African-American people know how to roll with the punches. We take difficult situations and turn them into winning scenarios and dealing with working from home during COVID-19 is just another challenge in our lives.
The pandemic has forced so many of us to bring in unplanned equipment and even though the coronavirus crisis will eventually go away, many corporations have discovered that they don’t require large office buildings, and many employees have discovered that they prefer performing their jobs at home missing the daily commute.
To this end, it’s important to switch your makeshift home offices for the pandemic into something that can work well for the long term. Your health can suffer if you don’t understand the value of having the right equipment, the physical setup — the ergonomics of the workspace — is critical, because you are performing repetitive actions that can cause repetitive strain injuries.
Here are a few suggestions on products that can help you maximize a challenging situation.
Create a dedicated space. Most people don’t have spare space, but you have to think creatively in finding a niche space.
Your desk requires proper work height. The industry standard is 29 inches from the floor to the top of the work surface. You know it’s the perfect height when you sit up straight and your forearms are parallel to the ground and your wrist is not bent up or down when you type. Bending the wrists for prolonged periods is an easy way to cause injury.
Amazon has a lot of great chair choices and if you don’t like your selection they will return your money without much of a hassle at all.
A foldable monitor stand is perfect for your laptop. You can adjust the height and it allows your arms to relax when working.
Here are a few products that can make your new home office work brilliantly.
The ErgoFoam Ergonomic Foot Rest goes under your desk. Covered with premium velvet-soft foam this footrest helps with lower back pain and knee issues. A ten-out-of-ten. One of the best purchases you can make.
The Nest Audio by Google is chic and effective. The simple design has five different colors to best match your personal décor. The internal housing is made from partially recycled aluminum and magnesium, but that’s wrapped by a recycled plastic mesh fabric material that greatly softens the appearance of the speaker.
Integrated into the fabric at the top of the speaker are three capacitive touch zones for volume up and down and play/pause. Underneath the center front of the fabric, the cover is four LED lights to indicate volume levels, when the speaker is listening, and when its microphones are muted.
The Nest Audio has a 75mm (three-inch) woofer and a 19mm (0.75-inch) tweeter. These combine to provide a much fuller, clearer sound that is more pleasant to listen to at higher volumes.
The dual-driver system allows vocals and higher pitches to shine through on bass-heavier tracks in ways the older speaker couldn’t handle. Additionally, the Nest Audio sounds good at lower volumes, which is nice when I just want some background music while I’m working or during dinner.
Playing music or other audio on the Nest Audio can be done a variety of ways: through voice commands to control services such as YouTube Music, Spotify, Pandora, and others; by casting audio from an app on your phone; or by pairing it to your phone directly over Bluetooth. There are no inputs on the Nest Audio, though, so you can’t hook it up to another source via wire like you can with some Echo models or the Home Max.
Of course, the Nest Audio isn’t just a speaker, it’s also a smart speaker that leverages voice control and the Google Assistant to perform a variety of tasks. Those capabilities have expanded over the years since the Google Home debuted, but the basics are the same. You can say “OK Google” or “Hey Google” to activate the speaker and then ask it to play music, give a weather report, control a smart home device, set a timer, program an alarm, or provide a random fact.
The Nest Audio has three microphones — up from the two on the Google Home — and in general, it is able to pick up voice commands well. I do feel like I have to be louder with my voice commands compared to Amazon’s Echo devices, however. A new feature called Ambient EQ will adjust the assistant’s voice response based on the background noise in the room. But if you’re playing music on the speaker and want to use a voice command, you have to raise your voice above the level of the music to get it to work reliably.
#CHRISTMAS #GOGGLE #TheErgoFoamErgonomicFootRest #HOMEOFFICE #NESTAUDIO
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