Nov 27, 2019
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Craig Peterson 0:00
Hey everybody, Welcome. Hey, its Craig Petersson here. I am so
excited about Thanksgiving. We've got some family in town going out
to breakfast today together, which is going to be fun and then we
got a great Thanksgiving day tomorrow all planned out smoked
turkeys that we're making today. This is really going to be
something my wife was up making some baking some pies, including a
very cool one that she saw on I guess on the British baking show or
maybe it's a Paul Hollywood pie, but it's like a three-layer pie.
I'm so excited. You guess it, I am not doing keto tomorrow. And I
won't be doing a whole lot of fasting tomorrow either. So I'm
breaking a couple of my normal things here to really celebrate the
time together with family and I hope you guys can too. All right,
I'm going now to WGAN by the way this weekend's radio show is going
to be "A best of Show" So, you know, no calls please they say. Here
we go talking about Thanksgiving type stuff with our friends can
and Matt.
Ken Altschuler
All right, it is the day before Thanksgiving ladies,
gentlemen, or the day after the day before the big day
and Craig Peterson joins us on this fine Wednesday to tell us all
about what's happening in the world of technology, including a lot
of Black Friday, Cyber Monday. Holiday related topics, perhaps
even
Matt Gagnon
Craig, how are you this morning.
Craig Peterson
Yeah. Hey, good morning, gentlemen. You're right. The big days
coming up only What now? two more days. Black Friday.
Matt Gagnon
Are you talking about Black Friday?
Craig Peterson
Yes, I am. Then we have Cyber Monday. Did you know that there's a
day and I didn't even know about this. It's called Travel Tuesday.
No, you haven't heard about this? No, well apparently over the last
couple of years and this is supposed to be true this year is Well,
the airlines have the best deals of the year coming up this
Tuesday. So most of the really good deals are only starting January
1, but you have to buy them on Tuesday. So get online, poke around.
And if you're planning on flying down to Florida or someplace
slightly warmer than Maine in January in February, you should
really look on Tuesday. Now, there are some great tools you can use
for airlines as well. I think you guys have like a favorite site or
a tool you use for finding and booking airfare.
Matt Gagnon
The site that I use to find in book airfare is the one I can find
the cheapest possible. I go to Hopper to compare them, right?
I hate to be cliche, but I'm, I'm Expedia or Travelocity if I
want to book it but then I kind of go the look at the deals then I
go the airlines themselves because the problem is of the airlines
and The flight gets messed up and Travelocity won't really help you
out there.
Craig Peterson
Yeah, Boy it is going to be really bad this Thanksgiving as far as
flights go because of all these storms. Well, I'm glad you use
Hopper. That was my recommendation last year and is again this
year. Hopper is an app that you can get for your smartphone or
tablet. And what it does is it allows you to track the prices on
airline flights and hotels now as well. It looks at all of this
historical data. So examining hundreds of million prices here over
the last, I think there's about five years worth of data right now.
And so they can kind of predict when the best time to book is and
it'll pop a little message up on your smartphone, saying hey, you
know that trip that you wanted to make to Naples, Florida, the best
time to buy it is right now and then it tells you, hey, coming up
in two or three days, the price is going to go up by $30. It's a
good one. Can I think you're right about that? Another one you guys
might want to check out. And our listeners, of course, as well, is
Google has Google flights that have been out there now for a good
couple of years. And Google won't show you some of the really
inexpensive airlines. Like, for instance, Southwest Airlines is one
of the leading in the price category plus you get free luggage. But
with Google flights, you can tell it I want to take so many bags
are so many people. Here's where I want to go. And it will compare
all of the major airlines. It's tied right into their databases. So
those are good ones. And then you guys mentioned like, Matt, I
think you mentioned Expedia and some others. They are not bad at
all. But I'll tell you my big secret to save money on these things.
I do use hopper for the airline flight And then I'll double-check
on Google and make sure everything looks legit. And I'll go to the
airline flight, I tend to buy it right from the airline flight not
from Hopper or not through Google either. I'll get my airline
flight and I will not book a hotel. Now, the exception to booking a
hotel is if I'm going to a conference or something, right, but if
I'm going out to visit friends or families, I will not book a
hotel. And then when I get there, I use hotwire. And hotwire has
this feature where you don't know what hotel you're getting. But
you do know that that particular hotel that is offering to you, you
do know what the ratings are of the people that have been there.
