Facial Recognition

Using your iPhone for a smart home remote just keeps getting better and better. Apple has consistently improved its HomeKit platform since the Home app came out, adding new features, tweaks, and refinements to the system with each update. And iOS 14 continues this trend with a ...more

Before you go out to protest, understand what you are facing. Sometimes these demonstrations become infected with looters and rioters, which could mean interaction with law enforcement and potentially arrest. And if your phone is on you, it can be used as a tool against you. ...more

The top five apps of the 2010s were all social media apps of some kind, and the fact that's not surprising to you says a lot. We may use them for other reasons here and there, but our phones are social media machines at their cores. The thing is, some make better machines than ...more

Sure, Tony Stark was able to build the original Iron Man suit in a cave with a box of scraps, but can the average do-it-yourselfer replicate the EDITH smartglasses from Spider-Man: Far From Home in a similar fashion? Evidently, the answer is yes, as YouTuber Jake Laser, whose ...more

Haptic feedback is one of the iPhone's most underrated features. With Face ID, you'll feel a satisfying tap or two when buying something in the App Store or iTunes, unlocking protected notes, viewing saved passwords in Settings, and the list goes on. For the first time, Apple ...more

The city of London is getting a holiday gift this season, but it's not the kind you unwrap, since it's completely delivered in augmented reality. Snapchat has created an augmented reality version of the famed Big Ben tower clock building that enables Westminster residents and ...more

French cosmetics giant L'Oréal isn't wasting any time putting its new subsidiary, ModiFace, to work. On Thursday, the company launched a new tool that enables a photo-realistic augmented reality simulation of nail polish shades and textures to be accurately displayed on a user ...more

One could argue that, at least for the moment, software development is more important to the augmented reality experience than hardware. Since a viable augmented reality headset has yet to emerge for the broader, mainstream consumer market, currently, the same devices that mak ...more

Apple's successor to the iPhone X is a beautifully made smartphone with much of the same characteristics, including a 5.8-inch OLED screen, two storage choices, and Face ID. But many features set the iPhone XS apart from its predecessor, as well as the other 2018 lineup of iPh ...more

Less than four months after Snapchat introduced its Snappables platform, Facebook has met the challenge with its own AR gaming feature that surpasses the originator. Rolling out to users on the Messenger app for iOS and Android starting Wednesday, multiplayer video chat AR ga ...more

Department store chain Target is the latest retailer to offer an augmented reality cosmetics app for customers to virtually try on lipstick. For its Beauty Studio web app, Target uses the YouCam platform offered by Perfect Corp. Available through Target.com via any desktop we ...more

Mobile augmented reality developer Blippar's mission is to construct a computer vision map the world, with visual recognition of thousands of notable buildings, bridges, castles, holy places. A major step toward that goal has been taken by the company this month with the annou ...more

Rabbit ears and dog noses are fun and all, but Kay Jewelers is here to class up Snapchat. Claiming a first among the jewelry market, Kay Jewelers has launched a Sponsored Lens that lets Snapchatters virtually try-on three necklaces. A pucker of the lips triggers a virtually-b ...more

Face ID is possibly the iPhone X's make-it-or-break-it feature. Apple is asking previous iPhone owners to put a lot of faith into their home button replacement, and so far, the results seem pretty good. That is until CNN tested the security feature with identical twins. It's ...more

Animoji, short for animated emoji, was a focal point of the iPhone X presentation at the Sept. 12 Apple event. The reactions were split, to be sure, as some considered the attention to this feature on a $1,000+ smartphone to be a bit, well ... too much. As goofy as Animojis ma ...more

As augmented reality gains popularity, the demand for delivering related services and generating content increases. This is demonstrated by a pair of investments from the past week, one in the expansion of a technology lab and another in the form of seed funding for a content ...more

You may not have woken up like this, but you're still #flawless thanks to Microsoft's new Face Swap app for Android. The free app — currently available on Google Play — lets you take a picture of your face and transfer it onto any face in any picture. Unlike the popular face ...more

If you thought the selfie would only ever be used to bombard your feed on Instagram, you were wrong. Dead wrong. JetBlue is looking to take those selfies and use them to check you in for your next flight. In an announcement on Wednesday, the airline said it was partnering wit ...more

The rumor mill surrounding the iPhone 8 is churning this week, and not necessarily in a good way. Yesterday, we learned Apple may be leaving the 3D camera out of the next big iPhone to keep the phone on schedule. Today, rumors allege the 10th-anniversary edition of Apple's sma ...more

