Taking a cue form Snapchat, WhatsApp Status lets you share updates that come in the form of GIFs, photos, videos and good old text. This awesome feature is available for both iPhone and Android users, and it even lets you choose which contacts to share with while disappearing ...more
When the iPhone first came out, using them seemed like an impossibility to the visually impaired. Luckily, the iPhone now provides a multitude of resources to make sure that the visually impaired have accessibility to the phone. In fact, many blind people use their iPhone to ...more
Google makes Android, but now, Google makes its own phones, too. Until this point, they've always stayed on the software side of things and let Samsung and friends handle the hardware, but their new Pixel phones are changing all of that. Related: The Pixel Exemplifies Google' ...more
My French press is one of the most important tools in my kitchen. It's indispensable, and it's no small exaggeration when I say that I use it on a daily basis thanks to my coffee addiction. However, it gets used for a lot more than just my morning cuppa (and my second morning ...more
Enabled from the moment you first booted up your device, there's a feature deep in the iPhone's settings that automatically backs up your device in the background. As long as you're connected to Wi-Fi and a power source and your screen is locked, your photos, text messages, ap ...more
Welcome back, friends! Many times, businesses, friends, and family will lock their zip files with a password to keep their files secure. It is reasonable, and understandable. Well, thanks to hackers, there are many ways to get past this wall of security. (The idea and recourc ...more
As a kid, I was always interested in what was beyond our world. I remember lying down on the top of my dad's car and watching the stars for hour, gleefully excited whenever a shooting star streaked across the night sky. I would force my dad to take me to the library, just so ...more
Timely costumes for Halloween are awesome—especially really obscure ones—because they're indicative of social awareness. In 2010, I remember seeing several Chilean Miner costumes, which I thought were great. 2012 brings new stories, new characters and more importantly...new Ha ...more
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?" Many of the top names in the industry from the 2018 edition remain the same, but their positions have shuffled. The p ...more
In Apple Music, loving and disliking songs is a great way to teach Apple's subscription service what type of tunes you like and which you don't. While it also seems like it should be an excellent way to keep track of songs you enjoy in the wild, there's no clear way to view al ...more
Smartphones are now indispensable when traveling. Domestic and overseas travel alike require food, navigation, translation, and so much more to make work or vacation successful. Gone are the days of lugging multiple tourist books around with you everywhere you go — you need to ...more
Mixed reviews of Magic Leap One aside, it would be hard to deny that Magic Leap has had a big year. And the AR unicorn isn't coasting to the finish line, with a number of new apps dropping and prescription frames finally arriving to bring relief to those who wear eyeglasses. ...more
Anyone remember Google Goggles? Well, it's back with a new name: Google Lens. But this time, there's more machine learning and it's integrated into many different Google apps and services. The latest is the Google app for iPhones. Adding Google Lens visual search to the Googl ...more
Media subscriptions are all the rage these days. Between Netflix, Apple Music, HBO Now, and countless more, your TV, movie, and music options have never been better. Unfortunately, all these choices weigh heavily on your wallet. So, when there's an opportunity to snag not just ...more
Safari has a convenient "Find" feature to search for specific words and phrases in a webpage, and Apple Books has a similar feature for e-books and PDFs. But those do nothing for you when searching text in the real world. Hardcover and paperback books are still very much a thi ...more
This week, Next Reality published its annual feature on the leaders in the augmented reality industry, the Next Reality 30. So it's no coincidence that the companies represented in the top four spots of the NR30 also made business headlines in AR this week. While Magic Leap i ...more
Sometimes incorrectly referred to as "iMessage," the Messages app is where iPhone owners go to chat with iOS users across the world. Apple has made some significant improvements to the messaging app with its iOS 12 update for iPhone. If you're interested to see how your Messag ...more
This is a tale about microbes, a man who became a hermit, and the parchment that carries both of their stories. Sometime around 1190 AD in Italy, a man named Laurentius Loricatus was born. Trained to be a soldier, Loricatus killed someone by accident and was stricken with rem ...more
The fatal crash of Air France Flight 447 is one of the most tragic accidents in avionic history — while it also serves as a stark reminder of what can go wrong when humans rely too much on driverless vehicles. The tragic 2009 plane crash off the coast of Brazil involved an Ai ...more
A group of researchers from Stanford University and Princeton University has put together the largest RGB-D video dataset to date with over 1,500 scans of over 700 different locations across the world, for a total of 2.5 million views. This dataset, called ScanNet, has been s ...more
