emails get lost in my 2,000 emails that I have. So I do like to use Hopper because it will just give me the push notifications on tracking flights. But also when I'm on the trip compiling this itinerary, I have this app called TripIt, where as soon as you book a flight, hotel, car, other reservation, you just forward the confirmation email to plans at TripIt.com, and it will compile it all together and add it into an itinerary for your trip. So it's really nice just to have everything in one place. Third, I love the XE app. It's the currency converter by XE, and it just helps to provide these, like, real-time currency conversions. because I feel like sometimes when we're in another country, it feels like we're spending monopoly money. Like, you don't really know how much you're spending. You're just swipe, swipe, swipe. We're spending the local currency. So it's nice to have XE up to be able in real time to see that conversion rate and realize, oh, maybe that's a little more than I thought it was. That's so true. I like to just ignore the conversion rate and be like, I don't even know what this is. I'm just going to assume there's, like, some kind of rounding. Like, if it's, like, $10,000, I'm like, oh, that's probably $100. I don't really know, even though when you do the XC thing. All right. Any technology that you can't leave home without when you travel? I mean, anything that you like to bring on your trips? Oh, I would say one that I love. Well, first of all, I am always worried when bags are force-checked. I'm a carry-on only girly. I really try to stuff everything so I can just bring it on with me. But in the event that I can't, I love my Apple AirTags. I pack them in all of my luggage. always helps me to know where my luggage is going, whether it's made it on the plane, whether it hasn't. And actually now on the newest iteration of them, they have a relationship with some of the airlines. So if your luggage gets misplaced, you can just send them the find my link and the airlines can look for it themselves. So that's really nice that they have this partner program. Outside of that, of course, I love to use my Apple Watch because it really helps me when I'm looking for stuff. Or if I'm not a local somewhere and I don't want to be holding up my phone looking at the map, It's nice that it gives you those push notifications telling you turn here, turn right here. I use my – this sounds like an Apple ad now, but I use my AirPods everywhere. Now they have real-time translations. So if you're trying to listen to something and translate it, it has that real-time translation feature. Have you tried that? Have you used that in real life? Because I keep wanting to try that. I have not used that in real life. I haven't yet, but I actually have some trips planned this year where I'm planning to. So I did just get, like, the newest version, and, like, that's my plan is, like, on these trips to try to see how reliable it is. But it's really exciting, and I'm sure they'll continue to, like, update the software and make it better and better. All right. We're going to leave it there. Marissa.Daily on Instagram. Marissa.Daily on Instagram if you want all of her travel tips. Thanks so much for joining me today. Thanks for having me. Where are you off to next? I am off to Belize in actually a week and a half. So, yeah, I'll be there for a week. Okay, have fun. Enjoy. 888-RICH-101, 888-742-4101. Get those calls in. We'll have more from you coming up next. Welcome back to Rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here, hanging out with you from the top of the Marriott State Building in New York City, talking technology at 888-RICH-101-888-742-4101. Marriott did not sponsor this. No, I'm just joking. But yes, I am in New York City for the Bon Jovi concert this weekend. And like I said, as any native New Jerseyan, it's like an homage, right? You got to do it. You got to make the pilgrimage once. Got to see Bruce Springsteen, Bon Jovi. I mean, Frank Sinatra would have been fun, but I'll listen to him on my Sundays while I'm making Sunday supper. But we've got lots to talk about still on the show. This trip, I actually, we were just talking travel, and it's funny because I was like, you know what, I want to be one of those people that packs just in a carryout. I'm like, let me try that for one of my trips because I hate doing that. I like to take as much stuff as I want, right? And so I'm always like, I'll just take a big bag. I'll check it. It's fine. But I'm like, every single person I know, I don't know how they do it. They all pack in a carry-on. And I'm like, I need like 10,000 things when I travel. I want options. So this time I said, you know what? I went on ChatGBT. I said exactly where I was going for how many days and what I was doing. And, you know, the dinners I was having, the events I was going to. And I said, give me the packing list. And sure enough, it came up with a packing list. Like AI comes up with an answer for everything, whether it's right or wrong. And I packed according to that list. Now, I will tell you, I followed it mostly. I might have put like an extra thing or two in there, an extra shirt. But for my pants and stuff, I packed exactly what it said. And I will tell you, and yes, it all fit in a carry-on. I had room to spare. My wife was like, how did you do that? I said, I just literally followed ChatGPG's instructions. And I'm not kidding. It has been so lean for wearing stuff. I'm so used to just having all this stuff at my disposal. and now I'm like, oh, no, I got to fold that back up and use it later or hang it up and wear that another time if I only wore it for like an hour or something. So it can work, but it is, I don't know how you people pack in just to carry on. It is a really tough thing for me to do. I have so much stuff, even my backpack. One more thing about travel before we get to Gary and Indio here. Flighty, the app I love, a lot of people love this app. They have a new feature called connection assistant. So when you have a layover somewhere, it will tell you how good or how tough that layover is going to be. And it also tells you what you need to do, whether you need to change terminals, go through security, clear passport, recheck your bags, ride a train, whatever you need to know about that layover, it will tell you. And it will tell you how long that step usually takes. It personalizes everything. And it tells you if your connection is relaxed, normal, tight, or at risk. And