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Why do we need Payphones? And how good is Pocket AI?
Why do we need Payphones? And how good is Pocket AI?
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About this episode
Payphones get a surprising comeback story: the hosts talk about why they’re still useful for kids and vulnerable people, how call volumes rose after payphones were made free, and how the network is maintained and upgraded (including 4G/Starlink backhaul and fault reporting). Then the conversation pivots to Pocket AI—how it syncs between phone and browser, how quickly it transcribes podcasts with speaker separation, and a key downside: no GPS/“find my” feature.
Cars:
Chrysler Town & Country
After we talked PayPhone Tag with the creator a few weeks back, this week we talk Payphones with the man in charge of Payphones at Telstra. Do we need a new name for Payphones?
Donna has bought the PocketAI - how has it gone? It's your fault Warren!
We circle back on Google Photos with a previous caller, talk Robot Vacuums and phone security causing issues.
Be part of the show, thanks to Vodafone text or WhatsApp 0477 657 657
Filter:
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Technical
Too Afraid to Ask
Car
Chrysler Country Town
"... which sounds strange but uh i know you live in a country town and i've just opened up the payphone tag map and ..."
The Chrysler Town & Country is a minivan, which is a type of car made for carrying people and luggage. It’s commonly used by families because it has more interior space than a typical sedan or SUV. It may come up when someone talks about practical, everyday transportation.
The Chrysler Town & Country is a minivan built for family transportation, with seating and space designed for passengers and cargo. It’s often discussed in podcasts because it represents the practical, everyday side of car ownership—especially for people who need room for kids, errands, and road trips. The conversation may be referencing it as part of a broader “lifestyle” or “everyday driving” topic rather than performance.
Term
spinning pad
"it's called the querovo edge c and it has not just the spinning pad but the one that kicks out so it kicks out on an angle"
A spinning pad is the rotating cleaning surface on the robot. Spinning tends to clean better than just sliding a cloth around.
A spinning pad refers to the rotating cleaning surface used by some floor-cleaning robots. Rotation helps scrub and lift dirt more effectively than simply dragging a flat cloth.
Term
auto empty station
"plus the one that kicks out so it kicks out on an angle so that it gets closer to the edge plus it's got the auto empty station so it's refilling itself and doing all that stuff"
An auto-empty station is the robot’s home base with a bigger trash bin. When the robot returns, it dumps what it collected so you don’t have to empty it as often.
An auto-empty station is a dock that automatically transfers debris from the robot vacuum into a larger bin. That reduces how often you have to manually empty the vacuum.
Term
kicks out on an angle
"the one that kicks out so it kicks out on an angle so that it gets closer to the edge plus it's got the auto empty station"
This means the robot’s cleaning part moves out at an angle. That helps it get closer to walls and edges instead of leaving a dirty strip.
“Kicks out on an angle” describes a cleaning head that extends or pivots to reach closer to edges and corners. The angled motion is meant to improve edge cleaning where flat pads often miss.
Company
Good Guys
"also what about this for a tip uh the good guys uh on any single page well not any page but certainly on their tv's and i've just noticed it's on here as well if you look under the price"
The Good Guys is a store brand. They’re describing a feature where the website checks other prices and then lets you get the lower price by clicking a button.
“The Good Guys” is a retail brand discussed as using a “price check” feature to match or beat competitors’ pricing. The host describes it as scanning the market and then discounting for customers who use the button.
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I was God's mate. I spoke to you on the Tuesday. Thursday afternoon there's this lovely courier
man at me back door with a parcel for me. All I know is within 24 hours mate. You had it sorted
after five weeks of her raising her. Mate I can't thank you enough. Join the conversation.
Head to eftm.com and click Ask Trev. Hoping Australians would check questions for over
15 years. The eftm podcast with Trev along. Real Australians. Real questions. Every week.
You can text Trev now. Thanks to Vodafone on 0477 657 657.
Thank you for listening. downloading. Great to have you company.
Wherever you're listening, however you're listening, it's wonderful to be with you.
Another episode of the eftm podcast. The only talkback technology show
where if you've got a question we can help you. We can answer it for you hopefully.
That's what I'm here for. So whether you've bought something new and you want to brag about it or
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and you want to get some advice on what to buy and what's out there, you can get in touch. Send
me a text 0477 657 657. Thanks to Vodafone. We'll take your texts or WhatsApp messages and
we'll get you on the show. It's really that simple. We're going to talk pay phones again today because
I've done some pay phone tagging over the last couple of weeks even since we spoke to the creator
Alex and I'm going to talk to Telstra about it. We're going to talk to Telstra about pay phones
here this week because you know they've got nothing to do with pay phone tag but what do they think
of it and just why do we still need a pay phone network and why are we calling them pay phones?
So many questions about pay phones, don't you think? We'd love your feedback on all those things.
So get in touch anytime you want. Did some travel on the weekend and tag some pay phones out in
regional New South Wales from Young to Griffith to Gunn Garland and yes, I claimed a few. I had
a few of them already stolen back off me too so that's a bit of a downer but it is what it is.
That's the game. It's a simple life I lead and you well know it. Anyway, that's the fun of the
game. We'd love to hear from you if you've got any question about technology or you want to talk
about cars. I don't care whatever. If it's about electric cars we'll keep you for the electric
vehicle show each and every Monday morning. If you've got a question about electric cars,
Stephen and I can help you out and we'll talk to you on the EV show. Those text messages,
the same number 0477657657 and if you're an unsatisfied customer, just unsubscribe
and if you're not happy with the advice you've been given, don't complain.
