It's easy to forget just how cool face filters are. Augmented reality has come a long way, and apps like Instagram now offer a suite of impressive effects to play with, but some of the best ones aren't easily found. There is a treasure trove of exclusive, custom face filters that are unavailable to the general public, but not at all inaccessible — you just need to know the trick to getting them.
| Update: ZTE's issues with the US government have finally been resolved. Check out the details below.
Sure, emojis are all the rage, but there's not an emoji for every emotion or feeling just yet. That's where emoticons come into play, emoji's older typographical sibling. Unfortunately, emoticons can be hard to type out, easy to forget, and ASCII art, in general, can be pretty time-consuming to create from scratch — but there's an easy way to forgo all these issues — make keyboard shortcuts.
Last week, augmented reality startup Proxy42 released Father.IO, a multiplayer game that turns any indoor or outdoor space into a laser tag arena.
With the V30, LG has really delivered an amazing smartphone that hits all the major features consumers want. Amazing camera, beautiful edge-to-edge display, great battery life, water resistance, and smooth performance — there isn't much not to like about the LG V30. Unfortunately, it does suffer from heavy bloatware thanks to the carriers. The good thing is, unlike in the past, you are not stuck with it.
It was definitely a shocker when Microsoft proposed cross-network play between the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 last month. After all, Microsoft and Sony have been competing for the same user base for more than a decade now, and this new feature might actually decrease console sales as a whole.
Fast food is a guilty pleasure in which we all indulge. When you're short on time and long on hunger, being able to whiz through the drive-thru or run 'in and out' of a fast food joint can be a real lifesaver.
A slow cooker can be both your culinary companion and your go-to gadget in the kitchen. That's right: the idea of slow cooking is no longer for Southern housewives or purveyors of the Ladies' Home Journal anymore. The times, they are a'changing!
Hello friends. This is actually my first how to.
It's truly amazing how far smartphone camera hardware has come in such a short period of time. It took roughly 5 years to advance the image processing capabilities from a pixelated mess to the crisp and clear photos we can take today. This reaches well beyond the megapixel spec race, since camera modules these days sport vastly improved optics, wider aperture, and even larger pixel sensors that capture more light.
Unwanted advertising is everywhere. Annoying pop-up ads, overly loud late night commercials, spam...it never ends. And before spam, there was junk mail. Junk mail is even worse because unlike TV commercials and internet ads, it's physical. You can't just delete or ignore it—and it's an awful waste of paper. So what can you do about it?
There are lots of people who want to stay anonymous online, and lots of reasons they want to do this. Staying anonymous on the internet isn't easy, and it's probably possible to trace almost anyone with enough time and resources. A lot of people think that they're completely secure with just one method of cover. For example, a lot of people thought anyone using the Tor network was nearly untraceable, but then things like this often cast doubt on just how secure these networks are. Unless you ...
If you’re having trouble getting games on your memory stick, this video will walk you through the steps of just what you will need to do to compress files onto a thumb drive. There are a variety of steps you will have to follow and you’ll have to have a little bit of time to wait for your game to compress but the effort is well worth it.
A flaw in WPS, or WiFi Protected Setup, known about for over a year by TNS, was finally exploited with proof of concept code. Both TNS, the discoverers of the exploit and Stefan at .braindump have created their respective "reaver" and "wpscrack" programs to exploit the WPS vulnerability. From this exploit, the WPA password can be recovered almost instantly in plain-text once the attack on the access point WPS is initiated, which normally takes 2-10 hours (depending on which program you use).
To reduce stress on internet bandwidth during the COVID-19 pandemic that the novel coronavirus is causing, Google decided to set YouTube's default video quality to 480p. That said, even when you could stream at HD quality without adjusting anything, you still couldn't switch the default to whatever you liked. We have a few methods on hand to help you change that.
The COVID-19 pandemic has created a frenzy for news and information that is nearly unprecedented in the smartphone era, with a major side effect of misinformation. Now, major tech companies are making it easier to ask for advice about novel coronavirus from their respective digital assistants. Results may vary, but Apple and Google are the most useful at the moment.
I'm a new parent and I just moved into a new home. The first thing I wanted to do was ensure my toddler's safety in his new digs. That meant buying a bunch of baby-proofing products from Amazon, realizing most were junk, then buying some more until I found solutions for all my needs.
The newly enhanced focus from Magic Leap on enterprise, announced on Tuesday, also came with a few companies opting to weigh in with their experiences developing for the platform.
Suddenly, Magic Leap's lawsuit against Nreal, as well as its barrier to entry in the Chinese market, appears to be as insurmountable as The Great Wall itself.
