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Route planning apps for electric cars

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A screenshot showing various route planning apps, including Google Maps, Apple Maps, ZapMap, Electroverse, PlugShare and ABRP

Since I first got my own car (10 years ago), we’ve used Google Maps for directions. I’ve never bothered with a stand-alone satnav, and our Nissan Leaf is the first car that we’ve owned to have one built-in.

With our electric Nissan Leaf, Google Maps is still our go-to app for route planning and directions, but there are some other apps that I’ve considered. Here’s an overview of them.

Google Maps

Starting with Google Maps. Its support for electric vehicles is okay; you can tell it that your car is an electric vehicle, and it’ll offer the most energy-efficient routes as well as the fastest. Remember, electric and hybrid cars have regenerative braking; in a petrol or diesel car, a shorter but slower route may only use a little less fuel, but a lot less energy in an electric car. On one recent journey, a slower but more direct route took five minutes longer, but used 29% less charge and meant that would get there and back without having to recharge en route.

You can also tell Google Maps what plugs your car supports. Our Nissan Leaf, for example, can charge from a 3-pin plug, a Type 2 AC charger and CHAdeMO DC chargers. Then, when you switch your car from being petrol/diesel to electric, it’ll no longer offer to show you directions to petrol stations, but to public electric car chargers instead.

Google Maps will show public chargers from the majority of major operators, and their occupancy. However, compared to some of the other apps mentioned here, it won’t show all chargers.

If you have a really new electric car with Google Maps built-in, then it’ll know your car’s current charge and be able to add charging stops for long journeys. Our Nissan Leaf doesn’t – we can just use Google Maps through CarPlay or Android Auto. As such, it won’t automatically suggest charging stops on longer journeys.

Apple Maps

Note: I’m writing this about Apple Maps in iOS 18, which was current at the time of writing

I’m sure that Apple Maps works great, if you live in California. I don’t, and since Apple launched it 13 years ago in iOS 6, it’s been a disappointment. If you do live in California, or a supported country, then there are EV features available to you. But it appears that the UK either isn’t a supported country, or it just doesn’t work with my Nissan Leaf. Either way, for me, there are no special features available in Apple Maps.

I can’t even tell Apple Maps that I drive an electric vehicle, and so it still bubbles up petrol stations which are of limited use to me now. You can search for ‘charging point’ and get directions to charging points, but it can’t easily incorporate these into a route. It also recommended a charging point to me which didn’t actually exist.

ZapMap

ZapMap has probably the best list of UK electric car chargers. As well as listing all of those on the main charging networks, including availability, users can also add chargers themselves. These are often ‘destination chargers’ at places where you can visit, which may be offered for free and are not part of a larger network.

The app is ad-supported, and won’t work with CarPlay or Android Auto unless you pay for ZapMap Premium. This currently costs £5 per month, or £35 for a full year if paid in advance (£30 if you sign up before the end of the month). As well as hiding the ads, you get a free ZapMap RFID charging card (normally £10) and a 5% discount if you pay for certain public chargers through the ZapMap app. As I only use public chargers occasionally, I may consider the £5 per month option when needed, and then cancel.

The free app lets you plan a limited number of routes, which can then be sent to either Apple or Google Maps for navigation.

Octopus Electroverse

Electroverse is the public charging app from Octopus Energy. It doesn’t list as many chargers as ZapMap, as it focusses just on those on the major networks. However, it offers things like route planning, CarPlay and an RFID card for free, unlike ZapMap, and there are no adverts. It also looks nicer.

It’s worth noting that, by default, it’ll only show public chargers that are compatible with the Electroverse app and RFID card. This means that public chargers from Pod Point initially don’t appear, for example. You can turn this off if you want to prioritise seeing a wider range of chargers.

The route planning is quite good. You can tell it what car you drive, your start and end points, and how much charge you expect to start with. It’ll then calculate a route that includes stops at compatible chargers, and it’ll tell you how much you need to charge at each stop and how long it’ll take. You can then send the route to Google or Apple Maps. Note that in CarPlay mode, handoff is only to Apple Maps and not Google Maps, so bare that in mind.

PlugShare

PlugShare is another site that allows user contributions of public charger places. Unlike ZapMap, which is UK focussed, PlugShare is global. Its list of chargers is extensive, and even includes chargers which are ‘under construction’. I checked a couple of these locally, and found that, whilst there was planning permission in place for these, construction work hadn’t started. I think this is where Apple Maps may be getting its data from, but without the knowledge that they’re under construction.

