News: Zappar Pitches Baseball AR Mini-Game for Wise Snacks
Wise Snacks wants baseball fans to reach for potato chips instead of peanuts and Cracker Jacks, and it's calling augmented reality out of the bullpen to close the deal.
Wise Snacks wants baseball fans to reach for potato chips instead of peanuts and Cracker Jacks, and it's calling augmented reality out of the bullpen to close the deal.
The Chinese government's tight restrictions on gathering data by foreign firms for 3D mapping, the lifeblood of machine-taught driverless systems, could at least slow down access to the market by Waymo, Tesla, General Motors (GM), Ford, and other players hoping to make inroads there.
Russian phone customizer Caviar — you might have heard of the blinged-out iPhone 6s Pokemon GO phone they released a few months back — is taking on international relations with their newest product.
The race is on to break Samsung's near-OLED Monopoly. Google joined the race back in April, reducing their reliance on Samsung's OLED's by supposedly investing about $880 million into using LG's OLED's for their Pixel phone screens. Now, Apple's stepping up with a rumored $2.5 billion investment into LG's OLED Display initiative for their phones too.
France's Groupe PSA (formerly known as PSA Peugeot Citroën) — one of the world's top-10 carmakers — aggressively seeks to take a lead in the rollout of the industry 's first driverless cars, as it becomes the first mainstream carmaker to announce it will launch a Level 3 self-drive vehicle launch by 2020.
Uber has lost market share to Lyft, its main competitor. Uber's US market share dropped from 84% to 77% between January and the end of May this year, and the ride-sharing company has continued to run into legal, public-image, and internal trouble. Lyft, on the other hand, has been growing.
Ok, I have to admit, I drop my phone around 2–4 times a week. I'm horrible at protecting it and I've gone through my fair share of cracked phones. Most of the time, once the phone is cracked it's just easier to get an entirely new phone, rather than have to fight your phone provider for a fix.
What a week for iPhone rumors. Monday saw an intriguing photo leak on Reddit of what could be the final designs for the iPhone 8, 7S, and 7S Plus (highly suspect, of course). Today continues the intrigue — iPhone assembler Wistron told reporters in Taipei that Apple's newest smartphones will be waterproof and feature wireless charging.
Anticipation is building for the release of the Essential Phone. Andy Rubin's newest creation is expected to be loaded with features like a rear fingerprint reader, attachable 360-degree camera, and an edge-to-edge display. However, a news release from Sprint has just revealed that it may take more than $700 to get your hands on the Essential Phone. The release revealed that the Essential Phone will be exclusively carried by Sprint, so it might be time to switch your wireless carrier.
Global design and technology services company Tata Elxsi says it has licensed its advanced autonomous vehicle middleware platform "AUTONOMAI" to a "leading automotive OEM."
The common thread between this week's Brief Reality stories is that augmented reality is beginning to prove its worth as a technology that improves workflows and processes. From customer service to healthcare to manufacturing, augmented reality is helping companies improve productivity.
After Ford's CEO Mark Fields' three-year tenure failed to keep up with the driverless industry and resulted in a 40% drop in shares since Field's took over in 2014, Ford is going in a new direction. Jim Hackett, who was previously chairman of Ford's self-driving division, has succeeded Fields as the company's new CEO.
Waymo has done a lot of things over the course of their driverless journey, but their solution to little birdies pooping all over a self-driving car's LiDAR system is definitely our favorite.
Online lives could be made easier now that Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger are testing merged app notifications. 'Could' being the operative word!
Mobile augmented reality developer Blippar has escalated the augmented reality advertising arms race, introducing a new rich media ad format that enables augmented reality experiences without a dedicated app.
While the technology continues to mature, businesses from various industries continue to adopt augmented reality to improve the efficiency of business processes. In this edition of Brief Reality, as conference season continues, we see examples of augmented reality applied to logistics processes and marketing of industrial supplies, as well as the topic of discussion at another trade show.
The good news keeps on coming for Samsung! According to the market research firm Strategy Analytics, the Korean giant sold a whopping 7.2 million Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge smartphones in the first quarter of this year. That totals 55 million of the company's flagship smartphones sold since their launch in March 2016.
The battle of the budget phone is well and truly underway, as both T-Mobile and ZTE have launched affordable new devices simultaneously.
An expert in the driverless market has earmarked Porsche as the company to watch in the automated car race.
It may seem strange to find the director of engineering at a question-and-answer site all of a sudden pick up and lead a new driverless startup, but to Kah Seng Tay, both engineering tasks require building the right infrastructure to handle large amounts of AI data.
