AI Generated Transcript
All right, welcome everybody to basics with bits. And we have a special presentation for you here. It’s our BITS holiday guide. And I’m hoping to make this maybe an annual thing. And so what I’ve done for today is, is since we got Black Friday coming up here in a couple weeks and, and it’s the season of giving. I’ve invited five people up to the panel here and we’re going to kind of give us. Hopefully they’ll give us some tips and things like what’s on their list to give people or what they. So if, if we’re going to go around, I’ve got with me, first of all, I’ve got with me the amazing Jeff Bishop here at the table. Hello, everyone.
And hey, I want to, I wonder if we can do some, a little bit of BITS announcement things before we get started on the stuff here. But we’ll wait for introductions. Okay. Yeah, let’s do the introductions and we’ll do that. Thank you for reminding me. Michael, are you at the table? Michael Babcock is not here. Okay. All right, so then I have sitting to my, to my one other, to the other side of me is the amazing Princess Marcy duty. Jeff, let’s go ahead and do some, some, let’s go and do those BITS announcements.
All right, cool. So I just want to remind everybody, of course, it’s, you know, membership renewal season for all of our affiliates actually at this point across acb. So if you are wanting to renew your membership in bits, we have a really interesting opportunity for you this year. We, we want, speaking of Black Friday, we, we inside of BITS are going to be doing something pretty special this year where we’re offering 50% off of a lifetime membership, meaning it’s normally 200. It’s going to be $100 if you want to do that, which is really amazing deal of lifetime learning and engagement and just community involvement. So if that’s you, then we would love to have you join at that level. If not, that’s fine. You can renew just as an annual member. We’ll be reaching out to all BITS members as well, individually. We’ve already started that process with some of our people who have actually paid for their memberships out further than 2026.
And so we’re reaching out to them first and then we’ll, then we’ll reach out to the rest of you. But stay tuned for that. And a lot of fun things are coming up, of course, our annual meeting coming up in December and you’ll be hearing a lot more about that as we just want to wish everyone a really wonderful Thanksgiving or whatever holiday that you might be celebrating this month and certainly enjoy time with your family. The by the way, the discount for life memberships starts on November 26th. That’s the Wednesday prior to Thanksgiving and going through Giving Tuesday. So that’s giving Tuesday is the 2nd of December. So you have basically a week Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday to, to take advantage of that offer. So just wanted to throw that out there and I’ll give the meeting back to our fearless leader here. Thank you, sir. Okay, sounds like we may have our, our panelist thing solved now.
So let’s start off here. Marcy, are you able to unmute? Hello, I’m here. There she is. All right, so we got Jeff, we got Marcy, Larry. Hello, everybody. Larry Watkinson here. All right. And did Michael Babcock come in? No, he’s not here.
I’m watching for him. He actually, he’s actually not going to make it. He had a, his own ACB council meeting today in his state. Got it. Okay, no problem. Well, we’ve got also got in here as no less important our, uh, fearless person leading and keeping watch over all those craziness over there in clubhouse. And that’s Brad. Hey, good afternoon. Glad to be here. All right, good.
And then we’ve got all of you. So what I’d like to do today is we’re going to kind of go over our picks here at the table and limit it to like three, how much it is and if you know where to get it and that kind of stuff. The things that you got either on your list to give somebody or something you might want to get. Just don’t send it to me because you won’t get it. And then, well, maybe not. I don’t know. Depends on if you’re on my naughty list or not. So. But yeah, and then, and then what I want to do is, is we want to turn out to you guys and hear the things that you’ve discovered that are deals out there that you might want to let other people know about and have other people be aware of, rather so. All right.
And to get things started off, I’m going to go ahead and give a demo of the stuff or the stuff that I have here on my list. Let me make sure I’m on the right document. So the first thing I found, which I thought is, is again, everybody loves these things and there’s a really good price on them. And that is the Fire TV stick the 4K with a remote. And those are currently on Amazon going for, as of right now, as a matter of fact, for 24, 2499. So you can pick those up. The great thing about those is because they’re, they’re an HDMI kind of thing, you can literally pop it into your computer while you’re out traveling and stuff like that. And you’ve got your Amazon Fire tv, all your stuff with you in your account, going with you into the hotel rooms or on the road to family and friends. So you have that all available. Right?
So that’s my first pick is an Amazon Fire TV stick in the 4K version. The second thing I got is the Amazon Pop Kids. And this is for you if you have children or grandchildren or you’re just a kid at heart. Like I know Jeff is right, Jeff’s a kid at heart. And Those again are 24.95 or 99 at Amazon currently. And that’s a, that’s a good thing. I think they’re normally about 49 or something like that, or $39. So it’s a good, it’s a good deal right now. And it’s going on through Black Friday that I’m aware of what I was able to read. The nice thing about the Amazon Pop Kids is it can, it delivers kids free or kid friendly stuff.
