Amid the coronavirus chaos, two companies at the forefront of augmented reality technology took starkly different approaches to their upcoming developers conferences, as Facebook has canceled its annual F8 conference and Magic Leap plans to invite a limited number of attendees to its Florida headquarters for LEAP Developer Days.
As much funding as Magic Leap has secured, another round of funding will still catch headlines. However, the latest funding solidifies the company's strategy for succeeding in the consumer segment of AR.
Despite years of user complaints, OEMs are still preinstalling third-party apps on brand new devices. Even in 2019, you'll still find plenty of phones with Facebook preinstalled. What's worse, it's installed as a system app, so it can't normally be uninstalled without root access. However, there are a few workarounds.
Facebook will let you do pretty much anything via a text message, but unless you still have a flip phone, it's more of a novelty than actually useful.
With the arrival of Facebook Ray-Ban Stories smartglasses commanding the recent spotlight, the tech world acted like it forgot about Facebook's first foray in consumer hardware — the Portal line of video calling devices.
The initiative known as Project Aria has been the focus of curiosity around Facebook's augmented reality plans ever since Mark Zuckerberg revealed the device around this time last year.
Facebook Messenger Lite is an official, de-bloated version of Facebook Messenger for Android. It's snappier and it's a lot more battery-friendly, but this is because there are fewer features complicating everything. One feature they didn't leave out, however, is the ability to send audio messages.
While Snapchat augmented reality often embraces pop stars like Drake and Ariana Grande, a couple of bands from the louder side of the music industry have found a home with Facebook.
Facebook has a new dark mode for Messenger, and it's a true OLED black theme. It's was hidden away in earlier versions and you needed to either run a root hack or send a moon emoji to activate it — but now, you can enable dark mode by toggling a simple switch in Facebook Messenger's settings.
With the 2018 FIFA World Cup underway in Russia, soccer (aka "football") fans worldwide can show support for their favorite teams and players in augmented reality via Snapchat and Facebook.
Facebook Messenger has another secret game for you to play in both the Android and iOS versions of its app. This time it's a soccer-themed game to tie in with the Copa America and Euro 2016 tournaments currently underway.
Facebook just added another feature to Messenger as part of its quest to have their service become an all-encompassing communications app. This feature lets you make free group calls using Messenger's VoIP service, and you can chat with up to 50 people at once.
Live streaming has emerged as a major part of the way people share information. With celebrities and news/media personalities utilizing mobile live streaming effectively to reach thousands, the appeal has bolstered the fortunes of Twitter's Periscope and Facebook's Live. Now, Google is ready to join the fray, and it's backed by its enormous YouTube property. According to initial reports, Google is at work on a brand new application for YouTube simply called "Connect," which will take its curr...
Facebook is really good at two things: connecting people all over the world and force-feeding changes to its users (ahem...Facebook Messenger).
Back in the days of iOS 6, iPhone users were able to send a quick tweet from their notification center, but that has long since been removed. This convenient feature was missed enough on iOS 7 for devs to create a jailbreak tweak in its absence. Thankfully, due to the new widget capabilities of iOS 8, we can have Twitter back in the Notification Center along with Facebook.
Facebook may connect millions of its users to each other with its messenger service, but it can also make it very difficult to avoid those annoying "friends."
Facebook wants to take your browsing history and sell it to advertisers. Video: .
Many of us were left scratching our heads when the iOS 7 update removed the Twitter and Facebook options from the Notification Center. Allowing you to quickly tweet and post Facebook updates, these were features used, and missed, by many—including me.
I think most people can agree that advertisements are just annoying. There is only one day out of the entire year when commercials and advertisements are actually welcomed, and that's the Super Bowl. But, since it can't be the Super Bowl every day (if only), those ads that float around on your Microsoft Surface's screen are just obnoxious. Luckily, there is a way to get rid of them, on Facebook at least. Facebook is one of the most visited sites in the world, so having the ability to hide ads...
We all know the real reason why Facebook was created. No matter what Mark Zuckerberg says, or how many commercials about chairs the company makes, it all comes down to one thing—boobies.
