Author Archives: Carol Edwards

Happy New Year! …now, when’s the last time you backed up your computer?

No, really? When? A few months ago? A year ago? Never?!

If you’ve never experienced data loss or hard drive failure, consider yourself extremely lucky. But, that luck will eventually run out. Everyone is bound to experience some sort of data loss within their lifetime. 

Take it from me. I’ve been an unlucky one. I’ve had an internal SSD die, and an iPhone brick — both times the data was unrecoverable. I literally once had smoke coming out of an external hard drive (that one, interestingly enough, was recoverable.)

We depend on our computers and mobile devices more so now than ever before. So the type of data being lost is only going to become more detrimental to lose: Your newborn child’s first photos, messages from deceased loved ones, the list goes on.

But that doesn’t have to be you! Let’s make regularly backing up your data – and backing it up the right way – our New Year’s resolution this year. Here’s what you need to make that happen.

The 3-2-1 Rule

There are quite a few people out there that I’ve come across who think moving files to an external hard drive in order to make room on their desktop or laptop computer means they have a backup.

If your files only exist in one place, you do not have a backup. In fact, even if you do have your files on two local drives, most data recovery experts would consider that insufficient.

That’s where the 3-2-1 rule comes in.

In order to truly protect your most precious data, you should have at least three separate copies, on at least two different mediums, with at least one copy offsite.

So, what does this mean? Let’s take your latest family holiday video that you shot on your iPhone. If, for example, you have that video saved on your mobile device, an external hard drive, and on Google Drive, then you’re following the 3-2-1 rule. That video is on two, separate local devices and saved offsite in the cloud.

How to make a backup on a Mac

If you have a Mac, there is no excuse to not back up your files. Apple’s Time Machine is an easy set it and forget it solution. And that’s important when it comes to backups. It’s automated. You can’t forget to do it once its setup.

Apple’s built-in backup software, Time Machine, is the easiest way to setup automatic backups on a Mac.
Credit: Mashable Screenshot

Just buy a small, compact 1TB or 2TB Western Digital My Passport drive and keep it plugged into your Mac and set up Time Machine. After the initial backup, Time Machine will save your computer’s state, all files included, every hour.

Ever have an issue with data loss? Simply use Time Machine to bring your computer back to the moment before the data loss.

I’ll be honest, I hadn’t used Time Machine for a very long time. It’s so easy to setup and use. I could have avoided a lot of headaches if I did. I regret it. In my defense though, years ago it took forever to create a backup. Sometimes, it just completely froze and didn’t even create the backup. Whatever the issues were back then, Apple has them fixed. My Mac Mini is now being backed up every hour and it’s super quick and efficient. You honestly won’t even realize when your Mac is backing up.

Physical storage tips

So, what hardware should you use to backup? What cloud services should you use to store your data? 

If you have a lot of data, say you take a lot of high quality photos or videos, it’s likely you’re not storing anything other than active projects on your actual computer. Time Machine has those active files covered. 

But, for basic cold storage for your archives, I’d recommend buying two Western Digital external drives. I recently purchased two 14TB WD Easystore drives on sale for less than $200 each, so you get a lot of storage for fairly low cost. To protect your files, keep a copy of all your photos, videos, and other important documents on both drives. For extra security, you could keep one of those hard drives offsite, say in your office or family member’s house.

Cloud services to consider

Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive – these are all well-known trustworthy file storage cloud services. However, they can get a bit pricey.

For $7 per month, you can try out Backblaze’s personal storage plan. Backblaze will automatically back up your PC or Mac, around the clock, no limit on how much you can store. It’ll even back up external hard drives plugged into your computer, as long as Backblaze detects them plugged into your Mac or PC at least once every 30 days.

Backblaze will regularly scan your computer for new files and automatically back them up.
Credit: Mashable Screenshot

If you ever need to grab a few files, you can access them through Backblaze’s online interface. If you suffer a total loss, you can request that Backblaze send you a physical hard drive in the mail with all your files.

Not a subscription person? There are two trustworthy companies who’ve been around for a while that offer a one-time payment “lifetime” cloud storage plan, PCloud and Koofr. 

