In the second half of last year, I stopped blogging about technology on a regular basis and spent more time focusing on other writing projects. I know it was hard on all of you. Computers and the Internet are scary things, and you probably feel lost right now.

To help get you back on track, here are five tips geared towards embracing technology in the new year. And don’t forget to follow me on Twitter to catch all of my mini-rants on the latest tech news and developments.

1. Give streaming music a shot

I gave up iTunes for Lent last year and haven’t looked back since signing up for an Rdio subscription. I pay $9.99 per month and stream albums to my Mac and iPhone all day long.

The only hiccup in the growth of streaming music services has been the recent trend of bands (Coldplay, Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Black Keys) withholding their new releases from Rdio and Spotify. It’s a messy situation, because these artists feel like streaming music is killing their industry, and meanwhile, Rdio and Spotify have almost no hope of becoming profitable thanks to the demands of the music labels.

My advice is this: if you are near a computer for most of your day, use Rdio or Spotify as your personal jukebox and as a way to explore new artists and albums. If you feel guilty about shortchanging your favorite bands and singers, then pay for the album on iTunes or, even better, pick up a copy from your local music seller.

2. Move your documents to Dropbox

I always thought of Dropbox as nothing more than a flash drive in the sky. Sure, it would let me store up to 2 GB of data online and give me access to it from anywhere – but I could already do that with Apple’s iDisk service or even just by emailing files to myself.

Then iCloud launched, essentially killing iDisk, and I took that as a sign to give Dropbox a try. I quickly discovered that the service is much more than just an online flash drive. Because of its desktop client for Macs and PCs, Dropbox can replace the need for storing files on your local computer. The magic of Dropbox is that your files are available whether or not you are connected to the Internet - and the syncing to your cloud storage is done entirely in the background.

As I mentioned before, Dropbox gives you 2 GB of storage space for free and offers paid plans for more gigabytes. I suggest you start with the free package and use it for your text documents, spreadsheets and presentations (music, video and pictures take up too much space). Dropbox will sync your data across all of your devices so that you never have to worry about manually transferring files or accidentally editing the wrong version of a document.

3. Get your Twitter life under control

The first step to getting your Twitter life under control is to comb through your timeline and unfollow all the accounts that you do not consider essential. Obviously everyone tweets at different rates, but I estimate that following any more than 100 accounts is dangerous (and yes, I’m currently breaking my own rule).

Then take all those people who you considered non-essential but are still interested in and filter them into Twitter lists based on their category, profession or whatever the hell you want. I currently have five Twitter lists set up to complement my main timeline: News, Tech, Sports, Local and Companies. Also, consider migrating any RSS feeds that you still check into Twitter lists.

Treat your lists as news tickers that you quickly scroll through when you have a free minute. But be careful about adding too many news sites and blogs to your Twitter lists, since their nonstop tweeting can quickly become overwhelming. And no matter what, DO NOT attempt to read every tweet from your main timeline and all of your Twitter lists. Trust me, I’ve tried it – and the journey back from Internet Addiction Disorder is a long one.

4. Cleanse your devices

Take a look at the icons on your smartphone. Do you still use or need all of those apps? What about the downloads folder on your laptop? Are you saving those dancing cat GIFs for a special occasion?

It’s easy for your digital devices to get cluttered. Why not try to reverse that trend in 2012?

Go through your phone and delete the apps, messages and contacts you don’t need anymore. Then sift through the folders on your computer, removing unnecessary files and transferring stuff that can be archived to an external hard drive.

If you are feeling really adventurous, format your computer or mobile device and force yourself to start from scratch. (Just make sure you back up all your data beforehand.) You’ll feel more organized, and your gadgets will probably run faster too.

5. Pick a new password right now

Look, I know changing passwords is a pain in the butt. I picked a password for my first AOL screen name in sixth grade, used it for just about every site and service I signed up for over the next decade, and didn’t come up with a new one until I graduated from college.

To be extra careful with your online security, you should really use a different password for each site or application and change them up every few months. But that’s a lot to ask, so I suggest starting with my approach: choose a new password at the beginning of every January and then devote a few hours to updating the credentials for all your online accounts. As the year goes on, keep a running list of every site that you create an account on, and that will help make the annual password change a little bit easier.

