Ask a Tech Person: What Are Jeff Titterton’s Favorite Gadgets?

I used to do a lot of triathlons, and now I’m more of a marathon runner, but this watch is so advanced that it’s perfect for both. It measures my heart rate and VO2 max and anything you’d want as a runner or triathlete. You can use it in the pool or even the ocean, too. I actually specifically support Garmin because of its connection to the athletic community — I don’t want to just get an Apple Watch because Apple created something. You get so much amazing detail about your workout and races with the Garmins, so I’m sticking with those.

I love to run and work out, and I thought these headphones wouldn’t stay in my ears during those exercises, but they totally do. I was joking the other day that I must have special ears. I also just love that they have this beautiful case they come in, so you have somewhere to house them when they’re not in use. It’s like they were born to live there.

I will use the Echo Dot for setting the timer while I cook, looking up fun and random facts with the kids, for playing music, for just about anything. Sometimes when you’re washing your hands and can’t fiddle with something, you’ll want to play a song or find out when the Battle of Waterloo was.

I use this all the time. It’s so portable and durable (they call it the indestructible speaker), and I just bring it around the entire house with me. We’re doing a huge remodel on our house, and my husband is an interior designer, he’s trying to design the place with all these built-in wall speakers. For now, while that’s all in progress, I am perfectly happy with the UE Boom. I’ll bring it downstairs to the laundry room to play music while I’m doing laundry.

This is a posture-correcting device that you wear on your shirt. I’d been thinking about getting one because I noticed everyone (including me) has slope-neck from looking at our phones so much. I heard about the Lumo Lift on Facebook because I was a victim of their targeted ad, and because I’m a total tech guy living on computers, my neck has started dropping, so this will actually buzz once my posture goes bad. It’s like having my mother’s voice periodically leaning in to whisper, “Sit up straight!”

Like I said, we’re redoing the house, which we bought in 2001, and at the time, we put all of these wires in the walls and installed speakers everywhere and did the whole thing. Who knew technology would make all of that obsolete in just a few years, though. Now, we’re adding a third floor, and the Nest thermostat just makes it so much easier to control everything throughout the house.

I use my noise-canceling headphones to tune out the world and become super focused. Increasingly now, I’ll use binaural beats to get to that place. They’re like a brain massage. Have you ever listened to them before? It sounds a lot like wow, wow, wow, wow, and you have to listen with headphones because it’s better for focusing the sound. When you listen to them, it just really helps you laser in on what you want to focus on.

I have been a Mac guy for a very long time, since I was in my 20s. I actually worked for Mac Addict magazine and was a heavy Mac-head. At the time, it used to be about ease of use, but now, of course, the Mac is such a leader on the design front and on the consumer front that a Mac laptop just makes more sense for me.

I’ve had this phone for a couple of months now, and I should be bored by the facial recognition, but I’m just not. It’s amazing. I’m continually wowed by it. Of course, I just appreciate that the phone reduces a lot of friction in my life. I’ll use apps like Headspace (for meditation); Freeletics (for crazy-hard free body-weight workouts); Strava (for running); Spotify (for listening to music and binaural beats while I work); and AquaLink (for turning on the pool at my parents’ house in the East Bay so that it’s warm by the time we get there).