It seems like gesture controls are all the craze these days. From camera-opening gestures to "Air Gestures", it's getting to the point where we hardly need to touch the screens on our phones to control them. With music players seemingly being left out in this recent trend, de ...more
If you've never played with a Nexus 10 tablet, then you probably have no idea that your Nexus 7 actually has a different user interface. For some reason, Google decided it was better for the Nexus 7 to use a phone UI instead of a tablet one, but luckily for us, we don't have t ...more
IFTTT is an application that allows you to automate certain tasks on your iPhone or Android. It can communicate with a myriad of apps and services on your phone by creating applets that perform actions automatically — actions you'd normally have to do manually. Finding those a ...more
If you're a user of Google Play Music, but not a fan of being relegated to a browser tab, I've got you covered. Developer Sajid Anwar has created a desktop client for Google's music service, but since he made no attempt to hide logos and trademarks, it may not be long before t ...more
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Get your mind out of the gutter. Search histories can and should be managed. Many folks are uncomfortable knowing that every video they click and every phrase they search is being recorded and saved, and YouTube is no exception. Sure, sometimes, it can be he ...more
Snapchat began rolling out a massive update on March 29th, dubbed Chat 2.0, that gives users a plethora of new features, basically transforming Snapchat into an all-purpose messaging app. New features such as one-tap video chatting, audio-only chatting, and the ability to mak ...more
I know where I bought my phone, and I definitely know who I'm paying money to every month for cellular service, so there's absolutely no need to see my carrier's name draped all over my device. Fortunately, with Android Lollipop, the carrier label is only present on the lock s ...more
As one of the most frequently used Android browsers, making Chrome work faster and more efficiently is something we can surely all appreciate. And just like its computer-based counterpart, there are experimental flags for the mobile app that can speed browsing up significantly ...more
When a big company (Google) concentrates on big things (Auto, TV, Wear), some of the smaller aspects of their design can be overlooked. Just as we saw in Android KitKat, battery percentage information is absent from the status bar. While we were able to enable a hidden setting ...more
Out amongst the ether of the internet lies a completely different version of the Netflix library you've come to know and love. Because of licensing and rights fees, the streaming media giant maintains separate libraries for each country it services. Ultimately, this means that ...more
I can't begin to tell you of the many times my friends and I get into arguments that eventually lose any semblance of structure, becoming shouting matches where we just lob the stupidest, meanest insults we can fathom. You could call it a unique art form, but honestly, being ...more
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. Siri is cool and all, but that synthetic voice isn't goi ...more
It's fairly easy to switch between running apps on the Nexus 7 by hitting the Recent apps key in the Navigation bar at the bottom of your screen, but for me—it's just not good enough. I don't particularly like leaving the app I'm currently in to see this menu, and the menu its ...more
Emoji characters make messaging more fun, and Google has continuously added convenient and fun ways to insert playful symbols into your conversations using Gboard. After getting Emoji Kitchen in early 2020, we now have Emojify, a tool that automatically adds emoji to your mess ...more
It's easy to lose the TikTok video you were watching when you accidentally refresh your For You feed, but it's not gone forever. TikTok has a new feature for your iPhone, iPad, or Android device that can show you all your watched videos over the last seven days. There are also ...more
The 2021 season of Major League Baseball (MLB) is in full swing, and now that vaccines are widespread in the US, major baseball stadiums are allowing fans back in at full capacity. But for those either without the time to attend or still comfortable observing developments fro ...more
Angry Birds, one of the first franchises to find success in mobile gaming, continues to shoot its shot at new life in augmented reality gaming. After adapting its slingshot gameplay for Magic Leap with Angry Birds FPS: First Person Slingshot and mobile with Isle of Pigs, Rovi ...more
The new WandaVision series is perhaps the hottest TV show on the Disney Plus streaming service since...well, its own The Mandalorian wrapped up its second season late last year. Now, after publishing AR experiences in partnership with Google to promote the latter, Disney has ...more
The cognitive benefits of learning a new language are many: it helps your memory, sharpens your mind, makes you a better problem-solver, aids in your understanding of your first language, and even helps you become a better multitasker. Your appreciation for the culture you're ...more
When it's hard to hear what's being said, subtitles give you clarity where audio falls short. Thanks to Android 10, your Galaxy S20 now lets you enable a live transcription of your phone's internal audio stream, meaning you can get closed captions in virtually any app — even i ...more
