Can't figure out how to give songs star ratings anymore in your iPhone's Music app? That's because Apple removed the ability to do so from the new iOS 10 update, just as I expected they would. It's still possible to rate songs, it's just very irritating.
Cheesecake is a nearly flawless dessert. It's rich but light, has a toothsome crust but a creamy body, and tastes good served room temperature or frozen. What's not to like?
Hash browns are a breakfast staple and for good reason: they're simple, salty, and crispy, and so delicious that you can easily down several servings of them in one sitting. Basically, they're the French fries of breakfast.
Knives are among the most important utensils in any kitchen; it's hard to even conceive of cooking a decent meal without them. However, many different foods can be prepped without a knife, and some are actually better off without one. If you don't believe me, then check out these 10 creative methods for chopping, peeling, mincing, and slicing knifeless.
Simmering or poaching food is a total pain sometimes. The problems are numerous: a layer exposed to air often dries out and creates a gross skin that can ruin the texture of the sauce, the poaching liquid evaporates too quickly and causes the poached protein to burn, and so on.
With new messaging services being pushed out constantly, it can be a pain trying to keep track of them all on your Android device. We had previously shown how to stay on top of them all with a unified "inbox" app, but that still requires you to have each individual app installed. While looking for a true one-stop messenger, I came across Disa.
NANDroid backups are one of the best reasons to root your Android device and install a custom recovery. They're essentially a snapshot of your phone's entire operating system and all installed apps, so if you ever screw something up when installing a flashable ZIP or custom ROM, you can restore your NANDroid backup to get everything back to normal.
It's a breeze to send videos and music from your phone straight to your TV with an Apple TV or Chromecast, but these devices don't support all file types. While MP4 videos and MP3 music files are the norm these days, I still have a ton of AVI and FLV files that I'd like to watch on a big screen.
I'll bet this scenario will sound familiar to you: you're in the middle of making a spectacular dessert that will knock the socks off of your guests, and you've almost finished gathering all of your ingredients to create your mise en place. The last ingredient listed is powdered sugar, and you reach for where it's stored, when—drat! You don't have enough for the recipe.
In an age where restaurants can charge $20 for eggs Benedict at brunchtime (if you're lucky enough to even get a reservation on a Sunday), many people long for a way to create this classic dish at home. But once you've taken pains to perfectly poach an egg and gently crisp your sourdough, the problem of the hollandaise still lies before you. The key to any good hollandaise sauce is to apply enough heat to cook the egg yolks, but not enough to scramble them. The minute the eggs begin to solidi...
Upgrading from velcro-only shoes to laced-up sneakers is an important step in life. Days are spent practicing the perfect bow-tying method, and people even argue as adults over tying with the bunny ear method versus the loop-and-wrap trick.
Flowers may be beautiful, but they're not usually appetizing. Sure, nasturtiums are hip in fancy restaurants, but they're primarily used as a garnish. Granted, fried squash blossoms are incredible, but the point remains: flowers are usually reserved for looking at, not masticating.
Finding the right theme can be a pain. Some are too gaudy or simple, while others look like they were thrown together as a joke. So why not try your hand at making your own?
CyanogenMod has always been on the forefront of ROM customization, and its newest release, CyanogenMod 12, is no exception. In the newest nightlies, they have included an updated version of their Theme Engine, which allows you to effortlessly change the way your entire system looks.
As far as wallets go, mine is as full as they come; think something like George Castanza's overstuffed wallet on Seinfeld. I've got receipts, pictures, and tickets jammed inside, but what takes up the bulk of the space are all of the cards—credit, debit, gift, rewards, customer loyalty... I've got pretty much any card you can think of squeezed in. While it is a strain on my rear end, there's nothing I can do besides keep some of the cards elsewhere. However, looking for them when I need them ...
You've probably tried just about every method of hanging your holiday decorations: nails, thumbtacks, sticky hooks, and, in desperation, even tape. Each method can leave a host of complications when removed, though, from chipping paint to visible holes.
Some nights, I'm a lazy cook and only want to chop one clove of garlic for my immediate needs instead of prepping a giant batch and freezing it the way I normally do. The only problem is if I'm already feeling that lazy, I really don't feel like dirtying a whole cutting board. However, I still want my garlic to be finely minced so it suffuses my dish with its wonderful, one-of-a-kind flavor.
Admit it: when nothing's at stake other than your boss's disapproval, you don't exactly feel the urge to get working. Finding the motivation to take on a task, whether at work or home, can be a constant struggle. Though working through your laziness might seem like the best course of action, a meaner method can make more of an impact on your productivity.
I may not be a parent just yet, but I've dealt with enough worrisome mothers to know that keeping a watchful eye over your child is of the top-most importance. Since most people cannot afford to stay right by their child's side 24/7, developers are always looking for ways to make the pain of stepping away a little less stressful for parents.
