TECH

UP
100 ESSENTIAL TIPS AND HACKS OF TECHNOLOGIES FOR
EVERYDAY LIFE

By
CLAIRE J. SHA


 COPYRIGHT

Copyright © 2015 Claire J. Sha
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any
form whatsoever.

For more information, please email clairejsha@gmail.com.


PREFACE

How to know whether you’re really getting a good deal when shopping online?
How to always stay on top of ever changing information on the internet?
How to batch process webpages to drastically improve productivity?
How to get disposable phone numbers or email addresses to protect your privacy?
How to improve your sleep and health with your computers and mobile devices?
How to earn Google Play Store credits to pay for your next app, music, movie, or book?
How to quickly restore accidentally closed tabs in web browsers?
How to become the master of spreadsheets and Windows operations in the office?
How to protect your digital footprint both online and offline?
How to find books within your budget on Amazon?
How to treat and prevent back and neck pain at home in simple and effective ways?
How to make the most out of a handful of essential and versatile kitchen gadgets for a
wide variety of food?
How to gain first-hand experience with the latest technologies on the cheap?

This book answers all of the above questions, and more. It curates a list of 100 solutions to
everyday problems and covers topics suitable for people from all walks of life. Anyone
can learn something from the book to improve their everyday life in one way or another.
Sometimes we just don’t know what we don’t know. No worries. Let’s read on, get
informed, tech up, and thrive!

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface
Disclaimers

Part 1. Something Online
1. Smart Shopping
2. Video Playing
3. Batch Processing
4. Learning Online
Part 2: Something Mobile
5. Battery
6. Call Tricks
7. Essential Apps
Part 3: Something Serious
8. MS Office, Browsers, Windows
9. Privacy and Security
10. Reading Companions
Part 4: Something Else
11. Everyday Ergonomics
12. Kitchen Gadgets
13. Experience the Latest Technologies

About The Author

DISCLAIMERS

The websites, apps, and products mentioned in this book are from the author’s personal
user experience and they are used here as examples to inspire readers to perform their own
research along similar lines themselves. The author is not affiliated with any of the
recommendations and has no financial interest whatsoever.

PART 1. SOMETHING ONLINE

1. SMART SHOPPING

One of the most important things we do on the Internet besides stalking people on
Facebook and watching funny cat videos on YouTube is online shopping. (Thank you for
going online and purchasing this e-book!) This chapter covers the tips and tricks that will
help you become a wise consumer and make informed purchasing decisions.

PRICE TRACKING
Amazon.com is the largest internet-base retailer in the United States and has separate retail
websites around the world. It has become the one-stop shop for many people to purchase
almost anything from groceries for home (Amazon Fresh, Amazon Prime Pantry) to stuff
for work (Amazon Business). But how can we make sure we are really getting a great deal
on Amazon, at least at the time of purchase?
CamelCamelCamel.com is a website that lets you track price history on Amazon and
offers a free service of price drop alerts. Setting up an account on the website with your
email is simple and enables you to use its handy web browser add-on to check price
history and set price alert without even leaving the Amazon webpage. The add-on, The
Camelizer, is available for Chrome, Safari, and Firefox at
http://camelcamelcamel.com/camelizer.
For example, once I was interested in this ping pong table but would like to wait till it
reaches below $350, which CamelCamelCamel tells me it did on May 18, 2009. The
website and the web browser add-on also include price history from 3rd party (both New
and Used) listed on Amazon. It was with the price history information that I could make
an informed decision of setting a reasonable price alert.

Note that next to the Price History Tab is another useful piece of data – the sales rank
tracking. Looking at historical sales rank helps you determine previous demand for the
product and thus its popularity.
Another comparable Amazon price tracker is Keepa.com. Although I use
CamelCamelCamel exclusively and heard it is more robust, please feel free to explore
both for comparison.
Last note on price drop alerts, you should use it before AND after a purchase. You may
manage to get a price adjustment due to the price difference within a number of days of
your order.

SOMETHING NOT JUST ABOUT AMAZON

The web browser add-on InvisibleHand can quickly tell you the online retailers carrying
the products you are looking at on the webpage. It saves you huge amounts of time
compared to visiting and searching many different websites to match products and
compare price information. At the time of this writing, it works in the USA, UK, and
Germany.

WEBPAGE MONITORING
The Chrome extension Page Monitor is a handy tool that stays in the background and
monitors any changes on the webpages of interest, including price changes.

DAILY DEAL SITES
There are many deal sites out there, but the special ones are the “Daily Deal” websites that
sell one product every day until they are sold out. Sites like these try to sell items at a hot
price.
The first and arguably most popular of the daily deal websites is WOOT: www.woot.com,
acquired by Amazon in 2010. It originally listed one product per day, but now lists several
products from different categories such as home, electronics, wine, sports, kids, etc..
The founder and former CEO of WOOT launched a new daily deal site called MEH:
https://meh.com. At the time of this writing, the site is selling DJI Phantom 1.1.1
Quadcopter with GoPro Mount for $275. In comparison, the list price is $680 and the
Amazon is selling it at $395. So you probably want to keep an eye on MEH.


2. VIDEO PLAYING

This chapter discusses how to really watch video on YouTube, the most popular video site,
as well as how to cast online videos to your TV on the cheap.

SHORTCUTS ON YOUTUBE
You probably know the Space bar as the pause and replay button while playing videos on
YouTube. However, you may not be aware of other keyboard controls that are equally
useful.
M: Mute the sound (does not stop the video)
L: Leap forward 10 seconds
J: Jump backward 10 seconds
Home: From the beginning
End: To the end
Left/Right Arrow: Rewind/Fast forward
1,2,…,9: 10%, 20%, …, 90% of the way through

WATCH ONLINE VIDEOS ON TV
I admit I’ve never had cable TV in my adult life. I watch online videos on my laptops or
computers. My latest monitor, even at 30”, started to appear not big enough to take
advantage of the HD qualities of online videos. How could I watch online videos on TVs
that have kept getting cheaper, bigger, and better? Two gadgets came to my rescue.

