Articles by Jeramy Johnson

Nothing warms my heart more than giving a thoughtful gift to my friends or family, but if I’m honest, receiving a thoughtful gift is pretty darn great too. What happens when you get a present that you don’t really like? Returning gifts has always been a pain, but now retail giants like Amazon and Walmart are making it easier than ever. I’ll show you how to return an unwanted gift to Walmart without even leaving your house!

How to return a gift to Walmart

Walmart is making socially distant, contactless returns easier than ever this holiday season. Here’s how you can return your unwanted gifts for free in just a few easy steps.

Go to Walmart.com in your web browser of choice or open the Walmart app.
Scroll to the bottom of the page and click Returns.
Scroll to Return items by mail, and click on I have an account or No account.

If you have a gift receipt, type in the Email address on the receipt.

If you don’t know the email, you may need to ask the sender.

Type in the Order n…

It can be both fun and useful to order around the Google Assistant with simple commands like “Hey Google, turn on the lights” and see your words transformed into actions. Did you know, however, that you can do much more than simple one-off commands? By setting up and utilizing the Routines feature of Google Home and Google Assistant, you can trigger complex processes and activities with a simple action or phrase. I’ll show you how how to set up Google Assistant Routines in the steps below.

Products used in this guide

Maximum utility: Nest Hub Max ($230 at Best Buy)
Assistant in your pocket: Google Pixel 4a ($349 at Amazon)

How to set up and manage a preset routine

Google has created several preset routines, including options like Good morning, Bedtime, and Commuting to work.

Open the Google Home app on your smartphone.
Tap on the purple Routines icon
Scroll through the list of available pre-set routines and tap on Start Your Routines on to select which device you want to cont…

When Google announced the Pixel 5 and Pixel 4a 5G, it didn’t just launch two phones with impressive cameras. It introduced new Google Photos editing features as well. Improvements to machine learning, artificial intelligence, and user interface mean that users will now be able to do more with light and portrait mode after a photo is taken. They will also have access to more granular manual controls. We’ll show you how to use the Google Photos editor with all its new features that will make your pictures look even better.

Products used in this guide

New flagship: Google Pixel 5 ($699 at Amazon)
Penultimate Pixel: Google Pixel 4a 5G ($410 at the Best Buy)

How to use the new Google Photos editing features: Manual controls

Once you receive the Google Photos app update, editing your photos (whether you just took them or they are already in your archive) is easier than ever. All you need to do is tap on the photo that you want to edit, and you will see quick access to manual editin…

Google is making it easier for more Indians to use its core apps and services.

What you need to know

Google is expanding Indian language support for Maps, Search, and Lens.
9 Indian languages being added, including Gujarati, Marathi, and Tamil.
This and other announcements were recently made at Google’s L10n India event.

Google continues to expand the languages it supports across its various services around the world, and now it has added support for nine Indian languages across three key apps — Maps, Search, and Lens. This announcement was made by Google at its L10n India event, according to a post on Android Police.

India has 22 official languages and many unofficial languages and dialects, so it makes sense that Google wants to be able to support as many as possible in the fastest growing country in the world. Among the nine languages that Google added are Gujarati, Marathi, and Tamil. Maps, Search, and Lens are natural apps and services to bring additional language suppo…

2020 became the year of video chatting and video conferencing, particularly on laptops like Chromebooks, but what are you supposed to do when things aren’t working, and you need to fix your Chromebook’s camera? While hardware solutions will require working with the manufacturer or warranty provider, there are some easy software tricks you can try to get your Chromebook camera up and running again as intended.

How to fix a Chromebook camera not working

The first thing you’ll want to do is to make sure that the camera isn’t obscured or damaged.
Next, try to power down your Chromebook and power it back up again.
Open the app launcher or press the Search key to locate the Camera app.

Click on the built-in Camera app to see if it is working.

Open another app that uses the camera (like Zoom, Meet, etc) and see if it works there.

If you’re still having problems, open the Settings app.
Click on Device.
Click on Advanced.
Scroll down to Reset Settings/Powerwash, and click on Reset.

…

Smartphones were one area where you got more for your money in 2020.

