How to wake up a PlayStation 4 with your phone

Controlling your PlayStation 4 is now available from your phone

Sony has expanded its horizons by allowing us to now use our phones as a controller for the PlayStation 4. The process is super simple, and extremely convenient. If your controller has died and you really don’t feel like getting out of bed to put your PlayStation into rest mode to go to bed, you can have your phone do it.

This also works for waking up your PlayStation if it went into rest mode while you are in a blanket fort you don’t want to leave!

Get the App

First things first you want to download the official PlayStation App to your phone. This app offers a ton of features, but I’m going to show you how to use it for what I consider one of its most important roles.

See on Google Play

Connect your phone to your PlayStation 4

When met with a blue screen, go ahead and sign into your PlayStation Network.
At the bottom of the screen press the PlayStation Symbol. This will open a little mini-menu.
Select “Second Screen”. This will have you download another app, where you will have the option to continue on the same account you are logged in on the PlayStation App.
A small help screen will show up, take a moment to read through it! Afterwords, connect your phone’s wifi to the same Network your PlayStation 4 is connected to!
Select your PlayStation 4.

Now connect your PlayStation 4 to your phone!

Go to Settings after powering up your PlayStation 4.
Select PlayStation App Connection Settings.
Now select Add device. Here it will show you a code.
Input this code into the app on your phone so the two can fully register to one another.

In the future if you wish to change the devices synced with your PlayStation 4 you simply to to the same menu screen to add or remove devices.

App Controls

Now that you’re all set up go back to your second screen app. The power button in the app will allow you to put your PlayStation into rest mode, or wake it up from rest mode!

How cool is this? Did you have any issues syncing up your devices? Tell us in the comments below!

PlayStation 4

• PS4 vs. PS4 Slim vs. PS4 Pro: Which should you buy?
• PlayStation VR Review
• Playing PS4 games through your phone is awesome

Amazon

Honor 8 Pro and Honor 9 pick up Android 8.0 Oreo update

Available first for users in the UK.

One of the leaders for mid-range Android phones is Honor, and while the company’s latest devices include the Honor View 10 and Honor 7X, two of its older handsets – the Honor 8 Pro and Honor 9 – are now getting welcome upgrades to Android Oreo.

With Oreo, you’ll find your standard array of goodies, such as picture-in-picture, snappier boot times, faster performance, notification dots, and plenty more. On top of this, Honor is also improving its Smart Tips feature to provide better recommendations about how to get the most of your phone.

You’ll also find that the Settings page now only has 11 options to choose from instead of the daunting 28, and there’s also 60 new emojis to check out with Oreo’s new style for them.

Oreo is first coming to the Honor 8 Pro and Honor 9 in the United Kingdom, but it’s expected that the update will expand to other countries soon after.

If you own either of the two phones, what are you looking forward to the most in Oreo?

Oreo rolling out to unlocked Huawei Mate 9 in the U.S.

Android Oreo

• Android Oreo review!
• Everything new in Android Oreo
• How to get Android Oreo on your Pixel or Nexus
• Oreo will make you love notifications again
• Will my phone get Android Oreo?
• Join the Discussion

Every NFL player can get a smart bed to track their sleep

The Super Bowl is almost here, and that means one thing in the tech world besides new ads: conveniently timed sports partnerships. The NFL and Sleep Number have unveiled an agreement that will offer every league player a Sleep Number 360 smart bed. The auto-adjusting design will theoretically improve their rest, of course, but the real star is the sleep tracking. Sleep Number will work with teams to incorporate the players’ habits into their training regimens, so they’ll know whether or not they’re getting enough sleep to make the most of their performance on the field.

The company has already been piloting efforts with the Dallas Cowboys and Minnesota Vikings.

Sleep definitely isn’t the most pressing health issue the NFL is facing right now — more than a few people would argue the league should be addressing head injuries first. In that sense, this deal is trivial compared to the larger problems looming over American football. Still, it does take the sports field one closer to a truly holistic view of player health where exercise and diet are just two parts of a larger picture.

Source: BusinessWire

The only thing Equifax’s new credit app locks is itself

Equifax still appears to have trouble wrapping its head around the concept of trustworthy software following its massive security breach. The company has launched its promised free credit report locking service, Lock & Alert, but there’s one overriding problem: at least initially, the mobile app associated with it doesn’t appear to work. The New York Times and Ars Technica both report pervasive problems with the app, ranging from the basic login to… you know, locking your credit report. In the NYT’s case, the tester gave up after the locking attempt stalled five times in a row.

A company spokesperson told the NYT that it hadn’t heard of widespread issues, but did say it was working on “isolated problems.” It’s a good thing the company has extended free credit freezes until June 30th, then. You can go the more traditional route until Equifax has (hopefully) sorted things out.