It only takes a few commands to manipulate a MacBook's secure HTTPS traffic and pluck login passwords out of the encrypted data. Let's take Facebook and Gmail hacking to the next level by intercepting Safari and Google Chrome web traffic in real time.
Sometimes, we get stuck on a song so good we want the world to know about it. Sure, you could take the time to save the album art to your iPhone, then upload it to your Instagram or Facebook story, but why bother doing that when you can simply share the song to your story right from Apple Music?
Whether it's an ex you can't stand, that annoyingly political friend of a friend, or good old fashioned trolls, the block feature on Facebook can be a great way to de-stress your feed. It will keep people from contacting you, and it will also prevent them from viewing your profile altogether. It's not just a tool for the full desktop website — in fact, the blocked list is easy to manage right from your phone.
Boomerangs are a staple camera feature for Instagram and its users. The idea is to take up to 20 frames of video, which Instagram then processes into a looping movie that plays forward and backward. Since Facebook owns Instagram, it was only a matter of time before the feature hit its namesake apps, so it's not surprising that Messenger now supports the popular camera technique.
On Thursday, Snapchat opened up its walled garden of World Lenses to the masses of creators with the launch of Lens Studio.
While it's currently impossible to go back in time, there is something wonderful about being able to undo the stupid stuff that you just did. While this is only really possible in the digital world, it does save you from real-life repercussions. If you've ever sent an email to the wrong person or sent some not-so-genius text messages, you know exactly what I'm talking about.
Hangouts and WhatsApp might be the preferred messaging apps for Android, but it's only a matter of time before Facebook Messenger surpasses them.
Facebook today has unleashed a new way to creep...er...keep in touch with "friends" using the official Facebook apps on Android and iOS.
You don't have to be Drake to realize that some friends are better than others. There are friends you know are only there for the party, and friends who actually listen when you whine about your life. There are friends you go out with for a beer, and friends you call when you're drunk and need a lift at 4am.
Facebook had a pretty big week in terms of augmented reality, with much of its news coming from the Oculus 6 keynote presentation. But Mark Zuckerberg's social media company found other areas of impact outside of Oculus 6 as well.
In Tidal, you could always share a link to your favorite playlist, song, artist, album, or video via a text message, email, or social media post. But if you wanted to share to Instagram Stories or Facebook Stories, you were out of luck. That all changes with Tidal's new sharing features on Android and iOS.
Dark mode support has steadily made its way to mainstream acceptance, with big-name apps like YouTube, Reddit, and Twitter adopting the feature to satisfy user demands. In this regard, Facebook is lagging, yet to offer the sought-after feature for easier viewing in low-light conditions. If your iPhone is jailbroken, however, you don't have to suffer like everyone else.
If the importance of augmented reality and VR hardware to Facebook's future wasn't already clear enough, a shake-up in the executive ranks at the company has made it as clear as smartglasses lenses.
It's about that time again: Facebook has announced the dates for its annual Facebook Connect (formerly known as Oculus Connect until last year).
I get along with most of my friends just like anyone else. We chat on the phone, go out drinking, and play video games—and we choose who to hang out with and when. That same sort of freedom is hard to find on Facebook.
In the Facebook app for Android and iOS, the shortcut bar has a few necessary tabs to go home and view notifications and settings. But other tabs can make the interface feel cluttered if you don't use them often enough — or at all. Thankfully, there's a quick trick to get rid of them for a cleaner navigation bar.
On Monday, the social media giant Facebook suffered a massive outage that, as of this writing, is still in effect.
Just hours after an early leak via Twitter, Facebook and Ray-Ban have officially released their new wearable collaboration.
The last few weeks were fairly busy in the realm of augmented reality and remote meetings developments. Most of that activity was generated by some mammoth announcements from Snap and its Spectacles AR smartglasses, and Google, with its Project Starline experimental holographic video conferencing system.
Facebook Reality Labs just experienced its first major executive exit since the pandemic began. Hugo Barra has announced that he's stepping down from his position as vice president of VR at Facebook.
