Keep track of your fevers with this smart thermometer for just $15!
Right now you can grab this awesome digital smart thermometer from Kinsa for just $15 at Amazon. If your family spends a lot of time on the go, this thermometer is a great addition to any bag so you can quickly and easily check your child’s temperature if they aren’t feeling great. To keep kids sitting still, the app offers a bubble-popping game, and the flexible tip makes it more comfortable in their mouth.
Beyond just telling you the temperature, the thermometer can also give you real-time guidance on what to do next, which is gathered from sources like Mayo Clinic and Cleveland Clinic. You’ll be able to track your health history for each member of the family with ease, and all for just $15 right now.
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Best Music Streaming Services
Which streaming music service is right for you? Here’s a look at some of the top options.
Over the last several years, music streaming has become arguably the most common way people choose to listen to their favorite tunes. Alongside that rise, a number of services have popped up from major and minor players alike, all competing for your subscription dollars. While many of these services no doubt share a lot in common, there are some differences that give each its own personality.
If you’re trying to choose the right music streaming platform for you, here’s a rundown of some of the more popular options in no particular order.
Spotify
At more than 100 million users (40 million of which are paid subscribers), Spotify is the current king of the music streaming space — and it’s not hard to see why. The service is available on a wide variety of platforms with quality apps, and its free tier acts as an effective way for new users to see what Spotify is all about. If you want to remove ads, Spotify offers a $10 per month individual plan or $15 family plan.
Spotify offers a unique way of helping users sift through its catalog of more than 30 million songs as well, thanks to its weekly Discover playlist. As the name suggests, the playlist is refreshed weekly with new tunes Spotify thinks you might like based on your listening history. While other services have also thrown their hat in on curated suggestions, Spotify’s Discover Weekly playlist has earned consistent praise from those who like the adventure of finding new artists and songs to check out.
Sign up for Spotify
Pandora
As one of the first names in the streaming music game, Pandora is probably already familiar to many. Pandora operates as a streaming radio service, allowing users to start a radio station based around a particular artist or genre. You can then personalize each station by giving a thumbs up or thumbs down to each song played, allowing Pandora to further hone in on your tastes.
Pandora has also introduced Pandora Plus, a $4.99 per month subscription option that allows you to replay past songs, take your music offline, and skip as many tracks as you want. While this is a slightly tamer version of the unlimited, play-what-you-want offerings of other services, it’s also cheaper and should work just fine for those who enjoy Pandora’s streaming radio stations.
Sign up for Pandora
Google Play Music
As far as its catalog is concerned, Google Play Music can go toe-to-toe with every other service on this list. While the service is restricted to a web browser or an app for iPhone and Android, you should be able to find almost anything you’re looking for — with the exception of certain exclusives. At $10 per month for individuals or $15 for families, the pricing is right too. Add in the service’s quick access to playlists sorted by mood or activity, and things start to get interesting.
Where Google Play Music really shines, however, is its tie-in with another Google-owned property: YouTube. Included in your subscription is also a subscription to YouTube Red, which removes ads from YouTube and gives you access to some exclusive content. If you already watch a lot of YouTube, that definitely makes Google Play Music an attractive option.
Sign up for Google Play Music
Apple Music
Apple is a relative newcomer to the streaming music scene, but it’s already making quite a name for itself. Available via iTunes, as well as on iPhone and Android, Apple Music serves up catalog of music that’s just as compelling as other options on this list. Apple has also shown a knack for securing exclusive content, including from big names like Taylor Swift and Chance the Rapper.
Apple matches the pricing of its competitors, coming in at $10 for individuals and $15 for families. One of Apple Music’s more interesting offerings, its Beats 1 radio station, is available for anyone to stream for free, and includes interesting shows and interviews from celebrity DJs like Elton John and Josh Homme. Otherwise, subscribers will find plenty of on-demand music, along with some pretty compelling curated playlists in the service’s “For You” section.
Sign up for Apple Music
Groove Music
Microsoft’s latest shot at a music streaming service is called Groove Music, and, like the others, includes a pretty large catalog of music for $10 per month. The service is widely available on multiple platforms, including Windows 10 PC and Mobile, iPhone and Android. Groove is even available on Xbox, letting you stream your favorite tunes from your console.
