Add two USB ports to any wall outlet with the $8 Aukey power strip

More power options in the same space.

The Aukey dual USB/AC wall outlet power strip is down to $7.99 with code 2XFITO5N on Amazon. It’s $16 without the code, so you’re saving 50% off the price. If this deal looks familiar that’s because a recent code brought the grey version down to $7. That deal has since expired, but the white for $8 isn’t too bad either.

Sure, the plug requires both outlets to use, but it gives you those outlets back and adds two USB ports for you! The top of the device has a little lip that can hold your phone while it’s charging, too. It has safety precautions to keep your devices from over-heating and over-charging. Aukey backs it up with a two-year warranty. Users give it 4.6 stars based on 21 reviews.

Aukey also has options with 4 USB ports on sale for $16, so be sure to check them out as well.

See at Amazon

3 things we need to see from Google Play Music at Google I/O

Changes are coming to Google Play Music at this year’s Google I/O, and here’s our wishlist.

Google I/O is less than two weeks away, and while there are a great many Google products and services hopefully seeing some big updates during the coveted keynote, few services are expected to see as drastic and possibly game-changing updates as Google Play Music. Google Play Music could see a lot of changes — or even complete replacement — on May 8th, so while we wait to see what we’re getting, let’s recap what Google Play Music needs.

App layout overhaul with a streamlined or compact layout

Google Play Music received its last overhaul back in 2013, when it traded a black and blue Holo UI for a white and orange Material Design UI. The app needs to be redesigned from scratch at this point, but the biggest things that need fixing are these:

• Reprioritize the hamburger menu or ditch it for bottom tabs like YouTube and Spotify have. Tabs would require Google Play Music to seriously scale back on the sections, because right now things are bloated, cluttered and downright crazy.
• Streamline and condense the UI to showcase more on screen at any given time, switching from large, album-collage thumbnails to a more compact list form on many sections of the app like Recents, Playlists, and Albums, which can become downright painful to scroll through with a developed library.
• Speaking of scrolling, scrolling and menu controls overlap on Google Play Music to the point that it’s damn near impossible to add songs from the Songs section of My Library to a queue or playlist. Switch to a better scroll bar or a jump list like Action Launcher’s Quickdrawer
• Completely replace the Home page. The bold banners suggesting stations, new releases, and music we’ve listened to around this time before are way too big and completely ignored by a large section of users. Make the Home tab a medley of Recently Played, suggested stations, and recommended releases, like YouTube’s home page.

The playback screen on Google Play Music is so in need of an overhaul that it gets its own section, because the way Google Play Music does its Now Playing screen is widely hated and has several highly noticeable problems:

• Album art is zoomed in to fill the full screen, regardless of the opaque top and bottom bars of the screen containing the track information and track controls that cover up part of the album art, often leading to awkward crops of artist’s torsos, arms, or legs. This is especially noticeable on extra tall devices, which are becoming more and more prevalent.
• The track controls are split between the opaque bottom bar and sitting above that bar within the album art. This means that the Shuffle, Repeat, and Google Cast icons can be obscured or completely lost in bright or busy artwork.
• The seek bar is a thin orange/white line that runs at the edge of the bottom bar and the artwork, saddled right between all the other track controls, which can be accidentally hit while trying to tap a point to seek to. The seek bar is so thin that it’s easy to miss, meaning that when you swipe to seek you could accidentally swipe to the next or previous song.

A vision of lovely darkness, brought to you by Substratum.

And last but not least, I’ve been begging since 2013, and I don’t intend to get up off my knees and stop until I have it: for the love of Duarte, give Google Play Music a dark theme. A good dark theme is easier on the eyes for after-hours listening, a true black dark theme can help AMOLED phone users eke a little more out of their battery during a jam session, and if you don’t think a dark UI doesn’t look readable or sexy, just ask Spotify.

Better multi-device handoff and Chromecast stability

We can listen to Google Play Music on a wide, wide array of devices, but we can only listen on one at a time. However, your queue is unique on every device, and if you want to start listening to a queue on your phone and keep listening on your computer once you get to work, you’ll have to save it as a playlist, rather than being able to move your current queue from one device to another like Spotify does with Spotify Connect. It’s a small feature, but one that would be absolutely heavenly to have.