It filters out things that they can’t do, things, things that they shouldn’t have access to or they don’t, don’t need to have access to. So again, if you have kids or grandkids, these are great things to put under the tree or in their stocking. Right, that’s that. And the last one is for, is for those of you again who travel often or something like that. And I love these. I gave one Katie a couple years ago and it’s like one of the things she loves the most. And this is an Anker portable travel folding charging tree. And you can get it from anchor.com and it’s 49.99 and it’s called the Maggo 3 in 1 Travel Charging Post. So this little folding thing that’ll fold up to like, I mean nothing, it folds flat and can fit in your suitcase or, or your tech bag and it’ll, it’ll unfold. And you can charge your iPhone and this will charge iPhone 17s.
It’s a 15 watt charger. So you can charge your iPhone, your watch and your AirPods at the same time. Just fold them all up, hang them on their little thing or on the stand and next thing you know you got it all ready to go. So those are my picks again. So let’s hand this off. How about Jeff, what do you got? All right, we’ll start with Amazon as you did and talk about something that’s coming out here. In fact there’s a whole line of these. But we’ll talk about of course the new Amazon Echo. Of course I just said everybody’s off except mine because mine is named something else.
We won’t name it here. This is the next generation of Amazon, a lady and E device that’s available. I believe it’s going to be selling for 99 and I believe it’s is it. I think it’s going to be available to ship next week if not now. Already so purported to be much faster, better base, you get instant access to Alexa plus if that’s something that you are interested in and it’s quite a bargain especially if you have not upgraded your A devices in a while. Some skills do not work on especially some of the legacy or much older A devices. We have seen for example where the ACB media skill does not work on Alexa original Alexa and Alexa twos and threes, those types of things. So they have higher models of these as well. So you can continue to do that as they have Echo shows that are available. They have Echo Studios available.
We won’t go into all of those specifically my next suggestion here because we don’t know what the prices or deals will be. But I want to talk about Apple a bit here and talk about why this is really important and some caveats that you might want to consider here. My dad just ran into this himself. You know your, your parents especially, you know they’re getting, they’re probably getting older and if they’re, they’re like my dad, you know my, my dad never really upgr things very much because why they’re they’re working and if, but if they are going to do that, especially if they are using a device with a home button and they’re going to be moving into a more modern device, there’s going to be some learning curve there. So just keep this in mind. But oftentimes you will get either Apple generally does not offer discounts on product but, but what they will do is they will offer same day delivery for products to be shipped to your home. That’s mainly done through couriers or they’ll give you a gift certificate for purchases in store. So oftentimes, you know, depending upon what you purchase, either an iPhone or, or a Mac or whatever the case may be it varies, but that’s something you’re going to want to think about in reference to your, your family. We’re not going to be talking about this, but you know, we’ve, we’ve always kind of done inside a, this whole concept of how do you make sure that your, that your family stays up to date in their digital life in reference to security and making sure that they’re being safe when they’re, when they’re online. And we probably should, you know, do that again.
Those are very, very, very, very popular when we’ve done them in the past. So that’s, that’s another idea that you might want to consider. My, my third option here is, is, is going to be sort of a catch all in that that I think you, we don’t know all of the Black Friday sales yet because they’re, it’s, well, it’s not Black Friday and it’s not closer yet. What I will suggest to you, if you are interested at all in things like Audible or other digital services that you use or if you need to get another year of upgrades on a specific license that you always check with the software providers that are going to be offering, you know, Black Friday sales and they often provide very, very, very steep discounts. And this is also true for some of you affiliates out there who are doing things like hosting for your, for your websites, whether that be for your affiliate or you personally. You can often get very, very good rates on, on things like that as well. So my advice to you is to be a diligent and careful watch, keep a careful eye on Black Friday sales and there’s plenty of places on the web where you can get that information. Lots and lots of sites that are tracking that. So keep an eye on all of those things. So those are my three right now.
Thank you. And I’ll have a follow up question for you after the rest of the panel talks before we start taking the audience. But Marcy. So for me, I really was, I was purchased or Dan purchased for me an Echo Pop. So for those of you who are very new to the industry or to the Amazon, Alexa or a lady industry, the Echo Pop is awesome. And it’s on sale right now for 21.99. If you get 2, it’ll go to 16. And so the Echo Pop is one thing that I most definitely recommend. Another thing that I think you all should think about are for those of us who use iPhones, it’s really important to have a really good Bluetooth headset. And so I Have the aftershocks and those you can get from at guys.
And I really like those a lot. I have one also from my computer that I really enjoy, and it speaks mute when you raise the microphone up and unmute when you put it down. And that’s the Logitech Zone 750. So those are the ones that I really recommend. And Tyson, if we recommend the same one, because I had that tree, does that mean that you’re buying one for me? I mean, you know, that’s awesome. I was like, oh, my gosh, I want that. That’s a good one. Those are. Those are awesome.
I’m telling you that. That’s. That’s. I keep getting dividends from giving that gift. She’s like, I love that thing. So that is awesome. So, yeah, the packs right in her bag, and she takes it everywhere, so. Exactly. But the echo pops right now are on sale for $16 each, and I was just like, oh, my gosh. And they sound great.
