Google’s Chromecast offers a way to play games on your TV, too. You won’t find the same ecosystem of games you will for the Apple TV or Amazon’s Fire TV, but you will find some fun party games people can gather around the TV and play, using their smartphones as controllers.
You could also cast your Android device’s screen to play a mobile game on your TV, or cast your computer desktop to play a PC game on the TV. But these methods allow you to play designed-for-Chromecast games.
Finding Games
You’ll first need to install some games that are designed for the Chromecast. Like typical apps that stream to your Chromecast, these are available as mobile apps for either Android or iPhone.
To find games on your smartphone or tablet, open up the new Chromecast app — install the Chromecast app for iPhone or Android if you don’t already have it installed — and tap the “Get Apps” header.
You’ll see a few popular games recommended. You can also scroll down to the bottom, select “Browse All Apps,” and then select the “Games” category.
You could also visit the Chromecast Apps website on the web and select “Games” to view available games for the Chromecast. Mouse over an app and you’ll see the platforms it’s available for — Android, iPhone, and Chrome on computers.
Playing Games
To play a game, just cast it like you would any other app. For example, we’d like to play the Google-created “Big Web Quiz” app as an example here. From the Chromecast website, we can mouse over it and see what platforms it’s available on. The “Chrome” icon is a bit misleading here, as that link takes us to a website that tells us to download the app on Android or iOS.
To play it, we’ll have to install the app on a smartphone, launch it, and tap the button to connect to a nearby Chromecast. This works just like you’d cast videos or music from any other app to your Chromecast.
The game will launch on your TV, and the device you’re casting it from — whether it’s a smartphone, tablet, or the Chrome browser on your computer — will function as your game controller.
This particular game supports up to six players playing it on your TV. Multiple players can install the app on their phones and connect to the same Chromecast to participate.
The actual selection of games on offer is pretty slim at the moment, but there are some big-name games that could be fun. Aside from Google’s own trivia game, you’ll find a variety of party games like Scrabble, Monopoly, Wheel of Fortune, Yahtzee, and Just Dance.
Amazon’s Fire Tablet offers both parental controls for quickly locking down a device as well as fine-grained “child profiles”. These child (or teen) profiles use the Kindle FreeTime feature, which is perhaps the most sophisticated parental-control solution for a tablet operating system
Fire OS is actually quite compelling if you’re looking for powerful parental controls and child-friendly features. It’s here that Amazon’s hardware really stands out on more than just price.
Parental Controls vs. Child Profiles
You can lock down your device in one of two ways. There are parental controls, and there are child profiles that use Kindle FreeTime. Both are intended for locking down your device and restricting what your kids can do, but they take different approaches.
Parental Controls: Enable parental controls and the Fire table will block access to a variety of things — the web browser, email, contacts, calendars, social sharing, the camera, Amazon’s stores, purchases, video playback, different types of content, Wi-Fi settings, and location services. You can choose which of these you want to block.
This doesn’t require you to set up any other account. Effectively, it’s a restriction placed on the current account that can’t be removed unless you know the password. You can just activate parental controls, set a parental control password, and access to sensitive content can be restricted. You can then hand the tablet to a kid and let them use it as they wish.
Child Profiles: Rather than just activating parental controls, you can get more sophisticated controls by creating up to four “child profiles” or “teen profiles”. You’d create a different profile for each child who will use the device. These use Amazon’s Kindle FreeTime feature, and you can choose which apps, eBooks, and other content you want to share. You can also change a variety of other settings — for example, setting a “bed time” for each child after which they can’t use the tablet, setting limits on how much they can use the tablet for different purposes, or requiring them to use educational content before they can play games.
Enable Parental Controls
To activate parental controls, open the “Settings” app — swipe down from the top of the screen and tap “Settings.” Tap the “Parental controls” option under Personal. Activate the “Parental Controls” slider and you’ll be prompted to create a parental control password. This password is necessary for enabling, disabling, or configuring parental controls. You can change it from this screen later — assuming you know the current password.
Use the other options on the screen to control access to the web browser, email, contacts, calendars, social sharing, the camera, Amazon’s stores, videos, other types of content, Wi-Fi settings, and location services settings.
While parental controls are enabled, you’ll see a lock icon on the notification bar at the top of the screen. To disable them, pull down the notification shade at the top of the screen, tap the “Parental controls are enabled” option, and then enter your password.
You could leave parental controls enabled except when you want to use the tablet yourself, ensuring your kids can’t make purchases, mess with your email, watch age-inappropriate videos, or browse the web — depending on which options you choose.
Create Child Profiles
Open the Settings screen and tap “Profiles & Family Library” under Personal to create new profiles and manage existing ones. This uses your configured “Family” and works along with Kindle Family Sharing.
