A company whose sole product line is smartphones might be worried about early proclamations that the smartphone is dead with the advent of augmented reality wearables.
After building a tech empire on revenues from search advertising, Google is not about to sit back and let Snapchat, Facebook, 8th Wall, and others draw all the AR marketing attention to their platforms.
Smartglasses maker Vuzix made a big splash at CES 2018 with the inclusion of Amazon's Alexa voice assistant among the AR superpowers of its consumer-centric Blade smartglasses.
It looks like it's cuffing season for AR hardware makers and telecommunications corporations. With AT&T aligned with Magic Leap as its exclusive wireless retailer on the high-end AR side, Verizon has also reached a master reseller agreement with Vuzix, according to a filing with the Securities Exchange Commission.
Fashion brand Christian Dior is using augmented reality as a carrot to drive up their follower counts on Instagram.
News junkies who own the Magic Leap One received some good news on Thursday, as CNN has published an app for the headset to display the network's news coverage in augmented reality.
The recent announcement of a $480 million US Army contract awarded to Microsoft over Magic Leap for supplying 100,000 augmented reality headsets shows just a how lucrative the enterprise (and government) sector can be for AR.
Smartglasses maker ThirdEye has announced that its X1 model wearable will be updated by the slimmer, as yet unreleased X2 model. Both devices will be promoted and sold through its partner, brick and mortar technology retailer b8ta.
The display is one of the most critical components in augmented reality hardware, and on Tuesday, one of the companies making that component, Avegant Corp., closed a funding round of $12 million to support development of next-generation AR displays.
Many Americans will celebrate the start of the summer this Memorial Day weekend with backyard cookouts, and two brands hope to solidify their invites to those parties through augmented reality experiences in Snapchat.
Digital imaging company OmniVision Technologies and the Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute Company Limited (ASTRI) entered the CES fray this week with a new reference design for an augmented reality headset capable of 60 degrees field of view (FoV).
When it comes to marketing, sexy sells, a point that has been lost on most augmented reality hardware makers focused mostly on the geek space. But a new promotional spot from AR-in-the-car accessory maker WayRay indicates that AR companies are beginning to see the virtual sizzle reel light.
Augmented reality was recently named the "Mobile Disruptor of the Year" for 2017 by Mobile Marketer, but the technology is showing no signs of slowing down as we head into 2018. In fact, the technology appears to be gaining momentum.
When a firm like Techstars believes that augmented reality is an attractive industry to invest in, there's a high probability that it's right.
Free beer and AR? What could be better? Amstel, a Dutch beer brand, has launched an innovative sampling campaign using an AR app called "Snatch." Snatch is a treasure hunt gaming app, and if you win the game, your prize is 10,000 free pints of Amstel beer, redeemable at Mitchell & Butler pubs.
On Tuesday, Apple held a public conference call for its Q2 earnings report. During the call, Steve Milunovich from UBS asked Tim Cook about a recent 451 report, and how it reflects a pause in current iPhone sales. Cook's response was more than interesting, to say the least:
At Adobe Summit 2017 this week, Adobe announced they are looking to occupy a new space in the market by combining their analytic capabilities with augmented reality. Teaming up with Microsoft, the company has combined Adobe Sensei software with the HoloLens, reports GeekWire. Together, the tech and software create a new tool for retailers to track their consumers' habits.
Microsoft's HoloLens has many applications in the business world, both large and small, but what about gaming? Initial demos gave the impression that we could expect amazing first person shooters, platformers, and even Minecraft. Yet, as Newsweek noticed, the HoloLens was nowhere to be found at E3 this year.
Shopping around for a good broadband company or mobile carrier may soon be as easy as shopping for cereal, thanks to the introduction of broadband consumer labels by the FCC for both fixed and mobile broadband.
Whether you have AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, or any other mobile carrier, chances are your smartphone is sold locked to only work on that specific carrier's network. Sure, you could unlock your carrier-subsidized device, but that would mean breaching the Library of Congress' latest Interpretation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act—making the whole process illegal. As softModders, boundaries and regulations are things that we don't take lightly, although many times we have to begrudg...
