If you have been a faithful follower of this blog, you know that it has gone through long periods of inactivity over the years. This year, we made a structured effort to post weekly to share the services and tools the library provides, help people navigate their devices, and highlight emerging technologies. We took a look back to see our most popular posts of 2022 and linked them here in case you missed them.
#5 – Accessing the Times Union
We recently added one of the local papers, the Times Union, to our digital offerings for our resident cardholders. Not only is it one of our most frequently used digital resources, the post we created with a video showing how to use it was one of our most viewed posts. Note: since we created the video, the link on our website looks a bit different. There used to be one link that led to the daily paper (image format) and another to text-only articles. There is now one link, and the image format can be chosen on the next page.
#4 – How To Spot a Fake Review on Amazon
I learned about the Fakespot service right before the holiday shopping season and had to share it immediately. Available as a browser extension or a website where a link can be pasted, Fakespot combs the listing and reviews and gives both the seller and the item a grade based on how genuine the artificial intelligence believes the reviews to be.
#3 – Check Out These Great New Email Newsletters from NextReads
NextReads is an email newsletter service the library provides to keep readers informed about new publications based on their reading preferences. Patrons can choose newsletters based on fiction genre, nonfiction subject, age group, and more. This year, NextReads came out with two new newsletter categories. This post highlights the newsletters and provides instructions to subscribe.
#2 – Wordle: The Game Everyone Is Talking About
Remember when Facebook was suddenly flooded with those Tetris-like images showing a Wordle score? We wrote a post to let people know what that was all about. Not only is Wordle still popular, but it has also spun off into similar games like Heardle, Factle, and more.
#1 – Introducing Biteable: The Best Free Image Resizer
This was, far and away, our most popular post. I was annoyed when Microsoft axed Microsoft Picture Manager, as it was a quick, easy way to compress, crop, touch up, or resize images. The new image manager in Windows is much more cumbersome, so I went looking for a simpler way to resize images. Enter Biteable, one of my favorite free tools. Given the number of people who viewed this post, I guess I’m not the only one who was looking for this type of tool
Summary
There you have it – our most popular posts of 2022. If you would like to see a tool highlighted or explained on Tech Tips in 2023, let us know in the comments and we’ll be sure to cover it. In the meantime, we wish you all a happy, healthy new year!