As one person did this morning, it was delightful. Delightful to get a complaint
and I don't really care. I listened back to the call and I thought well we achieved everything
we wanted. We asked extra questions but we're still not happy. Okay fine. See you later.
Producer Rob is able to tag a phone number as never to be part of the show again and that's
what we've done and I can tell you right now I'm pretty sure that person was not an actual podcast
listener. So let's keep it to the core folks. The podcast listeners get priority here.
That's always the best part of the day is knowing that I'm talking to someone who actually listens
to the show. So thank you very much to all of you and for sharing the wisdom of the show with
anyone you know and sharing it in your networks wherever you are. So the only real way you can
do that I've said before is painful. Audio is a very hard thing to share but look,
if you take a screenshot of how you're listening on your phone or wherever it might be you could
share it on your social media and you could just give a little cheeky link, little cheeky link
to the EFTN podcast. See if anyone else listens. Anyway, all lots of calls to come and we're going
to talk to Telstra about pay phones this week on the EFTN podcast.
Helping Australians with tech questions for over 15 years. The EFTN podcast with travel on.
Great to have you company and happy to help if I can wherever I can.
Oh four double 7657657 Rhianna's on the line. How are you doing?
Really good. We spoke previously and I don't know. Photos was the issue but remind me quickly what
was the issue? Lots of old phones, photos hanging around everywhere trying to get them all in one
spot. Phones in the drawer and I think I was like if you can get them all turned on and logged in
you could probably use Google photos. So what have you done? Yeah, well the hardest part was
yet finding them all and getting them all powered up but I was able to find into Google
photos as you suggested and they all synced happily so I now have everything in one location.
Wow and so was there any syncing do you think or did you notice prior like had was there is
there double ups or do you feel like you've now just got this one conglomerate of everything?
Yeah, no I don't think there's any double ups so it seems to have worked really well.
So no double ups that I found anyway just you know about 8000 photos.
Yeah how long has it been since you completed the backups of all of them?
A few years it was about four phones so. And sorry when did you finish the the process though
with Google photos? A couple of weeks ago. Okay so have you now looked on your phone or online at
the library and has it done a good job of finding things like yeah and it's you know faces and stuff
like that? Yes, yes it's doing all of that and now it's sending me memories every day.
Isn't it amazing the facial recognition? It's disturbing to be honest.
I was with family on the weekend and I said to my uncle I said hang on a minute no
because he had an Oppo phone I think it was and he wasn't using Google photos and I said to him
I'll prove it to you and I typed his name because I'd labelled him in my Google photos
and I was able to scroll back to photos of him when you know he'd be now 70 and when he was in
his 20s at a wedding and because I'd scanned all those photos and he was like how did it know that
was me? I went it just it can tell from your face facial recognition lasts through the ages.
You see it with kids today babies as they age that you get a bit of a crossover in there
before their teens so from the age of about eight to 13 it's like hang on is this him or her or what
like who is this and you have to give it a bit more feeding of data like saying yes and no to
things but broadly it's amazing how well it recognizes people. Yes and if that's what it
can do on my phone you can definitely see what it's doing on um you know higher end
government surveillance. Exactly that's true that's very true they would have a different level to
all of us and and have you done any fun searching like just searching for random things without
names so like you know blue car or red plane or birthday party and stuff like that. Oh no clearly
I need to start so that's the other thing to understand is that it's very intelligent at
record so it's you know it's for every photo it goes well this is Trevor um and it's a blue sky
oh they're at a sports stadium and stuff like that so if I search for sports stadium I'll see
everything from football to baseball to whatever but if I search for baseball it does a pretty good
job of just showing me photos of baseball um you'll be blown away have a play around and
the next time you'll really really appreciate it is on a birthday because you're like hang on a minute
Uncle Trev is the worst person in the in the family WhatsApp group because when my
nieces and nephews have birthdays they're like you know 25 30 I'm now showing them photos when they
were you know five and six because they're just on my phone they're in a glance I don't need to go
digging for them they're just there. Very good. Well I'm glad it worked for you Rihanna thank you
so much for letting us know. Don't worry thank you. Good on you thanks heaps um there you go it's
as simple as that um that was a fun one I forgot about that multiple old phones which you know we
should be sending to mobile muster we should be recycling because there's no point hanging around
I'm happy with you keeping one phone because it's a backup for when you lose or break your
current one if anything happens but with all those old ones and people worry about data I'm not
worried about data I've seen I've actually physically pulled apart phones at mobile muster
ain't no one looking at your data trust me but if you're worried about that uh before you format
your phone worthwhile doing a backup and no point trying to back up to your computer and different
things so yeah there you go you uh install boot them up log them on set them on the wi-fi install
google photos and hey presto you've got an entire library of your life's photos on one device in
one cloud location ready to rock and roll um if only I had a dollop every time I'd recommended google
photos let alone um people taking it up hey we should ask Claude uh we should ask Claude um how
many times have I recommended google photos on the EFTM podcast right so because of my amazing
library of transcripts of every single episode of this show now Claude is now able to
essentially log on to an online database um which has been created of every word I've ever said
and you've ever said uh and you'll notice also thank you to producer Rob we're now
publishing the the transcripts on the website every time we publish the podcast because
searchability basically you know you want people um to find this content and podcasts are not easy
to find here we go Claude says 135 mentions across 45 episodes safe to say it's your go to
recommendation for photo management that's a solid pitch to google photos if they ever wanted
sponsorship you've been doing it for free for years there you go so uh that's it it's uh it's
official google photos um we mentioned it a bit uh there you go I'm sorry I'm texting my wife um
