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☆ Juggling Time Zones for Work? These Tools Can Help
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-12 | by ( Nicole Nguyen | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

There’s one skill all remote workers, workcation-ers, frequent travelers and, frankly, anyone with co-workers in other states or countries must have: the ability to navigate multiple time zones. It’s one I exercise daily. My editor is in New York. I am constantly asking myself: What time is it for them right now? Will this midnight message get lost in their morning deluge?

☆ Your Inbox Runneth Over? How to Reduce Email Mess and Stress
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-05 | by ( Nicole Nguyen | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Email is my personal Everest. I spend hours a day fighting my way through useless messages, hoping for the chance to glimpse the more important stuff. So I set off in search of a less rocky climb. I talked to productivity experts, downloaded apps and tried features built into Gmail and Microsoft’s Outlook mail service. I am getting along much better now.

☆ Apple HomePod 2nd Generation Review: A Smart Speaker With Big Bass—and a Big Price
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-31 | by ( Nicole Nguyen | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com. https://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-homepod-2nd-generation-review-a-smart-speaker-with-big-bassand-a-big-price-11675171852

☆ How Fixing Notifications Changed My Relationship With My Phone
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-22 | by ( Nicole Nguyen | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Until recently, I was stuck in phone-notification hell. Unread texts and emails piled up. Apps pinged me so frequently that I began to feel phantom vibrations in my pocket. I’d turn on Do Not Disturb, only to be met with a long list of alerts once I was ready to be disturbed. I wanted to throw my phone into the sea and go off the grid.

Big layoffs at Meta , Amazon , Snap and others? A global crypto fraud set in the Bahamas? Elon Musk buying and running Twitter? Look, not even Nostradamus could have seen all that coming. Of course, that’s what we love about this annual exercise, where our team sits around a crystal ball, roasting AI-generated marshmallows and predicting what’s to come in the new year.

☆ Slow Internet? Bluetooth Blues? These Tips Can Fix 99% of Your Tech Problems
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-25 | by ( Nicole Nguyen | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

All year long, I hear from readers and friends sharing their tech woes. Last year, I wrote about ways to avoid tech problems. This year, I’m sharing how to tackle the most common issues, including laggy internet, Bluetooth fails and public Wi-Fi connection conundrums. If you have suffered from one of these headaches—or are similarly bombarded with queries as the official family IT person—there’s good news: With patience, you can solve the majority of problems yourself.

☆ It’s Time to Boot the Moochers Off Your Spotify, Netflix and Other Accounts
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-18 | by ( Nicole Nguyen | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Something weird is going on with my mother-in-law Missy’s Spotify account. According to Spotify Wrapped, the service’s personalized year-end analysis of listening habits, her most-streamed artist was Canadian rapper Tommy Genesis. She had never heard of Tommy Genesis and didn’t recognize any of her songs.

☆ Amazon Kindle Scribe vs. ReMarkable 2: Better Than Pen and Paper—for a Price
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-06 | by ( Nicole Nguyen | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

For spur-of-the-moment ideas, I am a big fan of pen and paper. But notebooks are vulnerable possessions. I’ve left my precious journals behind on buses and in hotel rooms. Once, a leaky water bottle rendered my notepad’s contents illegible. So now I’m open to a tech solution: digital notebooks with screens that look like paper, with the security and convenience of cloud backups.

☆ When Your Data Tells You Who You Really Are
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-03 | by ( Nicole Nguyen | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

I don’t love the idea that my data is collected by websites, apps and devices. Plus, it’s also kind of creepy that I’m tracked everywhere I go. There are times when I want my data collected, though. Or at least, there are times I don’t mind because I get something of value in return. I’m reminded of that every year when Spotify sends me my Wrapped results.