PCloud offers a one-time payment plan that’ll provide you with backup storage for life.
Credit: Mashable Screenshot

Unlike Backblaze, these services aren’t strictly for backups. They’re general file sharing services so they don’t have all the restore options that Backblaze offers. However, they do offer options to automatically back up your files. You can grab a 2TB PCloud plan for $245 through sales they run throughout the year. Koofr offers lifetime plans starting at $29.99 for 100GB. Both services also offer annual plans.

Take a lot of pictures and videos with your iPhone? Then definitely sign up for a paid iCloud subscription. Trust me, it’s worth it for the peace of mind knowing that if you lose your smartphone, you also won’t lose all your data. Remember though, iCloud does store your media but they’re not necessarily a backup if those same files aren’t also on your phone. So, make sure that you store your iCloud photos on your physical storage devices regularly, too. At $9.99 a month for 2TB of storage, which you can share with other iPhone user relatives via Family Sharing, it’s a no-brainer.

Monitor your hard drive’s health

I’m not going to recommend any data recovery software here for two reasons:

1. You’re not going to need it because after you read this post, you’ll take the necessary action to have sufficient backups to save you from any data loss mishaps.

2. By the time you experience data loss, you should be going to a data recovery professional because messing around with most consumer-level data recovery software will only reduce the chances of recovering your files.

However, one piece of software I will recommend is DriveDX for Mac.

Why? Because DriveDX is a preventative. It monitors the health of your drive and notifies you of any possible impending failures, so you can take action before data loss occurs. 

DriveDX will scan your internal storage and tell you exactly how worried you should be about its health.
Credit: Mashable Screenshot

Now, it’s totally possible for a drive to die on you without any prior notice. This is especially possible with SSDs as a hard drive usually suffers from mechanical failures, which is often audible before it crashes on you. But, oftentimes there are warning signs that could have been caught if only you were using an app like DriveDX.

DriveDX will warn you when it comes across bad sectors or other signs of a failing drive and even assess what state the drive is in. If your drive is about to die on you, these warnings can be crucial in making sure that you stop using the drive in order to backup your most recent data and refrain from using it to store anything new. In my opinion, it’s definitely worth it at $19.99.

Trust me when I tell you that data loss sucks. So make sure you backup your computer regularly and correctly. This is the one New Year’s resolution you don’t want to break.

Happy 2022! We’re stuck in an endless pandemic and the earth is burning, but at least we have our memes 🙂

Let’s float on back to 2012, shall we? It was the year of the London Olympics and presidential elections in both the U.S. and Russia (welcome back, Barack and hello, Putin!) Skydiver Felix Baumgartner broke the sound barrier. YouTube was finding its rhythm as a global platform and text-based advice animals memes were the height of comedy.

The internet was a simpler place back then—not to mention less divisive—and honestly a lot more fun. Below are 15 internet moments that turn 10 in 2022. How many of them do you remember?

The earworms:

PSY – “Gangnam Style”

She’s an icon, she’s a legend, and she was the moment. This boisterous bop was beloved in the West for its absurdist music video and simple, silly horse trot choreography that spawned a million imitations. Its success puzzled Koreans (Psy was an unlikely pop star, and the song’s lyrics touch on Korean class struggles) but has since become a source of national pride. “Gangnam Style” was the first YouTube video to reach 1 billion views and remains delightful—and impossible not to dance to—to this day.  

Carly Rae Jepsen – “Call Me Maybe”

What is there to say that hasn’t already been said about the earwormiest earworm of the last century? Released in September 2011, Carly Rae Jepsen’s stellar single got a major boost from Justin Bieber in February 2012. The pop star’s parody featuring famous friends inspired the USA Olympic Swimming Team, Chatroulette trolls, and covers that in retrospect feel kind of icky. As “Call Me Maybe” popped, Jepsen signed to Bieber’s management (pure coincidence or savvy marketing? You decide!) and released “Good Time” with Owl City in June. Yeah, it was a good year.

