Drop some beats and start the party anytime, anywhere with the wireless Minim mobile music maker by Livid (32 per cent off)

You won’t want to pass up this addicting little mobile instrument designed for making complex music on the go – you’ll be the hit of all the holiday parties without even breaking a sweat.

Called an “engineering masterpiece” and “really brilliant device” by Ask Audio, this highly portable creativity-boosting device made by Livid Instruments (creators of Guitar Wing) is available right now for £81.09 ($99.99 USD), 32 per cent off the retail price.

The Livid Minim mobile music maker features 8 expressive pads, a fader, 3D motion control, and touch-sensitive technology that will sync up with your smartphone, tablet, or computer wirelessly via Bluetooth LE MIDI so you can create and play music from wherever you are. Its non-slip rubberized bottom will ensure it stays put, even if you get a little overly enthusiastic about your masterpiece. Once you’ve dropped some tracks, you can loop up to 8 of them together for a whole new sound.

With the free Minim Music Lab app, you can intuitively create incredible music. It features a variety of built-in sounds, from synths to drum kits, for you to play around with. Maybe you already have a preferred music app? No worries. The Livid Minim integrates with whatever your personal favorite is, such as Garage Band, Ableton Live, or any other software that recognizes MIDI message.

Compatibility with Mac OS X 10.10 or later, iOS 8 or later, and Android 6 or later make this a great gift for any music lover or budding audio artist (or yourself—we won’t judge), even if you don’t know which device they’re on.

Including a charging cable and carrying case, this deal is worth £120.83 ($149 USD), but you can get the Minim Mobile Music Maker today for just £81.09 ($99.99 USD). Grab one now before they’re gone!

Major improvements to Audials MovieBox for Windows give you the best stream-recording experience yet, and now it’s 50 per cent off

Streaming movies and TV shows is great, but there’s not much you can do with that when you’re without an internet connection. Audials MovieBox 2017 solves that problem, legally.

When you’re planning a trip to the middle of the woods or a remote tropical island, and finally have the time to catch up on Dr. Who, the MovieBox will be your new BFF. For just £16.17 ($19.95 USD), you’ll be able to record media from any streaming, video-on-demand source—really—and save it to watch later, on any device, without needing to be online.

With a Windows 10, 8, 7, or Vista computer, you can record legal media streams of movies and TV shows from services like Netflix, SkyGo, and Amazon, thanks to the MovieBox’s new Generation 2017 abilities. Video streaming services use what’s called “adaptive streaming” to bring you content on demand in high quality, which previous versions of MovieBox weren’t so great at recording. Audials has now figured out how to record all the different types of stream protection among the various platforms, even recommending the right settings for a specific recording, so you’ll have access to practically anything you want.

Management of your media library is easy and worry-free; you can convert, edit, and store your video files for PC, smartphones, and tablets; you can edit movies from DVDs, TV, or protected online videos; and the Audials team pushes weekly updates to MovieBox to ensure you can always record in the best possible quality. In addition, you can set up recordings to begin automatically in the future, as the program keeps an eye out for legal playback of whatever you’re on the hunt for.

If you’ve been debating cutting the cord, debate no more. For Pocket-lint readers, the user-friendly Audials MovieBox 2017 is just too good a deal to miss: normally £32.34 ($39.90 USD), get it today for £16.17 ($19.95 USD).

5 things you didn’t know you could do with a Tile

Find your Keys, wallet, phone, anything with Tile.

Tile is a tiny Bluetooth-enabled tracker and companion app that allows you to locate your items, fast. And now this best-selling device comes in two different forms designed to work with all your favorite things:

●      Tile Slim is as thin as two credit cards so it fits perfectly into any wallet or purse.

●      Tile Mate has a convenient hole to attach to your keys or bags.

Attach Tile to anything you’d hate to lose and you can always find it fast.  Use the free Tile app to make your Tile devices ring when you’re within Bluetooth range so you can find them by sound. If you’re out of Bluetooth range, the Tile app remembers the last place you had your things and even shows you where they are on a map.

If you still can’t find your lost item, use Tile’s Community Find feature. Now anyone in Tile’s global community of users can automatically update you on your item’s most recent location just by passing by it! The update is automatic and anonymous!

The most common uses of Tile devices are hanging one on your keychain or slipping one in your wallet, so that you can find your keys and wallet, at any time, but there are several other ways to use Tile. In fact, hereʼs five clever uses for this helpful little device.

Use Tile Slim to track a lost jacket.

