You might be a person who loves new technology. If so, you’re probably standing front and center in line at the Apple store when the latest iPhone comes out. There are lots of individuals like this, especially belonging to the younger generations.

Some other people are the opposite, and perhaps you’re one of them. If you’re in this group, you might have waited for as long as possible before you broke down and bought a cell phone. You may not even have one now, and you still only use a landline.

There is nothing wrong with either way for you to live your life. However, there are some technology examples that you might find to be very convenient for you to use, even if you resist new gadgets most of the time.

We’ll talk about five of those today. If you have not looked into any of these yet, once you hear a little bit about them, you may decide to give them a try.

The Google Maps App

If you do have a smartphone, you might not use it for much. The average smartphone has hundreds of different uses, but a tech-resistant person may only use a couple of them on a daily basis.

Using some popular smartphone apps does not have to be all that complicated, though. It’s not as challenging as doing something like choosing a web application single sign-on solution or learning how to code. If you’re going to start exploring some of the apps on your Android or iPhone, Google Maps is an appropriate starting point.

The Google Maps app can tell you how to get somewhere by walking, driving, biking, or by using public transportation options if there are any close by. It will tell you how long it will take to get to your destination using any of those possibilities. It will also take traffic into account, which can come in handy if you need to reroute your trip because of a car wreck, a road closing, or some other delay.

It’s also handy because you can put your home address into it. You can use that as a convenient starting point to see how long it will take you to visit various locations, whether near or far. If you are thinking about taking a trip to see some relatives or a new romantic interest who lives in another city, it’s helpful to plug in their address to see how long of a drive it would be.

Smart Locks for Your Doors

Smart locks for your doors are another useful technology form that’s available today. If you own your own home, you can remove the old key-enabled door locks and replace them with numerical keypads. 

There are tons of different ones on the market now, so you can read some reviews and find one that seems as though people like it. It should be in your price range as well.

If you install smart locks on your doors, you can use the phone app to open the door if a neighbor comes by to feed your pets while you’re out of town. You might also give them their own personal code they can use. You can have several codes that work to open the door if you wish.

If you’re pulling into your driveway in the pouring rain, you might not like the idea of having to put the key in the lock to open the door that way. It’s time-consuming, and the rain is sure to drench you while you’re doing it.

You can use a smartphone to unlock the door before getting out of the car. That way, you will not get very wet as you dash inside. You can also change the numerical combination frequently if you’re worried that someone might guess it.

New Auto Safety Features

Technology also drives the automotive industry forward. It has always been that way. Car companies compete to try and come up with not just the latest luxury vehicle options but also ways to keep drivers, passengers, and pedestrians safer.

These days, if you get a new car, you might find that it comes with all kinds of amazing new technology. The tech that’s available in vehicles these days is astonishing as compared to even twenty years ago.

For instance, you might get a vehicle that can parallel park on its own. Gone are the days when you would have to adjust and readjust to try and fit into a tiny spot on a busy street.

You can get cars with automatic front braking systems. The vehicle will detect if a person, vehicle, or some other object is ahead of you, and you do not apply the brakes in time. That is useful if you lose your focus on the road for a moment because you’re listening to the radio or talking with one of your passengers.

Some cars have audible alerts that let you know if there’s a vehicle or some object in your blind spot. That way, you will know not to switch lanes until it’s safe to do so. That’s a way to avoid a sideswipe collision that might cost you a lot of money.

Rear backup cameras are very popular now as well. New cars need to have them, so if you get any vehicle made within the past couple of years, it should feature one. If you reside in a busy neighborhood with lots of kids and pets always running around, you’ll probably love this feature.

Doorbell Cameras

Many people find these days that they like to keep an eye on their house when they are not around. They can do that with cameras. You can now install cameras that run on batteries, and they don’t cost very much.

Most of them come with a phone app you can use to see if someone approaches the house. That might be UPS or Amazon Prime dropping off a package, but it could just as easily be a thief who is thinking about breaking in if the place looks deserted.

You can also get doorbell cameras. These are cameras that attach to your doorbell, so you can see who’s at the door on your smartphone as soon as it rings.

Some of these cameras even come with a way you can talk to the person at the door in real-time. You can use the feature to instruct a delivery service on where to leave your package. You can also tell anyone to leave who you don’t want to talk to or see.

Online Health Portals

If you utilize a laptop or desktop computer while you’re at home, you might want to look into online health portals. There are many different ones now that medical networks use. They were popular a few years ago, but they have grown quite a lot since the pandemic started.

With an online health portal, you can reorder meds if you have a scrip that a doctor gave you. You can ask the doctor to refill the prescription, or you can order it from the pharmacy. Some pharmacies will deliver the meds to your home as well.

You can talk to your doctor through a telehealth call that’s similar to a Zoom meeting. You can see the doctor face-to-face in real-time. If you have an immunocompromised condition, this is a way you can meet with your doctor without having to leave the house, so you don’t risk Covid-19 exposure.

You can see many of your test results through the portal, sometimes even before your doctor does. This way, you can find out about X-ray results, MRI results, blood test results, and so forth.

You can pay your bills through the portal, either all at once, or you can set up a payment plan. You can talk to a chatbot or a real person through a messaging service about how much you can afford to pay and when you might do so.

Possibly the most beneficial online health portal feature, though, might be the ability to schedule, reschedule, or cancel appointments. Almost all of the portals have this ability. Finally, you can avoid calling a doctor’s office and either talking to an overworked receptionist or having to wait on hold while you listen to annoying elevator music.

Even if you don’t like tech very much, most people would have to admit that it can make your existence much easier if you let it. Apart from everything we mentioned, you might use social media to communicate with your friends and family members who you don’t otherwise speak to all that much.

You can order just about anything online, so you don’t have to go to brick-and-mortar stores anymore unless you still like doing that. You can also use streaming services to watch movies right at the time they appear in theaters. Truly, living in 2021 is a time when technology can change your life for the better if you let it.