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.
The beauty industry has increasingly relied on the powers of augmented reality to drive sales in recent years, and now that virtual "everything" is on trend due to the pandemic, yet another big player is entering the fray.
The remake of the Warner Bros. classic animation meets live-action movie Space Jam, this time starring LeBron James instead of Michael Jordan, hits theaters today.
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Google has packed new functionality into Google Meet to compete with Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and other video conferencing platforms.
Accessibility features — such as spoken content, reduced motion, and voice control — help those who might have hearing, vision, learning, or physical and motor disabilities better use their iPhone devices. These features are very welcome, but when enabled they work system-wide, which can be a problem if you need these settings enabled only in certain situations.
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.
Like its predecessors WandaVision and Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Marvel's latest series for Disney Plus, Loki, has its own augmented reality experience.
Gamers, anime fans, and those with an interest in Japanese culture are in for an AR treat courtesy of Google.
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Facebook enjoyed a boost in sales of Portal, its smart video cameras with AR effects, as social distancing became the norm.
Who had Lil Nas X, blood-drop Nikes, and satan worship on your 2021 bingo card? In a story that's stranger than fiction, the "Old Town Road" rapper has ruffled some feathers with the video for his new single, "MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name)" filled with demonic imagery usually reserved for death metal bands.
Most iPhones are more than capable of shooting crispy, high-quality video, perfect for any TikTok account to use. But if you're serious about the platform, especially in the long-run, you don't want just any iPhone. Instead, you'll want to pick up an iPhone 12 Pro or 12 Pro Max.
The movie theater business is hurting due to the pandemic, but that hurdle is actually the perfect set of circumstances for movie studios to lean hard into augmented reality marketing.
With the new season of The Mandalorian underway, Google has launched a new AR app that enables some Star Wars fans to connect with virtual characters in between new episodes.
If you're a man and subscribe to podcasts or YouTube channels that cater to masculine interests, then you've almost certainly encountered sponsorships from Manscaped. And that means I don't have to explain what the company is selling you (for the uninitiated, it's a company dedicated to helping you trim your body hair—most notably, your nether regions, in addition to other areas).
Adobe has navigated competition for decades. Since the company's founding in a Silicon Valley garage in 1982, Adobe has led the way in design software. Pivoting to Adobe Creative Cloud in 2011, they've remained ahead of the game with an incredible suite of products.
The "Hidden" album on your iPhone has always had one problem — it was never truly hidden. Since iOS 10, when the feature was introduced in the Photos app, any image or video that you conceal in the private folder could be seen by anyone with access to your unlocked device. Finally, that has changed.
I've been steadily making my way through the series Hannibal, which arrived on Netflix in June. I've just now made it to the back half of the third season, which introduces us to a new villain who (spoiler alert) seeks to become the Great Red Dragon.
Google Photos is one of the most useful apps for storing, sorting, searching, and sharing all of the photos and videos you capture on your smartphone — but if you travel, it just got a lot more useful.
Every single photo you take carries with it a considerable amount of seemingly "invisible" yet important information known as metadata. Although metadata is usually helpful to sort your photographs by location and date, that same information could potentially be used against you, especially if the pictures are taken during a precarious situation.
It's open season on Zoom, the video conferencing platform that has grown in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic but has come under fire due to privacy issues.
The words of three of tech's most important executives in the last 48 hours are providing some valuable insight into the near term future of augmented reality and the cloud infrastructures that support it.
If you record yourself for a vlog or story post using your selfie camera, it can be challenging to stay on message. You might worry too much about the way you look or sound to focus on what you want to say. Using a script can help, but looking away from the camera to read is unprofessional, even on social platforms like Instagram. What you need is a teleprompter, and there are apps for that.
What does mainstream augmented reality look like? I'm not talking about the stuff you see in concept videos and science fiction films. No. What does it really look like?
The year in augmented reality 2019 started with the kind of doom and gloom that usually signals the end of something. Driven in large part by the story we broke in January about the fall of Meta, along with similar flameouts by ODG and Blippar, the virtual shrapnel of AR ventures that took a wrong turn has already marred the landscape of 2019.
On Monday, Apple unveiled its Apple Card, the company's boldest move yet toward becoming a truly mainstream mobile payments company. And the product has vast implications for our augmented reality future, some of which may not be immediately obvious to many.
Now that the dust has finally settled on Microsoft's big HoloLens 2 announcement, the company is circling back to offer more granular detail on some aspects of the device we still don't know about.
When it comes to digital security, one of the best ways to protect yourself is to use two-factor authentication. Most apps these days support it, including Facebook, a site where the more privacy you can muster, the better. However, of the two 2FA options available for Facebook, only one should be used as the other will share your phone number with the world, a huge privacy concern.
While Microsoft dominated the augmented reality news at this year's Mobile World Congress, a small AR startup we've covered in the past arrived in Barcelona, Spain, to unveil the next phase of its mission.
Traditionally, if you were looking for end-to-end encrypted messaging, you'd stick with something like iMessage, WhatsApp, or Signal. However, if you already use Facebook Messenger, you have all you need for truly private chats with its built-in E2E encryption. It's available to all users, on Android and iOS — you just need to know where to look.
The week of the annual Consumer Electronics Show is supposed to be filled with good news for the augmented reality industry as AR headset and smartglasses makers show off their new wares.
Out of the box, Apple's digital assistant could be a godsend or a nuisance, depending on your daily interactions it. No matter which camp you fall into, Siri can always be better suited to your personal needs with a little customization. You can make Siri a powerhouse not to be reckoned with, or you can minimize its presence if you only need Siri help sometimes — all without any jailbreaking.
The last time we heard from Meta, the makers of the Meta 2 augmented reality headset, things looked pretty bleak. Now, as several new facts have come to light, we have confirmation regarding the beleaguered company's fate: Meta is done.
Last year's augmented reality investments roundup was impressive. And in 2018, the dollars flowing toward AR haven't decreased, as venture capitalists and strategic investors continue to aggressively fund AR startups at a rapid pace.
In 2018, augmented reality went from the vague promise of interesting things in the near future to tangible developments in software and hardware, proving that immersive computing is indeed the future.
Every photo you take is brimming with metadata such as iPhone model, date and time, shooting modes, focal length, shutter speed, flash use, and geolocation information. Share these pictures with friends, family, or acquaintances via texts, emails, or another direct share method, and you unwittingly share your location data. Even sharing via apps and social media sites can compromise your privacy.
Creating doodles on an iPhone is made easy thanks to the "Draw" tool in Notes and "Digital Touch" for iMessages, but these are limited in scope. Drawing in Notes has no animated effects, and while Digital Touch does, its drawing tools are lacking and the animations can only live within iMessages. If it's animations you want, Apple has another app that can help you create them.
On Tuesday, the smartglasses startup known as North finally took the wraps off its Focals product, but in a very unique way: The team simply opened a couple of stores and invited the public in.
Because timing is everything, the latest entry in the location-based augmented reality gaming sweepstakes, Ghostbusters World, has arrived just in time for Halloween.
By now, you've probably already seen Andy Serkis and his performance capture demo for Magic Leap. And sure, marrying motion capture acting and augmented reality sounds compelling, but how does it really work as an experience?
This week, Next Reality released the fifth and final set of profiles on the NR30 leaders in augmented reality, with this chapter focusing on the influencers in the industry.
