This week, we're beginning to see the wide ranging impacts of some of the early iterations of augmented reality hardware and software.
You might be proficient at sending your family and friends money using Apple Pay Cash on your iPhone, but what about when you need some digital currency in your wallet to buy in-app purchases or to get back the money you spent on someone's lunch? Requesting some Apple Pay Cash can be done a few different ways, none of which are hard.
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.
Snapchat is mostly credited as the first AR social network, and, like most social media companies, its revenue model is nested largely within advertising. As such, the company now has a new avenue for branded content.
For as long as 14,000 years, the First Nations people of the Heitsuk Nation have made their home along the Central Coast of the Canadian province of British Columbia. Among the territory's inlets, islands, rivers, and valleys lie a clay deposit on the north side of Kisameet Bay, near King Island. For as long as most can remember, the tribe has used the clay as medicine. Now science says microbes that live in that clay may have important antibacterial properties.
For a company more associated with debugging computer programs, Google's parent company, Alphabet, is making a name for itself by taking on the real thing — mosquitoes.
Facing claims of misappropriation of trade secrets and confidential information by Meta Company, DreamWorld, led by Meta's former employee, Zhangyi "Kevin" Zhong, has fired back with a motion to dismiss the lawsuit.
Sex makes the world go 'round, and when it does, so does gonorrhea. Finally some good news on the growing menace of drug-resistant gonorrhea — a large, long-term study shows a vaccine may work in reducing the incidence of an increasingly dangerous infection.
Citrus greening disease — caused by a bacteria spread by psyllid insects — is threatening to wipe out Florida's citrus crop. Researchers have identified a small protein found in a second bacteria living in the insects that helps bacteria causing citrus greening disease survive and spread. They believe the discovery could result in a spray that could potentially help save the trees from the bacterial invasion.
Water makes up about 60% of your body weight. Whether you like it plain, flavored, bubbly, or in beverages or food, we all need water daily to avoid dehydration and stay healthy. For communities in need of clean drinking water, new research using bacteria may offer a simplified, lower-cost method for boosting potable water supplies.
The hunt for the mixed reality use-case that wins over consumers' hearts and creates a critical mass is a problem every developer would love to solve. Not only would they find themselves rich and famous seemingly overnight, but they would also end up making one of the various possible hardware solutions a viable place for other developers to put their time and energy.
Devastating and deadly, land mines are a persistent threat in many areas of the world. Funding to clear regions of land mines has been decreasing, but new research may offer a less dangerous method of locating hidden, underground explosives by using glowing bacteria.
Rumors that Apple is honing its automated car technology have skyrocketed. Thanks, now, in no small part to some enterprising members of the media who leaked the names of Apple's self-driving car team to the public.
It's about time people acknowledged that judging drug users would do nothing productive to help them. In the US this week, two new programs are launching that should help addicts be a little safer: Walgreens Healthcare Clinic will begin offering to test for HIV and hepatitis C next week, and Las Vegas is set to introduce clean syringe vending machines to stop infections from dirty needles.
There could be a fresh outbreak of the Zika virus in the Americas as the weather heats up and the mosquito population blooms.
Bitcoin, the decentralized cryptocurrency notorious for its status as the currency of the dark web, seems to be shedding its shady past and is now enjoying soaring highs not seen since 2014. The highly volatile online commodity reached parity with an ounce of gold back in March amid speculation of a pending ETF approval from the Federal Trade Commission. Since then, Bitcoin has doubled in value and analysts predict a bitcoin could reach $100,000 in value in 10 years.
When you do an internet search, you'll see ads that are relevant to your query mixed in with the rest of your results. Nothing surprising there—it's how the internet is funded. But then, when you click one of the search results, you'll also see ads that are related to your initial search. Now that's a bit creepy, because it demonstrates that one webpage knows what you typed into a different webpage.
Passwords are everywhere. We use them to unlock phones, computers, websites, encrypted disks, encrypted files... the list just goes on and on. Savvy users will already have a password manager of some sort that can generate a very strong password on a per site basis. However, these password managers also require a password. Not only that, it has to be something memorable.
The fact that this guide even exists is a downright shame, but that's neither here nor there. The truth of the matter is the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus don't have 3.5 mm headphone jacks, and since they use the Lightning connector to output audio, it's hard to charge your phone while your headphones are plugged in.
Welcome back, my novice hackers! More and more, the world is turning to and adopting the smartphone platform as the digital device of choice. People are not only using smartphones for voice communication, but also web services, email, SMS, chatting, social networking, photography, payment services, and so on.
