If you've never heard of or eaten temari sushi, then you're in for a treat. These pretty sushi balls are good for parties and festive gatherings, and even though they are so colorful and striking, they are not hard to make. Just like every other type of sushi, they are customizable, and they have the cute factor necessary for kids or appetizers.
I'm a firm believer that a sandwich is the ultimate food. It's filling, but not heavy; it has carbs, protein, veggies, and sauces; and it's easily customizable. Add that all up and you've got the absolutely perfect lunch.
Samsung has a long-standing reputation for packing their devices with lots of added functionality, and the Galaxy S6 Edge is no exception. It comes with a nifty feature called "Information stream," which allows you to get quick, at-a-glance information by swiping the edge of your screen back and forth while the display is off.
If you were around when the Nintendo Wii first launched, you remember how revolutionary the device was at the time. When I first encountered one, I was amazed at the simplicity of its controls, namely the fact that the Wii Remote (aka Wiimote) just felt like such a natural way to play a game.
Android Lollipop still doesn't have a simple way to add a custom lock screen wallpaper, so when I came across Corgi For Feedly from developer Stan Dmitriev, I had to check it out. What sets Corgi apart from other lock screen replacements is that it connects directly to your Feedly account to display top stories from your favorite RSS feeds as your background.
Widget toggles, or "power toggles" as they're often called, have been around for quite a while. They serve their purpose nicely as an easy way to add switches to your home screen or notification area for functions that don't come with the stock software on your device.
If you've ever attempted to report a bug to a developer, no doubt you've heard the response, "Get a logcat." This is infinitely important to a developer because of the fact that a logcat captures a full report of every command that was recently executed on your Android device, and it allows them to see exactly where something went wrong.
Android Lollipop's new Material Design interface does its best to strike a delicate balance between intuitiveness, usability, and aesthetics. For some folks, though, the use of a lighter color palette throughout the interface disrupts this balance.
The Snapdragon 801 processor inside the OnePlus One puts the device on par with other phones like the HTC One M8 and LG G3 in terms of power and speed. While the OPO is just as fast and responsive as many of the flagships currently available, there's no reason why we can't try to squeeze every last bit of speed and performance out of it.
Android 5.0 has a killer new feature that should make securing your device easier than ever. It's called Smart Lock, and it essentially lets you bypass your secure lock screen when you're in a "trusted environment." This means that if you're connected to a known Bluetooth device or near a pre-programmed NFC card, you don't have to bother entering your pattern, PIN, or password.
More and more devices are using iOS 8 over iOS 7, and that means more and more developers are adding iOS 8-friendly features to their apps, especially widgets. However, not every widget available for your Notification Center right now is awesome. Take for example the Dropbox widget—it's essentially nothing more than a real-time notification, as the only action it performs is opening a recently updated file within the app.
BlinkFeed completely changed the way I access new updates from Facebook and Twitter, but when I switched to the Google Play Edition of the HTC One, I lost access to the launcher. BlinkFeed is available in the Google Play Store, but HTC has not opened it up yet for all devices yet. While there are ways to port BlinkFeed over to other devices, it's reliability is dependent on the ROM, sometimes causing bugs and crashes.
The world of root is upon us, folks. While the LG G3 has be available for purchase for a couple of months now, rooting had been a shaky subject. International and T-Mobile variants enjoyed root from day one, while various security patches left the AT&T and Verizon Wireless variants as a mixed bag, and Sprint completely out in the cold.
How many times do you misplace your phone? Once a day? Twice? As much as you may hate losing your phone, it always seems to happen, and finding it isn't very easy if you left it on silent mode.
When you're not using your phone, it doesn't make much sense that it would be wasting power by maintaining an internet connection for the inside of your pocket or purse. Well, perhaps you need a little bit of intermittent data here and there so that apps can update themselves in the background and still post notifications, but it doesn't need to be constant.
I'm all about saving time. If there's a quicker way to do something, I'm going to find it. For this reason, whenever I need to search through old emails or compose new ones in Gmail, I do it directly from Chrome's address bar, or as Google likes to call it, the omnibox—and you can, too.
The new OnePlus One packs a 3,100 mAh battery that promises to last all day and night. While that will work for most, some of us don't quite know how to put our phone down and save some juice.