GOOGLE CHROMECAST
Chromecast (officially $35 as of 2015) is a thumb-sized streaming dongle that plugs into
the HDMI port on TV. Videos and webpages could be casted to the big screen from any
smart phones, tablets, and computers. Phones and tablets need to have the Chromecast app
installed while computers must have Google Cast extension installed in chrome web
browser.
Chromecast works with a number of apps, including Netflix, HBO GO, Hulu Plus,
YouTube, WatchESPN, Pandora, and so on. You can basically cast any of the subscribed
streaming services to TV from their apps.
Even if you just want to cast a webpage or an embedded video to TV, Chromecast along
with Chrome web browser can also make it happen!

AMAZON FIRE STICK

If Chromecast sounds so neat, why did I also get an Amazon Fire Stick? First off, it was
pre-sold to Amazon Prime Members like myself at $19 (officially $39 as of 2015). Plus, it
runs on an android system where I could “side load” any apps developed for TV but not
officially available in the Amazon app store. This level of flexibility could not be achieved
with Chromecast as far as I know.
The advantage of using Amazon Fire Stick is that it seamlessly streams Amazon instant
videos, music, and your videos and photos stored in Amazon Cloud Drive. The only
downside is that it does not support casting webpages or embedded videos.


3. BATCH PROCESSING

Once in a while, you may find yourself on one or multiple webpages full of files to
download and links to click. This chapter shows you the most efficient solutions without
straining your mouse or hand muscles.

BATCH DOWNLOAD
Download Master, a Chrome extension, helps you download any specific or all of the
images, videos, pdfs, docs, and other files linked on the webpage you are browsing.
Along with Google advanced search, this extension could be super powerful. Consider this
situation: you are researching a topic online. Suddenly you find a document on a website
quite relevant and want to look up and download all of the relevant documents on that
website. Now you’ve got a solution: search for pdf or any other file types on the website
of interest using Google advanced search, and then batch download relevant result files
using Download Master!
Similarly on Firefox, DownThemAll is an equivalent to do the same batch downloading
job.

WEB SCRAPING
Web scraping is a computer technique of extracting information from websites. Time is
money, but information is also money. Data, sometimes large amounts of it, is required for
businesses to search for consistent patterns and/or systematic relationships between
variables, and for individuals to make informed decisions in everyday life. How to scrape
data from the web is such an important topic that it deserves a chapter of its own.
Have you ever tried to save or copy webpage after webpage just for the information (e.g.
texts, numbers, or links) they carry so that you can use it for your own analysis and
documentation? You know you don’t have to do it manually! There are many tools for
web scraping, including the ones not so intuitive to use for people without any
programming background (sorry Beautiful Soup, not everyone is a Python programmer).
The most easy-to-use tool I have encountered is a Chrome extension called Web Scraper.
Its website has detailed video tutorials and documentations on how to set up the data
you’d like to scrape and export it as a .csv file in a clean format.
A web scraping job is created with one webpage as target by default. If you have a long
list of webpages to scrape data from with Web Scraper, you don’t need to input them one
by one during the setup process. Here’s my solution:
1. In Web Scraper, export Sitemap (in the dropdown menu of Sitemap) and copy all.
2. Import sitemap (in the dropdown menu of Create new sitemap) and paste in Sitemap
JSON.
3. Look for the link(s) after “startUrl” in the script (e.g. “http://oneofyourwebsites.com”),
replace the “http://oneofyourwebsites.com” with [“http://website1.com”,
“http://website2.com”, … , “http://website100.com”]. Note the brackets outside the web
links and the commas in between. They must be included for it to work.
4. Rename and save new Sitemap.

BATCH OPEN WEBPAGES
Chrome extension LinkClump (http://bit.ly/1rSXclF) allows you to open multiple links
on a webpage at one time. With the extension installed, you just hold down the SHIFT key
and drag-select multiple links, which will instantly all open in new tabs.
Firefox add-on Snap Links Plus (http://mzl.la/1LT27d1) is an equivalent tool for Firefox
browser.

BONUS
Notice that when you open the above download pages, the actual web address, for
example, is
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/linkclump/lfpjkncokllnfokkgpkobnkbkmelfefj?
hl=en instead of the much shorter version of http://bit.ly/1rSXclF that you just clicked on?
A shortened URL looks nicer in the book, and works especially well when posting links in
social media such as character-limited Twitter.
All you do is go to a URL-shortening site such as bitly.com, paste your long address into
the box at the top right corner of the page, and click Shorten. You will get a very short web
address that takes you to the exact same page. And you are ready to copy and paste it
wherever you need it. The process is free, instantaneous, and no sign-up required.

4. LEARNING ONLINE

“Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps
learning stays young.” — Henry Ford. I believe in life-long learning, so I compiled here a
list of online learning websites that I’ve tried and loved to share.

MIT OPENCOURSEWARE
MIT OpenCourseWare (MIT OCW) is a large-scale, web-based publication of MIT course
materials from its undergraduate- and graduate-level courses of all of the departments
(over 2180 courses available online as of Oct. 2012). MIT OCW started in 2002, so you
may find that many courses do not have video lectures as the other websites (introduced
below) do. But the class presentations, notes, exercises, and solutions are still very helpful
for self-study.

COURSERA
Unlike MIT OCW offering courses from one university i.e. MIT, Coursera provides free
online courses from a variety of top universities. It also offers certificates for purchase by
students to demonstrate their completion of courses. Founded in 2012 by two Stanford
professors, Coursera includes video lectures in almost all courses and holds forums where
you can interact with classmates and teachers.

EDX
EdX is another open online learning website. It was founded by MIT and Harvard also in
2012 like Coursera, but the difference is that it is non-profit and runs on an open-source
software platform. As of Oct. 2014, it offers more than 300 courses.

UDACITY
While most Coursera and edX courses are schedule-based, Udacity classes are self-paced,
ideal for people with unpredictable schedules. Udacity focuses on vocational courses for
professionals, such as data science, web development, software engineering, and so on. It
is most suitable for those interested in honing their computer/programming skills.

