‘Poke’ your way to love

“Poke” your way to love: Facebook Dating has grown 20% every year since launching in 2019. One big reason? It has free features other dating apps charge for. Friends can do the swiping for you and you can let someone know you like them anonymously. It makes sense; Facebook knows everything about you, so it should be able to find you a date.

Tags: apps, dating, Facebook Dating, social media


Small-biz tip: How to onboard a remote employee

If you’re a small business owner, onboarding a new employee virtually can be a huge undertaking. Taking a new hire out to lunch, giving them a tour of the office and introducing them to coworkers is often an integral part of the experience, but that might not be possible if you hire remote employees.

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That was easy: Use social media for your business? Stop posting one at a time. Tools like Buffer, Hootsuite and Later can help you schedule your social media posts ahead of time with just a few clicks. Use the free trials for each to figure out which option you like best.

💰 Your go-to rideshare app may not offer the best deals, depending on your location. Type your pickup and drop-off points into RideGuru to get a comparison of rideshare options in your area, including Uber, Lyft, Curb, Ola Cabs and DiDi Rider.

Smaller or regional options (like those names above you probably don’t recognize) can be a lot cheaper than Uber. Try Wingz, too, if you’re scheduling a ride to the airport in advance.

Speaking of, many airports add an expensive rideshare fee that gets passed along to you. I know someone who takes the airport shuttle to the nearest hotel or parking area instead of directly to the airport, and they catch an Uber from there to their destination instead.

Got this question from Sharon in Chicago: “How much can I make selling books on Amazon?” Be careful how you price your books. For e-books priced between $2.99 and $9.99, you’ll get 70% in royalties. Anything above or below that range drops your royalties to 35%. For paperbacks, you’ll get 60% of the list price (minus printing costs, which depend on page count, size and color). What a novel way to make a living!

🔒 Privacy, please: On Android, you can automatically lock your Incognito tabs when you switch to another app. Open Chrome, then tap More > Settings > Privacy and security. Turn on “Lock Incognito tabs when you leave Chrome.”

iPhone pro tip: Apple’s Shortcuts app lets you automate actions with just one click. The sky’s the limit — for example, you can set up navigating to an event on your calendar, shrinking screenshots to save space and auto-sending happy birthday messages to your favorite people. Here’s a full guide on how to use it.

I’ve been using Distraction Control (circled in red above) in the latest version of Safari on my Mac. It really works! It lets you hide whatever you want on a webpage — images, headlines and videos. If it’s distracting, make it disappear with a click.

🖊️ Ever write checks? Use a pen (4-pack for $10) with specially formulated ink that gets trapped in paper, helping to prevent criminal check washing and other document alteration.

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ChatGPT, find me customers: Use AI to find out what people are saying online so you can better target your company’s ads. Take a lesson from Shake Shack: They used a bot to scan 80,000 Reddit threads about chicken sandwiches, narrowed it down to the 30 most active and ran ads for their new sandwich. It worked — sales were 31% higher.

Microsoft Edge can’t take a hint: The browser is importing your Chrome browsing data and tabs without asking. Luckily, you can stop it. When you see the pop-up from Edge to Enhance your browsing experience with Copilot in Microsoft Edge, click the tiny white X in the upper right corner and close it. (It’s tiny — you might have to squint to see it.)