It supports route planning, but this seems to be limited to showing public chargers on a given route. Unlike Electroverse, it didn’t tell me how much to charge up by and how long to stop for, and wouldn’t send the details to a mapping app. It supports CarPlay though.

ABRP – A Better Route Planner

A Better Route Planner is worth considering. It’s a full replacement for Apple Maps or Google Maps, and is designed for electric cars. Like with Electroverse, you can select your car and the starting charge, and it’ll plan routes to include car chargers.

CarPlay is limited to ABRP Premium, which also allows you to factor in weather conditions when driving, and to prefer chargers where there are toilets or children’s play areas. And, like Google Maps, ABRP Premium incorporates traffic data. It can also connect to live battery data in more cars, albeit in a somewhat roundabout way. For my Nissan Leaf, it needs an OBD2 adaptor and the Leaf Spy Pro app (£20) set up. ABRP Premium costs €5 per month, or €50 per year.

Combining the apps

At the moment, I’m using a combination of all three:

  • Google Maps for general navigation
  • Electroverse for calculating charge levels on a route, or incorporating charge points into a route plan
  • ZapMap for finding charger locations

It would be nice if Google Maps included charge levels in its route planner on cars that don’t have it built-in; that would minimise my need to use other apps. Still, by planning my routes in Electroverse and sending them to Google Maps, I can achieve most of the features of ABRP without their premium subscription. Once I’ve picked up an OBD2 adaptor that’s fully compatible with Leaf Spy, I may give ABRP another try though.

No more Google Nest themostats in Europe

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A photo of our Nest thermostat with the heating set to 19 C

I’m a little bit late on this, as the news came out a couple of weeks ago. Google is dropping support for its oldest Nest thermostats, and will stop selling the newest models in Europe, once its stock is depleted.

This is relevant for me as we had a Nest thermostat installed nine years ago. Now, as far as I can tell, it’s not one of the models that’s being dropped. However, Google and Nest haven’t made it massively straightforward to check.

There is a ‘How to tell which Nest thermostat you have’ help page, but the information is different depending on where you are. Compare and contrast the UK and US versions:

The reason for the discrepancy, and the given reason for withdrawing the product altogether from Europe, is that:

“Heating systems in Europe are unique and have a variety of hardware and software requirements that make it challenging to build for the diverse set of homes”

However, when I’ve looked, I appear to have a third generation thermostat, but a second generation heat link. The heat link is the rounded-square white box that is wired up to your boiler. I’m hopeful, therefore, that I do indeed have a third generation thermostat. I haven’t had an email about it yet, that’s for sure.

If it does transpire that I have an older thermostat, then it’ll only work locally. That means that it’ll still control the boiler using the schedule set up on it, but users won’t be able to use either the Nest or Google Home apps to control their thermostat. And features like Home/Away assist will also stop working. In tandem with this, the old Nest app is being retired altogether, with all functionality moved to the Google Home app.

I assume that this will also apply to anything that uses Google’s APIs, so users won’t be able to use Home Assistant as a workaround, for example. The change takes place on the 25th October this year.

Compensation

As well as notifying affected users by email, Google is offering money off its newer thermostats for those who want to upgrade and keep their smart features. Of course, as Google is withdrawing its thermostats from Europe, European users are instead offered 50% off a smart thermostat from Tado, which costs €199 normally. The same kit is currently £149 from Amazon (sponsored link) but I’m guessing the discount code will only work for direct orders. Tado smart thermostats will work with Google Home, and with Home Assistant, but they’re still cloud-based like Nest’s thermostats are.

And this is the concern I have. I’ve trusted Nest, and later Google, to provide a cloud service, which they’re now taking away for some users. Whilst this (probably) doesn’t affect me now, further changes in a couple of years could mean that my thermostat becomes unsupported as well. And if Tado decides to do the same with their thermostats, users could be inconvenienced twice.

Google has been killing off a number of its smart devices recently. In March, the Google Nest Protect was discontinued (I also have one of those), and I’ve recently blogged about the removal of Google Assistant from Fitbit devices. And it’s not like Google hasn’t got form when it comes to killing off products. Killed by Google lists almost 300, and it actually hasn’t been updated in a few months. Indeed, I’m still bitter that Google Reader was killed off 12 years ago.

