In many ways, the latest version of the MakeSpace iPhone app, now updated with ARKit, makes it the bizarro world IKEA Place; instead of measuring your living space for new furniture, it measures your furniture so you can move it into storage.
The promise of augmented reality when it comes to gaming is the conversion of the player's real-world environment into a virtual playground.
Niantic pioneered location-based augmented reality gaming with Ingress and popularized it with Pokémon Go, but others have attempted to replicate the model without reaching the level of success that Niantic has garnered.
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Niantic must be blushing constantly, as numerous copies of Pokémon GO have spawned over the past year or so, seeking to capture the same success, often adding the lure of tangible prizes from brand partnerships.
Russian phone customizer Caviar — you might have heard of the blinged-out iPhone 6s Pokemon GO phone they released a few months back — is taking on international relations with their newest product.
Free beer and AR? What could be better? Amstel, a Dutch beer brand, has launched an innovative sampling campaign using an AR app called "Snatch." Snatch is a treasure hunt gaming app, and if you win the game, your prize is 10,000 free pints of Amstel beer, redeemable at Mitchell & Butler pubs.
With augmented reality making its way into the mainstream, consumers have been expecting a company bloodbath for a while now, one that will have a ton of casualties. Blippar has been expected to be one of those casualties due to the reported loss of millions of dollars earlier this year. Now, their situation might be made worse as the creators of the Layar app, Raimo van der Klein and Martin Lens-Fitzgerald, are rumored to be asking for their company back.
Tim Cook claimed 85% of new iPhone buyers are switchers from Android back in 2015. Now, after financial analysts noted a drop in the company's stock prices, Apple has unleashed a series of ad campaigns directly targeting the users it needs to win over. That's you, Android lovers.
Autonomous vehicles, aka self-driving cars, are not yet available to the public (at least not ones SAE Level 3 and higher). However, this doesn't make the jobs any less in demand. In fact, if you meet the right qualifications, you could make a lot of money in this industry.
Oh, Waze—you know, that Google-owned traffic navigation app that tempts drivers into stopping at local food joints like Dunkin' Donuts and Taco Bell? Well, now you can even order a large iced coffee through the app before you even arrive at a fast food hotspot.
The OnePlus 3T was released about five months after the OnePlus 3 with several noticeable upgrades. Firstly, it has a new processor, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 821, which is the same one that the Pixel and Pixel XL sport. Second is the 16 MP front-facing camera with a different sensor. And the next big change was a slightly larger 3,400 mAh capacity battery.
Snapchat has already found a compelling way to create advertisements in augmented reality with their branded filters, but they continue to experiment with new ways to monetize the bridging of the real and digital worlds. Their latest idea, which requires users to "snap" an image to unlock content, could succeed where QR codes haven't.
Star Wars season is definitely upon us. No matter where you turn, you can't go a day without being bombarded by merchandising and co-branding advertisements that attempt to draw a parallel between some character from a galaxy far, far away and a galactic cruiser like the Dodge Viper, or a midichlorian-laden power source like Duracell. Yep, it's kind of annoying, but at least we can get some fun out of it here and there.
In an attempt to increase advertising revenues, Snapchat introduced Discover back in January of this year, a feature that brought a handful of prominent media partners, such as CNN, ESPN, and Vice to your feed, along with their tailored news stories and videos.
With floating song lyrics displayed over the screen, apps like musiXmatch and Floating Lyrics are perfect for people who want to go beyond just the tunes and delve into a song's message and meaning. And while these floating windows can be convenient, they're not always necessary.
You don't need a study to tell you how beneficial music is to helping you fall asleep. Most of you probably have your soothing playlist and SleepPhones queued up and ready to go before you get into bed and count those Zs.
Not all smartphone chargers put out the same amount of current. The adapter in your car probably charges your phone a lot slower than the one plugged in at your bedside, and if you use wireless charging, it may be a bit slower still.
The Play Store is loaded with just about any app you can imagine. While many are free or have a "lite" version of a paid app for download, often enough, these freebies have intrusive ads cluttering up your screen.
