Yes, they're called volume keys, but they can do much more than adjust your volume. With minimal effort, you can do some amazing things with these physical buttons, like secretly record videos, toggle on your flashlight, scroll through pages, control your music, and much more. And while using them to wake your screen is useful, let's take it a step further and show you how to use them to completely unlock your device, even if the screen is off.
Whether you're in a movie theater, driving, or just want to temporarily unplug from the grid, you need to ignore or completely silence your phone. You'll still receive calls and texts during this time, but in a world where people expect instant gratification, you'll end up looking like a jerk who doesn't answer back.
Google makes backing up your contacts, messages, and Wi-Fi passwords extremely easy, but leaves you out in the cold when it comes the data on your internal storage. With most Android devices now lacking SD card support, when you unlock your bootloader or do a factory reset, you're stuck having to back up everything to your computer beforehand.
Modern smartphones can easily handle anything you throw at them, but it's always good to keep a tight grasp of what your phone is actually doing and how well it's doing it. System information can be viewed by looking through your Application Manager, but this process makes it difficult to keep an eye on usage in real time.
The movie Her is getting a lot of love from viewers and critics alike. While I find it kind of creepy to fall in love with a computer program, if Scarlett Johansson talked to me every day, I'd probably fall in love too.
Long before Windows Phone hit the scene, Windows Mobile was the operating system for Microsoft's older brand of smartphones through the early 2000s. But due to its clunkiness and inability to keep up with modern features, it was scrapped in 2010.
I listen to Pandora as I slowly drift off to sleep, so why not have the popular music app wake me up as well? Pandora only recently introduced the Alarm Clock feature on iOS, and now they've brought that same feature to Android—only it's better.
Adjusting the brightness on your Samsung Galaxy S3 can be a real pain sometimes. Each app you open may need a different amount of light to better optimize its use of the screen, and then you have to worry about it potentially eating up your battery life if it's too bright.
In this Windows 8 Tutorial you will learn how to disable automatic maintenance. Their are really two situations I can think of when you would want to disable automatic maintenance in Windows 8. The first being if your Windows 8 computer came with a Solid State Disk then you will probably want to disable automatic maintenance. The reason being is that a solid state disk does no benefit from defrags and the automatic maintenance automatically defrags your hard drive and this will take away from...
With the Google Play store on your Android device, it's a relatively easy process to check all of your application updates. All you have to do is launch the Market app, go to the My Apps section, and from there you'll be able to see all of the available updates for your applications, which should be positioned at the top of the list. The problem with this process is that many times, you'll go days or weeks and quite possibly even months without checking the Google Play application market, lea...
Doorbells are useful and all, but most of them are boring as hell. They use the same old generic sounds to let you know when guests have arrived, as demonstrated below.
Sitting in the Powell Library at UCLA was a constant thing for me. Directly after class, I would streamline my way there to study all night until my eyes shuttered to sleep. For the most part, my classes and professors managed to keep my studying online via PDFs, emails, long essays and journal entries.
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.
Every Apple computer running Mac OS X comes with a handy application called Terminal… MacBooks, MacBook Pros, Mac Pros, iMacs, etc. They all have Apple Terminal, and it can be found in your Utilities folder in Applications. Which means you can use it.
So, you've mastered the knot tying process for fishing, and you already know how to catch bait, so now what? You need to put that live bait to good use... this animated tutorial from Marinews will show you how to rig skip baits using a whole fish for fishing. Catching bait might just be as hard as baiting fish, but it's all in good fun when you kick back with a brewsky in your hands. You can learn by simply watching the bait rigging animation at a moderate speed, or if need be, click on "lear...
So, you've mastered the knot tying process for fishing, and you already know how to catch bait, so now what? You need to put that live bait to good use... this animated tutorial from Marinews will show you how to rig a garfish for fishing swimming bait. Catching bait might just be as hard as baiting fish, but it's all in good fun when you kick back with a brewsky in your hands. You can learn by simply watching the bait rigging animation at a moderate speed, or if need be, click on "learn by s...
