The Cavalier Maverick is a portable speaker with Alexa onboard, plus, it has a super stylish exterior, its own charging base, and a carrying case.

Whether you're looking for an Alexa-enabled speaker to use at home or one that can travel, the Cavalier Maverick delivers on both fronts — and unlike most speakers, this is one that you'll want to show off, thanks to its visually appealing design.

Its hipster vibe is just present enough that you may be convinced to do away with your record player to save a little space, but subtle enough to go with any room's style if hipster isn't your thing. It comes in two different color schemes: black and silver, and indigo and tan, which allows it to mesh well with any space.

I was able to test the Maverick for myself and immediately appreciated the craftsmanship. Genuine wood, distressed leather, metal, and custom knit fabric come together to form a speaker that lives up to the promise of "looking as good as it sounds."

Once I downloaded the Cavalier app, I had the Maverick set up and connected to our Wi-Fi in less than 10 minutes. If you want to take advantage of the Alexa-enabled voice control feature, you'll also need to download the Amazon Alexa app. Both apps are nicely laid out and easy to use.

The Maverick can easily be controlled via the Cavalier app, voice commands issued to Alexa, or with the smart button located on top of the speaker.

My favorite way to control the speaker was with Alexa, and as an Amazon Prime user, I could play songs right from my library. It's also compatible with Pandora, Spotify, and iHeart Radio, in case you don't use Prime Music. Thanks to the Spotify Connect integration, you can also control your music directly through the Spotify app if you so choose.

The Alexa-enabled voice control also came in handy when I wanted to know what the weather was, wanted to set a reminder, or wanted the latest news updates. This speaker is a great alternative to the Amazon Echo if you're looking for something a little more stylish and that can travel with you throughout your home.

I was equally as impressed with the sound quality as I was with the design aesthetics. The sound is crisp and clear and easily filled our large living room. If you're a fan of bass-heavy music, you may find the bass a little lacking, but I personally had no issues with the sound. If you're looking for an even more robust or whole-home sound experience, multiple Maverick speakers can be linked together, but the single speaker served our needs just fine.

As a Bluetooth speaker, the Maverick is also built to travel and comes with a sturdy carrying case for protection when you're on the go. The battery life is decent, with up to nine hours of playing time.

The Maverick is definitely on the expensive side, but in my opinion, extras like the charging base, the carrying case, and the Alexa integration make this a worthwhile investment if you're looking for a speaker that's both extremely functional and pleasing to look at.

Amazon reviewers love the superb sound quality, how easy it is to use, and the fantastic craftsmanship. — Kylie Joyner

Pros: Aesthetically pleasing design, crafted with high-quality materials, clear and crisp sound quality, portable, features Alexa integration with voice control, comes with charging base and carrying case

Cons: Expensive, bass is lacking a bit

Silicon Valley giants and media moguls alike are flocking to Idaho for Allen & Co.'s annual conference at Sun Valley Resort.

The " summer camp for billionaires" began Tuesday, and execs from Facebook, Disney, and PayPal are already in attendance. Historically, the conference has been a Petri dish for major mergers and acquisitions, including Jeff Bezos' purchase of the Washington Post and Comcast's acquisition of majority stake in NBCUniversal. One potential merger to watch unfold against the verdant backdrop of the resort this year could be CBS and Viacom.

Check out who's who arriving at the 2019 conference.

While Prime Day last year was a 36-hour event, Prime Day 2019 will be a 48-hour event.

Prime members will be able to start shopping more than 1 million deals sitewide at 12 a.m. PT on July 15 and ending at 11:59 p.m. PT on July 16— but you can expect that at least some of the deals will continue on through the days following.

In the week leading up to Prime Day, Amazon has also traditionally released a handful of early promotions and deals. These early Prime Day deals usually revolve around Amazon devices such as Kindle e-readers and Amazon services such as Prime Pantry.

Stay tuned as July 15 approaches to learn about more early Prime Day deals. And with the event less than a week away, consider opening a credit card with price protection in case an item sells out or all the discounted products have been claimed.

You'll also want to make sure you have the date marked in your calendar because Target is holding a directly competing summer sale at the same time, and it doesn't require a membership to shop.

Now that you know the date of Prime Day 2019, there are a few things you can do to prepare:

Waste not, want not.

We make so many purchases that we don't always realize what we are buying — and how we could be saving money. If we take a step back and think about all of our additional costs, we could cut a few out of our lives.

These 24 products can often be a huge waste of money:

Matthew Michaels contributed to the original version of this article.

