Having a smart home doesn’t necessarily mean you need to spend tons of money on dozens of smart devices. A few smart plugs can change things up quite a bit, allowing you to remotely turn on and off “dumb” devices without replacing them. And right now, you can get started with a pair of Kasa Smart Plugs for only $11 (was $20) with discount code 4KASAPLUG stacked on top of the current 25% product discount. Kasa’s Smart Plugs are tiny enough that you can fit two snugly into a double outlet, which is pretty awesome and makes it easy to get started if you don’t have any smart devices at all. Anything you plug into the Kasa Smart Plug will be controllable via the app, allowing you to turn the outlet on and off remotely. It’s great for lamps, fans, Christmas lights, and more. These smart plugs are compatible with both Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, so you can easily integrate them if you already have a burgeoning smart home of either ecosystem. Use voice commands to shut off the lamp in the living room while you’re already nestled in nicely in bed. You can also use a timer or countdown schedules to automatically turn on and off any appliances plugged into these smart plugs. You’ll love how easy it is to control certain outlets right from your phone, and getting two smart plugs for $11 is a great deal! Get two Kasa Smart Plugs for 45% off right nowBuy now at Amazon Read...

It’s funny how as most electronics have become smaller yet more powerful, big-ass screens keep getting bigger yet more affordable. (Try to buy a phone with a screen smaller than six inches, if you don’t believe me.) Right now, you can get the biggest OLED monitor on the market for just $899 on Amazon. And unlike some alternatives, this Asus monitor pairs great with gaming laptops. The Asus ROG Swift PG49WCD uses the same 49-inch 144Hz panel that Samsung, LG, and other gaming monitor makers do. Honestly, they’re probably coming from the same factory. So it’s up to individual manufacturers to distinguish their designs beyond that 5120×1440 resolution, which is basically two QHD monitors squished together on one curved screen. Asus does this with some extra I/O prowess. In addition to the usual HDMI and DisplayPort options, you get a USB-C port with 90 watts of power delivery, which should be enough even for thirsty gaming laptops. An extra pair of USB-A ports lets the built-in KVM switch do its thing for multiple PCs at once. Other highlights include a beefy heatsink to protect the OLED panel, various software tricks like pixel cleaning and screen moving to do the same thing, and three years of warranty coverage for burn-in if that stuff isn’t quite enough. Oh, and according to the Amazon listing, buying this monitor will get you a free copy of Doom: The Dark Ages. Hell yeah! You can use the savings to get a VESA mount for a stylish upgrade, but keep in mind that you might need an upgraded model to handle its weight. If this monitor isn’t quite what you’re looking for, be sure to check out PCWorld’s picks for the best monitors. Save $300 on this 49-inch OLED ultrawide gaming monitor (and get a free copy of Doom: The Dark Ages with it)Buy now on Amazon Read...

