Techish

GIFT GUIDE: Great gadget gifts for grads that they’ll totally love!

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***This story is from Jennifer's weekly columns and video segments for the USAToday Network.*** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xooy3Gg8csk Think back to your graduation, do you remember who gave you cash? I don’t. (And not just because I graduated a million years ago.) This cap-and-gown season, Americans are expected to spend more than $5.5 billion on gifts for high school and college grads. Cash in a card remains one of the most popular gifts, but it’s not the most memorable or even most useful in the long term. With my daughter graduating from high school this month, the pressure’s on to gift beyond cold, hard cash – and to find something truly meaningful, useful and just plain smart. ... Read more

#GiftingGoals for Mother’s Day 2019: Epic Gifts For All Kinds of Moms

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpfUxJsk7Vc Most moms I know “live in service and sacrifice to their children” 24/7. (I didn’t come up with that, Oprah did, see #7 on this list.) So it never hurts to go the extra mile to make her feel loved and appreciated. Of course, she’ll love your homemade card. And cry a few happy tears if you clean the bathroom without being asked. But if you — like more than 8 out of every 10 Americans — plan to spend a record amount of money on Mom this Mother’s Day, starting with this list is a genius move. #MomLife #TechLife Why? I’m a Mom who tests gadgets for a living. I also polled thousands of other Moms across social media, and then tried every single one ... Read more

HOW TO: Kondo your E-Clutter and Spring Clean Your Digital Mess

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Thanks to decluttering diva Marie Kondo, Spring Cleaning is expected to hit an all-time high this year. A recent survey by the American Cleaning Institute shows a record 77 percent of households plan to clean-up, clear-out, and address the mess of our modern lives. Since e-waste is the world's fastest-growing trash stream, there’s an even stronger sense of renewed responsibility to declutter your e-clutter. #1. CLEAR-OUT BEFORE YOU CLEAN-UP One of the key trademarks of the “KonMari” method is to start by clearing-out everything unwanted and unused. Think about how much tech junk you have – that drawer full of dusty cell phones, charging cable chaos, and old earphones you haven’t ... Read more

HOW TO: Clean your GROSS Gadgets

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You’ve heard by now that your smartphone is seven times dirtier than your toilet – and riddled with about 17,000 different types types of bacteria — right? I use two specific gadgets to keep my go-to tech tools pristine.  The HÄNS Swipe-Clean ($15) comes pre-loaded with tech-friendly cleaning solution, so you can just wipe down your smartphone, tablet, or other gadgets with cleaner, and then flip the HÄNS over and use the other end to dry and polish. It takes mere seconds but leaves everything squeaky clean. To go even further, I use the PhoneSoap Go (around $80), a portable, battery-powered UV sanitizer that bathes your smartphone in ultraviolet light that eliminates 99.99% of ... Read more

USA Today: Cruising into the future of travel with smart wearables, avatars, and lightening-fast WiFi

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This story originally ran in USA Today as part of Jennifer's on-going Tech+Culture column. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL90Fw_T5oE A year ago, boarding a cruise ship at the Port Everglades dock in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, was an exercise in patience as passengers waited in blocks-long lines to check in. Pens and paper in hand, anxious vacationers hunched over suitcases or used walls as a hard surface to scribble down important personal information, sometimes waiting hours just to set foot on board. Today, those lines are gone – at least in front of the Caribbean Princess. That’s the first sign that a new wearable gadget aimed at fixing common travel hassles, is working. “Look at ... Read more

New study reveals 44% of Americans prefer clutter-free house over sex

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Talk about doing a little Spring Cleaning (cue bow chicka bow-bow soundtrack in the background)... New data from Decluttr — a  tech buy-back and refurbished tech seller site — found that 44% of Americans prefer a clean home over having sex. Decluttr surveyed over 1,000 Americans to better understand the importance of a clean home and cleanliness. Some highlights: 60% of people agree that a clean, organized bedroom makes them more likely to have sex 40% of respondents reporting that they’re likely to end a relationship with someone who has a cluttered and/or dirty home 56% of Americans say they’d rather live with their parents than live in a cluttered home More than 80% of ... Read more

WIRED WELL: Four Tips for Managing Your Child’s Screen Time

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Post submitted by Christine Kyriakakos Martin, Author/Early Childhood Educator The digital age has given new generations of parents something extra to worry about: How much screen time is too much? Physicians, teachers, and psychologists generally agree that spending inordinate amounts of time immersed in computers, smartphones or social media can negatively impact a child’s developing mind and body. A recent screen time study published in JAMA Pediatrics found "a measurable association between how much young children are using screens and how well they are meeting their developmental milestones." Researchers found that higher levels of screen time at two and three years predict ... Read more

Keeping Up With The Phoneses: State of Smartphones 2019

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It’s time for mobile makers to put up, or shut up. We need to see revolutionary — not just evolutionary — upgrades. We need better battery life, and we need it yesterday. We need our most relevant must-have gadget to be drop-dead simple to use, unhackable, unbreakable and less expensive. Oh, and how about less addictive too? We need our smartphones to WOW us again. State of the Smartphone 2019   The first batch of 2019’s shiny new smartphones — Samsung’s S10 line — landed on store shelves and in people’s hands across the country today. It kicked off a new year of flagship phone launches hoping to invigorate sagging sales. Samsung felt the pinch with the Galaxy S9, which worried ... Read more

HOW TO: Keep creepers off your smart home gadgets!