What is the difference between the pop and the regular echo? Just so people might know. So it’s a little bit smaller. It’s about half of a. Half of an echo. But the sound is incredible. It’s like if you were to cut the echo in half, right? Yeah, it’s kind of. It’s got a really weird shape to it. You wouldn’t think it would sound decent.
Honestly, like, when I. Like when I got one, I actually won one in an auction thinking, you know, I’ll bid on this thing. No, you know, someone’s going to outbid me. And I ended up getting it. I’m like, oh, good. Well, I guess I’m going to have to figure out how to pack that in my suitcase. And so. Which was great. It got that in Nebraska, and I was shocked. The thing is really tiny, and it puts out.
It puts out tremendous sounds. It sounds like an office desk kind of thing. Isn’t it kind of cut in half from top to bottom, though? It’s kind of like a top to bottom. These. Where it’s kind of cut in half. Jeff, Is it. Am I correctly remembering that kind of. But it. But it.
It looks. It looks like the shape of it is like. How would you describe that, Marcy? I should go grab mine. Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. I’m gonna grab mine, too, to tell you. It’s like the one I have. Yeah. Like, the one I have is like. It’s like, take an orange and cut that in half and.
Yes, yes, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. But right now there’s kind of hollow inside. Kind of like it. Yeah.
Yeah. Don’t wait for Black Friday. No, that’s. That’s a. That’s a heck of a deal. Yes. Right. No. 16 each. 21.99 right now.
But two for, you know. Yeah, but two for 16, that’s. That’s pretty crazy. Yeah, that’s crazy. Right? Right. I mean, even if you just want to put them in, you know, like your bathrooms and stuff. No, listen, if you’re taking a shower and you want to listen to, know, a podcast or, you know, music TV presents, which I do with my phone. Out loud. Kids are in the bathroom.
It’s till I get out. Time to get out the shower. I’ll listen to podcasts on getting ready in the morning. I’m shaving and stuff. You know, turn on the echo and all that and. Yeah, it works. Okay, cool. All right, Larry, how about you? Well, I’m. I’m kind of out there in left field.
Jeff will tell you. I’m there in left field all the time. He’ll buy amateur radio antennas. That’s what he’ll buy. Well, actually, no, but I am going to suggest an amateur radio DX engineering and ham radio outlet. In fact, there’s no bits endorsement of those. But the new Kenwood Model 750 is projected to come out after the first year. And that is a three band ham radio that’s got 222 meters and 440 and it talks. It also will do Internet and be able to be interfaced on the Internet. And it’s one of the first radios that has all those features in it.
It’s kind of similar to the Kenwood TMD 75 radio that’s out there. And I kind of mention it to this group because this is. It’s an alternative great hobby. And they’re taking deposits at $35 a person so that you can reserve your radio when they get here. The other item is a really. How much is it, Larry? They haven’t determined a price. That’s projected to be under a thousand. It could be in the, you know, to be in the high. You know, probably it’s a lot of echo pots.
But as you know, as a hand fellow ham radio operator who doesn’t get on the air very often, it’s a good hobby. I’m too busy, but it keeps me too busy, Larry. Yeah, the other thing I is, is I know I’m talking big ticket items and I’ll narrow it down, but my wife And I kind of buy ourselves our presents throughout the year. And we were at CSUN last year and I ended up buying a fully, completely accessible unit that looks like a toaster oven, but it’s called, it’s made by Brava B R A V A. And they have a glass front and then a solid front on them. And it is a wonderful way to cook, you know, for a family, you know, like my wife and I, typically the two of us and our daughter and son in law, you know, will occasionally cook some stuff with it. But it’s got two shelves in it and it really is an expedient way of doing breakfast sandwiches, heating up pizza and doing garlic bread inside that. And it’s really kind of cool because it’s a countertop and they have applications and updates every Tuesday with different menu ideas and they bill it as being an accessible unit. I have not found anything that is not accessible except for the fact that, you know, the aluminum pans that you get with them when they come out are fairly hot. So you want to make sure you’re using a pot holder.
But the most recent thing that I got that just. I have a little bit of a hearing loss in my right ear fat. Well, significant hearing loss in my right ear. And I’m not using those hearing aids, but I use them and I’ve been carrying around my pocket consistently. And that is the new Apple AirPod threes. These things are incredible. And they’re $249. I haven’t seen them any less other than the fact that Costco right now, if you buy them, you get Apple support with them. And that respects. I bought mine at Apple, but oh my gosh, these just absolutely sound incredible.
And with the sound canceling on them on the AirTrain, when you’re on the train, you don’t hear any noise at all. They’re just. Anyhow, I can’t say a nice, nice thing about them. Back to you, Tyson. All right, cool. Thank you. And yeah, I use my AirPods as a backup hearing aids for myself. So yeah, you can configure those. Those are really nice. And that air fryer oven thing that you were talking about, that’s fully accessible?
