I bought this DYMO Portable Label Maker ($23) because it was an Amazon best seller and I didn’t want to put that much research into it, but now it’s been almost a year that I’ve owned it and it’s still incredibly useful and has not let me down. It’s so intuitive that months have gone by between use and I don’t have to remind myself how to work it. I love that it’s so light. I can walk around with it, type on it, print and cut my label and put it back in one fell swoop. — CD

My second favorite activity in the kitchen (after eating good food) is to stowe leftovers in our trove of Snapware Glasslock containers with snap-on lids. Glass makes the leftovers clearly visible, and re-heatable in their container, and the snap lids with gaskets create a nearly vacuum seal, and their sturdy flat tops can be securely stacked in the refrigerator. They will never spill, and are superior to all the other systems we’ve tried in the past. Snapping them shut on all four sides makes me really happy. By now there are 10 different brands of glass with snap lids (including Amazon Basics), all with the same design, though they are not interchangeable. I have not tried other brands; we are still using the original Snapware/Glasslock ones from a decade ago and they seem to last forever. — KK

I’ve been using TextExpander for at least 10 years and it has saved me hundreds of hours of typing. It’s a global utility that converts short snippets of text into canned text. For instance, when I type “mf” it changes it to “Mark Frauenfelder.” When I type “adr” it changes it to my home address. “Bio” spits out my biography and a link to my headshot photos. I have a lot of canned boilerplate for email responses that save me a ton of time. It can also add anything that’s saved in my clipboard to a chunk of boilerplate. It also corrects frequently misspelled words. The Mac OS has snippet expansion but lacks many of the features and the snap of TextExpander. I can’t stand using other people’s computers to write or do email because not having TextExpander slows me way down. — MF

I binge listened to all 8 episodes of Boom/Bust: The Rise and Fall of HQ Trivia in one day. I was obsessed with the viral game back in 2017, but eventually lost interest and didn’t follow the demise of the trivia startup. This documentary podcast series gave me an insider glimpse into what really happened and helped me better understand the very fickle attention economy. — CD 

I’ve been making my own coiled cables thanks to a tip I learned from Gareth Branwyn’s Tips newsletter (which we co-publish). Gareth pointed me to a John Park’s YouTube tutorial on heat treating ordinary USB cables into expandable coiled cables, like the ones on old telephone handsets, or headphones. (Jump to the 23-minute mark.) The hack really works and results in much more manageable cables for audio, photography, and desktop gear. — KK

A lot of characters aren’t on your keyboard, but you might find them useful. For example, ♠, ♣, ♥, and ♦. An easy way to browse and use these hidden characters is by visiting Symbololology, a one-page site with about 500 non-keyboard characters. Symbololology,  where have you been all my life‽ — MF

After my recent computer upgrade, I lost my Papier chrome extension that I previously recommended for taking notes in your browser. The website no longer works and it doesn’t exist in the chrome store and I was really bummed because it’s so useful to just be able to open a tab and have a space to write out your to-do list, or do a brain dump, or collect quotes. Thankfully, I was able to find an alternative created by a Google AI designer called Mindful (Beta). What’s better about Mindful is that it syncs with my chrome account so I can access my notes on both my desktop and laptop. — CD

Setapp is a subscription service for Mac applications. I pay $10 a month for over 180 useful applications. I don’t use all of them, but the ones I use are indispensable throughout my day. I use Meeter to quickly enter scheduled Zoom meetings. I use Mosaic to move and place windows on my desktop. CleanMyMac X has a bunch of useful utilities to free up disk space and delete apps and large files. IM+ puts my Google chats and Slack groups into one convenient place. Downie makes it easy to download YouTube videos. Forecast bar is a great menu bar weather application. I could go on and on, but you get the idea. Setapp also adds new applications into their offerings frequently, and I’m always eager to check them out. If you have a Mac and are interested in design, productivity, and utilities, this is a no-brainer. (I’ve mentioned Setapp on Recomendo before but they’ve added so many useful apps to their collection that it was  time for an update.) — MF

Google hosts one of the best virtual museums in the world. They’ve scanned many thousands of the world’s masterpieces at super high resolution. So from my home I can visit their “Arts and Culture” site and by scrolling get very very close to the art — much closer than I could in a physical museum. I’ve seen many of the originals in their home museums, and I feel I was seeing them for the first time here. — KK

