Google Instant

There are over 1.6 million apps on the Google Play Store, which makes it the largest collection of mobile apps on the planet. However, a large portion of this total is occupied by apps with overlapping functions—think social media, news, weather, music players, and various oth ...more

Now that smartphones have ensured that we're connected to the internet 24/7, online privacy has become more important than ever. With data-mining apps hoping to sell your information for targeted ads, and government agencies only one subpoena away from knowing every detail of ...more

While Google would like you to believe that Flash is incompatible on Android KitKat, there is a functional workaround that will get it up and running on your Samsung Galaxy Note 3's gorgeous screen in no time. You can't download Flash Player from the Play Store, but Adobe hos ...more

Nothing beats a human translator, but Google Translate and other software-based solutions have developed into decent alternatives for help with basic translations. Need an English word translated into German? No problem — but what if you need to have a conversation with someon ...more

As Android's official app provider, the Google Play Store is packed with thousands of useful programs. But Google's terms of service is extremely restrictive, which means that countless apps simply don't qualify to be hosted on the Google Play Store. As a result, many great a ...more

I can certainly say that I don't like be ignored, and you're probably right there with me on that. Also, if you're like me, you don't like being blocked on an instant messenger, either. There's something about being shafted like that that can really cramp your style. Now, the ...more

While numerous startups are competing to convert the AR Cloud from a pie-in-the-sky to a reality, Wikitude is thinking smaller with the latest edition of its augmented reality SDK. At the Augmented World Expo in Santa Clara on Thursday, the company launched the beta version o ...more

Samsung created quite a buzz when it debuted a built-in heart rate sensor on the Galaxy S5 back in 2014, but amazingly, not many other manufacturers decided to follow suit. It's really a shame, too, since data from a heart rate sensor would go perfectly hand in hand with the i ...more

When browsing the web, I enjoy my privacy. It's reassuring that I can peruse the internet without the worry of having my activity tracked back to me, allowing me to leave fun, anonymous comments when I get the urge to troll. Anonymity can also be important when sending a mess ...more

For many of us, our work phone and our personal phone are one and the same. Just any old phone isn't going to cut it when you need to meet a deadline — a phone with built-in features that make it easier to get things done is almost a must. For this article, we defined product ...more

Your favorite instant messaging service might not be your friend's preferred choice of communicating, and your sibling might prefer yet another. So when they send you messages via different apps, it's like having one address but multiple mailboxes on a single porch. To fix th ...more

Amazon just signed a deal with HBO to host the cable channel's original content on its Instant Video service. For those of us with Amazon Prime accounts, this is great news—but there aren't any readily apparent options for playing it on Chromecast. The iOS app lacks Chromecas ...more

Amazon just announced its entry into the set-top streaming content marketplace with its new Fire TV box. Competing directly against Apple TV, Google's Chromecast, and Roku, Amazon is betting on big processing power and voice controls to stand out from the competition. Features ...more

There's a lot of résumé writing happening right now. While it's a confusing and frustrating time, you don't have to wait to search for new opportunities. Maintaining a clear head and being proactive in your next career steps are two qualities that are necessary at this moment. ...more

Most Android phones have a Google search bar somewhere on their home screen. But did you know you can replace this with a different widget that actually functions as the address bar in your Chrome browser? To try it out, just long-press any empty space on your home screen and ...more

Recently, Google's Messages app has become an important cog in the Android ecosystem. That's because, for the time being, it's one of the only texting apps which supports RCS Universal Profile for iMessage-style conversations. Even better, Google just gave it a highly sought-a ...more

We've got Google Maps to help us out when we need to navigate outdoors, but Google can only map out so many indoor locations without getting creepy. And that's where Stimulant comes in. This "innovation studio" built a HoloLens app that lets you map out an area, define locatio ...more

Your iPhone's lock screen is about to get a major upgrade in iOS 10, as shown off by Apple at WWDC '16, and it will make dealing with notifications and apps a breeze. The new lock screen has been fully redesigned to give users better and faster interaction with the apps they n ...more

For the most part, Google Play Music makes it extremely easy to upload and organize your music library, as well as access it quickly using the default settings—but there are a few things it could do better. In your settings, you can adjust the equalizer, block explicit songs, ...more

Data restrictions suck, but Google wants to make it suck just a little less. Rolling out is the latest update to their mobile Chrome browser, Chrome 32. According to Google, "Chrome’s data compression and bandwidth management can reduce data usage by up to 50% while browsing ...more

