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For so many of us, the new year is about organization and fresh starts. That's why we tend to use January as an opportunity to cross off a few tech resolutions off our lists -- or at least get a head start on some of those to-do list ite…

With all of the heavy news right now , sometimes we really need someone in our corner telling us "You can do it! Keep trying! Don't give up!". This is the actual pep talk I got this morning from a chorus of joyful Kindergartners when I d…

We know that online mental health therapy access has exploded over the past two years, and increasingly so have other kinds of therapy. As a parent with a child in therapy (and a toddler who naps during the day), I know that just getting…

If you're getting ready for the Super Bow (whoa) this Sunday, and plan on having company to make it more fun, we've got 7 apps for your Super Bowl party that you'll want to download stat, from party planning help to food and drink delive…

We talked last week about tips for spring-cleaning your phone , and this week I'm taking a stab at my email. I'd never let my actual snail mail pile up in a massive overflow of unanswered bills and letters, but for some reason I let my e…

Parents of tweens and teens, we've got good news! YouTube is launching new parental controls specifically for kids in this age group. What a relief to those of us who see the value in letting them watch some of the content on YouTube...b…

Chances are good that you're clicking through to this article because you don't know what "tabbed gmails" even are. Right? Well, here's the deal: Gmail has a "handy" organization tool that categorizes all your emails automatically. To se…

Just yesterday, Google launched their 2020 Election Google Trends page, which allows you to see exactly what the rest of the country is searching for these days. And as a parent, I bet civically-minded kids would love to learn more about…

This is a sponsored message for T-Mobile If you're feeling like you've been inundated with more scams and unwanted robocalls these days, you're not alone. Coronavirus scams actually increased 70% from just May to June, and Americans have…

This is a sponsored message for Coding with Kids If you're looking for ways to keep your kids busy this summer, without missing out on any of that camp fun, you'll want to check out the virtual tech camps for kids 5-18 from Coding with K…

If you're in need of a fun little project to help focus your energy in a positive, inspiring way, we're happy to recommend our dear friend Tracey Clark's Picture Home . It's a family-friendly, all-ages communal photo project with 31 days…

Both Liz and I got word this week that our kids will be out of school for the rest of the school year, which means we'll be doing this isolation schooling for another couple of months. Thankfully, resources like SchoolClosures.org have b…

We're always amazed and impressed by the imaginative ideas kids can come up with when you give them a simple problem to solve. Just think of how many times your smartypants kids have gotten their siblings to do their chores. Or, figured …

If your goal is to read more in 2020, here's a smart browser extension that could help you save a little money this year, because it shows you what Amazon books are available at your local library. Related: 3 free audiobook apps you shou…

If you've got kids in summer camp, you may know that each day they don't get a letter from home is another reason they grow up to resent you. Kidding. But they do like to get lots of letters -- and I admit, I am not the best daily letter…

Liz has raved about the Pocket app for years now, and for good reason. It's a super handy app that lets you save your favorite articles, recipes, even tweets so that you can read them later. But, you know, how much time do we all have to…

This is a sponsored message from Relay So many parents want their kids to have the safety and security of a phone, especially over the summer when kids have a little more freedom, and a little more run-around-outside time. And yet, those…

We're getting organized in the new year, and I've found that using my Amazon Echo -- which is strategically placed in our kitchen, the hub of our house -- can be a huge help, including fitness. Yes, we're not kidding. In this post, some …

With the new year starting up, if you're like me, you've got organization on your mind. I've found that using my Amazon Echo -- which is strategically placed in our kitchen, the hub of our house -- can be a huge help. So, we're sharing s…

Turns out the Apple One-Year Warranty is way more flexible than you might realize. Or as the store associate told me on a recent visit, "you got Beats headphones that are not working or coming apart in any way? Just bring it in and we'll…

If you're fans of Amazon FreeTime Unlimited , you'll be thrilled to hear they just added over 1,000 Audible books for kids into the mix, with tons of popular titles ready for listening. Related: Here's what you need to know about the Ama…

If you're needing a little break from your Facebook feed, but still would like to be able to post, check your messages, and see your groups, then you should get Kill News Feed , a Chrome extension that will block out just your feed. Rela…

This is a sponsored message from Relay So many parents want their kids to have the safety and security of a phone, and yet those kids aren't necessarily ready for all the responsibility and liability that comes with owning one. It's a ma…

One of parents' biggest concerns about kids today, is the access they have to inappropriate content. Parents are often asking us for parental control devices, services and apps to help them moderate what kids' can see and keep them safe.…

We couldn't help but share this hilarious new service that's being offered by David Lloyd Clubs in Great Britain. Basically, you can pay a personal trainer to run in front of you with a TV on his back so you can exercise outside and bing…

I recently moved into a new home and needed a way to get rid of some of my old stuff (furniture, bikes, 4000 stuffed animals). Upon the recommendation of a couple of trusted friends, I decided to give Facebook Marketplace a try. As much …

It finally happened! You can now check out all of Disney's 11 parks with Google Street View . So if you're getting ready for your trip and want to get the lay of the land, or just want to spend the afternoon at The Magic Kingdom while st…

Because if you're saving money, you don't want to start by spending on another app.

