Real Life Buyer's Guide

7 Tech Things I Love

1. TinyPod. [Pictured] This thing is essentially a case for your Apple Watch that converts it into some sort of mini iPod slash phone thing (which actually looks pretty retro cool). The idea is to put the connected watch into the TinyPod to use it as your phone, which keeps you from getting sucked into apps and social media, etc. Obviously, there are many limitations, including no Uber access, but it works well enough for dinners out with your SO and things of that nature. I already use the Apple Watch for this type of outing, and the TinyPod makes it so I don’t need to wear it on my wrist, freeing me from further distractions. It’s an interesting little device, and anything I can do to keep me focused on what’s in front of me and away from the apps is a win.

2. Hey Email. It’s surprisingly not a bad idea to pay $100 a year for your email account. I’ve been using Hey since it launched, and I love it for certain things. First, I never hesitate to use the address for purchases or in situations where you feel like you will get spammed. With Hey you have to provide access to your inbox for every sender. So for first-time senders, you can easily screen out anything you don’t want emailing you. The other reason I like Hey is because it’s a lot less likely to be algorithmically filtering and blocking emails on its own like Gmail seems to do. I have a hard time seeing a lot of the emails I want to see in my Google account and have become increasingly skeptical of the service. Hey is a very viable alternative for personal email use so you can see what you need to see.

3. Wireless Carplay Adapter. This is exactly what you think it is. It turns out that any car with Apple CarPlay can easily be converted to wireless CarPlay. Who knew? These are worth the money if you hate having to plug in your phone every time you get in and out of your car. Although I used to love CarPlay more until we got a new Volvo with Google built into the whole system. It’s super game-changing to say, “Hey Google, navigate to Snug Harbor,” and it does exactly what you said to do without trying to type anything into your phone. You can tell the Google Assistant to also play stuff on Spotify, and it works perfectly. The only issue is your kids can tell it to play terrible kid music, and it listens.

4. Useful Chrome extensions.

   1. Keepa. A helpful Amazon price tracker that displays price fluctuations directly on the Amazon product page. Once you start using this, you will never be able to shop on Amazon without it. This plug-in inserts a graph on the product page of price fluctuations over the recent months for that product. It’s wild to see how prices go up and down for no understandable reason. Keepa is also helpful for holiday sales because you see the price go up before the sale so they can adjust it back down for the sale. This puts Amazon in a trust but verify situation.