It's OK to want an extended break when you're working or learning from home. Maybe you want to play a video game, spend more time with your family, hang out with your dog, or FaceTime with friends. But how can you do that when you're supposed to be in a Zoom video conference o ...more
The awkward silence when you're adding someone's name and number to your contacts is worse than usual since you're meeting a new person and this is part of their first impression of you. So don't get labeled as clumsy or slow before you even get a chance to network with your n ...more
Boomerangs are perhaps the quintessential story tool on Instagram. Surprisingly, there's never been much to them — point and shoot, and your subject plays forward and backward in a never-ending loop. Perhaps its prolonged simplicity inspired Instagram to give Boomerangs a bit ...more
Apple's iOS 13 has been available for beta testing since June, and the stable release pushed out to everyone on Thursday, Sept. 19. To help you make the most out of iOS 13 for iPhone, we've rounded up everything you'll want to know, whether a colossal feature, small settings c ...more
My autistic son loves music. One afternoon, when he was nine, I downloaded GarageBand to his iPhone to help with the boredom of a long wait at a doctor's office. Instead of pacing or escalating into a meltdown, he spent the entire hour and a half practicing, learning, and comp ...more
In Apple Music, loving and disliking songs is a great way to teach Apple's subscription service what type of tunes you like and which you don't. While it also seems like it should be an excellent way to keep track of songs you enjoy in the wild, there's no clear way to view al ...more
There are many reasons you might want to increase your text size in Google Chrome. The browser's accessibility options have a few tools to help the readability of text on websites. Changing the text scale, enabling zooming, and toggling the simplified view can customize Google ...more
Augmented reality platform maker Zappar and its marker-based augmented reality technology have been around well before Apple and Google brought markerless AR to mobile apps. But, as the saying goes, if you can't beat them, join them. On Thursday, Zappar unveiled ZapWorks Stud ...more
Not all enterprise augmented reality tools require a high-end headset and heavy computing power. Sometimes, a smartphone can do the job just as well. Along those lines, software maker Atheer is now bringing its workforce AR platform to iPhones and iPads via a native app. The ...more
As the stigma of online dating fades and swiping potential suitors on your phone becomes the new norm, one very real issue that you may have to deal with is catfishing: the act of being deceived by a fictional online persona. Although dating apps do their best to weed out fake ...more
Despite Tinder's tremendous popularity, Bumble has carved out a billion-dollar business by focusing on women (they message first), simplicity (ice breakers less wordy than OkCupid), and relationships past romance (friends and prospective jobs). Now they're diving into customiz ...more
French cosmetics giant L'Oréal isn't wasting any time putting its new subsidiary, ModiFace, to work. On Thursday, the company launched a new tool that enables a photo-realistic augmented reality simulation of nail polish shades and textures to be accurately displayed on a user ...more
After parting ways with Papa John's, the National Football League has drafted Pizza Hut as its official pizza purveyor, and the company has hit the field with an augmented reality game to entertain hungry football fans. After scanning specially marked pizza boxes using the Be ...more
Despite the popularity of Pokémon GO, augmented reality gaming hasn't quite caught on yet. The makers of the popular World of Tanks game aren't taking a shot at Niantic's crown yet, but they are looking at giving spectators a new way to watch the game. The game's maker, Warga ...more
Front and center for iOS 12 this year is Group FaceTime, which allows users to chat with up to 31 additional people at once. While that ambitious feature is sadly delayed, don't cast away FaceTime just yet — you can always pick up your iPhone and start a call with any single c ...more
UPDATE: The ported APK covered below is now obsolete because Fortnite beta is officially available for all Android devices! Alongside its Galaxy Note 9 announcement at Unpacked this year, Samsung confirmed that Fortnite would initially launch on Android as a Galaxy-exclusive. ...more
One of the earliest players in the social virtual reality space, vTime, has just landed $7.6 million in new funding, which the company says is partially earmarked for developing and releasing an augmented reality version of its platform later this year. "Bootstrapped from lau ...more
For a company who hasn't released a product and has a reputation for being secretive, Magic Leap sure has a tendency to make waves. Over the past few weeks, they've refreshed their website design, released an abstract YouTube video, and announced a partnership with Madefire to ...more
The default look for Kodi is a menu that shows all of the possible media playback options available to the media player. From movies to radio, Kodi's main menu has an option to meet your needs. But everyone's needs are different, and sometimes we don't want all of these option ...more
During Google Developer Days, taking place now at the ICE Congress Center in Krakow, Poland, an introductory session on ARCore provides some insights on how the platform operates. The presentation by Googler Tom Slater includes an overview on the three pillars by which ARCore ...more