Like others on this list, Groove Music offers up its take on curated playlists and suggestions in its “Your Groove” section. There, you’ll find relatively nuanced suggestions centered around mood, genre or other parameters based on tracks you’ve listened to in the past. Another of Groove’s unique features is its tie-in with Microsoft’s cloud storage service, OneDrive. Simply upload your own tracks to your OneDrive storage, and they’ll be accessible from your Groove library across all of your devices.
Sign up for Groove Music
Amazon Prime Music and Music Unlimited
Amazon curiously has a few different offerings on the table when it comes to music streaming. For Amazon Prime subscribers, you automatically get access to Amazon Prime music, which includes a comparatively paltry selection of songs that Amazon says come in at over a million. If you’re looking to step things up, however, the company now offers unlimited streaming of a much larger catalog that includes “tens of millions of songs” at $8 per month for Prime subscribers, or $10 for everyone else.
Like the others, Amazon Music Unlimited is ad-free, and includes on-demand music and curated playlists based on mood and genre. Where things get interesting is if you own an Amazon Echo, for which Amazon is offering a cheaper $4 per month Echo-only option. With Echo, you can do things like play a song based on lyrics you remember if you happen to forget its title.
Sign up for Amazon Music Unlimited
SoundCloud
If you’re looking to venture away from the mainstream a bit, SoundCloud is worth a look. As opposed to the other services on this list, SoundCloud made its name on remixes and indie artists, and includes a ton of that content for free.
SoundCloud does offer a subscription option at $10 per month, which includes offline playback, ad-free listening, and access to its full catalog of music. You’ll be limited to streaming either through the SoundCloud website, or via the service’s Android and iPhone apps, but there’s no substitute if you’re looking for a wealth of indie artists and remix tracks.
Sign up for SoundCloud Go
What’s your pick?
What’s your go-to streaming music service? Let us know your pick in the comments!
Amazon Echo Dot now shipping, get Alexa voice control for just £50
Amazon unveiled the Echo Dot alongside the full Amazon Echo at a launch event in London a few weeks ago, but its release was staggered. The full speaker version was made available first, but now the smaller, cheaper Alexa-based hardware is available too.
The Amazon Echo Dot is essentially an Amazon Echo but without the speaker drivers. It has a single speaker so Alexa can respond to your queries, but for the full audio experience it plugs into your own speaker system.
It can also hook up to a Bluetooth speaker wirelessly, so you don’t necessarily need to cable it to an AV receiver, speaker or amp of some description. And if you only plan to use it to control other smarthome gadgets, you can just plug it in somewhere out of sight.
- Amazon Echo vs Amazon Tap vs Echo Dot: What’s the difference?
- Amazon Echo: First 7 things you should do to get Alexa started
- Amazon Echo tips and tricks
Pre-orders of the Amazon Echo Dot have started shipping and you can now order one for yourself on Amazon.co.uk. Prime members can have it delivered tomorrow.
For those who want to spread Alexa voice assistants around their homes, Amazon offers a deal on the Echo Dot whereby if you order five you get a sixth free. Buy 10 and you get two extra Dots free.
The Amazon Echo Dot is available now for £49.99 and it comes in either black or white.
Marantz’s SR7011 is a do-it-all AV receiver powerhouse
Marantz has just announced its flagship home cinema amplifier for 2016, the SR7011 and it can do pretty much anything you’d want from an AV receiver. It will handle Dolby Atmos and DTS:X 3D object-based surround sound formats and delivers sound through up to 9 channels, each with 200-watts of amplification, making it a seriously powerful beast.
The SR7011 can calibrate the speakers in your room thanks to built-in Audyssey software and other Marantz-designed internal component promise the “purest possible sound”.
You’ll find eight HDMI inputs on the rear, so you’re not short of options to connect a Blu-ray player, games console, set-top box or any other HDMI device you have. All eight support 4K Ultra HD signals too, so you can use it with Ultra HD Blu-ray players such as the Panasonic DMP-UB900, Xbox One S or Samsung UDB-K8500.
