Breaking the Green Bubble: Improving Messaging, Security Cameras, and Future of Faxing Technology

Do you ever feel the frustration of the "green bubble" messaging barrier between iPhone and Android users? Exciting news! Apple's upcoming update promises to shatter this inconvenient bubble, enabling high-quality messaging without third-party apps. Join us as we share our insights into this development, touch on FaceTime compatibility with non-iOS devices, and explore the humorous yet infuriating incident of my refrigerator's sudden breakdown along with plans for an imminent relocation.

Our new home isn't just about moving; it is a technology haven evolving on a sprawling five-acre property. We're talking about setting up a solid network infrastructure, Wi-Fi cameras, and even a solar generator. Bit by bit, our dream is becoming reality. From a solar-powered, battery-operated Real Link camera to upgrading to the Wise Camera version 3, it truly is a thrilling journey that we cannot wait to document through a series of videos.

Finally, we switch lanes to engage in a fun, lively discussion of hoodies in diverse climates, various camera features, and the functionality of the Wise watch. Oh, and did I mention the future of faxing technology? Alexa might just be making voice-command printing a reality soon! As we conclude, we ponder over the security and relevance of faxing in the digital age, and tease the idea of extending our episodes with more content and videos. Our journey is just getting started, and we hope you're as excited as we are about what's to come.

Transcript

Ronnie: 0:00

Today on the show, we're going to talk about the green bubble. Ronnie knows what that is. And another thing broke down in my home, which is the refrigerator. Just as we thought we got everything almost fixed, we had to replace the refrigerator. Why would I bring that up? On about a five-acre tech? Because there's technology in it. Also, we're going to talk about the property. There's some things we're getting ready to do. All of this on five-acre tech MUSIC. I'm Adam Mogan and this is Ronnie Tofty, and this is five-acre tech. So, ronnie, what have we got today?

Ronnie: 0:57

Not a lot, not a lot.

Adam: 1:00

Not really, I don't know. I thought it was a lot.

Ronnie: 1:02

Oh, maybe you're right, I thought, it was a lot, but at least I thought that the green bubble, the green bubble.

Adam: 1:08

What is the green bubble? I don't. I've never seen a green bubble. I have no idea. I don't know what you're talking about.

Ronnie: 1:12

Well, we have green bubbles on. Why do you?

Adam: 1:15

have green bubbles on your phone, your iPhone.

Ronnie: 1:18

Because the inferior, totally inferior, android phone sends over this green bubble message. They can't do it in a blue message, which shows all of the nice features that the iPhone has, which is you can see when somebody's red, you can see when they're typing pictures coming clear. It's amazing stuff. It's so annoying. The green apparently huh, apparently so. I never even knew there was something about it until you brought it up one day, but that's about to change, yeah.

Adam: 1:52

We just read an article about RCS. What is RCS?

Ronnie: 2:00

I don't know what it stands for.

Adam: 2:03

But, it's what Android has been using for quite a while now to send its messages. An iPhone would not use it and would not accept it. That's right. So that is why everyone got a green bubble.

Ronnie: 2:18

Basically the communication on. Well, apparently they started using RCS in the Android world, but iPhone won't pick up the communication on it and work with it, and so it seems that everything was coming over either directly to the iPhone or into iMessage as SMS or MMS, and so that's the old way of doing things, and that was all done over a cellular originally, maybe still doing it over a cellular, except everything has gone towards the direction of throwing everything over the internet on mobile phones. So maybe that's the way it's working, but now Apple is going to allow this to happen sometime next year, we understand.

Adam: 3:06

There's going to be an update on your phone.

Ronnie: 3:09

And it's going to start working and everybody's going to be happy. So we're a little bit closer to not having to talk bad about iPhones and Android phones anymore.

Adam: 3:18

Yeah, it's interesting is I thought this whole time I was giving iPhone credit for their messaging system. It was superior and in some ways it kind of is. As far as the iMessaging part of it, it is very good, but they were not allowing Android to use their high quality messaging system with their phones.

Ronnie: 3:42

Yeah, so if you thought it was Android the whole time, we were all mistaken, it's true. Yeah, this we actually saw a video that talked about it. How long ago was that? Was it 2019?

Adam: 3:56

Yeah.

