As the year comes to a close, we've invited some of the leaders of the AR industry to take the time to look back at the progress the AR industry has made while looking forward to what's ahead in 2020. A report on the top apps of 2019 — and the decade — also offers some insights on the progress and direction of mobile AR.
Investment in augmented reality remained robust in 2019. For the third consecutive year, we looked back on the biggest funding deals in the AR industry this week, and a familiar name came out on top.
Is the augmented reality magic fading down in Plantation, Florida? That's the first question some may be asking following a casual revelation over the weekend that Magic Leap, the maker of the Magic Leap One, has assigned much of its patent portfolio over to JP Morgan Chase as collateral.
Augmented reality plays a key role in the evolution of adjacent technologies, such as 5G connectivity and brain-control interfaces (BCI), and the business news of the week serves up proof points for both examples.
By default, WhatsApp chats are protected with end-to-end encryption, which means only the devices you send and receive messages to will be able to read your texts. But what if you want to go further? Well, soon, you'll be able to make sure nobody can read your messages after a certain period of time.
This time last year, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel and his company were faced with an erosion of its user base that cratered its stock price. This year, on the strength of Snapchat's AR camera effects, the company has reversed course. And that's why Spiegel tops the NR30, our annual list of the leaders in the AR industry.
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.
This week, while Apple was the subject of thinly sourced reports that it had canceled development of its oft-rumored smartglasses, the Cupertino was actually laying the foundation for its AR hardware future with a new initiative focused on mentoring Chinese developers in mobile AR development.
As much funding as Magic Leap has secured, another round of funding will still catch headlines. However, the latest funding solidifies the company's strategy for succeeding in the consumer segment of AR.
They say home is where the heart is. So, the opportunity to view the inner sanctum of Magic Leap is like gaining access to what makes the company tick, just as the fruits of its labor make it into select AT&T stores.
During Huawei's P30 smartphone launch event on Tuesday, the China-based company unveiled a surprise addition to its line-up: smartglasses.
While Magic Leap turned heads at the Game Developers Conference with AR experiences at the Unity and Unreal Engine booths, news broke that the company was the winning bidder for ODG's patents.
In the past, if you stumbled upon a Yelp listing you liked, you could bookmark it and check it out later on your profile. You can still take advantage of this feature in the mobile apps, but it's more refined now than it ever was thanks to Collections, a feature Yelp first added back in May 2018. You get more power over organizing, accessing, sharing, and discovering favorite businesses.
Before attacking any website, a hacker or penetration tester will first compile a list of target surfaces. After they've used some good recon and found the right places to point their scope at, they'll use a web server scanning tool such as Nikto for hunting down vulnerabilities that could be potential attack vectors.
Unless you're one of the world's top golfers, there's a good chance you are not stepping onto the fairways of Pebble Beach Golf Links this weekend.
Mixed reviews of Magic Leap One aside, it would be hard to deny that Magic Leap has had a big year. And the AR unicorn isn't coasting to the finish line, with a number of new apps dropping and prescription frames finally arriving to bring relief to those who wear eyeglasses.
Signaling a new direction forward for the company, Magic Leap shook up its executive suite by re-assigning to top leaders to new advisory roles. Meanwhile, a new startup backed by Hollywood executives, tech venture firms, and notable angel investors plans to bring new life to AR for marketing entertainment properties.
This week, at its developer's conference, Samsung took the wraps off a new tool from Wacom that bestows the S-Pen with AR powers, as well as its own entry to the AR cloud market called Project Whare.
The iPhone XS, XS Max, and XR aren't the newest devices from Apple Inc., but all three have a serious problem in Messages. When sending a friend an SMS/MMS text rather than an iMessage, the phrase "Number changed to Primary" appears in front of every message. What gives? If this issue is driving you mad, there are a few tricks that may exterminate the bug until Apple gets around to issuing a patch.
If you use Apple's email services and the "From:" field in your iPhone's Mail app is cluttered with @Mac.com, @Me.com, and @iCloud.com variations of the same address — along with third-party accounts — there's an easy way to declutter things and hide the addresses you don't use anymore.
One could argue that, at least for the moment, software development is more important to the augmented reality experience than hardware. Since a viable augmented reality headset has yet to emerge for the broader, mainstream consumer market, currently, the same devices that make texting and selfies possible are leading the charge to enable easy-to-use AR experiences.
Apple often cites its tight integration of hardware and software for its success. Startup Illumix is looking to do the same thing for AR gaming by building an AR platform for its apps.
