Technology & More Archives - Page 15 of 18

Spend your tax refund wisely with unlimited talk text and data for less

I am a member of the Collective Bias® Social Fabric® Community. This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper amplification for #CollectiveBias and its advertiser.

Is it just me who is bothered by all those "how to spend your tax refund" ads that are really just frivolous ways to waste your money as soon as you get it? How about actually putting that money back to work for you by investing it in something that will lower your monthly expenditures and hopefully put even more money back in your pocket? Are you curious yet? I'm talking about the lowest priced unlimited plans anywhere.

Most people wouldn’t see a cellphone service as an investment, but when chosen carefully, the right plan can slash your phone costs in half or even more. By making a switch to Walmart Family Mobile you don’t have to compromise on anything and can get the hottest phones available paired with the lowest priced unlimited plans anywhere to make the most of your tax return.

Though I’m a huge saver, even I can justify a one-time expense that ends up lowering my monthly bills on something I need to buy anyway. But, I’m sure you’re wondering just how low of a price you can get through Walmart Family Mobile, and the answer is that it is even cheaper than you think. At $29.88/month for unlimited talk and text or $39.88/month for unlimited talk and text with internet service, it makes it possible to get a great plan at the lowest price anywhere.

Encourage a love of reading with Kobo Kids

If I were to summarize what I’ve learned so far about preparing your child to learn, it would look like this: foster a love of reading in your child. This message has come in many forms, but it’s always the same takeaway. Read with your child, give your child access to great books, and, likely most important, lead by example, and you will prepare your child for success in numerous facets of school and life.

I feel we’ve done fairly well at this in most regards and we are definitely raising little readers, but up until recently we haven’t had much time to model this behavior ourselves. Any parent of young children will tell you that there simply are not enough hours in the day, and one of my main struggles has been finding the time to get back into the kind of reading I did pre-kids.

Disney’s Frozen is available on Digital HD today {with free Incredibles download}

Did you love the movie Frozen as much as we did? If so, you're going to be super excited that Frozen is now available on Digital HD today! Yes, it's true! You can finally watch Frozen from home before it's even available on DVD!

These two are going to be so excited!

The gift of freedom with the FiLIP Smart Locator Watch

Growing up, we would disappear for hours, playing in the neighborhood, our friend’s houses, and off in the woods until dinnertime. Even at my children’s ages, I had a freedom that my kids don’t know these days in our urban neighborhood where the dinner bell doesn’t send the kids running.

Maybe this is why so many young kids have cell phones now, starting as young as elementary school. I get it, it’s for convenience for the parents first and foremost, but kids having cellphones is just not for me… at least not for a few more years. I’m not ready to police text messages, restrict game usage, make sure the kids don’t have open access to the internet, or worry about them losing expensive electronics by allowing them to have their own cellphones.

But this year, I’m giving them the gift of freedom in a way that is age appropriate with the new FiLIP from AT&T.

It may look like a fancy child’s watch, but don’t let that deceive you. Once you know what the Filip does, you will understand why I’m so excited about it and why we feel it is a great buy for anyone with a child aged 5 to 11.

Wireless sound with TRACKS AIR headphones from SOL REPUBLIC

By Tyler, editor and reviewer

Who doesn’t like a good, quality surround sound that makes music and movies come alive? Someone whose movie room shares a wall with a baby’s room, that’s who.

This is the problem with our entertainment room, designed for movies and thumping sound, but that just so happens to be located right next to our son’s bedroom. These days, the only thing playing at Rave Central theater is children’s movie matinees in between nap and bedtime. It’s a sad fate for a room with such promise.

So, what’s a movie loving guy like myself to do? Make a plan to revive our indie movie house with the arrival of these new TRACKS AIR headphones from SOL REPUBLIC.

The VHS to DVD Converter from Hammacher Schlemmer

I’m all about keeping it old school, and I have a huge collection of film cameras to prove it. But, some things are better left in the past, a good example of which is VHS tapes. I had forgotten how much I despised VHS until I was “gifted” our collection of VHS tapes that our family used for recording TV and home movies throughout the 80s and most of the 90s.

But, let me tell you, VHS is awful. The quality of the tape degrades as it ages, it’s a pain to fast forward and rewind, doesn’t have menus to help you navigate, and back in the day it wasn’t easy to edit down into the good stuff. This means I was “gifted” with hundreds of hours of pure awfulness and about 30 minutes of perfection {which more than made up for the awfulness I was subjected to while going through the old tapes}.

