Leading tier-one supplier Continental has confirmed it will sell driverless platforms developed from BMW, Mobileye, and Intel's previously announced alliance, giving the company a potential edge over competitors by widening the range of technologies it offers directly to OEMs.
Do you know what your smartphone is made of? I've had smartphones for years, but if you asked me that question I'd probably respond with "Wi-Fi." For uninformed consumers like myself, it may shock you to know just how much goes into creating a smartphone.
We were really rooting for you this time, BlackBerry! With the phone company having minimal success in the past with smartphones, the BlackBerry KEYone was extremely promising. That is until YouTube Reviewer JerryRigEverything discovered a fatal flaw, the phone's screen popped off with just a bit of pressure and then stopped working. So...there's that.
The Augmented World Expo (AWE), the biggest event for augmented, virtual, and mixed reality companies, developers, customers, and connoisseurs, is happening right now. You know what that means for us here at Next Reality? Companies presenting and exhibiting at AWE are releasing news like crazy.
Toyota is testing blockchain and distributed ledger technology (BC/DL) for data sharing for driverless cars and other applications. This could eventually reassure buyers of its upcoming high-end cars by making sure their sensitive data is secure.
WhatsApp sneakily made some security changes to iCloud backups without your knowledge, ladies and gents. Not that strengthening security is a bad thing, but still!
The US driverless market has become a competitive – and crowded – arena, with big names like Google, Apple, Uber, and even Intel intent on leading the pack. Not to be outdone, the EU is also getting in on the automated car action with self-driving fleets launching in both the UK and the Netherlands within the next two years.
Perhaps one of CyanogenMod's greatest features was its built-in theme engine. It wasn't perfect, but it got the job done and gave users a unique look. Now that CyangenMod is defunct, and the developers behind its successor, LineageOS, have confirmed they won't be continuing the theme engine, users have to find another way to theme their devices. No need to fear, though, Substratum is here.
In this Tuesday's Brief Reality report, there's a trio of stories from the healthcare world where augmented reality is helping out with surgical microscopes, asthma treatment, and other diagnostic and treatment tools. There's also something for all of you AR/VR storytellers out there.
The Disney Research Lab is using projector-based illumination to paint actors' faces during live performances. You know what that means? Disney just took Halloween to a whole new level.
It's not the bacteria itself that takes lives and limbs during invasive flesh-eating bacteria infections. It's the toxins secreted by the group A Streptococcus bacteria invading the body that causes the most damage.
Microsoft Build 2017, the first of Microsoft's big developer conferences for the year, is just a few weeks away. This very popular conference, which has been going on since 2011, is known to sell out fast. In 2015, it sold out in under an hour, and in 2016, in less than 5 minutes. This year was no different, according to VentureBeat; While not quite as fast as last year with so many rumors of HoloLens on the horizon at the time, this year's Build was sold out in 8 hours. And for this year's B...
Apple seems to want the public to perceive it as an environmentally-conscious entity, as evidenced by the company's recently published Environmental Responsibility Report. But as it turns out, they may be hindering recyclers from salvaging old iPhones and Macs by ordering the devices to be shredded instead.
Chinese search engine giant, Baidu, has just announced its own autonomous car platform which is intended to speed up the development of driverless vehicles.
The latest Google Photos update for Android has added a number of cool new features, like video stabilization and a rumored Google+ integration. The latest update started rolling out to devices on April 11, 2017, and includes the video stabilizing feature we've been waiting for.
NextReality will be giving readers a rundown of the augmented and mixed reality news briefs from the preceding week that we didn't cover already. This way, you'll never miss anything of importance in the NextReality landscape, and will always know what's going on with new augmented and mixed reality tech and applications. The first one starts right now, and you can enjoy future ones every Tuesday going forward, so stay tuned.
Uber wants you to forget about cars and start thinking about fully autonomous flying as an alternative—a more "economically favorable" way of getting to your grinding nine-to-five.
Upskill, an enterprise software developer for industrial augmented reality applications, recently received an influx of funding and a major vote of confidence from two of their top customers.
Apple's anxiously awaited iPhone 8 with a 5.8-inch OLED display is all set to launch this September, alongside the iPhone 7s variants. However, according to MacRumors, which cites information from a number of Barclays analysts, stock will be very limited, and most won't ship until late in the fourth quarter.
Nokia, the Finnish telecommunications company, is about to shake things up a bit after its networks sales in the final quarter of last year declined 14% compared to sales in 2015.
The latest Google Play Services update has somehow broken major functionality in both Titanium Backup and Substratum. Titanium Backup has suddenly become stuck at zero percent while restoring, and Substratum simply fails to apply themes anymore. Both of these apps do require root, but they've slowly become essential to rooted users, especially since apps like these come into play when you're deciding what your next phone should be.
