Setting Up Your Home Office

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Many of us with professions that center on writing once toiled in a book shop to make ends meet, including me. When I worked at Barnes & Noble in college, I was dumbfounded by how many books there were on productivity and self-betterment. Surely, they couldn't all contain nuggets of wisdom. Certainly, they must be money-grabs aiming to profit off people's self-doubt. In many cases, that's true; but, I learned, some of them do have serious value to share. The catch is that if you spend all your time reading about some author's productivity, you won't have much time for enhancing your own. Smartly choosing which to read …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. The Soundcore Boom 2 is built for people who don’t want to baby their speakers. With an IPX7 rating and a floatable design, it’s something you can toss in the pool, hose off after a beach trip, or take out on a boat without much worry. And right now, the black model is $89.99, down from $139.99, its lowest price ever according to price trackers. Soundcore Boom 2 by Anker …

If you've engaged in any sort of doomscrolling over the past year, you've no doubt encountered some wild AI-generated content. While there are plenty of AI video generators out there producing this stuff, one of the most prevalent is OpenAI's Sora, which is particularly adept at generating realistic short-form videos mimicking the content you might find on TikTok or Instagram Reels. These videos can be so convincing at first glance, that people often don't realize what they're seeing is 100% fake. That can be harmless when it's videos of cats playing instruments at midnight, but dangerous when impersonating real people or properties. It's that last point that I thought w…

I get really carsick if I try to read in a moving vehicle. And there's a reason for that: my eyes and my sense of movement are out of sync. At least, that's according to the CDC, which states that motion sickness, "happens when the movement you see is different from what your inner ear senses." Your inner ear is a sack of fluid that moves when you do, giving you an innate sense of movement. If you're in a car and watching the horizon, your senses are aligned. But if you're looking at your phone, your senses are confusing each other. It's similar to the reason VR games make some people feel sick. The free Android app KineStop aims to help. The application overlays a transp…

Generative AI has advanced to the stage where you can ask bots such as ChatGPT or Gemini questions about almost anything, and get reasonable-sounding responses—and now renowned gadget repair site iFixit has joined the party with an AI assistant of its own, ready and willing to solve any of your hardware problems. While you can already ask general-purpose chatbots for advice on how to repair a phone screen or diagnose a problem with a car engine, there's always the question of how accurate the AI replies will be. With FixBot, iFixit is trying to minimize mistakes by drawing on its vast library of verified repair guides, written by experts and users. That's certainly reassu…

If you get a letter from a company called 700Credit, don't ignore it. Your information may have been compromised in a massive breach affecting more than 5.8 million consumers, and you should take the necessary steps to protect your data. 700Credit supplies credit and identity verification services to more than 21,000 vehicle, RV, powersport, and marine dealerships in the U.S., so if you've purchased a vehicle and applied for dealer financing—or even been pre-screened or pre-qualified to do so—your information could have been affected. What happened with 700Credit?According to the company's filing with the Maine Attorney General, 700Credit's systems were hacked between O…

One of the ways AI models are rapidly improving is in their image editing capabilities, to the extent that they can now quickly take care of tasks that would previously have taken a substantial amount of time and effort in Photoshop. This is undoubtedly one of the main reasons Adobe has decided to introduce its own ChatGPT plug-ins. Want your t-shirt to be blue rather than red? Need to cut out a person or an object from an otherwise perfect group selfie? These are tricks that AI chatbots are now able to do cleanly and professionally, from just a text prompt. You don't need to have any digital photo editing skills; you only need to describe what you want to happen. Over th…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. The Nest Doorbell (Wired, 3rd Gen) is currently selling for $132, down from $179.99, and price trackers confirm this is the lowest it has ever dropped. Google Nest Doorbell (Wired, 3rd Gen) $132.00 at Amazon $179.99 Save $47.99 …

You can do a lot with Android Auto, but what you can't do is install a web browser—at least not with the default, out-of-the-box configuration. It is actually possible to get a window on to the web with a little bit of tweaking, and the help of the open source AA Browser built especially for Android Auto. Getting a web browser up on your car dashboard may not seem like much of an improvement over browsing on your phone screen, but it also enables another feature on your vehicle's display: video playback. Through AA Browser you can get at pretty much any streaming site you want and load up some video. Some serious safety warnings are required here, though. You should only …

