7/9/2024: Online passport renewal

Tip of the week: Online passport renewal

Plus: New Amazon Echo and pre-Prime Day deals

Jared Newman | July 9, 2024

Hey there! I’m Jared Newman, a veteran tech journalist, and this is the free edition of Advisorator, my weekly tech advice newsletter. If someone shared this newsletter with you, consider signing up to get it every Tuesday. Thanks for reading!

Thanks to this write-up by The Verge’s Sean Hollister, I learned that you can now renew a U.S. passport online as part of a public beta.

The State Department is currently limiting how many people can apply per day, and it opens new batches of sign-ups each day at 1 p.m. Eastern time. I’m incidentally in need of a renewal, and was able to sign up at around 2:30 p.m. last Sunday.

The process is surprisingly painless, provided you meet the necessary requirements for online renewal. (For instance, you can’t be traveling internationally within the routine six- to eight-week processing time, and you must be 25 or older.) The biggest hurdle is that you need a white wall with decent lighting as a backdrop for your passport photo, plus a tripod or another person to take the picture for you. Selfies with arms raised aren’t allowed.

I haven’t actually received my passport yet, having only applied over the weekend, but Hollister reports that turnaround times are currently faster than in-person renewal—in some cases by several weeks—due to the daily application limits. It’s worth a shot if you’re not in a rush and would rather avoid the post office.

What testing dozens of USB-C cables taught me

While USB-C cables might look the same on the outside, a pair of cables can offer vastly different capabilities when you plug them in.

That’s one thing I learned while testing dozens of cables for New York Times Wirecutter. Back in January, I was given the task of overhauling the site’s guide to the best USB-C cables and adapters, and it finally went live in June after months of research, testing, and writing.

Writing for Wirecutter is great for bragging rights, but what’s even more valuable is the amount of knowledge I picked up along the way. This week’s paid subscriber column takes a look at everything I didn’t quite realize or appreciate about USB-C until now. You can read the full column with a free trial.

News in brief

After seven years, Amazon has a new Echo Spot with better sound quality and no camera. It’s essentially a smart alarm clock with a small display for showing basic info—perfect for the smart speaker timer tricks I mentioned last week—and it’s currently on sale for $45 through Prime Day. It’s a neat-looking gadget, but also it’s just nice to see Amazon putting out new hardware even with the Alexa division seemingly in crisis. (Google, meanwhile, hasn’t released a new Nest speaker or smart display in three years.)

Other news:

Do you use Authy for two-factor authentication? Beware of phishing schemes after hackers collected 33 million users’ cell phone numbers.
A survey says people are more satisfied with fiber and 5G home internet than cable.
ChatGPT’s new Mac app was storing conversations in plain text, but now it’s fixed.
Apple rumor mill: Larger and thinner Watch, plastic Watch SE, and a “table-top robot” that sounds a bit like Amazon’s Echo Show 10.
After four decades, the Windows Notepad app finally has a spell checker. (Prefer to turn it off? Right-click on a misspelled word, then hit Spell Check > Turn off spell check.)
The list of Matter-compatible smart home devices is small enough to fit in one article. (By comparison, Amazon’s Alexa works with more 30,000 devices.)

Try these apps

Proton Docs: Proton has launched a document editor to flesh out its alternatives to Google Workspace. While it’s not at full feature parity with Google Docs, I like the simple interface and its promise of end-to-end encryption. It’s free to use as part of Proton Drive, which offers 5 GB of storage for files and documents. Give it a try at docs.proton.me, and see my story at Fast Company for more details.

A subscription-free Photoshop alternative: Affinity is now offering a six-month free trial for its creative software suite, with no payment info necessary. It includes Affinity Photo 2, Affinity Designer 2, and Affinity Publisher 2, which are alternatives to Adobe’s Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign, respectively. Each program normally costs $70 with no subscription, or $165 for the full bundle, and Affinity’s currently offering 50% off the purchase price as well. (Personally, the free version of Photopea still satisfies my occasional Photoshop needs.)

Like these recommendations? Paid subscribers can also access a master list of nearly every app I’ve spotlighted in the newsletter over the past six years—more than 300 in total.

Spend wisely

With Amazon Prime Day set for next week, Walmart’s trying to get an early jump with a sale of its own. Here are the highlights:

AirPods Pro hit a new low at $169. (Amazon’s matching the price.)
Don’t want noise-cancellation? Get second-gen AirPods for $69 or third-gen for $129.
Get a refurbished iPhone 13 for $360 unlocked.
The M1 MacBook Air drops to $649, $50 less than Walmart’s usual price.
UGreen’s 65W wall charger (two USB-C, one USB-A) is on sale for $17.
Samsung’s Galaxy Watch4 Classic—with a slick twistable bezel—drops to $99.
Here’s a portable external laptop monitor (15 inch, 1080p IPS screen) for $75.
Get a 65-inch TCL QLED TV with Google TV software for $398.
Mini-LED TV deals: 55-inch TCL for $398, 75-inch Hisense for $798.
Jackery’s 1000 Wh portable power station is half-off at $499. (Also on Amazon for Prime Members.)

Plus a couple other stray deals worth noting:

The Pixel 7 Pro is now down to $390 unlocked.
Grab a 1 TB portable SSD for $75.

Thanks for reading!

Got tech questions for me? Just reply to this email to get in touch.

Until next week,
Jared