Hot Gadget Hacks Posts
How To: Get the Best User Experience with the Samsung Galaxy S6
The wait is over. The Samsung Galaxy S6, arguably the best Android phone of this year, has just launched. There was already a lot of hype about this super phone—its looks, its specifications, and its other functions have been under the microscope for quite some time. It will not be a good idea that you take this phone in your hand and use it in the same fashion as you have been using your other phones in the past.
How To: Set Up Two Different Facebook Accounts on One Android Device
Whether it's for handling your business's social media account or just for personal reasons, like trolling an ex-girlfriend's page (not that I've ever done that) or posting on behalf of your pup, there are instances where having two different Facebook accounts on one device is simply easier than switching back and forth.
How To: Browse the Internet with Your Nexus Player's Remote Control
Since the Nexus Player is an Android device at heart, there are already several internet browsers that can be used on the streaming set-top box. Chrome, Firefox, and a few others will run perfectly fine, but the trouble with these is that you need a mouse to use them.
How To: Enable the Charging LED on Your Nexus 6
The Nexus 6 has an AMOLED screen that uses virtually no power to display black pixels. To take advantage of this feature, Google included an Ambient Display notification system that shows a black and white version of your lock screen when you get a new message. As a result, the Nexus 6 doesn't use an LED light to notify you of new incoming messages like most phones.
How To: Theme Your Lock Screen on Android Lollipop
If you're like me, you probably encounter the lock screen on your Android device more than any other screen. Every time you check for new notifications out of habit, or simply pull your phone out to see the time, the lock screen is front and center.
How To: Add a Data Traffic Meter to Your Nexus 5's Status Bar
Carriers really suck, don't they? We constantly have to monitor our data usage, even though many of us are on "unlimited" plans, which, in reality, will just be throttled to a slower 2G or 3G connection when we hit a certain download threshold.
How To: Add the Secret 'Vulcan Salute' Emoji to Your iPhone
If you're a Trekkie, you might be surprised to find that Spock's popular Vulcan salute can actually be used as an emoji on your iPhone. With the public release of iOS 8.3, you'll now have updated unicode for more diverse emojis.
What’s New in iOS 8.3: Diverse Emojis, Password-Less Free Apps, Filtered Messages, & More
After several weeks of testing out the public beta, Apple has finally released iOS 8.3 to the general public. The latest iteration of iOS for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch serves mostly as an update to fix many of the bugs that plagued earlier versions, but there are still a couple of awesome new features included in the new build.
News: Popcorn Time Explained
Part 1: What is Popcorn Time? Part 2: What is a torrent?
How To: Dual-Boot Multiple ROMs on Your Nexus 6
Desktop users have taken advantage of dual-booting operating systems for decades now. If your core system software is lacking in any regard, dual-booting a secondary OS can give you access to those features that you're missing out on.
How To: Purge Your Inbox of Account Passwords with Dashlane's Email Security Scanner
With troves of sensitive information, like receipts and password reminders, hiding in your email, your inbox can become a sort of Holy Grail for hackers—or anyone with your password. Although my crazy ex-girlfriend had no hacking experience, using my email login, she was able to find a lot of account information with just a general search for "password" in my inbox.
How To: Everything You Need to Know About Buying an Apple Watch
With only a few days until Apple Watch preorders begin, and just a couple of weeks until its official release, the biggest question in Apple Land seems to be: "Are you going to get an Apple Watch?"
How To: Party Pooper Lets Your Friends Vote on What Plays Next in Spotify
Everyone's a music aficionado these days. Whether you're having a party or on a road trip with friends, someone is always complaining about the music. There's no possible way to satisfy everyone, so instead of having your music drowned out by persistent nagging, turn Spotify into a democracy, allowing the consensus to pick what plays.
How To: Make Android's Clock App Open Directly to the Alarm Tab
The basic clock app on Android devices is functional and has a few nice features. One of these is a "World Clock" view, which lets you see the current time in different cities across the world, and shows the time in your location at the top.