For as useful as emails are, they sure have a way of hampering productivity. Not only do endless emails bog you down and keep you stuck in a loop of endless replies, but the stress of even having to wade through both the important messages and the junk is enough to make you avoid your inbox altogether. There's a reason "answer emails" is always the example I use for a tedious-but-important task when I'm explaining more complicated, detailed productivity techniques. But there are smaller techniques you can apply directly to email management, too. To stay on top of your work, school, and personal correspondence, you need a productivity plan, but it doesn't have to be intens…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. The Backbone Pro mobile gaming controller is currently down to $134.99 from $169.99, its lowest price yet, according to price trackers. That drop helps justify its somewhat in-between status—it’s more expensive than basic clamp-on controllers but still cheaper than buying both a dedicated phone grip and a standalone Bluetooth gamepad. BACKBONE Pro Mobile Gaming Controller …

Scammers frequently target shoppers who are looking for a good deal or a rare find (or both). As holiday sale season winds down, the Better Business Bureau is warning buyers about a scheme in which fraudsters charge you for "out of stock" goods and fail to refund your money. The out-of-stock purchase scam is simple: After you buy a product online, scammers send you a notification that said item is no longer available, cancel your order, and tell you that you'll get your money back. Obviously, the refund never arrives, and no one ever responds to further inquiries. As the BBB points out, in most cases, the item you thought you bought probably never existed in the first p…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Once you start down the path of DIY, you'll soon realize that any time you find yourself wishing someone had created a tool to serve a specific purpose, someone probably has—no matter how narrow the use case. Case in point: The cordless blower/inflator. This tool is exactly what it sounds like. Shaped like a power drill, it simply...blows air (though sort of like a handheld leaf blower, these tools typically come with an array of nozzles to give you a bit of precision with the flow of your forced air). You might think this sounds like a tool you’ll never actually need, because you have lungs. But I'm here to convince you t…

You know the scenario: You have a bunch of unread emails . The more that come in, the more anxious you get—and the more you procrastinate on sorting through them. How do you decide which ones to reply to and in what order? Even when the amount of unreads isn't overwhelming, your choice can determine how your workday will go. In general, you should choose a side between a last in, first out (LIFO) or first in, first out (FIFO) approach—and, in my opinion, the best choice is LIFO. What are LIFO and FIFO?LIFO and FIFO are terms that come from the financial world—respectively, they stand for “last in, first out” and “first in, first out.” They’re often used by accountants to…

2025 is limping to a merciful end, so I'm taking a look back at the year in slang. Below are ten examples of youth patois, chosen for both their popularity and for what they reveal about generations A and Z. Like most slang, these words and phrases evolved over time, so while many didn't first appear in 2025, but this is the year they gained popularity. (If you want a more complete list of youth slang, check out my guide to Gen Z and Alpha slang.) 6-7By far the most popular slang word of 2025 was "6-7." These two previously unremarkable numerals rose to unprecedented popularity with young people this year, to the consternation of legions of educators and parents. It's …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. It never fails to annoy me when I tell my friends here in New York City that I am cold and they reply, "But you're from North Dakota! This is nothing compared to what you grew up with." I know. Why do you think I left the coldest state in the continental U.S. as soon as I turned 18? I hate the cold in North Dakota, but that doesn't mean I hate the cold in New York any less. Indeed, wherever I am in winter, I'm at war with the cold—midwestern cold, northeastern cold, it's all cold. This is why I've devised a number of plans to mitigate it, and the most useful of my anti-cold measures is the collection of heated accessories …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. The makers of Bevel, a health app for the Apple Watch that turns the device into a Whoop-style fitness tracker, have announced on social media that nearly all of the app’s functions will soon be available for free. Until now, Bevel required a $5.99/month (or $49.99/year) subscription. That said, the paid tier isn't going away completely. What does Bevel do?You can read my review of Bevel here, but in brief, it’s a tracking app that uses data from your Apple Watch (and other devices) to give you a Whoop-style dashboard that collects your health data in one place and analyzes it. Bevel can give you advice about how recovered…