UPDATE (February 26, 2014) Yesterday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 1123 with a 295-114 vote decision. The ruling repeals the 2012 Library of Congress (LOC) decision that limited the ability to legally "unlock" your smartphone (see below).
In this video tutorial, we learn how to listen to audiobooks on a portable MP3 player like the Apple iPod. For more information, including a complete demonstration and detailed, step-by-step instructions, watch this consumer electronics how-to from the folks at CNET.
Do you like to try out the latest electronics before they come out? Do you hate it when you have to send back test products you do get your hands on? Watch this video to learn how you can get companies to send you products to review and let you keep them afterwards.
If you have created a product and want to start selling it, watch this video. It will give you some general ideas for steps you can take to market your product and attract interest from consumers and investors.
Adobe Photoshop Elements is the consumer version of the Adobe Photoshop raster image editing product. In this video tutorial you will learn to use the cookie cutter tool in Photoshop Elements 4.0 to create shapes out of your photos. The tool is great for creating signs and logos.
If there's any lingering uncertainty as to the mainstream viability of augmented reality, a list of the top mobile apps and games of 2019 serves to dispell those doubts.
The annual Augmented World Expo (AWE) typically packs the front page of Next Reality with new products and services from companies in the augmented reality industry.
A year after making a splash at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas with Amazon Alexa integration, smartglasses maker Vuzix is bringing a notable weather app to its Blade smartglasses for the 2019 edition of the conference.
The Kinect is finally here, poised to make game consumers forget the Wii ever existed. If you've got a Kinect, gotten it all plugged in, but are wondering what to do next, watch this video. It will walk you through the process of setting up and configuring your Kinect on the XBox so that it works as well as possible.
As far as the world of consumer electronics goes, it doesn't get much greener than recycling solar panels. In this video tutorial, you'll learn how to solder together broken solar panels, giving them new life as a functional AA battery charger, which produces about 6 volts in direct sunlight and about 3 volts indoors. In order to get started on this hack, you'll need a number broken solar panels (which can be had cheap for cheap on the Internet), a low-temperature soldering iron, silver-beari...
This week's Apple earnings offered a report of solid performance and guarded optimism about future iPhone sales, which may be impacted later this year by issues around the current coronavirus epidemic in China.
While consumer-grade smartglasses are the holy grail for tech companies, smartglasses maker Vuzix knows where its bread is buttered, and that's in the enterprise segment.
Despite the launch of ARKit a year ago, and ARCore this year, a true killer app has not arrived for either platform, that's according to the head honcho for one of the leading development environments for 3D applications.
Are you a follower or a leader? No matter how you respond, we all know that leader is a more desirable position to hold. Great leaders typically share a few qualities—confidence, intelligence, and strength, to name a few—but one of the most intriguing is their appearance. With the right facial structure, and some well-rehearsed expressions, you can trick others into thinking you're leader material.
Bokeh (which translates to "blur" in Japanese) is a photography technique referring to the blurred areas of a photograph. Basic bokeh photographs often have one point of focus, while the background falls away into a dreamy, blurred haze.
With the consumer edition of its Nreal Light headset, scheduled to ship in 2020, Nreal is prepared to bring the entire Android app ecosystem into augmented reality.
Did Google CEO Sundar Pichai kill Google Glass for non-enterprise users? That's the obvious first question following news that non-enterprise Glass users will no longer have access to Google's core apps after February 2020.
Suddenly, Magic Leap's lawsuit against Nreal, as well as its barrier to entry in the Chinese market, appears to be as insurmountable as The Great Wall itself.
The landscape of augmented reality marketing is growing by leaps and bounds nearly every month, with Hollywood and the cosmetics industry leading the way.
Just over two months ago, smartglasses startup North opened the doors at its two brick-and-mortar retail locations in Toronto and New York and began accepting orders for Focals. On Thursday, the company announced that those initial customers can get ready to pick up their wearables, as the first shipments have now arrived in stores.