I can tell you my next travel, I already popped it into the Flighty app. It tells me that my connection, this is so great. And I think the way to do this, if you want to figure out your connection before, is just put the information into the Flighty app. But I'm looking at my next connection. And let's see, where is it here? It is right there. It says relaxed. I've got a two hour and nine minute connection. And that's one hour, 19 minutes, more than the suggested minimum. And oh my gosh, this is really, really precise. Oh my God, this is like super nerdy. But it tells you what terminal you start out in, what exactly you have to do to plane in terminal three, follow the airside connector to the international terminal. I mean, this is pretty exact. So you got to give flighty credit. They have really done a good job with their app and making travel so much easier. The thing that's annoying is that it's still Apple only. So if you're on Android, there's an app called Buy Air. It's not as good, but it does a lot of the same things. But I really wish that Flighty, please, Flighty, can you please just make an Android version of this app as well? And a lot of these features, especially the premium features, do require a subscription. All right, enough about that. Let's go to Gary in Indio. You're on with Rich. I've got a question. Rich, I've got a question. You there? Yeah, I'm here. Sorry, I meant to say line one for Bobo, who's switching today, but go ahead. He figured it out. That's okay. Hey, I have a friend that her husband recently died, and she's not very tech savvy. And I'm not the savviest. And we want to go into her computer and see how many duplicate subscriptions he's had. Like he might have five Clean My Computer apps or things like that, and we want to clean it up so she's not paying for all these. Is there an easy way to do it or an app that scans everything? I don't think there's an – I'm sorry to hear about your friend's husband, first off. Thank you. And I don't think there's an easy way to do this. And you bring up a good point. This is one of those things where you're basically left to, you know, clean up the piece, pick up the pieces, figure out what this person had, what they subscribed to. And some of these may be on, like, a year subscription. So you may not figure this out until the next time around when the charge comes through. Oh, right. Yeah. So what I would do is I would take notice. I would go on the computer. You know, there's several ways to do this, and this could also include streaming subscriptions. It could include things that they had, you know, been to. Right. And there's, by the way, a million and one ways to do this. I'm just going to tell you what I think might be the easiest. I think the easiest would be to go through the computer, number one, and just look at all the apps that are installed on there and on the phone, and you can go through and get an idea of, okay, here's an app that's an antivirus app. Does that have a subscription involved? And kind of just take note of those. That's number one. Go on the iPhone, same thing. I think the easiest way to do this is really to go through and probably if you have the accounts, like a Chase account, like whatever credit card or bank account they have, probably the easiest way is to go through and export a year's. That's going to be really tricky. For the monthly subscriptions, you might just go through and export a statement, maybe take a sample of like six months of statements, print those out, and go through and highlight anything that might be construed as a subscription. Alternatively, you can take those and you can toss them into ChatGBT if you're comfortable doing that and saying, hey, identify anything here that may be a recurring subscription. You can do that. On the iPhone, if they have an iPhone or an Android, it's pretty easy to figure out what they've been subscribed to because you can go into your settings up at the top where it has your name. There's a subscription section on Apple, and that will show you all your subscriptions there. And then on Google, you can just Google Play subscriptions online, and it will say manage Google Play subscriptions. You can see all the things subscribed to on there. But otherwise, there's not really like a, there are apps like the app Rocket Money can go through, but you have to link up all of the different bank accounts. So you'd have to be comfortable doing that. ChatGBT also has the ability to link up the bank accounts, and it will find all of the subscriptions as well. They have a thing called ChatGBT Finances, and I'm actually signed up for that. It works really well. It went through all of my stuff, and it presents a list of every single subscription you're in. So the other thing you can do is cancel out the credit cards, and you can start fresh with a new card. I know that's not ideal, but, yeah, Gary, you've got your work cut out for you here, helping your friend here for sure. Okay. Thank you very much, Rich. All right. Good luck with that. Appreciate the call. 888-RICH-101. Another hour of Rich on Tech coming up right after this. Are we ready? What's up, fam? I'm sports journalist Ari Chambers. Hey, what's up, y'all? It's your girl, Sam Jay. And we're the hosts of Everyone Watches Women's Sports, a new podcast from Together and I Heart Women's Sports. Because let's be real, women's sports is giving us way too much to talk about these days. The highlights, the rivalries, the breakout stars, the moments that take over your entire timeline. And the conversations that start during the game and somehow keep going all week. Every week, we're breaking down the biggest stories across women's sports. We'll give you our takes, our debates, and probably a few disagreements. We'll talk to athletes, celebrate big moments, and get into what's happening on and off the field, court, track, and beyond. Because we're not just interested in what happened, we're interested in why everyone's talking about it. Because everyone watches women's sports. So if you're already a fan, or you're just getting into the game, there's a seat for you right here. Listen to Everyone Watches Women's Sports on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Emily Oster. I'm an economist and data expert. And I'm Perry Wilson. I'm a medical doctor. And this is our new podcast, Wellness Actually. Because you're getting a staggering amount of health and wellness information nowadays, and some of it is awesome. And some of it is, well, actually, bulls**t. Fortunately, we're both people who know how to read studies, parse data, and can tell you what's worth trying out and what you can safely ignore. Each episode, we tackle the health news of the week and then take a deeper dive into a misunderstood health and wellness topic like... What's the deal with peptides? What's the deal with GLP-1s? What's the deal with creatine? What's the deal with cupping? What's the deal with sleep? So join us for a weekly dose of sanity. It might actually be just what the doctor... Or the economist... Ordered. Listen to Wellness Actually on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. From daily news to dating fails, conspiracy theories to cooking with celebrities who can't actually cook, Amazon Music's got the most ad-free top podcasts ready to entertain, included with Prime. Welcome back to Rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here, hanging out with you, talking technology. 