Oh how we love open source software. If it wasn't for Open Office, we never would have been able to write that seven-page English paper while on our friend's Microsoft Office-lacking laptop during an impromptu road trip to Mexico. And Ubuntu, an open source secure operating system, offers you similar convenience. A much more intuitive computer operating software than your standard Windows or Mac OS, Ubuntu is great if you know what you're doing.
These days you can get a car tailored with special gangster rims, headlights, and sound systems, but one of the features of a standard car we all take for granted is power windows. Before those, all we had were frustrating crank-up windows that always got stuck if we didn't add enough elbow grease.
This After Effects tutorial will show you a nice underwater scene, complete with light rays, rising bubbles and cloudy ocean mist. You don't have to be a professional AE user to recreate this great animated scene, either! Laurence Grayson demonstrates all the techniques for this subtle ocean-like underwater look using the standard toolkit in Adobe After Effects (CS3, CS4 & CS5). Using Fractal Noise, CC Snow and a Lens Blur with Depth Map, Laurence will have you chilling out in no time!
Typically during the holiday season hostesses give very little attention to the plates that food is served on. Because the focus is on the food, the plate needs to be nothing more than a plain white backdrop, right? Wrong.
Want to play "Calendar Girl" by Neil Sedaka on the ukulele? Learn how with this free video ukulele lesson from Ukulele Mike. Whether you play the ukulele or bass kazoo, there is no better way to improve your chops than by learning to play your favorite songs. Not only is it more fun and much easier than running drills or memorizing a chord book by wrote, it's obviously also a wonderful way to build your repertory of songs. For more information, and to get started playing this popular standard...
Push ups are the one exercise move we can't seem to do without feeling like we're dying half the time, but if you happen to have mastered the standard push up and want to break past that plateau then check out this fitness video.
The possibilities of Minecraft are absolutely endless! If you're looking for a fast way to get to the surface from your mine, or are looking for a cooler form of transportation than your standard minecart ride, check out this video on how to build your own automated water elevator! You will get a full tutorial on how to build the structure and get it flowing! Get it? Flowing? No? Oh well...
The blues is where it all began. Before you learn how to play rock or jazz or metal, you should start with the blues. Learning the basic 12 bar form can help you feel out measures and develop your sense of direction in music, and learning how to play the shuffled rhythm will help to increase your proficiency with learning other rhythm patterns. In this fantastic video you will get a basic over view of the Blues on the acoustic guitar and a quick variation on the standard blues shuffle.
Create your own macro lens using the standard 50 mm lens that is shipped with your Digital SLR camera.
In this video, we learn how to make a multi-pocket/tag envelope page for mini scrapbook. To start, you will need to put the different pieces of paper together. You will need to use a standard number 10 envelope, then trim off each end so that the envelope body is nine inches long. Then, stick down the flap and then score from one end out four inches to the middle. Then, fold this down. After this, you will cut the ends off and two pockets will be created. Now, cut out half circles to create s...
This video is seriously as basic as it gets. Take a gander to learn how to tune a guitar quickly and with ease. While you can use a piano or a guitar tuner to tune your guitar, this method, which involves only your guitar strings, is much faster and you can do it on the go.
The side of one's head is not very flat, and might not seem like the best place to balance something round and hard to balance like a soccer ball. Well, if you like freestyle soccer and you're up for a challenge, try this side head stall move out. You start with a standard head stall, then roll the ball to the side of your head and keep it there. Sounds simple, but this is a complex move you'll have to practice a lot.
After Effects makes it easy to create wonderful designs and great looking material, and this tutorial makes it even easier! Watch and learn how to create a really quick carbon fiber (or carbon fibre for all you British folks) effect using After Effects. Carbon fiber is a great-looking material, and you can used the standard toolkit in After Effects to create an instant carbon fibre texture in seconds. Great for your next extreme sports car and high-tech driver video intro title sequence! Get ...
