How to use the Remote app on your iPhone with Apple TV

You can't find the Siri Remote? You are tired of swiping to type passwords? Use the Remote app on your iPhone instead!

How to use the Remote app on your iPhone with Apple TV

The fourth-generation Apple TV's Siri Remote is a huge improvement over its predecessor. It has dozens of useful features and supports the virtual personal assistant, Siri. But, it doesn't have a native keyboard and is still small enough to get lost in the couch cushions.

Apple's Remote app, which lets you control the second, third, and fourth-generation Apple TV, is perfect for typing into search or password fields, and is convenient when you can't find the Siri Remote, or just don't want to look for it. Here's how to set up and use it with your fourth-generation Apple TV.

If you don't already have the Remote app on your iPhone or iPad, be sure to download it for free in the App Store.

Free - Download now
It's worth noting that when controlling the fourth-generation Apple TV, the Remote app does not support Siri, volume control, accelerometer, or gyroscope, and the keyboard feature does not work with some third-party apps.

Still using a second or third-generation Apple TV?

How to set up the Remote app using Home Sharing

In order to use the Remote app with Apple TV, you'll need to connect the two devices so they talk to each other. One way to do that is with Home Sharing.

• On Apple TV, open the Settings app
• Select Accounts.
• Select Home Sharing.
• Select Turn on Home Sharing.
• Enter your Apple ID.
• Select Continue.
• Enter the password associated with your Apple ID.
• Select Sign In.
• On your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch open the Remote app.
• Tap Set up Home Sharing.
• Enter your Apple ID.
• Enter the password associated with your Apple ID.
• Tap Sign In in the upper right corner of the screen

How to set up the Remote app Manually

If, for some reason, you don't want to use Home Sharing to connect your Remote app to your Apple TV, you can instead set it up manually.

• On your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, open the Remote app.
• Tap Add a Device. A four-digit code will appear on the screen.
If you don't see Add a Device, tap the Settings tab in the upper right corner of the screen and select Turn off Home Sharing.
• On Apple TV, open the Settings app.
• Select Remotes and Devices.
• Select Remote app.
• Select the pairable device that your Remote app is on.
• Enter the number from your pairable device's screen.

After your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch is connected to your Apple TV, you can use the Remote app as a controller.

How to use the Remote app to control Apple TV

Although it looks different, the Remote app works very similar to the Siri Remote.

• Use the center of the screen like a track pad to swipe and tap, just like the track pad on the Siri Remote.
• Tap Menu to exit out of a screen.
• Press and hold Menu to go directly to the Home screen.
• Tap Play/Pause in the lower right corner of the screen to pause or play content.
• While content is playing, drag your finger across the screen to the left or right to rewind or skip ahead.
• While music is playing on Apple TV, tap Now Playing on the Remote app to access playback controls, like song skip, shuffle, and repeat.
• When in a text field, like searching or entering a password, a keyboard will automatically appear. Use the on-screen keyboard instead of swipe-to-type.

- If you don't want the keyboard showing, tap Hide in the upper left corner of the screen.
- Tap the keyboard icon in the upper left corner of the screen to call up the keyboard again.

​AWS makes Database Migration Service available to all customers

Amazon Web Services has now made its database migration service available to all of its customers, after completing the migration of over 1,000 databases since January 1, 2016.

​AWS makes Database Migration Service available to all customers

Amazon has launched a new service that makes it easier for companies to move their databases to Amazon Web Services (AWS) and promises that firms can “set up their migrations in less than 10 minutes”.

The launch comes five months after Amazon first debuted the AWS Database Migration Service in preview, and a day after reports first circulated that the Internet giant was preparing to officially introduce the service to all companies.

Since January 1, Amazon said that more than 1,000 databases have been migrated to AWS which is the company’s popular suite of cloud-computing services. Now, Amazon is encouraging all companies to move their on-premises data from the likes of MySQL, Oracle, and MariaDB to Amazon’s cloud with the promise of “virtually no downtime” during the transfer.