☆ Track Your Ovulation on a Wearable: Apple Watch vs. Oura Ring
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-20 | by ( Nicole Nguyen | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Trying to have a baby? There’s now a smartwatch for that—and a smart ring, too. The new Apple Watch Series 8 ($399 and up) and Ultra ($799), as well as the third-generation Oura ring ($299 and up), are modernizing the age-old practice of fertility tracking with advanced temperature sensors. Their accompanying software can detect slight rises in temperature to determine your ovulation, which typically causes an upswing of 0.5 to 1 degree Fahrenheit. This is the time of month you’re most likely to get pregnant.

Creeping prices are this year’s Grinch, so our team focused on essentials in our annual list of favorites. Throughout the year, we tested all sorts of gadgets, and only ones worth the money made it into this guide. This season, the best gear is stuff you and your loved ones will put to good use, such as a Wi-Fi-boosting Alexa speaker, a noise-canceling earbud upgrade and an adjustable light to illuminate webcam appearances. There are plenty of fun products, including a projector that plugs into a lightbulb socket, and a sensible splurge or two. A $1,100 vacuuming and mopping robot, anyone?

☆ Streaming Services Raise Prices Again. Here’s How to Avoid Overpaying.
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-06 | by ( Nicole Nguyen | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com. https://www.wsj.com/articles/streaming-services-raise-prices-again-heres-how-to-avoid-overpaying-11667743230

☆ 10 Things to Know About the 2022 iPads
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-04 | by ( ) www.wsj.com time to read: +6 min

It’s a fresh look for the tablet, bringing it more in-line with the iPad Pro, iPad Air and iPad Mini, with some notable compromises. Most people are likely better off choosing the 9th-generation iPad for non-demanding work, or the iPad Air or iPad Pro for more power. It has been totally redesignedThis is the first “mainline” iPad to get the edge-to-edge design that started with the iPad Pro before spreading to the iPad Air and iPad Mini. It uses fingerprint-based Touch ID on the top button for security, rather than the Face ID system found on the iPad Pro and almost all current iPhones. That’s nearly 40% more expensive than the base model, 9th-gen iPad, and only 25% less than the superior iPad Air.

☆ The Cult of Garmin: Why Athletes Stick With These Smartwatches Over Apple or Samsung
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-30 | by ( Nicole Nguyen | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

I see Garmin ’s sensor-packed smartwatches everywhere. On a recent trip to a 30-person refuge in the Alps, I counted no fewer than 11 Garmin wearers. For sporty types, there’s a cultish aura around the chunky, rugged smartwatches, despite their notoriously hard-to-use controls. Garmin makes up less than 5% of the smartwatch market, but Apple and Samsung are eager to win over its dedicated athlete fan base. Try as they might, the tech giants haven’t succeeded—at least not yet.

☆ iPad 2022 Review: Apple’s Basic Tablet Got a Face-Lift—but Is It Worth the Price Hike?
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-25 | by ( Nicole Nguyen | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

At first, Apple tablet was called, simply, iPad. The family grew to include iPad Mini, iPad Air and iPad Pro, but there continued to be one model just branded iPad. It became the affordable, low-frills model, the one you got your kids. That’s why Apple’s reboot of it this year confuses me: The new iPad has a killer video-chat feature, a fancy new separately sold keyboard case and a much higher price tag than its predecessor. Who is it for?

☆ iPadOS 16 Tips and Tricks: Apple’s Tablet Gets More Multitasking Features
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-23 | by ( Nicole Nguyen | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

“Should I get an iPad or a Mac?” People often ask me this question and, with the latest iPad software update, the answer is a bit complicated. Apple has added more laptop-like productivity features to the iPad over the past several years, such as mouse support and a file manager. There’s even more in iPadOS 16, available starting Oct. 24. The most visible change is a multitasking system called Stage Manager, which lets you resize app windows and simultaneously view more windows on screen.