888-RICH-101-888-742-4101. Broadcasting live from New York City this weekend. Welcome back to Rich on Tech. New York City, always a fun place to be. So much going on here. I don't know, should I give away the place that I went to? It's one of my friend's favorite places. And my wife and I ended up going there last night to check it out. It's this place called, And I guess it's fine. I mean, if you ever visit New York City, it's a really cool spot. It's called the Portrait Bar. My pal, Matt Swider, who runs theshortcut.com, he's always mentioning it. And we stumbled upon it last night, and it was great. Really, really cool little place. And one of the most unique things I've ever eaten, I know I talk a lot about vegan. I'm not a vegan. I'm not a vegetarian. But I do appreciate those foods sometimes. And so last night they had this mustrami, I think it was called, mustrami sandwich, mustrami sandwich. And it was a mushroom pastrami sandwich at the Porcher Bar. And I've never heard of this, but it was basically mushrooms that were sort of pastrami spiced with sauerkraut, Swiss, Thousand Island, and rye bread. And it was delicious. Really, like I'm craving that again. I would have that any day of the week. And my wife and I split it, and it was just delicious. So anyway, if you're in town, check it out. It's called The Portrait Bar. It's in some fancy hotel. So it's one of those places that you can't just walk by and see. Like, you would have to know about this place to go in there. 888-RICH-101, 888-742-4101. There are some weird things that can mess up your Wi-Fi. The BBC did an interview with Alex Hills, one of the pioneers of Wi-Fi. and yeah, he says microwave ovens can interfere with older Wi-Fi because they both use the 2.4 gigahertz frequency. Routers that use the 5 gigahertz or 6 are much less susceptible to interference. Fish tanks, you got a fish tank, that could be bad for your Wi-Fi. Water absorbs radio waves, so a large aquarium between your router and your laptop could create a dead zone. Mirrors and large TVs. Don't put your router behind your TV or near a mirror. They can reflect Wi-Fi signals. So do not do that. Dense materials. We know this from living in lots of apartments over the years. Old school buildings, brick, concrete, stone, they all weaken Wi-Fi much more than drywall or wood. So one of the easiest fixes, if you're getting a bad Wi-Fi signal before you blow everything up, just move your router to a new location. Put it in a central location. Put it up as high as possible. Keep it out. Do not put it inside a cabinet or inside a closet. That will not make your Wi-Fi signal better. And if that does not work, if one router is not enough, you might want to consider getting a mesh Wi-Fi system. The one I like is called Eero, but there are plenty out there. Those give you multiple access points that all work together to give you better coverage. And, yeah, I'm trying to, let's see. Weather doesn't usually affect Wi-Fi inside your home, but snow, ice, or extreme temperatures can disrupt infrastructure outside or block satellite internet dishes. So anyway, that's the thing. Like if you're paying for, you know, 500 down and you're only getting 100 through your system in your house, it's probably your Wi-Fi signal. That's probably what's happening. So when you do a speed test, you should always plug your computer into your router so that way you can get a true speed test and see how good it is. All right, let's go to line four, Cam in Buena Park. Cam, are you there? Yes, I'm here again. Thank you for taking my part. I love your show, and you have great, great excellence and power for novice users. I appreciate that. Thank you. Okay. I have a 10-year-old Wi-Fi router. I named it Cam 2.5 back 10 years ago. I bought a few devices. One of these devices, Thermostate, Honeywell, and some of the cameras, which I cannot, a ring camera that I have to put down. So I want to buy a new router, Wi-Fi network router, and I want to name called CAM 2.5, which I already have the same name, so I don't have to mess with my all existing devices. So I bought this T-Mobile Wi-Fi, you know, this modem with Wi-Fi on it. And when I name it 2.5, it doesn't allow special character, which is Dart. So I was wondering, is that device that I can buy and name it called CAM 2.5? Oh, interesting. So it won't allow you to put the period in there? Yes. on the T-Mobile router. It does allow, but it's in special character not allowed. Okay, so special character not allowed. Interesting. Okay, so the only thing you could do is really get another router that you plug into the T-Mobile and then use that because I haven't tried to put a period in my – I have some dashes in my Wi-Fi name, so that doesn't seem to mess it up. I've not tried to put a dot in there or a period. So if it's not allowing that, that might be part of their rules on there. You could get... No, no, I can buy any... I just want to buy a new Wi-Fi device or network device or network Wi-Fi. So I can name it CAM 2.5. So that's why I don't have to change setting on my existing device, which I already configured as CAM 2.5. Right. This is what we talked about earlier, where if you get a new Wi-Fi router and you name the network the same as your old one, everything will carry over. In this case, if you've got the T-Mobile. Is this the T-Mobile home internet? Well, no. I mean, T-Mobile, they cross it out. I'll just take an example. I have a Wi-Fi router that I want. This is 10 years old, and I name it 2.5. And I want to