Magic Leap is no stranger to hype and speculative advancement—when their name pops up in the news, all focus turns to them. And the company is making news again this week, with the knowledge of an acquisition of a startup founded by former Apple employees, and by hiring animators from an Emmy and Oscar award-winning studio.
If there's one thing entertainment companies love, it's rebooting aging franchises. But design firm Globacore Interactive Technologies appears to have taken rebooting to the next level by remaking the classic '90s game Lemmings specifically to work on the HoloLens, Microsoft's mixed reality headset.
It appears a privacy lawsuit that began five years ago is about to come to an end, and you might get some money out of it.
It's happened to all iOS users: You're talking to a friend or watching TV, and all of a sudden, you hear "I'm not quite sure what you've said." Apparently, your phone heard something that resembled "Hey, Siri," and activated the assistant. But now, thanks to a new patent from Apple, the days of unexpected Siri may be numbered.
Apple made headlines last month when it announced it would acquire the popular application Workflow. Now, the company should be making waves again with the news that they will reimburse customers who purchased the app.
Google Assistant is a handy little feature at most of the time, but it's upping the ante in honor of April Fools' Day this year.
For a long time, Apple has kept the upper hand on Android as far as app revenue is concerned. However, this tradition looks likely to change this year, as Android's app sales are expected to surpass Apple's.
The rumor that the iPhone 8 will ship with 3D camera system is not a new one, but a new analysis by Morgan Stanley's Charlie Chan lends credibility to the speculation. Now, it appears more likely than ever that Apple's next iPhone will ship with 3D capabilities, increasing potential for AR and VR integration in the future.
Lowe's Home Improvement laid another brick in their augmented reality foundation with today's announcement of a new app for Tango-enabled smartphones.
TrueCaller is sharing your phone activity by revealing the last time your phone was used to contacts. The application used to identify unknown callers launched in 2009 and has faced a wealth of privacy concerns before.
The '90s were a great decade to be alive. Before the internet became a high-availability service, we were untethered from the bombardment of media present in today's culture. Children ran through the streets with levels of physical exertion beyond what's required to capture fictional creatures found in Pokémon GO. However, there were some video game consoles that kept kids indoors, such as the Game Boy, SNES, and more importantly—the first ever PlayStation.
The Google Play Store is known for some pretty random promotions and offers, most of the time it's a free book or a discounted movie. But this time, an entire season for Game of Thrones is up for grabs. Yes, that's right, all of Season 5 of Game of Thrones is free to download, watch, or just stash in your library for later.
Google and Samsung have been leaving Apple in the dust when it comes to virtual reality gear. However, as the market grows and becomes more impossible to ignore within the tech world, Apple may be forced to play catch up. This could account for the new Apple patent that was granted today.
Mobile gaming is a huge industry that raked in more than $91 billion in revenue in 2016, and of course, all of the major players get most of the glory. But smaller, independent game developers make some of the most fun and unique games out there — it's just harder to find their stuff because they don't have the promotional budget of studios like Rovio and Gameloft.
Independent game developer PlayFusion announced today a partnership with NEXON Korea Corporation, resulting in a Series A preferred share round to fund development of their entertainment platform. PlayFusion's platform applies augmented reality, Internet of Things (IoT), and audio recognition to Lightseekers, an original property that combines mobile gaming with smart action figures, trading card games, and other media.
Have the sniffles? Yes. Does your head hurt? Yes. Coughing? Yes. Could you have influenza? Yes. How do you know the difference? With these symptoms, you could also have a cold.
"Necessity, not novelty," is a phrase I use often when it comes to HoloLens development. It would be fair to call it my mantra, or mission statement, as I prototype and explore software creation on this new frontier of mixed reality.
Using mathematical modeling, researchers suggest weather and warming created the "perfect storm" that drove the Zika outbreak in 2016.
Augmented reality software developer Maxst has made the move into hardware with Revelio, their new untethered AR smartglasses. These stereoscopic glasses feature an Octa-core processor, 2 GB of memory, a 40-degree field of view, and a 720p display, and they do not require being connected to a phone or computer.
When the time comes to replace your car, you most likely have a checklist of criteria that you would like on the new one. Your car is possibly the most expensive possession you have—or the second-most expensive, after your home—so you want to make sure that you are not only getting what you want, but that you are getting the best deal possible.
