13 Tech Things We Tried In 2015 And Recommend

This has been the year that Facebook groups have completely changed my view on Facebook. I started signing up for weird groups, and all of a sudden, Facebook is this fun awesome place with lots of interesting new people chatting and posting pictures of specific things, and not just a place for my high school friends' baby photos or political rants. Groups have made Facebook fun again for me – something I thought was literally impossible.

Of the weird and wonderful groups I've joined, the Mushroom Identification Forum is by far the best. It's huge for Facebook group standards: about 51,000 members currently. The group is exactly what it sounds like – people post photos of mushrooms they see out in the wild, and ask for help identifying them. I've been incredibly impressed by the deep knowledge some members have for fingering fungii (or "mycology", as the study of mushrooms is known). I had no idea that mushrooms were a ~thing~ people were into as a hobby. I'm a birdwatcher, and I can see how it's pretty similar, and you rack up knowledge pretty fast just by looking out while on a walk in the woods and maybe browsing a few guidebooks. The slightly geeky obsessiveness of amateur mushroom sleuths is very recognizable to me.

I just love seeing these people from all over the country posting a photo of some strange thing they saw while on a hike in Ohio, or growing on a piece of wood in an urban yard of San Francisco. It's a little bit funny, like the kid asking "can I eat it?" but also genuinely sweet and innocent. I've added several friends to the group, and they love it as much as I do.

Perhaps the best use of Facebook is not as place to connect with friends, but a place that when you see some weirdass shroom growing in your yard, you can ask someone "what the hell is this?" –Katie Notopoulos

Above: miserable after a trying to beat my times while jogging.

In theory I love the idea of tracking myself. Seeing my daily behavior at scale is fascinating and I hold out hope that by doing something over and over again and logging it, I'll gain some sort of deep insight into myself and, in turn, ~optimize~ my life. So when I started really getting into running, I immediately started logging all my sweaty miles with the Nike+ app. At first it was brutal and embarrassing, but it quickly became fun and addicting as I got marginally more in shape. I started lightly obsessing over milage and time, often precariously glancing down at my phone during runs to check my progress. I pushed myself to go faster and farther, which, at first seemed great — Nike+, my personal running coach!

But as the months went on it, like so many other trackers/gadgets, became a source of anxiety. The weather turned nice and, instead of focusing on the gorgeous scenery as I ran through New York, I was focused on some arbitrary fitness goal. Any run slower than the day before it was a failure instead of what it really was: a little victory. I also found myself bothered by lots of small little injuries, no doubt because I was doing pushing myself too much on days when I should have taken it easy.

So I stopped. I deleted the app and went out for runs without my phone. It was hard at first and I felt like I'd given up. And then, a week or so in, I started to feel great. I let my mind wander. I focused on listening to my body, rather than relying on an app. I had more time to let my mind wander. Running, this thing that felt like a daily punishment, was almost kind of fun.

Working out regularly is so goddamn hard and basically took me 27 years to do so with any frequency. Doing any kind of exercise is a victory and should be celebrated as such, and anything that gets in the way of that has got to go. –Charlie Warzel

This. (with the period in its name) is new site that emails you 5 curated links every day from people on it. (It also has a site you can browse, though I tend to use that less.) Members are only allowed to submit a single link a day, which means the selection is excellent.

I'm on a lot of social networks, receive a million newsletters and am basically saturated in news, so at first, was reticent to add another thing to my life. But the limitation on what you can submit, and simple, no-frills presentation of the site made it super compelling to me. It's kind of like starting Twitter from scratch in terms of finding out what people you respect are reading — news sites, as well as a lot of influential journalists, are all on there now. –Sapna Maheshwari

This is my giant head deep in thought as I listen to Discover Weekly , a feature that Spotify introduced in July. Its algorithms analyze the songs you save to your favorites list and, every Monday, spits out a playlist of songs it thinks you'll like. There are all kinds of ways to find new music online these days, from Pandora to Apple Music, but Discover Weekly is by far my favorite tool. (I say this as someone who isn't musically hip and has a hard time breaking out of ruts.) It gives me something to look forward to every Monday, which isn't the happiest day of the week.

