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Less Wrong Product & Service Recommendations
I have often benefited from recommendations for Things I Didn't Know I Wanted.
Given that Less Wrong is a community of unusually intelligent, critical, and self-improvement-focused people, I suspect we can generate a pretty helpful thread of product recommendations — perhaps even a monthly thread of product recommendations.
Rules:
- Post one product your recommend per comment, so they can be discussed and voted on independently.
- Provide a link for purchasing the product.
- No books, movies, TV, games, or music. (These should go in other threads, like this one or this one.)
I'll post my own recommendations to the comments section, too.
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Comments (365)
ManicTime.
A great time management tool.
TagTime.
"To determine how you spend your time, TagTime literally randomly samples you. At random times it pops up and asks what you're doing *right at that moment." From the folks that created Beeminder (also recommended on this thread).
I am sad that this thread fell by the wayside and that people are no longer actively throwing recommendations at it.
There was another like that some time in 2011, though I can't seem to find it. Anyway, the standard solution is to make it a monthly or bimonthly thread.
Shea Moisture Soap, Body Wash and Baby Ointment.
It has a soft, natural, a little bit nutty smell. It contains Shea Butter, which is an emollient. The soap comes in several different scents, including Lavender.
Shea Moisture Soap
Shea Moisture Baby Ointment This is not a lotion, it's much greasier than that. Nice on your skin in a dry climate.
Shea Moisture Body Wash
Available online from Walgreens.
An electric toothbrush. Your teeth will feel cleaner, and apparently these toothbrushes have been "proven" to do a better job. I now dislike using the normal toothbrushes, eg when travelling.
I am currently using this one, bought for $49 not $199 on Groupon, cleans great and wireless recharging is great, but seems to have a design fault - I only managed to replace the head by wrecking the old one, will replace with a different brand.
YNAB (You Need A Budget)
Great tool for implementing a zero-based budgeting system (also known as an "envelope system"), meaning every dollar of income is assigned to an expense category. Categories can (and should) include annual or longer-term expenses, so that you have cash on hand when foreseeable future expenses crop up. The system as a whole is great for giving you confidence in your spending choices, as well as helping you stay on track when you overspend. I find this type of budgeting ideal, though some may find it a little too demanding.
I personally still use an older, spreadsheet-based version of the YNAB system, mainly because it's what I'm accustomed to. So I can't vouch with certainty for their current software. But it does have a free trial!
If you already have a great budgeting system in place, you may not find this useful. But if your budgeting system doesn't work so well, or if you don't currently budget--you need a budget!
Angie's List - www.angieslist.com - for local business and service recommendations.
If you can't find it by Googling, they might still have several reviews on Angie's List. This helped me avoid a nightmare contractor when getting my kitchen redone. Paid for itself hundredfold with that first recommendation alone.
They only take reviews from paying members, which means the risk of spam or sock puppet reviews is slightly lower than the free review sites like Yelp. And they actively encourage members to review business/services they've used/patronized, which means that you don't just see the disgruntled ones.
Wirecutter for product recommendations.
The site makes a single recommendation, then explains how they came to that conclusion, so you can decide if the same attributes are important to you. Mostly computers, but they're branching out into home goods too.
Their method seems to be largely reading many other product reviews, and synthesizing them so you don't have to.
Workflowy! I heard you like bullet lists. So, we made workflowy so you can have bullet lists in your bullet lists.
The ultimate bullet list software. It allows you to bring a sub-bullet to the top of a page. I find it's really nice when you're working on sub-bullet to just click on it and then the screen reorganizes so you can only see that particular sub-bullet and its sub-bullets. Has hashtags, mobile integration, collaboration, and 90% of your daily serving of Vitamin awesome!
I've used workflowy and liked it, but the lack of an android app made it not very useful. Now I see there is a couple of android apps, and will try it again.
Against Malaria Foundation
According to GiveWell, the most effective charity on the planet. Save lives and increase your subjective well-being in one fell swoop. Charity is probably one of the more efficient means of converting money into utils and hedons at the same time.
Udacity.com for learning. Sebastian is an awesome teacher, and makes good use of the (very well designed) platform. This Chronicle of Higher Education review gives a pretty good overview.
I'm rather fond of wearing hiking boots. Although I originally bought them for actual hiking (I was in the Boy Scouts), I eventually got into the habit of wearing them as ordinary shoes. They're insulated, waterproof, and add to my height more than regular shoes do.
Downside: Hiking boots tend to be more expensive than ordinary shoes.
(Sorry for the lack of link.)
Switching to the Dvorak keyboard cured my RSI.
if you're German check out Neo-layout.org. Its much more awesome. For English speakers try Colemak. For all others check if there are optimized layouts for your language.
Hopefully someone does an adaption of the NEO principles into other languages at some point. Its not that difficult to get into it.
I can vouch for Dvorak being better on the wrists.
On that note, Colemak is similarly optimised, but significantly easier to learn than Dvorak. (The website claims Colemak is more optimised with regards to things like bigrams and trigrams and pinky-to-index rolling, but it's not clear how much this is an actual improvement. The ease of learning is clearly much higher though)
How long did it take to unlearn qwerty?
Can't speak for Eliezer, but for me, I was able to use my computer for normal tasks (but slowly, and with lots of errors) after probably 5-7 hours of intensive practice, but the frustration did not subside until after the 2nd or 3rd week. This was in high school, though, so I'm not sure how long it would take an adult.
That said, I haven't "unlearned" qwerty. I use Dvorak on my ergonomic work keyboard, and qwerty on every other keyboard. The different feel of the keyboards successfully triggers my brain to use the right layout, and I don't have any trouble switching between them (I don't even notice anymore that they're different layouts).
Boomerang for Gmail
Have emails return to your inbox at a specified day and time. Stop thinking about things until your past self decides you need to be thinking about them again. Keep a clean inbox. Want to reply to a letter but don't have time until after work? Boomerang it to tonight, and you'll get a reminder when it lands in your inbox and you have time to take care of it.
Free for the first 10/emails a month, $5/month for unlimited emails. I pay the $5 and it's very worth it.
I added Boomerang based on your recommendation. I already use Mailbox for iPhone to schedule emails to reappear at some given time. I've used Boomerang primarily to delay the sending of an e-mail ("Send Later") and to schedule emails to reappear in my inbox if I don't get a reply. I find "Send Later" particularly useful, since it removes the rationalization that "I'll compose this e-mail later, since I can't send it out until later".
