Whether you use Google Calendar, Exchange, iCloud, or any other service, you need a good Android calendar app to keep you organized on the go. For many folks, the obvious answer was always Sunrise Calendar, but Microsoft purchased the company behind this awesome app in a classic acqui-hire move, and now, Sunrise has officially been shut down.
Wi-Fi signals have limited range, so if you live in a two-story house or work in a larger office, you may have set up multiple routers or repeaters to ensure full wireless coverage. Sadly, Android handles the transition between networks pretty poorly.
The new USB Type-C standard was supposed to revolutionize smartphone charging, but so far, it's done more harm than good. Many cable and charger manufacturers are struggling to keep their products in line with the proper USB-C specifications, so as a result, we now have to check to see if a cable is compliant before purchasing one.
Several major web services—most notably Facebook—have horrendous Android apps that occupy way too much space and drain battery life at an alarming rate. Such issues have led to a new trend where third-party developers create minimalist "lite" apps that are essentially the mobile website bundled into a native Android wrapper, freeing up storage space and saving battery life without sacrificing many features at all.
When Apple wanted to bring their Notification Center to Mac OS X, I loved the idea. But after using it since its integration in Mountain Lion, it's been more annoying and distracting than anything. More and more apps incorporate notifications, so I'm constantly getting sound alerts and banners in the top right corner that I don't want.
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-...
Hangouts is a great cross-platform messaging service from Google that works with almost any device, making it one of the few messengers that can be installed on Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android gadgets alike. With its many useful features, one of the few debatable downsides is its not-so-attractive color scheme.
Sony has a gorgeous line of smartphones using the moniker "Xperia," and the latest and greatest model is the Z3. The firmware for the Xperia Z3 was just updated to Android Lollipop, and many system apps of course got tweaked and refreshed with this latest version.
What type of person are you in group settings? Are you the social butterfly, eager to get to know everyone and interested in the people more than the setting? Or are you a wallflower, afraid to catch anyone's eye out of fear?
In 2012, VideoLan published a beta release of their wildly popular desktop media player, VLC, for the Android platform. However, because the non-profit development team did not have access to popular North American Android devices, they opted to exclude the USA and Canada from their initial release. That is, until now.
Think eating food is as easy as putting it in your mouth? It's considerably more complicated than that. Your brain plays a big role in determining what and how you eat. Understanding how your brain interprets food choices is key to managing your eating habits.
Someone does't really like you. I don't know who or where they are, but they exist. If you want to change that, simply ask them to do you a favor.
How many times have you heard someone utter the phrase, "Now, let's break into groups"? From classroom discussions to workplace think tanks, gathering into groups to generate ideas is common practice. These forced get-togethers are intended to encourage creativity and unique thought, but they can actually do the opposite. More often than not, group brainstorming is annoying rather than encouraging, and these group sessions can actually be detrimental to your productivity. Getting together har...
Welcome back, my hacker apprentices! My recent posts here in Null Byte have been very technical in nature, so I thought that I'd have a little fun with this one.
The problem of system freezes is not new to the world of Windows and this has come to light even in the latest Windows 8 release. In the event that your system freezes, you cannot open your desktop files, some controls stop functioning, or you are unable to launch the start screen applications either. You may experience this unusual behavior after updating Apps in the store or due to a driver issue. Sometimes, freezes occur because of video card problems too. In order to do away with these Wi...
Most of us have some sort of malware scanner or antivirus program on our computers, but what about our smartphones? A lot of people don't realize that computers aren't the only devices that are susceptible to malicious software and apps—they can follow you on your smartphone or tablet, too.
Whenever you're on an audio call in the Phone or FaceTime app and accidentally press your iPhone's Side button, the call ends immediately. It's a helpful feature for those who like to terminate calls that way, but it's flat-out annoying for everyone else who inadvertently ends calls prematurely. Now, everybody wins because you can choose what happens during calls when you lock your device.
Apple's "Spring Loaded" event introduced us to many new and exciting products, including iMac and iPad Pro models with the M1 chip, an upgraded Apple TV 4K, a purple iPhone, and the long-awaited AirTag. However, one of the most anticipated announcements came in the form of a software update — the biggest update since iOS 14.0 and iPadOS 14.0 came out — and that's iOS 14.5 and iPadOS 14.5.