The SR7011 is a dab-hand with music too and has built-in support for Spotify, Tidal and Deezer, and will support high-resolution audio. You also get Internet radio, Bluetooth and Apple AirPlay for streaming from mobile devices, but it will also work with Denon’s Heos multi-room speakers.
- Denon Heos review: multi-room made easy
The Marantz SR7011 AV receiver will be available from November black and silver-gold for £1499.
The new Zelda ‘Breath of the Wild’ trailers are the best yet
We’re hours away from Nintendo’s (brief) reveal of the NX, and if there’s one game we’re excited for, it’s The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. The new adventure, which is coming out on both the Wii U and NX next year, was a highlight at E3 2016, giving fans their first exposure to the more open, dynamic world. Now, Nintendo has released two new trailers, which show off its exploration and combat in equal measure. They’re beautiful snippets of the full game, underpinned by a sweeping orchestral score. I don’t need to say much more — just go watch them, you won’t regret it.
Source: Nintendo (YouTube)
‘Switch’ is Nintendo’s next game console
It’s been almost a year and a half since Nintendo announced the NX, and now the gaming giant has finally dropped the codename and secrecy in favor of something more official: Switch. Like the countless rumors previously asserted, it’s indeed a hybrid mobile and home console with a tablet element and detachable controllers.
The tablet itself (which Nintendo calls “the Switch Console” is thin and pretty attractive. It looks to have a screen measuring around 7 inches, of unspecified resolution. At home, it’ll plug into the “Switch Dock,” which in turn plugs into your TV, while out and about you can either hold it or use the built-in kickstand to prop it up. In the trailer, a gamer plugs in what looks to be an SD Card-style cartridge, meaning games are likely to distributed both digitally and physically.
It’s powered by an unspecified custom Nvidia Tegra processor, which is “based on the same architecture as the world’s top-performing GeForce gaming graphics cards.” Whether that means Pascal — the architecture underpinning the 1000 series of GeForce cards and the yet-to-be-announced Tegra X2 — or just that Tegra chips in general are based on the GeForce architecture, is not clear. But the question of which SoC is powering the Switch — and whether it’s based on newer or older architecture — is important to answer if we’re to work out what exactly it’s capable of.
The controllers are just as we expected. Nintendo is calling them “Joy-Con.” They can be attached to a central unit called the “Joy-Con Grip” to behave like a single game controller, but also slide onto the side of the tablet for a more Wii U-like experience. Oh and, as rumored, they can also be used independently like two miniature gamepads.
If none of this sounds like your thing, Nintendo will once again offer a “Pro Controller” option laid out more traditionally. The trailer shows off lots of multiplayer gaming, either with multiple controllers connected to one system, or many Switch consoles connecting together wirelessly. We assume it’ll have online play as well.
So what will you be able to play on it? As well as the usual first-party suspects, Nintendo says it has the support of many developers and publishers, including Activision, Atlus, Bethesda, Capcom, EA, Epic Games, Konami, PlatinumGames, Square Enix, Take-Two and Ubisoft. In the trailer you can see third-party games like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and NBA 2K alongside what look to be a new Mario and Mario Kart games and Splatoon. In Nintendo’s bold future, Splatoon will be an e-sport watched live by tens of thousands of people.
“Nintendo Switch allows gamers the freedom to play however they like,” Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime said, “it gives game developers new abilities to bring their creative visions to life by opening up the concept of gaming without boundaries.”
The Switch will be released worldwide in March 2017.
Timothy J. Seppala contributed to this report.
Kanye: Apple and Tidal ‘bullshit’ caused Drake rift
Kanye West says that he and Jay Z didn’t appear on the final “Pop Style” track of Drake’s Apple Music exclusive Views album because of Apple’s rivalry with Tidal. “Y’all didn’t get, what y’all were supposed to get with me and Drake on this song because of some Tidal/Apple bullshit,” he said in a Saint Pablo tour video spotted by The Fader (below). He added that Jay Z pulled his own vocal “out of respect to Meek Mill,” presumably over the infamous Mill and Drake Twitter tiff.