Heads up to anyone who loves to read or plans to spend the bulk of their summer weekends splayed out on a beach flicking through the latest thriller — Prime Day 2019 is coming up July 15-16 and is bound to have some deals to appeal to your bookworm-ish heart and savings-driven brain.

This year, Prime Day will be live for 48 hours, starting at 12 a.m. PT on July 15 and ending at 11:59 p.m. PT on July 16. Because the yearly sales event is hosted by Amazon, it tends to favor Amazon devices and services, and that includes everything Kindle.

Kindle is Amazon's collection of tablet-like ebook readers. It's also an app that lets you read ebooks from your phone or any other type of tablet. Supplementing the devices and app is Kindle Unlimited, a monthly membership that gives you unlimited access to more books than you can count.

A pre-released Prime Day deal lets you enjoy three whole months of Kindle Unlimited for free. It's one of the best deals of Prime Day, saving you $30 over the course of a few months on a huge library of books.

Through July 14, you can also receive $5 in eBook credit when you spend $20 on eBooks.

Amazon is still sitting on most of its Prime Day 2019 deals ( though we have guessed at a few of the best deals this year), so consider bookmarking this page so you can check back closer to July 15-16 to see how you can save on each Kindle device and service this summer.

To see what it's like to read with a Kindle, you can first read our guide to using a Kindle, which includes expert tips and tricks. Then make sure you're prepared for Prime Day with this checklist.

Below, learn more about all of Amazon's Kindle devices and services that could be on sale.

Want to stay updated on everything Prime Day 2019? Bookmark this page and our master guide to the best deals of Prime Day.

On Tuesday, Microsoft announced yet another enormous partnership for its cloud business.

It signed a deal with ServiceNow that will stitch its cloud software more tightly into Microsoft's services.

ServiceNow is known for self-help tech-support software. But the company's latest spiel is what it calls "digital workflows," where companies can automate just about any repetitive task, from employee onboarding to end-of-month reports.

Integrating ServiceNow with Office 365 and Dynamics — Microsoft's competitor to Salesforce — could create a lot of interesting new cloud services for their joint customers.

More importantly, ServiceNow said it would be moving its entire tech stack onto Microsoft's cloud, Azure, in addition to continuing to run its own data centers.

Terms of that part of the deal were not announced, but ServiceNow spent over $10 million last quarter on its data center between buying new equipment ($8.5 million) and expansion costs ($2.9 million), it said in its earnings statement.

A string of surprising partnerships

This deal follows another brilliant new partnership between Microsoft and Oracle, where the database giant will make its new cloud database work well with Microsoft's cloud Azure.

It's an enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend scenario, where Microsoft and Oracle are teaming up to take on Amazon Web Services. The idea is that Oracle's database customers can use Oracle's cloud for their database and Azure for their other needs, one of Oracle's CEOs, Mark Hurd, explained last month to Wall Street analysts.

Read more: Top execs at longtime rivals Microsoft and Oracle explain why they just came out of nowhere with a new cloud partnership: 'This is the start of a beautiful friendship'

Mark Hurd. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

ServiceNow also follows in the footsteps of Microsoft's similar partnership with Adobe announced last year.

Similarly, Microsoft has an agreement with SAP — although SAP is partnering with multiple cloud providers to host its software, including Google and Alibaba, rather than building its own cloud.

To a lesser extent, Microsoft's new and surprising partnership with VMware falls into a similar bucket.

VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger made it clear that this partnership with Microsoft is considered second fiddle to its partnership with Amazon Web Services. But, all the same, VMware software can now be used on Microsoft's cloud Azure with VMware's formal consent.

(Notably, Microsoft was already working on doing this without VMware's okay.)

'Unprecedented' opportunity from Windows 7

But perhaps the biggest looming opportunity of all for Microsoft's cloud centers around Microsoft's old Windows operating system, Windows 7.

Reuters Formal support for Windows 7 ends in less than six months, on January 14, 2020. And companies are still using a lot of Windows 7 PCs.

Windows 10 just overtook Windows 7 in popularity in January. Today, roughly 38% of the PCs on the internet are still using Windows 7, according to NetMarketShare, a site that tracks such stats.

Roughly 40 million PCs will have to upgrade, the Intel executive Jason Kimrey told CRN.

Kimrey called the opportunity "unprecedented" in terms of the PCs and devices, consulting, software, and other services the Microsoft ecosystem will be in a position to sell to so many customers.