ITUNES U
iTunes U is a completely free medium through the Apple iTunes application where
colleges and universities can offer courses at no charge, to anyone who wants to take
them. There is also a new section of iTunes U that focuses on K-12 education, where state
or county education departments provide content for both students and educators.
Currently, over 800 colleges and universities from across the globe provide content to
iTunes U for post-secondary learning.

KHAN ACADEMY
Khan Academy, a non-profit educational organization created by Salman Khan, produces
micro lectures in the form of YouTube videos. All the subjects are free and include Math,
Science, Economics and Finance, Arts and Humanities, Computing, Test Prep, and Partner
content.

UDEMY
Instead of providing traditional collegiate coursework, Udemy.com is a platform for
experts of any kind to create courses to offer to the public, either at no charge or for a
tuition fee. Its courses include such topics as personal development, design, marketing,
lifestyle, photography, heath & fitness, teacher training, music, language, and so on. This
may appeal to a wide range of population.

QUORA
Who says learning should only be in the form of taking classes? Quora is a question-and-
answer website where questions are asked, answered, edited, and organized by its
community of users. It aggregates questions and answers by topics and sends you
notifications when the topics you follow or are involved with have new feeds.
Although there’re many other Q&A websites, Quora stands out for at least the following
reasons. It requires users to register with their real names rather than a screen name and
the site is essentially unusable if not logged in. This level of transparency can ensure the
quality of questions and answers. Moreover, many famous people, from bestselling
authors to successful entrepreneurs or CEOs, are active on Quora and contributing their
expertise to the community.

PART 2. SOMETHING MOBILE

5. BATTERY

The second saddest thing that could happen to your phone is that battery dies while you
are in the middle of a chat or looking for map directions. (The saddest is dropping your
phone and having to live with the smashed screen till the new phone contract.) This
chapter offers tips on how to charge battery fast and how to at least double your battery
capacity on the go.

CHARGING BATTERY FASTER
1. Put your phone in Airplane Mode. It will charge almost twice as quickly. This way the
phone isn’t wasting power hunting for a signal, receiving push notifications, and so on. All
the electricity is coming into the battery, but none is going out.
2. Plug your phone into a wall socket using the little power adapter that came with it
instead of using your computer’s USB jack, which most of the time takes about 30
minutes longer than a wall socket would.
The above also applies to tablets and other mobile devices.

BATTERY ON THE GO
When I’m traveling, I have a companion for my smartphone: a battery case. It is a phone
case but also a rechargeable battery that can effectively provide 100%+ extra battery life
for the phone. The battery case features an LED battery level indicator that lets you know
exactly how much electricity is left in the battery. The case can be recharged via a
microUSB charging cable connecting to either a USB port or a wall socket. Extra juice for
my phone keeps me happy on the go.
If you’re looking for a charger not only for your phone but also other devices like tablets,
e-readers, and so on, you need battery packs with >10,000mAh capacities.
If you are traveling internationally and left your adapter plug at home, there’re actually
two solutions to this bummer. First, ask the front desk of the hotel where you’re staying
because they may have many guests leaving behind their adapters which you could
borrow. Some hotels may instead have new adapters for sale. But if you’re out of luck to
get your hands on an adapter, there’s another solution: most of the hotel TVs have USB
ports at the back, which you could connect your devices to, while the TVs are on. As
mentioned in the previous section, it’s slower to charge through USB than wall socket, but
the charging would happen steadily but surely.

HOW NOT TO DRAIN BATTERY WITHOUT KNOWING
The screen is one of the biggest gobblers of your phone’s juice. To extend your battery
life, dim the screen and do not leave it on when not in use.
“Push” data is another big battery drainer, which makes new messages and notifications
appear in real time. You can switch notification frequency from “Push” to “Manual” in the
phone settings.
Wireless and GPS signals. Your phone uses radio waves to connect to WiFi and wireless
Bluetooth gadgets and communicate with the closest phone towers over cellular network
for GPS location. Even if you’re not using a map app, other apps may have location
services running in the background. Location services icon (an arrow) in the top banner of
your phone lets you know whether it’s on. You can save juice by turning off WiFi,
Bluetooth, and GPS for a while.

6. CALL TRICKS

Texting and video calls are great, but we still need to be on the phone the old-fashioned
way from time to time. This chapter introduces handy tricks for managing phone calls the
smart way.

REDIAL WITH ONE TOUCH
On any smartphone, you can call back the most recent number you’ve called with one
touch. Tapping the Call button on the dialing pad puts the most recently dialed number
into the typing box, as though you’d just typed it out again. Now tap Call one more time to
place the call.

BYPASS THE VOICE MAIL INSTRUCTIONS
Whenever your call goes to voice mail, you have to listen to 15 seconds of instructions:
“You may begin speaking at the tone … When you have finished recording, you may hang
up, or press 5 for more options.” You probably have heard those words too many times
and are willing to do anything to go straight to message recording.
In fact, it’s possible to bypass that message with a key press, and to jump directly to the
“begin leaving your message” beep. Each phone company requires a different keystroke to
get to the beep:
• AT&T: Press #
• Sprint: Press 1
• Verizon: Press *
The keystrokes also work on prepaid phones for skipping long messages warning of low
account balance before placing calls.

ESCAPE ANNOYING CALLS, MEETINGS OR DATES
SorryGottaGo.com offers a myriad of sounds you can play while you are trapped on an
endless phone call and gives you the perfect excuse to hang up.
For smart phones, there’re many apps to make fake calls to your phone for you to escape
any time-wasting meetings or awkward dates. Search for “Fake Call” in your app store.

DISPOSABLE PHONE NUMBERS
The more important phone numbers become for communication, the more necessary it is
to keep your phone number as private as possible to protect yourself from telemarketers,
scams, and harassment.
Hushed can help protect your personal number from those you don’t want to have access
to it and maintain contact whenever needed. One of its great features is that you can
manage multiple phone numbers from a single Hushed app without multiple SIM cards.
The plans are pay-as-you-go with no contracts or minimum terms.