Great recommendation. I actually came back to this page with the specific purpose of recommending Boomerang, after trying it for a coupe of weeks on the basis of Qiaochu Yuan's endorsement, and I'm happy to see it already mentioned.
I have been using this and love it. One of the things I use it for is to remind myself in the future to do a specific thing at a specific time (I have Gmail on my iPhone, so it pings me when I get the email), but in a way that's phrased as a request from a past self (e.g. "Hi future me, Do this thing! It'll be awesome! Cheers, past me") so it'll feel like I'm breaking a social commitment instead of just ignoring a reminder.
If you live in a city: Zipcar (Disclosure: Promotional link - if you sign up through this, we both get a $25 credit)
Saves a lot of money and stress. I don't worry about registration or car insurance or gas prices or parking. When I need a car, I pay a pre-determined rate, and then stop worrying about it. Warm fuzzy bonus: Positive externalities in (less land allocated to parking)+(less traffic)+(fewer CO2 emissions).
I've been bike-only for 10 years, with the option to borrow a car from family a 20 minute bike ride away. I signed up for zipcar a year ago after I really wanted a car for something and the family spare wasn't available.
In the year since then, I've looked into using the zipcar for things probably 5-10 times, and rejected it every time. I'm faced with a choice like: do I walk 10 minutes to the car, then borrow it for an hour for $10, then walk 10 minutes back, or just do the errand on a bike? Or, do I borrow the zipcar for a few hours (where the walking time doesn't matter as much), but it's $30? Nah, I'll do things some other way.
Walk-distance to car matters a great deal. I've got several locations within a 5 minutes walk from me, which considerably increases the value. Most of my use cases involve moving things that are inaccessible via public transit, moving things which would be unfeasible to move via public transit, or emergency transit when value(time)>>value(money).
I find it adorable that locations in which Zipcars are stored are labeled with the phrase "Zipcars live here".
Not exactly a product, but...put your directly mattress on the floor.
Does your bed every squeak or rattle when you move around? Does not happen if it's on the floor! Ever fall out of bed? Can't if it's on the floor. Want your bed to be bigger? Throw some pillows and blankets on the floor next to you and sprawl out to your heart's content. This is especially useful if your nocturnal co-pilot has a deeply rooted subconscious obsession with rolling on to your side of the bed.
In the morning, you can literally roll out of bed, and it feels kind of awesome.
Oh, you also now have an arbitrarily large nightstand.
Need to temporarily have more floorspace in your bedroom for something? It's really easy to stand your bed up against a wall.
But the boxspring! Your boxspring doesn't really do anything - it sits 6+ inches beneath you and acts as a solid, flat surface for your mattress. You already have one of those, it's the floor. I've been doing this for years, there is no difference in the sleeping experience except for the above listed benefits, and your view will seem weird for a while but you'l get used to it.
(If other people try this, I'd like to get your feedback so I can figure out whether I should promote this constantly or resign myself to being weird).
My experience is that it works very well, but I sometimes value the raw elevation (as David commented, it makes it easier to get out of bed in the morning). I also find that clutter on my floor is more annoying, so I clean more often, which has it's positives and negatives - in a small space it can be annoying since the clutter has no place to go. And, of course, dust/mold/spiders/cats are more annoying.
YMMV. Whenever I have had my mattress on the floor, (a) the dust at floor level drives my asthma batshit (b) it's harder to get out of bed in the morning (because I need to lift my centre of gravity higher), and I have enough trouble convincing myself to get up.
Also, it is a good idea to try a thinner mattress. Thick mattress - on the bed or not - can acquire some deformations that can make you feel uncomfortable. Thin mattress on the floor just physically cannot deform in a way that you cannot fix by shaking at a bit. It is said to be good for your spine, too.
Depending on where you live, mold can become a problem.
I do this. It reclaims the space above the bed as everyday living space, the bed never wobbles, and it's generally just perfectly satisfactory.
The one disadvantage is that it's harder to stand up off a mattress (or in my case a futon) that's directly on the floor than one that's higher up.
Aside from the lost storage space beneath the bed... there's the issue of company.
It's more fun when you don't have to worry about falling off the bed - it's more more amenable to extremely kinetic activities. This includes at least one double-blindfolded study.
You'd need to do more than blindfold me before I failed to notice that the bed is on the ground...
And if you didn't mean that literally... my own studies show that a GOOD mattress works quite well for double-blindfold studies even with the height of a frame :)
Sugru - rapid, easy, cheap repair of small, broken things. Suguru is basically a hardening putty - it's malleable when opene, and dries to be hard and durable in about 24 hours. I've used it to repair broken axles on a cart, reassemble broken headphones, re-attach a handle to a hairbrush - minor, easy fixes which save me marginal time/money/anxiety/frustration on a day-to-day basis. There may be other, similar, cheaper products (some appear on the amazon search I just did), but I have not tested them.
Amazon link
WaterPik water flosser. Flossing does more to improve oral health than brushing, but I had significant trouble keeping it up as a habit because it was awkward and required regularly replenishing a supply of floss. Water flossing appears to be about as beneficial as flossing with nylon but is far more convenient, and a tech you will use is better than one that you won't.
I have reactive hypoglycemia. I take cinnamon in capsules every morning. I have perceived improvement in my condition during the periods when I take cinnamon.
Monitor arms. I've got http://www.ergotron.com/Products/tabid/65/PRDID/355/language/sv-SE/Default.aspx
Also, a good chair, desk, etc. Vital if you spend as much time in front of the computer as many here probably do.
Monitor arms are awesome. After using them for a while I abandoned the desk entirely and just bolted them to the wall, allowing me to add a couch to my room instead. Warning, this advice probably not viable if you actually use your desk for stuff other than putting monitors on.
Yea. I considered it, but I do tend to have LOTS of other stuff on my desk, incubating necessary input devices.
Gorillapod. Works great, helps me take awesome pictures.
UnderArmour ColdGear Frosty: I hate being cold--these made it tolerable to go out biking in cold weather, and I also found myself wearing them as leggings under regular skirts when I was tired of a winter full of pants.
Anki : A program that makes remembering things easy. It syncs between mobile devices and your computer, too, and there are a number of LessWrong-related Anki decks already available for download.
A recommendation with no link or description?
