Exclusive: Meta Patent Infringement Case Moves Step Closer to Resolution, New Asset Owner Revealed
The story of Meta and its Meta 2 augmented reality headset isn't over, there's a new development that could impact its ultimate fate.
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News: Magic Leap Highlights Award-Winning Augmented Reality Apps Revealed at Reality Virtually Hackathon
With Magic Leap One approaching six months since launch, Magic Leap is fully focused on building a content ecosystem and developer community.
How To: Use Custom Background Colors & Translucent Overlays in Instagram Stories
On Instagram, you can write text over any picture or video in your Story, but it may be hard to get your message across with a distracting background. Although there is a "Type" option for Stories, which allows you to write text over colorful gradient backgrounds, the selection is limited to just over twenty options, and there are no options for solid colored backgrounds or translucent overlays.
News: 'David Bowie Is' App Delivers a Mesmerizing AR Tour of the Artist's Career with Gary Oldman as Guide
Although next week will mark the late David Bowie's 72nd birthday, his fans and admirers are the ones receiving a gift in the form of an augmented reality app that explores the artist's career
News: The 5 Most Innovative Augmented Reality Products of 2018
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.
How To: Stop Ads from Spying on Your iPhone Activity
Stumbling upon a specifically tailored advertisement on your iPhone can be a bit disconcerting. But that's what happens when you let advertisers track your data. Some of you may appreciate more relevant ads in apps, but the rest of you might consider it a straight-up privacy invasion.
News: Niantic Offers $1 Million in Rewards for Games Built on Its Real World Platform
Location-based gaming pioneer Niantic has been preparing its flavor of AR cloud, the Niantic Real World Platform, to bring more realistic and interactive augmented reality experiences to mobile apps. And now the company is looking for a few good developers to help execute its vision on the platform.
Hands-On: Cheddar's Magic Leap One App Is Now Available Online, This Is How It Works
When the announcement of the Cheddar app for Magic Leap first went out on Tuesday morning, the app was not available on my updated Magic Leap One (located in New York City). However, after checking throughout the day, I can confirm that the app is now live.
News: Magic Leap Launches Cheddar Video News Channel on Magic Leap One
The team at Magic Leap just got a millennial-style boost with the announcement that financial news network Cheddar is coming to the Magic Leap One.
News: Caltech Researchers Use HoloLens to Give Directions & Object Identification to the Visually Impaired
When computers have vision but people don't, why not have the former help the latter? That's the gist behind the Cognitive Augmented Reality Assistant (CARA), a new HoloLens app developed by the California Institute of Technology.
Hacking macOS: How to Create an Undetectable Payload
Encrypting payloads and encoding stagers are more effective against macOS than one might think. It's very easy to evade VirusTotal and macOS antivirus software using a few simple tricks.
News: Walmart Turns Its iPhone App's Barcode Scanner into an Augmented Reality Price Comparison Tool
While many retailers have introduced try-before-you-buy features in their apps, Walmart has gone in another direction by bringing shoppers an augmented reality tool to help them compare products they want to buy.
News: Resolution Games Scores $7.5M in Funding Round Backed by Google, Unity Founder, & Others
Fresh off shipping an augmented reality game for Magic Leap, Resolution Games has farmed another $7.5 million in funding through a Series B round.
News: Visualix AR Cloud Platform Looks to Give Enterprises the Ability to Virtually Map Their Facilities
A new augmented reality cloud platform from German startup Visualix is working to give enterprises the capability to scan their own warehouses, factories, and stores and create maps for augmented reality navigation.
Pixel 3 XL vs. iPhone XS Max: It's a Tough Match Between the Two Large Flagships
Besides the Apple vs. Samsung competition, few battles are as vocal as the battle between the best Pixel and best iPhone. This year, it's the Pixel 3 XL and iPhone XS Max, two phones that are equipped with minor hardware updates from their predecessors, though both showcase significant OS-level improvements.
