Chrome has been pushing out a lot of new changes lately, but not all of them are as good as they think they are. Earlier this year, there was an update that changed how user profiles worked, which made it harder to actually switch profiles. Luckily, there was a way to get back the old profile management interface, but now there's another "improvement" that you might want to change—Chrome's new Bookmarks Manager interface.
If you've got a desktop computer, I can almost guarantee that you've got a widescreen monitor set up in landscape mode. It's how just about everyone uses their monitor these days, including myself. Except that it's not always the best way of working.
With only a few days until Apple Watch preorders begin, and just a couple of weeks until its official release, the biggest question in Apple Land seems to be: "Are you going to get an Apple Watch?"
Everyone's a music aficionado these days. Whether you're having a party or on a road trip with friends, someone is always complaining about the music. There's no possible way to satisfy everyone, so instead of having your music drowned out by persistent nagging, turn Spotify into a democracy, allowing the consensus to pick what plays.
Perhaps the best part about Easter is the fact that, even after the day is over, there's usually still a lot of candy left. Jelly beans, gummy bears, Cadbury eggs, peanut butter cups, marshmallow peeps — there's no end to the sugary goodness in your awesome Easter basket. Yet as much as I love stuffing my face with brightly colored candies, it's easy to get sick of them halfway through the basket.
UPDATE 5/21/15
At any moment, you can open up Meerkat and start live-streaming a video from your smartphone, available for anyone to watch. Thanks to its popularity at SXSW and the backing of several big Hollywood players, the app just announced that it's receiving $14 million in funding.
If you were around when the Nintendo Wii first launched, you remember how revolutionary the device was at the time. When I first encountered one, I was amazed at the simplicity of its controls, namely the fact that the Wii Remote (aka Wiimote) just felt like such a natural way to play a game.
Android Lollipop still doesn't have a simple way to add a custom lock screen wallpaper, so when I came across Corgi For Feedly from developer Stan Dmitriev, I had to check it out. What sets Corgi apart from other lock screen replacements is that it connects directly to your Feedly account to display top stories from your favorite RSS feeds as your background.
Emojis, smilies, emoticons—whatever you prefer to call them, these fun little guys can bring a text-based conversation to life. If you're worried that someone's sarcasm meter might be broken, just toss in a wink at the end of your message. Or perhaps you can't quite put your sentiment into words, but one of these little graphics suits the moment perfectly.
As technology continues to advance, we as consumers are privileged enough to be able to take higher quality photos and videos and listen to clearer and better-sounding music on our mobile devices. But sometimes we forget that there's a price to pay for that awesome content—enormous file sizes.
The Overview screen (aka Recent Apps) on Android got a huge upgrade when 5.0 Lollipop was released. Chrome tabs now hold separate entries in this multitasking list, which also got a nice new Material Design theme. One of the biggest changes, though, was a new API that allows apps to color the header on their entries in this list.
Beginning with KitKat, I've been used to customizing every aspect of my Android phone, but with the release of Lollipop, there is quite a bit of catching up that developers need to do. Most customization features, like quick settings rearrangement and theme support have already been ported over, but any type of lock screen customization has been noticeably absent.
The biggest complaint I hear about Android Lollipop is the fact that the new Priority Mode notification system has effectively killed off "Silent Mode." Sure, you can still put your phone on vibrate, but that's not truly silent. Selecting "None" as your notification mode isn't a perfect solution either, since no notification icons will be shown in your status bar and your alarm will not go off in the morning.
Location Services, a native feature on iPhones since iOS 6, is used to pinpoint your approximate location using a combination of GPS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and cell tower information. Apple uses this on their smartphones for many useful reasons: so that you can tag locations in Instagram, get better directions in Maps, and check for matches based on your location in Tinder.
Google's Chrome Web Store is packed to the brim with extensions that do everything from letting you customize Facebook to improving your Google+ experience. While there are thousands of extensions for basically anything you can think of, the problem is sifting through them all.
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.
The Nexus 6 is one of the few devices on the market that sports a 1440p "QHD" display. This means that the amount of pixels displayed is higher than almost any other smartphone, which sounds great on the surface, but is not without its drawbacks.
The camera in CyanogenMod, CameraNext, takes some pretty impressive shots when compared to those offered by HTC Sense and Sony Xperia, but it doesn't have many of the features that make it a real competitor. Even the Color OS version of the OnePlus One has received better reviews when comparing low-light shots, which implies that it's not the camera sensor that's lacking, but the software.
2015 is quickly shaping up to be the year of the cord cutter, with various media companies finally warming up to the concept of offering live streaming content. In the wake of Dish Network announcing a streaming cable service called Sling TV and Sony unveiling a similar platform in PlayStation Vue, NBC has decided to stream the Super Bowl and all of its festivities online. Before we get to all of the many ways you can stream Super Bowl 49 between the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks ...
