Author: Danielle

If you have an Amazon Echo, you’re probably keen to use Alexa for more than just weather forecasts and setting timers. With inexpensive hardware you can get Alexa to turn individual or groups of lights on and off, and by using Routines you can make them turn on automatically at set times.

What is needed to control lights with Alexa?

• Smart plug, or
• Smart light bulb, or
• Smart wall switch
• A device with Alexa built-in or the Alexa app

You need at least one piece of hardware from this list that is compatible with Alexa before you can control a light, plus the latest version of the Alexa app and / or an Amazon Echo or another device that has Alexa built in.

Alexa works with many smart bulbs including Philips Hue and LIFX bulbs.We’re big fans of these because they’re high quality, reliable and offer lots of features. They come in white and colour versions, with the latter costing more, but still able to produce good whites as well as bright colours.

However, even the cheapest Wi-Fi bulbs can be expensive, so if you don’t want to splash out on new lights, you can instead buy smart switches that are compatible with Alexa.

Amazon now sells its own smart plug for £24.99 / $24.99, which isn’t the cheapest option either, but it couldn’t be easier to use and doesn’t require you to add a new Alexa skill or create yet another user account.

Obviously this is no good for ceiling lights as it will only turn on and off lamps which plug into a mains socket.

But you can get Alexa-compatible wall switches These include Lightwave RF and Energenie MiHome. Note that – like Philips Hue – these both require a ‘hub’ which plugs into your router: they don’t talk directly to it using Wi-Fi.

Whichever method you use, the way to control compatible lights, plugs and switches with Alexa is the same. Here’s how to do it.

How do you turn Alexa lights on?

To get started, you need the Alexa app. It is available on , and Amazon Fire tablets. You’ll probably have the app already if you have an Amazon Echo.

Before you can turn a light on, you must install and set up your light bulb, plug or switch. Do this by opening the Alexa app and following these steps:

1. Tap on Devices at the bottom right
2. Now tap on the + icon at the top right
3. Select the type of device you are setting up (Light, Plug or Switch)
4. Choose the brand from the list
5. Follow the instructions on screen

Typically, you will have to create an account with the manufacturer of the hardware, then link that account with your Amazon account and authorise the app to use that account.

Once your plug, switch or light is set up you should be able to see it when you tap on Lights, Plugs or Switches on the Devices screen in the Alexa app. 

You will want to rename it with a friendly name that’s easy to remember, and which Alexa can easily understand. Do this by tapping on the device in the list, then tap on the cog icon (top right) and then tap Edit name. Just like this:

It’s best to use short, single-word names, but you can experiment and change the name if it isn’t understood by Alexa.

To turn on a light with Alexa, the simplest command is:

• “Alexa, turn on [name of light]”

If your light or switch supports dimming or changing colours, you can also say:

• “Alexa, make the front light purple”
• “Alexa, dim the living room”
• “Alexa, make the kitchen brighter”

How do I control groups of lights with Alexa?

1. Go to Devices in the Alexa app
2. Tap the + icon, top right
3. Tap Add group
4. Pick from the pre-defined names or add a customised name for the group
5. Tap on the devices you want to be in the group
6. Tap SAVE

You can add an Amazon Echo device to the group as well. This is very useful if you have more than one Echo as it allow you to – for example – walk into the living room and say “Alexa, turn on the lights” and she will understand what you mean because you have grouped the Echo in that room with the smart bulbs in that same room.

Once this is done,  you can say, “Alexa, turn on Dining Room” and all devices in that group will be switched on.

In case you need to, here’s how to update your Echo’s software.

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Have you heard? Three’s best ever SIM only deal is back. But looking around popular culture for some clever analogy, we’re going to go with the new series of Love Island…it looks very similar to how it did before, just somehow not quite as good.

So the bare bones of this SIM only deal are exactly the same. £20 per month. Unlimited data, calls and texts. The benefit of Three’s Go Roam, personal hotspot and Wuntu perks. So far, so good.

But where this SIMO used to be for a one year term when it was here before, you now have to commit to two years on this tariff if you want to bag that incredible price. You may see that as a reason to run scared or the idea of bagging such a cheap rate for 24 months of completely unlimited data could be music to your ears.

Alternatively, for the privilege of only being tied in for one year, you can pay an extra £2 per month and still get all of that gloriously infinite data and calls.

