People fundamentally distrust magicians. And they should. The illusions they proffer are just that, illusions meant to astound rather than tangible interactions and results that have weight and meaning in our real world. Our lizard brains know this, and, no matter what the outstanding feat of "magic" presented, we nevertheless hold fast to our survival-based grip on the truth: we just saw simply "can't be real."
There's a new trend on Instagram Stories: People are making viral AR filters where images of popular characters from TV shows, movies, and other mediums shuffle above your head until one sticks. The filters range from Disney and Pokémon characters to Harry Potter and Friends, but you're not limited to just that because you can create your own "which are you?" filter.
Typography is an important aspect of the video editing process. You deal with it when adding captions to news clips, giving on-screen recipes in food videos, creating burned-in subtitles for short films, making no-sound-needed videos for social media, and so much more. Enlight Videoleap for iOS makes this all easy.
The price of hacking Wi-Fi has fallen dramatically, and low-cost microcontrollers are increasingly being turned into cheap yet powerful hacking tools. One of the most popular is the ESP8266, an Arduino-programmable chip on which the Wi-Fi Deauther project is based. On this inexpensive board, a hacker can create fake networks, clone real ones, or disable all Wi-Fi in an area from a slick web interface.
The transcribing app can be an invaluable tool, especially if you're a student or are in a profession that relies on audio journals or interviews. These apps can convert important recordings like lectures and meetings into text for you to carefully read through to better comprehend.
I was in college, and my 15-inch Sony Vaio laptop was my prized possession. It was my first PC and probably the most important thing I brought with me to my dorm — it was both how I completed my assignments and my primary source of entertainment. How could it turn its back on me in my time of need?
Believe it or not, there are a variety of ways to customize app icons in iOS. While iOS 12 made gave us an unofficial built-in way to do it, and iOS 13 improved it, and iOS 14 made it the best it could possibly be, there's still another option if you don't like using the Shortcuts app.
The war on dehydration is a commercially burgeoning marketplace. An increasingly sophisticated consumer population hoping to conquer everything from 26-mile marathons to vodka shots is deconstructing every functional remedy in the fight to quell the effects of severe dehydration.
There's no doubt Kali has established itself as the most popular penetration distribution available. However, just because it's the fan favorite of beginners and security researchers doesn't make it right for everyone. Manjaro Linux is a beginner-friendly Arch-based distribution which can be easily weaponized with the Black Arch expansion, creating a friendlier first-time Arch experience.
When you hear people say that Android is more flexible than iOS, it's because of things like Tasker. You can do virtually anything with the venerable automation tool, from saving battery life to controlling your smart home with your fingerprint. But before you get to that, you'll need a good understanding of all the basics.
The new iOS 11 was just released by Apple, and you can install it right now. Overall, it's got some great features, but how does it fare battery-wise on your iPhone? And how can you increase daily battery life for more juice and less charging every day?
The year was 1947. Scientists had isolated a virus from a pyrexial rhesus monkey in Uganda and named it after the forest where the monkey lived — Zika.
The camera situation on the all new HTC One is a little daunting. The M8 has not one, not two, but three camera lenses built in. First, there's the 5 megapixel selfie machine up front, then around back, there's the new Duo Camera with a refined UltraPixel sensor. HTC has done things differently here, and the UltraPixels and dual lenses means that the M8 doesn't necessarily take pictures like you'd expect—and that's not a bad thing. With a little guidance and some easy tricks, you can use all ...
Your iPhone goes with you pretty much everywhere you go, and unless you have unlimited data on your cellular plan, you've probably connected to dozens of Wi-Fi hotspots over the years. Wi-Fi passwords are saved to your iPhone so you can auto-connect to the router or personal hotspot again, but finding the plain text password for a network hasn't always been easy.
Your Pixel's Now Playing song discovery tool received a few updates in Android 12, and the feature is finally comparable to other music recognition services.
Are your Safari tabs a tangled mess? I know mine are. Whenever I try to find an open website on my iPhone, I face dozens, sometimes hundreds of tabs. Yes, there's Search, but it's not perfect if you don't remember the right keyword to narrow the results. That's where custom tab groups come in.
Over the past few weeks, Google, Snap, and Facebook have all taken their turns to show off their new augmented reality technologies. This week, it was Apple's turn, with new AR features for iOS 15 along with new capabilities for developers.
You don't need to take screenshots or make screen recordings to save photos and videos from other users on Instagram. While Instagram doesn't offer an official way to download others' posted content, dozens of shortcuts are available for iPhone that can do just that. But which one should you pick?
A temporary email can go a long way. Using your actual email to sign up for a mailing list to receive 10% off a purchase doesn't make sense if you don't use the website much. It means you'll have to deal with spam emails from then on, which is why an anonymous email is perfect not to have to deal with all that trouble. And that's where the TempMail shortcut for your iPhone comes in handy.
Users on Android could customize their app icons for some time, but it's a relatively new addition to the iPhone. You could change icons since iOS 12, but it really took off in iOS 14 and got even better in iOS 14.3. Still, it's not as easy as on Android, and you'll see a notification every time you open an app with your custom icon. However, there is a workaround to stop those annoying notifications.
