15 Cleaning Hacks That Will Just Sort Your Life Out

We are not the generation that would take out a vacuum cleaner to clean our homes. Yet we want to keep everything spic and span. Quick little tricks that don’t take too much time and patience is what we need. To manage our household chores better, we're bringing you 15 cleaning hacks that will make our work easier. You can thank us later!  

1. Remove water rings on furniture with a blow dryer.  

Personally, I think water rings are one of the most stubborn marks and don’t go away easily. But a hair dryer is what helps. All you need to do is keep the blow dryer really close to the ring and it’ll disappear in no time. 

2. Carpet stains can be removed easily with an iron. 

Carpets and rugs need massive cleaning. What to do? It’s simple, just spray a mix of 2 parts water and 1 part vinegar on the rug, and iron it for 30 seconds. 

3. Use lemon to clean spots on metal and stainless steel faucets.  

Have you ever wondered why most utensils detergents have lemon in them? It’s because lemon has cleaning properties. Use sliced lemon and rub it on your metal or stainless steel faucets and you’ll see them shining. Lemon helps in removing rust as well. 

4. Make your keyboard shine with an old tooth brush. 

We don’t think much about cleaning our keyboards, even though they are the dirtiest of things in our surroundings. Unplug the keyboard, dust its top and between its keys with an old toothbrush. 

5. Remove stains on cloth with a chalk. 

Chalk has superb absorbing qualities. All you have to do is rub the stain with chalk. 

6. Acetone on a microfiber cloth will help you get rid of nail paint stains. 

Pour some acetone on a microfiber cloth and apply it on the stain, and it should vanish within seconds. 

7. Grate raw potato to clean your grater.

The grater is another tool that's hard to clean, especially, if you grated cheese with it, because that refuses to go away. We use potato because its hardness  along with the oxalic acid helps in bidding goodbye to sticky cheese. 

8. Coffee stains will vanish easily with the help of baking soda. 

9. Make a ball of aluminium foil and add some soap to it for the the perfect cleaner for your baking dishes. 

We all love crumbling our aluminium foil and that’s what we have to do here. Make that ball, add some soap cleaner and scrub like a boss. 

10. Coca Cola works well with oil stains too. 

Yup, in fact, Coca Cola is considered great at restoring stained carpets, clothes, curtains and more. 

11. Toothpaste can make your old sneakers look like a new pair. 

Toothpaste is a magical ingredient. It can help you clean a lot of things including your car’s headlights and a lot more. Toothpaste helps remove pimples too, but let’s leave that for another story.  

12. Toothpaste can also help make your engagement ring shine 

13. How to clean a hair brush? Use your shampoo. 

Dip it in shampoo for a while. That’s it. 

14. Use a razor to clean the paint on your clothes. 

15. Clean your earpods with a little amount of warm liquid or a dry tooth brush. 

Earpods need to be cleaned. Don’t believe people if they tell you otherwise. Just put some warm water on your finger tip, yes that’s what we mean by ‘little’ and rub the ear buds. You could use rubbing alcohol as well, although rubbing with a dry brush will do the job too.  

Facebook Messenger Lets 50 Friends Get In on a Call

facecebook last week announced that it had rolled out group calling worldwide in its Messenger app. Members engaged in a group conversation can tap the phone icon on their screen to initiate a group call. They can manage individual participants on the next screen.

Members of a group who miss the initial call can tap the phone icon in the group chat to join the call while it's in progress.

The feature allows up to 50 participants and is available only in the latest version of Messenger.

Move Over, Phone Carriers

The announcement likely will cause concern among telecommunications companies because "if you consider that social media's a form of asynchronous communication, then Facebook is the largest telecom on the planet, with about 1.3 billion subscribers," observed Michael Jude, program manager at Stratecast/Frost & Sullivan.

"Now add synchronous communications -- that is, communications in real time -- and Facebook's beginning to come into focus as the next paradigm of communications: async and sync combined," he told TechNewsWorld. "This could be a game changer."

Messaging apps Viber and Line already offer group calling for up to 200 people.

However, "Facebook is different -- it's a social media site with a huge following that now offers direct communication to groups of people," Jude said. "Viber and Line are much smaller pools of people and don't have the rich social media capabilities that Facebook does."

The calling feature is in software, so "if Facebook sees a need to expand the scope of the service, they could probably do it by flipping a switch," he noted.

Facebook stands to gain "a substantial portion of the millennial telecom business," Jude suggested.

Further, the company launched a beta of its Messenger Platform with bots and its Send/Receive API, as well as bots for the Messenger Platform. How those features will play into group calling remains to be seen.

