Hey folks! A couple of quick programming notes before we get into the newsletter proper:

First, there will be no regular issue of Advisorator next week, as I take some time to recharge before the Fall Gadget Onslaught.

As for this week's issue, I'm handing over the usual feature spot to my friend and fellow tech journalist JR Raphael, author of the always-excellent Android Intelligence newsletter. JR has come up with some great ways to digitize, enhance, and preserve printed photos, and I'm excited to share those tips with you all.

Take it away, JR!

Bringing your old physical photos into the digital domain can be a daunting process — but it doesn't have to be. Today, we'll explore some exceptional and surprisingly affordable tools that'll give those prehistoric photos of yours exciting new life.

We can't possibly talk about revitalizing old photos without mentioning PhotoScan. It's a barely publicized Google app (for iOS and Android), and it makes it as easy to capture high-quality images of physical photos, making it look like they were always on your phone.

Seriously: This thing is almost freakishly good. You just open up the app and point your phone at any physical photo — like, say, one of you as a kid showing off your already-bulging biceps in an appropriately themed sleeveless t-shirt (just as a totally hypothetical example).

The app will walk you through capturing the image from different angles by moving your phone around, using on-screen circles as a guide. That allows it to stitch those angles together and eliminate any glare and flash-caused reflections — seamlessly and instantly, without any real effort.

Once the scan is finished, you can even adjust your image's edges, if you need to — as in this case, where the top of the photo had been cut in an awkward way. And when you're done, you'd never even know you captured the photo by essentially taking a photo of it with your phone.

Best of all? PhotoScan is completely free to use.

All right, so we've covered bringing old photos into your digital world. But what if all you've got are the negatives — y'know, those old-fashioned shiny strips that showed images in a weirdly colored form and were what you'd take in to a photo center when you wanted to get extra copies made up? Or maybe even slides that you used in a carousel at some point?! (Damn it, we're old.)

The answer resides in an incredibly clever app called FilmBox (for iOS and Android) for negatives, or its sister app SlideScan (also for iOS and Android) for slides. The apps work basically the same way: You open up a specific web page on a laptop and crank your screen's brightness all the way up to create a backlight. Then, you just hold your negative or slide a couple inches away from the screen and hold the phone a couple inches from that...

And once you press and hold the shutter button, the magic begins. Within a second or so, the app transforms your negative or slide into a fully colored, properly cropped, excellent-looking digital image. Let's all say it together now: Whoaaa....

The apps are free with limitations (which won't keep you from using 'em for a reasonable amount of scans) or $30 a year for unlimited, restriction-free use.

So you've got your archaic memories on your phone and/or in the cloud. Now it's time to think about touching 'em up a bit. After all, camera technology has come a long way in the last 147 years since we all took those ancient photos. And a teensy touch of tinkering can make old images look like they actually belong alongside all of your magnificent modern-day memories.

Specifically, I'd keep the following possibilities in mind for your photo-revitalizing purposes:

If you've got a ton of old stuff you want to digitize and don't want to do it all manually, a service called YesVideo is exactly what you need. YesVideo sends you a "time capsule" in the mail that you use to ship back any combination of photos, videos (on practically any format imaginable), film, or digital media. They then manually scan and convert everything into a high-quality digital format for you — and here's the especially cool part: They can even import it directly into your Google Photos storage so it'll just show up as part of your library.

In fact, the reason I'm even aware of this service in the first place is that the creator/founder and still-head-honcho of Google Photos himself recommended it. A pretty powerful endorsement, I'd say.

YesVideo's pricing varies depending on what exactly you're converting and how much material is involved. Photos, for instance, cost $29 for the first 50 images and then 48 cents for every image after that, while videos cost $29 per two hours of footage, but prices are regularly cut in half for seasonal promotions.

It isn't cheap, but if the manual scanning route is too time-intensive for ya — or if you've got videos and other sorts of materials that don't have any easy equipment-free digitalization method available — it's an excellent option to consider, especially if you manage to get in while one of these 50%-off offers is active and available.

Between that and all the other possibilities we just pondered, you should have everything you need to bring your old memories into the present and give 'em new life. All that's left is to actually take the initiative to do it — and that part, m'dear, is entirely up to you.

Thanks again to JR Raphael for contributing this week's feature topic! Sign up for his free Android Intelligence newsletter to get more advice on all things Google every Friday.

A slick digital pinboard: Manifest is a neat online notepad that lets you pin plain-text notes onto a virtual canvas. Just click and drag to create a note of any size, then start typing.

You can have as many notes as will fit on the screen, and you can always move notes around or stack them on top of one another. A dark mode is also available by pressing Alt+T. The site will automatically save your notes and layout for next time, provided you're using the same computer and web browser.

I discovered Manifest while researching last week's tip on turning websites into desktop wallpapers. Manifest works especially well with Plash (for Mac) and Lively Wallpaper (for Windows), as it effectively turns your entire desktop into an interactive pinboard.

If you're using Chrome or Microsoft Edge, you can also turn Manifest into a free-standing desktop app by clicking the install icon in the browser's address bar.

A more serene Safari: If you have $2 to spare and enjoy using websites instead of apps, you should treat yourself to Banish. It's an extension for the iOS version of Safari, and its sole purpose is to block those obnoxious "open in the app" pop-ups on sites like Reddit and Quora.

Once installed, head to Settings > Safari > Extensions. Enable Banish from there, and start enjoying your favorite sites with fewer annoying nags. (Via John Gruber, who also offers some colorful terminology for such prompts.)

Pretend you're busy: Get help sparing yourself from an overlong phone call or Zoom meeting with Busy Simulator, which lets you mimic the sounds of Slack, Microsoft Teams, iMessage and more.

Create enough of a cacophony, and you'll have to no choice but to graciously bow out. Is it weird that I find the site somewhat soothing?

Mark & Graham is selling the Ember Mug 2, a smart coffee mug that lets you control beverage temperature with your phone, for $100. That's $50 off the list price and $29 less than the price on Amazon. You can also use the code SHIPFREE for free shipping.

My lovely wife bought me one of these as a birthday gift this year, so while I'm contractually obligated to say that it's great, I really do enjoy dialing in a precise temperature for my coffee and getting an alert on my phone when said temperature is reached. The deal is available in either black or white.

Other notable deals:

One more round of applause to JR Raphael for this week's feature topic on digitizing your old photos. If you enjoyed it, make sure to check out his Android Intelligence newsletter.

Again, we won't have a regular issue of Advisorator next week, but I do plan to send over a handful of links to tide you over until I return. We'll be back to the regular publishing schedule on Tuesday, August 23.

Until then,
Jared