Each playlist is a manageable size of about two dozen songs, and the fact that it disappears a week later makes it feel special — gotta get it while it's here! The best thing, of course, is that Spotify's recommendations are uncannily spot on (ha) and I almost always end up saving a song or two from bands I'd never heard of. –Stephanie Lee

Between the hours of 7 a.m. and 10 p.m. every day I am hyper connected. In addition to the run of the mill, text, email, social notifications I also have Twitter and Facebook notifications set up for specific people, publications, and companies — this means I get a notification literally every time so and so "completed a 2.1 mile run with RunKeeper. Check it out!" or posts a picture of their unborn child on Facebook. Not to mention all of these notifications are accompanied by a fun little haptic buzz on my Apple watch.

Suffice it to say, it is exhausting and not just because of the constant, never ending slew of notifications but also because these notifications almost always pique my interest and almost always result in me opening my phone and looking at the tweet, and then checking Facebook, and then checking my email, and rinse and repeat. So this year I have started to try two things: First, I scheduled Do Not Disturb to automatically switch on at 10 p.m. every night and second, I try to delete the Twitter and Slack apps every Friday and download them again on Sunday night.

The 10 p.m. cutoff has been amazing, to be honest. I don't look at my phone before bed anymore because I almost just forget about it. And I am not worried about missing anything because I set up the do not disturb mode to allow my phone to buzz or ring when someone is calling me — so if it's really an emergency people know to call me. It's also given me a time limit for using my phone. I obviously can still pick it up but there's not this little reminder every couple of minutes that things are happening on the net right now! Things are always happening on the net so it's been nice to not feel this incessant need to pay attention to it.

Also, deleting Twitter and Slack on weekends has been great because I use Twitter and Slack largely if not entirely for work-related things. Not being plugged in on the weekends has made it a lot easier to be my friend, I hope. But at the very least, it's made it easier for me to come to work refreshed on Monday because it doesn't feel like all I've been thinking about was work-related things during the weekend. –Johana Bhuiyan

I started using Snapchat this year, over the past few months. I had avoided it because it seemed fundamentally creepy, and also because I'm jealous of the founder, who is wealthy, handsome, and dates Miranda Kerr.

After a few months of use, I like it. I like it not on its merits: It is hard to use and its various features don't seem connected by any specific philosophy or goal. I like it because it enables me to communicate with people who are younger than me, who freaking love it. I also like it because it is an easy way to check in with people and let them know what's going on, even if what's going on does not rise to the level of an Instagram post.

It's for, like, inside jokes and maintaining fun relationships with your friends.

I approve. –Joe Bernstein

Being able to name group chats on iMessage is cool as heck because it's a fun + creative way to solidify a friend group. Whether it's a group of girlfriends from across the country talking about everything from Tinder to salary negotiations — aka "🌑 Coven 🌑" — or four new friends making plans to hang out — "quad goals" — the naming feature is an easy way to cement your clique. It's also just way easier to look at in your contacts than a bunch of numbers.

I don't know how long iMessage has allowed people to send and receive voice messages, but I only started doing it regularly in 2015, which was also the year I moved to California. A lot of the people I love are still on the east coast, and I want to keep in touch, but I've never been one for phone calls with friends. (Snake people, amirite?!) Voice messages have the intimacy of a phone call — you can hear someone's voice — with the all the asynchronous perks of texting.

There are some problems with the voice message feature; devotees are all too familiar with the feeling of recording a two-minute long missive, only to have the screen go dark or the thumb holding the record button slip and lose the whole thing. There's also a sort of strange aspect of voice messaging, in that the messages permanently disappear within two minutes unless you choose to "keep" them, which can be a bit disconcerting, and even tragic if you forget. But it's also true that, if you're like me and send dozens of them every day, you would likely eventually start to run out of space. –Caroline O'Donovan