Expand Shape in Photoshop

Blue light (like that from our smartphone) tricks the human brain into thinking it's still daytime, even if it's coming from something as small as a screen. So while you're playing around with your new Pixel or Pixel XL after dark, subconscious signals to be awake are preventi ...more

If you're just starting out with Android—or smartphones in general, for that matter—there are a lot of little things to learn. One of the first terms you'll likely encounter is "Wi-Fi," which is a wireless internet connection served up by a router in your home, office, or loca ...more

Now that the Xposed Framework has finally been updated for Android Lollipop, we're starting to notice that some modules function properly, while others are a bit buggy or even worse—don't work at all. Most of this is a result of changes to elements of the Android system that K ...more

In photography, stereographic projection is a geometric technique that projects a sphere onto a plane, which is mostly used in the mapping of spherical panoramas. The most popular type of stereographic panorama is the "tiny planet," where the center view of a panoramic image ...more

A while back, Facebook released a killer feature called "Chat Heads" to its Facebook Messenger app. Messages from users would "pop up" in small bubbles that floated on the screen that could be seen, accessed, and moved around from within most apps. Users applauded the innovat ...more

Every year, Apple adds some old technology to the iPhone and gives it a catchy marketing name, then like clockwork, it becomes the next big thing. Google, on the other hand, creates some truly innovative features, doesn't really bother naming them, then lets them languish in o ...more

In iOS, Apple provides a few live wallpapers that you can use for the background on your iPhone's lock screen, but these animated options are just wavy color shifts and ink-in-water effects. To really customize your lock screen, you can use a Live Photo for your wallpaper. If ...more

There are plenty of third-party apps for scanning documents on your iPhone, but they can all be tossed out the door since iOS 11 includes one by default now. Instead of a dedicated app, it's included as part of the Notes app, and it's fairly easy to use. After scanning, you ca ...more

Halloween may be finished, but the augmented reality chills are not over yet for some people. Arachnophobes are bravely facing their fears by cozying up to augmented reality spiders for a university study. Wayne State University's Stress, Trauma, and Anxiety Research Clinic ( ...more

Two years ago, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg kicked off the F8 Developers Conference keynote with augmented reality and the introduction of Facebook's AR camera platform, now known as Spark AR. Since then, Facebook has faced an avalanche of controversy on its appro ...more

Google is going all in with Childish Gambino as its musical champion for augmented reality, as the duo has now dropped its second AR collaboration of the year. After Google launched his Playmoji for Pixel's Playground app earlier this year, Gambino, the musical alter ego of e ...more

We may have to wait a few years before they arrive, but reports of Apple's headset taking shape in Cupertino gives the tech world hope that its white knight for consumer AR is on its way. Snap's disappointing third quarter financial results, however, give us some pause on the ...more

With a new installment of the Saw horror series opening in theaters nationwide this weekend, Lionsgate is betting its ad dollars on immersive advertising to sell tickets. Using Vertebrae's recently-launched AR mobile web ad platform, the ads for Jigsaw will be served as displ ...more

Cruise Automation is actively seeking to recruit a lead engineer to head its development efforts of 3D maps with expertise in city environments, signaling the GM driverless unit's move towards a mobility-as-a-service business model. Given what Cruise has revealed so far, the ...more

This week's Brief Reality is led by a pair of stories with an eye to the future of the augmented reality industry, first in terms of standards for the industry, then with regards to its future applications in the automotive realm. Finally, one company looks to boost its future ...more

If you're ever in a major accident or have a bout with acute onset health problems, first responders will need to know as much information about you in order to provide proper care. For this reason, paramedics and firemen have been trained to search a subject's cell phone to f ...more

Sometimes it's the smallest feature in your smartphone that makes the biggest difference in user experience. Take screen timeout, for instance. You can probably think of plenty of times when your handset's display blacked out while you were in the middle of something. You coul ...more

Things are definitely starting to shape up with iOS 10. After three developer betas of the upcoming operating system, Apple has begun rolling out the developer beta 4 release for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, which focuses mostly on refining some of the cool new features. Don ...more

Obviously this is just a teaser, and who knows how soon we'll see something like this in real life, but just go ahead and watch the video first before you continue reading. Video: . I'm already at at least half-Keanu after watching this video that Microsoft dropped at a Super ...more

Star Trek Communicator badges rule. If you're a Trekkie, you know they are iconic to the TV series. The Next Generation, Voyager, and Deep Space Nine all had these awesome communicator badges. Video: . Step 1: Draw Your Communicator Badges I designed mine in a product called ...more

