If you use Apple's Mail app on your iPhone for iCloud and third-party email accounts, install the new iOS update ASAP if you haven't already. While there's not a colossal number of new features, the latest tools and improvements are powerful enough to make the update feel like Mail's biggest ever — and there are features we've been waiting for for years!
The emergence of Facebook's collaboration with Ray-Ban to launch Stories smartglasses has finally put an exclamation point on a new category of smartglasses: the pre-augmented reality wearable segment.
On Friday, the Tokyo Olympics finally kicked off after massive delays and complications due to the pandemic.
Some tried to call it a brief cryptocurrency-fueled fad, but it looks like NFTs are here to stay. Now, one of the biggest sneaker companies on the planet, Japan's Asics, is getting into the game with its own set of NFTs, and there's a virtual object component included.
After receiving $100 million in funding in 2018, smartglasses maker Rokid is going the crowdfunding route to finance its latest product.
The recent announcement that Facebook will begin inserting advertisements into its VR experience on its Oculus Quest headset has set the VR and augmented reality industry into a frenzy.
When smartphones were first getting popular, apps were much more limited in scope. Because of that, it was easier to find better programs to do what was needed. Now, in the App Store alone, there are nearly two million apps for you to choose from. When you're just looking for an app that will work well for the task at hand, two million is a lot to sort through.
The Apple Watch is rapidly becoming a standalone device that you can use without an iPhone or internet connection, and Deezer and Spotify have just helped make that even more true by adding support for offline playback on the watch.
Smartwatches are great for notifications. No need to dig your phone out of your pocket or purse when someone texts you — just glance at your wrist! It's great for driving, walking, and any other activities where you need to stay connected to your surroundings. Except it can still be a little distracting, depending on your settings.
Even as the world continues to grapple with the pandemic, the tech industry continues to chug along, with some looking for ways to present new products, and in some cases continue major conferences that reveal the latest in augmented reality developments.
When you're talking about collectibles, in 2021 it's heresy not to include the world of sneakerheads. Nowadays, a single, limited batch of newly designed sneakers from Nike can quickly sell out and then go on to be resold for many thousands more than they were purchased for at launch.
If you do a lot of typing every day — writing reports, essays, emails, and whatnot — we can guarantee your day would be improved by taking less time to do it. Thankfully, we've found a super-smart AI-powered tool that will do just that, and right now, you can get an amazing 52% off a Lightkey Pro Text Prediction Software: Lifetime Subscription for the sale price of just $79.99 (regular price $169).
If you're a man and subscribe to podcasts or YouTube channels that cater to masculine interests, then you've almost certainly encountered sponsorships from Manscaped. And that means I don't have to explain what the company is selling you (for the uninitiated, it's a company dedicated to helping you trim your body hair—most notably, your nether regions, in addition to other areas).
Since their introduction, emoji have become as essential to the iPhone as the touchscreen itself. While the original set of emoji was manageable, finding a particular emoji these days has become a chore. Apple tried to make it easier in past iOS versions, but it has avoided adding the most sensible option — until now.
In 2009, 4G LTE networks rolled out in Stockholm and Oslo, replacing 3G as a better upgrade to the mobile data technology that gives us the broadband speeds we have on our mobile devices. Over a decade later, and we have the latest, next-generation wireless network technology among us, 5G, but can you even use it?
No matter how many camera improvements a phone adds, you're always better off using manual mode. Known as "Pro Mode" on the Galaxy S20, this feature can remove Samsung's pre- and post-processing from photos, putting you in total control.
With all the talk about privacy concerns recently, Google's name keeps coming up because they are a very data-driven company. As an Android user, they know basically everything about you based on your device usage. That can easily scare some people off who are worried about their privacy and security. You do have some say in what personal data Google controls, but what if you want total control?
The words of three of tech's most important executives in the last 48 hours are providing some valuable insight into the near term future of augmented reality and the cloud infrastructures that support it.
There's a new trend on Instagram Stories: People are making viral AR filters where images of popular characters from TV shows, movies, and other mediums shuffle above your head until one sticks. The filters range from Disney and Pokémon characters to Harry Potter and Friends, but you're not limited to just that because you can create your own "which are you?" filter.
Although the Health app mostly focuses on fitness, Apple has slowly added features to help with other aspects of well-being, including hearing. In iOS 13, there's now a headphones volume tracker in Health that monitors audio levels and lets you know when your music, podcast, movie, or whatever else is too loud.
