With the whirlwind of noise surrounding the COVID-19 virus sweeping the nation, it's not hard to default to panic mode. One of the best ways to avoid panicking, however, is to follow trusted sources of information and avoid all of the opinions and trolls that don't reflect reality.
The worldwide health crisis around the coronavirus has gripped the live events industry, particularly in the tech sector, with the cancellations of Mobile World Congress, the Game Developers Conference, Facebook's F8, Google I/O and now South by Southwest.
Computer vision is a key component in enabling augmented reality experiences, but now it can help give sight to the blind as well. In this case, that assistance comes from Envision, developers of mobile apps for iOS and Android that use optical character recognition (OCR) and object detection to provide an audio description of the user's surroundings.
As a native of Alabama, Apple CEO Tim Cook has a special place in his heart for the state. He also empathizes with the struggles that African-Americans have historically faced in the state, particularly during the 1950s and '60s civil rights era.
The business world is currently figuring out how to deal with the coronavirus crisis, with many offices opting to work remotely for at least the next few weeks as a safety precaution. Predictably, this has thrown remote meeting software back into the spotlight, especially augmented reality solutions.
We've been so worried about volumetric scans possibly robbing celebrities and performers of their agency and right to control their image that, somewhere along the way, we forgot that scans may not always be necessary to produce passable holographic performances.
The camera system on the iPhone has never been better. Apple's iPhone 11, 11 Pro, and 11 Pro Max sport some of the best shooters on the market. But no level of quality makes up for the fact that shady apps can access your cameras for nefarious reasons. You can take control of the situation, however, and block any app you want from using your rear and front-facing cameras.
One of the hallmarks of augmented reality's coming of age is that the technology is starting to find a home in business categories that are less obvious compared to typical AR enterprise use cases.
In a world full of augmented reality camera effects apps, one app is going in a more social direction.
When Google introduced the Call Screen feature with the Pixel 3, I had never been more excited to get a Pixel device. This AI feature provided real protection against rising spam and robocalls, which billions of people deal with each year. After a recent update to the feature, you can reduce robocalls and other spam calls to nearly zero.
While Snapchat is no stranger to location-based AR scavenger hunts, the app's new world-facing game adds some environmental understanding to the mix.
If you made a resolution for 2020 to get healthier, it's essential to concentrate on your mental health just as much as you do on physical fitness. Running and exercising is great, but a sound mind is integral to a healthy and balanced life, and you can improve your emotional and physiological well-being with your smartphone.
Back when I worked in the music industry, I never imagined there would be a day that I'd be able to sit in a room surrounded by virtual album covers while listening to beats, but that day is really here.
We're a few weeks away from the fireworks associated with New Year's celebrations, but that doesn't mean you can't start a little early — in augmented reality.
Did Google CEO Sundar Pichai kill Google Glass for non-enterprise users? That's the obvious first question following news that non-enterprise Glass users will no longer have access to Google's core apps after February 2020.
After several iterations of the product, Snap is focused on making sure the world knows that its smartglasses can be fashionable.
After opening up its Spark AR platform on Instagram for all creators, Facebook is already expanding the platform's capabilities on its Snapchat killer.
As the demand for realistic volumetric video for AR experiences begins to grow (along with the available facilities and services for capturing it), researchers at Google have figured out how to improve upon the format.
When Apple acquired the popular Workflow app in 2017, many were worried that it would either get replaced with something much worse, or just disappear entirely. Thankfully, Apple put these concerns to rest with the launch of Shortcuts. In iOS 13, Shortcuts is becoming more powerful than ever, providing functionality on the iPhone that the original Workflow team could only dream of.
Thanks to the expanding universe of augmented reality tools being made available, increasingly, anybody can liven up sleepy office meetings with immersive computing.
GravityBox is a name that many know as the module to rule them all when it comes to customizing your Android device. Ask any of the longtime modding pros, and they'll tell you about the good old days during the Xposed era. The community was booming and full of great ideas, and there were never any shortages of fun modules to try. Thankfully, it still lives on even years later.
