Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer<\/em> No. 5, your guide to the best and Verge<\/em>-iest stuff in the world. (If you\u2019re new here, first of all, hi, hello, welcome, and second of all, you can read all the old editions at the Installer<\/em> homepage<\/a>.)\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n This week, I\u2019ve been reading about the remarkable pettiness of Disney CEOs<\/strong><\/a> and the crypto world\u2019s most obvious scams<\/strong><\/a>, watching a whole lot of US Open tennis and this wild home-renovation show that\u2019s all about VR<\/strong><\/a>, drafting fantasy football teams, nodding vigorously at this story about the scourge that is Rotten Tomatoes<\/strong><\/a>, trying to figure out how to keep my car off the internet after reading this new Mozilla study<\/strong><\/a>, shouting from the rooftops that everyone needs to stop using LastPass<\/strong><\/a> and change all their passwords, and throwing my life away for a few more minutes to play Ridiculous Fishing EX<\/strong><\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n This week, I also have a new camera, some new speakers, the smart home controller all others should copy, the next big AI music track, some thoroughly modern football-watching tips, and Jennifer Pattison Tuohy\u2019s homescreen. Let\u2019s go.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n (As always, the best part of Installer<\/em> is your ideas and tips. What do you want to know more about? What awesome tricks do you know that everyone else should? What app should everyone be using? Tell me everything: installer@theverge.com<\/a>. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer<\/em>, forward it to them and tell them to subscribe here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Happy football season to all who celebrate! This weekend is the beginning of the NFL season, and a lot of people are going to be watching games in a new place: YouTube. The company paid a reported $2 billion for Sunday Ticket<\/strong><\/a> this year and has some fun plans<\/a> for how people can watch games.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I asked Christian Oestlien, YouTube\u2019s vice president of product management, to give us some tips and tricks for how to get the most out of YouTube\u2019s football programming. (Did I do this just so I can watch football all Sunday and call it work? Who\u2019s to say.) Here\u2019s what he came back with:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I sometimes wonder how anything in Jennifer Pattison Tuohy\u2019s house actually works. Luckily, she\u2019s better at it than I am. She\u2019s The Verge<\/em>\u2019s <\/em>expert on all things smart home, which means she\u2019s constantly rigging up new systems, installing new sensors, and trying to do things like set her smart oven to automatically bake a turkey every time she opens the garage three times in four hours. Or something, I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I asked Jen to share her homescreen with us, hoping it would reveal the true chaos that comes with all her smart home testing and reporting. It\u2019s even better than I hoped. Here\u2019s Jen\u2019s homescreen, plus some information on the apps she uses and why:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The phone:<\/strong> iPhone 14. I like small phones and small iPads (preferably in purple), so I find a standard-size phone with an iPad Mini that can fit in my purse the best combo.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The apps:<\/strong> I currently have 364 apps on my phone. I didn\u2019t realize how unusual that was until an informal survey of The Verge<\/em> crew put me at about 150 apps more than most of my colleagues (only one other person was even close\u2026 David<\/em>). But it\u2019s the price I pay for a life as a smart home reviewer, where every gadget I test generally requires downloading a new app.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I manage this chaos by using the swipe down and search function 90 percent of the time, but the top two rows of apps on my homescreen are surfaced by the Siri Suggestions widget. This is surprisingly effective in offering up the right app at the right time. I use two mail apps (work and home), Life360 is how my family keeps track of each other (Apple\u2018s Find My is just\u2026 bad), and the ATP WTA Live app is for the US Open. I\u2019m currently testing robot vacuums and security cameras, hence Roborock, Tapo, and Eufy Security.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The second two rows are my constant go-tos \u2014 Slack for work, Evernote for throwing my life and work into quickly, and Todoist for the same but in a slightly more organized fashion. I\u2019ve been using Evernote for over a decade, and while it has its flaws, it also is my life, literally. Citymapper is the best app for navigating any city in the world, and having just been in Berlin for IFA<\/a> and London, Bruges, and Paris for fun, it earned itself a spot on my homepage (for now).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Then, the main three smart home platform apps I use for testing \u2014 Amazon Alexa, Apple Home, and Google Home \u2014 are always on my homescreen. (I also use SmartThings but test that on a Galaxy S22). Untappd is on my homescreen as my neighborhood hangout spot uses it for their daily tap menu. And in the dock, Phone, Safari, Messages, and WhatsApp.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The wallpaper:<\/strong> Pets and kids would be on my wallpaper if I could, but as I take so many screenshots that I publish in my articles, I prefer something less personal. I love the \u201cEarth\u201d live wallpaper that updates based on where you are. (I\u2019ve been traveling so much recently that it\u2019s actually been helpful in reminding me where I am when I wake up bleary-eyed and jet-lagged.