Amazon is giving away gift cards through ‘secret’ Alexa commands

Speak softly and maybe win some cash!

If you have an Amazon Echo and a Facebook page, there’s a good chance you could win some prizes from Alexa over the next couple of days. The Facebook page for Amazon Echo has been listing contests, and the only way to participate is to speak “secret” commands to your Echo. Drop the command on your Echo, and your account is registered to win a prize!

This is great for Amazon Echo users for a couple of reasons. First, most of the “secret” commands are actually Amazon Echo skills you probably aren’t using. This means Amazon is getting people to try out partner services, which is great for everyone. In using those commands, Amazon is registering your account for a lottery-style giveaway, and each set of prizes so far seem to be $25 gift cards.

Want to participate? The only way to do so is to have an Amazon Echo and read the commands from their Facebook page. Get to it!

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NVIDIA offering up to 80% off Android and GeForce NOW games for one week

Get into the holiday spirit with savings on games.

Continuing a regular tradition, NVIDIA is rolling out solid discounts on a bunch of games for the holidays. The sale runs from December 22 to 28, giving you a full week to get in on a combination of GeForce NOW titles and native Android games. Discounts range from 20 to 80% off the list price, which is great for many of these games that regularly list for upwards of $15 each.

Here’s the full breakdown of the games that are on sale, and their sale price; NVIDIA says the list may be updated shortly after launch as well. First, here are the native Android titles — most of these titles are Shield-only, or at a minimum Tegra-only (so the Pixel C is compatible), so be sure to check device compatibility before buying.

• Contrast $8.00 (20% off)
• DOOM 3 BFG Edition $4.99 (50% off)
• Parallax $1.25 (75% off)
• Pix the Cat $0.99 (80% off)
• Q.U.B.E.: Director’s Cut $3.00 (50% off)
• Q*Bert Rebooted:SHIELD Edition $3.00 (50% off)
• Stealth Inc. 2: Game of Clones $4.99 (50% off)
• Ultimate Chicken Horse $5.99 (50% off)

Now, here’s the list of GeForce NOW discounts. These are the games that can be purchased to stream through the GeForce NOW service to your Shield device (like the Shield Android TV.

• Day of the Tentacle Remastered $7.50 (50% off)
• Dead Island Riptide: Definitive Edition $12.00 (40% off)
• Dead Island: Definitive Edition $12.00 40 (50% off)
• Deadlight: Director’s Cut $10.00 (50% off)
• F1 2015 $16.50 (70% off)
• Grim Fandango Remastered $3.75 (75% off)
• Homefront: The Revolution $24.00 (40% off)
• Massive Chalice $5.00 (75% off)
• Metro 2033 Redux $5.00 (75% off)
• Metro: Last light Redux $5.00 (75% off)
• Risen 3 – Titan Lords $3.75 (75% off)
• Sacred 3 $3.75 (75% off)
• Saints Row: Gat out of Hell $3.75 (75% off)
• Stories: The Path of Destinies $8.25 (45% off)
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Game of the Year $29.99 (40% off)

Even though this is a really NVIDIA-specific set of discounts, big gamers will be super happy to see huge deals on titles they may have been eyeing for a while. Once again the discounts are available for a whole week (ending December 28), and you don’t have to do anything special — just head to the Play Store or GeForce NOW to see the new low prices.

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HTC 10 owners, how’s the Nougat update treating you?

While others wait, the U.S. unlocked HTC 10 has Android 7.0.

The HTC 10 was one of the more underappreciated phones of the past year. HTC’s 2016 flagship didn’t flash about too many gimmicky features — instead, it just focused on being a great all-around phone. And the ’10 has gotten even better recently, at least for some owners, with the arrival of Android 7.0 Nougat for the U.S. unlocked version.

Nougat brings new features to HTC’s flagship with minimal visual changes.

As with Marshmallow, HTC isn’t messing with Nougat too much. Android 7.0 on the HTC 10 is a clean, uncluttered experience with just a handful of visual tweaks compared to older versions. So you’re getting vanilla, Google-flavored Nougat, with a handful of HTC features, like the BlinkFeed-equipped launcher, the manufacturer’s messaging and dialer apps, and under-the-hood optimizations.