Welcome back, my nascent hackers! Although my favorite TV show, Mr. Robot, had completed its first season already, I have not completed demonstrating the hacks that Elliot used in the show. (By the way, I can't wait for season 2!)
In recent weeks, major bank websites around the world have experienced outages after being have been hit with Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. Although few, if any, of these banks have been totally knocked offline, these DoS attacks have dramatically slowed the response time of their websites to legitimate customers. The most recent victim was the Royal Bank of Scotland. Due to this attack, RBS customers were unable to access their accounts for about an hour last week.
There is a huge myth that most Americans believe, and it might be the marketing triumph of the 20th century. We pay an absurd markup (Zero Hedge says as much as 280,000% for "designer" water) on something we can get for free because most of us believe that bottled water is healthier than tap water. But is it? Here are 5 reasons why tap water is probably better than that bottled stuff you drink. 1. It's Not Cleaner (& Might Be Dirtier) Than Your Tap Water
One of the latest home-improvement gadgets out there today, smart lighting, has become more popular as prices come down. That being said, its still quite a penny to shell out. In this article, I'll go through a few of the top products out there today, including the Philips Hue, Belkin WeMo, and Lifx.
When it comes to theming your Android device, it's the little touches that count the most. That's why developer SArnab created the Android Theme Engine, an Xposed Module to theme those hard-to-reach corners of the Android System that often go untouched with other themes.
Fish is delicious, and as the Harvard School of Public Health points out, incredibly good for you. There are many studies that show regularly consuming a couple of servings of fish per week can help prevent heart disease and may well reduce your chances of stroke, depression, and getting Alzheimer's. After all, there's a reason why fish is called "brain food."
If you've never played Cards Against Humanity, it's time to get initiated. Originally funded through Kickstarter, the free to download card game is basically an obscene version of Apples to Apples.
Welcome back, my greenhorn hackers! After the disaster that was Windows Vista and the limited and reluctant adoption of Windows 8 and 8.1, Windows 7 has become the de facto standard operating system on the desktop/client.
Welcome back, my nascent hackers! Earlier, I wrote a guide on finding operating system and application vulnerabilities in Microsoft's own security bulletins/vulnerability database. In this tutorial, I will demonstrate another invaluable resource for finding vulnerabilities and exploits by using the SecurityFocus database.
The makers of arguably the two most important mobile AR apps, Niantic and Snap, both had good news this week, with the former preparing to replicate its success with Pokémon GO for another franchise and the latter notching another popular augmented reality Lens for Snapchat.
The recent announcement that Facebook will begin inserting advertisements into its VR experience on its Oculus Quest headset has set the VR and augmented reality industry into a frenzy.
There's already some fierce competition between Snap and Facebook in the AR space, but it's about to heat up even more, with Snap snatching up a 3D mapping startup that could add some new AR capabilities to its arsenal.
The mysterious technology product teased via an eccentric TED Talk nearly five years ago has finally been revealed, and it's called the Magic Leap One: Creator Edition. After all of the non-disclosure agreements, furtive comments from CEOs and insiders given early access to the device, and a seemingly never-ending string of hints dropped by the company's CEO, Rony Abovitz, on Twitter, we finally have a real look at the product.
I don't know how many of you had this experience in your youth, but when I was a kid, I used to actively think about what would happen if I suddenly woke up in a fantasy land, or were to pass through a portal into another space and time. I knew it wouldn't really happen, but when you're a kid, these can be important issues to you. So I slept with my glasses on every night, just in case. Photo from George Pal's The Time Machine.
When it comes to the ever-shifting sands of the augmented reality space, you never know which week will end up being truly historic. Well, this one was one for the history books.
Some tried to call it a brief cryptocurrency-fueled fad, but it looks like NFTs are here to stay. Now, one of the biggest sneaker companies on the planet, Japan's Asics, is getting into the game with its own set of NFTs, and there's a virtual object component included.
If you were to summarize the path Snap has taken towards augmented reality smartglasses with a meme template, how it started would be the first-generation Spectacles camera glasses and how it's going would be the next-generation Spectacles with AR capabilities.
The big day for Snap that resulted in the debut of brand new augmented reality Spectacles smartglasses is turning into a big week.
The race for the future of AR wearables gained steam this week with several pivotal developments. First, Apple, the subject of numerous reports and rumors regarding its purported AR headset, is reportedly eyeing an in-person unveiling of the device for later this year, rather than introduce it at its upcoming virtual Worldwide Developers Conference, which would usually be as good a time as any to make a big AR hardware announcement.
After years of testing and modifications, the US Army is moving forward with its customized version of HoloLens 2 from Microsoft.