Facebook and its Oculus subsidiary have been open about their intentions to bring AR wearables into the mainstream for some time now.
XDA recently reported on a leaked version of the upcoming Pixel 4's camera app. By testing the app, they were able to find upcoming Pixel 4 features like a new Night Sight mode that can photograph stars. Well that leaked version has leaked itself, so now you can install it on your own Pixel phone.
When it comes to the athletic footwear retail game, it's just not enough to just sell shoes anymore.
Augmented reality jigsaw puzzle game PuzzlAR: World Tour, formerly only available on mobile devices, has been given a major upgrade via a new version for the Magic Leap One.
The longer it takes Apple, Snapchat, Facebook, and other tech giants to build their own version of augmented reality headsets and smartglasses, the longer runway of practical experience Microsoft gains with the HoloLens and its sequel. The latest example: AR cloning.
My autistic son loves music. One afternoon, when he was nine, I downloaded GarageBand to his iPhone to help with the boredom of a long wait at a doctor's office. Instead of pacing or escalating into a meltdown, he spent the entire hour and a half practicing, learning, and composing. When we finally left that day, the rest of us exhausted and irritated, he shared his first composition with a big smile.
Sports technology company Form is testing the waters for augmented reality wearables with a product aimed at a very specific user group.
Microsoft.com is one of the most extensive domains on the internet with thousands of registered subdomains. Windows 10 will ping these subdomains hundreds of times an hour, making it challenging to firewall and monitor all of the requests made by the operating system. An attacker can use these subdomains to serve payloads to evade network firewalls.
A new profile on Apple's exiting design chief Jony Ive, the man behind many of the company's most successful products, paints a fuller picture of what led to his departure.
Forwarding messages is a helpful Telegram feature that makes it easy to share funny and entertaining content with other contacts. However, for the privacy-centric, forwarding poses an issue, as messages of yours that are delivered elsewhere carry a tag back to your account. Luckily, you can make your messages anonymous, so anyone receiving messages of yours that are forwarded won't be able to see you originally sent the message.
Aircraft manufacturer Airbus is so impressed with the boost in productivity it has gained from Microsoft's HoloLens, the company will begin offering augmented reality software to its customers.
So you've been using iOS 13 for a little while and noticed your iPhone is pretty slow to charge. Using the 5-watt power adapter out of the box, in the time it used to take your iPhone to charge its battery to 100 percent, your iPhone is stuck at 80% or below instead. That's because Apple introduced a new feature in iOS 13 that slows down charging — but for a good reason.
Next to Apple, Snap is currently one of the most important companies on the planet in terms of delivering products that are moving augmented reality into the mainstream. That's why it's no surprise that Facebook, which is also focused on AR and tried to acquire the company for $3 billion several years ago, duplicates many of the smaller company's features.
After launching its first augmented reality title for Angry Birds on the Magic Leap One, Rovio has doubled back to the platform that made its franchise famous.
While painting in augmented reality is not a groundbreaking pursuit, the ability for Magic Leap One, iPhone and iPad, and Android users to collaborate remotely on virtual artwork would be.
While the long awaited HoloLens sequel is scheduled to arrive later this year, Apple may force Microsoft to share the AR wearables spotlight, if reports of the company's first entry into smartglasses territory end up coming to fruition.
For 2019, Sony is trying to shake its failures of the past and start fresh. Following the unsuccessful Xperia XZ series, Sony is changing the name of their flagship to a single number: Xperia 1. With the name change comes a few upgrades, one of which is its new look. Secondly, its new display is unmatched in the mobile space.
Once again, LG is mixing up its launch. Instead of the announcing the latest entry in G series later in the year, the LG G8 ThinQ was announced at Mobile World Congress 2019, shortly after Samsung's Galaxy S10 event. And instead of trying to match what other OEMs are doing, LG is once again trying to be different.
Although all signs points to Microsoft releasing a new HoloLens in the coming days, the company is nevertheless looking to distribute its augmented reality apps to other operating systems.
