News: HoloPlayer One Achieves Holograms Sans Glasses Within Reasonable Price Range
A Brooklyn-based startup has launched a glasses-free holographic display for less than the cost of an iPhone 8 Plus.
Exhilarating Frontier Search Results
Market Reality: Businesses Invest in the Expansion of AR Services & Content Creation
As augmented reality gains popularity, the demand for delivering related services and generating content increases. This is demonstrated by a pair of investments from the past week, one in the expansion of a technology lab and another in the form of seed funding for a content studio.
News: Jaguar Land Rover Leans Towards Driverless Fleets in $25 Million Deal with Lyft
The $25 million development alliance Jaguar Land Rover's mobility unit InMotion has formed with US-based ride-share firm Lyft reflects how the British luxury carmaker is leaning towards a fleet service business model for its driverless offerings.
News: How to Get Unlimited YouTube & Google Play Movies on T-Mobile
Google dropped its opposition to T-Mobile's Binge On service due to some favorable policy changes at the magenta carrier. From now on, YouTube and Google Play Movies will happily work with the feature. Binge On rolled out late last year, allowing many customers to receive unlimited video streaming at 480p. That's not a great offer if you care about video quality, but it's nice if you want to save money.
Minecraft 1.7: What's New (Biomes & Fishing)
So, here we are with the second part to whats going to happen to Minecraft in 1.7 (you can see the first part here). Let's start off with the new biomes.
How To: Opt Out of Facebook's Creepy New Ad-Targeting Partnership with Datalogix
As if you needed another reason to lock down your Facebook profile, the company's sketchy new partnership with data mining firm Datalogix is geared towards giving advertisers more information on what you're doing—even when you're not online. It's just not enough that they can target ads based on your preferences, now they want to know how those ads are influencing your buying habits in the real world.
News: Act Fast — These Games Are Free for a Limited Time to Help with Coronavirus
Staying inside during the coronavirus pandemic isn't easy for most of us. As important as it is to keep away from others, it can be challenging to keep to ourselves day after day. That's why mobile game developers are stepping in to help; many are making their games free for a limited time, to provide some much-needed fun during scary times.
News: Magic Leap, Intel Bring Augmented Reality Cinema to SXSW
In the late nineteenth century, the advent of the motion picture wowed audiences with a new storytelling medium. Nearly a century and a half later, augmented reality is establishing a new frontier in film.
Market Reality: Apple, Snap, & Google Execs Talk AR, Form Takes AR to the Pool, & Octi Pivots to AR Social Networking
Some of the leading big tech companies are still working in the lab on actual products, but at least some of their leadership did have some thoughts to share on the future direction of the technology this week.
News: Qualcomm & Accenture Upgrade Event Planning with AR App for Nreal Light & Mobile
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.
News: Unity Previews Immersive Art Experiences for Mobile AR, Magic Leap One, & HoloLens at Upcoming Sundance Festival
The Unity 3D engine is not only responsible for facilitating the creation of 60% of AR and VR content but it also plays a significant role in producing the immersive stories that increasingly push the boundaries of cinema.
News: Blippar's Mobile AR Business Collapses After Funding Falls Through
Mobile augmented reality pioneer Blippar has now completed its fall from hopeful AR startup to the immersive computing history books.
News: Snap's Vice President of Content Is Ghost, as App Continues to Shed Users
In a move sure to stir up even more speculation about the future of Snap Inc., the company's vice president of content, Nick Bell, is leaving the company after five years.
News: Moschino & H&M Harness the Power of Magic Leap One to Intro Augmented Reality to the Fashion World
Magic Leap has already entered the realm of entertainment and enterprise, but on now it has blazed its way into a new augmented reality frontier: fashion.
How To: Use Gmail's New Confidential Mode to Send Private, Self-Destructing Emails from Your Phone
Back in July, Google rolled out a new design for the web version of Gmail. The rollout included new features alongside the visual changes, one of which being Confidential Mode. This new privacy-centric feature has now finally arrived on the mobile app version of the service, and here's what you need to know.
