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Apple’s App Store is full of apps with in-app subscriptions. That’s great news for developers, and it’s great for users who don’t want apps to go away. But if you don’t use an app, why not cancel your subscription?

Canceling a subscription to an iPhone or iPad app hasn’t always been the easiest thing to do, because Apple hasn’t always made the process obvious. Even if you did know. the chances are good that you do it so infrequently that you have forgotten, and there’s always the chance that Apple changed something in a recent iOS update.

Apple did in fact recently change how iPhone and iPad owners cancel subscriptions via the App Store, and thankfully, it’s now easier than ever. As with all things in life, however, these things are only easy if you know how—and we’re going to make sure you do.

How to Cancel App Subscriptions

To get started, open the App Store and tap on the icon that represents your Apple ID at the top of the screen.

Next, tap “Manage Subscriptions.”

Here you will see a list of all of the in-app subscriptions for which you are currently paying. You’ll also find any that are expired at the bottom of the list should you wish to re-subscribe.

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Instant Pot, the brand name and increasingly generic term, refers to a combination slow-cook pot (AKA a crock pot) that also uses pressure cooking. This means it’s easy to toss in a few ingredients—meat, vegetables, rice or pasta, sauce and seasonings—and make a huge amount of food very quickly.

Instant Pots are immensely popular thanks to their ease of use and speedy cooking; you can find delicious recipes all over the web. But which one is right for your kitchen? Or for that matter, your dorm room or even your car trunk for road trips? Take a look at our suggestions below.

The Best Overall Instant Pot: Instant Pot LUX60V3 6-Quart ($79) Instant Pot

To get into the Instant Pot craze quickly and easily, for a solid price, you can’t do better than this standard model. The LUX60V3 has enough volume for six quarts of food, which should be plenty to feed four people alone (or more, if you cook side dishes on your stove).

It has all the standard features for easy timer operation and pressure adjustment, plus pre-programmed settings for ten different common meals, like stew and rice. Despite being on the lower end of Instant Pot’s lineup, it includes the stainless steel construction and inner pot that’s helped to make these kitchen gadgets so popular. It’s also available in an eight quart version.

Buy on Amazon The Best Instant Pot for Big Families: Power Pressure Cooker XL ($139) Power Pressure Cooker

If you regularly need to cook big, simple meals for a small army of diners, this model from Power Pressure Cooker will do the trick. It has room for ten quarts of food, which should make enough to keep a dozen people or more full and happy. The big pot isn’t as sophisticated as some others, with fewer pre-set options and pressure levels. But the Teflon-coated inner pot is dishwasher safe for easy cleanup—if your dishwasher can handle the size, of course.

Buy on Amazon The Best Smart Instant Pot: Instant Pot Smart WiFi ($120) Instant Pot

Looking for something a little more modern? This model of the Instant Pot connects to your home’s Wi-Fi network, allowing you to control it via an Android or iPhone app. What’s the point, you ask, when all the buttons on the front are pretty straightforward? The Instant Pot app connects to the company’s database of user-submitted recipes, allowing you to choose a recipe and apply the perfect settings instantly.

This model comes with a six-quart capacity and all the features of our overall pick above. Do note: the Wi-Fi connection in the pot needs a 2.4GHz network, so you’ll need to make sure your home’s router still enables the older standard.

Buy on Amazon The Best Instant Pot For One User: Instant Pot LUX Mini 3 Instant Pot

If you’re cooking for one, six or eight quarts is a lot of food to get through. You can cook with fewer ingredients in a bigger pot, but it’s a hassle to move around and clean if you don’t need the extra space. Instant Pot’s standard LUX model comes in a three-quart “mini” size, perfect for making dinner and maybe enough for another meal’s worth of leftovers. (You can start it at lunch and still have it warming your pasta by dinnertime.) The smaller model still uses a stainless steel pot. At less than one cubic foot in size and 8.5 pounds, this also makes a good pick if you’re looking to use an Instant Pot on a road trip or in an RV.

Buy on Amazon The Best Value Instant Pot: Gourmia GPC625 Multi-Mode SmartPot ($55) Gourmia

If you need a combination pressure cooker and crockpot and you’re on a budget, check out this model from Gourmia. It has a full six-quart capacity, plenty of pre-set options for popular foods, all the usual timer and delay settings, and it slides in at just $55 at the time of writing. The design uses a removable stainless steel inner pot just like the official brand, and the package includes a steam tray.

