Is Amazon Music Unlimited a good deal? – CNET
Amazon is coming for you, Apple Music. And Spotify. And Google Play Music.
Yesterday, the e-commerce giant rolled out Amazon Music Unlimited, an ad-free streaming service that aims to compete with those established heavyweights. How? With lower prices. Sort of.
Not to be confused with Prime Music, which affords Prime subscribers a fairly limited catalog, Music Unlimited offers “tens of millions” of songs, according to Amazon. (Its competitors get a little more specific, each claiming at least 30 million.) Let’s just say it’s Amazon’s answer to Spotify.
Beyond that, Music Unlimited offers tight integration with Amazon’s Echo products. In fact, Echo owners can take advantage of special pricing. Let’s take a look at the various subscription options and whether or not they’re really a good deal.
If you already have Amazon Prime
You paid $99 for your Prime subscription, which works out to $8.25 per month. Sure, it affords lots of benefits beyond just Prime Music, but you still have to consider that as part of the equation. Existing Prime subscribers can add Music Unlimited for $7.99 per month — or $79, if you pay annually.
All the competing services charge $9.99 per month for a single-user subscription. So if you’re paying for Prime already, another $7.99/month (or an effective $6.58 from an annual payment) is a decent deal — though hardly a great one.
If you already have an Amazon Echo
Here’s where it gets interesting. Echo owners can get Music Unlimited for just $3.99 per month. But — and this is a big “but” — that subscription will play your music only via Echo — and only a single Echo at that. You don’t get to listen on the web, and you don’t get to use the mobile apps.
Verdict: no, thanks. This might be a bigger deal if you had no other options for unlimited music via Echo. But you do: Spotify. And obviously that service doesn’t limit you to a single device.
Admittedly, $3.99 per month is the single cheapest streaming-music option out there, but remember, you still need Prime. And an Echo. Neither one is free.
If you don’t have Amazon anything
“Civilians” can get Amazon Music Unlimited for $9.99 per month — the same price you’d pay for Apple Music, Spotify or the like. So then the question is, how is Music Unlimited better than the competition? At first blush, it appears to be very similar: big catalog, curated playlists, personalized stations and so on. Perhaps the best argument for choosing it is if you think you’ll purchase Prime and/or an Echo at some point down the road. But if you go with, say, Spotify from the start, you’ll still enjoy Echo integration.
If you have a family
That $9.99 per month is for a single user. If you want a family plan — even if you already subscribe to Prime — will cost you $14.99 per month. That allows up to six users to share the service, on par with what you get from Apple, Google and Spotify family plans.
However, Amazon also offers an annual payment option for Music Unlimited: $149, which works out to $12.42 per month. That would make it the least-expensive of the major music services. (I didn’t find a discounted annual-payment option for any of the others.)
But, as with the individual plan, the savings are pretty slim — just a couple of bucks every month. I definitely don’t see the value in Amazon’s Echo-only plan, which is way too limiting, and unless you already have a subscription to Prime that you like for reasons other than music, the standard $9.99 rate is unexciting.
If you do have that subscription, though, $7.99 per month is a solid single-user deal. And for families of six willing to prepay by the year, the $149 rate is definitely worth considering.
What are your thoughts on Amazon Music Unlimited? A good deal, or not quite good enough? While you’re weighing those questions, be sure to check out CNET’s music download and streaming directory.
How to make a to-do list with Alexa – CNET
Tyler Lizenby/CNET
Among Alexa’s growing list of features is one that lets you make and manage to-do and shopping lists.
Adding tasks or items is very straightforward. Tell her what you need to do or buy and she’ll add it the correct list. But that’s not all there is to Alexa’s to-do list capabilities. Here’s everything you need to know about task management with Alexa.
Adding to-dos and shopping list items
There are a few of ways to add items to your to-do and shopping lists.