How To: Simplify Your Android's UI for Less Distracted Driving
Most new Android devices come with at least one feature that helps control navigation, music, and more through voice-controlled, hands-free communication. While they usually don't end up being completely "hands-free," these apps do stop people from using both hands to perform tasks on their smartphones while driving, therefore distracting them less overall.
How To: Combine Top News Stories Shared by Facebook & Twitter Friends into One Easy-to-Read Place
Serving as the primary tool of distribution for many websites, social media is how most of us catch up what's going on around the world. While there is a bunch of clickbait going around on Facebook and Twitter, there are plenty of genuinely interesting articles being shared.
How To: Install the Official OnePlus OxygenOS (Lollipop ROM)
Despite CyanogenMod actively working on their CM 12S Lollipop-based ROM, OnePlus has opted to develop their own ROM, and after a few setbacks, OxygenOS is finally out. The OS is the result of OnePlus wanting to ship their devices without needing an outside company to create a ROM to power it. Like CyanogenMod's ROMs, Oxygen OS offers a vanilla Android Lollipop experience tailored for the OnePlus One.
How To: Fix Android Lollipop's Memory Leak for Improved Performance
Android version 5.0 Lollipop introduced a ton of changes to the OS—and of course with new features, there's always a new set of bugs. One of the biggest bugs of all was a massive memory leak caused by the new screen-off animation, which loaded its assets into memory but never cleared them away.
How To: The Easiest Way to Bookmark Apps & Tabs on Your Android
Using the overview screen (aka recent apps) is a simple way to jump back to a previous task to continue where you left off, but as you use more and more apps, jumping back to that initial task isn't really that "recent" with all of those new tasks stacked on top of it. Now, thanks to developer PhinxApps, we can redefine what "recent" truly means using PinTasking. With this app, you can pin any app or webpage you're currently using onto your device's screen in the form of a Facebook-like chat-...
How To: Feeling Down? Get Back on the Right Track with 'What's Up?' for Android
We live in world where it is hard to stay positive all of the time. I know at times it gets hard to see the bright side of things and sometimes you just want to give up and let life pass you by. This kind of thinking is usually indicative of a deeper psychological problem which requires professional help, but what about when you can't go see a therapist?
How To: Get CyanogenMod's Audio Mixer on Your Nexus 6
CyanogenMod continues to be the most popular custom ROM for a good reason. Their team of developers always stay on top of the latest trends, and ensure that their software is packed with nice tweaks and awesome features. One such feature is an audio equalizer that allows you to fine-tune your device's various sound outputs. It's got a great interface, and works with any app that calls on Android's default audio mixer.
How To: Use Your Phone to Scan Documents Directly to the Cloud with Microsoft's Office Lens
In the era of smartphones and cloud-based computing, it almost seems irresponsible to keep a stash of paper documents. Not only is a physical paper printout environmentally impractical, it's also a lot harder to organize and keep track of than a digital file stored on a hard drive.
How To: This Retro-Styled Game Lets You Shoot Projectiles from One Device to Another
Most smartphone games are clichéd and mundane, but every now and then a mobile game will appear with a new concept or idea that sets it apart from all the rest. While other developers continue to regurgitate the same old "winning" formulas, developer Sebastian Goszyla is changing how we play.
How To: Unlock Meerkat's Hidden God Mode to View All Live Streams in Your Timeline
All across the web, countless users and critics have already decided that Periscope, the Twitter-owned live video-streaming app, has killed (or is on the verge of killing) Meerkat off for good.
How To: The Easiest Way to Discover New Music on Your Phone
Resources for finding new music are at our disposal in all corners of the internet; the only problem is deciding which one is the best for you. Spotify, Pandora, and Rdio all have options to discover new music on your smartphone, but they tend to expose mostly established artists, making the process of finding lesser-known but good music a game of trial and error.