buy a new one. so which has a better speed, but I want to name it 2.5. Okay, right. So you just need a new router that will allow you to do this. So I think the bottom line is if the one that you're using is not allowing you to do this, I would just take a look at some of the top-rated Wi-Fi routers. If you don't need a mesh networking system, the TP-Links rate really highly. I know there's a little controversy with the TP-Links and the whole, you know, band and China stuff and the whole router situation. None of that has really happened yet, and they keep pushing the deadlines and all this stuff. So until then, the TP-Links are still pretty highly rated. So check out those, TP-Link Archer specifically. A lot of the reviewers like those. I personally like the Eero, which is really a good one. The Eero and Amazon has a bunch of those. I have not tried doing that, but I don't see why you wouldn't be able to. So I have not seen a place where you can't do that, but I don't know because I have not tested that personally. So I'd have to go back into my Internet and see if I can rename a network that. So I'm a little confused. Is the old router not letting you do it or the new one that you purchased not letting you do it? Well the old one is working fine but I want to get rid of it and buy a new one But when a new one I got it from T you know it just an example but when I set it up as a name called CAM 2.5, it doesn't allow me. I can do underscore or dash, but not dot. Okay, got it. I'll ask Rich, see if any other network device, Wi-Fi device that I can buy and name it CAM 2.5. I'm going to see if that is a universal thing or just a T-Mobile thing. So I'm going to try on my phone right here. I'm going to go Rich 2.5, and let's see if it allows me to do that. And it does. So it sounds like that is a restriction on this particular router. So I think if you find another router you like and it works well, I would just go with that, and I think you'll be okay. Thanks for the call, Cam. Appreciate that. And, yeah, I would say check out the TP links. Check out the Euros if you want something that's simple. The Asus routers are also great. There's just so many. Any of them will work for what you're doing. It just sounds like that is a limitation of that specific T-Mobile router that you got somehow. Real quick, before we go to break, there is a Sabre, which is a personal safety company. They have new smart pepper spray. This is pepper spray that pairs with your smartphone over Bluetooth. And when you use the pepper spray, it automatically sends your GPS location to your emergency contacts. It's kind of interesting. So the contacts will receive a text message with your live location, which continues until you mark yourself as safe. as safe. They do not need the app themselves. And let's see here. Now, it's going to email you. It's going to text your contacts. If you want it to call 911, you would actually have to pay for a subscription. But kind of interesting. It makes a lot of sense. I know they've had smart pepper spray before, but this one seems to be even smarter. The only limitation I would say is because this relies on your phone, your phone has to be nearby, has to be powered on, and it has to be paired with this and the app has to be connected. And on the iPhone, we know that apps can go to sleep in the background. So this will tell you, I guess, if the app isn't ready, you know, or somehow got disconnected. But so it's not something I feel like it'd be really tough to make sure this works 100% of the time, but it's kind of a neat thing to have as a backup. But anyway, Saber Smart Pepper Spray, I will put a link on the website. I thought that was pretty interesting. Rich on tech dot TV. All right. 888-RICH-101-888-742-4101. Still got more guests coming up to talk about accessibility. I'm also going to tell you how to turn an old iPhone into the perfect kid's phone. Wired had a cool article about this feature. I'll tell you what it is coming up right after this. Welcome back to Rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology, 888-RICH-101-888-742-4101. I get really excited about new things and ChatGPT came out with a whole new desktop app that I immediately downloaded and immediately uninstalled my old ChatGPT app and then I realized my mistake. So number one, the new app, if you are not like a major ChatGPT power user, do not download it. You don't need it. The old app will continue to get support. The old app will continue to work. And in fact, for most people, the old app is probably better because it doesn't burn through all of your usage in about 10 seconds like I did. So the new app is much more powerful for controlling your computer. And there is one feature that I really like about it, and this is what I did. So my old setup was I had Chrome as my browser, and then I had ChatGPT's Atlas as my other browser. and I would use that because I really loved how ChatGBT was integrated into the sidebar. And that means that anything that I was looking at on my browser, ChatGBT could offer assistance or summarization or when I'm doing my email, it can help me with my emails. And so that was a great thing to have. Well, they now built that feature into Chrome, but as a sidebar. But the problem is you need the new ChatGBT app to use it. It doesn't work with the old ChatGBT app. So that's why I did this whole installation. But then I quickly realized the new ChatGBT app is all about controlling your computer and all these tasks and agents and things like that that I really don't need just now. And so that's really why you would want it. If you're a power user because it can automate your browser, control your computer, do AI coding, and work through all your different apps that are on your computer, that's really what it's for. This idea of like an AI agent. It took me a while to realize that even on the new app, you can open up what's like a classic chat now. I mean, it's just really confusing. So bottom line, don't download the new ChatGPT app unless you need the power functionality of controlling your computer, because the ChatGPT Classic is fine. It's going to work just fine. It was quite the mess on my computer when I did this all. And now I've gotten rid of the Atlas browser, and I need that again. And so it's like a whole big thing. But anyway, ChatGPT did get some updates to the models and things like that. And it's fast. And I guess the new one is called Sol, ChatGPT Sol, which is, let's see, 5.6 Sol. It's got