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How To: Unlock Your Front Door Without Keys Using This DIY Keyfob Entry System

Keys are on the way out. They're clunky, take up precious space, and slow you down when you have tons of identical-looking gold ones on your keyring. Everything we can open with keys can now also be opened with wireless technology in just a click—so why use keys anymore? Sure, you can pay hundreds of dollars for an automated lock system on your house—but why do that when you can build it yourself!

How To: Save Some Cash on Apple's New Hybrid Fusion Drive and Make Your Own!

At the most recent Apple event, the company announced its new Fusion Drive, a hybrid hard drive designed to increase performance and speed by combining traditional and flash storage. It's composed of a small solid-state disk and a larger spinning hard disk drive, and files and applications are moved back and forth between the two based on how often you use them. A chunk of memory is reserved for whatever task you're currently doing, which means that multitasking doesn't slow down your compute...

How To: Make an Incredibly Realistic and Completely Functional Armored Gauntlet

If you've decided to forgo the super heroes and television characters and go medieval this year for Halloween, David J. Guyton has just the thing to take your costume over the top. To promote his new book, he built this awesome gauntlet armor—and made a step-by-step tutorial. David's is made of brass because it's meant to be a prop (would work well with Steampunk), but if you wanted to make it legit, he suggests trying steel instead. He started with a paper template, which he used to trace th...

How To: This DIY Illuminated Isomorphic Keyboard Changes Colors as You Play Music

An isomorphic (or self-transposing) keyboard is "a musical device where a grid of notes is displayed to the user and the interval change between notes in constant for any given direction." For those of you who didn't grow up playing the piano like I did, that basically means that it lets you move between keys easily without having to learn new patterns because the keys are laid out so that a chord is the same pattern in every musical key.

RoboDoc: A Kid-Friendly DIY Robot That Makes Doctor Visits a Little Less Scary

Remember going to the doctor when you were a kid? If the word 'traumatizing' comes to mind, you'll love the RoboDoc by MarkusB, a robotic doctor that makes checkups a little less scary (and a lot more fun) for kids. It all started when Markus took his 14-month-old daughter for a checkup. The finger clip that the doctor used to check her pulse terrified her, so Markus decided to build a heartbeat monitor just for kids that's much more likely to make them laugh than cry.

How To: This Easy Photo Trick Makes Fireworks Look Like Brilliant Sky Creatures

Anyone who does a lot of photography knows that the right exposure can make all the difference in the world. Taking a picture of something in motion requires a long exposure, so if you've ever wondered why your fireworks photos never quite turn out right, your shutter speed could be the key. Photographer David Johnson decided to put a twist on the classic long-exposure fireworks photo. Normally, when people take photos of fireworks displays, they just set a long exposure for somewhere over 3 ...

How To: Ditch Your Doorbell for This Front Door RFID Lock That Lets Whoever You Want In (Whenever You Want)

Hate answering the door, but don't trust your friends with a set of keys? This RFID front door lock made by Steve Pomeroy will solve all your party-hosting problems. It reads the RFID tags in his friends' public transit cards and decides who's allowed in based on "groups" that Steve defines. And I have to say, it's also rather stylish. It's controlled by an Arduino serial console and a custom Android app to add and remove cards. The reader can store 50 or 100 tags at a time and allows 7 diffe...

How To: Don't Have Photoshop? Use the Free Web Tool Cropp.me to Crop and Resize Images Easily

Cropping images can be a huge pain if you have a bunch to do at once. Even if you have Photoshop or a similar program, the process of opening each individual photo and cropping them one at a time can take forever. A free web-app called Cropp.me makes that task a lot easier by auto-cropping your photos to whatever size you choose. All you have to do is upload an image, choose what size you want it to be, and click Cropp My Images. You can choose from a list of sizes or input a custom size of y...

News: Artist Burns Chairs into Decorative, Fragile Steel Ring Seats with Fire

For his thesis at Design Academy Eindhoven, artist/designer Tuomas Markunpoika Tolvanen created this incredible chair using tubular steel cut into thin rings. How did he get them to stay that way? He burned them. His project is called Engineering Temporality, and the inspiration came from his grandmother whose Alzheimer's disease is deteriorating her health and memories. Once he cut the rings, he laid them over an existing chair, only partially covering it. The fire acted as a varnish, creati...

How To: Customize Your USB Keyboard with a DIY Illuminated Base with Built-In Phone Stand

I've never really liked to type on a flat or low keyboard. Even the small flip-up stands underneath most keyboards were not good enough for me, as those little legs aren't usually more than 2 or 3 centimeters high. I'd like a minimum of 5 cm, so I decided to make this keyboard base for myself. Aside from giving me the right height and angle, this DIY keyboard base also features LEDs that light up my monitor, the table, and gives a nice background to my desktop. It's even got a built-in stand ...

How To: Disassemble an HP iPAQ 6900 series PDA

Accidents will happen. This brief how-to will guide you through the process of disassembling your HP iPAQ hw6500, hw6510 (hw6510a, hw6510b, hw6510c, hw6510d, hw6510g), hw6515 (hw6515a, hw6515b, hw6515c, hw6515d, hw6515f), rw6815, rw6818, rw6828, hw6900, hw6910, hw6915, hw6920, hw6925, hw6940, hw6945, hw6950, hw6955 or hw6965 series pocket PC quickly and efficiently without damaging any of the components, the first necessary step of any successful repair. This tutorial will also be of use to t...

No-Boil vs. Traditional Pasta: Should You Make the Switch?

We here at Food Hacks are all about saving you, our wonderful readers, time and trouble in the kitchen. So when I saw that Barilla had come out with their Pronto line of "One Pan, No Boil, No Drain" pasta, I had to give it a try. While no-boil lasagna noodles have been around for a while and allow the pasta to essentially cook en casserole, this relatively new addition to the pasta scene includes elbow, penne, spaghetti, and rotini varieties that allow for usage in a greater variety of pasta ...

How To: Perform a sideflip

This is a quick and easy tutorial on how to perform a sideflip. When doing a sideflip, it's important to practice on a gym mat to avoid injury. Sideflips are a great skill to have if you decide to do parkour. Imagine being able to run around and do a sideways flip!

How To: Use a menstrual cup

The menstrual cup is a great alternative to tampons and pads. This feminine hygiene product is reusable, eco-friendly and much cheaper than disposable tampons and pads. This tutorial teaches you how to insert and remove the menstrual cup. Watch this how to video and maybe you will decide to use the menstrual cup.

How To: Take advantage of GoLive page templates

In this video Special Guest Lynn Grillo from Adobe will show us how to create and use GoLive page templates. Templates in GoLive allow you to define the page design and placement of your objects. By using Templates if you ever decide to update/change the design of your site, all you have to do is modify the Template page that your site pages are based on.

How To: Become a professional club DJ

You already know the mechanics of DJing, but you want to be an international celebrity -- or at least drink for free while showing off your music collection. Here's how to spin your hobby into a career. Watch this video to learn how to become a professional club DJ.