The Augmented World Expo (AWE), the biggest event for augmented, virtual, and mixed reality companies, developers, customers, and connoisseurs, is happening right now. You know what that means for us here at Next Reality? Companies presenting and exhibiting at AWE are releasing news like crazy.
Augmented reality is quickly becoming a popular tool for marketing use cases, as demonstrated by new projects serving the automotive, entertainment, and tourism industries this past week.
One thing that I got more and more excited about as we got closer and closer to the Microsoft Build 2017 developers conference was finally learning about the new Acer Windows Mixed Reality head-mounted displays (HMD). Brandon Bray, Principal Group Program Manager at Microsoft, had teased us a few weeks earlier at the Vision Summit event in Los Angeles, California, and said there would be a lot more information at Build. Fortunately for us, he was right.
Three years ago, with VR enthusiasts prepared to throw their money at Oculus to get their hands on the yet-to-be-release Rift headset, Google surprised the audience for Google I/O with Google Cardboard, a seemingly late April Fool's joke that actually jump-started virtual reality.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that there were 212 million cases of malaria across the world in 2015, and 429,000 of those people died — mostly children living in Africa. Preventing and treating those infections has been a challenging world priority. That makes a new malaria drug discovery — published in Science Translational Medicine — incredibly important.
A Seattle development team is putting the "ARRRR" in AR with the maiden voyage of Captain Blimey, an augmented reality game for iOS and Android devices that puts a pirate premise on Pokémon GO.
Who pays for live TV anymore? Better question, who watches live TV anymore? With a ton of streaming services available, there's no room in our lives for things like schedules, commercials, or going weeks between episodes. (What is this, 2010?)
In the US, ticks can spread several pathogens in one bite. A new test offers physicians the ability to identify what infections ticks are carrying and can detect if one of the pathogens could be the spreading Powassan virus.
Augmented reality software developer Edgybees has launched Drone Prix. The new mobile app immerses DJI drones and their pilots in more than 30 augmented reality obstacle courses.
Figuring out exactly which apps on your phone are eating through resources and battery life can be a difficult task. Though some information can be found in Android's battery menu, the charts and graphs provided here pale in comparison to what's offered by the GSam app. If you configure this app properly, it provides deep insight into battery, CPU, and data usage.
It's not the bacteria itself that takes lives and limbs during invasive flesh-eating bacteria infections. It's the toxins secreted by the group A Streptococcus bacteria invading the body that causes the most damage.
In the music world, it's safe to say electric instruments are more versatile, but they lack the portability of their acoustic counterparts. However, with the aid of your smartphone plus an audio interface, you can play your electric instrument anywhere — with all the pedal effects you please — and even record your efforts.
Velodyne wants to set the standard for the driverless industry when it comes to LiDAR. To do that, the Silicon Valley-based team just announced its next step — create a low-cost, fixed-laser sensor that can be embedded into a wide range of automotive and autonomous vehicles. That next step is named the Velarray. A sturdy, compact, and affordable LiDAR laser.
Rooting a phone lets us install custom operating systems, known as ROMs, which replace the device's preinstalled OS. Most custom ROMs are based on code from the Android Open Source Project (AOSP), which gives them a look and feel similar to Google's version of stock Android. But every now and then, you'll see a ROM that isn't based on Android, though these are few and far between — at least, until now.
The "Discover" tab in the latest version of the Google Home app has a new tip that says multiple users are now supported. Google Home uses a built-in speaker and microphone combo to give users access to smart search, a personal assistant, and smart home controls. This addition has the potential to make the voice-activated speaker powered by the Google Assistant much more efficient for households with more than one user. However, it seems that Google wasn't quite ready to announce this new fea...
When Google added new security measures to Android Marshmallow, it had a lasting impact on the entire process of rooting. These measures prevent the the Superuser daemon (the process that handles requests for root access) from getting the permissions it needs to do its job at boot. In order to get around these issues, Chainfire created the systemless root method.
As you may have heard by now, YouTube has launched its own live streaming TV bundle available for users in the select markets of New York, Los Angeles, the Bay Area, Chicago, and Philadelphia. A subscription to the new streaming YouTube TV bundle costs $35 a month, but the service is drawing in users by offering a free 30-day trial.
Upskill, an enterprise software developer for industrial augmented reality applications, recently received an influx of funding and a major vote of confidence from two of their top customers.
When the mosquito that carries the malaria parasite (Plasmodium falciparum) bites someone, the parasite must travel to the liver where it undergoes part of its lifecycle before infecting red blood cells and spreading to its next host. Until now, the first step of how the parasite gets to the liver hasn't been clear.
Dynasty Warriors has finally been unleashed on the world of mobile gaming. The latest installment in the popular series is called Dynasty Warriors: Unleashed, and it sends you rampaging through armies using a variety of devastating attacks, all while collecting and upgrading over 80 unique characters from the Dynasty Warriors series. Each offer their own unique abilities, which lets you create the ideal team to take on the seemingly endless hordes coming your way with cold, cruel efficiency.
Apple has yet to create a successful social networking app, but that doesn't mean they want to be left out of the social video conversation. Case in point: Today they announced a new video app set to debut for iOS in April called Clips.