Anki: A program that makes remembering things easy. It syncs between mobile devices and your computer, too, and there are a number of LessWrong-related Anki decks already available for download.
And it's been discussed quite a bit before. :)
A reading light. It's battery-powered and can clamp onto things. I find it useful for reading in bed, especially when travelling.
Empty tissue boxes. Use them to prop up the back layer of paperback books on your double-stacked bookshelves. Now you can see most of the titles of the books in the back row. If you want to upgrade in style, get some 2-by-4s cut to the right length at your local hardware store.
My God...HPMOR is the world's most elaborate product placement ever.
Aluminum foil. Use a gluestick to put it over your bedroom windows. Now there is darkness, and you can sleep. This made a huge quality-of-life difference to me, and I felt very silly for not doing it 10 years earlier. (A sleep mask, which I previously used, was not nearly as good a solution.)
I've found tinfoil often lets through entirely too much sunlight (the thin cheap stuff, evidently). But I did do something similar with black card in one house. Now we use blackout curtains, so we can get light through the windows when we actually want it.
I second this recommendation.
For the last 9 years, the room I sleep in gets pitch dark even in the middle of the day when I close the door and jam a towel or such under the door. (Makes naps much more restful.)
This probably occurs to most people, but to be explicit about the downsides:
If the foil is visible from outside it signals behaviors that are widely disapproved of. To that end, it would be wise to put something between the foil and the glass, perhaps colored paper or arbitrary fragments of unwanted posters.
Light may also come in around doors. In this case, a folded flap of duct tape with foil inside may be attached to the edge of the door on the swingward side and on the frame on the contra-swingward side. That may eliminate all light.
Particularly thin (cheap) foil may get have small tears that let through points of light. A piece of duct tape will patch those.
Blacking out windows is less beneficial than adapting to a conventional day/night cycle when possible. Natural light improves quality of life.
“A conventional day/night cycle” (for certain values of “conventional” at least) during the summer involves waking up several hours after sunrise.
Wow! that is a great idea. Here I was using blackout cloth and nails... Edit: A friend of mine informs me that this is commonly used by meth labs...and may attract unwanted attention from authority figures?
Isn't this what curtains and shutters are for?
Yes, it's what they are for - but they are typically inferior alternatives for the specific goal of preventing light entry.
My parents visited Israel when I was a kid. My grandparents' apartment had Israeli air-raid-quality shutters which ACTUALLY blocked out all the light; they were wooden slats that rolled down and stacked themselves solidly over the outside of the window. You pulled on the cord and the light went out completely - that simple. I expect it helped on noise reduction too, though I wasn't checking then. Ever since, I've taken the lack of this simple, extremely useful feature on any other windows I've ever seen, as proof that the housing industry is dysfunctional.
In Italy, roller shutters that block all of the light (like this) are pretty much ubiquitous. (This is one of the few things where I think Italy is less retarded than the rest of the developed world. Now I've bought a sleeping mask and I'm going to use it the next time I go abroad.)
If you can choose, French shutters work miles better than roller shutters at blocking light.
I've seen steel shutters like that in Pisa. Some of them still had bullet marks.
But not all of us need pitch darkness to sleep. My eyelids are the only shutters I need.
Some shade too I assume? I find I at least need to ensure that my eyelids aren't subject to direct sunlight for sleep to be realistic. This occurs sometimes in my room when the sun is at exactly the right point and the curtains aren't carefully aligned. If I am trying to go to sleep at that time I need to either lie on my side such that my head is facing away or cover my eyes with a pillow (or be very tired, or it could be overcast).
Listening to heavy metal in a brightly lit room will almost inevitably put me to sleep within 30 minutes. One of my friends only produces melatonin when exposed to sunlight or full-spectrum bulbs. Not everyone's body responds to "night = sleep, light = awake".
Wow. Really? Those are.... exceptional observations. Should I take them at face value or be confused?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_sleep_phase_disorder
I can't say for sure whether things like full spectrum bulbs actually help us sleep, or if that's just psychosomatic, but there definitely exist people who naturally sleep during the day and wake up at night. Left to my own devices, I go to bed at dawn rather reliably, sleep ~8 hours, and wake up feeling incredibly rested. Any other sleep cycle tends to leave me feeling restless and tired, but I've learned to force myself to conform to "normal" society.
I hate windows facing south in bedrooms.
As a morning person, I prefer to rise with the sun in summer, and well before it in winter.
That doesn't seem optimized for removal, but I also haven't used glue sticks for over a decade. I'd go with duct tape (or masking tape) instead.
Duct tape is a bad choice if one of the goals or requirements is not to leave adhesive residue. I know this from personal experience.
A very thin layer of the stuff from glue sticks is probably what I would use because if some of it remains on the windows after foil removal, it seems the easiest to scrape off the glass with a one-sided razor blade. I have never actually used glue sticks for this purpose, though.
Scotch Blue tape is usually the best choice if you want to make sure you can remove the tape and any adhesive residue even after the tape has been in use for years, but in this particular application there are two problems with Blue tape: (1) light will shine through the Blue tape and (2) direct sunlight is the one thing I have found that will over time render the blue tape hard to remove.
I have used aluminum-foil tape for this purpose and can verify that it and its residue can be easily removed from glass (but not from the metal part of the window near glass) after years of service -- although you will need a razor blade. This tape usually comes in 2-inches-wide rolls for some reason and comes attached to wax paper that it has to be (carefully) separated from before you can use it.
This is not a product recommendation, but a request - it looks to me like trampolines should be large amounts of fun. However, when I tried to look up risk statistics, I found lots of dire warnings and, of course, no numerical annual risk statistics at all, or any attempt to adjust for safer trampolines with surrounding safety netting. My one attempt to calculate risk statistics on my own output a 0.1% chance of an injury requiring hospitalization per year of trampoline use. That's probably more risk than somebody in my position should take on, even for the sake of exercise. Does anyone know of more accurate statistics than this, or a safer trampoline with recorded risk statistics, or have a strong opinion on whether trampolines are safe enough to use?
I think the fun would wear off if I started using one every day -- I think most of the fun of trampolines is in doing something I don't usually do. YMMV.