You can see the full details of this deal in full below and compare it to the rest of the UK’s SIM only deals, allowing you to see just how much you’re saving.

Three’s (almost) best ever SIM only deal in full:

Why go for a Three SIM only deal?

If you haven’t already been won over by this amazing offer then you’ll be excited to hear that Three doesn’t shy away from offering up some extra incentives as well. Whether that be free exclusive prizes or extra roaming. You can see all of best parts of a Three SIM only deal down below.

• Wuntu – Exclusive offers and freebies with Three’s rewards app
• Go Roam – Roaming abilities in 71 worldwide countries at no extra cost
• Travel Swagger – Get travel upgrades with Easyjet with bag drop and early boarding

SIM only deals for commitment-phobes

Feeling jittery about being tied into this contract for two long years?

If you want more flexibility to cancel, then check out that only makes you commit to 30 days at a time instead.

What’s more, you’ll currently get your second month completely free AND Smarty will send you a £25 Amazon voucher as an added bonus. Brilliant!

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YouTube is one of many companies that has given its logo a rainbow-themed makeover to show support for LGBT rights – but, underneath the colourful veneer, a row has erupted over how the video-sharing site enforces its own hate-speech policies.

At the centre of the dispute is journalist Carlos Maza, who presents a popular series called Strikethrough for the news site Vox.

He says he has faced persistent abuse from rival video-maker Steven Crowder, who has more than 3.8 million subscribers on YouTube.

Whenever Maza publishes a video for Vox, Crowder will post his own “debunking” video, peppered with insulting language attacking Maza’s sexual orientation and ethnicity.

So, last week, Maza posted a video compilation of the abuse.

In the clips, Crowder imitates Maza’s accent and calls him, among other things, a “lispy queer”, a “gay Vox sprite” and a “gay Mexican”.

Maza asked YouTube to step in.

“These videos get millions of views on YouTube. Every time one gets posted, I wake up to a wall of homophobic/racist abuse on Instagram and Twitter,” he said in a tweet.

“These videos make me a target of ridiculous harassment.”

YouTube said it would investigate.

It conducted an “in-depth review” and on Tuesday it came back with an answer.

“While we found language that was clearly hurtful, the videos as posted don’t violate our policies,” it said in a statement.

‘Friendly ribbing’

YouTube’s response has been met with a mixed reaction.

Many people want to frame the dispute as a battle over free speech.

Crowder himself claimed the row was not about abuse but “an example of a giant corporate media entity [Vox] trying to silence voices they do not like”.

He said the language he used to mock Maza was “friendly ribbing”.

“It’s funny and this is a comedy show. ‘Lispy queer’ is harmless and I enjoy saying it,” he said in a video.

But others have said if YouTube itself accepted the videos were “hurtful”, it was failing to enforce its own policies.

It rules prohibit content that:

• is deliberately posted in order to humiliate someone
• makes hurtful and negative personal comments about another person

But YouTube said Crowder’s comments did not violate the policies because they were sandwiched between “debate”.

In notes provided by Google and published by news site Gizmodo, the company said: “We take into consideration whether criticism is focused primarily on debating the opinions expressed or is solely malicious.”

YouTube’s social media pages are currently decorated with rainbow-themed graphics, in support of LGBT rights.

But Maza said the video-sharing site was “exploiting” LGBT people.

“It’s going to get so much worse now. YouTube has publicly stated that racist and homophobic abuse doesn’t violate their anti-bullying policies,” he said.

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Windows 10 making the move from sharp edges to rounded corners with its interface is looking a more likely prospect given the emergence of further evidence that this is Microsoft’s plan.

This news comes via an official proposal posted on Github by Sravya Vishnubhatla, a Program Manager at Microsoft, to give various controls and boxes rounded corners, to be more consistent with contemporary web and app styling.

Of course, we’ve already seen that Microsoft is thinking about bringing back rounded corners to Windows 10 with the 20H1 update, or is at least testing the concept right now.

In this fresh proposal, Vishnubhatla notes: “Update default control styles with rounded corners and make them easy to customize. Developers should not have to re-template the controls to ‘unround’ the corners or round them further.”

The broad aim is to make the common controls developers use consistent with each other, and to achieve more overall consistency across Windows 10 as a whole, from the desktop UI to the various apps used with it.

