Comfy Laptops and Private Videos

Many of us use laptops, and there are ways to make them as comfortable as desktops. Get a stand to angle the keyboard and place the screen at an ergonomically correct position, then pair it with a wireless keyboard and mouse. If you lack extra USB ports, add a USB hub.

If you don’t have a great photo printer or you’ve found it too costly to buy special paper and ink, consider online photo printing services. Many let you create calendars, photo books, coffee mugs, pillows, clothing and more, using your uploaded photos. Check out Snapfish, Shutterfly, York Photo, CVS Photo, Walgreens Photo, Walmart Photo, AdoramaPix, or even FedEx.

Good Vibrations

Use different smart phone vibrations to know what your silenced phone is alerting you. Both iOS and Android let you set vibration patterns for different apps, and for calls you can even change the default vibration patterns for various contacts. Now you can recognize that true emergency call without disturbing those around you.

There are a variety of ways to reduce mobile or cellular data usage that can often save you money. Manually cap your data on your phone, only use Wi-Fi, stop apps from syncing automatically or only let them sync on Wi-Fi, and definitely store music and such on the phone so you don’t need to stream them. And when you use these tricks to cut your data plan needs, you may find that your battery life goes up.

Sharing Home Videos

Use your YouTube (Google) account and mark your video as “Private” when you click into “Upload Video,” which means you can invite up to 50 YouTube users. If you select “Unlisted,” you can share what is basically an unlisted link to your video, even to people who don’t have a YouTube account. Other services with similar private options include Vimeo, Facebook, and other cloud storage services like Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, and others have options for sharing a link to a video without them ending up indexed by search engines for the entire world to enjoy.

A tech note for those who have previously submitted websites to Google for search word indexing: Google will soon require you to have and use your Google account with their “Search Console” site. If you have a website and would like to use Google Analytics to gather more information on how people get to and move through your site, look at support.google.com/webmasters.