Finding alternatives

I think what’s worse about Google killing off its older thermostats is that they’re not so easy to replace. A thermostat needs to be professionally installed. It’s not like a phone, or a smoke alarm, or a smart speaker, where the old one can simply be unplugged and replaced. And they’re not cheap – I paid £250 for my Nest thermostat back in 2016. Even with the discounts, you would still have to find someone to install it for you.

In time, we’ll be replacing our gas boiler with a heat pump, and when that happens, I’ll look to replace to Nest thermostat with something else. It won’t be Tado, as outlined above. At the moment, I’m leaning towards Drayton Wiser. It works with both gas boilers and heat pumps, and supports smart thermostatic radiator valves. It can also work locally – indeed, the Home Assistant integration (installable via HACS) doesn’t require the cloud at all. Others who I’ve talked to in smart home communities recommend it, but I haven’t experienced it myself.

I suppose, knowing Google’s history, that I should have been more wary about relying on Google hardware for my heating.

No more Google Assistant on Fitbit Versa 3

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A screenshot of an email from Google Fitbit. It says: You are receiving this email to let you know about an upcoming change to your Fitbit Sense and/or Versa 3. Over the next few weeks we will be progressively phasing out Google Assistant on your Fitbit device. You can learn more about this process here. This change means that Google Assistant voice control for activities will no longer be available on your Fitbit device.

In a few weeks time, Google is removing support for Google Assistant on its Fitbit Versa 3 and Sense devices. I have a Fitbit Versa 3, and so last week I received an email (screenshotted above) notifying me. Going forward, if you have a Fitbit Versa 3 or Fitbit Sense, you’ll only be able to use Amazon Alexa and not Google Assistant.

When I first heard about this, I was a little confused. After all, with Google now owning Fitbit, you would expect them to phase out support for Alexa to keep you in Google’s ecosystem. So, I did a bit of digging.

Alexa on Fitbit has always supported more features

Firstly, Google Assistant has been a poor relation of Alexa on Fitbit devices. On a Fitbit, Alexa can do most things that an Amazon Echo device can do, including controlling smart home devices. Google Assistant was more limited, to things like web searches, or launching apps on the Fitbit device to set timers or start exercises.

I’ve had my Fitbit Versa 3 for nearly three years – it was a 38th birthday present from Christine – and in that time I’ve only ever used Google Assistant. Following this announcement, I switched to Alexa, and have so far found it more capable. We don’t use any other Alexa devices at home, and so I’ve had to link up our various smart home devices to Alexa son that I can interact with them. For the most part, I’ve used Home Assistant and Homeway to achieve this.

Google is ‘upgrading’ Assistant to Gemini

You’re probably aware of Google Gemini, which is Google’s AI chat bot. Later this year, Gemini will replace the Google Assistant mobile app, as Google wants to foist its AI tools on its existing Google Assistant users. I’m not extremely comfortable with this, as I believe that current AI models are flawed and inefficient. For example, last year Gemini told people to eat one rock per day, and I’m concerned with the amount of computing power these AI models need compared to more basic natural language parsing. But I guess I don’t have a choice unless I stop using Google Assistant altogether.

Anyway, it seems that Google has decided that its older devices won’t be getting the Gemini upgrade. When you use Google Assistant on a Fitbit Versa 3, it communicates with the Google Assistant on your paired phone by Bluetooth. Presumably then, once the Google Assistant app has disappeared from app stores, it won’t be able to work. Google no longer sells the Versa 3 and Sense, and so I’m guessing they’ve made a business decision not to support the Gemini upgrade. After all, unless you’re a Fitbit Premium or Google One subscriber, you’re not making any more money for Google after having bought the device.

For now, the newer Fitbit Versa 4 and Sense 2 should still work with Google Assistant – these models are still on sale at the time of writing. However, they’re being phased out – in future, Google will only sell the Inspire and Charge Fitbit ranges. If you want a smart watch, you’ll be steered towards Google’s Pixel Watch range – but bear in mind that they’re Android-only.

As for my Fitbit Versa 3? Hopefully it’ll keep going for at least a couple more years, and I’m happy with using Alexa instead of Google Assistant for now. When it comes to replacing it, however, I’ll need to think hard about my choices. Whilst Fitbit’s smart watch range is less capable than, say, an Apple Watch, they offer much better battery life. An Apple Watch Ultra typically lasts only 36 hours, whereas the Versa 3 would do five days on a full charge when I bought it. Even now, it still manages 3-4 days, depending on use.

