The competition to secure the top slot in the smartglasses space is now in full swing, with Facebook challenging Snap's Spectacles and Amazon's Echo Frames with its own collaboration with Ray-Ban called Stories.
The battle for augmented reality and social media supremacy starts with the people working behind the scenes, and this week Snap pulled off a telling win that could indicate a shift in the AR space.
While Apple has been rather secretive about its work on AR wearables (despite the abundance of leaks revealing details about their unannounced devices), Facebook has been rather chatty about its plans for smartglasses.
As Apple, Google, Snap, and Facebook wrestle for positioning to lure developers and creators to build augmented reality experiences for their respective tools, Facebook is looking at a learning approach for its Spark AR platform.
Although Facebook has some questionable privacy and security practices, you'll find it still offers you ways to protect the information that's important to you. One of those ways is locking Messenger behind biometric authentication protocols such as Face ID and Touch ID, ensuring that no one else can access your private chats.
Facebook Messenger's user base has grown so much that it has taken over text messaging as the primary contact method for many people. However, sometimes you might want to hide your online status from specific contacts and appear offline to others. There's a neat little trick you should know that can help you achieve this.
Dark mode is simply a way of life these days now that both Android and iOS officially support it. Most major apps now use the system-wide setting on Android and iOS, and many had their own dark themes in-app before Google and Apple got with the program. But the social media giant Facebook took forever to implement a night theme, and some of you still may not be able to access it.
The worldwide health crisis around the coronavirus has gripped the live events industry, particularly in the tech sector, with the cancellations of Mobile World Congress, the Game Developers Conference, Facebook's F8, Google I/O and now South by Southwest.
Sending Christmas cards via snail mail is so passé. Why spend the time and money for a bougie photoshoot, saccharine card design, and postage when you can use augmented reality to instantly dress up photos and videos to send to friends and family instead?
Snapchat parent company Snap credits its popular augmented reality experiences and its flourishing Lens Studio creator community to its user growth throughout the year.
Starbucks is spicing things up ahead of this holiday season with a little augmented reality joy. This week the company launched its first Instagram filter, called Holijoy, delivered like an early Christmas gift and packing four seasonal lenses.
After hosting an augmented reality experience using its Snapchat Landmarker technology at the Statue of Liberty, Snap is now giving creators the opportunity to create their own Lenses with Lady Liberty.
One of the best parts of Pandora is its personalized stations that auto-generate songs within the specific style or genre you've chosen. Not only does this play your favorite tracks with regularity, but it also opens your ears to previously unknown songs or artists — ones you may fall in love with and want to share with others.
Popular chat apps like Messenger allow us to communicate with friends and family across iOS and Android phones alike. However, that interconnectivity doesn't mean both apps are the same. While Facebook has made strides to close gaps between these two platforms, chat heads remain an exclusive feature for Android devices, and they let you keep Messenger threads close by.
After testing the waters with a few pop-up stores along the West Coast earlier this year, North is bringing its smartglasses to more cities across the US and Canada.
Cosmetics augmented reality specialist ModiFace appears to be really benefiting from the brand power of L'Oréal, which acquired the company last year.
After winning the 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup, the USA Women's National Soccer Team is ready to defend its title in the 2019 tournament.
Smartglasses maker Vuzix made a big splash at CES 2018 with the inclusion of Amazon's Alexa voice assistant among the AR superpowers of its consumer-centric Blade smartglasses.
In an effort to raise awareness regarding the impact of emissions on the environment, Snap has partnered with the United Nations Environment Programme to use augmented reality to show how much ocean levels will rise over the next 80 years.
When it comes to web-based augmented reality, 8th Wall has emerged as one of the leading platform providers, and the company just cranked up its capabilities another notch for AR marketers.
Already a dominant force at the box office, Marvel Studios appears intent on establishing itself as the ruler of augmented reality media as well.
While the tech industries giants and eager startups chase the dream of widespread consumer augmented reality, enterprise AR is living the dream today.
As Microsoft continues to bask in the glow of its HoloLens 2 unveiling and begins ramping up the hype to launch, Nreal and Vuzix are carving out their own niches in the AR hardware landscape.
When you want to install a new tool or game on your iPhone, you go straight to the App Store to do so — but it's not the only place you can get apps from. Some developers use back alleys to get their apps to you, while others can trick you into installing them without giving it much thought. This can lead to malicious software running on your iPhone, software you'll want to get rid of asap.
In the past few years, augmented reality software maker 8th Wall has worked to build its platform into a cross-platform augmented reality toolkit for mobile apps, as well as web-based AR experiences.
Many apps, including Facebook, Twitter, and Facebook, do not let you download videos, even if they are living on your own account. Saving these videos usually requires a third-party app or screen recorder, which is inconvenient and can result in loss of quality. However, TikTok, the newish popular short-form video platform, makes it easy to download videos — even if they're not yours.
Despite the hype and potential of immersive computing, the augmented reality industry is showing that it is not invincible, as another AR hardware maker, this time Osterhout Design Group (ODG), is reportedly going out of business.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has cleared a path for Google to move forward with hand-tracking technology that could pose a major threat to Leap Motion.
Mobile augmented reality pioneer Blippar has now completed its fall from hopeful AR startup to the immersive computing history books.
Investors continue to bet on augmented reality, both for short-term returns and long-term plays. This week, Niantic reportedly picked up another round of funding from Samsung and others, based on the success of PokémonGO and the prospects for future revenue. Likewise, investors see value in WaveOptics, whose waveguide displays could make consumer smaller AR smartglasses possible within the next year.
New documents reveal that electric car company Tesla has filed a surprising new patent that has nothing to do with batteries or autonomous driving and everything to do with augmented reality.
One of the headlining features in Samsung's One UI update is a new dark mode that turns stock apps and system menus black. But something you may have missed is what this theme does to the Samsung Internet app and all the websites you visit.
In a world where augmented reality is becoming the hero of the movie marketing, Universal Studios has decided to use the technology to reinvent the traditional movie trailer, a time-tested tactic of film promotion, in support of the forthcoming Robert Zemeckis film, Welcome to Marwen.
French cosmetics giant L'Oréal isn't wasting any time putting its new subsidiary, ModiFace, to work. On Thursday, the company launched a new tool that enables a photo-realistic augmented reality simulation of nail polish shades and textures to be accurately displayed on a user's fingers in real time.
If you're looking into buying shoes from DSW on Black Friday, then you can save an extra 20% — but only if you smile more.
Augmented reality content makers often position the technology as a new storytelling medium. And who loves stories more than children?
It looks like the Harry Potter version of Pokémon GO won't appear in 2018 after all, as the company has decided pushed the game's release to 2019.
After a little more than a year at motion tracking technology maker Leap Motion, Keiichi Matsuda has resigned his position as vice president of design and global creative director, the company announced on Wednesday.
Adding another arrow to its quiver of augmented reality acquisitions, Apple has reportedly acquired Spektral, a computer vision company with technology for real-time compositing (otherwise know as the "green screen" technique in broadcast TV and film).
Augmented reality experiences for consumers, for the most part, are relegated to mobile devices at present, but creation and development of those experiences is still a province of desktop computers.
