May, 2018 - Softonic English

Which Wi-Fi extender is right for you?

If there’s one thing we’re not a fan of at Softonic, it’s poor Wi-Fi signal. Having grown up in the age of dial-up (yes, I am a dinosaur), it’s easy to forget how amazing it is to work untethered anywhere in your home or office.

Sometimes, though, dropouts or weak signal can really disrupt the flow of whatever you’re doing online. The solution is to buy a Wi-Fi extender, a device that’s designed to deliver a fast, stable connection throughout your home by boosting range and signal strength.

As there are lots to choose from, we’ve put together a list of our favorites to help you decide which one is right for you.

Best overall value

TP-LINK AC1200 Wi-Fi range extender – $62.41

Affordable
Gigabit ethernet port
Better for range than speed

This extender performs very well for the price. With a trio of booster aerials and an ethernet port, this is a super flexible unit that will enhance your home or office Wi-Fi with ease. It performs brilliantly at long range, and the intelligent signal light on the front helps you find the optimal location for the devices in your home.

$62

TP-Link AC1200 Wi-Fi Range Extender w/Gigabit Ethernet Port

From: Amazon

Add to Cart

Most stable connection

Devolo GigaGate – $724.24

Ultra fast
Effortless setup
Expensive for what it is

Given its high price, the Devolo is a fairly niche extender for those with a lot more cash to spare. The design and performance is exceptional, and it’s one of the fastest extenders on this list. The device is a two-part system with one unit pairing with your router, and the other acting as a satellite. While it’s not cheap, the Devolo really delivers on speed and ease of use.

$724

Devolo Gigagate Starter Kit

From: Amazon

Add to Cart

Best on a budget

D-Link DAP-1320 – $14.07

Excellent 2.4Ghz performance
Compact design
Doesn’t support 5Ghz

This is the smallest, cheapest extender on our list. It measures just 4.75 x 6.28 x 2.95 inches, so it should fit virtually anywhere in your house. Feature-wise, it’s pretty light. It’s rated at 300Mbps and only uses 2.4Ghz.

However, what it lacks in features, it makes up for in ease of use. Connecting is simplicity itself, simply press the WPS button on the side and it connects automatically. Alternatively, you can connect to the device’s default Wi-Fi signal, before linking it to your router. Performance, while not the fastest, is solid.

$14

D-Link Wireless N 300 Mbps Compact Wi-Fi Range Extender

From: Amazon

Add to Cart

Best mesh network

Netgear Orbi – $399.99

Blisteringly fast
Easy to set up and use
Consistent coverage
Very expensive
Not the fastest at close range

The Orbi is both an extender and router in one. Instead of pairing with your home network, the Orbi expands it. So no fiddling with your router, just turn on the Orbi and you’re good to go.

The Orbi devices also use a 5Ghz backchannel to communicate with each other, so there’s none of the drop-off from router-to-router chatter you get with less advanced products. It might not be the fastest in terms of raw speed, but it’s definitely a worthy upgrade.

$329

NETGEAR Orbi Home Mesh WiFi System

From: Amazon

Add to Cart

We hope you’ve found our suggestions useful, and we wish you a future filled with fast, stable, Wi-Fi.

4 of the most affordable IoT devices

The Internet of Things (IoT) has long promised to bridge the gap between the internet and the physical world. The estimated number of internet-enabled devices increased 31% from 2016 to 8.4 billion in 2017, and experts predict that there will be 30 billion of them by 2020. With an estimated global market value of $7.1 trillion by 2020, IoT looks set to become a big part of our future lives.

While not every device is as useful as it claims to be, manufacturers are scrabbling to release an ever-increasing number of products. You may have noticed one common trend among them all: they’re expensive. This kind of makes sense – we’re not just talking about a normal hairbrush; we’re talking about a smart hairbrush, with Wi-Fi, a microphone, and a gyroscope. No, really.

Fortunately, with the sheer number of devices available, you can find IoT devices that don’t break the bank. Here are four of them.

Tile – $26.99

First up is this handy little gadget. The Tile is a tiny Bluetooth tracker that attaches to just about anything. Keys, bags, wallets, or whatever else you can think of. The device is simple and easy to use – just pair it with your phone, open the app, and as long as you’re within 100 feet of the Tile, it’ll play a loud tune until you find it.

It works the other way too. Just click Tile, and it’ll make your phone ring. There are also “Sport” and “Style” versions with waterproofing and double the range of the standard model.

$27

Tile Slim - Phone Finder. Wallet Finder. Anything Finder.

From: Amazon

Add to Cart

Awair Glow – $99g

The Awair helps you monitor air quality in your home, giving you the temperature, humidity, and CO2 levels and chemical composition. The LED on the top shows you at-a-glance – red, yellow, or green – what the overall quality of air in a room is, and the associated app lets you track exact levels down to the PPM (parts per million) while also logging past data so you can see improvements over time.

