David Cogen

How to Make a Phone Call Using Google Home (& Use Your Actual Phone Number)

Google has finally started rolling out their new Google Home feature that allows you to call someone. As in, actually call their real cell phone, not just ring their Google Home app if they happen to have one installed. The feature only works in you are in the US or Canada at the moment and requires that you speak English (sorry, my French Canadian friends) and although all of the things you need to make it work aren’t immediately apparent, once you know, it’s pretty easy. Here’s everything you need to start making calls using the Google Home. Check You […]

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How to Create Custom Commands for Google Home or Amazon Echo (Video)

Voice assistants are pretty convenient. You can ask them the weather when you get up in the morning, have them set timers, even put them into infinite loops for your own entertainment, but despite these things, they definitely have a limited number of commands you can issue. Now, short of developing an app using the voice assistant APIs, there doesn’t seem to be an easy way to add your own custom actions and triggers to Google Home, Echo, etc. Thankfully though, IFTTT exists. IFTTT (If This Then That) is a popular program that allows you to create triggers and actions

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8 Cheapest Qi Chargers You Can Buy (Video)

So a while back I did a video on some of the best Qi chargers and while they were awesome chargers they weren’t terribly inexpensive. So afterward it got me wondering something–how cheap could you get a Qi charger for. I went searching the web and ended up finding some on Amazon that I bought and tested that worked great and were inexpensive as well as found a few in a place that I probably should have guessed to find really cheap Qi chargers–China. Qi Chargers in My Shop ALOOK Qi charging pad YoTech Qi charger Omoton charger Now for

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How to Send a Text Message From Your Amazon Echo

Amazon just added a new feature this week to Alexa: the ability to send text messages from an Android phone. You’ve been able to send messages from one Echo to another or to a phone using the Alexa app, but now you can send them as an actual SMS and have it show in your normal Android messaging app. Here’s how to send text messages using your Echo. How to Setup SMS on Your Amazon Echo Open the Alexa app on your Android phone. Tap on the Conversations icon at the bottom (looks like a speech bubble). Tap on the

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How to Remove Your Voice History from Google Assistant and Alexa

Whenever you say the wake word for either Alexa or Google Home, the devices don’t just listen to what you’re saying after, they record it and upload it to the cloud in order to do their magic. Personally, I don’t have too much of an issue with this myself, but I do get the concern from people about all this data being stored and somehow being used against them in the future. So, if you happen to be one of those with the odd predicament of being concerned about this but also willing to use the Alexa and Home, here’s

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The Best Battery Life Phone of 2017 (Surprising Results) (Video)

OK, part two of my series on putting the top 2017 phones to the test (if you haven’t seen the first one, check it out at the link below when you’re done here). Basically, though, I’m taking the best phones of 2017 and putting them side by side in some scientific, not really that scientific, tests. Today’s test is battery life. So for this test, I picked the phones that in my own personal use case have the best chance of winning this and put them against one another. This means that any of these phones are already really good

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How to Easily Turn Live Photos into Gifs on Your iPhone

I’ve never really been a fan of live photos on iOS. Frankly, I just really don’t have a use for a few second video before and after a photo, especially when you couldn’t edit this tiny clip. But, there was a small change in iOS 11 that made their usefulness change a bit. Apple decided to let you edit them and even easily turn live photos into gifs. With that, they’ve become a slightly better medium for capturing content than they were. Instead of this random tiny video, they can become pleasant surprises of accidental moments during a photo shoot

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Why Windows 10S is Just What Windows Needs (Video)

Windows 10S: faster, better battery life, and limited to Microsoft Store only apps. That last part doesn’t sound good but wait. Since it’s only store apps allowed they are vetted and optimized, and more importantly, are packaged in a way that they can’t affect Windows startup and are sandboxed from the rest of the system, much like MacOS. This is in comparison to regular exe programs that can basically do anything they want to your PC (and hence the for a lot more anti-virus software on a PC, etc.). Because they can’t affect the system’s registry and use a virtual

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How to Use Drop In on the Amazon Echo, Echo Dot, & Echo Show

I first used drop in on the Amazon Echo Show when I was having a party and had to run out while people were still there to get some things we needed. When I got to the grocery store, I decided to test it out and see how everyone in the party reacted. I opened the Alexa app on my phone and dropped into the Echo Show in my kitchen, instantly opening up a video call with some of my friends who visibly jumped at the abrupt sight of my face holding a few limes in my hands. “Is this all we

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Best Looking Home Monitoring Camera Ever

The Best Looking Smart Indoor Camera Ever (Video)

So Hive reached out to me and said they wanted me to come by and check out their booth at CES and show me a new device they were launching. Honestly, I’ve heard the name before but wasn’t that familiar with them. So decided to do some digging first. Turns out their actually super popular in the UK as the leading smart home brand their in over 750,000 homes. They sell a variety of starter packs with different lifestyles in mind from a basic starter pack with a a hub, a smart plug, 2 smart light bulbs, and two window/door

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How to Download Other People’s Instagram Stories (iOS/Android)

So I’m not sure I can think of a why you’d want to download someone else’s story necessarily. Maybe you’re a big fan of someone and want a keepsake? I don’t know. But I did think it was super interesting that you even could save someone’s story so figured I’d do a quick tutorial on how to do that for anyone who has a reason to or just wants to see how it’s done. Essentially, we’re going to use one of two apps, one for iOS and one for Android. How to Download Instagram Stories on iOS First up, iOS

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Samsung’s “The Wall” TV & Their New 8K Upscaling TV (Video)

Here we go with another quick and dirty CES video for you guys. Samsung announced a couple of TVs that were interesting. The first, called The Wall, because it is the size of the average wall in an American household apparently, is a massive 146″ flat TV. It’s so big, that you can even make it display a wall with shelves and a decent sized TV on it if you wanted. It honestly wouldn’t fit in my NYC apt, but I think if you wanted to convert a one bedroom apt into a 2 bedroom you could probably use this

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Samsung Notebook 7 Spin, Notebook 9, and Notebook 9 Pen (Video)

Samsung showed off three new laptops today at CES. The Notebook 7 Spin, the Notebook 9, and the Notebook 9 Pen. Here’s what they’re all about. The first is the Notebook 7 Spin. It’s a 2-in-1 format with a 360 degree FHD 13.3″ screen. It’s Active Pen enabled but the pen is sold separately, has an 8th gen Intel i5 processor, 8GBs of RAM, and 256GBs of storage. It has a dedicated fingerprint scanner for Windows Hello and has a far-field mic for the Voice note application for meetings or lectures (and even supposedly removes keyboard sounds when you’re running

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Tango vs ARCore: What is the Future of AR on Android?

Difference Between Tango and ARCore Google originally dropped the Project moniker in front of Project Tango just last June to signal it was out of beta and the new hardware focused AR program was ready for the mainstream. Two consumer devices were launched including the Lenovo Phab 2 Pro and the newer Asus Zenfone AR. These devices have some extra hardware to help them sense where you are in the world as well as where other items are (super important in AR applications, of course). These include a barometer for elevation, dedicated motion tracking camera, dedicated infrared depth-sensing camera, a

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Razer Project Linda: Turn Your Razer Phone Into a Laptop (Video)

I’m here at CES and wanted to try and get some videos out for you guys of some of the stuff I’m being shown. This is a tech convention though, so please excuse the quick and dirty nature of these. First up, let’s talk about Razer. Razer, as is Razer fashion, had a new Project to unveil at CES. This time it’s called Project Linda and is a laptop dock for your Razer phone. Project Linda is based on the Razer Stealth design with the same length and width but is slightly thicker by a hair and definitely lighter (thanks to

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