News: Investors Bank $30M on Varjo for VR/AR Headset with 'Human-Eye Resolution'
A Series B round of funding, totaling $30 million, will enable Helsinki-based startup Varjo to launch its industrial-grade augmented and virtual reality headset capable of "human-eye resolution" before the end of the year.
News: Thalmic's North Wearable Teases a Cooler Direction for AR Smartglasses
A major obstacle to the mainstream acceptance of smartglasses is the current inability able to smoosh processors, sensors, and batteries into a pair of frames that look cool. Wearables maker Thalmic is hinting that it may have figured it all out.
News: Samsung Is Bringing the Galaxy A6 to the US — Budget Phone with a Flagship Screen
Samsung makes more than just the Galaxy S and Note series. With a large portion of the world not able to afford phones with flagship specs, Samsung makes several different series that focus on price. The latest is the Galaxy A6, a budget option with a flagship feature.
How To: Use the Buscador OSINT VM for Conducting Online Investigations
For anyone using open source information to conduct an investigation, a balance between powerful tools and privacy controls are a must. Buscador is a virtual machine packed full of useful OSINT tools and streamlined for online research. This program can easily be set up in VirtualBox, and once that's done, we'll walk you through some of the most useful tools included in it.
News: Turn the Sky into a Shared Canvas with This Fun Augmented Reality App
While we've seen Snapchat apply sky segmentation to AR content, the makers of the Blue Sky Paint app have applied similar capabilities to create and share airborne art.
How To: Create Your Own Gesture Controls with the Microsoft Launcher
Ever-shrinking bezels and disappearing hardware buttons make for good looking phones, but they also increase the need for gesture controls. Android Pie comes with seven new swipe gestures, but if you don't have the update yet (or find its default gesture options to be lacking), you should take a look at the Microsoft Launcher.
News: Oculus Rift Creator Slams Magic Leap One as 'Tragic' & Magic Leap's CEO Quickly Hits Back
Following the launch of the Magic Leap One earlier this month, the device and the company took a few hits from early reviewers. But it turns out those were just love taps compared to the absolute scorched earth acidic screed penned this weekend by someone well credentialed to dissect Magic Leap One: Oculus Rift creator Palmer Luckey.
News: 6 Reasons Why iPhone Notifications Are Finally Up to Snuff in iOS 12
While iOS 11 was famous for its instability, performance issues weren't the only factor holding it back. The OS overhauled the notification system on iPhone, but not necessarily for the better. iOS 12, however, improves upon these changes, bringing critical features that make viewing and interacting with notifications on your iPhone on par with Android.
Hands-On: Magic Leap's Helio App Is the Best Window into the Web Available in Augmented Reality
Yesterday, I talked about what I think is the most immediately mainstream-friendly app on the Magic Leap One is (Screens), and now we'll touch upon the runner-up: Helio.
News: Mercedes-Benz Shifts to HoloLens for Employee Training
Luxury automaker Mercedes-Benz has joined the growing list of automakers adopting augmented reality to provide an assist to its manufacturing operations, in this case, via the Microsoft HoloLens.
News: Magic Leap Unveils Two New Demos Showing How Spatial Computing Works
The long and slow road toward the actual release of the Magic Leap One appears to be accelerating, with a couple of new demonstrations of how the system works revealed in this week's creator's portal updates along with the company's developer documentation.
ARKit 101: How to Place a Group of Balloons Around You & Have Them Float Randomly Up into the Sky
Have you ever seen pictures or videos of balloons being let go into the sky and randomly floating away in all directions? It's something you often see in classic posters or movies. Well, guess what? Now you'll be able to do that without having to buy hundreds of balloons, all you'll need is ARKit!
Market Reality: Magic Leap Builds Content Arsenal, Unreal Engine Updates for Mobile AR, & AR Cloud Expands
If you're not impressed with the current crop of AR content, and you're worried this may put a damper on the industry's growth, these stories should give you cause for some optimism.
News: The Real Reason Android Phones with Notches Have a Chin
In 2018, notches are the hot trend with smartphones. Essential was first to release a phone with a notch in mid-2017, but Apple kicked off the fad in earnest with the iPhone X. Unfortunately, unlike the iPhone X, every Android phone with a notch has a noticeable bottom chin. Let's take a deep dive to find out why.
