The voice interfaces Cortana and Alexa will soon be able to activate each other for functions that one does better than the other, Amazon and Microsoft announced. Besides the micro USB connector and HDMI plug, the Fire TV has no other connections and no physical controls. However, unlike the Streaming Stick you can. InformationWeek. com News, analysis and research for business technology professionals, plus peertopeer knowledge sharing. Engage with our community. Latest trending topics being covered on ZDNet including Reviews, Tech Industry, Security, Hardware, Apple, and Windows. Philips Tv Usb Port Hack Software' title='Philips Tv Usb Port Hack Software' />As editorinchief of 99U, Adobes publication for creative professionals, Matt McCue oversees stories about topics like client work, storytelling, and productivity. Alexa and Cortana Teamed Up, But Consumer Tech Is Still Stuck in an Ecosystem War. The voice interfaces Cortana and Alexa will soon be able to activate each other for functions that one does better than the other, Amazon and Microsoft announced today. Its the kind of cooperation that we dont see enough between the Big Five, or really any company thats grown out of its desperately cobble together partnerships so we look relevant phase and into its abandon all cooperation that doesnt lock customers into our shitty ecosystem phase. Cortana and Alexas competitors, Google Assistant and Siri, wont be integrating any time soon. As Gizmodo notes, Google and Apple have far more users locked into their ecosystems, so they have far less incentive to cooperate with competing systems. By combining forces, Microsoft and Amazon are admitting theyve lost the war for mobile, the dominant user interface now, and holding onto their own core competencies Microsoft for business communication, Amazon for consumption. Meanwhile, though Google Assistant runs on i. OS, its very limited and cant be activated without opening an app. Siri wont run at all on Android. And even on its native platform, Siri wont control best in class apps like Spotify, Gmail, or Google Maps. Google Assistant is more flexible, but it cant order things on Amazon the way Alexa can. You can run Alexa on Android, but only through Amazons app, and again with limitations. Your device also wont play well with a competing desktop OS Apples Handoff and i. Cloud make i. Phones and Macs work together seamlessly, whereas coordinating an Android phone with a Mac is clunky, and plugging an i. Phone into a Windows machine is eye twitchingly uncomfortable, thanks to Apples lousy Windows port of i. Tunes. The TV ecosystem is just as bad, largely thanks to Amazons own selfish decisions. Amazon still hasnt released its promised Apple TV app, so Prime customers have to stream Transparent and Curb Your Enthusiasm from their phones. There are no plans for an Amazon app on the Chromecast, or for Spotify on Apple TV. You can retreat to a third party media player like Roku, but then you cant play videos purchased through i. Tunes without a wonky file conversion. Starting at the end of this month, Amazon will no longer sell the Chromecast or Apple TV. AndRead more Read. Do you want to control your TV and your devices smart Take a look at this Kickstarter campaign. I try to get root access on my Philips PFL9703 TV. Whats especially impressive is the One Connect cable and box. This system uses a noodlethin cord that connects the portfree TV to the separate One Connect Box. TheINQUIRER publishes daily news, reviews on the latest gadgets and devices, and INQdepth articles for tech buffs and hobbyists. Which companies make smart TVs Virtually every major TV manufacturer makes a smart TV today, with the trend toward making every set smart. Microcontroller PIC Projects are categorized on the basis of microcontroller applications. Microchip pic microcontrollers belongs to modern family of MCUs. Meanwhile, Facebook runs around kind of integrating with all these other services while trying to push its own messaging and sharing platforms, and burying every post that dares link to You. Tube or Twitter. As a customer choosing a phone, computer, and media player, youre stuck with three choices Buy into an ecosystem that inevitably has some crappy elements. You could choose Google, and miss out on Apples slick interface and seamless desktop to mobile integration. Or choose Apple, lose a lot of third party functionality, and get locked into increasingly bizarre design choices your Lightning headphones wont work on your laptop and inferior software like Apple Maps, Mail, and Calendar. On desktop, choose Windows and miss out on that same integration, or choose Apple, pay more for the same computing power, and get your computer games a year late. Straddle ecosystems, running the Google Suite instead of MS Office and hooking your i. Phone up to your PC or your Android to your Mac. Run Spotify, buy an Echo, and live with