Flowers? Chocolate? Sure! But a truly useful website or app is what makes us REALLY happy.  For Valentine's Day, we're sharing a few of our favorites with you---the ones that are right up there with chocolate.  Most are free for basic use and offer paid upgrades. 

Tame the data monster
Have you ever hunted for information that you KNOW you saved. . . somewhere? Keep organized with Dropbox (Alison's favorite, simpler and more file-oriented) or Evernote (Diane's favorite, more sophisticated and better for lists, articles, and images). Both allow you to access your information from your own computer and from nearly any Internet-connected device.  

Painless backup
Murphy's law says that your computer will crash just before you were going to backup. Online backup services take the "oops!" out of protecting your data; set them up once, and they run automatically, so you don't have to remember to plug anything in--especially critical with laptops. Our two favorites are Mozy and Carbonite; look for a free basic plan or consider a long-term plan if you can lock in unlimited data, as those plans are vanishing rapidly.  (Newer Macs have a terrific built-in backup program,Time Machine, but you still need a drive to store the data).

Entertainment and Dining
Dining: Remember when you had to call around to find a table? Opentable has revolutionized reservations.  The online (paid) version of Zagat is a staple, too; we're eager to see improvements since Google bought them.  And for those annoying restaurants with "flattering" lighting and menus designed by 20 year olds:  Flashlight, an app that turns your iPhone or iPod touch into a mini light source. (Similar products exist for Android and Blackberry phones).

Staying in and cooking? Epicurious is a searchable database of recipes from Gourmet, Bon Appetit and others, plus ratings and comments from real cooks. 
 
Movie reviews: Rottentomatoes, especially for art-y films.

Tickets:  Broadwaybox and TKTS for discounts; Seatgeek for hot tickets. 

Radio:  Check out the the streaming radio options in iTunes--free and plentiful.  Couldn't do the dinner dishes without NPR, and they also have a great app.  Or, set yourself up with a custom radio station on iHeartRadio or Pandora. 

Getting There, Greenly
Did you know that New Yorkers travel almost a third of all public transit miles in the US? Google maps will find almost anything and give you directions, but Hopstop offers slicker public transit directions.  

Plain ol' fun and a shameless plug
Angry Birds and Bejeweled are great diversions, but Family Feud is free and fun and since you can only play one or two rounds for free a day, you can't waste too much time with it! 


Words with Friends is just addictive. Challenge Alison (username: cdotmom) to a game! 

Coming attractions:
Travel Tech returns in March, and our next new workshop will be on managing recipes!

We've all received those weird emails: a friend writes that she's stranded in a foreign hotel and urgently requires you to send money. Or that she can solve all your problems if you just click on this link.  Or maybe a message like that has been sent "from" you to everyone in YOUR address book. Mildly embarrassing, yes. But it could be so much worse!  When the bad guys get your passwords, you can be at real risk. 

One of the most common and dangerous mistakes we see is people using the same passwords over and over again. In a perfect world, you'd have a different password for every website you access--a nice, long, complicated one. But we only have so many brain cells, and they're full of more important things, like what time is dinner. So what to do? 

Three Levels of Passwords

There is no such thing as perfect security; there is only a balance between safety and convenience. If your passwords become too complicated, then you'll end up writing them down (not very secure) or forgetting them (very inconvenient). Here are our three simple rules for managing passwords in a way you can live with. 

1. Use a unique password for your email account The single most important password in your life is your email account password because it is the "master key" to almost everything else. (If you have ever reset a password for another account, how did it work? Usually by sending you an email. So if someone can get into your email account, they can control everything). Make sure the email account password one is: -  different from every other password you use;  -  long (at least 8 characters, 9 is better), and  -  includes both upper and lower case letters and numbers, and ideally other characters too.  That doesn't have to be as hard as it sounds;  a variation of, for example, your childhood address might work just fine (23Elm$treet).  

2. Use a different set of secure passwords for sites with financial or sensitive information If you bank online, access credit cards or medical records, use another set of unique passwords for those sites that are NOT the same as the password as your email address, but same rules. Length is important. 

3. Use VARIATIONS of a simple password for all the everyday stuff Making reservations on Opentable? Ordering prints on Shutterfly? Watching movies on Netflix? Those are lower-risk activities, but they all still require passwords. Come up with a password that is easy for you to remember (not your birthday, your dog's name, etc.) and then tack on something different for each website, for example: 
Opentable: 12bananas!O
Shutterfly: 12bananas!S
Netflix: 12bananas!N 

It's simple, easy to remember, and fairly secure. That way if one website's user login list is hacked, and your password is stolen, it won't be so easy for the thieves to get into all your other accounts. (There's a lot more we can show you about easy ways to manage your passwords, but this post is long enough!) 

Now, what are you waiting for? PLEASE, protect yourself online. Set aside a few minutes now to make sure that, at the very least, you are using a unique password for your email account. (And remember that you will need to update the password on any device that picks up your email, like a smartphone or an iPad). 

Stay Safe!