When you're playing a game on your iPhone, the chances are good that you'll come across an ad you have to watch before you can continue — especially on free games. While it may be annoying to be forced to wait for 10 seconds or even up to a full minute, it can be even more frustrating when you accidentally leave the game to visit the ad's linked app or site when trying to hit the little "x" to continue gaming.
Almost 20% of the US population (about 60 million Americans) live in rural areas where mobile reception is weak or nonexistent. In times of crisis, these Americans can't rely on the internet to communicate with loved ones or receive new information. This is why being able to interact offline is so important.
The COVID-19 pandemic has created a frenzy for news and information that is nearly unprecedented in the smartphone era, with a major side effect of misinformation. Now, major tech companies are making it easier to ask for advice about novel coronavirus from their respective digital assistants. Results may vary, but Apple and Google are the most useful at the moment.
Working from home has its perks. You don't need to commute, you can work in your pajamas, and you don't even need to clean your house, especially if you're using Zoom for video meetings on your smartphone. Instead of clearing toys from the floor or moving that pile of clothes on your chair, you can take advantage of Zoom's virtual background feature to hide what's really behind you.
As the COVID-19 virus continues to spread, counties, cities, and states are closing down businesses, events, and schools that aren't absolutely necessary. Some companies around the US are recommending or requiring employees to work from home during the coronavirus pandemic. If you're stuck at home, there are apps and services to help you make it through a lockdown.
The coronavirus continues to disrupt the tech industry, including the augmented reality segment, with Apple and the iPhone the latest to feel the impact.
If you thought the news coming from China about the coronavirus might not affect your daily life in Europe and in the Americas, think again.
After closing its office last year, enterprise AR company Daqri has moved on to the final stage of its lifecycle with the liquidation of its assets.
One of the hallmarks of augmented reality's coming of age is that the technology is starting to find a home in business categories that are less obvious compared to typical AR enterprise use cases.
The newly enhanced focus from Magic Leap on enterprise, announced on Tuesday, also came with a few companies opting to weigh in with their experiences developing for the platform.
While Apple, Facebook, and Snapchat are still working on their first-generation AR wearables, startup North is already preparing to bring its second-generation smartglasses to the world in 2020.
After opening up its Spark AR platform on Instagram for all creators, Facebook is already expanding the platform's capabilities on its Snapchat killer.
Thanks to the expanding universe of augmented reality tools being made available, increasingly, anybody can liven up sleepy office meetings with immersive computing.
The Pixel 4 and 4 XL are the first Android phones released in the US to support secure facial recognition. You no longer have to hate on your Apple's friends because you now have "Face ID" as well. So I assume you want to set it up right away — here's how.
The legal drama surrounding Chinese startup Nreal and Magic Leap continues, and now we finally have an update.
It might sound odd to call interior decorating exciting, especially if you're not a professional within that industry. But that's exactly what it is when combined with augmented reality.
The punch hole design of the Samsung Galaxy Note 10 has challenged users to find a clear way to deal with it. Although it's less intrusive than a notch, if left unaccounted for, it can be just as much of an eyesore. One of the more creative ways we've found is to use as a battery indicator.
Facebook had a pretty big week in terms of augmented reality, with much of its news coming from the Oculus 6 keynote presentation. But Mark Zuckerberg's social media company found other areas of impact outside of Oculus 6 as well.
It happens to all of us. You're ahead of the pack, clearly in first place, when someone launches the Spiny Shell (aka, the blue shell). It catches up and circles you before crashing into your kart, and there's seemingly nothing you can do about it. But what if I told you there are two ways to avoid this fate in Mario Kart Tour?
When it comes to building luxury cars, Bentley certainly knows what it's doing. However, when it comes to building an AR app, Bentley is looking less Continental GT and more Geo Metro.
The venture arms of Samsung and Verizon Ventures, along with Comcast, are among the strategic investors backing startup Light Field Lab and its glasses-free holographic displays in a $28 million Series A funding round
As you already know, the Galaxy Note 10 and 10+ have gotten rid of the beloved audio jack (RIP). Fortunately, it has never been a better time to switch to wireless. There are Bluetooth headphones and earbuds for every budget and every need.
Fast-food chain Jack in the Box has decided to put an augmented reality twist on the traditional sweepstakes promotion by employing the immersive powers of Snapchat.
Augmented reality jigsaw puzzle game PuzzlAR: World Tour, formerly only available on mobile devices, has been given a major upgrade via a new version for the Magic Leap One.
Viewing and reading content on websites is inherently harder to do on an iPhone due to the relatively small display. Even if you have an iPhone XS Max or 11 Pro Max, you'll probably struggle sometimes to read through tiny text while browsing online. Thanks to a feature found within Safari's view menu in iOS 13, your eyes can rest a little easier.
Have you tried searching for 4K HDR videos on YouTube, only to get 1080p videos just because the uploader used "4k" or "HDR" in the description? Or have you tried looking for a video about something that just happened, except YouTube's algorithm surfaces established videos first by default, so all the results you get are older than a month? Well, there's a better way.
A new profile on Apple's exiting design chief Jony Ive, the man behind many of the company's most successful products, paints a fuller picture of what led to his departure.
After a rough run of news, smartglasses maker North still has the confidence of investors, as evidenced by its latest round of funding.
Blue has defined Facebook's color scheme since its inception. Both Facebook's main app and Messenger theme are blue, which means your chat bubbles, like emoji, and menu bar items are also. While certainly a satisfying color for chat, you may get sick of it after a while, especially when it's in every thread. Luckily, Facebook lets you customize the color of individual Messenger chats.
Magic Leap and Samsung are putting their money where their augmented reality plans are, with the former acquiring an AR collaboration technology and the latter funding a waveguide display maker.
As promised with its teaser from Build 2019, Microsoft has unveiled the details for its augmented reality version of Minecraft for smartphones.
Two years ago, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg kicked off the F8 Developers Conference keynote with augmented reality and the introduction of Facebook's AR camera platform, now known as Spark AR.
While some widely praised immersive computing initiatives at Google are shutting down, over at Epic Games things are just ramping up, and it involves quite a bit of cash available to indie augmented reality developers and startups alike.
While the long awaited HoloLens sequel is scheduled to arrive later this year, Apple may force Microsoft to share the AR wearables spotlight, if reports of the company's first entry into smartglasses territory end up coming to fruition.
Your Instagram feed is jam-packed with interesting and lively photos, videos, and stories that largely offset the iOS app's comparatively bland user interface. If the interface's dull colors have always bothered you, you can splash on some much-needed color to better reflect your personality and tastes.
When you don't want certain friends viewing your account or just need to take a break from social media, Instagram lets you do so. While you can completely delete your Instagram account, then start over when you're ready again, it makes much more sense to just disable your account temporarily. Doing so will hide your profile, photos, comments, and likes from everyone, including your friends.
Back in 2018, Spotify began testing a new mobile feature that has grown very tiresome: three to eight-second looping videos that take over the entire screen. Known as Canvases, they effectively hide the cover art and lyrics of the current song — and they're still very much around to annoy and distract the hell out of you. Thankfully, Spotify has also included a way to get rid of these things.
I was today years old when I first heard of Bhad Bhabie, but I'm told she is apparently a rapper with a rags-to-riches story.
If you've blocked out your calendar to watch the NHL All-Star Game this weekend, then you might be excited to know that USA Today has given its readers the opportunity to meet Washington Capital's John Carlson in augmented reality.
With Pokémon GO as its cash cow and the forthcoming Harry Potter: Wizards Unite and Niantic Real World Platform promising future revenue streams, Niantic has convinced investors to bet on its flavor of augmented reality