that's very cool I am loving the database and transcript that we have now um I think it'll help
generally manage the the the thing and what I'm trying to do is because so there's a a tweaky
problem we have now because I used to be used to do talk back on the radio at 4bc and 6pr
a lot of the calls that we would get on this show were actually radio listeners um but I don't do
that anymore I only do my weekly segments where I'm talking about gadgets and we don't really
you know promote the fact that you can get in touch with me so you know there's less people
just reaching out for help and so by putting the transcripts and doing that kind of thing
hopefully some seo evolves over the years for people asking questions they'll see that I've
answered the question and or they can come to me and ask the same question uh and then we'll get
them on the show you know that's that's that's all it is it's a little evolution of the way
things works thanks to uh the power of ai but not not replacing the the human nature of this very
content in fact you could argue uh the 100 percent human facet of of eftm and gadget guy and tech
guide is the articles we write that's what we're referring to there but um critically the the
content on this podcast is 100 percent human the transcript transcribed by by ai but who gives a
rats you know i'm saying uh so if you want to be on the show if you bought something cool you want
to talk about it um you have your eyes on something interesting get in touch oh four
double 7657657 thanks to vodafone send me a text or a whatsapp
and we'll get you on the show this is the eftm podcast that's right you're listening and you
can be part of the show at any point as donner is get a donner hey trevor how you doing really good
what can i do for you um i just wanted to give some and get some feedback on the pocket ai that you
had on your podcast maybe a couple weeks ago yeah well okay let's uh when you say give some have
you bought one we certainly have we okay talk to me yeah so i wear a few different hats i run a
small business in seven hills in sydney with my business partner i do some board work um i also
have uh sort of semi personal stuff i do i look after an aging neighbor and a few other things
committees and things you sound as busy as my wife yes looking after people joining committees
and then having day job things to do that's exactly right um so i usually carry around
about four different coloured notebooks with me each one for the different part of my life
and they go everywhere in my handbag um because i need to write notes i'm a list person so when
i heard you talking about this with the guy that rang up i went oh no this is me i need this um so
i hopped straight on to the internet that night and did some more research um listened to a lot of
youtube videos on it and things like that called my business partner who isn't as crazy as i am but
close and said um i'm going to buy these things i said you're just going to have to live with it
and you're going to have to just google this and youtube this and i'll talk to you Monday or whatever
it was yeah so we did and um he took to it like a duck to water he loved it straight away um i had
to keep researching because i wanted to set it up right which i feel like i have for me um so my
feedback in anyone that's thinking about um buying one of these um would be to yeah absolutely do it
if you sound anything like me yeah um the second would be uh load the app onto your browser and set
up uh folders for the different parts of your life you can always change them later but that's
what i did and then i just jumped into using it trial by error i guess and then you just save
whatever your conversation is to that particular folder and it's really easy to go back in there
and find it and um and use it um so so i it was warren we we spoke to uh about a month ago
and i bought one while we were talking and it was a stupid thing for me to do
because yeah because i'm not like you i don't okay i run my own business but i don't really talk to
people yeah fair enough okay i don't i don't know i don't have meetings yeah this is this is the
like tuesdays i do from four a.m till ten a.m i talk on the radio yeah on 50 different stations
and then i talk for an hour to people like you and then that's it it's quiet in here you know
there's there's no conversations there i might do what about your mind is your mind quiet because
so this is that's that's where my challenge is my mind is active crazy active and yeah but but
i think it's active at the wrong times so for example in the shower in the morning i'm always
like oh and i what i do is i'm in the shower okay like this morning i was like breakfast movie i had
four things i was like do these four things or you'll or you'll be stuffed right they're my four
things yeah and that's fine but i can't use pocket a on the shower when i'm driving do i have ideas
yes um when i'm sitting at my desk do i have ideas should i just write them down so help me out
understand here because what i got from it was i was linked to my phone and so i think we kind of
download things onto my phone when you said use it in the browser is it bluetooth to the computer
or is that just a cloud version of what i saw on the phone obviously just a cloud version
because whatever i see or change on my browser because i sit in front of my laptop and three
monitors most of the day and the same when i get home at night time so i just have it open um but
yes it goes straight from the app on your phone to the browser or vice versa so if i go in there and
want to fix up some spelling or something on a meeting i might have had it just automatically
goes to either device switches so is it right to say that although that you've got a little bit of
admin to do every day how often do you sync it first and foremost it uh constantly i just
leave it attached to my phone now and it just sinks constantly so how often do you do you need to
log in and go okay there's i don't know six notes that i made verbally there's three phone calls
that listen to in two meetings do you then need to go tag each one of them with the relevant thing
or is it smart enough to know this was about my neighbour and this was about the board position
and direct is it no no i put them into the folders that i want them to go into yeah yeah
so that's easy um i did make a couple of notes just so that i mean it has a mind map so if you're
visual person it's too easy you just click it open and you can see um you can uh i'm also doing an
mba at the moment an online mba so i i was able to sync my study calendar with the pocket so in my
mba folder it's there's a reminder of when all my webinars are on my online classes or anything
that i need or i can put in there so i can record those and then it will summarize it for me yeah
right which which saves me taking notes and does that have you had a board meeting uh no the next
committee meeting is next week so that's one of my the things i'm a bit um hesitant about so if
if anybody knows of any way this works and i've also looked at all the blogs and everything
there seems to be a little bit of trouble with the tagging they call it tagging so you tagging
