Hip-hop artist Drake once rapped that "goin' online...ain't part of (his) day," but that's not stopping him from promoting his new double album, Scorpion, via augmented reality on Snapchat.
As if its users weren't already having enough fun with dancing hot dogs and face effects, Snapchat is upping the ante with a new kind of shared augmented reality content.
The augmented reality industry made great strides in 2017, but its apex is not even in sight. In terms of software, augmented reality is approaching meaningful mainstream awareness, thanks mostly to Apple and ARKit. Meanwhile, on the hardware side, AR is very much in its infancy, with headsets mostly limited to enterprise customers or developer kits and the majority of smartphones lacking the sensors necessary to achieve much more than parlor tricks.
Lately, any subject in the realm of politics is a figurative powderkeg primed to explode on the nearest social media channel. Now, one app wants to use your iPhone and AR to strike a match.
People love emojis, it's a scientific fact. So an app that places poops, smileys, and ghosts into social media videos should, in theory, be the most popular app ever. That's likely the reasoning behind the new Holocam app, which is available for $0.99 in the iOS App Store. Sure, Snapchat and Instagram offer users editing tools to stick static text, emojis, and drawings on top of photos and videos. However, Holocam ups the ante by placing fully three-dimensional emoji, text, and drawings, as w...
Droids are apparently very popular in the world of Apple's ARKit developers. We've seen robot battle games, a realistic robot commander walking the streets, and happy dancing robots.
Augmented reality has produced some incredible innovations that have revolutionized modern technology. From helping with live surgery to changing the game in marketing and businesses. But without a doubt, the most important thing that augmented reality and ARKit has ever brought us is an AR version of A-ha's iconic "Take On Me" video.
Since its release into the arms of waiting developers, Apple's new ARKit is already making waves in the augmented reality scene. Only a week out and there are already a hefty number of videos appearing on the web showing off various demos with iPhones and iPads.
Whether you love or hate wearing high heels, a pair of stilettos can be incredibly painful. You can feel blisters, searing pain, pressure, and stabbing aches long after you kick off those heels, but a really simple trick could help alleviate some of the issues caused by tight-fitting, wobbly shoes. According to Kat Collings of Who What Wear, taping your third and fourth toes (if counting away from the big toe) together with tape will reduce the amount of pain you feel in the ball of your foot...
Weeks before the music video for Nicki Minaj's Sir Mix-a-Lot-sampled single “Anaconda” dropped, an internet frenzy was sparked thanks to the help of an extremely racy cover image, several promo pictures with her "dancing" with label-mate Drake, and a teaser clip that showed Nicki twerking that hypnotizing booty.
Although it's been several years since Angry Birds first came out, it's still going strong in the App Store, currently third place on the Top Free Apps chart. The new Angry Birds Star Wars is sixth place on the Top Paid Apps chart. What does this show us? Those pesky birds can't be shooed away.
You can take some really awesome photos of water droplets if you've got a fast enough camera (and flash), but water drops aren't just spectacular as photographic subjects—you can also make them a part of the photographic process by using a water drop as a DIY projection microscope and even a macro lens for your iPhone. But as useful as a water drop can be, it's still way cooler when they're in front of the camera (as the subject). Recently, researchers from the National Autonomous University ...
TikTok is a video-platform first, and while visual content is critical to its popularity, what has carried many of these videos to millions upon millions of views isn't only what you see but what you hear.
Snap introduced some fantastic new augmented reality abilities in version 3.4 of Lens Studio, the company's tool that allows anyone to create AR lenses for the Snapchat app. The newest features include improved hand tracking and full-body segmentation.
The longest-running children's television show in the United States, Sesame Street, hasn't survived 50 years without leveraging new technology along the way.
Because it takes two to tango, your dancing Bitmoji World Lens on Snapchat is getting a dance partner.
Researchers at Disney have demonstrated the ability to render virtual characters in augmented reality that are able interact autonomously with its surrounding physical environment.
One of the byproducts of the success of Pokémon Go was the viral images that made the rounds on social media of people putting Pikachus, Charmanders, and their brethren in compromising positions. Snapchat has a similar claim to fame, most recently with the inexplicable popularity of the dancing hotdog.
