With floating song lyrics displayed over the screen, apps like musiXmatch and Floating Lyrics are perfect for people who want to go beyond just the tunes and delve into a song's message and meaning. And while these floating windows can be convenient, they're not always necessary.
We recently showed you how to recover your Shazam history from Siri, which is a lot less intuitive than finding the songs you've tagged directly in the Shazam app. But with a subscription to Rdio or Spotify, there's no need to even locate your history. You can Shazam songs and have them automatically added to a newly created playlist titled "My Shazam Tracks."
There's no such thing as a perfect Android keyboard. Some, like Swype, have gesture typing down to a science, but lack in predictive technology. SwiftKey, on the other hand, boasts awesome next-word prediction, but less than stellar gesture typing. Many others are optimized for multiple languages, space saving, or emojis, but none are without their flaws.
The Nexus 6 came with a hidden kernel module that allowed for double-tap-to-wake functionality, essentially letting you turn your screen on just by tapping it. A simple root app allowed us to activate this feature, which meant we were always two quick taps away from waking our device.
Android automatically clears entries in your call log after 30 days. While this might be fine in most cases, sometimes you need to find a number that called you more than a month ago. Or perhaps you want to keep detailed records for business purposes, and 30 days just isn't long enough.
The AMOLED display on the Nexus 6 wastes no power to show black pixels. This is because pixels on such a screen emit their own light, and black can be easily achieved by simply not lighting any given pixel.
Leaving your computer unattended, whether at home, work, or a coffee shop, even for just a short while, is enough time for someone to steal it or look at your personal files. While there are ways to deter thieves, it's a little harder to keep snoops away.
I once had a collection of over 300 different wallpapers for my MacBook, set to randomly change every 30 minutes. Needless to say, my desktop never got boring. Wallpapers can facilitate a mood, imply a political stance, or just add aesthetic appeal, so having to manually change them on my iPhone is a bummer because of how many times I want a new home or lock screen look.
An uncapitalized proper noun in a message or email is a serious no-go for those skilled in the art of grammar. But trying to make a lowercase letter uppercase (and vice versa) is not a fun task if you're using an iPhone. You've got to point the cursor is just the right spot to change a letter, and that's a skilled art in and of itself.
I'm a long-time and loyal Android user, but one iOS feature that I'm truly envious of is their keyboard shortcuts, which lets you assign a short macro that inputs a longer phrase. For example, typing "home" can input your home address.
How many times have you witnessed a beautiful moment that you would have loved to capture on film, only to watch it slip away as you struggled to unlock your phone and open your camera app?
Depending on who you ask, internet connectivity should be a basic human right. With Google recently embarking on a project to provide internet capabilities to remote corners of the world using balloons and satellites while Facebook attempts to do the same with unmanned drones, the concept of free web access is steadily gaining steam.
Only scumbags hide their call and message history, right? Wrong. While it may seem like a tactic for the unfaithful, it's still a good thing to do for certain contacts on your phone that you don't want to block outright.
These days, most of the hardware components in smartphones evolve at a breakneck pace. Batteries gain capacity while decreasing in size, displays continue to get sharper as graphics rendering steadily improves, and processors clock higher speeds at every generation.
Apps that save your passwords have been around for quite a long while. But apps that complete the entire login process automatically? Now that's a different story.
If you're one of the millions of people who use the WhatsApp service for messaging, you've probably noticed a recent propensity that the app has had for adding buttons to its interface. Two such buttons have made their way into the message thread screen, cluttering up the interface with functionality that is a tad bit redundant.
When people first learn that their Android device is capable of dual-booting different operating systems, e.g. Linux, they almost universally respond with, "That's so cool." And for those of us ambitious enough to actually try one out, we are typically filled with glee as we see Ubuntu, or something similar, boot up for the first time on our tablet or phone.
Arguably Chromecast's biggest feature since its launch, screen mirroring functionality started rolling out to select devices earlier this week, and in a word, it's awesome.
The desktop layout in Mac OS X Yosemite is undeniably beautiful—it's sleek, simple, and easy to admire. Thing is, I do too much on my Mac to install a developer preview as my main OS (even though I can make a bootable install drive and dual-boot it), but I do want the aesthetics of the new build.
The folks behind StumbleUpon have created a video service that is just as awesome at introducing you to new content as their website service is.