When iOS 14 came out, Apple released Translate, an app for translating voice and text between several languages (even within Safari). Unfortunately, it's not as comprehensive as some third-party apps or even Siri. That's why Apple uses Microsoft's translation services within Shortcuts. It may sound surprising, but we're not complaining since you can do some pretty awesome things with it.
This year, as part of the Next Reality 30, in partnership with Snap, we're spotlighting an up-and-coming innovator in augmented reality. Specifically, we were searching for an independent developer or creator who embodies the bleeding edge spirit of AR and its ability to leverage machine learning. This year's honoree is Aidan Wolf.
I won't mince words: the Notes widget in iOS 14 is bad. But you're not stuck with it if you want sticky notes on your home screen.
You should know the birthday for a parent, sibling, child, or significant other, but there are just too many people in your family and contacts to remember everybody's yearly birth anniversary. Still, everyone expects you to remember their birthday. To stop looking like a jerk, go a step further than putting birthdays in your calendar and make your iPhone help you send birthday wishes when their big day pops up.
The smartphone market is stagnating. Without hordes of new users rolling in every year, the best way to boost profits nowadays is to poach customers from the competition. That's exactly what Apple appears to be doing with iOS 14.
While the iPhone world's attention might be fixated on Apple's upcoming iOS 14 and all of its new features, it's still in beta. What's not in beta anymore? Apple's latest iOS 13 update — iOS 13.6 — which dropped on July 15.
Dark mode is simply a way of life these days now that both Android and iOS officially support it. Most major apps now use the system-wide setting on Android and iOS, and many had their own dark themes in-app before Google and Apple got with the program. But the social media giant Facebook took forever to implement a night theme, and some of you still may not be able to access it.
It feels like just yesterday Apple unveiled iOS 13 to the world, introducing game-changing features like system-wide dark mode and enhanced editing tools in Photos. But WWDC 2020 is rapidly approaching, which means iOS 14 is as well. As it turns out, we don't need to wait for an official announcement to get an idea of what new features and changes are coming to iPhone this year.
While some people might like Thanksgiving because of the food, seeing family, or another wholesome reason, many of us also enjoy saving big on the items we've been eyeing all year. Take iPhone cases, for example. Speck, Insignia, even Apple all make cases that can put a dent in your wallet. A good Black Friday deal can mean a shiny new case for your iPhone and some extra dollars in your pocket.
If there is a major blind spot in the AR space in 2019, it's the impact that blockchain technology will eventually have on the software distributed in AR clouds.
Smartphones are now indispensable when traveling. Domestic and overseas travel alike require food, navigation, translation, and so much more to make work or vacation successful. Gone are the days of lugging multiple tourist books around with you everywhere you go — you need to let your smartphone handle the dirty work.
It feels strange to be walking through an open field in a small village in the English countryside. There's no one else around — just the four of us: me, my husband, my 12-year-old son, and my adult niece. The day is spectacular, particularly for England. The sun is shining, and the temperature is in the low '70s.
There's a lot of misinformation about VPN services, and it stems from the fact that not all of them are created equal. Some focus on privacy, others on security, and a few VPNs are seemingly even purpose-built for the polar opposite: data collection. We made this guide to help clear the air on some of these issues while objectively ranking the best of the best.
Your social security number, credit card information, and medical history can fall into the wrong hands if you're not careful about how and where you share your data online. If you really care about your data, there are tools and techniques you can utilize to protect yourself from cyberstalkers, advertisers, and hackers in a time when digital lives are a high commodity.
You can mod every aspect of your phone's software with root, but if you want to make changes at the hardware level, you'll need a custom kernel. If you've looked into custom kernels before, one name undoubtedly kept coming up: ElementalX. It's easily the best custom kernel out there, and the reason for that is its awesome developer, flar2, aka Aaron Segaert.
When I review apps, I'll oftentimes end up downloading at least one or two "bad" apps that either lied about their functionality or were riddled with ads. These apps, while not as harmful as malware, can still be a major headache. This got me thinking about the other bad apps on the Play Store and how to avoid them.
One of Android's biggest strengths is its flexibility. There's usually more than one way to perform the same task, which makes it easy to find an alternate method that works better for you. Android also has some hidden features that newer users might not be aware of, so we made this list to highlight lesser-known tips and tricks.
Don't believe what you read on the internet, especially today, when web giants like Amazon, Google, and the like showcase their otherworldly products and services. If they seem too good to be true, they probably are—but that doesn't make them any less fun.
The very first banknotes were used by the Chinese in the 7th century, during the Tang Dynasty. Before it was used as an actual currency, paper money was part of a deposit system in which merchants would leave large amounts of coins with a trusted associate and receive a paper receipt for the transaction. The reason was simple — the copper coins used as currency then were heavy.
I love making my own printed circuit boards. It really gives a professional look to a finished project, and having all the design files means I can whip up another batch whenever I need to. However, when I need to make, say, three thousand swarmbots or fill an order for a dozen PCBs, the traditional etching process can slow down the operation to a crawl.