all these different – I mean, it's just this AI stuff is – you almost need like a full-time job just to figure out AI at this point, like how many things are available through there. So, okay, Wired had a cool article on assistive access. This is a feature that's built into the iPhone, but a lot of people don't realize that it could turn your phone into a much simpler phone. So it's typically, it was created for people with cognitive disabilities, but the author, Jeremy White in Wired, says, hey, it also works really well as a stripped-down phone for kids. So instead of relying on screen time, you can choose exactly which apps appear on the phone. Calls, messages, maps, camera, photos, music, you can make it simple. One of the biggest advantages, he says, is that you can completely eliminate web browsing by not including Safari or any other browser. And if anyone texts your kid a web link, they won't be able to open it because they won't have access to a web browser. You can also decide who the child can call or text, whether the keypad is available, whether speakerphone can be used, anything. Basically, it is all customizable through this assistive access. does require a separate passcode, so kids can't just exit this interface and go to the normal one. And the setup still supports all the features that parents want, like Maps, FaceTime, Find My Tracking, Apple Wallet, if you decide to enable them. The author says that he basically repurposed an iPhone 13 that was sitting in a drawer instead of buying a new device or paying for a minimal phone, because this did exactly what it needed. The only thing is he said voicemail doesn't work in assistive access. That's kind of strange. And you have to leave assistive access before powering off the phone. So that could be complicated because if a child needs to power the phone off for some reason, they wouldn't be able to unless they knew mom and dad's PIN. Anyway, if you want to check this out and see if it might work for a loved one that you know or someone that this might benefit, you go to settings, accessibility and look for assistive access and then tap set up assistive access. You choose the apps and then you choose a passcode. I'll link up the article on my website, rich on tech dot TV. Irma in Northern California writes, hey, Rich, I love your show. I tell everyone about it. I'm 88. I love the tech world and listen every week. Since I can't always catch you on the radio, I've been listening to the podcast, which I love. My question is about unwanted email. every morning and wake up to 50 or more junk messages. Is there any way to stop them without paying for a service? Well, first off, Irma, thanks for listening there in Northern California. Love that you love the show. So here is my tried and true method. Number one, only use the unsubscribe link on emails from legitimate companies that you recognize. We're talking Macy's, Home Depot, Bed Bath & Beyond, Container Store, whatever, Sweetgreen, Whatever you get emails from that are a legitimate company, they will honor that unsubscribe link, or if it's like a constant contact or any of those things like that, any of those subscriber mailing lists, they will honor that. If it's spam, do not click it. Don't even open it, because if you open these things, it might confirm that your email address is active. So anything that looks like spam, anything you did not sign up for, anything you don't want, do not open. Delete it. You can mark it as spam. So your email provider kind of learns from that and it will help block those in the future. But I think the real best tip that I have and why my inbox stays pretty clean, even though my address is everywhere, is I turn off what's called remote image loading. Look in your email settings. See if you have this. If you have this feature, you can turn it off. And basically, some senders will use hidden images to track when you open an email. And that's how they know that, oh, Irma has looked at this email. Let's send them more emails. And so if you turn off remote image loading, it disables that functionality, and they can't tell that you opened their email, and that is a great way to reduce your spam. Hopefully, those steps can help you cut down on those 50 or so junk messages. If they're going to your junk mail, then your email provider is doing their job. More Rich on Tech after this. welcome back to rich on tech rich demero here hanging out with you talking technology the website for the show rich on tech dot tv this is episode 182 so if you go to the website rich on tech dot tv slash that's a forward slash 182 you type that in it'll bring you straight to the show notes and it will bring you to uh more information about everything that i mentioned here. All right, joining me now is Christopher Kelly. He has been working in accessibility for a very long time and invited him to come on the show and talk about some of the websites, apps, anything that makes it easier for everyone to use technology, especially as we age. Chris, thanks so much for joining me today. Hey, it's great to be here. Thanks for inviting me. Yeah, so tell me about, you said you've worked in digital accessibility since 2002. What does does that mean exactly? So digital accessibility is similar to what other people might think of accessibility in the physical world. It's making digital interfaces, that's websites, software, applications, PDFs, Word documents, anything that's digital on your phone, computer, tablet, whatever, accessible to users with disabilities. And what we do as accessibility professionals is help designers and coders and developers build them in such a way that they can interact with assisted technology like screen readers or usable by keyboard only with adaptive mice and adaptive keyboards, Zoom technologies, things like that. It's very similar to building buildings. It's sort of the same as if you advise an architect on how to design a building with ramps and elevators to work well with a wheelchair. We just do it in the digital realm. And how do you think we are? Like, where are we at with this stuff? Do you think this has gotten better over the past couple of years? Do you think there's still a ways to go? Well, it's very much like the physical realm in the ADA. When I met my wife 24 years ago, she said to me, I thought the ADA fixed everything. And I'm like, well, child, that's so nice of you to think that. Things are better. Are they where we'd like them to be? No. That's why I still have a