Ask the Tech Guys Episode 1980 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.

Leo Laporte (00:00:00):
Well, hey, hey, hey. How are you today? Leo LaPorte here. It's time for Ask the Tech Guys today. Just one tech guy. My sergeant has a week off, but we've got lots of stuff to talk about. Dick DeBartolo has a couple of really fun gadgets for the heat wave that's coming this summer. I've got a new gadget from Google, it's called the Pixel Tablet. And we'll answer a question about why my website is so slow to load. It's all coming up. Next on Ask the Tech guys podcasts you love from people you trust. This is, this is asked the tech guys with Micah Sargent and Leo LaPorte. Episode 1980, recorded Sunday, June 25th, 2020 three, a hundred thirty two Tiny Bubbles. This episode of Asked the Tech Guys is brought to you by Thinkt Canary because thousands of ignored alerts help nobody get one alert that matters for 10% off and a 60 day money back guarantee.

(00:01:03):
Go to Canary tools slash twit, enter the code twit in the How did You Hear About Spa and Buy Fast Mail, reclaim your privacy, boost productivity, and make email yours with FastMail. Try it now free for 30 days at fastmail.com/twit. And by ACI learning, CIOs and CISOs agree that attracting and retaining talent is critical with an average completion rate of over 80%. Your team deserves the entertaining and cutting edge training they want. Fill out the form@go.acilearning.com slash twit for more information on a free two week training trial for your team. And buy Cashflow Cashflow delivers rich media content of, to 10 times faster than traditional delivery methods and 30% faster than other Major CDNs. Meet customer expectations 100% of the time. Learn how you can get your first month free@cashflow.com. Well, hey, hey, hey. How are you today? Welcome to Ask the Tech Guy is no s because Mike has the day off Lucky Dog.

(00:02:12):
So it's just you and me and we're gonna do a lot of questions today. If you have a question you can do, there are three ways to reach us. You can call us eight eight eight seven two four twenty eight eighty four eight eight eight seven two four two two two eight eight four. It's spells something <laugh>. It spells many things, nothing, nothing memorable. So I was just gonna give you the numbers. You can also use Zoom. We love to see you. If you want to use Zoom, just take your smartphone and go to the browser and type in call dot twit tv. If you've got Zoom, it'll open it up, but you can also do it in the browser. The reason reason we like that is cuz we know your phone already has a working microphone and camera. We hope if it's not broken and by the way, you can always turn the camera off. We don't have to see you. It's just nice.

(00:02:58):
If you don't mind, we'd like to put you in our tech guys, Stargate, and there's an email, ATG twit tv. Atg twit tv. As you might have guessed. I'm just back from well, two things. Lisa was on a panel at VidCon, which is the big convention for streamers video, like creators, I guess is really the right way to put it. The Creator Convention. It's been going on for some years. Hank and John Green started it, YouTubers it was eventually purchased by Viacom, and so Paramount Plus has a big presence. There. Chief sponsor had been for years, YouTube last year it was TikTok again, YouTube this year. So TikTok only one year. And it's interesting to go see that because there are, you know, you see a long line stretching in across half the show floor and you go, well, that must be somebody famous.

(00:03:53):
And you get there and it's some guy wearing a mask who's a Minecraft guy or whatever, big audience presentations, competing with large, you know, kind of auditorium style setups. But they're in the conference area. So it's open maybe two or 300 seats, 500 seats, a big, big bunch. Probably 200 people in each and panels going on of well-known YouTubers that I've never heard of. But man, the the kids are so happy to be there. And they're screaming. And I saw one of them, they said, do you wanna, we got the next episode. Do you wanna see it? It was some sort of ghost hunting thing. And the kids went crazy. And then they showed, and it's really interesting to me to go to these events because you see what's happened to media in our time, of course, we're a big part of that, which is instead of, as I, I grew up in, maybe you grew up, you know, three networks, you know, a handful of channels on your television you know, and you could only watch it when it was on.

(00:04:53):
I mean, I, I'm older than VCRs even. And even if you had a vcr you probably couldn't figure out how to program it so you could only watch it when it was on. It's only with the avid of TiVo and dvs that we actually can time shift effectively, I think. So it was a, the whole country was watching one show, you know, everybody was watching 60 Minutes on Sunday night, you know, and so the conversations the next day were kind of more unified. Now. It's completely, the media landscape has completely splintered. In fact, that's why streaming networks, you know, like Netflix and Amazon Prime and Apple TV plus and, and Paramount Plus, which is there are all struggling a little bit because, and and frankly, all the podcasts, our network as well are struggling a little bit because you have a lot more choices.

(00:05:42):
I think that's a great thing. And, and, and what's really happened is it's kind of the rise of the niche that if you are really into, you know, ghost hunting, well there's a YouTube channel for that, or Minecraft, or there's many YouTube channels for that. In fact, it's split up <laugh>. So you would think, well, it's splitter into the Minecraft people and the Ghost hunting people. No, the <laugh>, the Minecraft people are split up into hundreds of shards each with their own fan fandom, their own stars. And you really see this when you go to VidCon. These people to that group are as big a star as Paul Newman and Robert Redford were in my day. They are huge. They're getting autographs. They're lining up actually nowadays, mostly selfies, people do. It's really interesting to see. And it really is a shift. It's really changed.

(00:06:33):
So it was, it was great to go to VidCon. Lisa, my wife, was on a panel about B2B creators. This is a whole nother new area where businesses are saying, well, you know we, we ought to have a, a channel somewhere. They're talking about LinkedIn and new CK and newsletters. In fact, in some sophisticated cases they have YouTube and TikTok and Instagram as well. It's really interesting to see how this has shifted thousands of channels. It does mean that any individual channel isn't gonna make as much money. This is why Netflix is, you know, I think they're making plenty of money, but they're still like nervous about all of this. It's getting fragmented up quite a bit. You know, who's really nervous, of course, is the networks and the cable companies. <Laugh>, because everybody's watching on the internet. Everybody's watching YouTube.

(00:07:23):
Youtube's their big winner. Tiktok is the big winner. Facebook with Instagram is the big winner. These are the places people put their videos. These are the places you and I go to see those videos. So these platforms are making all the money very, very interesting. Then we went to Disneyland, old school media, right? And, and Disney is very, very smart. These, it's now a very well run company. Wasn't for a while, remember, went through a trough, but is now run. Bob Iger came back and it's run very well. And you see how Disney realized this was happening when they bought Marvel and they bought Star Wars. They spent billions of dollars for these well-known properties because they realized even within their world, you were gonna have these fandoms and you had to, and you wanted, you know, so we ran when we opened, went, went in the door on Wednesday to, to go to Disney World.

(00:08:11):
We ran to the Star Wars. Ride was a rise of the resistance is the hot ride right now. There was already a one hour line at seven 30 in the morning. The the ride doesn't even open at late am <laugh>. There's already a one hour line. It's, it's just shows you we are big fans, right? We love content. We all love content. We love being entertained. There are more, there's more content than ever before. And and you really can see that it hurts us as a small network because, you know, we need your, we need your participation. We need you to watch. Otherwise, it's hard for us to sell advertising or we need you to join the club. We can also you know, survive. If each of you pay $7 a month, we can survive that way too. But as, as there's so many other choices for you.

(00:09:00):
I understand completely. You know, you, you get a lot of, a lot of people vying for your time, your, your leisure time. That's great, right? You have more choices. That's wonderful. So we're stru we're struggling with a little bit with that. You may know we had to cancel a couple of shows this week, all about Android and hands-on photography just because of lack of interest in, I don't think it was the hosts. I think we have the best hosts in the world with Aunt Pruitt and Jason Howell and Michael Sergeant. I, I know they're doing a great job. It's not that at all. It's just the market is fragmenting and and some shows just have to fall off the end. We don't have, we don't have Disney resources, <laugh>, we, we fund our shows self-fund outta my pocket. And so we can only do the shows that, that, that make money.

(00:09:42):
And when a show's losing money for more than a year, we just have to kind of cut the cord. So it breaks my heart. I apologize to those of you who are fans of those shows. We are gonna keep the discord alive there. And, and both Jason and Ann are gonna do more in the club. And I think that, that in the long term is is what's gonna make a difference for us. Word of warning, before we get to our first call, Bakersfield, California, a woman, 61 year old woman her car was stolen. She had an air tag in it, one of these apple air tags and took it on herself to track down the stolen car. Do not do that. She was murdered. She was murdered. This happened in March. She didn't call the police. She just said, I know where my car is.

(00:10:30):
I'm gonna go get it. They have arrested the four men who killed her. They stole the car and when she caught up to them, they said, no, we're gonna keep the car. So I only mention that as a, as a cautionary tale. Cause I think sometimes people go, oh yeah, I see my, where I see exactly where my iPhone is. I see exactly where it is. I'm just gonna go get it. Don't go <laugh> find my is not to solve the theft problem. Find mine is to, when you lose your keys and the couch problem, <laugh>, please do yourself a favor. It is a very, very dangerous thing to do. (888) 724-2884 is the phone number. And I am gonna pick up right now our first call I see Maryanne, is, is, is I've been seeing her. She called in before the show, so I wanna put her on. Oh, and can I take this silly hat off now? Okay. I'll

Caller Maryanne (00:11:30):
Allow it.

Leo Laporte (00:11:31):
<Laugh>, will you allow it? John? Ashley? I can't. <Laugh> it's entangled <laugh>. It's in my hairpiece. I can't take it off. Hello, Maryann. Oh

Caller Maryanne (00:11:42):
No.

Leo Laporte (00:11:42):
Welcome. Welcome to Ask the Tech Guy. I am sorry. Micah's not here to help, but I could do my best. What's up?

Caller Maryanne (00:11:49):
Well, I got, it's a pretty dinosaur question because I am a dinosaur. But I just set up a new computer. I stayed with Windows 10 64 Bit Office 2016. I wrote it down so I wouldn't like mess this up. Years ago, I think it was you that gave me a registry hack so that I could hit file new and get to the templates the way I wanted to get.

Leo Laporte (00:12:19):
Oh, yes.

Caller Maryanne (00:12:20):
And it was so I did that hack before even looking at anything. And everything's working great. Everything's working fantastic until a few minutes in. So I hit final new, I go to my, all my hundreds and thousands of templates. And then all of a sudden, and I have it on the screen here, my pin templates are at the top, but below that is the office templates in Spanish <laugh> not my template.

Leo Laporte (00:12:48):
And this is, that's not useful at all unless you're unless you're doing Spanish language, it closed

Caller Maryanne (00:12:53):
Out. If I have like six fi you know, Excel files open, I can, I have to close out of everything, restart. And then I'm back to normal. But you can imagine how distracting that is when you're doing

Leo Laporte (00:13:04):
So Word, word has been told either by Windows or by you at some point that you want Spanish. And but you're using the same word you used before. It's still Office 2016, right?

Caller Maryanne (00:13:19):
Yes. And we're talking Excel, not that it makes a

Leo Laporte (00:13:21):
Difference. Excel word. Same thing. Yeah. what do you do that you have so many templates. Are you a bookkeeper, accountant?

Caller Maryanne (00:13:28):
And so I work on retirement plans and I've just nice, I do so many things and need, I have probably, I'm gonna say 200 templates that are active. I have a lot of Wow.

Leo Laporte (00:13:40):
So you're really retired. You're, you're a absolutely a power user.

Caller Maryanne (00:13:44):
I'm a workhorse. I'm a minutia. I'm not a leader. I, I'm not a visionary. It's my own company, but I, you know,

Leo Laporte (00:13:52):
Well you then you're a leader cuz there's no one. That's it, it's you, right? No, there's no one. You're a leader. Trust me, you're a leader. There

Caller Maryanne (00:13:58):
Was a good business model. I could have made more money, but it was a good business model in today's time. Completely agree. I don't have to find an employee.

Leo Laporte (00:14:05):
Yes. Yeah, exactly. And, and if are you, I didn't ask you what city you're calling from.

Caller Maryanne (00:14:11):
I'm in Huntington Beach, California.

Leo Laporte (00:14:13):
Yeah. In California. It's better to be an employee than employer or a sole proprietor. It is. Just

Caller Maryanne (00:14:19):
Lived at some real estate in Tennessee. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:14:22):
<Laugh>, California. Really? and I don't think it's a bad thing, but they really favor the, the employee which makes it often difficult to run a business. Yeah. so I am confused about, so you're, you're getting the, the templates you want are pinned to the top and that's good. And they're in English.

Caller Maryanne (00:14:40):
Well, that's like six or seven that I almost use on a daily

Leo Laporte (00:14:43):
Basis. Oh. But you wanna see all the rest as well.

Caller Maryanne (00:14:46):
Oh, yes. And and you know, I noticed when I set this computer up, which I just did two weeks ago, and it's really painful to set up a new computer. Oh yeah. Because I want everything to be the exact way. But I noticed in the language section it has English as default and it has Spanish below that. I tried to delete it, but it won't let me

Leo Laporte (00:15:09):
Try it in Windows itself. In the windows settings as I'm on

Caller Maryanne (00:15:13):
My computer if you wanna

Leo Laporte (00:15:15):
Oh, I don't try it. I don't know if I have <laugh> the patient's <laugh> Okay. To walk you through it. But I do think that record this, that in your settings, there's regional settings in your control panel. Yes. And make sure this is Windows

Caller Maryanne (00:15:28):
Setting.

Leo Laporte (00:15:28):
That's the only concern since you set it up brand new, that it might be confused about where you are. So make sure the regional settings are us, and you might even wanna look at your clock settings and have it set automatically, which means it needs location and stuff like that. And it gets the location from your internet address. So unless you have, maybe you have a Mexican I S P. No, you probably don't. Your internet service provider is, is Frontier Cox.

Caller Maryanne (00:15:57):
Spectrum.

Leo Laporte (00:15:58):
Spectrum. So spectrum's in the us So, so if it's looking at your IP address, it should say, oh yeah, she's in Huntington Beach. That shouldn't be a question.

Caller Maryanne (00:16:10):
What about the fact that it's going to the, you know how when you hit file new, you've got office then personal let me do it your direction. Person office, then personal. Yeah. So you could click on office and we've that's where it's going. And then when this happens, those two options go away.

Leo Laporte (00:16:29):
You don't see personal anymore.

Caller Maryanne (00:16:32):
No. So something maybe I should, I'm installing

Leo Laporte (00:16:36):
No, I, no, no, no, no, no. I, what happened is what you No, please don't. I know, I know. That sounds painful. I can see the pain. <Laugh>. It wouldn't

Caller Maryanne (00:16:44):
Happen today.

Leo Laporte (00:16:47):
I think honestly this your, it's not your office install. It's your Windows install. Hit the Windows key type language that'll bring up the language settings. Make sure that Spanish is unchecked. You can even remove Spanish language files if you want to do that. There are two places in office. Joe has this in our I R C in office 2016. One is in the general settings is one is under the keyboard layout. So make sure that in 2016 you've set English US for both of those.

Caller Maryanne (00:17:23):
Oh, I'm in the keyboard and I can set from, use the list recommended, or I can set it was, that's what it was set to and I just changed it to English. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:17:35):
Yeah. Here's a, here's one from a scooter X has found it. His Scooter X is found on micro template titles displaying in Spanish in Excel. Now this comes from 2015 an office 2013.

Caller Maryanne (00:17:51):
Yeah. I Googled the heck out of this. Yeah. And everything I went to was right from the beginning it went to Spanish. I have this unusual problem where everything's normal. And then if I have, say three sheets open and I go, well not even that long. By the time I get to the second file new, this happens, but not the first time. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:18:12):
That's I

Caller Maryanne (00:18:13):
Close out. That's

Leo Laporte (00:18:14):
Know that is the problem. You know, these days is everything is so complicated and there's so many interacting systems that you don't know why offices just suddenly decided to show Spanish I Excel templates. It's, it's, so there's three at least places to look. One is in the Windows language settings, then there's two within Office. I'm looking at this 2015 support document. This is probably not your system issue, but it says Microsoft's supply is, this issue is not determined by a feature. So in order to resolve it, it'd be best to uninstall and reinstall office. Aye. Yay. Yay. Don't do that. I see

Caller Maryanne (00:18:54):
That alone. Google

Leo Laporte (00:18:54):
Don't do that. Yeah. You see that too? That's kind of the default answer for everything. Just uninstall and reinstall it. But let's not, let's see if we can not do that. Okay. There is in the control panel. Now, this is old though, so I don't know if this is gonna be the same thing in, in programs and features where you have your office 23 20 16 install, there's an online repair option.

Caller Maryanne (00:19:20):
Yeah, I was gonna do that. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:19:21):
Try that just in case that's something that's gone wrong. But I think you probably, somewhere in the language setting, it's indicated that your, your preferred language or one of your preferred languages is Spanish. So, you

Caller Maryanne (00:19:34):
Know, but it, I have, I have Outlook 365 and I think it was there that I can't even delete the Spanish option.