A new repository appeared in Microsoft's GitHub account a few months ago for a project called HoloJS. For those JavaScript developers out there that have been wanting to make HoloLens apps, this one's for you.
Chrome's text selection interface is pretty nice, but it could definitely use some improvements. For instance, when you're in Incognito Mode, you can't perform a web search for words you've highlighted. And when you're typing out a forum post or using any text input field, for that matter, there's no option to search or share any of the text you've written.
If there's one thing you'd never think to play music on, it's probably a coffee stirrer, right? But that didn't stop this guy from playing one of my favorite theme songs on one — "Darth Vader's Theme," aka "The Imperial March."
Mobile security researchers at Kryptowire recently uncovered spyware preinstalled on hundreds of thousands of Android smartphones by FOTA provider Adups which was gathering personally identifiable information (PII) such as call logs, app usage data, and even the full contents of text messages and sending these to a third-party server—all without the users' knowledge.
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.
For some strange reason, Google left several of the Pixel's best software features disabled by default. One of the more interesting tweaks that fall into this category is a gesture that puts your fingerprint scanner to use after you've unlocked your phone.
The easiest way to see which Pokémon are close to your current location in Pokémon GO is by checking the Nearby tracker in the bottom-right of your screen. At least this was the easiest way up until a few days ago. Initially, the Pokémon in the Nearby screen would be marked with between zero and three footprint icons—the more footprints, the further away a Pokémon is from your location. Pokémon with zero footprints should be visible to you.
Deaf people primarily communicate through sign language, so understanding spoken languages can prove challenging. To bridge that gap in communication, the HoloHear team built a mixed reality app at a Microsoft HoloLens Hackathon in San Fransisco that translates the spoken word into sign language.
In the wake of Google Glass' failure, we can expect other companies to fill the void in due time. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Snapchat may be one of the first.
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.
More proof is emerging that the iPhone 7 won't include a 3.5 mm headphone jack, and damn—it is not pretty. These third-party Lightning-to-3.5 mm dongles were spotted on Chinese site Tama, and they give us a glimpse into a horrifying future in which we have to attach one of these clunky monstrosities to an iPhone just to connect a set of standard headphones.
Augmented reality (AR) generally exists through the lens of our smartphones as information layered on top of what the camera sees, but it doesn't have to. Developer Jon Cheng worked with an indoor climbing facility in Somerville, Massachussetts, called Brooklyn Boulders, to turn rock climbing into a real-world video game where participants compete in a time trial to hit virtual markers on the wall.
If you've been keeping tabs on the rumor mill for the iPhone 7, one of the most discussed elements of Apple's upcoming device is the possible elimination of the headphone jack in favor of a Lightning connection.
Samsung's next Galaxy Note smartphone is expected to contain some nifty new additions that the company hopes will give it the long desired edge it has been seeking over Apple. One of those features that might make the difference? An iris scanner, which could make it the first major smartphone on the market to have that technology included.
There's been a lot of speculation as to what Apple's next iPhone models will have in store for us. There's a lot of credible rumors about the iPhone 7, but is there also a Pro model in the works? We may actually have a legitimate sneak peek at what that device could look like.
Launcher shortcuts, which let you skip directly to a specific function on an app when you open it, first appeared in a recent Android N preview build, and now we're getting a look at how the feature might look in action.
If we go by the timeline set forth in Back to the Future Part II, Nike's new HyperAdapt 1.0 with adaptable lacing is at least a year late. But HyperAdapt will do more than just automatically tighten your laces—sensors in the sole of the shoe will provide a "tailored-to-the-moment" custom fit to maximize comfort and function while you jog, play sports, or navigate through hordes of aloof morons clogging the lanes at your local Trader Joe's.
John Oliver sunk his teeth into Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump during the long segment on the latest Last Week Tonight. The whole 21-minute video is definitely worth a watch, but the real fun starts around the 18-minute mark.
If you use a wireless mouse or keyboard, you could be leaving yourself open to attacks from hackers. Researchers at Bastille had discovered in January 2016 that attackers could make use of a cheap $15 antenna to sneak into your computer through a wireless mouse or keyboard dongle (receiver).
Snapchat's Geofilters add a little flair to Snapchat, giving you the option to dress up your Snaps based on where you took them. They're so popular, in fact, that we even showed you how to pull Geofilters from locations outside of where you are.