Are you afraid to tweet what’s on your mind because it might piss someone off or make yourself look stupid? Well worry no more! A Canadian firm called the Kiln Group has been considering the possibility of offering companies – and maybe even individuals – social media insurance.

In theory, businesses could pay for policies that would protect themselves from the backlash that occurs when one of their employees makes an insensitive, offensive or just plain idiotic comment on the Internet.

Lawyers say this kind of corporate tweet insurance could cost upwards of $100,000 per policy. That’s a lot of dough. Perhaps it would be smarter and cheaper to hire someone to proofread your tweets. Better yet – just change your company’s Twitter password so that the jerkoff intern (or the voice of your duck mascot) can’t embarrass your entire brand in under 140 characters.

On Sunday night, in the wake of Osama bin Laden’s death, the Internet exploded. The very first reports of the breaking news appeared on Twitter, and after that, people tweeted at the astounding rate of 3,000 times per second.

There were no fail whales in sight, and everyone managed to get in the mandatory three bin Laden jokes (it’s best to start with a Trump death certificate reference, then move on to a crack involving Jack Bauer, and finish up with some mockery of the Playstation and smartphone location data leaks).

It was an important moment for a lot of people, and in that moment, I think Twitter validated itself as a communication channel for the future.

With that said, part of me is worried for Twitter. What if Sunday night was not the launch of the site’s potential, but the culmination of it? Twitter may never have the opportunity to capture that same level of human interaction, reaction and raw emotion again.

And therefore, Twitter shouldn’t sit still and waste time congratulating itself on how it gave a voice to so many people at such a critical time in human existence. Instead, Twitter needs to seize the moment and take the next logical step in the site’s progression: animal tweeting.

The folks who run Birds on Twitter are already on the cutting edge of this trend. From a small village on the coast of Latvia, they slap a layer of unsalted bacon fat on a computer keyboard and wait for the local birds to peck at the keys. You can see the results by checking out @hungry_birds.

This is innovation.

This is the future of Twitter.

This is the power of the Internet.

Our northern neighbors are heading to the polls next week to elect new igloo captains and whatever other government positions they have up there.

But there’s one problem – a law from the 1930s that bans broadcasters from reporting election results before the polls close. The restriction was put in place back then to prevent radio stations from revealing early voting returns and potentially influencing citizens in the western portion of Canada’s six time zones.

Flash forward to the present day, and now Canadian election officials are saying the law applies to not only radio stations, television broadcasters and news websites, but also individuals chatting with their friends on social media. That’s right – anyone talking about early results on election day through Twitter or Facebook will technically be breaking the law in Canada.

It should be pretty entertaining to see how Canada attempts to enforce this ridiculous law, especially since there’s no way to prove where a tweet originates from unless the user has location services enabled. My hope is that we’ll see #TryToCatchMeCanada show up as a trending topic next week as election officials frantically send direct messages to offenders telling them to delete their tweets or face consequences like banishment from the Internet and massive geese attack.

In the Internet age, you shouldn’t have to sift through content to find something you actually want to read. This is one of the many reasons newspapers and magazines have become archaic in recent decades (I know Easter was yesterday, but don’t expect a resurrection for print media). New web-based services appear every day with innovative ways of customizing the news experience and helping people find stories that interest them.

The latest to join the movement is an iPad app called News.me. It links up with your Twitter account, pulls out the articles that people in your timeline are sharing, and then displays them in a readable format.

The only downside is that News.me will cost you 99¢ a week or $34.99 for a yearly subscription. While it’s great that the money will be distributed to publishers based on which articles you read, the app does not provide enough features to warrant a recurring fee.

News.me only supports Twitter integration – which means no Facebook and no RSS, so you’ll miss out on any stories that don’t appear in your timeline. And that brings up the central issue with News.me: it wants you to pay to read stuff that you could see for free just by using a regular Twitter app.

This is the way News.me comes off: “Do you have a Twitter account but lack the motivation to check it on a regular basis? Are you too lazy to actually click on Twitter links to read full articles? Then pay us to do it for you!”

The idea of organizing Twitter links in a pretty format is a valid idea, but there are already apps like Flipboard that do it better, support other types of accounts and cost nothing. Flipboard’s popularity makes it clear that people have a desire for personalized news, but there’s no proof yet that they are willing to pay for it.