Yes, it is fully accessible. They put out applications, the apps, and what’s cool about them is that they’ve been at CSUN the last couple years and they want inp and they really are trying to design these for the person who just, you know, has to do some cooking. That and their commitment to accessibility is just incredible. And their customer service Is. Is wonderful. And it’s bravo, but Bravo. What? That’s what it’s called. The company is Brava. B R, A, V A.
Yeah, but what is the item called? Like, it’s a Brava. I will get it here in just a second. I’ll have my wife go look at the front of that and tell me. Okay, yeah, so we can get that to people. Okay, cool. Thank you, Larry. Brad, how about you? What are you gonna get Marcy this year? Marcy’s got everything.
I don’t know. There’s nothing I can get her. She says she wants a folding charging stand, apparently. Yeah, that’s true. Well, but I thought you were taking care of that. I’ve been volunteered for that one. Right. Anyway, I’ll get. You know, like, Larry, I’m. I’m a big fan of AirPods.
So, you know, on my. As long as you’re not on my naughty list, you’re probably in line for some of those Air AirPods Pro 3. And I did see in one of my news things, I look at and I can’t remember which one that Amazon has them for.199, I think. So that’s like $50 off. That’s amazing because they just came out a couple of months ago. And if you don’t like the fit of those AirPods, I also recommend the regular AirPods 4 because they have noise. They have two models, one with noise canceling and one without the noise canceling is amazing considering that the AirPods 4 don’t come with the silicone tips to kind of seal your. Your ear canal. But that’s what a lot of people like about the regular AirPods is they don’t do that. The sound quality of both of them is just phenomenal.
I know that’s kind of two items there. That. Or is it one item? I don’t know. I also feel anyone the. Oh, God. Who makes that charging tree? Come on. Why can’t I say it? Anchor.
Anchor. Anchor. Makes a lot of battery backups or charging things. I carry. Always carry one in my backpack. They have a number of models I saw. I wish I knew the model number, but it has both USB C and USB A charging on it. And it’s a bonus. Say it’s a 10,000 milliwatt amp hour charger. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you the model number, but if you just search for them on Amazon, there’s tons of them.
They have a number of different models and carrying one of those around in your backpack is essential. And really that’s all I can think of. The aftershocks are always great. Any model and at guys has a number of models to choose from. You can also find them on Amazon as well. Well, that’s probably. Would be on my list. Yeah. Cool. Right on.
So I have one more item if you wanted me to bring it. Yes, please. So this, this may be something that you may not want to do right now because the rumor is that Apple is going to be still bringing out newer versions of these. But these of course are airtags and they traditionally are what, a hundred dollars for four, right? $99, something like that. You can get them on Amazon right now for 64 for 4, which is a really, really good nail, a really, really good deal. Now my guess is that they’re selling them cheap because the new ones are coming out. But listen, if you want to save some money and you have a lot of devices to put air tags on, then why not? I mean, you’ll save quite a bit of money doing it. So it is one option for you to at least consider.
We have. Oh my gosh, I don’t even know. I think you can use up to 16 AirTags per Apple account and we probably have, we, we have gone crazy buying these things because we have them on everything. I mean the cats, chief keys and wallets and you know, you name it, it’s on it. Pop up your suitcase when you travel. Oh yeah, suitcases. Absolutely. Absolutely. And carry ons because you never, never, never know if someone is going to walk off with your carrot. You know, you never, never know.
So, you know, lots of, lots of great opportunity there for major discounts on those. So if you’re into that, just use them responsibly. That’s all I’ll say about that. Yeah, you can’t, you’re not supposed to air tag a person that’s actually. Or a car or. Yeah. Or yeah. So unless it’s your car. Unless it’s yours. Right, exactly.
Whatever you want. Right on. I want to check and see if Larry got that model number for us before I ask you a question. It’s called the Braava Glass. The Brava Glass G l a s s but you go to brava V-R-A-V-A.com and it’ll be there. They have like four models and basically those are the accessories that come with the, the pans, the muffin pans, etc. And you said it has an app that goes with it as well. Oh yeah. It does not work with your Alexa devices at this point, just so you’re aware. So it is an independent app, but it’s very, very easy to navigate.
I think, I think one of those evening like cooking, kitchen classes things might be, might be one of. Welcome to hear about that. So anyways, I got a question for Jeff, but in, but while I get Jeff going on this question here, get your hands up so we can start getting you guys stuff that you’re looking at and looking for and, and that kind of stuff. But Jeff, could you use AI to use to look for your Black Friday? You can. Yeah, sure. I’m sure that we’ll see a lot of that this year with things like, I mean, they’re already doing it, you know, chatgpt and Perplexity and all these guys. Innosearch is probably doing it as well. Going to be doing it as well. That would be interesting to see what they’re doing this year.
