Most of the free apps you'll find on the Play Store have ads. These ads are personalized — in other words, they're for products and services Google believes you might be interested in. The way Google knows about your interests is by collecting data from your smartphone, including your location and app usage. While personalized ads have their advantages, the collection of data is unsettling.
We covered how to upload your library to Google Play Music, but now it's time to delve deeper into the platform. In this article, we'll discuss how to discover new music through a myriad of methods, by using your existing library as a foundation.
The Galaxy S8 Oreo Beta has been out for just over a week now. Over that time, we've taken a look at some of the best new features and improvements. One area of smartphone software that never gets much love in updates is the lock screen. Samsung changes that in the Oreo beta, bringing new colorization options that match lock screen info to your wallpaper.
Like gas on an open flame, rumors and whispers have flared up in recent months around hopes of augmented reality smartglasses from Apple. But among all the false leads and unsubstantiated chatter, we finally have a credible report that some sort of Apple AR smartglasses are actually in development.
If DroneBase's new AR platform inspires even half the creativity among its users as Minecraft did with its community, then drone pilots are about to enjoy acres of blocky worlds to explore among the clouds.
There's an annoying bug in Apple's latest operating system for iPhone, iOS 11, that autocorrects the lowercase letter "i" by itself (which usually turns into a capital "I" pronoun) into a capital "A" followed by a strange question mark in a box "[?]" symbol. There is now an official patch for this bug, as well as a workaround fix if you don't want to update yet.
If you need a little inspiration for tonight's Halloween festivities, this augmented reality magazine cover featuring the Dark Knight himself, Batman, may do the trick.
The Pixel 2 has a number of new unique features. One of the most interesting is the Now Playing option to identify songs you hear on a daily basis. Now Playing displays the artist and title of songs playing in the background of your day and shows this information on the lock screen. While this functionality is incredibly useful, the song history is not saved anywhere on your phone.
It's finally that time. Stranger Things 2 dropped today, just days before Halloween. And to get you in the mood, Snapchat has quietly launched a spooky new filter that lets you immerse yourself in the world depicted in the hit Netflix series.
With a pair of new APIs and low-latency media servers, Twilio's Programmable Video platform could soon help ARKit and ARCore app developers build shared AR experiences between multiple users.
Unlike traditional backlit LCD technology, OLED screens don't use any power to display black pixels. Many manufacturers have taken advantage of this by implementing an always-on display, which only lights up a few pixels here and there to show relevant info when your phone is locked. But this leads to extra battery drain, albeit small, and it increases the risk of screen burn-in.
One of the downsides of living in an unprecedented age of connectivity is the near-constant bombardment of information. WhatsApp, the go-to messaging app for people the world over, is just as susceptible to buildup of useless media files, thanks to awesome features that allow us to communicate in multiple ways, such as broadcasting to friends and family. Luckily, the app makes it easy to remove old and unwanted data from your iPhone or Android.
While widely known for its massive collection of free apps and tweaks that let you fully personalize your jailbroken iPhone, Cydia also comes laden with packages that can be purchased to take customization to a whole 'nother level. Similar in function to the iOS App Store, buying an app in Cydia is simple and relatively safe.
Apple Music, Apple's answer to Spotify, has many interesting features packed in to make that $9.99/month price tag as attractive as possible. One of those features is geared towards social listeners — those who want to follow other Apple Music users and who want to be followed back. But here's the thing: how do you know if your account is public or private?
There's no denying the impact ride sharing apps like Uber and Lyft have made on our lives. With fares that undercut traditional yellow cabs, combined with the fact that your ride is just a tap away, these services have become the primary mode of transportation for many folks in urban areas. Thanks to iOS 11, booking an Uber or Lyft has just become a lot more convenient.
Now that iOS 11 is officially rolling out to millions of iPhones, many users are upset with the fact that Apple has removed the 3D Touch multitasking gesture that we enjoyed in older iOS versions. Though not as fluid as this gesture, there is still a hidden way to quickly get into the app switcher without having to double-click the home button.
Apple's iOS 11 release promises many improvements and fresh ideas. One of those new ideas is an image codec called HEIF (similar to HEVC for videos), designed to reduce the space photos take up on your iPhone. But it's so new that it's already causing issues with compatibility.
In its never-ending quest to innovate its flagships, Apple's newer iPhone models with Face ID do away with the iconic Home button present since the first iPhone back in 2007. That means screenshots, force-restarting, switching apps, Apple Pay, and the home screen all work differently on the iPhone X, XR, XS, XS Max, 11, 11 Pro, and 11 Pro Max. One of the more important aspects, Siri, is also slightly different.
Every now and then, an iPhone will freeze up and become unresponsive due to a software glitch. It can be a buggy app that somehow interferes with iOS or a software update that somehow didn't install properly. Whatever the cause, it's safe to say that no iPhone is immune to this problem, not even the new iPhone X.
Gestures are a big deal on an iPhone X, XS, XS Max, XR, 11, 11 Pro, and 11 Pro Max. Without a Home button on Apple's super-premium smartphones, several actions had to be mapped to gestures instead, which impacts other areas of the system such as the Control Center.
In case you didn't catch the big event in Cupertino, Apple just unveiled two of the most cutting-edge phones ever made — the iPhone 8 and the iPhone X. Out of the many glorious specs that were rattled off on stage, one stands out for being just a little confusing: Both models are rated IP67 under the IEC standard 60529.