Leo Laporte (00:19:42):
Oh, it gets crazy when, see, you're <laugh> you're probably wise to stick with 2016 because Microsoft, that's way old. You know, Microsoft now wants you to subscribe monthly. Seven years old wants you to subscribe monthly to Office 365. Right. My, or they call it Microsoft 365 to add to the confusion. So I <laugh> I think that at this point if you, I, you know, honestly the best thing to do would be subscribed office.

Caller Maryanne (00:20:14):
I, I I wanna change. Yeah. I thought 2016 only because of the aggregate function. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:20:20):
You don't, you don't want, yeah.

Caller Maryanne (00:20:22):
2007 before that I was perfectly happy. And then I discovered that aggregate function, which was a really cool

Leo Laporte (00:20:29):
Yeah. Cool thing. Yeah. you have, but you, you do have Outlook 365, but not office, not the whole thing. Just Correct.

Caller Maryanne (00:20:36):
Yeah. Because of the whole server, all that stuff. I don't understand like the hosting for my email. Right.

Leo Laporte (00:20:44):
Understand. Yeah. This is how they get you to, to move. Okay,

Caller Maryanne (00:20:48):
Well I'll play around. It's not a clear obvious fix. Maybe I should reverse that registry hack.

Leo Laporte (00:20:54):
No, I don't think that's it. I don't think that's it at all. All that really did is put some templates you know, where your templates are beautifully.

Caller Maryanne (00:21:02):
Yeah. File new and there are all your

Leo Laporte (00:21:04):
Templates. I don't think that's, I don't think that's, well you could try reversing it. You know how to redo it. So you could try reversing it just to see. I would also look at that folder. Make sure that those Spanish language Excel templates aren't in the folder there.

Caller Maryanne (00:21:20):
They're

Leo Laporte (00:21:21):
Not. They're not. Okay. So it, it gives you the pinned ones, which are what's in the folder. And then where it would normally give you the standard English language Excel templates. It's giving you Spanish.

Caller Maryanne (00:21:35):
I just thought of something where it normally would gimme personal office. I could click on office. And by the way, when I do, that's in Spanish, so I don't know that the Spanish is the issue. The issue is when I hit, when this happens, I'm in the office template location, not in my template location. That's really the issue.

Leo Laporte (00:21:57):
I think you're right. Although

Caller Maryanne (00:21:58):
I should fix the Spanish issue.

Leo Laporte (00:22:01):
Yeah. I mean you're gonna get office templates when you fix it. It'll be in English, but you're still gonna get the standard templates.

Caller Maryanne (00:22:06):
Yeah. And so it'll go Yeah. Cuz it eliminates that personal office tab. Yeah. And it's in office. I have it. Obviously my option saved is, it is pointing to the right place. It's just ignoring that if I'm in a new in it's probably cuz I'm in a new instance.

Leo Laporte (00:22:22):
How old is, is, so you got this as a brand new computer.

Caller Maryanne (00:22:26):
Brand new computer.

Leo Laporte (00:22:27):
And is it is it Adele did you say?

Caller Maryanne (00:22:30):
Yeah, I didn't say but how'd you know that you're like a psychic?

Leo Laporte (00:22:33):
Well, my chat room is because the Flo in our chat room says Office 365 is pre-installed on the Dells and Oh. And so that may be what's happening is you've got, without your knowledge, two offices, there's a demo version of Microsoft 365. So go into the install an uninstalled programs and remove the Dell provided office. And I think everything will be back to normal. If not, reinstall the office 2016. You have, you don't have to uninstall first, just reinstall it. After you uninstall the Microsoft 365, you've got a conflict. Okay.

Caller Maryanne (00:23:14):
You're great. You hoped me ma, like 15 years ago on something very important to me. Oh, so I think you're wonderful. Oh, and my mother used to constantly tell me about you when she was alive.

Leo Laporte (00:23:24):
Oh. Except I

Caller Maryanne (00:23:25):
Couldn't get early enough to call. I think you're on K Ffi

Leo Laporte (00:23:28):
<Laugh>. Yeah. Well now two to 5:00 PM Eastern. 11 to one Perfect

Caller Maryanne (00:23:33):
Time for

Leo Laporte (00:23:33):
Me Pacific. I'm here every Sunday. Anytime. It's, it's a pleasure seeing you again after all this time. Wonderful. Take

Caller Maryanne (00:23:41):
Care. Yeah. Thank you very

Leo Laporte (00:23:42):
Much. Thank you so much. And thanks to our chat. Our IRC is really on top of this. That was a very good suggestion. Flop. There's Office 365 pre-installed on the Dell machine, and that is, it makes sense. That is what's, that's why you don't have you, you, you don't have the, the the, the changes you made aren't taking because it's conflicting. So, so get rid of the Office 365 perhaps reinstall Office 2016. Go back to that registry fix so that you get the, the templates you want in the folder you want. I think everything will be, oh, okay. We have lots more calls. We have emails. I'm gonna be very busy today. Dick de Barolo coming up in half an hour. The giz fizz with a gadget or a gizmo that no one will want. Before we go on any further, I've got to take this hat off.

(00:24:34):
<Laugh>. I have, I am so mixed up with my hat and my headphones. I, I don't think I'm amazed. Marianne could take me seriously, to be honest with you. Here's a guy wearing Mickey Mouse ears giving her an answer and she took it <laugh>. We, I did, I did. By the way, I didn't get this in Disneyland. I've had this forever. A fan brought it to me I think many years ago because you you can't get these anywhere anymore in Disneyland or they're all fancied up now. All gussied up. We'll just put it right there. Our show today brought to you by, oh, this is a great device. Speaking of b2b, if you have a business and you wanna make sure it's secure, the Thinkt Canary, here's the problem. You've got great. We do this too. We've got it great perimeter defenses, right?

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But as soon as somebody tries to open it or brute force it or SSH into it, you will know you've got a problem. Canary uses deceptively uncomplicated high quality markers of trouble on your network. You choose a profile for your Canary device. It could be brand name router, could be a Linux server. If you want, you could further tweak the services your Canary runs. For instance, you want a specific i i s service server version or open SSH or Windows file share. You can have actual files constructed according to your naming scheme. And everything looks exactly as real. It's not, there's nothing to tip off the adversary. The Mac addresses are real, the logins are real. Then you register your Canary with a hosted console for monitoring and notifications. By the way, notifications come any way you want. SMS text data messaging web Hooks api.

(00:28:49):
You can build your own they support email. Of course, it's rare to find a security product that people not only can tolerate, but actually one that they love. That's why if you go to Canary Tools slash Love, you'll be amazed at the people who love the Canary visit Canary Tools slash TWIT to get your canary. I'll give you an example of pricing. So you're, you, you're not surprised. If you wanted five, which, you know, a small operation would have five, big bank might have hundreds, $7,500 a year for five canaries. You get of course your own hosted console upgrades, support maintenance. You sit on your canary, your break it, they'll send you a new one, no questions asked. If you use the Code TWIT in the how did You Hear About Us Box, you'll get 10% off the Price for Life. And to reassure you, they have a two month 60 day money back guarantee for a full refund.

(00:29:43):
To further reassure you, I will tell you that during all the years we've done these ads, and it's been many now, there has not been one request for a refund. Everybody loves these things. Visit Canary <laugh>. That's pretty amazing, isn't it? Canary.Tools/Twit. Don't forget that. Canary Tools slash twit and the Code twit in the, how did you Hear About Us Box for 10% off for life. Thank you Canary for supporting our shows. We really appreciate that. And you support us by going to that address. Canary Tools slash twit. Don't forget the offer code. T w I t we try with our advertisers. Sometimes advertisers want specific shows. We try to explain to 'em, no, ain't nobody gonna remember <laugh> A T T G as the offer code. Just use twit. Everybody uses twit. So thank you Canary for understanding that they just, they use TWIT for the offer code, but they'll know that you saw it here. On we go, you know, I wouldn't mind doing a an email. Let's see here. There's a whole stack that's piled up. I don't know how we have a magic system to print these out. It's called John Ashley. All right, it's from Sunshine Black. Hi son. What a interesting name.

(00:30:56):
I have a vintage late seventies, early eighties stereo with turntable. So it's, you know, old school, not digital. A lot of the, if you buy a turntable these days, a lot of 'em have u SB ports on them, which is weird. Or cables. So you can connect it up to your U S B stereo. Some of 'em have airplay, but this is old school. This has got nothing but those phono connecting coming out. Do you know what type of Bluetooth transmitter I need? And can the receiver option be used on one? I'm thinking you wanna set up, you wanna play a record on your turntable and you wanna listen on Bluetooth headphones. Maybe you must right now be using, okay, this is, okay. So John Lenina <laugh>, who is our our guru for interpreting a 1970s stereo equipment <laugh>, cuz he has it quite a bit.

(00:31:56):
I think what's going on, I hope what's going on? I imagine what's going on is that you've connected your turntable to a receiver, right? If not, I think all bets are out. Cuz what you, what you really need is an amplifier. Turntable is unbalanced out, right? It's and it's very low level, so you've gotta have an amplifier. Even for headphones, you've gotta have an amplifier. So you've got something. I he needs a phono pre amplifier first. Yeah, because the phono is very, it was very different than any other kind of input, right? Yeah. It's different. It's unbalanced and it's low level. So yeah, that's bonito by the way. Also, apparently a seventies stereo guru. Do you have a turntable at home? Bonni? I do. I listened to vinyl. Aw, that's so sweet. There's a new record store opening in town. Did you see that downtown?

(00:32:38):
I was last week on Kentucky. Did you see it? Yeah. <laugh> I'm looking at it thinking who the hell's going there now I know Bonito and Sunshine black. So, so yeah, you, you need some sort and I'm assuming that Sunshine, Black's using this turntable, which means you have a phono amp on there, probably a receiver of some kind or an amplifier of some kind. So, so I'm gonna assume that, that you're not just taking a, a, a, a record player and trying to get it to Bluetooth you. Yeah, yeah. No, I, I I see this, John, I'm looking at your, I'm looking at your interpretation. So I'm gonna assume you have a receiver. He just says he has a stereo. Oh, stereo, right? So stereo would mean he's got a receiver or an amp. Yeah, I get it. I get what you're pointing at.

(00:33:22):
It was really tiny. So your, if your stereo receiver has tape out, which it almost certainly does, since it's from the seventies <laugh>, then any Bluetooth transmitter with left, right RCI plugs will work, right red and white. Plug those in. And now that's a Bluetooth transmitter. It's getting its input from the receiver or the amp that you're using. So you've got, you've got, I'm gonna assume some middle ground that's powering your speakers. You can then plug that transmitter in. And then if you want to run headphones or, or Bluetooth speakers somewhere else in the house, remember you have somewhat of a limit. Bluetooth isn't really designed to go farther than 10 meters, 30 feet. So, you know, it's not gonna be on the other side of the house in most cases. But a Bluetooth transmitter will do that. There are plenty of Bluetooth transmitters with with, with, with phono left, right? RCA plugs on Amazon. They're cheap. They're 10 bucks. Those should all work. So you're not gonna plug it into the, the phonograph, right? You're not gonna plug it into that. You're gonna plug it in to the receiver. Let's move on. I've got Michael on the line on the horn. Hi Michael. Welcome to ask the tech guys Leo LaPorte by himself this week because I, I left Micah in Disneyland by accident. Hey. Hey, how you, Hey, Leo. Welcome Michael. Where are you calling from? Good.

Caller Michael (00:34:51):
I'm calling from Bonnie Lake, Washington. Leo,

Leo Laporte (00:34:53):
Bonnie Lake. Where's that?

Caller Michael (00:34:56):
That is a suburb of Seattle. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:34:59):
It's

Caller Michael (00:34:59):
Beautiful southeast. Oh, I know. See, beautiful.

Leo Laporte (00:35:02):
How's the weather today? Is it, is it, is that your weather?

Caller Michael (00:35:05):
That that's the, yeah, this is live. This isn't some,

Leo Laporte (00:35:08):
It's not a green screen with fake blue sky <laugh>. Oh, man.

Caller Michael (00:35:13):
No, I called you guys I think on show one or two new format. Welcome, welcome. And I had a problem, you know, with my searching of files on hard drives because I did not have it. You know, I didn't have indexing turned on or something that saved me hours later in life.

Leo Laporte (00:35:32):
Yes.

Caller Michael (00:35:34):
The question. And then also, I just took about a six trip over to Europe and I used polar steps all along the way based on your recommendations. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:35:41):
How did you like that?

Caller Michael (00:35:43):
It's it's, it's unbelievable because it knows where you are. Of

Leo Laporte (00:35:47):
Course. Yes. It's using your phone gps then. Yeah.

Caller Michael (00:35:49):
Yeah. It's, it's, it's unbelievable. And then I used a travel router to hook up to those, to those funny hotels over there. So all my devices, I didn't have to log in each one. You know, we think about seven devices now, don't we?

Leo Laporte (00:36:04):
Ah, it's amazing. But, you know, in some ways it may travel better because you, for instance, you never get lost in, you know, Venice. Absolutely. You know where you are. Yeah. But you also lose some of that mystery <laugh> where, where am I? I don't know what's happening. Let's just find out. Yeah, yeah.

Caller Michael (00:36:20):
So, okay, so here's the question. Yeah. I have some old, old phones that I use or if I wanna listen to podcasts or if I wanna connect to the internet, almost like a radio, you know, I don't have self service with it, right? So I have some that have old versions of Android, and I think they're up to 12 or 13 now, is that correct?

Leo Laporte (00:36:43):
Yeah. Android 13, I think. Yeah. Yeah,

Caller Michael (00:36:46):
Yeah. So I have Moto phones and I wanna, I want to go to a website and enforce down an update to 12 or 13. Is that possible?

Leo Laporte (00:36:59):
Yes. Possibly. <Laugh> Moto funds, for sure. Yeah, this is the website, xda-developers.com. Well,

Caller Michael (00:37:09):
Holy smokes. Do I need to write this or are you gonna put it in your

Leo Laporte (00:37:12):
Show notes? In show notes as you call them notes. We'll put it in the show notes. All right. Yeah. They're, they're very scam, but they're, they're, they'll be there, right? John Ashley writes, okay they

Caller Michael (00:37:19):
John, thank you, John

Leo Laporte (00:37:20):
<Laugh>. The idea here is you're gonna search for your exact model of moto phones. Okay. And so I'll just, I'll just enter in a search as an example, Moto X, which I really loved the Moto X, that was a great phone.

Caller Michael (00:37:34):
And I like the price points of the Motos. It seems like, you know, they, they work well. You're not paying an arm and a leg. They

Leo Laporte (00:37:42):
Were great phones. I was mad at Google when they, when they sold it off to Lenovo. So first of all, you'll see the news, which is good, that Lineage Jos, which is one of the, you know, enthusiast built versions of Android supports as old as a 2014 Mode X with the latest build, which means you're gonna get you're gonna get you know, Android thir, I don't know, Android 14 maybe. Who knows how up to date they are. Yeah. So that's the first thing. But what you really want to do is, is go to their, is is it? Go ahead.

Caller Michael (00:38:17):
But is it controlled by Motorola? No, it's,

Leo Laporte (00:38:20):
No, Motorola has, is not gonna offer an update. No. Android device manufacturer offers updates for more than five or six years. They're not, they don't agree. And

Caller Michael (00:38:30):
This is my backyard, by

Leo Laporte (00:38:30):
The way. I am so jealous. Yeah. Come. So it's not, so you see, I wanna move to Washington State. I'm gonna have to look at Bonnie Lake. Bonnie Lake. But this is,

Caller Michael (00:38:39):
Yeah, this is a true, go ahead.

Leo Laporte (00:38:41):
Everybody says, oh, it's gloomy. I think that's propaganda put out by you Washington staters, to keep us Californians from moving in. Cuz the weather's beautiful.

Caller Michael (00:38:51):
<Laugh> and, and Leo, there's no income tax, man.

Leo Laporte (00:38:54):
That's why we're moving there, baby. But it won't be until retirement. Not, not soon, but I'm gonna retire up there, I think.

Caller Michael (00:39:01):
Come to triage Steve at the Holly Bonney Lake Washington. I will, we don't even do any yard work. So it's all done by the, by the H oa. I,

Leo Laporte (00:39:09):
That's, that's exactly why we're moving. You don't wanna do any, we have three acres and I'm the yardwork's killing us. So are you. So what you wanna do is you wanna go, you

Caller Michael (00:39:16):
Can call me and I'll host you. You

Leo Laporte (00:39:18):
Wanna Okay, deal. You, you X D has become really, this used to be a big forum now. Oh yeah. There we go. Go to forums. Go to x d developer, then forums, then search for your model. And what you'll find is the software you need, what you have to do with any Android phone that is out of date is you have to root it. Now, the good news is on almost all Android phones, getting root is not only allowed and permitted, but fairly easy to do. You'll have to run very good a program on your computer that you connect your phone to with a cable that basically unlocks the firmware. At that point, you're gonna be able to do anything you want. And there are a variety of third party, they call 'em Robs, they're basically firmware. There's a variety of third party firmware that you could put on your Motorola phone and, and take that phone all the way up to Android, I'm sure 14 and beyond.

