Co-Directed by WonderHowTo's Ford Austin. Do any of those actors look familiar? If you like it vote for it here Starring Tom Sizemore ("saving Private Ryan," "Heat," "Natural Born Killers"), Ezra Buzzington ("Fight Club," "The Hills Have Eyes"), Darren Dalton ("The Outsiders ...more
Many companies were disappointed when Google+ rolled out and banned the creation of accounts specifically for businesses and brands. Fortunately, today, Google began rolling out Google+ pages, for them to start connecting with customers and followers. For an example of what a ...more
ARGs have taken the concept of video games to some odd and wonderful real-world places. Socks, Inc. might not be the first ARG, and LittleBigPlanet might have defined the sock-puppet-based game archetype, but it is the first game to combine ARG and sock puppet elements into on ...more
Facebook's 'Safety Check' is a useful social media function — it provides users a comfort that in the event of an emergency, they can let friends and family know they are safe. While certainly not perfect, the service is now essential during disasters and tragedies. That servi ...more
You're in constant communication with your friends and family. The only issue? Nobody uses the same app. Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp — you have contacts spanning all three, and the resulting balancing-act to keep in touch can be overwhelming. That's why Facebook — who owns ...more
Snapchat accidentally—and then intentionally—announced their digital eyeglasses, known as Spectacles, over the weekend. While we'd hoped their augmented reality-heavy platform would result in related hardware, Spectacles unfortunately seek to "reinvent" little more than a vide ...more
On Thursday, Snapchat opened up its walled garden of World Lenses to the masses of creators with the launch of Lens Studio. Available as a free application for PCs and Macs, Lens Studio is billed as powerful enough for experienced developers to import their own 3D animations, ...more
Now even muggles can see how they'd look chasing the Golden Snitch on a Nimbus 2000. That's because Snapchat is gifting Harry Potter fans with a 3D Bitmoji Lens that adorns their digital doppelgängers in the robes of the houses of Hogwarts. To cast this AR spell with your Sn ...more
Despite the fact that Snap Inc.'s Spectacles weren't the hit some were expecting, the company is nevertheless taking another swing at it by releasing an updated version. On Thursday, April 26, Snap Inc. revealed a new version of Spectacles. No, the new version still doesn't d ...more
Continuing our NR30 series this week, we focused on the leaders of the software development industry that make augmented reality experiences possible. In other news, two of the current leaders in making AR headsets, Microsoft and Magic Leap, are pursuing multiple verticals wit ...more
It used to be that the best kind of swag was T-shirts and hats from your favorite music artists, but now the symbol of casual insider cool falls to the tech companies, and Snapchat has just joined the ranks of branded apparel purveyors. On Thursday, Feb. 1, Snap Inc. launched ...more
It's the bane of many a tech geek's existence that the customizability of Android software cannot be combined with the sleek design of the iPhone. A new Kickstarter project titled Eye, however, is looking to change that with a new iPhone case that allows you to combine the two ...more
On Wednesday, Snap, Inc. unveiled a revamp of its Snapchat app that draws a hard line between content from your friends and content from professional media organizations. However, the new changes, teased during the company's recent third quarter financial results, won't impac ...more
Following San Francisco-based Occipital's successful Structure Sensor Kickstarter campaign, the release of its Bridge AR/VR headset, as well as a string of technology and company acquisitions, the company has built a rather strong name for itself in the AR community. And now, ...more
What many thought was inevitable, based on recent hints, has been revealed to be in the planning stages: Snapchat is working on smartglasses. The surprising information came out on March 2 in a report that also claims Snap Inc. is planning to release version two of its Spectac ...more
As interest in augmented and virtual reality continues to grow, so does the need to bring objects from the real world into virtual space. With that, there's also now an increased need for solutions that bypass the time-consuming process of producing handmade 3D models. Typica ...more
While Snap's third quarter financial reports disappointed Wall Street, China's Tencent took the opportunity to expand its investment in the social media company. In filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Snap disclosed that it was notified this month by Te ...more
Just weeks after being acquired by comedian turned producer Byron Allen for $300 million, The Weather Channel has tapped augmented reality studio The Future Group to integrate immersive augmented reality experiences into its broadcast content. Augmented reality made its live ...more
Hutch Interiors, Inc., makers of an eponymous augmented reality home design app for iOS and Android, has closed a series A round of funding, led by online real estate company Zillow Group, totaling $10 million. Hutch shares the approach of similar augmented reality apps from ...more
In an effort to help its advertising partners close sales with its sponsored augmented reality camera effects, Snapchat has launched a set of e-commerce tools designed to encourage users to buy products directly in the app. Shoppable AR is an enhanced Lens that offers adverti ...more