One of my biggest new year's resolutions is to stay organized, and getting my meals planned is key. Because the hardest part of cooking for me -- other than the kids pulling on my shirt or asking me to help them put together their 1,487-…

Our Google Home can do all sorts of helpful things, and now it can read to us. That's because Google launched audiobooks , which you can use on iOS, Android, the web, and yes, your Google Home. Related: This app lets you borrow library b…

We can barely stay up until midnight anymore, let alone our little kids, and the combination of both of us with no sleep is just scary. If you're looking to get your kids to bed at a reasonable hour on New Year's Eve, Netflix has parents…

By now, everyone knows about Snapchat and kids right? It's like Snapchat has come to epitomize the "watch out for kids and their apps." But the truth is, there are so so many apps that can get kids into trouble, and it's hard to keep up …

We know lots of people who would appreciate a Hulu membership, or a subscription to Netflix over more stuff.

If you're not home to get your packages, Amazon can help with that, thanks to their new Amazon Key service where your courier will leave them right inside your front door. No, we're not kidding. The service hinges on your purchase (and i…

For ages now I've touted the wonderful benefits of Boomerang for Gmail to help me better manage my incoming and outgoing email, and it seems the folks at Google like the feature themselves. Because now Gmail has actually incorporated Boo…

This is a sponsored message from Bouncie With parents -- and teens -- spending so much time on the road, road safety is always a top concern. for families. That's why you need to check out Bouncie , a smart little device that easily plug…

When I was a drop-out Brownie some 30-ahem years ago, my troop worked on badges like Basketry and Arts & Crafts. But now I'm kind of wishing I could go back and do it all over again because this fall, the Girl Scout organization has anno…

If you're like me, you probably have 6,782 photos sitting in your camera roll on your phone, hundreds of song downloads you never actually listen to, and tons of out-of-date unnecessary documents on your laptop. If that sounds familiar, …

Imagine my surprise when I discovered the inactive SiriusXM radio in my car was suddenly blasting Channel 78 Kids Place Live again? Well, it turns out that it wasn't a fluke. Now through the end of May, SiriusXM has automatically turned …

We're coming up end-of-the-year gifts for teachers, grads, and coaches over the next month, plus Father's Day, which often means lots of group gifts. And as you might have experienced, chasing people down and keeping track of everyone's …

It seems like an April Fool's joke (and yes, I double checked the date on the post) but at long last, Google is taking moves to quash fake news with a new Fact Check feature in Google Search and Google News , worldwide. So basically, Goo…

If you've become more of a news junkie over the past year like I have, you've probably realized that your standard browser bookmark bar isn't necessarily your best best for saving articles you want to come back to. Let alone recipes you …

If you're upgrading your family (or yourself) in the gadget department this holiday season, here are several services that can help you sell or recycle your old gadgets, beyond wrapping them up for your kids that is. Which hey, isn't suc…

We love sending out paper holiday cards and getting them in the mail. We really do! But these days, you can send gorgeous digital cards that look as fabulous as your paper cards, and save yourself a whole lot of time and money. Here, 3 w…

I am fortunate that my grandmother was a writer, so she took it upon herself to write all her amazing life story down for us before she passed away. Even so, I would have loved to have had StoryWorth , a service that helps you capture yo…

Who ever thought that one day, the fine art of thoughtfully handwritten, artful notes would be considered punk? Well, the husband-wife team behind Punk Post is who. And they are determined to bring handwriting back in the coolest way pos…

For me, trying on jeans is about as dreaded as trying on swimsuits. There are so many brands with countless styles, cuts, and washes, it's beyond overwhelming. So, when I saw the ads for Like a Glove smart leggings on Facebook, which pro…

With four kids in school and various activities, you can just imagine the number of forms I have to fill out and sign, pretty much on a weekly (sometimes, daily) basis. I don't even want to think about how long printing them, filling the…

The summer is birthday season in my family, with what seems like every relative born in these few months. Inevitably, I finish up wrapping a gift only to realize I forgot a card. My go-to has always been Paperless Post to send last-minut…

We just returned from a family vacation to Italy, and boy do I wish I had discovered the Rome2rio app before our trip. It could have saved us countless moments trying to decide the best way to get around the various sites with three kids…