Like what iMessage is to iOS, Google Hangouts is to Android—allowing users to share messages instantly, as if quickly wasn't good enough. With Google Hangouts, you can share locations and send maps, receive and send SMS, share animated GIFs, make video calls, and chat not only ...more

Tor is an excellent obfuscation network for web traffic, and while instant messaging over the network is very useful, it can be relatively difficult to configure. In this guide, we'll look at two synchronous communications platforms (instant messengers) which can be routed ove ...more

In the last decade, the number of people working remotely in the US has increased dramatically, and so has their need for technology and software to supplement that remote work. Whether you work from home or a coworking office space, the requirement for highly compatible and h ...more

For enterprise augmented reality platform makers, remote assistance apps represent one of the greatest opportunities to show off the power of immersive computing. These apps enable experts to guide front-line workers or customers with AR prompts and other content in the field ...more

With smartphone cameras and software getting better and better every year, more and more users are getting passionate about photography. So when you're shopping for a gift to get someone, if they have a smartphone, chances are they'll more than appreciate some tools and access ...more

For $0.25 per transaction, PayPal will soon be allowing you to transfer money through their app that will get delivered within seconds rather than days. The plan was announced this morning, and it comes just after Apple's new Apple Pay features and big bank's move into the pe ...more

After 6 years of development, the big banks seem to be ready to combat Venmo on the money sending frontier, but now it might be too late. The system being implemented is called Zelle. Created by Early Warning, it is said to include an upgrade to banking apps that will allow u ...more

Since Stadia is an early access game streaming platform, Google is still working on bringing big things to the table. You can expect wireless Stadia controller support for many more devices, high-quality 4K gaming on all Chrome web browsers, and more Google Assistant features. ...more

Snapchat is probably used to Facebook copying its features by now, but Apple borrowing a page out of its playbook is likely a bit more surprising. But that's exactly what has happened, as Apple has added custom actions to its AR Quick Look protocol for web-based AR content th ...more

The Google Pixel's camera is a status symbol of sorts. When someone sees you with one, you become the photographer of choice for social events. And where do those photos end up? Social media, of course. It's how we share our lives now, and the smartphone camera defines how we ...more

YouTube Music has been around since late 2015, but it only started becoming a viable music service in 2019. It makes sense for Google to utilize YouTube's existing library of music videos, remixes, and cover songs to create one massive music platform. But one downside is you g ...more

In the past few years, augmented reality software maker 8th Wall has worked to build its platform into a cross-platform augmented reality toolkit for mobile apps, as well as web-based AR experiences. Now, the company founded by former engineers from Facebook and Google is mak ...more

The Note 7 debacle taught Samsung an important lesson on cramming oversized batteries into their handsets, and they've applied it diligently to their Galaxy S8 and S8+. You might even say the company has gone a little too far in trying to achieve a balance between battery size ...more

Unity 5.6 was just released on March 31, and it will be the last entry in the Unity 5 cycle. With all of the new features, it looks like Unity 5 is going out with a bang. We already covered some updates that were added to 5.6 during the beta, especially things pertaining to m ...more

During the last few months, WhatsApp's Google Play Store ratings have been tanking—all the way down to an average of 3.4 stars from the instant messenger's usual average of 4.1. Within the last week, though, WhatsApp has received thousands of seemingly fake 5-star reviews that ...more

The skinned versions of Android that come with Samsung, LG, and HTC phones usually have a feature that displays a small icon in your status bar when you connect a pair of headphones. It lets you know that your earbuds are plugged in or connected properly, and offers assurance ...more

If you're tired of Google tracking you, but love how Chrome works, CyanogenMod has you covered. Their browser is called Gello, which is based off Chromium, Chrome's open-source counterpart. It's basically a souped-up version of Chrome—without all of the intrusive Google stuff ...more

Logan's Run is one of my favorite movies of all time. The dialog is cheesy, the set design and special effects are wonky, and the main villain looks like he was conceived and built by an eighth grader in shop class—oh, and his name is Box. But there are plenty of things to li ...more

A growing trend for many artists (most recently Kanye West) is to offer exclusive or experimental tracks on music streaming sites like SoundCloud or YouTube before releasing them anywhere else. On rare occasions, some of these great songs never make their way onto an official ...more

SoundHound's new virtual assistant application, Hound, is gaining a lot of buzz in the tech world—especially after a demo video showed just how awesome it works (it has amassed over 1.6 million views in under a week). Don't Miss: Amazing New Digital Assistant Shames Siri & Go ...more

