Techish

Mood-boosting gadgets to help you survive until 2021

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It has been a long, long year. The doom scrolling, the isolation, the election madness, and the fear have been brutal. But the end of 2020 is in sight. Maybe next year won’t be such an apocalypse? Maybe 2021 will be all kittens, hope scrolling, and sunshine? We can only hope. What we can do is try every possible mood booster available to order online. And, while you’re at it, load the holiday gift basket with gear that will help your friends and family go into 2021 in a good mood? I rounded up some fun, functional, mood boosters you can order on Amazon. Nothing here will break the bank. But it will improve the mood. Prices on these gadgets are subject to change, this is what they were at ... Read more

HOW TO: Zoom-free ways to connect with family even when you’re far apart

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A year ago most of us had never heard of Zoom, and no one would have been able to coerce any of us into a video gym class or Sunday dinner over Zoom. But here we are. “Brady Bunch boxes” has become a term we toss casually into conversation, and everyone has a preferred brand of webcam. By next year, Zoom Fatigue will make into the Merck Manual as a real health condition. Zoom pushback has already started. Another Zoom call after a day of school or work on Zoom? No one has it in them anymore. It’s great to see everyone. But sitting in front of a screen to chat is often boring, hard to pay attention to, and exhausting. There are other ways to connect with the people you love. Because you ... Read more

HOW TO: Save money on your cell phone service

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By Christina X Wood Apple is pelting us right now with a marketing assault designed to create an irresistible urge to buy a new iPhone. Samsung, too, has just released some wildly tempting new phones and a marketing frenzy designed to whip Android fans into a buying impulse. And it’s working. Even though this is happening at a time when most of us are eyeing at our monthly budget for places to cut, one in three people in a recent survey planned to buy a new iPhone anyway. Sure, I get it. Your cell phone is your lifeline. That rectangle is always in your hand or within reach. It’s your most valuable possession. You don’t want an underpowered one. Most of us think it’s worth going into ... Read more

HOW TO: Sanitize your germ-riddled Smartphone

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Every time I walk in the house, I set my phone down and wash my hands for two minutes. Then I pick my phone up, pocket it, or respond to a text and go about my life at home. Sound familiar? Now think like an epidemiologist. Where’s the flaw in that system? Hand washing is the best way to prevent the spread of disease, according to the CDC. But that phone has become like a third hand. It goes everywhere with me. I probably touched it a thousand times while I was out. So, failing to wash my phone is an enormous flaw in an otherwise solid infection-prevention scheme. It’s so big a flaw, in fact, that it might be undermining much of my effort. But how do you wash a phone? You can’t ... Read more

7 ways to keep bored kids from turning into screen zombies

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How’s your pandemic going? If you are anything like the 2,000 parents of school-aged children recently surveyed by Fat Brain Toys, your kids have announced, “I’m bored” an average of six times a day, had five temper tantrums a day, and created six "career-best" messes in the past few months. The result, for many households, is that the kids have turned into “screen zombies.” Because what else are you supposed to do? This hardly seems like the best the time to limit screen time. Also, it’s gotten hard to know anymore how much screen time is too much. School, reading, research, entertainment, and socializing all comes in via screen. This doesn’t change the reality that too much screen time, ... Read more

Disaster Tech for Smoke, Hurricanes, and LIFE in 2020

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Fires in California. Unsurvivable hurricane storm surge in Louisiana. Flooding. Tornadoes. The worst hurricane – and worst hurricane season – the U.S. has ever seen. Oh, and there’s also a pandemic in full swing. If you don’t have an emergency plan to help you survive a disaster, you need to look to that STAT. The emergencies are coming faster than the news can hype them. Is this an apocalypse? Global warming? Retribution from the gods? Whatever reasoning you subscribe to, it’s time to gear up. The right gear can make the difference between having water and not, getting rescued and being stranded, knowing what’s coming and being caught unawares. And once the disaster is upon you, it’s ... Read more

HOW TO: Set Up a Safe, Ergonomic School-from-Home Workstation

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In the 1980s and 1990s entire industries went digital when computers hit the scene. People stopped using typewriters, light boards, and pencils and started sitting at computers. It was amazing. And, we all soon learned, it had a dark side: Huge numbers of people – me included – developed crippling injuries from what all now know were computer-related repetitive strain. It took years of lawsuits, permanent injury, research, and suffering before we learned that these injuries, tragedies really, could have been easily prevented. This year, an entire generation of children are making the shift from going to school – full of varied kinetic motion – to remote learning at home – rife with the ... Read more

HOW TO: Keep your pets safe this summer – tools to deal with fireworks, heatstroke, and more

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It was one of my darkest days. My beloved Malamute, Nik, was old. She had no patience for the outing on my agenda, preferring the shade of her favorite tree. So, I left her in the yard with plenty of water, snacks, and toys. It was early summer and the day was cool. By the time I got home, though, she was unresponsive. Heatstroke. I rushed her to the vet, where she spent several hours on an IV and languishing in an ice bath. She recovered. But I could have lost her. And the emergency bill was huge. “Dogs are not people,” says Paul Brazzell, veterinary consultant, and JustAnswer pet expert. “They function very differently. Heatstroke is at the top of my list of summer pet hazards.” But his ... Read more

