I've been an Android user almost as long as the operating system has existed, so when I received my first iPhone in April, I felt like I was in a foreign land. Sure, it runs most of the apps I'm used to, and the phone itself feels about the same in my hand as any similarly-sized device, but everything else is just different.
YouTube's massive user base comprises almost one third of all people on the internet, and collectively, users spend well over 100 million hours on the site watching billions of videos each day. Add it all up, and this means that YouTube is viewed by more people than any U.S. cable network—making it by far the favorite "TV station" of the internet generation.
Considering that nearly half a million brand new apps were published to the Google Play Store in 2015, you can definitely call it a banner year for Android development. In fact, it's getting to the point where we're a bit spoiled as end users, since we've grown to expect something new and exciting practically every week.
This year, Google released two Nexus phones to glowing reviews, and as we've grown to expect, the Android community wasted no time in coming up with a root method for both. In fact, legendary root developer Chainfire even devised an entirely new "systemless" method for rooting that should make updating a bit less complicated, along with a few other benefits.
It would only make sense that Google is one of the most active app developers on the Android platform, particularly when you consider that they develop the platform itself. From my count, there are an astounding 117 unique apps that the search giant and its subsidiaries have published on the Google Play Store.
It always looks different when it's not about you. The Internet is our world's Alterego. Those many bits don't really make sense unless we want them to be valuable, to mean something.
My bathroom is like my own private arcade room. Whenever I'm seated comfortably on the toilet, no one is going to disturb me, so I can play anything I want on my smartphone. You probably do it, too — and your parents, kids, friends, colleagues, and boss — so don't be afraid to admit it.
Organizing contacts is a bitch, especially on the iPhone. Some contacts will have multiple entries, you can only delete contacts one by one, and certain types of contacts can't be deleted at all. If that isn't enough to make you pull your hair out, then I don't know what will.
My years in the restaurant business have taught me many things. Some of those things are best left unsaid and other things require a PhD in vulgarity, but the one thing I learned that I keep coming back to night after night is that you do not have to spend a lot of money to drink excellent wine. This is especially true of champagne...I'm sorry, sparkling wines.
Fall is my favorite time of year, yet I cringe every time it begins. Why? Because it seems like every business is in a frenzy to start the Christmas shopping season the day after Halloween ends. For those of us who are fans of pumpkins, that's a buzzkill.
We've already seen the visual changes that Android 5.0 Lollipop has brought to the table, but Google spent just as much time altering things under the hood. Awesome new functionality and hardware capabilities have been added left and right, and with the OS already out now, it's high time we had a look at some of these tweaks.
If you've read any health news in the past year or so, you've probably been bombarded with headlines announcing that frequent sitters face certain death, even when you're just relaxing and watching TV at home.
Climbing into bed and shutting your eyes each night is heavenly—but waking up the next morning isn't. We all hate dragging ourselves out of the comfort of sleep and into the groggy, exhausting work day. Yet starting your day doesn't have to be awful if you know how to hack your sleep cycles and get the most out of your shut-eye.
Foodies and big-time chefs like Thomas Keller go crazy for fleur de sel. This finishing salt appears in fancy eateries and cookbooks the world over, and in the early 2000s, it was not uncommon to see diners in a high-end restaurant sprinkle a pinch of fleur de sel on their plates from their own personal stash.
In one of Apple's newer ads, the company claims that "more photos are taken with the iPhone than any other camera." If this is in fact true, then it might also be appropriate to say that more photos are accidentally deleted on iPhones than any other camera.
Most of us have conducted an investigatory science project without even knowing it, or at least without knowing that's what it was called. Most science experiments performed, from elementary to high school students and all the way up to professional scientists, are investigatory projects.
Living in Los Angeles has given me the opportunity to attend a bunch of really cool events. I've been to Dodgers, Lakers, and Clippers games, a few concerts at the Staples Center, and a plethora of smaller joints.
A few weeks ago, Facebook published a blog post called "Proposed Updates to our Governing Documents," which outlines a few changes in their policies and user voting system. These changes would essentially take away users' right to vote on future changes to Facebook's data use policy while also taking away Facebook's responsibility to alert users of those changes. If the new policy is enacted, the vote will be replaced with "a system that leads to more meaningful feedback and engagement," what...