You can say, “Alexa, create a new to-do.” She will then ask you what the to-do is. Whatever you say after that will be added as a line item to the list. You can also be more direct and say, “Alexa, I need to make an appointment with the dentist” or “Alexa, add ‘go to the gym’ to my to-do list.”
Screenshot by Taylor Martin/CNET
For the shopping list, you can say something like, “Alexa, add bread to my shopping list” or “Alexa, I need to buy deodorant.”
Alexa is fairly clever about to-do and shopping list commands. You can be far more general with your requests and she will try to fill in the blanks. For instance, when you say “add [noun],” Alexa understands you want that item added to your shopping list. If you say “Alexa, go to the gym,” Alexa will add “go to the gym” to your to-do list.
The problem with letting Alexa manage your to-do list is the lack of features, organization and accessibility of the list itself.
The only way to access your to-do list is within the Amazon Alexa app on Android or iOS or by going to alexa.amazon.com in your web browser. Click on Shopping & To-do Lists to view the lists. From there, you can add an item manually, check off, edit and delete items or move them between the two lists. You can also view completed tasks or print out the existing to-do or shopping list. That’s it.
Any.do and Todoist
Fortunately, official integration with both Any.do and Todoist was announced earlier today, bringing two-way sync and extended to-do list functionality to Alexa. You can expect other popular task managers to be added to the mix in the future, as well.
Screenshot by Taylor Martin/CNET
To connect an Any.do or Todoist account to your Alexa account:
- Open the Alexa mobile app or alexa.amazon.com in a web browser and click Settings.
- Scroll down and click Lists under the Account section.
- Click Link to the right of either Any.do or Todoist.
- Click Continue to be taken to the log-in page.
- Enter your Amazon account log-in credentials and click Sign in.
- Click Okay to be taken to another log-in page.
- Enter your Todoist or Any.do account credentials and click Log in.
After doing this, your to-do and shopping lists will be synced between your Alexa account and your connected Any.do or Todoist account. To-dos created via Alexa will be visible in Any.do or Todoist and vice versa.
You can also ask, “Alexa, what’s on my to-do list?” and all pending tasks for that day will be read to you.
The Todoist integration will also make use of its natural language task input, so you can add due dates and recurring tasks via voice. For instance, you can say, “Alexa, add ‘Car payment’ every 4th of the month to my to-do list.” The task “Car payment” will be added to your Todoist account, but will not show up in the Alexa to-do list until the day it’s due — the 4th of every month.
Here’s everything the Amazon Echo can do
1 – 5 of 41
Next
Prev
More to-dos with IFTTT
If you use a service other than Any.do or Todoist, you can enable one-way sync using IFTTT.
All you need is a recipe that uses the Amazon Alexa channel and Item added to your To Do List as the trigger and your task manager of choice as the action channel. You can also have items added to your shopping list added to an external to-do list using a similar recipe.
The Publish Alexa ToDo to Trellorecipe is a perfect example, but there are several supported to-do list and task manager services on IFTTT.
- Beeminder
- Evernote
- FollowUp.cc
- Google Calendar
- iOS Reminders
- Kyber
- MeisterTask
- Office 365 Calendar
- OneNote
- Todoist
- Toodledo
- Trello
Once the recipe is added to your account, tasks added via Alexa will also be added to your separate task manager account. However, items added to your to-do list elsewhere will not be synced with your Alexa to-do or shopping lists.
Disclosure: Taylor Martin (a CNET freelance contributor) writes and produces videos for the Todoist blog.
How to deal with Gear VR overheating
Nobody wants their phone to overheat in VR, and we’ve got the tips to help keep it from happening.
There is nothing quite as frustrating as being in the middle of an awesome VR game and having your phone overheat and shut everything down. Gear VR can overheat, and when it does, it’s never at an opportune time. Thankfully there are a fair few ways that you can get around this problem, and we’ve got the details on them.
Read more at VR Heads!
Android O: What we’d like to see
It’s never too early to start thinking ahead.