I've recently started using the Apple Reminders feature, which is free and included in your iOS device, and I've wondered why I haven't been using it it more this whole time. With end-of-the-year/beginning-of-summer madness, my mind has …

Even with school out for summer, that doesn't mean learning has to go on vacation too. If you've got a computer-crazy kid who's interested in the creativity that comes from learning to code, there are so many great resources online. You …

I have fallen into a dinner rut, relying on a few tried-and-true recipes that I can whip up before the kids get too peckish at the end of a busy day. But now that I've download the free and gorgeously designed Yummly app , which is avail…

If you haven't yet heard about the brand new feature from the Waze app called Waze Planned Drives , then you might be as excited as I am. Especially if, like me, if you're the kind of person who had kids, then went from being always earl…

As much as I love the vastness of the internet, sometimes I just want to find the perfect little black dress (should Liz and Kristen not be around to tell me just what to buy!) or the name of a great family restaurant at the beach withou…

This is a sponsored message from VidMob Take all those videos of school concerts, soccer games, even family vacations sucking up memory on your smartphone and turn them into professionally-edited masterpieces you'll watch over and over t…

Since starting to Konmari, or "tidy," my home almost a year ago, I've found myself avoiding certain categories of stuff left to purge, like the four large bins of CDs we've had stored in our basement since switching all our music over to…

This is a sponsored message on behalf of Curbi. Whether your family added some new devices to the mix this holiday season or you've been pretty gadget-reliant in your home for a while, you'll want to check out the free trial of Curbi , w…

Over the course of the year on Cool Mom Tech, we’ve put together so many helpful tech tips and tricks, many of which are answers to reader questions we get via email, over Twitter , on Facebook , and heck, even from our friends and famil…

Sending holiday photo cards is as much a part of our holiday season as sugar cookies, sparkling lights, hot cocoa, and chestnuts roasting on an open fire -- or at least listening to Nat King Cole croon about it. I always look forward to …

So, you have tons of photos on your iOS Camera Roll, right? Yeah, same. Now, how would you like to preserve those memories -- with audio -- forever and a day? Yeah, that's what I said. Bring it! That's why I was happy to discover the eve…

Leave it to NPR and Internet technology to create something as simple and wonderful as Playgrounds for Everyone , a community edited guide helping kids who require handicapped-accessible facilities find them easily. Turns out there actua…

There's that wonderful moment when you first open up the box of your newest gadget and just smile at it. Some folks even give the new, shiny, and often pricy tech toy its own special name. At no point during this grand unboxing do you en…

This is a sponsored message from Amazon In honor of Amazon's 20th birthday, they're celebrating with Prime Day on July 15, during which Amazon Prime members can score even more deals than on Black Friday. And with their #PrimeLiving Phot…

Trying to manage my three kids' time spent and content viewed on all of the various devices we have in this house is one of the most thankless, naggy job out there. They don't fully understand why I say "no" to the newest app, or why You…

If you're like us, you're counting down the days to a summer vacation, whether it's a weekend at the grandparents' place or something bigger. Either way, hopefully it means sleeping in late (kids willing), lazy days, catching up on books…

When my friend Anna , who is my go-to source for everything related to time management mentioned Boomerang for Gmail , I figured it was worth a shot. And wow...consider my life changed. If you're a Gmail user who finds yourself sometimes…

Hold the phone! No, seriously. Hold the iPhone, because there's something new(ish) and neat and cool happening with its Message app that you'll definitely want to hear about if you haven't yet. While this fun feature has been around sinc…

W e are a house divided. My husband is an Android user (but I love him anyway), and I am an iPhone user. We need a calendar app that works with both, allows for the importing of Google calendar an iCal and automatically refreshes it. Is …

Just in time for Mother's Day, I was absolutely thrilled to discover Zazzy , a new platform that allows you to design 3D jewelry , only they take out all the time-consuming stuff...like downloading sometimes complicated software, figurin…

Have you ever wished you could literally bookmark a favorite restaurant in a new town you're visiting? Like, just magically click a button in your brain that lets you put an asterisk next to the name of the place so you'll always remembe…

This is a sponsored message for Webroot No matter how much you or your family is online, the last thing you want to worry about is malware, viruses, and data and identity theft. That's where the award-winning Webroot security software co…

This is a sponsored message for Bevy Just imagine all the free space and potentially sanity you could have back if all your smartphone photos and videos were automatically uploaded to one safe place as soon as you captured them. That's e…

As a Brooklyn resident who falls squarely within the lucky Brooklyn-Manhattan delivery area for the new Amazon Prime Now app ( iOS and Android ) I downloaded it stat. It is a genius premise, functioning essentially like a Fresh Direct ki…

A few months ago I updated my will, and while I was figuring out which child would inherit my prized handbag collection, my smart lawyer asked me about my social media accounts: Who would I want to handle them after my death? What would …