Some recent things I have learned about SEO

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A screenshot from Google Console Search Insights congratulating me on achieving 900 clicks in 28 days, indicating that I am doing okay from SEO perspective

I’m signed up to Google Search Console (formerly known as Webmaster Tools) which gives web site owners an indication at how good they are at SEO, or search engine optimisation. And last weekend, Google emailed me to congratulate me on 900 click-throughs in 28 days. That means that about 60 people find something from this blog in a Google search, and click through to see it.

Of course, I mainly blog for myself. It’s a chronicle of things that I have done, or things I’ve found useful or want to share. But I also want people to be able to read it; as the saying goes, if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? So I feel it’s important to incorporate some degree of SEO.

As this is a WordPress blog, I use the Yoast SEO plugin (the free version). It works okay, and gives each post a traffic light symbol for SEO and readability. Readability is important to me; it discourages me from using overly long sentences, and avoiding passive voice. But the SEO suggestions are helpful too. For example, making sure that any images have relevant alt text, and that I include both internal and external links. Not every blog post needs to be optimised, but I try to optimise most of them.

Some blog posts have done better than others, and seeing as the whole idea behind this post is that I share what I’ve learned, here are some examples:

Comparing things

People will often search for ‘[thing 1] vs [thing 2]‘, which I found out when my blog post about the films Wonka and Wish did well back in January. It just so happened that I had seen both, and I could have reviewed them in separate posts. But putting them together meant that my little blog appeared on the first page of results for a while. Alas, apart from watching Butterfly Tale last month, I haven’t been to the cinema since.

I put this into practice when comparing Readly and Pressreader. My original plan was just to review Pressreader on its own, but having seen how well my Wonka and Wish post did, I tried comparing the two. That blog post is typically in the top 5 results for the search term ‘readly vs pressreader‘.

How-to guides

The most clicked-on link from Google is my guide to installing Home Assistant Supervised on a Raspberry Pi. About a third of all clicks to my blog are to that post alone. But other how-to guides score highly too, including Mounting a USB hard drive on startup on Ubuntu Core and How to join a preferred Thread network in Home Assistant. Generally, I’ve written these guides because I haven’t found a simple answer myself, and these are usually an amalgamation of advice taken from various forums or StackExhange threads.

Whilst having a dedicated SEO plugin probably helps, there are some things that you can do yourself that can help:

  • Ensure you have a machine readable site map, and point Google at it.
  • Make sure your site loads quickly; one of the reasons why I changed to GeneratePress as my theme is that it’s a lightweight theme.
  • Post regularly – Google likes sites which often post new content. I’ve found every other day to be manageable.

As I said before, the number one person that this blog is written for is me. But I also want it to be useful and for people to find it. I hope I get the balance right.

Home Assistant and Google Home broadcasts

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Screenshot of Home Assistant showing a script to broadcast a message via Google Home when my washing machine finishes

We have six Google Home Mini devices around our home, and now I can get Home Assistant to automatically deliver broadcast messages. Here’s how I did it.

Broadcast messages

When you have more than one Google Home device, you can say ‘Okay Google, broadcast [message]’, and it will relay that message to all of the other Google Home devices in your home. It’s useful for announcing that dinner’s ready, for example. Our house is long, rather than square, and I’m hard of hearing, so we use this quite a lot.

What I wanted to achieve was automation of these broadcasts, so that a broadcast was triggered by an event. This is possible thanks to the Google Assistant SDK integration. It’s a bit of a faff to set up – I recommend following this guide or watching the video embedded below:

Call the service

Once it’s set up, you can test it by opening Home Assistant’s Developer Tools. Click the ‘Service’ tab, and choose the ‘Google Assistant SDK: Send text command’ service. In the command, type something like ‘broadcast "This is a test"‘ and click ‘Call Service’. If you’ve set everything up correctly, your Google Home devices should all say something like “Incoming broadcast; it says: This is a test”.

Create a script

As I write this, the latest version of Home Assistant (2024.4.x) doesn’t allow automations to call services directly. So, to be able to trigger the broadcast, we’ll first need to create a Script in Home Assistant. In my example, I have a script called ‘Washing machine finished broadcast’. The ‘mode’ is left at the default setting of ‘Single’, and then I’ve created an Action which is to Call a Service. As above, I have selected ‘Google Assistant SDK: Send text command’ as the service to call, and then entered ‘broadcast "The washing machine has finished"‘ as the command, which I have ticked. I’ve left the rest blank.