job, because there's still work to do. But things have definitely improved in the 22 years that I've been doing it, that's for sure. What are some of the things that folks with disabilities run into online? What are those issues? So what a lot of people don't realize is about 20% of the United States population has some sort of disability, and that covers everything, you know, cognitive, physical, mobility, and visual and hearing. But the things we run into in the digital realm, you know, when we're working on websites or applications is simple things like making sure your apps, if you're using a desktop computer or a laptop, that the application or website can be used with a keyboard only. Not everybody can use a mouse or a touchpad due to mobility issues, you know, Parkinson's, ALS, cerebral palsy like I've got, other disabilities. So make sure you can use a website just simply by tabbing with the tab on the key on the keyboard, moving around that way, hitting the enter keys, face bar to activate things. Make sure you design things so they work in a way with a keyboard that makes sense as well. Don't come up with weird new interfaces that people have to figure out. You don't have to hit Alt-X and left arrow just to do something. Just make it with the arrow keys, simple things like that. Missing Alt-Text on images is the most common thing. If you read about lawsuits related to digital accessibility, it's usually around missing all text on images. I've got a shopping site. I've got pictures of things. I didn't describe them, that sort of thing. Those are the two most common things. When it comes to screen reader users, they also run into problems with programmatic issues where forms aren't labeled properly so they know that the first name field is the first name field and last name and that sort of thing. Those are probably the three most common things you run into. And how do you tell if these things are there? Like you mentioned using a keyboard to navigate a website. How do you even know how to check for that? So the keyboard testing is the easiest thing, and anybody can do it. Again, it's just put your mouse away. If you've got a website, a blog, whatever that you're working on, and you're wondering if it's keyboard accessible, try to use it without your mouse. Just start tabbing with the keyboard and look on the screen, and can you see where focus goes? Because that's another issue. Sometimes the focus is moving around, but designers think the little focus indicator you get on things, you know, the sort of little box or underline that moves around as you tab, they make it go away because they don't like the look of it. Make sure that's there. Make sure you can see where you're at. And then just tab around, and when you get into fields, hit the enter key to activate them. See if you can type in those fields. If you've got a tab panel, go to that and see if the arrows move around on it. Just play around with the keyboard and see if you can do everything. And if you find you can't, then there's a problem because that's going to be a problem for mobility users. mobility impaired users but also screen reader users because screen readers on your laptop and your desktop all use the keyboard to navigate as well simple way to check that now i've heard of i think it's called jaws is the is one of the popular screen readers do you recommend any others that you like so what there's several out there i mean windows has its own built-in it's called narrator um it's okay um i have a friend who is blind who told me this was a long time ago So I'm sure it's improved since then. But he used to say, Narrator's the one you use while you're installing another one. On the Windows side, JAWS is the granddaddy. It's been out there for decades. It's fantastic. You have to pay for it. They have a subscription and purchase models and things like that. There's also one called NVDA, which stands for Non-Visual Desktop Access, I believe. It's a nonprofit out of Australia. They take donations. It's also very good. and you can install that and use it on your Windows machine. On the Mac side, Macs have one built in, same as they do on iPhones and iPads, and it's got the same name. It's called VoiceOver. VoiceOver, JAWS, and NVIDIA, they're a little bit different. There are some differences in some of the keyboard commands, but in basic functionality, they all basically do the same thing. But if you've got a Mac, it's already built in. And again, on the Windows side, JAWS, NVIDIA, or Narrator, those are all available to you. What about mobile phones? Do you feel like they have come a long way with these accessibility features, and are there any things that we should look into? I mean, I know there's an entire section on both the Pixel or on Android and on iPhone when it comes to accessibility. Are there any features that people should know about? So they all have their screen readers, too. If you're looking at an Android mobile device, whether it's a phone or a tablet, it's called TalkBack on the iOS side. Again, it's called VoiceOver. They use VoiceOver on the Apple side for everything, although on the desktop, They do operate differently because on a touch device you're not generally using a keyboard. You can. But those operate with swipe commands. So if you've got your screen up on your phone and anybody, if you've got one of these phones, you can go in and turn it on. It doesn't cost you a dime. It's built in. Just turn it on and start swiping around with it. You just use your fingers, go left and right, up and down, and you'll see it move around. You'll see a little box move around the screen, and then when it focuses on something, it'll read it to you. and what we do as digital accessibility people is make sure that that content is able to be accessed by the screen reader. It's very much like putting a ramp in a building. If I've got a wheelchair and want to get in, I need the ramp. That's what we put in the software is putting the ramps in so that that screen reader can get a hold of it. But it's built in right in there to your phone. You've got screen readers built into your Roku and Amazon Fire 6. There's screen readers built into Xbox and PlayStation. Those are relatively recent, newer improvements in those devices, but it's showing up everywhere now. So you said, okay, hold on. You said the TV, like the Roku, the Fire TV, and what was the other one, Xbox? Xbox and PlayStation. They all have, they're very rudimentary screen readers. They're