Kanye performed the song, which he co-wrote, explaining to the crowd that his vocal was supposed to be the only one on the track. “I start freestyling to it. Jay thought of a couple of lines. I said, ‘Just go ahead, throw that on there. [Drake will] be so surprised, he probably won’t expect you to be on there.’”
ye talking about Watch The Throne 2 & Apple/Tidal problems @TeamKanyeDaily #SAINTPABLO pic.twitter.com/kXZNZuvTfP
— ike®☄ (@IkerLopez27) October 20, 2016
The track initially came out with Jay Z and Kanye (aka The Throne), but West said that Drake later balked. “We sent it back to him and he was like, ‘Oh shit, The Throne is on this shit.’ Then Jay thought about it, and out of respect to Meek Mill he didn’t want to be on the track,” said Kanye. He added that he wanted to “let people have this song” with all three artists, “but then it went into some political shit, some shit about percentages about a song.”
Kanye bears some of the blame for driving a wedge between Apple and Tidal, as he launched his Life of Pablo album as a Tidal exclusive. Lately, however, he’s been calling the race for exclusives a”dick-swinging contest,” and suggested a sit-down between the factions. Ideally Yeezy wants Apple to buy Tidal, but Apple Music head Jimmy Iovine recently said that’s not going to happen.
Via: The Fader
Source: @IkerLopez27 (Twitter)
What is Spotify and how does it work?
Spotify is a digital music streaming service that gives you access to millions of songs, podcasts and videos from artists all over the world.
Spotify is immediately appealing because you can access content for free by simply signing up using an email address or by connecting with Facebook. If you’re not keen on monthly subscription fees for Spotify Premium, or just want to dip your toe in and test it out, it’s easy to get started and there’s no commitment.
You can find out the main differences between Spotify Free and Premium in our separate feature but as a quick summary, the free version is ad-supported much like radio stations. The free version of Spotify can be accessed on PC, laptop and mobile phone, but the full service needs a Spotify Premium subscription.
How does Spotify work?
Getting started with listening to music on Spotify is easy:
Visit the Spotify website and sign-up. We’d recommend signing up with Facebook if you have an account as it’ll make it easier to find and follow friends, see what they’re listening to and share songs with them.
Choose a subscription level. We’d recommend going for Spotify Premium as it gives you access to more features, is more flexible and will connect with more devices.
Download and install the free Spotify application. There are versions for desktop and iPhone/iPad and Android phones.
Sign into your account on those devices and get listening.
The basic setup is pretty straightforward but there’s much more to Spotify once you delve in and it gets smarter the more you listen.
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Can you download music from Spotify?
Yes and no. With Spotify Premium you can set music to be available “offline” but it’s not the same as downloading music in the traditional sense. For example, you can’t try to game the system by downloading an album then cancelling your subscription at a later date. And you can’t download the tracks to burn them to a CD or copy them to other devices.
The idea of Spotify’s offline mode is to allow you to have access to your favourite music when you’re trying to save mobile data or travelling somewhere where access to the internet might not be easy.
With Spotify Premium you can have up to 3,333 songs available to listen to offline on up to three different devices. Downloading songs, albums or playlists on Spotify is simple too, which is great. Just click “save” on the album you’d like to download to listen to it offline. Alternatively, click the three dots next to a song and click “Save to Your Music”.
How much data does Spotify use?
The amount of data that Spotify burns through will depend on the streaming quality you choose – more on this in a minute. This is a rough guide for how much data Spotify will get through:
- One hour of music playback will use around 50MB of data when the quality is set to “normal”.
- At normal quality you can play around 24 hours of music for around 1GB of data usage.
- At high quality 1GB will be used in less than 15 hours.
- At extreme quality you’ll use 1GB of data in 7 hours.
- You’ll use a lot more data with video playback.
You can check and change the quality of streaming and download of songs using mobile data in the settings on your device.
Spotify: High quality streaming and audio quality
There are three different levels of streaming quality for Spotify. Streaming is all done in the Ogg Vorbis format and uses the following bitrates for each of the quality levels:
- Normal streams at 96kbps
- High quality streams at 160kbps
- Extreme quality streams at 320kbps
The quality level you use will depend on your preference and choices around data usage but it’s worth noting that extreme is only available to Spotify Premium subscribers.