Tap the “Add a child profile” option and you’ll be able to add one or more profiles. A “child profile” will get a simplified, content-centric interface, while a “teen profile” will get Amazon’s standard Fire tablet interface.
You’ll be able to choose which content you want to share, and you can tap the child’s name later to add more controls. For example, you could set up daily time limits, choosing when the child is allowed to use the tablet and for how long they can do different things on it.
From the lock screen, you or anyone else with the tablet can tap the profile picture at the top-right corner of the screen and select a new user to switch users. You can also pull down the quick settings menu while signed in, tap the profile picture, and select a new user account.
To view information about how your child has been using the tablet, you can open the “FreeTime” app.
Amazon will likely continue adding new parental controls to Fire OS. It’s ahead of every other mobile operating system when it comes to kid-friendly features and parental controls. It’s especially ahead of Apple’s iOS, which still doesn’t offer multiple user accounts or profiles on a single iPad.
When you go to an interview for a job, and the potential employer offers you a job, it’s easy to get excited. You’ve been looking for a job and you just found one! But, the thing is, just because you received an offer doesn’t mean it’s the right job for you!
Sometimes, you need to take a big step back and really think about whether the job is actually worth taking. Not all jobs are created equal, and sometimes, it’s better to be patient and wait for the right one to come along.
Check out the infographic below for signs that you should not take a job.
Today, we have one of the coolest free eBook offers we’ve ever had. We’re talking about four free Raspberry Pi eBooks all in one awesome bundle! These books would normally sell for over $90, but until 12/20, you can get all of them for free!
Don’t miss out on becoming a Pi guru for the low cost of $0 and a couple minutes of time.
Download: The Ultimate Raspberry Pi eBook Bundle
This is a third-party eBook. If you’re downloading an eBook for the first time, our distribution service, TradePub, will ask for some personal information in order to compile demographic statistics, and help us understand our audience. You will only have to do this once. For all future downloads, the system will recognize you.
What Books Do You Get?
In total, you’re going to get four awesome eBooks about the awesome world of Raspberry Pi for free! Each covers a different aspect of the Pi world, and each will teach you a ton about making the most of the tiny computer. Here’s the books you’ll get:
Raspberry Pi Computer Vision Programming
Raspberry Pi Cookbook for Python Programmers
Raspberry Pi Home Automation with Arduino
Raspberry Pi Robotic Project
To give you a little more perspective on what you’ll be getting if you download this bundle of eBooks, we’re talking about over 1000 pages of Raspberry Pi content. These are not four Pi pamphlets running around calling themselves eBooks. No, these are full length books packed with useful information.
Whether you want to built a robot, learn Python, automate tasks around your home, or almost anything else you can think of with your powerful little computer, the content offered in these eBooks have you covered!
An important thing to note is that you can only get these books for free until 12/20! After that, you’d have to spend $90 for them all, as that’s the standard MSRP. If you’ve always wanted to get into the world of Raspberry Pi, or you already use a Pi and want to take your skills to a higher level, you need to download this bundle of eBooks.
How to Get Your Copy
To redeem your copy and download the free eBook, just head over to this page and sign up for a free account. The process will take just a few seconds, and then you will be sent an email with a link to download a free copy.
It really is that simple. Just make sure to use a valid email address, as you won’t be able to get the link to download the book if you don’t.
If you’ve downloaded an eBook from us before, you don’t need to register your email address again! It will remember you in the system, so you simply need to click the link above and you’ll be sent an email to download this awesome eBook for free!
Want More? Check out all the other eBooks we have to offer right here! There’s a lot, so get ready to flex those brain muscles!
Android offers lots of tweaks you can make to your phone without rooting. In Android 6.0, you can add new tiles to your Quick Settings menu in just a few steps.
First, enable Developer Options by going to Settings > About Phone, then scroll down to Build Number and tap it seven times. Next, open the Quick Settings menu by sliding down from the top of the screen twice.
You should see a little gear icon in the top-right of the screen, next to your user picture. Press and hold on that gear for about ten seconds and release. You will see a notification that the System UI Tuner has been enabled.
Now that the setup is done, install the Custom Quick Settings app on your device running Marshmallow. Open it and follow the instructions to make sure it can operate on your device. Then, you’ll need to tap the floating Plus button to add a new tile.
The app will guide you (per the video below) through the process. You need to manually add a new Broadcast Tile to the UI Tuner called “CUSTOMTILE0″ to let the app customize it. From there, you go back into the app and can change the tile’s name, icon (there are many built-in), and what action the system takes when you tap it.
You can assign up to two actions per tile: one for tapping, and one for a long-press. Possible uses include a system setting that isn’t available by default, launching a website with one tap, or quickly launching an app. The possibilities are up to you!
If your phone’s got Marshmallow, check out even more of the best Marshmallow features.