Most of the long and thin smart floor lamps we’ve tried are all about casting bold splashes of color on the wall, perfect for setting a mood but not must help when it comes to reading, dining, or getting something done. But with its new line of Matter-enabled lamps, Govee hopes to bring the dazzle without forgetting the productivity.   Govee already has several floor lamps in its portfolio, including two that we’ve reviewed, the Govee Floor Lamp Pro and the Floor Lamp 2. We admired both lamps, which have long, thin, stick-light designs that cast multicolored and even animated light on your walls. But while both lamps can serve up eye-catching color scenes, they’re not really designed for illuminating your reading nook or dining table.  With its trio of new floor lamps, Govee is trying something different. The first lamp boasts a three-zone lamp head that casts light up as well as down; the second model comes with a torchiere design; and the third is a tree-style floor lamp with three adjustable arms. All three lamps are compatible with Matter, the smart-home unifying standard, and all are designed to cast white light as well as color, with the traditional lamp-head and tree-style lamps particularly well suited for reading or workspaces.  First up, the Govee Uplighter Floor Lamp ($179.99, available now) has an upper zone that can splash up to 20 square meters of multicolored light on the ceiling, while a middle RGBIC zone serves up a groovy decorative glow.   The Govee Uplighter Floor Lamp can cast cool ripple effects on your ceiling, but that’s not all it can do.Govee Crucially, though, the lower section can cast up to 1,000 lumens of white light, with temperatures ranging from a warm 2,700 Kelvin to a daylight-equivalent 6,500K. That means the Uplighter Floor lamp can either cast a nifty ripple effect on your ceiling or bathe your reading nook in warm white light—or do both at the same time, if you wish. We’ve had the opportunity to perform a full Govee Uplighter Floor Lamp review and we like it. The Govee Torchiere Floor Lamp ($149.99, available July 7) is the lone lamp of the trio that’s more focused on ambient light, with three curved lenses capable of splashing mulitcolored light on up to 16 square meters of ceiling space.   Thanks to those curved lenses, the three light zones can seamlessly blend to create rainbow effects or other colorful light scenes. When tuned to a daylight-equivalent 6,500K white-color temperature, the Torchiere Floor Lamp can cast up to 780 lumens of brightness.  The Govee Torchiere Floor Lamp has three curved lenses that can cast seamless rainbow effects on your ceiling, as well as a range of warm and cool white light.Govee Finally, the Govee Tree Floor Lamp ($169.99, available July 7) has a three-arm, tree-style design, with each arm capable of 350-degree horizontal and 90-degree vertical rotation. The light cast by the lamp heads can also be focused from 90 degrees to 30 degrees, allowing for either wide splashes of color or narrow cones of light.   Again, both multicolor and white light will be on tap, with white light temperatures ranging from a warm 2,700K to a cooler 6,500K. That means you could turn the top two lamp heads toward the wall for ambient splashes of color, while the third arm could be focused downward for use as a reading light. The three arms of the Govee Tree Floor Lamp can be adjusted indepedently, meaning they can wash colors on your walls as well as cast focused cones of white light.Govee Set to its coolest 6,500K white color temperature, the Tree Floor Lamp can generate up to 1,500 lumens of brightness.  All three of the new Govee lamps can sync with music with help from their integrated microphones, and all can be grouped using the Govee app, which also offers dozens of animated light modes along with the ability to create your own lighting effects.   Even better, the new lamps all work with Matter, the new standard that bridges the gaps between Alexa, Apple Home, Google Home, Samsung SmartThings, and other Matter-compatible smart home platforms. That means you can use your choice of voice assistant or smart home app to control basic features, although more complex functionality (such as creating your own animations) will require the Govee app.  This news story is part of TechHive’s in-depth coverage of the best smart lights. One feature that the new Govee lamps don’t have is an integrated Bluetooth speaker. The Govee Floor Lamp Pro has a Bluetooth speaker built into its base, making it easy to stream tunes from your phone and sync the music to the lamp’s LEDs. If you want Govee’s new floor lamps to sync with your tunes, you’ll need to supply your own music source. Read...