(00:40:13):
All right? Line Jos is a very good one. These are created by enthusiasts. These are not created by companies for the most part. It's not my motor role. It's not by Lenovo. Lenovo wants you to buy a new phone. They don't want you to keep that one going. So I know if you have an older Android phone it go to xca-developers.com, go to the forum. Okay. And search for your model. Exactly. And by the way, when I say exactly, I mean if you know the model number, you know, 1921 comma a 73 or whatever it is.

Caller Michael (00:40:42):
Yeah. And you get that in settings, don't you?

Leo Laporte (00:40:44):
It's in settings. Get that in about, in the, about phone. About, yep. Put that model number in. And cuz cuz these instructions vary. They're very specific to the model. And it will tell you how to take that phone, how to root it. That's the first part. And then once you root it, you're gonna put some software on there that will let you try different ROMs. And, and so modify the firmware. It's a little complicated. There's one little final step because these are not from Google. They don't pay license to Google for the Google apps to make this a real Android phone. You're gonna want the G apps they call it. And there's almost always this place. You download those and then it turns it into a full Google Android distribution. This is all because Android is open source. And Google, when they put out Android, really encouraged manufacturers not to lock the firmware, not to prevent people from rooting it. So in most cases, Samsung's one of the few exceptions. In most cases, you can easily root your phone. And again, X d a developers will have the details on how to do it. The, the possible risks. Perfect. And where to get the software for it. It's a great way to,

Caller Michael (00:41:49):
And I do have a Sam. Yeah. So I have so I have taken the Evil Empire and I do have a Samsung fold on its way to me

Leo Laporte (00:41:59):
Tomorrow. So, oh, ah, you should wait. Months. Months.

Caller Michael (00:42:02):
I need two screens going in the car. Oh, I should, oh

Leo Laporte (00:42:05):
Yeah. I don't want say anything but Andrew. But they're gonna announce new folds since flips soon. Well, don't, when is the end in June? I I thought it was in June.

Caller Michael (00:42:14):
I don't wanna pay top dollars. Hey, by the way, that gal who called you about her Microsoft Word. Yeah. That gal, that gal could be the new tech gal. I

Leo Laporte (00:42:21):
Think she's great. You can tell she's a complete, complete geek. Right, <laugh>. And it's funny because I talked to people like her and she said, oh, you know this. She said it. I, this is so I don't, this I don't understand. What are you talking about? You're a power user lady. Come on,

Caller Michael (00:42:36):
See all these, Hey, you see all these roofs around my neighborhood here? Yes. Okay. I've had a drone on the top of every one of 'em. <Laugh>,

Leo Laporte (00:42:46):
You're as bad as I am, my friend <laugh>.

Caller Michael (00:42:49):
Because if it gets too high in the wind. Yeah, right. You know, you're all cocky when it's at 10 feet, you get, you go up and the wind takes it, you know, to hell and gone. So story of my life,

Leo Laporte (00:42:58):
You know?

Caller Michael (00:42:59):
Yep. Yeah. So I know. So anyway, thank you for everything. You Hey,

Leo Laporte (00:43:02):
Pleasure Michael. All the time. Thanks for

Caller Michael (00:43:03):
Listening. My podcast,

Leo Laporte (00:43:04):
XTA dash developers, go to the forums. They have everything you need. It's a great place to go. Take care. Michael. Michael, thank you. And scooter X has sent us this way. Overpriced Bluetooth <laugh> transmitter from fio FIO makes very good. An what they call analog to digital converters. F i i o. This one's $120 at B and H. But it does all sorts of stuff. You know, I don't think you need a high fidelity Bluetooth transmitter receiver if you're using records or do you, John, I don't know if you, if you want to get all the pristine analog, goodness, if you wanna hear every click and pop, maybe you need that. Anyway. File makes very good stuff. I certainly recommend that. I don't think you need to spend that. Well, you know, if you're an audio file, I guess you can. So, Benito, do you consider yourself an audio file when you buy vinyl? No,

Benito/Dick DeBartolo (00:44:00):
I, no,

Leo Laporte (00:44:02):
No, but it's

Benito/Dick DeBartolo (00:44:03):
Just a, I don't understand audio files cuz I have listened to like really high end

Leo Laporte (00:44:06):
Systems. Oh, you're, you're a musician. You use synthesizer. We've talked to you about speakers before. You have good stuff.

Benito/Dick DeBartolo (00:44:13):
Yeah. But like, I, I, I just can't afford to be an audio file, you know what I mean? Like there's definitely a limit to how much you can afford.

Leo Laporte (00:44:22):
Well, now that you mention it, I'm gonna show these Danon just announced some earbuds that are like 150 bucks more than the apple AirPod pros, right? And these are kind of funky looking, but they're, they're supposedly very high quality audio. And they use something called Massimo Automatic Ear Checking <laugh>. They play funny sounds into your ears, and then they determine what your sound curve should be. And so I'm gonna give you a review, probably do this next week of these new Deon Pearl. They call 'em pearls and they just announced them. And when I saw it, I thought, you know, I own every earbud known to man. So let me check out these pearl stands for personalized listening, personalized earbuds. And I thought, well, if I'm gonna spend a lot of money for this masimo adaptive tech technology, I might as well get the pros.

(00:45:28):
So I spent even more money <laugh> on the high end. Pros. These can also be used for your, your phone and so forth. So I got the, I got a a, a dent on Pearl Pro. 350 bucks. That's, that's more than a hundred bucks more than the AirPods Pro, right? And I will give you a review. It does spatial audio. It does have a good eight hour battery life plus 32 in the case. So that's much Oh. Better than the the apples. And then this personalized sound. I can, I set 'em up last night when I got back from LA and I could say it's a little bit, they're a little tubby. What do you, what do you what what <laugh> They're for the sound obsessed. I thought it would be Benito stealing these. So we'll see.

(00:46:17):
I don't know how sound, maybe I have. Give 'em to Benito. You know what, bonito, you should set these up. Sure. Because you've got, you've got golden ears. I'm an old guy. I don't got the golden ears, you guys, you young guys have to me. And this is what the kids like. Now. It sounded a little, what I call tubby little high little much on the base. You do have a little slider that you can check, change that with. It gives you a bunch of tips. You can try different tips to make sure you're getting a good seal. The base is superb, I have to say. There's a lot of it. But that's what the kids want now, right? They want a lot of, a lot of base the Deon signature sound as they call this, and adaptive noise cancellation. Yeah, I agree.

(00:47:01):
John says, if you're a sound obsessed, you get wired headphones, get some ultimate ears. And I have those too. Those sound really good. That's what I'm wearing right now. They fit right in. You have to go to an audiologist and they pour silicone into your ear. Have you had that done, John? You have to turn your head like this. Oh. And they give you Popsicle sticks because you have to do it with your mouth partially open for some reason cuz changes your ear canal. So you got a, got a Popal stick in your mouth and you turn your ear like this and they pour silicone into your ear, silicone into your ear with a little string on it so they can pull it out. And then you have to sit there. You ah, the high out deck for about five minutes. So while it, while it hardens, and then they pull it out with a great sucking sound, let me tell you outta your ear. And then they do the other one. But then what happens is they've got a mold see, and you send it off to Ultimate Ears or whoever This was from J these are from JH Audio actually. And they will and they will mold those so that when it goes in my air, I get the great sucking sound. Both, both <laugh>, both ways. Airpods Pro are $200. So these are $150 more.

(00:48:23):
All right, we're gonna let, we're gonna let somebody with, with good ears review these. I like how they fit and they look, they, they look a little bit better in your ear than the AirPods. You don't have the, the little dongle hanging out. They don't look like you, they don't, they aren't white. These are, these look like you've got gauges in your ears. They look like you're really a, a hipster. See, it's just a big, it's a circle in there. Alright, let me think what we need to do here. I think we need to say hi to Dick DeBartolo. MAD's mattes writer and our GWiz Dickie d

Benito/Dick DeBartolo (00:48:59):
Leah. How you doing?

Leo Laporte (00:49:00):
Everything everywhere, all at once? Can I show this on my

Benito/Dick DeBartolo (00:49:05):
Sure. Yes. It came out Tuesday and as a tribute to Al Jaffe,

Leo Laporte (00:49:10):
Oh, the king of the Folden who passed away at the age of, was he a hundred,

Benito/Dick DeBartolo (00:49:14):
102

Leo Laporte (00:49:15):
Chi Miny Christmas. You know, I'm, I'm glad that people are living longer. Oh, look at that. That's the Folden. And there's Al himself. Aw, the king of the folding.

Benito/Dick DeBartolo (00:49:27):
Yeah. Well, he retired early. He retired at 99. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:49:32):
Anybody who like me grew up reading Mad Magazine will remember these. The story of the Foldings Kind of funny though.

Benito/Dick DeBartolo (00:49:41):
Oh, it's great. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:49:43):
You wanna tell us?

Benito/Dick DeBartolo (00:49:44):
Oh, yeah. So Playboy came out with the fold out the

Leo Laporte (00:49:49):
Gate Fold. Yeah,

Benito/Dick DeBartolo (00:49:50):
Yeah. Yes. The gate fold. The gate fold. And Jaffe went to Bill Gaines, the founder and publisher of Mad and said, bill, have an idea. We're a little magazine. We can't possibly afford to have a page fold out, but we could have you fold the page in <laugh>. And, and he said, he said, this is just a rough thing. It would be like this. And Bill said, oh, bill, do that. That's so funny. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:50:17):
That was more than 50 years ago, right?

Benito/Dick DeBartolo (00:50:20):
Oh my God. Yes. Yes. And then the editor said, where's the next fold in? And he No, it's like a one-time thing. And he goes, no, no. The mail is incredible.

Leo Laporte (00:50:32):
<Laugh>, we want it every month. Yeah. For the next 60 years, Al.

Benito/Dick DeBartolo (00:50:37):
Exactly. Wow. Exactly. Wow. There's a NICE's, a little tribute in

Leo Laporte (00:50:42):
There. Yeah, there's a nice tribute. Oh, this is really sweet.

Benito/Dick DeBartolo (00:50:46):
And we each got to tell favorite stories about Al. One is in there, the one I didn't tell. Do we have time for this? Yeah. Oh, okay. This

Leo Laporte (00:50:55):
Isn't a radio show, dude. We got all the time in the

Benito/Dick DeBartolo (00:50:57):
World's. That's right. So Bill Gaines and Al Jaffy going to some event and Bill rents a limo for them. And when they're leaving the event, Jaff says to Bill, bill, I'm in a new building, it's all businessmen in suits, and I just wear chinos and a and a t-shirt. And the doorman totally ignore me. If I pulled up in a limo, it might help. So could you actually take me to my house and, and drop me off? And Bill said absolutely <laugh>. So it gets better. So they pull up in front of the door and the doorman opens the thing for Jaffe and Bill says, Mr. Jaffe, I hope everything was good, because if it wasn't, whatever is wrong, you tell us and next time it'll be perfect. Aw. And thank you. And and Jaffe said, from that day on Bill, my problems were solved. <Laugh>. Yeah, yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:51:56):
Yeah. You're a superstar. Mr. Al Jaffe. Exactly. It's called the Al LXi department. Oh, mad remembers Al Jaffe and all of these memories from Al and the people who worked with him, including you Dick. There's a picture of you with Al

Benito/Dick DeBartolo (00:52:15):
On his 95th birthday.

Leo Laporte (00:52:17):
Oh my gosh,

Benito/Dick DeBartolo (00:52:18):
My gosh. When he was inducted into the Guinness Book of World Records for the cartoonist with the longest streak of working. <Laugh> is the <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:52:31):
I tell you what, Dick, when you when you get to 105, we will do this for you. Okay?

Benito/Dick DeBartolo (00:52:36):
Oh, okay, good. Oh, very good. <Laugh>. Okay, <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:52:40):
So what do you have for us this week?

Benito/Dick DeBartolo (00:52:42):
Okay, so, okay, so last year we had the fma later the Foma ranch. Alright. Yes. So it's summer. Tuesday was summer. So I went hunting for stuff and I thought, wait a minute, I found the hundred and 32 hole bubble machine. <Laugh>. Okay. <Laugh>. Okay. I

Leo Laporte (00:53:05):
Have a little, okay. Do not bring this to Disney World or Disneyland. There is, they sell, and everybody has them. These magic Mickey Wands that have like 10 of those holes and everywhere you go, it was in our food, it was everywhere. You've got four year olds going like this and there's bubbles. Oh, okay. Everywhere. This one, this would not be allowed. This is too dangerous. No,

Benito/Dick DeBartolo (00:53:27):
Not and I have a little one minute demo in my backyard. It it is really great fun.

Leo Laporte (00:53:34):
Oh my gosh. Yeah. Use the quickie demo with the Gizz video on YouTube. If you go to gizz.biz, you can get all this and see it all for yourself. So here you are. Absolutely. How many holes?

Benito/Dick DeBartolo (00:53:48):
132. Okay. Now there are cheaper versions, but they only have like 65 holes. Yeah. 75 holes.

Leo Laporte (00:53:55):
That crappy one they sell at Disneyland with a

Benito/Dick DeBartolo (00:53:57):
15. And, and it's rechargeable. So it comes with a little rechargeable pattern.

Leo Laporte (00:54:02):
Oh wow.

Benito/Dick DeBartolo (00:54:03):
No, this isn't, this is a neat, also, I, I, I said to Dennis, you know, I don't know if we can do the video today. I didn't order a bubble juice. There were 14 bottles. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:54:13):
Cause you're gonna need it with, with 132 bubbles, you're gonna need it.

Benito/Dick DeBartolo (00:54:17):
Yes. Yes, exactly. And the other thing is you sort of,

Leo Laporte (00:54:20):
Oh, I want this, this

Benito/Dick DeBartolo (00:54:21):
Is so cool. Get into there I go. Right into here is this is the first time that, and, and, and it's a dip. And Oh, I, I hate it when they have these sealed things. Yes. And no little tab

Leo Laporte (00:54:35):
It, the foil seals. They never do. These days, all my, all my drugs come that way. And it's so annoying. All right. So you pour it into a pan.

Benito/Dick DeBartolo (00:54:44):
Into a pan, then you dip it in the

Leo Laporte (00:54:46):
Pan. Oh, I get it.

Benito/Dick DeBartolo (00:54:48):
And then they say, charge the battery. But the the thing,

Leo Laporte (00:54:51):
Oh my God. It's like ridiculous. Oh, they're everywhere. The bubble, all the humanity. Oh my. And they

Benito/Dick DeBartolo (00:54:58):
Goodness. And they do, for some reason have color in them. I think. I think kids are gonna really get a, a

Leo Laporte (00:55:05):
Big kid. That's really, really cool. Yeah. Oh, that's, I think that's just refraction, isn't it? They're all Yes. Yeah, yeah. The color. Yeah. Yeah.

Benito/Dick DeBartolo (00:55:12):
And you can do bubble snakes with it so that as I said, you can find him cheaper.

Leo Laporte (00:55:18):
It's so funny to see Dick <laugh>

Benito/Dick DeBartolo (00:55:22):
Acting like a,

Leo Laporte (00:55:22):
A child. Oh, look at the bubble snake. Ooh.

Benito/Dick DeBartolo (00:55:25):
What do you mean acting like a

Leo Laporte (00:55:26):
Child? <Laugh>. I kept saying this amazing

Benito/Dick DeBartolo (00:55:30):
Why my name is out. I wanna show my name.

Leo Laporte (00:55:33):
I'm gonna get this cuz Lisa was the bubble wands were driving Lisa crazy at Disneyland. I'm gonna get this and bring it home.

Benito/Dick DeBartolo (00:55:40):
Oh, that'll be great. That'll be,

Leo Laporte (00:55:42):
I'll get you Bumbles in your tacos. Watch this. That'll be

Benito/Dick DeBartolo (00:55:45):
Holy.

Leo Laporte (00:55:45):
That'll be

Benito/Dick DeBartolo (00:55:46):
Very funny. And I have one other quick thing. Is this okay? Yes. Yeah. Okay. so summer's coming. I found a incredible fan has a gigantic hook on the bottom so that you can hook it to the tent pole or a tree branch. So it has a three speed fan. It has a misting action. Oh, so

Leo Laporte (00:56:07):
You I like the mister. Yeah.

