Judges at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Accelerator Pitch Event named Lampix the winner in the Augmented and Virtual Reality category, conference organizers announced today. The ninth annual competition, which took place over the weekend in Austin, Texas, pitted 50 startup finalists against each other in 10 technology categories.
One of the biggest hurdles for making touchscreen text input easy on the user has been finding a simple way to move the cursor around. With all the advancements in mobile technology, we're still left fumbling around with tiny arrow indicators or magnifying glasses when we need to add a letter to a word we've already typed. But thankfully, developer Ouadban Youssef has found a better way.
Late last year, two surgeons from the Instituto de Ortopedia e Traumatologia de Jaraguá do Sul in Brazil started using a combination of 3D printing and the Microsoft HoloLens to help plan spinal surgeries. And now, with the rest of their team, they've successfully performed a surgical procedure on their first international patient using their 3D impression planning and augmented reality process.
Mimesys, whose core focus has always been about creating holographic representations of humans for virtual and augmented reality, has released a video showing off their holographic communication platform in action. This new communication tool uses a combination of virtual reality, with the HTC Vive and a Kinect, and mixed reality, with the HoloLens, to allow the users to have virtual meetings from anywhere in the world as though they are in the same room.
A few days before Christmas last year, we saw the first glimpse of HoloSuit, a new motion controller by startup Kaaya Tech. This full-body motion controller is designed as a tracksuit with sensors that can be used to control devices such as a computer or Microsoft HoloLens, and now it's getting ready to start production, with an upcoming Kickstarter campaign planned to go live soon.
While most people have only begun hearing the term augmented reality in the last year or so, AR has been around in some form since the early '90s. It all started with heads-up displays (HUDs) for pilots to see instant information in their visors, but has graduated to a far more useful and widespread technology thanks to the advancement of computers and, more recently, smartphones.
Today, at Abundance 360, an exclusive event for tech entrepreneurs in Beverly Hills, California, Boston Dynamics unveiled a video of "Handle," a humanoid-like robot with wheels instead of feet.
Using extreme time-lapse microscopy, scientists watched a virus take over a bacteria to create a cell that looked and functioned more like a plant or animal cell. True story.
The search for the causative agent of colony collapse—the mass die off of honey bees throughout the US and Europe—has escalated with increasing confusion lately. Everything from pesticides and stress to viruses and mites have been implicated, and some researchers think that many of these environmental factors work together to take down hives.
While all of my previous Have You Seen This? posts have all focused on individual HoloLens apps in the Windows Store, this time I'll be sharing a couple at once. These holographic applications are really simple in scope, so there is not a lot to say about them, yet they are interesting enough for me to want to share them with you.
If you have a mobility impairment that affects your hands, arms, or manual dexterity, a smartphone's touch-based interface can almost be a barrier between you and the mobile internet. Eye-tracking software requires too much computing power for today's smartphones to handle, so it might seem as though there's no good way to interact with an Android device.
Once mixed reality technology is more widely available and realistically priced for consumers, using the tech to create the illusion of a larger space, will likely be a favorite use for mixed reality in places where real-estate is expensive, people tend to live in smaller homes and work in tighter offices.
Magic Leap, the mysterious Florida-based mixed reality start-up, announced on Wednesday that it would be opening a 260,000 square-foot expansion in Florida, and bringing along with it 725 new jobs over a five-year period. To make this happen, they will be making an $150 million capital investment, with government incentives, of course.
The Meta 2 developer kit has finally begun shipping! Gary Garcia, the senior director of customer success at Meta, just sent out an email that they are shipping out to the first round of preorder customers. Waves will be building from there, up to far higher manufacturing rates near the end of Q1 of 2017.
According to multiple users on Reddit, the Pixel and Pixel XL's camera can have some serious auto-focus issues if you're using a certain type of case with Google's new flagships. When the problem occurs, your camera app will refuse to settle on a focus point, making almost everything in the frame blurry. Redditor HeshoMike uploaded a video of the phenomenon, and you can see it in action here:
One of the only downsides to the Pixel XL is that Google's flagship phone does not have stereo speakers. But if Android's awesome development community has taught us anything over the years, it's that limitations like these can be bypassed with some creative software tinkering.
Google's new Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones are available for pre-order right now, but the general public won't start to get their hands on these devices for another week or two. Tech reporters got some hands-on time at Google's launch event on October 4th, but camera testing wasn't allowed, and the Wi-Fi coverage at the event was too flooded for real-world performance reviews.
Most of us don't get the opportunity to see election coverage first hand, but with virtual reality, we're not as restricted. AltspaceVR has teamed up with NBC News to let you log in on your computer or VR headset and actually take part in the action—just not physically.
Mixed reality can give you the feeling that you've uncovered a hidden world layered into the physical one you already know. This can happen in so many ways, from a trading card that births a hologram or a first-person shooter with robots blasting through your walls. Xperiel—a California-based augmented and mixed reality company—wants to create a platform to make that a whole lot easier for developers.