Reach out to them and see what they’re going to be doing from an accessibility perspective for Black Friday. But yeah, there’s, there’s lots and lots of places. But you know, CNET is also a really good place. There’s lots of places that, that will also consolidate the list of Black Friday sales and sort of give you the, you know, like the Verge will do this. I got most of mine from PC World. Yeah. Ars Technica is another, you know, really, really great site where they, the Wired website is also another really good one where they will look at the list of Black Friday deals and say, you know, okay, actually, you know, don’t always go with the absolute cheapest. Go with the next model up, you know, because you’re going to get more bang for your buck, that kind of thing. So be smart about, you know, your buying decisions here. Don’t go for the, the lowest price necessarily.
That, that’s something that you, you want to be really cognizant of. I will be interested to see what, what of the Samsung and Amazon Fire televisions themselves to see how much they drop in price as well. So that will be a really interesting thing to see what, see what happens there. There’s a, there’s a TV show. The judge used to say that cheap comes out expensive. It does, it does, yeah. Yeah. But you know, you can use your, you, you could use your AI products and really do some prompting and you could put in, hey, you know, I would like to buy a gift for somebody who typically has everything, but they have these types of hobbies and this is what I know about them. Could you give me a suggestion of what they may want. It’s all about how you ask the question and the context.
Right. It’s not, it’s, it’s. You know, we’ve done an entire course on this inside of bits, which is still available, by the way, about AI and really it’s about prompting in context or, you know, making sure that it understands exactly what you want and why, you know, the, the information surrounding it to give you the best information possible. Yep. Right on. Okay. Well, thank you all for those suggestions, but let’s turn our attention outward and let’s. Hands. We got lots of hands. Right.
So, Cindy, why don’t you go ahead and start? Sticks. Hey, Marty. Okay. Hi. So my first item is an AC wall charger. But what I like about this is it has your. It’s 120 watts and it sells for about 32 on Amazon. And it has your AC USB A port, USB C port. But it has two retractable cables on it, a USB C and a Lightning.
So I guess like a foreign. It has folding prongs. You said the first one was USB C or a. What’s that? The first one was a USB C or USB A. Well, USB A and a USBC port. And then the two cables are USBC. They, they extend about 27 inches and they’re typical retractable. You pull them out and then to retract, you pull them in. There’s actually a little magnetic area.
So the tip. That’s, that’s actually kind of cool. I like that. Yeah. And that’s only $32. $32. Do they sell other models of these? Like if you don’t need lightning, can you get like. Yeah, I, I’ve seen, I, I think they have some that have like, instead of USB C and Lightning, they have usb like two usbc. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Cool. And then my other comment was, I know you guys talk about AirPods and I have them, but my, One of my favorite headsets is I like the open ear concept. Oh yeah. Wearing hearing aids. You can still wear your hearing aids. And, and because these things don’t go in your ears. But the one I like, they’re small, they’re tiny. It’s the Bose Open Ear Ultra. And I think they sell when Amazon has deal days.
They sell for about 200. So what they are, is I had, I even had trouble. I had to get excited person to help me. They clip on your earlobe. Oh, really? Yeah. So you just position them on your earlobe so they’re right by your ear canal. And the way it is is the speaker part is. It’s like close to your ear and then on the other behind your ear and the other side of your ear is. They call it the barrel and it’s a button.
So. And you can in the app, like pick your shortcuts. Like, my left shortcut is the switch devices because I have my two phones and the library player. So you can only have two devices at once, but you just press and hold. And then my right short on my right shortcut is either the immersion mode. It’s off fixed spatial audio, or what the head tracking, they call it motion. I like that. Immersion of audio. Okay, great. Little echoey with speech and all, but cool.
Thank you, Marty. Thank you, Marty. All right, Cindy, wait, hang on a second. What you were saying, what was your first device? I know it was an Amazon one. I missed sort of. That didn’t get. Was it a new A lady or. Yeah, that was the new Echo. Huh.
So did they come in different generations or. There’s a new. There’s a new generation of Echo out now, so. Yep. Okay. Okay. Are you ready, Janet? Go ahead. Hello, everybody. Are the.
Oh, and I heard a commercial the other day before I. Before I sent my three. The commercial the other day was get a bang for your bark instead of a buck for your dog lovers. I love that. Anyway, the AirPods Max, because you need to put them out, you know, on your head, like headset. Yes. And wait for it, bits, candy or popcorn. Don’t forget the fundraising, y’. All. Oh, very good, Janet.
Look, bonus points for you. Gold star, right? Yeah, I would have twice from City Pop. So there you go. Okay. All right. Thank you. Okay, Carla, I have two questions and three picks, okay. About this TV fire stick. I’ve never understood those things.
So can you get local channels on them and what kinds of devices can you hook them up to? And then on the pops and the new generations, do they have a three and a quarter inch mini jack as well, or have they done away with them altogether? Because I like to plug my Amazon devices into my stairs stereo sometimes and record off of them. You know, Patch, I don’t. I. I don’t know about the new generations, whether or not they have that or not. I don’t either. That will have to be. Let me see what I can find for you on the Internet. I will go look.
