We know your time is valuable to you, so starting this week — and continuing every Wednesday — we are going to release weekly Dev Reports that quickly highlight important news and updates that augmented and mixed reality developers should know about.
As someone who grew up adamantly complaining every time my parents dared to turn on talk radio in the car, I can admit it's a bit weird that I have a love affair with podcasts. I can't help it! Even though podcasts are essentially the modern-day customizable talk radio, I choose to defend my all-out obsession with pointing out how popular they are (I mean, SNL even picked up on the trend).
Now you can watch your old copy of Bridget Jones's Diary anywhere, anytime, on your smartphone. It's a dream come true! (Disclaimer: This dream may oddly specific to me.)
The LG V20 is a true audiophile's phone when it comes to playing music through headphones, but it only has a single bottom-firing mono speaker. So even though the V20 has received plenty of praise for its overall audio experience, that single built-in speaker ruins the fun by putting out some shoddy and cheap-sounding audio.
The LG V20 went on sale on September 29, 2016, and is the second flagship phone in the V series to be released by LG. Both the V20 and its predecessor, the V10, have been audio-oriented phones from the start, but the V20 has a much nicer Hi-Fi Quad 32-Bit DAC, which makes the output audio from the 3.5 mm headphone jack sound amazing. It's loud, it's crisp, it's full, and everything from the higher frequencies to the lower ones can be heard.
In recent years, wave after wave of technological advancement has led us down roads that are beginning to look more and more like science fiction stories. In their efforts to bring us from science fiction to science fact, Microsoft Research showed us a new communication medium called Holoportation earlier this year—and now they have found a way to make this highly complex holographic system far more mobile.
If you've ever wondered why the pictures and videos you share with Snapchat on your Android device seem to look grainy with low resolution, you're not alone. We all know it, and we've come to accept it as a plain fact: Snapchat image quality sucks on Android.
HoloTube, a new unofficial YouTube app for the Microsoft HoloLens, brings a whole bunch of new content to the mixed reality headset. While it's nice to have, the experience feels focused on quantity, not quality. HoloTube has a simple interface most people will recognize. You get a page of video categories, and as you drill down through each option you're presented with videos to watch. You can view regular, flat videos on the wall (or wherever you like)—which has its merits.
There is a huge myth that most Americans believe, and it might be the marketing triumph of the 20th century. We pay an absurd markup (Zero Hedge says as much as 280,000% for "designer" water) on something we can get for free because most of us believe that bottled water is healthier than tap water. But is it? Here are 5 reasons why tap water is probably better than that bottled stuff you drink. 1. It's Not Cleaner (& Might Be Dirtier) Than Your Tap Water
Google made a huge splash this year in their annual Google I/O with an awesome announcement regarding their Photos app. Although I was primarily interested in the details surrounding Android M, my ears instantly perked up when Google announced that their Photos app will now offer free, unlimited, high-quality storage.
Ask 100 chefs what the most important tool in their kitchen is, and you'll get 100 chefs saying the exact same thing: their set of knives. For home cooks and professional chefs alike, nothing is more important (or exciting) than a good knife. A good knife allows you to work more quickly, more efficiently, more consistently, and more safely. And best of all, they're just a lot of fun.
I know people who hate mayonnaise. I know people who detest ketchup. But I know almost no one that hates mustard, and that's because mustard has a complexity and depth that bland mayo and ketchup do not. Mustard runs the gamut from smooth and subtle to sharp and spicy, especially when you know how to make your own.
These last few months have been a Lollipop lovefest, and I'm not talking about the candy. Android's latest OS has been exalted for its embrace of Material Design, and we've certainly given Lollipop its fair share of coverage as well; check out all its new features and ways to make older devices get some of the new look and feel of Android 5.0.
Coffee lovers take their beverage of choice seriously. Some even go out of their way to find their own kopi luwak (cat poop coffee) just to see if it lives up to all the hype.
At the end of an all-day affair with friends or family, I'll unwind and go through all the pictures I took that day as a sort of recap. All too often, though, I'll come across a few that are almost perfect, except I didn't quite position my phone well enough, leaving someone's face cutoff or too much space to one side of the image. It's a fail of a basic and crucial tenet of photography—framing.
Butter can be even more delicious than it already is. While that may be a shocking claim, it's most definitely true. Many new cooks and even seasoned chefs don't realize this, but the few minutes it takes to do these things will pay you back exponentially when it comes to that buttery taste.
Netflix releases monthly reports on major ISPs relating to how well their service works on each provider. The purpose is to educate the public on their choice of service provider, but since many of us hardly have any choice at all when is comes to an ISP, it backhandedly works to shame them (if they're even capable of feeling shame under all those millions of dollars).
Even though I often end the workday exhausted and just want to wrap rotisserie chicken parts in a store-bought tortilla and shove it in my eating hole, I generally try and take a couple of minutes to warm up said tortillas before I begin my meal. But if you're starving, do you really need to take the time? Do warm tortillas really make that much of a difference?
Things smell, and whether or not those things smell good or not is up to you. For lingering food odors on your hands, try using stainless steel or coffee grounds to remove the stench. To de-stink smelly jars, use mustard and water. For cutting boards, use lemons and salt, and use cinnamon and sugar for your funky kitchen. In your fridge, combine baking soda and a sponge, or even just orange peels and salt.
Now that Hangouts is Android's default messaging app, it's given us a lot of cool new features. A bouncing ellipsis lets you see when the other party is typing, and an indicator shows you whether they've read your message or not. You can even answer the age-old question of "Where you at?" with a tap of a button, sending a map of your location.
