Kik is an extremely popular messaging app, but it has a few annoying features that we all just sort of put up with. You can't turn off read receipts, nor can you hide when you're typing, and the photos you take with Kik's camera show up differently than ones you send from your gallery app. At least a couple of these features should be subject to change, but they aren't — well, not without some tinkering.
As a society, we seem to be moving backwards toward communicating by pictures only. Emojis and GIFs are today's cave paintings, and I, for one, am totally okay with that. To make this transition even more amazing, photo-editing app Facetune created a tool that lets us change our very own faces into moving emojis.
Soon, users will no longer need an expensive headset or even a smartphone to experience mixed reality. The new Microsoft update will be bringing mixed reality applications to every Windows computer next month. This new upgrade to Windows 10 named the Windows 10 Creators Update.
Sky Zhou, also know as Matrix Inception on YouTube, is no stranger here on NextReality. We loved his Pokémon concept game for HoloLens, as well as his D3D Keyboard that lets HoloLens users leave notes around the house. He just can't seem to stop creating cool mixed reality apps, and he's already got another one in the works.
The produce section is full of fruits, both familiar and quite strange. Depending on the season, you may see giant, bright-green bananas on display next to the normal bananas that you know and love. No, those aren't super-unripened bananas—they're plantains, and they are definitely a different fruit altogether. However, once you get to know them a little better, you'll find that they're much more fun to cook with.
Unless you have a newer iPhone 6S or 6S Plus, the front-facing "FaceTime" camera on your iPhone has a pretty weak, low-res sensor, which means unflattering selfies. You could use the rear "iSight" camera to take a high-res selfie, but framing your mug properly and hitting the shutter is difficult, takes many failed attempts, and usually results in a lackluster photo.
Believe it or not, there was a time when smartphones weren't the primary tool for taking photos. People actually walked around with bulky film-based cameras on their necks, and some even used cheap disposables. While photography wasn't introduced to the world when smartphones came out, it's definitely more accessible—and everyone is a photographer now.
The only mail I like getting comes in the form of an Amazon package, but when I go to my mailbox, it always ends up being a pile of credit card offers and catalogs I could never see myself ordering from. Those pieces of junk mail usually end up in the trash, which is horrible when you think about all the trees that had to get cut down in order to produce them.
In the weeks before Apple officially released iOS 8, consumers were abuzz over rumors that a new feature would password-protect your photos and text messages from prying eyes. Unfortunately, this ended up being untrue, though we did cover some alternatives to protecting your important information using some built-in features and a third-party app. Now, there's a new iOS app that can do it all.
Instagram introduced Photo Maps back in 2012, a feature allowing users to showcase where they've taken photos and explore where others have been, all through an interactive map.
If you've ever tried to record a Snapchat video of a song playing in your car, you know that it's impossible to do if the song is playing on the same device that you're Snapchatting with.
The new iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are supposed to last a lot longer in your pocket with improved battery life, but that doesn't mean that iOS 8 will be that friendly on your older iPhone model. All of those awesome new features could be killing your battery, but with some simple tweaking, your battery life concerns will be a mere afterthought.
With a 13 megapixel camera that can record in full 4K, there's a lot to love about the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 from a photographer's perspective. The image quality in my photos and videos are top-notch and nothing to complain about, but as with all things tech, things could always get better.
How many times have you witnessed a beautiful moment that you would have loved to capture on film, only to watch it slip away as you struggled to unlock your phone and open your camera app?
Trying to explain something difficult over the phone can be pretty frustrating if the other person doesn't understand you. Using text messages can be useless for auditory learners, and a phone call won't do much good for a reading or visual learner.
You have a cool picture that you want to show someone, but when you hand your phone over, they start swiping through all of your photos. Surely, you've encountered this scenario before. I definitely have.
In February of this year, the Higher Court of Berlin ruled that Facebook must follow strict German data protection laws, which Facebook's terms of services and privacy policies circumvent.
Last year, The New York Times wrote that certain restaurants in Manhattan and Brooklyn banned patrons from taking photos of their meals. That means no flash photography, no standing on chairs for a better angle, not even a quick pic for your Instagram followers before the first bite. Little do these restaurants know, this ban can actually make their customers' food taste worse, so to speak.
We all have that one friend on Instagram: every day, they post a million perfectly filtered selfies, sharing 15 different angles of their outfit. But let's be honest—no one likes to see a million posts in rapid succession, and more importantly, no one wants to be that person.
After years of making do with a cheap knife, I finally bought a really good 8" chef's knife—a Henckels, although I was also eyeing a Global santoku. It quietly but literally changed my life.
There's a lot of personal information residing on your phone, possibly even more than on your computer, so it's only a matter of time before someone tries to access it.
Mobile scanning applications are nothing new in the world of Apple, except that the majority of them usually come with pesky in-app purchases that stifle the entire experience and render some features useless until you pay for them.