At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros I’ve never seen a lamp that can provide more types of lighting on a single device Easy setup and installation Massive number of preloaded scenes Cons Ripple effect can be polarizing Overall hardware design feels a bit dated Not cheap Our Verdict The Govee Uplighter Floor Lamp is nothing if not an acquired taste. The rippling uplight effect won’t be for everyone, but it can be dazzling in the right environment. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: Check today’s prices Do-it-all smart home outfit Govee seemingly will not rest until every square inch of your home has light cast upon it. Its latest floor lamp/torchiere joins at least four previous freestanding lamp designs, along with two new floor lamps being launched alongside this one, the Uplighter. The name tells the story in part: In addition to providing task-based downlight illumination, the Uplighter is particularly designed with upward-firing accent illumination in mind, along with a third, side-lighting mode. Featuring lights designed with “enhanced RGBWWIC” LEDs (the acronym indicates there are discrete elements for producing red, green, blue, white, and warm white light), which Govee says “seamlessly blends dynamic color effects with practical white lighting,” the three lighting zones work like this: Downlighting: 1,000 lumens from warm-white LEDs to provide tunable, white-light-only illumination for use as traditional, downward-firing task lighting. Uplighting: This is really the main event. About 300 lumens of RGBWW lights fire upwards, painting the ceiling with a ripple effect (which I’ll elaborate upon in a moment). Sidelighting: Finally, a ring of RGBIC LEDs add a purely decorative accent element that can be used to complement either the down- or uplighting feature. There’s no luminosity spec provided, but this section isn’t bright. The Govee Uplighter Floor Lamp can deliver up to 1,000 lumens of downlighting with its dimmable warm-white LEDs.Christopher Null/Foundry All of these lighting components are contained in a single head unit, which is attached to the top of a metal pole that’s a little more than five feet long. The pole comes pre-wired, in pieces which are simply screwed together, sans tools. With the base and head unit, the system comprises a total of six pieces that must be connected, not including the standard A/C adapter. Things get wild with the Govee Uplighter’s upward-firing light; its task lighting function is largely traditional. Note that the head of the lamp can be tilted up to 30 degrees in any direction, which is useful for directing task lighting or, perhaps, for aiming the uplighting element, if you have a sloped ceiling. (Note, however, that it is difficult to make sure the head unit is level, as the ball-and-socket joint has no system for determining when it’s level with the floor.) Using the Govee Uplighter Floor Lamp A pair of buttons on the uppermost segment of the pole can be used to manually power the lamp on and off and cycle through lighting modes on both the up- and downlighting sections. A long-press on the scene button also switches uplighting on and downlighting off, and vice versa on the following press. The various presets for the scene button can be customized by the user. The Govee Uplighter sits atop a nearly 5-foot pole, which is prewired but you’ll need to make the final assembly.Christopher Null/Foundry As with all things Govee, the lamp is designed to work with the Govee app and sets up over 2.4GHz Wi-Fi. The app auto-discovered the lamp once I powered it on, and a single press of a button on the hardware was all it took to complete the connection to my network. As a task light, the lamp is solid, offering illumination that was more than bright enough for me to work under at full strength. (Even at about 20 percent brightness, I was still easily able to read by its light.) Color temperatures supported a range from 2700K to 6500K, providing more than enough variety for whatever mood you’re trying to set. While the task lighting function is largely traditional, the upward-firing light is where things get wild. First, it’s important to note the upper light is exclusively designed to showcase a “ripple effect” that looks exactly how it sounds. Wavy bands of color shimmer and dance on the ceiling, waving back and forth either in monochrome or with multiple colors, keeping with one color scheme or cycling through multiples. The Govee Uplighter Floor Lamp can project beautiful patterns onto your ceiling, but the effect becomes less pronounced the higher your ceiling.Christopher Null/Foundry It’s a bit like the effect of a swimming pool reflecting onto the ceiling at night; but not quite, especially since the ripple effect eventually stops and reverses, which is a little jarring if you happen to catch it happening live. It turns out the effect is largely mechanical, and you can see the bulb under the rippled glass physically rotating if you watch closely. A music mode that changes the lighting in time with ambient sound is also included and can use either the lamp’s microphone or your phone’s for its source, but the ripple effect