I haven't used a trampoline since I was a teenager. My neighbors had round one that I would guess was 12-15' in diameter. There were numerous injuries that I can recall, the worst being a broken leg. All of the injuries that I recall were due to what I would consider (now) to be inappropriate use. We would play dodge ball where one or more people would be on the trampoline and people off of the trampoline would throw a ball at them. I chipped a tooth doing that. Sometimes we would put a lawn sprinkler underneath the trampoline if it was really hot. I believe that is how the broken leg occurred. We did many other less stupid but still somewhat risky things, too, like doing front and back flips and seeing how high we could jump.
My point, though, is that if you do find any safety statistics take into account how they compare to how you would actually use it. Do the stats take into account the stupid things teenagers do on them?
If I can't do any flips on the trampoline, I'm not sure it's worth it.
Another question is whether there's any simple neck-brace I can wear to avoid spinal injuries, which are the main thing I'm worried about. I'm okay with a 0.1% chance of pain, it's life-altering injuries (or more to the point, work-altering injuries) that I want to avoid.
I once took a course, 30 hours, we jumped on a professional rectangular trampoline without vertical safety nets, supervised. I too was worried about spinal injuries. According to my teachers, most injuries do happen by jumping out of the bounds or impromper landing technique (taking the landing shock the spine by not angling hip/body correctly). With that said: Even without flips it was major Fun. Very fast learning curve (and I am a very slow learner with regards to complex coordinations), the freefalling... Also, flips are an advanced technique, we only attempted them by the end of the course; I felt quite safe by then from breaking my neck, I had learned to control the fall and the spinning. Please note that this risk assessment is based on me weighing 65kgs.
I don't have any statistics handy, but once you learn flips from an instructor and practice about 1000 times carefully and under supervision over several sessions, it is a safe activity, because of the muscle memory taking over. Unless you make it unsafe by pushing your limits or jumping while impaired. Of course, there are always freak accidents like this, but the odds are at the noise level, such as being rear-ended hard when driving.
And yeah ... they ARE large amounts of fun.
J/FIT stability balls, for sitting-on - I tried a TKO, but it had a persistent smell that made me nauseous. I can't say yet that I use mine for hours at a time, but it's fun to bounce on now and then, and costs $25 at Amazon. I'm 5'11" and need a 75cm ball to balance properly.
FancyHands Per task virtual assistant service - because outsourcing makes life easier ;)
Brookstone Napform sleep mask Best sleep mask I've found, soft, you can fully open your eyes while wearing this.
Etymotic ER-20 earplugs Use these so you can listen to music, go to clubs, ect, and still preserve your hearing. I've probably bought 15+ by now, and keep one in every bag/jacket I own.
Great idea. Also if you want to get a good estimate on how loud it should be before you wear the earplugs, try measuring the noise level using a sound meter. You should probably wear the earplugs if the noise level is more than 85 dBA.
Hearos Ultimate Softness foam earplugs Great protection (32NRR), super comfortable. Use these for sleeping.
I second the recommendation for Hearos after trying 3 other brands.
The human ear has not previously been under selection pressure to accommodate extended periods of stoppage. Plugging up or cover ears for significant fractions of the day on a regular basis is out-of-spec use of the human body and may have consequences including infections and skin irritation.
Just be careful and talk to a pediatrician before applying this solution to children.
The human ear has also not previously been under selection pressure to accommodate constant noise pollution. Not plugging up or covering the ears (or abandoning civilisation) is also out-of-spec use of the human body and has consequences including stress and damaged hearing.
(Apply evolutionary reasoning consistently!)
On the contrary, whichever wildernesses most shaped our hearing were not silent places. The places people lived, that we know of, in the ice ages were quite wet. Rivers and even streams are constant sources of noise.
There are issues of levels and likely specific frequencies, but complete silence puts the stoppered ear further from the conditions in which it formed as well.
To disclose, I have worked in call centers for a cumulative decade and found that ear infections were more likely if I did not switch which ear was covered at least every week, when ear-covering headsets were the only option. I expect that stopping up ears overnight will have a similar consequence for at least a portion of the population. And so I advise caution.
I do not find fault in that action.
I use Leight (laser lite, uncorded):
http://www.amazon.com/Howard-Leight-Laser-Earplugs-Cords/dp/B0007XJOLG/ref=sr_1_2?s=hi&ie=UTF8&qid=1341456079&sr=1-2&keywords=leight+laser+uncorded+200
These are definitely much cheaper, and I suspect feel softer, while offering the same alleged protection.
Using a pair of earplugs every night is a huge quality of life difference.
I'd be happy to give you a pair of Hearos next time I see you! I also have a few pairs of SilentEar reusable earplugs that I use for airplances or other times that I want to be able to easily insert/remove earplugs.
For you personally or for everyone?
It probably will improve sleep quality, but I have yet to run A/B tests and measure it with my Zeo/Fitbit.
Kindle 3G Keyboard E-book reader, but get this one for traveling - this provides backup internet access, practically worldwide. You MUST buy the older "keyboard" version for this. Also fantastic to read books on ;)
Why? Does the 3G on the touch version not work exactly the same way as the keyboard version?
Touch 3G is limited to stuff like Wikipedia and Amazon. (I have a Touch, and I like it, btw.) More general net access via Kindle Touch is only via wifi)
Microsoft Security Essentials (free antivirus)
Windows antivirus straight from Microsoft. Back in the day, Norton was the best, but it became slower and slower, and is now one of the primary causes of computer instability and slowness. I then used free services like AVG until they started being far more pushy and annoying. I stopped using AV altogether until Microsoft came out with MSE. It's extremely lightweight, as I've never noticed it slowing my system down, and it provides as good or better virus protection than the competition as shown in independent reviews.
All virus protection is about the same. All the researchers talk to each other. The difference is in the engines and the irritation factor of using the thing.
Apparently, Norton is no longer slow and MSE no longer offers effective protection: http://www.av-test.org/en/tests/home-user/marapr-2012/
You can also check out av-comparatives.org for further antivirus tests but it doesn't test Norton nor MSE.
I am not going to make any recommendations. Just regularly read the latest reports from av-test.org and av-comparatives.org and use the product that consistently produces good protection.
Seconded. I used to use Avast, when I set up my new PC I asked a friend which antivirus to use, and he suggested MSE. I thought he was kidding.
But it turns out Microsoft actually have a pretty excellent antivirus solution here. It is totally nonintrusive - I'm less aware of it than any of the other ones I have used (Avast, AVG, Norton) and it just quietly does its thing. Recommended.
