It doesn't matter how cool or groundbreaking a particular technology is, if it doesn't offer the promise of big returns on investments, you'll have trouble drawing interest from both Silicon Valley and Wall Street. That's why we're increasingly seeing existing augmented reality players doing everything they can to focus in on revenue generation, which was the message coming from Snap Inc. this week.
PUBG is currently taking the mobile world by storm, and it's easy to see why. The game has breathed much-needed life to the multiplayer shooting genre, primarily by adding an element of sheer terror as you scavenge for weapons in a hostile environment. With new players continually joining in on the fun, many players are looking for ways to gain an edge.
Although more and more smartphones are introducing portrait modes with their cameras, there are still plenty of devices out there — especially devices older than one or two years — that do not. While your particular smartphone might not offer you that bokeh effect, Instagram can, as it gives all smartphones software-based portrait modes.
The research team at Google has found yet another way for machine learning to simplify time-intensive tasks, and this one could eventually facilitate Star Wars-like holographic video.
Move over, Hype Williams, it looks like Snapchat is about to take some of your music video-making business, and pop rock group Maroon 5 is the proof.
Lost among the latest laptops, smart assistants, VR headsets, and Motorola-branded gadgets that it brought to CES 2018, Lenovo has also introduced a new pair of augmented reality smartglasses.
To create a destination for coffee connoisseurs, Starbucks has ordered up a venti cup of augmented reality to make the visit more interactive.
An AR/VR developer has managed to use the iPhone X to transport players into an emulation of the classic '90s video game Star Fox as the game's antagonist.
Face ID is one of the big selling points of the iPhone X, and the reception has been fairly positive so far. It's pretty impressive to watch the iPhone X magically unlock just by looking at it, but it's even more impressive to see how Face ID works its magic.
While not specifically an augmented reality conference, IFA 2017 packed a plethora of presentations with AR themes, including devices with AR features from Sony and Motorola, a smartphone-based AR headset from Lenovo, and a new processor from Huawei that will facilitate AR experiences.
If you've ever wanted to hone your paintball skills, without spending a ton of money and making a huge mess, Show Me Virtual and Apple's ARKit have an app for you.
Andrew Mucci, a New Jersey-based vlogger who is also Social Media Coordinator at Sennheiser, likes to use Instagram not only as a platform for the brand but also as a place to experiment with content on his own account.
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.
San Francisco-based startup AstroReality is putting the AR in lunar with a high-detailed model of the moon that comes to life through an accompanying augmented reality mobile app.
What began as a highly successful Kickstarter campaign has all but ended, according to an updated report by Polygon. CastAR, comprised of a few people from Valve's former research and hacking arm, has released a large portion of their team. Only a small core of the group remains, trying to sell the technology they have created.
Legacy Games, developer of mobile games for children, has just updated Crayola Color Blaster, an augmented reality Android adventure for Google Tango devices, with new content.
Joyce Kuo of Nijie Technology released a video showing a group fighting it out Dragon Ball Z-style in a restaurant, but instead of Goku, Piccolo or Vegeta, we have two horse-headed young ladies shooting fire and other elements at each other.
As we slowly approach its January 3 start date, CES 2017 seems to be shaping up to be an exciting year for smart glasses as well as augmented and mixed reality.
If we learned anything from Mulan, it's that "the flower that blooms in adversity is the most rare and beautiful of them all." Well, these have been a trying couple of weeks in the US, hence the need for a blooming marshmallow flower.
HoloMaps, an application by Seattle-based Taqtile, is available for free on the Windows Store. Taqtile, whose Vice President of Product Management was Microsoft's former Director of Business Development, is one of the few partners currently in the Microsoft HoloLens Agency Readiness Program. This interactive 3D map they have created, powered by Bing, offers more than just a top-down view of the world on the HoloLens.
Do I really need to tell you that it's a bad idea to play Pokémon GO while you're driving? I really hope it's not necessary, but just in case it is, here you go: It's a bad idea to play Pokémon GO while you're driving.
The iPhone 6s models introduced Live Photos in iOS 9, a cool new camera feature that takes a GIF-esque moving image every time you snap a pic, but the cool factor pretty much stopped right there. You couldn't take them on older iOS devices, share them with non-iOS users, or even edit them.