their limited capabilities. Maybe even run Excel on OS X. All but the most basic users reach outside their main ecosystem at some point. Install Linux on your Chromebook, jailbreak your i. Phone, run Cortana on your Fit. Bit, hack your Echo to play Tidal, and write a viral Medium post encouraging people to unplug. In the short term, all these companies have good reasons to lock up their platforms wherever they still think they can steal market share from the others, and wherever they would rather focus resources on improving their own service instead of handing millions of customers to their competitors through a partnership. But in the long term, this lock in keeps the Big Five from innovating, their products leaning on the crutch of the ecosystem, alienating customers who will then abandon the ecosystem for third party services like Spotify, Dropbox, Whats. App, 1. Password, and Overcast. OS has a bunch of great podcast managers these days, but after testing all of them, our favoriteRead more Read. Historically, these ecosystems tend to open up, making way for the next battle. Macs and PCs didnt always run so many of the same apps. Internet Explorer and Netscape were much more mutually exclusive than Chrome and Safari. And for a while, your Internet came in flavors of AOL, Prodigy, or Compu. Serve. Even Android and i. OS used to have zero apps in common. But each time, interoperability won out, bringing most of each platforms strengths to everyone. But things could get worse before they get better. The Big Five are all racing to win at online payments, wearables, AI, AR, VR, smart homes, smart cars, and the growing Internet of Things. And as long as each company thinks it can win, it will try to push out the others instead of playing nice. Eventually there will be winners and losers, or decentralized cooperation. Every now and then, a new protocol will open up thats as decentralized as email or HTTP. And the giants of the day will move onto a new fight. In the meantime, theres nearly always some way to force the ecosystems to play together, at the expense of simplicity and not having your shit constantly break. Theres always some third option to jimmy into the gap and outperform all the defaults. And thats what Lifehackers all about. Amazon Fire TV Review Rating. Editors Note This is not the most current model available. See our review of the 2. Amazon Fire TV. Amazons Fire TV media streamer takes the powerful performance of its first Android based streaming box, and ups the ante with ultra high definition 4. K video support and Amazons Alexa voice assistant. The updated Fire TV retains its broad support for apps, games, and services while keeping the same 9. Editors Choice for media streamers. Design. The Fire TV is, from the outside, just about identical to the original one. Its a 4. 6 inch black square that stands just 0. The sides are glossy black and bare, save for a power LED hidden on the left side of the front panel. The top panel is matte black with an Amazon logo on it, and on the bottom, theres a large rubberized foot. The back of the Fire TV holds the power connector for the included proprietary power adapter, an HDMI port, a USB port, an Ethernet port, and a micro. SD card slot. There are no buttons, switches, or any way to physically interact with the Fire TV on the device itself once its plugged in, its on, and is ready to work with the included remote. The remote control is also effectively the same as the one that came with the first Fire TV. Its a simple matte black wand with a flat top and a curved underside that slides off to accept two AAA batteries, which are included. The remote has eight buttons Voice, Back, Home, Menu, Back, PlayPause, Forward, and a large Select button located in the middle of glossy black circular direction pad if you count the directions of the pad, its actually 1. Since all interaction occurs via the on screen menus and voice search is robust, you rarely need to use anything other than the direction buttons and playback controls. You can also use your smartphone or tablet as a remote with the free Fire TV Remote app for i. OS and Android. It turns your into a direction pad for navigating menus, and includes support for text input and even voice search through your devices microphone. Fire TV OSThe Fire TV interface has been updated since its original version, overhauling the menus to make it appear closer to the Android TV platform. Rows of large, colorful tiles display different apps and content, letting you flip up and down to choose among the most recent apps and shows you loaded, all installed apps, and various flavors of suggested video. A text bar across the top of the screen lets you browse apps, shows, movies, and music categorically, beyond the main menu. The Fire TV highlights your Amazon based content in the Movies, Music, and TV categories, but the weighted selections arent too