Before phones became mobile-gaming, music-playing, app-downloading devices, they were used simply to make convenient, cordless phone calls. There's so much on phones these days that a passcode is needed to keep everything secure, and making calls is now more complicated.
In the wake of the NSA scandal and celebrity-photo hacks, lots of people scrambled to find more-secure ways to send text messages, share emails, and surf the internet. Known for their incredibly secure data networks, Germany's email services saw a remarkable increase in new users from across the world. Last year, we covered Sicher, a German app that lets you send and receive encrypted self-destructing messages on your smartphone.
Confirmation numbers, grocery lists, addresses, and phone numbers are all things we need to quickly jot down on our phones, but the thing is, they're never extremely easy to access later. You have to figure out which app you wrote them in, meaning lots of needless searching and scrolling. Even if you use a dedicated note-taking app, those extra steps of actually opening the app to find a UPS tracking number can be an unnecessary pain.
Placing widgets on your device's home screen is a quick way to gain instant access to shortcuts or to specific aspects of an app, like music controls or weather forecasts. As more and more developers create various types of app drawers and shortcuts, many overlook widgets and what they have to offer.
Getting a new phone is exciting, but having access to its exclusive apps ahead of its release is what we're all about here on Gadget Hacks.
As soon as you plug a set of headphones into a Samsung Galaxy series device, a bar pops up in the notification tray that lets you select from a list of "recommended apps" for earphones. It's a convenient little feature that shows the apps you're most likely to use based on previous activity.
Normally, your sound settings only let you change up a few of the sounds on your device—generally your ringtone and default notification sound. While some developers include the option to choose custom notification sounds within their app's settings, most of the time you are left with an ambiguous ringer for everything—not very helpful for identifying what app that alert just came from.
Normally, when you open applications on your Samsung Galaxy device, you do so from one of three places—your home screen, the app drawer, or from the list of recently used apps—but it never seems fast enough when it comes to opening your favorite and/or most-used apps.
Adding to the recent recent slew of bugs and issues within iOS 7, it now seems that emails sent with attachments are not encrypted, despite Apple's claims that they are.
Whenever I hand my tablet over to someone, my heart always races for a second at the thought that they may stumble across my private pictures, texts, and videos. I trust them, and they may not be the snooping type, but it can be easy enough to come across private stuff by accidentally opening a gallery or messaging app.
Accessing notifications and quick settings from the lock screen just makes things move quicker and more efficiently, unless of course we're using a secure lock screen. It makes sense that if we have face, pattern, or pin security enabled, we may not want notifications accessible, but really, that should be something we decide for ourselves—and now we can.
The Academy Awards, commonly referred to as The Oscars, are airing this weekend. If you're a movie buff or just want to watch the dimes walking on the red carpet, The Oscars is not to be missed.
One of the best things about iOS 7 is the Control Center, which gives you quick access from anywhere on your iPhone to turning on or off Airplane Mode, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and more. It also makes it very easy to adjust the brightness of your display, and gives app shortcuts for your Flashlight, Calculator, Timer, and Camera.
As a preventative measure against exploitation, certain Android applications won't work if your device is rooted. Opening one of these apps that detects root will typically end up with a warning and an inability to access its features, like in the picture below. AS IF!
Not particularly good looking, TouchWiz's lock screen adequately supplements the clunky and almost cartoonish-look of the infamous user interface on the Samsung Galaxy Note 2. While there are hundreds of lock screen options in the Google Play Store, I've never quite discovered one that I've thoroughly enjoyed, due to the obfuscation from so many options.
There are a lot of great music apps available on Google Play for your Android device, each usually specializing in one feature or another, and we’ve shown a bunch of them. There's everything from floating controls to equalizers to deeply integrated streaming, but what if you want all of those features jam-packed into a single app?
I know what you're thinking. Why spend time talking about another flashlight application when there are literally thousands of them scattered throughout Google Play? As it turns out, there is a void in the realm of flashlight Android apps. Flashing lights, strobe lights, cop lights, warning lights—they're all available, but the one feature that's missing is adjustable brightness.
I'm constantly browsing the web, taking pictures, and playing games on my Samsung Galaxy Note 2, but there's one thing that I'm always doing—playing music. No matter what I'm doing on my smartphone, I'm always playing my music in the background at the same time.
