How to Remove Pre-Installed Apps from a Samsung Galaxy S III

A brand new Samsung Galaxy S III comes with a number of built-in stock apps that some call “bloatware.” If you never plan on using any of these pre-installed apps, then they just take up space and clutter up your Apps menu.
Since the apps come installed with the phone, you can’t actually uninstall them like you can for apps you personally download. But there are ways to either disable the apps or hide them.

  1. Go to Settings, then Application Manager. Swipe left through the ‘Downloaded’ and ‘Running’ tabs to get to the ‘All‘ section.
  2. Inside the ‘All’ tab, scroll down to the stock app you want to disable. Click on it, and then click the Disable button in the top right. If you do not see the word Disable, but you see ‘Uninstall Updates’ then click that instead. Afterwards the Disable button will appear. If you want to undo what you disabled, you can find the disabled apps at the very bottom of the list in the ‘All’ tab. Disable these at your own risk, but these are the ones I disabled:

    AllShare Play: unnecessary
    ChatOn: seems to replicate functions the phone does anyway
    Game Hub: seems like mostly kids games & I can get games from Google play anyways
    Google +: I don’t need it.
    Media Hub: I don’t plan on purchasing through Samsung’s app
    Music Hub: Ditto.
    S Suggest: why not just use Google Play?
    Samsung Apps: I don’t see a reason not to just use Google play
    Talk: I might as well just text

Some of the stock apps cannot be disabled (the Disable button will be greyed out). In that case, there is still a way to remove the app icon from the app menu.

  1. Once in the apps menu, hit the Menu button. Click Hide Applications. This will place check boxes on each icon so that you can select which ones to hide. If you ever want to undo what you hid, there will be a new option in after you hit the Menu button called ‘Show hidden applications.’ These are the apps I had to hide this way since I couldn’t disable them:

    More Services: it just seems to link to the Samsung Apps
    VPN Client: I don’t currently need it, so I might as well disable it

I decided to leave a few of the stock apps for now in case I use them, such as Play Books, Play Magazines, Play Movies & TV, and Play Music. However, they can be disabled just as easily.

How to Resize an Image in Photoshop CS5 & CS6

Let’s say you have an image which you want to change the size of. In most cases, you want to make the image smaller, but resizing an image to be larger can also be done. In Photoshop, the steps are very easy:

  1. Open the image (File > Open…)
  2. Click Image > Image Size…
  3. In the section called “Pixel Dimensions,” enter a new value for Width or Height. The drop down boxes allow to you to specify if the values will be in Pixels or Percent. So, for example, if you want to resize the image by half, pick “Percent” and type in “50” for Width & Height.
  4. There will be a checkbox near the bottom called “Constrain Proportions.” This will lock with width and height to maintain the same ratio as the original image. Generally you want this checked so that your image will not distort or appear “stretched.” If unchecked, you can change width & height independently to any value.

That’s it! Now you can re-save the image. The method described above works in previous versions of Photoshop too, such as CS5 and earlier.

List of All Temple Run Powerups & Costs

Temple Run is a fun game for Android & iOS. Here is a list of all the powerups that can be unlocked in the game, along with the cost in coins to unlock them:

Mega Coin:
250: Enable the 50 Coin powerup.
1000: Increase Mega Coin to 75 coins.
2500: Increase Mega Coin to 100 coins.
5000: Increase Mega Coin to 125 coins.
7500: Increase Mega Coin to 150 coins.
25000: Allow disabling Mega Coin.

Coin Magnet:
250: Enable the Coin Magnet powerup.
1000: Make Coin Magnet last longer.
2500: Coin Magnet doubles coin value.
5000: Make Coin Magnet last longer.
7500: Coin Magnet triples coin value.
25000: Allow disabling Coin Magnet.

Invisibility:
250: Enable the Invisibility powerup.
2500: Make Invisibility last longer.
5000: Make Invisibility last longer.
7500: Make Invisibility last longer.
25000: Allow disabling Invisibility.

Speed Boost:
250: Enable the 250m Boost powerup.
1000: Increase Boost to 375m.
2500: Increase Boost to 500m.
5000: Increase Boost to 625m.
7500: Increase Boost to 750m.
25000: Allow disabling Boost.

Coins:
250: Double Value coins after 1500m.
1000: Double Value coins after 1000m.
2500: Triple Value coins after 3000m.
5000: Triple Value coins after 2500m.
7500: Triple Value coins after 2000m.