Cleverly, the Awair can also trigger non-smart devices such as dehumidifiers or air filters at specific times, or when certain criteria are met within the measured parameters.

$99

Awair Glow Air Quality Monitor

From: Amazon

Add to Cart

Wemo Mini-Smart Plug – $29.99

This handy plug lets you turn any pluggable device into a smart one. Using your existing home Wi-Fi, you can wirelessly control TV’s, lamps, heaters, fans, and anything else you can plug in, all from the Wemo app. You can also set schedules for devices and control them via your phone, giving you control over your devices even when you’re not at home.

$30

Wemo Mini Smart Plug, Wi-Fi Enabled, Works with Alexa and Google Assistant

From: Amazon

Add to Cart

Kas Smart LED Light Bulb – $39.98

Control your lighting from a smartphone with this smart bulb from Kas. Connecting via your home Wi-Fi, you can use the free Kasa app to set colors, brightness, and track energy usage from your smartphone or tablet. The app lets you create schedules or “scenes” that let you set the mood with a swipe. Or just ask Alexa or Google Assistant to dim the lights for you.

$40

Kasa Smart Wi-Fi LED Light Bulb by TP-Link - Multicolor, Dimmable, A19, No Hub Required, Works with Alexa and Google Assistant

From: Amazon

Add to Cart

So, remember, it doesn’t cost the earth to add a bit of IoT convenience to your home. Hopefully, some of the devices above will fit your budget!

How the IoT will affect your job

Will you be replaced?

Alexa and other smart assistants found to be vulnerable

AI voice assistant’s like Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Assistant have seen their popularity soar over the last few years. This will only continue, but placing highly tuned distance microphones all over your home raises certain security issues. If they can always hear, does that mean that they’re always listening? The developers say no, and laud the security technology they’ve bundled into their AI, but researchers at a series of universities have found some alarming vulnerabilities.

Alexa's cool new updates

Check them out now

The problem lies in the rapidly expanding number of voice assistant apps that are rolling out across the different platforms. Alexa and Assistant are the two biggest platforms and users can add third-party skills or actions to their voice assistant. These new apps are the raison d’etre behind the blog players developing voice assistants as a platform. They want to control a whole new marketplace.

As pointed out on the MalwareBytes blog, the researchers have discovered a particular vulnerability called voice squatting or masquerading:

“Voice squatting is a method wherein a threat actor takes advantage or abuses the way a skill or action is invoked. Let’s take an example used from the researchers’ white paper. If a user says, “Alexa, open Capital One” to run the Capital One skill, a threat actor can potentially create a malicious app with a similarly pronounced name, such as Capital Won. The command meant for the Capital One skill is then hijacked to run the malicious Capital Won skill instead.”

Users could inadvertently be invoking a harmful action from their voice assistant, simply because it sounds similar to the name of a legitimate action.

Voice masquerading takes this action even further. Rather than simply tricking users with similar sounds, voice masqueraders outright deceive. They pretend to be legitimate apps so that they can phish personal information from the unsuspecting user. If a malicious app pretends to be your bank, your most personal data immediately becomes at risk.

Another trick these fake voice apps use is to pretend to switch to another app or to offer a fake termination of an app, but then continue to listen in. Again this could be to phish information or to simply listen in and record what is going on around the smart speaker. Theoretically, this type of vulnerability could evolve an entirely new kind of ransomware with blackmail against the release of secret conversations being used to extort money from unsuspecting smart assistant users.

Check out this fully holographic AI assistant

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These two types of vulnerability are alarming, but they shouldn’t turn you off smart assistants altogether. MalwareBytes recommends that if you use a smart assistant, you need to really get to know the all-hearing product you’ve brought into your home. Understanding how the smart speakers work will help you protect yourself from potential attack. In the video examples shown above, a vigilant user would have noticed the discrepancies between the two responses to the voice command.

Your smart speaker could be eating up all your details

We talk a lot here at Softonic about spotting fake emails and web pages so that your information can’t be phished and then used against you. Malicious actors are now also using sonically activated means of tricking users, which will be much harder to spot. Also, as the technology develops, talking to these smart assistants will sound more and more like talking to an actual person. This will cause you to lower your guard, but you have to remain alert to potential threats against you.

As always with these types of security issues, you are the person responsible for your security. Your own vigilance is the best line of defense you have.

Reddit now gets more traffic than Facebook in the US

Reddit’s recent design overhaul was all about modernity. CEO Steve Huffman explained that he didn’t want Reddit to feel old anymore. If Reddit were to compete in the future, it would have to look like it belonged there. Reddit is already seeing that it belongs in the future as the popularity of the so-called “front page of the internet” is on the upswing. So much so, that according to Amazon’s web traffic analysis platform Alexa, Reddit is now getting more U.S. visitors than Facebook and is the third most popular website in the U.S. behind only Google and YouTube.

