Market Reality: Instagram Smartglasses, Oculus AR Gaming, Google AR Search, & Facebook Exec Shuffle
As we move toward the end of the year, the wheels of the augmented reality space continue to shift in major ways.
As we move toward the end of the year, the wheels of the augmented reality space continue to shift in major ways.
Ever since Facebook announced its partnership with Luxxotica brand Ray-Ban to produce smartglasses, the augmented reality space has been on high alert awaiting more details.
Apple released the first public beta for iOS 14.6 today, Friday, April 23, one day after the company seeded iOS developers 14.6 beta 1. The update introduces an easy way for testers to update from an iOS RC (release candidate) to the latest beta, via a simple option in Software Update.
Apple released the first beta for iOS 14.6 today, Thursday, April 22. The new beta (build number 18F5046e) comes just two days after Apple's spring event, as well as the iOS 14.5 RC, and features an easy way for beta testers to update to the latest beta software when running an RC.
Just as the augmented reality industry grows, so too does the segment dedicated to creating experiences for the tools becoming available.
Quietly, while the rest of the world was engaged in pandemic and political concerns, a few weeks ago Facebook casually upgraded its Spark AR platform with what it calls Unified Effect Publishing.
This week, developer Niantic began rolling out a new feature called AR Mapping to Pokémon GO that has bigger implications on the realism of augmented reality in mobile gaming and beyond.
As I've mentioned in recent days, it was refreshing to discover that Microsoft's HoloLens 2 stage production was every bit as accurate as presented (check out my hands-on test of the device for more on that).
So, you rooted your Pixel 2 or 2 XL and everything seems to be working quite well. However, a month passes, and you get a notification to install the monthly security update. Like clockwork, Google has been pushing out OTA security patches every single month for a while, but there is a new problem for you at this point — as a rooted user, you are unable to apply the update correctly.
While autonomous vehicles are almost assuredly the future of personal transportation, we are likely many years from seeing self-driving cars become as ubiquitous as manually-driven ones, as the auto industry has a myriad of government regulations and other constraints to contend with. Until then, augmented reality is looking like the next big thing in automotive technology.
Millions of travelers pass through airports each day without understanding how powerful and insecure a boarding pass can be. Anyone can scan the boarding pass barcode with a mobile app, allowing access to frequent-flyer accounts and even a passenger's temporary airline account. In this guide, we will explore how hackers scan and decode the information contained in a boarding pass barcode and why.
A new technological movement without the technology itself is just an idea sitting and waiting. Once the technology is present in the equation, movement forward can begin. This is how many of us see the head-mounted displays (HMDs) and smartglasses that have recently entered the augmented and mixed reality market — or are coming out in the next few months. This is a movement that will sweep over the world, changing everything in its path, and these are some of the people behind it.
With careful wording you can avoid lying and still avoid going to something that you just don’t want to attend. Even without a good excuse you can politely decline without hurting anyone’s feelings or ending up in an embarrassing situation.
It turns out you CAN have your character in Star Trek Online take a seat in the captain's chair. If you stand on the chair, you can then use an emote in the chat box to have your captain take his seat, just like Picard or Kirk!
The FFA is an organization that gets kids involved in farming and agriculture. Learn about the Future Farmers of America and showing pigs for livestock judging from an FFA member in this free animal husbandry video.
Not everything that Facebook does is in the best interest of its users. Just look at past examples such as social ads, facial recognition, and instant personalization. Users were perfectly fine without these, and they still are. And now there's another annoying problem that Facebook users have to deal with—the ticker.
A new Sony patent shows the company doubling down on mobile gaming, and it could mean more advanced controller features for your iPhone or Android phone, similar to those in PlayStation's DualSense and DualShock controllers.
Today is the 10-year anniversary of the death of Apple co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs. To commemorate the occasion, Apple has posted a message and a mini-documentary on its website.
Part of the mainstreaming of augmented reality is learning to adopt new habits around the hardware delivering these groundbreaking next-gen interface experiences.
