When I am in the flow for work, headphones on, I like to put on any of the annual 2-hour tracks recorded by the DJ Tycho at Burning Man sunrise. Each set is upbeat, trancy, mellow. If you like this year’s Waypoint 2018 sunrise set, Tycho’s previous years are also available on his Soundcloud site. — KK

TheReviewIndex finds recurring patterns in Amazon Reviews and then makes sense of it for you. It displays positive/negative ratings for things like “ease of use,” “quality,” “reliability,” and much more depending on the item. You can click through further to see snippets from user reviews pertaining to one particular aspect of the product. Right now the website only supports Electronics, Gadgets and Appliances. Worth bookmarking to make your shopping decisions a little easier. — CD

You can program your Alexa with new skills. I just trained our Alexa to serve as a home guide for houseguests, babysitters, and petsitters. I used an Alexa Blueprint to create an audible guide for finding things, or giving instructions like “where are the bath towels?,“ "where does the trash go?” or “how to turn off the porch light?” Visitors just ask Alexa, after saying, “Alexa open the home guide.” — KK

I recently discovered Photopea a free web-based image editor that closely mimics the look and feel of Photoshop. It even imports and exports .PSD files. Here’s a good introductory video. — MF

I stumbled across Forever on Amazon Prime having never heard of it. The show stars Fred Armisen and Maya Rudolph as a married couple stuck in the same old routine who then die, only to reunite in the afterlife and pick up right where they left off. It’s so funny and unexpectedly romantic. There may or may not be a season 2. Fingers crossed there is, but even if not this 8-episode series feels complete and worth binge-watching. — CD 

Every year for the past decade I’ve made 2 or 3 commemorative photo books to mark an anniversary, or document a vacation. I’ve tried just about all the different brands and modes of making photobooks and keep coming back to Blurb. It’s not the cheapest, or most expensive; but it’s the highest quality and very versatile. You can make a Blurb photo book three ways: 1) Use a layout program like InDesign to custom design your book, exported as a PDF; 2) use the Blurb function built into Lightroom to handily use photos in your LR library, or 3) use Blurb’s own fancy app, Bookwright, which will let you grab off-the-shelf templates, or completely customize your own templates. This year so far, I’ve make a small 20-page book, and a huge 400-page book, and am working on another one. — KK

I heard about My Talking Pet App (iOS and Android) on the Cool Tools Podcast episode with Kari Byron. With just a photo, I can make my puppy and kitten say ridiculous things and then share those videos via text. Every pet owner needs this app. — CD 

I took the Logitech Keys-to-Go Ultra Portable Wireless Keyboard ($50) to used with my iPhone on a recent overnight trip, leaving my laptop at home. It worked beautifully. I was able to easily write email, Google docs, and text messages with the keyboard. — MF

This cushion ($8) protects my knees anytime I have to work on anything close to the floor or the ground. I’ve had it since 2011 and am grateful to have it every time I use it. — MF

I can’t handwrite for long periods of time without some discomfort. These pencil grips are designed for kids and adults with arthritis, but they help me out a lot too. I bought a 6-pack for $11. — CD

Several power users of the Kindle turned me on to a great tip: load up your Kindle, or phone, with free sample chapters of any and all books you are interested in. Read the sample (usually the first) chapter and then decide if you want to buy the book. In fact, don’t buy any book until you’ve read the sample chapter. The “Send free sample” button is under the “Buy Now” button on the book’s Amazon page. — KK

It is easy to mock the importer Harbor Freight for their insanely cheap Chinese-made tools, but in fact I’ve had great success with the tools I’ve bought from them. I may only use them a few times a year, and for that frequency their quality is more than sufficient, and their self-proclaimed “ridiculously low prices” are in fact a tremendous bargain. Over the years I’ve bought a welder, a larger sanding wheel, a buffer, and recently a new compound miter saw for less than $100. – KK

I used to love the old Infocom text adventure games. They were interactive stories where you affected the outcome by making decisions and doing things as you moved around a world described in words only. A friend told me about a free web-based text adventure called Spider And Web and I am enthralled by it. I don’t want to say anything about the plot. Just give it a try. — MF

I love playing this geography game. Go to Geoguessr.com. It will place you on a random spot in the world in Google Earth/Maps, and you have to figure out where you are by walking around in Street View. Easy clues like words on signs are usually blurred out. Might be hard to even locate the right continent. You get points for how close your guess is to your actual location. Was your guess five miles or 5000 miles away? It probably appeals to world travellers like myself, but I enjoy the hunt for telltale signs of a different culture. — KK

Footpath is ridiculously easy to use. I missed my weekly hike recently and wanted to find an alternative walking route nearby. I downloaded Footpath for free and traced a route with my finger from my location to the nearest park. The line you trace snaps to roads and trails, and you can choose between a loop or out and back route, and then it displays the distance and elevation if any. I figured out that I would have to walk around the park ten times if I wanted to get 5 miles in. – CD

I use this $10 head-mounted magnifier at least once a week. It has two levels of magnification and LED illumination. It’s great for soldering or most other kinds of detail work. — MF

When starting to read a new author, or trying to recall a favorite author, I use the quote search function at Goodreads to surface the best quotes of a writer. The quotes are ranked by the number of times Goodreads readers “like” them. (This only works for books.) — KK

I work from home most of the time and when I do I have a 4-month old puppy keeping me company. When he’s not sleeping he’s getting into trouble, so I’ve already spent a healthy amount of money trying to find things that’ll distract him. This burrowing toy by ZippyPaws works best so far. He doesn’t rest until all the squeaking giraffes are out from inside. ZippyPaws makes a lot of adorable dog toys, it’s hard not to buy them all. I just ordered this bucket of fried chicken. — CD

If you use Google Docs, Sheets, Forms, Slides, or Sites, here’s a tip. Just enter doc.new, sheet.new, etc. into your browser and it will instantly create a new, blank version. — MF

Crazy ideas sometimes become everyday and obvious. No book I’ve read has had more crazy economic ideas than Radical Markets by Eric Posner and Glen Weyl. Their ideas — which rethink the idea of property and taxes — are intriguing, and even if wrong, might be productively wrong. It is dense reading, but exhilarating. — KK