“Hundreds of customers moved more than a thousand of their on-premises databases to Amazon Aurora, other Amazon RDS engines, or databases running on Amazon EC2 during the preview of the AWS Database Migration Service,” said Hal Berenson, vice president of relational database services at AWS, in a press release. “Customers repeatedly told us they wanted help moving their on-premises databases to AWS, and also moving to more open database engine options, but the response to the AWS Database Migration Service has been even stronger than we expected. In the preview, one-third of the database migrations used the AWS Database Migration Service to not only move databases to the AWS Cloud, but also to switch database engines in the process.”

Today’s news also comes a week after Microsoft announced the new version of its own database management system SQL Server 2016 and just as the company opened a new program that encourages companies to migrate their existing applications using free SQL Server licenses. Elsewhere, Google too has been ramping up its cloud offering with a myriad of updates and new services in the past couple of months, as well as nabbing big-name new customers such as Spotify.

The cost of AWS migration will vary depending on the size of the data to be transferred, but Amazon said that it can cost companies “as little” as $3 per terabyte. And to tackle a pain point that often deters potential customers from attempting a migration, Amazon promises that companies will experience very little downtime through the process.

Amazon’s Database Migration Service is only open in eight geographic regions for now U.S. East (N. Virginia), U.S. West (Oregon), U.S. West (N. California), E.U. (Ireland), E.U. (Frankfurt), Asia Pacific (Singapore), Asia Pacific (Sydney), and Asia Pacific (Tokyo). Additional regions, such as Brazil, will be added “in the coming months.”

--------------------
Read MORE:

About Amazon Web ServicesFor 10 years, Amazon Web Services has been the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform. AWS offers over 70 fully featured services for compute, storage, databases, analytics, mobile, Internet of Things (IoT) and enterprise applications from 33 Availability Zones (AZs) across 12 geographic regions in the U.S., Australia, Brazil, China, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Korea, and Singapore. AWS services are trusted by more than a million active customers around the world – including the fastest growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies – to power their infrastructure, make them more agile, and lower costs. 

About AmazonAmazon.com opened on the World Wide Web in July 1995. The company is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. Customer reviews, 1-Click shopping, personalized recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct Publishing, Kindle, Fire tablets, Fire TV, Amazon Echo, and Alexa are some of the products and services pioneered by Amazon.

Amazon Web Services Announces that over 1,000 Databases Have Migrated to AWS since January 1, 2016

Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com company (NASDAQ:AMZN), today announced that the AWS Database Migration Service, a fully managed service that allows customers to migrate their production Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL, MariaDB, and PostgreSQL databases from on-premises datacenters to AWS with virtually no downtime, is now available to all customers. Customers, including global enterprises and startups from a range of industries, used the AWS Database Migration Service preview to move more than 1,000 databases to the AWS Cloud since January 1, 2016. Many of these customers also used the AWS Schema Conversion Tool to switch database engines and break free from the cost and complexity of old guard commercial databases.

Customers migrating their databases to the cloud have faced a difficult choice: either take their database out of service while they copy the data (losing revenue and traffic in the process), or purchase migration tools that typically cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. The AWS Database Migration Service solves this problem by reducing the complexity, cost, and downtime of database migration, making it possible for customers to migrate terabyte-sized on-premises Oracle, SQL Server, and open source databases to the Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) or to a database running on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) for as little as $3/TB and with virtually no downtime. Customers can set up their migrations in less than ten minutes. The AWS Database Migration Service handles all of the tasks involved in moving data and completing the migration. Customers can use the service to perform one-time migrations, or they can maintain continuous replication between databases without having to install or configure any complex software. The AWS Database Migration Service monitors the progress of replication and migration, notifies customers of any network or host failures, and automatically provisions a host replacement in the event of a failure. Customers pay a simple hourly fee for the compute resources they use for migrating their database. For those customers who want to transition their applications from Oracle or SQL Server to Amazon Aurora or any of the open source engines supported in Amazon RDS (MySQL, PostgreSQL, and MariaDB), the AWS Schema Conversion Tool converts database schemas and stored procedures from one database platform to another.