Benito/Dick DeBartolo (00:56:09):
So you can have the fan going. Yeah. And then you can do misting. And then if it's at night, it has eight L nine LEDs with three Brightnesses and Leo. I paid about 22 bucks for it. I don't know what the current price is. I have a link to it on my website, but it is it's a, a 6,000 milliamp rechargeable battery.

Leo Laporte (00:56:34):
Everything's rechargeable now. Wow. Yeah. Wow.

Benito/Dick DeBartolo (00:56:37):
It's really great. Yeah. so that's, if you're going camping or anything, this is a neat little thing to bring along.

Leo Laporte (00:56:44):
So the Calabash brother Brothers <laugh>,

Benito/Dick DeBartolo (00:56:48):
I

Leo Laporte (00:56:48):
Think is not their real name, but I'm guessing the Calabash Brothers bubble machine is 29 99. But you know, Amazon prices go up and down. So, just down.

Benito/Dick DeBartolo (00:56:58):
Yeah. And that one comes with the 14 bottles of stuff.

Leo Laporte (00:57:04):
Well, that seems like enough.

Benito/Dick DeBartolo (00:57:07):
It does, yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:57:07):
Seems like plenty, I'm guessing. And then for hot summer weather, and it is, it has been hot, hasn't it? Yeah. $20 for the frizz call. I think that's not their real name either. Clip on fan with misting and a big old clip on that thing. So you could clip that thing.

Benito/Dick DeBartolo (00:57:25):
Yeah. And, and a hook if you wanna hang it upside down in the tent.

Leo Laporte (00:57:28):
Yeah. Yeah. Do you go camping a lot? Because you talk about camping all the time.

Benito/Dick DeBartolo (00:57:34):
No, I do. I I talk about it a lot because emails say that people said, oh, I took that thing camping. And

Leo Laporte (00:57:40):
When's the last time you went camping?

Benito/Dick DeBartolo (00:57:43):
Well, if you consider walking to the drive with a sandwich and sitting on a bench, I would say yesterday,

Leo Laporte (00:57:48):
<Laugh> Dick is the ultimate New Yorker. Ain't nothing about camping

Benito/Dick DeBartolo (00:57:51):
<Laugh>. No, no, no. Leo. I, I was at the gym about two weeks ago and I overheard a guy said, what'd you do over the weekend? And the other guy said, you're not gonna believe this. I went to the country. And the first guy said, why would you do that, <laugh>?

Leo Laporte (00:58:09):
Oh, I meant, I meant, I went to alphabet City. I didn't mean like the country.

Benito/Dick DeBartolo (00:58:14):
No. He said, my, my wife wanted to visit her folks. He said he, and, and he said, and it gets worse. He said, what's worse? He said, we stayed overnight,

Leo Laporte (00:58:23):
<Laugh>.

Benito/Dick DeBartolo (00:58:26):
And the first guy said, you are a devoted husband. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:58:31):
Why would you ever leave Manhattan?

Benito/Dick DeBartolo (00:58:33):
Exactly.

Leo Laporte (00:58:34):
Exactly. You probably meant I went to the Bronx, but, okay. Yeah, that's true. That's true. Dick de Barolo is at gizz biz. G iz w iz.bz. If you click the, you know gizz visits the Tech Guys button, you'll find both the Kash Brothers bubble machine and the DRIs call clamp on Fan. But you can also click the, what the heck is it button? And your screen will go black. No. And you will get the May, June. What the heck is a game? Just a few days left To guess what this closeup photo of a gizmo or a gadget is? It's got a pistol grip. It's got a, it looks like a power mount. I don't know what the heck that could be.

Benito/Dick DeBartolo (00:59:18):
Well, that's good. That's good. So you can make up something.

Leo Laporte (00:59:21):
Yeah. So the good news is there's, there's six MAD magazines for the correct answer, but there's 12 for the funniest, silly answers. And you're playing for an autographed copy as this is autographed by Dick t Bartolo of Mad Magazine. Is this the issue you're, you're playing for?

Benito/Dick DeBartolo (00:59:37):
Yes. That's the August

Leo Laporte (00:59:39):
Issue. Very nice. Yeah, this is great. I'm thrilled to have this. And, you know, well, thank you, <laugh>. I have a whole collection of old magazines. Every single one of them, the old Mads is, is folded in the back. <Laugh> Perfect. Which means they're no longer pristine, but it's worth it for the folding, for the, I just Perfect. I just love Del Jaffe. Perfect. That was great. Thank you Dick d Barto. Thank you. So great to see you.

Benito/Dick DeBartolo (01:00:02):
Okay, buddy. The same here. Take care. We'll care. See you next month. Have

Leo Laporte (01:00:04):
A great, you too. Summer.

Benito/Dick DeBartolo (01:00:05):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:00:06):
Bye. Yeah, summer began. Oh,

Benito/Dick DeBartolo (01:00:07):
See you. If for Giz Fizz too. Yes. Yes. Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:00:09):
Bye. See you for Wednesdays. Every Wednesday night for our club members, we do Dick's show the GIZ Fizz, which is a great chance to see Dick in all his glory. They play a bunch of games. If you're not a club member, can I ask you to just take a look at twit TV slash club twit and see the benefits. It's seven bucks a month. You get all of our shows. This show everything we do Ad Free plus that includes a bunch of shows we don't put out outside the club. And and, you know, I think we're gonna see some interesting new stuff from both Jason Howell and Aunt Pruitt in the club. So you get access to the Club, to at Discord, you get all sorts of additional stuff for seven bucks a month. And the reason we do this, it really helps us out.

(01:00:53):
These are tough times for podcasts. You see all the podcast networks laying people off. Spotify even NPR laid off, I think 10% of their staff, the podcast team, because they weren't making money in podcasts. We don't want to go away. We wanna stay here. I hate canceling shows. Please, twit tv slash Club twit. We thank you for your support Club twit members. Now here's something. Club twit members won't see an ad for Fast Mail. I am such a fan, actually. I know anybody who's watched our shows over the years has heard me plug Fast Mail for free. It's my email service. And I've said this many, many times, I firmly believe it. If email is important to you, you need to pay for it. Because if you're using free email, you're not the customer. You're the product. If you care about privacy, if you care about support, if you care about a quality service, you need Fast Mail as little as $3 a month.

(01:01:56):
Fast Mail is the best you can use your existing email client. I do. I use Apple Mail MailMate I use Outlook Mail with it. But you can also use their web interface and, and or iPhone app. Or Android app. By the way, the apps are the best. I I no longer use the, you know, the Apple apps or the Android apps on my on my phones. I use Fast Mail's app. It's fantastic. The web version, same thing. It has quick settings, which makes it easy to change your theme. Switch between light and dark mode. Change your text size without leaving the fast mail screen. That's a new feature. One of the things Fast Mail does, it's very cool, is it works with your password manager. If you're using one Password and Bit Wharton, our sponsor, you can create a fake email address along with the password, which adds to the security.

(01:02:49):
And Fast Mail will go Yeah, yeah. And put it in your irregular inbox. When mail comes to that address, it is a fantastic additional security feature. Fast Mail's been a leader in email for 20 years, and privacy is Job one. They believe in working for customers, not, you're not products at Fast Mail. You are, you are customers to be cared for. No advertisements, no tracking at Fast Mail, your data stays. Yours better features $3 a month. Better spam filters superior productivity tools you can have scheduled, sends snooze folders, labels. Yeah. You can have folders and labels. Search Bar. You can keep track of all the important details in your life with fast mail's. Powerful sidebar. I use Fast Mail also for my calendar and contacts instead of Google. I don't give Google my information anymore. It all goes to Fast Mail where it's private and secure.

(01:03:46):
Fast Mail is the email service for you. Reclaim your privacy, boost productivity with Fast Mail. You could try it free for 30 days when you go to fastmail.com/twit. I could go on and on about Fast mail. I won't, I'll spare you, but I u i there's so many great features. I use all of them. I've been a customer for more than a decade. Fast mail.com/t. It's the only email for you. Let's go back to the phones. Oh, what do you want me to do? Okay, you wanna do Scott, I'm gonna press the button. Scott is on the phone. (888) 724-2884. Hi Scott.

Caller Scott (01:04:28):
Hello. Can you hear me?

Leo Laporte (01:04:29):
I hear you great. Yeah, you, I forgot to mention Press six to unmute. I hear you great. Yeah, I

Caller Scott (01:04:35):
Did. Okay. Well this is your old friend, inspector Chappo.

Leo Laporte (01:04:40):
<Laugh> my hat, man.

Caller Scott (01:04:43):
Yes sir. How you doing? You man,

Leo Laporte (01:04:44):
I'm doing great. I told Lisa when we were at Disneyland, we gotta buy a hat. She said, you don't need any more hats. <Laugh>.

Caller Scott (01:04:51):
Well, yeah. You and me both buddy. You know, I can't, I don't, there's not enough room in my closet for, for these bags of hats,

Leo Laporte (01:04:58):
You know, so I know. I don't know what I'm gonna do and I don't, you know, my head size is not the same as my son's or my daughters. So I don't know what's gonna happen to the hats. We'll have a big hat auction at the end.

Caller Scott (01:05:08):
Yeah, I have a, I have a bunch of large sizes. Some we'll have to get together. We

Leo Laporte (01:05:12):
Can do How big is your hat? What's your hat size?

Caller Scott (01:05:15):
I'm a seven. Yeah, me too. I think you're a five eights.

Leo Laporte (01:05:18):
Well, I used to be seven and three eights. Does your head get bigger as you get older?

Caller Scott (01:05:25):
I don't know.

Leo Laporte (01:05:26):
I think it does. Cause I used to be seven three eights and now I'm seven and a half. But you have,

Caller Scott (01:05:31):
Well, I'm 70.

Leo Laporte (01:05:33):
You have that

Caller Scott (01:05:34):
Thing. I turned 70.

Leo Laporte (01:05:35):
Oh good. Happy New Year.

Caller Scott (01:05:38):
<Laugh>. Well, well I turned 70. I'm six five. I'm still waiting to shrink <laugh> and it ain't happening.

Leo Laporte (01:05:44):
So you're supposed to get shorter. That's right. Yeah. Mm-hmm. <Affirmative>.

Caller Scott (01:05:47):
Yeah, yeah. No, no, no.

Leo Laporte (01:05:49):
Well, I bet your ears, I bet your ears are getting a little longer and hairier though.

Caller Scott (01:05:55):
You know, that's, yes. Hair happens when you get old. I'm

Leo Laporte (01:05:58):
Just saying. It

Caller Scott (01:05:59):
Happens in all sorts of

Leo Laporte (01:06:00):
Places. Something to prepare the Youngs for. So what can I do for you, Mr. Inspector Chapeau?

Caller Scott (01:06:06):
Well, I wanted to tell you something. You probably knew I didn't, I think a lot of people don't. I recently upgraded to the Pixel seven A I had trepidations about the no headphone jack, but, you know, had to pull the trigger, you know, and, and it's a great phone and everything. But I was at a concert that had this mixed hollow thing going where they broadcast the sound from the soundboard onto this app. And you can listen to the sound from the soundboard through your headphones. And what makes it great is that they use the microphone in your phone to adjust the latency to the actual sound off the stage.

Leo Laporte (01:06:46):
Oh, that's so smart. So you don't have this echoey thing going on.

Caller Scott (01:06:50):
Exactly. And it, oh, that's brilliant. Works great with wired headphones. So of course, you know, I brought my Bluetooth headphones and it just wasn't working. Didn't work. But they had a, they had a stand set up. So I went and talked to the guy from Mix Hollow and we're talking about it and I said, well, I'm gonna have to use my old phone. Am I gonna have to switch them cards cuz I know that's gonna confuse somebody or something somewhere. And he is going, well, yeah, you do have blah, blah blah, blah, blah. And then he reaches over to his team and he hands me this little white generic looking adapter us BBC to headphone. Look at this. What, what is this? Hey. He goes, take it. So I take it home cause I didn't have any wired headphones. I plug it into my phone and this app pops up. This is is Cam. Oh no. What, what did I do? <Laugh>. Well, it's too late now, you know, just plug my, my, my headphones wired.

Leo Laporte (01:07:42):
Everybody's got an app

Caller Scott (01:07:44):
Boom. Works like a charm.

Leo Laporte (01:07:46):
Nice. Yeah. All all phones nowadays, almost all phones lack headphone checks. And most of the time I think what they want you to do is what Apple wants you to do, which is use these Bluetooth earbuds. But you've found a perfect example of, of a place where that does not work because the Bluetooth adds latency. That's one of the reasons they don't want you to use Bluetooth. It's gonna have a little, you're gonna have echo no matter what they do. So it used to be go, I didn't head these phones would come with either a dongle, apple has a lightning to headphone jack dongle. Now you have to buy them. Or, and I remember this, I can't remember which phone it was. One of my phones came with U S B C headphones. In fact, it's so funny that you mentioned this. Cause I, I, these, these are on my dresser.

(01:08:41):
I almost brought 'em in today to show them. Cuz it's an interesting artifact. They came with Audio Technica. These are quite good in ear wired headphones with a type C connector. Almost. I, I don't think there's any phone that lacks a headphone port that doesn't work with type C headphones. So you could buy these, they're 48 bucks and just plug them in. You don't even need a special app. The phone itself, the Android operating system will say, oh yeah, yeah. And it, and we're gonna put the audio through there and it's wired. So that's just like having a repair of wired headphones. Ok.

Caller Scott (01:09:16):
Get a load of this. This is the kicker. So now I've got this little white dongle that, that wor I mean adapter. That works great. So now, now, but it looks generic. So I'm looking it up. I'm, I'm Googling it and all. And oh. Oh here it is. Guess who sells this? Who? Google

Leo Laporte (01:09:32):
<Laugh>.

Caller Scott (01:09:34):
Google sells it. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:09:35):
I'm not surprised.

Caller Scott (01:09:36):
Do they advertise it? No. No

Leo Laporte (01:09:38):
<Laugh>. Yeah. And by the way, notice Apple does not sell wired headphones anymore, but they do sell this, this is the US BBC to headphone jack adapter. Why do they sell a U S B C? Oh cuz some of their devices have U us bbc, like the iPad. So this would be for an iPad. So notice they'll sell the connectors.

Caller Scott (01:09:56):
I think their new phone is, I think their new phone is gonna be

Leo Laporte (01:09:59):
Seized. And eventually this will be on all phones. Yeah. Everything will be U Us bbc. Thank you EU cuz Lightning. It was good in its day, but we don't need a variety of standards anymore. So, yeah.

Caller Scott (01:10:09):
So what's that you're holding up? Which one is that? This

Leo Laporte (01:10:10):
Is Apple's us bbc, the headphone jack connector. Now this is for an iPhone.

Caller Scott (01:10:15):
Well that looks exactly like,

Leo Laporte (01:10:17):
Yeah, it looks just like what you

Caller Scott (01:10:18):
Got. Well that looks exactly like what

Leo Laporte (01:10:18):
I got. Yeah. And there are ones for Android. I, this might well work with Android. I don't know. I don't know if Apple does something special. Probably they do.

Caller Scott (01:10:26):
Well, well what happens is it loads this this app called asca, which I also use. I bought a digital microscope and it used that also. I think that's what it was for. I've seen it before. So it's some,

Leo Laporte (01:10:40):
Somebody's telling me that Apple still sells wired headphones just like Google. It's on the back pages. Right. <laugh>, they, they don't, they would much prefer you spend 200 bucks on their <laugh>, on their wireless AirPod Pro. But they still sell 'em. And and I think eventually you're gonna see everybody will offer these, I think Wired still think Wired's better. I understand why they do it in the concert cuz they want to get zero latency. Otherwise you'd hear through the headphones, the real music coming at you, and then a quarter of a second later, the music coming through your headphones would be awful. It would be echoey. So they've got to get that latency down to almost nothing. And that's why they do that thing. Exactly that trick. It's a clever trick with the microphone

Caller Scott (01:11:24):
Real fast. Speaking of concerts, now that your schedule is loosened up, are you gonna get to go to the hardly strictly bluegrass festival for once?

Leo Laporte (01:11:33):
Oh, that would be fun. You go to that every year, don't you? Oh,

Caller Scott (01:11:38):
Well it's been around 15, 20 years or something. Wow. I've been every year, every show.

Leo Laporte (01:11:43):
Holy

Caller Scott (01:11:43):
Cow. Just every day Of every, yeah. Well I live like 10 blocks away, so <laugh>, you know, it was easy. Yeah. And I have nothing better to

Leo Laporte (01:11:51):
Do. That's in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.

Caller Scott (01:11:55):
Exactly. Yeah. What used to be the Speedway Meadows is now the Hellman Hollerer. Cause he's the guy that paid for it for years. That's

Leo Laporte (01:12:02):
A good name. The Hollerer,

Caller Scott (01:12:03):
His, the

Leo Laporte (01:12:04):
Hollerer. So it's coming up September Hollerer. Now. I could go to Friday and Saturday. Obviously I'm here on Sunday. So

Caller Scott (01:12:11):
Yeah. It's always the first weekend of October.