7. ESSENTIAL APPS

Nowadays, we cannot live our smart phones. We check them first thing in the morning,
last thing of the day, in the restroom, and on the go. It is mostly apps that make phones
much more interesting than their predecessors (remember the “dumb phones”?). Like for
many other things, we all have our own preferences for apps. This chapter introduces
several apps that can be all or partially used by everyone.

GETTING AROUND
GOOGLE MAPS
The most popular maps app lets users select and save a region of Google Maps for offline
use later. GPS-enabled devices are still able to see the blue locator dot on the offline maps.
Follow these instructions to save maps to your phone.
Please note that offline Google Maps expire after 30 days, but user will be prompted to
download them again when cached maps are becoming out-of-date. Turn-by-turn
navigation for offline maps is not available as of June 2015.

HERE MAPS
Compared to Google Maps, the free map app HERE Maps (Android, iOS, Windows) has
its own advantages and disadvantages. Instead of letting user arbitrarily select their
interested area, the app bundles maps into relatively large regions for download (e.g.
whole states in the U.S. and Canada, or whole countries on other continents). So be
prepared to allocate, for example, several megabytes on your phone to store the whole
map of Texas when you may only need the Houston map or even one of its
neighborhoods. The big plus side of the app is that it supports offline turn-by-turn
navigation, which won’t be available in Google Maps till late 2015 (expected).

MAPS.ME
Another great option of offline mobile maps is MAPS.ME, a mobile app for Android, iOS,
BlackBerry, and Amazon Fire that uses OpenStreetMap data. Some of the features include
offline map data, GPS support, offline search, bookmarks, KML file import, offline
routing from current location within one map, etc..

REAL TIME METRO/BUS TRACKER

Transit is North America’s most popular transport app (iOS and Android). It helps you
find out, in real time, when your next subway or bus is arriving. It provides arrival times
and directions for transit routes near you, including transport options such as bus, subway,
bike share, Uber, car2go, and more. As of June 2015, it covers 99 metro areas in the U.S.,
Canada, France, U.K., Italy, Germany, Mexico, and Kenya. If you live in one of those
areas and use public transportation, this is a must-have app for your everyday
convenience!

USE BEFORE SLEEP
We may be paying a price for basking in all the light emitted from TVs, computers,
phones, and tablets we look at before sleep time. Exposure to too much light, especially
blue light, at night throws the body’s biological clock out of order. Sleep suffers, and it
may affect other health issues as well. Although it helps to minimize the time spent in
front of a screen at night, especially right before bedtime, it’ll be even better if we could
block out the blue wavelength in the spectrum as much as possible.
Blue Light Filter for Eye Care is an Android app that filters blue light to reduce the screen
light’s strain on your eyes and minimizes the blue glow’s effect on sleep cycles.
For iPhone/iPad and computer users, f.lux makes the color of your display adapt to the
time of day, warm at night (yellowish with decreasing blue light) and bright as usual
during the day. It’s also a visual alarm for me to know when I need to wind down for the
day. Its neat webpage f.luxometer simulates and lets you visualize how much blue light
f.lux could remove from your phone/tablet/computer.
Another alternative low-light reading method is using night mode on your devices or in
apps, which reverses the default white background with black text to a black background
with white text, to expose your eyes to less light and help you naturally wind down for
sleep.
For Apple devices, go to Settings > General > Accessibility > Accessibility Shortcut >
Invert Colors to enable the Night Mode function. Now you can enter night mode at any
time by triple-clicking Home button.
For Android, try Settings > Accessibility > Inverted Rendering.

GOOGLE OPINION REWARDS
Who doesn’t want to have free Google Play store credits to purchase apps, music, movies,
and books? Answer quick surveys and earn Google Play credits with Google Opinion
Rewards, an Android app created by Google Consumer Surveys. Google sends you,
through the app, relevant surveys based on the basic questions you answered during the
setup.
The frequency of the surveys is claimed to be once a week, more or less. But I noticed that
if I opened my Google Consumer Surveys app more often, whether or not there’s any
survey notification, I would receive the next surveys more frequently. Also from my
experience, I received survey requests more often at the end of the month than at the
beginning.
The below screenshot proves that I made almost $33.30 in Google Opinion Reward in a
period of 10 months. Enough for a few apps or books!

BURN AFTER READING
Everyone deserves the right to not let others quote and misuse any of their messages.
Snapchat is a popular social messaging app available for both iOS and Android that allows
its users to take photos, record videos, include text and drawings, and send them to others
to only view for a limited time (from 1 to 10 seconds set by users before sending), after
which the viewed photos and videos will be hidden from the recipient’s device and deleted
from Snapchat’s servers.
Well, you may argue that Snapchat does not prevent recipients from turning on airplane
mode, viewing the photos/videos for a longer time and even taking screen shots. Or even
worse, some third-party apps may covertly save messages without letting the sender know,
which actually did happen when a hack of a third party app called Snapsave led to
Snapchat photo leak.
Don’t feel disheartened just yet! Another messaging app called Cyber Dust, created and
used by Mark Cuban, comes to the rescue. Messages self-destruct forever and never hit a
hard drive (whether on the recipient’s device or Cyber Dust’s server) after the recipient
reads them. Notification will be sent if screen shot is taken, and then all content on both
phones is disassociated from the username, i.e. there’s no proof of who-said-what in the
event that somebody takes a screen shot. That sounds like true “burn after reading” to me!

PART 3. SOMETHING SERIOUS

8. MS OFFICE, BROWSERS, WINDOWS

Tons of books and webpages have been written on how to use Microsoft Office, Browsers,
and Windows. I only intend to highlight a few lesser known and universally applicable tips
and tricks in this chapter, and reveal some useful tools at your fingertips to help improve
your productivity.

MICROSOFT EXCEL
MATRIX OPERATIONS
Unknown to surprisingly many users, Excel can do matrix operations (think solving
system of linear equation?), with Array Formulas. Official guidelines and examples are
available here.
An array formula uses matrix operations and returns a result that can be a matrix, a vector,
or a scalar, depending on the computations involved. Whatever the result may be, an area
on the spreadsheet of precisely the correct size must be selected before the formula is
typed in (otherwise you will either lose some of the answer or receive error). For example,
a single cell must be selected for a scalar result while multiple adjacent cells are for a
vector result. After typing an array formula, you press three keys together at once: CTRL
+ SHIFT + ENTER, instead of just ENTER as in the case of regular Excel formulas.