It was extremely simple in iOS 10 to switch your iPhone's display to warmer colors at night, but iOS 11 buried the "Night Shift" toggle for some reason. So don't beat yourself up if you couldn't find the setting right away.
There are two core components to any Tasker automation: A profile and a task. Profiles are basically a set of conditions that must be met before Tasker will do anything. Tasks, on the other hand, are the actions Tasker will perform when your profile's conditions have been met. Think of them like triggers and actions, respectively. Or a cause and an effect.
With great power comes great responsibility, and when it comes to modding Android, nothing is more powerful than TWRP custom recovery. As easy as it is to replace your phone's entire OS with a custom ROM, when things go awry, you can also be left with no operating system at all.
When you have minor software issues like an app crashing, restarting your iPhone would usually fix it. But Apple doesn't provide an official "Restart" or "Reboot" option (unless you count this bold text hack), so we typically have to power our devices off and on in these scenarios. Thankfully, there's a great Cydia tweak that lets you "respring" your device, which is even faster than restarting.
It couldn't be any easier to remove apps from your iPhone — simply do a long-press on the app's icon, then tap on the delete button once it pops up. However, when it comes to removing unwanted tweaks and apps from a jailbroken iPhone, the process is often a little more involved.
Waymo just received approval on a patent for a push-button console that replaces not only a steering wheel in a car but the brake and gas pedals, too. This reflects Alphabet's driverless arm could remain true to its original mantra of developing cars that pilot themselves without human intervention.
Unlike the iOS App Store, which is a one-stop shop that lets you search for and instantly download apps on your iPhone, jailbreak apps found within Cydia are far more fragmented and not as easy to source. In fact, Cydia only comes stock with a fraction of the apps and tweaks that are available on its official Apple counterpart. That's where Cydia repositories come in.
The world around us keeps getting smarter. Not only do we have advanced AI services like the Google Assistant, but now we've got the Internet of Things connecting physical objects to the digital world. It's amazing when you think about it, but the real sci-fi stuff starts to happen when these two technologies intersect.
3D modeling can be a long drawn out process. If you are a developer or programmer without 3D modeling experience, this process can be daunting, to say the least. This often leaves developers hunting sites like TurboSquid or the Unity Asset Store for free temporary models at the very least, or often times buying final models that don't quite fit their needs.
When somebody is in the middle of rapid firing you some text messages and they become too much for you to bear, you have a few options on your iPhone. You can simply leave the conversation, if it's an iMessage group chat with four or more participants, or you can put the whole message thread on silent, which applies to everyone, no matter if it's iMessage, SMS, MMS, or a group conversation.
As a side scrolling game, performing various jumps in Super Mario Run on your iPhone or Android is as vital as eggs in a breakfast buffet.
James Ashley, Atlanta-based Microsoft MVP and author of Beginning Kinect Programming with Microsoft Kinect, has been running monthly challenges since around the release of the HoloLens Developers Kits. Each month, those of us who follow what happens in the community can look forward to seeing what creative ideas come out of these challenges. It has been a treat, to say the least, and who knows ... maybe one of us here at Next Reality even won one of these before his time here.
If you've ever wanted to see a selfie stick in centuries old works of art, now's your chance. The Art Gallery of Ontario is launching an exhibit called "ReBlink." The exhibit uses augmented reality to give modern updates to their paintings which visitors can see through their smartphones or tablets.
Casey Hudson, the one-time project director for games like Star Wars: The Knights of the Old Republic and the original Mass Effect trilogy, has announced his return to his former home, Bioware as the General Manager. Of course, that also means he is leaving his role at Microsoft Studios as Creative Director, where he was reportedly working on both Xbox One and HoloLens projects.
Lazy makeup enthusiasts, this new service is what you've been waiting for! Makeup giant Estee Lauder's latest project incorporates augmented reality to help customers test out their lipsticks without even getting out of bed. The company collaborated with Modiface — a group that creates AR services for the beauty industry — to produce a new Facebook Messenger chatbot that uses customers' cameras to let them virtually try on the brand's Pure Color Lipsticks.
Twitter's Moments feature stitches together multiple tweets into a slideshow-esque story. This is particularly cool for you to keep up with major things that are happening in the world without having to follow and search for a ton of people to figure out the scoop.
Pinning a tweet to your profile is a fantastic way to get people to view and engage with your most important content on Twitter. In fact, it could very well be the best way to improve your overall Twitter strategy.
Mobile wallet Curve just released a new feature that lets you correct past mistakes. Sounds incredible, right? Unfortunately, the mistakes you can erase aren't things like forgetting to do an assignment in school, screwing up a job interview, or, well, your ex. However, you can switch the card you want to use to pay even after you've paid with Curve, and that's still pretty cool.
Winter is here, which means we have a lot of questions about the coming season of Game of Thrones. It's hard finding someone who cares enough to listen to you rant about why Jon Snow is the rightful ruler of Westeros. It's also hard to figure out who exactly everyone is and is related to since there are over 150 major characters on the show. We're all getting a little antsy waiting for the new season, so to hold us over a new bot has rolled out 'G0TB0t' on Facebook Messenger. Specifically, it...