Leo Laporte (01:12:14):
Right. Which this cause of when October is October 1st is Sunday. So they're gonna do September 29th through October 1st this year. Just a little word of warning. Yeah.

Caller Scott (01:12:25):
And a funny thing, the weather's always perfect.

Leo Laporte (01:12:28):
Yeah. That's the best. That's, that's summer in San Francisco. <Laugh> is is fall. Exactly. <laugh>. Don't go to Golden Gate Park expecting anything but clouds this time of year. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, it's a

Caller Scott (01:12:41):
Pleasure. Great. Fall is our summer. Summers our winter.

Leo Laporte (01:12:43):
Pleasure talking to you, Scott. I really appreciate it. Glad you used the phone to show people the way. And thank you. Welcome for that tip. Yeah.

Caller Scott (01:12:51):
I'm Mr. I'm Mr. Low Tech. So you

Leo Laporte (01:12:54):
Know, I wish, you know, we did,

Caller Scott (01:12:55):
There's hope for pixels guys.

Leo Laporte (01:12:57):
John Sino dragged us to a Umey McGee concert where they rent wireless Audi our Sennheiser headphone receivers. And you plug your headphones into it. And so you're hearing it from the board. And it is absolutely the best way to hear music from now on. I wish every concert would do this. I'm glad to hear that there are other concerts doing this. Maybe they'll do it hardly strictly too. That would be really, really great. Well, I

Caller Scott (01:13:25):
Don't, well, the Mix Hollow thing is not free to these kind. They have to pay for it, you know, so Yeah. Whatever. but stern Grove does it our

Leo Laporte (01:13:33):
Oh, I love Stern Grove. Oh, that's good to know. All right.

Caller Scott (01:13:35):
Yeah, yeah. They've got Lyle Lovett coming up. Oh, love Lyle. Love It is on his farewell tour and then I forget who finishes it up.

Leo Laporte (01:13:42):
Oh, I'm gonna have to go. That sounds great.

Caller Scott (01:13:45):
Well, good luck. You've gotta get your tickets one month before the show at two o'clock and you better be there and you know, have that phone in you. Oh yeah. The Indigo girl sold out. Immediate bet. So I bet. Even though it's free, they, they're controlling the crowd. What

Leo Laporte (01:14:00):
Hat do you wear to concerts? High security. You don't wear a high hat to concerts. You gotta wear a low hat to concerts.

Caller Scott (01:14:06):
Yeah. well this is kinda crazy cause there people sit on a hillside and, I mean, there's,

Leo Laporte (01:14:11):
Do you wear a hat? I mean, it's outside so you must wear a hat.

Caller Scott (01:14:16):
There's plenty of shade around. So I, I, yeah, actually I do bring my worst hat. I made the mistake of bringing a good hat once and at the end of, at the end of the complete end of hardly strictly bluegrass, I set it on my bicycle. Cause there was one show left stolen. I bring my crummiest hat. Who

Leo Laporte (01:14:34):
Would steal a hat? What kinda lowlife? Oh,

Caller Scott (01:14:37):
San Francisco

Leo Laporte (01:14:38):
Would steal a hat. Come on.

Caller Scott (01:14:41):
San Francisco. Theft in San Francisco. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:14:44):
Yeah.

Caller Scott (01:14:45):
Okay. Hey,

Leo Laporte (01:14:46):
Great. Talk to you to take care, Scott. I'll see you someday. Alright, we'll, yeah. Bye-Bye. Bye-bye. A again, if you wanna call eight eight eight. I like the phone calls. (888) 724-2884. It's kinda like the good old days back when I'm gonna take another call here. Should I, let's see. Somebody's got their hand raised. I don't see a name. I'll tell you what, since your hand is raised. Oh, he hung up. Suhail's hand is raised. Hi, Suhail. I'm gonna press, did I do it correctly? I don't know. Sohail, join us in the Stargate. Nope. Disconnected. I think I should do an email. <Laugh> what? In doubt. We have so many of them. John, do you have to translate this one from Kevin in kw I, oh, no, that's his initials. I think making a video of life memories for a senior family member. I've been tasked with helping an 83 year old uncle for years.

(01:15:58):
He's written humorous or inspirational stories and emailed them out to family and friends. The stories are, I think this is nice. Always factual from his life. The family wants him to build a video book of him telling these stories in his own voice and video. He doesn't know where to start. And I'm struggling to think of a way to make it easier for him to do any of it. Filming, editing, adding a caption, et cetera. So the question is, he's 83 years old. Does he have a smartphone? Because that's, that's the way anybody who has a smartphone should do it these days, makes it so, so easy. Use the camera on the smartphone. He could do it in a selfie mode is fine. So that way he can see himself, right? Which is nice. It's got a decent enough microphone. He doesn't even have to use a special microphone.

(01:16:53):
Have it not quite arm's length. So you, you want it to, like I am two thirds of the, of the pictures filled, you know, two thirds of you in the, I don't know how to describe this, like this <laugh> chest up. And and he should project a little bit. If his voice is a little weak, which it might be at that age you might wanna have an additional microphone. But I think, you know, best thing, just have him move it a little closer. And he should talk to the phone. Talk to the camera. This might be a little hard. I'm used to that, right? But he might have it a little little trouble. But once he gets used to it, pretend you know his grandson is sitting on the other side of the camera. Talk to the camera and tell the stories and then save them.

(01:17:38):
Now they're gonna be in his photo library, right? Which means it's very easy for him to click that video, email it out. I would not suggest you make him edit it. I would have him email it out or share it to you. Email's gonna be better because I think you'll be able to attach if it's not too long, if they're hour long, that's gonna be tricky. If they're hour long, then what he's gonna have to do is put it on iCloud and send you a link. I think you could figure that out. If you wanna edit it, you go ahead and do it. In fact, that's probably the best thing to do, is get him just to give you the raw videos, the 83 year old videos. You know, his stories, just as they are. Just have him tell the story. He doesn't have to end it in any special way.

(01:18:23):
Just press record, press stop and send it to you somehow, either via email. He could actually text it to you if it's pretty short. There are limits because of the size of video. If it's too big for either email or texting, then he can share it via iCloud photos. If he's on Android, Google Photos. So whichever photos app he has, share it to you as a link. That's, then you'll get the full quality video. You can download it, get a editing program if you're on iOS iMovie, which, which iMovie comes with. All iPhones. All iPads, all Max is perfect for this. Just import each of those videos in. You can trim 'em if you need to. You can do titles if you want. Probably a good idea. You can do dissolves from one to the other. You can add music even if you want, and then you can distribute it to the other family members.

(01:19:17):
I think that's a really great way to do this. He says, I only edit video when I have to, and I struggle my own way through on a MacBook Pro. He's, he shouldn't do it. You should do it and do it in iMovie. It's not hard. It's not hard. Between you guys and the kids in the back of the class chat room. Hello kids. I sincerely hope you'll have some suggestions for camera, microphone, tech challenge senior. Now, if he doesn't have a smartphone that gets a little bit more complicated I still think a smartphone is the best way to go. So maybe you buy a used cheap old iPhone and activate it and send it to him. I still think that's the best way to go. Even, you know, that's gonna be cheaper than any other microphone set up. I guess.

(01:20:08):
You could go out and get a camcorder. You'd have to set it on a stack of books or on a tripod. Turn it on. It's gets more and more complicated, right? The I, the, the smartphone makes this so easy. I think this is the way to do it, frankly. Let's see. Oh, look at all the calls all of a sudden. <Laugh>, you heard I had time. Tell you what, hang on. I will get to your call in just a second. As soon as I tell you about our sponsor, perhaps you've seen the the banner on the screen or above my head. A ACI learning our studio sponsors. Thanks to aci learning the days of oh, boring, archaic training methods are finally over. Lack of meaningful impact shows up as low engagement. And, and if you're going to get you know, some training for yourself or your team, low engagement is the worst, right?

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Caller Suhail (01:24:26):
Hey, how are you?

Leo Laporte (01:24:27):
I'm very well. How are you?

Caller Suhail (01:24:29):
I'm good, I'm good. I don't know if you remember me, but I was on the screensavers reboot show.

Leo Laporte (01:24:35):
I remember. Yes. With,

Caller Suhail (01:24:36):
With the wifi question. Yes. And I'm back with another networking question. <Laugh>, well,

Leo Laporte (01:24:40):
Every 10 years you should come visit us. How about that

Caller Suhail (01:24:43):
<Laugh>? Absolutely. So this one kind of stumped me because I'm pretty good with technology and I'm, you know, I'm an engineer myself. But what happened here is I have an ERO mesh wifi system. Yep. And you know, that's connected to my Comcast modem. And then I have the, the main euro wifi router connected to a switch, which is then connected to a desktop pc. And for some reason, and I can, I can't figure out why my wired internet speed throughput is slower than wifi Yeah. On the desktop.

Leo Laporte (01:25:20):
So why is the switch there? So you have the main base unit has, how many, I can't remember. It has how many ethernet ports? Two or it

Caller Suhail (01:25:29):
Just has two ethernet ports. So one goes to the mode. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:25:32):
So you need the switch because you're connecting more than one thing via that.

Caller Suhail (01:25:37):
That is correct.

Leo Laporte (01:25:38):
Ethernet. How many devices are on that switch?

Caller Suhail (01:25:40):
I, I have a desktop and may a ps4, maybe another device, but they're all not working at the same time though. Have

Leo Laporte (01:25:48):
You tried connecting the desktop directly to that port on the arrow? And see

Caller Suhail (01:25:53):
That's the only thing that I have to try now,

Leo Laporte (01:25:55):
Which is I would, I would just to see if the switch is getting in the way. Right. most switches these days are managed, which means they sometimes do some shaping. Right. So the, the, the, the first test is, let's just see what kind of throughput I get if I'm plugged directly into the Euro base unit. Right. If that's still low, there may be a reason for it. Euro is very aggressive in quality of service q os shaping. Right. So in fact, you'll see this in their ads and everything. It says, you know, we, we take the bandwidth and we give it to whoever needs it. Most <laugh>. So they are looking and they're saying, well, there's a streaming device, we're gonna give it priority because, you know, when you're watching a streaming movie, packet loss makes, ruins it. Right? Right. But if you're just doing email, a slow to arrive packet, not the end of the world. Right. And so it may be doing some sh some bandwidth shaping saying, well, I see, see, the problem is the switch is, might be, I don't know what the switch is doing if it's completely passive, probably not impacting this, that the arrow can still see that's a computer, that's a PlayStation four. Right, right,

Caller Suhail (01:27:05):
Right.

Leo Laporte (01:27:06):
And, and do the proper shaping. So I would first connect it to the arrow, see if it's faster. If it is, then the switch is suspect. Yep. Or the arrow can't see and isn't is just saying, well I don't know what this switch is, but I know it's sucking a lot of bandwidth, so we're gonna slow you down, buddy.

Caller Suhail (01:27:24):
That's so, so the app does show the individual devices that are on the switch. So yeah, I'm able to see all of that.

Leo Laporte (01:27:30):
Yeah, that's good.

Caller Suhail (01:27:31):
Okay. And I've also verified that the link speeds are okay. So that it's not an issue with the cable. Right. Like I'm getting gigabit from the PC to the switch and then gigabit from Okay. That's reported by Eero as well. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:27:44):
You're smart because obviously if you have a lower quality cable on one of these devices, it's not gonna get the full throughput, but you've checked Right. It's high quality cable, you know, cat five or six six.

Caller Suhail (01:27:54):
Yeah. You're short of bending down and like grabbing the cables and changing stuff. I'm kind of trying to,

Leo Laporte (01:27:58):
Nobody wants to do that. <Laugh>. Yes. Although again that can also be a problem. Right. The the cables. Right. I remember, you know, Steve Gibson, who is the ultimate nerd for the longest time we're having packet loss on security now. And I said, Steve, I think it's coming from you. No, no, no. I've checked. Everything's fine. <Laugh> turned out was a bad cable. Yeah, it's possible. Yeah. You know, that's the last thing. You know, he's, he's thinking all these high level issues. Yeah. And it was just a, it was just a physical

Caller Suhail (01:28:27):
Leo. It's not, it's not even like a 10 or 20% loss. It's like three times faster if that's terrible wifi. That is weird.

Leo Laporte (01:28:34):
Wifi should always be less than Wired always, in

Caller Suhail (01:28:38):
My opinion. Always. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Right. That's what I thought too because that's, you know, our traditional wisdom and for the first time just I was troubleshooting something and I was like, okay, let me just go through wifi and I'm like, I go to fast.com and it's showing me two 60 megabytes per second, which I've never seen on my desktop. It's only like 80 or so that I get when it's wired, which is just so, just weird. I'll try with a couple of other wired devices, I'll try a wired laptop directly to the arrow that my

Leo Laporte (01:29:03):
Conversation, that's the best thing to do just to see. And, and then if not a call to Arrow, the, the texts there are are really good and Okay. And, and explain the situation they know better than I do or you or hero's doing. They're not completely transparent about what kind of things they're doing with bandwidth shaping. They're very Yeah, I do know they're aggressive with that. And that's right. You know, for most people. Yeah. that's what you want. Cuz they're not you. Yeah. They're not sophisticated. They just want it to work. Yeah. Try something besides fast as well, because remember Fast is Netflix's Netflix Yes. Bandwidth test. And really it's only telling you how fast your connection is to Netflix servers. Okay. And it may well be, ERO says, oh, he's connected to Netflix. Well no, that,

Caller Suhail (01:29:48):
Well actually I did verify on another service Steam.

Leo Laporte (01:29:52):
Okay.

Caller Suhail (01:29:53):
Like I was getting 10 megabytes of second download speech to Steam, which then turned to 26 over wifi, which is again, and you know, for Steam, these are large games. Right. 30 gigabytes, 60 gigabytes. It cut my download times in like, you know, one third and it was, I was, I was angry cause I was, you know, my wired connection was going for over two years like this. I was like, I, I didn't. No,

Leo Laporte (01:30:13):
No. You should get better than that.

Caller Suhail (01:30:14):
Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:30:15):
Absolutely. So I am on wifi connected to I believe, what do you know John, what, what service we use for this, this wifi? Is this Sonic or is this, let me see who the which wifi Comcast. Is it Comcast? So I'm on TWIT on air. That's Comcast. So that's gigabit.

Caller Suhail (01:30:41):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:30:41):
So I'm getting 540 megabits wifi. Oh

Caller Suhail (01:30:44):
Wow.

Leo Laporte (01:30:45):
Okay. So that's pretty, that's, you should be getting That's about right. By the way. I usually kind of rule of thumb about half the wired. Right. Nominal wired speed for wifi cuz of the overhead. So that's pretty good. You should not be getting, what did you say, 260 kilobits?

Caller Suhail (01:31:03):
No, no. 260 megabytes over wifi. I don't have a gigabit Yeah. Megabits. I don't have a gigabit connection to Comcast, but over wired I only get 80 to 90. So there is some, I mean

Leo Laporte (01:31:14):
80, 80 to 90 is not awful. It's enough. It's not awful to do anything you wanna do.

Caller Suhail (01:31:19):
That's right.

Leo Laporte (01:31:19):
But I understand you say, but I'm paying for gigabit. Why am I only getting

Caller Suhail (01:31:22):
80 90? I mean and it's mostly things like steam downloads, right? Like those game files are huge. 16 megabytes.

Leo Laporte (01:31:28):
So the couple of things to look at, make sure the switch has faster ports. You may, you that switch may have a hundred megabyte, a hundred megabit ports. Cool. Cool. Which is very common. So that would be my first guess. Make sure your cable is faster, not cat five to cat six because Right. Cat five is also a hundred megabit. Yeah. So I think when you're saying 80, that sounds like it's a hundred megabit connection. So look at that

Caller Suhail (01:31:54):
Switch. Yeah. The link speed is okay though. Windows Verify is a gigabit link speed. So, but you know, it could be false advertising,

Leo Laporte (01:31:59):
Right? Yeah. Link speed's different than throughput. Yeah. So

Caller Suhail (01:32:04):
But for others listening in you, if you, if you're experiencing the same issues, you might wanna check, you might, you might get surprised with how fast the wifi is. But

Leo Laporte (01:32:11):
Then, then again yeah. If it's fast enough like I said, 80 or 90, there's nothing you can't do except big downloads. You'd maybe like to see hundreds. Yeah.

Caller Suhail (01:32:21):
That's the thing, right? The steam downloads, like a call duty update is 30

Leo Laporte (01:32:25):
Weeks. Yeah. Yeah.

Caller Suhail (01:32:26):
It's much faster over wifi for me. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:32:28):
That's interesting.