Sprint has announced that it will be the first U.S. carrier to release Jelly Bean 4.1 for the Samsung Galaxy S III. The over-the-air updates have already started, with users receiving a notification on how to update on their phone. The reason Jelly Bean has garnered so much at ...more

A good smartphone can be the perfect workout companion. You have music for motivation, videos for pushing through boring cardio sessions, GPS to keep you on course, and even an array of sensors for gathering data about your workout. But not all phones are created equal when it ...more

Dactyloscopy isn’t going anywhere. Forensic science has much relied on fingerprinting as a means of identification, largely because of the massive amount of fingerprints stored in the FBI’s biometric database (IAFIS), which houses over 150,000 million prints. And thanks to the ...more

Our hacked Kinect series has demonstrated amply how the Kinect is changing the worlds of business, art, medicine and robotics. But where does it go from here? That will be determined by the thousands of dedicated DIYers out there doing work like you've seen here over the last ...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

Augmented reality is expected to eventually change everything, and the prevailing view is that those changes will be for the better. The converse view, however, is that the technology will further erode privacy. A new Netflix film called Anon, starring Clive Owen and Amanda S ...more

The Audi A8 may be short on the wow factor as the industry's first Level 3 car, but Audi has revealed some interesting details about one stand-out feature underneath the hood: the car's ability to self-pilot itself at stop signs and lights. Indeed, when the A8 goes on sale th ...more

If it has an internet connection, it's got a huge attack surface for hackers. But what makes your phone even more dangerous is its portability and the collection of sensors it houses that can be just as good at tracking you as the camera and mic. That is why one of the first ...more

Computer vision is a key component in enabling augmented reality experiences, but now it can help give sight to the blind as well. In this case, that assistance comes from Envision, developers of mobile apps for iOS and Android that use optical character recognition (OCR) and ...more

The camera system on the iPhone has never been better. Apple's iPhone 11, 11 Pro, and 11 Pro Max sport some of the best shooters on the market. But no level of quality makes up for the fact that shady apps can access your cameras for nefarious reasons. You can take control of ...more

After adding dual cameras to its camera glasses, Snap is finally taking full advantage of the depth-sensing abilities of newer iPhones as well, extending the use of its new 3D Camera Mode. Rolling out to Snapchat on iPhone X, XS, XR, and new 11-series iPhones this week, 3D Ca ...more

To quote MKBHD, cheap phones are getting good. Each year we are seeing manufacturers start to offer more for much less. This not only translates to cheaper flagship phones, but better budget phones. The latest example of this is the Alcatel 3V, which is redefining what you can ...more

Back to the Future Part II missed wildly on many technological advances for the year 2015, such as flying cars and rehydration ovens. However, it connected on several predictions, such as video calling and biometric security, and it was in the ballpark (pun intended) on others ...more

The highly anticipated iPhone X is finally up for preorder, and it's been almost as exciting as we expected. With the dual cameras, bezel-less display, and high-tech facial recognition, there's almost nothing on the iPhone X that won't be liked. But around the same time as the ...more

The cutting-edge iPhone X, XS, XS Max, and XR have one-upped their Android competitors when it comes to facial recognition. Apple packed these flagships with an array of front-facing sensors to complement its selfie camera, which allows the new device to more accurately analyz ...more

Now that the cutting-edge iPhone X is up for preorder, everyone is excited to see how the new device will compare to offerings from Apple's competitors. Namely the Galaxy Note 8, which is a beast of a phone in its own right. The reasoning behind wanting to see how the iPhone ...more

CEO (and NR50 member) Tim Cook and Apple unveiled the long-awaited lineup of next-generation iPhones today on stage of the Steve Jobs Theater, packed with hardware improvements to facilitate AR experiences from ARKit, which will arrive with the iOS 11 on Sept. 19. The new iPh ...more

The iPhone 8 is just about here. If you're anything like me, you can hardly contain your excitement. Apple has been keeping its 10th-anniversary device — whether you call it the iPhone X, iPhone Edition, or iPhone 8 — as secret as possible, but this past year we've seen a wate ...more

One inventor wants to bring augmented reality to internet radio and home audio speakers. Meanwhile, a leading consumer electronics company has opened up access its deep learning tools for building augmented reality apps. In addition, analysts examine how augmented reality will ...more

A pair of organizations recognized companies working in augmented reality for their innovative technologies over the past week. Meanwhile, another company used augmented reality for a sector that is overdue for a technology makeover, while another company has developed new cam ...more

It seems that mobile app developers are constantly coming up with new ideas to apply augmented reality, with Apple's ARKit promising to increase adoption in apps exponentially. Recently, two developers came up with some rather unique ways to apply AR to familiar mobile applic ...more

