News: Snapchat Adds Speech-Activated Lenses to Its Augmented Reality Capabilities
Snapchat users are used to raising their eyebrows or opening their mouths to activate augmented reality face effects. Now, they get to use their voices as well.
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News: The ASUS ZenFone 5Z Is Coming to the US with Legit Flagship Specs for Under $500
After first being announced at Mobile World Congress 2018, the ASUS ZenFone 5Z will finally be coming to the US. Deemed an iPhone X clone by some, there is more than meets the eye when it comes to this flasghip. While it is similar to the iPhone X, in some ways, it improves on the design.
News: Snapchat Preparing to Upgrade Camera with Visual Search for Amazon, Report Says
A peek inside the code of the Snapchat app has revealed that the company is expanding the search capabilities of its augmented reality camera to include visual search that may link to items within Amazon's massive online store.
News: Motion Capture via iPhone X Is Available to Animators Now Through Live Face App
While 3D motion capture via iPhone X is coming soon from Unity, software maker Reallusion offers similar functionality to 3D model animation producers today.
News: Microsoft Opens Access to Sensor Data on the HoloLens with 'Research Mode' Update
The addition of a new research mode for Microsoft HoloLens will enable researchers and developers to tap into a wider range of data collected by the device's sensors.
How To: Access Your Photo Library in Messages for iOS 12 to Send Already Taken Pics & Vids
Ever since 2009, you could send a photo or video that you've already taken right from the Messages app on your iPhone. You would just tap on the camera icon next to the new message box, then choose either to take a new one or select one from your library. If you're running iOS 12, that's no longer the case, but that doesn't mean the capability is gone entirely.
News: The One Thing That Sucks About iOS 12's New Snapchat-Like Camera Effects for iPhone
In iOS 12, Apple included new, Snapchat-like effects and stickers for photos and videos in Messages. While these new options are fun, they're missing something that takes away from the appeal, especially since Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, and similar apps already let you do it.
News: Snow App Brings Animoji Alternative to Everyone with a Smartphone
Augmented reality avatars that mimic facial expressions are no longer the exclusive province of Animojis on the iPhone X or AR Emojis from Samsung. Camera app Snow has added its own alternative to Apple and Samsung's features, which it also calls AR Emoji, for iOS and Android.
News: Fantasmo Wants to Map the World & Its Buildings in 3D with Your Smartphone's Camera
Another AR cloud savior has emerged this week in Fantasmo, a startup that wants to turn anyone with a smartphone into a cartographer for spatial maps.
News: Facebook Camera Can Now Change Your World into an AR Paint Canvas
For social media platforms like Facebook, augmented reality represents a whole new art form with which users can express themselves online. Now, Facebook is giving those users a new brush.
News: Snapchat Refocuses on Its Camera & AR Magic in New Marketing Push
With a fresh series of videos and a new webpage, Snapchat has composed an answer to its own question, "What is Snapchat?"
News: Snap Inc. Planning Smartglasses Version of Spectacles for 2019, Report Says
What many thought was inevitable, based on recent hints, has been revealed to be in the planning stages: Snapchat is working on smartglasses. The surprising information came out on March 2 in a report that also claims Snap Inc. is planning to release version two of its Spectacles product in the third quarter of 2018.
Snapchat 101: How to Use 3D Friendmojis to Interact with Friends' Bitmojis in Augmented Reality
Snap Inc.'s dedication to augmented reality has expanded the world lenses in Snapchat to our own Bitmojis. While it's great to see our characters interacting with real environments, we haven't seen them connect to other Bitmoji in AR space. That all changes with "3D Friendmojis," a lens from Snapchat that lets you stage scenes between your Bitmoji and a friend's.
How To: Make an AR Emoji with the Galaxy S9
Apple's Animoji on the iPhone X might allow you to use your own facial movements to control your favorite emoji, but Samsung is looking to make you the focus of the interactive icon with the introduction of AR Emoji. Instead of a dragon or an alien, Samsung wants your unique look to define your avatar.