Caller Suhail (01:32:28):
Okay. Right. So that's legit. Yeah. So I'll do those troubleshooting steps I guess. Yeah. It's kind of in line with what I wanted to do. I was just kind of lazy to

Leo Laporte (01:32:36):
Well it's good to know a couple of things. Yeah. Make sure you have cat six cable cuz that's gigabit, not Cat five. Make sure your switch can handle gigabit. Right. You know, a lot of switches are a hundred megabit that that was the standard for a long time. Yeah, yeah. So connecting, using a cat six cable directly into the arrow will tell you if it's arrow or something you're doing and then, then you can decide which way you want to go after

Caller Suhail (01:33:01):
That. Yeah. And then maybe a call, maybe a call or an email to ERO support. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:33:06):
Ero, I have to say ERO support has, now, I haven't, hasn't been lately, but when I had an arrow they were remarkable. I thought they were very, very helpful. Yeah. Okay.

Caller Suhail (01:33:15):
Hopefully it's not an upsell to Euro Plus because I think that's how we kinda get,

Leo Laporte (01:33:19):
Well they maybe now see they're owned by Amazon now. This is pre-Amazon. I don't know what they, how they are these days, but Micah loves 'em. So I think they're probably still pretty.

Caller Suhail (01:33:28):
No, I mean I have no other issues with them. It's just this,

Leo Laporte (01:33:30):
They are aggressive. They're aggressive in bandwidth shaping. Okay. Thank you Shan. Okay. Have a great day. Take care. Thank you very

Caller Suhail (01:33:37):
Much.

Leo Laporte (01:33:37):
Bye-Bye. Let's say hi to Richard on the line from, he says Westchester, New York. I just have rebooted the entire thing. Hello Richard. Richard, you're muted on your side. I'm told unmute yourself. Allow your voice to be heard.

Caller Richard (01:34:07):
I don't think so.

Leo Laporte (01:34:08):
Dad, you're good now. I hear you now. Hey

Caller Richard (01:34:11):
Richard. Yes. Thank you, sir. I'm in the gym so I apologize. I will stop cycling in honor of having you on the phone.

Leo Laporte (01:34:19):
Never apologize for being in the gym. The gym should apologize to you.

Caller Richard (01:34:25):
So long time listener, back to screensaver on the first guy called. Yep. That the Apple Watch saved his life.

Leo Laporte (01:34:34):
Oh. And I can't, I remember, look at you working out staying healthy. Good for you.

Caller Richard (01:34:39):
I'm trying, I'm trying. New York is a steam bath right now. Yeah. So this is best choice <laugh>, but I'm gonna give you two avenues of approach if you wanna get philosophical. We are lucky enough to have the ability to have monitors, apple watches, et cetera. There is much of the population that is not as fortunate as us. And we are perhaps on a path to live a little bit longer because of the devices we have. Exactly. And our technical abilities to be comfortable with that.

Leo Laporte (01:35:17):
Exactly. Yeah, I agree with you. There is a gulf, but you know, there always has been between the haves and haves nots when it comes to health outcomes, hasn't there? And, and that is unfortunate. And I think one of the failings, if you want to get political in this country is, is the lack of a good national healthcare plan. Because there are a lot of people who can't afford to go to the doctor, let alone afford an Apple watch, to let 'em know. What was the con? Was it AFib? I've, I've forgotten the condition that Yes. It,

Caller Richard (01:35:49):
It, it was AFib. And 18 hours after I got to the hospital, the doctor had said that if this round of meds don't work we're gonna go with the paddle. Wow. And I just looked at him and said, that can't be fun,

Leo Laporte (01:36:05):
<Laugh>. Holy cow.

Caller Richard (01:36:08):
Holy cow, cow. So without this, I don't know where I would be. So I'd be,

Leo Laporte (01:36:13):
You're right. We're very fortunate. Let's not forget how fortunate we are. Incidentally, if you haven't spent enough money on your Apple watch, apple will be updating according to Mark Gorman, the Apple watches, including the ultra this fall <laugh>. Just in case you wanted to know. Well, I,

Caller Richard (01:36:28):
I, I have told my wife already that I probably will get every upgrade if

Leo Laporte (01:36:33):
I were in your shoes and that watch saved your life. That's a lot cheaper than having a heart attack. I gotta tell you right now.

Caller Richard (01:36:41):
I, or, or, or worse. But we are very fortunate at this point in my life. The apple of my eye is a granddaughter. Oh. 20 months old. So we take a lot of pictures.

Leo Laporte (01:36:57):
Oh, I bet

Caller Richard (01:36:58):
You can talk for a while about them digital asset management. Yes. Because that's the problem. My family at 20 months probably has to tune thousand pictures already.

Leo Laporte (01:37:13):
Oh, get ready. You know.

Caller Richard (01:37:17):
Do you rec do you recommend the folders within Apple? Obviously once again, we are sharing stuff. How do you deal with 10,000?

Leo Laporte (01:37:30):
Yeah. Well I have closer to 60,000 and my kids were born before digital photography was widespread in the year, in the early nineties. So I only really started taking photos of them digitally in the early two thousands. So there was almost 10 years <laugh> in which I have no very few photos of them. And it breaks my heart. I have prints. That's about it. But once, once came out, you're, you're right, the, the number of photos you take explodes, we were just as I mentioned at Disneyland, went to a character breakfast and Mickey came over right to, and I looked and I took 40 shots. You would never do that with a camera. Right. You take one picture, <laugh> hope it came out because you had to get it developed and it was expensive. Now the sky's the limit cuz it's digital and you can take as many as you want. So these do explode. I I think that both Apple and Google are really doing their best to make this mindless because they know that if it's too complicated, most people are not gonna back up. They're not gonna really understand. So both Apple and Google strongly encourage you to use their systems automatically backing up from the smartphone. I presume most of these pictures you're taking are on the smartphone

Caller Richard (01:38:51):
Phone. The whole family. Yeah. All Apple. Yeah. And we, we all do both Google backup and Apple backup. So I'm totally with you. Yeah. And I know that we've gotta get better at search.

Leo Laporte (01:39:05):
Yeah. So that's what the, so it's really interesting to see these companies, which really, I think they understand their, their customers pretty well and they understand that customers are not gonna, you know, Google bought a, there was a wonderful photography program. A lot of my listeners, you know, 10 years ago used I can picasa, I can't even remember if it was Picasso. Picasso, that's right. Picasso.

Caller Richard (01:39:29):
Picasso. Yeah. I set it up for my clients. I remember it for 35 years.

Leo Laporte (01:39:34):
There you go. It was wonderful. We recommended it and then they bought 'em and they basically put it out of its misery. But Picasso required a lot of effort, right? You would tag photos, you would put 'em in albums. There was a huge amount of organizational structure that Picasa allowed and people liked that. The problem is, it's very time consuming. Most people don't do it. What Google now says is they bought Picasa mostly, I think for the tools, less for the software. Cuz what they now say is don't organize anything. In fact, this is the trend across computing in general. Don't do folders, don't do tags. Let our search technology solve this problem. And, and Apple, to some degree does the same thing where you can type into Apple photos. I wanna see all the pictures that I took in New York City in 1975.

(01:40:26):
I wish we had those pictures still. And it would then narrow it down to that. Google Photos does the same thing. And this is the trend in computing in general because normal people don't wanna spend a lot of time dragging with their mouse, dragging stuff around, typing and tags. They just want to, they just, they don't wanna think about it. They just wanna take the picture. And, and so now if I search for Disney, I tried this in my Apple photos, I will find every visit to Disney over the last 10 years and all the pictures associated with it. Same thing with Google. In fact, Google's a little bit better with Google Photos. What I would suggest everybody in your family do is have more than one solution so that if something goes wrong, you've got a backup. So if you're on an iPhone, I would absolutely put Google Photos on your iPhone, periodically open it and let it sync.

(01:41:18):
So now you have all of your photos in both Google, Google's cloud and Apple's Cloud. If you're on an Android device if you're an Amazon Prime member, actually this works on both Amazon Prime offers unlimited photo backup. It's good to have more than one system. What if you, what if you lose your Apple account? You can't remember the password or your Google account. It's good to have a backup of that. That would be the most important thing I would say at this point. And, and I think I, apple and Google are both doing a really good job of making it easy to find what you want. And it's getting by the way, better and better because they're using AI to analyze these photos. So they're, you know, I could, I can search my Google photos for pictures of Paris in the snow and find pictures from 12 years ago when we were in Paris during the winter. That's really a nice feature. And now I don't have to categorize, I don't have to do folders, that kind of stuff.

Caller Richard (01:42:17):
Excellent. Yeah. Can you do us song one Big Favor and I ask to get Apple people to bring back,

Leo Laporte (01:42:27):
Bring back what

Caller Richard (01:42:28):
I can't get Dark Sky. The Weather app.

Leo Laporte (01:42:32):
Oh, dark Sky. Yeah. Apple bought it and and they've, they've shut down the Dark Sky server and they've supposedly incorporated dark sky into Apple weather. I think for people like us who loved Dark Sky, it's not a full, full incorporation is it?

Caller Richard (01:42:50):
I miss it every day. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:42:52):
I'll, I'll give you a couple other choices. One of our listeners sent me a, a strong recommendation, was it Evan? I can't remember for fork. F O R E C A. It's forecast without the st. It's, so it's interesting what Dark Sky did. Dark Sky is a non-traditional weather app that instead of doing what the National Weather Service does, which is look at trends and say, well it's gonna be rainy tomorrow with a 30% chance of rain and blah. They do hyper-local weather. They use information from local weather station reporting. A lot of amateurs, people like you and me who have weather stations, that kind of thing. And their entire goal was, instead of doing long range forecasting, was to say it's gonna rain in 20 minutes. And, and, and, and, and, and that was a, a completely new slant on weather that the National Weather Service never supported, never wants to support. They, maybe they will in time, but for those of us who got used to getting those alerts from Dark Sky, you know, bring an umbrella cause it's gonna rain this afternoon or rain will be here in 20 minutes. We kind of missed those great features. Apple's incorporated some of them.

Caller Richard (01:44:04):
I have, I have a quick dark sky story. I'm sorry to interrupted. I'm a New Yorker,

Leo Laporte (01:44:09):
Please. My no, I am too. And I'll keep talking until you interrupt, so please <laugh>.

Caller Richard (01:44:14):
That's, that's great. Bring it on. My wife and I are in Fire Island, our first trip and there's no vehicle allowed on the island. And we have reservations for dinner. I look down at my watch and Dark Sky also had a great watch app. Yes. And I said we leave in two minutes. We had to walk about a mile and a half to the restaurant. As soon as we get there, the skies opened up. He looks at me, I said, I'll let you know when we're leaving <laugh>, we get to dessert. I say, take your time with dessert. We're outta here in 17 minutes.

Leo Laporte (01:44:54):
Brilliant. You see, see how valuable

Caller Richard (01:44:58):
That is. Dark sky.

Leo Laporte (01:44:59):
Yeah. US Weather Service doesn't want to get in that business. But fortunately, dark sky showed the way and there are a lot of apps that do this. Carrot weather now. Does that, that's what I use Carrot for is Kara will say it's gonna rain in 15 minutes. Now Carrot, some people don't like it cuz it's snarky, has a slider that you can make it a normal weather app or a really mean weather app. You get to choose. You can also now choose its politics. Do they want, are you far left or far right? Which do you want? And so I would just turn off all of those features, make it a normal weather app. Karat weather is actually as good, I think as dark sky with a lot of the same information. Forecast. F O R C A is also very good. I use both.

(01:45:43):
Neither are free, unfortunately. There is nothing as good as dark sky. Sad to say an apple killed it. I'm gonna point you to one other thing. I've mentioned this before, I'll mention it again. This is perhaps more than anybody in your family will ever want to do, but maybe one person, maybe you in your family can be the archivist. And this is my friend Peter k Craig's article on DP best flow.org. The American Society of Media Photographers has an article on Peter's 3 21 backup. And it is, and you've heard me mention this many, many times under best practices, go to backup. It is exactly, you know, the kind of information. A professional photographer who cannot afford to lose a single image would, would need to know for the absolute best practices for backup. No normal human is gonna do this.

(01:46:41):
But, but since you're the geek in the family, maybe maybe you'll be the one who is the archivist. But there probably needs to be one person who's an archivist who follows the 3 21 rules, who's read these articles. Because this is really the dets, the deep dets on what backup needs to be. If you cannot afford to lose even one image. I personally think Apple and Google are doing a very good job making it kind of brain, you know, brainless to, to back up everything in a way that's gonna be useful. A pleasure talking to you. I'm glad you're still with us. It's the watch Baby <laugh>.

Caller Richard (01:47:21):
It's the watch. And I'm going back to the cycle. Once we get off the phone

Leo Laporte (01:47:25):
Back to cycling, I'm, I'm, I'm sad cuz my Peloton is, was in the recall and I and I, they say don't ride your Peloton because apparently the seats break and some small number of people have injured themselves. And so now I can't get on my bike and I'm waiting for the repair <laugh>, but I've got the rower. So I'm doing the rowing. Hey, let's stay fit. Okay, let's stay here.

Caller Richard (01:47:50):
We need to keep moving. Need, need to

Leo Laporte (01:47:52):
Keep moving for that 20 month old granddaughter. I'm so, I'm so happy for you. That's great. Have a great day. Thank you for,

Caller Richard (01:47:59):
Thank you for being a pillar of my it <laugh>. I mean that.

Leo Laporte (01:48:04):
Yeah. You know what happens to pillars, right? They turn to salt.

Caller Richard (01:48:08):
Well, Microsoft pushed me out. Just I, I'll get off the line, but I just got really frustrated with explaining to lawyers why their machines would go dead after updates. Yeah. I had to get that in. But I'll let you go. Thank

Leo Laporte (01:48:24):
You. Have

Caller Richard (01:48:25):
A great one. Thank you for

Leo Laporte (01:48:25):
Being in there for us. Have a take care. Stay healthy. Get back on that bicycle. Thank you. You've got miles, miles to go <laugh>. Yeah, it's I actually bought my mom 90 year old mom an Apple watch simply for the fall detection. Right? So you know that you remember those ads where you, I've fallen and I can't get up into medical alert and they had the button and all that stuff. And to many, I don't know if it's as good. Maybe it is, maybe it's not. But I think at the very least I'm glad she has that Apple watch on for fall detection. She loves it. She loves it. It came, I'm so surprised. I didn't expect this. Unfortunately it came while I was gone. So let me get up and we're gonna go on over to Radio Corner.

(01:49:08):
And I'm gonna show you something. I just got brand new from Google. So there are two devices in front of me. One of them is $229 from Google. That's the Nest hub. Max. One of them is $500 from Google. It's the Pixel tablet. They're both in the slide mode. Can you tell the difference between the two or can you tell which is which? They're both in. One of these is less than the other <laugh>. This is the $500. And I can tell you how you can tell just by taking <laugh>, taking it off the stand. This is the new Pixel tablet. This is an actually full Android tablet. If you look at it, it's got a camera on the back, just like a, a regular tablet would. And it has it has fingerprint recognition, actually right on the top here.

(01:50:03):
So I'm gonna press that. You actually don't even have to press it. It's got all the Google services. All the Google apps. Let me do this without too much glare. This is a full Android tablet with the problems that all Android tablets have, which is that many, many Google apps are not designed for the tablet. But if you're looking for an Android tablet and you don't mind spending 500 bucks, this is absolutely the class of the Android tablets, the Google Pixel. And this has the best single feature. Go back to my two shot, because it comes with, at least for now, it comes with this thing, which is a external speaker. And it has, if you notice, it has the smart pogo pins on it and a little magnet. And it did. You hear that? It attaches, and now it's just like a photo frame.

(01:50:56):
So I think this is a really clever idea. In fact, when I saw Google demo this at Google io, I immediately ordered it. Cause I thought that's a great idea. They pointed out, when you have a tablet like the iPad, you forget to charge it. This is a place that the tablet can live that's charging. Let me play a little bit of music so you can kind of hear what it sounds like. Let's see. Oh, I can't play music, can I? What? Who, oh, well, something's playing <laugh>. The the bass has pretty good bass. B a s E has pretty good. B a s s. The sound is good. It sounds good. You would probably use this as a single device, say in the kitchen. I would let, lemme pause this.

(01:51:47):
Bob Dylan would never sue us, would he? No. You wouldn't sue us, would you? Bob, you wouldn't, you wouldnt send us a cease and desist. It sounds very good. That's the point of the base, I guess that, and the fact that it's charging. So if you have this maybe in the living room and you wa and you're watching TV and you wanted to check something, look something up, you can remove it and use it as an Android tablet. But most of the time I suspect it's gonna live on this base. Now, here's the thing. When it's on the base, it's pretty much functionally it's very similar to the half as expensive. Nest Hub Max, this has a camera in the front because you can use it for, well, I would say Google Duo, but they killed that product. You can use it for Zoom calls. It has the slideshow mode, which is very similar. The sound on this is arguably maybe a little bit better, cuz as you can see, the base is a little bit a little bit larger. Let me play something just musically.

