Valve has been credited with changing the gaming industry on several occasions. From the massively influential Half-Life to the release of Steam, the company has essentially been a trailblazer since its inception. In recent years, the Steam Deck has been yet another game changer, igniting a gaming handheld craze that's already influencing PC gaming. Now with a full SteamOS release on the horizon, there are a lot of reasons to believe that things will change for the better yet again.

Image: Belkin Belkin has announced the Stage PowerGrip, a magnetic battery pack that doubles as a DSLR-style ergonomic grip for iPhone photography, a phone stand, and a spare wired charger for your other devices. It’ll be available in May, with pricing info coming later on. The PowerGrip is an odd-looking accessory until you see it attached to a phone. It’s clearly designed to evoke the look and feel of a traditional camera. It features Bluetooth pairing to enable the “shutter button” on the top of the grip to let you take pictures with the iOS camera app.Besides that, the PowerGrip has a built-in retractable USB-C cable for charging other devices and a 10,000mAh battery. It offers wireless 7.5-watt charging for the attached iPhone, and a small LED screen on the front will show how much battery it has left. Belkin says it will come in powder blue, sandbox (a grayish sandy color), fresh yellow, black, and pepper (a nearly black dark gray).Belkin’s take on this is similar to others you can find on Amazon, though mostly those are from brands with alphabet soup-style names. Apple sells one version of this concept called the ShiftCam ProGrip. Like Belkin’s devce, it adds a physical shutter button to your phone and doubles as a charger, but it costs $149.95. Belkin hasn’t announced pricing for the PowerGrip, but assuming it’s cheaper, it could be well worth a look if you’re into iPhone photography.

EcoFlow is launching it Home Energy Management System at CES this week. | Image: EcoFlow Smart energy solutions company EcoFlow is debuting Oasis, its new AI-powered Home Energy Management System, at CES in Las Vegas this week. Designed to automate and simplify energy management, Oasis features an AI assistant that can answer and even act on complicated questions about your home’s energy using natural language, such as “How can I maximize my solar energy usage today?” The company also teased the upcoming launch of Ocean Pro, a new grid-tied whole-home solar battery solution for the US it plans to launch later this year.Energy management is a key use case for the smart home, but the infrastructure is expensive, and it can be complicated to set up and confusing to manage. With Oasis, EcoFlow is tackling at least two of those problems. Oasis works with EcoFlow’s home power technology to manage your home’s energy through real-time monitoring of your home’s solar energy production, energy storage to EcoFlow batteries, and energy use from third-party appliances and systems you connect to it through the EcoFlow app. Image: EcoFlow Screenshots from the EcoFlow app, showing how Oasis provides an overview of your home’s energy use. Peter Linghu, EcoFlow’s director of product strategy and development, explained that Oasis uses predictive analytics and automations to do helpful things automatically, such as switch to backup power in the event of a power outage or charge up your batteries if there’s a big storm coming. While these are features most home battery storage systems today offer, with Oasis, EcoFlow says it’s adding a more capable software layer to provide more granular whole-home energy management.The EcoFlow Assistant, an AI chatbot in the app, can answer questions for you, such as “How much energy did I use today?” But it can also suggest, create, and set up automations to manage energy use across your home. For example, you can ask it to set up the best power backup solution, and it will present options it can then implement (see video). Linghu says it does this by analyzing data such as past energy usage, local electric rates, home solar energy generation, and weather patterns.Oasis can also proactively offer suggestions, such as running your air conditioning or washing machine off stored energy rather than grid power when energy prices are high. Linghu says you can instruct Oasis to automate functions like this or choose to be notified about them and implement them yourself.The EcoFlow Assistant chatbot can set up automations for you based on weather and energy use, simplifying the process of programming your smart home.Intelligent management of your home’s energy can save you energy and money without you having to run around turning off lights, fiddling with the thermostat, and unplugging the EV charger. But a big hurdle is finding a system that can talk to everything in your home and to existing infrastructure like solar panels. You also need an energy provider that offers time-of-use rates and demand response programs to get the most benefit. Additionally, many solutions today only work with proprietary equipment, making them better suited to new builds rather than retrofitting into your home. EcoFlow’s approach is more open.Today, Oasis works with EcoFlow products such as its portable Delta 3 Plus and River 3 Plus solar generators and its whole-home backup solution. Currently, that includes the Smart Home Panel 2, which offers circuit-level management of electrical loads and can be connected to your existing electrical panel. It can also work with the portable Delta Pro Ultra as a battery backup system. The new EcoFlow Ocean Pro system that’s coming to the US later this year will bring a higher-capacity grid-tied option for whole-home backup. EcoFlow hasn’t provided many details but says it’s similar to EcoFlow’s PowerOcean system, which is available in Europe. It looks like it will be a direct competitor to popular products in this space, such as the Tesla Powerwall and Anker Solix.Oasis also works with third-party devices such as Ecobee and Nest thermostats, energy-monitoring products like smart plugs from Shelly and TP-Link, as well as any Matter-compatible device. While Matter is still in its early stages when it comes to energy management, high-energy use devices like appliances, heat pumps, solar panels, and EV charging equipment are now part of the Matter specification. So, there may soon be more products that can integrate directly with Oasis. All this helps bring more devices into the system to get a clear picture of your home’s energy use.Several other companies are working on this type of home energy management solution. Schneider launched its Schneider Home system at CES last year; Savant Power, Anker Solix, and Generac also have interesting products in this space. The initial cost is still a major roadblock for many people, but if the complexity can be reduced through intelligent home energy management software, that feels like a big step in the right direction.