Ronnie: 3:56

Yeah, 2019. So in doing some more research on this, trying to figure out what is going on here, and hey, everybody's going to be happy, it's going to make life a lot better we're not going to like I've got some friends that if I want to really send something decent to them, we use WhatsApp. There's nothing wrong with that, but everybody would rather use just their main message app. You know, it's just going to be better to do it that way.

Adam: 4:22

You know one thing I didn't remember reading or knowing. I don't think it's going to allow FaceTime still.

Ronnie: 4:28

Yeah, but any FaceTime caller can initiate a call using FaceTime and sending a web link to a phone or a computer. So we can still initiate a call. Kind of like, if you're paying for Zoom and you want to start to initiate a call with everybody, you can do that. So it's possible. So there's a lot of possibility. Don't forget, if you're using FaceTime, you can send a link to people through email, through messaging, so they can connect to that, either through the web, on a web browser on your computer or on an Android phone. So, yeah, you can do that. It's very interesting, it is. It just seems like it's getting closer and closer. So I thought, you know, with all the banter going on between us, one day there was going to end up with like a riot on the street somewhere. You know about all this, but I think it's they've done what they can to contain this riot iPhone is finally catching up to Android.

Adam: 5:29

Yeah, first to USB-C. Yeah, and now RCS.

Ronnie: 5:33

Yeah, and we thought we had the superior phone. There's good and bad about both. It's just what you like.

Adam: 5:39

I don't know what I'm going to say.

Ronnie: 5:40

I don't know what I'm going to say. If it goes away, I don't think we're going to have much to talk about on the show. We may have to cancel it.

Adam: 5:47

You paid for more and you got less. That's all I have to say.

Ronnie: 5:50

Yeah certainly did, certainly did.

Adam: 5:55

I don't know. That's true. It's funny to say, though, for me so did you hear what happened? Yes, you did, yes, I did.

Ronnie: 6:07

The refrigerator in my house now died. It's been going on for a week.

Adam: 6:15

And I think people are going to stop listening to our podcast because every time they tune in it's something. It's drastic, blew up in your house, it's drastic.

Ronnie: 6:22

I can't wait to get out of it, but the person that ends up buying this house once we move in onto the five acres and build a new house, is going to have pretty much a new house. Yeah, I mean, we're not letting anything skimp. Of course, the refrigerator is coming with us because we bought a pretty decent one, so I think I'm going to keep it. So we went back with the Samsung refrigerator and looked at them. In 13 years we figured out how long we've had the other refrigerator and it's got Wi-Fi built in. Most of them do have Wi-Fi built into them now.

Adam: 6:55

What is the advantage of having Wi-Fi in your fridge?

Ronnie: 6:58

Well, I'll try to show a picture of the refrigerator somewhere right about here, and so if you see this picture of the refrigerator right there, it basically is a has a four door refrigerator, not one of the ones with the door going across the bottom of the refrigerator part that could be a freezer or refrigerator. Then you got the freezer at the very bottom. This has four doors all the way around. I almost would say it has five doors. How do you say that?

Adam: 7:27

Because it hides the water maker and ice maker that's true, yeah, that is a nice feature.

Ronnie: 7:34

So it's got you on the left door, at the top. On the top door, you can put your hand in the middle of the door and you can go ahead and pull open and there's a refillable, automatically refillable um pitcher, which is really nice, or you could put a cup in there and get get water from there. It's got a dual ice maker just below that in the freezer and just to the right of that you have either a freezer or a refrigerator. It's a flex unit right there so you can change it to either one top level all the way around as a refrigerator, and you can control it all from an iPhone or an Android phone, just using smart things. So, uh, really nice to make a quick change, see if there's a problem, tells you if the refrigerator doors open or closed and send you a notification. Along with it being very loud, but it does send you a notification, so that's kind of nice.

Ronnie: 8:29

So, um, you know, cool, yeah, um, so uses wifi. Connected that up was very easy using smart things. Uh, like I said, you can go in there and um do it, kind of whatever you want. Um, the interesting thing is we looked at lots of different refrigerators. It was pretty crazy. Mm, hmm, one uh refrigerator I can't remember if it was, I think it's Samsung or LG, I really don't remember had a window on it.

Ronnie: 8:57

Really, so you can see inside, but the lights were off, but there was a sticker on it that said knock me knock me, yeah or knocked to knock. It said knock.

