Gadget Hacks How-Tos

How To: Remove Your Name and Profile Picture from Facebook's Social Ads

Facebook is constantly evolving, and lately it seems like a bad thing, at least for its users. First, you had to opt out of Instant Personalization, which shared your personal information with Facebook's partner sites. Then, you had to take drastic measures to secure your home address and mobile number from third-party apps and websites. And now?—Now you need to opt out of Facebook Ads.

Echoisms: How to Measure Your Own Attractiveness

Have you ever heard symmetrical is sexier? Yep, according to scientists, symmetry is inherently more attractive to the Homo Sapien eye. Back in the days of Helen of Troy, Phidias, Plato and other great philosophers all observed the golden ratio, "a sum where the quantities to the larger quantity is equal to the ratio of the larger quantity to the smaller one". Confusing? Let's apply it to the human face only: the features of the human head were measured in calculated, precise proportions to d...

How To: Change Your Etsy Privacy Settings to Protect Your Profile from Prying Public Eyes

Nothing on the web is ever private. If you thought you can control your privacy, you were wrong. Websites may give you security options to better hide your information from the world, but ultimately your privacy resides in the hands of the website itself. We've seen how websites let ad companies track our private usage. We've seen how Facebook mucked up their privacy controls. We even saw how websites like Gawker are prone to hackers stealing user information. And now, Etsy has made what was ...

How To: Download and use the new features in the Firefox 4 RC

Mozilla Firefox is one of the Big Three web browsers, beloved for it's open nature and lack of affiliation with Microsoft or Google. Firefox 4 has been in a rather cranky Beta for some time, but has finally reached Release Candidate (RC) status! Watch this video for a guide to the new features you can play with in the RC, then click the link below to download it.

How To: Jailbreak iOS 4.3 iPhone, iPad semi-tethered, iPod Touch w/ Sn0wbreeze 2.3b1

If you own an Apple iOS device (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad) then you probably have the 4.3 firmware update by now. It's got some cool improvements, but as usual necessitates a new jailbreak. Enter Sn0wbreeze 2.3b1, the beta version of the jailbreak for the new iOS. It's in beta, so it's not perfectly stable, but this video will show you how to use it. You can see a written version of the guide and the necessary download links here.

Buy Products for Cheap on eBay: The Art of Arbitrage Bargain Hunting

In a recent arbitrage tip, we showed you the secret to making money fast by buying and selling the same thing over and over again on eBay. But there's one thing you need to know about the buying part—get the lowest price possible! This article aims to show you some of the best methods to making sure you're paying the lowest prices on eBay, so you're the best arbitrageur out there, with your profits higher than ever!

How To: Earn Money with ChaCha

Have you ever gone on a long internet binge, researching and surfing mindless things, and thought to yourself: I wish I could make some money surfing the internet and sharing the (sometimes useless) information I had just acquired? Well, now you can!

How To: Hack Your Nook Color into a Full (But Cheap) Android Tablet

Thanks to online music services like eMusic and iTunes, compact discs are becoming a far distant memory, turning local music shops around the country into desolate wastelands. The once mighty movie rental store Blockbuster is now bankrupt because of online streaming services like Hulu and Netflix. And Borders and Barnes & Noble are closing stores left and right thanks to eBooks available on eReaders, like the Amazon Kindle. Everything is moving to the digital world, and everything is finding ...

How To: Increase Website Traffic Using White Hat SEO Techniques and Free SEO Tools

Put simply, SEO = more organic traffic. And more traffic is always good for a web page / website (unless of course, you are an underground drug-dealer selling drugs worldwide via a spooky website whose URLs are as search engine unfriendly as possible, so that no one accidentally discovers your page and informs the police, sending to heaven both an exciting career opportunity and the likely Al Capone's successor).

How To: Delete your iPhone photo library

Well, you've shot one too many compromising photo and it's time to wipe your iPhone photo library. But, for some reason, this isn't the easiest thing to do. Well, with this how-to video, you'll learn how to get rid of those 212 photos of your niece in her sailor suit you thought looked adorable. Those cat climbing photos. Gone. That girl/boy you were recently dating. Bye bye. Delete at will and clear your iPhone photo library.

How To: Use the GasBuddy Mobile App to Find the Cheapest Prices in Town

Gas prices across the United States have skyrocketed, with today's national average for regular unleaded gas at $3.51 a gallon, with California leading the pack at $3.90 a gallon. AAA reports that last week's national average was just $3.37. That's a $0.14 increase in just one week! Just one month ago, the average was $3.12. A year ago—$2.75 a gallon. Actually, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) states the price of gas hasn't been this high since since 2008 when it hit $3.57 in ...

How To: Perform a master reset on a BlackBerry Curve

Alright BlackBerry users, it's time to wipe all that information before you sell, or pass on your BB to someone else. This simple how-to video will let you wipe it all, simply and easily. If you desire you can also choose to leave in your sim card and wipe the contents of that as well. The tutorial hose will guide you you step by step on how to remove your personal information from your Blackberry 8350i Curve. This instructional video is a simple but very detailed tutorial that instructs you ...