Now that we know what to expect for the next year or so with Android Nougat, it’s time to start a wish list for Android O. We’ll start guessing the name later, I’m sure.
Android is a far different animal than it used to be, and major platform updates don’t actually look very major on the surface. The jump from Marshmallow to Nougat is a good example — large portions of the underlying code changed how things are done but other than a few features like multi-window, much of it looks and feels the same. We may want something that looks exciting, but big shifts in the way things look and operate usually break plenty of other things, so slow and gradual adjustments are the norm.
Refinements not replacements.
And that’s good. Doze, for example, was refined in Android 7. When it works, it’s pretty great. A good path to follow would be to find out why it doesn’t always work and see what’s needed to fix Android and third party apps so everyone can enjoy the benefits. Making changes so apps like the camera don’t need to try and open when they’re not needed is great for overall performance. Extend those ideas to other system-level apps to make even more gains. That’s the sort of thing that we’re sure google is working on with Android O.
But there are certain things we really want from Google and Android going forward, and some of them are related to the way Google does their mobile services. Have a read and see our list.
Clarity about what’s Android and what’s Google
People who enjoy reading developer documentation don’t make the bulk of Android users. That means Google needs to go a good job of telling everyone what Android does while they’re telling us what their fancy new phones that use Android can do.
The Pixel event left most of us scratching our heads over why Google would force round icons and a new opaque-ish application tray on everyone, and when we’ll all be able to use Assistant and fingerprint sensor gestures on phones like the LG V20. They didn’t make it clear that the launcher and Assistant are not part of Android — the launcher and it’s round icons are for the Pixel only (for now) and Assistant is another Google service like Gmail, which also happens to be Pixel-only (for now).
If you want to announce a new version of Android at the same time you announce a new Google phone, you have to do a better job here.
There’s a big world out there
Google wants every person in every country to use all of their services. Laws and regulations don’t make that as easy as we think it is, though.
But that can’t be an excuse. Android O will also have some awesome new Google feature to go along with it, and that feature needs to come to everyone right away — not just Americans. Other companies are able to do whatever deals or magic is needed to have services work in many places at once, so we should expect Google to do the same.
Security, security, security
Having monthly patches for security exploits — both existing and potential — is great. Listing everything that was updated and linking to the changes themselves is great, too. Doing as much as they can to prevent them in the first place is even better because sometimes those updates don’t trickle down through the companies who make Android phones.
We know Google cares about Android’s security, and they have a lot of mechanisms in place to prevent unknowns from doing much damage, as well as clean things up if it does happen. They need to continue to focus on how your phone boots up and how changes for critical system files are monitored. More of those fixes that make it hard for folks to get root also make it hard for anything else to get root.
Better tools for desktop management
Samsung, LG and everyone else has their own programs for your computer to make things like transferring files and backing up your things easier. They have to do it because Google doesn’t offer anything.
Yes, Android is a cloud-centric OS. That doesn’t matter because it’s obvious that some folks want to manage some things locally. You can still design everything around being connected and have it all done through the phone itself but take the time and money to write desktop software for the people who need it. You sell very expensive high-end phones now, and pretending that the people buying them won’t have access to a computer isn’t the best position to take. Especially when your competitors don’t.
Themes
I like the brighter colors we’ve seen in the past few versions of Android. A lot of other people do, too. But an equal number of people don’t.
You fix that and make everyone happy by adding a theme engine. Developers and Google Play would quickly fill out an Android themes section. Feel free to leave out the crazy fonts, though.
The status bar needs some love
My lock screen has a clock. There’s a pretty slick clock widget or two in Google Play (as well as one included on almost every phone). Not to mention those watches you want us to buy and their primary feature. Why would I want a clock that can’t be removed in the status bar?
The same goes for the rest of the icons up there. They offer useful information, but plenty of other ways to get that information are available. Expand what was started with the System UI tuner, then maybe make it a little more visible so people know it’s there.