The largest and arguably most widely known event of its type, especially in the US, the Sundance Film Festival is an annual celebration of independent film—ones made outside the Hollywood system. This year, a new type of experience appeared at the Sundance Film Festival in an ...more
One thing you'll find a lot of in the Windows Store for HoloLens is demos and mockups, but very few projects are as fully realized and fully-functioning as Muralize. Created by Magnopus, an all-female development team, Muralize first appeared in the Windows Store in late-Novem ...more
If you love sitting poolside with a slice of watermelon, then I've got a real treat for you. Picture yourself cooling off with a slice of juicy watermelon topped with fresh ingredients like soft cheeses, herbs, and fresh summer fruits. Watermelon pizza is a wondrous thing—a c ...more
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 spe ...more
With the amount of time we spend glued to our smartphones, they could be considered a second job (if only we got paid). I spend a large part of my day scrolling through Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, and countless other apps, and burn through hours and hours without even noticin ...more
Every year, some overly ambitious neighbor down the street amazes the crowds with his DIY illusion costume. While these costumes certainly require more work than pulling a mask over your head, they do have that wow factor that others lack. These costumes illicit lots of doubl ...more
The concept and structure of Christmas hasn't changed much since its inception. In its infancy, Christians recruited Roman pagans by associating Christmas with the Saturnalia, an ancient Roman festival in honor of the deity Saturn (also held in December). The pagans had long w ...more
This is a simple pattern, designed to produce a well-fitting mitten. Both the right and left mittens worked the same up to the shaping for the top of the mitten. A slight adjustment for making one right and one left, then they are worked the same. The gusset for the thumb cons ...more
Will the predicted apocalyptic date—December 21st, 2012—really be the end of the world? In this ongoing five-part series, we examine what would happen if zombies, nuclear weapons, cyber wars, earthquakes, or aliens actually destroyed our planet—and how you might survive. End ...more
Whether you've made a resolution to try and read more books this year or are just looking to set time aside to listen to an audiobook a little bit each day, building good reading habits can be tough with a busy life. However, with iOS 13, Apple Books includes reading goals, wh ...more
When I first found out about Nreal, back in the spring of 2018, the most interesting thing about the company's story was the founder's background. Chi Xu, the CEO and founder of Nreal, previously worked at Magic Leap as a software engineer. Earlier this year, when I met Xu a ...more
You know your infant is advanced. Maybe you want to give her or him a head start at learning things like writing code to develop the next big Fortnite game. Or maybe you just want to play Fortnite with your infant. But the American Academy of Pediatrics discourages screen time ...more
One of the best gifts that someone with an iPhone can receive is a paid app, hot new movie, bestselling album, gift card, or anything else in iTunes, Books, or the App Store that costs money. Even if it's a small $0.99 game that you heard a friend talking about, a gesture like ...more
Get Out absolutely tore up the record books this year. And the wildest thing about it? It did so with the most ordinary looking characters and props ever (hence the shoestring $4.5 million budget). Which makes it a godsend for the time- and cash-strapped come Halloween. With G ...more
At Build 2017, the annual developer's conference, Microsoft featured a Windows Mixed Reality Academy. This class was designed to get a developer started creating Mixed Reality experiences quickly. For those of us already developing for the Microsoft HoloLens, while the class — ...more
So while it is the weekend of San Diego Comic-Con, and it should not be a complete surprise — without a word of warning hitting my feed — the trailer for the upcoming film, Ready Player One was released today. And wow it looks amazing. So, you have no idea what I am talking a ...more
Now that we've set up Vuforia in Unity, we can work on the more exciting aspects of making physical objects come to life on the HoloLens. In this guide, we will choose an image (something that you physically have in your home), build our ImageTarget database, and then set up o ...more
Months before London-based Jonathan Moon would turn 30, he started musing over how to celebrate. While he had rung in past birthdays at home, he wanted to do something out of the ordinary as a farewell kiss to his twenties. A short ski vacation with friends felt like the perfe ...more
Harry Potter fans got a treat last week when Pottermore, a site created by Harry Potter author, J. K. Rowling, released a test that let users learn what form their Patronus protective charm would take. Does it need to be said? The internet almost exploded. Riding this new wa ...more
For many of you, the carving fork only comes out at Thanksgiving as an essential turkey-slicing aid. Perhaps you pull it out of the knife block to slice up the occasional roast. But the carving fork (also known as kitchen fork) can be used for many more tasks around the kitche ...more
