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 ...
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.
Uber has been in the hot seat for awhile now, for many reasons, especially for being sued by Waymo over stolen LiDAR designs. But now, perhaps the attention will be taken off both Uber and Waymo as a new contender enters the LiDAR arena; A small, independent company called Luminar has finally let the world in on what it has been cooking up.
It may seem strange to find the director of engineering at a question-and-answer site all of a sudden pick up and lead a new driverless startup, but to Kah Seng Tay, both engineering tasks require building the right infrastructure to handle large amounts of AI data.
Every time Donald Trump tweets about a stock you own, Trigger Finance, or just Trigger—the app founded on the "if this, then that" rule to track and invest in the stock market—alerts you with a notification for real-time analysis of financial data.
The Washington Post believes augmented reality adds an extra layer to stories, and they're doubling down on that belief by adding in new AR features into their already popular "rainbow" news (iOS and Android) and Classic (iOS and Android) news apps.
The company that pioneered music scanning for mobile devices is moving into the augmented reality advertising arena. Included in an update of their iOS and Android apps last week, Shazam can now scan special codes to immerse users in 3D animations, 360-degree videos, mini-games, and other AR content.
Earlier this week, a mysterious tweet appeared on the HTC Twitter account of a picture containing the letter "U" topped with a tiny "for" and the date "01.12.2017" at the bottom. It is a pretty solid teaser, but for a company that has had a solid year with their Vive virtual reality headset, and all of the other technological appendages they have, it seems a bit ominous for them.
Pretty much every note you save on your computer, phone, or tablet can be uploaded to your cloud and viewed on any of your devices. But what about those notes you write down on actual paper? Well, those notes can also be cloud-friendly, thanks to the Rocketbook Wave.
If you already have speakers that you love, you don't need to ditch them for an expensive wireless set for convenience's sake. With products like Chromecast Audio, you can turn any set of wired headphones or speakers into wireless versions for much less, and stream music or audio to them from pretty much any device connected to the same Wi-Fi network.
Magic Leap, the virtual-reality software group backed by Google, just released a teaser video on their YouTube channel. In a word, it's amazing.
3D printing is getting closer and closer to becoming an everyday reality—which means revolutionary things are going to start happening for the home cook. Already there's a 3D printer that can produce edible tailored fruit and the Foodini, which can print full meals, including spaghetti and burgers. However, neither are available for purchase, and most likely won't be within reach of the average cook for years.
With over 2 million uploaded videos and over 28 million people who had talked about it online by the end of August, the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge was the most viral social media event of 2014. Its popularity provided the ALS Association with $115 million in donations to date, with everyone from students to veterans to celebrities contributing.
With rumors of the Active and Prime versions on the immensely popular Galaxy S5 circling the web for the past few weeks, today, we've got some clear proof of the upcoming Active variant.
For the most part, nobody makes money off of Facebook. Sure, some people make a living by updating pages for businesses and celebrities, but hardly anyone gets a dime from the site itself.
What's the meaning of life? That's the age-old question; but can it ever really be answered? I mean, isn't life just a big game anyway? Perhaps, a game of inches?
There are many different ways and many different apps that allow you to censor a racy photo and then share it to Instagram or Facebook. If you're in a time crunch and don't have the time or the patience to deal with something like Photoshop, then Snapseed is a great and easy app that will blur out your raunchy images in a quickie.
When you're taking a video in the Camera app on your iPhone, there's a little white shutter button in the corner that lets you take a still image while you're filming. Apple brought that same concept over to the FaceTime app in iOS 11, iOS 12, and higher, so you can take Live Photos of your friends during video chats.
Movember is here, and if you haven't already started growing your moustache, then you still have time. Movember takes place during the entire month of November, and if you haven't figured it out quite yet, it is a portmanteau of the words moustache and November.
The herd of augmented reality cloud startups that emerged in 2018 have been hunted to near extinction, with Google-backed Ubiquity6 the latest to move from an independent entity to a wholly-owned asset.
Sure, Microsoft has mostly marketed its HoloLens headsets towards enterprises and developers, but we learned this week that, like every other tech giant, the company is working on a consumer-grade AR wearable. Speaking of consumer smartglasses, Apple made another strategic investment this week that has implications for Apple's AR future.
The enterprise-focused category of augmented reality doesn't often get the headlines due to its relatively sedate profile as a mostly factory floor and training-based tool.
The emergence of Microsoft's HoloLens 2 as a cutting-edge US Army tool has focused a spotlight on the marriage between augmented reality and the military.
The Metaverse, or AR cloud, has been a sci-fi dream for decades, but only recently have companies begun to actually develop the technology to build it. With its latest funding round, Epic Games is suddenly a front-runner in this pursuit.
With the global COVID-19 pandemic preventing Pokémon GO players from venturing into the real world, developer Niantic has adapted the game for trainers to play in a socially-distanced manner.
For the average consumer, augmented reality is a fun way of dressing up photos and videos for social media. However, AR is also gaining momentum as a medium for storytelling, particularly in sharing powerful messages.
After closing its office last year, enterprise AR company Daqri has moved on to the final stage of its lifecycle with the liquidation of its assets.
Some of the leading big tech companies are still working in the lab on actual products, but at least some of their leadership did have some thoughts to share on the future direction of the technology this week.
When filtered through the prism of the top stories of the year, the business of augmented reality 2019 was defined as much by epic failures of AR startups as it was by the promising developments that propelled the industry forward into 2020.
In his famous 1996 "Content is King" essay, Bill Gates predicted that content is where tech companies will make money on the Internet. The adage clearly holds true in the current phase of augmented reality experience.
While Apple, Facebook, and Snapchat are still working on their first-generation AR wearables, startup North is already preparing to bring its second-generation smartglasses to the world in 2020.
It's the holiday season, and the tech industry is giving consumers several AR products and apps as gift-giving options.
Smartglasses from Apple have become the holy grail of augmented reality, and 2020 has been the rumored time horizon for the product's arrival for the past two years. The latest analyst report sheds more light on its potential debut next year.
While Magic Leap World gets its share of fun apps for playing with Porgs, watching TV, and exploring the ocean's depths, developers are making a strong business case for the Magic Leap One as well.
Facebook had a pretty big week in terms of augmented reality, with much of its news coming from the Oculus 6 keynote presentation. But Mark Zuckerberg's social media company found other areas of impact outside of Oculus 6 as well.
Former soccer star and current celebrity David Beckham has the augmented reality abilities of Facebook and Instagram as allies in the effort to eradicate malaria from the world.
If we were to assign a theme for the 2019 edition of the Next Reality 30 (NR30), it might be something along the lines of, "What have you done for me lately?"
It was a long time coming, but we finally have a meaningful conclusion to the legal case against augmented reality startup Meta Company.
The longer it takes Apple, Snapchat, Facebook, and other tech giants to build their own version of augmented reality headsets and smartglasses, the longer runway of practical experience Microsoft gains with the HoloLens and its sequel. The latest example: AR cloning.
In the last few years, the HoloLens has become a popular tool for use in medical procedures and training. But recently, the Magic Leap One has gained momentum in the space as well when it comes to medical use cases.