News: Leap Motion Concept Videos Imagine a World Where Augmented Reality & VR Merge
The shifting sands of immersive computing, currently fluctuating between augmented reality and virtual reality, can be hard to navigate if you're only versed in one of the platforms. But a new series of videos from Leap Motion paints a picture of a near future world in which AR and VR will seamlessly merge together, forcing us to change the way we see both.
Locking Down Linux: Using Ubuntu as Your Primary OS, Part 2 (Network Attack Defense)
After installing Ubuntu as your primary OS, you should have protected against USB Rubber Ducky payloads, defended against hard drive forensics, and reduced the overall attack surface against physical strikes. When defending against network-based attacks, you'll want to minimize hardware disclosures, prevent packet sniffers, harden firewall rules, and much more.
News: Niantic Partners with City Governments to Turn Pokémon GO into a Tool for Community Engagement
A new study published by American University demonstrates how Pokémon GO and other augmented reality games can help city governments bring communities closer together.
Hands-on: DreamGlass Looks Like a Cheaper, More Mobile Meta 2, But This Is What We Really Think After Trying It
Earlier this week, we told you about the new DreamGlass augmented reality headset from Dreamworld, a company started by a former Meta executive. The device looks great, and the features sound good, but is it worth your hard-earned cash? I recently took it for a brief spin to find out.
How To: Screen Time, App Limits & Downtime: How to Use iOS 12's New Parental Controls
Among iOS 11's many criticisms, one of the more surprising complaints came from parents worried that Apple wasn't doing enough to monitor and control their children's iPhone usage. Apple seems to have taken these issues to heart, as iOS 12 introduces new and improved parental controls to help encourage healthier mobile habits for kids.
News: Qualcomm Snapdragon XR1 Will Power New Augmented Reality Headsets from Meta & Vuzix
Confirming a previous report from last week, Qualcomm announced its Snapdragon X1 platform designed for augmented and virtual reality devices during an event at the Augmented World Expo in Santa Clara on Tuesday, with Meta and Vuzix among the first manufacturers to adopt it.
News: New 'Jurassic World Alive' AR Game Takes Everything Great About Pokémon Go & Adds Dinosaurs
The premise of Jurassic World revolves around splicing genes to create new dinosaurs, so it is fitting that the location-based AR game is a clone of Pokémon GO merged with the DNA of the Jurassic Park franchise.
Market Reality: Qualcomm & DigiLens Prepare Components for AR Wearables & Retailers Get an AR Reality Check
It will likely take a few more years before smartglasses are ready for primetime as component makers achieve the innovations necessary for consumer-centric device designs. Nevertheless, two technology companies are making steps in that direction as Qualcomm is rumored to be working on a chip dedicated to AR & VR headsets, while DigiLens has reduced the size of its waveguide displays for motorcycle helmets.
How To: Sideload Apps on Android 8.0 or Higher Now That 'Unknown Sources' Is Gone
Starting with Android 8.0 Oreo, the process of sideloading apps has changed dramatically. Google removed the old "Unknown Sources" setting and replaced it with a permission that you have to grant to individual apps. It's really an interesting security feature.
Google Chrome 101: How to Unlock the Material Design 2 User Interface with Round Icons & Blended Status Bar
Google's been using their "Material Design" look in Android for years now, but a change is coming up with "Material Design 2," their updated version focusing on new colors, icons, and spacing. Whether it'll be called "Material Design 2" or not remains to be seen, but you can try it out right now in Google Chrome on your Android device right now.
How To: Get the Blush Gold iPhone X — Announcement Date, Release Date & Where to Buy
Before the Sept. 2017 event held by Apple, we thought the new iPhone X would come in three different colors. While only a Space Gray and Silver option made it to the Nov. 2017 release, the missing third hue may finally be on its way, if the latest rumors are to be believed. If you can't wait for the new Blush Gold color, here's when and how you can expect to get your hands on one.