Mixed reality filmmaking isn't a new concept. Disney managed to make it work in 1988 with Who Framed Roger Rabbit, but not without an enormous amount of work. We haven't seen many mixed reality films of that scope since, and perhaps that's because it's still hard to accomplish. Filmmakers don't look through a viewfinder or monitor and see the fully rendered result on screen—but that can change with mixed reality headsets like the HoloLens.
After a successful Kickstarter campaign, a new smartphone manufacturer named Nextbit emerged, then released its first flagship device—the Nextbit Robin. The headlining feature of this colorful gadget is its cloud-based app storage, but the phone itself comes with a very polished and sophisticated suite of software.
Google Camera, the default shooting app on Nexus devices, is finally getting a feature we've been anticipating for years. As evidenced by a recent APK teardown done by Android Police, the beginnings of a new RAW capture mode have already been baked into the latest version of the app, which indicates that Google Camera will soon have the ability to store an unprocessed copy of the exact image your camera sensor captures.
Facebook announced at its F8 Developer's Conference on April 12th that, in addition to the VR-ready Oculus Rift we have today, it plans to bring Augmented Reality (AR) into the fold of their social machine.
Another day, another company hopping on the virtual reality bandwagon. Today, it's fast food behemoth McDonald's, which is testing limited edition Happy Meal boxes that you can turn into a VR headset by punching out a couple holes and tearing along a few perforated seams. The resulting headset is a lot like Google Cardboard, with the lingering scent of fry grease.
Even though the 88th Academy Awards have come and gone, there's a good chance you still haven't seen all the films that were nominated—or even those that won big.
LG is set to launch its G5 handset on February 21st at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. This shouldn't be too much of a surprise, but images of the G5 have now been leaked ahead of the event by Evan Blass (@evleaks). This image shows that the handset will indeed have two lenses on its rear-facing camera so that you can shoot wide-angle 135º photos.
February 21st is going to be a busy day for Android smartphones. Samsung has already scheduled its "Unpacked" event to show off their new Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge handsets, and now LG is joining in on the action, as it will unveil the G5 on the same day, at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
Sony Corp. is working on new battery technology that the company says would have a 40% longer life than a lithium-ion battery of the same size. Sony is planning to have the higher-capacity batteries on the market around 2020.
For some time now, iPhone owners have been able to use Siri to listen to and reply to text messages, but that functionality has been lacking on Android. That is, until Google silently rolled out a similar feature for Google Now (thanks to Android Police for the tip).
Mockingjay - Part 2, the final film in the Hunger Games series, hits theaters next month, and what better way to celebrate one of the series' most fabulous characters than with an over-the-top costume this Halloween?
Snapchat has built upon the photo-sharing service it once was to become a money-sending, commercial-shelling, video-messaging giant. They improved their user experience by adding Stories, Geofilters, and even the rarely-used Snapcash feature, but why isn't there something as simple as color filters? Yes, they have filters for black and white, saturated, and sepia, but that's it as far as color goes.
Mother Nature's creativity is infinite, especially when it comes to fruit. We've got black sapote, which tastes like chocolate pudding, and Buddha's hand citron, which looks like Freddy Kreuger's digits merged with a lemon. How could she possibly top herself?
Whether you love or hate wearing high heels, a pair of stilettos can be incredibly painful. You can feel blisters, searing pain, pressure, and stabbing aches long after you kick off those heels, but a really simple trick could help alleviate some of the issues caused by tight-fitting, wobbly shoes. According to Kat Collings of Who What Wear, taping your third and fourth toes (if counting away from the big toe) together with tape will reduce the amount of pain you feel in the ball of your foot...
If you're a Trekkie, you might be surprised to find that Spock's popular Vulcan salute can actually be used as an emoji on your iPhone. With the public release of iOS 8.3, you'll now have updated unicode for more diverse emojis.
Serving as the primary tool of distribution for many websites, social media is how most of us catch up what's going on around the world. While there is a bunch of clickbait going around on Facebook and Twitter, there are plenty of genuinely interesting articles being shared.
Using a timer to take a photo is great if you're looking for a quick workout. You have to prop up your phone, frame your shot, set the timer, and sprint to get into the frame. Then when you realize your position was a little bit off, you have to reset the timer and jump back in—over and over again until you get the photograph right.
If you've had your Gmail account for awhile, it's probably a cluttered mess thanks to unread messages, out-of-control newsletters, and never-ending email threads. This is one of the main reasons for the creation of Google's streamlined Inbox service, but the adoption rate for it hasn't indicated a huge shift over for most of us yet (partly because it's invite-only still).