not like on the computer, but they can read all the menus. And, you know, when you're going through the different menus and settings on those devices, it'll read them aloud to you. Wow. Okay, that's interesting. I'm seeing more and more of that. And, you know, one of the big questions I get, you know, for TV is obviously anything with audio. You know, people want to hear with their hearing aids or they want to – one person has hearing aids, one person wants to listen through the speaker or maybe through a headphone. So I'm getting – I'm seeing TV manufacturers build a lot more of these features in to make them easier. You said you've been doing this for a long time. So there's still a ways to go with all this stuff, I'm guessing, huh? Always. There's always improvements. Plus, the technology and the interfaces advance all the time. One of the big challenges we had with the rise of social media was the never-ending app, you know, because a lot of our technology was built around page-by-page things, you know, as far as dealing with accessibility. You go to this page, you go to that page, you go to that page. Very discreet, very defined. When it comes to something like a Facebook or a Twitter or Instagram or anything, it just never ends. So there are things you have to do from a coding standpoint underneath for screen reader users especially to help them understand that now I've scrolled up. You know, I've moved to a new post. I've moved to a new thing. Chatbots have the same sort of thing because there's always new information showing up. And so because of things like that that are always advancing and new things we come up with in digital interfaces that help a lot of visual users when it comes to our users who are blind or maybe have cognitive issues, can't keep up with some of the speed of things happening, there's always work for us to improve those things. All right. I've got about a minute left. Is there anything else you want to mention that I'm asking that you think folks should know? Just if you're working on websites and applications, as I said earlier, make sure it works with the keyboard. Check your color contrast because that's another thing that most people don't realize. You can use a tool called WebAIM Color Contrast Analyzer and other free ones out there to check and make sure that you're just getting enough brightness on from the text against the background. That helps all kinds of people. And that's probably the other thing to remember, too, is when it comes to accessibility, whether it's physical or digital, whatever we're doing to help folks with disabilities often helps other people, too. If you make that color contrast better, then someone like me who's got an astigmatism can read it better. If you put a ramp on a building, someone with a stroller can get in. It's all the same thing. All right. Chris Kelly, thanks so much for joining me, accessibility expert. A really, really interesting conversation, and thanks so much for your work there in digital accessibility. Sounds like you're helping many, many people out there. Really appreciate it. Thanks for coming on today. Thanks a lot. It's great to have a job where I feel like I'm doing some good. Oh, absolutely, 100%. All right. Oh, my gosh, it's already that time. It is time for the feedback. We will open up the comments, the emails, all that good stuff from you right after this. Welcome back to Rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology. It is that time once again for the feedback. And yes, this is Bon Jovi, the reason I'm in New York City to see his show. Madison Square Garden. I mean, you got to. I'm from New Jersey. I figured what a fun time for my mom. Even though when I got her the tickets, she said, well, you know, I've already seen him twice. I said, well, okay. I mean, I haven't. So it'll be a fun experience. My sister, another New Jerseyan, already saw him. So I think he's playing a bunch of nights. Anyway, looking forward to that. But anyway, the feedback, if you're not familiar, this is a combination of feedback and mailbag. Back in the day, people used to send actual letters to people like myself that we would read on the air. Now, of course, everything's done through email and snail mail, not so much. So feedback is my combination of feedback and mailbag. Let's start with Mark. He says, Rich, you might want to check out US Mobile. They use all the three major carriers. You could switch between them pretty quickly if you're in an area where one has a weak signal. Depending on your plan, the switch may cost a couple of bucks. They also offer Starlink, plus a variety of monthly and annual plans. I even noticed they get about a half bar better signal on Verizon through US Mobile than I did with Mint. Well, Verizon is a different service than Mint. Mint runs on T-Mobile, so that's probably why. But yes, Mint Mobile is excellent. Sorry, US Mobile is excellent. If you haven't heard of them, check out their website. I think they do a really good job with just everything. They just do such a good job, and it's all kind of do it online. They don't have stores, so you're in control of everything, but they give you all this control of your network and switching and just lots of flexibility there, so check them out. Don writes in and says, hey, Rich, I wanted to pass along a new scam I received. It looks like a Facebook events invitation, but it's actually a fake PayPal invoice saying I renewed a $398.99 subscription and urging me to call a phone number. Of course, I didn't click anything, but this is a new twist that could fool people. I have not seen this one before, but yes, it was not something I'd seen, but basically they sent it through as a Facebook event, but there were some links to click, and that would bring you to the scam. Phil in Orange, my Office Depot buddy. We both worked at Office Depot. Rich, I want to give you an update on my Amazon return saga. You told me not to give the seller my pin. I'm glad I listened. The seller claimed I returned an empty box, but then turn around and ask for my phone's pin so they can inspect it. I appealed to Amazon with my receipt from the post office showing the package weight, Google's timestamped email proving I'd remotely wiped the device before it was delivered, and the seller's contradictory messages. Amazon reviewed everything and issued a full refund. In the end, I skipped the Pixel Fold and ended up picking up a Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 at a lower price, and I am loving it. I'm glad you fought back there because, yeah, you order these things online, People can try to scam you, and you fall back, and you won. Good job. Ellen says, hey, Rich, I enjoy the show. If you haven't seen the movie Ad Astra, I think you'd like it. The story incorporates nature illusions, which reminded me of something you were talking about on the show. I have added, I've gotten more movie recommendations from this show. When I retire, I will watch all these movies when I have the time. Gary, Rich, you mentioned how the national anthem only became official in 1931. 