Home Tech Shopping

Oh, the weird and wonderful business of buying and selling secondhand goods online. A market once cornered by Ebay and Craigslist, virtual resale sites and apps are a booming business, some as virtual garage sales and others as niche marketplaces. Here’s the lowdown on five popular sites and apps and please jump in with your favorites (and not-so-favorites) in the comments! The lowdown: The cPro+ Craigslist Mobile Client is a well-reviewed app that lets you take Craigslist on the road.

Imagine yourself gift shopping, selflessly browsing the aisles, checking off items on your to-do list, when you find it: the perfect gift. Let me clarify: you find the perfect gift for yourself. While it’s a gift you know your significant other would love, you also know it’s something you’ve been longing for all year. You need to have it. You both need to have it. Perhaps it’s time to make your own wish list.

Did you know there haven’t been any updates to the traditional tape measure since the late 1800’s? Well, watch out: the measuring revolution has arrived. Just this week, InstruMMents (yes, that’s two M’s) celebrated the launch of “01,” the world’s first dimensioning instrument. Designed to seamlessly measure any object, (even one with 3D curves!

Update 5/26/17: IKEA announced this week that their smart lighting collection will also come with voice activation, supporting all three major assistants, Siri, Google, and Alexa. 3/31/17: The home of the future just got a lot more accessible. This week, IKEA debuted their new smart lighting collection. If you’ve been curious about smart home tech, but haven’t yet dipped your toe in, the Swedish retailer just made it as easy as—you guessed it—screwing in a lightbulb.

Alexa, Amazon’s virtual assistant, can do a lot of things—tell you the weather or traffic, shop for you, play music. Now, she can help you get dressed. Amazon’s latest device, the Echo Look, is a hands-free, Alexa-enabled camera that is your new #OOTD bestie so you can give your Instagram Husband a break. Echo Look, like Amazon’s other Alexa-enabled products, is voice activated, so you can tell it to take a photo or a short video without having to press any buttons.

If you’re sold on the future of smart home, you don’t need me to exalt all the benefits of Amazon Echo’s voice-activated personal assistant, Alexa. But this post is actually for the skeptics out there. Even if you think the whole voice-controlled smart home thing is silly or extra, I bet I can sell you on it, at least for one room in your home. See, I was an Echo skeptic for a long time. Until my sister-in-law gifted us an Echo Dot for Christmas last year.

Never underestimate the power of a quality pair of headphones. Whether for yourself or the music lover in your life, gifting a good pair of headphones this season can be a total game-changer for your day-to-day routine. Commuting and travel becomes more enjoyable, as does the gym and just about everything else, because you can cancel out the noise around you and focus on all your fave songs—which will sound amazing in a well-made headphones by the way—instead.

You know the type: they’ve had a subscription to Wired since forever, they attend tech expos every year (or at the very least, follow the coverage on social), and they always, always know what’s new and next. Get them chatting about which of these pieces of tech they’re coveting (nobody has everything), and watch them geek out…even more than usual. A do-it-all device with 4.3 stars from 59,132 reviews, all for only $50?

It’s about to be peak winter Hygge season and I don’t know about you but I’m excited as hell to stay inside and hold a mug with both of my hands. But sometimes the warmth emanating from own two palms is not enough to keep a mug of coffee warm as I slowly sip it throughout the morning. Luckily Ember, a Los Angeles based start-up, is here to solve this very particular, but common annoyance.

Weak wifi is one of the more infuriating annoyances of modern life. Whether you work from home or are just an avid Netflix watcher, an internet disruption can totally throw off your plans. A team from Dartmouth College has come up with a surprising (and surprisingly simple) way to boost wifi signals — put a tinfoil hat on your router. Yup.

When it comes to Valentine’s Day, there is a roster of expected gifts for your significant other: flowers, chocolates, a fancy dinner out. But sometimes, the best gifts are the most practical, and when you’ve been together a while, the best V-Day gift might not be sexy as it is problem-solving. That is, if you and your sweetie are even acknowledging February 14 as anything more than just a Wednesday.