SOLVER
Solver, an Excel add-in, helps you find a solution that satisfies all of the pre-set
constraints and maximizes or minimizes the objective cell value by changing other cells.
An example of using Solver is model fitting for least squares or L1-norm solutions. (My
other book From Nutrition Facts to Recipe Formulas: A Geek’s Guide to Reverse
Engineering Ingredients Quantities introduces the method of using Excel Solver for recipe
reverse engineering and development.)
The Solver add-in could be installed by going to the Tools menu and then Add-ins.

ANALYSIS TOOLPAK
An efficient way to perform complex data analysis in Excel is to use the Analysis
ToolPak, which could be loaded into Excel by selecting it in File/Options/Add-ins. You
provide the data and parameters for each analysis, and the analysis tool uses appropriate
statistical or engineering macro functions to calculate and display results in an output
table. In some cases, charts are also generated in addition to output tables.

FORMULA AUDITING
This tool is a godsend for those dealing with complicated spreadsheets. Trace Precedents
and Trace Dependents, in the Formulas Tab, locate and display precedents and
dependents for worksheet cells or formulas. A precedent is any cell whose value is needed
to compute a selected formula’s value. A dependent is any cell containing a formula whose
values can’t be computed without knowledge of a selected cell. Excel marks precedents
and dependents with blue arrows when you use the Auditing tool. The Remove Arrows
button clears the display of the arrows.

Clicking Trade Dependents repeatedly shows all the dependents of Cell B19.

MICROSOFT POWERPOINT
ATTENTION PLEASE
When you’re giving a presentation in PowerPoint or Keynote, there is an easy way to have
your audience pay attention to you the speaker instead of your slide. Simple Black or
White out the slide by pressing the B or W key. When you are ready to jump back to the
slides, press B or W again.

START THE SLIDESHOW

You cannot believe how many people I’ve seen hunting for the little icon on the screen to
start their presentations. Just press the F5 key. The slideshow will start from the
beginning.
If you want to start from a specific page, please do not embarrass yourself by starting at
the beginning and frantically clicking your way back to the slide you really want. Instead,
press SHIFT + F5. PowerPoint hops into presentation mode and begins with the slide you
had up.

JUMP TO A CERTAIN SLIDE

Sometimes you wish you could leap directly to a certain slide during a presentation
without making your audience watch you flip through all of them in sequence. Dream
come true: simply type the slide number and then hit ENTER. No need to exit slideshow
mode. You won’t see your typing on the screen. It makes your slide jumping really easy.

BROWSERS
Most of us use web browsers on computers every day at work, but many still are not able
to perform tasks quickly and use mouse for repeated tasks such as fumbling through tabs
or closing multiple tabs/windows. The most efficient way to use browsers is through
keyboard shortcuts. You may notice that some of the shortcuts appear in browser
dropdown menus. In Chrome, for example, click on File or Edit menu and you’ll see a
bunch of keyboard shortcuts listed next to the items (e.g. Ctrl+T or Cmd+T for new tab).
For more shortcuts, it’s helpful to visit browsers’ help pages (Chrome keyboard shortcuts,
Safari shortcuts, Internet Explorer keyboard shortcuts, and Firefox keyboard shortcuts).
As my last effort to convince you the huge benefits of starting to use more keyboard
shortcuts for browsing, I list below some of the Chrome shortcuts (on Mac) that I find
extremely useful.
Cmd + Shift + T: Reopens the last tab you’ve closed. Google Chrome remembers the last
10 tabs you’ve closed.
Cmd + [ or ]: Goes to the previous or next page in your browsing history for the tab.
Cmd + L: Highlights the URL (where all is selected by default)
Press Cmd and click a link: opens the link in a new tab in the background
Press Shift and click a link: opens the link in a new window

WINDOWS
Believe it or not, most of us use Windows (mostly like Windows 7) at work. But I noticed
very few actually know the power of navigating with one click which would allow you,
for example, to switch windows quickly to hide from a nosy coworker, or to lock screen
with a single key stroke before fetching coffee.
(Win for Windows logo key)
Win: Open the Start menu
Win + L: Lock computer or switch users’
Win + D: Display the Desktop, again to recover
Win + E: Open Computer
Win + F: Search for a file or folder
Win + M: Minimize all windows
Win + Home: Minimize all but the active window
Win + Up Arrow: Maximize the active window
Win + Down Arrow: Minimize the active window
Win + Left Arrow: Maximize the window to the left side of screen
Win + Right Arrow: Maximize the window to the right side of screen
Win + R: Open the Run dialog box
Alt + Tab: Switch between applications

If you use Windows in virtual machine on Mac, use the command key instead for the
Windows-logo key.

9. PRIVACY AND SECURITY

Nowadays, protecting our digital footprint has become more crucial than ever. This
chapter discusses how to recover or obliterate deleted files on computers, browse websites
anonymously, and give your emails without really giving them.

DELETE FILES ON COMPUTERS
You may know that putting files or folders into the Trash or the Recycle Bin doesn’t
actually delete anything. You have to empty the Trash or Recycle Bin to “permanently”
delete them. But they are still not really gone yet.
Technically, your computer has only marked those “permanently deleted” files’ spaces on
the hard drive as “available to store new files”. It hasn’t actually erased them. The good
news is that you can resurrect accidentally deleted files if you haven’t saved some files
onto the hard drive in the exact spot where your freshly deleted files once sat. Plenty of
data recovery systems, like Stellar Phoneix (for Mac and Windows) and Recuva (for
Windows), can usually bring back the dead. However, the bad news is if the files you’re
trying to delete are extremely sensitive, confidential, or embarrassing, somebody else
could actually recover them and use them to their benefit.
Here’s how to delete files to make them gone forever so that even professionals cannot
revive.
On Mac:
Choose the Secure Empty Trash command from the Finder menu. Whatever was in the
Trash is now deleted irrevocably and irretrievably.
On Windows:
Use a free program like Eraser, which does the same thing as the Secure Empty Trash
command on Mac.