Speaking of device handoffs, Google Play Music was one of the launch services for Chromecast. How is it possible to still have this many issues streaming music this many years later? Google Play Music still skips random songs in playlists on a weekly basis, and good luck casting any songs longer than 15 minutes.

Device policy and upload/download changes

I accept having a device limit. I do. I even understand having a specific limit on phones, as much as it hurts someone like me who goes through a lot of them. But the device policy on Google Play Music needs to be revisited for a few very important reasons.

• Your computer can be counted twice because both the web extension and Music Manager count as an activation.
• Devices that can’t download/upload to your Google Play Library can still count against the ten device limit, like Android Wear 2.0 watches and Android TVs.
• Almost every Android phone or tablet that ships Android has Google Play Music on it, and it can often activate itself before you have a chance to go disable it.

If you burn through your 10 device authorizations (and 4 deauthorizations) with phones and tablets and watches and TVs, you could not have a way to upload new music or download what is already rightfully yours, since you can only do so on a computer.

Let me repeat that: if you run out of device authorizations and de-authorizations, you can be locked out of downloading music you own.

Being unable to upload or download music from our library on the device we use most also needs to be rectified. Local-only songs cannot be added to playlists or casted. We shouldn’t need an old-looking and old-acting Music Manager or Chrome extension in order to add songs to our cloud library and cast them.

But really, all we really want is a little stability

The future is uncertain for Google Play Music. That much is clear. Google Play Music could get replaced at Google I/O. Google Play Music could get merged with YouTube or YouTube Music in some unholy Frankenstein magic. Google could be completely overhauling the service and changing everything we thought we knew about the service.

We just don’t know. And that’s scarier than things staying the way they are right now.

A music subscription is a vital piece of most users’ mobile lives. We wake up to music; we brush our teeth to music; we get through the day without taking a tire iron to our enemies and annoyances thanks to music. Music makes us better, and it’s too important a service to be hanging in limbo like this. With as little change as Google Play Music has seen in the five years since the last major update, no small number of users have jumped ship to other services that seem to be growing and improving while Google Play Music just sits there and bloats, like a belly-up orange-and-white goldfish.

Updated April 2018: This article has been updated, overhauled and refined ahead of Google I/O 2018, which is where we hope Google Play Music will be similarly updated, overhauled and refined.

The lure of the remote: why I stopped Chromecasting the second I got an Android TV

In a world of ever-growing choices for entertainment, the remote is a small taste of the familiar and the obsolete way of finding and playing our media.

We have so many choices when it comes to our entertainment. We can watch YouTube on our phones, our TVs come with “smart apps” of varying ease and intelligence, and then there are set-top and streaming devices like Roku, Google Chromecast and Android TV. There’s a lot of ways to consume your media, and a lot of tools for it, but the most popular one isn’t your phone or your tablet … it’s your remote. That’s right, for tens of millions of tech users who grew up with TV and old-school cable, the siren song of the remote is just too powerful, and it keeps pulling me back in.

Once upon a time in 2014, I was in love with my Chromecasts. Set-top boxes and smart TVs were out of my fresh-out-of-college budget, but at $35 — and still $35 today — the Chromecast was firmly in impulse buy territory, and it was a snap to install and use. Back in 2014, the list of apps that used it was still relatively small, but for the apps that weren’t supported, I could simply cast from my trusty Chromebook. The experience wasn’t flawless, as my subpar router would often drop a connection mid-episode and force me to restart my cast — or worse, restart my episode — but it was cheap, it was easy, and 90% of the time it worked.

This love affair carried on for two years, and in that time I took on my parents’ old 42-inch “dumb” TV, happy that it worked with the Chromecast. I looked at the apps on this Vizio TV back home and cringed. It took close to a minute for Netflix or YouTube to open, and even with a QWERTY remote, it still took forever to find anything to watch. I could already be casting what I wanted to see while they were waiting for the app to load, so why wouldn’t they just use the Chromecast plugged into the back of their TV? I didn’t understand why they’d settle for a slower, clunkier UI using the boring old remote.

Then I got an NVIDIA Shield TV as a Christmas present in 2015, and my Chromecasting days ended the minute I opened the box.