Have you ever left your jacket at a bar or restaurant? Well, with a Tile Slim, you can still locate it wherever it is. Simply slip the ultrathin Tile Slim into your jacket pocket and use the “Last Place Seen” feature. If your Tile app is running, it is constantly scanning for your Tiles nearby. If a Tile goes out of range, like when you leave it somewhere, the app will mark it on the map so you can go back to that last known location, including the exact spot your jacket was left.

Take advantage of the Tile network

Tile’s competitive advantage over other Bluetooth trackers lies in its massive “lost and found” network. When something goes missing and it’s not where the Tile app last saw it, you can ask the Tile community for help. Tile uses a “passive network”, so any phone running the Tile app is anonymously looking for other “lost” Tiles all the time. So, if you leave your Tile in a purse at a store, another Tile user will walk by your purse in the next hour and can notify you through a passive text message. Then, once youʼre within Bluetooth range, they can “ring” that object through the app to locate it by sound.

You can build your own network to increase your chances of finding something you’ve misplaced too. Every person who downloads the app becomes a node in your network – they don’t even have to own a Tile. Tile lets you retrace your footsteps There is another feature you can use to find Tile. You can retrace your steps with the Tile app, then use the Tile’s proximity sensor to help you locate it. Imagine having a Tile in your camera bag, but then you lose your camera while out. This feature can help you retrace your steps and find your camera. 

Find your car in the parking lot

Have you ever come back from a shopping trip only to realize that you totally forgot where you parked your car? The solution? Place a dedicated Tile in your car, then run the Tile app to remember where you parked. And if your vehicle happened to be towed, the location of your Tile could be anonymously updated by another member of the Tile community – just by running the app in the background on their phone. You merely need to open the Tile app and then follow the directions to your car.

Find a lost stuffed animal

People use Tile to track all sorts of objects – like keys, wallets, cars, or laptops. Almost anything can be tracked, including stuffed animals.Imagine your daughter has a stuffed teddy and youʼre on vacation somewhere and notice several hours later thatʼs missing. If it has a Tile attached, you can find it.

Amazon Echo just £120 for Black Friday, Echo Dot just £40

Amazon has been rolling out big discounts for its own tech devices all week, but it might have saved the best for a Black Friday reveal. It has slashed £30 off the price of the Amazon Echo, as reviewed here.

The Amazon Echo Dot has also been reduced by £10.

That means you can get the Alexa-powered Echo speaker for £119.99 and the Dot for £39.99. They will also be available at those prices up to the end of play on Tuesday 29 November.

• Buy the Amazon Echo here
• Get the Amazon Echo Dot here

The sale comes a couple of days after the Echo was crowned both best smart home device and product of the year at the EE Pocket-lint Gadget Awards 2016 gala held in London on Wednesday evening. It has received critical praise far and wide, and is set to be one of the biggest gadget gifts to be found under trees this Christmas.

And with the healthy discount, you can even save yourself a few bob when buying one for friends or family.

• Amazon Echo: What can Alexa do and what services are compatible?
• Amazon Echo tips and tricks
• Amazon Echo: First 7 things you should do to get Alexa started

Amazon has been running Black Friday deals for the last couple of weeks, with thousands of products being dropped in price for the duration. Another of its homegrown devices to get an attractive new price point until next week is the Amazon Fire tablet, which presently costs just £30.

Blu Vivo 6 hits Black Friday sales: Impressive 5.5-inch metal unibody Android phone for £185

Going metal often means digging deep into your pockets. Brands like Huawei and OnePlus have been pulling down the price of premium metal devices, but few will be as affordable as the Blu Vivo 6.

Blu is one of the largest providers of unlocked phones in the US and you can now buy Blu devices through Amazon.co.uk. Usually priced at £239.99, it’s launching on Amazon.co.uk and immediately going on sale as a deal of the day, priced at £184.99. 

• Click here to buy the Blu Vivo 6 on Amazon.co.uk

The Blu Vivo 6 has a metal body finished to an impressively high standard, with neat chamfering for that premium look, and a subtle curve to the rear to make it fit nicely into your hand.

There’s a 5.5-inch full HD IPS display on the front offering 401ppi, there’s a home button with fingerprint sensor flanked by capacitive keys for navigation.

There’s a 13-megapixel camera on the rear offering phase detection autofocus, and an 8-megapixel front camera.

Sitting at the heart is a MediaTek Helio P10 octo-core chipset with 4GB RAM and 64GB of internal storage, with microSD card support. 