PASSWORD MANAGING
Hold on before clicking that “Forgot password?” link - chances are that your web browser
has your password stored somewhere in the depths of its memory. Here’s how to retrieve it
from your browser.

CHROME
Click Chrome menu (three lines) in the upper right corner of your window. Choose
Settings and click Show advanced settings. Then click Manage passwords under
“Passwords and forms”. Check here for Google’s official answers to more password
management settings on both computer and mobile devices.

SAFARI
Click Safari > Preferences from Safari menu bar, and then select the Passwords tab. Click
Show Passwords.

FIREFOX
Click the Menu button (three lines) and choose Preference. In the Security panel, click
Saved Passwords and the Password Manager will open.

INTERNET EXPLORER
Go to Control Panel on your computer and search for “Manage network passwords”. Click
on the link and view and change your passwords in the Credential Manager window.

It’s essential to know the password managing features, because it prepares you to delete
your passwords stored in web browsers of any devices that you won’t be using ever again.

INCOGNITO BROWSING
Incognito browsing, or private browsing, is a setting that does not leave behind history or
other private data such as cache or cookies at the end of your browsing session. Incognito
browsing is not meant as a way to be completely anonymous on the Internet. If your
computer has any monitoring software, they can still capture and monitor everything you
do on the computer. Each web page you visit still recognizes your IP except if you use a
Proxy or Virtual Private Network (VPN). Nevertheless, incognito browsing does clear
your tracks from others who may have access to the same computer or mobile device that
you’re currently using.

CHROME
In the top-right corner of the browser window, click or touch the Chrome menu icon (3
lines on computer or 3 dots on mobile). Select New Incognito Window (computer) or New
incognito tab (mobile). A new window will open with the incognito icon (hat over glasses)

SAFARI
File > New Private Window
Private Browsing Enabled appears at the top of the new window as confirmation.

FIREFOX
At the top right of the browser next to the search bar, click on the Firefox Menu icon (3
grey lines) and then select New Private Window.

INTERNET EXPLORER
Tools > InPrivate Browsing
On Surface or Windows tablet:
Tap the “…” button at the top of the Tabs frame and select New InPrivate Tab.

THE 10-MINUTE EMAIL ADDRESS
When would you ever need to use a temporary email address? Well, when you sign up for
something with your email but not so sure whether you’ll get all kinds of spam thereafter.
Here’s a handy solution: www.10minutemail.com. An email address will be generated just
for you to use in the next 10 minutes (you can extend it if more time is needed). You can
send and receive emails using that disposable email address just like your real ones.

CALL BLOCKER
Mr. Number is a powerful app for your smart phone to automatically block unwanted
calls and texts as well as identify and stop spam.

THE “DO NOT CALL/MAIL/EMAIL” LISTS
The National Do-Not-Call Registry, established together by the Federal Communications
Commission (FCC) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), gives everyone a choice
about whether to receive telemarketing calls, including on cell phones. After signing your
phone numbers up for this free service at www.donotcall.gov, telemarketers are not
allowed to call and pester you on those numbers. In case some telemarketers ignore the
registry and call you anyways, the same site offers to let you report them.
Another FTC list that lets you avoid receiving unsolicited “preapproved” credit card and
insurance offers in the mail: www.optoutprescreen.com, which is run by the four big
credit-reporting companies (Equifax, Experian, Innovis, TransUnion).
If you want to do something about the overflowing junk mail in your physical AND/OR
electronic mailboxes, DMAChoice, created by the Direct Marketing Association, offers
the junk mail opt-out service you may be delighted to sign up for. For physical junk mail
opt-out registration, go to http://www.dmachoice.org/register.php. For Email opt-out, go to
http://www.dmachoice.org/ and then click “Email Opt Out Service” on the webpage.

10. READING COMPANIONS

“Reading is the best return on investment. You have to live your entire life in order to
know one life. But with reading you can know 1000s of people’s lives for almost no cost.
What a great return.” — James Altucher, bestselling author among many other titles, and
my recent favorite author. This chapter introduces some of the best tools for reading.

GOODREADS
Goodreads.com is a website for readers where they can add books to their personal
bookshelves, rate and review books, follow what their friends and authors are reading. I
love the website and its app for two reasons: 1) it lets me document all the books I have
read, am reading, and about to read; 2) I met some like-minded people on Goodreads who
enjoy the same types of books as I do, added them as friends, and got to know many other
good books that I would be interested in but was not aware of. Goodreads is truly a social
network for bookworms and available in the form of apps for mobile devices.
Other uses of Goodreads include checking out “Best of” Lists, entering/running
Giveaways, and taking book quizzes and finding quotes for fun.

FBREADER
You can open MOBI files in Amazon Kindle, ePub files in iBooks, and PDFs in Adobe
Reader. But you cannot do mix-and-match by opening MOBI in iBooks or ePub in Kindle.
FBReader is a free multi-platform ebook reader that can read most ebook formats. It’s
available for all smartphones and tablets (except for Apple products), Windows, Mac OS
and Linux. The Speak+ plugin for FBReader Android app allows text-to-speech and
automatic page turning. Like iBooks on Apple devices and Amazon Kindle app,
FBReader also offers the Night/Day option in the dropdown menu that could change the
default white background to black and vice versa - a useful feature to reduce your eyes’
exposure to light and prevent disturbed sleep.
An equivalently great reading app for Apple users is Voice Dream Reader.

SEND TO KINDLE
Have you ever wondered whether you could easily forward online articles from your
computer to phone/tablet or Kindle e-reader to read at another time? Send-to-Kindle gives
you the convenience of sending documents and web content from your browser or desktop
and reading them later on a Kindle device or in a Kindle reading app (on your phone or
tablet). The sent contents will be saved as personal documents in Amazon Cloud that can
be accessed from different devices of yours.

