Demand for Tesla's driverless features as well as its ultra-long battery ranges and a reputation for offering the best-in-class electric car driving experience helped Tesla see a 32% surge in its value as a brand, topping out at $5.9 billion in the BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands study, released June 5.
You may not have woken up like this, but you're still #flawless thanks to Microsoft's new Face Swap app for Android.
Who said sports need parity to be fun? For the third year in a row, the Cleveland Cavaliers are facing off against the Golden State Warriors on the NBA's biggest stage, and basketball fans everywhere couldn't be more excited.
The common thread between this week's Brief Reality stories is that augmented reality is beginning to prove its worth as a technology that improves workflows and processes. From customer service to healthcare to manufacturing, augmented reality is helping companies improve productivity.
Uber's legal team may have finally sold their engineering golden boy down the river as their war with Waymo continues. Anthony Levandowski isn't your average sacrificial lamb either — given the alleged stealing and all that — but Uber seems set on distancing themselves from this whole fiasco as fast as they can.
At Vision Summit 2017, UK-based Rewind, one of the recent additions to the Microsoft HoloLens Agency Readiness Partner Program, showed off a HoloLens application called "Flight Deck" that genuinely blew me away. The idea of watching a live-action sports experience on a coffee table has been explored and mocked up, but Rewind not only has done it, they will be releasing it later this year.
Instagram just added another nail in the coffin for Snapchat. It looks like it's the AR platforms final hurrah as IG has snapped up the app's last good feature: its AR selfie filters.
Uber and Waymo's lawsuit is starting to pan out. Following a ruling on Monday, May 15, Judge Alsup, who called Waymo's patent infringement claims "meritless," ordered Uber to perform a series of actions and duties for Waymo. Without further ado, here's what Uber must do to begin to put this lawsuit behind them (well, maybe):
The bacteria Klebsiella pneumoniae is a bad actor known for being antibiotic-resistant and causing a variety of serious infections in hospitals, including pneumonia, surgical site wounds, and meningitis. K. pneumoniae is something you do not want to encounter if you have a compromised immune system.
Engineer Anthony Levandowski has officially been kicked off Uber's driverless program by a judge as the company's legal war with Waymo continues.
More details about Google's latest Taimen device have been revealed all thanks to Geekbench. We already know that Google has been working on a tablet-like third device next to its original Pixel 2 lineup. Though, Taimen is not confirmed to be part of the Pixel 2 lineup.
Firefox Focus has been out for iOS for a while now, so it's about time Mozilla began porting the app over to Android. It's an amazingly private browser that protects you from trackers and ads when you're surfing the web. It blocks a wide range of online trackers, erases your browsing history, hides passwords, and deletes cookies. This essentially means ads won't be able to follow you around, in the sense that you won't see ads related to your last ten searches on Google.
Computer vision technology maker uSens, Inc. has unveiled uSens Fingo, a camera module that enables tracking of hand and head movements for PC-based, mobile augmented, and virtual reality platforms.
We're all passionate about something. Maybe it's the environment. Stopping poverty. Finding the best taco joint ... Whatever your cause, the last thing we want is to support companies whose practices go against what we believe. After all, you can't trust someone who doesn't like tacos. So it can be difficult to know which companies to avoid; there are just too many doing too many shady things to keep track of. Until ...
Last week, T-Mobile CEO John Legere got salty. He announced ever so cheerily T-Mobile's intentions to release the first true 5G network in coming years, all while gaily smacking AT&T around for their bogus "5G Evolution" reveal. But could Legere be wrong to say T-Mobile will be the nation's first 5G carrier? It looks as though that title may have to be shared with Sprint ...
In a series of news about the OnePlus 5, the company posted its first teaser of the upcoming device on its Weibo account. According to GSM Arena, the teaser doesn't show us any sneak peaks of what the phone might look like — co-founder Carl Pei took care of that — though, we are greeted with the caption "Hey Summer! Give me five!"
Oh, Uber. It's not often to hear your name in the news and have it mean something good. You're being sued, you're crashing, your driverless program is falling behind. But I have to hand it to you; when the world is crumbling around you, you continue to fight against it. You've even made it to Canada.
It seems like everyone wants to be flying without wings these days, and some big players in the autonomous car industry want a piece of that airborne action. Google co-founder Larry Page just invested in flying car startup Kitty Hawk, while Uber is adamant that its own-brand of flying vehicles will be zooming around the US come 2020.
You know, I was actually starting to get comfortable with the idea of the iPhone 8 not showing up until next year. As an Apple fan, I made my peace with it. "There's a lot coming in this model," I told myself. "It does make sense that this many features could cause delays." I was fine. But then ...
