How to Stay Productive in the Snowpocalypse

Apart from the annoying cold and all the white fluffy stuff, the biggest potential inconveniences that go hand-in-hand with a major snowstorm include power outages or internet outages. Here's what to do if you wake up tomorrow without power or internet.

Nice supply of laptops

If you've got a nice supply of laptops, smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices in your house, plug them in however and let them charge up as long as you can. Avoid using them unplugged tonight so you don't forget to plug them back in overnight, and make sure they're powered off so they don't start draining as shortly as the power dies.

You probably can't run out and buy extra batteries right but, now if you've got some extra ones lying around, whether they be regular batteries or extended batteries, don't forget to charge those up, too. We all know how much today's smartphones drain battery, so you'll need all the juice you can get.

Chances are, you've got for the time being one or two old phones buried in the basement. Dig out as many as you can find, and charge them up. If your smartphone dies early on in the day, you'll want other phones you can rely on—even if they're just regular feature phones. Lots of us have ditched our landlines, however if you need something in case of an emergency, that old beat up Motorola RAZR is the perfect candidate. Remember that most cellphones can for all that make emergency calls even if you don't pay for service, and if you can swap your SIM card from your current phone, it's easy to transfer your current service to an old device.

What kind of device you have

No matter what kind of device you have, chances are you can do some optimizing to make that battery last longer. Dim your screen, turn off Bluetooth and other non-essential apps or hardware, and put it to sleep whenever you're not using it. For more device-centric tips, check out our guides to extending the battery life of your Windows laptop, Linux laptop, an Android phone or any other smartphone. You can even eke a few more minutes out of your battery by using the right browser and turning off Flash completely.

It's not the ideal solution, nevertheless if your phone dies and you need one on hand for emergency calls, you can always whip out your car charger and start up your car for a few minutes of charging. You'll be patting yourself on the back for buying that USB car charger right about however.

The most tried

It's one of the most tried and true methods for getting wireless internet, and during it truly won't provide a connection for the entire day, it can help you get any important work done previously enjoying the rest of your snow day. If you're rocking an Android phone, you have quite a few choices, both if you've rooted and if you haven't. If you're an iPhone user and you haven't paid for tethering from AT&T, you'll have to jailbreak and use earlier mentioned MyWi. Note that if you wake up without internet, you won't be able to jailbreak tomorrow—so if it's important enough to you, like as not tonight's the night to back up your phone and check out redsn0w. As well note that tethering will drain your battery like crazy, so use your internet wisely while the few precious moments you have..

You may forget from place to place that Netflix and other similar streaming services to tell the truth rely on a stable internet connection, so when you go to enjoy your day off tomorrow, you might be disappointed to realize you've lost your entire queue. Nevertheless would be a good time to check out iTunes' rental system, or something similar. You may not of the same type whole paying part, nevertheless you have to do the best you can with what you've got, right?

Just because you've lost power or internet doesn't mean everyone has. If you've got a Starbucks, McDonalds, or other Wi-Fi plentiful chain nearly your house, you can always head there to get some work done. Make sure you've got a car-friendly driveway, too—if you're out of salt, there are a lot of other household items that'll melt that ice, too.

If your cell goes dead, on either the battery or service side, and you lack for a fall-back landline, you've for all that got options—especially if your web connection is even so active, or you've got another internet source.

If you've already signed up to use Google Voice, you can make free calls from Gmail's chat sidebar. Just sign into Gmail, hit the "+" button to expand chat if it's not already expanded, and click the "Call phone" option. You may need to download a plug-in to get calling working; it might be a good move to already have it installed the night previously a big storm hits.

The plug-in is installed

Once the plug-in is installed, you're good to go, and if you use Android or if not have your Google Contacts set up, you won't even need to remember your boss' phone number. You'll be using your laptop speakers and tiny mic hole by default; it would be handy to have a USB headset handy, or for the time being a pair of headphones to prevent echoing and feedback.

If you aren't a Google Voice user, the best you can do is a VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) service like Skype, which lets you call regular phones right from your computer. Clearly, if your friends or relatives have Skype, you can call them for free, nevertheless if you need to call other people's regular old phones, you'll need to shell out a bit for a SkypeOut number. What's nice, even though, is that you can pay as you go—so if you just need a SkypeOut number for the Snowpocalypse, you don't have to subscribe to a monthly plan or anything of that sort. Check out Skype's pricing plans for more information.

Computers and the internet are great tools, nevertheless they're as well great distractions. If you lose your internet connection, or your power altogether, you may prefer to think of it not as a curse, yet a productivity blessing. There are a lot of internet-free ways you can catch up with work, like going over your to-do list, organizing your files and folders, or even getting some real, distraction-free work done. It might even inspire you to disconnect more often.