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.

At its developer conference on Tuesday, Google launched a service called Music Beta to compete directly with Apple and Amazon in the digital music market. Music Beta gives every user a locker in the cloud, where you can store your entire music collection and listen to it from any computer or Android device.

Music Beta’s interface is a pretty one (which is shocking for a Google product), and it’s operating as a free service for now. But don’t let yourself get blinded by the hype – because overall, Music Beta is a very underwhelming product. Here are the three big reasons why.

1. The Name

Really, “Music Beta” was the best name Google could come up with? I would have even preferred just plain “Google Music.” Calling it Music Beta makes it sound like Google knows the service is not ready for primetime and somehow feels compelled to brag about it.

A lot of people found it funny how Gmail was still considered “in beta” for years after its release – despite the fact that millions had made it their primary email service. Is Google going down that road again with Music Beta just for kicks? Music Beta is a dumb name now, but it’ll be a much dumber one in five years.

2. The Apps

Music Beta will have solid integration with Android tablets and smartphones. No surprise there. Elsewhere, however, Google has failed to recognize the importance of the app culture. When you want to listen to a song from your library on a non-Android device or computer, the only way is through a web browser. No desktop apps, no iOS apps (and to make it worse, Music Beta requires a browser with Adobe Flash – so it will be completely useless for iPhone and iPad users).

The part that really frustrates me is that Google actually did build a Windows app and a Mac app in conjunction with this new service. It’s called Music Manager, but it’s only intended to help users upload songs and albums from their existing iTunes libraries, and it has no playback functionality at all. I just don’t see the logic in limiting the Music Manager app and forcing people to leave a web browser open whenever they want to listen to music.

3. The Approach

Like Amazon, Google went ahead and launched its cloud-based music service without reaching any agreements with the record labels. It’s not really a big deal though, because just like Amazon, Google is doing nothing more than giving you an external hard drive in the sky where you can play music from. Leading up to yesterday’s announcement, Google had a real chance to seize control of the digital music world by taking the next step and developing a subscription-based service that could attract the masses. Instead, Google played it safe and did just enough to stay competitive with Amazon without taking any significant risk.

Frankly, the whole subscription streaming discussion baffles me at this point. Why are a few companies like Rdio, Rhapsody and MOG able to negotiate licenses for subscription services, while others like Apple, Google, Amazon and Spotify struggle to do the same basic thing? Are record labels afraid to give big companies the rights to stream music without per-song purchases? Or are those big companies not willing to accept the same terms that the little guys have?

Perhaps the most puzzling aspect of Google’s Music Beta is the lack of a revenue plan. Google essentially tackled the digital music situation the same way Amazon did, with one exception – Google doesn’t sell any songs or albums with its new service. Amazon’s plan for launching its Cloud Player was to inspire more people to ditch iTunes and buy MP3s from Amazon. Google’s Music Beta, on the other hand, requires users to continue getting their music from other sources. So iTunes and Amazon will keep making money from music sales, while Google volunteers their servers for hosting those files. It’s a no-win situation for Google. The company won’t make any money from Music Beta until it charges a fee for the service, and once it does that, people will simply jump to one of the other available options.

A smartphone can be quite a handy device when exploring a new city. It can give you directions, recommend a restaurant, or even act as a flashlight in case you fall into a sewer and can’t see anything.

And now with an app called Broadcastr, your smartphone also acts as a walking tour guide. Here’s a brief rundown of how the service works.

• Something important, interesting or funny happens to you. (Note: this may involve close interaction with an overzealous flock of geese, but it is not a requirement.)

• You decide to capture the memory, record a quick narrative with your smartphone and then upload the audio to Broadcastr.

• Broadcastr stores the voice recording and links it to your GPS location.

• When other Broadcastr users pass through the same area, they hear your recorded story on their phone.

So as you can see, Broadcastr is trying to build a global archive of audio clips that will provide a museum-like atmosphere as you travel. While the recordings available right now on the app are not all super captivating (check out this vivid tale about a burger joint near me in Boston), I like the idea behind Broadcastr and hope it can continue to grow.

Broadcastr makes a lot of sense for walkable cities, but I could also see it being useful for other modes of transportation. Imagine having rental cars equipped with Broadcastr technology that automatically tell you stories and facts as you drive past different sites. It could certainly add another level to your vacation experience, but it probably won’t get your children to shut up in the backseat.

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.

As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, social media does not gel with digital video recorders. It’s like trying to mix spaghetti with maple syrup (elves are excused from that metaphor). Networks like Twitter are based on realtime communication, which works great for commenting on live TV – but not so much for recorded shows and events that you watch on your own schedule.

Up to this point, the rules have been strict: if you choose not to watch something live, stay off Twitter while it airs. And when you do finally get around to watching it on your DVR, keep your comments to yourself because no one likes to read tweets concerning something they stopped caring about a few days ago.

However, a new service called TweePlayer is trying to solve this dilemma. It attempts to synchronize Twitter streams with TV shows, so that you can follow along with the online conversation even if you are watching on a DVR.

For example, you can go to the TweePlayer page for last week’s episode of “Parks and Recreation” and flip the “On” switch when you start watching on your DVR. TweePlayer keeps track of your progress in the show and scrolls through related tweets so that it feels like you are part of a live commentary. You can even add a tweet of your own and TweePlayer will add it to the archived timeline.

I’m interested to see where TweePlayer goes from here, because it’s backed by an interesting idea but needs to grow. Specifically, putting the service in mobile apps would make it much more practical to use from the couch. It won’t totally replace the live TV experience, but if you’re one of those people who can’t watch a show without Twitter by your side, it can make your DVR viewings feel a little more social.