We get asked how to print Instagram photos all the time here on Cool Mom Tech, but of all the ideas we've featured before, you've never been able to apply them to your arm. Or chest. Or...well, you get the idea. Meet Picattoo , a new ser…

New year, new you. Of course, we've all heard (and probably said) this catchy line each time January 1 rolls around. But instead of promising to completely overhaul our lives with major changes, we're starting small and smart with this r…

I have some great news about TripIt , the lifesaving, can't-live-without-it travel itinerary app that I recommend to everyone I know. In fact, it just saved me $300 a ticket on our trip to Las Vegas for CES last week, thanks to an auto-a…

Let me guess: If you add one more item to your to-do list, it's going to burst into flames and take you with it, right? I know. I'm right there with you. That's why I'm loving the MyTime app and website. MyTime takes a help me help you a…

We can't start the new year without first taking a quick look back at the 2014 posts that were most popular of the year. If you're interested in what caught the attention of our readers for the past 12 months, here are the top ten of the…

Over the course of this year, we've put together lots of helpful tech tips and tricks, so many of them from your own questions to us. (We love answering reader questions!) Here, 11 of our very favorite tech tips of the year (including lo…

I still have some gifts to buy and cards to send, but it's nice to know that I can take care of some of those greetings to friends and families with a few clicks on my phone or computer. Here are seven of the best websites and apps that …

The holiday season involves some of my all-time favorite things: family, friends, good cheer, giving gifts, and sugary treats. And butter. But one of drawbacks of this time of year, for me, has to be the shipping stress. My family is clo…

If you're like me, you'll be printing your fair share of printables and more over the holiday season, which as we all know, often means those dreaded last-minute trips to the office store for more printer ink. Always at the most inconven…

Though I'm sure my kids' teachers, coaches, and other VIP's appreciate the effort that goes into collecting money for a group gift at the holidays, I just dread being the poor person in charge of that thankless job. Bugging people for mo…

I can keep amazing amounts of information in my poor, overtaxed brain, including practice schedules, appointment times, my wedding anniversary and my own kids' birthdays. But for anything beyond that, I need help. Fortunately EverMinder …

With Apple Pay now available, we are avidly watching to see how it will take off as people get more used to ditching their wallets and using their phones to pay for purchases. But for those of you not about to lay down the cash for a shi…

There are quite a few virtual decorating online resources that allow you to place your virtual furniture in your virtual home to get a sense of what it will look like. We've liked SketchUp , NousDecor , and even the awesome augmented rea…

We are definitely a Spotify family. And by family, I mean I do not tend to publish my playlists because they range from "Every version of every Frozen song ever" to "Every Gummy Bear song sung in every language ever." Okay, I do have a f…

I cannot tell you how many times I call a fellow iPhone user with FaceTime Audio and they're all, What is this? followed by Wow, why don't I ever use it? It seems that a ton of people, at least in my wide circle of friends and family, ar…

Bullying is an issue that's getting so much attention these days--and yet, it's still a big problem. While we're glad to see schools, parents, and kids tackling bullying head on, it can still be pretty scary for kids to report incidents,…

If your kids are like ours and asking questions about 9/11 , you're looking for appropriate sources to help you explain it to them rather that some network keeps replaying plane crash video footage over and over again. That's why year af…

This is a sponsored message from HP Even though so many of us try to go paperless when we can these days, with online party invitations, printables, mobile boarding passes, and homework, we still requires paper. Lots of paper. And that m…

The Artkive app has been one of my back-to-school lifesavers ever since it launched a couple of years ago. And even if you don't have four kids like I do, you're probably swimming in artwork that is oh so painful to toss. The ability to …

With back to school officially here, I cannot tell you how much I love the benefits of organization and communication apps for parents and teachers. They really do make life so much easier. Well, I've just discovered another tech tool th…

While we've seen apps to itemize and inventory your belongings , here's a first: The MakeSpace service is blending digital cataloging of your precious stuff with actual real-life storage. It's been taking NYC by storm, and I imagine it w…

One day I'm going get all of these special iPhone photos printed. How many times have you said that after scrolling through a month's worth of pics, hunting for the cute one with your kid doing that thing? Yeah, same here. That's why I'm…

We've covered many cool tracking systems and devices that can help you find your stuff, or make sure you don't leave it behind in the first place. But the new Findster GPS tracking system is actually designed to keep track of something m…

Unfortunately this site is no longer around. Bummer. The extensive selection on Netflix is both a blessing and a curse--so many titles I've never heard of, but that also means I have no idea if they'll be right for my family or even some…

With the addition of baby #3 in the past year, you can bet I won't be heading to a mall anytime soon for back-to-school clothes shopping. Online shopping has been my savior the past few years, but getting the right size is always a big q…