Controlling your smart thermostat remotely from your phone is cool and all, but don’t forget that you can also make it even easier on yourself and control it with your voice using Alexa. Here’s how to set it up. RELATED: How to Get the Most Out of Your Ecobee Smart Thermostat Before you get started, it would be a good idea to learn how to add Alexa skills to your Alexa account, as well as add smarthome devices to your Alexa setup....

If you have your house outfitted with Philips Hue lights (or any kind of smart bulbs for that matter), you’ve no doubt had to deal with people randomly flipping off the switches to the lights. Here’s how to fix that problem. RELATED: How to Get the Most Out of Your Philips Hue Lights With any smart bulb, you control them by turning on and off the light bulb itself, rather than using the light switch on the wall....

Once again, sensationalist clickbait is claiming Microsoft will soon require a subscription fee to “rent” your Windows operating system. This just isn’t true. Microsoft’s “desktop as a service” plan is only for businesses, and it also includes hardware—not just software. Look, there are a lot of things I don’t like about Microsoft. Windows 10 is loaded down with advertising, and Microsoft is pushing subscription fees for everything from OneDrive file storage to ad-free Solitaire....

Great photos can really make a website pop. They catch the eye, yes, but can also help you get your point across. RELATED: How to Develop a Better Eye for Taking Good Photos If you’re building a site, you could learn how to take good photos, but sometimes that’s not an option. Happily, there are all sorts of sites out there full of free images you can use for any purpose: commercial or otherwise....

Fortunately, there are plenty of free video conferencing apps you can use to connect. Google Hangouts Supports: Up to 10 participants for an unlimited duration. If you have a Google account, you have access to Google Hangouts. For free Gmail and G Suite Basic customers, Google Hangouts allows for up to 10 people to chat in a video call. The service also supports simultaneous voice chat and allows participants to join a conference via email or a shareable link....

There are some surprisingly decent games on the iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV, but touch controls are usually…less than ideal. Many of those games support full gamepads, though, so you can play with the same precision you do on a console. Here are the gamepads to buy. RELATED: How to Use a Physical Game Controller with an iPhone, iPad, or Android Device Sadly, you can’t just use any ol’ Xbox or PlayStation controller with your iPhone (unless you’re jailbroken)....

“Good Game” GG means “good game.” In multiplayer competitive games, GG is used as a mark of sportsmanship and an acknowledgment that you had fun while battling against your opponents. For many players, it’s standard practice to type GG into the chat at the end of every match. It’s similar to a handshake or hug at the end of a live sporting event. The practice of saying GG has been around since the late 90s to early 2000s....

The “Enhance Pointer Precision” setting in Windows can actually make you less precise with your mouse in many situations. This poorly understood feature is enabled by default in Windows, and is a form of mouse acceleration. What Does Enhance Pointer Precision Do? RELATED: Mouse DPI and Polling Rates Explained: Do They Matter for Gaming? Normally, the only thing that controls the distance your mouse cursor moves on the screen is how far you physically move your mouse....

Ever notice how iMessage will mark a message as “Read” when the other person sees it? These are called “read receipts”, and they can provide a lot of peace of mind for those that you message with. But when exactly does the other person know that you’ve read their message? RELATED: How to Prevent People from Knowing You’ve Read Their iMessage We’ve done some testing to find out. Of course, if you’re really paranoid about read receipts in the first place, you likely have them disabled completely, but they can be great to have for close friends and family members....

So you’ve unpacked a shiny new iPad (or laptop, or camera, or other gadget) and it’s time to get rid of the old one. Why not make a few bucks in the process? eBay: Good for Rare Items, Broken Electronics, and Spare Parts eBay may almost be synonymous with “selling stuff online”, but its reputation—particularly with sellers—isn’t actually that great. Let’s start with eBay’s downsides, because they are many and oft-complained about....