“Hundreds of customers moved more than a thousand of their on-premises databases to Amazon Aurora, other Amazon RDS engines, or databases running on Amazon EC2 during the preview of the AWS Database Migration Service,” said Hal Berenson, Vice President, Relational Database Services, AWS. “Customers repeatedly told us they wanted help moving their on-premises databases to AWS, and also moving to more open database engine options, but the response to the AWS Database Migration Service has been even stronger than we expected. In the preview, one-third of the database migrations used the AWS Database Migration Service to not only move databases to the AWS Cloud, but also to switch database engines in the process.”

Thomas Publishing has been in business for over a century, connecting buyers and suppliers across all industrial sectors, evolving from an industrial trade print publisher into industry’s most respected group of digital-friendly businesses. “Faced with the challenge of rapidly growing volumes of data and the need to increase efficiency and deliver results on shorter timelines, we were confronted with unattractive options requiring significant upfront investment in both infrastructure and Oracle license expense,” said Hans Wald, Chief Technology Officer, Thomas Publishing. “We were intrigued by the possibilities when we first learned about Amazon Aurora from our partner Apps Associates, but the magnitude of effort to migrate legacy PL/SQL code seemed to rule out the feasibility of this approach at the outset. The availability of the AWS Database Migration Service caused us to take another look at this problem, and after a careful evaluation, we demonstrated that the AWS Database Migration Service automated most of the work and dramatically reduced the manual effort involved in the code migration. The AWS Database Migration Service will be a key enabler for our plans to migrate more databases to Amazon Aurora in 2016.”

Expedia, Inc. is one of the world’s leading travel companies, helping millions of travelers per month easily plan and book travel. “We are in the process of migrating some databases to Amazon Aurora,” said Kuldeep Chowhan, Principal Engineer, Expedia, Inc. “The ease by which we can do this using the AWS Database Migration Service has simplified this process for us and enabled us to accelerate our migration efforts. The ability to closely monitor the process, the detailed logging feature, and the support we received from AWS have given us a great deal of confidence in a successful migration.”

Pegasystems, whose customers include many of the world’s most sophisticated and successful enterprises, develops strategic applications for sales, marketing, service, and operations. “After testing, the AWS Database Migration Service has been shown to reduce the manual effort and time required to migrate applications from various stand-alone databases to AWS-powered datastores,” said Willy Fox, Vice President, Cloud Product and Commercialization, Pegasystems. “Now that the service is generally available, we expect to use the AWS Database Migration Service to onboard Pega Cloud customers to help realize faster value from their Pega 7 platform and strategic applications.”

Customers can access the AWS Database Migration Service using the AWS Management Console. The AWS Database Migration Service is available in the US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon), US West (N. California), EU (Ireland), EU (Frankfurt), Asia Pacific (Singapore), Asia Pacific (Sydney), and Asia Pacific (Tokyo) Regions and will expand to additional Regions in the coming months.

How To Buy A New Amazon Echo Dot Without Using Alexa Or Fire TV

How To Buy A New Amazon Echo Dot Without Using Alexa Or Fire TV

Amazon really wants people to use voice command to buy stuff. So much so that the new Echo Dot, the smaller, cheaper version of the Amazon Echo that can use an existing speaker can only be bought through voice commands, specifically on an existing Amazon Echo unit or through Amazon's Fire TV platform. At least, that's what the launch announcement says. It turns out you can get one through the Amazon Android storefront app just as easily, no extra hardware required (though you do need to be an Amazon Prime subscriber). Here we go:

1. Download and install the Amazon Shopping app on an Android phone or tablet. (This might work on iOS too, but I don't have anything to test it with.)

2. Log in to your Amazon account.
3. Tap the microphone icon in the upper left corner to start the voice command tool.

4. Say "add Echo Dot to shopping cart." Speak clearly - I got "echo dog" and "echo dart" before it caught the right voice-to-text string.

5. Tap "Add to cart" next to the Echo Dot. Tap "Proceed to checkout."

6. Check out and pay.
Note that the Echo Dot is in pre-order right now - it should ship on March 31st, along with the $129.99 Amazon Tap. Again, according to Amazon you need to be an Amazon Prime subscriber in order to buy either gadget.

By Michael Crider / androidpolice.com