NetGuard is a well-established app known for its highly secure firewall, which blocks unwanted web activity from individual apps that can take up both precious bandwidth and battery life. Not quite as well known, however, is the fact there's a second official version of NetGuard that comes with a hidden ad-blocking feature, which can be activated with just a little tinkering in the app's settings menu.
Early this morning, Unity held their keynote at GDC 2017 in the InterContinental San Francisco hotel. During the event, they talked about their upcoming roadmap and many changes that are coming down the pipe. This list included the lighting explorer, progressive lightmapper, the new 4K video player, native support for Vulkan graphics, TextMesh Pro integration, and the one that really excites me as a HoloLens developer—dynamically/runtime created navigation meshes.
Some bacteria can already do it—generate electric current, that is—and those microbes are called "electrogenic." Now, thanks to the work of a research group from the University of California, Santa Barbara, we know how to easily turn non-electrogenic bacteria into electricity producers.
Sometimes it's the smallest feature in your smartphone that makes the biggest difference in user experience. Take screen timeout, for instance. You can probably think of plenty of times when your handset's display blacked out while you were in the middle of something. You could have been cooking with a recipe on the screen or looking at chords while you learned a new riff on your guitar.
DigiLens, a company specializing in optical waveguide technology, recently announced that they had closed a $22 million round of strategic investment, also known as Series B funding. This round brought in Sony, Foxconn, Continental, and Panasonic, as well as more traditional venture investors such as Alsop Louie Partners, Bold Capital, Nautilus Venture Partners, and Dolby Family Ventures.
3D modeling is usually a very long and complicated process. Manipulating the thousands to millions of vertices, faces, and triangles to the correct shape you want is just the first part of the process, and can take a good while depending on the level of detail needed. From there, you need to texture the model by applying the UV coordinates and placing the textures in the correct places. And all of this isn't even including the process of creating normal maps.
For some time now, there has been quite a bit of speculation as to when the selection of augmented and mixed reality head-mounted displays would begin to trickle out to the public. Pricing, availability, and software selection are all issues that will have to be addressed before widespread adoption will start.
The Google Nexus 6P, manufactured by Huawei and released a little more than a year ago, has been a well-received smartphone in general. It sports front-facing stereo speakers, an awesome camera, a massive screen, supports all US carriers, and doesn't allow the infamous Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 to hamper its performance in the slightest.
Bluetooth 5 was announced and made officially available on December 7, 2016. It comes with a handful of improvements to speed, range, maximum device connectivity, and anti-interference from other nearby devices. While this might be great for those special few who use Bluetooth on a daily basis to send and receive (or steal) data, what about the average Joe?
Fighting fires has always been a dangerous and noble venture, even with the proliferation of aerial firefighting. But things are looking to get a lot safer for firefighters with the help of the Boeing and mixed reality.
Don't let the lack of owning a HoloLens stop you from joining in on the fun of creating software in this exciting new space. The HoloLens Emulator offers a solution for everyone that wants to explore Windows Holographic development.
Kryptowire, a company specializing in mobile security solutions, released a report on Tuesday, November 15 that exposed firmware in a number of Android devices that was collecting personally identifying information (PII) and uploading it to third-party servers without users' knowledge.
Google's Pixel phones have a feature that lets you swipe down on the fingerprint scanner to open your notification shade and Quick Settings panel. It's one of those features that make you wonder why it wasn't there in the first place, since it gives you another way to interact with your device, and your fingerprint scanner isn't being used while you're screen is on anyway.
We like to have a variety of cupcakes on hand when we're entertaining, but we don't want to spend too much time making separate recipes. No one has the time or the money for that—especially when you're hosting and you've got a bevy of other dishes to prepare.
One of Android's biggest strengths relative to iOS is the fact that you can use any app to open compatible links, not just the stock ones that come preloaded on your device. When you tap a link that two or more of your apps are capable of opening, you'll see a message asking which app to launch it with—and from there, the choices are "Just Once" or "Always."
The future for the Meta 2 augmented reality headset will have to wait. While shipments were supposedly on their way out back in June, Meta revealed today that they need a bit more time to provide the best possible experience—and that's really for the best.
Android Nougat has a new API that lets apps create their own custom Quick Settings tiles. A similar feature was buried in Android Marshmallow, but that required a hacky workaround, and most manufacturers disabled it in their custom versions of Android 6.0. But since this is an official API now, all phones that run Android 7.0 and higher should be able to use custom Quick Settings tiles going forward.
Many phones these days are being manufactured without a notification LED—it's a cost-cutting move, and it's really not an essential component. However, the notification light on Android devices has traditionally alerted users to any missed messages, and this is functionality you can't get without the proper hardware.
Koji is a culture made up of a certain fungus (mold) called Aspergillus oryzae, which has been used to ferment rice and soybeans in Japanese, Chinese, and Korean kitchens for centuries. Koji can actually have other involved fungi, but Aspergillus oryzae is the most common, and therefore the names can be used interchangeably. Its end purpose is to enhance the flavor of items like soy sauce, sake, and miso.