CHROME TO PHONE
Last but not least, Chrome to Phone lets you send links, maps, selected phone numbers
and texts from the Chrome browser running on your computer directly to your Android
phone. Install the chrome extension for your browser and the app for your phone to get
started.
Along a similar line, Send to Google Glass allows you to send selected texts and images
from Chrome browser to Google Glass if you have one like myself.

CUSTOMIZED SEARCHING ON AMAZON
Ever have a budget for purchasing books on Amazon? One searching method is to sort
searching results by price, starting from the lowest all the way up to your stop price. The
drawback is that you lose the option of sorting by Average Customer Rating, Publication
Date or Featured (Popularity). The solution is to add &field-price=min_price(in cents)-
max_price(in cents) to the end of the search result webpage address.
For example, all the Kindle eBooks in the Computers & Technology category start listing
on the webpage: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=lp_154606011_nr_n_5?
fst=as%3Aoff&rh=n%3A133140011%2Cn%3A%21133141011%2Cn%3A154606011%2Cn%3A
By adding &field-price=0-99 to the long address -
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=lp_154606011_nr_n_5?
fst=as%3Aoff&rh=n%3A133140011%2Cn%3A%21133141011%2Cn%3A154606011%2Cn%3A
price=0-99,
we would get all the Computers & Technology eBooks priced between 0 and 99 cents.
The result could be further sorted by rating, publication date, or popularity in the
dropdown list on the webpage.
If you are only interested in free books, append &field-price=0-0 instead.


PART 4. SOMETHING ELSE

11. EVERYDAY ERGONOMICS

Nowadays, more and more companies educate their employees about ergonomics in the
workplace to reduce health care costs and improve employee productivity. As individuals,
we can actually benefit from ergonomics not only in the workplace but also in our
everyday lives. This chapter introduces several products I use personally almost every day.

HEIGHT- ADJUSTABLE DESK(TOP)
“Sitting is the new smoking.” Doctors have found that sitting for too long actually
shortens our lives. Alternating between sitting and standing positions is critical for us to
keep our bodies healthy and prevent illness.
There are two options of making the switch from a traditional desk. The starter is a
desktop riser. Call it a desktop workstation, a sit-stand workstation, or whatever you want.
It basically rests on your existing desktop with a heavy base for stability and includes an
adjustable-height surface to let you work while standing. The downside is the limitation of
surface area and the stability compared to a full desk.
The second option is to go all the way with a full-grown height-adjustable desk. Those
desks can be adjusted either electrically (such as GeekDesk or IKEA sit/stand desk) or
manually (crank). The GeekDesk I use can be programmed to store four preset heights, as
well as showing the height digitally to assist in keeping the same height for every use.

INVERSION TABLE
Inversion therapy involves being upside down or at an inverted angle while hanging by the
legs, ankles, or feet with the intention of therapeutic benefits. It is a form of spinal
decompression.
One of the tools for inversion therapy is called inversion table. Inversion table allows you
to choose any angle from horizontal, to benefit from inversion therapy, while putting less
strain on your feet, ankles, knees, and other joints while inverting at a smaller angle.
Claimed benefits of using inversion tables include relieving neck and back pain,
encouraging proper skeletal alignment (posture), releasing muscle tension, and so on.
I use a Teeter Hang-Ups inversion table (5 minutes at a time, inverted at a 60 degree
angle) to relieve neck/back pain or simply to stretch, right before going to bed. I
personally believe, in this way, my spine and joints will hold in the stretched condition for
a longer time when I lie down in bed immediately afterwards.
People with heart disease, high blood pressure, eye diseases (such as glaucoma), or
pregnant are at higher risk for the dangers related to inversion therapy and should consult
their doctors first about inversion therapy.

POSTURE CORRECTOR
Inversion table introduced in the previous section helps to reverse the impact of our bad
posture on our spine. But how can we prevent bad posture in the first place without
standing in front of a mirror all the time?
Lumo Lift is a small and lightweight wearable that helps you develop great posture and a
healthy back. It can track your posture and activity (good posture hours, steps, and calories
burned) and coach you to sit and stand tall. I like the feature that Lumo Lift vibrates
whenever I slouch from my upper back, making me aware of my bad posture.

SELF ROLLER MASSAGER
You’ve probably seen them in CVS or Walgreens. Self roller massager is one of the best
home therapy gadgets. It can eliminate muscle soreness and pain by rolling knots out of
muscles.
The Stick is a reputable brand of self roller massagers. Its 17” Travel Stick, which I use,
was popularized by the U.S. Cycling Team for use on the lower limbs for quick recovery.
In addition to relieving muscle pain after workout, I discovered another use for my
massager: relieving water retention in my legs at the end of a long day.
Water retention is sometimes caused by a sluggish lymph system. The lymph system’s job
is in part to collect fluid and return it to the blood. Without the efficient involvement of the
lymph system, fluid can accumulate and make us “swell”. Massage, like lymphatic
drainage, is a traditional way to help collect and pump fluid back to the lymph system and
thus relieve fluid retention. Self roller massager is an ideal tool for doing the job yourself.

TOILET STOOL
Do you spend too long on the toilet, sometimes with poor results? It’s very likely because
you aren’t sitting properly. Our gut has a natural kink created by a tight muscle. And only
a squatting position could make the muscle fully relax and the kink straighten for a faster
and satisfactory bowel emptying.
You’ve probably seen the commercial of Squatty Potty toilet stool (aka the video of “This
Unicorn Changed the Way I Poop” available on YouTube). A minimalist alternative to the
~$30 single-purpose stool to significantly improve your toilet experience is simply a 7-9
inch high multi-functional foldable step stool at about half the price of Squatty Potty.
Sitting with your feet on the stool and upper body leaning forward creates a squatting
posture, which is the most natural defecation position for humans!

12. KITCHEN GADGETS

Guilty as charged, I had too many kitchen gadgets. But there’re only a few of them that I
cannot really live without in addition to my basic pots and pans. This chapter discusses
three really versatile gadgets.