While the legality of secretly recording phone calls varies in each country, sometimes it's useful to have audio documentation of conversations you have on your Samsung Galaxy Note 2.
When most people think of stained glass, the first thing that comes to mind is a church, but it's become more popular in home decor as well. The biggest downside is that high quality stained glass pieces can be insanely expensive—and it's not an easy project to take on yourself.
These three videos will show you how to build a rustic, distressed kitchen table. I'll be walking you through the process of selecting some recycled timber from a junk pile, and with a little care and some simple joinery techniques, transform that waste timber into a distressed timber kitchen or dining table. In fact, you could use the table for whatever you wanted really.
When the time comes to move home, the logistics of moving your belongings can easily become tiresome, tricky and even disastrous. However, with a little careful planning and foresight, the act of packing can be a simple process. The key to getting the most from your move is in efficiency, planning and care. Here, we take a look at the best ways to pack in order to ensure a safe and simple move.
You want to know the real reason you pay so much money to dine at four and five-star restaurants? Well, the quality of the food is obviously a factor. But the biggest discrepancy is quite simply the presentation. Order something as simple as pan-seared tuna with sesame seeds and it'll come drizzled in a posmodernist Pollock-esque pattern of soy sauce and a miniature dragon made out of a carrot. It's pretty impressive stuff, almost as impressive as what your bill will be.
GarageBand is a great tool for composing your own beats and jingles, but when it comes to filters, it's not so easy to understand exactly what they do, as in the case of the AUBandpass filter. This video explains exactly what the AUBandpass feature does in GarageBand and how it can be used to make quality-sounding instrumentals for you beat projects.
You know how sometimes you'll look up a recipe from a famous chef, and then when you take a gander at the ingredients list it looks longer than the last "Harry Potter" book? Complex, "high art" dishes sometimes do requires what seems like a million ingredients - and precise stirring and heating times - to accomplish.
Facials are like magical wonders in a jar - slather some on at home, or get one professionally done at a spa, and you instantly go from tired and beat to a girl ready to take on the world. But purchasing a spa-quality facial, or even buying a "facial in a jar" at a store, can cost quite a lot of money.
Stir frying doesn't just mean "toss whatever you have lying around into the pan and add oil." In fact, stir frying is a precise art that requires control of quantity of ingredients, the right shape of pan (a wok is preferred), and a non-stick pan in order to produce the perfect quality result.
Need a hairstyle that'll wear well throughout the day, or even look better as the day goes on? It's not fiction; with this low ponytail it's reality.
If you're a steak lover then you know you have to whip out a nice portion of your paycheck to get a quality steak, especially if you're at a five-star restaurant. But with steaks costing upwards of $70 a piece, why not just make some at home to save your hard-earned cash?
In this clip, you'll learn how to overcrank footage from a Canon DSLR camera like the 7D or T2i to a lower frame rate for a high-quality slow-motion effect. Whether you're new to Adobe's popular motion graphics and compositing software or a seasoned video professional just looking to better acquaint yourself with the program and its various features and filters, you're sure to be well served by this video tutorial. For more information, including detailed, step-by-step instructions, watch thi...
This clip presents a guide to overcranking footage shot on a Canon DSLR camera like the 7D or T2i to a lower frame rate for a high-quality slow-motion effect. Whether you're new to Adobe's popular motion graphics and compositing software or a seasoned video professional just looking to better acquaint yourself with the program and its various features and filters, you're sure to be well served by this video tutorial. For more information, including detailed, step-by-step instructions, watch t...
Merrill offers up some of this best tips for making your works of art more realistic. There's three very important strategies for improving your the lifelike quality of your drawings and paintings, and in this video, he demonstrates them for you.
Want to make your ukulele sing the blues? In this clip, you'll learn how to create and play blues-style solos on the uke. If you want to get really good at playing the ukulele, it stands to reason that you'll need to practice. Happily, the Internet is awash in high-quality video lessons like this one from the folks at Ukulele Underground. For more information, including a step-by-step overview, watch this free video ukulele tutorial.
In this clip, you'll learn how to warm up your thumb and pointer fingers with a simple scale-based picking exercise for the uke. If you want to get really good at playing the ukulele, it stands to reason that you'll need to practice. Happily, the Internet is awash in high-quality video lessons like this one from the folks at Ukulele Underground. For more information, including a step-by-step overview, watch this free video ukulele tutorial.
Quite honestly we're sick of getting storebought Christmas cards. Not that we don't appreciate them - many are pretty and well-written, it's just that we have received copycats in the past and they're too mass-produced to maintain any sort of special quality.
Not all of us have an entire photo studio in our houses. In fact, unless you're a professional photographer, you probably don't have much space at all in which to create solid looking shots.
In this free video language lesson, you'll learn how to ask how to say the Spanish words for the numbers zero, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine and ten. Interested in learning Spanish but haven't got the time to take a weekly class? No problemo! The Internet is awash in free, high-quality video lessons like this one. For more information, and to get started using this phrase yourself, watch this helpful video guide for Spanish students.
In this free video language lesson, you'll learn how to ask how to tell someone that it's nice to meet him or her. Interested in learning Spanish but haven't got the time to take a weekly class? No problemo! The Internet is awash in free, high-quality video lessons like this one. For more information, and to get started using this phrase yourself, watch this helpful video guide for Spanish students.