Welcome back, my greenhorn hackers! Continuing with my Wi-Fi hacking series, this article will focus on creating an invisible rogue access point, which is an access point that's not authorized by the information technology staff and may be a significant security vulnerability for any particular firm.
Welcome back, my neophyte hackers! Several of you have written me asking how to crack passwords. The answer, in part, depends upon whether you have physical access to the computer, what operating system you are running, and how strong the passwords are.
It has happened to everyone at one time or another, but if you work in an environment with cars, it may happen much more often.
Remote Desktop gives you access to your Windows 8 PC or device from wherever you are to run your applications and access your files remotely.
People are always looking for ways to save money, and for the most part, saving money and cheating the system are synonymous when it comes to things like free internet access. Practically every new gadget is capable of connecting to the web, which means more and more people are looking for ways around those hefty internet bills.
Are you an avid gardener who tends to your plans on a daily basis? Then before you step foot outside the door today, check out this video to learn a plethora of tips for going green with your gardening.
Putting music on your iPod using Windows normally require having to use iTunes, which can be a real pain in the but if you hate using extra software for something that should be as easy and dragging and dropping.
This is a how-to –video on using hydra 5.4 to crack FTP passwords. This video is intended for educational purpose only. It reveals the basics of hacking a FTP server using dictionary search technique. Here are the steps involved.
Reverse lights are not something to let slide. Having a reverse light out can cause a serious accident. Before you kick your car into reverse, make sure your reverse lights are working properly. Replacing them is easy and takes only a few minutes.
All you need to remotely access your computer's iTunes library is your iPhone. Control itunes with your iPhone with this Howcast guide.
If you're trying to unlock the orange portals in Dark Souls, this guide should help you out. You'll need to complete Anor Londo first, but after you do, you can jump down a hole and access an alter to remove the fog barriers in front of the gateways.
If you want to stream your Xbox 360 and PS3 games online so that others can watch you play console games on Twitch.TV or Own3d.TV, this guide will help. You'll need to own a Hauppauge HD PVR and have access to XSplit Broadcaster, a program that streams video sources from your computer to popular streaming websites.
Having a hard time finding those endermen and creepers in the deep, dark caves of your Minecraft world? This guide will help you adjust the brightness settings in the Minecraft 1.8 pre-release and help you access the different world options.
If you need to replace or remove the battery, sim card, or SD card from your new Droid Bionic by Motorola, take a look at this walkthrough on how to remove the back of the case and gain access to all three pieces of the Android smartphone. Yes, you heard right. The Verizon Wireless phone does use a sim card because of its 4G connection.
If you want to increase your privacy and prevent iPhone apps from gaining access to data containing your location, take a look at this tutorial on turning off the location services in the settings menu on Apple's iPhone 3G devices and above.
The HP TouchPad is a webOS tablet capable of displaying media, browsing and connecting to the web, downloading and accessing apps, and more. This guide walks you through the process of configuring a number of settings on the device. Learn how to adjust the time, location services (GPS), screen lock, privacy features, and more.
Make a homemade airsoft machine gun with Kipkay! You will need a basic ball point pen, a film canister or medicine bottle, and an assortment of Airsoft pellets (6 mm size pellets work the best). You'll also need access to a drill, and a hot glue gun.
When building a fire in the wild you'll need some hard steel, a sparking tool, such as a ferrocerium rod and something to actually light on fire. If you have access to it, cotton wood is a great choice. It's dry fibers light easy when exposed to a ferro rod spark and this video shows you how it's done.
The propeller suit is the first major new power-up you have access to in New Super Mario Bros Wii, and it is super fun to play with. Watch this video to learn how to use it to collect all three Star Coins in World 2-1 of New Super Mario Bros Wii.
The hidden shrines in Assassin's Creed Brotherhood can be very difficult to access, but very rewarding once you do. If you're having trouble finding them all, watch this video for a guide to entering the Cloaca Maxima Shrine and earning the Plumber Achievement / Trophy.
In this how-to from Household Hacker, we learn of a number of free proxy services that make getting around your school's Internet filter software a breeze. For all of the details, and to start accessing and using all of your favorite websites when at school, watch this video guide.
The Pogoplug is a great device for accessing your info from anywhere, but did you know that with a little bit of work you can install Apache, Linux, MySQL, and PHP on the Pogoplug and use it as a cheap, functional, Linux-friendly web server.
