This post is brought to you by You Need A Budget.

Given today’s economy, there’s a good chance you’re a freelancer. The self-employed, as much as and maybe more so than the salaried, can only benefit from being strategic and disciplined in handling money.

Of course many of us don’t have the bandwidth to plan beyond next week, let alone the next six months. But with shifting sources of income and hard deadlines for bills, improvising with your finances is a sure way to lose cash you could be keeping.

Say goodbye to the 140-character limit that made Twitter famous and say hello to something much longer. According to a report, Twitter is getting ready to launch a new feature that will let users include as many as 10,000 characters in one tweet — 9,860 more than before.

If you’re like the rest of us, you’ve got a nice Mac with plenty of video, photos, and apps on it. Time Machine is a fantastic way to keep your stuff all backed up and safe, so you’ll need a high-capacity drive to do that with.

Samsung’s new external solid state drive (SSD), called the T3, has the capacity of multiple terabytes to keep more of your data backed up and the speed to make it easy.

“Following the successful worldwide launch of the Portable SSD T1 in 2015, we made several significant upgrades to the T3 based on the feedback and needs of our customers, which included content creators and business professionals in particular,” said Samsung’s Un-Soo Kim in a statement.

Chinese New Year is just a few weeks away and the Apple Watch is gearing up to celebrate the occasion with two new color options that will add a lot of red (and hopefully some good luck) to your wrist.

If you want to listen to the same corporate pop music as you do on your terrestrial radio, you can do so from the comfort of your couch.

iHeartRadio’s streaming app can now also reside on your Apple TV, assuming you have one of the newer fourth-generation set-top boxes from Apple.

The new Apple TV app will give you all the main elements of the iOS app, including Live Stations, Custom Stations based on songs or artists, and podcasts from the behemoth media network.

No, that car you see above is not a real Batmobile — but it is just as exciting. Built by Faraday Future, the FFZero1 is a concept smart car that’s back from the future, with a 1,000-horsepower electric engine that goes from zero to 60mph in under three seconds.

LAS VEGAS — Can you use lasers to regrow hair?

The folks at HairMax are at CES 2016 to show that yes, it is totally possible to stimulate hair follicles to regrow your skimpy, thinning head of hair into a thick, furry mane. However, there is a catch: You have to have the right type of baldness.

The LaserBand 82 brings laser revitalization to the home with its 82 medical-grade lasers that provide a full treatment for hair loss in 90 seconds. Cult of Mac caught up with HairMax at CES, the largest orgy of tech gadgetry in the world, to get a heads-on look at the funky futuristic headgear.

Apple CEO Tim Cooks gushes about his iPad Pro. But you, on the other hand, don’t see it as ready to replace your MacBook.

Accessories company Brydge is rolling out new keyboards it says will make your iPad feel as productive as a laptop.

After having initially been promised for a Christmas deadline, it now appears that both Apple and Ireland will have to  wait until February to receive the verdict of European Union regulators on whether or not Ireland has broken international tax rules by letting Apple shelter profits worth tens of billions of dollars there.

These days, coding for mobile is one of the most valuable professional skills you can acquire. If you want in on the action but didn’t spend your teen years coding a the console, you’ll need help getting your hands dirty with the nitty gritty of mobile development. That’s exactly what this course provides, offering the chance to build 20 hands-on iOS 9 apps, an invaluable learning experience that’s just $19.

Fitbit has upped its game to take on Apple Watch and Android Wear with a brand new fitness tracker called Blaze. It packs a premium, smartwatch-like design with color display, and it promises to run for up to five days in between charges.

Pounding coffee and Red Bull can only do so much to keep a driver from falling asleep at the wheel. But one company has developed a discreet Bluetooth headset that nudges you before you doze off.

The Vigo Bluetooth headset uses an infrared sensor, an accelerometer and an algorithm that tracks blinking patterns and head motion and notes changes to quantify mental energy in real time.

LastPass, one of the best and most popular password-management clients, just got a major upgrade that brings a fancy new look, emergency access for trusted friends, and revamped password sharing through the new Sharing Center.