News: Everything on the Galaxy S9+ That You'll Be Missing with the Regular S9
The S9 and S9+ are both fantastic phones. However, there's no getting around the fact that the S9+ has its advantages. In fact, it's an objectively better smartphone than its smaller counterpart — Samsung has given the S9+ features not found in the S9, meaning you'll be missing out if you choose the 5.8" Galaxy over the 6.2".
News: Should You Upgrade to the Galaxy S9 from Your S8?
Sure, you just got your Galaxy S8. But now, Samsung came out with their latest and greatest device — the Galaxy S9. While the S8 is still a great device, it's possible that the Galaxy S9 completely outclasses it, almost forcing you to pick it up. It is worth it though? That's a harder question to answer than you may think.
News: A Return to Glory? HTC Releases the U12+ with 4 Cameras, Edge-to-Edge Display & Edge Sense 2
2017 was a down year for HTC. First, the U11 and U Ultra were widely criticized. Later, Google purchased a large chunk of HTC's manufacturing division, leaving the Taiwanese company running with a skeleton crew after losing 2,000 key employees. But that's not stopping HTC — their flagship U12+ was just announced, and it's quite impressive.
News: Forget Face Masks, Facebook Is Working on Full-Body AR Camera Effects
Facebook may have shamelessly copied Snapchat and its camera effects for faces (as well as its World Lenses), but it might beat its social media competitor to virtual body augmentation.
News: This App Turns the iPhone X into an AR Face-Painting Booth
Thanks to Face Maker, a new app for the iPhone X, children everywhere can now avoid the trauma of face painting.
Snapchat 101: How to Use Memories to Save Snaps, Edit Old Snaps & More
Snapchat is an app built on sending quick-to-disappear pictures to your friends and family. Sure, this is the primary function of the app, but sometimes users want longer-lasting Memories while interacting with Snapchat. While My Story allows snaps to stick around for 24 hours, they still disappear in time. This is where Memories come in handy.
News: 100+ Apps iOS Users Need on Their iPhones in 2018
While there aren't as many ways to customize your iPhone like there is on Android, there are still a lot of apps out there that can help streamline and enhance your experience beyond Apple's own default options — and we've hand-picked over 100 essentials.
Coming Sept. 12: iPhone XS, XS Max & iPhone XR — Everything We Know So Far About Apple's 2018 Lineup
The iPhone X was released in November 2017, and the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus dropped right before it, but the hottest news right now revolves around the 2018 iPhone releases. The rumor mill regarding the iPhone X's successor started churning out speculations on names, cameras, display size, and more almost immediately after last year's devices, and there have been many new leaked details since.
How To: Hide DDE-Based Attacks in MS Word
In a previous article, we learned how to take advantage of a feature, Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE), to run malicious code when a Microsoft Word document is opened. The biggest challenge of this attack is that it requires getting the user to agree to a pop-up prompt. Fortunately, since I posted that article, many new obfuscation techniques have been discovered to make this easier. Today, we explore and combine some of them to make the ultimate hidden DDE attack.
News: You're About to See More AR Ads in Your Mobile Browser, Thanks to Vertebrae
Immersive advertising company Vertebrae has extended its native ad platform to augmented reality via mobile Chrome browsers for Android and Safari for iPhone.
News: Huawei Flexes Their AR Muscles with AI-Infused Kirin 970
Over the weekend at IFA 2017 in Berlin, Huawei introduced the Kirin 970 processor, the first of its kind to include artificial intelligence baked into the chip.
News: Qualcomm and Himax Align to Advance AR Hardware with 3D Camera Sensor
Two companies behind a number of augmented reality devices have joined forces to develop a 3D depth-sensing camera system that will facilitate computer vision capabilities for augmented/virtual reality experiences and more.
Apple AR: ARKit Turns Artist's Apartment into Fight Club's IKEA Scene
At the risk of breaking a few rules, we're going to talk about Fight Club. More specifically, digital artist Mateusz "Marpi" Marcinowski has mimicked a scene from the movie using Apple's ARKit.
