Posts from Tech

Have you looked at your cable bill lately? If you're like me, you may find yourself wondering, "where did THAT number come from??" With the cost of cable steadily rising, I got to wondering just how many people are sticking with the box.

I hate to admit it, but of all the rooms in my home, I've spent the least amount of time designing my office. That lack of effort from a design perspective has caused some other bad habits, including using my office as a general stopping ground for things that don't have a place. When a friend recently came over and said my office looked like it was in the wrong home, I immediately started making a list of changes I wanted to make to the space.

Product: Click and Grow Smart Herb Garden
Price: $99.95
Rating: Strong Recommend*

I love growing my own food. Sadly though, I have spent most of my adult life in tiny apartments with limited light and no outdoor space. Enter the Smart Herb Garden, a setup for growing herbs indoors in even the smallest and darkest of spaces, which promises success for even those with the "un-greenest" of thumbs.

If sci-fi films are any indication, we've been imagining a future just rife with chatty technology. While not quite at Her levels, there is a non-trivial amount of voice control available in tech today, from the Netflix controls on the latest Xbox with Kinect to voice search built into many smartphones.

HBO and Amazon joining forces caused a big shakeup in the TV world — in part because people were so annoyed that Game of Thrones wasn't included in the deal. But do not fear! When Netflix and Showtime announced their deal in 2011, Dexter wasn't part of the lineup, but now you can happily stream all eight seasons on Netflix.

While posture, the quality of your chair and the ergonomics of the mouse and keyboard can be big factors in how long you can sit at your desk, for me, it always comes down to eye strain. Without question, if I stare at my screen for more than four hours straight, I'm guaranteed to have a headache. So how can one battle eye strain? That's the very question I put to my optometrist the last time I went to visit. Here are a few quick methods he recommended:

Changing one's workspace from a regular desk to a standing desk can be a big challenge, but I made the switch over a year ago and haven't looked back. Attractive and affordable standing desks can be hard to find, but this DIY version from IKEA fits the bill nicely.

I take my smartphone everywhere. It's replaced my camera, my planner, and even the notepad and pen I used to carry in my purse (and the one I leave in my car, and the one on the nightstand). I'm definitely a note-taker; a girl who can't trust her memory to remember the important things. But even for the not-so-important things, it's really handy to have a notes app where I can store lists and libraries of personal ideas and resources to revisit later when I need them.

We stopped by the Umbra Shift booth this weekend at ICFF to check out the new brand extension from Umbra. We spotted both softness and innovation from some of the products newly launched.