people's names yeah and i'm wondering how that actually works like you get into a committee
meeting and you go i'm in a committee meeting i'm with and then each person says their name so it
automatically then tags yeah i hear my experience with tagging not in real time i've done a couple
in real time but more like just i've recorded interviews with people or other things and i've
sent it off i used to use a website called temi to to transcribe things so that i could
do articles and things but i don't give you another example i was just talking about um
i've had all of my podcasts transcribed and so later today you when you log on to the
eftm website and you see this podcast this whole conversation will be there in words
now okay will it be spelled right i don't know because we're not checking that stuff but
essentially what's happening is as soon as i publish the podcast uh within the next hour
it'll be detected and transcribed and then what what i'm doing is i'm using a slightly higher
level service than just transcription to separate out the speakers so it'll say speaker one speaker
two speaker three speaker four and all that producer rob is doing is going well producer four
caller speaker four is caller donner and you just go donner and it'll it'll say donner throughout
the whole transcript so basically it will it will tag everyone in the room with their own
identity i think but just a number and then i don't feel like it's a lot of work to say well
speaker one is jim speaker two is jill and off you go from there you don't have to do a whole
lot of work so i think it'll be pretty good at it and i would think that's the
kind of thing that will improve over time because that's yeah you know in reality and i haven't
spoken to producer rob about this but in reality it's it knows that you're donner because i introduced
you well that's right and that's what it's done so far for me too i had a um a meeting with age care
or my age care or something and i there was two different people on the line so that it was able
to in the transcript it was able to label everybody with the correct name but we all did
speak on the phone and say our name so that's how we did it you know what i would i would actively
are you in charge of the notes for the meeting or the minutes or anything like that on one committee
i am and that's how i thought i'd give it a bill yes because then you can say listen guys so you
know i'm gonna trial this i'm not still gonna take notes of course but for the first next couple
of meetings i'd like to trial this so if you don't mind before the first time you speak if you could
just introduce yourself your name and title that's what i'm thinking and then people are going to go
oh don't know if that saves you time because i think especially in volunteer committees which
you're probably on a lot of um if you're anything like my wife it's like hang on why is there a
secretary here taking notes that's crazy focus on the meeting and just record the meeting and then
dump it down later and i think that if you're able to say to people this is gonna make um make the
notes more comprehensive um it's going to give us very clear action points that we won't miss
um it's going to be amazing like and within minutes like i could be still sitting at the
table and everyone's packing up and they've already got their um minutes and their to-do list in their
inbox so it's going to be easier i'm hoping wow um the only other one big huge huge downside
is there's no find my facility there's no gps or find my pocket so my business partner has
already lost his and it's only been a couple of weeks um yeah so we've just had to order another
one which he can now link to his existing stuff which is fine it's really annoying i feel like
mine is sitting somewhere around me here on my desk and how tiny are they you know we're um
just because i haven't been using it i was just going to say uh because just it magsafes on the
back of your phone doesn't it yeah he just pushed it into his pocket and he thinks he's dropped it
or something i think what we need to do for him is you need to go to somebody like laserco.com that
are you and buy one of those credit card sized find my devices they're made for passports right
right you know what super glue the bloody thing to the back of it i'll have to do something
because that that's they're couple hundred i can't remember but it was a few hundred dollars
for the pocket so well yeah but if you buy more they're cheaper so when we bought the first yeah
so up to three i think they give you a bargain which i should have bought a spare because i know
it is like but anyway i didn't but that's fine yeah so i think it's a great for me and he's using it
the same way he does have a like is he using it for phone call like i'm fascinated by
the concept of well i bought it because i thought it'd be my note taking buddy yeah and and kind of
memory zone maybe i should get back into it and try it again but i i think of it more back in the
corporate world going oh man imagine this in meetings imagine this on phone calls well the phone
calls is the one the phone calls is one in a meeting you've got a little bit more slack i think
but on a phone call you without that person in the room or people in the room it's so much harder
you have to be on speakerphone how does it work no no no i'm on speakerphone with you now because
i'm just sitting at my desk but when i talked to call the other day it was more private so i just
had attached to the phone and out of here the other person it's through vibrations that is said when
i googled it like just to do a bit of research through the vibrations in the phone i guess also
the speaker on the phone is actually on the phone it is actually coming out of the phone so if you
if you had your ear close enough to someone else's phone you'd hear it so that's essentially what it's
doing um but um darin uses it more we've got a um medium-sized mechanical workshop so he's been
writing sops on it and workflow and just notes about different things in the workshop and things
like that so he's using it totally differently to i i am but he's just loving it so yeah wow
excellent that is really really cool i'm super excited about that yeah good on your war and you've
created a beast that's amazing well done all right donna thank you so much for the feedback
that is awesome stuff really well done and i hope it makes your life so much more productive and
hopefully time saving for you thanks enjoy your show and the magazine oh thank you so much donna
cheers no worries at all um fantastic stuff and that's great feedback from a caller inspired
gadget the pocket ai join the conversation head to eftm.com and click ask trev great to have
your company and lovely to be with you if you've got a tech question or you want to talk about
anything tech in your world love to have a chin wag about it you can send me a text 0477657657
anytime or a whatsapp and we'll uh we'll get you on the show now a few weeks ago uh you might remember
me talking with alex a guy who created a game online called payphone tag but it's offline because
i've been playing it for those two weeks and more and i've rarely looked at my phone because you
don't need a phone to play you just need to find a payphone so having had that conversation about