After months of beta testing, Siri Shortcuts has finally arrived on all iPhones that support iOS 12. Anyone familiar with Workflow will understand how useful it is to set custom Siri commands for your favorite apps. Of course, your favorite apps need to be compatible with Shortcuts in order to take advantage of the new feature.
Apple released the eleventh developer beta for iOS 12 to registered software testers on Monday, Aug. 27, only four days after the company unexpectedly released both dev beta 10 and public beta 8. Apple has ramped up its beta release schedule as of late, offering minor updates twice a week in the lead-up to iOS 12's official debut in a few weeks.
Although the Magic Leap One: Creators Edition is currently officially available in only six US cities, those living outside of Magic Leap's designed US cities now have a roundabout way to order the device.
Apple released iOS 12 beta 9 to developers on Monday, August 20. The company seeded the update just five days after releasing dev beta 8 to testers, itself a quick replacement for the problematic beta 7. This update was followed closely by public beta 7, confirming Apple's new same-day release schedule for both developer and public betas.
Since getting our hands on the Magic Leap One last week, we've been methodically delving into each feature and reporting our findings step-by-step. Earlier this week, we took a look at the Screens app (a video viewer) and the Helio app (an AR web browser). This time around, we'll be digging into the Create app, the experience that allows you to fill the real world with objects that transform the nature of your local reality.
The hype train that left the station years ago has reached its first stop, and now we finally have access to the Magic Leap One, the device many have claimed would revolutionize the augmented reality space at launch. But is that really true?
With the rise of website encryption (TLS), sniffing passwords from network activity has become difficult. However, it's still possible to quietly exfiltrate a target's network traffic in real time to extract passwords and sensitive information. Pertaining to macOS, there are two methods for retrieving traffic from a backdoored Mac.
Leaked databases get passed around the internet and no one seems to notice. We've become desensitized to the data breaches that occur on a daily basis because it happens so frequently. Join me as I illustrate why reusing passwords across multiple websites is a truly awful practice — and compromise hundreds of social media accounts in the process.
US customers might soon get access to their first Xiaomi smartphone. The fourth largest OEM has been eyeing a US launch for years, with rumors indicating a debut by Q1 2019. Now, it looks like the Mi 8 Anniversary Edition will be the first device.
Thanks to its intuitive interface that makes sending and receiving money a breeze, Venmo has become the go-to app for millions in the US. In fact, you've probably heard the term "Venmo you" being tossed around between friends. But before you take the plunge and sign up, it's always a good idea to read the fine print and know what you're getting into. Money is involved, after all.
Traditional subdomain enumeration techniques create a lot of noise on the target server and may alert intrusion detection systems to an attacker's intentions. For a stealthier approach, there's a tool with the capability of finding hundreds of subdomains related to the target website without alarming the server administrators.
Chrome is the browser of choice for millions of iPhone and Android users, largely thanks to its user-friendly interface and native Google support. But with concerns over sharing private information with massive companies growing, many people are starting to want a little less Google integration in Chrome.
The microphone in a Windows computer is accessible to most applications running on the device at all times and completely without security limitations. Information gathered from recorded audio conversations taking place in the surrounding area of a compromised computer can be used for social engineering, blackmail, or any number of other reasons.
Kali Linux is known as being the de facto penetration-testing Linux distribution but can be a pain to use as an everyday OS — even more of a pain if that means carrying around a second laptop or the constant frustration of using the finicky Wi-Fi on virtual machines. But there's another option: installing a Kali subsystem on your Windows computer as a convenient compromise.
With the reveal of Magic Leap's developer documentation last week, many questions have been answered—and several new ones have been raised as well. But since the Magic Leap One (ML1) isn't simply called the "Leap One," these are questions that the company probably has no interest (at least for now) in answering. Understandably, Magic Leap wants to keep some of the "magic" under wraps.
The default Camera app got a few more tricks up its sleeves when iOS 11 was released, and the best addition by far was the inclusion of a built-in QR code reader since that meant no more third-party apps just for QR code scanning. However, Apple's built-in QR code scanner did have a vulnerability at one point that would let hackers direct you to a compromised website without you even noticing it.
Earlier this year, Nokia released the Nokia 8 Sirrocco overseas. The new device served as an upgrade to the 2017 model with a minor specs bump and a more modern design. However, HMD isn't done with the 8 series. A rumored Pro version is coming later this year that brings innovations the iconic brand is known for.
Samsung Internet offers excellent features that enhance the mobile web browsing experience, often through its extensions. A QR code scanner, ad blockers, tracker blockers, and more work directly in the browser, so you can do exactly what you want to do on the web.