Remote access tools have become essential for both individuals and businesses. Whether you need to troubleshoot a family member's computer, collaborate with colleagues across continents, or manage a network of devices, choosing the right remote desktop software can significantly impact your workflow and productivity.

I use several devices throughout the day, including an Android phone, a Windows PC, and a MacBook. These devices run entirely different operating systems, and cross-compatibility between them is quite limited. Moving text from Android to Windows is relatively easy with the SwiftKey app, but the same cannot be said when syncing the clipboard with a Mac. Similarly, syncing the clipboard between a Windows PC and a Mac isn't very straightforward either.

If you’re unfamiliar with the term, emulation is the art of running apps and games designed for proprietary systems on unsupported hardware. Besides letting you use a single machine to enjoy your favorite console titles, emulation has the added benefit of preserving games that would otherwise remain locked on dead hardware.

Notion can handle everything from keeping track of household chores to large-scale, multi-database, project management, and CRM systems for businesses. I’ve designed complex Notion systems for large-scale operations, including a multimillion-dollar advertising company, but at home my personal trackers couldn’t be more simple. With all the possibilities Notion offers, it’s tempting to over-complicate things and track every little detail, but sometimes simple is better.

Are you excited for CES 2025? It kicks off in two days' time on January 7th, 2024, and it'll feature a ton of new reveals from the biggest tech companies in the world. And while some companies are holding the best stuff until the event, others are giving us sneak peeks into what to expect. For instance, Belkin has a wide range of accessories it'd love to show off, and we have all the details for you right here.

Melania Trump at Mar-a-Lago on New Year’s Eve. | Photo by Eva Marie Uzcategui/Getty Images Amazon Prime Video has licensed a documentary about Melania Trump that will be directed by Rush Hour director Brett Ratner, reports Variety. A Prime Video spokesperson told the outlet that the movie will be an “unprecedented, behind-the-scenes look” at the first lady. The news comes after Amazon founder Jeff Bezos had dinner with Donald Trump, who was heavily critical of the company during his first term. It also follows the decision by Bezos and Amazon to donate $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund, just as other tech CEOs like Apple’s Tim Cook and OpenAI’s Sam Altman have done. Prime Video is also set to livestream Trump’s inauguration.The film is the first significant Hollywood project that Ratner has taken on since 2017, when several women accused him of sexual misconduct and another of rape, Variety notes. He denied the allegations but parted ways with Warner Bros. Ratner has some notable ties to the Trumps, including a former partnership with Donald Trump’s Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin. He also filmed 2011’s Tower Heist largely on-location at Trump International Hotel & Tower and has reportedly run in Mar-a-Lago social circles since his departure from Hollywood life.Amazon’s Melania Trump documentary has already begun filming and the company plans to give it theatrical and streaming releases starting in the second half of this year, Variety writes.

The Raspberry Pi isn’t just a tiny, inexpensive computer. It can open up a whole world of possibilities, from acting as the brains behind an air quality monitoring system to running a home server. You can even use it as a print server.