The weather widget on the main home screen of a fresh-out-of-the-box Galaxy S5 is meant to show off the screen. Super-high contrast and crisp definition on the individual blades of grass in the background let you know that the phone you're holding has one helluva display.
Geohot's Towelroot exploit made rooting the Galaxy S5 so easy that it was almost unreasonable not to try it out—even for the first-timers out there. This, of course, meant that folks who didn't truly need root for their usage went ahead and got Superuser privileges anyway.
Google has finally announced the newest flavor of its mobile OS, Android L (Lollipop?), and I couldn't be more excited. While we won't see its official release until the fall, there are still some features we can get our hands on right now.
Let's be real, browser histories are virtually useless. Trying to find something you passed up a week ago is like, pardon the cliché, finding a needle in a haystack.
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.
This week, Google sidestepped their usual "Update Wednesday" strategy by dropping a huge update to their Maps app for both Android and iOS. We're accustomed to seeing new features and bug fixes to their stable of apps on Wednesdays, but today's Maps update was presumably big enough to get its own release day (it's Tuesday, folks).
Once you unlock your bootloader and root, you're left with one more hurdle to overcome, and that's getting S-Off.
Team Win Recovery Project (TWRP) is a custom recovery for Android devices and the one used by most softModders, mainly because it has touch-based actions, as compared to the more time-consuming button-based approach that ClockworkMod (CWM) uses.
With the release of Jelly Bean, Chrome became the default web browser on Android. The wildly successful desktop browser was now fully entrenched in the world's largest mobile operating system.
As fellow softModders, I'm sure you strive to find any and every way to make your phone unique. Wallpapers and icon packs are great to get started, but to really stand out from the rest, try changing your HTC One's boot animation.
With the emergence of rumors that Amazon, Google, and Samsung are all making their foray into the gaming console market, it's a possibility that our Android-powered mobile devices might become tools that play a central role.
There are plenty of ways to customize your stock HTC One (or any Android device), from playing retro games to adding rotating live wallpapers. But to get the most out of your device, you need root access.
When you think of nail polish, it's probably almost always in the context of a manicure. I mean, that's what it's made for, right? But there are plenty of other things you can use clear or colored nail polish for besides painting your nails.
Having quick and immediate access to your notifications is one of the most important features for any modern day phone, but these alerts can be easily missed when your device isn't in the palm of your hand.
One of the lesser known features brought along by the roll-out of Android 4.4 KitKat is the ability to screen record from within the device. This features isn't overtly obvious, nor is its implementation the most streamlined, but if you were ever looking for a way to capture video of what's happening on your screen, this is now the best way to do it.
You've got a brand new Nexus 7 tablet for Christmas, and you're extremely eager to start using it. There are many things you can do with it, like shake for new wallpapers, get rounded screen corners, and make it help you fall asleep at night. But, before you get into softModding your Nexus 7, you should know the basics, and if you've come over from a Kindle, turning your new Android tablet into a powerful eReader is a must.
With the release of iOS 7, the entire Internet was abuzz with what's the exact opposite of excitement as Apple's servers were overloaded, causing many download fails of the new operating system. Since then, many other bugs and issues have arisen that are fairly common with new Apple software updates, like iMessage fails and wallpaper complaints (to only name a few).
The transition from an iPhone to a Samsung Galaxy Note 2 or other Android device can be a tough one. A vastly different operating system and the ability to customize anything and everything might be too much for some people. Taking in all that new, while having to let go of the old, can be as daunting as climbing Mount Everest.
One thing that gets overlooked on Facebook is the amount of videos you can watch, and I'm not just talking about videos uploaded directly by Facebook users—I mean everything ever shared—YouTube, Vine, Instagram, Vimeo, etc.
For the first time ever, iPhones will be getting live panoramic wallpapers in iOS 7, but it's something Android devices have always embraced.
If you have a load of dusty Game Boy Advance games you've been itching to play, load them onto your Samsung Galaxy Note 2 for instant gaming anywhere—anytime!
The new Samsung Galaxy S4 just received an update to Android 4.2.2, so why is it that my Galaxy Note 2 is still running an older version of Jelly Bean? It felt like yesterday that my device was finally updated to 4.1.2, but why even bother since 4.2 has been around since last November?
