News: Verizon's Galaxy S8 Is Missing a Key Bixby Feature
The Galaxy S8's Bixby Vision feature isn't working up to its full potential for Verizon customers, according to a recent CNET report.
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Market Reality: PTC Stock Rising on Augmented Reality
Every Friday, Next Reality reviews the latest headlines from the financial side of augmented and mixed reality. This weekly Market Reality column covers funding announcements, mergers and acquisitions, market analysis, and the like. This week's column starts with a stock price that's performing well for one company — one that HoloLens developers should know quite well.
News: Your Bose Headphones Are Spying on You
Bose Corp is the latest company trying to make another dollar off of you without your permission. Bose Connect, the companion app to the swag $350 Bose headphones, is not the Jane to your Jack that maybe we all hoped it to be.
News: Facebook Introduces AR Platform at F8
During his opening address on April 18 at F8, Facebook's developer conference, CEO Mark Zuckerberg launched the company's augmented reality platform centered on artificial intelligence-powered cameras.
News: Excited About the Embedded Touch ID in the iPhone 8? Think Again
The rumor mill surrounding the iPhone 8 is churning this week, and not necessarily in a good way. Yesterday, we learned Apple may be leaving the 3D camera out of the next big iPhone to keep the phone on schedule. Today, rumors allege the 10th-anniversary edition of Apple's smartphone may not ship with Touch ID embedded under its display.
News: Apple Developing New iPhone Graphics Chip
Apple is in the process of developing its own graphics processors for future iPhones, according to recent reports.
News: BlackBerry KeyOne Launch Date Pushed Back
We have some bad news for BlackBerry fans: It looks like the upcoming KeyOne flagship won't be shipped in April after all.
News: Baby with Severe Zika-Related Birth Defects Born in San Diego County
A baby with severe Zika-related birth defects was born in San Diego County this week, prompting officials to urge pregnant women to avoid disease hotspots.
News: This App Notifies You Every Time a Trump Tweet 'Triggers' Your Stocks
Every time Donald Trump tweets about a stock you own, Trigger Finance, or just Trigger—the app founded on the "if this, then that" rule to track and invest in the stock market—alerts you with a notification for real-time analysis of financial data.
News: Shopping for a New Couch? Amazon Wants You to See It in Your Home (While You're Still in the Store)
Amazon has been toying with the idea of opening physical retail stores for some time now, even opening old-fashioned bookstores in select locations and teasing cashier-less convenience stores. But the online retailer has some new ideas in the works, including implementing virtual and augmented reality into retail home stores.
News: Google Maps Update Brings Real-Time Location Sharing
Google Maps now allows users to share their location in real time and update their friends and family on their location and estimated time of arrival when making a trip.
News: Apple Granted Patent to Make Augmented Reality Maps—Hinting at a Cool, Futuristic Version of Our Well-Worn Maps App
Apple recently scored a patent (number 9,488,488) to create augmented reality maps, hinting at possible AR integration into the iOS Maps application for iPhone. Does this mean we'll be seeing super visionary projections of places in the app in the near future? Maybe.
News: The Washington Post to Start Using Augmented Reality to Tell Better Stories
The Washington Post believes augmented reality adds an extra layer to stories, and they're doubling down on that belief by adding in new AR features into their already popular "rainbow" news (iOS and Android) and Classic (iOS and Android) news apps.
News: Shazam Sets Sights on AR Advertising with iPhone & Android App Updates
The company that pioneered music scanning for mobile devices is moving into the augmented reality advertising arena. Included in an update of their iOS and Android apps last week, Shazam can now scan special codes to immerse users in 3D animations, 360-degree videos, mini-games, and other AR content.
News: Bosch Wants to Speed Up AR Adoption in the Auto Industry
While there are many uses for augmented reality in the automotive industry, adoption has been slow. With the plethora of makes and models on the road today and rolling off assembly lines tomorrow, developing and deploying knowledge bases that utilize augmented reality to dealerships and garages can be costly and difficult to scale.
News: Zappar Goes from $84,000 Kickstarter to $3.75 Million Series A Funding for Mobile AR
In December of last year, UK-based Zappar successfully raise $84,356 for their ZapBox mixed reality headset—over $50,000 more than their goal. Well, they just blew that sum out of the water when they announced this morning that they've closed a Series A round of funding with $3.75 million.
Have You Seen This?: New 'Crayon' HoloLens App Brings Back the Fun of Drawing on Walls
Crayon, a free 3D drawing application by the mysteriously named arkalian, showed up in the Windows Store recently, so I gave it a try like I do all new apps for Windows Holographic. Truthfully, I loaded it up not expecting much, but wow, was I wrong. It's a simple idea, but it's executed well enough to make it a truly great experience on the HoloLens.
News: Windows Developer Day on February 8 Promises Windows Holographic Information
If you're in the Windows Holographic community of developers, make sure to mark your calendar and set your alarms for February 8, 2017 because it's Windows Developer Day.
News: DAQRI's New Smart Glasses Made Tough for the Manufacturing Sector
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.
News: College Kids Hack a Coffeemaker & Amazon's Alexa into a Fun WTF Robot
Leave it to some lazy college kids to attempt to figure out a way to brew a pot of coffee without leaving the couch.
News: LEGO Robot Plays 'Little Talks' by Of Monsters & Men on Guitar
Remember back in 2011–2012 when "Little Talks" by Of Monsters and Men was the bumping new single being played everywhere? Well, thanks to this robot created from a LEGO Mindstorm EV3 kit, and an acoustic guitar, you get to get the iconic "hey!" stuck in your head for the rest of 2017. You're welcome.
