tips and tricks

It's always fun for us to look back at the end of the year and see which posts captured our readers' interests and imaginations the most. And while we have some perennial favorites like our picks for 30 of the coolest iPhone 6 cases or h…

Over the course of the year on Cool Mom Tech, we’ve put together so many helpful tech tips and tricks, many of which are answers to reader questions we get via email, over Twitter , on Facebook , and heck, even from our friends and famil…

Just when you think you know everything there is about your iPhone, here comes a new tip for turning on the LED flash alert that I think will help a whole lot of people. You know how sometimes you'll miss a call, text or important notifi…

We're continuing our series about kids and cell phones on behalf of our sponsor, the premium authorized Verizon retailer, Cellular Sales , because wow, do parents need help with this! And by parents, we mean, ourselves too! Because we kn…

As we watched the events in Paris unfold on the news last night, we were shocked and horrified, and immediately wondering what we could do. We're feeling especially thankful for technology and social media today, which has made us feel a…

H i Cool Mom Tech, Have you written about a tech solution that gathers photos from all the family computers and phones into one place for backup purposes? - James We've been exactly where you are, James: looking at all the options and sc…

There are two things folks typically say when you tell them that you work from home. The first is: You’re so lucky. You get to be in your pajamas all day and wake up whenever you want! Uh, sure. And the second is something along the line…

This is a sponsored message from Hobnob With the holidays right around the corner, the free Hobnob app for iOS makes sending invites to your holiday events, and sharing the photos afterwards even easier. Plus, you could win a $200 Target…

For so many of us, Facebook is like a having your own personal time machine and their On This Day feature can definitely make for a fun throwback, plus let you re-share those important digital memories. But there's a flip side to skippin…

Like most busy working parents out there, I pretty much unboxed my new iPhone 6S and started using it like I did with my iPhone 5S. In other words, I was texting and calling and really not spending a ton of time getting to know about all…

Calling all you ghosts, pirates, zombies, superheroes, and that small army of Queen Elsas -- it's time for your closeup. Because one of the best parts of Halloween for us, besides stealing our kids' fun-size Snickers, is getting photos o…

It seems the whole National Do Not Call Registry isn't always effective. Legit marketers have a lot of loopholes; charities, pollsters, political fundraisers and others are exempt; and then there are those shady marketers who simply don'…

My daughter is turning 6 and I'd like to get her a camera. We gave her an old Canon point-and-shoot for Christmas and she is so responsible with it - she's ready for a new one of her own. I love the Fujifilm Instax Mini (especially Hello…

We have officially entered the "please turn that music off" stage of parenting. Yay. (Sarcasm.) We have been lucky to try various kids' headphones over the years, and I've compared some of the top affordable headphones for kids. They're …

Some of our kids are really picky when it comes to books -- not too long, not too short, with just the right plot points and character types. Then there are the ones who go through books so quickly that we can barely keep up with suggest…

There's that wonderful moment when you first open up the box of your newest gadget and just smile at it. Some folks even give the new, shiny, and often pricy tech toy its own special name. At no point during this grand unboxing do you en…

For well over a decade, people have been talking -- or more like yelling -- about being hamstrung by cable companies. Some had-it-up-to-here folks have started cutting the cable cord and looking for more manageable, customized ways of wa…

We have gotten a lot of questions about how to properly repost an Instagram photo on your own feed, and no surprise, there are a ton of apps to help you do just that. Yes, you can technically just screenshot the photo, upload it to your …

I am pretty sure that it's written somewhere in the fine print of the Parenthood Contract that we're supposed to take tons of photos of our kids. So it's always a nice bonus when the subjects of our countless pics develop their own inter…

For awhile now, Facebook has been using ranking to order the stories in your news feed, which means you might be missing a lot of updates and posts from your friends and favorite pages. We can't tell you how many times we've heard from r…

Think about the last email you sent off in haste. Maybe it had a ridiculous typo. Or, worse, you spilled out all your anger or hurt feelings across the QWERTY instead of taking a breath -- or a night's sleep -- before hitting send. Ugh. …

If you're like us, you're counting down the days to a summer vacation, whether it's a weekend at the grandparents' place or something bigger. Either way, hopefully it means sleeping in late (kids willing), lazy days, catching up on books…

When I finally broke down and got my daughter an email account ( all my friends have one! actually does work sometimes) we had the long, requisite discussions about safety, etiquette, and responsibility. But wow, it turns out there's so …

I was going through my settings on Twitter recently to tweak something, and I never realized it, but there's a way to turn off your Twitter notifications during pre-set hours only. And if I just discovered this for the first time, then I…