What tiles did you add to the Quick Settings? Do you use this menu often? Weigh in with a comment!
Image Credit: Denys Prykhodov via Shutterstock.com
If you are one of the 968 million people who log into Facebook each day, you may have noticed the platform offers three different ad placements, namely desktop newsfeed, mobile newsfeed, and desktop right column. Facebook also offers ads outside of Facebook through network sites (called audience network) as well as ads on Instagram.
Naturally, advertisers would want to take advantage of all of the different ad placements but that does not mean they should all be in the same ad set. Generally speaking, campaigns can be run on all placements simultaneously except for the audience network which only runs if the mobile newsfeed is active.
The behavior on site is different from one device to another. So, how people behave on the website may be different on desktop than what they would do if they were on a mobile device. Consequently, ad copies, landing pages, and of course the call to action as well as the overall advertising strategy should be adapted to the behavior per device.
This means each of the available Facebook placements (desktop and mobile feed plus desktop right column) should always be in separate ad sets.
Let’s look at the five most important advantages of breaking down placements in different ad sets and implementing a custom Facebook placement strategy.
1. More Precise Control of Budgets
One of the biggest issues many businesses are having with Facebook ads is that they can be difficult to scale up quickly. By having each placement in a dedicated ad set, you can customize the budget for each placement based on performance. This is key to profitably scaling up accounts.
For instance, let´s imagine that you have a CPA goal of $10 and you have ad sets with multiple target placements (such as Desktop newsfeed and Mobile newsfeed). If your current CPA is $11, running a placement report might reveal some placements perform above $10 and some below $10.
You can run a report by breaking down your data into the main Facebook interface:
Setting up separate budgets for each of the placements helps you get more for the placements below $10 and optimize the ones costing more than $10 with the goal to reduce the CPA.
2. More Effectively Allocated Budget with Customized Bids
Whatever the goal of your Facebook campaign may be—clicks, conversions, leads, engagement, you name it – the most important thing is visibility. Visibility is related to bids and there is no point in bidding the same thing for all placements because they are not equally expensive. Additionally, you might end up bidding too low for some of the highly competitive placements.
In other words, always have separate bid strategies for the placements to get the most bang for your buck.
3. Better Results per Placement with Customized Ads
Recently, when I was speaking at the SEJ Summit in Atlanta, someone asked why I recommend to customize ads per placement considering it takes a lot of time and there is a high chance people recognize the brand if the ad is identical. While I understand that brand recognition is important, I disagree with the fact that the identical ad will achieve brand recognition in the first place. Desktop and mobile newsfeed ads have completely different dimensions and desktop right column ads differ from both of those formats also.
The point it, ads look different based on where they are shown. A perfectly readable ad on desktop may be too small to decipher on mobile. There is nothing wrong with using the same ad for all placements, but they should be adapted.
For instance, mobile ads require less characters and need run on smaller screens than desktop newsfeed ads meaning the font size and small icons should usually be larger. By making anything larger one usually runs into Facebook’s text/image ratio regulations. No more than 20% text still needs to be respected, even when things are made bigger for mobile devices.
Make sure to double-check if everything is readable or some characters are cut off on mobile.
4. Higher Conversion Rates
Landing pages tend to perform differently depending on what device the visitor is using. Having the same landing page for every placement simply means that you are ignoring the fact that people behave differently on different devices.
Mobile users prefer short sales funnels, visual displays (such as a calendar for the expiration date of the credit card), and text that is informative but to the point. While many responsive websites are somewhat optimized for mobile, the checkout page is the one that typically causes the highest drop-off rates. The checkout page should be as short and easy to navigate as possible on mobile. On the other hand side, desktop users consider the length of the landing page and in-depth content when making a purchase.
When optimizing for different devices, keep in mind where in the sales funnel the user is. For instance, people who found you via Facebook on a smartphone are typically further away from making a purchasing decision than people on a desktop device who opened a promotion via email.
5. Long-Term Success and Better Strategies
Breaking down placements in different ad sets allows you to focus your ongoing management strategies on the elements of the account that work best.
For instance, different placements are likely to generate different results based on an initial set of ads. This is due to several factors, such as the cost per click, the visibility and size of an ad, and the online behavior of online buyers. Segmenting the placements in separate ad sets allows you to create a new advertising test each time you identify a top performing ad and to customize the ad copy to the technical requirement of each placement
Also, you are going to be able to create reports and eventually break the placement ad sets even further based on the device performance of age, gender, and geographical areas. All of that makes your ad strategy much more flexible and effective.
Over to You
Custom Facebook placement strategies are a great way to maximize results. Thoughts or additional tips to add? Let me know in the comments!
Image Credits
Featured Image: Image by Rocco Baldassarre All screenshots by Rocco Baldassarre. Taken November 2015.