Kiran Upadhyay

Calling all Android tinkerers! There’s one aspect of Android customization that a lot of users tend to overlook. Once you’ve fiddled around with a  custom Android ROM , new  Android launchers , new  icon packs , new wallpapers, and a  nifty new keyboard , is there anything left to play with? Yes! The lockscreen. Are you tired of looking at the same, boring screen every time you wake up your phone from sleep? That screen is called the lockscreen — because most users require a password or gesture to unlock access to the device — and it can be easily customized. Are you ready to breathe new life into your phone? Start Formerly known as Active Lockscreen, Start has really earned itself a large and loyal following. It’s sleek, classy, and packed full of features that make it a strong choice for an “all-in-one” lockscreen; in other words, it allows you to perform many different actions directly from the lockscreen itself. On the left, there’s a sidebar ...

It’s a common use case scenario: you want to broadcast a public WiFi network for anyone to use, but you’ve got strict requirements that only cat images be permitted. Great news: your Raspberry Pi is a perfect  transmoggification  machine. Intrigued? Read on. This project starts out identical to the  Onion Router  we built a few weeks back. We’ll make the Raspberry Pi into a standard WiFi network first, then place a proxy in the middle. The proxy will be filtering posts through a Perl script, which will replace the images on every HTTP request with cat GIFs from  TheCatAPI.com . Watch as befuddled users are both intensely frustrated, yet strangely calmed. Here’s the BBC, post-cat modifications. Making a WiFi Network Since this part of the tutorial is exactly the same as the  DIY Onion Router , please follow the instructions there up to the point of  Install Tor . The only small change we need to make is to broadcast an open Wi...

Who doesn’t want a Livescribe smartpen? Whether you’re a student, a journalist, attend meetings a lot, or just need to easily record writing and audio, you can make good use of a smartpen. Livescribe is the most famous maker of smartpens, and its former models — the Livescribe Echo  and  Livescribe Sky  — are still a brilliant way to pair audio and notes and transfer them onto your computer. The newest iteration of these smartpens — the $150  Livescribe 3  — looks like a shiny new model, and promises to “turn your words into action”. Just like with any new release, we expected this new pen to be richer and better than older models, especially as the Pro 2GB version of the Livescribe 3 sells for $200 — as much as a 4GB Livescribe Sky. But does the Livescribe 3 deliver? To find out, and to have a chance at  winning this $150 smartpen for free , just keep reading! Livescribe 3 — New Features, Weaker Pen If you want to know about some other sm...