Buy on Amazon

Windows 10’s Sticky Notes app is a powerful note-taking solution, but it doesn’t let you restore deleted notes—or does it? Although this feature isn’t part of the desktop app, there’s a way to get your deleted notes back.

How to Recover Deleted Sticky Notes

You’ve accidentally deleted a sticky note that had some important information on it, but the desktop app doesn’t have a way to recover—or even see—the items that you deleted. Well, thanks to Sticky Notes syncing everything to the cloud, you can now recover any notes you may have removed, directly from your Microsoft Outlook account.

Note: To access this feature you need to sign in with a Microsoft account on Windows 10. Also, Microsoft only keeps your sticky notes for as long as your deleted items folder holds them—usually 30 days.

Fire up Outlook.live.com and sign in to your Microsoft account you use for Windows 10.

Once you’ve signed in, scroll down the left pane and click on “Deleted Items.”

Scroll through the list until you see the items you want to recover. If you have multiple items, click the bubble next to each item first and then click “Restore.”

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With the rise of inexpensive online photo printing services, inkjet printers have fallen out of favor. But, as with any DIY project, some people claim that it’s cheaper to print photos at home. Is that really true?

A Quick Cost Comparison

Let’s break down the price difference between at-home photo printing and online printing services. We’re going to do this by comparing the price of online printing services and at-home printing. For the sake of convenience, we’re only going to look at the cost of 4×6 prints.

There are a lot of online photo printing services, but we’ll stick with the big four. Some of these services offer the occasional discount, but we’re going to pretend that those don’t exist. Shutterfly, one of the most popular photo printing services, charges $0.12 for every 4×6 print. Not bad, but Amazon, Snapfish, and Walmart will print your 4×6 photos for $0.09 each.

Alright, online printing services charge between $0.09 and $0.12 per 4×6 photo. Now we need to compare those prices to an at-home photo printing setup. So, let’s build a modest at-home printing setup. We need a solid inkjet printer, some 4×6 photo paper, and some ink.

Iryna Tiumentseva_Shutterstock

Let’s start with the printer. The Canon Pixma IP8720 is one of the most popular at-home inkjet photo printers, and for a good reason. It produces pictures with a 9600 color DPI, and only costs $180. That’s a budget price for a pretty decent printer.

The Canon Pixma IP8720 comes with ink, but we’re going to buy a full set of ink carts for the sake of price comparison. That pack of ink will set us back $55. Canon claims that these ink cartridges will yield up to 780 photos (yeah right), which means that, at best, we’re paying $0.07 in ink for every 4×6 print.

Well, $0.07 per print sounds pretty good. But we still need to buy photo paper. Let’s buy a lot of it to get the most bang for our buck. We’ll grab a 400 pack of CanonInk’s of 4×6 glossy photo paper for $20—that’s $0.05 per sheet.

So if we ignore the fact that our printer cost us $180, we’re paying $0.12 for every 4×6 photo that we print at home. That’s the same price as Shutterfly, and a bit more expensive than some of the other online printing services.

If You Don’t Use Your Printer, Things Get More Expensive

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Which Game Company Buried Over 5 Million Games In The Desert?

1. Microsoft
2. Nintendo
3. SEGA
4. Atari

Think you know the answer?

Excel has “Sort A to Z” and “Sort Z to A” features that let you sort values alphabetically or numerically, and a “Custom Sort” feature that lets you sort using multiple criteria.  Here’s how to use them.

Let’s Look at an Example

In this example, we have chosen nine chemical elements from the periodic table, and we will sort the data based on the cell contents using the “Sort A to Z” feature and the “Custom Sort” feature.

The “Sort & Filter” drop-down is located on the far right of the “Home” tab.

The drop-down has several features listed, but we are focusing on the first three.

Here is our example data, taken from the periodic table. Each “Element” has information that is unique to it, such as its “Symbol” and “Atomic Number.”  But each element also belongs to other categories, such as its “Phase at STP” (i.e., whether it is a solid, liquid, or gas in a room at standard temperature and pressure) and its “Element Category” on the period table.

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While you can get away with plugging your HDTV Antenna straight into your TV, a separate tuner opens up so many more possibilities. A tuner adds some upfront cost, but also a huge benefit for cord cutters.