My Shield TV came with a remote and a game controller, and that controller soon became my best friend. Even though the Shield TV comes with Chromecasting built in, I’ve used it maybe two dozen times, and all of those times have been for music. Even though it takes me longer to find what I want to watch using a remote, it just feels easier to use the remote rather than pulling up app after app on my phone looking for something to cast. The remote is convenient, especially if my phone is across the room or being used for other tasks, like gaming or taking screenshots for my articles.

Now, this isn’t to say that the remote on the Shield TV is something special. As a matter of fact, the actual remote experience pales in comparison to using the controller, as the D-pads on the controller are the best tools for speedy scrolling and seeking, short of flicking up and down on a touchscreen. And I can’t deny it, a touchscreen offers a far faster experience for finding content, but when watching that content, Chromecasting doesn’t offer the kind of quick playback control that remote-enabled systems do. Yeah, you can pause using the remote, but if you want to rewind, even just 10 seconds to hear the joke that got covered up by a timer going off, you have to pull your phone back out to seek. As someone who is notorious for skipping around in the episodes and movies she watches, this meant that even if the remote takes longer to get my content, I’ll be able to watch it more easily once my urge to skip a scene strikes.

There is a rumor of a new Android TV dongle coming at Google I/O, and I’m all for bringing a solid, more-affordable Android TV experience to more people, because as successful as the Chromecast is, it is always going to be fighting the siren song of the remote. What I’d like to see even more than a new Android TV dongle is an update to Chromecast that would enable it to recognize and accept more remote commands than play/pause, because the best of both world would be a Chromecast or Android TV that allows you to find what you want to watch and Cast it from a phone, then allow you easy remote controls for playback like rewind and fast forward.

Well, I can keep dreaming, and as I dream, I’m going to go scroll through YouTube for some more distractions.

How to download music on Fitbit Versa

Phone-free tunes are just a few taps away!

The Fitbit Versa is Fitbit’s most successful stab at the smartwatch market to date, and one of its highlight features is the ability to download and listen to music on it without the need for your phone.

Just like the Ionic before it, you can download over 300 songs on the Versa and listen to them with your favorite pair of Bluetooth headphones. You currently have three different ways to go about this, and this is how to get started with each one.

Deezer

Deezer is the latest music service to launch on Fitbit Versa/Ionic, and it’s already become my preferred way for storing tunes on my wrist. You’ll need an active subscription to Deezer Premium+ which costs $9.99/month, but Fitbit users can take advantage of a free 90-day trial if you’re new to Deezer.

From the Versa page in the Fitbit app, tap on the Media tile
Under Services, select Deezer
Go to fitbit.com/deezer and enter the activation code found in the Deezer app on your Versa
Log in or register for a new Deezer account
From the Deezer section in the Fitbit app, tap the new Add Music button
Select the playlist you want to add

Although the setup process may seem a little clunky, Deezer’s my favorite option for storing music on the Versa, as it gives you the most control over choosing which songs you’d like to listen to. You can download the pre-made playlists from Fitbit, your Flow station that’s made up of songs based on your listening habits, or any playlists you’ve liked or made in the Deezer mobile app.

In other words, if you’ve already got a perfectly-constructed playlist of your favorite workout songs, you can download it without a problem.

Pandora

Just like Deezer, listening to Pandora on your Versa requires a paid subscription. You’ll need Pandora Premium in this case, and just like Deezer, you’ll need to pay $9.99/month for it. Pandora’s 30-day trial for new members isn’t as generous as Deezer’s 90-day one, but it’s still something.

From the Versa page in the Fitbit app, tap on the Media tile
Under Services, select Pandora
You can tap on Log In to Pandora if you have an account, but new users will want to choose Start Free Trial
Enter your Pandora credentials, tap Log In, and you’re good to go

Although the setup process for Pandora is much simpler, its actual functionality isn’t nearly as useful.

Once you’re logged in, you have two options for storing music – automatically syncing your “top Pandora stations,” or choosing up to three of Pandora’s most popular Workout stations.

Here’s my issue with this – syncing your top stations doesn’t guarantee you’ll get music that you want to work out to, and there’s no way to customize the pre-made stations you can choose from. It’s a very locked-down setup, and it’s one I’m personally not a fan of.