the actual game and the premise of how it came about i thought well let's go one step further
and talk to telstra about the actual pay phones and the man that oh well let's just say he's in
charge of pay phones for telstra is pete man wearing and he joins me on the line g'day pete how
you doing hey trev i'm well thank you i'm disappointed in you i've got to say oh yeah hit me hit me out
i know where you live which sounds strange but uh i know you live in a country town and i've just
opened up the payphone tag map and i don't you haven't even bothered to claim the local payphone
mate what's going on you're in charge of pay phones you know about payphone tag come on mate
well i'm ethically torn don't put it that way it's like you you know how it works you remember
the old competitions it's like you know they had a competition and and and staff and um and staff
and family can't play the game well that's what i feel like it would be unfair it'd be under especially
let's say one of our technicians wanted to play the game he'd be he'd win easily that's a good
point actually because yeah and i'll i might get to that in a minute because i've i've i have a lot
of questions about how the network is maintained and if and why but what did you how did you first
find out about this game as the man who basically if anyone at telstra has a question about what
they're doing with pay phones and what's happening with them they come to you so how did this come
across your desk yeah it um well i mean pay phones are surprisingly loved across the business
you know they've been around a long time it's um you know it's so people send me stuff all the
time so it came across my desk probably you know within about four days of it kicking off right
and and you know we're often a bit nervous when things like this happen of course um you know
there's been some bad things but this one is outstanding what a great idea it's just a really
simple like i i'll be honest with you i had the same because i i saw a tiktok on it and
then i went and did it and i thought this is fun and then i thought i'll make a video of my own
and then i thought oh am i encouraging something strange am i encouraging something that i shouldn't
and i thought about the potential negatives of it like because i look at it from a parent's
perspective like i talked to my 14 year old said mate we should go out on the weekend and
and claim some pay phones and he said how do you do it and i thought i'd talk to him through it
and see for me i waited up and i went well i'm not going to send my 14 year old out randomly
claiming pay phones at night no but when you're if you're on the train with your mates to the city
jump out at a train station claim a pay phone get back on the train or wait for the next one
whatever it might be if you are like Mike Mike Mike we live in Sydney and my young son and
his mates they'll just go to the city to take photos they love photography while you're walking
around claim a pay phone and i felt like the best thing about this game and i mentioned this to to
the founder alex was it exposes people to firstly the location of pay phones which is a really good
thing to know and and especially if you talk to your kids about it because then you can say to
kids those phones are free and if you ever need me if you ever lose your phone have your phone
stolen get mugged whatever it might be your battery's flat that phone is your connection to me and
that's a great message 100% and you know it's not only in in so what happens over time these
pay phones have been there for a long time if you if we don't do these games or these center
activations or or whatever they become invisible yes so if you ask 10 people where their nearest
pay phone is they wouldn't have a clue but when they even with the big bright orange domes or pink
domes on top but um and so by continuing to kind of push these kind of you know activations or support
them in or somebody else like max comes up with some brilliant idea it's it's it brings in front of
mine and to your point exactly especially for kids which we support with the santa campaign
which um has been you know fantastic we get 700 000 calls from kids to our santa that teaches
these kids how to use the pay phones and and so when they need it the challenge for people like
i'm guessing you but definitely me is to remember phone numbers yes i bet you're like
me you'll remember your childhood number i was 410427 i was talking about this at dinner the other
night we maybe it was just our family or maybe it was our community but we would answer the phone
like you'd pick up the phone and go 410427 i don't know why like to check that you hadn't
run the roll number uh not to not give away your name but your phones have changed over the years
and kids now like i don't know my kids numbers i don't but i know that they know mine and that's
probably more important to me that they know how to contact me and and i like the idea of educating
the that that you know orange or or pink thing down the street is a way to contact me uh you know
it it really matters that people can stay connected and then there's the other part of it which we
can talk about in a bit as well which is you know there's people who are displaced um you know we
have i think awareness campaigns regularly about missing persons and stuff and encouraging people
and it sounds ridiculous but even if you want to stay missing to use a pay phone to make a free call
to let someone know that you're okay and those simple little things are a big part of society
ah it's it's it's why we do what we do like you know we we throw around a lot this term
you know our reason for being there in terms of the pay phone is is to support the vulnerable
and the disadvantaged and i think that covers a wide range of people you know you're vulnerable if
your son lost his phone or you're vulnerable if you're living rough um or all of those
elements and what we've seen is the pay phone usage was was um like really declining massively
when we were we were charging 50 cents a call which you know it wasn't a lot of money back in
2019 or 2020 but still it made a difference to those people who are vulnerable or disadvantaged
and so they weren't using it they weren't accessing the services they weren't calling home
so what we've seen we were we were down to around 6000000 calls for the year which is still a
lot of calls yeah but um 6000000 calls and we're up to 25 million a year now so just by
making it free now sure some of that is is kids you know they've learned how to use the pay phone
and they they call their grandfather and say hi or they call a fake number and do a prank i mean
who cares who cares yeah yeah yeah and some of it is is um you know this wonderful game payphone
tag which you know we're sitting close to 60 000 calls since it's kicked off they the stats super
happy on the real-time stats that payphone tag published say that time on calls so time spent
listening to the because when you ring and i mean explain this other day but to people that
weren't listening that time you ring and it says agent login you put in your code and then
you can uh you can listen to where you're right on the leaderboard but there's also this weird