A new feature in Android Nougat lets you add your own custom tiles to the Quick Settings panel. This menu, which can be accessed by swiping down from the top of any screen, lets you quickly adjust settings and toggle system features on and off. So now that it's been opened up for third-party development, we're starting to see all sorts of cool and useful tiles roll in.
Pottery Barn has teamed up with Google to create 3D Room View, a new mobile app to allow all wannabe interior designers (like me) to pick out the perfect couch, table, or whatever, and then overlay it onto a spot in his or her house.
With a predicated increase in the number of Lyme disease cases in the coming spring season, new research endorses the use of bait boxes to control ticks on the rodents that serve as their hosts.
As Intel steps up their investment in driverless technology with a $15 billion acquisition of Mobileye, so have automotive supplier Bosch and NVIDIA teamed up to manufacturer driverless car systems with the much-awaited Xavier chip.
Listen up ladies, there's no need to go to Sephora and model a hundred different shades of lipstick anymore. Now with Virtual Artist, Sephora's award-winning app, for iOS and Android, you can virtually test thousands of shades of single and palette eyeshadows, lip colors, and even false eyelash styles from their new augmented reality-based feature.
Rabbits have been a persistent problem in Australia for over 150 years. Now the Peel Harvey Catchment Council (PHCC) and Peel-Harvey Biosecurity Group have released a strain of the rabbit haemorrhagic disease virus (RHDV), called RHDV1 K5, to reduce the number of pests in the Murray region of New South Wales.
For some, drinking raw milk is a way to get back to nature, improve family nutrition, and hedge against asthma and allergies. However, according to public health authorities, drinking raw or unpasteurized milk is a big mistake—even fatal. So what's the story?
Before the release of the Galaxy S8, Samsung quietly uploaded one of their core TouchWiz apps to the Google Play Store as a beta. Samsung Internet, as it's called, has been a staple on all Galaxy devices for years now, but you can now try the browser on any Android phone.
Cinemagraphs are basically artistic photos that have been turned into a GIF to showcase a bit of subtle motion and give them life. Unlike regular GIFs, which can sometimes loop with a jarring cut at the end, cinemagraphs give the illusion of perpetual motion, like water drops off a flower's petal or clouds moving over a scenic sky.
Early this morning, Unity held their keynote at GDC 2017 in the InterContinental San Francisco hotel. During the event, they talked about their upcoming roadmap and many changes that are coming down the pipe. This list included the lighting explorer, progressive lightmapper, the new 4K video player, native support for Vulkan graphics, TextMesh Pro integration, and the one that really excites me as a HoloLens developer—dynamically/runtime created navigation meshes.
The rate of preterm birth has been increasing in the United States for unknown reasons, causing increased health risks for infants born too soon. But researchers may have found a signal that could help doctors plan ahead for, or even prevent, early birth with a simple swab of the vagina and cervix during pregnancy.
The widget system on iOS leaves a lot to be desired when compared to Android's offering, but that's not really Apple's fault. The system is there, we just need some good widgets to really get the most out of it, so it's up to developers to create some awesome apps that work with the home screen and lock screen widget panels on iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.
The LG G6 was officially announced by LG at Mobile World Congress 2017 in Barcelona and released in the US on April 7, 2017. The device is almost exactly what we've been expecting from all of the rumors and leaks building up to its release. The modular design we saw in the G5 is gone, taking the removable battery with it. However, we do gain waterproofing, an improved dual-camera setup, a larger screen with smaller bezels, and Google Assistant.
The YouTube app for Android doesn't exactly offer the greatest user experience. For one thing, it opens to an arbitrary "Home" tab instead of your subscriptions, so you see a list of what YouTube thinks you want to watch instead of your favorite channels. In addition to that, videos are loading at a mere 144p playback resolution for many users lately, which is downright terrible quality.
The HoloLens is a natural medium for 3D data visualization, which offers a far more ideal approach over 2D screens to managing multiple resources simultaneously and grasping the bigger picture. We've already seen how management is using holograms to oversee cities, firefighters, and the military, and now training for sports teams is being addressed with VAR Football.
Samsung began offering Android 7.0 Nougat to users in its beta program on November 10, 2016. The beta came to a close last month after the fifth and final version was pushed out to users under the build number ending in 1ZPLN. This update was released a couple of days after Christmas and fixed a couple of bugs, including a fairly annoying one that caused your device to randomly reboot.
Intel, the company which is mostly known for creating computer processors, once again showed off their Project Alloy "merged reality" experience, this time during their CES 2017 press conference. Intel's Chief Executive Officer, Brian Krzanich, stated that they will be "productizing" this tech with their partners in the fourth quarter of 2017.
These days, if you walk through Best Buy, you will see an entire area designated to smart home technology. Thanks to the interest and growth of the Internet of Things (IoT), this exciting new technology has finally entered the mainstream. Appliances, thermostats, and even the lighting throughout your house can be controlled from your computer or smartphone. You could also use artificial intelligence; Simply tell Amazon's Alexa what you want your house to do, and she will do it.
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 dollars up to $85,000 per sensor—and vehicles often need multiple sensors to see enough of what is going on around them to drive safely.