First Base

The narratives around virtual reality consistently revolve around human empathy and emotion, while the story around augmented reality has been decidedly more dispassionate and business-focused — until now. In a stirring speech held at a recent TEDx event, Brian Mullins, the f ...more

Binance, a China-based cryptocurrency exchange, is rapidly gaining popularity thanks to the sheer selection of digital currencies you can purchase — Ripple (XRP), Tron (TRX), IOTA, and Stellar (XLM), to name a few — using both Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH). Binance has an i ...more

With an eye toward future iPhone X-focused augmented reality functions, Apple's new investment in one of its components vendors will increase production capacity for the technology behind its TrueDepth camera, but could also apply to its future AR ambitions. On the software s ...more

If you're trying to get somewhere fast, taking a toll road or two can definitely help you do that, but at a cost. When you're not in any rush, that would-be toll money will work much better in your gas tank, especially if it's only minutes that are being shaved from your trip. ...more

Whether inappropriate or unimportant, some emails don't need to be viewed at a certain times of the day. For example, you might not want to see any personal emails during work hours. By default, Gmail will notify you of all emails that hit your inbox, but fortunately, there's ...more

For many of us, getting to inbox zero is the highlight of our day. But if you used your email address to sign up for various sites and services, your inbox is probably cluttered with all sorts of spam, news letters, and unimportant emails. Thankfully, Gmail has a feature that ...more

Considered by many (perhaps unfairly) to be a very public failure, Google Glass can add another plot point to its comeback story, this time as a tool to teach social skills to children and adults with autism. Enter Brain Power, a company that has combined neuroscience and aug ...more

Chis Lacy's Action Launcher is easily one of the best third-party home screen apps for Android. If you're interested in the basic feature set of this impressive app, check our our overview of the top five launchers on Android. Today, we're taking an in-depth look at the brand ...more

Mobile AR developer Blippar has achieved a breakthrough by releasing what appears to be the first commercially-available AR navigation app. The company's new app, AR City, gives users overlay directions for walking routes as well as points of interest. The app is available vi ...more

Many OEMs create skins that run on top of Android to differentiate themselves from their competitors. One example is the LG UX 6.0+ found in the new LG V30, which is Android at its core, but improved upon by the addition of unique features. One such feature is the ability to c ...more

A few months ago, we gave you a small peek at a new entrant in the race to deliver augmented reality smartglasses to the masses, and now the device is finally ready for the public. ThirdEye Gen is now accepting preorders for its X1 Smart Glasses, which will also provide users ...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

A development duo has concocted an iPhone app that displays related tweets based on objects recognized by the device's camera. Or Fleisher and Anastasis Germanidis compiled the experiment, dubbed Twit.AR, using Apple's CoreML machine learning platform and Google's Inception v ...more

Meta Company has filed its response to allegations that the user interface for their augmented reality headsets infringe on six patents owned by a mostly-unknown company. Last month, Meta's legal team asked the court to dismiss the patent infringement claims levied by Genedic ...more

While VR promises to take gamers to another world, AR has the potential to bring the game elements into your own neighborhood or home. Just in time for Halloween, ARZombi places your living room into the epicenter of a zombie outbreak, with your ARKit-compatible iPhone or iPa ...more

Mobile apps themselves are not always the end product or service for generating revenue. More often, they are deployed as tactics within a larger marketing or public relations strategy. For product manufacturers, apps can be used to sell anything from drinks and chips (by way ...more

Anyone who knows me well is aware that I am a cyberpunk junkie. The conflict between lowlifes, corporations, and the government, flavored with dystopian future, high technology, transhumanism, artificial intelligence, and noir storytelling, just does something for me. Since I ...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

Eventually, we all get tired of our home screens. There's nothing wrong with it, but after hundreds of times seeing the same thing, it all starts looking a bit stale. You can rearrange icons and widgets, or even just pick a new wallpaper — but sometimes, your layout is perfect ...more

When Apple announced the iPhone X, 8, and 8 Plus, they had a laundry list of new features to talk about. They discussed the improved camera, the new screen, wireless charging, and many other things, but they curiously failed to mention that they just matched one of biggest fea ...more

A PirateBox creates a network that allows users to communicate wirelessly, connecting smartphones and laptops even when surrounding infrastructure has been disabled on purpose or destroyed in a disaster. Using a Raspberry Pi, we will make a wireless offline server that hosts f ...more