Gotye feat. Kimbra – “Somebody That I Used to Know”

Gotye and Kimbra stood very still (naked and cold, no doubt) to shoot the stop-motion music video for this cathartic ditty about the very real pain of a breakup. A visually interesting and technically impressive Walk of the Earth cover in which all five members of the group play the song on a single, shared guitar was one of YouTube’s most viral videos of the year. Where is Gotye now? I’m not sure. Now he’s just somebody that we used to know… 

The ones you actually forgot about:

Shit People Say

Listen… listen, listen, listen, LISTEN, listen… this is one of the best memes of all time. Though the “Shit Girls Say” video that started it all was posted in 2011, the “Shit People Say” meme peaked in January 2012 after interpretations like Shit Black Girls Say (written by Lena Waithe!), Shit White Girls Say…to Black Girls, Shit ____ Say, and Shit New Yorkers Say (starring Eliot and Ilana Glazer) gained traction. My favorite remains the ever-relevant “Shit Single Girls Say” which, to this day, still feels just like looking in a mirror. 

Activists unfurl a KONY 2012 flag.
Credit: YouTube: KONY 2012

KONY 2012

KONY 2012 united the internet, until it didn’t. The video documentary about the wrongdoings of Ugandan war criminal Joseph Kony, including his exploitation of children, was the first video on YouTube to gain 1 million likes. It rallied the public and celebrities alike, cracking open discussions about the region until overwhelming attention from its unprecedented virality induced a very public mental health crisis for one of founders of the nonprofit behind the video. HuffPost noted that Kony 2012 “narrowed the gap” between activism and “slacktivism,” a concept that, like white saviour, we’ve only become more acquainted with since.

The ones that still haunt us:

Looks fine to me!
Credit: CESAR MANSO/AFP/GettyImages

The botched restoration of “Ecce Homo” aka Potato Jesus

This… erm… artistic interpretation of a 100-year-old Spanish fresco was originally thought to be an act of vandalism, before it was revealed to be an earnest attempt at restoration by a well-meaning 80-year-old parishioner. A post comparing the original fresco with the woman’s disfigured update first went viral on Reddit, and inspired a wave of trollish behavior. In addition to run-of-the-mill memes and mockery, internet pranksters gained more than 20,000 signatures on a Change.org petition to stop a professional restoration so that our beloved Potato Jesus might stay with us, forever.

The Cinnamon Challenge

The Cinnamon Challenge sounds deceptively simple: just swallow a spoonful of cinnamon in under a minute to beat it. Easy! The challenge existed before 2012, but the iconic attempt by YouTube creator Glozell in January 2012, which left her sputtering as she was enveloped in a cloud of cinnamon smoke, popularized it like never before. Her take is still the most-viewed Cinnamon Challenge video on YouTube, and people still foolishly attempt it today. If you’re reading this and thinking, “I bet I could do it,” we’d like to remind you that cinnamon-induced asphyxia is truly dangerous, so reminisce online but please don’t try it at home.

Overly Attached Girlfriend aka OAG

Laina Morris’s maniacal grin may rival Elizabeth Holmes’ for the most unhinged stare of the decade. Her submission to a Justin Bieber cover contest reimagined the song as a clingy girlfriend’s anthem. “If I was your girlfriend,” she sang, “I’d drive up the wall,” as well as stalk you on Facebook, etc. Morris’ persona, the “Overly Attached Girlfriend,” became an integral piece of early 2010s internet culture overnight. She used the fervor to jump start a successful career on YouTube. Though she officially called it quits in 2019, she told BuzzFeed last year that she still feels that “Overly Attached Girlfriend is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

The political gaffes:

Credit: KEVIN LAMARQUE/AFP via Getty Images

Texting Hillary Clinton

Behold, the original girlboss, seen here tap, tap, tapping away on her Blackberry, snarking at politicians and confirming brunch with Meryl Streep. That’s the humanized Hillz whipped up in the imagination of “Texts From Hillary Clinton,” the Tumblr blog that turned the original Reuters photo into a meme. On April 4, the blog posted its first photo set and, by April 10, had called it quits and after a submission from Clinton herself made them realize they could not continue without girlbossing a little too close to the sun. Their impact lives on in infamy: Clinton used the photo as her inaugural Twitter icon when she opened an account in June 2013 and the meme was also supposedly responsible for increased interest in Hillary’s potential use of a personal email address for government affairs. 