Killing Off Telcos

Facebook's move highlights the threat that new technologies pose to telecom companies.

"As we move farther and farther from traditional PBXs and wired phone lines to VoIP services, many of which are either very cheap or free, telecom companies are going to lose this revenue," noted Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group.

"They've had plenty of warning," he told TechNewsWorld. "This is just another one of those services that will make it easier for small companies and individuals to cut their phone cord."

Facebook began offering VoIP in 2013. A year later, it fully rolled out audio calls and had 10 percent of the global VoIP phone call market.

Facebook "is a much bigger threat" than chat apps "because far more people are likely to try and like it, due to its visibility," Enderle said.

Facebook Messenger has more than 900 million monthly active users.

"The overall trend is making traditional telephones obsolete," Enderle said. "This is just another indicator that trend is reaching critical mass, putting traditional telecom services increasingly on death watch."

Wireless carriers won't be hit as hard, because data charges apply to calls made through Facebook and other apps, unless WiFi is used.

What About Video?

Skype in February began supporting group video calls on iOS and Android for up to 25 people, ooVoo lets users make free high-quality video calls to groups of up to 12 people on any device, and Tango supports video calls to groups of up to 50 people.

Facebook reportedly is working on a group video calling feature, but "video introduces some issues associated with bandwidth, both in the network and on the end device," Frost's Jude pointed out.

Still, he said, "I expect Facebook will do something like that eventually."

Google Boots Ads for Predatory Payday Lenders

Google on Wednesday announced that it would ban advertising for payday loans in its ad systems.

Starting July 13, the company will prohibit ads for payday loans and related products where funds are due within 60 days of the date of issue, as well as ads for loans with an APR of 36 percent, said David Graff, Google's director of global product policy.

"When reviewing our policies, research has shown that these loans can result in unaffordable payment and high default rates for users, so we will be updating our policies globally to reflect that," he said.

The company has an extensive set of policies to keep bad advertising out of its system, Graff said, adding that it disabled more than 780 million ads in 2015 to keep them off its search engine and other systems.

The change will not impact other financial services, such as mortgages, car loans, student loans, commercial loans and credit cards, he noted.

Questionable Impact

Google is addressing many of the longstanding concerns of the civil rights community regarding predatory lending policies, said Wade Henderson, CEO ofThe Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.

"These companies have long used slick advertising and aggressive marketing to trap consumers into outrageously high interest loans," which many consumers could not afford, he said.

"It does cut off one of the ways that online payday borrowers have targeted borrowers," said Alan Horowitz, senior officer with the small-dollar loan project at The Pew Charitable Trusts.

However, the overall impact will be modest at best, he told the E-Commerce Times.

About a third of overall payday lending is online, while the remaining two-thirds involve 16,000 payday lenders operating in 36 states, according to Pew's research.

The top five payday advertisers spent US$277 million in ads from June 2012 to May 2013. MoneyMutual, the biggest, spent $212 million during that period, according to data Pew purchased from Nielsen.

In 2015, MoneyMutual agreed to end its payday loan lead-generation activities in New York and pay a $2.1 million penalty, according to the state's Department of Financial Services. Former talk show host Montel Williams agreed to withdraw from TV ads shown in New York.

The company loaned money at rates of up to 1,300 percent, the department said.

Blanket Assessment

The policies are "discriminatory and a form of censorship," the Community Financial Services Association said in a statement provided to the E-Commerce Times by spokesperson Amy Cantu.

"Google is making a blanket assessment about the payday lending industry rather than discerning the good actors from the bad actors," the association said. The policy is unfair to those payday lenders that are legal, licensed and uphold best business practices.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has proposed rule changes and enforcement activities. The bureau shares oversight authority with the Federal Trade Commission.

The proposed sending rules, expected to be completed this spring, would allow banks and credit unions to make short-term loans with a minimum of 45 days and maximum of six months for repayment, the bureau said. The rules would cap interest at 28 percent and fees at $20.

Many-Headed Beast

Online payday lenders use lead generators to bring in about 75 percent of their business, according to a 2015 report by Upturn.

For example, the CFPB in 2014 sued the Hydra Group, accusing it of making more than $97 million in loans through an illegal cash grab scheme in which it used online lead generators to make loans to people without their consent, depositing money into their bank accounts, and falsifying loan documents to make it seem as though the consumer had consented.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan announced an indictment against company owner Richard Moseley Sr.

Affiliates often pay $10 per click to have an ad next to a payday search term, according to Upturn, and the information is later sold for up to $200 at auction to other lead generators or payday lenders