Your TV (most likely) has a tuner built-in, but having an external tuner means you can split the signal from the antenna into a number of different channels. Different models of external tuners have different numbers of individual internal tuners and this indicates the number of concurrent streams it can handle.

For example, if you have a four tuner model, you can watch four different channels on four different screens—or watch three different channels on three different screens while using the fourth tuner to record another program. Or, perhaps more practical to most people, you can watch one channel while other people in your household watch different channels (or you record those channels for later viewing).

Tuners will connect to your home network with Ethernet or Wi-Fi, and the manufacturer of the tuner will offer an application to watch the live stream on most platforms. Some tuners have hard drives built-in to record shows, or you can record straight onto your Plex server.

HDHomeRun Connect Quatro ($150) Silicon Dust

This unit features four tuners inside, just as the “quatro” name implies. It features one coaxial jack to connect to your antenna and an Ethernet jack to connect to your home network. I’ve personally used this tuner to record and stream live TV with Plex, and it set up in an instant. If you don’t have a Plex subscription, HDHomeRun has a live TV app for every platform imaginable, as well as a website. If you want to use their software as a DVR, however, be forewarned that there is a $35 a year subscription cost that includes both their multi-platform software as well as a TV-guide type system—a Plex Pass will run you $40 a year or $120 for a lifetime subscription and many people prefer their live TV interface and recording system.

The Connect Quatro is currently bundled with a 30-mile OTA antenna, but it’ll work with any antenna. Set up is a breeze: connect the coaxial cable from the antenna, connect it to your network, plug it into power, and let it scan your channels. That’s it!

Buy on Amazon Amazon Fire TV Recast ($230-$280) Amazon

If you’re all in on Amazon’s ecosystem (or Echosystem, if you will), the Fire TV Recast will be a natural fit in your home. The Fire TV Recast comes with either two tuners and a 500GB hard drive (good for 75 hours of recording), or four tuners and a 1TB hard drive (good for 150 hours). There’s a $50 difference between the two, which isn’t trivial, but it’s also not an exorbitant amount if you want to give yourself some spare capacity.

RELATED: Should You Buy the Fire TV Recast?

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It’s important to look after your skin, but oh so easy to forget about it. These skincare subscription boxes help you keep your skin fresh and healthy.

Each of these subscription boxes take all the hard work out of looking after your skin—hunting down the right products. Instead, you can rely on them to deliver great products no matter what your skin type or needs happen to be. There are solutions here for those trying to get into a healthier routine or simply when you want to pamper yourself a bit after a long day or week.

Here’s our pick of the skincare subscription boxes.

Best For Getting Into A Routine: BioClarity ($29.95 per month) BioClarity

The best thing for your skin is to get into a good routine for looking after it. It’s tough to remember though so rely on BioClarity to remind you a little. Each month, you’re sent a selection of products that work together to keep your skin soft, supple, healthy, and calm. There’s a choice of the Clear Skin Routine, Essentials Routine, or Ultra Calming Routine packages. Each focuses on certain issues like Clear Skin tackling blemishes and Essentials hydrating your skin, but whichever you choose, you’re in safe hands.

Each of the products is 100% vegan and cruelty-free which is good peace of mind when looking after your skin. All you need to do is remember to use the facial cleansers, gels, and skin smoothies to get your skin back up to its perfect look.

Subscribe to BioClarity Best For Sheet Mask Fans: FaceTory ($8.90 per month) FaceTory

Sheet masks are a fun but invaluable way of looking after the skin on your face. For $8.90 per month, FaceTory delivers 4 hand-picked and curated sheet masks through your mailbox every month, with the package worth about $17.50. Each is cute and vibrant, and sure to make your face glow with life again.

If 4 doesn’t feel like enough, $19.90 per month gets you 7 masks that are generally worth more than the lower subscription package, weighing in at a retail value of about $40. All the masks are from South Korea and have been expertly tested by K-Beauty fans, so they’re sure to appeal.

Subscribe to FaceTory Best For Monthly Surprises: BeautyFix Beauty Box ($24.95 per month) BeautyFix

For $24.95 per month, BeautyFix offers quite an extensive selection of products. Besides skincare items, there’s also room for makeup and hair care too. All of the products have been hand-picked by experts, so you’re sure of high quality here.