Adam: 9:04

It said knock two times and so I knocked on the uh not three times, because that means meet you at the yeah. Don't know three times in the morning Something.

Ronnie: 9:17

Am I making you feel really dumb by saying I don't know, you don't know that, so I'm not?

Adam: 9:21

three times on the ceiling, if you want me twice, on the pipe and I'll meet you in the hallway.

Ronnie: 9:30

No, never heard that. All right, well, well, yeah, I guess I was absent that day. If you know that song, comment. Yeah, comment on that. Who sang that song? So I will find out and then I'll listen to it. So yeah, we can do that. So yeah, you look in the window and it's like you can't see anything at all. So it said knock on me twice and knocked on the wind and the glass twice and the light came on. So now you can see in half the refrigerator, see what's there, without opening it. So I'm not sure what what you know all that means is you know, but I'll know. It's always good to knock on the refrigerator door before opening. Why is that? Cause you'll never know if there is a salad dressing.

Adam: 10:22

That joke, dad joke.

Ronnie: 10:25

So yeah, you can have that joke. My friend Jenny Linley told me that joke recently. There's your shout out. Thank you, Jenny. I hear you're famous, I know.

Adam: 10:40

I'm infamous, but not famous. Oh yeah, I am famous.

Ronnie: 10:44

So I'm gonna say that I'm a famous person. Oh yeah, I am famous, so you ready for this, but you already know it. I didn't know. So one of my favorite, absolute favorite personalities on TV slash podcast, slash video podcast is Leo Laporte.

Ronnie: 11:07

I've been doing IT a long time and watched tech TV back when we had cable. He came and left different shows. It was hard to watch him. Then all of a sudden podcasting comes out and watch him all the time. I decided to call in and the day I call in he's not there.

Ronnie: 11:28

But the other guy that's on his show, which is as co host or other host or whatever, is Micah Sargent on the tech guys and you should really go and check out that show. It is fabulous show. It's on twitttv. I believe it's on twitttv and you're going to look for the tech guys and Leo Laporte and Micah Sargent is on there. It's about a two and a half hour show and it's a calling show. So I got to call in like anybody can. Anybody can call in. Any of you guys can call in the show and ask any kind of questions.

Ronnie: 12:04

I know I'm in IT, but I did have a question to ask, which was what are? What are they going to do about printers in the future? Are they going to make a new standard? Because one of the things we go through as IT people is printers have a lot of problems connecting to different devices. So it just they're. They're kind of behind. It's got a little better, but not really. It's just kind of still behind times.

Ronnie: 12:35

And if you're an IT professional, you know about them and you try to set them up depending upon the network. Or how are you going to build that network? The best you can. I mean you can use them through the iPhone. There's Apple print or whatever they call that. On there. There's a TCP IP, which is the way we all connect from computer to a phone over over a network that you would have at your home. But they try to automate that to make it easy for the end user to set up and it's just not easy. So I asked them if there is any any you know thing coming out and should go and listen to that. That episode it was only right about the same time as this show and it was something I've been meaning to ask. They seem they seem extremely smart about knowing all different things and asking another opinion from an IT guy.

Adam: 13:26

So and you were on Zoom. Yeah, we got to see your face, yeah we were on Zoom. Granddaughter was there.

Ronnie: 13:32

Granddaughter was on there also and got to talk about our podcast, for just as many asked what the you know what this room was for and what kind of equipment I had here, and it was fun. I'm going to call back Cool. Got him a couple more questions. I do want to talk to Leo. Never got a chance to talk to him, so this will be fun Nice.

Adam: 13:53

Excellent, yeah, I got it. I got something I wanted to say. You know a lot of you guys we started this show talking about fight was titled five acre tech and it's about your property and and building right and all that stuff, but we don't Talk very much about it?

Ronnie: 14:10

No, we don't. It seems to have taken quite a while to get to where we need to be. Why? I Just think it's? I Can't think of the right word we were talking about it earlier what the right word is to say but it's.

Adam: 14:28

It's just a slow process, it is a very slow process.

