What Can You Make Out of a Dollar

The DIY industry is booming, despite the desperate blackmailing of society by finance capitalists. Companies like Adafruit and Makerbot are grossing well over a million dollars a year, and Evil Mad Science Laboratories just recently dedicated themselves to running a full-time ...more

Need to stash a couple small valuables and your super secret Moleskin journal in a place where no one will ever find them? Get yourself some glue, a few cutting tools and a fairly thick book, and you'll have all of the utensils you need to make yourself a nifty book safe that ...more

Your favorite device is running low on juice and needs a couple new AA batteries—and with a quickness. You run to the store and grab the first pack of AAs you see. But should you? There's tons of options available, so which make and model gives you the most power per dollar? ...more

You can feel it in your bones. You may die if you don't get this phone. There's just one problem — the price. Suddenly, you come across what seems like manna from heaven. That very device, at a deeply discounted rate, can be yours. The only thing that makes you pause is that ...more

What's a penny worth these days? Not much. But could there be some free energy hidden inside your spare pennies? You'd be surprised! See how I hack together stacks of pennies into makeshift batteries that can drive small-current devices like LEDs and calculators. Video: . You' ...more

I'm back with the third part to my laser weapon series (see part one and two), and I'll be explaining the function, application, and potential of semiconductor lasers, aka laser diodes. Surely, most of you have used a laser pointer at some point. Whether purchased at a dollar ...more

Trying to figure out which music streaming service to subscribe to can be a difficult task when the playing field is so crowded. Each has its benefits, as well as downsides, so finding the right one for your needs and wants can take a lot of overwhelming research. But we've do ...more

According to a new study, the majority of smartphone users check their devices 150 times a day. While that number may seem incredibly high at first glance, the influx of notifications and amount of social media apps available reduce the initial shock and make the number seem n ...more

For the coffee addicts, Redditor therewillbesnacks shares a wealth of insider tips for cheating the Starbucks system. A dollar here, a dollar there- it all adds up. Below, a few highlights from the thorough posting: "If you and a friend are out and want a Frappuccino, ask for ...more

With the release of iOS 11, Apple promised to give us person-to-person transactions by way of iMessages. In the iOS 11.2 update, the new Apple Pay Cash system is now ready for you to send money to family and friends right from your iPhone — and there are multiple ways to get i ...more

The lock screen music player in iOS 7 has all the controls you'd ever need from a lock screen, but it's not as visually appealing as I hoped it would be. Yes, it does show you the album cover art, but the way everything is presented makes it feel cluttered. Good news is you d ...more

Snapchat is like that very attractive girl at the bar that has one too many shots and ends up slobbering on the bouncer as she gets led out. Of course she can still recover since she is hot, but you only get so many chances before you just become a complete failure. And that's ...more

"I'm Rey." That's what a lot of people will be saying again this Halloween, as Rey costumes are sure to be another favorite of trick-or-treaters and cosplayers. Yes, on Oct. 31 we all have a chance to be the scavenger of Jakku who just so happens to be the "new hope" for a Jed ...more

Halloween is only a few short weeks away, and most people are scrambling to get their costumes together before the big night. The secret to a great getup is all in the details, and including your pet in the fun can be exactly what you need to take your costume to the next leve ...more

Of the hundreds of uses for our devices, the one that I cherish most is the ability to kill time just about whenever and wherever I need to. Whether it's reading news, checking social media, or watching videos, we have a ton of ways to pass the time in that two-hour DMV line o ...more

Do you have two dollars and a water bottle? Then you can put together this simple but awesome solar-powered lantern that will provide more than enough light to read by at night. To begin, you'll need a water bottle, of course, some string, and optionally, a little bleach. You ...more

JibJab may not ring the bell, but you've probably seen one of their personalized videos. Using your own images, JibJab will place you first-hand into silly and usually musically-inspired videos that you can view online. Currently in beta, JibJib has made it's way to iOS in the ...more

With Apple Pay Cash, sending and receiving money with fellow Apple users has never been easier. One big plus about Apple's new Apple Pay Cash card is that all of your transactions are available just a few taps away, so you can see all your person-to-person payments, balance ad ...more

You might be proficient at sending your family and friends money using Apple Pay Cash on your iPhone, but what about when you need some digital currency in your wallet to buy in-app purchases or to get back the money you spent on someone's lunch? Requesting some Apple Pay Cash ...more

If you want to convince your friends that money is not an issue, then you can just burn it for real like Walter White. But if you don't really want to destroy your hard-earned cash, this burn trick is perfect for you. It just takes some basic chemistry and a few materials, suc ...more

This past Halloween, 26-year-old Gabrielle Wathen learned the hard way about Uber's ridiculously expensive surge prices. After a night out and an Uber ride home, she learned that the 20-minute drive cost her more than $360. If you're unfamiliar with Uber's surge pricing, it b ...more

Welcome to the first annual Next Reality 30, our list of people who've made the biggest impact on the augmented reality space in the last 12 months — and what a 12-month roller-coaster ride it's been. Apple introduced ARKit-powered apps last fall, Google launched ARCore for An ...more

We tend to think of Google Play as Android's app store—but there's far more to it than that. Not only does it allow you to purchase apps and games, but you can also buy movies, music, books, and even devices, plus there's always those pesky in-app purchases that it also handle ...more

It may be cheesy, but whipping out an origami flower while you're at the dinner table can really make someone's day, whether it's made out of a napkin, dollar bill, or burger wrapper. It's great for showing your waitress how much you appreciate the service, or for breaking the ...more

For the first time in history, Apple has decided to scrap the dock for its new iPhone release. As if the maps fiasco wasn't enough, users took to the web to complain not only about the dock ordeal, but why Apple decided to make it obsolete. 9to5mac first posted about a concern ...more

In 2007, Nintendo introduced the world to motion control video games with the Wii. Microsoft and Sony built on Nintendo's phenomenal success and released their own motion control products for the XBox 360 and Playstation 3 late in 2010: the Kinect and the Move. The Move is bas ...more

One of the big hurdles when equipping vehicles with sensors for autonomous driving is the cost. For example, the Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) sensors that power many versions of self-driving car technology are pricey, currently ranging from around several thousand dolla ...more

There's nothing worse than holding an ice cold brewski on a hot summer day and having no way to open it. If you're a Bud fan, you'll have no problem opening the bottle because most mass-market beers have twist-off caps. But if you have a taste for finer, more expensive brews, ...more

When it comes to playing music at parties, the whole process can be a bit like a dictatorship. One person, usually the host, chooses all of the music and controls playback, essentially forcing everyone else to listen to the songs that they like. But this is the 21st century w ...more

In my days as a hardware tech, I often came across motivated do-it-yourselfers who watched a video or two on how to repair a phone and thought that they'd give it a go. More often than not, they failed miserably and damaged their phones (and wallets) even more in the process. ...more

There's more than one way to get free credits and discounts in the Google Play Store for apps, games, books, movies, in-app items, and other Play Store content. You may know a few of them — but some of these may surprise you. When it comes to spending on apps, games, and in-a ...more

If we were to assign a theme for the 2019 edition of the Next Reality 30 (NR30), it might be something along the lines of, "What have you done for me lately?" Many of the top names in the industry from the 2018 edition remain the same, but their positions have shuffled. The p ...more