Want to play "Moonlight Bay" on your ukulele? Learn how with this free video ukulele lesson from Ukulele Mike, which presents a complete breakdown of the song and its chords. Whether you play the ukulele or bass kazoo, there is no better way to improve your chops than by learning to play your favorite songs. Not only is it more fun and much easier than running drills or memorizing a chord book by wrote, it's obviously also a wonderful way to build your repertory of songs. For more information...
Want to play "You Are My Sunshine" on the ukulele? Learn how with this free video ukulele lesson from Ukulele Mike. Whether you play the ukulele or bass kazoo, there is no better way to improve your chops than by learning to play your favorite songs. Not only is it more fun and much easier than running drills or memorizing a chord book by wrote, it's obviously also a wonderful way to build your repertory of songs. For more information, and to get started playing this great standard, watch thi...
Want to play "White Sandy Beach" on the ukulele? Learn how with this free video ukulele lesson from Ukulele Mike. Whether you play the ukulele or bass kazoo, there is no better way to improve your chops than by learning to play your favorite songs. Not only is it more fun and much easier than running drills or memorizing a chord book by wrote, it's obviously also a wonderful way to build your repertory of songs. For more information, and to get started playing this great tropical standard, wa...
Want to play "Hukilau Song" on the ukulele? Learn how with this free video ukulele lesson from Ukulele Mike. Whether you play the ukulele or bass kazoo, there is no better way to improve your chops than by learning to play your favorite songs. Not only is it more fun and much easier than running drills or memorizing a chord book by wrote, it's obviously also a wonderful way to build your repertory of songs. For more information, and to get started playing this great tropical standard, watch t...
Want to play "Yellow Bird" on the ukulele? Learn how with this free video ukulele lesson from Ukulele Mike. Whether you play the ukulele or bass kazoo, there is no better way to improve your chops than by learning to play your favorite songs. Not only is it more fun and much easier than running drills or memorizing a chord book by wrote, it's obviously also a wonderful way to build your repertory of songs. For more information, and to get started playing this great standard (famously populari...
These are the pianos of concert halls, of greats like Mozart and Beethoven, and of piano masterpieces that still set the standard for good music production. Grand pianos are large and a bit ostentatious, yes, but they create a deep, resonant sound that tugs on your heart strings.
Want to play Isham Jones' "I'll See You in My Dreams" on the ukulele? Learn how with this free video ukulele lesson from Ukulele Mike. Whether you play the ukulele or bass kazoo, there is no better way to improve your chops than by learning to play your favorite songs. Not only is it more fun and much easier than running drills or memorizing a chord book by wrote, it's obviously also a wonderful way to build your repertory of songs. For more information, and to get started playing this Americ...
Want to play Bobby Darin's "Beyond the Sea" on your ukulele? Learn how with this free video ukulele lesson from Ukulele Mike, which presents a complete breakdown of the song and its chords. Whether you play the ukulele or bass kazoo, there is no better way to improve your chops than by learning to play your favorite songs. Not only is it more fun and much easier than running drills or memorizing a chord book by wrote, it's obviously also a wonderful way to build your repertory of songs. For m...
As women, we're naturally prone to complaining about our bodies. Either our pores are too big or our boobs are too small or our abs are not small enough. There's really no limit to what we bash ourselves about, and it varies from day to day (thanks, societal beauty standards).
We've got a little secret to share with you: Being a master cupcake chef doesn't require you to be a baking whiz or even have a degree from a famous culinary school. When it comes to good cupcakes, decorating yours to pro standards is easier than you think.
This simple After Effects tutorial from Laurence Grayson will show you how to use CC Ball Action effect in AE to create a realistic scrolling LED signboard effect, like the ones you see at conference centers and football stadiums. Then end result can be altered to suit your project, and corner-pinned into a scene. There are no plug-ins required, and this method uses the standard toolset in CS3, CS4, and CS5.