Local music

If you don’t want to bother with streaming services and already have a library of local files, you can also transfer those directly to the Versa.

From the Versa page in the Fitbit app, tap on the Media tile
Under Services, select Personal Music
Per the instructions on the screen, go to fitbit.com/setup on your computer
Download the Fitbit Connect app that’s available for Mac and Windows

After downloading Fitbit Connect and installing it on your computer:

Click the Manage My Music tile
Go the to Music app on your Versa, open it, and tap Transfer Music
After your Versa has established a connection to your computer, you can choose which playlist to transfer
To choose which folders Fitbit Connect pulls your music from, tap the Settings icon in the top right, choose Advanced Settings, click the + icon, and select the folder you want

In my experience, the process for transferring local music is the least enjoyable of the three methods. The Fitbit Connect app often fails to see the Versa, and even when it does, it’s not uncommon for it to drop the connection altogether.

It’s nice that the option for this is here, but if you can, I’d strongly advise going with Pandora or Deezer instead.

Fitbit Versa and Android: Top 10 things you need to know

MoviePass now prevents you from seeing the same movie more than once

New and existing subscribers are affected by the change.

MoviePass – the lustrous subscription service that enables you to see up to one movie per day for just $9.95/month – just got a lot less appealing.

Following an update to the Android app and a change to the Terms of Service that just came in today, MoviePass subscribers are no longer able to see a certain movie more than once.

As of 12:49 PM EST, April 27, 2018, MoviePass’s official support site says –

We recently updated our Terms of Service to reflect that MoviePass subscribers are only permitted to see a select movie in theaters once with your MoviePass. We hope this will encourage you to see new movies and enjoy something different!

This change affects new and existing subscribers, including those that pay on an annual basis. Opening the MoviePass app now presents you with a “friendly update” letting you know about the new rules, and any movies you’ve already seen using the service are now grayed out with a message that says “You’ve already seen this movie.”

As someone who paid $89.96 during the $6.95/month promo in late March, this news is disappointing, to say the least. MoviePass does state in its TOS that it “reserves the right to change or modify the Service or subscriptions at any time”, and for new or potential customers, this will simply be something they’ll need to take into consideration before signing up.

However, for customers that pay for their membership upfront for all 12-months, it’s a bit shocking that MoviePass is forcing them to abide by the same rules. That’d be like paying for an entire year of Netflix and then a few months later being told you can only watch one show per day. It’ll likely help MoviePass to stop bleeding money as quickly as it is, but it’s a terrible look for customer loyalty.

If you’re a MoviePass subscriber or have been thinking about trying out the service, what’s your take on this?

House Democrats want to step up the fight against robocalls

Some in Congress don’t think the FCC’s latest anti-robocall measures go far enough. Democrats in the House Committee on Energy and Commerce have put forward one bill and two drafts that would give further grief to spam callers. The fully formed bill, the HANGUP Act, would force federal debt collectors to get your permission before robocalling you. This had actually been part of the 1991 Telephone Consumer Protection Act, bill sponsor Rep. Anna Eshoo said, but the 2015 Budget Act rolled it back. She characterized these automated calls as harassment, whether it came from a government contractor or anyone else.

The drafts may be more aggressive. Rep. Frank Pallone’s Stopping Bad Robocalls Act would address some of the complaints that led to a court shooting down an FCC rule in March and set concrete goals. It would clarify the definition of a robocall, set clear exemptions, create a national database of reassigned phone numbers and require the FCC and FTC to work together on reducing spam calls by “at least” 50 percent year-over-year.

Rep. Debbie Dingell’s CEASE Robocalls, meanwhile, would remove the common carrier exemption that prevents the FTC from taking action against providers who abuse robocalls. Smaller VoIP carriers have been “heavily involved” in robocalls, Dingell said.

These three proposals certainly aren’t guaranteed to become law. Even if all three are completed, they’ll still have to get Senate equivalents and pass both sections of Congress before they can be signed into law. If they do clear these hurdles, though, regulators would have considerably more authority to slap down robocallers. While there’s no doubt robocallers will persist, the ideas would at least draw a clearer line in the sand for potential offenders.

Source: Energy and Commerce Democrats