Now that the year is blissfully coming to an end, I don’t want to spend too much time rehashing the toxic hellscape that was 2020. I also really hate it when people try to find “silver linings” from truly awful circumstances. Let’s face it, the pandemic, social unrest, political upheaval, and economic downturn absolutely pummeled us all this year. However, as I sit here writing for an Android blog, it is pretty hard to ignore that despite all of the bad things that transpired this year, at least one consumer-facing benefit has come out of it — more good phones at (relatively) lower prices than ever before.

Some kudos are certainly due to the smartphone manufacturers who saw the collective writing on the wall, read the room, and realized that most customers were not going to fork up $1,000 or more on new phones this year. So what did they do? They introduced a number of models that were squarely in the “affordabl…

It can be both fun and useful to order around the Google Assistant with simple commands like “Hey Google, turn on the lights” and see your words transformed into actions. Did you know, however, that you can do much more than simple one-off commands? By setting up and utilizing the Routines feature of Google Home and Google Assistant, you can trigger complex processes and activities with a simple action or phrase. I’ll show you how how to set up Google Assistant Routines in the steps below.

Products used in this guide

Maximum utility: Nest Hub Max ($230 at Best Buy)
Assistant in your pocket: Google Pixel 4a ($349 at Amazon)

How to set up and manage a preset routine

Google has created several preset routines, including options like Good morning, Bedtime, and Commuting to work.

Open the Google Home app on your smartphone.
Tap on the purple Routines icon
Scroll through the list of available pre-set routines and tap on Start Your Routines on to select which device you want to cont…

Amazon first introduced Alexa to us through its original Echo smart speaker in late 2014. To this day, if you’re looking for the best Alexa speaker, you’re probably going to look first at the company’s Echo line of smart speakers. In fact, Amazon recently announced updates to its entire Echo product line, and we will be covering and reviewing each of these new speakers shortly. There are also many great Alexa-enabled speakers are made by other companies such as Bose, Sonos, and Ultimate Ears that you may wish to consider. This guide will help you make the best purchase decision as you consider the best Alexa speaker for your household.

Best Alexa Speaker from Amazon

Amazon Echo (4th Gen) — Best Overall Alexa Speaker: The fourth iteration of the original Echo gets a spherical redesign with better speakers and a built-in Zigbee smart hub.
Amazon Echo Dot (4th Gen) — Best Value Alexa Speaker: The best bang-for-your-buck Echo now available in two flavors: with clock and without.
Am…

As our connected lifestyles and smart homes continue to merge, we are finding new ways to secure our houses and belongings, like choosing from among the best security cameras with local storage. In light of recent data breaches and privacy scandals, many are looking for options that feature on-device storage solutions (a.k.a. don’t use the cloud), so we’ve put together a list of some of the best options for your reference. My favorite out of the bunch is the eufy Cam 2. It has all of the features I want, with none of the added expenses (subscriptions).

Best Overall Security Camera with Local Storage: eufy Cam 2

Eufy makes a line of quality smart home products like this Indoor/Outdoor camera, but one of the things we like best about its products is the one-time fee model they espouse. You don’t have to purchase an ongoing cloud storage subscription to access or store your videos, and this device even comes with 16GB EMMC digital storage, which is enough to store up to a year’s wor…

We’ve researched, tested, and reviewed dozens, if not hundreds of devices, and have come up with the following list of what we consider the best Alexa devices. If you don’t already have an Echo smart speaker, we recommend you pick up the Amazon Echo (4th Gen) to get started. It sounds great and comes in at a reasonable starting price. Of course, if you already have an Echo and want to see what else is available, well, we’ve got you covered there too.

Best Amazon Alexa Smart Speaker: Amazon Echo (4th Gen)

The original Amazon Echo that debuted in late 2014 gave us our first introduction to Alexa, and we’ve been hooked ever since. What started as a stark, black tube has evolved over three generations to a softer, gentler looking Alexa vessel, and has spawned an entire line of other Echo devices.

This “regular” Echo (4th Gen) is the best of the series yet. It boasts an improved sound architecture over the first three generations, one that it borrowed from the more expensive Echo Stu…