How To: Change the back cover on your iPhone 4

iPhones and the entire Apple i-line are incredibly gorgeous. Streamlined, minimalist, and futuristic, they're the epitome of both form and function. But we've always had a bit of a problem with the fact that it seems like every other person walking down the street has the SAME EXACT model as us. Doesn't exactly make us feel unique, you know?

How To: Hack a 64 bit WiFi wireless network using Ubuntu v. 9.04

Oh how we love open source software. If it wasn't for Open Office, we never would have been able to write that seven-page English paper while on our friend's Microsoft Office-lacking laptop during an impromptu road trip to Mexico. And Ubuntu, an open source secure operating system, offers you similar convenience. A much more intuitive computer operating software than your standard Windows or Mac OS, Ubuntu is great if you know what you're doing.

Strengthen Your Password: Watch an 8-Bit Striptease

About two months ago, the massive Gawker Media hack was a wake up call for many web denizens on the importance of proper password security. Data analyzed by the Wall Street Journal revealed the three most popular passwords recovered from the hack were downright idiotic—123456, password, and 12345678. If past events weren't motivation enough for crafting a strong password, then maybe a racy 8-bit stripper is. Naked Password is a jQuery plugin by Platform45 that rewards you with an accelerating...

How To: Sen an anonymous text message

Want to send text messages, but don't want your recipient to know they're from you? You can use a website called AnonText.com, which lets you send anonymized text messages to any cell phone number. Use your computer, or, if you have a smartphone (like an iPhone, Droid HTC Evo), then you can navigate to the website using your phone's browser capabilities.

How To: Hack wifi using Wireshark

If you're trying to hack someone's wifi, a useful bit of software you may want to try is called Wireshark. Wireshark is a wifi packet sniffer, which is an essential step in actually breaking into someone's wireless system. Of course, this is illegal, so make sure you're only doing it to test a network's security, or for your own educational purposes. Check out the video, follow the steps and see how secure network is. Hack, hack, hack!

How To: Easily Download Online Videos with Savevid

Want to download your favorite online video from YouTube? I'm going to show you how to download your favorites videos very easily from YouTube, along with other media streaming websites using Savevid. It also supports the downloading of videos from Dailymotion, Metacafe, Break, Veoh, MySpace, Revver, Blip.tv, WeGame, Tangle, 5min, Game Trailers, LiveVideo.com, RuTube, FaceBook, Vimeo, current, Funny Or Die, eHow, and Megavideo.

How To: Back Up Your Gmail Account (5 Ways of Archiving Gmail Data)

Last weekend, some unlucky Gmail users inadvertently had their email accounts wiped out. Actually, it was 0.02 percent of all Gmail users—or roughly 40,000 of the 200 million who use the email service, due to an "unexpected bug" which affected copies of the data. Gmail does make backup files of everything, so eventually everyone will reclaim their email history. In fact, as of yesterday, Google has successfully restored all information from their backup tapes and has started returning everyon...

How To: Add Flash Capability to an iOS Device

We all remember that feeling, when we first held our very own iPad—there was an excitement running through your body, and a smile on your face. And you say to yourself, "It’s true the iPad can do just about everything." But as you’re surfing the internet, you get a constant screen that says, “!!!Flash not supported!!!”. Then, there you are moping and downloading app after app just to get the iPad to do what Safari should do in the first place. Getting Flash on your iPad or other Apple devices...

How To: Fix 'no service' issue on iphone after unlocking it

Hey iPhone jailbreakers! Did you jailbreak your 2G/3G iPhone and then update to firmware 4.1? Yeaah. Now you've got a shiny little brick, don't you. Well, this video will help you get free (again) from the clutches of those clever guys in Cupertino. Apple doesn't like people messing with "their" phones, but come one, didn't YOU buy it? So hack it, crack it, load it up with 3rd party apps and when you get 'no service' check out this how to and bring your phone back to life.

How To: Stop Advertising Companies from Tracking Your Online Activity for Targeted Web Ads

Back in the eighties, I used to hate television commercials, but I eventually got used to them. Had to, in order to enjoy my favorite shows. Then, the increasing number of billboard ads annoyed me in the nineties. They followed me everywhere I went—no escape—persuading me to buy the newest whatever. It seemed like Big Brotherism—like They Live. But, I got used to it. When I finally entered the digital age and became a web addict, I was peeved at the constant sight of online ads everywhere I v...

How To: Use a transistor or N channel MOSFET to turn any device on or off

The transistor is the most basic and important part of electronics, allowing small changes in voltage to turn things on and off. On, off. 0, 1. There's electronics. The grandaddy of them all is the N channel MOSFET, the most important transistor. This video will teach you how the MOSFET works and how to build some example circuits. This video is an absolute must-watch if you are interested in electronics at all.