The one consolation: Equifax is avoiding one of the legal mistakes it made early on, when it implied that you gave up the right to sue by using the site that could tell you whether or not you were a victim. Lock & Alert tells you right away that you’ll never be forced into arbitration, and that your ability to lock your credit report won’t change. While Equifax does wave liability for glitches, you won’t be without recourse if the lock itself doesn’t work — once the app behaves as promised.

Via: Ars Technica

Source: New York Times, Equifax

Ads in Instagram Stories are about to get worse

More ads are coming to Instagram. This time, the photo-minded social network is upping the amount brands can put into Stories. Now, instead of one photo or video in an advertiser’s Story, there can be up to three. Coca-Cola, movie studio Paramount and Gap clothing are working with the new tools, but the social network says more brands will have the functionality soon enough. If you’re trying to get through your friends’ Stories quickly, this will probably prove annoying. But, you can always back out to the main feed and tap on each friend to see their evaporating photos and video instead of letting everything auto-play.

Given how popular Stories have become for Instagram — more people use that feature than all of Snapchat last we heard — this isn’t too surprising. And, unfortunately, we should probably expect even more of this stuff coming in the future.

Source: Instagram

‘Red Dead Redemption 2’ is coming on October 26th

Red Dead Redemption 2 will be released October 26th. That gives you just under nine months to round up a posse for Rockstar Games’ next adventure in the Dead West. The developer apologized for the delays — last May it promised RDR 2 would be out this spring, and before that, it was scheduled for Fall 2017 — saying that it’s using the extra time to add some polish to the game. Rockstar didn’t have much else to share, but teased that more information will be coming soon. Until then, enjoy the new screenshots below.

Source: Rockstar Newswire

Jeff Bezos’ master plan is to have no plan

The richest man in the world has been using his wealth in unexpected ways. Jeff Bezos announced this week that Amazon would create an independent company with JPMorgan and Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway. The new venture seeks to keep employee health-care costs under control and will initially focus on technology that would “provide U.S. employees and their families with simplified, high-quality and transparent healthcare at a reasonable cost.”

That adds health care to the list of industries Bezos has a significant investment in, along with technology, retail, media and aerospace. Considering Amazon’s massive scope and reach, this is hardly a surprising group of categories, but the companies Bezos owns make for a uniquely diverse collection.

He helped start rocket maker Blue Origin in 2000, and said late last year that he would be selling “about a billion (dollars) a year of Amazon stock” to fund the aerospace venture. Blue Origin had its first successful test flight in 2015 and is expected to charge $300,000 per ticket to space in the future.

Bezos also owns The Washington Post, which he bought in 2013 for $250 million (apparently without having negotiated a price nor analyzing the publication’s performance), and invests in myriad smaller businesses through his venture fund, Bezos Expeditions. The latter has backed companies ranging from Google, AirBnb, Twitter, ZocDoc, MakerBot and Workday to Business Insider, the Breakthrough Energy Coalition and Juno Therapeutics, which makes cancer biopharmaceuticals.

The man is also an active philanthropist, having most recently donated $33 million to the Dreamers scholarship program with his wife, MacKenzie. The Bezos foundation, established by his parents, Jackie and Mike, focuses on charitable programs that seek to “elevate the field of education and improve life outcomes for children.”

Other superrich people make similar financial decisions, too — this is by no means an unusual or isolated phenomenon. One person who immediately jumps to mind is Bill Gates, from whom Bezos stole the title of world’s richest. Gates also holds assets outside Microsoft, via his company Cascade Investment, which backs predictable businesses like hotels and the Canadian National Railway. Recently, though, Cascade paid $80 million to build a smart city in Arizona, which is an unusual departure from its typical picks. But it’s still a less surprising bet than Bezos’ new venture, because developing urban architecture is usually more reliably profitable than trying to make America’s health-care system simpler and more transparent.

A more astonishing move came courtesy of Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla, when they announced plans to donate 99 percent of their Facebook shares to charity. This amount will be given out during their lifetime, not all at once, via the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, with a goal of “advancing human potential and promoting equality.”

Donating money to a good cause isn’t a surprising decision, even if the scale of the Zuckerbergs’ allotment is. It’s something people with expendable income do, for reasons they may feel strongly about. Like the Bezos family philanthropy, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation also focuses on improving children’s lives but funds more than just educational charities. It also supports nutritional and medical efforts to bring food and vaccines to people who need them.

But it’s in business investments where Bezos is appearing to deviate from the likes of Gates, Zuckerberg and other peers like Steve Jobs, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. His recent decisions signal a shift in priorities away from conventional profit-making ventures. While Amazon continues to extend into (relatively) new industries like filmmaking and brick-and-mortar stores, Bezos is funneling his money into his space race against Elon Musk and Sir Richard Branson.