For all of the flak that it catches, Wikipedia is still a great source of information. Contributors take their work very seriously, so the vast majority of information is cited, and the site serves very well as a starting point to learn about a new topic. But when you're brow ...more

Amazon has launched its Chromecast competitor, the Amazon Fire TV Stick, which is available for pre-order today. This little dongle has four times the storage and twice the memory of Google's Chromecast, plus many of the features found in Amazon's Fire TV set-top box. Pricing ...more

Google continues to be the most commonly-used search engine for a reason. While continuing to stay ahead of the pack with advanced semantic search functions, Google even introduced Knowledge Graph results that offer key information without ever having to click a search result. ...more

Google, like Apple before them, no longer supports mobile Flash, but clearly there's plenty of Flash content still available on the web. From games to videos, it can be frustrating to get the most out of your mobile browsing experience without Flash functionality. Adobe keeps ...more

Google may have decided to back HTML5 for YouTube, but much of the internet still relies heavily on Adobe Flash content. While the Chrome browser for Android is unable to play Flash-based content like Amazon Instant Video streams, some third-party browsers will. Now, I haven' ...more

There are two types of bricks ("brick" as in "bricking your phone")—soft and hard. Soft bricks are recoverable—something has probably gone wrong with some critical system partition, causing a bootloop or inability to boot in some way. Fine. Re-flashing everything should fix th ...more

When our Nexus 7s upgraded to KitKat, one key piece of functionality was lost in the mix—Flash support. Of course, even before that we never had official support on the Nexus 7, but hacks seemed to do the job just fine. As it stands now, Google remains on the warpath against F ...more

Watch out Samsung (and you too, Pebble, Sony and the still unrealized Apple), your hold on the smartwatch market is about to get a lot less firm. Announced today, Google has released Android Wear, their platform for developing smartwatches, along with a preview of the Moto 360 ...more

Streaming video has definitely changed how we watch movies and television shows, but with the constantly growing number of services out there, it can be hard to keep track of who's got what. Who's got Disney now? Starz? Netflix? Who knows. And when you add sites that let you r ...more

There was once a time when everyone scoffed at the turmeric tonic tea sold at the coffee shop I work at. Funny, because as of recently, we seem to be selling out. How can this be explained? Beyoncé must have been spotted buying turmeric beverages on the cover of some celebrity ...more

Your phone's keyboard is one of the most commonly used apps. Whether you're typing out status updates, sending private messages, or just bombarding everyone in sight with as many emoji as you possibly can, you probably couldn't get by without a good keyboard app. Since Androi ...more

Four months have passed since Mojo Vision emerged from stealth, and we are no closer to seeing exactly what its "invisible computing" technology looks like. But we do know that Google is impressed enough to back the technology from the startup, as the company's AI-centric ven ...more

In the weeks following Google's AR toolkit launch last month, the availability of quality ARCore apps has been somewhat limited. That changed on Tuesday, as a flurry of new and updated apps arrived on the Play Store, including some AR experiences available exclusively on Andro ...more

Considered by many (perhaps unfairly) to be a very public failure, Google Glass can add another plot point to its comeback story, this time as a tool to teach social skills to children and adults with autism. Enter Brain Power, a company that has combined neuroscience and aug ...more

All to often, many of us are struck with a brilliant idea out of nowhere, only to forget about it moments later thanks to the distractions of daily life. Sometimes, the actual process of jotting these ideas down in our iPhones can be a holdup, as the idea we want to record fad ...more

Running commands on Linux seems so complicated for the layman that it may as well be a foreign language. But for the die-hard terminal users, or for those who are just curious about the Linux experience, there's a new Android launcher that gives your home screen a command line ...more

The keynote at this week's Vision Summit 2017, a two-day event put together by the Unity team in beautiful Hollywood, California, revealed a few new features coming to the Unity platform. They also previewed some of the beta features that are currently available for those less ...more

The internet's an amazing place. The entirety of human knowledge is now accessible in an instant, and all sorts of media can be streamed directly to the palm of your hand. But, of course, that also includes the darker side of humanity, so there's plenty of NSFW content floatin ...more

A development team in Silicon Valley is nearing early access release of a new hardware-independent augmented reality platform called Phantom AR. Compatible with Android and iOS-based headsets, as well as the Microsoft HoloLens and Meta 2, Phantom AR runs the entire augmented ...more

There's no question about it—Skype is one useful program, but has always been lacking in the mobile department. On your desktop, Skype works just fine and all of its options are available for usage. However, the same cannot be said for Android. On Android, you can't even chang ...more