Binders Full of Women

I could have lived without revisiting this Mitt Romney debate stage flub, which remains one of the most viral political missteps in history. In response to a prompt about pay equity for women, Romney bragged about staffing his own state cabinet using “binders full of women.” The resulting memeification of the moment torpedoed Romney’s campaign (with an assist from other reductive comments about women and work). It also inspired a new type of informal professional networking groups for women on Facebook, cheekily named the Binders. In 2017, a former Romney aide shared what they purported to be the actual physical binders themselves with the Boston Globe, which weighed in at more than 15 pounds.

The prevailing classics:

A brooding Grumpy Cat decked out in bows.
Credit: Mashable

Grumpy Cat

Eternally perturbed and never satisfied, Grumpy Cat spoke to an element of humanity deep inside us all. The original Grumpy Cat, whose name was actually (the almost certainly offensive) Tardar Sauce, passed away in 2019, but her image lives on on the internet and across the multiple trademarked books, toys, tees, and mugs that made up her kitty cat empire.

Tweet may have been deleted

It’s Gonna Be May

Ah, those frosted tips. The hairstyle of Justin Timberlake’s *NSYNC era may have gone out of style, but this meme never will. A crown jewel in the pantheon of misheard lyrics, “it’s gonna be me may” originated as a meme on—where else?— Tumblr. This winner still resurfaces like clockwork at the end of every April, and was recently adopted by the brilliant minds at Maytag for an, admittedly quite funny, 2019 commercial.

An older Kyle Craven recreates the school photo that became Bad Luck Brian.
Credit: Dustin Franz for The Washington Post via Getty Images

Bad Luck Brian

When Kyle Craven’s friend Ian promised to make him “internet famous,” he didn’t know he meant like… forever. On Reddit, a cheesy school photo of sweater-vest sporting Craven, who purposely showed up on picture day looking as ridiculous as possible, became Bad Luck Brian, an unlucky dude who can’t seem to catch a break. Craven saw Brian’s bad luck as a blessing and, with the help of a copyright lawyer, turned the meme into T-shirts and novelty items, ad campaigns with Volkswagen and McDonald’s, and in March, a Bad Luck Brian NFT.

Mom’s Spaghetti

In 2012, Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” verse about pre-rap battle nerves leveled up the established “spaghetti story” format with source material that was actually about spaghetti. Why it happened 10 years after the release of “Lose Yourself,” I can’t seem to figure out. But I still see new “Mom’s Spaghetti” tweets fairly regularly on my timeline, because time is a closed loop and pasta is always funny. Eminem recently opened his own “Mom’s Spaghetti” restaurant in Detroit, proving that he’s definitely in on the joke.

A silver medal? Meh. McKayla Maroney looks unimpressed on the medal podium.
Credit: Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images

McKayla Maroney is not impressed.

A decade ago, the Olympics were still a unifying spectacle steeped in nationalistic pride and broadcast on cable. America was captivated by the Fierce Five gymnasts and was especially tickled by McKayla Maroney’s sour reaction after a fall on vault landed her a good-but-not-great silver medal. She recreated the look with President Obama post-games, proving not even a trip to the White House could turn her frown upside down. The meme made Maroney the fourth most-searched athlete in the world that year. This year, as she recreated it for a cute commercial and put it up for sale as an NFT, I found myself rooting for her as if she were back on the mat in London. Go McKayla, milk that meme for all its worth!

If you know the 1973 movie Soylent Green at all, it’s likely for the arresting last line. “Soylent Green is people,” lead actor Charlton Heston bellows as he is carried away on a stretcher, simultaneously becoming a meme and summing up the plot so thoroughly that there’s little need to catch the rest of the film. (Soylent Green is a hot new food product in this starving overpopulated future New York; Heston’s detective character discovers it is not made from plankton as the manufacturer claims.)

Less well known is the year Soylent Green is set in: 2022. That’s right, we’ve reached the point when Hollywood told us that millions of New Yorkers would be fighting each other over protein bars made from the finest processed human. Presuming that a fad for cannibalism doesn’t arrive with the next NYC fashion week, we can safely say that humanity has successfully avoided the threat of the movie’s main premise. (Instead we’re grappling with the threat of the Omicron variant, which itself sounds like a Charlton Heston movie.)