How To: Lock Specific Apps & Hide Secret Photos & Videos on an Android Phone
Smartphone users often wish for a privacy, where no one is able to poke his/her nose in their personal stuff. Unfortunately, none of the smartphones have been able to guard their privacy in this fashion. Smartphones usually come up with none or almost negligible built-in security to serve your purpose.
How To: Add Slo-Mo & Time-Lapse Effects to a Single Video on Your iPhone
You can capture some pretty amazing videos using the slo-mo and time-lapse capabilities in the stock Camera app for iPhone 5s, 6, 6 Plus, or iPad Air 2, but there's no way to really combine them unless you shoot different videos and splice them together with a separate video editing app.
News: Facebook's Riff App Makes Snapchat Stories (But with Friends)
In the shadow of Facebook's announcement for third-party app development on Messenger, the company has announced the release of a whole new application called Riff, a creative tool for making videos with friends.
How To: Change the Color of Android's Clock Widget
When it comes to theming your Android device, it's the little things that matter most. Whether you're tweaking your navigation buttons or changing the color of system menus, no theme is complete until even the smallest element matches the rest of your color palette.
How To: Make Music with Floppy Drives & LabVIEW
Video: . Project Overview
How To: Clone Yourself Multiple Times in One Photo on Android
With platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat available for anyone to take advantage of, I'm all about differentiating from the mundane and repetitive images we see on social media everyday.
News: Play Pac-Man Around the World in Google Maps
It's that time of year again. Each spring, Google likes to have a bit of fun with April Fool's Day. Pranks have ranged from a fake email printing service called Gmail Paper to a search engine for smells. It's all fun and games, but this year, they've taken that mantra rather seriously with a Pac-Man game baked right into Google Maps.
How To: Install the Sling TV App on Your Nexus Player
UPDATE 5/21/15
How To: Keep an Eye on Your GPA with Pointo for Android
Even though my high school days are long behind me, I still find myself waking up in a cold sweat worrying about what my GPA is and what college I'm going to be able to get into. During those days I had to rely on coming up with my own equations to figure out my GPA between grading periods—including AP and honors course, as well as weights for pluses and minuses—but now there are smartphones to do all that thinking for me.
How To: Personalize Your Android's Dictionary with Words from Your Emails, Texts, & Social Media
Android has a system-wide user dictionary file that any third-party keyboard can utilize, if it so chooses. This file contains all of the words that you've added to your keyboard manually, and of the big-name players, Minuum, TouchPal, and the Google Keyboard call on this file to determine their user dictionaries.
How To: Play Super Mario 64 Directly in Your Web Browser
Yup, you read that right. As of now, you can actually play the first level of one of the most popular video games of all time—Super Mario 64—directly in your web browser.
How To: Use Your iPhone to Sell Unwanted Gadgets Without Ever Leaving Your Home
If you want to sell all of the old electronics lying around your home, it takes a lot of work. If you go the eBay route, you have to take tons of pictures, describe it accurately, wait for a week until someone bids on it (or not), then package it, ship it, and wait for feedback. Craigslist is a little bit easier, but usually requires you driving somewhere to meet the buyer in a public place (if you want to play it safe).
How To: Meet Periscope, Twitter's Meerkat Killer for Live Streaming Video on Your iPhone
At any moment, you can open up Meerkat and start live-streaming a video from your smartphone, available for anyone to watch. Thanks to its popularity at SXSW and the backing of several big Hollywood players, the app just announced that it's receiving $14 million in funding.
How To: Use Augmented Reality to Try on the Apple Watch with Your iPhone
Starting April 10th, you'll will be able to book 15-minute appointments online to try on an Apple Watch in person at Apple Stores across the world. With the April 24th release date just around the corner, making an appointment is a great idea for those who are unsure about which color and size to purchase—or if they'll even want one.
How To: Disable Lock Screen Album Art in Android Lollipop
Since version 4.4 (KitKat), Android has taken the album artwork for any song that's currently playing, as well as videos, podcasts, and other media, then used it as the background image for your lock screen. While many users have enjoyed this little tweak, others aren't quite as fond of it.