News: Hand Tracking for Augmented Reality Apps Comes to Smartphones via uSens
This time last year, computer vision company uSens introduced a stereo camera module capable of hand tracking. Now, uSens can achieve the same thing with just a smartphone's camera.
News: Epson's Moverio Smartglasses Line Gets Major Upgrades with New SDK and Web-Based Publishing
Electronics maker Epson is courting developers to its Moverio smartglasses with an updated software development kit (SDK) and integration with a web-based tool for publishing augmented reality experiences.
News: Magic Leap Adds Master of 'The Matrix' Bullet Time Effect to Secretive Product Team
After announcing another massive round of funding to the tune of $502 million, Magic Leap is adding another powerful weapon to its creative arsenal: John Gaeta, the man who helped develop the iconic Bullet Time effect for The Matrix series of films.
News: Arcona Could Cover the World with AR Objects
A Russian augmented reality startup wants the next frontier in real estate to be augmented reality estate.
News: Banks Arrive Late to Instant Money Transfer Scene, Just After iOS 11
After 6 years of development, the big banks seem to be ready to combat Venmo on the money sending frontier, but now it might be too late.
News: The Scaling Ratios Every HoloLens Dev Should Know for Clean Text in Mixed Reality
Designing for mixed reality, especially for the HoloLens, can present unique challenges. Dong Yoon Park, a Principal UX Designer at Microsoft with a passion for typography, recently gave a talk to the Windows Holographic Users Group Redmond (WinHUGR) about the pitfalls he ran into trying to convert what started out as a 2D iOS app 5 years ago to the newer 3D Holographic frontier with Unity.
News: It's Time to Ditch Your Yahoo Account
If the recent "state sponsored" Yahoo hack wasn't enough motivation for users to stop using their services, the latest news about Yahoo should be. Joseph Menn, a reporter at Reuters, just revealed that Yahoo created a custom email wiretap service for the US government.
Weird Ingredient Wednesday: Tahini—More Than Just a Dip
Tahini: it sounds like the name of a high-end fashion designer... or perhaps a variation on a two-piece swimsuit. But this "weird ingredient" is actually a delicious and nutritious paste made from toasted sesame seeds and oil.
News: The Smokeless Grill That Makes Indoor Grilling Fun
Indoor electric grills are nothing new; George Foreman grills have been around for over 20 years now, providing healthy, smokeless grilling options for indoor use. Yet as nifty and fun as George Foreman grills are, indoor grills have never been considered a hot item for passionate and avid home cooks.
Market Reality: Apple's Acquisition of Leap Motion Fails, While Snapchat & Magic Leap Make AR Fashionable
This week, inside sources divulged details of how Apple nearly acquired Leap Motion, twice. Otherwise, companies offering or working on augmented reality technology had more successes than failures to talk about.
How To: The 4 Best Firefox Mobile Extensions for Privacy & Security
One unique feature of Firefox Mobile is extensions. Extensions allow users to add in features that didn't originally come with the browser. These add-ons provide an array of features, including improvement to privacy and security.
News: How Stable Is the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 Oreo Update?
So, you want to install the Oreo beta on your Galaxy Note 8 but you're not sure if it's stable enough. It is a beta, of course, so waiting until others have tried it out sounds safer. Well, over the past five days, I've used the T-Mobile version as my daily driver and there are a plethora of new features, as well as a few glitches. Let's take a look at the bugs, performance, and battery life.
Market Reality: In the Race for Consumer Smartglasses, the Future Is Coming into Focus
The next frontier for AR hardware is the consumer headset, and tech companies of varying size and tenure are working hard to strike the right mix between comfort, cool factor, and cost. How these companies handle the hype and flow of information vary wildly.