Does this mean Soylent Green got nothing right about our 21st century world? Not so fast. As with Blade Runner and its setting, the Los Angeles of 2019, the movie’s predictive power is a mixed bag. Let’s open it up and cautiously sniff each item.

WRONG: Soylent Green. RIGHT: Soylent.

Soylent green is mint chocolate, it turns out.
Credit: soylent

Let’s get this one out of the way: Yes, we know there’s an actual meal replacement shake and protein bar called Soylent. Created in 2013 by Rob Rhinehart, a busy software engineer who wanted to eat nutritiously without consuming regular food, Soylent is exactly what you’d expect would result from that experiment: bland, powdery mush with a variety of masking flavors. Many users complained of gastrointestinal issues — farting, mostly — which led to multiple Soylent product recalls in 2016. The company blamed algal flour, an ingredient curiously close to the plankton that the movie’s food product was supposed to contain.

But there’s a distinction with a key difference here. Rhinehart actually took the name from Make Room! Make Room!, the 1968 novel of overpopulation and famine by sci-fi author Harry Harrison, on which Soylent Green is very loosely based. There’s no corporate cannibalism in the book. Instead, there’s a riot over Soylent steaks, a meat substitute made from soy and lentils (hence the name). Sound familiar? It should. Soy is the main ingredient in the Impossible burger, the most deliciously meat-like processed food of our age. Rival Beyond burger uses mung beans, legumes similar to lentils. Harrison arguably got it right, although there are no reports of riots when supermarkets run out of Impossible beef bricks just yet.

The movie’s prediction for the future of eating didn’t really pan out. In its nightmare New York, Heston is able to smuggle one black market apple, a slim steak and a single strawberry to his elderly roommate Sol (Edward G Robinson), who barely remembers the taste from his youth. It’s true that we have plenty of food deserts in the U.S., and that the lack of produce is disproportionately felt by people of color. Then again, nobody in 1973 would have predicted the boom in organic food, now worth $61 billion a year, or the coming age of vertical farms and high-tech at-home vegetable gardens.

WRONG: Starvation. RIGHT: Ocean acidification.

Food insecurity is a genuine problem in 2022, both in the U.S. and the world at large. But food insecurity is largely tied to extreme poverty, and the numbers of people suffering from both conditions is under one billion and falling over time. Regardless, our food problem certainly isn’t about a lack of supply caused by overpopulation, as it is in both Soylent Green and Make Room! Even as the number of human mouths on Earth is set to hit 8 billion (double what it was in 1973) this decade, on its way to a likely high of 10 billion later this century, our industries keep pace, We’re churning out enough foodstuff to feed the world many times over, even if a lot of that stuff is cleverly-marketed processed crap. In real 2022 New York, as in America at large, obesity is more of a widespread health issue than starvation.

But there is one supply problem the movie got chillingly accurate. Heston uncovers a secret report that says the oceans are dying, hence there isn’t enough plankton to make Soylent Green the way the recipe intended. Here in the real world, we know that plankton is in real danger from ocean acidification. If its population crashes, the entire marine food chain could go with it. And future generations might spend their golden years lamenting, Sol-like, the lost taste of real fish.

WRONG: Dump trucks for protesters. RIGHT: Global warming.

Police brutality, particularly towards activists, remains among the most serious issues of 2022. We have plenty of reasons to fear the militarization of law enforcement, and the racism endemic to its ranks. But no police department has followed the authorities in Soylent Green and simply scooped up protesters into a garbage masher. Yet.

That image, dump trucks for protesters, was so indelible it made it onto the movie posters. Less noticed at the time: This was one of the first major movies to mention the threat of “the greenhouse effect,” which in 2022 had started “burning the world up.” The resulting fires and dust bowls filled Soylent Green‘s city streets with particulate-filled clouds. New York may not have experienced this yet, but San Francisco and Sydney certainly know what’s up.

WRONG: Mass euthanasia. RIGHT: Mass numbing.