CyanogenMod has always been on the forefront of ROM customization, and its newest release, CyanogenMod 12, is no exception. In the newest nightlies, they have included an updated version of their Theme Engine, which allows you to effortlessly change the way your entire system looks.
When Google Play Music launched a few years ago, I ditched iTunes and began using the service as my one and only source for listening to my personal music library. While All Access is great, I still prefer the radio feature on Spotify, so I still use that to discover new music.
First, I want to give credit to the author where I first found how to do this: Astr0baby's Blog. This article was dated, so I took the script on his page and reworked it to make it work today. (I also included the way to make it hide the cmd line popup.) Requirements
Android Lollipop's new Material Design interface does its best to strike a delicate balance between intuitiveness, usability, and aesthetics. For some folks, though, the use of a lighter color palette throughout the interface disrupts this balance.
Decisions are rarely easy to make, and there are countless ways to mull your options over. You can sleep on it, pluck flower petals, make a list of pros and cons, or even follow the advice of a psychic. Yet to make the best decision possible, you might want to consider holding off until a certain time of the day—or even until you feel specific emotions. The state you find yourself in has significant impact on each decision you make.
When Yosemite was released, a more detailed boot screen came to your Mac. So now, just like on Apple's mobile devices, you will see a loading bar telling you how far into the startup process you are. Apple also decided to add a black version of this boot screen to newer Macs, leaving those of us who purchased a computer before 2011 out of the loop.
Welcome back, my greenhorn hackers! Before we attempt to exploit any target, it is wise to do proper reconnaissance. Without doing reconnaissance, you will likely be wasting your time and energy as well as risking your freedom. In previous guides, I have demonstrated multiple ways to perform reconnaissance including passive recon with Netcraft, active recon with Nmap or hping3, recon by exploiting DNS or SNMP, and many others.
We've previously shown you how to get your Samsung Galaxy S4 looking more like its successor by installing the revamped S Voice app and the new Quick Settings. Now, we're taking it a step further by giving you the Galaxy S5's stock Settings app. After this mod, it'll be pretty hard for others to distinguish your GS4 from a GS5.
Samsung's Galaxy Note 4 is a beautiful device worthy of all the critical acclaim it has received thus far. But aside from the S Pen features, most of the Note's user interface has a great deal of overlap with the Galaxy S5 that we all know and love.
These days, phone calls aren't always the best way to communicate with others. Maybe you need to reach people out of the country, or you simply want to have a more visual conversation. Either way, there's a reason why video calling has become so popular.
Investing is like exercise—we all know we should be doing more of it, but we often just can't find the time. I mean, really, who's got the hours, inclination, and skill to pour through volumes of data and put together a balanced yet sophisticated portfolio of investment vehicles tailored specifically to optimize their returns while mitigating potential risks. Not me, that's for sure.
JibJab may not ring the bell, but you've probably seen one of their personalized videos. Using your own images, JibJab will place you first-hand into silly and usually musically-inspired videos that you can view online. Currently in beta, JibJib has made it's way to iOS in the form of personalized GIF creation. And if you're wondering, "why the hell would I want this", trust me, you'll love creating GIFs starring your and your friend's faces. Check out the guide below to get the app installed...
One of the best ways to reduce clutter and enjoy the new iOS 8 wallpapers on your iPhone is to use the little-known trick of hiding all of your main home screen apps. This trick effectively moves your apps off the main home screen and over to additional home screen pages, or in your dock, making your main home screen beautifully clutter-free.
BlinkFeed completely changed the way I access new updates from Facebook and Twitter, but when I switched to the Google Play Edition of the HTC One, I lost access to the launcher. BlinkFeed is available in the Google Play Store, but HTC has not opened it up yet for all devices yet. While there are ways to port BlinkFeed over to other devices, it's reliability is dependent on the ROM, sometimes causing bugs and crashes.
There comes a time in relationships when two people decide to move in together, and when this happens, you learn two things:
When Google released Android 4.2, a new feature was introduced for tablets that allowed for multiple accounts to be used on a single device. In order to create a unique experience for each user, apps and personal data were kept separate, and switching between users became as simple as tapping your profile photo from the lock screen.
The Galaxy S5 is definitely not lacking when it comes to computing power. With a Snapdragon 801 processor, an Adreno 330 GPU, and 2 gigabytes of RAM, it can take almost anything you throw at it.
In recent months, HTC has decided to start breaking its proprietary apps out of its own ecosystem and into the Google Play Store. Along with the benefit of allowing its users to update their system apps more easily, this move also means that other folks can get a glimpse of what it's like to use an HTC device.
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.
It seems like gesture controls are all the craze these days. From camera-opening gestures to "Air Gestures", it's getting to the point where we hardly need to touch the screens on our phones to control them.
