How I do things

Jared Newman
|
September 23, 2024

If you’re curious how I get things done as a tech journalist, both in my office and around the house, I’ve put together this easy-to-read list of everything that I’m using.

The inspiration comes from the various “Uses” pages that many developers put together to describe the tools they use to write code. My version instead covers what I use for writing, research, gaming, and other tech hobbies.

Of course, what you see below is subject to change over time.

Hardware

Computers:

Peripherals

Phones

Tablets and e-readers

Wearables

Home entertainment

Handhelds

Accessories

Networking and smart home

  • Eero 6 Pro mesh router and satellite
  • Ecobee 3 smart thermostat
  • Liftmaster MyQ garage door opener gateway
  • Amazon Echo (fifth-generation) for the main bedroom
  • Lenovo Smart Display 10-inch for the kitchen, mainly for Google Photos slideshows, timers, and adding grocery items to Google Keep.
  • Sonos Move semi-portable speaker, also for the kitchen.

Software

Writing and notetaking

  • Obsidian for story drafts, ideas, weekly planning, interview planning, and invoice drafts, as described here.
  • Notability for taking handwritten notes on the iPad during interviews while also recording the audio. You can tap the writing to hear what was said at the time.
  • Raindrop.io for bookmarking tech stories, restaurants, recipes, and entertainment, as described here.
  • Google Keep for grocery lists, packing lists, and quick notes that aren’t super important.

Photo and video tools

  • Microsoft Paint for quick-and-dirty image resizing or cropping. Seriously!
  • A custom vibe-coded app for screenshot edits.
  • Photopea for layer-based photo editing.
  • EZGif for turning videos into animated GIFs.
  • OBS Studio to record screenshots and videos from any device with an HDMI output, using a capture card as described here.

Browser tools

  • Helium for a lightweight, privacy-conscious browser that just gets out of your way, though you might not want to use it.
  • Kagi instead of Google Search, with no ads, trackers, or forced AI overviews.
  • Simplify Gmail to make the Gmail website look cleaner while adding some extra features.
  • CamelCamelCamel to check the price history of items on Amazon.
  • AFineStart to replace my browser’s new tab page with a cleaner list of bookmarks.
  • uBlock Origin for lightweight ad and tracker blocking. It’s built into Helium.

Other productivity apps

  • Ambie for ambient sounds in Windows, Dark Noise for iOS and MacOS, and Atmosphere for Android.
  • Logi Tune to track upcoming meetings and join them with a couple of clicks, no Logitech hardware needed.
  • Gestimer to set timers on Mac by pulling down on its menu bar icon.
  • Hourglass to set countdown timers on Windows, pinned to the taskbar.
  • Minded to discourage mindless visiting of social media sites during the work day.
  • Raycast for clipboard history, text snippets, window resizing, quick calculations, folder search, and more as described here.
  • Beeper to consolidate text messages, Signal, WhatsApp, Instagram DMs, and Slack chats into one app.
  • Claude is the AI app I use more than others, though I bounce around when rate limits kick in.

Server apps

  • Plex Media Server streams my personal music collection from the Mac Mini to any device, anywhere.
  • Plexamp is the app I use to access that music.
  • Channels DVR streams live over-the-air channels, recordings, PlayOn rips, YouTube rips, DVD rips, and MLB.TV streams (via a Docker container) to the Apple TV.
  • BlueBubbles to access iMessage on Windows and Android, with a bridge that pulls those messages into Beeper.

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