Early adoption is the term used for folks who love to get their hands on new tech the moment it becomes available. And really, who doesn’t love having the coolest new gadget? Owning the shiniest and flashiest devices as they hit the market comes with a certain prestige; a certain level of, look what I have. There’s something else it comes with though, something a lot of consumers don’t think about: PROBLEMS.
If you’re anything like me, you get between 1 and 25 calls per day (aren’t I popular!), but you answer few (or none) of them because of the rampant rise of autodialed scams and advertisements. The plague of spam and robocalls is so prevalent that it’s reached Last Week Tonight’s main segment territory. I’m very lucky, because even though I live in Illinois my phone number has an area code from another state. This is fortuitous since most robocalls are made to appear as if they are a local number. If I see a call directly to my cell from my home area code, it’s safe to decline the call. Why does it seem like your carrier doesn’t or can’t do anything about it? It turns out they can!
Were you bitten by the ‘Spark Joy’ bug earlier in the year (or for the cool folks, way before that)? If you’re not sure what I’m referring to, Marie Kondo, author of the book, Spark Joy: An Illustrated Master Class on the Art of Organizing and Tidying Up (which was turned into the Netflix hit) is a professional organization consultant from Japan. She claims that using her ‘KonMarie’ methods to tidy up your home not only does just that, but that it can translate into your everyday life. After watching crying over the Netflix series, I immediately threw all my crap into the center of the room and started the process.
I’ve sifted through my fair share of browser extensions for blocking unwanted pop-ups, website redirections, and intrusive ads throughout the years. AdBlock Plus was the first that I ditched due to stability issues and its attempts at monetization. Privacy Badger and Ghostery were two that I tested around the same time, and while they worked well, they also required a fair amount of manual upkeep to work optimally.
Currently I’m using uBlock Origin. It blocks most unwanted website elements out of the box, is easily toggle-off-able if it is breaking a webpage, and it has low resource footprint. Overall, I would recommend it to anyone… for now.
I’ve heard A LOT of buzz about the Honey browser extension. Friends use it, coworkers use it, and everyone has said something like, “hey – I went to buy that thing and Honey saved me 10 bucks!” …on a towel, on a t-shirt, on a tube of toothpaste, and on and on. So, why wouldn’t I want to use it? I buy those things. I should install it. But … it’s been at least a year, and I haven’t done it.
