Baking a cake is relatively easy... if you happen to have a cookbook or some boxed cake mix nearby. And though you can use the internet or your favorite cooking app, it can be nice to just cook without a recipe. That seems impossible with baking, which is such an exact science, but it's actually relatively easy.
Your Apple Watch only looks as good as the band that it's bound to, but if you're looking to purchase one directly from Apple, expect to spend anywhere from $149 (for the Milanese Loop) to $449 (for the Link Bracelet).
Customization helps your device stand out from the rest, and that sentiment is no different when it comes to the Apple Watch. Unlike every other Apple device before it, the Watch allows you to customize the information that appears on the UI—without the need for any jailbreaking.
As you're probably well aware by now, the Apple Watch isn't just for sending text messages and checking Instagram—you can also use it as your wallet. With Apple Pay compatibility, you can use your Watch to make purchases at any retailer that accepts the payment service.
As someone who loves to run around my neighborhood, the Apple Watch feature that excited me the most was the ability to go out and exercise while listening to music, all without having to lug my iPhone around.
Widgets exist to offer quick access to certain features in the apps we use most. On the Samsung Galaxy Note 4, home screen widgets let me do pretty much anything, from checking the forecast to browsing my emails.
Android's auto brightness feature was recently updated, and as of version 5.0, a new "Adaptive brightness" feature was added. This allows users to set a preferred overall brightness level, but still have the ambient light sensor adjust the backlight accordingly.
When ringtones and vibration alerts miss the mark and fail to grab your attention, causing you to miss an important call or text, LED flash alerts are a great backup plan. While we already showed how to activate this on Samsung devices, the apps shown below make this feature easier to toggle on and off. Plus, they work on devices that don't have flash alerts included in the system settings.
Resources for finding new music are at our disposal in all corners of the internet; the only problem is deciding which one is the best for you. Spotify, Pandora, and Rdio all have options to discover new music on your smartphone, but they tend to expose mostly established artists, making the process of finding lesser-known but good music a game of trial and error.
The bulk of my mobile gaming is done in instances of boredom, like sitting in a waiting room or watching bad TV. So when I heard about a new trivia game that pits every user against each other just once a day, I was immediately intrigued; it's a new spin on a very popular platform.
With the advent of text messaging, our communication habits have changed drastically. Social niceties are still there, but we budget our words a little more since they have to be typed out rather than spoken. After all, SMS stands for "Short Message Service," so this is the nature of the beast.
Samsung's got a pair of beautiful new flagship devices coming out this spring that will surely top the sales charts. The Galaxy S5's successor is truly worthy of that title, but a second variant with a curved display turned heads at Mobile World Congress this weekend.
With all of the productivity tweaks and usability enhancements that we cover here at Gadget Hacks, it's nice when we come across a unique and noteworthy app that's simply about having fun.
There's no such thing as a perfect Android keyboard. Some, like Swype, have gesture typing down to a science, but lack in predictive technology. SwiftKey, on the other hand, boasts awesome next-word prediction, but less than stellar gesture typing. Many others are optimized for multiple languages, space saving, or emojis, but none are without their flaws.
Whether you're a secret spy or just a regular person with a few secrets, you may want to keep certain information on your smartphone private, and it's totally possible on Android to do so.
Those of us with girlfriends understand that in order for the relationship to run smoothly, you have to keep your woman happy and let her know that you're thinking of her—even when you're not.
My college days are long behind me, and while I don't necessary miss them, I am jealous of all the countless resources available to students these days. Apps like PhotoMath are something I wish I had access to in my student days, making assignments less strenuous and easier to complete.
We use the cameras on our phones to become Instagram-famous, direct Snapchat videos, and post pictures for all our Facebook friends to gander at. Needless to say, camera technology in smartphones has come pretty far in a fairly short amount of time. In fact, a film shot entirely with an iPhone 5S was just accepted into the Sundance Film Festival.
Thanks to Verizon Wireless, I pay over $220 a month for my phone bill. It's just me on the plan—no family members, and it's not even unlimited data. So, when I receive that data alert message telling me that I've used up 90% of my plan and that I've still got a few more week until my billing cycle starts over, you know that I'm left scrambling to connect to some Wi-Fi.
When you search for a specific location or business with the Google app, a Knowledge Graph card is usually the top result. This card displays a handy mini-map and offers a quick link for directions to the location of your query, but it has one irksome flaw—these links can only be opened by the Google Maps app.