Running Android 6 Marshmallow, the Blu Vivo 6 has a collection of bundled apps from Amazon and some tweaks to the user interface. There’s a neat Chameleon app that will let you quickly change the colours as well as a theme app to change the look of your phone. 

The Blu Vivo 6 is available from Amazon.co.uk from 25 November, hitting the online retailer at £184.99 for a limited time period. It is available in gold, rose gold and grey.

Grab a Sonos Play:1 for £139 from Black Friday to Cyber Monday

The Sonos Play:1 is the entry point to Sonos’ range of multi-room wireless speakers. It may be small in size but the sound it can deliver will likely take you by surprise upon first listen.

• Buy a Sonos Play:1 for £139 from Sonos.com

It’s a versatile speaker too and will be at home in the living room, kitchen, bedroom or anywhere else you want to play some top quality music.

The good news is getting in on the Sonos action is now even more affordable from now until Cyber Monday, as Sonos is reducing the price of the Play:1 from £169 to £139.

A £30 saving may not seem like a lot, but Sonos rarely discounts its products, so act quickly while you can.

Sonos works with the vast majority of music streaming services available in the UK, including Spotify, Tidal, Apple Music and the recently released Amazon Music Unlimited. TuneIn radio is onboard too and everything is streamed via Wi-Fi, so you only use your phone, tablet or laptop as a controller, helping to save on battery life. Plus it means music can be beamed around the room in the highest possible quality.

• Sonos tips and tricks: Get the most out of your multi-room system

You’ll be able to pick one up from Apple Stores around the UK or directly from Sonos.com. And once you’ve got your speaker, you can read our handy tips and tricks guide to get the most out of your new speaker.

• Best Black Friday UK TV deals: 4K, HDR, OLED TVs and more
• Black Friday UK laptop deals: the best laptop deals online
• Best Black Friday UK fitness tracker deals: Garmin, Fitbit, Polar and more
• Best Black Friday UK games deals: Amazing PS4, Xbox One and Nintendo deals
• Best Black Friday UK camera deals: DSLR, compact and system camera bargains
• Best Black Friday UK phone deals: Apple, Samsung, Android phone deals galore
• Black Friday UK smartwatch deals: The best smartwatch deals online
• Best Black Friday UK tablet deals: iPad, Android, Surface, Amazon and more

Plex’s machine learning tech auto-tags photos for you

Plex has made it easier for premium users to organize their photos and to unearth specific snapshots from their massive collections. The service now auto-tags photos based on what its new machine learning technology sees. If the tech detects a dog in a photo, for instance, it could tag that image with the words “dog” and “puppy.” Since tags are useless if you can’t sort your images with their help, Plex has also updated its web app’s interface to be able to search tags. Further, the interface will now display related images based on the tags you look up.

While only Plex Pass subscribers will be able to take advantage of its new tagging features, the service has updated its service for everyone. The Photo library now combines both videos and images to make searching for files much easier. Finally, has Plex tweaked its app to make importing photos thrice as fast as before.

Source: Plex

How to use Google Home with Chromecast

If you know the right commands, Google Home and Chromecast can come together to simplify media in your home.

Google Home sits in an interesting place. Not only can it operate independently to answer questions and stream its own media, it can also work with the Google Cast protocol in two different ways. You can Cast audio to from one of hundreds of apps directly to Google Home, but Home itself can also work as a controller to have other Cast-enabled devices start up their own streams.

If you have a Google Home and are looking to integrate it smoothly into your existing set of Google Cast devices — whether those are Chromecasts, Cast-ready speakers or Android TVs — we have a few great tips for getting started and making the most of your connected media streamers.

Using Google Home as a Cast target

The simplest way to use Google Home as a speaker is to just talk to it directly, saying “OK Google, play Christmas music” or “OK Google, play the latest Android Central podcast.” But Home is also a simple Cast target for audio, just like any other device — you can select your Google Home in any audio app that supports Google Cast, and it’ll start playing right away.

Use the Google Home as you would any other Cast-ready speaker.

When you’re Casting audio to Home, devices that have the Google Home app installed and linked to your Google account will see a notification indicating what’s playing on the Home and give you options to pause, stop or mute the stream. The Home will still respond to audio cues — including “OK Google, pause” or “OK Google, next track” — and can have its volume adjusted by using your finger on the top of the speaker.