Pancakes are a pretty simple breakfast. You add a few dry ingredients and a few wet ingredients, cook them up, and voilà—a delicious breakfast that's just waiting to suck up all that maple syrup.
One of the disadvantages of the digital world is that you can't pick it up and touch it. While that can feel like less of a problem in virtual reality, where you're already holding controllers, mixed reality environments—like the one you'd experience in Microsoft's HoloLens—suffer from a lack of physical connection with the digital objects that appear in your real world. Dexmo aims to solve that problem with a relatively intimidating new controller that encompasses your hands.
The mighty toaster oven may be the most useful small appliance ever, whether you're a college student who needs to heat up your Bagel Bites or a professional looking for a quick way to warm up a frozen pizza after a long day. But that toaster oven is no one-hit wonder. With this smart hack, you can give it double-duty superpowers to heat up not one, but two frozen foods at the same time.
Snapchat has already found a compelling way to create advertisements in augmented reality with their branded filters, but they continue to experiment with new ways to monetize the bridging of the real and digital worlds. Their latest idea, which requires users to "snap" an image to unlock content, could succeed where QR codes haven't.
The Google Chrome browser for Android allows you to cast quite a few different videos from the web to your TV, but some sites actively disable this functionality, and others have outdated video players that won't allow for it. For example, Instagram's mobile website won't let you cast any videos, and the official app doesn't support Google Cast.
In Pokémon GO, having an in-depth understanding of your Pokémon's stats and abilities is crucially important to becoming a better player. Not all Pokémon are created equal; as such, it's critical that you look at each of your Pokémon—even duplicates—with a keen eye.
We recently covered a set of ported apps from the new cloud-based smartphone, the Nextbit Robin. These ported APKs brought two of the Robin's slick new stock apps—Camera and Gallery—to any other device, but the launcher was conspicuously absent.
Ever since iOS 8, you could add widgets on your iPhone using the "Edit" menu on the Today view page, but there's an easier and faster way to get widgets set up for viewing via a right swipe on the lock screen, a swipe right from the first home screen page, and a swipe down from center top everywhere else.
We recently covered an app called Touch Controls for YouTube that allows you to swipe up or down on any YouTube video to quickly adjust volume levels or brightness. As awesome as that app is, commenters here and on our YouTube channel thought it was lacking one big feature—the ability to seek forward or backward in the video by swiping the screen.
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.
HTC's newest flagship smartphone, the HTC 10, has been met with nearly universal acclaim despite a weak amount of sales over the last few months. Most reviewers point to the device's gorgeous hardware as its main attraction, but at the same time, it certainly has some nice software to match, as this year's Sense 8 may be one of the best manufacturer skins ever.
Lens Launcher was one of the winners of 2106's Android Experiments I/O Challenge a few months ago, and with good reason—it gives us a new way to browse for apps on our Android phones. It's slightly reminiscent of how the Apple Watch does it, but even better.
Want to actually catch 'em all? Pokémon GO has long-teased the opportunity to hunt for Pokémon in the real world through augmented reality, but few have had the opportunity to actually see it in action.
Hello everyone. It's been a while since I've posted anything (with good reason). But, now that the digital dust has settled, it's time to be an adult about this. I will be continuing to post to Null Byte on a smaller scale, and will also fully participate in whatever communities Null Byte members branch into.
These days, there are Android apps for every budget—forgive me if that sounds like a car commercial, but that's just the way things are in the age of the smartphone and tablet. You've got apps that require monthly subscriptions, paid apps that will run you a $30 one-time installation fee, and even games that start at 99 cents, but quickly skyrocket in price with in-app purchases.
Google has added a number of new features in the latest update to Google Keyboard including a one-handed mode and a setting that lets you adjust the height of the keys. The update hasn't gone live on the Play Store yet, but you can download the APK right now for both 32-bit and 64-bit phones.
Welcome back, my budding hackers! Digital forensics is one of IT's most rapid-growing disciplines. All hackers should be familiar with digital forensics if for no other reason than to protect themselves. More than one hacker has been apprehended because they were unaware of the evidence trail they left behind.
Near Field Communication, or NFC for short, is a feature that allows our smartphones to wirelessly communicate with other devices over a short distance while using almost no power at all. Think of it like a slimmed-down version of Wi-Fi or Bluetooth that can send a small burst of data two inches away without having any measurable impact on your battery life.
As many of you know, I have been running a couple of series here on Null Byte about digital forensics called Digital Forensics for the Aspiring Hacker and Digital Forensics Using Kali. Although many readers have seemed to enjoy these series, just as many seem to be pondering, "Why should I study digital forensics?"
YouTube announced last October some of the original programming it was producing for its YouTube Red subscription service, and the first four originals went live on Wednesday, February 10th.
For many people, the two main advantages of buying a Nexus device are prompt updates and the ability to root without much hassle. But in a cruel twist of fate, these two features are almost mutually exclusive, since OTA updates will refuse to run on rooted devices.