I still have a nexus one. This little phone 196 Mb of storage space (and most of that is taken by the system). But I have somehow managed to live off it for 2 years. This is for anyone with a small amount of memory. We will be using Link2SD. MUST HAVE CWR AND A ROOTED PHONE.
Allowing us to easily get features that would otherwise be available only through flashing mods and custom ROMs, Xposed Installer has been a godsend since its development, simplifying the sometimes tasking and potentially harmful process of changing the core components of Android's operating system.
No matter how cool my 3D live wallpaper is, or how often my Google Now wallpapers automatically change, I always want more backgrounds. Zedge has made it easy for me to find new ones, and 500 Firepaper helps me keep my background lively with rotating wallpapers—but these aren't enough.
The status bar is an omnipresent force on our Samsung Galaxy S3s; always there to give us that vital information about battery life, date and time, Wi-Fi access, and much more. But there's just something about that default black bar that's so...boring.
While browsing the internet on your Samsung Galaxy S4, you've probably scrolled to the bottom of a very long webpage, Twitter feed, or down into the abyss of some other app. Depending just how far down you've scrolled, it can be a test of your patience (and fingertips) scrolling back up to the top.
In the wake of the NSA controversy and its subsequent fallout, many dashed towards finding means of secure communication—using private internet browsing and encrypted text messaging applications—out of fear of being spied on.
Don't be greedy, sharing is caring. If you have a brand new Xbox One, let some friends and family in on the action by getting a few extra controllers. You can connect up to eight controllers on one Xbox One console. Now that's a gamer party waiting to happen.
Applications, features, and software running in the background of your Samsung Galaxy Note 2 can drain a significant amount of battery power, even when your smartphone isn't being used. For this reason, smartphone carriers and developers suggest that you turn off Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and other battery hogging features when they're not being used.
With over 8 million active users, CyanogenMod is definitely the most popular ROM for Android devices, which explains why venture capitalists invested $7 million last month for future development.
We've all been in a similar situation before—you set your phone's ringer to silent before heading into class, and when you check your phone hours later, you find that your silenced phone didn't alert you to 8 missed calls and 17 text messages.
How to use Teflon tape for plumbing applications. I know it sounds simple but there are a few tricks to applying the Teflon tape. Teflon tape is also known as PTFE Tape.
While the legality of secretly recording phone calls varies in each country, sometimes it's useful to have audio documentation of conversations you have on your Samsung Galaxy Note 2.
Automating tasks on your Samsung Galaxy Note 2 is nothing new. Everything from adjusting screen brightness, to turning on the flashlight, to saving Snapchat pictures can be done automatically with the help of a few function-specific apps. The only problem with task-specific apps is that you have to download a handful of them to get everything you want, which can quickly add up. Now, thanks to AutomateIt, you can clean up your app drawer on your Note 2 and create loads of custom tasks using ju...
A free Wi-Fi hotspot can be a lifesaver. Whether it's because you have shitty reception, need faster connectivity, or just don't want to go over your monthly data plan, free Wi-Fi in public areas is greatly appreciated. While connecting to these free hotspots is fairly easy, finding them can become a whole nother issue. I've been in plenty of situations where I wasted my data plan instead of taking a few steps to the right, where free Wi-Fi would have been waiting for me and my Samsung Galaxy...
Snapchat's self-destructing nature is the perfect way to send funny and potentially embarrassing photos and videos (something Anthony Weiner wishes he knew about). That's why there are currently 150 million Snapchats sent each day. While it may be used for fun, many fail to recognize that there's a dark side to every good thing. While Snapchat claims that the pictures and videos on their application are completely obliterated—not only from the phone, but from the Snapchat server—there are oth...
There is no such thing as a pulled pork slider. In fact, there is no such thing as a pork slider. Or a chicken slider. Or turkey or fish. The term "slider" actually means a lot more than just a hot miniature sandwich, and if it's not beef, it automatically missed the first cut. Sorry, but that is not a slider above.
Last month, Alexander Heit drifted into oncoming traffic after being distracted from the road. His sudden correction forced his vehicle to roll and flip over. He was pronounced dead at a local hospital shortly thereafter. All because of a freaking text message. He was only 22 years old.
We've all had that moment when we enter into a classroom, meeting, or theater and completely forget to put our cell phones on silent.
I rarely ever turn my desktop off. For starters, it takes a few minutes to boot up, which I hate, and secondly, putting the computer to sleep is perfectly adequate. You really only need to completely shut down your computer every once in a while.
