Look, we all know the goal is to work less, but the reality is that sometimes we need to bust out the computer at home or on the go. You may as well be comfortable, you know?

Today’s featured Target Daily Deal is this ingenious Laptop Buddy portable laptop table. It’s got a cup holder and a separate side platform for your mouse, even. And today only, it’s marked down to just $28.99—plus the Daily Deals always ship for free.

What are you waiting for? If you have to work on the go, at least you should have a nice little ergonomic setup to make it a little more tolerable.

What if you could have the quality of your digital camera, but the picture-in-your-hand convenience of the old Polaroid instant camera? You can! And at a great price, too—today’s Amazon Gold Box Deal is the Pogo mobile printer from Polaroid for just $30 shipped (it’s normally $50).

It works with your digital camera or cell phone, and prints out borderless 2″ x 3″ photos in under a minute. No, it’s not going to replace conventional photo printing, but it will give you a bit of instant gratification (or a favorite new toy for a teen, perhaps…?) on the cheap. Love.

With schools cutting back on art education, one of the best ways to make sure your children get the benefits of studying music is by helping them learn about it at home. Groovy Music City software lets kids use the computer to creat their own musical compositions, which they can share with other kids online at Groovymusic.com. The software works with Macs and PCs; tt offers kids a library of sounds to tweak and shape, the online tutorials are easy to follow, and the interface feels kind of like a video game. Best of all: It’s a fun way to foster a love of both music and learning.

$39.99 at SoftwareMedia.com.

You’ve been meaning to pick up a camcorder when the price was “right,” but money is tight and the time just hasn’t presented itself. Until now—today you can snag the 30 minute Flip Ultra Series Camcorder from Amazon for $49.99 shipped, which is the lowest I’ve ever seen it.

The Flip Ultra delivers crisp video in a tiny, easy-to-use device. I keep mine in my purse (for camcorder emergencies!) and “Oh, I wish I’d been able to tape that!” is now a lament of the past.

Hey, why not kill two birds with one stone? Father’s Day is coming up. Just sayin’.

Sponsored Post:

You’re at the playground, and your child comes stumbling over to you, complaining that his head hurts. What do you do?

If you have Pediatric SymptomMD on your iPhone or iPod Touch, you tap the screen and access a wealth of easy-to-understand information immediately, without having to deal with a cumbersome internet search or unreliable WiFi service. The information provided draws from the same clinical protocols used by pediatricians and nurses across the US and Canada and has been tested time and again over 15 years on more than 150 million queries.

Navigation within the application is simple: Choose the most appropriate sympton care guide, use the chart to determine the recommended action, and follow the care advice provided.

There are 85 care guides from which to choose, and they’re organized alphabetically, by keyword, and by body area, with links to related guidelines. The charts can help determine the course of action you should take, including whether you should call 911 immediately. There’s also some great reference material, like pediatric dosage tables by weight for over-the-counter medications, images to help you identify symptoms and injuries like rashes or bug bites, and standard First Aid information.

The application is not a substitute for a trip to the doctor’s office or emergency care, but can provide the same peace of mind that you might get by calling the nurses’ line after hours. Think of it as having a pediatrician on call, all the time.

$1.99 at the iPhone App Store and iTunes (an adult version of SymptomMD is also available for $2.99).

OK, this is a bit of a departure from the affordable luxuries theme of this blog but I wanted to share this online service I recently learned about. It’s called YourDilligence.com and it helps parents monitor their kids’ activities on social networking sites like MySpace or Facebook. From their website, here’s how it works:

"During the set-up process, you can select the categories of words you want to search for on your child’s site(s), or you can create your own list. YouDiligence continually searches your child’s Facebook and/or MySpace pages for any use of the words you select. When one of those words appears on your child’s page, you will immediately receive an email identifying the word, the context in which it is used, and a link to the page where it is used."

My daughter is four and a half but already I am dreading her getting online and becoming part of these online worlds where our supervision is limited. I have many friends with older kids for whom this is a constant cause of stress. So I’m adding this service to my list of things to check out once we get there. Ugh, do we have to get there?

There is a free trial and it’s fairly affordable afterwards.

Touch the special “pen” to various parts of the page and the book comes alive — at least, that’s what kids will think. Poingo’s infra-red scanner picks up on hidden symbols in the text and pictures of Poingo books, triggering a wealth of words, music, and sounds through the onboard speakers. The books feature well-known characters from commercial hits like “Finding Nemo” and “Cars.”

$34.99 for the starter pack, which includes two books (additional books are $9.99 each) at MyPoingo.com.

Sometimes, hand sanitizer gel just isn’t enough. Germ Guardian’s new travel-size Sanitizer Wand promises to kill 99 percent of germs, viruses, bacteria, mold, and dust mites without chemicals; just shine the battery-powered UV-C light over the questionable surface. It works on hard surfaces (like countertops or silverware) and soft ones (think hotel bedspreads or public pool towels), and is environmentally friendly, too. At 10.5- by 1.5- by 1.5-inches and about 13 ounces, you can’t tuck it in your pocket, but it does fit neatly into into a backpack or diaper bag, and takes only seconds to use.

Regularly $59.99, but on sale for $29.98 at Lowes.

If you’re cell phone reception or wireless connection is weak, Arc Wireless’ portable antenna, Freedom Blade, can help boost the signal. It works with cell phones, laptops, and PDAs at home or on the road and is compatible with all major wireless carriers.

$44.99 (cell phone adapters sold separately) at Radio Frequency Wireless Electronics.

We all know the importance of backing up our hard drives, and yet we all come up with the same excuses for why we don’t do it — it takes too long, it’s too complicated, I keep forgetting to pencil it in. Now, there’s no excuse: The Clickfree Automatic Backup HD801 automatically finds and saves copies of 400 kinds of files, from documents to photos to music to videos, on its 160GB hard drive. All you have to do is plug the PDA-size device it in to your PC’s USB port; it works with Windows Visa, Windows XP, and Windows 2000. Have more than one PC? You can back all of them (up to 10 computers) on the same Clickfree system. To restore your data (or transfer it to another computer), plug it in again and click “Restore.” That’s it!

$119.99 at GoClickFree.com.