This morning Google announced ARCore, an SDK for Android devices that will allow augmented reality developers to add new functionality to Android 7.0 and up, all without any special hardware other than the camera of a phone. While Apple released ARKit into beta at WDCC a few ...more

By default, iMovie for iPhone adds a dissolve (also called a crossfade) in between all of the video clips in your movie project's timeline, which is an effect that transitions gradually from the end of one clip to the beginning of another. However, iMovie does not add any begi ...more

A survey by ABI Research revealed that only 25 percent of businesses have implemented augmented reality technology in some form or fashion. However, with 75 percent of companies expressing interest in augmented reality tools, the bandwagon could start to get crowded soon. Thi ...more

While it's easy enough to take a screenshot of an end-to-end encrypted Telegram chat thread using an iPhone, it's an entirely different story on Android phones. Telegram disables screenshots for Secret Chats by default on Android, and not everyone can turn it on. Sometime in ...more

This week, two companies looking to capitalize on the growing augmented reality industry, raised funding from starkly different sources. Meanwhile, several companies supplying components and technology for augmented reality experiences reported positive results from the first ...more

Developers in the augmented reality space are sitting on the bleeding edge of a hot technology. With the intense interest, especially in the tech circles, there are a large number of people working on potential solutions and uses for the technology. There is also a lot of time ...more

The Xposed Framework is still alive and kicking despite the fact that development has slowed down a bit lately. Rovo89 is the only true developer behind Xposed, so it's really a one-man show. This means the popular root mod doesn't typically support the latest Android version, ...more

Ride-sharing firm Lyft says it will continue to rely on drivers in the near and long term even as it replaces them with driverless cars, Taggart Matthiesen, Lyft's director of product, said during a Podcast with Recode. In other words, Matthiesen says Lyft plans to offer oppo ...more

As more companies begin adopting augmented reality in the workplace, providers like Vuzix reap the benefits. After revealing increased sales in the second quarter financial results, the smart glasses maker announced a partnership with Blackberry that strengthens their enterpr ...more

Elon Musk's SpaceX is launching the world's most powerful rocket. The Tesla founder and CEO says the company is about to go through "manufacturing hell" to make delivery schedules for its new Tesla 3. Somehow, Musk says Tesla will offer Level 5 driving (so you can take a nap w ...more

An update to the iFramed social media gateway app for iOS adds an augmented reality feature called JuxImage that gives its users Snapchat-like photo and video effects. For the uninitiated, iFramed enables users to post sponsored content to various social media outlets. Users ...more

Adobe Premiere Clip gives mobile video editors the tools they need to make some great looking projects from their iPhone or Android device. Editors need ways to organize and trim clips, edit the look of those clips, add music, and more. For a smartphone app, Adobe Premiere Cli ...more

If you've just started a freeform editing project in Adobe Premiere Clip on Android or iPhone, what's next? The first thing you're going to want to do is trim down the video clips you imported into your draft, that way you can lay them out perfectly in your timeline and create ...more

With the announcement of Google Glass Enterprise Edition last week, a literal behemoth entered the arena of companies serving augmented reality solutions to business customers. While Google Glass, with the backing of Alphabet, has the potential to be a disruptor, the field alr ...more

Results of an early-stage clinical trial of an HIV vaccine could mean a hoped-for breakthrough in the battle against AIDS. It was in 1981 that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) first reported on a rare lung infection in a young, healthy man who was gay. In ...more

Some drivers give Tesla's Autopilot update released this week rave reviews, after version 8.1 has taken longer than expected to live up to Elon Musk's "smooth as silk" Tweet from earlier this year. With this update, drivers report noticeable improvements in Tesla models' driv ...more

This may not matter to you if you only FaceTime from your iPhone occasionally, but if you're FaceTiming every day on a limited data plan from your cellular provider, you're going to want to conserve as much data as possible by making sure that you're connected to Wi-Fi only — ...more

When it comes to differentiating from the competition, brands are continuing to leverage augmented reality to give consumers to the point that there are few "firsts" left to achieve in the marketplace. While L'Oreal jumps on the augmented reality bandwagon for cosmetics, Acura ...more

When Chan Mei Zhi Alcine chose her senior project, she thought outside the box by thinking inside the bottle. Along with a research team at her university, she found a way to combine health and enjoyment, while meeting a challenge not so definitively met before in alcoholic be ...more