All kinds of people pretend to be someone they're not on the internet, including scammers, people attempting to wind others up, hackers and web predators. Almost all of these people will leave bases uncovered and they're all easy to expose when you understand how to. Here are my favorite ways of finding out when somebody is lying quickly. Image Search
Breathe new life into your Instagram profile picture with another layer of self-expression. It's the perfect way to show another side of your personality without sacrificing your current IG profile photo.
What started as an accessibility setting for hearing aids turned out to be a super helpful tool for anyone with a good set of Bluetooth headphones. The problem is that most iPhone and iPad users still don't know about it. If you're one of them, you need to see what this underrated gem in iOS and iPadOS can offer you.
There's more than one way to get free credits and discounts in the Google Play Store for apps, games, books, movies, in-app items, and other Play Store content. You may know a few of them — but some of these may surprise you.
It's easy to lose the TikTok video you were watching when you accidentally refresh your For You feed, but it's not gone forever. TikTok has a new feature for your iPhone, iPad, or Android device that can show you all your watched videos over the last seven days. There are also other, more hidden ways to see your watch history — one that goes well beyond a week.
When it comes to the ever-shifting sands of the augmented reality space, you never know which week will end up being truly historic. Well, this one was one for the history books.
Amid a troubling resurgence in coronavirus cases, led by the new Delta variant, augmented reality is once again moving back into the spotlight as a solution, especially now that the move to return to offices has been stalled.
It's already been a banner year for mergers and acquisitions in the augmented reality industry, with WaveOptics and Ubiquity6 among the notable companies acquired. Two of the more active M&A players, Snap and Epic Games, continued their respective buying sprees this week with major deals supporting their AR strategies.
Ever since Facebook announced its partnership with Luxxotica brand Ray-Ban to produce smartglasses, the augmented reality space has been on high alert awaiting more details.
Numerous potential exploits are found for every operating system each month, and Android is no exception. Trouble is, lots of Android devices don't receive timely updates — but many are now getting regular monthly security patches to at least shore up these vulnerabilities.
Few brands have been more enthusiastic about augmented reality than Lego, which has now expanded its AR experiences from toys to theme parks.
Google and Snap held their annual conferences this week, and both companies managed to upstage their new AR software features with fantastic new AR hardware.
Apple's iOS 14.5 overhauled the Podcasts app, combining new aesthetics with smart and efficient features. While you might find the app better at playing your favorite podcasts than past versions, you might also find something negative about the update on your iPhone: it may be eating up your storage.
Many of us choose to use an iPhone — as well as other devices in the Apple ecosystem — because of the company's dedication to user privacy and security. If you need more proof of that commitment, look no further than iOS 14.5, released April 26, which adds new tools to protect our data while browsing the web and more control over the data installed apps collect on us.
The march of Amazon to insert itself into nearly every retail arena continues with the e-commerce giant's latest move to launch its own brick-and-mortar beauty salons.
Back in Android 9, Google took away the expanding mini-menu for Bluetooth connections. The way it used to be, you could long-press the Bluetooth toggle in your Quick Settings, then the panel would turn into a fast-access menu for Bluetooth settings. It was a fairly minor feature, but dropping it has made it a lot harder to switch between your various Bluetooth accessories.
If you've been using an iPhone for years, chances are you have thousands of photos and videos in your Photos app. And while it may be fun to browse them when you have free time, finding a specific one can be a chore if you're not searching your gallery right.
This week, Google showed off some wild new and innovative AR experiences that showcase the WebXR protocol for browser-based AR content, while 8th Wall applied its own web-based AR platform in service of Captain Morgan.
For its latest take on augmented reality-infused playsets, Lego is giving the young, and the simply young at heart, its twist on the viral lipsync format made popular by TikTok with Lego Vidiyo.
After weeks of reports about their first augmented reality device, Apple actually shipped a real AR product this week in the form of a TV tie-in AR app.
Hand tracking is a key component in making natural interactions with augmented reality content, and one of the leading technology makers in this discipline has just improved on its tracking engine.
Quietly, while the rest of the world was engaged in pandemic and political concerns, a few weeks ago Facebook casually upgraded its Spark AR platform with what it calls Unified Effect Publishing.