Whether you're adding a new internal SSD to your computer or picking up an external drive for something a little more portable, you won't get far unless you format that drive with a file system your computer can recognize. If you're using a Windows computer, that means a choice between FAT32, exFAT, and NTFS, which are all file systems developed by Microsoft for the operating system.

Image: LG At least when it comes to making TVs, LG can seemingly do no wrong. Year after year, the company’s OLED sets are at the top of most reviewers’ recommendation lists. They’ve overcome the Achilles’ heel of older models — brightness — thanks to clever innovations like Micro Lens Array, which made the G3 and last year’s G4 bright enough to make HDR shine in any viewing environment.So it should come as no surprise that LG’s 2025 lineup of OLED TVs raises the bar yet again. At the top of the lineup is the M5, which is the latest series to use the company’s Zero Connect Box for a wireless link between the TV screen and your gaming consoles, streaming boxes, and other external devices. The M5 will come in 65-, 77-, 83-, and 97-inch sizes. The Zero Connect Box is an impressive trick that, by all accounts, works quite well. This year the wireless connection is apparently even more reliable. But no one really needs that. So I tend to view the G-series as LG’s more practical flagship for consumers. Lucky for us TV nerds, the G5 is (somehow) getting even brighter. LG says its latest Brightness Booster Ultimate technology “enhances light control architecture and light-boosting algorithms to achieve brightness three times higher than conventional OLED models.” (For context, that comparison is being made with OLEDs that don’t include the Micro Lens Array tech found in the M5 and G5.) LG is also pushing the refresh rate on its premium G5 all the way up to 165Hz, which it claims is an industry first, offering a new level of smooth gameplay for the PC crowd. You’ll be able to get the G5 in sizes ranging from 55 inches up to 83 inches. There are also 48-inch and 97-inch models, but those won’t deliver the same peak brightness. Image: LG The two highest-end models feature LG’s latest Alpha 11 Gen 2 processor, which improves image processing and upscaling to make lower-bitrate content look as good as possible on these 4K screens. LG says a lot of those processing tricks are also trickling down to the more mainstream C5. With so many people watching internet TV services and other streaming content these days, that magic sauce can make a noticeable difference. Sony’s known for being the best in the game at this, but LG has made big strides in recent years.Goodbye inputs button, hello endless AI featuresThis year’s Magic Remote no longer has a dedicated inputs button. In what might prove to be a controversial decision, LG is making the Home Hub button pull double duty: you can press it to reach the Home Hub dashboard of webOS or hold down the button to pull up your list of inputs. That’s not the end of the world, but it’s still another thing to remember for a fundamental TV interaction. And then comes the avalanche of AI features. The usual AI Picture Pro and AI Sound Pro optimization modes are present. The C5 series is getting the same virtualized 11.1.2-channel surround sound that debuted in the G4 last year. LG is also expanding on the picture wizard it introduced two years ago, where viewers pick from a series of images to land on their ideal image settings, with a similar process for audio. How much AI is too much for a TV?But this year, the AI focus is much, much bigger than that. LG has new “LG AI” branding — that’s what the mic button now activates. Oh, I’m sorry. Did I call it the Magic Remote before? The remote has been rebranded as the AI Remote. And there’s a whole damn LLM chatbot built into these TVs. Hell, even Microsoft’s Copilot is being thrown in. The risk LG faces here is getting in the way and pushing this stuff on customers too aggressively. The company’s OLEDs are some of the very best TVs on the market. They offer brilliant visuals with every feature home theater enthusiasts want. In 2025, that includes an enhanced Filmmaker Mode that takes your room’s ambient lighting into account and adjusts picture settings accordingly — all the while making sure to “maintain the filmmaker’s original intent.” For its part, LG claims the latest webOS homescreen is faster and easier to use. And the company has vowed to keep software updates coming over the next five years, much like our smartphones gain new features over time. Still, at this stage, I find myself putting up with webOS and spending the bulk of my usage time in a different interface — whether that’s Apple TV, Google TV, or something else. I’m hopeful that LG’s mega push into AI won’t be too heavy-handed, but we’ll have to see how it all comes together once the 2025 TV lineup starts shipping this spring. If customers find their usual flows getting interrupted by AI gimmicks, there might be some complaints. We’ll have a much better idea of how LG AI fits into these superb TVs — and whether it ultimately detracts from them — when the M5, G5, C5, and B5 OLEDs hit stores in a few months. By then, we’ll know how much they’ll cost, too.