A certified accessory program is good for everyone
No, not like Apple’s, but with the same goals — get companies excited to make things that work with Android.
Make it free. Publish papers and guidelines that help anyone wanting to participate. Encourage and incentivize partners to participate. Showcase great products at Google Play. This would make it easier for people to recognize products built to work best with Android, and reward companies that do so. Everyone wins.
Curated sections of Google Play for more things would be awesome
Let everyone download all the things, but also give people a place to look for specific apps. Expand from sections like Android Wear apps or apps for kids into apps that are great for some of the most popular models. People know where to look in the Galaxy App Store to find what works great with an S Pen. They should be able to do the same in Google Play, right from the Play Store app. I would download every app from a section titled “Games that use Google’s backup service so you don’t lose your progress and IAPs.”
You’re the king of search, so you know the current system based on keywords is broken. Fix it.
Tailor Android for better hardware
Everyone in an emerging market deserves a well-built low-cost phone with access to Google Play. Everyone who spends $1,000 on a phone with the highest specs available deserves software built to take advantage of it. Having an OS that melds these two things is hard, and doing so means not everything available works well on every phone.
Make use of the horsepower in our $1,000 phone.
A few changes that let phones with plenty of GPU and CPU power take full advantage of it without trying to be backward compatible so it can be used elsewhere could be easier than the one-size-fits-all solution. Keep the core APIs the same, keep the features the same, but differentiate the way developers can interface with them.
I want an Android One phone to be lean and functional. I want apps to work well on it. But I also want whatever we see next from the folks who push hardware limits to be able to harness what the hardware can do. Fragmentation be damned — expand on what NVIDIA has done and give us a better way for apps and games and a UI to use all that horsepower that will be in our next high-end Android that uses the same base features available to everyone.
Don’t forget AOSP
This ties in with the first thing on our list as well as the one above. Things you do that make Android better need to live in AOSP (the open-source version of Android). Having your own services is fine, but don’t neglect Android itself in favor of them. Anyone who has built Android 7 without Google’s services knows that it’s a fully functional OS for a phone that’s missing everything that makes Android compelling to use.
Give the world an open-source front-end for Gmail or for Google Movies and TV and all the other things that make Android great. You know that someone would be able to take the code and do a great job with it if you let them have a way to access things properly and a fully detailed set of rules to follow while doing it.
If you didn’t know that, download Carbon or Falcon Pro and compare them to Twitter for Android. Just don’t be a dick to developers like Twitter is.
Android has reached a point where major shifts aren’t needed. Refining what’s already there and adding a few well thought out services and features to Android, and the Google ecosystem itself will be a good way to add some polish and keep things from getting stale.
We’ll think of plenty more changes we want to see, and I’m sure everyone has their own list of wants and needs. Some will be valid, some will be silly and some might even happen. But it’s always fun to think about how things could (or should) change.
Samsung Canada offering $100 credit to exchange Note 7 for another Galaxy phone
Samsung Electronics Canada has announced two credit options for Canadian Customers who have yet to return their Galaxy Note 7, with incentives for those who opt to exchange their recalled phone for a Galaxy S7 or S7 edge.
Starting today, Note 7 owners returning their device at the original point of purchase can receive the following credit options:
- A $100 credit for customers exchanging their Note 7 for a Galaxy S7 or S7 edge.
- A $25 credit for customers requesting a full refund or exchanging for a non-Samsung smartphone.
Customers who bought their Note 7 through Samsung.com will receive their refund option once Samsung has received the recalled device. Samsung is also offering a refund on Note 7 specific accessories purchased at Samsung or an authorized reseller, provided you have proof of purchase.
If you’ve yet to return your Note 7 yet it’s certainly worth considering Samsung’s offer — Android Central named the Galaxy S7 the best Android phone of 2016.