Pocket-lint
How to find people and friends on Spotify
Signing up to Spotify with Facebook or connecting your Facebook account at a later date will allow you to easily find and follow friends and see what they’re listening to. The activity feed is displayed on the right-hand side of the desktop software and is a great way to pick up on friends who listen to the same music as you or poke fun at them for their latest Abba session.
You can also use the search function within the app to find friends. At the very bottom of the activity feed there’s also a “find friends” button which will allow you to find and follow more friends or artists.
If you’re not on Facebook or don’t want to connect your Facebook account to Spotify you can still find and follow friends, it just might be a bit more difficult in some cases.
According to Spotify, the best way to find and follow a friend is to use the search box on the desktop client and use this format:
Copy this and replace USERNAME with the name of your friend. If this doesn’t work, ask your friend to either copy their profile link directly from their profile page and send it to you. Alternatively, ask if they can share one of their public playlists with you. If they created the playlist, then their username is contained within the URL as a number:
You can either use that number to find them or click on their name in the playlist to follow them. For more detailed guidance on finding friends on Spotify, see Spotify’s official tutorial.
Pocket-lint
Spotify playlists, radio and discovering new music
Creating a playlist is as easy as right clicking a song and clicking “Add to Playlist” or clicking the three dots next to a song on the app. Grab your favourite songs and stick them in a playlist for your personal listening pleasure. Once you get started you’ll soon find you’re following playlists made by friends or curated by artists.
Spotify is smart too, the more you listen, the more it learns the sort of music you like and that has an impact on the music it will present to you in future. When you delve into the “Discover” section of the app you’ll find a number of recommendations based on your recent listening choices. This includes artists similar to those you’ve already been listening to. as well as your “Discover Weekly” and “Release Radar” playlists.
“Discover Weekly” is a playlist that’s automatically updated by Spotify each Monday and includes a number of different songs based upon what you’ve been listening to recently.
“Release Radar” is a selection of new tracks from artists you follow. It’s worth noting here that if you follow your favourite musicians you’ll get notifications and updates when they release new content too.
When listening on mobile, there’s also a selection of other playlists in your music library called “your daily mixes”. These daily mix playlists contain more of the same goodness you’ll usually find in Discover Weekly but there’s more of them and a bit more variety.
To discover new music, click on the three dots menu and select “Go to Playlist Radio” and you’ll be taken to an automatically generated “radio” station that’ll play a selection of music based on the contents of the original playlist. You can also use this logic with specific songs or artists by choosing to listen to ‘artist radio’ or ‘song radio’. These are great ways to discover new music that’s similar to your current taste but ones that you might not have otherwise listened to.
Spotify Bluetooth connectivity
One of the obvious benefits of Spotify is if you’re using it on your phone then you can connect to a wealth of different Bluetooth devices and stream your content that way. Whether that means a home audio receiver, head unit in your car, Bluetooth headphones or Bluetooth connected speaker – there’s plenty of possibility. With Spotify Premium you can also take advantage of Spotify Connect.
Pocket-lint
What is Spotify Connect
Spotify Connect allows you to play your music through a variety of different Wi-Fi connected devices including everything from Wi-Fi speakers to your television, Amazon Echo, Chromecast, PC and much more.
This is great because it means you can listen to your music in more places and with more devices. It also offers you a choice in how you control the music playing on your Spotify account. For example, if you’re streaming to speakers in your lounge using your phone then you can use it as a remote control to adjust the volume, change tracks or create a party playlist while listening.
- What is Spotify Connect, and why does it matter?
How much is Spotify?
Spotify comes in two main forms – free and Premium. Spotify Premium is currently £9.99 a month, which includes access to features such as ad free streaming, unlimited skips, extreme quality streaming and Spotify Connect.
If multiple people in your house use Spotify, you might consider Premium for Family which gives up to six people access to their own unique Spotify account under one bill. All users have to live at the same address so it’s not a package to include your friends on, but it’s a good way to split the cost.