party line thing you can join and talk to other people playing the game 277 hours spent on calls
and you know we're talking about a lot of time people picking up a phone you know as you said
60 70 000 calls have been made just capturing pay phones and it's a funny thing but and it's not
serious in any way there's a fun leaderboard and all that kind of stuff but there's also a real
like they sent out a notification the other day saying that 80 percent of all pay phones had now
been captured and it's now at 84.3 percent so 11 607 of your 13 766 pay phones have been interacted
with as a result of this game yeah it's wonderful it's it's wonderful and it's play for play's sake
which i think you know i think screen-free needs a bit more of that you know how do you
respond have you uh like they have a on the game there's a way you can report an issue with a phone
for example so i was in griffith on the weekend and um i looked at it and i went oh no one's claimed
a single phone here i'm out i said to my wife listen i'm just popping out for a minute she said
where are you going i said are going to claim some phone pay phone she said i don't even want to know
anyway i um i went to went to my old high school in griffith and i found a pay phone across the road
and the the wires were broken i could see that that it had been opened but i but here's how
nerdy i am i also knew that it was i could hear but i couldn't speak so i didn't care because
i knew the pain pay phone would still work and so i could still dial the number and even though i
couldn't hear the tag i just waited the appropriate amount of time before putting in my pin code and
then i i claimed the thing but i reported it then is broken and i think that's an interesting
interesting thing because you've got essentially you've got an active force of you know thousand
odd people who are out there finding uh issues with the network too so are you able to use that
to respond to to yeah i would 100 percent i i i yeah encourage that we so obviously there's
some smarts inside the pay phone which which tell us a number of faults when when it's not working
but there's but there's a couple of faults particularly the one you just mentioned where
where it's damaged and we can't tell remotely if it's faulty so yeah 100 we support people
either calling in on our on our pay phone fault number or as you said maybe through the through
the game but as far as i know i don't think we've got any reports from backs around that so i might
have to follow that up yeah worthwhile for sure i i which takes me to the question around pay phones
generally now every pay phone has a phone number and i've noticed most of them are mobile numbers
but some of them are still like landline numbers so is there still different types of pay phones
some that you've just got operating as essentially as mobiles and others that are still connected to
a landline network yeah 100 we have out of our fleet of you know just shy of 14 000 we've now
migrated about 8 000 to using the 4g backhaul or or starlink backhaul in in remote areas where
there's no 4g and so that's an ongoing programmer work where we're slowly migrating them off copper
onto onto yeah which obviously with the copper shot down we have to do that but the but the
benefit of that is like you know we're about to kick off a program to upgrade about 1500 of our
wi-fi pay phones which are running on adsl now you know i'm sure you you especially would understand
it's a pretty um pretty poor quality service but we're about to invest heavily and put 4g
backhaul and new wi-fi on those sites so they'll get you know much much better speeds but i guess
to that point the wi-fi on the pay phones is never meant to be for people like you and i it truly is
designed for the vulnerable and the disadvantaged so you know it's about them accessing those
those government services which are increasingly being shifted onto digital only yeah you know
access and so giving them that those opportunities is is pretty pretty key and is that this i mean
it's not just the spirit of the network but it's it's why the network exists as well because i
i know again you don't need to go into the detail because i'm not that deep in it myself but
essentially there's a there's a government guarantee to these things as well well the
government needs these this network out there they need them to exist for that purpose so
that's how you're able to continue the the network otherwise it would be hard to justify in some
ways wouldn't it oh it's it's it's hard to justify i mean the government partly you know significantly
pays for you know the network not all of it but uh but you know it's a good contribution
and that's on the voice network only they don't contribute at all to the um to the wi-fi component
right only only to the uh to the voice component and uh that runs through to 2032 so
there's still plenty of time left on that deal with the government and also plenty of time
left for us to convince our you know corporate stakeholders that we should be investing in these
and we are i mean to tell us his credit they throw a lot of additional money into a product that
generates zero revenue so you know in a corporate world that's you know pretty unheard of it is
unheard of and and especially i mean i look at a lot of people used to complain to me about the
way the nbn works and everything and i say listen you've got to understand the government kind of
needed to do that because the corporate world was never going to invest in a widespread broadband
network like this at that at that pace and if you now look at a map of the pay phone that we're
going to go my god they are in the most remote places there's a guy on or a guy or girl on um
pay phone tag with the uh username covert moth who who own a triangle from udna data down to the
womura um defense zone which is the largest possible triangle i think you could even have
and like the likelihood of someone else in the game driving there is pretty rare but
it points out just how remote these these devices are and i think that's a really
critical part of it too it's it's anywhere which you know it could be a breakdown could be someone
that's you know out of fuel there's a lot of reasons why these still need to exist in those
remote areas too oh yeah like there's um there's some sites we're working on currently up up
near canaban and uh they just had a cycle and go through but but there's there's a pay phone there
which does around 10 000 calls per year one phone in the middle of nowhere
and and you know so they're still yeah like like even with people running around with starlings in
vehicles and and 4g coverage there's still a real need for it when you look at the map the other
thing that's really interesting that it feels like it's real-time data you've obviously probably
got some really cool um real-time spreadsheet or website you can look at to see things happening
on the network but for us mere mere mortals the pay phone tag website is essentially a real-time
website for us of the pay phone network and it looks like when i said earlier 84 percent of the
phones have been captured you think oh there's not much more to go that's pretty good but then you