Snapchat is great for sharing and receiving pictures that we don't want "living" for too long, but sometimes we'd like to hold onto those memories, whether the other party wants us to or not.
The Xperia Z1, Sony's flagship device, has been extremely popular overseas, so much so that it has made its way into the U.S. market as the Xperia Z1S, a modified version of the original. Known more commonly as the "waterproof smartphone," the Xperia Z1 packs one of the most powerful cameras on the market, with an impressive 20.7 megapixels. Since the device is only available for T-Mobile here in the States, unless you currently have that carrier, the chances of you getting your hands on Sony...
Facebook makes it easy to show how much you appreciate a funny status, great picture, or cool news article using their iconic "thumbs up" button, but what about those terrible jokes and annoying baby pictures? Where's the "thumbs down" for that crap?
NSA aside, Apple makes it difficult for users to extract and download text messages from their iPhones onto a computer. For whatever reason (legal, devious, neurotic, etc), we've all found a time where we'd like to save backups of certain meaningful, important, or perhaps incriminating conversations (including all MMS or iMessage pictures and videos). While there are a handful of third-party applications that can help with this process, the majority of them cost money and implement certain te...
Initially introduced as an Easter egg deep within Android's operating system, the Daydream screensaver feature turned official in the release of 4.2.2 Jelly Bean. Now, it's been out for a few months, which means developers have already figured out how to take advantage of it in their own ways.
"We all want to escape our circumstances, don't we?" Benedict Cumberbatch may have been talking about acting, but the sentiment rings true for all of us at some point or another. Whether it's work, school, or just boredom at home—we all wish for an escape sometimes. If only.
Believe it or not, capturing a beautiful shot of a vehicle is more difficult than you think. Sure, you can just snap a photo, but capturing the design, detail, and essence of the car is a whole other story. Lighting, location, settings, and angles are play into how well the photographic representation turns out.
Want to prank a friend by making them look like a punk? Or get revenge by showing the picture to their parents? Or maybe you just want to see what you would look like wiht an eyebrow piercing yourself. Start with a photo of your subject, one with the eyebrow prominently shown, and then follow the steps in this tutorial to add a fake eyebrow piercing using the tools and techniques in Adobe Photoshop.
You want to look like the picture of perfection on your wedding day, right? But let's face it: Weddings are super expensive to hold, and that's not even taking into consideration your dress, hair, and makeup.
In this tutorial, we learn how to make a family photo album from digital photos. iPhoto from Apple has a ton of different options for you to make a great photo album. You can first start out with loading these on your computer and then creating them into a book. After this, you can choose the borders and text that you want to include in this, then drag the pictures in. After this, you can add in captions for each of the photos and then design the layouts of the different pages. After this, yo...
In this video, Daddy Troy teaches us how to star gaze with your kids. This can get your kids interested in space and teach them a thing or two, while still having a good time. First, Google offers a service called Google Earth, which will show your child the entire earth, moon, and mars. Kids can use these programs just like a video game. They can see real pictures as well as their own home or grandma's home. This is free and a lot of fun! Next, you can see satellites with your naked eye in t...
In this video, we learn how to draw two point perspective. Start off with a horizontal line on your paper. After this, draw a small point on the line where your drawing will focus to. From here, you will start to draw lines coming out of this. Next, you will design the rest of the picture around the main focal point you started out with. Add in lines to create lots of detail and make sure to use shading to show depth. Erase any background lines you don't need. Then when you are finished, you ...
Whether you are pursuing drawing as a professional or as a hobby or you are just a common person, we're pretty sure that you have drawn a tree somewhere in your lifetime. This video merely shows how to do the same in a better way. Though there is no narration (just background music) in this video, it is easy to understand the additive method of drawing. The artist starts off with a broad tree trunk and then starts adding thinner branches to the trunk that spread outwards. Then, even more thin...
The pressure underwater is undeniably strong. If you were to fill a balloon with water and take it underwater, it would not burst but would stay the same size because liquids are not compressed. The pressure is the same, inside and outside of the balloon. If you were to fill that same balloon with air instead, the lower it dives into water, the more it shrinks, until it eventually can't take the pressure anymore and bursts.
Make a Spark frame ripper
In this video, we learn how to use extension tubes in place of a macro lens. First you will need to have your camera and a tube insert that will attach to your lens. Once you have this, you can attach it to the lens by screwing it on with your hands. Then, you can focus extremely close, much more than you would be able to do with a regular lens. After you have attached this, look through the camera and start taking shots close-up. Then, you will be able to see a better picture than you had be...
Want to create your own camera? The simplest one that you can create is a pinhole camera which can be constructed from everyday household items.
The original pin up girls from the '40s and '50s knew how to work the camera and were clearly drop dead gorgeous. Even when Photoshop hadn't been invented yet, and even without all the fancy studio lighting and airbrushing we have now, they were able to look like handmaids of Aphrodite.