Apple's new iOS 14.5 will be coming out very soon, and that's even more evident now with the release of the iOS 14.5 Release Candidate (RC) on Tuesday, April 20. Anyone can install this update and get all of the same features iOS 14.5 will give everyone for iPhone; only you'll have a head start to using all of the updates in Maps, Music, Podcasts, Reminders, Shortcuts, Siri, and more.
Apple's iOS 14.0 update has come and gone, and now we're sitting on iOS 14.2, the latest version of the iPhone's operating system. While it may be too late for you to revert to the last iOS 13 version, if the iOS 14.2 firmware is giving you problems or you're not just digging it, you can downgrade to iOS 14.1.
Apple just released the first beta for iOS 14.2 to iPhone software testers today, Monday, Sept. 21. This update brings a new Control Center tile for Shazam music recognition, a redesigned Now Playing Control Center tile, and a new "People Detection" feature in Magnifier.
Facebook recently hit a snag in its quest to take augmented reality face effects to its millions of users.
Chances are, your favorite websites run on ads. That means the sites rely on those ads to fund their operations. Without ads, your laughs, news, and guides don't happen. That's why it's helpful to disable content blockers (often called whitelisting) for sites you support. In the past, it wasn't possible directly in Safari, but in-app whitelisting becomes a reality with iOS 13.
Every step in the evolution of computing brings an in-kind leap forward in user input technology. The personal computer had the mouse, touchscreens made smartphones mainstream consumer devices, and AR headsets like the HoloLens and the Magic Leap One have leveraged gesture recognition.
Sony Pictures has tapped the powers of augmented reality as provided by startup 8th Wall & the Amazon Sumerian development platform to help it promote the latest motion picture manifestation of Spider-Man.
Starting Nov. 1, 2018, Google got a lot tougher with Android app developers. New apps being uploaded to the Play Store already had to target Android 8.0 Oreo or higher as of August, but now, every update to existing apps has to do the same. It may seem like a simple rule, but it will have some serious repercussions.
This week, we're beginning to see the wide ranging impacts of some of the early iterations of augmented reality hardware and software.
While ARKit and ARCore are poised to bring AR experiences to millions of mobile devices, one company is poised to anchor those experiences anywhere in the world with just a set of geographic coordinates.
Scientists know that bacteria create their own energy, get nutrients to run their cellular processes, and multiply. But, bacteria haven't been shown to respond to external mechanical stimulation or signals in a way that's similar to how our bodies respond to touch, until now.
When you think about preparing for an internship, I'm sure your first thought is to go shopping for professional outfits or to brush up on technical skills. While that's all important, there's so much more for you to think about.
The community of bacteria that lives in our gut has a lot to tell us. It can give clues to what we eat, the environment we live in, and diseases and disorders we may have. Now, scientists have linked these bacterial species to how we feel. A new research study found an association between women's gut bacteria and their emotions.
Over the past week, companies took a variety of approaches to investing in augmented reality. Lampix is backing its own effort to build an ecosystem for augmented reality platforms. Nokia and Xiaomi are teaming up on numerous fronts, potentially including augmented reality.
Long admired for their active and cooperative community behavior, some types of ants also wear a gardening hat. Nurturing underground fungus gardens, these ants have a win-win relationship that provides food for both ants and fungi. If we humans understand it better, it may just help us out, too.
By looking for the mechanism that allows influenza A to invade lung cells, scientists also discovered a treatment that might block the virus from taking hold there.
Even if your cat drives you a little nuts, don't worry, because a new study says that cats pose no risk to your mental health.
Lighthouses and signal fires may have been the first social media. Without the ability to share language, a distant light meant "humans here." A new study from the University of California, San Diego, finds that bacteria can also send out a universal sign to attract the attention of their own, and other bacterial species.
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.
Macs are generally highly power efficient due to, in part, the optimized sleeping schedule with OS X. Yet in certain scenarios, you might not want your Mac to go to sleep: downloading a huge file, reading a book, reviewing a spreadsheet, analyzing some content on the screen... the list goes on. To resolve this, you can go to System Preferences and mess with the settings, but this can be an annoying process if you need to do it often.
Welcome back, my greenhorn hackers! The Holy Grail of any hacker is to develop a zero-day exploit—an exploit that has never been seen by antivirus (AV) and other software developers, as well as intrusion detection system (IDS) developers. In that way, you can exploit systems with your newly discovered vulnerability with impunity!