Google Assistant is a handy little feature at most of the time, but it's upping the ante in honor of April Fools' Day this year.
Google's Pixel smartphone is striking up some heated competition between phone makers HTC, LG, TCL, and Coolpad, as the Pixel 3 gets ready to release in 2018. Yep, you heard that right—not the Pixel, not the Pixel 2, but the Pixel 3—which shows that Google is really committed to the future of its new flagship line.
Disney Chairman and CEO Bob Iger has out and out rejected Virtual Reality (VR) as a component of any Disney Theme park. While Knott's Berry Farm, why-hasn't-this-chain-shut-down-yet Sea World (seriously, RIP Tillikum), and Six Flags have all invested in VR to help spice up their parks in this theme park depression period, Iger has "ordered his team not to even think about it." Iger instead is very much onboard the Augmented Reality (AR) train.
While augmented reality is mostly in the minds of consumers in the form of Pokémon GO, AR has been popular behind the scenes, with AR companies marketing it as a tool to help business operations become more efficient. This business-to-business market is the target of the new app DOTTYAR, which "provides 3D visualization tools for augmented reality viewers."
The newest version of Snapseed features three awesome new tools for you photo-editing enthusiasts. The 2.17 update for the editing app was rolled out on Tuesday, March 21, and its new additions are something to behold.
Apple is combining internal and external talent in an effort to give them in edge in the augmented reality market, though we still don't know what form their foray into alternative realities will actually take.
OnePlus just unveiled a new version of their popular OnePlus 3T—a limited edition all-black "colette" version for the boutique's 20th anniversary today. The slick device will feature the iconic colette logo on the back.
There are already a few ways to use your home computer on the go, but none of them feel very natural when you're out and about, and are clunky options at best. Samsung wants to change that with Monitorless, their upcoming augmented reality smartglasses, which offer remote desktop viewing capabilities as well as the ability to switch between augmented and virtual reality modes using electrochromic glass.
Last month, Dr. Sung-Hoon Hong, Vice President of Samsung Electronics, announced at the Virtual Reality Summit in San Diego that Samsung would be moving into the augmented reality market. According to a recently published patent application, that move has begun.
DAQRI, a company mostly known for its odd but fun-looking industrial Smart Helmet, unveiled their new Smart Glasses product at CES 2017. Their smartglasses look like a strange attempt to answer the Microsoft HoloLens, and the price tag of $4,995 for the developer's edition reinforces that notion.
Earlier this week, a mysterious tweet appeared on the HTC Twitter account of a picture containing the letter "U" topped with a tiny "for" and the date "01.12.2017" at the bottom. It is a pretty solid teaser, but for a company that has had a solid year with their Vive virtual reality headset, and all of the other technological appendages they have, it seems a bit ominous for them.
I don't know about you, but I was obsessed with handheld gaming devices when I was younger. Between my Game Boy and multiple Tamagotchis, I was guaranteed hours of entertainment that could fit comfortably in the palm of my hand.
When it comes to hacking guides, most are written from the perspective of a Linux user. There are a few outliers, but it's mainly Linux, which leads to the idea that Linux is the only OS that's viable for hacking. This couldn't be further from the truth. A properly set up Apple machine can do quite a bit of heavy lifting.
Most popular virtual reality headsets, like the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, require a tethered connection to the computer and that imposes some obvious restrictions on how much we can move in our space. We'd all prefer a simpler, untethered option, and Intel wants to provide just that.
Apple has been aggressively smashing bugs with its last few updates to iOS 10, so it seems like all of the major work is done. With the iPhone 7 release date approaching fast, it's a good sign that the only remaining hurdles are relatively minor and cosmetic tweaks (though they still need to add the song lyrics they showed off a few months ago).
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 locations, and use the headset to get instant directions to any defined location.
Most augmented/mixed reality hardware still exists in the development stage, whether that's one of the more robust headsets or a high-powered smartphone. Most everything else isn't widely used or monetized. Snapchat, however, snuck in under the radar and created the foundation for the first social network to focus on augmented reality.
As you get barbecuing this summer, you're likely to encounter a few grills that aren't exactly the cleanest. At parks or campgrounds and even on your friends' grills (or, um, your own), no one wants to place food on gunked-up grill grates.
The HoloLens can do some pretty crazy things such as create a robot invasion in your walls, but it can also help you do simple stuff, like hanging frames, paintings, or anything else on those walls—after you repair them from the robot attack, of course.
Got some seriously sensitive information to keep safe and a spare-no-expenses attitude? Then the new Solarin from Sirin Labs is the smartphone for you and your $17,000.