Having someone send you flowers will almost always lift your spirits. Wilting, dying flowers, on the other hand, aren't so great to look at and smell even worse. While there are time-honored tricks to keep flowers alive longer (change the water regularly, put a penny in the bottom of the vase, and cut stems diagonally are three that come to mind), it turns out that a few items in your kitchen are pretty useful at making sure those blooms stay perky.
I don't know of a pain greater than of the one felt after cracking the screen of your phone. After I managed to crack my screen, rendered unusable, I immediately began to panic as to how I was going to recover all of the photos, videos, and documents stored on my device. After a few hours of searching, I came upon a thread by Mohamad Sabra that showed exactly how to alleviate my problem.
While we now know that iCloud was not exploited by hackers to steal private celebrity photos, Apple did admit that guessed (aka brute-forced) passwords and/or iCloud security questions were to blame for the breach.
Ginger root is one of the most underappreciated and versatile spices around. It's simultaneously hot, sweet, and piquant. It's also a pain in the tush to peel, thanks to its thin, fragile skin and the thick, knotty rhizome that contains all the flavor.
Developing an imperceptible lie is difficult, especially when you're lying right to someone's face. Thanks to smartphones, getting people to trust you is now easier than ever. You can craft a lie in seconds and hit send, all without ever seeing their untrusting faces.
Although lacking in megapixels, the HTC One M8's camera can be considered a top-tier, flagship-level shooter. With the Duo Camera and UltraPixel technology behind it, it can make even the most inexperienced photographer snap pictures like a pro. There seems to be little missing for the average user, but for the more seasoned photographers, some of the standard settings may seem a bit too dumbed down.
Text input on a touchscreen device is constantly evolving. From early beginnings of pecking out each individual character to today's predictive text and gesture keyboards, we've already come a long way.
Loving parents can suffer bouts of insomnia when their children leave the house. Not just when they move out, but when hanging out with friends or during out-of-town weekends. Others may worry about their significant other who has to work late all week and their only option for getting home is that sketchy nighttime bus.
It can be a pretty exasperating ordeal to hunt for one image on your tablet when you have hundreds and hundreds of photos in your gallery. Luckily, there are ways to make this a pain-free process on your Nexus 7, as well as make sure it's never a problem in the future.
The list of streaming services is pretty vast, from HBO GO to Hulu to Netflix, these subscription-based services have never been so popular, and have never been easier to watch now that they have Chromecast support.
I don't like a lot of app icons on my home screen. It makes everything on my Nexus 7 feel dense and congested. As a minimalist, I like a simple and well-organized home screen, which is why I regularly utilize my app drawer to launch apps.
LG's new KnockOn feature for the G2 wakes the phone up just by tapping on the screen twice, in lieu of using the power/lock button.
WhatsApp may be one of the most popular mobile messaging services around since it's multi-platform, but if most of your family and friends use iPads and iPhones, there's no need to go beyond the stock Messages app.
When you enter the softModder realm by rooting your Nexus 5, you open up an exciting world of possibilities and deep customizations for your device. Among other things, it gives you the ability to flash custom ROMs which, individually, act as entirely different operating systems that can vastly alter your user experience.
Are you staying up longer than you want to? Do you fidget with your tablet late at night before bed? Maybe you're using it to read or to watch something to help you knock out. If so, this may actually be keeping you up.
One of the best-selling video game consoles of all time is the Nintendo Entertainment System, better known by its acronym, NES. However, cartridge-based gaming consoles are a pain now when compared to the newer download-and-play alternatives.
There's two things I'm always looking for in my Samsung Galaxy Note 2. Efficiency and quickness. So, like any other softModder, I tend to download a bunch of apps and tweaks that help speed up my device's overall performance. In doing so, I often come across the "Complete action using" popup, which is oddly enough, one of the most inefficient features ever. You'll see this popup whenever you click on something that can be opened with more than one option. If you click on a link in Google sear...
If you still have time left on your warranty, taking your HTC One in for repairs can be a serious pain if you've modified it in any way. To avoid the chance that they'll reject your phone because it's been tampered with, you'll have to return it to stock condition.
Sometimes I forget that I'm also a fiction writer, so I thought it might be a nice change of pace to share one of my stories with you. I wrote this piece awhile ago for an anthology that never came together and I'm tired of just sitting on it.
Sometimes you just want to kill a whole bunch of things at once, or to paraphrase Samuel L. Jackson in Jackie Brown, sometimes you absolutely, positively got to kill every mob in the room. Well, the automatic machine gun is the way to do it; accept no substitutes!
Want the convenience of a throwaway email address without all the hassle? How about anonymous text messaging so you can get to know someone before giving them your real information? Gliph has you covered. Gliph is a service that lets you create an identity around a set of three to five symbols called "artifacts" instead of your name, phone number, or email address. You choose how much information you reveal, and anytime you communicate with someone else who has Gliph, the data is protected us...