The future Windows 10, then, may have rounded windows, buttons, sliders, pop-up dialog boxes, and so forth. A number of examples are shown off, as Windows Latest highlights, such as a time picker box (which allows you to select an hour, and a minute) that has rounded corners and also a Fluent Design shadow behind it.

Don’t stay sharp

As you’re no doubt aware, Windows 10 currently uses sharp edges, and this is very much in contrast to other modern operating systems like Apple’s macOS which goes with smooth and rounded corners.

Of course, this new look for the interface is still very much at the development and testing stage, so there’s no telling whether it will actually be realized in Windows 10. If it is, however, the likelihood is that the rounded design language will also come to other Microsoft products like Office and the Xbox games console – as this seems to be all about consistency across the board.

There are certainly supporters for the new look, although equally, folks who aren’t so impressed with the idea. One commenter on the proposal observed: “For me having rounded corners everywhere would mean Windows would lose its distinctive look it has ever since the introduction of the metro design language and fluent design.”

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Vinyl records might be enjoying something of a comeback, but listening to them when you’re out and about is nigh-on impossible. The answer is to convert them to a digital format which you can put on your phone, USB stick or even on your car stereo. This also provides you with a backup of the albums, should disaster occur and the disc gets scratched.

How do I connect a turntable to my computer?

There are four elements you’ll need to turn your 33s, 45s, or 78s into MP3s. They are as follows;

• A record player (turntable)
• Connecting cables
• A PC or laptop
• Recording software
• Analogue to digital converter*

*If you’ve bought a turntable recently then it might have a USB port, which means the unit already contains a D2A converter and can be connected directly to your PC. 

Also, if your record player has a built-in pre-amp, you can connect an RCA-to-minijack cable to the audio or microphone input on your PC.

Otherwise you’ll need to route the record player’s output through an analogue to digital converter (with a built-in pre-amp) and then to your PC.

See our roundup of the best turntables if you want to buy a new one.

If you’re using a laptop, then it’s advisable to use a D2A converter even if your turntable has a pre-amp, as the mic input on computers are often mono, and won’t give sparkling results.

You can find convertors such as the VTOP USB audio capture card on Amazon for around £15/$15, but audiophiles might want to opt for a more premium model if they want the highest possible audio quality.

The software options are varied. is free, reliable, and can get the job done. It does require you to be quite hands-on in regards to editing though, manually breaking up the recording of the album into separate tracks for each song.

If you’re happy to invest a little, then is a dedicated app that automates most of the process and splits tracks by itself, saving you the hassle. Its costs $29.95 in the US and around £24 in the UK.

For this tutorial we’ll be using Audacity, as it’s available to everyone.

Convert vinyl to MP3 with Audacity

Connect your turntable to your PC, using whatever cables are relevant to your particular setup.

You’ll then need to adjust the settings on your PC so that it knows to use the newly attached device. This is done by opening the Start Menu and typing in Control Panel. Select the option that appears at the top, then navigate to Hardware & Sound>Sound.

Select the Recording tab in the window that appears, and choose the option that matches your turntable.

Open Audacity then go to the menu bar at the top of the screen and select Edit>Preferences>Devices, then look in the Interface section for an option called MME. Select that, then check the Recording section to ensure that your turntable is the chosen option and 2 (Stereo) is selected in the Channels field.

One last tweak is found by clicking on the Recording section in the left-hand column, then enabling the Software Playthrough option. With all this done, click OK.

Now you’re ready to record the audio. Before beginning, you’ll want to test levels to make sure the signal isn’t too loud, as this will cause distortion. Start playing the album on your turntable, then pay attention to the Input signals in the top right of the screen.

These should stay green for the vast majority of the playthrough, but if they hit red then you’ll want to use the input slider (the one with a microphone icon) to bring the signal down a bit.

Once you’re happy with this, reset the needle so it’s at the start of the album, hit the Record button on Audacity, and start playing. You’ll need to pause the recording when you get to the end of side one, flip the album over, put the needle on the record, then unpause the recording once more.

Once playback has finished, stop the recording and save the file.

You’ll now need to break the long, uninterrupted track into separate songs. This is achieved by placing the Audacity playhead back at the start of the album, then selecting Tracks from the menu at the top of the page.

From the drop-down menu, select Add Label At Selection, then enter the name of the first song. Move through the whole track, repeating this process where you see the gaps that indicate the beginning of a new song.