Can't wait till Apple's ARKit is released? Me neither. Luckily, a fun new app launched today that is close to what the ARKit promises to deliver in a few months.
Frosty the Snowman is a fairy tale they say, but this microscopic snowman is very real and just broke the record for the world's smallest snowman. (Though, it's not Guinness-official yet.)
While Leap Motion and Microsoft are looking to capture natural human motion with cameras, Enflux figured out how to do it with a shirt and pants that feel completely natural.
If you're tired of Google tracking you, but love how Chrome works, CyanogenMod has you covered. Their browser is called Gello, which is based off Chromium, Chrome's open-source counterpart. It's basically a souped-up version of Chrome—without all of the intrusive Google stuff. So if you're uncomfortable with Google displaying personalized ads based on your browsing history, or using your location to bring the "Physical Web" to your phone, you won't have to worry about any of that with Gello.
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.
Silicon Valley-based startup 8th Wall has spent much of the last few years building a reputation for enabling AR experiences that are platform agnostic via web browsers and mobile apps. Now, 8th Wall is promising to give developers the freedom to build and host AR experiences from anywhere via a simple web browser.
If you own a Google Pixel, you'll soon have augmented reality versions of Iron Man, the Incredible Hulk, and Childish Gambino on your camera.
Whether you like to go swimming or jump in a hot shower with your Apple Watch on, the chance is pretty high that you'll get water inside its speaker. If you're a big runner, even sweat can get inside there. While there is no way to prevent water from getting inside your Apple Watch's speaker, there is an easy way to get it out so that your muffled speaker sounds brand new again.
With April coming to a close, there's a fresh group of augmented reality Snapchat lenses you should try out while they're still hot. We've got a prank lens, gamer-oriented ones for Fortnite and Fallout, and ones for the memesters out there.
They say if you don't believe, you don't receive. Therefore, I'll choose to believe that this holiday season, Santa's elves have learned how to code in Unity and leverage ARKit to deliver these jolly AR apps for helping children of all ages virtually decorate their homes.
Nowadays, with the convenience of online shopping, brick-and-mortar retailers and malls have to work harder to draw shoppers to stores. This year, many of them are turning to augmented reality for assistance.
Now that the holiday season has officially kicked off, Office Depot has updated its popular Elf Yourself app with a few new augmented reality options.
So, it's Halloween time, and you feel like playing around with some augmented reality apps? Well, you've come to the right place — if you have an iOS device.
This morning Google announced ARCore, an SDK for Android devices that will allow augmented reality developers to add new functionality to Android 7.0 and up, all without any special hardware other than the camera of a phone.
I don't know about you, but visions of pumpkin pie and cornbread stuffing and big, juicy turkeys are constantly dancing through my head right now. I'm sorry, healthy eating habits, but it's Thanksgiving week, and all I can do is think about food.
Many game developers have finally realized that in order for their games to be successful, they have to support Android. To really win Android users over, they should also accommodate us hardcore gamers who have OTG cables with the ability to hook up controllers to our devices.
This post has been brought to you by the letter S. With the Christmas season fast approaching, it's time to ask one of the most important questions of our lifetime:
The year 2021 is already promising to yield a number of major shifts in the augmented reality landscape, and Snap is signaling that it has every intention of being an aggressive part of that narrative.
This year, over 2.7 billion gamers will spend nearly $160 billion dollars. That number is predicted to increase to over $200 billion in just three years. If ever an industry had growth potential, this is it.
Snapchat is mostly credited as the first AR social network, and, like most social media companies, its revenue model is nested largely within advertising. As such, the company now has a new avenue for branded content.
The iconic, lovable gummy bear originated in Germany, where it goes by the name Gummibär— but that's not what makes it so much fun. The base of gummy bears is made up of gelatin, which gives them the signature elasticity that makes you feel like a kid again. But the fun doesn't have to stop there.
A few days ago, Russian hacker Alexy Borodin found a way to get free in-app purchases on an iPhone or iPad. In-app purchases include things like items and power-ups for iOS games, as well as subscriptions and "premium" memberships for certain apps.
