Driverless transportation is definitely coming closer to the mainstream, but most companies developing the technology have said it will be another couple of years before we see autonomous vehicles being used as an alternative for typical transportation.
Millions of dollars continue to pour into the Chinese driverless market. Now, according to research firm CB Insights, $929 million have been invested in the first quarter of this year.
Yes, you read that headline correctly. Spotify now has 140 million monthly active users, which is up from the 126 million users on the streaming service last year. (If you're wondering, Mexico's population is currently 127 million.)
With the hype surrounding the iPhone 8, Apple's announcement that it's developing driverless software, and the new iOS 11 beta out, it seems like the tech giant is constantly in the news. Today, Apple's continuing this streak with updates for its iWork app suite on iOS and macOS.
This week, augmented reality spawns in the world of online role-playing games with a soft launch down under from an indie game developer. Meanwhile, in Asia, another startup wins a coveted award for its AR headset. Finally, an established player in the mobile AR touches up its feature set with an app update.
You were the chosen one, Snapchat! The new download numbers for the social media app show just how hard it will be to bring them back to the light after the rise of the Instagram empire.
A new dating advice site, WittyThumbs, launched today that lets users offer advice to others as well as seek it; the site combines that collaboration with advice from designated dating experts.
After Ford's CEO Mark Fields' three-year tenure failed to keep up with the driverless industry and resulted in a 40% drop in shares since Field's took over in 2014, Ford is going in a new direction. Jim Hackett, who was previously chairman of Ford's self-driving division, has succeeded Fields as the company's new CEO.
Google announced several new devices (as well as updates to existing devices) that will take advantage of the company's augmented and virtual reality platforms.
It has been a long road for Uber throughout the duration of its lawsuit with Waymo, especially with a judge who seemed significantly against Uber with almost every argument made. Monday's ruling was, while not necessarily a win for Uber, less punishing than many would have thought.
Engineer Anthony Levandowski has officially been kicked off Uber's driverless program by a judge as the company's legal war with Waymo continues.
The east coast is becoming a hotbed for driverless. Sure, the west coast has all of its fancy tech companies testing self-driving cars, but we've got the goods too. Uber has brought the technology to Pennsylvania and will soon do the same in Toronto. (Stratford, Ontario, has plans to test out driverless too!) And today we got some great news: Governor Andrew Cuomo just approved of driverless testing in New York.
Verizon could be getting in on the autonomous vehicle party, judging by its recent investment in driverless software company Renovo Motors.
Traveling is a rich and rewarding experience. When you don't speak the language, however, your trip can present some tricky obstacles. Google knows this, which is why they will now automatically translate user reviews in Google Maps and Google searches.
Every party has a pooper, and that's why you're reading this article. We don't mean to be a downer on such a fun day as 4/20, but it's important to make sure you know about the source of your pot, especially if you're one of the 2,299,016 people who use medical marijuana in the US.
The Broadway musical War Paint is teaming with augmented reality cosmetics app YouCam Makeup to promote the show on iOS and Android devices. The musical, which centers on the famous rivalry between Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubinstein, two cosmetics industry pioneers, has been the talk of Broadway since its premiere in March 2017.
Uber has been in the hot seat for awhile now, for many reasons, especially for being sued by Waymo over stolen LiDAR designs. But now, perhaps the attention will be taken off both Uber and Waymo as a new contender enters the LiDAR arena; A small, independent company called Luminar has finally let the world in on what it has been cooking up.
Google's former driverless car boss Chris Urmson raised considerable funds to get his new startup company Aurora Innovation up and running. Axios initially reported that Urmson raised over $3 million to fund his brainchild in the wake of his Alphabet exit, according to an SEC filing.
It may seem strange to find the director of engineering at a question-and-answer site all of a sudden pick up and lead a new driverless startup, but to Kah Seng Tay, both engineering tasks require building the right infrastructure to handle large amounts of AI data.
Mercedes-Benz's parent company, Daimler, announced their intention today to put self-driving taxis on the road in three years or less in a partnership with Bosch.