Ronnie: 14:31

It's fault necessarily no so there's three of us involved in buying this property. I'll break it down again. My brother-in-law is the one who actually purchased it. Then we have to talk to the city about Partitioning the property off. There's another word for that. I'm not sure what that is. Right offhand. It's not subdividing, it's replanting, that's it. So we need it replanted. We have to go to an engineer. Slash survey company, went to, went, found out from the city that we that's what we need to do. We went there. When we went back, we went back again Again and then one last time they finally the city finally said yeah, go ahead. And so now we're waiting on the bank because the bank has to go ahead and start the process of Resplitting the property up where we can all pay separately. So we got to get there. Okay on that. So the survey company can start and do their job. They will get with the bank also at the very end They'll file everything with the county and then we can proceed to build.

Adam: 15:34

So I'm thinking by the end of the year we could do it so, all that being said, is it all just sounds like a lot of stuff happening. So Nothing's happening here with that you guys get to see or we get to talk about, but stuff's happening, yeah, and I just think that it's. I just wanted to all the people, all our audience, to know that Our, our plan is as we get closer and closer, we're gonna have some onsite stuff happening, some structures going up and different things, and we're gonna try to film as much as that as you can and talk about what's happening and Whatever, yeah, and then we were talking today about One thing we can do.

Ronnie: 16:14

We have a canopy that we need to put up, and it was. We bought it. It got so hot down here. I mean we just were outside, barely doing anything, and I got sick one day for about four or five days, just from getting overheated. Wasn't even in the Sun. My son-in-law got. The same thing happened a few weeks later. It's, it's brutal, it was totally brutal, and we noticed it slowly starting to cool down. But just before usually it gets, it starts to just level off nicely. And then it went into super cold and and you didn't want to be outside because now you're getting too cold and not freezing yet, but you know so it's been a very strange year.

Ronnie: 16:56

So now we're at the point that we can start doing a few things out at the property. One of the things we want to do is build a canopy. We're gonna put a YouTube video together on that Talk about on the show again, and that canopy will hold the tractor in there and that is where we're gonna put the solar generator, the T-Mobile home internet and set up Wi-Fi cameras out there. So, because we don't have any power and solar panels on the canopy, that will be a great idea and what that said.

Ronnie: 17:27

We had somebody that asked about cameras again, and so we actually are gonna go out there here in just a minute.

Adam: 17:37

Not really in a minute. We're gonna go, we're gonna grab our microphones and we're gonna just go out there.

Ronnie: 17:43

We're gonna show them the difference between what kind of camera you can use on the property. Right now, we have a solar powered, battery operated real link camera that uses cellular LTE and I think it's slow and the interface is slow about a couple of them not exactly happy with it. I think we can do better. So we're gonna go out there and simulate what we're gonna do underneath the canopy by putting a wise camera version 3 out there, and here is where we're gonna show you. Right now. We Thought we would show you the real link camera and this is where we put it on the property. This is what we're currently using. It's a solar Camera, lte. We've talked about it on the podcast.

Ronnie: 19:09

Ronnie's over there getting the solar generator from Blue Eddy. We're gonna hook up a Wise camera and we're gonna test between the two. Let's see how they do Today. We're gonna hook up the t-mobile home internet, small office internet 5g Cylinder and the wise camera version 3 to the pole right behind Ronnie, who's taking the video with the real link camera. Also, we're gonna use the power from the Blue Eddy Solar generator For this test. We're gonna use the Blue Eddy solar generator, the t-mobile home internet tower and we're gonna have the wise version 3 camera set up and we're also gonna have the real link. So we're gonna see the difference between the two and see which one is better.

Ronnie: 20:39

Okay, as Ronnie comes out as a Sasquatch Through the woods, we're gonna test to see which cameras perform the best for notifications. This is the real link camera and this is the wise camera. Okay, so the real link camera here is here at the top there's a cellular LTE camera Does not need electricity, it's charged by batteries through that solar panel and will work independently. Unfortunately, the wise camera is going to require something else, such as power. So for now, what we're going to do is we're going to hook up the solar generator, as we already did, and we're powering it through USB. We've got an internet source out here that we can use. Eventually, we're going to put all this in a box and it'll be on the solar panels, and then it'll be independent and be able to charge all of these products. So that's pretty cool, yeah.

Adam: 21:59

So did you notice? I was wearing a hoodie.

Ronnie: 22:03

You had a hoodie on. Yes, I noticed that you were wearing a hoodie.

