Life Hacks – Spoken Edition

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Learn How to Draw From Disney Animators Through These Free Videos May 04, 2020

Show notes

If you’ve been using some of your at-home time to learn how to draw, Disney Parks has a number of videos that might help. The Park’s “How to Draw” series on YouTube offers videos on how to draw everyone from Elsa and Anna from Frozen to classic characters like Donald Duck and Goofy. Each video is hosted by an actual Disney animator. Some of the videos are around five minutes, while other more complicated characters can take over 20 minutes to learn.

Disney's Bedtime Hotline Offers Kids Free Bedtime Messages From Characters May 01, 2020

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Last September, Disney offered a “Bedtime Hotline” for two weeks where the young and young at heart could call to listen to a bedtime message from their favorite Disney, Marvel, Star Wars, or Pixar character. Now, the free hotline is making a brief reappearance to help kids staying at home off to dreamland. Between now and April 30th, you can access the hotline by calling 1-877-7-MICKEY. When you do, you’ll be prompted to select the character you’d like to listen to a message from. Options include Mickey himself as well as characters like Goofy and Donald Duck. Unlike September’s offering, your options are just traditional Disney characters this time rather than Marvel or Star Wars characters. Once you’ve made your selection, a recorded goodnight message from your selected character will play, and then the service will hang up. If you’d like to listen to another message, you’ll have to dial in again to select another character. The prompts at the beginning are definitely geared more towards parents than little ones, so you also likely want to go through those yourself and then put the goodnight message on speakerphone rather than just dialing and handing over your phone.

How to Preorder the iPhone SE for $200 off Apr 30, 2020

Show notes

Apple’s upcoming second-generation iPhone SE is available for preorder from several online retailers, but if you’re a Verizon or AT&T customer and your account is eligible for an upgrade, Walmart’s preorder deal can save you half the price of the device.

Get Notified When a Grocery Pickup Slot Is Available Apr 29, 2020

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The last time I got groceries, it only happened after a solid seven days of refreshing my cart periodically, sometimes constantly, in order to secure a delivery window. A new web-based tool could make the process a lot less painful for you, provided you live in an area where curbside pickup is an option. I have bad asthma that makes it difficult for me to wear thick masks for a prolonged period of time, transforming every grocery aisle into a potential war zone. Food shopping still has to happen though, a fact that has resulted in some creative dining at my house, courtesy of the local bodega that stocks a limited selection of grocery items. Getting a delivery or pickup window on grocery store sites is increasingly difficult, so much so that Amazon has started a waitlist for new customers to sign up to use its service in order to control the demand. If you’re like me and need to get groceries from a larger store without going inside, the new service Curb Run might be able to help. After you sign up and agree to receive texts, the site will let you know when a curbside pickup option is available at a grocery store near you. The idea here is that you’ll already have filled your cart on the grocery store website of choice, including your payment info. You can then set up an alert on Curb Run indicating how far you’re willing to travel for groceries, what store you want to get them from and what day you’d ideally want to pick them up. Enter your phone number you’ll receive an automated text when the site locates a curbside pickup option available. Unfortunately, the site only works with large chains—and not all of them—but it supports a pretty healthy list of familiar brands, including Wegmans, Safeway, Albertsons, Food Lion, Vons, Smith’s Fry’s, Ralphs and Fred Meyer. I gave it a test drive this morning and received a text about available curbside pickup options 20 miles from my house roughly 15 minutes later. That text doesn’t save you a spot, it’s merely lets you know one exists. Once you get that notification, it’s up to you to quickly load up that grocery store’s site and complete your transaction—hopefully before someone else snags the available pickup time. That means the best way to pull this off is to have the page open and ready to go and keep your eye on your phone so you can pounce quickly as soon as the text alert chimes. It’s not a foolproof system, but if you’ve been trying for a while, it might be just what you need to finally make eggs and milk happen.

Unlock Nvidia's New App to Kill Annoying Background Noise Apr 28, 2020

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Gaming is great and all—especially during a pandemic, and especially now that you can play a souped-up version of Minecraft with real-time ray tracing—but you can now use your Nvidia graphics card to create real-life magic.

You Can Get Two Months of Stadia Pro For Free Right Now Apr 27, 2020

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The COVID-19 pandemic has many of us spending a lot more time at home, and many companies offering options for things to do while you’re there. This week Google announced that it’s offering free access to its cloud gaming service Stadia right now. Additionally, it’s giving anyone that signs up 2 months of free access to Stadia Pro, which scores you free access to nine different games.

How to Access Your Instagram DMs On The Web Apr 23, 2020

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Social and physical distancing has a lot of us spending more time in front of screens and communicating with friends in different ways than we normally would, often through social media. Instagram, in particular, has offered a lot of interesting live shows to entertain us. One thing it hasn’t offered: a way to DM your friends from the web. Instagram DMs have historically only been available via the social networks app; however, this week Instagram brought the feature to the web as well. If you haven’t tried sending a DM from the web, you can get to it by going to your profile on Instagram from your browser, logging in, and then clicking the paper plane icon at the top right side of the page. You can also load your DMs directly by going to this page. It’s a small thing, for sure, but if you’re someone that’s been using Instagram as a way to communicate with friends then being able to access those messages on the web will definitely come in handy. Sadly, one thing Instagram hasn’t added into the mix just yet is the ability to watch all those Instagram Live videos on the web. Last week we told you about a Chrome extension that will definitely help you get the job done, but it would be great to see Instagram add that support natively in the future.

How to Customize Your Background in Microsoft Teams Video Calls Apr 22, 2020

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Microsoft’s big office communication app, Microsoft Teams, is getting a fun new feature that makes it just as wacky as Zoom. You’ll now have the power to pretend you’re on a beach, in some faraway city, on the moon, or sitting in front of your favorite meme when you’re on a video call—yes, custom backgrounds are rolling out, and it’s a silly feature that all videoconferencing apps should have.

If You Want Grocery Delivery, Get on the Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods Waiting Lists Now Apr 21, 2020

Show notes

If you were thinking about trying Amazon Fresh or Whole Foods Market delivery or pickup services for the first time, be aware that you might have to spend some time on a waiting list before you can use either service to shop for groceries—so you might want to put yourself on that list right now.

Install the Latest Windows 10 Patch to Block Two Serious Vulnerabilities Apr 20, 2020

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Downloading a Windows update can be a gamble these days, but this week’s Windows 10 “Update Tuesday” patch feels more important than most. The update includes plenty of important security fixes, including patches for two actively exploited vulnerabilities in the Windows Adobe Type Manager that affect all Windows 10 users.