Whenever a Microsoft customer upgrades operating systems, salespeople have a chance to sell them more wares. In this case, Microsoft is preparing to push a bundle known as Microsoft 365, ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley reported.

Microsoft 365 is a suite that includes Windows 10, Office 365, and a smorgasbord of other enterprise cloud software, including videoconferencing, Teams (Microsoft's Slack competitor), security, and analytics.

Foley reported that Microsoft has been, all year long, reorganizing various sales teams, particularly in its commercial sales business, to focus less on software and piecemeal cloud apps, and more on cloud, particularly Microsoft 365.

Ironically, this push toward the cloud could also be good for a few of Microsoft's old-fashioned back-office software offerings as well.

Companies may use this time to upgrade to a new Microsoft database, new Microsoft software development tools, and new Windows Server licenses. Windows Server may be running their custom and homegrown Windows apps.

The longtime Microsoft bull Keith Weiss of Morgan Stanley believes that Microsoft's back-office software could become a dark horse driving growth in the months to come.

That's because Microsoft is selling a new kind of license called Azure Hybrid Benefits, which lets Windows Server and database customers use these products on Azure at discounted rates.

Microsoft's chairman explains the post-Windows world

Microsoft is the only old-school enterprise software company to have successfully crossed the chasm and become a cloud powerhouse. And Microsoft Chairman John Thompson told Business Insider that it used its old-school on-premises software as its springboard.

Justin Sullivan/Getty

He said Microsoft's cloud success was "clearly attributable" to CEO Satya Nadella, who understands "that while Windows was a very powerful platform for the company for many, many years, it clearly has evolved. And that it's not just about cloud, it's about what services you offer in the cloud."

He added, "in Microsoft's case, one of the important leverage points that Satya and the team were able to take advantage of was their on-prem presence as they migrated customers to the cloud."

This final push of the Windows 7 holdouts represents another opportunity to use that playbook.

Gearing up its partners

We're seeing other evidence of how Microsoft is mobilizing to bring more of its customers onto more of its cloud with the news announced ahead of Microsoft's next big events, happening next week in Las Vegas.

Nadella.MicrosoftMicrosoft is hosting its Ignite conference for its worldwide partners and simultaneously holding its annual internal sales conference that kicks off its new fiscal year, which began in July.

We previously reported that Microsoft is telling partners that they will soon no longer get free Microsoft software to run their own businesses and that it wants them to specialize in more areas of the cloud.

The idea of allowing partners to use Microsoft software made total sense in yesteryear. Those who sell, support, and write custom apps for Microsoft software should use it themselves.

But as Microsoft downgrades the importance of software and elevates the importance of cloud, it no longer sees the benefit of giving its software away to its qualified partners.

They should be moving to the cloud — and most of them won't get to do that unlimited, for free, either, Business Insider has learned — just like it wants customers to stop buying three-year software licenses and start buying never-ending software subscriptions.

The eighth generation of Pokémon games is on the way: "Pokémon Sword" and "Pokémon Shield" will be released on the Nintendo Switch on November 15th.

Announced on the 23rd anniversary of the franchise, "Pokémon Shield" and "Pokémon Sword" will introduce players to dozens of new Pokémon living in a never-before-seen part of the Pokémon world.

Like the original Pokémon titles, "Sword" and "Shield" are role-playing games. Players will adventure through the brand-new Galar region, capturing Pokémon and battling other trainers on their way to becoming the Pokémon champion.

"Pokémon Sword" and "Pokémon Shield" are two versions of the same game, a long-standing tradition in the Pokémon series. Players will encounter different Pokémon depending on which version they pick, and will have to trade for Pokémon from the opposite version. Still, both games share the same story and gameplay experience.

Here's what we know about "Pokémon Sword" and "Pokémon Shield" so far:

Crystal-clear turquoise water against the backdrop of a clear blue sky along the beach may very well be the makings of a perfect Instagram post. But one lake near the Russian city of Novosibirsk that has recently become popular on Instagram may not be the paradise it seems.

Instagram users have been warned against swimming in the body of water, a man-made lake nicknamed the "Novosibirsk Maldives" because its vibrant blue color comes from metal oxides dumped in it from a nearby coal plant, according to recent reports from CNN, The Moscow Times, and Mashable.

The Siberian Generating Co., the firm that runs the coal plant that built the artificial lake, issued a warning on the Russian social-media platform VKontakte last month. According to a translation of the post, which described the lake as an "ash dump," the water is not poisonous, but it is also not suitable for swimming. Contact with the water could cause an allergic reaction, and the muddy bottom of the lake could make it difficult to get out.