Whilst here, I’ve also added a time condition. As this will be triggered when the washing machine finishes, I don’t want it to run when we might be asleep. We have Google Home devices in each of the bedrooms, and we sometimes run the washing machine overnight.

Home Assistant runs script actions in order. So, if you also want to add a time condition, you’ll need to add this before the Google Assistant SDK service call, or re-order the actions. In this example, I have created a Test action, where the current time is between 8am and 8pm. Outside of those times, the script will fail and not process the next command, so the broadcast action won’t be executed.

Link it to an automation

Now that we have a script, we can integrate this with an automation. I’m using my existing automation that sends a phone notification when my washing machine finishes. In my case, this is triggered using Meross energy monitoring smart plugs (sponsored link).

So now, as well as sending a notification, it also triggers a broadcast (within the time constraints).

Other things you can do with Google Home

Once you have the Google Asssistant SDK integration installed in Home Assistant, you can use scripts to run any other command that you would say to Google Home. You could, for example, create a button on your Home Assistant dashboard, which triggers the text command ‘play Never Going To Give You Up by Rick Astley on Spotify‘ if you want to automatically rickroll the other occupants of your house. It can also control smart home devices which work with Google Assistant, but do not yet have a Home Assistant integration.

Comparing smart speakers

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Yesterday, I reviewed our (relatively) new Google Home Mini. Today, I’m going to focus on why we chose to go with Google, and not an Amazon Echo or Apple Homepod.

Ecosystems

When you choose a smart speaker, I would take some time to decide which one works with the apps, services and devices that you already use. Apple’s HomePod only works with iOS devices for example; that’s fine for me, but not much use for my wife who has an Android phone. The Verge’s review seems to focus on the HomePod’s locked-in nature.

Similarly, Amazon’s Echo devices work well if you have Amazon Prime and one of its Fire TV devices, but we’re a Netflix household and have a Google Chromecast. I gather that Netflix support on Alexa isn’t that great, whereas it works well with a Google Home.

Price

We got our Google Home Mini free as part of a deal with Nest, which was probably the biggest reason for us choosing it over its rivals. As I write this, both the Amazon Echo Dot (sponsored link) and the Google Home Mini are £39, and normally sell for about £50, and even the more expensive models are under £200. Apple is selling the HomePod for £319. For that, you could buy six Google Home Minis and cover your house, and have some change left over.

Sound quality

One reason for the HomePod’s higher price is its focus on high quality sound for playing music. Arguably, it’s trying to compete more with the Sonos range of wireless speakers, some of which now include Alexa as well.

The larger and more expensive Google Home and Amazon Echo models have better speakers than the smaller ones, but I was still reasonably impressed with the little speaker in the Google Home. Audiophiles would probably be disappointed with all but the most expensive models but for most people, even the smallest and cheapest models will do.

Third party services

Amazon’s Alexa devices have a range of third-party ‘skills’ available, which massively expand its abilities and integration with other services. Google Home is somewhere in the middle; it supports a lot of internet of things devices, but not much else. That is changing but some things, like being able to order a pizza from Domino’s, are US-only for now.

As for the HomePod, it’s Apple all the way down. If you have smart devices that support HomeKit, great. But that’s a bit useless if you have a Nest thermostat, for example. It can only play music from Apple Music, and not Spotify or any other third party streaming service.

In summary

If you like good quality audio, have only Apple or HomeKit-supporting devices and money to burn, then by all means, buy a HomePod. Amazon and Google offer much better value speakers that work with a wider variety of third-party devices and services, and the choice you make will reflect what you already own.

Google Chromecast review

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A photo of a Google Chromecast

There were only a couple of presents that I specifically asked for Christmas this year, and one of these was a Google Chromecast. At £30, it’s a cheap and easy way of getting internet content onto your TV.

Roku versus Chromecast

If you’ve read my blog for a while, you’ll know that I’ve had a Roku 2 XS since summer 2014. I wanted a Chromecast to complement it, and alleviate some of the Roku’s shortcomings.