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A recent spate of high-profile smart home gadget hacks has a whole lot of us wondering what we can do to keep the creepers out. Easy to guess passwords? Oh hell no. Unsecured Wi-Fi networks? Gone. These are things I've been warning you about for years, but have you actually taken steps to make you and your family as safe as possible? Likely, the answer is, "no," and that's okay. It's not easy, and that's why we're here to help! “A smart home gadget is no different from your phone or your computer,” says Kelvin Coleman, executive director for the National Cyber Security Alliance. “If it’s vulnerable to being hacked, there are basic good housekeeping practices that should become second ... Read more

CONSUMER WARNING: Here’s the FTC’s top fraud list of the year. Did you get hit?

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Submitted by Paul Witt, Supervisory Data Analyst, Federal Trade Commission Every year, millions of people tell us about the frauds they spotted. Last year, the FTC heard from 3 million of you, and here’s some of what they learned from your reports: The FTC collected more than 1.4 million fraud reports, and people said they lost money to the fraud in 25% of those reports. People reported losing $1.48 billion (with a ‘b’) to fraud last year – an increase of 38% over 2017. The top reports in 2018 were: imposter scams, debt collection, and identity theft. Younger people reported losing money to fraud more often than older people. Let that sink in. It’s what the data ... Read more

TAXES: Can new tax tools let grandma file from home? (AS SEEN IN USA Today)

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This story originally ran in USA Today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlJulS5gy3k My senior citizen age mom and mother-in-law just filed their taxes for the first time ever straight from their mobile devices. That’s a pretty big deal, not just because it saved them both a good deal of money, but before now, they had no idea that it was even possible. “I really was not comfortable when you asked us to do this – not comfortable at all,” my mother-in-law Odette Blelloch admits, adding that the seemingly daunting task seemed like “a nightmare” at first. “What if I make a mistake,” my mom, Gypsy Jolly (yes, that’s her real name) asked?  “I’m pretty comfortable using technology ... Read more

RECODE: What’s all this fuss about “digital detox” — and does it really work?

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This article appears on Recode.net: I'm sharing it here with you because it's a topic I've researched and written extensively about - and think it's incredibly valuable to have all of these resources in one place. If you haven't visited Recode.net recently - be sign up for their newsletter - and get the most important news from all over the news world delivered directly to your inbox! Too much tech can be bad for you. Here’s what happens when people are left to fighting their own devices. By Shirin Ghaffary Jan 28, 2019 I knew I had lost control when a good friend confronted me over coffee. In the 30 minutes we had been chatting, I had checked my phone about 11 times. I wasn’t ... Read more

What’s hot at CES 2019_Jenn finds robots, a car with legs, and not-so-tearable-tights

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xf4jPR3yhlQ This is the year of the Robot Revolution. I’ve already run across more robots at CES, the Consumer Electronic Show, than I’ve ever seen here before. Some will help you tackle travel, others will get you where you’re going, and one, well, one of them just wants a little love. Lovot is the anti-robot. It doesn’t dominate a daily task with superhuman strength or skills, and it’s not even really meant to be helpful. What it is, however, is a fluffy, fabric-covered mechanical companion with the smarts of a toddler and the charm to match. It scurries over to you when you call it and begs to be held. It responds to touch and loves to be cuddled, and ... Read more

You’ve got to see it to believe it: A Jetson’s-like smart home of future in Nevada

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(This story first ran in USA Today January 7th, 2019) On the eve of the world’s largest consumer electronics show in Las Vegas, construction giant KB Home unveiled the first full-scale prototype smart home of the future – and gave us the very first peek inside. The home, called Builder KB Home ProjeKt, sits at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac in Henderson, Nevada, a 15-minute drive south of The Strip. The 3,200-square-foot concept house is the first-of-its-kind marriage of smart home systems and Jetsons-like tech, built from the foundation-up with over 400 gadgets working (mostly) in harmony. A smart speaker that controls living room lighting or a video doorbell that streams a live feed from ... Read more

How to follow any runner during Sunday’s New York City Marathon, including me!

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The annual New York City Marathon kicks off on Sunday, November 4th, and it's expected to be yet another world-class race. Last year, over 50,000 people completed the entire marathon, taking an average of four hours and 39 minutes to do so, and this year I'm throwing my hat into the ring. After many weeks of whipping myself into shape I'm ready to tackle the streets of NYC with tens of thousands of others, and even if you're not participating in the event (or even physically here in New York) you can follow along with me or any other racer you want to keep your eye on, right from your smartphone screen. All you have to do is download the official NYC Marathon app on either iOS or ... Read more