Okay. But getting back to the fire stick, the question I have is can you get like, could I plug that in? I. I could plug it into the computer, right. Or could I Plug it into, you know, note takers or aren’t they powerful enough to take them on the road? And can you get local chann, Amazon prime or what exactly did they get you? I have Verizon fios. I don’t know if you can. You’re not going to get local channels, but you will get. You will get, you know, Amazon prime and all of the things that Amazon provides specifically.
Which means that if Amazon prime offers, like, connections to, like, and they probably do through apps, right. HBO or Cinemax or, you know, Netflix or all of these things, you can do that. That all of the streaming stuff. Yeah, but you’re not going to get abc, CBS and, you know, Box. You can. What you have to do is you have to be affiliated with a cable company. So if you, for instance, have Spectrum or you have Comcast or Xfinity, you in fact can download their functional app in somewhere. I was just gonna say. Yeah, exactly. Verizon, because I have Verizon Fire.
You’d have to check with him and see. Yeah. Is it worth it? You know, is there enough free stuff to make it worth the purchase? I guess is what I’m asking. And you had to check with them to see if they have an app that runs on the Amazon Fire stick. Correct. And then you can hook it up to your tv. Can you hook it up to note takers or not? No, I’m not going to say note taker.
Your computer. Yes. Yep. As long as it has hdmi. Because think about anything. You could use it for like a TV for. So what that does is it gives you. So when you say free, what it is, is imagine if you had, like, your iPhone, all the contents of your iPhone available to you on this little stick. So when you plug it in, you’ve got your Netflix app, you’ve got your Disney plus app, you’ve got your HBO Max, all these, all the Paramount, plus all those. Right.
Along with like, Pluto tv. And there’s actually a web browser that comes with it that you can downlo. It’s not very good, but it’s still a web browser. Yeah, it’s. Yeah. So, but there’s anything you can access that way. But you, again, like Netflix, you have to pay. You have to pay your Netflix subscription. Just gives you access to it so that you don’t have to log into like through your computer or through your iPhone or something like that. It’s a different way of pulling that access.
It’s Amazon’s alternative to Apple tv, if you will. Pretty much, yeah. Pretty much, yeah. So you could go on to prime and not have to log into prime, say, if you’re a primer. Yeah. Because you’re already logged into. I mean, you have to, you have to use your account on your Amazon account. Okay. And then the devices that are the things that I have for suggestions is the senseplayer stand. And you might say, what if I don’t have a Sense player?
What it is, is it’s a stand and it comes in three metal parts and there are two screws and you can put it together and it helps you to line up your camera for things like, yeah, OCR and stuff. It’s $70. But I’ll tell you what, it’s paid for itself. It works with my blind shell, of course, it works with a Sense player. And I’ve even tricked it into working with other people’s iPhones and things. If you put it together upside down, you know, you have a flat surface on top, but if you can imagine it has on the top a little thing that you can put the player or your whatever into and it. You know what I mean? And then there’s a shaft that go. And then on the bottom there’s a flat piece where you put what your package you want read to you or your document you want read to you. It lines it up just right.
Nice. Who makes it? It’s the Sense Player stand. And I rep them. I rep, you know, Blind Mice Mart. You can get them at Blind Mice. You can get them probably from Sense, you know, but they’re great. And so I would recommend that. But of course I’m going to recommend Blind Shells. If you don’t want to be an iPhone user and you want something with buttons, they have lots of apps and cool things you can do.
And of course you can make phone calls with them. And then the second, the third thing I’m going to recommend, if you want a whole bunch of ideas, come to the Ivy Business Expo next Saturday from 11:30pm or a.m. eST. And it’s going to go on till 6 if we get enough vendors. But they’re going to have vendors selling all kinds of different things and you can talk to the vendors and you have to contact artist bays and if you would like to, you know, to get a link. But I think there’s going to be, you know, a zoom link. But they may even put it out on Community. Yeah, I think they usually do put it on. On Community, but hopefully they’re giving. Hopefully they’ll have some Black Friday coupons.
Yeah, they’re going to Be some of them going to have coupons, so. And I’m going to be on there too. So that’s what I wanted to say. And I, I appreciate very much your, your tips and this is fun. Thank you. Thank you, Carla. Thank you, Cindy. Who’s next? Okay. Stacy.
Yeah. I was wondering how much of this, how much of this stuff is. How about a Fire Tablet? Is there a difference between a Fire Tablet and a Fire Stick? Yes, there is. There is. And actually I heard today that Amazon is offering the generic fire tablet for 50% off right now. Yeah, that’s the one I saw too. It’s $69, I think, which is. Geez, man, if you’re in the market for one of those, that’s.
Wow, that’s almost a steal right there. Well, I was thinking, they were thinking that maybe a Fire Tablet could help me with like, say if I wanted Amazon disability to maneuver my Alexa remotely. Your Alexa? Yeah. I don’t know that they can control it remotely though, can they? I don’t think so. They can do some things with your account to assist you. Yeah, they don’t. They’re unable to access you. Like Microsoft’s accessibility.
