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Ask HN: What software did you purchase that positively impacted your family life

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Ask HN: What software did you purchase that positively impacted your family life

#1

Post by Galaco »

Recently my wife and I have recently been trying to organize our lives together a little more, and consolidate+manage the tools and services we use use.

For example, we have a family email address (for shared bills, banking etc) and have use cases for a VPN so we pay for a ProtonMail Family subscription to include both. We also pay for 1Password Family (until ProtonMail's ProtonPass is good enough). I was considering paying for Notion so we could manage our various existing Apple notes, lists etc in a shared space (although I think it's overpriced for this use case).

This got me wondering what other software or tools are out there that have found their niche amongst bringing families value. What software (or hardware) have you bought/maintained a subscription for that has had a positive impact to your family life?

Re: Ask HN: What software did you purchase that positively impacted your family life

#3

Post by hypertexthero »

I don’t have to, but I pay for Open Broadcaster Studio’s software through their Patreon page because learning to use it to stream was fun, made me learn valuable skills, and helped me make new friends and keep in touch with old ones.

https://obsproject.com/

https://www.patreon.com/obsproject/overview

Re: Ask HN: What software did you purchase that positively impacted your family life

#4

Post by eddieroger »

Todoist. My wife and I can share lists, assign tasks, track completion, all sorts of stuff. It’s not perfect, but I’m really mostly happy with it.

Also, setting up an iCloud family. Most of the sharing stuff we can do can be done without being in a family unit, but it makes it that much easier since it makes assumptions about who I wish to share with. From there, native Notes, Calendar, all that stuff has made our life so much easier.

Agree with 1Password family. Being able to send direct links and not passwords is amazing.

Interestingly, a theme here is that these tools allow me to have work stuff and personal stuff alongside each other, but still somewhat isolated. I think that’s more than a coincidence.

Re: Ask HN: What software did you purchase that positively impacted your family life

#8

Post by nytesky »

Family email address? Does that forward to all or both of you? I hobbled together a forwarding list with a gmail account set to forward auto to one of us, and the a filter to forward on a broad flag to the other, but something can skip the filter. A proper mailing list for family would be nice.

iCloud storage, Google plus, family setup so I don’t have to clean out inboxes or photo libraries too often for a family of 5. We do the Find My, shared notes, calendars and task in iCloud, but projects like vacation planing will be a Google doc since iCloud doc sharing is a bit squirrelly.

Shared password manager is key.

I would like notion, but there’s a fair bit of lockin with that format, and after Evernote I’m wary of building on sand.

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