How To: Import Your Photos into Snapseed & Get Them Ready for Editing
If you've ever wondered how to import your photos in Snapseed, then you've come to the right place. Snapseed is a wonderful photo-editing app and will provide you with many tools to take your photos to the next level. But you can't get to that next level if you don't know how to get your images into Snapseed in the first place.
News: iOS 11 Adds OIS, Flash & HDR Support to Portrait Mode on the iPhone 7 Plus
Arguably the most impressive aspect of the iPhone 7 Plus is its dual-lens camera, or better yet, the Portrait mode that comes with it. This mode creates a dramatically shallow depth of field behind a subject, and was pretty impressive as is. Now, in iOS 11, Apple is making it even better with support for more camera options.
News: You Better Be Camera Ready to Board Your Next JetBlue Flight
If you thought the selfie would only ever be used to bombard your feed on Instagram, you were wrong. Dead wrong. JetBlue is looking to take those selfies and use them to check you in for your next flight.
Not Hotdog: Try the Silicon Valley SeeFood App on Android
If you're a tech enthusiast, there's no way you're not watching HBO's Silicon Valley. So you surely know the Pied Piper crew's latest shenanigans involve an app that uses a phone's camera to find facts about food items — a sort of Shazaam for food, if you may.
SafetyNet Explained: Why SafetyNet Shows That Google Actually Cares About Android Root
Put yourself in Google's shoes: You know that business is becoming increasingly mobile, but the mobile operating system you maintain is wide open by design, and it's garnered legions of loyal fans that love to explore and exploit every aspect of it. There's a clear conflict of interest developing.
How To: 3 Ways to Unlock Your Samsung Galaxy S8 Faster — Without Using the Fingerprint Scanner
A great many S8 and S8+ users have undoubtedly spent quite a bit of time figuring out ways to unlock their new Galaxy in as few steps as possible. One of the most endearing features of previous Galaxy models was the ability to unlock the phone by pressing the home button and momentarily leaving your finger there for the sensor to do its job, almost instantaneously opening the device — all without having to pick up the phone.
News: T-Mobile & ZTE Add New Entries in the Budget Phone Race
The battle of the budget phone is well and truly underway, as both T-Mobile and ZTE have launched affordable new devices simultaneously.
News: Facebook Copies Snapchat Again by Putting Augmented Reality Camera Filters in the Main Facebook App
Facebook is aware that Snapchat is killing the social media game amongst the youths, which makes sense, because in 2017, video is king in social media currency. Facebook has continually shown that Mark Zuckerberg and crew seem to think the best strategy to keep up is to simply copy them.
News: Intel Steps Up to Driverless with $15 Billion Acquisition of Mobileye
In a race to make self-driven cars mainstream, Intel announced today that they've bought Israeli microchip technology company Mobileye for $15.3 billion, setting the stage for Intel to dominate a large portion of the driverless market.
How To: Turn Off Your iPhone's Flashlight Faster (Without Using the Control Center)
If you're tired of fumbling with the Control Center every time you need to turn off your iPhone's LED flashlight, you'll be happy to know there's a faster way. Using a simple trick that was discovered by Redditor 49599066, you can actually toggle your flashlight off in less than a second in iOS 10 and higher.
News: Meet the New Moto G5 & Moto G5 Plus—Budget Phones with a Premium Build
Lenovo, the company that now owns Motorola, just announced two new entries in their wildly successful midrange Moto G series. The Moto G5, and its bigger brother, the Moto G5 Plus, were both shown off in detail at Mobile World Congress 2017 in Barcelona, Spain.
How To: The 5 Best Phones for Video Chat
Video chatting has become an important factor in the overall smartphone experience. Even just a few years ago, 37% of teens were making video calls on a regular basis, and that number has surely grown. 85% of households with infants have used video chat apps to call relatives in other cities, and it's been shown that toddlers can create bonds and learn from visual cues in video calls.
Video: How the Google Pixel's Image Stabilization Stacks Up to the Nexus 6P
Walking while taking a video is always a pain. But it doesn't have to be, especially with Google's new Pixel smartphone and its new and improved Electronic Image Stabilization (EIS) feature. A new video, released on Reddit, pitted the Pixel's EIS against the Nexus 6P with some incredible results.