News: Mirra Wants to Be the Squarespace of AR & VR Content Creation, Releases AR Viewer App for iOS
There was a time when building a website required coding knowledge. Eventually, software came along that made the process easier, and then services like Squarespace made it dead simple for even a technical novice to design a website.
News: Defective Sugar-Loving White Blood Cells Could Be Why Cardiac Patients Get More Viruses, Like Shingles
People who have heart disease get shingles more often than others, and the reason has eluded scientists since they first discovered the link. A new study has found a connection, and it lies in a defective white cell with a sweet tooth.
News: Audi Set to Launch Level 3 Model — But You Have to Hack It for Self-Drive
The next-generation Audi A8 to launch in July is expected to be the world's first Level 3-capable production car to go on sale in retail channels.
News: How Humanity's Choices in Brazil Brought Together Bats & Pigs in a Melting Pot of Diseases
Ecosystem changes caused by agricultural choices in Brazil are creating a dangerous microbe mix in exploding populations of vampire bats and feral pigs.
News: A Wish List of Windows Mixed Reality Features That Could Change Everything for the HoloLens
"Necessity, not novelty," is a phrase I use often when it comes to HoloLens development. It would be fair to call it my mantra, or mission statement, as I prototype and explore software creation on this new frontier of mixed reality.
News: Augmented Reality Surprised Sundance Film Festival with a Journey into the Human Brain
The largest and arguably most widely known event of its type, especially in the US, the Sundance Film Festival is an annual celebration of independent film—ones made outside the Hollywood system. This year, a new type of experience appeared at the Sundance Film Festival in an installation called "The Journey to the Center of the Natural Machine." This mixed reality presentation offered the user the newest type of storytelling in a long and important line—continuation of the species kind of im...
ARCore 101: How to Create a Mobile AR Application in Unity, Part 1 (Setting Up the Software)
If you've contemplated what's possible with augmented reality on mobile devices, and your interest has been piqued enough to start building your own Android-based AR app, then this is a great place to to acquire the basic beginner skills to complete it. Once we get everything installed, we'll create a simple project that allows us to detect surfaces and place custom objects on those surfaces.
Hack Like a Pro: How to Compile a New Hacking Tool in Kali
Welcome back, my newbie hackers! Recently, I "upgraded" to Kali as my hacking platform, despite my preference for BackTrack. I did this reluctantly, primarily because new readers here could no longer download BackTrack from their site. I want to point out here that we all must keep in mind that with any software—or for that matter, any product—that is newer is not necessarily better.
News: Free Apps & Services to Take Advantage of During the COVID-19 Lockdown
While the airline, casino, cruise, and hotel industries are asking for government bailouts during the COVID-19 pandemic, companies around the US are giving away its apps and services for a limited time. So while you're stuck at home, keep your mind off of coronavirus with free movies, TV, music apps, concerts, internet, fitness sessions, classes, and more.
News: This Is Why All Augmented Reality Startups Suck
People fundamentally distrust magicians. And they should. The illusions they proffer are just that, illusions meant to astound rather than tangible interactions and results that have weight and meaning in our real world. Our lizard brains know this, and, no matter what the outstanding feat of "magic" presented, we nevertheless hold fast to our survival-based grip on the truth: we just saw simply "can't be real."
How To: Hot Cyber Monday Deals on Apps, Games, TVs, & Other Tech
If you missed out on Black Friday this year, you've got a second chance at saving some big bucks on apps, mobile devices, HDTVs, and other tech. See below for all of the hot Cyber Monday deals from Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and other online retailers. This list will be continuously updated throughout the day, so bookmark it to stay up to date on all the of Cyber Monday discounts.
News: What the Laws on Jailbreaking, Rooting, & Unlocking Mean for You & Why the White House Is on Our Side (Updated)
UPDATE (February 26, 2014) Yesterday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 1123 with a 295-114 vote decision. The ruling repeals the 2012 Library of Congress (LOC) decision that limited the ability to legally "unlock" your smartphone (see below).