remains. Lighting effects As is always the case with Govee, the user is given a seemingly infinite number of preloaded scenes to play with, whether you want your ceiling to look like it’s bathed in white moonlight, red flames, or chaotic graffiti (found under the “Funny” scene selections). Everything is displayed with that shimmering ripple effect. Of course, you can always DIY a scene of your own if nothing on the menu works for you, use Govee’s AI mode to ask for a bespoke scene, or check out the “Share Space” feature, where other Govee users can upload their own illuminated art. The sidelighting system includes another 8 segments of LEDs that you can play with to complement either the uplighting or downlighting modes—either as accent or contrast—and many of the built-in modes have preloaded settings to control the sidelighting as well. You can also control this lighting directly, even going to far as to address each of the 8 LED segments individually with their own color. You’ll find a dizzying array of lighting effects in patterns in Govee’s app. Christopher Null/Foundry What can’t you do with the Uplighter? The big limitation is that you can’t run both uplighting and downlighting simultaneously. While the sidelighting system can operate with either, Govee’s position is that task lighting and mood lighting are mutually exclusive. And to reiterate, there’s no color downlighting on the device, because Govee also seems to say that when you’re supposed to be working, you can’t be having fun. The height of your ceiling matters when it comes to the ripple effect. Beneath a low, 7-foot ceiling, the ripple is bright, commanding a tight area about 4 feet across. But cast on a 12-foot ceiling, the ripple spreads across about 12 feet of space, with its brightness significantly diminished. You won’t readily be able to alter this, of course, beyond adjusting the placement and brightness of the lamp. Power consumption The Govee Uplighter Floor Lamp offers a decidedly modern aesthetic.Christopher Null/Foundry Govee breaks down the power draw of the lamp by section: The downlight draws up to 9 watts, the sidelight 3.8 watts, and the uplight 17.8 watts, all of which seem reasonable. Support for Matter, Alexa, and Google Assistant are all also included – though as is common with complex lighting products like this, third-party ecosystems will greatly limit how much you can do with the device. That said, I had no trouble getting the Uplighter set up in each of them. This review is part of TechHive’s in-depth coverage of the best smart lighting. Should you buy the Govee Uplighter Floor Lamp? For $180, the Govee Uplighter might well be the most expensive torchiere in your home; it will likely also be your biggest conversation piece. The purchase decision, however, will almost exclusively come down to your thoughts about the ripple effect on your ceiling. I think it’s kind of cool, but my wife took one look at it and made a face. You know the one. Read...

At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Syncs across Mac, iPhone, and iPad Comprehensive editing and annotation tools Simple, intuitive interface Cons Requires annual payment Lifetime license enables use on Mac only Our Verdict PDF Expert is an excellent PDF editor that fits seamlessly in the Apple ecosystem. It’s our pick for Mac, iPad, and iPhone users. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: Check today’s prices MacOS includes a capable PDF editor in its Preview app, but iOS devices don’t have any native PDF editing capabilities. That leaves users to seek out third-party solutions, and Readdle’s PDF Expert is one of the most popular. The editor allows you to create, edit, annotate, organize, sign, and protect PDFs whether you’re on your Mac, iPhone, or iPad. In its latest version, PDF Expert adds an AI-powered chat assistant that can summarize documents, extract key points, and even generate hashtags, making it easier than ever to navigate and understand lengthy or complex files. Read on to learn more, then see our roundup of the best PDF editors for comparison. PDF Expert features and design PDF Expert has a clean, intuitive interface that lets you get right to work. Tabs run across the top of the screen—Annotate, Edit, Export, Fill & Sign, Scan Tools and Measure—each revealing an appropriate set of tools when active. When you open a PDF file, it’s displayed in the main pane, and thumbnails of the document pages are displayed in a sidebar on the left. PDF Expert’s latest version adds an AI assistant that can summarize documents and extract key points directly from the PDF. Michael Ansaldo/Foundry Whenever you select an annotation or editing tool to work with, its corresponding options display to the right of the page. Clicking the pen tool, for example, displays sliders to adjust the line width and opacity along with a selection of ink colors. Selecting the text tool opens a display of font settings and sizes. By putting the tools you need at hand instead of requiring you to hunt through menus for them, PDF Expert saves you considerable time on your editing jobs. PDF Expert offers a full slate of annotation tools, allowing you to highlight text and