The Roku is good little device, especially as it now supports almost all streaming media services in the UK with the recent additions of Rakuten’s Wuaki.tv and Amazon Prime Instant Video. And it’s easy to use, since it comes with a remote control – unlike the Chromecast. The main issues I’ve been having are:

  • Speed – apps such as BBC iPlayer are very slow. You can press pause, and the Roku will take several seconds before it actually responds in any way. I imagine newer Roku devices (the third and fourth series) are much faster; the Roku 2 series was on its way out when I bought it in 2014. That being said, it’s still receiving software updates which is good.
  • Stability – sometimes the Roku crashes, and has to reboot. I’ve had particular problems with the YouTube app causing this.
  • Netflix – the Netflix app on the Roku (second series at least) is poor. It doesn’t support multiple user profiles per account, so whatever you watch goes on the viewing history of the main profile. And parental controls don’t work, so you can’t watch any shows on the Roku which require a parental control PIN.
  • Spotify – Roku has a Spotify app, but you need to be a Premium subscriber to use it – that means paying £10 per month. I’m on Spotify’s £5 per month ‘Unlimited’ plan, which suits me but doesn’t work with the Roku.

Where the Chromecast excels

Setting up the Chromecast is quite easy – it took around 10 minutes which included installing a software update. And installation is as simple as plugging it into a spare HDMI socket, and then connecting the USB cable to a spare socket (a mains adaptor is included if required).

To ‘cast’ something, you just need to open an app on your Android or iOS mobile device, and look for the cast icon. Whatever you’re streaming will then appear on your TV, and you use your device to control it – playing, pausing etc. And, it only casts the content that you’re streaming, so your TV won’t flash up any notifications for example. This is a big advantage over simple Bluetooth speaker systems, for example, which simply broadcast all of the sounds that your device makes.

Compared with the Roku 2, the Chromecast is very fast. Tapping the cast icon in an app registers almost straightaway on the Chromecast and the only delays seem to be caused by buffering, rather than the device itself being slow.

Netflix works as well as it would do on a mobile device, so we can watch more adult things when our one-year-old isn’t about, but also ensure that their profile doesn’t show them. And Spotify streaming via Chromecast is available to all users – even those with free accounts.

There’s also a guest mode, which lets anyone who doesn’t have your Wifi password to cast to your Chromecast – provided that they have the PIN code displayed on the home screen. The PIN changes at least once a day.

…and some pitfalls

I’ve already mentioned the lack of a remote. But this problem is exacerbated, in my view, because you have to go into the app to access the controls to play and pause. On iOS, at least, the controls don’t appear on your device’s lock screen. You can lock your device and the content will still play, but pausing when the phone rings (for example) is a bit more involved. It’d be nice if there was an iOS widget that could pause whatever is playing, but I don’t know if that’s possible.

Not all apps support Chromecast. The big one that’s missing is Amazon Prime Instant Video, although there is a relatively easy workaround. The other app that I miss is UKTV Play, which is the only way that we can watch shows on Dave, like the new series of Red Dwarf. Living in a valley prevents us from receiving Dave via Freeview, we can’t get Virgin Media, it’s not on Freesat and we’re too cheap to pay for Sky.

I was also hoping that my favourite Podcast app, Overcast, would work, but apparently not. A tweet from the developer suggests that it would not be trivial to add this in future. And you’ll need to use an app such as AllCast if you want to view photos and videos from Dropbox on your Chromecast. I had mixed results with this in my testing.

Also, none of the built-in apps on iOS support Chromecast. This isn’t surprising – Apple sells a rival device, the Apple TV, and has a rival protocol called AirPlay. AirPlay is, in my view, more basic than the Chromecast protocol. With AirPlay, your mobile device acts as an intermediary – it receives the content stream, decodes it, and then sends it via AirPlay to your Apple TV. The Chromecast, instead, streams directly from the content provider – your device merely sends some instructions. The main benefit is that it won’t drain your device’s battery.

Sadly, I also had some stability issues when using the NextUp Comedy app with the Chromecast. Like with the Roku, these caused the Chromecast to lock up and restart. However, at least my device remembered where it was, so I could pick it up again easily after a restart.

Putting Chrome into Chromecast

There’s a reason for the Chromecast having such a name, and that’s because you can cast web pages from the Google Chrome web browser on the desktop. This is how you can get the aforementioned Amazon Prime and UKTV Play onto your Chromecast, but it does mean that you’ll have to play and pause playback using your computer. Which isn’t ideal when your computer is in a different room to your TV, like it is in our house.