Read more: Samsung's next major smartphone is coming next month, but it could be more difficult than ever to convince people to buy it

The location has become such a popular location on social media that it has its own Instagram account, The Moscow Times said, which is filled with images of people posing near the radiant water. Most Instagram posts published to this account show people near the water rather than in it, although some people have been seen in the water on paddle boards or pool floats.

Those visiting the lake, however, don't appear to be very concerned. A translation of a caption under an Instagram photo showing a man riding a unicorn pool float with his feet in the water said, "It's not dangerous to swim there. The next day, my legs turned slightly red and itched for about two days." Another caption under an image of two people on paddle boards translated to: "By the way — the last chemical analysis of the water showed that it is not so dangerous."

There's something of a podcast boom taking place right now.

Currently, there are over 700,000 active podcasts in Apple's catalog.

Most podcasts are free, and you can subscribe and listen using Apple's Podcasts app or any number of alternative apps.

Check out the products mentioned in this article:

iPhone Xs (From $999 at Apple)

How to find, download, and listen to podcasts on the iPhone

1. If you don't already have Apple's Podcasts app installed on your iPhone, you should start by downloading it from the App Store.

2. Start the Podcasts app and tap "Continue" at the welcome screen.

3. Use the "Browse" button in the toolbar at the bottom of the screen to look for podcasts you want to listen to. If you know the name of a podcast, tap "Search" and enter its name. Tap the podcast name when you see it in the search results.

Find podcasts with the search function. Dave Johnson/Business Insider

4. On the Shows page, tap the podcast.

5. For most podcasts, you have several options when the podcast page appears:

Download and subscribe to your favorite podcasts. Dave Johnson/Business Insider

6. After you have subscribed to some podcasts or downloaded episodes, you can find them by tapping "Library." There, you can choose episodes to listen to.

The Library is where you can find and play all the episodes you have downloaded. Dave Johnson/Business Insider

Alternatives to the Apple Podcasts app

While Apple offers the simple and functional Podcasts app for managing your podcast library and listening to episodes, many people prefer other apps, which offer more customization and a better design.

Some of the most popular podcast apps include Overcast, Castro, and Spotify. If you're surprised to see Spotify on the list, don't be — you can find most podcasts in the app along with music, follow your favorite shows, and listen to episodes.

Alternative apps like Overcast sometimes deliver extra features or convenience not found in Apple's Podcasts app. Dave Johnson/Business Insider

Finally, you have one other way to listen to podcasts on your iPhone: You can download podcasts as MP3 audio files from the web. Most podcasts are hosted on a web page which you can find by searching in a web browser. When you find the podcast, click the "Download" link to save the episode to your computer.

From there, you can copy the file to iTunes and sync it with your iPhone. This isn't the most straightforward way of listening to podcasts, but if you would rather use the Music app than a podcast app, it will work in a pinch.

It's easy to see the entire commercial-aviation industry through the dual lens of Boeing and Airbus — understandable as the US giant and the European mega-consortium divide about 90% of the market for jet aircraft.

However, there are two other plane makers of note on the planet: Canada's Bombardier and Brazil's Embraer.

Mind you, both are in the process of being absorbed by the Boeing-Airbus duopoly. Airbus has effectively taken over the troubled Bombardier CSeries, rechristening it the A220. Meanwhile, Boeing has bought into Embraer big time with a nearly $4 billion deal that's slated to close this year.

Like most travelers, I hate flying on larger narrow-body jets for the most part. But I make an exception for small single-aisle jets, which I very much dig, like the Boeing 717.

Recently, I made a quick trip to my hometown, Huntington, West Virginia. This a small city served by a small regional airport. For what seems like decades, I've flown in and out of Huntington Tri-State Airport on turboprop regional planes. But on my last visit, I discovered that jet service is back.

And the jet I wound up riding, the Embraer 145, was a winner. Read on to find out why:

In the market for a new TV? Now may well be the best time to buy. Best Buy has announced deals on a ton of its best TV models, ranging from the affordable to the ultra high end.

You can find deals from many big-name brands, including LG, Samsung, Sony, Vizio, and more. Many of the discounted TVs have smart operating systems, so you can enjoy your favorite content from streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime.

No matter what you're looking for in your next TV, there should be a deal below for you.

Keep scrolling to see the best TV deals at Best Buy.