Newegg (web store)
Newegg is a store for computer hardware and electronics, and is expanding into other areas. Extremely fast shipping, excellent customer service, good prices, extensive pictures and tech specs on every item, and a wonderful user rating system provide more info about a product than most sites. I look here first when looking for any product computer-related, except cables and adapters, which is what Monoprice is for.
Wikipedia (free)
Wikipedia is a compendium of human knowledge, edited by anyone who cares to contribute. It has articles covering everything people might want to know about, including references to source material for further reading. Its goal is to become an authoritative encyclopedia.
Netflix ($8/m streaming, $8/m DVD-to-door)
Internet streaming movies and TV, including many back-seasons of popular shows, and absolutely no advertising. It also has one of the most advanced recommendation engines for finding new media. Can ship DVDs to your door with free return shipping if they don't have an item available for streaming (starting at $8 extra a month). Serves me much better than a cable subscription.
Google Chrome (free web browser)
A web browser to replace Microsoft Internet Explorer, Apple Safari, or Mozilla Firefox. Provides bookmark, password, extension and tab syncing across systems, is very fast and standards compliant, has built-in Flash and PDF readers, silent auto-updates, has lots of new technology and is pushing forward the boundaries of web browsing while staying more secure than the competition. I use this application more than anything else installed on my systems. Based on the open source Chromium.
Flashblock equivalent: in Settings, click 'Show Advanced Settings', under Privacy, click 'Content Settings', scroll down to Plug-ins and select 'Click to play'
Web Cache: When you meet 404 not found, you may find web cache with this extension.
Hover Zoom: Enlarge thumbnails on mouse over. Works on many sites (Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Reddit, Amazon, Tumblr, etc).
Adblock Plus: By preventing the display of ads, Adblock Plus makes browsing the web less taxing on both your computer and your sanity.
Catblock is even better!
While the subject of browsers is being floated, does anyone have any good recommendations on how to sensibly achieve two or more concurrent sets of browser data on the same machine?
I have multiple accounts on a few different sites (for generally benign reasons), and I manage this by having one set of logins/cookies/history on Chrome and one set on Firefox. It's a bit of an elaborate assignment problem, especially if I need to maintain three concurrent active accounts in one place.
It would be extraordinarily helpful to have multiple instances of Chrome on one machine (like a Red Chrome, a Blue Chrome and a Green Chrome), which would allow me to keep them separate, but over a consistent environment.
Firefox has a concept of "profiles" too. (I don't know how effective they are, or if you can have multiple running at once.)
Open the Google Chrome settings page, look for the heading 'Users' and click 'Add New User'.
You can also use Google Chrome Canary, which will be an entirely separate installation of Chrome with its own independent directory.
Thank you.
Correspondingly, Mozilla Firefox.
Similar to Google Chrome/Chromium, and has many of the same features. Each of those two browsers will suit some people better than it suits others, e.g. I always have many many tabs open, and I find that having more than 10 tabs open in Chromium is hard to use (tabs get unreadably small) and eats all my memory, while Firefox is nicer on both of these aspects. (I'm sure other use-cases suit Chrome better.)
(On that note, Firefox has had a bit of a reputation as a slow memory hog compared to Chrome, but that's no longer true.)
Thank you for posting this. I'm a long time Firefox user but lately I've been curious about Chrome. Your recommendation gives me the impetus to try it.
Google Reader (free web service)
RSS feed reader with numerous features, including sharing to other services, starring of interesting articles, and folders for feed sorting. I use this far more than any other web application, as I'm constantly reading things from across the web, and Google Reader is the best way of aggregating all the new content from many websites into one place and presenting it in an easy-to-read list, along with knowing how many new articles are there today and not missing a thing. I even subscribe to individual feeds from LW, such as particular users I don't want to miss comments from.
Readability (free web service)
Turn any web article into archived text for later reading on any system you have Readability installed (clients for all major OSes and mobiles, including send-to-Kindle). It also reformats pages into plaintext for easier reading. Competitors: Instapaper, Pocket, and Safari's Reading List.
I use Instapaper in combination with Instachrome on Windows and iPaper on Android.
FreeMind
Free mind mapping software.
Sparrow
For those who like using native email applications (like Apple Mail etc.) but are frustrated that they don't integrate well with Gmail, Sparrow for Mac and iPhone (an iPad version is currently in development) is something you should definitely check out (they have a Lite version on both platforms). Sparrow provides the best Gmail experience in a native app I have found. The UI is very clean and well thought out. Another nice touch is it's Facebook and Gravatar integration (for contact pictures) and Dropbox integration.
All in all, it's a pleasure to use.
What's a "gmail experience"? Gmail exposes both pop3 and IMAP (and iCal for Google Calendar), any MUA (mail user agent) can work with it and provide any experience it wants.
Gmail provides many “non-stnadard” features like labels, starred, priority inbox, conversation threads, all mail etcetera, that aren't part of the IMAP standard. That's what I mean by “Gmail experience.”
This may be true, but Sparrow is the only client I have found that provides the experience I want: Gmail in a native app.
In my experience some clients do some things well (e.g. Mail seems to have conversation threads working really well) and there are tricks to getting other feature to work (like create a smart folder that looks for all flagged messages, which would be the equivalent of Starred). However, with Sparrow you just provide your Gmail credentials and everything just works.
$30 Doorjam pullup bar - a few repetitions per week makes a big difference and take little time or energy. Better design than the old in-doorway bars. Should be prophylactic against hunched-forward computer posture, and helps me feel better in a way that volleyball and soccer don't. I used to gym-weightlift regularly but found it too demoralizing (to approach personal limits and then injure yourself is silly).
I've been thinking about one of those pullup bars, but I'm terrified at the idea of tearing the door frame off and having it and the steel frame come crashing down on top of me. Is this a valid concern?
Mine came with a thin metal shim that slid easily between the wall and doorjam that prevents the unloaded bar-anchor from shifting away from the wall+doorjam. Once the bar is weighted, there's no way that can happen anyway (the shim is really optional and you could improvise similarly with finishing nails).
Worst case realistic scenario: (if you keep the area in a possible crash zone free of spikes and furniture corners) is that you bang up your knee a little. I'm assuming you're just doing pullups, of course.
Now that I've been using 1Password for over a year (probably closer to two), it's become indispensable.