Each box has a retail value of over $100 with a mixture of full and deluxe travel size products. You’re guaranteed at least 6 different items, each keen to make you look great. If you’re unsure if you want to commit to a subscription, you can always buy a one-off box for $34.95 too.

Subscribe to BeautyFix Best For K-Beauty Skincare: PinkSeoul ($39.95 bi-monthly) PinkSeoul

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When you buy a subscription to Office 365, you get client applications to download and run on your computer, along with various web applications that run in your browser. So, which applications do you get as standard, and how do you access them?

When you subscribe to Office 365, you can download the desktop versions of all the regular Office apps you know and (maybe) love—Word, Excel, and so on. You also get access to the online versions of those apps and, as long as you’re storing your documents in OneDrive, you can move pretty seamlessly between the desktop and online versions. In addition to all that, you get access to several online-only apps. It’s less confusing than it sounds, though, so let’s break it down.

Note: The apps described here are provided with Office 365 (also known as O365) at the time of writing. Microsoft might—and almost certainly will—change this over time, so check before you subscribe.

Traditional Desktop Client Apps You Can Download

Office 365 gives you access to the same desktop apps with which you’re familiar. In fact, with an Office 365 subscription (unlike with the standalone perpetual license), you’re allowed to install those desktop apps on multiple computers, even on both Windows and macOS.

With your Office 365 subscription, you get the following desktop apps when you download the standard office suite:

• Outlook: Microsoft’s venerable email client
• Word: Powerful word processing
• Excel: For spreadsheets and data analysis
• PowerPoint: For slide show presentations
• OneDrive: While OneDrive itself is free, an Office 365 subscription includes an additional one TB of cloud storage
• OneNote: A note-taking app of which we’re quite fond, which also comes for free with Windows 10
• Skype: For VOIP and video calling
• Publisher: A simple desktop publishing app
• Access: For simple database creation and management

If you’ve used Office before you’ll be familiar with most of these applications, even if you haven’t used some of them.

New Web Applications You Can Access

For anyone new to Office 365, you might be unfamiliar with the web applications that come with your subscription. Some of them are available for free use even without an Office 365 subscription, but some of them do require a subscription. We’ll note which are which in the list below.

However, just because there are free versions doesn’t mean they work in the same way as when you use them as part of an Office 365 subscription. While the functionality is usually the same, the O365 apps are more tightly bound together, giving you some better inter-app options and synchronization.

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Websites track you online to show you targeted advertisements, and Firefox 65 is just the latest browser to help you opt out. You can now block tracking content online without the need for a third-party add-on.

What is Content Blocking in Firefox?

“Content blocking” is a collection of privacy settings designed to block trackers and cookies that affect your privacy and browsing performance online. This feature first appeared in Firefox 63 as “tracking protection,” but it’s been redesigned and is now named “content blocking.”

By teaming up with Disconnect, a company striving to give people the freedom to move about the internet without having to worry whether their information is being collected and sold, Firefox can block a list of known trackers when browsing the internet. You can find a full list of trackers Disconnect does and doesn’t block—along with explanations—on its website.

Firefox lets you choose between three options to protect your privacy better online:

• Standard: This is the default setting and only blocks known trackers in Private windows, allowing for a balance between protection and performance. Third-party tracking cookies are not blocked using this mode.
• Strict: Blocks all known trackers and third-party tracking cookies in any windows, including regular sessions, that Firefox detects.
• Custom: A mix between the standard and strict modes which allows you to gain complete control over trackers and cookies and lets you choose what you want to block.

Warning: When you block all cookies, some websites that rely on them may not function as intended. This can result in pages or parts of pages from loading or breaking altogether.

How to Enable Content Blocking

To find these settings, click Menu > Content Blocking in Firefox. If you don’t see this option, you haven’t upgraded to Firefox 65 yet.

On the Firefox preferences privacy page, choose the option that’s best suited for you.

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Nest

Pretty much all video doorbells will record video when they detect motion and/or when the doorbell button is pressed, but if you want 24/7 continuous recording capabilities, there’s really only one option to choose from.

Nest Hello ($229) Nest

The only video doorbell on the market that can do 24/7 recording is the Nest Hello, which is, coincidentally, one of the best video doorbells on the market anyway.

