In recent years, Apple has been pushing health and safety as cornerstones of its technology, and iOS 11 is no exception. Apple's latest entry in its mobile operating system brings a new emergency feature called Emergency SOS, which gives you easy access to contact 911 if you press the sleep/wake button five times. It's a useful way to contact emergency services when you might otherwise not be able to.
Multistate outbreaks of Salmonella infection in humans have led the Centers for Disease Control to advise caution when interacting with poultry. A press release on June 1st mentioned eight multistate outbreaks connected to backyard flocks. As of May 25, 372 people in 47 states were reported infected with the outbreaks' Salmonella strains. That means this year could be as bad as 2016, a record year, for salmonella outbreaks with 895 people infected.
Getting support for your mental health is now as easy as opening up Facebook Messenger. By just opening up the Messenger app, you can connect to Woebot, a new chatbot developed at Stanford trained in administering cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).
The Augmented World Expo (AWE), the biggest event for augmented, virtual, and mixed reality companies, developers, customers, and connoisseurs, is happening right now. You know what that means for us here at Next Reality? Companies presenting and exhibiting at AWE are releasing news like crazy.
The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), a leading IT trade association, has published its first report on risks and recommendations for connected-vehicle security, ahead of when driverless cars are about to see volume production in the near future.
Things aren't looking good for Uber after its driverless experiment in Pittsburgh soured relations with local authorities. Surprised? Me neither.
Yep, Google just put in place a new thing called the dun dun duuuun .... "Device Catalog!" No, not like the Macy's catalog of your smartphone dreams. This is quite the opposite.
Buying a smartphone used is an excellent way to save money, but those savings come with a risk that your seller isn't as forthcoming as they claim. You don't want to end up buying a stolen smartphone because it might not work correctly ... and, you know, it's wrong. Luckily, there's an easy way to check if the phone you're about to buy is legit.
The driverless competition is heating up as Detroit automakers attempt to woo tech talent away from some of Silicon Valley's biggest players.
WhatsApp sneakily made some security changes to iCloud backups without your knowledge, ladies and gents. Not that strengthening security is a bad thing, but still!
With chips in four out every five PCs made since 2010, few companies are as pervasive in modern computing as Intel. That's why an advisory released Monday, May 1, confirming a remotely exploitable vulnerability in all non-server business hardware made in the last seven years has sent shockwaves through the technology world.
Even though your phone has a built-in media player, it's got nothing on VLC. The popular third-party video player supports virtually every codec and file format, and even better, you can use it to stream movies, shows, and other video files from your computer to your phone.
Augmented reality software developer Edgybees has launched Drone Prix. The new mobile app immerses DJI drones and their pilots in more than 30 augmented reality obstacle courses.
Chinese search engine giant, Baidu, has just announced its own autonomous car platform which is intended to speed up the development of driverless vehicles.
Uber's driverless car program lead has quit after just one year working for the ride-hailing company.
Asobo Studios, one of the first companies to partner with Microsoft on HoloLens development, is applying their expertise towards building applications for various business verticals through their internal HoloForge Interactive team.
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.
Download a popular, legit app from the Google Play Store. Decompile it. Add malicious code. Repackage the app. Distribute the now trojan-ized app through third-party Android app sites. This is how advertising malware Ewind, what Palo Alto Networks calls "adware in applications' clothing," infects Android users.
NextReality will be giving readers a rundown of the augmented and mixed reality news briefs from the preceding week that we didn't cover already. This way, you'll never miss anything of importance in the NextReality landscape, and will always know what's going on with new augmented and mixed reality tech and applications. The first one starts right now, and you can enjoy future ones every Tuesday going forward, so stay tuned.
Uber wants you to forget about cars and start thinking about fully autonomous flying as an alternative—a more "economically favorable" way of getting to your grinding nine-to-five.
Upskill, an enterprise software developer for industrial augmented reality applications, recently received an influx of funding and a major vote of confidence from two of their top customers.
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.
Uber's driverless cabs began picking people up in Arizona in February, after its attempt at a pilot test in San Francisco. Now, one of these cars has been in an accident, and that's just the tip of the iceberg.