Finally, go to File>Export Multiple, select the format you want (such as MP3 or FLAC), then click Export. If you do opt for MP3, you’ll see an error message that the required lame_enc.dll isn’t present, which is normal: Audacity doesn’t come with this codec. But it will give you a link to download the file and explain where to put it in File Explorer. 

Once the export process has finished, you should now have a collection of tracks within a folder that can be played in any music player you choose, copied onto a USB stick and transferred to your phone or any other compatible device.

Recording your old tapes is a similar process which we detail in How to convert cassettes to digital.

Click here for the best Microsoft voucher codes.

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It is rare that we get the chance to celebrate the affordability of Samsung Galaxy S10 deals –  it is one of the pricier phones on the market after all. So when a deal comes around that majorly drops the price, we’re going to shout about it from the roof tops.

Our most recent bout of roof top cheers is brought on by Carphone Warehouse. Dropping a big data Samsung S10 at £38 a month and just £29.99 upfront, this undercuts the pricing of most other offers on this device.

The value steps up another notch considering Carphone has dropped a welcoming 30GB of data with this offer. That means you won’t ever find yourself restricting your internet use or Netflix binge sessions to get you through each month.

You can see this deal and find out more about why the S10 could be a good fit for you below. But if you’re still not convinced – affordable pricing and all – you can check out our guide to the best mobile phone deals to see what else is available.

• Compare these offers to the best of Apple with our iPhone deals page

This brilliant Galaxy S10 deal in full

Why go for the Samsung Galaxy S10? 

Fitting perfectly between Samsung’s affordable S10e and the mammoth device – the S10 Plus – this phone is the perfect middle ground. You’re getting a high-quality screen, in-screen fingerprint scanner and a powerful battery/processor combo. A quick glance at our best smartphone guide shows we currently rank it as the third best phone in the world.

Read our full Samsung Galaxy S10 review here

Read more:

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Tory leadership candidate Matt Hancock is against the exclusion of Huawei from the UK’s telecoms infrastructure and has instead called on the government to create a British-based rival.

The contest to replace Theresa May as Prime Minister is taking place amid an ongoing debate about the role of Huawei in the UK’s rollout of 5G, with US President Donald Trump’s arrival on a state visit bringing the conversation to the top of the agenda.

Huawei has long been effectively been frozen out of the US telecoms market due to fears that its equipment is a national security risk, allegations that it has continually denied.

Huawei UK

Last month, US firms were ordered to stop doing business with the company, a decision which means future handsets may no longer receive updates for Google’s Android operating system or access its popular applications. The US government’s actions also make it significantly harder for Huawei to source components for its devices.

America is pressuring allies to follow its lead, despite the absence of any evidence to suggest any wrongdoing from Huawei, and the UK is carrying it out its own assessment. A report was expected to arrive in the Spring but has not yet materialised. Leaks suggested that operators will not be banned from using Huawei kit in the radio layer of their networks, but this has yet to be confirmed.

Tory candidates for the Premiership are split on the issue, but according to The Telegraph, Hancock will use a speech at the Policy Exchange Think Tank to warn against reactive action and simplistic answers.

Trump retreat

The current health minister said a long-term strategy to create a British competitor would be the most effective safeguard against foreign interference and that Huawei should not be banned until mobile operators are able to source kit from an alternative supplier.

UK operators have consistently opposed any restrictions on sourcing Huawei equipment, which is often more innovative and cost-effective than other options, arguing there is no proof that it is insecure. All four operators plan to use Huawei gear in their 5G infrastructure, although not in the core layer.

It has been speculated that any restrictions could lead to delays and cost the UK economy billions.

The US has suggested that it could limit intelligence sharing with the UK if Huawei was not banned, while Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt has said it is listening to America’s warnings. However, Prime Minister Theresa May is believed to have pushed back against Washington’s insistence during talks with Trump earlier this week.

In a joint-press conference, Trump appeared to retreat from a hard-line stance. When asked whether it would restrict British access to US intelligence, Trump replied: “No, because we’re going to have absolutely an agreement on Huawei and everything else. We have an incredible intelligence relationship and we will be able to work out any differences. I think we’re not going to have it. We did discuss it. I see absolutely no limitations. We’ve never had limitations.”

via Telegraph

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