Computer system authentication is critical to keeping systems safe from unwanted users, intruders, and abusers. Basically, authentication is the process of the potential user proving they are an authorized user. As most of you know, authentication into secure computer systems ...more

As far as lock screens go, your Samsung Galaxy S4 and other Android phones offer quite a few options. You can use the classic PIN unlock, the novelty facial recognition, or the reliable pattern lock. But what if you get tired of entering the same old PIN or pattern every day? ...more

Augmented reality and computer vision company Blippar has a new lease on life, as previous investor Candy Ventures has completed a successful bid to acquire the assets of the beleaguered company. Blippar entered administration (the UK's version of bankruptcy) last month after ...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

A new dating app has arrived, and it'll finally land you a date with your celebrity crush ... kind of. The app — Dating AI — uses face search technology to help you search for potential love interests that resemble a celebrity you're attracted to. That's right folks, Dating A ...more

Up until April 2020, the iPhone XR was, for many new users, the first entrance into the world of Apple because it was the cheapest iPhone model since the original iPhone SE. Now, the second-generation iPhone SE has shown up at the same initial starting price as its predecessor ...more

The results of Microsoft's $480 million contract with the US Army are on display and users continue to test the suped-up version of the HoloLens 2. Also, the enterprise segment of the AR industry continues to look attractive to investors, as startup Talespin has raised a new ...more

While consumer-grade smartglasses are the holy grail for tech companies, smartglasses maker Vuzix knows where its bread is buttered, and that's in the enterprise segment. As such, the company used the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2020 as its stage for unveiling the M4000, ...more

For the first time in a while, the battle between Samsung and Apple is really interesting. Unlike previous years where the choice for smaller hands was limited to the Galaxy S series, this year, there's an option for Galaxy Note users. Both sides of the aisle have their best o ...more

During the recent Augmented World Expo (AWE), we had a chance to try out the Lenovo ThinkReality A6 AR headset. Unfortunately, the experience was all downhill from there. Meanwhile, Vuzix continues to pursue both enterprise and consumer customers with Vuzix Blade, with a new ...more

As Microsoft continues to bask in the glow of its HoloLens 2 unveiling and begins ramping up the hype to launch, Nreal and Vuzix are carving out their own niches in the AR hardware landscape. Nreal continues to make waves with its forthcoming tethered smartglasses, and its fo ...more

If you salivate at the idea of waking up to the Jarvis-powered smart window from the opening minutes of Marvel's Iron Man, then connected home appliance maker CareOS is here to make your playboy billionaire philanthropist dreams come true. At CES 2019, the company unveiled th ...more

Fan favorite Transformer Bumblebee returns to theaters on Friday in a spin-off of the film franchise, so Paramount Pictures is bringing the car-robot back into the homes of fans via augmented reality. On Thursday evening, Snapchat launched a Sponsored World Lens featuring Bum ...more

Even with all the success HMD had with reviving the Nokia brand in 2017, it seems their second year is shaping up to be even better. Nokia has been steadily releasing sequels to last year's lineup, most with the new minimal bezel design language. The Nokia 7.1 is just their la ...more

Two companies armed with web-based augmented reality tools, Vertebrae and Shopify, are ready to help online retailers boost their sales. It takes some real backbone to wear certain styles of hats in public, so it is fitting that Tenth Street Hats partnered with Vertebrae to i ...more

Not many smartphones are announced at CES these days — instead, you'll mostly see other types of electronics like Energeous's WattUp and Li-Fi. However, ASUS decided to share some good news for their US customers, and it comes in the form of a new phone with some interesting s ...more

The OnePlus 5T was just released, and it's packing several new useful features. While many OnePlus 5 buyers are feeling frustrated with the quick release cycle, lots of fans are still clamoring to buy the new device. Aside from the larger screen, most of the buzz around the 5T ...more

Facebook is testing a new feature in India. One that could help you protect your profile photos from being used on sites without your permission. This issue is a lot more common than you'd think. Most of us have seen the MTV show 'Catfish' or at least have heard of it. A pers ...more

Locking individual apps on your Android device gives you an added layer of security by safeguarding app data from unwanted attention. I personally prefer using an app locker over a standard lock screen because my kids play with my phone, and they've completely disabled it afte ...more

The Snapdragon 820 and 821 were met with praise last year, receiving almost no complaints compared to their overheating predecessor, the Snapdragon 810. But now, all eyes are on Qualcomm to see what goodies they have in store for us this year, as their new SoC, the Snapdragon ...more