The office of your physician, or your local hospital, is where you go when you need medical care. But it could also be where you could pick up a life-threatening infection.
Bats are an important part of the US economy. They devour metric tons of bugs every night that would otherwise ravage crops and also be generally disgusting-looking and make you itchy. But they're in danger from a nasty fungal infection called white-nose syndrome, which has just popped up in Texas and has been spreading across the country.
Baidu's self-driving car unit has had a tough week. Today, the company's leading artificial intelligence (AI) expert, Andrew Ng, announced in an optimistic blog post that he would be leaving the Chinese search engine company to pursue AI research on his own.
A state of emergency has been declared in Malaysia's northeastern Kelantan state after an outbreak of avian influenza virus H5N1.
It's 2017 and finally ordering "fries with that" at McDonald's is an even easier prospect for all you lovers out there ball and chained to the fast food game. The great big golden arches are moving one step closer to making your order as golden as it ought to be through a mobile ordering app using geofencing technology to track your location.
This year's SXSW festival had a plethora of news and discussion about autonomous cars, but perhaps none was more exciting than the NIO EP9. The car was first shown off in November in London when it ran the Nürburgring Nordschleife track in record time.
Before the release of the Galaxy S8, Samsung quietly uploaded one of their core TouchWiz apps to the Google Play Store as a beta. Samsung Internet, as it's called, has been a staple on all Galaxy devices for years now, but you can now try the browser on any Android phone.
A couple weeks ago, GM's Cruise Automation released a remarkable self-driving video from the streets of San Fransisco that Driverless analyzed in detail. And now they've just released a new one giving more insight into their growing mastery of the complex roads in San Francisco, specifically, the Potrero Hill and Mission Dolores neighborhoods.
The widget system on iOS leaves a lot to be desired when compared to Android's offering, but that's not really Apple's fault. The system is there, we just need some good widgets to really get the most out of it, so it's up to developers to create some awesome apps that work with the home screen and lock screen widget panels on iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.
For years now, Xiaomi's smartphones, as well as any phone running Xiaomi's MIUI ROM, have had a subtle feature that makes the interface look all the more refined: Rounded display corners. But now, other manufacturers are getting in on the rounded corners craze, as the new LG G6 is using them, as well as the Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+ models, whose curve is more subtle.
The iPhone has a handy feature called AssistiveTouch that lets you quickly adjust volume, lock your screen, rotate your display, and even navigate through the phone's interface using a virtual home button. In a way, it's a lot like the on-screen navigation bar that you'll find on some Android devices, but with a lot more functionality, and bundled together in a floating bubble interface.
The HoloLens is a natural medium for 3D data visualization, which offers a far more ideal approach over 2D screens to managing multiple resources simultaneously and grasping the bigger picture. We've already seen how management is using holograms to oversee cities, firefighters, and the military, and now training for sports teams is being addressed with VAR Football.
The limitless applications of 3D data visualization will enable a more efficient approach to many of life's problems. Each day, developers exploring this technology are finding new ways to solve these problems in mixed reality; 3D modeling, easier house management, spinal surgery, and forest fire management are just a few recent examples of ways 3D data visualization can benefit us all.
Cyanogen, Inc., the for-profit company that spun off from its CyanogenMod roots several years ago, has announced that they're shutting down all of their services. The company's impending demise shouldn't directly impact many Android users, but the announcement does have one major repercussion: The servers that used to host the popular CyanogenMod custom ROM have now been shut down.
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.
Reading through various internet forums, it certainly sounds like the Google Pixel and Pixel XL are attracting more iPhone users than any of Google's previous Nexus devices. The sales figures seem to back that up, too, as the Pixel is outpacing last year's Nexus 6P, and pre-order demand has exceeded Google's expectations, causing delays in shipments. (We reached out to Google but they wouldn't give us any specifics on sales numbers or numbers of switchers.)
As a commercial and potentially consumer product, one might assume it very unlikely to see the Microsoft HoloLens in the military marketplace. And that assumption would be completely wrong. One company from the Ukraine is currently working on using the mixed reality head-mounted computer for 360-degree vision inside armored tanks. If a tank crew could see the entire battlefield there are in, they would likely have a better chance of accomplishing their mission and avoiding damage. Tanks are l...