Meringues are a French and Swiss dessert made of whipped egg whites and sugar, and they are light, sweet, and crispy confections. To make traditional meringues, you beat egg whites into soft foamy peaks, and then keep whipping as you gradually add sugar until the peaks become ...more

Over the last few years, Apple has significantly improved and scaled up your iPhone's ability to edit photos. Using the Markup feature, which was introduced back in iOS 10, you can add doodles, highlights, important text, your signature, and arrows and other objects onto pictu ...more

The biggest new feature in Android 10 is the system-wide dark mode. Both Samsung and Google phones have it, so third-party support is everywhere. The only problem is OnePlus forgot to include a way to quickly toggle dark mode on and off. You'd have to imagine a dark mode togg ...more

Augmented reality gaming pioneer and Pokémon GO mastermind Niantic is putting the pieces on the gameboard to prepare developers and gamers for the launch of its AR cloud platform. Announced in June 2018, the Niantic Real World Platform would enable multiplayer experiences, pe ...more

As the Augmented World Expo (AWE) prepares to open its doors to AR developers and enthusiasts, we sat down with founder Ori Inbar to talk about AR's growth over the past decade, and what the future may hold. In its eleventh year of summoning developers to its own conference, ...more

Developers in the augmented reality industry got a lot of love this week. While Microsoft is marketing the HoloLens 2 toward the enterprise segment, the company is still working hard to give the indie developer community a chance to purchase the next-generation AR headset. Me ...more

Google's has expanded ARCore support to numerous Android flagships like the Galaxy S10, so if you have a compatible device, you get access to all the cool new apps that can augment the world around you. One of ARCore's most sought-after features, AR Stickers, is normally exclu ...more

The next big iOS version for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch was revealed by Apple at WWDC 2018 and dropped for everyone on Sept. 17, 2018, less than a week after Apple revealed the new iPhone lineup. We've rounded up all the big picture items and secret features and changes we c ...more

The road to becoming a skilled white hat is paved with many milestones, one of those being learning how to perform a simple Nmap scan. A little further down that road lies more advanced scanning, along with utilizing a powerful feature of Nmap called the Nmap Scripting Engine. ...more

When you hear people say the iPhone "just works," it's because of all the finishing touches Apple adds to iOS. A perfect example of this is the new QR-scanning feature in iOS 12 — by tapping a single button in the iPhone's Control Center, you can scan a QR code within seconds. ...more

Before starting any drive where you're using Google Maps for directions, it's vital to make sure the app is functioning correctly, specifically, navigation prompts. After initiating turn-by-turn directions on your Android or iPhone, the last thing you want to worry about is Go ...more

If competition in the augmented reality space was a spectator sport, then ARKit, ARCore, and HoloLens dominate the prime-time broadcasts on ESPN. If you're looking for the race to be the "Cardboard for AR," you might need to tune-in to ESPN2. There, you would learn that Mira ...more

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 a ...more

The de Blasio Administration of New York City has announced that the NYU Tandon School of Engineering will be hosting the country's first publicly funded VR/AR facility. The school was chosen out of many institutions in the running because of its innovations in the world of s ...more

Oftentimes, seemingly insignificant, nondescript features have the most impact on enhancing our Android's usability. A great example is Nougat's inclusion of customizable Quick Settings tiles, which adds greatly to the user experience by letting individuals tailor their expand ...more

Up until now, enabling full-time Immersive Mode on an Android device has been a tedious task which required you to run individual ADB commands each time you wanted to toggle it on or off. This was a shame, too, since Immersive Mode helps reclaim lots of screen real estate by a ...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

When Google released the first Developer Preview build of Android 7.0 Nougat, users were happy to see that a new "Night Mode" was included among the changes. The feature would cancel out any blue light emitted from your screen to help you get to sleep a bit earlier, quite simi ...more

Hair dyers are pretty straightforward tools, but they can actually do way more than just dry your wet hair or defog your bathroom mirror. From the kitchen to the backyard, a blowdryer can help you solve common problems around the house and beyond, and here are our 10 favorite ...more

One of the first orders of business after purchasing a new smartphone is to load up your shiny new toy with phone numbers, email addresses, and general contact information for all the important people in your life. Don't Miss: Android Basics: Get Started with Your New Smartph ...more

The new Nexus 6 and Nexus 9 models will be shipping with Android 5.0 Lollipop preinstalled, and the Nexus 4, 5, 7, and 10 will be getting the new OS update from Google very soon. But where does that leave the rest of us? All non-Nexus devices running versions of KitKat will h ...more