HACK THE HOLIDAYS: How to find, use, and pay for the Holiday Season’s most coveted gear

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The Holidays are coming at you fast. Did you save? Make a list? Check it twice? Of course not. We live on the eve of Amazon drone delivery. Everyone is expected to take care of life in time we once wasted staring into space at stop lights. In the face of unreasonable modern expectations, we offer these hacks to help you do it, use it, and even pay for it. Don’t give up and buy everyone a bottle of gin. You’ve got this. Get the Ungettable Gear You know it’s coming, the first question at every holiday party. “Did you get an iPhone X?” Apple co-founder Woz may not be buying but everyone else is. Preorders sold out in 10 minutes and the line keeps getting longer. With Apple (maybe) ... Read more

Everything you Need to Know to send Animated (GIF) via Text

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Have you seen short animations on Facebook and wondered what they are? They are called GIFs and here is the lowdown: Way back in the 80s, Steve Wilhite invented a graphics format that was better than what was at the time. Being a nerd (he coded for the now-defunct, then Internet startup Compuserve), he called it Graphics Interchange Format (GIF). This format is so old now that most software understands it, making it readily usable for all. GIFs have lately enjoyed wild popularity because -- among other things -- it's so much fun to send baby goat GIFs to your daughter/spouse/sister via text. (Seriously. It is.) The big controversy around GIFs is not over whether creating and sending ... Read more

Ready for school? Not till you have tackled these cyber chores

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You did the back-to-school shopping, signed up to volunteer, set up your car pool and after-school care plans, and picked out the first-day outfit. You are done and the kids are ready! Right? Um. No. Didn’t you get the memo? You are no longer merely parent and chief bottle washer, you – or someone in your house – also needs to act as CTO (chief technology officer). And the main concern right now – in our current hacker-crazed reality – is security. You can’t just buy the kids a smart phone, tablet, and/or laptop and worry that they might bully or be bullied via social media. You should worry about that. But you also must protect them from hackers, viruses, and other monsters that ... Read more

Back-to-School confessions of a bag addicted Mom

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Hi. My name is Christina. I’m a bag addict. I haven’t bought a bag in three weeks. Back to school is a hard time for me. I have great excuses for buying bags. My kids need backpacks. Even if they don’t want them, they need them. Even if the three options I bought them last year are still in perfect working order, I can find a reason to buy another. (Did I mention, they need them?) Especially since there are some amazing sales going on right now. I mean, what reason could there possibly be to not buy a new backpack when they are 80 percent off?! The question for me, today, is not "do I buy a bag," but rather, which bag should I get next? Upgrade her style My daughter has been ... Read more

Here’s how to help Hurricane Harvey victims without getting scammed:

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People need help. You want to help. And this should be easy. You should be able to simply click a button in Facebook and offer that help. But there are some real creeps out there. They see a tragedy as an opportunity to score some cash – just for being creeps with computers. The hurricane in Texas is no exception. Scammers are out in force. And they have a lot of sneaky tricks to rope you in. Not all of them involve you getting out your credit card. Watch your wallet The FTC and Better Business Bureau have issued broad, general warnings to give money only to charities you already know, that have experience in disaster recovery, and that already have an infrastructure in place in Texas. ... Read more

DEALish! Amazon Echo Dot on Sale!

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Picture this: It's the first day of school. You are up making pancakes, excited to get everyone off to a new grade. But where are the smartly dressed students, excited to eat those flapjacks and be off to learn more mathematics? Instead of running around the house rousting them -- while your pancakes burn, say, "Alexa, drop in on Jack's room." Your Amazon Echo or Echo Dot will ring in the bedroom, where Jack (no doubt spit-polishing his shoes) can say, "Alexa, answer." And now you can talk to each other through the Echo so you can inform Jack the pancakes are ready. In order to use Alexa as an in-house intercom, in addition to all the other voice assisted tasks she can do, you need ... Read more

DEALish! Galaxy Note 8 lease at 50% off

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The Samsung Galaxy Note 8 promises to be, I think, a sweet phone. With a built-in stylus, impressive specs, wireless charging, and expandable memory. This, like all it's predecessors in the Galaxy Note line, looks like a serious work horse. And a beauty. You can read Jen's review of it here. So, I am finding this deal from Sprint very tempting: If you switch to Sprint, (preorders started today; phones will start shipping September 5) you will get 50 percent off the lease price of the Galaxy Note 8. That means you would pay $20 a month for 18 months with $0 down. Once you get 12 months into that lease, you'll qualify for the Galaxy Forever program which allows you to upgrade to a ... Read more

ECLIPSE 2017: How to tell if you fried your eyeballs

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If you, like our nation's president, looked directly into Monday's eclipse, you might wonder: Did I just damage my eyes?  Whether by accident or disregard, untold masses looked at the sun with unshielded eyes during the must-see-safely event. By Monday afternoon, people were already freaking out about their eyes online. In fact, “did I” into Google right now. The search engine will guess that you want to ask it, “Did I burn my eyes?” Should you worry? Did you mostly take all the precautions but you think maybe you looked for just a second or two, by accident? Maybe you aren’t sure? And you think maybe this headache behind your eyes means you are going blind? You are probably ... Read more