Closest thing to it would be kind of like how Apple can sometimes look at your screen but they can’t do anything. They can’t. Yeah, they can look but not touch. Right. And so they can’t do anything remotely with me if I want. If I wanted them to. No, it’s. They’re not set up like that. Yeah. It just.
They think they can look at your account and make adjustments to your account, but they can’t like, like remote into your device. Oh. And they can help you put stuff in your cart and, and stuff like that. Things like that. Yeah, but they just can’t pay for it. Remote into my account and they can’t remote my. If. Let’s say if I’m having a problem with the actual Alexa, they could probably help you with that. They could help talk you through it. Yes.
What’s going on with it? Or to help maybe reset the device. Or reset the device. Yeah. But. But again, there’s no way for them to actually like remote into your Alexa. Oh, that’s not really. Manager is. Yeah, it doesn’t work that way. The device does still not work that way.
Right. What you can call in on the first and third week of the month on Saturday mornings and you know, and ask some questions there under our mentoring and Groot. And that’s probably where this questions might be best answered for you. I’m Wondering. There’s no way to ever remote incident like into an Alexa. The device is just not built like that. No, it’s not. Call Amazon’s Accessibility. They do have a phone number and we can make that available to you and have a conversation with them about what they can do to help with your account. We probably should take the next call.
Yeah, we should do that. Stacy, do you have a. Do you have a recommendation or. No, I just would like them to be able to do that. Okay. All right. Yeah. Okay. Thank you, Stacy. Do you guys want that number?
I have it. Yes, go, please. Okay. It’s 888-283-1678. Okay. And we’ll repeat that again at the end of the call. So you grab some paper or something. Okay. Who do we got next? Cindy.
Okay, Michigan. Allison. I do have a couple recommendations. I also recommend the smart Vision 3 phone. I would like to upgrade from the blind shell 2 phone to the smart vision 3 phone. I’d also recommend for those of you that want a note taker similar to the old braille and speak 2000. You can get either the BT braille or the BT speak. I don’t know if the BT braille is fully out yet. It might be still in beta testing. I’m not sure.
Maybe you guys can cover that. And I also Recommend the new DA2 player. You can call your library and request the new DA2 player. What I like about it is whenever I get a book cartridge in the mail and it has books on it, when I insert the cartridge in the player, it’ll ask me if I want to put the books into the internal memory. All I have to do is press info and it downloads the books right into the internal memory. And it’s really fast. Yep. And mine is coming today. Nice. Yeah, it’s.
It’s a pretty sharp device, so that’s. Yeah, those are pretty cool. And you can hold what, 100 books? I think on it is what they’re saying, 100 books? Yeah, it’s got quite a bit. And you can download too, from. From Bard. On it. Yeah, straight onto it. Thank you for that, Allison.
Appreciate that. Yeah, that’s a good one. Yeah. Really. And it’s free. Yeah. Say you could gift it to one of your other blind friends by helping them get registered for it. There you go. Happy holidays. Go ahead, Rodney Neely.
I would recommend. I only have one item, and that is the Anker 30i open ear headphones. They were less than $50 and they’re great and I really like them because I use them almost every day with my phone to, to read. And I like them because they’re inexpensive, they’re open ear. They’re not as good as Bose. I know that. But my attitude about that is that I might lose the expensive ones. So I try to try to buy a couple of less expensive pairs of headphones because I feel like if I lose those, it’s not quite as big a deal. And that’s the only thing I want to recommend. So.
Rodney, a lot of people like to know what the battery life is on those. Do you have idea how long the batteries last? Because that’s something that people really like to know. It’s about, it’s about 20 hours. Okay. It’s not, it’s not wonderful. It’s not like you know, the, you know, some of the other ones, but it is really. They’re really nice headphones. They also have a pair of open ear headphones. No, they also have a pair of.
They also have a pair of noise canceling headphones that I like, but they’re a bit more expensive. They’re like a hundred dollars if you get them on sale on Amazon. And they’re nice too. And if you are really into expensive stuff, my envision Ally Sellers glasses are pretty nice too. But they’re, they’re expensive. Yeah, they’re expensive and they’re definitely some, they take some getting used to because of how they’re set up. And I hope someday that we’ll have a discussion about, about that in another forum. We will. We need to do that. That’s a great idea.
That’s it. Wearables. Thanks, Rodney. Karen. My National Library Service is on road tripping this last week or so and I went to a town a little ways away from me just to see them and she showed me the DA2 and explained it all and did a demo and oh my gosh, that sounds like it’s going to be fantastic. She put me on the list to get it right away because my last name is at the end of the Alphabet. So usually what happens with that is I’m at the end of the line. But she put me on the list. So I am really excited to get it because I, I just think it’s going to be fantastic that I can download books from Bard directly. There you go.
It’s gonna be love that. Love that. Yeah. And so don’t you wish, don’t you wish, Karen, that they do order of selection that way? Whoever first in first. No kidding. Yeah. You know, that would be wonderful. My maiden name is also at the end of the Alphabet the same as it is now. And I was always picked last.