BLENDER
Invest in a good blender, like Vitamix, Blendtac, or Ninja Blender. Besides serving as a
food processor, it can grind flour, crush ice, and make smoothies, which in my opinion are
better than juice because of the included fibers that make them whole foods to consume.
Have you ever included pineapple core in your smoothie to increase fiber intake? That’s
how good a powerful blender can be to turn anything into teeny tiny pieces. Besides
pineapple core smoothies, my other favorite blender recipes are mango sorbet (from only
frozen mango), strawberry ice cream (from frozen strawberry, cream, sugar, and vanilla),
and peanut/cashew butter (with or without salt, crunchy or creamy).
I believe a good blender can sometimes replace an ice cream maker, especially when
making soft serve ice cream. The mechanism of ice cream makers is to churn ice cream
mixture during the freezing process to prevent (big) ice crystals from forming which
would make the mixture feel like ice or popsicles rather than ice cream. A good blender
breaks frozen ingredients into tiny icy pieces and blends them all together. If how an ice
cream maker works is a bottom-up approach, then a blender utilizes a top-down approach
in ice cream making.

SPIRALIZER
Spiral slicer, or spiralizer, can create spiral cuts and noodles of vegetable or fruit in
seconds. It’s a great tool to cut vegetable/fruit fast, work more vegetable into your diet,
and turn vegetables into healthy, creative, and satisfying meals. Some of my favorite
dishes assisted by spiralizer are zucchini pasta, daikon ramen, spicy Jicama strings, and
Mason Jar salad with spiralized veggies.
Fruits and veggies suitable for spiralizing include: apple, beet, broccoli, butternut squash,
carrot, cabbage, celeriac, chayote, cucumber, jicama, onion, parsnip, pear, potato, radish,
rutabaga, sweet potato, turnip, yucca, zucchini and summer squash.
Just try it and you’ll be inspiralized!

DEHYDRATOR
A food dehydrator uses a heat source and air flow to reduce the water content of foods to
preserve fruits, vegetables, and animal proteins. It’s possible, with a dehydrator, to make at
home all kinds of fruit and veggie chips, fruit leathers, jerkies, dried tomatoes and herbs,
and even potpourri.
In addition, a dehydrator can serve as an incubator for making yogurt or other
fermentations. Just make sure your dehydrator, with the drying trays removed, can fit in
containers with food to ferment.
Here’s a side note. You may have seen or even tried freeze dried fruits and veggies in
grocery stores. A conventional food dehydrator cannot make the same texture as freeze
drying does to food because of their different working mechanisms. Food in a regular
dehydrator loses its water content and collapses textually in a process of hours. Freeze
drying works by freezing food and then reducing the surrounding pressure to allow the
frozen water in the food to sublimate directly from the solid phase (ice) to the gas phase
(water vapor) and leaving behind air pockets, which help preserve the original size of the
food. Obviously, the temperature and pressure need to be controlled precisely during the
freeze drying process, therefore freeze-driers are mainly industrial machines. Some claim
that if you leave food in a freezer for many many days, it’ll gradually lose its water
content (ice) by sublimation and thus produce freeze dried food. Although it sounds
theoretically possible, I haven’t been patient enough to conduct the experiment to verify
its validity.

13. EXPERIENCE THE LATEST TECHNOLOGIES

The information age, I believe, will have for us more excitement than ever in the very near
future. Think about it: virtual reality, electric cars, driverless cars, 3D printing, delivery
drones, solar power, etc.. This chapter introduces ways of experiencing three of the top
technologies for (almost) free, as a preview for the exciting and better future.

TESLA CAR
Who resurrected the electric car? Tesla Motors! It shows us all that electric cars can be fast
and sexy, plus zero emission. Tesla Motors operates stores or galleries in 81 U.S. states
and Washington DC, as of June 2015, where customers can see and feel Tesla cars, and
even take one out for a spin, for free. What could beat this experience when it brings you
so close to the revolutionary technology in cars? You can go to Telsa Motors website to
sign up for a test drive at your local Tesla store or event. A complete list of Tesla stores
and galleries around the world can be found here.

GOOGLE CARDBOARD
Just like its name assumes, the device is literally made of cardboard and other low-cost
components. But don’t let the device’s low price fool you. This is just Google’s way of
letting the public experience virtual reality (VR) in a simple, fun, and affordable fashion.
Google Cardboard is a virtual reality platform developed by Google for use with a fold-
out cardboard mount (viewer) for any smartphone. Simply install Google Cardboard apps
on your smartphone and mount it in the viewer for a truly eye-opening, jaw-dropping, and
mind-blowing immersive experience of virtual reality.
The viewer’s specifications were defined by Google, but there is no official manufacturer
or vendor for the device. You can build your own Google Cardboard viewer if you’re
crafty enough, or just purchase one from Google’s list or vendors on Amazon. (I got one
with head straps for ~$11 and one without for ~$4.)

3D PRINTING
This is another field of my interests. Believe it or not, aside from the buzz lately about 3D
printing at home, the general public still hasn’t really had first-hand experience of the
technology so as to realize its full potentials of changing the ways we can make things.
MakerBot, now a subsidiary of Stratasys (a major player in 3D printing), makes desktop
3D printers and 3D scanners to serve the consumer and desktop market segments.
Although desktop 3D printers only “print” in colored plastic, they’re a nice introduction to
the 3D printing technology. Watch a MakerBot desktop 3D printing in action in one of
over 460 stores across the U.S. near you.
Shapeways is a 3D printing marketplace and service company, where you can buy or sell
designs or printed items, or have Shapeways factories 3D print your design out in plastics,
sandstone, ceramics, or metal. If you live anywhere close to NYC in the U.S. or Einhoven
in the Netherlands, you’re in luck for free Shapeways factory tours. I signed up for one of
them on Meetup and had a great time at the event. The staff basically walked you through
most of the equipment and explained in detail the whole 3D printing procedure at the
factories. The tours can totally help you understand factory-scale 3D printing very well.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Claire J. Sha received formal training in Physics and Engineering (overeducated Ph.D.).
She is a self-claimed technophile and minimalist. Her interests include technologies,
reading, knowledge sharing, and healthy living. She lives in Houston TX and can be
reached at clairejsha@gmail.com.


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