Samsung Galaxy Note 7
- Galaxy Note 7 fires, recall and cancellation: Everything you need to know
- Do not buy a Galaxy Note 7
- Samsung Galaxy Note 7 review
- The latest Galaxy Note 7 news
- Join the Note 7 discussion in the forums!
This is the final trailer for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
This will be your last look at Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.
In terms of trailers, anyway. Rogue One already has a teaser and a full trailer, but this latest one, which debuted on Good Morning America Thursday, is apparently the last one we’ll get before the year’s most anticipated film opens in theaters in 3D, RealD 3D, and IMAX 3D on 16 December. It contains a lot of new footage and is packed with tonnes of clues and hints about the story line.
Directed by Gareth Edwards, produced by Simon Emanuel, Kathleen Kennedy, and Allison Shearmur, and executive produced by John Knoll and Jason McGatlin, the sci-fi action film, which follows seven other series installments, stars Riz Ahmed, Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, Ben Mendelsohn, Mads Mikkelsen, Genevieve O’Reilly, Alan Tudyk, Jiang Wen, and Forest Whitaker.
LucasFilm hasn’t revealed much about the plot, but according to the official synopsis, it’s centered in a time of conflict, when “a group of unlikely heroes band together on a mission to steal the plans to the Death Star, the Empire’s ultimate weapon of destruction”. This key event in the Star Wars timeline brings together “ordinary people who choose to do extraordinary things…”
Although the synopsis is a little vague and cliche, the trailer looks epic. We see a bit of Jyn Erso’s past, the origins of the Rogue call sign, incredible battle scenes, and interesting clues, including an opening look at the Imperial forces advancing on a farm. Galen Erso can be heard telling his young daughter that he’s doing “it to protect her”, and then an adult Jyn wakes up in a prison.
The trailer also shows the Alliance forces breaking her out of prison. We even see Darth Vader! Rogue One is set before Star Wars: A New Hope. Unlike the biggest movie of 2015, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Rogue One is a standalone film. It’s not a continuation. It’s the first major film to be earmarked as separate from the original saga. Two more standalone films are in the works.
Rogue One’s first trailer debuted in April and was followed by a teaser in August.
Twitter picks horse racing for its first global sports stream
Twitter has made a big deal out of streaming sports in the US, but anywhere else? Not so much, unless you count a Wimbledon experience that avoided showing the live games themselves. However, that’s changing today. The social network has unveiled a deal with the Victoria Racing Club to livestream Australia’s Melbourne Cup worldwide — its first streaming partnership beyond the US. You can watch the horse racing on Twitter’s website or its official apps. You may need to set an alarm if you live on the other side of the planet, though, as the pre-event coverage kicks off November 1st at 2:30PM Australian Eastern Daylight Time (11:30PM Eastern in the Americas).
It’s a modest start to Twitter’s international livestreaming deals (the core race broadcast lasts for an hour), but an important one. Twitter is both trying to define itself and court potential buyers, and becoming a go-to destination for live sports events could help achieve both ends. The challenge will be to score these deals on a frequent-enough basis that your instinct is to go to Twitter first.
Source: Twitter Blog, Flemington
Tinder ‘Smart Photos’ uses swipe data to select your best pic
When you’re swiping through Tinder it’s pretty easy to dismiss someone based on their first photo. Maybe it’s poorly compressed, from the delivery room or the church steps on a person’s wedding day. Those might be red flags that push people to instantaneously dismiss a potential match before looking deeper at a person’s profile. To help your right-swiping sojourn, though, Tinder is using data to make sure someone’s best picture is the first you’ll see.
The new feature is called “Smart Photos.” As the company tells it, in the background, the app will alternate the first photo other people see and will reorder your glamor shots to show the ones with the highest positive response in descending order. And it goes both ways, of course; your own picture order will be altered in a way that hopefully serves you better too — all without paying for it.
In tests, Tinder reports that users saw an up to 12 percent increase in matches. “Smart Photos takes into account each individual’s swiping pattern when selecting which photos they’ll see first,” a blog post reads. “It’s a system that gets smarter with more input: the more you swipe and the more you’re swiped on, the better the algorithm serves you.”