Google (01:52:48):
Here are some videos.

Leo Laporte (01:52:51):
Oh, both of them will talk to you in same song. Can I play the same song? I should have set that up. Oh, I can do, I can do this like with my voice. Hey, Google play Bob Dylan, forever Young. Let's see what happens.

Google (01:53:13):
Here's a video I found from Search

Leo Laporte (01:53:15):
<Laugh>. Same song. It's pretty much sounds the same. In fact, you might even say that The Nest Hub Max is a little bit better, mightn't you. All right, let's stop this before Bob does anything. Thank you very much. So as music players equivalent as devices, of course this is an Android, so it does a lot more, you could put any app on it that you could put on your Android phone or Android tablet. Again, many of them are not designed for this screen size. This is probably the single biggest downfall of Android tablets. I've, I I have to say I bought this even though it's twice as expensive. Not cuz it does more, but just cuz of this, the fact that you can just un glue it from the base and carry it around. Now, when two Dow showed this on all about Android on Tuesday and knocked it off when she, when she pressed the button on here.

(01:54:14):
So a number of people pointed out, this isn't the best magnet. I haven't had that problem. Once I understood how strong the magnet was, you know, I'm, no, don't worry, you don't <laugh> John Ashley's ready to catch it. You, you learn, you, you hold it a little bit when you press, it's, it's, yeah, maybe it should be a little bit stronger, but you don't want it to be so strong that when you do this, it picks up the speaker, right? You need it to have it loose enough so that it comes off easily. I think Google probably tested, did a variety of magnets and, and came up with this. And, and once you understand, once you've had it long enough and understand how strong or how weak the magnet is, I have not found this to be a problem. You see, I mean, it, it's, it's on there pretty good.

(01:54:58):
It's not falling off or anything. You have to kind of pry it off, tilt it off to get it off. My only co concern really is that it's $500. This is $230, something like that. It really is a big price differential. If you need an Android tablet and you, you know, and you wanna have something in your kitchen that pretty much does the same thing as the Nest Hub Max, I think this is a pretty good choice. But I brought them both in cuz I wanted you to see how similar they are. Kind of, at least on the surface, you know. The sound quality is the same. I use the desktop max all the time in the kitchen for watching news. I can, cuz I have YouTube tv. I can say, you know, put on cnn, I can watch the news in the kitchen.

(01:55:46):
I can even watch local channels in the kitchen. Yeah, I'll be able to do the same thing with this. This has a fingerprint reader. It has both a front face. I believe it has a front facing, you know, I, I actually didn't check. No, I guess it doesn't. I it only has a back facing camera, so that might be a little bit of a disadvantage. But it does have that and it's a decent, you know, single lens camera. I think it's gonna be hard for Google if people know about the Nest Hub Max. It's gonna be hard for people for Google to sell this pixel tablet. It just doesn't do twice as much more. The screens are about the same, right? John, do you notice a difference in the screen quality? I think they're about the same. The bezels are smaller.

(01:56:29):
Of course in the Pixel tablet, these are really pretty ugly bezels. I could imagine Google if they wanted to continue to sell the Nest Hub Max updating it to look a little bit more like this. But then you really say, well why am I buying the more expensive Pixel tablet? It's solely so that you can do this. You can go, you can take this, you can sit on the couch. Battery life on this I don't know yet because I haven't had it that long. And most of the time I leave it docked. But I think the battery life is is a little bit shorter than on a, on some of the other tablets. But, you know, that's fine. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna spend a lot of time, I'm not gonna travel with this tablet. Probably this is, this is a tablet for having in the house and pulling off when you need it and putting it back on when you want to use it in the kitchen or a living room.

(01:57:16):
So I like it. Thumbs up. I think the price differential is the biggest issue. If this costs the same as the Nest hub Max, well you would, obviously you'd buy the Pixel tablet. Is it worth an extra $230, 20 $20 to have this detachable and to have it running Android? Remember, this is not running Android. This is running, you know, I guess it's fuchsia, its own unique operating system designed for the Nest. This will do everything the Nest does if you wanna see your doorbell. If somebody rings a doorbell, it'll show up on here. It has the Google Voice Assistant, so it's not lacking anything. And it adds some features like fingerprint recognition, a camera on the back and this detachable stand. I, I have to say this has replaced the Nest hub Max in my kitchen because I like having that additional capability.

(01:58:10):
You'd have to decide whether it's worth the money for you. That is my comparison. I will have more. I, you know, I'm gonna take this over, keep this with me on the set cuz I can do that. Carry it back to the set with me. I hope you've enjoyed this review. Oh, interesting. Look at that attic display. Cause I named this the attic display. Heard you ask for Bob Dylan forever Young, but, but played it on the Nest hub Max. Was that the right thing to do? And then you can correct it. So that's interesting that it could, it, you wouldn't want to have 'em side by side, but it can tell the difference. I don't know. This is kind of fun, you know, to have it in your lap. You can watch YouTube videos. I do think this is a good I do think this is a good form factor. You know, the tablet form factor. Watch YouTube videos. See I'm watching myself. I do you think this is a good and by the way, the speakers on this are pretty good. It doesn't need the bass. In fact, I'm gonna guess. See I'm watching myself that it uses this and the bass. Like the bass might be, the bass are pretty good. It doesn't need, it's that confus. I should mute this. Shouldn't I <laugh> this?

(01:59:26):
It's a, it's a good screen. I think it's, you know, it's kind of a cool device. I think there might be a, yeah, there is a camera on this. There is a camera. I can see it now. Let me let me turn on the camera. I should probably go over there and do that. Huh? Take

Benito (01:59:40):
Pictures. As good as the pixel.

Leo Laporte (01:59:42):
Huh?

Benito (01:59:43):
Does it take pictures as good as the pixel?

Leo Laporte (01:59:46):
No, it's not a pixel quality camera. Why not? What are you crazy? 500. You true <laugh>. What are you nuts? Where's the camera? Oh, there it is.

(02:00:01):
Allow cameras access to this devices location. Yeah. Well, hell yeah. Okay. Turned on by default. Top shot. Okay, so now this is that camera. How do I turn? Oh, there, there is a turnaround. There's would done. Would you like to see yourself here? This is what you look like <laugh>. So that's this. That's the selfie cam, right? It's right up here. So this, you could also use this just in this form. Of course it has a selfie cam cuz you'd have to use it for Google Duo and stuff like that. All right let's move on. I'm gonna take a couple more calls in just a bit. But first word from our sponsor, as you probably already know cuz I say it, every episode, bandwidth for as the tech guys and every other show we do is provided by cashflow at C A c h e f l y.com.

(02:00:58):
We love cashflow. We've been using cashflow practically since Twitch started. There was absolutely no way for us to provide these downloads to the vast audience that we uncovered when we started without cashflow. I was struggling to do it. And along came Matt from line. He said, Hey, I think we can help. And they have been ever since because one thing we learned, videos have to play right away. Vi viewers aren't gonna hang around while you're buffering for 30 seconds. We also know if you, if you've got a shopping cart, if the shopping cart takes seconds to load shoppers, abandon the cart. Gamers leave bad reviews if the latency is high. Cashflow solves these problems. Customers expect and deserve a faultless experience when they're engaging with content. We know this any device anytime, anywhere in the world. That's why we use a content delivery network.

(02:01:55):
Cashflow. They've been doing this since 1999 where they have the track record for high performing, ultra reliable content delivery for more than two decades. In fact, back in 2002, more than 20 years ago, they pioneered the use of tcp n e cast. Now, CDNs are starting to catch up, but cashflow is always ahead of the curve. Quality of experience, that's the metric. Cashflow uses q o e. It's the most critical metric. If you're serving content simultaneously to a large distributed audience on a global scale, your delivery stack can be your secret weapon. Look at all these companies that use cashflow. Ultra low latency video streaming that can deliver video to more than a million concurrent users with less than one second latency. You get lightning fast gaming, faster download, zero lag, no glitches, no outages. You get mobile content optimization. This is great for your website.

(02:02:52):
Automatic simple image optimization. So your site loads faster on any device. Cashflow is the only CDN built for throughput. Delivering rich media content up to 10 times faster than traditional delivery methods. 30% faster than other major CDNs. And I love the way cash flight bills. You get month to month billing while you figure out what your usage trends are. Cashflow smooths out the spikes so that you don't have to pay for huge usage when it's slow the rest of the time. They help you figure that out. And then once you know what it's gonna be, you can get fixed term contracts that get discounts. But basically the point is you design your own contract when you switch to cashflow. 3,500 clients in 80 countries, cashflow is the best for scalability, reliability, unrivaled performance. That's why we use 'em. That's why you should look them up and, and use 'em yourself. Learn how you get your first month free@cashflow.com. Cashflow.Com. Thank you cashflow for making this all possible. I've got a wireless caller. I'm gonna pick you up. Press six to say your name and city. Hello Wireless caller. Do you hear me? How do they know that I've picked them up. Was there a beep or hello? That's you. Yes, you, hello? Oh, what's your name?

Caller Scott (02:04:15):
Hey Scott.

Leo Laporte (02:04:17):
Hi Scott. Where are you calling from?

Caller Scott (02:04:20):
Lithium Springs, Georgia. All right. It's suburbs of Atlanta.

Leo Laporte (02:04:23):
Welcome to the show. What's up?

Caller Scott (02:04:27):
I was gonna disagree with you when you started off about the Android tablet. It's like my most iOS people you started off about the layouts. Androids Yeah. Were not good. But it's the same with iOS. With my iPad Air. There is, it ain't, and my you're right. Android tablet is a, it's very

Leo Laporte (02:04:48):
Frustrating when there's an app that's designed for the phone that doesn't use the, the, the whole screen on the i on the iPad, isn't it? And that happens with many Apple apps. Yeah. But that's up to the developer. Yeah. And I think the difference is on the Android side, there's so few Android tablet users, developers are less likely to make an Android tablet version of their app available. Most of the time they go, well, I don't, you know, that's gonna be a small audience. But that's, do you prefer your Android tablet to your apple iPad?

Caller Scott (02:05:21):
Yeah. Oh, definitely. I have a the best Android tablet is the Samsung tab

Leo Laporte (02:05:28):
Eight. Yeah, those are really sizes.

Caller Scott (02:05:29):
Yeah. And I have the hundred 20 Hertz screen, which of course the iPad Air five is just 60 hertz. Right. And there's, it's just much better specs. And Samsung software takes advantage of a tablet much more than iOS software. Which, and, and it's the same thing with the big iPhone. It just stretches apps and they're bigger on the I agree. Biggest iPhone. It's, I agree. It's not like with Samsung how you got split screen and just, you know, you can have like three or four apps on the screen. So. Well, and, and I have

Leo Laporte (02:06:05):
To say that's the problem also for the Pixel, is they're competing against Samsung, which unlike Google, weirdly enough, has been making a tablet ever since Android's first offered tablets. And they make very, very good Android tablets and a variety of them. So that's another question. If you're gonna buy an Android tablet, should you even consider a Pixel? And I'd say probably for the price you're paying, you'd be better off getting like your Samsung Galaxy tab. You'd be better off getting a Samsung. Yeah. Cause this doesn't have a lot of those

Caller Scott (02:06:36):
Samsung features. Yeah. Samsung does make some cheap tablets. But if you go with a top the eight Yeah. In one of the three sizes. I mean, it is so smooth, you know, fast processor, plenty of Ram, great screen, 120 Hertz, you know, and

Leo Laporte (02:06:54):
Google's gonna gonna say, well, we've got our own, you know, special tensor processor in here and this is gonna have features that are better for AI and so forth and so on. And possibly that's the case. It remains to be seen. I think this is a very nice tablet. I agree with you. The top of the line. Samsungs are probably the only tablet you should consider if you're really gonna be using an Android tablet. I think Google's positioning this more like, ah, this is in your kitchen and if you need a tablet, you just take it off the base and you got it. I don't think Google really wants to sell these standalone. I think that's really all about that base and all of that. Do you like the base?

Caller Scott (02:07:32):
I mean, I'm,

Leo Laporte (02:07:33):
Do you like that

Caller Scott (02:07:34):
Idea? Yeah. Glad Google made it. I'm And I like for Apple to make plenty of different No, all of

Leo Laporte (02:07:40):
Them. That's my immediate

Caller Scott (02:07:41):
Reaction. Long buy it. I want this. I don't Yeah. Thats my, the more better.

Leo Laporte (02:07:45):
Yeah, that's exactly my reaction is when's Apple gonna do this? Cuz that's a good idea that, that charging base. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. I think that's a really good idea. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So thank you for standing up for Google, cuz you know, I I think I'm perhaps a little hard on Google tablets because you're right, like most iPad users, we just dismiss the Google tablet is not quite as good. But I think that you're absolutely right. It deserves to be taken on its own merits. And I think it's it is, it's quite good. It's quite good. So, yep, you're right. I apologize. You got, you got me on that one. Hey, thanks, thanks for calling. I, I wanted somebody to defend me. All right. I

Caller Scott (02:08:27):
Appreciate

Leo Laporte (02:08:27):
It. Thanks. Yeah. And this is, yeah, this is pretty good, but it's not as good as the Samsung I have to agree with. You. Have a great one. Right. Take care.

Caller Scott (02:08:35):
All right, you too. Thanks.

Leo Laporte (02:08:36):
Nice to hear from you. Bye-Bye. I like it when people use our phone number. That's great. Let's try Chris right now. See if we can get him up on the, on the horn here. Got a couple more minutes. Hi Chris.

Caller Chris (02:08:50):
Hey, can you hear me? Ah,

Leo Laporte (02:08:51):
Woo. Listen to that. That sounds good. That's the difference between Zoom and the phone, isn't it? Where are you calling from? Chris?

Caller Chris (02:08:57):
Sparta, New Jersey.

Leo Laporte (02:08:58):
Very nice to talk to you. What's

Caller Chris (02:09:00):
Up? Good to talk to you too. Hey, my high PR 40 here. No

Leo Laporte (02:09:04):
Wonder you sound so good. Are you a professional?

Caller Chris (02:09:07):
I love, I I, I, for years I'd wanted to get into voiceover and you know, years ago working at an a my first job working at a supermarket, people would come up to me and they'd go, oh, you have a great voice. You should be radio or, or do something like that. And I always dismissed it and I was like, you know what, what the heck? Lemme give it a shot. So I did it, you know, a little bit here and there, and somebody a

Leo Laporte (02:09:30):
Come to me and voice and you don't have a jersey accent. I don't know how you avoided that there.

Caller Chris (02:09:35):
No. You know what, <laugh>, there are some words that'll come out with a Jersey accent. Yeah. after spending two years in Florida, going to school with some southerners, I started to say things like yesterday, yesterday, just dropping my R's. So that, that would happen every once in

Leo Laporte (02:09:49):
A while. You know, it's funny, Paul Theat, same thing. You hear the dedham, the Massachusetts come through on just a few words. And my wife tells me, that happens to me too. I don't hear it personally, but she says, when you say roof, or I say room she says, there's certain words you say that they don't sound right. And I guess she's, I say apricot, she says Apricot. I don't understand. Anyway,

Caller Chris (02:10:14):
Tomato with tomato,

Leo Laporte (02:10:15):
Tomato, tomato. So what can we do for you, Chris?

Caller Chris (02:10:18):
So I have a website that I've been I recently got back into doing QuickTime, virtual reality. Well we, we used to be called QuickTime, virtual Reality, but now it's along the lines of taking a 360 camera, going into a store or something like that and creating a, you know, a walk around immersive tour using a 360 camera. Nice. Putting it together and some software and uploading it to the client's website and being able to do that. One of the things that I came into realizing is that a lot of people who are building websites, they generally don't have, they're not using you know, a standalone kind of, not proprietary. They're using Wix and Squarespace,

Leo Laporte (02:10:57):
Right. So they don't have a video player. Don't allow,

Caller Chris (02:10:59):
Yeah. I'm sorry. They don't

Leo Laporte (02:11:01):
Have a video player.

Caller Chris (02:11:03):
Well, they do, but they don't allow you to upload a folder full of files. Right. That would make up the virtual tour. Right. So what I have to do is I then host it for them on my server, and I'm using Blue Host, which I'm, I'm happy with, but I would like to be able to make them snappier so they load more quickly and things like that. They're not bad, but I wanna make it snappier. I've tried Cloud CloudFlare and I've had run into some issues with things not loading properly. And I'm wondering is, is there a way that a service, you know, maybe there's, there's some way to, to mirror that and I don't need it to be a worldwide thing. You know, this is usually local within, you know, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania area. So I'm looking for something like that, that will make my website snappier so that when somebody accesses one of these tours, it loads up quickly.