1931, it really got me thinking about how recent so much of American history really is. My dad used to tell me about reading the obituaries of the local Civil War veterans in the 1930s. Then I learned the last Civil War vet died in 1956, a month after I was born. That means people alive today could have talked with someone who fought in the Civil War. Wow. Gets even wilder. The last Revolutionary War veteran died in 1868. So a Civil War vet could have talked to someone who served under George Washington. In a way, you can connect the founding of our country today to just three overlapping lifetimes. That is wild. Thank you for that. Leo, I heard you with a call about the broken S23. Wanted to mention drive savers is a lot more expensive than you estimated. Data recovery from a dead phone can run anywhere from $1,800 to $4,000 because of the specialized work involved. Before going into that route, I'd look at software like Stellar Data Recovery for deleted files or formatted drives. although I haven't had much luck using it with phones that won't power on. Keep up the good work. Yeah, that's the problem with a phone that won't power on. No software is going to rescue that or it's going to be much tougher. Tim in Cape Coral, Florida, listening on the podcast, says, My M2 MacBook was driving me crazy. I kept getting the spinning rainbow cursor. Videos would freeze. The only way to clear it was to reboot. You suggested I back up everything and do a factory reset. I just wanted to let you know it worked. With iCloud, getting everything back was much easier than I expected. I appreciate your help. Love your show. You're so kind and so intent on helping people. That really is cool in our world today. No, Tim, you are cool. Thank you. Glad that worked out for you. Saved you a bunch of money there. Alan, it drives me crazy when media companies lock content behind DRM, geofencing, and other restrictions. If they won't sell me something or even offer a legal way to access it, how can they accuse people of piracy? To me, it's kind of like the kid on the playground who takes their ball home but won't let anyone else play either. Yeah, I hear you there. John, a friend of mine, restarted her iPhone after an update and was asked to enter her Apple ID password. The problem was she had set it up about 10 years ago and couldn't remember it. She was locked out of her phone and had to borrow someone else's phone to get help. Might be worth reminding people to make sure they know their Apple ID or email address and password before reinstalling iOS updates or restarting their phone, installing iOS updates. A lot of people don't realize they'll occasionally be asked to sign in again. Good reminder, good password hygiene. Strong passwords and also good passwords that you remember. Write them down in your password manager. That way you don't forget them. Wes, last year you recommended I switch from Authy to Proton Authenticator. I've been moving more of my accounts over as I enable two-factor authentication. One feature I'd love to see is the ability to organize accounts into categories. Since you recommend proton products, maybe your voice could help get that feature on their radar. That's a good idea. I'm not that organized in mine. I just search every time, but that's a good idea. Jim in Denver, I want to let you know I look forward to your podcast every week. Sometimes I run out of new episodes, so I go back and listen to old ones. They're all good no matter which one I pick. Thank you, Jim. Dave, I'm already married. Using AI would just mean adding another voice, telling me where and when to go. And Kathy, I just wanted to say thank you. I learned so much from your show, and I appreciate how you always share useful, easy-to-understand tech information. Thanks for being such a great teacher. Have a good weekend. Thank you, Kathy. I'm glad to hear that people do learn from the stuff that I talk about every single week here. All right, that's going to do it for this episode of the show. You can find links to everything I mentioned on the website, richontech.tv. Find me on social media, at richontech. Thanks so much for listening. There are so many ways you can spend your time. I do appreciate you spending it right here with me. One reminder before I go, please don't drive distracted. Those texts can wait. Put down the phone while you drive. Thanks to everyone who makes this show possible. Bobo out there on the West Coast. Kim, and also on the West Coast. Me in New York City, my guests, and of course you for listening. Thank you so much. My name is Rich DeMuro. I will talk to you real soon. What's up, fam? It's sports journalist Ari Chambers. Hey, what's up, y'all? It's your girl, Sam Jay. And we're the hosts of Everyone Watches Women's Sports, a new podcast from Together. We're breaking down the biggest headlines, the viral moments, and the stories everyone's talking about across women's sports. From game-changing performances to culture-shifting conversations, we'll give you our takes, our debates, and a few laughs along the way. Because everyone watches women's sports. Listen to Everyone Watches Women's Sports on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Emily Oster. I'm an economist and data expert. And I'm Perry Wilson. I'm a medical doctor. And this is our new podcast, Wellness Actually. You're getting a staggering amount of health and wellness information, and some of it is awesome. And some of it is, well, actually, bulls**t. Fortunately, we're both people who know how to read studies and can tell you what's worth trying out and what you can safely ignore. Listen to Wellness Actually on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. from daily news to dating fails conspiracy theories to cooking with celebrities who can't actually cook amazon music's got the most ad-free top podcasts ready to entertain included with prime