We’ve all heard the cliches: always look at the glass as half full; a smile can change your entire day; and there’s always a silver lining.

Whether you’re someone who is constantly complimented on their rosy outlook or can’t seem to stop frowning at everything around you, you’ve probably heard endless advice suggesting a positive attitude is a miracle cure. There’s some truth to the cliches, though—a happier mood can make a world of difference for both your outlook and your brain.

Improve Your Mood, Improve Your Brain Function

There are a number of benefits that come from happiness. The… more

The next time you finish that last pickle spear, don’t pour the leftover green juice down the drain. You can use your leftover pickle juice in cooking, in cocktails, and as a post-workout performance shot.

Pickle juice gives the salty, sour flavor to cucumbers, and is made of water, salt, vinegar, calcium chloride, and other seasonings and spices. The ingredients alone hint at its usefulness as a flavorful ingredient, a brine, and a home remedy. #1: Make a Pickletini

If you love a dirty martini, then you’ll love a pickletini. The pickle juice gives it a bit of tang and replaces the olive… more

Having trouble falling asleep? Using coconut oil, olive oil, beeswax, and essential oils, you can easily concoct your own DIY, nice-smelling sleep salve that will help you drift off to slumber with minimal effort.

Simply heat together 1 cup coconut oil, 1 cup olive oil, and 4 tablespoons grated beeswax in a glass bowl placed in a double boiler until everything is melted together. Add 50 drops each of lavender, orange, cedar wood, peppermint, and cinnamon essential oils to the mixture.

Transport mixture into a glass jar until it cools at room temperature. Once the concoction has solidified to… more

If there’s one gripe I have with Android Lollipop, it’s the new volume menu. When Priority mode was introduced, the stock volume panel was revamped to accommodate it, and somewhere along the way a bit of functionality was lost.

The way things are now, there are only two methods for adjusting media playback volume—you either have to go to the sound settings menu, or start playback and wait for the system to allow the volume buttons to gain control over it. The first option takes about 4 steps to execute, and the second option can result in 5 seconds of blaring media volume before you’re… more

Converting files from one format to another can be a pain. Sometimes you have to download software that you’ll only end up using once. Other times you have to use a shady third-party conversion site that’s riddled with ads. Not to mention that after a while, unless you’re extremely organized, your converted files will be scattered all across your hard drive.

CloudConvert, from German startup Lunaweb LImited, takes the hassle out of converting files by allowing you to quickly upload any file and convert it, then have it automatically sent to your cloud service of choice, all from a simple and… more

When surfing the web in Safari, you can double-tap the status bar to quickly scroll back up to the top any webpage. In other iOS apps that have the shortcut enabled, you can get the job done even faster by tapping the status bar only once. The only bad thing about this feature is that there’s no shortcut for scrolling all of the way back down or to the middle.

Fortunately, there is a way to create your own shortcut gesture that will make reaching the middle and bottom of a page just as easy as reaching the top. For this to work, you will need to have a jailbroken iOS device.
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Step 1:… more

While you can do a lot of things on your smartphone that were once only done on a computer, having a laptop is still necessary and critical for many tasks. Often times, the two devices work very well together.

We recently covered Google’s Chrome Remote Desktop, an app that allows you to access and control your computer directly from your smartphone or tablet from anywhere. Using my iPhone, I was able to mirror the image of my Windows computer and remotely access it.

But if you’re looking for a way to use your smartphone and computer side by side, I present to you Remote Mouse from developer… more

Meat tenderizers are absolutely necessary when dealing with leaner, tougher cuts like flank or skirt steaks. And while fruit like papaya, kiwi, and pineapple contain enzymes that can tenderize meat, the results can be hit-or-miss, and impart a fruity flavor that you may not always want.

Now, you can tenderize meat a number of ways. However, you get more consistent results with far less effort when you use a tool beloved by professional butchers and chefs—the Jaccard meat tenderizer—which makes cheap cuts of meat taste like expensive ones. This gadget contains either 45 or 48 stainless steel… more

In the wake of the NSA scandal and celebrity-photo hacks, lots of people scrambled to find more-secure ways to send text messages, share emails, and surf the internet. Known for their incredibly secure data networks, Germany’s email services saw a remarkable increase in new users from across the world. Last year, we covered Sicher, a German app that lets you send and receive encrypted self-destructing messages on your smartphone.

This time around we’re covering yet another German mobile messaging app called Tutanota, which you can use to send and receive encrypted emails directly from your… more

Android Lollipop promises tons of new features and functionality when it comes to a device near you, but as we wait, it’s almost painful to see the screenshots and demo videos from Nexus devices and how downright pretty the new operating system looks.

If you’re still stuck with Android 4.3 or 4.4 for now, take solace in the fact that unlike 5.0, these versions are still compatible with the Xposed Framework. To help tide you over, developer Igor Bocharov has come up with a new module that will allow you to theme your device’s status bar icons in the new Lollipop style, and he even threw in a… more