It has been an interesting few days in developer news. The Microsoft blog has been busy with information relative to the augmented reality space. Meta 2 has also announced an interesting development this week. Here is a collection of various tidbits that have been collecting up.
Developers in the augmented reality space are sitting on the bleeding edge of a hot technology. With the intense interest, especially in the tech circles, there are a large number of people working on potential solutions and uses for the technology. There is also a lot of time, money and effort being put in the tools and infrastructure for the technology. For better of for worse this also means constant changes.
Unless you're a WhatsApp pro user, you may be surprised to know that there are text formatting options that you can apply to your messages. Markdown characters can help you emphasize certain words or phrases by making them italicized or bold, and it'll even let you cross out words and change the font. It's one of those nice touches that isn't available in most other messaging apps.
Cruise Automation follows Waymo's and Uber's lead with its debut of a beta version of an app-based driverless ride-hailing service for its employees in San Francisco, ahead of a possible launch of a full-fledged commercial offering within four years.
Adobe Premiere Clip is a great mobile app for users with little to no editing experience. Its automatic editor will sort your clips into a fun video in seconds, leaving you to just choose the music. But what if you're looking for more than automatic settings? What if you want some serious control over your project, from the editing to the way the image looks?
The augmented reality productivity app market for is a crowded space, so differentiation can be an advantage. Atheer is doing just that this week with their AiR Enterprise application.
Nothing has stopped you from taking a screenshot of a funny moment in a FaceTime video call before, and nothing probably will. But screenshots are old news. Apple has made it even easier to take capture FaceTime moments on your iPhone, and the results are more lively.
Whenever you make FaceTime audio or video calls from your iPhone, Apple automatically uses your phone number or Apple ID email address as the caller identification. So when someone that you're calling sees the incoming call, they'll see it's from your phone number or email address. But what if you'd rather it be a different identifier?
RouterSploit is a powerful exploit framework similar to Metasploit, working to quickly identify and exploit common vulnerabilities in routers. And guess what. It can be run on most Android devices.
A new feature in Android O is making it incredibly easy to multitask while you're watching a video. It's called Picture-in-Picture mode, and if you've ever used a TV with this option, you should already have a pretty good idea of how it works.
The automotive industry is traditionally very conservative, so when a carmaker says it will launch a particular model or feature by a certain date, it means a lot.
Who would have thought back in 1991 that you'd eventually be able to play Sonic the Hedgehog whenever and wherever you wanted? Not a crappy Game Gear version, either. I'm talking the full Sega Genesis version of Sonic, available to you on a bus, a plane, or in a rest-stop bathroom. Now imagine how those people would react if you told them the game would also be free. They would think you were crazy.
Tesla has confirmed the EV carmaker has begun to upload videos from models equipped with its latest flavor of Autopilot, as Tesla seeks to "fleet source" data to help improve its cars' machine learning capabilities.
The latest iteration of the gaming classic, The Sims, has arrived as a soft launch for both iOS and Android in Brazil. Aptly named The Sims Mobile, this free-to-play game seems to be very faithful to the PC-based version that won it so much acclaim. There are plenty of things to do in The Sims Mobile besides the usual home and character customization, and the game also lets you interact with real life friends to fully experience its virtual world together. Maintaining relationships, whether r...
The keynote at this week's Vision Summit 2017, a two-day event put together by the Unity team in beautiful Hollywood, California, revealed a few new features coming to the Unity platform. They also previewed some of the beta features that are currently available for those less scared of the occasional hiccup.
According to Alex Kipman, HoloLens inventor and futurist at Microsoft, the smartphone is already obsolete. In an interview with Bloomberg, Kipman boldly stated that the HoloLens will eventually replace the smartphone and drive society right into a new augmented normal.
Recent launches of YouTube TV and YouTube Go created a bit of excitement on the web. Though the latter allows downloading, it doesn't allow background playback, as that would require a YouTube Red subscription for $10 a month. However, there's still a way to get both of these features without paying a dime.
Whether you're a professional mechanic, a hobbyist, or someone who just wants to know why their check engine light came on, your Android device and an OBD-II adapter can provide insight as to what's going on with your car. Most adapters sell for less than $10, and once you plug it into your vehicle, you'll just need a good app to help you make sense of all the data it can gather.
The latest Google Photos update for Android has added a number of cool new features, like video stabilization and a rumored Google+ integration. The latest update started rolling out to devices on April 11, 2017, and includes the video stabilizing feature we've been waiting for.
As someone who grew up adamantly complaining every time my parents dared to turn on talk radio in the car, I can admit it's a bit weird that I have a love affair with podcasts. I can't help it! Even though podcasts are essentially the modern-day customizable talk radio, I choose to defend my all-out obsession with pointing out how popular they are (I mean, SNL even picked up on the trend).
Samsung's new personal assistant, Bixby, is making its debut on the Galaxy S8 and S8+. In addition to taking voice commands and performing visual searches, a new Hello Bixby feature predicts what you might want to do next with an integrated home screen feed. All of these features look nice, but if you're not ready to shell out at least $750 for a new phone, you'll be glad to know that Hello Bixby just leaked.
The first developer preview of Android Oreo 8.0 was only out for a couple of days before Chainfire created a new root method for it. For the time being, only the Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P are supported by this first SuperSU ZIP, as the Pixel's dual-partition layout has created some hurdles, though Chainfire is surely working on overcoming those at some point soon.