While screenshotting a received Snapchat has never been a hard thing to do, saving one without being noticed is a completely different story. Previously, you would have to have either a rooted Android or jailbroken iOS device to save one of those self-destructing messages undetected, but one particular app has opened this trick up to the masses.
With GPS chips and Wi-Fi positioning systems, a modern smartphone is capable of tracking its user's location with pinpoint accuracy. This being the case, it's strange that the most common text message sent today is still "Where are you?"
It happens to everyone: you set a lock screen password in a hurry and cannot remember it the next day. To unlock your device again, you need to reset the password (or PIN, pattern, etc). There are two official methods of doing this.
In February of this year, the Higher Court of Berlin ruled that Facebook must follow strict German data protection laws, which Facebook's terms of services and privacy policies circumvent.
Whether it's bad timing, or some trying-to-be-funny photobomber, it sucks having a photo ruined by someone or something getting in the way. While you can always retake the photo, it's simply impossible to capture the moment you intended, no matter how much restaging you do. But with an HTC One, there's no need to retake anything, as we have access to built-in features that will remove those photo intruders.
If you're spending hours on your phone playing games like Angry Birds and Candy Crush Saga, or posting online to Google+ and Pinterest, you're probably being spied on. The latest releases from NSA whistle blower Edward Snowden reveal that the National Security Agency, and its UK counterpart, GCHQ, are mining the ad networks utilized in these apps to collect a trove of information on you.
It wasn't that long ago that we started seeing a variety of beers catering to the Steampunk crowd, so why not some wine?
There's a strange grey area for "guerrilla filmmaking" on YouTube. Generally, someone shooting a video needs to get permission from the people in it to show their faces. But on YouTube, that "rule" is more of a suggestion (and sometimes not even that).
Among the various components of the emerging augmented reality space, the most lucrative is the advertising market. The prospect of turning every object, every location, ever signpost in the real world into a discount code or virtual transaction interface is why AR will ultimately be more profitable than VR.
Whether we like it or not, our personal information and smartphones are tied together at the hip. The former needs the latter to deliver a personalized experience that matches our individual needs. This personal data, however, makes your phone a prime target for thieves of all sorts to turn your privacy into illicit profit.
Canvas fingerprinting is the web's trickiest privacy threat, but it's not impossible to stop. With all the media attention it's gotten lately, it's time we lay out exactly how to detect and prevent this invasive tracking technique.
Twitter is a science. The smarter you post and engage with others, the better chance you have at building a bigger audience. Scheduling your tweets is one way to get there. Most engagement occurs at specific hours, but you may not be around then to post your tweet manually. While the official Twitter app on iOS and Android doesn't allow you to schedule, there is another way.
Staying inside during the coronavirus pandemic isn't easy for most of us. As important as it is to keep away from others, it can be challenging to keep to ourselves day after day. That's why mobile game developers are stepping in to help; many are making their games free for a limited time, to provide some much-needed fun during scary times.
It's time to make some more room at the augmented reality cosmetics counter. This week, social media giant Pinterest unveiled "Try On," a virtual make-up visualization tool running on its Lens visual search tool.
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.
It's been said time and time again: reconnaissance is perhaps the most critical phase of an attack. It's especially important when preparing an attack against a database since one wrong move can destroy every last bit of data, which usually isn't the desired outcome. Metasploit contains a variety of modules that can be used to enumerate MySQL databases, making it easy to gather valuable information.
It's the holiday season, and the tech industry is giving consumers several AR products and apps as gift-giving options.
After opening up its Spark AR platform on Instagram for all creators, Facebook is already expanding the platform's capabilities on its Snapchat killer.
Silicon Valley-based startup 8th Wall has spent much of the last few years building a reputation for enabling AR experiences that are platform agnostic via web browsers and mobile apps. Now, 8th Wall is promising to give developers the freedom to build and host AR experiences from anywhere via a simple web browser.
Best known for its mobile phones and television sets, South Korea's LG has had a quieter presence in the US compared to the country's homegrown efforts.
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.
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.