When the iPhone first came out, using them seemed like an impossibility to the visually impaired. Luckily, the iPhone now provides a multitude of resources to make sure that the visually impaired have accessibility to the phone. In fact, many blind people use their iPhone to ...more
Ah, the sand between your feet, the sun on your skin, and the debt you're accumulating. However strong my sense of wanderlust may be, I still can't justify dropping thousands of dollars on a vacation. Fortunately, a new site — Wander — promises to help you book vacations that ...more
It's 2017 and finally ordering "fries with that" at McDonald's is an even easier prospect for all you lovers out there ball and chained to the fast food game. The great big golden arches are moving one step closer to making your order as golden as it ought to be through a mobi ...more
Customer service just got a lot more interesting. Construction equipment manufacturer Caterpillar just announced official availability of what they're calling the CAT LIVESHARE solution to customer support, which builds augmented reality capabilities into the platform. They'v ...more
LineageOS, the successor to the wildly popular CyanogenMod custom ROM, is adding an interesting new feature that could potentially save lots of juice when your battery is running low. When enabling "Extreme power saver" mode, which can be set to kick in automatically at 15%, y ...more
By combining years of web search advancements, natural language processing, and even DeepMind's artificial intelligence, Google Assistant hopes to change the way you interact with your devices. If you're familiar with Google's previous services, Google Assistant is like Google ...more
Coverage for the 88th Academy Awards, aka the Oscars, will air live this Sunday, February 28th at 4 p.m. PT (7 p.m. ET). The ceremony itself, hosted by Chris Rock, is set to begin at 5:30 p.m. PT (8:30 p.m. ET). This is the third year that ABC will be streaming the event onli ...more
For most of us, the primary reason we capture videos on our iPhones is to post on one of the various social media platforms out there, like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, or Twitter, providing instant gratification by receiving a proverbial nod from our followers. With so muc ...more
Aside from media, there's not a whole lot you can do in 140 characters to make your tweets stand out. You can use emojis, but they aren't exactly ground-breaking. However, now you can use Bedazzle, a Chrome extension from Gordon Zheng that'll allow you to add "rich text" to yo ...more
With only a few days until Apple Watch preorders begin, and just a couple of weeks until its official release, the biggest question in Apple Land seems to be: "Are you going to get an Apple Watch?" Apple Watch Pricing & Availability Probably the biggest concern that most of ...more
When I watched the first Cincinnati Bengals edition of the HBO series Hard Knocks back in 2009, among wide receiver Chad Johnson's bravado and attention-grabbing antics was a segment on backup quarterback Jordan Palmer and his newly-developed app, which was still in its infanc ...more
Blizzard Entertainment, the wildly successful video game developer that brought us World of Warcraft and StarCraft, has finally released their popular trading card game Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft to the Android platform. If you've never heard of it, Hearthstone is an off ...more
If you keep sensitive data on your phone, you've surely considered a "lockout" app before. There are many such apps that can add an extra layer of security to other apps within Android. For instance, you can require a PIN or password before anyone is able to launch a particula ...more
The Galaxy S5's screen is truly a feat of modern technology. It uses what is known as an AMOLED display—an acronym for Active-Matrix Organic Light-Emmitting Diode. In short, this technology means that every individual pixel on your phone's screen emits its own light. This is a ...more
Most variants of the Galaxy S5 come with the gesture-based Swype keyboard preinstalled. If you're into gesture typing, you probably already switched to this input method from the default Samsung keyboard (whose gesture service is nice, but it's no Swype). A couple of features ...more
In photography, stereographic projection is a geometric technique that projects a sphere onto a plane, which is mostly used in the mapping of spherical panoramas. The most popular type of stereographic panorama is the "tiny planet," where the center view of a panoramic image ...more
Something special is happening. Maybe it's your child's first steps or their walk down the aisle. Maybe it's a hit-and-run accident, a flaming meteorite, or your buddy spilling a drink all over himself. These are fleeting moments that need to be captured instantly. Though you ...more
LastPass is a password manager that's been around for some time, and has finally made its way over to Android for use with apps, not just websites. Just imagine logging into your banking app without having to input that password every single time. Much more convenient, and as ...more
The Academy Awards, commonly referred to as The Oscars, are airing this weekend. If you're a movie buff or just want to watch the dimes walking on the red carpet, The Oscars is not to be missed. The 86th annual Academy Awards, hosted this year by Ellen Degeneres, will air Sun ...more
There are a lot of things your Samsung Galaxy Note 2 can do straight out of the box, but there's also a ton of things it can't, or simply could be better at. That's why most of us end up rooting—to enhance the mobile experience. Today, I'll be showing you some of my favorite ...more