It's fair to say that Google's messaging services are in a bit of a heap at the moment, and to make matters worse, Hangouts is removing its SMS capacities. Hangouts version 18 is now being rolled out, but doesn't appear to incorporate any functional changes.
DayZ is a first-person shooter game for Windows that places you in a vast post-apocalyptic world filled with zombies and other players that are all out to get you. Famous for its realism, DayZ has garnered a cult following and influenced many subsequent games in the genre. But now, Bohemia Interactive, the brains behind DayZ, has developed a mobile-friendly version of the game for iPhone and iPad, aptly named Mini DayZ. Mini DayZ comes with a ton features that will definitely keep you busy. W...
Google has done it again—they've pushed another broken OTA update for the Nexus 6. Except this time, it almost completely softbricks your Nexus 6 instead of just screwing up Android Pay and SafetyNet. Apps are force-stopping left and right, making the phone practically unusable.
The LG V20 went on sale on September 29, 2016, and is the second flagship phone in the V series to be released by LG. Both the V20 and its predecessor, the V10, have been audio-oriented phones from the start, but the V20 has a much nicer Hi-Fi Quad 32-Bit DAC, which makes the output audio from the 3.5 mm headphone jack sound amazing. It's loud, it's crisp, it's full, and everything from the higher frequencies to the lower ones can be heard.
Early this morning, Unity held their keynote at GDC 2017 in the InterContinental San Francisco hotel. During the event, they talked about their upcoming roadmap and many changes that are coming down the pipe. This list included the lighting explorer, progressive lightmapper, the new 4K video player, native support for Vulkan graphics, TextMesh Pro integration, and the one that really excites me as a HoloLens developer—dynamically/runtime created navigation meshes.
Long before Apple and Android became household names, Nokia dominated the mobile industry. The Finnish company was one of the first to develop smartphones, and their classic N95 with 2G "high-speed" internet connectivity was declared the "best smartphone ever" by some in 2007. Outside of the US, before the iPhone became all the rage, owning a Nokia phone was a status symbol akin to wearing a Rolex or Omega watch.
Some of the products I have been looking forward to seeing the most during CES 2017 has been the upcoming Windows Holographic virtual reality headsets. These are VR headset that will run a version of the Windows Holographic platform, which will allow users to have a similar experience as the HoloLens with a mixed reality environment. Of the six headsets that could have possibly made it to CES, five had shown up. Unfortunately, most of them are behind glass.
3D modeling is usually a very long and complicated process. Manipulating the thousands to millions of vertices, faces, and triangles to the correct shape you want is just the first part of the process, and can take a good while depending on the level of detail needed. From there, you need to texture the model by applying the UV coordinates and placing the textures in the correct places. And all of this isn't even including the process of creating normal maps.
When you're sitting at your desk trying to get some work done, your Android device can be a big distraction. If a text comes in, you have to pick up your phone, unlock it, then respond with the clumsy touch screen keyboard—and by then, you've probably forgotten what you were doing on your computer.
Being able to take screenshots on Android isn't something we were always able to do. It was added to stock Android in Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0 (Gingerbread 2.3, if you were a Samsung TouchWiz user) as a simple full screen screenshot, and that's the way it's remained ever since—until now.
There's one thing that I've always liked about iPhones, and that's their centered digital clock in the status bar at the top of the screen. On Android, it's always on the right side by default, and there's no easy setting that lets you just change it to the center position. But if you have a Google Pixel XL, there's a simple modification you can perform to get exactly that—a centered status bar clock.
There's not much you can do to customize the look and feel of your iPhone's home screen, at least when it comes to official options provided by Apple. But thanks to a new bug discovered by YouTuber iDeviceHelp, you can now hide text labels for app icons and folders on your iPhone or iPad, and this hack doesn't even require a jailbroken device.
If you've ever been inspired to try out 3D modeling after enjoying computer-generated imagery in video games and movies, chances are you've checked out an paid applications like 3ds Max (previously called 3D Studio Max), or even free ones like Blender, then just went "No Way! It's way too complicated."
With the recent news that New York County's District Attorney's office is trying to get into over 400 locked iPhones for use in criminal investigations, you can see why it's important to keep other people away from your personal data. The fact that it can and will be used against you in a court of law is just one reason to protect your phone, because even if you make sure to stay above the fray, identity theft and bank fraud are still very real threats.
Kryptowire, a company specializing in mobile security solutions, released a report on Tuesday, November 15 that exposed firmware in a number of Android devices that was collecting personally identifying information (PII) and uploading it to third-party servers without users' knowledge.
Google is on a mission to bring a better messaging experience to Android users. We've seen them try and fail over the years with various messenger apps, but this time, they're taking a different approach by working with industry leaders to create a new messaging standard. The result is RCS Universal Profile, or simply Chat, and it's finally catching on.
If you've ever wondered why the pictures and videos you share with Snapchat on your Android device seem to look grainy with low resolution, you're not alone. We all know it, and we've come to accept it as a plain fact: Snapchat image quality sucks on Android.
Whether or not The Purge franchise will be as successful as Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, or even the Saw movies remains to be seen, but it's definitely winning in the Halloween costumes department.