Slack is meant for business, but it's inevitably used for personal reasons too, or even just to goof off with colleagues. However, you never know who's looking over your shoulder (nosy coworker? boss?), and you could get in trouble for something sent to you. That's why you might want to hide images and GIFs to help keep your conversations private.
It was a long time coming, but we finally have a meaningful conclusion to the legal case against augmented reality startup Meta Company.
The Music sticker is one of Instagram's best features. With it, you can add music directly to your story, incorporating a high-quality soundtrack to your favorite moments. On June 6, Instagram upped the ante on this feature, introducing live song lyrics that play throughout your story. Karaoke, anyone?
While augmented reality industry continues to grow, analog board games are also making a comeback. So, why not join the two together?
Bloatware remains one of the biggest problems with Android, especially when tied to a carrier. Removing bloatware usually requires you to take extreme measures like rooting. Unfortunately, the Galaxy S10 falls under this annoying umbrella, but there's an easy workaround.
Months after Next Reality broke the story surrounding the financial troubles at Meta Company, there's a new update in the company's ongoing patent lawsuit.
Apple found itself in serious trouble last week when a teenager discovered a critical FaceTime bug that threatened the security of nearly every iPhone user. The bug enabled a user using Group FaceTime to access either the microphone or the camera of a recipient before they answered the call. According to Apple, the issues have been fixed in an iOS 12.1.4 update released Thursday, Feb. 7.
When you don't want certain friends viewing your account or just need to take a break from social media, Instagram lets you do so. While you can completely delete your Instagram account, then start over when you're ready again, it makes much more sense to just disable your account temporarily. Doing so will hide your profile, photos, comments, and likes from everyone, including your friends.
The iPhone X introduced the world to Face ID in 2017, and now, every new iPhone uses Apple's biometric security system instead of the old Touch ID. It's more secure than fingerprint scanners and it's even more user-friendly. True, it's not without its faults, but at least one of the biggest problems can be fixed.
On Monday, with just days left before Christmas, Lowe's dropped a surprise augmented reality treat in everyone's lap: a brand new Magic Leap One app.
Recently, a user on Reddit complained that their Snapchat account had been temporarily banned because Snapchat noticed the user's account was going through a third-party service. In reality, the account in question was running on a jailbroken iPhone, and it was far from the first to be banned by the messaging app.
Thanks to cloud storage's increasing accessibility, permanently losing photos is becoming less and less common. Still, if you accidentally delete a picture from your smartphone without first making a backup of some sort, that data is pretty much toast — unless we're talking about photos from WhatsApp.
Soon, you'll be able to buy your OnePlus 6, but you can experience some of its apps today thanks to XDA user erayrafet, who ripped a few OxygenOS apps like Weather and this Gallery app. While Google Photos is a great service, this Gallery app should be your go-to app for locally-stored photos.
The OnePlus 6 is finally in customers' hands along with its top-of-the-line specs — and yes, a notch. But you can start getting some of their stock apps as early as today, thanks to XDA user erayrafet, who ported this Weather app directly from the source.
I don't need to remind you that Netflix is a holy bastion of both outsourced and original content. I probably also don't need to remind you that Netflix's rating system sucks. It suggests content based on how much you'd like it, as opposed to how highly it's rated. After all, Netflix wouldn't admit that some of their own material isn't good.
Although the initial reception for the Galaxy S9 has been generally positive, recent reports paint a potentially bleak image — some S9 owners are complaining that their new devices have "dead zones" in their displays, which don't register their touch inputs. Luckily, there are steps you can take to fix this problem.
This week's Game Developers Conference came at just the right time for Magic Leap, a company that was riding a wave of bad news from legal troubles and rumors regarding Magic Leap One.
DxOMark, an independent camera reviewer, has become the go-to place where consumers and OEMs alike hope for good camera scores on major new smartphones. The Google Pixel 2 has topped the charts since Oct. 2017, when the score no doubt helped pull the phone out from its troubled launch, but it has just been dethroned by the Samsung Galaxy S9+, which received the highest DxOMark score yet.
Among consumer brands, cosmetics companies rival furniture retailers as the quickest to adopt augmented reality as a means to help customers visualize how products will look before they buy them.
Nowadays, with the convenience of online shopping, brick-and-mortar retailers and malls have to work harder to draw shoppers to stores. This year, many of them are turning to augmented reality for assistance.
As if Amazon didn't already make it easier to buy things from home than in a store, the company has now given shoppers yet another reason to avoid the holiday rush with an ARKit update to its iPhone app.