Although it's on the expensive side, I would say its worth every penny. 1Password can store all your passwords, as well as notes and other information like passport, bank account, credit card etcetera. It also has a password generator which I use every time I sign up to a new site/service. With 1Password on my phone, tablet, computer, and in my Dropbox, I have access to all my passwords and other important documents anywhere. They also make plugins for all major browsers that make using 1Password on your computer remarkably easy.
It has simplified a previously annoying part of my digital life, while also making it more secure.
Just set it up; works great!
I haven't tried 1Password, but can recommend LastPass unreservedly.
I haven't tried 1Password or KeePass, but I've used LastPass for something like a year now and it works well for me. Using a small set of passwords across all sites, especially given that easily a dozen websites I've used have been hacked, is just insane. I regret that I didn't start using some password manager long before hand.
I also consider a password manager essential. I use KeePass, which isn't quite as full featured, but is free/open source (FOSS) and has clients for everything except iOS.
The password entry hot key is magic.
Second the recommendation for KeePass - I've been using it for about a year now.
Echoing the speedreading recommendations here I have some for consuming content at high speed in general.
Specifically educational Audio and Video content (this does not make much sense for enjoyment listening/watching *)
After some training I can easily listen to books at 3x (noting that professionally read books tend to be read on the slow side to start with). Watching video technical lectures at 2x.
There are several tools for this that I use. Audible app for iPhone (and probably Android) allows 3x in the most recent version.
For video I use AVideoHD on the iPad (for any downloaded videos) and on Mac/PC I use MySpeed from http://www.enounce.com/ for YouTube and other streaming video sources. Works great up to 3x, except that some sites can't keep up with that speed.
The nice thing about this optimization is that it requires very little willpower: the brain seems to adjust to higher speeds quite naturally (of course I recommend making the jump slowly, I remember distinctly 3x sounding like gibberish).
I'm planning to try this way of making a standing desk. Only $22, plus a bar stool or something, because I don't think I can stand all day, especially in the beginning.
It works great. I mentioned wanting a standing desk to my boss when I started a month ago, a couple of other people expressed interest, and he bought four of them, including one to use himself. It sits on the desk that's built into my cubicle, my laptop sits on the shelf, and the monitor sits on top. The boss had to send someone to IKEA to get another four.
We might need to get higher cubicle walls, though.
I've decided not to do it after all. The cat couldn't sit on my lap, and I love it when she does that.
E-book readers such as the Kindle
I use mine way more often than I originally expected. The low weight means I can have it in my bag by default. A lot of content is available in e-book format and it's easy to get onto the device. Reading lengthy articles on it makes me less likely to get distracted by links, email, etc.
The unexpected killer feature for me was that you can use it one-handedly. I've been carrying my sleeping daughter and reading at the same time for hours - that would have been impossible or at least prohibitively uncomfortable with a book.
Specific advice would be much appreciated.
I live in a country where name-brand E-book readers are quite rare. I am aware of E-Book readers for quite some time, but I am unsure if I can justify buying one, because of
a) non-existent electronic bookstore support. Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Sony and such doesn't work here officially. Will E-book reader provide enough value if I will only download books to it manually? I heard it doesn't handle pdf format well?
b) uncertain reliability of the e-ink devices. My only experience with it is when my brother borrowed a PocketBook reader for a day and it broke, somehow. He never even took it out of its leather case. Looks like those e-ink screens are very fragile? Or, maybe that's only true for some? I was thinking of buying a Sony Reader, which had metal cases, but they changed for plastic in the latest generation.
Any thoughts on this?
I loaded up almost a hundred books to my Kindle from Project Gutenberg. There are other free (legal) eBook locations such as Baen Free Library. For the $80 Kindle, that's likely worth it, even without accessing the vast illegal (in the US at least) sources. I agree they're definitely bad for PDF, text books, or anything else you'll want to flip back and forth; only good for sequential reading (novels and the like). They're very reliable and last a long time.
Tasker (Android app)
Lets you automate many activities on an Android phone. You define a context based on various conditions (e.g. connected to a Wifi network, using certain cell towers, phone spatially oriented a certain way) and various actions to perform upon entering and exiting that context. You can set variables and condition upon them, there is flow control for actions, customisable home screen widgets and shortcuts, and many other neat functions.
Some examples of tasks I use / am pondering:
There's a wiki with lots of downloadable setups you can experiment with for neat results.
I've got tasker, but haven't successfully set it up to do anything. I find all of the layers of menus and terminology confusing and wonder why there isn't a configuration file I can edit by hand.
Yeah, the interface is usually the biggest complaint and I agree it's quite suboptimal. I guess the good bit is once you get something working you don't have to interact with it again until you want to change it.
I haven't tried it myself, but I believe there is a way to write the contexts and tasks in XML files or something similar... you could look that up.
I haven't tried Tasker, but I used Llama for this same purpose, with excellent results. Here's a comparison of the two apps. As of July, 2012 both apps have the same rating on Google Play (4.7 stars).
Hmm, seems to be a few remarks on how Tasker is tricky to use. I haven't tried Llama, but I didn't find Tasker particularly difficult to get to grips with. Anyone with some programming experience should definitely find it easy enough.
I just got the toggle button for call forwarding set up yesterday. Now a process that used to be annoyingly cumbersome and take 30 seconds every time I arrived at or left work is a breezy two-taps that leave me feeling satisfied with myself for having set it up.
ComfortTech Thinsulate micromink blanket ($84 king, $70 queen, $70 twin)
I will probably never buy a bulky comforter/duvet for myself ever again. This is lighter, easier to clean, just as warm, and so much softer. Girls love it.
There are probably lots of options in this space; this is just one that I personally own and love. I've also heard good things about the cutely (or grossly) named Vagisoft blanket.
ComfortTech: my gf actually dislikes it, but I think it's quite good. Thanks.
NeoFinder ($40, but the trial version will probably do what you want, for free)
I spent months trying to find a program that would keep an updated index of the files on my two (very large) NAS drives so I could search them as quickly as I search with Google. I tried almost a dozen programs and Mac hacks, and none of them worked even though several of them should have worked in theory. And then I found NeoFinder, and it worked perfectly. Now I can finally search my NAS drives without waiting 30 minutes for each search to finish.
Hopefully I have now saved at least one person several months of searching. :)
For windows, I use X1 Desktop search.
I use 'Everything', but it crashes so often. Will look into X1 Desktop search.