A lot of time can be wasted performing trivial tasks over and over again, and it's especially true when it comes to hacking and penetration testing. Trying different shells to own a target, and testing out privilege escalation commands afterward, can eat up a lot of time. Fortunately, there is a tool called One-Lin3r that can quickly generate shells, privesc commands, and more.
Sending Christmas cards via snail mail is so passé. Why spend the time and money for a bougie photoshoot, saccharine card design, and postage when you can use augmented reality to instantly dress up photos and videos to send to friends and family instead?
After facing reports of financial troubles over the past month, Magic Leap came out swinging this week with a big push for the enterprise segment of AR, including a repackaged Magic Leap 1, a suite of enterprise apps, and updates to Lumin OS and its supporting development ecosystem. Oh, and its AR headset managed to win a starring role in the marketing juggernaut for the forthcoming Star Wars movie.
This week's Magic Leap Lumin OS update contained a number of goodies, including iris authentication, and a way to stream to Twitch from the device.
It's easy to take your iPhone's Notification Center for granted. As useful as it is for viewing important alerts, reminders, and more, the feature is pretty drab when compared to the customizable Control Center, Accessibility Shortcuts, and others.
Google is an incredibly useful database of indexed websites, but querying Google doesn't search for what you type literally. The algorithms behind Google's searches can lead to a lot of irrelevant results. Still, with the right operators, we can be more exact while searching for information that's time-sensitive or difficult to find.
The idea of a world without passwords used to be a pipe dream. But as we inch closer to making that a reality, we have services now that securely store all of our passwords under a single master password. It's a convenient way to keep our accounts safe and sound without having to remember all of their credentials. And there's no reason to be afraid — I'll explain why.
Why do you need augmented reality? Because enterprise, they say. And while that's certainly true for several disciplines, there's still that mainstream use case hanging out there waiting for users to discover beyond the realm of enterprise and gaming.
An incredible amount of devices use Bluetooth or Bluetooth Low Energy to communicate. These devices rarely have their radios switched off, and in some cases, are deliberately used as trackers for lost items. While Bluetooth devices support MAC address randomization, many manufacturers do not use it, allowing us to use tools like Bettercap to scan for and track Bluetooth devices.
For many, the stock version of Android is often considered the epitome of what the operating system should look and feel like by default. It's clean and clear of unwanted extra apps that come pre-installed with the system, provides a fluid and fast user experience, and runs on just about any device that has an unlocked bootloader to install a custom ROM with the stock version ready to go.
The days of bad smartphone videos are long gone. Your iPhone or Android phone is a capable video recorder, even offering different frame rate options in the native camera settings. Filmic Pro makes things a little simpler, however, and adds additional controls you wouldn't find on your device alone.
The hugely successful S10 series of flagships may be a tough act to follow, but Samsung has proven that it's up to the task with the Galaxy Note 10. The latest phablet bearing the Note name is the first of its line to come with an even larger variant, and boasts an eye-pleasing design with impressive performance to boot.
What does mainstream augmented reality look like? I'm not talking about the stuff you see in concept videos and science fiction films. No. What does it really look like?
If you've ever received an email from a sketchy address purporting to be Uber, asking you to sign in with your credentials, you might be a phishing target. Hackers use a fake login page from real-looking domains to trick you into giving up your account information, and while it's been an issue in the past, Uber is making it more difficult on cyber thieves with the addition of two-step verification.
As I've mentioned in recent days, it was refreshing to discover that Microsoft's HoloLens 2 stage production was every bit as accurate as presented (check out my hands-on test of the device for more on that).
In the last couple of days there's been a lot of speculation about the powers of Microsoft's HoloLens 2, but few have had a chance to get their hands on one to see if the company's claims live up to what HoloLens inventor Alex Kipman showed off on stage.
Android 9.0 Pie moved the status bar clock from the right corner to the left to accommodate phones with notches, but there's one major downside for Samsung users: since no Galaxy phones have a notch, all this did was take away space for the notification icons that would otherwise start from the left corner.
Almost every phone comes with biometric security of some sort these days, but the same can't be said of Windows computers. While fingerprint scanners are becoming increasingly common with laptops and desktops, they're nowhere near ubiquitous. Thankfully, your phone's scanner can be used as a sort-of remote authentication point for your PC.
Last year's augmented reality investments roundup was impressive. And in 2018, the dollars flowing toward AR haven't decreased, as venture capitalists and strategic investors continue to aggressively fund AR startups at a rapid pace.
In 2018, augmented reality went from the vague promise of interesting things in the near future to tangible developments in software and hardware, proving that immersive computing is indeed the future.