There were two Karens in kindergarten and the other Karen got picked first for the other teacher because there was only two teachers. And I got picked for the younger teacher, picked the younger girl. The older teacher picked me. And it was okay. I was upset at that time, but it was okay because my teacher was really great. But. And I know there’s another Karen on this call too, but so. And then my thing is, I’m always wondering about these meta glasses. How do you. I mean, how do people decide what to get?
Do you have to do your prescription? Do. Do you just fit them on your face? I’m just so interested in. In those glasses. And of course, an iPhone. I want an iPhone. That’s like my big thing. I want an iPhone. So I keep telling that to my husband.
I want an iPhone. He hasn’t sold on it yet, but we’re getting there. You don’t have one yet? No, I have. I have a. I think it’s a Samsung or it’s an Android. It’s an Android. And it’s because I have straight talk and I really just want to throw my phone out the window when we’re driving because it’s messed up. I don’t understand what happened to my contacts. They’re not there anymore.
There’s some alphabetical or whoever’s called me. It’s just the weirdest thing. They did an update, I think. Now I don’t understand it. Well, we got three more people here, so we should. So, Mr. Karen, if you’re watching, she wants a knife phone. Yeah. And so why don’t you bring Mr. Karen to our first and third Saturday morning session and let’s have a conversation there.
I. I will. He would listen today, but he is drag racing. Him and his friends are out. All right, we gotta move on. Thank you. Thank you. All right, who do we have? Cindy Dean, you can unmute. I’ve got this really good robot vacuum.
I did a lot of research back in July to try to find me a really good robot because the one that I had, the last one that I had, was pretty good, but the company was small and they went under and the app no longer could work with it. You couldn’t. It just kind of acted like a dummy because it couldn’t get online anymore. So I got this one from Ecovacs and they won the Vacuum Wars Award on YouTube. And I read a lot of of reviews and listened to quite a few videos about It. And I decided to go with it. And it, it vacuumed and it mops and it has a roller mop, not a mop pad. And it’s. It has voice. It has a voice.
What do you call as a voice assistant? You know, where you can talk to it and directly. Voice control. Yeah. And you can. You can link it with Alexa too. And so. And it does self emptying and it has a clean water tank and a dirty water tank. This thing basically comes with a station, you know, and so you put the tanks on them and, you know, in. And so it separates the water and then you get the solution.
And this little. The solution, you put this in another little tank that kind of goes inside of it, you know, you know, before you put the COVID on the station. And it does a really good job. People have said that it was funny because my mom was like, you know, you really need a housekeeper because you don’t keep the floors vacuumed enough. All right, Dan, we’re gonna have to get moving on. Thanks, Dan, but so, no, I love that. I’m sorry, this is Gene. Oh, Gene, I’m sorry. Yeah. But I just wanted to let y’ all know about it.
It’s about a thousand dollars, though. I know it’s kind of high, but it does a really good job. Sounds like. Thank you, Gene. Rosie, you have about three and a half minutes and you have one more call. Let’s do one more. Try to do it quick. Headland. The one thing that we haven’t touched on yet, which I think is an awesome stocking stuffer, is a thumb drive. Look at that.
Because, you know, people need to make sure their stuff is backed up. And sometimes. Yeah. I mean, a thumb drive can fit into a stocking very nicely. They do. And. And some of them even have like key ring things on them that you can put them on your key. I got a 2 terabyte one. How much did you call? How much did it.
You could cost. It was like 129, I think. But when you think about it, that’s pretty cheap. Yeah, that is. Yeah. I know that somebody needs actually a thumb drive that was in the shape of a thumb. Oh, cute. Oh, that’s cool. I got a 1 TB for 69 and it switches between USB A and USB C. Yeah, mine does too.
Yeah. You probably got the same one I have. Yeah. Is it metal? I love that it is, you know, because. Yeah, you got the same one. I just bought the 2 terabyte one. Yeah. And you just never know if you. You can.
You can back yourself up. And then if you absolutely need to, you can take that thumb drive over to somebody’s house and plug it in and mess their computer up. Well, thank you, Lindsay. Hey, Marcy, can you give the Amazon accessibility number one more time? Yes, ma’. Am. Thank you. It’s 888-283-1678. Okay. All right, everybody.
So, well, thank you all for coming in. Thank you for giving your suggestions. I want to thank my panel so much for volunteering to do this and come in and do that, and I’d love to make this kind of a BITS tradition on this particular weekend of Basics with Bits. So from all of us, all of you, happy holidays. I want to thank our host, Cindy and Brad for streaming and taking care of Clubhouse over there. Sad we didn’t have any participants, but maybe next time. So to all of you, again, from all of us here at Basics with Bits, we hope you have a wonderful holiday. Enjoy your family. Keep them tight and hug them often. Tell them you love them.
All right, Have a good, wonderful holiday, everybody.