add marginalia, notes, stamps, and shapes. You can capture your signature using your Mac’s keyboard or trackpad, your iPhone’s camera, or an Apple Pencil on your iPad, and sync it across all your Apple devices to sign contracts, invoices, and other documents. The editor also supports forms, automatically detecting and highlighting fields that need to be filled. When you’re working with sensitive documents, you can redact text by erasing it or obscuring it with a black box. You can also protect access to the file by setting a password. You can drag PDF pages to reorder them.Michael Ansaldo/IDG By putting the tools you need at hand instead of requiring you to hunt through menus for them, PDF Expert saves you considerable time on your editing jobs. How much is PDF Expert? You can use PDF Expert across your Mac, iPhone, and iPad for $79.99 a year, which is considerably less than our top two picks, Adobe Acrobat DC and Foxit PDF Editor. A lifetime plan is available for a one-time payment of $139.99, but it only enables use of the editor on your Mac, not your Apple mobile devices. PDF Expert offers a fully-functional 7-day trial of the Mac version, no credit card required, and it’s worth taking advantage of to determine if this robust editor will meet your needs or if you’d be better served by one of the other options in our roundup of the best PDF editors. Is PDF Expert worth it? True to its name, the editor expertly handled every task I threw at it. It makes page management a simple affair, enabling you to reorder pages by simply selecting and dragging them to a new location and add or extract pages with just a few clicks. It can convert scanned documents into editable text with the click of a button, and it converts PDFs into Microsoft Office formats, plain text, or image files. PDF Expert’s new AI chat feature extends this ease of use even further, letting you ask natural-language questions about your document, surface key points, or get a quick summary without reading the entire thing. For Apple users, particularly those with multiple devices, PDF Expert can be a worthwhile investment for a comprehensive and easy-to-use PDF editing toolkit. I only wish the lifetime license covered the whole Apple ecosystem and not just Macs. Read...

If you’re even vaguely paranoid about someone listening in on your conversations, you might be a little anxious about that phone sitting in your pocket going forward—if you use Bluetooth. Newly discovered flaws in Bluetooth security mean that your Bluetooth earbuds and headphones are a lot more vulnerable than you thought. Security researchers at ERNW presented vulnerabilities in widely used Bluetooth hardware, finding three crucial weaknesses and creating a proof-of-concept exploit. The implementation wasn’t all that sinister—just “reading” what media was currently playing—but the three bugs, one of which was rated as a “high severity issue,” could be expanded far beyond snooping on your racy audiobooks. It’s possible that they could be used to execute calls to specific phone numbers, scrape contacts or call history, or in the most extreme cases execute code remotely and fully compromise a connected smartphone. According to BleepingComputer, the affected Bluetooth headphone, speaker, and microphone hardware is used by at least 29 devices (and probably many more) from brands like Bose, Sony, Jabra, JLab, Marshall, and JBL, among others. Notable popular models include the Bose QuietComfort earbuds, Sony’s WF and WH headphone series, and Marshall’s Woburn and Stanmore speakers. That doesn’t mean you should immediately toss your gear in the trash. We’re talking about some pretty in-depth research from people whose entire job is to find and fix these vulnerabilities, and there’s no indication that these problems are actively being exploited “in the wild.” Furthermore, an attacker would need to get physically close to you while you’re using affected Bluetooth hardware to do anything with it. I suppose it’s technically possible that a hacker could, say, hang out in Times Square and just randomly try to drop malicious code on strangers’ smartphones while they’re listening to Brat. But a more likely scenario is a targeted attack on a specific, high-level individual, which is generally the purview of state-sponsored hacking campaigns. If you’ve never clapped eyes on anything with “TOP SECRET” in the header, you probably don’t have too much to worry about here. The affected companies were alerted to the vulnerabilities in May, and according to one German publication, some (less than half) have already patched firmware for affected devices. Read...

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Toulon scrum-half Ben White admits `I haven`t stopped shaking` after being called up as an injury replacement for the British and Irish Lions just as he was preparing to play for Scotland on Saturday. Read...

British qualifier Oliver Tarvet enjoys a dream Wimbledon debut as he sees off Switzerland`s Leandro Riedi 6-4 6-4 6-4 to reach the second round. Read...

England name an unchanged team for the second Test against India at Edgbaston, meaning a further wait for the return of Jofra Archer. Read...