Adam: 22:05

You were talking about it being cold. It was cold out there, I mean for us South Texanists, for you up north, you're laughing at us because it's 60 degrees outside and we're complaining about it being cold.

Ronnie: 22:18

All your YouTubers that show all this stuff up in Idaho and stuff like that. You wear jackets. All the time we get hot, cold, hot, cold, hot cold.

Adam: 22:28

We're not in flip flops and shorts, and it's too cold.

Ronnie: 22:33

It's been pretty cold, so we kind of know what you're going through, but we have more sun, so it's going to be nice having the solar out there, because we're lower down in the states.

Ronnie: 22:43

So we'll have to see how the solar panel performs and maybe we'll get on some of the other things before the flood happened and we can actually show you. We were talking about the hooking up the solar generator to the RV, stuff like that. So I'm hoping we can get a few people out there and put up the canopy and then we, ronnie and I, can work on the getting the other cameras out there. But it was really interesting the difference between these two cameras and frankly I think I'd rather go with the wise camera and, you know, go that route and try to get things out there. I do have another solar camera from wise. It's battery operated, it's similar to the ring camera or the real link and we're going to actually install that on that same pole and it's it's a solar panel installed, solar powered also, and so we should be able to maintain that and connect to the wifi close enough and broadcast it through 5g instead of LTE Gotcha.

Adam: 23:42

So I have the wise, the wise camera. It seems work. And you know what else I have.

Ronnie: 23:47

Oh, I got my watch. You got your watch, and what do you think about that?

Adam: 23:51

It's all right. It's all right.

Adam: 23:53

There's no way it even compares, not even a little bit, to the Samsung S gear stuff and yeah, I thought it's a nice timepiece and it's got the some of the health stuff you know O2 levels and heart rate and exercise weather. But it'll send me messages but nothing exciting, like it doesn't have very many faces to even choose from. I was hoping for a calendar. I just love having a calendar close by my watch because you want to fill something out and I need the date. But it's all right, it's for the price. It does it a decent job.

Ronnie: 24:32

Yeah, we talked quite a bit about it and Ronnie having a Android watch and me having an Apple watch and we had a you know better one. I mean I've got the Apple watch ultra and very incredible watch. See, if you got a flashlight on it right here, probably see that pop up, boom. And it is the little subtleties that you just really never use except for wearing it. It is a great companion. So if you don't have an Apple watch or a Samsung watch, these are really good. I mean the subtleties that, like I said, you're using navigation, you're getting notifications. They don't come on your phone. You can make it silent. They tap you using haptics. Fantastic, I mean absolutely fantastic. I have not used this one, but it's priced really well. What was the price on it?

Adam: 25:29

35 bucks, 40 bucks yeah 35, 40 bucks.

Ronnie: 25:33

I mean you really can't go wrong. And wise has got a good name so far. We just have to see what happens in the future with them.

Ronnie: 25:41

Yeah, let's see. What else do we have. What else do we have? The yeah I was going to bring. I brought up vaccine in the and different other things you can print. Let's go back to the printing conversation. So you know when you, when you have a bunch of a Lexus in your home and you have everything set up correctly, you can actually tell a Lexa to print something and it'll print right to your printer. You know, or you can buy an Alexa printer. They had one for a while. That was a sticky note printer. I got one. It's pretty cool and she'll print little mazes or things. But you can have a do a lot more things than that and you can ask your Lexa about that and learn how to set it up. The other things I asked I talked to the tech guys about was brought up quickly, about faxing and is it dead?

Ronnie: 26:39

I know it should be, but a lot of it's such an old technology. It's kind of like talking about the SMS and the MMS. It's such an old technology. Why can't we get rid of it? You know when, when is it going to happen?

Ronnie: 26:55

And there is a lot of services you can go. You don't have to have a regular phone line anymore. One company I use quite often is T38faxcom and is absolutely incredible inexpensive. You know you're going to pay between $11 and $15 a month. If you don't fax a lot, you can just do it by how many faxes you send and stuff like that. But it's inexpensive Overall. It's cheaper than the AT&T line that's going to charge you like 90 bucks Somewhere, give or take 20 bucks each direction and, being analog, but they were able to do it voice over IP. They can tell you how to set up your device. Pretty good, it's pretty awesome. So is it dead? It should be. Uh, it's secure, so a lot of people can't break into it. It's encrypted. It's still a useful tool because things aren't going away, kind of like the printer conversation. Things aren't going away. Who knows if we're going to get a new standard or not, but yeah, it'll be interesting Cool.

