TECH NOW: Reboot with tech to clear clutter, simplify
In theory, today's top consumer tech tools should make your life easier, not more complicated. Yet all too often, many of us are using the latest gadgets and apps for multitasking mayhem rather than sanity saving solutions. Here are some new ways to cut through the connected clutter and reboot your day:
1. Clutter control for your brain:
No matter how many times I check my smartphone calendar, get notifications, or alerts, there are often small details of daily life that somehow slip through the connected cracks, and catch me off guard. Remembering to remember is one of the toughest parts of my busy day. For years now, I've used Post-it notes to keep me in check. I have a rainbow of them stuck everywhere — on my desk, purse, fridge — even my car dashboard. But rather trail a tornado of paper wherever I go, I've recently discovered the Post-It Note Camera Feature in Evernote.
It's really easy to use. You just snap a photo and let technology do the rest; Capture, enhance, organize by color, sync across devices, and save all of your thoughts, notes, reminders, brainstorms, and to-do's in one easy to access place. You can even flag them with a reminder, tag them with keywords, and share them with your family and friends. The Evernote App is free for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone, and the service requires a subscription of $5 per month.
2. Getting a grip on connected clutter:
As our homes get more high tech, every new smart thing — from thermostats to light bulbs — now comes with its own separate app, push notifications — and the result can be total sensor overload. The new Revolv smart home hub can cut serious amounts of connected clutter. Revolv is like a digital translator for all of your connected home gadgets, such as Philips Hue lights, Yale deadbolts, Sonos speakers and Honeywell thermostats. It puts you in control of the whole shebang in one place, with less hassle overall. At $299, it's not cheap, but saving you time and headache may be worth it.
3. For those days when Moms need a Mom
Sometimes it's nice to have someone watching your back, but when life moves as fast as it does, you can't always call on your personal safety nets to lend a helping hand. The Sense Mother is a connected companion designed to help you and your family accomplish a number of tasks everything from getting a better night's sleep to finding more free time during an otherwise hectic work day.
The main Mother unit communicates wirelessly with sensors called Cookies that you can put just about anywhere, and measure just about anything, including motion, temperature, and basic patterns. A suite of useful tools is at your disposal via the easy-to-use companion app that can help you monitor everything from how many steps your family takes each day to whether the kids left the fridge door open. Mother takes life-logging to a whole new level that is kind of creepy, kind of awesome. The Sense Mother is available for pre-order for $222.
4. A digital clone of your own
It's one thing to use wearable tech to track your day, it's another to make it do something about it — like turn on the coffee maker when you roll out of bed, or update your budget when you leave the grocery store. The Kiwi Move is the most exciting new wearable device I've seen yet. It promises to track all facets of your life, automate appliances in your home, and be wide open to you teaching it to perform even more with voice commands and gestures. For instance, you could teach it to turn off all the lights, lower the thermostat, and turn on your alarm, every time you leave the house.
It promises to become like an extra brain for your smartphone and tell your device when to perform certain tasks. As I hinted at earlier, it can sense when you're getting up out of bed, and that action can be linked to turning your coffee maker on. It can also display all your sleep patterns when you wake up, or instantly load your workout apps and your favorite high-octane playlist when you walk into the gym. For the pre-order price of $125 (ships in July 2014), it's as close to a personal/life assistant as you'll probably ever get.
5. For when you need eyes in the back of your head
Home is where the heart is, but we can't be there during every waking moment. So for the times when you're away but need to see what's happening there, the Spotter sensor can be your window. Place the Spotter anywhere in your home and use the connected app to monitor sound, light, motion, temperature, and humidity. For $49.99, you'll always know that your home base is as comfortable as when you left it.
Jennifer Jolly is an Emmy Award-winning consumer tech contributor and host of USA TODAY's digital video show TECH NOW. E-mail her at techcomments@usatoday.com. Follow her on Twitter: @JenniferJolly.