Google quickly learned over five years ago electric vehicles (EVs) were the powertrain of choice for its then fledging driverless car program and the industry has since followed its lead. Now, every major carmaker has an EV program of some kind, while all-electric powertrains ...more

Volvo Cars' claims it will offer Level 4 models by 2021 means the premium carmaker will likely have to finalize the driverless design to meet the aggressive timeline by next year at the latest. But in consideration of the Swedish carmaker's aggressive goals, the extent to whi ...more

In the first part of this series, we looked at the surface detection that is provided by the ARKit. We looked at how it worked and covered some of the tools that could help us determine what is not working; when it doesn't. Now let's take this to the next step. Before we can ...more

Reigns recently went on sale on the Google Play Store (sorry, iPhone users), and that inspired me to give it a go. I've wanted to try this one out for a while now, but the steep price tag kept me away. ($2.99 is a lot for me, okay?) Now that I've had some time with Reigns, I ...more

The latest video game developer to hit the scene is a hotel chain, and they're offering big prizes for high-scorers. That's right, the W Hotels released a free game that can be played on your desktop, tablet, or smartphone called Belle the Bear. A Frogger-style game, Belle th ...more

Who would have thought back in 1991 that you'd eventually be able to play Sonic the Hedgehog whenever and wherever you wanted? Not a crappy Game Gear version, either. I'm talking the full Sega Genesis version of Sonic, available to you on a bus, a plane, or in a rest-stop bath ...more

Today it was revealed that Avis Budget Group will now support and maintain Waymo's driverless car fleet in Phoenix, the company's first public trial of self-driving cars. This is an unprecedented partnership in the autonomous vehicle field and conveys the steps driverless comp ...more

Google has an exclusive launcher for its Pixel devices, and it's pretty slick. But even though we've found ways to get this home screen app on other phones, certain features simply wouldn't work unless you were rooted. That's finally changed. Previously, when you installed th ...more

Tesla says the new version of Autopilot is now as good as the previous one, after having completed over-the-air updates of the driverless software during the past few days. Model S and Model X Tesla models the electric car firm began to make October 16 last year lacked certai ...more

Researchers have created a possible replacement for traditional camera lenses, using an "optical phased array" to function as both a lens and sensor of a camera. The project from researchers at the California Institute of Technology is the first ever camera that works without ...more

Music has always been able to connect us. Spotify is now offering an innovative new way to do just that. The company announced today that they have launched a new feature in collaboration with the Messenger app that allows you to share and make playlists with friends. The fea ...more

Leading tier-one supplier Continental has confirmed it will sell driverless platforms developed from BMW, Mobileye, and Intel's previously announced alliance, giving the company a potential edge over competitors by widening the range of technologies it offers directly to OEMs. ...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

A report by PwC highlights that immersive experiences in augmented and virtual reality represent the fastest growing segment of the entertainment and media industry over the next six years. News from two companies working in the industry, Fox and NetDragon, underscore the grow ...more

With so many apps being cloud-based, cached data has started to become a problem. This is particularly true if you're low on storage, so developer Dhi decided to do something about it. You see, apps will download temporary bits of data called cache to help speed things up the ...more

Pokémon GO's augmented reality journey is continuing with Apple's newly announced ARKit. It's no surprise considering Pokémon GO is the largest mainstream augmented reality game, with 500 million downloads. Apple mentioned Pokémon GO specifically during WWDC event last week, ...more

Much work needs to be done before laws and regulations no longer block driverless' rollout in the US, Rob Csongor, vice president and general manager of Nvidia's automotive division, said today during a US Senate committee hearing. Speaking before the US Senate's Commerce, Sc ...more

Get ready to step up your game, explorers! Google Maps is releasing an update for its gamified program to encourage reviewing of businesses and other locations within the Google Maps app. Local Guides was introduced in 2015 as a fun, interactive way for users to contribute to ...more

During the opening keynote of their Worldwide Developers Conference today in San Jose, Apple introduced the ARKit for the new iOS 11 that will bring augmented reality apps to millions of compatible iPhones and iPads. ARKit will allow developers to leverage motion tracking, su ...more

The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), a leading IT trade association, has published its first report on risks and recommendations for connected-vehicle security, ahead of when driverless cars are about to see volume production in the near future. The main idea behind the Observa ...more