If you’re one of the lucky ones to have already received the update on your HTC 10 (or you’ve manually flashed the RUU), we want to hear how you’re getting on. As the year closes out, has your HTC 10 stood the test of time? Have new Nougat features like split-screen multi-window and bundled notifications revitalized your device? Or were you hoping for more from the update?

And if you’re still waiting, are you happy with the phone as it is on Marshmallow, or are you chomping at the bit for a taste of Nougat?

Share your thoughts down in the comments, and be sure to head over to the HTC 10 forums for more discussion!

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Are you addicted to RollerCoaster Tycoon Classic?!

Let’s talk about RollerCoaster Tycoon.

RCT 2 is one of the best games ever, period. If you argue about that, we’re no longer friends. But that game, and sims like it, are difficult to optimize for touch, and the smaller screens we have on smartphones.

That’s why it’s so exciting to see Atari release RollerCoaster Tycoon Classic on Android, which for $5.99 gives you most of the features from RollerCoaster Tycoon and its legendary sequel, with optimizations for touch and those aforementioned smaller screens.

The game itself plays really, really well, even on a phone — though it is optimized for Android tablets, too — with the same awesome features that shipped on the PC so many years ago. And while it can be seen a mere cash grab, Atari seems to have done its homework with this one, and has eliminated greedy in-app purchases entirely. There are one-time expansion packs available for purchase at $1.99 a piece, but I’d rather see that than having to grind or spend dollars on gems or coins.

The release comes at a time when classic games are either being remastered, a la Capcom’s Mega Man 1 through 6, along with the incredibly-popular (and somewhat disappointing) iOS exclusive Super Mario Run. RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 won’t be nearly as popular, but I have a feeling it may have greater staying power.

Download RollerCoaster Tycoon Classic ($5.99, in-app purchases)

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Despite its marketing message, T-Mobile is once again just another big carrier

Some of us have seen through the T-Mobile hype. Others need to catch up.

As we near the CES show in Las Vegas the first week of January, T-Mobile is hyping up yet another “Un-carrier” event. Unlike previous iterations we’re now done with sequentially numbering these Un-carrier releases (I think we’d be at 13 now?), and instead it’s being marketed as “Un-carrier Next.” Truth be told the iterations of Un-carrier releases really started to lose meaning for me around version 4 or 5, and at this point it’s all a bit tiring.

With each subsequent Un-carrier announcement, the novelty of the concept wears off — you can only reinvent the system so many times. As T-Mobile has found things that grow its subscriber count and increase revenues, it all of a sudden isn’t so interested in completely flipping the wireless world on its head every six months. This is a reasonable response to the situation from a company that was just a couple years ago struggling to keep customers, losing money, and looking for merger and buyout options. So as soon as you right the ship, you get a bit more conservative and stay the course. T-Mobile has well and truly surpassed Sprint, its subscriber growth is high and steady, and perhaps most importantly it has the general public thinking it’s still the scrappy upstart carrier that’s trying new things.

It’s undeniable that T-Mobile changed the mobile network landscape when CEO John Legere took over at the end of 2012 and started making big changes in 2013 — that was the golden age of when “Un-carrier” actually meant something. But now, a few years on, things have regressed to the mean and T-Mobile is once again just one of the big players, doing most of the same things Verizon, AT&T and Sprint do.

After completely changing the way that U.S. mobile consumers look at buying phones by separating the cost of the plan and device, T-Mobile has fallen back to the same exact offerings as everyone else. Huge seasonal buying incentives, monthly payment plans, buy-one-get-one deals that lock you in and family plans all bring us back to the bad old days of being tied into contracts. T-Mobile doesn’t want you to bring your own phone or buy outright anymore — sales staff are pushing JUMP and mid-cycle upgrade promotions as hard as possible, hoping to make it tough to leave.

T-Mobile is arguably less flexible and less consumer friendly than the competition.

Once the carrier that was all about giving you lots of data and freedom to use it how you want, T-Mobile has now fallen back to leaning on gimmicks and “features” of its plans to entice customers. Rather than having lots of plan choices for you to configure as you see fit, with easy-to-understand add-ons when you wanted more, T-Mobile now gives you one plan (with a couple variations if you dig hard enough) — and if you don’t like it, tough luck. Power users don’t like reduced-speed tethering, down-scaled streaming video resolution and other restrictions, and that’s really only a problem because your only other choice is to choose a different carrier. And funnily enough, it’s now Verizon and AT&T that are doing a better job of simply letting you pay for data and use it how you want on whatever device you want.