Now, this isn’t exactly new for dating apps and services. OKCupid, for instance, has offered something similar before. But, the rub there was you had to opt in and then manually set the photo others deemed the best as your default. Think of this as passively outsourcing your love life.
The feature is the result of an internal hackathon, machine learning lead Mike Hall writes. Working with the app’s in-house sociologist (and presumably, the algorithm) Hall found that not smiling, covering even a small bit of your face and being in a group of people dramatically lowers your chances for love. Same goes for wearing a hat or “any kind of glasses.” Ouch.
The Tinder Dev blog goes pretty deep on the algorithm used (“epsilon greedy”) and testing process if that’s the sort of thing that turns your crank. However, if you’d rather just swipe using the new feature, it’s live now. To further up your game, you could always change your anthem from Skrillex’s “Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites” to Katy Perry’s “Rise” and see if that helps.
Source: Tinder (1), (2)
Facebook Video now plays nice with Chromecast and Apple TV
If you’ve been dying to get Chewbacca Mom on your television, the latest update to Facebook’s video product is directed at you. Starting today, you can now send Facebook videos to your nearby Apple TV or Google Chromecast from any web browser or iOS device.
Facebook says the feature will soon be live for Android users as well, although it will only be able to connect with a Chromecast or other Google Cast-enabled devices. As with other services that play nice with Apple TV (or AirPlay) and Google Cast, the instructions are pretty straightforward: users with a compatible setup will see a TV symbol in the top right corner of Facebook videos. Tap it and you can select which device to stream your video to. The video will even continue playing as you to go back to mindlessly thumbing through your News Feed on your phone. And if you happen to be watching a Facebook Live broadcast, the comments and reactions will be displayed on your TV as well — which will come in handy when you’re streaming the next presidential debate.
Smart trash can helps educate reluctant recyclers
France and recycling go together like hammers and fromage frais, which is why the country has some of the worst recycling rates in Europe. Local startup Uzer is hoping to encourage better habits with Eugene, a smart trash can that’ll tell users what they can recycle and track what they’re consuming. Essentially, it’s a pedal bin with a barcode scanner bolted onto the top, but if that’s what it takes to get folks separating their cardboard and plastic, it might just be worth it.
Let’s say that you had a microwave meal that you’d eaten and you were about to discard the packaging. Simply wander over to Eugene and scan the product’s barcode until the display leaps into life. It’ll say, for instance, that the cardboard body and hard plastic tray can be recycled, but the thin film has to go in general waste. Then you can go about your day with the feeling of satisfaction that can only be gained from knowing you’re helping not destroy the very planet we live on.
Naturally, as a connected product, Eugene comes with its own smartphone app that’ll offer a variety of additional features. For instance, the app can track what you’ve thrown away and add it to a shopping list for your next trip to the supermarket. Alternatively, it can add each discarded item to your online order, enabling you to replenish your supply. Uzer CEO Clément Castelli also thinks that brands may want to incentivize use of the system with discounts based on how much of their products you recycle.
Unfortunately, the startup is still in the prototype stage and isn’t expecting to have Eugene ready for sale until well into 2017. But the company has promised that it’ll have a second product, with the barcode scanner and display separated from the bin, ready to show at CES in January. The cost for the full-fat bin is pegged at €299, although that could change depending on how many people continue to struggle with the concept of throwing cardboard and thick plastic into bin marked cardboard and thick plastic.
Oh, and if you’re wondering why a recycling startup would call its flagship trash can product Eugene, it’s a French in-joke. In 1884, politician Eugene Poubelle decreed that all Parisians had to dump their trash in specialized cans. Resentful locals nicknamed these bins la Poubelle, and the name eventually became the official French term for trash can. That’s a fact from us, for free, that you can use to impress your friends this weekend.
Source: Uzer
AIVAnet 