If you’ve ever bought a new computer with Windows already installed, you might be annoyed by the default name of your PC. Or maybe you’re just ready for a change. Here’s how to rename your PC to whatever you like. Changing your PC’s name involves paying a visit to the “System Properties” window. Starting with Windows 7, it’s a little harder to get to, but here are several routes you can take:...

For years, I’ve dreamed of having an Emergency Pizza Button that will automatically order a pizza for me with a single tap. I’m not the only one with this dream. There have been countless innovations in pizza ordering technology in recent years…but they’ve all been from Domino’s. Which sucks, because they have the worst pizza. Why can’t other pizza companies catch up? Ordering pizza is a time-honored tradition among college students and tired parents everywhere....

Microsoft revealed in a blog post on Thursday, “as part of our mission to bring the joy and community of gaming to players wherever they are and to make gaming more accessible to people around the world, I’m excited to announce that we’ve partnered with Epic Games to make Fortnite available on supported browser-enabled devices for free with Xbox Cloud Gaming (Beta) in 26 countries.” Play Video You still need a (free Microsoft) account for logging in, and a good enough internet connection for cloud streaming, but you don’t need to pay for Xbox Game Pass or the game itself....

RELATED: Should You Buy a Robot Vacuum Cleaner? 5 Things to Consider The Case for Home Security Robots There’s plenty of great smart home security technology out there already. Devices such as the Ring camera products are incredibly popular, and if you have an Alexa device, you can make use of Alexa Guard. Guard is a special mode where the microphones in the Alexa device listen for sounds that are typical of a break-in, such as glass breaking....

A credit card skimmer is a malicious device criminals attach to a payment terminal—most commonly on ATMs and gas pumps. When you use an terminal that’s been compromised in such a way, the skimmer will create a copy of your card and capture your PIN (if it’s an ATM card). If you use ATMs and gas pumps, you should be aware of these attacks. Armed with the right knowledge, it’s actually pretty easy to spot most skimmers—though just like with everything else, these types of attacks continue to get more advanced....

There are many ways to improve your PowerPoint presentation—adding animations to objects, customizing slide transition styles, and using interesting themes to name a few. In addition to all that, you can also add music to your presentation. Adding Music to Your Presentation PowerPoint makes it very simple to add music to your presentation. Adding music to your presentation may be a great idea, but there are also cases where it may be considered unprofessional....

For this to work, you’ll first need to link your Facebook and Instagram accounts. Open the Instagram app on your Android smartphone or iPhone, then tap your profile picture in the bottom-right corner. Select the three-line menu icon in the top-right corner of the tab to reveal a side menu and head into “Settings.” At the bottom, tap the blue link for “Accounts Center.” Visit the “Accounts and Profiles” section....

Emoji are awesome, and even old people (like my 30-year old friends) are starting to realize it now. They add nuance to text messages that you can’t express with boring words. But emoji can do even more than that: now you can register emoji domains. I’ve bought www.🇨🇮.to. Click the link and you get taken to my Twitter page! Let’s look at how. Find a Top Level Domain That Supports Emoji Domains You used to be able to register any emoji domain you could think of, but since ICAAN (the group who manages domain names) changed the rules in 2010, there are only a few top level domains that support them....

Google Assistant is designed to be a conversational voice assistant, but sometimes it’s not socially acceptable to talk to your phone. If you’d rather type your requests to Assistant, you can make that the default instead. While using your voice to talk to Google Assistant is convenient in some cases, it comes with downsides. If you’re listening to music on your phone, Assistant will interrupt it any time you try to search when it turns on the microphone....

There’s never enough storage space on your iPhone or iPad, especially when you need it the most. Before heading out for a trip or recording a long video, it’s best to check available storage space on your iOS device. How to Check How Much Space You Have Left To find out the free storage space on your iPhone or iPad, open the Settings app. Tap on “General” and then select “iPhone Storage” (or “iPad Storage” if that’s what you’re using)....