As part of its ARCore release announcement, Google also revealed a forthcoming app that's sure to excite those who celebrate '80s pop culture. That app is Ghostbusters World, which is coming later this year from Sony Pictures Entertainment Consumer Products, Ghost Corps (the ...more
At present, consumer-facing augmented reality is a mobile world, and Snapchat is making money on it through advertising partnerships. The future, however, is in wearables, and that future is getting closer. While Magic Leap is lining up content for the launch of Magic Leap On ...more
With its recent acquisition of 3D gaming engine PlayCanvas, Snapchat parent Snap, Inc. appears to be preparing a challenge to the existing players in the world of game development, particularly in terms of augmented and virtual reality gaming. The acquisition appears to have ...more
For as long as 14,000 years, the First Nations people of the Heitsuk Nation have made their home along the Central Coast of the Canadian province of British Columbia. Among the territory's inlets, islands, rivers, and valleys lie a clay deposit on the north side of Kisameet Ba ...more
The North remembers...that smartglasses are the future! Game of Thrones jokes aside, the smartglasses startup opened its doors, and we visited its Brooklyn store to get our hands the consumer-focused Focals smartglasses. While North is just getting off the ground, Microsoft a ...more
It would be difficult to discuss the business of augmented reality without acknowledging the annual tech meat market of CES. The biggest stories of CES came courtesy of Vuzix, which debuted its consumer-centric Blade smartglasses, and Meta Company, which struck a deal with De ...more
Serving as the primary tool of distribution for many websites, social media is how most of us catch up what's going on around the world. While there is a bunch of clickbait going around on Facebook and Twitter, there are plenty of genuinely interesting articles being shared. ...more
It is finally happening. After not having a major update since August of 2016, HoloLens owners everywhere will soon get a number of new features added to their devices. At least if they are members of the Windows Insider program. Throughout 2017, the Mixed Reality Team at Mic ...more
Because augmented reality is still so new to so many people, there are a number of would-be experts opining online, often repeating basic facts anyone with a spare 15 minutes can find on their own. That's why it's important to point out when someone delivers what could be cons ...more
Throughout this NR50 series, we have talked about the incredible growth the augmented and mixed reality space has seen in the last year. More devices, software, developers, and use-cases seem to arrive daily. For this growth to have occurred, it took the work of many people, f ...more
Welcome to the first annual Next Reality 30, our list of people who've made the biggest impact on the augmented reality space in the last 12 months — and what a 12-month roller-coaster ride it's been. Apple introduced ARKit-powered apps last fall, Google launched ARCore for An ...more
Investors aren't keen to throw money at a new technology sector without at least some hope of a significant return on their investment in the future. That's why a recent run of activity within the augmented reality business space has stoked some new optimism among the financia ...more
A company known as Cyanogen, Inc. has been in the news numerous times over the past year, and almost every time their name is brought up, it's amid reports of an impending doom. The writing is on the wall for the makers of Cyanogen OS, as it appears that there is little that c ...more
With the theatrical premiere of Deadpool 2 less than two weeks away, the hype train for the sequel to 2016's surprise R-rated hit is gaining steam, and augmented reality is on board for the ride. The marketing superheroes behind the movie have teamed up with 7-Eleven, which i ...more
Snapchat is making it easier for developers and creators to build augmented reality effects in Lens Studio with a slew of new features, including seven face templates. The new templates, available starting Tuesday, include Face Paint, Photo, Distort, Trigger, 2D Objects, 3D O ...more
Mobile augmented reality pioneer Blippar has now completed its fall from hopeful AR startup to the immersive computing history books. On Monday, Blippar confirmed via a blog post that it has entered administration, the UK equivalent of bankruptcy in the US. The announcement c ...more
Meta Company filed suit today against a former employee and his startup DreamWorld USA, Inc. for the misappropriation of trade secrets and confidential information. Zhangyi Zhong, formerly head the optics department at Meta, his company, and 20 unnamed actors are accused of m ...more
GIFs are awesome, but GIFing from your keyboard is some next-level stuff, and Apple knows this. That's why they've included a way to find and send GIFs in Messages from the stock iOS 10 keyboard. However, iOS 10 is not out for the public just yet, so if you want to easily send ...more
To some, SCRABBLE is just a board game to play during family game night or during a casual get-together. Others think of SCRABBLE as a mere hobby. But with any activity, there will always be fanatics—the ones who would rather sell their soul than stop—the ones with a constant ...more
What if I told you that you could read minds? You'd most likely think I was crazy, and you'd be right. But what I really meant is that you could make people think that you could read minds, something that's not the least bit crazy. Performing mind reading — and it is a perfor ...more