News: HTC's Cryptic 'for U' Tweet Could Signal a Move into Augmented Reality
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.
News: Occipital's Bridge Headset—The iPhone's Answer to HoloLens—Is Available Now
A new contender has entered the mixed reality ring. San Fransisco-based Occipital has just released an "Explorer Edition" of Bridge—an iPhone-based mixed and virtual reality headset that uses their popular Structure Sensor. At a fraction of the cost of a HoloLens developers kit, this could be a place many curious people use to find their NextReality.
News: Brenda Freeman Leaves Behind TV & Film to Join Magic Leap as CMO
Today, December 7, it was officially announced that Magic Leap has found their replacement for the recently departed Brian Wallace. Magic Leap CEO Rony Abovitz has tapped Brenda Freeman, former EVP and Chief Marketing Officer of National Geographic Channel, as their new Chief Marketing Officer.
News: The Japanese Art Form That Turns Ordinary Dirt into Perfect Mud Spheres
People have been transforming mud into art, aka pottery, for thousands of years. This is not a new phenomenon, but often the finished product has a certain utilitarian aesthetic, such as a bowl or vase.
News: Artist Creates Giant Justin Timberlake Portrait with 13,000 Nails & 15 Miles of String
Justin Timberlake seems like a pretty cool guy overall—solid musician, decent actor, overall good person—but never in my wildest dreams would I think to spend 200 hours obsessively creating a giant portrait of his face.
News: Amazon's Best Black Friday Tech Deals 2016—TVs, Phones & Tablets
All across the country, retailers like Best Buy, Target, and Walmart are gearing up for their Black Friday sales. Brick and mortar stores are already packed to the brim with inventory in anticipation of the craziness that will strike as soon as the doors open the day after Thanksgiving.
News: 4 Famous Songs Played Perfectly on Glass Bottles
Take one down, pass it around, 99 bottles on which to play classical music? As someone who has studied music extensively, I've seen many interpretations of famous pieces of music played on glass bottles, but hearing these four interpretations of famous pieces (not all classical) completely blew my mind.
News: Trimble Releases SketchUp Viewer, the First Commercial HoloLens Application in the Windows Store
Visualization is one of the obvious commercial applications for technology such as Microsoft's HoloLens. The ability to see the assets of a project in different scales—from micro to larger-than-life—with a quick air tap will play a large part in the coming augmented reality revolution. Whether the assets are art for a game, interior design, raw financial data, or architecture, data visualization will play an important role in the future. This is due, in part, to our ability to absorb informat...
News: The @Burnvideos Instagram Account Gives You Exactly That—And It's Mesmerizing
As Alfred monologued in The Dark Knight, "Some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn."
News: The Latest Google Pixel Phone Leaks Show It All
If you just can't wait to see the Pixel and Pixel XL, the new Google-branded smartphones expected to be announced tomorrow, you're in luck. After weeks of rumors and blurry images, a smartphone sales company called Carphone Warehouse just accidentally dropped the entire ball. The UK business accidentally set the product pages for the Pixel and Pixel XL live a couple days early, and for just long enough for them to be archived before they were taken down.
How To: The Absolute Best Way to Clarify Butter... Period
Ah, butter—the (literally) heart-stopping star of the dairy world. Everything tastes better with it, from pie crusts and cookies to veggies and steaks. Hell, you can even fry things in butter if you want the best-tasting fried foods of your (short) life.
News: WhatsApp Is Now Sharing Your Data with Facebook, but Opting Out Doesn't Solve the Problem
When Facebook purchased WhatsApp for $19.3 billion back in 2014, we all knew this was coming—it just took longer than we thought. But starting today, the data mining became official, and now, information from your favorite messaging app is no longer out of reach for the world's biggest social media site.
News: Windows Holographic Is Coming to Intel's Project Alloy Cord-Cutting Headset
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.
News: Would You Buy This $89 Mannequin Head to Store a VR or AR Headset On?
How do you safely store your augmented, virtual, or mixed reality headset when you're not using it? Cybust hopes you're willing to shell out $89 to display it like a sculpture around your house.
How To: Get the Best One-Handed Swiping Keyboard for iPhone
Swipe keyboards such as GBoard, SwiftKey, TouchPal, and Swype are handy for quick one-thumbed typing on an iPhone, but Microsoft upped the game with its experimental Word Flow Keyboard. In short, the keyboard fans out to occupy the natural range of your thumb, where you can type or rely on predictive swiping.
News: How Snapchat Quietly Became the First Social AR Platform
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.
News: Google's New Home Assistant Is an Amazon Echo Killer
Google first introduced Google Home, its latest smart product in the works, at the company's I/O conference in May 2016. It will directly compete against Amazon's Echo, which has so far been a success with over 3 million devices sold, and it was even featured as FBI Agent Dom's only real friend in the second season of Mr. Robot. Google may have their work cut out for them, but we're betting Home will knock Echo out of the water. Google Home is a personal assistant with a built-in speaker and ...
News: 'Nutrition Labels' Will Make Picking the Right Internet Provider Painless
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.
News: These Pucks Turn All the Speakers You Already Have into a Badass Sound System
If you already have speakers that you love, you don't need to ditch them for an expensive wireless set for convenience's sake. With products like Chromecast Audio, you can turn any set of wired headphones or speakers into wireless versions for much less, and stream music or audio to them from pretty much any device connected to the same Wi-Fi network.