Apple just seeded developers and public beta testers the GM (golden master) for iOS 14 on Tuesday, Sept 15. The update (18A373) comes just after Apple's "Time Flies" event, and six days after Apple released iOS 14 beta 8 for both developers and public testers. Apple released ...more

The year 2018 was a rough one for Snap, the company behind the Snapchat app and the Spectacles wearable camera device. From executive departures to reports of slowed user growth, the company that once spurned Facebook's multibillion-dollar advances is now facing a moment of tr ...more

It's official — the newest version of Google's mobile operating system is called Android 8.0 Oreo, and it's in the process of rolling out to many different devices. Oreo has plenty of changes in store, ranging from revamped looks to under-the-hood improvements, so there's tons ...more

The screenshot tool on your iPhone can come in handy in various ways, but it may be even more helpful than you realize. So if you thought you knew everything there was to know about your iPhone's screenshot tool, it's time to put your knowledge to the test. Many of these hidd ...more

With Samsung's One UI 3.0 update, the main on-screen volume slider has a little menu button on the top of it. Tapping this will expand the slider into a full-blown volume panel, complete with controls for all of the various types of sounds your Galaxy might make. Standard stuf ...more

Two of the three entities behind Pokemon GO, the reigning champion in mobile augmented reality gaming, are joining forces again to see if lightning can strike more than once. This week, AR developer Niantic and gaming giant Nintendo announced a partnership that will see a ser ...more

Apple's iOS 14 is here. With it, you'll see over 200 new features and changes hit your iPhone, including home screen widgets, inline replies in Messages, and cycling routes in Maps. Here's how you can get your hands on the brand new update. Apple released iOS 14 to compatible ...more

Adobe has navigated competition for decades. Since the company's founding in a Silicon Valley garage in 1982, Adobe has led the way in design software. Pivoting to Adobe Creative Cloud in 2011, they've remained ahead of the game with an incredible suite of products. Adobe rem ...more

One of the primary factors that separates an augmented reality device from a standard heads-up display such as Google Glass is dimensional depth perception. This can be created by either RGB cameras, infrared depth cameras, or both, depending on the level of accuracy you're ai ...more

Whether your palate runs to domestic or imported, a piece of cheese can be a real treat for the senses. Its smell, taste, and texture are all parts of its appeal. A big part of what makes that savory wonderfulness comes from the microbes in and on the cheese. Thanks to a team ...more

Microbial cells can improve the functionality of clothes in creative and useful ways, including cooling us down during a workout or making clothing glow for better visibility. The innovative products were developed by a team of 14 researchers from MIT, in such broadly diverse ...more

In 1987, two brothers, Thomas and John Kroll, began work on an image editing software, which was eventually acquired in 1988 and released to the world in 1990 by Adobe. That software was Photoshop 1.0, initially exclusive for the Macintosh platform. Over the years, Photoshop b ...more

Your freezer is no one-trick pony. While it does excel at keeping your food fresh for as long as possible, it has a few secret talents it doesn't want you to know about. Like making soda slushies and pyro-friendly smoke mix, as well as reviving dead hard drives. Even better—it ...more

Apple just released its biggest update to iOS 17 yet, and there are 60 exciting new changes for your iPhone. With iOS 17.2, you get a brand new app, more Apple Music enhancements, upgrades in Messages, and a new security feature that was announced last year, as well as changes ...more

Digital artist Beeple's $69 million NFT art auction at Christie's has a second act called Wenew, and includes attempting to open the digital art floodgates to mainstream collectors and artists alike by using physical goods. Wenew is unique in that it is the first NFT platform ...more

Google dropped several of the Pixel 4's more gimmicky features in favor of perfecting the basics on the Pixel 5. While you probably won't miss Motion Sense or the Assistant squeeze gesture, you'll definitely like the extra battery they packed into the space those features once ...more

For a built-in app, Notes works pretty well and can stack up against some of the best third-party note-taking tools. Apple continues to update it with each iteration of iOS, adding new features and improving existing ones to make jotting down your daily thoughts a smooth and e ...more

When learning Wi-Fi hacking, picking a compatible Wi-Fi network adapter is the first step to learning to crack Wi-Fi passwords. Many compatible adapters have swappable antennas, and there are several different kinds of specialized antennas you can add to a network adapter to ...more

So you want to know what that person who is always on their phone is up to? If you're on the same Wi-Fi network, it's as simple as opening Wireshark and configuring a few settings. We'll use the tool to decrypt WPA2 network traffic so we can spy on which applications a phone i ...more