☆ Should You Upgrade to the New Apple Watch Series 8, SE or Ultra?
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-20 | by ( ) www.wsj.com time to read: +5 min

Apple also launched two other Watches alongside the Series 8: the Apple Watch Ultra and the second-generation Apple Watch SE. Apple Apple Watch Series 8 $400 at AmazonApple Watch Series 7 (2021 model)Upgrade? Not unless you are particularly interested in the new fertility tracking feature or the Apple Watch UltraThe Apple Watch Series 8 is almost identical, both inside and out, to last year’s Series 7, including the same processor speeds. Apple Watch Series 5 or Apple Watch SE (1st generation) (2019 models)Upgrade? Maybe, if your Watch is feeling sluggish or smallEven though they’re more than three years old, the Apple Watch Series 5 and the original Apple Watch SE are still great devices and there’s a good chance they’re still fulfilling your needs.

☆ Apple’s iPad Gets a New Look and iPad Pros Get an M2 Chip Upgrade—Here’s the Full Lineup
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-18 | by ( Nicole Nguyen | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Apple already released this year’s new phones and watches. Now, it’s iPad time. The Cupertino, Calif.-based tech company announced Tuesday the latest lineup of tablets, including M2-powered iPad Pros in 11-inch and 12.9-inch models and a major design update to the entry-level iPad. The new iPads hit shelves Oct. 26. It also said the iPadOS 16 upgrade would be coming to all recent iPads on Oct. 24.

☆ Google Pixel Watch Review: A Fancy Fitbit Smartwatch
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-13 | by ( Nicole Nguyen | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Android smartwatches have been around for about eight years, and I’ve been waiting for Google to make its own. Now, it finally has. The Pixel Watch, out Oct. 13, is a collaboration with wearable maker Fitbit, which Google acquired last year. That may be the best reason to consider it: The watch combines Fitbit’s sensors and apps with a more fully featured Google-enabled smartwatch.

☆ Amazon’s Fall Device Event: Wi-Fi-Boosting Echo Speakers, a Kindle for Note-Taking and More
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-28 | by ( Nicole Nguyen | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Amazon fall hardware event is often where it unveils oddball products such as the Alexa microwave and sticky note printer. This year, the e-commerce giant stuck mainly to more practical devices: a large Kindle e-reader with note-taking capabilities, a sleep-tracking bedside alarm clock and Echo speakers that can boost your Wi-Fi network. Amazon’s strategy has typically been to use its device announcements to do market research about a product’s viability. A year ago, the company announced a home robot named Astro that it has yet to make widely available to all consumers. The same goes for a flying indoor security camera unveiled two years ago.

☆ AirPods Pro 2nd-Gen Review: Better Noise Canceling, Easier to Find When Lost
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-22 | by ( Nicole Nguyen | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

I was rushing out the door when I accidentally grabbed my old AirPods Pro, not the new ones I was supposed to be testing. That’s how similar they look. But when I put them in my ears, I could immediately tell these were the three-year-old earbuds. To understand what’s different about the second-generation $249 AirPods Pro, available Sept. 23, you need to hear them.

☆ Apple Watch Ultra Review: Better Battery Life, but Not Quite Extreme
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-21 | by ( Nicole Nguyen | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Gadgets are all about trade-offs, and the Apple Watch is a perfect example. To stay svelte, it has typically had a small battery that requires frequent charging. Many people don’t mind the daily charging ritual as a concession for a useful, fitness-sensor-laden wrist computer that can call, text and run apps. The Apple Watch is the bestselling smartwatch in the world, according to Counterpoint Research.

☆ Nicole Nguyen — Personal Tech columnist at The Wall Street Journal
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-19 | by ( Nicole Nguyen | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Nicole NguyenNicole Nguyen is a Personal Tech columnist at The Wall Street Journal, covering how technology companies' products and policies affect people's lives. Before joining the Journal, she was a reporter covering tech giants at BuzzFeed News. Nicole lives in San Francisco with, to her husband’s great dismay, zero cats or dogs, and can be reached at nicole.nguyen@wsj.com or @nicnguyen on Twitter.

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