All you need to know about Reddit’s redesign

Find out more

This, of course, isn’t all about the rise of Reddit. Facebook’s slow demise, exacerbated by a user base that is migrating to other social platforms (including Reddit, and, fortunately for Mark Zuckerberg, WhatsApp and Instagram) and the recent Cambridge Analytica scandal also deserves attention. The stats, however, do not lie and Reddit looks to be in a strong position going into the future. A lot of people like visiting Reddit, and when they’re there, they like it and spend a lot of time on the site.

Reddit: The Official App Download Now

The average Reddit user spends over 15 minutes on the discussion hub every day. This is almost five minutes longer than Facebook users spend on the social network. It is substantially longer than YouTube users, who on average spend 8 minutes and 31 seconds on the site, and Google users, who clock in an average of 7 minutes and 16 seconds.

For years, Reddit has been the go-to place for all manner of online chat ranging from pop culture to the fringes of acceptable discourse. As we’ve seen Easter egg-filled TV series, movies, and video games become the norm, Reddit’s community has taken the lead in finding the hidden details and discussing what they mean. The recent redesign was supposed to make the site more welcoming to those who discover the site through those conversations, and it already seems to be working. More people than ever are finding Reddit, and more and more of them are coming back. Reddit’s little alien can definitely look to the future with a smile on its face.

Facebook: Send us your nude photos to prevent revenge porn

Revenge porn is one of the big problems of the Internet today: an intimate photo you sent privately to your partner can, out of spite, end up in front of everybody on social media. Aware of how easy this is, Facebook has developed a system so users’ intimate photos can’t be uploaded to the social network. But it’s weird. Really weird.

To prevent an ex-lover from uploading your naked pictures, Facebook wants you to send them your naked pictures. You read that right.

If this interests you, get in touch with Facebook using a special form, now available in Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada. Next, Facebook will send you a one-time link for you to upload all those intimate photos that you want to prevent from being uploaded by other people to the social network. From each of these photos, an identifier will be extracted to prevent third parties from distributing your images: the moment they try, FB will block them on Facebook as well as on Messenger and Instagram. Also, you’ll be notified that somebody tried to do this.

Although the idea behind this method could work, the implementation is fairly odd. While Facebook promises that it doesn’t store the info of your photos and absolutely nobody will have access to them, the idea of handing them over requires a significant amount of trust, especially considering Facebook’s recent scandals surrounding the privacy of its users.

Would you trust Facebook to prevent revenge porn?

Source: Facebook Safety

How to recover a deleted WhatsApp photo or video

It’s one of the most frequently asked questions when you’re having issues: “How can I recover a deleted WhatsApp photo or video?” For some reason, you deleted that snapshot and now want to get it back on your device. Yes, friends, you can recover it. In fact, today at Softonic we’re going to teach you how.

Before we get started, check carefully

We’re going to recommend a series of recovery programs, but before we get started, we want to ask you something: are you sure you’ve checked carefully?

We’re asking this question for a simple reason: WhatsApp saves all your images and videos in two different folders. One is the device’s “Image gallery” and the other is a dedicated folder for the app called “WhatsApp Images” (within the “Gallery,” of course).

In the case of iOS, the images are also found within every user. If you click on the profile name once the chat is open, you’ll see a field called “Multimedia, links and docs.” Go in and you’ll have access to all the images that you’ve downloaded since you installed the app (if you didn’t delete them previously, of course).

With apps

Once you’ve checked that the images aren’t there, it’s time to use apps to recover the snapshots. For this, we have two tools that work fairly well: DigDeep and Disk Digger, the first free and the second paid.

Starting with DigDeep, this app is extremely easy to use, so much so that its design is the most complex part. With a rough and ugly appearance, this software lets you recover all deleted images with two simple clicks. Literally. Once you have it downloaded and installed, you’ll see that several pictures of deleted images will pop up. Click on the one you would like to recover and click on “Restore.” It doesn’t get any easier.

DigDeep Image Recovery Download Free

For Disk Digger, the ins and outs are the same, except the free version of the app only recovers a thumbnail of the photo. Of course, the developers’ idea is that you’ll see the images or videos that you want to recover. And you won’t think twice about upgrading to the paid version.

DiskDigger Undelete Download Free

About WhatsApp Web

We’ll wrap up with a little trick that you may not know: WhatsApp Web, i.e. the computer platform for this app, may have your photos. For this, you only have to enter the site, scan the QR code that it requests (following the instructions that WhatsApp indicates) and you’ll see the app opens on your computer.

If you click on the chat of any user, you’ll see that same box as the iOS version (“Multimedia, links and docs”). Go in and you’ll have all the photos and videos that you’ve exchanged with that person at your fingertips!