It can do 1080p video, which looks really good, and the HDR capabilities bring out really clear image quality at every angle. It also does two-way talk and night vision. Plus, if you have a Google Home Hub, it will automatically show the video feed whenever the doorbell button is pressed, which is a really nice feature to have. Even if you have a regular Google Home, you can have it announce that someone is at the door.

The 24/7 video recording is only available with a Nest Aware subscription, which will cost $5 per month. That may seem a bit steep, especially after you spend $230 on the doorbell itself, but the subscription also gets you facial recognition, as well as video cloud storage for up to 30 days.

The Nest Hello cannot run on battery power like the Ring Doorbell, so it will need to hook up to your existing doorbell wiring. Luckily, the Hello is very compact and will likely fit where your existing doorbell was.

Lastly, one thing to be aware of with the 24/7 recording on the Nest Hello is that you can’t turn it off if you no longer want to use that feature. The best alternative is to set a schedule to have the camera automatically turn on and off at specific times.

Buy Now What’s the Next Best Option?

If you’re not a fan of the Nest Hello, but still want 24/7 recording, you’re kind of out of luck. The next best option is to simply deal with only having video recordings of motion detected and whenever the doorbell is pressed. From there, you have more options, but the Ring Video Doorbell 2 is probably the best in this scenario.

Ring

It can either run off the battery or be wired up to your existing doorbell wiring, so it’s definitely versatile in that respect. It can also do 1080p video, two-way talk, and night vision.

It is significantly bigger than the Nest Hello, so you might have trouble installing it where your original doorbell was, but usually it’s not too difficult of a job to install it in a slightly different location, especially if you’re okay with running it off the battery.

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The Skype app included with Windows 10 now has a notification area icon. That’s great, but you can’t just right-click the Skype tray icon and close it like a traditional desktop app. Skype doesn’t give you a “Quit” option.

Microsoft’s modern Skype app doesn’t even appear in your list of startup programs, so you can’t disable it by managing your startup programs from the Settings app or Task Manager.

However, you can hide the icon from Skype’s settings window. Right-click the Skype icon in your notification area and click “Settings” or open the Skype window, click the “…” menu button, and click “Settings.”

Click the “General” category and disable the “Show Skype in the Windows notification area (system tray)” option. Skype’s notification area icon will vanish.

Note that people can still send you Skype messages if you’re signed in, even if Skype doesn’t appear in the notification area. To stop that, sign out of Skype. Click the “…” menu in the Skype window and click “Sign Out” to do so.

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Amazon

Voice assistants like Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri have come a long way in the last few years. But, for all their improvements, one thing holds them back: They don’t understand you. They rely too much on specific voice commands.

Speech Recognition is Just a Magic Trick Amazon

Voice assistants don’t understand you. Not really, anyway. When you speak to a Google Home or Amazon Echo, it essentially converts your words to a text string and then compares that to expected commands. If it finds an exact match, then it follows a set of instructions. If it doesn’t, it looks for an alternative of what to do based on what information it does have, and if that doesn’t work you get a failure message such as “I’m sorry, but I don’t know that.” It’s little more than sleight of hand magic to trick you into thinking it understands.

It can’t use contextual clues to make the best guess, or even use an understanding of similar topics to inform its decisions. It isn’t hard to trip up voice assistants either. While you can ask Alexa “Do you work for the NSA?” and get an answer, if you ask “Are you secretly part of the NSA?” you get an “I don’t know that one” response (at least at the time of this writing).

Humans, who genuinely understand speech, don’t work like this. Suppose you ask a human, “What is that klarvain in the sky? The one that is arched, and full of striped colors like red, orange, yellow and, blue.” Despite klarvain being a made-up word, the person you asked could likely figure out from the context that you’re describing a rainbow.

While you could argue that a human is converting speech to ideas, a human can then apply knowledge and understanding to conclude an answer. If you ask a human if they secretly work for the NSA, they’ll give you a yes or no answer, even if that answer is a lie. A human wouldn’t say “I don’t know that one” to a question like that. That humans can lie is something that comes with real understanding.

Voice Assistants Can’t Go Beyond Their Programming

Voice assistants are ultimately limited to programmed expected parameters, and wandering outside of them will break the process. That fact shows when third-party devices come in to play. Usually, the command to interact with those is very unwieldy, amounting to “tell device manufacturer to command optional argument.” An exact example would be: “Tell Whirlpool to pause the dryer.” For an even harder to remember example, the Geneva Alexa skill controls some GE ovens. A user of the skill needs to remember to “tell Geneva” not “tell GE” then the rest of the command. And while you can ask it to preheat the oven to 350 degrees, you can’t follow up with a request to increase the temperature by another 50 degrees. A human could follow these requests though.