Soylent Green‘s most affecting scene isn’t hard to pick out. Sol decides the world sucks so much that he goes to a mass euthanasia facility run for free by a government that wants to reduce overpopulation any way it can. (It was particularly affecting as this was the last scene the legendary Edward G. Robinson would ever shoot; he died days after the end of filming, of bladder cancer, age 79.) In the real world, few countries provide end-of-life assisted suicide, not even for terminal patients in pain who desperately request it. Euthanasia is currently legal in under a dozen countries, including Canada and parts of Australia and the U.S.

But the scene should give us pause for other reasons. Sol decides to end it all in part because the facility offers a high-tech vision. He gets to lie in a wraparound cinema filled with beautiful images of the planet as it was before we ruined it, and variations on a theme of his favorite color (orange). Here in the real 2022, we certainly love our screens and our pretty colors — and they clearly help numb us to the precarious state the planet finds itself in.

Soylent Green is available to buy or rent on Apple TV, Google Play, Amazon Prime, and YouTube TV.

TL;DR: The Magnet Wireless Charger MagSafe Compatible (3.3ft Cable/2-Pack) is just $25.99 at the Mashable Shop as of Jan. 1.

It works with iPhone 12, 12 mini, 12 Pro, 12 Pro Max, and AirPods.
Credit: ZeroLemon

Everyone has a wireless device, so everyone needs a charger. It’s even more convenient if it’s a magnetic charger that makes connecting and recharging your phone easier than ever. Whether you’re grabbing one for yourself or getting a last-minute gift for the person on your shopping list that you accidentally forgot, anyone who uses an iPhone will appreciate this charger.

This wireless charging pad easily folds up and is lightweight enough to slip into any bag, so it’s easy to use at home or on the go. It’s also MagSafe compatible, so it’ll clamp to any iPhone 12 model or newer. The best part about this magnet is that, unlike other standard chargers, it can reach through your phone case as long as the case is not over 5 millimeters thick. That means you can easily enjoy its magnetic charging benefits without having to strip your phone of its protection every time you need to juice up.

Don’t own an iPhone 12 or 13? The charging benefits also extend to Qi-enabled phones and wireless earbud cases. It can even be used with Pixel Buds, AirPods Pro, and Galaxy Buds+. Just don’t expect the same magnetic attraction you’ll get with a modern iPhone. 

This charger works with a 7.5W power to juice up phones quickly. Plus, since the charger itself is 3.3-feet long, you’ll never have to stay near a power outlet to utilize its benefits.

See everything this charger can do and exactly how it works in the video below:

Normally, the magnet wireless charger retails for $29. But now for a limited time, you can save 13 percent and take this charger home for yourself or for someone else for just $25.99. It’s a great last-minute gift for anyone you realized you forgot on this year’s holiday shopping list.

Prices subject to change.

TL;DR: As of Jan. 1, get The 2022 Premium Learn Game Development Bundle for just $20 instead of its $970 value (a 98% discount).

If you’ve been sitting on a great idea for a game, but haven’t had a clue how to bring it to life, it’s about time you signed up for some training. There’s no time like the new year to reinvent yourself and do all the things you always wanted to do. Tomorrow isn’t guaranteed, after all.

The 2022 Premium Learn Game Development Bundle is your ticket to creating your very own video games — and launching them — from scratch. And it’ll only cost you $20.

In this day and age, you don’t have to have connections to big tech conglomerates to create a best-selling game. Just look at all the indie hits that wound up taking over the internet — Among Us, Undertale, and of course, Minecraft. All you need is the right instruction and some motivation.

This game development bundle features 130 hours of content on C#, Unity, Unreal, and Blender, all designed for beginner and intermediate developers. So, even if you have never dabbled in development or software, you’ll be able to pick up the skills fairly easily. You’ll start super simple, so no coding experience is required, either. Better yet, you can connect with the instructors at GameDev.tv before, during, and after the courses on dedicated forums for students. 

As you make your way through each course, you’ll start building your very own games from scratch, including a side-scrolling jumping game, a quiz game, a role-playing game, and more. You’ll also build your own game assets, 3D models, detailed terrain and landscapes, and everything else involved in designing the next big video game. 

