Setting Up a TV Your Parents Can Actually Use

Setting Up a TV Your Parents Can Actually Use

The phone rings at nine on a Sunday. The news channel has vanished again. Nothing has broken. The television is simply set up for you and not for them. Why do they always call about the remote? Because there are usually three of them on the table. One came with the television, one with the โ€ฆ

Make a Parent's Phone Safe for Payments

Make a Parent's Phone Safe for Payments

Your mother pays for vegetables by phone now. She is quietly proud of it. She is also the person a fraudster wants to call tonight. You cannot sit beside her forever. So the aim is different. Set the phone up so mistakes are survivable. Then leave rules short enough to remember. Give it one unhurried โ€ฆ

SiteDraft: Walk a Room, Get a Drawing You Can Build From

SiteDraft: Walk a Room, Get a Drawing You Can Build From

Every renovation starts the same way. Someone stands in a room with a tape, a phone torch and a notebook, calling out numbers while somebody else writes them down. Two days later a drawing arrives and nobody can quite say which of those numbers were measured, which were rounded, and which were guessed because the โ€ฆ

Where a Phone Should Sit While Your Child Studies

Where a Phone Should Sit While Your Child Studies

The house has declared a phone ban for study hours. By the fourth evening it has quietly collapsed. Why does a total ban never last? Because studying now needs the very device you banned. The timetable arrives on a class group. The notes are photos in a gallery. The doubt gets asked online at ten โ€ฆ

Authorised Service Centre or the Shop Down the Road?

Authorised Service Centre or the Shop Down the Road?

The screen has stopped responding in one corner. The authorised centre is across town and quotes you a figure that makes you blink. The shop near the market says he will do it by evening for much less. Both answers can be correct, depending on which repair this actually is. What makes a service centre โ€ฆ

Where Your Health Data Lives and How to Move It

Where Your Health Data Lives and How to Move It

You have worn a band for two years. The strap is finished and the battery is tired. You fancy a different brand now. One question stops you. What happens to two years of walking and sleeping? Most people assume it all lives inside the watch. It does not. Which app is really holding your data? โ€ฆ

Can Four People Share One Streaming Account?

Can Four People Share One Streaming Account?

Your sister is in another city and your parents are in the family home. Everyone uses the same login. Then one evening it stops working and asks somebody to verify a device. Streaming apps have quietly changed what sharing means. What counts as one household? Most apps now treat a household as the people at โ€ฆ

The First Hour After Money Leaves Your Account

The First Hour After Money Leaves Your Account

The message arrives and your stomach drops. Money has gone. You know at once you should not have tapped that. The next hour matters more than anything else. Shame is the thing most likely to waste it. So here is the order to work in. What do I do in the first ten minutes? Stop โ€ฆ

Whose Account Is Your Child's Schoolwork Sitting In?

Whose Account Is Your Child's Schoolwork Sitting In?

The school gave your child an email address ending in the school's name. Two years of homework, projects and class notes now live inside it. Very few parents have asked the obvious question about that account. Who owns a school account? The school does. An account issued by a school sits inside an account the โ€ฆ

The Paperwork That Decides Who Pays for a Repair

The Paperwork That Decides Who Pays for a Repair

The washing machine stops draining and you ring the service centre. Their first question is the date of purchase. You are fairly sure it was two years ago, or possibly three. Somewhere in the house there is a bill, and you begin opening drawers. Why does the bill matter more than the box? Because the โ€ฆ