Amazon and Google have worked very hard to overcome these obstacles, and it shows. Where once you had to follow the above sequence to control a smart lock, now you can say “lock the front door” instead. Alexa used to be confused by “tell me a dog joke,” but ask for one today, and it will work. They’ve added variations to the commands you use, but ultimately you still have to know the right command to say. You need to use the correct syntax, in the correct order.

And if you think that sounds a lot like a command line, you’re not wrong.

Voice Assistants are a Fancy Command Line

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If You’re The Victim Of A Smurf Attack, You’re The Victim Of What?

1. Theft of Virtual Goods
2. Phishing Tactics
3. A Denial-of-Service Attack
4. Credit Card Fraud

Think you know the answer?

During a presentation, a mix of media always performs best. Using images, graphs, charts, and videos not only makes your presentation more informative but also more engaging for the audience. If you have a YouTube video you’d like to use during your presentation, it’s as simple as embedding it in a slide. Here’s how.

Finding a YouTube Video’s Embed Code

Rather than linking to a YouTube video in your presentation, embedding it in the slide is usually the better option. It gives your presentation a more professional look because you won’t be leaving your slide to pop open the YouTube website. Keep in mind, though, that even with the video embedded in your presentation, you’ll still need to be connected to the internet to play the video.

First, head over to YouTube and find the video you want to embed. Once you’re there, select the “Share” option, which you’ll find in the video description.

A window will appear, giving you a few different vehicles for sharing the video. Go ahead and click the “Embed” option in the “Share a link” section.

Another window will appear, providing the embed code along with a few other options.  If you wanting to start the video at a particular time, select the “Start at” box and enter the time when you’d like the video to start. Additionally, you can select whether you’d like to player controls to appear and if you want to enable privacy-enhanced mode.

Note: Privacy-enhanced mode keeps YouTube from storing information about visitors that visit your website that the video is embedded on unless they play the video. Since we will be using the embed code in a PowerPoint presentation, this option is not necessary.

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Vinyl Me Please

Digging through crates is fun and all, but it can be difficult to find a good, playable record for a reasonable price. Thankfully, there are subscription boxes that make record collecting more affordable and easy.

Even with the rise in popularity of vinyl over the last decade it still may come as a surprise that there are a ton of vinyl subscription boxes on the market right now. They all have their own perks (exclusive records, old records, indie records, etc), but the general idea stays the same across all sites—build your record collection without wasting any time or money.

Many of these subscription websites allow you to choose a preferred genre or even specific records that you’d like each month, so you won’t end up with anything lame. And some of these subscriptions offer exclusive records, art, and inserts that could increase in value as time goes on.

Of course, depending on your budget or your listening preferences, one subscription box may appeal to you more than another. Subscribing to more than one of these would be… expensive. That’s why we’ve taken the time to find the best vinyl record subscription boxes for everybody’s needs.

Vinyl Me, Please ($25)

Vinyl Me, Please is one of the most popular record subscription services on the internet, and for good reason. Each month, Vinyl Me sends you an exclusive record, usually with a colored disc, a lyrics insert, or special artwork. And these aren’t some lame-brain records you’ve never heard of, they’re classics (and new hits) from all genres, including hip-hop and funk.

You get to decide which genre you want each month. But if you don’t like what Vinyl Me is offering, you can opt for a different record, or one that had been sent out a previous month. Some of Vinyl Me’s exclusive records have become popular collector’s items, so you may as well hop on the bandwagon now if you’ve got the dough.

Subscribe to Vinyl Me, Please Cratejoy Vinyl Record Club ($20)

If you’re a fan of subscription boxes, then you’ve probably heard of Cratejoy. The website’s full of unique subscription boxes, from cat boxes to makeup boxes, and it turns out that the Cratejoy Vinyl Record Club subscription is pretty good too.

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TP-Link’s HS100 smart plugs got a well-deserved shoutout in our roundup of best smart plugs and for good reason—thanks to this sale you can grab them for only $14 each.