The holiday season is here, and if you didn't already pick up a SCRABBLE set during Black Friday or Cyber Monday, then you still have time to buy the perfect gift for your lexical-minded friend. There's sure to be deals out there over the next couple of weeks, you just need to ...more
This time last year, we got our first taste of what mobile app developers could do in augmented reality with Apple's ARKit. Most people had never heard of Animojis. Google's AR platform was still Tango. Snapchat introduced its World Lens AR experiences. Most mobile AR experien ...more
Andy Rubin, the cofounder of Android, departed Google in 2014 to go on and start his own smartphone company, Essential. Rubin first gave us a clue at what he would be working on when he announced in January that he wanted Essential to create a premium smartphone with a bezel-l ...more
If there's any lingering uncertainty as to the mainstream viability of augmented reality, a list of the top mobile apps and games of 2019 serves to dispell those doubts. Of the top 10 most downloaded apps of 2019 according to app analytics service App Annie, six include augme ...more
Cyanogen, Inc., the for-profit company that spun off from its CyanogenMod roots several years ago, has announced that they're shutting down all of their services. The company's impending demise shouldn't directly impact many Android users, but the announcement does have one ma ...more
Augmented reality wearables maker ThirdEye Gen, Inc. has officially released what it claims are the "smallest mixed reality glasses" in the X2, which will be available for hands-on demonstrations at the company's CES 2019 booth this week. The sequel to the X1 model, the X2 pa ...more
One of the more compelling human interest stories of the summer has been the plight of the Thai Wild Boars soccer team, who were trapped in a cave for weeks. To show just how perilous the largely unchartered cave was, The New York Times has transported its readers into an aug ...more
With the opening round of Wimbledon, one of professional tennis's four major tournaments, beginning on Monday, Snapchat is serving up an augmented reality tennis mini-game. The game challenges worldwide users and their 3D Bitmoji avatars to take on the digital doppelganger of ...more
As if its users weren't already having enough fun with dancing hot dogs and face effects, Snapchat is upping the ante with a new kind of shared augmented reality content. Called Snappables, the interactive Lenses include games that users can play with facial expressions and h ...more
Apple's iPhone X now has the power to turn anyone into a Japanese anime character, thanks to a new app that harnesses the device's TrueDepth camera. Created by Tokyo-based ViRD Inc., the Puppemoji app allows you to transcend the confines of Apple's Animoji characters and reco ...more
With a fresh series of videos and a new webpage, Snapchat has composed an answer to its own question, "What is Snapchat?" In short, its answer is that "Snapchat is a camera." In an extended commercial (below) accompanying the new webpage, it's evident that the camera does qui ...more
Intel Corp.'s augmented reality division could ship consumer-focused smartglasses before the end of the year, according to reports. On Thursday, citing anonymous sources, Bloomberg reported that contract manufacturer Quanta Computer Inc. is producing the AR headset. Known int ...more
Snapchat users have clamored for the ability to share their Stories since the app's inception, and we're finally going to be able to with "Stories Everywhere." Similar to how Twitter gave people the ability to embed tweets in 2011, Snap, Inc. aims to make Stories even more acc ...more
Usually paper beats rock. With augmented reality, The Rock beats paper. Using the Life VR app for iOS or Android, Entertainment Weekly readers can point their smartphones at the cover of the Dec. 8 edition to view a holiday greeting from Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, star of the ...more
5G is showing up more and more in the news, as an increasing number of companies jump on the bandwagon. AT&T made a splash earlier this year with their embarrassing "5G Evolution" debacle, and the other three major wireless carriers soon followed suit, detailing their own vagu ...more
Augmented and virtual reality motion tracking leader Leap Motion, Inc. announced that it has secured $50 million in Series C funding to fund expansion into new territories and industries. The Series C round further solidifies Leap Motion's standing as a cornerstone of augment ...more
Apple made headlines last month when it announced it would acquire the popular application Workflow. Now, the company should be making waves again with the news that they will reimburse customers who purchased the app. In the weeks since the announcement, Apple has made Workf ...more
Chairish, Inc. is the latest furniture retailer to bring augmented reality into its mobile stores, adding features for users to visualize products in their homes. Today, the company added AR capabilities to their iOS apps for their brands Chairish, an online marketplace for v ...more
With intelligent grammar check, accurate predictive text, swipe gestures, and plenty of themes, it makes sense that Ginger Keyboard has well over a million downloads on the Google Play Store, making it one of the more popular keyboards available for Android users. GingerSoftw ...more
With smartphone cameras and software getting better and better every year, more and more users are getting passionate about photography. So when you're shopping for a gift to get someone, if they have a smartphone, chances are they'll more than appreciate some tools and access ...more