This morning, Belkin announced that they are pulling the plug on their Wemo home automation ecosystem and shutting down the app, cloud, and devices as of January 31, 2026. This is seriously bad news for those of us who bought Wemo smart switches and other devices, since they will cease to function on that date. But there is hope: Most Wemo devices can be connected to Apple’s HomeKit before the shutdown date and will continue to function afterwards! Here’s how to keep your Belkin Wemo devices from becoming e-waste.
Features
Taming Power Outages in the Home and Small Office
I worked primarily from home for over a decade, and though I now have an office with a few employees, many of the challenges remain the same. Key among these is power, or lack thereof, and the havoc it can wreak. I recently set about upgrading from my old consumer UPS approach to a real always-on power solution for the home, and thought my blog readers would like to follow along!
How to Disable Ads on Your YouTube Channel (Mostly)
YouTube is essentially the only game in town when it comes to Internet video, with a critical mass of viewers and tight integration with Google search. Back in 2020, Google enabled ads on all YouTube videos, even for publishers who had previously opted out. It is possible to disable ads in videos on your channel, but there are some serious limits. This post explains how to disable ads on your YouTube videos.
How To Auto-Post to Mastodon Using Zapier
With the current turmoil at Twitter, many people are turning to the federated social media network built around Mastodon as their new social outlet. Once I started posting there, a few old friends asked me to share my #SymLink, #PackRat, and #GoodRead links on Mastodon, since they enjoyed reading the contents. Since my posting process is entirely automated using Zapier, I automated posting to Mastodon using it as well. Here’s an easy way to add automatic posting to Mastodon using Zapier!
How To Connect Everything From Everywhere with ZeroTier
If you’re like me, you have a lot of different systems running in different places: at work, at home, in the lab, and in the cloud. And if you’re like me you’ve often struggled to connect and access these machines, especially when you’re on the road. At long last, I have a fully functional solution that lets me access everything from everywhere, securely and efficiently, whether on the open internet or behind NAT after NAT. The solution is ZeroTier!
