Gadget Hacks Features

Jonathan's Starbucks Card: A Social Experiment in Sharing Ends

Last month, mobile application consultant Jonathan Stark unleashed his Starbucks Card to the public as an "experiment in social sharing of physical goods using digital currency on mobile phones." Basically, he purchased a Starbucks Card and registered it via the Starbucks Mobile App for iPhone (there's an Android one, too) which allows caffeine addicts to pay for coffee and baked goods with their mobile device. He then took a screenshot of the barcode and let anyone on the web download it for...

How To: Set up Gmail delegation to allow limited access for administrative assistants

When you're personal assistant needs to handle your e-mails for you, it can be quite daunting having to give out your personal account information just so they can have access to your e-mail. And more importantly, having to battle for log in time might also be quite the hassle. With Gmail you can actually delegate your personal assistant so they have access to your inbox and can reply and send messages on your behalf, but they cannot change settings, passwords, or chat on your behalf. In this...

News: Google Releases "Dogfood" YouTube App to Google Play

If you watched a YouTube video on your Android device today, you may may noticed something just a little different. If you haven't, go check out the app in your drawer or homepage. Google today pushed out an update to their YouTube app, but by all accounts, it was never meant to hit the public. This is labeled a dogfood build, which is a term used to describe products going through in-house testing, in effect "eating their own dogfood".

How To: Make watching YouTube faster with Firefox

We're sure you can relate to those awful experiences when you seem to be waiting an awfully long time for your YouTube video to load, especially on Firefox. Well, now there's an easy fix for that. Check out this video from Tekzilla to learn about Auto Buffer, a Greasemonkey script that will automatically play your video in HD if available, remove ads, and buffers the video without autoplaying. Watching YouTube does not get any easier than this!

How To: Build a beeping electronic practical joke

Watch as Kipkay from MAKE Magazine shows you how to make something really cool for the office, with parts from RadioShack. One of the original practical jokes is the gravity activated subwoofer simulator, or better known as the Whoopee Cushion. See how to make a high tech prank... the Joke-A-Tron. This electronic prank device will beep and beep to keep your enemies on their toes.

How To: The Easiest Way to Download High-Res Cover Art for Albums, Movies, Books, Podcasts, Apps & More — Right from Your iPhone

The internet is saturated with low-quality pictures, making it difficult to find a high-resolution image for specific albums, TV shows, movies, podcasts, music videos, apps, and books. Apple uses high-quality images, but it seems impossible to download cover art, posters, thumbnails, icons, and other images from within its apps on your iPhone. Now, with the help of a shortcut, it's as simple as can be.

How To: Tether an Android phone to a Microsoft Windows PC

Looking for a guide on how to tether your Android phone to your Windows PC, creating an ad-hoc Internet connection? This guide will teach you everything you'll need to know. It's easy! So easy, in fact, that this guide can present a thorough overview of the process in just over four minutes. For more information, including detailed, step-by-step instructions, watch this clip.

How To: Stop Sites from Tracking You on Your iPhone with Firefox Focus

When you do an internet search, you'll see ads that are relevant to your query mixed in with the rest of your results. Nothing surprising there—it's how the internet is funded. But then, when you click one of the search results, you'll also see ads that are related to your initial search. Now that's a bit creepy, because it demonstrates that one webpage knows what you typed into a different webpage.

How To: Prevent Photobombers from Ruining Your Pictures on the HTC One

Whether it's bad timing, or some trying-to-be-funny photobomber, it sucks having a photo ruined by someone or something getting in the way. While you can always retake the photo, it's simply impossible to capture the moment you intended, no matter how much restaging you do. But with an HTC One, there's no need to retake anything, as we have access to built-in features that will remove those photo intruders.

How To: Find the percent sign on a BlackBerry devices

This video shows us the method to find the percent sign on Blackberry. The first step involves going to a place on the Blackberry where text can be inserted. This place is ideal for inserting a % sign. Look in the keypad carefully. There are various keys in it. Search for the key named 'SYM'. SYM stands for symbol. This key is helpful in typing various symbols in the text to be entered through the keypad. When the 'SYM' key is pressed, it opens a window containing various symbols. The % sign ...

How To: Message, Take Notes & Tweet Directly from Android's Quick Settings Panel

Creative thoughts are fleeting, so when an idea strikes, you have to jot it down as quickly as possible or risk forgetting it altogether. Let's say you randomly think of a perfect tweet while you're using your phone. You exit whatever app you were using, head to the home screen, dig through your app drawer, open Twitter—and by the time you make it to the "What's happening?" screen, you totally forgot what you were going to say.