The Note 7 debacle taught Samsung an important lesson on cramming oversized batteries into their handsets, and they've applied it diligently to their Galaxy S8 and S8+. You might even say the company has gone a little too far in trying to achieve a balance between battery size and battery life, as it not only not only sets screen resolutions to 1080p by default and warns users about maxing out display brightness, but it also keeps close tabs on individual apps' battery usage.
Intel launched their Advanced Vehicle Lab in Silicon Valley this week, and the tech giant is now on the hunt for potential partners.
The May 2017 security update has begun rolling out to Nexus and Pixel devices, which is usually great news. It means that your device is now being updated to protect you from the latest exploits and vulnerabilities found in Android. At other times, though, security updates patch root methods like Dirty COW, which is extremely frustrating for users and developers alike. Especially since most OEMs don't condone rooting or even unlocking the bootloader on their devices.
Google's Allo is still a work in progress, but the innovations to the chat and messaging app just keep on coming. The latest update rolling out now includes chat backups and a group incognito feature that we're very excited about.
On Tuesday, Apple held a public conference call for its Q2 earnings report. During the call, Steve Milunovich from UBS asked Tim Cook about a recent 451 report, and how it reflects a pause in current iPhone sales. Cook's response was more than interesting, to say the least:
While the technology continues to mature, businesses from various industries continue to adopt augmented reality to improve the efficiency of business processes. In this edition of Brief Reality, as conference season continues, we see examples of augmented reality applied to logistics processes and marketing of industrial supplies, as well as the topic of discussion at another trade show.
The OnePlus 3 and 3T are a pair of phones which allow you to do practically anything you want, because OnePlus is such a developer-friendly company. They almost always release kernel sources, and their phones sport an unlockable bootloader that doesn't void the warranty. But while their software is certainly solid (miles ahead of Samsung's TouchWiz), it still has room for improvement.
If you relate in any way to having the need to carry your iPhone and your vaporizer in one hand, then keep on reading.
Last week, the internet was ablaze with talk about the Galaxy S8's home button, because it subtly changes positions without the phone alerting you. This feature was included to stop burn-in issues with the screen, and the general consensus from tech sites was the screens would not experience any burn-in at all.
Disney is gearing up fully autonomous vehicles that will shuttle you and your family from the parking lot to the amusement park, stress-free. Well, as stress-free as you can get while introducing grandma to the concept of a car with no driver. No, grandma, Satan is not "steering this contraption." At least, we don't think he is ...
While the numbers may not always seem to agree, the message remains the same: augmented reality is a growth segment. This week's edition of Market Reality starts with two new reports outlining the expected good fortunes for the industry and concludes with an example of a company capitalizing on their own growth.
Well, well, well. Uber, we knew you were investing a ton of money into creating self-driving taxis and flying cars, but what we didn't know is that you were already testing out your driverless vehicles on the streets of New York City.
There's nothing worse than driving up to your destination only to discover that there isn't a parking spot in sight — but thankfully, Google Maps will soon have you covered.
This just in! Some of Frito-Lay's chips might be bad for your health for reasons other than the fact that they're deep fried potatoes.
Anyone who needs to use their iPhone hands-free knows how useful Siri can be. If you can't look at your iPhone, but still need to read and reply to messages, Siri has your back. Third-party applications have traditionally been unable to utilize this feature, but now that luck has turned for Facebook's other popular messaging service, WhatsApp.
An expert in the driverless market has earmarked Porsche as the company to watch in the automated car race.
Forget 3D movies. Warner Bros.' newest patent shows off designs for a mixed reality movie-going experience that will leave other theater-going experiences in the dust ... all in the comfort of your own home.
Texas has become only the latest state to face an unfortunate outbreak of mumps, but so far seems to be the hardest hit. On April 12, two days before the CDC's report was released, the Texas Department of State Health Services released a health advisory indicating this is the highest instance of mumps reported in 22 years.
Although John Chen of BlackBerry still sees Qualcomm as a partner, the chip maker and telecommunications company has just been given a preliminary order to pay BlackBerry $814,868,350 in royalty overpayments.
When it comes to global warming, most of us think of carbon dioxide emissions. While carbon dioxide is the most important greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide emissions have stayed constant for the last three years. On the other hand, methane, the second most important gas, has been steadily rising since 2007.
It looks like Samsung is stronger than ever, as evidenced by their quarterly forecast, which suggests a global profit of $8.8 billion, the company's highest mark in three years. Impressive, considering the spectacular failure of the Note7, Samsung's last flagship prior to the new Galaxy S8.