No matter how dedicated you are to responding to and archiving all your emails, there will always be one thing preventing you from hitting true inbox zero: all of those mailing lists you're subscribed to. These horrors will visit you at all hours of the day, making it harder to spot the truly important messages in your inbox—and it gets worse once you've gotten fed up enough to disable push notifications and they start to really pile up. It’s time to banish these buggers. And, if you're using Gmail, there’s an easy way to do it. Use filters to manage mailing list emails in GmailYou can use a third-party add-on to go through your mailing lists and unsubscribe, saying good…

For many students and workers, Windows is just the default way to use a computer. It's where all your apps work as intended, where all your Microsoft Office documents sync easily, and where you play all your games. But if you peel back its layers, Windows can be a lot more than that. Power users can take advantage of hidden features, and utilities from Microsoft and third-parties to not only speed up their workflow, but to improve productivity and fix some of the most annoying quality-of-life issues that plague Windows PCs. Control everything using the Command Palette …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. For many of us, New Year's Eve represents not just the climax of a long holiday season, but also a time to simultaneously reflect, and to look forward to what's ahead—sometimes with optimism, sometimes with sheer dread. (Lately, mostly dread.) Movies have frequently recognized the simultaneously hopeful and perilous nature of the time. It can be a period of reassessment, or renewal, or massive change. This selection of choice New Year's Eve movies reflects that range of possibilities, including everything from romance and murder, to comedy and tragedy, to wild sex and heartbreaking loneliness. When Harry Met Sally (1989) …

The first supermarket, the Piggly Wiggly in Memphis, opened its doors in 1916. It was the first time people could wander around a store and pick their items from a shelf instead of handing a list to a clerk who would gather everything for them—typically without any choice of brand or style. Grocery shopping remains a daily or weekly ritual for most people, and it can be a real chore—especially if you’re shopping for a large family. My own grocery lists aren’t all that long, but I still find myself juggling my phone and a scrap of paper as I walk around the store, checking for digital coupons and trying to do quick math. So when I read that one of the local grocery stores …

Using keyboard shortcuts is a lot faster than clicking around in the menus, but only after you learn them. That's the hard part. You could look up the documentation for the application or explore the menu bar—but if you're on a Mac, you could also just install KeyClu. This free application shows an overlay with all the keyboard shortcuts for the currently open Mac application, which is very useful for anyone trying to become a more keyboard-savvy computer user. To get started, install the application. Then, you'll need to choose a trigger key (basically one of the modifier keys on your keyboard). By default, you will tap the key twice and hold on the second tap to trigger…

Not every productivity method works for every person. That's why there are so many out there, and it's also why you need to spend time figuring out which ones might work for you, even if you have to alter or adapt them a little bit. When you're facing down an unusually big or overwhelming task, the traditional methods that you usually rely on may not be helpful. Why not try a one-two punch, combining two I like a lot to make it easier? The "one bite" techniqueFirst, let's try the one-bite technique. This takes a little pre-planning, but can help you out when a task feels daunting. Grab a piece of paper (or use a digital document) and write down your task. Let's say it's l…

New Year's Eve is my favorite holiday. I love a designated time to look forward and to reflect back, ideally while getting tipsy with friends. The turn of a new year is also a time when I’m grateful for my habit of writing down every little thing—and I don’t just mean getting my thoughts and feelings down in a journal. I’m talking about tracking every book read, every mile run, and every beer crushed (approximately). So if you’re interested in documenting your life—and you should be!—I highly recommend using a wonderfully detailed spreadsheet. I’m not talking about bullet journaling (which can be cool, but which I find too artistically daunting). I simply create a Google …

Following the major image editing upgrades added to Google Gemini back in August—under the whimsical codename Nano Banana—it's OpenAI's turn to supercharge the tools you get for image manipulations inside ChatGPT. The new update is called GPT Image 1.5, and is rolling out now for all users. One of the key improvements here, as was the case with Nano Banana, is the way that ChatGPT can now edit a specific part of an image while keeping everything else consistent. You can add or remove something, or change the color or style of something, without ending up with an entirely different looking picture. Another feature ChatGPT has now borrowed from Gemini: the ability to combin…