RELATED: The Best Smart Plugs

The plugs, part of TP-Link’s “Kasa” line of smart home products are a really great value at their regular $20 price point, but at $14 they’re a steal. You get smarthome integration through both the Kasa app and Alexa, Google Assistant, Cortana, and IFTTT recipes. The native app has built-in scheduling and easy remote control.

Best of all, if you’re looking to avoid adding another hub to your home you can skip that step—these plugs are Wi-Fi based, you just add them to your home network one at a time in whatever quantity you need. No hub required.

Buy on Amazon

 

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If someone you know is a frequent air traveler, their needs are very particular, favoring light weight, low volume, and anything that can reduce the pressure cooker stress of a modern airliner interior. Here are a few choice picks.

RELATED: Best Travel Pillows for On-The-Road Comfort

Most of the needs of the frequent flier are obvious, but if you’re not one yourself, there are eccentricities that can be hard to predict. Noise-cancelling headphones, for example, aren’t just to decrease the sound of the incessant toddler in the next row: they double as handy earmuffs for colder destinations. The following selections range in prices and application, but you should be able to find something useful for anyone who needs to trek to an airport more than once a month.

To Keep Their Gadgets Going: Heloideo Charger ($39) Eric Ravenscraft

Long distances away from power outlets might drain even the most capacious of phones, so a rechargeable battery is an excellent travel companion. You can check out all our recommendations here, but my personal favorite remains the 10,000mAh Heloideo charger—I haven’t taken a trip without it in over a year. It features plenty of juice for two or three complete phone recharges, an integrated wall charger, and tuck-away cables for Apple Lightning, MicroUSB, and USB-C, so all the connections it needs are right there in the same package. No matter what someone’s gadget is, this battery has it covered for power.

Buy on Amazon To Keep Their Stuff Safe: TSA-Approved Luggage Locks ($12) Lewis N Clark

Sure, frequent travelers probably already have their own locks. But like nail clippers or pens, they have a frustrating tendency to disappear (all too often while the TSA is giving a bag one of its oh-so-careful inspections). Grab a few for your friend, and sooner or later they will be happy you did. This Lewis N Clark model can lock to zippers and luggage handles at the same time, or clip things like a smaller bag or water bottle to rolling luggage for easier carry. Speaking of which…

Buy on Amazon To Keep Them Hydrated In Flight: Collapsible Water Bottles ($25) Nomader

Staying hydrated during flight is a necessity, and even the most attentive flight attendant might not be able to get a passenger adequate water. This water bottle can fold flat and roll up to fit easily in a bag and get through security, then unfold for a full 22oz when your recipient gets to a water fountain. Unlike some similar designs, it stays stiff even when near empty thanks to a sliding lip, and a screw-top cap makes for easy refilling.

Buy on Amazon To Keep Flight Essentials At Hand: A Backseat Bag ($68) Genius Pack

Your gift recipient probably already has a travel bag, but if they happen to be someone who prefers to check baggage and keep it light on the flight, check out this design from Genius Pack. It includes straps on the back that hang off of the in-flight meal tray, allowing the user to zip it open and get instant access to frequently-used items like a passport, phone and charger, or tablet (with its own dedicated pocket). When they arrive, the bag will clip onto rolling luggage with ease.

Buy on Amazon To Keep Them Occupied: Kindle Paperwhite 2018 ($100) Amazon

Amazon’s e-readers have always been popular travel items, but last year’s upgrade to the workhorse Paperwhite model is of particular note. In addition to a new flush touch screen (don’t worry, it’s still matte anti-glare) and waterproofing for tub or beach readers, it includes Bluetooth, allowing users to load up and listen to Audible audiobooks. As a secondary device, it’s a great way to save battery life on a phone if one needs it for constant work or navigating.

Buy on Amazon To Keep Them Sane: Noise-Cancelling Headphones ($100-350) Sony

You knew we were going to mention this, right? Noise-cancelling headphones are pricey, but they’re also a godsend in the unpredictable social interior of an airplane. At the moment Sony makes some of the best on the market, with the Bluetooth-equipped WH-1000XM3 being a good middle ground. They’re compatible with high-resolution, high-bitrate audio, feature fantastically understated styling, and use USB-C charging (still a rarity). If $350 for a set of headphones is outside your budget, Anker makes a very serviceable set for $100 in its Soundcore sub-brand.