As a society, we seem to be moving backwards toward communicating by pictures only. Emojis and GIFs are today's cave paintings, and I, for one, am totally okay with that. To make this transition even more amazing, photo-editing app Facetune created a tool that lets us change our very own faces into moving emojis.
Jeep has now jumped on the AR-retail trend with their introduction of the Jeep Compass Visualizer. Customers can now view and customize a Jeep Compass to their liking, all without a real Jeep even present.
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.
A bacterium which triggers respiratory disease has been detected in the water systems of two Pennsylvania nursing facilities.
Customer service just got a lot more interesting. Construction equipment manufacturer Caterpillar just announced official availability of what they're calling the CAT LIVESHARE solution to customer support, which builds augmented reality capabilities into the platform.
In a press event this past week at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, California, Unity Labs, the experimental and forward thinking arm of Unity, announced an upcoming toolset for developers in the augmented, mixed, and virtual reality space called the XR Foundation Toolkit (XRFT).
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.
AR.js is a new JavaScript solution that offers highly efficient augmented reality features to mobile developers. With HoloJS released back in December, there is a potential that the free AR.js, developed by Jerome Etienne, one of Next Reality's 50 people to watch in augmented and mixed reality, could work with the Microsoft HoloLens as well.
If you've played the game Portal by Valve before, you've most likely popped one portal onto the ceiling and another directly below it on the floor, dropped your Companion Cube in, and then watched it fall forever. Well, now it has been done in real life, in an actual hallway, not in a rendered world.
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.
You might notice that there's been a few changes around here. All of us here at WonderHowTo have been working hard to create fun new spaces and topic areas to dig our heels into. We've created a few brand new websites, spiffied up our design, and today we're launching the WonderHowTo network.
Merge VR, a company mostly known for its virtual reality experiences, is moving into and creating an augmented reality experience that combines an iPhone or Android smartphone, a set of goggles to put your phone in, and a box about the size of a Rubik's Cube which looks more akin to the Lament Configuration seen in the Hellraiser film series. When used in concert with the smartphone and goggles, the toy cube, called Holo Cube, becomes one of many AR experiences.
In recent weeks, thousands of Nexus 6P users have reported that their devices are shutting down with 30% or more battery life remaining. The phones won't start back up until they're plugged into a charger, so it's as if the battery completely dies even though there is plenty of juice left.
Here at NextReality, we talk a lot about the many different ways of controlling holograms in the HoloLens and other augmented and mixed reality devices; New and creative ways are coming more and more every day. Most recently is something called the HoloSuit. In the 25-second clip below, you can see a woman moving the arm of a jacket which in turn moves a 3D model of Darth Vader on the screen. It's a simple idea with big potential.
This week, Dr. Sung-Hoon Hong, Vice President of Samsung Electronics, announced at the Virtual Reality Summit in San Diego that not only does Samsung have a new virtual reality headset coming, but that Samsung intends to enter the field of augmented reality, too. In fact, Hong talked very little about virtual reality and instead spoke at length about Samsung's move into augmented reality.
When developing for the HoloLens, keeping a constant 60 fps (frames per second) while making things look beautiful is a challenge. Balancing the processing power to display complex models and keeping the frame rate where it needs is just a straight up painful process, but a solution seems to be on the horizon.
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:
Facebook released a new app in November 2016 that aimed to compete directly with Snapchat, but it was only officially available in Brazil—and still is. The app, called "Flash," is so much like Snapchat that it's not even the slightest bit of a stretch to call it a clone.
Many new developers are diving right into the Microsoft HoloLens, but augmented and mixed reality are fairly big subjects in terms of learning. There's a lot to cover and, unfortunately, very few places for someone brand new to Windows Holographic to begin lessons.
Google and Microsoft have both established platforms and hardware for emerging digital realities, but Apple, true to form, hasn't had much to say on the subject. They've shown interest in augmented reality, and we've seen patent filings that indicate research and development, but a recent rumor points to that research ending up in your car instead of a rose gold headset.