Leo Laporte (02:11:53):
Yeah. I mean, you can always embed a YouTube video. You don't want, well,

Caller Chris (02:11:58):
These are, it's basically HTML files. They're not videos,

Leo Laporte (02:12:02):
So you can convert them. So YouTube, who, what do you shoot 'em with?

Caller Chris (02:12:08):
It's a, a Ricco Theta X. Okay. And it, it's basically takes still images. You go into software like 3d stu not 3D Studio X.

Leo Laporte (02:12:17):
No, I understand. I have one. In fact I've, I uploaded a bunch of 360 degree videos taken on the Ricoh. I'll give you an example. This was shot in the Galapagos. And so this is on YouTube, so the YouTube understands the format. If I go full screen here

Caller Chris (02:12:39):
And that, that would be great if these were video. But everything that I'm shooting are still

Leo Laporte (02:12:42):
Images. Oh, they're still images. They're

Caller Chris (02:12:44):
Embedded. And you click on part of the video for, not the video, but the image, and then you can move it advance to the next area.

Leo Laporte (02:12:52):
Let me get some let me get a, for some reason I take it back. <Laugh> is not displaying, so nevermind. I guess. It worked, it used to work. In fact, you could see it as a 360. I see. So these are stills. Correct. And what do you want people to be able to do to move with their mouse around and look around? Is that Well,

Caller Chris (02:13:12):
Yes. And that's what happens. So when people go in, they can click around and they can look everywhere, and then there's like a little target on the floor that they click on, it takes 'em to the next area, and then they can look around and there's, you know, a target or something and they can click on that. It takes 'em to the next area and

Leo Laporte (02:13:27):
Doesn't, doesn't quickly. Rico, I quickly, I see you remember Rico had its own gallery for these things, right?

Caller Chris (02:13:35):
They do, yes.

Leo Laporte (02:13:36):
And then you can upload,

Caller Chris (02:13:37):
But then I have to pay them on top of my hosting that, you know, I have anyway for my own website.

Leo Laporte (02:13:42):
That's theta three sixty.com where you can upload them and then you can embed it using html. You can embed it on the customer site. But yeah, you'd have to pay

Caller Chris (02:13:52):
That. And that's what I do. Yes.

Leo Laporte (02:13:53):
So, so you're doing it, but you're doing it from your own server as opposed Correct. From theta 360. And what you would like to do is put it on somebody else's server for free?

Caller Chris (02:14:08):
Well, no, I have, I have my own server because I'm, I'm using it anyway for hosting for my own website. So I, I put their tour in a folder on my website and I provide them with the embed code and a link so that they can share it on social media and things like that. But I wanna make it snappier, so I'm wondering if something like CloudFlare is going to make it better, but I don't need, you know, worldwide coverage here, you know? Yeah. I'm talking about local.

Leo Laporte (02:14:32):
Yeah. So how, I don't know on Bluehost how much access you have to the lower level features of it. Do they let you, for instance, modify the settings on your web server?

Caller Chris (02:14:45):
To an extent, yes. Okay. Yeah, I can change like, the settings for you know, WordPress and how much you know, Ram is allotted to WordPress and, and each one of the instances and things like that, they're, they're, it's pretty robust.

Leo Laporte (02:15:00):
Okay. So depending on how much control you have of it, it, it is possible. What you wanna do is something, so you wanna make the picture load faster, right? There's a, there's a few seconds. How long does it take right now?

Caller Chris (02:15:19):
I mean, it's, it's only a couple of seconds. Yeah, but, you know,

Leo Laporte (02:15:22):
Just wanna, you'd like to show up the problem, the reason it takes so long is it's a large image. How big are those files? Yeah,

Caller Chris (02:15:28):
They, they are well it doesn't load the entire tour right away, but you know, a larger tour can be several hundred megabytes and it loads a little bit at, excuse me, a little bit at a time as you walk through. So,

Leo Laporte (02:15:40):
So here, so here's the issue. There could be latency on your side. Your server is taking a while to spin up and to do it and so forth. Cloudflare can't help with that, with something called load balancing. But there's the other side of it is, which is they still on whoever's going to that website, that grocery store website has to download a hundred megabytes worth of data before they can start moving around.

Caller Chris (02:16:04):
Well, it doesn't load all the hundred megabytes or

Leo Laporte (02:16:07):
Whatever, but it loads significant enough, right? Because it's not gonna, otherwise it's not gonna be able to move around. There's a lot of pixels it needs to get. And so some of the snappiness is really just your cus the, the viewer, the customers bandwidth. Sure. And nothing a load balancer would do to help that because they still have to get that data. So very often we use a metric time to first view or time to first control where, how long before, when I hit the website before I can actually move that image, right. So that I have a feeling that I'm, you know, getting, and we were just talking with cashflow about the idea that that shouldn't be more, you know, than a second or two. People are not gonna, I've seen stats that say after three seconds people go away. I mean, it's really quick. Nowadays people are very impatient. So I understand what you're

Caller Chris (02:16:59):
Worried. No, people have the attention span of a net. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (02:17:01):
I, I understand what you're worried about. There's so only some things you can fix. You can't fix the amount of data that has to download, right. Because that's completely contingent on the user's bandwidth. Do you know how much data has to be loaded from that image before you can actually manipulate it? Is it a megabyte, is it 10 megabytes?

Caller Chris (02:17:23):
You know, I don't know. I, I, it's only a couple of megabytes. I don't know specific, but I, it's, it's only a couple of megabytes. Okay. Cause it downloads the first image and, you know, whatever part of the interface needs to be there. And then it it, and it loads it up in a low resolution version as it's loading the high res version. Right?

Leo Laporte (02:17:42):
Right. Although as is often the case that's, you know, still not gonna be satisfactory to the user. Right. So you cannot control how fast their bandwidth is. You obviously want to have it start working as quickly as possible with as little bandwidth usage as possible. Right. understand that you can't help how slow the user's connection is. What can you do on your side? And it may well be that blue host is adding to this laggy latency because it's taken a while to get going and it's not as fast coming out. The solution to that is load balancing. That's what CloudFlare will do. It'll allow you to start three or four streams, for instance, of data coming to the user so that the user is gonna use all of their bandwidth. You know, you want them to, you want 'em to get as fast as they possibly can. Correct. And it may be that Blue host is, I just don't know, is a part of this equation that's, that's slowing you down the pictures are hosted on your server

Caller Chris (02:18:47):
Yes. On Blue Host.

Leo Laporte (02:18:48):
Okay. in general, my experience has been these hostings companies are designed to host kinda lightweight stuff. H T M L C S S, and they're speedy with that. As the content becomes richer, they are maybe not as optimal for that. And you're loading the most, you know, the richest stuff. Let

Caller Chris (02:19:18):
Me see. Maybe I should pick their brains and see if they have a solution. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (02:19:21):
They may, they may have a partner that they work with. Here's an article that scooter X just sent me from Similar Tech, which compares Amazon's Elastic Load Balancing, which is kind of what you want to use with Blue Host. They both cost money <laugh>.

Caller Chris (02:19:42):
That's expected. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:19:45):
You know, Bluehost is in fact the number one hosting for this solution. It's interesting. It looks like Bluehost is widely used for media. This kind of stuff. I would ask them, it may be an upsell, but I would ask them what they can do for load balancing to get faster loading of your, of your 3D content. All right. That's a good idea. Cause I think that that's probably something they can help you with by giving you load balancing capabilities within Bluehost, which would be ideal. Is it gonna be free? No.

Caller Chris (02:20:22):
No. It's a business. I expect to pay for it and I'm willing to

Leo Laporte (02:20:24):
Yeah. And, and yeah, you're just gonna charge your customers for it <laugh>, so you know, and take an extra 10% and then everybody wins. So. Right. I think they're gonna have a solution. And you're right about load balancing. You see what the problem is, if you use CloudFlare, they're not gonna cash it. Maybe they are gonna cash it, but I I think you really wanna do it on Bluehost. You wanna be doing low balancing on the place where that content exists.

(02:20:56):
Okay. It, it may be that I'm not enough in an expert on this to know whether cash fly or sorry, CloudFlare or perhaps even you know, an Amazon service could help you cashing it. What they'd have to do is cash the entire amount so that in effect, even though your page is coming from Blue Host, the content for the 3D image is coming from the cash. And CloudFlare I'm pretty sure could do that. I'm just not sure how that they, you would set that up. So that's what you're looking for. The words are load balancing and you're looking for somebody that will host the content or at least cash the content so that it's coming from them. I'd say start with Blue Host, see what their pricing is, and then do some research on Cloudflare's la load balancing and see what, you know, if that'll work for you. Cloudflare offers a lot of services other people charge for, for free. Right. They have an interesting business model. So I, you know, I have no problem with you using that. Are the customers the people visiting the website all in the US or are they all over the world?

Caller Chris (02:22:03):
No, they're generally in the local area. It's, it's all local businesses.

Leo Laporte (02:22:06):
Local. Okay. So I think Blue House would be fine for that. One of the, one of the PE reasons people use CloudFlare is for more of a global presence.

Leo Laporte (02:22:15):
Right. You know,

Caller Chris (02:22:17):
And that was one of the things I was starting to research was that, you know, a lot of people were who are, you know, talking about this load balancing are worldwide. Right. Right. And I don't need that. So.

Leo Laporte (02:22:26):
Right. Yeah, there's, I'll we'll put a link into cloud to cloudflare's load balancing explainer that helps you maybe understand what they're doing here. This is, this is the trick. I don't know if you've already read up on this or not. I'm not an expert, so I'm not giving you specifics. I'm sorry to say cuz I just don't know. But I would say take a look at that. They would have to cash the content to make that useful because if they could get it from you and then give it to the customer, there's no way that's gonna be faster than the customer getting it from you directly.

Caller Chris (02:23:05):
No, I, I wouldn't expect, and I think that was my understanding, is they'll cash it, you know, once the data is there the first time, they'll check out every once in a while Exactly the first time. And then they're hitting, you know, people are hitting CloudFlare rather than your site. Right.

Leo Laporte (02:23:18):
First save each server, distribute traffic accordingly. Yeah.

Caller Chris (02:23:23):
All right. I'll check out that thing and see

Leo Laporte (02:23:24):
Appreciate, I'm not sure, but we'll put that in the show notes. It sounds like a, a really interesting business and I'm sure realtors and, and you know, would also be interested in this.

Caller Chris (02:23:34):
You know, you would think that, but the realtors, unless they're selling multi-million dollar homes, they just wanna do the absolute minimum Yeah. Required to sell the, you know, and make the most profit. Yeah. So I find it, it's mostly restaurants wedding venues. They're the people who are interested Oh

Leo Laporte (02:23:48):
Yeah. Wedding venues. Sure. Cuz the bride wants the bride to be, wants to see what it's gonna look

Caller Chris (02:23:53):
Like. Right. Yeah. And then, you know, even I had one customer just recently I finished up, they have a wedding venue in a really nice restaurant and she was saying, this is gonna help me because I can send this link out to people and they can immediately see whether or not they're gonna waste my time. If they're like, yeah, you know what, this isn't the spot.

Leo Laporte (02:24:09):
Exactly.

Caller Chris (02:24:11):
So they, that's, that's huge for them. Sure.

Leo Laporte (02:24:13):
I mean, I, I've seen quite a few of these and they're always take time for me to load. I just kind of accept that, you know, it's gonna be a while I'm loading a VR representation, you know, a 3D representation of this. This is a lot of data, so I expect that. But maybe some customers just say, well, where's the picture? Where's the image? I don't. Right. I don't see it. Do you put a w you know, do you put a loading banner up or something? Let 'em know it's gonna take

Caller Chris (02:24:40):
A few. Yeah. You'll get a little thing that says loading tour, you know, please wait. And that's, I mean, for, I'm on a gigabit ethernet at home, so, you know, I've got a gigabit up and down so,

Leo Laporte (02:24:49):
You know, internet, so you're not the problem, but you're, you're as fast. I know. I'm not the gonna be. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I would talk to Blue Host. I bet you they have a solution for this. A any good hosting company should.

Caller Chris (02:25:00):
Yeah. And they, they come highly rated, you know. Oh yeah. The searches I've ever done. They're

Leo Laporte (02:25:03):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're very good. So.

Caller Chris (02:25:05):
All right. I appreciate your information.

Leo Laporte (02:25:07):
Hey, it's a great business. What's the website? Oh, you do? Do you wanna give it out?

Caller Chris (02:25:11):
Sure. It's called a better virtual tour.com.

Leo Laporte (02:25:14):
Better virtual tour. And you're mostly in the Jersey area?

Caller Chris (02:25:19):
I, I am northern New Jersey here, but you know, I will travel, you know, a couple hours if somebody,

Leo Laporte (02:25:24):
Cause you gotta go with your theta and take the pictures and all that. Yes. Yep. I just, I brought with me on our last trip, the the Osmo 360, or is that what it's called? I always forget. I think it's the Osmo 360. And and I shot quite a bit of 360 degree video, which no one will ever see because it's just a big pain in the butt. So let me just, just, so which one should I load just to see how long it takes? You

Caller Chris (02:25:50):
Know what the, the first one on the upper right hand, upper left hand corner there is the Barrymore Film Center in Fort Lee.

Leo Laporte (02:25:55):
All right. Let's see. Now this is a very fast connection. It says loading virtual tour. There's the first black thing. But see, this is the problem now it's just, you know, I think this is me cuz I wasn't able to load my I've got some sort of weird setting going on here.

Caller Chris (02:26:13):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (02:26:14):
Cuz it, but that was not bad. That got to the first, the first click within a second or two, which is pretty darn good. I don't know why I can't, you can't actually, I can't actually see it, but I noticed I couldn't see the other thing. Let's see the Firefly Studio. Warwick, New York. Yeah. I'm not getting images. It's load, you know, I'll have to say it loads pretty quickly. Okay. For me it loads within a a second.

Caller Chris (02:26:41):
You got a beefy pipeline too.

Leo Laporte (02:26:42):
I got a 480 as we just saw. Four 80 megabit pipeline. Is it loading for you? Yeah, it's something on this machine. Which is weird cause it's Windows 11. Oh, maybe it's not so weird. <Laugh>, pleasure talking to you Chris. All

Caller Chris (02:26:58):
Right. Thank you so

Leo Laporte (02:26:58):
Much. I appreciate it. There you go. How fast is that load for you? Pretty quickly. Yeah. I think maybe you just got clients with slow internet. But see that's the problem is we get used to this fast internet we have here with our gigabit connection and there are a lot of people Yeah. We get spoiled who don't have that kind of connection. I don't think your server is so much of a problem, to be honest with you. Alright, good. Yeah. Hey, it's nice talking to you. Alright,

Caller Chris (02:27:22):
Same here. Thank you

Leo Laporte (02:27:23):
So much. My pleasure. Thank you to all of you for joining us for a solo Ask The Tech Guy episode. We will be back next Sunday with two. Yes two tech guys double the information. Remember you can always email us ATG at twit tv during the week and that phone number's live during the week too. 8 8 8 7 2 4 2 8 8 4. You can leave us a voicemail. I bet you we had a lot of voicemails and I didn't even think of asking for them. So leave us a voicemail, try to keep it under 30 seconds. We're more likely to use it if it's shorter. And always start with your first name and city. Cause I like to know where you're calling from. Again, 8 8 8 7 2 4 2 8 8 4. You'll be live on the show if you call between two and five Eastern on Sundays. But otherwise you can leave a message.

(02:28:10):
And of course the Zoom during the show is called twit tv. We record this show and you can watch us doing it live with all the glitches, all the failures, all the flops that get edited out later every, every Sunday, 1101 Pacific, two to five Eastern 1800 utc. At live twit tv there's a live audio stream and a live video stream. Yes, we do video of this show. You could subscribe to the audio and the video. If you go to the website, twit tv slash atg, you'll see a link to the YouTube channel dedicated to the show. You'll see what you can subscribe to. You know, what is it? Smash the bell. Hit the button. Smash the like button. Smash the like button it hit the bell, baby. I was trying to watch all those people. If VidCon, I didn't, I don't, I don't speak that language.

(02:29:00):
I'm an old guy <laugh>. But you can subscribe in your podcast client. You'll see the links at the webpage to a couple of the big ones. But you know, there's also just search for Ask the Tech guys. You should be able to find it in your favorite podcast client. If you're watching live, we've got a live chat room. I use it as you can see, you guys are team, team tech guys at IRC dot twit tv. Of course, our Club TWIT members have their very own stadium club in the discourse. You can always go to that if you're a member of Club Twit, twit <laugh> TWIT TV slash club twit. Sorry about that. They'll cut that out. See, now that you're watching live, you're gonna see all the coughing and the hemming and the hawing. Love the Club twit. Would love to have you in there. Twi that TV slash club twit. I guess that's everything I need to say, except I'll see you next time. Have a great geek week. Bye-Bye.