T-Mobile’s only plan: $70 starting price

With these changes, of course, have come cost increases. It’s well documented that T-Mobile’s plans slowly but surely increased in price over the past three years as they were tweaked and tuned to target the broadest number of people and get more money out of the fringes. At the same time, low-cost plans (aside from prepaid offerings) have disappeared simply because the carrier offers just a single plan. Now with the new ONE plan, your entry point for T-Mobile postpaid service is $70 per month — AT&T is $50, Verizon is $55. It’s all about ARPU: Average Revenue Per User.

This is no longer the carrier of the savvy — it’s for the average consumer.

Now don’t get me wrong, I know that T-Mobile is really just offering what the public “wants” right now — and I can’t fault a business for doing that and maximizing profits all the same. But that, in itself, is the biggest sign that T-Mobile is no longer driving the industry forward, but simply going through the motions with the other carriers. T-Mobile used to be the one that stood apart from the rest, pushing the envelope in ways that the big carriers wouldn’t dare for fear of losing their massive subscriber base that brought in oh-so-much money. It used to be the savvy choice for those who didn’t want to deal with the big carrier nonsense of paying for things you didn’t want and could instead make a smart decision on a plan that gave them the most value every month.

T-Mobile used to mix things up, making you look at your current carrier and say “wow I’m stuck in the past over here.” Now, you may look at your AT&T or Verizon plan and think you’re in a better situation than if you switched to T-Mobile. And I doubt “Un-carrier Next” will do anything to change that.

iCracked repair service: Anytime. Anywhere

These days, we’re more likely to turn around and head home when we realise we’ve forgotten our smartphones than our wallets.

A recent survey stated  that an iPhone 6 or 6s lasts on average just six weeks before it’s damaged in some way. Whether a handset falls out of your hands, tumbles from your pocket or slides from your lap – the three most common ways people break their phones according to one phone case manufacturer – it needs to be fixed. Everybody wants the best result from the repair service that they choose.

Not every repair company is professional and trustworthy, so how do you choose where to take your precious hardware?

The iCracked service is highly effective. Let’s go through what sets it apart.

The company is setting the standard high for the rest of the industry to try and follow. It’s professionally certified, for a start, with a rigorous certification program which sees new repair engineers, called iTechs, undergo extensive training for every new device that the company is adding to it’s services repertoire.Being familiar with last year’s model isn’t enough.

After all, the technology changes radically between phone models. Remember how the quality of the iPhone screen improved radically with the introduction of the Retina display?

Or how the camera on the iPhone 6s was markedly better than on the iPhone 6, even if they looked superficially similar? You need an engineer who knows your phone inside out.

The iTechs are trained to be up to date with every new gadget on the market. This means that the repair can be done quickly, but with skill and professionalism. You can go to iCracked with confidence.

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Staff are rigorously verified. All the iTechs must pass background checks before they meet their first customer and customer feedback is carefully monitored.

There’s more to the service than just outstanding repair skills. There’s also much greater convenience than the rival services offer. The repair is done at the location and time of the customer’s choice. This can be your home, which is certainly handy. But if you dropped your phone at work, the iTech can come to your office and quickly and quietly fix things there, so your life continues uninterrupted.

If your workplace is convenient but not quite suitable, the iTech will meet you in a coffee shop or other favorite location so that your phone can be back up and running in no time. This way, you don’t have your boss breathing over your shoulder while the repair takes place.

The iTechs  are available from early to late so don’t worry if the accident happened at either end of the day or before the sun comes up– iCracked has you covered morning, noon or night.

Things don’t end when the repair work is finished. The company is so confident in its parts and technicians, each repair comes with a lifetime warranty so that it’s not going to fail further down the line.

After all, however convenient the repair work is – and it is very convenient – you don’t want to go through it again.

iCracked uses the most reliable, high-quality components (so the phone works as smoothly as it did before the repair) and the most effective engineers. This sets the service apart.

That’s before you add in the lifetime warranty and the convenience of seeing your beloved phone spring back into life as good as new before your eyes and at a place that suits you best. Morning, noon, night, coffee shop, restaurant, office, iCracked has you covered.