Adam: 28:02

Well, no-transcript. I think we talked about this before. Okay, but when was the internet started?

Ronnie: 28:13

I am not exactly sure. All I know is we talked about technology being a pretty old sum, assuming the internet was probably from 1742.

Adam: 28:25

1742. No dangling. So let's do this. Let's ask the internet Ziggy, when was the first internet?

Alxia: 28:40

The first internet was created in the 1970s by Robert Kahn and Vince Cerf. They developed the fundamental communication protocols that are still in use today.

Adam: 28:51

Ziggy, what was the name of the first internet?

Alxia: 28:54

Here's something I found on referencecom. The first working prototype of the internet was invented in 1965 by a scientist from MIT. The network was known as ARPANET.

Adam: 29:06

ARPANET, arpanet. So, ziggy, when was ARPANET permanent link established?

Alxia: 29:16

From circleidcom. The first permanent ARPANET link was eventually established on November 21st 1969.

Adam: 29:25

So there you go On this right around this time of year in 1969. Arpanet.

Ronnie: 29:35

ARPANET. I wish it was called ARPANET. Arpanet would be awesome. Just a new word.

Adam: 29:45

We did not talk about this, so if I throw you off, sorry, no, you can talk about anything. This oh man, I just lost it this, where I found this, has a little plaque talking about this ARPANET and it says SRI was the first. It was one of the first two nodes with the University of California at Los Angeles on the ARPANET SRI.

Ronnie: 30:22

Sound familiar. No.

Adam: 30:24

SRI.

Ronnie: 30:27

SRI. What do you mean? Which?

Adam: 30:31

word E, W. How do you spell SRI? That's all right, I don't Is that what that's talking about.

Ronnie: 30:39

No, no, SRI is another program that Apple bought many years ago.

Adam: 30:43

Okay, well, that's what I was wondering if it was something similar to what I thought.

Ronnie: 30:47

No, unfortunately it's something different.

Adam: 30:50

Okay, all right. Yeah, I thought maybe it was something they named from that original internet.

Ronnie: 30:57

Yeah, no, but unfortunately not.

Adam: 31:01

Anyway.

Ronnie: 31:02

But the show is being recorded on a different date than the giveaway. Oh, the giveaway, the giveaway. So right about here. Just a minute, we're gonna announce the person who won the giveaway, but at this moment we don't know who it is. So we're gonna leave a blank spot to insert a video and we put the timing very strange, so we're gonna have to do this late at night to do it right according to the instructions of the giveaway. So the person is that we're gonna give the Amazon Echo 2 will be.

Adam: 31:45

That was the right drum roll. That's the wrong kind of drum roll.

Ronnie: 31:48

But listen to this. Yes, hey, everybody Just wanna let you know who the winner is. It's Ryan in Florida.

Adam: 31:56

Thanks everyone for commenting and hopefully you continue to like our podcast and then help us out by commenting and subscribing.

Ronnie: 32:05

We would definitely appreciate it. And back to you, ronnie and Adam. All right, congratulations to whoever I said, or Ronnie said, we don't know because- we're gonna.

Adam: 32:17

Hopefully they enjoy it.

Ronnie: 32:18

Yeah, hopefully you guys enjoy it. We'll ship it out to you. Please follow the instructions on what you need to do. That's listed on the YouTube descriptions area of the latest episode, 14 and 15. 15 has a who won and 14 will have the instructions on what to do to win it. If nobody wins it, we'll put it back and we'll go from there, or we'll pick the next person down from the list.

Adam: 32:47

So awesome. Is that it for our show?

Ronnie: 32:50

I don't know I'd seem to wanna talk about more stuff what? But I don't really have anything else.

Adam: 32:58

Well, I think what you're gonna see is the show's a little bit longer than what we think, because we have some videos to add into this.

Ronnie: 33:06

That's true. That's true. Maybe that's what it is. So anyways, I guess at this point we can close it out. We appreciate you guys listening and, until the next episode, всех.