In the vein of "Things I Didn't Know I Wanted": an iPhone. I didn't know I needed a smartphone until I got one. It has improved my life, in many small ways that I had trouble predicting. Example: I no longer have to plan anything when I'm leaving my apartment, because I know I can look up whatever I need using my phone.
Do you mean that GPS navigation relieves you from the burden of planning your spatial transportation?
Can you please provide other examples (ideally as many as you can) about how owning an iPhone have improved your life?
As you can tell from my other comment, I'm currently very sceptical about such claims. My hypothesis is that most such claims are delusional; people are not aided by smartphones, justifying owning them as convenience while using them as entertainment and receiving additional stress and expense in the process. It would be a good occasion to be proven wrong.
I don't see what's wrong with owning it for entertainment, and I don't see where the stress comes from. Maybe it's more entertaining than useful to be able to go to wikipedia whenever I have an argument or want to settle a bet, but that doesn't mean it's not worthwhile.
Owning something for entertainment is only wrong (looks like irrational behavior for me) if one claims otherwise.
Stress comes from having additional personal computer in possession, which one has to manage, charge, mentally track location of (e.g. not lose) and respond to. Granted, dumbphone also has the above properties (and I'm regularly thinking if it is wise to have a cellphone at all), but to a limited extent.
With a smartphone, I can:
I'm sure I've missed some stuff. But all these things have improved my life, some in small ways, others in rather significant ways.
FWIW, I've heard many people give your justification for not having a smartphone. Of those who eventually caved, every one (4 or 5 people) said something like "holy shit, why didn't I get this a long time ago?"
I have Android:
I am actively avoiding buying a smartphone because I wouldn't like to (descending priority):
I currently have Nokia 1208, which retailed for €25. One might consider newer Nokia 1280 as an upgrade, which has FM radio with 3.5mm headphone jask and RRP of €20. Personally, I find 1208's build quality more appealing, and it's thinner as well and has different style keyboard, but this is a matter of taste, probably.
What am I missing?
It costs several hundred dollars more than other smartphones, though. Except for battery life and status signalling, why is it better?
The iPhone brings the user substantially more joy when using the product, compared to other smartphones.
When I say "joy" I also mean to indicate lack of frustration. The iPhone just works, and it works beautifully, in a way that other smartphones do not.
Now, why do I recommend paying for joy? Because you will be using your smartphone for probably multiple hours a day, for several years, and if you're slightly happier every time you use it, that adds up.
Downvoted for wildly subjective assertions about comparative merits of smartphones.
I personally have a Galaxy Nexus, and I much prefer the extra customisation and control I have over an Android system. It "just works beautifully", too. Feeling like I am in full control of a tiny, powerful computer in my pocket brings me a lot more joy than every time I've tried using an Iphone; where the lack of control made me feel like I was renting one of Apple's devices on a probationary period, rather than owning one myself.
So this is really a matter of preference; let's not pretend that the Iphone is simply an unequivocally "more joyful" or "better working" user experience.
<cynicism level="extreme">Well, joy is highly subjective, which kind-of pattern-matches the post facto rationalizations people use to defeat the buyer's remorse.</cynicism>
Totally agreed, you want a smartphone. Doesn't have to be the latest and greatest, either; my two year old HTC Desire continues to make me very happy.
I don't really understand what the selling point of the newer models is. I'm also quite happy with a HTC Desire (apart from the internal storage running out of app install space, had to install CyanogenMod just to patch over that), since it seems to do everything I want from a thing with that particular form factor and interface constraints. Basically, browse the web, write short messages, display reflowing text documents, run a scientific calculator and play video and audio. All of these seem to generally run without me thinking "I wish I had more processing power for this".
Not saying this is necessarily for you, but each time I've upgraded to an iphone with a faster processor I've been like "Shit this is way faster than the crap I was used to". App loading, web page loading, google maps running faster, etc. Maybe this won't be your experience, but it's easy to test by borrowing a newer version of your phone.
The iPhone in particular is very well-thought out. For example, they aren't including support for 4G LTE until they invent a new battery that will still last all day while connecting to 4G LTE. My friend just got a leading Android phone that has 4G LTE, but it runs out of battery after 6 hours.
I would recommend checking whether it is well-thought in the area you do care about.
I was surprised to find out that you cannot easily save PDF from a webpage to reliably keep it on the phone forever; it will be subject to cache retention policy. There are more obvious limitations, of course. Nobody is free of mistakes, so check what is obviously important for you in the specific device you are going to use.
Really? If you were referring to the iPhone, my experience is this. PDF links open by default in the browser, which copy only exists as a temporary cache. However, the window includes an "Open in iBooks" button, and using it saves a permanent copy to iBooks. iBooks is an Apple app that comes with the phone. There's also an "Open in..." button letting you save it to any app that has indicated it is able to handle a PDF -- I also have GoodReader.
Yes, it was on iPhone (specifically iPhone 1) and the owner said that he is disappointed by the situation and knows no solution. Maybe Apple fixed this problem later among some others like copy-paste.
I started with the iPhone 4. So there's the solution to his problem: upgrade, and experience wonderful new worlds of just-worksness!
Unfortunately for Apple, I already own an n810, and my expectations of the device willing to work in a sane-from-my-POV way, not "just work somehow" are heightened well beyond anything an Apple product can ever provide.
Clarification: I know, what I call sanity is a minority wish, and I am simply not using any devices that actively work against it.
My original point was that it is not like excellence is the driving idea of iPhone; releasing right-hand-only iPhone4 has shown that not much has changed.
Also, a device with a more-than-400MHz-CPU, more-than-128MB-RAM and more-than-1GB-storage that cannot run OpenOffice/LibreOffice without fighting what manufacturer did doesn't "just work".
As usual, there is an app for that. Dropbox, another product on this list, has an excellent iPhone app, which (among many other things) lets you save your PDF in permanent storage, and automatically sync to your computer with no extra effort.
I've been disappointed in minor ways with my iPhone, but nothing was significant enough to withhold a very strong recommendation from me. (Android is another story. Android devices are still very useful, but the difference in quality of experience between an Android device and an iPhone is like night and day.)
There is quite a bit of variance in quality among Android devices. Personally, I would take a Samsung Galaxy Nexus over an Apple iPhone.
I was pretty late on the smartphone bandwagon. The only reason I got it was to be able to use Anki on the go. Now I use about a dozen apps and get an enormous amount of value out of it.
