So, did I feel better? Obviously I can’t vouch for whether it’s made me less prone to disease, but I slept well, was significantly more hydrated and possibly calmer. If you’ve money to burn and are serious about your health, the Echo Flask could be a good place to start. Source link
I’m a heavy user of Amazon’s Echo ecosystem (and there’s power in owning more than one), and lately, Alexa has gotten a huge upgrade with Alexa Plus, which has literally changed my life. But something people don’t give Amazon enough credit for, especially with the Echo Studio line, is the incredible sound quality, especially when you enable and properly set up spatial audio on compatible Amazon Echo devices. This spatial audio feature is usually off by default, and you should really start using it because, with compatible audio sources, the audio experience can be truly breathtaking with vast sound stages and incredible dynamic range (the Echo Studio has seven beam-forming microphones it uses to “listen” to how sound behaves in your room, and can adjust its output to create a feeling of depth and space in your music). Let’s dive into how to get the most out of your Amazon Echos by properly setting up spatial audio. What is spatial audio? You must have a compatible Amazon Echo Credit: Brandon Miniman / MakeUseOf Spatial audio is …
Donald Trump doesn’t like protesters — at least the ones who don’t carry tiki torches while chanting “blood and soil” or who storm the Capitol to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power. During his first campaign for president, he was known to encourage people to “knock the hell out of” protesters at his rallies. After the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, Trump became maniacal in his loathing for what he called the “radical left.” He wanted to unleash the military onto the streets and even tried to order his defense secretary, Mark Esper, to shoot the demonstrators. So it should come as no surprise that protesters have become a target in Trump’s inhumane mass deportation campaign. On Saturday the Wall Street Journal reported that Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Patrol’s practice of arresting American citizens who are protesting the policy is a deliberate strategy to, as they put it, “detain and demonize dissenters” who are simply exercising their First Amendment rights. The cases are typically not supported by evidence, so they …
Ian McCulloch once cheekily described the Bunnymen as “the greatest band in the world, the greatest songs in the history of time and the greatest singer”, although you’d be hard pushed to find evidence of the latter at this show. Things begin promisingly enough with the darkly powerful Going Up and All That Jazz from 1980’s Crocodiles, the first of the terrific four-album run which blended psychedelia, post-punk and classic songwriting to turn the Liverpudlians into one of most hallowed bands of the decade. However, the singer seems to be suddenly irritated by the bass sound, and grows increasingly tetchy as he jabs a finger towards an amplifier and summons a crew member on stage. After starting the gig standing tall in trademark shades and overcoat, McCulloch then requests a stool and remains perched on it for the rest of the night, sipping and mumbling incoherently between songs. At 66, the singer can’t be expected to hit the notes he did aged 22, but he doesn’t attempt the choruses of Bring on the Dancing Horses, …
During the run-up to the Iraq War, one of the tropes that was passed around by the George W. Bush’s band of neoconservatives, who were at the height of their hubristic, premature victory celebration, was “Everybody wants to go to Bagdad, real men want to go to Tehran.” Twenty-three years later, at a time when he is reeling from collapsing poll numbers and a major economic and foreign policy setback from the Supreme Court, Donald Trump has taken the nation to the edge of war with Iran. The U.S. has assembled a massive military force in the region. Two aircraft carriers are leading an armada of a dozen warships and what experts say is 40-50% of the country’s total global air power to threaten the Islamic Republic into — what we aren’t quite sure. The president, along with his Middle East envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, hasn’t exactly been forthcoming with a casus belli. In fact, no one knows precisely why the administration is threatening military action or what it wants Iran to do …
If you’re like me and have an Amazon Echo in nearly every room of your house (and if you do, make sure you’re taking advantage of having multiple Amazon Echos in your home), you know how great it is to have ambient AI in every room. If you happen to own one of the Echos that contains a camera, there’s a facial recognition feature called Visual ID that can recognize the face of everyone in your family (if you set it up right) so that Alexa can take action when it “sees” a certain member of your family or household. This is a very powerful feature that will make your smart home even smarter. How to set up Visual ID You’ll first have to do a facial scan Credit: Brandon Miniman / MakeUseOf The prerequisite here is that you must own an Echo that has a camera from 2021 and onward (you can see a full list of compatible devices on the Amazon Echo website), and it’s important to place the Echo in a central location …
If you’re like me, you probably own more than one Amazon Echo. In fact, I have one in nearly every room of my house, and the new Alexa+ features have changed my life for the better. But what you might not be aware of is that having more than one Amazon Echo at home unlocks a bunch of interesting features that can make life easier, especially for communicating with your family and even for remote-controlling other Echo devices. Prerequisites Do these things first to enable features for multiple Echos A lot of the features I’m going to cover require you to give each of your Echos a unique name so you can refer to them individually. To do this, open the Alexa app -> Settings -> Device Settings -> tap on the Device -> type in a unique name. You’ll want to use practical, memorable names, like “kitchen” for the kitchen or “Bob’s room” for Bob’s room. Broadcast to your entire home Intercom, drop-in, and announcement features Credit: Brandon Miniman / MakeUseOf There are three communication …
You can play music, radio or podcasts through a wide range of audio devices nowadays, from phones and noise cancelling headphones to Bluetooth speakers and audio systems. But in the last decade, a more convenient and cutting-edge lifestyle speaker has emerged: the smart speaker. Smart speakers are defined by their built-in voice control, giving you access to a cloud-based virtual assistant such as Alexa or Siri for hands-free music playback, calls and control of connected smart home appliances. These voice assistants are also at your beck and call for reading the news aloud, setting alarms and timers, creating to-do lists, answering general questions, and much more. It’s little wonder smart speakers account for 26 per cent of all listening at home in the UK, according to a 2025 Ofcom report. I’ve tried all the latest smart speakers, including Amazon’s new Echos, and you can read my reviews in full below, followed by answers to some frequently asked questions. Here’s a quick look at my top five. Which are the best smart speakers? At a glance …
For as long as downtown L.A. has been a bustling center for American business and trade, Echo Park has been its nearest escape. A slow walk down the neighborhood’s winding boulevards and up its remarkably steep hillside streets — if you dare — is the best way to take in one of Southern California’s first suburbs. Get to know Los Angeles through the places that bring it to life. From restaurants to shops to outdoor spaces, here’s what to discover now. The stately Victorian homes to which 19th century business leaders would retire after long days at their downtown offices are still intact, perched on the high ground above Sunset Boulevard along Carroll Avenue, with a few holdouts along its parallel streets. So is Keystone Studios, the world’s first enclosed film stage and studio and the birthplace of slapstick comedy, though it has since been repurposed as a public storage facility (not the worst case of historic preservation in Los Angeles). Even some of the first efforts to make Los Angeles a viable Anglo-American settlement …