Facebook Reality Labs chief Andrew "Boz" Bosworth does a lot of hinting and teasing of what's coming next at Oculus, often with only a vague timeline on the horizon.
When it comes to the future of AR smartglasses, DigiLens has one word for you. Just one word. Are you listening? Plastics.
The Paris-based technology conference Viva Technology, which hosted the likes of Apple's Tim Cook and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, is now over.
Now that Snapchat has extended its virtual try-on powers from the face and feet to the wrist, Samsung is leveraging the new capability, along with an interactive twist, to sell its smartwatches.
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.
If you're like me, you're not too keen on being tracked. So when an app asks you if it can track your iPhone activity across other programs and websites for ads or data brokers, the answer is pretty much always "no." If you're tired of choosing "Ask App Not to Track" over and over again, there is a way to stop apps from even being able to ask in the first place.
As the COVID-19 pandemic persists, so, too, does the demand for video conferencing platforms like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet.
The development of virtual reality at Facebook has been evolving lightspeed in the last few years. But while a relatively small group of VR enthusiasts and gamers are enjoying the social media giant's dedication to immersive headsets, it is the augmented reality space and its potential scale that truly has the tech market enthralled.
For better or for worse, Google started the race towards smartglasses for everyday use with Google Glass before scrapping the Explorer Edition and pivoting towards enterprise customers.
Apple's augmented reality teases just keep on coming from the halls of its Cupertino labs. The latest comes in the form of an invitation to Apple's next public-facing event.
The moment many of the crypto savvy insiders in augmented reality and VR have been waiting for is here: we're finally getting our first big auction of NFT art that exists purely as a hologram.
The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the demand for virtual and remote collaboration, and Microsoft has a solution that may serve as the catalyst for more such apps for augmented and virtual reality in the near future.
The new WandaVision series is perhaps the hottest TV show on the Disney Plus streaming service since...well, its own The Mandalorian wrapped up its second season late last year.
In 2020, we had to learn that it's up to us to make ourselves stand out in our jobs or to future employers. Coding is a skill that won't just make you stand out — it'll make you indispensable. Due to the mass move to working online, there is more demand for strong, intuitive web design, and learning to code means you can be the person who makes that.
After piloting the Nreal Light in South Korea and Japan via carrier partnerships and securing another round of funding, Nreal is now ready to begin selling the consumer edition of the smartglasses to the western world as well as introduce a version for enterprise customers.
There is plenty of evidence to suggest that learning to program is becoming a highly lucrative and useful skill. Monster.com called coding "the skill you need today" if you want a job in some of the highest-paying fields out there. If the last year has proven anything, working online requires a strong digital infrastructure that someone has to help build. That someone can, and should, be you.
The focus on augmented reality over at Apple is, so far, restricted to the iPhone and the iPad. But if some of the most reliable analysts in the business are to be believed, we'll probably see some kind of AR or VR wearable from the company later this year.
Android Messages, formally named simply "Messages" now, has built-in spam protection. This doesn't get every spam SMS message, however — in fact, you can still get unwanted texts multiple times daily even with the feature enabled. Thankfully, you can manually block numbers, too.
If you've been working from home a bit more often than usual lately, you're far from alone. Despite some optimistic predictions that things would have returned to normal right now, social distancing guidelines have forced most offices to shut their doors, and it's looking like this is going to be the new normal for the foreseeable future.
A lot of digital ink has been spilled heaping scorn on Magic Leap. Much of that media schadenfreude was due to what some believed were unmet promises versus some of the early hype around the product. Others just seemed to be rubbed the wrong way by the startup's Apple-esque secrecy and penchant for attempting to coin new terms and frameworks for things that were, mostly, already in play.
Did you know there is a simple trick to making beautiful, professional charts? Whether for your work or for making running your own business easier, Edraw Project Software will make all your projects simple. Right now, a Perpetual License, which includes three-year upgrades and maintenance, is on sale for almost half off, at just $89.99 — that's a 49% discount off the regular price of $179.