Like magic, my 12-foot ladder will telescope down to less than 3 feet. I can throw this Telescoping Aluminum Ladder in the trunk of my car, but more importantly, I can effortlessly move it through our house under my arm when I need to reach high ceiling bulbs or skylights, etc. It collapses instantly when done and stores in a closet. It’s what a home ladder should be. There are a bunch of no-brand models, almost identical, for about $100. — KK

I just spent the last ten minutes on Window Swap staring out a window in Villalago, Italy, where I could see the mountains and hear birds chirping and church bells ringing. Anyone is welcome to submit video (and audio) of their window view, and with the click of a button you can bounce around all over the world. — CD

Last week I recommended The Nostalgia Machine, and some readers reported that it was glitchy and did not work on their browser. Reader Micael suggested if you have Spotify, try searching for “year:1992” to get song and artist results from that year, and @JMWander recommended Radiooooo.com which lets you customize a music stream based on decade, country, and slow, fast or weird music. Thanks! — CD

A year or two ago I recommended Standard Ebooks as a resource for free reading. They have since updated their catalog with a lot of new titles, so I thought it was time to re-recommend them. They take public domain texts (by authors such as Robert E. Howard, Edith Wharton, Sarah Orne Jewett, Bertrand Russell), scour them for typographical errors, add excellent cover art, and format them for Kindle and other e-readers. The online catalog is a pleasure to browse, and includes a synopsis for each book. The latest entries include The Gambler by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne, Pellucidar by Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Time Traders by Andre Norton, A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare, A Tangled Tale by Lewis Carroll, The Marvelous Land of Oz by L Frank Baum, and Villette by Charlotte Brontë. Join the mailing list or subscribe to the RSS feed for updates on new books added to the catalog. — MF

This may be a new thing for you. Working from Home Temporarily is a free 72-page ebook that offers extremely practical advice on how to set up this new lifestyle. Some of the stuff is obvious, but there’s a lot of great tips such as how to upgrade to good connectivity, how set office hours, how to share your home with others who are also working, etc. Available in 3 ebook formats, all free. — KK

I don’t eat beef, pork or lamb, but I still miss a good burger. I’m a big fan of veggie Impossible Burgers, but I like Beyond Meat’s burgers, cooked at home, even more. They are really delicious in flavor and texture. You can get patties of Beyond Burgers at Target, Walmart, and Costco, among other retailers. The rest of my family, who do eat beef, love these plant-based burgers too. — KK

About six months ago I bought an EyeQue Personal Vision Tracker for $25. It looks a bit like a microscope and attaches to a smartphone. After installing the app I was able to check my vision with it. The app gave me the same information as an optometrist’s prescription, which I used to buy inexpensive prescription eyeglasses online. I still plan to get eye health exams from  an ophthalmologist from time to time, but this is a cheap and convenient way to find out what kind of lenses you need, especially in the middle of a pandemic when going into an optometrist’s office poses an infection risk. — MF

Newsletter Stack is a directory of newsletters grouped by learning topics like COVID-19, Philosophy, Design, Wellness, etc. The website seems to be updated frequently. I signed up for all the Creativity topic newsletters, my favorite one is The Creative Independent, which explores the emotional facets of “creating” with a different working artist each weekday. — CD

For sheer summer-movie enjoyment, we really liked Knives Out. This is a fun murder mystery, constructed with fantastic, vivid characters, great acting, with clever plotting and pitch-perfect editing. It’s a real page turner, if you know what I mean. Now streaming on Amazon Prime. — KK

If you pick a year from your past (1951-2015), The Nostalgia Machine will warp you back musically and link you to videos of the top Billboard Hits of that time. 1996 takes me back to sixth grade and TLC and Alanis Morissette and a lot of weekend nights spent at the rollerskating rink. (Note: Some readers replied that this website did not work for them. One reader suggested that that if you type in "year:1992" in Spotify, you'll get hits from that year.) — CD

Sometimes a recipe will call for me to “drizzle” olive oil on chicken or a vegetable before putting it in the oven or grill. I’ve been drizzling for years, and got resigned to the fact that most of the olive oil would end up on the bottom of the pan and not on the food. Recently I found a silicone basting brush in a kitchen drawer, which my wife bought a couple of years ago when she made a pastry and it has turned out to be a game-changer. Now I just pour a little olive oil, or other sauce, into a small bowl and use the brush to paint it on the meat or vegetable before cooking. This brush gives me much more control, and there’s less waste. My drizzling days are over. — MF