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The widgets<\/strong>: World Clock, essential for keeping track of deadlines when you\u2019re in a different timezone from your boss, and the Apple Podcasts app. I\u2019m a huge podcast addict and am never without one chattering away at me.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I also asked Jen to share a few things she\u2019s into right now. Here\u2019s what she came back with:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Here\u2019s what the <\/em>Installer community is into this week. I want to know what you\u2019re into right now as well! Email <\/em>installer@theverge.com<\/em><\/a> with your recommendations for anything and everything, and we\u2019ll feature some of our favorites here every week.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cOne of my favorite websites is Deku Deals<\/strong><\/a>. It brings together the PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo stores and allows you to track games that are on sale really easily. You can sign up for email alerts whenever a game is discounted. They also have an iOS and Android app in development. The beta is available through their Patreon<\/a> and has cemented a homepage space on my phone. \u2013\u00a0Jon<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cOmni Crosswords<\/strong><\/a> fetches daily crosswords from major outlets without you having to subscribe to any of them. The only con of this app is that it does not have a hint system. If you like playing tennis games, Australian Open Game<\/strong><\/a> is a decent game to kill some time.\u201d \u2013\u00a0Shivam<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThe bookmarking app I never see but highly recommend is Pinboard<\/strong><\/a>, which markets itself as \u2018Social Bookmarking for Introverts.\u2019 It\u2019s blazing fast because there are no images or lazy loading; it\u2019s just webpages with text links you can add notes and tags to \u2014 that\u2019s it. The extensions are great, you can sync to Instapaper and Pocket to extend its \u2018Read Later\u2019 functionality, and it\u2019s only $22 a year and promises no tracking or ads. Have I mentioned it\u2019s fast? That\u2019s what did it for me. Every page loads instantly.\u201d \u2013\u00a0Ethan<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cRegarding link buckets: I was a longtime faithful user of del.icio.us (and then Pinboard) for many years, but maintenance on Pinboard has slowed to a halt in spite of its subscription pricing. This led me to seek out alternatives, and I eventually settled on linkding<\/strong><\/a>. This is a bookmark bucket service that you must host yourself, which may be an impediment to the majority of your readers, but I love it.\u201d \u2013 Josh<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI want to recommend an app I am obsessed with these days: it\u2019s called Yuka<\/strong><\/a>. It allows you to scan food items, and it rates food about how good \/ bad that food is and why.\u201d \u2013\u00a0Shubham<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI\u2019m really enjoying Read.cv<\/strong><\/a> and their little social network app Posts.cv<\/strong><\/a> \u2014 mostly centered around designers, but it\u2019s fun seeing all the apps and web design all these people are coming up with.\u201d \u2013 Christopher<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cNew World<\/em> on Netflix<\/strong><\/a>.<\/strong> A Korean reality show on a \u2018utopian island,\u2019 sort of like a video game turned TV show. They\u2019re gaining virtual currency, and then one of the contestants finds out he can rewind time and undo all the gambling. Fun, inventive, weird show.\u201d \u2013 Glenn<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cCame across Finalist<\/strong><\/a> on Threads, a really slick to-do app that works well for my brain. Focused on daily lists that are easy to carry over, just recently released.\u201d \u2013 Rigel\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWho Is Erin Carter?<\/strong><\/em><\/a> Netflix. Brilliant.\u201d \u2013\u00a0Faisal<\/p>\n<\/div>\n After literally a year of having it pinned on my to-read list, I finally sat down and plowed through The Wrap<\/em>\u2019s <\/em>huge retrospective<\/strong><\/a> on what happened with the movie John Carter<\/em>. It\u2019s a really interesting read and made me wonder how many more movies might have gone through the same chaos. And there\u2019s a surprisingly rich genre of YouTube devoted to this exact topic! I\u2019ve been plowing through the channel \u201c<\/strong>It Was a Sh*t Show,<\/strong><\/a>\u201d<\/strong> which chronicles all the mess behind everything from Mad Max: Fury Road <\/em>to Cats <\/em>to Arrested Development. <\/em>The stories are wild, the videos are great, and I\u2019m now completely convinced that it\u2019s a minor miracle that anything good ever gets made at all. But I\u2019m glad it does.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nThe Drop<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
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Pro tips<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
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Screen share<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
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Crowdsourced<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
Signing off<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n