Getting on the phone for customer service can be extremely frustrating. First you've got to find the correct phone number for your region (good luck trying to get customer service from a sales department), then you have to listen to the annoying automated system to navigate your way to the department you want. More often than not, you'll be stuck with some elevator music while you wait to speak to an actual human.
By now, nearly everyone with any type of media access is aware that Sony Pictures Entertainment was hacked on November 24th. Although there can be many interpretations and lessons drawn from this audacious act, there is one indisputable conclusion: it and its ripples across the globe underlines how important hacking has become in our all-digital 21st century. As I have emphasized so many times in this column, hacking is the discipline of the future. From cybercrime to cyber intelligence to cy...
Using a combination of my phone, laptop, and an arsenal of apps and plugins, I can send pretty much anything to my Chromecast. However, nothing is ever perfect, and the file type that was still giving me headaches were torrent and magnet files.
So, you're scanning the internet for some cool articles to read during your lunch break and you come across something pretty interesting—"The 50 Most Incredible Things Every Person with a Brain Should Know." That sounds interesting, so you click, and boom, you are hit with the utterly obnoxious Page 1 of 50. Really?
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.
iCloud Drive is Apple's new solution to file management syncing across iOS and Mac OS X. If you've upgraded to iOS 8 and you have an iCloud account, you can use iCloud Drive to store files for certain apps. While you won't really be able to benefit with file syncing between iOS and Mac apps until you get Yosemite, you can still access your iCloud Drive documents online.
Google Keyboard, which comes pre-installed on Nexus devices (and is available for all others from the Play Store), is one of the most functional keyboards currently available for Android. With features like gesture-based typing, next-word prediction, and even text expansion macros, it's a very capable form of text input.
With so much Flash content still available on the web, it's unfortunate that Google no longer supports mobile Flash Player on Android. Loading a webpage only to be met with a "Plug-in Error" is never fun, and it can inhibit your mobile browsing experience as you attempt to watch a video or play an addicting Flash game.
We've already shown you how to free up internal space on your iPhone, and now it's time to tackle another problematic storage issue—your iCloud account.
With a 13 megapixel camera that can record in full 4K, there's a lot to love about the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 from a photographer's perspective. The image quality in my photos and videos are top-notch and nothing to complain about, but as with all things tech, things could always get better.
Officially, in order to use AirPlay to stream music from your iOS device, you would need either an Apple TV, AirPort Express, or an AirPlay-enabled receiver or set of speakers. Despite what Apple wants you to think, there is another way to stream music without any of those AirPlay-capable devices—you just need to have two iOS devices (or just one iOS device and a Mac).
Remember when MITMing people to pentest webapps and log-ins you had to fire Ettercap,Arpspoof, SSLstrip, then look for credentials in the captured packets?
Apple has Siri, Google has its Now service, and Microsoft has Cortana. All of these voice-activated services can bring you information quickly and easily without having to type anything into your smartphone. Speak and within seconds you're provided with either an answer or somewhere you can find it.
If you've been to a farmer's market during tomato season, chances are you know that heirloom tomatoes are pricier (and funnier-looking) than their hybrid counterparts.
Although your friends might roll their eyes every time you talk about playing Clash of Clans, Call of Duty, or Candy Crush Saga, your excessive gaming habits might actually be making you healthier than everyone else.
It's a modern day nightmare to accidentally reveal too much information on Facebook. I've inadvertently told the world my location more times than I can laugh off, and my friends haven't fared too well either. Just take a look at the requested app permissions next time you're about to click install and you'll quickly realize how much that app can reveal about you.
If you have an artistic ability, I encourage you to learn how to airbrush on cars. Sure, it may be a little different, but if you already have the artistic ability, the rest is a walk in the park.
Imagine that you're the last person alive. After losing all of your loved ones, you thought you'd never see another human being in your life. Then, they arrive. The hoard of 15-year-old zombies looking for a cute British YouTuber so they may feast on his brains.
Last year, The New York Times wrote that certain restaurants in Manhattan and Brooklyn banned patrons from taking photos of their meals. That means no flash photography, no standing on chairs for a better angle, not even a quick pic for your Instagram followers before the first bite. Little do these restaurants know, this ban can actually make their customers' food taste worse, so to speak.