Playing games is fun, but designing games is much more exciting. Get the 2022 Premium Learn Game Development Bundle for just $20 (a $970 value) for a limited time. No code necessary.

Prices subject to change.

TL;DR: As of Jan. 1, take 95% off the All-in-One DNA My Dog Breed Identification Test & Dog Training Bundle, valued at $1,239, and get it for just $59.99.

If you’ve recently adopted a new four-legged member of your family and you’re in over your head, a little training can go a long way. And with this doggone good deal, you can get a dozen training courses covering all the basics.

The All-in-One DNA My Dog Breed Identification Test and Dog Training Bundle includes a 12-course bundle on dog training, plus an award-winning dog breed test kit to help you gain some valuable insight into your dog’s true nature. And for a limited time, the package is on sale for only $59.99.

First up, the training kicks off with an A to Z guide for puppies, so you can get it right from the start. You’ll learn the best ways to train, teach, and socialize your puppy so it grows into a joyful, well-balanced, and well-behaved dog. If you adopted an older dog, go ahead and skip to a course that focuses on the issue at hand. There are courses on leash training, barking, aggression, diet and nutrition, and natural remedies. And once you feel confident in your ability to train, there are even courses on starting a training business.

Another way to learn more about your new best friend is with the DNA My Dog Breed Identification Test. The test is fast, painless, and simple, and gives you some eye-opening results. Just swab your dog’s cheek, mail in the sample, and in two weeks or less, you’ll get a detailed report breaking down not only your dog’s DNA composition and breed mix, but also some insight into personality traits, predisposition to disease, and other unique characteristics.

This bundled deal is valued at $1,239, but you can snag it on sale for only $59.99 for a limited time.

Prices subject to change.

TL;DR: As of Jan. 1, take 97% off The Complete NFT & Cryptocurrency Wealth Building Masterclass Bundle, valued at $1,200, and get it for just $20.

If you didn’t hear the term “NFT” at the family table over the holidays, did you even have a holiday break? It’s the buzzword everyone’s talking about and no one seems to understand. But that can change with this masterclass bundle that teaches you everything you’ve ever wanted to know about NFTs and cryptocurrencies.

What’s more, this learning bundle is on sale for pocket change with this New Year, New You Sale. No coupon is necessary to redeem the deal — it’ll automatically be applied at checkout. 

The Complete NFT & Cryptocurrency Wealth Building Masterclass Bundle features six courses and over 152 lessons that break down everything you need to know to master and understand NFTs. 

You’ll start by learning how to register your own art in an open marketplace. The courses cover everything from non-fungible tokens, minting, and crypto wallets. From there, you can actually join the non-fungible token revolution by taking a course that only takes an hour to complete. You’ll begin to get more familiar with the world of NFTs by just the second course. Then, begin to understand the strategies and basics of trading cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. 

Each course is taught by instructors like Benjamin Wilson, an entrepreneur and marketing innovator who boasts an impressive 4.5 out of 5-star instructor rating.

Each course in the Complete NFT & Cryptocurrency Wealth Building Masterclass Bundle normally retails for $200. However, with this New Year, New You Sale, you can purchase the entire bundle for just $20 for a limited time — no coupon necessary. 

Prices subject to change.

Looking to up your Instagram Story game? Camera Tools are a good place to start.

If you don’t know what Camera Tools are or if you are looking to change the position of camera tools, you’ve home to the right place. We’ve got all your questions surrounding camera tools covered.

What are Instagram Camera Tools?

Instagram camera tools are the toolbar options that pop up when you go to post an Instagram Story. The toolbar is made up of different functions that can help you post different types of Instagram Stories. It includes the Create mode, Boomerang, Layout, Hands-Free, Multi-Capture, and Level.

How to access Instagram camera tools:

1. Open Instagram

2. Tap on your profile picture in the upper left corner

3. Tap “Camera”

Tap Camera to access Camera Tools.
Credit: Screenshot / Instagram

4. The camera tools are found on the left side of the screen.

5. Tap the arrow to see the full list of Camera Tools

Tap the arrow to see the full list of Camera Tools.
Credit: Screenshot / Instagram

When you tap the arrow the full list of Camera Tools will be revealed.