We’re bound to see some innovative new Apple Watch charging docks at this week’s Consumer Electronics Show, and kicking things off is accessory maker Actionproof’s cute “Bozon” Apple Watch charging dock.

Am I the only one who thinks this looks like a little Pixar cartoon alien?

Without a doubt, the oldest Mac Apple still sells is the 13-inch non-Retina MacBook Pro, model number MD101LL/A. Launched in 2012, it’s still on sale from Apple for just $1,099 … $200 more expensive than Apple’s entry-level MacBook Air, which is just as powerful.

What’s the deal? Why does Apple still sell it? The 2012 MacBook Pro is still a surprisingly big seller for Cupertino. Here’s why.

iPhones may not come with the crazy amounts of bloatware that swell up Android devices, but there are still a handful of pre-installed apps that some users don’t want to have on their home screen.

While Apple doesn’t let you delete its stock apps in iOS 9, a new method for hiding them was recently discovered by YouTube user videosdebarraquito, who posted a video revealing his solution. Check it out below.

T-Mobile, America’s uncarrier, claims that its Binge On program allows its customers to stream an unlimited amount of video from select services without taking away from their data caps. And that’s true.

But according to the Electronics Frontier Foundation, what’s also true is that Binge On throttles streaming speeds on literally every other HTML5 video service out there, degrading video performance across the board no matter where you stream. Boo.

LAS VEGAS — CES 2016 is about to kick off. The world’s biggest consumer electronics show, which is held each January in Las Vegas, starts this week. At a press preview Monday night, we got a peek at some of the industry’s latest, greatest offerings.

Here’s some of the stuff we think is pretty cool. Check out a cocktail robot, a monster Wi-Fi router that promises to eliminate dead spots, and a fixed-wing drone that flies like a hawk.

Heart rate-sensing technology was one of the big features of the Apple Watch (having even been credited with saving one customer’s life!), but according to a lawsuit filed by biometrics company Valencell, Apple allegedly failed to properly license the technology and is therefore using it illegally.

Most of the time you hear about another tech company “borrowing” from Apple’s design language it’s a Chinese smartphone maker creating an iPhone knockoff. Not so with HP, which just unveiled its gorgeous new EliteBook Folio notebook — which happens to look a whole lot like a MacBook.

If you’ve ever fancied a MacBook that runs Windows, this is probably the closest you’re ever going to get!

The iPhone 7 may be the best part of nine months away, but supply chain sources are starting to shed some light on what we can expect from Apple’s next generation handset.

One thing which seems more and more certain is that Apple plans to ditch the 3.5mm headphone jack in an effort to push users toward wireless headphones instead.

Mark your calendars. Apple is set to announce its Q1 2016 earnings January 26.

Apple confirmed today via its Investor Relations portal that it will be releasing financial results for the first fiscal quarter of 2016 (re: September through December 2015) at 2 p.m. Pacific on January 26.

Microsoft is excited, as it’s almost got as many installs of Windows 10 as there are iPads. Of course, the Redmond-based tech company didn’t put it in as many words, rather shouting out that Windows 10 is on now on a ton of devices.

“As of today,” writes Microsoft on its website, “there are more than 200 million monthly active devices around the world running Windows 10.”

That’s surely a lot of installs, showing significant growth.

It looks like the new hotness in drone technology — which many of us associate with quadcopters — is wings. Parrot, the company most well-known for its AR Drone and various mini-drones, is bring an all-new entry into the drone space: the Disco fixed-wing drone.

If you’ve ever wanted to fly your own remote-control plane and haven’t gotten into the technology yet, this just might be your time.

Sleep Number is perhaps one of the very few companies at CES that actually wants to put us to sleep instead of keep us awake with bright screens and games all night. It’s very latest method for accomplishing that goal is the It bed: a bed that will track different aspects of your sleep patterns during the night to inform you on just how well you’re sleeping at night. Plus, it’ll integrate with its own app and other third-party apps to do that.