I've been lucky enough to never be a victim of street crime, but I have read and seen too many articles and videos to completely rule it out as a possibility. You can do some things to prevent it, but if your life suddenly turns into a scene from Friday the 13th, you'll want to be prepared with some sort of way to let others know you need help. This is where Shake2Safety comes in, a free Android app from Phontonapps.
Emojis are a huge part of communication these days. In fact, I'm beginning to think that in a thousand years, historians will come across our then-ancient texts and speculate that we used a writing system that evolved from hieroglyphics.
Battery life is extremely unpredictable on an Android. Finding the right ROM and kernel combo can make or break having the kind of battery that will last you all day long. Even if you do find the perfect pair, you then have to worry about apps, widgets, and other processes constantly waking your phone and draining your juice. While your media scanner isn't the biggest battery hog out there, it can definitely take a chunk out of it.
The front-facing stereo speakers on the Nexus 6 certainly pump out some awesome sound—but it could always be better, right?
Every so often, we come across an app that makes us wonder "Why didn't someone think of this before?" This is definitely the case with developer Dor Sakal's latest offering, FloatNote.
A shady practice in place by AT&T and Verizon Wireless—and possibly more wireless carriers—was recently uncovered. Outgoing data requests sent from devices on these service providers are being injected with a Unique Identifier Header (UIDH) that allows websites, the carriers, and potentially even government agencies to track your online activity.
Placing widgets on your device's home screen is a quick way to gain instant access to shortcuts or to specific aspects of an app, like music controls or weather forecasts. As more and more developers create various types of app drawers and shortcuts, many overlook widgets and what they have to offer.
It takes a lot of time, effort, and cash to create a unique Halloween costume that will likely never see the light of day after the 31st. Not to worry: you can do it on the cheap and feel savvy and creative while everybody compliments your ingenuity.
Stocked with a 7-inch LCD display and 323 PPI (pixels per inch), the Kindle Fire HDX is one of the best tablets on the market for enjoying some great literature or entertaining streaming services—and I take full advantage of what this device offers.
I love my MacBook Air, but the fact that it runs on only 128 GB of flash storage causes me to move most of my files to the cloud. I don't mind having to be connected to the internet in order to access my files, but it's definitely a hassle trying to figure out which files I should move in order to save the most space. Usually, I don't even bother even trying until I see the dreaded "Your startup disk if almost full" warning. Currently, the only real way to find your biggest files in Mac OS X ...
Third-party keyboards have become a game changer for iPhone owners since their integration in iOS 8. And while the major players from the Android realm—Fleksy, SwiftKey, Swype—already have their keyboards on the iOS App Store, their products are relatively standard fare.
With the release of the ARChon Runtime, many Android apps can now be run within the Chrome web browser. Minor changes must be made to existing Android APK files before they can be installed on Chrome, so the process isn't exactly as easy as pasting an Android app into a folder on your computer.
Welcome back, my tenderfoot hackers! As you know, Metasploit is an exploitation framework that every hacker should be knowledgeable of and skilled at. It is one of my favorite hacking tools available.
Only scumbags hide their call and message history, right? Wrong. While it may seem like a tactic for the unfaithful, it's still a good thing to do for certain contacts on your phone that you don't want to block outright.
There have been countless times where I'd be racking my brain over the name of a movie I saw, and I don't like giving up. Usually, a few specifics can be remembered, but not enough to come up with a title on my own.
Summer is here and flocks of people will make their way to beaches, lakes, and rivers across the country. But before heading out to places like these, it's always a good idea to check the local weather forecast first.
Instinctively, we reach for popsicles and cold drinks when the temperatures climb, but doing something counterintuitive, like going for a hot drink or eating something spicy, is actually more effective at keeping you cool.
Netflix releases monthly reports on major ISPs relating to how well their service works on each provider. The purpose is to educate the public on their choice of service provider, but since many of us hardly have any choice at all when is comes to an ISP, it backhandedly works to shame them (if they're even capable of feeling shame under all those millions of dollars).
While Snapchat's latest update brought messaging and video chatting, it also ruined something for us softModders—KeepChat. With KeepChat, we were able to save pictures and videos sent to us without the other person being notified. It was pretty slick, and I was beginning to miss it.
Netflix has received a lot of publicity lately, and not because of its impressive worldwide library. From blog wars with Comcast to streaming deals with Verizon, it's easy to forget that the company exists for our entertainment, but sometimes that entertainment has drawbacks.