3 fun things to do with your Google Home

Google introduced the Home smart speaker back in 2016, amid fierce competition from Amazon’s Alexa. We wrote about what distinguishes them from each other in our blog, and today, we’d like to talk about the quirky features that make Google Home fun.

Did you know that Google Home has a whole team dedicated to developing the device’s personality? Neither did we. Lead by Ryan Germick, (who also manages the team responsible for Google’s doodles), and including writers from Pixar and The Onion, the team has created a range of entertaining, quirky features that really make it stand out.

So what fun things can you do with your Google Home?

1. Remember stuff

For the forgetful among you, this is essential. While it might not be the most fun feature on this list, if you’ve ever found yourself frantically searching for your passport the day before a flight, worry not – Google has your back.

Say something like, “OK Google, remember my passport is in the third kitchen drawer next to the washing machine.” When you need to find it in the future, say “OK Google, where’s my passport?” and you’ll be helpfully pointed to the exact location, and what date you originally asked Assistant to remember.

2. Questions, jokes, and trivia

It’s not known how many individual responses Assistant has, as Google has never released a full list. Needless to say, it’s probably somewhere between many and lots – some probably haven’t even been discovered yet.

Here’s a small sample of fun questions you can ask Assistant:

Can you sing a song?
What’s the meaning of life?
Can you tell me an interesting fact?
Do you know Cortana?
Can you make me a sandwich?
Can you tell me what you want, what you really, really want?
What is your voice?
What are you wearing?

3. Games and kids’ stuff

The smart speaker comes preloaded with a bunch of games to while away rainy afternoons. There are guessing games, adventures games, math and number games, and a host of trivia games where Assistant will act as your game show host.

Here are a few examples:

21 Blackjack, the gambling classic; try to hit 21 without going bust.
Guess My Age, where Assistant will ask you questions and try to guess how old you are.
6 Swords, a game based on the first edition of Dungeons & Dragons, where you and up to six friends can explore cities, castles, and dungeons.
Mad Libs, the classic game where you fill in the blanks with the funniest word you can.
Number Recall, a sequence of numbers which you have to recall back, and every time you get it right, the sequence gets longer.

Google has added a whole collection of apps designed especially for children, including stories like the classic fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood, and more postmodern pieces like The Chef Who Loved Potatoes.

Assistant also comes packed full of children’s games, so they can keep themselves entertained while you, presumably, hide in the kitchen drinking cocktails, and looking for your passport. Some examples include:

Talk Like a Chef, where they learn foodie phrases and facts.
Sporcle Junior, a fun quiz for kids, presumably about sporks.
National Geographic Bee, which will test their knowledge of places across the globe.
Tricky Genie, where you are told a tale and asked for ways to help the characters.
The brilliantly named Ding Dong Coconut is a wacky party game which tests their memory by matching sounds to random words.

Google Home is packed with fun features, and who knows, you might even find a few new ones yourself! Experiment, have fun, and let us know if you find something cool.

Now you can search for jobs directly on Google

Google has done it again. By now, the only thing it can’t help you find is your lost car keys. In addition to turning up search results for movie showtimes, flights, and almost everything else you’d want to know, now you can check for job openings.

To job hunt on Google, just use words like “work” or “job” + the field or profession you’re interested in. This will give you related results in your location.

For example, I searched “photographer jobs” and Google showed me related job openings in the Chicago area:

You can also do a generic search, like “jobs,” which will give you results of all kinds and filters to specify the sector and other info.

If we go to the detail page of any opening, we can read all the info, see other related openings and check openings with different filters.

We should note that Google’s solution doesn’t replace current job openings on platforms (such as Indeed, Glassdoor, and Linkedin), but rather aggregates all the info onto the same site, so you don’t have to go from page to page hunting for jobs.

This Google job search is similar to what Skyscanner does with flights or Trivago with hotels: it compiles different offerings from the most popular sites in the same place. So, to get more info on a job opening, Google will redirect you to the page where it’s posted.

What are your favorite online job hunting resources? Let us know with a comment below!

WhatsApp makes a big change: no more annoying photos from your contacts

Soon you’ll have the power to stop photos and videos sent by your WhatsApp contacts from appearing in your phone’s photo gallery. How many times have you opened your gallery to show a photo to a friend, only to find dozens of goofy photos or videos from those idiotic, muted group chats? Never fear. Those uncomfortable moments are at an end.

WhatsApp Messenger Download WhatsApp

This new feature appears in the latest WhatsApp beta version. This means that soon we’ll have it available in the regular version. Once the update rolls out, just have to go to the settings section of WhatsApp and then to Data and storage. There will be a new option called “Media visibility.” Simply disable “Show media in gallery” and the problem is solved.

What do you think about this new feature? Will you use it? Leave us a comment!