And I felt the ratings on hotwire to be way more accurate than
those on Travelocity or Expedia or most of the other sites. So I'll
show up and I'll be saving 50% or more on the hotel price, the best
price I could find anywhere. So I'll try to book at two or three in
the afternoon. So if you don't mind a little, a little uncertainty
in your travel, you don't necessarily you don't know what hotel it
really is, you know the area it is going to be in, generally
speaking, it's usually a few miles by a couple of miles. So, if you
don't have a car might be a problem, but today with Uber and lift,
what the heck. And you also don't know exactly which hotel it's
going to be, but that's what I do. I booked them. It's been kind of
fun. I used it in Europe as well. When we traveled around, we just
decided where do you want to go today? And we went on hotwire. It
worked in France. It was really kind of cool. So those there's a
couple of techie travel tips for everybody. Or there you go.
Matt Gagnon
Craig Peterson joins us as he always does on Wednesdays to go over
what's happening in the world of technology. And speaking of that
world of technology. How scary can it be Craig, we've got lots of
scams, probably that are related jams, all the deals that are out
there, you've got Black Friday. You know, sales like $11 for a DVD
player or whatever and a lot of places and you can I'm sure sees a
lot of stuff online. So how do you kind of judge the garbage and
the scams and the lies and the whatever from the real stuff? Like
what should I be looking for this Black Friday to protect myself if
nothing else?
Craig Peterson
Well, the best tip I think for everybody you mentioned, like the
$11 DVD players, is Matt, who uses DVD players anymore. It's
a good point.
Matt Gagnon
It's a good point. That is a good point.
Craig Peterson
But you're right on there because the number one thing is: if the
deal is too good to be true if you're seeing just the most
fantastic deal being offered. That's really kind of the number one
thing and it is the easiest to look for. But right now we've got
these types of squatting domains. Those of us with fat fingers,
domain names, be where, because there are about 110,000
typo-squatting domains. So that means if you type in something
incorrectly like if you type out orifice instead of office when
you're trying to go to the Microsoft site, there's 110,000 of
those. There are four times as many fake domain cybersquatting
domains as real retailers that are out there. So this is kind of
hard to figure out what valid or not, and you cannot rely on that
little lock up in the corner right there on the left of the URL
bar, that lock, you cannot depend on that, meaning that this site
is legitimate or really secure. So use some common sense if you're
on a website, and you're on a big-box retailer or one of your
favorite places to shop online. And you see ads on there from other
sites. So let's just say you're on the Walmart site, and you're
seeing ads from Amazon. Hey, it ain't the Walmart site. All right?
So things like that there are these clues that go back and forth.
But Matt, I would suggest you just double check your spelling type
in the URL directly. Because I've also found that there is there's
something called Google poisoning. And what that is, is the bad
guys, go ahead and make it so that when you are typing something in
the Google results that start coming up, are in fact, the fake
sites that type of squatting sites on Google knows this. So they
have people who are watching for that to happen this time of year.
So bottom line, if you stick with the real big guys that are out
there, the names we all know. And if you spell them right, even if
you look them up in Google, you're probably going to be arriving at
the right website. Now that doesn't mean the way that the data is
absolutely Be safe, but you'll probably be on the right website. So
you know, be careful of sites that are asking you to download their
apps, a lot of sites have those nowadays. Bottom line, it doesn't
matter, you're almost always better off just using the website as
opposed to using their app in almost every case. Be careful of some
of the bargains bait and switch is a big problem this time of year
with some of the smaller retailers. bait and switch have also been
a problem with some of these short term rental places like the
Airbnb is out there, where they call you up the day before your
booking for the house or the room and they say yeah, we had a
flood, a water pipe broke, etc, etc. We've got another place for
you, so don't worry about it. They do this the day before you're
supposed to arrive. Also, be very careful of those discount cards.
Be careful of that as well. But if you Want to find good discounts
online, there's a plugin that I use when I'm shopping called Honey.
If you use honey online, it's absolutely amazing. Honey is a coupon
finder, and you can find that online as well. Obviously a join
honey.com then when you visit a shopping site, it will
automatically try, well you actually have to click on it, but it'll
try a bunch of discount coupon codes that are known to work and
they can save you a whole bunch of money online. Honey dot com is
something else that you might want to look for. Bottom line, be
cautious pay attention. And everybody have a great great
Thanksgiving. Black Friday, Cyber Monday and airline Tuesday this
week.
Ken Altschuler
Good. Our tech guru joins us every Wednesday at 738 have a great
Turkey day we will see Talk to you next Wednesday, Craig.
Craig Peterson
All right, gentlemen, take care.
Matt Gagnon
Thank you, Craig. All right. So with that, we're going to take a
quick break here. We're gonna go into the newsroom and get once
again,
Craig Peterson
Hey, everybody, have a great Thanksgiving. And we will be back of
course next week. I think Monday is when I'm hitting it again. Take
care. Bye-bye.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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