Overall

The Chromecast isn’t perfect and has some key pitfalls as mentioned. But it’s great value for £30, and relatively simple for a moderately tech-minded person to use.

Sending everything to Gmail

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A couple of weeks ago, I decided to consolidate all of my personal email accounts into my Gmail account.

Considering that my relationship with Google soured after they killed off Google Reader (yes, I’m still bitter, three years on), this may come as a surprise. Until recently, I only used Google services for my calendar, search, maps and the advertising on this blog. I’d even stopped using Gmail, and had all messages there forwarded to my Outlook.com account. Mail sent to this domain was managed by its own IMAP server.

I’ll explain why I changed my mind in a series of sub-headings.

Gmail’s better spam protection

On my own email server, I had SpamAssassin (albeit without the Bayesian learning system which isn’t set up by default on my host), Pyzor, and the use of Spamhaus‘ blocklists. This still wasn’t enough to prevent spam getting through, and at its worst I was still getting 10-15 messages a day in my inbox. Gmail’s spam filtering is much better, despite a few false positives. For example, an email from my mother was sent to the spam folder as it was about transferring money – I’m guessing Google struggles to tell the difference between my mum and someone purporting to be a Nigerian prince. But over the past couple of weeks, I think there’s only been one spam email that has got through.

Not having to look after my own email server

The email server software offered by my host, Dovecot, is fine, but I’ve had to do things like enable DomainKeys and SPF myself. Ditto for tuning SpamAssassin and installing Pyzor. Outsourcing my email to a third party makes it easier.

I had considered using Google Apps, or Office 365, on my domain, but ran into issues. With Google Apps, you can’t use an email address already associated with a Google account, so I didn’t take that forward, and got stuck trying to enable Office 365’s DNS settings. Whereas I was just able to set up a series of email forwards to send everything to Gmail.

Notifications for important email only

If you turn on Gmail’s Priority Inbox mode, it’ll attempt to sort your email into ‘Important’ and ‘Everything else’. Crucially, that means that Gmail’s mobile apps will only notify you about important messages (if you want), rather than every new email message that isn’t spam. This cuts down the number of distracting notifications on my phone.

One (powerful) inbox to rule them all

By forwarding the email to this domain and from my Outlook.com account (reversing the previous situation), I have all of my personal email in one place. And that one place has decent mobile apps and a powerful web-based interface. By default, my host offers SquirrelMail which is very basic; I have since replaced it with RoundCube but Gmail is still easier to use.

Access to third-party services

With Gmail, I can finally use services like Unroll.me to clean up my inbox (which I’ll eventually devote a separate blog post to), and IFTTT, to name a few. There’s also Inbox by Gmail, which I’ve been trying recently and it’s a very impressive improvement to the basic email inbox. Again, I’ll have to write about it in more detail sometime.

Although I don’t pay for Gmail just yet (and nowadays I’m loathed to rely on services that I’m not paying for), there is a paid-tier of Gmail offering more storage should I require it. However, as I don’t use Google Photos, I’m nowhere near the storage limit for my Google account and so I don’t need to pay for it at present.

For those of you wondering what email address to use, please continue to send messages to neil@neilturner.me.uk. This has been my primary email address for well over a decade and I plan to keep it that way. Whilst everything gets forwarded to Gmail, I will still reply to messages using that address, and should Google decide to change Gmail for the worse in future, I’ll be able to port it somewhere else.

De-Google-ifying, part II

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Screenshot of icons for Google services

Last year, in the fallout following Google’s announcement that it was killing off Reader, I decided to make an effort to reduce my dependency on Google services. The thinking behind it was essentially ‘if Google can kill off Reader, what else will they get rid of?’

Whilst I did delete all of the Google apps off my phone, barring YouTube, within a few weeks they were all back and I was basically back to where I was originally – reliant on many of the services Google offers for free.

But recently I have managed to cut back on my Google dependency.

Contacts – iCloud

I used to use Google Contacts to keep my address book in sync between my various devices – iPhone, Mac, and Windows desktop at work. Originally I used Thunderbird at work which had a couple of  unofficial extensions that synchronised the address book with Google, and my Mac and iPhone both natively supported contact sync.

And then we moved to Office 365, at which point Thunderbird just wasn’t up to the job. So I now use Outlook 2010 like everyone else, and there’s no easy way of linking Google Contacts. iCloud, on the other hand, works fine with Outlook and my Apple devices (obviously) so I successfully migrated a few months ago.