realize that 2000 pay phones left to be found or tagged are in the most remote areas and while
you know there's lots of places in busy bustling areas it it looks like on the map oh we just go
for a quick drive and and we'll claim the nullable well that's a pretty epic journey
you know it's it's pretty unlikely that your your wife's going to let you stop along the nullable
and claim every every pay phone as well just from my experience of driving with my wife who was not
a fan of me randomly stopping to tag pay phones yeah yeah i hear you i've done it myself driving
around stopping at everyone doing a quick order of it calling in any faults um you know with with
the you're like it's my job it's what i need to do yeah but look well enough but not
all remote areas of course not along is still available and here and ready to tag if anybody
comes i'm happy to you know shout them a coffee for the first person 100 tags no long do you think
we need a new name because pay phones are not pay phones do you debate that regularly internally
yes oh my god yes i mean yes um it's there's a bit of tension within you know across the business
or on whether we can or we can't because it's a legislated product which is still called
but it's a very least you know public phone we could have our own yeah i think public phone is
we can't really call on pub phones either so that's problematic i'm i'm feeling i'm feeling a promotional
corporate competition coming on you know the rename the pay phones something
like that you you know the team it tells you that they've got eyes and ears for this if it's the
center thing and and the salvos and there's a bunch of reasons we promote them maybe just maybe
this is the the next step for you made it it's a fascinating job you have and i love the fact that
you've been able to have a bit of public attention on on your work through a simple little fun screen
free game like pay phone tag made and i i respect the fact that you're not engaging in the game
thank you yeah yeah it's it's just ethics mate just it's just ethics um you know yeah and if
max is listening i like i sincerely thank him i think it's a brilliant game and congratulations
to him good stuff matt i appreciate the chat all right see you later so bye bye jave
you're listening to the eftm podcast
you can text trev now thanks to Vodafone on 0 4 double 7 6 5
great happy company taking your calls uh get in touch dave's on the longer day dave
hey trev how are you doing mate really good buddy you had a question in the man cave what
what can i do for you you're looking at uh just moved into a single story house uh looking at a
robot vacuum cleaner and just knowing where to start without spending the earth so sorry start
again it's a single story did you say yeah and hardfors carpets what do we got hard hardfors
throughout oh okay well it's a it's it's a funny one because i've tested so many over the years
that i like i'm confident they're amazing but there's a weird thing that happened in our house
and i think you've probably heard me talk about my wife for plenty of times who
isn't really fan of most of the things that i bring home and i never i never really set a
robot vacuum to go out like every night um because we had this thing where we would put all the chairs
up and have it clean properly like basically once a week i'd just go let's put all the chairs up
while we go to baseball and have it clean but she said to me last time i set a vacuum up she said
why don't we have to put all the chairs up i said it's just because otherwise we could just send
it out every day and go around the chairs and she said why don't we just do that i went well
i'm happy to do that as long as you leave room for it to come out because often where it sits is
actually it's near her desk and there's the race sim and all these things get in the way i said we
got to go to bed knowing that that's that that runway is clear to get out anyway so we did that
and this thing's been going out every single night and she said to a random person so not
even just feedback to me but she was talking to a random person about robot vacuum she goes
it's absolutely noticeable how good the floor feels now that we've been using it literally
every every day every every two days so the thing your most important thing is is the
mopping feature because you need to worry less about suction power and all those things and
more about just simply having a bloody good mop because any vacuum as long as you use it
at least every second day any any vacuum is going to pick up the basic things that are
left out i will say you've still got to be careful of medium sized things like a
bread clip or you know hair clips uh what was the funny thing i heard this noise it was going
around making this horrible noise i thought what is that and i picked it up and there was a pencil
that had been picked up but not sucked up so it was just looping around on the bloody thing so
that was you know you got to keep your eye out still for the basics but uh but yeah have you
got a budget in mind probably under a thousand it's so you're probably not going
to get under a thousand you're not going to get the rolling mopper so you're more traditional
kind of full-on rolling mop what you'll get is the the pad mop so underneath on the bottom are
pads that that wash the floor but i was looking at say robo rock they have one called the corubo
i don't know how to say it q r e v o max five right max v what the what i like about it is it
has spinning pads and the spinning pads is what you want you definitely want one where the pads
on the bottom of it spin around in circles because um otherwise it's just dragging them around like
let's be honest no change the dragging drag you're just dragging a a cloth along the floor
okay it's been re-wet every time you know but it doesn't really make a difference you know so
kind of in the end you're better off with the rotating mop heads so um if you can find one
man i'm online right now robo rock they got what used to be a 2000 dollar one for a thousand
bucks on special right now it's called the querovo edge c and it has not just the spinning pad but
the one that kicks out so it kicks out on an angle so that it gets closer to the edge plus
it's got the auto empty station so it's refilling itself and doing all that stuff dude that's that's
really good value let's see edge c querovo q r e v o querovo edge c seemingly on special now
oh damn i've just clicked another page um i'm going to check whether they're also seeing it
the good guys got it for 900 and fifty jb's have got a cheap yeah
also what about this for a tip uh the good guys uh on any single page well not any page
but certainly on their tv's and i've just noticed it's on here as well if you look under the price
there's a thing that says price check pay less with price b you click that and you're also going to
get more money off right because they've found a cheaper price you're going to get it for 939
cool yeah that works that applies to tv's as well it's insane so basically what what good
guys is doing is they're scanning the market every hour or five or whatever they're updating their
database and they're going you know what it's a thousand bucks cheaper somewhere else but let's