However {and this is a big however}, each of those moments of perfection were spread out over 30+ tapes and took up a huge space in our office where no one could ever enjoy them. The solution? The VHS to DVD Converter from Hammacher Schlemmer that allows you to take all those precious home movies on VHS into custom DVDs that can be easily played, edited, and enjoyed.

In addition to easily transferring VHS recordings to DVDs, this little console does double duty as it’s also a video player for those who have a library of both DVD and VHS home videos. For DVDs it has 1080p upscaling through an HDMI output, but it also has a front DV input that allows you to connect a camcorder directly to the device to transfer content directly to a DVD {includes a coaxial input as well as component and composite inputs}.

VTech Premium Kid Connect lets you connect with your kids anywhere {InnoTab 3S}

My kids love to text and call their dad throughout the day while he’s at work, but I hate to leave them unattended with my cell phone. This means I’m constantly guarding my phone and making sure it’s locked down, and the kids try their best to convince me to take their pictures and send it to daddy all day long.

The solution? The awesome Premium Kid Connect available on the VTech InnoTab 3S that helps parents stay connected to their kids when apart. You may remember how much I adore the InnoTab learning tablet for kids and how it saved our Chicago-to-Seattle train trip, got us ready for school, and now offers supplemental learning we can do at home, but it’s way more than that when you connect it to VTech Premium Kid Connect and any Wi-Fi connection.

With the Premium Kid Connect on the InnoTab 3S, your kids can send voice, text, and picture messages right to loved ones' phones in real time. All by themselves.

How to host your own upcycling party {Singer VIVO Repair & Create machine}

You know those times when everything in your closet just seems so boring? Whether you haven’t been shopping since you were in high school or your body has changed and you’re still wearing your old clothing, chances are you have a stack of clothes in your closet taking up space that you really don’t want to be wearing anymore.

I know I did, as did my friends, so we decided to get together to make a negative into a very big positive. Instead of going shopping together and blowing a few hundred dollars between us while we updated our wardrobes, we did something a whole lot more fun and cost effective – we upcycled our clothing.

For those not familiar with the term “upcycle”, the basic idea is that you use what you already have and are not using to create something new and fabulous that you would have otherwise had to buy. Think of it as the greener way to recycle.

So, to start my party off, I had all of the guests create two bags full of stuff beforehand – stuff they like but want to make amazing in one bag and stuff they really don’t want any more but can still be used for parts in the second.

Immediately upon walking into the party, they were greeted with two felt bins – one to dump their discards into for everyone to use as material, and one for the clothing they would like to upcycle. Once everyone had arrived, we went through the contents of the first bin together so everyone could see what materials they had to work with.

The saying “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” comes to mind as digging through the discard bin quickly turned into a clothing swap where everyone grabbed a few new-to-them items. Hey, it's green and resourceful.

But, our purpose wasn't just to swap clothing, we were here to make our clothing awesome, which is why we had this little baby by our side:

Introducing the new VTech InnoTab 3S Wi-Fi Learning Tablet

With the start of school a few weeks ago, my daughter has been thirsting for knowledge. She’s always been a curious kid and very interested in how things work, but this newfound love of learning is unlike anything I ever imagined.

She literally bounds out of bed each day excited to learn, she has trouble falling asleep at night because she’s so excited about what she will learn the next day, and she is constantly looking for things to challenge her new skills. All of this is awesome – really awesome – but it’s also exhausting. Sometimes I want to just “do”, not “teach” as I do, but I hate to discourage someone who is clearly craving lessons.

For this reason, I love that I can give her 30 minutes of tech time with her new VTech InnoTab 3S that arrived last week and it gives me a half hour of alone time to get things done. Instead of interrupting me every few seconds with “how do you spell ___?” or “what sound does ____ make?”, I love that when her VTech time is done she comes running back telling me something new she learned – all on her own.

VTech Switch & Go Dinos

My son is crazy about dinosaurs and about vehicles of all kinds, so I knew he would think that the Switch & Go Dinos were basically the coolest thing ever. Whenever he sees the brightly colored dino covered boxes when we’re out shopping, he can’t help but hug them all. Of course I couldn't say no when offered a set of Switch & Go Dinos to review right before his birthday.

If you haven’t seen them in stores yet, Switch & Go Dinos are robotic dinosaurs that transform into various vehicles with just a few motions. When in dino mode, they roar like prehistoric animals, and when in car/truck/flying object mode, their engines rev and they make vrooming noises. Pretty much the best toy ever, in a little boy’s eyes.

I already knew that my son would think it was pretty awesome if a few Switch & Go Dinos came to live with us, so I was sure they would be the perfect birthday present for him this September. My daughter recognized this as well and decided that of all the other toys on the market, she really wanted to buy him one of these dinos for his birthday.