Because Google Home is just another audio Cast target in this respect, it can also function as one of many Cast devices grouped together for multi-room audio streaming. You can mix and match Homes and other Cast-ready speakers as you see fit without any distinction.

Using Google Home to Cast to another device

Here’s where things get a little more complicated: Google Home can also initiate Casting of audio or video content on other Cast targets. This is a bit more ambiguous because it’s a different interaction system to tapping a Google Cast button in an app, but it works similarly nonetheless.

Just tell Home what you want and where you want to send it.

The first thing to remember in this situation is that the names of your Cast targets — Chromecasts, Cast-ready speakers and Android TVs — matter, because you’ll be prompting Google Home to initiate streams purely with your voice. Having your Cast devices named by their place (i.e. “living room speaker”) or a more descriptive device name (i.e. “bedroom TV”) will help if you have a lot of Cast targets. You can rename them in the Google Home app.

To use your Google Home to send content to another Cast target, just tell Home what you want to watch or listen to, and what device should play it: “OK Google, Cast [thing] to [Cast target name].” That could be “OK Google, play cat videos on the bedroom TV” or “OK Google, watch the Fantastic Beasts trailer in the living room.” When it comes to music, things work the same way. Simply say “OK Google, play [music] on [speaker name]” and the stream will start up on that device, like “OK Google, listen to Beastie Boys on the kitchen speaker.” The Home will use your default music service unless otherwise specified.

Things can get complicated working just with voice, but keep trying commands!

Google Home can also initiate multi-room audio streaming on its own. Once you have your Cast-ready speakers grouped by name, just say “OK Google, play [music] on ” and the audio will start up synchronized across multiple speakers. This will work both for groups that include the Home and those that don’t.

You can also continue to use audio commands with Home to control the playback that you started on another device, such as “OK Google, pause” or “OK Google, volume 6.” The link between Home and the device that’s playing the media will remain until the Cast session has ended — just say “OK Google, stop Casting” to explicitly break the link. Just like when streaming media directly to the Google Home, your phone will also display a notification about the ongoing Cast session. You can pause, stop or mute whatever device is currently playing the media, no matter what device initially started the Cast.

Keep exploring Google Cast

This is really just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Google Home, Chromecast and other Cast-ready devices, with tons of potential possibilities depending on how many devices you have and what media sources you prefer. Google is also constantly adding to and tweaking the list of available commands and services that are Google Cast-ready.

To keep up with the latest and follow along with what other Android Central members are doing with Cast, be sure to join the discussion in our Google Home and Chromecast forums!

Chromecast

• Chromecast and Chromecast Audio review
• Chromecast Ultra vs Roku
• Chromecast vs Chromecast Ultra: Which should you buy?
• Join the discussion in our forums

Chromecast:

Google
Best Buy

Chromecast Audio:

Google
Best Buy

Chromecast Ultra:

Google
Best Buy

Grab Wileyfox’s Swift 2 Plus for just £149 in the UK

Snapdragon 430, 3GB RAM, and 32GB storage for £149.

UK startup Wileyfox is running a decent sale on this year’s Swift 2 Plus, selling the phone for £149 on Amazon UK, £70 off of the retail price of the handset. Wileyfox is also bundling a one-time screen replacement service as well as an official case at no additional cost.

The metal-bodied Swift 2 Plus offers a 5-inch 720p display, Snapdragon 430 SoC, 3GB of RAM, 32GB storage, microSD slot, 16MP camera, 8MP front shooter, LTE, NFC with support for Android Pay, fingerprint sensor, dual-SIM connectivity, USB-C, and a 2700mAh battery. When it comes to the software, you get Cyanogen OS 13.0 running on Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow.

The discounted pricing makes the Swift 2 Plus an enticing option for those looking for a well-rounded budget phone in the UK. Interested? Grab the deal from Amazon.

See at Amazon

Don’t miss this rare $50 savings on the Sonos Play:1 speaker!

The powerful and compact Sonos Play:1 speaker is currently $50 off, which is a pretty rare sighting. The speaker, which normally runs $199, can now be had for just $149, which is quite a great price for everything that it offers. Whether you have Sonos speakers already spread throughout your house or you are looking to get started with your first one, taking advantage of discounts when they are available is the best way to do this. You’ll be able to add this one to your existing set up or put it in a room or office to run independently.

Sonos does an amazing job of supporting its speakers and bringing new features to them often. Unfortunately, this price won’t last long. If you’re in the market for a Sonos speaker, be sure to grab one before the deal ends.

See at Sonos