In fact, Bezos appears to be following in the footsteps of Branson, moving into a series of increasingly wide-ranging areas after starting out with a business that made him rich. Of course, there doesn’t yet seem to be a plan for Amazon to start branding these separate businesses the way Virgin Group has by slapping its name on its entertainment, aerospace and health-care arms. Musk, too, has been working on curious endeavors like hyperloops, rockets and flamethrowers, while Tesla continues to struggle to meet orders.

This week’s announcement, together with Bezos’ investment decisions, show us he’s not your typical tech billionaire. He’s not going down the path blazed by Gates or even contemporaries like Zuckerberg or Page. Instead, he’s building an eccentric empire of business non sequiturs more similar to Branson’s or Musk’s. What Bezos wants to do with his money is his prerogative, but it does seem like he’s more willing to take risks and delve into unproven industries than tech billionaires of “old.”

Google launches lightweight Assistant app for slower phones

Android Go is Google’s streamlined OS that is designed to work on entry-level mobile devices. Apps are designed to use less memory and storage space, as well as be less data hungry. Today, Google released a version of its Assistant that is optimized for the Go platform. It’s available for download at the Play Store.

Now, users who have Android Go and the app installed on their mobile devices can ask Google Assistant questions with their voices. However, not all features are available in this streamlined version of Assistant. These include reminders, support for smart home devices and Actions. The app is currently only available in English, but as Android Go is partially aimed at an international audience, it’s likely more supported languages will be added in the future.

It’s really encouraging that Google is paying attention to users who can’t afford (or don’t want) the latest and greatest smartphone. There’s certainly a market for simpler devices, and as mobile devices become more and more expensive, people are hanging on to their existing ones longer. Considering the news that Apple was deliberately slowing older smartphones without notifying the user, it’s nice to see a different solution to this issue being presented.

Via: Android Police

Source: Google

‘Stargate: Origins’ trailer has an ‘Indiana Jones’ feel to it

Stargate: Origins will come to Stargate Command, a new streaming service focused on the franchise, on February 15th. Now MGM has released a full trailer for the show, and it looks pretty spectacular.

Origins will focus on Catherine Langford, the daughter of the person who discovered the Stargate on Earth. In the trailer, she battles Nazis as she fights to figure out what the Stargate is. The show has an Indiana Jones vibe to it, and it looks like a lot of fun.

Here is the official synopsis for the series: “In 1939, Professor Paul Langford and his daughter Catherine are still grappling with the mysteries of the ancient relic they discovered in the Egyptian desert more than ten years ago. With war looming in Europe and funding running out, these brilliant minds are approaching their lowest ebb. Little do they know, answers are about to present themselves in a dangerous form, when the Nazi Occultist Dr. Wilhelm Brücke approaches their facility with a sinister motive. Enlisting the help of two young soldiers, Catherine must use all of her wit and nous as she and her new allies embark on an adventure into the unknown to rescue her father, and save the Earth from an unimaginable darkness.”

The trailer seems to answer a question that quite a few Stargate fans had about the prequel series, which was: Would Catherine go through the Stargate? If so, that is contradicting the current canon of the show, in which Langford recruits archaeologist Daniel Jackson (played by James Spader in the movie and Michael Shanks in the follow-up TV show) to decipher the gate’s symbols. However, it’s also possible that it’s the Nazis who go through the gate, not Catherine. Either way, a solid show is more important than canon, but it will be interesting to see whether there’s a discrepancy.

If you’re interested in catching Stargate: Origins, you can sign up for a subscription to Stargate Command for $25. That nets you access to all of the TV shows, and movies within the franchise, as well as this new show.

Edit: This article previously stated that $25 would net you a lifetime pass to Stargate Command content. The video portion of the subscription will expire on May 25, 2018, according to the FAQ, so it appears the $25 fee is basically to watch the show.

Instagram lets you skip the photos with text-only Stories

Instagram is a photo- and video-centric social network by its very nature, but that doesn’t mean you always want to share images along with your thoughts. And now, you don’t have to. The service is releasing a Type Mode for Stories that, as the name implies, lets you write with a creative flair while skipping the pressure to use pictures. Switch to a new Type section and you can jot down whatever you like while choosing little more than a font style and background. You can produce a deep confessional or a clever transition without having to think about composing a shot, although you can add them (or other flourishes) if you’d like.

The new mode is available in version 30 of Instagram for Android and iOS. And in case you’re wondering, the new text styles are available for overlays in existing modes — Type Mode is just the obvious showcase for them.

Source: Instagram