Smartphones have become such a big part of our lives these days that they're now closely associated with our personal identities. No longer is it Ford versus Chevy, rock versus rap, or PC versus Mac—now, you're either an Android person or an iOS person. Don't Miss: 10 Things ...more
Brand loyalty is one of the main factors behind our decision to choose a particular mobile device, but it doesn't have to be the entire equation. Educated consumers know that certain devices simply fit their budget and usage better than others, which means you can't always let ...more
Smartphone cameras are so good nowadays that there's almost no reason to own a point and shoot. Once the megapixel spec race was finally settled (hint: more isn't always better), manufacturers started focusing on the quality of their camera sensors, which has led to a huge jum ...more
Android comprises an entire ecosystem of apps, games, functions, and features, so it would only make sense that it has its own lexicon. Words, phrases, and acronyms that didn't exist ten years ago are now used in an off-the-cuff style by developers and support technicians acro ...more
Welcome back, my novice hackers! This new series on Bluetooth hacking was inspired by a recent episode of Mr. Robot (my favorite TV show). In episode 6, Eliot hacked the bluetooth keyboard of the police office in order to hack the prison and release his nemesis, Vera. This is ...more
Windows 10 is officially here, and frankly, there's a ton of new features in Microsoft's latest operating system. From the return of the Start menu to the new Edge browser, Windows 10 can take some getting used to. Luckily, we've done a lot of the leg work for you, and what f ...more
Ever watched Netflix on your phone only to realize an hour later that you forgot to turn Wi-Fi on? That's a whole lot of data used. If you've ever gone over your allotted mobile data limit, you know firsthand how costly your carrier's overage fees can truly be. From that poin ...more
Your Nexus 7 may be a tablet, but it can also be used as a phone, thanks to the continued upswing of VoIP applications, which send voice and media messages over the Internet—not over a cellular network. There are many VoIP apps on Google Play that let you make free phone call ...more
Today's project will show how you can convert your laptop, smartphone, or tablet computer into a makeshift projector—just in time for March Madness! It's super cheap to build, and can add a little bit of creative fun to your next sports party. Video: . This DIY is geared mainl ...more
The vast majority of people involved in Steampunk are interested in history but, like with science, there's something about history that we don't talk about very often: The holes. That is, the gaps in our knowledge, not physical holes like that pictured above. That's a real h ...more
Continuity connects all of your Apple devices so that they all work seamlessly together. For instance, you can start tasks on one device and finish them on another, view and send text messages or make calls on your iPhone from your iPad, iPod touch, or Mac, and even use an iPa ...more
One of Apple's key features for iOS was always its "what you see is what you get" philosophy. Sure, there were small tweaks and complicated workarounds to customize an iPhone, but, for the most part, all iPhones felt similar. These days, however, changing up your iPhone's look ...more
The new iOS 14 for iPhone arrived Wednesday, Sept. 15, 2020, alongside iPadOS 14, and there are a lot of features to uncover. Improved widgets. Better home screen customization. Exciting Messages improvements. New abilities in Camera and Photos. There's so much here that it'll ...more
Despite the fact that over 600,000 Snap Lens filters have been created since Lens Studio debuted in 2017, and Facebook is reporting that more than a billion users have interacted with its Spark AR filters across Facebook properties, social augmented reality filters get a bad r ...more
My autistic son loves music. One afternoon, when he was nine, I downloaded GarageBand to his iPhone to help with the boredom of a long wait at a doctor's office. Instead of pacing or escalating into a meltdown, he spent the entire hour and a half practicing, learning, and comp ...more
In just a few months, Binance has experienced explosive growth, overtaking its rivals to rank among the top three cryptocurrency exchanges in the world by trading volume. Without a doubt, Binance is now among the best sites for trading alt-coins like Ripple (XRP), Stellar (XLM ...more
It looks like the dust is finally starting to settle on Google's POLED PR nightmare. The Pixel 2 XL — one of the most hotly-anticipated phones of the year — has been plagued by screen issues and worries. While it is certainly not without its faults, Google has created several ...more
We are most certainly not machines. We all need some downtime every once in a while to set our sanity scales back in balance, which in turn, makes us more productive workers. This is a premise that several forward-thinking employers fully understand, but these types of compani ...more
It's a controversial headline, I know, but bear with me and I'll explain in due course. Disclaimer: I was once a child, and I played lots of video games. I didn't look anything like this child. Are Video Games Good or Bad? Ah, video games: that perennial time-waster that chi ...more
Not that long ago I wrote an article discussing what it would be like, realistically, if you were to accidentally travel back in time to the Victorian era. At the end of that article, I mentioned that the best thing you could bring with you on a time-traveling adventure is a K ...more