The full list of Camera Tools includes Hands-Free, Multi-Capture, and Level.
Credit: Screenshot / Instagram

How to change the position of Instagram camera tools:

The camera toolbar is automatically on the left hand side of your screen, but you can change it to the right hand side of the screen in settings.

1. Tap the gear in the upper right corner of the Instagram Story screen

Tap the gear to access Instagram Story settings.
Credit: Screenshot / Instagram

2. Locate “Camera Tools”

3. Tap the white circle next to “Right Side”

Tap the white circle to change the orientation of Camera Tools.
Credit: Screenshot / Instagram

The blue circle next to Right Side indicates that Camera Tools will be on that side of the screen.

The blue circle indicates the orientation of the Camera Tools toolbar.
Credit: Screenshot / Instagram

4. Select “Done” in the upper right hand corner

Select Done.
Credit: Screenshot / Instagram

There you have it!

Human beings are perplexing creatures. We’re capable of developing vaccines to help fight deadly viruses in record time, sending billionaires into space, and creating all kinds of ever-improving smart technology, such as smart glasses. Yet when New Year’s Eve rolls around we can’t manage to get those plastic numerical party glasses right — and haven’t done for more than 12 years.

In 2019 I looked back on a decade of New Year’s Eve glasses and ranked them based on how dumb they looked. The glasses for 2010 — which featured two aesthetically pleasing zeros and easily turned the number one into a lens — looked the best. But in a surprise twist, the glasses for 2020 looked even worse.

You’d think creators would have taken advantage of 2020’s two zeros, or simply copied the 2010 glasses and transformed the second 2 into a lens, but they had to make things complicated. Yes, some 2020 glasses were visually acceptable, but others were nonsensical eyesores like these:

The two zeros were RIGHT THERE.
Credit: SCREENSHOT: P&F / AMAZON

Now novelty glasses creators spectacularly dropped the ball again with 2022’s frames. Here are some of the frames in question, with an extra zero added as a lens (to ring in the year 20220!), 2s placed on foreheads, and/or eyeholes so tiny you can barely see out of them. It’s pure chaos out here.

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Just mandating the manufacture of a single design each year — the one that makes the most sense — could end the insanity. In 2021, we could and should have just stopped with these:

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In humanity’s defense, the glasses didn’t always look pathetic. When celebratory eyewear was first conceived to ring in the year 1991, frankly, it slapped. Inventor pals Richard Sclafani and Peter Cicero made lenses in the holes of each 9 every year until 2000. When 2000 arrived, they sensibly used first and second zeros as lenses.

As Mel Magazine reported, 2000 was also the year that Sclafani and Cicero started getting serious competition. Rip-off designs started popping up around the world, and by 2009 the two friends decided to abandon their glasses-making endeavor. The competition was too heavy, but Sclafani also felt the designs would prove too challenging beyond 2010.

While the numerals themselves may not have made the art of designing glasses simple, some extremely straightforward years — such as 2020 — we just plain messed up. Had Sclafani and Cicero still been running the show, would our New Year’s Eve eyewear have been so hideous these past few years? I’d like to think not.

That pair had the original vision, and it’s clear that the novelty glasses posers of the world just can’t seem to see it.

Yes, 2022 is supposed to be a year of no expectations. We’re not expecting an end to the pandemic, or billionaires, any time soon. But this small thing we can at least control: Let’s build back a better set of glasses to ring in 2023.

December 31, 2021 is a dark day for the entertainment world. Beloved actor, comedian, and all-around national treasure Betty White had died at age 99.

White, who starred in popular television shows like Golden Girls, Hot In Cleveland, and The Mary Tyler Moore Show as well as films including The Proposal, was preparing to celebrate her 100th birthday on Jan. 17.

On Friday, her agent and friend Jeff Witjas confirmed her death to People and said, “Even though Betty was about to be 100, I thought she would live forever.”

That seems to be the sentiment shared across the internet. After news of White’s death, fans, friends, and fellow celebrities mourned the loss of her amazing talent on Twitter — and remembered what a spunky, lovable character she was.

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