Well, as for me, when I had a chance to hold iPhone for a few minutes, it lowered my perception of Apple from "high-quality, somewhat restrictive, expensive" to "overpriced, unpredictable quality". What their browser did with saving PDFs was one of the things.
I do use a PDA, though - n810 from Nokia (custom GNU/Linux distribution by Nokia inside), I use bluetooth integration with two different (different operators) phones, in many things PDA helps a lot - but iPhone specifically striked me as an overall poor product.
Given that Apple doesn't allow apps to fix every quirk, even "there is an app for that" doesn't help. Why would I want a device that doesn't run OpenOffice/LibreOffice?
Since OpenOffice has not been adapted and is poorly suited for touch screens, your mentioning it (twice) in a conversation about smartphones is more confusing than helpful.
Also, the n810 (which you've mentioned twice) is part of a product line that was discontinued about 2 years ago and never sold in large quantities.
(I know about OpenOffice and the n810 because I used Linux for my desktop platform for 17 years.)
Would you please limit your comments from now on to information that can realistically be expected to be useful to the general reader rather than only to people who have already invested heavily in very unusual hardware or software choices? For example, the vast majority of LWers who will buy a smartphone will (for excellent reasons, particularly "network effects") buy one with a touch interface.
OpenOffice on touch-only device has two goals: first, check that you can actually get complex software (not really optimized for the platform) working without too much hassle; second, just view the files in non-trivial formats with minimal if any editing (well, sorting and searching are not too bad on medium-size devices).
N810 is EOLed, but N9 lacks only keyboard. From the platform side of things it is quite close.
I am not mentioning N810 in top-level comments (because you cannot obtain it with warranty) or first-level replies (because mentions there are seen as related recommendations) - I am only using this to explain my experience and what baseline I compare Apple products to. The post you are answering to is a reply to the claim that "iPhone just works" (which is true not for everyone's definition of "works").
On easily rootable Qwerty Android phones (there are some), you can get chroot + vncviewer + vnc server in chroot (and so, whatever software you need from Debian/ARM) without giving up "using Android phone" and access to the popular apps. I am not naming a specific Android Qwerty phone because I haven't compared currently available such phones to each other and don't currently use one. (I do know from experience that setting up the system that I described it not hard).
As for network effects.. if you buy a product with network effect being a strong factor, you have found about it not from this post's comments.
Honestly, that's because PDF is not well-thought-out.
Choosing to use PDF to distribute text (or text-and-images) on the Web today does seem like a pretty silly idea. PDF favors exact reproduction of a paper-based layout over readability on the user's device; and that's the opposite of what's useful if you're trying to get a message across to many users.
But, given that PDF is out there, it's pretty useful for a mobile device to be able to deal with it competently.
Sorry? The problem equally applies to HTML and to everything you can read online. Also, PDF is well thought-out as a format with specific purpose. If you want to know exactly an for sure what the reader will see, you could use PDF and succeed or use HTML and make the existing problems of Web worse.
I really wish I could agree with you, but I've read parts of the specification of the pdf file format. Perhaps the goal was well-thought-out, but certainly the format itself is not.
Ignoring the barrier to entry involved in competing with a de facto standard like .pdf, are there any viable alternatives available?
Might I recommend StikK or Beeminder for goal commitment?
Suction cup phone windshield holder
If you use your iPhone for music in the car this thing is indispensable. I've used 4 different car mounts and this has been the most convenient to attach and change positions of, as well as the one to go the longest without breaking. The bendy arm makes customizing where it is super easy. The gripper isn't precisely engineered to fit the shape of my phone like some others are but this means that it works a lot better with cases and should theoretically work better with various kinds of phones, and still grips in a perfectly satisfactory way. I've never had my phone fall out.
On a related note I strongly recommend getting bluetooth interface for your phone if you get or make calls in the car often.
Mine broke after about a year, as did the other one I tried before. I'm going to try the Wirecutter's recommended one next.
12/17/2010 is when I ordered it from Newegg, for reference. It's still going strong with no sign of suction cup failure. Though the gripper appears to be slightly misaligned these days.
This trigger point tutorial and the Trigger Point Therapy Workbook for chronic muscle pain, including RSI. Looks to me like a genuine case where mainstream medicine has not caught up with what alternative-ish therapies can explain and heal. This guy's site looks like an incredibly well-documented resource for all kinds of chronic pain.
Self massage is a great healing method.
Yoga for maintaining and improving range of motion.
Five stretches for knitting pain relief-- myofascial massage. I don't knit, but these made my hands feel good and the comments about the stretches are enthusiastic.
I had bad RSI (wrists/shoulders) and back pain at various times in my late 20s. Physical therapy and other conventional treatments (thanks for the Vioxx scrip!) hardly helped. I'm still unsure why I got better, but resting and acting like an invalid for more than a few months is probably wrong.
Nozbe is, succinctly, a Getting Things Done (GTD) implementation. The service synchronizes with Evernote, Dropbox and Google Calendar. It has all the core functionality you really need and restrains itself from being too complicated. You can synchronize between a PC or Mac application, an in-browser app, and iPhone and iPad and Android apps.
It's not free but it's very reasonable for what you get. I've been using it for a while, after a long series or attempting other solutions, and I strongly advocate it for anybody looking for an integrated "getting organized" solution.
I tried Nozbe and I liked it. I also tried ToodleDo, and I liked it even more. These are probably the top two to-do list apps our there.
Update: I have now largely abandoned ToodleDo in favor of Workflowy (also recommended here), and use it pretty much like Paul Christiano does (as described in My Workflow).
People interested in Nozbe may want to also investigate Conqu, a similar app but with different design trade-offs. Various things that I find annoying or broken in Nozbe are not that way in Conqu, and vice versa, and the two have slightly different feature sets and UIs. (Notably: Conqu's app works almost exactly the same on all platforms (given a large enough screen), vs. Nozbe's many slightly different apps.)
Conqu is also cheaper on an individual basis, and can be used for free in an unlimited fashion on any single device: you pay only if you want to be able to sync between devices and email yourself tasks.
CrashPlan for unattended sync or backup. Unlimited cloud storage for $50/year. I switched to CrashPlan from Mozy when the latter changed ownership and became unreliable and useless.
I also use crashplan - to back up my Windows Home Server.