If you have a hard time remembering what you've just read on your iPad or Kindle, try changing the font next time. The typeface you use to read books, newspapers, and online articles is either hurting or helping your memory, and you'll be surprised which ones are killing your brain cells.
Notice anything different about your Google searches lately? Your favorite businesses are becoming even more reachable online. Now, you can simply Google a business and click on its highlighted phone number to give them a call immediately from your computer.
Facebook will let you do pretty much anything via a text message, but unless you still have a flip phone, it's more of a novelty than actually useful.
Samsung has multiple built-in font styles to choose from in TouchWiz, but they're limited to just four types. While there are many font installers available on Google Play, they usually cost money and only replace some of the text on the device, not all of it, creating an inconsistent and erratic user interface.
Autocorrect, a common feature available on most Android keyboards, helps fix fat-finger typos and even predicts the words you want to write. Without this feature, it'd take me about 5 minutes to write a sentence, and even then, it'd probably still be intelligible.
Admit it: you haven't talked to more than 70 percent of your Facebook friends in the last year. Whether you barely know the names crowding your friends list, or have vague memories of high school Spanish class with them, Facebook friends are easy to find and difficult to get rid of.
There's a lot of personal information residing on your phone, possibly even more than on your computer, so it's only a matter of time before someone tries to access it.
You can do many things on your Nexus 7 to make life easier, like auto-categorize photos and perform on-the-fly calculations, but one thing that you should really have is more swipe gestures. By adding custom swipe gestures, you'll be able to navigate your device better, skip music tracks, and get instant access to designated apps, all with the flick of a few fingers.
Welcome back, my greenhorn hackers! Although we have focused primarily on technical hacks here, social engineering can sometimes be especially effective. This one requires a bit of technical skill, but not too much. In addition, it's limited by how specific a target you can choose—but it will work.
Google recently updated their TOS to reflect the email scanning practices they use in Gmail, which are used to display more relevant ads, among other things.
The all new HTC One M8 is the latest Android flagship making the rounds through major carriers hoping to beckon your purchase. Coming in at about $200 for most carriers with a contract, it makes a good case for itself with its advanced features and solid price point—but, there's another way to buy the One, and it's not from your carrier.
By this point, you've definitely come across an app or two that wasn't designed with the HTC One in mind. Either the resolution is too small, the status bar stays active when it shouldn't, or the font isn't the ideal size. There are ways out there to get that changed, but up until now it wouldn't just change one app—it would change all of them.
The wait is almost over. The sixth season of Game of Thrones kicks off this Sunday, April 24th at 9 p.m. (PT) on HBO, or at 5:57 p.m. (PT) on HBO GO and HBO NOW, with the first episode "The Red Woman."
April Fool's Day, aka National Screw with Your Friends Day, is finally here. You can always pull a conventional prank, like strategically placing a whoopee cushion on your mom's chair, but that joke has been exhausted generations before smartphones were around. We live in a day and age where smack cam is the new level of pranking, so it's time to step your game up, novices.
Normally, you'd have to jailbreak your iPad or iPhone to play any games that aren't available in the iOS App Store, like the now-extinct Flappy Bird game. But this isn't the case if you want to play some of your favorite old school Nintendo classics.
The original Kit Kat was a mutton pie served at a political club in London during the 18th century, which is quite different than the chocolatey version we're familiar with today. Kit Kat bars have been around since 1911, are produced in 13 countries, and have been sold in over 200 flavors in Japan.
What do Hulu Plus, Pandora, and YouTube all have in common? Ads—and lots of them. Sometimes, an advertisement or two isn't a big deal, but when you're bombarded with them daily on your iPhone, they can get old really quick, and might even lead you to delete the apps entirely.
Amazon.com has been around for a long time now, but there are still a few things most people don't know about when it comes to buying products from them. Here's a quick roundup of tips to help you get the most out of Amazon and save some money in the process. The holidays are the busiest time of year for online shopping, but these tricks will work all year around.
My favorite type of video game is first-person shooters, and the one that started it all for me was GoldenEye 007. There was just something about the controls, fast-paced action, and free-roaming environment that got me hooked.