At £14.99, Premium for Family isn’t too much extra over a standard Premium plan price, so it’s a worthy investment.
How to delete your Spotify account
If you decide you no longer want your Spotify account, you can delete it. It is worth noting though, that you can downgrade from Premium to a free account, so if cost is the issue then we’d recommend considering that first.
If you’re still keen on deleting your Spotify account, then follow these steps:
Visit Spotify’s Support page on how to close your account.
Login to your Spotify account.
Click this link to delete your account.
If this doesn’t work, then you can also try this method:
Login and go directly to Spotify’s Contact Support page.
Choose ‘account’ as the category.
Select ‘I want to close my Spotify account permanently’.
Then click to close your account or cancel your subscription
- Spotify free vs Spotify premium: What’s the difference?
- What is Spotify Connect, and why does it matter?
- Spotify’s Family Plan is much cheaper now: Here’s what you need to know
Sky Mobile will open signups on October 31st
It’s taken more than two years, but Sky is finally ready to launch its own mobile service. At its annual Investor Day, the company confirmed it will open registrations for Sky Mobile, its O2-powered network, from October 31st. The move will ultimately allow Sky to sit alongside BT, Virgin Media and TalkTalk as a true “quad-play” provider.
Sky has yet to confirm pricing or an official launch date for Sky Mobile but did say that existing customers will be invited to sign up first ahead of a wider expansion in 2017. According to the Belfast Telegraph, Stephen van Rooyen, Sky’s UK and Ireland CEO, told investors that the company had “long had its eyes on the prize” when it came to entering the mobile phone market.
“There are literally millions of customers for us to go after,” he added. “We know that our customers are not only interested in Sky Mobile, but once they have been shown the proposition, they would consider switching to Sky.”
Like its rivals, Sky is expected to offer sweeter deals to customers who choose to go all in with the company’s TV, phone, broadband and mobile services. With 22 million customers across Europe, over half of which are in the UK, it surprised many that Sky would come so late in the game.
While it’s spent the past two years finalising its plans, broadband providers have begun adding their own TV services, ensuring that Sky now has increased competition on all four quad-play fronts.
#SkyInvestorDay: No details on #SkyMobile pricing but pre registration from 31 October pic.twitter.com/uDJy8S1Qus
— Paolo Pescatore (@paolopescatore) October 20, 2016
NSA’s hacking tools found among data stolen by contractor
The feds quietly arrested NSA contractor Harold Thomas Martin III back in August for stealing an enormous number of documents from the agency. Now, the investigators sifting through the documents found in his computers discovered what they were probably looking for from the start. According to the New York Times, the documents he stole included the NSA’s top secret hacking tools posted online by a group called Shadow Brokers earlier this year. Federal agents had to pore over terabytes upon terabytes of data to find those tools, since the classified materials found in Martin’s possession make the Panama Papers (2.6 terabytes) and Edward Snowden’s documents look insignificant in comparison.
The Navy vet has been working on intelligence and has held a high-level clearance for a long time. In fact, he was part of the NSA’s Tailored Access Operations, the very same team responsible for making the stolen hacking tools. Former NSA employee Dave Aitel told the NYT that the leak caused a huge damage to the country’s ability to defend against enemy nations. They can be used to identify rival countries’ hacking capabilities, after all, giving the agency the info needed to conjure up the best way to block incoming cyber attacks.
While investigators can now link Martin to the leaked tools, they’re still struggling to find out whether he released them on purpose or whether someone stole them from him. Back in September, the feds’ investigation focused on the scenario that one careless NSA contractor used the tools on an unprotected machine. Now that they’ve found forensic evidence in his computers, they’ve begun looking at it from all angles.
One possibility they’re considering is that the tools were physically stolen from his garage, though it’s more likely that he was hacked. The investigators are also looking into whether Martin deliberately sold the tools, because while he was earning six figures, he also seemed to be struggling financially due to his penchant for luxury goods. Then there’s the possibility that he leaked the tools to make a mark, so to speak. Someone who allegedly knows him well told the NYT: “He always thought of himself like a James Bond-type person, wanting to save the world from computer evil.”
Source: The New York Times
AIVAnet 