Buy on Amazon To Pack Way More Stuff: Compression Travel Bags ($18) RoomierLife

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Maybe you’ve heard of Google’s “Advanced Protection” program. Maybe you haven’t. Either way, we’re going to talk about what it is, who should use it, and how to enable it. Let’s go.

What is Google Advanced Protection?

Google Advanced Protection (GAP) is basically two-factor authentication (2FA) on steroids. It uses 2FA as part of the process, but it requires two security keys instead of just one—something like Google’s Titan Key bundle is perfect because one wireless key and one USB-only key is recommended for GAP.

The second key is more of a failsafe so your account is still protected should something happen to the first one. This is something that anyone can add to their Google account—you don’t need GAP to use two security keys. Again, the Titan Bundle is a perfect example of how this works in practice.

Beyond that, GAP also limits third-party access to your Google account. While you can use your Google account to sign into some sites, this type of access is limited to “Google apps and select third-party apps,” which helps protect your data from potentially fraudulent activity. It can also make things a hassle if you use your Google account to log in to a lot of third-party services. Can’t win ’em all, I guess.

Lastly, GAP enables extra security measures to safeguard your account from potential hijackers. While unlikely, the most determined of account thieves can attempt to steal your account by simply pretending to be you. With GAP enabled on your account, extra steps are put in place to help prevent this—even if you lose both of your security keys. This means Google will require additional information from you to gain access to your account, which “will take a few days for Google to verify it’s you.” So…try not to lose your keys.

Who is Advanced Protection For?

Now there’s the big question. With all these extra layers of security and, let’s be honest here, major inconveniences, it’s clear that GAP isn’t for everyone. In fact, it’s probably not even for you.

Google’s intent with Advanced Protection is to safeguard “the personal Google Accounts of anyone at risk of targeted attacks—like journalists, activists, business leaders, and political campaign teams.” In other words, people who are more likely to be targeted and have something to lose when attacked. Or people who attackers have something to gain by, um, attacking.

If you’re not one of those people, the odds are you don’t need to enable GAP. It’s just overkill for most users—for most people, just using 2FA is enough. And like I said earlier, you don’t have to use GAP to add security keys to your Google account, so that’s a good idea too.

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Are you having trouble with your Wi-Fi connection? Try using 2.4 GHz instead of 5 GHz. Sure, 5 GHz Wi-Fi is newer, faster, and less congested—but it has a weakness. 2.4 GHz is better at covering large areas and penetrating through solid objects.

5 GHz vs. 2.4 GHz: What’s the Difference?

Wi-Fi can run on two different “bands” of radio frequency: 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz. 5 GHz Wi-Fi went mainstream with 802.11n—now known as Wi-Fi 4—which was introduced back in 2009. Before that, Wi-Fi was largely 2.4 GHz.

This was a big upgrade! 5 GHz uses shorter radio waves, and that provides faster speeds. WiGig takes this further and operates on the 60 GHz band. That means even shorter radio waves, resulting in even faster speeds over a much smaller distance.

There’s also much less congestion with 5 GHz. That means a more solid, reliable wireless connection, especially in dense areas with a lot of networks and devices. Traditional cordless telephones and wireless baby monitors also operate on 2.4 GHz. That means they only interfere with 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi—not 5 GHz Wi-Fi.

In summary, 5 GHz is faster and provides a more reliable connection. It’s the newer technology, and it’s tempting to use 5 GHz all the time and write off 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi. But 5 GHz Wi-Fi’s shorter radio waves mean it can cover less distance and isn’t at good as penetrating through solid objects as 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi is. In other words, 2.4 GHz can cover a larger area and is better at getting through walls.

RELATED: What’s the Difference Between 2.4 and 5-Ghz Wi-Fi (and Which Should I Use)?

You Can Use Both With One Router

Modern routers are generally “dual-band” routers and can simultaneously operate separate Wi-Fi networks on the 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz frequencies. Some are “tri-band routers” that can provide a 2.4 GHz signal along with two separate 5 GHz signals for less congestion among Wi-Fi devices operating on 5 GHz.

This isn’t just a compatibility feature for old devices that only support 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi. There are times you’ll want 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi even with a modern device that supports 5 GHz.

Routers can be configured in one of two ways: They can hide the difference between the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz networks or expose it. It all depends on how you name the two separate Wi-Fi networks.

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