not change our price let's just give it to someone who's willing to press this one extra button
yeah yeah so they do they do it in store as well i did i bought a microwave just the other day
and he and he said look i said what's the difference between these two it's other than the price he said
nothing i said well and he said you can have that for i have a thing that's about 50 bucks less i'm
sure okay thank you no exactly i wasn't gonna say no yeah yeah it's it's it's uh i thought it was a
really cool feature of the good guys website that just means that you absolutely know that you
don't it's a smart one because it's their way of saying don't look anywhere else we've got you covered
and now your your your gut for anything over a thousand bucks your gut's gonna go i'm gonna
check okay i'm just gonna check that i can't find it anywhere else but wildly they are doing the
checking for you so really really cool um fantastic obviously just quickly the other
thing to do is compare a couple other brands so you might compare dreamy and ecovacs and go
just check what other right spinning mop with the kick out make sure it's got the kick out because
that's the edge portion portion of this quervo edge c and uh mate just go shop on value there see
what price you can get fantastic thank you very much all right anytime as always thank you mate
tuesday thank you um yeah so it's a massive market but what about that really cool price
check feature there on the good guys gotta give them credit for that um it came up i was talking to
someone um in the tv industry hi justine uh about uh the the eftm you know tv finder website thing
and um she said that she'd checked the good guys price check and that had that had matched what i
had as my best price and i'm like oh wow and i'll look i'll say this i've been talking to the guy
from jbbuddy.com about how we can incorporate and work together because i don't know that i've got
the time or inclination to continue because at the moment it's still manual process but i'm gonna
set us up i'm trying to try and make it automated but you know he's got some really cool stuff going
on and i'm trying to work out whether or not there's data we can share or whether we can work
together on that i don't know but um i'm still absolutely in love with the tv um finder with
the witch tv to buy tv search on eftm.com if you're in the market for a tv um we've now reviewed the
high sense new new r9 mini rgb mini led so you can now find that review linked on uh on the eftm
tv finder as well lots of great things going on in the world right now folks
be part of the show thanks to Vodafone you can text 0477657657
last fall for the week bruce is on the line today bruce
hey travair goons hey what can i do for you
hey got an issue i've downloaded norton 360 onto my phone and i've got a blackview 800 gold dash
cam and i can't access the camera oh so you would normally open up the app and
locally you view the camera download files replay things yeah and and you've you know it's the
the vpn yes that's the problem that i think i would think yeah that would be the problem
why why do you think you want or need a vpn on your phone um i've sort of come with the
with the norton thing mate i'm a big fan of you having security software absolutely big big
supporter um but the vpn is the least most important one of them all so okay yep if as long
as the norton is also doing other things like i don't know checking your emails or scanning your
emails and also link prevention what i want security on your phone for is so that you don't
press on a link that you shouldn't in a text message an email or wherever else um so that
would be a separate part of it so i would go into the settings and and check if you can disable
within norton the vpn otherwise is it an iphone yeah it is an iphone yeah otherwise in the settings
just search for vpn and you'll be able to just click a box and turn it off now the
frustrating thing will be okay yeah i've seen that norton will keep saying to you you're not
fully protected just you just need to remember you're as fully protected as you need to be but
yeah if you go and turn the firstly turn the vpn off and check it that the black view works that's
let's make sure that that's actually the problem um but yeah it should be as simple as that and i know
people love vpns and they spruke them and they sell them and but mate i i've rarely used a vpn in my
life okay no drama so yeah i can i'll definitely do that you'll you'll be back on
running and uh what what car's the black for you in mate what's with the car uh trotting trotting
what is it do you do you catch a lot of cool stuff or have you had issues with crashes or
are you just catching cool no random stuff that's happening around just just random stuff and i just
wanted to make sure if i did have an accident i was right yeah 100 well mate disable the vpn
log into the app and i think you'll be sorted yeah no i was yeah because when i got the
spice to come with the dash cam that it got stalled a bit later and yeah it didn't get a
very good hand over that so uh bugger on the dash cam that's it yeah right well you got it mate
it's a good dash cam yeah yeah no i was very happy with it yeah well done that's a nice one
well mate enjoy no i was i'll give that a go and i'll get out of this meeting thanks mate good on
thanks everybody cheers um bruce was in a meeting i said buddy are you good to chat he said yep
quickly i'm like okay we can do that we get it done quickly see we can nail your problems in no
time at all and look i hear you saying i strongly support a vpn good on you i'm cool with that
but most of the time when i talk to people about why they're using or installing a vpn at home or
on their mobile wherever it is it's because they've heard an ad for it and they don't know why they
need it now if you said to me that i like spanish tv and i want to put my phone in spain and stream
illegally the spanish content do your best whatever if you said to me i do my banking that way i say
don't do it on a public don't do it in a public cafe just avoid using it in those places but otherwise
i'm not too stressed i know it's not the top end security advice people think they're going to get
but in the end it's most of the time somewhat unnecessary
you're listening to the eftm podcast
join the conversation head to eftm.com and click ask trev
thank you so much for listening this week once again fun talking pay phones and uh if you're
please don't own my pay phones okay i've taken spent a lot of time trying to own those pay phones
if you live in anywhere regional there's a huge chance the pay phones around you are not tagged
so jump on a payphone tag dot com um i noticed they expanded the cells which is like groups or teams
and uh we now have more members i don't know how that happened but whoever nano
cases hello and welcome great to have your company you've got 32 phones fantastic love it
got to find it where they are i might be able to do that somehow here i'll do it after the show
thanks for listening folks and we'll do it all again next week right here
tech cars lifestyle this is the eftm podcast with trev along
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