Mobile web browser – Safari

In April last year, when iOS 6 was the latest and greatest, Google Chrome was significantly better than Safari, in my opinion. However the improvements to Safari in iOS 7 and 8 have made them broadly equal in my view and so I’ve removed Google Chrome from my iPhone and iPad. Having just one web browser makes things a little easier to work with and third-party web browsers have always been second-class citizens on iOS. Plus, 1Password integrates with Safari through an app extension, which saves me having to open, close, copy and paste to retrieve passwords.

Two-factor authentication – Authy

Google Authenticator is probably the most well-known app for managing two-factor authentication codes, and indeed it was about the only one available for a long time. Now, there’s Authy, which has a few key advantages. Firstly it’s a universal app that can be installed on both iPhones and iPads, and secondly these can be kept in sync. So if I have my iPad to hand, I can use Authy on that to enter codes on my phone, rather than having to switch between apps. There are also a couple of web sites – namely Humble Bundle and Coinbase – which require Authy rather than Google Authenticator, and Authy can do everything that Google’s app can do anyway. So rather than have both, I’ve moved everything into Authy.

As for everything else, I’m still mostly using Google services. I don’t yet trust Apple Maps enough to use instead of Google Maps, even though it has improved since launch. My calendar is still in Google Calendar despite its woeful support in Outlook, because it allows Christine and I to view each others’ events. The results I get from searching with Google are better than Bing or Yahoo!. So whilst I don’t think I could ever completely give up Google, I’m pleased that I’ve been able to find better solutions elsewhere.

Purchasing a video streaming box

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Raspberry Pi

I’m planning to purchase a video streaming box – i.e. a thing that you plug into your TV to watch streaming video services. Now that we have Netflix I’d like to be able to watch films and TV shows on our TV, without having to run them through my Mac (which is also connected to the TV).

Things I’ve already tried

Last year I bought a Raspberry Pi, and for a while I used that to watch BBC iPlayer, but it’s not a great experience. It’s a bit slow and as I had XBian on a different SD card to everything else I had to shut it down, swap the cards and reboot it. The BBC iPlayer interface in XBMC leaves a lot to be desired, plus I’d been using a smartphone app as a remote which is a bit clunky.

Our Freesat box and Blu-Ray players also technically support BBC iPlayer, and the latter also supports YouTube, but they’re so fiddly and slow that they’re not worth using. In particular the remote control for our Toshiba Blu-Ray player is awful – it’s often unresponsive and the buttons are confusing.

Comparing video streaming boxes

A couple of weeks’ ago Pocket Lint did a good review of several boxes available in the UK. They looked at the Apple TV, Roku, Roku Streaming Stick, Sky Now TV, Google Chromecast, WDTV Play, Amazon Fire TV (not currently available in the UK), plus a couple of less-known Android-based boxes.

As much as I like Apple, the Apple TV is out of the question. It’s one of the most expensive boxes on the market, at £99, and doesn’t support many UK streaming services – iPlayer and 4oD are missing, for example. Though Apple does add new channels from time to time, there’s no schedule and no way of adding custom apps without jailbreaking. Apple really needs to consider creating an app store for the Apple TV if it’s going to be more than a niche product.

I also think that the Google Chromecast is a bit too basic. It’s useless without a smartphone or tablet, but it is cheap. And the WDTV Play, as you’d expect from a company like Western Digital, is more about playing content that you already have on your own hard disks, although Netflix is supported.

Sky’s Now TV box is by far the cheapest at £10, and is basically a re-branded Roku box, but without the ability to (easily) add other apps. Indeed, there’s no Netflix because it competes with Now TV, but it does offer the main British streaming services like iPlayer and 4oD. And Amazon’s Fire TV box is US-only at present.

Rockin’ the Roku

So that basically leaves the Roku devices. They support the largest range of streaming services, including all the big British ones. The only notable omission is Amazon Instant Video, which we don’t subscribe to. And you can easily add extra services with custom apps if needed.

The Roku 3 offers more features, such as both ethernet and wifi (and not just the latter), as well as a remote control that can be used with headphones. But it’s larger and needs its own power supply. The Roku Streaming Stick, though less powerful, can run from a USB port and can be hidden away behind your TV. It’s also significantly cheaper at £50, versus £100 for the Roku 3.

So, it looks like I’ll be buying a Roku Streaming Stick soon. In my opinion it offers the best platform support and the best value for money.