obtrusive, and other services like Hulu Plus and Netflix are easy to access. Search results have improved over the years, and the Fire TV will now let you know if something you want to watch is on services besides Amazons, rather than forcing you to manually go through the app. Alexa and Voice Search. Voice search has been greatly enhanced on the Fire TV. The Fire TV OS incorporates Alexa, the voice assistant used in the Amazon Echo. This lets you ask simple questions about news, sports, weather, and general knowledge, and even make reminder lists that sync with the Amazon Echo app. For general media searches, you can speak any title, artist, genre, or even app into the microphone and it will give you search results. To use Alexa on the Fire TV, you need to press and hold the microphone button, then speak into the top of the remote. It isnt quite as convenient as using the voice assistant hands free by saying Alexa, like you can with Echo devices, but its still simple and easy to use. Alexa offers a slew of other functions besides searching for content and answering questions. It can control your Alexa compatible smart home devices, like Philips Hue lights, Nest thermostats, and Logitech Harmony remote hubs. It can also incorporate third party skills to do anything from playing white noise to ordering a pizza. To get an idea of what else it can do, check out the highest rated Alexa skills in every category. Because the Fire TV is connected to your television, it lets Alexa display visual information that the Echo and Echo Dot simply cant show. Asking Alexa for the weather will show you the forecast of the next few days on your TV. Vasco Rossi Discografia Completa Download Utorrent'>Vasco Rossi Discografia Completa Download Utorrent. Asking Alexa to play some music will display the album art of whatever it finds. Its similar to the touch screen equipped Echo Show, but without the actual touch screen controls you still need to use the remote to interact with anything Alexa shows you on your TV. K Video. The Fire TV supports Ultra HD UHD video content, and I had no problems viewing Alpha House on Amazon Instant Video and Daredevil on Netflix in 4. K. Both services depend on a fast network connection to display 4. K content, so dont count on a consistent UHD stream if your network is slower than either service recommends, and get ready for occasional compression artifacts with network hiccups. That said, both shows came through fast and crisp on the Fire TV connected to our Fi. OS test network. We recommend using an Ethernet connection rather than Wi Fi if you want the most consistent 4. K streaming. While the Fire TV can show 4. K video, the interface is 1. This effectively doesnt matter when in use, but sometimes theres a half second pause when jumping from a 4. K video stream to the main menu as the Fire TV switches output resolutions. Performance. While the Fire TV OS is based on Android, its very detached from the stock version of Googles operating system. Installing apps from unknown sources and ADB debugging are both options available in the Fire TVs settings, but like the original device, actually getting software onto the Fire TV through channels outside of the Amazon app store is a convoluted process. Because of this, we have decided not to formally benchmark the Fire TV. From a sheer usability standpoint, the device is very quick. Weird Science Game. In side by side testing, however, it is not noticeably faster than the original Fire TV, which is already quite responsive. Navigating menus with the remote and switching between apps is fast, though there is sometimes a second or two of lag when jumping through lists of search results as the menu populates with media this is tied to network speed as much as performance. This doesnt mean you can rapidly switch apps with impunity. Navigating between individual apps and the main Fire TV menu system is fast, but it takes about five to ten seconds to move between apps like Hulu Plus, Netflix, and Sling TV. Get ready for a very Android like experience of the Fire TV closing background apps without your knowledge if its not currently open or the last app you loaded, dont count on consistently jumping straight to where you were. Sometimes the Fire TV would keep my place in a menu and smoothly transition between apps, but it would just as often completely restart apps as well. Conclusions. Apple has yet to add 4. K streaming to its Apple TV, but there other solid options for 4. K streaming. The Roku Premiere is a very capable media streamer on Rokus platform and features a handy headphone jack built into the remote. The Nvidia Shield Android TV is more expensive than either streamer, but it has some impressive gaming functions you wont find from Roku or Amazon, and is easily the most powerful media streamer available. If you just want the most affordable way to stream online content to your HDTV and 4.